READ HIS TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: The Democrats’ Tax-Hike Proposal Would Shatter Biden’s $400K No-New-Taxes Pledge.
Archive for 2021
September 30, 2021
YOU DON’T HAVE TO WONDER WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED HAD HE HUNG WOKE POSTERS: Utah School Bus Driver Terminated for Hanging Conservative Posters in His Bus.
THIS PREDICTION HELD UP WELL: Sorry, there will be no return to normalcy under Joe Biden. “As the presidential campaign enters its final phase, one of the messages of the Biden campaign is that putting him, a 47-year veteran of national politics, into the White House will return us to something approaching normal. With Biden in charge, all the Trump craziness will expire, and things will be safe, sane and familiar. In fact, there’s no chance of this happening.”
More recently, from Conrad Black: “As we get to the midpoint between the last presidential election and next year’s midterms, all political sides are expending extraordinary effort to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the formerly smoke-filled room of American politics. This, of course, is Donald Trump. The Democrats are still outwardly pretending Trump has gone and that his support has evaporated. They also pretend they can hobble him with vexatious litigation and, if necessary, destroy him again by raising the Trump-hate media smear campaign back to ear-splitting levels.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Orwell and the Woke.
For answers about these hypocritical wokists, always turn first to George Orwell. In his brief allegorical novella, “Animal Farm,” an array of animal characters — led by the thinking pigs of the farm — staged a revolution, driving out their human overseers.
The anti-human animal comrades started out sounding like zealous Russian Bolsheviks (“four legs good, two legs bad”). But soon they ended up conned by a murderous cult of pigs under a Joseph Stalin-like leader. And so, the revolution became what it once had opposed (“four legs good, two legs better”).
Our own woke, year-zero revolution is now in its second year. Yet last year’s four-legged revolutionaries are already strutting on two legs. They are not just hobnobbing with the “white supremacists” and “capitalists,” but outdoing them in their revolutionary zeal for the rarified privileges of the material good life.
Read the whole thing.
UNEXPECTEDLY!
● Initial jobless claims unexpectedly rise.
● Weekly jobless claims rise more than expected to 362,000.
As Joe Biden warned (threatened?), “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”
But hey, happy days are here again! Amity Shlaes on Biden As the New FDR: It’s the same old bad deal for jobs.
Not until World War II did joblessness finally begin to subside, in good measure because of military mobilization — important, but not the same as peacetime employment.
As often discussed, errors in monetary policy contributed to the misfortune that was the 1930s. The cause of the duration of the Depression, though, was Washington’s persistent intervention. The chief economist at Chase, Benjamin Anderson, noted that after failing by playing God, the government chose not to retire but simply “to play God more vigorously.”
The first lesson of this sorry account is that an arbitrary national economic campaign from atop generates damaging uncertainty in the economy. However charmingly it reverberates, the very phrase “bold persistent experimentation” stifles growth.
The second point is that what helps the union hurts the worker. President Biden’s proposal to end “Right to Work,” if it becomes law, will dramatically stifle employment.
Flashback: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.
WELL, IT’S TRUE: Elon Musk tells Jeff Bezos you can’t ‘sue your way to the Moon.’
THIS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A MAN ABOUT TO FALL FOR BIDEN’S CHARMS OR SCHUMER’S PRESSURE, BUT WE’LL SEE: Manchin Calls $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill ‘Fiscal Insanity.’
WOULD THE WORLD BE A BETTER PLACE if Marx and Freud had never lived?
I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE TOLD WE SHOULD SUPPORT HIGHER EDUCATION BECAUSE IT FOSTERED CRITICAL THOUGHT AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP: Students angry at invitation to journalist who advised against rush to judgment in cop shootings.
SMITH AND WESSON IS moving from Massachusetts to my neck of the woods. “Smith & Wesson joins more than 20 small arms and ammunition manufacturers located in Tennessee. Tennessee ranks No. 1 in the nation for employment in the small arms and ammunition sector, with employment increasing by 54% over the last five years.”
WHY WOULD UCSD HONOR A RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC MASS MURDERER? Inspired by ‘radical’ politics, the CHE Cafe attempts to reopen at UCSD.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: (Mostly) Woke-Free Bond Sparks Solid ‘No Time to Die.’ “We’re left with a solid, unspectacular Bond that delivers one more shocking revelation – no spoiler alert required. It doesn’t go woke despite all the virtue signaling of the past year.”
The trailers didn’t leave me expecting anything as good as Casino Royale or Skyfall, but I’ll be happy with anything less relentlessly silly and obvious than Spectre.
BREAKING: Senate Reaches Deal to Avoid Partial Government Shutdown. “Schumer made one last effort to get the GOP to agree to increase the debt ceiling by including a suspension of the debt limit in the government funding bill until December of 2022, but Republicans insisted on passing a ‘clean’ funding bill and Schumer reluctantly acquiesced.”
WHY INDEED? BMJ: Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?
The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.234
“The CDC could say [to people who had recovered], very well grounded in excellent data, that you should wait 8 months,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, told Medpage Today in January. She suggested authorities ask people to “please wait your turn.”4
Others, such as Icahn School of Medicine virologist and researcher Florian Krammer, argued for one dose in those who had recovered. “This would also spare individuals from unnecessary pain when getting the second dose and it would free up additional vaccine doses,” he told the New York Times.5
“Many of us were saying let’s use [the vaccine] to save lives, not to vaccinate people already immune,” says Marty Makary, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University.
Still, the CDC instructed everyone, regardless of previous infection, to get fully vaccinated as soon as they were eligible: natural immunity “varies from person to person” and “experts do not yet know how long someone is protected,” the agency stated on its website in January.6 By June, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 57% of those previously infected got vaccinated.7
As more US employers, local governments, and educational institutions issue vaccine mandates that make no exception for those who have had covid-19,8 questions remain about the science and ethics of treating this group of people as equally vulnerable to the virus—or as equally threatening to those vulnerable to covid-19—and to what extent politics has played a role.
A very large extent. Plus:
Gandhi and others have been urging reporters away from antibodies as the defining metric of immunity. “It is accurate that your antibodies will go down” after natural infection, she says—that’s how the immune system works. If antibodies didn’t clear from our bloodstream after we recover from a respiratory infection, “our blood would be thick as molasses.”
“The real memory in our immune system resides in the [T and B] cells, not in the antibodies themselves,” says Patrick Whelan, a paediatric rheumatologist at University of California, Los Angeles. He points out that his sickest covid-19 patients in intensive care, including children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, have “had loads of antibodies … So the question is, why didn’t they protect them?”
Antonio Bertoletti, a professor of infectious disease at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, has conducted research that indicates T cells may be more important than antibodies. Comparing the T cell response in people with symptomatic versus asymptomatic covid-19, Bertoletti’s team found them to be identical, suggesting that the severity of infection does not predict strength of resulting immunity and that people with asymptomatic infections “mount a highly functional virus specific cellular immune response.”
InstaPundit readers have known this for quite a long time. The CDC still hasn’t figured it out. Or admitted it.
Also: “‘As we continued to put effort into vaccination and set targets, it became apparent to me that people were forgetting that herd immunity is formed by both natural immunity and vaccine immunity,’ says Klausner.”
HOAX HATE CRIME WAVE HITS ST LOUIS SUBURBS: Black student admits to writing racist graffiti in Parkway Central bathrooms. “A Parkway School District spokeswoman said officials don’t know why the student committed the acts of vandalism, or used the racist slurs.”
Yes, it’s a real mystery.
NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Leftists Increasingly Accepting Of Environmental Terrorism.
BYRON YORK: Milley’s Dishing.
The job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs is a very busy one. The debacle of U.S. forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, demanded round-the-clock attention. But in recent months, Gen. Mark Milley has found time to talk to a number of authors writing books that were very critical of former President Donald Trump.
Three of the biggest such books, all bestsellers, were Peril , by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa; I Alone Can Fix It , by the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker; and Frankly, We Did Win This Election , by the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender. All featured quotes and information that appeared to come directly from Milley.
At Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked Milley whether he had spoken to the authors. “Did you talk to Bob Woodward or Robert Costa for their book, Peril?” asked Blackburn. “Woodward, yes, Costa, no,” answered Milley. “Did you talk to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker for their book, I Alone Can Fix It?” “Yes,” said Milley. “Did you talk to Michael Bender for his book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election?” “Yes,” said Milley.
Blackburn asked Milley whether the authors had accurately represented his interviews in their books. Milley said he does not know because he hasn’t read any of them.
Milley told Leonnig and Rucker that he feared Trump might try to stage a coup after losing the 2020 election. “This is a Reichstag moment ,” the authors quote Milley telling aides. “The gospel of the Fuhrer.” And more: “They may try, but they’re not going to f—ing succeed,” the authors quote Milley telling his deputies. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”
Then the coup never came. “Thank God Almighty we landed the ship safely,” Milley told Leonnig and Rucker. The authors described a scene at the inauguration of President Joe Biden in which Milley expressed relief to former first lady Michelle Obama. “No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” Milley told Obama. “You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
Where does such dishing fit in the job description of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? At Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Sen. Rick Scott asked, “Why would you as the sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talk to a reporter who is writing a book about a prior administration? Why would that be part of your job description?”
Milley said he talks to the media regularly, multiple times a week. “I think it’s very important that senior officials talk to the media, in all its various forms, in order to explain what we’re doing,” he said.
But Scott wanted to know why Milley was dishing about a former president. “Why would you … talk to a reporter who is writing a book about a prior administration? Why would that be part of your job description?”
“I think it’s important to make sure that the American people are transparent with what our government does, is all,” Milley said. “Nothing more complicated than that.”
But Milley’s talks with Woodward, Leonnig, Rucker, Bender — and possibly other authors as well — clearly went beyond ensuring “transparency” about the Joint Chiefs’ activities. The general’s “Reichstag moment” quote spoke volumes about the statement he wanted to make for the books that would describe the Trump administration’s final days.
And then Milley got burned by Woodward’s and Costa’s sensational portrayal of his conversations with a top Chinese general, which led to some critics accusing Milley of “treason.” As it turned out, the critics were not being fair, and events did not transpire exactly as the book said. Milley suffered some unjustified criticism. But that’s the lesson for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Live by the media, die by the media.
He should be on trial. Fired at the very least, and I mean the very, very least.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: Gen. Mark Milley is ambitious, incompetent, progressive, and wildly self-assured.
Characteristically, he failed. But now, in light of these latest revelations, Milley has become a darling of the neocon and NeverTrumper media. Those who despise the previous president have come to consider Milley something of a hero, the sole “adult in the room” who managed to counteract the commander-in-chief who had appointed him. To those interested in extending the United States’ overseas commitments, Milley can be counted on to ensure that endless war stays that way.
These are two very powerful constituencies, and the long-converging combination of neoconservative money with popular anti-Trump sentiment on the center-left and center-right could prove formidable in the future. This could be worth keeping in mind, given that the general’s activity—courting powerful factions of the race-obsessed left, appending himself to key politicians of both parties, chasing media attention left and right—suggests he does not intend to pursue the quiet life of military-industrial complex sinecures automatically reserved for retiring four-stars.
At 63, Milley’s days in uniform are numbered—but 2024 is just around the corner.
His media rehabilitation tour will be a sight to behold if he (and the DNC-MSM) attempt to spin the past two months as anything but an utter debacle.
FBI STATISTICS SHOW UNPRECEDENTED SPIKE IN MURDERS NATIONWIDE IN 2020: And African Americans are disproportionately victimized. But you’ll still be accused of racism if you point out that defunding the police is a bad idea.
I wrote about this issue a couple of years ago. It goes back decades. Gunnar Myrdal—hardly a conservative—understood it in the 1940s. Alas, today’s intellectual elites (of all races) don’t seem to.
OH: Federal Judge Took on 138 Cases Involving Companies in Which He Had a Financial Interest.
When nominating Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap in 2011, Barack Obama praised his “unwavering commitment to justice and integrity.”