THAT NUMBER SEEMS QUITE LOW: Study: One in 10 people exposed to COVID-19 at home tests positive.
Archive for 2021
February 28, 2021
IF ONLY LOS ANGELES COULD BREAK OFF . . . Iceberg size of Los Angeles breaks off from Antarctica.
INSURRECTION: Hundreds rally in violent anti-lockdown protest in Ireland. “Demonstrators handed out leaflets reading ‘let Ireland live’ and chanted ‘end the lockdown’.”
UPDATE: Eight arrested at anti-lockdown protest in Denmark. “Organised by a group calling itself ‘Men in Black’, the rally of around 1,200 people in the Danish capital was the first since the government announced last week that it was extending many anti-coronavirus restrictions. Police said the rally remained largely peaceful, but eight people were arrested for allegedly using fireworks and for rowdy behaviour.”
CASS SUNSTEIN, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: The Cognitive Bias That Makes Us Panic About Coronavirus. Feeling anxious? Blame “probability neglect.”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! “Dr. Jill” to the rescue – bails out Joe during Univision interview in Houston. “Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, who happens to be my district’s congresswoman, goes by Fletcher, not Pannill, so Biden botched her name even more than Sheila Jackson-Lee’s. He can’t blame cold temperatures for his brain freeze, as the temperatures are well back into the 70s now. Biden seems incapable of delivering the most basic of remarks. Is this why his wife travels with him? Is she tasked with articulating Biden’s message? It sure looks that way.”
THEY CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES, THEY’RE IDIOTS: Food critics who rip NYC indoor dining are sabotaging their own industry.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. “Biden is not so much presiding over Obama’s third term as he is the doddering passenger riding in first class while Obama’s faithful pilots navigate. Democrats did not yearn for a President Biden; they yearned to beat President Trump and restore the status quo ante. Biden’s job is to give his people what they want: Obama policy and practice.” Which is why: Merrick Garland Heralds Return of the Obama Justice Department — Radical as Ever.
Related: Biden vs Trump On National Security: Here’s The New Administration’s First Month Report Card.
To sum up Biden’s first month in office:
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: This woman was refused service at a grocery store for not wearing a mask so she did what any normal human being would do and took off her underwear to use as a mask.
The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.
HISTORICALLY, IT’S NOT GENERALLY THE GOOD GUYS STANDING FOR CENSORSHIP AND BOOK-BURNING: Democrats’ sneak attack on the free press.
HOTEL GOOGLEFORNIA — YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE: Judge “Disturbed” To Learn Google Tracks ‘Incognito’ Users, Demands Answers.
(Classical reference in headline.)
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Principal who criticized Big Tech censorship sues school district for suspending him.
THE EXCITING LIVES OF L.A. TIMES COLUMNISTS: My wife is vaccinated. I’m not. Welcome to the new world of haves and have-nots.
In my house, we have a problem. My wife has been vaccinated; I haven’t.
Am I envious? Of course I am. Resentful? Yeah, some of that too. When she came home all cheerful after her second COVID-19 vaccine shot last week, I couldn’t help feel that she had crossed safely to the other side of a giant chasm, while I remained at the edge of the cliff.
Later, when she complained of a headache and some chills from the second shot, I was, perhaps, a tad less sympathetic than I could have been.
For a year we’ve been housebound together. But suddenly she was eligible for her shots and I was not. And now (or presumably very soon), she’ll be able to traipse off to a restaurant or a rave or an orgy or a national insurrection, while I’ll still be cowering at home hiding from the virus.
* * * * * * * *
And in what may be the biggest return to normality for the lucky people who’ve had their shots, the L.A. Times quoted medical experts Thursday saying that they can now “enjoy a sex life with other vaccinated people” outside their bubble.
I had no idea that L.A. Times columnists were such hard-partying types.
WHY HE HASN’T DONE A STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS: Watch Biden completely short-circuit during a speech and literally ask “What am I doing here?”
IF YOU CAN HEAR THE WHISTLE, THEN YOU’RE THE DOG: Alyssa Milano notes that the stage at CPAC 2021 is modeled after Nazi imagery used by the SS. Also on the case, Snopes and TMZ.
Related: Prepare For A Deluge Of Dishonest CPAC Coverage.
(Classical reference in headline.)
HMMMM: A Modest Proposal For Republicans: Use The Word “Class.”
3. War On The Upper-Class Media: This is your new term for “mainstream media”. Being against the “mainstream media” sounds kind of conspiratorial. Instead, you’re against the upper-class media, which gains its status by systematically excluding lower-class voices, and which exists mostly as a tool of the upper classes to mock and humiliate the lower class. You are not against journalism, you’re not against being well-informed, you’re against a system that exists to marginalize people like you. Tell the upper-class media that if they want your respect, they need to stop class discrimination.
67% of US families watch the Super Bowl – what percent of New York Times editors and reporters do? 20% of Americans go to religious services weekly – how many of those work for the New York Times? How come 96% of political donations from journalists go to Democrats? Your job is to take a page from the Democratic playbook and insist there is no reason any of this could be true except systemic classism, that any other explanation is offensive, and it’s the upper-class media’s moral duty to do something about this immediately. Until they do so you are absolutely justified in ignoring them and trusting less bigoted and exclusionary sources (I hear Substack is pretty good!)
Insist that working-class people have the right to communicate with each other without interference from upper-class gatekeepers. Make sure people know every single fact about @Jack and what a completely ridiculous person he is, and point out that somehow this is the guy who decides what you’re allowed to communicate with your Twitter friends. Every time tech companies censor social media, even if they’re censoring left-wing views, call their CEOs in for long and annoying Congressional hearings where you use the words “Silicon Valley elites” a lot.
Read the whole thing. Exit quote: “There’s a theory that the US party system realigns every 50-or-so years. Last time, in 1965, it switched from the Democrats being the party of the South and the Republicans being the party for blacks, to vice versa. If the theory’s right, we’re in the middle of an equally big switch. Wouldn’t it be great if the Republicans became the racially diverse party of the working class? You can make it happen!”
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Virginia College Forfeits Basketball Game After Suspending Players For Kneeling During Anthem.
The players claim that a pro-Trump rally held near the campus shows that some protests are OK with the school. But the school pointed out that the Trump rally was held on city streets, not college grounds.
That didn’t satisfy the players: “So it’s OK for everyone to have a Trump rally with Confederate flags, but it’s not OK for us to kneel for our people who’ve fallen,” Christian said. “He didn’t have an answer for that.”
This is the mind of a child in the body of a college athlete. The Trump rally was not on the college grounds. The school had no connection with it. [College President David Olive] tried to explain that to all the children on campus.
“We are a private entity, not a governmental entity,” Olive said in his statement. “We have policies and guidelines throughout the student handbook and the academic catalog that limit certain rights you otherwise might have elsewhere, such as in your home or in a public venue. The most important to me as it pertains to this matter, however, is what I shared earlier. When someone puts on a uniform or is performing a function on behalf of Bluefield College, that person is now representing Bluefield College. Heightened expectations are now placed on that individual as to what s/he can and cannot do or say as a representative of the College.”
Alternate headline: The rarest of breeds spotted in the wild — a college president with a working pair of testicles.
STANDING UP AGAINST BIGOTRY: Student Group Sues Yale for Discrimination, Revives Trump-Era Case.
HOW AMAZON CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Censorship: Clarence Thomas’s documentary removed from Amazon.
SHE’S GONE FULL LINCOLN PROJECT. YOU NEVER GO FULL LINCOLN PROJECT: Liz Cheney says include pro-Trump media in Jan. 6 investigation.
QUESTION ASKED:
Related: The Biden Effect Continues at the Border.
Flashback: Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
Which leads to another question:
