MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Mask bullies don’t want to persuade you — but to humiliate and rule you.
PARKING TICKETS ARE RACIST: Or something like that. (A favorite progressive theme these days is that the enforcement of fines and fees is “criminalizing poverty.” I would have a bit more sympathy for that position if progressives didn’t oppose all efforts to prevent bad behavior—from executions on down to reprimands from the teacher.)
WEIRD THAT THERE’S SO MUCH RESISTANCE AMONG THEIR STAFF THAT THIS IS NEEDED: UMass Medical mandates vaccine or faculty and staff face being fired.
I HAD NO IDEA HOW WOKE BRAVEHEART WAS: NPR, woke researchers declare ancient warrior remains to be ‘non-binary.’
SHE’S A CLOWN: Cori Bush’s call to defund police rejected 2-1.
EDITORIAL: It’s the end of the world as the IPCC knows it, and we feel fine. “There is no consensus that Earth is doomed by global warming. And there won’t be such a consensus, no matter how much the authors of the report’s summary choose to hype things up with alarming language.”
NO, DELTA VARIANT IS NOT WORSE: Why is it all but impossible to get from the Mainstream, excuse me, the Government Media solid data like the three charts provided this morning by Issues & Insights that demonstrate rather conclusively that Covid casualties are on a steady decline?
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Oregon Suspends Need For High School Graduates To Be Proficient in Reading, Writing, and Math.
POLITICAL CRIMES: Clarice Feldman: Latest developments in the prosecution of January 6 defendants.
Prosecutors in the cases against the January 6 demonstrators are starting to run into some judicial pushback: Questions about exculpatory evidence in their possession not turned over as the law demands, lower courts assessing the defendant as more dangerous than the evidence warranted, and most significantly, whether the prosecution is overcharging defendants with the federal crime of obstruction.
Most of the defendants are charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted area — a fancy way of saying trespassing. Defendants are entitled to see before pleading to the charges any materially exculpatory evidence in the government’s possession. Defense counsel have complained that the government has not been meeting this obligation, and the prosecution has been responding that it is unable to quickly assess all the evidence it has to meet this burden. As to those charged with trespassing, some are claiming they were invited in and, therefore, could not be guilty of the charges. The prosecution got one extension and the question is whether they should get another, a question complicated by the defendants’ right to a speedy trial. Sixteen of the defendants facing the most serious charges will not have their cases heard until next January.
This week, the Department of Justice seems to have conceded the very point of the inapplicability of some trespass charges.
In its pleading, it states: ”we possess some information that the defense may view as supportive of arguments that law enforcement authorized defendants (including Defendant) to enter the restricted grounds’. e.g., images of officers hugging or fist-bumping rioters, posing for photos with rioters, and moving bike racks, we are not in a position to state whether we have identified all such information.”
To my knowledge, two appellate courts have now held that the trial courts have erred in assessing the appellant’s dangerousness.
Read the whole thing.
Glad to hear that, chum, because I aim to misbehave.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH ROD BLAGOJEVICH IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Blagojevich Hammers Cuomo: ‘Bigger Scandal’ than Sexual Harassment Is His ‘Massacre at Nursing Homes.’
Related: Janice Dean’s Reaction to the Resignation of Cuomo Says It For All of Us.
ALSO BY ALBERT ELLIS : How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You. This book is also good if you or someone you know suffers from anxiety. Ellis uses rational emotive techniques that use an “action-oriented approach to managing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral disturbances.” I attended a lecture and workshop at the Albert Ellis institute a few years ago and it was excellent. Interestingly, one of the lecturers leaned over and whispered to me “Didn’t I see you on Fox News?” He seemed impressed. Though I got a good laugh that he felt he couldn’t say it out loud. (Bumped)
EXPERTS WRONG AGAIN. SHOCKING. COVID Cases Fell 40% in the UK After Restrictions Were Lifted, Proving the Experts Wrong Yet Again.
The decision of Johnson’s government was not without controversy.
CNN described it as a “huge gamble,” while Labour Party leader Keir Starmer criticized the move as “a reckless free-for-all.” Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, said it was “almost inevitable” the decision would result in 100,000 daily cases and one thousand hospitalizations per day, despite the presence of vaccines.
“The real question is do we get to double that – or even higher,” Ferguson told the BBC. “And that’s where the crystal ball starts to fail. I mean, we could get to 2,000 hospitalisations a day, 200,000 cases a day – but it’s much less certain.”
At the time, daily cases stood at roughly 45,000, which meant Ferguson was predicting it was “almost inevitable” cases would more than double.
When Freedom Day arrived, Reuters noted the occasion was marred by “soaring cases” and chaos. The AP had a strikingly similar take.
Weeks later, however, we have an abundance of empirical evidence that show the prognosticators were once again wrong. Cases did not double or quadruple as Ferguson had predicted. Nor did cases “surge,” as many had warned.
On the contrary, cases fell—a lot.
Neil Ferguson is a clown at best, a serious malefactor at worst. His pathetic “analysis” was responsible for billions (maybe trillions) in unnecessary losses, and many, many lives damaged or ruined. And he still broke quarantine to get laid, even after urging everyone else to stay home.
SHUT UP PEASANT. THE RULES DON’T APPLY TO THE RULERS: Obama Guests Delete Pics As Unmasked Truth Leaks.
THE CUOMO RESIGNATION PROBABLY DOESN’T HELP MATTERS: Arkansas law school feeling heat after naming professorship for Bill Clinton. “I simply do not think it is appropriate for a law school to honor a disbarred lawyer — it strikes me as hardly sending a deterrent message to law students or practitioners.”
Plus: “They said, ‘oh, lost mail,’ to explain their sudden addition but that is not true. It’s clear that his position was not named for Bill Clinton and it should obviously remain not named after Mr. Clinton.”
THE CDC HAS NEVER YET MISLED US, RIGHT? CDC urges against travel to Israel, France, other nations as COVID-19 delta variant spreads.
In other words, this is a global revolt, and your government is on the side of tyrants and is afraid you’ll rebel if you know other peasants are rebelling….. Delta is a funny way to spell Mouthy Peasants Catapulting Burning Smart Cars at the Arc Du Triomphe. I guess they failed high school French.
WELL, THEY’RE NOT WRONG: 61% SAY BIDEN LIKELY TO RAISE MIDDLE CLASS TAXES.
WHEN THE MACHINE LOSES THE POLICE, THE MACHINE LOSES: Ella French, Chicago P.D., End Of Watch.
NPR SELF-IDENTIFIES AS BRAINLESS: NPR Touts Medieval Warrior as “Nonbinary”.
SPEAKING OF THE DREAD NAME OF FAUCI: The Tale of The Flying Dutch-U-Haul.
This is by way (hopefully) of explaining why my schedule here will be…. more erratic than normal, for the next two/three weeks, as we’re now in phase one of a protracted three-phase move from Colorado.
I’ll be honest, if there weren’t health reasons for this, I probably would not have bestirred myself. But health, joining with everything else is finally spurring me to get to places less blue. There is a lot of sadness in this, as I wanted to live in Denver since I was 8 and wasn’t very sure where the heck Denver was.
But it’s time. And as is, I feel like I might be catching the last train out of insanity to come. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the feeling is there.
Oh. And son is mostly recovered, and not roaming the mountains forever in a cursed u-haul.
SHUD UP INFIDEL. IT’S ALL COVID. THE DREAD FAUCI DECREES IT: Surge in Pediatric Respiratory Cases Appear to Stem from RSV Infections, Not COVID-19.
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Texas Supreme Court Allows Arrest of Fleeing Democrats.
IS IT ACTUALLY POSSIBLE THEY’RE EVIL BARBARIANS TRYING TO DRAG EVERYONE TO THEIR LEVEL? Eat Celebrity Meat.
Why do we have to explain to them that cannibalism is wrong?
