K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Gay Florida Kindergarten Teacher Worries On MSNBC He Won’t Be Able To Share His Love Life With Kids Anymore.

A Florida teacher shared anxieties with MSNBC Tuesday that he won’t be able to talk about his love life with his kindergarten students anymore due to HB 1557.

Kindergarten teacher Cory Bernaert reacted Tuesday to news that Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed legislation banning classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity for Kindergarten through 3rd grade (ages 5-9).

“It hits hard in my heart professionally and personally,” he said. “Professionally it truly makes me feel like I am not trusted as a professional. I know my kindergarten standards through and through and nowhere in our curriculum does it have anything about teaching sexual orientation or sexual identity.”

“We should be able to have discussions and that’s what we’re encouraged to do in kindergarten,” he said. “My kids do have questions. They want to know who my partner is in pictures outside of my classroom, and I should be able to speak to them.”

Funny, I have no recollections of my kindergarten teacher ever discussing her spouse with us — I don’t remember my high school teachers telling me much about their personal lives. And referring to the kindergartners as “my kids” instead of “my students” seems like quite a tell here.

UPDATE: Further thoughts, and examples of similar language from other teachers, at Ace of Spades.

SO, LIKE PUTIN THEN? It’s Time To Give Gun Control Advocates an Offramp.

EXCLUSIVE: Lisa Cook’s Tenure Packet.

Lisa Cook’s nomination to the Fed Board is being voted on by the United States Senate this week, or sometime soon. I am not sure when exactly the vote will take place. I have covered her fecklessness extensively — my article Biden’s Fed Nominee Lisa Cook Criticized For Being Unqualified, Embellishing Resume was even featured on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the most-viewed cable news show in America.
…
Following my article, Cook’s only respectable publication (which was already thoroughly debunked and shown not to replicate by economist Michael Wiebe) was further found to have more glaring fatal flaws by some internet sleuths.

Much more at the link.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Harvard, MIT scientists slam door on studies showing ‘health benefits’ of drinking.

I’M SURPRISED THAT THEY DIDN’T BLAME RACISM: Chronic pain in Black people in US may be linked to gene expression.

PUSHING BACK AGAINST THE HOTTEST OF HOT TAKES: Obviously, Inevitably, The White Devil Did It.

So, anyway, as you may have heard, at a recent awards ceremony, a black millionaire celebrity slapped another black millionaire celebrity. The root cause, however, has only now been discovered:

This is about a much larger systemic issue rooted in white supremacist culture designed to police the behaviour of Blacks amongst the who’s who in Hollywood and beyond. 

It says so here:

Respectability politics suggest that equity and fair treatment require that Black people — both inside and outside of Hollywood — conduct ourselves in a manner deemed acceptable to whites. Furthermore, expressing any emotion other than complacence, apathy, or agreeance directly violates those norms, disqualifying Black people from receiving the same equitable treatment that whites enjoy as a birthright. And sadly, there is a large group of Blacks who have internalised this toxic messaging.

You see, when Mr Will Smith, a black millionaire celebrity, publicly assaults Mr Chris Rock, another black millionaire celebrity, on live television, and is promptly given a prestigious award, for which he is applauded, and is then seen celebrating triumphantly at the award after-party, this is somehow proof of victimhood, of being racially “policed” by “respectability politics” and other works of the White Devil. Mr Smith, we’re told, is “not receiving the same equitable treatment that Whites enjoy as a birthright.”

It’s David Thompson, so read the whole thing,

SHOCKING NEWS: Owners may play big role in dogs’ problem behaviors, researchers say.

BE PREPARED: Roadbox UPF 50+ Fishing Shirts for Men Long Sleeve UV Sun Protection Tee Tops. #CommissionEarned

GRANNY-KILLER CUOMO: NY Nursing Home Case Involving COVID Death Will Move Forward. “In stripping away the legal immunity that Andrew M. Cuomo gifted to hospital and nursing home operators, this case represents a bellwether event for families seeking justice for what happened to the loved ones they lost. We’re surprised the story hasn’t yet been covered by larger news outlets – we discovered it during our weekend sweep of stories from smaller outlets.”

