IN THE MAIL: From P.J. O’Rourke, A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land.
Archive for 2020
September 17, 2020
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Riots Most Expensive in History.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Could John Kerry be any more wrong?
Answer: No. John Kerry could not be any more wrong if he fell up into the sun rising in the west while wearing white after Labor Day.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- The most nonsensical projectile word vomit from Joe Biden you’ve ever heard
- How to lose voters and infuriate people, Democrat-style.
- It’s cool when Kamala wears it, but not Melania.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GEORGE KORDA: COVID-19: Can’t live with it, so we live in spite of it. Or, as in Nashville, we lie about it.
DON’T CALIFORNIA MY TEXAS: Moving Truck Prices In LA And San Francisco Are Skyrocketing Due To Demand.
WILFUL FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ORDER IS A CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATION, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S BASED ON RACE: Attorney General William P. Barr was also said to have asked prosecutors to explore whether to bring charges against the mayor of Seattle for allowing a police-free protest zone. Love how the NYT characterizes this lawless and violent area: “police-free protest zone.” Its own reporting showed that things were much worse than that.
BTW, InstaPundit was encouraging pointing out the civil rights violation back in August, though I was encouraging civil suits under 42 U.S.C. 1985. But a criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 241 is also possible.
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DID: Facebook and Instagram Flag Tucker Carlson Virus Posts.
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Georgia Tech to pay $50K, improve free speech policy in legal ‘win’ for pro-life students.
Now file a complaint with the Education Department under Executive Order 13864.
FROM MY FORMER STUDENT CHRIS DAVIS: Put Congress in a Blender!
DARMOK AND JALAD AT TANAGRA. SHAKA, WHEN THE WALLS FELL: I have deciphered Bidenspeak.
WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: Bombshell: Nashville mayor’s office deliberately kept vital COVID info about bars and restaurants from the public.
The coronavirus cases on lower Broadway may have been so low that the mayor’s office and the Metro Health Department decided to keep it secret.
Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing.
The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that.
And most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.
Disgraceful. Trust is the chief asset public health officials have, and they’ve squandered it with barely a thought. It will be a generation at least before people trust them again, even if they clean up their act, which at present seems unlikely.
AT AMAZON, BK Cookware Skillet Black Carbon Steel, 10′.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A roundup on the absurd USC ‘Neige’ scandal:
While Patton says he does genuinely feel bad that the example has caused such disruption, he has heard from Chinese students who don’t think he should have expressed remorse. “If there’s a complaint I’m getting, it’s that I apologized and should not have,” he says. He still struggles to understand how what he said could have been interpreted as laced with ill intent, as if he were sneaking in a slur. “I’m not springing it on them,” he says. “I’m talking in an international context. I’m specifically talking about China and the language most commonly spoken in the world.”
Patton doesn’t believe he’ll be able to teach in the full-time M.B.A. program again anytime soon. There’s concern at the business school that the students who complained might object to his teaching the communication course next fall, or any other course, for that matter
Ignorant, officious, self-important students shouldn’t have that much influence. But they will, so long as administrators are gutless weasels.
ENDORSED: Help parents pay for at-home education.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: House Of Cards: Can The American University Be Saved? “Across the country, universities are canceling classes and furloughing workers, leaving thousands stranded without income. Though some schools have lengthened the tenure timelines of assistant professors, the majority have refused to extend a similar courtesy to graduate students. Staff members and adjuncts have likewise been abandoned—forced to work fewer hours or unceremoniously let go. The situation is likely to get worse as students refuse to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to take subpar online courses while sitting in their living rooms. Without exaggeration, American higher education may be on the verge of a total breakdown.”
If only there had been some sort of warning.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Calif. prof shares home address of officer in Blue Lives Matter photo.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: First Amendment Champion DeVos Is the MVP of Trump’s Cabinet. “All that DeVos has been doing is attempt to restore some basic constitutional rights on college campuses that have been cavalierly stripped away over the years by commie academics. Universities should be encouraging the free exchange of ideas. That’s difficult to do when First Amendment rights have been tossed out of the window by the bitter totalitarian shrews in academia.”
HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED: Newt Gingrich named person who is ‘a major cause of the violence we’re seeing’ in US cities (and then ‘things got weird’ on Fox News).
This is one of the weirdest exchanges I’ve ever seen on TV. [Gingrich] correctly points out that George Soros threw an unprecedented amount of money into DA races all over the country to elect radicals and Fox News basically told him to shut up. WTF?
IT MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE TO SAY THAT IN HIS DIMINISHED CAPACITY HE’S BECOME A SOCKPUPPET FOR HIS PARTY’S RADICAL WING: Joe Biden Is No Moderate. “As Peter Beinart put it in The Atlantic, ‘Despite embracing an agenda that is further to the left than that of any Democratic nominee in decades, [Biden has] avoided the specific policy proposals and catchphrases that Republicans find easiest to attack. As a result, he appears more centrist than he actually is.’ Beinart is correct about where Biden’s agenda sits on the policy spectrum, but he is wrong about Biden avoiding specific proposals. In fact, it would be difficult to present his positions on social policy issues as further to the left than he has presented them himself (or has allowed them to be presented on his behalf) on his campaign website. Biden carefully describes his proposals in coded language and in less-than-obvious places, and a compliant press allows him to avoid discussing them on the stump. But the website sets forth policies that are unambiguously extreme.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Big Apple downsized: New Yorkers ready to leave their city.
KUDOS FOR NOT CAVING TO CANCEL CULTURE AND THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Spotify CEO Defends Keeping Transphobic Joe Rogan Podcasts Online. “The specific episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Ek was referring to was from July, in which Rogan interviewed Abigail Shrier, author of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, according to one of the sources. From the opening moments of that podcast, Shrier associates transgender youth with those with autism; Shrier and Rogan spend parts of the episode explaining that young people are being pressured into transitioning by YouTube and other media.”
