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Archive for 2020
November 29, 2020
OPEN THREAD: With nothin’ to do but feed all the kangaroos.
THE “FACT-CHECKERS'” HISTORY HAS NOT BEEN EXACTLY BRILLIANT: Candace Owens Challenges Fact-Checker, And Wins. “I wanted to show that these fact-checkers just lie, and they usually go unchecked because most people don’t have the money, don’t have the time, and don’t have the platform to go after them — and I have all three.”
THERE IS UNREST IN THE FOREST. THERE IS TROUBLE WITH THE TREES. FOR THE MAPLES WANT MORE SUNLIGHT, AND THE OAKS IGNORE THEIR PLEAS: “I hope we can create some kind of trend, that actually people are going to run to the parks and start complaining to the trees. This is one way of healing at this moment of our history.”
Well, it’s one way. David Thompson has much fun with this suggestion, so read the whole thing.
BECAUSE THE U.S. PRESS IS GARBAGE: Three professors, two from Dartmouth and one from Brown, have produced a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled, “Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News?” It focuses on the U.S. press, and its findings are disturbing.
Plus: “Why are ‘major’ U.S. news sources so massively more negative than their international counterparts? I think the widespread hostility toward President Trump is the obvious answer. The fact that Fox isn’t much different from its left-wing competitors probably tells us more about Fox than about the American press in general. But that isn’t the whole story. This NBER article suggests that the pessimism of major news outlets is a response to reader demand.”
TRANSLATION: IS TRUMP GOING TO SPILL THE SECRETS ABOUT US THAT WE GOT HIM OUT OF OFFICE TO PROTECT? When he leaves office, can ex-President Trump be trusted with America’s national security secrets? The intelligence community’s campaign against Trump started with a leak about a “briefing” about the fake Steele Dossier.
The intelligence bureaucracy is an unprincipled, self-interested player in American politics, and it doesn’t want people to know how, what, or who it’s been playing.
ROGER KIMBALL: Crime Hiding Crime: A Motive for the Steal.
My point is this: fear as well as greed has been a powerful motivating force in explaining the desperate tactics employed by the Left to secure the presidency for the disagreeable and senescent political hack at the head of the Democratic ticket.
The agenda he and—more to the point—his leftwing puppeteers hope to enact was one motivating factor.
Their desire to free themselves from scrutiny for their years—in some case, decades—of corruption was another, equally powerful motivation.
Doubtless, many of them of them believe they can breathe easy now. Joe is almost president, isn’t he?
Well, is he?
I said that the whole Russia Collusion hoax was the biggest scandal in American history.
That award might be about to be transferred to the 2020 presidential election.
Fair and free elections are essential to the maintenance of democracy.
Perhaps we have just witnessed how difficult it is to assure their perpetuation in the face of concerted partisan interference.
The first U.S. presidential election was held in December, 1788. We’ve come a long way in two hundred and thirty-two years.
It was a good run, maybe the best in history. It would be sad to see it go.
Stay tuned.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Biden To Name Tanden as Budget Chief, Rouse to Economic Council.
Flashback: “Israel is depressing,” Tanden wrote in 2016:
The co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s transition team called the March re-election of hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “depressing” in an e-mail to Clinton’s campaign chair.
Neera Tanden moaned to John Podesta the day after Netanyahu’s win.
“Israel is depressing,” Tanden wrote.
The hacked message was among thousands released by WikiLeaks. “It’s a good lesson that the wing nuts are just ruthless in every country,” Tanden added.
“Bad,” Podesta replied.
And speaking of “bad:” The Center For American Progress Staff Was Shocked After Neera Tanden Named The Anonymous Harassment Victim In An All-Staff Meeting.
As Glenn noted earlier this month, “A Biden presidency would be the death of #Metoo, just as Clinton’s was.”
UPDATE: “‘The good thing about a Biden run,’ Neera Tanden, Clinton’s close aide who also advised the Obama administration on health policy, wrote to Podesta in 2015, in an email later exposed by WikiLeaks, ‘is that he would make Hillary look so much better.’”
— ‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden, The Politico, August 14th.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? San Francisco wealth tax will fuel next blue exodus for rich earners.
It’s not like they weren’t warned. And we need a separate version of my Welcome Wagon Project just for rich people who move.
DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY:
● Morning Joe: We Have No Reason to Tolerate, Understand Anyone Who Supported Trump.
