HOW IT STARTED: Global warming is killing the Great Barrier Reef, study says.
—CNN.com, April 18th, 2018.
How it’s going: Parts of Great Barrier Reef record highest amount of coral in 36 years.
—CNN.com, August 4th, 2022.
HOW IT STARTED: Global warming is killing the Great Barrier Reef, study says.
—CNN.com, April 18th, 2018.
How it’s going: Parts of Great Barrier Reef record highest amount of coral in 36 years.
—CNN.com, August 4th, 2022.
I REMEMBER WHEN JERRY POURNELLE WAS WRITING ABOUT SPACE TELESCOPES THAT COULD DO THING LIKE THIS: James Webb telescope finds first evidence of carbon dioxide on an exoplanet.
Related: Scientists say exoplanet 100 light years from Earth may be covered with deep ocean.
LET ME JUST GET OUT AHEAD OF THE STORY AND SAY THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE: Former Phoenix reporter who broke story of Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting found dead.
Related article from America’s Newspaper of Record: Apple TV+ Announces New Show ‘Clintons In Cars Killing Witnesses.’ “‘Get in the car! We’re going suiciding!’ yelled Hillary Clinton to her daughter as the cameras began rolling. ‘You got the snacks, right? Faking a hanging always makes me hungry. Bodies are so heavy!’”
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
HMM: Pfizer says potential RSV vaccine 85% effective in late-stage trial. Examine this one thoroughly, the last RSV vaccine wasn’t so hot.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body. #CommissionEarned
AGING ROCKER LOBS ‘FASCIST’ GRENADE AT ‘MAGATS’ – IT BLOWS UP IN HIS FACE INSTEAD:
Dee Snider took aim at former President Donald Trump’s supporters, claiming that “MAGAT FASCISTS” and others like them were the reason behind Twisted Sister’s iconic anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Snider alternated between all-caps and normal text in a tweet that mirrored the tone of the angry protest rock for which he is famous.
“ATTENTION QANON, MAGAT FASCISTS: Every time you sing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree hugging half Jew who HATES everything you stand for,” he said. “It was you and people like you that inspired every angry word of that song! SO F*** OFF!”
But as critics quickly noted, Democrats were the driving force behind the effort to censor bands like Snider’s — and that song in particular.
Aldous Huxley’s Ghost (@AF632) responded to the tweet, saying, “I remember you in Congress, Dee, arguing in favor of free speech because Democrats wanted to censor you. Now you’re shilling for those same Democrats in power.”
He’s not the first to have a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome – even after Frank Zappa spoke out against Tipper Gore and other censorious Democrats in the 1980s, during the following decade, his widow was still donating to them: Gail Zappa Sends GOP a Message With Hefty Donations to Democrats.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Average Lifetime Earnings Of A Gender Studies Grad Rise To $10,000.
STEVEN MALANGA: School Choice Rising. Parental discontent with public education has sparked new momentum in state legislatures across the country.
DAVY CROCKETT EXPLAINS WHAT’S WRONG WITH BIDEN’S STUDENT LOAN GIVEAWAY: Not Yours to Give. In 1867, Harper’s Magazine published an article recounting a speech by Davy Crockett three decades earlier, when the frontier icon represented Tennessee in Congress. The House of Representatives was preparing to unanimously pass a bill awarding $20,000 to the widow of a naval hero, but then Crockett rose to oppose it.
Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. . . .
Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”
No one took him on his offer to donate a week’s pay, but he did succeed in getting the bill voted down.
Read the whole thing, including Crockett’s explanation of how his position was inspired by an eloquent farmer in his Tennessee district who convinced him that he’d previously violated the Constitution by voting to give away money that “was not yours to give.”
#AMAZONSHITCARSHOW: The Grand Tour “Scandi Flick” Special Looks Packed With Rallying Fun.
After releasing the “Carnage A Trois” special last year, The Grand Tour trio is back. This time they are making a journey through Norway, driving across “Europe’s last great wilderness.” The show hits the Amazon Prime Video streaming service on September 16, when we’ll watch Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May trek across the frozen landscape.
The special is called “A Scandi Flick,” named after the driving technique. The show will have the three engaging in a ton of snowy fun, with much of it revolving around rally racing. James May will pilot a Mitsubishi Evo VIII, while Hammond drives a Subaru Impreza WRX. Clarkson is the odd one out with the Audi RS4 B7.
The trailer shows a ton of action, including the three pulling makeshift houses across the snowy wilderness. It also appears to show the moment just before May crashes his Subaru. Earlier this month, May had suffered an accident during filming, crashing his Subaru into a wall at 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour) during an event where the guys were racing down a tunnel in an old Cold War submarine base.
Amazon released the trailer on Thursday:
IN DEFENSE OF THE ‘CANCELED’ NATE HOCHMAN: His only crime was to engage critically with hateful ideas.
It’s no fun being canceled by a mob, but it is useful in one respect: it’s an easy way to tell who your friends are. Recently, a young conservative writer, Nate Hochman, learned this the hard way after a hit piece appeared on the Never Trump site the Dispatch that was in part about him and comments he made while on a Twitter Spaces call last winter.
Twitter Spaces, if you (like me, before this) are unfamiliar with it, is basically a group conference call platform. In the winter, Hochman hosted a Space about what role, if any, white supremacists like Nick Fuentes should have in the conservative movement. Fuentes then showed up and the Dispatch reported what happened next:
The Dispatch obtained an audio recording of the Twitter Spaces conversation from an individual who listened in. Hochman argued that Fuentes shouldn’t be a part of the conservative movement, quarreling with Fuentes about his tactics and understanding of racial politics in America. But he praised what Fuentes had accomplished throughout the conversation.
Read the whole thing.
TIME TO SHUT THIS CESSPIT OF BIGOTRY DOWN: Cornell perpetuates ‘colonialism, slavery, racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism,’ school’s website states.
According to Deadline, 14 percent of the staff was laid off on WB’s streaming service, HBO Max. Those laid off include a lot of VPs:
Overall, 14% of staff — about 70 people — are being laid off Monday, the vast majority of them on the Max side. That includes in Max Non-Fiction Originals, International, Acquisitions, Casting and previously reported Live-Action Family Originals, which are all being either scaled back significantly or essentially eliminated, leading to the departure of the bulk of the the staffs, led by Jennifer O’Connell EVP, Non-Fiction & Live-Action Family Originals for HBO Max; Jennifer Kim, SVP, International Originals for HBO Max; Michael Quigley, EVP of Content Acquisitions at HBO Max; and Linda Lowy, EVP Casting for WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, TNT, TBS and truTV.
Some of these people who were laid off* were pretty loyal to radical leftism and woke culture, and naturally, the firings are being painted with racist intent.
The Daily Beast interviewed some of these former HBO Max execs and some were more than happy to say that now the staff at the streaming service is whiter than ever:
The layoffs have “amplified the lack of diversity at HBO,” another former executive told The Daily Beast. “HBO is the most homogenous part of this umbrella. Instead of trying to figure out how to integrate some of the [Max] executives into HBO, they just made this sweeping cut of three divisions: kids, family, and international. A lot of Black and brown people lost their jobs.”
However, one former exec gave the game away when they snidely derided the new direction as being one that doesn’t want to divide people based on politics and, instead, embraces middle America:
One former exec describes Discovery+ as a “more general audience platform that doesn’t have the specificity that HBO Max was tailored to. I think Discovery is just a very ‘all’ audience, [they] don’t wanna make things that are political, topical, alienate Middle America—more Chip and Joanna**,” they said, referring to the home renovation show Fixer Upper: Welcome Home hosted by Chip and Joanna Gaines.
“If David Zaslav had his wish, he would just program Chip and Joanna all day long,” the executive said. “There was just a massive, ‘We don’t need you. You’re not offering the things we’re focused on.’”
