CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Nebraska Goes Constitutional Carry Today.
I think it’s fair to say that the anti-gunners’ 50-year-old campaign to denormalize gun ownership isn’t going well.
Archive for 2023
September 2, 2023
IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF, THEY SHOULD BE DELIGHTED TO GO ALONG: ‘100% Transparent’: Jordan Peterson Says He Will Move To Broadcast Mandated Social Media Training.
R.I.P., JIMMY BUFFETT. I first encountered him in a short promotional film that appeared before Young Frankenstein.
JOHN HINDERAKER: “A question of perennial interest is, why, in these times of unprecedented material prosperity and security, are so many people unhappy and depressed? That is a big question, but one part of the answer is that we are constantly bombarded with apocalyptic propaganda.”
JOHN COUGAR FOOTINMOUTH: Only 1%-2% of Black people live better than slaves. “To me the most interesting thing about Mellencamp’s exchange with Maher was not his insane assertion that modern America remains a hellhole for Blacks; by now one has come to expect insane takes from racialists who fetishize invented oppression and marinate in it. No, it was his admission after Maher called him out on the stupidity of what he was saying. Mellencamp admitted that he just pulled the number 1%-2% out of his ass. He simply made it up, and that is just fine with him.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Ignoring Biden’s Fallout in Africa. “As a growing number of African countries devolve into chaos and seek alliances with countries opposed to US policy, the Biden administration is nowhere to be seen on the national stage. . . . It’s worthwhile noting that before Biden handed Afghanistan over to the Taliban, progressives at the State Department hoisted the rainbow flag over Kabul in a symbolic gesture that thoroughly infuriated small conservative nations around the world. Aside from the optics of turning our friends over to the terrorists, the Biden administration forgets that gestures like this do not sit well with many of the small African countries sitting on valuable oil and rare earth minerals. The result is many of these countries simply do not trust us. Instead of seeking help from the United States, a growing number of small, poor countries are running to Wagner for military support and China for shady loans.”
Related: “But the truth is, when we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.”
I do think in many ways the most profound question for American foreign policy, and it’s one that very much implicates economic policy, is that as right and just as we feel we are, there are just a large number of countries that are not aligned with us or that are only weakly…
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) April 16, 2023
#JOURNALISM: Farhad Manjoo writes a story about the Kia Boys without mentioning the Kia Boys.
As Manjoo sees it, the thefts and related problems (car crashes, armed robbery sprees, etc.) are entirely the fault of the manufacturers for making these cars so easy to steal. But he notes, ruefully, that another culprit is getting some of the blame. If you’re guessing he’s talking about the thieves, you guessed wrong. . . .
Not mentioned at all in these paragraphs or anywhere else in his column are the car thieves. All of the fault is placed on inanimate objects, i.e. the “theft-prone cars.” No responsibility is placed on the people driving this trend. This strikes me as pretty perfect encapsulation of everything that is wrong with progressive thinking on crime.
I think there’s a pretty clear reason why he’s leaving out the people responsible. Because the “Kia Boys,” as they’ve been described, are young teens, often black, who are stealing cars for fun and for social media cred. Contrary to what Manjoo claims, TikTok isn’t just providing dry information on how to steal the cars, it’s the platform where the “Kia Challenge” went viral. It’s where thieves post highlights of their joyrides in stolen cars to impress other kids. . . . In this clip, they admit they started stealing the cars because it was trending on TikTok. Watch and then tell me the responsibility should primarily fall on the car manufacturers. What about the kids doing this? What about their parents who seem to be completely absent? What about TikTok for making this into a social media game and a competition? Even the older men in the neighborhood point out that there is no accountability for these kids even when they are caught. So what about the courts and judges who give them a pass? If the car companies deserve blame that should come after a long line of other people involved.
Pretty much what we’ve come to expect from our brave “journalists,” though Farhad’s generally been better than this. Those Kias shouldn’t have been wearing such short skirts.
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco’s Homeless Ticking Time Bomb.
At any given moment, on any given day, there are around 8,000 people sleeping on the streets of the city — one of the wealthiest, per capita, in human history. Once acquainted with the basic facts of the crisis, including the incredible sum of money dedicated to solving the problem, the average San Franciscan concludes the city must be run by morons. How else, with billions of dollars, have city leaders failed to provide a few thousand temporary beds? Even with supportive services, the numbers don’t add up. This is because the average person assumes the small cabal of activists who run the city’s bloated homeless industrial complex want to temporarily shelter and rehabilitate the homeless. They do not. In fact, they are ideologically opposed to the concept. . . .
This year, San Francisco allotted $672 million to its Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), whose stated mission is to “make homelessness in San Francisco rare, brief, and one-time.” Since its inception in 2016, the HSH’s budget has tripled; in total, it has received over $3.3 billion in public funds. Yet the number of people on the streets continues to grow. HSH estimates that, on any given night, around 4,400 people sleep on the city’s streets and 3,400 sleep in shelters, putting the total number of homeless people in San Francisco at around 7,800, up over 20 percent from 2005. Where is all the money going? Is well over half a billion dollars not enough to provide temporary shelter and emergency care for all 3,400 people sleeping in tents, blankets, and cars on San Francisco’s streets? Is it not enough to improve the appalling hygienic conditions that once led a UN rapporteur to compare Downtown’s encampments to Mumbai’s slums?
San Francisco’s homeless problem is too lucrative to be solved.
September 1, 2023
LEOPARDS NEVER CHANGE THEIR SPOTS: P.J. Media’s Paula Bolyard is the first one who gets to the core of another slimy attack on what is perceived as “conservative” media. John Solomon of JustTheNews.com broadcast with partner Real America’s Voice an exclusive interview with former President Trump. They discussed, among other things, Trump’s vow to take on “federal machinery of censorship of political speech.”
Literally, before the sun came up, DNCC sock-puppets at The Daily Beast published a story claiming — with no evidence — that Solomon had been fooled, and talked to either an impostor or an “AI bot.” Did The Daily Beast call Solomon to ask about it? Nope. Did they call the Trump campaign to verify? Nope. That would be asking too much.
Although other media hedged their bets reporting on the alleged punking, Bolyard got right to it. Bolyard quoted the original (and now memory-holed) Daily Beast article as saying:
“Robert J. Sigg, the owner of the network, told The Daily Beast on Thursday night that the “Trump” on the call sounded “like ChatGOP” to him and that “an internal investigation will be needed” into whether his hosts were duped […] “This is not the company values that the American people tune in for,” Sigg added. “This is a major oversight by John and Amanda both. Our news directors will need to go through additional training about journalism practice and how to present the facts and truth to the American people.”
One little bitty problem with that: Neither Sigg nor the network ever said any such thing. The network responded to The Daily Beast‘s smear job saying that:
“These are all scurrilous lies in a fake quote that The Daily Beast never received from our network. Ironically, in a story they wrote about RAV being duped, it was The Daily Beast in fact that may have been “punked” into believing they had a qualified quote from us.”
Here’s the best part: the CEO of The Daily Beast is one of the same people who brought you a shit-show called “Gawker.”
NEVER, BECAUSE THEY’RE REGIME-SPONSORED THUGS: A J6 rioter just got 17 years in prison for shaking a fence. When will these BLM rioters at the White House get the same sentence?
OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend with good cheer.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Tiangong space station could alter perceptions of China’s space program, report says. Also the realities.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Hypothesized Physics ‘Demon’ May Have Been Found Lurking Inside Our Cells.
It’s not a real Maxwell’s Demon unless I can air-condition my magician’s lair with it, as in the classic Larry Niven story.
SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO:
OK, time for a long form response to that @Quillette article about space settlement by Joesph Grosso @goetheny1113
Opening is generally fine, summarises the state of Artemis and points out that the program has its critics and the there is a lot of pork barrel politics involved.… pic.twitter.com/RfeynWEkwl
— Peter Hague PhD (@peterrhague) August 31, 2023
Rand Simberg comments: “One of the foundational problems of space-policy discussions is the apparent inability of many to distinguish between space exploration, and space settlement.”