SAME: Larry Summers Says Inflation Has Him ‘More Worried’ Following July Jobs Report.
BUT AT LEAST THEY’VE BEEN SPARED THE HORRORS OF FRACKING: Energy Bills in Britain to Double Next Year.
JEFFREY ANDERSON: Masks Still Don’t Work. More than two years on, the best scientific evidence says that masks don’t stop Covid—and public health officials continue to ignore it as they impose mandates at schools, colleges and military bases.
Masks are physically uncomfortable, make it harder to breathe, and profoundly compromise human social interaction. But none of that matters to the mask zealots, who are convinced that benefits far outweigh any potential costs. So, where is the proof?
Nowhere — not in the data from the pandemic, and not in the scientific literature (including that zealots’ favorite study from Bangladesh). Read the whole thing.
THE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM, PERFORMING AS USUAL: The Chaotic Monkeypox Vaccine Pipeline Is Leaving Everyone Short.
Par for the course.
NOW OUT FROM DAVE KOPEL: Restoring the Right to Bear Arms: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Download it early and often!
THE INSTA-WIFE SUFFERS FROM THIS EVER SINCE A DENTAL MISHAP THAT DAMAGED A NERVE: Study: Tinnitus is widespread, deserves more attention from researchers.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden administration says ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy is over.
Just keep sending those busses to Washington and New York City.
DARK BRANDON: Now Biden Can’t Even Dress Himself. “This is fine. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the most powerful man in the free world, who doesn’t know where he is or who he is or what’s happening from one moment to the next. Yeah, okay, so he can’t even dress himself anymore. What’s the problem?”
SO STOP WITH THE VICTIM-BLAMING: Men’s higher risk of most cancers may be due to biological, not lifestyle, differences.
DON’T GET COCKY — A CORNERED RAT IS DANGEROUS: Deep State Burns Its Bridges to Get Trump—and Now It’s Fighting for Its Life.
THEY’RE NOW GIVING ADVICE ON HOW TO LIVE ONCE THE GREENS BAN AIR CONDITIONING: 11 ways to sleep better in unbearable heat: No AC? No problem.
I say, start with the parasite class: Ban A/C for DC! “We won two world wars without air conditioning our federal employees. Nothing in their performance over the last 50 or 60 years suggests that A/C has improved things. Besides, The Washington Post informs us that A/C is sexist, and that Europeans think it’s stupid.”
I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they start making actual sacrifices.
WHY MIGHT THAT BE? Harris County Really Doesn’t Want Vote Audits. “Remember, this is the county where the voting administrator had to resign over a horribly botched March primary this year.”
MAR-A-LAGO SEARCH WARRANT WAS APPARENTLY ISSUED BY A MAGISTRATE JUDGE. I mean no disrespect to federal magistrate judges – who are not Article III judges and are appointed to 8-year terms – but were I the FBI, I probably would have made the effort to try to get a full-on federal judge with a life term to sign off on a unprecedented search warrant for the former (and maybe future?) President’s house. The point of such life terms is to insulate such judges from political influence, and getting a warrant from someone not so insulated, on something as hot as this, is not a great look.
(I am ignoring the angle here that he had also represented employees of Jeffrey Epstein – it’s usually not fair to smear lawyers with their clients – but that’s not the best optics you could hope for either.)
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Judge Who Approved Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Obama Donor, Linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
Related:
A GOOD BEAT, A LITTLE TEQUILA . . . How dancing black holes get close enough to merge.
LABELING AS PROPAGANDA: ‘Made in China’: Apple tells Taiwanese suppliers to relabel products. “Apple told suppliers on Friday that China has begun to enforce its rule that Taiwanese products be labeled as being made in ‘Taiwan, China’ or ‘Chinese Taipei,’ both of which indicate that the island is a part of China.”
To be clear, the law applies to Taiwan-made parts (and other items) shipped to Communist mainland China for final assembly.
ATHENA THORNE: The Great Self-Sorting Continues. “An Axios-Ipsos poll is the latest confirmation of what many people already see happening around them: deeply divided Americans are sorting themselves into ever-redder and bluer states that better align with their personal ideologies.”
We used to get along much better before Washington decided we had to be forced to get along better.
And by “get along better,” I mean “go along with them.”
BE PREPARED: LifeStraw Personal Water Filter for Hiking, Camping, Travel. #CommissionEarned
BACKGROUNDER: Russian Defence Research Expert on AFU performance, the effect of Western weapon supplies.
A balanced interview with Ruslan Pukhov, director of Russia’s Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
NOT IF THEY CAN HELP IT, THAT MEANS: Princeton mum on whether it will investigate prominent professor accused of plagiarism. Ever since the Bellesiles affair I’ve had a pretty low opinion of elite academic history.
Since it’s been a long time, here’s Jim Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal article debunking Bellesiles fraudulent scholarship. (Would YLJ publish an article like this today? Doubtful.)
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Dark Brandon Is Your Nightmare Comic-Opera Dictator. “‘You’ve got a nice constitutional republic here,’ I wrote in a Vercotti Brothers voice. ‘We wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.'”
Plus:
- See MSNBC toe the FBI’s line in realtime
- The most heartwarming Ring video ever #FJB
- Boy, the news from New York City
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THE TERM “LATINX” IS ANGLO CULTURAL IMPERIALISM, SO THEY’RE OFF TO A BAD START: ‘Anti-racism, anti-oppression work, equity, and social justice’ commitment required for ‘Latinx’ cluster hire.
Then again, woke politics is basically a white Anglo dysfunction, so. . .
IT’S JOE BIDEN’S POLICY. NEW YORK IS JUST GETTING A TINY TASTE OF IT: “This is horrific,” New York City mayor says of Greg Abbott’s policy as second busload of migrants from Texas arrives.
THIS IS DIVERSITY? Here’s some things these four women — Dorothy Roberts, Kristin Henning, Sheryll Cashin, and Derecka Purnell — have in common: All are black, all have written books about ripping apart various American institutions, and all are webinar panelists for the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) convention, according to Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader.
“On August 17, AALS is hosting a webinar on new constitutional law books for its Constitutional Law section. But none of the books are about constitutional law. Why is it hosting the panel, then? Because it provides an opportunity to showcase what the AALS views as racial diversity,” Bader explains. How quickly the Left becomes a caricature of itself.
And we wonder why so often “lawyer” is a synonym for “Left-wing activist.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Merrick Garland’s Mar-a-Lago Raid May Have Clinched Senate for the GOP. “If there were any undecided voters floating around somewhere in America I can’t imagine that the fence is very comfortable right now. It’s also probably a safe bet that Drooling Joe’s Stasi move guarantees that apathy won’t be a problem for the Republicans.”
HAND OVER YOUR WALLET, SUCKA! Elizabeth Troutman of the Washington Free Beacon reports that the ACLU and Human Rights Watch want the UN — not the American people — to demand that President Joe Biden move with “immediate, tangible measures” to dismantle “structural racism” in America, including the payment of reparations to every group that ever claimed to be oppressed.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why Are Gas Prices Falling? “I believe the outlets are right to pinpoint changing demand as the relevant factor for falling prices, and they’re right that higher prices are part of the story, but the explanation is missing the most important part.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: The FBI has openly become an arm of the Democratic Party. This will not serve the Bureau well in years to come. But what was the pretext for the raid?
I’m not sure these questions originated with Mike Lee, but they’re good questions. For example: “Ninth, what should we make of the fact that this is occurring while FBI and DOJ have taken no discernible action regarding (for example) flagrant violations of the law by (a) Hunter Biden, or (b) pro-abortion extremists threatening Supreme Court justices at their homes?”
Plus: FBI Director Wray Leaves Senate Hearing Early to Fly on Government Plane to Vacation Spot.
