Mid-Morning Open Thread
—CBD
The Swan
Michael Zavros
Okay...so it's from this century. Shut up.
DON"T JUDGE ME!
The Morning Report 6/27/17
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning, kids. The President and America had an overall great day in court yesterday. The Supreme Court, that is. Justice Neil Gorsuch is looking like everything we hoped he would be and a key reason why many voted for Trump. While we did lose a second amendment battle against the rogue state of California, his dissent, coauthored with Clarence Thomas, is Scalia-like in its brilliance and eloquence. Let's hope it's only a taste of what's to come.
Next, a potential bombshell; a secret memo indicates that the FBI's investigation into Michael Flynn may have been engineered by now acting director McCabe as a retaliation for Flynn interceding on behalf of a woman who was planning on filing a sex discrimination against McCabe and other top G-Men. And not unrelated, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas has undercover footage showing a top CNN producer admitting the Russia thing is bullshit.
The GOP Renege and Repackage bill was scored by the CBO, for whatever that's worth. Of course noted champion of the free market Warren Buffett insists that all of us abandon the free market and embrace socialist NIH-style single payer. And alta-koker tyrant wannabe Bernardo Sandino and his wifey are being investigated for evidently goniffing a real estate deal in Vermont. It would be laughable were it not for the fact that too many young people, and too many adults that ought to know better look to this failure-of-a-man as a savior.
Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.
- Secret Memo Suggests FBI Russia Probe Was Retaliation Against Flynn for Going Against McCabe in Sex Discrimination Suit
- US Detects Assad Prepping Another Chemical Attack, Issues Strong Warning
- Keep F**king That Chicken Dept.: Hoyer Declares SCOTUS Reinstating Travel Ban "Hands Victory to ISIS"
- Project Veritas: CNN Producer Admits Network Hyping "Mostly Bullshit" Russia Probe for "Ratings"
- In Bid to Screw PDT, Obama-era Holdovers' Leaks Endangering National Security
- Rush: Public Opinion Could Curtail Mueller-Led Coup
- Feds Ratcheting Up Probe on Sanders, Wife in VT College Real Estate Swindle. . .
- . . . Comrade Bernie Dodges Reporter, Refuses to Answer Questions
- Smoke: CBO Sez GOP Healthcare Bill Reduces Deficit by $321 Billion, Lower Premiums 31% by 2020
- Mirrors: How Will the Bill Lower Premiums? Corporate Welfare for Insurance Companies
- Greedy Pig Thinks It's Time US Scraps Free Market and Institutes Brit-Style Single Payer
- Mr. President: Don't Suck Up to Industries That Hate You
- Conservatives Cheering Gorsuch as SCOTUS Ends Current Term
- Dem Dingell Daughter: Obama "Was Dead Wrong" on Trade
- The Bizarre Historical Connection Between Germany and Islam
Monday Overnight Open Thread (6/26/17) First Monday of The Week Edition
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
Quote I
So many books, so little time.Frank Zappa
Quote II
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quote III
A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you. Harold Ramis
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Whoa: Three CNN Personnel Connected to #FakeNews Russia Report "Resign"
—Ace
I didn't believe that CNN would actually discipline anybody. For once, I was wrong about CNN.
Wow, they really must have done something wrong here.
Three CNN staffers have resigned following the publication and subsequent retraction of a story linking a Trump transition team member to the Russia-related investigations.The piece, published late last week, cited an anonymous source saying the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into the chief executive of a $10-billion Russian investment fund who met with financier Anthony Scaramucci before the inauguration.
The reporter, Pulitzer-prize nominee Thomas Frank, assistant managing editor Eric Lichtblau (who recently joined from the New York Times) and Lex Haris, the executive editor in charge of investigations, are all out.
"In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," CNN said in a statement.
Scaramucci threatened a lawsuit, Politico reports, but media companies are used to that and usually ignore such threats. Price of doing business.
If they pulled this down in reaction to that threat, they must have been pretty sure they'd lose.
Meanwhile, Jim Acosta keeps whining that he doesn't get to play pretend Hero of #TheResistance with cameras on in the White House briefings:
.@Acosta temper tantrum proves @CNN is only after political theatrics.
— Katherine Byrd (@peaceandjoy101) June 26, 2017
I don't need to see the band to listen to the radio!#AudioOnly pic.twitter.com/IPbyRvxv5X
Sean Spicer seems to make fun of Acosta's camera-hungry nature here:
.@Acosta tries to shout a Q. @PressSec: “There's no camera on, Jim."
— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) June 26, 2017
Report: Fusion GPS, Which Injected the Infamous "Pee Party" Dossier Into the #FakeNews Bloodstream, Is, Get This, Stonewalling Senate Investigators About Its Connections to the Democrat Party and the FBI
—Ace
Does Adam Schiff demand "all the answers" to these questions too?
The D.C. firm that commissioned the Russia intelligence dossier smearing President Donald Trump is refusing to answer questions and provide records to the Senate panel investigating its connections to the Democratic Party, according to the New York Post's Paul Sperry. The so-called "dodgy dossier" helped spark the Russia scandal that has been bedeviling Trump since the election. Astonishingly, the FBI became involved with the dossier last summer, even though it knew the salacious report lacked credibility -- and now it is also stonewalling the Senate Judiciary Committee.Fusion GPS calls itself a “research and strategic intelligence firm” but is well known in Washington to be an opposition-research group for Democrats. According to Sperry, the firm's founders are "more political activists than journalists" and have "a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda."
A source I know with experience in intelligence operations told me, flatly, that this whole matter was "an op" -- a covert intelligence operation against Trump, cooked up by spooks opposed to him -- from start to finish.
Important Story From Vice: Straight Men Aren't Lining Up to Have Sex With Transexuals
—Ace
There's a lot of stories like this -- trans people complaining that people whose gender identities are stubbornly non-fluid aren't willing to date or have sex with people whose sexuality is ambiguous.
Vice is just the latest to push the idea, as Heat St calls it, "pity f***s for social justice."
I ask this a lot but I'll ask it again: If it's fair game for George Stephanopolous to ask Mitt Romney, out of nowhere, whether he'd ban contraception-- that is, to ask a Republican about an idea he'd never suggested, just to put him in the position of being associated with a fringe sort of position and also having to distance himself from a fringe sort of position that may be held by some of his potential voters -- why is George Stephanopolous not asking prominent Democrats if they agree with the proposition that being "tolerant" of gay and/or trans people means that straight people should be willing to date them?
If we get asked such wedge issue questions about difficult, embarrassing, wedge-issue sexual topics, why the hell shouldn't Claire McCaskill and Elizabeth Warren and Lord God King Barack Obama be asked if "Love Trumps Hate" means that straight people should repress their own "Born This Way" Sexuality and do some gay dating?
CNN Publishes Single-Source Claim on Russia Investigation, Then Disappears It, Then Finally Retracts;
Forbids Reporters From Running Any Russia Story Without Permission, Promises "Discipline"
—Ace
Before getting to that, Camille Paglia said last week that the Democrat Party had broken journalism, and that it would take "decades" to heal the wounds.
It would take decades to recover if they ever self-critiqued and self-corrected, which they're psychologically incapable of doing.
"It's obscene," she said. "It's outrageous, OK? It shows that the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood. There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What's happened to the major networks? It's an outrage.""I'm a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK?" she continued. "And I think it's absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that's going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior.”
Now on to the newest CNN #FakeNews: CNN reported, on the basis of a single anonymous source, that a Trump associate did business with Russia, and that he's now the target of a criminal probe.
They then retracted. First, they seem to have done so without acknowledging the retraction, just deleting all mentions of the story in their Twitter fed and nuking links to it.
But after Buzzfeed asked where the story went to, they issued a note stating it had been retracted, and failed to even meet CNN's Like Whatever Man exacting editorial standards for Russia reporting. If you can imagine such a thing.
CNN claimed Senate investigators are looking into whether or not Scaramucci discussed lifting sanctions with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the $10-billion Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a meeting just four days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.“CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” CNN said in its editor’s note, “That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”
Given that CNN is actually apologizing, and nuking the story from orbit, I have to guess that this story didn't just fail to meet their "editorial standards," whatever those might turn out to be when discovered, but was objectively and perhaps actionably false.
CNN is now forcing reporters to pre-clear all "Russia-related" stories by high ranking editors before publishing anywhere -- including social media -- and promising "discipline" over this error:
Over the weekend, CNN's executives busied themselves with a new process for reporting on Russia, Buzzfeed later learned. According to an internal memo, all reporting from CNN on that topic will have to get specific approval from executives before appearing on any of their platforms. Jon Passantino's source says that disciplinary action will also be forthcoming over last week’s debacle...
When a report is so fake that even CNN is panicking over it-- well, that's CNN showing us what it really is. A hotbed of conspiracy theorists and vulgar partisans.
Supreme Court Rules State Cannot Discriminate Against Religious Schools
—Ace
Gorsuch strikes twice.
The case involved grants made generally available to all schools in the state for refurbishment of run-down playgrounds. But then the state ruled that, while these funds were appropriated for all schools, religious schools nonetheless had to be affirmatively discriminated against, because you can't have government money ever going to icky religious schools (even if the money is not specifically to advance religion, but is just another state boondoggle of taxpayer cash for hard-to-argue-against feelgood spending programs).
Gorsuch and six other justices said Nah, brah.
The justices ruled 7-2 that Missouri stretched the constitutional separation of church and state too far by declaring a Lutheran church ineligible to receive a competitive state grant for playground resurfacing. The decision could have implications for more than 30 states that block public funds from going to religious organizations.Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision. Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
Even though the state's denial of funds likely would lead only to "a few extra scraped knees," Roberts said, "the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benenfit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand."
...
"It does seem as though ... this is a clear burden on a constitutional right," liberal Justice Elena Kagan said then, in reference to the state's refusal to treat Trinity Lutheran Church equally to other non-profits seeking state grants. The church had met all the neutral criteria for the program.
Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas would have gone further than Roberts, who suggested in a footnote to the court's decision that the case "involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination."
Gorsuch wrote: "The general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise -- whether on the playground or anywhere else."
So once more: Gorsuch would have gone farther.
No John Roberts taint on this one.
As Craig Ferguson used to say, it's a great day in America.
Supreme Court Reinstates, Mostly, Trump's Travel Ban;
Dissenters' Argument Is That They Should Have Restored All of the Ban
—Ace
The only limitation the court is permitting on the travel ban is for those who have a bona-fide pre-existing close relative in the country or bona-fide, established-previously business in the country. Such persons may visit the country.
But for all others, the Trump ban is back on.
Incidentally, the opinion doesn't even mention Trump's campaign statements, suggesting that the Court views this entire line of argument to be so illegitimate as to not even be worth a rebuttal.
This is a decision about a preliminary injunction -- the Court has struck most of the lower courts' injunction against enforcement of the ban down. But the case has not been heard in full on the merits yet. That'll happen later -- but it's not looking good for #TheResistance.
The resistance's greatest legal victory has been gutted, and not even Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted its most extreme arguments.
Guest Post: Observations From Flyover Country (Cumberland Astro)
—CBD
Since Donald Trump was elected I have seen a spate of local news stories about companies building, expanding, or investing in manufacturing plants within a 50 mile radius of Chattanooga. With these new plants there will be hundreds of new manufacturing jobs. Although pundits in Washington who are much smarter than me (just ask them) keep saying that manufacturing in America is dead, I'm observing a multitude of companies behaving otherwise, including several foreign companies. I don't think the Acela crowd is aware that manufacturing is expanding in business-friendly states.
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Mid-Morning Open Thread
—CBD
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
John Constable
It looks like a crossword jigsaw puzzle, and a damned complicated one at that. The artist's technical prowess and patience is obvious, but I wonder if that is all that is necessary? It's certainly not evocative of any personal triumph or tragedy. I guess it could be seen as social commentary.
Or just a cool painting.
I don't know, but it's fun.
The Morning Report 6/26/17
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning, kids. Another week is upon us and first up we have the continuing meltdown of the Media/Democrat Complex as their Russia collusion/obstruction-of-justice meme is crumbling like a wet blini. Propaganda outlet CNN is front and center after having pumped out and then been forced to retract a complete fable (pushed most notably by Senator Elizabeth Warpath among others) their own media critic Brian Stetler was refused comment by his own employer. Wow.
Next, there is a push to ram home the Senate Obamacare Rehash and Relabel Bill by the July 4th holiday. I find it infuriating that a) it doesn't go nearly far enough in dismantling the monster and bolstering free market solutions (as promised) but that b) those who point this out are labeled as "purists." Sorry, but no amount of ketchup and Everclear will wash down a feces sammich and make it taste like sirloin steak. If it's not obvious by now that this is all kabu-kakke theater to keep in place a bureaucracy that keeps DC denizens empowered and swimming in lucre, then you (the royal you) should not be coming here any more.
Lastly, the final link about this shyster lawyer who scammed over half a billion dollars in SSDI money is infuriating to say the least. It is a perfect example of why we need tort reform, judicial reform, entitlement reform as well as why government functions best when it functions least. And if Obamacare remains whole, in part, or as Mark Levin warns we get single payer, the fraud and abuse outlined above will look like a rounding error in what's to come. Sadly, to paraphrase Oberst von Scherbach "you will not get them." Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.
- Sketchy Firm Behind Trump "Dossier" is Dem-Affiliated and Stonewalling Investigation
- PDT to Call for US "Dominance" in Global Energy Production
- Levin: Not Only is O'Care Here to Stay, Same GOP Refusing Repeal Will Help Usher in Single Payer
- Four Ways to Get Senate Conservatives to Vote "Yes" on O'Care Repeal/Replace
- Say, What?! Dems Pissed PDT Has Failed to Lower Drug Prices
- Nebraska Dem Sez He's "F**king Glad" Scalise Got Shot, Wishes He Was "F**king Dead"
- 41% of Counties Could Have Only One Insurer in O'Care Exchanges, Up from 33%
- Even CNN's Own Brian Stetler Told "No Comment" from Outlet's Spox About Fake News Story
- Flint Terrorist Might Have Actually Debunked the "Gun Show Loophole" Myth
- Chicago Gay Parade Bans Star of David Gay Pride Flag Because Joo and "Safety Concerns" But Mostly "Joo"
- Why Otto Warmbier's Murder is the Biggest Challenge Yet to PDT's Presidency
- Birth of a New Persian Empire
- Why Germany is Once Again a Threat to the West
- A Cultural Revolution in Slow Motion
- Blood Boiling Dept.: Fugitive Lawyer Guilty of $600 Million in SSDI Scam, On the Lam with Fake Passport, Claims He's Now Broke and Working 9-5
Sunday Overnight Open Thread (6/25/17) Rusty Edition
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
Quote I
A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking. Earl Wilson
Quote II
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. Steve Jobs
Quote III
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. Samuel Johnson
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C'est La Vie (MJ)
—Open Blogger
Our civic debate and the intellectualism surrounding it has become boring. We all know the prism through which Charles Blow (racism), Thomas Friedman (globalism), or any left leaning publication will present its view. Everything the Left does is predictable.
The Right is oftentimes similarly rote, although there exists a stronger willingness to debate an issue beyond the merely emotional. It's more about the construct than the destruct; the depth and breadth.
Whereas speech is the hallmark of the Right, it is anathema to the Left. Their adherence to a limited cadre of acceptable words has led directly to their stunted and sheltered views.
I believe this unwillingness for honest diagnosis is leading to a growing, if not already fatal wound in Europe; the pinnacle of Leftism.
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Food Thread: When I Use A Word, It Means Just What I Choose It To Mean -- Neither More Nor Less
—CBD
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Afternoon Food Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are gorgeous (and naked under their aprons), knives are always sharp and never used to cut tofu or kale, and special snowflakes starve to death. And unlike other AoSHQ threads, the Sunday Afternoon Food Thread is so hoity-toity, we have a book! And bacon...
Or at least we will have a book, if you get off your asses and submit some recipes (and just once, could you color inside the lines please? We have rules!) And if Weasel and Bluebell and the rest of the reprobates and voluptuaries and debauchees (who claim to be assisting this grand project but really are just stealing the booze samples), put down the bourbon bottle and actually get something done.
Now that we have spent weeks touting the Moron Cookbook, nagging you to refine and submit Aunt Tillie's recipe for rutabaga mash with chopped chicken feet, it is time to discuss the inescapable reality that recipes are not received wisdom, that they are, at least for people who are comfortable in the kitchen, guidelines and ideas, not rigid and immutable laws.
Sort of like the US Constitution is for liberals.
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The Human Cost Of Government Regulation: 79 Dead In One Day
—CBD
This NYT article is a mass of evasive and sneaky explanations for the failure of government regulations and regulators to create and enforce reasonable building codes. At every turn it seems it was pressure from "business friendly" politicians that forced the regulators to allow substandard materials to be used. Why Grenfell Tower Burned: Regulators Put Cost Before Safety is a typical NYT article; it wows the unwary with seemingly in-depth reporting but it is clear that the conclusion was written before the reporting was complete.
Promising to cut "red tape," business-friendly politicians evidently judged that cost concerns outweighed the risks of allowing flammable materials to be used in facades. Builders in Britain were allowed to wrap residential apartment towers -- perhaps several hundred of them -- from top to bottom in highly flammable materials, a practice forbidden in the United States and many European countries. And companies did not hesitate to supply the British market.
How this would have turned out worse without the existence of any regulation is difficult to imagine. The only difference would be that the people responsible would go to jail. The fire-safety regulators and the building code writers and the inspectors and all of the other government bureaucrats whose very existence is to prevent exactly this catastrophe will be carefully insulated from any blame. There will be a large and expensive government inquiry, and they will find irregularities in the regulatory apparatus, but mostly they will find that it was private industry that is the real culprit. "Mean old Alcoa should never have sold us that exterior cladding!"
A formal government inquiry into the fire has just begun. But interviews with tenants, industry executives and fire safety engineers point to a gross failure of government oversight, a refusal to heed warnings from inside Britain and around the world and a drive by successive governments from both major political parties to free businesses from the burden of safety regulations.
So the very people who failed so spectacularly will be doing the inquiry? Brilliant!
And let's not forget to blame rich people!
Survivors have charged that the facade was installed to beautify their housing project for the benefit of wealthy neighbors.
Sunday Morning Book Thread 06-25-2017
—OregonMuse
Central Public Library, Oslo, Norway
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are gorgeous, safe spaces are underneath your house and are used as protection against actual dangers, like natural disasters, or Literally Hitler, and special snowflakes do not last. And unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which look like they can also be used as a sail for a good-sized yacht.
When The English Stopped Being Gentlemen And Started Fighting Dirty
Going all the way back to WWII for this:
In preparation for D-Day, a highly secretive British department known as Baker Street worked to drop 250 saboteurs behind enemy lines with one purpose: to stop the German army from sending supplies and reinforcements to Normandy. These guerillas were tasked with a massive coordinated sabotage mission to frustrate and block Hitler’s war machine in any and all ways possible. Especially important was stopping Germany’s most lethal division, the 2nd SS Panzer Division, Das Reich.
One saboteur destroyed all of Das Reich’s tank transporters by replacing the axle oil with axle grease mixed with an abrasive, forcing the division to travel by road and damaging six out of every 10 tanks. A separate team then barraged Das Reich with sabotage after sabotage, including felling trees in their path and planting bombs beneath them. In the end, what should have been a 72-hour journey took Hitler’s crack tank division 17 days—enough time for the allies to establish their beachhead.
All of this is detailed in the book Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat by Giles Milton. The D-Day operations of this group was part of a larger, more comprehensive war effort:
In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage.
The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Perhaps this is the last great untold story of the Second World War.
It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®
‘All their geese are swans’ is a 17th century expression implying that everything that somebody says is wildly exaggerated or overblown.
Usage: All of CNN's geese are swans.
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Overnight Open Thread (24 Jun 2017)
—CDR M
It looks the firm behind the dubious intelligence dossier on DJT is really an opposition-research group for Democrats and are political activists. You don't say. No wonder they are stonewalling the congressional investigators.
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Saturday Evening Movie Thread 06-24-2017 [Hosted By: TheJamesMadison]
—OregonMuse
Starting at Zero
When the lights go down and the movie comes up, the audience is opening up to new experiences, new adventures, and new connections. Most of the time, these new things are fake, but the audience is willing to suspend disbelief and try to connect with what's happening on the 60-foot screen before them.
But no matter how successful or abysmal the effort on the part of the artists is, the audience always starts at zero. They have no emotional connection with any of the characters. Because of the artifice of fiction in general, there's a wall between the audience and the film on basic things like setting even if it's set in a familiar place.
What happens next is the movie tries to convince the audience of its authenticity. It's not always an authenticity around placing the events in a real world context, but an authenticity that creates an emotional connection of some kind.
You can take this a bit more granularly and say that individual sequences need to build up to specific emotional payoffs. Without the buildup, the emotions meant to derive from the payoff never really materialize. Think of it like a punchline without a joke. That drumbeat and clash of symbols without any humor before it.
What I show next is three examples of payoff. Two have, in my opinion, well established buildups, and the third does…not.
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Saturday Afternoon Chess/Open Thread (Featuring Dress Pr0n) 06-24-2017
—OregonMuse
"OK, so you know the loser has to go over to the Obamas' house for dinner, right?"
Good afternoon morons and moronettes, and welcome to the Saturday Afternoon Chess/Open Thread, the only AoSHQ thread with content specifically for all of us chess nerds who pay homage in the temple of Caïssa, goddess of the chessboard. Also, dress pr0n. Each week, I pick out a few lovely, modest, conservative dresses for the 'ettes to admire and appraise. And, for those of you who aren't nerdly enough for chess, you can use this thread to talk about checkers, or other games, or politics, or whatever you wish, only please try to keep it civil. Nobody wants to get in the middle of a pie fight on a Saturday afternoon.
“A bad day of Chess is better than any good day at work”
(Anonymous)
Problem 1 - White To Play (198 )
Hint: White can force a win of material, or the game
rbb2r1k/p3qp1p/1p2pp2/8/3P2Q1/P2B4/1P3PPP/R4RK1 w - - 0 1
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Ace of Spades Pet Thread (6/24/17)
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
Welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. The thread is a little different today as I've been away and off the grid. So a light thread today. Still grab yourself a beverage and enjoy.
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Saturday Gardening Thread: Firewater [KT]
—Open Blogger
Well, we've got something pretty close to "fire" going on all over the southwest. "High pressure system", they call it. "Miserable" I call it. And some actual fires in a few places. One near my cousin's home. And there is a lot of water in the Southeast about now. Is everybody OK?
The closest thing I have had to actual "firewater" this week has been sedatives for a rather unpleasant medical procedure. And we are adjusting to someone who works a night shift moving into the house. I have not been well-organized, so don't expect much of a theme today. There are some garden news items today, though.
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Thread below the Gardening Thread: Roman Drama [KT]
—Open Blogger
House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii
A week ago, before Johnny Depp, um, made the news, Neo-Neocon wrote:
The current New York production of "Julius Caesar" in which Caesar is portrayed as a Trump-like figure is no ordinary propaganda.Caesar is a particular figure with particular characteristics. Why was he assassinated? Because the assassins thought he had become a tyrant. They met a bad end themselves, as assassins often do, but along the way they felt they were doing Rome a service by ridding it of a dangerous leader. They considered it to be not an assassination, but tyrannicide. . .
She goes on to make some interesting comparisons with the theatrical visions of John Wilkes Booth. But she also includes commentary on a writer at HuffPo calling for Trump's legal execution. The HuffPo writer also called for additional executions. The HuffPo writer's plan for purifying the land is considerably more disturbing to me than Johnny Depp's recent foray into heroic fantasy. Because Johnny Depp is kind of crazy. And because the HuffPo piece actually got published.
And because Julius Caesar was not the only guy assassinated in Rome.
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Saturday Morning Weird News Dump (6/24/17)
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
Damn dog!! Doesn't he know it's Vacation Day Saturday??????
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EMT 06/24/2017
—krakatoa
I've spent every free moment the last 2 weeks rehabbing my first house to put it up for sale. Been a rental property for the last 6 years or so. Good tenants, but lots of stuff to do.
I think I am about 2 days from done.
New paint inside, pressure washed the siding, new kitchen counter, re grouted all the tile, fresh stain on the deck, repainted the garage, new caulk everywhere, reseeded the lawn... I contracted out for the counter install and some of the exterior trim repairs and painting. The rest is all me. The wife doesn't know this yet, but when this place sells, daddy gets a new TV.
Overnight Open Thread (23 Jun 2017)
—CDR M
It's going to take years to build back up trust in the FBI and other government agencies. Who does the FBI work for?
Considering how ludicrous the FBI's conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI's conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.
If CIA contractors are willing to hack vending machines, what else do you think they're willing to do with capabilities they have access to in their official capacity? No one has really been punished at the IRS for their political shenanigans and the DOJ obviously interfered with the Hillary private server investigation. Until big name folks are held accountable for their violations, public faith in these institutions will continue to crater.
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"Russia, Russia, Russia!:" Kellyanne Conway Goofs on Indian-Slurring Alisyn Camarotta
—Ace
Alisyn Camarotta was most recently embarrassed when she asked a girl of Indian descent who'd just won a national spelling bee to spell "confeve," and then, when the girl got it slightly wrong, excused her mistake because "it doesn't have a Sanskrit root, which is what you're probably used to."
The Indian girl in question lives in the United States, speaks English, and wouldn't know Sanskrit even if she lived in India, where less than 1% of the population speaks it as a primary language.
Apart from being an expert on Languages That Indians Don't Really Speak, Camarotta also fancies herself a bit of a "player" in matters of national security and geopolitics.
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Matthew Continetti Gets It, Finally: What if the Political Class Knows Absolutely Nothing About Anything?
—Ace
Continetti had been a populist critic of the puffed-up, jumped-up false elites, but then backed off that position in reaction (I speculate) to Trump's populist victory.
But he seems to be permitting himself to get it again.
Events are turning me into a radical skeptic. I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past. I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise. What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. Habit, I guess. A sense of professional obligation, I suppose. Maybe boredom.The fact is that almost the entirety of what one reads in the paper or on the web is speculation. The writer isn't telling you what happened, he is offering an interpretation of what happened, or offering a projection of the future. The best scenario is that these theories are novel, compelling, informed, and based on reporting and research. But that is rarely the case. More often the interpretations of current events, and prophesies of future ones, are merely the products of groupthink or dogma or emotions or wish-casting, memos to friends written by 27-year-olds who, in the words of Ben Rhodes, "literally know nothing." There was a time when newspapers printed astrology columns. They no longer need to. The pseudoscience is on the front page.
...
"Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts," Michael Crichton once said. "We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it."
Don Surber coincidentally has a piece demonstrating that they're literally always wrong about everything, noting that they have learned absolutely nothing since November.
That's not just laziness. Even a lazy person learns by osmosis.
To actively reject all information is a purposeful exertion. They're remaining proudly ignorant as a demonstration of mule-headed willful stupidity.
The National Laughingstock: Our Deep State Embeds and Criminal Leakers Have Exposed Major US Covert Operation to Infect Russian Computer Networks with Malware
—Ace
Obama secretly ordered cyberweapons planted in Russian networks. It will be up to Trump whether to use them. https://t.co/FUlcL79Uq0
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) June 23, 2017
There apparently is only one Law the Deep State follows now: Get Trump.
Rather than reading the article, see Comrade Arthur's thoughts about this being primarily a blame-shifting exercise excusing Obama from acting: Obama didn't deploy his weapons, but Trump is somehow to be blamed for following Obama's lead.
I guess that makes Trump a Russian stooge -- but not Obama, for some reason.
In any event, it's pretty clear that serious natsec secrets are being leaked here, and there must be a legal reckoning.
Love Trumps Hate, They Threatened: Swishy Bankrupt Actor Most Famous For Silly Hats and Stupid Accents Dreams About Assassinating the President
—Ace
The name "Johnny Depp" is synonymous for "late in age one-note formerly famous person who is broke and is now making even more awful movies than he used to.
So now he's musing about the last time an actor killed a president, and wondering if it isn't time for another one to do the same.
The Secret Service should take this seriously -- Johnny Depp has been alleged to have a history of violence, though usually against women even smaller than himself.
The Black Mass actor split [with Amber Heard] last year amid accusations he was abusive, and although he has always denied the claims, The Management Group (TMG) stated they knew he was 'volatile' in filings submitted as part of their ongoing legal battle with their famous former client.In documents submitted this week, the company said: 'During his recent divorce from Amber Heard, Depp publicly and repeatedly denied having physically assaulted his former wife and accused her of manufacturing the allegations to 'extend her 15 minutes of fame'.
'However, [TMG were] informed well after the fact through communications with various house staff and security that Depp had been extremely volatile and sometimes "gotten physical" with Heard. [They] were also later informed that Depp had violently kicked Heard during an incident that took place in or around 2014.'
During the bitter divorce battle, Amber made public texts she had exchanged with the 54-year-old star's assistant, in which the employee apologised for his boss' behaviour, but the actor denied the texts were real - a claim which TMG dispute.
Heard later settled for $7 million, with no party admitting fault.This article mentions other instances of Depp's alleged "volatility."
The deal came on the eve of a hearing scheduled to begin on Wednesday and last five days, unleashing combative, high-priced lawyers to battle over lurid claims of jealous paranoia, drunken rages, manipulative greed and a severed fingertip.Heard, 30, filed for divorce in May and obtained a temporary restraining order, alleging her Oscar-nominated husband assaulted her after a drunken argument in their LA apartment. Her filing said Depp, 53, “began obsessing over something that wasn’t true” and “became extremely angry”, throwing a phone at Heard, striking her cheek and eye “with extreme force”.
A separate statement from a friend of Heard’s who witnessed the scene, Raquel Pennington, supported Heard’s version, including a description of Depp swinging a magnum-sized bottle of wine “like a baseball bat”.
Heard, who stars in the upcoming London Fields, supplied photographs of her bruised face and smashed wine bottles and said the incident fit a pattern of abuse, including a violent row in Australia which disrupted filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Io Tillett Wright, another friend of Heard’s, wrote in an essay for Refinery 29: “The reports of violence started with a kick on a private plane, then it was shoves and the occasional punch, until finally, in December, she described an all-out assault and she woke up with her pillow covered in blood. I know this because I went to their house. I saw the pillow with my own eyes. I saw the busted lip and the clumps of hair on the floor.”
Apparently the "severed fingertip" claim went like this: Depp accidentally severed the tip of his finger when raging about his suspicions that Heard was having an affair with much-more-manly actor Billy Bob Thornton. So he "dipped the stump" into blue ink and wrote "Billy Bob" and "Easy Amber" on a mirror.
Which isn't crazy or worrying at all, and the Secret Service should definitely not take a long look at this "volatile," drunk, financially distressed asshole.
We have nothing to fear from broken drunks with Nothing Left to Lose.
Senate Announces Probe Into Loretta Lynch's Possible Interference in Email Matter During 2016 Election
—Ace
Notice the media doesn't want to talk about the interference that's actually evidenced.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has opened a probe into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s efforts to shape the FBI's investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the committee’s chairman announced Friday.In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail the depths of her involvement in the FBI's investigation, including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes that the probe wouldn’t "push too deeply into the matter."
Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton's emails, and he also hinted at other behavior "which I cannot talk about yet" that made him worried about Ms. Lynch's ability to make impartial decisions.
Remember, the leftist media all reported that email between Lynch's confidantes claiming she wouldn't let the investigation get too far was "faked" or "forged" - these anonymous leakers swearing it, but not publicly -- but Comey himself gave no indications he thought the emails were faked.
The FBI never asked the writer of the email nor the addressee if it was "forged" by the Russians or real.
Maybe it's time for someone to ask them that, under oath.
Court Dismisses 14 of 15 Charges in the Persecution of Those Who Exposed the Trade in Organs of Aborted Babies
—Ace
When you charge someone with 15 counts, and 14 of them are so obviously without merit a judge dismisses them pre-trial, it shows the prosecution to be a politically motivated exercise in weaponized government.
On Wednesday the San Francisco Superior Court tossed for lack of evidence 14 of 15 criminal charges against journalists who recorded high-level Planned Parenthood employees discussing trafficking the body parts of aborted babies, reports LifeSiteNews. California’s Department of Justice says it will re-file the charges within the ten-day deadline for providing more evidence....
As a Democratic member of Congress, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra received thousands of dollars in campaign donations both from Planned Parenthood and fellow abortion promoter NARAL. His predecessor, whose department initiated the action, received $81,000 from Planned Parenthood for her campaigns.
In May, another California judge, who had contributed a quarter of a million dollars to former president Barack Obama’s campaign, slapped Merritt and Daleiden with contempt charges for releasing another video despite a restraining order. Their attorneys say the videos are already public thanks to their opponents’ public court filings, and the already released videos remain on CMP’s YouTube page.
In April, California’s Department of Justice raided Daleiden’s home and seized the recordings.
Nebraska State Democrat Official: I Wish Our Leftwing Assassin Had Succeeded in Murdering Steve Scalise
—Ace
The official has been removed from her post, but that wouldn't be enough if he were a Republican.
The recording was made during a conversation between Montag, party official Chelsey Gentry-Tipton and a friend of hers. Gentry-Tipton faced criticism last week for saying the GOP members of Congress crying about the shooting on television were funny because they supported the National Rifle Association’s agenda.
"I'm glad he got shot," Montag says in the recording. "I'm not gonna (expletive) say that in public."
"Well then what are you saying it to us for?" someone else in the recording asks.
"I wish he was (expletive) dead," Montag replies.
Here's the thing: The media milks one-day bad stories about Republicans into two, three, or four day stories by adding on secondary, follow-up, and spin-off stories. The easiest and most obvious way to milk a one-day story into multiple days is to turn to asking each and every Republican in the world if he denounces the person in question, and if he himself has contributed to the "Climate of X" that (unstated assumption offered with no evidence) caused the Recent Unpleasantness.
By doing so, you not only keep the story alive, so that more people hear about it, as it dominates all media chatter, but you subconsiously link the bad story involving one Republican to all Republicans.
This is deliberate.
But notice that the press never does that for Democrats. No one in the press -- not even in the conservative press -- will be asking Democrats if they denounce this Democrats' death-wishes, and if they think that Democrat hate-speech has encouraged this death-wish-speech, and if death-wish-speech encourages all the political violence on the left.
The media knows how to make a one-day bad story for one Republican into a weeklong bad story for all Republicans.
It also knows how to make a one-day bad story for a Democrat a half-day story about a minor office-holder of unknown party affiliation.
Corrected: I incorrectly wrote "she" when referring to Montag. The article identifies him as male, but who knows any more.
I Never Knew This Had A Name
—OregonMuse
Feminist: All men are rapists.
OregonMuse: What, are you high? You know that's complete bullshit.
Feminist: No, it's not, it's why we need feminism -- to smash the patriarchy.
OregonMuse: Feminism is bullshit.
Feminist: You're obviously a h8r. "Feminism is the radical proposition that women are people, too." How could you be against that?
-----
Do you see what the feminist did there? She led with a controversial, hard-to-defend statement, and then, when pressed, retreated to a safe, no-sane-person-can-be-against-this platitude. And then pretended the two are the same. I've seen this in one form or another for years and it's just infuriating. But I never knew until about an hour ago that it has a name.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold, the Motte and Bailey trick:
Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches at will between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as "cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge") in order to defend their viewpoint. Someone will "support" the easy-to-defend (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, but does not actually believe what they're saying. The "difficult" (bailey) version always remains the desired belief, but is never actually defended. For all intents and purposes, the MAB'er is defending a "ghost" belief.
So MAB is a specie of the genus "bait and switch." I found this graphic on Twitter that illustrates the MAB with a couple of examples:
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Mid-Morning Open Thread
—CBD
Scène de fête
Giovanni Boldini
And from the Cookbook committee:
We are looking for some Horde artists to do some pen-and-ink drawings for our Moron cookbook. We don't need the art just yet until we find out the file lay-outs required by the printer, but we would like to collect some names of artists who might be interested. They can email Weasel and Bluebell at the email address at the cookbook link, which is shared by both of us: recipes at moroncookbook dot com
The Morning Report 6/23/17
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning, kids. The weekend is here once again and the top story is the rolling out of the Senate Obamacare Repeal/Replace Bill. As expected, there's no repeal and the replace component essentially anchors the original 2010 monstrosity in our lives for all time. On a positive note, McYertle apparently does not have votes to move it forward and there will be amendments. Thankfully, Cruz, Paul and Lee are in the mix so that at least some of the more odious, economy-killing, freedom-killing aspects of this disaster are removed. To be sure, no matter what, parts of the original are here to stay. As someone once said, the one thing that you can never destroy is an entrenched government bureaucracy, but perhaps it can be made as benign as possible. Obviously, the Democrats are fueling the fires of more violence claiming millions will die in the streets if it passes. I would not be surprised if someone, somewhere steps forward and threatens GOP lawmakers with death if the bill becomes law. And Obama opened his cake-hole because the one good thing about this is that if it passes, there goes the single most important legacy of his 8-year reign of error. Amazingly, he's so wrapped up in his own little world that he doesn't appreciate the fact that a good sized chunk of his original namesake poison will no doubt continue to course through the veins of an atrophying America, perhaps forever. Meh, screw him to Hell.
If you look past our rage at and disappointment in the party that is allegedly ours, the Democrats are in absolute free fall. The Robert Mugabe Leadership of octogenarians has no clue about how to deal with PDT and who he represents; us. Their puppet masters in the MFM are equally clueless as are the cadres in academia and the culture complex. To them, it's all about the messaging and not their message itself. As Ive said before, if we only had a fraction of support from the GOP, the Democrats could become less relevant than "The Rent Is Too Damn High." But as we have seen from this insult from McYertle and Ryno, their interest is in preserving the power of the State. What a crying shame. But, thank G-d for Donald J. Trump.
Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.
- Obamacare Repeal and Replace is Obamacare Copy and Paste . . .
- . . . Deviates from House Bill Only Marginally . . .
