IT’S THE SIMPSONS’ WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT:
This came out in 2006 pic.twitter.com/UxS9Tn5zIf
— Carlos That Notices Things (@BasQuetzal) July 19, 2022
Archive for 2022
July 20, 2022
SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: SpaceX will break a major rocket-launch record this week.
WATCH: Joe Biden Says He Has Cancer.
He isn’t well, that’s for sure.
TELL THEM TO GET LOST: Knock, Knock: Video Shows ATF Straw Purchase Task Force Asking to See Delaware Man’s Guns.
The agent said they were verifying that people who bought multiple firearms still had the guns in their possession. The homeowner had bought seven firearms since January 2022.
He asked the men for identification, which the agents and trooper produced. They admitted they did not have a search warrant. The doorbell camera recorded what happened next. . . .
The homeowner agreed to get the firearms, closed the front door while the agents remained on the front porch, unaware they were being recorded.
Trooper “He doesn’t believe we’re cops.”
Agent 1 “I don’t blame him.”
That’s because no decent cop should be doing this sort of thing.
READER FAVORITE: Belkin Power Strip Surge Protector with 8 AC Multiple Outlets. #CommissionEarned
BE PREPARED: Victorinox-Swiss-Army-10-1/4″ Serrated Bread Knife with Fibrox Handle. CommissionEarned
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Remember Josh Hawley’s Fist Pump That Got Him Smeared As A Nazi? AOC Just Did The Same Thing.
UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: Merriam-Webster Changes the Definition of ‘Female.’
IT’S CCP SPYWARE: A Majority of Americans Support Banning TikTok From App Stores.
THE PROTEST AGAINST THE WORKINGMAN: The Democrats’ green war on the working class.
As some of us have been pointing out ad nauseum, we don’t have a political, partisan divide in the US. We have a class divide that separates college-educated elites from the working class. And the left has become almost completely aligned with those college-educated elites.
How did this happen? Turn on CNN or MSNBC or open the New York Times and you’ll be told that the fault lies with the Democrats’ messaging. ‘Why do Democrats suck at messaging?’, asks Vanity Fair. ‘Do Democrats have a messaging problem?’, asks the New York Times. ‘Yes, Democratic messaging sucks. But it’s harder to fix than you think’, the New Republic explains.
But the real problem isn’t the Democrats’ messaging – it’s their priorities. In fact, their messaging is actually impeccable. It signals very accurately what their values are and, by extension, who they view as their base.
Read the whole thing.
GREAT MOMENTS IN MESSAGE DISCIPLINE:
Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was once again blasted for pushing for electric vehicles on Tuesday, this time for saying, “The more pain” Americans feel at the pump, “the more benefit there is for” EV owners.
Buttigieg testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on the transition to “domestic clean energy production” by the Biden administration, which launched an initiative to ensure 50% of all auto sales are electric vehicles by 2030.
The topic soon turned to gas prices, which reached record levels in June. House Republicans questioned Buttigieg on how Americans struggling to pay $5 per gallon for gas could afford to purchase an electric vehicle.
Buttigieg then reiterated that the “pain” at the pump could be offset by using an electric vehicle.
“The more pain we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicle,” Buttigieg said.
—Fox News, yesterday.
Chaser: Also yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was retweeting announcements of (slightly) lower gas prices:
As Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon asked at the start of the month: Who’s In Charge?
Every time I speak to a conservative audience, I am asked who is really in charge in the White House. My answer has been that the president is in command. After all, institutions take on the character of their leaders. If all the White House has to offer is excuses, if decisions are made either slowly or randomly, if the communications team and the president and vice president seem to live on different planets, if incompetence and mismanagement appear throughout the government, it is because the chief executive allows it. No conspiracy is required to explain the ineptitude. This is Joe Biden we are talking about.
Lately, though, I have been having second thoughts. Not that Barack Obama or Ron Klain or Dr. Jill are running the show in secret. What I have been wondering, instead, is whether anyone is leading the government at all. There is no power, either overt or covert, in or behind the throne. The throne is empty.
