DEAR FELLOW AMERICANS, STEVE GREEN CAN’T DO IT ALL HIMSELF, YOU KNOW: Global survey finds the drunkest country in the world — and it’s not the US.
Archive for 2021
December 4, 2021
NOW OUT: Everything You Believe Is Wrong. #CommissionEarned
ROGER SIMON: Eighty House Republicans Vote for More Government Spying.
Welcome to Stasi America!
I used to think that cry was excessive, was an unrestrained accusation of some semi-existent phenomenon called the alt-right. The East German Stasi, after all, topped even the KGB when it came to intruding on the private lives of citizens, fundamentally destroying the individual at the hands of the state.
No longer.
Our lack of privacy, not to mention the increased ability of the government to spy on us, has been ratified by eighty—count ‘em eighty—House Republicans, including minority leader Kevin McCarthy (who wants us to see him as a viable replacement of, an actual savior from, Nancy Pelosi) and Burgess Owens of all people (Et tu, Burgess? Who can we rely on now?)
What these GOP members of what seems more and more like the People’s Congress of Cambodia under Pol Pot have voted for en masse, joining one hundred percent of the Democrats (something suspicious right there), is a bill to fund a Federal Vaccination Database.
Known as the Immunization Infrastructure Act (H. R. 550), this baby would provide $400 million of your dollars and mine for an “immunization system data modernization and expansion” of “a confidential, population-based, computerized database that records immunization doses administered by any health care provider to persons within the geographic area covered by that database.”
In other words, it’s a handy way to get the “wrong” people fired, ostracized or whatever, while getting their children kicked out of school.
The Lives of Others was never meant to be a how-to guide for good government.
IT’S SAD THAT THIS COUNTS AS A WIN NOWADAYS, BUT IT DOES: ‘Win for academic freedom’: College will not fire professor who defended rigorous math standards.
COMING SOON: THE MUELLER REPORT DELUXE BOX SET, WITH OUTTAKES AND ALTERNATE MIXES! More Russiagate Nonsense: DOJ Considers Releasing Alternate Mueller Report.
EPIC DEAL: Panasonic Arc5 Electric Razor, Men’s 5-Blade Cordless with Shave Sensor Technology and Wet/Dry Convenience. #CommissionEarned
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Princeton students call out dean’s Rittenhouse email for ‘factual inaccuracies, misconstrual, and virtue signaling.’
“There is a sizeable cohort of your students who agree with the Rittenhouse verdict; they think––as we do––that the jury executed its fact-finding mission faithfully and thoroughly, and that the facts of the case were applied to produce an outcome in accordance with what the law (not the moral judgment of a dean) requires.
That opinion has been echoed by many serious legal commentators. Issuing such a one-sided and misleading statement in your capacity as Dean, we fear, sends a message to students that the institution (qua you) has taken a position on the matter (the “right” position), and runs the risk of chilling serious intellectual discussion on important public issues. In sum, we found your statement to be factually and pedagogically erroneous.
Good.
Though in this case it’s not The Man, but The Woman.
AMERICA CAN’T BE GREAT AGAIN UNTIL IT IS ACCOUNTABLE: That’s the core message of OpenTheBooks.com founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski’s recent address to hundreds of state legislators from across the country at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference.
This guy and his troops filed more than 40,000 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for spending data at all levels of government. As somebody who has fought the transparency-in-government fight for three decades, I can attest to what a phenomenal achievements that is. Adam’s address is 22.37 minutes long and worth every minute.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH SARAH SILVERMAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: The truth has to matter’: Sarah Silverman (!!!) scolds Joy Reid over the Florida State Guard story.
Background here: DeSantis Derangement Syndrome Starts to Rear Its Ugly Head. “On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, likely fed up with the lack of support from the Biden administration, proposed a civilian-military force in the Sunshine State. The Republican introduced plans to re-establish the Florida State Guard to quickly aid responses to emergencies like hurricanes. Several other states across the country, including deep-blue California and New York, have similar civilian forces…Florida would be the 23rd state to establish such a force.”
GOODER AND HARDER, NEW YORK: Utility Bills to Rise up to 10 Percent to Green NYC Electricity Grid.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: 14 California Looters Arrested by Police Have Been Released Due to the State’s Zero Bail Policy.
ON EAGLES’ WINGS: When you see a Boeing 747’s wing, you know somebody designed it. So the central question posed by “The Genius of Flight” is why don’t we come to the same conclusion when looking at the vastly more complicated design of an eagle’s wing?
Yes, the issue here is design versus evolution, but regardless of which side you take on that long-running debate, this is a marvelously crafted and intellectually inspiring presentation that is at once entertaining and instructive.
WHY DON’T THEY TELL US THIS ABOUT OMICRON? Drew Holden and Aaron Sibarium of The Washington Free Beacon report African leaders are turning down additional shipments of the Coronavirus vaccine.
That’s directly contrary to Mainstream Media reports such as the recent one from the New York Times claiming “the continent was yet again bearing the brunt of panicked policies from Western countries” that limit supplies of the vaccine.
Why is it, one wonders, that the West in general and usually the U.S. in particular is always made to appear to be the bad guy? And then these people wonder why their public credibility is in the toilet?
JUST ASK ERIC GARNER: New Report Shows Why Congress’s Plan to Raise Cigarette and Nicotine Taxes is Such a Terrible Idea.
Suffice it to say this isn’t a good thing. Black markets fuel criminal activity and lack the same accountability and quality standards of free, legal markets. But fueling the black market is just another unintended consequence of big government meddling with legal markets.
“The crafting of tax policy can never be divorced from an understanding of the law of unintended consequences, but it is too often disregarded or misunderstood in political debate,” Boesen concludes. “Sometimes policies, however well-intentioned, have unintended consequences that outweigh their benefits.”
Flashback: It Wasn’t Just a Chokehold That Killed Eric Garner.
ALEC BALDWIN: I feel no guilt over Hutchins’ death.
By speaking publicly now, Baldwin locks himself into a series of claims which evidence may later contradict. If so, Baldwin has already impeached himself and that may make him more vulnerable to prosecution on criminal grounds, and certainly in the wrongful-death lawsuit to come. This is precisely why people involved in these kinds of incidents shouldn’t go on national television or anywhere else to offer “explanations.” They should let their attorneys do all the talking until absolutely necessary otherwise.
This is even worse, from a PR standpoint. Baldwin may not have loaded the live round, but the pistol he held fired it anyway — after Baldwin apparently didn’t check for safety himself before pointing the weapon at Hutchins and director Joel Souza. Instead of taking responsibility for what were undeniably his own actions, Baldwin instead paints himself as a victim with no moral responsibility for what transpired, let alone legal responsibility, even as one of the producers of the film with a duty to ensure safety on the set.
In its way, it’s as absurd a statement as Darrell Brooks’ complaint that the media had turned him into a “dehumanized … monster.” Both men ought to seriously consider all of the benefits that flow from keeping their mouths shut while the wheels of justice turn, rather than open them and help grease those wheels.
As Jim Treacher adds: Baldwin Proves Not All Publicity Is Good Publicity.
OCEANIA INCREASES CHOCOLATE RATIONS FROM 30 GRAMS PER WEEK TO 20! Biden Hasn’t Fixed The Port Crisis — Ships Are Just Being Counted Differently.
December 3, 2021
NOW OUT FROM MY FRIEND HIAWATHA BRAY: Power in the Blood.
OPEN THREAD: Sow a little tenderness.
TO BE FAIR, THEY PROBABLY COULDN’T HAVE FOUND THEIR WAY OUT ANYHOW: Snow storm forces customers to sleep in IKEA showroom.
SPACE: Space Force plans to launch experimental satellites early Sunday. Why are we launching “a satellite to aid detection of nuclear detonations in space?” Is it to watch out for the Chinese Orion tests?