YEAH, THEY TRIED TO PULL THAT ON ME YEARS AGO: U. San Diego Law Prof. Thomas Smith Harshly Criticized Chinese Gov’t, Now Faces False Claims Of Ethnic Bias.
The CCP is not the Chinese people. Much less people of Chinese ethnicity. My most notably sinophile friend hates Winnie the Xi with undying passion.
OPENING OUR BORDERS IS NOT AN ACT OF KINDNESS: Children in Danger: Where is Madeisy Batista?
HOW DARE PUBLIC SERVANTS RESENT ABUSIVE TREATMENT? Cops’ posts to private Facebook group show hostility, hate.
COMPENSATION FOR BEING SHUT DOWN BY GOVERNMENT? Wichita Eagle tortures the truth opposing COVID compensation law.
Why, that’s just crazy talk. Next you’ll say there’s a law against illegal takings….
THE TABLE IS ALWAYS SET AT THE CANNIBAL FEAST: When The Cancel Culture Eats Its Own.
THEY’RE OUT OF IDEAS. THEY’RE RUNNING ON FUMES: Nah, It’ll Be Fine: Entertainment Vlogger The Critical Drinker Hammers Cultural Corruption.
They’re not just wounded pigs. They’re cornered wounded pigs. And they’re desperate.
BUT MOST OF ALL THE STUPID: Lockdown Year: The Good, The Bad, The Very Ugly.
This whole thing is the stupid leading the stupid. None of these measures are useful. They’re all, however, completely insane.
Reagan was wrong. The scariest phrase in English is “We’re from the government and we’re here to derp, and you will obey us.”
SHE’S AT LEAST AS DEMENTED AS HE IS: NY Times Maureen Dowd Thinks Joe Biden Is Cool.
Though if by “cool” she means in deep freeze somewhere and being played by a bumbling double, I’m willing to entertain it. I mean, I don’t think so. I think Zhou Bai-Den was never that smart and now is a potted plant, but what the heck, I’m not a part insider.
SURE, BECAUSE IF TRUMP DIDN’T EXIST BIDEN WOULDN’T BE IN POWER: DHS Secretary Mayorkas Blames Trump For Biden’s Border Woes.
Hillary would be. And none of us would know about the border crisis. Because anyone leaking it would commit suicide with two shots to the back of the head.
See, it makes perfect sense, right?
IT WON’T WORK: They Can’t Drag Us to the Past.
The left is a cargo cult at variance with reality. Those can exist only for limited times. And I’m sick and tired of Doomers and Actchually people.
“WHEN YOU ACT OUT OF FEAR, YOU MAKE SERIOUS TACTICAL ERRORS:” The Filibuster Fight Is About Dems’ Fear Of Losing Control.
AT HELEN’S PAGE: COFFEES FROM ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE.
SO EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT WILLIAM SHATNER’S UPCOMING 90TH BIRTHDAY, and mostly about Captain Kirk. But, you know, he owned the role of Denny Crane in Boston Legal.
I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE PROMISED A RETURN TO NORMALCY. THIS ISN’T THAT. Is Joe Biden Really Doing the Job of President? Nearly Half of Voters Doubt It.
CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO MAKE ANY CRITICISM OF CHINA A POLITICAL THOUGHT CRIME: San Diego Law School “Must Immediately Cease Its Investigation” Into Prof. Thomas Smith Over China Criticism, Demands Free Speech Group. In letter to Dean Robert Schapiro, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education writes: “Smith’s post on his personal blog is an exercise of extramural expression, a right USD Law expressly provides to its faculty…. Accordingly, we call on USD Law to immediately disband its investigation into Smith.”
And you can learn a lot about who’s on the payroll, or at least on the team, by tracking who’s repeating PRC/CCP talking points.
And Dean Robert Schapiro supposedly teaches Constitutional Law.
NANCY ROMMELMANN: The Dream of the ’90s Died in Portland.
Wheeler, who’d squeaked past openly pro-antifa challenger Sarah Iannarone to win reelection, issued an anodyne press release, thanking voters for giving him a second chance and stating that Portland “is not a perfect place, and we have many historical inequities to repair, but this is a very special place.”
There were other signs people had had enough of the violence. Commissioner Eudaly, a favorite of the activists, was unseated by someone backed by the police union. And when I asked a local news editor, whose paper had pretty much been in the bag for the protests, if he had a contact at the PNW Youth Liberation Front, he wrote back, “If I had the names of the little criminals who run PNWYLF, I would have published them! [If they] were all torn apart by bears, as in the book of II Kings, I would consider that the work of the Lord.”
The situation in Portland did not improve after the election. Activists kept marching nightly. They swarmed the house of a newly elected city commissioner because he’d voted against the latest measure to defund the police. They vandalized 27 businesses along a six-block strip in Northeast Portland. They established an “autonomous zone” called Red House, ostensibly in support of a black and Native American family facing eviction. And on New Year’s Eve, they used Molotov cocktails and other high-powered incendiary devices to cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage in downtown.
Long but well worth a read, to see a leftist-monopoly city implode gradually, and then suddenly, to paraphrase Hemingway on bankruptcy.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Scientific American asks if climate anxiety is ‘a form of white fragility or even racial anxiety.’
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Yes. The answer is yes.
ENTIRELY ADEQUATE NUMBERS, IF LESS IMPRESSIVE THAN SOME OTHERS: AstraZeneca says U.S. trial shows COVID-19 vaccine almost 80% effective.
Though interestingly, I know one person who got the Astra Zeneca vaccine last summer in a trial, and she also came down with Covid recently. Ironically, she’s the most Covid-paranoid person I know. Her case, however, consistent with the findings above, was quite mild. Her take: “I’ve had worse hangovers plenty of times.”
Then again, that was basically my Covid experience too, with no vaccine.
IF IT’S NOT CLOSE, THEY CAN’T CHEAT: Report: Democrats Going All In to Take Iowa House Seat They Lost by Six Votes.
(Classical reference in headline.)
RACISM STRAIGHT UP: Report: Top Health Insurance Provider Tells Employees Not To Hire White Men.
SEEN ON HELEN’S PAGE: Free Military Thriller.
I MAY BE WRONG, BUT I FEEL LIKE THE “VARIANTS” ARE BEING OVERSOLD: Existing vaccines may protect against the Brazilian coronavirus variant.
Also, if “Chinese coronavirus” is racist, why isn’t “Brazil coronavirus variant” racist? Answer: Brazil isn’t bribing and blackmailing academics and journalists.
PUSHING BACK AGAINST WOKE IDIOCY AND PRO-PRC SYCOPHANCY: Academic Freedom Alliance stands with USD Law Professor in China Controversy. “Not only is the interpretation of Professor Smith’s phrasing as a slur based on race or national origin a tendentious misreading of the blog post in question, but the suggestion that a single phrase in a single blog post commenting on the behavior of the Chinese government and international health agencies can trigger the procedures of the university’s harassment policy sends a chilling message to all faculty.”
That’s what it’s meant to do.
Plus: “The Academic Freedom Alliance calls upon USD leadership to adhere to its academic freedom principles by rescinding its denunciation of Professor Smith and terminating all disciplinary proceedings against him based on his March 10, 2021 blog post.”
THE REST OF IT, HE WASTED: Self-Proclaimed Black Lives Matter Leader Indicted For Spending Donations On House, Guns, And Prostitute. He doesn’t look very black in the picture.
MARK JUDGE: Matt Damon and What Makes a Good Death.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: California’s 2021 Job Killers.
Much of California has been completely shut down or at a reduced capacity for the past year. Unemployment is still high, with approximately one million individuals out of work compared to the year before the pandemic hit. According to EDD, almost every sector of the economy saw a reduction in their workforce in 2020. Small businesses have shut down, or are barely holding on. It is estimated that about 44% of small businesses are at risk of shutting down permanently as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Small business revenue is down more than 30% in California, with some sectors being down more than 70%. According to Visit California, hospitality and tourism lost $59 billion in 2020 and California is not likely to reach pre-pandemic travel related spending until 2025. And while the increased vaccine distribution is promising and providing optimism that we may be close to the end of this pandemic, no one knows for sure. The Governor and federal government continue to remind people to be vigilant against the virus to curb any rise in infections.
