Archive for 2022
May 31, 2022
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Male Stripping Group Received This Much in COVID Aid, Watchdog Reveals.
OLD AND BUSTED: Smell the Glove.
The New Hotness? Smell The Napalm: The Story Behind This Incredible Scene in Apocalypse Now (Video).
DISPATCHES FROM THE SWAMP: The stench from the Sussmann verdict.
The stench surrounding the judge, the defendant, the biased jury, and the FBI ought to outrage the public, no matter who they supported for president. In fact, the public has been kept in the dark throughout the trial because the media refuses to report on it. (Expect them to now shout the “not guilty” verdict from the rooftops because it supports their viewpoint.) When James Baker gave his devastating testimony, all three television networks devoted zero minutes to the trial. The New York Times said nothing. They did the same thing the next day, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager dropped the bombshell in court that Hillary herself authorized the campaign to spread the Alfa-Bank-Trump story to the media. Again, crickets.
Read the whole thing.
WHY IS THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Uh-Oh: Black Staffers Leaving White House in Droves. “The Most Diverse White House EVER™ has a big problem: There’s been a mass exodus of black staffers, with some complaining about a lack of opportunity and mentoring for minority employees. According to Politico, ‘At least 21 Black staffers have left the White House since late last year or are planning to leave soon. Some of those who remain say it’s no wonder why: They describe a work environment with little support from their superiors and fewer chances for promotion.’ They’re calling it ‘Blaxit’—not to be confused with Blexit, an exit of black people from the Democrat party, headed by conservative commentator Candace Owens.”
THE MARTIAN HARDWARE HAS HAPPILY OVERPERFORMED: Ingenuity Was Supposed to Have Only 5 Flights. Watch Its Glorious 25th Flight on Mars!
I THOUGHT CLIMATE WAS CONTROLLED BY ANCIENT SUVs: Scientists shine new light on role of Earth’s orbit in the fate of ancient ice sheets. “In a new study published today in the journal Science, the team from Cardiff University has been able to pinpoint exactly how the tilting and wobbling of the Earth as it orbits around the Sun has influenced the melting of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2 million years or so. Scientists have long been aware that the waxing and waning of massive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets results from changes in the geometry of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.”
VEGAS CHAPELS ALL SHOOK UP BY ELVIS LIKENESS CRACKDOWN:
Elvis might be leaving the buildings.
The company that lords over the King’s image and likeness is cracking down on Las Vegas chapels that book Elvis-themed weddings and otherwise embrace his persona. Authentic Brands Group (ABG), which licenses Elvis Presley-related merchandise, has issued a cease-and-desist letter dated May 19 to several Las Vegas chapels.
“This couldn’t hit at a worse time. It’s not a good thing,” Clark County Clerk Lynn Goya, who has presided over Las Vegas’ wedding marketing campaign, said Monday. “It might destroy a portion of our wedding industry. A number of people might lose their livelihood.”
ABG is a licensing company that manages the estates of Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali, and its holdings include about 50 consumer brands (Shaquille O’Neal is among its leading investors). In this instance, ABG intends to stop the unauthorized use of (quoting from the company’s document) “Elvis Presley’s name, likeness, voice image, and other elements of Elvis Presley’s persona in advertisements, merchandise, and otherwise.”
ABG specifies “Elvis, “Elvis Presley,” “and “The King of Rock and Roll” as its protected trademarks.
ABG officials have not responded to an email for response or comment.
Issued and signed by an ABG attorney, the letter states that if an “infringing chapel” does not comply with the terms of the document within a week, the company’s counsel would advise seeking legal action. That date would have been May 27, or last Friday. As of Monday, no chapels have reported they have been contacted further by ABG.
But what will happen to the roadshow edition of Elvis Presley’s Coat?
NBC NEWS: BIDEN ‘RATTLED’ BY POLLING, ANGRY HE’S NOT GETTING ENOUGH CREDIT. Link safe; goes to Guy Benson of Townhall:
(3) This is highly sympathetic spin that is ultimately self-defeating:
Any assessment of Biden’s performance needs to take into account the epic challenges he faced from the start. “They came in with the most daunting set of challenges arguably since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only to then be hit by a perfect storm of crises, from Ukraine to inflation to the supply chain to baby formula,” said Chris Whipple, the author of a book about White House chiefs of staff who is now writing a book about the Biden presidency. “What’s next? Locusts?” Biden wonders the same thing. “I’ve heard him say recently that he used to say about President Obama’s tenure that everything landed on his desk but locusts, and now he understands how that feels,” a White House official said.Biden inherited problems, as every president does. Of course, his argument to voters was that he and his team would fix them, by dint of their competence and doing the opposite of Donald Trump. He wanted this job. He got it. On a number of fronts, from COVID to the economy, to immigration, he could have achieved better outcomes my simply doing nothing, or close to it. He also inherited COVID vaccines (despite false White House claims), an economy just waiting to rebound, and some successful illegal immigration mitigation policies. He and his team have mismanaged pandemic-related spending, harmed millions of students by bowing to teachers unions’ fake science, overheated the economy with inflationary spending that some Democratic economists warned against, and turbocharged the border crisis. Afghanistan was another self-inflicted disgrace, the sheer incompetence of which may have informed Vladimir Putin’s miscalculation in Ukraine. Wondering aloud about outside forces like the plague is embarrassing.
