UM: Corvette to Launch as a Brand in 2025 with a Four-Door and an SUV. Well, there’s this: “At a point in time when Ferrari and Maserati and Porsche are all offering one or more SUVs—the antithesis to the hard-core sports cars that put them on the map in the first place—why shouldn’t Corvette also consider building sedans, crossovers or, heaven forbid, even pickups?”
‘STUDENTS FIRST‘: New book on higher ed reform (and from a liberal college president, no less) has some suggestions that might help, like replacing credit-hour inputs with competency outputs.
CAN THE U-HAUL REVOLUTION SAVE AMERICA? New data from the latest Trafalgar Group shows increasing momentum of Independent and GOP voters pulling up stakes and moving to more hospitable climes.
READER FAVORITE: EFAYCRR Steampunk Table Lamp. #CommissionEarned I just ordered one of these for my desk, it looks kind of fun.
TAMARA KEEL: Are Double Stack 1911s Making A Comeback? “All of a sudden, the tacticool corners of the internet—a place where you couldn’t mention anything hammer-fired or with a manual safety for the last dozen years without getting hounded out of the room as a ‘Fudd’—are alive with, well, let’s call it big 2011 energy. For those of us who’ve nonetheless been keeping our thumb-safety skills sharp for the last decade, just in case, this feels like vindication.”
STAY WARM: Lasko 5586 Digital Ceramic Tower Heater with Remote. #CommissionEarned
“NOTHING BLEW UP, WHICH IS ALWAYS A WIN.” SpaceX fires up 11 engines as it prepares massive rocket for orbital test. “On Tuesday, SpaceX test-fired its Super Heavy rocket for about 12 seconds, making it the longest duration firing of the massive booster so far. The test, which ignited 11 of the 33 Raptor rocket engines, came as SpaceX continues working toward an orbital launch attempt of this Super Heavy first stage and its Starship upper stage. Earlier this month, SpaceX fired 14 Raptor engines on this booster for a few seconds, so Tuesday’s test did not set a new record regarding the number of engines tested. However, this “long duration” firing is the longest period of time that so many Raptor engines have been fired at once.”
Hey, blowups happen. And you can learn from them. That’s part of rocket science, too.
ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE, THE LEFT CANCELS EVERYONE: Will The Left Cancel Mr. Rogers Now?
NOT MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE: “DE-POLICING.” New study finds deaths from firearms are reaching unprecedented levels. But it does mention something that’s usually not prominently mentioned:
Maximum rates of fatalities by homicide among Black non-Hispanic men (141.8 fatalities/100,000 persons) significantly outpaced rates of fatalities among white non-Hispanic men (6.3 fatalities/100,000) and Hispanic men of the same age (22.8 fatalities/100,000 persons). The data does show there are also differences in fatalities by intent. Suicides were most common among white non-Hispanic men 80-84 years (45.2 fatalities/100,000 persons).
“Firearm fatalities accelerated dramatically during the COVID pandemic. Multiple potential factors have likely contributed to this including severe economic distress, an erupting mental health crisis, and a significant uptick in the sale of firearms,” says Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Again, not mentioned: De-policing.
XI JINPING UNMASKED: The Tiananmen Tiger Stalks the Chinese Communist Government.
Throughout the country protesters — some wearing surgical masks– stand before cellphone cameras and raise blank sheets of white paper.
Right — white empty space. To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, sometimes nothing is a real cool message. The blank sheets simultaneously satirize and defy the CCP’s malignant state censorship.
My translation of the blank: “We Chinese citizens say nothing yet you CCP tyrants fear our thoughts.” The empty page attacks the CCP’s systemic truth denial.
Check it out.
UPDATE: A death in the family took me away for awhile. Here’s a column from last week I should have blogged. Rubio and Roy Challenge the Woke Pentagon.
EUROPE’S GREEN POLICIES AS OUROBOROS: ‘Practically Unviable’ for Volkswagen to Build EV Batteries in High-Cost Europe. “It takes a lot of energy to produce a lithium-ion battery large enough to power a car or truck, and Europe’s high energy prices drive up the cost of making the batteries that were supposed to reduce costs.”
FIRST YALE, NOW THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS FACING JUDICIAL PUSHBACK OVER FREE SPEECH: Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall resigns KU Law teaching position over free speech issues.
On Oct. 19, the KU student chapter of the Federalist Society invited Jordan Lorence, the senior counsel and director of strategic engagement at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), to speak to KU Law students about the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Associate Dean Dean for Academic and Student Affairs Leah Terranova fired off an email to the entire staff and student body of the law school, decrying the talk as “hate speech” 90 minutes before the start of Lorence’s talk.
On November 25, Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall, who has been teaching appellate advocacy at KU Law as a member of the adjunct faculty, submitted a scathing, six-page resignation letter to Dean Stephen Mazza, head of the law school.
Stegall wrote that he had sensed “a dampening of the spirit of open inquiry I have so loved and benefited from at KU Law. A spirit that — going all the way back to my days as a law student — always existed within Green Hall. But events this fall have brought an unwelcome clarity to what before was only a vague and foreboding feeling. So I write to let you know that, as a result, I will not be renewing my teaching relationship with KU Law next fall.” . . . Stegall said he was concerned about a “closed and fearful environment, brimming with hidden hostilities and carefully nursed grievances.”
Directly referencing the controversy over Lorence, Stegall said he was “disappointed to hear from KU Law students who recently came to me to express concern over administration actions surrounding a lunch-hour event sponsored by the student chapter of the Federalist Society.”
According to Stegall’s letter, after the announcement of the Lorence event, there was a “significant uproar” among students and faculty.
Stegall wrote that when members of the KU FedSoc expressed concern about what might happen at the event and asked the administration to provide security, the students were instead told they should cancel.
Good for him. Educrats have no business launching personal attacks on student organizations that they oversee, and Dean Mazza needs to discipline the Associate Dean.
Much more at the link.
REMEMBER THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS? President Joe Biden clearly doesn’t, considering he wasted no time upon being sworn into the Oval Office in shutting down his predecessor’s historic diplomatic initiative. The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains why that initiative was historic:
“The peace deals that team Trump moderated took a totally different approach. Unlike previous administrations (both Democratic and Republican), the deals did not involve ‘land for peace,’ only ‘peace for peace.’
“The supposed peace experts of previous administrations had always bloviated that no Arab country would ever formalize ties with Israel before a Palestinian state was created, but the Trump team proved them wrong.”
Instead of pursuing what worked, Biden has returned to the old discredited formula. Not coincidentally, that formula includes U.S. energy dependence and the U.S. pouring millions of tax dollar down the fetid sinkhole that is the Palestinian Authority. We should hope whoever is Biden’s successor will have this Dunetz analysis at hand as a guide to how to restore hope in the Middle East.
GUN BLOG SILENCED: Blogger Censors Borepatch. “What Google hopes to accomplish by censoring a 14-year old post to gun cleaning solvents is unclear.”
SKYNET SMILES: San Francisco police ‘killer robots’ would have explosives, not guns: SFPD.
Sleep tight, San Fran citizens!
EPIC DEAL: Calvin Klein Men’s Dress Shirt Slim Fit Non Iron. #CommissionEarned
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! China is censoring the World Cup in a uniquely stupid way. “China blurred out faces in the World Cup so that their citizens wouldn’t know the world is maskless.”
PRESSURE WORKS: Chinese Cities Ease COVID Restrictions After Protesters Clash With Police.
Protests in Knoxville had a similar result a couple of years ago.
MARK JUDGE: Hey Hollywood, maybe make a #MeToo film in which the men are innocent? “The new #MeToo movie She Said has bombed. The prestige picture, based on the crimes of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, only made $2 million — ‘one of the worst results of a major studio in history,’ as Variety put it. Here’s an idea, Hollywood: Make a #MeToo movie in which the accused actually turn out to be innocent.”
JOHN NOLTE: How Woke Hollywood Killed the ‘Oscar Movie.’
Here is the domestic box office for this year’s titles enjoying the most Oscar talk.
• Till – $8.7 million
• The Banshees of Inisherin – $7.9 million
• TÁR – $5.1 million
• She Said – $4.3 million
• Triangle of Sadness – $4 million
• Bones and All – $3.8 million
• The Fabelmans – $3.5 million
• Armageddon Time – $1.9 million
• Aftersun – $756,000Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once might be nominated, but their status as box office successes had nothing to do with Oscar talk. If anything, it’s the other way around: their box office success won them some Oscar heat.
