UH OH: Chicom Nightmare: Hong Kong protests spread to gigantic Guangdong province. “This is Beijing’s worst nightmare come to life.”
Archive for 2019
December 3, 2019
THE ONLY DEMOCRATS WHO HAVE QUALIFIED FOR THE DECEMBER DEBATE ARE WHITE.
That’s straight-up fake news right there, when Elizabeth Warren, “Harvard Law’s ‘first woman of color’” will still be on the stage. But hopefully, Harris’ departure from the race will be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party to detoxify itself — it’s a shameful cesspit of sexism and misogyny according to…MSNBC, astonishingly enough, in a rare moment of clarity.
VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE TAKING THE FATE OF THE NATION VERY SERIOUSLY: Watch Andrew Yang Squirt Whipped Cream Into Mouths Of Kneeling Men, as Campaign Manager Desperately Tries To Stop Him.
Curiously, while Yang believes that climate change is such an existential threat that it requires eliminating cars and taxing cow farts, aerosol spray cans are apparently still very much A-OK.
OPEN THREAD: Express yourself.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Pete Buttigieg Volunteered for the Homophobic Salvation Army.
Earlier: The Left Hates The Salvation Army. That’s All You Need to Know About the Left.
Meanwhile, while Out magazine is dumping on Buttigieg for his charitable work, Buttigieg is in turn trashing half of America: Pete Buttigieg: Trump supporters at best just looked the other way on racism; Dana Loesch schools.
That’s awful. Our kids are so dumb, unlike those smart Europeans. Well, not so much: “In the UK, it’s just 11.5%. Those results are both better than the OECD average of 9%, according to the latest results of PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, an international test of math, science, and reading which is administered by the OECD every three years.”
It does suggest that K-12 education sucks everywhere, which is not a huge surprise. It also suggests that if, as I’ve argued, education in critical thinking is essential to protect against the harms of fake news and toxic viral ideas, well, we’ve got a long way to go. Makes you wonder if the powers that be actually want citizens who can think critically.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Europe Officially Signs on for Asteroid-Smashing Effort.
HARSH, BUT FAIR: Greg Gutfeld to WaPo’s Molly Jong-Fast: “Thats no rebuttal. You’re the recipient of media welfare and the drooling posts after your ‘scoop’ prove it.”
Taking no prisoners here. There’s a lot more of that going on from Republicans than there used to be. Also, fewer bowties.
Plus, from the comments: “There is a point where the honorific ‘knowledge worker’ becomes completely ironic. I think most members of the MSM elite have reached that point.”
WHEN A MAN AND HIS MOMENT COME TOGETHER IN PERFECT HARMONY: Actually, the husband in the Peloton commercial is a hero.
THE ONION: One-Eyed Man Who Kamala Harris Locked Up 25 Years Ago Quietly Removes Tulsi Gabbard Mask.
The Bee: Kamala Harris Fulfills Campaign Promise To Improve America By Dropping Out Of Race.
Both good, but I have to say I think this is a rare win for The Onion over The Bee.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Ivory-Tower Sex-Work Activists Have Lost Touch with the Needs of Actual Sex Workers.
ADAM SCHIFF CROSSES LINE: He’s Obtained Phone Records of Devin Nunes, Nunes’ Aide, Rudy Giuliani and John Solomon. “Well, fair is fair. Republicans should obtain Schiff’s phone records, those of the so-called whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, and the colleague with whom he had a “bro-like” relationship, you know, Sean Misko, the one Schiff hired as an aide the day after the whistleblower’s complaint was submitted…Once Schiff passes this to the Senate, it will be the Democrats on trial. This has become demoralizing. Republicans need to take off the gloves and fight back.”
STANDING UP TO THE MOB: Actually, the husband in the Peloton commercial is a hero. I feel sure that if a wife bought one for her husband to help him lose weight, it would be interpreted differently.
OKAY, BUT THE FIRST STEP IS GETTING RID OF JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Let’s think about energy dominance for North America — not just the US.
AT AMAZON, save in Arts Crafts and Sewing.
THE WAPO IS PIMPING FOR VALERIE PLAME NOW, AND IGNORING HER ANTISEMITISM, but there was a time when the WaPo was more honest about her.
WE’RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”
We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.
The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.
“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.
Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.
Hard to believe that we could look back on 2010 as a time of comparative honesty for the Post, but there you are. And here we are.
BEN SASSE ON MIKE BLOOMBERG: “The Kind of Stupid You Can’t Script.”
SOME PEOPLE WOULD SAY THIS IS A TRUMP POLICY BACKFIRING, BUT MORE DISCERNING PEOPLE WOULD SAY IT’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF TRUMP’S PENCHANT FOR ECONOMIC WARFARE AGAINST HIS ENEMIES: New Enrollments Of International Students Fall 6.6% At American Universities. Universities like international students because they pay full freight. So declines in their numbers are disproportionately expensive.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Richard Jewell’ Crucifies Fake News, Honors the Heartland. “Richard was an overweight white male who owned guns and had no girlfriend or wife. Or, as Kathy puts it, ‘He’s a fat f*** who lives with his mom. How did we miss that?’ Our culture abhors racial profiling, unless the suspect ticks off those boxes, and then it’s game on. Richard found that out the hard way.”
Plus: “You ready to start fighting back?”
Bottom line: “‘Richard Jewell’ is a testament to a wronged man, a cry against government overreach and an upper cut on Fake News’ jaw. It’s also one of the year’s best films.”