JOHN HINDERAKER: Who’s Wagging Whose Dog? “What follows is pure speculation, but I have had a sneaking suspicion for a while that the Ukraine crisis is ready-made for an international ‘solution’ that benefits a number of leaders politically while avoiding any serious down-side. Like a war, for example. That suspicion is strengthened by the positive turn that reporting on Ukraine has suddenly taken.”
Archive for 2022
February 14, 2022
ANNALS OF LAME EXCUSES: Department of Energy: There is no time to respond to questions of Granholm’s ethics violations because… global warming. “Last week Granholm was at the center of a growing storm of ethics complaints about her personal financial transactions. When the Washington Free Beacon reached out to her office for comment, a spokesperson said there isn’t time to handle such frivolous matters. They are completely bogged down with the whole global warming crisis. I’d like to say this person was joking, but, sadly, no. Welcome to Biden’s America.”
Biden’s America is a place where crooked officials do crooked stuff and their underlings offer lame excuses secure in the knowledge that the crooked press won’t ask awkward questions.
HMM: Judge Tosses Sarah Palin’s Defamation Case Against New York Times.
A federal judge on Monday threw out a defamation case brought by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against The New York Times over an editorial the paper published in 2017.
The editorial, titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” had incorrectly connected Palin to the 2011 mass shooting that left six people dead and Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) seriously wounded. The onetime Republican vice presidential nominee claims the editorial damaged her reputation and is seeking compensation in New York federal court.
As the jury was deliberating on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that Palin’s suit should be tossed because her legal team failed to produce substantial evidence that the paper knowingly and recklessly published false information about her.
Despite his ruling, Rakoff told the jury to keep deliberating to a verdict, and noted that an appeal in the case was very likely.
Still, the case could have broader impacts on press freedoms. In a country where defamation cases between public figures and major news outlets rarely go to trial, Palin’s case could end up having crucial implications for freedom of the press. If she appeals and the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, the justices could potentially revisit a bedrock legal precedent.
See, it’s not just a legal precedent, it’s a bedrock legal precedent, because it’s good for the press.
Related: Rethinking Libel for the Twenty-First Century.
UPDATE: This is great for me, because if my article is going to have an impact on appellate courts, there has to be an appeal. And Judge Rakoff has pretty much guaranteed that there will be an appeal. Thanks, Jed!
PRIME MINISTER ZOOLANDER KEEPS DIGGING: BREAKING UP WITH TRUDEAU! International Left and Right Agree: PM is a disaster.
OPEN THREAD: Keep hope alive.
THE HIGH PRICE OF BEING RIGHT ABOUT COVID:
This past month, [Jennifer Sey was informed that it had become “untenable” for her to stay on at Levi’s. She was offered a $1 million severance package, but she refused to take it, knowing that if she did, she would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring her from speaking about why she was leaving the company.
She lost it all: her career, the chance to become Levi’s next CEO, which was well within her grasp, and the money she was owed — all because she questioned one aspect of the COVID narrative and refused to stay silent.
Here’s another example. Eric Flannery, a veteran who owns a burger joint in Washington, D.C., decided that he would not enforce the city’s vaccine mandate, which required all businesses to ask patrons to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 when officials implemented it last month. His reasoning was simple: “I’m not a government agent, and quite frankly, it’s not my job to check your personal medical history for you to come in,” he said. “I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t have any opinions on the vaccine. You should talk with your medical doctor and make an informed decision on your own and decide that.”
As a result, Flannery’s bar, the Big Board, was slapped with multiple fines, and its liquor license was revoked. Ultimately, Flannery was ordered to stop doing business altogether by the D.C. Health Department. And last Thursday, D.C.’s Assistant Attorney General Anthony Celo demanded that D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration make its suspension of the Big Board’s liquor license permanent, arguing its “continued operation places the community at risk.”
Just four days later, D.C. announced it would lift the vaccine mandate.
Read the whole thing — and don’t let the left forget its stance as it dials up the gaslighting between now and November: Democrats Will Pivot to a ‘Return to Normalcy’ in Biden’s State of the Union Speech. “Not since the collapse of the Hindenburg Line in 1918 have such bitterly held positions been abandoned so quickly,” as the BattleSwarm blog noted recently.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Brilliant: L.A. Schoolchildren Dress Up As Super Bowl Celebs So They Won’t Have To Wear Masks.
WHAT ARE THE DEEP SEVENS UP TO NOW? ‘Invisible’ earthquake caused mysterious 2021 tsunami, scientists find. “Some tsunami-generating earthquakes are invisible to our monitoring systems.”
OUT ON A LIMB: No, Biden, Ending Mask Mandates Isn’t ‘Premature.’
It’s a pretty rich stance by Brandon’s handers, since as Ed Morrissey notes, “The disconnect between the White House and other Democrats executives just landed on Joe Biden’s doorstep — literally. Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser announced earlier today that they will stop requiring indoor venues to verify vaccination before allowing entry. And while Biden insists that mask-mandate rollbacks are ‘premature,’ Bowser pledged that the district’s mandates will be ‘rolled back’ in two weeks[.]”