Think of the economy, the border, and Ukraine. From time to time, Biden addresses these issues. He may even answer questions about them. The White House sends out press releases describing its latest initiatives. Vice President Harris or the second gentleman pops up somewhere to talk about all the good she and he are doing.
Yet each of these elements—the president, his staff, his spokesperson, his vice president, his policy—comes across as disconnected, discombobulated, as if each inhabits a separate sphere of activity. Whether because of Biden’s age, or his weekend trips to Delaware, or years of remote work, or lower-level staff turnover, or a painstakingly slow decision-making process, or ideological stubbornness, or a lack of a strategic plan, this administration drifts from crisis to crisis, and from one bad headline to the next. And nothing improves.
Of course, Buttigieg’s quote above is a reminder that high gas prices are entirely a crisis of team Biden’s making: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
(Updated and bumped.)
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Very sexy sex isn’t aspirational enough anymore.”
IRAN: Cover Your Head, Shoot Your Dog. “You’re not going to like this column, but it’s important to read it.”
THEY WANT YOU TO BE POOR, UNCOMFORTABLE, AND IMMOBILE: John Fetterman calls fracking a ‘stain’ on Pennsylvania, laments own ‘privileged’ life in old Reddit posts.
NOW OUT FROM DAVID BERNSTEIN: Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. I blurbed it, as you can see.
FALLOUT: Czech Republic To Buy 24 F-35s to Modernize Air Fleet in Wake of Ukraine War, Ministry Announces. “The Czech Republic plans to purchase 24 F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters to replace their current fleet of 14 Gripen fighter jets, the defense ministry announced Wednesday, in the latest move by Prague to rapidly move toward NATO-standard weapons in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Performance-wise, replacing 14 Gripens with 24 F-35s is like trading in your Honda Accord for a pair of Corvettes.
STEVE HAYWARD: Net-Zero and the Fall of Boris Johnson.
The hot race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Britain coincides with a record-breaking (though brief) heat wave that is summoning all of the usual clichés about climate change. But most Britons seem to be treating the heat with a shrug, understanding that heat waves sometimes come with what used to be known as “summer.”
Less recognized in the heat of the moment is the role extreme climate policy has played in the downfall of Johnson. The dominant narrative is that Johnson alienated his Tory colleagues in the cabinet and on the back benches with his hypocritical violation of Covid rules in his private parties, along with some scandal-ridden appointments, while the larger public soured on Johnson’s foolish embrace of draconian lockdown restrictions, along with a tax and fiscal policy one might have thought Johnson pinched from the Labour Party.
But the media, and even most Tory leaders, are reserving hushed tones for the role of Johnson’s fanatical embrace of “Net-Zero” energy policy (meaning a carbon-free energy supply by the year 2050). The energy policy of the Johnson government was indistinguishable from what Jeremy Corbyn’s Labourites would have imposed had they won the 2019 election.
Possibly because Britain was on tap to host the U.N.’s annual climate shakedown (known as COP 26) in Glasgow in 2021, Johnson somehow thought he had to be a “climate leader,” pledging among other reckless things to close all of Britain’s coal-fired power plants by 2024. Coal plants scheduled for closure this fall are now going to be kept online, even as the International Energy Agency in Paris recommended this week that Europe as a whole burn more coal on account of the soaring price and scarcity of natural gas—a scarcity that is entirely the political creation of western European nations that thought Russia was an honest and reliable partner that would supply the right amount of natural gas while Europe persisted in its fanciful green dreams of running their economies on windmills.
It’s quite a fall for Boris Johnson, who spent his salad days writing car reviews for Britain’s edition of GQ magazine and making guest appearances on the BBC’s motoring-themed show until last year, when he “spelt out the revolt against modernity that lies at the heart of climate-change alarmism when he used his speech at COP to complain about the invention of the steam engine. That contraption, which gave rise to the Industrial Revolution itself, was a ‘doomsday device’ that started the clock ticking on the eco-calamity we currently face, he madly said. And this is a PM who claims to stand up for British history and British greatness.”