Archive for 2021
September 21, 2021
WHO ARE ILLEGALS GOING TO BELIEVE, MAYORKAS OR THEIR OWN LYIN’ EYES? DHS Secretary Mayorkas in Del Rio, Texas: ‘Our Border Is Not Open.’
BAD THINGS COME IN THREES: Beto III: The Betoing. “Spider-man 3. Aliens 3. Godfather Part III. Very rarely is the third installment in a series the best. What brings this to mind is word that Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, hot off losing a senate race and a Presidential primary, has decided to run for governor of Texas.”
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Trump Is Reportedly Trying to Oust McConnell From GOP Leadership. Is This a Good Idea?
AJ Kaufman: Ilhan Omar Demands Democrats Disobey Senate Parliamentarian on Immigration. “This ruling by the parliamentarian, is only a recommendation. @SenSchumer and the @WhiteHouse can and should ignore it.”
Yours Truly (Plus the Missus): Cocktails with VodkaPundit: The Perfect Margarita. “I spent years futzing around with various ingredients and ratios, and the final result is so simple and so tasty that I don’t hesitate at all calling this margarita ‘perfect.'”
September 20, 2021
SUPERFICIALLY SHE LOOKS GOOD, BUT SHE SEEMS SQUISHY IN PRACTICE: WILL GOV. NOEM FIX THE SOUTH DAKOTA TEACHING STANDARDS FIASCO?
OUR LOSER RULERS:
HOW THE FAKE NEWS GETS MADE: Border Patrol Debunks the Fake ‘Whipping’ Haitians Story but Media Doesn’t Care About the Truth.
OPEN THREAD: Hey, hey, hey — whatcha got to say?
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Joe Biden Is Out of His Depth.
That inventory of leftwing wish-list items—a package that is known more for its price tag than for any of its actual aims—is still being negotiated among Senate Democrats, and the prospects of its passage through an evenly divided Senate are bleak. Inexplicably, House progressives appear to believe that holding Joe Biden’s chief domestic priority captive will convince their party’s genuine moderates to give in to their demands.
Few seem to believe that this threat is genuine; it’s one thing to issue an ultimatum, but it’s quite another to follow through with it and suffer the consequences. But progressives have lined up behind this power play, and they have not budged since they initially issued this challenge over the summer. And given the narrowness of the Democratic majority, even a handful of defections could imperil the infrastructure bill—or, worse, force Nancy Pelosi to rely on Republican votes to pass the president’s chief priority.
The question is: Why is Joe Biden letting this happen? He could use the power of the presidency to marginalize his party’s restive progressive flank today if he so chose. If taking to the podium and forcing the Democrats who are holding his agenda hostage to explain their rationale isn’t Biden’s style, he could use his authority to convince, cajole, or compel progressives to get on board. That kind of deal-making is, after all, what America thought it was getting when it elected a “deal maker.” But Joe Biden is not doing any of that. We’re left to conclude that he either has no interest in these, the messier aspects of his job, or that he fundamentally agrees more with progressives than the moderates who helped produce a bipartisan hard infrastructure bill in the first place.
Curiously, the trunalimunumaprzure option isn’t explored by the above article.
Earlier: Staffers Trying to Build ‘Wall’ to Stop People From Seeing What a Mess Biden Is.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China moon rock studies include fusion energy analysis, volcanic history. “Several science institutions in China are now studying rocks collected from the moon by the Chang’e 5 mission for research that includes evaluating the material as a potential source of fusion power. . . . The Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology is now studying a 50-milligram sample of lunar rocks to look for an isotope called helium-3. Helium-3 has been promoted as a potential fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. While extremely rare on Earth, helium-3 is thought to be more abundant on the moon, with the isotope delivered into the unprotected lunar surface by the solar wind, a constant stream of material flowing off the sun and across the solar system.”
RULE-BREAKING ELITES LET THE MASK SLIP ON COVID PROTOCOLS:
Remember all those saccharine paeans to the common good? Those Pecksniffian appeals to do the “right thing”? Those badgering reminders that “we’re in this together”? Yeah, those couldn’t outlast a single letterpressed invitation to the Met. In one hand, our elite class had its longstanding message that masking is crucially important; in the other, it had the chance to go to a really lush party. And the party won in a landslide.
Not for everyone, of course. That would have been gauche. No, the party won for the sort of people who were invited to the party. The staff? They were masked up to the eyeballs, because these days you just can’t be too careful around people carrying trays.
In San Francisco over the weekend, Mayor London Breed explained that the video of her enjoying herself maskless at a jazz club doesn’t count when you really think about it, because, unlike you, she is really into music. “My drink was sitting at the table,” Breed said when pushed on the matter, and “I got up and started dancing because I was feeling the spirit and I wasn’t thinking about a mask.” Which is an absolutely spiffing excuse if one assumes that the mayor of San Francisco is alone among her fellow citizens in desiring to spend her evenings without a large piece of cloth strapped across her face. Exonerating herself further, Mayor Breed suggested that “we don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing.” Which, again, is a ripping justification if we assume that everyone else in San Francisco is just dying for close supervision.
Related exit question: “Simply put, if we empower the government to police our intimate behavior, we shouldn’t fool ourselves—the elite will never have to play by the rules like everyone else. And if elite celebrities and politicians get to live their lives unrestrained, why shouldn’t we all?”
