Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 4, 2024

OLD AND BUSTED: Asian Murder Hornets are on the way!

The New Hotness? “The Northeast U.S. is bracing for an invasion of giant venomous spiders with 4-inch-long legs that can parachute through the air.”

Fortunately, America’s Newspaper of Record explained how the invasion of the Asian Murder Hornets was muted in 2020, so likely a similar approach could work next year against the parachuting giant spiders: Trump Retaliates Against Asian Murder Hornets With American Kamikaze Bears.

Posted at 2:34 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 4th, 2024

THIS IS THE TERRIBLE REVIEW OF REACHER WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR:

Reacher spends most of his time in the books saving damsels from genuine distress and teaching murderous bad guys they are not the toughest kids on the block. But given the times we live in it was inevitable that this light entertainment would eventually be labeled racist. Today, Vulture published a very belated review of the series which does exactly that.

Wallpaper TV is marked by an easygoing approachability and a low lift for concentration. These are series propelled by vibes that you can groove to as a viewer but whose characterization, narrative, and visual dimensions hew toward simplicity, if not banality. Amusement is tantamount, but these shows don’t ask much of the audience,and they certainly don’t challenge their fans. They’re perfect in the background, half-watched while sweeping the apartment. This is what I was expecting from Reacher: a mildly appealing series that required little of me, spoke to my mother’s televisual interests, and featured a tank of a man who was easy enough on the eyes. But swiftly after starting the series I realized there was something more complex about Reacher, a glaringly white fantasy that can’t help but crack under the weight of its conservative values. This isn’t merely hackneyed wallpaper TV; it’s uncanny fiction that exemplifies just how intensely Hollywood has returned to whiteness after years of feigning interest in diversity broadly and Blackness with a particular extricative zeal.Watching Reacher isn’t easygoing; it’s like watching a frightening manifestation of the free-falling American empire on a loop…

My prior knowledge of this literary franchise was admittedly shallow, mostly informed by my experience of the dim Tom Cruise movies. But this Reacher adaptation is a different beast. And beast is exactly the right word for it — featuring as it does a Dodge Charger who’s achieved human form (actor Alan Ritchson). When Reacher, who refuses to be addressed by his first name, Jack, saunters into the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, the show portrays his masculinity as exceedingly powerful yet good-natured; something to be obeyed but also preserved and exalted. In the premiere episode, Reacher wordlessly halts a domestic-abuse incident on his way into a diner, where, once inside, he doesn’t get to enjoy his cup of black coffee, or the slice of peach pie marketed as the best in the state, because he’s soon arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. He asserts his innocence at the police station, refusing to cooperate unless someone releases him from the zip ties encircling his wrists. (The handcuffs are too small, of course.) “Get the box cutter,” the routinely disrespected police chief says. “It’s okay. I got it,” Reacher says before popping the zip tie by sheer force. He picks up the fallen plastic. “Do you guys recycle?” A knowing smirk never leaves his face. Reacher knows that if a white man is tall enough, the world will bend to his whims.

I just have one question for this author. What did she think of the Equalizer series of movies? That series is based on the same exact sort of pulp storytelling, i.e. a heavily trained fighter/killer who lives off the grid but who also abides by a personal code stumbles upon a group of bad guys who he decided to bring down because he doesn’t like what they do. The outcome is usually very brutal for the bad guys. Those films all starred Denzel Washington instead of Alan Ritchson and they were successful enough that they made three of them.

We’ll get to the modern-day Equalizer franchise in a moment, but first, Christian Toto adds: Vulture: Reacher a ‘White Power Fantasy.’ Readers roast op-ed attacking Prime Video series, American conservatives.

The writer repeatedly conflates “white power” with conservatism in crude fashion. The two are interchangeable, giving the author wiggle room to explore these observations.

Vulture, the pop culture arm of New York Magazine, stirred up trouble within its readership. Its Facebook page visitors overwhelmingly shredded the “white-power” argument.

