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November 30, 2022

All of that is true but the NY Times is bit more blunt about the reasons these layoffs are necessary.

“It is incredibly hard to say goodbye to any one member of the CNN team, much less many,” Mr. Licht wrote in the memo, which was seen by The New York Times. “I recently described this process as a gut punch, because I know that is how it feels for all of us.”

The cuts come as CNN lags behind its chief competitors, Fox News and MSNBC, in total viewership this year, according to Nielsen data. It has notched some wins over MSNBC with viewers in the coveted advertiser demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds, but the sagging ratings overall have affected CNN’s profitability this year.

What I haven’t seen anywhere is any indication which contributors are part of this round of layoffs. Maybe that’s the news that will come tomorrow?

I’m not generally a fan of CNN’s approach and think they’ve been involved in some egregious myth-making over the past several years. That said, a month before Christmas is a tough time for anyone to lose a job. That doesn’t mean I won’t dance a little jig if Jim Acosta finally gets kicked to the curb but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.

—CNN.com, April 22, 2016.

F*CK DAVID MAMET:

In response to a positive review in The New York Times of the recent revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, one young theater maker, @harharharbour wrote, “F*ck Mamet, there’s nothing he has to say worth hearing. Stop giving racist transphobic playwrights platforms. This show is shit.”

This tweet epitomizes what is now an entirely mainstream, and in some circles mandatory, view of David Alan Mamet, 74, of Chicago, the great American writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, The Verdict, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Wag the Dog, Oleanna, and a mountain of other novels, books, essays, plays, and even cartoons. Mamet must be canceled. The “trash”—as Tony-winning actor and writer Colman Domingo writes—must be taken out. But as we Jews have learned all too often the hard way, silencing our prophets is usually a mistake.

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On the cost of speaking out against the hegemonic view:

“Well, what’s the alternative? … The big question of my generation and of show business, was how could these guys, during the McCarthy era, have sold their friends out, how could they do that? So when all of us here were shown the rack and asked how would you like to behave? That question reappeared and ‘Oh, I get it they had a choice, I guess I have a choice too.’ Now certainly I’m in a privileged position right? Because I’m in the final boarding process and I got a couple bucks in a sock under my mattress and there are people who aren’t in that privileged position and they may have to make a different choice.”

On whether the Jews should decamp to the Republican party:

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“Dennis Prager said the only thing that the Left has been successful at is in demonizing the Right and they demonized the hell out of the Jews so bad they can’t think clearly. My great aunt lives in Chicago and she’s 91 years old and she said you know ‘things have gotten so bad over here, the taxes are so bad, the homelessness is so bad, these kids are killing each other every week on the south side of Chicago and my friends had to move from a wonderful apartment because when they took over Michigan Avenue they got into the lobby of her building and things just couldn’t be worse’ and I said you know ‘Well keep voting [D]emocratic!’ and there was this long long long long pause and any of us who are Conservative know that pause and that look on the face of the Liberal and it’s a look of aphasia.”

Read the whole f*cking thing.

HISTORY: When the New Generation of Olds Killed Your Father’s Oldsmobile. “Instead of bridging generations, the ‘Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile’ effort alienated people of all ages, and has been be blamed for hastening Oldsmobile’s irrelevance and eventual death a decade down the road from the marketing campaign’s kickoff. Before that happened, however, things got weird. How weird? Like, ‘Leonard Nimoy’s daughter’ weird.”

UM: Corvette to Launch as a Brand in 2025 with a Four-Door and an SUV. Well, there’s this: “At a point in time when Ferrari and Maserati and Porsche are all offering one or more SUVs—the antithesis to the hard-core sports cars that put them on the map in the first place—why shouldn’t Corvette also consider building sedans, crossovers or, heaven forbid, even pickups?”

‘STUDENTS FIRST‘: New book on higher ed reform (and from a liberal college president, no less) has some suggestions that might help, like replacing credit-hour inputs with competency outputs.

