THEY’RE GETTING THE REALLY CRAPPY BAND BACK TOGETHER: Obama Staffers Who Joined NBC, MSNBC, and CNN, Now Headed to Biden Admin.
18th AMENDMENT RETURNS TO PENNSYLVANIA FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY! Pennsylvania Bars, Restaurants Not Allowed to Sell Alcohol After 5 p.m. Wednesday for One-Night Only; Stay-at-Home Advisory Issued.
I’VE SHOT ALL OF THESE, BUT I’M PARTIAL TO THE SPEER GOLD DOT: 5 Best 9 mm Loads for Self Defense.
PORT CONGESTION ON THE WEST COAST? “I’ve been in business long enough to know that something smells. Bad.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Democrats Push To Keep Schools Closed So Kids Will Be Dumb Enough To Accept Socialism.
And it’s working! Teen Vogue: ‘America’s Values Are White Supremacy and Capitalism.’
THE MULLAH REPORT: Is Biden bringing back the Iran Deal? Biden-Harris will do their best not to finish Trump’s successful business.
‘We’re going to be back in the game,’ our presumptive and somewhat previous new president tells us. ‘It’s not America alone.’ But America was never out of the game under Donald Trump and never alone.
Look who are also back in the game: Tony Blinken, who was Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, is Biden’s secretary of state. Jake Sullivan, once one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides, is going to be Biden’s national security adviser. John Kerry, the disastrous diplomat who gave us the Iran Deal, is Biden’s climate emissary.
And it was all going so well. Trump might not have built his wall, but he had the first successful foreign policy of any president since Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down that earlier wall. Of course, the Euros moaned. They are, as Barack Obama so memorably said of the British, ‘freeloaders’. It was a considerable achievement to force the Germans, Europe’s richest nation, to promise to pay their 2 percent to Nato.
On the other hand, look at the upside on Kerry’s return: “[I]f you want nothing done, John Kerry is just the man for the job. No wonder oil and gas stocks are soaring today. Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times catches this point right away:”
Biden seems determined to put the band back together again, as Jake and Elwood would say: Biden to Nominate Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary.
“THEY TOLD ME THAT IF JOE BIDEN WON THE ELECTION, TRUMP SUPPORTERS WOULD START GETTING ARRESTED JUST FOR BREATHING — AND THEY WERE RIGHT!” Trump Supporter Charged with Assault for Breathing on Protesters.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: Annoyed ABC Scolds Americans ‘Not Listening,’ Visiting Family on Thanksgiving.
—NewsBusters, today.
● Chaser: Little evidence that protests spread coronavirus in US.
—Headline, ABC News.com, July 1st.
VERY LITTLE OF WHAT WE’RE DOING IS DRIVEN BY SCIENCE. THAT WAS FORGIVABLE IN MARCH, WHEN WE DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING. IT ISN’T NOW. The Coronavirus Is Airborne Indoors. Why Are We Still Scrubbing Surfaces?
NEW JERSEY DEM. GOV. CONFRONTED AT RESTAURANT FOR NOT WEARING MASK, NOT DISTANCING (VIDEO).
As with many of their tactics, apparently Democrats never expected that their four years of harassing Republican officials in restaurants would ever be reciprocated by the other side, something they’ll likely be discovering to their chagrin over the next four years.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. “In recent weeks, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and now Matthew Yglesias have all left secure roles to pursue their own newsletters via this platform. So, of course, it’s inevitable that those who feel threatened by these moves will next strike at the common denominator — the platform itself. To rob these writers of their credibility and potency, the tactic will be to undermine the platform they’ve used to achieve financial, moral and intellectual independence. . . . Never fall into the mistake of assuming any of this is about principle or journalism. It’s about power. Independent writers increasingly at odds with existing journalistic institutions are taking back their audiences, and their autonomy. And cultural gatekeepers struggling to maintain their principles and their relevance in the current intellectual hothouse are using whatever tricks they have at hand to maintain their traditional role and authority. This is all very predictable.”
