THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT: Loudoun County School District Called CPS on Dad for Asking Questions About Bad Teachers.
Archive for 2022
March 8, 2022
BEST SELLER: Hanes Men’s Beefy Long Sleeve Henley Shirt. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION):
Invading neighbors, empty store shelves… it certainly looks like the Communists are back in charge.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN: Coming to Our Senses, Slowly.
Almost simultaneously with The Pipeline’s publication, the Epoch Times reporting from Capitol Hill on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, quoted its chairman, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, as saying that ““the recent action taken by Democratic commissioners [on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] served to elevate environmental considerations above American energy reliability, security, and independence.”
Manchin remarks were noteworthy on several grounds. He was attacking his own party’s appointees on the regulatory commission. He was challenging what has been until now the Green orthodoxy that grips both the Democrats and elite opinion generally. And since he is both the “swing vote” in a narrowly divided U.S. Senate and chairman of the committee wielding “oversight” authority of energy regulation, he has more practical power to change how that regulatory power is exercised than any other government official except the President of the United States—and perhaps more than him as well. To remove any doubt about the impact of the Russo-Ukraine war on his reasoning, Manchin went on:
To deny or put up barriers to natural gas projects and the benefits they provide, while Putin is actively and effectively using energy as an economic and political weapon against our allies, is just beyond the pale.
He wasn’t alone either. Another committee member, Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), said that FERC’s new policies would “make it next to impossible to build any new natural gas infrastructure or upgrade our existing facilities in the United States.” In fact, as sometimes happens when a lone voice challenges a sacred orthodoxy, the floodgates holding back skepticism open and a torrent of disbelief pours through them. Over the next few days, the following voices joined Manchin’s to swell a chorus of legislators and public notables singing such old favorites as “I got the Net-Zero Blues” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Elon Musk tweeted out:
Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.
And you can’t say that Musk, the poet of the electric car, is a mere tool of the fossil fuel lobby. In fact, he’s an example of what’s called the Cantuar Gambit: “If the Archbishop of Canterbury says that he believes in God, well he’s simply doing his job. But if he says he doesn’t believe in God, he must be onto something really big.” Elon’s clearly onto something big.
Yes, common sense can feel that way to its dissenters: Senate Dems fret: How do we keep from getting blamed for high gas prices? WSJ: Come on, man.
HOW IT STARTED: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…” And a few months later after then-presidential candidate Barack Obama muttered the above words, a similar phrase was said to journalists: Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
How it’s going: Biden Set to Ban Russian Oil Imports under Bipartisan Pressure.
The Biden administration is expected to announce a ban of Russian oil imports as early as Tuesday, according to several reports.
The U.S. ban, which will cover liquefied natural gas and coal, would come without European participation, Bloomberg News reported. The decision was made in consultation with European allies, the report adds.
However, the U.K. is also expected to announce plans to ban the import of Russian oil on Tuesday afternoon, Politico reported. The U.K. ban will include a months-long lead-in time to allow the global market to adjust and to dissuade people from panic-buying gas, officials told the outlet.
President Biden’s daily schedule was updated on Tuesday to include remarks from the White House at 10:45 a.m. announcing “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine.”
Biden faced bipartisan pressure to ban Russian oil and even stalled a bipartisan bill to do so, Fox News’s Jacqui Heinrich reported. The House Ways and Means Committee worked all weekend in a bipartisan manner to develop a bill, she reported. The White House then asked Ways and Means Democrats not to move forward on the bill. Sources reportedly told Heinrich the White House did not want to seem as though it had been boxed in by Congress on the issue.
Bloomberg News confirmed that Congress forced the administration’s hand on the Russian oil ban. Biden officials believed that it would be a “bad look” and asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold off on the bill, according to the report.
But if only an ethical source of oil was available:
If only:
Who could have seen this coming?!
Trump in 2020: "If Biden got in, you'd be paying $7, $8, $9. Then they'd say 'get rid of your car!'"