August 10, 2021
NOW THEY’RE COMING FOR FREDO:
OPEN THREAD: Come on baby.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Mask bullies don’t want to persuade you — but to humiliate and rule you.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! ‘It Was Just Disbelief:’ Parent Files Complaint Against Atlanta Elementary School After Learning the Principal Segregated Students Based on Race.
To be fair, segregation is pretty on-point for Atlanta Democrats.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Tall Were WW2 Leaders? (Video.)
FINISHED KURT SCHLICHTER’S THE SPLIT LAST NIGHT. Another home run, and the Ben Sasse bit was amusing. Plus, in the afterword, the funniest yet most-disturbing part, where he writes: “I’m still struggling with the fact that the present is almost crazier than any future I can imagine. Our struggle to reimpose sanity is not going to end anytime soon.”
NOW BACK IN STOCK AND ON SALE: The whole dang game. 410 cards total.
THIS SHOULD BE OBVIOUS: Fourth Amendment Forbids Handcuffing Driver Just Because He Has Gun + Gun Permit. “The court also held that the law was clear enough that the police officer didn’t have qualified immunity from the claim.”
I think that police who overstep in this manner should be subjected to corporal punishment. The loss of dignity attending a flogging seems appropriate in these circumstances. Indeed, it might be a bigger deterrent than money damages or jail time, and much less expensive for the state.
IT’S COME TO THIS: “Marijuana has never been more popular in the U.S. — and its carbon emissions have never posed a bigger threat to the climate.”
15 DAYS TO FLATTEN THE CURVE: Oregon to resume statewide indoor mask mandate, Gov. Kate Brown says.
TO BE FAIR, IT WAS ALSO BETTER UNDER THE BARBARIANS AFTER ROME FELL:
The “Dark Ages” were dark for bureaucrats and scribes — who get to name things like that — but the average peasant farmer consumed significantly more calories after the Empire’s taxes disappeared. The Goths and Vandals and such looted, but they stole less from the people than their predecessors. For more on this see Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter’s thesis is that the collapse occurs when the bureaucratic/parasitic load on a society destroys its ability to adapt to new challenges. We may be approaching that point. The safest and easiest thing to do would be to cut off the bureaucrats and parasites, but they will resist that with the determination of all who don’t work for a living to protect their sinecures.
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
Our garbage establishment has ceased to fear any reaction to its overreaching. It needs to be returned to its place.
Related: Obesity Is Contagious. “When an individual gains weight, it dramatically increases the chances that their friends, siblings, and spouses will likewise gain weight.”
You need to follow your diet, or mine won’t work.
QUORUM CALL: Texas Supreme Court Allows for Arrest of Democrats Who Don’t Show Up at Capitol.
Legislative rules generally empower the sergeant-at-arms to compel the attendance of absent members, and to employ law enforcement or other assistance. Back when Tennessee was about to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, opponents — Democrats, then, too! — absented themselves and had to be hunted down with help from private detectives, if I recall correctly Pinkertons. One history I read referred to “a wild chase across ridgetops on muleback by moonlight” or something like that (I’m going from memory). Anyway, enough were caught to allow a quorum and the Fourteenth Amendment passed.
The Democrats’ “Fleebagger” tradition goes back over 150 years!
DON’T GET COCKY: Rep. Ron Kind announces retirement in boon to GOP’s House hopes. “Rep. Ron Kind, a senior Democrat in one of the most competitive swing seats [in rural Wisconsin], will not seek reelection — a gutting blow to House Democrats in their uphill battle to hang onto their majority next November.”
It must have been painful for the three Politico authors attributed to the column to type the above lede.
ALEC BALDWIN RESPONDS TO CUOMO RESIGNATION: ‘This is a tragic day.’
Flashback: Anthony Weiner Is a Modern Human Being.
—Alec Baldwin, the Huffington Post, June 9th, 2011.
GREEN AUTHOR MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Why I Am Not A Progressive.
But progressives are talking out of both sides of their mouth. Yesterday I debated a British climate scientist named Richard Betts on television. After I pointed out that he and his colleagues had contributed to one out of four British children having nightmares about climate change he insisted that he was all for optimism and that he agreed with me about nuclear power. But just hours earlier he had told the Guardian that we were “hopelessly unprepared” for extreme weather events, even though deaths from natural disasters are at an all time low and that, objectively speaking, humankind has never been more prepared than we are today.
And on the drug deaths crisis, the consensus view among Democrats in Sacramento is that “the problem is fundamentally unsolvable,” according to one of the Capitol’s leading lobbyists. Facing a recall that is growing in popularity, Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday tried to demonstrate that he believes he can solve the problem. He came to Berkeley California and cleaned up garbage created by an open air drug scene (“homeless encampment”) underneath a freeway underpass. A reporter for Politico posted a picture of Newsom who he said was “looking tired, sweaty and dirty.” But a commenter noted that the video was shot at 12:12 pm and by 12:25 pm Newsom was holding a press conference. The governor hadn’t even bothered changing out of his Hush Puppies into work boots. People close to the governor say that it is Newsom himself who believes homelessness is a problem that cannot be solved.
The reason progressives believe that “No one is safe,” when it comes to climate change, and that the drug death “homelessness” crisis is unsolvable, is because they are in the grip of a victim ideology characterized by safetyism, learned helplessness, and disempowerment. This isn’t really that new. Since the 1960s, the New Left has argued that we can’t solve any of our major problems until we overthrow our racist, sexist, and capitalistic system. But for most of my life, up through the election of Obama, there was still a New Deal, “Yes we can!,” and “We can do it!” optimism that sat side-by-side with the New Left’s fundamentally disempowering critique of the system.
That’s all gone. On climate change, drug deaths, and cultural issues like racism, the message from progressives is that we are doomed unless we dismantle the institutions responsible for our oppressive, racist system. Those of us in Generation X who were raised to believe that racism was something we could overcome have been told in no uncertain terms that we were wrong. Racism is baked into our cultural DNA. Even apparently positive progressive proposals are aimed at fundamentally dismantling institutions. The Democrats’ $1 trillion infrastructure bill, supported by many Republicans, and their $3.5 trillion budget proposal, contain measures that would finance the continuing degradation of our electrical grids by increasing reliance on unreliable, weather-dependent renewables, and establish racial incentives for industries including trucking, where there is already a shortage of drivers in large measure because not enough of them can pass drug tests. And does anyone really believe that, if those bills pass, progressives will abandon their dark vision of the future and return to Rosie the Riveter?
Meanwhile, at the state and local level, progressive governments faced with worsening racial disparities in education and crime, are attempting to “solve” the problem by eliminating academic standards altogether, and advocating selective enforcement of laws based on who is committing them. Such measures are profoundly cynical. Progressives are effectively giving up on addressing racial disparities by ignoring them. But such is the logical outcome of victim ideology, which holds that we can divide the world into victims and oppressors, that victims are morally superior and even spiritual, and no change is possible until the system that produces victims and oppressors is overthrown.
To some extent none of this is new.
Nope: Welcome Back My Friends, to the Malaise that Never Ends.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Nation Agrees To Get Vaccinated In Exchange For TikTok Influencers Being Launched Into The Sun.
As Muggeridge’s Law states, there is no way any satirist can improve upon real life for its pure absurdity. Especially with Joe Biden in the White House, he might have added.
RADICAL CHIC, THE GERITOL YEARS: Minneapolis Democrat Party chair writes that setting a police precinct on fire was ‘an act of pure righteousness.’
Related exit question: How Crazy Are Liberals?
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Cuomo did ‘hell of a job’ as governor, Biden says in shock remark after resignation over sex harass claims:
Biden lauded Cuomo, who leaves office in 14 days, despite the fact that Cuomo is under investigation by at least four New York district attorneys for assault and the fact that he’s under federal investigation for an admitted coverup of COVID-19 death data at New York nursing homes.
