Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
February 8, 2023
Despite all these failures — or in some cases, if you’re a Democrat, smashing culture war successes — Americans were treated to an evening-long, real-time revisionist take on our state of affairs from President Joe Biden. It was long. And it was ultimately a lie.
Yet in one single sentence of her response speech, Arkansas’ first-term Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the state of our union better than Biden did in nearly an hour and a half:
While you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day.
For an increasing number of Americans, everyday life in 2023 is precisely that: a hard reality. Talk to any dedicated nurse who slaved through the height of the pandemic and was thanklessly fired for declining an experimental shot. Ask any professor who was dragged through the mud for refusing to instill racial division or deny basic biology. Speak to any parents who religiously pled with their school board to keep pornographic books out of their kids’ library and boys out of their daughters’ locker rooms. “Biden and the Democrats have failed you,” Huckabee Sanders summed it up. “They know it. And you know it.”
Exit quotes: “‘The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy,” and “At 40, I’m the youngest governor in the country. At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history.”
It’s not the years, Sarah. It’s the Trunalimunumaprzure.
February 7, 2023
I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: CBS Deletes ‘Ready to Worship’ Tweet After Blowback.
Turns out, one of America’s biggest TV networks saying it was “ready to worship!” right before a literally Hellish performance didn’t go over so well. The blowback was quick, with the normal criticism from the left of those who dared to object to what was considered objectionable. Apparently the whole “my feelings are more important than your rights” schtick is a one-way street for leftists. Who would’ve thought it?
But the pressure from those who found CBS’ tweet about Smith’s performance to be unbecoming worked, because by Tuesday morning CBS had deleted its tweet:
Since 1964 at least, I’m sure a certain number of conservatives have viewed CBS as having Satanic leanings. It’s good to see them finally confirm them, if only for a few hours or so. But this nostalgia is even older than that depicted in CBS’s 1970s series, The Waltons. That was a show set 40 years prior, during FDR’s Depression. Smith’s satanic posing has roots dating back over half a century!
UPDATE: Speaking of which:
(Updated and bumped.)
IT’S COME TO THIS: North Dakota town rejects Chinese project near US military base after Biden administration refuses to act.
A small city in North Dakota rejected a Chinese government-linked agricultural project located right near a key U.S. military drone base after the Biden administration refused to act against the “significant threat to national security.”
Early last year, Fufeng Group, a massive agricultural company with strong ties to Beijing, purchased 370 acres as a location for its new wet corn mill near the Grand Forks Air Force Base.
After months of consideration, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States declined to block the project despite urging from North Dakota’s Republican senators and other congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill. However, the Grand Forks City Council stepped in on Monday to unanimously block the Fufeng project from moving forward. The vote came just days after a Chinese spy balloon was allowed to traverse the U.S., including floating over a Montana military base, before being shot down off the coast of the Carolinas.
* * * * * * * *
The Grand Forks base is one of the key locations for the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, a “remotely piloted aircraft with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities” used by the U.S. around the world.
Last year, dozens of House Republicans also warned top Biden Cabinet secretaries about the “alarming” efforts by the Chinese government-linked company.
When the sale was first announced last year, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, also a Republican, initially told the Grand Forks Herald that “with Fufeng in Grand Forks, it will be North Dakota — not China — that reaps the benefits of the jobs, facilities, economic activity and tax revenue.”
And the spying and sabotage from the CCP as well.
FASTER, PLEASE: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott unveils plan for statewide TikTok ban.
Abbott is moving forward on plans to ban state employees from using the popular video-sharing app TikTok. On Monday, the Republican leader unveiled a statewide model security plan outlining objectives for state agencies to “address vulnerabilities presented by the use of TikTok and other software on personal and state-issued devices.”
Following a December 2022 directive from Abbott prohibiting employees from downloading or using TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company Bytedance Ltd., on government-issued devices. He also ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Department of Information Resources to develop the plan to guide state agencies on managing personal and state-issued devices used to conduct state business. State agencies have until Feb. 15 to issue their own policies to enforce the statewide ban.
Earlier: Wray warns about ‘threat’ posed by TikTok’s connection to China’s government.
(As Steve noted in November, “Wray Was Too Busy Weaponizing the Bureau Against Trump and Conservatives to Notice Until Now.”)
RAVING AND DROOLING: Pink Floyd’s Waters, Gilmour at war over ‘anti-Semitic, Putin apologist’ rant.
All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
The longstanding feud between former Pink Floyd frontmen Roger Waters and David Gilmour got even uglier Monday after the latter’s wife, novelist Polly Samson, lambasted Waters over alleged “anti-Semitic” remarks on Twitter.
“Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” fumed “The Kindness” author, who became one of PF’s main lyricists after Waters left the band in 1985.
She also labelled the 79-year-old Pink Floyd co-founder a “Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.”