I spent 26 years in journalism, and this is just embarrassing. I have never seen a piece miss the mark this badly. There is nothing “white-power” about this character or the series. The character’s best friend is a woman and a person of color. He loves old blues music and hangs out at a black-owned barber shop (in season one). He isn’t hateful or racist in any way, shape or form. This is so far off the mark that the author comes off as both projecting and desperate. – Jeremy D. Bonfiglio

In her twisting of the series, she deftly ignored one of the main characters who appeared prominently in both seasons: Reacher’s former army lieutenant, Neagley (Maria Sten). Neagley is mixed race and fully trusted by Reacher. Her prominent role in season 1 is only enhanced in season 2. Odd how her character is entirely not mentioned in the Vulture review, perhaps because it doesn’t support the false narrative she is trying to push.
– Ryan Littlefield

The genre that Reacher works in, which Rob Long dubbed “The Good Psychopath” in the April issue of Commentary isn’t even sexist these days, let alone racist:

The Equalizer entered American culture as a television character in the eponymous CBS Network series starring Edward Woodward as Robert McCall. In the original television series, which ran from 1985 to 1989, McCall is also a former intelligence agent with a shadowy past who fights for the little guy—in a realistically rendered crime-riddled New York City, so it was no fantasy—but the body count is much, much smaller. The show was rebooted in 2021, this time with Queen Latifah as a gender-adjusted Robyn McCall, and has been a steady performer for CBS for four seasons. Wait, The Equalizer reboot has been on TV for four seasons? I can hear you asking.

So there’s a feature-film version of Robert McCall that’s blood and guts and revenge, and there’s a broadcast television version that’s tamer and less violent, but the key elements are the same: utterly powerless victims, utterly remorseless villains, and a hero who settles the score and emerges without a scratch.

There’s also a streaming version of essentially the same character. Reacher, which can be found on Amazon Prime. It doesn’t have the polish or production values of its feature-film cousin—the dialogue is hilariously awful, the sets are spare and overlit—but it’s got the same basic tick-tock. Reacher, played by the mountainous Alan Ritchson, is, you guessed it, a morally upright and highly skilled warrior with a shadowy paramilitary past who helps the powerless fight bad guys. The bad guys in Reacher are super-duper nuts. The first season featured disembowelings, a crucifixion, a sneering psychopathic rich kid, and a villain who inexplicably carries a crystal-topped walking stick.

Reacher is the number-one title on Prime Video, and it’s available across the globe. The first season was hugely popular with audiences of all descriptions, and the second season became Prime’s top show within six days of its release. In other words, Prime Video discovered what Sony and CBS already knew. People like morally upright heroes with shadowy paramilitary backgrounds who use their warrior skills to help the little guy and kill the bad guys. Or the shorter version: Audiences love a Good Psychopath.

For decades, there have been gnostic film critics who can see racism everywhere, no matter how sensitive Hollywood has been on this issue since at least the early 1960s. With the popularity of streaming offsetting the woes of the big screen, no one should be surprised to see them attacking the wares available inside the Roku box instead these days.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 4th, 2024

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: We Have Been Subverted.

The question, of course, is who is doing the subverting. Who is trying to unravel America and the West?

Again, I am feeling only my part of the elephant, but I can discern at least three forces.

The first: American Marxists. This category includes old card-carrying communists, red-diaper baby socialists, antifa anarchists, and many of whom we now call woke. Though the Soviet Union collapsed decades ago, the Soviet worldview has found familiar proponents: young Americans and their professors. They are no longer advancing their cause merely through class struggle, but through the fusion of racial, class, and anticolonial struggles. Theirs is now a cultural communism; they lead subversion through the institutions with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the West.

The thundering socialists of the past (think of poor Bernie) seemed to earnestly care about the working class. Perhaps they did so naively, but at least they loved the poor. Does AOC? Rashida Tlaib? My former countrywoman, Ilhan Omar?

The second force is the radical Islamists, who are riding the coattails of the communists to power. A good example is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many tentacles. Of these tentacles, some are openly religious, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association, each with chapters in nearly every American university. Other organizations don a secular mask, like the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine. These groups have become increasingly confident over the past months. Anti-Israel Muslim candidates recently won elected seats in countries like England, where imams talk openly about reestablishing the caliphate in Europe.

The third force is the Chinese Communist Party. The most obvious avenues through which the CCP has spread subversion in America is through its numerous Confucius Institutes. These organizations have been vehicles for Chinese espionage within major American academic institutions. Then there is TikTok, an addictive social media app controlled by the CCP, which presents Chinese children wholesome, educational content while wreaking havoc on American kids—polarizing them and feeding them anti-American propaganda.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 4th, 2024

MARK JUDGE: Press Cowards’ Hypocritical Lament Over Media’s Lack of ‘Balls’ and ‘Swagger.’

I am intentionally resisting comparing these guys to girls. The truth is the Irish-Catholic girls I grew up with are much tougher than these guys. They also have much better senses of humor.

Consider: In 2018, when I was tossed into the political Thunderdome with Kavanaugh, the media were having fainting spells going through old things I had written. There was a piece I wrote in Splice Today—one of the last truly free media outlets—defending crime movies and male passion. There were the ribald jokes from my high school yearbook. They even got the vapors examining The Unknown Hoya, an underground student newspaper we did at Georgetown Prep. The media went full-on Stasi. They reached epic levels of hysteria but now they refuse to investigate my explosive and well-sourced claims that there was a criminal conspiracy funded and aided by the Democratic National Committee to destroy a Supreme Court nominee.

When it comes to revealing anything negative about the Democratic Party, all the tough-guy newsmen are now missing in action. The likes of wizened journalists of the caliber of say, Peter Hamill, have been replaced by Cowardly Lion avatars, who jump head-first out the window whenever I call them out.

Speak truth to power? These eunuchs are afraid of a book.

Jack Shafer’s response to the WaPo dumping Sally Buzbee instills a small amount of hope: The Rupert Murdoch-ization of the Washington Post.

Still, the regime got a bad review Monday morning at a staff meeting Lewis and Murray held at the Post. In exchanges that were described to me as heated by people present, staffers wanted to know why Lewis had recruited all his old buddies and why a greater search for new leadership had not been conducted to interview women or non-white people*. Lewis stood his ground and indicated that the flight manifest had been filed and no major alterations would be forthcoming.

The meeting might have marked one of the few occasions that something resembling public sympathy had been generated for Buzbee. Never popular with the Post staff and given to speaking in pillowy generalities like a politician, Buzbee was frequently characterized, unfairly, perhaps, by staffers as being only slightly aware of what her paper published.

The newsroom changes put in place by Lewis will not be immediate. Murray will run the Post until after the election, at which point he’ll hand off to Winnett, who will be in charge of what Lewis calls the “core coverage areas,” defined by him as “politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features.” Murray will then run the new third newsroom.

* I’ll be curious to see how the new regime at the Post handles their more elderly employees, who are clearly being kept on these days for purely sentimental reasons:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 4th, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE PALACE GUARD MEDIA:

Long before he entered his dotage, Joe Biden has spent his entire career insulting and belittling journalists – and curiously, they all just sit there and take it, instead of proving that they’re not his party’s operatives with bylines.

But Time’s problem is that Biden is so far gone, there’s only so much they can do to keep propping him up: The Transcript From Biden’s Interview With Time Is a Mess.

“For example, the idea that if when Putin decided to go into Russia,” Biden said at one point before correcting himself. “I mean, he’s gonna go from Russia into Ukraine—the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that he was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge.” Biden conveniently omitted — and TIME did not raise — the Biden administration’s intelligence sharing with the Chinese Communist Party in a failed attempt to have Beijing talk Putin out of invading.

Biden repeatedly mixed up Russia with Ukraine throughout his comments on the subject. He also mixed up Iraq and Iran at points, including his refutation of “the idea that you had nuclear arsenals in Iran, that were being, I mean, in Iraq…” At another point, Biden confused Taiwan with South Korea. Biden also said that America has “the strongest alliance in all of America,” before correcting his claim to “all of history.”

The interview also saw Biden trail off a number of times, ending an assertion about being “on a slippery slope for war if we don’t do something about Ukraine” with “It’s just not gonna…anyway…,” according to TIME’s transcript.

When asked about Israel’s prosecution of the war started by Hamas on October 7, Biden said “I’m not going to respond to that because I’m about to make a…anyway.” He’s about to make a anyway, folks.

Even TIME struggled to determine what the president said, having to insert admissions of transcription defeat at points such as this in the interview: “Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done period,” and again later: “You know, I don’t have any (unintelligible)…”

Exit question: “Look, the buck stops with Biden, but what are his handlers doing by putting him in these situations? And this happened with one of the most friendly outlets out there. Imagine what he’s going to look like at the debates if he gets even the slightest amount of pushback from a moderator. Biden is senile, and those around him are too scared to keep him out of the spotlight. That’s a bad combination.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 4th, 2024

June 3, 2024

GREAT MOMENTS IN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: Man accused of driving without a license appears in court — while driving.

A man accused of driving without a licence dialled into his remote court hearing in Michigan from behind the wheel of a car.

Corey Harris, 44, appeared before the dumbfounded courtroom from his moving vehicle despite being charged with driving on a suspended licence.

Washtenaw County Judge Cedric Simpson looked confused as the defendant joined the virtual Zoom hearing, asking him: “Mr Harris, are you driving?”

The defendant replied: “I’m pulling into my doctor’s office actually,” before casually turning the steering wheel and saying he would be ready in “one second”.

Whoops:

UPDATE: The Viral Story About a Defendant Driving With a Suspended License Was Fake News.

