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Archive for 2024
February 3, 2024
THE WAY THINGS WORK TODAY: The Bad Guys Gotta Be White Males or It’s Racist. Preferably Christian:
In London, a man named Abdul Shakoor Ezedi is wanted for an “alkali attack” against a woman and her three-year-old daughter. He threw some sort of corrosive substance on them, causing severe burns. . . .
So this guy flees Afghanistan for the UK, rapes someone, gets a slap on the wrist, and is granted asylum. Then he runs around splashing toxic chemicals on people and attacking children.
That’s happening right now.
I thought about that story as I watched the latest episode of Criminal Record, streaming now on Apple TV+.
It’s a pretty good show, a bit slow-moving but well-acted, intriguing plot, all that. But the fundamental premise really rankles me. If we’re to believe the screenwriters, the worst problem facing London in the 21st Century is racist right-wing cops.
Peter Capaldi plays DCI1 Daniel Hegarty, who’s sort of half-supercop, half-politician. He knows everybody, he sees everything, and he can pull the strings to make his colleagues’ lives as easy or as tough as he wants. And of course, you know he’s the villain because he’s a white male. Boo, hiss!
Hegarty comes into conflict with DS2 June Lenker (Cush Jumbo), and I won’t spoil any of the plot details. But Hegarty and his crew of likeminded white male cops are despicable, and Lenker keeps butting heads with them because they don’t see her as an equal.
Are there racist cops? Of course. Is that a worthy dramatic premise? Sure.
But just once, I’d like to watch a show that actually reflects other stuff that’s happening in the real world. A scenario where the cops are trying to protect the public from, say, insane Islamic immigrants who attack children in the street after being let out of prison for rape.
It’s not racist to notice. It’s not bigoted to empathize with the victims of a crime committed by somebody who’s been designated a victim because he’s not white.
I had a similar problem with another recent thriller series, Condor, currently streaming on MGM+.
Shocking.
MAGAZINES: The Wisdom of Downloading. “The answer to the age-old question of whether or not to top off a magazine to maximize the number of on-board rounds depends on the firearm in question. Even within the same model, individual examples can yield different conclusions.”
STAY SHARP: Orange Ninja Knife Sharpeners for Kitchen- 5 Adjustable Sharpening Angle. #CommissionEarned
THE CORBYNIZATION OF JEREMY CORBYN’S PARTY CONTINUES APACE: BBC employee called Jewish people ‘Nazis’ and whites ‘parasites.’
A senior BBC employee branded Jewish people “Nazis” and white people “parasites” in a string of social media posts.
The BBC has been informed of statements made online by Dawn Queva, who is a scheduling coordinator at BBC Three, according to her online profile.
Posts made on her Facebook page include calling Jewish people “Nazi apartheid parasites” that funded a “holohoax”.
Her posts repeatedly attack white people, calling them a “virus” and “mutant invader species”.
Ms Queva, whose location is listed as London on her Linkedin profile, also brands the UK “bigoted” and “genocidal” and claims white Europeans are “melanin-recessive parasites”.
Why is the BBC such a cesspit of a antisemitism?
A NEW LIFE AWAITS YOU IN THE OFF-WORLD COLONIES. THE CHANCE TO BEGIN AGAIN IN A GOLDEN LAND OF OPPORTUNITY AND ADVENTURE:
I am a struggling freelance writer. I have decided to go to South America and then immigrate to NYC. https://t.co/DIdHSzDf5U @elonmusk @kylenabecker @JackPosobiec @Heminator @laralogan @elonmusk @TuckerCarlson @StephenM @seanmdav @kylenabecker @RealJamesWoods @DrJayRichards
— Mark Judge (@markgjudge) February 3, 2024
IT’S STYLISH, SO IT MUST BE GOOD FOR THE PLANET: Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin.
The best part of the clip is when Newsom goes Full Karen on the employee for Wrongthink, asking for her manager. Remember, he proactively chose to tell this story, out loud, apparently thinking it makes *him* look good. https://t.co/yRBvZFn1OC
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 2, 2024
Of course Newsom thinks he’s the good guy here. As Fred Siegel wrote in The Revolt Against the Masses:
The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. “Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,” Parrington insisted, referring to both democracy and capitalism, “and the artist and the scientist will erect in America a civilization that may become, what civilization was in earlier days, a thing to be respected.” Alienated from middle-class American life, liberalism drew on an idealized image of “organic” pre-modern folkways and rhapsodized about a future harmony that would reestablish the proper hierarchy of virtue in a post-bourgeois, post-democratic world.
San Francisco in particular is off to an excellent start in that department: SF is hit by another huge blow as residential property market begins to tank, with investor landlord ditching 459 homes across 12 buildings due to plunging occupancy blamed on crime.
THAT KIA RIO REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE WORN ITS SKIRT SO HIGH UP: It’s all the cars’ fault! Progressive Seattle lawmaker who’s pro-defund the police and once condoned looting demands recall of Kias and Hyundais to tackle soaring vehicle theft in city — but refuses to concede soft-on-crime policies are to blame.
