HOW IT STARTED: Minneapolis City Council members intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.
—CNN, June 8th, 2020.
How it’s going: Once nicknamed ‘Murderapolis,’ the city that became the center of the ‘Defund the Police’ movement is grappling with heightened violent crime.
—CNN, yesterday.
Evergreen:
MORE EVIDENCE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE FBI ASYLUM: Just the News’ John Solomon reports that an FBI Agent has told the federal whistleblower office in Washington, D.C. that the bureau’s leadership is falsifying evidence against J6 defendants, inflating Domestic Extremist Violence (DEV) data and grossly misusing SWAT teams to make misdemeanor arrests.
“Special Agent Stephen M. Friend, who works for the FBI in Florida and serves as a SWAT team member, told the main federal whistleblower office in Washington he had an ‘exemplary’ work record since he joined the bureau in 2014 and even won awards but was suspended in recent days after he began raising concerns about the FBI’s and DOJ’s conduct in the Jan. 6 investigation
“‘I believed the investigations were inconsistent with FBI procedure and resulted in the violation of citizens’ Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights,’ Friend wrote. ‘I added that many of my colleagues expressed similar concerns to me but had not vocalized their objections to FBI Executive Management,” Solomon quotes Friend.
One wonders if a new FBI Director might not be among the growing list of whistleblowers from within the bureau who are coming forward to Republicans Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
EXCELLENT: Elon Musk Says He’s Activating Starlink in Iran After U.S. Eases Restrictions on Tech Companies
The transceiver dishes will have to be smuggled in, but that’s probably not a huge obstacle.
DEAL OF THE DAY: VBK Fidget Spinners Sensory Fidget Toy. #CommissionEarned
CHANGE: “Stop using ‘Latinx’ if you really want to be inclusive. Less than 5% of U.S. Latines use ‘Latinx’ as a racial or ethnic identity,” says…Salon?!
Screencap in case they change their mind on the headline:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people,” Milton Friedman once said. “The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
ON SUNDAYS I RUN A POST THAT PROMOTES (MOSTLY) INDIE WRITERS: Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
And as you see there’s also a vignette challenge!
ATHENA THORNE: …or Maybe the Trans Shop Teacher Is the Hero We Need Right Now. “This dude is gaming the system. An anon here yesterday was in this dude’s class. This teacher was almost fired for ‘toxic masculinity’ last year, as well as not embracing woke culture. He’d drop redpills to his class, such as how silly gender neutral bathrooms are. The school board hates him.”
WE’RE NOT FAR BEHIND. THIS WINTER WILL BE BAD: Germany’s “Tenfold Increase in Gas and Electricity Prices” Is Driving Out Industry.
EVERYTHING STILL UNCLEAR: Xi Jinping: Under House Arrest?
ABOUT ENOUGH: One Drop Of Nonsense.
THIS IS WHO THEY ARE: Arizona Dem To Campaign With Group That Promoted ‘F— the 4th’ Event.
IF YOU MUST SEND YOUR KIDS TO THE MALEDUCATION FACTORIES, BE SURE TO WATCH THEM VERY CAREFULLY: This Ohio School District Is Promoting an ‘LGBTQ+ Resource Guide’ With Instructions on Sex Work, Abortions.
DO NOT SEND YOUR KIDS TO PUBLIC SCHOOL. THE OTHER STATES ARE TEACHING THIS NONSENSE TOO. JUST NOT OPENLY: New Jersey to Become First State to Introduce Global Warming Curriculum in Public Schools.
Object to apocalyptic cults in school.
MORE LIKE REALITY IS WINNING: California Gov. Gavin Newsom: The GOP is “winning right now”.
Reality always wins. Hair gel is no defense.
IT BROKE AGAINST THE WALL OF MAD AS HELL: Operation Demoralize Has Failed.
ABOLISH THE FBI. SALT THE EARTH: Dozens of FBI Agents Raid Respected Pro-Life Advocate’s Home While His Wife, Seven Children Watch In Terror.
HURRICANE NEWS: Ian could become ‘catastrophic’ Category 4 hurricane.
That would be a change. As it passes Cayman, maximum sustained winds are just 45 mph.
DRAMAMINE NOT INCLUDED: SpinLaunch raises $71 million. “The company has raised $150 million to date to fund work on a unique launch system that uses a centrifuge to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds. The vehicles will then use rocket engines, like on conventional upper stages, to place payloads into orbit. SpinLaunch argues that approach can enable a much higher flight rate than conventional rockets while also being more environmentally friendly.”