It turns out all those stories, however, were based on a falsehood. Harris’ license had been reinstated years prior and was only registering as suspended due to a clerical error. As of this writing, there has been no spate of additional articles, corrections, or a reinvigorated news cycle based around this information, because the truth here doesn’t lend itself to virality and engagement.

That’s a good indication that this never should have been a national story to begin with, which would be true even if Harris had been driving on a suspended license. A man in Michigan driving allegedly when he wasn’t supposed to is not newsworthy enough to deserve coverage in the most influential outlets in the U.S. (and beyond). Good for a social media laugh? Sure. Justifying its own news cycle? No.

To be fair though, as Ed Morrissey writes, “Clearly the judge thought he wasn’t supposed to be driving, and this still doesn’t negate one reason the story went viral: the man was driving while calling in on Zoom. Certainly that was worth a smirk or two along the way.”

Posted at 11:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

CONVICTED BY THE ‘RATIONAL STATE:’

Donald Trump’s criminal conviction in New York last week must be understood in terms of a political war that has been going on since Watergate. This 50-year fight—between the American people and an increasingly powerful ruling class—is the last stage of a project that began over a century ago, when progressive intellectuals imported German political science into America with the explicit aim of transforming the Constitution. In place of a representative government chosen by the sovereign American people, a new ruling class claimed superior intellectual authority, derived from “rational” empirical science and its methodology. The Constitution may continue to exist in name, but it has mostly been replaced by an administrative state of bureaucratic experts.

Trump is the greatest threat to this ruling class since Richard Nixon. He has therefore aroused more raw political passion than anyone in recent memory. Making him a convicted felon is a calculated gamble to keep him from returning to the White House. There is a risk it could backfire. But the ruling class knows that Trump is entirely alone in the political establishment. He has the support of millions of voters—almost certainly a plurality of the American people. But he is opposed by virtually all of the influential social, economic, political, and cultural interest groups that determine the outcome of elections.

When most elected Republicans and conservatives accepted the legitimacy of the globalist interpretation of the 2020 election, they abandoned the rule of law for hundreds of American citizens. These citizens were called insurrectionists and were denied basic rights by a Congress and courts that funded and conducted what was clearly an elaborately staged hoax. The first, and still the greatest, political hoax in American history was Watergate, which first confirmed to the expert class that it could rule without consent. The official interpretation of Nixon and his legacy has dominated public opinion for the last half century. To this day, the delegitimizing of Nixon has given powerful support to the “rational structures” in government which have replaced the Constitution.

* * * * * * * *
Yet the authority of the rational bureaucracy remains insecure until the threat of Trump can be neutralized. He threatens to unite the country around an understanding of the older America—an understanding that denies the authority of the rational bureaucracy. What they have done to Trump, and his response, has now made the problem political in such a way that it cannot be resolved without a fight.

As America’s Newspaper of Record notes, the left are fully prepared to have it out in the name of, err, democracy:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

THIS READS LIKE A FAR SIDE CARTOON COME TO LIFE: A remote tribe was given the internet for the first time – here’s how it’s gone.

It’s a familiar scene around the world – but not deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Asked if the change has been a positive one, villager Tsainama Marubo, 73, said: ‘When it arrived, everyone was happy. But now, things have gotten worse,

‘Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet,’ she explained. ‘They’re learning the ways of the white people.’

Many of the tribespeople did speak of the benefits the internet has brought, including the ability to chat with loved ones living far away, educational opportunities and the possibility of sharing their way of life with others.

It’s also saved lives. Before Starlink, when there was an emergency the Marubo used amateur radio to send a message via several villages, which would eventually reach authorities.

Now if someone has been bitten by a snake, for example, a quick call on a mobile can mean a speedy helicopter rescue.

But many Marubo people acknowledge the internet has brought with it a fair share of problems.

Marubo leader, Enoque Marubo (all Marubo use the same surname), 40, who was instrumental in bringing Starlink to his people, said a big issue in the early days was people not hunting and growing food because they were stuck on their phone.

He said: ‘In the village, if you don’t hunt, fish and plant, you don’t eat.’

This was to some extent solved by ensuring the internet is now only switched on for two hours in the morning, five hours in the evening and all day Sunday.

But other issues have been more difficult to tackle, such as scams, violent video games, graphic pornography, addictive social media scrolling, abusive online strangers and gossiping group chats.

It’s stuff many of us have been dealing with for years, but for most of the world it’s been a relatively gradual change, whereas for the Marubo people and other Amazon tribes who have recently received high-speed internet it’s all come at once.

