Archive for 2022

JIM TREACHER: Kathy Griffin Finds Another Way to Get Attention.

The best part is that Musk wants to charge these hysterical ninnies $8 a month to maintain and improve their blue check verification. So they’re protesting by impersonating him, which demonstrates that the verification system they cherish needs to be overhauled. They just proved him right. They’re too dumb to know how dumb they are.

I’ve never gotten verified on Twitter, incidentally, and I’ve yet to be convinced I should even try. But given the fact that I was once suspended just for using the wrong emojis to address Bradley Manning, it’s great to watch these dummies protest being banned for purposely flouting the rules.

It’s difficult to put into words how deeply satisfying all this is. Every bit of it. The downfall of the censors, the seething at a billionaire who doesn’t spend his wealth the way the libs demand, the lamentation of the journos and celebrities who thought a little blue check made them special… the whole nine yardbirds.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Musk’s strategy at Twitter might work at a startup, but Twitter is a mature company in an extremely competitive market, with little prospects for growth.” Musk’s version of Twitter could flameout at some point, but for the moment, it’s fun watching D-list celebrities and DNC-MSM journalists melting down over losing their special status.

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE: Democratic Candidate issues apology after father alleged he lied about credentials. “Clyde Shavers, the Democratic candidate for Washington state’s 10th legislative district, has claimed to be an officer serving on a nuclear submarine in the Navy for eight years. In a letter, his father wrote, ‘Clyde was never a submarine officer, not even for a day.'”

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro. #CommissionEarned

HARRY OLSEN: My predictions for the 2022 midterm elections.

American politics has been a stalemate between the two parties for nearly 30 years. Every time it looks as though one party gains a lasting upper hand — Democrats after 2008 and 2020, Republicans after 1994 and 2010 — its legislative overreach sends it back to parity.

Tuesday’s midterm elections could be a continuation of that political trench warfare. Inflation, crime, progressive attempts at overreach and a general sense that President Biden is not up to the job will likely deliver a surprisingly large victory to Republicans. I predict the GOP will win the national popular vote by about 5.5 points, likely gaining between 31 and 40 House seats in the process. I also expect it will retake control of the Senate, gaining two to four seats.

But the GOP’s victory could also represent a chance for the United States to finally end its political quagmire. Republicans will gain support in almost every voter demographic, but they will make especially large inroads among Hispanics and middle-income suburbanites. These voters are not yet Republicans, but they increasingly recognize they are not modern Democrats.

My predictions are more optimistic for Republicans than those of most other prognosticators. The Cook Political Report, for example, predicts the GOP will win between 12 and 25 House seats, and FiveThirtyEight’s model forecasts the Senate as a dead heat. Those estimates and others underestimate the effect of a political truism: Midterms are always a referendum on the president.

Two things.

First, don’t get cocky.

Second, Olsen warns the GOP Congress not to indulge in “base-pleasing partisan overreach” or it will lose its majority again.

I’d argue that the GOP keeps losing its majority because it keeps failing to live up to its base-pleasing promises about smaller government.

FASTER, PLEASE: Team uncovers potential secret to viral resistance. “Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have unearthed a secret that may explain why some people are able to resist viral infections, having screened the immune systems of women exposed to hepatitis C (HCV) through contaminated anti-D transfusions given over 40 years ago in Ireland. The extraordinary work, just published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, has wide-ranging implications from improving our fundamental understanding of viral resistance to the potential design of therapies to treat infected people. . . . ‘These findings are important as resistance to infection is very much an overlooked outcome following viral outbreak, primarily because identifying resistant individuals is very difficult—since they do not become sick after viral exposure, they wouldn’t necessarily know that they were exposed.'”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: This Is Our Job.

What do you think will happen on Election Night?

The first thing I’m sure of is that I’ll spend all night drunkblogging the results — just me, a couple of screens, a well-worn keyboard, and as much strong drink as it takes to make sense of a crazy night.

Another thing I’m sure of is that there will be some surprise results, and I’m confident that most of the surprises will trend Red rather than Blue.

The last thing I’m sure of is that it won’t all be over before most sane people — and even some of the crazy ones like me — have finally given up and passed out.

There will be races too close to call, and precincts too dirty to trust. There will be shenanigans.

Much more at the link.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO AMPUTATE: Wisconsin hospice nurse charged with felony abuse after amputating a patients foot without a doctor’s order, police say. “Mary K. Brown, 38, a former hospice nurse who was responsible for taking care of the victim at Spring Valley Health and Rehab Center in Spring Valley, Wisconsin, was charged with physical abuse of an elder person, intentionally causing great bodily harm, and mayhem, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by local news outlet WQOW.”