Surprised, really?

RENT-FREE: Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Has 71-Person Police Unit To Protect Her, Blames Trump For Being In Danger.

And speaking of living rent-free: CNN Analyst Blames Trump for Oscars Kerfuffle, Because… CNN.

GOOD: Researchers find new strategy for preventing clogged arteries.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg has questions: “I’m skeptical until I better understand what the rodents were actually fed. A ‘western high-fat diet’ is a meaningless phrase. What kind of fats? Saturated? Seed oils? There is no scientific evidence that eating fat per se creates arterial plaque. How many and what kind of carbs were they getting?”

CHANGE: The flight attendant mask mandate lawsuit has arrived.

There is one catch to this effort, of course. The current mask mandate for travelers is set to expire on April 18th unless the CDC extends it yet again. It’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the plaintiffs could even get an initial ruling in that amount of time. And even if they did and it went in their favor, the government would immediately appeal, seeking to have the ruling put on hold. In the meantime, the CDC could simply allow the mandate to expire and then file a motion to have the case dismissed because the original threat of harm to the plaintiffs had been removed. The only way for the case to move forward at that point would be a hypothetical one seeking a ban on future mandates, and I’m not sure that they could show standing to bring that type of suit.

Most of these decisions by the Biden administration and various blue-state governors and mayors have been exposed as being primarily political in nature rather than being driven by “the science.” Given the growing public discontent over COVID mandates and the shrinking number of days remaining until the midterms, I will predict that Biden will simply allow the mandate to expire on the 18th (if not sooner) and just try to put this lawsuit in his rearview mirror.

Faster, please.

NOTORIOUS: Dems Found a Sneaky Way to Get a Statue of RBG at the Capitol.

I REMEMBER WHEN SUGGESTING THIS SORT OF THING WAS “DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION:” Antiviral drugs from HIV may protect against COVID-19 infection.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Rising Food Prices Could Spell Social Unrest, Demand Destruction and Less Bacon.

With the world economy already shackled by Covid-related shortages and now reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices of such basics as bread, meat and cooking oils have jumped across the world, sending shock waves through the commodity markets and damaging the global food system.

For the most vulnerable societies—think Yemen, which imports 90% of its food in the midst of a grinding conflict and depreciating currency—this poses a genuine risk of hunger. Elsewhere, it triggers worries about what economists call demand destruction, a phenomenon when goods get too pricey to purchase.

“The cupboards are bare,” said Julian Conway McGill, head of South East Asia at consultancy LMC International, “and consumers will have to reduce their intake.”

Food inflation is just getting started.

BRAD THOMPSON: The Battle for the Minds of America’s Children.

THE BIG PROBLEM WITH BIDEN’S NEW ‘MINIMUM TAX’ ON BILLIONAIRES:

What does a president do when inflation surges under his watch, gas prices are out of control, and his signature legislation has failed miserably ?

Pivot back to scapegoating the rich, apparently.

At least, that’s President Joe Biden’s latest tactic. On Monday, Biden proposed a new “minimum tax” on billionaires. “For too long, our tax code has rewarded wealth, not work, and contributed to growing income and wealth inequality in America,” Biden said in a statement. “Under current law, when an American worker earns a dollar of wages, that dollar is taxed as they earn it. But when a billionaire earns income because their investments increase in value, that gain is too often never taxed at all.”

A White House fact sheet says this tax would apply to those worth over $100 million and force them to pay a minimum tax rate of 20%. It would do this by taxing unrealized capital gains, aka the nominal growth in value of stock investments that haven’t been sold off yet. There is already a tax on capital gains that the wealthy pay when they cash out their stock options. However, Biden’s tax proposal is seemingly aimed at the growth in “unrealized” investments held by many billionaires, who currently do not have to pay taxes until they cash it out.

