OPEN THREAD: Time is running out.
BLUE ORIGIN’S PROBLEMS: Tory Bruno says the challenges with BE-4 are real but the engine is moving forward. “Blue Origin in 2015 proclaimed that engines would be ready by 2017. Bruno said everything in the BE-4 program has taken far longer than planned.”
IF IT COULD STOP ALL CORONAVIRUSES, IT COULD PREVENT MANY COMMON COLDS TOO: Antibody findings spark ideas for pan-coronavirus vaccine.
Plus: “‘Cuomo isn’t holding me hostage so much as coronavirus is, but he is the only one telling me what to do, where I can and cannot go (anywhere), who I can and cannot see (everyone), who I can and cannot listen to (President Trump, Bill de Blasio), what I can and cannot eat (anything but pasta)…. [W]hen I stream his presser… I feel comforted. I feel alive. I feel protected. I feel… butterflies….’ Now, that is partly satirical, but it is a confession that control feels sexually exciting — that dictators are loved.”
REMEMBER WHEN THE CDC BANNED ALL TESTS EXCEPT ITS OWN, WHICH DIDN’T WORK? At-home saliva test can spot COVID-19 variants in an hour.
YOU KNOW WHO GETS TO AUTHORIZE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE PRESIDENT? THE PRESIDENT.
It’s also rich to see the DOJ acting concerned about people casting doubt on an election, when it ran a dishonest, partisan, and almost certainly illegal operation — “Crossfire Hurricane” — to do just that.
Though to be fair, I’m sure they keep a pretty tight lid on who gets to talk to Biden.
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)
MICHAEL MALONE: Can Silicon Valley Find Its Way Back?
I’ve thought about this transformation a lot lately. I grew up Silicon Valley, I’ve covered it as a journalist longer than anybody, and I have known nearly all of its celebrated figures. The particular occasion for my reflection has been the publication of a special edition of my book, The Big Score (1984), the first history of Silicon Valley.
Rereading a book I wrote when I was 30 years old — when I was as shiny and optimistic as the entrepreneurs and companies I wrote about — was a disturbing experience. Here was a Valley on the cusp of greatness, filled with men and women who are now legends — Hewlett and Packard, Noyce, Moore and Grove, Jobs and Wozniak and many more — but who were then still mostly unknown to the general public, still coping with their new wealth, working in companies small enough that they knew the name of every employee. It was a time when Silicon Valley denizens still dreamed of success and — for all of their ambition — could never imagine that it would one day create the wealthiest enterprises in human history, or change the daily lives of every single person on the planet.
So, what turned that Valley into the one we know — and increasingly fear — today? How did Silicon Valley shift from wanting to change the world to wanting to run it?
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend comments: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The funny/tragic part is that such intelligent, well-intentioned, high-minded people thought they were immune to that. Correction: the funny/tragic/nightmarish Kafkaesque Orwellian part …”
FEMALE CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER KILLED, SECOND OFFICER ‘FIGHTING FOR HIS VERY LIFE:’ “Police sources and a family member identified the officer who died as Ella French, a 29-year-old woman who’d worked as a Chicago cop since April 2018. She was the first Chicago police officer to be shot and killed in the line of duty since Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office in 2019. The other officer is fighting for his life in critical condition at the University of Chicago Medical Center.”
JOHN MCWHORTER: KENDI AND DIANGELO DON’T DEBATE PEOPLE LIKE ME.
Grifters seldom debate people pointing out the grift. Instead they make up reasons why their marks should ignore them.
DENNIS PRAGER: The Media Produces Derangement: Proof From New York Times Readers.
This past weekend, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd added another column to the myriad irrational and hysterical pieces about the “existential threat” climate change allegedly poses to human life.
As I do after almost every piece I read on the internet, I read comments submitted by readers.
One provided me with an epiphany.
It was a comment submitted by New York Times reader “Sophia” of Bangor, Maine:
“I have one child, a daughter, who told me age 8 that she would never have a child because of global warming. She’s now 34 and has never changed her mind. So I will not experience a grandchild. For her wisdom, I am grateful. I would be heartsick if I did have a grandchild who would have to experience the onslaught of changing climate.”
It is hard to imagine greater proof than that comment of the power of mass media and of the left. That a normal woman would celebrate her daughter’s choice not to be a mother and not to make her a grandmother can only be described as deranged. No normal-thinking human being would think that way. Jews had children during the Holocaust and made sure to have children if they survived the Holocaust.
Does this deranged woman know how few people are dying due to weather-related incidents in the era of global warming?
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): On the upside, we’re probably better off with people like this out of the gene pool.
JEFF DUNETZ ON THE AUG. 9TH, 2001 JERUSALEM SBARRO BOMBING: ‘The Street Was Covered with Blood and Bodies.’ And appeasement Of Palestinian Terrorists Has Been Renewed By Biden.
QUESTION ASKED: How much of a COVID risk was Obama’s birthday bash?