Plus:
Those pushing the people like Sullivan and Yglesias out of their newsrooms shouldn’t waste their time trashing the platforms that allow for the very independence that they too might one day cherish. Instead, they ought be cheering. The rats are gone! The ships of established media institutions are now unsullied by the gutter-sniffing stain of wrong opinion. The noble survivors are now liberated to ascend the ranks, anointed anew as if by the angels on high.
Well, here we are now. Entertain us.
Heh. Smells like Woke Spirit. And you know what happens when you get woke. . . .
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Election Fraud Update for November 23, 2020. “It’s another election fraud update, full of twists and turns. Some of these reports are from sources I’m not familiar with, so use your own judgment.”
WAFFLE HOUSE’S STAND AGAINST LOCKDOWNS IS EXACTLY WHAT AMERICA NEEDS—ALMOST: Waffle House CEO Walt Ehmer’s stance against lockdowns is courageous, but ultimately bolder action may be required to save businesses from the pernicious effects of lockdowns.
Related: L.A. County is halting outdoor dining starting Wednesday as coronavirus cases surge.
SEX PISTOL PURSUES PETROLEUM JELLY: John Lydon suffers flea bite on his willy after letting squirrels into his LA home.
A SUCCESSFUL TROLL OF A SUCCESSFUL GRIFT: Antiracism Icon Robin DiAngelo Paid More Than Black Woman for Same Job.
Exit quote: “And while DiAngelo has made her name demanding that white people stop avoiding difficult conversations, she did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Free Beacon.”
(Via Power Line.)
TEEN VOGUE: ‘America’s Values Are White Supremacy and Capitalism.’
Teen. Vogue.
NARRATOR: NO, WE DON’T. We Need a National Institute of Climate Change and Health.
I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP TELLING ME IT’S A CRISIS START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS: Climate Change Alarmist Harrison Ford Seen Landing Private Jet to Pick Up Son Ahead of Thanksgiving.
JOANNE JACOBS: ‘I’ll leave the city for my kids to get educated.’
Several parents noted that many private schools are teaching in person. City-funded preschool programs are operating if they’re in private schools, but closed if they’re in district buildings.
If the chaos and incompetence drives middle-class families out of the city or into private schools and students who remain have learned little but knock-knock jokes, New York City’s public schools will go into a death spiral.
Longterm, that would be a net benefit.
THAT’S NOT PROMISING: Trump Campaign: Sidney Powell “is not a member of the Trump Legal Team.” “Since Powell appeared at a press conference with Ellis and Rudy just days ago, it’s hard to see how she was not viewed as part of the legal team. So the campaign statement likely reflects that whatever it was the campaign thought Powell had, she doesn’t. You can only imagine the joy at this development among the same people who for four years told us Trump paid hookers to pee on a bed in Moscow because Obama slept in it, who was a Russian agent being run personally by Putin, and who was worse than Hitler. In addition to those miscreants, there are many Republicans running for the hills. Lin Wood is standing by Powell.”
BRAS FOR MEN: Michael Yon, Antifa in Atlanta. There’s literally an Antifa guy like this in Kurt Schlichter’s new novel, Crisis. Michael writes: “Talking with some of the Atlanta ANTIFA I got the feeling I was talking with ‘misfit’ toys who feel rejected and are counter-rejecting, and are being used. . . . An honest smile and a hello is powerful medicine. This ANTIFA member literally just seems to feel rejected. Well…welcome him or her back! Be yourself. I am not your judge.”
SIGNS OF LIFE AMONG CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS: Why California Republicans Stopped Complaining about Ballot Harvesting and Embraced the Process.
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deal, Le Creuset Stoneware Mini Round Cocotte, 8 oz., Marseille.
THEY AREN’T EVEN PUSHING VITAMIN D SUPPLEMENTATION, WHICH IS CHEAP, SAFE, AND GOOD FOR YOU IN MANY OTHER WAYS: A friend on Facebook comments: “I don’t understand why basic info that could really help, such as have a pulse oximeter at home so if you catch Covid you can monitor if you need to go to the ER before it’s obvious from breathing difficulties, isn’t being circulated by any level of government.”
It’s as if public health isn’t our top public-health priority.
OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: The Latest Memorial to George Floyd Is in a Holocaust Museum.
IN THE MAIL: Matty Matheson: Home Style Cookery: A Home Cookbook.
NOW OUT: Kurt Schlichter’s latest Kelly Turnbull book, Crisis.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Former Pfizer VP Says Lockdowns Were a Mistake, YouTube Forcibly Removes His Video.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is it possible to survive four years of the press covering for alleged President-elect Joe Biden’s mental decline without finding one of those shady doctors who prescribes certain pills he shouldn’t to people who don’t really need them?
Answer: We’re asking for a friend, honest, after watching Biden’s latest.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- YouTube silences a former Pfizer veep for questioning the narrative.
- Pre-Adolescent Transgenderism at the New Church of the Poison Mind.
- Christmas lights so stunning you’ll shed a tear of real schadenfreude.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
JAMES LILEKS TACKLES KEY HOLIDAY ISSUES: “Since it’s Thanksgiving soon, let’s take a look at this ad for Camels, and study the best way to balance eating and smoking.”
BUILDING A BRIDGE TO 1933: Here Are The Pro-Union Labor Laws Joe Biden Has Promised To Pass As President.
THEY’RE VERY EFFECTIVE AT LINING THE POCKETS OF CONSULTANTS AND CREATING MORE USELESS ADMINISTRATIVE SLOTS, WHICH IS THEIR ACTUAL PURPOSE: Research: Teacher ‘anti-bias’ trainings not very effective.
SPACE: HALO space habitat module passes preliminary design review.
If NASA’s ambitions to set up a permanent human presence of the Moon and to send an expedition to Mars are to be fulfilled, astronauts will need someplace to hang their space helmets. The HALO module is critical to this vision, acting as a place to house crew and a docking hub between low-Earth orbit and the cislunar region and beyond.
Because the first HALO unit is scheduled to launch in November 2023 along with the Power Propulsion Element module, primary contractor Northrop Grumman is pursuing a fast-track approach by basing the design on its already flown Cygnus robotic cargo ship, which has been used to transport supplies to the International Space Station. The design of the hull is basically the same, though it will have radial docking ports, body-mounted radiators, batteries and antenna installed on the outside.
Inside the HALO will be command and control systems as well as a life support system that can support four astronauts for up to 30 days, with the aid of the Orion spacecraft. All of this will allow the module to act as both a crew habitat and a docking hub for other vehicles, such as a lunar lander.
Faster, please.
WELL, THAT’S ACADEMIA’S ROLE IN THE CLERISY: Dozens of professors echo socialist-backed calls to defund police.
BEING A DICK AT THANKSGIVING SEEMS TO BE A STANDARD LEFTY DESIRE: UVA student newspaper opinion writer: ‘Stand up’ to ‘racist family’ at Thanksgiving.
I recommend standing up to your bratty, know-it-all kids. A friend’s daughter was giving him hell for voting Trump, so he told her she couldn’t live with him if she was going to treat him disrespectfully. Two hours at her mom’s and she was apologizing and begging him to take her back.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: GOP Can’t Let Trump-Hating Squishes Take Over the Party Now. “The radical Never Trump people have been making noise for several weeks about wanting to return the party to the way it used to be, whatever that means. They are operating under the delusion that a lot of Republicans are waiting around to welcome them back with open arms.”
NOW THAT THE ELECTION IS OVER (OR AT LEAST THE VOTING PART), The New York Times can tell us what a huge success Operation Warp Speed was.
FIVE REASONS WHY BIDEN IS THE MOST AMAZING POLITICO EVER: Among other things, Biden, who spent most of the campaign in his basement, got more votes than Barack Obama in 2008 despite losing the 20 “bell-wether counties” that no winning president ever previously lost. The Federalist’ J.B. Shurk has more. Please note my tongue was firmly lodged in my cheek as I composed the headline to this post.
TRUMP SAVES ANOTHER INDUSTRY: Fall 2021 Law School Admissions At The Quarter-Pole: Applicants Are Up 32%, With Biggest Increases Among The Highest LSAT Bands And Applicants Of Color.
