A WIN FOR SCIENCE: Four blue states preparing to ditch mask mandates.
Archive for 2022
February 8, 2022
SCHADENFREUDE: ‘Irate’ Chris Wallace Has Meltdown Over Jeff Zucker-Allison Gollust Scandal, Said To Be At War In D.C. Bureau With Jake Tapper. “He went over there for Zucker and now Zucker is gone. Wallace feels that he has been stiffed. He’s got no staff, no Executive Producer and the guy he gave up a prized gig for has just walked out the door.”
TO BE FAIR, WHENEVER PREET’S NAME COMES UP I THINK OF INJUSTICE: Preet Bharara’s New Children’s Book Does America an Injustice.
And if you’re a “truth seeker” of any age, Democratic Party hacks are not the people to provide it, except unintentionally.
THE BORDER CRISIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK: Every state is now a border state and every city is a border city, especially concerning crime, according to Just the News’ John Solomon.
STACEY LENNOX: All Republican Candidates Must Learn a Lesson From Arizona Gubernatorial Hopeful Kari Lake. “When Lake threw her hat into the governor’s race in Arizona, she earned President Trump’s endorsement. After making a splash leaving her top-rated anchor position, being a Republican and a MAGA candidate made her a bigger target. That doesn’t stop her from engaging with the media and forcefully stating her positions. Recently she provided a master class for other Republican candidates on eloquently defending their voters.”
FOR ONE THING, THEY’RE INSECURE BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT ESPECIALLY BRIGHT: Bill Maher: Why are public health experts so hostile to differing opinions when they get so much wrong?
THE PHOTO DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A WHITE SUPREMACIST: Chicago PD Searching for Man Who Yelled ‘All of You Should be Killed’ at Jewish Students: Chicago has seen many anti-Semitic crimes these past two months.
This is speech, not a crime, but there have been some unsolved crimes, and some solved ones:
The police described the man: “Black man, 40 to 49 years old, 6 feet tall, with black hair, mustache and beard, wearing a dark knit cap, black coat, white hooded sweater and dark pants.”
West Ridge is a neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. It is one of a few neighborhoods that have seen many anti-Semitic attacks this year alone. The Chicago PD arrested Shahid Hussein, 39, for an anti-Semitic crime spree. They accused him of spray-painting yellow swastikas on a synagogue and at a Jewish high school. He smashed windows at other synagogues and made “threatening gestures.” . . . The police are still looking for a suspect who broke a window at Tel-Aviv Bakery. They are investigating accusations against several men for accosting a man at the Bnei Ruven synagogue.
Why are Democrat-dominated cities such cesspits of hate and violence?
#RESIST: Congressional Republicans: Zero Funding For Vaccine Mandate Programs. “Opposition to vaccine mandates is widespread in America, and almost universal among Republicans, which makes defunding them an excellent hill to defend. The only question is why more GOP legislators haven’t signed this pledge.”
I DON’T THINK THIS IS HOW THE PANDEMIC WAS MEANT TO TURN OUT: Joel Kotkin: A new dawn for the working class. Workers have more power than any time since the 1950s.
The labouring masses are restless, as evidenced by the Canadian trucker strike, union drives in Amazon warehouses in the US and in demonstrations throughout the developing world. More revealing still may be the turmoil in the labour markets, where workers are changing jobs, creating their own and, overall, refusing to return to the structures of the pre-pandemic order.
Once working-class protests were often organised by leftists or even Communists, but many of today’s working-class radical movements take on a different, more populist and distinctly anti-statist character. One can question the positions adopted by protesters, particularly on vaccines, but also recognise that the new wave of working-class unrest, whether in Canada or among the gilets jaunes in France, reflects a deep-seated frustration with diktats issued from above by an increasingly authoritarian state.
Generally, these movements are not embraced but are largely met with disdain and even horror by gentry progressives and their media allies. As Edwin Aponte notes on the Bellows, a widely read Marxist blog, this ‘betrays the left’s allergy to the varied social character of the working class as it actually exists in 2022’.
So true. Plus:
The people who kept society functioning as the ‘laptop classes’ stayed behind their screens are demanding some well-deserved respect as well as greater compensation. Politicians like President Biden talk about having to ‘learn to code’ to fit into the ‘new economy’. But in the real world, the biggest demand is not for coders, but for skilled, dependable workers, like drivers, machine-tool operators and welders.
