I DOUBT I’LL LIVE TO SEE THIS, ALAS:
The size of polities may be measured in latency seconds. A mega empire might be as much as 4 seconds wide. The phrase for distant might be "so far you can't ping him anymore."
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) September 14, 2023
I should note that there are already Interplanetary Internet Protocols under development.
FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ARI FLEISCHER SAYS MEDIA HAVE ‘BECOME ACTIVISTS FOR A CAUSE.’
“Not only has our country become more polarized, the press has become more polarized. When I was press secretary, the press was always liberal. Everybody knew it. They were liberal and you sort of just had to do your best and deal with liberal reporters. But they held themselves up to a standard that their jobs were still supposed to be fair and independent and down the middle and they would be tough on both sides. Well, that’s been abandoned. You now have a mainstream media which consists of the elite, New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, certainly MSNBC, all of whom have become activists for a cause.
“My book has example after example of where, when the two parties do identical things, the press covers the Democrats with sympathy and they cover Republicans with a sledgehammer. Republicans get it. It’s one of the reasons why the press is in such an amazing, huge decline everywhere. The mainstream media is dying. They really can’t change and it’s why they don’t care.”
As America’s Newspaper of Record noted earlier today, “Journalists Anxiously Wait For Email From Biden Administration With Today’s Instructions.”
And they must be doing it out of party loyalty, because no Democrat politician has treated his party operatives with bylines as shabbily as Biden has over the years, long before his brain completely transmogrified into guacamole.
UPDATE: Read Biden administration’s memo to media on impeachment.
THEY JUST CAN’T QUIT: More Mask Hysteria. From White House to elementary schools, from the CDC to its useful idiots in the media, the insanity continues.
SKEWERING THE ELITE: How Did Tom Wolfe Get Away With It? In his day, the liberal establishment was more dominant and even smugger than it it today, but somehow Tom Wolfe took on its high priests and triumphed, celebrating red-state culture and hilariously exposing the pretensions of the blue-state intelligentsia. I discuss the reasons for his success in a review of “Radical Wolfe,” a superb new documentary chronicling his career. The film opens in theaters this weekend in New York City, next weekend in Los Angeles and Toronto, and then in other cities. Definitely worth watching.
NO, BARBIE, THERE IS NO PATRIARCHY: The myth of male privilege. Toby Young, the Daily Sceptic’s editor-in-chief, proposes another law:
A few weeks ago I had a crack at coming up with my own sociological ‘law’ and my first effort went as follows: “The more progressive a country is when it comes to sex and gender, the more authoritarian it is when it comes to speech and language.” I was thinking of Ireland which, having legalised abortion in 2018, is about to impose the most draconian speech restrictions in Europe. I now propose a second law: “^Any group described as privileged is in fact marginalised; and any group described as marginalised is in fact privileged.’
A case in point is white men – and in particular cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class white men – who are now at the bottom of the intersectional hierarchy of oppression in most professions. But to add to their misery, these poor, benighted souls have to pretend they’re at the top of that self-same pyramid if they’re to retain their jobs, apologising for their ‘privilege’ in front of their more powerful black, female, non-binary, gay and disabled colleagues.
Read the whole thing. And for a look at the overwhelming evidence that both sexes are biased against men, check out my article in City Journal, “The Misogyny Myth.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: Academia’s Missing Men: Men are disappearing from science and academia. The public perception is, however, exactly the opposite.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Journalists Anxiously Wait For Email From Biden Administration With Today’s Instructions.
REMEMBER, A VULCAN GUN NEEDS EXTERNAL POWER: Making The Best Choice For A Home Defense Gun.
JOANNE JACOBS: KIPP schools are game changers. “KIPP charters are game changers, concludes a new Mathematica study. Compared to similar students who applied to KIPP but lost the enrollment lottery, graduates of KIPP middle and high schools were ’31 percentage points more likely to enroll in a four-year college within three years of high school,’ reports Jo Napolitano on The 74. ‘Their likelihood of graduating college within five years after high school shot up by 19 percentage points.'”
THAT’S BEEN THE RUSSIAN WAY OF WAR FOR A LONG TIME: Putin Betting on Massive Russian Conscript Surge to Win in Ukraine, Expert Says.
Olesya Tkacheva, assistant professor at Brussels School of Governance, said that when Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement, the implication was “all I need is young men between 18 and 35 years of age,” about .01 percent of the Russian population. Last year Russia mobilized 300,000 reservists. Putin also put the burden on provincial governors to deliver set, but secret, quotas of men to the Ministry of Defense. Some local municipal officials who kept the records of conscription registration and governors, both eager to curry favor with the Kremlin, exceeded Moscow-set quotas in mobilizing young men.
“Not all regions contributed the same share,” she added. From her studies of the mobilization, the call-up burden to fill the ranks fell heaviest on regions that did not strongly support Putin’s United Russian party in the latest Duma, or parliamentary, elections and were economically depressed.
Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine have been estimated at 120,000 killed and between 170,000 and 180,000 wounded through mid-August. Tkacheva said Putin’s regime has been very close-lipped on Russian casualties in the war that began in February 2022.
Win, lose, or draw, killing off that many young men from a country with Russia’s dismal demographics is just stupid.
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Early ovary removal likely to accelerate aging process and health problems.
NEXT, FIND A WAY TO BLOCK IT: Researchers identify driver of inflammatory bowel disease.
LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Florida Advises Against New Covid Boosters For Most Age Groups, Citing No ‘Sufficient Clinical Evidence.’ “According to a press release from the FDOH, the agency based its new recommendations on the ‘absence of any meaningful booster-specific clinical trial data performed in humans’ that warrants the shots’ approval by federal health agencies. FDOH also claimed that the federal government ‘failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.'”
RON HART: Remembering An American Badass: My Departed Druncle Mac. “His politics were what you might imagine. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on TV spewing her socialist rants, he blamed New Yorkers for electing her and went on to ask, ‘How big a drunk do you have to be to elect your bartender to Congress?'”
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHESY:
Shot: Are You Serious?! Olbermann Thrilled Unvaccinated Aaron Rodgers Tore His Achilles.
—NewsBusters today.
Chaser: Experts Believe Aaron Rodgers Ankle Injury A Result Of Being Unvaccinated.
—The Babylon Bee, Tuesday.
FORBIDDEN PALACE INTRIGUE [VIP]: Could Xi Get Khrushchev’d?
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation).#CommissionEarned
A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! The deep state tells Biden to retire.
It was only a matter of time before a major liberal pundit came forward to publicly deliver the bad news: Joe, it’s time to go.
Now, it’s happened, care of David Ignatius, a Washington Post associate editor and senior foreign affairs writer. Ignatius has thrown down the gauntlet to Biden with a column bluntly titled: “President Biden should not run again in 2024.” Dispensing the required pleasantries about Biden’s “remarkable string of wins,” Ignatius adds, “What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out.”
This will be news to Republicans.
Finally, he gets to the point: “But I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”
Ignatius states the obvious: Joe is too old for the job, adding acidly, “Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer.” Ignatius then switches to Harris and why she’s hopeless too, sticking in the shiv: “Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.” Ignatius advises Joe to go away, preferably soon, so as to allow the Democrats time to assemble a better team to win the White House in 2024. “Time is running out,” he says.
Ignatius is not alone among elite leftists: Joe Scarborough Reveals Every Single Democrat He Speaks to Off Air Admits Biden is ‘Too Old to Run.’
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.