THIS IS NOT THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: E. coli outbreak tied to romaine lettuce kills 1 in California, expands to 25 states.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 3, 2018
WESTERN “FEMINISTS” REMAIN SILENT: Hundreds of Dead Babies Found in Trash in Pakistan: 99 Percent Are Girls. “One four-day-old girl was found in the trash with her throat slit.”
May 2, 2018
IT’S AMERICAN MILLENNIALS VERSUS CHINESE COMMUNISTS — AND THE COMMUNISTS WIN: Chinese dress at US prom wins support in China after internet backlash. “After criticism of student Keziah Daum’s Twitter post showing her wearing the traditional qipao, Chinese commenters call it cultural appreciation, not appropriation.”
If I were 18 and had Daum on my arm, I would die of pride. Not because she’s lovely — which she is — but because of the character she’s demonstrated these last few days.
OUR POSTMODERN MILITARY: Pentagon Has Spent $697,627 on ‘Can I Kiss You’ Training.
And yet there’s still no money for training our soldiers how to defend themselves from assailants armed with pointed sticks.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Whisky shops in England braced for Scottish booze cruisers as minimum alcohol pricing hits.
Whisky shops in Berwick and Carlisle are preparing for Scottish drinkers on booze cruises after the introduction of minimum pricing.
Industry experts have warned the new rules will mean drinkers may cross the border in search of cheaper alcohol.
At midnight tonight, new pricing rules to discourage problem drinking will increase the prices of alcohol in Scotland.
Shops in England are already preparing for the surge in Scottish customers by increasing stock of whisky, other spirits and beer.
The law will affect lower-end whisky, as it is the less expensive brands which will be hit by the minimum alcohol pricing, with price per unit set at 50p.
This means that 70cl bottle of whisky (28 units of alcohol) could not be sold for less than £14.
The House of Malt in Carlisle is hoping to cash in on the minimum alcohol pricing ruling. The shop specialises in high-end whiskys but is expanding its lower-end range for Scots hoping to buy cheap booze.
Hordes of angry Scotsmen driving south into England in search of cheap booze — what could go wrong?
THAT’S NOT FUNNY — IT’S HYSTERICALLY FUNNY: Trudeau Hilariously Blames U.S. For His Illegal Immigration Problem.
MICHAEL WALSH: This is what a housing bubble looks like.
If you think things in San Francisco are ugly now, just wait until the bubble pops.
GOODY, GOODY: Tehran Terrified, U.S. Expert Says. “The Iranian regime is ‘humiliated’ after a daring Mossad operation seized scores of secret documents, the former Pentagon official said.”
Harold Rhode spent 28 years at the Pentagon and studied in Iran before the 1979 revolution there. The fluent Farsi speaker, who is now associated with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said his view stems from a wave of recent Iranian infighting.
He said when things are not going well in Iran, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officials and rival ayatollahs start attacking each other in a public blame game that expresses how exposed and vulnerable they feel their rule has become.
Rhode named senior Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli from northern Iran who has been lashing out at rivals, saying their corruption was bringing down the regime.
Israel “humiliated the Iranian government by capturing all of this material,” Rhode said, and many Iranians were laughing at the Islamic regime on social media.
While the global media stopped covering protests against the regime months ago, he noted, the protests are still churning.
I believe the Iranian political turmoil left in its wake was the primary reason for Bibi Netanyahu’s presentation on Monday.
THE GIG ECONOMY: New court ruling could force Uber, Lyft to convert drivers to employees.
Numerous employment law experts that Ars spoke with said that the new [California Supreme Court] opinion could end up being a moment of reckoning for Silicon Valley. Among those we spoke with is Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based labor lawyer who has brought numerous cases against Uber, Grubhub, and others.
“The test will provide much stronger worker protections and make it extremely difficult for companies to classify their workforce as independent contractors, as many employers have been trying to do, and unfortunately many courts have allowed them to get away with it,” Liss-Riordan said in an email to Ars. “Under this test, if the work is performed within the usual course of the company’s business, the worker is an employee.”
Byron Goldstein, an Oakland-based attorney who also has brought cases against startups over labor issues, agreed.
“There are many tech companies cheating the law, their workers, and their competitors because they misclassify their workers,” he emailed Ars. “Because this decision provides clarity regarding whether a worker is an employee, those companies should understand that they do not get a free pass merely because they write software.”
While I don’t think the courts should be interfering in private business relationships, it’s impossible to work up any sympathy for Uber, Lyft, or most any Silicon Valley tech company.
ANOTHER INSTITUTION DESTROYED: With girls joining the ranks, Boy Scouts plan a name change.
I pulled my older son out of Cub Scouts after just one year, when the Boy Scouts banned squirt guns. But the writing has been on the wall for far longer than that.
FUTURE HISTORY: How We Lost the Great Pacific War.
ACROSS THE POND: Racist leftwingers abuse new home secretary Sajid Javid in racist slurs.
The new home secretary was called a “coconut” by the prominent left-wing campaigner Tariq Mahmood online and an “Uncle Tom” by Jack Johnson, a Labour councillor, the Guido Fawkes website said.
Other left-wing campaigners also used racist epithets about the Conservative MP. Mr Javid, whose parents emigrated to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s, is the most senior black and minority ethnic member of the cabinet.
A Labour spokeswoman said: “Any complaints we receive which relate to party members are fully investigated and appropriate disciplinary action is taken in line with our procedures.”
It’s different when they do it because shut up.
GITMO THE **** OUT: ‘Not Simple’ to Find Place to Put 400 ISIS Captured Foreign Fighters, Mattis Says.
I don’t understand why we even want to hold these francs-tireurs, when summary execution is the legal and proper action.
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UPDATE (From Ed): As the late historian Robert Conquest told the New York Review of Books, Kingsley Amis famously quipped that Conquest should have re-titled the post-Soviet Union edition of The Great Terror, “I Told You So, You Fucking Fools.”
NEVER GONNA HAPPEN: Team Obama should just accept they failed with Iran.
David Harsanyi:
Republicans “drove the car in the ditch … and now they want the keys back.”
For years, President Barack Obama would trot out this analogy to attack his rivals’ fecklessness and obstructionism. How could the very same people who got us into the financial crisis lecture those who were getting us out of it?
Well, after driving the United States into a foreign-policy wreck, it’s time for former members of the Obama administration to ask themselves the same question.
According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has recovered documents that demonstrate Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. These clandestine plans for five 10-kiloton nuclear warheads were hidden and stored by Iran while it was developing a ballistic-missile program that would be able to carry them to Tel Aviv.So not only did the United States end up saving the Islamic Republic from economic ruin with the Iran deal, it allowed the nation to solidify its foothold in Syria and strengthen its terrorist proxy Hezbollah. And not only did the Obama administration allow a humanitarian disaster to unfold in Syria while it was placating Russia to save the deal, it destroyed a sanctions program that was working.
On top of that, we also now know that the Iran deal was sold to the American public in bad faith. Yet, even after these revelations came to light, the former Obama aides who established a media echo chamber meant to silence critics and mislead citizens were still taunting and whining from sidelines, offering one bizarre justification after the next to continue the charade.
Read the whole thing.
GOOGLE VS GOOGLE: How Nonstop Political Arguments Rule Its Workplace.
Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, flew to Silicon Valley earlier this year for a long-planned speech to Google employees. It wasn’t until she sat waiting in a parking lot that a call came through notifying her the event was canceled.
Ms. Newkirk had been invited by some employees to discuss her view that animals can be subject to prejudice just as people can, as part of the company’s “Talks at Google” series. Another group of employees said the topic was offensive to humans who face racism, and they protested.
“Google has these values, and with our talks, we have to align with these values,” a Google employee told Ms. Newkirk, according to a transcript of the call.
Such is the climate inside the tech giant, where fractious groups of employees have turned the workplace into a virtual war zone of debate over all manner of social and political beliefs. Google has long promoted a work culture that is more like a college campus — where loud debates and doctrinaire stances are commonplace—and today its parent, Alphabet Inc., is increasingly struggling to keep things under control.
To be fair, it isn’t easy holding a civil debate when it’s between the Progressive Left and the Progressive Far Left, because the Left always eats its own. Always.
And this story is behind the WSJ paywall, but is schadenfreudelicious enough that you might want to look for a backdoor here.
HUH: Why Did The NY Times’ Metro Editor Resign Yesterday? The Times Won’t Say.
Yesterday, NY Times metro editor Wendell Jamieson resigned his position at the paper after an “internal investigation” revealed…something. HuffPost published an email sent out by the Times to its explain the change to their own newsroom.
After an investigation, Wendell Jamieson has resigned from The Times. Susan Chira is stepping in as interim metro editor effective immediately.
Wendell has asked us to express the following to his colleagues in the newsroom: “Leading Metro for the last five years and working with the incredible Times team has been the high point of my professional life. I regret and apologize for my mistakes and leaving under these circumstances. I’m especially proud of all the talent I’ve helped bring to The Times. Susan Chira is a wonderful editor, a true New Yorker, and I know Metro will rise to even greater heights under her leadership.”
To protect the privacy of those involved, we do not intend to comment further.
Mistakes you say? What kind of mistakes? The Times has decided the sudden exit of a senior figure on its own staff isn’t news. And sure enough the Times’ own story on this says a spokesman refused to tell the paper’s own reporter what it was about, though there is a hint in the final paragraph of the story.
The investigation involved “several women,” so it’s a safe bet what kind of behavior forced Jamieson’s resignation.
One question however remains unanswered: Would Facebook rate the New York Times “trustworthy” after burying a story involving its own Metro Editor and a meaty #MeToo investigation?
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? Facebook will now start ranking news organizations by their ‘trustworthiness.’
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Extortion, Iran, Kanye and Much, Much More. “It’s wild to see how the DOJ is suddenly taking “the rule of law” so seriously after an eight year hiatus.”
Ouch.
