I LIKE THE NAME: General Atomics selects Firefly to launch NASA Earth science instrument.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
WHEN THE CANCELLERS ARE SCHEDULED FOR CANCELLATION:
This is an utterly uncompromising assault on context, the study of history, and the value of unfettered intellectual debate. It is a wonder that the executors of this cultural revolution are shocked to find that some people don’t take too kindly to the effort. What’s more, some of those who aren’t comfortable with this campaign of historical revisionism helm some rather powerful institutions. And those institutions, some of which are not beholden to America’s constitutional protections on speech and expression, are fighting back.
The government of France, for example, has all but declared war on the woke. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,” French President Emmanuel Macron averred. In France, a nascent intellectual movement alleges that some of the tenets of modern social justice, particularly the activists’ view that racial characteristics are linked to immutable habits of mind, are an assault on the preferred French conception of race as a subjective condition. In the view of its opponents, these uniquely American ideas poison the water, sow discord, and give comfort to an “Islamo-leftism [that] corrupts all of society.” And now, the heavy hand of French cultural policing has descended on universities that lend credence to these views.
A similar backlash is underway on the other side of the Channel. “I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses of unacceptable silencing and censoring,” British Education Secretary Gavin Williamson declared in a speech last week. “That is why we must strengthen free speech in higher education by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached.” The speech was accompanied by a declaration of the British government’s intention to impose legal mandates on universities to actively promote free expression and fine those institutions that fail to uphold this charge.
Framing the issue in no uncertain terms, Secretary of State and Housing Robert Jenrick vowed to “save Britain’s statues from the woke militants who want to censor our past.” The government’s move has been bolstered by private British institutions, which are ramping up their efforts to petition courts for redress on behalf of those who face professional consequences for violating social justice’s tenets.
It shouldn’t be, but it is somewhat surprising that the most aggressive defenders of social justice’s campaign of intimidation are horrified by the counterattack.
A year ago, the Wall Street Journal noted:
The French critic Pascal Bruckner has described the current atmosphere as a result of an “import-export transaction” between France and the U.S. “The identity politics and the P.C. culture that is central to the campus ideology in America came out of French theory,” he said, referring to the work of influential thinkers of the 1970s such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. “We’ve invented this, and now it’s coming back,” Mr. Bruckner said.
In France as in the U.S., the debate over freedom of speech scrambles the usual political divides. According to Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, “The peculiar aspect of this wave is that censorship was historically associated with right-wing authoritarianism, while for the first time in our generation it comes from the left.”
Given the French roots of cancel culture, it’s good to see them fighting back. As Steve Hayward wrote last week at Power Line in a post headlined,“Will *France* Save America?”, “imagine the reaction on American campuses to any American politician who proposes a similar review of our university curricula. (Memo to red state governors: You may just want to do this.) It gives you the same kind of warm glow as a double-shot of whisky.”
JOHN HINDERAKER: Democrats Move to Silence Non-Liberal Speech.
On paper, the Democrats have a tenuous hold on power in Washington. Their president is a cipher with severely diminished mental capacities, the Senate is a 50-50 tie, and they hold the narrowest House majority in decades. Nevertheless, the Democrats see what could be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and are pressing forward with their most radical agenda since they seceded in 1861.
Among other things, the Democrats are trying to repeal, in effect, the First Amendment, by barring conservative speech–or, rather, speech that is not consistently left-wing–from the public square.
We have seen this in the moves against conservatives and other independent voices by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Go Fund Me and other tech titans. While these companies are no doubt motivated in part by ideology in putting their thumbs on the scale of public discourse, the truth is more sinister than that.
The major tech platforms are monopolies with obvious antitrust vulnerabilities, as we saw when the Trump administration brought an enforcement action against Facebook that seeks the divestiture of Instagram. The Democrats have not only urged tech platforms to silence conservatives, they are at least implicitly (God knows what is said in private) holding out the prospect of immunity from antitrust enforcement, which means many billions more in profits. This is the ultimate in 21st-century corruption.
But it gets worse: the Democrats are also trying to drive independent voices off the more traditional broadcast and cable platforms.
Are they trying to provoke an actual civil war, as opposed to their notional “insurrection” at the Capitol?
You’d think by now the Washington Post would know better than to try and pick a fight with Elon Musk (who is officially the richest man in the world, sorry Bezos) but nope. They had to know he would be underwhelmed with their story about him …
More here: Alpha Male Elon Musk Reminds Politicians Just How To Talk To Reporters.
Now compare landing space ships to the world of news journalism I joined a bit over a decade ago, where laziness and based stupidity go hand in hand with self-importance.
It’s a profession where it’s noble to print private neighborhood texts and take photographs of children to get just one more scoop on the already known story of Sen. Ted Cruz going Mexico, yet a story about Gov. Andrew Cuomo killing thousands of your parents in your own state is ignored until President Joe Biden can be safely elected.
