COLOR ME SKEPTICAL: Psychedelic therapy could benefit millions of depressed Americans, study finds.
Archive for 2024
September 14, 2024
I DIDN’T KNOW THE DODGE HORNET EXISTED: The slowest selling car in America. “Even with its appealing starting price of $42,530, dealers just can’t get them off their lots quickly enough. According to CarEdge dealer inventory data, the Market Day Supply—or the number of days it would take to sell all the models available based on its current sales rate—of the Dodge Hornet is up to 428 days. Dodge apparently has 14,596 Hornets on dealer lots, but has only moved 1,536 in the last 45 days. As we mentioned, it doesn’t get much better for other Stellantis vehicles, as the Jeep Grand Wagoneer is in the same 428-day supply boat with 2,214 units on lots with only 233 sold in the past 45 days.”
I vaguely considered a Grand Wagoneer when I was buying a new SUV a couple of years ago, but it seemed expensive and clunky to me. I guess I wasn’t alone.
WE NEED A FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS LAW PROTECTING SELF-DEFENSE: Blue States Can’t Ban Your Guns So They’ll Punish You For Using Them.
Also gun-rights groups need to target prosecutors who go after people who defend themselves. There should be an automatic outside-funded effort to oust them, and nonstop vilification nationwide of the sort lefties engage in routinely.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Callaway Golf 300 Pro Laser Rangefinder. #CommissionEarned
JANE’S ADDICTION MORPHED INTO THE WWE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Perry Farrell’s wife Etty Lau breaks her silence to reveal the REAL reason lead singer of Jane’s Addiction punched guitarist Dave Navarro on stage.
Related: “Dave Grohl Proves Rock Ain’t Dead,” Jim Treacher writes. “I know I’m jaded and probably more than a little evil, but I ain’t mad at Dave Grohl. It’s amusing to me. I just hope his new kid is worth giving up half of everything he owns in the divorce. Long live rock & roll!”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The research supports you taking a sick day. The science is settled!
WATCH: The Best Fact-Check of Kamala Harris in History, and You’ll Never Guess How It Ends.
Is this my most clickbaity headline in a long time? Probably. Am I about to deliver on every promise it makes? Absolutely.
The setup happened during the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the topic centered on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. When pressed on the matter, Harris tried to pivot by claiming that there is not a single American service member currently serving in a combat zone.
HARRIS: As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.
That’s a bold proclamation, but is it true? That’s where this epic fact-check comes in, and be sure to watch the video so you can see the twist at the end. Be warned that while hilarious, there is some salty language used.
This is the greatest fact-check to ever exist. It will never get better than this. Savor it. pic.twitter.com/V6U6q4EF8t
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 14, 2024
Exit quote: “Harris doesn’t care about military members. That’s made clear by her choosing to cast them aside for political gain. For her, they are just obstacles on her way to the White House. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Democrat.”
LIGHTNING DEAL: AstroAI Tire Inflator Portable Air Compressor. #CommissionEarned
MATT TAIBBI: Leaders Beyond the Law. In a very real sense, Dick Cheney hasn’t changed sides at all.
THAT’LL RUIN YOUR DAY: Moment freight train smashes into stranded 18-wheeler carrying military howitzer in ‘devastating’ collision.
This is the shocking moment a freight train smashed into a stranded vehicle carrying a military howitzer in South Carolina.
The crash happened at a railroad crossing near Highway 52 in Goose Creek yesterday afternoon.
Debris can be seen flying into the air as the train collides with the 18-wheeled tractor-trailer as it tries to cross the tracks.
The crossing was also destroyed in the crash and the road was closed by police.
Cops from the Goose Creek Police Department said they received a call about the collision at around 12.30pm on Thursday.
Police said the trailer, which was carrying a military vehicle, got struck while driving over the train crossing.
There were no reports of any injuries and the driver refused treatment.
The military vehicle on the trailer has been described as a M109 Paladin Howitzer.
This being 2024, the crash can be observed from multiple angles:
STEVE HAYWARD: Republicans for Suicide.
The case of Dick Cheney is even more curious than most never Trumpers because his claim that Trump represents the most serious threat to the Constitution ever raises a question: What is the premise of that hyperbole? Is it that the executive branch has grown too powerful? Well yes—heartily agree. Yet the paradox here is that Trump in his first term kept trying to get Congress to step up and assert its constitutional powers to solve some of our major problems, rather than using executive ukase as Obama and Biden liked to do (and no doubt Harris will too, if she wins). And Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have struck the most serious blows against executive power, especially in striking down the Chevron Doctrine.
I wonder if Cheney agrees with that decision. If the executive branch is too powerful to be trusted in the hands of Donald Trump, maybe Cheney ought to look in the mirror a bit longer. After all, as both a congressman in the 1980s, and then as vice president, Cheney was one of the leading champions of maximum executive power, and produced serious work in support of the “unitary executive” idea.
