Quick Hits

We are real news, Mr. President:

Actress Tilda Swinton says she's done wearing masks, and is ignoring the masks-always-on protocol on a movie she's currently filming.

We've had different challenges in the last few years particularly, and some of them are lingering around people's belief in sitting in big spaces," Swinton began, per The Daily Mail.

"Look at you. I bet none of you are wearing masks, as well. I mean, who knew that was going to be possible?" she continued. "There was a time ... I mean, in Texas, did people even wear masks? I have to ask ... I don't know, it's a wide world and people do things differently all over."

The Academy Award winner followed up by discussing masking protocols that will be in place on the set of her new movie and how she's choosing to ignore them.

"I'm actually just about to start shooting a picture in Ireland, and I was told -- full disclosure, and I'm sure this is being recorded and people in Ireland might hear it -- to wear a mask at all times, and I'm not wearing a mask because I'm super healthy and I've had COVID so many times and I'm so full of antibodies and I have faith," Swinton said.

She previously described having covid. She had a case of it where she had "covid brain," which sounds bad. And now she claims she's protected by natural immunity which is a concept, as I'm sure you all know, which is a conspiracy theory promoted by RUSSIAN AGENTS who want us all sick so we can't fight in Ukraine.

Thomas Massie explains how the current bank panic, which is probably going to get very, very bad indeed, happened:

Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie

Let's review the Federal Reserve Bank's many roles, & how each of them enabled the SVB failure/malfeasance:

(1) Santa Claus.
By keeping interest rates artificially low, FED stimulated the economy, & nudged those with capital into the VC space creating demand for a bank like SVB.

(2) Arsonist.
FED created $5 trillion out of thin air so Congress could inject this money into the economy. There weren't 5 trillion dollars to borrow during COVID, and certainly not at the low rates imposed by FED. Inflation was off to the races thanks to dilution.

(3) Firefighter.
After setting the blaze, FED came to the rescue to fight inflation by rapidly increasing interest rates. As a result, net VC startup deposits into SVB slowed, while assets held by SVB (long-term low-interest government debt) became less valuable.

(4) Trauma Doctor.
Will the FED play a role in bailing out SVB depositors and other banks? Possibly by lowering rates, buying their holdings at above value, or creating more money for bailouts. None of these are free. But the FED becomes Santa Claus again and inflation rages on.

We, the American people, would be better off if the Federal Reserve Bank, an instrument of the very wealthy and connected, did not exist to socialize the risks of insiders while distorting our economy, destroying jobs, and devaluing our currency.

I used to think this was crankery but now I believe. End the Fed.

From last week, former Al Gore image consultant Naomi Wolf offered a genuine apology to conservatives for believing the media's lies about January 6th.

There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who "put America first" everywhere.

It's tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug -- to "move on" without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.

But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong.

I owe you a full-throated apology.

I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity -- and the credulity of people similarly situated to me - many conservatives' reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.

The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/08/
mccarthy-defends-jan-6-footage-tucker-carlson-fox-news].

While "fact-checkers" state that it is "misinformation" to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/27/fact-check-nancy-pelosi-isnt-in-charge-capitol-police/8082088002/], the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to -- the United States Capitol Police: [https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight].

This would be the same Congress that convened the January 6 Committee subsequently, and that used millions of dollars in taxpayer money to turn that horrible day, and that tragic event, into a message point that would be used to tar a former President as a would-be terrorist, and to smear all Republicans, by association, as "insurrectionists," or as insurrectionists' sympathizers and fellow-travelers.

There is no way to unsee Officer Brian Sicknick, claimed by some Democrats in leadership and by most of the legacy media to have been killed by rioters at the Capitol that day, alive in at least one section of the newly released video. The USCP medical examiner states that this Officer died of "natural causes," but also that he died "in the line of duty." Whatever the truth of this confusing conclusion, and with all respect for and condolences to Officer Sicknick's family, the circumstances of his death do matter to the public, as without his death having been caused by the events of Jan 6, the breach of the capitol, serious though it was, cannot be described as a "deadly insurrection." [https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes] Sadly, though the contrary was what was reported, Officer Sicknick died two days after Jan 6, from suffering two strokes. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/

There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real. Rather, he warned that it was "shameful" for Fox to allow us to see it. The Guardian characterized Mr Carlson's and Fox News' sin, weirdly, as "Over-Use" of Jan 6 footage. Isn't the press supposed to want full transparency for all public interest events? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/mar/07/biden-medicare-taxes-desantis-trump-2024-live-updates] How can you "over-use" real footage of events of national relevance?

Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority leader, did not say the video on Fox News was fake or doctored. He said, rather, that it was "a mistake" to depart from the views of the events held by the chief of the Capitol Police. This is a statement from McConnell about orthodoxy -- not a statement about a specific truth or untruth. [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060662/senator-mcconnell-calls-tucker-carlsons-depiction-january-6-attack-mistake]

...

Those who violently entered the Capitol or who engaged in violence inside of it, must of course be held accountable. (As must violent protesters of every political stripe anywhere.)

But in addition, anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of the day so as to distort the complexity of its actual history -- must also be held accountable.

Jan 6 has become, as the DNC intended it to become, after the fact, a "third rail"; a shorthand used to dismiss or criminalize an entire population and political point of view.

Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day.

So half of the country has been tarred by association, and is now in many quarters presumed to consist of chaotic berserkers, anti-democratic rabble, and violent upstarts, whose sole goal is the murder of our democracy.

Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry.

I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC and The New York Times.

She says she still doesn't like Trump, but then adds, in a parenthetical, a question to herself: How does she even know she doesn't like him? Based on what? She notes that her opinion is based on the claims of the leftwing media, which she now knows are liars.

But I like the liars who are our current gatekeepers, even less.

The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time -- and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors - deserve our disgust.

I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

I am sorry my former "tribe" is angry at a journalist for engaging in --- journalism.

I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

Though it is no doubt too little, too late --

Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

I am so sorry.

While liberals get red-pilled, a lot of fake "True Conservatives" are getting blue-pilled and simply decloaking as what they always were: liberal Democrats.

For example:

The Dispatch's prized contributor, January 6th Committee senior staffer, and Steve Hayes Suckboy Tom Joscelyn proves how much of a True Conservative he is by going to work for Salon magazine and claiming that Jim Jordan has completely failed to establish that there is any kind of leftwing clique weaponizing government against conservatives. It's a full-throated, no-caveats defense of the leftwing cabal of bureaucrats which targets the right.

He also claims the Twitter Files are fake news.

The new Republican House majority has promised historic oversight, anchored by Rep. Jim Jordan's subcommittee hunting for "whistleblowers" on the supposed "weaponization" of government. So far, Jordan's efforts have been a bust -- he's failed to produce a single true whistleblower.

To the three of us -- veterans of prior Capitol Hill investigations who have worked for Republicans and Democrats on the Church Committee, the first Trump impeachment and the Jan. 6 select committee -- Jordan's whole "weaponization" effort is an embarrassment. There is a right way to do oversight and to work with real whistleblowers, and this isn't it.

In Jordan's telling, the Department of Justice and the FBI are targeting ordinary Americans solely because they hold conservative political beliefs. He claims that "dozens and dozens of whistleblowers" have come forward to expose government malfeasance.

But neither weaponization nor whistleblowers were to be found last Thursday, when the subcommittee held its second hearing, focusing on the "Twitter Files." Jordan returned to one of his favorite complaints: Twitter's decision to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop for 48 hours in mid-October 2020. But Twitter's employees have previously testified that the FBI did not tell them to take it down. Jordan's witnesses during the hearing -- Matt Taibbi (a journalist) and Michael Shellenberger (an author) -- did not offer any evidence to contradict that, and moreover are not whistleblowers. They received files from Twitter's new management highlighting what they claimed was unjust censorship. But Americans are still waiting to hear from a true government insider on this score.

A "true government insider" like yourself, you mean?

Of course, the FBI had been pestering Twitter for months warning of a coming "hack and leak operation." They specifically mentioned the hack and leak would target Hunter Biden. The government-funded Aspen Institute staged a "tabletop simulation" -- a wargame -- to show the media what to do in the hypothetical situation that a malign foreign power released files about Hunter Biden during the closing months of 2020.

Twitter asked their FBI contact if the actual leak that occurred was in fact the one they were warning about. Despite the fact that the FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop since 2019 and knew full well that it was 100% real, they refused to tell Twitter that. They let their previous programming stand.

And this guy, a writer for Jonah Goldberg's, Steve Hayes', and David French's The Dispatch claims: There's no evidence the government told Twitter to censor the story. None at all! It's all just a Big Lie!

So, so many True Conservatives, you can't swing a sledgehammer without hitting one in his corpulent neck, and why would you want to miss, anyway?

This is repulsive: The sexually transgressive left is now kneeling to transgenders, and clutching at their garb as they plead for woke deliverance.

The left is locked in a hyper-neurotic mock-religious frenzy, seizing upon one "Victim" group after another to pray to and beg metaphysical forgiveness from.

They're not atheists, as they proudly boasts; they are merely pagan.

This is from a couple of weeks ago, but given David French's unadmitted but obvious support for transitioning children, it bears repeating.

French and other Pharisees claim to be Christians. As Tucker Carlson calls them, "Professional Christians."

Where is French and his other fake Christians to speak out against actual oppression of Christians... in Canada?

James O'Keefe announces his new media group with, of course, more dancing.

He say he owns this new company. The last one was a charity with a board of director which paid his salary.

posted by Ace at 06:17 PM

| Access Comments