NOTHING NEW ABOUT THAT: The New #MeToo Movie Tár Makes Conservatives Into Monsters. Rich, coming from the town that gave us Harvey Weinstein.
MARK JUDGE: The New #MeToo Movie Tár Makes Conservatives Into Monsters.
How this opening scene plays out tells you everything you need to know about the next two-plus hours. Something related to time or turning back to something thought forgotten in the past is going to occur (teshuvah), and that will trigger the need for repentance (kavanagh). There’s also this wrinkle, which gives the game away. When Lydia Tár mentions “kavanagh” in her interview, she quickly adds that “to this audience that word might mean something else.” By this she means that they audience will probably think of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As if on cue, the audience lustily boos.
Regular readers of The Stream know that I have spent the last few years writing about the Kavanaugh battle and my involvement in it that sprang from my friendship with Brett going back to high school. I won’t rehash it here. You can read about it in my forthcoming book. I can only say that it was a bit bizarre to step into a movie theater to see a well-acted drama and hear Mahler’s Ninth Symphony only to be confronted with a hostile New York audience booing my high school buddy, who was falsely accused of sexual assault.
The booing scene instantly made clear what I was about to watch. Tár would be another angry story about what heartless monsters conservatives are.
Hollywood just can’t help embedding a leftist sucker punch.
ITS 908-DAY MISSION, TO [REDACTED]: U.S. military space plane lands, ending record-breaking mission.
Imagine a postapocalyptic world. Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization – St. Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers – dwell savages in mud huts. The savages see the buildings every day, but they never compose legends about how they were built by the gods in a lost golden age. No, they say they themselves could totally build things just as good or better. They just choose to build mud huts instead, because they’re more stylish.
This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria. Its true believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like this*:
Headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, The J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., Thursday, March 23, 2017. Construction finished in September 1975, and President Gerald Ford dedicated the structure on September 30, 1975. (AP Photo/NewsBase)
So (continues the conspiracy) probably we suffered some kind of apocalypse a hundred-ish years ago. Our elites are keeping it quiet, and have altered the records, but they haven’t been able to destroy all the buildings of the lost world. Their cover story is that technology and wealth level haven’t regressed or anything, those kinds of buildings have just “gone out of style”.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, as a heavily illustrated Twitter thread collated with the Thread Reader app notes:
How old do you think this building is?
Well, it’s not as old as you might guess: it was built in 1967.
Here’s its story (and why architectural style is always a choice…)
It’s the great Cloth Hall of Ypres, a town in Belgium, built between 1933 and 1967.
But that doesn’t tell the full story, of course. It’s actually a stone-for-stone reconstruction of the original Cloth Hall, completed in 1304.
* * * * * * * *
Perhaps the most interesting thing about these reconstructions is that they were even possible.
Much modern architecture is wonderful – but, as with any style, much of it isn’t. Nonetheless, we get the impression that other, older styles just aren’t feasible any more.
The Tartarian empire does indeed still live, if you know where to look for it.
* Author’s photo of Google’s HQ building replaced with a photo we have the rights to use.
OUT ON A LIMB: Confirmed: Soccer Is the Greatest* Threat to Freedom and Democracy. FIFA bans “human rights for all” practice jerseys at World Cup.
What happened: FIFA, the international soccer federation, refused to let the Danish national team practice in shirts promoting “human rights for all” at the World Cup, which begins later this month in Qatar.
Seriously? Yes. The chief executive of Denmark’s soccer association said FIFA rejected the team’s request “due to technical reasons.” The seemingly innocuous phrase was presumably deemed too “political” due to the host country’s appalling human rights record and ties to terrorist organizations.
Wait, what? Human rights groups have condemned Qatar for using forced labor to build the infrastructure required to host the World Cup. More than 6,500 migrant workers are believed to have died there since 2020. The country is a longstanding supporter of Hamas, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist groups.
So why is Qatar hosting the World Cup? Because FIFA is an irredeemably corrupt organization that represents an irredeemably corrupt sport. A U.S. Justice Department investigation found that Qatar and Russia, site of the 2018 World Cup, secured hosting rights by bribing FIFA officials.
* To be fair, the NBA might want to put in a word here.
CURLY, LARRY AND MOE APPROVE THIS MESSAGE: Dana White launches ‘Power Slap,’ competitive open-handed striking sport.
UFC President Dana White on Friday announced the launch of “Power Slap,” a combat sport focused on competitive open-handed striking.
According to a news release, “Power Slap” is both sanctioned and regulated.
The release says Pilgrim Media Group will produce “Power Slap,” which “will feature competitors from across the globe competing on the ultimate stage to showcase their power, technique and resolve.”
According to the release, airing on TBS in early 2023, “Power Slap” will launch with an eight episode series in which “athletes will compete to earn a spot in the cast house, the first Power Slap rankings, in future Power Slap matches and world recognition.”
Preview of the pilot episode of Power Slap, which helped to sell the series to TBS:
Steven Spielberg might want a word here, but Scorsese’s best works have been brilliant. Still not sure about The Irishman’s excruciating 287-hour running time, though.
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: Cast Upon the Waters.
I love that he’s so prolific, but I do kinda wish he’d deliver the multiple sequels he owes in other series before starting new series.
BE PREPARED: Carhartt Men’s Washed Duck Double Front Dungaree. #CommissionEarned
HOW IT STARTED: The Rise of the Latte Town.
I’m holding up traffic. I’m walking down the street in Burlington, Vermont, and I come to a corner and see a car approaching so I stop. The car stops. Meanwhile, I’ve been distracted by some hippies playing Frisbee in the park, and I stand there daydreaming for what must be 15 or 20 seconds. The car waits.
In a normal city, cars roll through these situations; if they see an opening, they take it. But this is Burlington, one of the most socially enlightened cities in America, and drivers here are aware that America has degenerated into a car-obsessed culture, where developers pave over paradise to put up parking lots; where driving threatens to crush the natural rhythms of foot traffic and face-to-face community with superhighways and arid suburbia; where fossil-fuel-burning machines choke the air and displace the renewable energy sources of human locomotion. This driver knows that while sitting behind the wheel, he is ethically inferior to a pedestrian like me. And to demonstrate his civic ideals, he is going to make damn sure that I get the right of way. No matter how long it takes.
Finally, he honks politely, and I wake up from my reverie and belatedly cross the street. But by the time I reach the next corner, I’m lost in my thoughts again and, seeing a car coming, I stop. This car stops too. And waits. I have to go through this ritual about a dozen times before I finally adapt to local mores and trudge straight into the intersections. In Burlington, pedestrians have inherited the earth. Social enlightenment rules.
Burlington is a Latte Town.
Latte Towns — the term is Alan Ehrenhalt’s — are upscale liberal communities, often in magnificent natural settings, often university-based, that have become the gestation centers for America’s new upscale culture. They are the birthplaces of the coffee shops, gourmet bread stores, micro- breweries, organic grocery stores, and the rest of the sensibility-drenched enterprises that marry natural goodness, high craftsmanship, cosmopolitan taste, social concern, and inflated prices to create a 1990s version of genteel culture. Boulder, Colorado, is a Latte Town, as are Madison, Wisconsin; Napa, California; Northampton, Massachusetts; Missoula, Montana; Wilmington, North Carolina; Ithaca, New York; and on and on. You know you’re in a Latte Town when you can hop right off a bike path, browse in a used bookstore with shelves and shelves of tomes on Marxism the owner can no longer get rid of, and then drink coffee at a place with a punnish name that must have the word “Grounds” in it, before sauntering through an African drum store or a feminist lingerie shop.
The ideal Latte Town has a Swedish-style government, German-style pedestrian malls, Victorian houses, Native American crafts, Berkeley human- rights groups, and Beverly Hills income levels. There should be some abandoned industrial mills that can be converted into lofts, software startups, and organic-brownie factories. The Latte Town in Utopia would have Rocky Mountain views to the west, Redwood forests downtown, a New England lake along the waterfront, and a major city with a really good alternative weekly within a few hours’ drive.
—David Brooks, the Weekly Standard, September 15th, 1997.
How it’s going: Defund the police comes to Burlington, Vermont.
Defund police departments and crime goes up. Does that surprise anyone? No. But the real problem isn’t the lack of police but of the tolerance of drug addled transients. They know full well if they get arrested they’ll just be out the next day. They’ll never pay a fine and never do more time. There are no consequences whatsoever. That’s the real problem.
A reader from Vermont:
An important factor to understand is how police departments are staffed. Originally at roughly 95 in 2018, that was made up of 50 patrol officers and then 45 supervisors, detectives, domestic violence officers, etc. All most all of the police leaving have come from patrol officers. Now at about 60 total, only 15 are patrol officers, so it’s actually a 70% drop from 50 to 15.
This is fairly typical across the country – when you hear of departments being down such and such, the impact is actually far far greater than immediately apparent.Lots more reactions like these but this reader just says what the Times only insinuates.
Read this article carefully and the take away is the citizens are effectively resorting to vigilantism to solve the bike theft problem. Sure, they are not physically harming anyone now, but it is clear if the police will not or cannot protect lives and property — in this case property — people will take matters into their own hands. If you think this is better than effective law enforcement, think again.
As Glenn warned in August of 2020, when “defund the police” fever was in full bloom in latte towns across America, “the breakdown of law and order won’t go as [leftists] hope. Ultimately, the police are there to protect criminals from the populace, not the other way around. Get rid of the police, and armed vigilantism is what you’ll get. And what you’ll deserve.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student barred from class for claiming there are two genders.
PATRICK HYNES: Help us Ron DeSantis, you’re our only hope.
HOW IT STARTED: “Defund the Police.”
How it’s going: California sheriff’s office stops all daytime patrols due to ‘catastrophic staffing shortage.’
A California county sheriff’s office announced that it will stop its daytime police patrol due to a “catastrophic staffing shortage throughout the agency.”
Tehama County, which is located north of Sacramento and has a population of 65,000, will suspend daytime patrol services starting November 20.
Ending the patrols could prove dangerous considering that Red Bluff, the county’s most populated city, has a violent crime rate higher than 97% of other U.S. cities, according to Neighborhood Scout.
The Tehama County Sheriff’s Office released a statement announcing the decision and noted, “Over the past several years, the Sheriff’s Office has had difficulties with recruitment and retention of employees, which has been directly linked to pay disparities. A drastic rise in attrition, coupled with the inability to present enticing recruitment efforts have resulted in an unprecedented staffing shortage.”
According to KRCR-TV, the Tehama County Jail is currently around 60% of its staffing capacity. Over the past year, the sheriff’s office has lost 20 employees.
Gooder and harder, California.
IN OUR SYSTEM, YOU GOTTA GET THE VOTES WHERE YOU NEED THEM:
People didn’t show up where people needed to show up to flip races. Oh, they showed up elsewhere. You’ll hear about the “national popular vote,” the total number of votes cast for each party. Republicans received almost 52 million votes, Democrats only around 47 million. It’s an interesting stat that means absolutely nothing.
For the past few cycles, Democrats were roundly mocked by conservatives for citing how they’d won the NPV, as they should have been, so it can’t be a source of comfort now. Everyone knows where the votes are needed. If the candidates, campaigns, and party can’t work within that reality they deserve to lose.
Well. Plus: “That being said, the real problem for Republicans was Lindsey Graham. The senior Senator from South Carolina, for reasons known only to him, decided to introduce a nationwide 15-week abortion ban in September. Think what you will of the concept, it was a stupid strategic move.”
I said that at the time.
WHICH IS WHY THE DEMOCRATS UNCEASINGLY PROMOTE IT: White House Report Card: National division is a win for Biden.
I LOVE THE RESPONSES CALLING HER A “CHRISTOFASCIST” WHEN SHE’S ACTUALLY A HINDU:
THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE HOUSE: Where Things Stand. “So where do things stand now? Currently, at the time of this writing, Democrats have won 198 House seats compared to the GOP’s 210 seats. That leaves 27 seats that have yet to be called, and the Republican Party only needs to win eight of them to reach the 218 seats needed for the majority.”
“CLIMATE:” Boris and Rishi Buy the Pyramids.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: The Arrest of James Hodges.
THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES CAN DO THIS BETTER, AND DO: The battle over a 100% hand count in Arizona pulls back the mask.
