Archive for 2021
September 26, 2021
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: That NYC teacher vax mandate is back on hold. “Since this story is getting little to no traction in the mainstream media, we’re left with the same question that should have been being asked from the beginning. Where is the outrage over this? Aren’t these teachers ‘endangering the vaccinated’ and standing in the way of “following the science?” This mandate was put in place by New York City’s Democratic Mayor and is in line with the Democratic President’s recent orders. Why aren’t progressive Democrats and their faithful stenographers in the liberal media setting their hair on fire over this?”
DECAL OF THE DAY: Beer Only Refrigerator Vinyl Decal Sticker.
WHAT UNIVERSE DO THESE PEOPLE INHABIT? This report from The Hill only begins to illustrate how far Establishment Washington D.C. is out-of-touch with reality
OLD AND BUSTED: Destroying Statues.
The New Hotness? Destroying Industrial Infrastructure. The New Yorker asks: Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?
Here’s a May New Republic article on Malm: The Climate Case for Property Destruction. Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” urges activists to turn to tougher tactics:
What, then, is to be done? The main argument of How to Blow Up a Pipeline is simple: The climate movement should itself enact, through direct action, that prohibition on new fossil fuel infrastructure, and that dismantling of existing pipelines and power plants, which governments have so far refused to take on. Only if such equipment is damaged often and badly enough as to make its continued operation unprofitable does the stabilization of the climate stand a chance. For climate activists to confine themselves to peaceful protest is meanwhile to watch the earth become less and less hospitable to human life. Plenty of readers will react (as I did) with a sort of instinctive skepticism to Malm’s case that only widespread property destruction can forestall civilizational suicide, but his case deserves a hearing.
Emphasis mine. Note that this is the same leftist media that went all-out to blame Sarah Palin’s clip art for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, but they’ll all look the other way about their role in egging on domestic terrorism, if there is an attack on a refinery.
As Jonah Goldberg wrote in response to then-Vice President Biden calling the Tea Party “terrorists” eight months after all of the new civility language that Obama and the DNC-MSM pumped out that January in response to the Giffords shooting: To Hell with You People.
Flashback: Biden Land Management nominee ‘collaborated with eco-terrorists,’ traded testimony for immunity.
UPDATE: The Media is Whitewashing and Mainstreaming a Call to Terrorism. “The media’s response to How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Swedish Marxist author Andreas Malm has been a master class in the use of vague evasive academic language to make it seem harmless and courageous, the destruction of a paradigm, rather than people’s lives.”
(Updated and bumped.)
MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Muslim Passenger Screaming ‘Allah’ Tries to Storm Cockpit of JetBlue Flight Out of Boston.
AT LEAST THEY’RE NOT CENTIMETERING: The U.K. Left The EU, And Now It’s Inching Away From The Metric System Too. “Down at the local pub, die-hard Brexiters will be raising a pint to news that the United Kingdom is eyeing the end of a European Union-inspired ban on selling products in only pounds and ounces. . . . Since becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson has pledged to usher in an era of “tolerance towards traditional measurements.” On Thursday, Brexit minister David Frost clarified what that means — giving shops and supermarkets the option to sell items labeled only in imperial units. Under the plan, market stalls and shops would not be required to include measurements in metric equivalents.”
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying Put is not an Option.
COMBATANT CRAFT MEDIUM: A CCM “maneuvers in the waters off the coast of Guam.” Photo taken Sept. 8, 2021. Here’s a CCM participating in a 2019 exercise in the Black Sea. The CCM is a little over 60 feet long. Small special operations warfare craft require support. This Special Operations update from 2018 discusses a Maritime Support Vessel (MSV) the Navy acquired to support SOCOM. It mentions the Combat Craft Assault (CCA) which can be used to insert SEAL teams. The CCA is about 41 feet long. This Special Ops update from 2014 provides the strategic context: preparing for a war in the Pacific. The update also mentions the MSV acquisition.
A HOLLOW VICTORY IN THE “GOOD WAR:”
This is the argument of a new book, Stalin’s War, by a prolific and excellent historian, Sean McMeekin of Bard College. The author is already well known, having written highly readable and incisive books exploring the role of Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany in the origins of World War I. In his new work, he focuses on Stalin, his objectives, his tactics, his actions, and, above all, his ability to obtain from his Western counterparts everything (and more!) that he wanted. The book presents the story of Stalin’s success that brought an enormous human cost to his own people and to those who came under Communist domination, as well as an enduring geopolitical cost. Through this war, Stalin succeeded in anchoring Soviet power and influence over Eurasia, benefiting from the frailty of European powers. Germany was obviously reduced to rubble by 1945, but even the victorious powers, from France and the UK to the other smaller states across the continent, were mere shadows of their former selves. Stalin gained strategic real estate and the tools, looted from Europe or given to him by the United States, to turn Russia into an industrial superpower. The conditions for the Cold War were in place, and in the immediate aftermath of the war, the possibility that Stalin could become the master of Eurasia was not out of the question. And, for the U.S., victory in 1945 meant not a satisfying and prolonged age of peace, but the beginning of a new and massive investment in preserving its security and the stability threatened by the Soviet Union.
The story presented in such a way is not new, and its broad contours are accepted by most, except those who still see Communist ideology and the USSR as a benign progressive force or those who blame American post-war support of Western Europe for the Cold War. But McMeekin digs deeper and his goal is to change two pervasive myths. One presents Stalin as a paranoid dictator bumbling across the European chessboard, getting caught unprepared for Hitler’s aggressive intents, and then rising to the historic occasion and motivating his people to fight the “Great Patriotic War” to liberate Russia and the adjoining lands from the Nazis. In brief, a dictator to be sure, but a naive one with a great patriotic heart backed by a Russian nation willing to accept great sacrifices.
The other myth is of a strategically wise leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, skillfully making their moves across the world’s map, negotiating with a vast array of strategic partners (including Stalin) and organizing bold military actions that ultimately lead to the 1945 triumph. Neither myth, however, is entirely correct, as McMeekin brilliantly argues backed by abundant facts supplied through impeccable research.
Read the whole thing.
NOT ACTUALLY MULTI-CULTURAL: Black students harass white peers at Arizona State U. multicultural center.
Diversity and inclusion! Er, except for the inclusion.
Why have Democratic lawmakers and their media allies fallen into lockstep on this story despite clear evidence that they are spreading misinformation? Because it suits two narratives dear to the heart of those on their side of the political aisle: the idea that anyone who opposes an open border is a dangerous America First nationalist, and the notion that Border Patrol agents enforcing the law are in fact racists attacking vulnerable minorities.
The race narrative is especially pleasing to those on the left who view all efforts at policing as suspect or morally dubious. The images—of uniformed agents on horseback chasing black people—seem bad, so they must be bad, or so goes the logic of far too many people in the Democratic coalition. These are the same people who think the phrase “master bedroom” is racist and should be removed from real-estate listings. It’s not logic; it’s a racialized version of the politics of emotion.
In the end, the real reason the administration and its allies embraced the Big Bad Border Patrol narrative is that it spares them having to confront the far worse reality: They are the kind of leaders who would rather publicly humiliate their own Border Patrol agents than take responsibility for their own mishandling of a crisis.
At The Lid, Jeff Dunetz explores “Recent Crazy Lessons The Democrats Taught America.” Add to his list, this:
OVERDUE: Mark Milley’s Perception Warfare Deserves a Leavenworth Long Course
Overdue for several reasons. The column was published Wednesday. But Milley’s overdue for a wake-up from woke.
The Beltway is a vicious high school of a sort, but unfortunately its viciousness isn’t Mean Girls wrestling with fantasy crises. In Milley’s case, we’re confronting the abrogation of the constitutional order of the military under civilian control and ultimately the U.S. military’s duty to defend America regardless of the party or personality of the president.
Fact for Milley: Senior Chinese military officers are members of the Chinese Communist Party. Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong absorption. Uighur genocide. The Chinese military is a Party tool, Mark, a violent tool.
Milley’s short-sighted and, I argue, savvily self-serving action weakened U.S. national security and put the U.S. constitutional system at risk.
Milley’s actions are another example of the destructive perception warfare waged against the American people by powerful Beltway elites — and the worst examples of this war are perpetrated by power elites in the Democratic Party, to include President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
The Leavenworth “short course” is the Command and General Staff School. The Long Course used to involve a stint in the Disciplinary Barracks breaking rocks.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: How Harvard went woke.
Much had changed since I arrived at Harvard. Xeroxing had gone the way of spats, The Social Network replaced Love Story as Hollywood’s idea of Harvard, and a wonderful new cadre of Harvard-trained academics was teaching Yiddish literature. But the most crucial reform would have required ensuring greater intellectual diversity among the faculty, and I saw no sign of that happening. The absence of conservative views, most of which were classical liberal views when I was an undergraduate, meant students were being poorly served by teachers who lacked the moral confidence to transmit the foundational texts and ideas of America and western civilization. It was unbearable that this was the academy I left to my students.
