Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.
Oscar Levant, as quoted in Theodor Reik‘s Jewish Wit (1962), p. 104.
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Oscar Levant
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A Woman at the Bar
On December 30, 1919, Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, admitted its first female bar student.
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Reasonable Seasonal Grievances
Senator Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) has published his annual “Festivus Report” on federal government spending, and it doesn’t look good. The federal debt is on a multi-trillion-dollar spree, yet politicians keep throwing money around:
- Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime: The federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings
- A Pandemic Plunder: A Florida man stole $8 million in COVID-19 Relief funds to buy an island and more
- Your Tax Dollars at Play: The Department of the Interior (DOI) spent $12 Million on a Las Vegas Pickleball Complex
- Taxpayers Fund a Disinformation Index: The Department of State (DOS) wasted $330,000 to fund censorship of non- liberal and conservative media
- Hold on to Your Steering Wheels: The Department of Energy (DOE) spent $15.5 billion to push Americans toward electric vehicles they don’t want
- The Influencer Effect Hits Foreign Policy: The Department of State (DOS) squandered $4,840,082 on influencers
- When Bailouts Go Bust: The United States Department of the Treasury (USDT) granted a failed trucking company a $700 million pandemic-era loan
- Flocking Together! DEI Takes Flight: The National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $288,563 to ensure bird watching groups have safe spaces aka “Affinity Groups”
- Interest-ingly Wasteful: Americans are paying $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 on the interest on Uncle Sam’s Credit Card
- Because Who Needs a Secure U.S. Border, Anyway? The Department of State (DOS) spent $2.1 million for Paraguayan Border Security
These are just a few highlights. Read the full report for more juicy boondoggles and drunken-sailor prodigality.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” explains the senator. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”
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Oscar Wilde
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891).
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Mongolia, 1911
On December 29, 1911, Mongolia gained independence from the Qing Dynasty.
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China Hacks In
The United States federal government has been charged with protecting us from foreign enemies. But have those butcher’s-and-baker’s dozen of intel agencies and the Pentagon and Homeland Security really done the job?
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top White House official on Wednesday said at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations have been impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign.
Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.
Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future. White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could still grow.
The U.S. believes that the hackers were able to gain access to communications of senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures through the hack, Neuberger said.
Aamer Madhani, “White House says at least 8 US telecom firms, dozens of nations impacted by China hacking campaign,” Associated Press, December 4, 2024.
The report has not been all that widely discussed, oddly enough. How extensive were the cyber-incursions? “The number of countries impacted by the hack is currently believed to be in the ‘low, couple dozen,’ according to a senior administration official.”
For more information on Chinese communist aggression, see StoptheChinazis.org.
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Dorothy Parker
If with the literate I am
Dorothy Parker, in Life, (June 2, 1927) p. 13.
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
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Calhoun Resigns!
The first Vice President of the United States to resign his office occurred on December 28, 1832, when the seventh, John C. Calhoun — serving at the job since March 4, 1825, under two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson — vacated the position to take up his new calling as Senator from South Carolina (December 29, 1832 – March 3, 1843). After an unsuccessful bid for the presidency and a short stint as Secretary of State, Calhoun returned to the Senate on November 26, 1845, dying in office on March 31, 1850.
On the same date three years later, the great leader Osceola led his Seminole warriors into the Second Seminole War against the United States Army. Eleven years after that, Iowa joined the union as the 29th state.
Yesterday, we considered the farce of Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Tex.), serving out her term from an assisted living home — suffering, her family says, from “dementia issues.”
So, today, let’s discuss the donkey in the room: the president of these United States, one Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
“Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public,” explains a major exposé in the Wall Street Journal.
How “throughout”? Almost from day one: “a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on,” notes The Journal, “in just the first few months of his term.”
The reportage confirms what we suspected. “The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.”
This structure also served to cover for Biden’s most characteristic failing, “foot-in-mouth”: his hand-holders sought “to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.”
Not a morning person, the staff concocted an elaborate schedule of afternoon meetings which they tried to keep very short. “If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether.”
Perhaps most importantly, “[t]he strategies to protect Biden largely worked,” the report reminds, “until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump.”
Luckily, the Washington cabal has not quite figured out a way to have a president as figure-head only and keep the deception from the American electorate.
But too close for comfort.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Edward Bernays
One reason, perhaps, why the politician today is slow to take up methods which are a commonplace in business life is that he has such ready entry to the media of communication on which his power depends.
Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928).
The newspaperman looks to him for news. And by his power of giving or withholding information the politician can often effectively censor political news. But being dependent, every day of the year and for year after year, upon certain politicians for news, the newspaper reporters are obliged to work in harmony with their news sources.