I was busy yesterday, but I did catch this opening segment with the fabulous, and most beautiful, Italian-American, Maria Bartiromo.
Just great stuff, and I hope more and more folks hear, and heed, her message, and shout about these very threatened notions of "liberty" and "opportunity" in the U.S. today, "from the rooftops."
Watch:
It's been a big day, again, with work and family stuff, so blogging has been light.
But I did see the story earlier this morning, on "CBS This Morning," when at that time the San Francisco lady's "GoFundMe" hadn't yet reached $600,000.
Now the Guardian's reporting it's getting up to $800,000, and I won't be surprised if it passes a cool million over the weekend. (And I hope that helps the woman with all her medical bills, and what not, and perhaps she'll be able to "spread the wealth" to some of her neighbors, who many, no doubt, could use a hand, as this pandemic hurts everybody, even generally hard-working Asian families living up that way).
(ADDED: Of course the Guardian had to get in the obligatory, "Anti-Asian rhetoric, fueled by Donald Trump and the far right’s insistence on using offensive, stigmatizing language to describe the coronavirus, has helped provoke violence," blah, blah.)
In any case, and good for them, but some of lady's younger Asian-American neighbors are forming "citizens' patrols" to, frankly, stand guard and protect their communities from these kinds of attacks; and remember, most of these attacks are not from "white crackers," but black "hoodlums" whose culture is already anti-social, and committing crime for these idiots is just another day "on the job."
At KPIX News 5 San Francisco:
Now this is some story!
And it's interesting, because, if you think about it, it doesn't follow the script regarding recent attacks on Asian-Americans in San Francisco (so far, it's been mostly black urban hoodlums). I mean, here's some young white dude, who hates Asians, and let's say, he comes from outside the city to mount his attack? Where'd he come from? Who taught him this clearly racist and violent attitude? Because you know, while Gavin Newsom's overplaying his hand on all the "white supremacists" sponsoring the recall, it's not like we don't have any in this state.
I mean, you have the "State of Jefferson" secession movement, and those folks, probably many of them, are no doubt "white crackers." They live in the northeast part of the state, in some of the most remote counties, including Tehama County (just south of Redding), Modoc County (at literally the most northeast corner of the state), and Yuba Country (which abuts, on the east side, State Highway 99, which following it up north, about 100 miles or so, connects back over to Interstate 5 at Red Bluff).
So, yeah, it's just a hypothesis, but still --- who is this guy and where'd he come from?
So, that brings us back to the 75-five-year old Asian lady. She was carrying a stick, and though she suffered a horrible black eye, she gave as good as it gets. Now, what should really happen is San Francisco should expedite concealed-carry permits for local Asian-Americans who want to get armed, and frankly, the city should subsidize firearms training, to put their money where it counts (but not where it "is," sadly, because S.F. District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, is a "red-diaper baby," and he'll resist anything that conflicts with the Soros-leftist's "criminals are really vicitims" stupidity, which is one of the massive drivers of residents right the hell out of this dumphole of a state).
In any case, three cheers for this woman. I hope she sets an example and emboldens other S.F. Asians (especially those of the Chinese-American community) to do the same.
Via KPIX News 5 San Francisco:
Heh, keeping my with my "unaccompanied minors" story-line here, and following-up, "Even the Far-Left Los Angeles Times Can't Ignore Biden Administration's Cluster at the Southern Border."
Shoot, Fox should just make this guy a permanent anchor on any and all immigration news. No doubt the ratings for an hour with "Stephen Miller on the Border" would be right up there with Tucker's, heh.
From Laura Ingraham's last night:
Well dang, one would think!
The Other McCain is on the story, "Georgia Massage Parlor Massacre":
When my brother mentioned this story to me this morning, my reaction was: “Massage parlors? In Cherokee County? WTF?” I’m old enough to remember when that area was largely rural, and the idea that you would have Asian massage parlors there is just mind-boggling to me. Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds just said at a press conference in Atlanta that the suspect in this case appeared to have “sexual addiction” problems and “may have frequented” some of the establishments where these shootings occurred...
Following-up once again, "Thousands of Unaccompanied Minors Are Crossing Over to the U.S., as the Biden Administration Continues to Hide From the Media's Questions (VIDEO)."