I’m skeptical, but amused. And hey, that’s basically how they launched the satellite in Edward Everett Hale’s 1869 story, The Brick Moon.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, VLAD: Dagestan Women Confront Police in Mass Demonstration Against Putin’s Draft.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Democrats’ dangerous demagoguery turns deadly. “Cayler Ellingson was killed last week in North Dakota after another man, Shannon Brandt, 41, hit him with his SUV. Ellingson was 18 years old. Brandt was convinced the teenager was affiliated with a ‘Republican extremist group.’ No evidence exists for this claim. Footage of Brandt’s bail hearing shows him seeming confused that he may suffer for his actions. It comes right from the top. The president of the United States, supported by a fan-girl media, spouts irresponsible rhetoric that led to Ellingson’s death.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Pelosi made a surprise appearance at a festival in NYC and the crowd booed.
OF COURSE HE DOES: Biden Plans to Continue Iran Deal Talks Despite Regime’s Brutal Crackdown. A friend comments that he half expects the Biden Administration to rush through a deal and send the mullahs palletloads of cash that will be used to hire mercenaries and put down the revolution. My response: “Half?”
JUST IN TIME FOR THE MIDTERMS: Vaccine-resistant coronavirus similar to COVID-19 found in Russian bats.
We wrote here about today’s election in Italy, and the likelihood that it will be won by a conservative coalition led by Giorgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy party. Meloni is “far right,” which means she is skeptical of the benefits of endless illegal immigration, and a “firebrand,” which means she gives speeches that voters like.
The election is going on right now, and Meloni is favored to emerge as Italy’s next prime minister. She sounds like a winner, and like an American conservative:
Meloni made her comments this week during a rally in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, saying: “Italy is better than the left-wing governments it has had in recent years. The left is there to blather that everyone is afraid, but the only ones who are afraid are them because they have understood that their system of power is about to end.”
“We are ready, until the last vote, to restore freedom and pride to this nation. They say the markets, Europe, TikTok singers, actors, and influencers are worried about a centre-right victory. We don’t care what they say. We care what the Italians think,” Meloni continued, in comments reported by the newspaper Il Giornale.
* * * * * * * *
I hope it is not premature to offer Ms. Meloni our congratulations.
Not according to Breaking News Online: Italy’s right-wing bloc wins majority in parliament – exit poll.
UPDATE: A pre-election profile of Meloni in the London Spectator: Giorgia Meloni’s victory would be a triumph for Italian democracy.
The Italian media, which is mostly left-leaning, usually call both Meloni, her party and her coalition centrodestra rather than ‘destra’, a word which the Italians apply to actual extremists. That ought to make the outside world think twice before describing Meloni as the heir to Mussolini. That’s not to say the Italian media is well-disposed to her – most of them are not. They are just forced to be more accurate, given that their readers can see and hear every day what Meloni and Brothers of Italy are doing and saying. Italians know through experience who is and is not a fascist.
Those trying to stick the f-word on her point to a handful of things – only one of which I find even remotely convincing. As a teenager Meloni, who is 45, signed up to Italy’s neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) which had by then renounced dictatorship and anti-Semitism. Two years later in 1994, it became Alleanza Nazionale (AN) which renounced fascism. But Brothers of Italy which she co-founded in 2012, and whose name is that of Italy’s national anthem, retains – as AN had – the tricolore flame which was MSI’s logo. Many insist this is proof of Meloni’s refusal to abandon fascism. But she says the flame is the symbol of the journey by the post-war Italian right which existed before fascism.
Meloni identifies as a conservative and takes inspiration, not from Benito Mussolini, but from old-fashioned English conservatives such as Sir Roger Scruton and JRR Tolkien, as I discussed at length in my interview with her. At the right’s final rally of the election campaign in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on Thursday the actor who introduced her on stage before her speech paraphrased what Aragorn told the men of the west before the Battle of Morannon at the Black Gate in the film version of Lord of the Rings: ‘The day of defeat may come but it is not this day! This day we fight!’
Meloni did not go to university and speaks with a rough Roman accent, which makes her the Italian equivalent of a cockney. Which is why it’s odd to hear her compared to Thatcher. This is true in terms of her iron-like character, but not her politics. She is more like an old-fashioned conservative who is often paternalistic in her language, arguing that the state must sometimes protect countries and communities from the free market.
While Berlusconi and Salvini have been in trouble for their pro-Putin sympathies, Meloni unequivocally supports Nato’s arming of Ukraine. So might her coalition partners lure her away from this path given that more than half of Italians oppose sending arms to Ukraine? She told me that, in the coalition agreement she drew up with Salvini and Berlusconi at the start of the campaign she made support of Nato’s Ukraine arms programme a condition.
More: From Reuters on Friday: EU’s von der Leyen delivers veiled warning to Italy’s right wing.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has warned Italy of consequences should it veer away from democratic principles, issuing a barely veiled threat ahead of Sunday’s election that a rightist bloc led by Giorgia Meloni is expected to win.
The comments highlighted concern in some European capitals over the forthcoming election and suggested that relations between Brussels and Rome could get turbulent if Meloni and her partners secure victory.
“My approach is that whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” von der Leyen said at Princeton University in the United States on Thursday, responding to a question on whether there were any concerns with regard to the upcoming elections in Italy.
