WHEN INSTITUTIONS ARE CORRUPTED:
So much for the natural trends. But if enough perverts or robbers enter an institution they can take it over by recruiting each other. Then the foxes are guarding the henhouse. This has probably happened in more than a few organizations.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 1, 2024
MERRICK GARLAND RESIGN IN PROTEST? THAT WOULD REQUIRE STANDARDS ON HIS PART. Thread:
HUNTER BIDEN PARDON?
If as President BIDEN claims DOJ did not follow professional norms, & DOJ is instead bowing to political pressure, should not BIDEN fire someone? And if BIDEN is wrong about the norm-violation, should not someone (calling Merrick Garland) resign in protest?
— Seth Barrett Tillman (@SethBTillman) December 2, 2024
Related: Joe Biden Pardoning Hunter Biden: Will It End up with Hunter Testifying against Joe? Well, Hunter can’t plead the Fifth now.
POLITICO: Republicans Pounce! Republicans pounce on Biden pardoning his son, Hunter.
Screencap, in case Politico later revises their headline:
Evergreen:
UPDATE: After getting blitzed on Twitter, Politico updates their headline: “Republicans say Biden is a ‘liar’ after he pardons his son, Hunter.” Note that the Politico is still pouncing in its URL, though.
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the holiday weekend. Get back on your diet.
UNEXPECTEDLY! Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges not to.
And thus:
Joe Biden just gave Trump the ammunition to pardon every single J6 rioter that he has the power to.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 2, 2024
UPDATE:
A compilation of every time KJP was asked if Biden is going to pardon Hunter and every time she said no.pic.twitter.com/i4hEeVEpjN
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) December 2, 2024
IF THE GOP WANTS TO GO AFTER BIDEN’S PARDON OF HIS SON, HERE’S THE WINNING MESSAGE:
In 1994, a crime bill authored by @JoeBiden locked Black men up for years for the same gun charge he just pardoned Hunter Biden for today.
This is the Democrat Party.
Again, why any Black person would want to be associated with the democrats is beyond me.
— Kimberly Klacik (@kimKBaltimore) December 2, 2024
OUCH:
Except your son. https://t.co/Hh2Tsx9ryi
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) December 2, 2024
I’m super excited to see all the leftist who’ve been babbling about the rule of law for the last couple years explaining why pardoning Hunter Biden is a great thing.
I’m not sure, but I’m pretty positive it’s going to be because us conservatives are racist or something.— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 2, 2024
UPDATE:
In 1994, a crime bill authored by @JoeBiden locked Black men up for years for the same gun charge he just pardoned Hunter Biden for today.
This is the Democrat Party.
Again, why any Black person would want to be associated with the democrats is beyond me.
— Kimberly Klacik (@kimKBaltimore) December 2, 2024
DATING ADVICE FOR WOMEN: RELAX YOUR MINIMUM HEIGHT. I Was Feeling Hopeless About Love. Then I Went on a Singles Retreat. As a 6’3″ guy I benefited from women’s emphasis on height, but I think the dating apps have reified it and turned it from what used to be a preference into a hard cut-off. Literally, in the case of pulldown menus, etc., that let you set a minimum height. It’s almost fetishized now, with women bragging to other women that they won’t go out with a man under six feet, or 6’3″. This doesn’t benefit anyone.
CYBER MONDAY DEAL: Groove Life Groove Belt Men’s Stretch Nylon Belt with Magnetic Aluminum Buckle. #CommissionEarned
SCIENCE SAYS, IF YOU’RE PRETTY DON’T TAKE REMOTE CLASSES: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching. “Grades of attractive females declined when teaching was conducted remotely. For males, there was a beauty premium even after the switch to online teaching.” Pretty privilege is a thing.
SUPPLY CHAIN: How Wood Goes From a Tree to the Inside of a Bentley. Um, expensively?
UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY, COMRADES: New York Times describes women as “non-transgender women:” The New York Times’ erasure of biological women is the latest sign of its ideological capture.
