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Archive for 2022
September 25, 2022
HURRICANE NEWS: Ian could become ‘catastrophic’ Category 4 hurricane.
That would be a change. As it passes Cayman, maximum sustained winds are just 45 mph.
DRAMAMINE NOT INCLUDED: SpinLaunch raises $71 million. “The company has raised $150 million to date to fund work on a unique launch system that uses a centrifuge to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds. The vehicles will then use rocket engines, like on conventional upper stages, to place payloads into orbit. SpinLaunch argues that approach can enable a much higher flight rate than conventional rockets while also being more environmentally friendly.”
I’m skeptical, but amused. And hey, that’s basically how they launched the satellite in Edward Everett Hale’s 1869 story, The Brick Moon.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, VLAD: Dagestan Women Confront Police in Mass Demonstration Against Putin’s Draft.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Democrats’ dangerous demagoguery turns deadly. “Cayler Ellingson was killed last week in North Dakota after another man, Shannon Brandt, 41, hit him with his SUV. Ellingson was 18 years old. Brandt was convinced the teenager was affiliated with a ‘Republican extremist group.’ No evidence exists for this claim. Footage of Brandt’s bail hearing shows him seeming confused that he may suffer for his actions. It comes right from the top. The president of the United States, supported by a fan-girl media, spouts irresponsible rhetoric that led to Ellingson’s death.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Pelosi made a surprise appearance at a festival in NYC and the crowd booed.
OF COURSE HE DOES: Biden Plans to Continue Iran Deal Talks Despite Regime’s Brutal Crackdown. A friend comments that he half expects the Biden Administration to rush through a deal and send the mullahs palletloads of cash that will be used to hire mercenaries and put down the revolution. My response: “Half?”
JUST IN TIME FOR THE MIDTERMS: Vaccine-resistant coronavirus similar to COVID-19 found in Russian bats.
We wrote here about today’s election in Italy, and the likelihood that it will be won by a conservative coalition led by Giorgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy party. Meloni is “far right,” which means she is skeptical of the benefits of endless illegal immigration, and a “firebrand,” which means she gives speeches that voters like.
The election is going on right now, and Meloni is favored to emerge as Italy’s next prime minister. She sounds like a winner, and like an American conservative:
Meloni made her comments this week during a rally in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, saying: “Italy is better than the left-wing governments it has had in recent years. The left is there to blather that everyone is afraid, but the only ones who are afraid are them because they have understood that their system of power is about to end.”
“We are ready, until the last vote, to restore freedom and pride to this nation. They say the markets, Europe, TikTok singers, actors, and influencers are worried about a centre-right victory. We don’t care what they say. We care what the Italians think,” Meloni continued, in comments reported by the newspaper Il Giornale.
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I hope it is not premature to offer Ms. Meloni our congratulations.
Not according to Breaking News Online: Italy’s right-wing bloc wins majority in parliament – exit poll.
UPDATE: A pre-election profile of Meloni in the London Spectator: Giorgia Meloni’s victory would be a triumph for Italian democracy.
The Italian media, which is mostly left-leaning, usually call both Meloni, her party and her coalition centrodestra rather than ‘destra’, a word which the Italians apply to actual extremists. That ought to make the outside world think twice before describing Meloni as the heir to Mussolini. That’s not to say the Italian media is well-disposed to her – most of them are not. They are just forced to be more accurate, given that their readers can see and hear every day what Meloni and Brothers of Italy are doing and saying. Italians know through experience who is and is not a fascist.
Those trying to stick the f-word on her point to a handful of things – only one of which I find even remotely convincing. As a teenager Meloni, who is 45, signed up to Italy’s neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) which had by then renounced dictatorship and anti-Semitism. Two years later in 1994, it became Alleanza Nazionale (AN) which renounced fascism. But Brothers of Italy which she co-founded in 2012, and whose name is that of Italy’s national anthem, retains – as AN had – the tricolore flame which was MSI’s logo. Many insist this is proof of Meloni’s refusal to abandon fascism. But she says the flame is the symbol of the journey by the post-war Italian right which existed before fascism.
Meloni identifies as a conservative and takes inspiration, not from Benito Mussolini, but from old-fashioned English conservatives such as Sir Roger Scruton and JRR Tolkien, as I discussed at length in my interview with her. At the right’s final rally of the election campaign in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on Thursday the actor who introduced her on stage before her speech paraphrased what Aragorn told the men of the west before the Battle of Morannon at the Black Gate in the film version of Lord of the Rings: ‘The day of defeat may come but it is not this day! This day we fight!’
Meloni did not go to university and speaks with a rough Roman accent, which makes her the Italian equivalent of a cockney. Which is why it’s odd to hear her compared to Thatcher. This is true in terms of her iron-like character, but not her politics. She is more like an old-fashioned conservative who is often paternalistic in her language, arguing that the state must sometimes protect countries and communities from the free market.
While Berlusconi and Salvini have been in trouble for their pro-Putin sympathies, Meloni unequivocally supports Nato’s arming of Ukraine. So might her coalition partners lure her away from this path given that more than half of Italians oppose sending arms to Ukraine? She told me that, in the coalition agreement she drew up with Salvini and Berlusconi at the start of the campaign she made support of Nato’s Ukraine arms programme a condition.
More: From Reuters on Friday: EU’s von der Leyen delivers veiled warning to Italy’s right wing.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has warned Italy of consequences should it veer away from democratic principles, issuing a barely veiled threat ahead of Sunday’s election that a rightist bloc led by Giorgia Meloni is expected to win.
The comments highlighted concern in some European capitals over the forthcoming election and suggested that relations between Brussels and Rome could get turbulent if Meloni and her partners secure victory.
“My approach is that whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” von der Leyen said at Princeton University in the United States on Thursday, responding to a question on whether there were any concerns with regard to the upcoming elections in Italy.
“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,” she added.
Matteo Salvini, the head of the League and a part of Meloni’s conservative alliance, denounced her comments as “shameful arrogance”.
“What is this, a threat?” he wrote on Twitter. “Respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!”
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Eric Mamer, spokesman for the European Commission, told reporters in Brussels that von der Leyen had not been looking to interfere in Italian politics.
“She was stressing the role of the Commission as guardian of the (European) treaties with regard to the rule of law,” he said on Friday.
Meanwhile, CBS drops an F-bomb:
Walter Cronkite could not be reached for comment.
I’m not sure why an EU official and CBS would smear someone as a proponent of Mussolini, when Il Duce himself said, “I am and shall remain a socialist and my convictions will never change! They are bred into my very bones.” Or as Lawrence Samuels wrote on “The Socialist Economics of Italian Fascism” at Econlib in 2015, “In essence, the economics of Italian Fascism was Marxist and syndicalist-inspired—and far more left-wing socialist than the economies of many current western nations that embrace a mixed economy of socialism, welfarism and unionism. Now, if only economists and historians would, even if belatedly, recognize that fact.”
(Updated and bumped.)
INCREASED VIOLENCE IN THE ER, TRIGGERED BY A REDUCTION IN TRUST: “About two-thirds of emergency physicians said they believed the pandemic had triggered an increase in the amount of violence in emergency departments. About 69% said the pandemic had decreased the level of trust between patients and emergency department staff.”
HULK SMASH PUNY STADIUM BOOTH!!! Here’s why Bills OC Ken Dorsey lost his mind at the end of the Dolphins game.
Dorsey was trying to get his usually productive offense in field goal range before time expired, and those efforts were assisted by the Dolphins’ butt punt with less than two minutes left in the game.
It was not to be. The Bills ran out of time as Josh Allen was trying to get under center to stop the clock for one more play. It was at that point that Dorsey went on a jag that would have made both Keith Moon and John Bonham proud.
Or Axel Foley, for that matter.
The Bills may have lost the game, but Dorsey certainly won the Internet today:
The Bills coordinator was NOT happy
— FlashPicks ⚡️ (@flashpicks) September 25, 2022
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: PragerU Football Team Still Dead Last In NCAA Rankings.
WHAT DID SOCIALISTS HEAT WITH BEFORE DRIED DUNG? GAS! California’s pioneering climate change plans to nix gas heater sales by 2030.
HAM SANDWICH NATION UPDATE: Why sexual abuse victims like Pieper Lewis get convicted.
In 2020, Pieper Lewis killed her alleged rapist – a man she says began raping her when she was a mere 15 years old.
According to Lewis, the ordeal began when she ran away from an abusive home and ended up homeless. An older man took her in and began trafficking her at that point (forcing her to have sex with other men for money). One of those men was Zachary Brooks, who was 37 at the time. Lewis says Brooks assaulted her many times, including while she was unconscious, and said, “I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and was overcome with rage.”
The man who trafficked Lewis was never charged with any crime, but Lewis was. She was charged with first degree murder and ultimately sentenced for voluntary manslaughter and willful injury. Her charges meant she faced 20 years in prison, but a judge reduced that to five years of probation after she served two years in a juvenile facility.
So now Lewis is free, but her ordeal is not over. If she in anyways violates that probation over the next five years (which is very easy to do given how difficult we make it for people to comply with these restrictions) she will automatically go back behind bars and serve her full sentence. And not only that, she’s also been given a $150,000 bill by the state of Iowa thanks to a mandatory financial restitution law that carries no exceptions, according to her judge.
Classical reference in headline: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime.
SOME USEFUL Hurricane Preparation Tips.
SOON TO RECEIVE A WHITE HOUSE INVITATION: Spanish Minister of Equality argues that children have the right to sex with whomever they want regardless of age.
This, by the way, is what you get when you have a “Minister of Equality.”
READER FAVORITE: Silonn Ice Maker, Countertop. #CommissionEarned
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Randi Weingarten attacks Gov. DeSantis for politicizing education. “So that’s why Randi Weingarten was in Florida this week, because she’s a lefty unionist and a professional Democrat. Weingarten accusing anyone else of politicizing education is like Kim Kardashian complaining the media is too focused on celebrity gossip.”
INTERESTING: Resistance-breathing training found to lower blood pressure. “Resistance-breathing training involves breathing in and out of a small device, called, quite naturally, a POWERbreathe, every day for several minutes. The device forces the patient to use their breathing muscles to push and pull air through it, making them stronger. And that, the researchers found, also reduces blood pressure. The device has been in use for several years as a means to assist athletes, singers and people with weak lung muscles.”
GOV. NEWSOM SIGNS LAW ALLOWING HUMAN COMPOSTING AS BURIAL METHOD:
California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Monday allowing human composting as a burial method in the state starting in 2027.
Assembly Bill 351, introduced by Assembly Members Cristina Garcia and Robert Rivas, will allow for naturally decomposed human remains to be turned into soil. California will become the fifth state to allow the method.
WHY SOUTH AFRICA CONTINUES TO FALL BEHIND: Starlink Not Approved in South Africa. “South Africa’s telecoms regulator — the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) — previously told MyBroadband it would not issue any new licences to companies that are not 30% black owned, in line with new legislation for Internet service providers (ISPs).”
JEFF DUNETZ: An Important Message To The Gentiles On Rosh HaShana.
Because of the coming holidays, we would like to provide our Gentile friends with a list of dos and don’ts for the days we are gone. PLEASE REMEMBER, we’ve built a nice little internet here. Behave yourselves while we are gone. We’re not asking–we’re telling. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was correct—there is a Jewish space laser. We can zap you anytime we want.
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™