Truth

Via

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Three steps to fix the FBI. Start by moving the FBI HQ to Salt Lake City,

- When Norm Macdonald met Bob Dylan

- The suicide of the main stream media. There's a reason trust in the media is at its lowest point in my lifetime. (HT Execupundit)

- Biden Administration quietly revokes veteran's hiring preference for civil service jobs. There's a reason many are considering Joe Biden as the worst President in history.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- 4th of July fight fiasco: how a Jack Dempsey title fight KO'd a small Montana town's finances. Cool bit of history mostly forgotten.

- Whatever happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

- Daniele Bolelli on Good Food. Agree 100% - eat real food!

- MSM blames "Right-Wing Media" for their own failure to disclose Biden's dementia.

Elon Musk is Like The Hulk

The press won't like him when he's angry. Elon announces he's putting together a team of "hardcore streetfighter" lawyers to start suing people and promises "there will be blood."  My prediction is that these streetfighting lawyers will end up turning a profit for Tesla - which will be very bad news for corporate media.

Four years ago there was this article calling him a "media assassin" but they had no idea how prescient they were being. Also liked this bit about how Silicon Valley in general viewed the MSM:

The press, in the Valley mindset, is a relic from the 20th century, a low-bandwidth, dying thing, like AM radio that deserved to be ignored - and if not ignored, beaten like a mule for its stupidity.

The beatings will soon begin.

The Mainstream Media is Losing to Joe Rogan

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." - Friedrich Nietzsche 

Interesting post on how the mainstream media (brought to you by Pfizer) is losing the battle of credibility because of the way COVID has been reported. 

Joe Rogan gets a reported average of 11 million people listening to or watching his podcast. Compare that to the ratings of any show on CNN, MSNBC or Fox News. His most listened to episodes were the recent one with Dr. Peter McCullough and the one with Dr. Robert Malone - both about COVID and about how the public is being misled. People hear - and they know Rogan's guests are telling the TRUTH!

At the same time they think about how they've been misled by the media. They were promised that if they took the vaccine things would go back normal. They were told that getting the vaccine was a one time thing. They were told either lie upon lie or just one side of the argument so that they could not make an informed decision - and the principal reason to watch the news is to try to become informed.

People are upset that now they cannot trust the mainstream news outlets - so why bother watching or reading. We've seen the proof of this in the steep decline of their ratings and circulation numbers. Meanwhile Joe Rogan's ratings are exploding - because he's earned people's trust.

The Awesome Hypocrisy of the "Facebook Papers" Moral Panic

Matt Taibbi with a look at the blatant hypocrisy of certain media outlets in regards to the "Facebook Papers" campaign.

I may have become numb to the hypocrisy of the media in our society (at this point when you mention media - isn't hypocrisy automatically assumed?) but I hope I never become numb to Taibbi's ability to colorfully turn a phrase like; "Buzzfeed in particular represented the media equivalent of blowing strangers in Grand Central for crack money." Keep up the good work Mr. Taibbi!

Big Media Brought to You By Pfizer

If you were wondering if "Big media" and "Big Pharma" were working together.

You could probably do a "Congress brought to you by Pfizer" as well seeing how much of Congress is making money off their sudden investments in the company. In journalism and politics "follow the money" used to mean something completely different than how the media and Congress are profiting today.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Literally laughed out loud when I saw this live on Sunday night's broadcast. Knew right away that it would be GIF and meme mana from heaven.

- Documents reveal Miami Mayor's struggle to make the city a Bitcoin utopia. It's not easy being crypto. 

- The COVID Panic Police. "If you must lie to make the story work, you're a propagandist, not a journalist." (HT Execupundit) 

- VDH: Revolution without the Middle Class.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- VDH: Orwell and the Woke

- Blue Origin Under Fire. Interesting but if Blue Origin was disregarding safety wouldn't they be launching rockets more frequently instead of moving at the snails pace (compared to SpaceX) that they've been operating under? (HT Meanderthal)

- Matt Taibbi: The News is America's New Religion, and We're in a Religious War. Very true!

- I'm ready to vote for Rand Paul for President right now (or at least support the idea of making him the Surgeon General right away!)

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- How the Pandemic is Changing the Norms of Science. We quickly went from Fake News! to Fake Science! and yet people still wonder why there's an erosion of trust.

- Trust in media hits new low. Speaking of Fake News!

- This seems to be the logic

- Hey Joe - is there anything you could do to weaken Union support for Democrats across the board? Why yes - I have just the thing! 

Making Sense of Afghanistan

When you no longer trust the media to tell you the truth (which is where we are at today) then people will try to explain events in ways that make sense to themselves. This isn't about conspiracy theories or tinfoil hats - this is about common sense. Most people feel a need to make sense of the world they live in. Simple as that.

However, when the narrative the media or the government tries to peddle doesn't make sense - like how Afghanistan became FUBAR in such a short time - then those explanations may seem like conspiracy theories to many. But in fact they are probably closer to reasonable explanations then the narrative and obvious contradictions the government authorities would try and make you swallow.

I'm saying this because of this post by Borepatch - in which he points to this post by Big Country. Do I buy the explanations Borepatch and Big Country are offering? Not 100% but much of what was said does make sense to me.

Do I think Joe Biden is basically the Nominal Commander in Chief? Yes - absolutely. What kind of President allows himself to be told whether he's "allowed" to answer questions from the press? Can you picture Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, JFK or Harry Truman allowing that? No way. 

Do I believe that a desire to have full withdrawal from Afghanistan so that the Biden Administration could have a photo op in NYC on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 was the driving motivation behind the hasty withdrawal? Yes - that makes perfect sense to me.

Do I believe that when things started going badly south in Afghanistan that all involved - the Executive Branch, the US Military, and the Intelligence Community - all went into full CYA mode? Yes- absolutely! Could this damage control have involved intentional damage inflicted upon each other as deflection tactics? Yes - nothing would surprise me about these people.

Do I believe the media has been complicit in all of this? Yes! And I also believe that the basic journalistic tenet of "Follow the Money" has mostly been ignored here.

The Military (the brass specifically the Joint Chiefs - not the enlisted personnel) and the Intelligence Community both actively undermined President Trump because he wanted out of Afghanistan. That would have turned off their 20-year spigot of billions of dollars. Trump only had one year to act before the election so they basically kneecapped him. And to Trump's credit - he didn't act rashly as Biden has done. Trump did want out of Afghanistan but the intelligence reports and the military's advice made him want to slow walk his plan.

Not good ole full steam ahead Joe Biden who pulled out of Afghanistan in his first year in office (to horrible consequences). The Military Brass and Intelligence Community couldn't pull the same delaying or dirty tricks that they used on The Donald. But they probably did give him the same intelligence reports and military advice - but Biden (or those around him) didn't listen. And we've seen the results on the ground. And as the CYA maneuvers, leaking to the press, and backstabbing continues - we'll start to see more kernels of truth of the story and the consequences involved as they unfold.

If you still want to follow the money on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and it wasn't the Military or Intelligence Community then cui bono? The obvious answer is the Chinese and Russians. For pennies on the dollar they were able to sow this chaos. Pennies on the dollar! It was a classic case of what Scott Adams calls "free money." The Chinese (and maybe the Russians) probably saw an opportunity too good to pass up. Look how fast the Chinese pounced in becoming best friends with the new Taliban government.

To be fair though - it's not all people fresh off the lobbyist gravy train making all the decisions. There's also woke idiots with no real-world experience making policy. These people certainly don't hide their ignorance under a bushel basket. There's no doubt in my mind many of these people have (and maybe still are) receiving funds from the Chinese in various guises. Or you may have a Dianne Feinstein's driver or Eric Swalwell girlfriend Fang whispering poison into the ears of influential folks in the administration. 

It's all a disgrace. That's how my mind makes sense of the situation in Afghanistan. It's all a disgrace.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

The Lancet used to be known as an "esteemed medical journal" but now is widely known as that "leftwing medical journal." If you think that's a step in the right direction you probably also call people "comrade" on the regular... In work emails to people I do business with but haven't communicated with in a while I'll say "Hope all is well" either at the beginning or end of the email. Thinking of changing that to "I hope all is hell" to people I dislike and if called on it just blame it on Spell Check... Seriously have to believe that some schools teaching creationism in the 1980's did a lot less damage to society and the children involved than the damage Critical Race Theory is doing to society and the children of today... Getting your information from curated Substack writers is like drinking fine microbrew beers. Getting your information from the MSM is like drinking skunky Busch Light. Don't drink skunky cheap beer... And speaking of the MSM - Proctodeal Trophollaxis is such a cool cool way to say "ass-licking." The MSM is doing a lot of proctodeal trophollaxis of the Biden Administration... 

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training." - Epictetus 

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken

"If it is not making you happier, or healthier, or calmer, or having better relationships, or wealthier, then what good is it? It's useless. You can safely discard it." - Naval Ravikant

"All warfare is based on deception." - Sun Tzu

"If you can't handle controversy, you'll never outperform. When organizations limit controversy, they unknowingly limit innovation and drive the employees who create the most value out. When individuals can't endure controversy, they sabotage themselves." - Shane Parrish

"The goal of the media is to make every problem, your problem." - Naval Ravikant

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- John Wooden's Pyramid of Success. Might be time to re-read his book They Call Me Coach 

- 11 armed people were arrested over the weekend and it was reported because the whole Town of Wakefield (pop 27,000) had to be placed in shelter in place because of the danger. Then not a peep from the media. The Rise of the Moors had all the social media too - YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook - will Apple delete those services from their store to be consistent to how they treated Parler? 

- And we in the West have completely abandoned them to their fate

- The science behind hangovers

- Cut off the Blood Supply to Communist China: End Trade. Some excellent points. "Don't trust China! China is asshole!"

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Cool - I want one! 

- US Senate pledges diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics. It's bi-partisan and I support this 100%.

- Noah Smith with some interesting social statistics.

- Top 10 Media Lies

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Heh Heh

- Steven Pressfield: What Business are We In?

- Matt Taibbi and the Liberal Apostates of the Left. I'm comfortable reading writers from the Left like Matt Taibbi and writers from the Right like Victor Davis Hanson because they have earned my confidence that they are presenting intelligent, honest opinions on things. That honesty and intelligence are increasingly in short supply.

- Cool tidbit of history.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Glenn Greenwald: FBI's strange anthrax investigation sheds light on COVID lab leak theory and Fauci's emails.

- Heh Heh

- VDH: Living in Our Kingdom of Lies

- Heh Heh

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Don't let the media get away with U-turning on the lab leak theory (or Dr. Fauci) 

- Outside Magazine: 48 reasons to feel optimistic. Disagree with a few of them though (why celebrate non-alcoholic beer?).

- Evidence for the Wuhan Lab Covid-19 hypothesis isn't going to be waved away.

- Kenny Mayne is the best!

- Interesting - How Phil Mickelson took control on Sunday at the 2021 PGA Championship

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The CDC has been completely misleading when it comes to the risks of Covid. A child wearing a mask outside is child abuse pure and simple. And that's according to the science! 

- Matt Taibbi: Reporters once challenged the spy state. Now they're agents of it.

- This is so spot on (HT Instapundit)

- Medina Spirit will run in the Preakness

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Morgan Housel: The Limits of Investing Sanity

- Journalism today should come with the disclaimer "Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental" 

- This geography fact kind of blows my mind

- VDH: Are Americans becoming Sovietized?