Two months ago, having a blowout bash with all of your immunized friends wouldn’t have been a problem. The hot vax summer was upon us courtesy of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. Two months later, with hospitals in Delta hot spots filling up, we’re back in a nightmare of rampant transmission and rising death. Former Trump advisor Tom Bossert has been studying the numbers and spotted an alarming divergence between our Delta wave and the one in the UK. That country has a larger share of its population vaccinated than we do, but not wildly higher. And it’s possible that we have a similar degree of overall population immunity due to the number of people here who’ve had COVID and recovered.
* * * * * * * *
The grimmest piece on the pandemic that I’ve read this summer is this new interview with scientist Eric Topol titled “Too Many People Are Dying Right Now.” As Delta began to spread in the U.S., experts like Topol expected a surge in cases but a much gentler rise in hospitalizations and an even milder rise in deaths, all thanks to vaccination. Instead we’re seeing about the same ratio of cases to hospitalizations now as we saw during our pre-vaccination winter wave. How can that be when we know that the vaccines substantially reduce one’s risk of hospitalization? Topol isn’t sure but he’s worried:
I mean, one of the worst signals that I’ve seen is San Francisco. San Francisco is like Vermont, they’re even a little higher than Vermont for fully vaccinated — it’s 70 percent of the population of San Francisco county and it’s going through a very substantial hospitalization spike, unlike Vermont.
So I look at San Francisco as a bad bellwether for what might be coming. Why are they doing so poorly right now for hospitalization? Why is it so different than Vermont? If there’s that many people getting so sick, something’s just not right…
In San Diego, too, we’re having hospitalization increases, too — not as bad as San Francisco, but our vaccination rates are quite good for California. But they’re not preventing a surge of new patients in the hospital.
And the rate of rise — it’s scary. We’ve never had a rise like this for the country. And, okay, a lot of it is from Florida and Louisiana. But the rate of rise is just… scary. The fact that this ratio is being maintained, compared to a monster-wave, pre-dating vaccination…
Topol’s article appears on New York magazine’s Website. Note which event isn’t covered on the New York Website this weekend:
Click to enlarge.
JOHN HINDERAKER: The CDC’s Voodoo Epidemiology. “Our country’s response to the covid epidemic has been an unscientific embarrassment. It is not too harsh to say that our policy has consisted of harassing the general public while exposing the vulnerable. In the parade of irrationality, the Centers for Disease Control has been the leader. One way in which the CDC’s unscientific approach is currently on display is its refusal to acknowledge that catching covid confers immunity to the disease, to the same extent, and probably more, than being vaccinated. This stands to reason, since the whole point of vaccination is to mimic the effect–production of antibodies–of having a disease. . . . Our covid response has been dictated by politicians and bureaucrats, while the voices of actual physicians with expertise in the relevant fields and with clinical experience treating covid patients have been suppressed by the press and by social media giants. The result has been a fiasco.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Tell If Your President Is A Totalitarian Fascist (video).
INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: Charles Murray’s ‘Facing Reality’ — A Review. Razib Khan reviews and summarizes Murray’s unwelcome findings regarding “systemic racism.”
Comfortable white people—“nice white parents” in affluent neighborhoods who support efforts to “defund the police”—can refuse to look into the data or insist that those data are the product of racist systems and structures. They can “interrogate their privilege” and “confront their white supremacy,” or better yet, demand that others do so. But they won’t be any closer to understanding why poor African Americans and Latinos in inner-city neighborhoods want more police officers in their neighborhoods and not fewer, nor why poor African American parents clamor for access to strict charter schools that activists condemn for being “anti-black.”
. . . These are not data that foster peace of mind, because they disrupt the delusion that there are easy answers to hard problems or scapegoats we can drive from the village to restore purity and order. But we are not a society in a state of equanimity as it is. Serenity evades us as long as we build upon a foundation of lies. Screaming about injustice, spreading the blame to others less fortunate than ourselves, or denying it outright will not bring us peace, help the less privileged, or fortify our fragile republic.
Read the whole thing — and Murray’s book.
RIP: Night Court actress Markie Post passes away at age 70 after nearly four-year battle with cancer. “Post’s death comes less than a month after the passing of her Night Court co-star Charlie Robinson who played a legal clerk on the series.”
HEATHER MAC DONALD: Classical Music’s Suicide Pact (Part 2). Another cultural institution succumbs to the race-baiters. (In case you missed it: Part 1).
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Staying Alert is Key for Personal Defense.
BACK IN STOCK: Western Pistol Earrings and these Don’t Tread on Me Earrings earrings back too.
CAMILE PAGLIA: Lady Gaga: The Death of Sex.
Generation Gaga doesn’t identify with powerful vocal styles because their own voices have atrophied: they communicate mutely via a constant stream of atomised, telegraphic text messages. Gaga’s flat affect doesn’t bother them because they’re not attuned to facial expressions. They don’t notice her awkwardness because they’ve abandoned body language in daily interactions. They’re not repelled by the choppy cutting of her videos (in febrile one-second bursts) because that’s how they process reality – as a cluttered, de-centred environment of floating bits.
Gaga’s fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets but emotional poverty. Everything is refracted for them through the media. They have been raised in a relativistic cultural vacuum where chronology and sequence as well as distinctions of value have been lost or jettisoned by politically correct educators. It is a world of blurred borderlines – between childhood and adulthood as well as between parents and children. The young waver between dependence and independence and are slow to leave the comforts of home. Old family hierarchies have broken down. Gaga, for example, gets drunk with her parents and calls her father her “best friend.” She startlingly said this summer: “I’ve been in my father’s arms for two weeks wishing him happy Father’s Day.”
There are blurred borderlines between the sexes: gender is now alleged to be fabricated rather than biological; so everything is a pose. Thus Gaga welcomed the rumour about her being intersex and converted it into a fashion statement. Casual “hooking up” blends friends and lovers, with sex becoming merely an excuse for filial hugging. Borderlines have blurred too between public and private: reality-TV shows multiply; cell-phone conversations blare everywhere; secrets are heedlessly blabbed on Facebook and Twitter. Hence Gaga gratuitously natters on about her vagina. In the sprawling anarchy of the web, the borderline between fact and fiction has melted away.
Yes, it’s a decade old, but it’s also a bravura piece of writing. read the whole thing.
IF IT DOESN’T GET YOU A VAX CARD WHAT’S THE POINT? One dose of Pfizer vaccine may be enough for folks who’ve had COVID: study.
KYLE SMITH ON CLARKSON’S FARM: Daddy Pig Attempts to Farm.
Clarkson’s Farm is a brilliant eight-episode reality series on Amazon Prime whose central figure does a spectacular job making himself look absurd. Jeremy Clarkson — a national treasure in Britain, still little known in the U.S. — is a soft-bellied, PC-hating, extremely wealthy 58-year-old fellow who made squillions hosting Top Gear, then was fired for punching a producer, then launched a knockoff show called The Grand Tour. He is also beloved for the curmudgeonly humor columns he writes for the British Sunday papers.
* * * * * * * *
But it’s not the many individual catastrophes that make the show so delightful; it’s the comic superstructure that sells it. Jeremy is every middle-aged man fighting time, bureaucrats, machinery, markets, pests, and God. He is a comedy Job for our times, and he serves as a lesson for all of us who have ever thought of embarking on a bold new project well outside our comfort zone: Don’t do it. You’ll probably fail. There’s a corollary to that, though: What you’re doing now is probably as good as it gets for you, so be happy with your lot. At least you’re not in London attempting to sell the wasabi you so proudly grew on your farm and discovering it’s worth a fraction of what your parking ticket just cost you.
It’s a surprisingly enjoyable series, which in a way, subtly recreates the power trio dynamic of Top Gear/The Grand Tour: Caleb as Richard Hammond, the bumpkin who ends up stealing the show, and “Cheerful Charlie” the agronomist as James May, a bright man full of knowledge, which Clarkson continually ignores, to his misfortune.
READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: You’re Not Going to Believe Why a Wisconsin School Spent $50K To Move a Rock.
BUT THE OAKS CAN’T HELP THEIR FEELINGS, IF THEY LIKE THE WAY THEY’RE MADE. AND THEY WONDER WHY THE MAPLES CAN’T BE HAPPY IN THEIR SHADE: Male trees aren’t making hayfever worse. Trees are actually ‘super queer,’ scientist explains.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: New Hampshire delivers a double victory for school choice.
JUST MSNBC THE WRECKAGE:
● Ben Shapiro Just Lights up MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance When He Pushes False Jan. 6 Narrative.
● Shapiro Fires Back At Democrats For Cozying Up To Dictators On ‘Real Time With Bill Maher.’
● Watch: Ben Shapiro Masterfully Breaks Down Critical Race Theory On Real Time With Bill Maher.
Exit quote from that last link: “Shapiro’s performance received praise on social media Friday night, following HBO’s airing. The praise was so effusive that his opponent, Nance, claimed that bots were hired to promote Shapiro’s appearance and denigrate his own, according to Newsweek.”
REPORTS FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Chicago students explain why increased crime, Lightfoot policies put them at risk.
MASKS ARE FOR SUCKERS: DJ posts stealth pics of Obama’s ‘epic’ birthday party — before being forced to delete them.
GREAT MOMENTS IN FISCAL PRIORITIES: Report: Denver Spends Double on Homeless Than on One K-12 Student.
SALENA ZITO: Where’d you go, Ohio? How a swing state went red.
I FELT A GRAVE DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE: Star Wars Shop Owner Tells Trans Council Member ‘You’re Not A Woman’ In Viral Confrontation.
CULTURE JAMMING: Memes Make It Clear: New York City’s Vaccine Passport Is the Real Jim Crow 2.0.
(Classical reference in headline.)
CLOSED MINDS ON BOTH SIDES: It’s an unfortunate fact that there are closed minds in the Christian ranks and on the other side. Dr. Tim McGrew looks at David Hume as the springboard to a challenging survey.
THE IMPERSONATOR: Eric Feigl-Ding, COVID-19, and an implicit far-left agenda.
But not everyone associated with Feigl-Ding was thrilled with the early panic promotion act. Feigl-Ding’s frequent use of Harvard-associated credentials to elevate his baseless COVID-19 proclamations greatly upset some of his colleagues (despite many of them advocating for the same draconian measures proposed by Feigl-Ding to “combat” the virus), and landed him in hot water with the academic institution.
Twitter, for reasons unknown, decided to credential him as a “COVID-19 health expert,” which further elevates his supposed legitimacy as an “expert” on the pandemic.
In mid March, Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, described him as a “charlatan exploiting a tenuous connection for self-promotion.”
The Association of Health Care Journalists also took notice, reporting that he has “precisely zero experience in infectious diseases.”
An unnamed source at Harvard told The Chronicle on Higher Education in April that Feigl-Ding has “been asked many times to stop promoting himself as having specialized knowledge.”
In recent months, Feigl-Ding updated his profile to show that he is no longer associated with Harvard. The reasons for his departure have not been made public.
Read the whole thing.
THE POLITICAL CLASS DOESN’T KNOW MANY ACTUAL VOTERS: VIDEO: Dems, Journos Keep Saying ‘Latinx’ Even Though Most Latinos Have No Idea What It Means. “The term is popular among woke activists, but just 4 percent of Latino Americans prefer it.”
SUE ME, SUE YOU BLUES:
● Major Teacher’s Union Sues Rhode Island Mother Who Asked Questions about Curriculum.
● Not The Onion: Runaway Texas lawmakers file frivolous lawsuit against Abbott, 2 other GOP leaders. “Best of all, the Democrats know this is a frivolous action and not worth the paper it’s written on – they are claiming $5 in actual damages and $10 in punitive damages. Sure sounds like something The Onion would publish, right? We’ll see if they show up in Austin today for the start of the special session. The only thing they accomplished in D.C. was a meeting with Kamala, but not Joe Biden, and they postponed the inevitable passage of election integrity reform legislation. Good work, Democrats.”
I DON’T THINK THE MARKET CONDITIONS JUSTIFY THIS: Surge In Law School Applicants Is Biggest Since Dot-Com Bubble.
Then again, they didn’t justify the dot-com bubble either.
August 7, 2021
A QUESTION LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE ASKING: COVID: Yes, There Are Tests for the Delta Variant.
It’s like the misinformation Olympics.
Anyway, this is a VIP piece. Promo code CHARLIE for the discount.
OPEN THREAD: Can’t stop the rock.
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, PEOPLE!
HMM: Did The CDC Director Just Accidentally Admit That Vaccination Passports Are Futile? The vaccines are, in fact, pretty effective. Vaccines generally don’t produce “sterilizing immunity” such that no germs grow in your body. Rather they prime your immune system to wipe the germs out before they produce illness. Given how the immune system works, that’s pretty inevitable.
The real question here is risk thresholds. People who have been vaccinated, or who have had Covid, pose a very low risk of infection to vulnerable people, and essentially zero risk to people who have themselves been vaccinated or who have had Covid.
I DUNNO, J.K. ROWLING DOES OKAY: Why Men Don’t Read Books by Women. “A writer for The Guardian, M. A. Sieghart, has asked the perennial question, ‘Why do so few men read books by women?’ Curiously, the people who always ask this question never follow up by asking how women authors might better appeal to men or how the publishing industry might get a better share of the underserved male-readership market. No, the assumption is always that men have something wrong with them and need to change. It’s not the books that are the problem, it’s you. The customer is in the wrong.”
Well, all media discussions of men start with the presumption that men are the problem, and are wrong. That’s because most consumers of media are women, who need to be pandered to.
Plus: “Danielle Steel writes trashy romances. Jojo Moyes writes trashy romances. Jane Austen wrote non-trashy romances. Atwood writes a variety of things but is best known for a pearl-clutching feminist screed that confuses Baptists with the Taliban, though she also churns out an occasional apocalyptic science-fiction novel disturbingly obsessed with child pornography. To put it briefly and bluntly, men don’t want to read that shit.”
Though interestingly Jane Austen was quite popular with men in her time, and didn’t get labeled as a women’s writer until much later.
Also: “By the way, the Japanese manga Demon Slayer outsold the entire American comic-book industry last year. This is not a coincidence.”
Related: From Jon Gabriel in the Arizona Republic: Obama scaled back his 60th birthday because of COVID-19. He should have made it bigger. “If you want to increase the number of people getting the jab, we need more healthy, happy, vaccinated people out there enjoying life. Grim threats from lab-coat bureaucrats have motivated everyone they can. Time for a full-on charm offensive. Instead of threatening vaccine passports, Mayor Bowser should hold a block party and invite every vaccinated D.C. resident. Speaker Pelosi should throw a bipartisan cookout on the steps of the Capitol — we know all the lawmakers are protected. And let Obama hold an epic birthday rager; heck, invite 1,000 more guests. Despite my vigorous defense of his right to party, I doubt I’ll be on the list. But I hope he has a very happy birthday anyway.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Right Needs A More Confrontational Politics.