—NewsBusters, Wednesday.
● Barack Obama Smears Trump’s Latino Voters.
—Legal Insurrection, yesterday.
UPDATE: Professional Asshole Keith Olbermann: Prosecute Trump, Family, Supporters, Everyone (Video).
—The Lid, today.
(Updated and bumped.)
DAILY BEAST SETTLING NICELY INTO ITS COMING FOUR YEAR SLUMBER: Joe Biden’s Dogs Have Told This Pet Psychic a Lot About Their Beloved Master, and His Future.
The pop-up add above that article is a hoot:
Support our fearless journalism!
UPDATE: Just as the gypsy woman didn’t foretold: President-elect Joe Biden twists ankle while playing with dog, to see a doctor.
As our sister-site Twitchy asks: How come The Daily Beast’s dog psychic didn’t warn Joe Biden about the ankle injury?
(Updated and bumped.)
Hey Gavin: Pluck you, man! It’s time to stop the virulent Covidfornia virus before it infects every other place it touches. As the saying goes, if you don’t fight them over there, you have to fight them over here.
Therefore: we stay. We stick it out while they burn it down. After all, you’ve got to hit rock bottom before you can recover.
Lucky for me, we may be hitting rock sooner than I thought, thanks to Newsom, Mayor Garcetti, and L.A.’s newly elected district attorney, George Gascón.
George Gascón is a proud supporter of both BLM and Antifa. He is a far-left progressive and one of many District Attorneys who has enjoyed the generous patronage of George Soros. He thinks looting is reparations. His policies are a complete enshrinement of BLM demands: defund police, stop arresting criminals, and close down the jails, because they’re racist. The only people he plans to target for arrest are cops, of course, and innocent people guilty of things like home self-defense, white privilege, and insufficient public wokeness.
In other words, George Gascón is the disease—and the cure. Once he takes a wrecking ball to public safety, Lord help us all. The popsicle sticks and chewing gum holding this place together won’t stand a chance.
It is about to get real ugly, real fast. But at last, perhaps, people who have silently grumbled for years and years about tent cities and filth and robberies and junkies shooting up on the formerly beautiful beaches will have finally had enough.
The luddite mentality of aging San Francisco leftists is quite telling: ‘Good riddance’: Tech’s flight from San Francisco is a relief to some advocates.
Over the years, San Francisco residents tried a variety of tactics to protest the tech industry’s effects on the city: blocking corporate buses, halting expensive new condo buildings, proposing tax increases and even threatening to limit office cafeterias.
Affordable housing advocates, local politicians and longtime San Francisco residents hoped the well-off newcomers would contribute more to their new community, or if they didn’t, then perhaps leave.
Elberling, who before the pandemic spearheaded new restrictions on skyscrapers in San Francisco, is among those who believe the city was being overrun by people who arrived for one reason.
“The motivation got to this get-rich-quick attitude,” he said. “And that isn’t what our city is about. You can make a lot of money here, obviously, but that’s not the persona of San Francisco.”
San Francisco has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, stretching back to the 1849 gold rush and including multiple tech bubbles. But that’s not why people stay, Elberling said.
“If all you care about is money, I suggest you go to Texas,” he said.
GOP governors better get cracking on Glenn’s Welcome Wagon kits ASAP, if they want to keep their states in the red column. Otherwise, as a — [cough] — longtime resident of Texas, I’m all in favor of this proposal by America’s Newspaper of Record: Texas Passes Law Banning Californians From Voting After They Move There.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Happened To Led Zeppelin’s Boeing 720, “The Starship?”
The unit held registration N7201U and was the first Boeing 720 built. It was initially delivered to United Airlines in October 1960.
However, the 138-seater saw its most famous action following its purchase for $600,000 in 1973.
According to I Love Classic Rock, new owners Bobby Sherman and Ward Sylvester splashed $200,000 into the project. By the time the new configuration was over, the main cabin featured a 30-foot-long couch that ran along the right side of the plane, as well as a TV and video cassette player. The superstar passengers could also have a shower on board. This helped lessen the need to live out of hotels and suitcases while traveling from town to town across North America.* * * * * * * *
There was undoubtedly plenty of alcohol to go around at the bar. Road manager Richard Cole highlights the top quality champagne that was onboard.
Cole said the following, as reported by The New York Times:
”In those days, we went through a phase where we only drank ’64 and ’66 Dom Pérignon. If we found a good deal we’d have one of the assistants buy several cases and store it on the plane.”
Nonetheless, the first paying passengers on The Starship were the band members of Led Zeppelin. The group jumped on in July 1973, and during this period, they were one of the biggest bands across the globe. In true rockstar fashion, they toured with style, and there was plenty of excitement on their travels.
The band painted their name across the fuselage and treated the master suite like an hourly rate motel. There was also a lot of intoxication while in the skies, as Cole called the jet ”a floating gin palace.”
Earlier:
● ‘Jimmy Page: The Anthology’ and His Previous Coffee Table Book: None Will Be Revealed.
● The Liner Notes of the Gods: ‘Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World’s Greatest Rock Band.’
ROGER SIMON: Now Is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Get off Twitter.
That Twitter has just censored (“suspended the account” in their parlance) the film version of Lee Smith’s “The Plot Against the President,” directed by Amanda Milius, is not in the least surprising.
It’s only the latest example of what Twitter does, what we have come to expect of it—censor or whatever euphemism you want to apply because the massive site, we are informed ad infinitum, is a private company and can do what it bloody well pleases without having to pay the slightest obeisance to the Bill of Rights or even the Magna Carta.
Yes, it’s good publicity for the film, an accurate retelling of the horrifying Russiagate story, but that’s no excuse.
Whatever Jack Dorsey and his minions dislike, whatever threatens them, is automatically banned or, at best, temporarily tolerated with some supercilious notation about its supposed wrongheadedness. (And they claim they’re a public facility—like the phone company.)
Almost never do they say with any specificity why they are censoring. They just do it.
What is surprising is that so many of us are still on Twitter, addicted as any homeless crackhead in Santa Monica while fattening the coffers of a maniacal “progressive” billionaire by living as inadvertent vassals on his online totalitarian estate.
I wanted to get out years ago but hung on, even through the extraordinary blocking of the New York Post’s reporting on Tony Bobulinski’s testimony regarding the China-centric business dealings of Hunter Biden and the “big guy,” an act of hyperpartisanhip worthy of Goebbels or Beria.
That may have been the proverbial straw on the back of the proverbial camel for me.
I got out shortly thereafter and intend to stay out.
I urge everyone else to follow me, not because I’m anything special—as I noted it took me years to make the break—but because it’s by far the best thing to do.
Leaving, taking your business elsewhere, is the only way to destroy the pernicious influence of Twitter and the other tech giants. I’ve said it before, but this time I’ve done it myself. (Finally.)
And we can’t expect the government to do it for us.
Especially if Biden’s election goes through (I know, thankfully getting iffy), the chances of Section 230, the provision allowing Twitter and the others to avoid legal responsibility for what they publish, is unlikely to change. Big Tech literally owns the Democratic Party.
And if Donald Trump has a second term, I’m, alas, skeptical he will do much. He’s evidently addicted to Twitter as well. He should also get out.
I’m not going to spend time criticizing the narcissistic reasons so many media players, even those on the right who are mistreated, stay on. Obviously, I was one of them.
But I will address, via a personal anecdote, the question of whether both sides actually can discuss the issues together in a collegial manner, putatively the intention of Twitter, although totally ludicrous in its execution because the site’s bias against one of the sides is so extreme, even to the point of banning or censoring them (again, a distinction without a difference in the real world).
In addition to its high-tech totalitarianism, it’s a virus of the mind as well — somebody should write a book about the multifaceted elements of Twitter’s insidious nature.
COLOR ME SKEPTICAL THAT THIS WILL BE A GOOD THING: Digital License Plates Coming to Michigan in 2021 after Debut in California. “By making the license plate a screen, Rplate lets people display their own (approved) messages. The plate can also warn people that the car it’s on has been stolen, or maybe to show an Amber or Silver Alert, if the state wants that functionality.”
FASTER, PLEASE: New therapy to target the spread of bowel cancer.
THERE’S BARELY ENOUGH NATURAL INTELLIGENCE IN THAT FIELD: Exploring the use of artificial intelligence in architecture.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: Fauci resists Republican effort to turn testimony against protesters.
—Reuters, July 31st.
● Chaser: Fauci: There will ‘almost certainly’ be an uptick in COVID-19 cases after Thanksgiving travel.
—The Hill, today.