I’LL BELIEVE SHE’S SERIOUS WHEN SHE GIVES UP HER AIR CONDITIONING AND LIVES IN LESS THAN 1000 SQUARE FEET: Liberal Media Scream: Jane Pauley hypes climate agenda to ‘human extinction’ level.
JEFFREY CARTER: Making Up Numbers. “I think you ought to toss out all economic numbers from 2020 and 2021. Ignore them. Go back to 2019. Covid and the government’s response makes them silly to use when forecasting or trying to make sense of the economy. Sort of like using stock market numbers from 1930-1935 to extrapolate long-term return on equity. Hopefully, it’s a one-time event. The tax receipt numbers on the abysmal bill that just passed the Senate are guaranteed to be wrong. Economic incentives will change, and the numbers will be far below the expected numbers. Joe Biden and the Democrats killed the bull market. Lots of numbers are totally made up.”
FAR-LEFTIES DOMINATE NEW HILL AIDES’ UNION: The president of the Congressional Workers Union (CWU) works for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. But wait, there’s more! And it’s all from the Far-Left of the modern Democratic Party. What could go wrong?
HEAD OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL’S UKRAINE ARM RESIGNS AFTER BACKLASH TO REPORT:
The leader of Amnesty International’s Ukraine arm resigned Friday amid fallout from a scathing report the human rights organization issued criticizing the Ukrainian military’s tactics amid the ongoing Russian invasion.
Driving the news: The report accused Ukraine of endangering its own civilians and allegedly violating international law. It prompted Oksana Pokalchuk, the leader of the watchdog organization’s Ukrainian arm, to resign, saying in a Facebook post the report had become “a tool of Russian propaganda.”
What she’s saying: “If you don’t live in a country invaded by occupiers who are tearing it to pieces, you probably don’t understand what it’s like to condemn an army of defenders,” Pokalchuk said.
This is what lit the spark:
Not surprisingly, in between Annie Leibovitz photo shoots and posing with actress Jessica Chastain, Zelensky went apoplectic:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the report Thursday. Amnesty International, he said, was attempting “to grant amnesty to the terrorist state and to shift blame from the aggressor to the victim of the aggression,” Politico reported.
There’s further fallout as well: Will Amnesty condemn Islamic Jihad’s tactics as it did Ukraine?
Amnesty International’s contentious Thursday report, claiming that the Ukrainian military endangered civilians with its tactics, saw the organization lambasted for promoting Russian propaganda. But it is the fighting that began a day later, between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, that threatens the human rights group’s global credibility.
Islamic Jihad is clearly using the exact same tactics that Amnesty International accused Ukraine of. If the NGO does not condemn the terrorist group for these actions, it will show the world not just its political bias, but a staggering display of hypocrisy as well.
To be fair, Amnesty already accomplished that years ago.
VIDEO: Ukraine Export Deal: Too Little, Too Late. “The likely end result here is that this is the last year that Ukraine participates in international grain markets. They simply don’t have the capacity to get stuff up at a scale.”
If you don’t have the time or inclination to watch a video, Lawrence Person has done his usual excellent job of breaking out the bullet points for you to read.
ILYA SHAPIRO ON MOVING FROM CATO TO GEORGETOWN LAW TO THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: “What’s really different is that my organization’s leadership encourages my professional endeavors and isn’t trying to get me to toe a rigid ideological line.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Digital Meat Thermometer with Probe. #CommissionEarned
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: I apologize for my white baby: How can I extol the virtues of anti-racism while birthing another white person? “During my pregnancy, I caught myself fantasizing about the child coming out Black. My husband and I talked about adopting, but after watching that fascist Amy Coney Barrett parade her Black children in front of America at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing to prove she’s not just a racist bootlicker for the Patriarchy, we reconsidered. After all, does a Black child in a white family not perpetuate the cycle of white supremacy?”
Plus: “We tried desperately to find a Black nanny but had to settle for a Latinx.”
It’s satire, but I was only 100% sure of that because I know the author. We live in the instantiation of Poe’s Law.
HOW MANY CARS QUALIFY FOR THE SENATE DEMS’ NEW SUBSIDIES? “Today’s trick answer, via Reason: none. Thanks to the convoluted path that the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ took, what started off as an expansion of an existing tax credit for electric-vehicle models on the market developed into subsidies for vehicles that only exist in the imagination.”
THE TYRANNY OF THE ‘CURRENT THING:’
For a while, the Current Thing was #MeToo. From 2016 until 2018, the Current Thing was Russian collusion. After that scheme unraveled, we moved through a series of Current Things, each of which was said to compound the grave threat Trump supposedly posed to Our Democracy: in March 2020, it was Covid-19; for a few months that summer, it was systemic racism; then, it was the Delta variant; finally, for a stretch of early 2021, it was the January 6th “insurrection.” And when Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine became the Current Thing. You knew it was the new Current Thing because all the smart people suddenly changed how they spelled and pronounced “Kiev.”
So, you know what the Current Thing is. What, then, is “Current Thingism”? Current Thingism is the default mindset of a certain segment of the American population: typically, the professional, liberal, educated, urban caste of society. Current Thingism is an enduring assumption that whatever the Current Thing happens to be, it should, in fact, be the Current Thing—the issue among issues.
Current Thingism also enables some judgment on the part of the Current Thingist. Because the Current Thing deserves our total attention and deference, anyone who disputes the existence or the urgency of the Current Thing is a problem. The person who does not concede the urgency of the Current Thing is dumb, dangerous, or both. Remember the treatment of those who doubted the efficacy of masks? Those who were reluctant about mRNA vaccines? Those who doubted the wisdom of sending billions of dollars to fund Ukraine’s defense? Such is the fate of those who don’t get in line with the Current Thing.
Read the whole thing, which seems remarkably timely given the DNC-MSM’s reaction to last night’s events (the O-face on Nicolle Wallace’s face on the screen grab says it all).
ON SUNDAYS I DO A BOOK PROMO THING MOSTLY FOR INDIE AUTHORS. I FORGOT TO LINK YESTERDAY: Writer update Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Kevin Downey Jr: Dems Won’t Lift a Finger to Stop Crime in Black Communities, Yet Republicans Are the Racists? “I still can’t figure out what WWII atrocities have to do with BLM, but hell hath no fury like a white social-justice warrior with a diploma from MIT.”
Stacey Lennox: Charles Payne Brings the Hammer Down on Electric Vehicle Lies. ““This is what the world is going to need just to meet 2030 goals. We’re going to need, the world, 50 more lithium mines, 60 more nickel mines, and 17 more cobalt mines.”
Yours Truly: Hey, Kids! Trans Activist Eli Erlick Will Help You Chemically Alter Your Body Through the Mail. “This is the moral equivalent of taking a troubled teen who’s into cutting and handing them an X-ACTO knife and fresh blades.”
HE SCREWED UP SO MANY OTHER THINGS SINCE THEN: Biden’s Afghanistan Debacle One Year Later.
ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER: Wrought.
THEY HAVE SINCE OBAMA WEAPONIZED IT: The left now loves the IRS…
BAD NEWS: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL WERE ALWAYS CORRUPT FOOLS. THEY RARELY SUPPORTED VICTIMS OF COMMUNISTS: Amnesia [sic] International “report” on Ukraine: flush it down where AI itself belongs.
THEY WANT US ALL IMPOVERISHED OR DEAD: Samizdata quote of the day.
EVENTUALLY THE TRUTH COMES OUT: The TWA 800 Whistleblower Is Legit.
THIS IS FUNCTIONALLY DIFFERENT THAN OUR JUNTA BECAUSE….? Colombia swears in a Marxist guerrilla as president.
BECAUSE IT’S COMING HERE: Pay attention to what’s happening to Dutch livestock farmers.
UNLESS HE’S DOING SOMETHING HIGHLY ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL AT WORK, IT SHOULDN’T MATTER: Illinois Daycare Worker Tests Positive for Monkeypox.
