ON FACEBOOK, A COLORADO FRIEND IS UNIMPRESSED WITH GOV. JARED POLIS: “Disappointment: Our governor telling us that we’ll have to trim our cable bill, or cancel our family vacation to survive. He seems to be ignorant of what is actually happening in the lives of everyday people. Most of us are not in the position of having to let one of our nannies go. We’re trying to keep our business alive, and not have our home foreclosed on.”
Archive for 2020
May 2, 2020
Dear Professors —
It’s been a minute, right? A few months ago, you were talking smack about my year in a cabin. Now you’re trapped in your condo in Yonkers or the backside of Amherst or wherever, and you’d trade it in a heartbeat for 150 square feet and a whole forest full of owls and frogs and shit.
Don’t play dumb, bruh. You’ve spent most of your short career trash talking me. Every damn fall, you tell your first-year Am Lit seminar that I’m completely full of shit. You stand there in your goddamned tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches, and tell the kids how my experiment in self-reliance was all just a sham. Then you angle your head just so, and say something snarky about “performative solitude” or “cabin porn.” And for the coup de grâce, you proclaim that I was never really alone at Walden Pond, because I had regular visitors.
Bitch, I disclosed my visitors — I wrote a whole damned chapter called “Visitors.” Can’t blame me if some debutante from Darien didn’t read it. And who’s entertaining visitors now? Not your quarantined ass.
So sue me if my social distancing included regular visits from a Canadian woodchopper and multiple half-witted men from the almshouse. You, my friend, are leading a life of quiet desperation, where your only contact outside of Zoom is a fast-food delivery guy who you pay by app.
Heh.
I LOVE THE ROLLING STONES REFERENCE: Thaddeus McCotter: Who Broke General Flynn Upon a Wheel? And, just as importantly, “What happens when the party of law and order no longer trusts the American justice system?”
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH ANDREW SULLIVAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: By Biden’s Own Standards, He Is Guilty As Charged.
If I were asked to detail an incident that happened a quarter-century ago, absent serious trauma, I’d be completely stumped. There’s a reason for statutes of limitation. And a reason that in a liberal society an individual is deemed innocent until proven guilty.
Nonetheless, I tend to believe women on these matters as a starting point. They have to endure all sorts of exposure and embarrassment for coming forward, and their claims should always be treated respectfully, compassionately, and fairly. It’s been a serious gain for civilized life that women are not routinely ignored or universally trashed for protesting against their assaulters and harassers. Some trust for all women is vital.
But just as vital in a liberal society is verification. I believe strongly in due process, especially with grave allegations of sexual assault. Revolutionaries, like those behind the Shitty Media Men list, don’t care if an individual is unfairly accused because, well, in the grand scheme of things, the ends justify the means.
And Andrew has quite a bit of experience in the “ends justify the means” department. Andrew’s othering of Sarah Palin in 2008 — and by extension her supporters — was a key mile marker on the road to Trump.
Related: Tough new Trump ad: The Democratic double standard on believing women.
As a matter of raw politics, the Reade allegation will benefit Trump by deterring Biden from making an issue of alleged sexual misconduct by the president. The more Team Trump flaunts its hypocrisy by targeting Biden over Reade, though, the more Democrats will want to hit back. That’s what’s clever about the ad — it doesn’t go so far as to claim that Biden is actually guilty, merely that he should be judged guilty by his party’s own dumb standards. That’s safer ground.
While the New York Times is finally talking about Reade, note the line at the end of this excerpt of Ben Smith’s column:
You don’t have to believe Mr. Clinton assaulted Ms. Broaddrick in 1978. If you’re a journalist, it doesn’t really matter what you believe, as long as you report what you know. But the handling of Ms. Broaddrick’s story was one of the most damaging media mistakes of the Clinton years. And the treatment of Mr. Clinton’s accusers by the Democratic Party and the media alike is one of the original sins that led to today’s divided, partisan news environment.
The mainstream American media in 1999, for reasons that are hard to explain or excuse today, got cold feet on a credible allegation of rape against the president.
“Hard to explain.” Ben Smith is bensmithing away the second half of the 1990s in Washington, DC.
More: Tara Reade Is Joe Biden’s Eighth Accuser. Possibly ninth? Woman says Biden sexually harassed her when she was 14.
And finally, in yet another tone-deaf move by Biden and his handlers signaling the end of the #MeToo era: Biden nominates Chris Dodd of ‘waitress sandwich’ fame to help shop for female vice presidential candidates.
STRZOK EDITED THE FLYNN 302 BIG-TIME: So concludes The Epoch Times’ Peter Svab, who notes this from Michael Flynn lawyer Sydney Powell:
“I’ve now found a witness who says the original 302 did in fact say that Flynn was honest with the agents and did not lie,” she told Larry O’Connor on his WMAL radio show. “So for somebody to delete that from the 302 is just beyond outrageous.”
The FBI has claimed for years that the original 302 (report of the interview with Flynn) could not be located. My money is on somebody wiped it with a rag, you know, to bleach it. And then it just disappeared! Like in NASCAR with the “that’s just racin'” excuse.
KNOX COUNTY MAYOR GLENN JACOBS’ DAUGHTER travels to New Jersey to assist with Covid-19 relief efforts. “We are helping two pulmonologists here at this hospital and neither one of them have had a day off since March 26 and each of them were seeing up to 60 to 70 patients a day.”
