Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
August 23, 2023
August 22, 2023
HOW IT STARTED: CNN writer vexed by conservatives’ use of leftist terms.
CNN appears unwilling to admit that Americans have grown antipathetic to certain leftist terms on account of the loathsome and/or meritless concepts they signify.
Instead, to make sense of the ongoing backlash to leftist terms and concepts such as “woke,” “critical race theory,” and “equity,” senior CNN writer John Blake has penned an article explaining why Republican “verbal jiu-jitsu” is to blame.
Blake defined “verbal jiu-jitsu” as a “form of linguistic combat in which the practitioner takes a political phrase or concept popularized by their opponent and gradually turns into an unusable slur.”
An example would be the Biden administration and Democratic establishment‘s hostile use of the term “MAGA” as a modifier for those populist conservatives and Republicans whom they wish to mark as extremists.
Blake suggested that the adoption of new terms or turns of phrase by those with differing worldviews is a means to “avoid taking opposing arguments head on and instead redirect their opponents’ momentum to beat them.”
—The Blaze, yesterday.
How it’s going: Cuccinelli Calls Out CNN’s Hunt for Deceptively Editing DeSantis.
Former Virginia Attorney General and founder of the DeSantis-aligned Super PAC Never Back Down, Ken Cuccinelli confronted CNN’s State of the Union fill-in anchor for deceptively editing comments made by Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis during an interview with the Florida Standard to make it seem like he called Trump supporters “listless vessels.” Regardless of whom you support for the Republican nomination, everyone should be outraged at the media lying about one of the Republican candidates.
Setting up the dishonest clip, Hunt insisted “There was a pretty interesting moment in a recent interview where Governor DeSantis talked about Trump supporters. He used the words listless vessels.”
Cuccinelli jumped in to correct her: “He wasn’t talking about Trump supporters!”
—NewsBusters, Sunday.
Transcript at link, including Hunt’s response after getting caught: “Fair, Okay.” With absolutely no remorse, Hunt then continued to steamroll the conversation. Yet another “reliable source” at CNN!
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: We will woke you! Classic Queen song “Fat Bottomed Girls” is mysteriously dropped from the group’s new Greatest Hits collection.
But will Sir-Mix-a-Lot be able to escape the PC police?
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Hilary Makes Landfall, Destroying Over 30,000 Emails.
WAS IT OVER WHEN JOE’S ‘67 VETTE BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? Biden Likens ‘Insignificant’ 2004 House Fire to Deadly Hawaii Wildfire.
Joe Biden likened the deadly Hawaiian wildfire, which has so far caused at least 115 casualties, to a 2004 house fire that almost cost him a cat and his ’67 Corvette.
“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it was like to lose a home,” Biden said. “Years ago, now, 15 years, I was in Washington doing Meet the Press. It was a sunny Sunday. Lightning struck at home on a little lake outside the home — not a lake, a big pond. It hit the wire and came up underneath our home, into the air condition ducts. To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat.”
The Cranston Heights Fire Company, the department that extinguished the 2004 fire at Biden’s Delaware house, confirmed that the blaze was “an insignificant fire as it did not lead to multiple alarms and did not need a widespread incident response throughout the county,” adding that, “in the case for any homeowner, it was obviously significant at the time and was quickly responded to by the local firefighters.” The flames were confined to the kitchen, the fire chief said in 2004, and the fire was under control in 20 minutes.
Like his former bosses, all crises are an attempt, as Tom Wolfe would say, “Let’s talk about me!” Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth: Maui confronts the challenge of finding more than 800 missing people after the deadly wildfires.
HENRY MORGENTHAU’S REVENGE: De-Industrializing Germany.
So it’s goodbye, manufacturing. No more German automobiles, among other products. Of course, the issue isn’t whether the government should subsidize energy prices on behalf of the manufacturing sector. The issue is whether the government should continue to intentionally and catastrophically drive energy prices higher.
But Ms. Schnitzer says we should resist pessimism about her country:
However, she rejected the idea that Germany is again the sick man of Europe.
She says Germany needs to “embrace change.” Unfortunately, the change she proposes is de-industrialization and a resultant sharp decline in Germans’ standard of living. I’m not sure that is a good idea. The world still remembers what happened the last time Germany suffered an economic collapse.
Yes, and one proposal for Germany’s post-war future: The Morgenthau Plan of 1944.
A plan drawn up by the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr (b. 1891, d. 1967) which envisaged a postwar Germany as an agricultural, deindustrialized country which would be divided into a northern and a southern half, with the Rhineland, the North Sea coast, and other important strategic or industrial areas coming under international control. After initial acceptance by Roosevelt, it was quickly withdrawn as completely impractical, as such a Germany would continue to be reliant on foreign finance. The plan was used extensively by Goebbels in his Nazi propaganda to strengthen German resolve towards the end of World War II.
So, deindustrialization was too radical for even FDR, but considered a viable plan by today’s German Greens. Progress!
August 20, 2023
CUCKOO: Alarmists Want You to Turn off Lights, Close Blinds so ‘One Billion Birds’ Won’t Die.
OK, that was a bit hyperbolic and a tad misleading. Let’s try it again.
The National Audubon Society, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats, is asking Americans to make their communities “bird safe” in a concerted effort to prevent more than “one billion birds” dying per year from flying into closed windows.
The bird group told WBAL-TV in Baltimore that “lighting and reflectivity, specifically during migration for birds, is a really dangerous problem and kills up to one billion birds in North America per year.”
I’ll get to the very fuzzy math relative to how they came up with one billion later.
Does it really matter? Birds aren’t real.
August 19, 2023
August 18, 2023
I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Taxpayer-Funded Minneapolis Art Center Holds ‘Family’ Class on Summoning Demons.
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR AIRBRUSHES! Wiki Wow! Damning Emails Reveal Manipulated Biden Wikipedia Entries.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Sports protected for women and girls in North Carolina through veto override.
HOW IT STARTED: Kamala… They Are Coming for You.
If Biden is set to go, Kamala Harris must go first. A half century ago, when the Republican Establishment thought Nixon’s days as president were numbered, they decided they didn’t want VP Spiro Agnew around. So Agnew pled no contest to a felony charge of tax invasion. Gerald Ford became vice president, Nixon resigned, Ford became president, then in 1976 lost to Jimmy Carter. Watergate played a role. Can Biden scandals do it this time?
If they can’t find anything compromising in the past of Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom could fulfill his pledge to appoint a black woman to Dianne Feinstein’s Senate by convincing Feinstein to resign, then appointing Harris to her seat. Better yet, Harris then could displace Chuck Schumer and become the “first woman” and “first black woman” to be Senate majority leader. (She’s relatively young; if she transitions, Democrats might back her for president in the future.)
* * * * * * * *
The powers in the Democratic Party can no more gamble on Kamala than on Joe. If either is on the ticket, more than the White House is at stake. Republicans would expand, not lose, their House majority. And Democrats would certainly lose their precarious hold on the Senate. Their best hope is an election that again is a referendum on Donald Trump; but regardless of who the Republican nominee is, not a referendum on Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
Kamala must go before Joe does, certainly before Joe announces he won’t run.
One way or another — Kamala, they’re coming for you, and then Joe.
–Arnold Steinberg, the American Spectator, July 2nd.
How it’s going: It’s Getting Serious Now: L.A. Times Kicks Off the Dems’ ‘Dump-Harris’ Movement.
The Times’ George Skelton knows that the left, unlike the right, never turns on its own, and that a public acknowledgement of Harris’ manifest incompetence would be damaging not just for her, but for Old Joe himself. After all, the putative commander-in-chief has repeatedly praised her and declared as recently as May that she “hasn’t gotten the credit she deserves.”
* * * * * * * *
His plan for doing this involves Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California SSR), who is ninety years old and manages to make Old Joe look as if he’s sharp as a tack. Feinstein, Skelton writes, “is a problem for California because she’s no longer capable of fully representing the nation’s most populous state — a world-class economic power — in the Senate.” And thus the solution to the Democrats’ problems presents itself: “Feinstein could resign from the Senate and Gov. Gavin Newsom could appoint Harris to replace her. Biden then could find a more popular running mate, one more acceptable to voters as a potential successor.”
That successor could be, say, Newsom himself, although the left’s fondness for him as a possible future presidential candidate pays insufficient attention to the fact that he has presided over an unprecedented flight of patriots and other sane people from the Golden State.
No sooner does Skelton raise the possibility of Harris replacing DiFi and clearing the way for the Democrats’ dream candidate (well, the Dems’ real dream candidate would be a gay trans Marxist person of color, but if they can’t find one of those, then a more ordinary Marxist will have to do) than he dismisses it: “A great idea. But it’ll never happen because it would take all of the president’s persuasive and coercive powers to pull off. And he doesn’t seem the type likely to do that.” Indeed, not only has Feinstein said that she is going to remain in the Senate until her term ends, but Harris is unlikely to give up being a heartbeat away from pretending to be president for another Senate gig. What’s more, it’s essentially out of the question that Old Joe could persuade either of them to take this course, as the man can barely formulate a coherent sentence, much less charm two egomaniacs into being humble.
–Robert Spencer, PJ Media, today.
MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Mortgage rates could hit 8%, economists say, citing a worrying sign not seen since the Great Recession.
BIDEN’S KATRINA MOMENT: How Biden’s response to Hawaii wildfire disaster went so wrong.
August 16, 2023
Whenever I am down in the LA area, as I am today, my mind runs to ordering French fries “animal style” from In-and-Out burgers. (IYKYK.) But today, opening up the Washington Post, I discover the origins of a possible new sect of conservatism: Animal-House conservatives, who naturally do things “animal-style.”
Yes, the Post really does suggest that the 1978 comedy blockbuster Animal House bears some responsibility for the Reagan era coming to pass. The movie, quite simply in the eyes of the Post, “changed everything.” You think I’m kidding? The author offers a disclaimer:
I’m not saying that “Animal House” led directly to the election of Ronald Reagan two years later. But I am saying the movie empowered a generation of 20-somethings to aspire to a new hedonism — call it, at best, enlightened selfishness — that spilled over into the political sphere.
Senator Blutarsky smiles.
QUESTION ANSWERED: Why Bill Watterson Vanished.
“Work and home were so intermingled that I had no refuge from the strip when I needed a break,” Watterson recalls. “Day or night, the work was always right there, and the book-publishing schedule was as relentless as the newspaper deadlines. Having certain perfectionist and maniacal tendencies, I was consumed by Calvin and Hobbes.”
By Watterson’s own admission, he cannot accurately recall a whole decade of his life because of his “Ahab-like obsession” with his work. “The intensity of pushing the writing and drawing as far as my skills allowed was the whole point of doing it,” he says. “I eliminated pretty much everything from my life that wasn’t the strip.” While Watterson’s wife, Melissa Richmond, organized everything around him, he furthered his isolation, burrowing ever more deeply into the strip’s world. There was no other way, he believed, to keep its integrity absolute. “My approach was probably too crazy to sustain for a lifetime,” he says, “but it let me draw the exact strip I wanted while it lasted.”
When crises arose, it often seemed like the end of the world. First, there was the fight with the syndicate. It looks like a piddling matter now, when few newspapers turn a profit, but in the Reagan era, there was still some money to be made in print media—particularly in licensing the rights to popular cartoons. Watterson wasn’t opposed to licensing in principle, but he felt that nearly all the merchandising proposals presented to him would devalue his strip of its artistic merit. He fought with his syndicate for years and expressed his dissatisfaction with the business side of the comics industry in speeches, in interviews, and, eventually, in court. At last, he won a renegotiated contract and the right to draw bigger, more complex Sunday strips, something Watterson had wanted since he began. The victory was pyrrhic. “For the last half of the strip, I had all the artistic freedom I ever wanted, I had sabbaticals, I had a good lead on deadlines, and I felt I was working at the peak of my talents,” he says. But Watterson had designed a world for himself so self-contained that any disruption could mean its destruction: “I just knew it was time to go.”
Read the whole thing.
TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: The Trump Trials Will Be an O.J.-Level Media Frenzy.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Luxury San Francisco store may close after 166 years due to ‘litany of destructive’ policies making the city ‘unlivable.’
UNEXPECTEDLY! One Year Later, President Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Is a Total Flop.
One year ago today, President Biden signed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” into law. Today, the president will take the stage and attempt to take a victory lap over this legislative “victory.” But an honest accounting reveals that the misleadingly-named Inflation Reduction Act has woefully failed at its namesake goal: reducing inflation.
The legislation mostly consisted of green energy subsidies, healthcare subsidies, tax increases, and more funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Yet the President sold it to the public as a way to bring down the crushing inflation that continues to bankrupt the American people. (The typical U.S. family spent $709 more on monthly expenses last month, July 2023, than it did in July two years ago.)
The president promised during the debate over the legislation that the Inflation Reduction Act was “the strongest bill you can pass to lower inflation, reduce costs, and tackle our climate crisis.” But, while the inflation rate has dropped significantly, many economists from across the political spectrum agree that the IRA has had essentially no impact on that decline, which is almost entirely due to other factors, including the expiration of COVID stimulus spending and the Federal Reserve’s changes in monetary policy.
Why, it’s as if:
John Podesta just spent three minutes at the White House press briefing explaining how the "Inflation Reduction Act" is actually just a massive piece of climate legislation. pic.twitter.com/FcyAZTgyrF
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 16, 2023