AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Backed-Up Cargo Ships Positioned To Spell Out ‘Let’s Go Brandon.’
No word yet if the Babylon Bee’s editor is currently slowly explaining this headline to pedantic lefty Atlantic staffers.
Archive for 2021
October 14, 2021
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Gallup: Majority of Americans now favor limited role for government since Biden took office.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China just put its next-generation spaceship on display.
DOES ANYBODY IN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING? Pete Buttigieg has been MIA.
While U.S. ports faced anchor-to-anchor traffic and Congress nearly melted down over the president’s infrastructure bill in recent weeks, the usually omnipresent Transportation secretary was lying low.
One of the White House’s go-to communicators didn’t appear on TV. He was absent on Capitol Hill during the negotiations over the bill he had been previously helping sell to different members of Congress. Conservative critics tried (unsuccessfully) to get #WheresPete to trend and Fox News ran a story on October 4 with the headline: “Buttigieg quiet on growing port congestion as shipping concerns build ahead of holidays.”
They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.
“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. “He has been ramping up activities since then.” As he does that, Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children,” the spokesperson added.
That ramp has been steep this week, as Buttigieg reverts to his “go everywhere” media habits.
Since Oct. 7, Buttigieg has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “MSNBC with Geoff Bennett,” CNN’s “New Day,” CNBC’s “Morning Bell,” Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power,” and the NPR Politics Podcast. He participated in virtual events to promote the infrastructure bill with the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Citizen Budget Commission of New York. He also attended a high-profile meeting with President Joe Biden Wednesday on supply chain bottlenecks.
In other words, Buttigieg went from paid child leave for two months followed by lots of DNC-MSM appearances, while the supply chain went to hell. Keep that in mind as headlines fly such as this: White House: Cancel Christmas? “Forget malaise, and let’s start talking Grinch. With supply-chain issues still festering for months and inflation beginning to roar, retailers wonder whether they can provide the goods for the holiday season on which they rely for fiscal solvency. The White House offered its advice yesterday, which was. . . get used to disappointment.”
As a legendary community organizer warned, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up” — beginning with the team he assembled.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND THE VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW: Virginia Democrats Voted to Allow Schools to Refrain from Reporting Sexual Battery in 2020.
A ROTTEN SYSTEM: Virginia dad vilified for defending daughter shows rot at heart of system.
The callousness is what is so hard to stomach from the progressive elites of Loudoun County, Virginia, the wealthy dormitory community of Washington, DC.
They laughed and cheered when plumber Scott Smith was crash-tackled by police and humiliated at a school board meeting on June 22 as he tried to raise the plight of his 15-year-old daughter, who he says was raped and sodomized in the school bathroom by a boy in a skirt. No one expressed any concern for his daughter.
There was no compassion, either, from superintendent Scott Ziegler, who claimed bafflingly at the meeting that there had been no assault in a school restroom anywhere in Loudoun County and airily dismissed parents’ concerns about the risks of transgender bathrooms. Then he gave a little woke homily to show those powerless parents in the room who really was in charge.
Make them pay.
BREAK THEM UP, DON’T ENACT THEIR AGENDA: Facebook Welcomes Regulations, Specifically Those That Hurt Its Competition.
SELF-SACRIFICE UPON THE ALTAR OF ‘DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION:’
Efforts to make museums adhere to more stringent [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] policies have prompted the hiring of many such “racial literacy consultants” who have introduced debunked ideas such as “implicit bias training” for volunteers. As one such consultant, Porchia Moore, told Slate, “I would argue that the notion and structure of racial equity and historical thinking are concepts that need to be taught from the earliest age possible” and that “there is no better place to do this than the museum.”
In other words, booting the white docents is only one phase of a much more radical program for museums. Moore, for example, wants to see “a whole structural reimagination of museums that goes well beyond volunteers.” As she told Slate, “We need to use this time to think about wage equity, hierarchy of the boards, and the systemic and institutional racism in museums.”
In the meantime, who will lead the tours of rowdy schoolchildren? Who will answer questions about the latest temporary exhibit or offer hours of unpaid labor to the public solely because of their commitment to giving back to their communities through art?
No one. Cultural institutions like the [Art Institute of Chicago] would rather deny the public—including schoolchildren, many of them from inner-city Chicago—the experience of knowledgeable, enthusiastic guides than appear not woke enough. Indeed, institutions like the AIC are now so woke that the mere existence of a voluntary labor force of white women is seen as an affront.
Why is the left such a cesspit of racism?
ROTTEN TOMATOES AND THE CULTURAL GAP BETWEEN CRITICS AND AUDIENCES:
Rotten Tomatoes has a user review system, which it measures against the media critics. This helps to show how paid critics approach their art, as opposed to casual audiences. It’s also becoming a cultural cudgel that proves a disconnect between the woke media and the public at large, which is exhausted by cancellations and public struggle sessions in the name of “progress,” racial or otherwise.
Currently [Dave] Chappelle’s The Closer critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 43 percent, earning it the dreaded green splatter. However, it’s at an overwhelming 96 percent on the audience meter. On the flip side, the new Disney Plus documentary on Dr. Anthony Fauci, which explores the personal side of the controversial figure, has a certified 91 percent approval rating from critics and a mere 2 percent from audiences.
