THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: For the first time, Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israel, poll finds.

VDH: Are We the Byzantines?

Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create.

Current woke dogma, obscure word fights, and sanctimonious cancel culture are as antithetical to the past generations of World War II as the last generation of Constantinople was to the former great eras of the emperors Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo.

The Byzantines never woke up in time to understand what they had become.

So far neither have Americans.

It’s VDH, so read the whole thing.

WELL, I’M GLAD WE FINALLY CLEARED THAT UP: So, not Russian disinfo? Hunter Biden’s legal team basically just confirmed that it was his laptop.

I’M SORRY DAVE, I CAN’T ALLOW YOU TO EMAIL THAT WORD DOC: Microsoft unveils AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant.

Microsoft has announced a new assistant powered by artificial intelligence to help boost productivity across Microsoft 365 apps, currently being tested by select commercial customers.

Known as Copilot, the new AI feature helps create and manage documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, as well as triage and reply to emails.

Copilot is coming to all Microsoft 365 apps, from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to Microsoft Viva and Power Platform.

It uses the GPT-4 large multimodal model just like the new Bing Chat and works like a chatbot, enabling users to generate content based on prompts exchanged via a chatbot interface.

According to OpenAI, “while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

It harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) with users’ data in Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 to increase productivity.

Clippy has become self-aware. What could possibly go wrong?

https://youtu.be/8_lXSmlwk1s

AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ADVISES, GET IN THEIR FACES AND PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Farmers’ protest party win shock Dutch vote victory.

But with most votes counted they are due to win 15 of the Senate’s seats with almost 20% of the vote.

“This isn’t normal, but actually it is! It’s all normal citizens who voted,” said leader Caroline van der Plas.

The BBB aims to fight government plans to slash nitrogen emissions harmful to biodiversity by dramatically reducing livestock numbers and buying out thousands of farms.

But its appeal has spread rapidly beyond its rural heartland, on a populist platform that represents traditional, conservative Dutch social and moral values.

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”

The federal government issued new guidelines Monday for Americans on how to combat the coronavirus pandemic, titled “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” The 15 days are seen as a trial period for the new recommendations and add to previous guidance about practicing good hygiene, staying home if sick and following state and local authorities.

Fauci and Birx’s glee during the announcement is something to behold:

Remember when everybody had to stop going to school and start living inside their houses? Newscasters started broadcasting from home and everything? All that weird stuff?

And, oh yeah, they broke the economy like snapping a dry twig over their knee.

These people. https://t.co/d9CsJ55TsD

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) March 17, 2023

JOHN NOLTE: Happy 90th Birthday to the Mighty Michael Caine.

Michael Caine turned 90 this week. I can hardly believe it.

Caine was born in 1933, and like his irreplaceable contemporaries — Robert Duvall (Born 1931) and Clint Eastwood (born 1930) — he keeps on keeping on. How fortunate we are for that.

If you read Caine’s superb 1992 autobiography, What’s It All About?, you’ll discover that his true contemporaries were legends like Peter O’Toole and Terence Stamp and that he grew frustrated watching their careers explode while he scraped along…

But he hung in there, and stardom finally arrived at the ripe old age of 31 with Zulu (1964), a supporting role he basically lucked into. Zulu ended up being a box office hit (and is now rightly regarded as a classic), and in it, Caine proved he was something special: a true actor who was also a movie star, a leading man capable of character roles. But, most of all, there is his depth, a bottomless reservoir of Something’s-Going-On-Down-There-And-Something’s-Going-To-Happen. Without opening his mouth, Caine’s mere presence gives his every character a history and emotional life.

Related: Michael Caine at ninety, in his own words. “We might know him as Michael Caine, but he took his knighthood in his real name. He is really Sir Maurice Micklewhite. Sir Maurice takes being Michael Caine very seriously — and he is very good at it — but his diplomacy has limits. When I ask him if the media have been unfair to Woody Allen, the director of Hannah and Her Sisters, who is dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, he says yes, but adds no more. When I tell him that Zulu is listed on the counter-terror Prevent scheme as a piece of culture that incites the far-right, he says: ‘That is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard.’ Again, he adds no more. He pursues happiness. His perfect day is being at home with his grandchildren, and on his birthday, he says, he will dine with his family.”