CAN THE U-HAUL REVOLUTION SAVE AMERICA? New data from the latest Trafalgar Group shows increasing momentum of Independent and GOP voters pulling up stakes and moving to more hospitable climes.

READER FAVORITE: EFAYCRR Steampunk Table Lamp. #CommissionEarned I just ordered one of these for my desk, it looks kind of fun.

RIP: Fleetwood Mac singer Christine McVie dead at the age of 79.

TAMARA KEEL: Are Double Stack 1911s Making A Comeback? “All of a sudden, the tacticool corners of the internet—a place where you couldn’t mention anything hammer-fired or with a manual safety for the last dozen years without getting hounded out of the room as a ‘Fudd’—are alive with, well, let’s call it big 2011 energy. For those of us who’ve nonetheless been keeping our thumb-safety skills sharp for the last decade, just in case, this feels like vindication.”

I QUESTION THE TIMING: Edible Bug Sales Projected to Spike the Same Year in Which You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy.

STAY WARM: Lasko 5586 Digital Ceramic Tower Heater with Remote. #CommissionEarned

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: ‘Philadelphia is a war zone’: Moment thug casually strolls up to parking officer and shoots him in the head in broad daylight in Dem-led city.

“NOTHING BLEW UP, WHICH IS ALWAYS A WIN.” SpaceX fires up 11 engines as it prepares massive rocket for orbital test. “On Tuesday, SpaceX test-fired its Super Heavy rocket for about 12 seconds, making it the longest duration firing of the massive booster so far. The test, which ignited 11 of the 33 Raptor rocket engines, came as SpaceX continues working toward an orbital launch attempt of this Super Heavy first stage and its Starship upper stage. Earlier this month, SpaceX fired 14 Raptor engines on this booster for a few seconds, so Tuesday’s test did not set a new record regarding the number of engines tested. However, this “long duration” firing is the longest period of time that so many Raptor engines have been fired at once.”

Hey, blowups happen. And you can learn from them. That’s part of rocket science, too.

ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE, THE LEFT CANCELS EVERYONE: Will The Left Cancel Mr. Rogers Now?

NOT MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE: “DE-POLICING.” New study finds deaths from firearms are reaching unprecedented levels. But it does mention something that’s usually not prominently mentioned:

Maximum rates of fatalities by homicide among Black non-Hispanic men (141.8 fatalities/100,000 persons) significantly outpaced rates of fatalities among white non-Hispanic men (6.3 fatalities/100,000) and Hispanic men of the same age (22.8 fatalities/100,000 persons). The data does show there are also differences in fatalities by intent. Suicides were most common among white non-Hispanic men 80-84 years (45.2 fatalities/100,000 persons).

“Firearm fatalities accelerated dramatically during the COVID pandemic. Multiple potential factors have likely contributed to this including severe economic distress, an erupting mental health crisis, and a significant uptick in the sale of firearms,” says Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Again, not mentioned: De-policing.

THAT WOULD BE NICE: New single-dose treatment for sleeping sickness could help eliminate transmission of the disease by 2030.

XI JINPING UNMASKED: The Tiananmen Tiger Stalks the Chinese Communist Government.

Throughout the country protesters — some wearing surgical masks– stand before cellphone cameras and raise blank sheets of white paper.

Right — white empty space. To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, sometimes nothing is a real cool message. The blank sheets simultaneously satirize and defy the CCP’s malignant state censorship.

My translation of the blank: “We Chinese citizens say nothing yet you CCP tyrants fear our thoughts.” The empty page attacks the CCP’s systemic truth denial.

Check it out.

UPDATE: A death in the family took me away for awhile. Here’s a column from last week I should have blogged. Rubio and Roy Challenge the Woke Pentagon.

EUROPE’S GREEN POLICIES AS OUROBOROS: ‘Practically Unviable’ for Volkswagen to Build EV Batteries in High-Cost Europe. “It takes a lot of energy to produce a lithium-ion battery large enough to power a car or truck, and Europe’s high energy prices drive up the cost of making the batteries that were supposed to reduce costs.”

HEALTH: