AND THIS: The Candy Crowley Debate.
Archive for 2024
September 12, 2024
IS TRUMP PERFECT? NO, BUT WHAT ANNOYS A SUBSET OF CONSERVATIVES IN THIS COUNTRY ARE EXACTLY WHY OTHERS ARE VOTING FOR HIM: Let Trump Be Trump.
SURELY NOBODY BELIEVES DEMS WOULD CHEAT? THAT WOULD BE UNDEMOCRATIC! Company responds to theory Harris wore audio earrings at debate: ‘The resemblance is striking’.
SO DID TRUMP REALLY LOSE THE DEBATE? Kamala’s Condescending and Mocking Debate Faces May Be What Voters Remember.
September 11, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Here we go again.
AND IT’S GOTTEN WORSE: What September 11, 2001 Taught Us: There Are No Adults in the Room. “The Axis of Evil in American politics is now complete: Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, and Kamala Harris are all on the same side. They will compromise on any of their supposed ideological differences and bury old blood-stained hatchets — remember when the Left called Cheney a war profiteer and blood-crazed jingoist? — in pursuit of a higher goal. That goal is keeping power in the hands of tiny, privileged elites who despise most lesser Americans. . . . You could see the coalition taking shape years ago, when all the Best People gathered for John McCain’s funeral in Washington, D.C., and then-President Donald Trump was pointedly disinvited. Our elites air-kissed and traded alligator tears around McCain’s flag-draped casket. In a touching moment of bipartisan polyamory, George W. Bush and Michelle Obama flirted like 13-year-olds while Barack looked on with a smile. What unites these power elites beside a haughty contempt for the public they claim to serve? One key qualification that is too little discussed, even among MAGA types: amoral, blasé, dilettantish incompetence, unencumbered by moral principles or basic human empathy.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA’s $50,000 Reward: Help Map the Moon’s Mysterious South Pole and Win Big.
WE’VE KNOWN THAT FOR A WHILE: Weight Loss Involves More Than Calories In, Calories Out. Here’s How.
STOP DOOMING. IF WE’RE GOING TO CONTINUE LIVING IN CLOWN-WORLD, ALL OF YOU NEED TO GET BETTER AT READING THE NEWS THROUGH THE FOGS OF PRAVDA: The Curious Case of The Winner Who Didn’t Act It.
GOOD: Apple to release AirPods with built-in hearing aids. “Designed as an over-the-counter hearing aid feature for those with mild to moderate hearing loss, users take hearing tests on iPhones or iPads running iOS 18, and then their AirPods make ‘personalized dynamic adjustments’ to allow them to hear sounds that are boosted to prescribed levels in real time.”
JAMES MAY DRIVES THE TESLA CYBERTRUCK (Video):
From the video’s comments: “James May measuring how curved each panel of the Cybertruck has with a steel rule is the most James May thing you’ll ever see.”
ON THE BEACH: It’s a Beach if We Say So: Lost Scenes From Downtown’s Hipster Landfill.
If you’re not prepared for it, an old photograph of the Twin Towers can do a number on your heart.
That’s partly why Fred Conrad’s picture of the sunbathers is so eerie and disquieting: We know something the sunbathers don’t. Something horrific. Something that will unmake, and remake, the world by the time they reach middle age. Conrad, a former Times staff photographer, took the shot in 1977. It must have seemed whimsical at the time — a nod to the eternal war between business and pleasure. Today, it’s surreal, almost post-apocalyptic. It looks like a poster for “Planet of the Apes.”
And that’s not just because the towers are no more. It’s also because of the beach in the picture. There was a beach in Battery Park City?
There was, albeit only for a few years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.
EVERYDAY CARRY: What’s in your gun? “Some scoff at carrying a .380 when you could be carrying a 9mm (or a .40, or a .45, or a 10mm). But modern .380 personal defense ammunition has been much improved over the last decade so carrying 10 (or 12) plus one rounds of good .380 JHP is a valid self-defense option.”
THE ELITES WOULD HAVE YOU FORGET The Falling Man.
