HEALTHCARE RATIONING IS HERE: Don’t go to the Cleveland Clinic seeking a kidney transplant if you aren’t vaccinated. Didn’t there used to be something in that Hippocratic Oath about doing no harm?

IT’S AN HONOR JUST TO BE NOMINATED: Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.’ “As with other attempts to limit personal freedoms in the name of counterterrorism, Facebook’s DIO policy has become an unaccountable system that disproportionately punishes certain communities, critics say. It is built atop a blacklist of over 4,000 people and groups, including politicians, writers, charities, hospitals, hundreds of music acts, and long-dead historical figures.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Your Quarterly Reminder That Nobody Likes Kamala Harris. “Kamala Harris is so unpopular even with her own party that she had to drop out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race in 2019. Marianne Williamson lasted longer than Harris did, and she spends most of her free time huffing essential oils with her cats.”

WELL, THEY SEE THEMSELVES AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, SO WHY SHOULDN’T SHE? Pelosi: Reporters need to do a better job selling Biden’s agenda.

HE BEAT THE DEMOCRAT/MEDIA COMPLEX BACK WHEN IT WAS MUCH STRONGER: Justice Thomas’s audio memoirs released today, 30 years after he withstood the smears.

NARRATIVE MANAGEMENT: The One Jon Gruden Email We Can All Agree On…And One the Media Doesn’t Want to Talk About.

“Former Las Vegas Raiders coach and NFL broadcaster Jon Gruden mocked President Biden in 2011, calling him a ‘clueless p—-,’ according to new leaked emails.” . . .

I mean, Gruden is right about Biden. I will say that. I think you all agree. But let’s not act like this is some huge story. . . . Gruden’s email about Biden was right. Just like how Lt. Col. Ralph Peters was correct in calling Obama a ‘p**sy.’ Kernels of truth everywhere here.

Well, as they say, truth is the new hate speech.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: More CA Walgreens close due to “organized retail crime.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: America Is Running Out of Everything: The global supply chain is slowing down at the very moment when Americans are demanding that it go into overdrive.

I’m sure we’ll be told that this is all Trump’s fault, somehow.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Boston suspends 812 workers over coronavirus vaccine mandate. “The city of Boston has suspended 812 employees without pay who didn’t come into compliance with its coronavirus vaccine mandates, leaving the city “implementing contingency plans” as it finds itself short more than 4% of its workforce.”

REDISTRICTING: John Yarmuth, powerful liberal from Kentucky, announces he’ll retire from Congress at the end of his term. “The seat is safely blue, but if the GOP-controlled Kentucky legislature decides to slice up the area, which includes Louisville, into other districts in redistricting it would become much harder for a Democrat to win a seat in the Bluegrass State. Yarmuth is the 11th House Democrat this cycle to announce plans to leave Congress at the end of their term, compared to nine Republicans. Of those 11 Democrats, four are running for governor or a US Senate seat.”

WATCH LIVE: William Shatner’s Launch on Blue Origin.

PULL THE PLUG: Fauci’s credibility on life support.

COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci’s credibility is down to an all-time low after he raised doubts about families gathering for Christmas.

In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 54% of likely voters agreed that he has lost “all credibility.”

He was awful on AIDS too, and paid no price. He should be chased out in disgrace now.

EXCLUSIVE: Southwest Whistleblower: Canceled Flights the Result of a ‘Coordinated Protest’ Against Vaccine Mandate.

JUSTICE GORSUCH AND THE TRANSGENDER BATHROOM ISSUE: The transgender bathroom issue has made it into the (conservative) news again—this time in a case involving an alleged sexual assault in at a Loudoun County school.

I don’t understand why so many people assume Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) requires schools to allow transgender girls (anatomical boys who “identify as female”) to use the girls’ toilets, locker rooms, and showers. Whether you’re a fan of Justice Gorsuch’s reasoning or not, Bostock doesn’t go that far. Indeed, the opinion denies that it is intended to apply in that context.

I would go further: Bostock’s logic actually strengthens the case for school discretion in dealing with the transgender bathroom, locker room, and shower situations.  Its logic suggests that individual school districts should have the option of dealing with the issue as they see fit.

