THE NEW HORSE DEWORMER? Anti-depressant may boost recovery in people with severe COVID-19, study finds.
Archive for 2021
October 28, 2021
FOR ALL THEIR SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY, POLICE DON’T SEEM VERY GOOD AT STOPPING CRIME OR CATCHING CRIMINALS: “Brian Laundrie may have already been dead when police confused his mother for him and assumed he was home during surveillance of the residence, officials said Thursday.” “Police in North Port, Florida, admitted earlier this week that even though investigators had trained cameras on the Laundrie residence, they weren’t as aware of his comings and goings as they thought.”
HMM: Radio Silence: Where’s Dan Bongino? “The host is currently in a showdown with his radio syndicator, Cumulus, over the company’s COVID-19 shot mandate. The company won’t comment on the battle with Bongino. He, however, is anything but silent, telling his podcast listeners that he’s lost a lot of sleep over the conflict, but believes he’s right to use his position to fight on behalf of Cumulus employees who will lose their jobs if they can’t or won’t get the shot.”
I’VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE: The WH’s Life of Linda offers a peek at the sweet life under #BuildBackBetter, where government is the only daddy you’ll ever need [pics].
I wonder if Linda is familiar with Obama (or Orwell’s) Julia: Remember Obama’s “Julia?” She’s Not Doing So Well.
But the latter did get a pretty cool song by the Eurythmics, so she’s got that going for her, which is nice.
IT’S GOOD TO BE PREPARED: Augason Farms Vegetable Stew Blend Certified Gluten Free. #CommissionEarned
YEAH, HE’S PRETTY MUCH AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THE STATE: Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen is a Lying Liar Who Lies About Defensive Gun Uses.
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN: US GDP data show stagflation: US looks dead in the water, inflation devouring demand stimulus the government poured into post-Covid economy.
LIVE AT 3:30PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Special Guest Ed Morrissey.
WISCONSIN SHERIFF SAYS ELECTION COMMISSION BROKE THE LAW: Just the News reports that Racine County, Wisconsin, Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said his investigation found credible evidence the state’s election commission “shattered” the law in 2020.
I HOPE THIS SUCCEEDS, BUT BLUE ORIGIN NEEDS TO GET BETTER AT, YOU KNOW, ACTUALLY LAUNCHING THINGS INTO ORBIT: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Will Launch an Orbital ‘Space Business Park.’
DEMOCRATS HAVE LONG THRIVED ON MISERY, POVERTY, AND MENTAL ILLNESS: “NYC’s Homeless Problem Is A Giant Scam!”
Here’s a Louis Rossmann video that discusses a homeless shelter in New York City that:
1. Bills the government $3,500 to $4,000 [per homeless person] a month to
2. House the homeless in a literal shithole (with visible feces in one picture of the place), and
3. By an amazing coincidence, is run by a non-profit founded by Andrew Cuomo and now run by his sister Maria Cuomo Cole.
Much more than just the video at the link.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: A New Era of Stagflation?
The most likely outcome in my view is that the biggest US consumer stimulus in history will produce sustained inflation in excess of 5 percent a year. Falling real wages and shrinking profit margins will continue to depress output, and the US economy will enter a period of stagflation something like the late 1970s. At some point, the United States Treasury will find itself unable to borrow the equivalent of 10% of GDP per year, at least not at negative real interest rates. As long as investors are willing to pay the Treasury to hold their money for them, the US government can sustain arbitrarily large deficits. That is the brunt of so-called Modern Monetary Theory. But the Herb Stein principle applies: Whatever can’t go on forever, won’t. The creditors of the United States will not accept negative returns on an ever-expanding mountain of US debt indefinitely. At some point, perhaps not long from now, the US will face sharply higher interest rates and the type of budgetary constraints that were typical of profligate Third World borrowers.
Related: Stall: Economy falls to 2% GDP growth in Q3
JEN PSAKI APPROVES: North Korea tells starving citizens to eat less: Report.
North Korea is telling its hungry citizens to be prepared to eat less for a few years.
Pyongyang, which closed its Sino-Korea border early last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, said there is only a slim chance of it reopening before 2025. This situation, which includes the restriction of trade, puts a significant pinch on the country of 25 million where people are already starving to death because of skyrocketing food prices, according to Radio Free Asia.
“The food situation right now is already clearly an emergency, and the people are struggling with shortages. When the authorities tell them that they need to conserve and consume less food until 2025 … they can do nothing but feel great despair,” an unnamed resident of the northwestern border city of Sinuiju told the outlet this month.
Flashback: White House: Cancel Christmas? “Forget malaise, and let’s start talking Grinch. With supply-chain issues still festering for months and inflation beginning to roar, retailers wonder whether they can provide the goods for the holiday season on which they rely for fiscal solvency. The White House offered its advice yesterday, which was. . . get used to disappointment.”
No word yet when Pyongyang Department Store Number 1 will be opening a branch near you:
I also followed a few people around at random, as discreetly as I could. Some were occupied in ceaselessly going up and down the escalators; others wandered from counter to counter, spending a few minutes at each before moving on. They did not inspect the merchandise; they moved as listlessly as illiterates might, condemned to spend the day among the shelves of a library. I did not know whether to laugh or explode with anger or weep. But I knew I was seeing one of the most extraordinary sights of the twentieth century.
I decided to buy something – a fountain pen. I went to the counter where pens were displayed like the fan of a peacock’s tail. They were no more for sale than the Eiffel Tower. As I handed over my money, a crowd gathered round, for once showing signs of animation. I knew, of course, that I could not be refused: if I were, the game would be given away completely. And so the crowd watched goggle-eyed and disbelieving as this astonishing transaction took place: I gave the assistant a piece of paper and she gave me a pen.
The pen, as it transpired, was of the very worst quality. Its rubber for the ink was so thin that it would have perished immediately on contact with ink. The metal plunger was already rusted; the plastic casing was so brittle that the slightest pressure cracked it. And the box in which it came was of absorbent cardboard, through whose fibres the ink of the printing ran like capillaries on the cheeks of a drunk.
At just before four o’clock, on two occasions, I witnessed the payment of the shoppers. An enormous queue formed at the cosmetics and toiletries counter and there everyone, man and woman, received the same little palette of rouge, despite the great variety of goods on display. Many of them walked away somewhat bemused, examining the rouge uncomprehendingly. At another counter I saw a similar queue receiving a pair of socks, all brown like the plastic bowls. The socks, however, were for keeps. After payment, a new shift of Potemkin shoppers arrived.
If Orwell had come across the above passage, he would have said, “I can’t put this in 1984; no one would believe it!” If you’ve never read Theodore Dalrymple’s visit to Pyongyang Department Store Number 1, definitely read the whole thing.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden Plans To Further Break The Border With Fraudulent Asylum Seekers.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND WEIMAR AMERICA: Florida school board has parent removed for simply quoting the graphic sex material they are teaching kids.
Eugene Volokh emails:
1. Are you sure they’re teaching it, in the sense of its being part of the curriculum? As I understand it, the book was just in the school library, see https://www.orangeobserver.com/article/watch-speaker-removed-from-orange-county-school-board-meeting-for-reading-from-a-book-found-at-school-library.
2. The post seems to me to suggest that the school board is endorsing the inclusion of the material in school while at the same time refusing to allow it to be read at the meeting; but as I understand it, the chair was saying she was planning to get it removed, and didn’t know it was there (see the video and the article I cited). Now maybe they should be held responsible for its being in the library, and maybe they should have let him keep reading even though they said they were going to try to remove it from the library; but I think as written the post suggests willful inconsistency on the school board’s part, and I don’t think that’s quite justified.
TO BE FAIR, IF YOU’RE HIDING UNDER AN OVERPASS YOUR OPTIONS ARE PROBABLY LIMITED: Safety of overpass as last-ditch shelter from tornado unclear, study says.
INDIVIDUALITY IS FINE, AS LONG AS WE ALL DO IT TOGETHER: Woke media dubbed Kyrsten Sinema a ‘bisexual icon’ — until she voted against progressives.
(Classical reference in headline.)
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: “A Kentucky school district is investigating after a teenage boy gave lap dances to his high school principal and other staff members during a homecoming event. Other provocative photos of spirit events at Hazard High School posted on social media showed teen girls parading around the gym dressed as Hooters waitresses and boys being paddled, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.”
Seriously, why are you sending your kids to public schools?
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden’s FEMA Refuses Emergency Aid to Battle Texas Border Crisis.
CITIES ATTRACT KOOKS: Adults at risk for mental health disorders drawn to city living, study finds.
Related: PEW STUDY: WHITE LIBERALS DISPROPORTIONATELY SUFFER FROM MENTAL ILLNESS. “Young white women suffered the worst.”
Leftism is basically a program for weaponizing mental illness, so this isn’t surprising.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Yes, China Could Invade Taiwan.
“This really is the grimmest time I’ve seen in my more than 40 years working in the military,” Taiwan Minister of Defense Chiu Kuo-Cheng recently said. He went on to predict that, though an invasion now would exact a high—and presumably unacceptable—price from Beijing, the time will come when China’s military modernization drive will produce a capability that will lower that cost to a level Chinese leadership will judge acceptable.
Other experts have concluded that China’s military power has already reached the point that a conquest of Taiwan is not only conceivable but even tempting to Beijing. They also note that, as much as the Taiwanese people may be resistant to unification with China, U.S. military dominance in the area, and its ability to protect the island, is steadily eroding.
China, the U.S., and Taiwan are now caught in a “vicious spiral,” according to Jia Qingguo, a professor of international relations at Peking University who advises the Chinese government. “The process of vicious interactions between Taipei, Beijing, and Washington resembles the forming of a perfect storm.”
Presiding over what is undoubtedly China’s most powerful military in history, President Xi is setting the stage for a third term, beginning in 2022 He is worried about the political impacts of significant debt and other economic problems and could feel compelled to conquer Taiwan as the crowning achievement of his era of power.
Xi is tough to read. Sometimes he seems to be playing the long game, other times he seems like he’s in a mad rush. The thing he needs to be reminded of — assuming there’s anyone in Beijing who can still say “no” and make him really hear it — is that wars are easy to start, difficult to end, and nearly impossible to predict how they’ll go.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: As James Lileks writes, “It’s wise to be suspicious of social media outrages; mistrust but verify and all that. When I saw Today’s Thing, I was doubtful:”
Back to the Twix Facebook page, where I assumed the comments would be . . . lit, as they say. They were. A lot of people did not like the ad.
In fact, I’d say there are more people online who do not like the ad than there were Chapelle protestors outside of Netflix. The Twix instagram comments for the last few days are even more numerous. But one Twitter user liked the ad, couldn’t find it, wanted to know if it had been erased.
* * * * * * * *
So yes, it’s real, and it’s Twix endorsed. It doesn’t really matter how you think about it. What you learn is how Twix thinks about you. They think you’ll love it, and if you don’t, you’re on the wrong side.
And they really do. In a post headlined, “Happy Halloween Bigots,” Rod Dreher adds:
What is the message of this two-minute clip? That genderfluidity is right and good, and opposing it is what wicked bullies do. That a child struggling with gender dysphoria can turn to the occult for assistance, and to smite his enemies. God made them male and female, says the Bible, but the power of the occult can be accessed to overturn that bigotry.
This radical message, embedded in a humorous ad for Halloween candy.
This is an aspect of the weird totalitarianism we are living through today. We have seen harder manifestations in cases where physicians, academics, and others lose their jobs for questioning transgender ideology. Things like the Twix ad cannot be understood as apart from the overall message discipline of the Left: that there is only one permissible opinion to hold, and those who do not hold it are enemies to be crushed.
That’s a curious message from a manufacturer of candy bars, but this is where we are in 2021, I guess.
(Bumped.)