WHEN YOU REALIZE THEY’RE JUST A DEMOCRATIC PARTY FRONT GROUP IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Karol Markowicz: Feminists are MIA as anti-science school closings brutally slam women.
Archive for 2021
February 8, 2021
WHAT ARE THE DEMOCRATS SO AFRAID OF? GOP congressman: ‘We still don’t have answers’ to why National Guard remaining around Capitol.
How can the impeachment trial be fair if the Capitol is ringed with troops controlled by the man who beat Trump in the disputed election? That’s the sort of question we’d be hearing everywhere if the parties were reversed. Intimidation!
THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING, I’LL PROBABLY WIND UP A REFUGEE THERE, GLORYING IN THEIR NEWFOUND EMBRACE OF FREEDOM AND CAPITALISM: Cuba opens up its economy to private businesses.
OPEN THREAD: Happy Monday!
JOBS? THAT WAS THE OTHER GUY’S PROGRAM, NOT OURS. Jen Psaki mocks reporter when asked about Keystone pipeline job losses.
Related: Dems from oil-producing N.M. grapple with Biden moratorium.
Turn New Mexico red!
CONVICTION IS LOOKING UNLIKELY: Sen. Tim Scott: Trump is ‘simply not guilty’ on impeachment.
JUST A REMINDER: I get paid based on ad revenue now, so if you wouldn’t mind whitelisting InstaPundit if you run an ad blocker that would be great. Or some people hit the PayPal donation button, which is also great.
UPDATE: Sheesh, reading some of these comments I wonder why I even bother with this place. Then again, that’s probably the aim.
NEW YORK TIMES: Publishers Banning Conservatives Isn’t Blacklisting Because They Can Self-Publish.
Hachette, you may remember, is the publisher that put out In Defense of Looting, which combined antisemitism, hostility toward Asians, with support for looting. No one seems to have been fired for that one so we can assume that some kinds of hate, incitement, and false narratives are still okay.
But the perfect New York Times paragraph comes most of the way down.
Thomas Spence, the president of the conservative publisher Regnery, said he regarded the shift by the Big Five (soon to be four, when Penguin Random House completes its acquisition of Simon & Schuster) as a “form of blacklisting.”
Ben Smith however offers this tremendous act of journalism.
“But when that word was used in 1950s Hollywood, the movie studios could silence a writer, director or actor because they exercised near total control over production and distribution. The New York publishers don’t have that power anymore. High-profile authors provide more marketing on social media than any publisher can dream of, and the largely values-neutral Amazon is the main distribution channel for most books. Donald Trump Jr. self-published his second book.”
Seriously. It’s not blacklisting because… you can self-publish.
Pathetic. Contemptible. Neither seem to do this justice. It’s the sort of thing that a Communist apparatchik would have offered up to an American journalist asking about the persecution of some blacklisted writer. Now it’s the sort of contemptible apologia for its blacklists that the New York Times offers up in the very same article in which it promotes and celebrates the blacklist.
As Victor Davis Hanson wrote yesterday, “The Left’s 1960s dream is America’s 2021 nightmare:”
To advocate burning or destroying a book is not some nightmare from Fahrenheit 451, but a woke way to “stop the hate.”
A new Orwellian phrase is “free speech is not free reach”—as leftists become the intellectual inheritors of the racists of the open-housing fights of the 1950s and 1960. The old racist boilerplate of apartment owners and realtors was “You can live anywhere you want, just not here.” The new hate mantra of Silicon Valley cartels is, “You can tweet or socially post anywhere you like—if you can manage to find a place.”
Surveillance and spying are now good. How else to ferret out “right-wingers,” “white supremacists,” and “insurrectionists”?
So the FBI and CIA have transmogrified into heroic agencies run by stalwart social activist fighters like John Brennan, the old Gus Hall supporter, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe. They cut to the quick to achieve social justice, without the messy give and take of Congress, or that albatross, the relic Constitution.
What a wonderful world they have created: Eavesdropping on the national security advisor, forging FISA documents, spying on American citizens, aiding one presidential candidate by surveilling another.
Finally, they can use their skills and surveillance to investigate and hound the “right” enemies, for the “right” causes.” The CIA and FBI always secretly wished to be beloved by the Left. Now they are deified.
Presumably, since their columnists can still self-publish, the New York Times has no problem with this development: New App Allows Twitter Users to Block All NY Times Reporters With One Click.
I’m not in the business of censorship, so I’m very uncomfortable with this app, but given the tenor of the times (okay, pun slightly intended), I can’t say I’m at all surprised at its development.
NAZIS MAYBE, BUT REPUBLICANS OR NRA MEMBERS? DOUBTFUL. Would the ACLU Still Defend Nazis’ Right To March in Skokie?
REPORT: The “Florida COVID-19 Whistleblower” Saga Is a Big Lie.
NPR describes [Rebekah] Jones as a “top scientist” leading Florida’s pandemic response. In fact, Jones has held three jobs in her field; all three have ended in her being terminated and criminally charged. She has a Master’s in geography from Louisiana State University, where she worked until she was fired. She was arrested in 2016 while, reportedly, trespassing on campus and attempting to steal computer equipment from her former workplace. She then lectured at Florida State University (FSU) and began researching tropical storms for a dissertation, but never earned a Ph.D. as she was suspended and fired in 2018 after her former student accused her of sexual cyberharassment. Before her termination from the DoH, she was a geographic information systems manager, overseeing the COVID-19 web portal.
It’s therefore misleading to imply Jones has specialized knowledge of infectious disease. Florida’s top Democratic official calls her “Dr. Rebekah Jones,” but Jones is no doctor. Nor is she an epidemiologist, virologist, statistician, or public health professional; the DoH has a highly qualified team of those. A technical manager, Jones didn’t have the authority or expertise to decide unilaterally how to visualize data. But when experts disagreed with her, she assumed they were wrong—or deliberately deceiving the public.
After she was fired from the DoH for a pattern of insubordination, Jones claimed that Deputy Secretary for Health Shamarial Roberson had asked her to “manipulate data to mislead the public” about the safety of reopening rural counties. According to Dr. Roberson, this is “patently false.” Emails show a state epidemiologist told Jones to temporarily disable data export from the dashboard to verify dates against other official sources. The data was aggregated from local public health authorities in 67 counties; it couldn’t be falsified or hidden. In other words, Jones is no “whistleblower.” She’s a conspiracy theorist.
In amplifying Jones’ story, the media has all but ignored Dr. Roberson, who has impressive experience in epidemiology and a doctorate in public health. As a Black woman from a disadvantaged background, she has risen to the forefront of Florida’s pandemic response. Dr. Roberson deserves the recognition the media has lavished on her ex-employee. But according to The Narrative, serving in a conservative administration disqualifies her.
Exit quote: What distinguishes ‘whistleblowers’ from ‘disgruntled ex-employees’ is credibility, and here Jones has a problem.
THE HUMILIATING ART OF THE WOKE APOLOGY:
It’s never a handful of people who are offended but entire institutions and categories of people, evidently always rocked to their cores.
Donald McNeil, whose work on the coronavirus has gained renown during the pandemic, made it sound as though science coverage at the Times, and perhaps the paper itself, would be hard-pressed to recover from his innocent use of the n-word:
“My lapse of judgment has hurt my colleagues in Science, the hundreds of people who trusted me to work with them closely during this pandemic, the team at ‘The Daily’ that turned to me during this frightening year, and the whole institution, which put its confidence in me and expected better.
“So for offending my colleagues — and for anything I’ve done to hurt The Times, which is an institution I love and whose mission I believe in and try to serve — I am sorry. I let you all down.”
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees criticized kneeling last year, then quickly buckled under the resulting criticism. “I would like to apologize to my friends, teammates, the City of New Orleans, the black community, NFL community and anyone I hurt with my comments yesterday,” he said, leaving no one out. “In speaking with some of you, it breaks my heart to know the pain I have caused.”
The Poetry Foundation made a fairly typical statement of support for racial justice after the killing of George Floyd and then, when critics wrote a letter of condemnation for the supposed offenses embedded in the statement, the Foundation apologized — to pretty much everyone imaginable.
The show trial-like tone of the “woke apology” stands in sharp contrast to the Trump-era style of never apologizing for anything, in order to “own the cons/libs.” A CNN article from 2018 is headlined, “Donald Trump is not sorry. Ever.” For better or worse, for politicians, it’s a style that spreading:
● Ocasio-Cortez Says She ‘Will Not Apologize’ For Cruz ‘Trying To Get Me Killed’ Remarks.
● Marjorie Taylor Greene refuses to apologize while addressing House.
● Nancy Pelosi calls salon visit a ‘setup,’ refuses to apologize.
We’re at quite an inflection point in our culture when those who have been cancelled grovel, while politicians and celebrities who have erred refuse to. Of course, the speed of today’s media plays a part. Why apologize for a scandal that the media will likely forget about 15 minutes later?
AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL ARREST FOR REFUSING TO SHOW ID TO THE COPS.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Three Worst Things About That Terrible Jeep Super Bowl Ad.
How could a major corporation not see how propagandistic it comes off to suggest that when Republicans win a national election, that’s divisive, but when Democrats win one, that’s unifying? The corporate-approved approach is to paper over disagreement while Democrats hold power while amplifying a full-on #Resistance when Republicans are in power.
Jeep sales will not heal the fabric of the country. Jeep ads can’t even help toward that goal so long as they are using dishonest and manipulative partisan framing in service of car sales.
Read the whole thing. Springsteen’s ad will alienate Jeep with red state car buyers*, but it will place its creator in the pole position to win a Clio. Apparently, that’s far more important for Jeep. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record put it: Conservatives Sit Down For A Relaxing Evening Of Being Insulted By Every Major Corporation In America.
* And many buyers who belong to the party that preaches tolerance for diversity, since they consider the 75 million or so people who voted for Trump to be various shades of evil. (Just ask leading LA Times columnists.)
IT’S SURPRISING HOW MANY LOOK BETTER IN THE OLDER VERSION: 45+ Pics of Celebrities Hanging Out With Their Younger Selves.
SUPER-SPREADING SANCTIMONY AT THE SUPER BOWL:
Andrew Cuomo’s hometown paper took a similarly sanctimonious tone. ‘In Tampa, Super Bowl Celebrations Bring Superspreader concerns’, a New York Times headline screamed this morning. Back when Biden won, the paper’s super-spreader concerns were curiously absent: ‘A Rollicking NYC Celebration for Biden’s Win, Well Into the Night’.
So what’s behind the open and naked double-standards being pushed in both corporate and social media? There isn’t some grand diabolical strategy. It’s pretty simple actually. They are allowed to flaunt the rules and change how COVID affects a population based on the social causes they and political lines they espouse — and you aren’t. It is that simple. COVID-19 doesn’t affect racial protests or Democratic victories. It will however kill everyone who attends a football game or has a private gathering in their home.
No one is denying this is a deadly virus worth taking seriously; therein lies the problem with politicized public health experts who wag their fingers at people trying to get out and enjoy an event, but who explain away mass gatherings in the name of social justice. The virus doesn’t care why crowds have gathered. It spreads indiscriminately.
So does hypocrisy. If you are a public person with a byline, or an activist or a politician who ignores COVID in favor of your cause, you deserve to be ridiculed while lecturing others — you deserve to be ignored. Enjoy the parade, Tampa Bay.
Flashbacks:
● Fauci resists Republican effort to turn testimony against protesters.
● Fauci: There will ‘almost certainly’ be an uptick in COVID-19 cases after Thanksgiving travel.
● Media Pushes Narrative that BLM Protests Did Not Contribute to Spike in Coronavirus Cases.
● “The great theme of the Trump years, the one historians will note a century from now, was the failure of America’s expert class. The people who were supposed to know what they were talking about, didn’t.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why food sticks to nonstick frying pans.
YEP. Bruce Springsteen sells out with pablum. I wonder if Jeep dealers are hearing complaints from customers.
ANTI-TRUMPERS: TRUMP IS A THREAT TO THE CONSTITUTION!
ALSO ANTI-TRUMPERS: Donald Trump should be convicted unanimously by secret ballot. This piece accusing Trump of “hiding behind the Constitution,” is by Doug Kmiec, once a well-known conservative pro-life law professor, who shilled for Obama and was rewarded with an ambassadorship.
JOHN ROSENBERG: “Equity”?
As Rosenberg points out, Lani Guinier (Bill Clinton’s ill-fated nominee to head DOJ’s Civil Rights Division) was a reasonably respectable academic. Like many academics, she had succumbed to the desire to say something completely novel. That’s how you get ahead in academia. The problem with novel ideas, however, especially in overcrowded fields like law, is that they are usually novel only because they are silly ideas. So it was with Guinier’s cumulative voting idea. It was silly and entirely unsuited to the real world. On the other hand, I had a conversation with Guinier years ago and found her to be quite insightful on some of the issues facing legal education.
Biden’s nomination of Kristen Clarke for the Civil Rights Division is a different thing. She is literally a racist.
Related (From Ed): ‘Neo-Racism’ in the Justice Department. “Will Clarke enforce civil rights law, or does she share the ideological commitments of what John McWhorter has called neo-racism, which rejects color-blindness in favor of destructive racialism? Expressing regret for one’s youthful radicalism is expected for a nominee facing a potentially tough Senate confirmation process. But what Ms. Clarke has shown with her behavior as a lawyer and an activist is that she is an untrustworthy champion of American civil rights.”
THE TRUTH IS, IT SUCKS: The Truth Behind The Great Ammo Crisis.
The simple explanation is that demand exceeded the supply, then continued to exceed the supply. But to understand how that happened you have to go a little deeper. According to Jason Vanderbrink, President of Federal, CCI, Speer and Remington, before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was considerable excess capacity in the ammunition market.
Manufacturers could make more than they could sell, so supply was abundant and prices were low. You could order a case of 9 mm off the Internet for $200. Manufacturers were prepared for an uptick in sales that normally accompanies a presidential election, but the excess capacity would have been enough to cover that.
2020 had other ideas. The first was the COVID-19 pandemic. Then a summer of civil unrest that sometimes turned violent. A hotly contested presidential election, and then the party of gun control having control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
Any single one of those would have spiked demand, but all these factors happening in rapid succession was more than the market could bear. Partly because the NSSF estimates that 7 million new gun owners entered the market in 2020. As Vanderbrink pointed out, if those 7 million new gun owners each bought 100 rounds of ammo, that’s 700 million rounds that the market needs to produce.
To put that in context, the entire commercial market in 2018 made approximately 8 billion rounds. An 8.75 increase in demand wouldn’t shut everything down, but when it’s added on top of the demand created by all the other factors, it becomes too much.
I took my boys to the range on Saturday, and was relieved to find the ammo shelves weren’t totally bare. The handgun selection wasn’t great, either.