SEE YOU LATER, TATER: Brian Stelter To Leave CNN As Network Drops Reliable Sources.
Archive for 2022
August 18, 2022
NOT EXACTLY CUTTING-EDGE HERE: Amazon is internally testing a TikTok-like feed in its app.
TRUST THE SCIENCE: National Academy of Sciences sanctions White House climate official for ethics violation. “The NAS took the punitive action because it said Lubchenco violated the code when she edited a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal that included her brother-in-law as an author. The academy said Lunchenco violated a rule that says members ‘shall avoid those detrimental research practices that are clear violations of the fundamental tenets of research.'”
STACY MCCAIN: R.I.P., Republican Establishment.
KRUISER: ‘The Worst of Times’ for the Week of Aug. 8-14, 2022. “Let’s see what the commie kids were on about last week.”
WILL ANYONE BE FIRED? (SPOILER: NO.) CDC announces overhaul after COVID-19 response failed ‘expectations’.
I ALMOST NEVER RUN ACROSS A BROKEN GAS PUMP: Electric vehicle owners are fed up with broken EV chargers and janky software.
THE WASHINGTON POST HAS A SAD: The man who shot Reagan wants to play concerts. It’s not going well.
If he were any other shooter — found not guilty by reason of insanity and later deemed not a danger to himself or others — Hinckley might have been free of the court system years ago, and blending in with his guitar at a New York City club. But his victims included a U.S. president, as well as a press secretary, a D.C. police officer and a Secret Service agent. Many people are not eager to see him enjoy the benefits of a life without court supervision.
The Reagan Foundation opposed lifting Hinckley’s restrictions and his attempt at a music career, saying in a statement that Hinckley “apparently seeks to make a profit from his infamy.” A 2021 op-ed in The Washington Post by Patti Davis, one of Reagan’s daughters, also protested his freedom.
“I don’t believe that John Hinckley feels remorse,” she wrote. “Narcissists rarely do.”
We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Patti Davis is a voice of sanity.
Before Covid, a restaurant-goer would first encounter a host before being greeted at the table by a waiter. While restaurants are micro-economies unto themselves, the waiter serves as the primary representative. He interprets the menu, offers personal insight, captures the diners’ attention, and brings the experience to life. In today’s digital system, however, diners are directed to train their smartphone cameras on a link to a digital menu and make selections via the web.
This exacerbates our regrettable retreat from social life. Already battered by two years of masking, the practice of manners and of ordinary social interaction has been degraded further. For the shy child, the chance to interact maturely with an unknown adult is lost. For the laptop-class adult, a chance to interact with someone from outside of that bubble disappears. And the intercession of the smartphone itself into the dining ritual is destructive. Ordering each course requires the diner to redirect his attention to the mobile device. The QR service system all but guarantees that the phone will remain at a patron’s fingertips throughout the meal.
Read the whole thing.
HE OUGHT TO BE LAUGHED OUT: Florida Prosecutor Suspended by DeSantis Sues the Governor in Federal Court.
USING OPPRESSION TO JUSTIFY OPPRESSION: New York Uses Historic Gun Bans Against Native Americans, Catholics to Justify Current Restrictions in Court Filing.
VIA MARY KATHARINE HAM: A heroic Afghan ‘terp’ who kept Americans alive. She writes: “I indirectly know the Senate staffer/Reservist who helped get his family out of Afghanistan and they’re struggling in TX now. It’s legit!”
I donated.
READER FAVORITE: Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Inflation is Straining the Charitable Sector. “According to Feeding America, 53 million people turned to food banks, food pantries and meal programs in 2021, one-third more than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of Americans relied on food banks – some for the first time – as workers lost jobs or were temporarily unemployed. Today, many people are back to work, but real wages, or inflation-adjusted pay, keeps falling, as grocery prices rise. Again, food banks are seeing long lines for help and reporting spiking demand.”
SANCTUARY CITIES SEETHE AS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ACTUALLY ARRIVE:
The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.
It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.
Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.
It was easy for Bowser to tweet meaningless platitudes like this…
…When the Trump administration was actually securing the border.
UPDATE: Sanctuary cities not enjoying actually being used as sanctuaries.
STANDARDS: Incoming freshmen at over 1,800 colleges did not have to take the SAT or ACT, report claims. Not having objective tests makes racial discrimination easier.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Cheney’s Humiliating Defeat Is Another Sign That We Are Winning.
She is Republican monkeypox, you know. She is a walking, talking, warmongering, loathsome disease infecting the nether regions of the Republican Party, and her resounding rejection by the decent Americans of Wyoming demonstrates that we are curing the infection that is her kind. The Bill Kristols, the Jen Rubins, the Jeff Flakes, and the John McCains are gone, and we don’t miss them. Miracle Whip Mitt will be gone next time. He won’t be missed either, except by MSNBCNN and WaPo when they need a sitting senator to sell out the people who once had his yellow back.
We are the new Republican Party, one not dedicated to getting its leading lights invited to DC cocktail parties but one determined to drop a turd in the DC punchbowl.
And the new Republican Party has no place for Liz Cheney, her horrific father, or other insipid creatures like them. We’re tired of GOP poohbahs who never met a war they didn’t want your kids to fight. The Cheneys are absolutely perfect examples of what we are talking about. What have they ever done? I mean accomplished, as opposed to run their fool mouths about. What’s Dick Cheney’s big score? What’s in his win column? Nothing, and the same with his useless daughter.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported yesterday: Producers Confirm Liz Cheney Will Not Be Back For Season 2 Of January 6 Hearings.