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: First Republic Bank Executives Sold $12 Million in Stock in 2 Months Leading Up to Collapse.

GREAT MOMENTS IN MORAL EQUIVALENCE: VP Harris’s husband likens outraged parents at school board meetings to hatred that led to the Holocaust.

While speaking about how to combat anti-Semitism, Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, first gentleman Doug Emhoff, likened the hate that led to the Holocaust to the frustrations of parents at school board meetings.

Emhoff, who is Jewish, made the remarks at SXSW* in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, while recounting a recent trip to a concentration camp.

I met one woman who was saved in the Holocaust in Germany, settled in Ukraine, and is now a refugee again back in Berlin,” Emhoff recalled to Symone Sanders, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, who was leading the interview.

This hate is interconnected,” he continued. “You see it in the discourse in the country right now. You see it in the divide that we have. Just going to school meetings you see that hate that is out there.”

Virginia’s Gov. Terry McAuliffe could not be reached for comment.

Also at South By Southwest:

UPDATE: Ace of Spades adds:

Gina Carano was cancelled for referencing the Nazis in connection with modern-day woke purges.

But the left is permitted to make these comparisons. Pedro Pascal, Carano’s co-star on the Disney+ show The Mandalorian, repeated compared detaining illegal aliens sneaking across the border to concentration camps. Not a peep of controversy was heard.

I mean, the truth is that Disney+ actually fired Carano because she wouldn’t use transgender pronouns (as Pedro Pascal eagerly did). So they looked for any excuse to fire her which would not call attention to their “Not-So-Secret Gay Agenda,” or make the transgender extremists look like the bad guys.

So they blamed the Jews instead. I guess it’s a classic for a reason, huh, Disney?

Related: ‘No truth in claim that Walt Disney was an anti-Semite.’

(Updated and bumped.)

‘THAT’S A LIE:’ Janet Yellen Faces Grilling Before Senate Finance Committee.

Biden’s refusal to work with lawmakers was brought up again by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) on the issue of protecting the solvency of Social Security. Yellen tried to insist that Biden “cares very deeply” about the program, but couldn’t explain any of his actions to back up that claim. Instead, Yellen insisted Biden “stands ready to work with Congress.”

“That’s a lie,” Cassidy pointed out, as lawmakers have tried to meet with Biden on the subject to no avail.

It’s unsurprising that Biden doesn’t have a plan to address Social Security or negotiate a debt ceiling increase, considering his previous failures. From the Afghanistan withdrawal to declaring “independence” from COVID in 2021, Biden’s plans, when he does have them, don’t end any better.

QED:

Sen. @MikeCrapo gets Biden Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen to admit the link between Biden's inflation crisis, rising interest rates, and the current banking crisis pic.twitter.com/rgp6Ozuqpx

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 16, 2023

I’M THE GYPSY, THE ACID QUEEN, PAY ME BEFORE I START. I’M THE GYPSY, I’M GUARANTEED TO TEAR YOUR SOUL APART: Politico: Marianne Williamson ‘abusive’ toward campaign staff.

Finally, Politico looked up some old stories from the time when Williamson was first gaining traction for her work as a Hollywood guru of sorts. Here’s a bit of a story from the LA Times in 1992:

Williamson is also the latest mystical sensation in Hollywood, where many work assiduously to cultivate their souls, often with the same devotion they apply to their physiques. Anthony Perkins, Lesley Ann Warren, Tommy Tune, Cher and Roy Scheider go to her lectures. David Geffen and Sandy Gallin listen to her on tape and have sought her private counsel; she lunches with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Dawn Steel, and last summer she officiated at the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Fortensky. “Her sense of spirituality triggered off my own,” the bride said recently through a spokeswoman…

Feared in some quarters for her explosive temper, Williamson acknowledges that she often comes across as “the bitch for God.”…

Many people who have worked with her say she has an explosive temper that erupts indiscriminately even in front of sick clients. They contend she is a “control freak” who insists on becoming involved in every detail and cannot bear to be upstaged or challenged. “If you don’t agree with Marianne you’re not going to be around very long,” said Dick DeVogeleare, a dismissed executive director who sued the center for breach of contract and later settled.

“Marianne is someone who likes to control everyone around her,” said journalist Jean Halberstam, formerly on the Manhattan center’s board.