It’s a world where Brian Stelter feels comfortable talking about how he “crawled into bed and cried,” where journalists think covering Trump was “thrilling in the way that I imagine storming Omaha Beach must have been,” where Brian Williams smiles and waves to a crowd at a Ranger’s game while the jumbotron tells the completely fake story of that time he was super brave and his helicopter was shot down in Iraq.
Exit quote: “Close your eyes and you can almost see chubby little Washington Post journos dramatically whipping their bangs out of their eyes as they whisper: ‘Democrathy dythe in darkneth.’”
SCOTT ATLAS, NIALL FERGUSON, AND VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: On Free Speech at Stanford.
The accusations against us three last week were as various as they were untrue. And all were presented regardless of clear and published evidence to the contrary.
Professors Landy, Monismith, Palumbo-Liu and Spiegel alleged that one of us, Atlas, “violated the American Medical Association’s standards for ethical medical conduct” while serving in government as a presidential adviser, and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of “tens of thousands of Americans.” Those serious charges were based on straw-man arguments and gross distortions of Atlas’s words, as pointed out by others. In misrepresenting Atlas’s statements, Stanford faculty members intended to delegitimize him and his analysis.
Landy et al. accused Hanson of having written articles that “formed the backdrop to an insurrection that cost 5 lives and threatened the lives of Representatives, Congressional staff, and the Vice President, as well as our constitutional democracy.” In reality, the articles in question discussed real problems with mail-in and early balloting, often requiring progressive efforts to change state voting laws—all problematic voting changes acknowledged by scholars at Stanford University Law School itself. Hanson has never questioned the legitimate inauguration of President Biden. The alleged connection between his written work and the events of January 6 in Washington is entirely spurious. In unequivocal terms, Hanson criticized the January 6 riot at the Capitol and called for punishment of any and all street violence during the entire 2020 election year and its aftermath.
A third, Ferguson, was alleged to have “conspired with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on a Stanford undergraduate.” But no such “conspiracy” occurred and no such research was ever done, as was made perfectly clear at the time.
The purpose of this article is not to rebut these false and derogatory claims, however. We and others have each done this elsewhere or shall shortly do so. Our aim instead is to object to a group of professors’ deliberate misuse of the Faculty Senate and the student newspaper to act as purveyors of their defamation.
Read the whole thing.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Every slander media flung at Florida’s DeSantis was true of Cuomo. “Finally, the media loved the way Cuomo talked about the pandemic at his take-charge news conferences. This was taken as the opposite of Trump’s approach, which it was — Cuomo talked a good game, while utterly botching the substance of the response, while Trump talked irresponsibly about the pandemic, while handling the substance pretty well.”
Recent public messaging harps on the idea that people can still become infected and transmit COVID-19 after they get vaccinated. While that is a risk, it’s an extremely low risk, and not worth the negative consequence: it’s stopping people from getting vaccinated.
People are using the idea that others can spread the virus after being vaccinated to claim that the vaccine does not work and therefore should not be taken. I have spoken with people who have done just that.
Vaccine trials measure how many people get infected after vaccination. Take for example the Moderna vaccine trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine beginning in November with follow-up publications extending through February. In that trial they randomized 15,210 people to the vaccine and 15,210 people to placebo. Of those who got the placebo, 185 developed COVID-19. Therefore, 1.2% got COVID-19. Thirty of those became very ill. Of those who got the vaccine, 11 developed COVID-19. None of them got very ill. Therefore, 0.07% got COVID-19. So, the vaccine was effective: it prevented illness and it prevented serious illness.
The efficacy of the vaccine is quoted as 94%. That figure is arrived at by dividing 0.07 by 1.2, which equals 6%. Subtracting that from 100% equals 94%. This math can be worked in different ways but the bottom line is that 11 of 15,210 became mildly ill with COVID-19 after the vaccine. Those 11 could spread the illness. But 11 out of 15,210 is a very low number. But that is 22 out of about 30,000 and 44 out of about 60,000. So it is true that some might spread COVID-19 after the vaccination but it is also true that the risk of that is very low. . . .
Another way to approach this issue of whether the vaccine prevents spread is to consider what happens with other vaccines. When we give the flu vaccine do we find that those who get the vaccine contract the flu and pass it on to others at a clinically significant rate? The answer is no. Can it happen? The answer is yes. The flu vaccine, like the COVID-19 vaccine, is not perfect. But it is highly effective. The same holds for the smallpox vaccine (smallpox is now obliterated from the planet by vaccination), the polio vaccine, and others. Even when vaccines are not perfect they can be highly effective. Therefore, to harp on the rare possibility of spreading COVID-19 after vaccination is to focus on what is unlikely to happen rather than to focus on what is likely to happen — that it will work very well.
It’s enough to make you think they care more about fearmongering than about health.
Related: The growing evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines can reduce transmission, explained. “Some people may think, if I get vaccinated but I still have to continue masking and social distancing at all times, then why get vaccinated at all?”
FLASHBACK: WANT TO LEAVE A LEGACY? PLANT A TREE: One of the first fruit trees planted in America is still alive and well at age 383. Hero of the Napoleonic Wars Cuthbert Collingwood planted oak trees all over his property so that Britain would be able to build wooden ships a century hence. They don’t do that any more, but many of the trees remain.
THAT MAKES SENSE: Kangaroo portrait is Australia’s oldest rock painting.
JIM TREACHER: Hillary Clinton to Put Her Name on ‘Political Thriller.’
Libs have always been more fond of fantasy than reality, which is why The West Wing was such a hit even while Clinton was still in office. Aaron Sorkin created a Democrat president who wasn’t a lying, philandering creep, and Dems, disappointed by the real world, ate it up.
In other former First Couple news, Obama’s got a new podcast with former musician (and current attendee of DUI classes) Bruce Springsteen.* As Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon notes, Barry is just jealous of his wife’s podcasting success and is trying to show her up.
Celebrity spouses, right? They’re just like us, except their egos are even more out of control and the rest of us have to hear about it.
*I thought about listening to the first episode of the Obama/Springsteen podcast and trying to get a blog post out of it, but I checked it out on Spotify and the first episode is 53 minutes. Who wants to listen to those two knuckleheads babble about how great they are for an hour? Plenty of people, apparently, but not me. I would do anything for you, Dear Reader, but I won’t do that.
Or as the Washington Free Beacon put it: Barack Obama Copies Wife Again, Launches Podcast with New Jersey Man Arrested for DWI.
HOW IT STARTED: Coronavirus Outbreak Gives World Leaders Power Hard to Give Up.
—Bloomberg, March 25th, 2020.
How it’s going: Fauci: For the good of society, you can’t dine indoors or go to theaters — even after being vaccinated.
—Hot Air, today.
As Noah Rothman asks, “Does Fauci think that people, the vast majority of whom are not vaccinated, are abstaining from indoor dining or going out in public. Because from my limited vantage in the NJ suburbs, 25% capacity is a floor, not a ceiling.”
Fauci’s also apparently hasn’t been to Florida recently.
MICHAEL WALSH: With Supreme Court’s Non-Decision, Citizens Must Reform Electoral System.
Monday’s non-decision to turn away a case involving “absentee” ballots that arrived up to three days after the November election as “moot,” was in fact a decision in itself, indeed the Catch-22 of Robertsian jurisprudence.
The Court had shunted aside the case (in a 4-4 decision with Roberts siding with the liberals and Amy Coney not yet confirmed) back in October, in effect inviting the plaintiffs to come back after the voting to show injury, if any. Heads, Democrats win, tails, Republicans lose. After all, Trump finally conceded, didn’t he, so what’s the problem? Case closed.
Heading into the election following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, conservatives liked to think that with the appointment of Barrett, the ideological split would be 6-3. And in fact, in this case they were right. All three dissenters were conservative: Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. The other six, including Roberts, were silent.
“The Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots: 8 p.m. on election day,” wrote Thomas in his dissent. “Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day… These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
Maybe not. What we’ve learned from Roberts is that he’s susceptible to pressure and hates conflict. In one of the most disgraceful episodes in the court’s history, Sen. Chuck Schumer, losing his cool over abortion “rights” on the steps of the Supreme Court, directly threatened Roberts’ colleagues Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” he said last March. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Roberts’ reaction? “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”
Still, Schumer’s message came through loud a clear: vote our way or face the packing of the Court with a fistful of new justices. With the election of Joe Biden last fall, that prospect is now within reach. Elections really do have consequences.
And now here they are: two of the three judges Trump appointed to the Supreme Court have stood idly by while the Constitution’s directives for election law just got shredded. Perhaps not surprising: Kavanaugh’s tearing up during his nasty confirmation was embarrassing, and nothing he’s done since has indicated any desire for quiet payback. And so far Barrett has been a cipher.
Earlier: ‘Inexplicable:’ Alito and Thomas Dissent as Supreme Court Strikes Down Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit.
STILL DON’T THINK DEMOCRATS ARE IN LOVE WITH CENSORSHIP? Lenin knew that part of establishing a one-party state was to control the media. One of the first things he did in 1917 was pushing a Decree on the Press in November 1917 that gave the government the emergency power “to close down any newspapers which supported counter revolution.”
