HUNTER BIDEN AND THE CORRUPTION OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA:

Big Tech has played a role in trying to dampen down public interest in the latest Hunter leaks. Initially, anyone who searched on Google for terms such as ‘Hunter Biden crack’ would be greeted with a message saying: ‘It looks like these results are changing quickly.’ They were then invited to search for further information in ‘a few hours or days’. ‘Come back later’, Google’s automated response instructed. Apparently this was because the info about Hunter could not be verified, yet I don’t recall receiving similar messages when I Googled ‘Trump Russian prostitutes’ a few years back. This isn’t the first time Big Tech has helped to throw water on the flames of a Biden controversy. When the New York Post first reported on Hunter’s ‘laptop from hell’ in late 2020, shortly before the presidential election, there was ‘aggressive moderation’ on social media. It wasn’t ‘moderation’, of course – it was classic political censorship, with the oligarchs of Silicon Valley preventing Facebook and Twitter users from sharing the New York Post’s story on the basis that it was possibly false information. These unaccountable billionaires even prevented the Post, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the US, from accessing its own Twitter account. It was a grotesque assault on press freedom designed to protect the Democratic elites from scrutiny. A true low point in woke corporatists’ disdain for free public discussion and for democracy itself.

As for the media, most of them turned a blind eye to the original laptop story. ‘We don’t waste our time on stories that are not really stories’, said NPR. Even now, following further revelations of questionable behaviour in the Biden camp, the media are mild at best, silent at worst, in their response. Rumours about Trump were enough to send the liberal media into a frenzy; truths about the Bidens cause them to feel nothing at all. This is how politicised mainstream journalism has become. It now clearly conceives of itself, not as the pursuer of truth, wherever that might lead, but as the defender of the professional managerial elites against the questions and concerns of the populist throng. This is why the Hunter Biden story matters. Not because one sad, unsettled man took some drugs and hired some prostitutes – we can forgive that – but because the media establishment has made it clear to the world that it is more interested in protecting power from truth than speaking truth to power.

Hence this well-deserved Gallup poll: Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows.

THE SOLUTION IS OBVIOUSLY TO BAN WALKING: US pedestrian deaths are reaching a new high. Also, isn’t it a tautology to say that vulnerable communities are most affected? If they weren’t, would they count as “vulnerable communities” at all? It’s likewise unsurprising that they’re more likely in the south, since the walking season is a lot longer in Florida than it is in, say, Michigan.

TWO NY GOVS IN ONE!

● Shot: Governor Hochul Announces Launch of Multi-Year Study to Explore How Climate Change Affects New York State Communities, Ecosystems, and the Economy.

—The New York Governor’s office, November 4^th, 2021.

● Chaser: Hochul flies on NY’s dime as everyone struggles to fill gas tanks.

While New Yorkers are reeling from sky-high gas prices that force them to choose between driving to work, a trip to the store or a family vacation, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been hitching rides on their dime and avoiding traffic altogether by flying to most places.

The governor hit the friendly skies, either on a state helicopter or airplane, a whopping 140 times in the first seven months since she took office last August — with costs to taxpayers estimated at upwards of $170,000, records reviewed by The Post show.

“The governor’s personal frequent-flyer program is immune to things like rising gas prices, cancellations, delays and lost luggage,” Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (R-Oswego) told The Post.

—The New York Post, today.

I’d be more willing to believe global warming is a crisis, when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves. In the meantime, I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint.

MEGAN FOX: The Indy Star Got Something Very Wrong in 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Story, Report Shows.

[Typo in headline fixed, and now the same typo is fixed here. —Charlie]

UNTIL NOW THIS WAS “CONSPIRACY THEORY,” “MISINFORMATION,” AND “ANECDOTAGE:” In survey, COVID-19 vaccine recipients report changes in menstrual bleeding.

WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE NYT…: NYT: Who we gonna believe, the Saudis or the serial fabulist? “It’s not just conservative critics wondering which narrative to buy, though, after conflicting accounts of the Biden-MBS meeting emerged over the weekend. The New York Times’ Peter Baker recalls a few similar Biden tall tales over the years and wonders as well, albeit very politely.”

MUCH FASTER, PLEASE: Fauci to retire by the end of Biden’s term.

Exit question: When will Fauci and liberal leaders apologize for the millions of lives damaged with pointless COVID restrictions?

BUT DOES IT EAT PEOPLE? Massive waterlily at Royal Botanic Gardens proves to be new species.

NERVOUS MEDIA WARNS THE WOKESTERS: They’ve seen the polls and know disaster is coming.

When [Khiara Bridges, a law professor at UC Berkeley] was then pressed by Senator Josh Hawley to clarify whether she meant women, she retreated to one of the woke’s favorite lines of defense by declaring that Hawley’s line of questioning was “transphobic” and “it opens up trans people to violence.”

On Twitter, the progressive left promptly called it a win for Bridges. Yet then something unexpected happened. Several more moderate journalists sounded the warning that the hearing did not go the way their woke colleagues thought it did.

Megan McArdle at the Washington Post was the first to sound the alarm, writing, “Unlike a Rorschach test, however, this one has a right answer, and the progressives have it wrong. Moreover, the fact that they can’t see just how badly this exchange went for their side shows what a big mistake it was to let academia and media institutions turn into left-wing monocultures.” This went over on Twitter about as well as expected.

CNN host and analyst Fareed Zakaria then warned at the Washington Post that the Democratic Party was heading for ruin by obsessing over things like pronouns. Zakaria said that instead, “Democrats need to become the party of building things.” He’s right, but in the insular world of Twitter, it didn’t matter. The Post changed the headline of the piece, caving to an outraged hoard of wokesters, which in turn, kind of proved Zakaria’s point.

Democrats are facing a bloodbath in the November midterms, yet these warnings seem to be falling on deaf ears. That’s true even with polling staring them in the face. Per Axios, more Hispanics and minorities are drifting away from the Democratic Party, while more educated white and coastal elites are embracing the new campus hegemony. 2022 and 2024 could thus become elections at least in part about basic human biology.

Read the whole thing (and don’t get cocky).

IF HE DID, WOULD TWO-THIRDS OF THE NATION FOLLOW THEM? Will the Biden Administration Bring Back Mask Mandates and Lockdowns?

NICHOLAS WADE: The Myth of the Wronged Heroine: A Nature article traffics in debunked history to bolster claims of discrimination against women in science. “Women receive less credit for their contributions to science than do men, just as Rosalind Franklin was denied credit for her role in discovering the structure of DNA—or so says a recent article in Nature. But the authors’ statement about Franklin is false, and their conclusion about women in science is probably no more trustworthy. The portrayal of Franklin as a wronged heroine is a modern myth that will not die, propagated by feminists who hope with claims of discrimination to undermine male dominance of science.”

It’s bigoted to talk about male dominance in science, historically, anyway. How do we know how those “male” scientists would have identified today?

Plus: “In asserting that Franklin was ‘wrongfully denied authorship’ on the Watson and Crick paper, the Lane group seems to believe that she was a junior member of Crick’s laboratory who had a claim on the team’s joint work. In fact, she was leader of a rival team at a different institution. Listing one’s competitors as coauthors on a discovery paper is hardly a common practice.”

GOOD QUESTION: Just How Stable Is China Right Now?

The Chinese government, like all authoritarian regimes, requires a narrative of universal competence and wisdom in its leaders, which means the regime can never openly admit a mistake. Everything is always going according to the five-year plan, the state is always right, the leaders are always all-knowing and all-seeing, and any corruption, failures or incompetence that gets exposed is always isolated incidents involving rogue low-level employees.

And lately those narratives are crashing into higher and higher piles of counterevidence.

Whatever is happening in China, it seems to be pointing to new levels of economic, social, and political turbulence. Maybe the Chinese economy is a “too big to fail” colossus, with too much built-up momentum to be derailed for long. Or maybe the whole thing is a house of cards; reliable and verifiable economic data have always been hard to find in China.

Authoritarian regimes often appear strong and stable right up until they don’t.

UVALDE GUNMAN GAVE MULTIPLE HINTS OF SCHOOL SHOOTING, REPORT SAYS: A year before Uvalde shooting, gunman had threatened women, carried around a dead cat and been nicknamed “school shooter.”

BUSINESS CLIMATE IS MOSTLY SET BY THE REPUBLICAN STATE LEGISLATURE; QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE FOUR BIGGEST CITIES IS MOSTLY SET BY DEMOCRATIC MAYORS: Tennessee is the 9th worst state to live in, 6th best for business according to CNBC study.

I’M SO SORRY WE FAILED HIM: Jill Breaks Out the Violin for Joe: ‘He Had So Many Hopes.’

THE PROMISE OF Nanomechanical Computers. “Our gate uses the bistability of a nonlinear mechanical resonator to define logical states. These states are efficiently coupled into and out of the gate via nanomechanical waveguides, which provide the mechanical equivalent of electrical wires. Crucially, the input and output states share the same spatiotemporal characteristics, so that the output of one gate can serve as the input for the next. Our architecture is CMOS compatible, while realistic miniaturisation could allow both gigahertz frequencies and an energy cost that approaches the fundamental Landauer limit.”

TO BE FAIR, IT’S JUST BECAUSE SO MANY JOURNALISTS ARE GARBAGE PEOPLE:

BADTHINK MUST BE PUNISHED: Penn Law Dean Ted Ruger Requests Faculty Senate Impose ‘Major Sanction’ Against Tenured Professor Amy Wax.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: More than 2 million illegal border encounters so far in fiscal 2022. “The total includes those apprehended and encountered by U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations staff. They exclude gotaways first reported by The Center Square, which includes at least another 50,009 people.”

HMM: GOP Senate Candidates Are Way Behind Democrats in the Money Race.

READER FAVORITE: Belkin Power Strip Surge Protector with 8 AC Multiple Outlets. #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: New San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins Must Be Doing Something Right, as the Far-Left Is in Shambles. “On Friday, new San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins fired 15 people in her office. These firings happened in the first week after San Francisco Mayor London Breed appointed Jenkins following the recall of disgraced District Attorney Chesa Boudin.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Arkansas university eliminates 25 degrees, fires 67 professors due to financial crisis.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

JOE BIDEN DID THAT: Gas Prices Could Be Spiking Again by Election Day.

HEY, THE POPE DOESN’T DO IT SO WHY SHOULD THEY GET A PASS? Students protest Christian university for upholding its religious values.