EPSTEIN WAS KILLED BECAUSE HE WOULD HAVE EXPOSED SEXUAL ABUSE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF OUR SOCIETY. And everyone knows it.
Archive for 2021
March 15, 2021
SO IT TURNS OUT THAT THE PRESS REPORTS ON TRUMP’S PHONE CALL TO THE GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE WERE ALL FALSE.
You know who knew this all along? Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But he didn’t say anything to refute the story. Why not? Was he the “anonymous source” who led the press astray?
STEPHEN KRUISER: Military Brass Bravely Launch Operation Tucker Carlson.
Carlson was merely noting that the United States military’s focus might be a little off, especially considering the threat from China that grows larger by the day. Several official military accounts responded by proving him right. Sgt. Emo and his ilk are an embarrassment. This great land is well and truly lost forever if more military leadership comes down with a case of the wokes.
I have a difficult time believing that most of our men and women who serve are like that, but who knows here in Topsy Turvy Land?
There was some backpedaling and apologizing by a couple of the official accounts that went after Carlson, but the real problem is that they felt comfortable doing it in the first place.
And the military are still posing for anti-Republican photo-ops and YouTube clips: ‘The military is not a play thing:’ Congressman has Guam National Guard march on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office.
As Rod Dreher writes on Operation Tucker, in a post titled US Military: Social Justice Warriors, “This also proves that there’s no ‘there’ anymore – it’s ‘here.’ The military has become consumed with Wokeism and the Left has fully conquered it. I’ve said before, once the Left subverted the military, then it’s subverted the last institution in America that was truly national and something of a refuge for conservatives. The battle, if not the war, has been lost. What else is there for the Left to come after?”
UPDATE: Did Biden Establish the Military’s First ‘Virtue Signal’ Corps?
(Updated and bumped.)
OPEN THREAD: ‘Cause I don’t want you to feel forgotten, and only you can choose your fate.
NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Knox County Mayor grants operation on public roads to autonomous vehicle, Olli.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Thousands more satellites will soon orbit Earth. We need better rules to prevent space crashes.
Rob Merges and I wrote a piece on this a while back.
Earlier this year, doctors and epidemiologists in South Africa’s economic capital were bracing for the worst. A new coronavirus strain was surging across the country, thousands of holidaymakers were due to return from Covid-19 hot spots, and one in three coronavirus tests was coming back positive.
Then something unexpected happened: Covid-19 cases started dropping.
Since mid-January, confirmed Covid-19 infections in South Africa have fallen from a record of nearly 22,000 a day to around 1,000, without a large-scale vaccination campaign or stringent lockdown. Fewer than 5% of Covid-19 tests are finding traces of the virus, a sign that health agencies are missing fewer cases. The government has lifted most of its remaining virus restrictions for the country of 60 million people.
The cause of this steep decline in cases remains somewhat of a mystery. As in other countries that have at some point experienced surprising drops in Covid-19 cases—such as India, Pakistan and some parts of Brazil—epidemiologists and virologists are piecing together different explanations for why the outbreak in South Africa isn’t following patterns set elsewhere. . . .
The simplest explanation for the sudden mid-January drop in cases is that sections of the population had reached a level of immunity that made it harder for the virus to jump between different groups, said Jinal Bhiman, a principal medical scientist at the NICD.
So the theory that there were a lot more asymptomatic cases leading to immunity than we realized is still quite plausible, there and here. Likewise the notion that many people have T-cell based immunity but not antibodies that show up on tests. Also there and here. Meaning that herd immunity could come much sooner than predicted. Also there and here.
Even the New York Times is running this: ‘I’d Much Rather Be in Florida.’ What’s interesting are the Democrats praising Ron DeSantis.
Helen and I were in Miami a couple of weeks ago. It was less wide-open than some press accounts suggested — we even saw a surprisingly large number of (crazy) people wearing masks while walking on the beach. But it was much more lively than NYC or LA. In fact, we chatted with some Spring Breakers from Beverly Hills who said they were there because “California sucks now.”
Meanwhile, the NYT story slams people for not wearing masks on the beach. There’s zero science supporting a need to wear masks on the beach, as The Atlantic noted recently: “Throughout the past year, traditional and social media have been caught up in a cycle of shaming—made worse by being so unscientific and misguided. How dare you go to the beach? newspapers have scolded us for months, despite lacking evidence that this posed any significant threat to public health.”
Treating masks as some sort of voodoo talisman isn’t science, but it’s very common among those who profess to “believe in science.”
NOT SO MUCH THE PANDEMIC AS THE RESPONSE THERETO: National poll: Pandemic has negatively impacted teens’ mental health.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Joy Behar Doesn’t Think Antifa Exists.
Joe Biden took that ball and ran with it — well, a brisk stroll, at least — referring to Antifa as “an idea, not an organization.” It’s just an idea that’s beating up cops and smashing windows and burning down the neighborhood Arby’s. It’s just an idea that chased those Minneapolis cops out of their own station and then burned it down. It’s just an idea. Ideas are good, right?
Now, noted philosopher and Foxy Brown cosplayer Joy Behar is expanding upon that. Not only is Antifa merely an idea, but the idea doesn’t even exist! Tristan Justice, The Federalist:
ABC’s “The View” co-host Joy Behar denied the militant left-wing group Antifa existed on Monday.
During a segment on Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson claiming he wasn’t concerned by rioters who stormed the Capitol at the start of the new year, but might have had they been militant Black Lives Matter or Antifa demonstrators, Behar condemned the Midwestern Republican as worried about racist fiction.
“He’s right out there with his racism, there’s no dog-whistle for him you know, it’s like ‘I’m a racist, have a nice day.’” Behar said. “He’s scared of this fictitious idea of Antifa, a thing that doesn’t even exist.”
Well, this “fictitious idea” was responsible for at least 25 deaths last year. This “thing that doesn’t even exist” caused up to $2 billion in property damage in 2020 alone. But hey, who’s counting? Let’s not get bogged down in pesky little details.
I give the ladies on The View points for consistency at least:
● Rosie O’Donnell mutters “I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel,” rather than admit that 9/11 was caused by, as South Park memorably put it in their anti-conspiracy theory episode, “A bunch of pissed off Muslims.”
● Whoopi Goldberg Entertains Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories.
● Joy Behar believes that Antifa is “fictitious.”
Whatever controlled substances ABC News is supplying in The View’s green room are powerful stuff indeed.
THE MEDIA MALPRACTICE ON THE TRUMP-GEORGIA STORY KEEPS GETTING WORSE: Audio shows the media got the Trump-Georgia story all wrong.
If you can believe it, the Washington Post’s dud of a “bombshell” isn’t even the most scandalous thing about this episode in media malfeasance. No, the most scandalous thing is: Several newsrooms claimed they independently “confirmed” the original “scoop” with anonymous sources of their own.
NBC News reported it “confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation.”
USA Today claimed a “Georgia official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters confirmed the details of the call.”
ABC News reported: “President Donald Trump phoned a chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office asking the official to ‘find the fraud’ and telling this person they would be a ‘national hero’ for it, an individual familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.”
PBS NewsHour and CNN likewise appeared to claim they independently “confirmed” the story through their own anonymous sources.
But Trump never said those things. The sources either were terribly mistaken or lying.
The most likely scenario is ABC, the Washington Post, and others talked to the same person or group. It’s either that or a bunch of people managed somehow to be wrong about a very specific claim, which is highly unlikely.
The uncomfortable questions we are left with now are: Whom were they all speaking to? How did this person or these persons get the details of Trump’s private phone call wrong? Are there additional examples of the media reporting bad information provided by anonymous sources we don’t know about, merely because there’s no contradictory audio or video? Just how many anonymously sourced stories are fraudulent? If it can happen this easily, who is to say it doesn’t happen often? Further, how many of these bogus stories have enjoyed the backing of supposed independent corroboration when, in fact, newsrooms most likely talked to the same person or people?
But wait, it gets even worse: CNN’s correction to the imploded Trump/Georgia story leaves something to be desired. As our sister-site Twitchy notes, “The quote marks in the original story certainly seem to more than imply that it was a direct quote, but since it’s CNN none of this should be surprising:”
According to CNN today: Officials located December recording of Trump call in a trash folder on Georgia investigator’s device.
Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office located a recently released recording of former President Donald Trump‘s call to a state investigator in a trash folder on her device, a state official familiar with the situation confirmed to CNN.
The discovery of the call comes after state officials originally told CNN that they did not think audio of the call existed. The call added to the examples of Trump’s extraordinary efforts to push false claims of widespread voter fraud and influence Georgia election officials as they certified the state’s election results.
Yeah, virtually the entire DNC-MSM screwed the pooch on the story, and a recording wound up in a PC’s recycling folder, but its real takeaway is Orange Man Bad. Keep flucking that chicken, CNN.
FASTER, PLEASE: Chemotherapy with fewer side effects may be on the way.
KURT SCHLICHTER: How Many Times Must We Tell You to Never Apologize to These Scumbags? “That Mumford & Sons banjo guy is a pathetic weenie who the left hates and who we despise, and who now has to live forever as a groveling coward nobody likes. Yeah, he was in Mumford & Sons and managed to find a way to make people like him less. What did he do? He gave in. He submitted. . . . Really people, this is getting exhausting. How many times do we have to say it? How many people have to plead for forgiveness and end up humiliated, broken, and – not incidentally – unforgiven before people understand that the only effective response to these monsters’ fake outrage is to flip them the middle 20 percent of the fingers of a Bulwark staffer’s primary erotic partner?”
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
Seems like a fairly popular meme, for what it’s worth. So much for Biden’s “return to normalcy.”
ROGER KIMBALL ON THE BIDEN/PELOSI/SCHUMER ERA: For US, Gradual Ruin Is About to Become Sudden.
There is the passage in the house of H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People” bill, which would effectively assure that were was never another fair election in this country.
It would do this by all-but-obliterating voter ID requirements—you need an ID to board a plane but not cast a vote—mandating same-day voter registration and at least two weeks of early voting, and by requiring states to provide unsupervised drop boxes to receive completed ballots.
In other words, H.R. 1 would centralize presidential elections, taking responsibility for oversight away from the states, where the Constitution placed it, and arrogating it to the clutches of the federal government and its sprawling bureaucracy.
If, as seems almost certain, H.R. 1 becomes the law of the land, it would be the final nail in the coffin of electoral integrity.
The widespread irregularities (that’s polysyllabic periphrasis for “fraud”) that attended the 2020 election would be codified into law assuring that, for as long as anyone could envision, 2016 would have to be counted as the last free, fair, and open presidential election.
It used to be that American was the land of the free and home of the brave. A robust culture of free speech was every American’s birthright.
We had free and fair elections, unlike the banana republics we were always called upon to bail out or police.
We also had borders, and even politicians eager to increase immigration understood the difference between entering the country legally and opening the floodgates to the hordes massing on our Southern border.
That’s all behind us now, or at least those traditions appear to be on life support—no, the patient was on life support, but someone came to euthanize him and pulled the plug.
The signs and portents are many and they are not encouraging.
Perhaps the most disturbing episode last week was Joe Biden’s alarming performance when he announced the elevation of two women to the status of combat generals.
Biden went on to underscore the “intensity of purpose” with which his administration would be pursuing “body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating their hairstyle requirements.”
This was not from a Saturday Night Live skit: it was the President of the United States live in front of the cameras.
Plus:
Adam Smith once remarked to a disconsolate correspondent that there’s a “deal of ruin in a nation.” I quoted that remark to a friend some years ago when America was reeling from the twin assaults of the financial meltdown and the ministrations of Barack Obama. “Especially this nation,” my friend replied, and I had to agree.
For a moment, during Donald Trump’s tenure, it seemed as though we’d returned to the sunlit uplands. Leave aside his partisan successes, the judges and tax cuts, for example.
Concentrate instead on what he did to secure the borders, to upgrade the military, to make America energy independent.
It’s only mid-March 2021. In just six weeks, and with 60-odd executive orders behind him, Joe Biden has largely unravelled all that and more.
This is the reality: Joe Biden has set us on a collision course with tyranny at home and armed conflict abroad.
He has denominated his political opponents “domestic terrorists” and directed the FBI to harass and arrest them. He has done everything in his considerable power to surrender the country to the woke mob.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is not standing still. Look for a kinetic clash with Russia, China, or Iran soon. It’s coming to a theater near you by the end of this summer, and I do not mean a movie theater.
Expect the velocity of our declivity to increase—the gauge is set to move from “gradually” to “suddenly” now, and there will be plenty of shock and awe when it does.
Is this alarmist? Maybe, but that is appropriate when the situation is alarming.
First as farce, second as tragedy.
BECOMING A MINIVAN MAN.
SO HOW LONG HAS EMILY LITELLA BEEN EDITING THE WASHINGTON POST? The Washington Post Issues a “Correction” Which Clarifies That Every Claim Made In Their Story Stating that Trump Told the Georgia Secretary of State to “Find the Fraud” Was a Lie.
I’M SICK AND TIRED OF BEING TOLD TO LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS BY PEOPLE WHO DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR OWN PEOPLE ON THE SCENE: Nursing Home ‘Patients Will Die’: Staff Warned NJ Commissioner About COVID-19 Order.
MUCH FASTER THAN THOUGHT: Oil in the ocean photooxidizes within hours to days, new study finds.
GUESS I PICKED THE WRONG YEAR TO QUIT SMOKING: Calls to smoking ‘quit lines’ drop appreciably during pandemic.
DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Legacy Media Silent as Biden DHS Tear-Gasses Antifa Rioters in Portland.
NOT CLOSE ENOUGH: The World Just Moved Even Closer to a Real, Working Warp Drive.
“CANCEL ADJACENT.” “I observed that the new rule seems to be ‘that you have to proactively denounce people, or you yourself will become the target’.”
Why not just tell them to go screw themselves?
Of course, getting an adjunct law professor to resign mostly hurts the law school and the students. Unlike adjuncts in other fields, law adjuncts typically practice law and get paid a pittance for teaching. Now the school has to find someone to finish out the semester, and I can’t imagine this sort of thing will make recruiting adjuncts easier. Risk your reputation and possibly your career to crazy mobs of angry students, for something like $5000 a semester? Why? So in a way, “go screw yourselves” could be the message of the resignation here.