“Well, he’s done a hell of a job. He’s done a hell of a job. And I mean, both on — everything from access to voting to infrastructure to a whole range of things. That’s why it’s so sad,” Biden said.
The president did not express sympathy for Cuomo’s victims, but said that “I respect the decision he made” to resign.
Flashbacks:
● NY Times: Cuomo aides hid nursing home deaths for months.
—The New York Times, April 28th, 2021.
● Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now.
—The New York Times, March 16th, 2020.
● “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”
—Cuomo on January 29th.
BIDEN EV CONVERSION DEPENDS ON CHINA: Nadia Schadlow was deputy national security adviser during the Trump years and she points to multiple reasons why China has all the cards on EV batteries.
What CNN, MSNBC, and their party, the Democrats, won’t discuss is their genuflection last year before Andrew Cuomo’s press conferences. He’s a smart talker, no doubt, and they gobbled it up. Cuomo even won Emmy Awards for his performances, perhaps because Michael Avenatti was indisposed. What these news organizations didn’t do was investigate the medical disaster that was actually happening in New York state nursing homes while they were drooling at Cuomo’s press conferences. CNN went even further. They allowed the governor’s brother, Chris, who has a prime-time show on the network, to act as a political fanboy, turning his program into a nightly advertisement for his brother. Letitia James’s report reveals that Chris later worked as a clandestine political adviser to his brother while still on-air at CNN. At any other network, Chris might want to get his résumé ready. At CNN, who knows?
Here’s something else that should bother all journalists: if 11 people came forward to AG Letitia James to testify about Gov. Cuomo’s harassment, plus at least two more since the report was issued, isn’t it highly likely that journalists in the tight-knit political world of Albany already knew about the problem before it surfaced publicly? Isn’t it likely that they kept silent because the governor was from their favored party and because they feared retaliation if they spoke out? Put differently, when journalists fail to do their job and are already marked down as political partisans, perhaps the two are connected.
Here’s another question we should ponder: would Albany Democrats have pushed Cuomo out of office if his successor would have been a Republican? That was the problem faced by Virginia Democrats after they quickly condemned Gov. Ralph Northam for a blackface photograph, only to find his lieutenant governor, another Democrat, also facing serious #MeToo problems. That meant Northam’s removal could pass the office to a Republican. Upon that unhappy discovery, Democrats began saying that they’d been too hasty in seeking to remove Northam. He was able to wait it out.
Cuomo took Northam’s survival strategy as a model. But the differences were too stark. The evidence against Northam was much weaker and older than the evidence against Cuomo. Equally important, the consequences for his political party would have been much worse. Once Virginia’s black political leaders, all Democrats, decided Northam’s blackface offense was tolerable, under the (current political) circumstances, he could survive. No such luck for Cuomo.
Related: Valerie Jarrett Claims Cuomo Worried Her in 2014. She’s Praised Him For Years On Twitter.
FREDRIC WERTHAM TO THE BATPHONE, PLEASE! Robin comes out as bisexual in new Batman: Urban Legends comic.
YES: Now Chris Cuomo Must Go Too. “Now that Andrew Cuomo has resigned, his brother, Chris, must be next. They are, after all, both guilty of gross ethics violations.”
A CLASSIC OF MY YOUTH: Lamborghini Countach Returning for Limited Run.
Related (From Ed): Meeting the stars of your youth in person can be terribly disappointing:
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Daddy Issues: A Hard Man Novel (The Hard Man Series). I read it a while back and it is quite good.
WHY TUCKER’S TRIP TO HUNGARY HAS SPARKED OUTRAGE: “There is a lot at stake in the culture war being waged against Hungary. Hungary stands out as one of the few places that actively promotes and upholds the civilisational values of the West. In many respects, its values are antithetical to those of the Western cultural establishment. Yet the sentiments that prevail in Hungary are the very ones that resonate with the outlook of millions of people throughout the Western world. That is why Hungary has become the target of so much animosity from the globalist media.”
The problem is on the Russian end, though, which makes it more difficult.
ROGER KIMBALL: The neo-feudalism of Obama’s maskless ball.
There is a lot to be repelled by in the Spectacle of Barack Obama’s exercise in brazen self-indulgence, also a lot to be angry at.
I think it is important, though, to look at it as a learning experience. Pretend you were Aesop. What moral would you draw from this exercise in exhibitionism?
Doubtless there are several learning experiences to be had. But I thought that Rep. Jim Jordan perfectly articulated an important lesson in a tweet. Now we know, he wrote, that
‘#COVID19 spreads at:
-Church
-School
-Trump rallies
-Motorcycle ralliesIt doesn’t spread at:
-“Peaceful” protests
-The southern border
-Democrat wedding receptions
-San Francisco hair salons
-Governor Newsom’s dinner
-President Obama’s birthday party’Really, I hadn’t know that before and I am grateful for the enlightenment.
But of course. As Jim Treacher noted on last week: Democrats Don’t Need Masks Because They’re Better Than You. “The virus knows. It knows what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and it only punishes people who don’t read The Atlantic or listen to NPR. If you can recite a MyPillow ad from memory, you need to wear a mask when you’re told to wear a mask. But if you can pick Lin-Manuel Miranda out of a lineup, you don’t have anything to worry about. That’s how COVID-19 works. That’s just the settled science.”
LYING TO PEOPLE AND CONTROLLING THEM WILL DO THAT: “The COVID-19 pandemic has taxed national healthcare systems, stunted local economies and overburdened global supply chains, but according to a new study, the crisis has also destabilized the relationship between citizens and state. According to a new survey, published Monday in the journal Psychological Science, the pandemic’s psychological toll, including frustrations with shifting public health policies, has motivated citizens to engage in protest or political violence.”
MICHAEL WALSH: The Rage Orchestrating the Transformation of America. “In my 2015 best-selling book on the subject, ‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace,’ I wrote this: ‘Rage is the salient characteristic of Satan, and of the satanic in men.’ And what do we see all around us today? Rage against the Man, against the System, against Whiteness, against newly defined ‘bigotry,’ against the existing order, against religion, against Western civilization, against history itself. Rage is curdling the blood of half our citizens, driving them mad with ersatz resentment, misplaced empathy, and frustration that their views of what ought to be and reality are irreconcilable.”
JIM GERAGHTY: The Media Didn’t Make Andrew Cuomo a Monster, They Just Enabled His Narcissism.
Related: “It’s been a long road to justice for Janice Dean, who lost both of her in-laws to COVID last spring. They were living in assisted-living facilities and were victims of Cuomo’s infamous policy of returning infected patients to their nursing homes in order to preserve hospital capacity.”
GO, JUDGE HO!: “Judge Defends Equal Justice Against Tide of Critical Race Theory, Disparate Impact.”
(For a primer on just how ghastly disparate impact liability is and how it got started in the law, try my article here.)
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF TAUTOLOGIES: Study: Laws that limit opioid prescription duration help cut length of use.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: U Of Wisconsin-Madison’s Racist Rock Gets Removed. “Just when you think cancel culture is hitting rock bottom, it gets even more imbecilic. The learned academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say rocks can be racist. No, we’re not talking about a racist tossing a rock at someone. We’re talking about a boulder just sitting there.”
…AND HE’S GONE: Cuomo Resigns over Sexual Harassment Allegations.
WELL, THEY’RE NOT WRONG: 59% BELIEVE INCREASED GOVERNMENT SPENDING LEADS TO INFLATION.
SAY IT AIN’T SO, SPUDS! The Beer Industry And The Illusion Of Choice. “And as beer lovers around the world toast to the seemingly endless variety of their favorite drink, Statista’s Felix Richter zooms out to show how much of the world’s beer production is actually controlled by just a few brewing conglomerates. Over the past two decades, companies such as Anheuser Busch InBev, Heineken or Carlsberg have consolidated hundreds of beer brands under their roofs, creating an illusion of choice for consumers around the world.”
ALSO DUMB AS A ROCK, BUT I REPEAT MYSELF: No, AOC, they don’t dislike you because you’re a woman — it’s because you’re a socialist.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Gov. Kate Brown signed a law to allow Oregon students to graduate without proving they can write or do math. She doesn’t want to talk about it. “For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level…The Oregonian/OregonLive asked the governor’s office when Brown’s staff notified the Legislature that she had signed the bill. Charles Boyle, the governor’s deputy communications director, said the governor’s staff notified legislative staff the same day the governor signed the bill. Boyle said in an emailed statement that suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements while the state develops new graduation standards will benefit ‘Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.’ ‘Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports,’ Boyle wrote.”
THIS IS CNN: CNN finds the real border crisis: Republicans pouncing.
HE STUDIES POLITICAL POLARIZATION, TOO: Journalism professor deletes tweet that appeared to advocate for violence against Rand Paul.
All the lefty hate for Rand Paul is quite striking.
This is the only real qualification for a career in journalism, as is true in Hollywood and in academia. No actual talent is necessary. So long as you are useful to the basic media project of propagating liberalism, you’ll never miss a paycheck. And therefore nothing — not even accusations of sexual harassment — could dislodge Al Hunt from his seemingly eternal career as a D.C. journalist. He’s 79 years old, and still cranking out columns, now for The Hill, including this one last week:
Read the whole thing.
DISPATCHES FROM THE 1984 PROJECT: UNC Dean Worried ‘Diversity of Thought’ Would Interfere with Social Justice ahead of Nikole Hannah-Jones Appointment.
AND AGAIN: James Lindsay just got suspended from Twitter.
DON’T GET COCKY: You’d Rather Be the GOP.
There will be a lobbying effort among progressives to extend those expanded benefits beyond their September sunset date, and that effort could be as successful as their demand that Joe Biden violate the Constitution to extend a national moratorium on evictions. If so, the nation’s employment vacancy glut will continue. It will be hard for Democrats to argue that they’re creating new jobs even as they’re doing all they can to exacerbate shortages in the labor market.
By contrast, Republicans are preparing a salient midterm messaging strategy that has to have Democrats worried. They’re planning to run against Democrats on rising rates of inflation—a condition the GOP-aligned American Action Network’s polling suggests resonates with 86 percent of the voters surveyed in 51 key battleground districts. Beyond that, the GOP intends to leverage the organic outpouring of contempt for including precepts related to “critical race theory” in American K-12 curricula. Democrats have managed no compelling counterargument against either of these two conditions save to say that the former is cyclical and sure to pass before the midterms while the latter isn’t happening at all.
It’s the Democrats’ Catch-2022:
PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1975: The US is sending B-52s and AC-130 gunships back in Afghanistan to slow its impending collapse.
It’s bound to work, since the Biden administration is also milking the soft power dividend of this moment as well: US Envoy In Doha To Press Taliban For End To Offensive: State Dept.
MORE OF THIS, PLEASE: Cheers to Jim Jordan and Darrell Issa for Investigating the IRS. “More specifically, they’re looking into how the private tax returns of very rich Americans were leaked to ProPublica, and from there to the public. . . . In this case, certain Americans did their taxes and filed them confident that their filings would remain confidential. The IRS violated the expectation of confidentiality with its leaks. The violations are unacceptable. Few things are more personal than income, and the idea of an entity that at least nominally exists to serve us is leaking our personal information is truly offensive. It quite simply shouldn’t happen. The review of tax documents should be designed so that it cannot happen.”
The government promises confidentiality, but government employees break government promises at their whim.
GIVEN WHAT A FEW LARPERS MANAGED TO DO WITH NO ORGANIZATION, IT SHOULD BE EASY TO TOPPLE THIS GOVERNMENT IF NEEDED: GAO Bombshell: DHS blew it on Jan. 6, can’t adapt to security threats.
Flashback: Department of Bureaucratic Security.
Of course just having the Capitol Police keep the doors closed might have worked.
HEALTH IS THE EXCUSE, REPRESSION IS THE GOAL: COVID politics: Democrats demand masks, vax cards.
I say, require a vax card to vote, and watch them change their tune.
GREAT WORK, CNN: CNN and ‘Squad’ member Cori Bush are blasted for fake news story that helped to raise $230,000 for ‘single mom of three facing homelessness over eviction moratorium’ – but who was actually just a BABYSITTER. The three kids on the couch with her? Not hers.
I would make a joke about layers of editors and fact checkers, but that would imply that they care whether the stuff they carry is true.
IT’S LIKE THEY JUST WANT TO MAKE AMERICA WORSE: As Violent Crime Rises Across Country, DCCC Chairman Backs Anti-Police Policies.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Academia’s hostility to intellectual diversity suffers a courtroom setback.
The university’s contempt for the district court’s order in the BLinC case indicates that the university officials felt their political high-mindedness entitled them to disregard the law in order to enforce conformity to progressive opinions that hardly need such buttressing on today’s intellectually monochrome campuses. The 8th Circuit concluded:
“What the University did here was clearly unconstitutional. It targeted religious groups for differential treatment under the Human Rights Policy — while carving out exemptions and ignoring other violative groups with missions they presumably supported. The University and individual defendants turned a blind eye to decades of First Amendment jurisprudence or they proceeded full speed ahead knowing they were violating the law. Either way, qualified immunity provides no safe haven.”
So, they can be sued. And they will be. Which should be an educational experience for them, and a teachable moment for the many others like them in today’s academia.
Make them pay.
HEH, INDEED. John Nolte: Barry’s 60th Birthday Bash Was an Appropriate F*ck You to Joe Biden. “This might actually be the first time Barry has done something positive for a country he hates and for the people of this country, who he hates even more. Honestly, if you think about it, the Obamas sent a great message to America… If you’re vaccinated, this pandemic is over. Don’t listen to the fear merchants. Don’t listen to Joe Biden. Go and live your life. Anyway, from the looks of it, the most toxic thing at Obama’s 60th birthday bash was Chrissy Teigen.”
FAVORITE SELF-HELP BOOK: Albert Ellis’s How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything–Yes, Anything! This is my favorite self-help book, what is yours? (Bumped)
UPDATE: Now #1 in Applied Psychology, ahead of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
FOR THOSE WHO MAY BE INTERESTED: HillFaith today is on the fifth of the seven great “I AM” claims of Jesus, including the shortest verse in the Gospels.
THINGS THAT WOULD MATTER UNDER A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT: The migrant child detention center that’s worse than ever.
THIS IS CNN: CNN Proposes Travel Ban on Florida Over COVID Cases.
Related: American Politics Reaches Its ‘Worse Than Trump’ Phase. “This is simply how Democrats begin to talk about Republican candidates whom they believe are capable of winning a national election. When such candidates reach office, they’re Hitler. When they’ve left office, they’re bad, but not as bad as the ones in office. And when they’re dead, they’re the sort of Republicans whom the living ones should be more like — yes, even if, when they were alive, they, too, were deemed to be Hitler. The assertion that ‘DeSantis is worse than Trump’ was inevitable from the moment Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.”
Flashbacks:
● Every New Republican Is the Most Evil Republican Ever.
● Every Republican president or presidential candidate is the next Hitler — even Calvin Coolidge, who served before the Nazis came to power.
TODD ZYWICKI IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Why I’m Suing Over My University’s Vaccine Mandate. “Teaching law is my job and I owe my students my best. I also knew I could do it safely. During the spring of 2020 I contracted and recovered from Covid-19, which I later confirmed through a positive antibody test. Multiple positive antibody tests have since confirmed that I continue to have a robust level of immune protection. But now my employer, a state institution, is requiring Covid vaccines. In my case, vaccination is unnecessary and potentially risky.”
More (unpaywalled) at the link. He’s being represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, on whose board I serve.
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