QUESTION ASKED: Why Can’t the Woke Trans Agenda Leave Star Wars Alone?!
Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record: Disney Ordered To Pay Reparations To Longtime Star Wars Fans.
Archive for 2021
April 1, 2021
SUNLIGHT IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT: University of Nevada denies banning white students from ‘identity-based’ dorms set aside for blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ, and Native Americans.
LIVE AT 3:30PM THURSDAY: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.
FALLOUT: How ‘Defund the Police’ Killed Police Reform.
Division over how far to go on criminal justice reform has fueled a broader divide in the Democratic caucus. In a widely leaked caucus call, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.) blamed the push to defund the police for nearly costing her a hotly contested seat, while top Florida Democrats have said the movement helped hand President Donald Trump the state. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) fired back at Spanberger, suggesting it was a failure of campaigning, not of message, that cost Democrats valuable seats in the House.
The activist push is a response to the belief, common among the most liberal Americans, that police violence is an urgent problem. Polling from the Skeptic Research Center reveals that the further to the left one’s political beliefs, the more one overestimated the number of unarmed black men killed by police.
Misapprehensions like this help explain the urgency with which many liberals have called for radical change. A collective certainty that the criminal justice system is beyond repair animates a demand to not merely “reform” the system but tear it down altogether.
Spoiler: They’d replace it with something far worse.
FACEBOOK REMOVES TRUMP INTERVIEW WITH DAUGHTER-IN-LAW, CITING CONTENT POLICY.
Except, arguably, during times of war, censors are rarely the good guys. However, the left’s organizing principle for the last 120 years has been “the moral equivalent of war,” so of course Facebook officials feel like they’re good guys here.
YES: Is Cyberwar War?
SIDEWINDER TEST: An F-16 based as Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, fires an AIM-9M Sidewinder missile during a training exercise held at Tyndall AFB, Florida. As this Air Weapons update from 2019 points out, the basic Sidewinder has been around since the 1950s. It has gone through several extensive upgrades.
I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: Rand Paul Humiliates Dr. Fauci AGAIN Over Double-Masking.
STRATEGYTALK LOOKS AT FONOPST: Jim Dunnigan and Al Nofi discuss Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. Of course the U.S. Navy is the central subject. On a regular basis Navy destroyers sail past China’s “militarized sea features” (Pentagonese for China’s fake islands). But glory be. Uncle Sam isn’t alone. Several countries exercise freedom of navigation rights. For the record, Dr. Nofi is one of America’s top naval historians. He brings a special expertise to this subject. He worked for the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) for several years. StrategyPage’s editors are all historians. So, dig on some explanatory background. From 2016 a definition of FONOP. From July 2020, a look back at communist China’s slow invasion of the South China Sea. If you like the podcast, please subscribe. (bumped)
PRIORITIES: Lawmakers anxious over lack of Pentagon picks. “The White House hasn’t sent any defense nominees to the Senate since January, when Biden tapped the Pentagon’s top three leaders. Now, some lawmakers are voicing concerns that key leaders — such as a trio of civilian service secretaries — aren’t in place as the administration gets ready to deliver the broad outlines of its first budget this week and Congress ramps up its work toward annual defense legislation.”
SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE THEATER: School Board Member Arguing For Mandatory Masks Nearly Passes Out While Wearing Mask (Video).
DO YOU SEE THE SUBLIMINAL BIAS? In what is generally a good article about the impact of the Fox/Dominion libel suits, WaPo’s Margaret Sullivan makes some sensible points, mostly “be careful what you ask for.” After all, a deeply anti-media ruling may be precedential against all media outfits. But here’s the dirty little secret. She says:
“In some ways, it’s a relief to see someone hold Fox to account, especially since nothing else seems able to restrain right-wing media outlets from spreading disinformation.”
The not-so-subtle implication is that “disinformation” is a “right-wing” problem. It’s as if Daily Koz and Occupy Democrats (two notorious purveyors of false info) don’t exist. Russian hooker pee tapes, anyone?
Sullivan (like super-genius Paul Krugman) has elsewhere approved of the Wikipedia mob’s attack on fairness in journalism, decrying it as “bothsidesism.” Perhaps the deletion of fairness as an essential element of good journalism is responsible here.
I think it’s just as likely a byproduct of editing from within a bubble. These folks will go to their graves denying any left-leaning bias exists in their pages. Professor Reynolds ran headlong into this in a recent roundtable with First Amendment pater familas Floyd Abrams, who sniffed dismissively at the notion that the press is by and large, as Judge Silberman put it, a collection of “Democratic broadsheets.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Apple’s Siri Digital Assistant Goes Woke.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Remember when a female-sounding voice was described as “female” and it wasn’t a big deal?
Answer: Maybe we can finish reminiscing over it at the re-education camp.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- DOCTOR Jill Biden needs to brush up on her Spanish
- Japan went from building the fuel-efficient cars that Americans couldn’t 50 years ago, to reporting on the border crisis that the American press won’t right now
- The Left couldn’t ignore Trump if they tried (and we have the proof)
Bonus Sanity: A big win for liberty against Ralph Northam in Virginia.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
I’M IMAGINING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Asteroid singed Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago, particles suggest.
YOU WILL BE MADE TO CONFORM: Former Students Sue to Force LGBT Orthodoxy on Christian Colleges.
#JOURNALISM: Lester Holt’s ‘Fairness Is Overrated’ Monologue Accents Journalism’s Corruption.
They’re happy to be cogs in the Party’s messaging apparat, and they don’t even try to hide it anymore.
THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: Hot off the press– The Defeat of Proposition 16 in California and Mr. Dooley: Should the Supreme Court Take Notice of “Th’ Iliction Returns” Next Time It Addresses Race-Preferential Admissions Policies?
(This article formed the basis of the argument in the Amicus Curiae Brief submitted yesterday by Californians for Equal Rights in the Harvard case.)
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: As more states drop mask mandates, comparing CDC data between states with mandates vs those without is very revealing. Conclusion: “Whether or not ‘masks work’, mask mandates don’t and they are nothing but COVID-theater.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Healthy living in middle age reduces risk for health issues in senior years.
APRIL FOOL: Washington Post surprised to learn that federal bailouts disproportionately go the politically well connected: “Some of America’s Wealthiest Hospital Systems Ended Up Even Richer Thanks to Federal Bailouts.”
CHARLES LIPSON: Biden’s Bait-and-Switch Presidency. “Joe Biden was elected as a moderate-left Democrat, but he is not governing as one. He pledged repeatedly to work across party lines, but he is ramming through the biggest, most expensive progressive agenda in American history without any Republican votes. He is almost certain to try it again with his next two spending proposals, the largest since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. As the White House pushes these mammoth bills with only Democratic votes, Americans are realizing they got a very different president from the one they bargained for, the one they were promised during the campaign. What’s unclear is whether they will recoil from this new reality.”
SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ONE YEAR AGO: “There is widespread, ongoing transmission of novel coronavirus in the United States and worldwide. If you have traveled in the past 14 days, please monitor your health, stay home as much as possible, and wear a mask while in public.”
While vaccines are rolling out quickly (I had my second shot earlier this week), that still sounds like pretty good advice, today. So why are Pelosi and the Biden administration rejecting it at the border? Dems block Miller-Meeks’ bill to test illegal immigrants for COVID.
Perhaps such testing is superfluous because of how woke the virus is:
● Shot: No evidence migrants at border significantly spreading virus.
—AP, March 10th, 2021.
● Chaser: Little evidence that protests spread coronavirus in US.
—AP, July 1st, 2020.
● Hangover: Trump campaign rallies led to more than 30,000 coronavirus cases, Stanford researchers say.
—CNBC, October 31st, 2020.
● The D.T.s:
ON THIS DAY IN 1976: The Rocky Horror Midnight Show Is Born.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Publisher HarperCollins Is Pushing Radical Trans Agenda on Elementary School Kids.