NOW OUT FROM CHRIS DURBIN: Old Bahama Straits: The Fifteenth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure.
Archive for 2024
May 30, 2024
WELL, WHEN THE INDUSTRY STANDARD IS COMIC BOOK MOVIES, REMAKES, AND REMAKES OF COMIC BOOK MOVIES, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? Box office blues: Movies today are underwritten and have no emotional payoff.
FORMER JEOPARDY! HOST MAYIM BIALIK SAYS IT’S A ‘REAL CHALLENGE’ TO BE A LIBERAL AND DEFEND ISRAEL:
Former “Jeopardy” host Mayim Bialik said it’s been a “real challenge” to be a liberal and be an outspoken supporter for Israel following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Appearing on Wednesday’s installment of “The Sage Steele Show,” Bialik was asked about the overall silence coming from Hollywood as the war between Israel and Hamas has unfolded.
“Like what we talked about with this, you know, the Trauma Olympics, right? There seems to only be room for one pain in this kind of conversation,” Bialik told Steele. “There’s room for everyone’s pain. You can hold all those things at once.”
“It’s a real challenge to be a liberal person who also believes that Israel has a right to exist. I’m a bleeding heart liberal, though. It’s very a very strange place to be. It’s a strange intersection,” Bialik said.
* * * * * * * *
“There has been an abhorrent and conspicuous absence of women’s organizations around the world unequivocally condemning the systematic rape and torture of women on October 7 by Hamas,” Bialik wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “Brutal gang rapes, sexual torture, and murder of fetuses happened- period. Where are the ‘BELIEVE THEM’ voices?”
“These crimes against women were in many cases documented by the terrorists themselves and broadcast for the world to see,” she added. “Those of us who have fought for women’s rights and have sought to shout from the rooftops when women’s bodies are being used in war for the sadistic pleasure of perpetrators are astounded at how the world has been silent surrounding this.”
Related: Jon Lovitz: It seems the parties ‘switched completely’ on Israel.
On October 22nd, Konstantin Kisin wrote, “Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists…October 8 was a wake-up call for those who didn’t appreciate that the ideology of the campus has spread to our cities, supercharged by social media.”
Our first post mentioning “The Corbynization of the Democratic Party” ran in 2016 when Obama was still in office. The “Corbynization of the Democratic Party Continues Apace” headlines began in April of 2019. In other words, this wasn’t an overnight pivot; the handwriting was there for quite a while.
THEY HAVE A LEGIT BEEF:
Kangaroos Ask People To Stop Unfairly Comparing Them To U.S. Justice System https://t.co/WCjQ0nam1C pic.twitter.com/ZXnqYGbMfa
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 29, 2024
JIM GERAGHTY: Busted Gaza Pier Has All the Markings of a Joe Biden Op.
Our Phil Klein fumes, “The Gaza pier is every bit the disaster we all expected it would be when Biden made the ridiculous proposal in his State of the Union address back in March. . . . This debacle was not only predictable, it was predicted by many.”
Now, the Pentagon’s JLOTS [Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore] guys aren’t stupid. They knew the likelihood that weather conditions would require operations to halt at least temporarily, and the potential risk to equipment and personnel. This is why you’re seeing speculation that the Pentagon prioritized the president’s orders over a reasonable assessment of the risk.
We don’t know who, precisely, came up with the idea to build a pier. Perhaps on some future date, we’ll hear that it was the proposal of national-security adviser Jake Sullivan or Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or someone else. The buck stops with the president, anyway; he’s the one who authorized the mission.
But . . . come on. The plan was to build a pier on the front door of a war zone, in the absolute minimally acceptable environmental conditions, and hope for the best? That has Joe Biden’s fingerprints all over it.
Biden’s foreign-policy ideas always have this, “Guys, it’s so easy” simplicity to them.
By the way, how’s Biden’s cancer-curing “moonshot” coming along?
UPDATE: Welcome Back Carter, Ace writes: “You Youngs may not remember Jimmy Carter’s ill-fated attempt to rescue his failing 1980 political campaign. At a late hour, he finally gave the greenlight for a special forces operation to rescue the hostages from Iranian Muslim fanatics. But the helicopters crashed in a dust-storm. It became emblematic of Carter’s ineffectual, feckless presidency. Now Biden’s got his own sandstorm. An American vessel used to unload humanitarian aid from ships into the Gaza Strip via a floating pier disconnected from a small boat tugging it this morning due to stormy seas, leading it to get stuck on the coast of Ashdod, eyewitnesses say. Another ship was then sent to try and extract the stuck vessel, but also got beached.”
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record:
To Save Time, Biden To Drop Next $320 Million Cash Directly Into Ocean https://t.co/wVD7tUyUk1 pic.twitter.com/fDwBrKBxGD
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 29, 2024
NEW YORK’S POLITICIZED LEGAL SYSTEM TAKES A LOSS: Sotomayor hands NRA victory in Supreme Court free speech case. “The question before the justices was whether Vullo used her regulatory power to force state financial institutions to cut off ties with the NRA in violation of constitutional First Amendment protections. . . . Although the gun rights group is typically involved in litigation surrounding the Second Amendment, the case marked an unusual departure to a First Amendment claim that even had backing from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has historically targeted the gun rights group in other cases before the high court.”
Here’s the full opinion.
SHE’S A BEAUTY: SpaceX Starship Dress Rehearsal for Next Week’s Test Flight.
The photos truly are stunning.
CHANGE: U.S. girls begin menstruating at younger ages. “A girl’s weight appears to partially explain why periods are starting earlier, researchers said. In other words, childhood obesity — already known to be a risk factor for early puberty — could be contributing to earlier menstruation.”
THAT NEW YORK KANGAROO COURT DOES NOT SEEM TO BE HAVING THE DESIRED EFFECT: Biden, Trump tied in head-to-head Virginia match-up.
TRUE:
Say what you will about the Iranian regime, but you can't deny they're unsentimental about who their allies are. https://t.co/D945S7MYXF
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) May 30, 2024
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH THE APPEAL TO HEAVEN FLAG: San Francisco Flew ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag Until Saturday.
It’s no surprise that San Francisco is run by a bunch of insurrectionists.
How many of us secretly believed that the city was only barely American in the first place? There is even a Nelson DeMille book in which the ultra-conservative baddies plan on nuking San Francisco because it was full of anti-American zealots. It’s hard to argue with their reasoning about S.F., but I would never endorse nuking any city, no less one as beautiful as the City by the Bay.
Still, you wouldn’t expect the city fathers (mothers? Nonbinary caregivers? Degenerate lawmakers? What should I call them?) to be flying an ultra-MAGA January 6th insurrectionist flag. I would have expected a modified Cuban flag with rainbows and a keffiyeh or something.
But sure enough, until this weekend, the city was flying the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, showing their support for a violent insurrection to install Donald Trump as El Supremo Maximal Dictator Extraordinaire.
Thus causing this Orwellian headline from the San Francisco Chronicle:
I think the fact that it flew above San Francisco city hall until a few days ago sorta contradicts the description of it as “controversial”, @sfchronicle https://t.co/vbzCcFR3iS pic.twitter.com/sAywILb9MO
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) May 29, 2024
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Carhartt Men’s Force Relaxed Fit Midweight Short-Sleeve Pocket T-Shirt. #CommissionEarned
DON’T GET COCKY: It’s Red Alert for Joe Biden in Minnesota.
WELL, INFLATION HAS “SLOWED,” BUT IT HASN’T REVERSED. People Are Still Feeling the Pain of Inflation.
THE MOST ENTREPRENEURIAL WHITE HOUSE EVER? Donald Trump is weighing an advisory role for the Tesla leader in the event the former president reclaims the White House. “The role hasn’t been fully hammered out and might not happen, people familiar with the talks said, but the two men discussed ways to give Musk formal input and influence over policies related to border security and the economy, both issues on which Musk has grown more vocal.”
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Israeli Airstrike Kills Two Bazillion Starving Children (Or Maybe Zero).
BIDEN’S NATURAL CONSTITUENCY: Targeting Felon Votes With ‘Bidenbucks,’ Democrats Court The ‘Criminal Caucus.’ “While it may sound like a noble cause, it’s not just about the ‘right to vote’ for the big monied interests behind these ‘reenfranchisement’ efforts. It’s about voting for the right people.”
The people less likely to punish all sorts of crimes.
“I WAS DONE:” The Day Nellie Bowles Left the New Progressive Movement.
Near the end of Morning After the Revolution, Bowles wrote:
To do a cancellation is a very warm, social thing. It has the energy of a potluck. Everyone brings what they can, and everyone is impressed by the creativity of their friends. It’s a positive thing, what you’re doing, and it doesn’t feel like battle so much as nurturing the love for one’s friends, tending the warm fire of a cause. You have real power when you’re doing it. And with enough people, you can oust someone very powerful.
The easy criticism of a cancellation is: You went after someone who agrees with you on almost everything but some minor tiny differences? Some small infraction? It seems bizarre. But that’s the point. The bad among us are more dangerous to the group*. Mormons don’t excommunicate a random drag performer. They excommunicate a bad Mormon. I’d watched all the presidential debates in 2016 with some family members, who are conservatives. After Hillary lost, I couldn’t stomach going over there for a few months. I was too upset, and I couldn’t handle seeing them happy. But that’s not a cancellation. I had no power over these family members or sway in their community. I couldn’t make them apologize for being happy that Trump won.
* * * * * * * *
Because around my thirtieth birthday, there came a day when I didn’t cancel someone, and it was the true end of my time in the movement. Reporting on the wrong topics had gotten me close. But it was resisting a cancellation that did me in.
I knew the thing I was meant to yell about that day. I knew the tweet I was meant to send, but I liked the target too much. He was sweet and younger than me. I was agonized over it, sweating in my apartment. I sometimes get this bizarre psychosomatic stress response where my arms go limp in a panic, and all that day my arms were going limp. I got a few notes pushing me to join in. It was important. We had to draw a line that day. We had to speak in unison. My voice needed to bolster the other voices.
I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t think the violation was so bad. I’d gotten old or soft or something, and there I was, too pathetic and limp-armed to even send a nasty tweet.
Eventually that close friend of mine from the book circled back to me. The one I had canceled in honor of. We’d lived together at one point when we were both coming up in the world, cooked together, talked about our families, plotted our careers together. Both our lives came to fruition as we’d planned them, and there was a thrill in that with each other. I loved this friend and still do. But I knew what was coming when I saw her name on my phone.
She said very nicely that it was suspicious how quiet I was that day. She said, Nellie, you say a lot of things, yet you haven’t said anything about this one, today. She very politely told me that I was a racist. Then she said goodbye.
Congrats leftists – you’ve finally become Ted Knight’s Judge Elihu Smails character from Caddyshack: “I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.”
* Contrast this with President Reagan’s famous quote, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Whooping cough toxins shipped to China by U. Florida student leader: report.
The leader of a Chinese student organization is facing federal charges for her alleged role in shipping whooping cough toxins and illegal drugs back to China.
Nongnong “Leticia” Zheng and others “have been implicated in an illegal, multi-million dollar scheme investigated by the Justice Department to fraudulently buy thousands of biochemical samples of dangerous drugs and toxins,” according to the Associated Press.
I wonder whqt else is going on out there.
NYT AND EPOCH TIMES HEAD-TO-HEAD: Compare and contrast how the publication once known as the Old Gray Lady and the emerging media power, The Epoch Times, report on consecutive days how Biden and Trump are approaching Black voters.
NEITHER VERY IMPRESSIVE NOR VERY DIVERSE: Meet the University of Texas at Austin students and staff arrested at Hamas-endorsed protest.
CREDENTIALED AND CONNECTED, NOT EDUCATED: Why top college students don’t read or go to class: Resume polishing is #1. “Going to class and doing classwork as ‘simply another item on their to-do list.’ Earning good grades is easy. Resume polishing requires more effort.”
DICTATORIAL REGIMES ABUSE THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM TO SUPPRESS THEIR POLITICAL OPPONENTS: The ‘Hong Kong 47’ Convicted in the City’s Largest Trial to Crush Democracy.