Archive for 2022
January 6, 2022
A FRIEND WRITES:
I’d be interested to hear what 9/11 and Pearl Harbor survivors, heck Americans in general, think about Kamala Harris’ Jan. 6 comparison.
Then again, having Kamala Harris say anything about anything probably signals the Dems don’t really believe it themselves, don’t really think anyone else will, but they need a stooge to say something.
Kind of a Hail Mary spaghetti at the wall toss … like, hey, who knows, maybe it’ll stick!
They did just cue the next round of derision, tho. Photoshop time!
Haha … never has a party in power so yearned for insurrection.
Only because they don’t actually believe in it. Meanwhile, the Photoshops have begun.
Related: Washington Examiner: The Cult of January 6.
Plus: Biden’s divisive, deceitful Jan. 6 disgrace. “Requiring signatures on mail-in ballots is not violence. Any suggestion otherwise is just absurd. And then, Biden’s speech got even worse.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: In 1983, a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol.
Eventually, M19 turned to building explosives themselves. Just before 11 p.m. on November 7, 1983, they called the U.S. Capitol switchboard and warned them to evacuate the building. Ten minutes later, a bomb detonated in the building’s north wing, harming no one but blasting a 15-foot gash in a wall and causing $1 million in damage. Over the course of a 20-month span in 1983 and 1984, M19 also bombed an FBI office, the Israel Aircraft Industries building, and the South African consulate in New York, D.C.’s Fort McNair and Navy Yard (which they hit twice.) The attacks tended to follow a similar pattern: a warning call to clear the area, an explosion, a pre-recorded message to media railing against U.S. imperialism or the war machine under various organizational aliases (never using the name M19).
Note this passage:
You write, “Despite claims by Fox News and others that Antifa activists are ‘terrorists,’ their street brawling and harassment of right-wing extremists hardly rise to the level of the left-wing political violence of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. The same cannot be said about the Neo-Nazi and white supremacist violence.” Could you talk about the parallels or lack thereof between the left-wing terrorism you write about and some of the domestic terrorism we’re seeing today?
The above article was published on January 6th, 2020, before that year’s summer of leftist riots.
More: The New York Times, March 2, 1971: Bomb in Capitol Causes Wide Damage.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Georgia Launches ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Investigation.
As Joel Abbott of Not the Bee writes, “They are gonna milk this for all its worth!”
Those ratings don’t drive themselves, you know:
MAKE COOKING EASIER: 5-Ingredient Cooking for Two: 100 Recipes Portioned for Pairs. #CommissionEarned
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student receives praise for bogus paper on how milk is a ‘colonizer’ of coffee.
THE GREAT MIGRATION: George Korda: Color these (new) Tennessee former blue-staters red.
I recently met a highly educated, professional family from Washington state who’d moved to Knoxville. Wondering about their reasons for coming such a distance, I asked what motivated them. Their answer was that they no longer wanted to live in a state with Washington’s rising crime rate and politically liberal political, regulatory, taxation and educational priorities. . . .
There are Tennesseans and others in red states who are understandably uncomfortable with the influx of blue-staters, fearing they might bring with them high-tax, big-government philosophies. But it appears most are coming to escape those situations, so it wouldn’t seem likely they’d want to duplicate those conditions in their new home.
This isn’t to say that Tennessee doesn’t have long-standing political “progressives” (read, “liberals”) within its population. They tend to be concentrated in the blue islands within the ocean of red that is Tennessee’s political coloration. Some blue-sters carp a good bit about Tennessee’s politics and low-tax climate.
On such occasions I make it a point to ask them this: “If you don’t like Tennessee, what blue state would you like to see Tennessee emulate? California? New York? New Jersey? Washington state? Another?”
I have never — and I mean never — gotten a straight answer as to why they want to turn Tennessee into a place they don’t want to live in the first place. Perhaps they like the taxation, regulatory and other advantages of living in red Tennessee while at the same time talking it down. That enables the best of both worlds: a sense of moral superiority while not having to live under the policies for which they claim to pine.
Read the whole thing.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:
I decided to actually do something with my months-old Gettr account this week, and while small, it has the fun vibe of early Twitter.
GRAMMY AWARDS POSTPONED INDEFINITELY AMID OMICRON-FUELED COVID SURGE.