Flashback: The late Cathy Seipp on California Screaming.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Yellen Admits that CCP-Linked Silicon Valley Bank Depositors Will Be Bailed Out by U.S. Banks.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted during a Thursday Congressional hearing that Chinese Communist Party-linked businesses that had deposits in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will be made whole by the American banking system.

Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) pressed Yellen on the matter during a Senate Finance Committee hearing held days after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.

“It has been reported publicly that SVB had a large number of Chinese investors that are there including some companies that were directly connected to the Chinese Communist Party,” Senator Lankford (R., Okla.) asked Yellen during Thursday afternoon’s hearing. “So what I’m asking is: will my banks in Oklahoma pay a special assessment to be able to make Chinese investors whole in Silicon Valley Bank?”

Secretary Yellen confirmed that they would.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported: Man Struggling To Feed Family Just Glad He Could Help Bail Out Bank.

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Hallie is unmasked as the mystery third Biden family member to receive China cash: Top Republican reveals Beau’s widow and Hunter’s ex got $35,000 in 2017 from $3M deal made by Hunter’s associate.

NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: Forget Boring Rental Cars: Rent a Limited-Edition Shelby GT-H Mustang from Hertz Instead.

ANSWERING THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ON THE PLANET: Can you split an Oreo and get equal cream on both sides? A group of MIT scientists created the “Oreometer” to find out.

KING OF COMEDY UPDATE: Watch the Jussie Smollett hate hoaxers re-enact the ‘crime.’ “Is this the best video to grace the internet today? Cockburn thinks yes. Check out Abel and Ola Osundairo, the Nigerian brothers who allegedly perpetrated a fake hate crime against Empire actor Jussie ‘Juicy’ Smollett, re-enacting how they carried out the staged attack:”

The Osundairo brothers were hired men for a con created to dupe America. They share what they were instructed to do the night of the staged attack on Jussie Smollett. https://t.co/jvWwGloz8k #FoxNation #JussieSmollett #AnatomyOfAHoax pic.twitter.com/3uOEHLFSoN

— Fox Nation (@foxnation) March 13, 2023

(Classical reference in headline.)

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: It’s the End of Women’s Colleges as We Know It, and You Know Why.

Wellesley College, an all-women’s school that has long prided itself as a place for “women who will make a difference in the world,” has truly lost the plot.  Currently, the school’s policy is that students who were “assigned female at birth who identify as men are not eligible for admission,” but students who were “assigned male at birth who identify as women are eligible for admission.”

So, in reality, Wellesley hasn’t truly been an all-women’s college since 2015, when it last updated its policy to accept applications from biological males who identify as women. But even that policy allowing biological men to attend wasn’t woke enough for the student body, which, on Tuesday, voted in support of a non-binding resolution to allow “trans men and nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth” to be admitted as students.

Matt Walsh, call your office!

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: How we forgot about Pol Pot.

In 1975, the ancient monarchy of Cambodia was roiled by the troubles shaking all of Indochina. Vietnam was at the end of its long war for independence, led by the communist Viet Cong. The USA was bombing, often with bestial inaccuracy, Vietnam’s neighbours like Laos and Cambodia (used as supply lines by the VC). Cambodia was thus semi-involved in the war.

[In 1975], a groupuscule of Paris-educated Cambodian ultra-Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, was rising to power. They started by radicalising and arming the peasantry, firing them with violent passion. Eventually they seized the capital (that terrible day witnessed by Roland Neveu). They then set about enforcing their crazed belief in an agrarian paradise, with everyone labouring like oxen in the rice-fields. A Maoist autarky. A place without money (they literally blew up the national bank, scattering now-worthless banknotes into the jacaranda trees). A place without religion, hierarchy, social class, intellectuals.

To do this, they killed all the middle classes. Everyone. If you had an education, you were killed. If you spoke a foreign language, you were killed. If you were a monk, a teacher, a lawyer, you were killed. People wearing spectacles were killed. Anyone who could dance was killed; ancient and exquisite Cambodian dance was a tradition handed on orally and practically – this meant that the nation of Cambodia forgot how to dance.

When the KR ran out of obvious bourgeoisie to kill, they killed each other. For any reason. People caught with snails in their pockets were killed. People were killed for having sex, or being happy, or laughing. In the end it is estimated the Khmer Rouge slaughtered about 2-3 million people in a population of 8 million. Cambodia is the nation that crucified itself.

Why? Why was this regime so mad? This is the question many have asked. After this latest visit, finally going to Choeung Ek, I think I perhaps have an answer. In his fine, troubling book – The Elimination – about his interviews with Duch, Khmer Rouge survivor Rithy Panh quotes Duch saying that in his world ‘there is no place for the individual’, and ‘beauty is an obstacle’.

This is important because it reveals the insane yet inexorable logic of the Khmer Rouge. If Marxism means enforced equality, its ultimate endpoint is this. Individuals cannot be ‘allowed’ as they might be ‘different’, they might laugh or be happy, unlike others. Beauty – physical, artistic, sexual, spiritual, intellectual – must likewise be ruthlessly extinguished, because it too prevents a Marxist Utopia. Beauty is unfair. It must be eliminated.

Does this matter? Yes, because we live in a time when kids think Marxism is cool again. When self-confessed Marxist Jeremy Corbyn is seen as an amusing old uncle.

“Cambodian genocide denial” has its own Wikipedia page; not least of which was practiced by Noam Chomsky in the 1970s.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Mollie Hemingway: Drew Barrymore Kneeling To Dylan Mulvaney, “A Dude In Ladyface,” Is Embarrassing As A Woman.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Admits How Unpopular He Is, and Response of Vegas Audience Confirms It:

“It’s a hell of a lot more popular than I am!” Biden admitted. I agree. Most of his budget is probably unpopular but at least the left will like the radical parts. That already makes it more popular than old Joe who is unpopular across the board.

But if there was any sign of how unpopular he is and how people don’t like his policies, listen to the reaction here when he promises, “There’s a lot more coming.”

In a room full of a likely friendly audience, it sounds like one person claps. That’s what people think of his agenda. Not a good look for him for 2024. Indeed, you can hear far more in the silence — that’s the people who know “a lot more coming” from Joe Biden is something to be feared and concerned about.

Earlier: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

THE LID: Remember March, The Ides Of March Remember!

SECOND-WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY ASKS THE WORST PRESIDENT TO DELIVER HIS EULOGY.

GOODER AND HARDER CALIFORNIA: L.A. riders bail on Metro trains amid ‘horror’ of deadly drug overdoses, crime.

Drug use is rampant in the Metro system. Since January, 22 people have died on Metro buses and trains, mostly from suspected overdoses — more people than all of 2022. Serious crimes — such as robbery, rape and aggravated assault — soared 24% last year compared with the previous.

“Horror.” That’s how one train operator recently described the scenes he sees daily. He declined to use his name because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Earlier that day, as he drove the Red Line subway, he saw a man masturbating in his seat and several people whom he refers to as “sleepers,” people who get high and nod off on the train.

“We don’t even see any businesspeople anymore. We don’t see anybody going to Universal. It’s just people who have no other choice [than] to ride the system, homeless people and drug users.”

Commuters have abandoned large swaths of the Metro train system. Even before the pandemic, ridership in the region was never as high as other big-city rail systems. For January, ridership on the Gold Line was 30% of the pre-pandemic levels, and the Red Line was 56% of them. The new $2.1-billion Crenshaw Line that officials tout as a bright spot with little crime had fewer than 2,100 average weekday boardings that month.

Meanwhile in the Bay Area: The end of BART? California’s bullet train isn’t the only rail system in deep trouble. “BART ridership was in decline even before the pandemic but since then it has truly dropped off a cliff. Here’s a chart showing pre-and post-pandemic ‘exits’ at downtown stations. These are people who used to ride the trains to work.”

JON GABRIEL: DC Freaks Out Over DeSantis’s Ukraine Comments; Voters Shrug.

Rah-rah, Slava Ukraini, and all that, but there’s a limit to American largesse. And people get miffed when Biden jets to Kyiv with a suitcase full of money but avoids East Palestine, Ohio.

Politicians in both parties must understand that their first responsibility is to their own nation; allies come second. Forget this, and the people will toss them on their tin ears. DeSantis makes his priority clear: the United States of America.

Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz asked every new US ambassador a simple question. “I’m going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.”

When they pointed to the nation assigned to them, Shultz corrected them. “Your country is the United States.”

DeSantis has passed this test. Biden has not.

Assuming Brandon makes it to the finish line, the debate between him and DeSantis would be staggering to watch.