Despite the uncertainty, loss, and devastation to California’s economy, the Legislature has introduced bills to: (1) increase taxes on targeted groups of Californians, even though California currently has a $15 billion surplus with another $151 billion coming from the federal relief package to state and local governments, schools and other sectors; (2) expand labor and employment mandates including additional protected leaves, new threats of litigation and costs, and forced unionization, all of which will burden struggling employers; and (3) even though it is well acknowledged that California has a significant housing shortage, there are bills to limit or eliminate housing production in the State. There is also a bill that will eliminate oil and gas production in this State to address climate change, even though it will put thousands out of work and make California more reliant on importing oil and gas from other states or countries with less restrictive environmental laws than California. And finally, a proposal has been introduced to completely overhaul the entire healthcare system in California, while we are still in a pandemic, and have the Government take over and manage it.
Coming soon? The Californication Of America.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Cuomo had staffers document which networks covered his press briefings and for how many minutes a day: Report.
A VIP TWOFER FOR OUR GOLD MEMBERS: Why My Trust in the Military Has Been Shattered.
I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it is to write these words, but my trust in the military has been shattered by its rapid surrender to the Woke Brigades that took over Washington on January 20.
As many others have noted, over the last 30 years or so, the military has consistently been our last remaining public institution enjoying broad public support.
Under the Biden Administration, our armed forces are becoming just as politicized as the DOJ under Eric Holder, Lois Lerner’s IRS office, or James Comey’s FBI.
Our Infotainment Industry, which just spent the last four years crying “Fascist!” about President Donald Trump and any Republican to the right of Mitt Romney, is mostly silent.
That one is from, and here’s another from our managing editor, Paula Bolyard: Berkeley Prof Robert Reich Knows the REAL Reason We Oppose D.C. Statehood. Can You Guess?
You really can’t.
But if you aren’t already a VIP subscriber, don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code.
DON SURBER: Government experts do not know what they are doing. “Ashli Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who stormed the Capitol on January 6. The overwhelmed Capitol Police panicked. An officer shot and killed her in the only violent death that day. It was the first act of the post-President Trump regime. A media that spent all summer bestowing sainthood on a man who died from a drug overdose has stoically ignored Babbitt’s tragic death at the hands of a police officer. Between the metro police, the Capitol Police, and the assorted law enforcement arms of various government agencies, Washington has the highest number of cops per capita in the nation. Nevertheless, Congress dragged in 25,000 Guardsmen from across the nation to protect buildings from imaginary attacks by right-wing boogie men. None dared call it crazy but it is, was, and always will be crazy.”
ENVIRONMENTALISTS MAKE GOOD VILLAINS BECAUSE THEY GENUINELY WANT TO MAKE YOUR LIFE WORSE: THE HARM DONE BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS. The environment is just the excuse.
WELL, THAT’S NOT GOOD: Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” Beta Is Just Laughably Bad and Potentially Dangerous.
HIT BACK TWICE AS HARD: Defamation? Babylon Bee Is Considering Legal Options to Counter NYT Cheap Shot.
INTRODUCING A BIGGER BLOG: A Timeline of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Nursing Home Scandals.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: One of Our Presidents Is Missing!
Where’s Presidentish Joe Biden when you need him most?
Scratch that. Poor wording on Insanity Wrap’s part. No one has ever needed Biden, except as the occasional hatchet-man for bad Democratic projects like the 1994 crime bill and poisoning the well for judicial confirmations.
But you know what we mean: The country, we’re obliged to at least stipulate, needs a president. And Biden is AWOL.
Welcome, one and all, to a special “One of Our Presidents Is Missing” special edition of Insanity Wrap.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Biden White House…
…but were afraid was true.
WILL THIS BE LIKE DIESEL? Volkswagen Announces EV Battery Push.
I BELIEVE THIS. Happiness Can Be Learned.
WELL, THEY WERE SHOWN MONTHS OF PANICMONGERING BY THE MEDIA: Majority Of Americans Grossly Overestimated COVID-19 Hospitalization Rates.
ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE ENGINEERS: Astronauts in crewed missions to Mars could misread vital emotional cues.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY IN MUTTI MERKEL’S GERMANY: Several German states want German COVID curbs extended to April: draft plan.
