Is Gawker Destroying Itself From The Inside? Let’s Hope So.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.  Maybe MSNBC will follow Gawker into oblivion next:

Is Gawker Destroying Itself From The Inside? Let’s Hope So.

Because what may have seemed like a shocking new low was really just the inevitable trajectory of one of the most toxic cultures in all of media. It was the natural extension of a media empire with an editorial mission that owes far more allegiance to bullying and bitterness than it does to accuracy or ethics. This most recent scandal—which seems to have suddenly woken up the general public—is not an anomaly. It’s exactly what you get when you mix bad leadership, bad incentives, and selfish, self-loathing people.

Just look for a second at some of Gawker’s biggest stories over the years. There was the time they stole an iPhone prototype and nearly faced criminal prosecution for it. There was the time they ran private nude photos of quarterback Brett Favre to his objections and the objections of the recipient. There was the nude video of Dov Charney. There was the time they published an anonymous source’s recounting of a supposed one night stand by a female Senate candidate. There was the time they ran humiliating commentary against stolen footage of a sex tape featuring Hulk Hogan.

…to mention nothing of this Wonkette excrescence (link is to archive.org) which they attempted to memory-hole sometime in 2012 or 2013:

wonkette: OMG I AM WATCHINGMICHELLE MALKIN’S INTERNET VIDEOS FOR THE FIRST TIME
operative: she has internet videos?
operative: does she do the thing with the ping-pong balls?*
wonkette: SHE HAS A WHOLE FUCKING INTERNET VIDEO NETWORK THIS SHIT IS BANANAS

The turd burglar responsible for that made #5 on this list of “the ten most heinously unpleasant Gawker writers.”

Wisconsin’s Shame: State Supreme Court Vindicates Victims of ‘John Doe’ Witch Hunt

For once, liberal fascism takes it on the chin:

Wisconsin’s Shame: State Supreme Court Vindicates Victims of ‘John Doe’ Witch Hunt

In a ruling this morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rendered official what observers have long known: Wisconsin Democrats did, in fact, launch a massive, multi-county “John Doe” investigation of the state’s conservatives, featuring extraordinarily broad subpoenas and coordinated “paramilitary” raids of private homes; the “crimes” that provided the investigation’s pretext were not crimes at all, but First Amendment-protected speech; and the legal theory underpinning the investigation was bunk, “unsupported in either reason or law,” as the court put it.

In two separate reports, National Review described these raids in detail. (The court cited our reports in its opinion.) On October 3, 2013, multiple Wisconsin conservatives were awakened by a persistent pounding on the door, their houses were illuminated by floodlights, and police — sometimes with guns drawn — poured into their homes. Once inside, the investigators turned the private residences of these innocent conservative citizens “upside down,” seeking an extraordinarily broad range of documents and information. These raids were supplemented by subpoenas that secured for investigators massive amounts of electronic information. The court was obviously disturbed:

The breadth of the documents gathered pursuant to subpoenas and seized pursuant to search warrants is amazing. Millions of documents, both in digital and paper copy, were subpoenaed and/or seized.  Deputies seized business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys. The special prosecutor obtained virtually every document possessed by the Unnamed Movants relating to every aspect of their lives, both personal and professional, over a five-year span (from 2009 to 2013). Such documents were subpoenaed and/or seized without regard to content or relevance to the alleged violations of Ch. 11. As part of this dragnet, the special prosecutor also had seized wholly irrelevant information, such as retirement income statements, personal financial account information, personal letters, and family photos.

It’s Getting Tough To Tell Planned Parenthood From Nazis

Not too surprising, given their founder’s fondness for eugenics, especially as practiced by the NSDAP:

It’s Getting Tough To Tell Planned Parenthood From Nazis

German SS officer and Auschwitz “physician” Josef Mengele once wrote, “There’s only one truth and one true beauty …There’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in nature. There’s only ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’… Both sides receive equal chances. Nevertheless, nature provides a strainer. Things that are ‘inappropriate’ fall through since they lose in the struggle for survival.”

More lately, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director for medical services, had this to say: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

It’s almost like Planned Parenthood is the strainer and babies, those inappropriate little consequences of life, fall through in the struggle for survival while the organs, the appropriate parts, survive and get sold at market. Ain’t progress grand?

Far Worse Than Munich

obama-chamberlain14 July 2015…another day that will live in infamy:

Far Worse Than Munich

I checked in with Sean Hannity on Fox News to share my thoughts on both the Iran “deal” and illegal immigration. You can see the full interview here.

Sean started by cross-cutting Barack Obama on Tuesday with Neville Chamberlain in 1938. But I thought that comparison was unfair to Chamberlain. He was an honorable man who loved his country and just happened to get the greatest issue of the day wrong. You can’t say the same of Obama:

Steyn said he thinks what President Barack Obama did is “significantly worse” than what former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain did. He also stated that he doesn’t think the president was negotiating on behalf of the United States.

“I think what happened at these talks is that he and the Iranians were in a sense negotiating together to anoint Iran as the regional power in the Middle East and to facilitate Iran’s re-entry, the biggest planetary sponsor of terrorism, to facilitate its re-entry into the global community,” Steyn said. “That’s what Obama was there doing.”

Wondering why the weather’s been cooler lately?

winter_is_comingThe sun is unusually free of sunspots, and a set of coincidences in timing could lead to a “Maunder minimum” in the next decade:

Is a mini ICE AGE coming? Scientists warn the sun will ‘sleep’ in 2020

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

Wondering why the weather’s been cooler lately?

winter_is_comingThe sun is unusually free of sunspots, and a set of coincidences in timing could lead to a “Maunder minimum” in the next decade:

Is a mini ICE AGE coming? Scientists warn the sun will ‘sleep’ in 2020

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

The new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat.

It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.