Archive for 2021
June 9, 2021
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: People more afraid of catching COVID-19 are more judgemental, study finds.
AMAZINGLY LIFELIKE: Rep. Boebert Takes VP Harris To Visit The Southern Border.
EVEN THE CHINESE DON’T TRUST THE CHINESE VACCINE: China promises more COVID-19 vaccines to ASEAN nations as ‘responsible partner.’
Flashback: The Strange Sinovac Vaccine Phenomenon, Countries Report Increased Cases After Using Vaccine.
Even the Chinese don’t trust it: “Since the Chinese vaccine data lacks transparency, people are concerned about the safety of the vaccines. There were news reports of low acceptance of the vaccines in Shanghai and other first-tier cities. As of March 27, the vaccination rate in China was only 7 percent.”
THE SOUND OF INEVITABILITY: The 1619 Project Comes for the Second Amendment.
Left-wing academic Carol Anderson’s new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, is all over the news. “The Second Amendment is not about guns — it’s about anti-Blackness, a new book argues,” reads a CNN headline. NPR claims that the author has uncovered the racist “roots” of the Second Amendment.
This is wishful thinking. The Second is an attempt — much like the 1619 Project — to reimagine history in purely racial terms. The result is tendentious polemic that suffers not only from a paucity of historical evidence, but from a dishonest rendering of the facts we do know.
After comprehensively detailing the constitutional debate over slavery and the nefariousness of that institution, Anderson takes the liberty of asserting that the Second Amendment was “not some hallowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with Black bodies.” This is a contention that isn’t backed by a single contemporaneous quote or piece of hard evidence in the book.
It was slavery skeptic John Adams, in his 1770 defense of Captain Thomas Preston, one of the soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre, who argued that even British soldiers had an inherent right to defend themselves from mobs. “Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves,” he noted. When Pennsylvania became the first colony to explicitly guarantee the right to bear arms, it was Benjamin Franklin, by then an abolitionist, who presided over the conference. It was the anti-slavery Samuel Adams who proposed that the Constitution never be used to “authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” In the writings and speeches of nearly all American Founders, the threat of disarmament was a casus belli.
It still is.
And do read the whole thing.
In the aftermath of other tragedies, not least 9/11, we came together with courage and cohesion. But COVID has nearly destroyed us. Now we are fearful of each other. Angry. Doing stupid things and forcing others to do them, too.
I’ve lived in New York nearly my entire life. I remember the bad ’80s, the wild ’90s, the sterile 2000s. We had ups and downs. We suffered and we celebrated.
This is the worst New York I’ve ever known. It is suspicious and divided, broken and refusing to heal.
It would go a long way to see each other’s faces again. To smile at each other. To not see each other as disease vectors but as fellow citizens. To acknowledge what we collectively went through, process the trauma together and move on as the greatest city in the world.
We can do this. But it has to start with letting go of our security-blanket masks and acknowledging the mistakes we made. Let’s get back to who we were before the virus, before bad decisions by politicians and tyrannical “experts” broke us. Let’s be New Yorkers again.
FECKLESS SANTA BARBARA: woke, broke and on fire.
The awful truth is neither the City Council nor the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors have figured out anything. They are still intent on protecting the fuel load in the name of habitat preservation and they keep doling out services — read that all carrot and no stick — to attract and coddle more and more homeless into our communities.
So now we find ourselves trying to plead, cajole and lure hundreds of “house-challenged” individuals from camping, replete with campfires, in our creeks, highways, byways, parks and beaches. How does the so-called birthplace of the environmental movement tolerate tons of trash, feces, hypodermic needles, stolen bicycles, couches, abandoned cars and the like being dumped into creeks and river beds that are otherwise considered sacrosanct?
Well, it all has to do with the feckless politicians you keep electing time and time again.
They have mistaken tolerance for mercy and compassion. The difference? Tolerance withholds any form of judgement. This mind set considers all these homeless people to be victims that society failed. None of them are held accountable for their criminality and the degradation they bring on this community or their unwillingness to accept the help they really need.
Instead, we are told we need to help them by throwing a house their way while virtually ignoring all their underlying conditions and complicity. Honestly, that will have the same result as when Dorothy dropped a house on the Wicked Witch of the West. This may not be Oz, but it is the home of Oprah, and that is a distinction without a difference.
These people are homeless because they burned every friend and relative they had. Now they are fixing to burn the town down. In places like Kansas, at least in days of old, they had mercy and compassion on the downtrodden, but they also had reasonable expectations of sentient human beings. That is, they would help the poor but not the shiftless.
Read the whole thing.
HELEN TRIES IT: M. Fletcher Reynolds, an attorney and music theorist sent me a copy of his book The Basics of Copyright. The book is a guide for non-lawyers and is written in simple, lighthearted language for those of us who want to understand how copyright law works and how to make it work for what we do in daily life like snap photos on our iPhones. The book explains the difference between a patent, trademark and copyright law which I always found slightly confusing. It also has a chapter on fair use and a final chapter on how to avoid trouble if you want to use a photo, video or clip art. Throughout the book are short quizzes that help you know if you understand the material. They are simple and explained in a discussion section. I highly recommend this book if you use the web, have a website or just want to know more about copyright law. This listing is now verified.
THE BEST ADMINISTRATION CHINESE MONEY CAN BUY: Biden replaces Trump executive orders targeting TikTok and WeChat.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Bye-Bye, Biden Infrastructure Blowout — Hello First-Term Lame Duck?
Plus:
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
UNEXPECTEDLY! China’s highest producer inflation in over 12 years highlights global price pressures. “China’s May factory gate prices rose at their fastest annual pace in over 12 years due to surging commodity prices, highlighting global inflation pressures at a time when policymakers are trying to revitalise COVID-hit growth. Investors are increasingly worried pandemic-driven stimulus measures could supercharge global inflation and force central banks to tighten policy, potentially curbing the recovery. China’s producer price index (PPI) increased 9.0%, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday, as prices bounced back from last year’s pandemic lows. PPI rise in May – the fastest on-year gain for any month since September 2008 – was driven by significant price increases in crude oil, iron ore and non-ferrous metals, the NBS said. Analysts in a Reuters poll had expected the PPI to rise 8.5% after a 6.8% increase in April.”
Nothing to see here, move along.
Totally unrelated: Fear the Boom and Bust. It’s the boom that should make you feel leery. “You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press, or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed.”
NY TIMES DEFENDS EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER ‘DISTURBED’ BY AMERICAN FLAGS ON LONG ISLAND:
Mara Gay of the New York Times talked about how “disturbed” she was recently to see so many Trump flags and American flags on trucks on Long Island on MSNBC.
She wanted to make the point that the Trump “threat” still exists. She seemed genuinely shocked that there are still Americans who support Trump.
Gay’s view is a fascinating view into the mind of the progressive media elite.
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When did Long Island become a conservative hotbed? Isn’t it safe to assume that some of those people on Long Island who fly American flags are Democrats?
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By the way, does the name Mara Gay sound familiar? It should if you follow politics.
Flashback: MSNBC Fail: Bloomberg ‘Could Have Given Each American $1 Million.’
Related: Ted Cruz Flattens NYT Spin on Mara Gay’s American Flag Attack.
#RESIST: Hundreds of Denver students demand Tay Anderson’s name removed from their diplomas.
An online petition calling for Denver Public Schools to remove board member Tay Anderson’s name from recently issued diplomas is collecting signatures faster than we can keep up with the total.
The initial goal was set at 200 signatures when launched Thursday, but now with 416 signers they are aiming for 500 supporters to make it happen.
The change.org petition is organized by Gigi Gordon, who wrote that when she received her diploma last week it was “signed by an alleged rapist/pedophile.”
The petition is based on the 62 charges made against Anderson last week by a liberal activist testifying before a legislative panel.
The activist claims Anderson sexually harassed or molested that many minors, most of whom were students and did not have U.S. citizenship and were afraid to report the incidents to authorities.
Plus: “The media aren’t bothering to follow the bombshell story since it was first broken by the Denver Post.”
BECAUSE THEY WERE A BAD IDEA? Harvard med school professor explains why he spoke out against COVID lockdowns.