RIP: Douglas Trumbull, Who Pioneered VFX on ‘2001,’ ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Close Encounters,’ Dies at 79.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The script wasn’t brilliant, but his directorial debut in special-effects breakthrough pic Silent Running deserves a mention. The use of front projection and models was pioneering. Interiors were in the decommisioned aircraft carrier “Valley Forge.”
LET’S GO, BRANDEAU! Outrage as Trudeau smears anti-vax mandate Freedom Convoy as ‘swastika-wavers’ in Canadian parliament despite no evidence: Protesters blockade busiest border crossing to the US at Detroit.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson also slammed Trudeau’s response, claiming the demonstrators are being treated like terrorists.
‘This is a peaceful, political protest. No one has shown any evidence to the contrary. It’s not a drug trafficking or human trafficking operation. It’s not Al Qaeda,’ Carlson said on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight.
‘These are Canadian citizens who drive trucks for a living, but they’re being treated like a terror group.’
Why would Trudeau object to peaceful protestors? Flashback: Justin Trudeau takes a knee at Black Lives Matter demonstration on Parliament Hill.
GREAT MOMENTS IN KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE: ‘Inspired by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro,’ a New York restaurant missteps in Miami.
A Mexican hangout where the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Che Guevara plotted the Cuban revolution is the inspiration behind a New York City restaurant opening a location soon in downtown Miami.
Miami is having a problem with this.
Café Habana, set to open at 229 S Miami Ave. in the Spring of 2022, opened its first location inside a converted New York diner in 1997. The concept is a fusion of Cuban and Mexican cuisine — with a backstory rooted in communist revolutionary lore.
“Inspired by a storied Mexico City hangout, where legend has it Che Guevara and Fidel Castro plotted the Cuban Revolution, the flagship Café Habana location was created out of an old-school New York diner in 1997. Eighteen years later, Café Habana remains an institution…” read a description on the restaurant’s website until this week.
That information was scrubbed from the restaurant’s website and Google in the days after people in Miami discovered the restaurant’s backstory.
Interesting theme for a restaurant — particularly one located in Miami — considering, as Moe Lane once wrote, Marxism “tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life. Literally.”
GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA REALLY FAILING HER CONSTITUENCY: More Unreleased Stacey Abrams Maskless School Photos.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: BIPOC only charter school to open in Portland.
Michael Graham wrote Redneck Nation as a warning, not a how-to guide for leftist educators.
The most busted name in news pic.twitter.com/lT5uLgMmPe
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 8, 2022
Via Jim Treacher, who writes, “I don’t know who at the Daily Wire edited the following clip together, but Ben Shapiro should give him or her a big raise.”
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit? “For some, an end to the pandemic signals the closing of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake the world…When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, the names of many drugs — Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, sotrovimab — will be mentioned. But the account will be incomplete if the distorting effect of the most powerful and addictive drug of all, political power, is omitted. The public, out of fear, gave politicians enormous power. What we’re about to see, the world over, is whether they can take it back.”
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: James Carville thinks woke warriors in his party are simply ‘naive.’
“We’re letting a noisy wing of our party define the rest of us. And my point is we can’t do that.
“I think these people are all kind of nice people. I think they’re very naive, and they’re all into language and identity. And that’s all right. They’re not storming the Capitol. But they’re not winning elections.”
Carville’s case, in short, is that the broad mainstream of the Democratic Party is letting the “noisy” liberals dominate what the average American — particularly those who identify as swing voters — thinks the party stands for. Calls to defund the police, pass the “Green New Deal” or end the detention of people coming across the US’s southern border illegally are, in Carville’s mind, simply not majority positions in the country. Pushing them — loudly — is, therefore, a major mistake.
—CNN, July 15th, 2021.
—Fox News, yesterday.
GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVITY: NYC Mayor Eric Adams says it’s hard to tell the difference between a person ‘hooked on cheese’ and someone ‘hooked on heroin.’
Let he who has never confused Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch and the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” cast the first stone!
Related: Fishgate: ‘Vegan’ NYC mayor hooked into admitting he eats fish.
OLD AND BUSTED: Follow the Science.
The New Hotness? Follow the Polling! Democrat Govs. Drop Mask Mandates as Biden Holds Tight to His Science.
Today saw a small wave of Democrats caving to factual science. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy decided to end the mask mandates*.
Delaware Gov. John Carney will end mask mandates on Friday. School mask mandates will cease in March.
