TEXAS FLEEBAGGER UPDATE: Texas Senate Passes Republican Voting Bill, Overcoming Dem Obstruction.
Archive for 2021
August 12, 2021
JIM TREACHER: Arnold Schwarzenegger Actually Said: “Screw Your Freedom.” “An Austrian loudmouth who scoffs at freedom and demands compliance with the government’s dictates… Why do I feel like I’ve heard this story before?”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Diet key to better health for people with diabetes, study shows.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Boys Are In Fact, Okay. “It is fashionable to attribute to the ‘cage of toxic masculinity’ what might be just as easily explained by some of the enduring differences between men and women.”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden calls Michigan governor ‘Jennifer’ in latest slip.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Bidenomics: A “That 70s Show” Rerun.
Question: how much is the typical oil company profit from each gallon of gas sold at the pump? I believe it is still around 20 cents (or less). How much do state and federal governments make from each gallon of gas sold at the pump from gasoline taxes? Around 45 cents. (Incidentally, every time the government investigates gasoline price markets, as they have since the 1970s, they find . . . nothing. It’s like markets actually work or something. No one ever seems to remember any of this.)
Jimmy Carter was unavailable for comment.
Read the whole thing.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart.
WHAT ABOUT BOB DYLAN? Which one, you might ask. If you’ve ever liked any of the various Dylans seen over the years, you will certainly enjoy my appreciation of Barry Lenser’s excellent assessment of the role of faith in the aging singer’s career. You might even like it if you’ve hated Dylan since the answer was blowin’ in the wind.
ROGER SIMON: “It’s About the Kids!”–Mask Rebellion Breaks Out in Tennessee.
“All politics is local,” then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill told us back in 1982 but contemporary events remind us how true that was.
Part of the reason—given the plethora of useless Republicans in the U.S. Senate made yet more obvious by the infrastructure vote—is Washington, D.C. veers to the hopeless, but it is also because all politics really should be local.
It’s where We the People can most affect matters—or try. And citizens across the country are beginning to realize this.
That was very much in play Tuesday night in Franklin, Tennessee.
Readers may recall I wrote of a rebellion stirring in Franklin—seat of Williamson County and basically part of metro Nashville—via the “Moms for Liberty” over the issue of Critical Race Theory pervading the curriculum of their supposedly perfect schools.
Tuesday night that rebellion was redoubled at the school board meeting where the question of whether those same children should be forced to wear masks to class this year.
What happened? All politics is indeed local and, we might add, “it’s about the kids.”
I wasn’t there—although my text messages were, to borrow an old phrase, “ringing off the hook”—so I’ll let local news in the form of Channel 5 Nashville describe:
“The Williamson County School Board voted to require students, staff and visitors at elementary schools to wear face masks while indoors and on buses beginning Aug. 12 and to end Tues. Sept. 21 at 11:59 p.m.
“The decision was made Tuesday night after a lengthy and heated special-called board meeting that dozens of parents attended.”
“Lengthy and heated” was a bit of an understatement by the channel. The place was steaming with lawsuits threatened by angry parents as they engaged in shouting duels with recalcitrant school board members. And well more than “dozens” were really in attendance because hundreds more parents were apparently outside, unable to get into the venue.
Able to get in and also a parent with three children in the system—he had promised on radio to get there early—was Clay Travis of Outkick and The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, who made an impassioned speech:
“We teach our kids that facts matter. That is why they go to school. The facts are these. Masks don’t work. There isn’t a single scientific data that has ever proven that masks work. Also, let’s talk about risk analysis. I feel bad for all of these people walking around in masks and engaging in cosmetic theater thinking that they are making a difference against COVID. They aren’t.”
“Cosmetic theater.” Great phrase and almost too accurate. There’s a lot of that going around, including, alas, some “vaccine theater.”
What are we to do now? Take more vaccine, a booster with yet another booster undoubtedly to come until… who knows?
“Follow the science” has become the clarion call of the “know-nothing.” Which science is never quite clear. And when it is, it’s ever-changing.
The parents see this too and have a right to be furious, especially because it is now being brought down to their children, both in the form of masks and vaccinations with unknown consequences.
Earlier: Rand Paul is right: It’s time to stop listening and start resisting.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I recommend passing out masks to the kids that say “Shh: Republicans wouldn’t make you wear these” on the inside. All you need is a big box from Costco and a rubber stamp. When they issued the mask mandate in Nashville schools, some worried that many kids wouldn’t be able to get masks. Help the schools out here, and watch to see if they start demanding that kids take their masks off so they can be inspected for unwelcome political sentiments . . .
WHATEVER HAPPENS, YOU’LL ALWAYS BE TAPPAN ZEE TO ME: Following Cuomo Resignation, New Yorkers Want To Rename ‘Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.’
‘BEWARE:’ CHP OFFICERS TO HELP PATROL OAKLAND, MAYOR SCHAAF SAYS.
“Beware – there is going to be more enforcement.”
That’s the warning Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gave Wednesday after announcing Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved the city’s request to send more law enforcement resources to Oakland.
Schaaf said she was grateful for Newsom’s “rapid response” in bringing more traffic enforcement to Oakland, adding that the “governor granted the request quickly.”
The mayor added that this request for more law enforcement is in response to the demand from residents for more law enforcement safety, particularly among commercial corridors and the state highway of International Boulevard.
Newsom worried about crime in Oakland? When a man knows he is to face a recall election in a couple of fortnights, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
UNSURPRISING: Why the U.S. Delta Wave Could Be Far Less Deadly: We may see a decoupling between cases and deaths in the fourth COVID wave, experts say. That’s the normal course of viral evolution, a tendency to become more contagious and less deadly over time.
HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT GROWS ON APPLE PROPERTY IN SILICON VALLEY.
Buried lede: The version of the Matrix programmed by Tom Wolfe before shuffling off this mortal coil is still working perfectly.
ALSO BY ALBERT ELLIS : How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You. This book is also good if you or someone you know suffers from anxiety. Ellis uses rational emotive techniques that use an “action-oriented approach to managing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral disturbances.” I attended a lecture and workshop at the Albert Ellis institute a few years ago and it was excellent. Interestingly, one of the lecturers leaned over and whispered to me “Didn’t I see you on Fox News?” He seemed impressed. Though I got a good laugh that he felt he couldn’t say it out loud. (Bumped)
UPDATE: Now #1 in Mood Disorders.
AND YOU THOUGHT WILLIAM TELL WAS JUST AN OVERTURE: Christopher Bedford, writing in The Federalist, sees interesting parallels between the 700-year-old Swiss legend and our own contemporary showdowns before local school boards on Critical Race Theory, mask mandates and virtual classrooms.
THE REST HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION: 73% Think Chinese Gov’t Actively Covered Up Its Role in COVID Release.