Archive for 2022

REPORT: Here’s What the Buffalo Shooter’s Alleged Manifesto Actually Says.

Others have tried to link the shooter in a more general way to right-wing politics. For example, the so-called conservative S.E. Cupp of CNN tried to blame “right-wing extremism” for the shooting.

But here’s what the manifesto says about the shooter’s politics:

Did you always hold these views?

When I was 12 I was deep into communist ideology, talk to anyone from my old highschool and ask about me and you will hear that. From age 15 to 18 however, I consistently moved farther to the right. On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist.

So, the shooter describes himself as “authoritarian left-wing,” but the left and S.E. Cupp are trying to blame “right-wing extremism.” Okay?

* * * * * * *

Later in the manifest, the shooter insists, “I would prefer to call myself a populist. But you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want, I wouldn’t disagree with you.” He also repeatedly attacks capitalists, and rejected the conservative label because, he wrote, “conservativism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”

But let’s not pretend that, assuming the manifesto is legitimate, the rhetoric espoused in its pages means the shooter cannot be legitimately aligned with either major political party or political movement. While I would argue that the views expressed in the manifesto echo rhetoric of radical leftism, the manifesto is full of nonsense and garbage that is at times inconsistent. The people who were quick to exploit the situation to attack Fox News and conservatives were wrong and should be ashamed of themselves.

More here: As Twitter Takes to Blaming Tucker Carlson for Shooting, Suspect’s Manifesto Confirms He’s No Fan of Fox News.

BEFORE THE BABYLON BEE: Orwell’s Humor. The British writer confronted totalitarianism with determination but also with wit and irony.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: A Record Number of Drug-Related Deaths. According to new CDC numbers, the death toll rose 15 percent last year after jumping 30 percent in 2020.

JAMES BOND DIRECTOR CARA FUKUNAGA ‘ASKED TWO TWIN SISTERS FOR A HOT TUB THREESOME AT THEIR PENNSYLVANIA HOME’ AS HE IS ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND GROOMING BY THREE ACTRESSES:

Fukunaga has been accused of sexual harassment and ‘grooming’ by three young actresses.

The 44-year-old, who directed Daniel Craig‘s final outing as 007 in No Time to Die, allegedly left one woman so traumatised that she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The allegations come after Mr Fukunaga posted a story on his Instagram page declaring his support for women’s rights in light of a leaked document revealing that the US Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v Wade, a ruling which legalised abortion in America.

He wrote: ‘The Supreme Court is about to push us one step closer to war with ourselves… by legitimizing a war against women’s rights.’*

One of his accusers is actress and professional skateboarder Rachelle Vinberg, 23, who says she met Mr Fukunaga when he directed her in a commercial the day after she turned 18 and became of legal age. The pair began a consensual sexual relationship which ended when she was 21.

Ms Vinberg accused him of grooming and abusing her, writing on Instagram: ‘So he posted this today. And it p****s me off cause he literally doesn’t care about women. He only traumatizes them. I spent years being scared of him. Man’s a groomer and has been doing this for years. Beware women.’

She claimed Mr Fukunaga told her their relationship, which was ‘completely fully intimate’, had to be kept secret and that he introduced her as his cousin, niece or sister when they were in public.

Ms Vinberg, who posted pictures of herself with the director, said: ‘I tried to reach out to him in the past about how he made me feel and he’s never taken accountability, he’s basically brushed me off.’

She said the experience left her so traumatised she remains in therapy and has been diagnosed with PTSD. Two other women, twins Hannah and Cailin Loesch, met him on the set of Netflix’s 2018 drama Maniac when they were 20, and say they had a three-year ‘hot-and-cold relationship’ with him.

* Flashback to John Nolte last year: ‘No Time to Die’ Director Smears Sean Connery’s Bond as Rapist.

Cary Fukunaga, director of the upcoming 007 feature No Time to Die, is running around smearing Sean Connery’s James Bond as a rapist.

“Is it Thunderball or Goldfinger where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” Fukunaga rhetorically asked the far-left Hollywood Reporter during an interview. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”

Well, of course, it wouldn’t fly today, you goddamn simpleton. But the only reason it wouldn’t fly today is because we now live in a world where everything is rape. Look at a woman wrong; it’s rape. Some woman later regrets her life choices; it’s rape. Micro-aggressions are rape. Everything is rape except when Joe Biden is credibly accused of rape.

