SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN: “Today is the anniversary of the birth of John Lennon. Murdered at the age of 40, he should be here to celebrate his 82nd birthday today. What a loss.”
Archive for 2022
October 9, 2022
BUT THEY SERVED THEIR PURPOSE: Satellite Temperature Data Show Almost All Climate Model Forecasts Over the Last 40 Years Were Wrong. Of course, the computer modelers erred on the high side — just like the Covid modelers.
WHY ARE WE TAKING CRIME ADVICE FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS? Oh, right, we’re not.
But if we’re going to regulate guns like motor vehicles, I want people to be able to freely buy and own them, I want them to be readily used in all 50 states by anyone over 16 who does own or possess one, and I want them to be easy to buy and resell across state lines.
THE FDA’S LATEST ASSAULT ON PUBLIC HEALTH: Needs More Salt. The Food and Drug Administration plans to pressure food companies into reducing sodium content, but its guidance hasn’t passed scientific peer review and could actually lead to an increase in cardiovascular disease and death for many Americans — not to mention ruining the taste of foods.
HOW IT STARTED: Polygamy Is Not Next.
—Cathy Young, Time magazine, June 30th, 2015.
How it’s going: NYC judge rules polyamorous unions entitled to same legal protections as 2-person relationships.
—The New York Post, yesterday.
ALT HEADLINE: “DESPITE ROE OVERTURN, ABORTION STILL ACCESSIBLE IN 36 STATES:” Study: 14 U.S. states now lack access to abortion.
BE PREPARED: Weather Radio Raynic 5000 Solar Hand Crank Emergency Radio. #CommissionEarned
NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR WRONGTHINK: Furman U. puts professor on leave for attending the 2017 Charlottesville rally.
Late last month the Twitter account Sunlight Anti-Fascist Action revealed that Computer Science Professor Chris Healy attended the rally, writing “What’s that you’re standing next to, Chris – a Confederate flag?” among other commentary.
Furman President Elizabeth Davis noted in a September 30 statement that, aside from his attendance at “Unite the Right,” Healy is “alleged to be associated with other organizations that are connected with white supremacist groups that promote racism, exclusion and hatred.”
I remember when it was bad to go after people for being “associated” with unpopular ideas. But to be fair, that’s when they were unpopular leftist ideas.
WELL, FOR CERTAIN VALUES OF “CONSERVATIVE:” Conservative senator on track to become university president after unanimous vote. “Nebraska Senator Dr. Ben Sasse will potentially be stepping down from his office to become the next University of Florida (UF) president. On Thursday, UF, located in Gainesville, announced that its Presidential Search Committee unanimously voted to recommend Senator Sasse to the Board of Trustees for the ’13th president of the University of Florida.'”
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Starbucks refuted GOP crime criticisms. Now they’re abandoning cities.
LOL, JEN RUBIN:
ROGER KIMBALL: Prudence is a Virtue.
The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon when his relevant audience was not a bunch of Democratic moneybags but an increasingly isolated and jumpy Russian dictator?
This was something that worried Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. “We must,” he said in response to Biden’s talk of Armageddon, “speak with prudence” when we speak of such matters. “I have always refused to engage in political fiction,” Macron continued, “especially . . . when speaking of nuclear weapons.”
Most of the time, I am not part of the French president’s fan club. But I do think that he is 100 percent right in this case. It is good, peace-loving advice. It is a pity that Biden and his handlers seem less and less willing to follow it.
Related: Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?
DON’T GET COCKY: GOP on verge of House-Senate majority lock.
If you care about this election, you need to be donating and volunteering.
I’D BE THRILLED TO GET THIS JOB . . . Amid Major Military Setbacks In Ukraine, Russia Replaces Eastern Military District Commander.
WELL, HE SHOULD BE: “Maddie’s father says she dropped out of medical school to become a full-time eco-campaigner and after seeing the video above he’s ashamed of her.”
