GOODER AND HARDER: Joe Biden Voters Discover They Voted for Joe Biden.

WOKE INDOCTRINATION and Sorokin’s Norma.

BRYAN PRESTON: Will The Oak Island Money Pit Mystery Ever Be Solved?

It’s a VIP piece, but if you want to sign up for PJ VIP you can use the code PRESTON for a discount.

(Bumped.)

ON WILLIE MAYS’ BIRTHDAY, NANCY PELOSI POSTS PHOTO OF WRONG GIANTS LEGEND NAMED WILLIE:

On Willie Mays’ 90th birthday Thursday, the Twitter account for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posted a picture of … Willie McCovey.

The tweet, which showed the San Francisco Democrat with McCovey, was removed quickly and replaced with an image of Pelosi with the correct Willie, though the caption remained the same.

* * * * * * * *

It’s not the first time a high-profile politician has made an error like this one.

When civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis died last year, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (or someone on his staff) posted a picture of himself with also-deceased Rep. Elijah Cummings instead and was criticized harshly.

Pelosi did not receive anywhere near as much blowback, and her office later blamed a staffer for the gaffe.

“Pelosi did not receive anywhere near as much blowback:”

RIP TO JAGUAR’S GREATEST SALESPERSON EVER: Tawny Kitaen, ’80s Music Video Vixen and Bachelor Party Star, Dies at 59.

BRITISH ACTRESS APPROPRIATELY HUMBLED BY EVERYDAY AMERICAN CULTURE: Kate Winslet Describes Being Awestruck By ‘Mythical’ Wawa Convenience Store.

Flashback: When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Houston.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Wide-Angle Edition.

NO MAN IS SAFE: There is a new book coming out soon by actor and director Greg Ellis called The Respondent: Exposing the Cartel of Family Law. There is an introduction by Johnny Depp who says about the book: “If you’re trapped in the dungeon that is the family court system, The Respondent should be your constant companion.” I need to read this.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: CAIR is demanding the NBA stop supporting China’s Muslim genocide. Join them.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Texas Virtual Academy trains students to enter workforce right after high school. Many institutions in our society are becoming obsolete, and the pandemic has accelerated that process.

WELCOME BACK CARTER: Twitter’s take on a tweet by Donald Trump Jr. is really something special.

“Fair enough. Carter won a Peace Prize and has built a lot of houses for charity in his post-presidency. But, economically speaking, his presidency was not a fun time for most Americans. So why is Twitter spinning for aggrieved Democrats? I’m assuming a person wrote this nonsense. Again, it sounds like a Vox headline, i.e. ‘Well, akshually…’”

I’m assuming the young tykes who program Twitter’s “Trending Posts” are far too young to have been around in the 1970s, and have no knowledge about just how gloomy the Carter years were, with runaway inflation, unemployment, interest rates, gas prices, a defenestrated military and the infamous “malaise speech.” They just know he has a (D) after his name,  he’s not the Bad Orange Man, and his son must be wrong, so Carter must be defended. Ben Rhodes famously said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” Those who can’t cut as reporters wind up working for Twitter.

I SUSPECT THIS IS MORE ABOUT MONEY THAN HYGIENE: AALS Cancels In-Person Faculty Hiring Conference For Second Year In A Row Due To COVID-19. Though it seems like a bad call for AALS, if people realize they don’t need that conference to do hiring at all.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.

Why anyone would want to repeat this experiment in the dismal science is a mystery. Biden, however, is fixated not on inflation but on repudiating the legacy of the man known for describing it as “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

Milton Friedman, whose empiricism led him to embrace free market public policy, was the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century. But Biden has a weird habit of treating Friedman as a devilish spirit who must be exorcised from the nation’s capital. For Biden, Friedman represents deregulation, low taxes, and the idea that a corporation’s primary responsibility is not to a group of politicized “stakeholders” but to its shareholders. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Biden told Politico last year. “When did Milton Friedman die and become king?” Biden asked in 2019. The truth is that Friedman, who died in 2006, has held little sway over either Democrats or Republicans for almost two decades. But Biden wants to mark the definitive end of Friedman and the “neoliberal” economics he espoused by unleashing a tsunami of dollars into the global economy and inundating Americans with new entitlements.

The irony is that Biden’s rejection of Friedman’s teachings on money, taxes, and spending may bring about the same circumstances that established Friedman’s preeminence. In a year or two, the American economy and Biden’s political fortunes may look considerably different than when Janet Yellen blurted out the obvious about inflation. Voters won’t like the combination of rising prices and declining assets. Biden’s experts might rediscover that it is difficult to control or stop inflation once it begins. And Milton Friedman will have his revenge.

Or to put it another way: The Message Washington Needs to Hear Right Now: STOP!

IF IT WERE ONLY THAT:  Brown U. Professor: Teaching Identity Politics is a ‘Criminal Abdication’ of Our Responsibilities.

What it actually is, is tap dancing on the dynamite barrel of Western civilization. This will not end well, unless we end it soon.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: The Wokest Place on Earth.

The Walt Disney Corporation famously bills its amusement parks as “the happiest place on Earth,” but inside the company’s headquarters in Burbank, California, a conflict is brewing. In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma, bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” and “white saviors,” and launched racially segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

* * * * * * * *

Multiple Disney employees told me the political environment at the company has intensified in recent months. There are “almost daily memos, suggested readings, panels, and seminars that [are] all centered around antiracism,” said one employee. The company is “completely ideologically one-sided” and actively discourages conservative and Christian employees from expressing their views. “I attended several [training sessions] at the beginning just to see what the temperature of the discussion would be and to gauge if I would be able to bring up my own objections in a safe way—safe meaning for my career. And I’ve continually gotten the unspoken answer: ‘no,’” said the employee. “It’s been very stifling to feel like everyone keeps talking about having open dialogue and compassionate conversations, but when it comes down to it, I know if I said one thing that was truthful, based on data, or even just based on my own personal experience, it would actually be rather unwelcomed.”

Despite these internal warnings, there is no sign that Disney is slowing down its efforts to achieve ideological purity. The company recently fired actress Gina Carano for expressing a conservative viewpoint. Content managers have modified and added “content advisories” to films such as Dumbo, Aladdin, and Fantasia, which, according to an internal video I have obtained, executives have denounced as “racist content.” In the same video, executive chairman Bob Iger pledged that the company “should be taking a stand” on political controversies and will no longer “shy away from politics” in the future.

Disney’s premise has always been to provide an escape for middle Americans, but its executives seem to harbor growing contempt for the very people who visit their amusement parks, watch their films, and buy their merchandise. Once known as the “Happiest Place on Earth,” Disney has now committed to becoming the “wokest place on Earth”—whatever the cost.

If there’s anyone who studies Disney’s amusement parks Kremlinologist-style, it will be fascinating (and depressing) to see how management’s uber-wokeness manifests itself there, particularly in sections such as Liberty Square.

Related: Also from Rufo: What critical race theory is really about.

BIRTHING PERSON OF ALL SILLINESS:

I’m also not saying the majority should always give in—or give too much—to the minority. Take the recent algae plume of stupidity on Twitter. Rep. Cori Bush referred to mothers as “birthing people.” This elicited immediate, and deserved, mockery from many folks on the right, including yours truly. NARAL—or, at least, NARAL’s Twitter person—rallied to her cause.

Birthing-person-of-pearl! (Or for those of a certain faith, Holy Birthing Person of God!) This is a seamless disco ball of absurdity, radiating inanity from every angle. If one of the core tenets of the new Great Awokening is that the term “mother” is divisive or bigoted, then the Great Awokening is doomed (and deservedly so). Don’t tell me conservatives are too obsessed with silly and divisive culture war “distractions,” if in the next breath you’re going to lecture me on the need to erase the term “mother” from the English language.

One of the most interesting divides on the left is between socialists and critical race theorists. Some of the best pushback on the execrable 1619 Project came from socialists who think making race, as opposed to class, the focal point of the progressive project is counterproductive. It’s a fresh opening of a fascinating old divide that had once been central to the left when Marxism was taken more seriously by serious people. Anything that distracts from the class struggle is a gift to what Randi Weingarten calls the “ownership class.” This argument was applied to everything from Mickey Mouse to the welfare state to slavery reparations.

My point isn’t that mom-erasure sets back the class struggle, my point is that mom-erasure sets back the transgender cause, and virtually every other left-wing cause as well. People aren’t going to stop calling their mothers “mother” or “mom” or anything of the sort. Kids aren’t going to fall off a swing at the playground and shout, “Birthing person! I have an ouchie!” (And before you accuse me of perpetuating gender stereotypes, if dad is at the playground, they’re not going to shout, “Non-birthing person! I have an ouchie!” either.) And it’s absurd to ask them to, not just because it’s wrong on the merits, but because it’s an utterly doomed project that will invite 100 times more backlash against their cause.

Rep. Bush discovered this the hard way. She’s very mad that conservatives pounced (yes, I’m using that term ironically) on her birthing person comment while ignoring her larger point about the very real problems faced by pregnant black women.

I testified in front of Congress about nearly losing both of my children during childbirth because doctors didn’t believe my pain. Republicans got more upset about me using gender-inclusive language in my testimony than my babies nearly dying. Racism and transphobia in America.

This is bunk. Sure, transphobes and racists no doubt object to replacing “mothers” with “birthing people.” But you know who else does? Almost everybody. If Bush were more interested in communicating her actual message, she might have pondered that for a moment and used language that didn’t turn people off.

“Birthing person” sounds like a Newspeak Dictionary update too far. Read the whole thing.

SPACE: NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity lands at new airfield after 5th flight.

SOCIALISM: IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL LEAVE. California Population Fell by More Than 180,000 in 2020, State’s First Ever Yearly Drop.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Glock wins (and Biden loses) in major liability suit.

IT’S NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD, YOU KNOW:  The College of the Ozarks is suing Biden and HUD officials over the Administration’s insistence that transgender students be assigned to the dormitory they identify with, rather than the dormitory of their anatomy.

(The brief linked to here was written for the Title IX context rather than for the Fair Housing Act context, but I think the basic logic still applies.  Like Title IX, the Fair Housing Act forbids SEX discrimination, not GENDER discrimination.  At the same time, there seems to be a general agreement that the FHA allows colleges and universities to have separate dorms by sex. Once you get that far, even under the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (in fact especially under Bostock), the College wins for the reasons outlined in the brief.

Here’s the quick version:  In Bostock, Justice Gorsuch was hyper-textual.  He essentially held that if an anatomical women who wears dresses would be hired, but an anatomical man who wears dresses won’t be hired, that’s sex discrimination under Title VII.  But the same logic doesn’t apply here:  If an anatomical woman who wears dresses can live in the women’s  dorm, but a anatomical man who wears dresses can’t live in the women’s dorm, that is indeed sex discrimination, but sex discrimination  is permitted in this context.  If it weren’t permitted, it wouldn’t just be transgender individuals who could “cross over” to the other dorm.  All men (and all women) are being discriminated against when they are not permitted to live in the opposite sex’s dorm.  Note that it doesn’t help HUD’s argument to say, “Well, transgender women (anatomical men who identify as women) really are women.  At that point, they are arguing that the college is treating two kinds of women differently.  But there is no law against discriminating between two different kinds of women; the statute forbids discrimination on the basis of sex.)

RIGGED: Social media’s ban on Trump: Our ‘silence of the lambs’ moment.

INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON: Milton Friedman’s Revenge: The specter of inflation haunts Joe Biden’s presidency.

YEP:

RETURN TO NORMALCY: Pays not to work: How Biden benefits are grinding the economic recovery to a halt.

JIM TREACHER: WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki Wishes Biden Maybe Didn’t Talk So Much.

Have you ever noticed that Joe Biden only says stupid stuff when he opens his mouth? When he keeps his pie-hole shut, he’s fine. He just shuffles around like a 137-year-old man, and his handlers pretend he knows who and where he is, and it’s all good. He doesn’t need to worry because he’s got 95% of the press there to cover for him and promote his agenda, even when he’s in one of his fugue states. But whenever Joe starts flapping his yap, every single time all sorts of crazy, moronic garbage comes out. More than the last guy spewed, even. Joe might be the dumbest president we’ve ever had, and sometimes I actually feel bad for the people whose job it is to clean up after the messes he makes every time he tries to express one of his increasingly erratic thoughts. Then I remember how much money those guys make when they leave the White House for the land of cable news and ghostwritten books and speaker’s fees, and the feeling goes away.

I suspect “President Ron Klain” wishes “Presidentish Biden” didn’t talk so much as well.

Speaking of whom: Ronald Klain retweet indicates WH believes ‘huge miss’ jobs report shows Biden/Dems aren’t spending enough money.

What could go wrong?