A Seattle councilor who backed calls to defund the police has a new idea to cut car thefts – ban the cars.
Tammy Morales is among a group of progressive lawmakers from Democrat cities who have blamed car makers Kia and Hyundai for soaring rates of auto crime, demanding they make their products harder to steal.
The Washington State capital launched a lawsuit against the manufacturers last year after videos of car thefts trended on TikTok, and is now calling for federal regulators to enforce a nationwide recall.
But the socialist leader had little to say about the city’s soft-on-crime policies that have seen car thefts more than double in the last five years.
‘I won’t speak to the motivations of young people, except to say that they are young people and when issued a challenge, especially on something like social media, they like to take it up,’ she said.
The Seattle police department has lost around 600 police officers since the City Council began defunding the department in 2020.
In that time car thefts have jumped from fewer than 4,000 to the record 8,379 recorded last year.
The funding cuts began with the riots that rampaged across the city in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis by a white police officer, riots that Morales was accused of defending.
‘What I don’t want to hear is our constituents told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn’t solve anything,’ she told a council meeting at the time.
‘It does make me wonder why looting bothers people so much more than knowing that across the country, black people are being killed around the country.’
Flashback: The Fall of Seattle:
What happened to Seattle? The answer, of course, depends on your politics. In the news section of the Seattle Times, for instance, a reader is unlikely to see any consideration of a link between policing and public safety. “No single cause for 2021’s surge in gunfire in Seattle,” declared a typical recent headline over an article that points only to possibilities such as the pandemic or an unlucky cycle of “retaliatory violence”. But the majority view in Seattle appears to have shifted toward an acknowledgement that the unrest and destruction that occurred after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 marked a turning point and that the city’s policies toward its police force, whose ranks are now depleted, are relevant to understanding the story. What follows, based on interviews with a number of past and present police officers — five of whom are on the record in this article — is an attempt to offer an obvious but unheeded perspective. It is a cop’s-eye view of Seattle’s undoing.
QED: How it started: Seattle City Council approves plan to defund police department, slashes jobs and salaries.
—Fox News, August 10th, 2020.
How it’s going: Seattle police stopped investigating new adult sexual assaults this year, memo shows.
—The Seattle Times, today.
HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND:
● CNN Anchor Stunned Into Silence After Panelist Explains Why Illegals Don’t Stay in Florida.
—Red State, yesterday.
—The Blaze, Monday.
CNN isn’t going to get past the ratings of old Hollywood western reruns if all their anchors can offer is “the sound of silence” whenever their epistemic bubble is burst.
THEY’RE STILL STYLISH, THOUGH: Lead aprons no longer necessary for dental X-rays.
RECREATE ’68 STRAGGLERS STARTING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR OFF EARLY? Three Conservative Offices Are Torched in Minnesota.
As with any office building, the three organizations were not the only tenants. But the chance of someone wanting to torch one of the other businesses is not great. In a statement on the CAE website, President John Hinderaker said:
The fires obviously were set by someone. They targeted conservative organizations, they didn’t firebomb the chiropractors or psychologists or the Manufacturers Alliance. We are cooperating with the FBI to try to identify the perpetrators. This firebombing will not slow us down — American Experiment’s work for freedom is not dependent on a bricks-and-mortar location. In fact, we launched a new campaign today opposing Gov. Walz’s new fuel standards that are more extreme, and more expensive, than even those of California, Oregon, and Washington. (sic)
More here: They Firebombed My Office.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Dad Loses Custody for Refusing to ‘Trans’ Son.
But has the de-gleichschaltung slowly started to happen?
You know what the difference is between last year when everyone was screaming that this was essential health care and now?
Trial lawyers. It’s trial lawyers. And some of them are about to get a massive payday off some very sad kids and some very dumb doctors. https://t.co/BPpSnsfKpC
— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) February 2, 2024
HIGHER EDUCATION HAS GONE PAST SELF-PARODY: Robot Racism: Pittsburgh Professor Sounds Alarm Over “Interacting with White Robots.”
SAME REASON SUVS REPLACED STATION WAGONS: Why Are Pickup Trucks Ridiculously Huge? Blame Government.
IT’S LIKE TRYING TO PASS DOWN A NOSE JOB TO YOUR KIDS. In my latest Substack Adam Goldstein and I take on Lysenkoism, fantasy botany, John Stuart Mill’s Trident, and epigenetic rhinoplasty.
LEFTIST LONGS FOR THE LAST OUTPOST OF MEDIA CRITICISM TO BE DESTROYED: Hilarious Kamala Leak: Former Aide Reveals Criticism by Fox’s The Five Is Getting Inside Her Head.
That same month, co-host Jessica Tarlov took issue with fellow panelist Jesse Watters insinuating that Harris’ past romantic relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was “how she got ahead in politics.”
