FASTER, PLEASE: Experimental treatment appears to subdue type 1 diabetes in laboratory mice.
GOOGLE JUST ISN’T ALL THAT INTO ETHICS: Google fires yet another AI ethics lead and we’ve gotta ask: What’s going on over there?
SADLY, IT HAS TO BE FACULTY-EDITED BECAUSE SO MANY STUDENTS DON’T BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH: New Faculty-Edited Law Journal: The Journal Of Free Speech Law.
IRONY ALERT: MassHealth employee fired after Facebook posts about masks, Nazi Germany.
A MassHealth employee who said she was fired after she compared calling the police on neighbors for not wearing masks to Nazi Germany tells the Herald that her First Amendment rights have been “trampled on” and she’s considering legal action.
Denise Foley, 60, is no longer MassHeath’s director of internal and external training and communication following the firestorm in a private Milton Facebook group that has 12,000 members.
It all started on Dec. 3 when someone in the Milton Neighbors Facebook group posted they had received a mailer about turning in neighbors who aren’t wearing masks.
Foley responded to the post, “Sounds like what the Nazis did in Germany.”
She later wrote in the comments, “How dare anyone try to take away my rights! I have the right NOT to wear a mask if I don’t want to. I have the right to gather with friends and family if I want to. If that’s a problem for you or anyone else, report me!”
They did. “Foley is now looking to bring a First Amendment lawsuit against the state.” And possibly an NLRB case as well.
THAT’S NOT GOOD: Chronic heartburn doubles risk for certain cancers, study finds.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Gravy Train Keeps Rolling for Second Stepdaughter Ella Emhoff. “Predictably, the media coverage of Emhoff’s overnight transition into a hipster fashion icon has been excessively fawning. The New York Times described her style as ‘Wes Anderson chic,’ which is just a fancy way of saying ‘rich and white.’ And yet, the fact that Emhoff has tattoos and doesn’t shave her armpits has compelled many to embrace her as a revolutionary figure bringing much-needed diversity to the fashion industry.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Facilitated Migrants Are the New Caged Children.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Does it take a magic wand to turn cages for children into facilities for migrants?
Answer: Nope, it just takes a Democrat president and a complicit media.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- The questions about reparations none dare answer
- Fredo Cuomo and Granny Killer Cuomo are the true victims
- Biden HHS nom endorses sex changes for children
Bonus Sanity: Former Clinton advisor Naomi Wolf takes the red pill on lockdowns.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GRANNY-KILLER CUOMO: What We Know About Cuomo’s COVID-19 Cover-Up. “The cover-up may be worse than the crime, Dr. Joel Zinberg, a medical doctor, professor, and contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, says of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s inaccurate reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in his state. “
ANYONE WHO THOUGHT MERRICK GARLAND WOULD BE A “MODERATE” ON THE SUPREME COURT, TAKE NOTE:
In his confirmation hearing Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland plans to tell the Senate his priority is domestic terrorism, and that he personally will supervise the prosecution of what he calls “white supremacists” who stormed the Capitol.
It is disturbing that Garland is embracing the rancid lie that the Capitol riot was racially motivated, an uprising by “white supremacists” which rivalled the Islamist terror attack of 9/11 in which 3,000 people were slaughtered.
This is Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s narrative, which she has driven with escalating hyperbole until it no longer resembles anything that happened on January 6.
Prediction: He’ll be Biden’s “wingman” and will push radical legal and social agendas. Because that’s how he’s starting out.
Related (From Ed): Biden AG Pick Declares There’s “Room” For More Gun Control Laws. “Judge Merrick Garland, who’s been tapped by Joe Biden to be the next Attorney General, told a Senate confirmation panel on Monday that there’s ‘room’ for Biden’s anti-gun policies to be enacted into law, and if confirmed he’ll work with the administration to carry out its gun control agenda.”
THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT, BUT SOME WHO DID LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DETERMINED TO REPEAT IT: As Americans Turn Left, We Should Remember Socialism Killed 36 Million Chinese.
CANCEL CULTURE COMES FOR KERMIT: It’s Getting Harder Being Green. As John Hinderaker writes, “The truth is, it is harder being normal. The forces of authoritarianism have come for, of all things, the Muppets. I did not speak out, because I wasn’t a Muppet…But seriously: Disney has gone stark, raving mad:”
Anyone who streams “The Muppet Show” on Disney+ will see a disclaimer first — warning of “offensive content.”
***
The disclaimer shown prior to each episode warns viewers that the show features “stereotypes” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.”“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the disclaimer states.
“Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together,” the disclaimer says.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record puts it: Disney Warns Viewers That The Muppet Show Is From A Different Era When Comedy Was Culturally Acceptable.
AND YET THERE CLEARLY IS, AS THE RESPONSE TO THE CAPITOL INVASION INDICATES: There shouldn’t be a double standard for law & order.
NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: US Army is developing the ‘most powerful’ laser in history which will vaporize targets using short pulses and produce powerful signals to disrupt enemy electronics.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! University of Kentucky promotes segregated ‘racial healing circles.’
WOEING: After Saturday’s engine failure, Boeing says many 777s should be grounded. “There are versions of the 777 aircraft with engines built by three different manufacturers. For about the last 15 years, new 777s have all been delivered with GE-made engines. So this recommendation applies to older models of the aircraft still in service.”
AFTER OVER A MONTH OF THE MEDIA SPREADING DISINFORMATION:
They told us all that time — without evidence — that he died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher by a protester. That was false. How long did they know it was false before they came clean? Many of them still haven’t.
WELL, YES. THAT’S HOW THEY RUN INTERFERENCE, AGAIN AND AGAIN. Every slander media flung at Florida’s DeSantis was true of Cuomo.
IT ISN’T TERRORISM WHEN LEFTIES DO IT: Merrick Garland Won’t Call Antifa Attacks on Federal Buildings Domestic Terrorism. His Reason Is Absurd.
SO JUST IDENTIFY AS A MOTHER: Fathers don’t count. “I argued in the New York Times that the science is telling us to reopen schools. An author and pro-closure teacher responded on Twitter with the counterpoint that I am a father.”
Just remember: If you interpret “woke” as a synonym for “crazy and stupid” — or maybe “crazy, stupid, and vicious” — you’ll seldom go far wrong.
IT’S NOT “PRIVATE COMPANIES” MAKING DECISIONS WHEN CONGRESS IS PRESSURING THEM: Democrat Congressmen Pressure Cable Providers to Censor Conservative News Networks.
DOUBLE STANDARDS ARE THE BEST STANDARDS BECAUSE YOU HAVE TWICE AS MANY: Pelosi, Who Claims to Oppose Gerrymandering, Funnels $300,000 to Democratic Gerrymandering Group.
YOU ARE NOW NO LONGER ALLOWED EVEN TO DEFEND PEOPLE WHO ARE CANCELED: “The online publication Slate has suspended a well-known podcast host after he debated with colleagues over whether people who are not Black should be able to quote a racial slur.”
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Thank You, Michael Che!
Friends, we’ve got to stop this. Che’s joke wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t something someone accidentally let air on a decades-long television show with a cast and crew in the hundreds. It wasn’t even new for him. Was the line anti-Semitic? Yep. Was it also absolutely intended? You betcha.
* * * * * * * *
Me? I prefer my wolves in wolves’ clothing. If anti-Semitism is essential to the ideology of today’s left—and it is—then it is essential that we see it clearly. Keeping ourselves under illusions is… Well, let’s just say, that has never been a winning strategy for Jews.
Read the whole thing.
WEIRD, I KEEP HEARING HOW THAT LOSER TRUMP LEFT THE GOP IN RUINS: Republicans Outraise Democrats Across the Board in January.
