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Archive for 2025
May 19, 2025
BILL MAHER DISCOVERS ANOTHER TRUTH: Wokeness = Dying Alone. “Let me tell you, folks, if the standards on the Left are going to be this high, and politics is going to be this much of a cock block, we’re never going to win elections or have any more babies.”
REWRITING YOUR HISTORY: One of the genuine problems with overbroad efforts to scale back libel defenses is that we may open up the opportunity for wealthy or “connected” people to completely rewrite history.
Background: There are more than a few bold-faced names who regularly threaten or file libel suits if your story does not paint them in the light in which they want to be seen. The Church of Scientology is a good example.
In my own personal experience, convicted felon Michael Milken sends in lawyers and spin-doctors every time he is referred to as “The Junk Bond King.” They all insisted to me that he is better known as a “philanthropist.” I suppose if you are paid enough to say that, you start to believe it.
Similarly, publishing magnate Conrad Black tried to ruin my weekend when one of our stories described — from court records, no less — his conviction on charges of felony fraud and obstruction of justice. He pushed the “lawyer” button, of course. To be fair, he was pardoned, but that does not erase the courtroom history of a mentally competent adult man who made the choices he did.
I once had the pleasure of responding to a complaint from Bill Ford, when our magazine piece mentioned the horrifically anti-semitic background of Henry Ford and the The Dearborn Independent. No matter how gently or fairly one describes the man’s history, there’s simply no getting around it.
And now to the present. Gerry Adams of IRA and Irish political fame is suing the BBC because in 2016 it broadcast an allegation that Adams had been consulted on, and sanctioned, the 2006 murder of Denis Donaldson, a former Sinn Fein official who was revealed to have been a paid agent working for British intelligence. Reported by The Times of London, the writer says:
“There is no need to take a view on the Donaldson case, however, to appreciate that Adams is once again engaged in the wholesale rewriting of history. This is made clear by his own lawyer’s comments to the effect that Adams’s reputation has been grievously damaged by the Donaldson allegation, because, look, “Gerry Adams’ reputation is that of a peacemaker. It has taken Gerry Adams a lifetime to gain that reputation.”
Now, realize, this case is proceeding under Irish law, which is far less forgiving of a false and defamatory statement than that of our First Amendment. It’s always possible (especially as an EU member) that the Irish court recognizes a “public interest defense.”
In either event, the case may be a barometer for what could happen here if we were to adopt looser libel defenses.
Morally, I have no problem with eliminating blatant falsehoods, but the wrong decision may allow the elite to airbrush history going forward.
Worth keeping an eye on.
**Typo fixed, thanks to eagle-eyed reader**
MOUNT ARARAT’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
ENCRYPTION IS OVERRATED AS A MEANS OF SECURITY: Paris kidnap bid highlights crypto data security risks. “Since 2014, software developer Jameson Lopp has recorded 219 physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency users.”
Remember, if it’s secured by your fingerprint, all they need is your finger.
OUT ON A LIMB: Biden lacks any credibility to dismiss suspicions about his cancer announcement.
Biden’s personal office announced Sunday that he has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. In addition to an outpouring of sympathy, and some vile ill wishes as well, the internet reaction included lots of skepticism. When did Biden and his team know about this cancer, and why are they announcing it now?
For instance, did Biden keep this diagnosis secret during his run for reelection?
Also, is it a coincidence that Biden is announcing this just after audio was released of his long, incoherent testimony to special prosecutor Robert Hur, and just before the release of a book about the yearslong dishonest cover-up of his cognitive decline?
Is either of these theories true? Are they both true?
Only Biden and his inner circle could deny these claims, but neither he nor his inner circle has any credibility when it comes to his health.
They claimed for years that he was “sharp as a tack” and had more energy than his young staffers. Biden attacked Hur dishonestly for mentioning his mental decline.
Tons of reporters and Democrats stuck their necks out for Biden, and they all got proven liars and dupes.
They weren’t “dupes.” Everyone could see Biden’s decline and compare his slow shuffling manner with his former energetic (albeit gaffe-prone) younger self. But no Democratic Party operative with a byline wanted to be the first to go on the record about it, and risk becoming the fall guy for causing the Bad Orange Man to return to power.
MEH, FREE MARKETS ARE DOING THEIR THING ALREADY: States Are Taking Action Against Lab-Grown ‘Meat.’
OUT: LEARN TO CODE! In: OpenAI introduces Codex, its first full-fledged AI agent for coding.
MARK STEYN: No Change, and Decay.
As I have written often, the consistent message from the permanent ruling class around the west is that nothing will be permitted to change on anything that matters. Of the two principal popular revolts of almost a decade ago – the Trump election and the Brexit vote – the jury is still out on Trump 47 (America’s last chance), but Brexit is dead.
A theme of my book The Prisoner of Windsor is that there is no Brexit. It never happened – or, perhaps more precisely, it was never permitted to happen. And so, as the PM tells the King, Britain is now reduced to the status of a princely state in the Indian Raj, under which, in a nominally sovereign sultanate, every decision that matters was made not by the sultan and his ministers but by the British Resident. The King protests that he hasn’t heard the phrase “princely state” in forty years …but that’s why it helps to know a little history, so you can figure out where all the bollocks is headed.
I saw where all this was heading when we first serialised The Prisoner of Windsor in audio five years ago. Sir Keir Starmer, taking time out of his hectic schedule of being firebombed by twenty-one-year-old Ukrainian “male models”, has spent the last few weeks enacting my literary jest into formal, binding treaty law. As a popular Steyn Show guest puts it this morning, for the “right” to live under EU laws and regulations in perpetuity, the UK will also have to surrender its fishing grounds permanently. Or, if you like, in exchange for surrendering national sovereignty to Brussels on law, it will also have to surrender national sovereignty to Brussels on fish.
Brexit is over. The EU has won: It has got what it always pined for during the Thatcher years – a Britain formally subordinate to Brussels but without a vote at the top table.
The elites on both sides of the Atlantic sure talk an awful lot about protecting democracy for people with zero interest in it.
READING BLOGS WILL FIX THAT PROBLEM FOR SURE: Easily distracted? How to improve your attention span.
HELP YOUR PET FEEL BETTER: Liquid Probiotics for Dogs of All Ages – Probiotics for Cats to Support Digestion Well-Being. #CommissionEarned
DISMANTLE UNWRA: Here’s the Smoking Gun: UNWRA Knew About Oct 7 in Advance.
CBS NEWS EMBROILED IN YET MORE SCANDAL AS TOP BOSS STEPS DOWN WITH VERY TENSE STATEMENT:
CBS News’ CEO Wendy McMahon has announced she’s quitting the network – with a tense statement hinting at her unhappiness at the newsroom’s current state.
McMahon, 50, made her departure known in a Monday memo to staffers – one that made clear she was taking a stand against Donald Trump and a lawsuit alleging CBS News exhibits bias.
The maneuver was first reported by The New York Times, three months after insiders first said McMahon was set to lose her job.
Both she and now-former 60 Minutes boss Owens opposed Paramount heiress Shari Redstone’s plans to settle a $20billion dollar suit being brought by the president that alleges an October 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was deceptively edited.
A settlement appears to be the sticking point for the Skydance deal to go through – leaving Owens and and McMahon in higher-ups’ crosshairs.
‘It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,’ McMahon wrote Monday as a result.
‘It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.’
‘Today, I am stepping down from my position as president and CEO of CBS News and Stations,’ McMahon told her team, calling the less than two-year stint plagued by poor ratings ‘one of the most meaningful chapters in [her] career.’
More details here: CBS News President Resigns amid Feud with Trump.
McMahon took over CBS News in August 2023 and oversaw numerous controversies during her brief time as head of the network. Redstone rebuked McMahon when CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil drew the ire of progressive staffers for lightly challenging author Ta-Nehisi Coates’s inflammatory claims about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Dokoupil was subject to ritualistic humiliation internally for the Coates interview and eventually succumbed to the pressure with an emotional apology.
Former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge has criticized the network for censoring her attempts to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story and squashing a live interview with billionaire Elon Musk. CBS laid off Herridge last year and she now runs an independent newsletter.
Paramount is also seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its merger with Skydance Media, a blockbuster transaction the agency has spent months reviewing. The FCC and Paramount recently began discussions about the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, among other conditions for the FCC to allow the merger to take place.
As Bob Hoge writes at Red State, “another one bites the dust at CBS News. They thoroughly earned this ongoing humiliation, however, so I shed not a single tear for them.”
READER FAVORITE: NutraVive Crepe Repair Cream – Anti-Aging Crepey Skin Treatment. #CommissionEarned
WARM UP THE STERILE SCREWFLIES: U.S. suspends live animal imports from Mexico amid screwworm outbreak.
THIS IS CNN:
Three clips.
1. Anderson Cooper accusing the right of selectively editing videos to make Biden look cognitively impaired. Cooper went on to claim that Obama did not have to guide Biden off the stage at the fundraiser, which was a total lie.
2. Cooper selectively editing video… pic.twitter.com/mxcQqcdro2
— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 16, 2025
It’s (D)ifferent when Anderson Cooper does it.
MIRANDA DEVINE:
Seriously, has anyone listened to the whole Hur audio? The establishment takeout that this is just about Joe Biden having pudding for brains is lazy and misses the deeper point, which is that the prosecutors had him cold on possessing classified documents he had no right to keep.… https://t.co/ocdDSmC3T6
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 18, 2025
Full text:
Seriously, has anyone listened to the whole Hur audio? The establishment takeout that this is just about Joe Biden having pudding for brains is lazy and misses the deeper point, which is that the prosecutors had him cold on possessing classified documents he had no right to keep.
Biden lies and dissembles and filibusters and goes vague and mumbly at all the crucial points, with the help of lawyer Bob Bauer, who interrupts every time Joe might incriminate himself and laughs like a hyena when Joe gets feisty or cracks a sarcastic joke at the prosecutors’ expense.
It is vintage Biden, nasty, smarmy, and self aggrandizing. He tries to impress the lawyers in the room with exaggerated highlights of his subpar legal career. At one point he boasts about spending Thanksgiving in Nantucket handwriting a memo about Afghanistan to Obama to try to “save his ass”. Delusions of grandeur.
