THE BUCK STOPS BACK THERE: Biden Says Meeting Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline Will Be ‘Tough,’ Blames Trump.
Archive for 2021
March 23, 2021
WILL THE XIDEN ADMINISTRATION VETO IT? Senate passes bill to combat Chinese Communist Party propaganda on campus.
HOW DO WE KNOW THE PANDEMIC IS OVER? MASS SHOOTINGS ARE BACK. Was The Shooting In Boulder, Colorado Yet Another Attack In A Gun-Free Zone? It Looks Like It May Be.
JOHN TIERNEY: Death and Lockdowns: There’s no proof that lockdowns save lives but plenty of evidence that they end them.
The number of excess deaths not involving Covid-19 has been especially high in U.S. counties with more low-income households and minority residents, who were disproportionately affected by lockdowns. Nearly 40 percent of workers in low-income households lost their jobs during the spring, triple the rate in high-income households. Minority-owned small businesses suffered more, too. During the spring, when it was estimated that 22 percent of all small businesses closed, 32 percent of Hispanic owners and 41 percent of black owners shut down. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School, summarized the impact: “Lockdowns have protected the laptop class of young low-risk journalists, scientists, teachers, politicians and lawyers, while throwing children, the working class and high-risk older people under the bus.”
Yep.
PRIVACY: U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs Facebook appeal in user tracking lawsuit.
The case centers on Facebook’s use of features called “plug-ins” that third-parties often incorporate into their websites to track the browsing histories of users. Along with digital files called “cookies” that can help identify internet users, the plaintiffs accused Facebook of packaging this tracked data and selling it to advertisers for profit.
Facebook said it uses the data it receives to tailor the content it shows its users and to improve ads on its service.
A federal judge dismissed the case in 2017 but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020 revived it, allowing the Wiretap Act and state privacy claims to go ahead.
“Facebook’s user profiles would allegedly reveal an individual’s likes, dislikes, interests and habits over a significant amount of time, without affording users a meaningful opportunity to control or prevent the unauthorized exploration of their private lives,” the 9th Circuit said in its ruling.
Hiding from users that they’re the product is the core of Facebook’s business strategy.
PROFESSOR STOPS RESEARCHING COVID BECAUSE OF POLITICAL HOSTILITY. How many people will die because we have scared this and other faculty members away from researching anything remotely controversial? We’ll never know what the unnecessary death toll is from chilling campus research, but it’s much higher than zero. All decisions have tradeoffs, of course, but the political censors (both official and self-appointed) need to stop pretending their political preening has no costs. They reap the benefits of back-pats and a smug sense of satisfaction, while we (and our kids) pay the price.
IT ENDS WHEN THE NEW CLASS FEELS IT HAS CONSOLIDATED ITS POWER SUFFICIENTLY, WHICH IS NEVER: When Does It End?
Sen. Rand Paul and top Biden adviser Anthony Fauci had a spat on Thursday over masks, vaccination, and reinfection. Partisans of both sides claimed victory, but the public lost because they never addressed the underlying question:
When does this all end?
Fauci seemed to argue that no amount of vaccine uptake can free us from the need to wear masks, pointing to coronavirus variants. A day earlier, reporters on Twitter assailed conservative writer Noah Rothman for suggesting that once fully vaccinated, he’ll shed his mask and live a normal life. “Your vaccine may not protect others,” they warned, believing that we must assume every bad possibility until science disproves it. . . .
Lockdowns, distancing requirements, and mask mandates need to end as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean today. It doesn’t mean tomorrow. But it means at some point.
Our leaders and health experts have a duty to articulate, right away, standards of when these should end.
Fauci, President Biden, every governor, every mayor, and every county executive who is still enforcing lockdown measures should say, “I will lift them when …”
Lockdowns should end now. Even W.H.O. says they’re never justified except as a short-term measure when medical facilities are overwhelmed, which they’re not and really never have been.
Oh, the other time it can end is when the public simply stops complying, which seems to be starting to happen.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Democrats Introduce New Green New Deal Bill Calling Fossil Fuels ‘Racist.’
HMM: Democrats Plan to Come for Big Tech With Swarm of Small Antitrust Bills.
Both Democrats and Republicans have become wary of the sheer size of firms like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft in recent years. Democrats have focused more on what they see as anti-competitive tactics, abusive labor practices, and promotion of misinformation and violent extremism, while Republicans have mostly sought to prove said companies are run by members of a semi-secret socialist cabal. Either way, tech firms have found themselves in more hostile territory in DC, with a more limited array of allies. Some type of major legislation or regulatory response designed to limit the companies’ power now seems politically realistic (even if the U.S. government remains unwilling or unable to take dramatic actions like breaking tech firms up).
Representative David Cicilline, the chair of the judiciary committee, told Axios this weekend that he sees prepping numerous proposals on antitrust as a sort of drone swarm tactic that would overwhelm Big Tech’s political firewall by sheer numbers.
Cicilline told Axios that he believes the result of the committee’s work could be 10 or more small bills that he believes would increase the likelihood that individual components could pass—as individual propositions may have broader support from members of both parties—and that would be harder for lobbyists to unite against.
We’ll see, but I’m dubious.