If he really exposed kids under his care, let the parents deal with him.
WE THINK IT’S HORRIFIC YOU ASSHATS ARE FACILITATING THE INVASION OF YOUR OWN COUNTRY: NYC Mayor Adams Thinks It’s ‘Horrific’ that Abbott Sends Illegal Immigrants to the Sanctuary City.
Is #TEAMVLADTEPES in the audience? Because I can hear you.
THE BETTER TO EAT US WITH: Inflation ‘Reduction’ Act Makes IRS One of the Largest Government Agencies.
#TEAMHEADSONPIKES INTENSIFIES: FBI Director Wray Leaves Senate Hearing Early to Fly on Government Plane to Vacation Spot.
WHO ELSE WOULD IT TARGET. BUT DON’T WORRY, ONLY IF YOU’RE TO THE RIGHT OF LENIN: WH Economic Advisor Dodges Questions About Whether Bloated IRS Will Target Middle Class.
I’M RAPIDLY MOVING PAST ABOLISH THE FBI AND SALT THE EARTH TO #TEAMHEADSONPIKES HIGHWAY BEAUTIFICATION PROGRAM: Trump: FBI Raided Mar-a-Lago – “These Are Dark Times For Our Nation”.
August 8, 2022
WILLIAM A. JACOBSON: This is a provocation. They are trying to get a reaction that allows a further crackdown.
Don’t take the bait. Being stupid isn’t tough, it’s just stupid.
I flipped back and forth between CNN and MSNBC. At least when I watched, they were not engaging in the expected celebrations. There was a palpable dread that this could backfire against the Democrats. Bigly.
Be smart.
Read the whole thing.
NOT ONLY WAS MERRICK GARLAND UNFIT FOR THE SUPREME COURT, HE’S UNFIT TO BE ATTORNEY GENERAL:
I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY HE’S BEEN RED-PILLED: Turley: Time for a “NATO” of red states to combat progressive boycotts.
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Bernardino County Board Approves Measure of Possible Secession on November Ballot.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A 2004 BBC documentary titled, “Why I Hate the Sixties,” with conservative Peter Hitchens, author of The Abolition of Britain, among those interviewed (video).
CELEB AUTHOR MALCOLM GLADWELL GETS ROASTED FOR DUMB (AND HYPOCRITICAL) TAKE ON REMOTE WORK:
Celebrity author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell is getting roasted online—and for good reason. He attacked remote work during a recent podcast interview, and his remarks went viral over the weekend.
“It’s very hard to feel necessary when you’re physically disconnected,” he said. “As we face the battle that all organizations are facing now in getting people back into the office, it’s really hard to explain this core psychological truth, which is we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary.”
* * * * * * * *
There are so many problems with Gladwell’s argument, which is unfortunately shared somewhat widely among the elite class, that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Malcolm Gladwell is a Work-From-Home Hypocrite
Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that Malcolm Gladwell himself has a long history of working remotely.
In fact, New York Magazine reported in 2010 that despite living just miles away from his publication’s office, Gladwell almost never went into work:
“He is a well-known figure around his neighborhood, fond of tapping away on his laptop in coffee shops and cafés. His writer’s life is part anachronistic, part futuristic. His Lexus IS—a car, he concedes, he rarely drives—is parked down the street in the space he pays a small fortune to lease. A couple of miles north in Times Square are Gladwell’s editors at The New Yorker, who don’t see him in the office very often—owing to his self-professed ‘aversion to midtown’—but who grant him a license to write about whatever he chooses and accommodate him with couriers to pick up his fact-checking materials, lest he be forced to overcome that aversion.”
Similarly, Gladwell declared in 2005, “I hate desks. Desks are now banished.” The Guardian reported that, “He starts the day writing at home, but this is always done from his sofa, using his laptop.”
In 2010, Gladwell described himself as “someone who writes in coffee shops for a living.”