Here's Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who's about as "woke" a journalist you can find, reporting on the humanitarian disaster of the Biden administration's making.
At LAT, "Surge of migrant families and youths overwhelms Border Patrol in Texas":
MISSION, Texas — The priest arrived to bless about 90 Central American families Tuesday at an old parish hall that had been converted into a shelter to absorb the rising number of migrants and unaccompanied children streaming into Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The Rev. Roy Snipes, a native Texan who preaches in a straw cowboy hat, stood in front of a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He prayed in Spanish over the families, sprinkling them with holy water drawn from the Rio Grande, the same river many had crossed just days before. “You made it here, and here you are,” said Snipes. The parents — some holding infants — applauded. Migrant families and unaccompanied children are overwhelming U.S. Customs and Border Protection holding areas and federal youth shelters even as the facilities are being expanded. The surge is happening as families flee gang violence, unstable governments, poverty and hurricane damage at a time many believe the Biden administration will be more welcoming than the former Trump White House. “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Tuesday. “We are securing our border, executing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s public health authority to safeguard the American public and the migrants themselves.” The number of migrant families has doubled this year but remains below previous spikes, including the most recent influx in 2019. But the flow of youths arriving without adults has increased to near-record levels, to 9,457 last month from 5,858 in January — more than the number who arrived in the same period in 2019. The influx is straining U.S. immigration resources and intensifying pressure on the Biden administration to stem an emerging crisis Republicans say it should have been prepared to handle. Federal officials have reopened a migrant youth shelter for 700 in central Texas and created a temporary shelter for another 700 at a former oil camp in west Texas. The Dallas convention center will house up to 3,000 youths. Some shelters have faced criticism in the past amid allegations of mistreatment, and migrant advocates oppose reopening them. The Border Patrol’s main holding center for migrant families in the Rio Grande Valley is closed for renovation. About 600 families and more than 1,800 unaccompanied migrant youths were held at a nearby Border Patrol tent facility last week, some sleeping on the floor because there were not enough mats, according to Leecia Welsh, one of the lawyers who interviewed about 20 youths held there Thursday. She said some young migrants told the lawyers they had been held at the facility for more than a week, despite the federal government’s three-day limit for detaining children. Many said they had not been allowed to phone their parents or other relatives. Some parents have been unable to locate children for more than a week after they arrived in the U.S., said Dr. Amy Cohen, co-founder and executive director of Every Last One, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that works to reunite separated migrant families. “We are forcing the hand of these parents who are in a situation of tremendous danger in Mexico, where they are seeing or experiencing being kidnapped again and again,” Cohen said. “I’ve had parents who were in the situation where they were afraid they would be murdered and their child left alone.” Two Honduran children, ages 11 and 9, were separated from their uncle recently. The man was returned to the Mexican border city of Miguel Aleman, where he was kidnapped and freed only after his relatives in the U.S. paid $5,000 ransom, Cohen said. Relatives in Texas are still trying to find out where federal officials are holding the children. By law, children are supposed to be transferred by Border Patrol to Health and Human Services shelters within 72 hours, but there have been delays because of pandemic restrictions. Some children have also been transferred out of state to federal foster care, Cohen said...
And as always, the despicable Dems blame on it "Texas Republicans." Well, now, maybe A.O.C. can fly back down to Hidalgo and Zapata Counties, right near the border, where the surge of illegals continues unabated. And while she's there, maybe she can do some fundraising for the AMERICANS getting hammered by her party's clusterf*ck policies?
I wanted to post this one earlier, but I'm glad I waited until after I found the Tucker segment posted earlier, "Spectacular Tucker Carlson Episode 'On Assignment' in El Salvador! (VIDEO)."
At one point at the video below, CBS News correspondent Mireya Villarreal is near tears, as she watches a young boy start off down the highway into the U.S., with no one "accompanying" him, so who knows what fate awaited that child, because the "bad hombres" prey on children not just south of the border, but inside the U.S. as well?
And I've got Fox News on right now as I'm working on this, and they've already had three segments blasting Jen Psaki and other administration officials for their lies and deceit, and it's not just Fox's Peter Doocy doing the grilling.
No doubt I'll be keeping up with this story, because it's one of the most volatile for Biden, as he's just not up to the task on this issue, or any other, dealing with actually helping Americans rather than foreign "migrants," many of whom have in fact been designated as "terrorists," especially the untold number of "MS-13" gang-bangers and murderers Biden's now letting into the country, to kill, maim, and rape U.S. citizens, who're being literally f*cked by the ghouls now in charge in D.C.
At Celeb Jihad, "Gina Carano Scene From 'Cancel This' (VIDEO)."
"Former UFC fighter and actress, Gina Carano, appears to take the fight to 'cancel culture' in the ... scene [at the link] from the new film 'Cancel This'."
This is obviously NSFW.
Have a great day!
Shoot, I'm surprised Fox News actually posted this whole segment, because as I've mentioned before, they're kinda stingy on posting Turker's stuff to YouTube. But this one is phenomenal, and I'm glad they did!
(Maybe they're just really "pumping up" some of the new content that will be part of the new "Fox Nation" package of specials, of which Tucker's new programming will be the highlight.)
Anyway, he keeps getting better, that's for sure, and as always, I can't stop laughing when I'm watching his segments.
Here:
It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist.
She's day in and day out, a one-woman wrecking-crew demolishing the endless lies streaming from all the hate-addled (and despicable) leftist media outlets, be they print, broadcast, cable, or whatever. I'm glad she's on our side.
She's the author, most prominently, of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, but also, Trump vs. the Media (Encounter Broadsides Book 51).
Also, my apologies for the light blogging today, but the pace of posting should pick up a bit over the next couple of days, and into the weekend.
Be well.
Actually, I received not just one, but two!, in the past few days, for my post, "Biden, Harris, Psaki and Other Top Staffers Afraid to Appear in Sunday News Shows (VIDEO)."
On Sunday, Ed Driscoll, one of the main co-bloggers at Instapundit, linked my post, probably just moments after I tweeted it to him.
And then Stephen Green, also one of the other main stalwart co-bloggers over there, linked it again this morning.
It's pretty gratifying, especially since I've had little time to blog, and I sure appreciate getting tons of traffic, and I welcome the Instapundit readers.
But I want to thank MY loyal readers most of all, who number probably just in the hundreds, and if the number's over a thousand, that's on a good day. So thank you again for your all your support, for coming here to read, and to shop occasionally at my Amazon links.
I've been doing this a long time, and some of the the greatest blogs from back in the day, at the height of the blogosphere, probably around the time from the Iraq war in 2003 (or maybe a little earlier, like 9/11) to the years of both the Obama administrations, are long gone; and back then, blogging was bigger and way more influential, than, say, social media (and especially Twitter, which itself was better back in the day, around the first part of the Obama years, before they starting f*cking with all the stupid "algorithms").
So, thanks for reading. This blog isn't going anywhere, but the volume of posting will rise and fall, perhaps a lot, depending on how things are going right here at home, with my wife and two sons, because, like everybody else, this godforsaken pandemic has messed everything up, including not just income flow, but the way the world works, how people literally "go to work," and how people engage and socially interact. It's killing people, literally, with the rise not just deaths from Covid-19, which are horrifying, but perhaps even more dangerously long-term, from the increasing social despondency and isolation people are enduring, particularly young people, whose life chances have been set back years, and even decades, if this economy flounders, or inflation surges, and the national debt keeps growing, and on, and on.
So, thanks again, dear readers, I appreciate the support.
I'll be back with more later, probably in the late afternoon or early evening.
"Controversial." Wait, what?
I used to watch "The Talk" years ago with my wife, who was an absolute fan of Julie Chen. But when she left the show when her husband, Leslie Moonves, got caught up in the "MeToo" witch hunt (which might not have been the biggest "witch-hunt" in his case, since the man HAD been engaged in bad behavior, the details of which I can't exactly recall, because there were so many top leftist execs just like him who did the exact same things, and worse), my wife was still pissed that Ms. Chen quit --- and she quit, because, actually, all the show was really about is a bunch of privileged women sitting around gossiping about how horrible their privileged lives were, and of course, inevitably, Ms. Chen would have actually been attacked mercilessly for her husband doing something (indeed) horrible and unforgivably un-woke.
