LIVING ON TUZLA TIME: Hillary Clinton couldn’t’ve chosen a better photo to accompany her ‘shameless’ Veterans Day tweet.
Because they were pro-Obama, even CBS called her out for that lie, back in the day:
Archive for 2022
November 11, 2022
BUT HE FIGHTS — OTHER REPUBLICANS: Donald Trump Moves to Attacking Glenn Youngkin in Extremely Odd Statement.
THAT WOULD MAKE IT EVEN LESS LETHAL THAN WE THINK, RIGHT? Global COVID-19 infection rates may far exceed reported cases, WHO says.
AT AMAZON, 2022 HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop PC, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD+2TB HDD, Intel i5-10400F. #CommissionEarned.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Consumer sentiment falls again, more than expected.
ROBERT GRABOYES: Pandemic Amnesty, No. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Yes.
Toward the end of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), Flounder, a gawky freshman pledge, cries inconsolably because the older members of his fraternity have destroyed the Lincoln Continental his older brother lent him for the weekend. Otter, an oleaginous charmer, pats Flounder on the back with mock compassion and says, “C’mon, Flounder. … You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. … You f**ked up! You trusted us! … Hey, make the best of it!”
In an Atlantic article (Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty), Brown University economics professor Emily Oster channels Otter; and Oster-as-Otter invites the American public to assume the position of Flounder. Oster’s solution to nearly three years of “totally misguided” (her words) COVID-19 policies is “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty.” After an endless torrent of mandated mayhem—grandma dying alone, funerals by Zoom, businesses bankrupted, educations wrecked, social fabric shredded—Oster says, “I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days. … Moving on is crucial now.” In other words, “You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. … Hey, make the best of it!”
Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who!
A DIFFERENT VIEW OF “DESANCTIMONIOUS.”
Plus, related — but very different — thoughts from Jeff Goldstein.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Topless ‘nun’ performs sexualized burlesque at Dartmouth drag show.
RIP: Kevin Conroy, the Voice of Batman, Dies at 66. The voice actor played the Dark Knight for 30 years, beginning with Batman: The Animated Series.
PARAMOUNT+’S THE GOOD FIGHT CHARACTER ACCUSES RON DESANTIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT:
After last week’s episode of Paramount+’s legal drama The Good Fight fed us leftist propaganda from a firehose, this week wasn’t much better.
Thursday’s series finale, “The End of Everything,” featured an obvious Milo Yiannopoulos-like character who accuses the newly re-elected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of sexual assault in a plot to help former President Donald Trump win the presidency in 2024.
The episode begins with Diane (Christine Baranski) returning to the city, and thus to the chaos of white supremacist riots outside of the building she works in, after a relaxing trip to the countryside. She gets swept up among the protesters while trying to go through a blockade as she’s surrounded by protesters, many in red MAGA hats shouting, “White lives matter!”
The scene was a supposed “echo” of January 6, according to Vulture. As a reporter on the scene states, “From what we can tell, most protesters seem to be coming from outside Chicago, drawn by the expectation of violence, and the arrival of 11/10 supporters.” The reporter is interrupted by a protestor shouting, “One more day!”
The date 11/10 is the one protesters have been counting down to and threatening the predominantly black law firm with – albeit without any details.
Once safely upstairs, Diane is introduced to a familiar but unwelcome face. Felix Staples (John Cameron Mitchell), is seeking representation for a lawsuit he wants to bring against DeSantis for sexual assault:
Lets the smears begin. Final episode of @TheGoodFight on @ParamountPlus has client claiming @GovRonDeSantis sexually assaulted him. “He invited me onto his staff. Little did I know what he meant by staff….and forced me into oral sex.” Have DeSantis DNA “stain.” #thegoodfight pic.twitter.com/961T7MP0nu
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) November 10, 2022
This is simply the same streaming platform using the negative image version of Stacey Abrams as president of United Earth on Star Trek: Discovery to generate some cheap publicity to an otherwise little-watched show. DeSantis would be best left to ignore this attempt to smear him.
MAKE OPENING JARS EASIER: Electric Jar Opener. #CommissionEarned
NEW VIDEO FROM AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Sponsor A Liberal For Just $8 A Month. “Help a helpless progressive get they/their blue check today:”
SPEECH THE IVY LEAGUE VALUES: Topless ‘nun’ performs sexualized burlesque at Dartmouth drag show.
LATERAL MOVE: Addidas and Balenciaga replaces Kanye West with Bella Hadid.
However, in October — just one day after making his runway debut at Balenciaga’s mud-covered fashion show in Paris — the rapper debuted his own Yeezy Season 9 collection, which included “White Lives Matter” T-shirts. In the subsequent days and weeks, West, 45, has continued to push the white supremacist phrase in addition to spewing anti-Semitic remarks, none of which he’s apologized for.
On Oct. 21, Balenciaga announced it was cutting ties with West, ending the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga partnership helmed by the fashion house’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia.
“Balenciaga has no longer any relationship nor any plans for future projects related to this artist,” parent company Kering told WWD at the time. West’s photo was scrubbed from Balenciaga’s Instagram and website as well.
While West’s 10-year contract with Adidas seemed tenuous in recent months for a number of reasons, tons of celebrities called on the brand to terminate its deal amid the rapper’s anti-Semitic rants. After placing the partnership “under review,” Adidas — which had served as the manufacturer and distributor of the Yeezy brand since 2016 — finally terminated the collaboration.
From last year: Bella Hadid joined pro-Palestinian protests.
PROTEST LIKE IT’S 1999: Cornell students cancel Coulter’s speech: ‘Your words are violence. We don’t want you to speak here,’ one protester yelled. Protester, you’re a dumbass who’s a stain on the Ivy League. Though it’s pretty much the Stain League at this point.
EVAN MCMULLIN IS A LYING, GRIFTING TOOL WHOSE BEHAVIOR STAINS HIS SUPPORTERS: ‘Not at all how the call went’: Sen. Mike Lee’s son calls McMullin’s bluff.
In a subsequent Facebook post and tweet, McMullin claimed he told Sen. Lee, “I truly hope that he upholds his oath to the Constitution during his upcoming term.”
Lee’s son John retorted via Twitter: “That is not at all how the call went. I was there. Both candidates were surprisingly cordial. For once, you didn’t take the typical pedantic tone — I was surprised how kind the exchange was. And then you turned around and tweeted this. You have lied and deceived until the very end.”
McMullin is an encapsulation of what’s wrong with our political class. Unprincipled, sanctimonious — yes, this time it sticks — and willing to say anything to bring in the grift.
THIS IS STUPID AND WRONG: Trump lashes out at ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ (again). Not only is it dumb to be attacking a highly successful Republican out of what looks like pure ego, but “DeSanctimonious” is a total failure as a linguistic kill shot. Trump has launched some devastating ones, but when they work it’s because they encapsulate something that’s obviously true about the target, and that people have been unwilling to say. Here, DeSantis isn’t sanctimonious at all — that would be, say, Mitt Romney, for those who remember him — and it just falls flat. Besides, he’s already been called (also falsely) “DeathSantis” by the media, so this just seems weak by comparison.
Sorry, but Trump is off his game here.
UPDATE: And now he’s going off on Glenn Youngkin too on Truth Social. Why?
DESANTIS RULES: Eight reasons why the Florida governor had a big election night.
SPRINGTIME FOR COL. SANDERS: In Germany, the ‘K’ in KFC Mistakenly Becomes Kristallnacht With Promo Error.
In the biggest advertising blunder since a Rhode Island sports bar and grill thought using the words “Anne Frank” and “ovens” in the same sentence was comedic gold, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s German division has apologized for an automated promotional message sent to its app users in that country. The message contained mention of Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), the 1938 beginning of the Holocaust, as though it was a holiday. From the Washington Post:
On Wednesday, the 84th commemoration of those brutal riots, KFC Germany sent out push notifications to users of the fried chicken chain’s app. The notification suggested that for the “[c]ommemoration of the Reich pogrom night,” customers could “[f]eel free to add more tender cheese to the crispy chicken,” according to a Google translation of the original message. “Now at KFCheese.”
Elsewhere in Germany: Watch: Germans are dancing to stay warm this winter. Just four years after laughing at Trump:
Watching the footage of the chilly krauts cha-cha-cha-ing, Cockburn can’t help but recall former president Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations back in 2018, where he warned that “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy.” At the time, the German delegation laughed and shook their heads at what they considered yet another absurd broadside from the American president.
Reliable, even-handed CNBC rated Trump’s claim as “highly misleading.” That didn’t age very well.
After a bruising midterm cycle for the Republicans he endorsed, Trump can salve his ego with the fact that he was right about Russian energy.
In a Reuters video showing off the class, one instructor said that “you can dance yourself warm, for example, by taking up the swinging, this bounce that you have all the time, or a triple step.” Another expressed a sense of satisfaction with the program, saying it helped to add some positivity to the “problems with the climate or the energy crisis and such.”
How far Germany has fallen. From being the economic envy of the world, it is now a country where citizens turn to the waltz to save energy and fight the cold — the faint echoes of World War One’s Turnip Winter are hard to miss.
I’d say that we need a complete and total shutdown of Germany until we can figure out just what the hell is going on, but thanks to their suicidal energy policy, that’s exactly what’s about to happen.
WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE IT DID: Even Democrats agree media election bias favored Team Biden.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Second Amendment Challenge to University of Michigan Gun Ban.
JURY ORDERS FILMMAKER PAUL HAGGIS TO PAY $7.5M IN RAPE SUIT:
Veering from sex to red-carpet socializing to Scientology, the civil court trial pitted Haggis, known for writing best picture Oscar winners “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” against Haleigh Breest, a publicist who met him while working at movie premieres in the early 2010s.
After hugging her lawyers, Breest said she was “very grateful” for the verdict as she left court. In a statement released later, she said she was thankful “that the jury chose to follow the facts — and believed me.”
Haggis said he was “very disappointed in the results.”
“I’m going to continue to, with my team, fight to clear my name,” he said as he left the courthouse with his three adult daughters. One had wept on a sister’s shoulder as the verdict was delivered.
After a screening afterparty in January 2013, Haggis offered Breest a lift home and invited her to his New York apartment for a drink.
Breest, 36, said Haggis then subjected her to unwanted advances and ultimately compelled her to perform oral sex and raped her despite her entreaties to stop. Haggis, 69, said the publicist was flirtatious and, while sometimes seeming “conflicted,” initiated kisses and oral sex in an entirely consensual interaction. He said he couldn’t recall whether they had intercourse.
After a day of deliberating, jurors sided with Breest, who said she suffered psychological and professional consequences from her encounter with Haggis. She sued in late 2017.
While awarding her $7.5 million to compensate for suffering, the jury concluded that punitive damages should also be awarded. Jurors return Monday for more court proceedings to help them decide that amount.
The verdict came weeks after another civil jury, in the federal courthouse next door, decided that Kevin Spacey didn’t sexually abuse fellow actor and then-teenager Anthony Rapp in 1986. Meanwhile, “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson and former movie magnate Harvey Weinstein are on trial, separately, on criminal rape charges in Los Angeles. Both deny the allegations, and Weinstein is appealing a conviction in New York.
If these trials keep up, Hollywood could begin to get a ever-so-slight reputation of being a sex-grooming gang.
ROGER KIMBALL: Republicans need to figure out mail-in voting: It’s being used by Democrats to influence the course of elections.
What was the determinative fix in the 2022 midterm elections? Early, mostly mail-in, voting. It is perfectly legal. But it undermines a fair and open electoral process. Were I a Democrat, I might even say that it “threatens our democracy.” Why? Because it allows for the wholesale manipulation of the vote. It also dilutes the integrity of an election by transforming it from an event into a process.
I should add that “mail-in ballots” is an equivocal term. It can mean different things in different contexts and in different states. The practice is obviously open to more interference and manipulation than same-day voting is. So extra safeguards must be put in place and scrupulously followed if such interference and manipulation is to be avoided. Some states do this. Florida is a good example. Other states do not. Apparently, about 1.4 million people asked for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Around the same number voted early by mail in Arizona, compared to just shy of half a million on Election Day. Were all such ballots carefully checked to ascertain the identity and eligibility of the person casting the vote?
I doubt it, but let’s leave that question to one side. The real issue is that the wholesale practice of early or mail-in voting makes a mockery of elections. If you say that an election is to be held on November 8, but millions of ballots are already docketed, if not actually counted, by the time November 8 rolls around, why bother to have Election Day at all? Why not have Election Week, or Election Month, or Election Quarter?
Elections are meant to represent a particular decision made at particular time at which voters can assess the state of things at that moment and make their choice. Early and mail-in voting undermines the definitiveness of that practice. I suspect that in many cases the result of an election is essentially predetermined by early and mail-in voting, something that makes the very idea of Election Day superfluous.
Indeed, and that’s the ultimate goal.