REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: How a New York City Restaurant Loses Money on a $14 Sandwich.
Archive for 2021
May 17, 2021
SPACE FORCE CANNED HIM FOR WRONGTHINK, but his self-published book, Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military is currently #2 on Amazon. Oft evil will shall evil mar, as they say.
UPDATE: Now #1 on Amazon.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still #1. (Bumped.)
THE CHINESE HAVE BEEN AWFULLY QUIET: Where is China’s Zhurong Mars rover? “At this moment we do not have confirmation that China’s rover Zhurong landed safely on Mars. . . . For the sake of science, and to enhance and not denigrate China’s image to the world, it behooves them to tell us soon everything they know about the state of their Mars rover. The longer they delay the worse they will look.”
CORPORATE TYRANNY: American Airlines Investigating Pilot Who Opposes School District’s Critical Race Theory Plan. “American Airlines says it’s investigating a Texas-based pilot who spoke against an effort by his local school district to implement elements of critical race theory.”
Now you’re not allowed to express an unapproved opinion on the education of your own kids, or the spending of your local taxes. To hell with this. If you want this to stop, American Airlines should face demonstrations, outside the home of its CEO, for this abuse of its power. That’s how this is done now, right? If you want corporations to stop acting badly, it needs to be personally unpleasant for their leaders when they do. That’s what the left does, and it seems to work. No need to go as far as bringing a guillotine, as the lefty protesters did at Jeff Bezos’ house.
More here.
OPEN THREAD: This town’s never like another when you head down over West Paces brother.
Background on the linked tune here.
HOW’S THAT RED STATE WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? New Yorkers Moved to Florida in Droves Amid COVID Lockdowns, New Figures Show.
The ATF has unleashed their proposed rule to change the “Definition of ‘Frame or Receiver’ and Identification of Firearms” and it’s as ugly as it sounds.
If enacted, 2021R-05 would drastically change the Federal definition of a firearm receiver. For starters, this proposed rule would outlaw 3D printing, parts kits, 80% lowers, and other home-built firearms and would apply FFL rules to individuals.
Under the proposed rules, any “externally visible housing or holding structure” will be considered a frame or receiver.
Not only are the definitions ambiguous and ripe for arbitrary enforcement, but the proposed rules also destroy any clearly understood definition of what a gun is and what parts are and give absolute control to the tyrannical ATF to decide if you are breaking their enigmatic B.S. regulations.
Getting caught up in federal gun charges could be a real possibility even for gun owners trying their best to comply.
Here is the proposed rule.
Here’s how you can submit a comment.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: If woke companies really ‘care,’ let them help where it counts: fighting crime.
In Atlanta, home of Coca-Cola, homicides this year are up 60 percent over 2020 at this point, even though 2020 saw the most murders in two decades. How much of Coca-Cola’s ad budget is urging action?
Silicon Valley, home of politically motivated companies like Apple and Uber, openly ignored the Bay Area’s 35 percent murder spike last year.
These firms can do a lot to effect change in their home regions if they wanted to. They can demand more policing. They can spend money on mental-health facilities. They can fund better street lights, which have been shown to reduce crime, and cameras in hot spots to identify assailants faster.
They can speak up on the issue again and again so politicians know it matters. Instead, they’re putting out slickly produced TV commercials telling us they “care” about abstract, often loony issues.
But they won’t, because the woke ruling class are terrified of being trashed en masse by their fellow leftists on social media.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Way We Live Now.
The gimlet-eyed Janet Daley identified one worrisome cluster in a column for the London Telegraph called “Free society is finished if we fail to resist this new Dark Age of unreason.”
Daley begins by noting the irony that the collapse of Soviet Communism, one of the most evil tyrannies the world has ever seen, did not, as some observers predicted, usher in a new age of sweetness and light but rather removed one of the supporting props of global security.
The resulting vacuum has fostered confusion and disarray everywhere. but mostly, Daley argues, in the West, which has been seduced into abjuring its faith in reason and open debate.
“Public discourse,” she writes, “does not consist of competing arguments any more: it isn’t a proper discussion at all. It is a diatribe in which one side tries to destroy, or prohibit, or totally suppress the other.”
She warns that we are on the verge—or perhaps past the verge—of “a Dark Age where reason and actual disputation are considered dangerous: where views contrary to those being imposed by what are often nothing more than activist cults can be criminalized. Not only must those who now hold opinions which breach orthodoxy be banned but historic figures who could not possibly have anticipated current social attitudes must be anathematized as well.”
Daley sees a parallel between our situation the age of religious absolutism in the West when the Church busied itself enrolling books by David Hume and John Locke on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Be that as it may, Daley is surely right that the question is not whether you approve of any particular opinion but whether you insist that orthodoxy be accepted, indeed celebrated, without question or examination.
QED:
● Twitter Suspends Spanish Politician for Tweeting ‘A Man Cannot Get Pregnant.’
● Space Force Commander Fired for Noting, Correctly, That Critical Race Theory Is Marxist.
WAR ON SCIENCE: Some aren’t ready to give up masks despite new CDC guidance.
INSIDE THE MILITARY’S SECRET UNDERCOVER ARMY.
The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called “signature reduction.” The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.
The unprecedented shift has placed an ever greater number of soldiers, civilians, and contractors working under false identities, partly as a natural result in the growth of secret special forces but also as an intentional response to the challenges of traveling and operating in an increasingly transparent world. The explosion of Pentagon cyber warfare, moreover, has led to thousands of spies who carry out their day-to-day work in various made-up personas, the very type of nefarious operations the United States decries when Russian and Chinese spies do the same.
Increasingly targeting Americans, too, I suspect.
YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Twitter Suspends Spanish Politician for Tweeting ‘A Man Cannot Get Pregnant.’
THE GALAXY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Luke Skywalker Condemned For Blowing Up Associated Press Office Located On Death Star.
MY FAVORITE ARE THE PEOPLE RIDING A BIKE WEARING A MASK BUT NO HELMET: Bike-linked head injuries plummet for kids, but not adults.
JIM TREACHER: Was Cori Bush Cured of COVID-19 by One of Her Fellow Faith Healers?
Before today, I didn’t know much about Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) except that, because she’s a black woman, anything I say to rebut or criticize her is automatically racist and sexist. For example, recently Rep. Bush referred to pregnant women as “birthing people” — apparently to avoid offending the 0.0001% of Americans who are or have been pregnant, but somehow identify as male — and all the people who slammed her for it were motivated only by her race and gender.
* * * * * * * *
But back to the point here: Cori Bush is a faith healer. There’s a faith healer in Congress. Possibly more than one, but Bush is the one we know about.
How did we not know this until today? Isn’t this newsworthy?
Can you imagine the media firestorm if a congressional Republican was a faith healer who claimed to have cured him- or herself of COVID-19? CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, and all the rest would present it as evidence that Republicans are a bunch of drooling redneck rubes. The guffaws from the #PartyOfScience would be deafening. The late-night comedians would show clips of convulsing Pentecostal snake-handlers and quip, “That GOP retreat looks like fun, huh?” I can just picture the smirk on Stephen Colbert’s face, although it’s impossible to picture him without it.
Oh sure – next you’re going to tell me that the editor of the Washington Post during its Watergate heyday was married to a birthing person who believed in seances, Ouija boards, and hexes.
THAT THEY’RE BOTH CALLED “LINEAR” SHOULD HAVE BEEN A TIPOFF: Minoan Language Linear A Linked to Linear B in Groundbreaking New Research.
9-0, BITCHEZ: Supreme Court rules warrantless home gun confiscation is unconstitutional in 9-0 vote.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that warrantless gun confiscation from Americans’ homes is unconstitutional, voting unanimously on the side of a Rhode Island man whose firearms were taken by law enforcement without a warrant after his wife expressed concerns that he might hurt himself.
According to Caniglia v Strom, a lower court had previously determined that police confiscating the guns without a warrant fell under the Fourth Amendment’s “community caretaking” exception, but a 9-0 vote from the nation’s top court struck down that ruling.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court, stating that law enforcement can execute “many civic tasks in modern society,” but there is “not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.”
“The very core of the Fourth Amendment,” Thomas wrote, is the “right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”
“Community caretaking.” The full opinion is here. It’s very short and to the point.
FRONTIERS IN BIGOTRY: City of Newton, Mass Freaks Out Over a Proposed New Downtown Gun Store.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): A Louisiana woman is accused of forcing a teenage girl to perform sex acts with boys she lured online by impersonating the underage victim. “She was taken in for questioning two days later and arrested on charges of human trafficking, indecent behavior with a juvenile, online impersonating, second-degree cruelty to a juvenile, pornography involving juveniles and computer-aided solicitation of a minor.”
THE EXPERTS HAVE NOT HELPED THEMSELVES OVER THE PAST YEAR: Scientists Debunk COVID Vaccine Magnet Challenge: However, the skepticism shown to the debunking evidence demonstrates corrosion of “expert” credibility.
FRACTURED FAIRY TALES: True love’s first kiss or rape culture? “Disneyland’s Snow White ride, redesigned to be less scary, shows the kiss. The prince kisses Snow White ‘without her consent while she’s asleep, which cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it’s happening,’ write Julie Tremaine and Katie Dowd on SFGate.”
ACCORDING TO FACEBOOK’S CENSORS: This Article Is “Partly False.” After Facebook’s “fact-checkers” blacklisted my previous City Journal article on the harms of forcing children to wear masks, we appealed the ruling. It was a futile but revealing exercise. Facebook refused to remove its “Partly False” label on the article, but at least we got an inside look at the tactics that social media companies and progressive groups use to distort science and public policy. They exploit Facebook’s News Feed algorithm to reduce the visibility of conservatives at the Wall Street Journal, libertarians like John Stossel, and others who challenge progressive orthodoxy.
These “fact-checkers” are actually fact-blockers.
SWIFT JUSTICE: Israel Kills Islamic Jihad Leader Behind Missile Attacks.
THE ORIGINS OF COVID: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lab-Leak Theory. Donald McNeil, who was the lead reporter on Covid for the New York Times until being forced out by a woke revolt in the newsroom, was long skeptical of the theory that Covid leaked out of a lab in Wuhan. But after considering a recent article by Nicholas Wade (another former Timesman), McNeil now says the evidence has gotten “considerably stronger.”