AND CHRISTOPHER WRAY HAS PROVEN HIMSELF TO BE A DISHONEST POLITICAL HACK:
Archive for 2021
March 7, 2021
March 6, 2021
THE MAN IN THE MEDIA MASK: Tracking the Course of Joe Biden. “The Biden administration can be subjected to two empirical tests by any observer: first whether there will there be a new outbreak of war in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) owing to the repudiation of the Abraham Accords and second, will it endorse restrictions on the exercise of the First and Second Amendments?”
Yes, and yes.
EXPLAINING THINGS TO CHARLES BLOW, who generally needs the help.
Plus: “Never noticed Pepe LePew behaved like a Democrat pol before.”
OPEN THREAD: Party like the Bay City Rollers.
SO A MAJOR CHANGE HAD A MINOR IMPACT. States that allowed indoor dining saw 3% rise in COVID-19 deaths, CDC finds. That’s margin-of-error stuff even on a well-designed study.
I KNOW HOW I’M GUESSING: Online dating: Super effective, or just… superficial? “People’s reason for swiping right is based primarily on attractiveness and the race of a potential partner, and that decisions are often made in less than a second.”
DON’T LOOK TOO CLOSELY, THE DEEP SEVENS MIGHT NOT LIKE IT: Scientists Detect Signs of a Hidden Structure Inside Earth’s Core.
EVERGREEN HEADLINE FOR THE 21st CENTURY: I can’t believe this is not satire. But this is not satire. They’re really doing this. “Yes, this a real product. Yeah. It’s a ridiculous-looking Groucho-style air filter you wear over your schnoz all day long. So that the air you breathe in through your nose is cleaner and less virus-y. Because nowadays everything is trying to kill you, remember?”
The above link goes to Not the Bee — because in 2021, even the Babylon Bee’s satire can’t keep up with how crazy reality has become.
REVIEW: Walther PDP Handgun in 9 mm.
SCIENTISTS EXPECTING AN EARTHSHATTERING KABOOM: South-West Iceland’s Been Hit by 17,000 Earthquakes This Week. It May Be About to Erupt.
TIME MAGAZINE, ONE YEAR AGO: Health Experts Are Telling Healthy People Not to Wear Face Masks for Coronavirus. So Why Are So Many Doing It?
THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION: Humans evolved to use water much more efficiently than apes.
JOE BIDEN’S UGLY BETRAYAL OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLE:
In the short time since taking office, Biden has already snubbed Iranian dissidents who courageously wrote to him from inside Iran, some writing from prison, urging him to maintain sanctions and other pressures on the regime and to provide support and solidarity for their democratic struggle. Instead, their message was received as an inconvenience by a White House national security team staffed with some of the regime’s leading U.S.-based apologists. The administration then quickly provided other sweeteners to the regime, including the lifting of sanctions on their proxy in Yemen, the lifting of restrictions on its arms buying and selling, the lifting of U.S. opposition to an IMF loan, and the neutering of a pro-freedom public diplomacy initiative from the State Department, which went overnight from being a popular source of information on the regime’s repression and corruption to the butt of jokes among Iranian democracy activists. The initiative‘s Persian-language Twitter account has had a steep drop in followers since the U.S. election because of its canceling of real-time statements about the regime’s human rights abuses in favor of promotion of the Biden team’s appeasement measures. When angry Iranians on Twitter pushed the State Department into taking a stand about the regime’s torture and killing of Behnam Mahjoubi, it only raised their ire by saying he was “mistreated.”
Biden’s decided U-turn away from maximum pressure on the regime to a posture of maximum accommodation has been accompanied by silence about the regime’s escalation of its war against its own people, and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to fall within its reach. Biden’s policy of appeasement has been accompanied by large increases in the number of executions and deaths in custody of political prisoners, the taking of foreign hostages for ransom, and threats to kill dual nationals like Swedish Iranian researcher Ahmadreza Djalali. The new administration has, in effect, taken every opportunity to demonstrate to Iran’s thuggish theocracy that it will give in, even signaling that the regime’s holding of American hostages will not be an impediment to negotiations on the nuclear program.
The results of this policy of accommodation are clear. Khamenei has not hesitated to respond by intensifying belligerence by the Islamic Republic’s proxies, who shell American troops in Iraq. America’s other leading adversaries, particularly China and Russia, are also taking note; they do not expect to be confronted for their aggressions and can more easily plot to fill the vacuum left by the United States in the Middle East.
Earlier: ecological Terrorism: Iran Behind Major Oil Spill Off Israel’s Coast.
THIS SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD: Recipe: Creamy French Mustard Chicken.
THE GRAUNIAD, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: Why I’m taking the coronavirus hype with a pinch of salt.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB. MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Conservatives would trade tax cuts to ‘openly say the n-word.’
BOB ZUBRIN: A Method for Creating Enormous Space Telescopes.
LIKE MY GRANDFATHER SAID, SMOG MEANS JOBS: Air pollution fell sharply during lockdown.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden: ‘Indian-Descent Americans Are Taking Over the Country.’ “Can you even imagine if the previous president had said this out loud into a microphone? You’d have to peel Brian Stelter off the ceiling. Hell, last week Biden blurted out what sounded a lot like the N-word, and all the libs pretended it never happened because they just don’t want to deal with it.”
NANCY ROMMELMANN: Kids and Cowards: What Really Happened to Donald McNeil at the New York Times.
I don’t know who leaked the information (neither does McNeil). But the why seems easier to fathom: It’s one way to get ahead these days, a shortcut whereby you can chop down someone’s 45-year career in a few days, killing their reputation while burnishing your own as someone who’s fighting the unassailable good fight. And in 2021, that fight is combatting racism. Drop that blood in the water and watch it spread.
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The repercussions were swift. As Baquet kept repeating, “Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom.”
“Let me give you an alternative view of ‘who’s lost the newsroom,” McNeil countered. “If you fire me over this, you’re going to lose everybody over age 40 at the paper, all the grown-ups.”
“We’re not firing you,” Baquet said. “We’re asking you to consider resigning.”
It was the exact same abdication of leadership Baquet has become famous for. What kind of executive editor allows the newsroom—indeed, the most activist subset of the newsroom—to lead him?
Yeah, who does Baquet think he is, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic?
