WON’T THAT JUST ATTRACT MORE? To keep backyard animals safe from cats, offer more meat and play.
Archive for 2021
February 14, 2021
NEWS FROM THE AMERICA THAT WORKS: SpaceX rolls last Starship off the assembly line ahead of “major upgrades.” “After an unusually long ~6 weeks of testing, SpaceX declared Starship SN8 ready for flight and ultimately pulled off a high-altitude launch that made it just a dozen or so seconds (~5%) away from a complete success – far further than anyone really expected. That surprising level of success appeared to lead SpaceX to reevaluate its plans and the strategic design of its test plans. . . . Ultimately, after Starship SN8’s spectacular success and last-second failure, SpaceX seemingly concluded that it was unlikely to need a full seven prototypes to achieve the first soft landing(s) and effectively killed Starships SN12, SN13, and SN14 in the cradle.”
IN MUST-WATCH CLIP, TRUMP ATTORNEY “MICHAEL VAN DER VEEN, CITIZEN” DESTROYS MEDIA:
[CBS News anchor Lana Zak] seemingly didn’t know what to say, and wanted to follow up on van der Veen’s assertion that the House managers doctored evidence.
To be clear for our viewers, what you’re talking about now is a checkmark that’s a verification on Twitter that did not exist on that particular tweet, a 2020 that should have actually read 2021, and the selective editing, you say, of the tapes. Is that how — is that the doctored evidence of what you’re speaking?
At that point, van der Veen is all of us when he lost it on her.
Wait, wait, wait, wait…that’s not enough for you? That’s not enough for you?
Zak indignantly jumped in to argue with him, not believing that he dared to question her.
It’s not okay to doctor a little bit of evidence. The media has to start telling the right story in this country. The media is trying to divide this country. You are bloodthirsty for ratings, and as such, you’re asking questions now that are already set up with a fact pattern. I can’t believe you would ask me a question indicating that it’s alright just to doctor a little bit of evidence. There’s more stuff we uncovered that they doctored, to be frank with you, and maybe that will come out someday.
To be fair, accepting faked evidence from the government par for the course from the network that brought you Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and Scott Pelley.
THE GROWNUPS ARE BACK IN WASHINGTON! Pelosi Crashes House Impeachment Managers Presser, Melts Down Over Acquittal and Blames McConnell.
THANKS, PRESIDENT TRUMP: U.S. Troops Go One Year Without A Combat Death in Afghanistan.
MARDI GRAS MADNESS: The mayor said come to New Orleans, then the parades were canceled.
For the first time since 1979, there are no parades rolling through the streets and no stories of craziness from the parade-goers this year. In 1979, the reason was a new mayor and a police department that didn’t want to be led by his newly appointed police chief. A police strike was involved and the krewe captains canceled the parades themselves rather than be used as a pawn in the strike negotiations. It was a political battle. Now it’s a health issue.
Up until now, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other city officials have welcomed tourists and encouraged visitors to the city. The welcome came with a request to respect the restrictions in place due to the plague. However, there is criticism that city hall has done little to enforce the restrictions. With Mardi Gras rapidly approaching – next Tuesday, February 16 – the mayor is cracking down. On Saturday she issued new restrictions to remain in place for five days, from Feb. 12 through Fat Tuesday, besides the other Phase 2 restrictions already in place.
On Saturday the mayor announced that the city shut down four bars that were violating coronavirus restrictions. Calls were made to city hall, alerting officials to the bad behavior. This came one day after her administration will ban all bar services and limit access to popular streets in the final days of Carnival beginning late this week. The big day is coming and they have to get serious about public safety.
Making a hash of Mardi Gras during the pandemic seems to be what Cantrell does. Though unlike last year, she can’t blame the Bad Orange Man for whatever happens. Flashback to last March: “Just so we are clear, the Mayor of New Orleans is blaming the president for her not acting as the Mayor of New Orleans. The amazing part of her delusion is how she launches into a long diatribe about ‘leadership’, all while discussing something that transpired as a result of her lack of leadership.”
As I wrote back then, “Mardi Gras was on February 25, and the partying starts at least two weeks earlier in New Orleans, a period when Trump’s travel ban was still considered racist and xenophobic by the news media. Oh, and speaking of which: [Local] ‘Health official says risk of coronavirus in New Orleans is ‘very, very low’ but warns of flu cases,’ the New Orleans Gambit, part of the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate group of publications, reported on February 26th.”
JOHN NOLTE: The Gloriously Inappropriate and Problematic Blues Brothers (1980).
We live in a literal Woke Police State run by Big Corporations. Ironically, this was something Hollywood frequently warned us about — and now Hollywood is one of our most fascist enforcers. McCarthyism and blacklists have returned with a vengeance.
Well, as the (soon-to-be-blacklisted) Python boys famously suggested, you should “always look at the bright side of life.”
So, yes, there are some benefits to Woke McCarthyism… First off, it’s kind of fun to feel like an outlaw just for daring to enjoy a movie. Secondly, we certainly live in interesting times. Finally, now that movies like Animal House and The Blues Brothers have become the forbidden, like all things forbidden, you cherish and enjoy them all the more.
The Blues Brothers was always a terrific movie, a legitimately great musical-comedy. It’s aged into something even more beautiful, though, and not just because of Woketardism.
You see, in the 41 years since its release, we’ve lost all the legends the movie paid such affectionate tribute to: Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, James Brown, and John Lee Hooker. They’re all gone now, and what a treat it is to watch them up on the screen strutting their magic. Each of their numbers, most especially Aretha’s “Think” and Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher,” is a total show-stopper. You can’t help but sit with a big grin on your face mixed with an ache in your heart.
Yes, Giants once walked the earth … including John Belushi.
Best of all, you can sense the reverence John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (who co-wrote the script with director John Landis) have for these giants. Not only are they eager to introduce their idols to a new audience, but during their respective musical numbers, Aykroyd and Belushi stay almost entirely out of the way. They generously (and appropriately) allow their musical heroes to shine alone in the spotlight.
Both the movie and musical history are better for it.
It’s a massively bloated Hindenburg of a musical comedy, redeemed by the goodwill of its two SNL stars, their brilliant backing band, and the film’s stellar guest artists. And as Nolte writes, “because of all that goodness and good humor and colorblindness and ennobling of the human spirit, The Blues Brothers could never get made today — at least not without everyone involved getting blacklisted by today’s Woke Nazis.”
KATHY SHAIDLE ON THE 1966 ROCK HUDSON/JOHN FRANKENHEIMER FILM SECONDS:
Much has been written about the multiple subtexts of Seconds — the Hollywood “blacklist,” as well as Hudson’s then-secret (more or less) gay identity; the crazy “Brian Wilson connection”; the extraordinary lengths to which Wong Howe and Frankenheimer went to realize their vision: For one thing, to thin out a section of Grand Central Station to capture their opening shots, they hired a woman in a bikini to create a crowd-forming spectacle at the other side of the terminal.
And all these factors do indeed add invisible yet palpable depth to a film that is in and of itself a stunning feat of storytelling, acting and technical prowess.
Liberal fans of Seconds praise it as — you guessed it — a chilling condemnation of shallow materialistic American consumerism and conformity. Yet few of them mention that when Hamilton gets his twice in a lifetime opportunity to savor the idealized progressive lifestyle instead, he’s miserable then too. Actually more so.
In fact, coming out as it did in that pivotal year between the early Sixties New Frontier/Mad Men era, and the late Sixties of Woodstock and Manson, Seconds could just as easily be read as a critique of the then-nascent youth “drop out” counterculture.
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A professor at the University of Iowa tweeted that certain academic fields, specifically the classics, should be “dismantled and burned” in order for “white supremacy to be smothered.”
You know, if they keep this up, people might start judging “white supremacy” by its enemies. Is that a good idea?
WELL, NOW THAT THE ELECTION’S OVER AND TRUMP’S OUT: Democrats in rebellion against Cuomo’s nursing-home coverup.
Related: Cuomo creates COVID-only homes — after thousands died.
BLOWBACK: Louisiana GOP censures Sen. Cassidy over impeachment vote to convict Trump. Unanimously. That was fast. “We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Sen. Cassidy to convict former President Trump. . . Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed and President Trump has been acquitted of the impeachment charge filed against him.”
UPDATE: Not just Louisiana. Also fast.
REPORT: White House lawyers tell Meena Harris to stop using aunt Kamala to build brand.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ social-media-influencer niece has long used her aunt’s fame to boost her own personal brand — but now that Harris has entered the White House, aides have become increasingly concerned about the ethical implications of the promotional pattern, according to a report.
“Some things can’t be undone,” a White House official, speaking about niece Meena Harris, 36, on the condition of anonymity, told The Los Angeles Times.
“That being said: Behavior needs to change,” the official said of the niece Harris, whose ventures have reportedly become a sensitive issue in the newly formed Biden-Harris White House.
Isn’t that SOP for the Biden White House? Earlier: Biden brood already cashing in on Joe’s presidency.
MICHAEL BARONE: The Republican Party won’t fall apart this time either.
ROGER KIMBALL: Yes, Acquittal is Vindication. “The pandemonium at the Capitol was not the cause but merely the pretext for the unprecedented second impeachment by the U.S. Congress of a single individual.”
It was informative to see our rulers’ reaction when — after a long summer in which cities burned, businesses were destroyed, and people were beaten or murdered — just the tiniest taste of civil disorder came home to affect them.
Plus:
I think that an acquittal is a vindication. I know that there are some intermittently conservative organs that disagree. They believe, or at least they say, that Trump’s acquittal does not mean he was vindicated. The proposition that Donald Trump is in the wrong is an analytic truth for them. Like the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried,” they regard it as a necessary truth. It is something inarguable.
It is worth noting, however, that these are the same organs that couldn’t stop berating Trump—the most pro-life, pro-Israel, pro-prosperity, pro-middle class, and pro-American president in decades (maybe ever)—while he was president. And they are also the same organs that, come tomorrow, will be wringing their hands over Joe Biden’s pro-abortion, pro-China, pro-totalitarian attacks on American freedom and prosperity. They prefer whining to wielding power, I suspect, and actually seem to believe that an incompetent mannequin-like Mitt Romney is somehow more preferable as president than someone like Donald Trump.
And poor Peggy Noonan must be really unhappy.
No doubt. Also:
That touches on one of the two main reasons that the Democratic machine wheeled out their impeachment wheeze yet again. They are terrified of the voters—all those embryonic “domestic terrorists” Joe Biden’s Stasi is tracking—who, ignoring the wisdom of their betters, might actually get together and vote someone else like Donald Trump—if not the Bad Orange Man himself—into office again. That mustn’t happen.
They do seem really afraid, don’t they?
CHARGE THE DEMOCRATS AND MEDIA — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — WITH INCITEMENT: Lawyer says his home, family ‘under siege’ as retaliation for representing Trump in trial.
When prominent “White Shoe” law firms represented accused Al Qaeda members, for free, we were told that everyone deserves a defense. But lawyers representing Trump have been repeatedly mobbed.
Remember, though, it’s all about protecting “decency” and “our democracy” and our institutions from that bully Trump.
Earlier: Biden Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo Threatens Reporter: ‘I Will Destroy You.’
Joe Concha of The Hill tweets,”WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki announces the resignation of Deputy TJ Ducklo: ‘We are committed to striving every day to set the standard set by the president in treating others with dignity and respect.’ Note: Psaki was aware of the Palmeri harassment for 3 weeks and did nothing. Psaki, along with senior aide Anita Dunn, was made aware of Ducklo’s sexist tirade on Jan. 21. Only after the Vanity Fair story on Feb 12 did Psaki/the administration act because they had to. Without the VF story, nothing happens here. This accountability statement is laughable.”
I’m so old, I can remember last month when Biden claimed, “‘I will fire you on the spot’: President Joe Biden warned White House staff that disrespect would not be tolerated.”
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Cuomo Didn’t Protect Seniors From COVID-19. But it Was the Media That Covered it Up.
Things are not looking good for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. After receiving an Emmy “in recognition of his leadership” and writing a bestselling book called American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, the toll Cuomo’s leadership has taken is finally emerging. On Thursday, the New York Post broke the story that Melissa DeRosa, one of the governor’s top aides, apologized to Democratic lawmakers for fudging the number of nursing home deaths from COVID for fear of being investigated.
Such an investigation was long overdue. One of the biggest scandals of the pandemic has been the number of nursing home deaths in New York City, many of them possibly linked to a March 25 directive from the Cuomo administration forcing nursing homes to take in people even if they had tested positive for COVID-19. It would prove a death sentence for thousands of seniors. And to fend off an investigation, the Cuomo administration underestimated the number of nursing home deaths by 40%. The true number was 15,000, not 9,056.
But this isn’t just a government scandal. It’s a media scandal. For while the Cuomo administration was sentencing seniors to death, the media was busy fawning over Cuomo in a series of softball interviews, many of them conducted by his own brother.
Cuomo has been a television mainstay throughout the crisis, particularly on CNN where his brother, Chris Cuomo, is a host. But it wasn’t just his brother who fawned. A June interview with CNN’s Chris Cilizza provided Cuomo an opportunity to tout his performance while criticizing that of then-president Donald Trump and Republican governors who had not gone along with economy-crushing lockdowns. Cilizza was more than happy to assist.
Exit quote: “‘Obviously, I’ll never be objective. Obviously, I think you’re the best politician in the country,’ Chris Cuomo said during a June 24 brotherly interview.” Though as Markowicz notes, “This embarrassing lack of objectivity had spread well beyond family ties. Cuomo-love affected almost all of the governor’s coverage.” Read the whole thing.
JOHN FUND: California’s Coming Recall Election.
GOODER AND HARDER: Gas up 18% since election, could surpass $4 under Biden.
RETURN TO NORMALCY:
● ISIS: We’re baaack!
● Houthis Bomb Airport in Saudi Arabia After Being Removed From Terror List by Biden Administration.
● Biden Makes History: First President in 40 Years to Punt on Contacting Israel.
● Biden Will Close the Guantanamo Bay Military Prison After ‘Robust Review’
● Nevertheless, Xi persisted.
GOOD ADVICE IN THIS ERA OF CENSORSHIP:
I BLAME RON DESANTIS: Will New York Lead the Way in Screwing Up School Reopening?
Related: New Biden K-12 Plan Will Cancel Sports For Nearly 83 Percent Of Counties.
Why, it’s as if “the president is abdicating his responsibility by outsourcing education to his benefactors in the unions, all while teenagers continue to take their lives, begging for help the Democrats are dragging their feet to provide.”
All of which is why: The GOP must hammer the Democrats on school reopenings.
DON SURBER TO NIKKI HALEY: Nikki, they still hate you and want you to die.
I see where Nikki Haley showed all the loyalty of a Mitt Romney as she dumped on Donald Trump. That’s the thanks he gets for appointing her ambassador to the UN, even though she virulently opposed his nomination in 2016.
How cute. She thinks this will endear her to the press.
That will never happen.
They hate her and want her to die.
Well, sure. She’s a Republican.