The New York Times once had a reputation for being unafraid to air a wide range of different opinions, even for challenging the views of the so-called “progressive” Left. No longer. And the ideological capture of the publication is beginning to show even in the language its journalists and editors use.
In a recent piece on transgender athletes, it managed to use three words when one would have done. The story goes like this: the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the main governing body for college sports in the United States, has ruled on trans-identified volleyball players and testosterone levels. But the NYT chose a bizarre form of language to report the already extraordinary fact that a biological male with four times the level of testosterone as a biological woman is allowed to compete in women’s sport. It described women as “non-transgender women”.
It’s the latest sign that the publication remains under the cosh of blue-fringed ideologues who consider feelings to be more important than facts. And more so, who prioritise a miniscule population of trans-identified males over half the population of the planet.
Feminist campaigners against gender ideology who object to the erasure of women immediately hit out when the story was posted on X. One of those was the tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who, as an out lesbian since the early 1980s, has done more to fight for the rights of women than most in her field.
“NYT- you stink,” she posted. “We are women, not NOT TRANSGENDER WOMEN. Just WOMEN will do in the future.”
Related: “To prevent the ‘not-un’ formulation, Orwell suggest memorizing this phrase: ‘a not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.’ For their part, the ‘not transgender woman’ crowd might buy a can of spray paint and find a retaining wall for their writing. That’s the level they’re on.”
SONNY BUNCH: Wicked: Part One Review.
I did not care much for Wicked: Part One—I’m desperately tired of movies being one half of one movie, particularly when said movie has a run time of 160 minutes—but Ariana Grande delivers one of the best performances of the year as Glinda. Yes, it’s largely one note, that note being “ditzy blonde consumed by self-absorption.” But she hits that note like she’s Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl: Grande is raucously funny and charming within it, and Glinda’s moments of growth—as when she sees behind Elphaba’s rock-like façade and acknowledges the girl’s suffering—are both genuine and heartfelt. There’s conflict within the heart of this ditz, and she conveys it clearly with her eyes.
I’ve seen folks suggest that this movie is a satisfying whole rather than an unsatisfying half of a whole that’s nevertheless the same runtime as the Broadway musical. This is perplexing, as virtually every subplot—including the hamhanded metaphor about animal oppression that implicitly compares talking goats to Jews in Nazi Germany and the desperately dull relationship between Nessarose and a Munchkin with a crush on Glinda—goes completely unresolved.
Thankfully, all of my questions will be answered: Regardless of my exhaustion, the movie will likely be a monstrous hit with audiences and Oscar voters alike. The audience I saw it with seemed enraptured; it laughed and sniffled at all the right moments. It’s not for me, but you’ll know if it’s for you. Please don’t let my peevish nature dissuade you defying the gravity of my disapproval.
Related: “Is This the Craziest Trigger Warning Yet?”, Christian Toto asks of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC):
The story touches on friendship, feeling different from your peers and, of course, flying monkeys.
The BBFC fears the film, which is crushing the box office competition, might trigger select audiences.
Why?
“…seeing beloved characters being mistreated, especially when Elphaba’s skin-colour is used to demonise her as the ‘Wicked Witch’, may be upsetting and poignant for some audiences.”
Yes, that’s a key point of the original show and the movie. Should we avoid stories that are “upsetting” and/or “poignant?” That might leave out, well, most content.
Wait until the BBFC discovers the Incredible Hulk, Zoe Saldaña’s Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy, and some of Capt. Kirk’s interstellar trysts. Speaking of which:
NEWS THEY DON’T WANT US TO HEAR: Illegal Alien’s Purchase Of 170 Guns Raises Eyebrows.
CYBER MONDAY DEAL: Tabletop Fire Pit with Smores Maker Kit Portable Indoor/Outdoor. #CommissionEarned This looks fun, we had kids at Thanksgiving and gave them marsh mellows to roast and they loved it.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Did Biden Make His Anti-Semitism Official?