The most shocking title on that list is The Fabelmans. Those of us of a certain age can remember when Oscar talk around a Steven Spielberg movie would have had people flocking to theaters, especially over Thanksgiving weekend (when Fabelmans opened). Spielberg guaranteed that magic cinematic experience we all crave.
There are only two movies on that list I’m interested in seeing: TAR, for sure, and The Banshees of Inisherin. Other than that? Nope, nope, nope… Life’s too short, and I have too many Blurays sitting around.
So why are these movies flopping?
Short version: They aren’t entertaining.
Hollywood has gone from “Let us entertain you” to “Sit down and eat your peas.”
And the peas are spoiled.
ABRAMS’ NON-PROFIT BOUGHT ESTATE, THEN FIRED HALF OF ITS STAFF; Haven’t we heard this song before, the one about left-wing activist group using funds given for political activities to buy real estate instead?
IT’S ONLY FOOD: Dutch Government Demands ‘Compulsory Purchase’ of 3,000 Farms to Comply With EU Environmental Rules.
Previously: How The Netherlands Has Become The World’s Second Largest Food Exporter.
An awful lot of food exports are going to be withdrawn from a very hungry world.
BOOK I AM READING: Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy. #CommissionEarned
DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Zero Republican professors found across 33 departments at seven universities.
We need a higher ed industry that looks more like America.
WHY WHAT HAPPENS ON CAMPUSES MATTERS: Booklet describes the need for universities to be ‘drivers of equity and inclusion in American society.’
THIS IS A DIRECT RESPONSE TO TWITTER RE-EMBRACING FREE SPEECH: Google, YouTube spend MILLIONS to launch Global Fact Check Fund.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Government COVID Fascists Can’t Grasp That We’ve All Moved On. “The people tasked with doing everything they could to protect the public health did almost anything but that and most of the public is now aware of that. We aren’t in a state of early COVID panic and now have a lot of experience with them getting things very, very wrong.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: What’s Next for China’s Lunar Exploration Plans?
IF RANKINGS WEREN’T IMPORTANT, PEOPLE MIGHT FOCUS ON LOCATION AND COST: More Commentary On The U.S. News Law School Rankings Boycott. “The ire directed at U.S. News and other purveyors of rankings is understandable but can mask a deeper and more troubling reality: In the world of colleges and universities, reputation, brand strength, prestige — call it what you will — is now and has long been more important than anything else, including the nature and quality of the actual education provided. In fact it would be difficult to find another industry in which reputations are so fixed, so valuable, and based on so little hard evidence.”
The truth is, there’s much less difference between law schools than the rankings suggest. Faculty pretty much all come from the same handful of top schools, curricula are more alike than different, everybody has a nice building and library now (and nobody uses the library for research much, that’s nearly all online anyway). The students around you are on average smarter at top schools, but not that much smarter and often more deficient in other ways. The chief appeal of “top” schools is just prestige.
IT’S A WEIRD ADMINISTRATION: Theft case against Biden nonbinary aide Sam Brinton is admittedly ‘weirder.’
UPDATE:
WHY, INDEED? Why can’t Karine Jean-Pierre pronounce Nobel Prize?
SO MUCH WRONG WITH ‘RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT:’ With Senate passage Tuesday of the purposely mis-named same-sex marriage bill supported by all 50 Democrats and 12 Republicans, the deeply Orwellian character of American political rhetoric has become so obvious as to be undeniable.
That’s according to Dr. Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and author of the incisive analyst behind “The Briefing.” Don’t let his title mislead you because Mohler’s razor-edged analysis exposes the utter lack of logic behind the bill and the deceptive reasoning of advocates like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin. It’s lengthy at 25+ minutes, but well worth every second.
MEGAN FOX: 4 Reasons Police Haven’t Arrested or Named a Suspect in the Idaho 4 Murders. “For the sake of the families who just lost four beloved children on the cusp of their adult lives, this is a developing story that should be handled with extreme care. Already, just nineteen days into the investigation, the parents are starting to question the forthrightness of the police and their emotions are raw going into the first holiday season without their children. It would be helpful for them if the true crime die-hards didn’t fan the flames of upset for clicks and views. I’ve spent the day going over the facts of this case and to me, it’s looking like very good police work in a very difficult situation.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US consumer confidence falls in November for 2nd month.
THEY CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE THAT, SINCE NONE OF THEM ARE: Mark Judge: Hey Hollywood, maybe make a #MeToo film in which the men are innocent?
THE GROWNUPS ARE BACK IN CHARGE AFTER TRUMP! Biden Official Makes History: The First Nonbinary Federal Official To Face Felony Theft Charges.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Anti-Xi protests should end American left’s China envy.
LICENSED BARBARISM: The Most Passionate Science Deniers Are Pro-Trans ‘Experts’ Who Profit From Carving Up Kids.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that studies on transition, and especially transitioning children, are overwhelmingly conducted by those whose careers depend upon proving the benefits of transition. The doctors who are chemically castrating teenage boys, or amputating the healthy breasts of adolescent girls, are all-in. To admit that these procedures are a mistake would be a confession of horrific, possibly even criminal, medical malpractice that would end their careers.
Likewise, many of the formerly respectable gatekeepers of medicine and scientific research have been deeply compromised by transgender ideology. From medical associations to hospitals, there is a multitude of people who are in too deep to admit error, even as transgender ideology collapses.
The fact-free nature of transgender ideology is apparent in the latest standards of care issued by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health), a pro-trans group that is treated as the leading authority on transgender medicine. The organization eliminated many of its recommended age restrictions for medical transition in order to protect from malpractice claims physicians who were transitioning children younger than the previous standards — after all, doctors can’t violate a standard of care that doesn’t exist. And bizarrely, WPATH declared “eunuch” to be a valid gender identity, a decision reached, in part, by relying on online forums filled with violent fantasies of child sexual abuse.
These cranks and creeps have captured the establishment, from medicine to academia to the Democratic Party. And they intend to use their power to intimidate and silence critics. They do not care that their attempts are dishonest and incoherent. For instance, the NEJM writers admit that the scientific “consensus is ever evolving,” yet they posit this as a reason to shut down debate and deregulate transitioning children.
Future generations will look back on ours as butchers of children, because that’s exactly what’s happening.
YEP: Are Biden Inc scandals warping US policy toward China’s protesters?
Kirby is a very smart and able guy. Unlike many administration lightweights who convey that they are in over their heads, he knows exactly what he is saying. He is well aware that his appeasing message is crushing to people who are risking their lives. Those people know that Xi’s regime despises America, yet sees that America is too cowed to speak up for them. They are not expecting a U.S. military invasion. They just crave the kind of encouragement that, in 1981, President Reagan gave to Poles who defiantly revolted against the Soviets and their puppet regime in Warsaw. The Chinese protesters just expect a self-proclaimed beacon of freedom to act like a beacon, not a power failure.
At the risk of belaboring what I’ve been saying for a couple of years, the Biden family scandal — the millions of dollars that agents of the Chinese government (among other agents of corrupt and hostile regimes) poured into the family coffers during the Obama and Trump years — cannot be disaggregated from Biden administration policy positions on China.
Nope.
THE GRAY LADY ON THE BALENCIAGA DEBACLE: REPUBLICANS POUNCE! When High Fashion and QAnon Collide. Two new Balenciaga campaigns ignited a firestorm that traveled from the internet to Fox News, fueled by allegations that the brand condoned child exploitation.
The internet is full of trolls. Why did this controversy take off?
As online criticism of the campaigns spread, the story was picked up across right-leaning media outlets, including The New York Post and the prime time Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The show has helped to publicize and mainstream QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”
“Here you have a major international retail brand promoting kiddie porn and sex with children,” Mr. Carlson told viewers on Nov. 22, “and not promoting it subtly but right out in the open.”
He’s not wrong, but as Jim Treacher likes to say:
WOW, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING? China Used Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal to Score Propaganda Points, Pentagon Finds.
The Chinese Communist Party used the botched American military withdrawal from Afghanistan to portray the U.S. as an unreliable international partner and a nation in decline, the Department of Defense found.
In a Tuesday report to Congress on national security developments involving China, the DOD noted that the CCP exploited the Afghanistan embarrassment to undermine the U.S. and its reputation.
“In 2021, the PRC employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and criticizing U.S.-backed security partnerships,” the department concluded.