Sadly, our long national nightmare isn’t entirely over: “According to Variety, the Grammys typically require a 10-day or more lockout of the venue in which they are held. However, the Crypto.com [until very recently, the Staples Center] Arena’s schedule doesn’t appear to have that kind of opening until at least June. The Recording Academy will likely look to produce a full show with a live audience. The Grammys generate millions of dollars in revenue, even though — like many televised award shows — ratings have declined in recent years.”
THE HELL OF ZERO COVID:
Imagine a nation in such a state of distress that its citizens were reduced to bartering for food. A nation where women were so desperate for something to cook and eat that they started swapping sanitary towels for vegetables. A nation where families were so hungry that they would trade their cigarettes for a cabbage. This country actually exists. And it isn’t one of the poor, sometimes famished nations of the global South. It’s China. More accurately, it’s China under the policy of ‘Zero Covid’. If you want to witness the hell of Zero Covid, the dystopian derangement of subordinating every facet of life to the crusade against coronavirus, look no further than the country where this virus first emerged.
The bartering for grub and other basic supplies is taking place in the city of Xi’an in north-west China right now. There has been a spike in community Covid infections in Xi’an and the authorities have responded with ferocious authoritarianism. Thirteen million people have been confined to their homes since 23 December. Initially they were allowed out once every two days to buy food, but even that infinitesimal scrap of liberty was done away with on 27 December. Since then, the people of Xi’an have been under literal house arrest. They are not permitted to leave their place of residence for any reason, not even to buy food. Yes, for the past nine days 13million people have been locked in their own homes; if they take so much as a step outside, they risk arrest.
To get around the rather important matter that people will become gravely ill if they don’t have food, officialdom in Xi’an has arranged to deliver essentials to people’s front doors. Not surprisingly, this hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. Residents have complained about not receiving enough to eat. Others say they have received no aid at all. Citizens have taken to Weibo to share images and videos of themselves bartering for foodstuffs. In one clip, a desperate man offers a Nintendo console for some instant noodles and steamed buns. Another offers dishwashing liquid for apples. People ‘no longer have enough food to eat’, one Xi’an resident told Radio Free Asia. Another said Xi’an has witnessed a ‘return to primitive society’. . . . Zero Covid is not just a ‘Chinese thing’. No, here in the supposedly free West, too, numerous experts and observers openly lobbied for Zero Covid policies, for the subjugation of liberty and the joys of life to a programme of ensuring that Covid could never gain a foothold in our society. ‘Zero Covid’, over the past year, has become a little like the campaign slogan ‘Defund the police’, in that the people who pushed this policy now deny that it is actually what they wanted.
Public health is too important to be left to the public health authorities, especially as they seem to be incompetent, power-mad, and generally hateful toward ordinary people.
LAYERS AND LAYERS OF…OH, NEVERMIND: Remind me again why people at corporate media giants are smarter than everyone else and ought to be the arbiters of what is and isn’t “dangerous information”? This is still online:
JAY LENO’S GARAGE: This Mustang Chases Porsches for a Living (Video).
HMM: McConnell open to changing how Congress certifies presidential elections. “Lawmakers in both parties are eyeing legislation that would change the ease with which lawmakers can object to presidential election results following last year’s riot at the U.S Capitol on Jan. 6, the day both the House and Senate met to certify President Joe Biden’s victory under the Electoral Count Act.”
DON’T GET COCKY, BUT IMMIGRATION IS MAKING FLORIDA REDDER: “Millions of Americans are fleeing blue states for freer, more prosperous red states. Many have worried that these refugees may be foolish enough to bring blue-state politics with them. This could happen, but recent voter registration data from Florida suggest that it isn’t happening there.”
Anecdotally, that may be happening in Knoxville. In general I think people who move on their own tend to lean right, while people who follow their employers bring lefty politics with them.
Just to be safe, I’m backing the the Fresh Start States Welcome Wagon project. I donated.
PHYLLIS CHESLER: Pro-Trans, Pro-Palestine: Celebrities Condemn Harry Potter and his Mother.
Comedian Jon Stewart, formerly of The Daily Show, has just accused J.K. Rowling of anti-Semitism. And why? Because her depiction of the “goblins” who run Gringotts, the underground bank where everyone’s gold is stored is, in his opinion, an anti-Jewish stereotype. He wonders why the “goblins” are the underground bankers… Get it?
Apparently, fiction, even fantasy, must conform to rigid speech code rules. But unlike Wagner’s Nibelungen, Albrecht, (a “dwarf” or a descendent of a “race of dwarfs’) who stole and who hoards the gold which can control the world in Wagner’s four part opera The Ring Cycle—Rowling’s “goblins” merely guard it and release it to its rightful owner—just like the Swiss do.
