FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY: Five Civil Rights Americans Lost to the COVID-19 Panic.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Star of sitcom Black-ish claims Trump will put black people ‘in camps’ if he’s re-elected and says ‘this motherf***** is Hitler.’

I’m so old, I can remember back in 2012 when a sitting vice president and his party’s operatives with bylines said the same thing about genteel milquetoast Mitt Romney.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS PROCEEDING APACE HAS JUMPED TO LUDICROUS SPEED: Wait, The Biden Administration Is Going to Label Jewish Goods Now? Sounds Pretty Hitlerian.

So, does anyone have a history book in the Biden White House? Because this policy is a public relations nightmare. The Biden administration and the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are beyond strained due to the Gaza War. The Biden White House wants the war to end since it’s causing domestic issues, namely that scores of young voters and Muslim Americans are giving the president and the Democrats grief over their support for Israel. Jerusalem is going to continue its ground war against Hamas in the region—Biden can choke on it.

Israel has offered numerous ceasefire agreements since the last failed humanitarian pause; Hamas has rejected all of them. Then, this White House gets huffy that Israel doesn’t stop their offensive operations against the genocidal terror group that’s dominated the Gaza Strip for over 20 years. Democrats on the Hill are now mulling cutting off new arms to Israel or at least applying conditions for new aid. That’s bad, but what’s even worse is this plan to label Jewish goods that come from the West Bank. Will they have yellow stars on the packages? It’s a Hitlerian throwback and a move that should cause an uproar (via Financial Times)[.]

Exit question:

… How many more uncommitted votes before Jews are asked to wear a yellow star? https://t.co/odFArSAiC1

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) April 5, 2024

Who on earth could have seen this coming from President John Gill?

UPDATE: “We won’t support you:” Inside Biden’s ultimatum to Bibi.

Curious how Biden appears to hate Netanyahu as much as the last Democrat in the White House!

MORE:

For those shopping for Passover, be prepared for these stickers which appeared on Israeli products at our local Safeway. Activists have added warnings that these products are "contaminated with apartheid & Zionism." pic.twitter.com/cuc8qBBTj7

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 4, 2024

I guess star-shaped yellow stickers might have been considered too gauche for those spreading their antisemitic-fueled socialism nationally.

ALL HAIL PRESIDENT PETER LEMON MOODRING!

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

Classical reference in headline:

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Why Truman’s 1948 upset is no template for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, according to the expert who wrote the book on polling failure.

Harry S. Truman’s stunning, come-from-behind victory in the 1948 presidential election has encouraged frissons of optimism for long-shot candidates ever since. Walter Mondale invoked the 1948 election in his race against President Ronald Reagan in 1984, insisting the polls signaling his overwhelming defeat weren’t picking up the popular support flowing to his candidacy. Mondale lost in a 49-state landslide. In 1996, Bob Dole channeled Truman’s pugnacity of 1948, declaring, “I’m going to win whether you like it or not.” The closing hours of Dole’s race against President Bill Clinton included a campaign stop at Truman’s hometown in Independence, Missouri. Dole lost by 8.5 percentage points.

President Joe Biden’s uncertain campaign for reelection this year has invited comparisons to Truman’s come-from-behind victory in 1948. A recent assessment in Politico, for example, said the blueprint Truman followed in his aggressive and strenuous campaign in 1948 offers Biden a playbook for victory. Even the leading newspaper in France, Le Monde, has invoked the 1948 template as a way of understanding this year’s U.S. presidential election.

While broad and superficial similarities may be detected between 2024 and 1948, the two cases are in fact quite dissimilar, especially in the conventional wisdom that pre-election polls generate and reinforce.

* * * * * * *

In 2020, several prominent national polls, including those conducted for CNN and jointly for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, anticipated Biden’s winning by 10 points or more. Biden carried the popular vote by 4.5 points in what, overall, was the poorest polling performance in a presidential election since 1980.

As of Apr. 4, the RealClearPolitics polling average showed Trump with less than a percentage point lead in a two-way race against Biden–scarcely a margin to inspire 1948-style overconfidence.

Another notable difference lies in the sense of vigor projected by the Democratic candidates. Truman was 64 years old in 1948 and pursued a grueling campaign of a kind that is difficult to imagine the 81-year-old Biden even remotely contemplating. Truman logged thousands of miles by train in an arduous, cross-country whistlestop campaign, or what biographer David McCullough called “a fast-rolling political roadshow.”

“I know I can take it,” Truman said of the rigors of the campaign, adding in jest: “I’m only afraid I’ll kill some of my staff.”

Meanwhile, Dewey ran an above-the-fray campaign, a model Trump would never embrace. Dewey, unlike Trump, sought to minimize controversy and avoided specific policy pronouncements, once telling an aide “When you’re leading, don’t talk.”

Biden doesn’t have the energy and the good health sufficient for a repeat of Truman’s last-minute whistlestop campaign, but the entire Democratic apparatus are dedicated to repeating one aspect of it:

IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN’T DO? Why Sydney Sweeney and her double-D breasts are being hailed as proof that woke culture is dead.

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY: Explaining the Manchurian Media:

Or to put it another way: China’s Long Tentacles Extend Deep Into American Media.

The companies that own the major news networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS, all do significant business in China. On the print side, top U.S. newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have been criticized for running paid China Daily inserts. What they were paid for these inserts is still unknown.

By contrast, conservative news companies are much less involved in China. Conservative radio giant Salem, whose attempt to buy Tribune several years ago provoked an enormous freakout from media reporters over consolidation, is all-American. And Fox, after several troubled attempts to break into the Chinese market—including sending a News Corp team to help build People’s Daily a website—has mostly given up, after selling its Asia-Pacific operations to Disney over the last two years.

Disney owns ABC and has a park in Shanghai. It also owns ESPN, which was criticized for its coverage of China’s retaliation against the NBA earlier this year over one team owner’s support of the Hong Kong protests. But other than ABC, Disney is relatively uninvolved in news.

Comcast, on the other hand, has a much larger footprint in the U.S. media landscape, between NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC. The company’s role in fostering cultural exchange is truly historic: they’ve brought to millions of American homes a customer service experience akin to a utility provider in a communist country, and have invested billions to bring “Minion Land” and a Harry Potter village to Beijing, with the help of a state-owned investment vehicle.

What might the Chinese government do if it were displeased with something that ran on MSNBC? Perhaps they’d have a tense conversation with their partners at 30 Rockefeller Plaza about the forthcoming slate of movie releases in China. Or it might be worse, given their decision to cut off all NBA games to retaliate against one team owner.

But evidently China is pleased with their partnership so far, and no NBC journalists had their residency permits pulled earlier this month. A March 10 post on the New York consulate’s website touted a recent meeting with Comcast execs:

Comcast Corporation is not only the participator of the increasingly close cultural exchanges, but also the contributor and beneficiary of deeper economic exchanges between China and the US. The NBC and the Universal Studios Theme Park in Beijing are witnesses of the in-depth development of Sino-US economic and trade relations and increasingly close cultural exchanges.

Consul General Huang Ping made a point of discussing China’s response to the coronavirus, as well as news coverage in the U.S.: “China’s prevention and control practices have earned valuable time and experience for other countries. …We hope that the NBC and other U.S. media will objectively and fairly report China’s efforts to control the epidemic.”

Comcast’s masters in Beijing must be quite pleased with the coverage they’re receiving from NBC:

As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.

QUESTION ASKED FOUR YEARS AGO YESTERDAY: Has Sweden Found the Right Solution to the Coronavirus?

If the COVID-19 pandemic tails off in a few weeks, months before the alarmists claim it will, they will probably pivot immediately and pat themselves on the back for the brilliant social-distancing controls that they imposed on the world. They will claim that their heroic recommendations averted total calamity. Unfortunately, they will be wrong; and Sweden, which has done almost no mandated social distancing, will probably prove them wrong.

Lots of people are rushing to discredit Sweden’s approach, which relies more on calibrated precautions and isolating only the most vulnerable than on imposing a full lockdown. While gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited and high schools and colleges are closed, Sweden has kept its borders open as well as its preschools, grade schools, bars, restaurants, parks, and shops.

President Trump has no use for Sweden’s nuanced approach. Last Wednesday, he smeared it in a spectacular fashion by saying he’d heard that Sweden “gave it a shot, and they saw things that were really frightening, and they went immediately to shutting down the country.” He and the public-health experts who told him this were wrong on both counts and would do better to question their approach. Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist and now adviser to the Swedish Health Agency, says that other nations “have taken political, unconsidered actions” that are not justified by the facts.

In the rush to lock down nations and, as a result, crater their economies, no one has addressed this simple yet critical question: How do we know social-isolation controls actually work? And even if they do work for some infectious epidemics, do they work for COVID-19? And even if they work for this novel coronavirus, do they have to be implemented by a certain point in the epidemic? Or are they locking down the barn door after the horses are long gone?

Flash-forward to 2024: How Sweden Proved the World Wrong About Lockdown:

Certainly, Sweden did not do everything right during the pandemic. The government itself admitted that in 2022, when it concluded its inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. However, Sweden did manage to succeed in a few key areas where other nations failed spectacularly. Notably, it did not panic during the crisis. It considered how its policies would impact society as a whole. It did not just focus on limiting cases of Covid. And it did not ignore the potential long-term effects of lockdown. Above all, it recognised that the pandemic policy of China’s authoritarian government should not have served as a guide for a liberal democracy.

Of course, our study isn’t perfect. We could never possibly cover every single health aspect or economic indicator. And yet our analysis does reveal some cold, hard facts about the real cost of lockdowns. The burden is now on the pro-lockdown camp to prove that their disastrous policies were worth it.

As John Tierney wrote here in August, “Sweden’s ‘Laissez Faire’ Pandemic Policies Paid Off. Sweden, which the media denounced in 2020 as a ‘pariah’ and a ‘cautionary tale’ because it stayed open and and told its citizens not to wear masks, has come through the pandemic with the lowest rate of excess mortality in Europe, as Johan Norberg shows in a Cato Institute report. All the more reason its public-health leaders deserve a Nobel Prize.”

Not surprisingly, John’s post was titled, “Why the Media Doesn’t Talk About Sweden Anymore.”

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: So, the Left Is Now Defending Joe Biden’s Showering With His Daughter.

JIM TREACHER IS TESTING THE UTTERLY TERRIFYING LIMITS OF THE CURRENT STATE OF AI: What If Brian Stelter Had His Own Video Game?

IN THE GRIP OF APOCALYPSE ANGST:

[In Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, author Dorian Lynskey] quotes so widely that at times the book resembles a megadeath miscellany. One of the perverse pleasures of reading about how humanity deals with calamity is the comically grim vocabulary, some of which was new to me: omnicide, promortalism, Weltuntergangsroman. There are a couple of handy phrases: unaligned AI (‘if AI is not aligned with human values, then it is considered “unaligned” or “unfriendly”’) and its potential consequence, knowledge-enabled mass destruction. How have I come this far without considering the distinction between catastrophic risk and existential risk? Hint: the latter is worse.

Or is it? Bellow is the first novelist Lynskey quotes on the subject of our perverse love of apocalypse but he’s not the last. Here’s a Don DeLillo character arguing that the news has displaced the novel:

This is where we find emotional experience not available elsewhere. We don’t need the novel… We don’t even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports and predictions and warnings.

And here’s Kurt Vonnegut: ‘Let us be perfectly frank for a change. For practically everybody, the end of the world can’t come soon enough.’ Made-up stories about total annihilation are thrilling, and yet we can’t seem to engage with the reality of an encroaching doom.

In her 1965 essay on sci-fi films ‘The Imagination of Disaster’ (a touchstone for Lynskey), Susan Sontag argues that part of our viewing pleasure ‘comes from the sense in which these movies are in complicity with the abhorrent’. She writes about the ‘peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess’, but at the same time acknowledges the enduring effect of the Bomb. In the middle of the 20th century it became clear that from then to the end of human history, every person would spend his individual life not only under the threat of individual death, which is certain, but of something almost unsupportable psychologically – collective incineration and extinction, which could come at any time, virtually without warning. It was Sontag who pointed out that the title ‘Apocalypse Now’ was wishful thinking. What we’re living with is ‘Apocalypse From Now On’.

As James Piereson wrote in Camelot and Cultural Revolution, the death of JFK, combined with the myriad failures of the Great Society, caused once optimistic Democrats to become what he dubbed “punitive liberals” by the mid-1960s. Richard Nixon winning the presidency in 1968 seemed to push them completely over the edge, resulting in a massive number of competing doomsday scenarios by the early years of the following decade. (Which not surprisingly, quickly became fodder for Hollywood’s post 2001, pre-Star Wars eco-obsessed sci-fi movies). Or to paraphrase the late and sadly missed Kathy Shaidle on Trump as Hitler, I’m already on (at least) my fourth apocalypse:

Oh, and:

Lynskey quotes so widely that at times the book resembles a megadeath miscellany. One of the perverse pleasures of reading about how humanity deals with calamity is the comically grim vocabulary, some of which was new to me: omnicide, promortalism, Weltuntergangsroman. There are a couple of handy phrases: unaligned AI (‘if AI is not aligned with human values, then it is considered “unaligned” or “unfriendly”’) and its potential consequence, knowledge-enabled mass destruction.

I got your unaligned AI right here!

This is just two Chat GPTs having a chat on how to destroy civilization on earth… pic.twitter.com/UuUXrDhb4z

— Acknowledge A.I (@acknowledgeai) April 5, 2024

TALCUM X GAINS COMPETITION: ‘World’s sexiest albino’ posed as BLM leader to steal nearly $500k through fake charity, prosecutors.

An activist who calls himself the “world’s sexiest albino” is on trial this week after allegedly conning nearly $500,000 from donors through a reportedly phony Black Lives Matter charitable group he established.

The FBI arrested Sir Maejor Page, 35, back in 2020 after a complaint detailed how he fraudulently utilized a Black Lives Matter non-profit organization “by way of misrepresentations and by posing as a Black Lives Matter leader.”

Page, who is also known as Tyree Conyers-Page, began his trial on Tuesday stemming from federal charges of wire fraud, one count of concealment money laundering and two counts of money laundering. He pleaded not guilty to the charges back in 2021 and has seen his trial repeatedly pushed back, including in August, before it kicked off this week.

Authorities detailed that in 2018, Page set up a bank account called “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta Inc.,” and also set up a social media page, “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta,” as a supposed charitable foundation and listed the group on GoFundMe, the FBI said in 2020.

Related: Gap CEO: We are seeing early signs of a reinvigorated business.

I’m not at all surprised!

HOW CAN WE MISS YOU IF YOU WON’T GO AWAY? Lizzo is not the first diva to come crawling back.

Five days after announcing on social media that she was abandoning music, Lizzo, the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter, clarified that she was not quitting after all. Her about-turn had the feel of someone storming out of a blazing row having had the last word, only to find they had left their coat on the back of a chair.

Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, is not the first star to shock her fans with a dramatic declaration that was later recanted.

Frank Sinatra led the way when he retired in 1971 two years after the release of My Way, aged 55 – only to come out of retirement two years later and play another thousand concerts.

But the age of social media appears to have made it much easier for performers both to retire and then promptly return.

* * * * * * * *

Digital quitting takes being a diva to self-defeating extremes. Lizzo, like many others, appears addicted to sympathy.

As with Sinatra, nobody really believes these artists are gone for good when they quit, but their digital platforms demand fake finality and the stars demand fake horror. Lizzo is not entirely correct when she says: “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Lizzo’s brief timeout gets her headlines coming and going, and keeps these headlines from recirculating: Lizzo accused of sexual harassment and fat-shaming Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez.

Related: Lizzo expressed interest in banana sex-shows years before allegations. “In the lawsuit, the dancers claimed that ‘things quickly got out of hand’ after ‘Lizzo began inviting cast members to take turns touching the nude performers, catching dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas’.”

And, via the Power Line Week in Pictures, Lizzo’s return to performing could have serious repercussions in the Pacific Rim:

HAMMER TIME: Talking Miami Vice with Legendary Keyboardist Jan Hammer.

A fan of the series contacted me recently looking for my 2003 interview with Vice soundtrack composer and all-around synthesizer wizard Jan Hammer, which was originally published at the late-lamented original version of Blogcritics. I was happy to republish it with updated hyperlinks, and drop in a few videos of Hammer’s music from YouTube, a site that astonishingly, didn’t exist back in those stone knives and bearskins days on the Internet.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Earthquake Edition.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: How the British look at the world.

Just as in America, this grading system conveyed a particular set of values to students, one that they carry with them as they enter their professional lives. It seems to me, for example, that, for better and for worse, the ingrained habit of proving that they are worthy of a first has shaped the style of many British journalists. Even as the country is getting more polarized, opinion writers care more about being entertaining than about being right. Across the political spectrum, from the Guardian to the Telegraph, columnists have far greater freedoms than their American counterparts to adopt a chatty tone, to float a half-baked idea, or to go off on an entertaining tangent. For American journalists, the cardinal sin is to be wrong. For British journalists, the cardinal sin is to be boring.

If, “for American journalists, the cardinal sin is to be wrong,” then there was more sinning going on in the newsroom from 2015 to, well today, than Sodom and Gomorrah combined:

• Adam Carolla: ‘Every Mainstream Media Narrative … Has Been Wrong.’
• Ex-Intel Official Admits He Knew Hunter Laptop Was Real, and That’s Not the Worst Part.
• Sports Illustrated Caught Using AI Generated Articles Written by Fake Authors.
• Deadspin Reporter Blasted By Mom Of Young Kansas City Chiefs Fan He Falsely Shamed For Wearing ‘Blackface:’ ‘He Is Native American.’
• New York Times Opinion Columnist Doesn’t Know Hamas Runs Gaza.
• Associated Press Won’t Let Reporters Call Hamas a Terrorist Organization.
• AP’s Gaza reporter repeatedly ripped Israel on social media, said oppressive regime should be ‘overthrown.’
• Israel Shared Intelligence to Us Showing Hamas Operated Inside Building Where Ap, Al-Jazeera Had Offices.
• Washington Post Settles Nicholas Sandmann Defamation Lawsuit In Covington Catholic High School Controversy.

Given the reportage of the last nine years, it’s a bottomless list, needless to say.

I TOO AM SADLY UNABLE TO STOP IT: Michigan mayor says he’s been asked to stop the eclipse.

There’s only one incorporated city in Michigan that‘s even going to see totality during the Great American eclipse, Luna Pier, which is just a little north of Toledo.

Like many small cities, Luna Pier is worried that they’ll be overrun with sun watchers.

So much so, that Jim Gardner says people have asked him to stop the eclipse from happening.

I’ve been told that I need to stop this eclipse and I do not have the authority to do that. So yes, people are really concerned. But we’re just trying to prepare them.

That’s an odd request and an odder response.

What does mayoral authority have to do with an astronomical event?

Especially when these are pre-planned regular events. No need to worry:

Related: Newspaper cutting unearthed from 1970 successfully predicted 2024 solar eclipse. It’s time to start bopping along to some Bonnie Tyler:

UPDATE: Speaking of Bonnie Tyler: ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ singer Bonnie Tyler feels extra love for her hit song ahead of the eclipse.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: How climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers.

Well, these things happen when “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past:” One of the longest running climate prediction blunders has disappeared from the Internet.

As spotted by Steve Hayward of Power Line, CBS is (not surprisingly) getting in on the enviro-craziness: Hyper-sexual “zombie cicadas” that are infected with sexually transmitted fungus expected to emerge this year.

But how badly will the murder hornets react to the hyper-sexual zombie cicadas? And if so, will their trysts cause any negative impact on the vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers?

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Believe data, not activists: Transgenderism among kids is mostly a fad.

Leaked documents last month from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health found some doctors don’t think disclosing potential risks is necessary.

As The Post reported, practitioners believe telling a 14-year-old about possible fertility consequences is like talking to a “blank wall.”

A child psychologist said it’s “out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”

If children can’t understand the medical consequences of an entirely elective procedure that isn’t necessary to benefit their health or save their life, perhaps it’s best not to do it?

This shouldn’t be controversial.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Democrats Warn Parents To Quickly Transition Their Kids Before They Grow Out Of It.

Flashback: Here Come the Teen Transgender Lawsuits.

BACK AND TO THE LEFT, BACK AND TO THE LEFT: If You Want to Gauge the Democrats’ Lurch Toward the Left, Read This Thread About Bill Clinton.

‘William Jefferson Clinton was a moderate Republican’ isn’t a new criticism of the former president—Michael Moore lobbed it in his book “Stupid White Men” years ago. Still, some pollsters and data crunchers have used it to analyze the former president, as his 1996 landslide was far from a foregone conclusion after the 1994 Republican Revolution. People thought this Slick Willy was dead in the water, and he might have been if it weren’t for Dick Morris’ triangulation overhaul concerning policy. In short, it eschewed far-left tendencies and gravitated toward the middle, attacking policies with healthy consensuses.

We’re a right-of-center country; no matter how much progressives deny that fact, it’s true and channeling that saved Clinton’s presidency. Patrick Ruffini of Echelon Insights decided to construct a lengthy Twitter thread about Clinton’s 1996 comeback, how his presidency stole some GOP initiatives, and how some issues that Clinton championed still resonate today, like being tough on crime and curbing illegal immigration.

Wait until the left discovers JFK’s policies. As Peter Robinson of Uncommon Knowledge and Ricochet said when he interviewed James Piereson, the author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution in 2008, “Let me point out that John F. Kennedy ran to the right of Richard Nixon on defense, and not long after he was elected, he set to work on and enacted before his death a massive income tax cut.” Piereson replied, “You know, a lot of conservatives look back on Kennedy and say his views in 1960 are not all that far from their views today.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE ICE FLOE: Dem Senator Richard Blumenthal Turns Up the Heat On Justice Sotomayor to Retire: ‘Graveyards Are Full of Indispensable People.’

Speaking with NBC’s Sahil Kapur for a story published Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) made a veiled reference to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who ignored calls to step down for years during former President Barack Obama’s tenure. She passed away in 2020, with former President Donald Trump choosing her successor.

“I’m very respectful of Justice Sotomayor,” Blumenthal told NBC. “I have great admiration for her. But I think she really has to weigh the competing factors. We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included.”

The idea of the 69-year-old Sotomayor stepping down has gained momentum in recent days. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan made the argument for the justice to retire in a recent column for The Guardian.

CTRL-F, Blumenthal’s age on the Mediaite article brings back zero results. Or as Jim Geraghty writes: Really Old Senator Tries to Convince Less Old Justice That She’s Too Old to Stay at Work.

Oh, Blumenthal thinks Sotomayor is too old to remain as a Supreme Court justice, huh?

Blumenthal turned 78 in February. Sotomayor is 69 years old. And while Sotomayor has diabetes and travels with a medic, her mother lived to be 94.

Look, I’m as appalled as anybody else at what Blumenthal is saying, but we should probably cut him some slack, as old men tend to ramble and get confused. Or maybe he’s just having a traumatic flashback from Vietnam.

Flashback: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics.

DEVELOPING: Earthquake hits NYC! 4.8 magnitude quake rattles the Big Apple as thousands — as far as Philly and New Jersey* — report feeling tremors inside ‘shaking buildings.’

Yes, that will happen, when its epicenter was in Lebanon, New Jersey.

Fortunately though:

I AM FINE

— Empire State Building (@EmpireStateBldg) April 5, 2024

If you see this man, follow him to freedom!

New Yorkers: I know the city is about to descend into utter chaos because of this tiny earthquake. So, if you see this man, follow him. He will get you to safety. pic.twitter.com/mwki9gUefn

— James Pethokoukis ⏩️⤴️ (@JimPethokoukis) April 5, 2024

MARK FELTON: Did Japan Attack the Continental US — Fact or Fantasy? (Video.)

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Judge Orders Trump To Stop Noticing That The People Trying To Put Him In Jail Are Democrats.

JIM TREACHER: Sorry, Beyoncé — Charley Pride Got There First.

Dang. And I thought Taylor Swift fans were nuts!

“Record-breaker and history-maker”? [Michelle Obama] has left the White House behind forever(?), but she still likes making $#!+ up.

Contrary to the former First Lady, Beyoncé isn’t the first African-American to hit #1 on the country chart. Do you know who is?

Of course you know. I just told you in the headline. It’s this guy:

That’s right, Charley Pride. That was his first #1 Billboard country single, all the way back in 1969. It came out a few months before the moon landing. For all we know, Neil Armstrong was listening to it on his way to work.

Okay, maybe not. But he sure wasn’t listening to Beyoncé.

Pride went on to rack up an incredible 29 #1 hits in his career. That’s more than Dolly freakin’ Parton!

Hell, he had his first #1 album on the country chart when MLK Jr. was still alive. At a time of violent racial strife, barely a century after the abolition of slavery, Charley Pride sold 70 million records to the whitest people in America.

That’s something to be proud of, isn’t it? So why are all the headlines lately about the first black woman to make such an achievement?

Why are we erasing this man’s legacy? Doesn’t ol’ Charley count anymore?

See also: Erasure of the accomplishments of Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton, Carrie Fisher, and Scarlett Johansson in sci-fi and comic book movies, not to mention the behind the scenes talents of women like Marcia Lucas and Gale Anne Hurd to pretend today’s crop of female stars are revolutionary feminist breakthroughs.

On the other hand, let’s praise Beyoncé for what she did accomplish! Page Six: Beyoncé Saved Dying Genre Known As Country Music.

The genre was dying so much that she wanted to cash in on it.

— The Hanford Institute 🐶 (@ThiccInstitute) March 29, 2024