The CCP used the foreign policy failure as “evidence that the U.S. is an unreliable partner and declining power,” the report said. . . .
In August 2021, the Biden administration presided over a messy military departure from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to seize control of Kabul before U.S. forces and diplomats had vacated the country.
The withdrawal ended in chaos, with 13 American service men killed in a suicide bombing and desperate U.S. citizens and Afghan refugees scrambling to evacuate the war-torn country. As the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, as many as 9,000 Americans were left in the country, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report released in February 2022.
How many are still there?
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: China to have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035: Pentagon.
IF YOU NEED SOMETHING NON OFFENSIVE* TO GIVE SOMEONE THIS CHRISTMAS, CONSIDER: Notebook: Henry Stare (So Sez Henry).
#COMMISSIONEARNED
Yes, Mr. Henry Hayden, Esq is a very photogenic cat. And his image on a notebook is bound to make you wish to write more.
*Okay, so it will offend your aunt who thinks we should spend the money we spend on pets on one legged martians with broken UFOs. But you know what? She deserves to be offended. Buy her three So Sez Henry notebooks.
SOME OF US KNOW THIS. WE ALSO KNOW WE ONLY HAVE A CHOICE OF EVILS: Apple emerges as a villain in China, shutting down iPhone apps that help protestors.
THIS IS JUST NEAT AND FODDER FOR WRITER RESEARCH: Deepest underground structures.
THEY SHOULD HAVE READY ALLIES ANYWHERE THAT HUMANS WANT TO SURVIVE: Climate Change Skeptics Have Ready Allies in Africa.
IT’S ALL RIGHT. THEY’LL LIVE ON UNICORN FARTS: Netherlands To Seize 3,000 Farms In Name Of Climate Change.
THAT THING ABOUT MEDSCHOOLS AND MEDICINE? Today’s blacklisted American: Massachusetts hospital network to deny healthcare to those who say things it doesn’t like.
It’s more than time.
ONCE IS HAPPENSTANCE, TWICE IS COINCIDENCE, 2432 TIMES? Was the Nick Fuentes meeting a setup? Does 45 have a mole in his personal staff, or are they just that incompetent?
A cigar to the gentleman who just said “enemy action.” I knew you could.
NOW THEY’RE JUST GETTING SILLY: ABC’s Martha Raddatz Scolds Americans for Not Getting Covid Booster.
AS THEY TRY TO STAMPEDE US INTO COMMITTING SUICIDE BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER: Scientists Revive ‘Zombie Virus’ Frozen for 48,500 Years in Russian Permafrost.
DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THAT EARTH WORSHIP ALWAYS COMES WITH HUMAN SACRIFICE: Netherlands to Shut Down Thousands of Farms to Comply With EU Climate Demands.
UNIPOLARLY: When Atlas Takes A Coffee Break.
IT’S GOING TO GET BAD. REALLY BAD: U.S. Consumer Confidence Hits Four Month Low in November.
November 29, 2022
SO, I FINALLY GOT AROUND TO REPUBLISHING THIS (IT’S STILL DEDICATED TO THE BOSS, YES): A Few Good Men.
If I were doing it today and all, I’d have named it something else, like Uprising, maybe. But… At the time the pun appealed to me. Ah well, mistakes made. And we all have decades of derpitude to cross to get to our present derpy selves. Anyway#COMMISSION EARNED.
![A Few Good Men (Darkship Thieves Book 3) by [Sarah A. Hoyt]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51htG63c03L.jpg)
The blurb for this might be the suckiest thing I’ve ever written, as I did it last night, after becoming exhausted fighting Amazon’s new “hard cover uploading thing” (I wish they’d stop with the improvements.) So, I’m not going to copy it here. I’ll probably rewrite it tomorrow if the great coughening brought on by bp meds has receded enough to allow me to sleep (I can hope.)
But… So, almost 10 years ago, I was sitting in my office while Dan fretted about us being late to the local convention in town, (I was metaphorically SOCMOB (standing on a corner, minding my own business)) when these two bad dudes got into my head and started telling their story. I made my poor husband very nervous as I had to capture the voice before I left. And I came in halfway through a panel. I’m a great trial to my poor husband.
I’d been doing a deep dive into the history of the American Revolution, and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is more or less a perennial re-read. And then– Well, I was having really bad feelings. 2012, you know? So we go to a future where America is only a vague memory. Only tatters and ravelings in the wind. But there are these proscribed, persecuted people — USAians, from the term that, back then, foreigners called us on blogs, trying to rile us up — who carry scraps of flag that flew over the USA while it was still a sovereign republic. And they memorize our founding documents.
And in this book, in the strangest possible way, at the worst possible time, and at the hands of the most unlikely of agents… None of them ready, none of them perfect, none of them clean, the time has come.
“Your life, your fortune, your sacred honor. Did you think those were just words. Did you think it was just a game?”
AT AMAZON, Klipsch Cinema 400 Sound Bar + 8Inch Wireless Subwoofer with HDMIARC. #CommissionEarned
YEAH, THANKS TOM, WE’D ALREADY FIGURED THAT OUT: Tom Nichols: Never Trump really meant never Republican.
JOHN HINDERAKER VISITS ENGLAND, bumps into Mark Steyn at breakfast.
UM: Wait, whut?! Biden’s Nantucket Secret Service rental vehicles burst into flames. “The vehicles were parked at the Nantucket airport and the blaze reportedly spread to just 40 feet away from the facility’s jet fuel tanks. It is currently unknown what caused the fire. Fox News reached out to the White House for information, but they did not immediately respond.” Plus: “That is going to be one interesting peek under what’s left of the hood. All five vehicles accompanying the president mysteriously and spontaneously combust in the rental drop-off parking lot after he leaves?”
Probably environmental terrorists unhappy with his carbon footprint. I mean, they weren’t Chevy Bolts, so . . .
Or somebody was destroying evidence. Always a possibility these days.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Anti-Xi protests should end American left’s China envy.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Bar Association Drops LSAT Requirement to Increase Diversity in Law School.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: NYC Mom Hired ‘Deprogrammer’ for Daughter ‘Brainwashed’ by College’s Woke Agenda.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Tim Cook Says He’s Ready To Pull Twitter From App Store Once President Xi Gives The Order.
BREAKING NEWS FROM 2000! Increasingly, Trust in Election Outcomes Appears Dangerously Partisan.
In focusing on America’s rising rates of violent crime leading up to the midterm elections, Republicans were routinely accused of playing a dirty trick on voters.
“We don’t really have a common definition of what crime means,” crime-statistics analyst Jeff Asher asserted in an October interview with NPR. Apparently, the range of activities that constituted a violation of statute made it difficult to discern what voters meant when they said “crime.” And when “crime” wasn’t a nebulous concept that eluded the unsophisticated, it was cast as a problem presided over by Republicans. “Research has repeatedly shown that crime is rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states,” wrote Clinton-era Labor Sec. Robert Reich. It certainly wasn’t rising in cities led by lenient progressive prosecutors, as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein noted, citing the entirely dispassionate research produced by the Center for American Progress. Indeed, violent crimes such as homicides and rapes were down in 2022, according to the FBI’s midyear survey. “Violent crime is not soaring,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asserted. “In fact, it might be declining.”
These formless arguments orbit around one animating imperative: Neutralize the crime issue. In no less a venue than the Associated Press, a mid-2021 article previewed this approach by castigating the GOP for failing to make sufficient note of (at the time) declining rates of drug offenses and burglaries while recklessly emphasizing your increased risk of being murdered by a stranger. The GOP was deploying “a new twist on an old ‘law and order’ argument from the party’s past, harkening back to President Richard Nixon.” The GOP failed to make note of the “complicated reasons for fluctuating crime rates” in 2020 and early 2021, such as the “protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd by police”—which were accompanied by a lot of crime and a muted response from law enforcement.
Now that the election has passed, the truth can be told. Indeed, the truth was lacking only in one vital attribute: an angle.
Regarding the AP: “‘Gaslighting’ is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2022,” they report.
Speaking of mush from the wimp, I give the Biden administration credit for the rise of “gaslighting” to prominence in 2022. However, you will find nary a hint of the administration’s possible contribution to its popularity in the AP story. I pride myself in not having used the word so far in 2022. It has become a mind-numbing cliché. I can’t afford to lose the brain cells.
Of course “gaslighting” is the word of the year — Obama or retreads from his administration are in the Oval Office:
WITH HELP FROM APPLE AND THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: China’s security apparatus swings into action to smother Covid protests.
I WAS TOLD THAT WEED WAS THE ONLY THING THAT WORKED FOR CANCER PATIENTS: “Our study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests cannabis is no better at relieving pain than a placebo.”
IN FACT, IT SUPPORTS IT: The Biden Administration Is Unwilling to Oppose Discrimination Against Men.
Men are, on average, disadvantaged relative to women in several key respects in developed countries such as the United States. Men are the majority of prisoners and the majority of the homeless. Men live shorter lives in part due to higher rates of suicide and workplace deaths. Bias against male defendants may contribute to sex disparities in the American criminal justice system, including in the administration of the death penalty. American women control 60 percent of personal wealth and make or influence 85 percent of all consumer purchases.
Poorer outcomes for men may stem in part from structural inequalities in the American education system. About 77 percent of teachers in the public education system are women. Girls get higher grades than boys in all subjects. Several studies suggest that stereotyping can bias teachers’ assessment and grading against boys. The U.S. Department of Education has for some time steadily and selectively limited athletic opportunities for men. High school boys are much more likely to face (often counterproductive) disciplinary actions such as suspensions or expulsion than are girls. Women compose an ever-increasing majority of college students nationwide. The overwhelming majority of those sanctioned in schools under Title IX rules are male, and the majority of Title IX administrators are women.
The federal government is only widening these gender disparities.
All true.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Celebrities Cut Ties With Balenciaga After MyPillow Spotted In Photo Shoot.
JULIETTE OCHIENG: That Time When Some Carcass-Worshiper Called Me A House Negro Because I Suspected the Motives of Muslims.
To those whose male ancestors survived American Slavery long enough to ensure that the former would be alive in the twenty-first century and, therefore, be able to refer to me as a House Negro for suspecting the motives of the putative builders of the “Ground Zero” Mosque, I feel pity.
That pity is mixed with a sense of astonishment, however, at this conclusion: that so many black people are so well indoctrinated with perpetual anger at the sins of America’s past, that they would ignore the more egregious sins of Islam’s present and desired future.
To be fair, lots of white people are the same.
IS APPLE HELPING THE CHINESE SQUASH DISSENTERS? “In other words, Chinese iPhone users can’t do or say anything without the CCP knowing about it. Dissent can be quashed before it even starts. The Chinese people can be kept under the CCP’s thumb. And Apple is helping. . . . Here’s a theory: They’re not the good guys anymore, if they ever were. They hate free speech, anywhere it threatens to flourish.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Honda Shifters Are So Good.
ONE’S FASTER, ONE’S COOLER: 2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 Meets the 1990 Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Edition.
SOMETIMES IT TAKES A SHOEHORN AND AXLE GREASE TO FIT A STORY INTO THE PROPER NARRATIVE: Focus on the Family Blamed for Club Q Shooting Despite Jim Daly Condemnation, Suspect’s Non-Binary Identity.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY POTUS HIMSELF THAT COVID WAS OVER: White House COVID Doc: The Way to ‘Move on’ From COVID Is Endless Boosters.
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) Wireless Earbuds. #CommissionEarned
ED MORRISSEY: NBC’s Mystery of the Week: Where in the world is Miguel Almaguer after Pelosi-report retraction? “The feds don’t want to correct the record in their indictment for a reason. They don’t want to have to raise that question in court, or in the court of public opinion either. Why? We certainly can speculate on that point.”
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Caffeine gets you to the finish line faster, reveals new study on sprint performance.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Hyperventilating About Kanye Can’t Hide The Left’s Antisemitism Double Standard.
IT’S UNWISE TO ADOPT LEFTY GOODTHINK PHRASES LIKE “AFFIRMATIVE SURGERY”: Transgender Women Now Issued ‘New Vagina Manuals’ Following Affirmative Surgery.
ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON NOT LIVING UP TO PREDICTIONS: We’ve reached the end of a bizarre Atlantic hurricane season.
This is, of course, evidence of climate change. So would be the presence of many storms. Or none!
YES, THERE ARE ACTUALLY FLYING SNAKES: This came as a shock to me to discover, as I am sure it will be for some number of Instapunditeers. The Apologetics Press’ Kyle Butts explains in this video on HillFaith. I am puzzled how Natural Selection could account for these creatures.
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