CHANGE: DeSantis-backed candidates flip Florida school board from liberal to conservative.
UPDATE: Leftists Crushed in School Boards Across Florida.
(Updated and bumped.)
Archive for 2022
August 24, 2022
August 23, 2022
STEVEN MALANGA: Trump Derangement Won’t End with Trump. Already, progressives are branding the GOP’s next generation as “a threat to democracy”—sound familiar?
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Rep. Jerry Nadler knocks off Carolyn Maloney in NY-12 battle of House Dems.
With almost two-thirds of the district’s vote scanners reporting, Nadler had 55.9% of the vote compared to just 25.1% for Maloney. Attorney Suraj Patel, who was challenging Maloney for a third consecutive cycle, had 17.8%.
Nadler said both Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Suraj Patel called him tonight to concede defeat.
He praised Patel as an “exceptionally bright and committed young leader” and thanked Maloney for her “decades of service to our city,” adding that they spent much of their “adult lives working together.”
New York’s controversial redistricting process pitted the two longtime allies — Nadler, 75, of the Upper West Side, and Maloney, 76, of the Upper East Side — against one other, sparking bad feelings that marred a 30-year career in the House.
If you want a sense of how toxic their slug-fest was, Jim Geraghty had an fun column on the topic yesterday: Two Democrats Set Aside Years of Friendship to Destroy One Another. “Is staying in Congress for a 31st and 32nd year worth trying to destroy the reputation of someone you audaciously still call a friend? Apparently, it is. If you’re a conservative, this is all hilarious. Two longtime allies with little to no ideological distinction are turning on each other with ferocity and venom, turning their primary into a demolition derby just out of a desire to stay in Congress for a few more years — years that are extremely likely to be spent in the minority! But, if you suspect that politics rots your brain and corrodes your soul, this is rather vivid evidence that the longer you stay in power, the more you prioritize staying there. In the end, winning another term is all that matters to these two.”
JEFF GOLDSTEIN: They / Them (pronounced They Slash Them): a Review. “If peak Woke has yet to be reached, this wretched fare got as close to that summit as any ‘horror’ movie ever made.”
VOTE BY MAIL, THEY SAID. IT’S SAFE, THEY SAID. THEY EVEN GOT NEWMAN FROM SEINFELD TO ENDORSE IT. (NO, REALLY, THEY DID). Baltimore post office discovers 2020 mail-in ballots. “We deeply regret the late delivery of these mail pieces.”
And no, I wasn’t kidding about the ad:
A new ad commissioned by PACRONYM, a Democratic super PAC, features Wayne Knight as that mail carrier, who — though he’s not identified by name in the ad — is unquestionably Newman, the sinister postman Knight played on Seinfeld. Indeed, the ad was written by David Mandel, a former Seinfeld writer-producer (and future Veep showrunner), who convinced Knight to bring Newman back after years of reluctance to reprise the role.
“It’s been my studious attempt to let Newman die,” Knight tells EW with a laugh. “I’ve been so associated with the character that it became somewhat of a lodestone in my mind.” But as the Trump administration began to attack voting by mail and the U.S. Postal Service, Knight, “having played one of the most iconic postmen, knew that something would happen. And I began getting contacted by various different people about reawakening Newman for this purpose.”
Plus: “Newman in the ad is much the same character Seinfeld fans remember: ‘The only person who can slow down the mail is a mailman!’ he exclaims.”
All together now: Newman!
OPEN THREAD: Don’t just sit there, comment.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FAUCI RESULTS:
Unbelievable! Does Fauci NOT know that the Internet lives forever? HERE are the receipts:
Fauci: "I didn't shut anything down…"
Oh really? Roll tape! pic.twitter.com/73L2pDpABS— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) August 23, 2022
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China claims progress on rockets for crewed lunar landings and moon base.
IT’S FUNNY THAT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IS CONSTANTLY LEAKING IN A CASE ALLEGEDLY ABOUT CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen Admits Masking Stunted Her Toddler’s Social Development.
