Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 10, 2024

REPORT: BIDEN ‘BLEW UP’ IN PRIVATE OVER SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT.

Privately, Biden was also furious about the report’s comments on his memory. During a private meeting with House Democrats at their policy retreat in Virginia earlier Thursday, Biden grew especially animated when asked how he was doing,

“How the f— could I forget the day my son died? Of course I remember everything,” he said, according two people with knowledge of his remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a closed-door conversation.

At his White House remarks, Biden began by stressing that the report concluded that charges were not merited, even citing specific page numbers to bolster his case.

“I was pleased to see he reached the firm conclusion that no charges should be brought against me in this case,” the president said. “This was an exhaustive investigation.”

He also highlighted a separate investigation into former president Donald Trump’s own handling of classified documents, and the differences between them — notably that Trump allegedly sought to keep the documents even when authorities asked for them back and that he, unlike Biden, now faces criminal charges.

There is no doubt that this report is going to hurt Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign. Not only does it reinforce the public’s concerns about his advanced age and mental decline, but it also supports the narrative of a two-tiered justice system that throws the book at Republicans, while Democrats face no consequences for their actions.

Mental decline, you say? Biden confuses presidents of Mexico and Egypt after defending ‘fine’ memory: ‘Hard to watch.’

Biden should have completely leaned into that moment and shouted, “¡Deja ir a mi gente!”

On the other hand, if Biden is furious about Thursday’s report, then the answer is simple: Either Biden Is An ‘Elderly Man With A Poor Memory,’ Or He Needs To Be Charged. Pick One.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

JESSE WALKER: Taylor Swift Is Just the Latest Subject in a Long History of Pop Conspiracy Theories.

Conspiracy theories about the music industry come in many flavors. A century ago, to give one of the uglier examples, Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent claimed that a “Jewish combine” was suppressing gentile music and promoting jazz. “Popular music is a Jewish monopoly,” the paper declared in 1921. “Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.”

You didn’t have to be a Ford-style bigot to suspect that a cabal was behind the music you disliked. In 1958, Vance Packard—the author of The Hidden Persuaders, a best-selling attack on the advertising industry—testified to the U.S. Senate that “the public was manipulated into liking rock and roll” and that “the rock and roll, hillbilly, and Latin American movements were largely engineered, manipulated for the interests of the [music-licensing group] BMI.” When a Michigan senator objected that many of his constituents genuinely like hillbilly music, Packard agreeably replied, “I like some of it too, but I think the quality of it lately has been degenerating.”

The psychedelic ’60s gave us such pamphlets as David A. Noebel’s Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles (which claimed that the Kremlin was using the Fab Four to induce “artificial neurosis” in the American child) and Gary Allen’s That Music: There’s More to It Than Meets the Ear (which speculated that the Beatles’ music was “put together by behavioral scientists in some ‘think tank’”).

Curiously, the magnum opus 2006 book Recording the Beatles is over 500 pages long, and there’s not one mention of those behavioral scientists in their think tank! (On the other hand, Oliver Stone just called and said, “Wake up, sheeple! That’s how deep the conspiracy goes…”)

On the other hand, given that Walker’s article is in the Atlantic, physicians, heal thy selves: Who Said It, Adolf Hitler or Taylor Swift?

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

PROFILES OF THE FUTURE: A Quick Look at the 21st Century So Far.

If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

* * * * * * * *

Then there is the American system, which constantly seems to test its own limits. There are countless problems in the United States, such as immigration, which has sadly become as lawless in the US as it is in Europe There is defunding the police, which, not surprisingly, has added to the anarchy. The political divisions that race-baiters have whipped up are such that rather than help minorities, such as improving K-12 education, there have just been increasing episodes of violence and an increasing number of cities with massive drug problems.

