GEORGE COSTANZA SMILES: The Mariko Aoki Phenomenon: When You Need To Poop After Entering A Book Store.
Archive for 2021
November 23, 2021
TAKE THAT, DR. FAUCI! TripIt Data: Thanksgiving 2021 Travel Volume Nearly Triple 2020.
Earlier: Ignoring Them Is the Only Way Out.
WHY THE LEFT IS OUTRAGED OVER THE RITTENHOUSE VERDICT: “Basically guys, all the outrage over this trial is because the left is terrified of losing another tool in their toolbox. They love lawless mobs terrorizing you and wrecking your stuff. They love having you too scared of the system to stand up to their dirtbags.”
THE FEDS SLACK, THE STATES TAKE OVER: Operation Steel Curtain plus 10,000 state troopers and National Guard units deployed to protect Texas border.
UM: Benelli’ combination pump/semi-auto shotgun. It’s been around for decades and it works but it’s still weird. But I’ve never shot a Benelli I didn’t like.
YES, DEFINITIONS DO MATTER: Perhaps especially in the realms of politics and religion, definitions of key terms can make all the difference. To cite just one example, AOC and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both talk a lot about “freedom,” but they may have absolutely nothing in common in terms of what they each mean by that word. Shane Morris of the Colson Center elaborates on the issue in the latest “What Would You Say” video. And if you prefer to read the transcript, the link is at the end of the post.
OFFICIAL LAWLESSNESS: On ObamaCare, Democrats Defy the Supreme Court.
The multitrillion-dollar tax, climate and entitlement spending bill the House passed last week cuts funding for hospitals that treat uninsured patients. It likely violates the Constitution in the process by punishing states that have declined ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.
Seven states, including expansion and nonexpansion states, still use uncompensated-care pools to reimburse providers for charity treatment. Section 30608 of the Build Back Better bill contains two separate provisions that would apply solely to nonexpansion states. The first would reduce by 12.5% their Medicaid disproportionate-share hospital payments, which offset the costs of hospitals that treat high numbers of uninsured patients.
The Biden administration has already attempted to use the uncompensated-care pools as leverage to dragoon states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Kansas into Medicaid expansion. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in April revoked an extension of Texas’ 1115 waiver, a decision that a federal judge struck down in August. The language in the House bill would give CMS new grounds to reject, or at minimum scale back, the nonexpansion states’ uncompensated-care pools.
While the new subsidies authorized under the bill would expire in 2025, the reductions in Medicaid payments—which the Congressional Budget Office estimates at approximately $4 billion a year—are permanent.
That clearly violates the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius, which declared ObamaCare’s mandatory expansion of Medicaid unconstitutionally coercive on states.
Coercion and lawlessness are right on-brand.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Introducing Joe Biden’s Weapons-Grade IRS.
Plus:
- MSN is even worse news than you thought
- Get ready for (yet another) Democrat war on domestic oil production
- Celebrating George Floyd as Jesus (really)
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
IF THANKSGIVING IS RACIST AND EVIL AND I’LL HAVE MY EVIL AND RACISM WITH EXTRA GRAVY: It’s Woke Time: Thanksgiving Is Inherently Racist And Evil.
NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE AMERICANS: Life after sex — sex is everywhere in America, except in the bedroom.
Clothing too has become unsexy. Little House on the Prairie chic was big last spring. Now we’re back to the two-sizes-too-big outfits. No one wants to take those ugly clothes off someone. Just call me when you get home and we’ll do it on FaceTime so I don’t have to see that sack on my floor.
Then there’s the “look at me, don’t look at me” nature of social media. Women pose provocatively in full makeup and tight outfits, but all their comments are from girlfriends leaving a row of fire emojis. If a man dares post how good she looks, that guy is a creep. Message her privately and that’s “sliding into her DMs.” Men are supposed to ignore how women look which, seeing as men have started wars over the beauty of women, has traditionally been somewhat of a challenge. Women are supposed to want them to ignore how we look, but secretly not: why would we actually want that?
There’s the question of whether something men used to do with some regularity — say, lean in for a kiss with a woman without asking — is now something sinister. Huma Abedin, best known for standing by her man Anthony Weiner again and again as he exposed himself to random women on the internet, has a book coming out in which she tells the story of being “sexually assaulted” by a US senator. She says that she left a party with him, they went for a walk and she accompanied him upstairs for coffee. Upstairs, he tries to kiss her, she says no and he stops.
When I tweeted that this was clearly not assault, several responses said he should have asked her permission. Could there be anything more mood-sapping than someone asking for formal permission to kiss you? This isn’t a British period drama. Even Mr. Darcy has probably stopped asking by now.
No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women? Why, it’s as if we’re turning Japanese or something.
SHOCKER: Exposure to harmless coronaviruses boosts SARS-CoV-2 immunity. “The researchers were able to demonstrate that people who caught SARS-CoV-2 had lower levels of antibodies against coronaviruses that cause common colds compared to uninfected people. In addition, people with high levels of antibodies against harmless coronaviruses were less likely to have been hospitalized after catching SARS-CoV-2.”
THEY’RE THE INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENT OF TOBACCO COMPANIES: Social media tied to higher risk of depression.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Santa Cruz County Will Require Masks In Private Homes.
WHEN PRESENTED WITH ACTUAL TERRORISTS, THE PRESS IS SILENT: ‘I Hope You Die’: The Murderous ISIS Jihadi From New York City You Heard Nothing About.
LIFE IN 2021: Scenes From The Supply Chain.
COLORADO: Front Range passenger train a looming boondoggle.
The pandemic has made people reluctant to climb aboard any form of mass transportation. But it hasn’t stopped the state of Colorado from planning an idiotic Front Range passenger train that is proposed to connect Fort Collins and Pueblo, with Denver in between. In June, Governor Jared Polis signed a bill creating a taxing district to pay for the train’s inevitable losses. Last week, the Colorado Transportation Commission agreed to spend $1.9 million on a viability study (whose total cost will be twice that).
The Denver Post, which was a major cheerleader for Denver’s $4.9 billion FasTracks plan until it became the $7.9 billion FasTracks plan, by which time it was too late, is now a major cheerleader for the Front Range passenger train plan. It claims that an Amtrak train between Chicago and Milwaukee “shows what it could be.” Yes, because Fort Collins (population: 170,000) and Pueblo (population: 112,000) are just like Milwaukee (population: 577,000), and Denver (population: 715,000) is just like Chicago (population: 2.75 million).
Yes, but all the correct palms will get greased.
JIM TREACHER: Journos and Other Libs Can’t Defend Darrell Brooks, So They Attack Andy Ngo.
The libs have invented a motive for Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions, even though all the evidence shows he acted in self-defense. And now they’re denying a strong motive for Darrell Brooks’ actions, outright rejecting any evidence that it could’ve been a hate crime. They abhor the truth like poison.
As Pat Moynihan said 20 years ago, “[Hannah] Arendt had it right. She said one of the great advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”
EH, THEY’RE PROBABLY RIGHT: Poll: 81% of parents think their children are ungrateful. Nothing about society or media — by which I mostly mean media — encourages children to be grateful.
Possibly related: Experts Concerned As Americans Are Rapidly Losing Interest In Having Kids, According To New Poll. Not a sign of a healthy culture.
Also related: The Parent Trap.
Also: car seats as contraception: “Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”
TOP SELLER: Clarks Men’s Bushacre 2 Chukka Boot. #CommissionEarned
REMEMBER THE BLUE-CITY GOVERNMENTS THAT TRIED TO BAN THEM: Ridesharing services may be lowering drunk driving deaths, study finds.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Policing, journalism experts caution use of ‘looting’ in describing rash of Bay Area smash and grabs.
Similar crimes hit Hayward and Walnut Creek this weekend with waves of suspects rushing stores leading to major losses.
But according to the California Penal Code, what we saw was not looting.
The penal code defines looting as “theft or burglary…during a ‘state of emergency’, ‘local emergency’, or ‘evacuation order’ resulting from an earthquake, fire, flood, riot or other natural or manmade disaster.”
To some, the distinction may be small, but Lorenzo Boyd, PhD, Professor of Criminal Justice & Community Policing at the University of New Haven, and a retired veteran police officer, emphasized that words matter.
“Looting is a term that we typically use when people of color or urban dwellers are doing something. We tend not to use that term for other people when they do the exact same thing,” said Boyd.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidily defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”