[A] few months later shortly after the book his the bookstore shelves, [Reagan advisor Martin] Anderson was watching TV news coverage of Reagan getting off the helicopter on the White House lawn and approaching a bank of microphones for some brief but rare comments to the media about something, and lo and behold! Reagan was clutching a copy of Anderson’s book under his arm, with the title plainly visible for the cameras and easy to make out. It was visible in photos that appeared in newspapers. Anderson took this as a much better boost for the book than a dust jacket blurb. And Anderson knew it was no coincidence or happenstance.
This story came back to me over the weekend with the photos of Joe Biden emerging from a Nantucket bookstore holding in plain sight the book he purchased: Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017. Khalidi is a former spokesperson for the PLO, defender of Hamas terrorism, and a vicious anti-Semite, full stop. He is also an emeritus professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, naturally.
It is quite possible that in his senile state Biden isn’t actually replicating Reagan’s deliberate act of promoting a book with an implicit presidential endorsement. But you’d think that aides, or his super-smart son Hunter, who was with him, would have made him keep it in a bag. Deliberate or not, it is revealing.
The pre-2020 Biden, who spent his entire adult life obsessed with ultimately winning the White House would of course have known the value of a presidential endorsement of a book, and had seen his former (and current) boss posing prominently in 2008 on the campaign trail with Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, in a deliberate foreshadowing of the “fundamental transformation” to come, which garnered his fellow leftist massive amounts of free publicity.
But this is the Trunalimunumaprzure-era Biden we’re talking about today. The fact that Khalidi’s book is upside down lends credence to it quickly being stuck in the (p)resident’s hand for a photo-op, to signal to the far left that the empty husk of a man serving out his final days isn’t “Genocide Joe,” or at the very least, the people actually running the country are supportive of their fight against Israel.
PLUG-INS ARE THE FUTURE: Kia Targeting 60-Mile PHEV Range Within “the Next Couple Years.”
READER FAVORITE: Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream with SPF 30. #CommissionEarned
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Mayonnaise is the most popular condiment in the U.S. So why does it have a bad rap? I love mayo, but I’m annoyed that, in a variant of “shrinkflation,” Kraft’s “Avocado Oil Mayonnaise” is now “Mayonnaise with Olive Oil,” meaning that it’s basically 34% Avocado oil and the rest soybean and canola oil. You can buy fancy brands that are all avocado oil, but they’re (much) more expensive. And to my taste, not quite as good.
BOOKS TO READ AND GIFT: Over on X, Steven Sinofsky has an interesting list of books to read and gift this season. This includes my book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, regarding which he says: “This book is an **infuriating** look at the arbitrary and cynical world of racial and ethnic classification. It is filled with the absurdity of the legislation, court battles, and cynical application of what amount to fairly nonsensical classifications when considering the goal.”
WHAT THE WELL-DRESSED POOCH WEARS? Five reasons your dog might really benefit from canine clothing.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: 3D-printed hydrogel enables continuous drug delivery via contact lens.
DO THE WORK, BUT DON’T GET COCKY JUST YET: Steve Bannon: Maga can rule for 50 years and Farage will be PM.
When I meet him at his house in Arizona (one of several he owns across the US) at 7am on Wednesday last week, his 71st birthday, he doesn’t seem like someone who has won. For Bannon, beating the Democrats was just the start. Now comes the struggle against dissenting elements in the Republican Party.
“We are so close,” he tells me. “We just need to see this through.”
Trump may have won the presidency, but to enact the sweeping changes he wants to make — chief among them destroying the administrative state and deporting millions of undocumented migrants — he needs to move fast, with the support of his party.
If they manage this, Bannon tells me more than once, the Maga Republicans can rule for half a century. “If we deliver now, it’s upon us. They’ve given President Trump that. If he delivers on the economics of this … we’re going to govern for 50 years. It’s all there for us to lose.”
We’ve seen similar post-election gloating from the other side, which often looks quite misguided in retrospect. QED: James Carville Angles For ’40 More Years.’
—NPR, May 7th, 2009.
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