* * * * * * * *

You know, it’s not even the sexless prudishness that bothers me as much as it’s fascist assholes like Fukanaga deliberately looking to terrify artists to behave within his fascist boundaries. And that he does so by smearing art is especially galling. And that’s what Thunderball is, it’s art, and in this briefest of brief subplots, it is art with a legitimate, complicated, and fascinating message.

And I say that as someone who doesn’t even agree with the message. Sexual liberation has only unfurled the horrors of abortion, STDs, and unwed mothers. Oh, and I also don’t believe people should have sex at work.

But because I’m not a goddamn simpleton like Fukanaga, I can also see beyond the text to the subtext. I can see that the overall message here is not just about jumping in bed with a relative stranger. It is also about questioning authority and not allowing others to control your behavior.

That’s a very good message, even if you disagree with the vehicle delivering it.

These people are not only uptight squares; they’re full-fledged morons.

Or perhaps, they’re employing a bit of misdirection in the hopes you won’t investigate their alleged role in industry that’s been called “a sex-grooming gang.”

BILL MAHER SLAMS BIDEN’S ‘DISINFORMATION GOVERNANCE BOARD:’ “Maher pointed out the inevitable way such an expansion of power will eventually be used against liberals and progressives. ‘Who do you think is going to be the Truth Czar in 2025?’ he asked, implying that it may very well be a Republican appointee if the GOP wins the White House.”

As Glenn wrote last year when Democrats stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, “Just as when Harry Reid got rid of the filibuster, they think the worm will never turn.”

THE LAST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD QUALIFIED TO SPEAK ABOUT “FIXING” JOURNALISM: First, note that in the UK they refer to on-air talent as “presenters,” not “journalists.” Good for them. In the US, we have had bimbos and mimbos like Diane Sawyer (ABC) and Stone Phillips (NBC) not only crow about being “journalists” but lecture others about how to do it. Never mind that (and I can’t disclose it for professional reasons) many of these “TV journalists” when sued for libel have signed affidavits and in deposition admitted that “they don’t research or write” and they essentially “just read what’s put in front of me.”

Even Rachel Maddow has pleaded in court and under oath that she was not presenting “facts” but instead “opinion.” Said the 9th Cir. in affirming dismissal of a libel case brought by One America News:

“[T]he MSNBC host’s statement that the far-right network was “paid Russian propaganda” was “an obvious exaggeration,” rather than an asserted fact.”

Oh, “an exaggeration. ” Never mind then. And these are the hypocrites who complain about Tucker Carlson’s passionate Op/Ed work as “disinformation? (Never mind that Carlson doesn’t make “facts” up out of thin air, more often than not has a provably solid basis for his “opinion.”)

So lets have look across the pond to see what our British cousins are saying to “fix” Journalism. Well, The Press Gazette, a pretty good publication covering all matters media in the UK noted that:

“BBC News presenter Ros Atkins has said that change in the news industry is a “necessity” if it wants to survive because “news is not a given in people’s lives” anymore.”

Atkins’ list of things to fix sound like the kind of self-serving well-paid-for psychobabble that passes for analysis of journalism in today’s graduate schools. To be fair, some of Atkin’s “suggestions” are in fact what I teach as primary elements in learning and doing journalism, such as identifying problems in the public interest and providing evidence clearly. If you need a “presenter” to tell you that mass media needs to do a better job at those things, I’d suggest that the education and training of young journalists is severely messed up.

But what I find most objectionable is the reliance on buzzwords that inculcate a culture of self-promotion rather than public service:

“The fourth thing on my list is making sure your work has a digital and social dimension. This might seem obvious, but it’s worth reiterating. If we’re spending money on journalism that has no digital dimension, we should ask hard questions about whether that is money well spent. And then if we’re making digital content, then we have a plan for how this will be shared by people,” he went on.”

His final comment is the dreariest example of gibberish so acceptable in journalism schools:

“The next thing I will say… is how are you going to tell a story… we can see the digital revolution as a distribution revolution, a different way of getting things to people but actually it’s a storytelling revolution,” Atkins said. “We’re living in an age of extreme creativity and in news, we need to match that. We should look far and wide for storytelling inspiration.”

I don’t even know what that means. And coming from the state-sponsored scandal factory that is the BBC, I find it more than a little, um, unself-aware that any of these clowns have the gumption to lecture anyone else.

I’m an old, I guess.

IT’S COME TO THIS: MSNBC Condemns ‘Talk About The Constitution’ In SCOTUS Draft Opinion.