Call me crazy but once I read the comedian Jon Stewart’s allegation, I immediately thought that Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, (changed his name, wonder why—nah, I know why) must also favor Palestine i.e. his anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism. Bingo! Even Al-Jazeera mourned his departure and bid him a “fond farewell” as one of the only Americans who told the truth about Israel and Palestine.
Stewart, a genuinely funny guy, is one of those “As a Jew” people who stand tall upon their own ethnicity in order to critique Israel. Well, he’s one of those dangerously crazy-funny guys.
As Jim Treacher writes: Jon Stewart Believes Goblins in Harry Potter Books Are ‘Anti-Semitic’ — And so are you if you think that’s silly.
Okay. Or maybe… they’re just goblins?
I mean, goblins aren’t anything new. They’ve been part of European folklore for a thousand years. They’re magical little creatures who love gold and causing mischief. When Rowling was creating her fantasy world, why wouldn’t she turn goblins into bankers? How is it a secret signal to anti-Semites?
Is the Green Goblin anti-Semitic too? After all, he’s a rich, greedy guy who does bad things.
Were Stan Lee and Steve Ditko anti-Semites as well?
Nah. It’s just fashionable these days to bash J. K. Rowling, ever since she made the mistake of saying women are women and men aren’t. Acknowledging biological reality has made Rowling a pariah among her peers in the entertainment industry, so it’s easy to accuse her of being an anti-Semite too. They’ve already falsely branded her as one kind of bigot, so why not falsely brand her as some other kind of bigot?
This sounds very much like the Grauniad writer who in late 2002 decided to score some cheap points at the height of the Lord of the Rings trilogy’s cinematic popularity by declaring Orcs racist. As Jonah Goldberg wrote at the time:
Sigh. Okay, yes, it’s true. Many of the Orcs (and the super-Orcs) are dark-skinned and have slant-eyes. They are also — how shall I put this? — Orcs! Ya frickin’ idjit!
One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people — like me — who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, “Cool, Orcs!” On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim “black people!” Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters.
The intersection of pro-Palestinian and trans activism isn’t confined to Stewart and Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, of course: What would the suffragettes make of Marks & Spencer selling hijabs for 4-year-old girls — and throwing open its female changing rooms to trans women?
UPDATE: And now, the walkback: Jon Stewart Clarifies He Does Not Think ‘Harry Potter’ is Antisemitic.
Clown nose on, clown nose off, as Treacher would say.
MORE: Jon Stewart forgets that he’s Jon Stewart:
(Updated and bumped.)
WHY MAKE IT TEMPORARY? Postal Service asks for temporary waiver from Biden vaccine requirement. “In a letter to OSHA, the Postal Service says its ability to deliver the mail would be hurt because employees would either leave over the mandate or be disciplined for disobeying it.”
ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE EMORY LAW JOURNAL’S POLITICAL-CENSORSHIP SCANDAL: There is a major controversy brewing over free speech and censorship at Emory Law Journal.
It’s the essay form. It’s not chock full of citations. Alexander could easily come up with things to cite, but he’s making his own personal statement. He puts his name on it, and that’s that. Fight with him if you don’t like it.
If people don’t want to fight with him, they seem to underscore his point — that everyone knows but they just won’t admit it! The editors are coming down on the side of less speech: Don’t say the thing we don’t want to have to talk about. It’s hurtful.
Unfortunately, that makes it seem as though you’re conceding that you’re in Alexander’s “everyone” category.
Here’s the statement in question:
In general, blacks as a group are doing better than ever before materially. And for those who are not doing well, the cause is not the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Nor is the cause racist bigotry, which, though some undoubtedly exists, is not a significant obstacle in blacks’ lives. Nor is it the vague culprit of “systemic racism.”
Racism is not the cause of black poverty to the extent it exists. (If it were, African and West Indian blacks would not be doing as well as they are, or emigrating to the U.S. in great numbers.) Although racism could be a problem for blacks today, the reality is, thankfully, is that it isn’t.
The real impediment to the advancement of poor blacks – and everyone knows this, regardless of whether they admit it – is the cultural factors that have produced family disintegration, which in turn portends poor educational achievement, crime and poverty.
He’s not wrong. (Emphasis from Althouse).
