THAT’S BECAUSE WE’VE NEVER DECISIVELY BEAT THE MARXISTS AND MADE THEM INTO OBJECTS OF HORROR — LIKE THE NAZIS — INSTEAD OF CUTE ACADEMIC PETS: Learning from Experience, Not.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE. NO, WHAT YOU’RE FEELING IS NOT NORMAL, BECAUSE THE TIMES AREN’T NORMAL: Quote of the Day.
Go read.
A MESSAGE FROM ONE OF MY FANS, CONCERNING THE ETERNAL LOCK DOWNS: My thoughts concerning SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 and abcdefg2020.
He says these many months later, he’s still saying “you shouldn’t. No, really you shouldn’t.”
THANKS. WE KNEW THAT GOING IN. THE FRAUD WAS PRETTY HIGH TOO. IT STINKS TO HIGH HEAVENS: WATCH: Alan Dershowitz suggests it’s possible Powell and Giuliani can win, but the bar is high…
DUH. THIS IS WHY I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. BECAUSE THE DEMS WEREN’T CAMPAIGNING. THEY WERE DOING A MINIMALIST, POTEMKIN CAMPAIGN. BECAUSE THE FRAUD WAS IN. IN ALL THE WAY: Regarding post-election fraud in Pennsylvania.
So all you luvies that say “we’ll get them n 22” might want to think of the USSR elections. The DDR elections too. By 22, they’ll have 100% of the vote. And the Green Nude Heel on your neck.
Unless you intend to learn to eat grass and go “baaaah” stop that nonsense.
DEFINITELY: Forest for the Trees.
RIGHT NOW SURE TRUMP CONCEDED BECAUSE A PART OF THE DEEP STATE IS TALKING TO ANOTHER PART OF THE DEEP STATE: The capitulation conservatives.
Spit out the black pill, boys and girls. If you let them take this one, with this MUCH in your face fraud? You might as well concede we couldn’t keep the republic. And if that’s what you’re going to do, go elsewhere. The adults are fighting.
Oh, and before you say there was no fraud, go here, here, and here. And btw I live with a mathematician. Every mathematician, statistician and numbers person who hasn’t sold his mind to the lefty cult is going nuts because the numbers make no sense. And the only way for the numbers to make no sense is for them to be cooked. Numbers people hate that. It’s like looking at a slightly ajar drawer. which in my experience mathematicians also don’t like.
Sure, convincing yourself there’s no fraud is soothing. So is an excess of sleeping pills, or opening your veins in a warm bath. NONE are healthy, though. Or survivable.
IF EITHER OF THESE TWO TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING? DO THE OPPOSITE: Sorry, Dr. Fauci. You, too, Joe Biden: Americans refuse to cancel Thanksgiving.
CANCEL THE ATLANTIC, URGES SANITY: Cancel Thanksgiving, Urges The Atlantic.
TOO MUCH OF THE FIRST, NOT ENOUGH OF THE SECOND: Arbitrary Lockdowns And Civil Disobedience.
SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO KNOW YOU’RE NOT ALONE. OTHER PEOPLE SEE THE INSANITY: The Covid Physician’s true coronavirus timeline.
November 23, 2020
SHARYL ATTKISSON: The New Woke Times.
As demanded by the mob of staff, the Times adds an editor’s note to Cotton’s column. It says the op-ed had been approved in a “rushed” editorial process that did not meet its standards. Sulzberger emails employees, “Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years.”
Days later, editorial chief Bennet is finished. The Times announces he has resigned. The same newspaper that defended controversial op-eds such as the one signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2013, and even an anti-Trump opinion piece that hadn’t been signed at all and was published anonymously, was now adjudicating the words of a prominent US senator to be just too incendiary.
It is a strange place, indeed, where news reporters can editorialize but op-ed editorials cannot. On June 1, 2020, after President Trump walked through a public Washington, DC, park amid national protests and riots—to a church that had been burned a block away—Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, tweets:
Trump just stands in front of the church and holds up a bible while posing for photos. He does not even go inside for a faux tour of the damage or make a pretense of having any purpose in going there other than to pose for photos.
The latest developments remove any lingering doubt as to how the Times sees its modern mission: serving and pleasing the left-wing activists on its staff and the liberal activists who dominate on the news and social media. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger’s dictum when he fired the newspaper’s public editor in May 2017 had come to pass in a terrible way. Recall that, at the time, he declared that the Times’ followers on social media would “collectively serve as a modern watch- dog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be.”
The Times let itself become hopelessly slanted. Captive to organized feedback on social media. Beholden to irredeemably conflicted staff members. Consumed by internal demons.
Make no mistake: other media outlets are taking note. In this way, they are motivated to self-censor news and information, lest they draw the wrath of the mobs. One editorial figure at a major international publication who did not want to be identified recounted numerous pieces he has recently killed for fear of the organized backlash.
“They can bankrupt me,” he tells me. “Facebook, Twitter, Google— they can ruin you in a matter of hours. For somebody like us, they can destroy you. So what do we do? We pull our punches. To raise certain issues is to cut your own throat.” He continues, “The newsman in me says, ‘Tell the truth,’ and that sounds great. But if I do that and destroy [my publication] in the process, what kind of pyrrhic victory is that?”
The information landscape becomes ever narrower, squashing diversity of thought and facts. Pretty soon, we won’t know what we don’t know. And that will be that.
All is happening in accordance with the prophecy:
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Picturesque Junkyard Backgrounds For Your Next Video Conference.
PAY TO PLAY IN SANTA CLARA, CA: “Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen on Monday announced several additional charges in his investigation into a pay-to-play scheme involving concealed carry licenses issued by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, including the head of Apple’s security team and two top officials within the sheriff’s office itself.”
SO, HELEN AND I DROPPED BY THE KNOX COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT BUILDING TO SEE THE ANTI-LOCKDOWN PROTEST. There were over 200 people there, a mix of small business people, waitresses and bartenders, etc. The class conflict angle was real. As the Board of Health met via Zoom, one of the speakers remarked: “It’s the upper elite that meet by zoom. The rest of us have to go to work.” The vibe very much reminded me of early Tea Party rallies, as did a remark I overheard from one of the organizers, “I thought we’d be lucky to get 5 or 10 people but we got all these.” I also heard people saying how much fun it was to get out and protest.
Also heard: “Limit Wal-Mart first!”
The protest opened with a prayer, which was preceded by a statement that those who were not into it were still respected and valued and welcome. There were also calls for courtesy, and a critic who showed up was even allowed to speak, though he opened by telling the crowd that its failure to wear masks was the reason for new restrictions. This was poorly received.
I think the coronavirus overreach is producing blowback. And I think that the deplorables aren’t going to sit down and shut up as some people hoped.
I took a few pictures:
And it made a difference: Knox Co. Board of Health approves blunted measures with 10 p.m. dine-in curfew, table size restrictions. “After hearing discussion from business owners and seeing blunted measures recently passed in the Memphis and Nashville areas, the Board of Health opted not to vote on the stricter measures it had discussed Friday that would have cut restaurant capacity to 25%.” And closing gyms, which was on the agenda last week, wasn’t discussed at all.
Related: Protests show two Americas — those who lost their jobs and those still getting paid.
Also, from a lefty source:
There’s a huge Covid class divide. The economy has not just bounded back for upper income Americans; it’s given them higher housing values and lower interest rates. Meanwhile, 12 million service industry workers are still out of work. Small businesses are struggling. The affluent see Covid as a health problem, while for the working class it’s about economic survival. And liberals are doing the same thing they did with Trump: Clothing their class privilege as science and facts and morality.
The politicians are even worse. Instead of coming up with a clean Covid bill, Democrats are now trying to pressure Biden into student loan forgiveness. Can you believe it? What kind of society thinks it’s ok to ask 12 million people who lost their jobs to Covid to foot the bill for the student loans of the top 40% of earners? Sure, maybe it will accidentally help someone in a food line who dropped out of college. But college-educated Americans are back at work. The Covid recession is over for them. Why are the Democrats designing legislation to help the people who need it least, in the belief that some of the benefits might trickle down to help those who need it most?
Oh, I think I know why. And this whole interview is pretty sensible.
BIG TECH’S TIGHTENING NOOSE: The Censorship Intensifies Against Fieldcraft Survival.
A VIDEO WITH A TRANSCRIPT, WHICH IS NICE: Mark Rippetoe: Testosterone Optimization Therapy with Jay Campbell.
UPDATE: Compare the guys in the above video with the guys in this one: Related: Buzzfeed Crew Shocked To Learn They Have Low Testosterone Levels.
ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Mystifying monolith found amid Utah rocks.
Has it sent a powerful radio signal aimed at Jupiter yet?
MEH. AstraZeneca says COVID-19 vaccine has average efficacy of 70%. Though it’s 90% at a different (weirdly, lower) dosage. Takes two shots a month apart, though.
UNEXPECTEDLY, CRIME IS SOARING: “Burn It Down.” In Seattle, the movement to “abolish the police, prisons, and courts” is not simply the dream of marginalized radicals; it has also been adopted at the highest levels of municipal government. “Burn it down” has evolved from a street slogan into a political platform.
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 was 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.”
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