I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: We Asked A.I. to Rewrite the “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones – Take a Look at the Result.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 1, 2023
THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Interviews Comey on Every Alleged Violation of the Rule of Law . . . Except His Own.
For those of us who have been long critics of Comey, the interview was almost a mocking parody.
Comey recently celebrated the indictment of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg despite even some liberal experts denouncing the charges as a political prosecution. The political weaponization of the criminal justice system was declared by Comey to be “a good day.”
The former FBI director, who has been teaching and speaking on government ethics, joined others in celebrating the upcoming arrest of Trump because nothing says “ethical leadership” like a patently political prosecution.
Comey declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton on her email scandal despite finding that she violated federal rules and handled classified material “carelessly.”
He declared, “Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth.”
Yet now Comey is heralding a raw political prosecution.
Cooper also did not ask Comey about the blistering report of Special Counsel John Durham on the repeated failure of his own leadership in pushing an investigation without sufficient evidence. Under his leadership, the FBI took a false Russian collusion theory pushed by the Clinton campaign and continued the investigation despite early refutation of the underlying sources and claims. That included warnings from American intelligence that the agency was using suspected Russian disinformation funneled through the Clinton campaign.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:
WHAT ABOUT YOUR GAAAAFFFFFESSSSS????!!!! Ron DeSantis isn’t blind to the media’s game.
But this is not a story of journalistic reporting, but rather of journalists creating a narrative. DeSantis is wise to the game. It’s a game that journalists perfected during the Trump years, creating outrage cycle after outrage cycle. Sadly, this is only the beginning.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin revealed this agenda , tweeting that “the larger problem w DeSantis reaction is it shows he still doesn’t grasp the bad will he’s courting by, in this case, lashing out at one of the top reporters for the @AP.” Here Martin is playing the fake “How dare you, sir” card. The challenge for DeSantis is that he knows no matter what kind of action or response he offers, good or bad, many in the media are going to create stories for their mostly progressive base.
Hence why he’s playing hardball.
Also, note the media feedback loop:
JOEL POLLACK: Jewish Conservatives Launch ‘Jews Against Soros.’ “Hammer and Scharf note in a press statement announcing their organization: ‘Attacking Soros for his influence on American politics, to say nothing of his nefarious agenda in Israel itself, isn’t antisemitic. It is simply a fact that Soros funds a huge portion of the radical left in this country. And he must be stopped.’”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Watch: President Biden Takes Hard Fall On Stage At U.S. Air Force Academy Graduation.
HEY, LET’S NOT LOSE OUR HEADS OVER THIS: Dispatches From an Alternative Universe: Los Angeles Dodgers To Honor Anti-Islam Group at Pride Night.
HOW IT STARTED: Oakland City Council Votes to Defund Police, Stripping More Than $17M from Department Budget.
—Bay Area CBS affiliate KPIX, June 24th, 2021.
How it’s going: Rising Oakland crime draws fervent pleas for city action.
—The Berkley Scanner, yesterday.
SETTING THE DESANTIS COVID RECORD STRAIGHT:
DeSantis has called all this historical revisionism precisely what it is: “bizarre.” The governor has proposed several rebuttals to Trump’s reconceptualization of reality, but the most effective is how Trump’s behavior runs counter to his attacks. “Hell, his whole family moved to Florida under my governorship,” DeSantis exclaimed. Of course, so did hundreds of thousands of other Americans.
It’s understandable that Trump would seek to massage his record on the pandemic. With enough table-pounding, maybe voters will forget the degree to which he outsourced the presidency to admittedly manipulative social engineers like Dr. Anthony Fauci, his effusive praise for the Chinese Communist Party, and his chaotic conduct throughout the pandemic.
Trump appears to wish that he had governed differently during the Covid crisis and erred on the side of liberty. If he had, his record would look a lot more like that of Ron DeSantis.
A style of governance Trump explicitly rejected at the time.
May 31, 2023
DISPATCHES FROM THE SPRING WOKEBALL SEASON: A Tale of Two Pitchers and Their Encounters With the Pride Mob.
RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Mike Pence to announce 2024 presidential campaign in Iowa next week.
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: Political Analysts Confirm That Chris Christie Will Eat The Competition’s Lunch. “He will also eat their breakfast, their dinner, and any snacks they may have lying around. No candidate is safe.”
THAT SCIENTOLOGY SHOW: Jury convicts actor and Scientologist Danny Masterson of two rape counts, hangs on third.
Masterson was accused of raping three women in 2001 and 2003. At the time of the alleged crimes, he was one of the biggest stars on TV, playing Steven Hyde in That ‘70s Show from 1998 to 2006. He later played Jameson “Rooster” Bennett on the Netflix series “The Ranch.”
The first jury deadlocked in favor of acquittal on each of the three forcible rape counts on Nov. 28.
Prosecutors revamped their case for the second trial, reordering the witnesses and trying to address discrepancies the last jury identifies between police reports and witness testimony.
The changes had mixed results: The last jury most favored guilty for the charge involving Masterson’s former girlfriend of six years, voting 7-5 in favor of acquittal while voting 10-2 to acquit for alleged victim Jennifer B. and 8-4 to acquit for alleged victim N.T. But this jury convicted on both Jennifer and N.T.’s counts and hung 8-4 in favor of guilty for Masterson’s former girlfriend.
Scientology has always been prominent in the case because Masterson is second-generation Scientologist, and his alleged victims were members when they say he raped them. Each has since left Scientology, and they testified that the Church influenced their decision not to report Masterson to police sooner.
Read the whole thing.
Flashback: Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang.
A CULTURE-WAR RECKONING FOR CORPORATE AMERICA:
A headline in New York magazine laments, “Bud Light, Target, and a New Era of Corporate Caution.”
A new era of corporate caution? Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Imagine a beer company that just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you. Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer to everyone but didn’t feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals, any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt or teach you the value of standardized testing in public schools or warn you about North Korea’s intercontinental-missile program. Imagine a beer company that liked its existing customer base and didn’t feel a need to reeducate those customers and get them to give up their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”
Imagine an everything store like Target that wanted everyone to shop there, but that had the good sense to realize that partnering with a brand that had “Satanist-inspired merchandise” was not the way to win over shoppers in a country that is still roughly two-thirds Christian. (Also note that almost every faith has a devil figure, so there’s no reason to think non-Christian religious customers are big fans of Satanic branding, either.) You want to put rainbows and “PRIDE” on your merchandise, go right ahead. It’s a free country. But if you partner up with a “Satan Respects Pronouns”* designer, don’t be shocked when lots of people choose to shop elsewhere.
Entering into the culture war has become the Kobayashi Maru for Bud and Target. They’ve alienated conservatives badly, and now that their brands are politicized, they’re alienating the left by trying to get some distance between themselves and their mistakes. Naturally though, the media sees no enemies to the left: Media Hot on Threats Against Target, Until Alleged LGBT Bomb Threat.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Trump is the last of the Cuomosexuals.
Well, a week into the DeSantis campaign, now we know: Trump thinks DeSantis sucked on Covid, and so did Florida! Instead of sounding a note of ownership of the state’s successes — that such freedom was only possible under a White House that respected gubernatorial power to make such decisions — Trump has decided DeSantis’s local control was very, very bad, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Has he hired whistleblower lunatic Rebekah Jones yet?
The best part of this approach is Trump’s decision to laud the disgraced Andrew Cuomo’s handling of Covid in New York, which led to immeasurable excess deaths. Ever the antithesis of hip, Trump has become the last of the Cuomosexuals, in thrall to the former governor’s every capable-sounding word and his hand sanitizer that was definitely not a convoluted grift.
The exiled Cuomo hailed the praise from the former president: “Donald Trump tells the truth, finally,” he tweeted. Trump’s campaign later sent out an email blast containing “evidence” of the Florida governor’s “Lying Record on Covid.” The mailer criticizes DeSantis for praising vaccines and, gasp, being pictured wearing a mask… both things for which President Trump’s administration advocated.
If DeSantis “shut down the State and even its beaches,” that would be news to this escapee from Bergman’s The Seventh Seal:
But even if DeSantis did lock down, wouldn’t that be following Trump’s orders at the time? In April of 2020, Trump gave an enormous public and private bollocking to Gov. Brian Kemp, for reopening Georgia.
UPDATE: Trump’s Campaign Attacks DeSantis For Supporting Trump’s Nominee in 2017.
RAVING AND DROOLING: Roger Waters’ Performances and Anti-Semitism. “A celebrity influencer who believes Jews rule the world, Israelis are subhuman, and supports every effort to eradicate the Jewish state.”
UNHINGED — AND UNEXPECTEDLY: Trump Attacks His Former Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
“I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
Flashback: Tour de Force: Here Are the Top Ten Kayleigh McEnany Smackdowns of 2020.
BUT HOLLYWOOD KEEPS PUSHING US AWAY: Larger Screens, Heated Seats, Sushi: Theater Owners Want You Back.
THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC CALLED AND SAID THAT IT’S TIME TO HIT THE BRAKES ON 2023: Backlash Grows Over Male Transvestite Greeting Children at Disneyland.
MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: With Inflation, Even Workers Earning Six Figures Feel the Sting.
Financial fragility has been widespread among workers as inflation and prices remain high.
And while the pain is being felt primarily among low-income workers, there’s a surprising group of employees who are also feeling the squeeze: those earning six figures.
Several recent studies indicate that not only is financial stress on the rise among all workers, but high-income employees are feeling less confident about their financial situations than they were a year ago, when inflation hit a four-decade high.
Households earning more than $100,000 per year saw the biggest drop in financial well-being compared with a year ago, according to a poll by Morning Consult released last month. While scores dropped from 2022 to 2023 among all U.S. adults polled, the scores among those making six figures dropped 2.45 percentage points to 57.07 from 59.52 a year earlier. Comparatively, year-over-year financial well-being scores for those making between $50,000 and $99,000 dipped 0.59 points, from 51.90 in 2022 to 51.31 in 2023, while scores for those making under $50,000 dropped 0.86 points, from 46.24 in 2022 to 45.38 in 2023.
Meanwhile, just over half of high-income workers—those making $100,000 or more—said they are living paycheck to paycheck, a jump from 42 percent a year ago, a report out earlier this year from LendingClub found. Another report from financial wellness firms Salary Finance and FinFit found that workers at all income levels are feeling financial stress—nearly 60 percent of those making under $55,000 feel financial stress, but roughly 40 percent of those making over $200,000 feel it, too.
“Higher-income earners are feeling the pressure,” said Deepa Chatterjee, chief operating officer of Dayforce Consumer Services at Ceridian, a Minneapolis-based human resource software firm.
Gooder, and harder, America: The ghost of Milton Friedman is haunting President Biden.
Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Chris Christie gets a super PAC — who is ready for candidate Christie?
COVID IS TRULY OVER: Air Traffic Exceeds 2019 Levels.
The seemingly endless COVID pandemic may have finally ended.
According to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), holiday air travel has fully recovered.
Reuters reported that holiday air travel traffic over the Memorial Day weekend actually exceeded levels seen in 2019.
Almost 9.8 million passengers went through security or were screened by the TSA from Friday-Monday. That exceeded the 2019 Memorial Day period by about 300,000, according to Reuters.
On Friday alone, the TSA screened 2.74 million passengers, the highest single day since before COVID in November 2019.
And: Half-Empty a Year Ago, Cruises Are Now Packed Like Sardines.
Anyone expecting a repeat of the ample elbow room on many cruises last summer should prepare. The crowds are back at sea.
Cruise lines are seeing occupancy levels above 100% on many ships, largely due to the discounts and promotions many cruise lines offered in late fall and winter. Passengers are encountering long lines for activities on board, sold-out excursions and stressed-out crew members, a year after all but having ships to themselves. In extreme cases, cruise lines are canceling some people’s trips after overselling.
Royal Caribbean Group reported that the occupancy rate across its cruise lines averaged 102.1% during the first quarter of 2023, up from 57.4% in early 2022. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings says the occupancy rate averaged 101.5% during the first quarter and projects it to average 103.5% for the full year.
Cruise occupancy rates can rise above 100% because they are based on the expectation that two people will stay in each cabin, and this was a common occurrence before the pandemic. When three or four passengers stay in one cabin, occupancy rates can exceed 100%.
The average starting cost of a five-night cruise on a major cruise line for an inside cabin is $743 in June, according to data from cruise website Cruise Critic. That’s up from $551 during the same month last year. The price of a cruise vacation varies based on destination, duration, cabin type and cruise line, among other factors.
Bookings have been strongest for “sun and fun destinations” like the Caribbean, says David Crooks, senior vice president of product and operations for World Travel Holdings, a Massachusetts-based travel agency that operates cruise-booking sites including CruisesOnly and Cruises.com. Many of these cruises are sold out for this summer and are seeing strong demand well into 2024, he says. There is more flexibility for cruises in Europe and Alaska.
Exit quote from the first article: “Fauci must be furious.”
May 30, 2023
THIS TWEET FROM AN MLB PITCHER IS SURE TO MAKE LEFTIST SPORTS MEDIA MELT DOWN:
As the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball club continues to hem-and-haw its way through a controversy created by its decision to honor a group called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for their supposed contributions to the City of Angels — more on their, ahem, activities from Mia here — a growing number of baseball fans and faith-based organizations have registered their disapproval of the Dodgers’ decision.
Among them, as of Tuesday afternoon, is Trevor Williams, a 31-year-old pitcher for the Washington Nationals who happens to be Catholic and decided to use his platform to speak out against the Dodgers and Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in a statement on Twitter. His admirable decision to use his voice rather than remain silent is sure to send left-wing media — especially leftward-lurching sports media — screeching into the abyss.
“As a devout Catholic, I am deeply troubled by the Dodgers’ decision to re-invite and honor the group ‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ at their Pride Night this year,” Williams said in his tweeted statement. “A Major League Baseball game is a place where people from all walks of life should feel welcomed, something I greatly respect and support. This is the purpose of different themed nights hosted by the organization, including Pride Night,” he continued.
Exit quote: “Say a prayer for this man. The demons are gonna come for him with everything they have. They cannot risk others showing this kind of courage.“