Blaming Israel and its Jewish supporters was taking over the culture and a large swath of the Democratic party, with the leftists of Harvard leading the way. What popped into my head during the worst of that time was watching on television the scene of Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky being set free at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge in 1986. Told to walk straight across to the American side, he defiantly zigzagged his way across instead. In retrospect, we defenders of Israel ought to have turned our backs on the faculty of a distinguished and venerable institution and said, ‘Such crap will not be tolerated.’
How deep has the rot gotten at Harvard? This bad:
(Of course, that also applies to the Gray Lady as well. As James Lileks notes in the second link above, “It’s odd when the paper of record is simultaneously a parody account.”)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yet another leftist tried to silence pro-life students on campus.
THEN AND NOW: THESE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE “SMART PEOPLE:”
“I am what you might call an old-school liberal who was brought up with the crazy idea that segregating by race is bad. That’s what I was talking about. Again, when it comes to an anthem, it doesn’t have to be the one we currently use. But it has to be just one. You know, because it’s a national anthem. And symbols of unity matter. And purposefully fragmenting things by race reinforces a terrible message: That we are two nations hopelessly drifting apart from each other. That’s not where we were even 10 years ago, and it’s not where we should be now.”
Well said, Bill. You’re up, Whoop.
It’s fun watching Bill Maher being slowly red-pilled in real time.
A FAILED PRESIDENCY: Pollster Zogby: Biden ‘is in trouble,’ a ‘D’ for the week.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Times Reveals FBI Role on January 6th.
The emergence of numerous FBI informants or undercover agents won’t complicate the “picture” of the Proud Boys participation in January 6. It will, however, complicate the groupthink shared by the media, Democrats, and NeverTrump Republicans that the FBI played no role in organizing or perpetrating the “attack” on the Capitol, suspicions raised by myself and the late Angelo Codevilla here at American Greatness, and Darren Beattie at Revolver News months ago.
Even more ridiculous is how the Times attempts to debunk those suspicions: “The new information was revealed at a time when misinformation continues to circulate among far-right commentators and websites accusing the F.B.I. of having used informants or agents to stage the attack on Jan. 6. And the records show that the informant traveled to Washington at his own volition, not at the request of the F.B.I.”
Color me crazy, but an informant working with the FBI—and getting paid to do so—didn’t exactly need an invitation from Christopher Wray to get to the scene of a major political event on January 6.
Since the summer of 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used every tool in its extensive and potent arsenal to target Donald Trump. This included the use of confidential informants, FISA warrants, leaks of classified information, and sketchy documents such as the Steele dossier produced by another FBI asset at the time, Christopher Steele.
As I’ve written for months, the FBI now is turning those weapons against Trump-supporting Americans.
Flashbacks:
● The Whitmer Kidnapping Case Reveals the FBI’s New Counterterrorism Target is You.
● The FBI is made of snitches, often trapping Americans into committing crimes.
And of course: Armed Person Arrested During J6 Rally Was Undercover Cop.
Wasn’t everybody there?
Finally, as Roger Simon writes: It’s Time to Break Up the FBI. “Like Carthage, the FBI delenda est. The FBI must be destroyed.”
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: 7 Steps to a Pain-Free Life: How to Rapidly Relieve Back, Neck, and Shoulder Pain.
CHRIS CUOMO IS A SYMPTOM OF CNN’S DISEASE:
Why should Chris Cuomo be kept on the air in such a high-profile time slot, given his history of lying to his superiors, staging fake COVID stunts, smearing sexual harassment accusers as liars on behalf of his brother, and now an on-the-record admission and apology for groping a colleague in a public setting in front of her husband? CNN could put a woman, even a woman of color, into that time slot effortlessly, and yet refuse to do so. The reason is simple — CNN believes Chris Cuomo is a star, and when you’re a star, CNN lets you get away with it.
That’s why Jeff Zucker turned a blind eye to Donald Trump when he was at NBC and The Apprentice and that’s what Zucker and CNN are doing now with Chris Cuomo. Perhaps the pattern of bad behavior does not simply begin and end with Cuomo, but with the executive and the network that continue to enable it.
Well, yes: On Friday night, “Cuomo started his show,” Nicholas Fondacaro of NewsBusters tweets, “not with a comment about his sexual harassment scandal which broke today but mocking the result of the Arizona audit. According to the TV guide, the time slot was slated to be hour 2 of AC360. Perhaps he’s trying to save face…Even at the end of the show, Cuomo refused to address his sexual harassment scandal. ‘This has been a crazy week, Chris. Absolutely crazy,’ says Laura Coates filling in for Lemon. ‘So I hear,’ Chris responds.”