And thank goodness. Can you imagine a world without lawyers?
PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THEM, AND WON’T COOPERATE: RealClearInvestigations: Help! Pollsters Have Fallen and They Can’t Get Up!. “If you can’t predict something as simple as an election race, do you think these same polls are giving people the right answers on how people feel about Covid?”
BERT PETERSON: To Restore Election Integrity, End Mail-In Vote Fraud.
Suffice it to say, the opportunity for fraud with mail-in votes is clearly there. If that opportunity has been taken, can we, through a recount, prove it? The answer is no. Once the mail-in ballots are accepted, they are thrown in with the in-person ballots. Even if officials find out later that a dead person sent in a ballot, we don’t know how that dead person voted.
So if we find evidence that something in the recent election suggests that there was mail-in voter fraud (and there is such evidence), there’s nothing we can do to prove that. Ever.
Although we cannot have a recount that would discover and erase fraudulent mail-in votes, and potentially throw the state electors to Trump, there’s one thing that we can do. We can have a re-vote — one that includes early voting and (restricted) absentee voting, protocols to protect against COVID-19, but not mail-in voting. This would not award anything to anyone; it simply would provide a far more trustworthy vote.
Had it not been for the Wuhan Flu shutdowns, Trump would have coasted to victory, and ditto for the panic- and opportunistic-driven move to mail-in voting.
MICHAEL BARONE: Californians, and Americans, reject racial quotas and preferences.
Among the most surprising of the multiple surprising results in this election was California’s rejection of Proposition 16. The ballot measure was supported by the Democratic supermajorities in the state legislature, by long-established corporations, and by Silicon Valley tech firms, by leaders of mainline churches and nonprofit organizations.
Some $20 million was spent on its behalf and only $1 million in opposition. Yet, it lost by a solid 14-point margin in a state that voted 64% for Joe Biden.
Why? Because Californians, like most other Americans, don’t like racial discrimination. Proposition 16 was put on the ballot to repeal Proposition 209, which passed in 1996, which banned state government from discriminating “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.” Most Californians thought then and think now that that’s a good idea.
Disagreeing emphatically are the people who run the state’s giant state colleges and universities. Like their counterparts across the nation, they want to admit more black and Latino students than would qualify on non-race-based criteria such as test scores. The result, as documented by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor in their 2012 book Mismatch, is that more black and Latino students are admitted, but because instruction is pitched to the median student, many opt out of rigorous STEM majors or drop out altogether. Enforcement of Proposition 209 meant fewer black and Hispanic students at flagship campuses (Berkeley, UCLA) but more (and more graduates) at UC and Cal State campuses elsewhere.
Racial quotas and preferences these days discriminate less against whites than against Asians, who are denied places despite high test scores and rigorous preparation, much as Jews were in the Ivy League from the 1920s to the 1950s. Anti-Asian bias is made plain in lawsuits pending in federal courts against Yale and Harvard, whose admissions personnel suspiciously rate Asians low on “positive personality.”
Affirmative action — and its weasel-worded replacement term, “diversity” — has always been highly popular among elites, and highly unpopular among everyone else. And if you concluded from this that that’s because it is good for elites, and bad for everyone else, you would be spot-on.
A TALE OF TWO CAMPAIGNS: As all good Instapundit readers know by now, Proposition 16 has been soundly rejected by California voters. This happened despite its supporters having spent $27 million to the NO side’s $1.72 million.
