#BELIEVEALLWOMEN: The Five Women Who Have Accused Andrew Cuomo of Sexual Misconduct.
Archive for 2021
March 8, 2021
THAT’S NOT FUNNY: So This Conservative Comic Goes on Social Media and… “Openly conservative stand-up Nick Di Paolo got suspended from YouTube for supposedly sharing false information, after ridiculing the left’s exaggerations of the virus in attacking President Trump. Comedian Chrissie Mayr’s video mocking China’s handling of COVID-19 — ‘Kung Flu Fighting’ — was erased by Instagram, which deemed it ‘hate speech’ despite featuring a diverse lineup of comics. The Babylon Bee, the right’s online answer to the satirical site The Onion, has been at war with Facebook for years. The social media giant intermittently threatens to de-platform the site for spoof articles that moderators apparently take seriously, such as its 2018 report that CNN had purchased industrial-sized washing machines to better ‘spin’ the news.”
WELL, IF HE WERE GOOD AT FIGURING THINGS OUT, HE’D HAVE A BETTER AVERAGE: Student shocked to discover he won’t graduate high school with 0.13 grade point average.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Gender studies prof blames ‘capitalism,’ ‘white supremacy,’ and ‘patriarchy’ for deaths of shelter animals.
THE DAM HAS BROKEN: Calls grow for Cuomo to quit from top New York lawmakers. “Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins became the first senior Democrat in the state to say the three-term governor should resign. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie stopped short of demanding that Cuomo quit, but said in a statement that ‘it is time for the Governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York’.”
A CLASS-ACTION SUIT I COULD GET EXCITED ABOUT: The Lid notes that millions of American kids are being cheated out of major learning time by teachers unions that are more than happy to use Covid as an excuse to keep getting paid for not working.
And here’s an interesting idea:
“Wouldn’t it be a damned shame if some of the money these Teachers’ Unions have to shovel into local elections were tied up with a national class-action lawsuit by the students and families who have been harmed by their outright refusal to return to work?”
UPDATE: Link fixed. Sorry about that, folks.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Trump Was Right: Gas Is at $2.75 a Gallon and Projected to Go Nowhere But Up.
I don’t keep close track of gasoline prices since I drive a diesel, but locally diesel prices are up almost exactly 50% since SCOTUS refused to hear Trump’s case.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Texas shows the way on COVID rationality.
Last week, a US state decided to throw off the shackles of prolonged pandemic restrictions that have done very little good and much harm. That state will reopen libraries, museums, houses of worship and most businesses at full capacity.
No uproar ensued. The state in question was, of course, deep-blue Connecticut. A day earlier, however, when the governors of Texas and Mississippi announced their states were reopening, they got a very different reception. When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also noted he will be lifting the statewide mask mandate, the liberal establishment reacted as if had vowed to personally inject the novel coronavirus into the bodies of Lone Star residents.
President Biden slammed the move as “Neanderthal thinking.” NBC’s Lester Holt declared the country at “an unsettling crossroad tonight.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boss Rochelle Walensky warned against a “premature lifting of these prevention measures.” Federal coronavirus guru Anthony Fauci called the news “inexplicable” and said “now is not the time to pull back.”
Actually, the time to pull back was months ago, but better late than never. A year into the pandemic, we easily forget that the lockdowns and other draconian restrictions were imposed as a temporary measure to “flatten the curves” and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. We did that successfully. Months ago.
No one signed up for living in lockdown indefinitely.
Nope.
Related: Nature article: Staying home doesn’t keep people safe.
A GOFUNDME CAMPAIGN to support Mark Judge’s work on his book. I donated. We have to support people that the left tries to destroy. God knows, the left takes care of its own.
UPDATE: Some people didn’t want to donate via GoFundMe. I get that, so I asked him if he had a Paypal account or a mailbox where people could send checks. Paypal is .
Mailbox is Mark Judge, 3220 N St. NW #175, Washington, D.C. 20007. Paypal is better if you can do that as he’s out of DC for a while. (Bumped).
KURT SCHLICHTER: Do We Even Have A Republic Anymore? “The idea of a republic is that the people, through their representatives, get to make the laws that govern the country, but it appears that’s no longer a thing. What if you made a law, and no one enforced it? Is there even any point to the exercise? And if we can make all the laws we want and not have them enforced except in the limited manner that the people hired to enforce them choose, are we even a free country? Well, it appears that our garbage elite does not think so, and it’s ecstatic about it.”
LUCKILY, THE W.H.O. ISN’T MUCH GOOD AT ANYTHING, INCLUDING WHITEWASHING: Another failed WHO whitewash of China’s COVID guilt.
MICHAEL BARONE: ‘Defund the police’ cost Democrats Hispanic and black votes.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Informs GOP Higher-Ups That It’s Still His Party. “As The Hill article noted, this seems to be an attempt by Trump to ‘solidify his standing as a top kingmaker in the GOP.’ ‘The’ top kingmaker would be more like it. Who else in the Republican party has that kind of power? The MSM hacks are still lost in a dreamland where they think the Romney wing of the party is respected and has some clout.”
DIARY OF DEATH: A Retrospective Review of ‘American Crisis’ by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
More than 12,000 New Yorkers have died since October 13, when American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic hit bookshelves. Cuomo is no longer the #Resistance rock star he was in the early days and weeks of the pandemic, when thousands of nursing home patients were dying on his watch, and his administration was deliberately hiding the data to avoid negative press.
The extent to which the “Butcher of Albany” was slavishly deified in the media cannot be overstated. The thirst, as the saying goes, was real. As it turned out, avoiding negative press coverage was rather easy, given the circumstances. In the eyes of professional journalists and other psychopaths incapable of merely liking a politician, Cuomo was a certified PILF. They gave him a variety of sexually charged nicknames—the “Luv Guv,” among others—that ring differently in light of the sexual harassment allegations.
The most significant difference between then and now? Donald Trump is no longer president. Cuomomania never would have happened otherwise. Molly Jong-Fast, author of the Vogue piece “Why We Are Crushing on Andrew Cuomo Right Now,” recently admitted as much. For what it’s worth, she was also a fan of #Resistance porn lawyer Michael Avenatti and an unpaid adviser to the Lincoln Project. Being the “bad boy” who opposes Trump can be a lucrative career path, so long as you avoid committing felonies. (Easier said than done, apparently.)
Heh. Indeed.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: “Safer at Home” Isn’t.
The Nature article is here. At the very least, this undercuts the self-righteous certainty that led to people who disagreed with established policy being labeled as “anti-science” murderers.
Will there be any apologies or accountability? Doubtful.
THIS IS HOW DESPOTISMS WORK, THAT’S WHY: “What is the government interest in suppressing communication by persons charged with crimes? I can understand why someone’s lawyer might advise him not to give public interviews, but why is there a requirement of ‘clearance from the U.S. Marshals Service, the detention facility or the judge’ — and what is the extent of the clearance? Is it just about giving interviewers access to a detention facility? If it’s nothing more than that, then the lawyer’s assumption was correct. If it is more than that… why is it more than that?”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. What China Really Wants: A New World Order. “The hope of U.S. engagement policy was to invite China into an international community based on free trade and mutually beneficial cooperation, ultimately changing China. Yet in the last 40 years, the CCP has become more internally authoritarian, and outwardly China has opened up only to a relatively small degree. At the same time, the U.S. has fully let the CCP enmesh with us and use our free system to its own advantage. Trump accused China of unfair trade, theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, using our freedom of speech and publication to serve the CCP’s propaganda goal, etc. But no American could have ever imagined that the CCP is plotting to ensure four enemies against the U.S. at the same time, a debt crisis to trap us, and even to control our Congress. It is one thing for a nation to strive for greatness and become a power by respecting international rules and treating other nations decently, either as cooperators or competitors; it is another thing to do so by enmeshing with cooperators or competitors not only to take advantage of them but also to undermine them.”
This is a long piece, but you might find it worth your time.
CHANGE: The Age of Space Reconnaissance.
ANDY KESSLER: When The Stock Boom Turns to Bust.
Even after last week, it feels as if a lot of people think markets only go up. Buy the dip! Hold on for dear life! Feed the ducks when they’re quacking! Stocks. Bonds. SPACs. Real estate. Commodities. Crypto. $200,000 nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs, with clips of LeBron James. Even GameStop is flying again. The sentiment is: Assets go up; cash is for losers. That hasn’t been a bad bet. The March 2020 Covid insta-bear market quickly returned to an insta-bull market. So how do you know when to jump off the runaway train instead of being run over by one?
I don’t think I’m breaking new ground when I suggest that markets do go down. A lot. I was somewhat new to Wall Street when the crash of 1987 took 22.6% out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In retrospect, that’s nothing. A partner at an old-line investment bank once told me that you haven’t seen a real bear market until you’ve lost 90% of your money. . . .
How do these bull bashes end? When the last skeptical buyer finally sees the light and buys into the dream that every car will be electric, that crypto replaces gold and banks, that we overindulge on vertically farmed “plant-based steaks” while streaming “Bridgerton” Season 5 before we hop on an air taxi for our flight to Mars. Those last skeptics (maybe already) convince themselves there’s no longer any downside. And then boom, it’s over.
Bull markets need fuel. When the marginal buyer is done, there are no more greater fools to buy in, no matter how well companies actually perform. The dream is priced in, and firms can only meet, not beat, expectations.
For those lulled by today’s bull market, remember that you own a piece of paper. Low-yielding U.S. Treasury bills and bonds are safe because they are backed by the U.S. government, by cash flow of tax dollars and by the country’s assets (think land, not Fort Knox). Stocks are backed by expectations of future earnings, but if you overpay during periods of high expectations (like today), then your downside is huge. Crypto is backed simply by the faith of those who proclaim it is a store of value. Even art and exotic cars and silly NFT tokens are backed only by faith the wealthy will overpay for uniqueness. Faith becomes scarce when the selling starts.
I think we’re overdue for a big drop, but I tend to expect a crash too soon, and as a friend once told me, don’t scorn bubbles, you make your money in the bubbles. Well, sometimes. . . .