SADLY TRUE:
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Let’s Stop Pretending That Union Teachers Are Saints. “The unions have been delaying the reopening of schools by demanding a variety of things that don’t have anything to do with educating your children. And despite the fact that there is SCIENCE proving that school kids aren’t spreading the ‘rona, teachers are acting as if they’re marching to their deaths if they go back into the classrooms.”
VDH: Is the Biden Administration Stumbling Into War?
So wars are deterred when all the potential players know the relative strengths of each and the relative willingness to use such power in defense of a nation’s interests. Lack of such knowledge leads to dangerous misjudgments. And war then becomes a grotesque foreordained laboratory experiment to confirm what should have been known in advance.
Wars begin when aggressive powers believe that their targets are weaker, or give the false impression that they are weaker, or at least stay inert in the face of provocation. What were Argentina’s generals or Saddam Hussein thinking when they provoked the United Kingdom or the United States during the Falkland War and First Gulf War? No doubt, they assumed that their more powerful targets were too busy elsewhere, played out, or insufficiently concerned to react. In aggregate, a lot of damage and death followed in those two respective brief wars of 1982 and 1991—and all to prove what should have been obvious.
Perhaps Buenos Aires had one too many times read of British parliamentarians referencing the “Malvinas” rather than the Falkland Islands. Or Saddam remembered too well the United States Ambassador to Iraq naïvely voicing uninterest in 1990 “border” disputes between quarreling Arab neighbors—perhaps in the manner of Dean Acheson’s controversial speech in January 1950 to the effect that South Korea was probably not inside the U.S. defensive orbit abroad and thus made a previously hesitant Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung a little less hesitant.
Read the whole thing.
QUEEN ESTHER WAS QUITE A CODE WRITER, TOO: Just ask the modern-day Persians in Iran who had to deal with the Stuxnet computer bug that hobbled their nuclear arms development for years. The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains how she did it, 2,000 years ago to give rise to the Jewish holiday of Purim, and more recently for what was no holiday at all for Tehran.
SO MUCH FOR A “KINDER AND GENTLER AMERICA:” Woke Coke Shows Why Bush Republicanism Is Dead. The GOP Establishment didn’t want to fight the culture wars. Look where that got us.
BURYING THE LEDE: Oath Keeper claims she met with Secret Service before Capitol riot. “Watkins, who has been detained since mid-January, is asking for the court to release her to home confinement pending trial, noting she is at risk for ‘harsh treatment’ as a transgender woman.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Sen. Mazie Hirono To Chair Senate Subcommittee On Military Seapower.
Flashbacks:
● Sen. Hirono Walks Out of Hearing After Refusing to Denounce or Criticize Antifa.
● Senator Hirono’s Double Standard.
● “Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), however, will be remembered for asking something no one else asked. During her time to question Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Hirono asked, ‘Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?’ No, I’m not kidding.”
● Dem Senator Says It’s a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to Say Dems Were Out to Get Trump From Beginning.
● We Should Believe in Climate Change as If It’s a Religion, Not a Science.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): ‘Give It a Try!’ Seattle-Backed Homeless Shelter Provides Pipes to Smoke Heroin and Advice on ‘Booty Bumping.’
BECAUSE IT’S AWFUL? Why you hate contemporary architecture.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER (Whose most recent book is up for a Prometheus Award): Family Law.
People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.
Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?
How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?
When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.
What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?
Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…
The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.
I THINK IT’S MORE THEY’VE SEEN THEIR OWN PEOPLE REVOLT: Le World Turned Upside Down.
WE KNOW: The COVID epidemic really IS ending.
WELL, TURN ABOUT IS FAIRPLAY: Kelly Loeffler starts GA voter group to rival Stacey Abrams: report.
But until our fraud machine rivals theirs, or we have some way to stop theirs, it won’t make much difference.
WELL, I’M NOT SURE. A LOT OF US COULD PAINT THAT RIGHT NOW: Edvard Munch wrote hidden ‘madman’ message on ‘The Scream’.
IT MIGHT MEAN SOMETHING THIS HAD OCCURRED TO ME: Helter Skelter Redux?
Of course, what they’re actually doing is creating white supremacy out of whole cloth.
TO BELIEVE ALL CULTURES ARE EQUALLY WHOLESOME: You only have to believe there are no other cultures. A badger among kittens.
February 22, 2021
ANDREA PEYSER: Put me on Team Woody — Mia Farrow is full of it.
FACEBOOK MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR JAN 6 THAN PARLER: Rachel Bovard dug into the flood of Mainstream Media (MSM) reporting accusing Parler of being the social media of choice for organizers of the January 6 Capitol riot. Here’s what she found:
“Of the 223 charging documents, 73 reference posts on Facebook as evidence, 24 reference posts YouTube, 20 single out Instagram posts (owned by Facebook), and only eight highlight posts on Parler.
“Was Parler involved? Yes. Was the platform the virtual Bat Cave of Incitement and Violence that Apple, Google, Amazon, and thoroughly un-critical press reporting made it out to be? Hardly. If any single platform can be fingered as the favorite of the rioters, it appears to be Facebook.”
Bovard has more, much more and, boy, is it damaging to the MSM and Big Tech.
I BLAME PREHISTORIC SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES: Earth’s magnetic field flipped 42,000 years ago, creating a climate ‘disaster.’
WOULDN’T IT BE SIMPLER FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER? Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”
Flashback: “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
MERRICK GARLAND WATCH:
● Garland: Portland Riots May Not Be ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Because Courthouse Was Closed.
● Garland Vows to Prioritize Prosecuting Capitol Rioters and Their ‘Abettors.’
● Garland Won’t Promise to Protect Durham Investigation.
● Garland Says DOJ Would Advance Biden’s Anti-Gun Policies.
● Garland refuses to state illegally crossing the border is a crime.
● Garland Sidesteps Question on Trans Participation in Women’s Sports.
UPDATE: Claire McCaskill “is very upset with Sens. Cruz & Cornyn’s treatment of ‘Garland Merrick'” (Video).
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Nancy Pelosi’s New COVID Bill Has 10 Crazy Examples of Waste and Kickbacks.
ROGER SIMON: Lies the Supreme Court Told Me.
In a fashion we must now regard as entirely predictable the Supreme Court of the United States has dismissed (i.e., thrown out) the various state challenges to the 2020 presidential election.
Any decisions on these challenges were determined by the majority to be “moot” because the election had already been decided, and Donald Trump has conceded to Joe Biden. (Associate Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch objected in varying degrees.)
In other words, a stolen presidential election—if it happens, we don’t really know in this case—has an almost immediate statute of limitations, although the results of that election can affect hundreds of millions, if not, as in the case of the United States, nearly the entirety of humanity.
This is true, apparently for a majority of the Supremes, although all sorts of crimes, some not particularly onerous, have statutes of limitations that can go on for years.
Go figure.
The Supremes also cited the issue of “standing,” a term of legal “art” that has always struck me, despite all the precedents on which it is supposedly based, as wide open for biased interpretation of the most self-serving sort. One person’s “standing” can be another’s closed door, almost at will and certainly by vote of a “majority.”
If I sound cynical about the Supreme Court, I have to admit I am. It’s even true of the law in general, which I want to believe in and admire, but increasingly no longer do.
In the real world, legal results tend to mirror A.J. Liebling’s 1960 comment in The New Yorker about the press: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
The law belongs to those who have the deepest control of a society at the time.
We want lady justice to be blind but in actuality she’s a cyborg with all-seeing, rotating night vision similar to the kind you might find on many urban street corners today from Beijing to Chicago, using the latest algorithms to isolate presumed enemies of the state.
And, yes, I am no lawyer. I haven’t taken even one course in the law and spent my time in college and graduate school studying now questionable white men like John Milton.
But over my decades as a Hollywood screenwriter and then founder and CEO of PJMedia I employed many lawyers—some very good and some not so much—and came to understand the limitations on what they did.
Contracts, it turned out, weren’t worth much more than the paper they were written on unless both parties wanted to honor them. Enforcing infringements, unless they were hugely egregious, was rarely worth the expense and effort.
Lawsuits—win or lose— tend to take over your life in highly deleterious ways. Few want to get involved.
The Supreme Court is the apotheosis of this system—an organization that puts its finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing (assuming that’s even necessary) and then writes its opinions based on pre-conceived notions designed to offend the lowest number.
Sadly, it is the last place to look for justice in a Presidential election—or anything, really, that tilts against that prevailing wind.
Related: ‘Inexplicable:’ Alito and Thomas Dissent as Supreme Court Strikes Down Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit.
REMEMBERING JOHN RAWLS ON HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY. He was on my dad’s PhD thesis committee at Harvard, along with Lon Fuller. I met both of them as a kid, but my memories are hazy. His son is an InstaPundit reader, though, so the family tradition of intellectual preeminence remains!
YOU EXPECT A GRANDMA-KILLER TO BE NICE? Cuomo’s office terrorized me for doing my job as a journalist.
NEW SPACE RACE: Historic new images from Mars show rover landing.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HER JIB: Rep. Lauren Boebert Exposes the Cruz Cancun Hysterics for the Frauds They Are.
ROGER KIMBALL: Why Art Is Not ‘What You Can Get Away With.’
There is something peculiarly disengaged about aesthetic pleasure itself.
When it comes to our moral and sensory life, we are constantly reminded that we are creatures of lack: we are hungry and wish to eat, we see the good and know that we fall short.
But when we judge something to be beautiful, Kant says, the pleasure we take in that judgment is ideally an “entirely disinterested satisfaction.”
(It is worth recalling the difference between “disinterested” and “uninterested,” words that are often mistakenly conflated. We can be very interested in cultivating disinterested satisfaction.)
The great oddity about aesthetic judgment is that it provides satisfaction without the penalty exacted by desire. This accounts both for its power and for its limitation.
The power comes from the feeling of wholeness and integrity that a disinterested satisfaction involves. Pleasure without desire is pleasure unburdened by lack.
The limitation comes from the fact that, unburdened by lack, aesthetic pleasure is also unmoored from reality.
Precisely because it is disinterested, there is something deeply subjective about aesthetic pleasure. It can even be said that what we enjoy in aesthetic pleasure is not an object but our state of mind. Kant spoke in this context of “the free play of the imagination and the understanding”—it is “free” because it is unconstrained by interest or desire.
It is a curious fact that in his reflections on the nature of aesthetic judgment Kant is only incidentally interested in art. The examples of “pure beauty” he provides are notoriously trivial: sea shells, wall paper, musical fantasies, architectural ornamentation.
But Kant was not attempting to provide lessons in art appreciation. He was attempting to explain the mechanics of taste. It is not surprising that the “Critique of Judgment” became an important theoretical document for those interested in abstract art: on Kant’s view, the purest beauty was also the most formal.
In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Orrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:
As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts. Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered. But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field. Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge. Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently. The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible. If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either. And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.
And thus we we end up with formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”
SCIENCE: Sewage study shows US, Netherlands and Australia like to party hard. “The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and the United States are consuming the highest amounts of designer ‘party’ drugs, according to wastewater samples taken from eight countries over the New Year period.”
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH ANDREW SULLIVAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Andrew Sullivan on the ‘majority-minority’ myth.
1776 UNITED: Censoring The Second Amendment.
IT’S ONLY RACIST WHEN YOU DO IT: Tori Richards of the Washington Examiner pulls the lid off a government employee training program in San Diego so intrinsically racist that, were the colors reversed, it would warm the heart of the KKK:
“The Health & Human Services Agency required employees to spend six hours watching the online racism course, a training participant told the Washington Examiner. Critical Race Theory classes taught participants ‘Racism is a WHITE’ problem, and, ‘Only white people can be racist.’ The title of the course is ‘Power and Privilege.’
“’This training is lumping people into groups, and it has not explained how some (minority) individuals have succeeded in this systemically racist country — like Barack Obama, NBA/NFL players who make millions, Dr. Ben Carson, Oprah, and Whoopi Goldberg, to name a few,’ the employee said. The Washington Examiner is not identifying the employee, who asked to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation.”
Expect many more stories like this across the country in the days ahead. And oh yes, you will be helping to pay for it with your federal tax dollars.
GUTLESS WONDERS: Clarence Thomas Blasts the Supreme Court for Ducking the Pennsylvania Election Challenge. “Few things are worse for public confidence in elections than having the rules changed in the middle of the game (or after it). An epidemic of late-in-the-day changes to the rules was particularly corrosive in 2020. Courts are ill-equipped to referee those changes when partisan tempers are running hot. The Supreme Court just threw away its last opportunity to remedy that problem before the next election cycle. . . . This issue will not go away, and it may return next time surrounded by the same sorts of popular rage that led to the Capitol riot. This was the time for cooler heads to say what the law is.”
There will be a lot more rage next time, I expect.
WOW, I COULDA HAD A V-8: Mercedes-Benz explains why next C-Class will get only four-cylinder engines.
THE LATEST VODKAPUNDIT FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: Cancel Culture Comes for the Muppets [But You’re Not Going to Want to Miss This Liza Minnelli Clip]. “A few moments from The Muppet Show might offend some Woke types, so children must be protected from seeing it. Yet the very children that Disney hires to star in its own shows are given impossible expectations.”
If you’ve been thinking of joining, don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.
PELOSI PREACHES ANTI-GERRYMANDERING, THEN POURS BUCKS INTO GERRYMANDERING: The Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Schofstall — Right Media’s best money-in-politics reporter — notes that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi condemned gerrymandering congressional districts in 2019, then her PAC handed $300,000 to the pro-gerrymandering outfit of former Attorney General Eric Holder.
FROM PUBLISHER ENCOUNTER BOOKS: Statement on Amazon and the delisting of “When Harry Became Sally.” “If Amazon, which controls most of the book sales in America, has decided to delist a book with which some of its functionaries disagree, that is an unconscionable assault on free speech. It will have chilling effect on the publishing industry and the free circulation of ideas. It must not be left to stand unchallenged.”
Somebody alert the Antitrust Division.
WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS, TO THE MALAISE THAT NEVER ENDS: We’re already in a sour mood, President Biden. Don’t pile on the pessimism. Jon Gabriel in the Arizona Republic:
This isn’t the first time America has been in a lousy mood. Forty years ago, Jimmy Carter addressed the “malaise” of the late 1970s with one of the most disastrous speeches delivered from the White House.
“All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” Carter said. “It is a crisis of confidence. … We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
Sounds familiar.
By the time Carter lectured Americans about “the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose,” TV sets clicked off around the country. Two days later, he asked for the resignations of his entire Cabinet. Eighteen months later, he was cleaning out the Resolute desk.
In his first month as president, Joe Biden is repeating Carter’s mistake.
“We remain in a once-in-a-century public health crisis that’s led to the most unequal job and economic crisis in modern history,” Biden said at an executive order signing. “And the crisis is only deepening. It’s not getting better; it’s deepening.”
His outlook didn’t improve when he moved on to vaccinations. “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Thanks for the pep talk, Joe.
The Democrats’ malaise began with the assassination of JFK, and has continued ever since. Just compare the doomsday environmentalism of this 1968 RFK clip with the sunny “New Frontier” optimism of his late brother, and it’s obvious that little has changed since in the left’s playbook:
MARK RIPPETOE: Physical Strength is the Most Important Thing in Life.
JOANNE JACOBS: Men without work. “Just before the pandemic hit, almost 7 million civilian, non-institutionalized men between the ages of 25 and 54 were out of the workforce altogether.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Climate Czar John Kerry Proves We’re All Insane.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: If John Kerry says we’re all doomed without John Kerry, does that mean we can all sit back and relax without John Kerry?
Answer: Sit back with a nice drink and find out.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- The Left finds, ignores, the real insurrection
- Will Chamberlain debunks systemic racism in one easy tweet
- Ryan Long’s progressive superhero team
Bonus Sanity: Turns out it is possible to go too far left for Mitt Romney.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THEY’RE RIGHT, AND IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T CARE. I JUST DON’T THINK ANYONE WILL DO ANYTHING UNTIL THERE’S A CRISIS. Economists Warn We Can’t Keep Ignoring the National Debt Forever. And then it’ll probably be the wrong thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Cheap Prepper’s Guide for Cold Weather And Other Disasters.
THE GRAUNIAD IS MUY INFELIZ WITH MEXICO: Mexico was once a climate leader – now it’s betting big on coal.
Chuck Schumer wonders when they’ll learn their lesson.
ROMNEY, COLLINS OPPOSE NEERA TANDEN’S CONFIRMATION AS OMB DIRECTOR:
Senators Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Mitt Romney (R., Utah) will not support Neera Tanden’s nomination for director of the Office of Management and Budget, further endangering the confirmation of President Biden’s nominee.
“Congress has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent,” Collins said in a statement on Monday. “Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency.”
A source reportedly told Politico that Romney “has been critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees” and “believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”
The Republicans’ opposition comes after Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) said Friday he would not support Tanden’s nomination, citing her “overtly partisan statements.”
More here: “‘Senator Romney has been critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees, and this is consistent with that position,’ spokeswoman Arielle Mueller said. ‘He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.’”
Pierre Delecto has spoken.
Psaki will “circle back” on Tanden’s actual qualifications.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook blocking my article brought home the urgent need for tech giants to be held accountable.
Earlier this month I wrote an article for UnHerd in response to the World Health Organisation trip to Wuhan in search of the pandemic origins.
My piece was scathing about the belated exercise, arguing that a crucial inquiry for global safety was compromised by shameful appeasement of a dictatorship. It criticised how the team – vetted by Beijing and including one scientist with a clear conflict of interest – disregarded evidence to push China’s narrative that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely” and not worthy of further investigation, while claiming the virus might have been imported to the country on frozen food.
Facebook posted a sign warning of false information and alleging “this post repeats information about Covid-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false”. My editors were furious since this impeded sharing of a time-sensitive article, while I was dismayed by a serious allegation that could damage my reputation.
Luckily, I was able to track down a senior executive for the company, who after rapid investigation apologised for their mistake and discarded the sanction. “A fact-checking label was wrongly applied to this post yesterday and it was removed,” he said in an email. “We’re very sorry for any inconvenience or confusion caused.”
Facebook is even clumsier than they are arrogant.
BLUE CITY BLUES: Trump Organization says it is closing Central Park ice rinks after city severs contract.
Two ice skating rinks operated by the Trump Organization are set to close in Central Park at 4 p.m. on Sunday as the city severs its contract with the company. The decision to cut ties by the de Blasio administration came after the Capitol riot, CBS New York reports.
The leases to the Wollman Rink and the Lasker Rink will be terminated on February 26. The rinks are set to close Sunday to allow time for the Trump Organization to move out.
Families decried the move, with one skater pleading for more time. “So much has been taken away from us this year, and this was one thing that was kind of holding us all together,” Mya Henning told CBS New York. “It’s only, like, six weeks more that we’re asking for.”
More: “The Wollman Rink was the one that then-New York Mayor Ed Koch tried and failed to renovate for years at great public expense. Trump took over the project and at his own expense got the rink operating for the public in just six months. The Trump Organization has operated it since, returning most of the profits to public works.
But Orange Man Bad.
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