QUESTION ASKED: Do Wuhan Institute of Virology Scientists Often Fall from the Building’s Roof? “Oh, I’m sure he was just checking out the view and leaned over too far. I would say that this Russian habit of important people falling out of windows must be contagious, but as we know, the Chinese government is habitually reluctant to label anything as contagious.”
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 19, 2023
ANHEUSER-BUSCH TRIES AGAIN TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE WITH A NEW AD CAMPAIGN: “What is missing? An apology. Just a simple apology would go a long way. [CEO Brendan Whitworth] can’t bring himself to do it. He knows that as soon as he apologizes, the alphabet brigade will come for him. Whitworth has chosen to appease them over his actual customers. He is doomed to fail and it is entirely self-inflicted.”
BIDEN STANDS UP FOR CHINA: Secretary of State Antony Blinken in China Says ‘We Do Not Support Taiwan Independence.’
Who could have seen it coming?
UPDATE: ‘Whatever You Need:’ How Hunter Biden Helped the CCP’s Premier Influence Group Gain a US Foothold.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The headline is a little stronger than the story, even though it’s accurate. But there’s also this: “We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.’ Blinken added that the United States continues to ‘expect the peaceful resolution’ of the countries’ differences but that America also ‘remain[s] committed’ to ‘making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.’ Blinken is the first U.S. cabinet-level official to visit China since 2019 and ended the trip on Monday with an unexpected meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping.”
So on the one hand, this isn’t really a change in U.S. policy. On the other hand, it’s important to make certain that it’s not interpreted as some sort of tacit permission for China to launch an invasion. See also Biden’s off-the-cuff remarks that made Putin feel safe about invading Ukraine, or Dean Acheson’s misstep that led to the Korean War. Or, for that matter, Amb. April Glaspie’s remarks to Saddam Hussein that made him think he could safely invade Kuwait.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: AT&T to Shut Flagship Store in Downtown San Francisco.
June 18, 2023
NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Democrat Corrects Herself After Saying Trump Should Be Shot.
Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) had to correct herself on Sunday after she said during a live television interview that former President Donald Trump should be “shot.”
Plaskett made the comment during an appearance on MSNBC, during which she discussed the federal charges against Trump relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents following his departure from the White House in January of 2021.
As Richard Fernandez once wrote: “It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation.”
Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.
UNEXPEDTEDLY! The Critical Drinker on The Flash — “A Hot Mess” (Video).
Last year, one of Steven Crowder’s co-bloggers noted: Variety Shames Ezra Miller’s Alleged Victim Because She Used the Wrong Pronouns for Ezra… Who Attacked Her:
Ezra Miller is a terrible person, and Variety is very careful to make sure this garbage person isn’t offended by using the wrong pronouns. So much so, they shamed a woman who Ezra ATTACKED for using the wrong pronouns.
Ezra Miller identifies as non-binary. A family in North Dakota identifies him as a pedo grooming their daughter. The woman he choked in Iceland identifies as a woman who Ezra Miller CHOKED AND ATTACKED and was sharing her exclusive story with Variety. The magazine was very careful to make sure we knew the woman who was being choked by a dude wasn’t enlightened enough to know the dude looks like a non-binary.
“At the time of the interview, it was unclear whether the woman was aware Miller uses they/them pronouns.”
Riiiiight. Or, maybe, the woman who Ezra attacked didn’t give a shit as she was describing Ezra attacking her. That could be it, too. She wasn’t confused. A dude attacked her, and she identified him as a dude.
And they’re still doing it. A piece from Friday titled, “Ezra Miller’s Legal Troubles: A Timeline of Arrests and Controversies Before ‘The Flash’” contains this paragraph:
Behind the scenes, though, Miller had troubles of their own. In April 2020, they were caught on video appearing to choke a woman at a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland. The woman told Variety, “I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t. All of a sudden, [they’re] on top of me, choking me, still screaming in my face if I want to fight. My friend who’s filming sees [they’re] obviously not joking and it’s actually serious, so he stops filming, and pushes [them] off me as [they’re] still trying to fight me. Two guy friends of mine are actually holding [Miller] back as [they’re] screaming, ‘This is what you wanted! This is what you wanted!’”
As Jim Treacher asked last year: Why Should I Use Ezra Miller’s Preferred Pronouns?
HOW THE CORPORATE MEDIA’S TRUMP ADDICTION RELAPSE RELATES TO CHRIS LICHT’S CNN EXIT:
If I could summarize my advice on how to fix the problems in the corporate media today, it would be this: Whatever Jay Rosen tells you to do, do the opposite. Rosen is a journalism professor at NYU, and prolific tweeter (red flag #1 right there). There isn’t a specific example to point to — you can literally take any of his tweets and it would illustrate the point. He’s the epitome of an “information minimalist” — a crusading anti-speech activist in the newly-aligned media environment that distrusts the public, and therefore demands the media censor and omit various points of view it deems too dangerous to allow publicly. He wants the journalists of tomorrow to be as proficient in covering up the news as they are in covering the news. He is the gatekeeper of the gatekeepers, in an emerging media ecosystem that allows the American audiences to interact without gatekeepers altogether — and he, like so many in the old guard, are panicked.
And Rosen is what Licht was up against — the Rosen philosophy that sadly permeates not just much of CNN, but much of the entire legacy media apparatus. At the same time, perhaps the philosophy would have been easier to overcome and correct had Trump truly exited the political and cultural stage. But he’s back, and so is the Trump addiction.
The only consolation for those of us who believed in Licht’s vision of removing coastal lefty talking points from news coverage (his initial clean-up included stopping the hosts from using terms like “The Big Lie” which was literally started by the Biden team) is that the Discovery execs are still in charge. David Zaslav, John Malone — they don’t have the same disdain for half the country that many in the corporate press do. They have found success for decades programming content that America likes to watch. “Naked and Afraid” or “90 Day Fiance.” Besides sports, and Yellowstone, these are the kinds of shows that vast quantities of Americans still enjoy sitting down and watching.
That vision for CNN is not going away, even with Licht gone, and the Trump addiction relapse back in full force. And that’s good for everyone who cares about a better media ecosystem, that serves the people, and not just the powerful.
I’d like to think that was true, but I doubt that CNN is going to tack to the center anytime soon.
JEFF DUNETZ: Missing My Dad On Father’s Day.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: This 17-year-old high schooler was a model student. Only problem was that she was actually 28 years old.
Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano, 28, enrolled in Hahnville High School in June 2022 and attended the entire 2022-2023 school year, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
School officials notified the sheriff’s office in May they had received a tip that a student on record as being 17 was in fact an adult in her mid-20s, the release said.
The Grauniad assures me that in the 21st century, this is not a problem: Dutch man, 69, starts legal fight to identify as 20 years younger.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: ACLU Is Upset That a Child Rapist and Double Murderer Was Executed as a Man.
President Biden kicked off his first day of campaigning for re-election by making excuses for communist China — saying that President Xi Jinping never meant to fly a spy balloon over sensitive American military sites earlier this year.
“I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters Saturday as he headed to Philadelphia for his first campaign rally of the 2024 election. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.”
Biden does everything thing but thank the Chinese Communists for taking an interest in our military installations. What do they have on him? I should like to think that no one can be this stupid without motivation.
Who on earth could have seen this coming?
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Report: Biden Says So Many Weird, Incoherent Things That His Own Aides Are Perplexed.
You have to love the idea that randomly pleading for the queen as a US politician ending a speech is just an “old-timey expression.” I’ve got grandparents. I’ve never heard them say that, and you’d expect people from the South to be even more into folksy sayings. Why did Biden actually say what he said? No one knows, and that’s the point.
The [Axios] article in question then dropped this absolute gem of a paragraph. Truly, this might be one of the most amazing things I’ve seen written in the political press public.
Biden’s quirky aphorisms are sometimes weaponized by Republicans to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline. But Biden has been using unique phrases for years — but even some of his aides aren’t exactly sure what he means by them.
“Weaponized:”
The San Francisco Chronicle tells its readers that “There is nothing more bacchanalian than a kid’s birthday party,” which may be one reason why: San Francisco is the most childless major city in the U.S.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought.
JON GABRIEL: Ron DeSantis finally has Donald Trump on the defensive. Keep it up.
Trump mouthpiece Alex Bruesewitz tweeted, “No statement from DeSanctimonious today. Coward!”
Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk took to Twitter, as well. “Every ‘Republican’ running for President should suspend their campaign and go to Miami as a show of support …. show solidarty [sic] or we will mark you as part of the oppsition [sic].”
For his part, DeSantis criticized the “weaponization of federal law enforcement” and the “uneven application of the law.”
Needless to say, he didn’t suspend his campaign.
Still, even GOP Trump skeptics criticized DeSantis for only obliquely commenting on his legal troubles, insisting the governor stop “pulling his punches.”
But DeSantis has a very good reason not to focus all his energies on the Orange One. Being a former Naval officer, he understands something called the OODA Loop.
Read the whole thing.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Automakers can’t quit manual transmissions so they’re cramming fake stuff into EVs.
There’s no question that the rise in electric vehicles represents a wholesale shift in the auto industry. But while most car companies appear ready to embrace the electric future, a lot of them are having trouble letting go of the past.
Take Toyota, for example. The biggest automaker in the world is reportedly working on an electric vehicle prototype that mimics the feel of driving a manual transmission, complete with a gear shift that’s not connected to anything and a floor-mounted speaker to pipe in fake engine noises. The car will even pretend to stall out if you fumble the controls — in order to deliver drivers the complete experience of driving a manual car.
Keep in mind this is an electric vehicle. There is no engine, no drive shaft, no gears to speak of. All of this is achieved using software and a bit of smoke and mirrors. Toyota says the goal is to preserve the driving experience for car enthusiasts, but it’s unclear whether people actually want this.
I’m not a car enthusiast, but I know people tend to hate fake shit. (Just look at the fake meat industry. It’s not doing so well.) It stands to reason that they will hate this.
Unfortunately, Toyota is not alone in its attempts to awkwardly merge the auto industry’s past with its future. Dodge has been working on a symphony of fake engine sounds it hopes to include in its upcoming lineup of electric muscle cars. The Charger Daytona SRT concept was the first to stress test this vision with a fake engine sound that sounded like a bobcat that was angry about being neutered.
Dodge isn’t the only car company using fake engine sounds. In his recent review of the sporty two-door Toyota GR86, Jeremy Clarkson mentioned that he “truly loved driving this car, and I loved the noise it made too, until I discovered it was an artificial sound coming at me through the speakers. Then I hated it.”
TATOOINE’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Jabba The Hutt Complains Of Discrimination After Airline Charges Him For Multiple Seats.
ROGER AILES LEFT THE BUILDING LONG AGO: Fox News Encourages Employees To Read ‘Gay Erotica’, Support Pro-Child Castration Groups, In Leaked Docs.
Tucker Carlson to the white courtesy (video) phone, please!
TYLER O’NEIL: Tim Scott Eviscerates Attack on Moms Who Want Education to Focus on ‘ABCs, Not CRT.’
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is running for president, defended Moms for Liberty and condemned the Southern Poverty Law Center for using “race as a weapon*” in putting the parental rights group on a map with Ku Klux Klan chapters.
“The provocative history of race in this country should not be weaponized against moms who simply want their kids to be educated and not indoctrinated,” Scott, a black man who grew up in the aftermath of segregation, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.
The South Carolina Republican condemned the SPLC for “weaponizing their powerful position historically to attack their political enemies.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center last week put Moms for Liberty—a diverse group of parents across the country who oppose COVID-19 mandates, critical race theory, sexually explicit books in school libraries, and transgender ideology in schools—on its “hate map,” listing the group alongside KKK chapters.
* To be fair, that’s not the only weapon the SPLC deploys: SPLC Lawyer Arrested in Atlanta Molotov Cocktail Riot, Faces Terrorism Charges.
NEO: The trans proliferation: Part I (intro and grooming).
As part of the effort to understand more deeply what’s been going on, I’ve read many articles and also watched a host of YouTube video interviews of transitioners and detransitioners, especially youthful ones. I’ve been impressed at the eloquence and insight of so many of the latter, who despite their exceptional intelligence got sucked into this terrible mess and often made irreversible decisions because the adults in charge failed them in major ways. These stories are heartbreaking, fascinating, and enraging.
Read the whole thing.
Once upon a time there was a tweet from a Columbia professor.
Educated Hillbilly sure can, and he has thoughts on the hordes of urban women who move to the big city to find meaning in a career – especially those who make a job out of trashing their own families.
Apparently a lot of people liked (or hated) his thoughts because as of the time of this writing, he had 771,000 views on that tweet.
I’ll put the rest of his thread in a text box:
I’ve seen enough to get a fix on this gal and I’ve seen her type a million times. And they’re a dime a dozen in the writing world. They almost always go into the arts… never the sciences. Because your intelligence can be measured in the sciences. Writing is subjective.
Molly here grew up poor, TN I believe she said, but she mentions “poor” & “the south” about a million times. She’s making a point here. That she has the authority to speak on these topics & tell the liberal NY writing society that they’re correct to hate rural white poors.
She absolutely hates her parents, hates having to grow up in & around all that poor, all that filth, all their ignorance. Imagine knowing you’re better than everyone else & having to share a school bus with them. A lunch table. A class room. The rage builds for 18 years.
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: “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.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama suggests ‘digital fingerprints’ to counter misinformation ‘so we know what’s true and what’s not true.’
The former president added that the deepfakes — digitally manipulated images, audio or video that appear legitimate — started with a version of him dancing, “saying dirty limericks” and similar kinds of activity.
“That technology’s here now,” continued Obama, who warned about the issue getting worse moving forward. “So, most immediately we’re going to have all the problems we had with misinformation before, [but] this next election cycle will be worse.”
He then suggested “digital fingerprints” to discern truth from misinformation.
“And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true,” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of work that’s going to have to be done there, but in the short term, it’s really going to be up to the American people to kind of say.”
Hey, remember when Obama’s comms shop tried to pretend he was the anti-1984 guy? Good times, good times.
June 17, 2023
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: San Francisco Announces That Due To Crime, It’s Moving To Texas.