STILL AVAILABLE: Beer Only Refrigerator Vinyl Decal Sticker.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Piers Morgan: If there’s a ‘special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,’ mean-girl Katie Couric is going to have a ring-side seat after her women-trashing book reveals her lectures about female equality and bullying to be the rankest hypocrisy.

SCIENCE! Leading ‘reproductive justice’ professor insists fetal heartbeats do not exist.

J.D. TUCCILLE: Public Health Officials Blew Up Their Credibility, and We’re Paying the Price: Vaccine hesitancy can, in part, be laid at the feet of experts who betrayed the public’s trust.

Critics are certain to wave off the findings as the unfounded concerns of low-information knuckle-draggers who need to be poked and prodded into compliance. But, while such dismissal may confer a warm and fuzzy feeling of superiority, it doesn’t explain why health professionals also have lost faith in public-health officials.

“Trust in the CDC and FDA has decreased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic among health care professionals,” WebMD/Medscape noted in June. “Out of nearly 2,000 U.S. nurses surveyed on Medscape (WebMD’s sister site for health care professionals) between May 25 and June 3, 77% said their trust in the CDC has decreased since the start of the pandemic, and 51% said their trust in the FDA has decreased. Similarly, out of nearly 450 U.S. doctors surveyed in the same time period, 77% said their trust in the CDC has decreased and 48% said their trust in the FDA has decreased.”

Respondents to the WebMD/Medscape poll cited concerns about politics affecting public health decisions as well as contradictory messaging about masks, vaccination, and proper conduct to avoid infection. Both of those concerns were on display last year when public health officials went from condemning anti-lockdown protests to promoting protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

“Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What,” The New York Times headlined an article on the whiplash-inducing change in messaging over the potential health risks of public gatherings.

Want people to trust you? Be trustworthy. Want people to think of you as lying, opportunistic hacks? Be the public health establishment over the past couple of years.

WILL SEIU OWN MCAULIFFE? Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton fund-raiser and enforcer, wants a second stint as Virginia’s governor and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is spending big to make it happen, according to Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig, writing in the Washington Free Beacon.

After handing $40,000 to a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that specializes in registering new Democratic voters, Ludwig reports, the SEIU “endorsed a mailer that contains a partially pre-filled absentee ballot application form sent by the D.C.-based Center for Voter Information, a left-of-center vote-by-mail advocacy group.

“The mailers, one of which was obtained by the Virginia Project, have targeted over two million voters across 134 Virginia counties and cities, urging them to register for mail-in ballots ahead of the November election, when Virginians will vote for their next governor and control of the House of Delegates.”

McAuliffe is in a close race with Republican Glen Youngkin, so the SEIU-funded effort could make the difference. Given his record, McAuliffe will be only too happy to accommodate whatever the union demands in return.

JOHN LUCAS ON Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller. “Are his arrest and the potential charges justified or are they, as many think, just a witch hunt to punish an honorable officer whose only sin was to demand accountability from more senior leaders?”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Sadly, the Great Facebook Outage of 2021 Was Only Temporary. “It’s no secret that we in conservative media have a rather fraught relationship with the social media giant. Our fortunes are still somewhat tied to the behemoth but, as I explained last week, we’re working on ways to combat that. It’s pretty safe to say that I didn’t experience any heartbreak over the tough Monday Zuck and Co. were having.”

#1 BEST SELLER IN RESTAURANT & FOOD INDUSTRY: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. (Bumped)

JOEL KOTKIN: The COVID Class War: The Obedient Online Educated vs. The IRL Resistance.

A new class conflict is emerging across the world. You can see its face in the mass protests over COVID-19 restrictions from Paris, Berlin and London to southern California and Melbourne. The protestors are often cast as a death cult of ignorant rubes, but they are exposing a new class conflict that’s pitting two increasingly irreconcilable populations against each other: those who wish to obey and those who refuse restraints.

To be sure, a serious public hazard like Covid-19 requires that steps be taken to protect the vulnerable and develop vaccines and treatments. Resisting a jab, as all too many Americans have done, does suggest that there is no vaccine for stupidity, as one writer put it.

But at the same time, the attempt to achieve total safety—notably in places like Australia and parts of North America—has expressed itself in a highly authoritarian approach that even to some on the Left seems more about social control than just an emergency response.

Well, that’s because it is.

A friend writes: “Low value people favor mandates, because obedience is the only place where they can compete.”

Related: The rich and powerful thrived as the rest of us suffered in the year of lockdowns.

PEOPLE ARE STARTING TO NOTICE WHAT IS HAPPENING AT MY CUTE LITTLE UNIVERSITY:  “The Woke Blob Swallows the University of San Diego.”  (Alas, if anything, this article understates the problem.)  If you’re a USD parent, student, donor, or alum, it’s time to speak up.  We’re a small enough institution to where you might actually have an effect.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: ‘Stagflation is here,’ following months of rising prices, BofA analysts say. “Fears about higher prices are coming to the fore, with BofA Global Research analysts declaring in a Friday note that “stagflation is here” and a government report showing U.S. inflation still at a 30-year high as of August. Even central bankers appeared to be starting to capitulate this week, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell saying that high inflation could run into 2022.”

THIS IS THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT:

BIDEN’S IMMIGRATION FAILURE: The Biden administration’s new immigration-enforcement guidelines will have bad practical and political effects.

BUT MANDATES AND SHAMING GIVE THE RULING CLASS A TINGLE: Polling shows persuasion better than mandates to boost vaccination.

Evidence shows vaccination is the safest way to contain COVID-19. A new survey suggests persuasion—not mandates—is the best way to boost vaccination rates.

As July saw the Delta variant sweep across states with low vaccination numbers, President Biden expressed frustration at the slow-down in daily vaccination rates. His frustration reached a boiling point on September 9. Saying “our patience is wearing thin,” Biden announced all federal government employees and health care workers in facilities receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds must vaccinate. He further mandated that all workers in firms with 100 or more employees must either vaccinate or submit to weekly testing.

No doubt the federal government can legitimately set terms of employment for its own workers and attach conditions to the expenditure of government funds. But mandating that private individuals vaccinate is another thing entirely, one that raises moral concerns.

A new survey backs up those concerns by suggesting mandates could ironically make many unvaccinated Americans less likely to vaccinate rather than more likely. . . .

If public health officials want to change behavior, they need to stop shading the truth. Stop using divisive rhetoric like President Biden did when he said, “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers,” which demonized the unvaccinated.

Stop undermining vaccination efforts by implying that vaccines do not protect recipients—as the Food and Drug Administration did when it paused the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did when it recommended vaccinated people wear masks indoors, and as President Biden did with the above statement.

Instead, start treating unvaccinated Americans with respect.

Treating Americans with respect is anathema to our ruling class.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella #3

Fresh off the chaotic conclusion to the riddle of Camelot, Barbarella finds herself out an ally but with no time to lick her wounds. A mysterious signal from space leads Barbarella to the water world of Encantado, where the remnants of a once-thriving situation lay hidden, as do much genetic shenanigans. And lest you think that’s all the Siren of Space must deal with, the armed forces of they deadly power behind the enslavement of Camelot is still hot on her trail—good luck outrunning lasers!

KINDLE A LIGHT: Prometheus.

IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL AMERICANS LOSE PATIENCE:  Lucky us: Illegal alien militants plan more obnoxious protests.

THE INSANITY ABIDES:  COVID has Replaced Climate Change as the Religion of the Left.