SELFIES

You've probably already heard of the self-own, when someone goes on the Internet and makes what he or she thinks is a profound point only to make a complete jackass of themselves.  But here's where we've come to.  Put your hands together for the self-hack.

The New York Times is officially reversing course. After Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, published an op-ed in the paper Wednesday that was met with outrage, the NYT on Thursday said Cotton's column—which advocated for the federal government using the military to suppress protests over the deaths of black people at the hands of police—did not actually meet the newspaper's standards for publication. James Bennet, the editor who oversees the paper's opinion section (and who initially defended the op-ed's publication), told staff members that he hadn't read Cotton's essay before it was published. Shortly after that meeting, the Times issued a statement that CNN refers to as a "stunning reversal." A spokesperson said a review "made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards."

But it got in anyway.  Right.

Candy-asses.

I'd have given the Times props for that op-ed.  Lord knows, it's rare when a conservative or a conservative opinion is taken seriously at all, never mind published.  But no longer.  Whatever vestigial respect I had left for that ridiculous publication has dried up and blown away.

DAMN, GAULEITER

Mix in a Christian or two now and then.  Or idiots like me are going to start throwing around terms like Kristallnacht.  And you wouldn't want that. 

I suppose.

YOU NEVER KNOW

Donald Trump might actually be the Antichrist.

U.S. employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, the largest monthly increase in recorded history, as coronavirus lockdowns across the country were lifted. The unemployment rate dropped to 13.3 percent last month, down from 14.7 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

CNBC reported that the May gain of 2.5 million jobs “was by far the biggest one-month jobs gain in U.S. history since at least 1939.”

ADVENTURES IN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

This week's episode: PLEASE rebuild that business we just let leftists torch.

Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot said she’s hopeful major retailers will reopen the Chicago stores that were looted or otherwise damaged during protests surrounding George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota. But, she’s unsure of one of the biggest.

Mayor Lightfoot said she was on a conference call with Walmart and other major retailers that had stores looted or heavily damaged during the unrest in Chicago. She said she pleaded with them to not abandon Chicago.

What's sad is that they'll probably do it.

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS

The Chinese Flu is officially dead.

For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19—stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings.

Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It’s time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism.

 

“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

 

“The injustice that’s evident to everyone right now needs to be addressed,” Abraar Karan, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital physician who’s exhorted coronavirus experts to use their platforms to encourage the protests, told me.

 

It’s a message echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests. Their claim: If we don’t address racial inequality, it’ll be that much harder to fight Covid-19.

 

But their messages are also confounding to many who spent the spring strictly isolated on the advice of health officials, only to hear that the need might not be so absolute after all. It’s particularly nettlesome to conservative skeptics of the all-or-nothing approach to lockdown, who point out that many of those same public health experts—a group that tends to skew liberal—widely criticized activists who held largely outdoor protests against lockdowns in April and May, accusing demonstrators of posing a public health danger. Conservatives, who felt their own concerns about long-term economic damage or even mental health costs of lockdown were brushed aside just days or weeks ago, are increasingly asking whether these public health experts are letting their politics sway their health care recommendations.

ANNALS OF ANGLICAN USELESSNESS

Things must be going fantastic in Scotland if the Scots Piskies can come in on something that didn't actually happen but, you know, the importance of the narrative and stuff.

We then witnessed the blatant misuse of both a church building and holy scripture in the pursuit of political gain – in circumstances where the President of the USA had only managed to stand in front of the church because his officers had cleared a pathway through peaceful protesters by the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The message of the Church and the Bible is about love and equality and all sharing in the bounty of a generous God. Nothing we witnessed last night by the President represented that.

As Jesus said, the whole law is summed up in Leviticus.  Orange Man Bad.

You're "official" Anglicans.  I've said it before and I'll probably say it many, many, many times again.  Shriners have a better claim on being Islamic than you do on being Christian.

THROWING IN THE TOWEL

David Horowitz asks a vitally-important question.  Have the Democrats given up?

The Democrat party is at war with America. That is the clear message of the Democrats’ responses to the crises that have engulfed our nation over the last six months, made our streets war zones, and destroyed the small business communities that are the lifeblood of our system. When the country was attacked by a deadly virus from China in January, the Democrats attacked the president’s efforts to stop it at the border, then blamed him for the 100,000 deaths that followed. Yet Democrat governors controlled the health systems of every major center of the covid19 devastation and were 100% responsible for any policies that failed.

 

When the president attempted to re-open the economy in May, Democrat governors and mayors issued draconian orders to arrest individuals violating their “social distancing” injunctions by strolling in parks, lounging on beaches and – worst of all - attempting to revive their barbershops and salons. As a direct consequence of these imposed shutdowns forty million Americans lost their jobs. To many of us, the Democrats’ purpose was clear: to depress the economy and blame the consequences on the president. This became the incessant theme of their political utterances and ads.

It's hard not to come to that conclusion.  I mean, who in the world is ever going to get excited by Joe Biden?  In 2012, Mitt Romney had the same kind of vibe for the GOP.  This man is a genuine, pedal-to-the-metal, foot-to-the-floorboards, rock-ribbed conservative?

Seriously?  Do you really think we're that stupid?

After 2012, Donald Trump was the most inevitable person in the world and any "conservatives" who still claim not to understand that need to get out of public life and stay out of it forever.  So let's just face facts, shall we?

The Democrats have thrown away whatever "moderation" they had left and kicked in with, well, basically, communism.  Put 40,000,000 people out of work and burn down the rest of it.  Joe can make all the leftist policy claims he cares to but nobody believes he actually means any of it.

The last thing in the world the left wants is for Joe Biden to win in the fall.  Because if you win, you have to produce results.  And the left can't do that and it knows it can't do that.

Ever.

Better to destroy everything and try to recreate something from the ashes.

With any kind of luck.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION II?

Could be.  Maybe not the one the Democrats hope for.

UPDATE: Notes from a failed northeastern US state.

 

Then there will be more looting, more burning, more victims — and an ever-escalating sense that the city is incapable of preserving the public peace and that it lacks the courage even to try.

 

Let’s be frank: The notion that the actions of four cops in Minnesota on Memorial Day in any way justifies the continued fracturing of New York City’s social order 10 days later is nonsense on its face.

And the willingness of Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo to tolerate what has been happening in New York since last Friday — violence is rampant upstate as well — is scandalous beyond words.

For the two of them, it’s always been better to do nothing than to alienate an interest group — but effectively accelerating municipal mayhem through studied inaction is something altogether new.

UPDATE: Yeah, pretty much.

As the blue cities burn, as the blue mayors of those cities tell their police to stand down in the face of violent mobs, and blue city police, realizing that their blue supervisors and blue elected officials do not have their backs and that they may lose their jobs if they so much as move one micro millimeter beyond what some ex post facto internal affairs investigation will determine is correct, decide to not stick around to be sacrificed on some grandstanding blue politician's altar.

And once the anarchists figure out (which they will, quickly) that the police aren't going to do anything, it's party time. Which will result in a certain percentage of business owners closing down permanently and moving elsewhere. This is what happened after the Watts Riots in 1965 and the 1992 'Rodney King' Los Angeles Riots. The 1967 Detroit Riots resulted in 43 killed, 1,000 injured, 2,000 buildings destroyed, and 400 families left homeless. In each case, the neighborhoods became more impoverished and never did fully recover.

UPDATE: Thinking of coming to St. Louis, Missouri any time soon?  You might want to...oh, I don't know...not.  St. Louis City and St. Louis County are two totally different legal entities so that's still working for you.  But while I own knives, I am seriously considering buying a gun.

First time in my life.

UPDATE:  Maybe I'll buy one with the stim check.  Assuming I get one; haven't seen it yet.  But at least Charming Billy will be happy. :-)

CONFIRMED: Kimmy's bought and paid for.

QUICK QUESTION

Do any of you guys have any idea who "Seth Rogen" is?

AND NOW...IDIOTS

Episcopalianity is in.

The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington condemned President Donald Trump

Of course she did.  The house pointy hat of The Washington Post could do no less.  What do you think she's on retainer for?

on Monday for his visit to St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House after law enforcement officers used tear gas to clear protesters from the area.

Maybe those "law enforcement officers" felt they had to.  Security and stuff.

"Let me be clear:

 

For a change.  You're a Piskie, we already know what you're going to say.

 

The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition,

 

Some old book we have to feign respect for every so often.

 

and one of the churches of my diocese without permission as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for," Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde told CNN.

 

And you would know about the "teachings of Jesus" because?  You're an Episcopalian, lady.  As far as you're concerned, "Jesus" is nothing more than meaningless professional jargon. 

 

"And to do so... he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard. I am outraged," Budde said.

 

Of course you are.  The fact that quite a number of poor people all over the country are going to lose their jobs or their outlets for, you know, buying food and stuff is apparently not that big of a deal.  Makes you no never mind as long as they leave Whole Foods alone.

 

High-Church Unitarianism is on record.  All we have to do now is find out what actual Christians are thinking about all this.

UPDATE: Confirming my long-held belief that Episcopal bishops are the single most worthless and useless group of people currently assembled anywhere for any reason, the PrezBish haz thotz.  You already know what they are so clicking on that link is up to you.

UPDATE: Every so often, the Babylon Bee is scary good.