In the past, all Republican presidents or presidential candidates were called Hitler by Democratic politicians and their operatives with bylines while they ran or were in office, and then rehabilitated as thoughtful elder statesmen once there was a new Hitler who needed attacking. But now that we have former Republicans endorsing the current Democratic presidential candidate, it places their opponents’ past rhetoric in sharp perspective. Why should we believe their crazy rantings now, knowing that they’ll find astonishing levels of Strange New Respect™ a few years later?
SUPERCUT!
Harris: I'm proud to be endorsed by the Dark Lord himself! pic.twitter.com/ifpLk1W0DJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 12, 2024
Or as the Hill exclaimed on Tuesday: How the GOP’s Darth Vader turned into Luke Skywalker.
Incidentally, as the Spectator’s “Cockburn” asked in February of 2020: Why do NeverTrumpers think they can run the Democratic party? The arrogance follows wherever they go.
UPDATE: Everything seemingly is spinning out of control!* AP is quick to provide redemption to Cheney:
Meanwhile, from America’s Newspaper of Record:
WHY MALE VOTERS CAN’T STAND KAMALA:
Kamala’s biggest problem is the men. White men. Black men. Young men.
Gen Z has the largest gender gap of any age group with young men supporting Trump by margins similar to those of older men. Black men and Hispanic men have been the hardest minority groups to persuade into the Kamala camp. A New York Times article last month blamed lagging black male support for Kamala on the ‘misogynoir’ that black men were suffering from.
Why is Kamala doing so poorly among men? One hint comes from polling numbers showing that white men went from supporting Trump by 13 points before the DNC convention to 21 points afterward. “Joy”, “brat summer” and all the efforts to brand a presidential campaign like the Barbie movie backfired making Kamala into ‘Barbie’ and Trump into ‘Oppenheimer’.
It’s not just the vibe, climaxing in Oprah’s convention appearance, that’s turning off men, the vibe is a symptom of the real problem not only with the campaign, but the candidate.
Kamala is a lightweight politician running on feelings at a time when men need something more solid. The “joy” theme told votes to turn off their brains, join the party and stop worrying. TikTok dances make a certain kind of voter gush while completely alienating another kind of voter.
Having “brat summer” inflicted on you when you’re cutting back on groceries is salt in the wound. A trivial campaign is insulting to those who are suffering and falling behind on bills.
But TikTok dances are the whole reason why Kamala is here.
Also, every office has a woman like Kamala, cruising on privilege and diversity points.
NOT SHOCKING, BUT DISAPPOINTING (Warning: longish post):
As most IP readers know, although I am not an absolutionist on the First Amendment (nor any of the Bill of Rights) I’ve dedicated my professional life to defending not just the right, but the need for what Justice Brennan called “the breathing space” upon which democracy depends to give all political speech, even that which we may find unfounded or even offensive.
I bring this up because I cannot help but remind people to hold the news media as accountable as they do politicians and policy makers. This leads me to emphasize how critical it is to support — or at least read — news platforms that are dedicated to providing accurate and fair stories, and in a nod to the value of hearing heterodoxy that the First Amendment (and indeed real democracy) needs, cover stories and viewpoints of all stripes.
Free marketplace of ideas, and all that.
Case in point: JustTheNews, a wholly independent and thriving news website has the courage (and business smarts) to present stories that the stenographers in the mainstream media routinely ignore.
They reported today on the fact that there are serious and provable connections between a Soros-funded racial justice organization that supports liberal prosecutors and coordination with the Biden-Harris administration to apply lawfare against former President Trump.
The key issue as a citizen is to get all the facts and make up your own mind. When the media incessantly refuses to dig into questions, [insert motivation here] the public is, in a word, shortchanged.
In my career as a newsroom lawyer, I recall speaking with a reporter in the Bloomberg newsroom about the failure to cover the “Fast and Furious” scandal of the Obama-era.
“What’s that?” the reporter asked me. “I’ve never heard of that.”
Res Ipsa loquitur.
We’ve seen a relevant observation here many times:
So, gentle reader, I implore you to regularly read the “out of the mainstream” news platforms available — and encourage others to do the same.
The Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, PJ Media, among others are not slanted in conservative bias. They simply provide clean, clear and factual news of interest to libertarians and conservatives who are not getting all the facts.
To be sure, the faux-liberals running search engines and other wanna-be censors (those who bellow “We must suppress disinformation to save democracy”) have done their damndest to demonetize and suppress these voices. Frankly, I find the arrogance and dehumanization of such paternalistic policies to be what I call “liberal fascism.”
You don’t have to believe everything you read, but you are better served by reading everything.
***Disclosure: I have provided some of the above listed news platforms with editorial and legal advice, and this posting has not been suggested, sponsored or approved by any of them.***
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Roland Emmerich Is Ready To Shop Lawrence In Arabia.
The filmmaker has long dreamed of playing in the world of the classic 1962 film starring Peter O’Toole, and in the coming weeks, he and Bohemian Rhapsody writer Anthony McCarten will take it out to potential partners. The duo envision this as a three-season prestige series, and McCarten hopes to write the entire first season.
