Archive for 2023

GREAT MOMENTS IN MORAL EQUIVALENCE: VP Harris’s husband likens outraged parents at school board meetings to hatred that led to the Holocaust.

While speaking about how to combat anti-Semitism, Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, first gentleman Doug Emhoff, likened the hate that led to the Holocaust to the frustrations of parents at school board meetings.

Emhoff, who is Jewish, made the remarks at SXSW* in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, while recounting a recent trip to a concentration camp.

I met one woman who was saved in the Holocaust in Germany, settled in Ukraine, and is now a refugee again back in Berlin,” Emhoff recalled to Symone Sanders, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, who was leading the interview.

This hate is interconnected,” he continued. “You see it in the discourse in the country right now. You see it in the divide that we have. Just going to school meetings you see that hate that is out there.”

Virginia’s Gov. Terry McAuliffe could not be reached for comment.

Also at South By Southwest:

UPDATE: Ace of Spades adds:

Gina Carano was cancelled for referencing the Nazis in connection with modern-day woke purges.

But the left is permitted to make these comparisons. Pedro Pascal, Carano’s co-star on the Disney+ show The Mandalorian, repeated compared detaining illegal aliens sneaking across the border to concentration camps. Not a peep of controversy was heard.

I mean, the truth is that Disney+ actually fired Carano because she wouldn’t use transgender pronouns (as Pedro Pascal eagerly did). So they looked for any excuse to fire her which would not call attention to their “Not-So-Secret Gay Agenda,” or make the transgender extremists look like the bad guys.

So they blamed the Jews instead. I guess it’s a classic for a reason, huh, Disney?

Related: ‘No truth in claim that Walt Disney was an anti-Semite.’

(Updated and bumped.)

‘THAT’S A LIE:’ Janet Yellen Faces Grilling Before Senate Finance Committee.

Biden’s refusal to work with lawmakers was brought up again by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) on the issue of protecting the solvency of Social Security. Yellen tried to insist that Biden “cares very deeply” about the program, but couldn’t explain any of his actions to back up that claim. Instead, Yellen insisted Biden “stands ready to work with Congress.”

“That’s a lie,” Cassidy pointed out, as lawmakers have tried to meet with Biden on the subject to no avail.

It’s unsurprising that Biden doesn’t have a plan to address Social Security or negotiate a debt ceiling increase, considering his previous failures. From the Afghanistan withdrawal to declaring “independence” from COVID in 2021, Biden’s plans, when he does have them, don’t end any better.

QED:

 

I’M THE GYPSY, THE ACID QUEEN, PAY ME BEFORE I START. I’M THE GYPSY, I’M GUARANTEED TO TEAR YOUR SOUL APART: Politico: Marianne Williamson ‘abusive’ toward campaign staff.

Finally, Politico looked up some old stories from the time when Williamson was first gaining traction for her work as a Hollywood guru of sorts. Here’s a bit of a story from the LA Times in 1992:

Williamson is also the latest mystical sensation in Hollywood, where many work assiduously to cultivate their souls, often with the same devotion they apply to their physiques. Anthony Perkins, Lesley Ann Warren, Tommy Tune, Cher and Roy Scheider go to her lectures. David Geffen and Sandy Gallin listen to her on tape and have sought her private counsel; she lunches with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Dawn Steel, and last summer she officiated at the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Fortensky. “Her sense of spirituality triggered off my own,” the bride said recently through a spokeswoman…

Feared in some quarters for her explosive temper, Williamson acknowledges that she often comes across as “the bitch for God.”…

Many people who have worked with her say she has an explosive temper that erupts indiscriminately even in front of sick clients. They contend she is a “control freak” who insists on becoming involved in every detail and cannot bear to be upstaged or challenged. “If you don’t agree with Marianne you’re not going to be around very long,” said Dick DeVogeleare, a dismissed executive director who sued the center for breach of contract and later settled.

“Marianne is someone who likes to control everyone around her,” said journalist Jean Halberstam, formerly on the Manhattan center’s board.

Flashback: The late Cathy Seipp on California Screaming.

DOBBS WAS BIG BUT SO WAS SHURTLEFF: It’s not every day that the nation’s highest court tosses the Lemon Test in the trash. My latest PJ Media column compares the significance of Dobbs and Shurtleff.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Yellen Admits that CCP-Linked Silicon Valley Bank Depositors Will Be Bailed Out by U.S. Banks.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted during a Thursday Congressional hearing that Chinese Communist Party-linked businesses that had deposits in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will be made whole by the American banking system.

Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) pressed Yellen on the matter during a Senate Finance Committee hearing held days after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.

“It has been reported publicly that SVB had a large number of Chinese investors that are there including some companies that were directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” Senator Lankford (R., Okla.) asked Yellen during Thursday afternoon’s hearing. “So what I’m asking is: will my banks in Oklahoma pay a special assessment to be able to make Chinese investors whole in Silicon Valley Bank?”

Secretary Yellen confirmed that they would.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported: Man Struggling To Feed Family Just Glad He Could Help Bail Out Bank.

IF YOU LOOK AROUND THE TABLE AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THE SUCKER IS, THE SUCKER IS YOU: White House hopes Biden’s relationship with Xi can defuse U.S.-China tensions.

Now that Chinese President Xi Jinping has consolidated power and effectively ended collective rule, he’s the lone figure in Beijing making decisions that will drive future relations, according to U.S. officials who were granted anonymity to offer frank assessments of the relationship.

It is Xi who will decide whether China invades Taiwan; Xi who will determine whether China gives lethal arms to Russia in its war in Ukraine; Xi who will calibrate how hard to push North Korea into curbing a nuclear arms program that threatens the United States and its allies.

“The answer is China. Now what’s the question?” Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff, said on the country’s role in global affairs as Xi starts another five-year term.

One question is whether the Biden administration can deter Xi from actions that put the two nations on a path to conflict. Biden often tells aides that when they speak publicly about China, they should stress the need to open lines of communication, a senior administration official said.

Yet because of Xi’s dominance in China’s system, the only conduit that truly matters in staving off catastrophe is the one that exists between the two presidents, administration officials and analysts say.

Having gotten to know Xi, Biden hopes to use those insights to put the U.S. and China on a safer footing. A recent security assessment written by U.S. intelligence officials warns that China wants to build a “world-class military” capable of “offsetting perceived U.S. military superiority.”

Hope is not a plan. Buffing up the Navy and eliminating the woke BS in favor of real training… now that’s a plan.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is Paramount Feuding with William Shatner? “The exclusion of James T. Kirk in modern ‘Star Trek’ marketing is yet another example of efforts to diminish Shatner’s contribution and to emasculate strong male characters on television and at the movies.”