Archive for 2024

June 23, 2024

REPLACEMENT THEORY BECOMES REPLACEMENT PRACTICE:

 

Posted at 10:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 23rd, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 23rd, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF “WELCOME BACK, CARTER” AND TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: NBC Analyst Says Biden Campaign’s Biggest ‘Worry’ Is It May Be Impossible To Convince Voters He’s Competent.

“I think that the thing, Katty, that worries them, is that the information environment is what it is,” [John] Heilemann told MSNBC contributor Katty Kay. “And so I asked [O’Malley Dillon] to kind of try to make the case for, you know we see surrogates all the time go on TV and say, ‘I was in a meeting with Joe Biden recently and he seemed great.’ And I said, ‘Look, most of those people have been at one meeting with Joe Biden or a couple. You spend more time with him or as much time with him as anybody in the White House over the course of the last three years. How do you make the case that Biden is, give me a vivid reason to believe that for those who say Joe Biden is not up to the job?’”

“And she told a great story … emotional, powerful, vivid, but it’s a four or five-minute long story,” he added. “And in this information environment … the voters they have to reach are people who don’t hear the five-minute story. They’re never going to see Joe Biden that way. What they’re going to see is deep fakes, cheap fakes and not fakes, but images, quick images that leave a certain impression. And trying to reach people in this environment is really hard, reach anyone in the environment we live in now in the information ecosystem.”

Part of Heilemann’s job is pretending not to know about “deep fakes and cheap fakes:” John Heilemann Demanded Examples of MSNBC Dishonesty. Here Are a Few Choice Favorites.

And: MSNBC analyst whitewashes COVID ‘conspiracy theory’ lab leak stance: ‘Always’ took it seriously. In May 2020, John Heilemann slammed Trump for pushing a ‘made-up’ story targeting China.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Three Columbia College administrators placed on leave amid investigation into leaked texts sent during panel on Jewish life.

Three Columbia administrators have been placed on leave pending an investigation into text messages they sent in late May during an alumni weekend panel about Jewish life on campus, Columbia College Dean Josef Sorett told staff on Thursday.

As the panel’s four speakers discussed antisemitism at Columbia for nearly two hours, one attendee captured photos of Vice Dean and Chief Administrative Officer Susan Chang-Kim’s exchanges with Sorett, Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm, and Associate Dean for Student and Family Support Matthew Patashnick.

One of the texts included vomit emojis while referring to an October op-ed penned by the campus rabbi, and another described the panel as “difficult to listen to.” The messages have drawn criticism from Columbia affiliates and congressional leaders alike for being “disparaging” and in “poor faith.”

[The Columbia Spectator] obtained photos of the messages, which were first leaked to the Washington Free Beacon and published on June 12. The attendee, a Columbia alum who graduated decades ago, spoke to Spectator on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns for safety.

It gets better: Sorett calls the cops.

Since then, the Free Beacon’s coverage of the administrators’ text messages during the panel on the ordeal of Jews at Columbia this past spring has been impacting…, as Drudge used to put it. On June 20 Eliana Johnson (my daughter) reported that Sorett placed his three texting colleagues on leave pending an investigation. Eliana drily noted the anomalies:

A Columbia spokesman said the school had no comment regarding why Sorett, who took part in the text exchanges, was not placed on leave or on the propriety of Sorett making the announcement that his colleagues are under investigation. Likewise, the spokesman declined to say who would conduct the investigation, to whom the results would be reported, and whether the results would be made public.

Can you imagine how Sorett’s conversation with his colleagues went down? It must have been like something out of Blazing Saddles: “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!”

Yesterday Eliana and Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium turned up the heat on Sorett. With a little help from their source, they extracted one of Sorett’s previously unreported text messages during the panel discussion: “‘LMAO’: Dean of Columbia College Mocked Hillel Head in Newly Obtained Text Exchange.” Subhead: “Josef Sorett has sought to distance himself from leaked messages that are now the subject of a university investigation. The latest text message shows his participation in the affair.”

What you mean “LMAO,” Kemo Sabe?

Seeking a comment from Sorett, the Free Beacon then sent reporter Jessica Costescu to Sorett’s Morningside Heights apartment. What happened next? Sorett called the cops (both Columbia’s and the NYPD). Costescu observes yet another anomaly: “Sorett’s willingness to call the police to protect him from a reporter comes four years after he signed a 2020 faculty letter calling to ‘defund the NYPD by $1 billion.’”

As I wrote at the beginning of the month, linking to a piece by Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner: Old and Busted: Defund the Police. The New Hotness? Lock ’em up libs run the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Speaking of wanting to protect his phony-baloney job:

This seems like the admission of a man not up to that job. Given that Sorett writes on his homepage that “the study of religion” is one of his focuses, isn’t combating anti-Semitism something he should have spent some time “learning” a bit about before becoming the Dean of Columbia?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024

A LUXURY 6X6 OVERLAND CAMPER? Not bad, but I’d prefer something on a Unimog chassis.

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 23rd, 2024

OUT ON A LIMB: Serial Man-Dumper Taylor Swift Might Be the Sign of the End of Western Civilization.

Well yes, but she’s got serious competition in that department:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Having a Salena Zito Moment.

If you enjoy these essays, please subscribe.

Posted at 4:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 23rd, 2024

THIS IS THE WAY:

Posted at 4:24 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024

QUESTION ASKED: Is the Debate To Be Biden’s Last Stand?

It’s so strange, so unprecedented and so bizarre that no one is talking about it being so strange, so unprecedented and so bizarre.

That it is the debate scheduled for next Thursday, June 27, between President Biden and former President Trump.

June 27 — that’s more than two weeks before the Republican National Convention, more than seven weeks before the Democratic National Convention. And almost 10 weeks before Labor Day, the traditional date for the start of a general election presidential campaign.

And summer is a time when America is mostly on vacation. Folks are thinking more about beach time, airline schedules and the next hot travel destination. Politics is mostly shoved into the mental attic until the fall.

A debate between the two parties’ presidential candidates this early has never happened before. Never.

The explanation is that the Biden campaign, worried about his sagging poll ratings, wants to reassure voters about his age and mental acuity, contrast himself with Trump, and remind Americans that the stakes have never been higher. Meaning the evil orange man might get returned to the White House, and America needs to know how awful he is.

Really, the country needs to hear more Democrat reasons to hate Trump?

Already the legacy media daily sound the alarms about Trump’s supposed threat to democracy, mom and apple pie.

But that’s what Democrats are selling — an early debate exposé of the manifest danger of a second Trump term.

Let’s consider another possible motive, one perhaps animating Democrat leaders and party faithful who behind the scenes must be verging on panic over the increasing public perception of Biden as a senile old fool, an 81-year-old man who’s doddering, decrepit, feeble in mind and body.

Read the whole thing. As with Biden’s SOTU speech in March, the late-era Soviet spin from the DNC-MSM will be amazing to watch.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: White House promotes Biden official who compared police to slave patrols, wants to abolish ICE.

Tyler Cherry sparked controversy last year after social media posts surfaced in which he blasted law enforcement and promoted “Russiagate.”

“Praying for #Baltimore, but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases,” Cherry posted in 2015 amid riots that were sparked following the death of Freddie Gray, a Black man, in police custody in Baltimore.

* * * * * * * *

“Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine — no shame and f— your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine,” Cherry said on July 25, 2014, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Cherry also has a history of criticizing Republicans on social media, including in 2017 when he said that conservatives in the Republican Party were focused on “white grievance politics.”

“The Tea Party was never about the debt/deficit but about racism and white grievance politics,” he wrote on X.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said, “We’re very proud to have Tyler on the team.”

Well, of course they are. Biden certainly must agree with Cherry about the Tea Party, given that in 2011 he referred to them as “terrorists.” (Which I’m assuming in this case, he meant as a bad thing, unlike the terrorists the Obama and Biden administrations have cozied up with.)

And Cherry picks up the fashion-forward mantle left by the departed Sam Brinton, as well:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2024
« Previous Entries