HELEN’S PAGE, PHASE TWO: So, thanks to all the InstaPundit readers who served as volunteer testers, we’re now ready to invite people over to look around the site. It’s not done yet, as there are still some issues we’re nailing down, but a lot of you have been curious about how the site is coming along, so I thought it would be nice to have an Open House. Poke around the place, look at our sample listings for books, legal, furniture, films, or whatever strikes your fancy.
Hope you like it! Feel free to put up a listing of your own if you like; listing is free for 30 days, but you will have to register and enter payment information to confirm that you’re a real person. Browsing is open to everyone, though, just click to agree to the terms of use and look around.
WHAT WENT WRONG: The Sinking of the Golden Ray.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS EXCLUSIVE: Read the Shocking Pentagon Training Materials Targeting Conservatives in the Military.
SHOCKER: Bill Moyers casually smears the Federalist Society with laughably false claim.
I haven’t forgotten that Bill Moyers asked the FBI to investigate two men who were “suspected as having homosexual tendencies.”
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT, BIDEN’S GOTTA GIVE IT: Democrats Push ‘Drive Plastic Manufacturing To China’ Act. “Congressional Democrats are offering up a bill whose effects will be to destroy the American plastics industry and drive manufacturing to China.”
THE PRESS IS HIDING THIS BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PIN IT ON TRUMP: Project Veritas Exposes SHOCKING Images of Kids Packed Like Sardines in Border Facility.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Apple and Facebook’s Fight Isn’t Actually About Privacy or Tracking.
Apple isn’t going to stop developers from tracking you. It’s also not against personalized ads, as Facebook refers to the targeted advertising it shows you based on your internet activity. If you want to share everything you do online with Facebook, Apple won’t stop you. In that case, a developer can still collect the IDFA for the purpose of targeting ads or tracking conversions.
Apple is just going to require developers to be transparent about what data they want to collect and how they want to use it. Then, they have to ask your permission.
That’s what the real fight is over–transparency. And, it’s why Facebook is so worried.
Facebook’s problem is that, if given a choice, many people will choose not to allow tracking. A recent survey from AppsFlyer, an attribution data platform, shows that almost half of all users (47 percent) are likely to opt-out of tracking.
That’s the dirty little secret it would rather not talk about. Facebook doesn’t want you to think about tracking, and certainly doesn’t want you to have a choice.
In other words, it’s a very progressive firm.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HATE: USC College Republicans expose abusive messages sent to conservative students.
The College Republicans at the University of Southern California have taken matters into their own hands to expose abusive messages sent to conservative students after they say university officials have done nothing to help stop the online bullying.
The initiative is called Trojan Truths and aims to expose and challenge the hateful messages they have received from others on campus by publishing the comments for the world to see.
The series consists of actual screenshots of messages sent to center-right students from peers, edited to conceal full names. The USC GOP then adds thoughtful rebuttals.
I think it’s generous to conceal the names. I don’t think hatemailers have a legitimate expectation of privacy.
WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? Noem ‘Neutered’ Bill Protecting Women’s Sports. “Gov. Noem’s veto would scrap the vast majority of the bill text and would strip protections for female athletes in collegiate sports in the state. Additionally, it would eliminate all reasonable enforcement mechanisms, neutering the legislation so much as to render it meaningless.”
WELL, THAT’S WHAT SOCIALISTS DO — THEY STEAL THINGS AND THEY CENSOR PEOPLE: Anti-socialism memorial vanishes overnight. “The Young Conservatives of Texas at Sam Houston State University set up a memorial on the evening of Feb. 23 to honor victims of socialism only to find it gone the next morning. The night before an event against socialism, the Young Conservatives of Texas at Sam Houston State University planted 1,000 red flags on the lawn near the Lowman Student Center to represent the more than 94 million lives lost to socialism. The next morning, however, the flags were nowhere to be found.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Israeli company says oral COVID-19 vaccine on its way. “Oramed’s technology can be used to orally administer a number of protein-based therapies, which would otherwise be delivered by injection. Oramed is in the midst of a Phase III clinical trial through the US Food and Drug Administration of an oral insulin capsule for type I and type II diabetics.”
The “faster, please” seems a little presumptuous, given how quickly Warp Speed and other programs have produced results.