UNEXPECTEDLY: The Biden presidency is in free-fall.
This is not a joke. It’s not an overreaction. It’s not about Biden’s opponents pouncing or seizing. Biden’s presidency has a very real chance of completely foundering within its first year. After a promising start where he inherited a vaccination process that was already in progress, albeit briefly, under Trump, his vaccine strategy has stalled to the point of him now demanding mandates on private businesses, a step he assured the electorate he would not take. Last Friday, an FDA panel bucked Biden’s booster rollout program, which was slated to begin this week.
That was one of many self-inflicted wounds that Biden suffered at the end of last week as he took off for the Delaware coast for a long weekend of bike-riding and ignoring reporters. In the span of that single afternoon, the Pentagon also revealed that a retaliatory drone strike for the deaths of 13 US service-members at Kabul airport did not kill any Isis-K terrorists, as Biden and his State Department had claimed, but instead killed an innocent US-linked aid worker, as well as seven children. Neither Biden nor his press secretary Jen Psaki have answered questions on this matter. Their strategic silence is all we need to evaluate how they think this looks – and they are correct.
Along with the self-imposed Afghanistan debacle, which has created an enormous refugee crisis in a foreign region, Biden has caused another one on our southern border. Drone footage and photos splashed all over social media this weekend showed thousands of migrants, some believed to be Haitian, crossing the Rio Grande river into Del Rio, Texas, unabated. They had to be corralled under the Del Rio Bridge, with several even crafting makeshift tents and shelters.
How bad is the Biden (p)residency right now? It’s come to this: Poll: Biden Underwater By 19 Points in Texas…Among Hispanics.
Perhaps America’s Newspaper of Record offers an explanation as to how we’ve gotten here: 4D Chess: Trump Reveals He Let Biden Win So His Presidency Would Look Amazing By Comparison.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE:
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is the Coronavirus Stronger Than White Guilt? We’re about to find out:
Presto! In the blink of an eye, this story just magically transformed from “Stupid Anti-Vax Texans Literally Punch Science in the Face” to “Black Women in NYC Restaurant Latest Victims of Racial Profiling.” (Remember that Starbucks incident? Remember how the whole company shut down for an entire afternoon to do “anti-racial bias” training?)
And if those dueling narratives aren’t confusing enough for the average liberal mind, it gets even better: The hostess is Asian. So, here’s yet another victim of the anti-Asian violence we’ve been hearing about for the past 18 months. #StopAsianHate, anyone?
Anyone? Hello?
No, that’s not the narrative this time. Which is what this is all about: narratives, not facts.
Earlier: “Now in NYC you’ve got a vaccination-passport requirement that disproportionately affects black people, who are much less likely to get vaccinated than whites and Asians, and you’re surprised that the response is violent? Once you teach people that it’s okay to be violent if they feel mistreated, you don’t get to choose when they feel mistreated.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
SWANNING ABOUT WITH THE TALIBAN: The Taliban is now riding in swan boats with rocket launchers (for real). Let me walk you through these insane photos:
IT’S SEPSIS AWARENESS MONTH: What to Know About Treating Sepsis. “Nearly 270,000 people in the U.S. die each year as a result of sepsis, and one-third of people who die in a hospital have sepsis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Flashback: Sepsis causes more deaths worldwide than previously thought.
Related: Vitamin C infusion may reduce sepsis death risk. It sounds like this is just vitamin C, not the vitamin and steroids cocktail that has been so successful elsewhere.
Neither of these is mentioned in the not-very-informative article linked at the top.
WHEN POLITICAL PORN EXCEEDS ITS SHELF LIFE: The Handmaid’s Tale Sets Record for Most Emmy Losses in a Season.
GLENN GREENWALD: The Indictment of Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer is an Indictment of the Russiagate Wing of U.S. Media.
It has long been known that the Trump/Alfa-Bank story was a fraud. A report issued in December, 2019 by the DOJ’s Inspector General revealed that “the FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, but concluded by early February, 2017 that there were no such links.” Special Counsel Robert Mueller thought so little of this alleged plot that he did not even bother to mention it in his comprehensive final report, which admitted that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Even the more anti-Trump Senate Intelligence Committee report acknowledged that, while unable to explain the data, “the Committee did not find the DNS activity reflected the existence of covert communication between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.”
Despite all this, this fraud — one of so many that formed the Russiagate scandal — played a significant role in shaping media coverage of the 2016 election. Spurred on by Hillary Clinton herself, the liberal sector of the corporate media used this fake claim to bolster their narrative that Trump and the Russians were secretly in cahoots. And the story of how they spread this disinformation involves not just the potential criminality outlined in this indictment of Hillary’s lawyer but, even more seriously, a rotted and deeply corrupted media.
More like this, please.
DON’T RAISE THE RIVER, LOWER THE BRIDGE: Low achievement? Dump the tests. “We’ve been denouncing and canceling the metrics by which achievement (and its shortfalls and gaps) have long been monitored, declaring that tests are racist, barring their use for admission to selective schools and colleges, and curbing their use as outcome measures (e.g., states scrapping end-of-course exams) without substituting any other indicators of achievement.”