Thursday, December 31, 2020

Farewell 2020

This is Fountains of Wayne a couple of weeks after 9/11, expressing the sentiment we all share today as well: 

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Maybe 2020 is going out on a high note

I have to relay this non-political story because it's been maybe a year since I laughed so hard.  On my commute home today, there was a white Subaru being just an absolute a-hole on the road.  Weaving in and out of traffic on I-291 outside of Springfield, MA, but then getting caught up in the bottleneck of single-lane roads through Chicopee and Granby.

Just by sheer happenstance, I caught up to this car because it simply couldn't pass any other cars on the single lane with oncoming traffic.  The white Subaru was behind an F150 going around the speed limit and I knew we were all coming up to straight section near farmland that also happened to be a double-yellow line (as in, you can't pass).

Sure enough, as soon as we were on the straight, the Subaru blew through the double line and passed the pickup.  THEN, the car BEHIND me sped up, crossed the double yellow and got behind the Subaru.

Then TURNED ON HIS LIGHTS.  It was an unmarked police car that just happened to be in the right place at the right time, if you're a fan of street justice.

I laughed all the way home.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Think different about slave labor

The Corner: "Apple Supplier Charged with Exploiting Uyghur Forced Labor."

I understand that corporations are not altruistic angels, but no company huffs on their own sweet farts like Apple.  They have a commercial running right now with Lady Gaga and Lisa Simpson that strongly implies the Apple Macbook is responsible for all artistic creativity and world-changing activism in the world.

Monday, December 28, 2020

But, but, the science

California is back on top of the state with the most per capita covid cases.  Scientists are baffled: "Locked-down California runs out of reasons for surprising surge."  

Sunday, December 27, 2020

This is mental illness

Victory Girls: "The Moral Repugnance Of Cancel Culture." - "Jimmy Galligan has no character. His glee over ruining the life of one of his classmates is sickening. He has demonstrated cancel culture at its most morally repugnant iteration." 

Shame on the University of Tennessee for capitulating to the mob.

I think I fixed our refrigerator

Whenever I'm able to score a minor victory by figuring out how to fix a car or appliance, I like to post about it just in case somebody out there is in the same predicament.  So if you have a 27-year-old Amana refrigerator that won't cool down, today's your lucky day.

On Christmas day (naturally), the refrigerator got warm even though the bottom freezer was fine.  (That was nice on the one day a year you can't buy ice anywhere).  A couple of searches online and some YouTube videos later, I found that the most likely cause is that the coils behind the freezer are not going through a defrost cycle, thereby blocking the flow of cold air to the upper refrigerator section.  The repairman videos show them completely removing the ice maker and the back panel of the freezer to access the coils.  But then I noticed this red knob down at the base of the fridge:


This red knob only turns clockwise and I suspected it was a manual control and/or timer to cycle between the cooling (compressor running) and the defrost stage.  So I turned it clockwise until the compressor - which had been running non-stop - turned off and let the fridge sit for two hours.

After that time, I turned it clockwise again until the compressor kicked in and cold air started to come out of the vent in the refrigerator.  Now it's likely that this timer is either broken or just got stuck in the cooling cycle, which means every couple of hours I'll have to manually set it into defrost mode.  But this beats putting everything on the backyard deck in camping coolers.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Oh that's not news

Breitbart: "New York Times reporting blackout on Eric Swalwell - spy ties continues." - "The New York Times has continued its reporting blackout on ties between Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and suspected Chinese Communist regime spy Christine Fang — not reporting on those ties for more than two weeks after they came to light." 

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Peace on Earth

Big Government: "Netanyahu: 'Many, many more Arab states' to normalize ties soon." - "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday promised that “many, many more countries” would be signing normalization agreements with Israel “a lot sooner than people expect,” and lauded the Trump administration for consistently “defending the truth and defending the State of Israel.” 

Brexit is a go

Fox News: "Boris Johnson says UK has 'taken back control' after securing post-Brexit trade deal with EU."  

Monday, December 21, 2020

Sunday, December 20, 2020

New York needs taxes

Reason: "Determined To Kill Businesses That Survived Lockdowns, New York Plans Minimum Wage Hike Later This Month - New York's unemployment rate is nearly 10 percent and roughly one-third of small businesses in New York City may have closed forever. Seems like a great time to make it more expensive to employ people, right?"

New York City in particular needs tax revenue from baristas to make up for the $34 billion they've lost from fleeing citizens.  

Memory-hole that headline

Via Instapundit, some headline-scrubbing at the Gray Lady:

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Finished binge-watching "Dexter"

I didn't think the finale was as awful as people described.  There I said it.

Friday, December 18, 2020

And then a miracle occurred

Federalist: "Corporate Media Are Ignoring Trump’s Role In Developing A COVID Vaccine" - "The press scoffed at Trump's vaccine timeline. They said it would take a 'miracle.' The miracle came, and the press just shrugged."

If history is any precedent, that means Joe Biden will win the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year. 

Maybe Cuomo can write another book about the fine job he did

His first one worked out great:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to insist a new shutdown is not inevitable, even as the state set a new single-day case record Friday (along with a record number of tests) and Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to insist that another round of restrictions is not only necessary in New York City but needs to come soon.
We've used every tool in the toolbox from lockdowns to more lockdowns.
There are two great tragedies that will forever be the legacy of this pandemic: the loss of lives, of course, and the loss of livelihoods brought about by lockdowns that may not have even helped.

If any of what the petty tyrants have been peddling about masks and staying at home were true, then California would be one of the safest places on Earth right now.

Instead, it’s just a tragic place dealing with a rapidly growing population of people who are both sick and broke, thanks to all the science and helping.
It's so depressing, you just want to go out to your local wine bar and sip some Merlot.  

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Listen to the scientists

Fox News: "California doctor calls lockdowns ‘failure of imagination,’ as state becomes epicenter of outbreak."
Despite enacting some of the country’s toughest measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, California is emerging as the latest epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.

On Thursday, the state reported a staggering 52,000 new cases in a single day — equal to what the entire U.S. was averaging in mid-October — and a one-day record of 379 deaths. More than 16,000 people are in the hospital with the coronavirus across the state, more than triple the number a month ago.
So the empirical data indicates that the lockdowns don't work.  The masks don't work.  The only scientists who seem to know what they're doing are the vaccine developers.  

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Insurers to Portland: LOLGF

Ace: "Insurers balk at insuring Portland businesses; exclude future damage related to civil unrest."
Do you remember a few months ago during the peak of the BLM/Antifa rioting when Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) were either silent about the violence, or they actually praised property destruction and looting? As for the lives and businesses destroyed, they just dismissed the damage as harmless because “insurance will pay for it.”

NPR actually spent your tax dollars to advocate for looting, publicizing Vicky Osterweil’s book “In Defense Of Looting” and effectively endorsing the book with its tongue-bath of an interview.

You’ll never guess what happened next.
Actually you will, if you're an American with the vaguest notion of how property rights work.

Speaking of property rights in Portland, Matt Christiansen how one family refused to pay for their home, squatted for years, and now suckers are rewarding their rank lawlessness by paying their debts.  At Matt notes, if this is "systemic racism" then sign me up: 

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Fact-checkers are on the case

Legal Insurrection: "Trump’s Coronavirus Vaccine Timeline Vindicated, Corporate Media Hardest Hit" - “But experts say that the development, testing and production of a vaccine for the public is still at least 12 to 18 months off, and that anything less would be a medical miracle,” NBC News reported in a May fact check."  

Friday, December 11, 2020

Democracy dies in darkness, and how

With the Hunter Biden whitewash, the mainstream media drops the mask once and for all.  David Harsanyi: "The media's disgraceful Hunter Biden cover-up."
It's now clear that the Hunter Biden story was real, with Hunter himself acknowledging a federal probe into his taxes — one that reportedly began in 2018. Really, it was always clear. Yet, when the New York Post broke the details, virtually the entire journalistic establishment and left-wing punditsphere defamed the newspaper, claiming it was passing on Russian “disinformation” or partisan fabrications.

The political media quickly began pumping out process stories about the alleged discord in the Post’s newsroom and about the problems with the reporting. In so doing, of course, they did practically no reporting on the substantive allegations that Joe Biden’s family had spent years cashing in on his influence. Tech companies, spurred on by these censorious journalists, shut down the account of one of America’s most-read newspapers to inhibit users from reading the story. It was completely unprecedented.
Unprecedented, yet not unexpected.  The New York Post, which broke the original story, is understandably reminding everyone where the real collusion was:
“Collusion” was perhaps the media’s favorite word these past four years, even when it wasn’t true. But you know what real collusion looks like? It’s when left-leaning media, that is the media in general, decide en masse that something is “not a story” because it harms their preferred political candidate.

That’s a key takeaway from Wednesday’s bombshell news revealing a federal probe of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, that reportedly involves e-mails from his laptop — which The Post reported on exclusively in October. We even noted back then that the FBI had seized the computer and hard drive; Fox News later confirmed that it was part of an FBI money-laundering probe.

Other media outlets didn’t just ignore the story; they tried to suppress it. Then social media stepped in, preventing the story from being posted (Facebook) and even banning The Post (Twitter).
Twitchy's Media section is jam-packed with the receipts from "news" outlets who either ignored the story or actively worked to discredit it.

Now it's our turn.

Now the Republican-controlled Senate will be charged - turbocharged - to grill any nominee for Attorney General since "nobody is above the law" as we've been reminded a jillion times.  Oh, dear, Manafort was convicted on money laundering and tax evasion from his business in a foreign nation?  Well, it's great to have that precedent staring us in the face.  And I guess the precedent of really, really wanting to see somebody taxes - just because - will come in handy.

It's going to be great.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Swalwell must lose his seat on the Intel committee

Fox News: "Growing number of top Republicans call for Swalwell removal from House Intelligence Committee." 

I'm a huge fan of the show "The Americans" about Russian secret agents living in the U.S. and all the schemes they use to extract information.  The "honey pot" is a regular technique due to its effectiveness (at least on the show).  Information is gained by:

1) Pillow talk - "Tough day at work?  Tell me all about it."
2) Access - once you invite the spy into your bedroom, he/she will start rifling through your briefcase while you're taking a shower.
3) Bugging/surveillance - or, he'll plant a recording device in that briefcase or a clock on a shelf.
4) Blackmail - I was as surprised as Ace that Swalwell is married.  There's always that chance the honey trap will lay out pictures with the implicit threat of exposure if he doesn't produce the goods.

No matter how you cut it, this is an astonishing lapse of judgement.  Swalwell must go.

Tuesday, December 08, 2020

I hurt my singing box

I woke up this morning with a sore throat, so I was a little nervous in this age of covid.  However, it faded by midday.  The only explanation I can offer is that "Wichita Lineman" came on the radio yesterday and I was singing "I am a lineman for the county!" - loudly - in my car.  

Monday, December 07, 2020

Nice work if you can get it

Fox News: "New York’s threatened lockdown spares ‘SNL’ once again as show uses COVID loophole to keep in-person audience."  Here's the loophole:

As previously reported by Fox News, the comedy show is said to have skirted strict coronavirus regulations in the Big Apple by paying audience members $150 for their participation in the season premiere this fall. This would allow the program to consider live audience members paid individuals who “work” for the show.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, a bar could sell you a beer for $155 and then pay you $150 to engage in the performance art of drinking it. 

At this point it's more than obvious that there's one set of rules for Hollywood types and another set of rules for the rest of us.

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

The struggle sessions are real

Quillette: "Race and Social Panic at Haverford: A Case Study in Educational Dysfunction."
The school-wide November 5th Zoom call, a recording of which has been preserved, was hosted by Wendy Raymond, Haverford’s president. At the time, the elite Pennsylvania liberal arts college was a week into a student strike being staged, according to organizers, to protest “anti-blackness” and the “erasure of marginalized voices.” During the two-hour-and-nine-minute discussion, viewed in real time by many of the school’s 1,350 students, Raymond presented herself as solemnly apologetic for a litany of offenses. She also effusively praised and thanked the striking students for educating her about their pain, while “recognizing that I will never understand what it means to be a person of color or be black or indigenous in the United States. I am a white woman with considerable unearned privilege.”
Confess your sins to the state, entitled bourgeois scum.
Since 2015, when Yale rolled over in response to student harassment of two husband-and-wife faculty members, such self-abasement rituals have become common—even if the prevalence of teleconferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic has given us an unprecedented opportunity to watch them unfold.
In the end, Jonathan Kay comes to the depressing conclusion that it's better for the school administration to assuage some of the most privileged students in America and keep collecting that $54,000 tuition. 

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

Red State: "NYT Hilariously Stealth Edits a Paul Krugman Column After He Gets Caught Undercutting His Own Claims."

Dude never heard of Google, apparently. 

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Sports will be offered with your wokeness sermon

It used to be a joke that General Motors became a pension and health care organization that occasionally makes cars.  The U.S. Woman's Soccer Team is now a SJW outfit that occasionally plays soccer.  

Friday, November 27, 2020

Thankful

John Stossel: "Be Grateful for Capitalism This Thanksgiving - If government controlled the production of turkeys and toilet paper, this would be a very unhappy holiday." 

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

That one time Bill Belichick smiled

I'm winding down the short work-week so let's have some football-related levity heading into the Thanksgiving weekend:

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Par for the course at CNN

Ace: "Garbage Network CNN Pushes Yet Another Viral Fake News Story, This One About Covid Patients Saying "Covid Is a Hoax" with Their Dying Breaths; Story Falls Apart, With Zero Corroboration."

Zero corroboration?  Sounds like a step up for CNN.

Cover your knees up!

Fox News: "School tells girls not to show knees because it distracts male staff."


Newsom's fancy dinner: from tone-deaf to criminal?

In case you hadn't heard, California governor Gavin Newsom attended a dinner at a fancy French restaurant with a $400 prix fixe menu in the middle of the pandemic.  No masks, indoors, high living.  And now it's been revealed that the bar bill was, ahem, substantial: "Who Paid For the (Alleged) $15,000 Wine Bill Gavin Newsom and Friends Racked Up at French Laundry?"
Newsom can receive up to $500/year in gifts from someone who’s not a registered state lobbyist.

Could they get around that restriction by claiming it was Newsom’s wife who received the gift, and not the Governor? Nope. A gift to Jennifer Siebel Newsom is considered a gift to Gavin Newsom for the purposes of FPPC reporting.

If someone else paid for Newsom’s dinner, the only possible way that could be done without skirting required financial disclosure rules would be if his longtime friend, the birthday boy, paid for the dinner, and if none of the lobbyist birthday boy’s clients had business currently before the state.
Ah, yes, it's very common for the birthday boy to pick up the five-figure restaurant bill.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Bill de Blasio engineers a crime wave in NYC

Fox News: "Subway shoving, flamethrowers, shootings in NYC blamed on 'perfect storm' of police reform, pandemic" - "Shootings have almost doubled from last year following a long era of low crime rates."

Who would have guessed that no-cash bail while defunding and demonizing the police department would have led to this result?  Oh yeah, everybody.  Also, the Ferguson effect is in full swing:
"The City Council pretty much took away the ability of the NYPD to make arrests," SBA President Ed Mullins told Fox News. "We have cops out there right now that are hesitant to grab anybody simply out fear that if it goes bad we may get ourselves arrested."
What a completely predictable surprise.

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Nighty-night

Time for the news media to take a four-year nap.  T. Becket Adams: "An obituary for the press in the post-Trump era."
Goodbye, all. It has been a crazy four years.

See you all back here the next time a Republican is president.

Friday, November 20, 2020

Listen to the science

No, not that much science.  City Journal: "Lockdown Addicts" - "New data from Sweden show it’s safe to keep schools open, but Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisors seem more interested in shutting down."

Well, that's some consolation

Legal Insurrection: "While You Were Focused on The Kraken, the Senate Continued Confirming Trump Federal Judges" - "Long ago Mitch McConnell vowed to leave no federal judicial vacancy unfilled by the end of Trump’s first term. That promise is close to being kept despite Democrat and media outcry." 

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Sinking into resignation

Axios: "COVID cases are spiking, but our attention isn’t"
Sociologists argue that one reason that the public has perhaps become more apathetic towards media coverage about the virus because it's become too redundant and often, alarmist.
Let's not undersell "useless" and "contradictory" also: "New Study On Wearing Cloth Face Masks: Protection Is “Statistically Insignificant”."  

ICYMI - Behind the Black: "New study: Lockdowns & masks are useless and might even increase COVID-19 spread."  Quoting results published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Listen to the scientists! 

Monday, November 16, 2020

Oh that's different

Hot Air: "CNN Panel: Here’s Why Stacey Abrams’ Refusal To Concede Was More Virtuous Than Trump’s."  It's CNN so take a wild guess.  

TFG

Twitchy: "Barack Obama’s allegations about Trump are a lock for induction to the Projection Hall of Fame."


I didn't watch.  Did "60 Minutes" push back when Obama stated that Trump targeted journalists? Flashback from the NY Times
Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
In short, there's not a single thing Obama accuses Trump of doing that the Chosen One didn't do, except Obama didn't have to suffer anywhere near the same level of criticism from the media.  

Sunday, November 15, 2020

The end times are nigh

Glenn Greenwald: "The Ongoing Death of Free Speech: Prominent ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression of a New Book" - "Free speech has always been more than a Constitutional guarantee: it's also a crucial societal value. And it's more imperiled than ever."  

We always knew the ACLU was exactly what we thought it was.  Now we know it's true.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Sounds like one Senate runoff is in the bag

Hot Air: "More Warnock Oppo Drop: Arrested In 2002 For Obstructing A Child-Abuse Investigation?."
Far more interesting here is the fact that today is the first time we’re hearing about any of these Warnock issues. Did Democrats even bother to do any due diligence before lining up behind Warnock?
It's almost like the Democrats depended on the mainstream media to cover up these charges.  But there I go again, acting all conspiratorial.

Extra - Twitchy: "The hits keep coming."  

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

The (election) night Chicago died

H. L. Mencken said that "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."   In that spirit, I'm loving this story on the comeuppance of decades of mismanagement in Illinois from City Journal: "Are Democrats Cornered in Illinois? - The defeat of an amendment establishing a progressive income tax may force the state’s dominant party to pursue real reforms."

The opening paragraph explains the situation pretty well:
One of the most surprising results of the 2020 election was the defeat, in Illinois, of a state constitutional amendment to permit a progressive income tax. The Graduated Income Tax Amendment would have eliminated the Illinois constitutional requirement that tax rates remain flat across incomes. Its defeat is likely the most important political event for the state since I moved here 18 years ago. The proposed change in the state constitution was an effort by the dominant Democratic Party to continue its model of high taxes and high spending to support the base of its political muscle—public-sector unions. The party retains control of the legislature and the governor’s office, but it is politically cornered. Legislatively, it faces a choice between a reform agenda that would undermine its political base or a substantial tax increase on every working citizen.
So, as usual, the plan was to soak the rich but it was rejected in part because virtually none of the new money was going to be earmarked to pay down or otherwise reform a public pension system that has unfunded liabilities over $100 billion leading Illinois to have the worst bond rating in the country.

Now what?  Well, since Illinois can't tax "the other guy" to pay the bills, the Democrats in charge need to either raise taxes on all of Illinois equally or slash spending.  Neither is a recipe for future political victories but Illinois has run through all the other viable options.

Yes, we noticed

Hot Air: "NY Times’ Nate Cohn: ‘National Polls Were Even Worse Than They Were Four Years Ago’."

Friday, November 06, 2020

It's a mass movement

To work.  Babylon Bee: "69 Million Trump Supporters Take To Streets To Drive To Work And Go About Their Lives As Normal."

Maybe it's because I'm surrounded by apolitical engineers all day but nobody - and I mean nobody - said a word about the election.  

New York Times surprised they botched it again

Washington Free Beacon: "The New York Times Didn’t Learn Its Lesson - The 'paper of record' commits the same mistakes it apologized for four years ago."
Blindsided by Trump's surprise victory [in 2016], the Times pledged to examine whether it had underestimated the depth and breadth of his support, and to rededicate itself to understanding and reflecting "all political perspectives and life experiences."

As the kids say, LOL. The paper's coverage of the 2020 presidential election was not only as misleading as it was four years ago, it was misleading in the same way, overstating the odds of Democrats everywhere thanks, at least in part, to a belief in race and gender as the defining features of American politics. Identity politics has come to define the New York Times, but the country isn't so monolithic.
The Gray Lady did its best to seek out fresh points of view from midtown Manhattan to the Upper East Side.

Thursday, November 05, 2020

In which I kick the media while it's down

This RedState article is essentially the same as what I wrote last night, so it must be good: "Our National Media Has Learned Nothing In Four Years."
The media blew this election in an even more extravagant fashion than the last one....

This election is as much a repudiation of the media as it is supposed to be a wake-up call for Democrats, but neither group will actually recognize that. The GOP made gains in the House and kept the Senate. The Democratic Party is about to enter its own civil war. But the media is going to focus on the defeat of Trump as the real victory and that everything else can be ignored.

And if Trump is really the loser here, that’s all they care about. They will stay inside their little bubbles and not come out for another four years… but in four years, the GOP will be on the rise again while Democrats struggle to figure out who their base is and what it wants.
Oh, I think the Democrats have some inkling how badly they screwed up even as stories like this are making the rounds: "Wait, Do Republicans Actually Have A Chance Of Winning The House?"  (Spoiler alert: they'd have to almost run the table of outstanding races.) 

But back to the corrupt media.  Here's Michael Goodwin:
We all make mistakes, and most of us try to avoid them. The problem with the unholy news-polling-social media-industrial complex is that the mistakes are so numerous and predictable that they begin to feel intentional.

Worse, all the mistakes run in one direction. What are the odds of that happening honestly?
The state polls were often ludicrous, hitting the nadir with the Washington Post/ABC News poll saying Biden would win Wisconsin by 17 points.  This was off by 16.3%.  

Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Media polls 2020: The Clown-en-ing

At this point, it's looking likely that Sleepy Joe will eke out a victory with the barest of margins in the electoral college.  This was a huge surprise among the A+ pollsters who consistently overestimated Biden's support in all the battleground states.

In the House, the Cook Political Report predicted:

We now view a Democratic net gain of 10 to 15 seats as the likeliest outcome, with anything from five to 20 seats well within the realm of possibility.

End result as of this writing?  The Republicans have picked up +5 seats in the House and moderate Democrats are talking about replacing Nancy Pelosi.

How about the Senate?

Democrats remain the clear favorites to take back the Senate with just days to go until Election Day.

Oh, do tell.  At this writing, the Democrats are at +1 and they might pick up another, to keep Chuck Schumer as minority leader.  But I understand: until a week before election day, Joni Ernst in Iowa was consistently trailing behind Theresa Greenfield.  In North Carolina, Thom Tillis had been trailing in every poll since October 22nd.  Then there's the Maine Senate race where incumbent Susan Collins hasn't been above water since February, has been trailing in fundraising, and has been left for dead...before winning by eight percentage points.

Pollster Frank Luntz had the decency to point out the obvious:

"The political polling profession is done," leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz tells Axios. "It is devastating for my industry."

How did we get to this state where polling is nearly meaningless?  Well, I would say it's because a large portion of America sees the inherent bias in the mainstream media and says "no thanks."

Now we're in a death spiral where nobody believes the media and therefore people hide their true feelings, resulting in completely bogus polls, which hurts the credibility of the media.  Rinse and repeat.

After Trump's surprising win in 2016, the media swore they would do better to understand the concerns of people who don't go to Zabar's for bagels.  Maybe find somebody who owns a pickup truck.  But no, they pour the contempt on middle America and middle America pours their contempt right back.  

You go girl! No...not you.

Federalist: "Republican Women Dominating The 2020 Election Will Be Overlooked By Mainstream Media."  

Looks like Florida 2000 all over again

Here come the lawyers...

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Getting tired

I don't know if I can stay up too much longer because I need to get a set of tires put on my car tomorrow.

That pun was unavoidable.

Suddenly a coin toss

Earlier today, the states of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina were identified as "needle states" (I believe by Nate Silver) in that if Trump won all three states, this election goes from a 90% Biden win to a 50-50 proposition.

Let's rip this band-aid off

I voted, for what that's worth in The People's Republic of Massachusetts.

This is a crazy year, so who knows what's going to happen.  But the Real Clear Politics average shows that Biden has a +2.3% advantage in the battleground states.   Just for comparison, Hillary went into election day with a +1.1% advantage over Trump.  

In 2016, Hillary had a +6.5% aggregate lead in Wisconsin; Biden has a +6.7% lead.  Hillary led by +1.9% in Pennsylvania; Biden leads by 1.2%.

So if we see a repeat of the "shy Trump" voter surge, it could be deja vu all over again. 

Monday, November 02, 2020

It's almost over

I'm not going to make a prediction because it will probably be wrong.  All I'm going to say is this: if Trump wins Florida and Pennsylvania, we could be waiting for results from Arizona.  But if he loses either of those, it will be an early night. 

Sunday, November 01, 2020

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Just a stray observation: I had no idea daylight savings time ended last night.  And, frankly, I might have kept on not-knowing except for the fact that the clocks on the wall were wrong.

Otherwise, all my modern devices adjust the time automatically: cell phone, Fitbit, cable box, Google Home, etc.  I might have gone on with my day with the vague impression I got an extra hour of sleep. 

Saturday, October 31, 2020

007

BBC: "Sean Connery: James Bond actor dies aged 90."

This news is:

Sign of these crazy times

Jonathan Turley: "'Not Pro-Black': Wisconsin students unanimously vote to remove Lincoln status as racist."  

Unanimously.  There wasn't one brave soul to stand up and say "this is insane."  Sad. 

Kicked to the curb

Reason: "California's Proposition 22 Pits the Future Against Its Enemies" - "The ballot initiative would allow companies such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash to classify workers as independent contractors rather than as permanent employees."  

This is all about lashing the worker to the government.

Carry that water

Mollie Hemingway: "Yes, Media Are Rigging The Election Against Half The Country. Here’s How - Will all this be enough for mass media to win the day? People will find out next week." 

Extra - Long post via Instapundit.  

Thursday, October 29, 2020

The big picture

John Stossel: "Don't Freak Out About the Election" - "The most important parts of life happen outside of politics." 

Not even hiding the bias

Ace: "Glenn Greenwald Resigns From His Own Media Company, The Intercept -- Because The Editors In Chief Are Repudiating The Site's Mission Statement and Imposing Complete Censorship Over Any Mention of the Biden Crime Family Scandal."

Instapundit comments: "What is going on in media now is not normal. It is, in fact, a species of coup. Should Biden win, many will regard his victory as essentially illegitimate because of this, and they will have a good argument." 

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

All opinions are welcome that agree with ours

The Corner: "The New York Times’ Echo Chamber."  "The New York Times opinion section has published, as of 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning, seven consecutive pieces about the need to reform the Supreme Court."  

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Oh, that's unverified...because we refuse to verify it

Here's Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (neither one a fan of Trump) giving voice to what we all see: "With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story - Unprecedented efforts to squelch information about a New York Post story may prove to be more dangerous corruption than whatever Hunter Biden did with a crooked Ukrainian energy company."  

Extra - NPR can't be bothered with Hunter but they sure had time for any unsubstantiated Kavanaugh allegation that came down the pike.

Fun's over

P. J. O'Rourke is my favorite political humorist; I have all his books.  So I have to listen to his latest take on the election:
"Biden's campaign platform is 564 pages long. It promises everything to everybody. It's full of unicorns and flying ponies and candy-flavored rainbows and pixie dust. And when those flying ponies glide with the marzipan rainbows and pixie dust starts to gum up the works of society … we're going to be in for a mess … But on the other hand, I think we're done with this experiment of having the inmates run the asylum."
I'm pessimistic on Trump's chances if only because Trump fatigue is palpable and, as I like to say, sometimes Americans just want to "turn the page."  But then I've been wrong on so many elections, the last time I voted for the "winner" was 2004.  So who knows.  

The Ralph Northam effect

Breitbart: "Jeffrey Toobin proves hating Trump means you can do no wrong."  

Friday, October 23, 2020

TGIF Fun!

It's been a long week at work, so here's a video I liked:

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Democrats hoisted by their petard one more time

Hot Air: "Judiciary Endorses Barrett, 12-0; Lee: “Abuse Of Power Is Their Agenda”  All the Democrats boycotted the vote so how did they get around the quorum call?  By using Chuck Schumer's tactics against him yet again:
The idea of the boycott was to prevent Graham from having a quorum for the vote, delaying the process indefinitely. Graham took a page from the 2013 playbook of Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and decided to change the precedent, reverting to general Senate rules on committee hearings rather than Judiciary Committee rules. The former do not require anything other than a simple majority to conduct official business.
ACB will be Justice Barrett on Monday. 

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

The fifth column

New Neo: "Compare and contrast: loyalty to the candidates."
When the press takes sides so openly and nakedly, and is joined by social media giants, we have reached a level of partisan information control I thought I’d never see in this country. But that’s where we are. And it’s in service of a candidate who has always been of mediocre intelligence at best and is now cognitively faded, who is almost certainly corrupt, who has been wrong on almost every important issue that exists, is a long-term liar and plagiarist, and will be putty in the hands of the most extreme leftists in his party who hate America and capitalism and want both destroyed.
Say what you will about Trump but he's exposed the rot underneath the floorboards of the American media.  Every single one of them thinks they're Woodward and Bernstein and their standards of fairness will turn on a dime when it suits their crusade.  

Weak deflection, Gray Lady

Red State: "NYTs Tries Desperate Anti-Trump Hit to Distract From Hunter Biden, Makes Things Worse."

In case you're wondering, all those journalistic standards about using leaked information obtained without authorization have flipped again.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Joe, what was the most enchanting thing about your milkshake?

 Rich Lowry: "The Biden Protection Racket."

Never before have the media been so openly fearful of asking or reporting something that might hurt a presidential candidate. What are supposed to be the animating values of our adversarial press — informing the public, getting answers, holding the powerful to account — have all been subordinated to the protection racket that is coverage of Joe Biden.

Classic reference in the title.

Monday, October 19, 2020

The media isn't even pretending anymore

PJ Media: "The Media Will Drag Joe Biden Across the Finish Line if It's the Last Thing They Do."


Victor Davis Hanson gives a review of the unapologetic bias of the American left:
An avuncular Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Jim Lehrer, or Abe Rosenthal at least went through the motions of reporting news that was awkward or even embarrassing to the Left. Their agenda was 1960s-vintage Great Society liberalism, seen as the natural evolution from the New Deal and post-war internationalism. Edward R. Murrow, the ACLU of old, and Free Speech Movement at Berkeley—these were their liberal referents. Those days are gone.

Yet even during the Obama years, when studies showed the president had received the most slanted media honeymoon in news history, overt media bias was, at least, as hotly denied as it intensified. There were still a few ossified, quarter-hearted efforts now and then to mention the IRS scandal, the surveillance of Associated Press reporters, the various scandals embroiling the Veterans Administration, General Service Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Secret Service. But even that thin pretense is over now, too.
After the eight year tongue bath that the media gave their Chosen One, how about a grace period for the newly-elected President?
When early on in the Trump Administration, the liberal Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that in the first 100 days all news coverage was on average 80 percent anti-Trump—93 percent negative in the case of CNN and NBC—no one seemed embarrassed. 
Have no fear.  The media is on the case to get tough answers from Grandpa Joe: 



Thursday, October 15, 2020

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Nothing to see here, move along

Reason: "The Media Does Not Want You To Read, Share, or Discuss The New York Post's Hunter Biden Scoop."

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Sheldon Whitehouse mansplains for 30 minutes straight

Red State: "Sheldon Whitehouse Goes Full-On Looney Tunes While ‘Questioning’ ACB."

"Questioning" is in quotes because he didn't ask a single question.  Maybe he thought he was the one everyone was supposed to be "hearing."

Sunday, October 11, 2020

What media bias? The AP falls in line with the new narrative.

Looks like the new Democrat talking point is that packing the Supreme Court is a valid proposal since the Republicans "packed the court first."  Ya know, with the entirely Constitutional practice of approving judges in the Senate.  Kudos to Jake Tapper (of CNN!) for pointing this out.

Now, with Orwellian speed, the Associated Press has adopted the Democrats' language of "depoliticizing" the Court will replace "packing."  Nothing surprising me when it comes to media bias anymore.  

Saturday, October 10, 2020

Debate prep is for losers, apparently

Rich Lowry: "Trump Is Letting Down His Side."  "If the existence of the country itself is on the ballot, why not prepare better for debates? Why not use Twitter exclusively for messages that advance his cause rather than detract from them? Why waste any time on petty animosities and distractions? Why not write down a health-care plan and a COVID-19 plan to blunt Biden’s most potent issues?"  

The voters don't need to know that

Why should voters know how you stand on a position in an election?  Anyway, I'll just leave this here: 

Friday, October 09, 2020

What a terrible pattern of hacking

Poor Steve Scully: his Twitter account seems to get hacked every time there's an embarrassing post.  Red State: "Whoops: Debate Moderator Steve Scully has a History of Claiming to Be ‘Hacked,’ Deletes Twitter Account."  
This is a good time to remind everyone that Scully was a former intern for Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy. He has a long history of supporting Democrats, including posting glowing pictures with Biden as recently as 2016. He also shared Never Trump material during the previous presidential cycle.

Scully has deleted his account now.
These "journalists" always claim the superhuman power of complete objectivity and, gosh darn it, they're willing to alienate friends and family for the higher good.

That's what they tell themselves.

Thursday, October 08, 2020

What exactly are we doing here?

I've been complaining about the decline of discussion on the Sunday morning talk shows for a long time.  I'm old enough to remember when New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan would go on "Meet the Press" and - imagine this - answer questions.  He was a happy warrior who would state his positions without obfuscation or ambiguity.  I miss that guy.

Then there was the Vice Presidential debate.  Real Clear Politics: "Few Interruptions, Even Fewer Straight Answers."

This began early in the night with a double dodge of the most pertinent question during a pandemic. Debate moderator Susan Page asked: Had they discussed safeguards or procedures with their running mates in case of presidential disability? Pence gave an unrelated answer about how Democrats had “undermined public confidence in a vaccine.” When it was her turn, Harris inexplicably talked about when Biden asked her to join the ticket, calling it “one of the most memorable days of my life.”

Page moved on. Her question went unanswered. The non sequiturs kept coming.

At one point, Pence turned a question about abortion into a meandering reply about the U.S. attack on Iranian intelligence commander Qasem Soleimani. Harris saw that gambit and raised him one: Asked if the next president should be transparent about his health records, Harris brought up Trump’s recently leaked tax returns.

What a waste of time.  After one of the early Democrat debates, it was decreed that the raising of hands to indicate a clear-cut position on an issue was verboten.  Too much honesty!  Now news shows and campaigns and debates will only be the recitation of stale talking points.

Tuesday, October 06, 2020

2020 does it again

NY Post: "Eddie Van Halen, rock guitar god, dead of throat cancer at 65."

Not a huge VH fan, but respect the talent.  Trivia for ya: Eddie played the guitar solo in Michael Jackson's "Beat It."  

What happens when you can't level bogus charges

Rich Lowry: "Democrats Haven’t Landed a Punch on Amy Coney Barrett."  "The ratio of progressive outrage over the nomination of federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to supposed reasons that the U.S. Senate shouldn’t confirm her is completely out of whack — there’s a surfeit of the former and almost none of the latter."  

Coddling Grandpa Joe

Fox News: "NBC town hall panned as 'Biden infomercial': 'Undecided voters' didn't seem so 'undecided' - 'Can't blame him for doing it,' Politico reporter Marc Caputo said."

Unsurprising.  Did you see all the stories about Biden saying he depended on a "black woman to stock the grocery shelf?"  Of course you didn't: he's a Democrat and that's not news.

The media plays defense for Grandpa Joe and relentless, indefatigable offense against Trump: "The Media Coverage Of Trump’s Covid Diagnosis Was A Disgrace."  

Monday, October 05, 2020

LA isn't a big media market

Game 1 of the NBA Finals had the lowest ratings of any finals game.

Game 2: "Hold my beer."  

Democrats very concerned about Senators' health

Unless they need legislation passed, then get your ass out there on the Senator floor.  Flashback: "Senator Robert Byrd is seriously ill."
Democrats will need every vote they can get. With the midterm elections on the horizon, Washington is as polarized as ever and, for the second time in just over six months, President Obama’s agenda could once again hinge on Mr. Byrd’s health.

In the final days of the health care debate, Mr. Byrd appeared for several crucial votes — pushed each time to the Senate floor in his plaid wheelchair and greeted by handshakes and applause from his colleagues. He spent six weeks in the hospital last spring with a staph infection, prompting persistent speculation about his health and who would replace him if he became too sick to finish his term.
Funny how it wasn't "reckless" to push an ill 92-year old guy out on the Senate floor back then.

Revisionist history

Issues and Insights: "No Joe, You Didn’t Hand Trump A Booming Economy."  

Sunday, October 04, 2020

Another day, another bad faith argument for delay on ACB

Kevin Williamson calls it:
Chuck Schumer has called for a delay in confirming Barrett because of the president’s COVID diagnosis. In other news, Schumer thinks the vote should be delayed because water is wet, because bears defecate in an arboreal setting, and because it is bad luck to confirm Republican nominees on days of the week ending in “y.”
Chuck Schumer is mimicking Jake Blues' many excuses for why they just can't have hearings.  The latest, via Amy Klobuchar, is that gosh-darn-it, it's just not safe to have hearings, despite the fact that the Senator had previously praised virtual meetings.
Fox News’s Chris Wallace noted that the Judiciary Committee, of which Klobuchar is a member, has held virtual hearings before and that Klobuchar earlier praised the panel's chairman, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), for arranging them.
After the Kavanaugh nightmare, I don't see why Democrats should be afforded an iota of consideration for their many bad faith tactics.  Full steam ahead, Mitch.


Saturday, October 03, 2020

Golden state

Reason: "California Is a Cautionary Tale for America - California bounds from one crisis to another; most of them being self-imposed." 

Friday, October 02, 2020

Um...hmm

Fox News: "Trump being transferred to Walter Reed 'out of an abundance of caution,' after testing positive for coronavirus."  

A NYT editor ventures outside the bubble

Hot Air: "NYT Editor: By Golly, These Anarchists Just Want To Watch The World Burn."
Quinn also didn’t find evidence for the most popular counter-narrative on the Left either, which were that these were conducted by “white supremacists.” Antifa is exactly who everyone except media outlets like the NYT thinks they are — leftist “insurrectionary anarchists” who just want to watch the world burn.

...

Unfortunately for Ms. Stockman, we don’t really have a Joker Award for Belatedly Discovering That Some People Want to Watch the World Burn. (Maybe that should be an Alfred Award, anyway.) However, we do have the Captain Louis Renault Award, and it applies well to an NYT editorial board member who is shocked, shocked to learn that her own paper can’t report on reality.

 

 Actually, I think the more appropriate award would be the Pauline Kael trophy for political insulation:

"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them."
I only know one person who reads the New Yorker, plus or minus one.  

Yuge news

Fox News: "President Trump, first lady test positive for coronavirus, set to quarantine at White House."

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

What it feels like to be a Republican in Provincetown, MA

 


The whale watch was fun, though.

CNN and NYT white-knighting for their guy

Biden didn't say that thing he said.  Twitchy: "Drew Holden fact-checks the fact-checkers after Tuesday night’s debate."  

Regrettably, I mostly agree with this

Power Line: "A long night":
If President Trump entered the debate trailing in most battleground states, as I believe he did, his performance served him poorly. I can’t believe he won over a single persuadable voter.

Trump’s performance must also have cemented the negative perceptions held by voters who have turned against him. He carried his do not go gentle into that good night mode to wild excess. Perhaps it was President Trump who needed pharmaceutical assistance to dial it back. As it happened, I thought Trump interrupted Biden on a few occasions when a Biden brain freeze was in progress.
It's fair to say that what appeals to a lot of conservatives like me is that Trump is not a wishy-washy McCain or a milquetoast Romney; he gets out there and fights.  But four years of this is exhausting and I can see how the persona that worked so well as an outsider can turn against him as President.  Trump didn't do himself a lot of favors, including interrupting Biden when he was in the midst of bad response.