And speaking of “the cultural gap between critics and audiences:” The Daily Beast Completely S**ts the Bed When It Comes to Coverage of Dave Chappelle. “If that headline seems like it’s unprofessional or I might have slept with the reporter involved, then you have a great eye for words.”
FLASHBACK: The Age of Disabling Professions. “The Age of Professions will be remembered as the time when politics withered, when voters guided by professors entrusted to technocrats the power to legislate needs, the authority to decide who needed what, and a monopoly over the means by which those needs should be met. It will be remembered as the Age of Schooling, when people for one-third of their lives were trained to accumulate needs on prescription and for the other two-thirds were clients of prestig- ious pushers who managed their habits.”
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP:
● Obama’s Defense Secretary Unloads On Biden: Watching Disaster In Afghanistan Made Me Physically Sick.
● Obama Economic Advisor: Buckle Up, Inflation Will Get Out of Control Thanks to a Woke Fed.
As Jason L. Riley of the Wall Street Journal noted in August: Biden Is Delivering Obama’s Third Term.
So much so that Obama’s former staffers aren’t happy that Biden can’t hide the decline.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Effort to Clean up the Gupta Train Wreck Interview Proves Joe Rogan’s Point. Don Lemon “also painted a very different picture of the interview than what actually happened, telling Gupta ‘you held your own, though. It was very good’ — when the interview was demonstrably awful for Gupta’s reputation and CNN. But that’s the problem with CNN in a nutshell, and it’s the point that Rogan was making. They don’t care about the truth; it’s all about narrative. Rogan had previously speculated on whether he would have to sue to get them to be honest. I wonder what he’s going to think about this spin, especially after he so eviscerated Gupta. They may have just invited that action.”
ATLANTIC AUTHOR INTERVIEWS THE EDITOR OF AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: The Christians Who Mock Wokeness for a Living. The Babylon Bee, an online satire publication, has become a popular destination for Christians disaffected with megachurch culture and right-wingers who crave clever commentary about the hypocritical left.
Not surprisingly, there are several of these moments:
[Emma] Green: You guys wrote an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claiming that Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in an American strike.
What makes this funny? I know that’s the worst question to ask somebody who writes jokes.
[Kyle] Mann: It’s funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half-mast. Get it?
Green: But that’s what I’m saying. Besides just saying the joke again, what makes it funny?
Mann: Do you want me to explain the joke to you? Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad.
If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you’re not the audience for the joke. The funniest part is that it got fact-checked because it was so believable that Democrats would do that. That’s a real honor.
As Frank J. Fleming tweets, “The interviewer comes off sounding like Data. ‘I don’t understand. Why is this making you laugh, Captain.’”
I GUESS THOSE BLACK KIDS MUST BE ALL ALIKE: Seattle school cancels Halloween over ‘equity,’ says Black kids don’t celebrate.
CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Walmart vs. Whiteness. The company’s new training program tells hourly employees that they are guilty of “internalized racial superiority.”
Walmart’s training program seems a study in opportunism. For years, activists have attacked the company’s business practices; the critical race theory program helps the giant retailer shift blame to forces beyond its control. As the company denounces “white supremacy culture”—with components including “objectivity,” “individualism,” and “hoarding”—its entire nine-member top executive leadership, except technology chief Suresh Kumar, is white, and its top six leaders made a combined $112 million in salary in 2019. Chief executive officer Doug McMillon, whom the whistleblower described as a “true believer” in critical race theory, hopes to export woke ideology to every Fortune 100 company through his role as chairman of the Business Roundtable.
The formula is clear: American executives, among the most successful people on the planet, can collect accolades and social status by promoting fashionable left-wing ideologies. Meantime, their hourly workers, making between $25,000 and $30,000 yearly, are asked to undergo dishonest and humiliating rituals to confront their “white privilege” and “white supremacy thinking.” McMillon gets the social justice credit; his workers pay the price.
Read the whole thing.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Lockdowns Coincided With Record-Breaking Drug Overdose Fatalities, New CDC Data Show.
WE USED TO LIVE IN A GOLDEN AGE OF MUSCLE: 2022 Ford Mustang V8 Will Be Down on Power.
GOODER AND HARDER: Polis mandates gender affirming health care insurance coverage in Colorado. “Gov. Polis claimed his crown as King of the Woke in announcing Tuesday that many Coloradans will pay higher insurance premiums because the state has mandated ‘gender affirming care’ be included as essential coverage beginning in 2023.”
Democrats always run on making healthcare more affordable, but then deliver stuff like this.
LIVE AT 3:30PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Special Guest.
DATA SHOWS IMMIGRANTS MORE, NOT LESS, LIKELY TO REPORT CRIME: Leftists have claimed for years that immigrants, especially those here illegally, won’t report crimes against them to local police for fear of being hassled or even deported. That claim is reported as gospel throughout the major media to justify sanctuary cities.
But guess what, according to federal data made public today by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the reality is immigrants, including illegals, are more likely than natural born citizens to report the crimes they suffer. So, expect to see this on top of the homepages of the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today.
What … it’s not there on any of them you say???
WOMEN’S NOVELTY T-SHIRT: Let’s Go Brandon American Flag Impeach Biden T-Shirt. #CommissionEarned
FREEDOM FLU… CATCH IT! American Airlines cancels 230 flights, delays 600+… Sickout is spreading.