WELL, GOOD: Turkey Bitchslaps Russia. “Basically Ukraine managed to hit (but not sink) some Russian warships in Sevastopol harbor with some waterborne drones, and Putin threw a hissy fit, declaring the Ukrainian grain export deal was off. Turkey promptly went “No it isn’t” and said exports would continue with Turkish flags on the grain ships in question, causing Russia to back down and rejoin the deal pretty much immediately.”

Much more at the link.

JIM CLYBURN IS NOT TAKING THE MIDTERMS WELL: On Friday, The House Majority Whip told Fox News:

“This country is on track to repeat what happened in Germany when it was the greatest democracy going, when it elected a chancellor that then co-opted the media,” Clyburn told Fox News Digital on Thursday. “This past president called the press the enemy of the people. That is a bunch of crap. And that is what’s going on in this country.”

Clyburn is obviously echoing and amplifying the closing message the Democrats have been selling and that the public has not been buying. And in the belief that people tuning out your message must not be listening hard enough, Clyburn, the Democrats, and the MSM have decided to scream the same BS even louder hoping that sheer volume will make you relent.

* * * * * * * *

What struck me about Clyburn’s statements was not his once again proving Godwin right. Nazi analogies are frequent; mostly from the Left these days, but conservatives do it too. I have done it, although I am hardly proud of it. It is just so easy. It also always fails to persuade. Even if the literal Nazis came back tomorrow it would take a while for people to take a description of them as Nazis seriously because the reference is so overused.

What struck me instead was the praising of the Weimar Republic as “the greatest democracy going.” Wait? What? Huh? Where did he get that?

The Weimar Republic is remembered as utterly failed. Hyperinflation, the complete collapse during the Depression, moral depravity.

I guess we have one (moral depravity), are headed toward two (hyperinflation), and by God I hope to avoid the third, but fear we may not.

Is that what Clyburn actually believes was the greatest democracy going? Better than the United States? A Republic that collapsed after a bit more than a decade, and one that wound up with Hitler being appointed dictator by the president,, due to the utter failure of the government and collapse of support?

Yesterday, Clyburn went even further, telling Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream, “Losing this democracy could very well be the end of the world:”

“I mean, what can you say? The guy said what he said, then immediately denied saying it. After Bream gave Clyburn an opportunity to correct his lie, he claimed he didn’t say what he said, and instead dropped the Hitler card on Trump. Then, as if his appearance wasn’t already self-demolished, Bream read Clyburn the direct quote, and he went off the rails as if it were Shannon Bream’s fault.”

I guess it has something to do with “election deniers,” a topic Clyburn knows quite a bit about:

Karl Rove reminded viewers on Fox News Channel during an appearance on Wednesday that if it were not for the help he received from an election denier, Joe Biden wouldn’t be president today. Just hours before Biden’s spur-of-the-moment address to the nation about the threat to democracy that voting for Republicans will cause, Rove brought up a little nugget from the past about Rep. James Clyburn.

Clyburn was an election denier before election deniers were cool. Rove said that in 2005, Clyburn promoted a conspiracy theory that voting machines were switching votes for Democrat John Kerry to Republican incumbent President George W. Bush.

And he was far from alone!

TRANSGENDER ‘TREATMENTS’ FOR KIDS ARE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT ON THE BALLOT IN TWO STATES, CRITICS WARN:

The transgender agenda appears to have weaseled its way onto the ballot in two states, but voters may not know it. Hidden in the language of two proposed state constitutional amendments is a “right” to transgender medical interventions that would undermine parental rights and make children vulnerable to “treatments” that would leave them scarred, stunted, and infertile, critics allege.

Michigan’s Proposal 3 would establish a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution. The proposal’s text says this “entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care” (emphasis added).

The state’s Planned Parenthood chapter has disputed the claim that this amendment to the Michigan Constitution would have any impact on what it calls “gender-affirming care for minors.”

Vermont’s Proposal 5, which would add a new Article 22 to the Vermont Constitution, states “that an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”

Read the whole thing.

RUY TEXEIRA: Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class: The party’s biggest challenge heading into the midterm elections is the erosion of its traditional base of support. Its base didn’t “erode,” it was ejected. The main bonding element among the Democrats’ leadership class is contempt — loudly expressed — for the working class and for “normie” voters in general.

Texeira:

America’s historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support. And not just among white voters. Not only has the emerging Democratic majority I once predicted failed to materialize, but many of the nonwhite voters who were supposed to deliver it are instead voting for Republicans.

This year, Democrats have chosen to run a campaign focused on three things: abortion rights, gun control, and safeguarding democracy—issues with strong appeal to socially liberal, college-educated voters. But these issues have much less appeal to working class voters.

Luxury beliefs don’t have mass market appeal. And it’s hard to build a majority based on contempt for, well, the majority.