THERE WAS A TIME WHEN THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSURDLY UNBELIEVABLE: Evidence Mounts That the Government Planted Pipe Bombs at Capitol on January 6. Today is not that time.
Archive for 2024
January 20, 2024
KEEP YOUR FEET DRY: NORTIV 8 Men’s Waterproof Hiking Winter Snow Boots. #CommissionEarned
NEO: The hostages present a Solomonic dilemma: why say “Bring them home?”
Israel is being addressed in these pleas, rather than Hamas, because Israel is humane and Hamas is not. Remember William Lloyd Garrison’s famous statement, “With reasonable men I will reason, with humane men I will plead … “. What many – most?- people forget is the rest of the quote, “but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.” Negotiations with Hama are “wasted words.”
As far as a military way to bring them home goes – Israel probably doesn’t know where they all are, and even if and when Israel does know where they are (almost certainly not in one place but in many), a military approach would be likely to kill them or precipitate Hamas murdering them.
I think the phrase that makes more sense is “Let them go!” – addressed to Hamas and the Gazans*. Of course, Hamas has no more intention of letting them go than Pharaoh had of letting the Jews who were slaves in Egypt go, as in the song “Let My People Go.” It took ten escalating plagues for that to happen, and it’s not surprising it took that much to get him to relent. Perhaps you believe that’s a historical fact, or perhaps you believe it’s a legend or a story, but whichever it is it tells something true about evil and power.
I suppose if the message is to be “Bring them home!,” the words should be addressed to the world: the UN, nations, supposed “humanitarian” organizations, and the international community as a whole. If the world was united in stating the obvious fact that the kidnappings are evil and Hamas must release them or face attack or severe sanctions, globally – perhaps that would be enough pressure. But in reality that is very far from happening and Hamas knows it, and knows that the world is actually far more united against Israel.
Exit question: “Remember this past virtue-signaling? Now we hardly even have this sort of thing:”
* Yes, but that would require that the poster-rippers admit that Hamas and the Gazans actually are the bad guys. That’s far too much cognitive dissonance for their tiny brains to process.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Anna Wintour Kept Her Sunglasses On the Entire Time She Was Telling Pitchfork Staffers They Were Getting Laid Off, Writer Says.
Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s longtime fashion doyenne, is famous for a singular style trademark — her sunglasses.
Indeed, Wintour didn’t take off her sunglasses the entire time she met with employees of Pitchfork this week to tell them they were losing their jobs after Condé Nast had decided to subsume the music criticism site into GQ, according to one now-former employee in attendance.
“One absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour — seated indoors at a conference table — did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned,” Allison Hussey, a former Pitchfork staff writer, wrote on X. “The indecency we’ve seen from upper management this week is appalling.”
It’s unclear whether Wintour’s reported decision to not remove her eyewear during the meeting was a deliberate fashion choice or, rather, a way to avoid having to look Pitchfork’s employees in the eye. Reps for Condé Nast did not respond to a request for comment.
In a 2009 interview with “60 Minutes,” Wintour offered an explanation for the omnipresent sunglasses: “They are seriously useful. I can sit in a show and if I am bored out of my mind, nobody will notice… At this point, they have become, really, armor.”
At the moment, they’re also the stuff of Google News headlines:
In sharp contrast, so far at least, unlike Cloudflare’s CEO when a (former) employee videotaped her own layoff, Wintour hasn’t offered grovelling apologies to the hyper-online masses in today’s de rigueur bobo-style corporate therapeutic language.
NEVER FULLY TRUST ENCRYPTION: How a 27-year-old busted the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity.
What part of “distributed ledger” sounds like anonymity?
CLOWARD-PIVEN OR AND BUST!
How it started: How Denver became a destination for migrants.
Why it matters: The city has built a reputation as a destination for migrants due its resources, economy and central geography.
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Denver Mayor Michael Hancock signed a bill into law in 2017 codifying the city’s resistance to work with federal immigration enforcement, along with legal defense and coordinated assistance, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president.
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At the time, the mayor said his intent was to let Denver’s refugee and immigrant communities know: “We’ve got your backs.”
—Axios, January 5th, 2023.
How it’s going: Denver hospitals want federal bailout as illegal immigrants flood system.
—Fox News, yesterday.
THIS DOES NOT INSPIRE CONFIDENCE: Who is most efficient in health care? Study finds, surprisingly, it’s the VA.
WHY IS JODIE FOSTER ERASING THE SUCCESS OF SIGOURNEY WEAVER, LINDA HAMILTON, CARRIE FISHER, AND SCARLETT JOHANSSON? Not to mention her own success over the decades at the box office?
I swear these people think it’s perpetually 1970 https://t.co/RBaz6L4pyu
— Good Tweetman (@Goodtweet_man) January 20, 2024
In 2000, David Brooks published Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Because the left thinks in terms of revolutionary language, they can’t process that they haven’t been bohemians for nearly half a century; after their “long march through the institutions,” they’re the bourgeoisie running DC, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and America’s university system. And yet, for the civil rights movement, it’s always a pre-Civil Rights Act 1963. And as the tweeter above noted, for feminism, it’s always 1970.
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Signs Pointing to Michelle Obama Angling to Replace Joe Biden as Democrat Presidential Nominee.
DON’T GO COLD TURKEY: Quitting antidepressants may lead to emotional, social struggles.
HOW IT STARTED: Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past.
—Headline, the London Independent, March 20th, 2000.
How it’s going: Global Warming? North America Snow Coverage Hits “Decadal Highs.”
—Headline, ZeroHedge, yesterday.
BANS ACROSS THE WATER: Report: Nikki Haley campaign bans London Daily Mail from events following story on alleged affairs. “So my real question (aside from the allegations themselves) is this: If Haley is billing herself as the alternative to Trump, why is she acting the way people say Trump acts?”
READER FAVORITE: SonoHealth EKG Monitor: Capture Heart ECG Metrics On-The-Go. #CommissionEarned
SHOCKER: Pro Bono Supreme Court Amicus Briefs Provide Additional Evidence That BigLaw Skews Liberal. Hey, just look at how many represented Al Qaeda terrorists for free, as opposed to J6 defendants.
QUESTION ASKED: Why is everyone getting bad plastic surgery?
"Long gone are the days when glittery Lip Smackers and Wet N’ Wild eyeshadows were the teen girl’s holy grail. Now, tweens want a full face of luxury makeup and a ten-step skincare routine filled with active ingredients that are too harsh for young skin."https://t.co/3QnOyidDF9
— The Spectator World (@TheSpectator) January 19, 2024
Most people would say that the woman on the left is objectively more attractive. She looks healthier, for one, but more importantly, she looks human. Faces are not supposed to be perfectly symmetrical. In the photo on the right, Moriarty looks uncanny. Even if you didn’t have the photo on the left as a reference point, you’d know that something was “off.” Another issue is that the image on the right has maximized what we generally consider to be “attractive” features — high cheekbones, a sharp jawline, big eyes lifted on the outer corner, full, pouty lips and a slim nose. When taken to their extreme and put together on one face, the effect is quite displeasing to the eye.
Even though probably 99 percent of people would agree Moriarty looked better before having work done — in this case, I think she’s had buccal fat removal (the cosmetic surgery du jour), an upper and lower bleph, lip injections, a rhinoplasty and probably some other procedures — she spent tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to look like the photo on the right. Why?
For young women in the entertainment industry, plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures have become the norm rather than the exception. It was recently pointed out to me that celebrities change their hair color or style quite drastically when they’ve had work done so that our eyes are drawn elsewhere. Many celebs have gotten away with subtle, gradual changes — some filler here, a couple of units of Botox there — like Taylor Swift. Just look at photos of Swift in her debut era versus now. If you don’t believe me and think hooded eyes just naturally disappear as you age, I’ve got some ocean -front property in Arizona to sell you. Plenty of others have fallen into the Madonna trap — Ariana Grande is a good example of this. She looks like a completely different person in her newest music video. Kylie Jenner is another; her Instagram selfies don’t match up with how she looks in public because her face only looks good from certain angles.
Back in 2011, I explored “Weird Science Meets The ‘Me’ Decade Meets Magical Thinking:”
A few months ago, Kathy Shaidle linked to a podcast by comedian/talker Adam Carolla in which he described plastic surgery, botox, and other surgical/medical techniques as currently going through the same experimental phase as digital special effects went through in 1990s Hollywood, i.e., some outstanding examples when it all works, and plenty of weirdness when it doesn’t. And like CGI in hollywood, there’s no doubt, in the next few years, plastic surgery and its spin-offs will become even more seamless and difficult to detect — and even more ubiquitous.
Instead, we appear to have passed by 1990s Hollywood CGI and entered the Star Wars prequels or Michael Bay Transformers era of throwing as much CGI on the screen as possible school of facial modifications.
Although, some in Hollywood are still keeping it old school and really going back to the future when it comes to dramatically changing their appearance: Kanye West has teeth REMOVED and replaced with $850K TITANIUM dentures ‘more expensive than diamonds’ — as rapper compares himself to James Bond villain Jaws.
NEITHER WORKS AS ADVERTISED, AND THEIR FAILURES ARE BLAMED, UNCONVINCINGLY, ON “DISINFORMATION.” Electric Vehicles and the Administrative State. “‘Total Breakdown’ is the common denominator.”
It’s not disinformation when the dogs just don’t like the dog food.
SKYNET SMILES, SAYS IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT: Author admits she used ChatGPT to write parts of prize-winning novel.
MATT WALSH: Dem-Controlled Cities Legalize Shoplifting, Shocked When Businesses Flee.
It’s not surprising that shoplifters don’t get in trouble with the law anymore if you stop prosecuting them for petty crimes. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped shoplifting and committing petty crimes. In fact, if anything, it means they’re shoplifting a lot more than they used to, because why wouldn’t they? They’re going to shoplift so much that it becomes impossible for businesses to stay open, which means that very quickly, so-called “disadvantaged communities” will lose access to convenience stores and pharmacies. They will become even more disadvantaged, which is supposedly the opposite of “restorative justice.”
We don’t have to speculate about this. All we have to do is look at what’s happening right now in Boston. Walgreens has just announced it’s closing its fourth location in Boston in the past year. Every single time, it’s been a low-income community, mostly black or Hispanic, that’s been affected. This time, they’re closing a store in the mostly black neighborhood of Roxbury.
You might think this development would prompt some reflection from the media in Boston, or the politicians, or activists in the local community. You might think they’d ask whether allowing people to rob stores is, in fact, a bad idea. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, we’re getting reports like this one, from CBS Boston:
Well, that last question is easy to answer: Walgreens, just like every other private business, has no obligation whatsoever to lose money. They don’t have to stay open to provide any kind of “service” to the local community. Their job is to make money. That’s not greed. That’s called economics. It’s the government’s job to make sure there is law and order, so that thugs don’t just walk into the Walgreens and take everything. And in the past several years, the government has deliberately decided not to do that.
But there’s no sense anywhere in that entire segment that Boston’s policy of encouraging shoplifting might be to blame. You can go online and watch the whole clip if you want. It’s not there. There’s no sense that Boston’s recent decision to defund its police department could be playing a role, either. Instead, we’re left with the implication that Walgreens just doesn’t like black people. The argument appears to be that Walgreens should keep its business open as a charity, where it keeps bleeding money in order to provide various services to the local community.
Meanwhile, coming out of the west coast, as Steve spotted on Wednesday: Underwear and socks are the latest items to be locked up in shoplifting crackdown — as Walmart and Target both take action on theft of undies.
The quotes from the article are illuminating, to say the least:
As thefts have surged over the past year, stores have been increasingly keeping items behind lock and key.
But these have tended to be electronics and toiletries.
Shoppers at the stores, in the Bay Area of California, have reacted with suprise at the move by two of America’s biggest stores.
‘It comes to the point of how ghetto does it look that they have to lock up the socks or whatever it is that they have under the key,’ shopper Olga Leon told NBC Bay Area.
Well, which would you prefer? A store with merchandise that locks it up to prevent theft, or no store at all? Which leads us to:
One customer wanting to buy boxer shorts waited ten minutes for a staff member to come and unlock the case containing them.
Meanwhile, a Walmart store in the Hilltop area is also locking up underwear. Staff there say they are hit by shoplifters every day.
Richmond City Council member Cesar Cepeda told NBC: ‘The cost will go up as residents will have to pay more, or they’ll have to commute and travel farther to pick up their groceries, to pick up their socks, to pick up their prescriptions.
‘It’s really going to be hurting our community.’
Congrats, Council member Cepeda; you’ve just stumbled into an Ayn Rand novel, assuming that businesses have some moral obligation to remain in high-theft areas and take it as their shelves are picked clean.
Of course, in many areas of the Bay Area, residents have a second choice for rapid purchase of goods: Amazon, which touts same day delivery in cities like San Francisco.
But that comes with its own sets of pitfalls, for both consumers and Amazon: rampant package theft.
WELL: Fulton County Audit Chair Demands Answers from Fani Willis. “Fulton County Commissioner Bob Ellis, the chairman of the county’s audit committee, sent a letter to Willis Friday evening asking whether she engaged in a ‘romantic relationship’ with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, ‘misused’ county funds, and ‘accepted valuable gifts and personal benefits from a contractor/recipient of County funds.'”
LOL:
🚨NEW: This is a clip of Fani Willis from 2020 where she says she would fire any employee who sleeps with a co-worker, promises to not date “anybody that works under me,” and said it would be “unfortunate” if taxpayers had to fund sex misconduct lawsuits
pic.twitter.com/tEUTM8DVEJ— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 19, 2024
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: Enjoy the ratio on this take from Axios. The comment section is 🔥:
Question:
What happened in March of 2020? https://t.co/PsAlF54N5u
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 18, 2024
If Axios wants to claim in 2024 that Trump was duped by Fauci and should have ignored his advice and kept the economy open, taken his cue from Sweden, and thus preventing a massive rise in unemployment, school closures, and possibly eliminating the summer riots or at least reducing their severity — have at it! But considering how conservatives were crucified for making similar arguments back then (both by the left and by Trump himself), please show us where they joined that chorus back in 2020.
Otherwise, this is an unintentional callback to Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992, building upon G.W. Bush raising taxes in 1990, a year in which he was consumed by foreign policy decisions. A gesture that Clinton repaid by declaring the mild recession of 1991-’92 as “the worst economy in fifty years” and by running to Papa Bush’s right by excoriating him for violating his 1988 “read my lips” pledge.
AT AMAZON, Shop the Deals at the Winter Sale. #CommissionEarned
Democrats can’t decide if they want to topple statues or have them make our laws for us https://t.co/AmqgaMCt8a
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) January 17, 2024
Jim Acosta, call your office! Shouldn’t the anger of Rep. Frost (D-FL) be directed at his fellow Democrat mayors such as Eric Adams of New York, who declared their cities to be “sanctuary cities,” only to shout “nevermind!” when GOP governors called their bluff?