And I never personally could stand founding host Sara Gilbert, whose only real claim to fame is having starred as Darlene Conner on "Roseanne" for so many years. And the real Rosanne Barr made whatever stupid remarks she made after the "reboot" appeared, and the über-woke Gilbert had a hissy-fit, and ultimately quit "The Talk" after ABC canceled the second season of the re-branded "Roseanne" show, "The Connors."
So, here we are, and the one remaining smart and decent personality on the show, Ms. Osbourne, wife of the notorious heavy (and early "death") metal icon, Ozzy, is now about to be canceled, because she defended Piers Morgan?
This country if f*ked. And it's leftists who've f*cked it all up.
At the Hollywood Reporter, "'The Talk' Extends Hiatus as Claims Mount Against Sharon Osbourne":
After a controversial defense of friend Piers Morgan during a conversation about racism, Osbourne is facing accusations of further misdeeds on set. The Talk will remain silent for another week.
After going dark on Monday and Tuesday, CBS' panel series is extending its brief hiatus from live shows until Tuesday, Mar. 23, as the network continues a review stemming from last Wednesday's heated debate between Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood. Initially planning to return to live episodes on Wednesday, Mar. 17, the show will stay dark as Osbourne's defense of Piers Morgan and comments on racism — particularly her confrontation with Underwood, her Black colleague — go under the microscope internally. A CBS spokesperson sent The Hollywood Reporter the following comment about the extended hiatus on Tuesday: “CBS is committed to a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace across all of our productions. We’re also very mindful of the important concerns expressed and discussions taking place regarding events on The Talk. This includes a process where all voices are heard, claims are investigated and appropriate action is taken where necessary. The show will extend its production hiatus until next Tuesday as we continue to review these issues.” Fallout for Osbourne (and the show) was swift following the longtime panelist's teary defense of friend and fellow Brit, Morgan, who stormed off the set of (and ultimately quit) ITV's Good Morning Britain — which he'd co-hosted since 2015 — after his vitriolic criticism of Meghan Markle was read by most as racist. At one point in her defense of Morgan, Osbourne went on the offense and demanded that Underwood tell her what Morgan had done wrong. "Educate me, tell me when you have heard him say racist things," Osbourne said. "I very much feel like I'm about to be put in the electric chair because I have a friend, who many people think is a racist, so that makes me a racist?" Since then scrutiny has only increased...
Well, naturally, the scrutiny was never going to "decrease," because CBS, craven as can be, is just letting all the controversy hang in the wind, without doing a thing to defend Ms. Osbourne, who will soon enough, probably early next week, be fired.
Now, this is my wife's theory, but she's been predicting the actual cravenness of the network's execs since the story first broke. My wife says if the media outrage dies down over the remainder of this week, the execs will be "in the clear" to keep Ms. Osbourne on the show. But if by next Monday, the clamor is continuing, the wife of the "Iron Man" vocalist will be melted down and dribbled along with the rest of the (cast) iron dregs of the nearest ironwork's foundry.
So disgusting. I say it every time, but these people (leftists) are despicable.
(The "controversial" portion of the episode, with the "controversial" comments by Ms. Osbourne, can seen at the beginning of the video above.)
Holy cow!
I've been off everything today, and frankly, I just scheduled my sixth "discussion forum" a little while ago, to go live at 12:01am on Tuesday, in less than 50 minutes from now, and the first thing I see when I click over to Instapundit is this, dang!
It's Sharyl Attkisson:
You know why these ghouls won't go live on air to take real questioning about the administration's so-called "BFD" victories --- they'e scared sh*tless to actually have to face the music. And I freakin' watched "Face the Nation" this morning, because Margaret Brennan's the only Sunday morning host who I can take seriously (not to mention, she's quite easy to gaze upon).
And who does the administration give the "O.K" to appear? This Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, who is not just "Chair of the White House's COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force," but is also the "Associate Dean for Health Equity Research" at Yale. Now that's some privilege, dang! I think I barely made it through the interview, but I did listen to this women's "equity speak," and she's got the whole "equity, inclusion, and diversity" boondoggle down cold.
So, in the end, Biden had to send, really, a lower-lever White House aide, who is a black woman, and thus pretty much impervious to criticism, lest anyone who does have a word of opposition wants to be branded a "racist."
These people are despicable, and even Ms. Brennan, who is noticeably pregnant (which is admirable and shows that women do have incredible opportunities in the leftist media world these days), didn't drill down hard enough against this "woke" medical "social justice warrior" administrative shill as she could have.
Oh brother. It's bad. And it's going to be a long-four years; and keep in mind, my family's not opposed to getting the checks. But I'll bet like millions of other Americans, we're definitely not so happy about the, what?, near-90 percent of the bill which is practically a $2 trillion grab bag of pork-ladened goodies for far-left constituencies that helped these clowns gain office in the first place.
I can't even. *Sigh.*
At Politico, "POLITICO Playbook: Biden stiffs the Sunday shows":
President JOE BIDEN just signed the first BFD of his administration — a massive Covid relief bill to boost the fortunes of everyday Americans. But you barely heard a peep about it from his own administration on the Sunday shows. Yes, Biden is hitting the road this week to sell the package. But on his way out the door, he skipped a major audience on Sunday — a day many people will actually sit back and watch something of substance, hence the gangbuster ratings for CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Just one senior administration official was booked on the five major Sunday shows: Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN on ABC’s “This Week.” She fended off questions on whether $1.9 trillion in new spending would drive inflation and balloon the debt. Sunday show producers tell me the White House only offered medical staff like ANTHONY FAUCI, who appeared on CNN, NBC and FOX, and MARCELLA NUNEZ-SMITH, who went on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” This was despite requests for chief of staff RON KLAIN, VP KAMALA HARRIS and Biden himself. Senior communications staffers like JEN PSAKI, KATE BEDINGFIELD and SYMONE SANDERS were not even offered to explain the bill. “They’re leaving a vacuum on the Sunday shows,” said one senior producer, who called the whole thing “baffling.” A senior administration official downplayed the light presence on the Sunday programs, saying that Biden and Harris “look forward to hitting the road this week and engaging directly with the American people through events and interviews.” The official noted that the administration has done and will continue to do plenty of other press — national and local — on the Covid bill. But the Sunday shows combined reach an audience of about 10 to 15 million each weekend and help drive newspaper coverage on Monday. Biden himself has said BARACK OBAMA erred in not selling the 2009 economic rescue package to the public aggressively enough, and they paid a price for it in the 2010 midterms. Biden, who hasn’t held a news conference since he took office, is expected to interview with local media during his roadshow...
There's still more, but all it says is that "China Joe's" gonna talk sometime soon with fake journalist and high-paid Democrat-media-shill George Stephanopoulos, on ABC's morally bankrupt "Good Morning America," and KAMala (don't you dare say KaMALa) Harris will sit down with "CBS This Morning's Gayle King who is nice, but she's got heavy baggage as an Oprah lackey, and she's one who's guaranteed to be soft as a feather in interviewing the actually not-truly "black" vice president (at least, not truly black in the sense that she's never experienced the grinding poverty of real inner-city blacks who've been screwed by Democrat policies in the big urban leftist strongholds for decades), not to mention that King for sure won't press the former high-falutin' Brentwood local who's lied through her teeth about "marching" for civil rights, and don't you dare mention she's just as bad a plagiarist as Joe "Neil Kinnock" Biden (and both her parents, minorities they might be, earned doctoral degrees at U.C. Berkeley), so cry me a river about our "oppressed" second-in-command, who is perhaps more than any V.P. in history, literally a "heartbeat away" from taking her seat at the "resolute desk" for herself.
See what I mean, how bad things are? Gosh, the 2022 midterms can't come soon enough.
At LAT, surprisingly, "Inside U.S. troops’ stronghold in Syria, a question of how long Biden will keep them there":
KHSHAM, Syria — At a makeshift military outpost abutting a natural gas field in eastern Syria, the signs of the country’s violent upheaval are everywhere. Bombed-out concrete buildings lie in ruins. The pipes that once carried liquefied natural gas are shredded and twisted. A tattered U.S. flag strung between 40-foot-tall gas processing towers flies high over the base, a visible symbol that American troops are here — and not planning on leaving soon. “We’ve got the flagpole planted,” said Army Lt. Alan Favalora, a Louisiana National Guard soldier at Conoco, the name the base acquired from the long- departed U.S. oil and gas firm that once operated the wells. “We want them to know we are committed to this region.” How committed President Biden will be to keeping troops in Syria is uncertain, however. The Biden administration does not appear to be in any rush to pull out the 900 U.S. troops who remain in the country, a relatively small force that some White House officials see as key to preventing a resurgence of Islamic State and a rush to reclaim the area’s oil fields by Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. But White House officials have said they are reviewing the troop presence in Syria — an announcement that has raised concerns that Biden could reconsider the deployment as part of a larger scaling back of U.S. troops in the Middle East and a planned shift of Pentagon focus to Asia. What Biden is going to do “is the one question I got from everybody,” Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said in an interview after visiting eastern Syria on Friday. “I think the new administration is going to look at this, and then we’re going to get guidance.” Robert Ford, who was an ambassador to Syria during the Obama administration, called the U.S. strategy “deeply flawed” and said Biden should withdraw the remaining troops who have helped the Syrian Democratic Forces — a Kurdish-led militia — carve out a semiautonomous enclave in the country’s northeast. “I don’t think it’s worth it,” Ford said about the American deployment in an interview. Islamic State “is largely contained and not in a position to threaten the U.S. homeland or even to send fighters to Europe.” The Arab population in northeastern Syria initially supported Kurdish militias’ efforts to oust Islamic State. But many Arabs now resent being under the Kurds’ governance, creating a new source of recruits as Islamic State tries to recover, Ford added...
Well, of course Biden's policy is "deeply flawed," because his foreign policy advice has been "deeply flawed" all around, particularly during the Obama administration, when the "red line" fiasco basically put Russia in the driver's seat, giving that neo-imperialist power strategic advantage, of which it hasn't wasted, to the disadvantage of U.S. interests. Now Biden's just trying to salvage his own reckless legacy and save whatever loss of face he can for all the f*cked up Democrat foreign policy fiascos. These people are liars and hacks.
A great piece, from the fearless Gleen Greenwald, at his Substack page:
The most powerful and influential newspaper in the U.S., arguably the West, is The New York Times. Journalists who write for it, especially those whose work is featured on its front page or in its op-ed section, wield immense power to shape public discourse, influence thought, set the political agenda for the planet’s most powerful nation, expose injustices, or ruin the lives of public figures and private citizens alike. That is an enormous amount of power in the hands of one media institution and its employees. That’s why it calls itself the Paper of Record. One of the Paper of Record’s star reporters, Taylor Lorenz, has been much discussed of late. That is so for three reasons. The first is that the thirty-six-year-old tech and culture reporter has helped innovate a new kind of reportorial beat that seems to have a couple of purposes. She publishes articles exploring in great detail the online culture of teenagers and very young adults, which, as a father of two young Tik-Tok-using children, I have found occasionally and mildly interesting. She also seeks to catch famous and non-famous people alike using bad words or being in close digital proximity to bad people so that she can alert the rest of the world to these important findings. It is natural that journalists who pioneer a new form of reporting this way are going to be discussed. The second reason Lorenz is the topic of recent discussion is that she has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about influential people, and attempting to ruin the reputations and lives of decidedly non-famous people. In the last six weeks alone, she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room in which she was lurking (he had not) and then accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist in a different Clubhouse room to attack her (he, in fact, had said nothing). She also often uses her large, powerful public platform to malign private citizens without any power or public standing by accusing them of harboring bad beliefs and/or associating with others who do. (She is currently being sued by a citizen named Arya Toufanian, who claims Lorenz has used her private Twitter account to destroy her reputation and business, particularly with a tweet that Lorenz kept pinned at the top of her Twitter page for eight months, while several other non-public figures complain that Lorenz has “reported” on their non-public activities). It is to be expected that a New York Times journalist who gets caught lying as she did against Andreessen and trying to destroy the reputations of non-public figures will be a topic of conversation. The third reason this New York Times reporter is receiving attention is because she has become a leading advocate and symbol for a toxic tactic now frequently used by wealthy and influential public figures (like her) to delegitimize criticisms and even render off-limits any attempt to hold them accountable. Specifically, she and her media allies constantly conflate criticisms of people like them with “harassment,” “abuse” and even “violence.” That is what Lorenz did on Tuesday when she co-opted International Women’s Day to announce that “it is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I have had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life.” She began her story by proclaiming: “For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment.” She finished it with this: “No one should have to go through this.” Notably, there was no mention, by her or her many media defenders, of the lives she has harmed or otherwise deleteriously affected with her massive journalistic platform. That is deliberate. Under this formulation, if you criticize the ways Lorenz uses her very influential media perch — including by pointing out that she probably should stop fabricating accusations against people and monitoring the private acts of non-public people — then you are guilty of harassing a “young woman” and inflicting emotional pain and violence on her (it’s quite a bizarre dynamic, best left to psychologists, how her supporters insist on infantilizing this fully grown, close-to-middle-aged successful journalist by talking about her as if she’s a fragile high school junior; it’s particularly creepy when her good male Allies speak of her this way). This is worth focusing on precisely because it is now so common among the nation’s political and media elite. By no means is this tactic unique to Lorenz. She did not pioneer it. She is just latching onto it, exploiting it, in order to immunize herself from criticisms of her destructive journalistic misconduct and to depict her critics as violent harassers and abusers. With this framework implanted, there is no way to express criticisms of Taylor Lorenz’s work and the use and abuse of her journalistic platform without standing widely accused of maliciously inciting a mob of violent misogynists to ruin her life — that’s quite a potent shield from accountability for someone this influential in public life. But this is now a commonplace tactic among the society’s richest, most powerful and most influential public figures. The advent of the internet has empowered the riff-raff, the peasants, the unlicensed and the uncredentialed — those who in the past were blissfully silent and invisible — to be heard, often with irreverence and even contempt for those who wield the greatest societal privileges, such as a star New York Times reporter. By recasting themselves as oppressed, abused and powerless rather than what they are (powerful oppressors who sometimes abuse their power), elite political and media luminaries seek to completely reverse the dynamic. During Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign, one of the most common tactics used by her political and media supporters was to cast criticisms of her (largely from supporters of Bernie Sanders) not as ideological or political but as misogynistic, thus converting one of the world’s richest and most powerful political figures into some kind of a victim, exactly when she was seeking to obtain for herself the planet’s most powerful political office. There was no way to criticize Hillary Clinton — there still is not — without being branded a misogynist. A very similar tactic was used four years later to vilify anyone criticizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — also one of the world’s richest and most powerful figures — as she sought the power of the Oval Office...
Still more.
And at Hot Air, "Glenn Greenwald’s Insightful Take on the Taylor Lorenz Situation."
A great piece, from the surprisingly amazing Matt Taibbi, at his Substack page:
I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep. These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”? Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc. Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work: — Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty — Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor — Biden's historic victory for America The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about this person:
Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:
It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas. The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions. When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage. “In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.” This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing. The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted? The new, cleaved media landscape advances the same tiny intersection of elite opinion, except in the post-Trump era, that strip fits inside one party. Instead of appearing as props in a phony rendering of objectivity, Republicans in basically all non-Fox media have been moved off the legitimacy spectrum, and appear as foils only. Allowable opinion is now depicted stretching all the way from one brand of “moderate” Democrat to another...
Keep reading.
Again, you have to go to Duck Duck Go to find any decent conservative videos, especially for Tucker Carlson (and I don't know why Fox doesn't upload more of them, except to say, maybe they're afraid they'll lose even more audience share, despite Tucker's continuing killer ratings metrics).
And if you missed it, you gotta watch Tucker's interview with Alex Berenson from Wednesday night, which was just amazing, "Tucker Carlson Tonight 2-10-21 Alex Berenson."
But don't miss it! The Los Angeles Times has found its new "New Dealer" in the 78-year-old mumbo-jumbo "China Joe."
See, "Biden’s early win on COVID-19 relief could be hard to repeat. Or he could be FDR":
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s first big legislative victory, the $1.9-trillion package he calls the American Rescue Plan, squeaked through an evenly divided Senate by the narrowest of margins, along party lines, foreshadowing the challenges ahead for his other priorities — on infrastructure, voting rights, immigration and climate change. But the accomplishment — and the potential economic and public health impact of the wide-ranging relief program — could also mark a big step toward Biden fulfilling his Rooseveltian ambitions. “This is going to be the biggest legislation affecting social and economic justice in decades, and it’s been achieved in the early days of an administration,” said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative. Building on this early success won’t be easy, given Democrats’ razor-thin Senate and House majorities and the nation’s deep partisan divisions. Few of the president’s other policy initiatives are likely to be as broadly popular as combating a painful year-old pandemic. But his first 50 days have given Democrats reason to believe that the experienced, grandfatherly Biden is well-suited to capitalize on the opportunities opened up by the confluence of twin health and economic crises and a divided, distracted opposition party. “He’s been underestimated all along ... and then he pulled off the biggest popular vote defeat of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover lost in 1932,” said Shrum. “Nobody would have predicted this, but Biden’s not on a path to being a transitional figure. He’s on a path to being a transformational figure.” With Republicans failing to mount a blitz against him, Biden kept his focus on his pandemic response. He amped up vaccination efforts, mourned the more than 529,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, and built public support for his relief bill, much of which — direct payments, extended unemployment benefits, a child tax credit — is targeted toward the country’s neediest families. The fact that not a single Republican voted for the package belied its broad popularity, which Biden said was critical for passage. In a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 70% of Americans surveyed said they supported the proposal, including 41% of Republicans. And Biden, set to deliver a prime-time address Thursday to mark one year since the country first locked down to limit the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID, continues to earn high marks for his response. “He just seems like the right person at the right time, and this is a totally unprecedented time,” said Mack McLarty, President Clinton’s first chief of staff. “He’s very self-aware, and after being vice president and serving in the Senate, he’s at a different place in his life and career. He’s very secure in himself; he’s experienced loss and that’s shaped him. “He’s been decisive and bold, but in a very statesmanlike manner,” McLarty continued. “So far, it’s been effective.” Republican strategist Mike DuHaime said Biden benefits from the low bar Donald Trump set by his outlandish conduct as president. “It’s a very basic level of competency and a lack of controversy,” DuHaime said of Biden. “Just by being boring, he is clearing the bar.” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said Biden also benefits from “being an old white guy.” Belcher, who is Black, added: “It’s hard for Republicans to scare middle-of-the-road Republicans about Joe Biden.... But he’s also someone minorities have rallied around. And that makes for a combination we don’t see very often in our politics.” Biden and Democrats have been guided by hindsight and an oft-avowed determination not to repeat perceived mistakes from President Obama’s first year by going too small on a recovery package, waiting too long for Republican support, or failing to tout its benefits. The example of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has also been influential for Biden and his team. Chief of Staff Ron Klain and other senior aides made a point of studying FDR’s Depression-era presidency during the transition period, and Biden hung his portrait in the Oval Office. But past experience is only so helpful. “It’s good to learn from the past. It’s more important to recognize changed circumstances when you’re in the moment,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was a communications director for Obama. “The Biden team, as much as they’re relying on their experience, they’re seeing and appreciating that they’re in uncharted territory.” Many senior aides, Palmieri noted, are on their third tour of duty at the White House after serving Presidents Clinton and Obama. “You learn to trust your instincts,” she said. “And you come to know that to some degree, you’re damned [politically] if you do and if you don’t. So it becomes: Position yourself to actually solve the problems.” When Biden and his aides began sketching out a relief bill before the inauguration, they didn’t start with a price tag. “We spent weeks assessing and analyzing what more the federal government could do to meet this challenge more effectively, more aggressively and more forcefully,” said Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti. “The total number and nature of the package reflected that analysis. The president had assessed that this was what was needed to address the crisis.” Biden never budged from the $1.9-trillion bottom line, arguing that Obama’s 2009 stimulus package suggested the greater risk was spending too little. Emboldened by two Senate victories on Jan. 5 in Georgia, where the Democratic candidates won after campaigning for larger relief payments, Biden also refused to reduce the $1,400 provided for most Americans in the bill. Once the Georgia elections suddenly put Democrats in control of the Senate, they could use a procedural option for budget bills, known as reconciliation, to pass the measure with just 50 votes — without Republican support. Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, leveraged his relationships with lawmakers in both parties. He was unsuccessful in cajoling moderate Republicans, but helped negotiate a last-minute compromise on unemployment benefits to secure the decisive 50th vote from centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. The victory unified a Democratic caucus that had been divided over parts of the bill, in particular over a minimum wage increase that was ultimately removed on procedural grounds...
I should say, I hope the authors of this piece, Eli Stokols and Chris Megerian, had an extra set of clothes handy, after obviously drooling all over themselves while writing-up this hasty hagiography. (*Eye-roll.*)