It isn’t that we don’t have a problem with Big Tech, it’s that I don’t trust the Democrats to come up with a “fix” that doesn’t end up locking in advantages for their allies in Big Tech.
SO MUCH HATE FROM THE LEFT, NONSTOP: Liberal Media Scream: Seth Meyers rants against rural whites, Constitution.
SEEN ON HELEN’S PAGE: Books by Moe Lane.
MAKES SENSE: JetBlue Considers Move to Florida.
THE MORNING BRIEF: Joe Biden’s Humanitarian Border Crisis Becomes a Cover-Up While Kamala Harris Just Laughs. “The Biden administration is attempting to engage in a cover-up. Consider: It’s limiting reporter access to the border facilities; it’s refusing to offer any real numbers of those crossing illegally and those who’ve been apprehended; it’s failing to consult with Congress; it’s failing to work with the affected states; and it’s failing to work with local communities.”
I REMEMBER WHEN “DARK MONEY” WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BAD: Dark Money Fuels Push to Ditch Filibuster.
BLUE STATE BLUES: Jared Polis’ COVID-19 business restrictions have caused needless harm to Colorado’s economy.
In my view, the loss of so many Coloradans from the workforce at the end of the year is likely attributable to harsh COVID restrictions implemented by Polis last November. Indeed, payroll data show the employment rate for low-wage workers cratered following Polis’ renewed lockdown.
About 94,000 restaurant jobs have been lost with 40% of the restaurant workforce furloughed. All told, Colorado restaurants lost more than $3 billion in 2020, according to a recent industry survey. Job losses in these sectors were disproportionately concentrated among women and working-class communities.
Yet, Polis would have the public believe Colorado is “leading the way” reopening and getting people back to work. That might be true for some people, but not for many poor workers.
That Democrats “look after the little guy” is a fraud even bigger than “the party of youth.”
DON SURBER: Twitter is ruining liberals.
THEY’RE MEANT TO DO HARM. THEY’RE NOT MEANT TO DO GOOD. Identity politics do more harm than good. “This addiction to examining all social issues through the prism of race is harmful as it seeks to legitimize a claimed victimhood into our already balkanized society, inaccurately depicting historical and current events, and deflecting from a genuine search for meaningful redress.”
It’s meant to be destructive, and it is.
PUSHING BACK AGAINST WOKE IDIOCY AND PRO-PRC SYCOPHANCY: Academic Freedom Alliance stands with USD Law Professor in China Controversy. “Not only is the interpretation of Professor Smith’s phrasing as a slur based on race or national origin a tendentious misreading of the blog post in question, but the suggestion that a single phrase in a single blog post commenting on the behavior of the Chinese government and international health agencies can trigger the procedures of the university’s harassment policy sends a chilling message to all faculty.”
That’s what it’s meant to do.
Plus: “The Academic Freedom Alliance calls upon USD leadership to adhere to its academic freedom principles by rescinding its denunciation of Professor Smith and terminating all disciplinary proceedings against him based on his March 10, 2021 blog post.”
KRUISER: I’ve Decided to Be Nicer While Being Mean to Joe Biden. “Here’s the thing about Biden though: he’s just too easy to make fun of. I’ve never liked the guy. He’s always been a spaz and I never found his verbal gaffes to be charming like so many others have. He was a gift that kept on giving for his critics even before his obvious recent decline. He may be the most powerful man on Earth now but he is also the low-hanging fruit that’s hanging underneath the low-hanging fruit.”
MORE GREEN HYPOCRISY: The True Face of the North Face. “It turns out the vast majority of North Face’s apparel—its hoodies, snow pants, coats and many other items in its product line, like backpacks and tents—are made with polyester, polyurethane and nylon, all of which come from petroleum. Even its fancy fleece jackets are made of polyester.”
People who’ve lost their jobs due to Biden’s energy policy should go picket North Face stores and pass out copies of this article.
FROM R D MEYER: Homecoming.
Earth. The mere name has had an almost talisman-like pull on the human race since we were driven from our homeworld over 6,000 years ago. Mankind’s ancestors ran from the genocidal threat engulfing them, fleeing like intergalactic refugees towards a new home that would allow us to flourish once again.
And flourish we did. From a ragtag group of just over 12,000 survivors, humanity has grown to create a proper empire of nearly 900 billion spanning two galaxies. But we never forgot our home, so we waited and we planned. Now the time was finally right to return to Earth and take back what we once had no choice but to abandon.
Although the military campaign, as well as the alien races between humanity and our birthplace, were the primary concern, they turned out to not be the only ones. You see, Earth itself, despite crawling with the vermin that nearly eradicated us, was far from free of surprises, both physical and historical. Unanticipated challenges waited for the people of the Terran Confederation, including notions that would shake the very foundations of what it meant to be human. Our legends had defined us, but could those legends withstand scrutiny? What if everything we’d come to believe about ourselves and our world had been carefully crafted to cocoon us for our own good?
A story meant to be about our return to Earth expands to cover our journey both across and within the realms of known space, from long lost colony worlds where mankind has morphed into something else, to the edges of an intergalactic war between implacable enemies…enemies that now had the incentive to turn their attention towards humanity…
THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE, FOLKS, JUST MOVE ALONG: Mexican drug cartels use kids as decoys to smuggle members into US.