CNN medical analyst and former president of Planned Parenthood Dr. Leana Wen admitted Tuesday that masking her son during the COVID-19 pandemic stifled his language development and social life.
Wen wrote that she won’t be sending her kids to school in masks this fall in an op-ed for The Washington Post, despite previously being an ardent supporter of strict pandemic measures to limit the spread of COVID-19. Now, Wen said, the reality of vaccines being available to everyone and the high transmissibility of new viral variants means masking kids isn’t worth the downsides.
“It became clear that the goal I’d hoped for — containment of covid-19 — was not reachable. This coronavirus is here to stay,” Wen wrote of the Omicron variant outbreak. “With this new, indefinite time frame, the benefit-risk calculus of mitigation measures shifted dramatically. I was willing to limit my children’s activities for a year or two but not for their entire childhood.”
Wen said she’s had both her kids, aged five and two, vaccinated against COVID-19, and she’s accepted that they will likely both become infected with the virus at some point during the school year. It will almost certainly be mild though, she reasoned, and further masking and sheltering them would make it harder for them to live happy and developed lives, while also hampering her and her husband’s freedom to work.
“Masking has harmed our son’s language development, and limiting both kids’ extracurriculars and social interactions would negatively affect their childhood and hinder my and my husband’s ability to work,” she wrote.
Flashback: Speech Therapy Shows the Difficult Tradeoffs of Wearing Masks.
—Atlantic headline, March 2, 2022.
As Ace of Spades wrote, at the start of a lengthy post on that last headline, “The masking mandates that the corrupt US and state and local governments forced on children, under pressure from the corrupt teachers unions have imposed developmental disorders on children that they may never recover from. The early years of development are critical ones. You don’t get those back. These are critical years of development in which children’s brains are wired to rewire themselves like crazy. Their brains will reconfigure themselves during these years like in no other point in their lives, ever. There is no ‘Do Over’ switch on a child’s formative years.”
Related: The Mainstream Media Damaged Our Children.
Earlier: Mary Katharine Ham Reviews the Stolen Year: A Belated Vindication for School Reopeners.
HOW IT STARTED: Rioters Burn Atlanta Wendy’s to the Ground following Death of Rayshard Brooks.
—National Review, June 15th, 2020.
How it’s going: No charges for Atlanta officers in shooting death of Rayshard Brooks.
“Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia Executive Director Pete Skandalakis gave a detailed presentation on what led to his decision in a news conference Tuesday.
‘You look at the totality of the circumstances. What did the officer know in that time, in that moment, in that split second,’ Skandalakis said.
Skandalakis said the officers’ use of force was reasonable and they did not act with criminal intent. He said the charges against the officers will be dismissed.
Police said that on the night of June 12, Brooks fell asleep in the drive-thru line at the Wendy’s. When police responded, he struggled with officers, grabbed one officer’s Taser and tried to run away.
Officers Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan shot him to death after police say Brooks’ pointed the Taser at Rolfe’s head. Body camera video showed the events leading to Brooks’ death play out.
—Atlanta’s ABC affiliate, WSB-TV, today.
ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVIST ROGER WATERS APPEARS ON CHINESE PROPAGANDA NETWORK.
China Global Television Network (CGTN) America, based in Washington, D.C., is an arm of the Beijing-led propaganda network China Central Television. In an interview with CGTN America about China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Waters attacked American media.
“You won’t catch me watching MSNBC or Fox or anything in between because it’s all nonsense. It’s all propaganda, all of it … and they’re doing it as an exercise in control,” Waters said.
Waters compared American media’s coverage of U.S.-Taiwan relations to Nazi Germany and to George Orwell’s 1984.
“It’s the same kind of technique that, dare I say it,” Waters said, “the Third Reich used in the ’30s in Germany: You have to identify somebody. They identified the Jews. … Once you identify your enemy it’s much easier to control the people because you close down the window of attention that they have.”
Waters reprimanded the United States for its relationship with Taiwan and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) for visiting Taiwan earlier this month.
Flashback: Wish You Weren’t Here: Roger Waters’ Jewish Problem Catches Eye of Award-Winning Filmmaker.
