#RESIST: Congressional Republicans: Zero Funding For Vaccine Mandate Programs. “Opposition to vaccine mandates is widespread in America, and almost universal among Republicans, which makes defunding them an excellent hill to defend. The only question is why more GOP legislators haven’t signed this pledge.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
February 8, 2022
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Joe Rogan Haters Aren’t Letting Their Tantrum Go. “I’ve been aware of Joe Rogan for a long time because he’s a comedian who did very well for himself. This current drama surrounding him and Spotify is turning me into a huge Rogan fan merely because so many of his haters are awful people.”
RE-FUND THE POLICE: 1 dead at school where coaches replaced cops.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Will Biden’s Chief of Staff Be Made the Fall Guy? (As if President Klain would ever agree to that._
Chris Queen: 60 Years of Bond Theme Songs: The Songs That Could’ve Been. “Did you know that there were several “alternative” Bond themes that didn’t make the cut for various reasons? Some of them are better than the finished product, others not so much — while there’s one alternative theme song that’s equally as good as the one the producers chose.”
Yours Truly: The Six… No, Five… Wait, Four… the THREE Things the Left Won’t Call Racist. “If I’ve done my math right, that leaves us with just three things the Left can’t or won’t (or hasn’t yet) called racist.”
Bonus: Biden Attempts Reset #3 in Two Weeks, Fails Comically. “This guy has got the Merde Touch, but Team Biden just won’t quit.”
February 7, 2022
EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Vermont school district cancels ‘Flannel Friday’ due to ‘equity’ concerns.
MASKS ARE FOR THE PROLES: N.Y. School Board Photographed Unmasked Inside for Legislative Event, Parents Livid.
SHAKEDOWN: Spotify CEO offers grovelling apology over Joe Rogan, commits $100 million to ‘marginalized groups.’
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Now Rogan should take the $100 million offer to move to Rumble, after sticking Spotify with a $100 million virtue-signaling bill . . .
He should do it anyway. As the Rumble folks know, his presence is enough to make them a highly viable competitor to existing platforms, and we need that. And so does Rogan.
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE MORE WORD ABOUT HOW PROGRESSIVISM IS CARING: San Francisco Promotes Illegal Drug Use, Overdose Deaths ‘Skyrocket.’
HMM: A strategy to unseat Rep. Lauren Boebert? “Democrats registered in the 3rd Congressional District are being asked to change their voter registration to ‘unaffiliated’ in a growing campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Republican primaries in June.”
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Stacey Abrams’ Campaign: Racism Behind Criticism of Her Maskless Photo.
DON’T TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Missing Chinese Tennis Star Peng Shuai ‘Allowed’ to Give CCP-Friendly Interview. “Now, with the cameras rolling and a Party official keeping a close eye on her, Shuai claims, ‘I never said that anyone made me submit to a sexual assault.'”
DAVID DEAVEL: Georgetown’s Ivory Tower Becomes a Leftist Citadel.
Those commenting have noted that Georgetown seems to have extraordinarily flexible standards about such things. During confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Georgetown professor Christine Fair tweeted about her desire for “terrible deaths” for Kavanaugh’s supporters, whose corpses she wished to castrate and feed to swine. In 2020 Professor Heidi Li Feldman tweeted that the Law School should not support any applications of Georgetown Law students to clerk for judges appointed by Donald Trump and that law firms should not hire anyone who did so.
Fair was briefly suspended for her violent comments but was then vindicated and praised. Feldman apparently faced no scrutiny despite university and city non-discrimination rules forbidding discrimination based on political affiliation.
In short, it’s not “free speech” that’s in danger. It’s simply speech that purportedly offends—I say purportedly because the meaning of Shapiro’s tweet, though “inartful,” in his words, is pretty easily understood—the left.
Read the whole thing.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: A Tough Week of Gut Punches for the Left. “Watching BLM crash and burn is HILARIOUS. What I find tragic is Speaker of the House and head lizard person Nancy Pelosi telling American Olympians to mind their beeswax and not speak negatively about the Chinese, despite their Nazi-like camps and that pesky little virus they released on the world.”
JOE CONCHA: CNN’s collapse is now complete.
In the spring of 2020, the country was in a horrific place. Businesses shut completely; people were scared. There were no COVID therapeutics, no vaccines. Hospitals were overwhelmed, thousands were dying each day. If ever there was a time for news organizations to educate and inform the public, this was it.
Instead, Zucker apparently believed it was the perfect time to exploit the situation for political gain and to help the network’s ratings.
Andrew Cuomo benefitted from briefings that made him appear to be the adult in the room regarding COVID and Trump appear to be the villain. Cuomo got a $5.1 million book deal as a result.
Chris Cuomo and Zucker/Gollust/CNN benefitted from marathon interviews with Cuomo’s governor/brother, which didn’t touch the governor’s alleged nursing home scandal. Ratings soared.
So, was Zucker’s departure simply about a consensual relationship with a co-worker? One might be forgiven for questioning that.
Moving forward, what’s next for CNN when the company falls under the Discovery Channel umbrella later this year? Let’s hear from its soon-to-be largest shareholder, John Malone of Liberty Media.
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“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said in an interview that recently aired on CNBC.The collapse of CNN is now complete: Nine-out-of-ten viewers, gone. Its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, gone. Its network president, gone. Its integrity in shambles.
Zucker was always an entertainment guy, not a news guy — and he wasn’t all that successful producing entertainment.
I’ve never understood why he was brought in to run CNN, but I can’t argue with the results.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Canada Trucks Along to Freedom. It’s been different watching the drama going on with our neighbors to the north. Here in the United States, we don’t often look to Canada as a beacon of freedom but this is where we are in Joe Biden’s commie America.”
SOROS SPEAKS: ‘Omicron Threatens To Be Xi Jinping’s Undoing.’
“Omicron entered China mainly through the port city of Tianjin, which is 30 minutes by high-speed rail to Beijing,” Soros said.
“City-wide lockdowns are unlikely to work against a variant as infectious as Omicron. This is evident in Hong Kong where the Omicron outbreak looks increasingly serious.”
“Given the strong opposition within the CCP, Xi Jinping’s carefully choreographed elevation to the level of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping may never occur,” Soros said. “It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad. This would remove the greatest threat that open societies face today and they should do everything within their power to encourage China to move in the desired direction.”
If Xi were to be removed by a Party clique, Khrushchev-style, it could lead to a period of Beijing focusing inward again. Whether or not that would turn out to be a benefit to the Chinese people is something entirely else.
Also: Don’t trust anything George Soros has to say about the advantages of open societies.
Facing a potential fraud investigation by the state of Florida, GoFundMe reversed a decision to redistribute money given by thousands of donors to the Canadian “Freedom Convoy” protesting COVID-19 regulations.
On Friday, the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe froze the convoy’s official campaign, claiming law enforcement convinced the company that the convoy had become violent and unlawful.
GoFundMe encouraged donors to submit a refund form, and said that any funds not properly returned to donors would be donated to a charity chosen by the Freedom Convoy.
Within hours, however, GoFundMe walked back the refund applications, instead announcing it would be refunding donors automatically.
Related: Freedom Convoy Raises $2M on GiveSendGo After GoFundMe Removes Campaign.
HOW VERY META: Famous Marketing Professor Calls Facebook’s Metaverse a ‘Flaming Bag of S**t.’
Turns out at least one major marketing expert agrees with what the plebeian public already knows — Mark Zuckerberg may not be able to pull off this Metaverse thing.
On a new new episode of Vox’s Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher, renowned NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway laid the cards on the table. While he gave Zuckerberg credit for being a “visionary” who’s doing the right things to try and pivot a sinking ship — aka Meta-formerly-known-as-Facebook, which is now losing active users for the first time ever — but he’s not convinced that its Metaverse is headed in the right direction.
“If he pulls it off, it’ll be one of the most impressive feats in — not even corporate renewal — but vision around maintaining growth,” Galloway said during the podcast. “I don’t think they’re going to. I think this thing is already a giant flaming bag of shit.”
Part of Zuckerberg’s problem, according to Galloway, is that Meta’s Quest headset, previously known as Oculus, is still way too clunky to impress Meta’s target audience.
Facebook is free and exists on any device users want it on. Meta’s Quest is expensive and sits on users’ heads.
Awful as Facebook is, Meta is worse.
RIGHT TO KNOW: How Many U.S. Agencies Are Funding Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance Pulling Viruses Out of Animals? “EcoHealth Alliance CEO Peter Daszak just got another taxpayer-funded windfall. Instead of being deposed regarding his firm’s work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he is receiving a new pile of cash from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The new award gives EcoHealth Alliance $4,675,023 for a five-year project in Liberia, on the continent of Africa. USAID awarded the funding well after serious questions surfaced about EcoHealth Alliance’s coronavirus research. There are ample concerns about whether those activities violated the Obama administration’s ban on gain-of-function research even if they did not create the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
February 4, 2022
JOE BIDEN, REPAIRING OUR TATTERED RELATIONS AROUND THE WORLD: Argentina’s president offers Putin a ‘gateway to Latin America.’