Archive for 2021
June 8, 2021
ALL HE DID WAS SAY THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: CNN’s Brian Stelter Acts Like ‘State Media’ in Psaki Interview.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: No apology: Yale releases lukewarm statement on speaker who said she dreams of shooting white people.
Hey, it’s not like she misgendered someone.
SAVING GRACE: My Woke Employees Tried to Cancel Me. Here’s How I Fought Back and Saved My Nonprofit.
It is by no means a fair fight. Your opponents will cry foul no matter your speech or behavior. Claims of “harm” will be made simply on account of certain ideas being brought into the conversation or sacrosanct commitments of critical social justice being challenged.
This is why you must be “above reproach.” Let your interlocutors know you will be recording all organizational conversations. Insist that terms be defined clearly from mutually agreed upon authoritative sources or fruitful engagement will be impossible.
On that last point, definition of organizational terms was a key component of our success. The first term I worked to define was “psychological safety.”
This was a necessary first step because even challenging some of our staff’s ideas was seen as “violence.” Being an organization dedicated to addressing trauma, we were shocked that words like “causing harm” and “unsafe” were used liberally by the clinically trained individuals on our program staff to describe conversations about ideas (a sad result of their education in psychology through a critical theory lens).
Grace Daniel has provided a real public service with this piece. Read the whole thing.
YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Order Anything From Pizza Hut and a Side of Toxic Racism Goes to Kids in Public Schools. “Pizza Hut launched the Empowering Educators initiative in August 2020, at the height of the riots that engulfed several U.S. cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, Minn.”
DO TELL: Grand theft: More say Biden taking credit for Trump achievements.
That’s because he is, though he’s undermining some of the most important ones, like energy independence, immigration control, and mideast peace.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? One Huge Problem with the White House’s Plan for Global Taxation.
But trapping global businesses in one tax system wouldn’t just kill tax competition. As Larry Reed recently explained for FEE, it would also create a de facto international tax cartel.
“Imagine if oil companies got together and agreed to charge consumers no less than $3.50 per gallon for gas,” he writes. “If private firms connived to fix a minimum price for their goods, they would be branded ‘robber barons’ and their CEOs would be vilified before congressional committees.”
Indeed they would be. The politicians pushing this global tax scheme are no less corrupt because they hold elected office, and we should reject their efforts just as vociferously.
Read the whole thing.
THE ATF HAS NOT COVERED ITSELF WITH GLORY WITH ITS NEW PISTOL-BRACE REGULATIONS: “Sounds like a beauty contest where contestants answer panelist questions about solving world hunger.”
POTENTIAL GAME-CHANGER: New tech cheaply produces lithium and H2, while desalinating seawater.
China’s global leadership on high-volume EV production has put it ahead of the game, and while the majority of ground-based lithium reserves are in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, China controls more than half’s the world’s supply simply through investments and ownership. It has shown in the past that it’s not afraid to wield commodity supplies as a weapon.
But as with other metals like uranium, land-based lithium reserves pale in comparison to what’s out there in the sea. According to researchers at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), there’s about 5,000 times as much lithium in the oceans as there is in land deposits, and a newly developed technology could start extracting it cheaply enough to make the big time – while producing hydrogen gas, chorine gas and desalinated water as a bonus.
According to the research team, the electricity required to produce a kilogram of lithium in this way (about 76.3 kWh) would cost around US$5 – and every kilogram of lithium would generate a bonus 0.87 kg of hydrogen gas and 31.12 kg of chlorine gas. At 2020 prices, these side products alone could sell for between US$6.90 and $11.70.
Those are encouraging numbers. I hope this pans out.
COLLUSION: ‘Foreign Policy’ Ramps Up Advertising Deal With Chinese Propaganda Outlet.
If we got rid of all the parts of our establishment that are on the take from the Chinese, would we have an establishment any more?
QUESTION ASKED: What Use Is Chris Cuomo to CNN?
At this point in the proceedings, one is tempted to conclude that Chris Cuomo must have laced CNN’s corporate offices with dynamite and informed the powers that be that, if he goes, they go, too. What else could explain the network’s eternal tolerance for being embarrassed and degraded by the man? Here, at the tail end of his long experiment in deficiency, Cuomo resembles nothing more keenly than the inadequate tee-baller who gets to stay in past eight or nine strikes because his uncle coaches the team. His ratings are poor. His insights are vacuous. His conduct is a permanent source of ignominy. All the perfumes of Albany could not sweeten this little man. “What’s in a name?” inquired Shakespeare. Little did he know.
Charles Cooke is just getting started — read the whole thing.
BOWSER’S DC METRO POLICE, NOT TRUMP, DEPLOYED TEAR GAS AGAINST RIOTERS NEAR WHITE HOUSE LAST JUNE. “Now, the MPD is confirming that tear gas was used by district officers outside of Lafayette Park — something it had not done in its legal filings to date…Questions remain, however, concerning why it took a year for the district to reveal its use of tear gas, especially in light of the conflicting reporting, and the attempts to hold the Trump administration responsible for the decision.”
Funny how much we’re now learning about the events that shaped 2020 and who instigated them, now the Bad Orange Man is safely out of the White House.
A TOXIC CULTURE: Gripped by ‘Dinner Party-gate,’ Yale Law Confronts a Venomous Divide. Elite higher education has simply become a place where bad people behave badly — and stupidly.
Also, a lack of leadership: “A feature of this difficult year has been increased demands from student groups. Against this backdrop, Ms. Gerken’s critics in the faculty worry that she acted too hastily in the Chua matter, prioritizing students’ concerns over a professor’s rights.”
Student demands should largely be ignored. They’re there to learn, not to run the place.
Plus: “Tattletale espionage.” “Where are we — in Moscow in 1953, when children were urged to report on their parents and siblings?” That’s the goal. “The students said the dean’s office had never asked them what actually happened at Ms. Chua’s. They said, too, that the administration seemed much more worried that they might have been harmed by Ms. Chua than by the friend who secretly recorded their conversations.”
And we all know that this is about payback for supporting Brett Kavanaugh, no more. If it brings the law school bad press, and ruins the already disappointing deanship of Heather Gerken — spoiler, it has — then that’s justice. Just read this, and imagine putting any of these people in charge of your life, your liberty, or your business’s future.
More — including lengthy excerpts from the above article — here.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Biden’s Rabid Trump Reversal Fever Is Bad for America. “It’s no secret that the Democrats were broken by their hatred for Trump. It’s a real sickness though if they need to pretend that peace in a historically war-torn region isn’t a good thing. Objectively, the Abraham Accords are something to be celebrated. Being so consumed by partisan bile that they can’t acknowledge them is not a good look for Biden or the Democrats.”
BETRAYAL: Veterans’ Advocates Slam White House for Lack of Plan to Evacuate Afghan Interpreters. This is actually the basis for a pretty good sitcom, United States of Al. Helen and I have enjoyed it so far this season.
PROSECUTORS SUBPOENA CUOMO BOOK MATERIAL IN INVESTIGATION OF NURSING-HOME COVID DEATHS:
In his book, Cuomo defended a March directive that prohibited nursing homes from denying entry to residents just because they tested positive for COVID. Some lawmakers have claimed that the order contributed to the high mortality rate among New York assisted-care facilities. Cuomo insisted in the memoir that the order was necessary to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with patients and strapped for resources.
The news of the subpoena comes after it was discovered that Cuomo’s book, which covered New York’s response to the COVID crisis, was positioned to earn $5.1 million, according to documents disclosed by his office last month in May. Cuomo reportedly secured $3.21 million in 2020, and he is set to receive an additional $2 million to be paid out over the next two years, state officials told the New York Times.
Another inquiry was opened in April to determine whether Cuomo unlawfully abused state resources, including staffers, to draft and promote the book after State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli sent a formal referral letter to James saying that the evidence warranted a criminal investigation.
In addition to a scandal involving sexual harassment in the work place, Cuomo now confronts four federal inquiries.
And New Yorkers are on the hook for all those mounting legal fees: New York Taxpayers Paying Andrew Cuomo’s $2.5 Million Legal Fees For Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Pandemic Probe.
IF OR WHEN? What Happens If The Coronavirus Wuhan Lab Leak Thesis Is True?
The Biden administration would then be under excruciating pressure to adopt an extremely hardline policy toward Beijing. Despite expectations that President Biden would seek to restore a much more cooperative and conciliatory China policy after the tensions in bilateral relations that characterized the Trump years, his actual approach has been akin to “Trump lite.” On issue after issue, from Taiwan, to the South China Sea, to trade, the Biden administration’s posture toward Beijing has been surprisingly firm. Perceptions that covid began in a Chinese virology lab, though, would compel the White House to adopt even stronger, more confrontational, measures. And that process could intensify bilateral tensions to an extremely dangerous level.
Biden’s allies in Congress and the mainstream media likely would find themselves under ferocious attack as well. The earlier attempt to stifle debate and exonerate the PRC government from any responsibility for the onset or spread of covid would be in danger of backfiring spectacularly. Critics might even question whether that campaign was merely an error born of rabid, unthinking hostility toward any position the Trump administration embraced, or whether more nefarious motives—including financial ties to the Chinese government—played a role. The potential for outright neo-McCarthyism on this issue is considerable.
So if it is proven that Communist China set a pandemic loose on the world, by either accident or design, the real danger is that Republicans might pounce?
SCIENCE! Gallup: 79% are still wearing masks — even though 53% have been fully vaccinated. And many others have actually had Covid, which provides immunity that is — at least — as good as being vaccinated.
CALIFORNIA SHRANK BY 165K TAXPAYERS, $8.8 BILLION IN GROSS INCOME: IRS.
California residents of all ages and incomes are leaving for more tax friendly climates, and they’re taking billions of dollars in annual income with them.
The Internal Revenue Service recently released its latest taxpayer migration figures from tax years 2018 and 2019. They reflect migratory taxpayers who had filed in a different state or county between 2017 and 2018, of which 8 million did in that timespan.
California, the nation’s most-populous state, lost more tax filers and dependents on net than any other state.
Minus incoming filers, California shed a net 165,355 tax filers and dependents between the two tax years, representing a loss of $8.8 billion in net adjusted gross income.
Texas was the primary destination for California ex-pats, with 72,306 total exemptions leaving to go there. Neighboring Arizona saw 53,476 total filing exemptions come from California. The two states saw a gross income boost of $3.4 billion and $2.2 billion, respectively.
Despite the annual losses, the Golden State still is the nation’s most populous and benefits from a diversified economy that attracts high earners who are more likely to afford what has become some of the nation’s most-expensive cities in which to live.
Brandon Ristoff, a policy analyst with the California Policy Center, reacted to the figures Thursday, saying the IRS’ new numbers reflect the exodus of residents they have seen on the ground.
“Billions of dollars of this state’s wealth has been sent away year after year from our great state, because of California’s bad policies on the economy, education and more,” he said. “California used to be a place where everyone wanted to live, but now California has become a place where people want to leave.”
Exit question, via Reason TV: Is California Over?
THREATENING CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR FREE SPEECH SHOULD BE PUNISHED: “Police Chief Charged With Civil Rights Violation” for Threatening Criminal Charges over Critical Posts.
THE ROAD TO TALLAHASSEE: Trump Sees a Potential New Running Mate in 2024…
WHY DOES BIDEN HATE LATINOS? Guatemalan President Blasts Biden’s Border Policies For Enabling Criminal Human Smugglers.
I’M IN THIS WITH A DARKSHIP UNIVERSE SHORT STORY: We Dare: No Man’s Land.
Ripley facing down the Xenomorph Queen. Sarah Connor fighting the Terminator. David Weber’s Honor Harrington. Science fiction novels and the silver screen are full of badass women kicking butt and taking names. Sometimes it’s the momma bear persona stepping up to defend her young, but, other times, she’s just the meanest one standing—bionic arm or not!
Edited by Jamie Ibson and Chris Kennedy, “We Dare: No Man’s Land” is a collection of 15 all-new stories with female leads. Whether it’s changing an engine on the outside of a spaceship’s hull or chasing SimNACs through the jungle, these heroines have only one goal in mind—to win at all costs! From defending asteroid bases to searching giant space stations, these women get the job done!
What makes female leads great? Does it matter—these women are incredible! Be warned though—they may be referred to as the “fairer” sex, but don’t cross these ladies, or you’re gonna get what you have coming! The authors dared write about these awesome women; will you dare to join them on their adventures? If so, step inside. But beware…this is No Man’s Land!
THEY’RE SERIOUSLY BOGARTING THE OAXACAN DITCHWEED: According to the Lincoln Project, Antifa members are just like the soldiers who fought the Nazis on D-Day.
Look, guys, we in Colorado learned that it’s not okay to toke and drive. Perhaps toking and writing is a bad idea too? At least consider it.