FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: New study provides robust evidence that COVID-19 is a seasonal infection.
Archive for 2021
October 22, 2021
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden’s Soviet town hall:
Is it more worrying that President Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge? Nobody has the power to force a president to undergo the indignities that Biden went through on Thursday night’s CNN town hall. As with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, either someone convinced him to do it or he insisted on doing it. Either way, you could not watch him, clenching his fists as though holding a Zimmer frame while Anderson Cooper spoon-fed him a prompt, without feeling that we are heading nowhere good.
On the same day that Donald Trump evoked the ghosts of Soviet propaganda by launching a social-media app called Truth — the Russian translation is Pravda — Joe Biden attempted a Brezhnev-era theatrical of his own. In the Eighties, we laughed at the Soviet leaders’ transparently crude bumbling before the cameras. Their low-grade production values and rambling, slurred speeches exposed them as a decayed and senile regime. This was the opposite of the intended effect, but the US set the global standard in political imagery, so the Soviets felt they had to keep up. They beat themselves at our game.
To be fair, we’re not quite at the Soviet Union phase just yet: CNN’s Townhall Crowd Audibly Giggles As Biden Becomes Confused Mid Sentence.
WE KNEW THIS BEFORE, BUT THE DATING IS MUCH MORE PRECISE NOW: In tree rings and radioactive carbon, signs of the Vikings in North America.
Scientists have known for many years that Vikings — a name given to the Norse by the English they raided — built a village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation.
The explorers — up to 100 people, both women and men — felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 — at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492. . . . But their stay didn’t last long. The research suggests the Norse lived at L’Anse aux Meadows for three to 13 years before they abandoned the village and returned to Greenland.
What Columbus did that the Vikings didn’t, though, was open up the New World to a system of global commerce.
RECOVERY: Data is stubborn: Red states are leading the way. “The problem for the United States is that the most populous states are dominated by the hard left wing of the Democratic Party. They aren’t concerned with people but are concerned about public-sector unions and power. Somewhere in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, radical terrorist Bill Ayers is smiling. Things are going swimmingly for him. His friends are patting him on the back.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Anthony Fauci’s metaphysical get-out-of-jail-free card.
Just a few weeks ago, he was saying that it was “too early” to say whether we would be allowed to gather for Christmas. We’ve known for some time now that he was involved with, and paid with taxpayer money for, “gain of function” research at the Wuhan virology lab where the novel coronavirus that has caused such upheaval was developed.
Yes, that’s right. Fauci was paid by your tax dollars to help weaponize a virus that he then went on to exploit as a means to enhance his lugubrious celebrity.
He lied, under oath, about his role in his testimony before Congress, most pointedly in his heated exchanges with Senator Rand Paul this last summer.
Now we have Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, publicly challenging Fauci, charging that he is guilty of spreading “misinformation” about taxpayer funding of Fauci’s “gain of function” research at the Chinese virology laboratory.
Of course, “misinformation” in this case is just a polysyllabic synonym for lying — and besides wasn’t it Jen Psaki herself wanted people to be punished for spreading “misinformation”?
Yes, but she didn’t mean people like Fauci, who is on team A and is therefore exempt from public obloquy, not to mention federal prosecution.
You understand this, right? If you are part of the nomenklatura, you are endowed with a sort of metaphysical get-out-of-jail-free card, an immunity inscribed like a vaccine confirmation on your soul. You can lie to Congress, lie to the FBI, lie to the public with impunity. More than that, if you are part of the nomenklatura’s shock troops — a member, for example, of antifa or Black Lives Matter — then you can burn down police stations and destroy private property with impunity — nay, you can be hailed as a hero, a campaigner for “social justice.”
As Dana Loesch tweeted last night, after the NIH admitted it funded gain of function research, “Lot of people owe [Rand Paul] an apology.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s Shenzhou 13 sends second crewed mission to Tiangong.
JIM TREACHER: Alec Baldwin Is Innocent Until Proven Guilty. “Let’s not rush to judgment, like Alec Baldwin would be doing right now if this were happening to someone he sees as an enemy.”
BREAKING: Alec Baldwin’s Gun Loaded with One Live Round in Place of a Blank. “Despite reports that Baldwin was using a ‘prop gun,’ that’s dangerously inexact. He was using a real gun being used as a prop, as is often the case in moviemaking. Somehow a genuine round was loaded into the genuine firearm.”
CONFLATING THE COVID EPIDEMIC TO HIDE THE IMPACT OF THE POLICE-DEFUNDING CAMPAIGN: Study finds 30% spike in U.S. gun violence during COVID-19 pandemic.
SADLY, THIS IS NOT THE SILLIEST OR MOST DANGEROUS THING TO COME OUT OF THE BAY AREA: San Francisco State University Prof Says Jewish Pot is Making Black Men Gay.
MAYBE WHISTLING IN THE DARK: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is all bubbly and excited because, she told reporters this morning, “We had a very positive meeting this morning; I’m very optimistic. It’s exciting, because whatever it is, it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve ever done for the American people.”
That last “for” should probably be “to.” Note: If you have a couple of wavering votes, one way to push them across is to announce the deal is all but done, so they will finally cave.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Logistics Crisis Will Lead to Long-Term High Prices, Ports Council Chair Warns.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: China Pulls Celtics Games After Player Says ‘Free Tibet.’
China pulled Boston Celtics games from the streaming service Tencent on Thursday after center Enes Kanter protested Beijing’s repressive rule over Tibet and called President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator.”
Wearing a T-shirt bearing an image of the Dalai Lama, Kanter in a Facebook video post called for China to “free Tibet,” saying the Communist Party is carrying out a campaign of “cultural genocide” in the region.
“Shame on the Chinese government,” Kanter said. “The Chinese dictatorship is erasing Tibetan identity and culture.”
More like this, please.
BLUE GOVERNANCE IN A NUTSHELL: Biden Thanks Unions for Promising to Help Solve a Supply Chain Mess They Created. “Two ports that account for 40% of all US imports haven’t been operating on weekends during the biggest supply chain crisis in generations—because of a union contract.”
MATT MARGOLIS: Merrick Garland Debunks Democrat ‘Insurrection’ Claims About Capitol Riot. “Surely the Biden administration, with all its tough talk about holding the rioters accountable, could find someone to charge with insurrection, right? If they could, they certainly would have, and we all know it. Instead, they’ve been charged with other crimes related to their actions on that day. Just not insurrection. Why not? Because the riot wasn’t an insurrection. Attorney General Garland knows this. Congressional Democrats know this. Heck, the media probably knows it too.”
They do, but plenty of news sources — including the AP — continue to use “insurrection” in their “news” stories.
SHOCKER: Colorado’s vaccine sweepstakes didn’t boost rates. “The findings contradict previous statements from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis touting the program — which gave $1 million to five randomly selected winners. The Democrat has repeatedly suggested it helped, despite prior evidence to the contrary.”
LIFE’S EASIER WHEN YOU’RE A FAVORITE OF THE REGIME: Sanctioned flag vandal still controls $1 million in student organization funds.
More than a month after Fadel Alkilani vandalized a 9/11 flag display, Washington University officials handed down his punishment.
“A student senator at Washington University in St. Louis was fined $500 and put on disciplinary probation,” Young America’s Foundation reported on October 20. The conservative student organization sponsored the flag display put up by the university’s College Republican chapter.
YAF obtained a letter from the student conduct office that described the punishment Alkilani received.
The letter said Alkilani has been convicted of five different violations of the student conduct code. The violations include “[f]urnishing false information, “[i]nterfering with the rights of other members of the university community,” and theft.
He has been placed on probation and removed from his resident advisor job but remains on the finance committee of the student government. YAF reported that his position allows him power to allocate more than $1 million to student organizations.
The other crime is that there’s $1 million in student organization funds.
BY ANY MEANS FAIR OR FOUL: Just a Coincidence? Richmond Schools Give Teachers Full Week Off During Election.