AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
FBI Discovers Building Full Of Dangerous Extremists Organizing Acts Of Terror Across Country https://t.co/5Q31IarKXh pic.twitter.com/Hc0lp61S7w
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 18, 2023
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
May 20, 2023
GREAT MOMENTS IN STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: I have lockdown nostalgia, and I’m not alone.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Target’s ‘Tuck-Friendly’ Bathing Suits Inspired by Drag Queen.
JOHN NOLTE: Disney’s ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Debuts to Brutal Reviews.
How many franchises does franchise-killer Kathleen Kennedy get to woke-rape before she’s fired? So far, it’s three: Star Wars, Willow, and Indiana Jones.
By the way, that super-woke Willow TV series is such a flop on Disney+, so rejected by viewers, it’s already scheduled to be removed from the streaming service to save money.
The first three Indiana Jones movies are fantastic. Why waste your time with garbage when you can revisit those?
Why spend all that time and money to go to a movie theater and sit through garbage when you can buy a Blu-ray of some classic movie you’ve never seen for half that cost? Why not use your time and money to take a chance that way? It’s a much safer bet, and the Blu-ray is yours to keep.
When even the leftwing BBC is saying, “I’m not sure how many fans want to see Indiana Jones as a broken, helpless old man who cowers in the corner while his patronising goddaughter takes the lead, but that’s what we’re given, and it’s as bleak as it sounds,” it might be time to consider your writing and directorial choices.
May 19, 2023
LAWYER: Woman Has ‘Receipts’ in Viral Citi Bike Incident, Media Will Be Held Accountable. “We saw how mania and media worked in the case of the Covington kids, where there’s a dogpile to get someone because it fits the political beliefs of the media. It’s shameful that people fall on people in stories like this when they don’t know the facts and try to ruin others. And yes, usually they aren’t held to account. But it sounds like this time, just like with Covington kid Nick Sandmann, they just might be.”
FUNNY HOW THESE “IMPROPRIETIES” ONLY GO IN ONE DIRECTION: FBI improperly used warrantless search powers more than 278,000 times in 2021, FISA court filing reveals. The queries targeted people involved in Jan. 6 and George Floyd protests, and donors to a failed congressional candidate.
DISPATCHES FROM THE ICE FLOE: Hypocrites: The View Demands Feinstein Resign, ‘Not Ageism or Sexism.’
The die was cast on ABC’s The View on Friday as the cast collectively demanded that California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein resign as her advanced age and deteriorating health hindered her ability to represent her constituents, and they should get a younger liberal in the seat. But this was a grossly hypocritical position for the liberal ladies to take since they’ve previously denounced mental competency tests for Congress, term limits, propped up and defended Senator John Fetterman’s poor health condition, and defended President Joe Biden’s mental faculties.
After a quick rundown of the situation facing Feinstein from moderator Joy Behar, racist co-host Sunny Hostin lamented: “It’s terrible because she has been such an effective senator for over six decades – or six terms rather, and I think that it’s very difficult for someone to step away from work that they love.”
She then blamed Republicans for supposedly forcing Feinstein to return to work before she was completely healed:
She’s 89 years old. She says she’s not going to resign. And she did ask the Republican Party – or the Democrats asked the Republican Party to allow her a temporary replacement while she heals. They’ve refused to do that. And so, she’s back at work. And I think she’s not fully healed. I mean, if you look at the pictures of her, it pained me to see the condition that she was in.
Despite her own argument, Hostin still said he felt “it’s time for [Feinstein] to put the country before herself.”
* * * * * * * *
[Co-host Sara] Haines was one of Fetterman’s strongest defenders on the show. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, she insisted that his doctor’s note from one of his donors “would suffice” as an all-clear for him to run.
Haines, Behar, and Hostin also mocked then-Senate candidate Hershel Walker with salacious accusations of having brain damage from playing football yet decried the “unempathetic” criticism of Fetterman’s inability to be a senator.
Late last month, Behar argued that a braindead and “drooling” Biden was better than “any Republican.” “There’s nothing to indicate that there’s anything wrong with Joe Biden up here. There’s nothing to indicate that,” Hostin asserted while pointing at her head.
Flashback: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Reviews Confirm Worst (Woke) Fears About Indy’s ‘Dial of Destiny.’
