HAVING (LIKE A RESPONSIBLE PARENT) READ ALL OF MY KIDS TEXTBOOKS, ALL I CAN SAY IS “THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE. SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED.”:  The ideologue who wrote the textbook calling Trump and his supporters “racists”.

If you don’t read your kids’ textbooks, and don’t have other books and evidence ready to refute this sort of thing — and please note this stuff goes on in both public and private schools — you’re falling down on your job. You might have your reasons, but you should also be aware you’re failing your kids.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Joe Biden Will Be Number 21: Here’s the State of the 2020 Democratic Primary.

THE BABYLON BEE: Ocasio-Cortez Calls For Boycott Of Sesame Street After Discovering Show Is Sponsored By Numbers.

Reminder to Snopes: It’s the Babylon Bee, so it’s satire — or is it?

BUT THE DAY ISN’T OVER YET: Never Mind, Now Kamala Doesn’t Think the Boston Marathon Bomber Should Be Able to Vote.

OPEN THREAD: Make it special.

WASHINGTON POST: “SRI LANKA’S MUSLIMS FEAR RETALIATION AFTER EASTER ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS”: Yes, of course, I sympathize with innocent Sri Lankan Muslims who fear that they will be associated and hence blamed for the sins of their ISIS co-religionists. But I’m not sure this is the most newsworthy angle on the Sri Lankan murders today. The victims are not even all in their graves. Shouldn’t we hear a bit more about them? Or about the royal screw-up of the Sri Lankan government, which had been warned that such an attack was being planned?

This appears to me to be another example of left-leaning journalists’ political usefulness bias. I suppose we all have such a bias, but given the disproportionate number of leftists in the media, it gets a little tedious.

You’d think that after the Washington Post’s howler of a headline (“Christianity under attack? Sri Lanka bombings stoke far-right anger in the West”) earlier in the week that it would want to avoid such criticism … but I guess not.

TEXAS EXECUTES FIRST MAN CONVICTED IN 1998 JAMES BYRD JR. DRAGGING DEATH.

Flashback to 2000: “[T]he media silence so far is deafening over the new ad campaign by the NAACP (see box). Over black and white video of a truck dragging a chain, James Byrd’s daughter suggests George W. Bush killed her father all over again. Floyd Brown’s media-pulverized 1988 ad never found the family of Horton’s murder victim and said when Dukakis released him for the weekend, it was like Dukakis was stabbing him all over again… The NAACP’s candidate, Al Gore, tells black audiences about Republicans: ‘They use colorblind the way duck hunters use their duck blind. They hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t figure out what they’re up to.’ (On today’s Good Morning America, ABC’s Charles Gibson didn’t ask Gore about the NAACP.)”

HMM: Skills Check: Empty-Chamber Carry Drill. If you’re carrying with an empty chamber you should definitely practice chambering a round. But . . .

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: California Politicians Hiked Gas Tax, Now Demand Investigation Into State’s $4 Per Gallon Gas Prices.

Related: Will Newsom end oil drilling in California? Many environmentalists are betting yes.

That should do wonders for lowering California’s gas prices, as California’s Potemkin environmentalism rolls on.

RECOMMENDED READING: So I read Andrew Wareham’s Nobody’s Child and liked it very much. I had previously enjoyed his China Station books, but this is quite different, and also different from the usual run of Napoleonic-Era Royal Navy sea stories: Nobody’s Child takes place mostly in the Far East, and Louis XVI is still King, while the protagonist ships out on a privateer. Very entertaining.

MORE OF THIS, PLEASE: Revolutionary: Oklahoma Has Just Put a Ban in Effect – Banning Bans on Plastic Bags.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The ideologue who wrote the textbook calling Trump and his supporters “racists.”

WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING URINE, FECES: Ancient urine details hunting-to-herding transition 10,000 years ago.

Original source of this recurring joke here.

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Plus, deals on Grills and Outdoor Cooking.

LYNNE LECHTER: Trump’s army of ‘the uncovered.’

A funny thing happened on the way to the 2016 presidential election. The unelectable, uncouth, unintelligent, unpolitical, unlikeable, and utterly unthinkable guy won. Clearly, the “deplorables” assisted, as did the “bitter clingers” — owners of guns and Bibles — and the so-called uneducated, unsophisticated, and ridiculed patriotic swath of the American people.

But it took more. The uncovereds carried President Trump over the finish line to unbelievable victory.

Who and what are the uncovereds? They are the silent army who are passionately pro-Trump but wouldn’t and still won’t admit it. Why? one might ask. Were they cowards?

In the months leading up to the 2016 election, the reasons for secrecy were very different from and far more benign than those dictating secrecy today. In 2015, Trump’s inner circle was aware of the phenomenon, as were the ancillary Trump campaign volunteers who walked the streets, knocking on doors, and toiling for hours at phone banks.

What did they collectively discover? Diverse but large groups of people were committed to voting for Trump. However, while they would admit their pro-Trump predilection to anonymous pollsters or door-knockers or phone surveyors, they would not tell their family, friends, co-workers, bosses, or teachers. Universally, their response would be “I’m voting for Trump, but I’m not telling my spouse, or anyone else.” In 2015, it just wasn’t worth the hassle and ridicule to them. They didn’t want to argue with friends and relatives, teachers and students. And they didn’t want to be perceived as dumb. . . .

In 2019, going into the upcoming presidential election cycle, the uncovereds’ reticence stems from far more profound fears. There is a fear of violence. There is a fear of being fired. There is a fear of grade retribution. There is a fear of a car with a pro-Trump bumper sticker being vandalized. This fear radiates in America. Incredibly, the Democratic Party has created an atmosphere of free speech suppression — “if you disagree with us, we will silence you.”

The Democrats, with their anarchistic thug minions, blackmail serial con artists, and monolithic control of public education and social and print media, have terrorized many Trump aficionados into diving underground and undercover. By doing so, they have perpetuated the inevitability of their second and seemingly more comprehensive demise. That is because, by pushing more uncovereds underground, they don’t know how many uncovereds exist.

Yet despite massive intimidation, another funny thing is happening on the way to the 2020 presidential election: Many of the heretofore uncovereds are banning together and openly bursting forth from the Trump closet. These include the Jewish groups Jexit and Jexodus and the ever-expanding black American and Caucasian movement #walkaway.

The groundswell of Jewish appreciation for President Trump, in some Jewish enclaves, is so overwhelming that it has permeated the 2019 Jewish celebration of Passover.

Read the whole thing.

ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DAY, revisiting Islam’s greatest slaughter of Christians.

I HAD WOMEN TELL ME THEY WERE ON BIRTH CONTROL WHEN THEY WEREN’T. WAS I RAPED? Is Sex by Deception a Form of Rape? Note that the examples in this article all have men in the offender slot.

Flashback: A rape epidemic — by women? New CDC report reveals troubling equality when it comes to sexual assault rates.

Related: When Rape Matters and When It Doesn’t: In the eyes of the media, all rapes are equal. But some rapes are more equal than others.

Also: The Understudied Female Predator.

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KING OF COMEDY UPDATE: Jussie Smollett Should Be “Brought Back” For Empire’s Next Season, Taraji P Henson & Terrence Howard Tell Disney, Fox.

Rupert Pupkin smiles.

Related: Osundairo Brothers File Suit In Federal Lawsuit Against Jussie Smollett’s Attorneys.

IF YOU LIKE YOUR PLAN, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PLAN: CBO Report: 1.4 Million Lost Health Insurance Since 2016 — And Obamacare Is To Blame.

WELL, GOOD: A prescription drug already in use for the treatment of high blood pressure could be effective against conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s, in which toxic proteins build up in brain cells.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN ILLINOIS: Feds Probe Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, First Lady For Property Tax Appeals On Gold Coast Mansion.

ROB LONG: The Moguls Who Couldn’t Deliver the Goods.

This is not at all like the old-timey ways of, say, Harry Cohn of Columbia Studios. It is part of Hollywood lore—unconfirmed Hollywood lore, but still—that Cohn would often demand sexual favors from actresses in exchange for movie roles. You’re shocked, I know. But here’s the crucial difference: Harry Cohn could deliver. When Harry Cohn whispered promises to an actress on the sofa with many cushions, you can bet he kept them. It is part of Hollywood lore—again, unconfirmed Hollywood lore—that one time Harry Cohn pressed the button under his desk, and a few days later Kim Novak was a movie star.

Sure, Moonves could have called someone up and asked for a favor. Trust me as someone who had many television series on CBS in the intervening years between Moonves’s pressing the button on Bobbie Phillips in 1996 and the publication of Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker articles in 2018. If he had given me a jingle and asked me for a favor, I absolutely 100 percent without question would have done it.

But then he would have owed me a favor back. And as someone who had many television series on CBS between 1996 and 2018—all of which were cancelled—that was probably something he wanted to avoid.

* * * * * * * *

The modern Hollywood mogul—like the modern executive in pretty much every other business—has just enough power to get into serious trouble, but not enough to make it go away. He can press the button, but he cannot deliver the goods. One strange by-product of the #MeToo scandal is how it revealed that two of the most powerful men in Hollywood were actually impotent.

Read the whole thing.

DON’T GET COCKY: Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Victory Chances are Very Real.

THE COWARD OF BROWARD: Florida Supreme Court blocks former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel from getting his job back.