You can hear the prosecutors’ frustration – they’re in a straitjacket and with a strict time limit. He reminds them out of the gate that he has just been on the phone to Bibi Netanyahu talking about the Oct. 7 attack – the previous day — just so they know they are keeping him from more important business.
Bottom line is he absurdly lies throughout. He denies having kept classified material for his personal use. It is not something he would ever do because he’s so upright and honorable.
And yet the prosecutors found reams of it tucked away everywhere in his house, garage, and Penn Center office, along with Biden’s recorded admission to his ghostwriter that he had found classified material in his basement he could use for his memoir.
So they had a dilemma. Do they charge the sitting president and label him a pathological liar, causing a massive scandal and constitutional crisis? Or do they use his age and mental fog as an excuse not to charge him? Pretty clear which was the easier path.
“Easier,” not “better” or “correct.”
EDITH WILSON SMILES: Joe Biden Breaks Silence on Cancer Diagnosis as Rumors Swirl over Announcement Timing.
Joe Biden broke his silence after his office revealed Sunday that the former president is battling an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer.
Biden, 82, posted a selfie with his wife Jill and their cat on social media, expressing gratitude for the well wishes he received.
“Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support,” Biden wrote in the caption.
It’s 2025. Why are we assuming that Joe actually wrote that? Biden family insider exposes culture of concealment in former administration.
Biden family insider Michael LaRosa opened up about the former administration’s culture of concealment while speaking to Fox News on Sunday, telling “FOX & Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy that the people surrounding the former president during his tenure in the White House were unwilling to be transparent.
“This was a group in the White House who were allergic to transparency, and I’m talking about just in the East Wing,” he said. “The very first day walking into the White House, the usher was fired, and I couldn’t get reporters straight answers, because nobody would give me straight answers.”
Biden family insider Michael LaRosa opened up about the former administration’s culture of concealment while speaking to Fox News on Sunday, telling “FOX & Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy that the people surrounding the former president during his tenure in the White House were unwilling to be transparent.
“This was a group in the White House who were allergic to transparency, and I’m talking about just in the East Wing,” he said. “The very first day walking into the White House, the usher was fired, and I couldn’t get reporters straight answers, because nobody would give me straight answers.”
Last year Niall Ferguson wrote, “We’re All Soviets Now:”
Gerontocratic leadership was one of the hallmarks of late Soviet leadership, personified by the senility of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.
But by current American standards, the later Soviet leaders were not old men. Brezhnev was 75 when he died in 1982, but he had suffered his first major stroke seven years before. Andropov was only 68 when he succeeded Brezhnev, but he suffered total kidney failure just a few months after taking over. Chernenko was 72 when he came to power. He was already a hopeless invalid, suffering from emphysema, heart failure, bronchitis, pleurisy, and pneumonia.
And like the Soviet Union bad news is just another excuse to continue the omerta: Dem strategist David Axelrod says criticism of Biden’s mental decline should be ‘muted’ amid cancer diagnosis as timing of announcement questioned.
And right on cue: Brian Stelter: Cancer Diagnosis Should ‘Pause’ Scrutiny of Joe Biden’s Cognitive Decline.
John Podhoretz adds: Biden and His Palace Court.
And in the end, of course, Biden isn’t the villain of the story told in the book being released tomorrow. The bad guys here are the people around him, and the Democratic cognitive elite from both inside the administration and out. Either they knew he was too out of it to serve as president and covered it up, which is criminal and means they should never again be allowed anywhere near a position of authority, or they deluded themselves into thinking otherwise, which means they were fools who should never be allowed anywhere near a position of authority. Anyway you slice it, they should never be anywhere near power ever again. This means you, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. And you, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. And you, Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients. You propped up an infirm man, and maybe a man you knew to be suffering from cancer, to keep yourselves in power.
Now, Jill Biden will have no way to be anywhere near power, but she is clearly the central player in this melodrama, and the question for the future is: Who will tell that story?
When do we start seeing books about the Biden administration that actually name names?
As someone who replied to Mehta suggests, “[It] Would not surprise me if it turns out the traits we saw as cognitive decline were exacerbated by cancer treatment.”
JESSE SINGAL: Of Course Liberal Institutions Are Engaging In Illegal Hiring Practices On The Basis Of Race: And of course this will turn out to have been a very bad idea. “Lucas notes that until recently Harvard touted, right on its website, the reduction in the proportion of white male faculty members. . . . I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if the Trump administration does engage in a thorough investigation here, it is unlikely to come away empty-handed.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Epstein Suicide Confirmed by Kash Patel and Frankie Five Angels.
IT’S NEVER ABOUT WHO THEY HELP, IT’S ABOUT WHO THEY HURT: If Publishing’s Efforts to Diversify Haven’t Done Anything, Why Did You Fight for Them? Why Do You Defend Them Now?
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Report from Down South.
MEDICAL EXPERTS: Biden Cancer Diagnosis Was Likely Covered Up For Years.
One of them being Rahm Emanuel’s brother.