THIS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A MAN ABOUT TO FALL FOR BIDEN’S CHARMS OR SCHUMER’S PRESSURE, BUT WE’LL SEEL Manchin Calls $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill ‘Fiscal Insanity.’
WOULD THE WORLD BE A BETTER PLACE if Marx and Freud had never lived?
I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE TOLD WE SHOULD SUPPORT HIGHER EDUCATION BECAUSE IT FOSTERED CRITICAL THOUGHT AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP: Students angry at invitation to journalist who advised against rush to judgment in cop shootings.
SMITH AND WESSON IS moving from Massachusetts to my neck of the woods. “Smith & Wesson joins more than 20 small arms and ammunition manufacturers located in Tennessee. Tennessee ranks No. 1 in the nation for employment in the small arms and ammunition sector, with employment increasing by 54% over the last five years.”
#1 NEW RELEASE IN MEN’S NOVELTY SHIRTS: Think while its still legal T-Shirt.
WHY WOULD UCSD HONOR A RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC MASS MURDERER? Inspired by ‘radical’ politics, the CHE Cafe attempts to reopen at UCSD.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: (Mostly) Woke-Free Bond Sparks Solid ‘No Time to Die.’ “We’re left with a solid, unspectacular Bond that delivers one more shocking revelation – no spoiler alert required. It doesn’t go woke despite all the virtue signaling of the past year.”
The trailers didn’t leave me expecting anything as good as Casino Royale or Skyfall, but I’ll be happy with anything less relentlessly silly and obvious than Spectre.
BREAKING: Senate Reaches Deal to Avoid Partial Government Shutdown. “Schumer made one last effort to get the GOP to agree to increase the debt ceiling by including a suspension of the debt limit in the government funding bill until December of 2022, but Republicans insisted on passing a ‘clean’ funding bill and Schumer reluctantly acquiesced.”
WHY INDEED? BMJ: Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?
The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.234
“The CDC could say [to people who had recovered], very well grounded in excellent data, that you should wait 8 months,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, told Medpage Today in January. She suggested authorities ask people to “please wait your turn.”4
Others, such as Icahn School of Medicine virologist and researcher Florian Krammer, argued for one dose in those who had recovered. “This would also spare individuals from unnecessary pain when getting the second dose and it would free up additional vaccine doses,” he told the New York Times.5
“Many of us were saying let’s use [the vaccine] to save lives, not to vaccinate people already immune,” says Marty Makary, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University.
Still, the CDC instructed everyone, regardless of previous infection, to get fully vaccinated as soon as they were eligible: natural immunity “varies from person to person” and “experts do not yet know how long someone is protected,” the agency stated on its website in January.6 By June, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 57% of those previously infected got vaccinated.7
As more US employers, local governments, and educational institutions issue vaccine mandates that make no exception for those who have had covid-19,8 questions remain about the science and ethics of treating this group of people as equally vulnerable to the virus—or as equally threatening to those vulnerable to covid-19—and to what extent politics has played a role.
A very large extent. Plus:
Gandhi and others have been urging reporters away from antibodies as the defining metric of immunity. “It is accurate that your antibodies will go down” after natural infection, she says—that’s how the immune system works. If antibodies didn’t clear from our bloodstream after we recover from a respiratory infection, “our blood would be thick as molasses.”
“The real memory in our immune system resides in the [T and B] cells, not in the antibodies themselves,” says Patrick Whelan, a paediatric rheumatologist at University of California, Los Angeles. He points out that his sickest covid-19 patients in intensive care, including children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, have “had loads of antibodies … So the question is, why didn’t they protect them?”
Antonio Bertoletti, a professor of infectious disease at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, has conducted research that indicates T cells may be more important than antibodies. Comparing the T cell response in people with symptomatic versus asymptomatic covid-19, Bertoletti’s team found them to be identical, suggesting that the severity of infection does not predict strength of resulting immunity and that people with asymptomatic infections “mount a highly functional virus specific cellular immune response.”
InstaPundit readers have known this for quite a long time. The CDC still hasn’t figured it out. Or admitted it.
Also: “‘As we continued to put effort into vaccination and set targets, it became apparent to me that people were forgetting that herd immunity is formed by both natural immunity and vaccine immunity,’ says Klausner.”
HOAX HATE CRIME WAVE HITS ST LOUIS SUBURBS: Black student admits to writing racist graffiti in Parkway Central bathrooms. “A Parkway School District spokeswoman said officials don’t know why the student committed the acts of vandalism, or used the racist slurs.”
Yes, it’s a real mystery.
NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Leftists Increasingly Accepting Of Environmental Terrorism.
BYRON YORK: Milley’s Dishing.
The job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs is a very busy one. The debacle of U.S. forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, demanded round-the-clock attention. But in recent months, Gen. Mark Milley has found time to talk to a number of authors writing books that were very critical of former President Donald Trump.
Three of the biggest such books, all bestsellers, were Peril , by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa; I Alone Can Fix It , by the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker; and Frankly, We Did Win This Election , by the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender. All featured quotes and information that appeared to come directly from Milley.
At Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked Milley whether he had spoken to the authors. “Did you talk to Bob Woodward or Robert Costa for their book, Peril?” asked Blackburn. “Woodward, yes, Costa, no,” answered Milley. “Did you talk to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker for their book, I Alone Can Fix It?” “Yes,” said Milley. “Did you talk to Michael Bender for his book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election?” “Yes,” said Milley.
Blackburn asked Milley whether the authors had accurately represented his interviews in their books. Milley said he does not know because he hasn’t read any of them.
Milley told Leonnig and Rucker that he feared Trump might try to stage a coup after losing the 2020 election. “This is a Reichstag moment ,” the authors quote Milley telling aides. “The gospel of the Fuhrer.” And more: “They may try, but they’re not going to f—ing succeed,” the authors quote Milley telling his deputies. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”
Then the coup never came. “Thank God Almighty we landed the ship safely,” Milley told Leonnig and Rucker. The authors described a scene at the inauguration of President Joe Biden in which Milley expressed relief to former first lady Michelle Obama. “No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” Milley told Obama. “You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
Where does such dishing fit in the job description of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? At Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Sen. Rick Scott asked, “Why would you as the sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talk to a reporter who is writing a book about a prior administration? Why would that be part of your job description?”
Milley said he talks to the media regularly, multiple times a week. “I think it’s very important that senior officials talk to the media, in all its various forms, in order to explain what we’re doing,” he said.
But Scott wanted to know why Milley was dishing about a former president. “Why would you … talk to a reporter who is writing a book about a prior administration? Why would that be part of your job description?”
“I think it’s important to make sure that the American people are transparent with what our government does, is all,” Milley said. “Nothing more complicated than that.”
But Milley’s talks with Woodward, Leonnig, Rucker, Bender — and possibly other authors as well — clearly went beyond ensuring “transparency” about the Joint Chiefs’ activities. The general’s “Reichstag moment” quote spoke volumes about the statement he wanted to make for the books that would describe the Trump administration’s final days.
And then Milley got burned by Woodward’s and Costa’s sensational portrayal of his conversations with a top Chinese general, which led to some critics accusing Milley of “treason.” As it turned out, the critics were not being fair, and events did not transpire exactly as the book said. Milley suffered some unjustified criticism. But that’s the lesson for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Live by the media, die by the media.
He should be on trial. Fired at the very least, and I mean the very, very least.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: Gen. Mark Milley is ambitious, incompetent, progressive, and wildly self-assured.
Characteristically, he failed. But now, in light of these latest revelations, Milley has become a darling of the neocon and NeverTrumper media. Those who despise the previous president have come to consider Milley something of a hero, the sole “adult in the room” who managed to counteract the commander-in-chief who had appointed him. To those interested in extending the United States’ overseas commitments, Milley can be counted on to ensure that endless war stays that way.
These are two very powerful constituencies, and the long-converging combination of neoconservative money with popular anti-Trump sentiment on the center-left and center-right could prove formidable in the future. This could be worth keeping in mind, given that the general’s activity—courting powerful factions of the race-obsessed left, appending himself to key politicians of both parties, chasing media attention left and right—suggests he does not intend to pursue the quiet life of military-industrial complex sinecures automatically reserved for retiring four-stars.
At 63, Milley’s days in uniform are numbered—but 2024 is just around the corner.
His media rehabilitation tour will be a sight to behold if he (and the DNC-MSM) attempt to spin the past two months as anything but an utter debacle.
FBI STATISTICS SHOW UNPRECEDENTED SPIKE IN MURDERS NATIONWIDE IN 2020: And African Americans are disproportionately victimized. But you’ll still be accused of racism if you point out that defunding the police is a bad idea.
I wrote about this issue a couple of years ago. It goes back decades. Gunnar Myrdal—hardly a conservative—understood it in the 1940s. Alas, today’s intellectual elites (of all races) don’t seem to.
OH: Federal Judge Took on 138 Cases Involving Companies in Which He Had a Financial Interest.
When nominating Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap in 2011, Barack Obama praised his “unwavering commitment to justice and integrity.”
ANTI-SEMITIC GARBAGE PEOPLE AREN’T A PROBLEM FOR THE DEMOCRATS, THEY’RE A CORE CONSTITUENCY NOW: College Democrats Leader Under Fire For Anti-Semitic Tweets.
Democrats used to push the “punch a Nazi” line, but now they’re pushing people who think of Jews the way Nazis did.
I’VE HEARD THIS MESSAGE BEFORE, BUT I’M NOT SURE WHERE…Message to GOP: ‘Don’t get cocky’ from Biden failures.
UNEQUAL JUSTICE: Federal Judges Failed to Recuse in Hundreds of Cases. “Over 100 federal judges failed to recuse themselves from cases involving firms in which they held stock or other financial interests between 2010 and 2018, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. All told, the investigation identified 685 cases in which the judge or a family member owned stock in a company involved in a case before them.”
PUNCH A NAZI COMMIE: Biden Banking Nominee Proud Recipient of Collegiate ‘Lenin Award.’
LIFE IN THE BIDEN ERA JUST GETS WORSE: Bacon prices have skyrocketed to record levels, and they might not go down anytime soon.
BECAUSE IN THIS ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTING FROM THE AGREED-UPON STORY IS THE ONLY CRIME: WHY IS MARINE LT. COL. STUART SCHELLER IN THE BRIG AND NOT GEN. MARK MILLEY?
THEY’VE ALREADY MOVED ON TO THE NEXT CRISIS THEY’RE TRYING TO CREATE AND/OR EXPLOIT: So Where’s That Crisis the Left Predicted After Eviction Moratorium Expired?
ABOUT A DOZEN PEOPLE IN THE GOVERNMENT NEED TO BE GIVEN A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY AND A REVOLVER WITH ONE BULLET: Milley’s blunt private blame for the State Department.
But instead they’re blaming each other and hoping this will pass over, because that’s how a corrupt bureaucracy works.
September 29, 2021
ANTI-DESANTIS AD THAT READS LIKE A MOVE TO FLORIDA AD:
Stop what you are doing and watch this immediately. If you are ready to remove Ron DeathSantis from office retweet this new ad and make sure everyone can see it. pic.twitter.com/AyaHQ77fqs
— Remove Ron (@RemoveRon) September 29, 2021
RACISM, STRAIGHT UP. Charles Blow: “When I see those Black bodies at the border, I am unable to separate them from myself, or my family, or my friends. They are us.”
When you feel empathy for people solely because of their race being the same as yours, that’s racism. Straight up.
Plus, from the comments: “Well, good heavens, if you feel your individuality is being erased, first try not referring to your fellow black people as ‘bodies’ instead of people!”
Also: “I know it’s a trendy locution on the left, but referring to these people as ‘bodies’ always sounds dehumanizing. It strikes me as the language of a slaveowner.”
Talk of “black bodies” or “brown bodies” is a tell that the speaker is peddling racist nonsense.
Plus, a question for Charles Blow: “Why do so many Black people around the world want to leave their Black governed countries, free of the evils of racism, to come to a nation where they will be oppressed by the systematic racism?”
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Workers Who Maintain Supply Chains Warn of Worldwide ‘System Collapse.’
Several industry groups have warned world leaders of a worldwide supply-chain ‘system collapse’ due to pandemic restrictions, coming as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell suggested that the current period of higher inflation will last until 2022.
The International Chamber of Shipping, a coalition of truck drivers, seafarers, and airline workers, has warned in a letter to heads of state attending the United Nations General Assembly that governments need to restore freedom of movement to transportation workers amid persistent COVID-19 restrictions and quarantines.
If nothing is done, they warned of a “global transport system collapse” and suggested that “global supply chains are beginning to buckle as two years’ worth of strain on transport workers take their toll,” according to the letter. It was signed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the International Road Transport Union (IRU), and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), which represent some 65 million transport workers around the world.
“All transport sectors are also seeing a shortage of workers, and expect more to leave as a result of the poor treatment millions have faced during the pandemic, putting the supply chain under greater threat,” the letter said. “We also ask that WHO and the ILO raise this at the U.N. General Assembly and call on heads of government to take meaningful and swift action to resolve this crisis now,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, retailer Costco said it’s chartering its own container ships between Asia and North America amid supply chain issues worldwide, Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said in a recent conference call.
Nothing to see here, move along.
UPDATE: Flashback, via the comments: Black Swans, Butterflies And Supply Chains: Predicting The Unpredictable.
ACCURATE HEADLINES AREN’T WHAT THE NARRATIVE IS INTERESTED IN:
OPEN THREAD: She likes to play for double or nuthin’.
I DON’T WANT TO LIVE FOREVER I JUST DON’T WANT TO GET OLD AND DIE: Want to Live Forever? There’s No Theoretical Limit to Human Lifespan, New Study Says. At present I’m hoping to maximize my healthspan.
WHAT’S BEHIND China’s Power Crunch.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? NASA’s Lucy science mission will fly by eight asteroids. I hope at least one of them turns out to have diamonds.
MANCHIN TO SWITCH PARTIES? Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) sounds like a man who is preparing to become a Republican:
“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford — not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending.”