Related: Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Crime surge and shootings of police threaten Democrats, Biden.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Joe Rogan Haters Aren’t Letting Their Tantrum Go. “I’ve been aware of Joe Rogan for a long time because he’s a comedian who did very well for himself. This current drama surrounding him and Spotify is turning me into a huge Rogan fan merely because so many of his haters are awful people.”
#1 IN EMERGENCY CAMPING BLANKETS: Swiss Safe Emergency Mylar Thermal Blankets + Bonus Gold Foil Space Blanket.
FROM THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPIRE, A NEW BEGINNING: The Roman Empire is in pieces, and for awhile, it’s far from clear what comes next or why. Instapunditeer Lee Dise — aka the “Reformed Trombonist” — continues with Day Two of his Lessons from History series on HillFaith.
WELL, NOW THAT COULD BE AN ISSUE: Supreme Court Frontrunner Was a Zealous Advocate for Gitmo Terror Suspects: Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed conspiracy theories about Bush administration policies, records show. “Jackson has portrayed her work for the detainees as that of a disinterested professional fulfilling an assignment. But a Washington Free Beacon review of court filings dating back to 2005 indicates that Jackson was deeply committed to equal treatment for accused terrorists. Her advocacy was zealous and often resembled ideological cause lawyering, even in her capacity as a public defender. At times, she flirted with unsubstantiated left-wing theories that were debunked by government investigators. On other occasions, she accused Justice Department lawyers of egregious misconduct with little evidence.”
Once we would have said that it’s unfair — maybe even unAmerican — to judge lawyers by their clients, but since lawyers for Trump were chased off by social-media mobs stirred up by the Lincoln Project and other Democratic front groups, to general approval by all the best people, that’s gone. And we’ve been told for two years that there’s nothing worse than pushing “conspiracy theories.” And charging lawyers with misconduct without evidence seems utterly un-judicial. She’s toast. Next?
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: James Carville thinks woke warriors in his party are simply ‘naive.’
“We’re letting a noisy wing of our party define the rest of us. And my point is we can’t do that.
“I think these people are all kind of nice people. I think they’re very naive, and they’re all into language and identity. And that’s all right. They’re not storming the Capitol. But they’re not winning elections.”
Carville’s case, in short, is that the broad mainstream of the Democratic Party is letting the “noisy” liberals dominate what the average American — particularly those who identify as swing voters — thinks the party stands for. Calls to defund the police, pass the “Green New Deal” or end the detention of people coming across the US’s southern border illegally are, in Carville’s mind, simply not majority positions in the country. Pushing them — loudly — is, therefore, a major mistake.
—CNN, July 15th, 2021.
—Fox News, yesterday.
RE-FUND THE POLICE: 1 dead at school where coaches replaced cops.
RADIOACTIVE: Dems to Biden: Don’t stand so close to we. “Just how far have Joe Biden’s polling numbers fallen? Far enough for Democrats to start distancing themselves from their party leader in advance of the midterms. It’s become enough of a problem for the White House to get the attention of the Washington Post, which posits a ‘big dilemma’ for the party’s incumbents. . . . One would think that Warnock would embrace Biden, but a recent poll showed that disapproval of Biden had quadrupled among black voters in Georgia. Warnock needs a big turnout from this demographic to even have any hope of competitiveness in what looks like a Republican wave in November.”
Related: Dem governor: I don’t know if Biden should run for reelection. “This is as close as we’re going to get to a prominent Democrat admitting that Biden will be too old and senescent by 2024 to do the job, so enjoy it. Here’s Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak being put on the spot by WaPo. . . . Translation: ‘I think what’s left of Biden’s brain will be Jell-o two years from now.'”
GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVITY: NYC Mayor Eric Adams says it’s hard to tell the difference between a person ‘hooked on cheese’ and someone ‘hooked on heroin.’
Let he who has never confused Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch and the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin” cast the first stone!
Related: Fishgate: ‘Vegan’ NYC mayor hooked into admitting he eats fish.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Will Biden’s Chief of Staff Be Made the Fall Guy? (As if President Klain would ever agree to that._
Chris Queen: 60 Years of Bond Theme Songs: The Songs That Could’ve Been. “Did you know that there were several “alternative” Bond themes that didn’t make the cut for various reasons? Some of them are better than the finished product, others not so much — while there’s one alternative theme song that’s equally as good as the one the producers chose.”
