ATF: CONSIDER ‘SWATTING’ YOUR EX FOR VALENTINE’S DAY. Wow, this can’t go wrong. Someone over there needs to look up “perverse incentives” in the dictionary.
Archive for 2022
February 14, 2022
THE FIX IS IN: Toronto Bank Freezes $1 Million in Freedom Convoy Money.
For what it’s worth, there’s also a lot of online chatter that Trudeau will declare martial law, perhaps as soon as this hour.
WHY IS SHANNON WATTS SUCH A SEXIST BIGOT? Moms Demand Action’s Messaging Fail: Watts Blames Men, Pretends Women Gun Owners Don’t Exist.
HAVE YOU TRIED VOTING REPUBLICAN? Only 15% Of Democrats Want US Immigration Levels Increased.
CLEANEST ELECTION IN HISTORY: Is the Biden Admin Trying to Hide a Report on Dominion Voting Systems?
TOP SELLER: BAGSMART Large Toiletry Bag Travel Bag with Hanging Hook. #CommissionEarned
NICHOLAS WADE: End Merit As We Know It. President Biden hired Eric Landers to lead a research program to “end cancer as we know it,” but his expertise wasn’t enough to protect him from attacks by feminists. Now that they’ve driven him out, the administration is considering replacements with inferior qualifications — except that they’re the right gender.
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: Senior Biden Communications Adviser Leaving Ahead Of State Of The Union Address.
HISTORY: My Nigerian Grandfather Sold Slaves. “Nwaubani Ogogo lived in a time when the fittest survived and the bravest excelled. The concept of ‘all men are created equal’ was completely alien to traditional religion and law in his society. It would be unfair to judge a 19th Century man by 21st Century principles. Assessing the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.”
There’s a mythology that white slave traders ran around the bush kidnapping Africans, but that’s bunk, of course — they’d pretty much all have died. They bought African slaves from Africans. My brother talked to people in Ghana about that some years ago, and they reflected little guilt: Back then if you lost a war, you either died or were enslaved. That’s just how it worked.
One of the reasons Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon couldn’t get published when she wrote it was that the black literary community didn’t like that it portrayed the extent of African complicity in slavery. But history is history, despite efforts to rewrite it.
FASTER, PLEASE: The Receding Democratic Majority.
November 8 to improve both his own political standing and public attitudes toward the Democratic Party. Otherwise, his tenuous congressional majorities—222–212 in the House of Representatives and 50–50 in the Senate—will disappear. Every morning brings him another reminder of his dilemma. Every morning brings him one step closer to what’s shaping up to be the biggest political shellacking in more than a decade.
The odds are not in Biden’s favor. Historical precedent is against him. Only twice in the last century has the president’s party gained seats in its first midterm. Both situations were unique. In 1934, FDR’s Democrats benefited from an enormous amount of support for the New Deal. In 2002 George W. Bush’s Republicans gained from the surge in patriotism and hawkishness after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Public admiration for the leadership styles of both presidents was visible in their high job-approval ratings. That goodwill translated into gains for their parties. There is no parallel today.
Don’t get cocky. As Glenn has written, “If you want to win, donate and volunteer. Winning takes work, and commenting on Internet blogs, even this one, doesn’t count.”
D.C. MAYOR TO DROP INDOOR VACCINE MANDATE FOR BUSINESSES.
The city’s mask mandate for indoor spaces will also be “dialed back” starting March 1, said Bowser. While masks will not be required at restaurants, entertainment venues, churches, grocery stores, or other, similar venues, they will still be required in schools after that date.
Sure, that punishes DC kids, but it at least eliminates the odds that Bowser will be caught violating her own mask mandate:
DAVID DEAVEL: The Prescription for Modern Medicine is Not Racial. “While public health officials have detonated their credibility in the age of Covid-19, Americans have still largely retained their respect for and trust in medical professionals. Dr. Fauci may be less credible than Dr. Pepper or even Austin Powers’ nemesis Dr. Evil, most people reason, but the men and women at my clinic are trustworthy professionals, right? Frighteningly enough, for those following the medical profession and medical education, a fixation on the goals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in both medical schools and healthcare systems is making our once-top-notch American medical care more politicized and racialized but less effective.”
Just what an aging population needs.
TRUCKERS GET RESULTS: Ontario to end COVID-19 vaccine passport system March 1.
THIS DOESN’T SEEM SURPRISING: People with spinal cord injuries at higher risk for depression.
YESTERDAY I WAS LEVI’S BRAND PRESIDENT. I QUIT SO I COULD BE FREE. I turned down $1 million severance in exchange for my voice:
Then, in October 2020, when it was clear public schools were not going to open that fall, I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco. We often take a stand on political issues that impact our employees; we’ve spoken out on gay rights, voting rights, gun safety, and more.
The response this time was different. “We don’t weigh in on hyper-local issues like this,” I was told. “There’s also a lot of potential negatives if we speak up strongly, starting with the numerous execs who have kids in private schools in the city.”
I refused to stop talking. I kept calling out hypocritical and unproven policies, I met with the mayor’s office, and eventually uprooted my entire life in California—I’d lived there for over 30 years—and moved my family to Denver so that my kindergartner could finally experience real school. We were able to secure a spot for him in a dual-language immersion Spanish-English public school like the one he was supposed to be attending in San Francisco.
National media picked up on our story, and I was asked to go on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News. That appearance was the last straw. The comments from Levi’s employees picked up—about me being anti-science; about me being anti-fat (I’d retweeted a study showing a correlation between obesity and poor health outcomes); about me being anti-trans (I’d tweeted that we shouldn’t ditch Mother’s Day for Birthing People’s Day because it left out adoptive and step moms); and about me being racist, because San Francisco’s public school system was filled with black and brown kids, and, apparently, I didn’t care if they died. They also castigated me for my husband’s Covid views—as if I, as his wife, were responsible for the things he said on social media.