It’s yet unclear what inspired the scribe’s online salvo. However Samson, 60, could have been reacting to a recent interview Waters did with Germany’s Berliner Zeitung, in which the rabble-rousing rock star doubled down on his prior comments analogizing the State of Israel to the Nazis over its treatment of Palestinians. Elsewhere in the interview, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer had defended Russian President Vladimir Putin over his decision to invade the Ukraine.
She could also be responding to this: Will Roger Waters’ Explosive New Comments About Israel and Ukraine Sink a $500 Million Pink Floyd Catalog Sale?
Much more details about the “(d)evolution of Roger Waters,” the “anti-Zionist…bully…woke…authoritarian” at JNS.org, in an article brilliantly headlined: Roger Waters: The Leni Riefenstahl of rock and roll.
Classical reference in headline:
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Biden Spending All Night In Bacta Tank In Preparation For State Of The Union.
QUESTION ASKED:
https://twitter.com/xenophonrocks/status/1623023670045163521
QUESTION ASKED: Is technology discreetly, but thoroughly, rendering parents expendable?
About 10 years ago, my younger son stopped me in my tracks with a thoughtful observation.
I wasn’t surprised that he could be thoughtful — he often is — but this time his thought seemed momentous to me: “Parents don’t get to teach their children anymore. When I was little,” he explained, “if I wanted to know almost anything, my first instinct was to go to you or Dad about it: ‘What’s a bowline knot? Why does everything get dusty? What is a shillelagh?’ We would always talk it through. Now, if I’m curious about something I just go to Google. Younger kids don’t even develop the habit of going to their parents for answers. They’ve been googling since they could reach a keyboard.
“Parents have become expendable,” he concluded. “They aren’t even in the equation.”
Well, that’s one of the left’s goals — and it’s Politico, Comcast, Nation magazine, and even Celion Dion(!) approved:
GREAT MOMENTS IN DIVERSITY: Senator’s Twitter account temporarily suspended for publishing a hunting photo.
And, he’s back. The senator looks to be back on Twitter again. It’s 12:30 p.m. Central time as I make this update. I noticed a tweet from Elon Musk and thought, hmm. Don’t know if it’s related but nonetheless, [Steve] Daine is back on Twitter.
Going forward, Twitter will be broadly accepting of different values, rather than trying to impose its own specific values on the world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2023
I’m so old, I can remember the left’s lengthy “tolerance for diversity” modified limited hangout before it expired.
TO BE FAIR, THERE ARE SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM: Pontiac Fiero History and FAQ: GM’s Most Famous Failure?
QUESTION ASKED: Should we care about what they do at awards shows?
If we ignore the awards shows, at least the key performances, we make ourselves ignorant of what is in the air that kids breathe. What creates attitudes? What can fuel social contagions that proliferate throughout the culture? What we see from these performers tells us what a lot of young people will be doing over the next few years. It goes from outré to normal.
The culture has shifted around us, and it was invisible to most of us until the damage was done. In just a few years we went from only being vaguely aware of the alphabet people to 1 out of 6 Gen Z–those who are around 18 right now–identifying as non-heterosexual. That includes all the colors of the rainbow. And the numbers are still skyrocketing. For one thing, the kids won’t have kids. Our culture is literally going to die off.
Our schools are pushing gender ideology and attacking every brick in the foundation of Western culture. Without a few brave souls like Chris Rufo and Matt Walsh, the heroes at Gays against Groomers, and some vilified parents, many of us still wouldn’t know. And we need to know if we are going to save our culture.
It’s tiresome to pay attention to the evil being pushed out by Hollywood and the music industry, but it is also necessary to understand the messages that children are being fed. Just as we have to keep up with the outrages that take place in schools, the pornography being pushed at kids in libraries, we must pay attention to celebrities. They are cultural barometers.
Keeping tabs on the cultural milieu tells us vital things about the culture’s health.
There’s much we can read about the state of the culture by applying a Kremlinologist’s attitude towards show biz awards shows:
February 6, 2023
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: The Critical Drinker on Disney — An Empire In Collapse (Video).
NOT WORKING FOR ME — EVEN BEFORE HE ENTERED HIS CURRENT DODDERING TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE PHASE, BIDEN WAS NEVER THIS ARTICULATE: You Have to Watch This Viral Deepfake of Joe Biden Talking About Trans ‘Women.’
Heads up: It’s a blistering attack against the trans movement, and thus, you’ll probably not want to play this at work:
https://twitter.com/MachiavelliMemz/status/1621212197480267777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1621212197480267777%7Ctwgr%5Ed9bf2b510a7eb7ee1b1d95b172fa6864571c0551%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fnews-and-politics%2Fmatt-margolis%2F2023%2F02%2F03%2Fyou-have-to-watch-this-viral-deepfake-of-joe-biden-talking-about-trans-women-n1667619
“While the audio is spot-on for Joe Biden’s voice and cadence (save for the usual stumbles in speech), the mouth movements are far from convincing. Nevertheless, it’s the stunning realism of Deepfake Biden’s voice that is actually terrifying here. Without the accompanying video, it would be easy to conclude the speech is legitimately Joe Biden speaking, and it raises major concerns about how this technology can be used for nefarious purposes.”
