Archive for 2020
May 13, 2020
NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, BUT A CONSPIRACY: ‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time: And the media know it.
They know it, but they’re going to do their best to make sure as few other people as possible understand it.
Remember:
THE PRESS, BY NATURE, IS LAZY, CONDESCENDING, AND AUTHORITARIAN:
Go to the link to see the county-by-county map — “Where people started leaving home again/Percentage point change in the share of people staying home.” How does the NYT know this? It uses data from Cuebiq, which takes “a representative sample of about 15 million smartphone users nationwide who have agreed to share their location data with certain apps.” It’s not snooping on you. You agreed! With certain apps.
Quite aside from that invasion of our privacy — by our lax acceptance of the demands of apps — there’s the insinuation that we’re violating our state governments’ orders if we do not stay home. But where are we required to stay home? Not here in Wisconsin. We’re free to leave the house. It really irritates me to hear mainstream news and commentary speaking of a requirement to stay home. The requirement is social distancing! Maybe in New York City, you need to stay home to avoid violating the strictures of social distancing, but that’s not true in most of the country. If people are leaving home to take walks or go food shopping, they’re not disregarding orders.
Whether people are thinking for themselves and following their own ideas about how much social distancing they want or need instead of following orders — that’s another matter entirely. And I don’t think the certain apps are measuring that.
And it’s gotten worse — and dumber — in recent years.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Therapeutic Campus. Why are college students seeking mental-health services in record numbers? The therapeutic bureaucracy is flourishing as “safe spaces” expand into woke spas for the most privileged neurotics in history.
Underneath the essential oils and yoga mats, the woke spa mental-wellness crusade is accomplishing an even more profound transformation of university life.The assumption that emotional threat and danger lie just beyond the spa is the product of an increasingly female-dominated student body, faculty, and administration. That assumption is undermining traditional academic values of rational discourse, argumentation, and free speech.
Read the whole thing.
FLASHBACK: States are cutting university budgets. Taxpayers aren’t interested in funding campus kooks. “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make crazy. And higher education has become objectively crazy.”
MEANWHILE, AT VODKAPUNDIT: Elon Musk, Gordon Gekko, and the Power of Character. “Gordon Gekko saw the corruption in the world around him, and instead of building something better, he chose to exploit it. Musk stood up to California’s corruptocrats, and they folded almost at once.”
This one is just for our VIP members, and I hope you’ll use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.
WELL, GOOD: U.S. to Get Sanofi Covid Vaccine First If It Succeeds, CEO Says.
That’s because the U.S. was first in line to fund Sanofi’s vaccine research, Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson said in an interview with Bloomberg News. He warned that Europe risks falling behind unless it steps up efforts to seek protection against a pandemic that’s killed more than 290,000 people worldwide.
“The U.S. government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” Hudson said. The U.S., which expanded a vaccine partnership with the company in February, expects “that if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first.”
Huh. All the best people told me Trump just wants people to die.
“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”: Keystone Rebellion. Six counties in Pennsylvania rebel against the governor’s lockdown policies.
ONCE TRUMP TOUCHED THE ORB, THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE BABYLON BEE CROSSED POINTS ON THE REALITY METER: Will Coronavirus Kill Astrology?
BIDEN’S HANDLERS GETTING NERVOUS:
To be fair, attacking reporters has always been a key element of Joe Biden’s style:
UPDATE: How do you do, fellow kids? Joe Biden Goes on “Youth” Oriented Snapchat Show, Gets Relentlessly Clowned.
Related: Biden’s rhetoric, versus his staff’s:
UPDATE: Biden campaign deleted the tweet. Does that mean [Herridge’s] reporting stands then?”
USAF THUNDERBIRDS: Just saw the Air Force Thunderbirds overfly Austin, Texas. Great show. Folks up and down the street either clapped or hurrahed. A photo from the StrategyPage vault of the Thunderbirds practicing over Nevada. Here’s one I like, the Thunderbirds over Loch Ness.
THE ROAD TO JONESTOWN: On this day in 1931, Jim Jones—the charismatic religious leader who instigated a terrifying mass murder-suicide—was born in Crete, Indiana.
Personally, I am not a big fan of charisma. I like my leaders—religious or otherwise—to be more on the sober side. Downright boring isn’t a deal killer for me. Exciting leaders tend to lead their followers to places they’d prefer not to be—like the remote jungles of Guyana.
Jones grew up poor with an interest in religion that was unusual for his age. Also an avid reader of Marx, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Gandhi, he began attending gatherings of the Communist Party USA in 1951. Determined to become a great man, he asked himself, “How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church.”
OH, THAT LIBERAL FASCISM: Gretchen Whitmer Targets 77-Year-Old Barber’s Livelihood, Strips Operating License ‘Without a Hearing.’
GUESS WHO’S ON THERE? JOE BIDEN. List of Obama Officials Who Sought To ‘Unmask’ Flynn Released.
But what did the Vice President forget, and when did he forget it?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Importance of Situational Awareness.
GASLIGHTING: Media Lies: Democrat Governors Doing Great Jobs Despite Higher Wuhan Death Rates. “What’s a Republican governor have to do to earn respect from the mainstream media? I’m asking because saving a lot of lives without totally trashing their state’s economy doesn’t seem to do the trick. Meanwhile, certain Democrat governors are portrayed as quietly competent heroes while having the worst infection and death rates in the nation.”
I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN JOE BIDEN WAS PORTRAYED BY THE MEDIA AS THE MODERATE DEMOCRAT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Biden Taps AOC to Chair Campaign’s Climate Change Task Force.
After the Democratic presidential candidates’ apocalyptic-themed “climate change” town hall on CNN last year, PJM’s Bryan Preston wrote, “If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela. Thank you, CNN, just for letting these people talk. Do it again next week? Please?”