GLOBAL COVERAGE IS COMING: Satellite operators join forces to chase direct-to-smartphone opportunity.
Archive for 2024
February 12, 2024
HEADLINES FROM 2018: The age of glorifying Greta Thunberg is over.
Greta Thunberg spent her weekend in France supporting two environmental campaigns. On Sunday she appeared at a rally in Bordeaux against an oil drilling project; twenty-four hours earlier the twenty-one-year-old Swede was further east, adding her voice to those activists opposed to the construction of a new stretch of motorway between Toulouse and Castres. “We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project and this madness,” said Thunberg in English, her now familiar keffiyeh around her neck.
Some French media described Thunberg as an “anti-global warming icon” and the “figurehead in the fight to protect the planet.” She might have been once.
Now, however, in her ubiquitous keffiyeh, appearing to chant “Crush Zionism” or endorsing slogans such as “Palestine will be free” she has become — perhaps unwittingly — the figurehead for what conservative commentators in France call “the green alliance.”
Three years ago Jean Messiha, the spokesman for Éric Zemmour during his 2022 presidential campaign, wrote of this strange coalition between Islamists and ecologists: “They share one color: green. But not only that. They also share a totalitarian approach to society.”
Plus ça change: the original European environmentalists who had a strange coalition with Islamists were awfully totalitarian as well.
OLD AND BUSTED: Recreate ’68!
The New Hotness? No, not that way! RFK, Jr.’s Super Bowl Campaign Ad Broke Democrats in a Big Way.
The ad is pinned to the top of Kennedy’s X account. He apologized to his outraged family members, though, which I was disappointed to see. But, it’s his family.
I'm so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain. The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign. FEC rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 12, 2024
Some of his siblings and other family members have treated him very badly simply because they disagree with some of his political stances, especially his opinion on the COVID-19 vaccine. They are Biden supporters and that’s their right. However, airing their hard feelings against their brother is unseemly.
But some members of Kennedy’s family complained about his use of family images. Kennedy’s cousin, Bobby Shriver, the son of Kennedy’s aunt Eunice Kennedy Shriver, wrote on X, “My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces- and my Mother’s. She would be appalled by his deadly health care views. Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA. She strongly supported my health care work at @ONECampaign & @RED which he opposes.”
And Bobby Shriver’s brother, Mark Shriver, also commented, saying, “I agree with my brother @bobbyshriver simple as that.”
Someone whose initials are “RFK” is saying off-the-wall stuff during an election year? That’s never happened before:
By 1970, it would all fall apart of course. The same liberals who believed that they could simultaneously go to the moon, fight the Cold War, fight a hot war in Vietnam and Texas-size the New Deal with the Great Society would come crashing down to earth, and become obsessed with a whole host of reasons why the nation — and the planet — were royally screwed. Environmentalism, zero population growth, a so-called energy crisis and a whole plethora of other doubts were the symptoms of a self-created mental depression that once manic liberals found themselves wallowing in during the entire 1970s.
And while you can blame some of their self-doubts on the accumulated weight of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King being assassinated in 1968, followed by the election of their bete noire that November, Moe Lane spots a clip of Bobby Kennedy on the campaign trail that year that shows how quickly the rot had seeped in. Compare RFK’s rhetoric as he tells a classroom of young kids that they were doomed to spend their adult lives trapped in a Soylent Green-style eco-apocalypse, with the optimism of his brother, and it was clear that the end of the New Frontier was well in sight:
What would Bobby Kennedy think about today’s Occupy Wall Street? It depends on which period RFK you spoke with. Late period RFK — the man who told a group of college students in 1968 that America needed to “breed men who riot” — would love it. An earlier RFK would have wire-tapped its leaders.
Would RFK Sr. have had a similar stance on vaccines as his son had he lived beyond 1968? It’s impossible to speculate given the many strange and at times contradictory paths leftism has taken over the decades since his horrific assassination, but unlike the current members of the Kennedy clan, I believe it’s not beyond the realm of impossibility.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Rare Human Case of Bubonic Plague in Oregon Confirmed by Authorities.
ROB HENDERSON: America’s Lost Boys and Me. “Single parenthood appears to be especially detrimental for boys, while having married parents is particularly advantageous.”
ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Joel Osteen Houston Megachurch shooting: What we know about woman who walked in with child and started firing. “The shooter used an AR-15 that had ‘Free Palestine’ written on it, according to a federal law enforcement source. Investigators are trying to sort out whether she was politically motivated or a disturbed individual, the source said.”
According to Andy Ngo, “She has been named as Genesse I. Moreno and her social media shows a history of leftist politics.”
Update: The deceased Houston mega church shooter had “Free Palestine” on the semi-automatic rifle she used in the attack, according to federal law enforcement speaking to media. She has been named as Genesse I. Moreno and her social media shows a history of leftist politics. https://t.co/0FX2B0omPy pic.twitter.com/IjKAK80702
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 12, 2024
UPDATE: Houston Police Announce Results of Their Investigation Into Church Shooter’s Pronouns. “The Houston Police have announced that through an investigation that included documents and interviews, they have determined that the shooter was a female Hispanic and will be referred to by she/her pronouns. This is all very confusing, but it seems that the police are deadnaming the dead would-be mass shooter.”
Better dead than rude.
MORE: Here’s Everything We Know About the Megachurch Shooter.
The now-deceased gunman who opened fire inside a famous Texas megachurch run by Joel Osteen Sunday afternoon has been identified as an identity-switching Hispanic woman with pro-Palestine, antisemitic beliefs.
36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, a biological female who used multiple male aliases, was wearing a trench coat when she entered the Houston-based Lakewood Church with two rifles, a backpack, and a young child by her side around 2 p.m. Sunday.
* * * * * * * *
Moreno’s Facebook page—which expressed leftist, anti-police views—has since been scrubbed. Moreno’s since-deleted Instagram account featured posts of her cleaning an AR-15 and donating money to Lakewood Church. There, she uploaded a screenshot of the contribution’s confirmation. “[A]s for me and my household…I will honor and bless my church,” Moreno wrote on Instagram.
In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Moreno supported socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “I WANT HIM IN THE OFFICE AS THE US PRESIDENT,” she wrote in an Instagram post, uploading a photograph of Sanders on the campaign trail.
Arrest records show she was an El Salvadoran immigrant.
Moreno had a violent, extensive criminal history stretching back to 2005, according to court records reviewed by Townhall. She was previously arrested for assaulting a public servant, assault causing bodily injury, forgery, theft for stealing cosmetics from a store, evading police, and unlawfully carrying a weapon, among a slew of charges on Moreno’s decades-old rap sheet.
Read the whole thing.
THEY’RE JUST IMMIGRANTS SEEKING A BETTER LIFE, AND BRINGING DIVERSITY IN EXCHANGE: Alien invasion: Non-native earthworms threaten ecosystems.
LUXURY BELIEFS, LUXURY LIFESTYLES: Freddie DeBoer: Polyamory is a Luxury of the Affluent, Just Like Everything Else We Have and Do: “X works better for the most educated/accomplished” is just generically true.
That was true with drugs like LSD, heroin, and cocaine, too. Of course, “better” doesn’t mean “well.” But generally speaking the better-off have more reserves, financial and otherwise, to support them during risky behavior.
An alternative take: You Don’t Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books.
Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article.
The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy. Then they conclude they hate polyamorous people.
But this is an unfair generalization. They should hate people who write books. . . .
I know many people in happy, successful, polyamorous relationships. None of them write advice books. If they did, they would say something vapid, like “Treat every day as a gift from God.”
The actual best-known polyamory advice book is More Than Two, by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert. A few years after it was written, Eve and three of Franklin’s other partners accused him of abuse, which he vehemently denied and turned back on her. Every so often I check to see how things are going, and one of them has come up with some new volley against the other.
In retrospect, I think it’s not surprising that the best-known relationship advice book was written by people in a terrible relationship. Terrible relationships have a way of making you overanalyze your relationship dynamics. They encourage you to come up with lots of strategies for dealing with conflict, given all the conflict you’re constantly getting into. They happen when you’re the sort of person who over-promises and under-delivers, which is also the kind of person who can write an exciting-sounding book shilling something.
Well, maybe you should just hate the kind of people who write books on relationships. Plus: “Not all memoirs are written by narcissists. Some are written by activists. This is not an improvement.”
And this sounds right: “I think this goes beyond polyamory. The people I know from various oft-discussed groups – transgender, super-religious, autistic, rich, etc – are all nicer and more normal than their public representatives would lead you to believe.”
READER FAVORITE: Orange Ninja Knife Sharpeners for Kitchen. #CommissionEarned
WE MUST CLOSE THE GRENADE LAUNCHER GAP! Only One Country Fields A “Sniper Grenade Launcher.”
SURPRISING EXACTLY NO ONE: Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair.
“How Biden Got So Rich So Fast” should have been a big story almost as soon as he left office in 2017. That the press is so deeply incurious about such obvious corruption is just one reason for the upcoming extinction-level event.
HMM: “Both women and men preferred lower-pitched voices for partners in long-term relationships or marriage. Additionally, the lowest-pitched male voices sounded more formidable, particularly to younger men, and older men tended to associate the lowest-pitched voices with higher prestige.”
I guess this is good. I was singing along at a birthday party a couple of weeks ago and a woman congratulated me on my beautiful, melodic bass voice, which was a surprise. I’ve always been more of a baritone.
DECK CHAIR ON THE TITANIC: REARRANGED. Karine Jean-Pierre’s Babysitter Gets Promoted.
TO BE FAIR, THEY GREW UP IN A HIGH-TRUST SOCIETY: Older adults rely more on trust in decision-making. It could open them up to scams.
I HAVE NOT BEEN OVERJOYED WITH RECENT PRODUCTS OF CHINESE MEDICAL RESEARCH: Chinese genetic study seeks to make generational medical discoveries.
DELIVERY IN 90 MINUTES OR IT’S FREE: US military hopes one day to move supplies, maybe troops, on SpaceX’s Starship.
Elon Musk’s next-generation rocket currently in development at SpaceX’s southeast Texas facilities is gearing up for its third suborbital test flight as soon as this month after its first two ended in explosions last year. It’s part of the company’s long-term plans for a completely reusable spacecraft with more payload capacity into space than any other rocket ever.
Starship’s potential also includes flying quickly from one spot on Earth to another, which is what has the Department of Defense interested. That was discussed during the Space Mobility Conference held by the Space Force at the Orange County Convention Center earlier this month.
“Rocket cargo point-to-point is not the reason we’re building Starship,” said SpaceX senior adviser Gary Henry. “We’re building Starship to get to Mars.” [But] “what we’re finding is it’s a system we’re putting together that has profound impacts for national security, and one of them just happens to be rocket point-to-point.”
Indeed.
NO MENTION OF IMMIGRATION IN THIS STORY: Measles and tuberculosis should be long-forgotten. Why are cases rising in the U.S.?
JIM TREACHER: Don’t You Think He Looks Tired?
The media have been Biden’s faithful little lapdogs all along, giving him fawning, deferential coverage that belies his woeful popularity ratings. Hell, they even shut down a legitimate news story about his corrupt business dealings with his son, just to help get him elected.
But that attitude might be changing. It’s starting to sound like ol’ Joe has outlived his usefulness to the Democratic Party, and therefore the mainstream media.
Exit quote: “This is a problem that cannot be fixed. Biden cannot get younger.”
And there’s Biden’s strangely undisciplined comms team: Joe Biden Dragged For Bizarre Super Bowl Tweet. “Why, Joe? Why was this necessary? The Dark Brandon meme/identity is weird to begin with. The premise is that the President is some kind of villain capable of outwitting all his foes. Are we really sure that’s how the President should present himself to the world? As an unstoppable villain? We all know the answer is no. Furthermore, the situation is more ridiculous because everyone knows Joe Biden isn’t cooking up these tweets. His staffers are and for some reason, they chose this bizarre take instead of just a normal tweet.”
NOW THAT’S A WALL: Egypt Shows Biden How to Secure a Border.
ATTACK AND DEFENSE: My latest Substack essay is on the prospects for a 10/7 attack on America, and what to do about them.
As always, if you like these essays, please sign up for a paid subscription.
DON’T BE EVIL: Why Is Google Selling Adwords For Snuff Films?
A comedy group called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie had a skit about why you should keep your parents off the Internet. “I want to find out if latex paint bonds to stucco. I guess I’ll search for ‘Latex Bondage.’”
“Uh, you don’t want to do that!”
I just had one of those moments.
My default — even though I only use Google when everything else fails — is to leave SafeSearch on.
JONATHAN TURLEY: The Rasputin Effect: Biden Moves To Make Podesta the Climate Czar With A Crown… or a Confirmation.
With the departure of John Kerry as “climate czar,” President Biden has announced that he will be replaced by John Podesta, a Democratic powerbroker and Washington insider.
Podesta, however, will take the power and not the title. He will be appointed as “coordinator,” thus sidestepping confirmation by the Senate, which could have been brutal.
Such action will shield Podesta from questions about Kerry’s work and expenses as climate czar. Before leaving office, Kerry refused to turn over information on his staff to Congress and the public. The Biden Administration is now being sued over the secrecy.
It would also spare Podesta from answering questions over his own past work as well as his brother’s ties to Chinese companies. Likewise, senators, including Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, have criticized Podesta for comments favoring payments to Chinese companies in the energy sector.
See also: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s impromptu disappearance late last December and early January.
It is inexcusable that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin concealed his multiday medical incapacity from President Joe Biden and top Pentagon officials, including his own Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. By his actions, Austin has shown a catastrophic inability to recognize the responsibilities of his office or the basic principles of strategic leadership.
It would be bad enough if the transportation secretary did what Austin did. But when a defense secretary acts in such a manner, the stakes are much higher. And he chose to have elective surgery when hot spots in different parts of the world are in flames. Austin endangered national security out of a vain and misguided sense of personal privacy. This sends a message to U.S. adversaries that Washington is dysfunctional at the highest levels. Austin should be relieved of his position.
The incident underlines the broader chaos within the Biden administration and the wholly earned lack of respect in which subordinates hold their commander in chief. Obsessed with the 2024 election, the White House appears to believe its top priority is to press the media into more positive coverage of the president and more negative coverage of his challengers in the GOP. But as the president and his team focus narrowly on domestic partisan politics, the world grows more insecure.
Team Biden’s chaotic priorities are further underlined by the fact that Hicks was vacationing in Puerto Rico during her boss’s incapacity. In essence, the acting U.S. defense secretary was living the beach life unaware that she was actually in charge of the U.S. military. It’s unclear whether Austin transferred all his authorities to Hicks or just some of them.
Fortunately, “Team Biden” appears to have actually learned from their mistakes last month: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is moved to the critical care unit at Walter Reed after tests on ’emergent bladder issues’ as he passes duties to his deputy for second time in a month following his prostate cancer surgery. “Earlier Sunday, it was announced Austin has had his duties stripped and transferred to deputy Kathleen Hicks.”
READER FAVORITE: ECG Portable Heart Rate Monitor. #CommissionEarned