EARLY BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: TurboTax Premier 2022 Tax Software. #CommissionEarned
TWO WORLD WAR II AIRPLANES COLLIDE AND CRASH DURING WINGS OVER DALLAS AIR SHOW:
Two World War II-era airplanes collided and crashed while performing a flyover at a commemorative event in Texas on Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. Six people were onboard the two planes at the time of the crash, the Commemorative Air Force said.
A Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra were participating in the Air Force’s Wings Over Dallas air show when they collided mid-air near the Dallas Executive Airport just before 1:30 p.m. local time, the FAA said.
According to the event’s website, several planes were scheduled to do a flyover demonstration Saturday afternoon. Social media posts showed hundreds of people gathered to watch the flyover. The 3-day event is in honor of Veterans Day, which was Friday.
Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.
“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called it a “terrible tragedy.”
Here’s video of the crash, which was caught by multiple people on their phone cameras:
⚠️ GRAPHIC VIDEO: A mid-air collision involving two planes near the Dallas Executive Airport, today. The accident took place during the Wings Over Dallas WWII Airshow at 1:25 p.m., according to Dallas Fire-Rescue. A @FOX4 viewer took this video. @FOX4 is working for more details. pic.twitter.com/jdA6Cpb9Ot
— David Sentendrey (@DavidSFOX4) November 12, 2022
THE FALL GUY: Biden border chief Chris Magnus resigns amid pressure from Homeland Security.
He said he believed he was doing the job Mr. Biden asked of him in the direction he was taking CBP.
That direction has been the worst border numbers on record, with more illegal immigrants encountered and more fentanyl and terrorism suspects detected than ever before.
Mr. Magnus, who had been chief of police in Tucson, Arizona, took over at CBP when numbers were already bad. They started deteriorating at the beginning of the Biden administration.
But during 11 months on the job, Mr. Magnus made little headway in bringing the numbers down.
Border Patrol agents and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame Mr. Mayorkas — indeed, if the GOP takes control of the House there will likely be an effort to impeach the secretary.
Mr. Mayorkas, though, seemed to finger Mr. Magnus as the hurdle to better border security.
Mr. Mayorkas is slated to appear on Capitol Hill for testimony next week, and the border situation is likely to come up.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mr. Biden had accepted Mr. Magnus’s resignation and ”appreciates” his lengthy law enforcement career.
As Ed Morrissey wrote on Friday, before Magnus resigned, “This also raises another question of whether Biden and Mayorkas want to push out Magnus as a way to blame him for everything that’s gone wrong, to discredit Magnus in case he goes to Congress with what he knows about the border crisis, or both…At some point, the silly impotence of trying to push Magnus out will end as it should have last month, before the nasty leaks and innuendo. Biden will formally fire Magnus, and Magnus will then start chatting up House Republicans about his future testimony. If Biden and Mayorkas don’t like that, then they should adopt better border-control policies and keep Magnus inside the tent. If they did that, perhaps Magnus won’t be inclined to burn it all down.”
FTX: The fall of Sam Bankman-Fried is crypto’s Enron moment.
In recent weeks, the world’s richest man and his flailing attempts to figure out what to do with Twitter have dominated the news cycle. However, his unhinged management-by-tweets reality show are nothing compared to an almighty tussle between two crypto-bros.
Internet magic money (aka crypto) billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, is the man behind FTX, a crypto exchange. He seems to have angered fellow magic money billionaire and fremeny, Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ and CEO of the rival exchange Binance. It might have to do with FTX cozying up to regulators to get the regulations beneficial to the FTX but not its rivals.
Last week, the FTX balance sheet was leaked to crypto news site Coindesk, which effectively caused a run on the exchange by exposing the financial ties between FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm also owned by SBF. The balance sheet showed that FTX’s finances were a paper tiger and ripe for plundering.
There followed a jujitsu move by which the Binance chief created a market run on FTX. His firm dumped the FTX tokens they were holding, essentially telling the market they had no faith in them. “CZ outsmarted SBF, plain and simple,” a friend who is deeply involved in this industry told me of the clashing egos. “CZ helped SBF create FTX, let him grow it, and then when it got too big, he destroyed it.”
CZ, in an ironic Robinhood act that SBF himself pioneered with other failing crypto firms, announced that he was buying SBF’s empire in a move to “save” FTX. A day later he declared, “no deal” as FTX is a big hairball and not worth the hassle. Now that’s a proper decimation of a competitor. The whole thing is quite messy – much like the whole crypto ecosystem, which is supposed to be open and transparent but is more opaque than a dog with glaucoma.
If this whole thing looks like a Ponzi scheme involving magic Internet money, then it just might be – as the Substack Dirty Bubble Media outlines in this post. Feel free to follow VC-twitter and read their threads. Whatever you do, beware of those promising endless good times, unicorns and money raining from the skies.
And a fair amount of money aimed at (mostly) Democrat politicians: FTX Founder Spent $40 Million As Democrat Midterm Megadonor.
Leading up to Sam Bankman-Fried’s spectacular implosion – in which his firm FTX evaporated billions in wealth after the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange allegedly commingled client assets with his trading firm into a liquidity crunch – he became the sixth-largest donor in this year’s midterm election cycle, giving some $40 million to mostly Democratic candidates and causes.
According to Forbes, Bankman-Fried was second only to George Soros among billionaire donors to Democratic groups during the 2022 midterm election cycle.
FTX allegedly loaned Alameda Research – a trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried – roughly $10 billion in client assets, which has landed him under federal investigation by the SEC, CTFC, and the Justice Department – the latter of which already had been working on a months-long investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The CTFC, meanwhile, is tasked with regulating certain elements of the crypto markets – including digital assets that are as commodities, and crypto exchanges and clearinghouses.
In late September, Bankman-Fried admitted that his political donations were mostly to Democrats, and Republican recipients were ‘targeted’.
The fallout could be enormous: Canadian teachers could have a $95 million hole in their pensions due to the FTX crypto implosion.
The crisis at cryptocurrency exchange FTX is having ramifications far and wide. Now Canada’s third largest pension plan is revealing details about its exposure to the troubled company led by 30-year-old crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.
On Thursday, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) released a statement saying that in October 2021 it invested $75 million in both FTX International and its U.S. entity FTX.US. Additionally, it said, it made a follow-on investment of $20 million in FTX.US in January this year. The potential losses it could face are still unknown.
The OTTP wasn’t the only one burned by FTX’s collapse. Sequoia Capital, one of the most successful venture capital firms of all time, said it will mark down its investment of $214 million in FTX to zero. “We are in the business of taking risk,” it wrote to investors. “Some investments will surprise to the upside, and some will surprise to the downside.”
Other blue-chip backers of the platform include BlackRock, SoftBank, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek.
If only investors had listened to Larry David: Larry David predicted FTX’s implosion.
Larry David made a prediction about this week’s crypto meltdown that was prettaaay prettaaay good.
In a Super Bowl ad for the FTX crypto exchange in February, Larry David sarcastically predicted that FTX wasn’t going to make it. The ad shows David’s character throughout history, naysaying humanity’s greatest inventions, including the wheel, the lightbulb, coffee and democracy.
At the end of the ad, David learns about FTX, “a safe and easy way to get into crypto.” A dismissive David says, “Ehhh, I don’t think so. And I’m never wrong about this stuff — never.”
“Don’t be like Larry,” the FTX ad closes.
The ad resurfaced on social media this week after FTX imploded. David’s character was, it turns out, right to be skeptical.
FTX filed for bankruptcy proceedings in the United States on Friday, marking a stunning downfall for one of the biggest and most powerful players in the crypto industry. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder of the exchange, resigned.
To be fair, he was bound to be right eventually:
Besides bribed politicians and investor losses, there’s more fallout from FDX’s implosion: FTX Owes Miami $16.5M For Arena Sponsorship Cancellation. “Late Friday, the County and the Miami Heat announced that they had terminated the relationship with FTX because of its bankruptcy.”
So what’s next for Sam Bankman-Fried? FTX founder Bankman-Fried denies fleeing to South America amid crypto collapse.
Decline is a choice, America:
GRIFTING IS AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON: British BLM activist charged with fundraising fraud.
WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST “EXPERTS” ANYMORE: ‘Masks reduce racism’ study is latest sign US medical establishment is insanely, perilously woke.
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.
November 12, 2022
DYING IN A B-17 CRASH, in 2022. “The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China wants to ramp up the launch rate of its Long March 5B rocket.
THAT SOUNDS USEFUL: Older adults’ ears can be trained to hear better in noisy environments.
I’VE BEEN TAKING THIS FOR A WHILE, BUT I DON’T THINK I’M AT HIGH RISK FOR BREAST CANCER: Study: Popular dietary supplement causes cancer risk, brain metastasis.
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: Birth of the Raj (A Merchant’s Tale Book 1).
SELF DEFENSE: Make It A Team Effort: A spouse who can shoot is a force multiplier in a lethal force encounter.
That’s certainly the philosophy in this house.
Hey, I should make a yard sign: In This House: We believe that a spouse who can shoot is a force multiplier in a lethal force encounter.
BE PREPARED: APC UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector. #CommissionEarned
WE MAY NEED IT FOR THE NEXT ELECTION: U.S. COVID public health emergency to stay in place.
LESSONS FOR 2024: Toward a Conservative Popularism. If they want to win majorities, Republicans should emphasize issues on which the public supports their positions.
I GUESS THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO NUKE CHINA, SINCE THAT’S WHERE THE EMISSIONS ARE MOSTLY COMING FROM: Carbon emissions hit new high, Earth’s time to contain warming ‘running out.’
Drastic times call for drastic measures. Sorry, Chairman Xi.
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Studies link low vitamin D with higher risk for diabetes among Black Americans. I’m constantly encouraging my half-Nigerian niece and nephew to take Vitamin D.
HOLIDAY DEAL: Bowflex Weight Bench Series. #CommissionEarned
THEY KNOW IT’S JUST MANDATORY BULLSHIT: Syracuse students not interested or engaged in mandatory diversity course: report.
IF CONSERVATIVES START PROTESTING THEY’LL BRING OUT TANKS: ANALYSIS: UC Davis’s anti-cop history makes administration unprepared for campus protest.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elon Musk is not a national security threat — TikTok is: Joe Biden is focusing on the wrong social media giant.
But Tik Tok isn’t a threat to the Democrats, and Elon Musk is.
YA THINK?
UPDATE: Plus:
ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s as plain as day and very simple: All America needs for its salvation is MORE CUBANS.
MORE: Yep.
But the talking point did its job for the necessary interval.
IT WASN’T A RED WAVE, BUT IT’S NOT THE ROUT SOME HAVE CALLED IT EITHER: Republican Lombardo defeats Dem incumbent Sisolak for Nevada gov.
BE PREPARED: LEATHERMAN Rev Pocket Size Multitool with Package Opener and Screwdrivers. #CommissionEarned
Related: “The withdrawal is another humiliating setback for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and the most significant military moment in the war since Ukrainian forces swept through the northern Kharkiv region in September.”
THIS IS UNDOUBTEDLY TRUE: Graham: They’re trying to destroy Walker to deter people of color from becoming conservative Republicans.
And if he were a Democrat all the networks would be quoting professors of anti-racism darkly inveighing against the racism inherent in criticising the sexual behavior of young black men.
November 11, 2022
SNOWFLAKE NIGHT LIVE: Campus Culture Comes to SNL Over Chappelle Hosting Gig.
There’s unrest at 30 Rock, Page Six hears, over the decision to sign up Dave Chappelle to host “Saturday Night Live” this weekend.
We’re told that some staff writers are so furious that the comedy superstar — who has made transphobic and homophobic jokes — has been chosen to helm the iconic show that they’re sitting out the episode.
“They’re not going to do the show,” an insider told Page Six. “But none of the actors are boycotting.”
But Chappelle’s rep told us that there was nothing to suggest that there was a boycott when they attended writers’ meetings this week.
This completely gives away the left’s game at SNL. I have contended for years that SNL no longer functions as a comedy show, but rather as a Democrat super PAC. The show viciously mocks Republicans week after week, but when a comedian who has told a few trans jokes is set to host, staff writers are suddenly concerned about the danger of comedy.
One of the staffers who is ‘nonbinary’ reportedly said that transphobia is like “murder.”
Along similar lines, the number of comedy writers who would kill to write for SNL must be enormous. Why isn’t Lorne Michaels firing his writing staff, and bringing in writers who aren’t snowflakes?
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China wants to ramp up the launch rate of its Long March 5B rocket.
CIVIL RIGHTS STUMBLE: Oregon’s new gun control law punishes poor people. Poverty should not be a death sentence, and one’s rights should never be conditioned upon their ability to pay.
