YOUR LYIN’ EYES: Are We Supposed to Believe Dr. Fauci or the Data Collected on COVID-19? “How much longer is Dr. Fauci going to be allowed to make proclamations that contain confounding variables, data-free assumptions, and outright falsehoods with no pushback?”

NEWS WE WON’T USE: I was in charge of the CDC. Here’s my advice on verifying vaccines.

IT DOES SEEM FATAL: The FBI’s Incurable Rot. “The bureau is an institution with no shame, no remorse, and no accountability. There’s no fix for that.”

Well, there is. But it’s ugly.

GOOD: Politico: Biden’s domestic agenda near collapse — and Dems know it.

I THINK BILL LEE IS WRONG ABOUT THIS: Tennessee Follows Federal Guidance, Recommends Vaccinated Don’t Get Monoclonal Antibodies.

One of Helen’s friends who was vaccinated nonetheless got Covid at a small party — where everyone vaccinated contracted Covid, but the friend who had actually had it escaped unscathed — and became sick enough to be hospitalized. She got the antibodies and went from deathly ill to fine in short order.

UPDATE: Some in the comments are confused. It was a party where everyone but one person was vaccinated. All the vaccinated people got Covid. One of them was hospitalized and might have died but for the antibodies. The non-vaccinated one who had had Covid was protected by natural immunity.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE! NO, NOT THAT SCIENCE! Heads Explode Over Florida’s New Surgeon General.

Has anyone noticed that Ron DeSantis is basically operating as a sort of shadow counter-president?

Plus: “Meanwhile, the media have decided that a bunch of know-nothing journalism majors have more knowledge of COVID than a tenured professor who got his medical degree from Harvard.” Credentials really matter, except when the narrative is in peril.

LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD: Break Up Big Tech? Luigi Zingales, a University of Chicago economist, offers City Journal’s Allison Shrager some suggestions for reforming the FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google).

While I wouldn’t go as far as breaking the FAANGs up, there is one thing I’d love to see. Why can’t I have software that monitors both Signal and WhatsApp and can receive and send data to both at the same time? In 2008, a company called Power Ventures did just that, but Facebook sued the hell out of it and established a principle in U.S. courts that if I give you my Facebook log-in credentials and you download data with my consent, then you are committing a federal crime and should go to jail. I think this is crazy, and it’s one of many legal issues making solutions difficult.

Another thing he’d like to see:

First, we should separate the editorial role from the sharing role. In the editorial role, where there are no network externalities, we can have competition. I can have a University of Chicago editor, and another person could have Jacobin as editor. Newspapers can redefine their role as editors. I could subscribe to the Wall Street Journal editorial-selection services: the Wall Street Journal would edit and select from the web the articles or tweets I want to read. For example, I hate it when people talk about their lives on Twitter; other people love that. There should be free competition on curating these information feeds.

By contrast, the sharing function (which benefits from network externalities) should be considered a common carrier, with the restrictions typical of a common carrier, including universal service. Everyone should be allowed to post on Facebook, unless she violates the law.

In the same way, the sharing function of Facebook should retain protection from legal liability, while the editorial function should not. Think about Reddit. You can write posts on Reddit, and Reddit doesn’t promote those posts, so Reddit should be free from editorial liability. The moment Twitter or Facebook choose what post to promote to keep users more engaged, they become editors and should be liable for content.

Read the whole thing.

OPEN THREAD: I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:

● Shot: It Took Biden 48 Years to Be President and 8 Months To F*** It Up.

—Matt Lewis, The Daily Beast, today.

● Chaser: This Virginia Conservative Republican Is Ridin’ With Biden.

—Matt Lewis, The Daily Beast, March 4^th, 2020.

● Hangover: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”

—Barack Obama, as quoted by the Politico, August 8, 2020

(A quote that’s missing from Lewis’ latest article.)

DON’T GET COCKY: As Biden’s Presidency Crumbles, Democrats in Congress Lose Hope.

Related: The Biden administration: lying with impunity.

So what are the lies for, if not to persuade? They are meant to give the already-convinced – the Democratic rank-and-file voter – their ready-made excuses for not paying attention to whatever objections the right may make or point out. The Democratic voter can shrug off any concerns they themselves may have, too, in a shallow and facile way. They also give the many pundits on the left their talking points, and if the talking heads on TV and the columnists hammer them home enough, the repetition makes the lies sound more like truths. After all, if all these smart people agree, who is the listener to differ?

Lastly, these lies have a function that is similar to what was going on with the Soviets – the lie as mockery and insult and sadistic tease. In that regard, obvious lying is a feature, not a bug, and it helps that the lie is absurd. It’s a show of power meant for the opposition to view, a way to say, “we can state any stupidity we want as truth, things both you and I know are ridiculous, and will we say it with a straight face to illustrate the extent of our power over you. We don’t have to pretend to make sense. We’re in control and you’re not. We are laughing at you.”

That’s the point we have reached.

They’re also designed to get (P)resident Biden past each horrendous news cycle, to give his operatives with bylines something to justify his administration’s disasters du jour.

Evergreen:

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA plans to send lunar rover to Nobile region of moon’s South Pole.

NOW OUT FROM FRANK MINITER: The Deep State Revolution. I’ve read it and blurbed it (follow the link to see my blurb) and it’s good.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal Celebrates Birthday Maskless After Bashing Anti-Maskers.

Earlier: Rule-Breaking Elites Let the Mask Slip On COVID Protocols: “Historians looking back at this period in our history may well come to regard this week as the moment the dam began to crack. It is tough during the best of times for America’s elites to make demands, but, when the citizenry turns on its TV sets and sees the very people who have been lecturing it begin to cavort around without a care, the project becomes ineluctably futile. Of all the ills in all the world, duplicity is the hardest to recover from. And, despite the best efforts of our feckless smart set, there can be no herd immunity from its effects.”

KAROL MARKOWICZ: The Carmine’s COVID altercation was preventable but I predict we’ll see more of this.

To eat inside a restaurant in New York, a diner has to present their vaccination card and an accompanying identification. Last week, a hostess had to deny service to unvaccinated patrons and violence ensued.

Three women visiting New York from Texas had an alleged altercation with the hostess because she would not seat some of their friends who were unable to present a vaccination card. The women were arrested and charged with assault and criminal mischief.

They deserve what they get.

But what occurred was extremely predictable and preventable. And it will happen again. Obviously a hostess at a restaurant should not have to require personal medical information for a visitor.

“Also on Monday, Black Lives Matters protesters descended on Carmine’s to protest what they say was discrimination by the restaurant,” Markowicz adds.

Which is “Why Bill de Blasio’s COVID Passport Edict Is About to Backfire Hard,” Matt Vespa wrote at Townhall earlier today:

Black Americans remain the demographic that’s least likely to be vaccinated in the city. I’m just shocked it took this long for the liberals to shoot themselves in the foot on this one. Why would Mayor Bill de Blasio pass such a racist edict? You think you know someone, huh? No, but seriously, he chucked this boomerang and it’s about to break his face. So much for being part of those BLM murals over the summer, huh, Bill?

Perhaps though, America’s Newspaper of Record provides a solution that de Blasio will approve: New York Restaurant Adds Voting Booth So They Can Allow People In Without ID.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland.

Via Jesse Kelly who tweets, “I can’t tell you how much this story has rocked me. I had such cool plans for the black market. I was gonna be a gun runner or an ocean smuggler. (I’ve read enough pirate books. Pretty much an expert.) But now, I think I need to be the guy who can get you fried chicken.”

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: AOC, ‘Squad’ force House Dems to spike $1B for Israel’s Iron Dome from spending bill.

K-12 UPDATE: The Exploitation of Young Minds: How indoctrination shortchanges K-12 students.

#JOURNALISM: Exclusive: the New York Times stole my story: The paper lifted my reporting about the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist without any attribution.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: A year of committed exercise in middle age reversed worrisome heart stiffness.

LOCKDOWN DAMAGE: ‘Staggering’ Doubling of Type 2 Diabetes in Kids During Pandemic.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Maspeth HS diplomas ‘not worth the paper’ they’re printed on.

Maspeth High School created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — “even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,” an explosive investigative report charges.

Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.

“I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45 — it’s your job to give that kid credit,” the principal is quoted as telling a teacher.

Abdul-Mutakabbir told the teacher he would give the lagging student a diploma “not worth the paper on which it was printed” and let him “have fun working at Taco Bell,” the report says.

The teacher “felt threatened and changed each student’s failing grade to a passing one.”

The SCI report confirms a series of Post exposes in 2019 describing a culture of cheating in which students could skip classes and do little or no work, but still pass.

We’re really seeing just how little public schools have to do with learning. And how little they care.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Why Bill de Blasio’s COVID Passport Edict Is About to Backfire Hard.

In New York City, you need your photo ID and a vaccination card to enter these locations. The liberal self-own here is just epic. Photo identification is Jim Crow 2.0, but it’s okay for COVID vaccination status. It’s mind-blowing how liberals so expertly dice their talking points into sashimi. For Carmine’s, they’re about to be besieged by Black Lives Matter activists after a hostess and black patrons from Texas were involved in an altercation when proof of vaccination status was refused by the diners. Racial slurs were allegedly hurled at the black patrons. We’ll see about that, but the fact that BLM is coming to the Big Apple to protest the racist COVID passport ordinance is just as entertaining as it is predictable…

* * * * * * * *

Black Americans remain the demographic that’s least likely to be vaccinated in the city. I’m just shocked it took this long for the liberals to shoot themselves in the foot on this one. Why would Mayor Bill de Blasio pass such a racist edict? You think you know someone, huh? No, but seriously, he chucked this boomerang and it’s about to break his face. So much for being part of those BLM murals over the summer, huh, Bill?

As Glenn wrote yesterday:

Now in NYC you’ve got a vaccination-passport requirement that disproportionately affects black people, who are much less likely to get vaccinated than whites and asians, and you’re surprised that the response is violent? Once you teach people that it’s okay to be violent if they feel mistreated, you don’t get to choose when they feel mistreated.

Meanwhile, I understand there’s already a war among NYC progressives, as blacks and hispanics hate all the Covid security theater, while the white Karen wing of the party is loving it. I’m hoping for a war of mutual destruction. Hey, maybe Curtis Sliwa can make it to the mayoralty after all!

Insert Henry Kissinger Iran-Iraq war quote here.

HOWARD HUSOCK: It’s mental health, stupid: How Team Biden misunderstands homeless crisis.

BYRON YORK: Democrats panic.

There is a method in Senate rules for getting around a filibuster and passing a bill with a simple majority, or even a tie, plus the vice president. It is called reconciliation. The problem for Democrats is that it can only be used a limited number of times, usually once a year, and it must only be done with a budget bill — the idea being that a minority should not be able to use the filibuster to keep Congress from passing a budget for the U.S. government. To be included in a reconciliation measure, a proposal must be “germane” to the budget. It can’t be just any policy whim. It must have a real budgetary effect.

But Democrats had an idea. We don’t have enough votes to break the filibuster or to pass big parts of our agenda, they reasoned, so let’s just throw everything into one gigantic budget reconciliation bill. We can even throw immigration reform in there! Sure, that’s not what reconciliation is for. But let’s just do it. We can get around the filibuster and pass a New Deal-sized bill without even controlling a majority of seats in the Senate.

Put the idea in the category of too clever by half. Some Democratic centrists in both the House and Senate are uncomfortable with the $3.5 trillion figure, especially with inflation plaguing the U.S. economy. The Senate parliamentarian blocked the effort to put immigration reform in the reconciliation bill. Several Democratic senators have their doubts about getting rid of the filibuster. They don’t agree on climate measures. There is a fight coming over the debt ceiling. Amid all those Democratic disagreements, all of a sudden, the super-clever, let’s-put-it-all-in-one-big-bill-Republicans-can’t-stop plan looks very vulnerable.

Which is why we’re also seeing headlines such as this: Democrats tie government funding to debt bill, GOP digs in.

REVIEW: Colt Anaconda Revolver.