Archive for June, 2024

I was reading a piece about the potential sale of the money losing Washington Post when I noticed something I had missed: (emphasis mine)

Anyone who has paid much attention to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over the years knows that he isn’t afraid to shut down something that isn’t working. In 2015, Amazon pulled the plug on its Fire smartphone, after announcing a $170 million writedown on unsold devices. In 2019, Bezos finalized a divorce from his wife of 25 years. In 2022, Amazon announced it would close down all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores and retail shops. In 2023, Amazon discontinued its Amazon Smile program that let customers direct a portion of their purchases to charity. Earlier this year, Bezos announced he was ending his residency in the state of Washington after nearly 30 years, and moving to Florida. 

“Embrace failures” is part of Amazon’s “Day 1 culture,” along with “high-velocity decision-making.” Implicit in that is recognizing when something is not working and isn’t worth keeping trying to get working, rather than indefinitely pretending that sometime in the future it will start working. 

This is how bad the difference between blue and red states are, that ultra rich ultra liberals don’t want to live in ultra blue states anymore. That old villain reality is kicking in.


On the plus side for the Washington Post CNN is doing much worse:

Throughout the week of June 10, CNN was only able to attract an average of 396,000 viewers throughout the total day.

That is astonishing.

During its dreadful primetime hours, CNN dropped below 500,000 total viewers for the week to a pathetic average of just 477,000.

This is apparently what happens when you decide to abandon straight news and decide to fight for the Nevertrump niche with MSNBC. Nolte sums up the reality nicely:

It’s one thing to cast the truth aside and revel in your Orange Man Bad hatred when the economy is booming…It’s one thing to enjoy the MSNBC and CNN lies and hoaxes aimed at the MAGAtards when the world’s at peace, gas costs $2.35 a gallon, and eggs are 99 cents a dozen…All that CNN and MSNBC insanity and dishonesty is pure entertainment when illegals aren’t flooding your city and your mortgage hasn’t doubled…

Apparently the nevertrump market can’t support both CNN & MSNBC as the niche simply isn’t big enough, darn that nasty reality!

As one person put it:


A while back I covered a hate crime hoax in the next town during the Obama years that went national until it fell apart (no apologies of course and no national coverage of the reverse). Instapundit when writing about the hoaxes notes that the demand for hate crimes exceeds the supply now there is a new documentary about the phenom titled Demand for Hate:

They focus on a hate hoax out of UVA, Hollywood in Toto notes the reaction and the key line of the picture:

The filmmakers tried to interview Zyahna Bryant, the activist who helped rally the Left against Bettinger, UVA officials and University President James Ryan to glean their side of the story.

They all declined. Their silence speaks volumes. So does the lawsuit that gives the film a marginally happy ending.

“Demand for Hate” offers a single quote to sum it all up, courtesy of Jim Bacon from The Jefferson Council.

“There’s not enough racism to go around.”

That’s the reality, it’s also why activists end up going after No U-Turn Signs to keep things rolling.


Reality is also hitting automakers like Ford who with the Biden admin’s pushing spent a lot of money on electric car are finding that like the proverbial dog who doesn’t like the dog food people don’t want electric cars:

Slowing demand for Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck is delaying the start of full production at the company’s new West Tennessee factory and pushing vehicle deliveries to dealers until early 2026, according to the state senator representing the community home to the new facility.

State Sen. Page Walley, a Savannah Republican, told the Lookout his understanding is that full production of the truck at the BlueOval City campus in Stanton was pushed back earlier this year by nine months from its initially scheduled full production start date.

Based on “what’s happening, with (Ford’s) read on the economy,” the company might need “a little bit longer runway” before full production takes off, Walley said. 

The real problem is that people who actually try electric cars aren’t all that enthused:

In general, more consumers are willing to consider buying an EV for their next car, with 38 percent of non-EV owners planning on buying a plug-in hybrid or full battery electric vehicle for their next purchase—a slight increase from 37 percent in 2022, according to Automotive News. Still, that dwarfs the number of Americans who will likely buy a combustion engine vehicle for their next car.  

Even more surprising was the number of EV owners who plan on going back to gas for their next car. According to McKinsey, 46 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. said they’re likely to go back to a traditional engine in their next vehicl

In a bad economy the reality of getting from one place to another trumps false green dreams.


It’s been rather funny watching the reaction of the ultra leftist “just stop oil” campaign to the anger over their defacing Stonehenge one of the key historical sites of the world.

They can’t seem to understand why people are so upset at what they did when the world as the claim is at stake:

I did give an explanation to their question

You might recall Rush Limbaugh’s “Al Gore Doomsday Clock” which ran out about 7 years ago Instapundit linked to the last word on this yesterday:

Same grift as a TV preacher, different marks.

Kananga: Solitaire, why? I treated you well. You lacked for nothing.

Solitaire: I don’t understand what you…

Kananga: [interrupting] Mr. Bond’s watch, my dear. I gave you every break possible. You had a 50-50 chance. You weren’t even close.

Solitaire: I had no choice. Please believe me. The cards.

Live and Let Die 1973

Today is Friday June 21. In six days President Joe Biden will meet President Donald Trump in what I suspect will be the only debate between the pair of them before election day. I’m typing this post at 8:54 AM EST a week before the day after the debate and I submit and suggest by this time next week the fate of Joe Biden will be decided.

By this I don’t mean the result of an election between President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, I mean by this time next week the people who are actually running this government will decide if they will allow Joe Biden to remain on the ballot.

Consider, Joe Biden has been given every possible advantage for this debate even to the point of having one of the people who help propagate hoaxes about Trump being one of the two moderators. Everything from the choice of venue, to the lack of an audience to even the mics being controlled by the moderators favors Joe Biden.

Furthermore the mainstream media will without a doubt elevate and exaggerate their description of Biden’s performance well beyond any level he manages to achieve.

But in the end no matter what is said in public privately if Joe Biden with all of these advantages is unable to preform to a level that can convince the powers behind his throne that the election can be kept within the margin of fraud he will be gone.

There would be many ways to “persuade” him to step aside. Maybe the press will “suddenly” discover evidence of corruption that they consider credible, or maybe the justice department will suddenly decide that that old Joe IS competent to stand trial or maybe they will go after the rest of his family that has been drawing water from the well all his political life. Or maybe they’ll go all in on Hunter to put him away for good.

Joe Biden could be told that any or all of those things are likely to happen if he stays in the race. The Biden family knows that none of these things would be hard as they only require people to tell the truth and/or follow the law

They could even have his doctor declare him medically unfit, again that would be really easy as it would be the truth and could even be the ground for not pursuing all these other possibilities as he would be unfit to stand trial.

And if none of these tactics shook his resolve, well he IS an old man maybe he’ll die from a fall or even “natural” causes. At his age that would be at least plausible and the left would play the sympathy card to be used by whoever they (not the voters of course) choose to replace him on the ticket with. Oh and if you think the left is not capable of this, you have not been paying attention these last few years.

This is what is on the line here for Joe Biden in the debate. You and I may not know what decision the powers that be have made but this time next week his fate will be decided and don’t think for one moment that the wheels are not all ready in place to execute whatever plan they may decide on right now.

Update: Van Jones Agrees

“This is the entire election, as far as I’m concerned. The entire world will be watching,” Jones said Thursday in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta. “If you are a carbon-based life form, you’re going to be watching. If you’ve got a functioning brain stem, you’re going to be watching.”

“Because, if Biden goes out there and messes up, it’s game over. If he walks out there, and a week later he’s lower in the polls, it’s panic in the party,” he continued. “But if he goes in there and he can handle himself against Donald Trump — a runaway train, a locomotive, a raging bull — then this guy deserves another shot to be president, because that is tough.”

I live in a medium sized town in Massachusetts.  In my town there is lake with a rather famous name, a name that is found in the Guinness Book of Records.  This lake is now rather infamous amongst us locals because of the way it is managed by the town government. Residents constantly complain that a day spent there is no where as much fun as it used to be.  I completely agree with them.  Every bit of fun you could have at this picturesque lake has been banned.

When I was young you could swim anywhere you wished.   If you chose to swim outside of the area guarded by lifeguards it was swim at your own risk.  About a decade ago the town government outlawed all swimming outside of the roped in area, you could only wade everywhere else.  This was done for our safety.  I have no memory of anyone drowning back when we were allowed to swim where ever we wished but the nanny state knows best.  Only big government can decide what is acceptable risk for each and every individual.   We are all too stupid.

Today even walking in ankle deep water outside of the roped off area is verboten.  If you dare to engage in this outrageously risky behavior the lifeguards scold you and demand you return to your proper place.  Forget about playing catch with a nerf football or floating peacefully on an air mattress.

After a few individuals left a mess and dumped hot coals into the wrong trash barrels no one can grill at the town beach.  A much more just system would be to punish the guilty and let the rest enjoy themselves.  That ain’t how big government operates.

I would love to sit back at the lake, relax, and enjoy one of my homebrewed beers.  Just because a small percentage of individuals would drink themselved into the state of intoxication, no one is allowed to consume any adult beverages at the lake.

The town government robbed everyone at the lake of the freedom to enjoy themselves. This was done slowly, incrementally, over time.  It happened so slowly that few noticed, and fewer spoke up against it.  That is just how freedom most often dies.

You know maybe it’s just me but if I wanted to convince people that election 2020 was on the up and up I likely would pass a law making it illegal for the canvasing boards from investigating election fraud.

Of course if my goal was to win at all costs and didn’t have a problem with people knowing I was cheating I might think otherwise.


One of the side effects of Caitlin Clark joining the WNBA has been on X / twitter.

Every time her Indiana team plays the WNBA and her team trend on X / twitter

I’ve been on twitter for a while and I don’t remember seeing the WNBA trending before, now it trends every few days.

Still not breaking even though, at least not yet.


Last week’s Doctor Who was one of the best of the season in terms of writing and plot. A real barn burner of an episode.

Which makes it such a shame that so few people saw it as Doctor Who is setting records for the lowest viewership in its history.

Davies has tried to bring back classic villains and classic characters to bring old fans home, however he also gave us the previous week’s episode Rogue which was described by my son who watched it as “below the level of the Chibnall years” as it seemed the only point of the episode was to generate a gay make out scene that Davies wanted to have with Capt. Jack but didn’t do before.

I skipped that one myself as I don’t watch shows with guys making out.

Bottom line when you tell established fans to get lost that you don’t want them, they tend to grant your wish and the Disney+ money won’t last forever.


There are a lot of sad stories from the war against Hamas but one of the saddest is this one:

The sad thing here is that it took her being taken hostage to believe what has been plain to many of us for decades. The Palestinians wants Jews dead and no amount

Reality never cares what your beliefs are


Finally the “Just stop Oil” crowd decided that damaging Stonehenge was an appropriate action for their group and it appears that they might have actually crossed a line red enough to generate real punishment for their crimes.

I have a simple suggestion myself, if they are so dedicated to forcing people back to the 18th century sentence them to an 18th century prison.

No Electricity, no plastics, no internet of course, no modern toilets, no pesticides to keep out vermin, hot in summer, freezing in winter with only whatever they can set afire for heat.

Give them the life they desire for others, then go after the backers who have paid for all this nonsense.

Until there are consequence it won’t stop.