So what good old Biden? Logic and facts tell us that children don’t need to be masked. Actually, you don’t need to wear a mask unless you have a cold. The mask is supposed to help you not spread a virus. That’s why before COVID doctor offices asked you to put on a mask if you had cold or flu symptoms.
Does Biden think holding tight to his “science” will help his beleaguered party in November? Jen Psaki said this at the press briefing:
PSAKI: “Well, the guidance is very clear, which is that we recommend masking in schools. That is the recommendation from the CDC. It is also true that at some point, when the science and that data warrants, of course, our hope is that that’s no longer the recommendation, and they are continually assessing that. But the guidance is very clear. It is also true that has always been up to local school districts to make determinations about how to implement these policies.”
I’m laughing so hard. I know the majority of those governors changed their minds because of midterms. I cannot imagine how frustrated they are with Biden right now.
The Democrats stand to lose a lot in November. The governors of these poor states loosening their grip on their citizens might help. The biggest help would come from Biden and D.C. I don’t see Nancy Pelosi going against the old man.
In addition the above, AP is reporting: California to lift indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people on Feb. 15, Newsom says. After Feb. 15, unvaccinated people still will have to be masked indoors, and everyone, will have to wear masks in high-risk areas.
Also: Connecticut’s Ned Lamont to End Statewide School Mask Mandate on Feb. 28.
On the other hand there’s Illinois: (Video) Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: Illinois Might Have to Wear Masks Forever.
* Note though, the caveats in New Jersey, with similar ones possible in other states: Although “Murphy is lifting the state mask mandate, he’s not issuing a DeSantis-style ban on local governments from implementing their own mandates. If you live in a Democratic-run community, as most people in New Jersey do, odds are good that the ‘forever pandemic’ mentality in schools requiring perpetual masking will persist. It’ll just be the school board that’s to blame instead of Murphy. Or rather, it’ll be the ‘safety first’ approach of liberal parents pressuring the local school district to reinstate masking requirements that’ll be responsible.”
Exit question from radiologist Pradheep Shanker: “All the people that were furious that [Glenn Youngkin] ended mask mandates in Virginia a month ago…I presume you are just as angry at Democratic Governors today?”
UPDATE: Gooder and harder, Los Angeles: “Despite the state’s new announcement, the Los Angeles County Public Health issued a statement Monday evening saying the county will not align with the state’s stance on ditching the mask mandate after February 15. The Los Angeles County Public Health said COVID-19 transmission is still ‘high and substantial,’ as reasons to not follow the state’s decision to soon parting ways with the mask mandate. Last week, County Health Director, Dr. Barbara Ferrer said the county will consider itself out of the current COVID-19 surge when virus-related hospitalizations fall below 2,500 for seven straight days. Once that mark is reached, the county will no longer require masks at outdoor mega-events, such as football games, or in outdoor spaces at schools and child-care facilities. Meanwhile, health officials say they are continuing to evaluate the masking requirement for schoolchildren.”
(Updated and bumped.)
MICHAEL WALSH: Sic Semper Tyrannis.
It’s become axiomatic that inside every leftist is a totalitarian screaming to get out. So if there’s one positive thing Covid has done is identify those people for all to see: the slave-muzzle wearers, proudly exhibiting their servile natures. They’re the Karens, the mask nazis, the buttinskis who can’t leave you or your family alone, the ones who screech at the sight of the unmasked like Donald Sutherland ratting out a real human being at the end of the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers:
These are the same people who want to force you into electric cars but not provide a reliable source of electricity for them. Who wish to destroy the energy industries that built our nation, and leave you freezing or sweltering in the dark. Who condone and even encourage mass looting of shops, the murder of small Asian women waiting for a subway train, the shooting of policemen by the underclass, and the flouting of nearly every law of civilized behavior on the streets in the name of “social justice.” And these are the people who, under the rubric of “climate change” and “the Great Reset,” want to strip you of your home, your cars, your livelihood and, eventually, your life. No matter which office they hold, high or low or none at all, these people are your enemies and should be treated accordingly.
Make no mistake: Covid was only a beta-test, one that a submissive population passed with flying colors. Instantly repealed, without all that pesky business about amending the Constitution, were the first, fourth, fifth, and the eighth articles of the Bill of Rights. (The ninth and tenth, of course, have long since been rendered null, void, and nugatory. You remember them, the ones that reserve all unenumerated rights not mentioned in the Constitution to the people and the states.) This is why former president Barack Obama infamously referred to our founding document as a “charter of negative liberties.” Which is precisely what the Founders desired.
Read the whole thing.
