WHAT WILL JOE ADMIT NEXT? Just in the past several weeks, President Joe Biden has admitted that his “Inflation Reduction Act” didn’t actually have much to do with reducing inflation, and he, finally, acknowledged having a seventh grandchild. Who knows what he might admit next, but Issues & Insights has some interesting suggestions.
Archive for 2023
August 15, 2023
MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT MISGENDERING IS A CAPITAL OFFENSE: Karine Jean-Pierre Does It Again, Messes Up Names and Gender of Hawaii Senators.
RELIEVE BACK PAIN: Everlasting Comfort – The Original Seat Cushion for Desk Chair. #CommissionEarned
WHAT COULD HAVE GIVEN THEM THAT IDEA? Many Americans wrongly believe marijuana smoke is safer than cigarette smoke.
COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: The Chinese Communist Party Is Infiltrating China’s Private Sector.
Historically, these party branches are tied to the recruitment and management of party members among employees. In contrast to SOEs, the CCP charter gives a somewhat circumscribed role for party units in private businesses. They are mainly charged with ensuring the company complies with the laws and promoting its “healthy development.”
In most businesses, party branches tend to focus on “business-friendly” activities and do little more than organize study sessions or social gatherings for party members. Yet that may be changing as Xi has called on the private sector to “unite around the party.” Following a requirement initiated in 2015 for SOEs to enshrine the role of CCP entities in their articles of association, an increasing number of private companies, mostly those with mixed ownership or political connections, have also implemented such amendments.
The CCP’s objective is to “cultivate a team of private economic persons who are resolute in walking with the party” and can be relied upon “in times of crisis.” Entrepreneurs are expected to undergo further education and monitoring to make sure they remain in line with the party’s objectives and “cultivate a healthy lifestyle.”
“Healthy lifestyle” generally means “doing what the party says.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN PR: Disney’s Snow White Star Slammed As She Continues Bashing Original Film In Another Resurfaced Video.
Disney’s new “Snow White” Rachel Zegler got slammed on social media by Daily Wire host Matt Walsh and others as she continued bashing the original film in another resurfaced video in which she claimed the Prince was a “stalker.”
In the video that resurfaced on X over the weekend, the 22-year-old actress said “I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird. So we didn’t do that this time.”
“We have a different approach to, what I’m sure a lot of people will assume is a love story, just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude,” she added. “It’s one of those things that I think everyone’s going to have their assumptions about what it’s going to be, but it’s really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful.”
Walsh posted a message on X to his 2.4 million followers in response, “Disney is trying a really interesting marketing strategy where the star of the new ‘Snow White’ spends a year before the movie’s release publicly talking about how much she despises Snow White.”
Brie Larson could not be reached for comment.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Sad Truth About Drug Legalization.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Gov’t Employees Told To Work From Home Due to Rampant Crime Outside the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in SF.
ABOUT THOSE ‘DARK AGES’ AND SCIENCE: It’s conventional wisdom these days that the Medieval epoch (500 to 1500 AD) included the Dark Ages when the Christian church establishment suppressed science and kept people trapped in fairy tales and myths. In fact, as science historian Michael Kaes argues today on HillFaith, it was Christianity that encouraged the development of what became modern science.
NOW OUT: Tucker. #CommissionEarned
AI JUST GOT A LITTLE SMARTER: The New York Times prohibits using its content to train AI models. “The move could be in response to a recent update to Google’s privacy policy that discloses the search giant may collect public data from the web to train its various AI services, such as Bard or Cloud AI. Many large language models powering popular AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are trained on vast datasets that could contain copyrighted or otherwise protected materials scraped from the web without the original creator’s permission.”
THE DEFINING FEATURE OF OUR AGE: Our declining trust in institutions: elites vs the governed. “That goes a long way toward explaining the Biden Administration’s powerful embrace of censorship. It desperately wants to play the role of information gatekeeper that editorial boards used to. It wants to have the final say on what Americans can and can’t know. But much information has escaped the corral and theirs is a desperate effort to round it back up.”
THE WAGES OF DEMOCRATIC HATE SPEECH: U. Chicago report: 30 million Americans believe violence justified to keep Trump from presidency. The people running things seem either oblivious to, or hopeful for, the prospect of a civil war.
DECEPTION? YES. CLEVER? NOT SO MUCH: Is ‘Decreasing’ Inflation a Clever Deception?
LOL, LEFTY PROFESSOR TALKS ABOUT RACE: Professor says ‘Barbie’ movie is too White for his toddler.