At first glance, this might seem like a sensible way of cracking down on rich people (legally) evading taxes.

It is not.

Taxing unrealized gains is both fundamentally unfair and economically absurd. “The Biden tax plan is crackers,” Cato Institute economist Chris Edwards said. “Unrealized gain is not income. It represents the expectation of future income, which would be taxed in the future under a well-designed tax system. Often, expected future income doesn’t materialize and asset values drop.”

Moreover, a “capital gain” is just a fancy way of saying “value gain on a productive investment.” It’s simple Economics 101 that when you tax something, you get less of it. Do we really want the tax code to (further) discourage productive investments?

Philosophically, I certainly understand the desire not to increase taxes on high earners. But I also understand the reverse: “They installed this regime, so let them get it good and hard.”

IT’S A TRANS, TRANS, TRANS WORLD: Pipe Down, Ladies, and Know Your Place: Female Cyclists Warned Not to Complain About Men Competing in Their Sport.

THEIR APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: John Nolte: 2022 Oscars Go Down as the Second Least Watched Ever.

Will Smith committed an assault against a comedian over a nothing joke, and the entertainment industry is so morally broken he wasn’t removed from the building and charged with a felony. In fact, about 40 minutes later, Smith got a standing ovation and an Oscar.

***LANGUAGE WARNING*** 

The worst of it was watching the entire industry oppose Florida’s much-needed “Don’t-Groom-Little-Kids” bill.

Hollywood was always full of a disproportionate number of thugs and degenerates, but this was something entirely new. These depraved narcissists aren’t even trying to hide their depravity anymore. Instead, they are openly lobbying to normalize their kinks, openly opposing a law that protects prepubescent kids from being groomed in the classroom, and openly assaulting comedians who dare to make them a little uncomfortable.

The whole Hollywood spectacle is now something grotesque instead of classy, perverse instead of entertaining, and disturbing rather than magical.

People have and will continue to reject pumping this filth into their homes through the television set.

It’s not only sewage; it’s smug, unfunny, elitist, violent, and perverse sewage that wants to ridicule you (while assaulting anyone who ridicules them) and have sex with your children.

Everyone wishing to enter Hollywood knows they’re going to work in a profession long devoted to being a sex-grooming gang. But nobody wants to see that industry expanding its turf:

Related: DeSantis Has a Message for Hollywood ‘Degenerates.’ “If the same Hollywood elites who upheld degenerates like Harvey Weinstein now oppose our efforts to protect parental rights, I wear that like a badge of honor,” DeSantis says at signing ceremony.

CHRIS HEDGES: On Being Disappeared. “The entire archive of six years of my show On Contact has been removed by YouTube.”

The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. None of the shows I did on mass incarceration, where I interviewed those released from our prisons, are any longer on YouTube. Gone are the shows with the cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth. Melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind.

A harsh reminder that “the cloud” really just means “someone else’s hard drive.”

IT WOULD CERTAINLY MAKE ALL THE RIGHT HEADS EXPLODE: Donald Trump as Speaker of the House Next Year?

HMM: Senate Judiciary Committee Delays Jackson Vote. “With 11 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, Jackson needs majority approval to advance. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., granted the Republicans’ request to allow a one-week delay in sending Jackson’s nomination vote to the full Senate for a vote.”

WHEN THE JUNK SCIENCE IS MANDATORY: FSU assigns implicit bias test as homework to RAs. “According to research from Harvard, ‘hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that antibias training does not reduce bias, alter behavior or change the workplace.'”

This isn’t about any of those things, though.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Biden’s COVID Relief ‘The Biggest Fraud in a Generation.’

Plus:

• Naked shopper assaulted in San Fran department store
• Bill Gates is a fungi
• Lia Thomas makes waves with actual female Olympians

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

YOU LEARN A LOT FROM FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUESTS: EXCLUSIVE: Texas State regents were unhappy with how university took Sallie Ward Beretta’s name off a residence hall.