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Archive for 2024
January 28, 2024
WE MUST OBLITERATE THOSE RESPONSIBLE: Three US troops killed in drone attack in Jordan, at least two dozen injured. “The killing of three Americans at Tower 22 in Jordan near the border with Syria is a significant escalation of an already-precarious situation in the Middle East. Officials said the drone was fired by Iran-backed militants and appeared to come from Syria.”
SIRI, DESCRIBE THE BIDEN YEARS FOR ME IN A SINGLE SENTENCE: Joe Biden Announces Border Is Broken After He Broke It – Says He Can Fix It When He Hasn’t – Asks for Authority Which He Already Has – Wants You to Believe He Will Take Action When We All Know He Won’t.
Christian Toto adds: ‘SNL’ Ignores Biden’s Gibberish, Invents Attack on Trump.
Enter “de-bank” into Google, a popular search engine the show’s writers clearly must be aware of, and you’ll find this result at the top of the page.
The Alliance Defending Freedom breaks down the phrase., calling it “Cancel Culture’s newest threat.
Wikipedia also weighs in on the subject.
De-banking, also known within the banking industry as de-risking, is the closure of people’s or organizations’ bank accounts by banks who perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the bank … Criticism of de-banking has included it being a potential threat to freedom of speech.
The dawn of the de-banking era should frighten everyone, no matter your political persuasion. Trump didn’t make it up. Nor did he use it incorrectly.
Yet the writers’ room for one of TV’s longest-running shows couldn’t bother to do a Google search on the phrase. Nor is it politically savvy enough to recognize the term.
Embarrassing? Of course.
Greg Gutfeld tweets:
friend once made a joke about the appearance of a sick person. a google search could have kept him from looking dumb. this is a case where a joke operates on collective ignorance: not knowing a common evil- a “new term” apparently Trump invented, but hadn’t – that affected innocent civilians.
how rich that the joke is on the teller.
Related: The terrifying rise of ‘debanking.’
More: Debanking complaints surge in wake of Nigel Farage’s NatWest scandal.
If only SNL took its own advice, and left The Bubble occasionally:
FLASHBACK: “I’d like to propose a ‘waiting period’ for legislation. No bill should be voted on without hearings, debate and a final text that’s available online for at least a week. (A month would be better. How many bills really couldn’t wait a month?). And if the bill is advertised as addressing a ‘tragedy’ or named after a dead child, this period should double.”
READER FAVORITE: MyPillow 2.0 Cooling Bed Pillow, 2-Pack Queen Medium. #CommissionEarned
MAYORKAS IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES POSTED: House Committee on Homeland Security will almost certainly vote on a straight-party vote Tuesday to adopt these two Articles of Impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Majorkas.
JACK SHAFER: The News Business Really Is Cratering.
The ongoing flood obviously won’t sweep all journalism away. But except for a few big players, will it become more of a cottage industry than an economic and cultural force? If great cities like Los Angeles, with its many prosperous, educated and engaged citizens, can’t support a decent daily newspaper, what hope is there for the rest of the country? Are we belatedly learning that the great journalism empires — the Times-Mirror chain, Knight Ridder, Gannett, Scripps-Howard, Tribune, McClatchy, Advance Publications, Hearst, Freedom Communications and the rest — weren’t journalism empires as much as they were advertising colossuses, and that they became doomed when they lost status as the best advertising vehicle?
Journalism will survive, of course, even if the business falters as the advertising subsidy that made it viable erodes. Publications for readers who depend on market-moving news like you find in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and other business titles will endure. So will the aforementioned New York Times, which provides news that moves political markets and has established itself as a national voice worth paying for.
That isn’t what Shafer wrote in 2018 about the Gray Lady: Sell the New York Times. Now. And other unsolicited advice for A.G. Sulzberger:
The best thing A.G. has going for him is that he isn’t Arthur Jr., who inspired more sniggers than respect during his years as Times publisher. According to the various profiles written about him, Arthur Jr. was a well-meaning but goofy Star Trek fan, completely over his head in the job. An unsteady manager, he indelicately sacked two executive editors (Howell Raines and Jill Abramson), though admittedly in crises not completely of his making. One unnamed critic told Times chroniclers Alex S. Jones and Susan E. Tifft that Arthur Jr. needed to “go back in the oven and bake a little longer.” An anonymous Times Company executive dismissed him as no more than a business “figurehead” in a 2005 New Yorker Auletta feature. Mark Bowden shared more abuse in Vanity Fair in 2009, writing, “Even the mid-level talent around Arthur does not regard him as a peer, much less a suitable leader.” Behind his back, staffers ridiculed Arthur Jr. for instituting corporate sensitivity seminars at the paper. “I’ve been hugged by people I don’t even want to shake hands with,” one repulsed Times editor told the late Marjorie Williams for a 1994 Vanity Fair story. (Arthur Jr. does have his champions, though. See this recent Daniel Okrent piece for the counterpoint.)
As I wrote at the time, “only a fellow Democrat could describe Pinch Sulzberger as ‘well-meaning’” after his myriad racialist, anti-American, and doomsday statements made during his decades with the paper. And that was before the Times’ identity politics crackup in 2020.
Can the Times weather that storm? Well, certainly the brand name will likely exist in perpetuity, but like most journalistic outposts in 2024, the end product is far weaker than what it was in decades past, as former NYT editor James Bennet admitted at the end of last year.
WHY IS ELITE HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATRED AND BIGOTRY? Lawsuit accuses UC Berkeley of not protecting Jewish students.
JOSH BLACKMAN & SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Professor Akhil Reed Amar and Professor Vikram Amar Retreat From Their “Global” Rule for the “Offices” and “Officers” of the Constitution: Their amicus brief endorses the view that members of state legislatures are officers. They took the exact opposite position in 1995 and in subsequent publications.
ROGER KIMBALL: Our Democracy™: The Democratic Weaponization of Government and the Need for Decentralization. “The Constitution aimed to limit the power and reach of government; its rival aims to make government triumph everywhere.”
OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Snopes Fact-Check Calls True Biden Story ‘False’ Despite Photos THEY Included in Post — Then Reverses It.
The updated article contained an editor’s note, explaining the complete 180.
Editor’s Note: We received a ton of comments in a very short time challenging our assumption that wearing a hard hat “backwards” means wearing it with the brim facing to the rear, and “forwards” means wearing it brim to the front. On the basis of that assumption, we originally rated the claim that Biden was wearing a hard hat backwards as false.
The prevailing counter-argument is that if the suspension of the hat has been purposely configured by its owner such that the bill and tightening knob are worn to the back (as was the case of the hat Biden wore), to wear that hat with the bill facing forward is, practically speaking, to wear it backwards. Therefore, it’s argued, it’s actually true that, in the photo op discussed below, Biden was wearing it backwards. The strap and tightening knob, which should have been behind Biden’s head, were on his forehead.
A corollary to that argument is “Biden looks damn silly in any case.”
We find these arguments sound. Therefore, the claim “President Joe Biden wore a hard hat backwards during a photo op with union construction workers in Superior, Wisconsin” is true, and this fact check has been re-rated as such. Thanks to all who argued on behalf of this correction.
So ultimately, the fact-checkers ruled that the obviously backward hat was backward after all, and that the photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards was indeed a photo of Biden wearing a hard hat backwards. But only after some convincing.
Perhaps Snopes needs to go back to “fact checking” the Babylon Bee and AOC parody accounts, rather than continuing (and failing) to do the heavy lifting required to prop up the ever-deteriorating husk of John Gill in an election year.
BIDEN REPORT CARD: Even Obama is worried about beating Trump.
HANG DOWN YOUR HEAD, TOM DOOLEY: I knew that the well-known folk song, Tom Dooley, was about a real murder. But, oh my … I didn’t know part about free sex and … uh … syphilis … that is assuming it’s true.
Tom Dooley–actual name Tom Dula–had quite the story (or stories). I have no idea which version, if any, is the correct one. I guess I don’t need to know. But if you’d like to sort it out, you can start with the links above.
Good song anyway. But I may have to hand down my own head to sing it now.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: David Frum Announces Misguided Quest to Rehabilitate the Reputation of One of America’s Worst Presidents.
Next Saturday, February 3, marks 100 years since the death of President Woodrow Wilson. No US president has suffered such a calamitous collapse in reputation from peak to now. In the issue of the Atlantic that ships Monday, I argue the case for uncancelling Wilson.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) January 27, 2024
I dunno — Woodrow Wilson sounds like a pretty awful fella based on what I’ve read in the past:
Wilson was also the most disdainful racist to hold the presidency since Andrew Johnson in the 1860s. Wilson’s administration sought to remove black Americans from all but the most menial federal employment. Those who could not be removed were required to work in spaces screened from public view and to use segregated lunchrooms and toilets. When a black newspaper editor led a delegation to Washington to protest the introduction of Southern Jim Crow into the national government, Wilson — a slaveholder’s son — retorted that segregation “was not humiliating, but a benefit” to black people.
Wilson led the United States into the First World War in April 1917, justifying his decision in characteristically idealistic language: “to make the world safe for democracy.” Only five months before, he had won reelection on an antiwar platform: “he kept us out of war.”
* * * * * * * *
Yet these same admirers also quietly came to see Wilson as the very model of how not to be president: as a dogmatist, a chatterbox, and, ultimately, a loser. When it came their turn to decide issues of war and peace, they praised Wilson — then did just the opposite. That seems likely to be the lasting verdict of history, too.
—“Mystery Man,” David Frum, Newsweek, March 11th, 2013.
Related: The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson. “I come now not to explain Wilson, but to hate him. A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.”
THIS WEEKEND’S FREE SPEECH UPDATE features an interview with a Chinese dissident student at Georgetown Law, an excerpted chapter of ‘Canceling’ in Quillette, and a whole lot more!
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: MIT Parents Press School To Address ‘Threatening’ Anti-Israel Disruptions.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth hasn’t been forced to resign yet, but she doesn’t look happy in this picture.
AT AMAZON, Shop the Winter Sale. #CommissionEarned
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Iconic San Francisco toy store that inspired Toy Story films closing after 86 years over ‘perils and violence’ in city’s downtown.
San Francisco’s oldest toy store, which inspired the Pixar classic “Toy Story,” is permanently shutting its doors after nearly a century in business with the city’s widespread crime and violence problem playing a significant factor.
Jeffrey’s Toys broke the news Friday it will be closing up shop at the end of February, marking the end of an iconic 86-year run.
“The store has been struggling for a number of years, due to the perils and violence of the downtown environment, inflation, the decrease in consumer spending and the demise of retail across the world,” attorney Ken Sterling told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The family is saddened it has come to this and we’ve explored all other options to try and keep the business going,” Sterling explained.
* * * * * * * *
San Francisco’s rampant violent crimes also impacted the store’s staff.
Luhn told the San Francisco Chronicle that one of his former employees was pushed up against the shop’s wall and nearly stabbed.
Sterling blamed “the leadership of the City of San Francisco and the Downtown Association” for letting crime run wild in the “once vibrant and fun downtown experience.”
Luhn, who manages the toy store with his dad and stepmother, said they were “putting our money in, we’re putting our hard work in, and we’re putting our love into it,” but the local business was not getting any help from the city in return.
That last item isn’t all that surprising, when the SF Chronicle reported in 2022 that “San Francisco is the most childless major city in the U.S.” and in a great moment of urban self-awareness, exclaimed in 2008: “There is nothing more bacchanalian than a kid’s birthday party.”
HAHA: Pro-Palestinian Protesters Showed Up at John Fetterman’s House. His Reaction Was Priceless. “The pro-terrorist lunatics we’ve seen hold rallies nationwide, shut down roads and bridges, and attempt to close airports have been well-documented. So, given that he’s now become an enemy of the state in the eyes of progressive America, it’s only fitting that they target the Pennsylvania Democrat at his home, which they did. And Mr. Fetterman precisely knew how to respond: by going onto the roof and waving the Israeli flag. . . . He did the same last fall when he waved the Israeli flag at a bunch of pro-terrorist supporters getting arrested on Capitol Grounds.”
Them: “You can’t hide”
Him: Here I am, bitches 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱 https://t.co/Vx9XvA26n5
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 27, 2024
BRENDAN O’NEILL: The rise and rise of Holocaust envy.
Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is not famed for its astuteness. These omnipresent public-school leftists, who rock up to every radical demo to holler facile chants in fake accents they learnt from EastEnders, are about as far from scholarly as you can get. Yet a few years ago they did something that was world-beatingly dumb, even by their famed low standards. They handed out a leaflet about the Holocaust that described it as an unspeakable tragedy in which ‘thousands of LGBT people, trade unionists and disabled people were slaughtered’. Spot the omission?
Yes, they forgot the Jews. They forgot the Jews. It was 2008 and the SWP was skulking around a festival organised by the far-right British National Party (BNP). They handed their leaflets to anyone who’d take one. The leaflet denounced the BNP for ‘deny[ing] the Holocaust’, which was apparently an act of mass murder against gay people, trans folk and the disabled. No one else. Just them. The irony of the SWP slamming the BNP for ‘denying the Holocaust’ while simultaneously erasing from the record the six million souls obliterated by the Nazis was too much to take.
Their omission of the very people the Holocaust was designed to destroy did not go unnoticed. Even other radical leftists were appalled. The SWP seems to have discovered a ‘Jew-free Holocaust’, swiped the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Perhaps the SWP is keen to appeal to people who think it was ‘all right that Hitler killed six million Jews, but think it too much that he also killed LGBT people’, the AWL said. Then came the AWL’s keenest observation: yes, the omission of the Jews was probably ‘a slip’, it said, ‘but for such a slip to pass unnoticed through writer, typesetter, printer, organisers and distributors, without anyone at any stage picking it up, must say something’ (my emphasis).
Read the whole thing.
Related: A hollow Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Flashback: Whoopi Goldberg’s Ignorance About The Holocaust Is What Happens When Intersectionality Rots People’s Brains.
MAKE THEM PAY: Canada’s Laurentian Elite Cry Uncle.
And just like that, Canada’s storied Liberal Party, in power for one hundred years, the country’s self-described “natural governing party,” is done. Before the ruling this week, Pierre Polievre’s Conservatives were projected to win 222 seats, according to Angus Reid’s January 21st poll, with the Liberals at 53 seats. Trudeau’s partner-in-crime, the fetching champagne socialist Jagmeet Singh, he of the mauve headwraps and Rolex watch? Twenty-five seats. With the decision, handed down by a federal judge, that Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act illegally, to end the truckers’ protest in Ottawa and at border crossings in Ontario and Alberta, Canada’s ruling elite has given up. They cannot continue the fiction any longer.
To illustrate how ridiculous Canada’s public life is, the findings by the RCMP and government were entirely driven by a government-funded Non-Governmental Organization, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, or CAHN. The group was used in a perfect illustration of the Iron Triangle of government and bureaucratic action. The government funds an anti-hate group, which immediately identifies opposition to the government, labels it as hate, feeds it to the police which proceeds to investigate.
The astroturfed outfit accused a podcaster of being a “white supremacist” and an “accelerationist.” The RCMP then provided CAHN’s “evidence” to legislators who then fed it to the subsidized media. Like a very, very good little girl, Canadian senator Paula Simons said he (the podcaster) wanted to “accelerate racial conflict to lead to the eventual creation of a White ethnostate,” during a debate in the house. None of this was found in any of the hundreds of hours of said podcast. Nevertheless, it was reported widely across the media as cold hard fact.
As in every single western democracy now staggering under unsustainable government-caused debt, the “natural ruling party” stood up for the thousands upon thousands of activist groups who besiege citizens with scare- and sob-stories meant only to increase the tax base for the Liberal elite. In recent years, to combat growing anti-government populism, elites in every western democracy have also supported political action groups meant to drive its enemies into the dirt. As reported by Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, these are coordinated through the Five Eyes and gamed at the World Economic Forum, in a cross-cultural assault by the elites on the people.
In short, CAHN drove virtually 100 percent of the evidence used to invoke the Emergencies Act. All of its accusations were found to be fake, fictionalized or exaggerated, as the attached FOIA documentation demonstrated. The outfit is a typical attack dog, staffed by members of the hard left, like this character, its face: Sue Gardner. These people are sent around the Stations of the Activist Cross, acquiring credits, awards and citations, to give themselves credibility, without having creating anything of value in the real world. The marshalling of the greedy hard left by corporatists to force ideological purity upon the middle and working classes was a masterful strategy. It, and its international cadres, are entirely focused on destroying the political power of the middle and working classes by accusing them of “racism” and “hate.”
The most egregious finding of the court was that the RCMP faked intelligence that identified the protestors as being funded by MAGA in the U.S., because they wanted to “take over” Canada. Documents obtained under FOIA discovered the following, from Michael Schellenberger’s Public substack.
So the consequences for this misbehavior need to be biblical. If the ruling class faces no consequences, it will do it again. And no, losing an election isn’t enough. There need to be crushing personal consequences for the individuals involved in this.
It’s not as if their misrule hasn’t already imposed consequences on their citizenry: “Let’s put it this way, if Canada were a state, it would be poorer than West Virginia or Mississippi, despite being the second-largest country, with abundant natural resources, in the world, blessed with a highly educated populace. The courts decision may mean that Canada is emerging from its half- century stasis and its massive grifting class on its way to the abattoir.”