Pete Buttigieg this week: If gas prices are too high, just buy an electric car! pic.twitter.com/6xGcptsKD3
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 8, 2022
Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Tech Totalitarians Are On The March.
The Chinese were pathbreakers.
With their system of “social credit,” which seeks to enforce conformity by “grading” an individual’s or business’s adherence to the party line and imposing penalties for deviations, they have showed the West the way.
If you don’t espouse the right attitudes, you might find yourself barred from public transportation, from work permits or travel visas, from preferred jobs and other social—which includes economic—perquisites.
It’s a totalitarian’s dream—one that was dreamt by George Orwell in the pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—and it’s made all the more total by advances in technology.
Winston Smith, Orwell’s unhappy protagonist, had to contend with a tiny two-way television set in his flat that he could not turn off and that constantly eavesdropped on him.
Chinese citizens have to contend with having their texts, emails, and internet activity constantly scrutinized, which also means having every phone conversation docketed and financial transaction tracked.
Cameras, backed up with facial-recognition technology, are everywhere, watching, listening, building up a record that can always be marshaled as an indictment.
It’s a good thing, isn’t it, that we in the freedom-loving West eschew such totalitarian intrusiveness?
Just kidding.
The American Department of Justice showed how it is done in the land of the formerly free when it employed all those techniques to track down, arrest, and incarcerate hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.
Phone and social media accounts were hoovered up and dissected; facial recognition technology was deployed and weaponized; financial transactions and travel records were subpoenaed and combed through.
Hundreds of people are still languishing in a Washington, D.C. gulag, waiting while the authorities expend vast amounts of legal ingenuity to transform various misdemeanors into felonies.
In many ways, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau of Canada went even farther in dealing with the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers.
He had banks shut down the accounts of the protesters, prevailed upon entities like PayPal and GoFundMe to deny them access to funds that third parties had raised; he confiscated their property, and went after anyone who provided aid, comfort, or even coffee to them.
Xi Jinping must be proud of him.
Probably.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Secret Iran Deal Invaded by Russia… Biden Surrenders. “Welcome to Insanity Wrap, your weekly dose of the best of the worst. Joe Biden letting Russia negotiate his end of the Iran Deal is the new big crazy.”
Plus:
- God is “non-binary, queer, and autistic,” apparently
- Video: That time Senator Biden told Russia “good luck” getting closer to China
- Republican Senator wants to raise your taxes and give you “free stuff”
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Intellectuals are proving bad for America.
A Vanderbilt University professor recently wrote on Twitter that parents concerned about critical race theory teachings are “ignorant racist[s].” A known scientist who’s served in several scientific policy capacities to combat pollution wrote in one of America’s most esteemed scientific journals, “Scientific American,” that “Science Needs to Face Up to Its Racist History.” An associate professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Rhode Island once tweeted, “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.” And there’s a growing movement based on faulty, deceptive science pushed by agenda-driven so-called scientists that say, as The Daily Beast wrote in one headline, “Yes, Men Can Have Periods and We Need to Talk About Them.”
It’s getting so the more letters after a person’s name, the stupider the theories to come. Higher education degrees are rapidly becoming the modern illustration of William Shakespeare’s sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When there are rewards but no consequences for saying stupid, destructive things, you’ll get more stupid and destructive things.
VIDEO: Can Ukraine Actually Win?
Once again, Battleswarm Blog has the highlights if you don’t want to watch the entire video.
My big takeaway is that it isn’t so much that Ukraine has a chance to win, but that Russia just might lose.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The End of the Old Normal. “The West made a miscalculation of comparable magnitude to Putin’s by becoming energy dependent on the Kremlin to mollify their domestic Greens. They ignored the obvious danger that their money would fund aggression because invasion was inconceivable to them, though not, as it proved, to the siloviki, the clique of strongmen who control Russia. It’s another reminder of the danger of mirror imaging; to think the other guy wants what you want is always fraught. John Kerry’s reaction to the outbreak of hostilities was to observe it would hamper the campaign against climate change. But that was probably the farthest thing from Putin’s mind.”
