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Archive for 2021
April 4, 2021
I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED THAT ELIE MYSTAL IS MAKING A HISTORICALLY ILLITERATE ARGUMENT ABOUT RACISM:
It’s certainly possible to make a cogent criticism of blue slips without engaging in baseless race-baiting. Just not, apparently, for Elie Mystal.
Related: Senate Blue Slips and Senate Regular Order. Notice that nobody was charging Democrat Pat Leahy with racism when he was blocking George W. Bush’s appointments: “In June 2001, when Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) ascended to the chairmanship, he said that the panel would move nominees only after both home state senators returned positive slips and once he was satisfied that the White House had consulted each of them.[22] Sollenberger found that this policy was ‘a profound and significant shift from Hatch’s post-Clinton blue-slip policy.’ He also remarked that Leahy permitted Michigan Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow to curb processing of ‘all nominations to the Sixth Circuit’; based on this observation, Sollenberger commented that the Chair apparently strengthened the procedure on slips to benefit his partisan views in a manner analogous to Hatch.”
UPDATE: First link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
FLASHBACK: Elie Mystal fantasizes about driving his car into the Trump Building.
OPEN THREAD: Have fun, kids!
BUT THEIR TRANSGENDER AWARENESS TRAINING WAS UP TO DATE: Heartbroken families of fallen Marines, sailor react to failures exposed in tragic AAV sinking investigation.
When a Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicle with 15 Marines and one sailor aboard started sinking off the coast of California on July 30, 2020, no safety boat was in sight.
As the water inside the AAV rose to calf level the vehicle commander went to the top and started waiving the “November” flag ― a blue and white checkered flag indicating a possible sinking, because the ship’s radio communications were down.
The Marine stood waving the November flag for 20 minutes before any neighboring vehicles noticed. As the vehicle was going down, one of the AAV crewman told the infantry Marines in the back to open the rear hatch so they could escape, a slide into the report obtained by Marine Corps Times said.
When the cargo hatch would not open the crewman attempted to open the hatch himself before discovering that the “handle had spun past the open position due to a broken woodruff key,” which delayed evacuation.
Eventually two AAVs moved to help the sinking vehicle. But that quickly made the situation, which was becoming dire, worse.
One of the rescue vehicles hit the sinking vehicle, pushing it broadside into the waves. After one large wave hit, water rushed into the sinking vehicle ― sending it rapidly to the floor of the ocean.
At this point eleven service members were still inside, sinking with their ship in darkness, as the emergency egress lighting had failed. The other five Marines had safely evacuated from the vehicle before it completely sank.
You can’t expect to keep up training and maintenance while also maintaining a full schedule of political indoctrination classes.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Facebook removes account of Capitol attack suspect and ‘Follower of Farrakhan.’
ROGER KIMBALL: The Appeal of the New Totalitarians.
What is the America against which the elites have pitched themselves? It is the America articulated in the Declaration of Independence: a polity founded on the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Where are we today? Dreher quotes the governor of Vermont, who a few days ago tweeted the news that “If you or anyone in your household identifies as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC), including anyone with Abenaki or other First Nations heritage, all household members who are 16 years or older can sign up to get a vaccine!” So, all men are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
Dreher began his column with an arresting quotation from Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. In a section about the “temporary alliance between the mob and the elite,” Arendt observes that “The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it.”
“The destruction of civilization.” It’s a melodramatic formulation, to be sure, but it was entirely apt for the situation Arendt was analyzing. That was the price the elites did, in fact, pay. We are living at a moment that is both increasingly fissiparous and increasingly dominated by a totalizing ideology, the ideology of racialist wokeness and radical sexual exoticism.
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It was part of Arendt’s genius to grasp and explain that side of the phenomenon as well, the “irresistible appeal of the totalitarian movements’ spurious claim to have abolished the separation between private and public life and to have restored a mysterious irrational wholeness in man.” It’s what makes the effort to transform politics into God so appealing to susceptible souls, and so dangerous for society as a whole.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: GOP’s Sen. Barrasso says he was told to delete photos of border facilities.
CHINESE VIRUS CONSEQUENCES: The Death of Density. “The events of 2020 crippled the machinery that undergirds density. Taxpaying workers, revenue-generating shoppers, free-spending tourists—the people and activities that finance the infrastructure, mass transit, and municipal workers—are disappearing. And as they head for the exits, we’re left with an urbanism that’s coarser, less forgiving, more dangerous, more radical, and more expensive.”
Flashback: Coronavirus Lessons on Density, Mass Transit, and Censorship: They Kill.
Related (From Ed):
OH SURE, BUT WHO HASN’T? Hunter Biden Admits He Smoked Parmesan Cheese After Mistaking It for Crack.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Powerful: Google Leaves Homepage Empty In Honor Of Jesus’s Empty Tomb.
READER BOOK PLUG: A Destiny of Undying Greatness: Kiffin Rockwell and the Boys Who Remembered Lafayette. You can find autographed copies at the author’s site at Helen’s Page.
DON’T IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON: Raphael Warnock (D-GA): ‘Meaning Of Easter’ Transcends Resurrection Of Christ, People Can ‘Save’ Themselves With Good Works.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Low-Cost Training Methods for Shooters.
FUTILITARIANISM: That feeling when you have to judge a man who is accused of a crime but who doesn’t appear to be guilty but the elites and the mob want him dead so you decide to kill him anyway because it seems like it will pacify the mob and make the problem go away but then he comes back after three days and 2000 years later 2,300,000,000 people are still worshipping him.
Another Bible story with a lesson and reminder that work outside the religious context, too — and one that our “judges” at all levels need today more than ever. And Happy Easter, everyone!
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 60 years after Bay of Pigs, New York Times role – and myth – made clear.
Sixty years ago, The New York Times is said to have muzzled itself in reporting about plans for the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, earning a lasting niche of dishonor in the history of American journalism.
The Bay of Pigs-New York Times suppression tale has been cited in books, newspapers, on cable news shows and elsewhere as a study in self-censorship and its consequences.
Had the Times resisted the requests of President John F. Kennedy, had it printed all it knew about the pending invasion of Cuba, the suppression tale goes, the ill-fated assault might have been scrapped and the U.S. spared a foreign policy debacle.
The suppression tale makes for a timeless lesson about the perils for news organizations in yielding to government pressure and withholding vital if sensitive information, ostensibly because of national security implications. When government officials invoke national security, publishing secret material becomes a thorny matter for news outlets.
Well, it’s not like the legacy media being Democratic Party operatives with bylines is all that new a development.
Related: Speaking of “Jim Crow on steroids:” MLB requires photo ID to pick up tickets from Will Call but boycotts Georgia.
I BLAME PREHISTORIC S.U.V.s: Melting ice sheets triggered 60 feet of sea level rise 14,600 years ago.
‘ABSOLUTE LEGEND:’ Man sends the lockdown police on a walk of shame out of his church (video). “Christian man ejects cops from the church who are there to enforce covid lockdown tyranny. One man with sheer force of personality and faith just sent 8 cops slinking away in shame.”
NOT REPORTED: HOW MANY OF THESE WERE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS & DISRUPTION, VS. OF THE DISEASE ITSELF. Study: U.S. had 23% more deaths than expected in 2020 due to pandemic.
HAPPY EASTER! VIA A FRIEND:
