THE NEW ANTIRACISM LOOKS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE OLD RACISM: To Fight Racism, Should White Children Be Made ‘Uncomfortable’?

Not unlike how if a vaccine makes you feel a bit sick that shows it is working, this discomfort is supposedly evidence that progress is being made. White people unwilling to experience this discomfort are viewed as part of the problem.

Proponents of these methods insist that encouraging these painful emotions is not punitive, but rehabilitative. The pain is meant to be the door white people pass through to truly embrace antiracism and deconstruct white supremacy.

In the end, you will love Big Brother.

THIS DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Minnesota high schoolers stage ‘Back the Blue’ walkout.

SAMPLE RETURN: Coming Home: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission to Begin Return from Deep Space.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Trustee floats merger for woke-but-broke Evergreen State College after presidential search flub.

TYLER O’NEIL: The First ‘Transgender Bishop’ Shows How Churches Abandon Christianity.

THINGS THAT EVERYONE ALREADY KNEW: Intoxication brings strangers physically closer, study finds.

COLORADO: Weld County reaffirms its Second Amendment sanctuary status amid flurry of anti-gun bills in state legislature.

DISPATCHES FROM THE CARTER BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: As I sat in a gas line discovering my parents’ 70s experience here in North Carolina today, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if the NSA and our other “intelligence” agencies had spent more of their time helping companies defend vital infrastructure like pipelines and less building giant facilities so they can illegally spy on Americans? It’s not like they didn’t know this was a problem.

Update: Sorry for basically replicating Ed’s post from 12 minutes ago; I was late because of the dang line for gas! Shoulda bought that Tesla, my power is nuclear…

HELL, IT’S A BAD IDEA TO HAVE IT ON WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE: Is Sleeping with Your TV on a Bad Idea?

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Biden’s America: Gas Stations In Multiple States Run Out Of Fuel, Sparking Panic.

LAME MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: White House Denies That Paying Workers to Sit at Home Is a Disincentive to Work.

To be fair, if Democrats understood incentives, they wouldn’t be Democrats.

SCIENCE! Yale researcher gives new ant species a ‘non-binary’ scientific name.

MIT SCHOLARS REVIEW ANTI-MASK DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUDE: “As science and technology studies (STS) scholars have shown, data is not a neutral substrate that can be used for good or for ill [14, 46, 84]. Indeed, anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries, who espouse naive realism about the ‘objective’ truth of public health data.”

Plus: “Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.”

Also: “As Tufekci demonstrates (and our data corroborates), the CDC’s initial public messaging that masks were ineffective—followed by a quick public reversal— seriously hindered the organization’s ability to effectively communicate as the pandemic progressed. As we have seen, people are not simply passive consumers of media: anti-mask users in particular were predisposed to digging through the scientific literature and highlighting the uncertainty in academic publications that media or- ganizations elide. When these uncertainties did not surface within public-facing versions of these studies, people began to assume that there was a broader cover-up [99].”

As I keep saying, trust is the number one asset of the public health community, and they rushed to squander it without a second thought.

TALES FROM THE SWAMPLAND: Big Media-Backing Special Interests, Lobbyists Flood Ken Buck’s Campaign Coffers as He Pushes Bill to Benefit Them.

Buck is leading this charge while taking thousands and thousands of dollars this year from special interests and lobbyists backing the legislation. In total, in just the past two months, recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show Buck has raked in at least $18,000 from lobbyists, special interest groups, and PACs for organizations that support the legislation he is championing that would fundamentally change the media and technology landscape.

The bill, opposed by both the full Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who warned the bill would give establishment media outlets “cartel power,” as well as House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who called it “the antithesis of conservatism,” is called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). It would create a special legal exemption in antitrust law for media companies to allow them to band together in a manner that would otherwise be illegal so they could collectively bargain with big tech companies.

The controversial legislation is the brainchild of a special interest group called the News Media Alliance (NMA). NMA, which is technically a 501(c)6 as classified by the IRS, is a membership-based advocacy organization with top establishment media organizations as leading board members.

Plus: “Backers of the legislation believe it may rein in big tech companies by forcing them to pay news organizations for content they use on their platforms, but as Breitbart News has demonstrated, the legislation has a number of flaws and loopholes that would actually end up empowering big tech and big media companies, while still hurting independent and smaller publishers.”

150,000+ SIGN FRENCH LETTER WARNING OF CIVIL WAR, DEMANDING MAJOR ANTI-ISLAMIST CHANGES TO SOCIETY.

COOL: ‘Priceless’ Chrysler Turbine Car resurfaces after private sale.

WHEN IT’S NO LONGER USEFUL: When will the COVID pandemic be considered over?

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: Reporters fume at White House ‘quote approval’ rules.

The practice allows the White House an extra measure of control as it tries to craft press coverage. At its best, quote approval allows sources to speak more candidly about their work. At its worst, it gives public officials a way to obfuscate or screen their own admissions and words.

The Biden White House isn’t the first to employ the practice. Many reporters say it’s reminiscent of the tightly controlled Obama White House. The Trump White House used it, too.

But reporters say Trump’s team did so less frequently than Biden’s team — which also used the tactic during the campaign — and a number of current White House reporters have become increasingly frustrated by what they see as its abuse. “The rule treats them like coddled Capitol Hill pages and that’s not who they are or the protections they deserve,” said one reporter.

“Every reporter I work with has encountered the same practice,” said another.

But, as is often the case with the unwieldy White House press corps, there is a collective action problem. Reporters are reluctant to say no to using background with quote approval because it could put them at a disadvantage with their competitors. “The only way the press has the power to push back against this is if we all band together,” said the first reporter. At least one White House reporting team has been talking internally about reaching out to other outlets to push the Biden team to stop the practice.

“Have any reporters talked about mutinying?” the second reporter asked us. “If you start fomenting an insurrection, keep me updated.”

Reached for comment, White House spokesperson MICHAEL GWIN asked to go off the record.

Gwin later texted a statement from press secretary JEN PSAKI. “We would welcome any outlet banning the use of anonymous background quotes that attack people personally or speak to internal processes from people who don’t even work in the Administration,” she said. “At the same time, we make policy experts available in a range of formats to ensure context and substantive detail is available for stories. If outlets are not comfortable with that attribution for those officials they of course don’t need to utilize those voices.”

Related: WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki Wishes Biden Maybe Didn’t Talk So Much.

FACT CHECK: It’s True, Joe Biden Was the First President to Cut God Out of the National Day of Prayer.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Putin Takes Biden’s Lunch Money, Gives Atomic Wedgie.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s another way of saying, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

Answer: “The Biden Doctrine.”

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Stu Rothenberg has breaking news from 2001
• Biden appoints actual insurrectionist as Deputy Director for Political Strategy
• Is this video from 1979 or 2021? YOU make the call!

Bonus Sanity: At last, somebody has noticed that the new CIA Director is a CCP sympathizer.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Democratic Death Watch: ‘Biden’s agenda is pretty much dangling by a thread.’ “Yes, my headline is pretty blunt but no more so than this NY Times piece itself. Last week CNN published a story about the progressive push to get Justice Breyer to retire. There’s was one paragraph in that story which I found particularly striking. It noted that the Senate could fall into Republican’s hands ‘at any moment’ because ‘two members of the Democratic majority are near or just over 80 years old.’ In other words, Democrats are one stopped heartbeat away from losing the chance to replace Breyer with a young progressive. Today, the NY Times weighs in with a piece that is focused not just on Justice Breyer but the possibility that President Biden’s entire agenda could come to a grinding halt if the wrong people were to die suddenly.”

CHANGE: Boris Johnson Is Redrawing The Political Map Of England. “North East England is becoming a Conservative stronghold after a century of Labour dominance. Northumberland’s local council is under Conservative control for the first time since 1970 and Labour lost control of Durham County Council for the first time since 1925 after the Conservatives gained 14 seats. The Conservative Mayor of Tees Valley was re-elected with almost 73 percent of the vote. Across the rest of provincial England, the Conservatives also gained new council seats. There were even swings towards the Conservatives in London where Labour was expecting an easy victory.”

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS (HISTORY): History or Misinformation: Did Santa Anna Have an All-Black Regiment Fighting In the 1836 Texas Revolution? “Salas has made the claim before, and it seems to be part of an effort to somehow rehabilitate Santa Anna. Rehabilitating Santa Anna is a woke and revisionist political project.”

IT’S THE END OF THE MEDIA WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE: Be it Resolved: The Mainstream Media is Dying, and that’s OK. Um, faster please?