NEW YEAR’S PREDICTIONS, from Sarah Hoyt.
Archive for 2017
December 31, 2017
AT AMAZON, year-end deals.
REMEMBERING THE 1967 ICE BOWL. My stepmother attended that game, and said they were packing snow around themselves to keep warm.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! You can celebrate in the comments.
“ACTIVISTS” ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS AND DO NOT HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS AT HEART: Baltimore Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence. “That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community.”
IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY. But I think Michelle Malkin out-tweeted me.
INSTITUTIONAL PUNISHMENT WOULDN’T BE NECESSARY IF THERE HAD BEEN INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTABILITY: TaxProf: The IRS Scandal, Day 1697: Budgetary Evisceration After Tea Party Targeting Allegations Has Left The IRS Incapable Of Implementing The New Tax Law.
BITCH, THIS AIN’T IHOP: Waffle House waitress pulls her own gun when robbers threaten restaurant.
Okay, I stole the headline, but it’s good.
THE COMING WAR ON DRIVING:
Regardless, everyone will suffer from the catastrophic loss of privacy. Any network of self-driving cars would, by definition, necessitate total and unceasing tracking of their occupants. I may know how to get to the local liquor store without a map, but my car most certainly does not. To make it there in a driverless model, I’d first have to tell it where I was going, and then it would have to ask the Internet, and the satellites, and, probably, my credit card. To the existing framework we would thus be adding a planet-wrapping exoskeleton with a perfect digital memory. The car, far from serving as a liberator, would become a telescreen on wheels — an FBI-approved bug, to be slipped beneath the chassis in plain sight of the surveilled. At a stroke, my autonomy would be gone. Without permission from the Web, I would be lost in space. A mere server glitch could render me immobile. The government, should it so choose, could stop me dead in my tracks. Yet again, I would be handing over my self-reliance to the government and to the corporations, and asking, plaintively, “Please sir, may I move?”
I refuse.
On the upside, they’ve pretty much got the ability to track you everywhere already. So there’s not much privacy left to give up.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN KOWTOWING: In an article headlined “Iran blocks Instagram and Telegram apps, warns protesters will ‘pay the price’ for unrest,” the Washington Post’s Erin Cunningham goes on to describe Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as “moderate:”
From the capital, Tehran, to Kermanshah in the west and the holy city of Qom in the north, Iranians defied police to vent frustration against a government that allows limited space for political dissent.
Rouhani called on protesters to refrain from violence and damaging government property. After a night of escalating unrest saw attacks on government buildings and violent confrontations with police, the moderate president, reelected to a second term in May, took a conciliatory tone.
In stunning scenes, Iranian protesters chanted “Death to the dictator!” as they tore down posters of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds absolute authority in Iran. Public criticism of Khamenei is generally taboo.
Omri Ceren of the Israel Project has screen shots of additional examples of such journalistic “moderation” and asks, “How many Iranians does the Iranian govt have to shoot in the streets before journalists stop calling that govt & president ‘moderate’?”
Just think of the media as still being Democratic activists with bylines who are still part of Ben Rhodes’ blob, and it all makes sense.
THE NATION WORRIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS’ HARD-TURN TO MCCARTHYISM: Russiagate Is Devolving Into an Effort to Stigmatize Dissent.
KNOXVILLE WELCOMES NEW YEAR by “burning negativity” from 2017.
THERE ARE ONLY TWO TRAGEDIES IN LIFE: ONE IS NOT GETTING WHAT ONE WANTS, AND THE OTHER IS GETTING IT. Baltimore Police Backed Away From a Community That Protested Against Them, and Guess What Happened?
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Words banned for the new year? ‘Fake news’ gets top vote.
Well, by the DNC-MSM at least. And note that the article is at Yahoo, which has had its own reasons for wanting to see the words “fake news” banished.
ONE LESS BRICK IN THE WALL: “Islam has brought nothing but misery to Iran. Perhaps it’s time for Iran to try something different,” Michael Walsh writes.
Read the whole thing.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: My Wish for the New Year – End the War on Men!
CRY HAVOC, AND UNLEASH THE TUBAS OF WAR! War Tubas: The strange history of listening for approaching aircraft before radar.
(Found via Jonah Goldberg, who is busy “Trying to figure out what the ‘war tuba’ analogue for ‘gaydar’ would be.”)
BREAKING: DID HOUSTON POLICE THWART A POSSIBLE MASS SHOOTING? “Details are sketchy as the only information made available thus far comes from early news reports but Houston police arrested a man, and when they searched his hotel room, they found the makings of a possible disaster.”
JANE THE ACTUARY: I’m sorry, but “aging in place” is still is a piece of *@!%. The Insta-Mother-in-Law moved out of her solo apartment and into an “Independent Living Facility” over a decade ago, and it was a really good move for her. It’s different for different people, of course, but we tend to push one-size-fits-all policy solutions. Well, for certain values of “we,” anyway.
AT AMAZON, save on bestselling Game Downloads.
Plus, deals on Digital Music.
HOLLYWOOD ENDING: Five Movies that Flopped Hard in 2017.
As William Goldman once noted, “Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood.”