THE HILL: White House cocaine discovery becomes GOP ‘political fodder.’
The discovery of cocaine near the West Wing of the White House is causing a political headache for President Biden, leaving him exposed to criticisms from his GOP opponents while raising concerns about security at the complex.
Evergreen:
One interesting wrinkle in all of this is that I have yet to meet a therapist who approves of the medicalization of the treatment of children who say they are transgender, and that includes all the therapists I know who are liberal Democrats or on the left, and I know plenty of them. The ones I know tend to be older or even retired, and they were trained under a very different system long before medical treatment and “gender affirmation” for minors were ever contemplated. But despite their current disapproval of these methods, they still vote reliably Democrat, and for the most part – actually, in every case so far – they were unaware of the devastation these treatments can wreak until I told them. And these developments are not nearly enough to change their minds and convince them to vote for anyone on the dread right. I plan to work on that a bit by talking to them more; should be interesting.
Related: Castrating Kids to Win Elections. “Grooming children in schools isn’t just a perverted agenda, it’s a political one. The Democrat electoral agenda depends on building coalitions of minority groups. Sexual community organizing in schools is a machine meant to expand that coalition. Every teenage girl tracked for a mastectomy and every teenage boy for castration is a future Democrat voter.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Meta’s New Threads App is Censoring From Day One.
Threads is Meta’s latest and boldest attempt to go head-to-head with Twitter. Operating as an independent app, but at the moment requiring an Instagram login, Threads is the stage for public textual interactions and dialogues among users, linked to their Instagram profiles. Astonishingly, within less than a day of its debut on Thursday morning, Threads had already attracted a whopping 30 million sign-ups.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, ushered in users with his inaugural post, “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads.” He described Threads as a “friendly” alternative to Twitter, an app that lets people indulge in text-based conversations with a 500-character limit and the option to share links, photos, and videos.
Zuckerberg seems to be putting a lot of emphasis on keeping Threads congenial. He stated in a Wednesday post, “The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success.” He candidly went on to take a swipe at Twitter, suggesting that its lack of success is due to its desire to support more free speech.
But of course, what Zuckerberg means when he calls for congeniality is censorship.
Just hours after launch, Threads was caught in the eye of the storm, with allegations of stealthy censorship and unavailability of user appeals.
Flashback: What Is To Be Done About Facebook?
From the company’s earliest days, Facebook’s leaders have adopted a remarkably consistent approach to the exposure of problems and missteps: a mercenary variation of the “ask for forgiveness, not permission” strategy. Any time the company does something irresponsible or privacy-violating, Zuckerberg issues an apology on Facebook and Sandberg appears on television programs to reassure an anxious world that Facebook will do better. As Zeynep Tufekci observed in Wired: “By 2008, Zuckerberg had written only four posts on Facebook’s blog: Every single one of them was an apology or an attempt to explain a decision that had upset users.”
But he kept doing it because it worked—until 2018. That year, Apple booted Facebook off of its app store for violating Apple’s privacy rules. Facebook had used an app to facilitate a research study wherein Facebook paid teenagers and some adults to let the company monitor everything they did on their mobile phones. That same year, there was a major hack of Facebook, this one affecting approximately 29 million Facebook users; the company issued its standard sorry-we-promise-to-do-better statement and changed nothing about its core business model.
Around the same time, as TechCrunch reported, Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives secretly “disappeared” their sent messages from their accounts, removing years’ worth of Facebook correspondence from other users’ mailboxes with no warning. Once caught out, the company claimed that it had done so for vaguely defined security reasons, but the lack of transparency by a company that insists that everyone should share everything was seen as hypocritical by many Facebook users.
As Peggy Noonan wrote in 2019: “Overthrow the Prince of Facebook...Break them up. Break them in two, in three; regulate them. Declare them to be what they’ve so successfully become: once a pleasure, now a utility. It all depends on Congress, which has been too stupid to move in te past and is too stupid to move competently now. That’s what’s slowed those of us who want reform, knowing how badly they’d do it. Yet now I find myself thinking: I don’t care. Do it incompetently, but do something.”
Somebody should write a book about this stuff.
JIM TREACHER: Ben and Jerry Want America to Return Mt. Rushmore.
Ice cream manufacturers and dumb leftists Ben & Jerry are back at it, and this time they’ve found a new reason to bash America on the Fourth of July: Mt. Rushmore was stolen!
Wait, what?
The junk food-makers posted an essay on benandjerry.com, claiming:
“Ah, the Fourth of July. Who doesn’t love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display? The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land.
“This year, let’s commit to returning it.
“Here’s why we need to start with Mount Rushmore.”
Return Mt. Rushmore. What could be more patriotic?
How would that work, exactly? Do we need to box it up ourselves to return it? Do the original owners send us an address label?
Remember: Those two fat old men make overpriced ice cream. That’s the only reason you’ve even heard of them. Ice cream.
Right. So why don’t they start by committing to return the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont? After all, it was built on land that was “once the frontier between the Mahican and Pennacook people.” Go first — set the example for the rest of us, fellas!
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA:CDC now giving tips for trans people who want to breastfeed.
WHY DOES THE DNC THINK ALL MINORITY GROUPS AUTOMATICALLY “BELONG” TO THEM? Islamic leader challenges Psaki’s claim Muslim parents manipulated by GOP: We’re not ‘political puppets.’
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: AI robots could play future role as companions in care homes.
Nadine, a social robot powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) with human-like gestures and expressions, could have an important future role to play in tending to the sick and elderly, according to a professor who helped invent it.
Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, a robot expert from the University of Geneva, who served as the model for Nadine’s dark brown eyes and auburn hair, said Nadine and robots like it could prove more effective than human carers.
“She (Nadine) has time 24 hours a day. The others have no time,” Thalmann said.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a conference organised by the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva to make the case for AI and robots helping to reach global goals, such as health.
Global competition for nurses and carers is heating up, especially after COVID-19 and some countries are experiencing a staffing crisis in care homes which some think humanoid robots could one day ease.
Turning Japanese? I really think so: Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care.
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND:
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has the flip-side of the equation: ‘This is a hit to Hollywood’s gatekeeping model:’ Faith-based producers of Sound of Freedom laud conservative backers for movie about one man’s quest to save children from sex-traffickers — as it beats Indiana Jones at box office.
IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY, OR WHAT? Think the WH Cocaine Was Hunter’s? You Can Place Your Bets for That Online.
QUESTION ASKED: Is Al Franken trying to dunk on the Supreme Court’s gay marriage website decision?
So… we are pretty sure he is dunking on the decision and probably Ms. Smith herself. But there are several problems. First, Ms. Smith has not, to our knowledge, said anything bad about Jews. Second, she had a web design business, she was merely talking about expanding it to create wedding websites, so we don’t know where the “non-existent” comment comes from.
But third, and most basically, is he arguing that he the law should force him to ‘write homophobic & anti-Semitic jokes to express her hostility to gay-marriage & Jews in general’? Is that the outcome he prefers?
Or here’s a fourth option: He is a moron who thinks in a remarkably shallow manner.
Buried lede: Accidentally (of course), Al actually got something right!
1984 AND THE LIVES OF OTHERS WEREN’T MEANT TO BE HOW-TO GUIDES: Professional Censors Are Furious That A Federal Court Stopped The Biden Admin From Suppressing Speech.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS:
It’s really something watching the people who gave us politicized “science” complain about politicized science. https://t.co/wUeCOMIWRX
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 5, 2023
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Democrats Confused By Parades Where Everyone Wears Clothes And Doesn’t Swing Sex Toys Around.
QUESTION ASKED: Is Ben and Jerry’s The Next Bud Light?
This 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it. Learn more and take action now: https://t.co/45smaBmORH pic.twitter.com/a6qp7LXUAE
— Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) July 4, 2023
Well, are you Ben & Jerry’s? Then set the example for the rest of us, and go first. Move your operations from the US. Demand that your product not be sold in America. Make the first move and show us how it’s done!
WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Substance found in White House library tests positive for cocaine.
JEFF DUNETZ: July 4th 1776, The First Brexit.
BIRCH, SITTING IN FOR JAMES LILEKS AT THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE: Fireworks from a dog’s point of view.
Hello, my name is Birch. I belong to James Lileks, who has the day off. I decided to write his column. On behalf of all of us in the dog community, I beg you to listen: Terror Boom Bomb Time is coming up and we dogs are begging you to stop it.
We have no idea what’s going on and it scares the heck out of all of us, except for Winnie up the street — he’s like a beer barrel with fur who wouldn’t flinch if a meteor landed next to him. The guy’s so chill his butt smells like ice cream. But the rest of us live in dread and fear, because this is the worst time of the year. And I say that as a dog with no sense of linear time at all, so you know previous July 4ths have left an impression.
Look at it from our point of view. It’s a nice night. We’re all outside, guests are over, the grill’s working overtime and we all are having a good time. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a sound we can’t explain. Something really big just made a huge boom so loud that we can feel it in our guts. Or, worse, a whoosh and a shriek. Or a lot of short, buzzing sounds like when your mouth is full of bees.
And none of you humans seem at all bothered. By any of it.
I’m, like, “Hello? Did you not hear that? Do you not smell that? I know you have bad ears and you couldn’t smell a dead deer if it was a mile in front of you, but I’ve got thick flaps of skin and fur hanging over my ears and I heard it. Every bang, boom and hiss. I’m convinced we’re all in terrible danger. It could be that the world is ending. Let’s find shelter! Now!”
But you humans just laugh and look at the sky.
It’s always great to see a new budding journalist make his debut, so read the whole thing.
(Bumped.)
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Liberals Run In Terror As Pride Flags Replaced With American Flags.
FRANCE’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Chaos In France As Rival Protesters Keep Trying To Surrender To Each Other.
FOURTH OF JULY FLASHBACK: San Diego’s 2012 Fireworks Flop.
WELL, THE CEO DIDN’T WANT ANY “EX-MILITARY WHITE GUYS OVER 50,” SO: Lost Titanic sub: Vessel used electrical system designed by college interns: Report.
Growing up in Benton, Ark., Malaya Tapp loved celebrating the Fourth of July with her family. “We would go to parades and see firework shows and hang out with friends,” she said. “It was always such a fun holiday.”
But now that she is an adult — she’s 18 and entering college next year — commemorating the holiday isn’t so simple.
It started in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter movement spotlighted many of the injustices across the country. “I lost a lot of my patriotic feelings,” she said.
Ms. Tapp, who now lives in Atlanta, also realized that many festive components of Fourth of July aren’t that palatable for her.
There are the fireworks. “It’s hard to tell the difference between guns and fireworks, and here there is always something on the news about a shooting or something, so it makes me nervous,” she said. “They are also bad for the environment. They release a lot of toxic chemicals.”
This year she is skipping the holiday altogether, opting instead to travel with her church youth group to visit a Navajo nation in Arizona, but the trip was canceled because of a Covid outbreak.
As the late Charles Krauthammer wrote in in 2002, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” But there’s a problem, Christopher Caldwell wrote a couple of years later:
At some point, Democrats became the party of small-town people who think they’re too big for their small towns. It is hard to say how it happened: Perhaps it is that Republicans’ primary appeal is to something small-towners take for granted (tradition), while Democrats’ is to something that small-towners are condemned for lacking (diversity). Both appeals can be effective, but it is only the latter that incites people to repudiate the culture in which they grew up. Perhaps it is that at universities–through which pass all small-town people aiming to climb to a higher social class–Democratic party affiliation is the sine qua non of being taken for a serious, non-hayseed human being.
For these people, liberalism is not a belief at all. No, it’s something more important: a badge of certain social aspirations. That is why the laments of the small-town leftists get voiced with such intemperance and desperation. As if those who voice them are fighting off the nagging thought: If the Republicans aren’t particularly evil, then maybe I’m not particularly special.
For the rest of us, have a happy Fourth!
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