There was a story in the New York Times citing a recent scientific study which found that people can lose weight by exercising more. Stop the fucking presses! Follow the science! On the bright side, it may be the only factually accurate story the Times has published in the last four years. Possible follow-up: Is there scientific evidence that people can also lose weight by eating less? Read more →
Author Archive: Hostile Witness
People I Thought Were Dead
Jean-Luc Godard, film director, screenwriter Earl Holliman, actor Tony Kubek, baseball player and broadcaster Steve Lawrence, singer John le Carré, novelist Jill St. John, actress Clarence Williams III, actor Updates John le Carré, died 12/12/2020 Read more →
How is the Utah Monolith Like the 2020 Election?
If something is valuable — in the case of the monolith, because it became internationally famous — and unguarded, someone is going to steal it. Read more →
Unity For Biden
I recently heard Joe Biden giving a speech about “unity” . . . that’s what we need is somebody giving a speech about unity. Here’s the deal (as Joe would say): After spending the last year calling your opponent and his supporters Nazis, good luck with the unity . . . Read more →
It’s Only Bad When Americans Die?
“More than 230,000 people have died from COVID! I hope everyone remembers that on Election Day!” “Are you suggesting Trump is responsible for the 230,000 deaths? He’s kept you alive. A dubious achievement, I grant you. But there’s about 330 million people in the US, so why not look at it that way? He’s kept almost 330 million people alive.” “I’ve kept myself alive. I wear a mask, wash my hands, social distancing . . .” “Sure, sure . . . are you saying we can choose whether or not to be infected? Everyone knows what’s safe and unsafe. Did the 230,000 people choose to get sick and die? Or did everyone who’s still here take care of themselves but all the deaths are on Trump? “And by the way, your death count is too low by about a million people. You’re citing the death count for one country. It’s… Read more →
A Child Rapist, A Human Trafficker and a Church Leader Walk Into a Bar
California judge tosses extortion charges against megachurch leader; child rape and human trafficking counts left in place — OC Register Who would you trust: a child rapist, a human trafficker or a church leader? The good news is you don’t have to choose because they’re all the same person. Read more →
Steve Scully: Ex-Debate Moderator
No, Not Trump, Not Ever https://t.co/PFvHTeQSZu — Steve Scully (@SteveScully) March 18, 2016 Steve Scully was going to be the moderator of tonight’s now-cancelled presidential debate. I know a lot of people who think President Trump’s “fake news” feud with the media is based largely on his own paranoid imagination. But is a guy who has publicly stated that Donald Trump should never be president really a good choice to moderate a presidential debate in which one of the participants is Donald Trump? There wasn’t anyone a bit more impartial available? Wait, it gets better. While in college, Scully served as an intern for — wait for it — Sen. Joe Biden. OK, now for the coup de grâce! Today, C-SPAN suspended Scully indefinitely after he admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when he was confronted about a questionable exchange with former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci. Read more →
I Don’t Think I Would Be Allowed to Run a Store
The convenience store where I buy sodas in the morning has literally four signs at the entrance saying wear a face covering if you come in the store. This morning a guy comes in with no face covering and a cup. The girl at the register says to him, “You can’t come in without a face covering.” “I’m just going to get a cup of water,” he says. So there’s another problem, which is that nobody knows the provenance of that cup and he’s going to push it into a public water dispenser. “You can’t be in here without a face covering,” the girl says a little more loudly. “I said I’m just going to get a cup of water!” Which he does. When I get to the register, I say to the girl, “I don’t think I could run a store because I would pick up the gun that… Read more →
A Lot of Controversies Are Spoiled By a Guy Who Actually Knows What He’s Talking About
I saw this headline today on theroot.com: A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism The author of the article is someone named Michael Harriot, whose bio describes him as a “world-renowned wypipologist.” (Look it up.) The section that caught my attention was where the author proposes and rejects other explanations for the number of black people in prison. An excerpt: “White people make up roughly 74% of the Massachusetts population while accounting for 58.7% of cases in our data,” the study explained. “Meanwhile, Black people make up just 6.5% of the Massachusetts population and account for 17.1% of cases.” Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right? Nope. That’s it. No further explanation. No link to relevant data. Just “Nope.” I added a comment to the article: “Of… Read more →
Traffic Stops and Swimming Pools
We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow When I was younger (we’re all very well-behaved now 🙂 ), I had several friends and family members who had unpleasant run-ins with police, where they were cuffed or arrested or beaten, the common thread being not that they were black (they were all white), but they were all wise-asses who didn’t respect authority and couldn’t find it within themselves to be compliant to a police officer. One day my 9th-grade gym teacher told us (again, all white boys) to be excessively polite to police officers — yes sir, no sir — have your day in court if it came to that, but better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. In my experience, the narrative that only… Read more →
Biden Blames Trump For Riots Carried Out by People Who Hate Trump
Joe Biden has emerged from his basement to blame President Trump for riots carried out by people who hate President Trump. Bear in mind that these are liberal groups, rioting in liberal cities, with liberal mayors, and liberal city councils, promoting radical liberal causes, and supported by liberal money. Amidst sinking poll numbers, Joe, the media and others on the left have pivoted from months of “Violence? What violence?” to “Rioting is terrible but it’s all Trump’s fault.” Read more →
“Mostly Peaceful”
Portland mayor says protesters are ‘attempting to commit murder’ and helping Trump’s reelection campaign — Los Angeles Times I’m not sure how those two things go together but look, Mr. Mayor (is this the “Summer of Love” mayor or is that in Seattle?), you’re not going out on a limb by taking a stand against murder. Pretty much everyone is opposed to murder. But if you’d enforced at some point over the last couple months the laws against lesser offenses like assault, theft and destruction of property, the state of affairs in your city wouldn’t have deteriorated to this point. You now look like a fool saying “Someone should do something about this!” Like who, the mayor? Read more →
Down in the Pleasure Center
What percentage of Americans get more pleasure from calling someone a racist than from having an orgasm? I’ll estimate 35 but I feel like that may be low . . . Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
About 19 years ago, I published the first version of People I Thought Were Dead. As of yesterday, July 25, 2020, with the death of Olivia De Havilland of natural causes at the age of 104, all of those people are now actually deceased. Read more →
Protests Considered Harmful?
I saw multiple people on TV this weekend looting stores, running out with a “Black Lives Matter” sign in one hand and stolen merchandise in the other. Maybe we should stop having these Black Lives Matter protests. The majority of the TV coverage is black citizens stealing things and setting things on fire, which doesn’t improve anyone’s lives and probably, in terms of prejudice and race relations, makes things worse. In this case, the George Floyd case, I haven’t heard one person say that kneeling on someone’s neck and killing them is good police work. So it’s really a protest against no one, except the one guy who did it and he’s already been fired, arrested, charged with murder and condemned by everyone from the president of the United States on down. There’s no opposing viewpoint to protest against. The mayor of Atlanta, who is a black woman and therefore… Read more →
HW’s Whiskey Reviews: Basil Hayden’s Dark Rye
I know it’s customary in talking about whiskey to talk about “notes” of vanilla, toffee, hammers, etc. But let me just say that I like my whiskeys the way I like my women: dark and rich. Rating: Read more →
Why is Michael Bloomberg a “Racist”?
Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city. That’s an old quote from Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, cited in “The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg: His racist stop-and-frisk policy as New York mayor can’t be forgotten.” in the New York Times. My first thought is, instead of jumping right to calling the man a “racist” (translation: “anyone who disagrees with me”), run the numbers and tell us if the statement is true. My sense is that he might be a little off on the numbers but not a lot. And my second thought is that the statement is both sexist and ageist but to my knowledge no one has objected… Read more →
Lowering the Trauma Bar
More than a hundred faculty members at Ball State University signed a letter to the student newspaper saying, in part, “We support our students of color as they deal with the trauma of these events and navigate its fallout.” The traumatic events, as it turns out, are that a marketing professor asked a black student to move to a different seat in the classroom and the student declined to move. First, why make a racial thing out of it? If my son, who is not black, were asked by a college professor to move seats, my hope is that he would would move seats, and if he didn’t want to move, he’d move anyway. Certainly there’s room for personal interpretation, but to me a traumatic event would be, say, losing a limb, or witnessing a murder. Being asked to move seats in a classroom is not a traumatic event. I… Read more →
When Is a Mass Shooting Not a Mass Shooting?
Chicago shooting: 13 people were shot at a house party honoring a man killed earlier this year — CNN.com This is a wild story . . . First of all, the shootings took place at a gathering honoring a man slain earlier this year. According to police, shots were fired within the residence, which caused everyone to start to leave. As partygoers fled the home, police believe one of them opened fire outside. Then a vehicle was driving down the street and one of the people who left the residence, not the same person who was randomly firing at people leaving the house, fired on the vehicle. So we had one person firing inside the house, one person firing at people leaving the house, and a third person firing at a vehicle driving down the street, for a grand total of 13 victims. Because no one involved can be labelled… Read more →
What Causes Hurricanes?
We can’t blame it on white supremacists? When we talk about a climate crisis this is what we mean. Our people are in danger. And it’s only going to get worse. We have no choice but to pass a Green New Deal. https://t.co/jbtnlvDsYH — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 2, 2019 Read more →