BURIED LEDE: CNN IS ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF JOURNALISM! CNN digs up Hakeem Jeffries’ editorial defending his uncle’s anti-Semitic remarks and Louis Farrakhan.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
April 13, 2023
THE GHOST OF SAUL ALINSKY SMILES: Bodega clerk Jose Alba to testify at House Judiciary field hearing on violent crime under NYC DA Alvin Bragg.
RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS UPTOWN: New York City names its first-ever ‘rat czar.’
New York City now has a “rat czar.”
Kathleen Corradi has been named the city’s director of rodent mitigation.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rats,” Corradi said Wednesday after she was introduced by Mayor Eric Adams.
Added Adams: “Kathy has the knowledge, drive, experience, and energy to send rats packing and create a cleaner more welcoming city for all New Yorkers.”
The mayor also announced $3.5 million for rat mitigation in Harlem. The money will fund new techniques and new staff members to inspect, exterminate and clean public spaces.
“He hates rats. I hate rats. Every New Yorker hates rats,” Corradi said. “Rats are tough but New Yorkers are tougher.”
Back in 2013, I wrote a lengthy post on Charles Bronson’s first Death Wish movie, filmed on location in the clapped out, crime-ridden Manhattan of the 1970s, and concluded:
In contrast, New York has improved immensely since the period depicted in the original 1974 Death Wish. Naturally, New York’s bourgeois-bohemians, as David Brooks would call them, would welcome a chance to return to the hell of Manhattan in the ‘70s, as Daniel Henninger noted in a 2005 Wall Street Journal article:
The actor John Leguizamo: New York in the ’70s “was funky and gritty and showed the world how a metropolis could be dark and apocalyptic and yet fecund.” Fran Lebowitz, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair: The city “was a wreck; it was going bankrupt. And it was pretty lawless; everything was illegal, but no laws were enforced. It was a city for city-dwellers, not tourists, the way it is now.” Laurie Anderson, a well-known New York artist and performer, admits the ’70s were considered “the dark ages” but “there was great music and everyone was broke.”
I hope everybody in Fun City is enjoying all the newfound funkiness and grittiness as much as its Bobo elites who cheered for its return.
THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION THE MEDIA NEVER ASKS GAVIN NEWSOM:
It’s an inarguable reality that California has lost a substantial portion of its population and its revenue, while Florida surges.
So why is Newsom not being asked about it?
If Californians were happy with the job he’s doing, why aren’t they staying?
In just a few years, California’s lost 1.3% of its population. That’s a staggering drop for a state that previously led the country in growth and provided endless opportunity.
Meanwhile, Florida’s had a massive influx of new residents, more than any other state.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it makes perfect sense that Gov. Brylcreem get to avoid the tough questions about his state’s ongoing collapse.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Bud Light suffers bloodbath as longtime and loyal consumers revolt against transgender campaign. “‘I think society flexes it muscles sometimes and reminds manufacturers that the consumer is still in charge,’ Jeff Fitter, owner of Case & Bucks, a restaurant and sports bar in Barnhart, Missouri, told FOX Business. ‘In Bud Light’s effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else, including their traditional audience.’”
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: It’s merely performative.
Tennessee Representative Justin J. Pearson is a total fraud
Pearson in 2016 vs 2023: pic.twitter.com/iPLXFFJ6r2
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 11, 2023
We’re in a curious place where two of the most prominent leftists of the moment are full-time performance artists: The performance of a lifetime. Dylan Mulvaney’s mimicry of women is absurd.
April 11, 2023
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Budweiser Replaces Clydesdales With Cows Dressed As Horses.
‘RED-PILLED:’ FBI docs label people who use term as extremists.
The documents were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Heritage Foundation. They show the agency has glossaries that flag the terms as a sign that the user may be associated with “Involuntary Celibate Violent Extremism” or “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.” The documents say that “While most incels do not engage in violence,” some have been involved in “at least five lethal attacks in the United States and Canada.”
The attempt to tie these terms, “based” and “red-pilled,” to violent extremism is baseless. Here’s where they actually come from.
Update Newspeak Dictionaries accordingly, comrades!
FILM LADD IS ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IN A NEW VIDEO: Should I Hate Wil Wheaton?
Gaines also discussed self-avowed feminists like Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and Billie Jean King who advocate for what is effectively a step in the contradictory direction of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.
Just hours after torching Rapinoe and Bird on Twitter, Gaines elaborated on how such “faux-feminists” are scared thanks to incidents like the one that happened to her at San Francisco State University.
“Well, to be totally frank, people are scared because look at what just happened to me for saying something as simple as men and women are different,” Gaines said. “That’s easy, right? That’s common sense, yet I was still ambushed. No one wants that to happen to them; no one wants to be labeled as transphobic.
Flashback to late 2018: Greatest Female Tennis Player in History Martina Navratilova Says That It’s Not Fair for Men to Compete Against Women; Trans Activists Attack Her Until She Deletes the Tweet and Apologizes.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Amazon looks to grow diamonds in bid to boost computer networks. “Quantum networking uses subatomic matter to deliver data in a way that goes beyond today’s fiber-optic systems. The diamonds would be part of a component that lets the data travel farther without breaking down.”
