Archive for 2023
July 1, 2023
THIS IS A THEME OF TAMARA KEEL’S: Holsters: Almost As Important As The Handgun.
TEST: Can Toyota’s Native Navigation Beat Google Maps? I have the Toyota nav system in my car, and it works fine but I basically never use it because I have the phone right there on Apple CarPlay. I suspect that most people use their phones rather than the built-in nav.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hunter prosecutor: IRS whistleblower is … telling the truth?
And here we thought the State Department report on Joe Biden’s disgrace in Afghanistan was the long-holiday Friday night document dump. That turned out to only be an appetizer, however. US Attorney David Weiss, the man behind the very lenient and very convenient plea deal for Hunter Biden, finally responded to House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan’s demand for an answer to whistleblower accusations that he and Merrick Garland misled Congress on the extent of his authority and independence.
Weiss rebutted that claim by, er … admitting to it? Read for yourself.
Document at the link. Plus:
This point is critical. If Weiss actually had plenary charging authority as Garland claims, Hunter could have been charged with felonies just around the midterm elections (which took place on November 8, 2022, almost exactly a month after this meeting). Weiss couldn’t get either Biden-appointed US Attorney to partner with him on those charges, however. And either Weiss didn’t request Special Attorney status at that time, or Merrick Garland denied his request.
Instead, it looks like Weiss caved and cut a sweetheart plea deal to cut Hunter loose — and help keep the cover on the scandal through another election cycle.
That makes sense when you remember that Garland is a corrupt party hack.
Also: “Note well that this letter from Weiss also rebuts a new effort from Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell to claim that these aren’t actual whistleblowers and that their testimony is false. . . . The next step is to get Merrick Garland under oath in a House hearing and force him to testify as to what authority Weiss actually had, when Weiss applied for §515 status (if he ever did), and why Garland has lied about Weiss’ status to the public and to Congress for the last two years. It might take a grant of immunity to Garland aides to force the truth out of the Department of Justice for their attempt to bury the Biden influence-peddling scandal — and to see just how high up the deceit and corruption actually go. Note: Readers might recall Garland’s response last week came in the same press conference in which he claimed that questioning an AG or the DoJ is the same thing as undermining democracy. Now we can glimpse a reason for Garland’s panicked hyperbole; the whistleblowers are exposing the truth about Garland’s corrupt administration of the DoJ.”
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Xeroderma pigmentosum study tests artificial antisense oligonucleotides as therapeutic.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Just Stop Oil protesters disrupt London pride parade over ‘polluting’ sponsors.
THANKS, HARRY REID, RBG! The Four People Responsible for the Conservative Supreme Court Majority.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: A young woman has aired her struggle with “picking up” fellow singles at the gym, after she tried to approach a man during a workout.
“I know I’m not supposed to be looking at guys in the gym. I know I’m not supposed to be picking up people in the gym. But it’s the only place I go where there’s men at – so give me a break.”
Her latter comments seemingly addressed the trend of women filming and then calling out men for their “creepy” behaviour while exercising.
Hannah was prompted to make her video after working out near a “really attractive” man for almost an hour, saying she tried to make eye contact with him.
“The whole time I was working out I was like, ‘This guy’s really attractive, I want to talk to him’. How the f**k do you do that, though?” she said.
“I felt like I kept looking over but he never looked at me. Never caught on once looking at me, so I couldn’t accidentally catch eyes with him.”
Letting the most neurotic 10% of women set societal rules — especially dating rules — hasn’t worked out.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Ex-Pfizer worker arrested for insider trading during clinical trials of COVID treatment.
LIGHTNING DEAL: SOLVTIN S6 Pro Max Battery Jump Starter. #CommissionEarned
THIS IS CNN: What Caused a CNN Host to Quickly End Her Segment on Affirmative Action.
CNN host Abby Phillip ended a segment with a fair admissions advocate on Thursday when he used facts to demonstrate the downside of affirmative action.
Kenny Xu — a board member for Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case — told Phillip that academic excellence, not race, “should be prioritized” in college admissions.
“I think that admissions should be only based on merit,” he said. “Why are we asking a university to calculate somebody’s level of diversity? I think that sets a very bad precedent for anybody trying to get into college. We should be treated on the basis of our merits. We should be treated on the basis of how hard we work, or study, our SAT scores, our grades.”
But Phillip pushed back. She asked why admissions boards should not consider “other factors” that students “bring to the table” like socio-economic background.
Xu argued you cannot do that fairly because, inevitably, admissions standards are changed for applicants from a disadvantaged socio-economic background versus applicants from a privileged background.
“We don’t want that. We want black students to succeed. We want every student to succeed, low-income students to succeed,” he pointed out. “But you have to put them in scenarios, in places where they are likely to succeed. And lowering your standard to admit somebody of a socio-economic status or race would not help you do that. In fact, you would harm their graduation rate and excellence.”
