Archive for 2021
April 14, 2021
LIKEWISE, OBESITY: Physical inactivity linked to more severe COVID-19 infection and death.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Merchants of Revolution: California’s ethnic studies initiatives train children in Marxist theory—and opposition to the American system.
I have obtained documents from one such program, the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Ethnic Studies Initiative, that paint a disturbing picture of the ethnic studies curriculum and the activists leading the charge. According to the documents and to sources within the district, the Office of Education held a series of teacher-training sessions on how to deploy ethnic studies in the classroom. The leaders, including district staff, an advisor for the state Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, and a professor from San Jose State University, encouraged teachers to inject left-wing politics into the classroom and to hide controversial materials from parents.
According to slides and contemporaneous notes from the session, the Santa Clara Office of Education began the presentation with a “land acknowledgement,” claiming that Santa Clara County and the public school system “occupy the unceded territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Nation, the sovereign nation and original people of the skies, land, and waters.” The premise of this ritual, which has become common in progressive organizations, is that the American government, founded by white settlers, is an illegitimate colonial power that should return the land to the Native American tribes.
But La Raza assures me that California was stolen from Mexico. As Tom Wolfe wrote in his last novel, “A phrase pops into his head from out of nowhere. ‘Everybody… all of them… it’s back to blood! Religion is dying… but everybody still has to believe in something. It would be intolerable — you couldn’t stand it — to finally have to say to yourself, ‘Why keep pretending? I’m nothing but a random atom inside a supercollider known as the universe.’ But believing in by definition means blindly, irrationally, doesn’t it. So, my people, that leaves only our blood, the bloodlines that course through our very bodies, to unite us. ‘La Raza!’ as the Puerto Ricans cry out. ‘The Race!’ cries the whole world. All people, all people everywhere, have but one last thing on their minds — Back to blood!”
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN ALBANY: Andrew Cuomo Is Doing the Future of Energy Wrong. “He reduced New York’s energy output, achieving nothing in return. It didn’t even help the environment.”
CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS RACIST AND DIVISIVE: Merchants of Revolution: California’s ethnic studies initiatives train children in Marxist theory—and opposition to the American system. And that’s by design.
THEY’RE PROPAGANDISTS, NOT REPORTERS: Watch as Reporters Insist There Was No Riot in Minneapolis.
Most of us are already exasperated by mixed messaging from every government agency in charge of public perception. The FAA and CDC both said vaccinated people should still not fly on airplanes, before pulling back and then declaring it safe to do so. President Biden, who has been fully vaccinated for four months, still wanders around in a mask, as does the Vice President who shadows him at every turn. The media and the Biden administration want to tell everyone that the vaccines work, but are unwilling to demonstrate the perks of getting vaccinated. These people are not interested in returning to normal by the end of the year. That’s saying nothing of the antics by national teachers’ unions attempting to extort the public before allowing their members to return to classrooms.
Perhaps the personal anxiety being displayed in the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post is simply lifestyle bias: journalists in DC and New York perceive the entire country to be boxed in as they are; they struggle to accept that Florida and Texas have been open for months. Perhaps the Biden administration sees an opening for a broad and restructuring opportunity to push through an ambitious agenda for the country on the back of the pandemic and doesn’t want to let a good crisis go to waste. Perhaps Anthony Fauci sees the curtain falling on his moment in the spotlight.
One thing seems obvious as more and more people become immunized against both the virus and hesitant elites — life is going to resume whether the ruling class wants it to or not. As the institutional figureheads find excuse after excuse to prolong the pandemic, their several messaging missteps mean their words aren’t having the intended effect. Soon enough, the politicians, pundits and ‘experts’ will see that the American public is content to leave them behind and tune them out.
Flashback: The suicide of expertise.
IT’S GOTTEN AS BAD AS WINDOWS: NASA delays Mars helicopter flight again for software update.
HE NEEDED TO REST UP: Get the Popcorn Ready, Joe Biden Is FINALLY Going to Address Congress.
21ST CENTURY WATCH DOG: A USAF master sergeant operates a Quad-legged Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV). Photo taken March 24, 2021 at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. Here’s a background article on droids that move like dogs.
LIFE IN OUR CURRENT DEGENERATE AGE: Matt Taibbi: Due Process Is Good, He Said Controversially.
You can spot the “woke” nowadays by the way they act like the ignorant Mississippi villagers with torches in old movies about lynchings.
UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOU FOR A NEW COUNTER-PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE STRATEGY:
…America needs a counter-psywar strategy that can confront China’s and Russia’s destructive lies and treat anti-American propaganda like CRT as the faculty club rubbish it is.
The goal is building public awareness of and societal resistance to these psychological warfare assaults designed to shatter us. The Biden administration is in thrall to Critical Race THeory advocates, so individual Americans and private-sector organizations willing to defend freedom must be the initial actors…
It’s an all volunteer force.
I EXPECT THAT 2020 WILL DEPART FROM THIS TREND: STD rates in U.S. rose in 2019 for sixth consecutive year, CDC says.
GOOD: New conservative group wields unorthodox tactics to block Biden agenda, nominees.
A new conservative opposition research group is using unorthodox, and controversial, tactics to throw what it describes as “a big handful of sand” in the gears of the Biden administration — tactics it claims have been used effectively by the left for years.
“I see the group right now as getting up every morning and with the goal of making it as difficult as possible for the Biden administration and their allies on the Hill to implement their agenda,” Tom Jones, founder of the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), told Fox News in an interview.
“Our goal is to take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration, and that’s what we’re going to do every day,” he said.
Jones – who has worked in a number of research groups, as well as a legislative director for Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and for the 2016 Ted Cruz presidential campaign – said the AAF differs from other opposition groups by not being client-based, and instead is focused on causing trouble for the new administration.
It was set up only in March but has already made headlines, in part due to its guerilla-style tactics.
This is Trump’s legacy: More Republicans who fight like the Democrats always have.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: BBC diversity chief says Idris Elba’s Luther character “lacks authenticity.” “He doesn’t have any Black friends, he doesn’t eat any Caribbean food.”
BERNIE MADOFF, INFAMOUS PONZI SCHEMER, DEAD AT 82.
Still though, the man worked tirelessly to expand socialism: Reminder: Bernie Madoff Donated Mostly to Democrats.
As were most of the people who donated to him.
BRYAN PRESTON: Woke British Leftist Says the Horrible, Genocidal Part Out Loud. “That Naziesque tweet wasn’t a one-off. Webbe followed it up with a thread outlining why she believes the rich should be ‘abolished.'”
Leftism always comes down to eliminating undesirables.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: AP Plays Big Brother, Abolishes the Word ‘Mistress,’ Hilarity Ensues.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Could we please just go one whole day when the Left isn’t using 1984 or Brave New World as an instruction manual?
Answer: Nope.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Just wait until Facebook’s automated censors learn about Boysack, Scotland
- America would have to destroy Baltimore to save it, except Baltimore is doing a fine job of the first part all on their own
- Patrisse Cullors can smear anyone she wants without repercussion — call it Marxist privilege
Bonus Sanity: You’ll love reading how people set the AP straight.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
THE TRUTH HURTS: Chinese state media is not happy after university think tank reveals CCP’s human rights violations. “The report concluded that the People’s Republic of China bears responsibility ‘for committing genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of the 1948 Convention.’ Pointing to the Chinese Communist Party’s deliberate actions in killing members of the group, inflicting serious bodily harm, and preventing births, the report concluded that China has the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part’ the Uyghur ethnic group under the framework of the Geneva Convention.'”
KRUISER: Prince Philip Totally Seemed Like a Fun Guy to Party With. “Prince Philip always seemed like the kind of royal who spent his privileged days dreaming of being a regular guy who could go to the pub and get drunk watching sports with his mates. You know, just be ‘Phil’ rather than Philip and enjoy a pint or ten.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? You can now appeal for Facebook’s Oversight Board to take down bad posts. “The Facebook Oversight Board will now allow users to appeal for posts to be taken down from the platform, a significant expansion of the Oversight Board’s scope. For the first six months of the Oversight Board, users could only appeal to have content restored to the platform after it had been removed by Facebook moderators. Now, the board will also hear appeals for content that Facebook moderators have left in place.”
Twitter’s Woke oversight board turned the once-fun platform into the world’s nastiest leftwing echo chamber. Facebook has been speeding along the same path, and this will speed things up even more.
Have you tried MeWe? It’s basically Facebook without the censorship.