POINTS AND FIGURES: Dispatches from the Covid Frontlines.

On Wednesday, April 7 I went to Red Rock Casino here in Las Vegas and got a free Johnson and Johnson Covid 19 vaccine. It was nice of the casino to do that. The process was orderly and organized. My wife found out about it on Twitter and because my doctor at Mayo recommended I get the vaccine, I went.

Of course days after I got the shot a few people around the country were getting blood clots and they have stopped giving people the JnJ vaccine. When I looked at the numbers, it was so small given the entire sample size I wasn’t worried. Also, almost all of the people getting clots were women and I have identified as a male since the day I was born. I guess I could be a “cis-lesbian-female” if I understand the new terminology correctly. The Dead Sea Scrolls are easier to decipher but I digress.

I checked out of the hospital today.

On April 14, I started running high fevers up to 105. I could get them down with Tylenol, Advil, and cold baths. Because of what happened to me in January, I take a drug that is an immune suppressant. My genetics have kept my white blood cell count low all of my life but now it is exceptionally low. We were sorting through some old papers from the 90s and my WBC count was low then. My counts are so low they are in that “four standard deviations away from the mean range”-or outside the “normal distribution” for those that truly understand statistics.

I was poked and prodded in the hospital. I was fed a constant stream of antibiotics. I was tested for Covid 19 again and was negative. My eighth victory against Covid. They drew lots of blood and tested it. So far, I have no other bacterial or viral infections percolating in my bloodstream. I was CT Scanned and Lung X-Rayed, “Hey, your lungs look great!”. I was Ultrasounded to check for clots. No clots.

The only conclusion is that my body had a very adverse reaction to the vaccine.

Read the whole thing.

DALLAS INTERNATIONAL GUITAR FESTIVAL RETURNS APRIL 30:

Dallas International Guitar Festival (DIGF) is back at Dallas Market Hall April 30-May 2. The world’s largest and oldest guitar show is excited to emerge from their cocoon after a year-long quarantine caused by the pandemic.

DIGF hours are 12 noon to 7 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. There is continuous music throughout the festival, with two outdoor stages. Dallas Market Hall at 2200 Stemmons Freeway in Dallas offers ample free parking for those attending the show.

Jimmy Wallace, DIGF producer and owner, said, “In these challenging times we are committed to maintaining a safe and clean environment for our attendees, performers and staff. This year will be a hybrid event with indoor and outdoor activities. Dallas Market Hall will still have a mask mandate in place during the event. Masks, along with social distancing, will be a requirement and help on-site attendees and exhibitors feel more safe and comfortable attending the Dallas International Guitar Festival this year.”

More details here.

WELL, GOOD: Sweat sensor could warn of impending COVID-19 cytokine storm.

CUBA’S RAÚL CASTRO RETIRES AS HEAD OF COMMUNIST PARTY, MARKING AN END OF AN ERA:

Raúl Castro said he is stepping down as chief of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party, leaving behind a demoralized country running on little but post-revolutionary fumes as it struggles with growing food shortages and rising discontent.

Mr. Castro’s retirement announcement Friday, which came during a four-day party congress in the capital of Havana, marks a generational change as the old guard that took power with his older brother Fidel Castro in 1959 gives way to a younger generation of bureaucrats. The 89-year-old is expected to be replaced by his handpicked successor, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, a longtime party apparatchik.

In his speech, Mr. Castro effusively praised Mr. Díaz-Canel, saying he had built a good team. Nevertheless, he said in retirement he would remain with a “ foot in a stirrup ready to defend socialism.”

Mr. Díaz-Canel, a burly, white haired 60-year-old, takes over at a particularly tough time, with Cuba’s economy facing its biggest crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The Covid-19 pandemic has largely shut down the country’s vital tourism industry, causing the economy to contract 11% last year, according to the government.

Why would the CCP stick it so badly to their fellow true believers?

THE WHO INTERVIEW: Pete Townshend on Band’s Future, Sell Out Album.

The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper at the beginning of the Who Sell Out era. Did that inspire you at all? They framed their songs around the Sgt. Pepper idea and you framed yours around a pirate radio station.

No, no. Come on. The Beatles copied us! Paul McCartney came up to me at the Bag O’Nails [music club], which we mention in the album artwork. He was always very, very sweet to me. I should say that first. But he said to me that he really loved our mini-opera, which was called “A Quick One, While He’s Away.” That was on the album that preceded The Who Sell Out. And he told me they were thinking about doing similar things.

I think anybody that was even a little bit art school back then, a little bit adventurous — and, of course, the Beatles were encouraged to experiment to the max in the studio — would have thought about doing something which was a concept.

In this case, of course, it wasn’t a concept. [Laughs] It wasn’t a concept until the day that we walked in to get photographed in tubs of baked beans. It was only at that photo session that we learned that the name of the album was going to be The Who Sell Out, which is a brilliant title, of course.

Plus:

It felt to me like I needed a rest. And so I re-arranged the universe, brought in this thing called Covid-19 and then a year off! [Laughs]

I was relieved, in a sense, that I didn’t have to tour. I would have done an OK job, I’m sure. But I felt like I needed a break, but I think everyone else did, too. You know, if rock & roll had a model, it would probably be AC/DC or ZZ Top.

My best story about ZZ Top, which has been confirmed by them, [is] that they once did so many shows in year that their family made them come home for Thanksgiving because they had missed four Thanksgivings in a row. When they got there, they didn’t know where they lived. They booked into a Holiday Inn.

If you’re a fan of The Who, read the whole thing.

PROTECTION FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: NY Times wants to defund the police — except the one in its lobby. “Scratch an advocate who favors defunding the police and you usually find someone with private armed security. In this case, a company such as The Times writes a check to the NYPD, which pays the officer, minus an administrative fee, to provide protection in full police regalia.”

Times owner Tom Cotton could not be reached for comment.

MAXINE MELTDOWN: Maxine Waters tells Minnesota BLM protesters ‘to get more confrontational’ one day after violent anti-police clashes erupted across US.

Flashback: AYFKM?! NYS Dem Sen. Diane Savino shrieks over violent political quote and demands action until she learns it came from Maxine Waters:

Considering the national media presence of Waters and “the Squad,” it makes for quite a contrast with January’s story involving GOP madness:

Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

ANOTHER SHOOTING, ANOTHER FAKE NARRATIVE: A Recipe for More Tragedy. The media’s rush to judgment on the Adam Toledo shooting in Chicago will come with a high cost. Rafael Mangual’s frame-by-frame analysis of the video footage shows what’s wrong with the story being spun by the media and politicians.

YIKES! Plane makes emergency water landing near the beach during air show in Florida (video).

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Stanford students told they better not agree with J.K. Rowling on trans issues.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof: ‘The problem with academia today is that it has too many conservatives.’

SITCOM KING CHUCK LORRE BOWS TO CANCEL CULTURE:

As Christian Toto asks, “The cable stars are beloved by both the press and the Left, and yet they realize saying one wrong thing could end that love affair in a hurry. It’s a lesson not lost on Lorre, arguably the most powerful TV producer of the modern era. If they can’t stand up to woke bullies, what chance do other, less powerful, talents have?”

GREAT MOMENTS IN HARD-HITTING SATIRE: Samantha Bee Is Wrong about Comedy.

‘It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it,” wrote G. K. Chesterton. Those who hold their beliefs strongly can laugh at the world, their predicaments, and themselves. Those without confidence in their beliefs cannot laugh at all, for fear the whole thing will come crumbling down. Of course the same applies to political beliefs, too, which are often now a mere stand-in for religious ideas.

Comedian Samantha Bee recently remarked that she can’t make fun of Joe Biden in the same way she made fun of Donald Trump, admitting that she pulls her punches when it comes to the 46th president:

“You’re like, okay, well we could be making jokes about, we could be making jokes about the infrastructure plan, but in general, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is great. Why would I purposefully undermine something that is, seems to be a great idea, pretty much across the board?’ Like, I don’t need to make jokes just to make jokes. I like to make really targeted jokes. There are more worthy targets right now, I think.”

Bee’s comments offer perhaps the best example of what has gone wrong with leftist comedians as of late: They think the point of comedy is to make “really targeted jokes,” to “undermine” things, or to “target” things they — and presumably their audience — disagree with. Over the last decade, late-night hosts across the board began to lay aside their relatable, everyman’s brand of comedy and pivot toward lecturing the crowd on their moral values. They went from chasing laughter — no matter who the butt of the joke may have been — to chasing applause. The result has been anything but funny.

But in the age of a massively splintered media, the palace guard approach is the safest approach to holding onto an audience that’s a sliver of what Johnny Carson enjoyed:

This is also my theory about the big entertainment awards shows like the Oscars and the Emmys. If the big, broad, general audience you used to have is gone, and deep down you think it’s never coming back, then why not make a harder bid for the loyalty of the smaller audience you’ve got left? In a time when the entertainment industry is (or thinks it is) a one-party state with no dissenters, you had better echo that politics back to your base.

What were once cultural institutions with a broad, bipartisan audience are becoming niche players with a narrow fan base. They no longer view partisan politics as a dangerous move that will shrink their audience. Instead, they’re using partisan politics as a lure to secure the loyalty of their audience, or what is left of it. Not that it’s going to work over the long term, because people who want to have their biases confirmed will just watch the five-minute YouTube clip Chris Cillizza links to the next day.

—Why Late Night Hosts Like Jimmy Kimmel Are Suddenly So Political, Robert Tracinski, the Federalist, October 5, 2017.

GREAT MOMENTS IN HARD-HITTING JOURNALISM: WashPost Submerges Kamala’s Border Duties, Promotes Her ‘Mark’ on the ‘Crochet Scene.’

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Whoops! One of the Critical Race Theory Elect goes down.

Jim Best is out as headmaster of the Dalton School. Knew this one was coming. He totally deserved it, but I wonder if the board was just upset at all the publicity.

Johnston did a couple of damning blog posts on Dalton back in December, attracting the attention of Roger Kimball and Ed Driscoll, and even others.  Faculty demands were breathtakingly woke.   In March, Bari Weiss interviewed terrified parents at a number of prep schools.   Terrified of CRT.  But they should really be terrified that the prep schools are pushing CRT because that’s what the Ivy League wants.

YES, WELL, that preoccupation is not an accident, but by design:

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Lori Lightfoot: Chicago Mayor to Resign After Being Caught Cheating on Wife? “The reports are unconfirmed and no official statement has been released from the mayor. However, news of Lightfoot’s alleged resignation has sparked outrage on Twitter with many expressing their anger over the mayor’s decision to resign over a cheating scandal instead of other recent unfortunate events including the misappropriation of COVID relief funds to the Chicago Police Department, covering up a botched raid on Anjanette Young, as well as the fatal shooting of Adam Toledo.”

Yeah, that’s the least of her scandals. As a friend comments, “It must be a difficult choice for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to resign over a personal sex scandal, vs her city burning to the ground, with children shooting each other up, over and over and over again, every single day.”

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? White House Report Card: Joe Biden, flip-flopper in chief.

JOHN MCWHORTER: THE VICTORIANS HAD TO ACCEPT DARWIN. WE NEED TO ACCEPT THAT COPS KILL WHITE PEOPLE AS EASILY AS THEY KILL BLACK PEOPLE.

AT HELEN’S PAGE: Books by long time reader Francis Porretto.

QUESTION ASKED: Does This Make Any Sense to You? Me Neither.

“The Queen and the late Prince Philip had been in a bubble with some members of their household for the last year and so the monarch was not eligible to join a support bubble with other members of her family,” CNN helpfully explains.

[Aside: She’s the queen. She doesn’t need permission nor “eligibility” to do anything. In earlier times the British sovereign would have had such contumacious subjects beheaded]

So the 94-year-old monarch bid farewell to her beloved husband of 73 years masked and alone in a church pew— without the reassuring squeeze of a hand or an encouraging word from a family member whispered into her ear.

But why? The queen has been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. If these vaccines are as effective as we’re told they are, why on earth would she need to wear a mask, let alone social distance from family members?

Because politicians, pundits and ‘experts’ don’t want COVID to end.

HMM: Biden Administration Asks Supreme Court To Drop Challenge to Men-Only Draft: Justice Department signals support for efforts to include women in the draft. “The Justice Department told the High Court on Thursday that judicial action is unnecessary because Congress is actively considering whether to change draft registration rules. The National Coalition for Men and the ACLU say the Military Selective Service Act is unconstitutional because it discriminates against women, and they asked the justices to say as much in January.”

It’s not moot until it’s moot, but this Supreme Court seems eager to duck cases.

NEO ON COURT PACKING: Venezuela is the template.

JOHN NOLTE: BLM, Antifa Checkmate Democrat-Run Cities into Committing Suicide.

If a Democrat-run city polices crime, BLM and Antifa will destroy the city via non-stop rioting and anarchy.

If a Democrat-run city backs away from policing crime, the city is doomed to a future of urban blight, one where everyone who can gets the hell out, while the poorest of the poor and those who prey on the poorest of the poor remain.

Basically, we are looking at a future with a whole bunch of Detroits.

And it’s being aided and abetted by the DNC-MSM:

● Chris Cuomo: Police reform comes when ‘white people’s kids start getting killed.’

● CBS Posts Cropped Video of Adam Toledo Shooting on Twitter, Leaving Gun Out of Frame.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH BILL MAHER IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Maher praises DeSantis, knocks Cuomo, ‘liberal media’ for getting COVID wrong: ‘Those are just facts.’

TIME TO OPEN UP: CDC: Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.

FLASHBACK, September 12, 2009:

Quincy, Illinois.

ALL OF JOE BIDEN’S PROMISES COME WITH EXPIRATION DATES: Biden Caves to Radicals: Will Increase Refugee Admissions After Saying He Wouldn’t.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: How corporations conspire with Democrats to hoard power at the public’s expense.

OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for posting.

SPACE: Larger late-stage deals dominating space investment landscape.

AND YET: Another One: FedEx Shooter Brandon Scott Hole was ‘Known to Authorities.’

WELL, GOOD: Dermatologists say most COVID-19 vaccine rashes aren’t worrisome.

DESPITE — OR BECAUSE OF — THE TEETHING PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT VACCINES, WE’RE LEARNING A LOT: Virologists develop broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. “The candidate vaccine was developed using an innovative vaccine platform targeting a highly conserved genomic region of coronaviruses. . . . The new vaccine platform utilizes a genome-reduced bacteria to express the coronavirus vaccine antigen on its surface. Such a vaccine platform can be manufactured with low cost in existing facilities around the world, which could meet the pandemic demand.”

WEST POINT’S CHEATING SCANDAL: “The question that arose in my mind — and I have no idea of the race of the various accused cheaters — is whether an honor code is a manifestation of white supremacy. The NYT has been weaving Critical Race Theory throughout so many of its articles, that we ought to take note of its failure to include that dimension.”

MANHATTAN PUSHBACK: A New York father pulls his daughter out of Brearley with a message to the whole school. Is the dam starting to break?

Possibly related: Head of NYC’s posh Dalton School splitting at the end of 2021.

C’MON, THAT WAS JUST JACK’S TEMPORARY EXCUSE TO HELP GET DEMENTIA JOE OVER THE LINE: Twitter Promotes Story Using ‘Breached’ Data To Dox Police – After Banning NY Post For ‘Hacked Material.’

LUXURY: Mercedes Is Teasing a New V-12-Powered Maybach S-Class.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE. ‘I’m Kind Of Disgusted:’ Appearing on Tucker, Victor Davis Hanson Rips U.S. Ambassador To UN For Lauding Al Sharpton.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is the Army Going to Extremes Over Extremism?

Recently, the United States Army Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) created the first-ever Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position and ordered the Army Extremism Safety Stand-Down. These two measures meant to address what frankly very few within the ranks saw as an issue amongst their peers.

With no clearly defined mission and with absolute abruptness, these D&I officers were shoe-horned into the command structures of units Army-wide, specifically into USSOCOM subordinate units.

The first to hold the failed USSOCOM Diversity and Inclusion Officer position was Mr. Richard Torres-Estrada. He was supposed to be USSOCOM’s slam dunk to appease the ever-growing appetite for the woke social media criteria in today’s military.

Torres-Estrada’s tenure was short-lived. His diversity and inclusion beliefs made their way onto his social media accounts. They revealed him to be a Left Wing ideologue rather than a political moderate — which you would think would be a good idea for anyone you hire to promote things like diversity and inclusion.

Within hours of his appointment, his beliefs were discovered and made public. Within days, USSOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw made the statement, “USSOCOM is aware of the situation, and the command has initiated an investigation.”

McGraw then followed up with a less than meaningful, yet very common, statement to cover for higher-ranked leaders. Torres-Estrada has been reassigned to other duties pending the results of the investigation.

The soldiers wanted to know why this position was created in the first place.

Xi Jinping can dream big, reading articles like the above.

HMMM: New Capitol ‘Attack’ Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to ‘Stand Down’, and the Feds ‘Botched’ Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (Video).

SMALL BUT POWERFUL? First Look: Federal Premium .22 LR Punch Defense Ammo. “The Punch .22 LR load features a 29-grain nickel-plated lead-core bullet that travels at maximum velocities (1,070 fps from a 2-inch barrel) for deep penetration from short-barreled handguns. Somewhat of a departure from standard .22 projectile designs, the Punch bullet features a flat nose and heavy jacket around a lead core, thus increasing velocity and minimizing expansion so as to increase penetration depth.”

Well, you can only make a .22 expand so much. And people pretty much hate being shot by any caliber of bullet. But it’s still small.

LONG-TERM TEST: Our 2020 Kia Telluride Never Lost Its Luster: The three-row Telluride’s unwavering excellence over 40,000 miles illustrates how far Kia has come.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HEAD OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS:

60% of the time it works every time!

COVID ONE YEAR AGO: The battle at the heart of British science over coronavirus.

The crisis may not be over, but already there are lessons. Perhaps the biggest one, according to Sir David [King], is to bolster resilience against future outbreaks. As chief scientific adviser between 2000 and 2008, he pushed the idea of the UK becoming more serious about preparing for emerging health and environmental threats.

“We seem to have forgotten the lessons, the fact that we need redundancy against all the things we haven’t prepared for,” he says.

The current crisis shows how a lack of preparation ultimately limits a country’s options. “When it came to foot-and-mouth and Sars, we used to be the ones telling China how to respond, but now the boot is on the other foot. The Asians are in the lead and they’ve responded well. We’ve done poorly.”

“They’ve responded well.”

(Via.)

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Popular New Mask Reads ‘I’m Not A Democrat, I Just Forgot To Take Off My Mask When I Left The Store.’

IF TREATMENTS ARE GOOD ENOUGH, WHO NEEDS A VACCINE? Experimental antiviral proves effective in halting spread and damage of COVID-19.

OUT ON A LIMB: Breonna Taylor’s Mother Claims BLM Louisville Is A ‘Fraud’ That Exploited Her Daughter’s Death. “I think it’s crazy when people say they’ve been here since day 1.”

Earlier: BLM co-founder: I practice Marxism by getting rich and supporting my family. “If Marxism means making bank and sharing the riches with your kids and siblings, then you know what? I guess I’m okay with Marxism. As Marx himself said, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to whether they’re kin to a politburo member and have their eye on a four-bedroom.’”

CHANGE: OnlyFans, COVID-19 pandemic have spurred a new sexual revolution. “In other words, selling one’s sexuality online is becoming a side hustle without stigma. Once upon a time, a reality star under contract to a high-profile cable network would likely be fired for sex work on the side. It wasn’t all that long ago that Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, was stripped of her title for having posed nude, after her pictures were purchased and published by Penthouse magazine. A nation gasped. Today, we yawn.”

DISPATCHES FROM FUN CITY: NYC YouTube Prankster Tells Restaurant Patrons He Has Bomb, Will Kill Them for Allah.

IS IT A FUNCTION OF AGE, OR IS IT GENERATIONAL? Older adults are more likely to help others than younger adults.

MICK JAGGER’S ROCK’N’ROLL FIGHTBACK AGAINST LOCKDOWN:

The beauty of ‘Eazy Sleazy’ is that it is a libertarian bypass of so much of the culture wars surrounding Covid. In an era when the battle has apparently been raging between supercharged finger-waggers seizing a once-in-a-century opportunity to impose the nanny state and ostrich-headed loons citing ever more esoteric graphs, the song manages to dismiss both.

Lockdown? ‘We took it on the chin / The numbers were so grim.’ Conspiracy theorists? ‘Bill Gates is in my bloodstream / It’s mind control.’ As well as containing elements of Jagger’s well-observed wit, it’s also nice to be reminded of a time when musicians’ opinions went beyond the drearily conformist. There is also the entertaining concept of ‘shooting the vaccine’ – a geriatric nod to the idea that, after pushing 60 years on the road, the Stones’ days of heroin chic might be on the wane.

Seeing Jagger raging against being ‘Bossed around by pricks’ and ‘football’s fake applause’ feels rather what it must have been like seeing Bertrand Russell on an anti-Vietnam War march. A mind so readily associated with a past era is suddenly transposed into the present, showing up our anaemic and relentlessly policed public discourse today. Dave Grohl also deserves a nod for playing the straight man and piling in on the drums and bass. ‘Don’t want to be your monkey wrench… I’d rather leave than suffer this.’

The punky “Easy Sleazy” isn’t exactly the second coming of “Satisfaction,” let alone “Wild Horses” and “Midnight Moonlight,” but it’s great to see Jagger, 78, punching back against the seemingly permanent lockdown culture. It’s curious Jagger’s song seems to be much better received by rock fans (and was enthusiastically introduced by leftist DJ Jim Ladd on Sirius-XM’s Deep Tracks channel on Thursday night) than the earlier protest songs by Eric Clapton and Van Morrison in November. Perhaps timing is everything, with Morrison and Clapton having proved it’s still possible to protest the establishment.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Vitamin D deficiency may impair muscle function in older adults, study finds.

THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE: Arizona woman finds tires slashed and a severed finger in her driveway.

The Maricopa mother believes the finger belongs to her neighbor because they argued with him the night before and a trail of blood leads to his house. “I don’t find joy in anybody hurting themselves. However, karma has a good way of working itself out,” said Wikoff.

The neighbor wasn’t home Thursday and Wikoff said he hasn’t been home all day. Arizona’s Family reached out to the Maricopa Police Department and haven’t heard back. Wikoff said no arrests have been made, only the finger so far has been taken in custody by police in a brown paper bag. “Well, I got the better hand,” said Wikoff.

Ouch.

WELL, SOME OF IT: The Pandemic Revealed How Broken Public Education Is.

IF YOU HAVEN’T YET READ BRYAN PRESTON ON THE ALAMO: Go do it now because it is both a superb corrective to the creeping rot of wokism and a wonderful tribute to the Tejanos, the men of the Alamo of Mexican lineage who were born in what became Texas.

The vast majority of people with Texas blood flowing in their veins instinctively recognize the Alamo as the enduring symbol of freedom that it is, but others need to hear the facts about what happened there, including especially that it had zero to do with “white supremacy.” Preston is doing it well. Thank you, Ed Driscoll, for posting his column link.

HELEN TRIED IT: There is a book listed at Helen’s Page that I read a while back called Before I Go: Preparing Your Affairs for Your Heirs. I have it sitting on one of my bookshelves and have used it from time to time to help me update a list of important information in case someone in my family needs it. It is not a very uplifting topic but the book is really good at helping you organize your financial and important documents to help your family in case you become sick or die. Though I don’t recommend the topic, I do think the book is worth a read if you ever wondered what kinds of things like bills, insurance, finances etc. your family needs to know about if something does happen to you. (Bumped)

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Riot Preseason Edition.

INTEGRITY: General Assembly Considering ‘Tennessee Election Integrity Act’ to Regulate Outside Funding for Election Officials, Require Official Watermarking for Absentee Ballots.

JIM TREACHER: Ted Cruz Stops Wearing a Mask After Getting the Vaccine, Which Is Somehow Newsworthy.

Why?

This isn’t a rhetorical question. If these vaccines work, why do vaccinated people need to wear masks?

Why?

People are getting kicked off passenger flights for allowing their children to eat without masks, as if it were somehow possible for them to eat with their mouths covered.

Why?

Jen Psaki regularly stands at a podium in front of the White House press corps, all of whom are wearing masks, and she never wears a mask.

Why?

There hasn’t been a single reported case of someone getting COVID-19 from touching a surface, yet there’s still all this cleaning theater going on. A public figure walks away from a microphone, and somebody rushes in and sprays down everything he might’ve touched or breathed on.

Why?

Now one of the vaccines has been pulled entirely because there’s literally one chance in a million that if you’re pregnant or on birth control, you could get blood clots. That’s a 0.0001% chance.

Why?

None of this crap makes sense. There’s nothing scientific about any of this. It’s just hysteria. Superstition.

From everything I’ve seen and read, these vaccines work wonderfully. Miraculously, even. I’m getting my second dose next week, and I can’t wait. I’m not spending one more minute living like this than I have to.

Ron DeSantis has the best response to the multi-mask-obsessed left:

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE PEOPLE BETTER, MORE CRITICAL THINKERS: ‘Anti-racist journey’ prompts UNR lecturer to apologize for teaching ‘Jingle Bells,’ ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep.’

TATER TAUNTED: Project Veritas Triggers a Meltdown From Our Friend, CNN’s Brian Stelter (Video). “The CNN media guy was so unable to deal with the reporter, he chickened out and called a maintenance guy to remove him. He was left completely speechless by folks who are doing actual reporting, something he wouldn’t know anything about. CNN hasn’t answered the question about whether Chester is still employed by them. What was extra hilarious about it all was how Stelter was dressed, in shorts and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt said ‘Journalism matters. Now more than ever.'”

IT’S AN ADMISSION OF GUILT: Superintendent’s George Floyd message that school district is racist draws federal civil rights complaint.

In June 2020, district Superintendent John Simpson posted to the school’s blog site claiming that the school district contributed to inequitable systems which disadvantaged its black students. It was part of a blog post lamenting the death of George Floyd.

“I’m not saying that all police officers are bad or all educators are bad, but they (we) operate within systems that, by their outcomes, clearly privilege one race over another. It’s undeniable,” Simpson wrote.

“As your superintendent and as a white man, I must hold myself and our school system to a greater level of accountability in how we see and support our Black children, staff and parents and how our work is leading to the dismantling of the inequitable systems and structures within our district.”

Parents Defending Education argues in its March 30 complaint that his statement should count as an admission that Webster Groves violated Title VI of the Civil Rights act of 1964.

That section of the act mandates that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber made a similar statement last year, about racism being embedded in his university. That statement led to Princeton being investigated by the Department of Education for possible Title VI violations.

Heh. Make the enemy live up to his own book of rules. More like this, please. And sure, nothing will come of it, but the process is the punishment.

DEVELOPING: ELDERLY PRESIDENT SLOWLY MORPHING INTO FOGHORN LEGHORN. Biden calls Masters champ Hideki Matsuyama, 29, ‘Japanese boy’ in odd compliment.

BRYAN PRESTON: At the Alamo, a Tejano Hero Gets His Due.

According to woke Texas State Historical Association chief historian Walter Buenger, the Alamo is a symbol of “white supremacy.” Some might like for it to be that, but they are a fringe on the left and right extremes, and the facts keep getting in their way. It’s today’s woke history that’s oversimplified and racist. History is as complex as life itself.

Buenger is not a Texas Revolution historian and may not have heard of the Tejanos who died at the Alamo fighting against dictator Santa Anna, his betrayal of the Federalists, his abrogation of the 1824 Constitution, his 1835 proclamation branding those Federalists “pirates” if they lifted a finger to oppose him as he sought to disarm them, or the several other Mexican states besides Texas that rebelled against the hated dictator during the same timeframe. Those facts’ existence violates the revisionist narrative that wokes seek to create regarding the battle that was the crescendo of the Texas Revolution. The life-and-death decisions made by some Tejanos also get in the wokes’ way.

One of those Tejanos was Jose Toribio Losoya. Losoya faced a choice that changed the course of his life and his place in history. He was not alone in that choice. As historian Dr. Jody Edward Ginn has pointed out, Tejanos — native-born Texans of Mexican heritage — in 1835-36 were statistically slightly more likely to fight for Texas’ independence than were the Anglos Buenger and other woke historians claim were fighting for white supremacy and slavery.

Those Tejanos and Texians fought side-by-side as brothers. They had intermarried families. Shared neighborhoods and towns. A shared fate.

Remember the Alamo, and read the whole thing.

FEAR OF THE MOB: Minneapolis Public Schools to go to distance learning ahead of Chauvin verdict.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Oregon newspaper deletes tweet identifying police shooting victim as a white person after online uproar. ‘We generally do not identify race in news stories but…’

WELL, YES:

America’s major cities, particularly the ones that have tense relationships between black communities and heavily white police forces, are almost entirely Democratic run. Their city councils are Democratic. Their mayors are Democratic. In many cases, the governors of the states are Democratic. In the majority of these circumstances, there are no Republicans to blame. And for a little while, some non-conservative media institutions started asking the uncomfortable question of why Democrats, who insisted they always opposed racism, ran cities where African Americans perceived the police forces as irredeemably racist. As Benjamin Wallace-Wells put it in The New Yorker, “A whole generation of Democratic mayors have seen their reputations defined by their inability to manage the aftermath of police killings: Rawlings-Blake in Baltimore, Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, Bill de Blasio in New York, Pete Buttigieg in South Bend.”

(Running a city well is hard, and I think some of the media-celebrated cases of urban renewal over the past few decades have put too much emphasis on big, glamorous downtown projects and not enough emphasis on the basics of governance and quality of life — good schools, reasonable cost of living, and safe streets.)

Nobody wants to fix potholes when they can get national attention for sounding woke. Result: Increases in the amount of potholes and wokeness.

SPACE: SpaceX wins $2.9B contract to fly astronauts to the moon.

The move comes a year after the agency named three companies to design and build human landing systems. In addition to SpaceX, NASA also selected Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, which partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper on its approach, and Dynetics (a Leidos company) out of Huntsville, Alabama. The total combined value for those contracts was $967 million for a 10-month base period.

Interestingly, the Post reported that SpaceX received the smallest award in the initial go-round: $135 million compared to $579 million for Blue Origin, which was reportedly “furthest along” in its development.

Blue Origin has so far underperformed expectations.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: COVID-19 Has Accelerated College Closings. “A recent study shows nearly five hundred colleges faced little financial risk before the pandemic; however, over 20% of those colleges now face a high level of financial pressure. Even more, COVID-19 has exacerbated the negative effects of mismanagement on these colleges, as well as the colleges that struggled for survival even before COVID-19. One may ask: If those private colleges struggled to survive during the best of times, how can their (malfeasant) directors possibly save them during a global pandemic with no foreseeable end? The answer is simple: They cannot.” Pleased to say that this piece was co-authored a some former student of mine.

Related: Federal Judge Allows Student Tuition Refund Class Action To Proceed Against Quinnipiac University Over COVID-19 Shift To Online Learning.

The pandemic has thrown a lot of lefty-dominated institutions into vulnerable states — Hollywood, media, higher education, state and local governments — but will the right take advantage of that?

POLLS: Most want Hunter Biden investigated.

President Joe Biden hasn’t had much luck or made much of an effort in making good on his call for unity.

But his son Hunter has.

In a new survey shared with Secrets, 68% agree that the Justice Department should appoint an independent special counsel to investigate allegations that the president’s son engaged in shady international business and tax dealings while his father was vice president. Included was the president’s brother James, whose healthcare ventures are also in the legal spotlight.

The survey from TIPP Insights is bad news for the Bidens. Not only do 85% of Republicans want a special prosecutor separate from the FBI and the Biden administration appointed, but so do 65% of Democrats and 65% of independents.

I lack confidence in the DOJ’s willingness or ability to investigate the Bidens, but this indicates that the media silencing campaign hasn’t fully succeeded despite great efforts.

DON’T GET COCKY: “The early line: Republicans are going to sweep both houses of Congress next year.”

Related: NY Dem Flips Out When Joe Scarborough Questions How Dem Focus On Racial Politics Plays Out In 2022.

SO RACIST! Biden Keeps Trump Refugee Cap.

BIDEN STANDS UP FOR CHINA: Watch Jen Psaki stand up for literal Chinese propaganda that America is an evil, bigoted nation.

Classical reference in headline:

GLENN GREENWALD: Journalists, Learning They Spread a CIA Fraud About Russia, Instantly Embrace a New One.

Let’s express this as clearly as it can be expressed. Any journalist who treats unverified stories from the CIA or other government agencies as true, without needing any evidence or applying any skepticism, is worthless. Actually, they are worse than worthless: they are toxic influences who deserve pure contempt. Every journalist knows that governments lie constantly and that it is a betrayal of their profession to serve as mindless mouthpieces for these security agencies: that is why they will vehemently deny they do this if you confront them with this accusation. They know it is a shameful thing to do.

But just look at what they are doing: exactly this. These are not journalists. They are obsequious spokespeople for the CIA and other official authorities. Even when they learn that they deceived millions of people by uncritically repeating a story that the CIA told them was true, they will — on the very same day that they learn they did this — do exactly the same thing, this time with a one-paragraph Treasury Department Press Release. These are agents of disinformation: state media. And when they speak, you should listen to them with the knowledge of what they really are, and treat them accordingly.

Well, yes: “It’s Important To Be Honest About What Today’s Media Actually Are. They are Democrat propagandists and should be treated as such.” Their unrelenting war on Trump has made that plain.

Related:

It’s pure power politics. As Harry Reid said after being called on lying about Mitt Romney’s taxes, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

Earlier: The New York Times’ ‘Russian Bounties’ Story Just Unraveled.

WE’LL BE SORTING OUT THE NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS OF THE LOCKDOWN FOR YEARS: Drug Overdose Deaths Skyrocketed to Record Levels Amid Pandemic Lockdowns, New CDC Data Show.

WELL, GOOD: Paris’ fire-damaged Notre-Dame cathedral ‘on course to reopen in 2024.’

WHO WINS, ‘GENETICALLY MODIFIED SKEPTIC’ OR ERIK MANNING: Genetically Modified Skeptic’s real first name is Drew and he makes an articulate case for the idea that all spiritual visions are remarkably similar, regardless of the individual’s particular faith tradition. For that reason, he contends, there must be an underlying natural cause, not a supernatural one, for such experiences.

Erik Manning is a Christian apologist who devours “literature, podcasts, lectures, and online classrooms produced by both Christians and skeptics.” Manning responds to Drew in a detailed, factual and civil manner. The result is a fascinating analysis that challenges the thinking of both sides.

So, hey, it’s Saturday and watching this video will give you something to think about today as you cut the grass, pull those weeds, run weekend errands, make plans to party tonight, or whatever else you do to make today productive and enjoyable, regardless of which side you come down on.

OPEN THREAD: Indeed.

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO SENT PAYPAL DONATIONS OR CHECKS: The thank-you notes have all gone out. If I somehow missed you, thanks very much!

SPACE: NASA, SpaceX are ‘go’ to launch Crew-2 astronauts to space station on Earth Day.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: How corporations conspire with Democrats to hoard power at the public’s expense.

SPACE: NASA review advances first launch of astronauts in reused capsule.

I’M SURE THIS IS TRUE: Study: Later school start times aid sleep duration, quality for adolescents, teens.

HMM: Histamine-suppressing drugs found to reduce benefits of exercise. “A team of researchers from Ghent University and the University of Copenhagen has found that antihistamines such as Allegra or Pepcid can reduce the benefits of exercise. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes two experiments they conducted—one short range, the other long range—that involved giving volunteers antihistamines before they engaged in exercise regimens.”

HMM: COVID might be linked to more blood clots than we thought.

A LIE TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD BEFORE THE TRUTH IS OUT OF BED. There are *still* people who think W. Bush served a “plastic turkey” to troops in the Middle East. And who could forget Harry Ried out and out lying about Mitt Romney “not paying taxes”? A rare few called him out on it. His response? “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

And so to today. Matt Taibbi (on Substack, the platform that is terrifying the media elite) published a “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus.” Among the gems (still believed by many):

• The “Back Channel to Russians” story, Yahoo! September 23, 2016. Yahoo! published a story by Michael Isikoff called, “U.S. Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin.” The piece identified Trump advisor Carter Page as a “possible back channel to the Russians,” and claimed he passed information from the Kremlin to figures higher up in the Trump food chain, like former campaign chair Paul Manafort […] This proved incorrect on all fronts, with no evidence of any Page meetings with either man. In fact, the irregularities involved with the Isikoff story – particularly the use of information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele, identified as a “well-placed Western intelligence source” – became a bigger story than the alleged improper relationship between Page and Russians.
• “US investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier,” CNN, February 10, 2017. Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez of CNN reported that “multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials” have “corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent,” i.e. the “Steele Dossier.” […] This was a significant and apparently deliberate piece of misinformation. We know, from the report of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, that the CIA months before had already dismissed the Steele reports as “Internet rumor,” while the FBI had already done several rounds of attempts to corroborate its independent reporting, coming up with negative results each time.

And now “disinformation” like a new toy, a bow-and-arrow play set for media mavens. But the arrows all seem to fly in the same — and often wrong — direction.

CHANGE: Barrett Awarded U.S. Army Sniper Rifle Contract.

FLORIDA SOCIALIST: This Florida politician utterly beclowned himself by denying socialism has ever killed anyone.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Why the FCC Keeps Shooting Down Requests From Companies That Want To Shoot Down Drones.

DON’T GET COCKY: The Democrats Are Flirting with Suicide in the Midterms.

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM SCIENCE: Study: 2.5 billion T. rex roamed Earth, but not all at once.

WHEN AMERICAN “PROGRESSIVES” HAVE LOST THE GERMANS…Berlin’s Disastrous Rent Control Law Gets Scrapped.

GOD, SCHMOD, I WANT MY MONKEY-MAN! Scientists grow human-monkey chimeric embryos in lab.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The Top Seven Most Ridiculous Hate Crime Hoaxes.

THAT’S ABOUT THE SAME PERCENTAGE AT RISK AS PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN VACCINATED WITH PFIZER OR MODERNA: Study: Up to 10% of young adults who recover from COVID-19 at risk for reinfection.

I mean, I’m still waiting to see evidence that the vaccine immunity is clearly better than natural immunity, though a lot of people seem to assume that it is.

Likewise, this headline, Past COVID-19 infection does not fully protect young people from reinfection could just as easily be rewritten with “Vaccination” in place of “Past COVID-19 infection.”

Which is fine, no vaccine is 100%. But why pretend, without evidence, that the vaccine is vastly more protective than natural immunity?

TO BE FAIR, THAT WAS PRETTY MUCH THE KREMLIN’S DEFINITION AS WELL: BLM co-founder: I practice Marxism by getting rich and supporting my family.

Flashback: “In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: ‘But what if the communists come back?'”

QUESTION ASKED: How Do Big Media Outlets So Often “Independently Confirm” Each Other’s Falsehoods?

There were so many false reports circulated by the dominant corporate wing of the U.S. media as part of the five-year-long Russiagate hysteria that in January, 2019, I compiled what I called “The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story.” The only difficult part of that article was choosing which among the many dozens of retractions, corrections and still-uncorrected factual falsehoods merited inclusion in the worst-ten list. So stiff was the competition that I was forced to omit many huge media Russiagate humiliations, and thus, to be fair to those who missed the cut, had to append a large “Dishonorable Mention” category at the end.

That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.

In their all-out effort to finally get The Bad Orange Man, a whole lot of corruption at the heart of the DNC-MSM was exposed: The New York Times’ ‘Russian Bounties’ Story Just Unraveled.

UPDATE: Liz Cheney Was A Primary Culprit Of Spreading Fake News On Russian Bounties To Undermine Trump.

(Updated and bumped.)

MESSING WITH TEXAS: Woke capitalism’s Texas showdown.

Texas, improbably for a pro-free market state, has its own component of woke capitalists. American Airlines, which headquarters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has declared itself ‘strongly’ against the Senate’s legislation.

‘Voting is the hallmark of our democracy,’ AA insists, ‘and is the foundation of our great country. We value the democratic process and believe every eligible American should be allowed to exercise their [sic] right to vote, no matter which political party or candidate they [sic] support… At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our society — not create them.’

Well, duh. Who says otherwise? The Republicans promoting the bill? In what context? What provision of the bill would overthrow Americans’ sense of American ideals?

Wherein lies the problem. Critics of voter reform legislation unfailingly fail to show how measures meant to entrench honesty at the polls undermine the democratic process — unless we need a little less honesty around here, recognizing as we should that crooks and cheats deserve representation too

The Texas legislation is going to pass, given Republican control of the legislature; the governor is going to sign the bill; and then the legal fraternity is going to get busy, filing lawsuits, doubtless in the aggrieved language test-driven during the current debates. Given the present composition of the US Supreme Court, you are entitled to hope the new law will largely survive — that a little more honesty will somehow show its face around American polling places. But the background racket in our present so-called debate over reform isn’t a sign of encouraging things to come.

Flashback: Trump Won Heavily Latino Texas Border County He Lost to Clinton by Huge Margin. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I’ll still have to show ID when getting on American airliner.

THE BANNINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Social media again silences the Post for reporting the news.

Once more unto the breach.

On Thursday, Facebook decided its users should not be able to share a New York Post article about the property buying habits of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter.

This is the third time we’ve tangled with social media giants in the past year. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we published a column that suggested the virus could have leaked from a Chinese virology lab. Facebook’s “fact checkers” decided this was an opinion you weren’t allowed to have, and blocked the article. Today, it’s a commonly discussed theory, with officials from former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta saying it can’t be discounted. Even the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it can’t be ruled out.

In October, we published a series of articles about a laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware repair shop. Twitter suspended our account. You probably know how that ended. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted to lawmakers months later it was a “total mistake.”

We were right both times. We’re right this time, too.

Earlier: The Morning Briefing: Area Fascist Jack Dorsey Purges James O’Keefe From Twitter.