Emmerich calls it “In Arabia,” rather than “of Arabia,” because as he says, “it has a little bit more characters” than the original movie.
In 1983, executives at NBC thought, “Yes! Let’s turn the beloved 1943 movie Casablanca into a TV series. And let’s get David Soul out of Starsky and Hutch to play Rick, the iconic character played by the legendary Humphrey Bogart. It’ll be brilliant!”
It wasn’t. And Roland Emmerich’s TV series version of one of the greatest films ever made will likely be worse.
SOMETIME BETWEEN WHEN I WAS A KID AND THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY, NOOSES WENT FROM EMBLEMS OF THE OLD WEST TO PRESUMPTIVELY RACIST: Maryland noose not ‘racist’ or ‘anti-black’: principal. “This is not the first time during this new school year a rope has turned out to just be a rope.”
MARK JUDGE: BlueAnon: Liberalism’s tragic descent into paranoia and conspiracy theories.
[David Harsanyi’s] The Rise of BlueAnon is one of the most important political books of the decade. It’s also one of the saddest, exploring how a once-great Democratic Party has become infected with paranoia and conspiracy theories. Harsanyi, a columnist for the Washington Examiner, calls these new liberal crazies “BlueAnon.” They are the left-wing version of QAnon, the crazy far-right conspiracy nuts. Thus, there’s no real difference between conspiracy guy Alex Jones and Russiagate hoaxer Rachel Maddow.
Harsanyi argues that while QAnon is a fringe phenomenon, BlueAnon has entered the mainstream of American culture through media, universities, and the internet. It has also become a dangerous threat to the future of American democracy.
“Over the past decades,” Harsanyi observes, “the American left and its institutions have mainstreamed a unique brand of political paranoia. The modern Democratic Party’s policy prescriptions—even what it views as our most pressing societal problems—are increasingly tethered to groundless or sensationalized anxieties, myths, revisionist histories, pseudoscientific alarmism, and outright lies.
Exit quote: “The biggest difference between Alex Jones and Rachel Maddow is the haircut.”
THE RIGHT WEAPONIZES THE ANTI-SEMITISM OF THE LEFT. We’re for It.
Oh, we forgot to mention: The ads are airing in the Detroit area. Dearborn, Mich., is an inner-ring suburb of Detroit home to the country’s largest Muslim population, and what the Times report from Katie Glueck doesn’t say is that the 40,000 or so odd Arabs there don’t like Jews.
It’s not that the ads are anti-Semitic, it’s that the voters are. The ads are a bit of political chicanery aimed at turning that bigotry against the Democratic ticket. It’s cynicism, not anti-Semitism.
Saul Alinsky smiles.
MAKE THEM OWN IT: The Right Weaponizes the Anti-Semitism of the Left. We’re for It.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Kamala Harris sticks with ABC for first solo interview since slanted debate — and still serves up word salad.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with an ABC affiliate for her first solo interview Friday, choosing the same network that got her through this week’s slanted presidential debate — but still managed to stumble through softball questions.
She answered five questions from Action News 6 ABC, a local affiliate of ABC News, in the interview that came just days after the moderators in the ABC debate with Donald Trump assisted her by providing fact checks on the former president but not her.
One of the ABC moderators for the debate, Linsey Davis, is a member of Harris’ sorority and Dana Walden, a Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC, is one of the vice president’s close friends.
Action News 6 ABC anchor Brian Taff asked Harris, 59, what she would specifically do to bring down prices as president.
“Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up as a middle class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard,” she began, before going on about her neighborhood where people “were proud of their lawn.”
“We as Americans have beautiful character. We have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions,” Harris went on.
Twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
Related: Wait, did Kamala lose the debate? “If you think this election is about vibes, then it’s a big deal that Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, something Brian Stelter keeps hyping up… but if it’s about fundamentals? What if any questions did Kamala answer in that debate to resolve people’s uncertainty about what she plans to do? Her dismissiveness on fracking, guns and abortion as if nothing Trump argued was landing seems to me to be a mistake, instead of confronting it head on and promising to the American people what she will and will not do.”
LIGHTNING DEAL: AstroAI Tire Inflator Portable Air Compressor. #CommissionEarned
YOUR DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Congressional Black Caucus Speaker Defends Hamas: ‘Not My Job to Tell People How to Liberate Themselves.’ “CUNY professor Marc Lamont Hill defended Hamas during a Congressional Black Caucus panel discussion with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on Thursday, calling the terrorist group a ‘democratically elected organization that has been systematically undermined.'”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Who Really Are the MAGA People?
Who really are the MAGA People? pic.twitter.com/Zk6rvijCge
— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) September 13, 2024
As Ed Morrissey writes, “I love the anthropological tone of this ad, coming from RFK’s former running mate. This is the same way that Mainstream Media treats conservatives in America, too.”
The DNC-MSM have been would-be anthropologists for over half a century. Jonah Goldberg was writing about the media’s “Gorillas in the Mist” style of covering half the country way back in 2002.
Time magazine was (non-ironically) employing that same tone in 1970.