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Archive for 2023
May 28, 2023
GOODER AND HARDER: Every Company Leaving California: 2020-2023.
RIP:
In a just world Claudia Rosett would have had several Pulitzers…for her eye-witness accounts of Tiananmen Massacre, for reporting on USSR’s demise as WSJ‘s Moscow bureau chief, etc. She was also a wonderful friend for over 40 years. Swift passage to the greatest story of all. pic.twitter.com/6ILJBLC7of
— David Asman (@DavidAsmanfox) May 28, 2023
COMMIE TOOL SAYS WHAT? Jane Fonda Blames Men for Climate Change: ‘We Have to Arrest and Jail Those Men.’ “Hollywood star Jane Fonda made the outrageous claim Friday that climate change is being caused exclusively by men, specifically white men, adding that ‘those men’ must be arrested and jailed. She also blamed the ‘patriarchy’ and ‘racism’ for global warming.”
YES! (In Some Cases): Is There a Polite Way to Handle the Pronoun Madness?
Stand to Reason’s Amy K. Hall wrote, “I recently spoke to a Stand to Reason supporter who received a company-wide email saying leaders were expected to display their pronouns.” She went on to include the text of the man’s email reply to his employers.
I appreciate the goal of mutual respect and creating a welcoming environment for everyone. My desire is to be respectful of everyone. The expectation to display my pronouns asks me to accept a premise that I can’t accept—namely, that my pronouns could be different than he/him. It’s an ontological claim about the nature of reality, and I hold a different view. I’m not asking those that are transgender to accept my view of reality, but I’m being asked to accept theirs.
I can live and work with respect toward anyone with differing beliefs than my own, including my transgender coworkers. Can I be respected in my beliefs that differ on the nature of gender and identity while affirming the dignity of every person?
The man’s email resonated with his bosses, and they told him that “the pronouns were not mandatory.”
You’ll learn a lot about who you’re working for if you receive a different response.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
I feel like we all just need to add the phrase:
“Mr. Trump, who previously supported…”
To our auto-autocomplete.
Something tells me we’re going to have to use it a LOT. 😅
— Janine Curran (@janinereturns) May 28, 2023
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: State Farm halts new home insurance policies in California. “It sounds as if the company is too polite to bring it up, but don’t you suppose that home and business insurance is also no longer profitable because of rampant crime combined with homeless encampments driving down property values? Every time gangs of retail looters come in and empty out a store and destroy the windows and other structures, the store files insurance claims. When mobs loot people’s homes or set them on fire, more claims are filed. All of that adds up after a while.”
SMART: Ford Just Made a Brilliant, Blindingly Obvious Move by Embracing Tesla Charging. “As everyone knows, Tesla’s Supercharger network is the gold standard of EV charging and has been since the earliest days of its rollout. And it’s not even close. . . . But it’s not just the sheer number of Supercharging stations that matters, it’s the user experience. Tesla chargers just work. Period. When they don’t, Tesla owners know which ones to avoid well in advance, either through their car or mobile app. All of this is why Ford CEO Jim Farley joined Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Thursday, May 25, for a Twitter Spaces announcement that Ford EVs will be able to use the Tesla Supercharger network starting early in 2024 (via NACS to CCS adapters) and that in 2025, Ford EVs would come equipped with the NACS hardware and software to make the charging experience completely seamless.”
Plus: “During a recent road trip, I watched the driver of a $160,000+ Lucid Air attempt to charge his car at a broken EV charger—in the rain—behind a gas station off Interstate 5 between LA and Sacramento. I was inside a fast food restaurant across the parking lot (tending to my hungry 2-year old), as the poor guy struggled to get the charger to connect to his car. He re-positioned his car twice so that the CCS chargers on each side could reach the port— unaware that the system itself was broken. There were no clear signs that the charger was offline. The screen didn’t show an error message, and any hastily made signs from other travelers attempting to convey the status had been washed away by the rain. I know this because just a few minutes earlier, I was that guy. This is the exact opposite experience you’d expect from a luxury car brand, and I say this not to call out Lucid, but all EV manufacturers entering the space. If you want the masses to switch from gas to electric, and to your brand specifically, you must make the charging experience consistently excellent.”