West Virginia is turning solidly red and Manchin knows it as well as anybody.
According to [Kenneth] Minogue, around the sixteenth century in the English-speaking world emerged Lockean liberalism—a political philosophy that rests upon the natural rights of man. At its birth, this liberal morality was tolerant, egalitarian, and peace-loving; liberals exercise great self-control and excel in compromise. For Minogue, this was a political system that unleashed previously repressed individual energy and allowed for responsible political opposition, which led to prosperity and stability.
Modern liberalism, in contrast, “is a new understanding of politics;” it treats politics “as a technical activity like any other.” All social problems are thus turned into political problems, “inviting a solution by state activity.” Plan, control, command, and mobilization, all those large-scaled and all-encompassing state activities, have turned liberalism from a political philosophy, one built on the doctrine of natural rights, to a political movement that sees political life only as a struggle aimed at ultimately making society more just and equal. Or, to use the 21st-century parlance among our cultural elite, “we” are building a DEI world: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Cynicism and sentimentality are the trademarks of the modern liberal mind.
* * * * * * * *
When reading Minogue’s anatomy of the moral character of the liberal mind, I recalled an exchange I had with a classmate three years ago. She is a former journalist and proudly-avowed global citizen—a modern liberal one might say. She mentioned that her home country, Switzerland, accepted most immigrants but her countrymen rarely interacted with them or helped them. When I asked her why individual Swiss exhibited so little personal compassion, she shrugged her shoulders: “there is government.” The truth is, as Minogue reveals, the people who focus on cultivating feelings or crafting images that provoke either hatred or tears are usually not those who actually help the needy around them. Thus, an unintended consequence of the excessive exploitation of real or crafted “suffering situations” of the classes of people taken to be “oppressed” is apathy among the masses.
A puzzle remains, namely, what has transformed liberalism from the staunch preserver of liberty, with John Stuart Mill being its most celebrated spokesman, to “St. George,” the righteous zealot, who vows to slay all human sufferings. Minogue’s devastating dissection of the liberal mind offers us some hints.
Read the whole thing, although what Minogue defined as modern “liberalism” is really a massive stolen base by “Progressives” in the 1920s to rehabilitate the brand after Woodrow Wilson had soiled it completely during WWI, as Fred Siegel wrote in his 2014 history of the American left, The Revolt Against the Masses:
Liberals were those Progressives who had renamed themselves so as to repudiate Wilson. “The word liberalism,” wrote Walter Lippmann in 1919, “was introduced into the jargon of American politics by that group who were Progressives in 1912 and Wilson Democrats from 1916 to 1918.” The new liberalism was a decisive cultural break with Wilson and Progressivism. While the Progressives had been inspired by a faith in democratic reforms as a salve for the wounds of both industrial civilization and power politics, liberals saw the American democratic ethos as a danger to freedom at home and abroad.
* * * * * * * *
The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. “Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,” Parrington insisted, referring to both democracy and capitalism, “and the artist and the scientist will erect in America a civilization that may become, what civilization was in earlier days, a thing to be respected.” Alienated from middle-class American life, liberalism drew on an idealized image of “organic” pre-modern folkways and rhapsodized about a future harmony that would reestablish the proper hierarchy of virtue in a post-bourgeois, post-democratic world.
So from that point of view, “liberalism,” while changing its spots somewhat over the past decade to encompass “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” is still working as the original “Progressives” redefined it.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: VP Harris to student who accused Israel of ‘genocide:’ Your truth must be heard.
ROUGHLY A THIRD OF PEOPLE ON BLOOD-PRESSURE MEDICATION aren’t properly controlling their blood pressure. “All told, nearly half of adults in the United States have high blood pressure, increasing their risk for heart attack, stroke, kidney disease and other health complications, including severe COVID-19, according to the American Heart Association.”
I suspect the numbers are so high because the new guidelines are too low.
MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE COL. KURTZ AGAIN! Marines Departing Kabul Airport Were Forced to Clean up the Graffiti Insults They Left for Taliban.
Departing U.S. service members were told to destroy equipment at the Kabul airport, so as not to leave things behind of which the Taliban might make use. They smashed electronics, shattered windows, and stripped armored vehicles to render them useless to the Taliban. They had also strewn trash around the airport to interfere in any takeover by the Taliban.
“Many said they found that experience cathartic, particularly in the wake of the August 26 ISIS-K suicide bomb at one of the airport’s gates, the Abbey Gate, that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US service personnel,” according to the Daily Mail.
That wasn’t hard to believe. But, what happened next is.
Marines who were still angry about the suicide bombing attack which killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians also left some graffiti messages for the terrorists. There was “F**K ISIS + Taliban” graffiti, including what looked like a penis painted in purple. Another message showed several troop members in front of a wall painted with “F**K ISIS, AFG 2021.” There was also a picture of service members holding a sign, which read: “F**k the Taliban.”
But the top brass ordered the Marines to clean off the messages and clean up the debris before they departed the airport.
“My boys had to go….pick up every last piece of….trash for who? The Taliban?” said a Marine to The Washington Post. “It was a slap in the face to us,” he said.
Marine spokesperson Lt. Jack Coppola claimed the trash had to be picked up so as not to interfere with flights but didn’t explain why they made Marines erase the graffiti.
As always, life imitates Apocalypse Now (Language warning):
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? MLB Ships Jobs to China To Build Closer Relationship With CCP.
Major League Baseball is expanding its partnership with the Chinese Communist Party, coming at the expense of U.S. jobs and growing Chinese influence over America’s pastime.
The country’s leading propaganda outlet China Daily on Aug. 20 touted the MLB’s attempts to build a “baseball ecosystem” within the country. The league has grown its network to more than 100 Chinese baseball teams in 20 cities, with a growing fanbase of millions. The league’s operations in cahoots with Beijing are not just limited to play—quality U.S. jobs are also at stake. Miken Sports, a baseball equipment brand that provides business to the league, folded a Minnesota production plant and moved its nearly 70 jobs to China.
The league’s interest in exporting jobs and resources to China is drawing fierce rebukes from lawmakers. Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R., Minn.), whose district includes the Miken plant, introduced a resolution on Wednesday obtained by the Washington Free Beacon blasting the MLB for taking away American jobs.
”Baseball is considered to be America’s national pastime, so it is completely outrageous that the MLB has decided to shut down the Miken Sports plant in Caledonia and outsource American jobs to communist China—directly defying the MLB’s position as an American sports league,” Hagedorn said. “Miken has been one of the largest employers in Caledonia for decades, and this community will face major hardships and job losses due to this closure. We are urging the MLB to reverse this decision, purchase products that are made in America, and work to keep these jobs at home.”
Curious that the MLB is getting deeper in bed with Beijing after the CCP-NBA debacle in the fall of 2019, and China’s role in the events of last year. It likely won’t end well for professional baseball — as Jim Geraghty wrote in 2019 after the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.
Related: A Slow Kowtow to China.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Now NBA Players Sound More Rational Than Gov’t Officials on COVID-19.
How is it that an NBA player is making more sense about the pandemic than every single government official we’re somehow supposed to trust?
Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic is one of the players quoted in a recent Rolling Stone article about anti-vaxxers in the NBA, and he had some problems with how he was depicted in the story:
* * * * * * * *
“I am not anti-vax. I’m not anti-medicine. I’m not anti-science. I didn’t come to my current vaccination status by studying black history or watching Donald Trump press conferences. I have nothing but the utmost respect for every health care worker and person in Orlando, and all across the world, that have worked tirelessly to keep us safe. My mom has worked in health care for a really long time. I thank God, I’m grateful that I live in a society where vaccines are possible, and we can protect ourselves and have the means to protect ourselves in the first place.
“But with that being said, it is my belief that the vaccine status of every person should be their own choice and completely up to them, without bullying, without being pressured, or without being forced to do so. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m uncomfortable with taking the vaccine at this time. I think that we’re all different, we all come from different places, we’ve had different experiences, and hold dear to different beliefs. And what it is that you do with your body, when it comes to putting medicine in there, should be your choice, free of the ridicule and the opinion of others.”
Is Isaac right? I don’t know. But if he’s not, I need someone to explain why, not just dismiss him as some wild-eyed loon. He’s obviously given it a lot of thought, and he’s able to express his opinion succinctly and cogently. He’s not ranting and raving about conspiracies. He’s just not convinced about this vaccine, because the people in charge of convincing him have failed.
And I’m assuming he’s not a Trump voter. He doesn’t fit the profile of anti-vaxxers that our friends on the left keep trying to draw up. He’s not the caricature.
Isaac certainly sounds more rational than his elders[.]
QED: NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls for unvaccinated players to be removed from teams.
FROM LAWRENCE PERSON, your supply-chain update.
MARTIN CENTER: Critical Race Theory is even taught in the music schools: Arizona State hires its first CRT music professor.
DIRTY TRICKS: In Virginia governor’s race, Dem group ‘posing’ as Republicans to try driving wedge into GOP.
During the past week, some voters in Virginia have been targeted with ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google and Snapchat questioning Youngkin’s commitment to the Second Amendment, Axios reports.
“While the NRA backs Donald Trump, they REFUSED to endorse Glenn Youngkin. We can’t trust Glenn Youngkin on guns,” one of the ads says.
The ads come from a group called Accountability Virginia PAC, which on its website doesn’t give details about who’s behind the organization. But the group’s online donation page is accessed through ActBlue, the main Democratic fundraising platform; its bank account sits with Amalgamated Bank, a financial institution owned by labor unions and frequently used by pro-Democratic political groups; and consultants at a firm that works with Democrats helped incorporate Accountability Virginia, according to Axios.
Have any Instapundit readers seen these ads?
EVEN THE BEARS WANT OUT OF CHICAGO: Bears move closer to leaving Soldier Field for the suburbs.
ABC MEMORY HOLES BHO: Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich Spotlights ABC News for Omitting Obama Calling Open Borders ‘Unsustainable’ in Interview.
Evergreen:
YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: YouTube Purges Accounts, Videos Casting Any Doubt On COVID Vaccines.
COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Kamala Harris Tacitly Endorses George Mason Student’s Antisemitic Rant.
ANOTHER DAMN THING: Power crisis deepens in Asia and Europe: What it means to shipping.
According to Bloomberg, power use is now being curbed by tight supply and emissions restrictions in the Chinese provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong.
Bloomberg quoted Nomura analyst Ting Lu as stating, “The power curbs will ripple through and impact global markets. Very soon the global markets will feel the pinch of a shortage of supply from textiles and toys to machine parts.”
Nikkei reported that an affiliate of Foxconn, the world’s biggest iPhone assembler and a key supplier of Apple and Tesla, halted production at its facility in Kunshan in Jiangsu Province on Sunday due to lack of electricity supply. Another Apple supplier, Unimicron Technologies, also halted production in Kunshan on Sunday, said Nikkei, citing regulatory filings.
The New York Times reported on power outages in the heart of China’s southern manufacturing belt, in Guandong. Factories in the city of Dongguan have not had electricity since last Wednesday. The Times interviewed a general manager of a Dongguan factory that produces leather shoes for the U.S. market who has kept his operation running with a diesel generator and who said that power outages began this summer.
Stoppages of Chinese factories would further delay deliveries of U.S. imports, which have already been waylaid by extreme congestion at ports in Southern California and, more recently, ports in China.
Get your Christmas shopping done early this year.
BUMPER STICKER: Since the shirts seem to be selling out, there is always the Think While it is Still Legal Decals. Or here is another Think while its still legal t-shirt.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Japan to lift all COVID restrictions.
SHANGHAI LIL NEVER ATE LAB-GROWN MEAT — SHE SAID THAT IT JUST WEREN’T NATURAL: Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story. “As of this writing, Open Philanthropy has not referenced its groundbreaking findings on social media or its website, not even on its pages devoted to animal agriculture. Open Philanthropy declined to be interviewed for this story.”
The problem here isn’t that it’s not natural, it’s that the expense and difficulties involved are being wildly understated, presumably in an effort to hoover up grant money and investors.
BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION? HELL, I’VE SEEN IT DONE: Plasmodium falciparum evolving to escape malaria rapid diagnostics in Africa.
A major tool against malaria in Africa has been the use of rapid diagnostic tests, which have been part of the “test-treat-track” strategy in Ethiopia, the second most-populated country in Africa. But researchers studying blood samples from more than 12,000 individuals in Ethiopia now estimate these tests missed nearly 10% of malaria cases caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the most common cause of malaria cases and deaths.
The research, published in Nature Microbiology, showed that two genetic mutations to the parasite allow it to escape detection.
So if malaria can evolve to defeat a test, I have a thought: Could widespread vaccination be a mistake with Covid?
We know that the vaccine is imperfect, and lets people who have been vaccinated get infected. By definition, those are infections that are able to avoid the effect of the vaccine. If most people are vaccinated, then shouldn’t it be the case that after a bit, most cases of the virus everywhere will be vaccine resistant? And wouldn’t that leave people who are most vulnerable, like the old, the sick, and the obese, more vulnerable to the virus than if only the vulnerable people had been vaccinated all along?
Am I missing something here?
DISPATCHES FROM THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH: ACLU Issues Weak Apology for Erasing ‘Women’ From RBG Abortion Quote. “It was a mistake among the digital team,” says executive director Anthony Romero.
Regardless of one’s position on trans issues and the rapidly evolving demands of progressive activists with respect to conscious language choices, it is wrong to go back in time and pretend that people used different words. Demands for greater sensitivity should not prompt a literal rewriting of history. Progressive thought leaders of the very, very recent past recognized fundamental differences between men and women—it’s absurd to pretend otherwise, and to obscure this fact by changing the speech they used.
Someone should inform the L.A. Times as well that this is wrong:
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: YouTube Announces It Will Ban All ‘Anti-Vaccine’ Content.
GOOD NEWS FOR SPACE COLONIZATION: Oxygen and water for lunar explorers can be extracted from moon rocks.
BEIJING WON’T LIKE THIS BUT THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME: Fumio Kishida to Become Japan’s Next Prime Minister. “Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister who has called for Japan’s missile defenses to be beefed up, was elected ruling party leader on Wednesday, assuring him of becoming the nation’s next prime minister. Mr. Kishida, 64 years old, is an establishment choice who, like his predecessors, supports a strong U.S.-Japan alliance and is concerned about China’s military expansion.”
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Biden’s Inflation Scapegoat Is ‘Profiteering.’
When July’s all-item Consumer Price Index (CPI) registered 5.4 percent year-over-year growth—a level of inflation which essentially takes away a year’s income growth for low-wage earners—it was all but assured that the White House would offer comment, if not action. President Joe Biden was quick to call attention to accelerating meat prices and, looking for someone to blame, called out the country’s three largest meatpackers for “profiteering.”
Shortly after that, with August’s CPI showing “just” 5.3 percent annualized growth, the president focused his ire on gasoline prices and again suggested that all was not well. Again, profiteering was the scapegoat: “There’s lots of evidence that gas prices should be going down—but they haven’t. We’re taking a close look at that.” Maybe he should look inside the halls of the West Wing.
I blame the spies, hoarders and wreckers.
KYLE SMITH: The Permanent War for Culture.
The late and much-feared New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer was once seated next to Woody Allen at a dinner. Allen asked whether Kramer ever felt embarrassed when he encountered in social settings artists whose work he had disparaged in print. No, said Kramer. Why should he be embarrassed? They made the bad art. He merely described it. It occurred to the critic after the party had concluded that he had once published an adverse review of a Allen movie, The Front.
Forty years ago, Kramer founded The New Criterion, which was taken over in his declining years by Roger Kimball, who supplies the anecdote above in a marvelous chrestomathy, The Critical Temper: Interventions from The New Criterion at 40, a volume that brings together some of the funniest, most cutting, most perceptive, and most appreciative pieces published in that august, sometimes Augustan, journal over the past decade. Kramer and Kimball’s monthly magazine of arts, culture, and media has far outlasted its honored ancestor The Criterion, T. S. Eliot’s publication, which dissolved on the eve of World War II after 17 years of contrarian and conservative rebuke to its era’s prevailing cultural dogmas.
With his dry wit, his sesquipedalian playfulness, his deep learning, and his dapper sangfroid, Kimball is perhaps our closest living heir to his friend William F. Buckley Jr. As Bill did, Roger retains a certain boyish (or even impish) aspect well into middle age, along with a never-slackening thirst to charge back into the fray, no matter how outnumbered his side. Roger enjoys quoting Hamlet’s injunction “to find quarrel in a straw when honor’s at the stake.”
Read the whole thing.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT CNN HOSTS? CNN’s Don Lemon May End up in Court Next Year Over Sexual Assault Charge.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: BLM NY: We need some George Floyd-style protests against vaccine mandates.
IT’S ALMOST LIKE THERE ARE INNATE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO SEXES: COVID-19 lockdowns revealed significant, cliche gender differences.
THE VIRTUE SIGNAL GAME : You can get all the games on sale here. They make fun gifts for those in your life who would get the humor or maybe even better for those who don’t.
HMM: VA Republicans Jump to In-Person Early Voting Lead, Model Shows.
Just 82,000 Virginians cast ballots during the first week of early voting, according to the state’s Department of Elections. That figure marks a sharp decline from the 270,000 voters who flocked to the polls during the first week of early voting in 2020. Of the 51,000 early votes cast in person, Republicans hold a 127-vote advantage, a data model provided by the Virginia GOP shows. While the state does not register voters by party affiliation, the model uses factors like primary voting history to extrapolate the voters’ partisan preference. Democrats have historically dominated early voting—President Joe Biden won Virginia’s early vote by more than 30 points against former president Donald Trump.
Those numbers will likely alarm supporters of former governor Terry McAuliffe (D.), who face an enthusiasm gap in their bid to defeat Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. An August Monmouth poll found that Youngkin enjoys a 19-point lead with voters who describe themselves as being “more enthusiastic.”
The early voting numbers also come as Biden’s standing in the state slips significantly. According to a September poll conducted by Democratic consulting firm Global Strategy Group, 49 percent of Virginia voters hold a favorable opinion of Biden, while 50 percent of voters view him unfavorably. Biden won the state by double digits in November.
Republicans’ apparent lead among in-person early voters “clearly is concerning for Democrats, who traditionally have been the advocates of early voting and have turned out more than Republicans,” according to Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
Well, don’t get cocky.
IN OVER HIS HEAD: Republicans Get Out of the Way as Democrats Form a Circular Firing Squad. “The president badly overestimated his own abilities and underestimated GOP unity. He overestimated his ability to sell his agenda to both radical socialists and Main Street Democrats. In the end, the socialists undermined Biden by acting like radical socialists and throwing a tantrum when they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. And the Main Street Democrats got a bad case of the shakes when contemplating the passage of the $3.5 trillion budget bill without any obvious way to pay for it.”
I’m old enough to remember when Biden was sold to us as the man who could work with Congress, but aside from a couple of meetings with Manchin an Sinema, he’s been noticably absent from the process of pushing his own agenda.
He’s just not up to the job.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS DELENDA EST:
AHOY! Terry McAuliffe touts the endorsement of Bill Kristol, the ‘leading conservative in America.’
Flashback: Bill Kristol and the political defector grift. Since the days of Richard Nixon, you can make a very good living in the DNC-MSM media bubble by being a prominent Republican who never votes for Republicans.
Also McAuliffe last night: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Well, that should lock-up the all-important Comcast demographic in Virginia:
DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Preschool Funding in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Is Modeled After Failed Head Start Program. “Fraud, abuse, poor outcomes, and high costs.”
WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, DEMS OR YOUR OWN LYIN’ EYES? Democrats Would Prefer That You Ignore All of the Violent Crime Around You. “Before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all.”
THEY DID NOTHING WRONG AND BIDEN CAN’T HAVE THAT: NYT corrects false claim that Border Patrol ‘whipped’ Haitian migrants; agents may still face discipline from Biden admin.
RESIDUE OF HATE: Remembering what campus cancel culture has purged.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: PPU students petition to remove classmate from campus after Fox News interview .
CONSEQUENCES ARE FOR THOSE WHO GO OFF-MESSAGE: Marine Who Criticized Biden Admin’s Afghanistan Withdrawal is Jailed: Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller only asked for those in charge to accept responsibility and admit they messed up the withdrawal.
Those who are responsible for the debacle, meanwhile, get book deals and fawning CNN interviews.
JOHN LUCAS: Biden’s Doubled-Down Lies About Border Whips Are More Proof He’s Unfit To Lead. The problem is, we’ve gotten ourselves into a situation where everyone in the line of succession is unfit, too. Kamala Harris? Nancy Pelosi? Patrick Leahy?
And by “we’ve gotten ourselves” I mean a nearly-united establishment fiddled the rules and lied in all the press coverage to get us here, even though everyone important knew Biden was unfit, and so were his potential successors.
THAT’S WHY THERE’S TESTING: Tiles Fly Off SpaceX Starship Prototype During Testing. “The S20 prototype still has many stress tests ahead of the its first orbital launch. The spacecraft will have to undergo cryogenic proof and static fire tests, Teslarati reports. According to road closure postings, the first tests could kick off as soon as later this week.”
I AGREE: Parents of Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller call for resignation of top military leaders.
The parents of the Marine officer who is jailed after posting a scathing video about the botched Afghan withdrawal slammed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Frank McKenzie – and called for their resignations.
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller has landed in the brig after he ripped into military leadership following the devastating suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans.
The officer announced he was resigning and walking away from a $2 million pension after 17 years of service.
His parents, Stuart Scheller Sr. and Cathy Scheller, said in an interview on “The Ingraham Angle” on Tuesday that their son is being unfairly punished as he sits in solitary confinement at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC, Fox News reported.
They expressed their anger at Milley, Austin and McKenzie, the commander of the US Central Command, saying they refused to take accountability during their earlier appearances at a Senate hearing.
Admiral Byng, pick up the white courtesy phone.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Biden Is An Increasingly Toxic Combo of Addled and Untruthful. “To be a fly on the wall in places that Democrats are hanging out these days. Even the most die-hard partisans couldn’t possibly still be pretending that things are going well or that they will soon be better. Beltway Dems are probably bringing in Prilosec and Xanax by the trainload now. I can almost smell their flop sweat all the way out here in Arizona.”
I’M HOPING FOR PERSONAL LIABILITY ON THE PART OF THE UCLA ADMINISTRATORS IN THIS ONE: UCLA Professor Sues After Being Suspended for Refusing Preferential Exam Treatment for Black Students. This was one of the worst (if not the worse) of the cancel culture episodes on campuses in 2020. Such idiocy.
DEMS TO PUT $100 BILLION TAX BURDEN ON THE POOR: Patrick Hauf, reporting for the Washington Free Beacon, points to a provision of His Fraudulency’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending plan and notes it includes a huge hike in the cigarette tax.
Vaping would also be taxed for the first time if the provision becomes law. Why is this a tax burden on the poor? Because they smoke at three times the rate of the rest of the population. One wonders if this proposal will light up lower income voters to vote for Republicans who promise to repeal Biden’s tobacco tax.
GET USED TO SEEING THESE: Supply Chain Disruption Update. “I didn’t expect to do another supply chain disruption update just two days after the last one, but there’s a lot more news popping up.”
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