Archive for 2020
September 9, 2020
NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Plane lands on interstate in Knoxville after running out of gas, no injuries reported. “No injuries were reported and neither cars nor the plane sustained any damage. The plane was refueled and took off from the roadway around 10:45 a.m.”
We don’t make a lot of fuss around here.
TED CRUZ TO THE SUPREME COURT? Trump’s 2020 Supreme Court List Will Drive the Left Crazy.
THE LEFT HAS BEEN FOMENTING RACIAL HATE AND IT’S WORKED: Jayvon Hatchett, 19, who told police he repeatedly stabbed an AutoZone employee because he “felt the need to find a white male to kill,” is now accused of killing his white cellmate in the Muscogee County Jail.
Well, he’s tenurable in some colleges now.
HOLLYWOOD’S TRANSRACE HYPOCRISY: The Academy Awards are making America look stupid in front of the entire world.
So, Hollywood is lecturing its domestic audience about the positive racial symbolism of POC, but manufacturing negative racial symbolism for its biggest export market, the CCP. Before we dismiss this as the worse kind of hypocrisy, consider its beneficial, albeit unintended side-effects.
Hollywood has created a powerful incentive for non-white actors to become ‘white’ for the foreign market, and another powerful incentive for white actors to ‘present’ themselves as POC for the domestic market. We know from the carnival of affirmative action what will happen next: a wave of transracial transgression.
Hollywood will make it acceptable to be transrace, because there is money in it. At the same time, certain kinds of race-switching will be unacceptable, because there is money in it. That’s showbiz, but what we call fiction in the movies is a lie in reality.
More here: Oscars’ woke quota will backfire on Hollywood spectacularly:
The easiest criterion to meet is apprenticeships for members of underrepresented groups, meaning anyone but straight white non-handicapped males. Welcome to low-paid internships, people of color! I’m sure Hollywood race relations will feel totally chill five years from now, when every java boy and latte girl serving America’s showbiz aristocracy is black. Soon the last surviving copy of “Gone with the Wind” will be locked in a vault accessible only to scholars of racism, but you’ll be able to see Tara re-enacted in Burbank and Culver City.
* * * * * * * *
Yet since we know that the real controversy revolves around black representation, what the Academy announced this week isn’t going to mollify its critics for long. People who fancy themselves America’s most daring creative leaders will soon be cringing at another hashtag, conceding sin and publicly flogging themselves in the course of announcing yet another round of woke reforms.
That’s a given, as illustrated by the latest 21st century Maoist struggle session involving — checks notes — She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power showrunner Noelle Stevenson:
[T]he person was discussing characters in a cartoon. They were brothers. They had rhyming names that related specifically to their occupation or characteristic. Oboe played a woodwind instrument. Whoa was a stoner dude. Bow was an archer. Sow was a farmer.
Are you okay? Just checking in, because I know some of you might be reeling back right now because that was not okay.
Sow? Was a farmer?
How could she not know?
How steeped in supremacy could she be to call a character “Sow,” without realizing how people would see this as a reference to slaves, who sowed the fields?
Can you even? Are you literally?
Here’s how the guilty party responded.
Click over for the river of tweets, which look like a textual version of this:
WESTERN CAROLINA U. AND THE CANCEL CULTURE SCRIPT: The story of how Western Carolina threw 5 students to the social media mob is such a perfect distillation of how cancel culture works that it’s practically the Platonic ideal of cancel culture. So I’m dissecting it, piece by piece. This is part 2 of an ongoing series – part 1 is here (and linked in the article).
SOLZHENITSYN: LIVE NOT BY LIES. A friend writes: “Solzhenitsyn’s recommendations on page 3 are sadly applicable for many Americans who now have to work in politicized institutions.”
Quoth Solzhenitsyn: “There are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest.” As he knew, the left hates honesty because it lives by lies, and has to.
WELL, IT’S ALREADY A 21st CENTURY DYSTOPIA; IT’S NOT SURPRISING IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE BLADE RUNNER: San Francisco awakens to darkness, as wildfire smoke blankets city in red twilight.
In other fire-related news: Forest Service Temporarily Closes All National Forests in California.
“NO on PROP 16” WARRIORS COULD USE AN INSTALANCHE: Can I ask a favor? If you have just a second, I’m told clicking on the Californians for Equal Rights/NO on 16 web site will help our Google ranking. If you have more than a second, then by all means take a look around the website.
If you still haven’t heard about Prop 16, this OC Register editorial is a quick read.
(p.s. THANK YOU to all of you who have already contributed to our campaign. Instapundit readers really are the best.)
SHOCKING NEWS: Study Indicates First-Time Gun Ownership on the Rise.
BREATHLESSLY REPEATED BY OUR MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Cringeworthy Study Debunked: There Was No ‘Sturgis Superspreader’ COVID-19 Event.
TODAY AT 4:15PM EASTERN: VIP Gold Live Chat with VodkaPundit, Kruiser, and Bryan Preston.
We’re taking your questions but the cocktails are our own.
LET’S GET BACK TO WORK: Wall Street Explains Why Despite A “Second Wave” In COVID Cases, Deaths Have Barely Budged.
Picking up on this point at a time when many countries in Europe are suffering from a second wave of covid infections (as shown in the chart above) DB’s Jim Reid writes that “in recent days and weeks, concern has risen that Europe could be at the beginning of a second wave of the pandemic.” He adds that just in his native UK “the number of confirmed cases rose by 2,988 yesterday, which was the largest daily increase since May 22.”
Yet noting the point brought up by Goldman above, Reid then counters that even as case numbers have risen, “hospitalizations and deaths have thankfully not.”
A key reason for this – as we first discussed in July in “The Under-40s Dilemma” – is that it’s now younger people who are more likely to get the virus.
As Reid points out, while most of this evidence has been anecdotal across the world the attached chart from Public Health England provides some telling statistics: back at the peak of the pandemic in late March, 61% of the confirmed cases were among those over 60. But they now make up just 11% of cases. For over 80 year olds it’s dropped from 28% to 3%. For those under 40 it’s the reverse picture with cases increasing from 14% to 67% of the total.
By and large, COVID doesn’t kill under-40s.
IT’S PORTLAND, SO THEY’LL REPLACE HIM WITH SOMEONE EVEN FURTHER TO THE LEFT: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler viewed negatively by two-thirds of city’s voters: report.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 6 Reasons Why the Oscar Diversity Rules Are a Total Disaster. “Imagine the hoops future productions will jump through to meet all the necessary quotas. The average film production must juggle dozens of precarious elements as is, from casting the right stars to raising the necessary funds. Other factors include on-set creative differences, marketing strategies and release date consideration.”
CONTAINMENT: U.S. Military Is Offered New Bases in the Pacific. “Palau invites Pentagon presence at unspecified joint-use facilities, marking an advance of U.S. efforts to pressure China.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER!
I’m pretty sure that Michael Graham wrote Redneck Nation as a warning, not a how-to guide for college administrators.
A BRYAN PRESTON EXCLUSIVE: Austin Mayor Steve Adler Led Defunding the City’s Police Department. This Is What the Cuts Look Like.
IT’S A SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM: Generation Z isn’t all that into lab-grown meat, according to new study.