MORE FROM JACK GOLDSMITH: More on How to Think About the Costs of the Trump Election Fraud Prosecution. “Jonathan Chait closes his critical response to my piece with a smidgen of agreement and two questions: ‘[Goldsmith] is right that the outcome from Smith’s prosecution will be terrible. But worse than the alternative? How could it be worse?’ My worry, though not my hope, is that we are going to learn the answer to this last question.”
If there’s any lesson from the past couple of decades, it’s that “how can it be worse?” pretty much always gets answered.
CHANGE (IT BACK): An American Airlines pilot’s message about good conduct goes viral. “Just as people commenting on those fashion posts yearn for a more refined era, it turns out that people generally wish for a level of social maturity extending beyond toddlers throwing tantrums. That’s the only explanation I can find for a viral video of an American Airlines pilot giving a pre-flight speech explaining to passengers that he expects them to behave politely and with respect for their fellow travelers.”
NATIONAL REVIEW’S BOOMER SOONER BLOWS IT: Go read Don Surber’s latest on Substack. It’s a devastating comparison of Oliver Anthony – he of the Appalachian Scots-Irish and sudden smash hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond” – and National Review Executive Editor Mark Antonio Wright.
Anthony’s No BS ballad about the current state of American leadership captures the frustration and desperation of a generation of Appalachian men who have seen their economic way of life taken away from them, jobs shipped to China and industry outlawed by distant bureaucrats determined to shove America into a Green Energy Hell.
Wright lectures Anthony about upholding the traditional masculine virtues in the workplace and all but accuses him of being a lazy welfare bum, which, of course, totally misses the point of the song. At first I was puzzled why an NR editor would be so mindless about one of the most vivid illustrations of the Left’s Welfare State.
But then Surber notes that Wright is from Oklahoma. “Bet he’s an OU graduate,” I thought to myself. A quick check of Wright’s bio confirmed that initial intuition. Wright is indeed a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, that seething cauldron of liberal enlightenment that features itself adrift in the sea of Red Neck Ignorance that is the Sooner State.
Somewhere, Bill Buckley continues mourning the death of a once-great magazine.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I grew up in Oklahoma, but I had the good sense to attend The Oklahoma State University (BS in 72) instead of that liberal sinkhole in Norman.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: West Virginia Law School Faces Major Cuts As Part Of University’s ‘Unprecedented’ Budget Retrenchment. “West Virginia University announced sweeping budget cuts, including terminating 7% of faculty.”
If only there had been some sort of warning.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Garbage Indictments Could Give Trump Electoral Superpowers. “It is beyond surreal that the Democrats are hell-bent on punishing Donald Trump for questioning the results of an election by proving that they are willing to go to any lengths to tamper with an election. This time they’re making sure that they get a huge head start.”
Related:
Trump wanting signature verification is a criminal act in our Banana Republic. pic.twitter.com/ktNAAdHYLN
— Paul Hookem 🇺🇸 (@PaulHook_em) August 15, 2023
The brazenness is supposed to dispirit you. Don’t let it.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE (CONT’D): I defended my wife after she slept with a schoolboy — but now I’m done.
THE CHINA SYNDROME: In a First Since World War II, Japan May Develop a Fleet of Jet Bombers.
Japan is reportedly considering breaking a postwar taboo to deal with threats from North Korea and China.
Under a new proposal, Japanese C-2 planes would use the American Rapid Dragon system to quickly convert them from long-range transport jets into bombers. The postwar government banned bombers as weapons of aggressive warfare, but military pressure from its neighbors is pushing Tokyo to reconsider.
According to Jiji Press, the Japanese government is “considering using a type of missile whose engine ignites in the air after the missile is dropped during flight.” This is a reference to the new American Rapid Dragon system, which the Air Force Research Lab established in December 2019 to leverage the hundreds of American transport jets (including C-130J Super Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III aircraft) in the Air Force’s inventory, turning them into temporary bombers.
Previously: Japan’s Navy Is Getting Aircraft Carriers and Stealth Fighters—and China Isn’t Happy.
VIV-MENTUM: Ramaswamy rising: Another poll shows him No. 2, besting DeSantis. “In a second poll in a week, Ramaswamy is second. While he and the others in the race remain far behind front-runner Donald Trump, the businessman has edged Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). In a second poll in a week, Ramaswamy is second. While he and the others in the race remain far behind front-runner Donald Trump, the businessman has edged Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). In the Kaplan Strategies survey provided to Secrets early Monday, Ramaswamy is supported by 11% of likely Republican voters. Trump has 48%, and DeSantis has 10%. Pence is fourth at 8%.”