Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 23, 2022
OUT ON A LIMB: WHO Chief Believes COVID-19 Likely Did Come From Lab Leak.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I’ve mentioned before, what’s notable about this is not the belief, which every rational person entertains, but rather that the chief of WHO, which China went to great lengths to control over the past few years, is now willing to openly break with the Chinese here. This indicates a dramatic weaking of China’s position.
CHANGE: Post-recall San Francisco school board rescinds vote to cover controversial Washington High mural.
The 1936 fresco, painted on wet plaster, is the work of Russian artist Victor Arnautoff, and part of the Works Progress Administration public art program under President Roosevelt’s New Deal employment projects. The 1,600-square-foot “Life of Washington” mural features multiple panels with scenes from the life of the first president.
According to Wikipedia:
Arnautoff taught sculpture and fresco painting privately and at the California School of Fine Arts, first during summer sessions and as a regular instructor beginning in 1936. He taught art at Stanford University from 1938 to 1962. Beginning in 1947, he also taught art courses at the California Labor School, including printmaking. At Stanford, Richard Diebenkorn was one of his students; Diebenkorn considered Arnautoff a mentor and admired his intellectual and political stances.
Beginning with his association with [Diego] Rivera, Arnautoff’s political views moved to the left, and he joined the Communist Party[5] as well as the American Artists’ Congress and the San Francisco Artists and Writers Union. His style was generally more subtle than Rivera’s and other social realists, but his politics were nevertheless reflected in his work, which has been described as being part of a mural arts movement that “hoped to inspire change through criticism of the present political system”.
In 1955, an Arnautoff lithograph titled “DIX McSmear”, associating Vice President Richard Nixon with McCarthyism, created controversy. As a result, there were calls for Stanford to dismiss him. The lithograph was then used as the cover for an issue of The Nation. After he was interrogated by a House Unamerican Activities Committee subcommittee, there were again calls for Stanford to dismiss him. However, the faculty committee that reviewed his case declined to make such a recommendation to the president, and Arnautoff remained a faculty member.
So a Nation Magazine-approved future Communist (who later returned to the Soviet Union and died in Leningrad) employed by the Roosevelt Administration who eventually drew an anti-Nixon illustration titled “DIX McSmear” was considered too conservative for the San Fransisco School Board, circa 2019?
UPDATE: More change: San Francisco School Board Votes to Return Elite High School to Merit-Based Admissions.
JON GABRIEL: Who needs a right-wing plot when progressives are busy eating themselves alive?
In [Ryan] Grim’s [Intercept] piece, one senior progressive congressional staffer (anonymous, of course) couldn’t hide his frustration. “There are wins to be had between now and the next couple months that could change the country forever, and folks are focused on stuff that has no theory of change for even getting to the House floor for a vote.”
“I’m not saying it’s a right-wing plot,” another executive chimed in, “because we are incredibly good at doing ourselves in, but – if you tried – you couldn’t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders.”
The midterms are less than five months away and Democrats have a lot of ground to make up. But progressives are too busy rolling tumbrels through their cubicles and admiring their own tails.
If November goes as expected, the left won’t need to worry about new legislation distracting them from their main job: eating themselves alive.
Don’t get cocky.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:
● ‘The Jewish Factor, It’s Money’: Biden Ambassador Pick Under Fire for Anti-Semitic Tirade.
● ‘Proud’ of Funding: Qatar Defends Work With Biden USAID Nominee in Letter to Senate.
KEEP ROCKIN’! The L.A. Times assures its readers: Yes, a recession looks inevitable. But will it be that bad?
Whether it’s President Biden insisting a recession is avoidable or his critics arguing that the wolf is at the door, both sides are acting as if the nation faces an unprecedented catastrophe.
Partly it’s political theater — Biden fighting on behalf of an already beleaguered presidency and many of the doomsayers hoping a downturn could be the coup de grace for Democrats.
Behind the rhetoric, the reality is that recessions are a normal part of American economic life. The U.S. has had one, on average, every 6½ years since 1945.
And in the present case, most professional economists think any downturn now is likely to be relatively mild, with a fairly quick recovery.
“We’re calling for a small ‘r’ recession,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital. “It means it’s not going to be protracted and things aren’t going to fall apart,” as they did during the Great Recession and again in 2020 when the pandemic struck.
Many households are flush with cash, and jobs are plentiful with demand for new workers strong. Banks are well capitalized, which gives them a solid buffer against a business contraction.
The L.A. Times is dismissing how painful a recession — combined with supply chain woes, out-of-control fuel prices and inflation in general — will be for millions of Americans — in much the same way they dubbed unemployment during the administration led by Biden’s former boss as “funemployment:” “For the ‘funemployed,’ unemployment is welcome!” — after all, it’s a chance to “Keep rockin’”!
RASHIDA TLAIB BELIEVES THE NFL SHOULD ‘WORK’ LIKE THE WASHINGTON POST:
At one point near the end of more than two hours of testimony, Goodell was questioned by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), who asked whether Goodell and the league are “willing to do more” to punish Snyder.
After initially asking whether he would recommend Snyder’s removal as owner of the Commanders, Tlaib followed up by asking Goodell: “Will you remove him?”
“I don’t have the authority to remove him, Congresswoman,” Goodell responded.
An NFL owner can be removed only by a three-quarters (so, 24 out of 32) majority vote of fellow owners, although Goodell does have the ability to officially recommend such a vote.
I don’t know — Tlaib may be onto something here. Think of the possibilities of Taylor Lorenz as head coach and Felicia Sonmez as general manager!
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Viral Fears: First outbreak of highly infectious polio detected in UK since 1984 – the 6 signs to know.
OUT ON A LIMB: Reporter says Democrats in Congress told her ‘nobody gives a bleep about Jan. 6.’
Still though, we do need to get to the bottom of this insurrection: Republicans demand security footage of Colbert team arrests.
June 22, 2022
THE HORROR…THE HORROR:
Related: Chaim Bloom’s Diamond Life. The senior VP of baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays explains how his team changed the way the game is played—and why he keeps a jar of gefilte fish in his office.
GREAT MOMENTS IN LYSENKOISM: I’m An MD Suspended By Twitter For Tweeting A Link To A Scientific Article On COVID-19 Vaccine Lowering Sperm Counts.
SONGS THAT CHANGED MUSIC: Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (video):
(Updated and bumped.)
OUT ON A LIMB: Stop Apologizing To Your Woke Masters. “But for extreme circumstances — see Portnoy and Chappelle above — smear merchants often only bombard a target with mean tweets for 36 hours before moving on to someone else around the 37th hour. If you can stomach a day and a half of ugly Twitter comments, then guess what, you’ll likely survive. So when some schmuck pretending to represent the feelings of a marginalized community comes for you — and they eventually come for everyone — don’t go bending the knee. They don’t have a sword to your throat, they have a Twitter account with flags all over it.”
RIP, GOOSE: Tony Siragusa, former NFL star and TV personality, dead at 55.
The news comes only hours after a current member of the Baltimore Ravens passed away: Ravens Linebacker Jaylon Ferguson Dies at 26. Player was found unresponsive at a Baltimore home Tuesday night; cause of death not yet determined.
Disney just released Buzz Lightyear, a Pixar animated movie about the character from the Toy Story franchise (or… is it?), aimed at young children.
Obviously, if you’re making that kind of movie, there’s only one thing that’s missing: a gay kiss.
The movie has been banned in fourteen countries, because Disney insisted on sticking a lesbian kiss into a movie aimed a very young children.
Disney has long been inserting gay shit into stuff aimed at children. And then they cut it out of foreign releases, for countries that don’t like gay shit the way Disney’s gay activist employees like gay shit.
The trouble this time is that Disney’s gay activist employees insisted that there could be no cutting — this time, the gratuitous gay kiss must go global.
It is pride month, after all.
The new Pixar animated film Lightyear has become the latest battleground for LGBTQ+ rights. The movie — which is a prequel to the highly successful Toy Story saga — has been banned from 14 countries for including a same-sex kiss. This means that countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, as well as a handful of Asian nations, will not be screening one of the most anticipated movies of the summer.The movie features a character called Alisha Hawthorne, who is in a relationship with a woman. In the scene in question, Hawthorne briefly kisses her partner. In 2006, executives at Disney, the parent company of Pixar, asked for this same scene to be cut from the movie. When this decision was revealed in March, it sparked fierce backlash. Hundreds of Disney workers signed a letter calling on the entertainment giant to take a tougher stand in defending LGBTQ+ rights. The workers not only criticized the censorship of the scene, they also demanded that Disney publicly denounce the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida. This measure, which was proposed by Republicans in the state, prohibits class discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity until students are at least nine years old.
“We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were,” the letter sent to Disney CEO Bob Chapek stated. In response, Chapek promised to take a more active role in defending LGBTQ+ rights, and as a sign of this, he ordered the same-sex scene in Lightyear to be put back in the film.
And how did this latest #Woke bomb do at the box office?
Well, it bombed. Buzz Lightyear was projected to sell between $70 and $85 million in tickets.
Instead, it sold a paltry $50.6 million in ticket.
And it performed much more poorly than Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
The Hollywood Reporter blames this partly on “rightwing politicians.”
It couldn’t be because the film has gotten terrible reviews and currently has a 5.2 (out of ten) rating at IMDB, right? “So say you’re a movie studio executive desperately looking through your backlog of titles for some ‘intellectual property’ you already own that you can exploit. You discover that you possess the rights to the farcical Naked Gun series. And it comes to you: You could redo The Naked Gun, only… serious! Watch as a young Frank Drebin breaks up a drug ring as he learns he has to rely on his partners and not go it alone! Yeah… nah. Well, something almost exactly like this happened to the people at Pixar and Disney a few years ago when they looked at their IP and had the blinding flash that they could build a new animated action franchise based on an iconic character from the very first Pixar film: Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear. You can almost hear how a silence must have descended on the meeting in which this notion was first proposed, a silence only ended when someone very high up shouted: ‘Brilliant!’ And thus was born Lightyear. Not brilliant.”
NO THANKS, I’M STILL SOCIAL DISTANCING: DNC Clearance Sale: Act Now, and You Can Get a Selfie With Kamala at 65% Off!
TEXAS GOP CHOOSES ANTI-GAY INTOLERANCE OVER LIBERTY AND POLITICAL SUCCESS.
UPDATE: Counterpoint: Texas GOP Pulls No Punches.
THAT’S QUITE A BULLET FLORIDA DODGED IN 2018: Whoa: Gillum faces 21-count federal indictment for “campaign finance-related” fraud.
STOP! OR I’LL SAY STOP AGAIN! Chicago cops barred from chasing people on foot who run away.
(Classical reference in headline.)
SKYNET SMILES: Ukraine Unveils Mini “Terminator” Ground Robot Equipped With Machine Gun. “Killer robots with machine guns appear to be entering the battlefield, and this one seems as if it was ‘WALL-E’ that went to war. “
As Abraham Lincoln has said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: What’s driving the rise of catalytic converter theft? “In 2018, the New York City Police Department said 200 catalytic converters were reported stolen. Last year, the number spiked to nearly 4,000.“
June 21, 2022
TURNING JAPANESE; I THINK WE’RE TURNING JAPANESE — I REALLY THINK SO: New York state officials are giving companion robots to more than 800 senior citizens to help combat loneliness.
Classical allusion in headline: Aging Japan: Robots may have role in future of elder care.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Gets Snippy with Reporter Asking a Not-So-Tough Question—Non-Comedy Ensues.
TRANSCRIPT:
REPORTER: “Economists are saying recession is more likely than ever.”
BIDEN: (Interrupts): “Not — the majority are not saying that. Come on, don’t make things up, OK? Now you sound like a Republican politician. I’m joking. That was a joke. That was a joke. But all kidding aside, no I don’t think it is.”
He’s got jokes, ladies and gentlemen.
On a side note, I wonder if the reporter was more offended by the president accusing her of making things up or sounding like a Republican? This we will never know.
On the plus side, Jimmy Carter and Obama are thrilled that their reputations are suddenly getting propped up in comparison with Biden’s disastrous performance.