SANNA MARIN IS LIVING HER BEST LIFE POSSIBLE: Finnish PM Sanna Marin apologizes for leaked photo of topless influencers.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin apologized Tuesday for a photo showing a pair of topless influencers locking lips during a private party at her official residence.
“In my opinion, the picture is not appropriate,” Finland’s leader told reporters on Tuesday. “I apologize for it. That kind of a picture should not have been taken but otherwise, nothing extraordinary happened at the get-together.”
Marin’s public mea culpa over the X-rated display comes just days after leaked videos of her own wild dancing and partying at a separate event caused a backlash and prompted the prime minister to voluntarily undergo drug testing in a bid to clear her name.
I’m not sure if the leaked photo counts as X-rated — perhaps R or even PG-13.
Related: Sanna Marin and the rise of fake controversy. “You’d really have to work at climbing aboard your high horse to make the case that getting tipsy or, for that matter, outright plastered now and again on her day off would render Marin unfit for office. The social use of alcohol is hardly unprecedented in politics, and it’s only relatively recently that its use in professional contexts has come to be frowned on. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher were both drinkers. Pitt the Younger would put away a bottle of port before he addressed the House. There’s no suggestion that Marin is an alcoholic; just that she’s prone to the occasional drink as many sociable women in their thirties are. Yet since enough trolls are pushing it through social media, we’re licensed to report the fact of the ‘controversy’; and besides, everyone loves an embarrassing leaked video and the Finnish PM is an attractive woman so the story illustrates well. It has legs mainly because the Finnish PM has legs. Yet just to calm this nonsense down, Sanna Marin has had to take a drug test — which itself becomes news.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Grand Forks teacher resigns over ‘unethical,’ ‘insulting’ equity policies. “To put it simply, these gender policies, and listening to district administration about these gender policies, caused me to lose all faith in Grand Forks Public Schools.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE, STANDARDS EDITION: Guessing C For Every Answer Is Now Enough To Pass The New York State Algebra Exam.
Twitter has much bigger problems than bots, according to its former head of security, who just dropped a bomb in claims to the federal government that the site’s security is so lax it’s a risk to national security, and the company allegedly has foreign intelligence agents on the payroll.
Well, Elon Musk may have his good reason to back out of the Twitter deal after all! A bombshell set of allegations from Twitter’s former head of security dropped Tuesday morning, a now-whistleblower who has apparently already been working with the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission.
That former head of security submitted disclosures to those agencies, as well as Congress, detailing what CNN calls “reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies,” including that thousands of Twitter employees have access to central controls with no oversight, that executives have been knowingly lying to investors and regulators for years, and that that company likely has foreign spies on the payroll. (The story was simultaneously given to the Washington Post.)
Read the whole thing.
COVERING THE IMPORTANT STORIES: Today is National Cuban Sandwich Day!
SLIDING DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: Canadian soldier suffering with PTSD offered euthanasia by Veterans Affairs: Medical assistance in dying, or euthanasia, was legalized in Canada in 2016. “According to the report, the veteran called VAC seeking support for PTSD when the employee brought up medical assistance in dying, or euthanasia, unprompted. The veteran was reportedly shocked by the suggestion. His family told Global News that the soldier had been making positive progress in his physical and mental rehabilitation and that he felt betrayed by an agency that is tasked with assisting veterans.”
CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL: Impermissible Notions. Or, Things That Will Not Be Tolerated On Twitter. “The thing in question this time is a cartoon, an illustration of an idea. It was shared, briefly, yesterday by biologist and Quillette contributor Colin Wright, and was promptly censored by Twitter’s moderators. Mr Wright has apparently been suspended from said platform until a confession of hateful wrongdoing – as yet unspecified hateful wrongdoing – has been extracted. Given the cartoon’s scandalous properties, I’ll reproduce it below the fold. Do feel free to grip the arms of your chair.”
COVID HYSTERIA’S FALLOUT: Students Opting Out of College Post-Covid. “The coronavirus is changing the course of young adults’ educational endeavors, according to a new report. Nearly 30 percent of students across the U.S. are opting out of attending college altogether. Alternatively, 36% of students in the U.S. have chosen a different learning format such as online classes and 9% of students previously enrolled have switched schools.”
Neither K-12 nor higher education handled Covid well, or in a way that made them seem indispensable. Quite the contrary.
TOO FUN TO CHECK: Is Warner/Discovery’s libertarian investor imposing an ideological agenda on CNN?
In the cable news morning show ratings battle, Fox & Friends remains dominant, while MSNBC’s Morning Joe has a solid second and CNN’s New Day lags behind in third place.
In terms of total viewers, the 8 a.m. hour of Fox & Friends more than quadrupled New Day’s total audience on Wednesday.
Fox brought in 1.66 million total viewers at 8 a.m. compared to CNN’s 394,000 total viewers.
MSNBC, meanwhile, registered 766,000 total viewers — which is an average of the 6 through 8 a.m. hours.
Berman and Keilar do a good job of presenting the news and interviewing people of note in a relatively balanced manner. Viewers are not rewarding CNN for that, however; they’re rewarding more casual and more ideologically affirming programming that runs against it. As much as we might admire Malone’s observations on the necessity of straight news reporting, Licht seems to be strategizing on the business realities that argue against it.
In other words, at least so far … it’s business, not personal, and likely not ideological in the sense that Cartwright thinks. But don’t be surprised if the replacement for New Day (assuming the sources are accurate) turns out to be more ideological than the status quo.
Which, as long as they disclose their biases, is just fine. (Although most viewers will cotton on to them even if they don’t,)
ZOOM IS STRUGGLING TO CONVINCE CONSUMERS TO PAY, AND THE STOCK IS SLIDING:
Zoom Video Communications Inc. is struggling to convince people to pay for its videoconferencing service in the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to a trimmed forecast and falling stock price Monday.
Zoom executives reduced their earnings and revenue guidance for the fiscal year Monday afternoon, and Zoom Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg blamed a stronger U.S. dollar — a problem many global tech companies have called out in recent earnings reports — but also a decline in “the online business,” or the more casual Zoom user.
“Our revenue was impacted by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, performance of the online business, and to a lesser extent sales weighted to the back end of the quarter,” Steckelberg said in a statement included with the results.
In an interview with MarketWatch and a conference call Monday afternoon, Steckelberg acknowledged that individuals and small businesses have changed their habits. Many aren’t flocking to the service as often or for as long as they did during the peak of the pandemic, when many Americans were working almost exclusively from home and socializing with friends over the service. An increase in one-on-one meetups, vacations and hybrid work schedules have altered the post-pandemic business cycle for Zoom, executives acknowledge, and getting users to pay is harder.
“The big challenge is new customer additions,” she said.
More here: If Zoom Video Breaks to New Lows, Here’s What Could Happen:
Zoom Video stock is off on Aug. 23 after the provider of videoconferencing and other tech services missed sales expectations.
Zoom Video on Tuesday has been trying to rally off the opening lows, but the shares of the provider of videoconferencing and other tech services at last check are down 14%.
The stock is making multimonth lows after the company reported earnings. At today’s low, Zoom Video stock was down about 15%.
* * * * * * * *
On the downside, today’s low will be key. At last check that was $82.88, and a break of this level that isn’t quickly reclaimed could put the 52-week low in play near $79.
If it breaks below this level and can’t reclaim it, it could usher in more selling pressure and potentially bring us a test of the $60 level, which was a major support level before the stock erupted higher due to the covid-19 pandemic and work-from-home efforts.
Zoom stock closed 16.54 percent down today.
UNEXPECTEDLY! The White House Claimed It Had No Prior Knowledge of the Raid on Donald Trump’s House. The White House, Once Again, Lied.
“On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office — affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes,” Wall wrote Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran.
That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.
…
The memos provide the most definitive evidence to date of the current White House’s effort to facilitate a criminal probe of the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election and may face again as a challenger in 2024. That involvement included eliminating one of the legal defenses Trump might use to fight the FBI over access to his documents.
Read the whole thing.