Oh no! Warner Bros. is stepping away from divisive politics and embracing content that pleases general audiences instead of pushing a message that only a very small group of people actually cares about. Better get the torches and pitchforks.
There’s a simple principle that has been proven true time and time again, and with few exceptions: Get woke, go broke.
* Will the laid off employees be learning to code, or building solar panels?
Flashback to an earlier Zaslav cut:
** Interesting reference if you’re claiming that the Warner empire is whiter than ever: Gaines’ “mother was Korean and her father was half German and half Lebanese.”
THEY’RE LEARNING A VALUABLE LESSON IN HOW THE AUTHORITIES OPERATE: Georgetown students say mask mandate ‘isn’t doing anything.’
JUST THE IMPORTANT ONES: Six things we still don’t know about the Trump raid after redacted FBI affidavit released.
Trump’s having fun with the near-total “redactions” though:
Related: Matt Taibbi: The Great Disappearing Raid Story. Did that big news two weeks ago actually happen?
Excuse me for giving a damn, but what happened to the Trump raid story?
Two weeks ago, the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was the biggest story on earth and seemingly one of the most consequential American news events since 9/11. The search inspired a few hours of social media jubilation, followed by roughly a week of frenzied leaking as a parade of national security soothsayers unspooled sinister scenarios on TV, and then — nothing. The line went dead. By last week’s end, the cancellation of Brian Stelter on CNN was a top national headline in comparison.
Plus: How is this not a huge story?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is running amok, but are we so desensitized by the rampant corruption and prosecutorial overreach that we’re just numb to it all? The curtain of professionalism and apoliticism that were hallmark characteristics of this agency began to fray with the bureau’s Russian collusion investigation in 2016. It was also marked by the unscrupulous love affair between two top officials, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, and painted a picture of political animus that had infested the FBI.
The bureau and the Department of Justice are both facing heat for the August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago, a political hit by the heavily politicized Biden Justice Department against a former president. The search warrant and the affidavit providing probable cause for the raid have yet to neutralize the stench that this wasn’t politically motivated. If anything, the release of the affidavit made the DOJ look worse.
Those will be settled in time, but another story of FBI overreach has gone under the radar. In 2020, the bureau reached out to Facebook and requested they censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. It’s another case of the FBI interfering in an election, only this time they’ve appointed themselves the guardians of information which is peak creepiness.
“How is this not a huge story,” asked Matt Taibbi, the former contributing editor to Rolling Stone. He then faced a deluge of unhinged liberals who just didn’t seem to get that a) the laptop was declared authentic eons ago, and b) the FBI policing speech in the middle of an election is antithetical to American values. The FBI is our leading domestic intelligence agency. As Taibbi noted, their meddling in news distribution should have sent chills down the spines of everyone, especially the American Civil Liberties Union. Where the hell are they in all of this?
Servicing the Democratic Party’s needs, as usual. The big takeaway from this story is about the corruption of every institution, from the FBI to the ACLU, in the service of those needs.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! The Disastrous Push to Resegregate Health Care.
WHY DO YOU THINK IT WASN’T ALLOWED ON THE BALLOT? New poll shows Gascon recall could have succeeded if it had made it on the ballot.
BURIED LEDE: Don Lemon Actually Commits Journalism: Don Lemon and Karine Jean-Pierre Clash Over Biden’s ‘Semi-Fascism’ Comment Against GOP.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joined CNN’s Don Lemon for a heated exchange on Biden’s direct attack towards Republicans.
“What exactly is semi-fascism, Karine?” Lemon asked.
During a fundraising event in Maryland, Biden told the crowd that America is under threat, blaming the GOP for supporting former president Trump’s MAGA movement, linking their ideology to “semi-fascism.”
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy… it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said.
However no one, including Jean-Pierre, seemed to know exactly what Biden was trying to say by this comment, and frankly the president himself probably didn’t even know.
“The American people have a choice in front of them and the president laid that out very clearly, very powerfully tonight. When you look at what Democrats are doing and what they are delivering, and what they have done, Don, in less than two years, which is lowering costs on prescription drugs, lowering the energy costs, making sure that we have this historic legislation to really deal with [the] climate crisis. All of these things are important,” Jean-Pierre told Lemon.
Lemon was less than satisfied with her answer, asking once more what Biden meant.
“And they are,” Lemon interrupted, adding “Karine, I want to get to all of those things with all due respect, but we have a short time. I’m going to get to all those things, but if you’ll answer my question.”
“I am… I was just about to get to your question. I really was… You brought me on the show for a reason. And I have to talk about,” Jean-Pierre said just as Lemon interrupted for a second time.
Jean-Pierre is frustrated by having to submit to actual journalism — doesn’t Lemon know that she works for his boss?
BUT OF COURSE: Over 200 Biden aides could cash in on student loan bailout.
THEY HAVEN’T QUITE BURIED IT: More on the Ashley Biden diary story.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: A new ‘devil’ of a problem for Planet Earth: vanishing humans.
HOW STUNNING IS THAT, REALLY? Axios: Biden and team stunningly unprepared for their trillion-dollar Academia bailout. ” According to Axios, the White House didn’t bother to gather the data on eligibility, didn’t create a system which would check it, and has no system yet in place to fully complete the process.”
It’s pretty sad:
The agency doesn’t have income data for most of the 43 million Americans eligible for forgiveness, meaning around 35 million people — including Pell Grant recipients — will have to attest that they makes less than $125,000 per year and apply for relief. …
StudentAid.gov, the government’s financial aid website, experienced significant delays Wednesday and Thursday after it was inundated with people seeking information on loan forgiveness.
The White House doesn’t know exactly how many eligible borrowers will actually end up applying for loan forgiveness — or how much it will cost.
The Education Department hasn’t yet released the website where people can apply for loan forgiveness by attesting that they meet the income requirement — and it’s still unclear when that will be released, a person familiar with the matter tells Axios.
Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up.
Related: BREAKING: Penn-Wharton pegs Biden’s Academia bailout potential cost at $1 trillion.
HMMMM: Ro Khanna’s Apology Tour. And Why Trump Voters Love It. The congressman from Silicon Valley is pressure-testing a message that he thinks could save the Democratic party in the industrial Midwest.
For Ro Khanna, the progressive Democrat and third-term House member who represents the district singularly synonymous in the country with big money and high tech, this was the first stop of a four-day, three-state tour through the more downcast Midwest, meeting with local officials, factory workers and union retirees in perennially depressed one-time auto-industry strongholds.
Khanna, who turns 46 next month, is still young, but he’s been at this a long time. He worked as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s first state senate campaign before eventually working in his presidential administration. He modeled Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run in his own precocious, even pushy initial try for Congress going on 20 years back. He was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, and his new book got kudos on Twitter from Bill and Hillary Clinton. And in the conference room here at New Castle Stainless Plate, the audience made up of the company’s CEO plus a clutch of his right-hand men, Khanna had road-tested pieces of a message he’s been honing for years. “Make more stuff here,” he said. “Build our productive capacity,” he said. “Buy American,” he said.
* * * * * * * *
Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”
Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”
Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”
Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”
Khanna had anticipated that wariness. “Look, you people in this room will disagree on where I stand on abortion, on gay marriage. But why can’t we find the place where we do agree?” he said.
You people? Language warning, needless to say:
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The New Politics of Bifurcation: The electorate tunes Biden out—and why it matters for November.
The 2022 election grows more mysterious by the day. Republicans enter this cycle with the wind at their backs: President Biden is unpopular, voters say we are in a recession, Democratic majorities are razor-thin, and midterms favor the opposition party. The issue set—inflation, border security, crime, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—is well-suited for Republican candidates. Many Democrats are retiring. GOP voters are enthusiastic. And did I mention the president is unpopular?
Yet Democrats are increasingly bullish about their electoral prospects.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that.
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