YES. AND NOWADAYS IT’S ALSO PLAINLY ANTI-ASIAN. Is the Radical Critique of Merit Anti-Semitic?
Archive for 2021
November 24, 2021
THE WAR ON WOMEN: New Olympic Committee Rules Essentially End Women’s Sports. “The new rules are couched in ideas of anti-discrimination, but they are only about not discriminating against gender-nonconforming biological males who identify as transgender and use female pronouns, and in so doing, they directly discriminate against women.”
QUESTION ASKED: Was 1980 the worst automotive year ever?
Quick, what’s the worst year in American automotive history?
Recent bias might lead you to select 2008, when an unprecedented modern financial crisis slammed the overall economy and led to a government bailout of GM and Chrysler (those carmakers received $80 billion after taking a 40 percent nosedive in sales and having some 3 million jobs at risk). But the near-death experience yielded vehicles and automakers more closely aligned to consumers’ needs and desires.
Arguments could be made that 1929 proved far worse, as the stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed drove many automakers out of business. But that period also yielded some of the finest cars ever produced, ones with names like Marmon, Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow, Stutz, and many others. Or perhaps it was 1957, when the last of the independent automakers, Nash and Hudson, disappeared from the market, and Packard was gasping its final breath as a poorly disguised Studebaker, a company that would disappear a decade later.
No, it’s 1980. With the arrival of the second OPEC Oil Embargo the year before, a recession took hold of the country. Sales of US-made cars came in at 6.58 million units, down 20 percent from 1979, as import automakers claimed a 26.1 percent market share, up from 21.2 percent in 1979. Ford lost a record $1.5 billion as domestic sales plunged 33 percent and worldwide sales declined 29 percent. Chrysler, having lost $2 billion in the past year and a half, was in such bad shape that banks wouldn’t lend it money. Instead, Congress did, providing a $1.5 billion loan guaranteed by the federal government. Even General Motors was hit by a $763 million loss, the company’s first since 1921.
But bad numbers alone don’t earn 1980 the title of ‘Worst Automotive Year Ever.’ Having to engineer cars with new technology for the first time in decades, the Big Three struggled to meet the unprecedented demand for small fuel-efficient cars. And in the face of profits and market share declining, Detroit responded by, frankly, fielding some of the worst cars it has ever produced.
Read on for the horrors of the 1980 model year including — trigger warning — the Chevy Citation:
ROGER SIMON: Two Excellent COVID Books for Christmas?… Why Not?
What honest person can deny that the U.S. and global responses to COVID-19—dubbed here for some time the Chinese Communist Party virus—have been an unholy mess?
Vaccines/no vaccines, lockdowns/no lockdowns, masks/no masks, social distancing/no social distancing, school/no school—it’s hard to see there has been any difference. As Alex Berenson, a man who has justifiably raised his reputation by being canceled by various Big Tech gangsters, often puts it, in the end, “a virus gonna virus.”
It’s almost as if no one had done anything it all would have been the same—or better.
That’s the conclusion—with certain caveats—that I came to after reading two extremely informative and timely books regarding the pandemic that are being published almost simultaneously on or about Dec 1.
They also ratified something I admittedly already believed—big government is the enemy of the people. Or, as Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Read the whole thing.
MATT MARGOLIS: Psaki Doubles Down on Biden’s Rittenhouse Smear. “But refusing to acknowledge that Biden falsely called Rittenhouse a white supremacist doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
HOLIDAY WISHES FROM THE ATLANTIC! Deprogram your relatives this Thanksgiving:
Some people (like my friend Tom Nichols) think that you should spend your Thanksgiving playing nice, pretending that your cousin doesn’t follow QAnon and that your uncle doesn’t believe the election was stolen and also that the Cyber Ninjas are a bunch of cucks for not uncovering voter fraud. Tom believes that Thanksgiving is a time for harmony and niceties and gratitude. I love Tom, but he’s completely wrong.
Spending a holiday sitting around, pretending your crazy relatives aren’t crazy, is one of America’s time-honored traditions. In normal times, you could be the dog in the house-fire meme declaring, “This is fine” while taking a sip of doggy coffee, but we are not in normal times.
Last Thanksgiving, many of us didn’t see our families, because the pandemic was raging. Now, 773,000 dead Americans later, we have vaccines and boosters. And while the unvaccinated are still dying at a pretty rapid clip, we are finally able to more safely get together with our parents and grandparents and weird cousins and uncles.
This is your chance to deprogram them. Facebook knows its algorithm radicalizes users. This is your chance to tell your aunt that maybe the news she gets from it isn’t all that reliable. And that maybe the MAGA news network is not giving her unbiased news, either.
Or to put it another way:
UPDATE: Past performance is no guarantee of future results: “What the FBI Had on Grandpa” — also from Molly Jong-Fast, earlier this year.
(Updated and bumped. The last link via Dan McLaughlin, who tweets, “Life comes at you fast.”)
STAY WARM: Carhartt Men’s Winter Dex Glove, Black Barley. #CommissionEarned
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Top Republican Pushes Congressional Witnesses To Disclose Foreign Influence.
Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would require experts slated to give congressional testimony to disclose whether their employers accept foreign money. The proposal largely targets universities and think tanks, which provide a steady stream of expert witnesses for congressional foreign policy hearings.
While the bill would cover donations from all countries, Banks focuses on China, given the Communist regime’s significant funding for prominent Washington-based think tanks. The China-United States Exchange Foundation, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, has in recent years donated millions of dollars to the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. CIA director William Burns, the former president of Carnegie, testified this year that he cut ties with the Exchange Foundation because of its efforts to malignly influence American policymakers.
I’d suggest bringing back the House Un-American Activities Committee, except that so many in Congress are already un-American.
Rhetoric that demonizes law-abiding gun owners is necessary to the Democratic Party agenda of absolving themselves and their constituents of responsibility. Nothing that goes wrong in Philadelphia — or Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, etc. — is the fault of the people directly involved, because those people vote Democrat. The voters who elect Democrats must be held blameless for their problems, and the blame must be transferred to scapegoats — which is why phrases like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” have entered the political lexicon.
Read the whole thing.
READINESS: The US Navy Is Rusting Away.
Last month I visited Naval Station Norfolk, headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. What I saw horrified me and reminded me of stories of the rusting Russian navy in the days following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The streaks of rust symbolized the decay of our naval shipyards due to decades of neglect and budget misallocations combined with an inadequate workforce.
Ships such as the nine-year-old USNS Medgar Evers, named for the slain civil rights leader; the USS Arlington, an amphibious warship named in honor of those killed at the Pentagon on 9/11; and a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser whose hull number was obscured sat rusting at the piers. They weren’t the only ones, but they were the most noticeable as I toured the base.
I’m not the first to notice this problem.
A friend and Navy veteran told me that he too had visited the base a few weeks prior and had seen what I saw. It infuriated him.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Our pronoun training is up to date, though.
BIDEN’S WAR ON AFFORDABLE ENERGY IS A GENUINE ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’: Oil, Oil Everywhere But Not a Drop of Sense. “With great fanfare from the press and a shrug from the markets, Presidentish Joe Biden announced his plan to basically do nothing about the high price of oil and gas.”
TOP SELLER: The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook, Gift Edition: 650 Recipes for Everything You’ll Ever Want to Make. #CommissionEarned
NO ONE EVER ACCUSED HIM OF BEING TERRIBLY BRIGHT: :Biden Wants Lower Oil Prices and Lower Oil Supply.
LEFTIST HISTORY MYTHS DEBUNKED AGAIN: History Professor’s Follies Revealed Once Again.
Duke University history professor Nancy MacLean has become famous for her ad hominem attacks on economists who advocated limited government. First she went after James Buchanan, and then most recently, Milton Friedman. Her “scholarship” is not meant to elicit truth but to advance the leftist claim that anyone who argues against their omnipotent government agenda must at heart be an evil person.
She’s a hack and a disgrace. But the left finds her useful for the moment.
WHITE PRIVILEGE: Survey: 34% of white college applicants lied about their race to improve chances of getting accepted. If white supremacy were actually a thing, this wouldn’t be happening.
NO ONE BUT KAREN IS STILL LISTENING: Fauci Prepares to Move the Goalposts — AGAIN.
OH, DRY UP LIKE YOUR MOM’S TURKEY, KID: ‘This is not our land’: Students pen editorial on ‘dark origins’ of Thanksgiving.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Starter Men’s Polar Fleece Jacket, Amazon Exclusive, Vapor Grey Heather. #CommissionEarned
GO ON AND LAUGH, BUT SLIDE RULES DON’T GO DOWN AND CAN’T BE HACKED — AND DO OUR PILOTS KNOW HOW TO USE ONE IN A PINCH? Ruling The Skies? Astonishment As Russian Fighter Pilots Use Slide Rules In Mach 2 Jets.
A HINT OF WHAT TO EXPECT FROM GOP HOUSE: Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) has introduced a bill requiring congressional witnesses to disclose foreign contributions to their employers. Universities and think tanks receiving Chinese funding are the primary targets, but other nations, notably in the Middle East, are also big donors to well-known foundations.
“The China-United States Exchange Foundation, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, has in recent years donated millions of dollars to the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. CIA director William Burns, the former president of Carnegie, testified this year that he cut ties with the Exchange Foundation because of its efforts to malignly influence American policymakers,” according to The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Great News For Republicans in Arizona. “Without a doubt, Sinema is the Arizona Democratic Party’s best shot at holding onto the seat. Arizona is a reddish/purple state, and Sinema can’t afford to be a left-wing radical. Unfortunately for her, Arizona Democrats don’t understand this yet and may end up nominating someone who would have a much more difficult time winning in a general election instead.”
Megan Fox: Maybe Suing Everyone Isn’t the Best Idea for Kyle Rittenhouse. “The media destroyed his reputation and Sandmann has been filing (and winning) lawsuits against the media companies that did it for the last three years. So what’s the problem? Watch a few seconds of today’s Sandmann.”
Yours Truly: Panic Attack! POLITICO Warns Democrats Their ‘Entire Brand’ Is a ‘Wreck.’ “Either the White House is completely tone-deaf or they honestly have no clue about what real Americans have experienced since Biden took office (with the accent on ‘took’).”