WE WERE SOMEWHERE AROUND WILMINGTON ON THE EDGE OF THE GOLF COURSE WHEN THE DRUGS BEGAN TO TAKE HOLD: You Can’t Make This Up: Biden’s HHS to Fund Crack Pipes, Needles, and “Harm Reduction” Vending Machines.
WHOOPS: This ice skater from California renounced her U.S. citizenship to compete for China and then fell a bunch and placed dead last. “And here’s where the not-so-funny stuff comes in…The last thing you want to do in an honor-shame culture is bring shame to your family, community, and nation. When you couple that with a communist dictatorship in which the Party is always right and always strong, however, you get a recipe for disaster. Have you ever wondered why Chinese athletes often cry when they place 2nd or 3rd? It’s because they know the CCP will ruin their lives… if they are allowed to live at all.”
“MODERATE JOE” WAS ALWAYS A LIE: Supreme Court Frontrunner Was a Zealous Advocate for Gitmo Terror Suspects. Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed conspiracy theories about Bush administration policies, records show.
CONGRATS TO JAMES LILEKS ON 25 YEARS OF “THE BLEAT:” “A quarter of a century has elapsed. Children have been raised and sent into the world; dogs and houses have come and gone. But the Bleat not only abides, it talks about the same damned thing it did twenty-five years ago. I have no idea what I thought this would all become, but if you’d told me 25 years ago I’d still be doing it, and I’d still be going to the tech store to look at things and judge them with the Swede, and enjoy some French fries afterwards, then go home to wife and dog (same wife, different dog) I’d have been . . . grateful. Happy. Perhaps: relieved.”
ROGER SIMON: GoFundMe and How the Left Came to Despise the Working Class.
To understand it, you have to go back to the man who started it all, Karl Marx, who expected his communist revolution to begin in heavily industrialized Germany.
He was wrong, of course. It began in the much less developed and largely agrarian Russia. In Germany, the working class was not nearly as attracted to his theories as he had hoped. The majority rejected them.
This trend continued as communism did better in poorer countries (China, Cambodia) than it did in the industrialized West, where it was supposed to take hold.
This failure was not lost on a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School, who brought their revised Marxian theories designed to succeed where the working class approach had failed—notably via the so-called march through the institutions (media, entertainment, education)—to the United States at the end of World War II.
This indeed was an intellectuals-first revolution, and it has succeeded almost completely in our university system, where their “critical theory” dominates. They also succeeded, to lesser but still powerful degrees, in turning the media and entertainment, pretty much destroying Hollywood in the process. Why would the Chinese object?
This was clearly a top-down revolution, with elites dictating to hoi polloi what they should think and how to behave. In the way of the world, those elites also became increasingly rich, richer than anyone else in the history of the human race (the likes of Bezos, Zuckberg, Gates, et al.). They knew best. (Someone should write a book about that.)
In the process, the working class, what Amity Shlaes earlier called “The Forgotten Man,” was forgotten.
Which brings us to the truckers. This time—I think, hope, and pray—these elites have gone too far. The yawning gap between them and the people they lord over has become too great. People are sickened, as they should be, by the arrogance.
Thank you, GoFundMe, for blowing it. This is a teaching moment. Let’s use it.
As Glenn wrote last week in his New York Post column, “Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it,” “For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the ‘intellectual vanguard’ of the left. A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants.”
Related: Ted Cruz Calls For FTC Probe Into GoFundMe For Shutting Down Convoy Fundraiser. “Cruz’s comments follow announcements from several Republican state attorneys general that they plan to investigate GoFundMe for potentially violating state consumer protections laws. Other prominent Republican lawmakers, including Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, have signaled their intent to scrutinize the crowdfunding site.”
JOHN O’SULLIVAN: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Boris in the Wrong.
How wrong this particular wrong is—well, that’s a matter of dispute. What Boris Johnson did was to impose a series of tough anti-Covid regulations on his fellow-citizens—staying at home, wearing masks, social distancing, not going to marriages, funerals, or the deathbeds of dying loved ones—while ignoring the same regulations himself when he attended parties in Number Ten Downing Street (his official home as well as an office) where “alcohol was served.”
On top of that, the truth had to be prised out of Boris’s possession by a series of damning tweets, Downing Street memos, Fleet Street scoops, and eventually an official report by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, who made strong criticisms of the behavior of Downing Street staff but whose report had to be heavily redacted until the police determine whether any of them, including Boris, will be charged with the criminal offense of drinking in company during a pandemic.
It’s clear from all this that Boris broke the rules he was imposing on everyone else. For most of the last few weeks, his denials of this made matters worse when they gradually disintegrated under the weight of evidence. His popularity—which two years ago was enormous when he won a landslide election, fell ill, and then emerged from hospital having almost died from Covid—collapsed in recent days to below sea level. He faced demands from all sides, including Tory M.P.s and ordinary party members, that he should resign in disgrace. Many of his critics as the week ended were still hopeful that Boris would feel the policeman’s hand on his collar when they checked the evidence and found an armory of smoking guns.
Plus a look at “Tory” Boris’ very Brandon-esque energy policy.
Read the whole thing.
DAVID BROOKS IS PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1919!
Flashback to a century ago, when attacks on individuality were all the rage among collectivist-obsessed “Progressives:”
[Woodrow] Wilson was merely one voice in the progressive chorus of the age. “[W]e must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection to the activity of the many,” declared the progressive social activist Jane Addams.
“New forms of association must be created,” explained Walter Rauschenbusch, a leading progressive theologian of the Social Gospel movement, in 1896. “Our disorganized competitive life must pass into an organic cooperative life.” Elsewhere, Rauschenbusch put it more simply: “Individualism means tyranny.”
Or as Mies van der Rohe, the last director of Weimar Germany’s socialist-oriented Bauhaus design school said in 1924:
The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us. The decisive achievements in all fields are impersonal and their authors are for the most part unknown. They are part of the trend of our time toward anonymity. Our engineering structures are examples. Gigantic dams, great industrial installations and huge bridges are built as a matter of course, with no designer’s name attached to them. They point to the technology of the future.
Curiously, Mies would have no problem building for wealthy individuals who wished to commission his work — not to mention having his name firmly associated with his designs — after he fled the Weimar Republic’s much more punitive successors for America.
Exit question:
Some of its shakier proponents fell in love with fine trouser creases over substance. As did others who knew better, but hated missing out on all the best cocktail parties on both ends of the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention, the green room at MSNBC.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I’ll believe Brooks’s “end of individualism” schtick when he gives up his NYT byline and replaces his name with “Staff Writer.”
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO SMUGGLED OUT OF THE TRUCKISTAN HELLSCAPE:
https://twitter.com/sunqueentrg/status/1489325606290411520
Related: David Solway on Terry Fox and the Truckers: “It is hard to miss the irony of an avowedly socialist prime minister cynically abusing the class of working people whom he presumably represents and on whom the nation depends for its survival, accusing them of racism and of stealing food from the homeless. It is equally hard not to see that the truckers are the avatars of Terry Fox. A majority of Canadians now approve of their mission. The truckers are on the way to becoming national heroes. As Chris Queen at PJM writes, ‘what started as a convoy within one sector of the Canadian economy is turning into a national movement advocating for freedom. It’s enough to warm your heart, even in the cold Canadian winter.’”
GOOD TO SEE THAT BARRY IS STILL TAKING GLOBAL WARMING SERIOUSLY:
Shot: Hawaii’s beaches are disappearing due to climate change.
—ABC News, October 31st.
—The London Daily Mail, yesterday.
As Amy Curtis asks on Twitter, “This is the second waterfront property he’s bought. Why would anyone who thinks the oceans are going to rise from climate change soon do this?”
Well to be fair, Obama himself admitted that global warming ended on June 4th, 2008:
UPDATE: “Add Barack Obama to the list of elite Dems who don’t wear masks in public despite telling everyone else to wear one…Did he learn nothing from his maskless birthday party on Martha’s Vineyard? Apparently not[.]”
THIS IS CNN: The CNN Sex Party Comes To An End.
Under Jeff Zucker, it was pretty clear the fraternization rules were viewed more as suggestions. Quite a few CNN employees sleeping together (see: Dana Bash and John King) or pleasuring themselves on video chats with no consequences (see, actually don’t see, Jeffery Toobin). With 2 former producers being linked to pedophilia and one current anchor being sued for allegedly shoving his hands down the pants of a man, CNN is like a sex club from hell.
The end of the orgy isn’t what upset CNN staff, it was something even worse…for people with no scruples or talent – they are terrified that their next boss might want some accountability.
One thing Zucker did, either because he was fooling around with his deputy and recognized he couldn’t or because he just sucked at his job, was allowed for any and all standards of journalism and ethics to disappear.
Exit quote by Don Lemon: “…Thank you Jeff Zucker for everything you did for everyone at this network and for what you did to the entire country — for the entire country.”
LAYERS OF SYMBOLISM HERE: Health Icon, Maskless Stacey Abrams with Masked Children in Georgia (Photo).
Flashback: The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace.
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