- . . . Meanwhile, Anthem/Blue Cross Pulls Out of O'Care Markets in WI and IN
- Gulf Tensions Escalate as KSA, Other Arab States Demand Qatar Shut Down Al Jazeera
- PDT Hammers DNC for Failing to Give Hacked Server to DHS, FBI
- Ex-CIA Employee, State Dept. Security Worker Arrested for Passing Defense Secrets to Chi-Coms
- Sanders' Wife Lawyers Up
- Comey Spotted Leaving NY Times Building Yesterday
- Prayers for Nancy as Several Dems Plotting Her Ouster
- Yes, Please! "Progressive" Group Pleads with Dems to Retain Disastrous Strategy of Shunning White Working Class Voters
- How the Dems Burned $40 Million to Lose Four Elections and Scam Supporters
- Minor Miracle: 14 of 15 Charges Against Planned Parenthood Expose Documentarians Dismissed in SF Court
- Mr. President, Meet Avner Shapiro: Saboteur from the DC Swamp
- Judge Blocks Deportation of More than 100 Iraqi Christians
- The Dirty Secret of How Income Taxes Really Work
- The Sharing Economy Is Much Bigger than Uber
ONT-88 Lines About 44 Congressmen
—WeirdDave
Kamala was an AG once
Bent the law to her own whim
Cory was a different type
He invented all his friends
Charlie was an orange guy
I've never seen a tan like that
Charles avoided taxes
claimed he couldn't do the math
Hmmmm HmmHmmmmHmmHmmm
Hmmmm HmmHmmmmHmmHmmm
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Granny Rictus McBotoxface's Allies Circle the Wagons Around Their Incredible Shrinking Crone
—Ace
Pelosi aides are sending allies suggested supportive tweets on social media. Some examples. pic.twitter.com/oHrPmBlAZ7
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 22, 2017
Pelosi aide Drew Hammill calls, says the tweets were sent by Pelosi for Congress to a small group of donors who asked for guidance
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 22, 2017
Love Trumps Hate, They Threatened
—Ace
The Real Democratic base -- not the celebrities they trot out every four years.
Before I die I want our president and congress to sign a treaty to never side with Russia or any enemy of the United States of America! If one will then that person deserves to be shot," his post read. "Guess what Trump? I'm waiting for the right time...and I KNOW your (sic) Putin's (expletive)!
Maybe he was just making a dark joke and didn't actually intend to threaten an assassination.
" The secret service now has a heads up as to my plan to assassinate Trump...let's see if they act."
Whoops, there goes that defense.
But maybe he didn't mean it honestly.
..."Honestly am I really going to have to kill trump before our fine Government (the jack booted thugs they are) actually takes me into custody for threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump? I mean he sold our country to The Russians. He is a Benedict Arnold but hey the (expletive) is our President even though he needs a blade in his neck. And you dumb, asses who stick up for him...who's gonna protect you when someone like me comes t (sic) take you out."
2. Man Charged With Threatening GOP Rep and "every g**damn one of you."
"I've seen the prayer ya'll were saying at the baseball diamond ... I think ya'll better hit your knees and pray for the people that you're screwin' up their lives..."We're coming to get every g**amn one of you and your families. Maybe the next one taken down will be your daughter. Huh? Or your wife. Or even you."
3. 30 GOP Congressmen have been attacked or threatened since May.
May 8: Wendi Wright, 35, was arrested after stalking Rep. David Kustoff (Tenn.) and trying to run him off the road. After pulling over, Wright "began to scream and strike the windows on Kustoff's car and even reached inside the vehicle."May 9: Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett needed heavy security at a town hall after receiving a series of death threats in May that police "deemed to be credible and real."
"This is how we're going to kill your wife," one message said. Others detailed how they would kill his children, and even his dog.
May 12: A town hall participant accosted North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, shoving fake dollar bills into his suit jacket. A Kramer supporter grabbed the same man by the neck. Both men were ejected by law enforcement, but neither were charged.
May 12: A Tucson, Ariz. school district employee was arrested by the FBI for sending several death threats to Arizona Rep. Martha McSally. The man threatened to shoot McSally and told her to "be careful" because her days "were numbered."
And that's not even up to the Ides of May.
4. Jason Chaffetz Receives Threat: "Prepare for the Battle, Motherf***er."
So: How are Democrats responding to the fact that their colleagues were shot at just a few days ago due to their blood-and-thunder rhetoric?
Like so:
5.
I’ve read the Republican “health care” bill. This is blood money. They’re paying for tax cuts with American lives. pic.twitter.com/298DLguNiM
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 22, 2017
Wisconsin Bill Would Expel or Suspend Students in the University of Wisconsin System Who Attempt to Shut Down Public Speakers
—Ace
Under a new bill approved Wednesday night by the Wisconsin State Assembly, such student protesters in the UW system could be suspended or even expelled if they repeatedly disrupt campus speakers they disagree with.The Republican-backed legislation, called the Campus Free Speech Act, is part of a national effort by conservative groups to crack down on protests intended to silence controversial speakers on liberal college campuses. Similar measures have been enacted in Colorado and introduced in Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and California.
Demonstrations like the one that interrupted Shapiro’s speech last fall have become an increasingly common sight at universities around the country as debate has roiled over how to curb hate speech while protecting free expression and intellectual diversity. Some demonstrations have turned violent, like the recent protests and riots in Berkeley, Calif., that shut down a planned lecture by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
Bizarrely, this law (should it become one) will probably be successfully challenged on free speech grounds, with plaintiffs arguing their shutting down of free speech is their own free speech. The fact that the state is an actor here will be held against the measure.
But it shouldn't -- the UW system is itself a state actor, and is therefore obligated to defend free speech rights itself. It isn't doing so -- and therefor the "state actor" is already acting against free speech. This is more correctly seen as a corrective to that illegality.
A better option is simply to defund any universities -- for, say, a year per offense -- that don't vigillantly protect speech rights.
