HMM. WHAT COULD ACCOUNT FOR THAT? Cancers in Adults Under 50 Have Increased Dramatically Around The Globe. “What’s concerning is that the increase in early-onset cancers doesn’t seem to be slowing down – and improvements in screening alone don’t seem to be able to fully explain the trend.”
Archive for 2022
September 10, 2022
YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM A LEAK: The First Law of Media Leaks.
But you learn it from the leak itself, not the story around the leak. (VIP)
BRITAIN WOULD BE BETTER SERVED BY A HISTORY OF PRO-NUCLEAR ACTIVISM: King Charles III brings long history of environmental activism to throne.
SCIENCE: 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned. “This report summarizes the findings of a national survey of firearms ownership and use conducted between February 17th and March 23rd, 2021 by the professional survey firm Centiment. This survey, which is part of a larger book project, aims to provide the most comprehensive assessment of firearms ownership and use patterns in America to date.”
ISRAELI SUPERHERO SABRA ENTERING THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE: “If the haters had not already found reason to boycott Marvel films, they will now. We are getting ourselves an Israeli superhero!”
Related: Shira Haas to join next ‘Captain America’ film as Israeli heroine Sabra.
Israeli actress Shira Haas, who gained international fame through her starring role in the hit Netflix series “Unorthodox,” will play an Israeli superhero in the next “Captain America” film, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to multiple reports.
According to Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and others, Haas will play Sabra, a little-known character who first appeared in Marvel comics in 1980.
In the comics, Sabra, aka Ruth Bat-Seraph, is a former superhuman agent for the Mossad spy agency who sometimes knocks up against other superhuman characters such as the Hulk and the X-Men.
Her powers include super strength and stamina, and her costume often incorporates the Israel flag and the Star of David.
The reaction from the uber-woke leftist crowd that Disney courts, and possibly the uber-woke language that Disney’s scriptwriters craft for Haas’ character will be fascinating to watch.
BE PREPARED (or at least read and charge your phone) Bedside Lamp with USB Port. #CommissionEarned
FIVE LOCAL DEPUTIES ARRESTED AFTER PROPOSING PUTIN BE ARRESTED ON TREASON CHARGES.
Five Russian municipal deputies from St. Petersburg have been arrested after publishing a request to the Duma to have Vladimir Putin arrested and charged with treason for the invasion of Ukraine.
“They know the punishment will be severe. They can easily face a death sentence based on Russian federal law. The significance of this act of defiance and dissent by a handful of Russian officials cannot be possibly overstated,” Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer and author of Putin’s Playbook, told Fox News Digital.
Just 24 hours later, another local authority called for Putin’s resignation. In a letter addressed to the president by council deputies at Lomonosovsky Municipal District, the deputies wrote that Russia had now become “feared and hated” while “aggression” has taken the country back to the “Cold War era,” as reported by Newsweek.
Putin is in no danger of being deposed — unless there is plotting by the military going on under everyone’s radar. But any sort of political revolt can easily be thwarted by Putin, who has the police and the FSB security service on his side.
From today’s Power Line Week in Pictures:
THIS IS PRETTY FUNNY: A few things to know before stealing my 914. “Welcome to my Porsche 914. I imagine that at this point (having found the door unlocked) your intention is to steal my car. Don’t be encouraged by this; the tumblers sheared off in 1978. I would have locked it up if I could, so don’t think you’re too clever or that I’m too lazy. However, now that you’re in the car, there are a few things you’re going to need to know. First, the battery is disconnected, so slide-hammering my ignition switch is not your first step. I leave the battery disconnected, not to foil hoodlums such as yourself, but because there is a mysterious current drain from the 40-year-old German wiring harness that I can’t locate and/or fix. So, connect the battery first. Good luck finding the engine cover release. Or the engine, for that matter. Now, you can skip your slide hammer. The ignition switch’s tumblers are so worn that any flat-bladed screwdriver or pair of scissors will do. Don’t tell anyone.”
FLASHBACK: I drank like a colonial American and it was awesome.
Related (From Ed): How to drink like the Queen this weekend.
(Updated and bumped.)
FDA THUMBS NOSE AT FOIA REQUEST FOR COVID SAFETY DATA: Epoch Times’ Zachary Steiber filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the results of a specialized data mining procedure regarding COVID vaccination safety:
“The Epoch Times asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July for all analyses performed by the agency for the COVID-19 vaccines using a method called Empirical Bayesian data mining, which involves comparing the adverse events recorded after a specific COVID-19 vaccine with those recorded after vaccination with non-COVID-19 vaccines.
“According to operating procedures laid out by the agency and its partner in January 2021 and February 2022, the FDA would perform data mining ‘at least biweekly’ to identify adverse events ‘reported more frequently than expected following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines.’ The agency would perform the mining on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
“In a recent response, the FDA records office told The Epoch Times that it would not provide any of the analyses, even in redacted form. The agency cited an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act that lets the government withhold inter-agency and intra-agency memorandums and letters ‘that would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.’
Translation: So sue us.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: San Diego teacher defines ‘fascist’ to class as ‘whites,’ ‘heterosexuals,’ and ‘Christians.’
A teacher from Madison High School in San Diego claimed fascists are synonymous with the “modern-day Republican Party” and “white, Christian, heterosexuals,” according to a student at the school. Speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, the high school student detailed the teacher’s unhinged definition of a “fascist.”
The school began the 2022-23 year on Aug. 29. The alleged incident occurred at the high school last Thursday.
“Immediately, I walk in and notice on the board, it says, ‘The Republican Party is the fascist party, and it does not fit the mold of a Democratic Party,'” the student told me. “It’s the first thing I saw when I came in.”
The student took a picture of this and shared it with me. It read, “As it is currently constituted, the Republican Party is now a fascist organization that no longer fits the category of a conventional Democratic Party.”
But the teacher didn’t stop there. He continued with his radical left-wing indoctrination by listing whites, Christians, and heterosexuals as groups that are “fascist.” The student took a picture during the class that shows how the teacher defined “fascist.” On the classroom’s white dry-erase board, the teacher wrote the word “fascist,” underlined it, and listed the words: Trump, heterosexual, white, Christian, and hatred of foreigners, immigrants, and minorities, among others.
Earlier: Mark Judge: Adolf Hitler Thought More Like Nancy Pelosi Than Donald Trump.
The best book on Hitler’s religious beliefs is Hitler’s Religion: the Twisted Beliefs That Drove the Third Reich by Richard Weikart. After reading it one gets the idea that Hitler would have sided much more with the modern abortion movement than the pro-life cause.
Hitler was a pantheist who believed in the survival of the fittest and that the strong can bully and wipe out the weak. “Pantheism is the idea that all of nature is God,” Weikart, a history professor at California State University, explained to me in an interview. “Because Hitler thought that nature was God, he thought that following the laws of nature was doing the divine will.”
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, nature is a creation of God, not God himself. According to Weikart, Hitler believed that God is found in the power of nature — particularly the violent Darwinian struggle for survival. “Hitler thought that destroying people he thought of as weak or inferior was in perfect accordance with what nature does,” Weikart said. “After all, in nature, animals get killed, and certain species go extinct. Hitler thought the same thing should go on in human society because he thought certain races were inferior to others. So he thought destroying them was a good thing.”
This view is much more aligned with the ideas of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, than those of anyone in the GOP.
Atheists Love to Lie About This
Despite this evidence, Weikart says, the idea that Hitler was a Christian still pops up in Progressive arguments and on atheist websites. “One of the reasons they argue that Hitler was a Christian is that they are atheists or agnostics and want to bash Christianity. They’re wanting to show the evils of Christianity, so making Christianity responsible for the Holocaust meets their idea about Christianity representing all the evils in the world.”
The left has always gotten away with Nazi-Republican comparisons because understanding Hitler’s religion has been a complicated task. The German dictator often spoke about what religious beliefs he did not accept, but never clearly stated which ones he did. He rejected not only Christianity, but also atheism, mysticism, occultism, and neo-paganism.
Flashback to the No Pasaran blog in 2012: 卐mas Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the “Religion” of National Socialism.
Or as author Dave Shiflett quipped in 2002 in National Review, “A shocking story has been revealed: Adolf Hitler was not a Christian after all. Instead, he hoped to destroy Christianity.”
THE ANCHORESS: On Charles III and the Value and Power of Ritual.
Watching these early moments in what will be an ongoing grand spectacle out of this small island of ambitious (sometimes ruinous) rulers only emphasizes for me the sagacity of maintaining our rituals, even as generations raised on deconstruction wonder why they are not dismantled.
One thought consistently intrudes: how is this playing to the younger generations, whose lives have been bereft of formal customs and observances beyond sports championships and presidential elections?
Read the whole thing.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business.
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? AOC’s Biggest Problem Is That She’s AOC.
“It’s my resolution that perhaps we can be engaged by the end of the year,” she recalled him telling her. “And I said, ‘Oh, really? Well, you’re going to have to woo me. You’re going to have to convince me, after all this time, why I should.’ ” Ocasio-Cortez told me that she never considered marriage inevitable. Her relationship with Roberts, who is white, raised its own particular questions about identity and belonging: She wasn’t positive that an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit for her.
Sorry, what? Is there anyone in America who, having read these words, can still insist that AOC is treated unfairly? If anyone else in politics had told a friendly journalist that they were not positive that “an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit for them, it would have yielded a hurricane of criticism. Per Gallup, 94 percent of Americans approve of interracial marriage — and by “approve, one must assume that they do not mean “. . . but only for other people. What the hell does “she wasn’t positive that an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit for her mean in practice? And who, besides AOC, would be given the benefit of the doubt when one considered such a question. I’m sitting here trying to imagine the reaction if, say, Senator Tim Scott had said that. Or Glenn Youngkin. Or Marco Rubio. Or anyone. They’d have been crucified.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s her?
Indeed.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: How Democrats sabotaged schoolchildren.
There was no way to escape the damning implications of the extended COVID-19 school closures or Democrats’ owning the lion’s share of the blame for them, so Jean-Pierre tried to deflect: “In less than six months, our schools went from 46% to nearly all of them open to full time. That was the work of this president, and that was the work of Democrats in spite of Republicans not voting for the American Rescue Plan, [of] which $130 billion went to schools to be able to have the ventilation, to have the tutoring and the teachers and being able to hire more teachers, and that was because of the work that this administration did.”
This is a lie Democrats are increasingly telling themselves and anyone who will listen because they need the villains of this particular story to somehow be transformed in the public’s imagination into the heroes. The arsonists want to be remembered as the firefighters.
But the reality wholeheartedly refutes the spin. Before President Joe Biden even took office in January 2021, he set a very unambitious goal to get schools open in the first 100 days. One problem: That 100-day goal meant children would finally head back to regular school in May, right around the time schools around the country were shutting down for the summer. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. The 100-day plan would run headlong into the same roadblock that had kept schools closed before Biden became president: Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers who had directed the Democratic officials in her pocket to fall in line.
During a press briefing on Feb. 9, 2021, then-press secretary Jen Psaki suddenly backtracked on what “open schools” meant to the president. “His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools, so more than 50%, open by Day 100 of his presidency. And that means some teaching in classrooms, so at least one day a week. Hopefully, it’s more. And obviously, it is as much as is safe in each school and local district.” Asked to clarify, Psaki answered, “Well, teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by Day 100.”
PHILADELPHIA MORPHED INTO DETROIT SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Philadelphia has fallen. Just look at these surreal videos showing the current state of the once-great city.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● Shot: Biden Wanted an F.D.R. Presidency. How’s He Doing So Far?
—The New York Times, October 26th.
● Chaser: New York Declares State Of Emergency As More Counties Detect Polio.
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY: Has Anyone Seen My Toes? Buckley is at the top of his game in his latest comic novel. It’s the story of an aging screenwriter — working on an absurd screenplay about Hitler kidnapping FDR — losing his waistline and his mind during the Covid pandemic. And it’s hilarious.
JUST NEEDS A LITTLE TLC: Entire military fort in Wales on sale for less than the cost of an average London home.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: WNBA Games Now Last Place On Earth Where You Can Safely Social Distance.
DON’T WORRY, I’M SURE TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY BUTTIGIEG* WILL SORT IT OUT: Potential rail strike threatens to kneecap US economy ahead of midterms.
More than 9 in 10 railroad workers would vote to reject the PEB recommendations and go on strike, according to a recent survey from the organization.
Still, Kaminkow noted that workers could change their minds when faced with the prospect of years of back pay and the reality that Congress can take away their main source of leverage at any time.
Federal law gives Congress the power to block or delay a railroad strike. If workers were to walk out, lawmakers could vote to enact the PEB deal or appoint arbitrators to fast-track a new contract, among a range of other options.
The Association of American Railroads, which estimates that a national rail shutdown would cost the U.S. at least $2 billion a day, said that lawmakers should vote to implement the PEB recommendations in the event of a strike to “instantly reward employees and reduce economic uncertainty.”
Experts say that an extended walkout would devastate industries that rely on freight to transport grain, coal, diesel, steel and motor vehicle parts. Shipping containers would pile up at ports, severely congesting supply chains and sending prices soaring ahead of the holidays.
“The railroads are actually very critical to the nation’s economy, and also to security. There’s a lot of hazardous stuff that simply can’t go by road,” said Nicholas Little, director of railway education at Michigan State University’s Center for Railway Research and Education.
*Or perhaps he has more pressing matters to attend to: In Oakland, Pete Buttigieg vows to ‘reconnect’ communities razed by highways.
DESPERATE DEMOCRATS HOPE MIDTERMS ARE A REFERENDUM ON TRUMP, NOT BIDEN:
The Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago Raid and President Joe Biden’s dystopian Independence Hall speech to start September began a transparent autumn effort to thrust former President Donald Trump back into the spotlight. Why you ask? Because Biden and Democrats much prefer to make the crucial midterm elections a referendum on someone not currently holding office than their party’s disastrous policies.
Any Trump-related headline, they believe, can distract not only from Democratic debacles but Republicans’ superior plans for America should the GOP reclaim power.
A recap shouldn’t be necessary, but the Reader’s Digest version includes Team Biden mishandling COVID-19 policies, letting teachers’ unions destroy vulnerable students’ futures, and continuous poor communication on masks, re-openings, and vaccines. Recently the White House botched monkeypox with vaccine shortages and misapplications.
The administration’s profligate federal spending, including two unnecessary recent bills to close the summer, exacerbated inflation, crushed the middle and lower classes, and reduced supplies of food and energy.
Interest rates are now soaring, making homeownership harder for people who want to marry and start families instead of relying on the government.
Small businesses, hampered by COVID lockdowns, still suffer under inflation and cumbersome regulations. But Biden wants to “help” them by adding nearly 90,000 new IRS agents, likely for audits.
Then there’s Biden’s shambolic student-loan “forgiveness” program that even a former top Obama White House advisor admits is atrocious public policy.
Related, from Glenn in the New York Post: Dems want the midterms to be a referendum on Trump, not bungling Biden — and the media are compliant.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Amazon Basics Memory Foam Seat Cushion. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)