Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during a surprise Wednesday visit to Arizona’s southern border, defended his administration’s decision to fly migrants to California but did not respond directly to the sharp criticism aimed at him by that state’s governor.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, called DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” for arranging the flights while Newsom and other state officials have suggested criminal charges could come in the wake of two flights that shipped migrants to Sacramento.
Florida had remained silent about the two flights, which started Friday, until Tuesday when the state released a video of migrants signing documents, waving and smiling on a plane, party bus or limousine. A spokesperson for the state agency that hired a contractor to organize the flights said all asylum seekers boarded the plane voluntarily.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 8, 2023
MARK JUDGE: The Lost Bardo of Bill Kristol. “Imagine how different Kristol’s life could have been had he pivoted away from politics when the Standard ceased publication in 2018. Like fellow conservative William F. Buckley, he could have done some traveling. Or scuba-diving. Or something . . . anything. The Buddhists have a concept called a ‘bardo’ which means a death and a rebirth. People can experience several bardos in life—such as when you have your first heartbreak, or when you lose a parent, or when you endure a tough illness. All such milestones call for some big change in perspective.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Newsom Gets Revenge On DeSantis By Continuing To Send Thousands Of Californians To Florida.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Las Vegas family claims to see aliens after several report something falling from sky.
Related: Aliens! Some thoughts on the new flurry of reports.
DON’T GET COCKY: Shock: America turns right, conservatives top liberals 40%-26%.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: Jobless claims increase more than expected to their highest since October 2021.
CHRIS GETS LICHT: Jeff Zucker’s inmates still run the CNN asylum.
The irony of so many at CNN still dedicated to Jeff Zucker’s shadow campaign is that there is no other human being alive on the planet more responsible for Donald Trump’s cultural resurrection, and political career, than Jeff Zucker. He leaned into the political war and attempted to position CNN as Trump’s heel, just as he did with guiding Trump to the number-one-rated television show in the country with The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice. Jeff Zucker knows how to make stars — and that’s what network infotainment “journalists” fancy themselves to be these days. Jake Tapper will yuk it up with Stephen Colbert. Anderson Cooper will get completely shitfaced on New Year’s Eve and Jim Acosta will cry at the border wall.
Everyone Jeff Zucker hired at CNN was playing a part that he wanted them to play — and it led to record ratings, book deals and talk show appearances. Under Licht, that all sort of disappeared, and it’s back to reading the teleprompter with cause. Much was made of CNN’s decision to host former president Donald Trump in a town hall format, and the usual theatrics followed. CNN, however, needs Trump, now more than ever. That is why Chris Licht is out of a job, and why Jeff Zucker’s inmates are still running the asylum.
Related: CNN Honcho Chris Licht Is Out. Will His Corporate Overlords Now Clean House?
It demonstrated Licht’s biggest problem, as reported by former CNN anchor Brian Stelter and nearly every other media reporter eager to jump on the — mostly correct — narrative that the boss had “lost the room.” But there are a lot of very unpopular CEOs that don’t get written up in their own company’s newsletter.
So while CNN’s rank and file are likely thrilled that their nemesis is out as CEO, it doesn’t change the WBD mission for the network. WBD CEO David Zaslav and lead shareholder John Malone have made abundantly clear that they see CNN as a nonpartisan news outlet willing to treat all news as nonpartisan.
Good luck with that in 2023 — viewers want to know the worldviews of who they’re watching on TV; and it’s impossible for journalists not to express those worldviews when preening on Twitter.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: Los Angeles Times to cut 74 newsroom positions amid advertising declines.
The Los Angeles Times is cutting its newsroom staff, becoming the latest news organization to contract amid economic pressures brought on by advertising and print readership declines.
The Times is eliminating 74 positions in the newsroom, representing about 13% of the total.
Full-time and temporary workers will be let go, including a handful of managers. Reporting positions are expected to be largely spared but the production staff will be scaled back. Nearly a third of the cuts come from news and copy editor ranks. Some photographers, audience engagement editors and audio producers will also be affected.
Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida announced the layoffs Wednesday in a note to the newsroom, saying the decision was “made more urgent by the economic climate and the unique challenges of our industry.”
“Decisions that result in talented staffers losing their jobs are agonizing,” Merida wrote. “We will be saying goodbye to some tremendous colleagues.”
On the upside, when Joe’s former(?) boss was in the White House, the L.A. Times assured its readers: For the ‘funemployed,’ unemployment is welcome.
DESANTIS BREAKS HIS SILENCE ABOUT CALIFORNIA MIGRANT FLIGHTS:
Almost five days after that first flight, DeSantis weighed in on the transports after he was asked about it in Arizona.
“These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem because they have endorsed and agitated for these types off open border policies,” DeSantis said. “They have bragged they are sanctuary jurisdictions. They attack the previous admin efforts to try to have border security … When they have to deal with some of the fruits of that they all of a sudden become very, very upset about that.”
Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.
The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.
It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.
Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.
These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record noted: Newsom Says It’s Cruel And Unusual To Fly Immigrants To California.
REPORTS THAT TRUMP IS ABOUT TO BE INDICTED (Trump denies being notified):
It sounds like something big is about to happen. The Independent has a story out today saying the DOJ is about to ask a grand jury in Washington, DC to indict former President Trump.
The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.
The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept at his Palm Beach, Florida property long after his term expired on 20 January 2021…
It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation of necessary.
The catch here is that even if Trump is indicted tomorrow or early next week, that indictment would probably remain sealed. There’s a separate grand jury in Florida that is looking at some of the same issues (the Mar-a-Lago documents) and it’s expected nothing will be announced until both grand juries have decided what they are going to do. In other words, unless there’s yet another anonymous leak we won’t know if this indictment story is true anytime soon.
Why, it’s as if: Biden Is Desperately Seeking Trump.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Why RFK Jr. flunked the Roger Waters test.
Let’s start by noting the irony of Kennedy’s support for someone who is as dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to defaming the Jewish people as Waters. His father was, after all, murdered by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab who claimed that his crime was revenge for Bobby Kennedy’s support for the State of Israel. Though, ignoring all the evidence, RFK Jr. doesn’t believe Sirhan killed his father and wants him freed, a bizarre stand that may, at least in part, help to explain his willingness to embrace Waters.
The timing of the tweet was also appalling.
It came just as Waters was being assailed by critics for a performance in Germany, of all places, where he added images of Anne Frank and dressed in a black costume with red armbands that while reminiscent of his “The Wall” days looked very much like an SS uniform. The Pink Floyd star has long been known for peddling conspiracies involving fictional Israeli crimes against humanity and his hostility to Jews, even as he denies being an antisemite. Not to mention employing antisemitic imagery in his past shows, such as flying a pig balloon with a Star of David.
But his new tour, launched in Berlin, in which he compares Frank to Palestinians allegedly killed by Israel and fires a fake gun, made headlines around the world and caused a new round of denunciations for his offensive conduct. It also generated an investigation from German authorities since in that country any use of Nazi imagery is against the law.
So for Kennedy to tweet what he did was shocking. He wrote: “Roger You are the global hero Orwell had in mind when he said, ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act’ The high priests of the totalitarian orthodoxies are trying to silence you with censorship, gaslighting and defamation. Please keep speaking truth to power!”
Read the whole thing.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Maryland Democrat Says Muslim Families Sided with ‘White Supremacists’ for Flagging Sexual Material in Class.
WWII AIR FORCE EXPERT RATES EIGHT DOGFIGHTS IN MOVIES (Video):
Incidentally, the (mostly) live action filming on Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk stands out like a sore thumb, and looks so much more realistic than the plastic CGI effects in most of the films clipped for this video.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Newsom Says It’s Cruel And Unusual To Fly Immigrants To California.
Heh, indeed.™
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Crazy climate activist goes on and on berating a guy for “sitting in the car with the engine running, polluting the atmosphere” … He’s in a Tesla 😂.
😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/u6cMY223bZ
— Davy Jones (@itsNTBmedia) June 6, 2023
TUCKER CARLSON DEBUTS HIS NEW TWITTER-BASED SHOW: TUCKER ON TWITTER.
Ep. 1 pic.twitter.com/O7CdPjF830
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 6, 2023
30 million+ views is a spectacular debut; in February, Forbes reported: With 3.5 Million Viewers, Tucker Carlson Has The Week’s Highest-Rated Cable News Show.
Incidentally, here’s the article that Tucker mentioned mid-show: Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin.
The truth is out there!
June 6, 2023
JOHN KERRY, REPORTING FOR DOODY: Kerry compares climate battle to D-Day.
While Kerry said there were key differences between the fight against Nazi Germany and the battle to ease global warming, there are similarities.
“Make no mistake, just as that was a fight for the future as much as anything we have ever faced, what we are seeing now is the same,” he said.
Kerry said the world was now in a decisive decade and the price of failure could carry greater consequences than those faced during the D-Day landings if the right choices are not made.
“What is also clear right now is we can also win this fight, but it requires the same level of innovation and mobilisation that was required back then by those in the greatest generation,” he said.
Unlike the fight against Hitler’s forces, the climate battle is not one against a single enemy, Kerry reasoned. “Today’s threat comes from all of us. It comes from the result of the things we do or avoid doing,” he said.
The moral equivalent of war has been the organizing principle of the left since the start of the 20th century, trapping them in the moral equivalent of a quagmire, with no sign of an exit strategy in sight. In response, Tim Blair is succinct: If radical environmentalism is refighting WWII, “Fair enough. Nuking Hiroshima it is, then.”
Barring that, when does Kerry demand his fellow elites curtail their private plane usage? And when does he order DC to give up its air conditioning?
OKAY, GROOMERS: Beware the New York Times kids section.
“Stinky. Sweaty. Hairy. Pimply. Totally Normal.”
That’s the seemingly innocent tagline of the “Puberty Issue” of the New York Times for Kids, which appears in the print newspaper on the last Sunday of every month.
The kids section, which was started in March 2017 as a part of the New York Times magazine department, often looks harmless at first glance. The cover typically boasts colorful and engaging artwork, while inside, children are greeted with cartoons, games, puzzles and mini articles about cool accomplishments by other kids. Past issues covered how kids could spend their summer vacations, interesting facts about bugs and other creepy critters, and how to start growing a garden.
The “Puberty Issue,” which ran in print on April 30, is no exception — it contains tons of useful information kids might need to know about their changing bodies and assures them that being uncomfortable throughout the process is normal.
It’s also filled with radical ideas of gender, dismisses attempts by parents to remove pornographic content from school libraries as anti-LGBTQ “book bans” and falsely claims that “medical care” for children experiencing gender dysphoria “saves lives.”
The Weimar Republic called and said that the American left might want to dial it back a notch or 20.