The sequel’s Cannes Film Festival premiere allowed select film critics to screen the movie, slated for a June 30 release. And the early notices are less than kind.
“Dial of Destiny” boasts a limp 43 percent “rotten” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, a critical review aggregator site.
The BBC review called the film “gloomy and depressing,” but that’s not the critical takeaway from the pan.
[“Dial of Destiny”] has the air of a film passing the torch (or whip) to the next generation. But it does all this in an even gloomier fashion than The Force Awakens did. I’m not sure how many fans want to see Indiana Jones as a broken, helpless old man who cowers in the corner while his patronising goddaughter takes the lead, but that’s what we’re given, and it’s as bleak as it sounds.
Ouch.
Variety confirms what many suspected about the belated sequel – it’s a vehicle for Disney, Inc. to replace Ford’s Indy with [Phoebe] Waller-Bridge’s heroine.
Which worked out well for the (also Kathleen Kennedy-produced) Star Wars sequels.
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: Anheuser-Busch loses LGBTQ+ rating for missing ‘key moment’ to stand up for Dylan Mulvaney.
The nation’s largest gay advocacy group stripped Anheuser-Busch of a key metric following the beer giant’s backpedaling over Bud Light’s controversial tie-up with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The Human Rights Campaign, which issues a Corporate Equality Index to rate companies on their policies toward workers in the LGBTQ community, told the Belgian-based brewer that it will slash its perfect 100 score, according to a letter leaked to USA Today on Thursday.
Bud Light’s parent company has been scrambling to fix the fallout from having Mulvaney associated with the brand.
Sales of the nation’s top-selling beer have plummeted nearly 25% since Mulvaney posted a photo of a Bud Light tallboy featuring her face on April 1.
“Anheuser-Busch had a key moment to really stand up and demonstrate the importance of their values of diversity, equity and inclusion and their response really fell short,” Eric Bloem, HRC’s senior director, programs and corporate advocacy, said, told USA Today.
Anheuser-Busch’s Alissa Heinerscheid really wreaked havoc with her previously apolitical brand — both by issuing the Mulvaney can, and by attacking her existing customers as “fratty” and “out of touch.” As Ed Morrissey wrote earlier this month, “This is what happens when corporations take sides in social debates — especially when their executives either don’t know their customer base, don’t like their customer base — or in Heinerscheid’s case, both.“
LYSENKOISM: Social-Justice Couples Therapy.
Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, and others have used the term “woke mind virus” to cast radical leftism as a communicable brain-eating malady. I had once thought this was a clunky and cartoonish formulation, but now I’m not so sure.
In the New York Times Magazine, clinical psychologist Orna Guralnik identifies something that sounds like, well, you tell me: “In my practice, I’ve found that engaging with these progressive movements has led to deep changes in our psyches,” she writes. “My patients, regardless of political affiliation, are incorporating the messages of social movements into the very structure of their being.”
Kind of like one of like one of those exotic parasites that take over the behavior centers of the host brain to make it more compliant. And sure enough, Guralnik admits: “it has all made my work as a couples therapist easier.”
Guralnik, you see, isn’t opposed to the leftist annexation of the psyche. She thinks it’s just terrific. “Coming to see the working of implicit biases on us, grasping that our views are contingent on, let’s say, our gender, class background or skin color, is a humbling lesson,” she writes. “It pushes us beyond assuming sameness, opening up the possibility of seeing our partner’s point of view.” Or, as the eminent psychotherapist Mao Zedong put it: “In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.”
Read the whole thing.
ROGER SIMON: Nashville Coverup Escalates: Tennessee’s Governor Must Cancel Special Session.
Many are justifiably upset over what may or may not be in the “manifesto.” More rumors are flying around this city than country music star Morgan Wallen has hits. And I am not against protecting some of the privacy concerns involved here.
But whatever happened or didn’t, none of it, past or present, justifies Audrey Hale’s rage killings.
We live in a time when transgenderism is metastasizing faster than any of us could have believed possible even a few years ago. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say every other family has a child suddenly thinking that the normal growing pains of adolescence mean they have gender dysphoria and that changing their sex is the solution to a happy life.
Briefly put—that’s insane.
It’s become a national, even international, insanity that leads almost always to an excruciatingly unhappy life. Witness Audrey Hale.