Greens are entitled middle-class twits, and enemies of humanity at large. Their chief goal is working out their neuroses by making everyone else’s lives worse. That said, I’m betting that we won’t see a lot of celebrity or billionaire endorsements for this “End Private Jets” campaign.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Columbia Men’s Crestwood Hiking Shoe. #CommissionEarned
WELL, POLITICO: Politico’s hypocrisy over SCOTUS ethics. “The Politico story makes much of Mr. Barrett’s continuing to practice law after moving to Washington when his wife joined the Supreme Court. But by sticking with his Indiana-based firm, SouthBank Legal, Mr. Barrett hasn’t raised any appearance issues. SouthBank Legal doesn’t have a Supreme Court practice and has never represented clients before the court. Neither Politico nor the press generally raised such concerns over Marty Ginsburg, who moved to Washington and joined the Fried Frank law firm when his wife, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. He practiced at the firm until he retired in 2009. There was no hue and cry over Judge and later Justice Ginsburg not providing a list of Fried Frank’s many clients to allay public concerns over a potential conflict. A review of Justice Ginsburg’s financial disclosures from 2005 to 2009 confirms that she never disclosed Marty Ginsburg’s clients and didn’t even list Fried Frank in the disclosure form’s section on spouse’s noninvestment income. Instead she listed her husband’s income as coming from Martin Ginsburg P.C.”
“THE GRUMPS ARE A SMALL MINORITY, BUT THEY’RE VOCAL.” ““From all sour faced saints, deliver me O’ Lord. I don’t want to be with a grouch, a crab, a crocodile in a moat. The grumps are a small minority. But they’re vocal. Yes, the grumps are vocal. They have unresolved things, maybe from their childhood.”
DAVID BROCK SPREADS MISINFORMATION:
Earlier this week Axios reported on the Democrats’ real fake news gambit: “Writers for a D.C.-based media operation run by prominent Democratic operatives are behind a sprawling network of ostensible local media outlets churning out Democrat-aligned news content in midterm battleground states[.]” It’s an interesting and well-researched story written up in the dumbed down Axios form by Lachlan Markay and Thomas Wheatley. They found that David Brock was a key operative and fundraiser for the American Independent, “a Washington-based progressive news outfit” that appears on each of the sites’ mastheads.
Reading it at the time, I wondered. Aren’t those “local media outlets” redundant? Minnesota escapes the net, but how would a Minnesota-based outlet differ from the Star Tribune? The Star Tribune works the beat 24/7 with approximately infinite resources at its disposal. Is this something more than another vehicle for Brock’s self-promotional and fundraising prowess?
And while we’re on the subject, I wonder which would be more fake — a Twin Cities Times fed by Brock’s “progressive news” or the Star Tribune? Which would be more effective at promoting the Democrats’ party line? In the Twin Cities Brock’s real fake news would at the least be superfluous.
Heh.
STING, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Utah man searching for authors of message in a bottle found in Caribbean.
October 8, 2022
BLACK WIDOW MURDERS: My latest TV appearance is on a new show called Black Widow Murders on Oxygen tomorrow (Sunday) at 7pm. eastern time. I find the show fairly non-PC as it portrays female killers as perpetrators rather than victims. You can read more about the show here.
THE AFGHANISTAN DEBACLE WAS POOR MARKETING: Army National Guard misses recruiting goals again, force levels drop. I noticed that my local Guard had a display at West Town Mall featuring a Blackhawk, a Bradley, a Humvee and assorted other stuff in the parking lot this weekend. I assume that’s a response to disappointing recruitment numbers.
THIS WILL END WELL, I’M SURE: Why Did Biden Just Send Top U.S. Officials to Meet With the Taliban?
People ask me these days if I’m still on TV. The answer is: not really. So, where have I been? What happened to this formerly visible part of my career?
It came to my attention in July that I had been punished under old CNN leadership— kept off air since January— for tweeting about Jeffrey Toobin in a Twitter dust-up with Andrew Kaczynski (another CNN employee) regarding our network’s coverage of the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting.
You can read about that Twitter fight, here, which — although it got heated and brought in ugly trolling from others — remained basically above board between Kaczynski and me and resulted in no bad blood, as far as I knew, and as I assessed in an after-action debrief over private messages. I suppose some might reasonably conclude that critiquing CNN’s coverage in a factual and calm tweet, or arguing with Kaczynski, could have spurred some disciplinary action, as it violates the rule against “shooting inside the tent” among colleagues. But it turns out that didn’t do me in. Rather, I’m told, “when it got to the comments about Jeffrey Toobin…everyone wanted a bit of a breather.”
Well, everyone but me, who had no idea there was a breather in effect. I was never informed of my punishment until it was rescinded recently by new management. No one called me or my representation about it. There was no announcement of a suspension, or notification of in-house disciplinary action, which I would have preferred, even welcomed by comparison to serving a secret sentence.
In case you’re wondering, as I did, how my punishment for tweeting about Toobin compares to Toobin’s suspension for his offense, I can tell you. He was off air for eight months; I was off for seven. One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work.
This. Is. CNN.