More on this growing scandal here.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Stephen Kruiser: Why Are Entertainment Industry Libs Treating Omicron Like It’s a Monster? “Despite the fact that even the Covid panic porn ‘experts’ are saying that the Omicron variant isn’t even remotely as severe as any iteration of this virus that has preceded it, Hollywood sheep are fleeing for the safety of their virtual pens as if they were facing the Bubonic plague in 1350.”
Stacey Lennox: The Political Appointees at the FDA Are Taking the War on Boys to a Whole New Level. “According to Kaiser’s study, there is almost no circumstance where a male between 12 and 24 should receive an mRNA vaccine. A society that was not intent on burdening its children to make adults feel safer would not subject any child under 12 to an mRNA vaccine out of an abundance of caution.”
Yours Truly: Biden’s 2022 Agenda: Abort, Retry, Fail? “Had Biden settled for a smaller agenda, he might have gotten it. But instead, the so-called moderate tried to push major changes through on slender majorities. That would be a challenge for a much more talented and energetic executive, and impossible for someone of Biden’s diminished capacities — that were never that great.”
KUDLOW: Game Over? Manchin Approval Soars as He Stands Ground.
This high tax, high spend, woke monstrosity is going nowhere. All these phony baloney political writers who say otherwise are wrong. Like the Axios report yesterday that breathlessly said that Mr. Manchin is really negotiating on a child tax credit.
Blah, blah, blah. No he’s not. That was a Democratic leak. Pure baloney, and Axios should know better than to fall for that stuff. Unless, of course, they’re pushing their own little woke, “BBB,” big government socialist agenda. Is that what they want? Really? I thought they were independent journalists.
The point I’m making is that not only has Joe Manchin been heroic, he has also been loyally representing the voters of West Virginia. Some recent polling shows that West Virginians oppose the big government socialism bill.
Nearly two thirds of them believe the bill would lead to higher costs for gas and groceries. Senator Manchin’s job approval has gone up seven points to 59%. He’s doing the lord’s work.
And he offered a deal to Chuck Schumer last summer, and Mr. Schumer dissed him.
It’s business and personal.
ROGER SIMON: George Soros’ Many Gifts to the Republican Party.
Why am I thanking Soros? It should be obvious. The billionaire’s habit of opening his very deep pockets to elect “woke” district attorneys across the country has been remarkably successful. He, more than anyone, is personally responsible for the crime wave currently engulfing America with murder rates in our big cities the highest in decades.
That, as much as anything, is sending people out of the blue states on what is called in the country classic “Wagon Wheel,” “the Southbound Train.”
That the vast majority of those murders are black on black doesn’t seem to have deterred George (although he surely must know it because the statistics are widely available), nor does it appear to deter Alvin Bragg, the newly elected black Manhattan DA.
They—the mayor of Chicago, the DAs of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore and many others—don’t seem to care about this. They apparently have other priorities. Like Black Lives Matter itself, they don’t seem to think black lives actually do matter. Power (theirs) is all that matters. And that they look good. (To whom, I wonder?)
The people who really do care about black lives are the people who are supposed to disdain them—the cops (many of whom are themselves black).
According to the Post, one high-ranking policeman said of Bragg’s new dictum that his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except for homicides and a “handful” of other felonies, “It will lead to more young lives lost to gang violence and innocent people being hurt both physically and emotionally.”
Another added: “This is outrageous. He was elected to enforce the law. If he wanted to change them, he should have run for a state office.”
True enough, but as some woman once said of another crime that was never punished, “What difference does it make?” The police have been leaving New York too. More will now.
Bad, even horrific, as that is, we do have something to thank George Soros for that is considerably more important than whatever jokes we want to make about red state property values.
Exit quote: “More than anyone—with the possible exception of the current resident of the White House—George Soros will be responsible for a sweeping Republican victory in 2022 and possibly 2024.”
THIS IS WHERE DEMS ARE TAKING JANUARY 6: This quote in The Hill today from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) captures it succinctly: “The point is that the constitutional purpose is clear, to keep people exactly like Donald Trump and other traitors to the union from holding public office.”
Raskin is referring to Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which was approved as a means of preventing former Confederates of any rank from holding elected office after the Civil War. The provision bans any individual who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the Constitution.
There are presently only a dozen or so in Congress who agree with Raskin, according to The Hill, and a few as well in the academic world. But don’t think there won’t be more after today’s hyper-partisan January 6 “memorials.”
Since the constitutional penalty for treason is death, what the Raskins of the Democratic Party want is to return politics to the blood sport it was for centuries before 1789 in which losing meant a trip to the gallows, the chopping block or a firing squad.