“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,” she added.
Matteo Salvini, the head of the League and a part of Meloni’s conservative alliance, denounced her comments as “shameful arrogance”.
“What is this, a threat?” he wrote on Twitter. “Respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!”
* * * * * * * *
Eric Mamer, spokesman for the European Commission, told reporters in Brussels that von der Leyen had not been looking to interfere in Italian politics.
“She was stressing the role of the Commission as guardian of the (European) treaties with regard to the rule of law,” he said on Friday.
Meanwhile, CBS drops an F-bomb:
Walter Cronkite could not be reached for comment.
I’m not sure why an EU official and CBS would smear someone as a proponent of Mussolini, when Il Duce himself said, “I am and shall remain a socialist and my convictions will never change! They are bred into my very bones.” Or as Lawrence Samuels wrote on “The Socialist Economics of Italian Fascism” at Econlib in 2015, “In essence, the economics of Italian Fascism was Marxist and syndicalist-inspired—and far more left-wing socialist than the economies of many current western nations that embrace a mixed economy of socialism, welfarism and unionism. Now, if only economists and historians would, even if belatedly, recognize that fact.”
(Updated and bumped.)
INCREASED VIOLENCE IN THE ER, TRIGGERED BY A REDUCTION IN TRUST: “About two-thirds of emergency physicians said they believed the pandemic had triggered an increase in the amount of violence in emergency departments. About 69% said the pandemic had decreased the level of trust between patients and emergency department staff.”
HULK SMASH PUNY STADIUM BOOTH!!! Here’s why Bills OC Ken Dorsey lost his mind at the end of the Dolphins game.
Dorsey was trying to get his usually productive offense in field goal range before time expired, and those efforts were assisted by the Dolphins’ butt punt with less than two minutes left in the game.
It was not to be. The Bills ran out of time as Josh Allen was trying to get under center to stop the clock for one more play. It was at that point that Dorsey went on a jag that would have made both Keith Moon and John Bonham proud.
Or Axel Foley, for that matter.
The Bills may have lost the game, but Dorsey certainly won the Internet today:
The Bills coordinator was NOT happy
— FlashPicks ⚡️ (@flashpicks) September 25, 2022
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: PragerU Football Team Still Dead Last In NCAA Rankings.
WHAT DID SOCIALISTS HEAT WITH BEFORE DRIED DUNG? GAS! California’s pioneering climate change plans to nix gas heater sales by 2030.
HAM SANDWICH NATION UPDATE: Why sexual abuse victims like Pieper Lewis get convicted.
In 2020, Pieper Lewis killed her alleged rapist – a man she says began raping her when she was a mere 15 years old.
According to Lewis, the ordeal began when she ran away from an abusive home and ended up homeless. An older man took her in and began trafficking her at that point (forcing her to have sex with other men for money). One of those men was Zachary Brooks, who was 37 at the time. Lewis says Brooks assaulted her many times, including while she was unconscious, and said, “I suddenly realized that Mr. Brooks had raped me yet again and was overcome with rage.”
The man who trafficked Lewis was never charged with any crime, but Lewis was. She was charged with first degree murder and ultimately sentenced for voluntary manslaughter and willful injury. Her charges meant she faced 20 years in prison, but a judge reduced that to five years of probation after she served two years in a juvenile facility.
So now Lewis is free, but her ordeal is not over. If she in anyways violates that probation over the next five years (which is very easy to do given how difficult we make it for people to comply with these restrictions) she will automatically go back behind bars and serve her full sentence. And not only that, she’s also been given a $150,000 bill by the state of Iowa thanks to a mandatory financial restitution law that carries no exceptions, according to her judge.
Classical reference in headline: Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime.
SOME USEFUL Hurricane Preparation Tips.
SOON TO RECEIVE A WHITE HOUSE INVITATION: Spanish Minister of Equality argues that children have the right to sex with whomever they want regardless of age.
This, by the way, is what you get when you have a “Minister of Equality.”
READER FAVORITE: Silonn Ice Maker, Countertop. #CommissionEarned
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Randi Weingarten attacks Gov. DeSantis for politicizing education. “So that’s why Randi Weingarten was in Florida this week, because she’s a lefty unionist and a professional Democrat. Weingarten accusing anyone else of politicizing education is like Kim Kardashian complaining the media is too focused on celebrity gossip.”
INTERESTING: Resistance-breathing training found to lower blood pressure. “Resistance-breathing training involves breathing in and out of a small device, called, quite naturally, a POWERbreathe, every day for several minutes. The device forces the patient to use their breathing muscles to push and pull air through it, making them stronger. And that, the researchers found, also reduces blood pressure. The device has been in use for several years as a means to assist athletes, singers and people with weak lung muscles.”
GOV. NEWSOM SIGNS LAW ALLOWING HUMAN COMPOSTING AS BURIAL METHOD:
California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Monday allowing human composting as a burial method in the state starting in 2027.
Assembly Bill 351, introduced by Assembly Members Cristina Garcia and Robert Rivas, will allow for naturally decomposed human remains to be turned into soil. California will become the fifth state to allow the method.
WHY SOUTH AFRICA CONTINUES TO FALL BEHIND: Starlink Not Approved in South Africa. “South Africa’s telecoms regulator — the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) — previously told MyBroadband it would not issue any new licences to companies that are not 30% black owned, in line with new legislation for Internet service providers (ISPs).”
JEFF DUNETZ: An Important Message To The Gentiles On Rosh HaShana.
Because of the coming holidays, we would like to provide our Gentile friends with a list of dos and don’ts for the days we are gone. PLEASE REMEMBER, we’ve built a nice little internet here. Behave yourselves while we are gone. We’re not asking–we’re telling. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was correct—there is a Jewish space laser. We can zap you anytime we want.
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™
WELL, THAT’S POOR SALESMANSHIP: Pfizer CEO tests positive for COVID-19 again.
FBI MISLED JUDGE WHO SIGNED WARRANT FOR BEVERLY HILLS SEIZURE OF $86 MILLION IN CASH:
The privacy invasion was vast when FBI agents drilled and pried their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show. In one box, agents found cremated human remains.
Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it.
I need to borrow Sarah’s shocked face for this post:
● Whistleblower: FBI Deliberately Miscategorizing J6 Cases to Boost ‘Domestic Extremism’ Claims.
● FBI labeled veterans group “terror organization” despite knowing they weren’t.
● Biden Reportedly Pressuring FBI to ‘Cook Up’ White Supremacy Cases.
● Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.
GIVE ME HOT TUBS FOR MY MEN, AND SWIMMING POOLS FOR MY HORSES: Horse rescued from owner’s backyard pool in California.
WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE: Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters cancels concerts in Poland after Ukraine war comments.
City councilors in Krakow were expected to vote next week on a proposal to name Waters as a persona non grata, expressing “indignation” over the musician’s stance on the war in Ukraine.
Waters wrote an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska early this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for having “set your country on the path to this disastrous war.” He also criticized the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons, blaming Washington in particular.
Waters has also criticized NATO, accusing it of provoking Russia.
Funny how this keeps happening to Waters.
Flashback: Wish You Weren’t Here: Roger Waters’ Jewish Problem Catches Eye of Award-Winning Filmmaker.
DON’T GET COCKY: WaPo/ABC poll: GOP holds +5 edge on generic ballot — and wide leads on top issues.
As Glenn wrote last month, “I’ve been saying ‘don’t get cocky’ for a reason. If you care about the midterms, you should be volunteering and donating.”
HMM: Xi Jinping Trends Online Amid Coup Rumors, Canceled Flights. I’m skeptical of these reports, though I’d like to see Xi removed, so long as he’s replaced by someone better, not worse.
THE MEDIA FORGET THEMSELVES ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE:
We’ve seen 41-year-old Shannon Brandt, who purposely struck and killed 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson. Brandt claimed he thought Ellingson was a “Republican extremist” and admitted to murdering the teenager over a political dispute. Still, a brief search of the websites of CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS yielded no returns for the name “Shannon Brandt,” and save for conservative media, the story has evaded coverage by national outlets.
The next incident involved the murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative journalist Jeff German. German had been investigating abuse allegations against Public Administrator Robert Telles. Telles had lashed out at German’s reporting several times on Twitter. Shortly after German’s murder, he was arrested and charged with the killing. Yelles, a Democrat, was also an enthusiast for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), attending her CNN town hall during the 2020 election.
Again, however, Telles’s party identification has all but been erased from national news stories. The media have settled on simply describing Telles as an elected official. In a detailed write-up of the crime and the charges Telles faces, the Associated Press completely omitted his party identification. Top line: Members of the national media are going out of their way to protect a person charged with the murder of one of their own colleagues. It’s a level of professional shamelessness rarely seen for an industry already well known for protecting Democrats.
Still, these are two specific and exceptionally serious incidents that occurred after the sitting president called for a full-frontal press against his political opponents — opponents, it should be noted, whom he openly described as unpatriotic extremists. But neither Biden nor his administration has been made to answer for this dark rhetoric. Either targeted political rhetoric leads to violence and even death, as our media dutifully warned for years, or it doesn’t. But it cannot be both.
This will of course, all change if the GOP takes one or both houses of Congress in November: Any violence remotely related to the right (or in fact not related to the right) will be called out en masse by the DNC-MSM.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Feastoria Double Long Soft Rifle Case. #CommissionEarned
MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Fire Breaks Out at World’s Biggest Produce Market in Paris.
A billowing column of dark smoke towered over Paris on Sunday from a warehouse blaze at a massive produce market that supplies the French capital and surrounding region with much of its fresh food and bills itself as the largest of its kind in the world.