America, however, is also prosperous; formidably innovative, at the head of the most dazzling military concentration ever assembled, and structurally capable of managing economic and financial crises better than its competitors. Why? For a simple reason: flexibility. In many American states, you can hire and fire without cause, with just a few days’ notice. As soon as a company expands, it can hire on a massive scale in order to grow because it knows that if it hits hard times, it can also lay off people just as fast. A company is a rational entity.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21st century will be more American than ever.

And yet curiously, America’s left have been in search of stagnation for over half a century, in part because of their fear of a dynamic labor market and bottom-up growth: Welcome Back My Friends, to the Malaise That Never Ends.

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

CRISES BY DESIGN: Illegal Immigration ‘Surge’ Will Put ‘Downward Pressure’ On Wages For Years, CBO Says.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the ongoing surge in immigration, both legal and illegal, will put “downward pressure” on inflation-adjusted wages through 2034, according to a recently released report.

The downward effect on real wages will continue until 2027, at which point it will “partially reverse,” with immigration still expected to cause average real wages to be lower in 2034 than they otherwise would be, according to CBO. CBO did predict some positive impacts of immigration, as well, such as increased GDP growth and an expanded labor force.

(RELATED: Blue State Doled Out Over $330 Million From COVID Funds To Illegal Immigrants)

The surge in new workers is expected to reduce the amount of available capital, resources like factories or machinery, per worker, as well as work in low paying areas of the economy, both of which will exert a downward pressure on wages, according to CBO. The impact of these variables will decline over time as CBO expects additional capital to be built and workers to gain more skills.

Flashback: 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.”

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Shot: The Lefty L.A. Times Is in Hospice. Could There Be a Death Bed Conversion?

In 2018, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper. The South African-born emigre discovered a drug to slow metastatic cancer and became a billionaire. He believed it was his civic duty to take over the troubled newspaper as online news and social media platforms eviscerate print journalism.

The newspaper went even more woke. Soon-Shiong was derided as an absentee landlord and excoriated by the newspaper’s union shop. The clashes continued and so did the layoffs. This week’s layoff, which goes into effect in March, was the worst in the paper’s history.

* * * * * * * *

What good is a regional newspaper if it tells only one point of view and chooses stories based on young, dumb, activist reporters’ confirmation biases? As a result, the Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column. These flaws are the reason PJ Media and other conservative media exist.

—Victoria Taft, PJ Media, January 26th.

Chaser: Opinion: Age matters. Which is why Biden’s age is his superpower.

Joe Biden is old. Like each of us, he comes from a particular place in history, in his case the LBJ years. And that’s one big reason why his first term has been so full of accomplishment: His age, often cited as the greatest obstacle to his reelection, is actually his superpower.

There was never much question that Third Act, the progressive organizing group for people over 60 that I helped found, would end up endorsing President Biden for reelection. We campaign to protect our climate and our democracy, and so the chances we would back Donald Trump — who pulled us out of the Paris climate accords and helped mount the Jan. 6 insurrection — were nil. (Nikki Haley, another no-go, strenuously backed Trump’s Paris pullout.)

Biden, on the other hand, is a scrupulous small-d democrat. His record on climate isn’t perfect, but he has helped jump-start renewable energy development, and just last month he showed real bravery in standing up to Big Oil and pausing new permits for LNG — liquid natural gas — export.

—The L.A. Times, yesterday.

Keep rockin’! In seeking ever-higher energy prices, the L.A. Times wants even more of its readers to enjoy that sweet, sweet “funemployment,” which is how the paper described the results of the recession during Joe’s boss’ first time in office, back in 2009. It’s like “a blessing disguise!”

To be fair, the L.A. Times aren’t the only Democratic Party operatives with bylines pushing this narrative, Ace of Spades notes: The Leftwing Media Says “Biden Has Dementia, And Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing!“ “We have entered the Soviet grain report phase of the Biden presidency.”

Not surprisingly, but in sharp contrast, the overseas papers, which aren’t staffed with Democratic Party operatives with bylines, aren’t carrying Biden’s water:

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH ELDERLY POLITICIANS: Jim Geraghty asks, “Who’s Going to Take the Keys Away from This Man?”

President Joe Biden has not sat down for a formal television interview with any news outlet since October. He has not held a formal press conference since the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November. That day, he took four questions. As noted yesterday, Biden didn’t make any televised address to the nation when the U.S. launched airstrikes against the Houthis in January, nor when he ordered airstrikes against other Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Syria earlier this month. Biden didn’t give any Election Night remarks as he romped to a big win in the South Carolina Democratic primary. And Biden is skipping the traditional Super Bowl Sunday interview for the second straight year.

Biden has been strangely absent and unavailable for questions for almost his entire presidency, and this comes after the “basement campaign” of 2020.

You’ve heard a lot of statistics about Biden’s age, but here’s a really revealing one: The day Biden was sworn in as vice president in 2009, he was already the sixth-oldest vice president in U.S. history. By the time Biden left the role in 2017, he was the second oldest, behind Harry Truman’s veep, Alben Barkley. During the 1996 presidential election, Time magazine asked, on its cover, “Is [Bob] Dole too old for the job?” At the time, Dole was nine years younger than Biden is today.

Exit quote:

Related: Either Biden Is An ‘Elderly Man With A Poor Memory,’ Or He Needs To Be Charged. Pick One.

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRIORITIES: ‘This is the worst day of Joe Biden’s presidency,’ Democrats admit.

Joe Biden has suffered “the worst day of his presidency”, an ally said, after a bombshell report found the US President had “significant limitations in his memory”.

Lawyers who interviewed Mr Biden as part of an investigation into his handling of classified documents said he could not remember the years when he was vice president or when his son died of brain cancer.

An ally of the President said it had been “the worst day of his presidency”, telling NBC News: “I think he needs to show us this is a demonstrably false characterisation of him and that he has what it takes to win and govern.”

Another Democratic operative said the report was “beyond devastating” and “confirms every doubt and concern” that voters have about Mr Biden.

Those Americans left behind during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which very likely led to the 1,200 killed and over 200 kidnapped in Israel by Hamas on October 7th, might want a word about Thursday being “the worst day of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 10th, 2024

February 9, 2024

IT WAS SIXTY YEARS AGO TODAY: The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, 60 years later: “Life went from black and white to color.”

How radically did the Beatles change the zietgiest? This radically:

Here’s one weird anomaly to start with — the article [inside the February 24th, 1964 issue of Newsweek with the Fab Four on the cover] about the four musicians we know as John, Paul, George and Ringo is called “George, Paul, Ringo and John.”  Go figure.  And, boy, did Newsweek just not get it.  They started that article like this:

“Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair.  Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody.  Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.”

It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?  The Beatles generation became so mainstream that nobody can imagine that people felt that way, but Newsweek wasn’t just being stuffy, they were representing the overwhelming feelings of the vast majority of people over, say, twenty.

Indeed; my dad, whose teenage years and early 20s was spent listening to big bands, Crosby and Sinatra expressed similar views of the Beatles long into the ’70s. Others who had the same take in 1964 include:

Los Angeles Times

Feb. 11, 1964

With their bizarre shrubbery, the Beatles are obviously a press agent’s dream combo. Not even their mothers would claim that they sing well. But the hirsute thickets they affect make them rememberable, and they project a certain kittenish charm which drives the immature, shall we say, ape.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Boston Globe

Sept. 13, 1964

An estimable critic writing for National Review, after seeing Presley writhe his way through one of Ed Sullivan’s shows … suggested that future entertainers would have to wrestle with live octopuses in order to entertain a mass American audience. The Beatles don’t in fact do this, but how one wishes they did! And how this one wishes the octopus would win….

The Beatles are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful. They are so unbelievably horribly, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music, even as the imposter popes went down in history as “anti-popes.”

Not surprisingly, Newsweek predicted little future for the group after their Sullivan appearance:

“The big question in the music business at the moment is: will the Beatles last?  The odds are that, in the words of another era, they’re too hot not to cool down, and a cooled-down Beatle is hard to picture.  It is also hard to imagine any other field in which they could apply their talents, and so the odds are that they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict.”

Flash-forward to last November: ‘Now and Then:’ How the Beatles Created Magic on Their New ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ Albums, Via a Little MAL-ware.

 

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 9th, 2024

February 8, 2024

ANGRY BIDEN LASHES OUT AT REPORTERS, SPECIAL COUNSEL AFTER SCATHING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REPORT: ‘I know what the hell I’m doing.’

If you say so, Joe:

 

Posted at 11:24 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 8th, 2024

THE LONELY LIVES OF FORMER STAR TREK ACTORS:

In 1975, original Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O’Donoghue, fresh off the National Lampoon, was asked by producer Lorne Michaels to write scripts for the show’s original co-stars, the Muppets. (Michaels and Jim Henson shared a manager, if you’re wondering how that shotgun wedding happened.) O’Donoghue famously replied, “I don’t write for felt!”

Today’s left are now crying over them. This is not a healthy society.

UPDATE: As I was saying:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 8th, 2024

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY YOU KNOW, EVEN IN OLD BLIGHTY: First ‘private’ nuclear reactor to power 2m British homes.

Britain’s first “private” nuclear power station is to be built in Teesside using mini reactors previously championed by Boris Johnson.

Four so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) will be installed on the north bank of the River Tees under the scheme, producing 1.5 gigawatts of power – enough for up to two million homes.

For the first time in British history, the taxpayer is not involved.

The aim is to have them running by the early 2030s, meaning the power station could be in operation ahead of Hinkley Point C – now under construction in Somerset – and well before Sizewell C, planned for the Suffolk coast. Both are backed by the state.

Community Nuclear Power, the company behind the Teesside project, said it has reached an agreement with the US manufacturer Westinghouse to supply the reactors.

Faster, please. As Glenn likes to say, you can’t be antinuclear and care about the environment.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 8th, 2024

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Handling Lawsuit Against Oil Companies Calls Climate Change An ‘Existential Threat.’

  • Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Sabrina McKenna called climate change an “an existential threat” and “the most important issue” facing courts during an Oct. 26 talk at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School.

  • The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled this week that Honolulu’s lawsuit against oil and gas companies can proceed to trial.

  • “Climate change is, in my view, the most important issue facing all courts in the world,” McKenna said during the event.

That’s nice. When do Hawaiian leftists prove that they’re serious on this topic by banning all passenger aviation to and from the island?

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 8th, 2024

GLASS CEILING FINALLY SHATTERED:

Posted at 12:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 8th, 2024

February 7, 2024

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Go See American Fiction. 

One [Academy Awards] Best Pictures nominee that qualifies on the “merits” demanded by the diversity commissars is “American Fiction.” It features a black cast, black screenwriter, and black director. I noted the film here back in October when the first trailer came out (posted below for reference), noting that it seemed like an anti-woke film.

I have now seen it in the theater, and it is a superb piece of filmmaking. It does indeed make woke white liberals look foolish and idiotic, but it does so with a two-track story that is quite effective. And it is all the more effective for making its critique with a slow-rolling back story.

It is worth contrasting “American Fiction” with “An American Carol,” a satire of the left that David Zucker (of “Airplane” flame) made back in 2008, starring Kelsey Grammer and other A-listers. (Trailer below.) It was a direct attack on Michael Moore and his popular style of leftism. And while the film had lots of great set-piece jokes and musical numbers mocking the left, it wasn’t very good overall because it attempted to be a full-frontal assault, and had no subtlety.

Having seen it last week in Fort Worth, there’s no doubt that American Fiction is a much more watchable film than American Carol. Just a heads up, as Steve Hayward alludes above, with the exception of American Fiction’s postmodern last act, the big belly laughs are almost all in its trailers. The rest of the film plays like a slightly edgier version of a good Cosby Show episode from the late 1980s, albeit with excellent on-location widescreen cinematography, not Cosby’s set-bound videotaped 4X3 look.

As Hayward concludes, “Go see ‘American Fiction,’ and help boost its box office numbers, and perhaps—who knows?—an underdog bid to win the Best Picture award with a design meant to reject the whole ‘diversity’ regime that the Academy has embraced. That would be true racial justice.”

UPDATE: American Fiction cast say Oscars shouldn’t just reward ‘Black pain’ (video):

(Updated and bumped.)

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 7th, 2024

DEADSPIN CANNOT CLAIM IGNORANCE IN BLACKFACE LAWSUIT:

The opening paragraph of the article also claimed the face paint proved the fan “hates black people and Native Americans.”

The full photo of the fan was available online the night of Jan. 26, a day before Deadspin published its piece. We also sent Deadspin and Phillips the full photo in an email three hours after the publication of the article.

Phillips acknowledged our email almost immediately in a now-deleted tweet, saying he could explain how “red and black face paint is just as offensive as blackface.”

He also accused me of “hating Mexicans” in the same post.

Nonetheless, it’s inarguable that Deadspin and Phillips both knew they had printed a harmful lie about an innocent 9-year-old kid by mid-afternoon on Nov. 27.

And yet the article remained as is. Deadspin did not correct the article. That’s journalism malpractice.

In fact, an editor for the site doubled down on the accusation three days later.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 7th, 2024

SELF-ABSORBED TAYLOR SWIFT DOESN’T GIVE A RIP ABOUT DECEASED MENTOR TOBY KEITH:

To answer Rich’s query: Taylor Swift sells off one of her $40m private jets — but keeps her even larger plane to commute to lover Travis Kelce in Kansas City, as she threatens to sue college student who tracks her whereabouts.

Given that Swift was branded “the world’s most carbon polluting celebrity” by one wag in December, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

Posted at 8:29 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 7th, 2024

JIM GERAGHTY: The Self-Defeating Republican Party.

  • When McDaniel took over, Trump was about to be inaugurated, there were 52 Republican senators and 246 Republican members of the House, and 4,205 of the 7,383 state legislative seats (almost 57 percent) were held by Republicans. Today, Biden is president, there are 49 Republican senators and 219 Republican members of the House, and 4,022 of the 7,383 state legislative seats (54.4 percent) are held by Republicans. Filings with the Federal Election Commission indicate that the RNC begins 2024 with just over $8 million in cash on hand, the lowest since 1993, adjusted for inflation. The Democratic National Committee begins the year with $24 million on hand.

  • Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar reported that the RNC spent about $297,000 on office supplies, $1 million on management consulting, $70,000 on floral arrangements, $116,000 on media-booking consultants, and $263,000 on limousines — significantly more than their counterparts in the Democratic National Committee in each category. Meanwhile, the DNC significantly outspent the RNC on voter-file maintenance, get-out-the-vote texting, and transfers to state parties — you know, the sorts of efforts that actually help candidates get elected.

  • Oh, and finally, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that “Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company” and that “Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?” Jeff Miller, a lobbyist for Anheuser-Busch, is hosting a fundraiser for Trump on March 6.

I don’t know about you, but I find all this “winning” exhausting. Will Rogers famously said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.” Lately, the Republican Party is demonstrating all the organization of Bogota rush-hour traffic.

We can’t get a bipartisan consensus to aid our allies. America’s enemies must be laughing this morning.

As Jim Treacher adds, “Even Trump says Bud Light is good now. So I guess that whole thing is over. Sure, fine, so this was one of the few culture-war skirmishes the Republicans were actually winning. But what’s so great about winning anyway, right? Such a hassle. Lay down your guns, Kid Rock. War is over if you want it. Oceania is not at war with Bud Light. Oceania has never been at war with Bud Light.”

Exit quote:

Posted at 5:15 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 7th, 2024
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