Archive for 2020
February 8, 2020
THAT WAS THE DEBATE THAT WAS: Mayor Pete Takes Heat, Biden Fumbles, Dems Wink at Socialism in NH Debate.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related:
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT MIKE BLOOMBERG IS THROWING A LOT OF MONEY AROUND:
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: It’s Never Sunny In Wokeadelphia.
Sunny Singh models how to achieve and maintain power in the current academic hothouse — proclaim one’s own victimhood, accuse anyone you don’t like of racism, sexism, and so forth, and compel everyone else (in her case, a white man!) to fall all over themselves to calm you down. But she does not model virtue, strength, or resilience. With this pathetic display, she showed that she is a weakling and a bully. If you want to learn something about literature, avoid Dr. Singh’s class, is the lesson here. She’s a laughingstock.
Any academic institution constructed on a foundation that privileges people like Sunny Singh is going to fall, and deserve to fall, because it is decadent. If the university were healthy, it would tell its Sunny Singhs to get hold of themselves, and to get back in there and teach the damn class. If the kid doesn’t want to do the reading, and he won’t be persuaded that it is to his benefit, then flunk him, and move on. He doesn’t deserve to be at the university anyway, if that’s his attitude. But like I said, Sunny Singh and that anonymous doofus have a lot in common, in that they see the education process as self-centered and therapeutic.
In academia, the will to power derives from victimhood; for both students, and increasingly, their teachers, apparently. Read the whole thing.
OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER: Netflix finally lets users turn off annoying auto-playing previews.
I feel like Winston Smith when he visits O’Brien’s Outer Party flat in 1984, and has his moment of awe when O’Brien switches the telescreen off: “You…you can turn it off!”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yale apologizes for calling gender identity disorder ‘gender identity disorder.’
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS BEGIN LICKING DOORKNOBS TO CONTRACT CORONAVIRUS AND REDUCE HUMAN POPULATION.
From (of course), the Babylon Bee, which became America’s Newspaper of Record, in part by likely employing writers with very long memories.
SEARCHING FOR THE MA DEUCE SUCCESSOR: SOCOM is trying out the new Sig Sauer 338 (8.6mm) Machine Gun, which uses the 338 Norma Magnum.A long but informative post. Here’s a photo of twin-.50s on the USS Boxer and another with a .50 caliber machine gun inside a CH-53E Super Stallion flying over Afghanistan’s Helmand province,
IT’S COME TO THIS: NBC’s Katy Tur Fears ‘Gerrymandering’ Helping Republicans Win Senate Seats.
Shot:
China is again making a major effort to sell its J-10 jet fighter to export customers. The J-10CE, the export version of the Chinese Air Force J-10C was on display at a November 2019 air show, along with eager sales reps looking for customers. There were some nibbles but nothing serious.
Chaser:
What the J-10 sales reps did not want to discuss was what most potential customers already knew; the F-16 had an exceptional service and combat record and was the most widely exported post-Cold War fighter. In contrast the J-10 first flew in 1998 and entered service six years later. Less than 500 J-10s have been produced so far and none have been bought by export customers.
There’s a lot of analysis after the chaser.
HARSH, BUT FAIR:
WHY RUSH LIMBAUGH MATTERS: The Era of Limbaugh.
Limbaugh is not fringe. His views fit in the conservative mainstream. He idolizes Buckley. “He was a fundamental individual in helping me to be able to explain what I believed instinctively, helping me to explain it to others,” Limbaugh said last year. The ideas are the same but the salesman is different. Limbaugh is Buckley without the accent, without the Yale credentials, without the sailboat and harpsichord. Limbaugh is a college dropout from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who spends Sundays watching the NFL and speaks in plain language. His background connects him to the audience—and to the increasingly working-class Republican voter.
Limbaugh entered stage right just as Ronald Reagan made his exit. He took from Reagan the sense that America’s future is bright, that America isn’t broken, just its liberal political, media, and cultural elites. “He rejected Washington elitism and connected directly with the American people who adored him,” Limbaugh said after Reagan’s death. “He didn’t need the press. He didn’t need the press to spin what he was or what he said. He had the ability to connect individually with each American who saw him.” The two men never met.
Limbaugh assumed Reagan’s position as leader of the conservative movement. In a letter sent to Limbaugh after the 1992 election, Reagan wrote, “Now that I’ve retired from active politics, I don’t mind that you have become the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country. I know the liberals call you the most dangerous man in America, but don’t worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work. America needs to hear ‘the way things ought to be.'”
Read the whole thing. As Jim Geraghty tweeted earlier this week, Rush was the gateway drug to conservatism for millions of Americans. During the 1990s, prior to the arrival of the World Wide Web, Fox News, and then the Blogosphere, Rush was also essentially foreshadowing blogging; riffing seemingly effortlessly on both alternative takes on the stories of the day, and stories the DNC-MSM either got wrong or failed to cover. And doing it in a way that flattered those in what coastal elites long ago dubbed “flyover country.” And increasingly far worse — as the late Timesman David Carr said to HBO’s Bill Maher in 2011, “If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right?”
More from Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon:
[Limbaugh] mentioned a recent encounter on a golf course. Someone told him it is hard to defend President Trump. “I said, ‘What? Hard to defend the president? It’s one of the easiest things in the world to do.’ President Trump does not need to be defended.” The crowd cheered. A few seconds later Limbaugh said, “How do you defend Donald Trump? You attack the people who are attempting to destroy him. They’re trying to destroy you. They’re trying to transform this country into something that it was not founded to be.”
Indeed. And from Rush himself: What a Week! I’m One of the Luckiest People Alive.
BUFF WITH A FLOCK OF FRIENDS: A USAF B-52H and six F-16 Fighting Falcons conduct bilateral joint training with four Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-2’s off the coast of Northern Japan, February 4, 2020.
NOW OUT FROM CHARLES MURRAY: Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class.
HUBRIS, MEET NEMESIS: NRA enters 2020 campaign early, Virginia gun ban push the ‘biggest wake-up call.’
RIP: Veteran actor Orson Bean, 91, struck and killed by vehicle in Venice, California. And condolences to his daughter, Susie Breitbart.
IF YOU MISSED IT LAST NIGHT: You’re Fired! Lt. Col. Vindman Loses NSC Job, Escorted from White House. “Vindman’s twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a National Security Council attorney, was also fired, and both were escorted off the White House grounds.”
Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland Also Booted.
Related: Joe Biden Claims Lt. Col. Vindman Deserves a Medal and ‘Not Rush Limbaugh.’
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Seen on Facebook:
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Five Britons contract coronavirus in French ski resort. “Five British nationals on a ski trip have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus at a mountain resort in France, after staying in the same chalet with a person who had been in Singapore, French health officials said on Saturday.”
Apple Contractor Tells Employees To Stay Home As Coronavirus Cases Nearly Triple.
Hundreds of Miles from Hubei, Another 30 Million Chinese Are in Coronavirus Lockdown. “More than 500 miles from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, 30 million people are in lockdown — some quite literally locked in their homes — as Chinese authorities resort to extreme lengths to curb the spread of a respiratory illness that has stubbornly defied containment. Across the coastal province of Zhejiang, the worst-hit area after Hubei province, four big cities have essentially put their populations under a form of house arrest: Only one person from each household is allowed to leave, and only every second day, to buy supplies.”
First American Citizen Dies of Coronavirus.
Royal Caribbean Delays NJ Cruise Ship Departure Over Coronavirus Fears; 4 Evaluated.
Coronavirus: Singapore mounts second evacuation flight from Wuhan.
Novel coronavirus can transmit via aerosol: expert.
Coronavirus: 722 dead, 34,546 people have been infected in latest update.
Megacities put up coronavirus entry barriers as China goes back to work.