Yours Truly: The Six… No, Five… Wait, Four… the THREE Things the Left Won’t Call Racist. “If I’ve done my math right, that leaves us with just three things the Left can’t or won’t (or hasn’t yet) called racist.”
Bonus: Biden Attempts Reset #3 in Two Weeks, Fails Comically. “This guy has got the Merde Touch, but Team Biden just won’t quit.”
EMORY LAW NEEDS TO BE HELD TO ACCOUNT OVER THIS DISGRACEFUL EPISODE: Turley: New Disclosures Undermine Defenses Of Emory Law Journal’s Withdrawal Of Larry Alexander’s Publication Offer.
February 7, 2022
OLD AND BUSTED: Follow the Science.
The New Hotness? Follow the Polling! Democrat Govs. Drop Mask Mandates as Biden Holds Tight to His Science.
Today saw a small wave of Democrats caving to factual science. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy decided to end the mask mandates*.
Delaware Gov. John Carney will end mask mandates on Friday. School mask mandates will cease in March.
So what good old Biden? Logic and facts tell us that children don’t need to be masked. Actually, you don’t need to wear a mask unless you have a cold. The mask is supposed to help you not spread a virus. That’s why before COVID doctor offices asked you to put on a mask if you had cold or flu symptoms.
Does Biden think holding tight to his “science” will help his beleaguered party in November? Jen Psaki said this at the press briefing:
PSAKI: “Well, the guidance is very clear, which is that we recommend masking in schools. That is the recommendation from the CDC. It is also true that at some point, when the science and that data warrants, of course, our hope is that that’s no longer the recommendation, and they are continually assessing that. But the guidance is very clear. It is also true that has always been up to local school districts to make determinations about how to implement these policies.”
I’m laughing so hard. I know the majority of those governors changed their minds because of midterms. I cannot imagine how frustrated they are with Biden right now.
The Democrats stand to lose a lot in November. The governors of these poor states loosening their grip on their citizens might help. The biggest help would come from Biden and D.C. I don’t see Nancy Pelosi going against the old man.
In addition the above, AP is reporting: California to lift indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people on Feb. 15, Newsom says. After Feb. 15, unvaccinated people still will have to be masked indoors, and everyone, will have to wear masks in high-risk areas.
Also: Connecticut’s Ned Lamont to End Statewide School Mask Mandate on Feb. 28.
On the other hand there’s Illinois: (Video) Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: Illinois Might Have to Wear Masks Forever.
* Note though, the caveats in New Jersey, with similar ones possible in other states: Although “Murphy is lifting the state mask mandate, he’s not issuing a DeSantis-style ban on local governments from implementing their own mandates. If you live in a Democratic-run community, as most people in New Jersey do, odds are good that the ‘forever pandemic’ mentality in schools requiring perpetual masking will persist. It’ll just be the school board that’s to blame instead of Murphy. Or rather, it’ll be the ‘safety first’ approach of liberal parents pressuring the local school district to reinstate masking requirements that’ll be responsible.”
Exit question from radiologist Pradheep Shanker: “All the people that were furious that [Glenn Youngkin] ended mask mandates in Virginia a month ago…I presume you are just as angry at Democratic Governors today?”
UPDATE: Gooder and harder, Los Angeles: “Despite the state’s new announcement, the Los Angeles County Public Health issued a statement Monday evening saying the county will not align with the state’s stance on ditching the mask mandate after February 15. The Los Angeles County Public Health said COVID-19 transmission is still ‘high and substantial,’ as reasons to not follow the state’s decision to soon parting ways with the mask mandate. Last week, County Health Director, Dr. Barbara Ferrer said the county will consider itself out of the current COVID-19 surge when virus-related hospitalizations fall below 2,500 for seven straight days. Once that mark is reached, the county will no longer require masks at outdoor mega-events, such as football games, or in outdoor spaces at schools and child-care facilities. Meanwhile, health officials say they are continuing to evaluate the masking requirement for schoolchildren.”
(Updated and bumped.)
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: A Free Speech Win at George Washington University.
At this point, any university that doesn’t bend over for the CCP is a win.
DO TELL: “Everyone in this article is incredibly annoying.”
They’re probably all Mask Karens.
OPEN THREAD: Come on in and join the party. Once you dig in, you’ll find you’re coming out the other side.