BLOCKING INSTAPUNDIT ON SOUTHWEST AIRLINES’ WIFI? Reader Matthew Elias emails: “Good afternoon, I am on Southwest flight 974 and it appears that Instapundit is blocked. I can access the PJ Media site but when I try to access Instapundit through the PJ homepage or from a saved url it brings up the Southwest home page. I travel Southwest often and have never had the problem before.” Hmm. Anyone from Southwest want to respond to this?
UPDATE: Apparently not. See the comments. Well, good!
AT AMAZON, deals on Vehicle Electronics and GPS.
POSTMODERN EDUCATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT? Researchers blame YouTube for the rise in Flat Earthers.
THE INSTA-WIFE: What Do You Do if the SHTF?
JIM TREACHER: It’s Okay to Admit You Were Wrong about Smollett, Even if It Means a Trump Supporter Was Right. “Of course, because Smollett claimed his attackers were Trump supporters, all the people who don’t want Trump to be president had to weigh in. That included most of the current Democratic Party candidates for president.”
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Pat Caddell Could See Over the Horizon. “An urgent pollster prophet.”
PATTERICO: Trump Courts Streisand Effect in Legal Action Against ‘Team of Vipers’ Author Cliff Sims.
The Streisand Effect is blind to race, sex, gender, religion, creed, and political affiliation.
MIKE KERRIGAN: No Presidents Day car sales for me: What I learned from John Wayne, C.S. Lewis and an old truck.
I didn’t buy a car today, but I bought four new tires and it seemed like they cost as much as a car.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: 7 Ugly Lessons from Jussie Smollett’s ‘Attack.’ “Yes, the media did it again. That isn’t the only brutal takeway from this race-based scandal.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Do the Insanely Wealthy Actually Pay for Something Worth Hundreds of Millions of Dollars?
DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Rethinking President Grant (Part I).
Along with a parallel campaign to portray Grant as a plodding general who won the war only through the advantages of men and materials, therefore, it was necessary to paint him as a weak president giving free rein to the worst instincts of others.
Second, besides Reconstruction, the other main theme of Grant’s presidency was the dawn of Gilded Age capitalism as America transitioned rapidly into an industrial nation. Historians of a left-wing economic bent tended to paint Grant’s entire era (including Reconstruction) as a riot of plutocracy.
Third, Grant was looked down on, in life and thereafter, by intellectuals from the Northeast. Grant was a humble, plainspoken Middle American with ordinary tastes and little pretension. His mental gifts were precisely the sort that tend to be underrated by intellectuals, wrapped in precisely the kind of blunt, terse man-of-action persona that can leave these gifts unappreciated. As with Eisenhower and some other Republican presidents, these factors combined to make Grant an irresistible target for the gibes of the Eastern highbrow set, even though expert military historians held him in high regard, and his memoirs enjoyed a reputation as a classic of the form.
Fourth, Grant’s reputation suffered from simple Democratic partisanship.
The more things change…
OLD AND NO LONGER HOOPY: Do you know where your towel is?
THE NEW FROODNESS: As a couple, how many towels are you supposed to have?
EVERYTHING WAS GREAT EXCEPT THE ECONOMICS: Private cabins, flying bars, and hundreds of seats—farewell, Airbus A380.
WHEN EVEN KNITTING GIVES WAY TO THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG: A Witch-Hunt on Instagram.
Knitting, which helps lower the blood pressure and keep the mind busy, has enjoyed an upsurge in popularity in recent years. The Internet has allowed for the proliferation of new platforms from which to buy yarn and patterns, and has helped connect artisans and hobbyists worldwide. Usually, it’s a calming and creative pastime focussed on aesthetics rather than politics. However, a short browse through the knitting posts on Instagram steered me in the direction of the source of the exchange I had overhead and the “conversation” it had produced.
On January 7, Karen Templer, a knitting designer and owner of the online store Fringe Association, published an innocuous blog post on her website entitled “2019: My Year of Colour,” in which she enthused about her forthcoming trip to India. To most observers, Templer’s post will read like a guileless account of her hopes and aspirations for her upcoming travels.
You’ll totally believe what happened next.
REVIEW: The Folding Full-Conceal Glock. “The patented M3D is, in essence, a Gen4 Glock 19 with a hinge in the front strap and a spring-loaded latch in the back strap. Press the latch and the entire grip folds forward to lie against the dust cover, parallel to the bore axis. Perhaps uncoincidentally, the folded package is more than a little reminiscent of the G26-plus-spare-magazine package that Full carried before the Kahr. In order to accomplish this feat of origami, the trigger guard is replaced with a hinged assembly that collapses flat between the grip and dust cover.”
THEY’RE NOT SMART ENOUGH TO LEARN TO CODE:
(Classical reference of very recent vintage in the headline.)
I’M NOT PLEASED: Antibiotic resistances spread faster than previously thought.
STACY MCCAIN: Bearing False Witness: The Case of Jussie Smollett.
Anyone with common sense could see that Jussie Smollett’s story didn’t add up, but evidently none of the Democrats running for president in 2020 has any common sense. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris used almost identical language in proclaiming Smollett the victim of “an attempted modern-day lynching.” Former Vice President Joe Biden declared: “We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts.” Smollett was the victim of “the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color,” said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, adding: “We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it.” Other leading Democrats joined this chorus of condemnation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the “racist, homophobic attack… an affront to our humanity,” while New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez asserted that the attack on Smollett was indicative of “the rise of hate crimes.” No Democrat more explicitly pointed the finger of blame than California Rep. Maxine Waters who said “this is happening for a reason.… It’s coming from the President of the United States. He’s dog-whistling every day.”
If the incident which provoked all these denunciations proves to be a hoax, however, will any of these Democrats apologize? Will they suffer any actual consequences for being so disastrously wrong about what happened to Jussie Smollett? No, don’t be silly. Liberal journalists won’t ask Booker, Harris, Biden, or other Democrats to explain why they were so easily deceived. Indeed, the media are already trying to spin the story to rescue Democrats. CNN’s Brian Stelter claimed Saturday that the real problem is that “random websites” had “weaponized” the story, whatever that means. Stelter went on to say of the Smollett hoax that “the motive here is still a mystery at the heart of the story.” Except it’s not really mysterious: Smollett has repeatedly declared his hatred of President Trump, and what better way to damage the president than to frame Republicans for a fake hate crime? And liberal journalists were eager to act as Smollett’s accomplices, as Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow remarked Sunday: “This is absolutely about the media and their constant desire to prove Orange Man Bad no matter how implausible the story.”
Read the whole thing.
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