THE PROPAGANDA WAR ON THE CANADIAN TRUCKERS:
It is the truckers and other workers who have felt the brunt of Covid restrictions, while the Zooming upper classes have been content to stay indoors and get their supplies delivered to them – by truckers. Until recently, the Canadian government had classified truckers as ‘essential’ workers and therefore exempt from vaccine mandates. Nevertheless, some 90 per cent of them got vaccinated voluntarily. Yet Trudeau picked this moment to order all truckers to be vaccinated if they want to cross back into Canada from the US. It’s not surprising the mandate triggered a backlash.
Throughout this crisis, Trudeau has played the role of an aloof elitist to a tee. He has dismissed the protesters as a ‘small fringe minority’ who hold ‘unacceptable’ views. By declaring them Nazis and Confederates, Trudeau has labelled the truckers as a foreign enemy within. Displaying a stunning lack of self-awareness, Trudeau tweeted that truckers ‘don’t have the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives’ – when his restrictions over the past two years have done more harm to the economy and liberty than anything the truckers have done. One fellow Liberal Party MP, Joël Lightbound, rightly criticised Trudeau and Canada’s political class for being out of touch with working Canadians: ‘Those making the decisions seem at times to have been blind to the fact that we’re not all equal [under] lockdowns [and] that not everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at the cottage.’ (The ‘cottage’ is an allusion to the place where Trudeau escaped to when the trucker protests first flared up.)
I wonder if there will be a strike.
WELL, GOOD: Durham probe has ‘accelerated,’ with more people ‘cooperating,’ coming before grand jury.
Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation has “accelerated,” and more people are “cooperating” and coming before the federal grand jury than has previously been reported, a source familiar with the probe told Fox News.
The source told Fox News Monday that Durham has run his investigation “very professionally,” and, unlike Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his activities, and witness information and cooperation status are rarely, if ever, leaked.
Well, to be fair, Mueller had to have leaks because he didn’t have anything else.
ACE: Hollywood Is Dying and Jessica Chastain is the Grisly Angel of Death Dragging It to the Grave.
And speaking of Woke movie-making: Jessica Chastain’s latest vanity project, her attempt to prove that she can be an Action Movie Star, bombed abysmally, taking in an incredibly embarrassing $4.3 million at the box office in its opening weekend.
After five full weeks at the box office, plus an additional weekend, it took in $28 million worldwide. It’s out on PPV now so that about wraps up its box office take.
The Spider-Man movie is almost at $1.8 billion globally so this can’t be blamed on covid.
Below, the trailer.
* * * * * * * *
Who is this for?, Nolte asks.
Well, it’s for Jessica Chastain. Apparently she conceived of the project expressly as a culture war vehicle — she wanted to “challenge the notion that the action-spy genre belonged to men.”
That’s not an artistic motivation. It’s a purely political one.
It’s not that she has a love of spy action films, it’s not that she had a story idea, it’s not that she had this “idea burning inside me” — she just saw something boys were doing and said “girls should plant a flag there to claim territory from the boys.”
That’s about as far from a creative impulse as you can get. It’s not even a money-grubbing impulse — which could result in good art, because good art will often produce money.
No, this is a spiteful impulse, an impulse to denigrate and beat up on men — while also demanding they come give you money to see your movie.
As Charlie’s Angels did a few years ago.
The (female) writer kind of gives away that spiteful motivation. It’s not about the story, or the genre, or the love of the action-spy format.
Didn’t The Avengers, Modesty Blaise, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. “challenge the notion that the action-spy genre belonged to men” — over half a century ago? (Without alienating half the potential audience in the process.)
MICHAEL WALSH: ‘The Whole World is Watching.’
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has involved the 1988 “Emergencies Act,” which allows the central government to take “special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times” in order to to crack down on the protest.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday he will activate rarely used emergency powers, including cutting off financing, to end protests that have shut some border crossings and paralyzed parts of the capital. The government, saying the protests were damaging the economy and Canada’s reputation as a reliable trading partner, introduced sweeping measures to support police forces and bring crowdfunding platforms under terror financing oversight.
The “Freedom Convoy” protests, started by Canadian truckers opposing a COVID-19 vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, have drawn people opposed to Trudeau’s policies on everything from pandemic restrictions to a carbon tax. “The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety,” Trudeau told a news conference. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”
“Dangerous activities” such as peaceful protest… not to mention “temporary measures” like “two weeks to flatten the curve…”
* * * * * * * *
Back in the day, the comic strip Pogo, by Walt Kelly, was immensely popular. Perhaps its most famous moment came on April 22, 1970—the first Earth Day—when Kelly drew a poster depicting his title character, a possum, sadly contemplating a trash-strewn landscape and observing, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Left loved that sentiment then, and they love it now. Except that the players have switched sides.
And this time, the whole world is watching
Read the whole thing.
Related: Trudeau Goes Nuclear: Invokes Never-Before-Used Emergencies Act to Crush Freedom Convoy.
NOWADAYS, THIS COMMERCIAL FOR RADIO FREE EUROPE could be for Breitbart or OANN or Fox . . . or InstaPundit:
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. preparing to withdraw all personnel from Ukraine capital within 48 hours, sources say.
PRIME MINISTER ZOOLANDER STAYS TRUE TO TYPE: Trudeau Goes Nuclear: Invokes Never-Before-Used Emergencies Act to Crush Freedom Convoy.
The obvious next move is for the truckers to go home for a well-deserved rest of, say, a couple of weeks.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Military Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) Lives Up To its Acronym.
The idea that “diversity, equity, and inclusion are necessities in U.S. military” is maybe the stupidest thing ever asserted by the Biden regime, which is saying something. You sit back and look at a pronouncement like this, which was apparently written and disseminated on purpose, and you really have to marvel. If the Pentagon had reincarnated the greatest failures in all of military history to work together to come up with something so transcendently dumb that it would have made Varro, the dumbass Roman consul who decided “Yeah, Cannae is just the place to show that uppity Hannibal fellow what for – see how weak his center is!”, look like, well, Hannibal.
It would be funny if this kind of unserious idiocy was not going to get scores of our troops killed. In fact, scores of our troops have already gotten killed through gross incompetence, 13 of them in Afghanistan during Operation Utter Failure. And more will die. War is serious business and in America, it is being overseen by fatally unserious people obsessed with liberal wine women fetishes like “diversity, inclusion and equity” (DIE) instead of combat readiness. They will put the “die” in “DIE.”
I wish I had some good news for you, but there isn’t any. We have three more years of this diapered dementite as our alleged commander-in-chief and he’s too stupid and too stubborn to change. It’s bad enough when a smart, savvy man becomes senile, but Joe Biden started off as a moron, so he’s already got a huge head start as he degenerates into drooling incontinence. And our enemies know it. Let’s review a short and incomplete list of places our Pentagon, under his leadership, will lose wars during the next three years thanks to him and his incompetent flunkies.
“Diapered dementite.” Heh. Tell us how you really feel, Kurt.
I HAVEN’T HAD TIME TO READ IT TODAY, but there’s a new report out on critical race theory and social justice thinking in Tennessee universities.
I THINK IT’S LIKE A JOE BIDEN SPEECH, IT JUST SEEMS LIKE FOREVER: Does Outer Space End – Or Does the Universe Go On Forever?
JON ADLER: Why Efforts to Throw Rep Cawthorn Off the Ballot Are Likely Unconstitutional. Nothing the left wants is unconstitutional. It’s a rule.
FLASHBACK: “For a nation to flourish, it needs a political class possessed of self-discipline, and one that values the long-term interests of the nation. We don’t have one of those. So hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
KEEP ON TRUCKING: DC mayor: We’re canceling mandated vaccination checks tomorrow.
ROCKIN’ IN THE STREAMING WORLD: Well, Well, Well … Look Who’s Back on Spotify.
UPDATE (From Ed): Neil’s found a new grouse to keep his name in the press for an extra 15 minutes: Neil Young Now Calling for Boycott of Banking.
“Stop supporting banks contributing to the the [sic] mass fossil fuel destruction of earth,” says the crusty Canuck rocker on his website, calling on people to pull their savings from JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, four of the largest banks in North America. “Please join me and move the power of your money away from the damage causers or you will unintentionally be one of them,” Young says.
Why stop there? Surely just about every bank is, by Young’s reckoning, involved in fossil fuels in one way or another, as are all of the fossil-fuel companies and all of the companies that use fossil fuels, which is to say, just about every company. Young might want to take a peek at, for instance, how vinyl records and CDs are made: both from petroleum. As with many other boycotters, the only logical endpoint here for Young to boycott himself.
As recently as December, Young was quoted as saying he had no plans to tour:
His most recent in-person show, according to Setlist.fm, dates back to a pre-pandemic appearance in September 2019. Young set a return date for April at Farm Aid but decided to cancel.
“It was too soon,” Young admitted. “I just I told my buddies there, Farm Aid, I said, ‘I can’t do it. It gives me a sick feeling.'”
His chief concern remains watching in horror as one of his concerts turns into a super-spreader event.
“First of all, I charge a fortune to play. Whatever it is, even the lowest-priced tickets are ridiculous,” Young said. “So, people come to this thing that they really want to see because they paid a lot of money, and they’ve been looking forward to it for so long. And then they all go there – what if something goes wrong?”
When and if Young does decide to tour again, please pay no attention to his quote about “mass fossil fuel destruction” when his roadies load up the semis full of amps and gear.
(Updated and bumped.)