I thought you might be interested in a list the top donors to the YES campaign. They were:
Quinn Delaney ($7,900,000)
ACLU, Inc. ($2,450,538.70)
Open Society Policy Center ($2,000,000)
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. ($1,500,000)
ACLU of Northern California Issues Committee ($1,253,599.14)
Patricia Quillin ($1,000,000)
California Teachers Association/Issue PAC ($574,229.70)
Neighbors for a Better San Francisco ($536,000)
Anne E. Delaney ($500,000)
Blue Shield of California ($500,000)
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO (MPO) ($500,000)
Connie E. Ballmer ($500,000)
Steven A. Ballmer ($500,000)
Our Voice, Our Vote-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Ballot Measure Committee Yes on Prop 16 ($389,365.50)
Salesforce.com ($375,000)
SF Workforce Housing Alliance PAC 2020, Sponsored by Neighbors for a Better San Francisco ($300,000)
California Nurses Association Initiative Political Action Committee ($300,000) California Democratic Party ($290,346.50)
Pacific Gas & Electric ($250,000)
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 3299 ($235,540.00)
Cisco ($200,000)
Cabrera Capital Market, LLC (Martin Cabrera, Jr.) ($200,000)
SEIU Local 1021 ($200,000)
Facebook, Inc. ($200,000)
Gwendolyn Marion Mathilde Sontheim ($200,000)
The San Francisco Foundation ($200,000); Genentech USA ($200,000).
The No campaign did not receive a single donation that large. Its largest donation came from Students for Fair Admissions for $50,000. The second largest donation from … uh … me. We won anyway, because Californians aren’t buying identity politics.
A list of the 34 largest donors to NO side (contributing $5000 or more) is available here. If you donated (as many Instapundit readers did), thank you!
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deal, Belkin 12-Outlet Power Strip Surge Protector, Flat Plug, 10ft Cord (4156 Joules), Gray.
DON’T BE A SCIENCE DENIER, KEEP THE SCHOOLS OPEN: CDC Director Says School ‘One of Safest Places’ for Children, Data Supports In-Person Learning.
GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE CAN KILL YOU: That’s the point of a recent “news” story cited by American Institute for Economic Research’s (AIER) Jeffrey Tucker to illustrate what he calls “the blizzard of bogus journalism on Covid.”
ALL THE SERIOUS PEOPLE TODAY: IT’S IRRESPONSIBLE AND HIGHLY DESTRUCTIVE TO ENTERTAIN UNPROVEN CLAIMS OF ELECTION FRAUD.
Democrats overwhelmingly say fake news spread by Russia was at least somewhat likely to have affected the results of the presidential election – just under half (46%) say that it was very likely. Republicans disagree – except for those Republicans who think that Russian-sponsored spreading of fake news actually took place. A majority in this group believe it was in fact likely that the effort did affect the election outcome.
Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President – something for which there has been no credible evidence.
In response to the oncoming deluge of fraud claims, many of which will be clearly dubious, you’ll see the usual suspect crowd of journalist/activist types dropping giant heaps of gleeful scorn. They’ll laugh at the absurdity of supposed “conspiracy theories” being proffered about the vote counts in Arizona or wherever else. They’ll mock those who can’t accept reality. And they’ll be right in certain instances that the claims will be preposterous. But what will be even more preposterous is the profoundly misplaced sense of smug superiority they won’t be able to help themselves from exuding, given everything they just put us through over the past 4+ years.
I know we’re all tired of the polling-industrial complex and rightly so, but let’s please remember that a December 2016 YouGov poll found half of all Clinton voters that year didn’t just believe that Russia “interfered” in the election to the advantage of Trump, but that they tampered with the ballot tallies and effectively hacked the voting machines. By 2018, a supermajority of Democratic voters expressed this belief. And the belief didn’t become widely-adopted as a result of standard looney-tunes off-the-reservation conspiracy-theorizing, which is typically understood to emanate from the fringes of society. Instead these crazy, evidence-free beliefs were deliberately engineered by the most Serious precincts of mainstream respectable opinion, particularly those allied with the Democratic Party and its think tank / media affiliates.
The phrase “hacked the election” entered wide circulation by December 2016, with the New York Times among others spouting it without compunction. If you’re not a particularly sophisticated news consumer, and you have a pro-Democratic predisposition, what exactly do you think you’d have tended to infer from the phrase “hacked the election”? Trump winning the election was unfathomable to many, and people were understandably searching for answers. They were provided with self-deluding fantasies by sources they’d come to regard as authoritative. The people who used the phrase over and over again, like chronic liar Adam Schiff, aren’t stupid. They knew it would engender doubt as to the legitimacy of the election; that was the entire purpose.
One particularly egregious example from November 2016 was when Gabriel Sherman, then of New York Magazine, totally mischaracterized the views of a group of “prominent computer scientists” by attributing to them the belief that they had “found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.” The group had then supposedly advised the Hillary campaign to request recounts on that basis. Sherman’s article caused a huge firestorm and clearly contributed to the patently false belief that Russia had tampered with the vote count. But it was bunk; the computer scientist in question renounced Sherman’s article. By then it was too late though, and the legitimacy of the 2016 election would never be accepted by huge swaths of the population — all thanks to the ineptitude/depravity/deceptions of the media class.
I’m going with depravity, for the most part. And note that Hillary eventually did concede — but then proceeded to spend the next four years calling Trump illegitimate as she and her allies spread unfounded claims of “Russian collusion” and produced an absurdly baseless impeachment vote.
Trump, on the other hand, is challenging things via litigation and entirely within the system. And yet he’s somehow the threat to our norms and institutions.
Related: Robert F. Kennedy claims 2004 election was stolen. “It’s a scandal and people should be prosecuted for it, there should be hearings, people should go to jail.” And for extra laughs,he says that exit polls are “an exact science” that could be used to overturn the election.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ON THIS MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVEMENT: First Americans Could Get COVID-19 Vaccine by December 11, Top Health Official Says.
Flashback: Fact check: Coronavirus vaccine could come this year, Trump says. Experts say he needs a ‘miracle’ to be right. Miraculously, he was.
HE’S ENTITLED TO TROLL HIS CRITICS, AS HE’S BEEN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SECRETARY OF STATE IN DECADES: Pompeo Trolls Critics in Long Goodbye as He Looks to His Future. The organization of Asian allies against China, and the Middle East peace agreements are enough to support that all by themselves, though a Biden/Harris administration will probably — deliberately — throw both away at the earliest opportunity.
MARQUETTE IS A TROUBLED PLACE, WITH PROBLEMS IN BOTH FACULTY AND ADMINISTRATION: Marquette Faculty Stage Sickout Over Proposed Budget Cuts, Cancel Numerous Classes.
Related: Marquette May Cut Up To 20% Of Faculty And Staff Due To Budget Shortfall.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Left Attacks Scott Atlas For Saying Same Things About COVID As The New York Times, Six Months Earlier. “Atlas is just a prominent face for this view that the power-hungry elites need to crush to avoid responsibility for their horrifically bad leadership during the COVID outbreak, as well as to get Trump. So they seek to destroy him because he and the scientific coalition he represents makes it clear that these public health emperors may have plenty of masks, but no clothes.”
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot:
We dove right in by asking Gov. Brown what her opinion is on the phrase “defund the police.”
“I am absolutely committed to taking actions that ensure the safety of all of our communities,” she said.
There were two things that she pointed to, first, working with the People of Color Caucus and seeing what proposals they bring to the legislative special session. Second, she wants to “re-examine” training policies and accountability measures that are in place.
“Here’s also what I do know, actions need to be taken. Good intentions, words are not enough. We have to tackle the racial injustice in this state, in this country. I am absolutely committed to taking that action and making that happen,” Brown said.
* * * * * * * * *
“I think we need to re-envision how our law enforcement operates in this country,” Brown said.
From there, the interview with Governor Brown pivoted to the coronavirus pandemic. We asked if she is anxious that protests will cause a spike in COVID-19 cases and slow down the reopening of Oregon.
She said that whether the protest was of people rallying at the Capitol to oppose Oregon’s stay-home order or the thousands that have gathered nightly to protest police brutality, she is worried about the spread of COVID-19. She encouraged everyone to practice their First Amendment rights but do so safely, wear a face covering, maintain social distancing and use hand sanitizer.
—“Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on redefining public safety, use of tear gas and spikes of COVID-19,” Portland’s NBC affiliate, KGW8, June 10th.
● Chaser: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown urges residents to call cops on shutdown violators.
—The Washington Times, yesterday.
THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED, BUT THE PANDEMIC WAS NOT: Cornell professor explains why coronavirus cases are much lower than he originally predicted. From the comments: “Predictably, Professor Frazier now claims that the wonderful job he and his bosses have done accounts for numbers that are a small fraction of his prediction.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Recounts Needed to Settle Dominion’s Role, and the Election.
It turns out that your opinion about Dominion Voting Systems depends not only on who you are but when you are asked.
If you zip way back to December 2019, then, if you are Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, or Amy Klobuchar, you are very worried about their security.
Back then, these high-minded public servants wrote letters warning that these widely used voting systems were “prone to security problems.” “We are particularly concerned,” they wrote, that “voting machines and other election administration equipment, ‘have long skimped on security in favor of convenience.’”
That was in December of last year—the good old days when NBC, for example, warned about “Chinese parts” and “hidden ownership” of the machines. . . .
“Chinese manufacturers,” they noted, “can be forced to cooperate with requests from Chinese intelligence officials to share any information about the technology and therefore pose a risk for U.S. companies,” not to mention “the concern of machines shipped with undetected vulnerabilities or backdoors that could allow tampering.”
As I say, that was a year ago.
Today, post-Nov. 3, 2020, you don’t hear the Democrats worrying out loud about the security of the machines that counted (not to say manufactured) the votes that led to Joe Biden’s apparent victory.
On the contrary, to raise questions now about Dominion Voting Systems and the software that powers them, as Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and others have done, is to obstruct “democracy” and promulgate “conspiracy theories.”
Zip back to 2006, and you find CNN running stories about how vulnerable electronic voting systems are to interference and hacking. Back then, the watchword was “Democracy for sale.”
Honestly, our whole voting system needs an overhaul. If we ran systems with the integrity of those we impose on nations we’ve conquered — photo ID, purple fingers, votes counted openly at each voting location, etc. — there wouldn’t be any concern with fraud. That we don’t do that at home tells you a lot about the political class’s priorities.
And it doesn’t help that the press is more interested in maintaining and policing narratives — even when they shift 180 degrees overnight — than in reporting facts.
NBC NEWS: Chinese parts, hidden ownership, growing scrutiny: Inside America’s biggest maker of voting machines. “The source of the nation’s voting machines has become an urgent issue because of real fears that hackers, whether foreign or domestic, might tamper with the mechanics of the voting system. That has led to calls for ES&S and its competitors, Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems and Austin, Texas-based Hart Intercivic, to reveal details about their ownership and the origins of the parts, some of which come from China, that make up their machines.”
This story is from 2019, of course. If you raise the same concerns today you’re a conspiracy theorist. (Bumped).
November 22, 2020
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals Galore.
REPORT ANY DEMOCRATS YOU MIGHT KNOW: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown urges residents to call cops on shutdown violators.
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Police union boss tells MTA riders they’re on their own amid violence uptick.
FLASHBACK: Senior WHO official: “stop using lockdowns as your primary control method.” “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”
WHY CAN’T AMERICANS JUST GO ALONG WITH QUARANTINES LIKE THOSE ORDERLY CHINESE? Shanghai airport is plunged into chaos after a ‘worker tested positive for Covid-19 prompting Hazmat-clad staff to herd THOUSANDS of people into basement for testing before they make bid for freedom.’
CHANGE: Mass Protest at CNN HQ. I’m not saying the rally was huge, but it was bigger than CNN’s audience. . .
SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB: Face mask trial didn’t stop coronavirus spread, but it shows why more mask-wearing is needed.
WHERE’S THE SCIENCE? As my local Board of Health ponders closing gyms and bars their own data doesn’t support that action:
Charity Menefee said that small social gatherings between friends and coworkers at homes, offices and restaurants are the most significant causes for COVID-19 cases.
So why close bars and gyms, sending people to spend more time in these gatherings? From the comments to this post, the Tennessee Department of Health data don’t seem to support the restrictions, or even the statement about restaurants above.
As I’ve said before, my concern is that they’re not following the science. They’ve twice admitted that their own data don’t show bars and restaurants as significant sources of infection, yet they’ve continued to treat them as such. In the early days, when we didn’t know much, going by hunch and supposition was forgivable. Now we’ve got over 6 months of contact tracing data, and going by hunch and supposition isn’t forgivable anymore. Any government action must at the very least show a reasonable relationship between a legitimate governmental purpose and the action taken. At this point I don’t think they can show that for the bar and restaurant regulations.
UPDATE: National Study Confirms It’s Safe To Work Out At The Gym: Current Data Shows No Evidence of COVID-19 Spread in Gyms. It’s a big study, though it relies on self-reporting of infections. But, like the contact tracing data above, suggests that gyms aren’t much of a threat.
HISTORIANS HEAL THYSELVES: There is perhaps nothing crazier in the modern historical profession than the refusal of people who really should know better to acknowledge that Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist, murdered JFK for political reasons. (He was also unhinged, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)
Let’s review. Oswald was a Communist. He had previously defected to the USSR, but was allowed to return after growing disillusioned. He then became a partisan of the Cuban Revolution, and visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico, trying to defect to Cuba. He was very angry about hostile U.S. policy toward Cuba, and before he killed JFK tried to kill well-known anti-Communist Edwin Walker.
Yet somehow, every November, instead of reminding us of these facts, “mainstream” historians gaslight us with stuff like the tweet below, implying, and sometimes explicitly stating, that JFK was the victim of “right wing hate.” They then complain in other contexts about how conservatives purportedly won’t accept “reality.”
I have a theory about why liberal historians do this re JFK. The left spent the 1950s and early 60s decrying McCarthyism as a “witch hunt,” i.e., not just that McCarthy was a lying demagogue (which he was), but that there was no domestic Communist threat, whatsoever. Acknowledging that a domestic Communist, albeit a lone nut apparently acting on his own volition, assassinated a beloved Democratic president ruins the witch-hunt narrative. That narrative has been a huge propaganda advantage for decades, and they don’t want to let it go.
PUSHBACK IN KNOXVILLE: Seen on Facebook:
KNOX COUNTY RESIDENTS!!
IMPORTANT!
Tomorrow evening (Monday 11/23)
5PM
We will be peacefully protesting at the Knox County Health Department. They’re voting Monday evening on a new Lockdown that will destroy businesses and the morale & mental health of the residents.
It includes:
1. No more than 8-10 people in a group
2. New Curfew at either 8 or 9 pm
3. Gyms closed
4. Restaurants at either 25% capacity or no indoor dining (takeout only)Please join us at the Health Department. Feel free to bring a sign.
I’ve twice heard Knox County officials say that their contact tracing data doesn’t indicate that restaurants or bars are a significant source of infection. I’ve heard no evidence that gyms are a source of spread. I don’t think these plans are scientifically based — we’ve been contact-tracing for 8 months — and I don’t think they’ll hold up in court if challenged. Businesses have already been devastated by lockdowns and the pandemic, and we’re in what, month 8 of “15 days to slow the spread” now?
To quote Judge Stickman in the Pennsylvania case: Population-wide lockdown orders are “such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”
UPDATE: The local small business community is getting organized. A friend sends this message, which is circulating:
We are trying to get all small business/service industry to close from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm so all staff can attend in solidarity the Health Department protest. We also ask that in lieu of being able to be there in person that you at least make emails from the [circulated] list of public officials.
This is the first organized resistance I’ve seen, but it won’t be the last.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More on what the science does, and doesn’t, support, here.
ROGER KIMBALL: Waiting for Sidney.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Joseph Stalin To Receive International Emmy For His Outstanding Hunger Relief Efforts.
(To be fair, America’s wannabe newspaper of record wouldn’t have a problem with that idea, either.)
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Self Defense and Your Vehicle.
DEMOCRATS ALWAYS WANT TO CRIMINALIZE THEIR OPPOSITION: Criminalizing Politics: Michigan GOP Lawmakers Threatened With Criminal Investigation For Meeting With Trump On Certification.
2020 WON’T QUIT: The US is running out of wasp venom. That’s bad. Can we do something with the murder hornets? Just spitballing here.
PUSHBACK: Kentucky AG joins legal challenge to governor’s order banning in-person learning at schools.
Related: Seen on Facebook: “BTW, this is NOT photoshop.”
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Apple Looks to Soften Bill That Fights Forced Labor in China.
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