MARK JUDGE: A new anti-Kavanaugh book doesn’t mention me by name. Here’s why. “If [CNN Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic] named me, she would have to describe the contents of my book, The Devil’s Triangle. I reveal extortion attempts, media manipulation, witness tampering, and even a sexual honey trap, all to destroy me and Brett Kavanaugh. I talk about Leland Keyser, Ford’s friend who denied the alleged assault ever happened and went on to say that she was pressured to change her story. Biskupic doesn’t want to go there because it would collapse her case against Brett. It’s the same reason the Washington Post won’t review my book despite my being a native Washingtonian with deep family roots in the city, and despite the fact that I was at the center of one of the most explosive Washington scandals in decades…As I’ve heard many times said about the media, it ain’t just what they report. It’s what they choose to leave out.”
JIM GERAGHTY ON THE UKRAINE WAR: The Leaked Documents Warning Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Will Likely Stall.
As I said yesterday, this is bad. It is bad that this assessment leaked; it is bad that this assessment of Ukraine’s abilities in the spring offensive are so modest or grim; it is bad that apparently lots of foreign-policy experts have doubts about the administration’s approach but are afraid to say so publicly; and it is bad that Biden’s public assessment of the war in Ukraine is the same rosy-eyed, unrealistic optimism that characterized his assessment of Afghanistan, inflation, migrants crossing the border, and the Chinese spy balloon. The president is always telling us that things are going great and that we have nothing to worry about, and a little later, we learn that the truth is the opposite.
More here: About that leak.
Related: DNC issues statement to its operatives with bylines: Government Spokesman Instructs Media to Ignore Leaked Intelligence: It’s ‘Not Intended for Public Consumption.’
April 10, 2023
LONG OVERDUE: Biden signs bill ending COVID national emergency with month to spare.
Related: I wonder if this will cause the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca to have a change of heart? The School That Couldn’t Quit Covid. A school in upstate New York imposed some of the most extreme measures during the pandemic—including silent lunches and outdoor masking. The rules are still in effect. “As of today, children at EACMSI are still required to mask indoors and outdoors. They are still prohibited from speaking during lunch. Second-graders who began school there as kindergarteners in fall 2020 have never experienced a normal day of school in their lives.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN FAILURE THEATER: Expelled TN Democrat to Be Reinstated, GOP Speaker Appears to Fold.
INVERTING THE CLAUSEWITZ CLAUSE: FBI Used Undercover Agent to Cultivate Sources among Catholic Clergy and Leadership, House Republicans Reveal.
Meanwhile: Walter Reed Issues ‘Cease and Desist Order’ to Group of Franciscan Priests Ministering to Catholic Patients.
As I wrote in 2009, “President Obama has demonstrated that he’s always eager to view American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head. Certainly class and culture warfare at least. It’s the Chicago way, after all.” Biden’s handlers have dusted off Obama’s old playbook, and our sclerotic “President Unity” apparently has no qualms with putting it to work.
DON SURBER: DeSantis wants to bring back the 1950s? Cool.
Donna Brazile, the ethically challenged Democrat operator, said on Sunday, “Ron DeSantis is running on a 1950s America, not a 2050 America.”
Cool because the 1950s were a period of peace, prosperity and promise in America under President Eisenhower.
After 20 years of wars and depression under Democrat presidents, America was ready to roll again, this time without Uncle Sam spending money he did not have on the military.
America remained, however, the champion of the free world. We drafted the King of Rock and Roll to drive a tank to protect West Germany from a Soviet invasion. Elvis did not complain. He saw it as his patriotic duty because he loved the country. Once his service ended, he came home and resumed his career as a singer and actor.
Imagine some rapper or even country star doing that today. And for the record, Jimi Hendrix served and was a member of the 101st Airborne. That was in the 1960s, which shows the values we had in the 1950s had staying power.
Eisenhower had won the War in Europe in the 1940s. He knew war and he avoided it. His first accomplishment as president was ending the hot war in Korea. He refused to enter England’s dispute with Egypt over the Suez Canal and declined the invitation to join the Hungarian revolution.
Our economy blossomed. Factories hired. Stores stocked up. For the first time since the heyday of Calvin Coolidge, America was booming again without a war.
DeSantis would have bipartisan support if be brought back the ’50s: A Moment of Communion with Paul Krugman.
Back in 2006, when he was writing The Conscience of a Liberal, Krugman found himself searching for a way to describe his own political Eden, his vision of America before the Fall. He knew the moment that he wanted to describe: the fifties and early sixties, when prosperity was not only broad but broadly shared. [Krugman’s wife, Robin Wells], looking over a draft, thought his account was too numerical, too cold. She suggested that he describe his own childhood, in the middle-class suburb of Merrick, Long Island. And so Krugman began writing with an almost choking nostalgia, the sort of feeling that he usually despises: “The political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional moment in our nation’s history …”
It’s not too late, Paul!
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Dalai Lama Inundated With Requests From Public Libraries To Lead Story Hours.