OPEN THREAD: We’re about ready to rock steady.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Washington Post Discovers World War II-Era Survey, Cancels the Greatest Generation.
Fox News noted, however, that there seemed to be an ulterior motive in the presentation of this “uncensored” material. “Critics took to social media to blast The Post’s framing of the surveys, with some questioning the desire to view people in the 1940s through a 21st-century lens, and others suggesting that there was now an ongoing effort to cancel the grandparents of some Americans.” Nick Timothy, a columnist for the UK’s Telegraph, tweeted: “Next you’ll be telling me William Wilberforce wasn’t in the Parliamentary LGBTQ society, and Gandhi didn’t support Black Lives Matter. Historical figures lived with different social and moral norms. This is not news, or a novel academic discovery.”
Indeed. It is noteworthy also that the Post saw fit to highlight, out of 65,000 pages of surveys, racist and sexist remarks, rather than material that might have provided insight into the challenges that the men who won World War II faced and the difficulties they overcame. The Post’s article, and apparently the entire Virginia Tech project, if its focus is reflected accurately in the article, is akin to the pulling down of statues that has become a fad all over the country. The Left wants Americans to be ashamed of our history. Washington? Jefferson? Not statesmen, not men of courage, not key framers of the most successful republic and freest society the world has ever known, but just racist slaveowners, to be repudiated and abhorred, not respected or celebrated. Lincoln? He didn’t free the slaves; that’s the “white savior complex.” He, too, must be rejected as a racist, paternalist white supremacist. The Greatest Generation? Yes, they fought and won World War II and came home and made the United States the greatest power on earth, but you see, they did not hold woke attitudes.
In accordance with the prophesy:
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I’ve noted before, our elites are now promoting the kind of history one would impose on a conquered nation, to break its people’s spirit.
UPDATE (From Ed): As Kevin Williamson wrote in 2018, “Watch What You Say. Someone Else Is.”
The generation that reached what passes for maturity in the age of social media is the most status-obsessed—and hence etiquette-obsessed—since the ancien régime. They are all miniaturists: There hasn’t been an important and original book of political ideas written by an American Millennial, and very few of them have read one, either. But they are very interested in individual pronouns and 280-character tweets. It is extraordinarily difficult for any one of them to raise his own status through doing interesting and imaginative intellectual work, because there is practically no audience for such work among his peers. Worse, the generation ahead of him stopped paying attention to Millennials years ago, and the generation behind him never started.
What that leaves is the takfiri tendency, scalp-hunting or engineering a court scandal at Versailles. Concurrent with that belief is the superstition that people such as Harvey Weinstein or Bret Stephens take up cultural space that might otherwise be filled by some more worthy person if only the infidel were removed, as though society were an inverted game of Tetris, with each little disintegration helping to enable everybody else to move up one slot at a time. Status obsession does funny things to one’s map of social reality. It leads to all manner of bizarre thinking.
And plenty of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” as well. “It is defined as the belief that ‘the thinking, art, or science of an earlier time is inherently inferior to that of the present, simply by virtue of its temporal priority or the belief that since civilization has advanced in certain areas, people of earlier time periods were less intelligent.’ If we add, ‘and therefore wrong and also racist’ to this definition, we would have a perfect definition of today’s SJWs. Historian Larry Taunton defines it as ‘imposing the mores of our own time on those who lived in another.’”
(Updated and bumped.)
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Does this mean Antifa is officially racist now? Woke Journalists Compare Antifa Riots to D-Day Landings.
MANCHIN IS DRIVING LEFTIES CRAZY: The New Yorker seems to think that there’s something “Imperial” about a houseboat, and something proletarian about . . . kayakers?
Like toddlers, they go crazy whenever their impulses are thwarted.
IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL, Y’ALL; IT’S JUST BIDNESS: A writer with Dallas roots unravels the rare secrets of the best movie ever — The Godfather.
Before The Godfather began shooting, the film’s producer, Al Ruddy, was being threatened. Constantly. He and his staff “would trade cars,” Seal says, to avoid being trailed. One night, his female assistant parked Ruddy’s car in front of her home, only to hear gunshots blasting out the windshield, with a note attached “saying they didn’t want the movie made.”
And that, the author says, “was only the beginning.”
Coppola wanted to shoot, not in the Midwest, as his bosses fervently hoped he would to keep costs as low as possible, but in New York City, where the Mafia was headquartered.
Soon, Ruddy was forced to meet with Anthony Colombo, head of the Italian American Civil Rights League, who as Seal says was fighting hard against the “stereotyping of Italian Americans in popular culture.” And making headway.
Ruddy was badly in need of keeping the Mafia at bay. Prime locations were being denied. Truck drivers were threatening a work stoppage. There were bomb scares.
So, Ruddy made a proposal that felt a bit like a Hail Mary. By his agreeing to omit the single word “Mafia” from any Godfather script, Colombo was satisfied. “One deletion,” Seal says, “led to a world of cooperation. From that point on, doors opened.”
And then, a new surprise: Real-life mobsters all but demanded being cast.
At the center of it all was Coppola, who badly needed a break. Initially, Coppola was skeptical of Puzo’s novel becoming anything more than a marginal motion picture. A breakthrough came when the director finally began to see it as the saga of a king and his sons, a Shakespearean story of family, which in Seal’s view gave it the magic it needed.
Even so, moments after its release, Coppola felt less like a potential Oscar winner and more like a doomed failure. It wasn’t until his wife phoned him in Paris, where he had traveled to write the screenplay for another Evans-Paramount film, The Great Gatsby, that he began to see what soon became obvious — that he’d created something great. His wife told him that, in New York City alone, people were lining up around the block, clamoring to see his movie.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Anthony Colombo was actually a Mafia member, as was his father — who was actually shot at a rally opposing steretyping of Italian-Americans as mobsters.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Christopher Rufo: Florida v. Critical Race Theory. Governor Ron DeSantis takes a stand against racialist ideologies in public institutions and businesses.
Yesterday, I accompanied Florida governor Ron DeSantis on an early-morning flight from Tallahassee to The Villages retirement community, where he was scheduled to deliver a policy address on critical race theory. During the flight, DeSantis reviewed talking points for his speech, edited communications materials, and, after the plane touched down, selected a red-and-blue sign that would hang on the podium: “STOP WOKE ACT.”
DeSantis warmed up the crowd of approximately 100 people at Ezell Regional Recreation Center and outlined the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act,” which would ban critical-race-theory indoctrination in public schools, prohibit racially abusive training programs in the workplace, and provide parents and workers the right to sue institutions that violate these prohibitions.
The governor framed the rise of critical race theory as a mortal threat to the United States. “I think what you see now with the rise of this woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and to delegitimize our institutions,” he said. “And they basically want to replace it with a very militant form of leftism that would absolutely destroy this country.”
As illustrations of critical race theory in American institutions, DeSantis cited seven of my reports for City Journal: Arizona claiming that babies are racist; Santa Clara County denouncing the United States as a “parasitic system”; Philadelphia teaching students to celebrate “Black communism”; San Diego telling teachers “you are racist”; Bank of America teaching that the United States is a “system of white supremacy”; Verizon teaching that America is fundamentally racist; and Google teaching that all Americans are “raised to be racist.”
Read the whole thing.
INNATE IMMUNE SYSTEM RESPONSE: Rapid immune response in children protects them from COVID-19, genetic study finds. “The study, published in Nature, is the most comprehensive single-cell study to compare SARS-CoV-2 infection in adults and children across multiple organs. Researchers found that a stronger ‘innate’ immune response in the airways of children, characterized by the rapid deployment of interferons, helped to restrict viral replication early on. In adults, a less rapid immune response meant the virus was better able to invade other parts of the body where the infection was harder to control.”
Here at InstaPundit we’ve been talking about this for many months.
OF COURSE, NOW WE HAVE THE MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES, WHICH ARE BETTER: Study: Blood plasma given early reduces risk for hospitalization from COVID-19.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate: They worked with the media to trash the Great Barrington Declaration.
In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science.” In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research.
The tale unfolded in October 2020 after the launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement by Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya against blanket pandemic lockdowns. They favored a policy of what they called “focused protection” of high-risk populations such as the elderly or those with medical conditions. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration—if they were able to learn about it. We tried to give it some elevation on these pages.
That didn’t please the lockdown consensus enforced by public-health officials and the press. Dr. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health until Sunday, sent an email on Oct. 8, 2020, to Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?”
These researchers weren’t fringe and neither was their opposition to quarantining society. But in the panic over the virus, these two voices of science used their authority to stigmatize dissenters and crush debate. A week after his email, Dr. Collins spoke to the Washington Post about the Great Barrington Declaration. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” he said. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.” His message spread and the alternative strategy was dismissed in most precincts.
Dr. Fauci replied to Dr. Collins that the takedown was underway. An article in Wired, a tech-news site, denied there was any scientific divide and argued lockdowns were a straw man—they weren’t coming back. If only it were true. The next month cases rose and restrictions returned.
Dr. Fauci also emailed an article from the Nation, a left-wing magazine, and his staff sent him several more. The emails suggest a feedback loop: The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media. Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works.
On CBS last month, Dr. Fauci said Republicans who criticize him are “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” He isn’t “science.” And it’s also dangerous for scientific officials to mobilize to quash dissent, without which it’s easy to make tragic mistakes. A scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest, especially during a once-in-a-century plague.
Focused protection of nursing homes and other high-risk populations remains the policy road not taken during the pandemic. Perhaps this strategy wouldn’t have prevailed if a debate had been allowed. But it isn’t enough to repeat, as Dr. Collins did on Fox News Sunday, that advocates are “fringe epidemiologists who really did not have the credentials,” and that “hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy.”
More than 800,000 Americans have died as much of the country followed the strategy of Drs. Collins and Fauci, and that’s not counting the other costs in lost livelihoods, shuttered businesses, untreated illnesses, mental illness from isolation, and the incalculable anguish of seeing loved ones die alone without the chance for a family to say good-bye.
Rather than try to manipulate public opinion, the job of health officials is to offer their best scientific advice. They shouldn’t act like politicians or censors, and when they do, they squander the public’s trust.
All of our institutions have been corrupted.
A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY: The short and long-term effects of aerobic, strength, or mixed exercise programs on schizophrenia symptomatology. “We concluded that 3 weekly sessions of a moderate to vigorous progressive exercise program for 16 weeks improved the symptomatology of individuals with schizophrenia in all three groups, with no differences between them. However, the effects had declined to baseline levels by the 10-month follow-up, suggesting that exercise interventions should be maintained over time.”
Yes, exercise stops working if you stop doing it.
NICE LAMP!: I bought this LED Desk Lamp Table Lamp Reading Lamp with USB Charging Port 5 Lighting Modes 5 Brightness Levels, Sensitive Control, 30/60 min Auto Timer, Eye-Caring Office Lamp (Black). #CommissionEarned It seems to work very well and for the low price, is definitely worth it. I tend to get headaches when I use the computer and this lamp seems to help reduce those. Give it a try if you need a low-cost lamp for your computer station.
HOW IT STARTED: New bill funds mental health experts, not police, to respond to emergencies: ‘mental illness is not a crime.’
Congress wants to make it easier for state and local governments to defund the police by instead funding mental health services and empowering them to respond to emergency calls instead of armed officers.
“We should be connecting people in crisis to care, not tossing them in jail,” Rep. Katie Porter, who reintroduced the bill on Thursday, said in a statement. “Mental illness is not a crime, and we have to stop treating it like one. Most police officers are not trained to care for individuals experiencing mental health crises, which too often tragically leads to unnecessary violence.”
The Mental Health Justice Act has the backing of Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), as well as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
—The Hill, February 26th.
How it’s going: U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon carjacked and robbed in South Philly after touring FDR Park.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer, today.
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: Biden Claims Economy Today Is Stronger Than Before Pandemic.
I’D LIKE TO SEE IT TESTED SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE ORIGINAL TINY CIVIC: Tested: 2022 Honda Civic Si Evolves but Remains a Driver’s Car. I hated those original Civics, which I regarded as a VW Beetle without the character, but the modern ones are very nice cars. In the Seventies they would have almost qualified as exotics. . . .
I PRACTICE OUT TO 25 METERS OCCASIONALLY; BEYOND THAT I FIGURE I’LL JUST RUN: Why You Should Practice with a Handgun at Distance. Normally I practice at 5, 7, or 10.
IF THIS WERE JUST THE START OF A HORROR MOVIE, I’D ENJOY IT: Human brain cells in a dish learn to play Pong faster than an AI.
IF SO, WHAT A MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hmm … Is Durham Planning to Charge Team Hillary?
BE PREPARED RESQME The Original Keychain Car Escape Tool, Made in USA. #CommissionEarned
FASTER, PLEASE: Pfizer pill becomes first US-authorized home COVID treatment.
“CLOUD STORAGE” JUST MEANS “STORAGE ON SOMEONE ELSE’S HARD DRIVE:” Recent AWS glitches illustrate the power, and fragility, of cloud computing.
TWITTER IS GARBAGE: Saudi Dissident Arrest Raises Questions About Twitter Collaboration.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT:
Shot: Bullish China Warns U.S. Unification With Taiwan Unstoppable by ‘Any Force.’
—Newsweek, yesterday.
Chaser: US Air Force allows usage of pronouns in electronic signature.
—The Washington Examiner, today.
YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN! CNN’s Chris Cillizza Melts Down Over Omicron. “What is it with CNN’s on-air talent acting like the lamest characters out of The Godfather?”
TOP SELLER: Sony WF-C500 Truly Wireless In-Ear Bluetooth Earbud Headphones with Mic and IPX4 water resistance, Black. #CommissionEarned
VIDEO OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN: Hoax alert: No video evidence for alleged assault against female Muslim in student center.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County has, “pending further investigative leads,” halted an investigation into an alleged assault on a female Muslim student.
University spokesperson Dinah Winnick shared the update with The College Fix via email on December 15.
“It’s our policy to send alerts to the campus when hate-bias incidents are reported,” Winnick said on December 20, when asked if the school planned to send out a new update about the investigation being frozen. “UMBC Police evaluate the need for any updates based on the investigation.”
The hate and bias investigation report labeled the incident “inconclusive” and other information obtained by The College Fix through a public records request point to the strong possibility of a hoax.
Meanwhile, in Virginia: ‘Islamophobic Hate Crime’ in Virginia Turns Out to Be Fake.
JAMES LILEKS’ WEDNESDAY REVIEW OF MODERN THOUGHT:
It’s not that I don’t like the subject, or the writer. It’s a combination of the two into something that elevates “food journalism” into something very important. It is not very important, although of course I should talk.
Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you will react differently to the first paragraph of this New Yorker profile, which I found mysterious: who the hell cares about any of this.
Alison Roman approves of creamed greens, knobby lemons, and iceberg lettuce. She’s a slicer of onions, not a dicer; a “ride-or-die corner person” when it comes to lasagnas and cakes. She doesn’t sift flour, soak beans, or peel ginger. Instapots are a no, as are runny dressings, tomatoes on sandwiches, apples as snacks, and drinks served up. Breakfast is savory. Naps are naked. Showers are “objectively boring” and inferior to baths. The thing to do, according to Roman, is to start the water, put on a towel, and head back into the kitchen. The amount of time it takes to fill the tub is roughly equivalent to the time it takes to tear up a loaf of stale bread, for croutons fried in chicken fat.
“You either like my style or you don’t, you’re into the vibe or not,” Roman told me.
* * * * * * * *
The distinction seems to be about the appearance of caring overly much. In Roman’s world, an admission of effort must be offset by an ungiven fuck.
Ladies and gentlemen, the New Yorker.
You can see the modern-day William Shawn looking at a poem submitted by Robert Frost, thinking “wouldn’t this be better if it was the fuck ungiven, not the road not taken?”
To be fair, this reads like an example of New York life attempting, somehow, to get back to what passes for normal there in some quarters, at least before the phrase “the Omicron Variant” became universally known. Read the whole thing.
SUDDEN BURSTS OF IRRATIONAL ANGER ARE TYPICAL OF DEMENTIA: Don Surber: Manchin shows Biden’s dangerous. “When Manchin told him no, Biden flipped out. How dare some punk with less than 12 years seniority rebuke him.”
HAVING COMPROMISED AND DESTROYED HOLLYWOOD WHILE SUCKING UP ITS TECHNOLOGY, CHINA SAYS SO LONG: Inside China and Hollywood’s Frayed Relationship: ‘We Need to Stop Trying to Keep the Status Quo, Because the Status Quo Is Gone.’ “Xi Jinping’s goal is absolutely to have Chinese films play worldwide just like Hollywood movies, so that China can exert soft power and replace Hollywood. There’s no way they’re going to be cooperative going forward, allowing U.S. films into China.”
WELL, HIS PERFORMANCE IS WORSE THAN CARTER’S: Biden’s economic ratings are worse than Carter’s.
THANKFULNESS SHOULD PRECEDE TAKEFULNESS: Aunt Lillian’s Timely Grace. My Christmas column — with a little thrust at the end.
IT’S MOSTLY PEACEFUL: Squad Member Rep. Pressley Calls Opposing Student Loan Forgiveness ‘Policy Violence.’
GAMING THE BULGE: The Battle of the Bulge began December 16, 1944. The latest StrategyTalk features a discussion of Jim Dunnigan’s classic operational simulation of the battle. “Bulge.” Jim and I also discuss the background to the German attack and lessons learned.
RELATED: A few photos from the Bulge archive. 1: An M-36 Jackson heads for the front. 2: Americans improvise snow camouflage. 3: Snow covered Shermans at St. Vith. 4: Exhausted engineers in the woods near Wiltz. 5: American soldiers in the snow — without winter camouflage. 6: German grenadiers in woods in Luxembourg. This last photo was taken December 22, 1944.
TOP SELLER: From John C. Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns. #CommissionEarned I met some “Bogleheads” on a trip once and chatted with them about the Bogle investment strategy and it seemed like there was a lot of useful stuff to learn from it.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee (Video).
(Bumped.)
THE WINTER OF HIS DISCONTENT: High-Risk Presidency: 79-Year-Old Joe Biden Coughs His Way Through COVID-19 Press Conference. “I know you’re tired, and I know you’re frustrated. We all want this to be over. But we’re still in it.”
SO MUCH FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: SDSU dean publicly criticizes ‘stench’ of conservative agenda.
ROBERT SPENCER: The Biden Administration’s Truly Ominous Christmas Wish List for America.
The whole controversy over the vaccines, after all, is one of credibility. Biden’s handlers insist the vaccines are safe, yet there is growing evidence that this is not completely true. CBS News reported that the CDC “issued updated recommendations preferring Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines over Johnson & Johnson’s, in light of new data about the risk of a rare blood clotting side effect linked to the Johnson & Johnson shot.” As for Pfizer, The Hill reported Sunday that “health authorities in New Zealand have said they believe a 26-year-old man’s death is connected to a side effect from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
Biden’s handlers also insist that the vaccines are effective, yet The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported about a COVID outbreak at a wedding at which “most if not all of the guests wore masks” and everyone was vaccinated. Meanwhile, the NFL just postponed three games because of a COVID outbreak, despite the fact that all players are required to be vaccinated.
In light of all that and much more, what the Biden administration actually needs in order to stand vindicated for its vaccine mandates and warnings is a large amount of severe illness and death among the unvaccinated this winter.
I never thought I’d look back fondly on Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech, but at least he wasn’t implicitly cheering for millions of Americans to die.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I’d say “heh,” but this isn’t really funny.
DAILY DEAL: YAMATIC Kink Resistant 3200 PSI 1/4″ 50 FT High Pressure Washer Hose Replacement With M22-14mm Brass Thread. #CommissionEarned
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Professor: ‘And if they fire me, I’ll sue for my job.’ “Block told Campus Reform that the student who initiated the petition had ‘never taken a class of [his].'”
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Biden To Spend $7.5 Billion on Chargers That Electric Car Owners Likely Won’t Use. “Conveniently placed vehicle chargers could mitigate the range issue: Ideally, a trip to a charger would simply replace a trip to the fuel pump. But the Biden plan is unlikely to fix this problem. There are two types of public vehicle chargers, Level 2 and Level 3. (Level 1 uses a standard power outlet.) Level 2 chargers produce around 25 miles of range per hour, meaning that a full charge from empty could take five hours or longer. Level 3 chargers produce considerably more power, and can charge some vehicles from empty to 80 percent in as little as 15 minutes. But while Level 2 chargers cost less than $3,000 apiece, Level 3 chargers cost as much as $140,000 each to build. There is no indication which the administration prefers, but if it plans to build 500,000 for $7.5 billion, it’s almost certainly going to have to settle for Level 2 chargers.”
“EVIDENCE” IS A RACIST SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: RealClearInvestigations: No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Here’s the Abundant Evidence Saying Otherwise.
BUT HE’LL SOON BE DELIVERING THE INEPTITUDE BOOSTER SHOT: Biden delivers a double dose of ineptitude as COVID, BBB bedevil his presidency.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Michael Flynn vs Granny Boxwine—Make Extra Popcorn. “It’s impossible to predict anything anymore, but I still feel that none of this is going to turn out the way the Democrats are envisioning it in their mentally disturbed Trump hate fever-dream.”
CHRISTIANITY BIRTHED MODERN SCIENCE: Speaking of Stephen C. Meyer and the Webb telescope, he’s also up on a new Prager U video explaining how modern science was encouraged by Christianity and many of the most famous scientists, including those of the present era, were and are believers.
FIGHT THE POWER: Alex Berenson Sues Twitter For Purging Him From The Platform. “Complaint: ‘the company broke its promises, its stated policies, and our laws, including a nearly 150-year-old California law that explicitly sets out its obligations as a company in the business of carrying messages.'”
DID YOU KNOW NASA LAUNCHES A TELESCOPE TODAY THAT CAN SEE YESTERDAY? Stephen C. Meyer says the James Webb is bigger, more maneuverable and more powerful than the Hubble telescope, and it can detect infrared light emitted by stars formed shortly after (relatively speaking) the Big Bang.
But don’t expect to hear much about this in the Mainstream Media because the Webb telescope won’t do anything about the Omicron variant.
HOW’S THE BIDEN ERA GOING? Now: Christmas Dinner in a Can.
EVERYBODY IS GOING TO GET COVID. EVERYBODY. I did everything Biden told me to do. On Friday, I tested positive for COVID-19.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Life is Short, But Prop 65 Warnings May Not Be.
On January 8, 2021, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) proposed changes to how businesses warn under Proposition 65. I wrote about it back in February 2021 and explained why the agency’s proposal to change short-form warnings would negatively impact businesses by way of increased costs and unnecessary liability and yet still fail to address the Prop 65 overwarning problem – something the agency intended to fix with the rulemaking.
CalChamber and the Consumer Brands Association (CBA) led an industry coalition of 119 organizations pushing back against the proposed changes, arguing the rulemaking should be rescinded because the proposal was flawed, relied on faulty data, was contrary to regulatory assurances made by OEHHA to all stakeholders when first overhauling Article 6 warning provisions in 2018 and failed to achieve OEHHA’s stated of addressing Prop 65 overwarning.
After almost one year since the rulemaking began, OEHHA recently noticed its plan to move forward – but with some notable modifications that appear to have been made in direct response to CalChamber and CBA industry coalition comments.
Short-Form Size Limitation Increases From 5 Square Inches to 12 Square Inches
The coalition argued that the agency does not explain nor provide evidence to justify why a 5-square inches or less requirement is the appropriate cutoff. CalChamber and the coalition articulated that such a policy change deviated from OEHHA’s own most recent guidance telling businesses that Article 6 had “no size limitations for which products could utilize short-form warnings.” The regulated community relied on these express statements when spending significant time and resources overhauling their Prop 65 compliance programs.
Under the modified approach, OEHHA proposes to increase the maximum label size for short-form warnings from 5 square inches to 12 square inches, explaining that “after considering these comments, OEHHA determined a 12 square inch limit would accommodate [–] concerns, while still limiting use of the short-form warnings to packages with limited available label space for consumer product information that would not easily accommodate the full warning.”
Flashback to Reason magazine in 1987: “Proposition 65 is a lawyers’ welfare act. I don’t think it will have any effect on public health.”
POLL: Who speaks for you? Trump 44%, Biden 31%.
To be fair, His Fraudulency doesn’t even speak for himself, he just reads whatever is put on the prompter. End of message.
JOE MANCHIN IS NOW POISED TO SWITCH PARTIES:
I have long suspected that Manchin will stick with his party, especially if he has no plans to run for political office after his Senate term ends in early 2025, when he’ll be 77 years old. But with national polls indicating a Republican sweep in the offing in the November 2022 congressional midterm elections, does Manchin want to be ensconced in the minority party to complete his term of office?
All these calculations, and more, are probably swirling in Manchin’s head. He was never a fan of Donald Trump, but he’s no longer president now, and it’s Manchin’s party making his life miserable.
The Senate’s party conferences meet at least once a week while they’re in session. It’s not hard to imagine at which conference Manchin would be more welcome. For once, the switch to at least a GOP-caucusing independent looks increasingly likely. The stage is almost set for him to cross the aisle. He should.
Make it so.
YES, THEY ARE LISTENING: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was speaking at the Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Arizona when suddenly, none other than Siri interrupted, reports Jeff Dunetz on The Lid. Cruz just happened to be speaking about the need to force Big Tech out of the censorship business.
DON’T CALIFORNICATE IDAHO: Sorry, Idaho. Things Were So Bad in ‘Woke’ Places That a Record Number of People Are Fleeing to Spud Country.
How’s that Welcome Wagon program coming along?
STILL POPULAR: RIVBOS Polarized Sports Sunglasses Driving Sun Glasses. #CommissionEarned
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE K-12 IMPLOSION: DC Librarian Who Made Children Reenact Holocaust Is Failed Dem Candidate, Convicted Fraudster, and Animal Abuser. Kimberlynn Jurkowski defrauded New Jersey of $24k, abused dogs.
The principal of Watkins Elementary School, Scott Berkowitz, did not return a request for comment on Jurkowski. D.C. Public Schools did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including about whether it was familiar with Jurkowski’s criminal record prior to hiring her.
Since working in D.C. Public Schools, Jurkowski has struck an ultra-partisan combative tone online. Her Twitter account is filled with retweets of calls to abolish the police and defend Palestinian terrorism. One Al Jazeera post she shared claims that a Palestinian terrorist named Ahmad Erekat was killed by Israeli police but fails to mention that he was shot after ramming his car into Israelis.
Watkins Elementary School is located just outside a city ward represented by a Democratic lawmaker who claimed that Jews control the weather.
We need a complete and total shutdown of DC until we can figure out just what the hell is going on there.
ED MORRISSEY: Dems about to play hardball with Manchin … and vice versa?
Excuse me? “Absolutely no pressure”? Not only has Manchin been under constant pressure from progressives in both the House and Senate, he’s been the target of so much abuse from them and their allies that at one point they finally realized it wasn’t doing them any good. That was after House Democrat Cori Bush attacked Manchin for being “racist” over his opposition to BBB.
Manchin wasn’t the only senator targeted over BBB. Kyrsten Sinema got repeatedly harassed in public by activists, including in public restrooms. It got so bad for both Senate Democrats that the White House’s blame-shifting last week to Manchin finally pushed him over the edge in part because Manchin knew that would set off another round of harassment.
Build Back Better is so popular that Democrats can’t even get it through their own Senate caucus.
But the party leadership’s sense of entitlement is so overweening that they can’t tell — or at least won’t admit — that their own lack of political skill is the reason why.
THE YEAR OF LIVING TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURELY. John Podhoretz: Biden vowed a return to normalcy — instead, we got a year of chaos.
Imagine President Joe Biden opening up the doors on his advent calendar on these final days before Christmas.
On the 21st, the doors reveal: a graph depicting the decline in Biden’s approval ratings from 55 percent in January to 44 percent today,
On the 22nd: a photograph of a helicopter hovering over the US embassy in Kabul as Afghanistan falls to the Taliban in August.
On the 23rd: another graph, this time of the inflation rate, rising from 1.4 percent on Election Day to 6.8 percent in November.
And finally, on December 24th: Sen. Joe Manchin, the man who finally performed a mercy killing on the doomed Build Back Better bill, dressed as Santa, waving at him in one of those weird plastic-rubber 3D picture cards that were popular 50 years ago.
I’m not saying Joe Biden is his own worst enemy. It’s more like he’s his own worst best friend, a man who gives himself absolutely terrible advice and is deeply grateful to himself both for offering and listening to such sage counsel.
Never has a politician snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in quite the manner Biden has.
Exit question:
WITCH HUNT: Gen. Michael Flynn Files Restraining Order Against Nancy Pelosi. “Flynn served as Trump’s National Security Adviser for less than a month before he resigned under a cloud in Feb. 2017, having become a central focus of the Russian collusion hoax. He wasn’t serving in the Trump administration in any capacity on Jan. 6, 2020 and had not done so for nearly three years. But that didn’t stop the rabid partisans of the Jan. 6 committee from trying to rope him into something he had absolutely nothing to do with.”
THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL IS A DUMPSTER FIRE: Things Get Worse at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The University of Illinois at Chicago seems unable to correct course and respect the academic freedom commitments that it has made to its faculty. For a year, the university has been hounding one of its law professors, Jason Kilborn, at the behest of some of its students. The fracas started when Kilborn included a hypothetical on his civil procedure exam involving an individual telling an investigating lawyer that former co-workers “expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a “n____” and “b____” (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.” He has been suspended from teaching ever since as students demand that he be fired.
He reached an agreement with the university that would have settled the matter, but the university reneged on that agreement and the chancellor of the university weighed in demanding that the punishment must continue until morale has improved. . . .
It seems unavoidable that Professor Kilborn will have to vindicate his rights in court. The University of Illinois has disgraced itself in this matter.
I think its accreditation should be re-examined.
THAT’S NOT HOW DEMOCRATS WORK. THEY ALWAYS NEED TO DESIGNATE A GROUP OF AMERICANS AS THE ENEMY:
Related:
December 21, 2021
EH, PROBABLY: Did a Pulitzer Prize winning former NY Times reporter scam hundreds of musicians?
I mean, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer, so . . .
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee (Video).
YES. NEXT QUESTION? CNN expert: Cloth masks are useless “face decorations” at this point. And surgical masks are only marginally better. “So why does the White House continue to model their use? That’s a question worth asking. It appears to only function as a way for Joe Biden to wear the presidential seal as a brand.”
I’m not saying that Elizabeth Warren is the dumbest person in public life–there is a lot of competition for that title–but let’s just say she is having the worst week. First she accused Elon Musk of being a tax freeloader, just before he disclosed that he will pay $11 billion in taxes this year, more than any American in history, to
Warren’s slush fundthe federal government. Next she blamed skyrocketing food prices on “Big Grocery.” Seriously. . . .This is almost beyond belief. The grocery store business is notoriously competitive and relatively unprofitable. David Harsanyi writes that “average margins [come] in at a little over 2 percent,” one of the lowest margins of any industry. The idea that there is such a thing as “Big Grocery” is so laughably stupid that only a far-gone ideologue like Elizabeth Warren could take it seriously.
The broader point is that, according to the Democrats, we have suddenly been beset by a plethora of capitalist conspiracies, worthy of Chavez/Maduro Venezuela: Big Oil is responsible for exploding gasoline prices, auto companies–according to Warren–are to blame for rapidly rising vehicle prices, semiconductor companies (again, per the eternally clueless Ms. Warren) are behind the chip shortage, and so on.
It is hard to understand why all of these industries would conspire to raise prices at the same time, coinciding–by coincidence, apparently–with the Biden administration’s wild money-printing and spending spree. Hard to explain, that is, if, like Elizabeth Warren, you don’t know a damn thing about economics.
Oh, she knows. She just hopes her voters don’t know.
OPEN THREAD: It is you and me and a long night.
Well, then, I hope it doesn’t.
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: We May Be Prescribing Antidepressants Wrong, Claims Concerning New Review. “In fact, when taken over long periods for mild and moderate depression, antidepressants may be doing patients more harm than good, the review explains.”
One of my doc friends used to run a low-T clinic. He said that most of his patients who were on antidepressants didn’t need them anymore once they got their hormone levels back to normal.
I WOULD BE MORE PLEASED BY THIS IF I HAD MORE FAITH IN THE FBI AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Harvard professor convicted by U.S. jury of lying about China ties.
It’s not that I don’t think that China has a huge variety of hooks into the U.S. establishment — I do, and it does — I just don’t trust the process.
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SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Overweight older adults lose weight, keep it off by moving more.
“IT’S IN THE SYLLABUS:” University Of Tennessee Professor Put Clues To A Cash Prize In His Syllabus. No One Noticed.
ONE BIG LESSON FOR CEOs — AVOID CAUSING HEADLINES SUCH AS THIS: Furious Customers Are Suing Hertz for $529.7 Million. Here’s the Lesson Every CEO Should Learn:
More than 180 Hertz customers are suing the car rental company in bankruptcy court, seeking damages of just under $529.7 million. Most of these customers were stopped by police, and sometimes arrested, for driving Hertz cars that they had legally rented.
According to their filings, for years Hertz has falsely reported that its cars were stolen as part of its regular business practice, “ensnaring its customers in accusations of car theft, throwing them in jail on felony charges, prosecuting them, burdening them with criminal records that impact their livelihoods, and separating them from their family and loved ones.”
Why would Hertz claim that its cars were stolen when legitimate renters were driving them? Believe it or not, the filing claims this is a cost-cutting measure. In some cases, the company simply misplaces a car or a rental contract and doesn’t know where the car is. Rather than upgrade its malfunctioning inventory systems or conduct its own investigation when cars are unaccounted for, Hertz simply reports these cars as stolen, the filing claims. The plaintiffs say the company is “effectively using the police, criminal justice system, and taxpayers to subsidize inventory control for a private corporation.” The unfortunate renters who happen to be driving those cars are collateral damage.
Read the whole thing.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Biden’s Net Economic Approval Rating Tanks to -13 Points, Worse Than Jimmy Carter.
Forty-five percent of registered voters said they approved of Biden’s performance on the economy, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll released Tuesday, a study that has generally been more favorable to the president than others. Fifty-four percent said they disapproved. “The average of all polls taken in December is quite similar with Biden at -13 points on the economy,” CNN said in its findings, noting the figure exceeded even former President Jimmy Carter’s low-water mark in 1978, when a CBS News/New York Times poll found that president with a -8 percent gap.
On Biden’s performance more broadly, 55 percent said they disapproved, while 44 percent said they approved.
The development comes after skyrocketing inflation. Labor Department numbers pegged inflation-related price hikes at 6.8 percent in November, the highest number since 1982, and 6.2 percent in October. November marked the sixth consecutive month the rate fell above 5 percent.
Both Obama (source of the above headline) and Carter himself must laughing at having to dodge the Carter comparisons thanks to Brandon’s ability to indeed, f*** things up.
Was this the moment when everything went pear-shaped?
MICHAEL WALSH: Time to Fire the Decepticons and Get Over COVID.
Here we are, coming up on the second anniversary of “two weeks to slow the spread” of a flu-like virus most likely hatched in a Chinese Communist laboratory in Wuhan, with a little help from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the American taxpayer, and the dreaded COVID-19 chest cold has conquered the planet, instilling fear and loathing in weak minds whenever and wherever it appears in any of its Transformers-like, constantly mutating configurations.
In the Transformers film series, ordinary household machines like cars can suddenly reshape themselves into terrifying robots; the evil ones were known as Decepticons and had scary names like Megatron and Bonecrusher. In the world of socialized medicine, this viral beast has been dubbed by the government the Omicron variant (what a title for a Robert Ludlum thriller), which of course has arrived, right on schedule, to attack the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations around the world.
The irony is, had the novel coronavirus been treated the same way as its immediate predecessors, including SARS, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, no one would be talking about it, there would have been no lockdowns, no masks, no ruination of the economy, no destruction of the travel industry, no stealth takeover of private medicine and, most important, no unconstitutional loss of personal liberty.
Indeed — Woodstock, Altamont, and Apollo 11 all took place during the Hong Kong flu outbreak. In January of 1969, Paul McCartney even fretted that he might have it, one of many moments in Peter Jackson’s newly edited Get Back miniseries that resonates in 2021.
HEH:
@loganburkhalter TRANS-RACIAL?!?! #transracial #identifyas #trans #wtf #woketok #race #lgbtq🏳️🌈
I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN JOE BIDEN WAS GOING TO SHUT THIS VIRUS DOWN:
Plus: “At the speed Omicron is moving it will be gone by the time they send out the first test. Just inept.“
HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Americans Fled ‘Woke’ States in ‘Historic’ Numbers in 2021.
SPOILER: IT WON’T WORK. N.Y. Gov. Hochul Now Bribing Counties to Enforce Her Mask Mandate.
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WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: The Covid-19 Pandemic Actually Helped Saved Retail.
The hottest of hot takes from Bloomberg.
NO: A Law Professor Rewrites the Second Amendment…And Eliminates All Those Pesky Guns.
But she turns it into an abortion guarantee!
GROOVY: Psychedelics: The newest tool in nuclear negotiations?
The plan was simple: Give the psychedelic drug MDMA (popularly known as Ecstasy) to Soviet scientists and military personnel set to negotiate with US President Ronald Reagan in 1985, thereby injecting empathy and cross-cultural understanding into the nuclear peace process.
So, that’s just what Rick Doblin and Carol Rosin say they did—and they still believe introducing psychedelics into nuclear negotiations can produce positive results.
I’m dubious this happened, to say the least.
IT’S DIFFERENT NOW BECAUSE ORANGE MAN BAD: Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Begs Biden for Help After Turning Down Trump Offer for Assistance.
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