A BREAKDOWN OF ANTI-ASIAN “HATE CRIMES:”
The best data I’ve found for 2020, the salient period for this discussion, are provisional data on complaints and arrests for hate crimes against Asians in New York City, one of two cities which seem to have been most affected. They record 20 such arrests in 2020. Of those 20 offenders, 11 were African-American, two Black-Hispanic, two white, and five white Hispanics. Of the black offenders, a majority were women. The bulk happened last March, and they petered out soon after. If you drill down on some recent incidents in the news in California, and get past the media gloss to the actual mugshots, you also find as many black as white offenders.
This doesn’t prove much either, of course. Anti-Asian bias, like all biases, can infect anyone of any race, and the sample size is small and in one place. But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.
And, given the headlines, the other thing missing is a little perspective. Here’s a word cloud of the victims of hate crimes in NYC in 2020. You can see that anti-Asian hate crimes are dwarfed by those against Jews, and many other minorities. And when you hear about a 150 percent rise in one year, it’s worth noting that this means a total of 122 such incidents in a country of 330 million, of which 19 million are Asian. Even if we bring this number up to more than 3,000 incidents from unreported and far less grave cases, including “shunning”, it’s small in an aggregate sense. A 50 percent increase in San Francisco from 2019 – 2020, for example, means the number of actual crimes went from 6 to 9.
Is it worse than ever? No. 2020 saw 122 such hate incidents. In 1996, the number was 350. Many incidents go unreported, of course, and hideous comments, slurs and abuse don’t count as hate “crimes” as such. I’m not discounting the emotional scars of the kind of harassment this report cites. I’m sure they’ve increased. They’re awful. Despicable. Disgusting.
But the theory behind hate crimes law is that these crimes matter more because they terrify so many beyond the actual victim. And so it seems to me that the media’s primary role in cases like these is providing some data and perspective on what’s actually happening, to allay irrational fear. Instead they contribute to the distortion by breathlessly hyping one incident without a single provable link to any go this — and scare the bejeezus out of people unnecessarily.
It’s not unnecessary if it’s necessary to their chosen political narrative.
Also, if anti-Asian hate crimes are such a white-supremacist thing, why do most of them occur in deep-Blue cities? (Bumped).
UPDATE: Related: “Everyone who’s posting ‘stop Asian hate’ should need to publicly take a position on whether universities should be allowed to systematically exclude many Asian applicants for the explicit reason that they are Asian. It’s easy to post the trending hashtag of the day in response to a clearly horrific mass murder, but would you ever be willing to speak out against less visible forms of discrimination against Asian-Americans?”
Also: Anti-Asian “hatred” shows up mostly in university admissions.
Plus: Dear White Liberals, We Asians Aren’t Your Pawns. “My brother replied that there were over 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian violence last year, yet you didn’t check on us. The friend said he didn’t know. My brother said, of course not—because no one besides us Asians cared. But now that you see a perp is a white male from the South, you start to care. You have to make this about YOU making a political statement rather than really caring about us, the Asian Americans. . . . My brother told his ‘friend,’ or his ‘ally,’ to snap out of trying to be the white savior.”
THE TIMELINE THAT UPENDED EASTER DEBATE: There are 13 days left before Easter, so there is a bit more talk than usual about the event that precipitated the holiday. It wasn’t that long ago that doctoral students claiming a literal resurrection of Christ would be laughed off campus.
But the debate has radically changed in recent years, due in great part to the timeline Dr. Gary Habermas explains in this excerpt from a famous lecture he delivered at the Veritas Forum. It’s based entirely on sources skeptics and believers largely agree are credible. That’s why it changed the debate from derision to a genuinely open discussion.
COME SEE THE RACISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: ‘Teen Vogue’ Staffer Who Seized on New Editor’s Racist Tweets Had Racist Tweets of Her Own.
CHANGE: The New U.S. News Law School Rankings Methodology: Implications And Predictions. For the first time, they’re punishing schools with high graduate debt, which is a good thing. The weighting may not seem like much, but given that the rankings are actually pretty tight, even a small difference in score can move a school several places.
MICHAEL BARONE: What explains Biden’s chameleon-like transformation?
About the Biden transformation, there can be no question. The senator who opposed government financing of abortions for 30-some years now supports it up through the ninth month of pregnancy.
The Judiciary Committee chairman who sponsored and bragged about the tough provisions of the 1994 crime bill now decries systemic racism and echoes almost the entire Black Lives Matter mantra.
The politician who supported the welfare reform bill that Speaker Newt Gingrich kept pressing until Bill Clinton, facing reelection, decided to sign it in 1996, has now concocted “COVID relief” legislation that includes multiple thousand-dollar payments to single mothers with no work requirements.
I don’t think Biden has any view anymore. I think he’s just a vessel for his handlers at this point.
Related: There Is No Biden Administration. “Biden’s face is everywhere, but there’s no real sign that he’s actually running anything. Instead the Biden administration seems to be exactly the kind of mess that the 25th Amendment was designed to prevent in which a non-functional president is the figurehead for the cabinet members and the special interests who are actually calling all the shots. The Potemkin village that is the Biden administration was built in two tiers with establishment cabinet members who appear more moderate presented for Senate approval while extremists were being placed in key positions to set policy on everything from civil rights to Iran.”
SKYNET FROWNS: New York lawmaker wants to ban police use of armed robots.
HILARIOUS: Bruce Gilley writes at the James Martin Center: “[I]n December of last year, the [Portland State University—American Association of University Professors] ‘voted overwhelmingly’ to officially condemn my research on colonialism. In a bizarre twist of logic, the PSU-AAUP justified its action by declaring that it ‘stands for academic freedom’ but does ‘not stand for hostile work environments created under the guise of academic freedom.’ In other words, by conducting research according to accepted methods and publishing my findings, I have somehow created a hostile work environment for my colleagues who have repeatedly attempted to censure me.”
This kind of problem is everywhere these days, including, most recently, at my own cute little law school.
BUT NYU WILL TAKE A BOLD POSITION AGAINST “ANTI-ASIAN HATE.” China Regularly Abuses NYU Students. NYU Keeps Taking Chinese Money Anyway: NYU receives millions from regime.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE OF CORRUPTION EDITION: Cornell University, Pursuing Partnership with China, Can’t Say Whether Beijing is Guilty of Genocide.
JOHN FUND: IDs for a Vaccine Shot, but Not for Voting?
MAYORKAS CLAIMS BORDER IS ‘CLOSED:’ Right. And President Biden regularly works out on a Stair Climber. Meanwhile, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) predicts a million illegal border crossings by summer.
TO BE FAIR, USD PROBABLY GETS A LOT OF MONEY FROM THE PRC: University investigates professor for criticizing communist regime.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Today We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 2019. “Colorado has 3,000 people a day applying for background checks,” I was told. “The backlog is pretty bad.”
GEORGETOWN’S KNEE-JERK FIRING OF A PROFESSOR HAS BAD CONSEQUENCES FOR BLACK STUDENTS: “Do Black students receive lower grades in law school? If so, why? It has now become dangerous to ask those questions. And that’s very bad news for anyone who cares about systemic racism — or freedom of speech — in the United States. We’ll never solve America’s glaring racial inequities unless we can also talk about them.”
The goal isn’t to “solve” anything, it’s to give people a shot of self-righteous dopamine. Nothing in the “woke” project is about making the actual lives of actual black people better.
YOU KNEW IT: Joe Schoffstall, with help from Matthew Foldi, exposes the left-wing money machine behind Fix Our Senate, the “grassroots” campaign to blow up the filibuster.
NEWSOM PRAISED BY ANTI-VAXXERS: Interesting how Washington Free Beacon needles California’s recallable governor this morning.
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE HAS SUFFERED A BREAKDOWN DUE TO EXHAUSTION: Biden aides had ties to large tech companies, disclosures show.
LIBEL WIN: Project Veritas vs. New York Times. “The New York Times is a disgrace to journalism. While current defamation law makes it almost impossible for a plaintiff who is a public figure to win–hence the impunity with which organizations like the Times feel free to lie about their political enemies–it will be interesting to see what facts emerge from this lawsuit.”
In my Rethinking Libel in the 21st Century, I offer some ways courts can fix current libel law, without even having to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan.
ABOUT THAT ‘AMERICAN COMPASS’ LABOR MOVEMENT: Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Michael Watson, intrigued by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) supporting the unionization movement within Amazon, did some digging into American Compass and found a couple of major Lefty funding outfits.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Who Actually Broke the Law Regarding the Trump-Georgia Election Phone Call? “Georgia might absolve the person actually running the tape machine, but it also criminalizes in a stand-alone law the act of giving the tape (or electronic file) to a third party.”
So who gave the tape to the Washington Post?
Plus: “Had President Donald Trump been the one to record the conversation with Georgia election officials and then he or his staff released it to PJ Media or Breitbart, we all know what Amy Gardner’s lede would be at the Washington Post. We all know that CNN would have offered wall-to-wall coverage on Georgia’s prohibition on selling or giving recorded wire conversations to third parties. I’d wager even Amy Gardner knows it.”
THE “WELCOME WAGON” PROJECT ISN’T JUST ABOUT MONEY: REASONS PEOPLE ARE MOVING FROM LOS ANGELES TO DALLAS — MORE IMPORTANT THAN ESCAPING HIGHER TAXES.
THE WORST SCANDAL OF THE PANDEMIC: Death and Lockdowns. There’s still no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them, as I found by looking at the toll of “excess deaths” during the pandemic. Last year in the United States there were 130,000 more deaths than normal that were not attributed to the coronavirus.
These excess deaths occurred disproportionately among the young and middle-aged, minorities and low-income workers — groups hit especially hard by the lockdowns. The toll has been especially high in locked-down California but not in unlocked Florida. The mortality rate among younger people soared in America but not in Sweden, where it has been below normal. All of which confirms that the lockdowns are “trickle-down epidemiology” — protecting the laptop class at the expense of the working class — and constitute one of the greatest public-health mistakes in history.
FROM SPACE TO SPAC: Satellite veterans warn of space SPAC downside. “Space ventures have been rushing in the last six months to take advantage of increasing investor appetite for SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies. Often referred to as ‘blank check’ companies, SPACs offer space ventures a significant — and relatively quick — cash injection as they are fast-tracked to the public markets. . . . Suborbital spaceflight venture Virgin Galactic sparked the current space SPAC wave with its 2019 merger with Social Capital Hedosophia. In late 2020, space logistics startup Momentus and satellite-to-device specialist AST & Science announced SPAC deals. Space-based data ventures Spire and BlackSky and launch providers Astra and Rocket Lab all announced SPAC mergers between Feb. 2 and March 1. . . . In a separate interview, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg compared the rush of companies going public with sky-high valuations despite little or no revenue to the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century. ‘I think it’s very dangerous,’ Dankberg told SpaceNews.”
DEPENDS ON HOW MANY TIMES: Is it safe to reuse plastic bottles?
THE GIANTS OF THE GOLDEN QUARTER CENTURY ARE PASSING AWAY: NASA engineer Glynn Lunney dead at 84. “He led the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs before retiring from the agency in 1985, then led human spaceflight activities in private industry with Rockwell International and, later, United Space Alliance until his retirement in 1995. Lunney received the Presidential Medal Freedom as part of the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team in recognition of actions that made it possible to save three Apollo 13 astronauts aboard a spacecraft that became disabled on the way to the moon on a 1970 mission. Under Lunney’s guidance, the team worked with the astronauts to shut down the command module systems so that the lunar module could be used as a lifeboat for the crew during the journey home to Earth keeping the crew alive and safe while NASA’s teams developed longer-term plans for successful re-entry and splashdown.”
Baker’s status within the sheriff’s department is currently unknown. Neldner’s statement didn’t go into detail.
Earlier, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said in a separate statement that, though Baker’s comments were “taken or construed as insensitive or inappropriate,” they “were not intended to disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy, or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect.”
“Captain Baker had a difficult task before him, and this was one of the hardest in his twenty-eight years in law enforcement,” Reynolds said.
“I have known and served with Captain Baker for many years. His personal ties to the Asian community and his unwavering support and commitment to the citizens of Cherokee County are well known to many,” the statement added. “On behalf of the dedicated women and men of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office we regret any heartache Captain Baker’s words may have caused.”
As of this writing, Rupar’s selectively edited video and his accompanying commentary, the things that sparked the firestorm aimed at Baker, have been shared by more than 38,500 social media users.
Rule of thumb: If you ever, ever, see Rupar share a brief snippet of remarks made by a public official, always look for the full context. There’s a 99.9% chance there’s more to the story.
Reset the Vox counter:
And likely, some at Vox are proud of another of Rupar’s accomplishments:
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s interesting how the media/political/academic apparat is, in unison, echoing the propaganda line of the Chinese Communist Party on this subject.
TOO BUSY LECTURING HIM ON MASKS: FAUCI DIDN’T TELL SEN. PAUL HE FUNDED CHINA VIRUS CREATION AT WUHAN VIROLOGY LAB.
As such in October 2014, because of public health concerns, the US government banned all federal funding on efforts to weaponize three viruses – influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
In the face of a moratorium in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci – the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and currently the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force – outsourced in 2015 the GOF research to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.
The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Fauci’s role here, though a matter of public record, continues to receive surprisingly little comment.
Related (From Ed): The mask is slipping, Dr Fauci…He’s a cable-news star first and a scientist second.
THE TYRANNY OF ‘LIVED EXPERIENCE:’
Piers Morgan got the heave-ho from Good Morning Britain for saying he didn’t believe a word of what [Meghan Markle] said. That’s pure blasphemy. Disputing lived experience is to 2021 what disputing the Word of God was to 1521. Ian Murray of the Society of Editors was pushed out for challenging Harry and Meghan’s claim that the British press is racist. ‘Show me proof’, he essentially said. Big mistake. You do not ask for evidence to substantiate claims of lived experience. Data and analysis count for nothing in the face of what people feel. The truths of social experience — the measurable reality of racist attitudes in the press or among the population, for example — are subordinate to an individual’s perception of what his or her lived experience has been. To muddy a victim’s impression of life with cold talk of analysis is to compound the oppression they feel. Just genuflect to their lived experience. Ask no questions, venture no facts.
And yet appearances can be deceptive. For even amid this almost religious elevation of ‘lived experience’, things are not as they seem. Not all lived experiences are taken seriously. Some lived experiences are more equal than others. Consider the stark contrast between Meghan Markle’s professed experiences and Priti Patel’s. Meghan’s — her impression that there is racism in the royal family, in the British press and in the hearts of many ordinary British people — was made sacrosanct with extraordinary swiftness. It acquired the status of moral incontrovertibility almost overnight. Patel’s lived experience, on the other hand — her experience of racism as a child and sexism as an adult — was disparaged, mocked, and consciously denied any social importance whatsoever.
As Glenn wrote in one of this recent New York Post columns, “The woke think of themselves — and want everyone else to think of them — as deeply moral. If they have a flaw, it’s that they just care too much. They’re too idealistic, too empathetic, too eager to make the world a better place. That’s bulls–t (pardon my French, Pepé!). If you look at what they do, rather than what they say about themselves, it quickly becomes obvious that the woke are horrible, awful people, and they should be treated as such and reminded of this whenever they raise their head.”
THE LOCKDOWNS CAME WAY TOO LATE TO DO ANY GOOD: Novel Chinese coronavirus likely was circulating in October 2019, U.S. researchers say.
Plus: “Scientists also used epidemic simulations to understand the early phase of the pandemic. Experiments showed only 29.7% of simulated epidemics went on to become ‘self-sustaining epidemics.’ ‘The remaining 70.3% of epidemics went extinct,’ scientists said.”
Well, in the real world the Chinese were allowing/encouraging people from Wuhan to travel internationally well into 2020, so there’s that.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Get the Most From Your Range Training.
HE CAN’T EVEN DELIVER A PIZZA: Can Joe Biden Deliver a Sci-Tech Renaissance? You certainly won’t get one from “net neutrality, the Iran nuclear deal, and a government-wide climate focus.” And in fact, headline notwithstanding, nothing in this article suggests any particular reason to expect scientific progress to bloom under the Biden Administration.
THE BAD NEWS IS, THEY DO THIS BY BLOCKING ANDROGEN RECEPTORS: White button mushrooms could slow progression of prostate cancer.
MARY KATHERINE HAM: From Cat Lady to Dog Mom.
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