Archive for 2022
May 26, 2022
FINALLY, SAN FRANCISCO BEGINS TO HEAL: San Francisco Unified School District drops the word ‘chief’ from job titles to avoid connotation with Native Americans.
Update Newspeak Dictionaries accordingly, comrades.
OLIVER TRALDI: With All Due Respect to the Experts. “Experts are also susceptible to processes that arbitrarily reinforce an unexamined consensus, both ex ante and ex post. The linguist and left-wing political commentator Noam Chomsky has noted that the technocrats who express their expertise through public policy form a kind of ‘secular priesthood.’ If admission to the priesthood requires demonstrated commitment to certain beliefs, then the deck is already stacked. The consensus view is a prerequisite for qualifying as an expert, not a considered consequence of one’s genuine expertise. Chomsky has always made this case about American foreign policy. But academia and journalism now conduct such sifting quite explicitly, with mandatory diversity statements that function as political pledges and high-profile firings of those who manage to slip through the cracks.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Valano Men’s Long Sleeve Shirts UPF 50+ Sun Protection. #CommissionEarned
FASTER? PLEASE! World’s fastest passenger jet goes supersonic in tests. “With a capacity for up to 19 passengers, a range of 8,000 nautical miles (14,800 kilometers) and a top speed of Mach 0.94, the upcoming plane is expected to enter service in 2025, according to a statement from Bombardier. The news comes after a Global 7500 test vehicle broke the sound barrier during a demonstration flight last May, achieving speeds of more than Mach 1.015.”
If you have the means, they highly recommend it.
OKAY, GROOMERS: It’s Official: Barbie Goes Transgender.
A Hollywood celebrity now has their own Barbie.
On NBC’s TODAY show Wednesday, the morning staple welcomed Laverne Cox, transgender star of Orange is the New Black.
Cox was all dolled up, which might not have been coincidental. Today.com delivers the news:
To celebrate her 50th birthday on May 29, the Emmy-award winning actor and LGBTQ+ activist is honored with a Tribute Collection Barbie. Her doll is dressed in a red ball gown, a silver bodysuit and comes with accessories like high-heeled boots and silver earrings.
TODAY Parents got in on the action:
“It’s been a dream for years to work with Barbie to create my own doll,” Cox said in a statement shared with TODAY Parents. “I can’t wait for fans to find my doll on shelves and have the opportunity to add a Barbie doll modeled after a transgender person to their collection.”
In accordance with the prophecy: Mattel Unveils New Pregnant Ken Doll.
IT’LL MOSTLY GO TO GRAFT OR GRIFT: Slave descendants question Georgetown’s $1 billion reparations fund.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Fiskars Micro-Tip Pruning Snips. #CommissionEarned
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Ever-Classy Obama Uses Texas Massacre to Remind Us He Hates Cops. “Obama’s most enduring legacy is the virulent anti-law enforcement sentiment on the American left. Wherever and whenever there was some conflict between radical, lying leftists and law enforcement Obama made sure to side with the radicals, most notably in Ferguson, Missouri.”
PARKLAND ALL OVER AGAIN? Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school, but they refused. Parents were ready to take over:
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
“They were unprepared,” he added.
I’m going to wait to hear more before making up my mind, but . . .
YES: We must confront the cultural mess that gave us Uvalde.
Children should not be forced to undergo regular drills to prepare them for the threat of a shooter. Parents should not be worried about whether those drills will someday be necessary. And the public as a whole should not be accustomed to reading headlines about the latest mass killing. Yet here we are, reading about the 27th school shooting this year.
We have a problem in this country — that’s just a fact. But it’s a problem much more complicated than many would like to admit. The solution is not simply to restrict access to firearms, as gun control advocates like to claim. And I say this as someone who is much more of a squish on gun policies than many of my fellow conservatives. I think it’s ridiculous, for example, that the 18-year-old Uvalde shooter was able to own a gun legally when he was not considered legally responsible or mature enough to buy a beer. And I think certain restrictions, such as narrow and well-defined red flag laws that would allow law enforcement to block a person’s access to firearms if a family member or close friend is able to prove he is mentally unfit to carry one, are a good idea.
But there is no evidence that the sweeping gun control policies pushed by leftists, such as an outright ban on assault-style weapons, would have done anything to prevent the mass shootings that have taken place. Such policies aren’t even good at preventing common crime. In Chicago, for example, which has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, and where law enforcement regularly seizes thousands of illegal weapons per year, crime is so rampant that Mayor Lori Lightfoot had to enact a curfew prohibiting minors from being outside after 10 p.m.
Moreover, gun control policies, even if they could be effective, would be little more than a Band-Aid solution. People don’t shoot each other just because there are guns around. The Uvalde shooter wanted to shoot up a classroom full of children — that’s the real problem.
This, ultimately, is the heart of the debate. Why are so many young men being driven to commit such heinous acts of violence? Why do they always seem to have no one in their lives paying attention to the signs of mental instability and aggression? What is wrong with our systems that they keep failing to identify and help people who are desperately in need of an intervention?
Read the whole thing.
WHY DON’T DEMOCRATS CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN? Biden ATF pick opposed arming teachers.
BRAD THOMPSON: Critical Race Theory Goes to School.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: In Tragedy, Democrats Only See Political Opportunity. “Mass shootings, of course, are a tried and true tragedy that Democrats have nailed their responses down to a science.”
Megan Fox: Why Are Amber Heard’s Experts So Weird? “Looks matter, but Heard’s team had no problem hiring an expert who looks exactly like a bitter queen with a rude magic mirror.”
Yours Truly: COVID Vaccines Might Impair Longterm COVID Immunity. “It’s enough to make you wonder what the long-term effects of getting boosted every few months might be.”
I’M SURE THEY’RE AT LEAST AS FORMIDABLE AS THEIR ALLY AND SPONSOR VLADIMIR PUTIN: Iran Warns Israel: ‘We Are Ready for War.’
TO BE FAIR, RAMPANT INEPTITUDE AND LAZINESS ARE THE HALLMARKS OF BOTH: Politico: FDA timeline shows bungling on formula shortage — but also months of inaction by Biden.