Archive for 2023

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN:

And so here’s a bonus just because.

OPEN THREAD: Happy Saturday.

ARNOLD KLING: Is The Overton Window Moving to the Right?

Recently, Tablet published a symposium called What Now? It was an opportunity for Jews to offer opinions that they probably would not have articulated prior to the October 7 Hamas pogrom. Titles of the essays include:

End DEI

Replace American Communal Jewish Leadership

Get a Gun

Deport Violent Radicals

What has shocked Jews much more than the atrocities of Hamas are the atrocities committed by Progressives. It turns out that Progressives support a Palestinian cause that seeks not peace and dignity for all but to drive Jews out of the Middle East completely. Progressives say that the “context” justifies rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent people. Under the doctrine of intersectionality, Progressives manage to link support for Islamic theocrats to LGBTQ rights.

The Overton Window has clearly moved for many American Jews. The Ivy League is now disgraced. Imagine if on college campuses there were students marching around in Ku Klux Klan hoods shouting racist slogans. And imagine they were doing this right after the death of George Floyd. That is what the pro-Hamas demonstrations feel like to Jewish students.

After George Floyd was killed, we had riots everywhere, which were widely defended by all the best people, and only one reaction was even tolerated in most of the public sphere. But when a Jewish pro-Israel marcher was murdered by a pro-Palestinian professor, it barely made a ripple in the national conversation.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Ariane 6 completes long-duration static-fire test.

Related: Ariane 6 Passes Last Full-Duration Rehearsal Before Inaugural Flight.

Also: Ariane 6 cost and delays bring European launch industry to a breaking point. “In the decade since this agreement was reached, there have been at least three factors that have precipitated a crisis in European launch. One is the rise of SpaceX, which, through its reusable Falcon 9 rocket, has come to dominate the commercial market with prices about half those offered by the Ariane rockets. Because it has optimized for speed, SpaceX can also launch far more frequently and efficiently than Europe.”

The Europeans have a development cycle measured in decades. SpaceX has one measured in months-to-years.

#JOURNALISM:

He’s not an “immigrant.” He’s just someone who . . . immigrated 20 years ago.

UPDATE: Bill Quick in the comments: “Can’t imagine why the Regime Media hates X so much.”

Related: Diversity Stabbing of the Day.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments:

They are going to kill Elon Musk. They HAVE TO.

They can’t exist if he does.

They are going to MURDER him.

He’s a smart guy. I assume he’s taken precautions.

BASIC MALFUNCTION CLEARING DRILL: Learn the Tap, Rack, Bang. “There are a lot of brand new gun owners out there who haven’t had much time with their new pistols. Maybe they haven’t even thought about the possibility of a malfunction, but they need to. No one wants to rely on a handgun to protect themselves or their family and have it fail to go bang. That can ruin your whole day.”

UM: Dear Annie: Our son-in-law pigs out at family dinners, and we’re disgusted by it.

Dear Annie: My 40-year-old son-in-law has horrible manners. At dinner, if we have a buffet set up with six pieces of chicken, and there are six people eating, he will grab four pieces.

Six pieces of chicken isn’t a buffet, for most Americans it’s a Snack Pack. A buffet should have enough food to feed everyone, with a comfortable surplus. One piece of chicken per person doesn’t count, at least not in America. Maybe in Bangladesh, or post-Green Sri Lanka. What is wrong with you people?

MARK JUDGE: The Unforgettable Avalon Theater.

It was a little later that dad met my mother. He was having a drink at the Chevy Chase Lounge, a tavern just a few doors down from the Avalon. He looked up and was smitten: here was a woman who looked like Gene Tierney. Like Tierney, my mother Phyllis was “black Irish,” gorgeous people of Irish descent who have jet black hair and blue eyes. Both mom and Tierney also had a slight overbite that only added to their appeal.

“Wow,” my dad said. “You look like Gene Tierney.”

“You look like an asshole,” mom replied.

A year later they were married.

Read the whole thing.

DEREK CHAUVIN NEEDED ‘LIFESAVING MEASURES’ TO KEEP HIM ALIVE AFTER PRISON STABBING, LIBERALS CELEBRATE:

Many on both sides of the aisle believe that Chauvin deserved his sentence and that his actions caused Floyd’s death. Nevertheless, those celebrating what some are calling “Shanksgiving” should be ashamed of themselves:

* * * * * * * *

I will let readers decide what they think of Chauvin, but I think we can all agree that the prison system is obligated to keep him safe—and they utterly failed—and that celebrating the stabbing of a federal prisoner is deranged. Their celebrations bring to mind all the disturbing pro-Hamas protests we’re seeing—where people are literally revering savagery.

Is this what we’ve become?

For many, yes; those who failed to realize that Tom Wolfe didn’t write Radical Chic as a how-to guide for leftists throughout America.

PAULA BOLYARD: A Dirty Little Secret About Drudge.

Many of you will recall that Drudge at first did everything he could to promote Donald Trump. Then something happened, some sort of falling-out that no one ever really got to the bottom of, and Matt Drudge turned on the president. That was in 2019, a year of big changes for Drudge. There were rumors (still unconfirmed) that the site had been sold. Drudge changed its ad provider, and it began to lean more liberal and more favorable toward mainstream media. That same year, PJ Media became part of the Townhall Media family and the links stopped—abruptly. Literally on the day of the sale. Whoever was running Drudge at the time, whether Matt or some minimum-wage intern, apparently had some sort of grudge against Townhall and he/they even dropped us from the blogroll at the bottom of the page. Petty, vindictive, and, if I’m being honest, rather costly to our bottom line.

Now, if you go to the Drudge report you’ll find links to a bunch of left-wing UK sites, and well-funded mainstream media sites like the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the New York Post. Good for them, I guess. For whatever reason, Matt Drudge, who was reportedly apolitical and more interested in the success of his site than anyagenda, decided to tank the site. A comparison of Similiar Web (a site that ranks websites based on various metrics)  shows that Drudge was listed as #41 in the nation with 164 million visits in October 2018. Currently, the site ranks at #145 with 51 million visits in October 2023. That’s a major, major drop.

I’m not losing any sleep over any of this, and I trust you’re not either.

Not at all, but I’d love to finally get to hear the actual story of what turned Drudge into a zombie Website; a mere shadow of its former greatness. Flashback: Where’s Matt Drudge? “The Drudge Report reminds me of MTV in the early 2000s, a channel I returned to sheerly out of habit based on its greatness from decades before.”