WITH GREAT DILIGENCE AND PLEASURE: How The New York Times Helped Hide Stalin’s Mass Murders in Ukraine.
Walter Duranty’s spiritual children are still at it today: ‘1619 Project’ Founder Has a Tantrum After NYT Publishes Critical Column.
Archive for 2020
October 24, 2020
SO THE LOCKDOWNS DIDN’T STOP IT? COVID-19 cases in U.S. skyrocket by 71,000 — the most in 3 months. But it may be good if they pushed the cases to when people’s Vitamin D levels were highest. Now we shouldn’t have any lockdowns because we don’t want to push cases back to midwinter when levels are low and cases are likely to be more severe. Right?
BUNGA BUNGA: A cautionary tale about how democracy can subvert itself.
Berlusconi was more of a crony capitalist than the neo-fascist of leftwing caricature. Few recall that the formative political relationship of his career was with Bettino Craxi, the socialist who led Italy in the mid-1980s. They were close, Craxi even godfather to Berlusconi’s children. Berlusconi backed the Craxi regime, characterized by unbelievable venality and, weirdly, pan-Arabism. Berlusconi inherited only one of those traits from his mentor: guess which?
Self-interest, not ideology, drove him. Becoming PM was a business decision. After acquiring Mondadori, Italy’s biggest publisher, and Publitalia, Italy’s biggest advertising firm, the next step was simply to acquire the government. Turns out that could be bought as easily as anything else in his portfolio. It allowed him to pass laws to stifle investigations into fraud, corruption, mafia links. He banned over-seventies from going to prison… then publicly celebrated his 70th birthday. You have to admire the cheek.
In a sense, Byron was right. If a leader can make 2,500 court appearances in 106 trials without ever getting done for anything, there does seem to be no functioning law or government. It’s not true, though, that things carry on well enough regardless. In the decade to 2010, Berlusconi’s decade, only Haiti and Zimbabwe had lower GDP growth, as Italy creaked into the eurozone crisis.
Read the whole thing.
THEY HAVE LEARNED NOTHING AND FORGOTTEN NOTHING: The Hunter Biden Corruption Scandal Is a Reckoning for the Legacy Media.
CHELSEA HANDLER, CLOSET TRUMP SUPPORTER: How else to explain this headline? Chelsea Handler explains shaming of Trump-backer 50 Cent: ‘I had to remind him that he was a Black person.’
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: General Atomics and Boeing team up on high-energy laser weapon.
QUELLE HORREUR — THE CHALKENING RETURNS!
This week I drove down to Thibodaux, Louisiana, to give a Live Not By Lies talk at Nicholls State University. Thibodaux is Cajun country. It is not the Bay Area. It is not the Upper West Side. It is not New England. It is a conservative place. But earlier in the week, the Social Justice Warriors made their malign presence known on campus in a big way.
Last weekend, the campus College Republicans chalked pro-Trump messages on the sidewalk. Such as:
“Geaux Trump” is the most Louisiana MAGA thing ever. Anti-Trump students had a meltdown. Over chalk. On a sidewalk. Here is a parade of fragile students speaking out at an extended student government meeting, all of them outraged that other students expressed a political opinion — support for the re-election of the President of the United States — that caused them anxiety.
“Safetyism” is in the process of destroying a generation of young adults.
(Classical reference in headline.)
REPRESENTATION FOR OUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS THREATENS DEMOCRACY! Harvard professor says Republican Party threatens democracy. When you realize that to leftists, “democracy” just means “unchecked power on our part,” it all makes sense.
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: Senator Hirono’s Double Standard.
On Thursday afternoon, I caught up with Hirono in the Capitol and asked her about the apparent double standard. The Hawaii senator stands by her condemnation of Barrett for saying “sexual preference,” but won’t call on Biden to apologize for using the same term in May 2020:
National Review: Senator, last week at the hearing you mentioned that you thought it was “offensive and outdated” when Amy Barrett used the [term] “sexual preference.” It turns out that Joe Biden said it in May. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it in 2017. Some of your colleagues on the Judiciary Committee said it maybe in 2010, 2012. Do you stand by that criticism?
Mazie Hirono: Well, of course.
NR: Do you think Joe Biden should apologize for saying that in May?
Hirono: Well, look, it’s a lesson learned for all of us. But when you’re going on the Supreme Court and you’ve been a judge, as one of my judge friends said, you should know what these words mean.
NR: Should Joe Biden apologize, too, like Amy Coney Barrett did?
Hirono: Joe Biden is not up for the Supreme Court.
NR: He’s up for the presidency. So, he shouldn’t apologize?
Hirono: People will decide.
NR: You don’t want to call on him to apologize?
Hirono: Oh, stop it. The world is in flames.
Of course, the state of the world is the same this week as it was last week when Senators Murray and Hirono smeared Barrett as a bigot for using the term, and the argument that either Barrett or Biden did anything wrong is very weak.
As P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Profs outraged over Trump being nice to female debate moderator Kristen Welker. Well, when you’ve lost the faculty of the University of Wisconsin (Platteville). . . .
NON-COMBATANT EVACUATION: A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey prepares to land during a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) exercise at Twentynine Palms, California. Photo taken Oct. 16, 2020.
I BLAME GLOBAL WARMING: October snowstorm set to smash early-season records.
In conjunction with the record-challenging cold that is set to surge southward across the central and western United States, another potentially record-setting snowstorm is set to target millions of Americans in the coming days. This time, the dose of wintry precipitation will target areas much farther south, including some that typically don’t pick up snow until much later in the season.
With this storm coming on the heels of recent winterlike weather that shattered a 115-year-old snowfall record in the Twin Cities, residents across the Plains and Upper Midwest may check their calendars twice to make sure it’s still October.
But, of course, this means nothing in terms of science — it’s not climate, it’s just weather. Now if it were unseasonably hot weather, it would be clear proof of climate change. Because that’s how the science works.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Pissed Trump Called Her AOC During Debate.
JOE “SUPERPREDATOR” BIDEN WILL FIX THAT: Under Trump, black prison rate lowest in 31 years, Hispanics down 24%.
IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: The New York Times Discovers China — Just in time to provide cover for Biden in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.
MAKE THEM PAY: Jewish Students at U. Illinois File Education Department Complaint Over Campus Anti-Semitism.
Remember, the process is the punishment.