PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who offered Dems advice on how to get BBB passed, says Joe Manchin should be thanked for blocking it.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 13, 2022
TOP GUN: MAVERICK: TOM CRUISE DELIVERS THE GOODS.
My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Them: ‘You Must Care!’ Us: ‘No.’
Every non-narc victim of this Stasi witch hunt should be pardoned and the next GOP administration should settle their civil rights suits for the outrageous violation inflicted upon them by a politicized DOJ for huge sums. The guy who shot Ashli Babbitt should be prosecuted – there’s no statute of limitations on murder – and the GOP, once it takes Congress back in November, should investigate the federal agents on the scene, the systemic denial of rights, and the selective prosecutions that followed. That would make for an interesting set of primetime hearings, as opposed to the tedious political onanism of the current kangaroo kommittee.
We don’t care about any of it. And that is important. The left can only impose its will when it convinces us to choose to let them do so. They have to make us care. Look at them. They are a gaggle of mutated misfits, neurotic chicks, academic parasites, grievance hustlers, and femmy doofuses who can’t do a push-up. They can force nothing on us. That’s why they attempt to enlist the power of the state to do it for them, but their real power comes from us going along. When you watch some stupid Star Wars spin-off on Disney, you empower them. When you refuse to vote because you are convinced your vote will never be counted – despite huge election reforms in places like Georgia – you help them. When you let yourself think, “Gosh, maybe this androgenous fatty screaming that I am a privileged tool of the patriarchy has a point because s/he/it would never lie to my face,” you let them win.
A well-caffeinated Kurt is just getting started, so read the whole thing.
Related: That is the worry that likely motivates DeSantis, the first politician to ‘weaponize’ the Florida tax code. He brought its hammer down on Disney to punish that one company for using its immense corporate coffers to lobby against parents’ rights in Florida. In principle, it’s a move I’m leery of. (And in the case of sending CPS after moms and dads who take their kids to drag shows, a move I would oppose.) But the gist of this stratagem—escalation—may be necessary. Indeed, it already seems to be working. Playing offense, even raising the stakes, may be the only means of achieving a much-needed truce. I’m out of better ideas; how about you?”
BUT HEY, NO MEAN TWEETS: Stock Market Plunges 600 Points, Entering Bear Territory.
Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
June 12, 2022
IT’S COME TO THIS: Young Sheldon Rerun Crushes J6 Hearing in TV Ratings.
OUT ON A LIMB: Report by German Parliament Expert Committee Finds No Evidence that Lockdowns did Anything.*
Not just in Germany: “An analysis of studies of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality has just been released by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University, and their conclusion is depressing. ‘Our study finds that lockdowns had little to no effect in reducing COVID-19 mortality,’ they wrote. ‘However, lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects.'”
* Oh, they did something alright: More teens in mental crisis boarded in hospital ERs during pandemic.
FAST TIMES AT BEN BRADLEE HIGH: Washington Post in-house spat shows we’ve gone overboard with therapeutic ‘me’ culture.
But the coup de grâce, so to speak, came when a Post software engineer named Holden Foreman (pictured) chimed in via a lengthy Twitter thread to defend Somnez (and in other tweets, Lorenz) even though a reasonably rational person could see they were clearly in the wrong.
Foreman looks like he could be a high school freshman; indeed, just last year he was a student at Stanford University. And last August, he took to the student paper Stanford Daily (which has a predilection for publishing piddly student complaints) to rip the university for not catering to (no pun intended) his “disordered eating.”
Complete with a trigger warning (“This column contains references to disordered eating”), Foreman’s piece noted that his alleged malady — “a compulsion to eat less than needed when [in] either in social settings or when [one has] trouble estimating the amount of food [they’re] consuming” — still remains undiagnosed.
“In theory, Stanford’s dining halls present students with the opportunity to eat as much as they need given its buffet format,” Foreman wrote. “Yet students like me may struggle to take enough of any of the available food when they are charged with portioning it themselves.”
If this doesn’t already sound farcical enough, Foreman followed up with several suggestions for Stanford to coddle his alleged needs, such as “educat[ing] the student body regarding disordered eating.” He also noted the university did contact him regarding his condition, but he never followed up: “Despite my struggles, I never sought help with my disordered eating from Stanford. But it’s not fair to place the blame squarely on my shoulders […] the fact that [Stanford’s] email was the only dedicated outreach, especially for someone with a history of disordered eating, is deeply concerning.”
So … Foreman didn’t budge an inch when Stanford reached out to him … and it’s Stanford’s fault.
Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Foreman sure seems like a bright enough guy, but … has he ever been told “no” in his life?
In my senior college year, I used to get uptight going to the student gym to work out because many college athletes hung out there. It was intimidating, as I felt the need to “measure up” to my 20-something behemoth peers. Eventually I got myself some free weights to keep in my dorm room so I didn’t have to go to the gym.
What never occurred to me was to ask The Review if I could write an op-ed about how the university bore much of the responsibility for my anxiety (“Why wasn’t there a gym just for non-college athletes? Where was the outreach?”). Because that would be ridiculous.
Why, it’s as if safetyism has destroyed a whole generation, or something.
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: WaPo: $5 gas is largely Putin’s fault.
The United States has hit another uncomfortable milestone: $5 gas is now the norm. More than 20 states have prices above the $5 mark (California is above $6 a gallon), according to AAA. Record gas prices are a daily reminder of how different the current economy is from what many Americans are accustomed to: Inflation is at a four-decade high, and interest rates are rising at a pace not seen in two decades. People are anxious about this economy. Consumer sentiment is at a record low since the University of Michigan began tracking it in the mid-1970s.
This is largely Vladimir Putin’s fault. Gas prices are up nearly $2 in the past year, and 75% of that increase came since Putin’s Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The United States and many other countries rightly responded to this unjustified war by imposing heavy sanctions and halting purchases of Russian oil and grain. But that means supplies are down, and energy and food prices have soared to record highs around the world. Putin wants — and expects — the world to cave and lift the sanctions and cede parts of Ukraine to Russia in the face of these high prices. As hard as it is, we cannot let Putin win.
Stronger demand is also playing a role. As pandemic restrictions fade, Americans are booking trips to the beach, theme parks, and cities at home and abroad. Airport security checkpoints are processing nearly as many people as they did pre-pandemic. This is on top of many families driving to vacation spots and driving to the office and school again.
In the short term, there’s not a lot President Biden can do.
Does anyone at the Washington Post actually read their own newspaper?
● Biden’s plan to cancel Keystone pipeline signals a rocky start with Canada.
—The Washington Post, January 19th, 2021.
● Biden pulls 3 offshore oil lease sales, curbing new drilling this year.
—The Washington Post, May 12th.
● Biden administration won’t appeal judge’s ruling revoking Gulf of Mexico drilling leases.
—The Washington Post, February 28th.
Flashbacks: Why Aren’t Democrats Dancing for Joy About Sky-High Gas Prices?
In the service of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats have long openly worked to raise the price of fossil fuel energy. They have done so by proposing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, higher leasing fees, and other measures to jack up costs so people burn less of it. This is why Barack Obama said, in answer to a related question about electricity, that his energy plan would make prices “necessarily skyrocket.” This is why Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna praised BP’s CEO less than six months ago for pledging to reduce oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. Reductions in oil production and rising gasoline prices are part of the Democrats’ agenda and the Paris climate agenda.
There’s even more to it than that. Over the past decade, the Democrats’ overt hostility toward fossil fuels has even driven companies in the industry to sideline production, purely for public relations purposes, while prioritizing meaningless, politically correct carbon emissions goals. How can Democrats suddenly feign outrage at their incredible success in influencing the industry?
Is it a mystery why Democrats aren’t doing a sack dance and celebrating the salvation of planet earth?
There’s the small matter of their political survival, of course. It would be unseemly — like doing a jig at an Irish funeral — to celebrate other people’s pain. And it would cost many Democrats who are secretly jubilant about high gas prices their political careers.
Instead, Democrats are pretending to look for a way to “ease consumers’ pain.”
In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
Exit quote: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
I’M PRETTY SURE I SAW RANDY NEANDERTHAL OPEN FOR DURAN DURAN AT THE ROXY IN 1981: Randy Neanderthal may be to blame for passing on the gene that caused up to a million people to die from Covid, scientist claims.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Star-studded LA high school is sued by Jewish father for its ‘racially divisive, anti-Semitic’ curriculum which branded Jews ‘oppressors’: Woke syllabus was ‘quietly ushered in’ after death of George Floyd.