STUDENTS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT SPEECH. After decades of administrators censoring opinions they don’t like and supporting the most expansive idea of free speech for those they do, students are unsurprisingly confused. They rightfully made their feelings known in response to FIRE’s survey for our 2025 College Free Speech Rankings.
Top 5 schools:
Bottom 5:
And here are five more takeaways from this year’s rankings.
THE STIG CRASHES: The Onion Mocks Corey Comperatore’s Death.
The Onion once stood alone as the country’s premier Fake News site.
The platform, first in print and later via the web, delivered deliciously fake stories on politics and culture. Then, much like other comic institutions, The Onion got woke.
And worse.
It mostly stopped mocking Democratic politicians, becoming yet another propaganda outlet. Earlier this year, it seemed like The Onion was headed for the trash heap of history.
New management came along, revived the site and installed Ben Collins as its guardian. Who’s Ben Collins? He’s NBC’s former “misinformation” specialist who proved as biased as his peers.
Maybe worse.
The Onion continues to hammer Republicans and give Democrats a pass. It’s why The Babylon Bee, right-leaning but more balanced and infinitely funnier, eats their lunch 24/7.
Yet The Onion’s Tweetstorm during the Trump/Harris debate Tuesday proved the site can still scrape the bottom of the barrel.
There’s “punching down.” And then there’s this:
As Mary Chastain of Legal Intellectual asks, “The tweet has over 80,000 likes, too. What is wrong with people!?”
Earlier: The Stig Crashes an Expensive Lemon.
READER FAVORITE: ANCEL AD410 Enhanced OBD2 Scanner Vehicle Code Reader. #CommissionEarned
BREAKING NEWS FROM 2020: There is now very little doubt that Covid leaked from a lab.
What was the worst industrial accident in history? Bhopal in India, where in 1984, at least 25,000 people died as a result of a leak of methyl isocyanate from a pesticide plant? No, if – as most people who have examined the evidence now believe – the Covid pandemic began as a result of a laboratory leak, then what happened in Wuhan, China was worse than a thousand Bhopals. It killed around 28million people – and was by far the most lethal industrial or scientific accident that has ever occurred.
* * * * * * * *
Opinion polls show a similar result – two-thirds of Americans believe the virus originated in a lab in China – yet most senior scientists seem to be sublimely unbothered by the fact that the public holds this view. They show little or no interest in getting out there and persuading people to change their minds. Instead, they just hope the whole topic fades into history. That reluctance even to try persuading the public betrays either a marked lack of confidence in their own case or a guilty conscience.
Where does Tom Cotton go for his apology?
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Underappreciated Albums: ‘Hearts And Bones.’ “‘Hearts And Bones’ is the album that relaunched Paul Simon’s career to all-new heights by crashing and burning.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN CONTRARIANISM: It Looks Like Trump May Have Helped Himself in the Debate.
Perhaps because of what I do for a living, I’m extra critical of Donald Trump’s performance. I’ve been pointing out for days now what Trump needed to do in the debate, and seeing him miss opportunity after opportunity was beyond frustrating. But according to a report from Reuters, undecided voters largely shifted to him after the debate.
“Kamala Harris was widely seen as dominating Tuesday’s presidential debate against Republican former president Donald Trump, but a group of undecided voters remained unconvinced that the Democratic vice president was the better candidate,” the outlet reported.
Reuters interviewed ten undecided voters before and after a debate. Six of them shifted toward supporting Trump, three leaned toward Harris, and one remained uncertain. That’s a rather solid outcome for Trump.
“Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds,” wrote Reuters.
That must have painful to write up in the Reuters newsroom, based on this February 2017 Daily Caller story: Reuters Instructs Reporters To Cover Trump Like An Authoritarian Regime.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Am I Racist?’ – 2024’s Funniest Comedy.
The documentary finds Walsh going undercover to expose DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) proponents.
The result? A devastating peek behind the curtain of the Identity Politics racket. “Racist?” doubles as the year’s funniest comedy.
“Woman?” made its interview subjects squirm. This time, it’s the audience that might wriggle in their seats between the laughter.
The best part might be when “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo gets tricked into paying reparations to Walsh’s producer.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Bruno Marc Men’s Plain Toe Oxford Shoes. #CommissionEarned