October 19, 2024
I THINK HE’S A PERFECT SPOKESMAN: Usher joins Kamala Harris campaign as concerns over past ties to Diddy resurface. “Social media users expressed discontent with Harris’s choice, highlighting Usher’s ties to Diddy, who was recently arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.”
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirTag. #CommissionEarned
BY HIGHER EDUCATION STANDARDS THAT COUNTS AS DIVERSE: Democrat professors outnumber Republicans 7 to 1 at U. Florida.
FILE UNDER “YOU ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS A SLEAZEBALL”: Creepazoid Congressman Adam Schiff first popped up on my radar screen after he led the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” scam. I remember quite distinctly watching him on live TV calling Tucker Carlson a “Russian agent.” No factual basis, no evidence, just a smear. In typical Carlson fashion, he laughed it off.*
Anyhoo, Just The News published this story yesterday:
“In the two decades before he became the Democrats’ U.S. Senate nominee in California, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff repeatedly declared in mortgage and election filings that both of his homes – one in California and the other in Maryland – were his “principal residence.” The claims have now prompted an ethics complaint and could be prosecutable as fraud, experts said.”
It would seem that “saving democracy” has nothing to do with, oh, I don’t know, maybe following laws regarding residency requirements to serve the people?
I forgot: “Shut up, serf.”
*BONUS LEGAL TRIVIA: Many folks don’t remember that the landmark Gertz v. Welch decision establishing the higher standards in libel a public figure must prove, nobody remembers that the alleged libel was that the plaintiff was called a “Communist-fronter.” Nobody challenged whether that statement carried defamatory meaning. (After all, it was around 1969). Not so sure it would play out the same way today.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia offers ‘Trans History’ of US by instructor who researched ‘Radical Faeries.’
LIMITED TIME DEAL: CRAFTSMAN VERSASTACK Mechanics Tool Set. #CommissionEarned
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:
Related: How Al Sharpton Inflamed The Crown Heights Riot And How The Media Lied.
GOLDEN STATE FOLLIES: Not Taking Crime Seriously: California’s Prop 47 Exacerbated Crime and Drug Abuse.
YEP:
It's been a big week for the West. Starship catch. Sinwar gone. Unfortunately Washington gives the impression that its role in events has primarily been to get in the way.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 17, 2024
OLD AND BUSTED:
The new hotness? I’m an ex-McDonald’s chef — Trump has no idea how difficult it is to be a french fry cook.
Not surprisingly, Twitter had loads of fun with that headline: McWow: The NY Post Attempts to Cook Donald Trump With Ex-McDonald’s Fry ‘Chef’ and Gets Burned.
If minimum wages keep shooting up, I don’t think Musk’s Optimus robots will be necessary to replace that 16 year old dope smoker: McDonald’s pilots robot fryer in kitchen.
In any case, if Trump wins next month, and he really wants to Make America Great Again, hopefully his first executive order will be for McDonald’s to return to cooking the fries in beef tallow again.
THE DEMOCRATS’ GENDER GAP: “The signs of possible Trump strength among young men are obvious online.”
Related: On the Campaign Trail With Elon Musk: Offering Young Men an American Dream.
Using the sort of rhetoric that he has criticized Democrats for, Musk framed the stakes of November’s election as nothing short of “the fate of Western civilization” and painted a Harris win in apocalyptic terms, predicting runaway crime and illegal immigration.
“It’s nice to watch the ‘Mad Max’ movie,” Musk told the crowd Thursday. “But we don’t want to be in the ‘Mad Max’ movie.”
They cheered.
There he was joking around. But more than that there Musk was carefully explaining himself and his dreams. He talked about a city on Mars and space travel, or, as he said, making “Star Trek” real and building “Star Wars”-like robots.
“Life can’t just be about solving one problem after another, there have to be things that inspire you and that move your heart,” Musk said.
“Build the Warp Drive!” somebody yelled. . . .
The image of the two together worried Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who is sounding the alarm that Musk’s willingness to campaign for Trump is a real threat to Democrats in the state.
“A lot of surrogates really doesn’t count for much, but Musk, it’s undeniable that he’s successful. He’s the world’s richest man…and he has—he has a brand, and that’s attractive to a demographic that we need to have, to win in Pennsylvania,” he told CNN this week.
Before the show began Thursday, I ran into 19-year-old Owen Young and his 18-year-old brother, Eric. Both live near Ridley High School where Musk held court Thursday. Both work at a hoagie shop, and both dream of bigger things down the road.
“I’ve been following Starship and SpaceX for a long time, since I was in middle school,” said Owen, who wore a SpaceX sweatshirt. “I am very inspired by what he has done so far.”
Eric summoned up his excitement in simpler terms: “It’s Elon frickin’ Musk.”
“He’s gonna be the single biggest pioneer in getting us, you know, to Mars,” Eric added. “He’s gonna get us off world.”
They weren’t the lone fanboys eager for the chance to see Musk in person. Several guys told me that they didn’t consider themselves politically active but jumped at the chance to come to a Musk rally. . . . Yes, Musk has unfathomable wealth. More than that, though, to them, Musk has something more precious: purpose.
For certain young men in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, who feel left behind, that’s the new American dream. Purpose. And Musk is showing them that.
Offer young men the prospect of big achievements and they respond. That’s why the people running our society have been careful not to do that.
AYN RAND DIDN’T INTEND FOR THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: High Electricity Prices Have Europe Facing Deindustrialization; Don’t Let It Happen Here.
Deepening Europe’s crisis, the Biden administration has announced a pause in liquefied natural gas export license approvals. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm claims the pause won’t affect the country’s “ability to supply our allies in Europe, Asia or recipients of already authorized exports.” But the market for LNG exports is global. With global demand increasing, and Europe particularly desperate for more LNG since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a restriction in U.S. exports anywhere will raise LNG prices for all importers. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia may soon be accusing President Biden of waging economic warfare against them.
Desperate to cushion the blow of soaring electricity prices, Germany is now plowing more than 4 percent of GDP into energy price mitigation for households and businesses. That’s almost the entire U.S. budget deficit in an average year. Decades of German fiscal discipline have vanished in a single energy shock, along with the ability of its industries to compete globally.
Great Britain is facing a similarly dire situation. In a devastating new report, Rupert Darwall notes that British businesses are paying almost five times more for electricity now than in 2004, and in 2022 paid 2.3 times what American businesses paid. Britain’s electricity prices would be even higher, but for its anemic GDP growth in the last two decades. That represents a lost generation of economic growth due in part to Britain’s self-destructive energy policies.
America has thus far been spared similar pain, but alas, it is headed down the same road. Buffeted by the anti-fossil fuel policies of the Biden administration and states such as California and New York, average electricity prices in the U.S. have risen 30 percent since the start of 2021. That has contributed to cumulative inflation of 25 percent since President Biden’s inauguration, wiping out a generation of wage gains for American workers.
Making matters worse, Biden’s proposed electric vehicle mandates would significantly add to electricity demand, and his new power plant rules would force many coal and natural gas plants to shutter. If implemented, the new rules would wreck America’s electricity grid and make American electricity prices even more expensive than Europe’s.
Those nutty “Progressives in a hurry” in Cuba are really taking a crash course on deindustrialization and its aftermath right now: Island-wide blackout sweeps Cuba after power plant failure.
Cuba’s electrical grid shut down on Friday, plunging the whole country into a blackout after one of the island’s major power plants failed, according to its energy ministry.
In a statement on X, the ministry said “the failure” of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant caused “the total disconnection of the National Electrical System” from 11 a.m. ET on Friday.
In Havana, motorists on Friday tried to navigate the city where no street lights appeared to be working and only a handful of police were directing traffic. Generators are a luxury for most Cubans and only a few could be heard running in the city.
The country’s health minister, José Angel Portal Miranda, said on X that the country’s health facilities were running on generators and health workers continued to provide vital services.
This week, Cuba’s increasingly energy-strapped government called for draconian measures to save power, including telling many workers to stay home.
The Biden-Harris administration is probably taking notes right now: Are you ready for the climate lockdowns?
Related: “Roll the country back to more oil and gas:”
YEP:
The problem with relying on "useful fools" is they are fools.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 17, 2024
October 18, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Happy Friday.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Nations pursue sovereign space capabilities fortified by commercial services.
FACES IN THINGS: Eerie Discovery on Mars Looks Exactly Like a Human Face.
AN UNSURPRISING DEVELOPMENT: Increased autism risk linked to Y chromosome, study finds.
MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANS ARE A PROBLEM, ISLAMIST FANATICS ARE PROGRESSIVE, QED:
RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME:
Her tweet offering to bail out rioters is still up, incidentally: Kamala Harris Lies, Claiming That She Never Promoted the Bail Fund That Bailed Out BLM Rioters As Well As Murderers and R4pists; But the Tweet In Which She Promoted that Bail Fund Is Still Up!
Earlier: Did Tim Walz ‘Let Minneapolis Burn?’
(Classical reference in headline.)
WELL, THAT’S WHAT THEY DO: Gun-Ban Groups Spend Big and Sell Lies To Defeat Pro-Gun Candidates.