Today, the word “disinformation” has replaced “counter revolutionary” but it’s really the same thing: a set of statements that the State (and its ideologues) deem “false” and “dangerous.” You’d think the media, which unabashedly leans left (which is their right) would be wary of such power. After all, today’s “lie” might be tomorrow’s “history.” Moreover, if the First Amendment — which they claim to love — means anything, it is the notion that there must be room for error in public discourse, or as Justice Brennan put it:
“That erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and that it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the “breathing space” that they need to survive.”
Post-Trump, we are witnessing a New McCarthyism, where lists are made, and commentators call for “detoxifying” or “cleansing” the public discourse and psyche of any remnants of the motive force behind the previous administration. Self-described “progressive” columnist Jason Sattler said in USA Today that:
“I want to believe that Biden will be able to achieve far more than just detoxing our body politic from Trump while minimizing the unpardonable harm that this wannabe dictator and his GOP co-conspirators did to this country.”
This sounds more like something from the Cheka than it does from genuine “progressivism.” The frightening part — and we should be frightened — is that lawmakers, supported by media outlets, are encouraging the purge. It’s a multi-pronged attack. Cancel culture is encouraged by the media every day, because at the end of the day the by-product of manufactured outrage is more readership. One of the other prongs is to use the power of the State to silence dissent, which can always so easily be labeled “disinformation.”
Mediaite reports that the movement of State control has begun. Democratic representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney demanded that television providers including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Apple, and Amazon say whether they planned to continue providing Fox News on their platforms, in addition to Newsmax and One America News.
You’d think that any “progressive” publisher would recognize the dynamic here. But you’d be wrong. Vice News, one of the wokiest outlets on the web is ironically owned in part by The Walt Disney Company (16%); A&E Networks (20%); TPG Capital (44%); and (surprise, surprise!) Soros Fund Management (10%). And Vice is cheering on the Democratic lawmakers. In their story, the sub-head sets the tone and the narrative:
Lawmakers are demanding answers from Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, and other cable companies who have ‘done nothing’ to stop disinformation on OANN, Newsmax, and Fox News.
In what ought to labeled an Op/Ed, Vice goes on to “report” that:
“While “big tech” has received the lion’s share of criticism for doing too little to combat disinformation in recent years, less talked about has been the role traditional cable TV giants play in circulating dangerous, bad faith nonsense.” [Eshoo and McNerney wrote that] “Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm.” Eshoo and McNerney also noted that carrying conspiratorial channels not only helps foster radicalization among the “alternative facts” set, it poses a direct threat to public health.”
Even worse, Vice, cheerleading for State control of media, plants a meme we’re sure to see repeated elsewhere. The article gives a passing nod to (OMG!) free speech by saying that:
“Largely because any new laws or restrictions intended to prevent news networks from carrying dodgy purveyors of disinformation would likely run afoul of the First Amendment. As such most wouldn’t survive a legal challenge, especially given the Supreme Court’s rightward lurch in recent years.” (Emphasis added).
You get that? Those “dodgy purveyors of disinformation” are sadly, protected by the First Amendment, and wouldn’t you just know, the First Amendment is now a right-wing thing. It can be laughed off, but I don’t think it’s funny. Much like those with experience in the Second Amendment sphere, genuine defenders of the First Amendment are more and more going to be understood by the public as “right-wing nuts”, “insurrectionists” and “purveyors of disinformation.” Be advised that failure to condemn them will brand you a “fellow traveler.”
Disinformation, indeed. The ghosts of Peter Zenger, Eugene Debs, Lenny Bruce, Mario Savio and William Brennan are surely weeping, and the ghosts of Lenin, Mao and McCarthy are grinning.
KEEP ‘EM GUESSING: Donald Trump Won’t Declare 2024 Presidential Bid At CPAC.
DO AMERICAN PASTORS HAVE THE COURAGE OF THIS CANADIAN MAN OF THE CLOTH? My latest column in the Culture precincts at PJ Media.
REMINDER OF THE DISASTER THAT WAS THE TRUMP YEARS: US Household Incomes Increased More in 2018 Than in the Previous 20 Years—Combined.
THIS WAS INEVITABLE; COVID-19 JUST SPED UP THE PROCESS: The Blue States Are Now the Beggar States.
FINALLY, A SPORTS-RELATED PROTEST WE CAN ALL APPROVE: Pro beach volleyball players back out of Qatar tournament over bikini attire.
EVERYONE’S PAIRING OFF, BUT WE’RE ALL ALONE: Binary stars are all around us, new map of solar neighborhood shows.
DISPATCHES FROM THE GANJA STATE: Gov. Phil Murphy officially legalizes weed in New Jersey.
TYLER O’NEIL: Book Warning Against Transgenderism Disappears From Amazon as Democrats Push Equality Act. “I only found out because people trying to buy it told me it was gone. And not just like it’s out of stock. The pages are down. You can’t buy a used copy. You can’t buy the Kindle [version]. You can’t get the Audible version. My publisher reached out yesterday for an explanation, and no response from Amazon yet.”
GOOGLE JUST ISN’T ALL THAT INTO ETHICS: Google fires yet another AI ethics lead and we’ve gotta ask: What’s going on over there?
SADLY, IT HAS TO BE FACULTY-EDITED BECAUSE SO MANY STUDENTS DON’T BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH: New Faculty-Edited Law Journal: The Journal Of Free Speech Law.
IRONY ALERT: MassHealth employee fired after Facebook posts about masks, Nazi Germany.
A MassHealth employee who said she was fired after she compared calling the police on neighbors for not wearing masks to Nazi Germany tells the Herald that her First Amendment rights have been “trampled on” and she’s considering legal action.
Denise Foley, 60, is no longer MassHeath’s director of internal and external training and communication following the firestorm in a private Milton Facebook group that has 12,000 members.
It all started on Dec. 3 when someone in the Milton Neighbors Facebook group posted they had received a mailer about turning in neighbors who aren’t wearing masks.
Foley responded to the post, “Sounds like what the Nazis did in Germany.”
She later wrote in the comments, “How dare anyone try to take away my rights! I have the right NOT to wear a mask if I don’t want to. I have the right to gather with friends and family if I want to. If that’s a problem for you or anyone else, report me!”
They did. “Foley is now looking to bring a First Amendment lawsuit against the state.” And possibly an NLRB case as well.
THAT’S NOT GOOD: Chronic heartburn doubles risk for certain cancers, study finds.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Gravy Train Keeps Rolling for Second Stepdaughter Ella Emhoff. “Predictably, the media coverage of Emhoff’s overnight transition into a hipster fashion icon has been excessively fawning. The New York Times described her style as ‘Wes Anderson chic,’ which is just a fancy way of saying ‘rich and white.’ And yet, the fact that Emhoff has tattoos and doesn’t shave her armpits has compelled many to embrace her as a revolutionary figure bringing much-needed diversity to the fashion industry.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Facilitated Migrants Are the New Caged Children.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Does it take a magic wand to turn cages for children into facilities for migrants?
Answer: Nope, it just takes a Democrat president and a complicit media.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- The questions about reparations none dare answer
- Fredo Cuomo and Granny Killer Cuomo are the true victims
- Biden HHS nom endorses sex changes for children
Bonus Sanity: Former Clinton advisor Naomi Wolf takes the red pill on lockdowns.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GRANNY-KILLER CUOMO: What We Know About Cuomo’s COVID-19 Cover-Up. “The cover-up may be worse than the crime, Dr. Joel Zinberg, a medical doctor, professor, and contributor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, says of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s inaccurate reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in his state. “
ANYONE WHO THOUGHT MERRICK GARLAND WOULD BE A “MODERATE” ON THE SUPREME COURT, TAKE NOTE:
In his confirmation hearing Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland plans to tell the Senate his priority is domestic terrorism, and that he personally will supervise the prosecution of what he calls “white supremacists” who stormed the Capitol.
It is disturbing that Garland is embracing the rancid lie that the Capitol riot was racially motivated, an uprising by “white supremacists” which rivalled the Islamist terror attack of 9/11 in which 3,000 people were slaughtered.
This is Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s narrative, which she has driven with escalating hyperbole until it no longer resembles anything that happened on January 6.
Prediction: He’ll be Biden’s “wingman” and will push radical legal and social agendas. Because that’s how he’s starting out.
Related (From Ed): Biden AG Pick Declares There’s “Room” For More Gun Control Laws. “Judge Merrick Garland, who’s been tapped by Joe Biden to be the next Attorney General, told a Senate confirmation panel on Monday that there’s ‘room’ for Biden’s anti-gun policies to be enacted into law, and if confirmed he’ll work with the administration to carry out its gun control agenda.”
THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT, BUT SOME WHO DID LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DETERMINED TO REPEAT IT: As Americans Turn Left, We Should Remember Socialism Killed 36 Million Chinese.
CANCEL CULTURE COMES FOR KERMIT: It’s Getting Harder Being Green. As John Hinderaker writes, “The truth is, it is harder being normal. The forces of authoritarianism have come for, of all things, the Muppets. I did not speak out, because I wasn’t a Muppet…But seriously: Disney has gone stark, raving mad:”
Anyone who streams “The Muppet Show” on Disney+ will see a disclaimer first — warning of “offensive content.”
***
The disclaimer shown prior to each episode warns viewers that the show features “stereotypes” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.”“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the disclaimer states.
“Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together,” the disclaimer says.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record puts it: Disney Warns Viewers That The Muppet Show Is From A Different Era When Comedy Was Culturally Acceptable.
AND YET THERE CLEARLY IS, AS THE RESPONSE TO THE CAPITOL INVASION INDICATES: There shouldn’t be a double standard for law & order.
NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: US Army is developing the ‘most powerful’ laser in history which will vaporize targets using short pulses and produce powerful signals to disrupt enemy electronics.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! University of Kentucky promotes segregated ‘racial healing circles.’
WOEING: After Saturday’s engine failure, Boeing says many 777s should be grounded. “There are versions of the 777 aircraft with engines built by three different manufacturers. For about the last 15 years, new 777s have all been delivered with GE-made engines. So this recommendation applies to older models of the aircraft still in service.”
AFTER OVER A MONTH OF THE MEDIA SPREADING DISINFORMATION:
They told us all that time — without evidence — that he died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher by a protester. That was false. How long did they know it was false before they came clean? Many of them still haven’t.
WELL, YES. THAT’S HOW THEY RUN INTERFERENCE, AGAIN AND AGAIN. Every slander media flung at Florida’s DeSantis was true of Cuomo.
IT ISN’T TERRORISM WHEN LEFTIES DO IT: Merrick Garland Won’t Call Antifa Attacks on Federal Buildings Domestic Terrorism. His Reason Is Absurd.
SO JUST IDENTIFY AS A MOTHER: Fathers don’t count. “I argued in the New York Times that the science is telling us to reopen schools. An author and pro-closure teacher responded on Twitter with the counterpoint that I am a father.”
Just remember: If you interpret “woke” as a synonym for “crazy and stupid” — or maybe “crazy, stupid, and vicious” — you’ll seldom go far wrong.
IT’S NOT “PRIVATE COMPANIES” MAKING DECISIONS WHEN CONGRESS IS PRESSURING THEM: Democrat Congressmen Pressure Cable Providers to Censor Conservative News Networks.
DOUBLE STANDARDS ARE THE BEST STANDARDS BECAUSE YOU HAVE TWICE AS MANY: Pelosi, Who Claims to Oppose Gerrymandering, Funnels $300,000 to Democratic Gerrymandering Group.
YOU ARE NOW NO LONGER ALLOWED EVEN TO DEFEND PEOPLE WHO ARE CANCELED: “The online publication Slate has suspended a well-known podcast host after he debated with colleagues over whether people who are not Black should be able to quote a racial slur.”
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Thank You, Michael Che!
Friends, we’ve got to stop this. Che’s joke wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t something someone accidentally let air on a decades-long television show with a cast and crew in the hundreds. It wasn’t even new for him. Was the line anti-Semitic? Yep. Was it also absolutely intended? You betcha.
* * * * * * * *
Me? I prefer my wolves in wolves’ clothing. If anti-Semitism is essential to the ideology of today’s left—and it is—then it is essential that we see it clearly. Keeping ourselves under illusions is… Well, let’s just say, that has never been a winning strategy for Jews.
Read the whole thing.
WEIRD, I KEEP HEARING HOW THAT LOSER TRUMP LEFT THE GOP IN RUINS: Republicans Outraise Democrats Across the Board in January.
SADLY TRUE:
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Let’s Stop Pretending That Union Teachers Are Saints. “The unions have been delaying the reopening of schools by demanding a variety of things that don’t have anything to do with educating your children. And despite the fact that there is SCIENCE proving that school kids aren’t spreading the ‘rona, teachers are acting as if they’re marching to their deaths if they go back into the classrooms.”
VDH: Is the Biden Administration Stumbling Into War?
So wars are deterred when all the potential players know the relative strengths of each and the relative willingness to use such power in defense of a nation’s interests. Lack of such knowledge leads to dangerous misjudgments. And war then becomes a grotesque foreordained laboratory experiment to confirm what should have been known in advance.
Wars begin when aggressive powers believe that their targets are weaker, or give the false impression that they are weaker, or at least stay inert in the face of provocation. What were Argentina’s generals or Saddam Hussein thinking when they provoked the United Kingdom or the United States during the Falkland War and First Gulf War? No doubt, they assumed that their more powerful targets were too busy elsewhere, played out, or insufficiently concerned to react. In aggregate, a lot of damage and death followed in those two respective brief wars of 1982 and 1991—and all to prove what should have been obvious.
Perhaps Buenos Aires had one too many times read of British parliamentarians referencing the “Malvinas” rather than the Falkland Islands. Or Saddam remembered too well the United States Ambassador to Iraq naïvely voicing uninterest in 1990 “border” disputes between quarreling Arab neighbors—perhaps in the manner of Dean Acheson’s controversial speech in January 1950 to the effect that South Korea was probably not inside the U.S. defensive orbit abroad and thus made a previously hesitant Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung a little less hesitant.
Read the whole thing.
QUEEN ESTHER WAS QUITE A CODE WRITER, TOO: Just ask the modern-day Persians in Iran who had to deal with the Stuxnet computer bug that hobbled their nuclear arms development for years. The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains how she did it, 2,000 years ago to give rise to the Jewish holiday of Purim, and more recently for what was no holiday at all for Tehran.
SO MUCH FOR A “KINDER AND GENTLER AMERICA:” Woke Coke Shows Why Bush Republicanism Is Dead. The GOP Establishment didn’t want to fight the culture wars. Look where that got us.
BURYING THE LEDE: Oath Keeper claims she met with Secret Service before Capitol riot. “Watkins, who has been detained since mid-January, is asking for the court to release her to home confinement pending trial, noting she is at risk for ‘harsh treatment’ as a transgender woman.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Sen. Mazie Hirono To Chair Senate Subcommittee On Military Seapower.
Flashbacks:
● Sen. Hirono Walks Out of Hearing After Refusing to Denounce or Criticize Antifa.
● Senator Hirono’s Double Standard.
● “Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), however, will be remembered for asking something no one else asked. During her time to question Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Hirono asked, ‘Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?’ No, I’m not kidding.”
● Dem Senator Says It’s a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to Say Dems Were Out to Get Trump From Beginning.
● We Should Believe in Climate Change as If It’s a Religion, Not a Science.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): ‘Give It a Try!’ Seattle-Backed Homeless Shelter Provides Pipes to Smoke Heroin and Advice on ‘Booty Bumping.’
BECAUSE IT’S AWFUL? Why you hate contemporary architecture.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER (Whose most recent book is up for a Prometheus Award): Family Law.
People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.
Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?
How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?
When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.
What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?
Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…
The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.
I THINK IT’S MORE THEY’VE SEEN THEIR OWN PEOPLE REVOLT: Le World Turned Upside Down.
WE KNOW: The COVID epidemic really IS ending.
WELL, TURN ABOUT IS FAIRPLAY: Kelly Loeffler starts GA voter group to rival Stacey Abrams: report.
But until our fraud machine rivals theirs, or we have some way to stop theirs, it won’t make much difference.
WELL, I’M NOT SURE. A LOT OF US COULD PAINT THAT RIGHT NOW: Edvard Munch wrote hidden ‘madman’ message on ‘The Scream’.
IT MIGHT MEAN SOMETHING THIS HAD OCCURRED TO ME: Helter Skelter Redux?
Of course, what they’re actually doing is creating white supremacy out of whole cloth.
TO BELIEVE ALL CULTURES ARE EQUALLY WHOLESOME: You only have to believe there are no other cultures. A badger among kittens.
February 22, 2021
ANDREA PEYSER: Put me on Team Woody — Mia Farrow is full of it.
FACEBOOK MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR JAN 6 THAN PARLER: Rachel Bovard dug into the flood of Mainstream Media (MSM) reporting accusing Parler of being the social media of choice for organizers of the January 6 Capitol riot. Here’s what she found:
“Of the 223 charging documents, 73 reference posts on Facebook as evidence, 24 reference posts YouTube, 20 single out Instagram posts (owned by Facebook), and only eight highlight posts on Parler.
“Was Parler involved? Yes. Was the platform the virtual Bat Cave of Incitement and Violence that Apple, Google, Amazon, and thoroughly un-critical press reporting made it out to be? Hardly. If any single platform can be fingered as the favorite of the rioters, it appears to be Facebook.”
Bovard has more, much more and, boy, is it damaging to the MSM and Big Tech.
I BLAME PREHISTORIC SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES: Earth’s magnetic field flipped 42,000 years ago, creating a climate ‘disaster.’
WOULDN’T IT BE SIMPLER FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER? Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”
Flashback: “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
MERRICK GARLAND WATCH:
● Garland: Portland Riots May Not Be ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Because Courthouse Was Closed.
● Garland Vows to Prioritize Prosecuting Capitol Rioters and Their ‘Abettors.’
● Garland Won’t Promise to Protect Durham Investigation.
● Garland Says DOJ Would Advance Biden’s Anti-Gun Policies.
● Garland refuses to state illegally crossing the border is a crime.
● Garland Sidesteps Question on Trans Participation in Women’s Sports.
UPDATE: Claire McCaskill “is very upset with Sens. Cruz & Cornyn’s treatment of ‘Garland Merrick'” (Video).
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Nancy Pelosi’s New COVID Bill Has 10 Crazy Examples of Waste and Kickbacks.
ROGER SIMON: Lies the Supreme Court Told Me.
In a fashion we must now regard as entirely predictable the Supreme Court of the United States has dismissed (i.e., thrown out) the various state challenges to the 2020 presidential election.
Any decisions on these challenges were determined by the majority to be “moot” because the election had already been decided, and Donald Trump has conceded to Joe Biden. (Associate Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch objected in varying degrees.)
In other words, a stolen presidential election—if it happens, we don’t really know in this case—has an almost immediate statute of limitations, although the results of that election can affect hundreds of millions, if not, as in the case of the United States, nearly the entirety of humanity.
This is true, apparently for a majority of the Supremes, although all sorts of crimes, some not particularly onerous, have statutes of limitations that can go on for years.
Go figure.
The Supremes also cited the issue of “standing,” a term of legal “art” that has always struck me, despite all the precedents on which it is supposedly based, as wide open for biased interpretation of the most self-serving sort. One person’s “standing” can be another’s closed door, almost at will and certainly by vote of a “majority.”
If I sound cynical about the Supreme Court, I have to admit I am. It’s even true of the law in general, which I want to believe in and admire, but increasingly no longer do.
In the real world, legal results tend to mirror A.J. Liebling’s 1960 comment in The New Yorker about the press: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
The law belongs to those who have the deepest control of a society at the time.
We want lady justice to be blind but in actuality she’s a cyborg with all-seeing, rotating night vision similar to the kind you might find on many urban street corners today from Beijing to Chicago, using the latest algorithms to isolate presumed enemies of the state.
And, yes, I am no lawyer. I haven’t taken even one course in the law and spent my time in college and graduate school studying now questionable white men like John Milton.
But over my decades as a Hollywood screenwriter and then founder and CEO of PJMedia I employed many lawyers—some very good and some not so much—and came to understand the limitations on what they did.
Contracts, it turned out, weren’t worth much more than the paper they were written on unless both parties wanted to honor them. Enforcing infringements, unless they were hugely egregious, was rarely worth the expense and effort.
Lawsuits—win or lose— tend to take over your life in highly deleterious ways. Few want to get involved.
The Supreme Court is the apotheosis of this system—an organization that puts its finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing (assuming that’s even necessary) and then writes its opinions based on pre-conceived notions designed to offend the lowest number.
Sadly, it is the last place to look for justice in a Presidential election—or anything, really, that tilts against that prevailing wind.
Related: ‘Inexplicable:’ Alito and Thomas Dissent as Supreme Court Strikes Down Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit.
REMEMBERING JOHN RAWLS ON HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY. He was on my dad’s PhD thesis committee at Harvard, along with Lon Fuller. I met both of them as a kid, but my memories are hazy. His son is an InstaPundit reader, though, so the family tradition of intellectual preeminence remains!
YOU EXPECT A GRANDMA-KILLER TO BE NICE? Cuomo’s office terrorized me for doing my job as a journalist.
NEW SPACE RACE: Historic new images from Mars show rover landing.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HER JIB: Rep. Lauren Boebert Exposes the Cruz Cancun Hysterics for the Frauds They Are.
ROGER KIMBALL: Why Art Is Not ‘What You Can Get Away With.’
There is something peculiarly disengaged about aesthetic pleasure itself.
When it comes to our moral and sensory life, we are constantly reminded that we are creatures of lack: we are hungry and wish to eat, we see the good and know that we fall short.
But when we judge something to be beautiful, Kant says, the pleasure we take in that judgment is ideally an “entirely disinterested satisfaction.”
(It is worth recalling the difference between “disinterested” and “uninterested,” words that are often mistakenly conflated. We can be very interested in cultivating disinterested satisfaction.)
The great oddity about aesthetic judgment is that it provides satisfaction without the penalty exacted by desire. This accounts both for its power and for its limitation.
The power comes from the feeling of wholeness and integrity that a disinterested satisfaction involves. Pleasure without desire is pleasure unburdened by lack.
The limitation comes from the fact that, unburdened by lack, aesthetic pleasure is also unmoored from reality.
Precisely because it is disinterested, there is something deeply subjective about aesthetic pleasure. It can even be said that what we enjoy in aesthetic pleasure is not an object but our state of mind. Kant spoke in this context of “the free play of the imagination and the understanding”—it is “free” because it is unconstrained by interest or desire.
It is a curious fact that in his reflections on the nature of aesthetic judgment Kant is only incidentally interested in art. The examples of “pure beauty” he provides are notoriously trivial: sea shells, wall paper, musical fantasies, architectural ornamentation.
But Kant was not attempting to provide lessons in art appreciation. He was attempting to explain the mechanics of taste. It is not surprising that the “Critique of Judgment” became an important theoretical document for those interested in abstract art: on Kant’s view, the purest beauty was also the most formal.
In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Orrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:
As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts. Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered. But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field. Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge. Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently. The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible. If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either. And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.
And thus we we end up with formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”
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