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Archive for 2024
August 15, 2024
ON GOV. TIM WALZ, COVID LOCKDOWN FANATIC:
Everything is connected. Especially Covid authoritarians.
Before he conspired to violate my civil rights and make Twitter ban my journalism in 2021, Democratic healthcare operative Andrew M. Slavitt was a top Covid advisor to Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
With Slavitt’s encouragement, Walz pushed a tight lockdown on his state. He encouraged residents to snitch on each other on a state-run hotline. And he sharply tightened Minnesota’s rules on gatherings in November 2020, long after it was clear Covid was a threat mainly to the very elderly and could not cause hospital overrun.
How badly did Walz panic in fall 2020? He essentially destroyed Thanksgiving. On Nov. 19, 2020, one week before the holiday, Walz barred “indoor or outdoor [emphasis added] gatherings, except with immediate household members” and added “no person from outside your immediate household should enter your home.” He also closed bars, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, organized sports, and pools.
Of course, months earlier, when protests and riots over the death of George Floyd had rocked Minneapolis in May and June 2020, Walz had taken a different view. “We certainly believe that there’s a right that people have to gather,” he told reporters.
Walz’s crackdowns received less attention than those by Democratic governors in states like California and New York.
But his power grab was arguably more problematic because Minnesota is more closely politically divided than the coastal blue states and Walz’s lockdown faced more open opposition. In spring 2020, the protests were fairly narrow.
But after Walz’s November orders, business owners openly revolted, and police largely refused to enforce the rules.
Read the whole thing.
WAIT, I THOUGHT WORRIES ABOUT CHEMICALS IN SUNSCREEN WERE ANTI-SCIENCE CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Chemicals in makeup, sunscreen may increase risk of pregnancy complications.
WHEN FICTITIOUS PRESIDENTS MEET: Lame-duck Biden urges Trump to ‘get a job’ while spending dwindling moments of his own with Martin Sheen.
Flashback: Magical Sorkinism:
Among the worst disasters for progressivism in recent decades has been the work of Aaron Sorkin, whose impossibly articulate ratatat dialogue made it way too easy to imagine sexy technocrats saving the world. It’s great entertainment, but normalized unreasonable expectations of the flawed human beings who happen to have high IQs and impeccable credentials.
As a child of the New Left, I never missed The West Wing: it was irresistible catnip for my adolescent hopes and dreams, and so much more satisfying than whatever was on the news—except for the eloquent public intellectuals on the Bill Moyers show on PBS. Later, as an idealistic policy major at Brown, I was surprised and disappointed to find basically nobody operating on that level.
It was only when I’d lucked into joining the Moyers organization that I began to understand how such Sorkinesque eloquence was manufactured each week—not with deliberate dishonesty, but ever more misleading as years passed and the scene grew shallower.
Or as Megan McArdle reminded leftists at the Daily Beast a decade ago: Memo: The Aaron Sorkin Model of Political Discourse Doesn’t Actually Work.
BRAVE SIR ROBIN BRAVELY TURNED AND FLED: Kamala Officially Chickens Out of First Debate With Trump.
GET KIDS OFF THEIR PHONE: Exploring Nature Activity Book for Kids: 50 Creative Projects to Spark Curiosity in the Outdoors. #CommissionEarned
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
Chris Rock getting slapped by Will Smith had a longer news cycle than Donald Trump getting shot by a sniper.
— Jitney Guy (@JitneyGuy) August 14, 2024
They still want him dead, though.
KURSK SURPRISE: Ukraine Starts Digging in, Takes Tons of Prisoners. “Why that many men under those conditions surrendered to a smaller security unit remains a mystery.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Iron Sights Still Matter.
THE MISTAKES ALL SEEM TO RUN IN ONE DIRECTION: Facebook Admits to ‘Incorrectly’ Rejecting Ads for ‘Reagan’ Movie.
LAUGH — BUT TAKE HER SERIOUSLY, TOO: Harris Explained Democracy Today and I’m Laughing but Also Frightened.
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR AIRBRUSHES! Attorney General Kamala Harris Was Even Worse Than You Think.
—The Bulwark, August 19th, 2019.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood, British Celebs Silent on Extreme UK Censorship. “The ACLU, a group that previously fought for free speech, ignored the matter.”
HEH, INDEED:
If Ukraine starts installing first-world plumbing in the areas they’ve occupied, Russians will turn against me.
— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) August 15, 2024
THINGS THAT YOU BUY SHOULD BE YOURS FOREVER. Even if it’s disguised as a “license.” Redbox app axed, dashing people’s hopes of keeping purchased content.
Buy physical media while you still can.
RIP: Bay Area rock icon Greg Kihn passes away at 75.
Kihn has passed away at 75, according to a blog post on his official website. Kihn, who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but made his name as a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area music scene, lost his battle with Alzheimer’s disease earlier this week.
Known for his distinct songwriting style that blended folk, classic rock, blues and pop, Kihn scored a string of hits in the early 1980s with “The Breakup Song,” “Remember,” and “Lucky.” He is best remembered, however, for his 1983 smash “Jeopardy.” The song was Kihn’s only Top 10 hit, reaching number 2 in May of 1983, just behind Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
It was also immortalized in the Weird Al Yankovic parody, “I Lost on Jeopardy.”
In addition to his successful career as a musician, Kihn was a morning radio host on KFOX for 17 years.
In addition to his hit songs, he became a highly talented DJ in his second career in the 1990s and 2000s; I’m sorry to read of his death at such a comparatively young age.
IT ISN’T LIKE THEY HAVE ANY REPUTATION LEFT TO PISS AWAY: The Media Gaslighting About Kamala Harris Just Keeps Getting Worse.
I GUESS THOSE RUMORS ABOUT RFK JR ANGLING FOR A HARRIS ADMINISTRATION CABINET SLOT AREN’T GOING TO PAN OUT:
VP Harris’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to my father and uncle and I cannot reconcile it with my values.
The Democratic Party of RFK and JFK was the party of civil liberties and free speech. VP Harris‘s is the party of censorship, lockdowns, and medical coercion.…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 15, 2024
Maybe he ought to endorse Trump, who is a helluva lot closer to RFK Jr on any of these issues that Harris will ever be.
HOW HOWARD STERN BECAME THE MOST IRRELEVANT MAN IN MEDIA:
Stern has made more than Rush Limbaugh. More than Hannity, Beck, Imus, and Schlessinger combined. No radio talent has ever matched his checkbook.
For a time, he was so omnipresent in popular culture, that an article like this would never see the light of day. First of all, the premise alone would be preposterous — how the hell is Howard Stern irrelevant?! He’s everywhere! And second, journalists were terrified of Stern. If he turned his spotlight on you, it was brutal: His insanely loyal fans would terrorize you in public. Go ask Kathie Lee Gifford how fun it was to be caught in Stern’s crosshairs.
And really, that was the secret to his success: More than anything else, it was the connection Stern forged with his audience that made him so special. If he had an autograph signing or an appearance somewhere, thousands of his fans would huddle together in the pouring rain — waiting for hours — just to get a glimpse of their radio deity. His book “Private Parts” became the biggest literary smash-hit Simon & Schuster had ever published. His audience hung on to his every word. The emotional bond between him and his audience was unbreakable.
Or so we thought.
Then something strange happened: Howard Stern became the world’s first celebrity to go behind a paywall.
It was a clever move by Sirius: For satellite radio to succeed, they needed to figure out a way to convince audiences to pay for something that they’re accustomed to getting for free. So, if you’re Sirius, what’s the fastest, most efficient way to build a paying audience?
Answer: Find the biggest name in the talk-radio universe with the most loyal audience — fans so faithful, they’ll follow him anywhere — and sign him to an exclusive contract.
And that’s exactly what Sirius did. Stern left terrestrial radio and jumped to satellite in 2006.
Originally, this was pitched to his fans as an amazing new development for creative content: Before, Stern was limited by the FCC. Now, he’s finally free to do the show he’s always wanted to do — it’ll be wilder, crazier, and waaaay more explicit! Oh, can you imagine the antics Stern might pull without any risk of censorship?!
Does the wacky Stern 1.0 exist at all today? Between the clips of Stern fluffing celebrities on YouTube, Bruce Bower’s damning portrait of him in City Journal, in January of 2020, before the covid lockdowns, and Stern’s germophobic behavior since, that version of the definitive “shock jock” seems long gone. Stern tossing Biden the gentlest of softball questions in late April is yet another indicator that the once maniacal perpetual manchild is now just another cossetted megastar, arguably terrified of being cancelled over the past behavior that made him a household name in the 1980s and ‘90s.
I THINK WE’RE DOING TO BE HORRIFIED ABOUT HOW WE’VE BEEN TREATING UNCONSCIOUS AND COMATOSE PEOPLE: International study detects consciousness in unresponsive patients with severe brain injury.
Related: “I wonder if it’s because of the emerging technology that this research on unresponsive persons is happening. Are we just now learning things we could have learned before but those who control the research didn’t want to know?”
SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Moment CitiBank guard punches climate change activist in face during protest at firm’s NYC HQ.
A climate protester was hospitalized with facial injuries on Wednesday after being punched by a security guard at Citibank’s New York headquarters, Common Dreams reports.
The incident occurred as activists with the Summer of Heat campaign were gathered in the bank’s lobby.
Eren Can Illeri, the injured protester, was part of the protest demanding a meeting with Citibank executives to address the bank’s continued investment in fossil fuels.
Summer of Heat, a coalition backed by New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit, and Stop the Money Pipeline, has made Citibank a primary target this summer.
Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Citibank has invested $396.3 billion in coal, gas, and oil infrastructure projects.
‘We have been asking Citi to meet with us for weeks to talk about what it can do to tackle the climate emergency,’ Alicé Nascimento, a spokesperson for Summer of Heat told Common Dreams. ‘But rather than meet with us, they have sent their security guards to physically attack peaceful climate activists after weeks of intimidation and threats.’
Video footage of the incident shows Illeri filming with his phone when a security guard approached him and attempted to grab the device.
The guard then punched Illeri in the face and pushed him to the ground.
‘Citi backs violence and it’s sickening,’ said Alice Hu, a climate campaigner for New York Communities for Change, who said the violence that took place at the company’s HQ is a direct reflection of ‘the violence of fossil fuels and climate chaos.’
The increasingly deranged climate protestors believe that an ever-changing climate is an existential threat. They shouldn’t be surprised when their chosen targets respond in-kind, particularly when their private property is invaded.
HELLUVA PICK, KAMALA: Kamala’s Running Mate Literally Minted a Coin to Memorialize His Stolen Valor.