Archive for 2022
April 20, 2022
DON’T GET COCKY: Two Respected Political Sites Make Massive House Predictions Shift Toward GOP. “Two of the most respected political prognostication sites — Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report — announced massive shifts in their partisan ratings for House races.”
THE RISE OF “CONTRACT GRADING.” Sounds kind of like a “labor theory of grading” to me. Doesn’t sound like a great idea if you want good performance, but I admit I would have loved this in math class…
MADE IN THE USA: Walnut Cutting Board by Virginia Boys Kitchens. #CommissionEarned
HE MAKES EVERYTHING WORSE: Biden’s Child Allowance Made Tax Season Worse. “Over the last few weeks, many Americans came to the shocking realization that instead of getting a refund – a refund they’d been counting on to offset the last 12 months of rising prices – they would owe money to the federal government. Why? Because President Joe Biden’s now-expired government child allowance disrupted a longstanding tax benefit.”
SHAWNEE STATE U SETTLES WITH PROF IT PUNISHED FOR FAILURE TO USE PREFERRED PRONOUNS. “[T]he university agreed to pay $400,000 in damages and Meriwether’s attorneys’ fees. Additionally, considering the 6th Circuit’s ruling, the university is rescinding the written warning it issued Meriwether in June 2018.” Pricey.
WAR ON WOMEN UPDATE, AUSTRALIA EDITION: Woolworths accused of cancelling women after it referred to tampon users as ‘people who menstruate.’
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE: The Chances of Finding Alien Life on Jupiter’s Moon Europa Just Shot Way Up.
SELF-REGENERATING BUMPERS BY CHANCE OR DESIGN: If a Ford engineer designed a bumper that self-regenerated itself back to its original shape, would we call the engineer an “intelligent designer?”
On HillFaith this afternoon, Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press answers that question and applies it to Geckos, evolution and the debate about Intelligent Design. It’s a fascinating video regardless of which side you are on in the debate.
CAROL ROTH: What are the warning signs of a recession?
Changes in inflation, including rapid inflation, can be a sign of a pending recession. Increasing commodity prices, which are obviously linked to inflationary pressures as they trickle through the economy, can also flash a warning sign.
Obviously, those indicators are definitely not bullish for the economy. Inflation is at the highest levels in four decades, and commodity prices are continuing to add to costs throughout the supply chain, impacting consumers.
Naturally of course, Biden takes no blame:
PARDON ME IF I’M NOT OVERLY IMPRESSED: CDC launches Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.
A PINCH OF CHANGE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Joe Kahn to succeed Dean Baquet as the Times’ executive editor.
In recent months, Kahn had emerged as the overwhelming favorite for the top job at the Times, though Baquet had likely put his succession in motion when he elevated him to the role of managing editor, his second-in-command, in September 2016. “I very much think that Joe should be a candidate to succeed me,” Baquet said at the time.
Kahn, who joined the Times in 1998 after stints at the Wall Street Journal and Dallas Morning News, has the kind of résumé that has traditionally lined the path to masthead jobs at the paper. He covered international economics and trade from the Times’s Washington bureau and Wall Street from the business desk in the city before serving as Beijing bureau chief and then rising through the ranks of management on the foreign staff.
In an internal note to Times staff, publisher A.G. Sulzberger called Kahn “a brilliant journalist and a brave and principled leader,” and acknowledged that few would be surprised by his appointment. “Dean told me recently that he believed that Joe was more prepared than any editor he’s ever seen to take over a global newsroom that’s grown in size, complexity and ambition,” he wrote.
I’m curious to see if Kahn will keep his young uber-woke Democratic Party operatives with bylines under control better than the hapless Baquet could.
UPDATE: Or not. Cringe: Stop what you’re doing and check out this photo of the new executive editor of the NYT that he took on purpose.
(Updated and bumped.)
KREMLINOLOGY REMAINS AN INEXACT SCIENCE AT BEST: Kremlin Insiders Alarmed Over Growing Toll of Putin’s War in Ukraine.
The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten people with direct knowledge of the situation. All spoke on condition of anonymity, too fearful of retribution to comment publicly.
So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.
Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by U.S. intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission.
TWO BRANDONS IN ONE! Biden Says Masking Is a Choice as His DOJ Fights to Hold Onto Mandate. “This is welcome news, of course. Think how much national angst we would have saved ourselves if this had been the government’s policy from the start. Unfortunately, our cognitively addled president sorta forgot that he had ordered the Justice Department to appeal the ruling by a federal judge in Florida that ended the mask mandate on transportation. The DoJ has the CDC’s back as the public health agency attempts to maintain the mask mandate.”
NOBODY LIKES JOE: Lefties in Panic Over Biden Support Collapse With Younger Voters. “To give you an idea of the actual bitterness felt by young voters for Biden, this TikTok video from March is closing in on two million views.”
As originally reported at Bloomberg, Stewart’s show has failed to catch on after seven months, attracting only about 180,000 viewers for its premiere. No one is watching, and more importantly, the media at large, which now skews younger, thinks of Stewart as an out-of-touch Boomer. They aren’t going to embed his clips if they have to pay for it. Apple+ is still a niche service provided by a company with a passionate product fan base, but Apple no longer dominates the market like it used to, either in technology or in cultural influence.
Stewart, of course, tried to adjust to the new culture of wokeness with an episode titled “Race” and a segment called “The Problem with White People.” It involved a struggle session with guest Andrew Sullivan and came off like some Upper East Side rich white liberal book club anguishing over Robin DiAngelo. Stewart’s problem is that all this could have been funny, but he chose instead to play the scold.
Moreover, there’s nothing original about Stewart’s newfound white guilt. The audience he’s playing to can get this stuff in the New York Times or on CNN without having to subscribe to a new streaming service. They can also get it on TikTok or Twitter — or just put a black square on their Instagram and, bang, they’ve solved racism.
These are the sorts of things Stewart once lampooned in his own partisan way. But he’s joined the mob now, and the mob is already big enough.
And Apple apparently doesn’t mind Stewart’s low numbers. As Bobby Burack writes at OutKick.com, “AppleTV+ is playing with house money…Apple, which is trading at an almost $3 trillion valuation, just wants programs that make the company look progressive, pro-LGBT and all of the other corporate America buzzwords. Apple thinks Stewart helps in this regard. ‘We are thrilled [with] ‘The Problem with Jon Stewart,’’ Molly Thompson, head of unscripted and documentaries at Apple TV+, told Bloomberg. ‘The series has sparked complex conversations about critical issues, and we’re proud to team with Jon for season two and beyond.’ At Apple, ratings are secondary to lectures about white people, climate change, abortion and the border. That’s why Jon Stewart went woke and lost his audience.”
DID YOU KNOW JEWS CONTROL OUR WEATHER? Oh, you didn’t know that, you say? Well, you would if you followed Washington, D.C. Councilman Trayon White, who is challenging Mayor Muriel Bowser in the Democratic Primary.
“White’s fraught relationship with the Jewish community dates back to at least 2018, when he claimed that wealthy Jews used ‘climate manipulation’ to cause bad weather in D.C. and donated $500 in community funds to sponsor a conference by infamous Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan,’ reports Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon.
Next Question: Did officials from Coca Cola Consolidated and Giant Foods also not know about White’s anti-semitic views? Apparently not, as a bunch of them stood shoulder-to-shoulder with White at a recent campaign event disguised as an environmental cleanup operation.
Would any of those officials still be employed today had they instead stood with an anti-semitic White Supremacist?
DEAL OF THE DAY: ThermoPro Wireless Meat Thermometer. #CommissionEarned
LIZ CHENEY (R-BELTWAY ELITES): Hard to avoid that moniker when you realize, courtesy of Tristan Justice of The Federalist, that only two percent of Cheney’s campaign contributions come from within the state she represents.
“According to a Federalist analysis of Cheney’s campaign finances to date based on public records from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), less than 10 percent of the dollars Cheney raised came from Wyoming residents. Only about 2 percent of Cheney’s total contributors were from her home state.
“In contrast, donors in Northern Virginia with fundraisers featuring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney sent more than $880,000 to the campaign, a full six figures higher than the $780,000 raised among Wyomingites. Cheney raised more than $760,000 from California and more than $720,000 from Texas.”