Before we can figure out what to do, we absolutely must know what the transgendered Hale, or her physicians, put in her body that generated so much rage that she could kill six people and evidently want to kill many more.
Is it testosterone? At what dosage? What about antidepressants, which many are now saying have significant negative side effects or create unintended outcomes?
Forget AK-47s. These or other medications that are being given almost willy-nilly may be the real murder weapons.
Does Gov. Lee know Ms. Hale’s medical history? If so, why doesn’t he tell us before urging his Assembly to enact legislation? Isn’t he concerned that others may act out in the manner of Ms. Hale, whether in Tennessee or the other 49 states? What happened in Nashville could have happened anywhere.
I don’t want to speculate further here, but I can tell you this: The left seems currently in love with the transgender movement. It’s their latest cause célèbre, no matter how many lives it destroys.
Earlier: Release The Nashville Manifesto.
THE DEMAND FOR RACISM STILL VASTLY EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY: More media madness: fake racism edition. “The media LOVES LOVES LOVES to stir up racial hatred. It is their milk and honey, their French wine, their brie and baguette, and their chocolate mousse. Destroying the life of an innocent person, labeling them a racist hatemongering White supremacist is like a Prime Rib dinner with all the fixings, and if you get the person fired it’s time to pop the champagne…Such a story broke onto the internet earlier in the week, as a pregnant nurse coming off a 12-hour shift rented a bike and was accosted by 5 large black men who claimed that she was stealing a bike that they had paid for. Watching that video were are supposed to assume that this nurse was the aggressor, and that is the take that everybody pushed on the Internet and then in the MSM. Shockingly, that was false. Who could have guessed?”
GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: San Francisco Office Values Collapse 75%.
I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Review: Time Is of the Essence in a Sequel That Gets Old Fast.
UPDATE: Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a franchise murderer — and Indiana Jones is her next victim.
https://twitter.com/TimothyNerozzi/status/1659180602015326208
LET’S WATCH AN AI CHATBOT CANCEL A NEW YORK TIMES SUBSCRIPTION:
Here is a DoNotPay GPT-4 bot negotiating with the New York Times to cancel my subscription.
It is ridiculous you have to chat with a customer service agent to cancel.
Fortunately, A.I. will end dark patterns, because it doesn’t give up as easily as a human! pic.twitter.com/lUNqtJQ9Pb
— Joshua Browder (@jbrowder1) May 12, 2023
Related: “ChatGPT plugins just dropped. This update is like the new App Store of AI. Here’s 8 plugins that’ll easily 10x your productivity.”
Meanwhile at the Gearspace forum: Three Predictions for Music AI.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Chris Christie to announce 2024 presidential run ‘in the coming days:’ report.
HOW IT STARTED: No one is coming for your gas stove anytime soon.
—The New York Times, January 21st.
How it’s going: Celebrity chef Jose Andres exempted from Palo Alto gas stove ban.
—The Washington Examiner, yesterday.
NOT A TERRORIST? The Biden Team Killed the Wrong Person Again.
U.S. military officials are walking back claims that a recent strike in Syria killed an influential al-Qaeda figure, following assertions by the dead man’s family that he had no ties to terrorists but was a father of 10 tending to his sheep when he was slain by an American missile.
Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, whose family identified him as the victim of a Hellfire missile attack on May 3, was a former bricklayer who lived quietly in this town in northwest Syria, according to interviews with his brother, son and six others who knew him. They described a kind, hard-working man whose “whole life was spent poor.”
The operation was overseen by U.S. Central Command, which claimed hours after the strike, without citing evidence or naming a suspect, that the Predator drone strike had targeted a “senior Al Qaeda leader.” But now there is doubt inside the Pentagon about who was killed, two U.S. defense officials told The Washington Post.
“We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” one official said. The other, offering a slightly different view, said “though we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.” Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary determinations of an ongoing investigation into the incident.
In the weeks since the attack, U.S. military officials have refused to identify publicly who their target was, how the apparent error occurred, whether a legitimate terrorist leader escaped and why some in the Pentagon maintain Misto was a member of al-Qaeda despite his family’s denials.
In a statement, Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for Central Command, said officials are aware of reports of a civilian casualty and continue to assess the outcome.
It’s par for the course for an Obama administration retread: Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki Would Have Been 26 Today If Not for the US Drone War.