WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Israel Has Shot Down Drones With An Airborne High-Power Laser.
REVIEW BY WILFRED REILLY: “One ‘Maverick’ Documents Another–Jason Riley’s Biography of Thomas Sowell.” So one maverick documents another documenting yet another. Sowell should now write about Reilly thus making the circle complete.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Republicans Pounce on Gay Pride Parade Attack, Bad Reporting.
Plus:
- Sex Ed. is even worse than you thought
- Now dieting is racist
- Brian Stelter and his dead-eyes smile get savaged on live TV
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THE ‘TERRORIST ATTACK’ THAT WASN’T: Politicians and pundits spread misinformation about a car accident at a Pride parade.
In a tragic traffic accident at the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride march near Fort Lauderdale, a driver lost control of his vehicle and careered into members who were marching. One person was killed and another was hospitalized. This was of course not how social media saw it, as rumors of a terrorist attack rocketed around Twitter, aided in no small part by irresponsible comments from Fort Lauderdale mayor Dean Trantalis.
The mayor claimed on camera that the incident was a ‘terrorist attack against the LGBT community’. He then seemed to hint that the intended target was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: ‘Hardly an accident. It was deliberate, it was premeditated and it was targeted against a specific person. Luckily they missed that person, but unfortunately, they hit two other people.’
Fueled by the mayor’s statement, several activists and journalists on Twitter began to speculate. Once the official statement was released and the mayor had recanted his account, mainstream journalists like New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and CNN’s Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter turned their ire towards a usual target — Fox News — for simply reporting on comments made about the accident.
For years in academia, the will to power has derived from victimhood, aka “safetyism.” As with the New York Times staffers’ reaction to Tom Cotton’s op-ed last year and the Atlantic’s crybully meltdown over Kevin Williamson in 2018, it’s no surprise to see that mindset seep further into the DNC-MSM.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Private colleges across America can’t pay their bills. “There’s a reckoning coming in higher education — especially for smaller, private liberal arts schools — that’s been years in the making. In obvious ways, COVID-19 accelerated some of the trends, but college finances have been hurting for a while. . . . Colleges can’t file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the way insolvent companies can because they would lose their accreditation and student access to federal loans.”
Plus: “Students don’t usually evaluate a school’s wherewithal to pay its bills when choosing a college — but they’re the ones who stand to lose the most from closures. The earlier schools deal with their problems, the more likely they’ll be able to provide a smooth path for students to finish their degrees.”
All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
NEW YORK: The Berserk End of the Campaign.
The big story of the race’s final days was the alignment of Yang and Garcia, designed to keep the news on both of them but also to hurt Adams on at least two fronts.
First, they hoped to hold his numbers down in the initial round of balloting. An Ipsos poll from Monday had Adams at 28 percent, which is roughly in line with where other public and private polls put him. The key in a multi-candidate ranked-choice election is to keep the front-runner below 35 percent or so on the first count — anything higher than that, and he is likely to be ranked second or third on enough ballots to push him over the 50 percent threshold required to declare victory. The margin between Adams and whoever is second or third matters less than keeping the front-runner in the low 30s or less. And so while the bulk of the attention was focused on Yang enthusiastically endorsing Garcia for No. 2, keeping Adams lower-ranked on as many ballots as possible, or off of them altogether, gives Yang an advantage too.
Second, Adams’s rivals hoped that the alliance would bait Adams into calling the gambit a racist attack against him, potentially turning off some of the conservative white voters who, while supportive of Adams’s law-and-order platform, may be wary of someone willing to play up charges of racism.
This primary is a real test of whether New Yorkers are ready to reject De Blasio’s city-destroying progressivism.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Deep Diving the Facts and Fiction of Anti-Trans Murders. “The Washington Times reported that the trans murder rate is 1.48 per 100,000. This is less than a third of the overall murder rate of about 5 per 100,000, far less than the rate for men in general (6.68), and a mere fraction of the rate for black people (18.8). Also, most of the killings aren’t hate-related.”
OOPS, I GUESS THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN 17 ITEMS ON THAT LIST: Georgia hospital system hit with ransomware attack following Biden-Putin summit.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Bryan Preston: Game Changer? Eva Guzman Announces Run for Texas Attorney General. “In recent years, though, the Texas attorney general has taken on an additional and far more high-profile duty: battling Democrat [presidential] administrations. It’s on this ground that the campaign for attorney general will be fought in 2021 and 2022.”
Matt Margolis: Five Things Democrats Could Do To Convince Us They Don’t Want Widespread Voter Fraud. “When a Republican wins the election was stolen, and when a Democrat wins it was a secure election.”
Yours Truly: Revenge of the Laptop: DOJ Looking Into Hunter Biden, Firm, for Illegal Lobbying. “The president’s son working clandestinely for foreign officials suspected of corruption seems to be kind of a big deal.”
IF YOU ARE GOING TO SHOP PRIME DAY, please support some of the Helen’s Page authors and businesses such as Old Post Road Oils, Korving & Company, authors of the Before I Go Workbook, or Professor Carol’s Why Freshmen Fail: and How to Avoid It. (Bumped)
THAT ’70S SHOW: Get Ready For Price Controls If Inflation Jumps.
If inflation persists, and the Fed caters to political pressure to keep rates near zero to finance the growing federal debt and prop up asset prices, it would be tempting for progressives to call for price controls. Those controls would be dressed up as a temporary measure to stabilize prices and win votes, but they would not address the underlying inflationary pressures stemming from excessive money growth and fiscal dominance.
Fed governors Lael Brainard and Randal Quarles have assured us that the Fed has the tools to counter inflation—namely, increasing interest on reserves (IOR) and selling assets to reduce the size of its massive balance sheet. Yet, it may be politically difficult to use those tools: any significant increase in IOR to ward off inflation—paying large banks billions of dollars to park reserves at the Fed—would be untenable; and any call for tapering could cause a tantrum on Wall Street, just as in 2013. The Fed does not want to risk throwing the economy into recession by raising rates, but if it stands still inflation could worsen.
The view from here looks like Biden will give us repeats of the worst of both Nixon and Carter.
CHANGE? Don’t Count Out the GOP’s Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. “McAuliffe’s seeming willingness to cover for Marxist critical race theory may prove to be his greatest weakness.”
DANIEL GREENFIELD: The Small Secessions of the New Civil War: Neighborhoods secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states. “The political geography of the new civil war is a tug of war between Democrats seeking to concentrate authority in as few places as possible and an opposition seeking independence.”
Looks like I was ahead of the curve with my Notre Dame Law Review article on intra-state secession!
Related thoughts here.
CLEANEST ELECTION EVER: House Republicans Demand To Know How A Left-Leaning Group Allegedly Channeled Private Funds To Election Agencies.
A group of House Republicans sent a letter Monday to the left-leaning group Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), calling on them to explain where the hundreds of millions of dollars they were given during the COVID-19 pandemic went, saying the group spent less than one percent on personal protective equipment (PPE).
The Daily Caller first obtained the letter which was spearheaded by Republican New York Rep. Claudia Tenney who was joined by 13 other House Republicans. The letter mentions that CTCL gave $350 million to nearly 2,500 election officials in 48 states and the District of Columbia in 2020. The lawmakers call on the CTCL to immediately publish their full financial 990s for public review, saying it is the groups legal obligation as a registered 501(c)(3).
Plus: “Pennsylvania State Representative Eric Nelson raised concerns with certain counties receiving disproportionate funding, stating ‘I just felt, ethically, it was disturbing to me that the private grant distribution was happening, and it was not happening evenly between counties.'”
THE EFFORT TO MARGINALIZE THIS VIEW APPEARS TO HAVE FAILED: One-third says Biden won ‘only due to voter fraud,’ 80% want voter ID.
Related: Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Georgia Conducting Secret 2020 Ballot Review — Keeping Plaintiffs in the Dark. “After several Fulton County, Ga., poll monitors testified last year that boxes of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden looked liked they’d been run through a photocopy machine, state investigators quietly broke the seal on one suspicious box and inspected the hundreds of votes it contained for signs of fraud, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively. At the same time, a key whistleblower told RCI that state investigators pressured her to recant her story about what she and other poll monitors had observed — what they called unusually “pristine” mail-in ballots while sorting through them during last November’s hand recount. . . . Although the ballots are at the center of disputes about the Georgia presidential race, which Joe Biden won by just 12,000 votes, the state never disclosed its probe to the public or to election watchdogs suing to inspect the ballots.”
THAT’S WHY THE OLIGARCHS WANT US TALKING ABOUT RACE AND GENDER: Class and Region, Not Race or Gender, is the Big Divider in Today’s America.