Also: you'd think by now Trump would amply understand that the press is solidly aligned against him.  This was his opportunity to cut through the bias and directly contradict Biden's many lies.  But he didn't counter the phony Atlantic story until a couple minutes later when he raised Biden's "stupid bastards" comment.  He failed to push back at the moment and gave repetitive replies when he would have been better served by strategic jabs. 

Make no mistake, I thought Biden was terrible as Andrew Sullivan noted: "I’ve never seen Biden seem so old or so weak. He can’t land a strong blow. He’s being successfully heckled."  But if you're a voter looking to move past the high drama and return to some normality, Trump added fuel to your fatigue.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Well, that was fun

That was not a debate, but I think it was what we expected at least from Trump.  Biden gave as good as he got but, once again, he lied repeatedly and was allowed to get away with it since we know the fact checkers will ignore them. 

Prove me wrong, mainstream media.  I didn't keep a running list but - off the top of my head - Biden lied about "very fine people", about the unproven Russian bounty story, the uncorroborated Atlantic story, about Hunter Biden's grift, his adherence to the Green New Deal, Kamala Harris badmouthing science, and his opposition to the travel ban.

On other issues, he refused to state his position on court packing in a Presidential debate, claimed Antifa was just an abstraction, and flip-flopped on election-year nominations to the Supreme Court.

Funniest quote tonight: "God save the transcribers."  

Update - Hot Air: "Biden Told So Many Whoppers Last Night, Burger King May Sue Him." 

Debate night!

I'm on semi-vacation so this is the first time I'm checking the news today.  It looks like the candidate who has been spending half his campaign under the "lid" wants periodic breaks in a 90-minute debate.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

It's nomination day!

Hot Air: "NYT: The Upcoming SCOTUS Confirmation Hearing Could Be A Real Game-Changer — For Trump And The GOP."
And that’s why the assumption that a Kavanaugh-esque spectacle won’t galvanize voters to back Trump is no small wager. Trump’s nomination of Barrett (or Lagoa, or another woman) isn’t going to change many minds about Trump among voters already inclined to oppose him either, but a failure to go all-out in smearing the nominee may well disenchant and disincentivize them to turn out at all. The upcoming confirmation hearing may not be entirely a win-win for the GOP, but it’s very clearly a lose-lose proposition for Democrats — which is why Republicans want to hold the hearing.
Will Democrats be able to curb their worst instincts, or will we see more "Handmaid Tale" costumes shuffling around Capitol Hill?  Probably the latter and they're treading into dangerous ground of religious tests for a nominee considering that the Jewish woman she's replacing was confirmed on a 96-3 vote.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Is Joe Biden dying?

Is this such an extreme question?  In case you missed it, Biden's campaign called their ninth "lid" on the day this month, so Sleepy Joe could rest.  When Biden does appear in public, it's in tightly controlled scenarios to minimal crowds, that are not advertised ahead of time in case they need a quick retreat:
There is scant physical evidence that the former vice president and Democratic nominee is in town. His visits are scarcely publicized beforehand, logistical details are closely held and his event venues serve as much as video studios as places of gathering. Barely anyone is allowed near the candidate.
The most significant recent high-wire act for Biden was the CNN town hall where he was served up countless softballs in a forum that even Politico called a "kid-gloves" treatment.  On the few times he was challenged, he either ignored the questions or went into a weird jag about chicken manure

Usually, a party tries to avoid making the same mistakes that recent losing campaigns made. But Biden’s operation seems to be leaning into dangers that should be obvious. Hillary Clinton’s campaign was dogged by conspiracy theories about her health, ones that were dismissed by her cheerleading journalists until the very moment she seemed to collapse at a public event, and was thrown into the side of a van by her handlers.
Joe Biden has had two aneurysms, he lashes out when he gets the slightest bit of pushback ("Listen, fat"), and now he's spending a third of his time in hiding and the rest of the time led around by his puppeteers.  What, indeed, is going on with this guy?

Two other clues: the Democrats are pivoting away from mail-in voting, perhaps because of the high disqualification factor, but maybe because it locks voters into candidate who may not make it to election day.  Second, Kamala Harris is incommunicado:
“A reminder that it has been 42 days since Harris was tapped as the VP pick. There are 42 days until election day,” NBC News reporter Deepa Shivaram tweeted. “The senator has not once formally taken questions from the press.”
Isn't this weird?  Why isn't she out there promoting Joe Biden?  Maybe it's because she knows Joe is in a downward spiral and it's only a matter of time before she'll be forced to step in.  Until then, the campaign has one goal: hide the decline.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Hygiene theater

Reason: "Can the CDC Get Anything Right?"  "As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can't stop proving itself useless and incompetent."  

Monday, September 21, 2020

You know, I thought traffic was light today

Ace: "Sundown Joe Biden: Covid Has Killed Two Hundred Million Americans."

Relevant source: Did Joe Biden kill me?  

Ready for the battle

Bring it on.  Red State: "Lindsey Graham 2.0 Returns, Flames the Dems on SCOTUS in Brand New Statement."  Here's the key part:
“After the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh I now have a different view of the judicial-confirmation process,” Graham said. “Compare the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh to that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and it’s clear that there is already one set of rules for a Republican president and one set of rules for a Democrat president. I therefor think it is important that we proceed expeditiously to process any nomination made by President Trump to fill this vacancy. I am certain if the shoe was on the other foot, you would do the same.”
Speaking of Elena Kagan, I remember the vicious grilling Lindsey Graham gave Kagan after she was nominated by Obama in 2010.  Avert your eyes from this partisan cruelty:


Sunday, September 20, 2020

Because of course