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: AP thinks abortion was a constitutional right: Justices cheered at conservative group’s anniversary dinner.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion showed up at the conservative Federalist Society’s black-tie dinner marking its 40th anniversary.
Screen cap for if/when AP updates the lede:
(Classical reference in headline.)
GOOD: Feel-Good Friday: Justices Barrett and Alito receive standing ovations during gala event. Events like this are important. Lefties have endless awards ceremonies, etc., to reinforce the egos of the people they like. People on the right are barely in the game.
MARK JUDGE’S THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE: MARK JUDGE VS THE NEW AMERICAN STASI IS NOW AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.
CHANGE: Multiple sources (including Decision Desk HQ) are projecting Republican Joe Lombardo elected governor of Nevada.
UPDATE: Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak concedes.
CALL ME CYNICAL, BUT THIS SOUNDS LIKE AN EFFORT AT EXTRACTING GRAFT: WHO report decries inequality in global vaccine market.
SLEEP IS VITAL: If You Don’t Get Enough Sleep, Your Brain Literally Eats Itself.
NOAH CARL: Name-Calling, “Fact-Checking” and Censorship in the Covid Era. A new paper analyzes the tactics used to enforce Covid orthodoxy.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Other Imaginary Red Wave. Despite ceaseless warnings on the left, Election Day came and went without right-wing violence.
We have been through this hysteria before. Predictions of right-wing violence are now a standard feature of Democratic rhetoric. In the lead-up to January 6, 2022 (the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot), the media, politicians, and the Biden national-security apparatus warned that “domestic violent extremists” were likely to strike again. Washington, D.C., was reportedly on edge in anticipation of the MAGA rebels. As it turned out, January 6, 2022, was notable only for the maudlin theatrics of newly patriotic Democrats, who softly sang “God Bless America” in a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps, as calm engulfed them.
During the previous year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued regular warnings about election-denying terrorism. The summer of 2021, August 2021, September 2021—all provoked a satisfying increase in alerts and in precautionary barricades and bollards. And still, the right-wing terrorists did not strike.
Read the whole thing.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Yes, China Really Grew a Plant on the Moon.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Steve Deace: Why Thanksgiving?
READER FAVORITE: Narcissus Electric Knife Sharpener. #CommissionEarned
ONWARD AND UPWARD: Firearm Sales Poised to Eclipse Pre-Pandemic Records.
MAKE COOKING EASIER: Razor Sharp Meat Cleaver. #CommissionEarned
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT GLENN REYNOLDS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT: Four hundred private jets arrived in Egypt during COP27 as climate delegates are accused of ‘hypocrisy.’
I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves, to coin an Insta-phrase.
PROBABLY: Will FTX crash bring a crypto winter?
I have some friends who made a lot in Bitcoin and who still trade crypto (I think they keep their nest egg elsewhere, though) and they see this as a buying opportunity. I’m skeptical, though I’m much too cautious as an investor.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Chinese incursions into India are increasing and are strategically planned, study finds. Color me unsurprised.
LIVING ON TUZLA TIME: Hillary Clinton couldn’t’ve chosen a better photo to accompany her ‘shameless’ Veterans Day tweet.
Because they were pro-Obama, even CBS called her out for that lie, back in the day:
BUT HE FIGHTS — OTHER REPUBLICANS: Donald Trump Moves to Attacking Glenn Youngkin in Extremely Odd Statement.
THAT WOULD MAKE IT EVEN LESS LETHAL THAN WE THINK, RIGHT? Global COVID-19 infection rates may far exceed reported cases, WHO says.
AT AMAZON, 2022 HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop PC, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD+2TB HDD, Intel i5-10400F. #CommissionEarned.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Consumer sentiment falls again, more than expected.
ROBERT GRABOYES: Pandemic Amnesty, No. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Yes.
Toward the end of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), Flounder, a gawky freshman pledge, cries inconsolably because the older members of his fraternity have destroyed the Lincoln Continental his older brother lent him for the weekend. Otter, an oleaginous charmer, pats Flounder on the back with mock compassion and says, “C’mon, Flounder. … You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. … You f**ked up! You trusted us! … Hey, make the best of it!”
