THE VISIGOTHS BEG TO DIFFER: Open Immigration Was a Disaster for Rome. “By 500 A.D. Rome had lost control of every province under its rule to uninvited immigrants.”
Archive for 2021
June 8, 2021
WAIT, I THOUGHT ONLY REPUBLICANS POUNCED: Leftists Pounce as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Signs ‘1836 Project’ Law.
I’D GET RE-VACCINATED FOR A BOTTLE OF 15-YEAR-OLD BOWMORE: Now Washington State Backs Weed Giveaways for Getting COVID Shots.
21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Millions of electric cars are coming. What happens to all the dead batteries?
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Our Politics And The English Language: What would Orwell say about our debased discourse?
I think he’d say “I tried to warn you. I didn’t author a how-to manual. At least, I didn’t mean to.”
Plus: “I was just reading about the panic that occurred in the American Medical Association, when their journal’s deputy editor argued on a podcast that socio-economic factors were more significant in poor outcomes for non-whites than ‘structural racism.’ As you might imagine, any kind of questioning of this orthodoxy required the defenestration of the deputy editor and the resignation of the editor-in-chief. The episode was withdrawn from public viewing, and the top editor replaced it with a Maoist apology/confession before he accepted his own fate.”
Our institutions are run, largely, by awful people. And even most of the non-awful people who remain are too cowardly to resist.
ROGER KIMBALL ON JOE BIDEN’S SUMMER VACATION: He’s going for a nice ride across the big, big ocean in a very shiny airplane. Weeee!
Tomorrow, The Committee will bundle up Joe Biden, titular president of the United States, and take him for a nice ride across the big, big ocean in a very shiny airplane. Weeee! No details have been released yet about what flavors of ice cream he will enjoy, but The Committee’s press arm has been full of stories with titles like ‘Three things to watch on Biden’s first foreign trip‘.
This is not a difficult assignment. The big boys and girls who arrange Joe’s play-dates have told all his favorite friends in the media exactly what to say. And just a couple of days ago they surprised Joe with an article in one of his favorite newspapers, the Washington Post. It was just so nice. A couple of the minders got together and wrote the article and then put Joe’s name on it. Joe was just so excited to see that.
‘Did I do that?’ he asked when he sounded out the bit that said: ‘Thanks to the American Rescue Plan and our domestic vaccination strategy, our economy is now growing faster than at any time in almost 40 years. We have created more jobs in the first four months of our administration than under any other president.’
‘Sure you did,’ they said, though everyone knew it was someone else who developed the vaccines, who oversaw their manufacture and distribution and whose economic policies led to the lowest unemployment in history.
Will President Harris be going as well? ‘I don’t understand your point:’ Kamala snaps at Lester Holt from Guatemala for asking why she won’t to go to the border and insists she does care about the crisis — in interview 1,308miles from the Rio Grande. Kamala Harris lashed out during an interview Monday when asked why she hasn’t visited the southern border. ‘At some point, you know, we are going to the border,’ she said in the interview 1,308 miles from the Rio Grande. ‘We’ve been to the border.’ But Holt pushed back: ‘You haven’t been to the border.’ ‘And I haven’t been to Europe,’ Harris snapped. ‘And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making.'”
How on earth can she be this bad at interacting with one of her own party’s operatives with a Chyron?
BACK TO WORK: Apple Return to Office Plans ‘Forced Some of Our Colleagues to Quit,’ Staff Claim. “Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple.”
HMM: F.D.A. Approves Alzheimer’s Drug Despite Fierce Debate Over Whether It Works.
Related thoughts here: “Given the current data, I do not think that aducanumab should be approved. I don’t believe that Biogen’s clinical trials have really demonstrated efficacy against the disease, and the FDA briefing documents show that there are many people in the agency who agree with that position (see that second link above). . . . There’s another huge factor that is not officially under the purview of the FDA (not directly, anyway). And that’s the huge pent-up demand for something, anything, that can treat Alzheimer’s. That is a moral hazard, as I’ve said many times over the years, because it puts pressure on regulators to approve things just to show that they’ve approved something, and it puts pressure on companies to try to push marginal projects over that regulatory line in hopes of reaping a huge immediate windfall from millions of desperate families.”
MEMORY-HOLING PEACE: The Biden Administration’s Orwellian Erasing of the ‘Abraham Accords.’
HOWARD WOLOWITZ SMILES: NASA’s new $23 million space commode system is more than just a toilet.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. It’s Clear Now Anthony Fauci Isn’t A Fool, He’s A Villain.
Besides his lies about the well-supported lab origin theory for COVID, Fauci misled the public about asymptomatic spread being a major driver of the outbreak, as a Feb. 4, 2020 email revealed. He lied about masks working, as “the virus is small enough to pass through the material,” according to a Feb. 5, 2020 email.
He admitted outright he moved the goalposts on herd immunity based on what he thought the public was “ready to hear,” and he continues to lie about herd immunity being a necessity given that vaccine’s purported efficacy, much less a goal that must be achieved through mass administration of an experimental vaccine.
His deceit is just one aspect that conforms to the villain archetype in literature. There’s a poetic injustice in his story arc that would be hard for a novelist to top.
Under his directorship, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded the EcoHealth Alliance, which funneled $600,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab now under scrutiny for leaking SARS-COV-2, to study coronaviruses in bats.
While Fauci maintains NAIAD never funded the dangerous gain-of-function studies that appear to be potentially involved in COVID’s origin, the U.S. State Department said in January that WIV was indeed conducting gain-of-function research. In 2012, Fauci defended this “risky” type of research, involving increasing the transmissibility or severity of a disease in humans, that he knew might spark a pandemic.
He stated it was a risk worth taking even though it was a “valid concern” that “someone somewhere might attempt to replicate these experiments sloppily.”
It’s a shame he didn’t get Trump’s patented “You’re fired!” over a year ago.
Related (From Ed): Wuhan Lab’s Top Bat Coronavirus Researcher Lists Grants From Fauci’s NIAID On Resume.
NEW YORK TIMES STAFFER SHOCKED TO DISCOVER NEW YORK CITY IS ACTUALLY IN AMERICA! NYT’s Mara Gay: Seeing American Flags on D-Day Anniversary Was ‘Disturbing:’
It’s not very often you hear this kind of blanket honesty from a journalist about how even the simple image of an American flag triggers them.
On Morning Joe Tuesday, frequent guest Mara Gay from the New York Times admitted she was shocked at seeing dozens of “disturbing” American flags over the D-Day anniversary weekend. But what was really disturbing, was Gay likening our country’s flag to racist, white nationalism.
Gay’s loony comments were spurred on by the panel talking about- what else? The need for a January 6 commission on the Capitol Hill riot.
* * * * * * * *
You know, the reality* is here that we have a large percentage of the American population — I don’t know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy, but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness. Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue.
I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend. And I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with you know, expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which you know is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this. And so until we’re ready to have that conversation, this is going to continue.
Remember when Times staffers reported in from war zones during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam? Here’s a safetyism-obsessed Timeswoman who gets the vapors going to Long Island, who accidentally just relived Saul Steinberg’s classic 1976 New Yorker cover parodying the insular nature of its core readers, “The View of the World from Ninth Avenue:”
It was a year ago this month that young crybully Timespeople melted down over an op-ed by Tom Cotton:
[A]fter the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all sharing the same copypasta bullying their bosses: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
Now all it takes are American flags to cause a similar reaction.
* Pseudo-reality, as James Lindsay noted at the start of the year, in a piece titled, “Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism.” “Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult ‘realities’ in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.”
Not so fast, Ben! “Food injustice has deep roots: let’s start with America’s apple pie” — the Grauniad declared war on American apple pie back in May.
IT’S ALMOST LIKE A CRISIS BY DESIGN: Guatemalan President Blames Biden for Border Crisis.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: We Finally Found the Russian Collusion! (It’s in the Oval Office Right Now).
Plus:
- Weiner comes up short
- Missing the Markle with British readers
- Introducing the Libs of TikTok
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: DeSantis Takes New Actions Against China As Biden Goes Soft: ‘Enough Is Enough,’ ‘Start Fighting Back.’ “DeSantis signed two bills at a press conference at Monday that aimed to stop the spread of foreign influence in the state and to strengthen penalties against those convicted of espionage. DeSantis also gave a fiery speech, which is featured later on in this report, where he lambasted China and called them an ‘adversary,’ something Biden has refused to do.”
THE CURRENT CROP OF PROGRESSIVES AREN’T SO KEEN ON THEM EITHER: Why the Early Progressives Rejected American Founding Principles.
CHARLES LIPSON: Who Loses When China’s Bat Cave Implodes?
THE DEMOCRATS MAY BE STARTING TO WORRY: GOP Sweeps in Texas Races Signal Growing Hispanic Support.
DEMOCRAT VOTERS SEEM TO LIKE EVERYTHING ABOUT PROGRESSIVISM EXCEPT LIVING WITH ITS RESULTS: Is the Progressive Project Over? New York City Mayor’s Race Indicates It Could Be. “If AOC and her radical star can’t make a difference there, she can’t make a difference anywhere. Yet, Democrat leaders in Washington, D.C., still cave to her and her far-left colleagues. New York City is one of the most progressive cities in the country, and even the more moderate candidates use some progressive buzzwords, such as “equity.” But the ambassador for the progressive cause is struggling to influence a critical race there.”
I HAD BEEN ASSURED IT WAS THE CLEANEST ELECTION IN HISTORY: Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed.
When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.
Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.
In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.
“All of them were strangely pristine,” said Voyles, who said she’d never seen anything like it in her 20 years monitoring elections in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta.
More to come, I’m sure.
PRESIDENT TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE NEEDS ALL THE HELP HE CAN GET: FDA Approves Alzheimer’s Drug For First Time In Years.
ON THE ONE HAND… Biden Backs Ukrainian President In Tensions With Russia, Extends White House Invite Ahead Of Summit With Putin.
ON THE OTHER HAND… Ukraine’s Zelensky says he learned of Biden’s decision to waive Russian pipeline sanctions through the press.
The summit is for appearances. The pipeline is real.
I DUNNO, I THINK AN AWFUL LOT: I attended an anti-racism campus book club. It’s worse than you think.