Firefighters urged people to stay away from the area in Paris’ southern suburbs, as 100 officers and 30 fire engines battled the blaze at the Rungis International Market.
Flashback: Update On Food Plants: More Fires, FBI Alert, One Off-The-Wall Explanation. “Now the fact-checkers have come out in force, so we know there’s nothing to worry about. Right?”
ROGER SIMON: Even More Than the Economy, 2022 Is the Fentanyl Election.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has been sounding the alarm on fentanyl for some time, reminds us of just how bad it is in an op-ed for The Washington Times:
“Fentanyl is an especially dangerous drug. Just two milligrams—the equivalent of a few grains of sand—can kill an adult male. The Mexican cartels have built super labs to mass produce this extremely deadly drug. Last year alone, authorities seized around 2.5 billion deadly doses of fentanyl at our border. Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
“Each drug death and severe case of addiction is like a bomb going off in a community. Families are shattered, children are orphaned, promising young Americans are psychologically destroyed, and neighborhoods physically deteriorate. It’s little surprise that some parts of this country look and feel like warzones.”
The Biden administration allowed this horrendous crime—we can easily call it mass murder since more of us are dying annually from fentanyl than did American troops in the Vietnam War—via the open border. It’s time for all of us to channel Emile Zola and say “J’Accuse…!” No more of this crime against our nation’s citizens.
We can do so at the ballot box in November, obviously, but also this may well be the best issue with which to wake up those who hide behind the terms “liberal” and ”progressive” and think of themselves as “good people.”
How can you be “good” and countenance this?
It’s incumbent on all of us to publicize this expanding catastrophe as widely as we can, not just through articles and postings on social media, but even more potently one-on-one where people are often more prone to listen.
This is not just an epidemic in red America. It’s everywhere and growing.
Is it a conspiracy of communist China? You decide. But whatever it is, those pills, dressed up and repackaged as they are by the cartels in pretty, inviting colors, are killing our children as nothing has in the past.
COVID-19 is a piffle by comparison. Fentanyl is destroying our younger population, therefore our future. As Cotton noted, it is the leading cause of death between those 18 and 45.
Related: Texas sheriff: Fentanyl is a WMD — and Biden’s border crisis is the delivery method.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: Female Muslim Syracuse U. students demand exclusive pool accommodations.
DISNEY REPLACES JAMES EARL JONES’S VOICE AS DARTH VADER WITH AI:
Actor James Earl Jones will no longer be tapped to voice his iconic Star Wars character Darth Vader thanks to artificial intelligence.
The 91-year-old actor has already provided plenty of archival recordings via the films that began in 1977, television series, animated programs, video games, and Disney’s various theme park rides. Now, Ukrainian start-up Respeecher will combine those recordings with artificial technology to provide a voice for Darth Vader that sounds similar to Jones’s voice.
Respeecher has already begun using the synthesized voice for the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi while keeping the actor in the credits of each episode the voice is featured in. Jones last voiced the character during the 2019 film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
It’s not all that surprising — Jones’ voice sounded awfully old in 2016’s Rogue One, which was written as a prequel to 1977’s Star Wars. (Watch the films back to back; thanks to digital effects and an unlimited budget, Vader is an absolute killing machine in Rogue One, yet moves at a much more lumbering pace in Star Wars, but his voice sounds much younger — as Jones was much younger — in the 1977 film.)
Combined with the digital effects that recreated the late Peter Cushing and a young Carrie Fisher for Rogue One, audio technology such as Respeecher will be bringing many more legendary actors alive again in digital form, just as Arthur C. Clarke predicted in the 1980s.
CHANGE: Italy poised for hard-right leader as country votes in snap election. “Brothers of Italy has chimed with sections of the public who are concerned about immigration (Italy is the destination for many migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean), the country’s relationship with the EU and the economy.”
The usual suspects call this opposition semi-fascist, of course, but then when don’t they?
THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR: Amtrak’s Oakland to Los Angeles train is slower than the 1930s, but just as beautiful.
But why does California’s premier train connection take twice as long as driving?
Steve Roberts, president of RailPAC, a train advocacy organization, said the train’s slow speeds are tied to the nation’s 20th-century love affair with cars. In the heyday of 1900s train travel, before automobiles and highways supplanted mass transit, private railway companies operated a vast network of luxurious passenger trains. That was when rail travel came with elaborate art-deco drinking taverns and wood-paneled coffee carts.
Last century on the Daylight, dubbed “The Most Beautiful Train in the World,” the tracks and technology were upgraded so trains could zoom around corners at higher speeds. “The train at some places along the coast could go 90 miles an hour,” said Roberts.
But once passengers started skipping rail for their steering wheels, the private railway companies downgraded their faster infrastructure because it was too expensive to maintain, Roberts said. In 2022, Coast Starlight’s top speed is 79 miles per hour, but that velocity is rarely reached.