In an Atlantic article (Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty), Brown University economics professor Emily Oster channels Otter; and Oster-as-Otter invites the American public to assume the position of Flounder. Oster’s solution to nearly three years of “totally misguided” (her words) COVID-19 policies is “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty.” After an endless torrent of mandated mayhem—grandma dying alone, funerals by Zoom, businesses bankrupted, educations wrecked, social fabric shredded—Oster says, “I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days. … Moving on is crucial now.” In other words, “You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. … Hey, make the best of it!”
Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who!
A DIFFERENT VIEW OF “DESANCTIMONIOUS.”
Plus, related — but very different — thoughts from Jeff Goldstein.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Topless ‘nun’ performs sexualized burlesque at Dartmouth drag show.
RIP: Kevin Conroy, the Voice of Batman, Dies at 66. The voice actor played the Dark Knight for 30 years, beginning with Batman: The Animated Series.
PARAMOUNT+’S THE GOOD FIGHT CHARACTER ACCUSES RON DESANTIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT:
After last week’s episode of Paramount+’s legal drama The Good Fight fed us leftist propaganda from a firehose, this week wasn’t much better.
Thursday’s series finale, “The End of Everything,” featured an obvious Milo Yiannopoulos-like character who accuses the newly re-elected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of sexual assault in a plot to help former President Donald Trump win the presidency in 2024.
The episode begins with Diane (Christine Baranski) returning to the city, and thus to the chaos of white supremacist riots outside of the building she works in, after a relaxing trip to the countryside. She gets swept up among the protesters while trying to go through a blockade as she’s surrounded by protesters, many in red MAGA hats shouting, “White lives matter!”
The scene was a supposed “echo” of January 6, according to Vulture. As a reporter on the scene states, “From what we can tell, most protesters seem to be coming from outside Chicago, drawn by the expectation of violence, and the arrival of 11/10 supporters.” The reporter is interrupted by a protestor shouting, “One more day!”
The date 11/10 is the one protesters have been counting down to and threatening the predominantly black law firm with – albeit without any details.
Once safely upstairs, Diane is introduced to a familiar but unwelcome face. Felix Staples (John Cameron Mitchell), is seeking representation for a lawsuit he wants to bring against DeSantis for sexual assault:
Lets the smears begin. Final episode of @TheGoodFight on @ParamountPlus has client claiming @GovRonDeSantis sexually assaulted him. “He invited me onto his staff. Little did I know what he meant by staff….and forced me into oral sex.” Have DeSantis DNA “stain.” #thegoodfight pic.twitter.com/961T7MP0nu
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 (@BrentHBaker) November 10, 2022
This is simply the same streaming platform using the negative image version of Stacey Abrams as president of United Earth on Star Trek: Discovery to generate some cheap publicity to an otherwise little-watched show. DeSantis would be best left to ignore this attempt to smear him.
MAKE OPENING JARS EASIER: Electric Jar Opener. #CommissionEarned
NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Sponsor A Liberal For Just $8 A Month. “Help a helpless progressive get they/their blue check today:”
SPEECH THE IVY LEAGUE VALUES: Topless ‘nun’ performs sexualized burlesque at Dartmouth drag show.
LATERAL MOVE: Addidas and Balenciaga replaces Kanye West with Bella Hadid.
However, in October — just one day after making his runway debut at Balenciaga’s mud-covered fashion show in Paris — the rapper debuted his own Yeezy Season 9 collection, which included “White Lives Matter” T-shirts. In the subsequent days and weeks, West, 45, has continued to push the white supremacist phrase in addition to spewing anti-Semitic remarks, none of which he’s apologized for.
On Oct. 21, Balenciaga announced it was cutting ties with West, ending the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga partnership helmed by the fashion house’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia.
“Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist,” parent company Kering told WWD at the time. West’s photo was scrubbed from Balenciaga’s Instagram and website as well.
While West’s 10-year contract with Adidas seemed tenuous in recent months for a number of reasons, tons of celebrities called on the brand to terminate its deal amid the rapper’s anti-Semitic rants. After placing the partnership “under review,” Adidas — which had served as the manufacturer and distributor of the Yeezy brand since 2016 — finally terminated the collaboration.
From last year: Bella Hadid joined pro-Palestinian protests.
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