When do the Marubo begin to learn about the joys of Tupperware?

Related: In 1999, “Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan’s first crime wave — murder, fraud, drug offenses.”

UPDATE (6/12/24): Fake news?

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

WAPO FIRES EDITOR, REPLACES WITH WSJ AND TELEGRAPH ALUMS:

Well, well, well. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it still kinda does.

After losing half its readers and hundreds of millions of dollars, the Bezos-owned newspaper is radically shifting strategies.

Sally Buzbee, the author of this absolute disaster, no doubt left under her own steam to spend more time with her family or something similarly false and anodyne-sounding. It certainly had nothing to do with the wreckage of a once-great and respected news outlet.

* * * * * * * *

I, for one, thank her for helping inspire this dramatic shake-up. Among other things, it looks like the Post will be putting much of its most egregious propaganda-producers in a new division of the newsroom, and it may even rededicate the regular newsroom to reporting actual news.

Perhaps. I will believe that when I see it, but clearly there is at least a desire to do so. After all, the interim Executive Editor will be coming from The Wall Street Journal and the permanent replacement will be coming from The Telegraph Group–you may recall, I have recommended The Telegraph in one of my Things I Like columns.

The Wall Street Journal is not actually a conservative newspaper–it’s opinion section is, but much less so the newsroom–but it is superior to both The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Telegraph actually leans centrist and by newspaper standards, is far-right. It probably provides the most objective reporting in the English-speaking world.

Vanity Fair describes how the WaPo’s publisher broke the news to his employees: “I Can’t Sugarcoat It Anymore:” Will Lewis Bluntly Defends Washington Post Shake-Up.

During the Monday meeting, Lewis said, “We need world-class journalism every single day, and the people that are coming in to help us do that will be a real benefit to the organization.” He said he “really enjoyed working with Sally” and “wish[ed] it could have gone on for longer, but it couldn’t.” As far as diversity goes, Lewis admitted “it’s not great” and vowed to do better going forward.

Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be “significant opportunities” within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, “It was an iterative, messy process, which I don’t want to go into the details of.”

At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis said. “So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”

He continued to take a blunt approach when asked about the “third newsroom,” specifically how it would be staffed. “I’ll be looking for people to put their hands up internally, but also sourcing talent externally,” said Lewis. (Of the “third newsroom,” Lewis said in Sunday’s memo, “The aim is to give the millions of Americans—who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed—compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”)

It sounds like the “third newsroom” might end up as the rubber room where Taylor Lorenz and the more outre members of the Post’s staffers will be housed, perhaps where they can do the least damage to the paper’s actual reporting:*

* Or lack thereof: Sally Buzbee’s Rocky Tenure at the Helm of the Washington Post.

During her tenure, she oversaw the creation of a “Democracy” team at the paper in the wake of January 6. While the idea predated Buzbee, she helped make it a reality: a nine-person team within the National desk that counts reporters in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin among its members.

The idea that the institutions of democracy are under threat from the right came to inform much of the Post’s reporting under Buzbee. During her three-year tenure, the paper dedicated significant space to airing the concerns of left-wing activists and dismissing or distorting the concerns of those Americans who don’t share the progressive assumptions of the paper’s editors and reporters.

Today, we look at some of the best examples of that phenomenon.

Beginning with one of the most egregious examples: reporting that New York City mayor Eric Adams might not have approved the deployment of police to Columbia University’s campus during anti-Israel protests without pressure from Jewish “billionaires and business titans.”

“Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor,” the Post’s report read.

New York City deputy mayor Fabien Levy and others were quick to call out the antisemitic undertones of the article. “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that the Post seems to think it wasn’t necessary for the NYPD to get involved, even when students and outside agitators seized a building on campus — the outlet had previously characterized the anti-Israel protests as “antiwar demonstrations.”

But lackluster campus reporting is just one part of the paper’s larger failure to accurately and fairly cover the Israel–Hamas conflict.

Finally, Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal lays down a marker:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT CLAPTON-ROGER WATERS COLLABORATION, TO BE HONEST: Eric Clapton Discovers the Secret: Israel is Running the World.

“Israel is running the world, Israel is running the show.”

Superannuated guitar demiurge Eric Clapton made this shocking and counterintuitive revelation during a recent interview, and of course the has-been rock deity is by no means the first to say this. Claiming that the Jews secretly run the world has been a staple charge of Jew-haters since the publication of the infamous czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and before that, but it’s particularly bizarre and striking for Clapton to drag out this particular canard at this point, when the entire world is ganging up on Israel, its foremost ally has betrayed it, and all the international organs of “justice,” or what passes for justice these days, are intent upon preventing the tiny Jewish state from defending itself. If Israel is running the world these days, it’s doing an extremely poor job of it.