“Basically, society’s decision was to build the interstates,” said Roberts. “And the railroads stayed static.”
While lackluster infrastructure means slower trains, Amtrak’s biggest affliction is rampant delays caused by the nation’s economic workhorse: freight trains.
For the Coast Starlight, only 54% of passengers arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled time in 2021. The dismal performance stems from a long-standing and bitter competition between Amtrak and freight train operators, both of whom are forced to cohabitate on the nation’s rail network. While Amtrak is supposed to be entitled to priority on railways, riders are often forced to wait hours for passing freight trains. Last week, in one of the latest dustups, Amtrak announced mass cancellations of its long-distance trains, including the Coast Starlight, due to freight workers threatening a strike.
I know California leftists hate the car and highways hate the car and highways, but why doesn’t the article mention the other development that made passenger railroading much less desirable? The jet passenger aircraft:
By the time Congress created Amtrak, intercity rail passenger service in the United States had been in a 20-year decline. Until the 1950s, railroads were the only way to travel long distances. But during that decade, the federal government began financing the interstate highway system, a $41 billion, 16-year project, and, as jet airplanes were introduced, significantly increased its support for the construction and improvement of airports.
Airplanes, personal automobiles, and buses began competing with the country’s railroads for long-distance travel. The railroads responded to the competition with new equipment on their prestige long-distance routes, replacing steam locomotives with diesel engines, and introducing lightweight stainless steel passenger cars with air-conditioning and double glazed windows. But as the number of passengers continued to drop, the rail companies had little incentive to make major capital investments to upgrade their tracks, signaling, stations, and maintenance facilities. Why, they thought, should their profitable freight business subsidize a means of intercity transportation that was competing with systems receiving federal and state tax dollars? By 1958, rail service accounted for just 4 percent of intercity travel.
The decline in rail passenger service and the deterioration of passenger facilities continued during the 1960s. By the end of the decade, the number of passenger trains had dropped to 500, down from more than 20,000 some 40 years earlier, and only 12,000 passenger cars remained in service. Losses from passenger service operations in 1970 came to more than $1.8 billion dollars in 1997 dollars. Most of the loss was on long-distance, intercity travel. Commuter and suburban lines obviously were less affected by airlines and, at least during the 1960s, lost little ridership to buses and private cars. Many of the railroad companies filed applications to get out of the intercity service on most or all of their routes. Among the most critical was the proposal by Penn Central (the merged Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad) to eliminate all its passenger service in the Northeast and Midwest.
Federal Action
The Railroad Passenger Service Act allowed the railroad companies to transfer their money-losing passenger operations to Amtrak in exchange for either a tax write-off or Amtrak stock. Only three lines, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, the Rock Island, and the Southern, did not join Amtrak, opting to continue their own passenger service.
The San Jose Mercury story at the top of the article notes that “the Bay Area portion – connecting Oakland and San Jose to Los Angeles – takes over 12 hours. In 1938, the now-defunct Daylight train cruised down to Los Angeles in less than 10.”
A flight from Oakland’s airport to LAX takes one hour and 25 minutes — and costs about the same for a ticket.
(Classical reference in headline.)
MICHAEL BERTOLONE: Blame blue city officials for the mass exodus of law enforcement.
UPDATE: Oops, I had it as Michael Barone originally. Sorry!
BUT OF COURSE: NASA calls off Artemis 1 moon rocket launch on Sept. 27 due to Tropical Storm Ian. “NASA won’t try to thread the weather needle with its Artemis 1 moon mission after all. The space agency had been targeting Tuesday (Sept. 27) for the launch of Artemis 1 from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), on Florida’s Atlantic coast. That remained the plan as recently as Friday (Sept. 23), though NASA officials stressed that they were keeping a close eye on a brewing storm in the Caribbean called Tropical Depression 9.”
I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP TELLING ME IT’S A CRISIS START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS: Climate Hawk Sean Casten Flew 6,000 Miles, Stayed in Luxury European Hotel to Fight Global Warming: Casten’s flights emitted more than 313,000 pounds of carbon.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Eveready LED Camping Lantern 360 PRO (2-Pack). #CommissionEarned
JEFFREY CARTER: Direct And Clear: There Is No Subtlety To This Market. Trump said Joe Biden would crush your savings and stock portfolio, and he was right. It wasn’t a hard call to be fair given what Biden said he wanted to do. I lost friendships over politics in the past years since Obama was elected. It’s not enough to say, ‘at least there are no mean tweets.’ The people in charge right now are deliberately destroying the country.”
“The people in charge right now are deliberately destroying the country.” Has that ever been a reasonable thing to say in the past?