That’s true. And since it’s true, plug-in hybrids are clearly superior to all-electric vehicles in today’s environment.
Related: Ford’s Deal To Use Tesla Charging Connector And Superchargers Could Kill CCS.
Ford Motor company has announced that starting next year, Fords will get access to Tesla’s supercharger network via an adapter sent to all owners, and later, new Fords will be made with the Tesla connector on them, allowing use without an adapter. This may mean the death of the “standard” CCS connector used by non-Tesla cars, and there is a strong case that it should. Whether it means the death of the J1772 slower charging plug is a different story.
Conventional wisdom is that J1772 and CCS are “industry standards” and thus the sure winners. They are also encoded into various laws creating subsidies for the installation of charging stations. But in spite of being a “standard” the Tesla connector is found on 2-3 times as many cars as CCS/J1772 because Tesla has, and continues to outsell all other carmakers combined. Is the “standard” the one chosen by the most companies, or the one chosen by the most people?
Eventually, adoptions usually win out.
MICHAEL P. SENGER: Thread – The Great COVID Ventilator Death Cover-up. “Tens of thousands of Americans died after being placed on mechanical ventilators in spring 2020. It’s long past time we got real answers as to how many were killed this way.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What You Need to Know About Rabies.
READER FAVORITE: BULLIANT Belt for Men 2Pack. #CommissionEarned
REGULATE FACEBOOK LIKE TOBACCO: Causal association found between evening social media use and delayed sleep.
SHORTCUTS MAKE LONG DELAYS: “A Partner at a Big Firm . . . Received Memos with Fake Case Cites from . . . Two Different Associates.”
Sorry, but CHAT GPT isn’t up to doing legal work yet.
But: ChatGPT Coming to Court, by Way of Self-Represented Litigants. “Indeed, a quick CourtListener search pointed out three self-represented filings (1, 2, 3) that expressly noted that they were relying on ChatGPT. That suggests that there are many more that used ChatGPT but didn’t mention it. (To my knowledge there’s no requirement to disclose such matters.). Note also that self-represented litigants are quite common.”
Related: Bar Associations Threaten Pro-Se Litigant, Aided by AI, with Unauthorized Practice of Law Suits.
BLESS HER HEART: Jane Fonda Blames Men for Climate Change: ‘We Have to Arrest and Jail Those Men.’
Hollywood star Jane Fonda made the outrageous claim Friday that climate change is being caused exclusively by men, specifically white men, adding that “those men” must be arrested and jailed.
Speaking at a career retrospective at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Jane Fonda promoted her radical climate activism efforts, saying the world has “about seven, eight years” to cut fossil fuel consumption in half.
She also said “poor people of color” as well as populations in the southern hemisphere will be hit hardest by global warming.
“It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men,” she added, according to a Deadline report.
Later, Fonda continued her anti-male climate harangue.
“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy,” she reportedly said. “A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”
Fonda failed to mention that China — which isn’t run by white men — ranks as the world’s largest polluter, emitting more greenhouse gases than all developed nations combined.
To be fair though, Fonda only wants white men “arrested” for climate change. Don’t get her started on those who are anti-abortion: “Today on The View–my God, does someone actually watch that show?–she suggested that pro-lifers should be murdered.”
WHAT OUR LEADERS WANT TO DO HERE: China deletes 1.4 million social media accounts in “rectification” program designed to improve government control.
GOOD: Breaking: McCarthy gets debt-ceiling deal — with work requirements. “Utterly predictable, although it still came about 24 hours later than I expected. On a holiday weekend when people are paying the least attention, Joe Biden finally cut a deal with Kevin McCarthy to raise the debt ceiling and end a game of chicken that Biden and Democrats lost months ago. House Republicans didn’t get everything they wanted, but Biden and the Democrats didn’t get anything they wanted except to limit the embarrassment.”
‘PEOPLE WITH FEMALE SEX ORGANS:’ Major Feminine Product Maker’s Latest Attack On Girls And Women. “What is a woman? It looks like the feminine hygiene products maker Always doesn’t even want to use that word anymore, let alone answer that question.”
ROGER KIMBALL: The Politics of Inertia.
Newton was thinking of the physical world. But we can observe something similar in the social world and the world of politics. Once a trend or tendency has been achieved, it continues on course until something intervenes to stop or alter its direction.
Consider the Biden Administration. Once achieved, it lumbered on. Joe Biden’s incontinent glossolalia didn’t matter, nor did his signal failure at the southern border, with energy policy, or with the economy. The communicable mind-virus of wokeness may have reached epidemic proportions in the corporate world, in government agencies, even in the U.S. military, but the blind trajectory set by Biden’s autopilot just barreled on through, unhindered.
Has something finally intervened to change things? Maybe. In substance, it is just the same thing we’ve seen many times before: allegations about Joe Biden’s involvement with his son Hunter’s shady business dealing. Tucker Carlson, among others, detailed these allegations in technicolor. Back in October 2020—note the date—Carlson interviewed Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. It was an extraordinary, and extraordinarily damaging, interview.
Or so one would have thought. As I noted at the time, Bobulinski “laid out the entire bizarre story of his association with the Bidens, including two face-to-face meetings with Joe Biden in the company of his brother and son.”
Remember, Joe Biden has repeatedly denied ever talking to his son about his business dealings. He knew nothing about it, he said. That seemed highly improbable on its face. Bobulinski shows that it was an outright lie. Two communications stand out. In one, the equity stakes in the new company are broken out. The last item indicates that 10 percent will be held by ‘H’—that’s ‘H’ for Hunter—for ‘the big guy,’ which, along with ‘my Chairman,’ is Hunterese for Joe Biden.
The outcome or upshot? The press seized on the revelations and overnight it became the media sensation of the election season.
Just kidding! Some commentators attacked Bobulinski as a Russian agent. Mostly, however, the story was studiously ignored where it was not actively buried. A day or two after Tucker Carlson’s blockbuster interview, a search for “Bobulinski” on the CNN site produced a search-not-found result. It still does. How odd.
Nothing Tucker Carlson could do was potent enough to intrude upon the inertia of the Biden Express.
No Democrat politician has consistently treated reporters worse over the years than Joe Biden. When do his Democratic party operatives with bylines start to consistently return fire?
THAT’S NOT CREEPY AT ALL: The Strange Fans Who Want to Veto Taylor Swift’s New Boyfriend.
Taylor Swift, otherwise a member of the U.S. pop-culture royalty in good standing, doesn’t see any of her boyfriend’s past controversies as dealbreakers, and as far as we can tell, is as smitten as ever. “The heart wants what it wants,” which is romantic if you quote Emily Dickinson saying it or creepy if you quote Woody Allen saying it. The actions of Swift’s boyfriend are sorts of things are supposed to be career-killers and/or get you ejected from reflexively left-leaning American high society, carrying the cultural death penalty, and Swift is effectively declaring, “Nah.”
Flashback: Liberals Are Incensed That Taylor Swift Won’t Be Political or Miserable.
THE TODAY SHOW CORNERED KAMALA HARRIS…And Things Quickly Went Off the Rails:
What does Harris do right? Seriously? She’s failed at promoting COVID vaccinations. She’s certainly failed at the border. This is The Today Show. This is softball territory—and she couldn’t even manage that. This is the easy stuff—and she failed miserably.
It’s quick to see why her 2020 campaign failed, why she bleeds staff, and why her office environment is a toxic waste dump. She just lashes out when things don’t go her way.
Dan Quayle smiles.