$2.99 ON KINDLE: Jonathan Rauch’s The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50.
Archive for 2019
November 23, 2019
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FATHERLAND: The Man in the High Castle Concludes.
After seeing the gang from PJ Media in Orange County last week, I took one for the team and binge-watched the final season of Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle series. Click on the above link for a lengthy (and full of spoilers, incidentally) review at Ed Driscoll.com.
(Bumped.)
#AMAZONSHITCARSHOW RETURNS: The Grand Tour: Amazon Drops Trailer For Special Featuring Jeremy Clarkson & Co. On Boats.
The feature-length episode is the first in a sequence of specials the team is making for Amazon Prime Video after they decided last year to ditch The Grand Tour‘s studio format, set in a tent, and concentrate on a series of adventures.
Although they have parked their cars, the Seamen episode features many familiar format points, from the presenters showcasing the boats they have chosen, to racing challenges, collisions and unfortunate break downs.
For their journey along the Mekong Delta, Clarkson recreates a Vietnam war-era Patrol Boat River, Hammond charters a Miami Vice-style speedboat, while May enjoys a 1939 wooden river cruiser.
Earlier: Season Three of Amazon’s ‘Grand Tour’ Concludes.
(Classical reference in headline.)
RIP: Michael J Pollard, Bonnie and Clyde and House of 1000 Corpses Actor, Dies at 80.
Pollard also appeared in the first season Star Trek episode “Miri,” and was the inspiration for Michael J. Fox’s choice of middle initial when Fox joined the Screen Actors’ Guild.
THE INNOCENT, LOVING NATIVES OF IDYLLIC PRE-COLUMBIAN AMERICA: 2,100 Years Ago, Two Dead Babies Were Buried Wearing The Skulls of Dead Children.
THE STRANGE CASE OF PIERRE DELECTO: Will Romney Vote to Impeach?
Since this doesn’t involve Trump and instead is just on some minor issue with Obama (who probably knew what he was doing), we’re just going to go ahead and delete this completely irrelevant story and replace it with analysis of the latest Trump tweet. Can you believe what he just said?
From the Babylon Bee, America’s Paper of Record.
UPDATE: “We apologize for the fault in the reporting. Those responsible have been sacked,” the Bee adds.
A Møøse once bit my sister… No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge — her brother-in-law — an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: “The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist”, “Fillings of Passion”, “The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Winning Was Trump’s High Crime and Misdemeanor.
When I don’t get the feeling Adam Schiff is secretly working for the Russians, I get the feeling he’s secretly working for Donald Trump. The latter feeling predominated during two weeks of impeachment hearings. The case, which doesn’t strike me as strong, should be that Mr. Trump withheld, or threatened to withhold, congressionally mandated military aid for Ukraine for an illegal purpose. But the witnesses who were supposed to be harmful to Mr. Trump weren’t. They failed to establish, or even argue, that Mr. Trump’s concern with the Biden role in Ukraine, or Ukraine’s role in the 2016 election, was illegitimate.
State Department witness George Kent testified that he himself upbraided Ukrainian officials for ending an investigation of Burisma, Hunter Biden’s employer, which U.S. taxpayer dollars had helped support. He called for—guess what?—an investigation: “I would love to see [Ukraine’s government] find out who the corrupt prosecutor was, and who took the bribe, and how much he was paid.”
William Taylor, another presumably hostile State Department witness, was sufficiently open to the agenda of his outsider president to propose that an official other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky make the wished-for announcement, “in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.”
Like a dinner-theater detective, Mr. Schiff shouts “Aha!” at every confirmation of what has been obvious since the White House released its own transcript of the Trump call with Mr. Zelensky. The Trump administration was keen on arming Ukraine and supporting its new government to exact a cost from Vladimir Putin. That is, everybody in the Trump administration except the president himself, who was cool or indifferent to this agenda but intruded only occasionally to push the Biden talking point.
His staff, apparently appreciating who actually received votes from the electorate, busied itself at times trying to reconcile Mr. Trump’s agenda with their own. And yet, in the manner of factotums everywhere, the agenda they ended up delivering was their own—Ukraine got its arms and presidential meeting—while Mr. Trump’s fell through the cracks.
Mr. Trump is chaotic, unschooled and politically motivated, but only the first two qualities differentiate him from other presidents. He cares only about “the big things,” Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified. Isn’t that the job description? If President Obama’s staff had been as successful as Mr. Trump’s, U.S. troops would never have left Iraq. Yet Mr. Obama was entitled to make the trade-off he did, unfortunate as it was. Securing re-election is the first thing any president owes his supporters. It’s what makes our system go ’round.
The “deep state” was noticeably less concerned with reining in Obama, whose instincts were much worse than Trump’s, and whose actions were much more destructive. But Obama was a member of the club in ways Trump never will be.
TWO ALIENS WALK INTO A BAR IN AMSTERDAM: Okay, it’s an argument about intelligent design and Rembrandt. And it includes J. Warner Wallace, NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective offering eight reasons one of the aliens is right. Come on, go ahead and click it! When’s the last time you read about two aliens arguing in a bar in Amsterdam???
WILL THE HOROWITZ FISA REPORT SHAKE THINGS UP? Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker seems to think it will. Sundance at The Last Refuge is not so sure.
BORAT HAS A NEW JOB: SPEECH COP. Exit question: “Who does [Sacha Baron Cohen] think government-regulated social media will target first? I’m thinking…. the guy who lies to, targets, and humiliates government leaders on camera.”
WAS IT OVER WHEN GQ BOMBED THE FALLOPIAN TUBES?!
To be fair, given Gentleman’s Quarterly current anti-gentleman’s direction, that’s an entirely appropriate typo for them to make.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Judge approves Title IX suit against university for saying women can’t consent to threesomes.
RIP: Ex-Vikings kicker Fred Cox, inventor of Nerf football, dies at 80. “In 1972, while still playing for the Vikings, Cox came up with the idea of a soft football to prevent leg injuries to kids. He and partner John Mattox, a local entrepreneur, took a mold of a full-sized football and injected it with soft foam rubber material. The result was the Nerf football.”
BERKELEY HATEWATCH UPDATE: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Berkeley protesters call cops ‘f**king pigs’ as violence erupts.
Lucas is a Knoxville lawyer, distinguished Special Forces veteran, and occasional shooting buddy of mine. His thoughts are worth your time.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Politico Disowns Its Own Reporting on Ukraine Because Trump.
I’m looking forward to Politico’s coverage of the war with Eastasia and its impact on the chocolate ration.
AT NO PASARAN! THOUGHTS ON HISTORY AND LIES: 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT—Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists’ “Blame America First” Approach to History.
HE’S EXPECTED TO SIGN IT: Hong Kong human rights bill clears US Congress, is sent to Donald Trump to sign into law. The fear of U.S. sanctions and the economic devastation they’d bring is all that’s prevented a massacre in Hong Kong so far. Trump has used the trade war to demonstrate to the Chinese that they’re much, much more vulnerable to economic warfare than they had thought.
FAUXCAHONTAS SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE: “Confronted by a school-choice activist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) denied sending one of her children to a private school, though her presidential campaign later told the Free Beacon that her son, Alex Warren, did in fact attend private school.”