Archive for 2017
March 5, 2017
NOTE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES: No, Bartnicki v. Vopper won’t protect you if you yourself actually solicited the illegally publicized material.
OPPOSITION PARTY IN ACTION: NYT columnist Nick Kristof asks IRS to leak Trump’s tax return.
Of course, the Gray Lady is pretty selective when it comes to reporting leaked documents – not to mention simply reporting news. When the “Hide the Decline” Climategate scandal involving the University of East Anglia climate research center broke in 2009, then-Timesman Andrew Revkin, who wrote their “Dot Earth” enviro-blog, sniffed, “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”
And the previous year was a rather memorable one for the paper as well. As Byron York noted, September 24th, 2008 was “a red-letter day for the New York Times. For the first time, the paper has reported in its news section that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once uttered the phrase ‘God damn America.’ Wright’s comments were widely reported and widely discussed beginning with an ABC News report six months ago. Barack Obama even had to give a much-publicized speech because of those words, and others. But the newspaper of record has never seen fit to publish Wright’s quote in its news pages. Until today.”
Twitchy quotes one Twitter user noting, “Annnnddddd the media wonders why they are called the opposition,” responding to Kristof today.
Heh, indeed.™
ROGER KIMBALL: The Middlebury Meltdown. “Future historians of the liberal arts in American academic life will be able to pinpoint the time and place of its death with remarkable accuracy. The fatal blow was delivered Thursday night, March 2, at Wilson Hall, Middlebury College, Vermont. The victim struggled manfully, but finally expired outside the McCullough Student Center an hour or so later. It was there that liberal fascism—that witch’s brew of identity politics, political correctness, and what I’ve called the weaponization of victimhood—finally erupted with definitive virulence.”
SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS: James Rosen on being the target of surveillance under the Obama administration.
UPDATE: Flashback: Obama Spied on Congress, Jewish Leaders Opposed to Iran Deal. “Watergate? That was small time.”
SUZANNE VENKER: When She’s The Boss.
PART OF THE GENERAL BLUE-TO-RED JOB MIGRATION: Boeing isn’t a story of jobs disappearing. They’re just moving to South Carolina. “So 1800 workers in Washington are finding themselves unemployed. At the same time, more than 3000 people in the Palmetto State have gone to work, begun training and started pumping new life into the economy. So why aren’t the two unions in Washington who are making this doleful announcement talking about that story? I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but it might be because South Carolina is a right to work state and the union has already been roundly rejected by the workers there.” And the press won’t debunk them because that would step on an anti-Trump storyline.
IS THERE’S NOTHING HE CAN’T DO? Barbra Streisand: ‘Donald Trump is Making Me Gain Weight.’
Shot:
With his Twitter account, President Donald Trump can move the media — and can also apparently tip celebrities’ scales.
Singer Barbra Streisand tweeted Saturday that Trump is making her gain weight, because after hearing the morning news, she switches from liquids to pancakes doused in maple syrup.
[Donald Trump is making me gain weight. I start the day with liquids, but after the morning news, I eat pancakes smothered in maple syrup!…Trump just accused Obama of tapping his phones. Seriously crazy times. Time for more pancakes,” Streisand tweeted.]
— “Barbra Streisand: ‘Donald Trump is Making Me Gain Weight,’” Big Hollywood, today.
Chaser:
When she started out in Hollywood it was not a crime to have curves, so Barbra has never denied herself in the same way as the younger generation. Interviewers have noticed over the years that she constantly nibbles at cheese while talking.
More recently, however, she has tried her hand at a few fad diets. Celebrity nutritionist Carrie Wiatt (who also counts Jennifer Aniston among her clients) tried to introduce her to a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, with plenty of vegetables and fruit and no processed foods. But failed.
Her attempt to cut back on carbohydrates faltered due to her love of pancakes, which she eats for breakfast every day when she’s not working.
Barbra and her husband, the actor James Brolin, also dabbled with the Jenny Craig diet (an American diet system which delivers healthy meals direct to wealthy clients). But within weeks she admitted: ‘I’ve been eating like a pig.’
— “Pancakes, no exercise and £7 face cream — how Barbra stays stunning at nearly 70,” the London Daily Mail, October 27, 2011.
You go into some of these small towns in California, and like a lot of northern effete leftwing towns such as Chappaqua and Georgetown, their sanity has been going now for the past 17 years, and nothing’s come to replace it. And it fell through the Bush Administration, the Obama administration, and during each successive administration they said that somehow these artists’ creative spark is gonna regenerate and it has not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to pancakes and syrup and oikophobic antipathy to Americans who aren’t like them or anti-Trump sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
But geez, for an ideology that’s currently styling itself as “The Resistance,” French Underground-style to Trump, you’d think the left would hit the gym a bit more and lay off the pancakes, to stay in shape for their imaginary apocalyptic struggle. But at least, after eight years, now they have someone to blame for everything that goes wrong in their lives.
HOOLIGAN VIOLENCE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT: This is a Instapundit Two-fer, the Associated Press and Russia, two suspect sources in one!
A Russian pol is proposing that “Soccer hooliganism” be made a spectator sport. And the AP –ever in search of click bait — is reporting it. I’d say “you can’t make this stuff up” but of course you could manufacture it. In fact, cable tv more or less treats hooligan violence as a sport, at least when Red Fascists beat up conservatives.
A Russian lawmaker has proposed an unorthodox solution to the country’s problems with soccer hooliganism ahead of next year’s World Cup – legalize it and make it a spectator sport.
The Rooski dude’s raison d’etre for staging gang fights as a sport:
Organized groups of Russian fans, many with martial arts training, fought English fans on the streets of Marseille during last year’s European Championship.
Better Than Snopes and The Washington Post Fact Check: This is sensationalist spout-off that approaches fake news.
Like, who in the heck is dumb enough to square off with British football rowdies?…Oh, wait…Russian football rowdies…
Actually, the Russian politico could be a cable tv producer. He wants to stage a “draka,” the Russian word for fight.
“…20 fighters on each side, unarmed, in an arena.”
Hold it. I’m being too hard on this guy. If he’d ginned up this concept six months ago Obama would’ve wiretapped him. By exhibiting showmanship of this caliber ole Barack would’ve been convinced he got the idea from Trump.
This is what Hollywood calls blockbuster concept. We all know what’ll happen. The Russians will stack their rowdies with Spetsnaz and the Brits will stack their rowdies with Special Air Service (SAS) commandos. War would once again become a contest of tribal champions. Stay tuned!
RELATED: The SAS recruits a dozen Gurkas. This gives the Brits a “draka” edge, in my opinion.
AMERICA LOVES BEING INSULTED AND PUT DOWN. HOW COULD IT FAIL? Rise and Fall! Ratings Plummet for ABC’s Ambitious Gay Rights Drama ‘When We Rise.’ “Some thought the show, created by award-winning gay activist Dustin Lance Black and aired on four nights this week, goes out of its way to portray middle America as intolerant homophobes.”
CLEANLINESS: Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes.
Only clean things are allowed to touch my bed. No suitcases or purses; they’ve been on countless floors and other suspect surfaces. Not even me when I’m dirty; I’m the weird roomie who showers when she gets home from the bar.
And definitely no other polluted people or their polluted clothing.
I’m always surprised when my request confuses my guests. I mean, why would you legitimately allow street clothes in your bed?
I explain it like this: “Just think about where your clothes have been: on a subway seat, a city bench, a bar stool. Now think about who else has been on those seats, benches and stools. Would you invite them into your bed? I didn’t think so. Well, then what makes their sweat or cooties or bodily particles any different?”
I get the sentiment, but honestly, this sounds kinda OCD. And the Hygiene Hypothesis suggests it’s counterproductive to try too hard to avoid germs.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Oscars aren’t about popular movies. It’s time for the Academy to accept that:
Perhaps, then, AMPAS should consider the Oscars to be less of an industry celebration or an effort to reward the best films of the year and more of an opportunity to highlight its appeal to niche audiences. Look: The blockbusters can market themselves and they’re clearly having no problem finding an audience. And Hollywood, frankly, shouldn’t worry too much about resentment from mass audiences that these films aren’t getting awards consideration; we’re all grownups here, even if the grownups, myself included, are mostly watching the kiddie junk these days.