The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday that Clapton, who has recently been playing a guitar emblazoned with the flag of “Palestine,” not only claimed that Israel is running the world, but also expressed enthusiasm for the sometimes violent pro-Hamas demonstrations that have been breaking out on college and university campuses all over. “I was so enthused about what was going on at Columbia [University] and elsewhere,” said the aged adolescent, and who wouldn’t have been enthused?

Related: Eric Clapton says Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters suffers “terribly” from sharing his political views.

Eric Clapton has stated that he thinks Pink Floyd‘s Roger Waters has “a lot of guts” for sharing his political opinions – many of which have been heavily scrutinised and have even resulted in his own gigs being cancelled due to claims of anti-Semitism.

The guitarist’s thoughts on Waters arose during a new interview with The Real Music Observer, after being asked on what he thinks about people suggesting that musicians should “stick to music” rather than weigh in on politics.

“I don’t respond to the word ‘should’ very well,” he answers. “Anyone that tells me what I should be doing, I’m going to do the opposite. Not just out of spite, but because who are they to tell me how to live my life? I don’t interfere with them.”

Clapton continues, “I love Roger. I love him. We are brothers and he goes his way about it, and it takes a lot of guts, and he suffers from it terribly. I’ve seen him sit on the window ledge in tears and say ‘It’s morning here in Manhattan and I’m in tears again’, you know?

“I can’t do that, I am on the verge of tears a lot when I think about what’s going on and the evil there is, but I also have to carry a positive message of hope, and he does too. Music is a healing agent. I believe that there is a system of thinking about how you conduct yourself in that realm, and to be responsible not to offend people.”

When Clapton was quoted in 2021 about having “severe reactions which lasted ten days” after his first covid vaccination and being anti-lockdown, he was crucified by Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and numerous other publications, most of which brought up his infamous drunken rant in 1976 while onstage in Birmingham England about Enoch Powell’s anti-immigration “Rivers of Blood” speech. I hadn’t expected Clapton at age 79 to enter into Roger Waters-style anti-Semitic rants as well.

Exit quote:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

STEPHEN KRUISER: Let’s Take a Break From Despair and Be Irritated About Pride Month Today.

On Sunday afternoon, a friend reminded me that it is now the secular holy month of Pride, which I had managed to not think of until that point. Yeah, I hadn’t gone anywhere near the news or social media for a couple of days. I immediately thought, “Hey, let’s kick off the week with some annual Pride Month lamentation!”

Even the slightest variations on an “end of the Republic” theme can save what’s left of one’s sanity.

Here is a tale from last year’s Alphabet Mafia celebration that Catherine wrote about over the weekend:

It’s June, the month LGBTQ loonies have aggressively and egregiously claimed as their own, but even before the Pride flags unfurled last year, a California fire department lifeguard found himself in trouble for saying the flag did not accord with his Christian beliefs.

Last year, the LA County Board of Supervisors made it mandatory for county facilities to fly the Progress Pride flag throughout the month of June. The Los Angeles County Fire Department originally gave Capt. Jeffrey Little his requested religious exemption from personally putting up the flag, Fox News noted, but the exemption was later revoked and he was told his religious beliefs “do not matter”. Little later lost his investigation unit position and had to use vacation time to avoid being forced to put up the flag. This year, his religious exemption requests were simply ignored. Now he’s suing.

Good for him. It’s absolutely insane that people aren’t allowed to say “Christmas” at a public school, but a government entity can force an employee to worship its secular quasi-religion.

This is where everything goes awry for people like me. The heavy-handed “you will be made to care” approach by the militant LGBTQ+ mob provokes a rebound reaction. I’m all about live and let live, but around the 500th forced rainbow sighting of June — I think we’re already there this year — I’m more than a little irritated with the whole thing.

As are some on the left: Pride Marchers Face Off With Pro-Palestine Protesters After They Block Parade Route.

Pride parade marchers in Philadelphia Sunday were seen facing off with a group of pro-Palestine protesters after they blocked the parade route from moving forward, video shows.

From the comments: “They’re both fighting for top billing in the victimology hierarchy.”

This is also the time of the year when many notice that the Middle East itself appears exempt from most corporations’ Pride pandering:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

‘PEOPLE ARE COLLAPSING ON THE STREET:’ Oropouche epidemic in Cuba spirals out of control.

There are no adequate hygienic and sanitary conditions to combat the Oropouche fever virus (OROV) in Songo la Maya, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, the epicenter of the outbreak on the island, reported Dr. Roberto Serrano from that area.

The accumulation of garbage dumps and sewage, as well as the lack of resources for fumigation, is a current concern for the residents of La Maya, given the presence of the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, which proliferates in any type of water, including sewage, explained Serrano.

The doctor, who is still recovering from the symptoms of this virus, mentioned the extent of the outbreak in his locality: “There are countless febrile cases, patients with high fever, and above all, a severe headache, and pain, especially in the sacro-lumbar area and the muscular part of the back of the lower limbs, along with vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite. It is quite a severe condition, significantly affecting people’s health.”

“People are collapsing on the street because it is quite strong. I am telling you this because I went through it, I am going through it, as I have almost had the condition for a week, and today I was able to go to work, thank God,” he added.

In the case of Cuba, OROV is mainly transmitted through the bite of the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, which can also be a vector.

“It is a type of midge, but much smaller, barely visible when it bites, and there are a huge number of them. There are no mosquito nets here, nothing is sold here, and nothing has been done here. When one person in a neighborhood falls ill, the whole neighborhood does, and there is absolutely nothing in the clinics or pharmacies, not even dipyrone to reduce the fever,” said the doctor.

Cuba’s vaunted socialist healthcare system is “unexpectedly” not up to the task, it seems.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

THE MASK COMES OFF ANTHONY FAUCI’S PANDEMIC RESPONSE:

Due to the other outrage, the banana republic court verdict in lower Manhattan that was micromanaged and orchestrated by Joe Biden donor and trial judge Juan Merchan, the news about the pandemic culpability of Dr. Anthony Fauci barely registered a blip.

The top medical advisor in the White House in 2019-2023 at the height of the COVID outbreak, Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified in January in a closed-door session of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The transcript of that hearing was released last Friday.

In short, the response to the pandemic – the masks, the social distancing, the separation of families, the 6-foot spacing signs graffitied all across the country, the plexiglass walls erected to wall people off from each other, the closed schools, all of it was bovine excrement. All of it. There wasn’t a lick of science behind any of the policy. It was Anthony Fauci and his team making it up as they went along, and Fauci relishing the power trip in which he found himself.

In the National Review’s write-up of the release of the transcript, here is Dr. Fauci just nonchalantly admitting that masking, in this case, child masking that caused so much damage to an entire generation of child development, wasn’t based in any scientific data. Fauci said this.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Fauci: ‘It Sort of Just Appeared, That Six Feet Is Going to Be the Distance.’

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 3rd, 2024

June 2, 2024

UNEXPECTEDLY: WNBA Players Going Out of Their Way to Prove Charles Barkley Right About Their Petty BS.

In accordance with the prophecy:

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

RICH LOWRY: EV fail exposes Pete Buttigieg as the little cabinet secretary who couldn’t.

Rarely has a cabinet secretary done so little with such vast resources.

On the CBS show “Face the Nation,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to defend the Biden administration’s woeful record of building new electric vehicle charging stations that are key to unlocking its hoped-for EV nirvana.

Host Margaret Brennan asked how it could be that, with $7.5 billion allocated for this purpose two years ago, the administration has managed to build eight.

Not 8,000, or even 80. Eight.

Buttigieg said President Biden plans on building 500,000 chargers by the end of the decade, and — implying this is some sort of accomplishment — “the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”

It’s true that eight is better than zero, and the administration is now only 492,000 chargers away from its goal rather than 500,000 away.

At this rate, though, the Emperor Hadrian wouldn’t have finished his wall prior to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and we’d still be constructing the Hoover Dam* to this day.

Evergreen:

* Well, they can’t build those, either: As Joel Kotkin wrote in 2010, “When FDR commissioned projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, he literally brought light to darkened regions. The loyalty created by FDR and Truman built a base of support for liberalism that lasted for nearly a half-century. Today’s liberals don’t show enthusiasm for airports or dams — or anything that may kick up some dirt. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta, for example, promised a Las Vegas audience: ‘You will never see another federal dam.’”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Shocking new footage emerges of huge wooden ‘shantytown’ built in Democrat-run city whose name is byword for crime and urban decay:

Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic ‘shantytown’ that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city’s slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues.

Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland.

The footage showed trash strewn around scores of houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials.

Particularly shocking was just how large the ‘shantytown’ is, with a lengthy stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered with the makeshift dwellings.

Oxford could be heard calling the area a ‘shantytown’ that is ‘absolutely mindboggling,’ as he remarked how ‘insane it is that [city officials] allow this.’