“DON’T COME BEGGING FEDERAL TAXPAYERS:” Hawley, Jordan team up to block coronavirus aid from going to rich colleges.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Questions Reporters Might Ask Liberals If They Didn’t Suck.
NEW WORLD ORDER, OR LAST GASP OF THE OLD REGIME? Legacy news, social media giants converge in new era of censorship: Once rivals for audience share and cultural relevance, new and old media are now allied in top-down control of information.
SUPERHERO TEAM-UP: RESIST WE MUCH AND SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76! Joe Biden Will Sit Down With Al Sharpton Saturday. Will Anyone Understand a Word?
WEIRD, THAT’S NOT THE IMPRESSION I’M GETTING FROM MSNBC: Gallup: Trump surges to approval high, best ever OK from independents.
President Trump’s roller coaster approval ratings are back to their all-time high, this time thanks to the record support of independents, a group he needs to win reelection but has struggled with.
The latest Gallup survey found that 49% of adults approve of the president’s job, up from 43% two weeks ago. Trump has never crossed 49% in the Gallup survey.
The pop came despite crushing media criticism of his fight against the coronavirus and push to reopen the economy.
Not so crushing as all that, I guess.
WHAT GIVES WITH THE FLYNN CASE?: Powerline continues its excellent series of posts on the rigged case against LTG (ret) Michael Flynn. The link takes you to Part 6. Follow this link to Part 5.
VIRGINIA-CLASS ON THE SURFACE: The U.S. Navy attack submarine USS Delaware conducts sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean. Photo taken August 31, 2019. This How to Make War “Submarines” post from 2014 discusses the USN’s modification program for its Virginia-class nuclear attack subs.
Each new batch of the Virginia SSNs have new features. In April 2014 the U.S. Navy ordered ten Block IV Virginia class at a cost of $1.8 billion each. These are to be delivered at the rate of two a year through 2018. This is the largest submarine order (in terms of dollar value) in U.S. history. There are already eleven Virginia’s in service and seven more Block IIIs under construction or on order. This new order is long-term, which is rare, but it results in lower prices because components can be ordered in larger quantities and farther in advance.
The post provides an excellent summary of the process as well as the technical details.
AG BARR SAYS IT’S ‘TIME TO START ROLLING BACK’ CORONAVIRUS RESTRICTIONS. “‘Now that the curve has been flattened and the hospital system has not been overwhelmed, it is time to start rolling back some of those restrictions,’ Barr reiterated. ‘We will be on the lookout for restrictions that are too widespread, too generalized or unduly discriminatory towards liberty, such as religious liberty or speech, and in the appropriate case we would consider taking action.’”
DIRTY DEALING AT THE CORRUPT FBI: Flynn Entrapment was McCabe’s Revenge. “We know that swamp thing James Comey’s mission in life was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House, but McCabe had a personal animus towards Flynn which goes way back, possibly originating in Flynn’s offer to be a witness in a legal proceeding filed against McCabe.”
Jail and disbarment, at the very least.
I’D BORROW SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE, BUT THE POOR THING IS OVERWORKED AS IT IS: Iowa Dem Evicted Local Businesses to Make Way for Multinational Chain: Theresa Greenfield running for Senate as small business champion.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Rutgers University Prof Blames Trump Supporters for Coronavirus Deaths. “F**k each and every Trump supporter. You all absolutely did this. You are to blame.”
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Joe Biden discovers due process — does it apply to everyone?
Sorry, #MeToo: the liberal media had its first major test in the “believe all women” era and, of course, it has failed spectacularly.
Vice President Joe Biden, currently on track to be the Democratic nominee for president, has been accused of sexual assault by former staffer Tara Reade. Reade has some corroboration, including audio of her mother calling into the “Larry King Live” show in 1993 and inquiring what a staffer “for a prominent senator” in Washington could do if she had run into “problems.” But the liberal media just gosh darn aren’t sure she’s credible.
It’s hard not to notice that they didn’t have any such qualms about running with the accusations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
The main difference, of course, between the accusations of Brett Kavanaugh and Joe Biden is there is evidence Biden’s accuser knew him while no such evidence existed that Kavanaugh had ever met accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
There also don’t exist dozens of pictures of women standing by awkwardly as Brett Kavanaugh sniffed their hair or rubbed their shoulders.
But the key difference is that Kavanaugh was appointed by a Republican president and the Democrats were assisted by their friends in the media in trying to bring him down. Now Democrats suddenly want the due process they never afforded Kavanaugh.
Is anyone surprised by this? Anyone at all?
NEW YORK’S MTA HEAD SAYS SUBWAY CAR, STATION CLEANINGS WILL HAPPEN ‘24 HOURS A DAY.’
I didn’t know that Hieronymus Bosch was illustrating New York Post covers these days:
Related: Op-Ed: Homeless Will Be ‘Sanitized’ From Subways — But To Where?
PEOPLE WILL STAY LOCKED DOWN FOR ONLY SO LONG, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU HECTOR OR SHAME THEM. IN FACT THE SHAMING AND HECTORING MAKE THEM LESS COOPERATIVE. Apple Data Shows Shelter-In-Place Is Ending, Whether Governments Want It To Or Not. “Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest.”
Failed predictions and moved goalposts also hurt.