Further thoughts from Colby Cosh:
It seems CEO Gladwell now thinks very poorly of magazine Gladwell. Is this mere hypocrisy? I’m sure the evangelical sense of mission he has as a boss is genuine. He no longer has the problem of finding the most comfortable place to churn out oceans of copy. His problems are those of a CEO, and the podcast he was appearing on is called “The Diary of a CEO.”
Naturally, he thinks the podcasts his company produces represent a solemn and elevated “storytelling” crusade. But if I could have 2006-vintage Gladwell on a “Professional Blowhards Who Make Fishwrap” podcast, I suspect I might find him arguing the other side of the new religious divide with near-equal fervour.
What I’d like best is for people to stop treating the shift to working from home as a moral phenomenon. Folks, you are bitching about the weather — i.e., the labour market. I think COVID revealed something we all know to be true: much office work isn’t especially heavy on the “work” part the way a construction site is, and a lot of it is real-time activity that has you welded to a screen switching between work tasks, Slack windows, instant messages and cat memes.
The productivity surplus from the internet, which economists have been squinting to perceive since the turn of the century, is now materializing in the form of remote work — and, not to wax Marxist, but the workers are in a struggle with the bosses over who shall capture it.
Alvin Toffler was predicting telecommuting in 1980’s The Third Wave, and as far back as 1970’s Future Shock, but it took covid to make it a reality for millions of workers. I can understand Elon Musk’s concerns — unless your Internet handle is Iowahawk, it may be difficult to build cars at home — but for so many 21st century jobs, it doesn’t matter all that much if your monitor, keyboard, and mouse are on a desk in an office tower, or a desk in your home office.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches mysterious reusable ‘test spacecraft’ to Earth orbit.
I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WATCHING A POLITICS-FREE ESPN: ESPN Fails Because It Continues To Promote Deluded America Haters Like Jalen Rose.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Hunter Biden Breathes Sigh Of Relief As FBI Raid Team Passes By His House On Way to Mar-A-Lago.
“DARK BRANDON” MAY BE ON LIFE SUPPORT, POLITICALLY. Stelter: Hey, Hunter Biden is “not just a right-wing media story” any more, you know.
Why was it only a “right-wing media story” in 2020? Because mainstream media ran interference for Joe Biden in 2020. Why is it a legit story now? Because mainstream media now wants to jettison Biden in order to salvage the standing of other Democrats.
In the meantime, the actual facts of the story haven’t changed at all. The laptop data is the same, the testimonies of others around have remained the same, and so on. The only additions have come because the New York Post and other “right-wing” media outlets kept investigating and reporting on the story while the “mainstream” media and Big Tech platforms kept calling it “Russian disinformation.”
It’s narrative journalism at its worst … in both directions.
Joe Concha ripped Stelter and the media bias on display on Fox News. He also brings the receipts on Stelter’s hypocrisy:
[Video at link]
“Now that he has a new boss,” Concha says about Stelter, “I guess he’s trying to keep his job by actually doing his job.” That gives Stelter too much credit here. He’s trying to keep his job by helping Democrats push the Bidens to the sidelines. Although, according to Puck News, the layoffs may be a-comin’ at CNN soon. Stay tuned … or not.
And possibly not just CNN: As David Zaslav Goes Straight Savage Cutting and Cancelling Everything #Woke at Warner Discovery, SJWs Start Shrieking About MuhFakeJobs.
Rumors are flying that Zaslav is going to end, mostly, DC’s monthly comic business, and either start publishing just the occasional graphic novel, or perhaps license out their eight or ten actually-valuable characters to some other company. The result will be a lot less work for the people who killed the American comic book industry.
And they’re screaming. They think that calling Zaslav a racist will work.
Here’s one of DC’s more obnoxious SJWs attempting the “I’ll call my boss a racist to keep him from firing me” card.
Not this time.
The Warner empire went woke — Zaslav is now in cleanup mode to prevent it from going broke.
SPRINGTIME FOR BRANDON: Yes, The White House’s ‘Dark Brandon’ Memes Contain Nazi Imagery With CCP Influences.
