THEY NEVER WILL BE MISSED, THEY NEVER WILL BE MISSED: CNN expects layoffs and budget cuts by the end of the year.
Archive for 2022
October 27, 2022
THEY MUST BE EXPECTING A SERIOUS SHELLACKING: Another Democrat Talking Head Equates Voting for Economic Issues With the End of Democracy.
Remember, when millions of ordinary people vote contrary to the wishes of a privileged few, they’re subverting democracy.
HMM: Enforcing the Coming Affirmative Action Bans: A Modest Proposal. I hope the Supreme Court really does nuke Grutter and Bakke and enforce the constitutional and statutory bans on racial discrimination.
READER FAVORITE: Instant Read Meat Thermometer. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Major Fuel Supplier On “Code Red” As Diesel Crisis Hits Southeast. “Diesel supplies are very scarce across the Northeast and in the Southeast. Supplies are at the lowest seasonal level for this time of year, and the US only has 25 days left of the industrial fuel in storage. The crisis gripping the diesel market appears to be getting out of hand as one fuel supply logistics company initiated emergency protocols this week.”
DON’T GET COCKY: Leftist Think Tank’s Poll: Blake Masters and Mark Kelly Are Tied.
IT’S NOT THE RECESSION, IT’S ZUCK SPENDING $10 BILLION A YEAR BUILDING A VR ‘METAVERSE’ NOBODY WANTS WHILE HIS MONEYMAKER, FACEBOOK, FLOUNDERS: Meta Stock Crash Steepens As Facebook Parent Grapples With Recession Fears.
DEMOCRATS’ COVID DENIALISM:
Clearly the worm has turned if Democrats in competitive races are running away from their own policies.
Well, I have a reminder for them. Not only did they pound the “deplorables” into the ground with mandates, censorship, school closures lasting up to a year, and economic sanctions for failing to comply–vast numbers of Democrats wanted the COVID fascists to do even more. The madness was real, the harm extensive, and the real threat to our democracy was laid bare by oppressive Democrat policies.
Every time you hear a Democrat politician bumble around denying the extremism of the Left on COVID, think about a poll taken just 9 months back–in January of this year to be precise.
The Heartland Institute commissioned a poll from Rasmussen Reports on attitudes regarding COVID mitigation policies, and the results were both startling and terrifying. Confirming what we all suspected at the time, Democrats in large numbers care little about freedom and even less about their fellow citizens who disagree with them. I remember reading the poll at the time and being appalled, and I thought about it again as candidates such as Christine Whitmer have begun doing an about face on COVID mitigations.
Here are some findings from that poll. Once you are done you will question what kind of country many Democrats want to live in. . . . Unsurprisingly, the people most likely to support harsh punishments were strong Biden supporters.
Remember, this is not April of 2020, when we knew little about COVID and people were scared to death (by the CDC) that we were facing the return of the Black Death. This is from earlier this year.
Read the whole thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats’ Homestretch Flailing Is Both Pathetic and Hilarious. “Even Democrat candidates who haven’t had a bad week so far are still saddled with a village idiot of a president who thinks airplane seat legroom is racist and his spokesditz who is even more nonsensical than he is.”
DAVID BERNSTEIN: Re-reading Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Opinion in Bakke.
Civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall wrote an outraged dissent, in which he summed up his reasoning as follows: “In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society.” Many have found Marshall’s dissent, especially his exposition of the historical discrimination against black Americans and its continuing effects, to be compelling.
In re-reading the opinion when researching my new book on racial classifications, though, I noticed something interesting. Marshall refers to “Negroes” and “the Negro” many times in his opinion, but never references any other minority group. What’s interesting about that is that the medical school’s quota program at issue in Bakke had the following results, according to an appendix to Powell’s opinion: From “1971 through 1974, the special program resulted in the admission of 21 black students, 30 Mexican-Americans, and 12 Asians, for a total of 63 minority students.” In other words, only one-third of the students admitted under the minority quota program were African Americans.
So, even if we agreed with every word of Justice Marshall’s opinion, he not only failed to explain why racial quotas were appropriate for Asian and Mexican Americans (the “Hispanic” classification not yet in existence when the litigation commenced), he never even mentions the other groups. As the four-justice opinion on the other side notes, “The inclusion of [Asians] is especially curious in light of the substantial numbers of Asians admitted through the regular admissions process.” That opinion also notes that the university was unable to explain “its selection of only the four favored groups—Negroes, Mexican-Americans, American Indians, and Asians—for preferential treatment,” as opposed to the myriad other ethnic groups it could have included.