He captioned the video, ‘Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country. They just allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.

‘This looks like Hooverville during the great depression. Welcome to Oakland’s very own Gavinville.’

Tom Wolf, a former homeless man who is a recovering heroin and fentanyl addict from San Francisco, also re-shared the same video and said, ‘Worse than any shanty in the third world. You know how we got here? Drugs.’

Oakland’s descent into a dystopian hellhole comes despite its enviable location in the San Francisco Bay area – one of the most naturally-beautiful locales in the United States.

And while both Oakland and neighboring San Francisco are home to huge numbers of wealthy people thanks to the tech boom of nearby Silicon Valley, both cities have become associated with filth and crime increasingly blamed on progressive policy.

“Gavinville?” Time to update an oldie but a goodie Photoshop:

Oakland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1977.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

JON GABRIEL: Trump isn’t the reason why Biden is down in the polls. Inflation is.

It’s tough to change the narrative when every trip to a store, restaurant* or barber shop serves as another anti-Biden campaign ad.

According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, Americans prefer Trump’s economic policies to Biden’s by a 10-point margin. Abstract warnings about the end of democracy won’t distract moms and dads from worrying about their weekly budget.

When it comes to the economy, Arizona is doing better than most states. We rank fourth in job growth, unemployment is below the national average, and the Phoenix area has the lowest inflation in the U.S.

And yet. It just doesn’t feel like boom times, nor will it in November.

According to the Joint Economic Committee, the average Arizona household spends $1,202 more per month than it did when Biden was inaugurated. Over that same time frame, they’ve cumulatively spent an extra $29,052 thanks to inflation.

A lot of things are going wrong** for Biden, from immigration to foreign wars to concerns about his age. But his biggest problem is that things simply cost too much.

He can’t stop voters from noticing that.

* As Kate Hyde joked on Twitter last week:

** Hard to think of illegal immigration as “going wrong” for Biden, when it’s been one of his (and/or his handlers’) goals from day one:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY, THE PIVOT BEGAN: ‘Did I miss the memo?’: Hospital workers in full PPE applaud George Floyd protesters as they march past.

As Greenwald writes in his follow-up tweet, “That episode single-handedly destroyed trust in public health officials, proving they’d politicize their expertise when convenient. Corporate media celebrated a douchebag-lawyer shaming families at deserted beaches, then — overnight! — cheered densely packed street protests.”

QED: Shot: Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in grief and grief mentoring. “It’s important that we start recognizing that we’re in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now.”

Many people are reckoning with individual losses, including illness and death due to the novel coronavirus, or loss of employment as a result of economic upheaval. But even people who haven’t lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are affected, Cormier says. “There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems — all of these systems we depend on — destabilize,” she says.

—The American Psychological Association, April 1st, 2020.

Chaser: APA’s action plan for addressing inequality.

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you while still reeling from the tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the ongoing protests, which are reverberating in a shockwave throughout our nation and around the world.

These recent events present us with an urgent challenge—as an association, discipline and profession, and individual psychologists—to bring our expertise to bear to address the range of underlying problems these events represent from discrimination to racism, which have resulted in long-standing social, economic, and political inequalities, from police brutality, to the disproportionate spread of the coronavirus among black and brown people, to the soaring unemployment rates among communities of color.

APA is urging psychologists to share their thoughts and recommendations for using the power of psychology to address the “pandemic of racism,” both in the short and long term. As part of that process, we must also examine our role as a field and as an association in perpetuating these ills.

—The American Psychological Association, June 2nd, 2020.

Note the photos atop those Webpages. The April 1st post is illustrated by photos of an elderly white woman looking frustrated in her apartment, and a young black woman staring wistfully into the distance outside the window of her apartment, with the photos separated by a white dividing line to emphasize both persons’ isolation from the world. Contrast that with the photo of the massed protestors carrying “Black Lives Matter” placards atop the June 2nd post.

NPR also pivoted on June 2nd, 2020:

The DNC-MSM and local mayors turned on a dime from enforcing hard-line lockdown rules and shaming anyone who went to church or got a haircut, to letting rioters congregate with impunity. As Bill de Blasio was quoted four years ago today, “When you see…an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seated in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”

Flashbacks:

● After telling GOP to downsize convention due to COVID-19, N.C. governor marches in crowded protest.

● NJ governor admits COVID-19 double standard, says recent protests are different from business owners’ complaints.

● De Blasio: Large Group Protests Are Acceptable, Religious Observances Are Not.

● NPR: Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.

● The Suicide of Expertise.

● Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 2nd, 2024
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