Because the Supreme Court has “court” in its name, most people understand that it is an institution tasked with addressing legal issues, but MSNBC’s Ali Velshi and The New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolhatkar are not most people. On Velshi’s Saturday show, they condemned the Court for “talking about the Constitution” and “the right to life” while ignoring economic statistics.

* * * * * * * *

Kolhatkar then condemned the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, “You know, they spend 98 pages of their draft opinion talking about the Constitution, they talk about conception, and the right to life but there’s almost nothing about what this will look like in society other than a very cursory throwaway line about how there is widespread access to childcare, contraception, and paid family leave.”

After condemning the Court for doing its job and putting life before money, Kolhatkar added, “And, of course, those, as we know, are simply false assertions.”

It’s the return of The Raj Koothrappali Approach to Constitutional Law! As Glenn noted in 2013, “Here’s the problem with public officials — because that’s really [Louis Michael Seidman’s] audience — deciding to ignore the Constitution: If you’re the president, if you’re a member of Congress, if you are a TSA agent, the only reason why somebody should listen to what you say, instead of horsewhipping you out of town for your impertinence, is because you exercise power via the Constitution. If the Constitution doesn’t count, you don’t have any legitimate power. You’re a thief, a brigand, an officious busybody, somebody who should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail for trying to exercise power you don’t possess. So if we’re going to start ignoring the Constitution, I’m fine with that. The first part I’m going to start ignoring is the part that says, I have to do whatever they say.”

JACK DUNPHY: Dave Chappelle and the Death of Free Speech.

[L.A. D.A George] Gascón is currently facing a recall campaign, and his refusal to file felony charges against Lee has stoked outrage among his detractors, whose number now includes podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan took to Instagram to lament Gascón’s decision. “When you see that a person commits a clear crime,” says Rogan’s post, “and does it to one of the most loved performers alive, and does it in a very high profile public setting, and it gets captured on video, and you don’t charge that person for what they obviously did, it’s the kind of thing that makes people lose faith in law enforcement.”

Perhaps so, but loath as I am to defend Gascón, his rejection of felony charges in the Chappelle matter is entirely reasonable and indeed the only ethical choice. It may be true that Chappelle is, as Rogan describes him, one of the most beloved performers, and it is indisputably true that the Hollywood Bowl is a high-profile public setting, but neither of these factors weighs in the determination of the appropriate charge against Lee. He was arrested and booked under a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, but sober examination of the incident reveals his conduct did not match the elements of this crime under California law.

Yes, at the time Lee rushed the stage and assaulted Chappelle, he is said to have possessed a deadly weapon, to wit, a replica handgun built into which was a folding knife, but it was in a bag Lee carried and was never wielded at Chappelle or any of the men who pursued and subdued Lee backstage. Further, Chappelle was uninjured and continued his performance when the commotion settled. Not even the most aggressive, law-and-order prosecutor would file a felony charge given this set of facts.

Though Chappelle soldiered on and appeared unfazed, as his fans have come to expect, in his quiet moments since that day he surely must have wondered, as we all must have, what might have happened had Lee been more determined to cause him harm. Lee somehow carried his weapon through the Hollywood Bowl’s security measures, then to the foot of the stage and finally onto the stage itself. Lee easily could have inflicted a mortal wound on Chappelle with such a weapon. And consider that if a replica handgun passed through security with such apparent ease, what would have prevented Lee from bringing a real one?

Returning now to our aspiring comedian, what assurance does he have that one of his jokes will not ignite in some member of his audience a violent impulse similar to that which stirred within Isaiah Lee? If Dave Chappelle, with all his handlers and security team, can be attacked in front of 17,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, what chance does an unknown have at the local comedy club should some lunatic try to take him out?

Read the whole thing.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: AP: GOP’s new midterm attack: Blaming Biden for formula shortage.

Republicans aiming to retake control of Congress have already sharpened a message centering around blaming Democrats for high inflation, expensive gas, migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and violent crime in some cities.

But GOP leaders landed on an issue this week that it hopes could prove even more potent: tying President Joe Biden to a shortage in baby formula.

Parents are suddenly running into bare supermarket and pharmacy shelves in part because of ongoing supply disruptions and a recent safety recall. But in an election year that was already shaping up to be rocky for Democrats, Republicans sense that the shortage could prove to be an especially tangible way to argue that Biden is incapable of quickly solving problems confronting the U.S.