DOG BITES MAN: Democrats fake tough on crime stance with falsely labeled bill. “The so-called ‘Crime Prevention Through Safer Streets,’ bill is part of Gov. Polis’s public safety package to thwart evil doers through better environmental design of streetscapes and lots of light pollution.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The GOP should … air this video in every state:’ Subversive Floridians say ‘gay’ in stunning and brave TikTok video. Why are Democrats in favor of grooming kindergarten through third grade students?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia Math Professor Questions University’s #2 U.S. News Ranking: ‘A Web Of Illusions.’ “Can we be sure that the data accurately reflect the reality of life within the university? Regrettably, the answer is no. As we will see, several of the key figures supporting Columbia’s high ranking are inaccurate, dubious, or highly misleading. In what follows, we will consider these figures one by one.”
Columbia’s new alma mater:
THE APPLIANCE WARS AND GOVERNMENT OVERREACH: “When a blue jurisdiction (state or local) obsesses about what kind of appliances you have, they have pretty much raised the white flag on their day job. They can’t or won’t address crime, education, homelessness etc., so they make decisions about whether you can have gas stoves or gas water heaters in your home — decisions that rightly belong to homebuyers, home builders and homeowners. Whether it is to distract, to satisfy their urge to make decisions for others or to virtue signal, it is an acknowledgment that they have failed. It brings us directly to the question of who should make decisions about your new house and what kinds of appliances are in it. What authority does the government have to restrict personal choice in this arena?”
WILL SENATE GOP USE RULE 26 TO BLOCK JACKSON? I’m not holding my breath but Rachel Bovard explains how it can be done.
AN IMPORTANT REMINDER FROM 2008, WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH PRICKED THE OIL PRICE BUBBLE:
Plus: “When the government of the largest and most productive economy in the world announced that it was no longer going to put artificial limits on its domestic energy production, the market took note.”
Read the whole thing.
Update: Twitter embeds seem to be broken this morning. The best I can offer until Twitter fixes its mess is to go to Will Collier’s Twitter feed and scroll down to his oil thread.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bakersfield College funneled nearly $200k to undocumented student programs.
THE REAL GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS: Congressional subcommittee hearings are typically pretty hum-drum affairs, stage-managed by the majority staff to present a favored narrative on a given issue.
But this morning’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy subcommittee is likely to be hugely different. The witnesses are stacked three-to-one in favor of Electric Vehicles (EVs) specifically and climate change/global warming Greenie policies more generally.
The one witness who is not an advocate of the conventional wisdom of the Greenies is Institute for Energy Research (IER) President Tom Pyle. His prepared testimony, which you can read here, is as concise and factual a description of how and why gas prices are skyrocketing and almost certainly will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
And that means the day will inevitably come when the real global warming crisis is every family having to choose between driving or staying warm/cool at home.
DEAL OF THE DAY: GOOLOO GT4000 Jump Starter. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Democrats Hit New Level of Disarray Over Decision to Ban Russian Oil.
I’d be happy if Biden would drop the ban on American sources of oil.
HMM: Ukraine says it has RE-TAKEN Chuhuiv city and killed two high-ranking Russian commanders during the battle. This is going to interfere with Russian efforts to encircle Kharkiv.
YOU DON’T SAY: China seeing new surge in cases despite ‘zero tolerance.’
The mainland on Monday reported 214 new cases of infection over the previous 24 hours, with the most, 69, in the southern province of Guangdong bordering on Hong Kong, which has been recording tens of thousands of cases per day.
Another 54 cases were reported in the Jilin province, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) to the north, and 46 in the eastern province Shandong.
In his annual report to the national legislature Saturday, Premier Li Keqiang said China needs to “constantly refine epidemic containment” but gave no indication Beijing might ease the highly touted “zero tolerance” strategy.
It’s a highly contagious and endemic virus that doesn’t give a damn what anyone’s tolerance level is.