Archive for 2019
February 6, 2019
HEH: “I tuned in to watch Hitler . . . and there they were, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a Jew.” Worst. Nazi. President. Ever.
SEN. SHERROD BROWN RECOMMENDS: … that we all read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness to learn how racist our criminal justice system is.
Here’s my recommendation: Read my essay that discusses how real racists used to ignore crime in African-American neighborhoods, because they didn’t give a d*mn. I worry that the “debate” over criminal justice reform has become very one-sided.
WHEN IT COMES TO SOCIALISM, BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID. Ocasio-Cortez, progressives accuse Trump of using socialism as scare tactic.
VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Justin Fairfax is testing the Left’s ‘believe all accusers’ standard.
Not a good look, when even NBC is reporting this:
Just as Northam is testing the left’s new “whatever happened in college is destiny” standard.
Exit question: Could declaring himself an independent save Northam’s, err, seat?
COCAINE MITCH COULD USE A LITTLE PICK-ME-UP: McConnell Cautioning White House a National Emergency Would be ‘Contentious’ Process.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS? Virginia AG says he wore blackface at college party.
Another top Virginia Democrat — Attorney General Mark Herring — admitted Wednesday to putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was a college student.
Herring issued a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a black rapper during a party as a 19-year-old undergraduate at the University of Virginia.
The revelation further roils the top levels of Virginia government. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are already facing controversies, and Herring would be next in line to be governor after those two men.
Remember, their campaign theme was that they were going to protect us from Ed Gillespie, who had suddenly transformed from run-of-the-mill GOP pol to dangerous white supremacist just in time for the election. Oops!
Anyway, it’s obvious that all three need to resign in favor of Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox. Zero tolerance for racism and bigotry!
Heh.
IT’S COME THIS: Stacey Abrams’ SOTU Response Had People Asking if She Was in Front of a Green Screen. “Is this Democratic Response using a green screen or is it just bad lighting?” asks Tinder co-founder Jonathan Badeen.
Note that The Wrap’s column was picked up by that infamous West Coast HQ of the VRWC – the San Francisco Chronicle.
IN THE MAIL: From RG Ainslee, The Iranian Intercept: A Ross Brannan Thriller (The Secret Cold War Book 3).
SURPRISING EXACTLY NO ONE: Report Finds Kim Hiding Nukes, Selling Weapons as Trump Announces Vietnam Summit.
I don’t know if Trump can actually accomplish anything here, but Kim earned a seat at the negotiating table by developing nukes while the previous three Administrations kicked the can.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NATIONAL FISKING LEAGUE: If you loved James Lileks’ classic “Notes from the Olive Garden” 2003 fisking of a leftwing “Grauniad” columnist trying to explain — and mock — the modern American south to his fellow British lefties, you’ll enjoy his latest “Wednesday Review of Modern Thought,” a takedown of an American leftist writing in London’s New Statesman on an even more impenetrable subject to Brits than the 21st century American south — American football. It features this passage:
The Super Bowl should be pure, or as pure as any comically overblown brand extension devise can ever be. This is not a time to squabble over our differences. It should be a time to get together, eat a whole bucket of chicken, and punch your best friend in the stomach – like God intended.
So you know we’re off to a highly authentic, nuanced start, the Internet equivalent of Alistair Cooke’s Letters from America BBC radio series. As Lileks replies:
Okay, let’s look at some more . . . Trump Trump Trump and so on. Kapernick, whose kneeling showed that “America has a persistent problem with racial inequality that we seem to have no interest in reckoning with.” Nope, no discussion on that issue. You’d think it would come up in elections and political discussions, but it’s just not a big thing. Odd.
Despite the cavalcade of horrific news stories about the rise of white supremacy in the US that bolstered Kaepernick’s thesis – from Charlottesville to the latest tragedy involving Empire star Jussie Smollett –
We’ll just leave that one there, and skip ahead a bit.
The build-up to this year’s Super Bowl has been mercifully free of political squabbling and self-righteous posturing. As much as I’d like this to be a sign that we too can move past the last three years of perpetual in-fighting, this detente is guaranteed to be short-lived. Surely, another front will open up in this rhetorical pillow fight. Maybe halftime show performers Maroon 5 will unfurl a Palestinian flag during their set. Could Patriots quarterback Tom Brady remove his jersey to reveal a “Build the Wall” t-shirt? What if the Los Angeles Rams win the game and refuse to visit the White House, then donate their championship bonus to Kamala Harris?
Dave Schilling is a writer and humorist
I’m hardly the “stick to sports” guy conservative Americans are so fond of lashing out at,
Wait a minute. Hold on. Conservatives lash out at the guys who want sports to stick to sports?
but I also would like to enjoy my Bud Light commercials in peace.
And what prevents you from doing so?
Certainly nothing this year, as Anheuser-Busch’s latest round of Super Bowl ads were consistently designed to please elite American leftists and cop Clio awards from the advertising industry (but I repeat myself). This year the ads featured ill-conceived freakouts over corn syrup, a Leonard Nimoy-esque search for both Bob Dylan and wind turbines, and, plugging Anheuser-Busch-imported Stella Artois, an ad that co-starred that legendary blue collar lager lass, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Exit quote:
The one thing right-wing bloviators are correct about is that sport is meant to be an escape. I’ve grown tired of mixing my personal ideological convictions with the simple, binary pleasures of watching two teams compete in an athletic contest.
As Lileks replies, “So don’t. Or do. No one cares. Who politicized it in the first place?”
Read the whole thing.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Colorado university hit with lawsuit for refusing to recognize Christian apologetics club.
HMM: Pentagon walks back Trump idea of using Iraq base to counter Iran.
Iran’s imperial ambitions run through Iraq to Syria, and their constant meddling in Yemen’s troubles is just a proxy war against Saudi Arabia. Not to mention support for international terrorism, nuclear threats against Israel, and remains one of the two surviving members of the still all-too-real “Axis of Evil.” In short, Iran is the biggest single obstacle to peace in the entire region. So it sure would be nice to see more creative thinking out of the Pentagon for a change.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UGA Union: Defending ‘some white people may have to die’ prof ‘should not be controversial.’
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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Psychotically incoherent with cookies, dog poop and much, much more. “Women enjoy record level unemployment, more women than ever are in public office and have more opportunities available to them and these chicks are playing dress-up in the 1800s. The true state of affairs was revealed when the white ladies stood up in cheered the president’s job statistics for women. That’s right, you can thank President Grab-a-P*ssy for that, handmaidens.”
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Here’s video and a transcript of Trump’s state of the union speech.
ANGEL IN WINTER: The Blue Angels conduct a winter training exercise.
SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Protecting chokepoints remains a key strategic challenge.
FASTER? PLEASE! Boeing joins with Aerion to bring world’s first supersonic business jet to market. “One significant player in the race to build the first Son of Concorde is the Reno, Nevada-based Aerion, which is developing a 12-passenger business jet that can fly at Mach 1.4 (1,038 mph, 1,671 km/h) using a GE Affinity engine, but with a significantly reduced sonic boom thanks to an advanced fuselage design. If things go according to schedule, the AS2 could fly by 2023 and enter service in 2025 to become the world’s first supersonic business jet.”
If you have the means…
FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: Census Bureau: 75 million more immigrants by 2060, 95% of future US growth.
OOPS: A Crypto-Mystery: Is $140 Million Stuck or Missing?
On Jan. 15, the company announced on its website that Mr. Cotten had died on Dec. 9 from complications related to Crohn’s disease while building an orphanage in India. He was 30 years old. Two weeks later, the exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in a Nova Scotia court.
Quadriga said its customers have accounts with a total balance of about C$250 million. Only about C$70 million of those customer funds is in cash. About C$180 million, or about $140 million, is in cryptocurrencies held in a reserve account maintained on Mr. Cotten’s laptop, the company said in its bankruptcy filing. Quadriga would need control of that account to send those cryptocurrency funds to customers.
Mr. Cotten ran the business out of his home in Fall River, Nova Scotia, his widow, Jennifer Robertson, stated in an affidavit. Ms. Robertson said Mr. Cotten was the only person who moved funds from an active account—called a “hot wallet” in crypto circles because it is connected to the internet—to the reserve account, which is an offline “cold wallet.” The company said it has been unable to break into Mr. Cotten’s laptop to try to recover the access keys.
If the laptop can’t be accessed, the funds could be permanently frozen.
Poof.