DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Texas Judge Deals Stinging Defeat To Biden: Trump’s ‘Remain In Mexico’ Program Must Stay.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
December 17, 2022
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What’s Really Behind the Left’s Mad Rush to Legitimize P3dophilia.
This junk didn’t START during the pandemic – that’s when it was DISCOVERED by parents who looked over their kids’ shoulders and were horrified to discover what was on those remote-learning screens. Kids were hit with years of sexual and political indoctrination before that.
Outraged parents who formed grassroots pushback movements were stunned to discover huge batteries of political artillery were already pointed at their scrappy little bands. They realized they were belatedly joining a battle that was long in progress – nearly over, in fact.
Sexualizing children is important to the Left because it separates them from their parents. As we’ve finally been discovering, thanks to some courageous samizdat citizen reporting, sexual indoctrinators in schools almost invariably tell the kids NOT to talk with their parents.
That’s not just to prevent outraged parents from banding together and putting a stop to this offensive garbage. It’s psych warfare, deliberately alienating kids from parents, tradition, and community. Statist control is rebranded as a cool secret club kids are pressured to join.
Read the whole thing.
I’m so old, I can remember when Twitter suspended an entire newspaper in October of 2020: Jack Dorsey says the New York Post Twitter account will remain locked until it deletes the original tweet featuring its Hunter Biden story.
TWITTER FILES PART SIX REVEALS FBI’S TIES TO TECH GIANT: ‘AS IF IT WERE A SUBSIDIARY.’
“The #TwitterFiles are revealing more every day about how the government collects, analyzes, and flags your social media content. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi began the thread on Friday. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth… a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.”
Taibbi highlighted the FBI’s social media task force established after the 2016 presidential election to monitor foreign interference prominently featured in the Twitter Files.
“Do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? ‘You have to prove to me that inside the f—ing government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,’ says one former intelligence officer,” Taibbi wrote.
Why, it’s as if: Head Of Twitter’s Censorship Operation Was A Former FBI, CIA Operative.
Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.
But why are these stories being dumped by Musk’s hand-picked journalists on the weekend? As Ace of Spades notes, “Of course he drops it late Friday afternoon, again. So… the media has an easier time ignoring it — bury news you don’t want covered with a Friday evening dump — and the only people who care about it, conservatives, have to blog about it Friday night. Yeah, let’s never hold this for Monday morning, ever. Not even a single time.”
December 16, 2022
THE STIG LOSES HIS CAR KEYS: NBC News Suspends Reporter Ben Collins Over His Elon Musk Coverage.
NBC News temporarily suspended senior reporter Ben Collins for his “editorially inappropriate” coverage of Twitter CEO Elon Musk, according to the new publication Semafor.
Collins is temporarily prohibited from going on the airwaves of NBC News and MSNBC for his outward dissaproval of Musk and the tech magnate’s actions, Semafor reported, citing anonymous sources. Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.
* * * * * * * *
The reporter also lamented Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files” through Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, which intended to disclose the social media company’s suppression of the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Collins’ suspension is due to the reporter’s coverage of Musk earlier in December, according to Semafor.
“Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world,” NBC reporter Ben Collins tweeted. “Humiliating shit. Speak* truth** to*** power.”
Related: How Disinformation Journalists Practice Disinformation.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE LEFT-WING JOURNALISTS ELON MUSK SUSPENDED FROM TWITTER GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED:
There can be only one reason to promote or retweet real-time location information about a person or their family: You hope something bad happens to them. You hope someone acts on it. In this case, these reporters were amplifying a Twitter account that was posting location data about Musk’s private jet, and doing so on the heels of a disturbing incident in Los Angeles involving a stalker targeting a car that was carrying Musk’s toddler son.
In other words, the media elite who for years absurdly claimed that “speech is violence” actually engaged in the promotion of violence and got caught doing it — and we’re supposed to feel bad for them? I don’t think so.
Media leftists who for years have demanded online censorship of conservatives, don’t care at all about free speech, and in fact actively work to quash it however they can are suddenly alarmed at Musk silencing their own?
To quote Sen. Tom Cotton’s recent remark to the woke CEO of Kroger, a company that fired Christian employees for not endorsing the grocery chain’s LGBT advocacy but now wants Republican help with a proposed merger: “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”
CNN is having a meltdown over one of their journalists being temporarily suspended by Musk:
Which is too bad, as they belatedly discover that doxxing someone finally has some consequences.
SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND: Concord Opens Up About Its $300 Million Deal For Genesis And Phil Collins’ Music Rights.
A LOOK INSIDE A PRIVATE STASH OF RARE MUSCLE CARS: This stash of COPOs, Shelbys, and Hemi-Powered Dodge and Plymouth muscle is not open to the public.
Tucked away in a large building in Salem, Oregon, with no external signage and no obvious entrance from the street, is a truly large and astonishing car collection and museum. It is not publicized, and is hard to find. Most significantly, it is not open to the general public. Those who are fortunate enough to get in usually arrive by pre-arranged tours through special car clubs or, recently, as a fundraiser for a local charity group. The operation of the museum itself is unique. Its location is known, though there are no efforts to publicize it. The identity of the owners is a closely guarded secret. (Several websites have claimed to know, but they are likely in error.) Word is the brothers that own it do have some plans eventually to open the collection up to more public view, but that’s some time off. For the time being, tours can be arranged for a fee, with the proceeds going to charity.
In its more than 117,000 square feet of display area are housed some 600 automobiles, all in fully restored condition, including more than 350 muscle cars from the 1960s onward to the present era. Seen in its entirety, the collection is eclectic, and includes various classics from the Thirties, vintage cars from the Forties and Fifties, exotics from across three decades, and even a couple of wooden hydroplane racing boats—one a Ferrari and one a Maserati—from the 1950s.
If your name isn’t Al Gore, Greta Thunberg or, alas, Boris Johnson, read the whole thing.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: James Lileks on “dragphobia.”
Oh look, a new word.
There is no such thing as “dragphobia,” unless it falls under coulrophobia, or fear of clowns. From the Cleveland Clinic:
Coulrophobia brings on feelings of fear when you see clowns or clown images. It’s a specific phobic disorder that causes anxiety, a racing heart, nausea and profuse sweating. Most people can avoid clowns. Some need exposure therapy, a type of psychotherapy, to help manage their reactions to clowns and clown images.
Most people can avoid clowns. Not these days.
“Dragphobia,” like all the faux-phobias, is meant to delegitimize dissent. If you have a specific objection to a behavior, an idea, a means of practicing one’s religion, you are reacting irrationally.
Why is GLAAD giving the aura of a penumbra of an emanation of appearing to be pro-grooming?
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: The Daily Beast ponders: Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups.
(Link safe; goes to Ace of Spades.)
LAST NIGHT, ELON SETTLED ALL FAMILY BUSINESS: Twitter bans journalists including Aaron Rupar and Keith Olbermann.
December 15, 2022
TONIGHT ELON SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS:
● Cue lefty meltdown while people guess why Twitter suspended Aaron Rupar. (Permanently?)
● Well DAMN! Many OTHER lefty accounts (including Keith Olbermann) have been suspended.
● Huge Suspension Drops on Twitter, Liberal Meltdown in Progress.
● GMTA:
● Elon Musk Vows ‘Legal Action’ Against Trackers; Clarifies Private Jet ‘Doxxing’ Policy.
● “It appears [Rupar] shared info for a website for ElonJets that was banned for doxxing, good riddance.”
● Taylor Lorenz locks down her Twitter account.
JULIE BURCHILL: Whoever persuaded Bono he could sing?
There are a few pop stars whose work I can’t help liking in spite of myself – their song-writing, that is. I’d be happy never to see the faces or hear the voices of Mick Hucknall or Chris Martin again, but the moment ‘Stars’ or ‘Trouble’ starts, I’m mesmerised – only to wonder crossly the minute the song ends: ‘Why couldn’t they have given it to someone with a decent voice?’ Think about it: dancers have choreographers and actors have scriptwriters, so why should we assume songwriters can sing? Bono’s another. I love some of his songs (‘One’, as performed by Johnny Cash, and ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, by the Pet Shop Boys), but when faced with the awful actuality of his yowling, I remember what Prince once said about him: ‘You know what I’d do with a voice like that? Become a janitor.’
Surrender comes in at a whopping 563 pages, and I was already beginning to feel quite enervated by the time I’d read the press release informing us that Bono is an ‘artist and activist’ who has written an ‘honest and irreverent, intimate and profound’ book – which we’re lucky he got around to, considering his ‘more than 20 years of activism, dedicated to the fight against Aids and extreme poverty’. But isn’t having your press release calling your book ‘profound’ rather like giving yourself a nickname? Wait for someone else to do it.
Related: Bono is perceived as pompous. Why? “Why do people hate Bono? In a nutshell, the answer probably ultimately revolves around the fact that he is perceived as pompous, a self-ordained savior of rock and the world living the highlife afforded to him by his earnings and status. Why does everyone hate Bono? Consider the fact that the man was once known as Bono Vox. You wouldn’t name your cat that and expect it not to receive humiliation across the neighborhood. While this likely deserves a chuckle, also consider that most of rock n’ roll, no matter under which genre banner it has been paraded under has been just as ridiculous throughout its decades-long existence.”
OLD AND BUSTED AT THE WAPO: Woodward and Bernstein.
The New Hotness? Taylor Lorenz Lashes Out at Younger, More Successful Journalist in Cruel Anti-Semitic Tirade.
“Notable what gets framed as a ‘buzzy media startup,'” Lorenz seethed. “If u start off rich, have a rich spouse, rich friends, don’t follow any journalistic ethical rules, and focus your content solely on serving the interests of extremely powerful rich ppl, you can go far!”
A number of Twitter users observed that Lorenz’s rant was rife with projection and petty jealousy. [Bari] Weiss is younger*, better looking, and more successful as a journalist and as a human being. Why wouldn’t Lorenz be jealous? But that was hardly the most scandalous aspect of the so-called reporter’s public tantrum. Weiss also happens to be Jewish, and Lorenz’s tweet was a textbook example of an anti-Semitic trope about how all Jews are rich and powerful, conniving, and immoral.
Lorenz has a history of targeted harassment against Jews. Earlier this year, for example, she publicly identified—or “doxxed”—the anonymous woman behind the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok.” Doxxing is an explicit endorsement of physical violence. The woman who operates the account is Jewish. Lorenz also attempted to ruin the lives of four Instagram influencers by revealing their true identities. They are the daughters of a prominent Jewish political activist. Coincidence?
Related: Past performance is no guarantee of future results:
Flashback: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Government Warns That With Elon Owning Twitter They Will Only Control 97% Of The Media.
ELON TURNS TABLES, DROPS VIDEO OF ‘CRAZY STALKER’ WHO LOOKS LIKE ANTIFA: “The video posted by Musk on his Twitter account now has 8.4 million views as of this writing. Chances this guy gets nailed soon if he hasn’t been already? I’m going to guess that he isn’t going to last out the day without being identified. The real question, if this is in California, is whether this guy will suffer any consequences at all for his actions.”
BIGLY! Trump ridiculed for ‘major announcement’ that he’s selling digital trading cards.
Former President Donald Trump is being mocked over his “major announcement” that he’s selling digital trading cards featuring himself depicted as a superhero.
“MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!” Mr Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social on Thursday.
“These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting,” he added. “GET YOUR CARDS NOW! Only $99 each! Would make a great Christmas gift. Don’t Wait. They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!”
Twitter users were quick to mock the announcement.
As Michael Walsh recently described Trump: ‘A Man Who Could Have Been Great.’
DON SURBER: Groomer is the word of the year. It’s “the word of the year because it serves as the dividing line between the sane who live in this country and the insane people who run its government…The word is powerful because it calls out what is behind this wave of sexualizing very young children. And that is why liberals do not want us to use it. Too darned bad.”
December 14, 2022
MICHAEL WALSH: ‘A Man Who Could Have Been Great.’
One of the best and most poignant moments in the underappreciated 1999 TV movie, RKO 281, about the making of Citizen Kane and the battle between William Randolph Hearst and the brash upstart Orson Welles, comes when Hearst, defeated, broke, and broken, defends himself and the choices he’s made in an argument with his mistress, Marion Davies:
Hearst seemed to have everything: wealth, political influence, multiple homes, a beautiful actress-mistress in California and a wife and five sons back home in New York. And, of course, a media empire that included prominent newspapers across the country. He tried his hand at politics, serving two terms in the House as a Democrat, but losing races for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904, mayor of New York (twice), and governor of New York. Relentlessly acquisitive, he eventually spent himself into penury, losing control of his company and retiring into seclusion. As James Cromwell, the actor portraying Hearst in the film cited above, says: “I am a man who could have been great, but was not.”
If that reminds you of anybody, join the club.
Exit quote: “For reasons both of, and not of, his own making, Trump (like Hearst) will go out a loser. For the good of the nation, when the time is right and DeSantis most needs him to, he should close down his campaign and retire gracefully to Mar-a-Lago. It may not be Hearst Castle, but if he can hang on to it in the financial disruption that is almost certain to come, he can still do his country a great service. He can be great, just not in the way he might have wished.“
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The One Island Where You’ll Definitely Die If You Set Foot on the Beach.
Located [adjacent to India] in the Bay of Bengal, North Sentinel Island was a national news story in 2018 when a Christian missionary John Allen Chau attempted to bring the word of Christ to these people, who he considered lived on Satan’s Island. He knew the risks, and after bribing some fisherman to get him within sight of the island’s shoreline, he met his maker—literally. The Sentinelese butchered the missionary and buried Chau on the beach where it remains today as multiple efforts from local authorities to retrieve the body proved unsuccessful—the natives kept showing up in force.
In 2006, two Indian fishermen were illegally fishing in the waters around the island and got intoxicated, crashing their ship into the surrounding reefs. Witnesses from other fishing boats in the area witnessed Sentinelese men emerging from the dense jungle with weapons and butchering the two men. They later displayed their bodies like scarecrows on the beach as a warning.
In 1976, the cargo ship MV Rusley ran aground near the island, along with the MV Primrose five years later. The crew of the Primrose encountered the belligerent natives and sent an urgent distress call asking for firearms and ammunition for protection. The ship had no weapons, and the crew was waiting for another passing vessel to rescue them. RealLifeLore added that the weapons drop wasn’t necessary as American helicopter pilots working in the area could airlift the besieged crew off the ship. The YouTube account humorously added that this was probably when the Sentinelese got thrust into the Iron Age, as they later scavenged the abandoned ship.
Read the whole thing.