Forty-four years later, much of the discourse around affirmative action preferences still assumes that the only admissions preferences, or at least the only ones that matter, are those for African Americans. Today’s op-ed in the New York Times by Justin Driver is a case in point. This is true even though Hispanic Americans outnumber black Americans by about a 4-3 ratio, even greater if you exclude black immigrants and their children.
Given that the driving force behind affirmative action was and pretty clearly continues to be the felt need to redress the effects of long-term discrimination and worse against African Americans, I wonder if we would have been better off if Powell, instead of adopting the diversity rationale, had adopted Marshall’s opinion, but still held the UC Davis quota program unconstitutional to the extent it included Mexicans and Asians. Voluntary adoption of quotas for African Americans would have the advantages of transparency, serving the main rationale for affirmative action to begin with, avoiding the dishonesty and lack of transparency that comes along with the diversity rationale, and also not encouraging the growth of DEI bureaucracies that bring a specific and generally counter-productive ideology with them.
Affirmative action is all about virtue-signaling, not about helping actual disadvantaged people.
I recommend Bernstein’s book, which — as you can see if you click through — I blurbed.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN THE U.S.: ‘We will be the supplier…’ Saudi Arabia Indicates Readiness To Supply More Oil If Energy Situation Deteriorates.
MICHAEL BARONE: This campaign’s missing issues: Foreign policy and economic redistribution.
What issues are the candidates and the parties not talking about? It’s worth asking, because sometimes these issues turn out to be important.
I don’t remember any candidates talking about Islamic terrorism in the midterm elections of 1998 or about the risk of investing in mortgage-backed securities in 2006. Going back a ways, I can’t recall much discussion about how to win or de-escalate the Vietnam War in 1966 or to cope with rising inflation in 1970.
So what aren’t politicians talking about this year?
Some stuff that matters.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Twitter workers are twits. “I don’t know about you but I am enjoying some time wading into the river of Leftist tears.”
Plus: “In response to the rumor of huge cuts, a number of employees have done what Leftists always do when they are unhappy: make demands. Now frankly if I were in their position I would be keeping my head down, praising Musk to the skies, and hoping that I can appear so vital to the company that the Angel of Death flies by me rather than uses its scythe to chop my head off. But that isn’t how Gen Z rolls, so they are firing off a letter to Musk making a series of demands, and it’s pure comedy gold.”
TERMINATOR POLITICS: From J6 to John Fetterman, the Mainstream Media Never Rests.
“WHEN I DRIVE THROUGH PORTLAND, I’M SCARED:” Oregon Voters Say They’ve Lost Patience With Democrats.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE, INDEED. YOU HAVE ALL OF US: “You are not alone. We are with you.”
We are the majority. We will survive and thrive. Be not afraid.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Hamilton Beach Juicer Machine. #CommissionEarned
HMM: Twitter is losing its most active users, internal documents show.
“Is Twitter dying?” billionaire Elon Musk mused in April, five days before offering to buy the social media platform.
The reality, according to internal Twitter (TWTR.N) research seen by Reuters, goes far beyond the handful of examples of celebrities ghosting their own accounts. Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users – who are vital to the business – engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla (TSLA.O) chief executive as he approaches a deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”
Maybe Musk bought a pig in a poke, or maybe he can turn it around.
I’d be happy to take my once-dormant account public again, if he’d make it a paid service and cleaned out the bots.
Previously: It’s (Not) Official: Twitter Has a New ‘Chief Twit.’
DAKOTA WOOD: Yes, the U.S. military is weak.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Victoria Taft: Would You Want John Fetterman Driving Your Kid’s School Bus? “Well, I don’t want to poop in your oatmeal or anything, but those reporters, MSNBC’s writers, and John Fetterman’s doctor don’t seem to be very observant.”
Rick Moran: More and More Democratic Seats are Now in Play as the Red Tide Keeps Rolling.
Yours Truly: I Can’t Believe Moscow’s Latest Lame Excuse for the Ukraine War. “Are you ready for this? Seriously, I need you to be sitting down.”