‘Dark Brandon’ is the Biden White House’s cringetastic effort to win back the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme that haunted the perennially COVID-hit President through late 2021 and early 2022. The efforts, shared by taxpayer-funded White House staff, combines an almost year-late rebuttal to the Brandon memes with the Byronic aethestic of the well established “Dark MAGA” movement.
One more problem: it’s extremely ‘Third Reich‘ in nature.
That’s right. On the day the media wants us to buy the idea that Donald Trump demanded his Generals behaved like Nazis, the current White House is actually promoting Nazi memes to hype its passage of the Inflation Recovery Act (IRA). The timing by the White House isn’t bad, to be honest, since the IRA (another irony not lost on us) does in fact empower the U.S. government with a Stormtrooper-style IRS to snoop through your taxes (all at your expense, of course).
But there’s more to this story than the White House using the Reichsadler or Parteiadler in its memes.
Including:
But there’s one more part of the Dark Brandon saga. The cherry on the cake. And that is the aesthetic origin of the entire thing.
“You have this very exaggerated image of a very ‘evil Biden,’ but also, his ability to mobilize these public intellectual zombies in an image is also kind of funny because it has long been China’s accusation of the U.S. government, that the U.S. is using folks like public intellectuals and scholars within China to carry out ‘peaceful evolution,’” Victor Shih, associate professor at UC San Diego, told POLITICO.
That’s right – it comes from China. Specifically, by an artist named Yang Quan, who sought to portray Biden in a negative light in early 2022.
Related: “[T]he problem with the left as has been said in the past is that they can’t meme. First, the problem is that because Biden is feeble and incoherent, it just looks silly and desperate when you are trying to imbue him with special powers. Not to mention as my colleague Brittany Sheehan pointed out, it’s a bit of a rip-off already of memes of Trump. Big surprise, the Biden team sort of plagiarizing an idea once again. But then because they can’t meme, they came up with something that is not only dumb, but actually problematic. If Trump had come up with it you know the liberal media would be screaming ‘Nazi imagery’ because of the eagle in the background. They would be crucifying him 24/7.”
Related: DARK BRANDON suits up for action!
<"This is fine" dot gif> https://t.co/VOuDq1qYb4
— Ken Gardner (@KenGardner11) August 8, 2022
FASTER, PLEASE: Giant Viruses Called ‘Jumbo Phages’ Could Help Us Fight Antibiotic Resistance. People have been promising phage therapies as long as I can remember. More results faster, please.
BREAKING: TRUMP ANNOUNCES MAR-A-LAGO RAIDED BY FBI. This will end well.
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Down on Vitamin D? It could be the cause of chronic inflammation.
BE PREPARED: Amerex 322, 5lb Carbon Dioxide Class B C Fire Extinguisher. #CommissionEarned
WEIRD HOW LAST YEAR’S “CONSPIRACY THEORY” IS ONCE AGAIN THIS YEAR’S “EVERYBODY KNOWS:” CNN’s Brian Stelter: Hey, Hunter Biden is “not just a right-wing media story” any more, you know.
Yes, we know — and we knew it all along. Almost two years after the mainstream media locked arms with Big Tech platforms to prevent the dissemination of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, suddenly it’s no longer just a “right-wing media story.” Brian Stelter declared it open season on Hunter’s legal woes and alleged connections to corruption … now that Joe Biden’s approval and favorability ratings are bad enough that Democrats want to find ways to push Biden out of the 2024 election cycle.
Once you understand that Stelter — and the vast, vast majority of his counterparts — aren’t journalists but Democratic Party operatives, it all makes sense.
ANDY KESSLER: R.I.P. the Big Bull Market (1982-2022): From start to finish, the Dow rose from 776.91 to 36800, a 9.6% annual rate.
But now what? Like it or not, we’re in a new era. Capital, as always, sloshes around the globe searching for its highest return. Inflation usually means money is attracted to real assets rather than ideas. Energy? Real estate? Commodities? Fixed income will be attractive again. Corporate earnings, meanwhile, have started to decline as input costs—material, labor, regulatory overhead—spiral upward, red meat for bears.
Of course, a new bull market could start anytime, but don’t even think about another big one driven by interest-rate declines until, well, interest rates go up enough. Instead, the next bull will be fueled by earnings growth from whatever drives productivity next. Forget last cycle’s winners, find new ones—next-generation machine intelligence, geothermal energy, gene therapy, insta-vaccines, nuclear fusion or, more likely, something completely out of left field that starts out expensive, is dismissed by skeptics and then gets relentlessly cheaper over decades, creating wealth for society.
This is why we should always nurture the supply side, with capital-forming low tax rates and regulations that allow productivity to increase. The bull is dead, long live the bull.
I don’t think we’ll see another bull market with the current gang of idiots in charge.
IN THIS HOUSE, WE SUPPORT SCIENCE: Scientists suing Biden admin over COVID info censorship.
I WAS TOLD THAT GLOBAL WARMING WOULD MAKE HURRICANES LIKE KATRINA A PRACTICALLY-DAILY OCCURRENCE: Two months into 2022 season, nary a hurricane so far in the Atlantic basin.
ONE OF MINE, TOO: Remembering Olivia Newton-John: Singer, Actress, and My Boyhood Crush.
I HAVEN’T DRIVEN ONE IN A DECADE, BUT I USED TO LIKE THEM: Report: Nissan Maxima Dead in 2023.
A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: ‘If things get hard, they just quit.’
JOE BIDEN’S GODZILLA TAX COLLECTORS: Holy Crapo Amendment! Dems Reject Middle Class Protection from Doubled IRS.
HAHA, OF COURSE THEY DID YOU SCHMUCKS: WaPo: Did Senate Dems sell us a bill of goods on climate change too?
It’s bullshit all the way down, and you eat it up every time. “Conservatives warned repeatedly during this bill’s development that we tried the same strategy in 2009 in Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was nicknamed ‘Porkulus’ by the skeptical. The skeptical turned out to make the accurate call, which the Post now belatedly recognizes.”
They always wait to recognize it until after the Democrats have gotten what they want.
MILBLOGGER LAUGHING WOLF’S NUCLEAR WAR PRIMER CONTINUES: Nuclear 101: Survival.
HOW GOVERNMENT HURTS: Nuclear Regulatory Commission Has Nearly Frozen Nuclear Designs for 48 Years.
THE FBI’S RUBY RIDGE MURDERS, 30 years later.
PREPPING THE NOVEMBER BATTLESPACE: The MSM Suddenly Decides Elections Can Be Stolen… But Only by Republicans.
MY NEPHEW GOT IT OVER A YEAR AGO AND HIS SMELL AND TASTE HAVEN’T COME BACK: Study: Smell, taste loss from COVID-19 can take up to two years to return.
“THEY PRETEND TO PAY US, AND WE PRETEND TO WORK:” Quiet quitting: why doing the bare minimum at work has gone global.
Rather than working late on a Friday evening, organising the annual team-building trip to Slough or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience, the quiet quitters are avoiding the above and beyond, the hustle culture mentality, or what psychologists call “occupational citizenship behaviours”.
Instead, they are doing just enough in the office to keep up, then leaving work on time and muting Slack.
But posting about it on social media, so it’s not entirely quiet.
OR IF YOU’RE A DEMOCRAT BIGSHOT, BECAUSE TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Dem senator on huge IRS expansion: If you’ve paid your taxes, you should have nothing to fear. “This is like saying that you must be guilty if you decline to talk to the cops about a crime they’re investigating. Yet it was a popular take among lefties on the ol’ Twitter machine this weekend.”
If he believes that, then the IRS should have to pay your legal and accounting bills when you’re audited. If your compliance costs outweigh the taxes owed, they wind up in the hole. That would discourage abuse.
Also: Lots of conservatives should apply for these new positions at the IRS. We need moles in there to publicize any shenanigans.
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