Speaking of which: 4chan users embrace AI voice clone tool to generate celebrity hatespeech.
UPDATE: Twitter apparently shut down the above account, but not before Jim Treacher was able to grab a copy of the video: Artificial Intelligence Is Freaking Terrifying.
This video is fake, and it looks like the text they plugged into the AI Biden voice generator originated in a 2020 4chan post.
It won't be long before these deepfakes are indistinguishable from the real thing. Skynet has already won.https://t.co/qALZxscyAf
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) February 4, 2023
As Treacher notes, “Even the most casual Biden-watcher can tell within seconds that this video isn’t real, because all the words are pronounced correctly and formed into complete sentences. Plus, Joe would never admit any of this stuff out loud. But as with anything else, people of below-average intelligence might be fooled.”
(Updated and bumped.)
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: School food vendor [Aramark] apologizes — again — for ‘inexcusable’ Black History Month menu.
—NBC News, yesterday.
—The Boston Globe, February 4, 2022.
● How NYU and Food-Service Giant Aramark Stumbled Into a Black History Month PR Fiasco.
—New York Magazine, February 9th, 2019.
● Loyola dining vendor apologizes for ‘insensitive’ Black History Month menu.
—The Chicago Sun-Times, February 10th, 2018.
● School apologizes for fried chicken menu for Black History Month.
—NJ.com, February 20th, 2017.
● Ohio college apologizes for Black History Month menu that featured fried chicken.
—The Washington Post, February 23, 2015.
● Park Tudor School apologizes for ‘misguided’ Black History Month lunch.
—The Indianapolis Star, February 27th, 2014.
● UC Irvine says fried chicken and waffle dinner on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was insensitive.
—The L.A. Times, January 27th, 2011.
● Black History Month Lunch Menu Racist?
—CafeMom.com, February 9th, 2010.
February 5, 2023
ROGER KIMBALL: Peace Through Strength or Chaos Through Senility? The Chinese would not have been deploying spy balloons over U.S. nuclear installations if Donald Trump was still president.
Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
EVEN THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS IS ASKING, ARE YOU BETTER OFF NOW THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO? Record numbers of people are worse off, a recipe for political discontent: Poll.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Gamer Groomers: ‘The Sims’ Introduces ‘Top Surgery Scars,’ ‘Binders’ as Character Accessories.
2024 FORD MUSTANG FIRST LOOK: Photos and Full Details on the New Pony Car! “Executive chairman Bill Ford said he knows the last internal combustion, stick shift Mustang will roll off the line in Flat Rock, Michigan, in his lifetime, and he will have a tear in his eye—but we’re not there yet. Regardless of what the future holds, the 2024 Ford Mustang, revealed in Detroit on September 14 at the 2022 North American International Auto Show, is a commitment to many more years of traditional pony car sales. There will still be a ’23 model year for the existing model with orders to open soon. And then the new-for-2024 car rides in, a de facto victory lap for the breed with its taut new looks, modern interior, electronic drift brake, and the ability to rev the engine with your key fob.”
MONTANA OFFICIALS DENY VIRAL MIDAIR ‘EXPLOSION’ VIDEO AMID CONCERNS OVER CHINESE SPY BALLOON:
A viral video depicting what appeared to be an explosion over Billings, Montana Friday night was met both with skepticism and concern amid widespread reports of a Chinese spy balloon flying over the state earlier in the week.
“We’re monitoring the situation. I’m talking to our National Guard to find out if they have additional information,” Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) told Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson in an on-air interview shortly after the video was posted.
Later in the evening, the City of Billings reported on its Twitter account that they confirmed with Montana’s Disaster Emergency Services and Gov. Gianforte that there were no explosions “in, around, or across” the state. In addition, the City of Billings said the video “can not be substantiated.”
Ok, so here’s what I just caught I few minutes ago out my window. I saw a jet go by so fast and then explosion in the sky. Holy crap! Billings MT. pic.twitter.com/swr8ERC6pf
— Dolly Mills-Moore (@MMtTreasures) February 4, 2023
Which seems fair enough. We live in an era in which almost everyone has an HD video camera in his smartphone. But only one person “shot” the above clip. If something that spectacular happened, there should be clips of it online posted at various camera angles and distances by numerous people.
OLD AND BUSTED: “The Science is Settled.”
The New Hotness? Bill Maher Roasts Woke Revolutionaries Who Scream At ‘Reality,’ Say Biology Is A ‘Theory.’
Related: Bill Maher compares the ‘woke’ movement to China’s communist revolution.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: Majority of Democrats Want Someone Other Than Biden to Be 2024 Nominee: Poll.