When Phillip tried to say the standards weren’t lowered, Xu whipped out data on SAT scores and admission rates, and the CNN host quickly fled to the bunker. Xu is right. Thomas Sowell explained this glaring problem with affirmative action in front of a US Senate committee, adding that these protocols often set up these applicants for failure.
How Affirmative Action FAILS minorities — Thomas Sowell pic.twitter.com/rxyb9rV0Od
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 29, 2023
Read the whole thing.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND WEIMAR, AMERICA: Watch: Dad of the year brought receipts and 🔥 to a school meeting about the trans bathroom issue.
Father of the year brought the receipts.
Enough with the lies. Protect the children. pic.twitter.com/PJ0TVnfJzi
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) June 30, 2023
NOT BY ACCIDENT: Mark Judge: From Saturday Night Fever to No Hard Feelings, how the American male in movies became impotent.
But even in Saturday Night Fever, a man becomes a man through interaction with a woman. In older movies (and books) manhood is marked by conquest of oneself, and by meeting the expectations of other men.
STRATEGYPAGE RUSSIA UPDATE:Twilight of the Generals
As the Wagner revolt collapsed Prigozhin blinked first but:
…Putin was revealed as vulnerable because many of his senior generals regard the Ukraine invasion as a mistake that will tarnish Russia’s military reputation while also crippling the army and forcing budget cuts for the navy and air force in order to replace what was lost in Ukraine. The government is spending money it doesn’t have on the military operations in Ukraine. To make that happen, Russia has to diminish support for its navy and air force. The financial strain has been considerable. The Russian national budget increased by $80 billion (to $480 billion) since 2021, its defense budget has nearly doubled, going from $57 billion to $83 billion, and the budget for the national police and other internal security forces has gone from $47 billion to $77 billion. Before 2022 little of this was spent in Russian-occupied Ukraine, especially Donbas and Crimea. These two areas were illegally annexed and have growing problems with local security, not all caused by Ukrainians. Then came the invasion, which was taking over $10 billion a month out of the military budget. This defense spending growth was made possible by borrowed money. These loans had to be made at very high interest rates because the domestic and international financial industries agree that Russia is currently a bad credit risk from massive international sanctions and its military defeats in Ukraine.
The post discusses in detail Russia’s economic strains.
MINES, ANTI-TANK MINES, OBSTACLES AND FORTIFICATIONS: Perspectives and Realities facing Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive. It’s StrategyPage’s latest Armor update in Jim Dunnigan’s How To Make War section.
Extract:
…Historically, most tank and armored fighting vehicle (AFV) losses come from mobility kills. The Ukraine War was unique because top attack ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) were able to destroy Russian-designed tanks and AFVs by causing the turret to explode and kill the entire crew. Now the Ukrainians are on the offensive and have to devote a lot of men and resources to removing anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. At the same time the Ukrainians use anti-tank mines to protect quiet sectors of the front line from surprise armored attacks.
The update has detailed analysis of Ukraine backed by historical perspective. (Link problem fixed.)
RELATED: An M1A2 Abrams tank and two Leopard 2A6 tanks participate in a NATO live fire exercise in Poland.
STEVE GREEN: Kathleen Kennedy Does to Indiana Jones What Nazis, Supernatural Cults, More Nazis, and Space Aliens Never Could.
We’re about to witness the release of an Indiana Jones movie that will be lucky to break even.
Rotten, woke dialog like these two samples apparently remain, even after the reshoots:
Indiana Jones: You stole it!
Dr. Voller: You stole it!
Helena: Then I stole it! It’s called capitalism.And:
Indiana Jones: I fought the Nazis you know!
Helena: And you stole from indigenous people, too!Helena is Indy’s goddaughter, played by the aggressively unlikable Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and who is reportedly being groomed to don the fedora as the franchise’s new leading lady. You might have last seen Waller-Bridge — heard her, actually — as the voice of L3-37, the droid in the execrable Star Wars flop, Solo. L3 was the droid that galactic playboy Lando Calrissian was romantically attached to. Lando!
You will not be surprised to learn that Disney’s Lucasfilm chief, Kathleen Kennedy, was in charge of both productions. And so it appears that Kennedy, fresh off of driving Star Wars into the ground, will do to Indiana Jones what Nazis, supernatural cults, more Nazis, and space aliens never could: Murder the man with the hat.<
The Critical Drinker agrees:
INSUFFICIENT CONSEQUENCES: Law dean who suspended conservative professor has contract renewed.
THE SLOW MOTION INVASION: The Chinese government seems to be everywhere in the U.S.
IT’S SUMMERTIME. SHOULDN’T THEY BE OUTSIDE HAVING FUN? Number of teens who ‘don’t enjoy life’ has doubled with social media.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Biden Attacks His Admin Over Report On Afghanistan Failures: ‘No, No … I Was Right.’