The Bostock opinion is hyper-textual.  Its logic goes something like this:

• The plaintiff—a man who revealed that he was going to wear skirts and make-up and use mannerisms that are generally thought of as feminine—was fired from his job at the defendant’s funeral home.
• A woman who wears skirts and make-up and who uses mannerisms that are generally thought of as feminine would not have been fired from that job.
• That’s sex discrimination! A man and a woman behaving in the same way were treated differently.
• Because Title VII bans sex discrimination (and no exception to that ban applies here), this is a violation of Title VII.

Note that Justice Gorsuch did not subscribe to the notion that transgender women are women or that transgender men are men. Indeed, if he had done so, it would have ruined the plaintiff’s case. Title VII does not outlaw discrimination between different kinds of women or between different kinds of men. To win a case, the plaintiff needs to be able to show that a male is being treated differently from a female. In Gorsuch’s view, that’s the key to liability.

Note also that Gorsuch’s logic would presumably also apply to a male who isn’t transgender, but who just wants to wear a skirt and makeup (or to the more common situation of a woman who isn’t transgender and who wants to wear pants and not wear makeup). It’s all about treating males and females differently.

Title IX applies to federally funded schools and covers not just employees but also students. Like Title VII, it bans sex discrimination. It also authorizes the President to promulgate regulations that allow for separate living facilities. President Gerald Ford did so. The regulation explicitly authorizes the separation of toilets, locker rooms, and showers by sex.

So let’s try the Bostock hyper-textual logic in this context:

(more…)

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: SPOTTED: Illinois Dem Sean Casten at Chicago Airport WITHOUT A MASK. “Another Democrat selfishly endangers American lives.”

NEVER LET A (MANUFACTURED) CRISIS GO TO WASTE: Psaki Admits Biden Is Exploiting COVID for ‘Fundamental’ Economic Change.

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Horror in Loudoun County Implicates Local and Federal Officials.

The situation in Loudoun County, VA, has become a point of national interest over the last year as it has come to represent ground zero for the fight against Critical Race Theory and transgender ideology in schools. Parents have stood up at school board meetings and pushed back on policies allowing boys in girls’ bathrooms, books that promote pedophilia, and other perverse directives.

Back in June, one such meeting exploded with multiple arrests after the cowardly school board declared an unlawful assembly. Police officers with no care for the rights of parents grabbed and threw one man to the ground who refused to leave. In what became a viral moment, the man was dragged out with his pants around his ankles.

Now, we have the story behind what happened via The Daily Wire, who put out a multi-thousand-word investigative piece sharing exactly what Scott Smith had gone through. Most of it is behind a paywall, but I will share as much as I can here.

Per the report, Smith was at the school board meeting because his daughter had been raped by a transgender boy in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. What transpired after that was almost as sickening as the act itself.

People need to start pressuring the police not to defend these creeps. God knows the creeps they’re defending would throw them under the bus without a thought.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE THAT THIS KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENS AND THAT GEORGIA’S VOTING INTEGRITY LAW IS RACIST: Two Georgia Elections Employees Fired Over Allegations of Shredding Voting Applications.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS! Orange County Public Schools board chair ejects parents, speakers from meeting.

At the direction of the Orange County Public Schools board of education chair, parents and members of the public were ejected from the Oct. 11 board meeting by Orange County sheriffs’ deputies.

The reason? Apparently speaking about concerns and topics that were not on the meeting agenda.

Attendees were also subjected to metal detectors and told they could not congregate on the premises of A.L. Stanback Middle School where the meeting was being held.

Several times during the meeting, Mackenzie was heard to say, “you cannot talk on that topic,” before motioning for deputies to remove the person. Loud booing throughout the auditorium followed.

Orange County schools’ policy manual does not include language dictating what a speaker can or can’t talk about beyond barring discussion of personal information, student information or addressing a specific board member with a grievance.

“If you don’t speak about agenda items you will be asked to leave,” Mackenzie repeated several times.

In the background, a male attendee yelled, “You’re shutting down parents! You shut down parents. You advocate for a Communist cause and that’s going to be exposed.”

Shouts from the audience were fairly steady throughout the public comments portion of the meeting.

Following additional yelling and gavel banging, another individual attempted to address curriculum, but the moment he uttered the words “racist behavior” Mackenzie intervened, saying she could “not let you speak on that,” while sending deputies to intercept him and walk him out.

Even when speakers attempted to address an item on the agenda, a resolution to “address harm caused to students by incidents of hostile and racist behavior,” Mackenzie gaveled them out of order and still had them escorted out by law enforcement.

Go protest at his home, and follow him into the restroom with a camera. The left has informed us that it’s just part of the process.

RIGGED: FLASHBACK: Report: Zuckerberg Money Used in Violation of Federal Election Law.

SO EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT WILLIAM SHATNER’S UPCOMING SPACE FLIGHT, and mostly about Captain Kirk. But, you know, he owned the role of Denny Crane in Boston Legal.

OPEN THREAD: You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Just kidding, you can comment here all night.

DON’T GET COCKY: Abandon ship: Dem chair of House Budget Committee not running for reelection.

As Glenn has written, “Really, don’t get cocky…If you want to win, donate and volunteer. Winning takes work, and commenting on Internet blogs, even this one, doesn’t count.”

AMERICA IS RUNNING OUT OF EVERYTHING:

The container situation is even weirder than it looks. With demand surging in the United States, shipping a parcel from Shanghai to Los Angeles is currently six times more expensive than shipping one from L.A. to Shanghai. J.P. Morgan’s Michael Cembalest wrote that this has created strong incentives for container owners to ship containers to China—even if they are mostly empty—to expedite the packing and shipping of freights in Shanghai to travel east. But when containers leave Los Angeles and Long Beach empty, American-made goods that were supposed to be sent across the Pacific Ocean end up sitting around in railcars parked at West Coast ports. Since the packed railcars can’t unload their goods, they can’t go back and collect more stuff from filled warehouses in the American interior.

And what about the truckers who are needed to drive materials between warehouses, ports, stores, and houses? They’re dealing with a multidimensional shortage too. Supply-chain woes have backed up orders for parts, such as resin for roof caps and vinyl for seats. But there’s also a crucial lack of people to actually drive the rigs. The Minnesota Trucking Association estimates that the country has a shortage of about 60,000 drivers, due to longtime recruitment issues, early retirements, and COVID-canceled driving-school classes.

In short, supply chains depend on containers, ports, railroads, warehouses, and trucks. Every stage of this international assembly line is breaking down in its own unique way. When the global supply chain works, it’s like a beautifully invisible system of dominoes clicking forward. Today’s omnishambles is a reminder that dominoes can fall backwards too.

* * * * * * * *

This has not yet added up to a recession. But it portends a massively frustrating holiday-shopping period, especially for households with a habit of buying presents at the last minute. “I’ve been doing this for 43 years and never seen it this bad,” Isaac Larian, the founder and CEO of the toy maker MGA Entertainment, told Bloomberg. “Everything that can go wrong is going wrong at the same time.” USPS has already announced price hikes for the winter holidays. To avoid paying those surcharges and suffering the yuletide wrath of disappointed children, the recommended course of action is clear: If you want it by December 25, start placing those orders soon. Everyone complains when stores start playing carols and advertising holiday sales in October. This year, “Christmas creep” is your best shopping strategy. Either that, or prepare the kids to celebrate Christmas morning some time in January.

Even John Gill’s Biden’s White House has noticed: ‘There will be things that people can’t get,’ at Christmas, White House warns.

Naturally, the Reuters article has a “Republicans seize!” angle to it:

Republican strategists are seizing on possible Christmas shortages to bash Biden’s policies as inflationary, and thwart his attempt to push a multitrillion-dollar spending package through Congress in coming weeks.

A recent opinion piece by Steve Cortes, a onetime adviser to former President Donald Trump, dubbed the upcoming holiday season “Biden’s Blue Christmas,” continuing in a long tradition of conservatives criticizing Democrats over celebrations around the Christian holiday.

Trump, considered the front-runner Republican candidate for president in 2024, blasted it out in a mass email through his political action committee, Save America.

Seth Weathers, a Republican strategist who ran Trump’s Georgia campaign in 2016, said they see a local impact. “People here in Georgia are paying twice as much for items than they paid a year ago, and they are blaming Biden. He’s in charge.”

A Quinnipiac poll released last week showed Biden is losing the public’s trust on the economy, with only 29% of public thinking the U.S. economy is in “good” or “excellent” condition, compared with 35% in April.

“President Biden could use a holiday season win,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said. “A slowdown of holiday season deliveries and the financial strain that comes with it would be coal in the stocking for the administration at the close of the first year in office.”

As Jim Treacher likes to say:

#RESISTANCE: