REWARDING FASCISM: “So now we know what it takes to become a state: the murder of Jews. Rape, kill and kidnap Jews and seven months later, the leaders of Ireland, Spain and Norway will recognise your statehood. That’s the lesson of today’s coordinated spectacle of virtue-signalling in Dublin, Madrid and Oslo: pogroms work. The butchery of civilians gets results. Fascism has its rewards. This is ‘diplomacy’ at its most dangerous.”
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
May 22, 2024
BREAKING: Nikki Haley Says She Will Vote for Trump. “‘I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account who would secure the border,’ Haley said during a discussion on foreign policy at the Hudson Institute, her first public appearance since ending her presidential bid in March. ‘Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times,’ she added. ‘But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.’”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Iran Confirms They Are Interviewing Several New Turban-Wearing Bearded Genocidal Psychopaths To Replace Deceased President.
UNEXPECTEDLY! The Torricelli Option Is On the Table: Leftwing Bloomberg Begins Polling Trump v. Kamala Harris, Anticipating a Biden Departure.
As Michael Graham sagely cautioned in 2004 (the year Torricelli was swapped out and replaced by a fossilized Frank Lautenberg on the NJ ballot), “Don’t assume you know who’s on the Democratic ticket until Election Day.”
As Glenn noted in February, “But it is, and they can’t hide it anymore. It was an issue in 2020 too, but they could hide it.”
Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: It Would Be Easier to Stop Worrying about AI If Its Apostles Weren’t So Creepy.
First of all, I want to salute [Scarlett] Johansson for saying no to Sam Altman and Open AI. I am certain that, given how flush with cash they are, they offered her more money for the use of her voice than most actresses will make in an entire career. She said no despite how buzzy and glamorous an emergent technology AI is among movers and shakers. This would have been the easiest paycheck to earn in the world: Sit down in a booth and let someone sample your voice for a few days.
Why did she decline? (Leave aside for a moment just how sleazy it was that Open AI tried to use Johansson’s voice, or its style, even after being rejected — for those suspicious of Silicon Valley business ethics, this was fine vindication.) This brings us to what most unnerves me about Silicon Valley’s proselytization for AI: Its most vociferous apostles seem for all the world to be driven by psychologically bizarre, socially damaged desires. In Johansson’s statement, she says she declined the offer to recreate her character from Her “after much consideration and for personal reasons.” That strikes me as a polite way of saying, “Did you actually watch this film? Did you understand the point of this film?”
For Her is not a love story — it is a cautionary tale. Set in the near future (really just an excuse to dress everyone in awkward ties), it stars Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely and embittered soon-to-be divorcé. As part of his unfulfilling job, he gets a “virtual assistant” with his newest operating-system upgrade: “Samantha,” a learning AI voiced by Johansson that exhibits such naïvely ingenuous lovability as an algorithm new to the world that the alienated and unhappy Phoenix begins to fall in love with it. And, seemingly, “she” with him as well.
It is a marvelous and memorable film — Spike Jonze’s best work by far as both director and writer, with a truly humane, beating heart at its core — so I will not spoil the plot for you from there. But, as those who have seen it know, the film is designed to make you uncomfortable with AI, not more welcoming of it — for AI is incapable of loving you, or even truly befriending you, at least not in the way that people crave and require. Her makes a direct appeal to its viewers to take their heads out of the clouds (and, by analogy, drop the smartphone from their hands) and re-engage with the human reality of the world around them, rather than getting lost in a world of artificial intelligence and pleasures both ultimately illusory and inevitably heartbreaking.
So how the hell could Sam Altman have gotten all of this so wrong? Go back to the “Torment Nexus” joke I opened with. What kind of an utterly dense brick of a person could watch Her and think, “Yeah, I definitely want my AI to remind me of the algorithmic plague that seduced society away from everything except their earbuds before cruelly ghosting planet Earth.” One presumes Open AI has already moved on to option No. 2: getting Hugo Weaving to reprise his role as “Agent Smith” from The Matrix.
To be fair, Weaving portrayed Agent Smith 11 years ago in ad for GE to promote their hospital networking technology. As I wrote in a post back then headlined, “No, That’s Not Creepy At All,” “GE takes the notion of human capital seriously.”
JIM TREACHER: Ireland Is a Cesspool of Antisemitism.
I’m allowed to say the following because I’m Irish. We get to say it about each other. Except this time, the N-word is “Nazi.”
Ireland, Norway, and Spain are now recognizing a country that does not exist and never has.
So: Hamas butchers and rapes a bunch of innocent people, diligently documents it all on livestream video, and now the world is supposed to hand them a state? Please take that idea and stuff it up your bottom with a broom handle till your tonsils ache.
It’s official: Antisemitism is mainstream, and nobody cares because none of these guys are wearing MAGA hats.
The left and the right both have a big antisemitism problem. They’ve both got a bunch of weirdos who hate Jews and are always finding reasons to blame them for everything. The difference is that the right shuns and belittles their loathsome antisemites, while the left sends theirs out in a suit and tie to address the entire world.
It ain’t just Ireland, of course. Biden is currently coddling the Jew-haters in his own party because he desperately needs their votes.
And yet he’s still moaning about Charlottesville in 2017. “Oh, can you believe those Nazis? Look how much they hate the Jews!”
Which is true. What’s also true is that you never saw any of those idiots again.
Seriously, who even are those dumb hillbillies? What are they doing now? It’s been seven years. Who are they influencing? Why should I care?
In sharp contrast, the Corbynization of the Democratic Party goes all the way to the (p)resident’s handlers: Of Course: Biden Was Plotting With Iran Against Israel.
SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC Tries to Shame Rudy Giuliani and is Immediately Shut Down in an Embarrassing Fashion.
this you? pic.twitter.com/keLa6BanNp
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) May 21, 2024
It gets worse: In the AOC Archive.
An archived web page from 2018, created by a developer named Riley Roberts, purported to offer for sale Civet Select, “the world’s most exotic cup of coffee.” In Indonesia, according to the web page, “cage-free indigenous Palm Civets climb to the top of the plantation trees to eat the best coffee beans in the crop. Civets digest the berries and pass the coffee beans. The enzymes in the digestive process remove the bitterness and acidity from the coffee. Farmers hike the plantation and surrounding forest to find the rare, wild Civet droppings. The found beans are thoroughly cleaned, washed and sun dried at the plantation. Lab testing confirms Civet coffee is clean and safe to drink.”
Anyone reading these astonishing claims might well think the resulting product, pardon my French, tastes like shit, but a winsome photo of Roberts’s attractive partner, “Alexandria,” highlights her reassuring guarantee that that’s not the case: “This Civet coffee has a unique, smooth and full-bodied flavor that I really enjoyed.”
Yet most amazing of all is the listed price of the “found” beans for which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was shilling: $40 for two ounces! Coffee beans usually come in 12-ounce packages, so $240 for a bag of “droppings” would be an awfully steep price even for New York City Democratic Socialists.
Say what you will about the coffee that Rudy is hawking, it is — hopefully! — nowhere near as, err, exotic as the coffee Sandy reportedly endorsed.
May 21, 2024
ENDORSED: Apply 👏 the 👏 Social 👏 Justice👏 Playbook👏 to 👏 Jews.
Folks, it’s time to step up. It’s time’s up to do better. It’s not enough to “not be antisemitic.” We have to be actively anti-antisemitic. Anyone who is not actively anti-antisemitic is antisemitic.
We’ve seen the stunning success of similar online campaigns for Women, Black People, and Trans Folk in completely eliminating all prejudice and elevating mental well-being. It’s time to apply the same social justice playbook to Jews. There are specific ways to perform your support that all Jews are guaranteed to appreciate since Jews, like all other marginalized groups, can be treated as a homogenous people who famously agree on everything.
Here are ten ways to be an Ally to Jews:
Support Jewish-Owned Businesses
Forget DuckDuckGo: support businesses like “Google,” an impressive technology company based in Mountain View, California. Both founders of this quite large company are Jewish! Or financially empower companies like “Goldman Sachs,” an investment company founded by Jews 150 years ago. Can you say #ChaiAchiever?
Don’t forget to support Jews in STEM! This past summer, Universal released a film celebrating the national Yid-spiration, J. Robert Oppenheimer. However, we have to call out the film for portraying this Jewish icon with a non-Jewish actor. The Jewish community famously hates that, given the critical failures of productions like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Maestro, Golda, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Life Is Beautiful.
Elevate Jewish Voices
Jewish authors who could use your support include Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Ayn Rand, Judy Blume, David Mamet, Isaac Asimov, and Gertrude Stein. It’s time to take these voices out of the dark and into the mainstream.
We need to celebrate Jewish contributions to the world of cinema: for instance, classics such as Bee Movie, which was both written by Jews and stars a celebrity many people may not know is Jewish, Jerry Seinfeld. Bee Movie is just one of at least dozens of films created by Jewish people.
Did you know the pianist in Billy Joel’s band is Jewish? We need to elevate Jewish voices like his, so they get the audience they deserve. Representation matters. Perhaps that is why so many Jews are agents.
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing, you big macher, you.
MARK JUDGE: Help Me Hire a Stripper to Read My Audiobook.
We still don’t know for sure if it was a stripper or a belly dancer.
We do know, however, that the dancer who performed for our high school music teacher at a bachelor party in 1982 was part of the news cycle in 2018. That’s when the American political left and the Stasi media tried to destroy me.
That’s why I need to hire a stripper to do the audio version of my book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.
It’s not a prank. Getting a professional adult dancer to read The Devil’s Triangle would work aesthetically and as a broader cultural commentary on modern politics and media. It would defy the new liberal Stasi who buzzkill everything, and even make a few tight-ass conservatives who were afraid to defend me nervous.
Our 1982 bachelor party erupted in the news in 2018, during the nightmarish Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Opposition researchers—including a couple of disgruntled classmates from my time at Georgetown Prep—tried to sink Kavanaugh, a classmate of mine, by depicting me, him, and the entire class 1983, as party people and womanizers. They found a description of the 1982 bash with the stripper in something I’d written years before, and were off to the races. It was The Wild Life meets The Lives of Others. The Washington Post employed a reporter to find out if we’d hired a belly dancer or a stripper. There’s still a debate about that. I only remember the dancer as very pretty and nice.
I survived the 2018 hit and wrote a book about the experience. The Devil’s Triangle recently got some media attention when I was interviewed by Martha MacCallum for a documentary that’s now airing on Fox Nation. This was followed by a blistering column by Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post—defending me.
Now, if we sell enough books, there will be an audio version.
Hiring a stripper to read The Devil’s Triangle is an in-your-face move, but there are also some layers to it. The first is artistic. Juxtaposing a narrative about an evil political plot and 1980s teen stream-of-consciousness with a rich feminine voice would work brilliantly. Two opposite elements that produce something dynamic.
As Ross Douthat wrote in 2018 during the Kavanaugh hearings, “The Year of Our Lord 1982, upon whose disputed summertime events a Supreme Court nomination now hinges, was part of the Reagan era but not a particularly conservative year.”
JIM TREACHER: Paul Pelosi’s Attacker Was Neither a Male Prostitute Nor a Trump Supporter. But the whole thing was weird*, and still is:
The whole thing was just bizarre. The “male prostitute” thing started because a local reporter said one of the two men was in his underwear when he opened the door for police. This claim was quickly dropped, and nobody has ever explained why it was made.
(I never understood why it would be a scandal anyway if a man was attacked in his own home while wearing only underpants. He was in his house in the middle of the night!)
Then NBC aired this report:
This sequence of events has been vindicated by police bodycam footage, but at the time it was different than the version that had been given to the public.
Instead of explaining, NBC deleted the video from their website, and reporter Miguel Almaguer suddenly disappeared. Almaguer no longer works for the network, after 18 years of service, and has never explained anything about the incident.
That’s weird, man!
Jim Geraghty adds: The Detail About Pelosi’s Attacker That Everyone Chose to Ignore.
I have no objection to Paul Pelosi’s attacker, David DePape, being sentenced to 30 years in prison. Throw the book at the bastard.
But I notice a strange detail in the coverage in the New York Times:
Judge Corley said in court that she had taken into account Mr. DePape’s lack of a previous criminal record and his vulnerability to conspiracy theories.
Lack of a previous criminal record? He was in the country illegally! His tourist visa expired in 2008! He had been residing in the country illegally for fourteen years when he attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband!
The New York Times described DePape as “a Canadian citizen who moved to San Francisco in his 20s,” and the Associated Press labeled him “a Canadian who moved to the U.S. more than 20 years ago.” Those descriptions are really misleading. DePape’s illegal immigrant status is not mentioned in the coverage from CNN, CBS, the BBC, The Guardian, and many other news reports on the verdict.
The Times characterized Pelosi’s attacker as almost an inevitable consequence of the fierce criticism of his wife:
Mr. DePape reflects the underbelly of American politics: a man driven by online conspiracy theories who seemed to embrace the rhetoric of many right-wing figures, who have used dehumanizing language for years to describe Ms. Pelosi and call her an enemy of the United States.
Yes, online conspiracy theories are bad, and no one should break into any lawmaker’s house, seeking to break their kneecaps, and violently assault a lawmaker’s spouse.
But there are some other lessons to be taken from DePape’s crime. One is that some of the people who either enter the country illegally, or those who enter legally and then stay beyond the legal limit, and who then move to sanctuary cities, are bad and dangerous people who should be deported.
* And speaking of weird: What’s Going On Here? Paul Pelosi’s Attacker Has Already Been Tried and Sentenced – Meanwhile, the Man Who Wanted to Kill Justice Kavanaugh Hasn’t Even Gone to Trial.
FINALLY — CALIFORNIA GETS SERIOUS ABOUT CRIME: San Diego is finally cracking down … on beachside yoga.
No, they’re not cracking down on illegals storming the beaches. They’re not cracking down on drug dealers. They’re not even cracking down on homeless encampments.
It’s the yoga that’s gotta go, according to a new city ordinance in San Diego.
https://twitter.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1792681534694281370
To be fair, it’s probably for the best: Americans who practice yoga ‘contribute to white supremacy,’ claims Michigan State University professor.
May 20, 2024
ANYTHING YOU PUT ON THAT TELEPROMPTER, RON BURGUNDY WILL READ:
ETHNIC ORIGIN ALERT: Biden ditches the Puerto Rican, Greek and Irish communities, now claims to come from the Jewish community pic.twitter.com/UNmGxCX62l
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 20, 2024
Even the sign language reader seems pretty astonished at Joe’s latest whopper in the above frame capture. Here are flashbacks to some of the Joker’s many other origin stories:
Biden was raised in the Puerto Rican, Greek, Irish, Catholic, Jewish, Italian, Polish, Palestinian, Persian, and Black communities of Delaware. Incredible! pic.twitter.com/O5rX3TYuZi
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 7, 2024
President Peter Lemon Moodring strikes again!
ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR II: The real story of Bauhaus and the Nazis.
This confluence of competing styles was reflected most of all in architecture. The architecture of the Third Reich is generally regarded as reactionary, but the reality is more complex, and Weimar provides one of the best examples. The city’s monumental Gauforum (which now houses governmental offices, and a sombre museum about slave labour in the Third Reich) is one of the largest surviving buildings of the Nazi era. Its style is traditional but streamlined, a blend of old and new. We’re generally inclined to regard Nazi buildings as ugly because the tyranny which made them was ugly. If only life – and art – were so simple. In fact, a lot of Nazi architecture wasn’t so far removed from modernist styles like Art Deco. Hardly surprising really, when so many Bauhaus architects ended up working for the Nazis.
The work of Bauhaus alumni during the Third Reich demonstrates that a lot of artists, then as now, were actually pretty apolitical, happy to focus on the job in hand rather than fretting about the morals of their paymasters. Yet a good many actively embraced the new regime: 188 joined the Nazi party, 15 joined the SA and 14 joined the SS. One SS man, Bauhaus graduate Fritz Ertl, was one of the designers of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Most Bauhaus biographies are more nuanced. Herbert Bayer, a student and then a teacher at the Bauhaus, designed jolly brochures for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, celebrating the achievements of Hitler’s Reich (he called himself ‘the anonymous favourite of the propaganda minister’). He left Germany in 1937, after his work featured in the Nazis’ infamous ‘Degenerate Art’ show (a crude propagandist display designed to denigrate modern art).
The case of Bauhaus graduate Franz Ehrlich is even more complex. Imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp (a few miles from Weimar) after he was caught producing pamphlets for the Communist underground, he was put to work inside the camp, furnishing the commandant’s office and designing the creepy motto on the camp gates. Inmates did what they had to do to survive and only a fool would dare to judge them, but Ehrlich continued working for the SS at Buchenwald even after he was released.
In his 2015 book, Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany, Jonathan Petropoulos wrote that Bauhauslers far higher up on the school’s food chain than Ehrlich were “unexpectedly” more than a little eager to work with the post-Weimar socialists. and very likely they would have, if only the former art student leading the regime hadn’t so hated modernist aesthetics.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Los Angeles County Officially Celebrates an American Traitor’s Contribution to the Communist Defeat of South Vietnam.
In my experience, there are two Americans, whom most Vietnam veterans regard as the most deserving of utter contempt, if not downright hatred, for their role in connection with the Vietnam war. They are LBJ’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara and Jane Fonda.
McNamara earned his well-deserved high standing in any Vietnam veteran’s list of despicable Americans because of his, incompetent micro-management of that war at the highest levels, combined with his egotistical refusal to accept professional military advice.
Jane Fonda earned her place in the Pantheon of American traitors by giving aid and comfort to the enemy while our men were still fighting and dying, and while prisoners of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton were routinely tortured to force them to meet with visiting American propagandists such as Jane Fonda, Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and other fellow travelers. Despite that record, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution proclaiming “April 30 of each year as Jane Fonda Day.”
As with Earth Day each year, reminding otherwise naive 21st century citizens of Fonda’s early ’70s perfidy isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Jane Fonda’s Vietnam Actions Were Worse Than You Think.
DISPATCHES FROM AL SHARPTON’S NETWORK: MSNBC: Michael Cohen’s Heist of $60,000 from Trump Was Him “Just Trying to Rebalance the Bonus He Thought He Deserved.”
MSNBC’s @Lawrence O’Donnell defends Michael Cohen stealing from the Trump Org.: “Cohen [was trying] to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved, & it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved & the bonus he had gotten the year before” pic.twitter.com/UsdEfQUetR
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 20, 2024
Well, we’ve known for almost 15 years that O’Donnell was a big fan of wealth distribution, but now we know it’s on both a macro- and micro-economic level. Flashback: “I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN RADICAL CHIC: The U.S. Response to Iranian President’s Death Is Disgraceful.
A condensed listing of Raisi’s bloody track record — even before becoming president of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) recaps his barbarism:
Raisi — the deputy prosecutor general of Tehran from 1985 to 1988 — facilitated the regime’s 1988 slaughter of thousands of jailed political dissidents by serving on a four-member panel known as a Death Commission, which decided who would live and who would die. The commission would conduct interviews of prisoners — often just a few minutes long — aimed at determining their loyalty to the Islamic Republic. Questions could include: “What is your political affiliation?” “Do you pray?” “Are you willing to clear minefields for the Islamic Republic?” The wrong answer meant death.
The executions were usually by hanging or by firing squad, and typically took place the same day as the interrogations. The commissions allowed neither lawyers nor appeals. Burials occurred in unmarked mass graves. The regime waited months before notifying the relatives of the victims, refused to tell them the locations of the bodies, and told them not to mourn in public. The victims included women and children as young as 13. Raisi has defended the killings, saying in 2018 that they were “one of the proud achievements of the system.”
What a guy, proud of murdering thousands of innocent Iranians, to mourn. FDD also noted that Raisi’s subsequent posts as deputy chief justice, attorney general, and chief justice allowed him to preside “over the prosecution, imprisonment, torture, and execution of countless detainees.”
Biden’s State Department formally expressed its “official condolences” in a statement Monday afternoon:
The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran. As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
It wasn’t just the State Department that was issuing its condolences to a mass-murderer, of course:
For those keeping track:
U.S. Senate Chaplain
U.S. State Department Spokesman
White House Spokesman
NATOAll offered condolences for the Butcher of Tehran's death https://t.co/ugTiPVD1IV
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) May 20, 2024
Regarding the NATO spokesperson’s response, former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore put it into sharp perspective:
Our condolences to the people of Germany for the death of Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, President of Interpol, and Director of the Reich Security Main Office Heydrich, who perished in the car crash. https://t.co/ppOKszLVnt
— Chuck DeVore (@ChuckDeVore) May 20, 2024
WHEN THE ARTISTS ARE WAY TOO AHEAD OF THE CRITICS: 110 years ago, The Rite of Spring incited a riot in a Paris theater.
It began with a bassoon and ended in a brawl.
One hundred years ago today, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky debuted The Rite of Spring before a packed theater in Paris, with a ballet performance that would go down as one of the most important — and violent — in modern history.
Today, The Rite is widely regarded as a seminal work of modernism — a frenetic, jagged orchestral ballet that boldly rejected the ordered harmonies and comfort of traditional composition. The piece would go on to leave an indelible mark on jazz, minimalism, and other contemporary movements, but to many who saw it on that balmy evening a century ago, it was nothing short of scandalous.
Details surrounding the events of May 29th, 1913 remain hazy. Official records are scarce, and most of what is known is based on eyewitness accounts or newspaper reports. To this day, experts debate over what exactly sparked the incident — was it music or dance? publicity stunt or social warfare? — though most agree on at least one thing: Stravinsky’s grand debut ended in mayhem and chaos.
50 years ago, when Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted on American television on PBS, many critics had a similar reaction:
ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS THE IDEOLOGY: Watch: Top New York Times reporter caught on hot mic urging reporters NOT to interview prominent Iranian dissident.
Farnaz Fassihi from the New York Times @nytimes was overheard in a Clubhouse room instructing Leili "Make sure Emma doesn't interview the crazy Masih @AlinejadMasih." This isn't the first instance of her urging reporters & journalists to boycott Alinejad. It's time for Fassihi to… pic.twitter.com/qADl4pJTT6
— Mooniter (@Mooniter) May 20, 2024
Erick Erickson adds, “It is extreme important for everyone to understand this. The New York Times UN Bureau Chief and chief Iran reporter was caught on audio urging reporters not to interview one of the most prominent Iranian dissidents.”
Who could have seen this coming? Other than Tom Cotton, James Bennet, Bari Weiss, Tim Scott, Don McNeil, and others censored by America’s former Newspaper of Record. Or as its successor in that department prophesied four years ago:
FIRE HARRISON BUTKER? K.C. Star Opinion Writer Says Yes. Time to Hire Female Kicker.
Anybody who thinks this controversy is about women’s rights is missing the point. Butker said nothing that would indicate that he opposes women’s empowerment and ability to chase their dreams, whatever they might be.
What offends the left has nothing to do with that; it has everything to do with undermining family values. It is their hatred of the family that is revealed, not their zeal for girl bosses.
It is awfully hilarious though seeing the leftist establishment suddenly and in lockstep remembering how to define “what is a woman,” only two years after Ketanji Brown Jackson’s legendary “I’m not a biologist” meltdown.
May 19, 2024
DEVELOPING: Iranian President’s Helicopter Suffers ‘Accident’ or ‘Incident’ — Either Way, It Went Down.
UPDATE:
My thoughts are with the @washingtonpost obituary team in this difficult time as they fiercely debate whether to call Ebrahim Raisi an “austere religious scholar”, a “patriotic anti-Zionist leader” or a “zealous anti-corruption crusader”.
— Gabriel Noronha (@GLNoronha) May 19, 2024
UPDATE (5:27 pm): It’s not an obit, since there’s no official word yet, but currently, the WaPo is going with “protégé and trusted confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi was elected president in 2021 after a decorated career as an ultraconservative in Iran’s judiciary.”
No mention of the many executions that Raisi signed off on. Even the House of Stephanopoulos is noting that in the late 1980s, “International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Raisi served on the commissions.”
UPDATE (6:05 pm): If Raisi Is Dead: Implications for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
UPDATE (11:01 pm):
BREAKING: No survivors from Iranian helicopter crash
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 20, 2024
UPDATE (11:22 pm):
CNN reports that there were no survivors of the helicopter crash, citing Iranian State media.
In addition to President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, was also onboard. pic.twitter.com/jTir3NeRT8
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 20, 2024
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR NEW ZEALAND: Transgender 18-year-old attempts surgery on himself at home due to lack of access.
A transgender young person’s attempt to perform top surgery on himself is a clear result of historical underfunding and inequitable access to gender affirming healthcare, an expert says.
The 18-year-old turned up at an emergency department after attempting to perform a bi-lateral mastectomy, also known as top surgery, at home. He was several hours through the procedure when he became concerned he would cause nerve damage.
The case was published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday and was described as an “act of desperation”.
The young person was facing long wait times for a surgery referral in the public health system and was unable to afford to go private – which can cost up to $35,000.
“This is a clear result of the historical underfunding and inequitable access to gender affirming care around the country,” said Jennifer Shields, president of the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA).
“Research shows that gender affirming hormones and surgeries are essential for the wellbeing of many trans people,” she said.
When does New Zealand get its version of the Cass Report?
THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF BEZOS: The Washington Post’s Disgrace.
In that chat, several people pressed Adams to send the New York Police Department to clear out Columbia University’s dangerous, disgraceful, and violent pro-Hamas encampment, something that did not happen until student reprobates further escalated the situation and broke into and occupied a campus building several days later.
The Post surfaces no evidence—zero—to indicate there is any connection between the demands made in the chat and the cops’ appearance at Columbia, since the decision, of course, was left to Columbia University’s weak-kneed president Minouche Shafik.
A spokeswoman for the newspaper declined to comment, and the paper did not publish the piece in its print version on Friday.
Maybe this is why. “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,” the reporters write ominously. Get it? The piece is a modern-day echo of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in which Woodward and Bernstein—er, Natanson and Felton—mimic the uncovering of a secret plot.
We hope you’re sitting down, because the Post reveals that several of the billionaires also “worked with the Israeli government” to screen film footage of the Oct. 7 massacre compiled by the IDF and one of them, the hedge funder Bill Ackman, even facilitated its screening at Harvard.
And as Jeff Jacoby notes, the WaPo has made one of their periodic reminders that they’re simply Democratic Party activists with bylines: A cynical Washington Post tells Biden: Nothing matters more than beating Trump.
Of course the Times leans well to the left and many of its journalists revile Trump. All the more reason, then, for Kahn to emphasize that it is not the newspaper’s responsibility to ensure a Republican defeat. The Times may — the Times does — often fail to resist its liberal bias. Nonetheless, its highest-ranking news editor deserves credit for articulating the principle that the paper ought to uphold.
Now consider the principle articulated by The Washington Post opinion section.
Last week, the Post’s editorial board — which speaks with the institutional voice of the newspaper — declared that it regards President Biden’s reelection in November as a matter of such importance that it will not fault him for promoting misbegotten policies that are designed to attract votes. The president’s policies “clearly pander to core constituencies,” the editorial board conceded, and “some of these policies are quite bad — even dangerous.” Other pandering by the White House may be “less obviously dangerous but still violates common sense and principle.”
For example, the Post cites the president’s refusal to approve a ban on menthol cigarettes. The editorial board has strongly supported such a ban, which it maintains would save tens of thousands of mostly Black lives. But as a political matter, it knows that if the White House were to issue the ban, the Democrats would lose a significant number of voters “whom Mr. Biden can ill afford to alienate in this close election.” And since “Mr. Trump’s reelection is the kind of nightmare scenario any responsible politician would go to great lengths to prevent,” the Post concludes that it is responsible, or at least acceptable, for Biden to let those deaths occur rather than weaken his odds of reelection. “Democrats are scrapping for every vote,” the editorial asserts, so this is no time to be fastidious about matters of principle, or about right and wrong.
In a lifetime of newspaper reading, I have never encountered an editorial so cynical in its willingness to discard any principle other than to win at all costs. “Trim your principles, Democrats, and pander away,” the Post advises Biden and his party. To “play Machiavelli” isn’t the worst thing, it says — the worst thing is “losing.”
Or as Matt Taibbi wrote in December: Democracy Dies in Daylight: Eight years ago the Washington Post pledged to save democracy, but now argues we need to be saved from it.
UPDATE: NYT Carrying Biden’s Water — This ‘Article’ Is Like a Press Release.
In 2005, Editor & Publisher casually noted, “Welcome to life under the Washington Post-New York Times swap. As part of a secret arrangement formed more than 10 years ago, the Post and Times send each other copies of their next day’s front pages every night,” so I can’t say it’s surprising to see the Gray Lady also working so blatantly to advance Biden’s reelection bid.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Biden Compares MAGA Republicans to 1950s-Era Segregationists.
But as Matt [Margolis] points out in his excellent piece on blacks and polls, black voters over 50 are more susceptible to the machinations of Democrats trying to scare black voters with visions of hooded whites coming for them.
Matt points out that “recent polling shows that black voters 50 years old and older still back Biden 82% to 8%. However, younger black voters, between 18 and 49 years old, a stunning 25% support Donald Trump.”
Joe Biden spoke on Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture to an audience largely made up of older black voters and raised the specter of segregationists hoping to stampede black voters to vote for him.
Biden recalled his meeting with the “Little Rock Nine” and tried to tie MAGA Republicans with the segregationists that opposed them.
“The Little Rock Nine were met with vitriol and violence. Today the vitriol comes in other insidious forms—an extreme movement led by my predecessor and his MAGA Republican allies, backed by an extreme Supreme Court that gutted affirmative action in college admissions. My predecessor and his extreme MAGA friends are now going after diversity, equity and inclusion all across America,” Biden said. “They want a country for some —not for all.”
Biden has no business criticizing MAGA for being segregationists. As a congressman in the 1970s, Biden fiercely resisted busing and school desegregation.
And how: Speaking of George Wallace…:
But since Obama brought it up, it’s worth noting that the only person in modern American politics to have repeatedly praised Wallace and other segregationists is Joe Biden. It was Biden who bragged that in 1973 Wallace considered him “one of the outstanding young politicians of America.” It was Biden who wrote in 1975 that the “Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace.” It was Biden who in 1981 told a black witness in the Senate that “sometimes even George Wallace is right.” It was Biden who, while campaigning for the presidency in Alabama in 1987, claimed that he’d been the recipient of an award from Wallace in 1973 (it probably wasn’t true; but what a thing to brag about!), and then boasted that Delaware was “on the South’s side in the Civil War.”
“Biden was also buddies with J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a segregationist and anti-Semite who would later become a mentor to the Clintons.”
As well as another fellow Democrat, Robert Byrd: Herschel Walker says ‘Democrats do not like America’ and slams media for not grilling Joe Biden over his friendship with former KKK member-turned senator Robert Byrd.
Not to mention this former aficionado of blackface:
Then there was Biden’s terrible optics in 2022, when he modeled himself after the ultimate segregationist:
And while Biden is busy trashing “MAGA Republicans,” in the past he was eager to attack their predecessors as well, using similarly hyperbolic language.
Flashback to 2012: Biden: Romney’s approach to financial regulation will ‘put y’all back in chains.’
And a flashback to 2011, when Biden called Tea Party members “terrorists.”
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA:
Oakland is now replacing traffic lights with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from Oakland's electrical boxes: pic.twitter.com/Y2lFQ8BJsM
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 19, 2024
Oakland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1977.
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: God Baffled That Democrats Managed To Ruin California. “‘You guys were literally given everything! How do you even do that?’ said a spokesangel for the Almighty. ‘You have perfect weather, beautiful coastline, great surfing, skiing in the mountains, fish tacos, rolling vineyards, the list goes on. How on earth did you manage to take the most beautiful stretch of land on God’s earth and turn it into a huge dump? It doesn’t make any sense.’”