Plus: “Socialist Representative Rashida Tlaib shows you exactly where the Democrats’ head is at on fossil fuels and using safe technology like nuclear power to build a larger electricity grid in general in her diatribe last week. It’s not just what she says, it’s her delivery and tone. This isn’t new. Obama led the world on the ignorant march to energy ineptitude. These people just aren’t serious people that spend time in reality solving real problems. The Martha’s Vineyard escapade along with the JB Pritzker response to The Scream ought to prove that fact to you. They don’t want to legislate they want to dictate. I am glad Dimon answered the way he did. It is time to be direct and clear.”
Time and past time.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Ken Burns Is Not Worthy of His Own Best Vision.
Sadly and tragically, Burns stumbles by leaving us confused as to whether the moral peril is confined only to those who are identifiably on the right.
This is most pronounced in the final episode of his series, when he directly preaches his lesson. He shows vivid and affective images in the screen of neo-Nazi types doing their thing in all its squalid ugliness. Here they are in Charlottesville, Virginia, wearing Nazi tattoos and screaming in full paranoiac breakdown mode about not being replaced. Here they are among the crowds on Jan. 6, waving violently anti-Semitic signs.
Fair enough. If this doesn’t concern every conservative, then we are in trouble.
But where was a focus on Louis Farrakhan, in one of any number of obscene, Jew-baiting moments? Here is a powerful leader who is unabashedly anti-Semitic and who is powerful enough to subvert politicians to his purposes — that is, he’s effective and dangerous. Why was he not featured? The best guess is that Burns’ politics obscured his vision here.
Where was a showing of Jewish campus groups’ meetings being broken up, Nazi-style, by organized groups dedicated to the destruction of the country where the world’s largest Jewish population lives? Where is a clip of powerful Democrat politicians, publicly embraced by Democrat leadership, spouting anti-Semitic tropes on the House floor and in speeches — Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, and other lesser lights? Where is the focus on the leftist ideologies that identify Jews as a class to be colonialists and white supremacists, and therefore worthy objects of mobbing, exclusion, and even violence?
Furthermore, Burns willingly and powerfully equates the denial of asylum to European Jews facing Hitler’s annihilation machine to today’s attempt to any organized control of America’s borders. Can one really make a moral equation? Is assuring that we can weed out the drug runners, human traffickers, and gang members from those seeking political asylum equivalent to denying shelter to Jews fleeing the gas chambers? Is it moral to conflate the two? This is mere political propaganda, an imposture of moral authority rather than the real thing. It contaminates and poisons the moral message.
Just think of Burns as a Democratic Party operative with director’s credit, and his “no enemies to the left” attitude makes perfect sense.
Earlier: Ken Burns’ Angry New Film.
WELL, HE’S RIGHT:
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Long Island Woman Who Goes to Vegas With a Hinge Date.
PAULA BOLYARD: This Is Not The America I Know: Dozens of FBI Agents Raid Home of Catholic Pro-Life Activist as Children Scream in Terror.
Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.
Remember, Biden’s own press secretary says that if you disagree with the majority, you’re an extremist!
Also, let’s publicize the names of those agents. There’s no privacy right in raiding people’s homes.
I HOPE THAT’S TRUE BUT I’M HONESTLY A BIT SKEPTICAL: NASA declares SLS tanking test a success.
AD ASTRA: SpaceX’s Florida launch seen as far as New York, Massachusetts. “People reported seeing the launch as far as Cape Cod in Massachusetts as well as New York, New Jersey and Maryland — sharing pictures on social media of the rocket in the sky. SpaceX has launched more than 3,340 satellites into low-Earth orbit with 2,499 operational, according to an online tracker. Last weekend, SpaceX launched 34 satellites into low-Earth orbit with AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 satellite.”
REMEMBER, GREENS WANT YOU TO SUFFER: “This was part of an effort to appease the green parties in government, who have been notable for their long-standing opposition to nuclear power.”
THAT’S BEEN AMPLY DEMONSTRATED IN THE PAST: Woke ‘Teacher of the Year’ proves NY’s educrats don’t care about actual education.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Countertop Nugget Ice Maker. #CommissionEarned
FIRST PUTIN, NOW THE MULLAHS:
JAMES MEIGS: Why Fauci Became a Bobblehead.
Fauci seems to have concluded that he is synonymous with science itself. “It’s easy to criticize,” he complained on Face the Nation last year, “but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.” Note to reader: No one “represents” science. Science is a radically transparent system of inquiry, debate, and a willingness to challenge received wisdom. As soon as any individual claims the authority to speak for science as a whole, that person is doing the opposite of science.
Today, there is reason to believe that Covid-19, as devastating as it was, did less damage to our society than our ham-fisted overreaction to the disease. Fauci and his public health colleagues were enthusiastic cheerleaders for the policies that inflicted this damage. The social, medical, and economic aftershocks will reverberate for decades to come. It’s tempting to lay the blame here all on Fauci, to assume that his personal moral shortcomings created this mess. I don’t think that’s right. By all accounts, Fauci is a well-meaning official who really believes he’s doing what’s best for the country. But so what? Well-intentioned people can do just as much damage as malevolent ones, sometimes more.
No. The real problem here is power. Fauci simply has had far too much of it for far too long. When the Good Saint Anthony retires in a few months, this administration (or, more likely, one that follows) would be smart to ensure that the next NIAID director operates on a much shorter leash. We would all do well to recognize that appointing “czars” in times of crisis always backfires in the end. And it’s fundamentally un-American.
Flashback: Fauci and other health ‘experts’ are messing up monkeypox just as they did COVID, Ebola and AIDS.
LET THE COMMENTING BEGIN: 9 mm vs. .45 ACP–A Different Kind of Comparison.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR CANADA: Parents and Students Protest Transgender Teacher With Huge Fake Breasts.
DUMBEST GUINNESS RECORD EVER: Teen puts 22 socks on one foot in 30 seconds for Guinness record.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Ford’s Latest Supply-Chain Problem: a Shortage of Blue Oval Badges. “The shortage is impacting Ford’s popular F-Series pickup trucks, the people said. Ford executives had considered some workarounds, such as 3-D printing the insignia until the permanent ones could be obtained, some of the people said. But they didn’t feel the printed substitutions would meet the bar on quality, these people said…A Michigan-based supplier that has made badges for Ford in the past had to limit operations in August, after disclosing to Michigan regulators it had discharged industrial chemicals into a local sewer system, according to city and state officials. The supplier, Tribar Technologies, Inc., specializes in decorative exterior trim for automotive, including making badges and lettering for vehicles. The company’s website shows it has made the insignia for Ford models previously, including the 2021 F-150 pickup truck.”
YOU SHOULD HAVE ONE, BUT PREFERABLY ONE THAT WORKS: Officials issue warning after carbon monoxide detectors fail to alarm. “Consumers should immediately stop using HECOPRO digital display carbon monoxide detectors because they can fail to warn about the presence of the dangerous gas, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.”
RIP: Louise Fletcher: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s Nurse Ratched dies aged 88.
Flashback: Kathy Shaidle in 2012: Nurse Ratched, My Hero: 4 Female Movie Villains I Love.
JOE BIDEN TOLD US COVID IS OVER: Chicago and suburbs reach low risk level for COVID-19 as new cases, hospitalizations decline.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden’s Old Man Filter Goes Haywire Again: “Biden with his arm around Elton John: ‘It’s all his fault we are spending $6 billion in tax payer dollars on HIV and AIDS this month.’”
SLEEP IS VITAL: Getting enough sleep key to a healthy immune system.
JUST A REMINDER: I get paid based on ad revenue now, so if you wouldn’t mind whitelisting InstaPundit if you run an ad blocker that would be great. Or some people hit the PayPal donation button, which is also great.
Some people have asked how to send a donation by check; you can send those to 118 N. Peters Rd. #12-230, Knoxville TN 37923. If you do, please make it out to me, Glenn Reynolds, not to “InstaPundit.” (Bumped).
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Stacey Abrams Bursts Through Wall Like Kool-Aid Man To Tell Overjoyed Mother That The Heartbeat Sound She’s Hearing Is Fake.
MCDONALD’S TO FACE $10B LAWSUIT ALLEGING BIAS AGAINST BLACK MEDIA COMPANIES:
A $10 billion lawsuit against McDonald’s will be allowed to proceed after a federal court denied the company’s motion to dismiss and sided with media tycoon Byron Allen, who is alleging that the corporation allocates less ad funding to black-owned media.
Allen will be allowed to try and prove the franchise discriminates against black-owned media, thus violating federal civil rights laws, a federal district court in California ruled last week.
“This is about economic inclusion of African American-owned businesses in the US economy,” Allen said in a press release Tuesday. “McDonald’s takes billions from African American consumers and gives almost nothing back. The biggest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between white corporate America and black America, and McDonald’s is guilty of perpetuating this disparity.”
Allen alleges that the company placed his networks, which include the Weather Channel and Comedy.tv, to an “African American tier” that receives less funding. The lawsuit claimed black people represent 40% of fast-food customers, but McDonald’s spent 0.3% of its $1.6 billion U.S. ad budget in 2019 on black-owned media, according to the press release.
When then-CEO Steve Easterbrook said in 2015 that he wanted to transform the corporation into a ‘modern, progressive burger company,’ apparently, he wasn’t kidding.
HILLARY IS RIGHT: Abortions should be as hard to obtain as AR-15s. “I’m here to tell Mrs. Clinton that these terms are acceptable. Abortions nationwide should be as easy as obtaining an AR-15. The pro-life movement should begin working on implementation immediately.”
WELL, FETTERMAN ALWAYS IS CRINGEY: Oz releases his medical records and Fetterman’s response is… cringey.
STAY COMFORTABLE: Dickies Men’s Loose-Fit Cargo Work Pants. #CommissionEarned