CORPORATE MANAGEMENT IN ACADEMIC FOG: Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon spent some precious time attending the “Bloomberg Equality Briefing titled ‘Corporate Mandate for Change’ and sponsored by Cisco. To the extent we learned anything at all, it’s that conversations about corporate diversity initiatives are comprised almost entirely of meaningless jargon that is terrifying nonetheless.”
And if that meaningless jargon sounds vaguely familiar, then you must recently have spent some time on campus listening to professors, administrators and students discussing why you are a racist, America is racist, all white people are racist, capitalism is racist, etc. etc. etc.
How long before stockholders wake up to the fact the coming management generation views words like “profit,” “return-on-investment” and “revenue streams” as racist terms that must be forever buried? Like Glenn says, that which can’t go on, won’t.
COLLUSION? CULTURE OF CORRUPTION? WHY NOT BOTH! DOJ Nominee Worked with Hunter Biden at Law Firm Tied To Ukrainian Energy Giant.
NEW HILL STAFF PROGRESSIVES GROUP LAUNCHED: Roll Call reports new group seeking Lefty activists to work on Hill staffs has been launched and already has more than 250 members, including at least 100 senior staffers.
Funny, I thought there was already a group attracting left-wing organizers and agitators, the House Democratic Caucus. Don’t laugh, though, as Hill staffers on both sides of the aisle have immense, though mostly unseen, influence on the course of things in Congress.
Historical Footnote: The Republican Study Committee (RSC) was organized in 1973 as a counter to the original group for left-wing staff types, the Democratic Study Group (DSG), which was launched in 1959 and went kaput in the wake of the Contract with America.
JOE MANCHIN’S COMPROMISE BILL: Still not great, says John Fund.
COLORADO: Aurora teacher pledges to teach critical race theory, like it or not. “Common ground doesn’t mean meeting in the middle.The only common ground that exists is what exists in leftist beliefs. Because conservative ‘common ground’ leaves out people who are poor, BIPOC, Queer, with disabilities, etc. But OUR common ground includes the liberation for all.”
NOW THEY’RE ALL “SO YOU’LL MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO TEACH ABOUT JUNETEENTH?” As Rebellion Against Critical Race Theory Grows, Left Turns to Denial, Dismissal.
ROGER SIMON: Don’t Defund the Police. Defund the Military!
Ah, but the military.
It used to be the safe haven—or so we thought.
But who but the most adamant supporter of critical race theory could not help but be astonished and depressed by the weirdly evasive responses of Adm. Michael M. Gilday’s to questions from Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) at last week’s House Armed Services Committee hearings?
If you haven’t seen this exchange, replayed frequently on the more conservative cable channels, go here.
As The Daily Signal put it:
“Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, did not answer questions Tuesday about whether author-activist Ibram X. Kendi’s opposition to interracial adoption and capitalism is extreme.
“But, Gilday did tell the House Armed Services Committee that Kendi’s controversial book ‘How to Be an Antiracist‘ would lead to ‘a better Navy’ by promoting more discussion on racism in America.”
The book was on the list of the Navy’s recommended reading and as The Daily Signal further noted:
“Gilday’s passive view of his recommended reading list wasn’t entirely accurate, said Brent Sadler, senior fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
‘The reading list is lopsided with anti-racism and a bent toward critical race theory,’ Sadler told The Daily Signal. ‘A reading list is an endorsement.’”
I had been hearing about the military’s infection by “woke” politics for some time, but there it was in front of my eyes. I can only imagine what it’s really like inside the upper echelons of the Pentagon. Patton must be turning over in his grave.
As a frightening reminder, it’s Gilday and his ilk who are responsible for our deterring Communist China in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
You can see the temptation to defund the military, but, of course, we’re trapped. China and Russia are not about to defund theirs.
As for Mr. Kendi, his work—much like that of BLM co-founder and aspiring real estate magnate Patrisse Khan-Cullors—is largely about the money. You don’t write a best seller or win the approval of the aforementioned New York Times, as he did, by once again endorsing Martin Luther King and that “tired” equality Dream speech of his.
You have to be edgy. Critical race theory is edgy.
It’s also racist, stupid and wildly divisive—but no matter.
Where is this headed?
When I was in high school I remember reading James Baldwin’s powerful book “The Fire Next Time.” Its title came from a couplet in the moving spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep”:
“And God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water, the fire next time.”
Since then there have been a fair amount of fires, mostly from black communities motivated by exploitative racialist leaders the likes of which Baldwin and Ralph Ellison would undoubtedly have recognized.
But as an eighty-year old once said, “The times, they are a-changin’.” The roles are reversing. The fire may be coming from the other side.
In a fascinating article at the “Gold, Goats ’n Guns” blog, Tom Luongo writes:
“There will be political surprises all across Europe this year and next. By the time they are done the Democrats will look like Labour in the UK, a brittle shell of a party built on equal parts envy and smarm, and the Republicans, guided by Trump, will return to power with a vengeance we’ve never experienced in U.S. politics. It will not be pretty.”
Hmm…. If true, and it’s beginning to look increasingly likely for a variety of reasons (Luongo was writing of Jon Stewart’s take down of Colbert), the future does not look promising for Admiral Gilday and his Pentagon cronies. They had better wake up from “woke” and, as they used to say in appropriately nautical terms, be prepared to shape up or ship out.
No matter what happens, as we learn more and more about the CCP’s perfidy and aggression, headlines like these need to be transitioned into the dustbin: Biden Administration Will Offer Gender Transition Surgery Through VA Healthcare.
BRYAN PRESTON: Woke Indoctrination in the Texas State Guard?
EVERYONE’S IN FAVOR EXCEPT FOR THE POLITICAL CLASS. I WONDER WHY? Landslide: 80% support photo ID for voting, including 62% of Democrats and overwhelming share of minorities. “Given how often Democratic politicians equate laws tightening voting rules with Jim Crow, you might expect heavy support for voter ID laws among whites and only tepid support, or even opposition, among minorities. But you’d be wrong. Monmouth has whites split 77/21 and nonwhites approaching unanimity at 84/13. The same is true when we look at income, with a larger share of those who earn less than $50,000 per year in favor of voter ID (81 percent) than those who make more than $100,000 (76 percent). Opposing these laws isn’t a winner even within Abrams’s own coalition. It’s a boutique issue for woke white liberals.”
I’m tired of catering to woke white liberals, and so is the rest of the country, I suspect.
FROM JULIE PASCAL: Traditional by Accident.
Can you say yes, if it’s impossible to say no?
The encroaching Solaran empire has gobbled up Svana’s world. Svana fled her planet with the first wave of refugees, swept up with members of a different clan. Space is vast and she finds herself on a space station, alone, waiting hopelessly for her own family to arrive to save her. Thomas is from her world and similarly adrift. He offers to save her, and it’s an offer that Svana can’t refuse, but that doesn’t mean that letting him save her is the right thing to do.Unless, perhaps, they can somehow save each other.
HOW CAN THIS BE A SURPRISE? The left is pursuing an agenda that benefits just a few leftists.
These people are communists. Read history.
“DEVIL” IS SUCH A JUDGEMENTAL WORD: Tasmanian devils kill every penguin on tiny Australian island.
They are not native to the island; they’ve driven the native penguins extinct, endangered another species, and so traumatized the native geese that they’re roosting in trees. But don’t worry! The Save The Tasmanian Devil Program “continually monitor and evaluate” their activities.
I don’t know why I’m thinking of the homeless that infest Denver and have been given carte blanche to use public transport (for free) and camp anywhere they want to, even as the population was under house arrest.
Must be some weird cross-wiring of my brain….
“PERSONAL POPULARITY” IS AN HILARIOUS WAY OF SPELLING “VOTER FRAUD”: Are We Stuck with Biden?
Ah, well, it’s been a long time since I taught English comp. And the AP has changed the rules several times.
SO THE PARTY THINKS THEY CAN CONTROL DESANTIS? INTERESTING: Straw poll shows GOP favorability to Ron DeSantis over Donald Trump.
Also, please, people, don’t smoke what you cook.
NEW YORK, CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE,, DETROIT, LOS ANGELES, AND PHILADELPHIA: Most big cities have become more racially segregated: study.
Gee, I wonder which party dominates these cities? Anyone?
BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE! Recent History Suggests FBI Involvement in January 6.
Disband them. Salt the Earth.
MOST OF THE MARXISTS ARE: Journalists Are Completely Out Of Touch With America And Reality.
SEPARATE, MAYBE, BUT CLOSER TO REALITY-REALITY THAN CNN: RI School Superintendents Group: “We all know many of our citizens live in a separate news reality with Fox, Newsmax and their ilk”.
CRAZY LEFTISM IS NOT EPISODIC. IT’S CONSTANT: WaPo Goes Full Critical Race in VIDEO: ‘White Body Supremacism is not Episodic; It’s Structural’.
OH, IT’S JUST A CASE OF INCOMPLETE THOUGHT: Psaki: WH has ‘Highest Ethical Standards’ Despite Many Admin Family Hires.
They mean “highest ethical standards” in hell!
BUT BIDEN STILL WANTS TO GIVE THEM PALLETS OF CASH: Iran President Raisi Refuses To Meet With Biden.
June 21, 2021
WELL: More Australians Have Died From Vaccine-Related Blood Clots Than From Covid This Year. Of course, their situation is different from ours: “Two women in Australia have died from the blood clots. The only COVID fatality this year was an 80-year-old traveler who died in April after being infected overseas and diagnosed in hotel quarantine.”
RALPH NORTHAM SMILES:
USS BOONDOGGLE: NASA’s new moon rocket, the Space Launch System, takes shape in giant hangar. This much money used to purchase launch services would have had us on the Moon already.
READER BOOK PLUG: My friend and roommate Terry Lacy has a new book coming out, available for pre-order now. The book is Savannah 1.0:The Quest for Love.
Dan Mitchel is a lonely guy, plagued with OCD and terminal social awkwardness, at times so severe he seems robotic. Raised by a cold, overbearing mother, he fails at every romantic relationship and resigned himself to growing old alone–until he buys Savannah, a sexbot, the first one able to pass as human. In many ways, his problems are finally over, but in others they are just beginning. Can a robot teach a man what it means to be human?
“I may be terminated over Monday’s incident.”
They had watched both Schwarzenegger movies, and he’d explained that a “terminator” was a killer robot. She had enjoyed both of them, but had cheered for the terminators, calling herself “Team Robot.” He’d found it funny, and cheered with her. But it was her only reference to the word, so she looked confused as she asked, “They’re going to kill you?”
P.S. I read it and think it’s really good. Start of a series.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Female Weightlifter Suffers Tragic Testicle Injury Just Weeks Before Tokyo Olympics.
GOODER AND HARDER: California’s $100 Million Marijuana Bailout Tells You All You Need to Know about Its Government.
I bring up [the Johnny Depp film] Blow in light of news that California’s legislature approved a $100-million plan to boost California’s struggling legal marijuana industry.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, the industry is in serious trouble. The growth of licensed cannabis shops has been dismal and far below state projections. Just 1,086 retail and delivery firms have been permitted to date—about 82 percent lower than the 6,000 cannabis shops the government anticipated.
How is this possible? Well, shortly after California legalized pot in 2016, lawmakers began burdening the industry with so many regulations—particularly myriad compliance orders associated with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—that businesses are drowning under paperwork, fees, and delays.
“Many cannabis growers, retailers and manufacturers have struggled to make the transition from a provisional, temporary license to a permanent one renewed on an annual basis — a process that requires a costly, complicated and time-consuming review of the negative environmental effects involved in a business and a plan for reducing those harms,” the Times reports.
Who on earth could have predicted this development? Flashback: California’s Legal Weed Is So Heavily Taxed and Regulated That the Black Market Might Survive.
Related: The Ontario government lost $42M selling cannabis in the last year.
WE JUST GOT EVEN MORE PROOF THAT STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS LETHALLY BACKFIRED:
In a new paper, economists from the University of Southern California and the RAND Corporation examined the effectiveness of “shelter-in-place” (SIP) mandates, aka stay-at-home orders, using data from 43 countries and all 50 US states. The experts analyze not just deaths from COVID-19, but “excess deaths,” a measure that compares overall deaths from all causes to a historical baseline.
The authors explain that lockdown orders may have had lethal unintended consequences in their own right, such as increased drug overdoses, worsened mental health problems, increased child abuse, deadly delays in non-COVID medical care, and more. So, to find out whether stay-at-home orders truly helped more than they hurt, examining excess deaths, not just pandemic outcomes, is key.
The results aren’t pretty.
“We fail to find that shelter-in-place policies saved lives,” the authors report. Indeed, they conclude that in the weeks following the implementation of these policies, excess mortality actually increases—even though it had typically been declining before the orders took effect. And across all countries, the study finds that a one-week increase in the length of stay-at-home policies corresponds with 2.7 more excess deaths per 100,000 people.
The lockdowns simply didn’t work.
As Jordan Schachtel wrote late last month in a Substack article titled, “What to make of the COVID-19 lab leak theory,” “The virus was not the cause for global catastrophe. It was the response to the virus that crippled the global economy and our society. The disease was not nearly as damaging as the ‘cure’ for the disease.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: My road to cancellation — Stanford professor and CEO Joel Peterson’s take.
Soon, a Black Lives Matter advocate asked, of all things, whether I would stand for the American flag. To provide context for my decision, I shared a story. As a toddler, I’d seen my mother take a call from the Department of Defense announcing that her fighter-pilot brother had been killed. Honoring her grief, I’d chosen to stand for the flag under which my only uncle had offered the ultimate sacrifice. The student’s response was presented as an irrefutable argument; my choice was “racist.”
Furthermore, in this woke new world, my professional experience was no longer relevant because of the race and gender I’d been assigned at birth. Despite having created tens of thousands of jobs, promoted women and minorities, and coached scores of entrepreneurs, I was deemed an “oppressor” in the catechism of “wokeism.” Furthermore, the penance for being raised in a “systemically racist” society — founded on millennia of Greek, Roman and Judeo-Christian antecedents, no less — was submission, and, if resisted, cancellation.
The reason behind such tyranny came into focus for me when Condolezza Rice, former secretary of state and current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, told me she’d shared with her students that the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (9/11’s architect) had felt like “having Erwin Rommel under lock and key.” The blank looks on the faces of her very bright students revealed that they had never heard of WWII’s famous Desert Fox.
Until then, I’d traced the enmity to activists like Jackson and Hannah-Jones. Now, I could see that it also stemmed from students having swapped an education for indoctrination. Those enlisted as social justice warriors had avoided the lessons of history, missed out on refining skills that might have allowed them to judge assertions and denied themselves the insights required to make wise trade-offs.
In The Social Media Upheaval, Glenn wrote:
In bragging about how he manipulated the political news media, Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes described them this way: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Knowing nothing makes you easy to manipulate. Lack of relevant life experience makes you easy to manipulate. So maybe people should know more? I’ve written elsewhere about the failures of our educational system, but in a time when two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is, it’s not crazy to think that our populace could be toughened up when it comes to mental nutrition.
I’ve linked here before to a 2013 video by Holocaust education advocate Rhonda Fink-Whitman, interviewing depressingly clueless incoming freshmen (hope that f-bomb isn’t too triggering) at several Philadelphia-area colleges; as the Washington Post reported in 2018, “Holocaust study: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is.” Which allows the Corbynization of the Democratic Party to continue apace.
HEATHER GERKEN’S DEANSHIP IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The New Yorker: What Is Going On At Yale Law School? “From certain vantage points, everyone in this story looks unsympathetic.”
The problems at Yale predate Gerken — Bob Post’s deanship was awful and laid the foundation — but the place needs firm, common-sense leadership instead of capitulation to mobs. When I was there a group of students presented a demand to one of the older professors, who responded “that might bother me, if I cared what students thought.” That’s a much healthier response. Right now a relatively small number of students are bullying other students, and faculty, and the administration isn’t doing anything about it.
TESTING Bullet-resistant glass.
BOMB CANADA — THE CASE FOR WAR: Vancouver School Board Is Eliminating Honors Programs To Achieve ‘Equity.’
(Classical reference in headline.)
ABIGAIL SHRIER: The Books Are Already Burning. The question is only: How long will decent people stand by quietly and watch it happen?
Let that sink in: a book review by a respected physician was bullied out of existence in America.
Public figures who have watched the success of such campaigns — and they are now weekly if not daily — now know they risk their livelihoods by engaging heterodox views. Jordan Peterson, for example, chose to demonetize the interview we did on his YouTube channel to, in his words, “avoid attracting counterproductive attention by jackals who weaponize demonetization.”
It’s not only corporations facing this type of activist pressure. Public libraries now do, too.
Halifax Pride, the annual LGBTQ festival, announced late last month that it would cut ties with the city’s library system over its insistence on carrying Irreversible Damage, calling it “transphobic,” and claiming that it “jeopardizes the safety of trans youth” and “debates the existence of trans people.”
So far, the Halifax Public Libraries have resisted. Their position is straightforward and apolitical: libraries exist to expose the public to the widest array of views, “including those which may be regarded as unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.”
The Halifax Public Libraries tried to compromise with the activists by pasting a note inside the book’s cover, directing readers to a list of “trans-affirming” resources. But the activists were unappeased. No ties with the libraries were restored. They want the book gone from the library and scrubbed from existence. Two copies in a library of nearly 1.2 million volumes are two too many.
Not even the Nova Scotia Library Association or the Canadian Library Association has come to the library’s defense, though their standing orders explicitly require member libraries “to guarantee and facilitate access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those which some elements of society may consider to be unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable.”
Silent supporters stand alongside the Halifax Libraries. They sign up to borrow the book, now nearly 150 of them, and post supportive messages on Twitter usually under pseudonyms.They know that the activists waging this battle — over who gets to determine what we can read, what ideas adults are allowed to explore, will, at some point, come for ideas they favor, or causes they support.
But like too many individuals and institutions who try to hold fast to liberal values in the face of an intolerant and illiberal onslaught, the Halifax Libraries stand alone in the public square.
I know how they feel.
As Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
Speaking of which, flashback: Antifa Forces Portland Book Store to Stop Selling Andy Ngo’s Book About Antifa.
SHOCKING NEWS: No matter how many vitamins we take, we will eventually grow old and die.
Eventually can mean a lot of different things.
JOE BIDEN’S NEW NEGOTIATING PARTNER: Iran Prez-Elect on Mass Execution of Political Prisoners: ‘I Have Always Defended People’s Rights.’
TEACH YOUR KID TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR: KidVenture: Twelve Weeks To Midnight Blue.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The G7 Does Not Bode Well for the Globalists. “Biden returns from G7 with a new cold war with China and its junior partner Russia under way. With each new sinister report out of China, the globalists must feel like those movie brides who are progressively discovering evidence their charming new husband is a serial killer, and always has been. But they cannot even act on that belated realization without deranging their domestic Woke agenda.”
HMM: Some blood pressure-lowering meds linked to less memory decline in older adults. “These findings represent the most powerful evidence to-date linking brain-penetrant ACE-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers to better memory. It suggests that people who are being treated for hypertension may be protected from cognitive decline if they medications that cross the blood-brain barrier.”
POWERLINE: Fighting Back Against Evil.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Wipe Metadata from Any File. Like, with a cloth?
JIM TREACHER: Fauci Flip-Flops on Previous Flip-Flop About Masks.
Fauci could’ve started out in March 2020 by saying, “Please don’t wear masks because health care workers need them right now,” and that would’ve been justified. But he didn’t. He lied, and he’s still lying. That’s not our fault, it’s his.
If Anthony Fauci was ever a scientist, those days are long gone. He’s a bureaucrat, and the #1 priority of any bureaucrat is always to cover his own ass. He can get as indignant as he wants, but his many, many public statements over the last 15 months prove him to be a liar.
If you lie to me, admit you lied but tell me it was for the greater good, and then accuse me of hating science itself for remembering that you admitted you lied, don’t expect me to ever trust you again.
Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Defeat Racism With This One Weird Trick.
Plus:
- Anthony Fauci IS science
- Yet another journalist repeating fake news before doing any journalisming
- Hamid Karzai would like to speak to the manager
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
A SMALL LESSON ABOUT BULLETS.
I LOVE VINHO VERDE, IT’S MY GO-TO SUMMER WINE: Roger Kimball: The green, green wines of Portugal: Grab a case before setting out on your next boat trip or barbecue.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-OWNERSHIP:
I’ll believe there’s an ongoing public health emergency when the people telling me there’s an ongoing public health emergency start acting like there’s an ongoing public health emergency.
DONALD SENSING: Stop making Protestant arguments against Catholic bishops! “We Protestants need to understand that the sacraments of the RCC are a system and are closely interrelated. This is not much true in my denomination, the United Methodist Church. Our two sacraments of baptism and Communion are related, but not much interrelated. . . . Finally, it is pretty obvious that tweets like this are not really directed at the RCC bishops, for this is not an attempt to persuade the bishops to reconsider. This and other, similar tweets and posts are directed toward the posters own in-group to signal that they are defending not a superior theology of Communion, but political figures whose abortion advocacy must be protected.”
MARK JUDGE: Weak Dissent. Another Lazy, Dumb, and Error-Packed Book About Me in High School. “You can add the contents of Dissent to the long list of intentional media calumny about me, Brett Kavanaugh and Georgetown Prep, the high school we attended. At various times in fall 2018, our East German Stasi media told the public that I’d presided over ten gang rapes. That I’d bought and sold cocaine. That all in all I was a volatile mix of Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and King Kong. Vanity Fair had to issue a correction admitting that a woman who’d said we went to college together in fact had attended a different school. The Washington Post withheld an exonerating witness from their explosive first story about Ford. NBC’s Kate Snow withheld damaging facts about Michael Avenatti, whose fever dreams of drugs and gang rapes were touted by New York magazine as the end of Kavanaugh. Avenatti is now awaiting sentencing for extortion and has two more criminal trials coming up.”
“IT’S A LONG TRADITION IN RHODE ISLAND:” Sheldon Whitehouse’s systemic racism. “As GoLocalProvidence notes, Whitehouse didn’t wait a fortnight after George Floyd’s death before decrying its supposed cause of systemic racism. ‘We hear the voices of the peaceful protestors who have marched. We can and must do better to root out systemic racism in its many forms,’ Whitehouse wrote in a statement at the time. And yet, here’s Whitehouse who’s apparently unwilling to root out systemic racism in a club in which he and his wife have an ownership stake. Notably, this comes the day after the first celebration of the new Juneteenth federal holiday, which Whitehouse enthusiastically supported. D’oh!…If a Republican belonged to an all-white club, the media would never let it go. It certainly seems odd that the national media has yet to make an issue out of this even after 15 years for this prominent progressive Democrat, doesn’t it?”
Not at all. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:
SPEAKING OF ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES IN EDUCATION: Georgia Public School Board Blocks Charter School Due to ‘Competition.’
THIS IS BIG: BREAKING: Unanimous Supreme Court Rules for Student Athletes Against NCAA.. “The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.” Query: What other things does the higher ed industry do for which that might be the case?
Plus, thoughts on the business implication from Points and Figures.
NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I’D BEEN HOPING FOR: Airspeeder says it had the first successful test flight for its electric flying racecar.
BIDEN’S RETURN TO NORMALCY: Biden DOJ Argues It’s Unconstitutional to Defend Women’s Sports, Protect Kids From Chemical Castration.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University of Oregon can discipline students for off-campus offenses under new policy.
OUR ELITES ARE ANYTHING BUT: Portland Can Blame ‘Woke’ DA Schmidt and Singer John Legend for the Police Riot Squad Walk Out.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Chapman University hosts racially segregated ‘cultural graduation celebrations.’ “‘There is no separate graduation for exceptional academic achievement, but one for someone’s skin color,’ remarked one student.”
Well, that tells you what’s important to the Chapman University administration, I guess.
HE’LL LAUGH AT THIS ALL THE WAY TO SUB-ORBIT AND BACK: Petitions to Stop Jeff Bezos From Returning to Earth After Space Trip Get Thousands of Signatures.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Audit Everything Until the Stink From Last November Is Gone. “That’s the thing here. Any American truly interested in fair and free elections shouldn’t shy away from examining the kinds of things that happened last year. This, by the way, is different than Stacey Abrams running around acting like she’s the real governor of Georgia because feelings and stuff. There was a lot that went on last November that didn’t pass the smell test.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Via a friend:
TOP AND BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Salma Hayek Has No Plans To Stop Posting Bikini Photos: ‘I Have No Shame On It.’
BOB MCMANUS ON THE NYC MAYORAL RACE: Eric Adams the only choice to get kids out of the line of fire.
THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Facebook to update its community standards to clarify what it considers satire. “The Oversight Board pointed out in its recommendation that while Facebook has said it will make exceptions for satire, it doesn’t specify how or what qualifies as satire in its guidelines. Facebook said in its post that in addition to making its guidelines around satire clearer, it would ‘initiate a review of identical content with parallel context,” and may take further action.'”
Previously: Oversight Board Reveals It’s A Rubber Stamp For Facebook Censorship.
IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT THERE, YOU CAN’T MAKE IT ANYWHERE: South Dakota rocked again as a wind turbine plant shuts its doors.
NONSENSE, EVERYONE KNOWS THE FBI IS SQUEAKY-CLEAN: WATCH: Glenn Greenwald suggests the FBI had a role in Jan. 6 riot, exposes propaganda of CNN, MSNBC.
BY ITS FRUIT, THE TREE IS KNOWN: Youth Protest Group Inspired By Greta Thunberg Disbands, Accuses Itself Of Racism.
CRYBULLIES: 85% of ‘liberals’ would report ‘offensive’ prof. “Students were almost as eager to report their classmates: 76 percent of liberals, 57 percent of independents and 31 percent of conservatives say that a student who says something that offends other students should be reported.”
“Tolerance” doesn’t mean what they think it means.
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