THAT WAS UNEXPECTED: Show Trial Ends in Acquittal for Russian Activist Yuri Alexeyevich Dmitriev.
Archive for 2018
April 6, 2018
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, Repel Windproof Travel Umbrella with Teflon Coating.
BECAUSE IT’S DANGEROUS, YOU GET THERE SWEATY, AND THERE’S NO PROTECTION FROM THE ELEMENTS? Why More People Don’t Walk or Bike to Work.
PRE-DEMONIZATION OF CENTER-RIGHT MEDIA: Much has been written about the MSM freakout regarding Sinclair here, and here. What’s happening is this is nothing more than a campaign from the left to demonize Sinclair so that readers avoid it, and more importantly, relegate it to their list of “must ignore” platforms, like InfoWars or GatewayPundit. It’s a pre-emptive move to further control the narrative and censor by repudiation what you see and hear.
Two important facts (known in the media business but pointedly ignored) are first, CNN sells a service called CNN Newservice to stations around the country, and customers repeat CNN’s scripts verbatim. Conan O’Brien discovered this as a source of humor as long ago as 2013.
The second fact is that even on more “serious” matters, like editorials, The Fair Media Counsel reports an anecdote from a former Tribune (now “Tronc”) journalist:
Sinclair isn’t the only organization to do such a thing, but it is perhaps the most visible and unapologetic in its approach. In the not-so-obvious file was this personal experience: When the FCC was considering raising the ownership cap, all Tribune-owned newspapers were told to run an editorial in support of the action. (The same editorial, by the way.) I had written a letter to the editor in opposition of that point of view. My letter was rejected, with a brief explanation: Tribune was not allowing letters with opposing points of view on that particular subject.
Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas? It’s been abandoned in the culture wars. In the new media marketplace, if you use center-right currency, your money — and your ideas — are no good here.
NOTHING GOOD: Exactly What Happens When You Ignore the Bridge Height Sign. But sometimes something spectacular.
ALSO CRAZY: A 32% GRADE ROAD. Waze’s crazy routing over a 32% grade road is driving residents nuts.
ONCE IS ACCIDENT, TWICE IS HAPPENSTANCE, THREE TIMES IS ENEMY ACTION: The Journolist Goes to War Against Scott Pruitt.
WHAT BLUFF? China Has the Cards to Call Trump’s Bluff.
Related: The Saudi Crown Prince Thinks He Can Transform the Middle East. Should We Believe Him?
Bin Salman has taken enough concrete steps to have earned some trust, so the real question is whether he can survive the attempt.
MARK STEYN ON THE YOUTUBE SHOOTING AS THE GRAND CONVERGENCE:
What happened [Tuesday] is a remarkable convergence of the spirits of the age: mass shootings, immigration, the Big Tech thought-police, the long reach of the Iranian Revolution, the refugee racket, animal rights, vegan music videos… It was the latest mismatched meeting between east and west in the age of the Great Migrations: Nasim Aghdam died two days before her 39th birthday, still living (according to news reports) with either her parents or her grandmother. She came to America at the age of seventeen, and spent two decades in what appears to be a sad and confused search to find something to give her life meaning. But in a cruder sense the horror in San Bruno was also a sudden meeting of two worlds hitherto assumed to be hermetically sealed from each other: the cool, dispassionate, dehumanized, algorithmic hum of High Tech — and the raw, primal, murderous rage breaking through from those on the receiving end.
Read the whole thing.
BECAUSE THEY CAN: Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?
INVESTING: Investment Giant Offers New Funds that Exclude Gun Manufacturers, Retailers.
Every now and then you read about one of these “ethically” minded mutual funds starting up, but I can’t recall ever reading about any of them doing particularly well.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A recent resolution introduced by the Virginia Tech Student Government Association argues that talks delivered by popular conservative figures constitute “discriminatory incidents” on campus.. “The resolution proceeds to elaborate on the so-called ‘discriminatory incidents,’ specifically mentioning talks by conservative scholar Charles Murray, political activist Charlie Kirk, and conservative comedian Steven Crowder—even going so far as to label Murray a ‘white-nationalist’ and claim that promotional information for one of Crowder’s events included ‘homophobic language.'”
Virginia Tech needs to hear from its alumni.
REVIEW: ‘Chappaquiddick’ is a long-overdue dismantling of the Kennedy myth.
As portrayed by Jason Clarke, the young senator is a venal, self-pitying coward, thoughtless and remorseless, ambition his only care. He treats loyalists and groupies with equal contempt, and as the weekend begins, he toasts them all for “wanting to prove yourselves worthy of . . . the Kennedy name.”
It’s clear the filmmakers are in on this joke.
We next see Kennedy leaving the party with the young Mary Jo Kopechne, who had worked for Bobby Kennedy and was still mourning his death. The film depicts Ted as drinking and driving before his black Oldsmobile 88 flies off a small wooden bridge and into a pond, crash-landing upside down.
According to contemporaneous accounts, the tide was dead low, the water only 5 or 6 feet deep. Both of the passenger-side windows were blown out. Kennedy later testified that Mary Jo might have been hitting or kicking him in her frantic struggle to escape. He claimed to have gone back under for her six or seven times but there is no proof. He was seen at 2:25 a.m. in dry clothes by a hotel desk clerk.
The fact that it took nearly 50 years for a movie like this to get made tells you everything you need to know about the power of the Kennedys and the complicity of Hollywood.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof Wins Another Round In Lawsuits Claiming Texas Tech Retaliated Against Him For His Opposition To Tenure.
and LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Social Media’s Troubles Grow and Much, Much More.
GRASSROOTS SUPPORT: Andrew McCabe’s GoFundMe Campaign Was Put Together by K Street PR Firm. “Law&Crime followed up for a more precise idea of who ‘Friends of Andrew McCabe’ might be and why pro bono legal efforts necessitated such a hefty fundraiser. Schwartz refused further comment on who exactly makes up the aforementioned group and clarified that such ‘activity has been pro bono to date.'” To date.
PREPARING TO OWN THE NIGHT: Two U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams tanks prepare for a night exercise at Fort Carson, Colorado.
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO FIND GOVERNMENT RESEARCH CONFIRMS WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW: A GAO report finds that boys are disciplined more often than girls in school. It also finds that African-American students are disciplined more often than white students and that whites are disciplined at higher rates than Asian Americans. Of course, the NYT covers it with an utterly misleading headline “Government Watchdog Finds Racial Bias in School Discipline.”
Here’s what the NYT didn’t say: Just a few days ago, another government report showed that African-American students SELF-REPORT that they have been in a physical fight on school property at a rate MORE THAN TWICE the white rate. Overwhelmingly, the aggregate disparities in school discipline are the result of differing rates of misbehavior, not bias.
Another non-surprise, surprise: The GAO report also found that students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than non-disabled students. But schools DEFINE behavioral problems as “disabilities.” Finding that students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than non-disabled students is equivalent to finding that students who misbehave a lot get disciplined a lot. If you are thinking of students in wheel chairs when you hear statistics of this kind, you are misunderstanding what’s driving the issue.
Federalizing school discipline policy is a mistake. It’s hard to think of an issue that is less likely to benefit from the intervention of bureaucrats.
WEAPONIZED NARRATIVES GO TO WAR: My latest Creators Syndicate column.