LOOK AT THIS COMMUNITY NOTE AND IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY THEY HATE ELON:
We’ve created close to 800,000 manufacturing jobs since I’ve taken office.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 5, 2023
Haha you got fact checked.
— Melanie (@Imagecaptured) December 5, 2023
TRUMP WINS TOM FRIEDMAN’S VOTE: Well, if the New York Times columnist meant what he said on “Meet the Press” a while back in expressing his wish that for just one day America could be like China. Issues & Insights caught it.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is China Telling the Truth About the New Respiratory Outbreak?
GEORGE KORDA: Trump’s ‘vermin’ comment was vile, but Democrats should also stop dehumanizing opponents.
Meh, once you’ve called a guy Hitler, I don’t think you can complain about what he calls you back. There’s been no restraint in political language (aimed at the right) at least since the GWB era, and probably for longer. After all, Thomas Dewey was compared with Hitler, too.
THE PENN DEBACLE: After President’s Remarks on Antisemitism, Penn Should Consider Her Future, the State’s Governor Says.
A day after M. Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, testified at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism, the state’s Democratic governor said she had “failed” to “speak and act with moral clarity” and made an implicit call for her removal.
In her remarks, Magill did not directly answer pointed questions about whether students’ calling for the genocide of Jews violated Penn’s code of conduct. Gov. Josh Shapiro told reporters on Wednesday that Magill’s evasiveness was “absolutely shameful” and “unacceptable,” adding that Penn’s Board of Trustees “has a serious decision they need to make.”
Shapiro, a nonvoting member of the board, urged the trustees to meet soon, though their next scheduled public meeting is not until February, according to the board’s website.
Magill testified on Tuesday alongside Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay, the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, respectively, at a hearing convened by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The committee had demanded that the three leaders “answer for mishandling of antisemitic, violent protests” on their campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war, according to a news release.
Late on Wednesday, Magill issued a video statement about her comments. “In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies, aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”
Penn’s board chair did not respond immediately to requests for comment from The Chronicle. A Pennsylvania state senator on Wednesday called for Magill to resign, vowing not to support any state funding for the university until she does.
Everything is going swimmingly. Related: Harvard President Gay Traveled to Washington to Quell the Backlash. Her Testimony Only Made it Worse.
PRIVACY: Apple Confirms Governments Using Push Notifications to Surveil Users.
According to the report, [Sen. Ron] Wyden’s letter said a “tip” was the source of the information about the surveillance. A source familiar with the matter confirmed that both foreign and U.S. government agencies have been asking Apple and Google for metadata related to push notifications. The data is said to have been used to attempt to tie anonymous users of messaging apps to specific Apple or Google accounts.
Reuters’ source would not identify which governments were making the data requests but described them as “democracies allied to the United States.” They did not know how long the requests had been going on for.
Apple advises developers not to include sensitive data in notifications and to encrypt any data before adding it to a notification payload. However, this requires action on the developers’ part. Likewise, metadata (like which apps are sending notifications and how often) is not encrypted, potentially giving anyone with access to the information insight into users’ app usage.
Not a great look for a company that’s been using privacy as a big part of its sales pitch.
HE’S KIND TO LIMIT IT TO FINANCIAL MATTERS: James Comer to NBC host: ‘You’re financially illiterate.’
LIFTOFF!
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/iBETMTpR7m
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 7, 2023
Some parts of America still work.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Ivory Tower’s Day of Reckoning. People are noticing how many institutions have been corrupted.
Establishment client groups get protection. Designated class enemies do not.
AT AMAZON, Shop Holiday Deals. #CommissionEarned
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA says SpaceX’s next Starship flight could test refueling tech.
“NASA and SpaceX are reviewing options for the demonstration to take place during an integrated flight test of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket,” Russell said in a statement. “However, no final decisions on timing have been made.”
Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, said on November 19 that hardware for the next Super Heavy/Starship test should be ready in three to four weeks. That projection seems dubious because SpaceX hasn’t moved any pieces of the rocket to the launch pad for pre-flight testing, but a test flight early next year appears realistic.
Other factors that could play into the Starship launch schedule include tune-ups or fixes to resolve problems that occurred on the November 18 test flight and receiving a new launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.
When SpaceX tries transferring 10 metric tons of propellant from tank to tank inside Starship, it will be at a scale never before attempted in space. But it’s a small fraction of the amount of fuel and oxidizer needed to fill a Starship spacecraft in orbit. The ship’s total propellant capacity is some 1,200 metric tons. After the tank-to-tank demonstration, SpaceX will attempt a ship-to-ship propellant transfer between two Starships linked together in Earth orbit.
“That’s really when we start maturing the systems, and when it really gets exciting for HLS, because those are the building blocks that we need, and, frankly, it’s never been done successfully in orbit,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s HLS program manager, in an interview with Ars last month.
Stay tuned…
The justice system goes easier on rioters who come from establishment client groups.
MATT TAIBBI: Sue the Bastards: Federalist, Daily Wire Take the State Department to Court. “Bookending the historic Consortium News suit, conservative news outlets take on the Global Engagement Center for funding ‘censorship enterprises’ and blacklisting.”
INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: Man, These White House Interns Really Blow.“‘Never thought I’d miss the relationship between the interns and the president in the Clinton White House, but here we are.’ That’s the lead crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap, an entire week’s worth of the best bad news.”
Plus:
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
FROM ARI MENDELSON:
#CommissionEarned
GLENN LOURY AND JOHN MCWHORTER: Derek Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd.
In the documentary What Killed Michael Brown?, Shelby Steele coins the term “poetic truth” in order to describe the persistence of the myth that Michael Brown was “executed” by Darren Wilson. Steele calls poetic truth, “a distortion of the actual truth that we use to sue for leverage and power in the world. It is a partisan version of reality, a storyline that we put forward to build our case.” Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.
That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge.
But all the people who yelled “Free Mumia!” are now saying that everything is settled beyond dispute by a court.
CENSORSHIP WON’T HOLD WORLDWIDE: New Zealand Whistleblower Claims Public Health Data Shows COVID Vaccines ‘Are Killing People’.
THERE ARE SOME LIES SO EGREGIOUS ONLY MARXISTS WOULD TELL THEM: Nature, Tooth, Claw And All
PUT GOVERNMENT IN CHARGE OF THE DESERT. WE’LL RUN OUT OF SAND IN A MONTH: After Congress Allocated $7.5 Billion for Electric Vehicle Chargers, Exactly Zero Have Been Built.
THIS IS WAR: Over 12,000 Migrant Encounters on Tuesday Sets ‘Single Day Total Ever Recorded’.
The elites are using illegals as weapons in a war against us.
WELL, GIVEN THAT THEY’RE ALL BIGOTS… Another example of the inability of Democrats to condemn bigotry
IT’S THE STAFF RUNNING THE PLACE, SO THEIR DENUNCIATION MATTERS MORE: White House — but not Biden — rips university presidents over failure to condemn antisemitism on campuses.
THE ONLY ONES SURPRISED WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION: Is Ivy League university “leadership” morally bankrupt? Bill Ackman says, Congressional hearing removes all doubt.
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