All this drama took place at our regular town halls—a companywide meeting I had looked forward to but now dreaded.
Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” I was told that the main complaint against me was that “I was not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.” I was told to say that “I am an imperfect ally.” (I refused.)
The fact that I had been asked, back in 2017, to be the executive sponsor of the Black Employee Resource Group by two black employees did not matter. The fact that I’ve fought for kids for years didn’t matter. That I was just citing facts didn’t matter. The head of HR told me personally that even though I was right about the schools, that it was classist and racist that public schools stayed shut while private schools were open, and that I was probably right about everything else, I still shouldn’t say so. I kept thinking: Why shouldn’t I?
Read the whole thing.
TOP SELLER: TurboTax Deluxe 2021 Tax Software, Federal and State Tax Return with Federal E-file [Amazon Exclusive] [PC/Mac Disc]. #CommissionEarned
XI IS MAKING XISELF RIDICULOUS: Chinese fans of ‘Friends’ angry after show re-released with censorship.
In recent years, China has shut tens of thousands of websites and social media accounts that contained what it said was illegal content as well as “vulgar” and pornographic material.
“I resolutely boycott the castrated version of ‘Friends’,” said one user on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
“This is a defiling a classic,” said another.
A third user said “if you can’t show the complete version under the current atmosphere, then don’t import it.”
Xi won’t like merely being thought of as “the current atmosphere.” Plus:
The discussion was a “hot search topic” on Weibo on Sunday.
But in a sign the discussion itself may have caught the attention of censors, searches on Weibo on Sunday for several variations on the hashtag or search term #Friendshasbeencensored produced either zero or limited recent results.
Gosh, China’s starting to act like the U.S. . . .
BECAUSE IF HE ACTUALLY DELIVERS, HE’LL DERAIL THE GRAVY TRAIN: Why Musk’s biggest space gamble is freaking out his competitors: Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors, which are watching its progress with a mix of awe and horror.
NASA officials — and their longtime aerospace contractors — are watching with a mix of awe and horror.
“They are shitting the bed,” said a top Washington space lobbyist who works for SpaceX’s competitors and asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his clients.
NASA and its major industry partners are simultaneously scrambling to complete their own moon vehicles: the Space Launch System mega-rocket and companion Orion capsule. But the program is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule — and, many would argue, generations behind SpaceX in innovation.
Many would be right.
The space agency’s first three Artemis moon missions over the next three years — including a human landing planned for 2025 — are all set to travel aboard the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, which are being built by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and numerous other suppliers and engineering services firms.
But with the SLS’ first flight this year further delayed at least until late spring, concerns are growing that even if it succeeds, the system, at an estimated $2 billion per launch, could prove too costly for the multiple journeys to the moon that NASA will need to build a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.
That makes Starship, which conducted a successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress.
As Starship progresses, it will further eclipse the argument for sticking with SLS, according to Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and space consultant.
“Once the new system’s reliability is demonstrated with a large number of flights, which could happen in a matter of months, it will obsolesce all existing launch systems,” he said.
“If SLS is not going to fly more than once every couple of years, it’s just not going to be a significant player in the future in space, particularly when Starship is flown,” he added.
And that will derail the multibillion-dollar gravy train. One quibble — Starship hasn’t really flown to the edge of space, unless you set the edge of space low enough that many airplanes reach it. And a friend comments that Crew Dragon has flown 5 times, not 3.
#RESIST: Satyagraha, Eh. “Satyagraha, in addition to being my least favorite of Philip Glass’ early operas, is Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance to political repression. We’re seeing an excellent example of it being deployed up in Canada, as the trucker protest against Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates continues.”
FLASHBACK: Silicon Valley Has Gone From Liberating To Creepy. “Where, a decade or so ago, the tech world’s products served to liberate us from the control of big institutions — I wrote a book on that! — now they seem designed to keep us under the thumb of big institutions. People used to start blogs to express themselves. Now they communicate via giant quasi-monopoly ‘social media’ sites that mute and ban users over their politics. Your computer and phone used to be ways for you to learn more about the world than had ever been possible before in human history; now your devices have turned into tools for governments and corporations to keep tabs on you in ways that have never been possible before in human history.”
NBC EXPOSES MASKLESS CELEBRITIES AT SUPER BOWL ON NATIONAL TELEVISION:
It’s simple: These celebrities are part of a system that has pontificated about the pandemic for months. Everyone knows at this point that the idea of “we’re all in this together” is a complete lie. Although there are probably plenty of people at SoFi Stadium not wearing masks, they do not need to be held to the same standards as public figures.
Times seem to have changed for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who raised eyebrows kissing with masks on at the MET Gala in September. And while Lebron James has previously criticized bizarre masking policies for high school athletes, one would think he’d be more in line with left-wing orthodoxy, as he is online.
California’s State of Emergency is still ongoing, despite hosting the massive event in Inglewood, and the statewide mask mandate is not scheduled to be lifted until Tuesday.
Even if it is not considered hypocrisy for everyone involved in this latest incident, it still shows that people of all social classes and levels of influence are sick and tired of ridiculous coronavirus restrictions put forth by Democratic politicians. At the end of the day, this has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with coming across as a good person.
As Remy of Reason TV says, “It’s Magic!”
BUILD BACK BIGGER: The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives. I’m inclined to favor this.
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? Experts: Freedom is Fascism. “If you don’t let the government take your stuff and dictate outcomes, you don’t believe in the beautiful freedom that comes from submitting to the State.”