GRADUALLY, AND THEN SUDDENLY: How San Francisco Became a Failed City.
If you’re going to die on the street, San Francisco is not a bad place to do it. The fog keeps things temperate. There’s nowhere in the world with more beautiful views. City workers and volunteers bring you food and blankets, needles and tents. Doctors come to see how the fentanyl is progressing, and to make sure the rest of you is all right as you go.
In February 2021, at a corner in the lovely Japantown neighborhood, just a few feet from a house that would soon sell for $4.8 million, a 37-year-old homeless man named Dustin Walker died by the side of the road. His body lay there for at least 11 hours. He wore blue shorts and even in death clutched his backpack.
I can’t stop thinking about how long he lay there, dead, on that corner, and how normal this was in our putatively gentle city. San Franciscans are careful to use language that centers people’s humanity—you don’t say “a homeless person”; you say “someone experiencing homelessness”—and yet we live in a city where many of those people die on the sidewalk.
San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.
THE FIRST GOOD WEEK OF BIDEN’S PRESIDENCY: “It’s been another eventful week in President Joe Biden’s America. The stock market plunged 5 percent as inflation soared to new highs and recession fears continued to mount. The number of COVID-19 deaths on Biden’s watch surpassed 600,000 while his approval rating fell below 40 percent. That’s not great! Nevertheless, it was still a relatively good week in the context of Biden’s failed presidency. Two of the most obnoxious Ivy League libs in American history—Chesa Boudin and Felicia Sonmez—were fired for reckless behavior. For a demoralized country in need of some good news, it is reason enough to rejoice.”
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Who’s Next: The Times does Biden.
The New York Times has posted the Biden variant of the “Dump Feinstein” campaign that Steve has been tracking. In an alert to subscribers, the Times directs readers to Reid Epstein and Jennifer Medina’s story on the “Democratic whispers” that perhaps Biden should step aside in 2024 (and announce his decision to do so after the midterms). This just in: Democrats fear he may not be up to the task. And you thought the Times has lost its nose for news.
Earlier: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics:
The Democratic leadership is also very old. The average age of the Democratic House leadership is 70 (compared to 53 for Republicans); Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 80; her lieutenants Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn are 81 and 80, respectively. Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is a comparatively spry 70.
The liberal mainstream media occasionally comments on the age of Democratic leaders: New York magazine lamented the “Gerontocracy of Democratic Party Leadership” back in 2016, as did The New Republic in 2019 (“The Democrats are Too Old”), but they did so as part of an effort to paint Feinstein as senile and thus incapable of doing activists’ bidding during Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings, not as a matter of general concern.
“Republicans were stealing another seat” on the high court, TNR claimed, and “Feinstein conducted the hearings as if they were occurring in a normal political environment.” She even had the temerity to hug her colleague Lindsey Graham, which was, in the liberal media’s eyes, a clear sign of senility.
In other words, Democrats prefer to ignore the age issue until it becomes useful as a justification for pushing out someone who is no longer useful to the party.
It’s a cynical tactic that will continue to create odd political moments, such as Nancy Pelosi shimmying after the passage of the recent COVID relief bill or older Democratic leaders kneeling in kente cloth in support of Black Lives Matter (and struggling to get up afterward). Those displays make older Democrats paradoxically seem less like vigorous leaders and more like advertisements for assisted living communities that strenuously highlight all of the things “active seniors” can still do.
The next time a Democratic politician makes an anonymous observation about the age or vigor of a colleague with whom they disagree, be skeptical. The remarks are made to reporters as if in sorrow, but the message is about as subtle as a shiv in the prison yard.
In 2010, Obama used that sort of language in an effort to toss fellow Democrat Charlie Rangel under the bus:
President Barack Obama has kept mum on the fate of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) for days — but he tells CBS News that it’s time for the embattled 80-year-old former Ways and Means Chairman to end his career “with dignity.”
“I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served– his constituents very well. But these– allegations are very troubling,” Obama told Harry Smith in an interview to be aired on the “Early Show.” and first broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.
“And he’ll– he’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I’m sure that– what he wants is to be able to– end his career with dignity. And my hope is that– it happens.”
Rangel hung on for another six years in office, retiring at the age 86.
June 11, 2022
MARK FELTON: East German Boy Scout Tank Unit (Video).
NEO: School police chief Arredondo speaks.
“Everybody knows” that the cowardly Uvalde cops sat in the hall for over an hour while children were being shot and school police chief Arredondo gave the order to stand down, although of course the officers could have gotten the key or breached the doors or shot through the doors without hurting any children.
Except that we don’t know those things, although there certainly have been reports in the MSM stating them as facts or as obvious conclusions – much or all of the specific information coming from anonymous sources.
I would say that probably the vast majority of people who’ve followed this story believe a lot of things that haven’t been proven and that originate with unnamed sources talking to the MSM, or “experts” or pundits not paying attention to what we actually know and what we don’t. Haven’t we learned from previous experience not to trust those initial reports, especially anonymous ones, and to suspend harsh judgment until a lot more is known? And doesn’t that take time?
I’ve been asking a lot of questions as I try to sort it out. One of the things I’ve been waiting for is to hear from school police chief Arredondo. Well, now wait no more. You are free to think he’s lying through his teeth in his description of the ordeal, of course. But I think he just might be telling the truth.
Read the whole thing.
BILL MAHER: The Times buried the Kavanaugh assassination story because he’s a conservative.
Katrina Trinko remembers how the Gabby Giffords shooting, perpetrated by a genuine random lunatic, was immediately and egregiously coopted by the media as an indictment of tea-party agitation against Democrats. But the supreme example of the double standard will forever be the attempt by an ardent Bernie-loving progressive to mass-murder Republican congressmen on a baseball field in 2017, news that would have been treated as a national trauma on the order of a major terrorist attack had the partisan roles been reversed. As it is, the story fizzled after a few days and probably would have fizzled sooner if not for the subplot of Steve Scalise fighting for his life in the hospital. Trinko:
[W]hen it comes to political violence in the United States today, here’s a maxim you can always rely on: If the victim or likely victim is on the right, the perpetrator is simply a lone wolf. But if the victim or likely victim is on the left, the perpetrator was fueled by dangerous rhetoric…
Sure, the justices have been given some additional security. But where is the outrage from top liberal lawmakers and activists? Where are the calls for people to remember that at the end of the day, no matter how vehemently we disagree on certain policies, we are all Americans who should be working together to resolve our differences?…
Here’s the reality: Corporate media and liberal lawmakers probably aren’t going to rush to highlight the horrific assassination attempt on Kavanaugh. They know that moderates will be horrified to discover how commonplace it has become for Supreme Court justices to face protests at home. (Notice how little coverage the corporate media has given to these protests, despite the fact that they are publicly announced ahead of time.) And they don’t want to risk alienating the extremists on their own side by focusing on this.
Left-wing agitators understand that they operate free of scrutiny from major media. It’s why the same group that doxxed the Court’s conservative members last month felt no compunction about advertising a new protest at Amy Coney Barrett’s home even after the news broke about a threat to Kavanaugh.
Flashbacks:
● Reagan historian: Releasing Hinckley signals it’s OK to target conservatives.
● Sen. Rand Paul had part of his lung removed this weekend because of damage from 2017 attack.
● Actor Jeff Daniels to CBS’s Stephen Colbert: ‘We Need Someone That Can Punch Trump in the Face.’
● Ilhan Omar Retweet Suggests Rand Paul Deserved to Be Assaulted.
● Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) to 2020 Dems: Don’t Run Away from Trump — ‘Punch Him in the Face.’
● Joe Biden: I Want to ‘Beat the Hell Out of’ President Trump.
● Patti LuPone defends violent attack on Rand Paul.
● CNN Host Palled Around with, Promoted ICE Firebomber’s Antifa Group.
● Leftist Thug Caught on Video Assaulting Conservative Berkeley Student While Fellow Students Laugh.
● Journalist Andy Ngo Beaten Up at Portland Antifa Rally.
● John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”
GONE IN A FLASH: Court Is Unable to Locate Ezra Miller, Cannot Serve Papers.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that the parents of 18-year-old Tokata Iron Eyes were granted a protective order against actor Ezra Miller, but law enforcement has been unable to locate the actor. Miller has yet to be served the papers, which accuses them of “physically and emotionally abusing” the teen. The Times’s report also uses the term “grooming.”
