HEY, WHEN DID FOX BUTTERFIELD JOIN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE? Broken Homes: “San Francisco spends millions of dollars to shelter its most vulnerable residents in dilapidated hotels. With little oversight or support, the results are disastrous.”
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
April 28, 2022
“TO FIGHT THE FASCISTS, WE HAD TO BECOME THE FASCISTS:” Biden Seeks Sweeping New Powers To Confiscate Wealth to Fight The Enemy.
MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Biden ‘Not Concerned about Recession,’ Touts ‘Enormous Growth’ after Economy Shrinks in First Quarter.
President Biden attempted to allay concerns about the performance of the U.S. economy on Thursday after the Commerce Department announced that the economy shrank over the first quarter of 2022.
“I’m not concerned about a recession,” Biden told reporters at a press conference at the White House.
“I mean, you’re always concerned about a recession, but the GDP, you know, fell to 1.4 percent,” Biden added. “But here’s the deal: we also had last quarter consumer spending and business investment and residential investment increase at significant rates,” and “unemployment’s the lowest rate since 1970.”
Biden said that the U.S. was seeing “enormous” economic growth alongside Covid disruptions.
Earlier: How Bad Will the Biden Recession Be?
(Classical reference in headline.)
DALLAS INTERNATIONAL GUITAR FESTIVAL RETURNS APRIL 29: Oldest & Largest Guitar Show In The World Returns to Dallas’ Market Hall.
Dallas International Guitar Festival (DIGF) returns to Market Hall April 29-May 1 to celebrate the 44th anniversary of the oldest and largest guitar show in the world.
DIGF blends musicians, fans, collectors and celebrities together into one huge musical extravaganza. Visitors can buy, sell, trade, or just browse among the thousands upon thousands of new and vintage guitars. The show also features basses, amps, banjos, mandolins, straps and strings, effects pedals, music memorabilia and more.
Visitors enjoy live music throughout the festival. There are performances by over 60 artists on four concert stages at Dallas Market Hall. A highlight of DIGF each year is the Texas 10 under 20 stage, with bands featuring musicians 20 years old or younger performing throughout the festival. The 10 under 20 contest is held Sunday morning. The winner receives valuable prizes to help further their musical career.
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The Guitar Festival is open Friday from 12 noon to 7 p.m.; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For tickets and updated information including performance schedules for the 44th Dallas International Guitar Festival please visit guitarshow.com.
Here’s my after-action report (with photos) from last year, which was the first, somewhat tentative, year back after the COVID lockdown.
(Bumped.)
BYRON YORK: Will the Babylon Bee get out of Twitter jail? The Babylon Bee’s CEO, Seth Dillon: “I care a lot about the preservation of freedom and the restoration of sanity. What we did in all of this was just to refuse to delete a tweet. We refused to delete a tweet, and look what has come about as a result of that — possibly, at least, we played a role in it. That’s pretty remarkable. Hopefully, other people see that, and we’ll have more people joining the ranks of those who are refusing to go along with the insanity and standing up for reason and truth and freedom. And we’ll start to see the pendulum swing back the other way. We’ll be in that fight until the fight is over, which is, I guess, until we die.”
April 27, 2022
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND CREEPY JOE: Biden Tells Teachers: Children Are ‘Yours When They’re In The Classroom.’
“You have heard me say it many times about our children, but it is true, they’re all our children. And the reason you are the teachers of the year is because you recognize that,” he said. “They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.”
https://youtu.be/zX0pKJi6mX4
The president’s remarks come after uproar over gender identity and Critical Race Theory concepts being taught to children in both public and private schools. Largely exposed by virtual schooling during the pandemic, these concepts have prompted a parental rebellion against school boards across the nation.
Former Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe sparked massive backlash when he said on the campaign trail that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach” — a remark that some have argued cost him the election.
To be fair, we’ve known where Comcast stands on this issue since 2013:
“I GIVE YOU MY WORD AS A BIDEN:” Report: Joe Biden Failed to Report More than $5.2 Million in Income He Used to Pay Hunter’s Legal Fees.
Related: Hunter Biden to Brother’s Widow After Affair — ‘Get Tested for HIV.’
(Updated and bumped; classical reference in headline.)
QUESTION ASKED: If Elon Musk Is ‘Targeting’ Twitter Employees, Isn’t The Washington Post ‘Targeting’ Elon Musk? If there is a headline, it should probably be: “Elon Musk Agrees With Twitter That Censoring the Hunter Biden Story Was Wrong.”
If Dwoskin and the Post reject that analogy, this is what they are saying: when the media industry holds people to account, it’s noble and justified; but when people outside media hold people to account, it’s an act of targeted harassment. The media then insist these acts of targeted harassment (as they define it) are newsworthy, and the cycle repeats itself.
This was the subtext of last week’s Washington Post expose on Libs of TikTok, which revealed the name of the woman behind the influential rightwing Twitter account. Libs of TikTok collects and republishes videos depicting progressive teachers and activists making comments that attract mockery from conservatives; by exposing the account, The Washington Post sought to shed light on the inner workings of the rightwing outrage machine. But the woman’s identity wasn’t particularly important to the story, and revealing it undoubtedly subjected her to considerable opprobrium.
In response, fans of Libs of TikTok relentlessly assailed the story’s author, Taylor Lorenz. Much of the anti-Lorenz campaign was itself creepy and vile. But it’s getting somewhat difficult to delineate legitimate reporting that serves the public interest from malicious spotlighting of political foes, unless one takes the clearly dubious position that exposes crafted by journalists are de facto legitimate.
To be fair, that is the view of the DNC-MSM: Taylor Lorenz is simply following the new rules of journalism.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Megan Fox Admits To Participating In Ritual Blood Drinking With Machine Gun Kelly.
Eventually Fox would be asked, “Is it true you drank each other’s blood after he proposed?”
She answered, “I guess ‘drank each other’s blood’ might mislead people, or like people are imagining us with goblets and we’re like Game of Thrones drinking each other’s blood.”
“It’s just a few drops,” she said. “But yes, we do consume each other’s blood on occasion, for ritual purposes only.”
“He’s much haphazard, and hectic, and chaotic, where he’s willing to just like cut his chest open with a broken glass and be like, ‘Take my soul. Let me bleed on you,’” she revealed.
As always, life imitates the earlier, funnier, Woody Allen movies: “Touch my heart. With your foot.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Hillary Clinton warns of ‘fascism’ at Madeleine Albright funeral.
Hillary Clinton on Wednesday injected partisan politics to the funeral of diplomat Madeleine Albright, the nation’s first female secretary of state, saying “fascism” could dominate the United States if “dictators and demagogues” aren’t stopped — taking a clear swipe at former President Donald Trump and his allies.
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, lost to Trump in a shocking upset and her attacks generally are welcomed by Republicans who describe her as an embittered and base-rallying foe.
“She knew better than most and she warned us in her book on fascism that yes, it can happen here and time and courage are of the essence,” Clinton said in a eulogy at Washington National Cathedral.
To be fair, Hillary knows “better than most,” as well.
DON’T GO FULL ‘LIBERTY CABBAGE’ ON RUSSIA: Russian, Belarusian Players Ineligible For 2022 Canadian Hockey League Import Draft.
“The Canadian Hockey League remains committed to the safety, well-being, and the development of all of its players regardless of their country of origin,” the statement reads.
The mandate is likely to affect at least 20% of players, as in the 2021 CHL Import Draft, 16 Russian and 11 Belarusian players were selected out of 120.
The CHL’s decision to exclude Russian and Belarusian players is similar to the edict that came down from Wimbledon last week. Tennis’ signature Grand Slam is prohibiting Russian and Belarusian players from participating in this year’s event, meaning that the world’s No. 2 men’s singles player Daniil Medvedev will miss out.
16-time Wimbledon champion Billie Jean King has since spoken out against the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) for its decision.
“The decision of the LTA and the AELTC regarding the Russian and Belarusian players at this year’s tournament was a difficult and complex undertaking, and I appreciate the challenges and pressures they are facing,” King said. “One of the guiding principles of the founding of the WTA was that any girl in the world, if she was good enough, would have a place to compete. I stood by that in 1973 and I stand by that today.
“I cannot support the banning of individual athletes from any tournament, simply because of their nationality. Tennis is strong when we stand together, and our continued support of the Tennis Plays for Peace initiative, which provides meaningful financial support and resources to Ukraine, needs to be our focus.”
Related: Do You Remember 9/11 And How They Cleansed World History Of All Mention Of Muslims? Neither do I.
(Classical reference in headline.)
BEN SHAPIRO: Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Reveals the Left For What It Is.
All of these seem like worthwhile and anodyne goals. More speech, not less. More transparency, not less.
And yet the political Left went utterly insane. Charles Blow of The New York Times vowed to leave the service; in fact, #LeavingTwitter trended on the service. The American Civil Liberties Union, while noting that Musk is a card-carrying member, fretted, “there’s a lot of danger having so much power in the hands of any one individual.” Meanwhile, powerful individual with consolidated power Jeff Bezos worried over the possibility of Chinese influence on Twitter: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the deal “dangerous for our democracy.” MSNBC’s Ari Melber hilariously agonized, “You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the elections.”
Yes, Ari, we know. That was the concern for tens of millions of us when social media decided to silence the Hunter Biden story, lock accounts of prominent Trump-associated officials who shared the story, and then finally to throw former President Donald Trump off of all services simultaneously following Jan. 6. That was one of Musk’s concerns, presumably, in purchasing the service.
The Left’s outsized panic over Musk’s takeover is revealing for two reasons. First, it shows that the Left always understood Twitter to be a key part of its ecosystem, a Left-biased platform designed to obscure its own leanings while propagandistically pushing a particular political agenda. For years, the Left claimed that conservative concerns about Twitter bias were simple paranoia. Now, upon Musk’s takeover, the Left has broken into spasms of apoplexy. That wouldn’t happen if they thought Twitter wasn’t their sole property.
Not that we didn’t already know how illiberal the American left are, but even so, it’s been quite an instructive month. QED:
Musk and a merry band of fellow billionaires that includes [Internet entrepreneur David Sacks] and the venture capitalist Marc Andreesen seem to be coalescing into an American counterelite committed to breaking the monopoly on public discourse held by our current ruling class.
On the other side of the skirmish line we have the forces of the bipartisan political establishment under the command of General Barack Obama. The members of this faction are easy to identify because they have been engaged in an unhinged freakout for weeks. Ever since news first broke indicating that Musk was trying to acquire a controlling share of Twitter, his critics have been apoplectic about the dangers to democracy that will be unleashed by allowing users to more freely share and view information. Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich captured the shrill zeitgeist of apocalyptic liberal technocrats everywhere when he warned that Musk’s “libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet [is] also the dream of every dictator, strongman, and demagogue.” Uh, sure, “what linked Idi Amin, Suharto, and Adolf Hitler,” James Kirchick recently noted in The Scroll, “was their belief in unfettered freedom of speech.”
But the official, buttoned-up version of the freakout was articulated by Obama himself. Less than a week ago in a speech at Stanford University, the former president warned that it’s necessary to impose more regulations on the internet, in order to prevent toxic disinformation from destroying American democracy by eroding citizens’ trust. “Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won,” Obama told the audience at the Silicon Valley hub. “As Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election,” Obama said, “our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission.”
Obama’s latest forays into disinformation were a prelude to this development: free Speech Alert: DHS Setting up New “Disinformation Governance Board.”
Nina Jankowicz, who will head the board as executive director, has an extensive, swampy background in the area of “disinformation” as well as the geopolitical interface between Russia and Europe. Her bio for Syracuse University, where she is an adjunct professor, reads in part:
Jankowicz’s expertise spans the public, private and academic sectors. She has advised governments, international organizations and tech companies; testified before the United States Congress and European Parliament; and led accessible, actionable research about the effects of disinformation on women, minorities, democratic activists and freedom of expression around the world.
Jankowicz has extensive media experience, with writing published in many major American newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She is a regular guest on major radio and television programs such as the PBS Newshour, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and Amanpour, the BBC World Service, and NPR’s All Things Considered.
Clearly, the Left is very worried about black and Hispanic Americans hearing anything contrary to the party line.
Additionally, states the bio, “In 2016-17, [Jankowicz] advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on disinformation and strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. Prior to her Fulbright grant, she managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute.” Just the person to make sure only approved information reaches Americans, as the administration fumbles us closer to war every day while assuring us that news about Hunter’s Ukrainian lucre is merely Russian misinformation.
Jankowicz has written two books, How to Lose the Information War and How to Be A Woman Online. In a pinned tweet pimping her newly released second book, Jankowiz lets her inner misandry loose and writes, “Men ‘burst violently into your mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable.’”
What could possibly go wrong?
LATERAL MOVE: CBS abortion reporter joins Planned Parenthood.
Almost instantly upon resigning from CBS News, Smith’s Twitter feed was full of dedicated pro-abortion narratives about fetal heartbeat bills. While at CBS News, she framed Texas’s abortion law as the “so-called heartbeat” bill.
Smith had already adopted the language and euphemisms of the pro-abortion Left while posing as a neutral reporter simply sitting down for interviews. As National Review also notes, “When Alexis McGill-Johnson became acting president of Planned Parenthood last summer, her first public interview went to — who else? — Kate Smith, who opened their conversation with a broad smile and a hearty, ‘Congratulations on the new job!'”
The issue at hand is not abortion. There are plenty of other talented experts and writers on the subject of life and ending life. Rather, it is how Smith’s move sheds light on the often extreme internal bias of journalists. Planned Parenthood has spent enormous blood and treasure locking up the national media in its favor, once even offering the Maggie Awards for journalists. These recognize “exceptional achievement by the media in presentation and coverage of reproductive rights and health care issues, including contraception, sexuality education, teen pregnancy, abortion, and international family planning.” The awards were terminated early in 2015.
Every branch of the MSM has revolving doors, but there’s something about Democratic Party operatives with Chyrons leaving CBS that causes them to go to extremes at their next gig:
● Walter Cronkite pledges “That’s the way it is” every night on air, before spending his dotage championing the glories of one-world government.
● Dan Rather swears he’s completely objective, before flaming out with RatherGate and afterwards, hosts fundraisers for far-left Nation magazine.
● Katie Couric leaves CBS and then gets caught falsely editing an anti-Second Amendment documentary.
15 DAYS TO SLOW THE SPREAD UPDATE: Just 772 Days to Slow the Spread.
April 26, 2022
And now, the news that Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter has been successful has caused a predictable meltdown of volcanic proportions. In the unbridled mania among identitarian leftists, we are seeing evidence that they have not learned the lessons of Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, which they similarly treated as portents of the apocalypse. It takes an infantile mind not to accept that democracy works on the basis of the loser’s consent, the principle that – as Roger Scruton put it – ‘We respect our fellow citizens even when they do not vote our way, because the government is not “mine” or “yours” but “ours”’.
Even the deranged reactions to the Brexit and Trump votes were but tepid premonitions of the responses to Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted that Musk is a ‘media-thirsty, vindictive, white supremacist who is looking to convince you he is an innovative disruptor’. Activist Shaun King wrote that Musk’s move is ‘about white power’. Apparently, Musk is ‘upset that Twitter won’t allow white nationalists to target / harass people. That’s his definition of free speech.’ No evidence for these claims has been forthcoming, of course. Like all his fellow activists, King has the kind of access to his political opponents’ private thoughts that Uri Geller could only dream about.
King has since deleted his Twitter account, and many others have threatened to do so, too. Actor Jameela Jamil’s statement that she is leaving Twitter has been clocking up the retweets and likes, so it’s understandable that her account still remains active. The broadcaster India Willoughby has said that ‘if Elon gets Twitter, I think that’s it for me’. Activist Tim Wise has gone straight for the trash talk: ‘Fuck Elon Musk. Apartheid Baby. You, your company, and everyone who Stans for you. I’m saying this on your platform now and will keep saying it. Let’s see how committed you are to free speech when we start roasting your ass.’ Twitter has not been this entertaining for years.
King has since returned, playing out this classic Seinfeld scene in real life (or what passes for real life on Twitter):
EFREM ZIMBALIST JR. LEFT THE HOOVER BUILDING A LONG TIME AGO: Did a Key FBI Agent in Whitmer Plot Attempt to Surveil Steven Crowder?