Archive for 2024
August 31, 2024
I SWEAR EVERY DECADE IT GOES BACK AND FORTH: Back to sleep.
THE FUTURE OF AI: Post-Apocalyptic Education.
BUT BUT BUT, SHE WAS NEVER AGAINST FRACKING. SHE SAID! In Latest Folly, Biden-Harris Bans Drilling On 28 Million Acres of Public Lands in Alaska.
THE LEFT IS HAVING SOME SUCCESS SPINNING UP NEUROTIC PRO-LIFERS: Trump To Vote NO on Florida Amendment 4, Criticizes ‘Radical’ Abortion Access.
WHEN TSA STANDS FOR TRUSTED SQL-INJECTION ATTACK: Bypassing airport security via SQL injection.
TELEGRAM IS PROBABLY EVIL, BUT THE FRENCH AUTHORITIES ARE (QUELLE SURPRISE) HYPOCRITES WHO DON’T WANT TO BE SEEN AS CENSORIOUS BANSTURBATORS: Telegram Thoughts.
GEE, WHAT KIND OF SOP CAN THE ADMINISTRATION THROW MUSLIM VOTERS? Kamala Harris tied with Green Party candidate Jill Stein among Muslim voters, damning poll reveals.
STAY STRONG, ELON! The battle between a Brazil judge and Starlink/X escalates.
NO TOLERANCE FOR THOSE WHO MAKE EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM: University of Michigan campus club fair erupts into mayhem as cops break up anti-Israel protests.
WE NEEDED AN EXPERT FOR THIS? Harris lacked ‘confidence’ and ‘authenticity’ in first interview since Biden’s exit: body language expert.
Whose authenticity could she have, anyway? She lacks even a tenuous relationship with the truth.
THE PROBLEM IS WIDESPREAD, PLEASURE WITHOUT PURPOSE, AND IT’S DESTROYING CIVILIZATION: Make love not babies: the culture war on conception.
PROGRESSIVES HAVE A TENDENCY TO DO THAT; THEY’RE NOT BIG FANS OF TRADITIONAL VALUES LIKE LIBERTY, FREE SPEECH AND SELF-DETERMINATION: Totalitarian Starmer leaves a hole where British values used to be.
WHY THEY’RE JUST ACTING LIKE THEY’RE AT HOME: Progressive Denver Mayor Defends ‘Newcomers’ Gang Violence.
Democrats claimed there is a misconception that illegal immigrants are more dangerous and cause more trouble.
So… let me get this straight, the real problem is xenophobic Americans who don’t recognize their privilege in thinking they shouldn’t be raped, robbed or roughed up?
IT DOESN’T TAKE EXPERTS. ONLY A BASIC GRASP OF ECONOMICS: Experts Warn Kamala Harris’ Tax Proposal Would Destroy America.
August 30, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Galactic Energy launches six satellites with third sea launch. “China’s Galactic Energy conducted its third Ceres-1 solid rocket sea launch Thursday, successfully sending six satellites into orbit. . . . Three of the satellites were Yunyao-1 spacecraft, equipped with GNSS occultation (GNSS-RO) and infrared imaging payloads, intended to provide meteorological data for commercial firm Yunyao Yuhang. Also aboard was Jitian-A03, the first satellite for Suzhou Jitian Xingzhou Space Technology Co. Ltd. The satellite is equipped with a hyperspectral remote sensing payload for high-resolution optical remote sensing technology verification. Hyperspectral sensors capture data across hundreds of narrow, contiguous spectral bands, allowing these sensors to distinguish between materials, making these useful for applications including mineral exploration, agriculture, and environmental monitoring.”
GIVE THEM THE GAWKER EXPERIENCE: Media Matters Loses Another Round to Musk.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Trouble Above Earth: NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail Grapples With Deployment Snag.
BYRON YORK: Will CNN interview be Harris’s last?
After her instant ascension to the Democratic nomination, Vice President Kamala Harris waited more than five weeks to do an interview with the press. Now, she has done a single interview, a mostly friendly session with CNN that consisted of 27 minutes of questions and answers. Now that it’s done, a debate awaits a week from Tuesday, and a couple of weeks after that, early voting starts in some states and then ramps up across the nation. Will Harris feel the need to do another interview in that time? “It’s possible her campaign will figure this is the last interview she needs to do from here to November,” wrote the Wall Street Journal editorial board. It might be right.
As for the CNN talk, “she was methodical and risk-averse in the 27-minute interview, performing like a top seed in the early rounds of the U.S. Open tennis tournament trying to hold serve, survive, and advance to the next round,” the New York Times wrote. It wasn’t that hard to do. While interviewer Dana Bash asked a few probing questions, with an occasional follow-up, they weren’t the sort of follow-ups designed to really dig down to the crux of an issue.
Still, since this is literally the only time Harris has taken a series of questions as a presidential candidate, it’s worth looking closely at what she said about the three issues polls show are the most important to voters in the 2024 elections. Those issues are inflation, immigration, and abortion.
Box ticked, and now it’s time to play prevent defense, as the MSM-DNC believes Kamala to be ahead, and just need to run out the clock — and it’s a strategy that could well work.
I QUESTION THEIR AUTHORITY TO DO THIS: FDA mandates photo ID for all under 30 to buy tobacco.
THE OPRAH-FICATION OF POLITICS: Beware politicians posing as paragons of ‘decency.’
One of the most devious words in political discourse today is ‘decency’. It’s everywhere at the moment.
Last Thursday, Oprah Winfrey issued a direct appeal to unaffiliated and undecided voters to back Kamala Harris as the next US president. ‘Decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024’, she said, ‘character and values most of all’.
The same word was employed by Max Hastings earlier this month. Writing in The Times, he concluded that the Democrats were the party all Americans should back, as they embody ‘fundamental decency and moderation’. The same day, Alan Rusbridger, in his Prospect column, inveighing against Elon Musk’s X, wished there was a ‘reliable, decent, honest, well-tended [social-media] platform that can never be taken over by a billionaire man-child’.
Decency is a vague, asinine word. It’s beloved of people who seem to think that being a nice person and having good manners are the same as having good politics – the kind of people who deprecate Donald Trump for his coarseness and vulgarity, and who revile Musk’s X for allowing users to express horrid, ‘hateful’ words. ‘Decency’ is an empty mantra for a class that likes its politics bland and consensual.
This is why you should beware the appeals to decency. It’s used by people who want to shut others up, who would be happy to see X hobbled and GB News taken off the air. They conflate being offensive, impolite and airing unfashionable and brash opinions with inciting actual hatred and violence. ‘Decency’ is a form of attempted linguistic blackmail, designed to make dissenters feel the opposite: indecent, uncivilised and abnormal. It belongs in the same category as that other insipid mot du jour, ‘grown-up’ (the antithesis of which is ‘childish’ or ‘juvenile’). Both sit alongside the better-established ‘kindness’ (anyone who disagrees is unkind), and that long-standing declaration of egotism deployed by the crafty and the naïve: ‘compassionate’.
“Shut up” is the mantra of leftist politics. “Decency” is simply a kinder, gentler way to accomplish that goal.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN); Decency, from Oprah:
