The one thing the Elizabeth Warren for president campaign cannot afford is ‘I’m With Her’ redux.
Hillary ‘the “her”’ Clinton came off as ultra-phony. She tried too hard to be something she is not — that is, likable and not an elitist. Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to seem normal were transparently clumsy. Even cringe-worthy, as when on The Breakfast Club with ‘Charlemagne the God,’ she said that she carried hot sauce in her purse.
You know, because, just like black Americans, she really loves her hot sauce.
The faux-Cherokee Senator from Harvard already has an honesty problem to deal with, just like Hillary. She doesn’t need a Witless/Senescent Boomer aura on top of that.
But that she suffers from just this sort of insincerity became clear in her first livestream, the most inauthentic aping of normalcy most of us have ever seen. And now there is ‘Warren’s Meme Team,’ a Twitter account designed to marshal young people to make ‘memes’ that will support Warren just the way Trump’s supporters Pepe-d Trump’s success in 2016.
Publicizing the notion of “saving the nation with selfies and memes” (in the words of the account) sinks Warren below Hillary down to Biden-level cluelessness. As Dave Cullen relates on Bitchute, the ham-fisted and “unintentionally hilarious” scheme “smacks of sterile, joyless corporate marketing jargon.”
If Warren loses to Trump next year, it won’t be cause of sub-par memes, of course. It will be because of mimesis — that is, mimicry — of Hillary Clinton.
Or because Warren, the self-professed capitalist, is viewed as a socialist.
Here in Virginia, it looks like we will have a soggy Halloween. But in Chicago the cold and snow may barrel in big time.
“A buckled jet stream weather pattern known as the Pineapple Express has sent warm weather from closer to the equator north to Alaska, setting records there,” we learn from The Chicago Tribune, “even as it’s forced below-normal temperatures south from closer to the Arctic and into the Chicago area.”
The Tribune notes that they are working on a new record in the Windy City. Not a new lowest temperature, but, well, “a record for coldest high temperature.” Go back over a century and a half, before all this ‘global warming,’ and “records were set in 1873 for the coldest Oct. 31 high temperature, 31 degrees, and the lowest low temperature, 23 degrees.”
What is refreshing in all this is not the chill winds, nor the snow. It’s to read multiple articles about the weather and see not one mention of greenhouse gases and man-made ‘climate-change.’
Mark Twain famously once quipped that “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Nowadays, too many people are trying to do something about not just ‘the weather’ but about ‘the climate.’
Which, we should understand, is deceptively simple when we put the definitive article in front of the word: THE climate. When I was a kid, most climate talk referred to weather patterns in regions. Not the whole planet as one big region.
What if the interaction of different regions were the real story?
So, my Halloween treat has already been digested: the hobgoblin of catastrophic climate change has been set aside, the cold weather too strong a contrast to feed that diabolical narrative.
“The thing is, LeBron, we’ve come to expect more of you,” writes Dan Wolken in USA Today, taking the National Basketball Association star to task for his comments taking Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey to task for having tweeted“Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
Morey’s pro-protester statement had caused a backlash against the NBA from the totalitarian Chinese government, threatening the league’s — and LeBron’s — continued access to China’s large and lucrative market of basketball fans.
LeBron James told reporters that Morey was “misinformed, not really educated” about the Hong Kong situation, before adding, witlessly, “I have no idea but that’s just my belief.”
“Yes, we all do have freedom of speech,” acknowledged James, “but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen, when you’re not thinking of others and you’re only thinking about yourself.”
Ramifications for whom? The people of Hong Kong yearning for freedom and democracy? Or was Mr. James . . . only thinking about himself?
Criticism came fast and furious. “@KingJames — you’re parroting communist propaganda. China is running torture camps and you know it,” tweeted Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.
“Let me clear up the confusion,” responded the King of Basketball, if not public relations. “I do not believe there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet. I’m not discussing the substance.”
And then LeBron further clarified, “My team and this league just went through a difficult week. I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others. . . . Could have waited a week to send it.”
Hong Kong protesters are now burning LeBron’s No. 23 jersey.
Last Friday, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, tweeted a graphic repeating the Hong Kong protesters’ chant,
“Fight for freedom!
“Stand with Hong Kong!”
But before I could hit “like,” he deleted it amid the massive backlash from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese companies it rules.
The owner of the Rockets, with billions in NBA business at stake, immediately distanced himself from his GM — and human rights — tweeting that, “@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets” and “we are NOT a political organization.”
Rockets star James Harden apologized on Chinese state television, adding, “We love China. We love playing there.”
Despite suggesting that it does not “Stand with Hong Kong,” the NBA did reiterate that “the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them.”
“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” GM Morey penitently explained in yet another tweet. “I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.”
On Facebook, Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai posted a defense of China’s anti-democratic action in Hong Kong. “Supporting a separatist movement in a Chinese territory is one of those third-rail issues,” the Taiwan-born businessman wrote.
Let’s hope Hongkongers — for the last 18 weeks risking life and limb by demanding basic democracy, rather than totalitarian control by China — were not counting on a more steadfast commitment from Morey.
Sen. Kamala Harris successfully bears aloft the banner of Barack Obama.
As “a person of color”? Yeah, sure — but mainly by pandering to ignorant ideologues.
“Look, women are still not paid equal for equal work in America,” she said recently at a campaign stop.
The Daily Wirenotes that a few months ago she dug herself deeper:
“The law says that men and women should be paid equally for equal work, but what we know is that in America today, women on average are paid 80 cents on the dollar of what men are paid for the same work. African American women, 61 cents on the dollar, Latinas 53 cents on the dollar. And these are actually not debatable points.”
Well, these points are not debatable . . . in the sense that they have no merit, and everyone who has studied this objectively knows this. Politifacttitles its article covering her statement: “On Colbert, Kamala Harris flubs wage gap statistic.”
“Flubs” puts it lightly.
Lies is more like it.
Former President Obama surely fibbed, too, when, in 2016, he said, “[t]oday, the typical woman who works full-time earns 79 cents for every dollar that a typical man makes.”
He knew that he was misusing statistics. He has been made aware of the debunkings of the 79¢ myth. And he understood; he’s no dummy.
The stat is not about “equal pay for equal work.” It aggregates incomes. There is no job-for-job equality and no consideration of real wages (with benefits, for instance). It is just that women-as-a-class take home less pay than men-as-a-class, per capita.
“It is known,” as was said on Game of Thrones.
The lie continues because of America’s “game of thrones.”
Minding my own business — well, maybe not so much . . . except that “mankind is my business” — I joined Hong Kong’s Global Anti-Totalitarianism Rally.
Is there a more important cause than preventing totalitarian regimes from crushing more lives?
Arriving at the city government complex, I discovered that protesters were marching from another location and would not be there for another 30 minutes or so.
“Hey, I have a plane to catch!” I thought to myself.
Protests are not always punctual.
A convoy of police buses left, leaving press people speculating on whether they were headed to block protesters from getting to the government center at all. Thankfully, about an hour later I saw marchers a block away passing city hall and headed . . . well, to be honest, I had no idea where they were headed. But I hustled up to join their ranks, nonetheless.
After walking for more than half an hour to chants of “Fight for freedom/Stand with Hong Kong,” and “Five demands/Not one less,” I realized had I better get back to the hotel, grab my bags and scoot to the airport.
So I turned around and walked past the long line of marchers, finally reaching city hall where police were set up in riot gear. A small number of protesters were there as well. Suddenly, a policeman fired a volley of tear gas. (I guess such things always seem sudden to those in their sights.) It was followed by several more rounds, which hit both in front of me and behind me.
I saw no cause for the escalation.
“Uh-oh, this is a lot of tear gas,” I realized, holding my breath as I attempted to run outside the range of the rapidly spreading gas. No surprise, but tear gas really burns your eyes — and lungs, too, making it difficult to breathe.
Now it really hit home just how right-on my Friday commentary was to laud Alex Ko, the Taiwanese fellow who raised money to send 2,000 gas mask kits to HK protesters.
As I exited the cloud of smoke, a young man wearing a gas mask came up to me and told me, “Breathe.” It was sound advice.
I was carrying a bottle of water and poured it into both eyes soaking my “Got Liberty?” t-shirt. Which helped a great deal. (I mean the water, not the shirt.)
Another protester handed me a pre-packaged vial of sterilized water. Yet another gave me something labeled “Disposable Surgical Earloop Face Mask.” Neither was effective, frankly, but I certainly appreciated their concern. (And I kept the items as souvenirs.)
Getting back to the hotel was not so simple, either. The subway stations in the surrounding area had been closed by police. And there was a dearth of available taxis. After walking for ten minutes or so, I finally found one and left.
I made my flight, barely, jetting to the greater freedom of Taiwan, and to the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy where I’m speaking later this week.
Some wonder why I would take this risk. Well, if these brave young people can continually take much larger risks to fight tyranny, I feel compelled to take much smaller risks to support them. I’m honored to have been with them, to stand with them. Even to cough and gasp and tear up with them.
Those are the tears of future freedom . . . I certainly hope.
Cancel culture, writes Christian Britschgi of Reason, may have just “jumped the shark.”
Britschgi tells the tale of “Carson King, a 24-year-old security guard who achieved viral fame after he was spotted on ESPN’s College Gameday waving a sign that asked people to use the mobile payment app Venmo to send him beer money.” Mr. King got a huge number of responses, then decided to give it all to charity. This spurred on both Anheuser-Busch and Venmo to match the donations, and a hero was born.
Enter the shark.
I mean, legacy media.
The Des Moines Register chose to profile King, on Tuesday, with that special postmodern twist: dig up some ugly tweets by the man from back when he was a 16-year-old edgelord, saying the de rigueur racist things.
Next: apologies, backlash.
“Treating a person’s most intemperate tweets as worthy of public shame is an exercise in hypocrisy,” Britschgi not unreasonably asserts. “What’s worse is that we have graduated from using social media history as a way of divining a person’s true nature to deploying that history cynically and maliciously.”
The hypocrisy part was provided by the Register’s registered hitman, a recent hire who was himself caught on Twitter, having used the n-word and warning others never to talk to “strange gay men,” as Keith Mann regales us with on Heavy.
This is not the way civilized people behave.
Sure, don’t tweet ugly, vicious stuff in the first place. That’s a good takeaway.
But cancel culture shouldn’t cancel out cultural goodness.
The latest scandal of the How Dare You Say That!?! variety features The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, who is banned from Fox News, we learn, because he characterized the celebrated “climate activist” Greta Thunberg as “mentally ill.”
He said it while serving as one of those invited talking heads. The other guest immediately cried “how dare you?”
And censoriousness ensued, with high moral dudgeon and nasty put-downs and the whole shebang.
While I don’t really know much about Miss Thunberg’s mental health going into all this, I do not believe it can be much improved by playing Prophetess on the world stage.
Which also givestoo much cultural power to someone so young. And since power corrupts . . . that’s not good for Greta, and it makes her promoters corruptors.
And that is the point Mr. Knowles appeared to be trying to make. Reasonable people can disagree on the propriety ofhow “the execrable Michael Knowles” (as his fellow Daily Wire colleagues jovially refer to him) referred to the Swedish prophetess, of course. But it neverthelessremains rather shocking to witness
“Adults sometimes like to use children to carry their messages,” vidcaster and Dilbert creator Scott Adams points out, “because it makes it hard for the other side to criticize them without seeming like monsters.”
How can we “listen to the scientists,” as Miss Thunberg recently implored, if the talking is being done by a young teenage non-scientist?
I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?
On Wednesday, the 16-year-old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement.
She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”
You know, for “real action.”
It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”
And then the non-scientist spoke . . . not very expansively.
Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.
Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing . . . exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?
That’s what Democratic presidential aspirant and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg reminded last night’s debate audience. “All day today, I’ve been thinking about September 12th, the way it felt when for a moment we came together as a country.”
The terrorist attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon, and the attempt foiled by brave citizens who were killed in the crash of their airliner in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, did indeed result in a wonderful bond of unity throughout our country.
Having lost more than 3,000 citizens, we came together.
“Imagine,” instructs Buttigieg, “if we had been able to sustain that unity.”
Before we all sing along with John Lennon, though, consider: (1) It is not so easy for government to re-create the sort of public horror, fear, grief, etc., necessary to ensure maximum national unity, and (2) please don’t try.
The purpose of government is not to produce a pressure-cooker society where we forever exist on a wartime footing.
Do you miss the good old days of World War II? Totalitarianism threatened much of the globe; 70 million people died in the war. But it unified our country, which defeated Nazism, fascism, and a murderous empire.
We must memorialize the victory, not repeat it . . . just for unity’s sake.
Yet the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocosio-Cortez (D-NY) states that “the House of Representatives recognizes that a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal is a historic opportunity. . . .”
Opportunity?
Our motto should be ‘Liberty’ — not ‘never let a crisis go to waste.’
