OPEN THREAD: Last one of the year. Enjoy!
Archive for 2022
December 31, 2022
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China looks to build space partnerships with Gulf nations. They’re finding it easier since Biden’s “pariah nation” remarks about Saudi Arabia.
CHANGES FOR INSTAPUNDIT IN 2023: Don’t worry, the blog isn’t going anywhere. But we’ll be getting a major rebuild in the next couple of months. That’s mostly under-the-hood stuff that you won’t see, but that makes the site more stable and secure. It’s overdue, not least because it’s not cheap. I’m also going to be looking at new revenue models. Ad revenue is down about 75% over the last couple of years, and Amazon earnings are off by a similar amount. The former is partly the general decline in ad revenue across the digital world, and (I think) partly the result of big outfits deliberately steering ads away from right-leaning outlets. The latter is partly deliberate, as we’ve reduced the Amazon promotion on purpose because of the Parler business. Discontinuing it would have been nice, but it’s a major source of income for Helen, and efforts to replace it with Helen’s Page, Books-a-Million, etc. have all failed. And one of our friends who works for Parler didn’t boycott Amazon, saying it would make their life worse without Jeff Bezos noticing, which is true.
I started InstaPundit as a hobby, but after over 20 years of pretty much every day work, it needs to do more than occupy my idle hours, of which I don’t have enough. Donations have helped, but of course PayPal has become problematic and will have to go. I’m going to experiment with Stripe for donations, I think.
I’m also considering setting up on Substack. I wouldn’t move the blog there, but it might be an alternative to writing columns for other people. I do sort of wonder whether I’d do as well without a deadline, but on the other hand, I’ve been writing a weekly (or sometimes twice-weekly) column for over twenty years as well, and maybe it’s time for something different.
Anyway, none of this is dramatic and none of it will happen tomorrow, but just FYI.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s Rover Finds Traces of Never-Before-Seen Basalt on The Moon.
#HIMTOO? Woman sues Steven Tyler, alleging child sex assault in 1970s.
A woman who has previously said Steven Tyler had an illicit sexual relationship with her when she was a teenager is now suing the Aerosmith frontman for sexual assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit brought by Julia Misley was filed Tuesday under a 2019 California law that gave adult victims of childhood sexual assault a three-year window to file lawsuits for decades-old instances of assault. Saturday is the deadline to file such claims.
The 65-year-old Misley, formerly known as Julia Holcomb, said in a statement that she wanted to seize “a new opportunity to take legal action against those that abused me in my youth.” The Associated Press does not name victims of sexual assault unless they publicly identify themselves.
While the lawsuit doesn’t name Tyler, Misley identified him by name in the statement, issued through the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates. She has also recounted her experiences with Tyler in prior interviews, and Tyler discussed a relationship with a teenage girl in two books, published in 2011 and 1997. The acknowledgements section of his memoir “Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?” thanks a “Julia Halcomb,” which Misley has said is a reference to her.
Representatives for Tyler did not immediately return requests for comment Friday. Rolling Stone first reported the lawsuit.
Flashbacks:
● The sexual predators everyone still worships.
● #MeToo feminists may not realize it, but their other target is sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
● Hugh Hefner, Gangsta Rap & the Emerging Moral Majority: “Slowly, however, the elite of our culture seem to be drifting toward a new, far-more jaundiced and suspicious view of popular culture from the 1960s to the 1990s.”
BIDEN’S ISLAND ESCAPE SHOWS HIS DISCONNECT:
Someone should have told Joe Biden that vacationing in St. Croix was not a good idea.
He could have chosen better.
And leaving the country at this time was bad optics.
The president, seeking warmer climes, appeared to have abandoned the country in the wake of a historic blizzard that buried the U.S., killed scores of people, caused massive blackouts, and stranded thousands of holiday travelers at airports across the country.
Some 37 people were killed in the Buffalo area, the airport was shut down and thousands were left without power there and elsewhere across the nation. Biden grinned and sent prayers.
While he was aboard Air Force One flying above the country, untold thousands of other Americans were stuck at airports across the country as flights were delayed or canceled due to the harsh weather and Southwest Airlines incompetence.
But the bitter cold weather that swept across the nation did not deter hordes of illegal immigrants from crossing the southern border into the country under Biden’s cruel and criminal open border policy.
Immigrant families, turned away at overcrowded shelters in El Paso, were forced to sleep in the streets under freezing conditions.
“Come to America and sleep in the streets,” seems to be Biden’s message to immigrants from around the world.
But you can’t be too harsh on Biden. He is old and feeble, and he needs the sun to warm his bones.
But the optics of him ignoring domestic programs while vacationing in St. Croix, one of the U.S Virgin Islands, sent the wrong message, especially as fellow Americans struggled with frigid weather and skyrocketing home energy bills.
What optics? Biden knows his Democratic party operatives with bylines aren’t going to give him the Ted Cruz treatment, so this story will be forgotten by the next news cycle, if not sooner.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Adjust Your Mirrors to Avoid Blind Spots.
MARK JUDGE: Shredding away the COVID insanity.
Forget Jan. 6. The worst day in recent American history came on May 2020, when the city of Los Angeles filled the skateboarding park at Venice Beach with sand. The move was a deterrent done in the name of preventing the spread of COVID. A month later, and without permission, the skaters dug out the park and started riding again.
For those of us who are skateboarders, the closing of the park was a dark day. We seem to intuitively know what has since been proven: joyful exercise in fresh air and sunlight is a natural preventative to illness, including COVID. We knew better than the buzzkill bureaucrats.
Now, science has caught up with the skaters. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that “a regular exercise routine may significantly lower the chances of being hospitalized or even dying from COVID-19.”
Why, it’s as if: Ignoring Them Is the Only Way Out.
THE CRITICAL DRINKER REFLECTS…2022 EDITION (Video):
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: NYC Could Lose 10,000 Airbnb Listings Because of New Short-Term Rental Law.
HOLIDAY DEAL: ThermoPro TP19H Digital Meat Thermometer for Cooking. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)
The following was quite prescient. It’s from Senator Frank Church himself on August 17, 1975, when he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (…)
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
We are either teetering on the edge of that abyss or we have already fallen into it.
I’ll take the latter option: Are FBI And CIA Agents ‘Sheep Dipped’ At Twitter And Other Tech Companies?
FROM AN INSTA-READER: “I can just about guarantee the Chicago scanner stream will be better than anything CNN does tonight:”
Our Mission
The purpose of CrimeIsDown.com is to provide police scanner listeners in the Chicago area an easy way to lookup information quickly pertaining to what they hear. Journalists use the site to quickly know what neighborhood and police district an incident is happening in. Scanner enthusiasts use the site to find out what radio zone they should listen to. Average citizens use the site to find out what crime is happening around them and to tune in live.
We hope to let people decide for themselves whether or not crime is down, based on independent statistics and listening to breaking news.
Why the name “CrimeIsDown”?
The name CrimeIsDown comes from a hashtag of the same name that was popular starting in 2013 among those in the #ChicagoScanner community. City leadership often said how crime was down, but that seemed to conflict with the number of shootings. In 2014, Chicago Magazine had published a story about how Chicago Police was reclassifying crimes to make crime stats appear lower than they really were.
I’m sure Mayor Lightfoot is ever-vigilant in her efforts to clean up the streets of Chicago!
DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE? Parsing the New York Times’ obsession with alarmism:
The impending collapse of democracy—that’s not small beer. So imagine the alarm of New York Times subscribers when, on October 3, an essay titled “Democracy Challenged” appeared in the newspaper with the subhead, “Representative government faces its most serious threats in decades.”
If the New York Times wishes to limit gun ownership in America, articles like this can hardly be said to help. Before leaving the house the day the article was published, I opened our front door as slowly as I could, motioned to the family to stay in place until I had peered up both ends of the street, and then instructed everyone to walk behind me as we all moved as noiselessly as possible toward the sidewalk and our several destinations. “Do what you can to save representative democracy in America!” my wife whispered to the kids as they set off for school.
I am joking, of course. The piece, written by Joseph Kahn, the paper’s new executive editor, appeared in what the Times calls “The Morning Newsletter.” Though this morning’s item concerned the country’s worst nightmare, it was only four paragraphs long. And it was hard to fathom. The subhead’s reference to the most serious “threats” to “representative government” “in decades” was perplexing, since any real threat to democracy would be deadly and single, not one among several competing threats. And there was no threat to American democracy decades ago, unless Kahn was referring to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which were threats of a whole different order than what he went on to claim were the perils faced by American democracy now.
To be fair, the Gray Lady is far from alone in its paranoid style:
● Worst of 2022: The GOP Will End Democracy Award.
● An MSNBC “Debate”: Is GOP “Neo-Fascist,” “Proto-Fascist” or “Semi-Fascist?”
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the rest of us are asking the same question about MSNBC:
GM QUALITY: 2023 Chevy Corvette Z06 Pops Engine after Only 52 Miles.
Garcia noticed a lack of power coming from the engine and opted to pull off the highway to investigate. A check-engine light and some aggressive rattling noises accompanied the issue, which began with just 52 miles on the odometer, Garcia says. After walking into town to charge his phone, Garcia was told by the dealer that he couldn’t tow the car back there that evening. Furthermore, OnStar struggled to help as they didn’t have the proper warranty information yet for such a new car. Garcia was forced to tow the Z06 back to his construction yard that night.
Things didn’t improve much the following day. OnStar sent a tow truck for the car on the 24th, but that truck wasn’t authorized to return the car to the selling dealer. That created a new issue, apparently requiring Garcia to spend hours going through the OnStar service for assistance yet again.
Do better, GM. The motor might just be a fluke, but the response was entirely within your control.
BE PREPARED: GTHUNDER Digital Night Vision Goggles Binoculars for Total Darkness. #CommissionEarned
MISLABELING WEATHER AS CLIMATE DOESN’T MAKE A WEATHER DISASTER A “CLIMATE DISASTER.” 2022’s US climate disasters, from storms and floods to heat waves and droughts.
AT AMAZON, shop the New Year’s Sale.
DID HE CONSIDER THE CLIMATE IMPACT? Man eats at 18 Michelin-starred restaurants in 24 hours.
I DUNNO, I’D ORDER PRIME RIB: Diners choose more sustainable menu items when climate impact is labeled.
“DUDE, THIS LADY HAD WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON HER HANDS:” A San Francisco biker had a meltdown over an ambulance that was parked in the bike lane and it’s now one of my favorite videos on the internet.
San Francisco bicycle rider has a hysterical episode over an ambulance in a bike lane. There are many such cases.pic.twitter.com/V7lq1aCl0d
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 30, 2022
“John works hard. Which means that he can afford to drive a car. That means he gets home to his family, safely. Work harder. Get a car:”