“The Five” has not been shy about discussing Harris’ prior relationship with Brown and making jokes about it.
We reported earlier how Joe Biden is obsessed with “Morning Joe,” has frequently consulted with people on the show, and likes to talk to Scarborough for his take. Now, that’s a bad move given how wrong Scarborough often is, but that may be another reason Biden is so often wrong. Then, of course, what does that mean “Morning Joe” is worth for objective opinion on Biden? I don’t think anyone thought they were objective, but this makes both sides look worse. It’s like a very bad mutual admiration bubble.
Apparently, Kamala Harris likes the show, too. She and her husband had dinner with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough last month. It’s one thing if it’s an opinion person, but another if it’s people claiming to be presenting objective news.
It also says something about her if she can’t take the criticism and if it truly is causing her “high anxiety.” Biden is already weak and can’t take criticism. If Harris gets so upset about jokes from “The Five,” it shows she has a pretty brittle personality as well.
Dan Quayle, a spry 76, likely smiles wryly as such reports, as he remembers when the entire news media and late night talk shows obsessed over destroying him in the late 1980s when the DNC-MSM still had their lock on public opinion, as this 1991 Chicago Tribune article recaps: The Unmaking of Dan Quayle.
– In 1988, the authoritative Politics in America said: ”Quayle today is seen as a diligent senator willing to work on complicated defense issues and interested in reforming Senate procedures to make the chamber function more efficiently.”
– And here, also in 1988, was an evaluation from the equally authoritative Almanac of American Politics: ”In the Senate, Quayle has been one of the most active and successful members of the Republican class of 1980. . . . Dan Quayle brings to the Senate sunny good looks, a cheerful temperament, and an inclination that many observers found surprising to dig into issues, do his homework and come up with workmanlike legislative solutions to problems of government.”
The Almanac of American Politics concluded that ”his career taken as a whole suggests that he is not a political accident, but a fortunate young man with good political instincts.” Such was the Quayle that George Bush selected as his running mate-a man he had repeatedly heard described by the nation`s leading media as an accomplished legislator and a successful politician.
The press corps encamped in New Orleans, however, seemed either unaware of Quayle`s record as a legislator and politician, or merely uninterested. The fact that Quayle`s announcement was a surprise, and that reporters were far from their usual Washington sources, perhaps explains why they focused less on Quayle`s record in government and politics and more on his personality and private life.
The rest is history. Having brought Quayle to national prominence by praising him, the press proceeded to destroy his reputation. Like Hollywood`s legendary gossip columnists, the national press corps has shown with Quayle that it can make a politician`s reputation-and can break it too.
See also John McCain and Mitt Romney during their respective presidential election cycles.
LIFE IN THE BIDEN ERA: East Palestine residents still displaced, suffering 1 year after toxic train derailment.
EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy’s Biggest Awards. “Three months later, the truth came out when McCarty shared the Hugo nominating statistics on Facebook: Someone had stolen nominations from The Sandman legend Neil Gaiman, Babel author R. F. Kuang, Iron Widow novelist Xiran Jay Zhao, and fan writer Paul Weimer. All four of them earned enough votes to be finalists—and therefore eventually winners—but for unknown reasons, someone had secretly marked their works as ‘ineligible’ after the first rounds of voting. . . . When McCarty finally shared last year’s nominating statistics on his Facebook page, authors, fans, and finalists were shocked. In the history of the awards, no works had ever been deemed ineligible like this. Many people who had expected Kuang to win for Babel were now stunned to see she very well could have, and McCarty’s refusal to explain what happened made everything worse. (McCarty did not respond to interview requests for this story.)”
Plus: “All four ‘ineligible’ writers have criticized the Chinese Communist Party or its policies at some point in the past.” Insiders deny that was a factor, but . . .
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LATERAL MOVE: John Podesta Replaces John Kerry As U.S. Climate Envoy.
Podesta now oversees implementation of Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The law devoted billions of dollars to accelerating the nation’s transition to wind, solar and other sources of clean energy. Podesta also played a critical role in brokering the 2015 Paris climate agreement as a counselor to President Barack Obama, and helped steer President Bill Clinton’s environmental policies while serving as White House chief of staff.
The move comes at a crucial time for Biden’s climate agenda and global efforts to slow Earth’s dangerous warming. The president is racing to finalize strong environmental regulations by the end of his current term, as former president Donald Trump campaigns on a pledge to undo many of those actions. The outcome of the election could influence the credibility of the United States, the world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, at the next U.N. Climate Change Conference this fall in Azerbaijan.
Our only hope for sanity is to get a Republican in the White House, probably Trump, who won’t kowtow to the lunatics in the climate hysteria world. Podesta is a longtime Swamp creature who knows a good grift when he sees it.
But hey, what could go wrong? John Podesta’s Cure for Climate Change: A Government in Charge of Your ‘Family Planning.’