Chase Iron Eyes and Sara Jumping Eagle had their interim order of protection for their daughter approved by a judge from the Standing Rock Sioux tribal court in North Dakota last week. The parents accuse the Justice League and We Need To Talk About Kevin star of “psychologically manipulating, physically intimidating and endangering the safety and welfare of” their child, who has begun using the name Gibson and, like Miller, uses they/them pronouns.
The order would bar Miller from “contacting or harassing” the 18-year-old or their parents, and also would force them to stay 100 yards away from the family residence prior to a July 12 hearing. The court will grant the “relief requested” in the restraining order if Miller does not make an appearance at the hearing.
However, Miller’s current whereabouts are unknown. “They move around so much [that] we’re stuck in this legal limbo situation, and we can’t serve them in any place they’re in long enough,” Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and activist, told the newspaper. “They’ve been flighty. They’ve been avoiding service, and now there’s public pressure mounting on them to make a decision, which makes us very concerned about Ezra’s volatile nature.”
Flashback: Kyle Smith in 2018: Hollywood is a sex-grooming gang.
ROGER KIMBALL: Dismantle the D.C. Company Town.
In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein says “all philosophical problems have the form ‘I have lost my way.’” The first response to being lost should be to retrace one’s steps in order to escape the maze. It’s time that Americans faced up to the reality that their governing apparat is a corrupt, self-engorging Leviathan. This is not, or not only, a partisan issue. Sure, Washington, D.C. is a fully paid-up concession of the Democratic Party, regularly voting some 93 to 95 percent Democratic. Sussmann was never going to be convicted there.
So a preliminary antiseptic, as I have argued elsewhere, would be to downgrade Washington in the political metabolism of the country. Indeed, I think the capital, if not the Capitol, ought to be dispersed. Washington, D.C., could continue to function as what it has already in part become: a sort of stage set where functionaries preen and simper before the cameras of a preposterous media and press corps.
Donald Trump made a few half-hearted stabs at dismantling the lumbering machine that is the Washington establishment, but that seems like a long time ago and, besides, the swamp closed almost instantly to reassert its prerogatives. In his next term, however, he should make the destruction of the Washington machine one of his highest priorities. It won’t be easy. To be frank, I am not sure, absent some world-shaking calamity, it is even possible. But it is nevertheless necessary if anything resembling the republic as envisioned by the founders is to be salvaged.
Faster, please.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:
● Sriracha maker warns of ‘unprecedented shortage’ due to supply issues.
● Plot Twist! Movie Theaters Fear Popcorn Shortfall Will Be a Spoiler.
● FLASHBACK: When ‘Experts’ Claimed Gas Prices Would NOT Skyrocket Under Biden.
UPDATE: America Will Be Very Cranky: Coffee Prices To Skyrocket, Global Harvest Near Record Lows.
(Updated and bumped.)
BEN SHAPIRO: A Complete Betrayal At Fox News.
Fox News highlighted the story Friday of a biological girl whose family encouraged her to identify as a boy, as part of its “America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month” series.
The video would be absolute despicable insane lunacy if I saw it on CNN or MSNBC.
To see it on Fox News is a complete betrayal of anything remotely resembling conservatism or decency.
Every element of this video is propagandistic, dangerous garbage. The report states that this biologically female child was choosing her gender before she could speak.
That is madness.
Read the whole thing.
PA. DEMOCRAT CONGRESSWOMAN GOES FULL NAZI, SAYS GOP MUST BE ‘CLEANSED.’
Despite being an advocate of “civility,” “decency,” and “unity” in the past, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) has apparently been so radicalized by her caucus that she now says the Republican Party is “diseased” and must be “cleansed.”
“This is, in my opinion, a diseased Republican Party. And it needs to be cured and cleansed,” Houlahan said on the Daily Beast‘s The New Abnormal podcast last month. “So the stakes of having a Republican, as an example, in my seat are more than just policy differences. They are democracy, in my opinion.”
The GOP is “diseased” and must be “cleansed?” Where have you heard such rhetoric before? It bears a shocking resemblance to the rhetoric of the Nazi Party.
Somebody needs to ask herself, “Are we the baddies?”
https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU