LIMITED TIME DEAL: Etekcity Camping Lanterns for Power Outages 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned
Archive for 2024
September 24, 2024
READ THIS HEADLINE TWICE: IAF strikes Hamas command center in Gaza’s Khaled ibn al-Walid school.
The IAF conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Khaled ibn al-Walid’ School in the central Gaza Strip, the IDF announced overnight on Sunday.
Hamas terrorists reportedly used the school compound to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and Israeli territory, the military added, noting that numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information.
The IDF stated that it had operated based on the guidance of the Intelligence Command and Southern Command.
Plus: “In its announcement, Al-Manar stated that Khaled bin Al-Walid school also shelters displaced people east of the Nusirat camp.”
Just remember that Hamas doesn’t just want human shields — they want dead Gazans to use as propaganda.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Gen Z is Quiet Quitting Higher Education for Trade Schools.
SO, THE SUNDAY PROMO POST WAS LATE… AGAIN: Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:
Left map: US drug deaths per capita in 1999, shortly before US policymakers like Summers pursued policies like “China in the WTO” to reduce inflation by subjugating the US working & middle classes, to support the UST mkt & Wall St.
Right map: US drug deaths per capita in 2014 https://t.co/j79xL2hb5U pic.twitter.com/nhNAJgaFUi
— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) September 23, 2024
I’VE BEEN ASSURED BY THE AUTHORITIES AND MEDIA THAT THE BORDER IS SECURE (AND THEY’VE NEVER MISLED ME BEFORE): How migrant gang Tren de Aragua is luring women into forced prostitution in 8 states — including along NYC’s ‘Market of Sweethearts’.
KAMALA’S COOKIE CRUMBLES: Trump leads Cincinnati ‘cookie’ poll that has predicted every election but one since 1984.
IT MIGHT BE TOO LATE: Replacing the NHS is a matter of life and death.
Socialism always kills. Fast or slow, but always.
“TOXIC IMBECILITY”? GOOD COINAGE! Starmer, Davey and the rise of Toxic Imbecility.
WE THE PEOPLE ALREADY HAVE, THE QUESTION IS WHEN WILL OUR MEDIA AND ‘LEADERS”? When will we wake up to the Islamist explosion of hate?
HOW DID A POPULAR INCUMBENT DROP FROM 33,811 VOTES TO 1,568 – AND CAN IT HAPPEN HERE? Mystery of Andrew Bridgen’s vanishing votes.
NOT A SURPRISE: New Russian missile explodes during test.
YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW OUR POLITICS IS PORTRAYED ABROAD TO UNDERSTAND THIS MAN HAS NO IDEA HE’S NOT ENDEARING HIMSELF TO AMERICANS IN GENERAL: Zelensky Trashes Trump and Vance, Signs Artillery Shells in PA.
NOT SO QUIETLY, IN MY CIRCLES: Gen Z is Quiet Quitting Higher Education for Trade Schools.
AS WALZ POINTED OUT — AND THE ONLY TIME I’LL AGREE WITH HIM — WE CAN’T AFFORD ANOTHER 4 YEARS OF THIS: Harris Spox Can’t Answer if Americans Are Better Off Now Than 4 Years Ago.
IF ONLY THEIR FANTASIES WEREN’T LETHAL: Inadvertently Spilling the Truth: What Is the Democratic Party If Not the Party of Sophomoric Teens, Intrepid Cosplayers, and Would-Be Heroes?
THAT IS NOT A JOB THAT CAN OR SHOULD BE DONE BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: Jill Biden: Defense Dept. Spending $500 Million for Women’s Health Research.
September 23, 2024
#WAR:
Also, you now watch to see which buildings people run away from.
— Ian parkinson (@Ianpark62581273) September 23, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
HANNAH AND HER RESISTERS: Nathan Pinkoski reviews We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience.
One of the greatest beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s 2016 election was Hannah Arendt—or at least, her literary estate. In the first year of Trump’s presidency, sales of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism soared by 1,000 percent. New editions of Arendt’s works appeared, in which intellectual celebrities argued that Arendt’s reflections on totalitarianism anticipated all the great ills of the present, from Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia. These commentators saw themselves as engaged actors, using Arendt to launch a new political resistance.
Lyndsey Stonebridge, a professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham, owes the inspiration for her book to this post-2016 moment. We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience begins by invoking the 2016 election and the renewed interest in Arendt’s work prompted by this purported crisis. In the first few pages alone, there are several familiar references to “climate apocalypse,” “post-truth,” and “the age of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.” Stonebridge writes earnestly about the importance of “combating populism” and “jump-starting social democracy.” America takes center stage as a country “that is reckoning (or refusing to reckon) with its violently racist history.” The book also contains cameo appearances from the contemporary leftist canon of heroes and villains, with some curious glosses. Elon Musk’s ambitions to relaunch space exploration make him an imperialist, a new Cecil Rhodes. Volodymyr Zelensky is rebranded as “Jewish-Ukrainian,” a spokesman for hyphenated identity and pluralism. Joe Biden turns up as an intellectually curious young senator requesting a copy of one of Arendt’s speeches—a hopeful hint that under his presidential leadership, America might finally turn a corner.
From its early pages, one might expect We Are Free to Change the World to be yet another tedious distillation of leftist clichés, but Stonebridge mostly spares her readers. Although her book belongs to the genre of #Resist, it is elegantly written. Instead of a clumsy “If Arendt were alive today . . .” tract, Stonebridge offers a conversational, personal reflection on Arendt’s life and work. She generally distinguishes her own conclusions from Arendt’s and avoids straightforward political commands. As befits the genre, the book has an obvious political angle, but because Stonebridge largely takes for granted an ideologically sympathetic audience, she is not heavy-handed. As exposition, We Are Free to Change the World renders Arendt legible, mesmerizing, and relevant to those beset by the anxieties of contemporary leftism. Yet the book has a greater significance. It inadvertently exposes the fault lines between Arendt’s thinking on the totalitarian phenomenon and that of the contemporary left.
Read the whole thing.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chinese commercial rocket firm Deep Blue Aerospace conducted a first-stage rocket hop test Sunday, experiencing a partial failure during the final moments of landing. Failures aren’t failures if you learn from them.
AMBER DUKE: The Rise of BlueAnon.
BlueAnon is a blanket term coined by some conservatives to describe liberal and left-wing conspiracy theories. It intentionally rhymes with QAnon, the arguably better-known right-wing conspiracy, and mostly arose in response to what many regard as the Russian collusion hoax, the idea that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election. Several stories stemming from the Russian collusion hoax were outlandish and unverified yet embraced by prominent members of the media and people in high-level positions within the national security state and the Democratic Party. The claims were also the subject of a special counsel investigation into President Trump.
Jonathan Chait, a political reporter for New York magazine, has said that claims of Russia blackmailing Trump with a so-called “pee tape” are “perfectly consistent with what we know about both parties.” Propelled by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s claim to have evidence of collusion, and consistently false reporting from the media about Trump campaign contacts with Russia, left-wing figures like Rosie O’Donnell, Bette Midler, Spike Lee and the Krassenstein brothers pushed the hashtag #MuellerTime to insinuate that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump would lead to his imminent indictment and arrest.
Disinformation experts and media outlets have routinely placed the bulk of the blame for “misinformation” and “disinformation” online on right-wing sources. But they have mostly failed to acknowledge the breadth and impact of the Russian collusion hoax, plus other popular BlueAnon fake stories: that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was involved in a gang rape; that actor Jussie Smollett was attacked by two Trump supporters; that Trump failed to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville in summer 2017; that Trump told people to inject bleach during the pandemic and other stories that were shared — or are still peddled to this day — at levels as high as the presidency. Most also ignore the stories and ideas that were deemed right-wing misinformation but ended up being correct: the Hunter Biden laptop story; that Covid-19 likely came from a laboratory leak; that there were undercover federal agents at the January 6 riot; or that President Joe Biden was suffering obvious cognitive decline. All were labeled conspiracy theories; all turned out to be true.
* * * * * * * *
[David] Harsanyi, though, says BlueAnon has always been around. It just didn’t have a neat nickname until 2021. “The left has been pushing wild conspiracies and paranoia for decades. [In The Rise of Blue Anon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists] I lay out that history,” Harsanyi says. “Are Democrats any more likely to accept the results of a presidential election? They haven’t done it in decades. After Trump won in 2016, they simply gave into their worst conspiratorial instincts. It’s a lot easier to convince people that their political opponents are crypto-Putin assets hell-bent on instituting The Handmaid’s Tale than it is to debate them.
Decades is indeed true. As Steve Hayward wrote in his 2007 review of James Piereson’s Camelot and the Cultural Revolution:
That Kennedy was killed at the hands of a Communist should have had a clear and direct meaning: “President Kennedy was a victim of the Cold War.” Everyone had reasons for averting their gaze from this fact. For Lyndon Johnson, it would have carried frightful implications for foreign policy if it turned out that Lee Harvey Oswald had links to Castro or the KGB (which Piereson suggests is remotely possible). Liberals didn’t want to dwell on this fact for a mix of other reasons. In the early hours after JFK was shot, we didn’t yet know of Oswald’s Communist background, and the media jumped to the conclusion that Kennedy’s killing must have been the work of right-wing extremists. The day after the assassination, James Reston wrote in the New York Times that the assassination was the result of a “streak of violence in the American character” and that “from the beginning to the end of his administration, [Kennedy] was trying to tamp down the violence of extremists from the right.”
This “meme,” as we would say today, so quickly took hold that it could not be shaken, even after Oswald’s noxious background began to come out. Indeed, the notion of collective responsibility would be repeated five years later after Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Communist Arab radical who professed deep hatred for America.
As Brent Bozell has written, “Few Barry Goldwater backers forget 1964, when [Walter] Cronkite repeatedly smeared the GOP nominee:”
When Goldwater accepted an invitation to visit a U.S. Army facility in Germany, CBS hack Daniel Schorr said he was launching his campaign in “the center of Germany’s right wing.” Kurtz recalled that on the day of JFK’s assassination the year before, Cronkite nodded his head in thinly veiled contempt when handed a note on air that Goldwater said “no comment.” Never mind that Goldwater was attending his mother-in-law’s funeral that day.
Watergate is looking increasingly BlueAnon-adjacent in light of everything the left has thrown at Trump since 2016. (And speaking of Watergate and CBS…)
And the hits just keep on coming: How Trump assassination conspiracy theories went mainstream.
Finally, entering its fifth decade on the charts! Climate activist: “The next five years are make or break.”
UPDATE: Mike Lindell is A-OK.
HMM: “Democrats are increasingly worried that pollsters are undercounting Donald Trump’s voter support.”
Ridiculous, that’s never happened before.