“This is not a Third World country,” said GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the chair of the House Republican conference. “This should never happen in the United States of America.”

The administration has sometimes been slow in responding to sudden political threats, perhaps most notably when signs of inflation began to surface last year. The White House appears determined not to repeat that mistake, announcing on Friday that formula maker Abbott Laboratories committed to give rebates through August for a food stamp-like program that helps women, infants and children called WIC.

Biden insisted there’s “nothing more urgent we’re working on” than addressing the shortage.

Asked if his administration had responded as quickly as it should have, Biden said, ”If we’d been better mind readers, I guess we could’ve. But we moved as quickly as the problem became apparent.”

But the defense by the White House illustrates how finger-pointing at the Biden administration has already spread far and wide among Republicans in Washington, on television and on social media. It’s a new issue for the GOP to hammer at and a way to address families at a time when Democrats believe outrage over the U.S. Supreme Court possibly ending the right to an abortion could galvanize women and other key voters, and thwart or at least lessen a Republican wave in November.

As Hot Air’s Allahpundit notes (but curiously, the other AP doesn’t): “America doesn’t need a mind-reader as president. It needs a Wall Street Journal reader. Per Jim Geraghty, the Journal had a story about the formula shortage back on … January 12.”

Did anyone in the White House read it at the time?

How many times is this administration going to find itself surprised by supply-chain issues? They dropped nearly $2 trillion last year on COVID relief amid a supply crunch, then were stunned that the whole country being flush with cash while goods are scarce might cause prices to rise. Now they’re figuring out that when a major baby-formula manufacturing plant got shut down three months ago at a moment when formula was already hard to find, a serious shortage might result.

Is seeing one move ahead on the chessboard too much to ask?

Ed pointed out on Twitter that the Washington Post and the Journal were running stories about stores rationing baby formula fully a month ago. What has the crack Biden economic team been doing about it since then?

Why bother attempting to solve problems, when you know the DNC-MSM has your back, as AP proved yesterday?

(Classical reference in headline.)

WENDY MURPHY: Democrats weak as court signals reversal on Roe.

Not a single person at the 2017 Women’s March said a word about the Equal Rights Amendment, which would establish women’s basic legal equality under the Constitution for the first time in history.

ERA advocacy groups asked for time to speak, so they could explain how the ERA would ensure that all laws are enforced fully and equally on behalf of women, but the people in charge said no. The huge crowd that gathered to talk about women’s suffering would learn nothing about the fact that the primary cause of that suffering is women’s second-class citizenship.

Telling women they should rally in our nation’s capital “as women” but only if they talk about everybody else’s problems is like telling Black Lives Matter they can have a protest, but not talk only about racism. Or telling the Anti-Defamation League that when they host a public gathering, they cannot focus on anti-Semitism.

No group fighting for basic human rights wants to be told they must water down their message.

By forbidding speakers to talk about the ERA Women’s March revealed itself not as an advocacy group for women but as a proxy for the Democratic Party, which would be fine if the Democrats actually cared about establishing women’s full legal equality, but they don’t.

If they did, the Biden administration would not currently be blocking the ERA and preventing it from being added to the Constitution. The ERA should already be in the Constitution because it became law when the last necessary state ratified it in January 2020, but the Trump administration blocked it.

Women then voted for Biden in droves assuming he would unblock it, but he refused. Yes, the ERA has a purported deadline that expired years ago, but many scholars agree the deadline is invalid, which liberated Biden to use his executive authority to validate it — yet he refused.

Biden is not only blocking the ERA today, he is also fighting against it in DC federal court. The DC court’s ruling is expected any day, and most believe the court will rule against the ERA, in part because the Biden administration is fighting against it.

The Democrats will be delighted if, when the ruling comes down, women are so focused on abortion they don’t notice how Biden helped kill a far more important law.

To be fair, a month and a half ago, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee couldn’t actually provide a definition of the word “woman,” or her opinion of when life begins.

“THE 80’S CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR FOREIGN POLICY BACK”: Oh how they laughed at the zinger from then-President With The Greatest Trouser Crease Ever. He assured us even back then that “the cold war has been over for more than 20 years.”

But look at the world now.

My close friend and former teammate at Bloomberg News, Rob Urban, is something of an Eastern Europe specialist, and in the early days of Bloomberg Urban helped build many important bureaus, from Moscow to Prague to Warsaw. His piece, published a few months ago speaks the wisdom of the witness:

“The strongman image was especially effective after Yeltsin, who walked slowly and stiffly because of a bad back, and was frequently intoxicated. When he had run for re-election in 1996, I remember footage of him riding a snowmobile on vacation and it really looked like he was strapped to the machine, just a body flopping around. Then came Putin, bare-chested, on horseback.”

Nobody I’m aware of in the political media have asked Obama if he regrets that “joke” or “insult” (depending on your point of view). But anyone who uses idiotic phrases like “the Putin Price Hike” to explain away our own flaccid economic policies knows literally nothing, and are likely to believe that Putin magically sprang up upon the election of Donald Trump. They are dead wrong.

** Note that you have to register to read the entire Independent article, but’s free.

WHEN YOU JUST KNOW YOUR OPINIONS ARE TRUE, WHY ALLOW DISSENT? How Disagreement Became ‘Disinformation.’ Barton Swaim explains in the WSJ how academics and journalists went from abhorring censorship to loving the new Disinformation Czarina (and revering authoritarians like Anthony Fauci). The Daily Skeptic offers a non-paywalled excerpt.

ALL YOU NEED IS CASH: An Open Letter to Paul McCartney Regarding Ticket Prices.

Let’s, Paul, for the sake of argument, say I want my parents to, you know, actually see you, so I buy three seats in section C129. Those seats are $450. Each. And, as Ticketmaster reminds me, “+ fees.”

I can’t surprise my parents with tickets to see Sir Paul freakin’ McCartney only for them to sit halfway to LAX. That’s like giving a child a toy without batteries. A $600 toy, mind you.

That $600 doesn’t include parking. I’ve yet to visit SoFi Stadium, but let’s pretend parking is $20. We both know it’s not $20, but let’s pretend. That’s $620. My parents don’t drink alcohol, so I’m definitely saving money on beers, but — and I know you don’t live here — have you any idea of current gas prices? You probably don’t because if I wrote “The Long and Winding Road” I wouldn’t know gas prices, either. Paul, gas is expensive. Like, so expensive that I’m writing to you and wasting space by talking about gas.

Conservatively, if I bought the cheapest tickets, I would be looking at $700 to take my parents to your show and sit far enough away that we will not be able to see you. To be frank, Paul, that sucks. I don’t want to spend that kind of money to stare at the big screens that I am sure will be on stage. Certainly, you’ve heard of YouTube. My parents and I can get the same experience tomorrow morning for much less money.

Paul, serious question: What the f*ck?

Did you actually think the Beatles were serious when they sang “All You Need Is Love?”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: As Parents Resisted Transgender Push, Teacher Suggested Sending in Child Services.

The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.

First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”

Next, she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.

There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBT children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.

After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”

Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.

While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.

District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, she said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.

As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.

Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.

Thumbs up from the management of Comcast and MSNBC:

BRING BACK THE GAS LINES: Price Controls?! Democrats look to resurrect a completely discredited economic policy.

WE PREFERRED CHARLATANS LIKE FAUCI: The Public Health Prophet We Did Not Heed. The late Donald Henderson, a giant in the field of epidemiology who directed the successful international effort to eradicate smallpox, published a landmark paper in 2006 warning against just about everything that Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx inflicted on America during the pandemic.

This paper reviewed what was known about the effectiveness and practical feasibility of a range of actions that might be taken in attempts to lessen the number of cases and deaths resulting from a respiratory virus pandemic. This included a review of proposed biosecurity measures, later utilized for the first time during covid, such as “large scale or home quarantine of people believed to have been exposed, travel restrictions, prohibitions of social gatherings, school closures, maintaining personal distance, and the use of masks”.

Even assuming a case fatality rate (CFR) of 2.5%, roughly equal to the 1918 Spanish flu but far higher than the CFR for Covid, Henderson and his colleagues nevertheless concluded that these mitigation measures would do far more harm than good.

They found the most helpful strategy would be isolating symptomatic individuals (but not those who had merely been exposed) at home or in the hospital, a strategy that had long been part of traditional public health. They also cautioned against reliance on computer modeling to predict the effects of novel interventions, warning that, “No model, no matter how accurate its epidemiologic assumptions, can illuminate or predict the secondary and tertiary effects of particular disease mitigation measures.” Furthermore, “If particular measures are applied for many weeks or months, the long-term or cumulative second- and third-order effects could be devastating socially and economically.”

Read the whole thing, which includes a copy of Henderson’s paper.