Archive for 2021
August 26, 2021
FASTER, PLEASE, CAPTAIN SLOW: James May: Our Man In The USA Has Been Confirmed For 2022 Release – Details Here.
HARSH BUT FAIR:
Holy cow. What an ad. pic.twitter.com/hPUFtr4qBV
— Storm Paglia 🇺🇸 (@storm_paglia) August 24, 2021
UPDATE: From the comments: “Administrations are judged on how they respond to their first real crisis, it’s hard to imagine how Biden could have done any worse than he has on this one.”
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: Antifa Attacks Reporter in Portland.
Nonetheless, antifascist protesters have taken their absurd demands of non-coverage quite far in the past, making lists of protester-approved media and going after reporters and videographers from papers like local CBS and ABC affiliates as well as the Washington Post, NPR, the Toronto Sun, and others. Their rationale is that filming hurts their cause by making them vulnerable either to arrest or doxing, a dubious concept one could argue on multiple levels, but again, that’s what masks are for. Moreover — and I know this can be a hard concept — cameras generally help public protests, with the exception being when activists behave stupidly or unattractively in public. If you don’t do things like knock female reporters to the ground, you’re probably not going to end up dealing with negative press.
By general assent many mainstream outlets and politicians have taken the position that “Antifa” doesn’t exist, with outlets like Vanity Fair writing pieces like “Sure looks like the right’s Antifa boogeyman doesn’t exist,” and people like Jerrold Nadler calling Antifa violence a “myth.” It does seem to be true that there is no “Antifa” in the sense of a nationally organized phenomenon, and they certainly are not the threat Donald Trump claims they are, but that doesn’t mean they are a completely harmless non-entity either. Too many news outlets have respected the desire of such protesters to remain invisible when they behave atrociously, and this is one of those cases.
If the protesters from this past weekend had any integrity, they would come forward and start with an apology. There’s no excuse for attacking press, especially when your modus operandi is moronic attention-grabbing public stunts. I’ll let Ford and News2Share tell the rest of this story, but to say I’m furious about the events of this weekend would be an understatement. It also doesn’t say a lot about the ethics of mainstream press outlets that they let behavior like this go without comment. How is any of this “progressive”?
Because during the Trump administration, the uber-woke DNC-MSM decided to compare Antifa to brave men storming the beaches of Normandy:
THEY WON’T BE SHY ABOUT EXPLOITING IT, EITHER: China Announces Discovery of a ‘Major Shale Oilfield.’
MY BODY, THEIR CHOICE: You do not have the ‘constitutional right’ to refuse the Covid-19 vaccine.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF MISOGYNY AND ABUSE? Ex-‘Good Morning America’ producer accused of sexually assaulting two women.
NICE. NOW WHAT ABOUT THE POWER GRID WE’LL HAVE TO PLUG THEM INTO? Remarkable density of new lithium battery promises massive range for EVs.
ALSO, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH: University bioethicists: Vaccine mandates ‘promote freedom.’
SO MUCH RACISM IN HIGHER ED THESE DAYS: Stanford prof says ‘Whiteness’ explains parents’ opposition to school mask mandates. If you start with the presumption that anyone going on about “whiteness” is stupid, dishonest, or grifting, you won’t go far wrong.
PEOPLE ARE PAYING ATTENTION: Biden Approval Index at -21.
HR4 IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN YOU KNEW: Attorney Cleta Mitchell has been in the front lines of election reform battles for decades, so she knows a thing or thirty-three about how the Left has corrupted the ballot box over the years. And she warns today that HR4, just passed by the House of Representatives, is not about protecting voting rights.
“Instead, the bill cynically adopts into federal law every losing argument advanced by the vast leftwing elections industry to courts across the country for years. Every theory rejected by the courts has been enshrined in HR 4. The bill also hands control of our elections over to the radical leftwing attorneys in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Most importantly, the bill codifies congressional districts as ‘protected’ under federal law even if those districts do not have a majority of minority residents. Courts have recognized the importance of majority-minority congressional districts, but have rejected partisan efforts by Democrat lawyers to extend that recognition to congressional districts that do not have a majority of minorities in the district. HR 4 would put into the federal statute protection for districts with more white voters than minorities, thus expanding legal protections to — you guessed it — Democrat House seats.”
This piece is essential reading for anybody who cares about what happened in the 2020 presidential election and could happen again and again and again in future elections.
“DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP”: Joe Biden Is Now the World’s Top Arms Supplier to Terrorists.
SPACE: Watch Blue Origin launch its New Shepard rocket on an uncrewed suborbital flight today. The launch is sked for 9:35 am ET.
INSTAPUNDIT READERS HAVE KNOWN THIS FOR MONTHS BUT NOW IT’S OFFICIAL: Exclusive: Police Lieutenant Who Killed January 6 Capitol Rioter Ashli Babbitt Finally Identified.
For more than seven months, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester climbing through a broken window in a hallway of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, has remained anonymous.
Though his name was known to U.S. Capitol Police, congressional staffers and federal investigations, no one would divulge it. The secrecy fueled months of online speculation.
Babbitt’s family alleged a coverup.
With reason. The officer is Lt. Michael Byrd, a Capitol Police officer with a checkered record of gun mishaps even before the shooting:
Byrd is a controversial figure with a record of mishandling firearms, including once leaving a loaded pistol in a Congressional Visitor Center bathroom. Roberts said Byrd’s decision to fire his weapon on January 6 indicated his unfitness for duty.
“If I was a congressman, I’d be very concerned about him carrying a gun around me,” he said.
Typically, police officers who shoot civilians are named publicly. But the January 6 riot and the riots that erupted after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, divided the country along political, class, and racial lines—making officials cautious about revealing the name of a Black police officer who killed a white protester.
Roberts said race was “clearly a factor” in the decision to shield Byrd from public scrutiny.
“It’s something that has to be considered, because it’s just a clear pattern in the United States,” he said. “A white cop kills a Black individual? Their name is out there within a day. It’s all public. And look, a police officer is a public official. There should not be any exception for this.”
U.S. Capitol Police officials, police union representatives and government officials had repeatedly claimed that disclosing the officer’s identity would put his life and his wife’s in danger—and subject them to racial slurs. Lt. Byrd’s family roots are in Jamaica, according to one of his neighbors.
After not naming Byrd publicly for months, Babbitt’s lawyer said he became skeptical when he learned Wednesday that the officer was set to appear with Lester Holt in an NBC News broadcast the following day—and that NBC had already taped the interview.
They had a narrative to defend, and they didn’t want the public thinking that the ruling class’s protectors were accountable to anyone but the ruling class.
CRITICAL RACE CAPITALISM: Verizon teaches employees that America is fundamentally racist and promotes “defunding the police.”
GREAT. NOW WHEN WILL THEY FINALLY START MY BETA SERVICE? SpaceX Prepares to Cut Starlink Dish Cost by Half Later This Year.