50 YEARS AGO TODAY, THURGOOD MARSHALL WAS CONFIRMED TO THE SUPREME COURT: “37 Democrats and 32 Republicans voted for Marshall. 10 of the 11 negative votes were Democrats.”
Archive for 2017
August 30, 2017
EVERY TIME YOU THINK YOU’RE OUT, THEY PULL YOU BACK IN: Hurricane Harvey has Beldar blogging at least briefly.
WEIRD HOW SYPHILIS, WHICH WAS NEARLY ERADICATED, IS SUDDENLY COMING BACK: Knocking on doors, climbing through fences: How L.A. County’s health investigators are out trying to stop syphilis.
TRUMP WARNS NORTH KOREA: All options on the table.
YOU STAY CLASSY, POLITICO: Yes, We Must Talk About Politico’s Awful, Smug Insult To Texans And Faith.
ABOUT A DOG: At Ricochet, James Lileks’ encomium to his beloved Scout. RIP.
WILL MUELLER EXAMINE THE DNC SERVER?: Of course he should. It’s in the public interest! He also needs to answer this question: Why didn’t Comey examine it?
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release stolen computer files that pertained to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Two days later, CrowdStrike, a computer security company working for the Democratic National Committee, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC’s computer server. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC’s server. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack.
Much to the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton, the released files showed that the DNC had secretly collaborated with her campaign to promote her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination over that of Bernie Sanders. Clearly, the Clinton campaign needed to lessen the political damage. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s public relations chief, said in a Washington Post essay in March that she worked assiduously during the Democratic nominating convention to “get the press to focus on … the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary.”
Thus was laid the cornerstone of the Trump-Russia-collusion conspiracy theory.
Since then, the mainstream media have created a climate of hysteria in which this unsubstantiated theory has been conjured into accepted truth. This has resulted in investigations by Congress and a special counsel into President Trump, his family, and his campaign staff for supposed collusion with the Russians.
I love this sentence: “Why would the purported victim of a crime refuse to cooperate with law enforcement in solving that crime?”
A possible answer: Because examining the server might expose the so-called victim’s campaign deceptions and current media lies?
“ONCE A WOMAN-HATING BLOWHARD, ALWAYS A WOMAN-HATING BLOWHARD.” Michelle Malkin on “Keith Ogre-mann: Condé Nast-y’s Misogynist-in-Chief.”
DATECHGUY’S LAWS OF MEDIA OUTRAGE HIT ANTIFA:
Why has the MSM suddenly turned on ANTIFA? Why it’s in accord with Datechguy’s 2nd law of media outrage: “The level of acceptance of the positions and/or actions of any group or organization by the left and media is directly proportional to their current or potential value in electing liberal Democrats.”
Read the whole thing.
Related: I Smell A Movement.
Well, that’s one way to describe what’s going on with Antifa and the DNC-MSM.
De Clarens stole one of the vital secrets of the war — Germany’s plans to build and test the V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs at Peenemünde. Her intelligence encouraged the British to bomb Peenemünde, delaying and disrupting the program, and “saving thousands of lives in the West,” said R. James Woolsey Jr., then CIA director, at a private ceremony at the agency in October 1993 honoring de Clarens.
How did this charming, diminutive woman accomplish her mission impossible? She listened. De Clarens was a fluent German-speaker, and in 1943, she teased the first threads of information about the rocket program out of some German officers she had befriended in Paris as a translator. And then she kept pulling on the string.
“I was such a little one, sitting with them, and I could not but hear what was said. And what they did not say, I prompted,” she told me in 1998. “I teased them, taunted then, looked at them wide-eyed, insisted that they must be mad when they spoke of the astounding new weapon that flew over vast distances, much faster than any airplane. I kept saying: ‘What you are telling me cannot be true!’ I must have said that 100 times.”
Read the whole thing.
METAPHOR ALERT: The Newseum, Journalism’s Temple to Itself on ‘Death Watch’ After ‘Stunning Decline:’
Past reporting by NewsBusters showcased the Newseum’s tone deafness. In 2009, I noted that the section on objectivity finds a “partisan” slant in “talk radio and internet blogs.” What about NBC? The New York Times?
In 2008, the MRC’s Kyle Drennen pointed out that the museum’s ethics exhibit is smaller than the gift shop.
Those proportions sound about right for the DNC-MSM.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why it could be risky to find a plastic surgeon on Instagram.
GOODNIGHT, WESTERN CIVILIZATION — IT’S BEEN FUN! LA City Council just voted 14-1 to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day as municipal holiday. The city of Los Angeles will now join Oberlin, Ohio and other progressive areas in the country by no longer observing Columbus Day.
UPDATE: Vandals Damage Statue Of Christopher Columbus In Yonkers Amid Growing Controversy.
PATRICK POOLE: Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx Met This Holocaust Survivor, And You Won’t Believe What Happens Next.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): In a slightly-related matter, here’s the Insta-Wife talking about Nikki Sixx’s childhood.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump Says Texans Can Handle Anything.
RAND PAUL: No, the feds shouldn’t give war machines to the police.
What kind of equipment are we talking about? Well, Haverhill, Mass., a town of fewer than 65,000, got a nearly 20-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. Keene, NH, a town of fewer than 30,000, got an 8-ton armored BearCat. Over 10,000 bayonets have been handed out. Yes, bayonets.
Police work is unquestionably difficult — and often thankless. I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for those who put it all on the line to protect our communities, and I saw their bravery firsthand this summer when Capitol Police officers made all the difference during the attack on our congressional baseball game practice.
To support our local police, we must first realize they aren’t soldiers. But today the line between the two is being eroded.
It’s no surprise you can find big government right at the heart of this problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies — where police departments compete to acquire military gear.
Plus, over a third of the “surplus” equipment is new, so it’s disingenuous to portray it as banged-up old stuff lying around the garage.
Whether or not the kind military equipment Paul mentions is ever actually deployed against its residents, how does a town of 65,000 properly pay for the upkeep and maintenance of a million-dollar (when new) MRAP vehicle?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Me on police militarization, in Popular Mechanics.
AT AMAZON, on sale, AmazonBasics Balance Ball with Hand Pump – 65 cm.
SCIENCE: Study gives first proof that the Earth has a natural thermostat.
The idea of a natural temperature thermostat was first proposed in 1981, but until now no-one has been able to provide data to show that the recovery from the hot and cold temperature fluctuations were associated with a specific mechanism.
Now a group of British scientists has shown that recovery from global cooling events is associated with changes in the rate of weathering of rocks, which is the main mechanism of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. In weathering, rocks are dissolved by rain and river water; the process removes CO2 from the atmosphere, which is then transported to the seas by rivers to be locked up in carbon-rich rocks such as limestone. The more weathering, the more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere.
The team had previously found evidence supporting the role of weathering in cooling the Earth in times of high temperature. This current work confirms that a slow-down of weathering takes place in cold periods, and so supports the concept of an “Earth thermostat”.
Fascinating.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Will Smoking Pot Make Me Vomit Forever? “Cyclic vomiting syndrome is on the rise among adults, and marijuana use may be partially to blame.”
MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE RONALD REAGAN AGAIN: Here’s how a president really pushes tax reform.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Guide to “Offensive” Statues.