A TRILLION HERE, AND A TRILLION THERE, AND SOONER OR LATER, YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT REAL MONEY: Nine Crazy Examples of Unrelated Waste and Partisan Spending in Biden’s $2 Trillion ‘Infrastructure’ Proposal.
Archive for 2021
March 31, 2021
I’M GETTING USED TO THIS KIND OF STUFF: COVID, murder hornets, riots, the Suez Canal … and now Johnson & Johnson factory mistake ruins 15 million doses of vaccine.
HOT OFF THE PRESS!: Amicus Curiae briefs in support of the Petitioner are due today at the Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Here the brief Peter Kirsanow and I filed. Cross your fingers for SFFA.
BUT SCHOOL SHOOTINGS WERE UNKNOWN: Flashback: When toting guns in high school was cool.
New York City high schoolers used to pack heat as often as they packed lunch.
This month, more than 100,000 city public school kids walked out to protest gun violence — but last century some students attended class armed with their rifles and practiced shooting on school grounds.
Many of the city’s public high schools had shooting clubs and a few even had gun ranges on their premises, according to accounts from the Department of Education and others.
There were at least three shooting ranges in public schools, the DOE said, including Curtis HS on Staten Island and Erasmus Hall HS in Brooklyn.
Another inside Far Rockaway HS in Queens, which closed in 2011, is shown in a black-and-white archival photo from May 1929 displaying a compartmentalized gun range with at least five windows to shoot from and cranks for students to pull the targets back and forth.
“To accommodate the kids, they even made them these little pull-out benches they can kneel on to shoot from that position or even lie down to shoot,” said Darren Leung, owner of Westside Rifle & Pistol Range in Chelsea, describing the equipment seen in the 89-year-old photo. “What an excellent design.”
Shooting clubs were popular in many schools, even if they didn’t have gun ranges.
A different, and in many ways better, America.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Biden’s Bloodthirsty, Floor-Pooping Canine Companion Is a Window Into His Soul.
Yes, it’s satire — or is it?
THIS IS CNN: CNN News Writer Denies the Biological Reality of Sex at Birth.
CNN News Article: ‘It’s Not Possible to Know a Person’s Gender Identity at Birth’
In an article reporting on Kristi Noem’s decision to veto the “Fairness in Girls’ Sports” bill, CNN breaking-news reporter Devan Cole claimed yesterday that there’s no way to determine a child’s “gender identity” at birth.
“It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth,” Cole asserted, in a statement better fit for an unhinged opinion article than a news article by a breaking-news reporter.
In fact, as most of us are willing to acknowledge, for all of human history we’ve all relied upon a very simple way of actually knowing sex at birth. The concept of “assigning” sex at birth, far from being based on any “consensus criteria,” is a progressive invention designed to inculcate new parents into believing that a child’s biological sex and gender are sometimes, or even often, misaligned, and that it would be damaging to them to merely accept the reality of their biology at birth.
Cole has more to offer in this vein, critiquing two orders that Noem signed in an effort to require that biologically male athletes and biologically female athletes compete against others of their own sex:
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record puts it: CNN Says There Is No Biological Difference Between An Apple And A Banana.
DEMOCRAT DROPS ATTEMPT TO OVERTURN IOWA CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION:
Rita Hart said Wednesday that she is dropping her effort to overturn the results of her election loss in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, saying the effort to contest the race had become too “toxic.”
Her decision means Democrats will no longer be able to try to oust Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the Republican who won the race by six votes and who has been serving since Jan. 3 — albeit in what Democrats insisted was a provisional status.
Ms. Hart’s challenge had become a serious distraction for Democrats on Capitol Hill, pitting Speaker Nancy Pelosi against more moderate members of her caucus, who said they couldn’t see overturning the results of an election after complaining so loudly when former President Donald Trump attempted the same thing.
Next up for Hart, governor of Georgia?
Flashback: “For a guy who supposedly lost, Trump sure had a lot of coattails. And for a guy who supposedly won, Biden sure didn’t.”
OH: Yahoo Story on Florida COVID Study Misrepresented Key Finding, Study’s Author Says.
“Florida is undercounting the number of people who died from COVID-19 by thousands of cases, casting new doubt on claims that Gov. Ron DeSantis navigated the coronavirus pandemic successfully,” begins the fear-mongering story, published by Yahoo national correspondent Alexander Nazaryan on Tuesday.
The story was built around a study published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, which analyzed Florida’s “excess deaths” during the COVID-19 pandemic — or the difference between the actual number of deaths in the state and what was expected, after accounting for registered COVID deaths.
The study — which found that Florida, after accounting for COVID deaths, had 4,924 excess deaths from March to September 2020 — reported that “the impact of COVID-19 on mortality is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest.”
Yahoo incorrectly framed the nearly 5,000 deaths as COVID mortalities that the state has let slip through the cracks.
“In the case of Florida, the researchers say, 4,924 excess deaths should have been counted as resulting from COVID-19 but for the most part were ruled as having been caused by something else, thus lowering Florida’s coronavirus fatality count,” the article reads. The story led Drudge Report on Tuesday with the caption “RESEARCH FINDS 5,000 MORE DEAD,” and was prominently shared by Florida Democrats Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried.
But Moosa Tatar, the lead author of the study featured by Yahoo, said the story’s framing of his analysis was incorrect, and he does not yet know how many of the excess deaths are attributable to COVID.
Listen, if we’re going to let facts stand in the way of perfectly reasonable panicmongering, then eventually people are going to stop being needlessly afraid.
Related (From Ed): COVID Panic Peddlers Get Clobbered by Their Own Boomerang in Pushing Doom and Gloom Narrative.
JIM TREACHER: White House Staff Finds Poop on Floor, Blames Champ and Major. “Of course, this is all assuming Champ and/or Major are the culprits in the first place. Fecal incontinence isn’t an uncommon problem among the elderly, and some of the current residents of the White House don’t seem to have a solid grasp on where they are at all times. What I’m saying is…Who’s keeping tabs on Jill?”
WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING URINE, FECES: Professor Asks for His Neighbors’ Poop to ‘Fight Gentrification.’
(Classical reference in headline.)
I DON’T CARE FOR THE CONTENT OF THAT TEACHER’S CHARACTER: Teacher Bullies Student for His Colorblind Attitude Toward Race.
HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL: Major Biden’s hunger for human flesh has yet to be sated.
Of course, this story is great “stray voltage” material to get the attention off Biden’s disaster at the border: Biden approval numbers on immigration sink amid border crisis: poll.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Great Defense Loads for the 9 mm.
WARP FACTOR… POINT NINE-NINE-NINE? New Warp Drive Model Requires No ‘Exotic Matter,’ Scientists Say We Can Build It. “Unlike the Alcubierre and White designs, the APL team’s proposal requires no exotic matter to power the vehicle, but there is one catch. According to the researchers, the physical nature of the new design means it is constrained by Newtonian physics. In short, while their drive concept is indeed designed to transport humans across the galaxy and needs no exotic matter to fuel its journey, it is not capable of breaking the speed of light.”
That’s a bummer.
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS LAW SCHOOL’S FIRST AMENDMENT CENTER: Standing up for the First Amendment … unless it would p*ss off the wrong people.
DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TITAN AND THE TITANIC? Brook McIntire of the Colson Center explains why that difference is important in responding to claims the Easter Resurrection story was merely borrowed from ancient pagan myths.
UPDATE YOUR NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: Everything is racist, including not being racist, as Merriam-Webster expands the definition of the word ‘color-blind.’
THIS IS CNN: CNN Blows Minds With ‘Hard News’ Report About Assigning Sex.
Exit quote from CNN article: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Bespoke neuroblastoma therapy weaponizes cell metabolism.
CALIFORNIANS WANT TO KEEP GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD. Poll: Majority of California Voters Would Retain Governor Gavin Newsom.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): CNN Claims ‘Biological Sex’ Is a Disputed Term: ‘No Consensus Criteria for Assigning Sex at Birth.’
I DON’T THINK PEOPLE WILL GO ALONG WITH THIS: Masks, distancing still needed as cities reopen, even with vaccinations, researchers say. I see a lot more people ignoring mask rules suddenly. I think people are over it, and the experts’ authority is much-diminished.
FACEBOOK BAN ON PRESIDENT TRUMP EXTENDS TO INTERVIEWS OF TRUMP: At least if you are a member of “Team Trump,” affiliated with some campaign, or even a “former surrogate” (like there aren’t plenty of those hostile to the former president). And you will be punished if you don’t comply. This is an extremely bad idea in every way and it’s gonna get real weird if Trump runs for office (or is elected!) again. If you can imagine a world where such a situation doesn’t lead to an overreaching regulatory backlash by governments to prevent this, you have a better imagination than I do. Just imagine how this conversation’s going to go:
2024 Democrat Voter: “Trump loses again! The people have spoken!”
2024 Trump Voter: “You are telling me that this was a fair election and that I should think that this represents the will of the people when three giant companies colluded to ban my candidate from even appearing on the platforms where I get most of my news?”
How does that conversation end with any kind of agreement or shared sense of legitimacy of the U.S. government? Back away from the brink, folks!