This wouldn’t solve the ratings problem, but that “problem” is really only one of self-conception; there’s no real reason to try to entice tens of millions of viewers once a year to watch what amounts to a trade show. A niche broadcast aimed at niche audiences who tend to live in urban enclaves and seek out the critically acclaimed but relatively unpopular movies that have won in recent years would also be tremendously freeing: In addition to worrying less about attaining the proper mix of commerce and art in the year’s nominees, concerns about alienating audiences via overly political speeches would go out the window.
In 2010, Rush Limbaugh dubbed the MSM as closed-circuit TV for leftwing coastal elites. Outside of the aforementioned comic book/sci-fi blockbusters, Hollywood’s product has become largely the same as the MSM’s – and note the very same adversarial relationship with their potential domestic audience, which like Hillary and Obama, Hollywood and the MSM view as deplorable people, bitterly clinging to their guns, religion and Trump.
At his Website, frequent PJM contributor Christian Toto asks if conservatives will punish Trump-hating Hollywood. But as long as the comic book and sci-fi-derived franchises, and other long-running franchises such as James Bond and Mission: Impossible keep filling theaters, what difference, at this point, would it really make, to coin a phrase?
IT’S A MERITOCRACY WITHOUT ACTUAL, YOU KNOW, MERIT: Victor Davis Hanson: Is the American Elite Really Elite? “21st-century repute is accrued from the false gods of the right zip code, high income, proper social circles and media exposure rather from a demonstrable record of moral or intellectual excellence.”
FAKE HATE CRIMES:
Shot:
The Left, for the moment, cannot seriously compete in the theater of ideas. So rather than play the ball, it’s play the man. Socialism failed, but there is some juice to be had from convincing people who are not especially intellectually engaged and who are led by their emotions more than by their intellect — which is to say, most people — that the people pushing ideas contrary to yours are racists and anti-Semites, that they hate women and homosexuals and Muslims and foreigners, that they could not possibly be correct on the policy questions, because they are moral monsters. This is the ad hominem fallacy elevated, if not quite to a creed, then to a general conception of politics. Hence the hoaxes and lies and nonsense.
Phony hate crimes. Phony hate.
—“Bogus Hate Crimes: Trump, Conservatives Blamed by Clueless Leftists,” Kevin D. Williamson, NRO, today.
Chaser: “Headstones toppled at Brooklyn Jewish cemetery were from neglect not vandalism, NYPD says.”
—Jewish Telegraphic Agency, today.
IT’S NOT ACTUALLY AN AUTOPILOT, YOU KNOW, DESPITE THE NAME: Tesla driver blames Autopilot for barrier crash. “In actuality, it was a construction zone, and the driver should likely have understood the situation, instead of relying on Tesla’s Autopilot to change lanes by itself. As the road markings continue directly into the temporary yellow barrier, it’s clearly a situation that can confuse Autopilot, but one that a human driver should be able to detect in time.” Though humans are sometimes fooled by that too.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: If It Happened, Trump Wiretapping Makes Watergate ‘Look Like a Joke.’
REVIEW: The Wilson Combat AR-9 Rifle. “I am less concerned with terminal ballistics than I am with hitting the target, and this carbine is highly conducive to hitting the target quickly and often.”
POLITICO: How the feds could have listened to Trump’s phone calls.
Related: Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance. “Here are the problematic aspects of the Obama surveillance on Trump’s team, and on Trump himself. First, it is not apparent FISA could ever be invoked. Second, it is possible Obama’s team may have perjured themselves before the FISA court by withholding material information essential to the FISA court’s willingness to permit the government surveillance. Third, it could be that Obama’s team illegally disseminated and disclosed FISA information in direct violation of the statute precisely prohibiting such dissemination and disclosure. FISA prohibits, under criminal penalty, Obama’s team from doing any of the three.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Lindsey Graham offers two ways Trump Tower wiretapping could be bigger than Watergate.
OBAMA’S LANDMINES: ‘This Is Is the Revenge of the Losers.’