SO FAR, THE TREND FOR THE 21ST CENTURY SEEMS TO SUPPORT THEIR APPROACH: ‘Preppers’ Quietly Stock Up for the ‘Perfect Storm.’
People, he said, are waking up to the worsening reality of supply chain disruptions and food shortages, and rapid political and social changes that all point toward “a perfect storm” just ahead.
The COVID-19 lockdowns and empty store shelves only served to heighten popular sentiment that the “old normal” is gone, he said.
“When the pandemic struck, we started seeing all this panic buying,” Maddox said. “What’s really increased is the number of people that contact me. These are really personal emails. They’re not crazy extremists. These are single moms, elderly people, disabled people, regular working people. They’re realizing that things are changing. They can just feel things are changing rapidly,” he said.
“The riots [of 2020] were bad. The election was bad. Now what’s happening is the whole world is starting to change.”
And not for the better.
FIGHT INEQUALITY: ABOLISH HIGHER EDUCATION. College Was Supposed to Close the Wealth Gap for Black Americans. The Opposite Happened.
Black millennials thought college would help them get ahead. Instead, it is setting them back.
The median net worth of households with Black college graduates in their 30s has plunged over the past three decades to less than one-tenth the net worth of their white counterparts, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. The drop is driven by skyrocketing student debt and sluggish income growth, which combine to make it difficult to build savings or buy a home. Now, the generation that hoped to close the racial wealth gap is finding it is only growing wider.
More than 84% of college-educated Black households in their 30s have student debt, up from 35% three decades ago, when many baby boomers were at the same age. The younger generation owes a median of $44,000, up from less than $6,000. By comparison, 53% of white college-educated households in their 30s have debt, up from 27% three decades earlier. The median amount rose to $35,000 from $8,000. All figures are adjusted for inflation.
Meanwhile, Black graduates’ household incomes have grown more slowly than those of college graduates in general, according to a Journal analysis of census data. Median income for Black college-educated households in their 30s increased 7% from the early 1990s to late 2010s to about $76,000. Income for their white counterparts rose 13% to about $114,000.
“Not only are Black families pretty far behind, they’ve fallen further and further behind for millennials,” said Ana Hernández Kent, a senior researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s Institute for Economic Equity. “It will be very difficult for these older Black millennials to build wealth.” . . .
The median net worth for Black households with college graduates in their 30s has fallen to $8,200 from about $50,400 three decades ago, the analysis found. Over the same period, their white peers saw their median net worth grow 17% to $138,000. Net worth is calculated by subtracting a person’s liabilities, such as mortgage and college debt, from assets like homes and stockholdings.
The Journal’s analysis is based on the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which examines household wealth, and census data. The analysis sorted the data by age, race and educational attainment. The Journal pooled results from 1989, 1992 and 1995 and compared that with results from surveys conducted in 2016 and 2019 to capture a larger number of college-educated families in their 30s than participate in a single survey.
Why didn’t President Obama do anything about this? Why isn’t President Biden addressing it?
BACK IN STOCK: Don’t Tread On Me Adjustable Snake Ring.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● Shot: Will Hollywood’s MeToo Movement Finally Hold Andrew Cuomo Accountable?
—Christian Toto, NewsBusters, today.
● Chaser: Hollywood Feminists Silent On Revelations That Time’s Up Helped Cuomo Undermine Accuser.
—The Daily Wire, yesterday.
Related: Birds of a Feather: Ralph Northam Won’t Call on Cuomo to Resign.
MY KIND OF UNDERWATER SPORT: Hunting Lionfish with a Glock. Video at the link.
Related item here.
GOOD LUCK, I WANT YOU TO KNOW WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU: Hillary’s coven wants you to like Kamala Harris.
The coven discussed using Harris’s record as a prosecutor to defend her against negative press coverage. What a truly brilliant strategy to remind voters of the very thing that sunk Harris’s presidential run. That’s why these ladies get paid the big bucks!
If you criticize them or Harris, though, you will be accused of ‘sexist overtones.’ Harris’s allies want to ‘make sure the press knows this’. It’s much easier to blame Harris’s low approval ratings on bigotry rather than her own poor performance.
Translation: Democratic Party brass has given its operatives with bylines their marching orders, and is promising to shame them if they refuse to comply. “You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line,” to coin a phrase. It will fun to see who does.
As Jon Gabriel adds, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Kamala’s critics into what I call the basket of deplorables. But what difference, at this point, does it make? I think her new PR team will easily wipe away all the bad coverage, like with a cloth or something.”
OLD AND BUSTED: Apple still refuses to unlock iPhones, so Bill Barr is mad.
—Young-adult site* Vox.com, May 18th, 2020.
The new Hotness? Apple is opening a Pandora’s box with its upcoming software update:
Apple has announced it will install a program on iPhones in the United States that will persistently scan users’ photos and flag those its algorithm believes to be related to child abuse.
Flagged photos will then be reviewed by humans to determine if they violate any laws. Once implemented, the measure will affect roughly one-third of people in the U.S.
Although the goals of this initiative are noble, its implications are dire. We learned last month that the federal government is actively advising social media platforms on what constitutes disinformation, sometimes even going as far as to single out individual posts and users for removal. Bear in mind, many things branded disinformation throughout the pandemic have turned out to be true.
What could possibly go wrong?
Orwell didn’t write 1984 as a how-to guide. As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.
YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Erick Erickson just got suspended from Twitter for this tweet.
More here: Twitter Has Kicked Erick Erickson off… for Being ‘Pro-Science.’
JOURNO TWITTER RUNS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION:
Within 24 hours, Joe Biden, having declared several times that he did not have the authority for such an order, complied with Alcindor’s request, to the delight of her fellow blue-check reporters. Alcindor is also pushing the administration to levy penalties on states that do not comply with a national and federal mask mandate, such as Florida. Who knows how that will turn out for them…
While the President himself may not know how to use a computer, 137 years of age that he is, his comms team follow the example of the acting president in the Chief of Staff’s office. They appear to be Way More Online than even the administration of ‘the Former Guy’.
Left-leaning journalists know they can nudge this administration in the direction they want it to go with their tweets. The trouble is, not many more people besides self-promoting journalists have dominant voices on Twitter. There’s an insular bubble in Washington DC containing the blue-checks and the administration. Who knows how their shared policy vision will sit with the people outside it?
Well, here are a few clues:
● New York Magazine Writer Baffled by Support for the Rule of Law.
● Biden Administration Extends Pause on Federal Student-Loan Repayment Until January 2022.
Regarding that last item, as Stephen Miller tweets, “Cool so pandemic panic porn will be going until at least the end of next January.“
THIN AIR THERAPY: The unexpected medical benefits of hypoxia.
This isn’t entirely surprising. As Bill Broad noted in his very interesting book on the science of yoga, while yoga practitioners talk about flooding the body with oxygen, many yoga poses and breathing routines actually lower oxygen and increase CO2. And that can be beneficial.
FROM THE ALOHA STATE: STOP COMING HERE: The Hawaii Tourism Authority wants fewer tourists. Careful what you wish for.
THE BCG VACCINE HAS BEEN LOOKING PROMISING FOR A WHILE: Old vaccine for tuberculosis may help protect older people against COVID-19.
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Potential COVID-19 medication found among tapeworm drugs.
THE HUNGARY GAMES:
● Rod Dreher on point: Tucker To Hungary, Nixon To China.
Which brings us to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. It is quite sensible that Tucker Carlson and other conservatives would want to figure out what the leader of this small, relatively poor Central European country has done to hold off those like George Soros and the woke leadership of the European Union, to defend his country and its sovereignty. With our own conservative establishment either neutered or sidelined by pointless lib-owning enthusiasms, thinkers of the American Right who actually care about saving our civilization ought to be coming to Hungary and Poland to study these places, and to make common cause with these people. They could use our solidarity — and we can certainly use theirs.
● And also from Dreher: Viktor Orbán is winning his culture war.
As an American, I have seen how the madness of gender studies has migrated in the blink of an eye from a once-fringe academic discipline to a commanding ideology of the Western ruling class and its institutions. Along with critical race theory, gender ideology is tearing American apart. To dissent from gender ideology in any way — even, as J.K. Rowling did, as a left-wing feminist — is to risk your career. Academic freedom is an important liberal value, but it cannot be society’s suicide note.
In late spring, I spoke with Peter Kreko, a widely admired Budapest professor who is a well-known liberal critic of the Orbán government. He told me that he strongly opposes the government’s policies against gay marriage and gay adoption, but added, mildly, that ‘I don’t follow the logic’ of transgenderism. Later in our interview, he conceded that for all his criticism of Orbán and Fidesz, he can say whatever he likes in his classroom without fear of retribution.
I pointed out to him that in many American universities, he could not say what he had earlier in our talk — that he strongly supported gay rights, but was slightly uncertain about the trans phenomenon — without facing swift denunciation from his students, and pressure to resign. The college administration probably would not stand by his right to academic freedom, and would find some reason to cut him loose. His reputation as a bigot secured, he would never work in academia again.
None of this would come from the state. It would all come from the militant, illiberal ideology that has seized control of American academia. So who is more free to speak his mind: a professor in Orbán’s Hungary, or a professor in the US?
● Jonah Goldberg on counterpoint: Nationalists Turn Their Lonely Eyes to Hungary.
So, as a matter of practical politics, I think this is really an absurd waste of time. And as a matter of intellectual or cultural politics, I think it’s ill-advised. Flirting with a personality cult surrounding a corrupt, demagogic foreign leader who—justifiably or not—has earned a reputation as a wannabe despot is a great way to limit the appeal of your arguments and invite skepticism about your larger motives. Please note the lawyerly precision of the previous statement. I’m not saying that everyone celebrating the Hungarian model is a would-be authoritarian or nativist. I’m saying that getting overly enthusiastic about Orbánism is needlessly lending ammo to those who would make that charge.
But what I will say is that I find all of this stuff to be a depressing sign of conservative rot. For my entire adult life, conservatives have heaped scorn—and rightly so—on progressives who looked to Europe for inspiration on how to transform America. “Europe banned guns!” progressives would exclaim. “So what? We’re not Europe,” conservatives would answer. You can substitute the progressive pleading about how “Europe has socialized medicine!” or “Europe has a massive welfare state!” etc., and the argument stays the same. Sometimes it wasn’t Europe, but Scandinavia or Germany. Or, before that, Italy and the Soviet Union. Heck, in the 1980s, liberal technocrats cast their Atari Democrat gaze on Japan. In the 1990s, the Thomas Friedman crowd smushed their collective noses against the candy store window of China, and longingly cried, “I want a piece of that!” But the argument was always the same.
We report, you decide.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Well, you might as well look to Hungary, as you’re not going to find any inspiration coming from Jonah Goldberg.
PROGRESS: SpaceX briefly puts together largest rocket in history at Texas base. “SpaceX briefly constructed the largest rocket ever made Friday, attaching the U.S. aerospace company’s Starship spacecraft to the Super Heavy booster at its facility in Texas. The combined height of the structure was 400 feet, nearly 40 feet taller than the next largest Saturn V rocket built by NASA. The SpaceX rocket, though, will have about twice as much thrust as Saturn V, 70 meganewtons compared to 25 meganewtons.”
ROGER SIMON: Hagerty Holds Up the Senate—for Good Reason.
An article in the Washington Times this morning—“GOP Sen. Hagerty blocks Democrats from expediting $1.2T infrastructure bill in late-night session”—made this bald guy’s hair stand on end this morning.
“Sen. Bill Hagerty blocked Democrats from ramming through President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill late Thursday, only hours after the package was found to be not fully paid for as promised.
“Mr. Hagerty, a first-term Republican from Tennessee, refused to sign off on a deal between Democratic and GOP lawmakers to expedite passage of the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer had worked out an agreement with Republicans to pass a series of amendments to the infrastructure package en masse.
“If successful, the tactic would have all but ended debate on the bill, setting up a final vote for Saturday. To succeed, however, all 100 members of the Senate had to acquiesce, something Mr. Hagerty refused.”
It appears Hagerty had a good reason. A report had just come in from the Congressional Budget Office detailing that the bill, which had been ballyhooed as revenue neutral (i.e., “No new taxes,” as the saying goes), was coming in all of a quarter of trillion dollars short.
Who pays for that? Well, we know. And then there’s the little matter of the astronomical national debt no one’s supposed to care about.
Bravo, Bill Hagerty!
But where were the rest of the supposedly fiscally-responsible Republicans?
Arguing with Hagerty to get him to change his mind, according to Examiner reporter Haris Alic, so they could go off on vacation. It’s the dog days of August, so the beaches were calling, and, besides, Schumer & Co. were going to get their way in the end anyway. The rancid Green New Deal was next.
Yet, Hagerty held his ground. And, to be clear, the freshman senator is no naive freshman, wet behind the ears. He was the ambassador to Japan, not exactly a lightweight job.
This kind of report, assuming it’s accurate, and unfortunately it reads true, makes you wonder about many of your favorite senators talk a good game on television but when the rubber meets the road (hate that expression, but it’s still early in the morning) don’t come through.
Much more like this, please.
THAT’S BECAUSE THE THREAT OF THE “DELTA VARIANT” IS EXAGGERATED: J&J’s COVID-19 jab holds up against Delta variant, study finds.
NAVY COULD RETURN TO USING PHOTOS FOR PROMOTIONS: “The Navy could include service photos in promotion packages again after data suggested minorities are less likely to be selected blindly in some situations by promotion review boards, the service’s chief of personnel said Tuesday… [Marine Brig. Gen. A.T. Williamson said,] ‘There are elements of the photo that are…very helpful for us. I think that we may find that we may have disadvantaged individuals by removing those photos from the boards.'”
I kept waiting for the twist that would tell me that this isn’t what it looks like, but it never came.
FAKE NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Babylon Bee Guide To All The Different Christian Denominations.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: The new COVID hysteria contagious among conservatives.
When Donald Trump was in the White House, conservatives lauded Operation Warp Speed. They viewed Pfizer’s decision not to seek emergency authorization for its COVID vaccine until after the November 2020 election as an attempt to deny Trump a much-needed and deserved boost at the ballot box. Liberals, meanwhile, from Kamala Harris to Andrew Cuomo, expressed skepticism about the safety of a Trump-overseen vaccine. Now that Joe Biden is president, the conservative outer fringes are portraying COVID vaccines as bioweapons designed by ‘globalist psychopaths’, while liberals are decrying vaccine hesitancy as a pathology of right-wingers, ignoring the even higher rate of skepticism among blacks.
Many conservatives would insist that their opposition focuses on vaccine mandates, rather than on the vaccines themselves. But the distinction is not sharply drawn. The media and the numerous Democratic interest groups will never stop hyping COVID case counts as a way to keep society in lockdown or its next best alternatives: universal masking and crippling social distancing rules. If the last year and a half has taught anything, it is that no amount of rational argument can counter the siren song of fear. The only way to defeat the case count racket and return human life to some semblance of normalcy is to eliminate rising case counts entirely. Vaccines are a proven way of doing so, whose risks at this point pale in comparison with the destructiveness of COVID hysteria. Conservatives should be promoting their use, including mandates for healthcare workers, once the object of saccharine nightly tributes of horn blowing and pot banging, now among the staunchest of vax-resisters.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Ignoring Them Is the Only Way Out. “My view is, I think, the normal one that it’s urgently necessary for vulnerable people to get it but that it is insane, evil, and innumerate to delay normalcy for children until there’s a pediatric vaccine. But getting vaccines into arms doesn’t guarantee an end to public-health interference…If you asked public-health authorities for permission to be born and live a life, there’s no way they could just, you know, approve of that in an unqualified way. You just have to remember that you’ll never be in less danger to yourself or others until dead. They’re waiting for us — the people. The people began locking down and shutting in and buying masks last February, when public-health officials were telling you that masks were racist and that you should attend Chinese New Year parades to show you weren’t afraid. The people began traveling out more — based on the Google traffic data — before the lockdowns were eased. When does it end? When we end it.”
JACK DUNPHY: In Progressive Washington State, Criminal Justice Reform Only a Criminal Could Love.
Imagine a family so imprudent as to have chosen to vacation in Seattle this summer. They are walking from their downtown hotel on their way the Pike Place Market, and as they weave through the homeless drug addicts lining the sidewalk they are set upon by robbers, who at gunpoint relieve them of their money, cameras, jewelry, and cellphones. The robbers drive off in a white Toyota.
The unfortunate tourists call 911 and provide the police with a description of the robbers and the getaway car in the hope that responding officers will spot the culprits before they can make a clean escape. An officer on patrol nearby sees a white Toyota, the occupants of which match the description provided by the victims. The officer drives up behind the Toyota and attempts to pull it over. Rather than stop for the police, the Toyota driver hits the gas and speeds off. What happens next?
A car chase, you say, at the conclusion of which the evil-doers are arrested and the stolen property is returned to its rightful owners.
Incorrect. The Toyota is allowed to drive off unmolested, the occupants free to dispose of the victims’ belongings as they please. This is Seattle, Washington, we’re talking about, where the state lawmakers, in their wisdom, have enacted House Bill 1310, which restricts the police from using force in any circumstance where they lack probable cause to make an arrest.
Good and hard.
NIGEL FARAGE Beats BBC and Sky News Combined in Ratings.
Plus: “The BBC — which is funded by a mandatory ‘licence’ imposed on anyone who watches live television, even if they do not consume any BBC content — is said to be facing a ‘crisis’, with one million households stopping their payments of the TV tax in the past two years.”
BYRON YORK: For the FBI, a Shameful Anniversary. The launch of Operation Crossfire Hurricane, a partisan political disinformation operation run at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
A friend messages: “Crossfire Hurricane was a political disinformation campaign? I thought it was a conspiracy to commit insurrection.”
Embrace the power of “and.”
SIXTY PERCENT OF THE TIME, IT WORKS EVERY TIME: Biden Slips Up, Says 350 Million Americans Have Been Vaccinated Against COVID-19. “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019, the country’s population was estimated to be 328,239,523. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website reports that 193,199,353 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 165,637,566 have been fully vaccinated, as of Thursday evening. The CDC notes that 403,047,945 doses of the vaccine have been delivered, but only 348,966,419 have been administered to people. Biden has previously mixed up numbers while listing statistics.”
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: Student paper omits race of assault suspect despite linking to police report which mentions it.
On July 22 a female UM student was attacked in downtown Ann Arbor by a “middle-aged black male, about 5’11’’, medium build, medium skin tone,” according to a UM Department of Public Safety and Security bulletin. The suspect also wore a “navy ball cap with a yellow block M and either a dark black, gray, or blue shirt,” and was riding a “mountain bike that may have been silver in color.”
The Daily‘s description: “The perpetrator was described in the bulletin as a medium-build, middle-aged man wearing a navy ball cap with a yellow block M on it.”
They’ve already learned the importance of promoting a narrative.
“BASED ON JEFFREY TOOBIN’S BOOK:” Cobie Smulders to Play Ann Coulter in ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ After Betty Gilpin Exits.
As Glenn noted earlier this week, “#Metoo Stopped Mattering the Day Gropey Joe Biden Was Nominated.”
ANTISEMITISM IS COOL NOW ON THE LEFT: Berkeley instructor says ‘Jews have been overwhelmingly abandoned by progressive activists.’
OLD AND BUSTED: “We Are All Socialists Now.”
The New Hotness? We’re All Gonna Die! Newsweek takes the Covid fear mongering to the next level with warning about looming ‘Doomsday variant:’
I thought net neutrality had already killed everyone off three years ago?
THE ECONOMIC CASE AGAINST NEW MASK MANDATES.
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