Read the whole thing. If that language of “the most daunting set of challenges arguably since Franklin D. Roosevelt” quoted above feel like deja vu, that’s not surprising, since it’s a classic bit of Democrat spin — George H.W. Bush’s mild recession of ’91-’92 was described as “The worst economy in 50 years” by candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign, to cast Papa Bush as the reincarnation of Herbert Hoover. Time magazine portrayed incoming-President Obama as FDR for their November 24th, 2008 cover, with the headline, “The New New Deal.”
And speaking of Obama, as Noah Rothman of Commentary writes, “Consciously or otherwise, the Biden administration is channeling the Obama White House’s self-indulgence:” Joe Biden’s Presidency Reaches the Self-Pity Stage.
“Now, let’s face it,” Barack Obama told a group of Democratic donors at roughly the same point in his presidency, “this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.” In public and private, the former president regularly lamented the circumstances that befell his presidency—from the ploddingly slow economic recovery to the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. In his own telling, Obama was a victim of circumstance. His pursuit of higher tax rates, support for a burdensome regulatory environment, and the ill-considered withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq failed to earn him sufficient praise.
The former president bristled at the GOP’s critique of his administration’s profligacy. “It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini, and all that stuff, and then just as you’re sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab,” Obama told another group of donors. The blame for America’s ballooning debt, which just about doubled under his watch, could be laid at the feet of structural forces, reckless actors in the private sector, and, of course, Republicans. Obama and his team convinced themselves that they could talk Americans into believing their objectively unenviable economic circumstances weren’t that bad after all. Biden’s team seems to have bought into the same myth.
Obama was similarly ill-served by his staff. When the president declared that “the private sector is doing fine” in the summer of 2012 (only to later admit that “the economy is not doing fine”), Obama’s staff did their best to suggest the president had not said what the nation heard him say. From “you didn’t build that” to Obama’s “hot mic” moment confessing to nominal Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” in his second term, the president’s aides (and much of the journalistic establishment) were quick to “clean up” and “contextualize” those remarks. Before White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was the subject of much second-guessing, it was Rahm Emanuel who was failing the president.
Every president inherits a set of circumstances, some of which are more advantageous than others. Every president encounters unforeseen challenges. Every president is opposed by the party out of power. And although Biden has a unique talent for malapropisms, every president relies on his communications staffers to mop up after a gaffe or misstatement. The Biden White House isn’t uniquely beset by the forces of history. Indeed, so much of what the president and those in his orbit resent are conditions they either contributed to or incepted into existence.
As Ace of Spades notes, “The magnitude of Joe Biden’s failures is now so large that even Joe Biden is beginning to grasp it. That’s how big a thing this is. Even f’n’ Joe Biden gets it now. He now realizes that the midterms will be a historic repudiation, and that 2024 will probably be one as well. And that he will go down as a worse President than Jimmy Carter. So that means it’s time for Pre-criminations. It’s time for Joe Biden to start trashing his staff and blaming them for his failures.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN EMPATHY:
● Shot: Sunny Hostin [of The View] Defends Man Who Smeared Cake on Mona Lisa.
—Mediaite, today.
● Chaser: Hostin: Black/Latino Republicans Are an ‘Oxymoron,’ ‘I Don’t Understand.’
—NewsBusters, May 6th.
● Hangover: Hostin Declares All GOP Voters ‘Biggest Domestic Threat’ to America.
—NewsBusters, May 19th.
THIS WILL GO WELL, I’M SURE: OPRF to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year.
Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators will require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.
School board members discussed the plan called “Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading” at a meeting on May 26, presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.
In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments, according to the plan.
These are the Crazy Years.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Chinese Lockdowns Force Toyota to Cut Production Again.
READER FAVORITE: Dual Dash Cam with Built-in GPS. #CommissionEarned
D.C. JURY NULLIFICATION? Durham’s flop: Jury acquits Hillary lawyer in Russiagate.
I’m worried that people are going to start doubting the rule of law.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Worries about coming ObamaCare premium spikes intensify.
Democrats are growing increasingly concerned that a spike in ObamaCare premiums could hit this fall right before the midterm elections.
The party is already facing major headwinds from inflation and President Biden’s lagging approval ratings, and a health care premium spike would add a major blow.The American Rescue Plan signed by President Biden last year temporarily increased financial assistance under ObamaCare, but that increase is set to expire at the end of this year, causing an increase in premiums for enrollees in the health law unless Congress acts.
Notices about the premium increases would be sent out shortly before the midterm elections, adding political pain for Democrats in addition to the higher premiums for consumers.
“Right before the election, people would get notices of big premium increases, and that will certainly not reflect well on Democrats,” said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
They’re running out of other people’s money.
WHY IS CHINA SUDDENLY WARNING ABOUT the danger of U.S. hacker attacks?
I tend to read everything like this through a lens of Xi trying to shutdown avenues for a coup, whatever the ostensible reason.
VICTORIA TAFT: The FBI Is Also on Trial in Sussmann Russia Collusion Case.
IF I SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK IT’LL PROBABLY BE BLOCKED AS “DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION:” Researchers identify rise in Guillain-Barré syndrome following AstraZeneca vaccine.
OR AS EGYPTIANS CALL IT, RECENT HISTORY: Archaeologists in Egypt dig up artifacts that date back 2,500 years.
OLD AND BUSTED: “One Riot, One Ranger.”
The New Hotness? The Uvalde Police Force Called For Backup Last Week From Texas Law Enforcement — To Protect Themselves From The Public.
TO BE FAIR, LIES AND IDIOCY ARE HIS TWO AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Biden Wants You to Know the Economy Is Super and if You Don’t Agree You’re a Moron.