OUT ON A LIMB: Stop blaming everything on ‘white supremacy.’ The Atlanta and Boulder shootings were swiftly pinned on racism. The reality was very different.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Ga. State Rep. Calls Joe Biden’s Bluff on Georgia’s ‘Jim Crow on Steroids.’
BAN FALLING: Falling Killed 126 Times More People than Rifles of Any Kind. “The same CDC data shows unintentional firearm deaths for 2018 came in at 458, which means accidental death by falling was about 82 times more likely than accidental death via any kind of firearm.”
We also need to license gravity.
COVID ONE YEAR AGO: Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 timeline: from ‘mild symptoms’ to a brush with death.
(Via.)
HOW IT STARTED: “15 Days to Slow the Curve.”
How It’s Going: Increases in Coronavirus Cases Are Happening Mainly in States With Stricter COVID-19 Rules. The Washington Post nevertheless blames “a broad loosening of public health measures.”
BOTH SIDES THINK THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN, BUT ONLY ONE SIDE SHOWS MUCH INTEREST IN FIXING IT: Trump Rallies Conservatives to Fight for Election Integrity With Their Wallets.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Biden’s Easter Bunny Goes from Spreading Cheer to Spreading Fear.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s even better than filling children’s lives with joy and wonder?
Answer: Reminding them that they’re all probably going to die, apparently.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Oakland voters are dying to #DefundThePolice
- Did Senator Tim Scott (and many others) just fall into another one of the Left’s language traps?
- Come see the anti-Asian racism in the NFL
Bonus Sanity: Matt Kibbe knows how to save civil society, and you’ll love who loses.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
Plus a VIP twofer from yours truly and Paula Bolyard.
First the bad news: Now American Airlines Has Joined the Woke Chorus.
And then the really bad news: There’s No Stopping Vaccine Passports. Here’s Why.
If you’ve been considering becoming a supporter, don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT promo code.
THAT’S BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE PAYING ATTENTION: Public trust in CDC drops across all demographics during pandemic.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: 2 Yemeni men on the FBI’s terrorism watch list were caught after illegally entering the U.S. via the Mexican border.
HELEN’S PAGE REQUEST: Are there any shaving companies out there that would like to advertise on Helen’s Page? It would be nice for men to have an alternative company to buy products from, other than Gillette that disrespects men.
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: CBS ‘News’ Deletes Tweet Advocating How Companies Can Oppose Georgia Republicans.
Related: CBS goes dark on DeSantis, avoids mentioning ’60 Minutes’ report on morning, evening news programs. Program accused of selectively editing governor’s remarks to imply ‘pay-for-play’ scheme.
And talk about burying the lede, CNN discovers that a channel besides Fox News exists:
Just think of the media as “‘Democrat activists in the propaganda field,’ certainly not reporters, or journalists. They need to be treated as what they are.”
AND YOU KNOW THAT THEY WILL: Joy Pullman: If Democrats Will Cry ‘Racist’ No Matter What, Republicans Should Pass Much Stronger Laws. “Everyone knows why Democrats don’t want voters to show ID. It has nothing to do with racism, and everyone knows it. So why are we playing this stupid game?”
Republicans should learn from the left: Bus protesters to CEOs’ homes, disrupt shareholder meetings, picket country clubs they belong to, and otherwise exact a quality-of-life penalty from corporate officials who oppose them.
DISPATCHES FROM THE “IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN WE DO IT” PARTY: Disparate treatment in two fund-raising fraud cases renews debate over dual Justice system. Nigerian Clinton foundation donor gets deferred prosecution deal, Trump inauguration donor gets 12 years in prison in eerily similar cases.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: NASA Ends Mars Mission After Finding Out Planet Has No Early Voting.
OR MAYBE HE THOUGHT IT WAS GOUDA: Hunter Biden Smoked Parmesan Cheese Because It Looked Like Crack Cocaine.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Make America Grate Again.”
FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC REP. ALCEE HASTINGS DIES AT 84. “Hastings was a 15-term congressman, civil rights lawyer and Florida’s first black federal judge, though he was ultimately impeached after ten years of service over allegations of bribery and perjury.”
YOUR HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD INFOTAINMENT INDUSTRY: CBS Smears Ron DeSantis While Pete Buttigieg Gets the Obama Treatment from AP. “The Associated Press published an egregious triple-bylined puff piece on Buttigieg’s efforts to save America by building bridges, both literally and figuratively. With the possible exception of Beto O’Rourke during his failed campaign for Senate, only Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of such obsequious coverage.”
Give the AP this much credit: It was an impressive effort, given how little they had to work with.
WHEN WILL POTUS ACKNOWLEDGE HE HAS A TWO-YEAR-OLD GRANDDAUGHTER HOLED UP SOMEWHERE IN ARKANSAS? Hunter Biden Claims He Has ‘No Recollection’ of Woman With Whom He Fathered a Child.
MAKE THEM PAY: Her business was run off campus for her views. Now she’s taking legal action. To the tune of $10 million.
SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: The Biden Administration’s czarina of racial equity, Catherine Lhamon, continues to express surprise that students diagnosed with behavioral disabilities are disciplined in school more than students without such disabilities … and that African American students are disciplined more often than other students. But data show that there is a good and obvious reason for this.
I’m figuring the Biden Administration will be reinstating the Obama Administration’s (in my view illegal) school discipline policy any minute now.
BIG BEZOS IS WATCHING YOU: 5 ways Amazon monitors its employees, from AI cameras to hiring a spy agency.
GERARD BAKER: The C-Suite Converts to the New Political Religion.
The men who run Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola and other giants have been quick to mouth the required antiphony of the modern liturgy. After long careers in which they seemed happy to let their talents propel them to unimaginable wealth, they’ve now discovered that the society that elevated them was founded in evil.
But instead of doing the honorable thing, and stepping down in favor of some less-privileged underling, they demonstrate a commitment to the faith by denouncing others. Here you have the essence of the new faith and morals of the woke classes, the truly privileged people in our society: I’m not to blame, you understand; it’s all those other white folk.
Wokeness is not about taking power from The Man. Wokeness is The Man’s way of securing his power over the rest of us.
CORPORATIONS DON’T PAY TAXES; THEY COLLECT THEM: Biden’s Economic Adviser Proposes Corporate Tax Rate That Exceeds China’s, and Will Land on You.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: All-Star Game Moved From Atlanta To Uyghur Prison Camp Yard.
A friend comments: “Who knew that people in sports had all the spine and wit of a Faculty Senate?”
ALL BUBBLES POP: With the S&P 500 above 4,000 the ‘Buffett Indicator’ is wildly out of whack.
The Buffett Indicator measures the ratio of stock market’s total value to U.S. economic output. The idea is that abnormally huge valuations relative to GDP can only stay at those levels, let alone wax from there, if future earnings also soar to devour a much-bigger-than-normal slice of national income. That can happen for a few heady years. But over a longer span, outsized profits trend back to their traditional share of GDP. As the late economist Milton Friedman used to tell me, “Over time, corporate earnings can’t absorb more their traditional share of national output in our competitive economy.” When that “reversion to the mean” in profits occurs, valuations also drop.
We’ve witnessed that pattern many times. The difference now is that stocks have never defied the Buffett rule for so long, nor gotten so incredibly out of the whack with this heretofore gravity-like force.
Look out below.
YES, IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS: Black people agree: Race relations ‘worse’ under Biden.
Well, we went from a President who said, “When You Open Your Heart To Patriotism, There Is No Room For Prejudice,” to one who ran and and has governed based on explicit racial division.
MEAN, GREEDY, AND LAZY IS NO WAY TO GO THROUGH LIFE, MA’AM:
And people have noticed. Has anyone handled the pandemic worse than the teachers’ unions?
HELEN TRIES IT: So I thought I would start trying out some of the products that are being listed on Helen’s Page in order to let readers know if they are good or not. Tested products get a verification badge.
First up is King Harv’s Imperial Coffees. I ordered the Organic Colombia which is one of their sale brands. You can get it ground anyway you want from regular to k-cup grind. I ordered the k-cup grind and received it 4 days later by USPS. King Harv was kind enough to add a half pound of their pricier blend of Panama Geisha coffee which King Harv told me “is called ‘Geisha’ because although grown in Panama, the genetic source of the coffee trees is from Gesha valley, Ethiopia.”
