1969: IN 50 YEARS WE’LL HAVE FLYING CARS AND BASES ON THE MOON!
2019: Magic mushrooms for better health? Psychedelic drugs are having a moment across US. Though to be fair, this would be less of a surprise to 1969’ers than a lot of things about 2019.
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THE FIRST AMENDMENT LIVES: Religious Freedom Win for Artists Who Refuse to Create Same-Sex Wedding Videos.
AND THE ROLE OF THOMAS EAGLETON WILL BE PLAYED BY: Joe Biden, who tells crowd at New Hampshire campaign rally, “I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts.”
“Which raises that age-old question, older than even Joe Biden: If a guy is crazy, does he know he’s crazy?”, Jim Treacher writes, spotting the catch-22 in Biden’s statement.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for August 26, 2019. “Inslee and Moulton are Out, Sanders wants to bring U.S. Postal Service efficiency to powering your house and car, and there’s a rumor Grandma Death may arise from her crypt.”
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Possible case of rare gonorrhea infection being investigated in Calhoun County. “Disseminated gonorrhea infection occurs following a sexually-transmitted gonorrhea infection, when the bacteria spreads though the blood beyond the initial infection site. This rare infection often requires hospitalization. Symptoms may include fever, chills, joint pain, stiffness and swelling, along with the normal sexually-transmitted disease symptoms. The department is urging anyone experiencing these symptoms to contact their healthcare provider.”
HMM: Beijing is manufacturing the circumstances to justify brutal intervention in Hong Kong.
The normal Beijing playbook for managing dissent has just not worked in Hong Kong, for four main reasons. First, the protest movement in Hong Kong is what Beijing truly fears—a mass movement whose scale is undeniable. And there’s no clear leadership group Beijing can arrest or intimidate to decapitate the protests, although the authorities have continued to arrest those they think might be important.
On top of this, the protesters have been incredibly innovative in shifting the nature, location and tactics of the protests, making containment impracticable. They’ve drawn on international sources of inspiration, as we saw with the kilometres-long ‘human chain’ on the weekend, which echoed the ‘Baltic Way’ protests in 1989 that helped topple Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
And lastly, the protests have been broadcast virally by multiple eyewitnesses through social media and have been covered extensively in the international media. Pretending they’re just by a small group of extremists or about low-level issues, which has worked in the curated information environment of mainland China, just hasn’t washed with international audiences and governments.
So, we’ve got to a point where the playbook needs to turn a page.
Read the whole thing.
SEE ALSO: CLINTON AND BOTH BUSHES (AND BIDEN IF GIVEN THE CHANCE). Trump is right to confront China, reversing Obama’s policy of weakness and appeasement.
JOURNALISTS ARE HAVING A MELTDOWN OVER JOURNALISM BEING DONE TO THEM:
The New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger said in a statement to the paper of record’s staff that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.
“The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”
Sulzberger’s concern over the intimidation of journalists fails to address and even excuses the racist and antisemitic views of his own staff, but also fails to acknowledge the mainstream media’s aggressive history of intimidating private individuals because they support the president or hold conservative political views.
Last February, a CNN crew showed up on an elderly woman’s lawn in Florida to publicly shame her for unknowingly sharing a “Russian-coordinated event” on her Facebook page. Consequently, the woman received waves of violent threats, abuse, and harassment online.
In June, the Daily Beast reporter Kevin Poulsen doxxed a black forklift operator from New York who doctored a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
National media outlets have harassed countless other private individuals who support the president on social media or create memes. Yet publications such as the New York Times become outraged when conservatives point out that their own employees spew virulent, racist, and antisemitic views on social media — and remain employed.
Other conservatives on Twitter noted the hypocrisy.
Ace of Spades tried to warn the MSM in November of 2016, a week after Trump won, that the backlash was coming. “You dominate this culture. You made the rules. You now get to live in the savage world you made brick-by-brick, media…The media loves to ride the tiger of Mob Hatred when that tiger is devouring a plebeian. Well, sometimes the tiger bucks, old chaps.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Silicon Valley Copycats China’s Orwellian Social Credit Scheme.
Think of it as a digital Stasi. Your neighbor catches you smoking in a non-smoking area, and reports on you with his phone. The state telecom notices you’re spending too much time playing online videogames. Your latest social media post gets too many downvotes. Or maybe someone at work you’re having problems with just makes something up. It could be almost anything, but once your social credit score turns negative, your life can become a living hell, and with no legal recourse. You’ll have to become a conspicuously good little Communist to turn your credit positive again.
Or as the government itself says, “Keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful.”
Silicon Valley says: “Hold my soy latte.”
Much more at the link.
ALLIES: Marines Considering Flying U.S. F-35Bs Off of Japan’s Largest Warships.
They’re considering it because Tokyo asked them to.
TEACH PROGRESSIVES NOT TO BE SO RAPEY: Or something. On the one hand, this guy might be the victim of a #MeToo railroading, on the other hand, he might think, like many men, that his liberal credentials get him a free pass to grope. (As opposed to mere fame and money, which seems to cross party lines).
I don’t know…read it and make up your own mind.
FLASHBACK: The Economics of Attention.
WATCH THE SENATE: Donors Driving Big Money to Colo. Dem Primary.
John Walsh, a former federal attorney, has touted his grassroots support in his bid to unseat Republican senator Cory Gardner, but 70 percent of his campaign funds have come from big-money donors, FEC filings show. More than $540,000 of Walsh’s $776,999.12 raised to date came from donors contributing at least $1,000. More than $330,000—43 percent of his cash to date—came from $2,800 contributions, the maximum allowed under federal law.
Walsh’s reliance on big-money donors has not softened his rhetoric against money’s influence in politics.
In a July video thanking his “grassroots supporters,” Walsh called fundraising an “unfortunate” political necessity. He expressed disdain for campaigns that focus on “the most wealthy Americans.”
While most everyone is distracted by the presidential race, the Democrats are moving big names and big money into various Senate races.
WHY OBAMA DROPPED BIDEN: “Obama, it turns out, cares about one thing: himself. He is obsessed with his political legacy. Every day that Joe Biden stays on the campaign trail, he detracts from that.”
THERE IS NO HOCKEY STICK: The Iconic Image of the Global Warming Movement Is a Fraud.
IN THIS ASPECT, AMERICA IS ALREADY GREAT: In Praise of Free Refills.
I would mention the wonderful Texas restaurant tradition (particularly in the summer) of proffering the customer a “to-go cup” — a large plastic cup — of his favorite beverage, but I do not wish to encourage further immigration of you Yankees from the parentheses states.
IT ISN’T A PURCHASE IF THE SELLER DOESN’T AGREE TO IT: Among Democrats, ‘Mandatory Gun Buyback’ Plan Gains Traction.
“Mandatory buy-back” is newspeak for “confiscation with a little sweetener.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE VIOLENT WORLD OF CNN: April Ryan’s excuse unveiled: It’s the bodyguard’s fault.
MAYBE GETTING ALL BUDDY-BUDDY WITH PUTIN WAS A MISTAKE: Erdogan and Putin may be heading for a Syria showdown.
Turkish media criticized Russia for not doing enough to prevent the Syrian air force from attacking the convoy. In fact, Moscow not only failed to halt the attack, it also actively supported it. Russian President Vladimir Putin observed: “Before the Sochi agreement on Idlib was signed, about 50 percent of that territory was under terrorist control, and now that number is 90 percent. There were also numerous attempts to attack our air base in Khmeimim from the Idlib zone, so we support the Syrian army’s efforts to carry out local operations to neutralize these terrorist threats.”
Russia’s discontent with Turkey’s attitude is hardly concealed in this statement.
Turkey was disillusioned by this, because its perception of the Sochi agreement’s ultimate objective was probably different from that of Russia.
Seems like Turkey’s position might be stronger if they had fewer Russian-made antiaircraft missiles and more F-35 stealth fighters.
OUR LAST SEVERAL PRESIDENTIAL SEARCHES AT TENNESSEE WERE DONE BY SEARCH FIRMS, TO NO PARTICULARLY IMPRESSIVE RESULT: With a rising number of “secret” presidential searches that leave faculty members jilted, some point to the use of search firms as the cause of the troubles. I tend to favor inside candidates; as a colleague said, when the Army wants a general, they promote a colonel.
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