D.C. INJUSTICE: How DC judges are brazenly denying any relief for J6ers even as President Trump continues to promise pardons are in the making on Day One.
Something needs to be done about D.C.’s impossibly partisan legal system. Personally, I’m in favor of abolishing “home rule” for DC. Our nation’s capital should be ruled by the nation, not by the apparatchiks who live there.
JONATHAN TURLEY: “This is Not the Time for Balance:” LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary.
Last year, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
Litman has been one of the most unabashed lawfare warriors. Even when the Justice Department was seeking to dismiss the Flynn case, [liberal columnist and former prosecutor Harry] Lipman wrote an L.A. Times column advising Judge Emmet Sullivan how to “make trouble” for the administration. Litman admitted there is “very little leeway to reject the government’s decisions to dismiss charges” but encouraged Sullivan to “accomplish what Congress, multiple inspectors general, and a majority of the electorate have not been able to do — hold the president and his allies accountable for their contemptuous disregard for the rule of law.”
On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Litman declared to Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s victory is “an absolute five-alarm fire.” He called the effort to restore a diversity of viewpoints as little more than an attempt “to curry favor with Trump.” He then added:
“And I just think this is not a time for balance when you have someone who’s not telling the truth on the other side. And it’s a deep responsibility. And instead, I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings and just being threatened by Trump. And that’s a really shameful capitulation, I think. So, I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it and had to resign.”
It was a telling moment. Litman appeared on a network that has lost half of its viewership and is fighting for its existence in an effort by NBCUniversal to unload it. Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country. Yet, these figures would rather lose their jobs and media platforms than their bias.
To be fair, from global cooling/warming/climate change/climate chaos to gun control to abortion issues, it’s never “the right time for balance” when it comes to the legacy media, who would rather champion their pet leftist issues than attempt to keep their readers.
GUNS ARE TERRIBLE, DANGEROUS, AND CORRUPTING AND ONLY WE SHOULD HAVE THEM: Michigan Democrats Exempt Themselves From Capitol Gun Ban.
HOW DO YOU SAY “BUILD THE WALL!” IN GERMAN? I Can’t Believe What Germany and Austria Just Did… er, Stopped Doing.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Top 8 Online Platforms for Interracial Dating in 2024.
DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER: A Coup Against Right Wing Movements Is Underway In Europe.
In Germany the establishment is attempting to ban the increasingly successful AfD Party on the grounds that they represent a “return to fascism”. Over 100 legislators backed the resolution, though it is unclear if a vote will be taken. The AfD is the second most popular party in Germany and has recently put a candidate forward for chancellor in the upcoming February elections.
All other political parties in Germany are variations of the progressive spectrum. Leftists say that if the AfD gains any significant governmental power they will refuse to work with them, preferring to leave the German government in a state of limbo rather than accept the will of the voters. It should be noted that Germany’s coalition government is already collapsing and the country is in crisis.
In France, the increasing success of Marine Le Pen and her National Rally Party has been met with extreme derision by the progressive elites. The establishment under Emmanuel Macron engaged in political chicanery after the National Rally won the first round of the French elections. The centrists established a coalition with the radical leftists as a way to prevent the right wing from taking power. The move was technically legal, but considered by many to be an immoral effort to deny conservative French voters a voice.
The elites are also attempting to use lawfare against Le Pen, conjuring charges of misuse of EU funds with the intent to ensure she can run in the 2026 elections. As in Germany, it should be noted that the very coalition that was put in place to keep the right wing out of government has now collapsed under a no confidence vote of Prime Minister Barnier and France is currently in crisis.
What the elites eventually seem to forget is that if they don’t accept peaceful losses by democratic means, eventually, they may lose in some much worse way.
BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN DOCUMENTARY BE COMING TO IMAX IN FEBRUARY:
After many years of being in development, Led Zeppelin have announced their new documentary, Being Led Zeppelin, is set for release in February, 2025.
The film, directed by Bernard MacMahon, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 but didn’t receive a widespread release, as initially expected. Earlier this year, talk of the documentary was reignited when Sony Classics Pictures acquired the distribution rights for the production.
However, the cut of Becoming Led Zeppelin, which will arrive in cinemas, is slightly different to the version which aired at the Venice Film Festival three years ago.
The film promises to combine interviews with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, as well as historic clips of John Bonham speaking, with concert footage of the band in 1969 at Fillmore West, the Atlanta Pop Festival and the Texas Pop Festival. It focuses on the early years of the band and their rise to becoming the most popular group on the planet rather than chronicling their entire career.
Becoming Led Zeppelin is set to be released in 200 IMAX theatres on February 7th, 2025. Additionally, before its general release, it will premiere in 18 cities on February 5th, 2025, for advanced screenings in select locations.
In a statement, Becoming Led Zeppelin writer and producer Allison McGourty explained why it was such a prolonged project to complete, stating, “We spent five years flying back and forth across the Atlantic scouring attics and basements in pursuit of rare and unseen film footage, photographs and music recordings.”
McGourty added: “Then we transferred each piece of media with custom techniques, so that in IMAX, these 55-year-old clips and music would look and sound like they came out of the lab yesterday.”
In the meantime: The Hammer of the Gods: The First Critical Biography of Led Zeppelin Finally Available on the Kindle.
My latest, on Stephen Davis’ somewhat infamous 1985 look at Zeppelin’s now infamous very much non-#metoo-approved debauchery, over at Ed Driscoll.com.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Quality of parent-child relationships predicts adulthood well-being, 21-country study finds.
COLBY COSH: The apocalypse that never was still haunts generation X.
How often have you heard or read the phrase “the End Times”? On Nov. 25, the evangelizing author Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), died at the age of 95. The world’s press took relatively little note of this, even though Planet Earth is sometimes said to have been the single best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s. But even this surely understates the global cultural influence of Lindsey’s book. For many non-Christians, the variety of “dispensational premillennialism” he propagated just is their idea of Christianity, received secondhand from mass-media evangelists and religious pamphlets.
* * * * * * * * *
Funnily enough, Lindsey absolutely could not find a trace of the United States anywhere in the Bible, leading him to conclude that the U.S. was unlikely to participate in the last war, and was therefore certain to enter a precipitous decline in economic and strategic power — probably because of some sneaky Soviet attack.
That’s held up as well as most of his prophecies. Lindsey was vague about timelines, but certainly did not think in 1970 that there would be a year 1990. He was sure that the return of the Jews to Israel would be followed immediately by the demolition of the Dome of the Rock, which is still there in 2024, and the building of the Third Jewish Temple, which still ain’t.
The Late Great Planet Earth had a long series of ludicrous and inevitable sequels as the original prophecies passed their expiration date and had to be subtly revised. But while the Cold War was still in progress, millenarian feelings were inescapable, and Lindsey did as much as anyone to make them so. Our secular teachers were propagandizing us endlessly about the imminent end of the world even as our evangelical friends were living with the same expectation and more than happy to tell you all about it. There is a part of the generation X brain, religious or not, that wakes up in the morning in the year 2024 and subconsciously thinks, “Huh. It’s all still here.”
Related: Panicking over the planet and population is pointless.
One sign of moral panic is that when the facts change, the fears remain the same. In the 1970s, the Washington Post, TIME and Newsweek stoked fears of “a new ice age.” As soon as scientists updated their models to show a trend in the other direction, “global warming” became as threatening as global cooling. And when winters stubbornly kept happening and the direst predictions of new-age prophets like Al Gore failed to come to pass, the whole thing was rebranded as “climate change.”
Whatever the label, and whatever the underlying phenomenon was thought to be, the moral implication remained the same — human beings were ruining the earth and must curtail their comforts to save the planet. Bad weather used to be God’s punishment for human sinfulness. Now it’s nature’s punishment for capitalism. Men who foresee the future know this, and the only remedy is, of course, one that environmentalists, socialists and other anti-capitalists had already demanded before the crisis even was identified: larger government, more global government and increasing control over the economy and individuals’ lives.
Leftist intellectuals, frustrated by the failures of the Great Society and the coming of Richard Nixon became “Progressives Against Progress” in the late 1960s, and as our Newsweek link earlier today to the latest in an unending series of articles over the years picturing a world that’s on fire/frozen/underwater illustrates, they’ve never recovered since:
UPDATE: “The handwritten manifesto found on the person of the man detained in Altoona criticized health care companies for putting profits above care, according to a senior law enforcement official,” Andy Newman of the New York Times writes.
THEY’LL CONTINUE DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID FOR A WHILE LONGER:
Idk, maybe Democrats should try to win elections instead of cater to neurotic privileged weirdos. https://t.co/83m8xPToqh
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 8, 2024
The Democrats are a party of, by, and for neurotic privileged weirdos, and they hold too many influential positions to be easily shaken loose.
VOX SAYS IXNAY ON THE TAY-TAY ASSASSINATION PORN: Taylor Lorenz and Vox are parting ways.
Vox Media is ending its deal to distribute Taylor Lorenz’s podcast and YouTube show. The company had a short-term partnership with the high-profile tech reporter that is set to expire at the beginning of the year, Semafor has learned.
The company announced its partnership with Lorenz earlier this year in Axios, which dubbed the distribution deal a “huge win” for the company, as it tried to partner with premiere podcast talent on distribution, monetization and strategy. Still, while Lorenz remains one of the most talked-about journalists in digital media, her social media persona is a magnet for criticism both for her and for media companies associated with her.
Vox’s decision not to renew the show was made before Lorenz’s comments this week, in which she appeared to justify the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as an expression of public discontent. (She clarified in a Substack post that she was not defending the shooting, and was instead making a point about the US health care system.)
I eagerly await the Substacks from Lorenz exploring the paleoconservative reactionary worldview of her latest former employer: Taylor Lorenz Says NYT Only Allows Right-Wing Opinions At Newspaper and that NPR is “extreme right wing.”
YES.
100%! Daniel Penny, Florida waits for you. https://t.co/M0och4byUz
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) December 9, 2024
Related:
Don’t worry about the libs, sure they’re super mad about that verdict, but they’ll brush themselves off and go right to looking for another white guy to sacrifice on the altar of their new religion
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) December 9, 2024
UPDATE (From Ed): Ron DeSantis tweets, “The acquittal of Daniel Penny is clearly the just and correct verdict. I must admit I was skeptical that a jury in New York City would reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, and the jury deserves credit for doing the right thing. Meanwhile, is there a worse prosecutor in America than Alvin Bragg?”
SARAH ANDERSON: Sex, Murder, and Small Town Politics: What’s Going On In Letcher County, Kentucky? “What happened on Sept. 19, 2024, not only shook things up in Letcher County, but it also potentially exposed something much more sinister. That Thursday afternoon, District Judge Kevin Mullins and County Sheriff Shawn Stines had what looked like a normal lunch together at a sports bar in the county seat of Whitesburg before meeting up at the county courthouse a few hours later. While in the judge’s chambers, the two men allegedly had an argument before Stines pulled his gun and shot Mullins several times. The incident was caught on a security camera.”
FOR MY FRIENDS, EVERYTHING. FOR MY ENEMIES, THE LAW. How The Régime Treats Is Enemies, And Its Friends.
THE BIDEN CABAL/OBAMA SHADOW REGIME GOING OUT SWINGING: Biden Unbanking And Censoring Political Enemies? “The Biden Administration isn’t yet done, and still more of it’s dirty dealings are coming to light. Remember Operation Choke Point, the semi-secret program to ‘debank’ disfavored businesses like guns and weed under the Obama administration? Well say hello to Operation Choke point 2.0, where the disfavored people being unbanked are the Obama/Biden Machine’s political opponents.”
GIFT FOR THE ABSENT-MINDED: Apple AirTag 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned
WHATEVER HAPPENS TO SYRIA NEXT, THERE WILL AT LEAST BE THIS MOMENT TO TREASURE: Syria’s Biggest Losers: Khamenei, Putin, Obama.
HOW IT STARTED: Donald Trump Won. But the Biggest Loser Was the Mainstream Media.
—Newsweek, November 7th.
How it’s going:
Spoiler Alert: It's the same cities that were supposed to be under water by 2000 and 2020. https://t.co/ICpxiuH6XG
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) December 9, 2024
Still though, why take chances? Gentlemen, start your SUVs!
Flashback: Quick Reminder: Nobody at ABC Personally Takes Their Global Warming Doomsday Predictions Seriously, Either.
New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.
The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.” (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)
On June 12, 2008, correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.”
As one expert warns that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly, a visual shows New York City being engulfed by water. The video montage includes another unidentified person predicting that “flames cover hundreds of miles.”
Then-GMA co-anchor Chris Cuomo appeared frightened by this future world. He wondered, “I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?”
As I wrote back in 2015, “Obviously, no one at ABC thought so, since the network never moved their corporate headquarters from its tony Upper West Side address, despite attempting to scare the crap out of gullible low information viewers that Manhattan would be flooded in seven years.”
I HOPE DADDY CAN AFFORD GOOD LAWYERS: Because these Sarah Lawrence students have just admitted to the serious felony of material support for terrorism. And given the Supreme Court’s holding in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the First Amendment is unlikely to protect them.
AL-ASSAD FAMILY’S WORST GENOICIDE: Richard Pollock details how the father of the now deposed Syrian dictator, Baashar Al-Assad encircled, starved, then executed residents of Hama, Syria, en masse in 1982.
“To this day, the name Hama stirs trepidation and rage among the country’s citizens. And it should be listed among one of the al-Assad family’s worst crimes while the deposed leader now apparently enjoys refuge in Russia.
“Certainly, the al-Assad dictatorial family is notorious for carrying out many atrocities. In 2011, it’s estimated Bashar killed 500,000 and displaced half of the country’s 23 million. He also is believed to have killed as many as 1,400 by nerve gas in 2013.”
Tragically, there is more, much more, to this record.
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