Both coffees arrived in nice vacuum sealed bags and we made them in in our Keurig maker using the adjustable k-cup thingy. Glenn tried the Geisha blend and pronounced it to be “smooth, bright, and not too acidic, and reminiscent of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee” which he loves. I tried the Columbia blend and it was very classic, with a strong bold taste, yet very smooth. Both were excellent but if you are on a budget, the Columbia is a better bet. If you want to splurge, the Geisha is worth it. Since I tried it, I gave King Harv’s a verification badge. You can read more about the brand at Helen’s Page. (Bumped).
IF YOU SET OUT TO BOYCOTT GEORGIA, BOYCOTT GEORGIA: Rubio to MLB commissioner Manfred: Drop your Augusta golf membership, too. “I am, of course, under no expectation any of this will happen. Taking the All-Star game
out of Georgia is an easy way to signal virtues without significant financial fallout.”
TRUST: Chinese Officials Trying to Dodge COVID-19 Vaccinations, Citing Health Reasons: Leaked Documents. “As the Chinese regime races to inoculate tens of millions through coercive policies and a propaganda blitz, some local officials are quietly dodging the shots themselves. Amid Beijing’s aggressive vaccine push, dozens of officials from parts of Liaoning, a province in northeastern China, have cited various health reasons not to take the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times reveal. In a town called Xintai, located in the center of the province, only three out of 66 officials have gotten vaccinated, with another two on the registration list—showing a dismal willingness rate of less than 10 percent.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Media Smears Are Just Making DeSantis Stronger. “We all thought that the mainstream media was at its absolute lowest when President Trump was in office. At the beginning of the year I warned everyone that things were about to get worse. Now the journalist hacks are faced with both propping up the empty husk who is occupying the Oval Office and exorcise the demons associated with Trump still living rent free in their heads. The perversions of the First Amendment have gotten exponentially worse since January 20th.”
WHY IS MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SIDING WITH ACTUAL SLAVEHOLDERS? Rubio Rips MLB Commish for League’s China, Cuba Ties.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Neuralink Co-Founder Says We Have the Tech to Build an Actual Jurassic Park. “We could probably build Jurassic Park if we wanted to. Wouldn’t be genetically authentic dinosaurs but [shrugging emoji]. Maybe 15 years of breeding + engineering to get super exotic novel species.”
Has he not seen any of those movies?
AND YET THE ESTABLISHMENT WILL OSTRACIZE YOU NOW IF YOU SAY IT: Democrats don’t trust elections either, only 19% of all voters say Biden and Trump elected ‘fairly.’
After 2016, a deluge of articles and books pointed to Hillary Clinton’s 77,000-vote margin of defeat in three decisive states, blaming, plausibly, James Comey’s late actions or, less plausibly, Russia’s dabblings in Facebook and Twitter. These legends live today and are treated respectfully. The same books could be written about 2020. Mr. Trump’s Electoral College failure was even smaller, 44,000 votes in three states. This legend is not going away either, however much Mr. Trump muddies it with absurd claims. No evidence suggests large-scale vote fraud. The “but for” argument is the one that will endure.
But for late rule changes in many states in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, mail-in votes would have played a much smaller role in the election.
But for the efforts of the mainstream media and Silicon Valley giants, many more voters might have been influenced by the Hunter Biden laptop story.
But for the efforts of 50 retired intelligence officials who suggested the story was Russian disinformation, news organizations would not have had a hook to insist the laptop story was false.
Mr. Biden’s allies were right in seeing the laptop as their James Comey. But the well-sourced laptop story was true. The FBI, we learned almost as soon the election ended, possessed copies of the data since 2018 and was investigating Hunter’s tax and business dealings.
The laptop has now surfaced again to corroborate, with Hunter’s own text messages, a strange story about his lying on a federal background check to obtain a gun, then the improper disposal of the same gun in a public trash can by his then-girlfriend who also happened to be his brother’s widow.
The New Yorker magazine, among a host of impeccably establishment news outlets, once devoted 10,000 words to the topic, “Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign?” Today, the top half of the hierarchy in every newsroom in America knows the gun story is the quintessence of “news,” especially given the current clamor for strengthened background checks. Yet news editors have largely treated the gun story as if it doesn’t exist, likely because they are terrorized by their own bottom half. . . . The role of rule changes in 2020, the role of the media, the role of a “cabal” (in Time magazine’s word) that worked the legal machinery to assure Mr. Biden’s advantage—all this is part of history now and should be spoken of.
Also Related: Republicans regard news media as Democratic tools.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Throws Fastball at MLB’s Virtue Signaling.
EVERY SUNDAY I RUN A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE WRITERS: Book Promo And Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
This week it got bumped to Monday.
GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN’T USE DATA HERE, THIS IS A UNIVERSITY! University Of Missouri Faculty Upset About Use Of Data In Promotion And Tenure.
To be fair, it depends on the quality of the data. For $527,000 a year — which sounds kinda boondogglish for simply comparing faculty scholarship to that at other universities — the data had better be damn good.
UNFORTUNATELY IT SOUNDS ENTIRELY PLAUSIBLE: NASA Ends Mars Mission After Finding Out Planet Has No Early Voting.
Or perhaps the Babylon Bee is using their time machine to see the future again.
LET’S PAINT THE TARGETS SO THE CHICKENS KNOW WHERE TO LAND! On Chickens Coming Home To Roost.
IT’S HISTORIC: On this day in 1930, the Twinkie was invented by bakery manager James Dewar in Schiller Park, Illinois. As is so often the case, capacity was the mother of invention. The machinery for making cream-filled strawberry shortcake was unused when strawberries were out of season. Twinkies (which were originally banana cream filled) were the off-season solution.
HOW LONG WILL YOU TOLERATE THIS? For our own good: liberty and health.
Forgive me for asking again, but you really, really really should be thinking about it.
DUH! Election Fraud Hotspots – 10% of the Data are 70% of the Fraud.
As Larry Correia (may his beard grow longer) said from the beginning: the 2020 election: fuckery is afoot.
Election 2020: the more fuckery update. And: I asked one simple question to people who work with fraud.
And yes, I do know that what we’ve learned in 2020 is that when a science fiction writer screams on her/his own blog and nobody listens, it doesn’t make a sound. However, Larry, before becoming The Mountain Who Writes and purchasing his very own mountain lair was a forensic accountant.
Any non-compromised/bought/otherwise suborned accountant/statistician/mathematician or simply someone who knows what bullsh*t with numbers smells like (say anyone who lived under socialism before) has been screaming “the facts/numbers don’t add up” since November.
How long are you going to obey the ursurping Junta as though they were legitimate in any way shape or form?
THE RUSSIANS ARE GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER: A Russian assessment of combat capabilities in southeastern Ukraine.
By force, of course. It’s not like Zhou Bai Den is going to prevent them, is it?
HOW LONG WILL THE WORLD TOLERATE THIS? The Hills Are Alive With The Screams Of Uighurs.
HIS LIES AND HIS USURPATION ARE COSTING AMERICA MORE THAN WE CAN PAY: Biden’s Lies About Voter Law Cost Georgia The All-Star Game.
How long will you tolerate this?
(And don’t tell me “Sit down John.” Vote for independence now.)
THEY THINK THEY’RE KINGS, DICTATING THE USE OF PUBLIC PROPERTY AS THOUGH IT WERE THEIR PERSONAL ASSETS: Feds Considering CA’s Long Beach Convention Center as Emergency Migrant Shelter.
How long will you tolerate this?
BEHOLD. MY SHOCKED FACE: Border Crisis: Human Smugglers Use Facebook to Connect With Migrants.
I’VE BEEN SHOUTING SINCE THE BEGINNING ABOUT THE DIAMOND PRINCESS: Ugly Truth of COVID-19 Lockdowns.[VIDEO.]
Hey at least we know what happens when an sf writer shouts in her blog and nobody listens. I.e. people go careening merrily down a crazy path and let themselves be treated like sheep. Stupid sheep.
I spent an entire year incredibly depressed that the world had gone insane and refused to look at facts. I’m done being depressed. I’m just angry. How long will you tolerate this intolerable governmental intrusion? How long?
FOLLOWED BY A GLOBAL SOCIAL-CREDIT SYSTEM: Exclusive: Janet Yellen to call for global minimum tax rate.
We can’t have countries competing on tax rates. That might put downward pressure on tax rates, and that might crimp the style of the global ruling class. Which, as you may have noticed, is engaged in a worldwide effort to shut down any constraints on its freedom of action.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Democrats want open borders but won’t say so, causing today’s cruel crisis. They won’t say so because open borders are unpopular with many of their own voters, especially black voters.
WELL, THAT HARSHES THE NARRATIVE: Derek Chauvin Defense Shows Video Clip To Suggest Officer Knelt On George Floyd’s Shoulder—Not His Neck. “Nelson raised the concept of ‘camera perspective bias’ and played two roughly 30-second-long clips of Chauvin’s restraint of Floyd as paramedics were arriving on the scene: a bystander video from teenager Darnella Frazier and the police bodycam footage from former Officer Alexander Kueng. Nelson then highlighted that while it appeared Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck in the video recorded by Frazier, the knee appeared to be on Floyd’s shoulder blade during the same period in the bodycam footage.”
ANN ALTHOUSE GETS RID OF COMMENTS. “I didn’t try to skew the poll by telling you about the burden it has become for me. I just wanted to see what you thought, and it’s nice to know that the majority of poll-takers were happy with the experience I had worked so hard to create. The behind-the-scenes work for me isn’t something that should concern you. Quite the opposite. The backstage labor isn’t part of the show.”
I’m not close to doing that — though I admit it’s crossed my mind once or twice — but I get it. Mostly the comments are great, but some can kind of ruin things. It helps that I don’t really moderate very heavily. I’m not a comment-curator.
THIS IS DISAPPOINTING. I WANT MY REACTIONLESS THRUSTERS. In a Comprehensive Test, The ‘Impossible’ EM Drive Has Failed to Produce Thrust… Again. The apparent thrust was apparently a thermal effect. Bummer.
WORLD ENDS TONIGHT, WOMEN AND MINORITIES TO SUFFER MOST: Catherine Lhamon, the former Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and now Biden’s “Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity,” was quoted by ABC News a few days ago: “[P]ollution and the climate crisis disproportionately threaten the lives and livelihoods of Americans of color.”
Maybe. But a 2016 report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights tried to prove exactly that, and ended up with data that showed just the opposite: The pollution it found was disproportionately in white areas. Of course, the Commission proceeded to ignore its own data.
NOW OUT FROM JOHN TAMNY: When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Deaths from cocaine, meth mixed with opioids on the rise.
CUTE LITTLE HERO: Four-year-old honored by Texas police officers for helping to save his toddler cousin from drowning. The more heroes are honored (even the pint-sized ones), the more of them we’ll get.
IN THE UNPRECEDENTED TIMES, WHY IS THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA WEIGHING IN ON A LONDON MAYORAL ELECTION? Stacey Abrams tells London: yes we Khan.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Why is the government being so lenient toward the murderers of an Asian man? #StopAsianHate.
CAUSE? OR EFFECT? Study reveals people with higher incomes feel more confident.
TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT THROWS FASTBALL AT MLB’S VIRTUE SIGNALING:
“I was looking forward to throwing out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opening game until @MLB adopted what has turned out to be a false narrative about Georgia’s election law reforms,” Abbott tweeted Monday. “It is shameful that America’s pastime is being influenced by partisan politics.”
Abbott attached a letter he addressed to Neil Leibman, president of operations and chief operating officer for the Texas Rangers.
In it, he told Leibman that while Texas was proud to host the playoff games and World Series in his state last year, it would not seek to host any other MLB special events, including the All-Star Game.
Related: Mitch McConnell Threatens Woke Corporations Objecting To Georgia Election Law. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order. Businesses must not use economic blackmail to spread disinformation and push bad ideas that citizens reject at the ballot box.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: A professor pushed back on mandatory ‘white fragility’ training for four minutes, the school investigated her for nine months.
THE PHOTO OF THE RESULTS IS UGLY BUT PREDICTABLE: Trap Shooters: Stop Resting Your Shotgun Barrel On Your Foot!
SHUT UP OR ELSE, THEY EXPLAINED: SPLC Predicts ‘More Violence’ Because Republicans Don’t Buy the Left’s Narrative on the Capitol Riot.
WEIRD THAT SO MANY PEOPLE SEE THE PRESS AS LYING MEMBERS OF THE DEMOCRATS’ PROPAGANDA APPARAT: ‘Intentionally False’: Another Florida Dem Absolutely Shreds ’60 Minutes’ Hit Piece Against Ron DeSantis.
As of this afternoon, yet another Democrat has weighed in on the media-driven controversy surrounding DeSantis and Publix, and it just so happens to be the mayor of the county “60 Minutes” tried to claim was not consulted by DeSantis before the vaccine partnership with Publix was created.
Democrat Dave Kerner, who is the Palm Beach County mayor, ripped the report to shreds, noting that DeSantis had specifically consulted with him and another county official about multiple vaccination distribution options and that they (county officials) “asked to expand the state’s partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County.” Kerner said they also discussed his county’s own plans for vaccination distribution, and that DeSantis was very supportive.
“[60 Minutes] had that information, and they left it out because it kneecaps their narrative,” Kerner stated.
Labeling the report “intentionally false,” Kerner also said that he offered to provide insight to “60 Minutes” for their report but that they weren’t interested.
Of course they weren’t.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: In Push For Diversity, Military Canine Units To Give Equal Opportunities To Chihuahuas.
COMPUTER’S MIND, BLOWN: Watch This Audi RS 6’s Speedometer Drop to Zero as it Eclipses 200 MPH on the Autobahn.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Are Leftists Stupid Or Liars?
It’s a real headscratcher – are these people dumb, or do they think we’re dumb, or is it a little from Column A and a little from Column B?
Take Heidi Heitkamp – and you can take her since she’s not busy, the people of one of the Dakotas having fired her for being a crappy senator. This has-been was on with Bill Maher – his show is where C-list pols go to die – and they were talking about cancel culture and what happened next was illustrative. See, Heitkamp was supposed to be one of those moderate Dems from the Midwest, not some strange-o channeling the table talk in the faculty lounge at Gumbo State. And this alleged moderate then announced that Gina Carano is a Nazi.
Carano’s the MMA lady who was on that stupid kid’s space show playing a character named Puun Xeeeblefrok or some dumb thing. She got kicked off it by Disney because she would not genuflect to the various demigods of the pinko pantheon and probably fails to accept that men can menstruate. Now she’s working with Ben Shapiro’s outfit. I’m sure Ben will be shocked to know that he’s working with a Nazi; frankly, it seems off brand for both of them, but leftists are smart, right?
No. They are dumb, or they are liars who imagine we might fall for it.
Embrace the healing power of and.
ANDY NGO UNMASKS THE REAL THREAT TO AMERICAN FREEDOM:
Although Unmasked reached no. 1 status on Amazon in advance of its release, when Antifa members protested Powell’s plan to sell the book, the store’s managers immediately apologized, explaining that while a lot of the store’s inventory was hand-picked, that wasn’t true of Ngo’s book. They consequently pledged that the book “will not be placed on our shelves. We will not promote it.” They did add that Unmasked would “remain in our online catalog,” since “we carry a lot of books we find abhorrent, as well as those that we treasure.” One might think that they were speaking of Mein Kampf! But despite the pledge that Powell’s wouldn’t stock the book, a crowd of protestors gathered outside the store’s flagship, downtown location (as reported by ABC News) on the day of the announcement, plastering the windows with signs and prompting the store to close early as a safety precaution.
A conversation with a friend and former student of mine who owns another of America’s leading independent bookstores, situated in a fashionable downtown neighborhood far removed from Portland, assures me that Powell’s really had no choice in the matter. In fact, my friend, who is of a moderately conservative inclination, told me that he wouldn’t dare stock the book himself, as the result might be the burning down of his establishment. If he won’t, I doubt that many bookstores, outside of the most conservative areas of the country, would dare to.
It is a sign of our changing political times that Andy Ngo, who describes himself as gay, an unbeliever, and (at least in the past), a Democrat, should find his chief defenders among those who identify as conservatives. But as the son of Vietnamese boat people who risked death to escape Communist prison camps, he evidently appreciates the value of law-based freedom more deeply than many native-born Americans who take it for granted. And most American conservatives, one hopes, have come to recognize that what they share with fighters for freedom like Ngo matters far more than any disagreements about sexual orientation, religion, or party affiliation. But what would John Milton or John Peter Zenger, Thomas Jefferson or John Stuart Mill say of a situation in which a nation that historically prides itself on an unsurpassed freedom of speech and of the press allows anarchist groups to prevent books that express views contrary to their own from being sold? And why are the mainstream media, both print and electronic, making so little of it?
Because they’re “‘Democrat activists in the propaganda field,’ certainly not reporters, or journalists. They need to be treated as what they are.”
DON’T BE EVIL OR WHATEVS: Supreme Court Lets Google Off the Hook for Copying Oracle’s Code, Thomas Skewers Twisted Decision.
TAMARA KEEL: Eaters of the Dead. I always find machinery that survives by cannibalization sad.
Was Adams implying that fighting the Wuhan coronavirus is the moral equivalent of war? If so, then, to paraphrase Tim Blair in 2019, when AOC and Bernie Sanders were playing the “moral equivalent of war” card to sell her “Green New Deal,” fair enough — nuking Beijing it is, then.
(Via the Covid One Year Ago Twitter account.)
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Are NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens?
BARI WEISS: Do Not Look Away From Evil.
I had Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who survived the attack, write this op-ed in the Times two days after he was shot. In it he warned: “Over the years people I know have been harassed and assaulted by thugs in the neighborhood where I grew up, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in incidents that typically go unreported by the press.”
Indeed, when I tell people I’m from Pittsburgh they flash with recognition and sympathy. But I highly doubt one would elicit the same response if you told a group of strangers you were from Jersey City, where a kosher grocery was shot up in 2019 by attackers linked to the hate group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. Or if you told them you were from Monsey, New York, where, that same year, a machete-wielding fanatic stormed a Hanukkah gathering at a rabbi’s home. Or if you said you were from Crown Heights or Borough Park, where street crimes against Orthodox Jews have become a regular feature of life.
The value of a victim should not be dependent on the identity of their victimizer. This is why any totalizing ideology, from right or left, that claims people are either pure or impure, real Americans or pretenders, saints or sinners, all good or all bad, collectively innocent or collectively guilty depending on the circumstances of their birth, is so dangerous.
It blinds us to the truth. It erases our common humanity. And it must be rejected.
One more thing:
Tablet just published this important essay about antisemitism among the well-educated. A new survey shows that the old understanding — that ignorance breeds antisemitism — may not be true. “Those political causes making use of anti-Semitism are increasingly favored by the well-educated in this country,” write the authors.
Read the whole thing.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Mob Rules — No Justice, Know Peace.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: What does the Left get when they cave to the outrage mob?
Answer: Exactly what they wanted all along.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Know we know what’s worse than a crack ho
- Maybe Amazon should look up the meaning of “hubris” in one of those books they still sell
- Come see the anti-Asian racism inherent in the Leftism
Bonus Sanity: A pro-oil children’s book? Oh, Canada!
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THIS WILL BE HELPFUL FOR ELON MUSK’S ANTIMATTER ROCKET: Scientists at CERN successfully laser-cool antimatter for the first time.
JAMES ROBBINS: Nine ways to thwart the ridiculous Georgia ‘voting rights’ boycott. “From the panic on the left you’d think the 1965 Voting Rights Act had been nullified. But the hyperbole over the Georgia reforms betrays a shocking lack of historical knowledge.”
It’s not panic. It’s gaslighting, in which anything that makes fraud more difficult is cast as “racist” because reasons.
GOODER AND HARDER: Biden Is Covering Up True Price Tag of Infrastructure Plan, Experts Warn.
UH OH: German officials: People under 60 shouldn’t get AstraZeneca booster. “The move was made days after health officials on its recommendation restricted use of the vaccine jointly made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University to those over age 60 due to concerns of rare yet severe cases of blood clots in younger recipients of the drug. . . . Health Minister Jens Spahn said 31 cases of the rare brain clotting had been diagnosed in the country as of Monday with nine of the patients dying as a result. Nearly all were women under age 60.”
AT HELEN’S PAGE: Alpaca products made in the USA.
FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU RATHERGATE:
—The Daily Wire, Sunday.
● CBS ‘News’ Deletes Tweet Advocating How Companies Can Oppose Georgia Republicans.
● CBS’s Soft Hunter Biden Interview Downgrades Scandals to ‘Rumors,’ Promotes Book.
—NewsBusters, Sunday.
Back in 2017, 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley had this gaslighting moment with blogger/Twitter user Mike Cernovich:
Scott Pelley: How would you describe what you do?
Mike Cernovich: I’m a lawyer, author, documenter, filmmaker, and journalist.
Scott Pelley: And how would you describe your website?
Mike Cernovich: Edgy, controversial content that goes against the dominant narrative.
Scott Pelley: What’s the dominant narrative?
Mike Cernovich: The dominant narrative is that there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are liberals. Everybody on the right is a bad guy. Let’s find a way to make everybody look bad. Let’s tie marginal figures who have no actual influence to anybody we cannot overwrite. That’s the narrative.
Scott Pelley: That’s not a narrative I’m familiar with. Who’s narrative is that?
Whatever gets you through the night, Scott.
(Bumped.)
BREXIT LOOKING BETTER EVERY DAY: EU banking system ‘teetering on collapse’ as Brussels struggles to maintain control.
WELL, HE IS A COMMIE: Sen. Warnock — a PASTOR — Preaches Damnable Heresy on Easter.
THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S OBVIOUS: Republicans Regard The News Media as Democratic Tools. Note that this article doesn’t even entertain that hypothesis.
FLORIDA DEM: That 60 Minutes hit piece on DeSantis and Publix is “absolute malarkey.”
The bolded parts are all the pieces that 60 Minutes excised to protect its narrative:
Sharyn Alfonsi: Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach—
Ron DeSantis: So, first of all, that — what you’re saying is wrong. That’s—
Sharyn Alfonsi: How is that not pay-to-play?
Ron DeSantis: —that, that’s a fake narrative. So, first of all, when we did, the first pharmacies that had it were CVS and Walgreens. And they had a long term care mission. So they were going to the long term care facilities. They got vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long term care facilities the third week of December to do LTCs. So that was their mission. That was very important. And we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points. So yes, you had the counties, you had some drive through sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies — Publix, Walmart — obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission. And we said, we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that. For the Publix, they were the first one to raise their hand, say they were ready to go. And you know what, we did it on a trial basis. I had three counties. I actually showed up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different Publix. How was the experience? Is this good? Should you think this is a way to go? And it was 100% positive. So we expanded it, and then folks liked it. And I can tell you, if you look at a place like Palm Beach County, they were kind of struggling at first in terms of the senior numbers. I went, I met with the county mayor. I met with the administrator. I met with all the folks in Palm Beach County, and I said, “Here’s some of the options: we can do more drive-through sites, we can give more to hospitals, we can do the Publix, we can do this.” They calculated that 90% of their seniors live within a mile and a half of a Publix. And they said, “We think that would be the easiest thing for our residents.” So, we did that, and what ended up happening was, you had 65 Publix in Palm Beach. Palm Beach is one of the biggest counties, one of the most elderly counties, we’ve done almost 75% of the seniors in Palm Beach, and the reason is because you have the strong retail footprint. So our way has been multifaceted. It has worked. And we’re also now very much expanding CVS and Walgreens, now that they’ve completed the long term care mission.
Sharyn Alfonsi: The criticism is that it’s pay-to-play, governor.
Ron DeSantis: And it’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s a fake narrative. I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don’t care about the facts. Because, obviously, I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Well, I— I was just—
Ron DeSantis: And, so, it’s clearly not.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Isn’t there the nearest Publix —
Ron DeSantis: No, no, no. You’re wrong.
Sharyn Alfonsi: —30 miles away.
Ron DeSantis: You’re wrong. You’re wrong. Yes, sir?
Sharyn Alfonsi: That’s actually a fact.
We talk a lot about media hatchet jobs, but this is almost a literal hatchet job. CBS News cut out every substantial point DeSantis made in order to make Alfonsi look like she got the best of him. DeSantis had made clear that Publix, far from getting preferential treatment, was merely the first chain to be ready to move on general-population vaccinations. Walgreens and CVS actually went first in long-term care facilities anyway, which tied them up for a while from doing anything else. DeSantis wanted to get as many others as possible in the game — which isn’t terribly surprising.
What’s amazing is that CBS News and 60 Minutes thought they could get away with it. This was, after all, a public press conference, not a one-on-one interview in which all of the footage was controlled by CBS. Did no one think that people would check the tape of the presser?
Nearly 17 years after RatherGate, and CBS still hasn’t discovered the Internet exists.
BUT THE NARRATIVE! The States Without Mask Mandates Have Lower COVID Rates.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
