OUT: DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM.
IN: DISSENT = VIOLENCE: ‘White Lives Matter’ painted on Kent State U. rock: a ‘direct threat’ to black students.
Archive for 2020
September 7, 2020
TODAY’S NON-SHOCKING HEADLINE: Biden lead evaporates in Texas.
COUNTERREVOLUTION: BYU student starts petition to bring back ‘Christ-centered education.’
ELEVEN OF THIRTEEN POSITIVES AS FALSE-POSITIVES IS A RATE THAT DOESN’T INSPIRE CONFIDENCE: UArizona: COVID-19 rerun tests reveal some student-athletes, others had false positive results. “On Sep. 3, the athletics department reported 13 positive test results for athletes, after a rerun of those tests, two came back positive.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: We’re Open for Labor Day and the Rioters Are Still Morons. “The nightly scenes from Portland are probably the most effective Trump-Pence 2020 ads possible. Let these paste-eaters keep destroying this God-forsaken commie hellhole and themselves along the way. You know it’s awful there because the MSM has been working overtime to convince us otherwise. One of the safest bets these days is to assume that the opposite of what MSM hacks are saying is true.”
RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: San Francisco gym owners livid after discovering gyms in government buildings have been opened for months.
Gyms within government buildings in San Francisco have been open for months, despite privately owned establishments being ordered to close due to the coronavirus.
“It’s shocking, it’s infuriating,” Daniele Rabkin, of Crossfit Golden Gate, told a local NBC station. “Even though they’re getting exposed, there are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking.”
The gyms that have been open for government employees include those for police officers, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and paralegals, according to the report. One such gym, the Hall of Justice gym, has been open since July 1.
“It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of a double standard between what city employees are allowed to do and what the residents of San Francisco are allowed to do,” Dave Karraker, owner of MX3 Fitness in the Castro, said.
Titles of Nobility at work. I thought the Constitution banned those. . . .
MICHAEL BARONE: “Were the lockdowns a mistake? To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes.”
For two weeks, no. That’s the kind of thing we did in 1918. But in 1918 our polity was much more mature and sensible. And even I — who should know better — failed to appreciate just how much worse our political class and political culture are now than they were then, which wasn’t exactly a great time either. But at least in 1918, the Karens didn’t have the vote.
I’M SURE WE’LL BE TOLD THAT LAST WEEK’S SOCIAL-JUSTICE MARCH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS: UT football scrimmage canceled, 44 players unable to participate.
UPDATE: Confidence, college football and how to beat COVID-19.
DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: A Violent August in N.Y.C.: Shootings Double, and Murder Is Up by 50%.
Mister, they could use a man like Rudy Giuliani again.
WE HEAR A LOT ABOUT CHINESE PATIENCE, BUT LATELY WE’RE SEEING THE IMPATIENCE OF AN ELDERLY DICTATOR WHO KNOWS HE DOESN’T HAVE A LOT OF TIME: Europe Just Declared Independence From China: As the EU navigates an increasingly Sino-American world, it finally sees the need to stand together, even against Beijing.
Related: Document of the Week: Czech Pol to China: Piss Off.
DON’T STEAL THIS BOOK: On In Defense of Looting.
Steal This Book could stand alone as a work of assiduous experimental journalism, filled as it was with “survival techniques” for life underground he’d gleaned in multiple innovative ways, including responses to ads placed in revolutionary newspapers. Hoffman even supposedly fact-checked the anonymous tips about places on the map to find free food, get treated for sexually-transmitted diseases, score drugs, etc.
Steal This Book was also an equal opportunity offender, as cutting toward phonies within the revolutionary ranks as it was toward the “Pig Empire”:
The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn’t allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk or collecting postage stamps.
There are a lot of things one can say about Abbie Hoffman, but he was no LARPer. He wrote the introduction for Steal this Book in jail, doing time for contempt for his memorable lunacy at the Chicago Seven trial, when he among other things told the judge to “stick it up his bowling ball.” He once tried to halt the Vietnam war by using psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon 300 feet in the air, where it would turn “orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled.” Abbie Hoffman was interesting.
Then there’s Vicky Osterweil.
Like Hoffman, Osterweil is a self-proclaimed leftist revolutionary who justifies stealing on the grounds that property is a crime. The similarities pretty much end there.
Plus:
Adherents to this theology are characterized by a boundless, almost Trumpian capacity for self-pity, even as they’re advocating setting you on fire. They can make wrapping fishwiches sound like digging coal in Matewan, being deprived of a smartphone like being whipped by Centurions, and they matter because everyone, including especially Democratic Party politicians, is afraid of the fallout that comes with telling them to shut the fuck up. So their “ideas” spread like cancer.
If no one in the party says anything, Trump will argue, with some justice, this is the true face of his opposition. The first Sister Souljah moment was a drag, but this moment actually calls for one. Will there ever be a more perfect candidate than this book?
I doubt that what’s left of Joe Biden’s cerebral cortex agrees with Osterweil’s In Defense of Looting. But since Joe’s far-left handlers are running the show, it’s difficult to see him making an easy lay-up of a Sister Souljah moment. As Ben Shapiro noted last week, during Biden’s speech on generic violence, “Biden name-checked ‘white nationalists’ once, ‘white supremacists’ once, ‘right-wing militias’ twice and ‘armed militias’ once in his supposedly unifying anti-violence speech yesterday. He did not mention Antifa or BLM. This is gaslighting and cowardice.” No enemies to the left.
FRACK-CHECKING JOE BIDEN: “Joe Biden has made it clear that he was for fracking before he was against it. Forget the cognitive testing — the cognitive dissonance of the incoherent policies his puppet masters are feeding him though his earpiece is enough to disqualify him for the presidency and may doom him politically in key states like Pennsylvania just as Hillary Clinton’s pledge to bankrupt a lot of coal companies doomed her.”
CANCELLATION IS MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE WHEN THE VICTIM REFUSES TO COOPERATE: Steven Pinker Survives Attempted Cancellation.
SOLD! Facebook paying users to delete accounts ahead of November.
The effort is part of a new research project Facebook announced in an Aug. 31 blog post to “better understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes and behaviors during the U.S. 2020 elections.”
“We’d like to know how much you’d need to be paid in for deactivating your Instagram account…in late September for either [one] week or [six] weeks,” an Instagram notice to users reads in a screenshot Dwoskin posted to Twitter. “To participate, you must be willing to deactivate your account for both time periods and not use Instagram during that time.”
It isn’t a very good business model, but I approve of it more than their current one.
NO, AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT:
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: El Dorado blaze sparked during gender reveal party at park, fire officials say.
The El Dorado Fire near Yucaipa that has burned 7,050 acres in Southern California was caused by a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used during a gender reveal party Saturday morning, according to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection press release. The devices are sometimes used to release blue or pink smoke to announce the gender of an expected baby.
The blaze, which started Saturday about 10:20 a.m. at the El Dorado Ranch Park, is 5% contained.
“CAL FIRE reminds the public that with the dry conditions and critical fire weather, it doesn’t take much to start a wildfire,” the press release stated. “Those responsible for starting fires due to negligence or illegal activity can be held financially responsible and criminally responsible.”
As with the recent BLM/Antifa riots, is a gender-reveal party high enough on the woke-ometer to avoid facing charges in California?