Archive for 2022
December 16, 2022
MAX EDEN: What Happened in Loudoun Schools.
The report suggests that lax school discipline played a role in the second assault – but did the transgender bathroom policy truly play a role in the first? After the Daily Wire article was published, many liberal pundits insisted that it was unfair to say so because the policy was not yet officially in place. But the report contained two strongly suggestive details. First, a teacher had walked into the bathroom as the first sexual assault was occurring and seen two pairs of feet in a stall – but took no action. The assailant knew that he had a space where he could commit an assault, later commenting that “they usually don’t do anything” when seeing things like two pairs of feet in a stall. Second, top Loudoun school officials understood the connection between this incident and their bathroom policy. Shortly after the assault, the district’s chief operating officer e-mailed the superintendent, deputy superintendent, assistant superintendent, and director of communications, saying that “the incident at SBHS is related to policy 8040 [the transgender bathroom policy]. I will send a Teams appointment from 3:30 to 5.”
For many months before Daily Wire’s Rosiak broke this story, Loudoun schools had been in the news for their aggressive embrace of woke policies and ideology. After the news got out, reaction filtered along partisan lines: conservatives insisting that something was deeply rotten, liberals arguing that conservatives were wrong or simply ignoring the story altogether.
Read the whole thing.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Out-of-pocket health spending rises at highest rate since 1985.
THE LEFT-WING JOURNALISTS ELON MUSK SUSPENDED FROM TWITTER GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED:
There can be only one reason to promote or retweet real-time location information about a person or their family: You hope something bad happens to them. You hope someone acts on it. In this case, these reporters were amplifying a Twitter account that was posting location data about Musk’s private jet, and doing so on the heels of a disturbing incident in Los Angeles involving a stalker targeting a car that was carrying Musk’s toddler son.
In other words, the media elite who for years absurdly claimed that “speech is violence” actually engaged in the promotion of violence and got caught doing it — and we’re supposed to feel bad for them? I don’t think so.
Media leftists who for years have demanded online censorship of conservatives, don’t care at all about free speech, and in fact actively work to quash it however they can are suddenly alarmed at Musk silencing their own?
To quote Sen. Tom Cotton’s recent remark to the woke CEO of Kroger, a company that fired Christian employees for not endorsing the grocery chain’s LGBT advocacy but now wants Republican help with a proposed merger: “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”
CNN is having a meltdown over one of their journalists being temporarily suspended by Musk:
Which is too bad, as they belatedly discover that doxxing someone finally has some consequences.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: White House revives program offering free COVID-19 tests by mail.
WOKENESS DESTROYS EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES, AND IT WANTS TO TOUCH EVERYTHING: “Why so frightening? Well, our NIH is promoting the idea that it is time to dump our current medical education system based upon science-based Western medicine in order to replace it with a more diverse and inclusive one. Our current system is racist, sexist, homophobic, and every other super-bad thing that the woke are desperate to destroy.”
BUY AMERICAN: Germany Buys 35 F-35 Stealth Fighter Jets.
ELON MUSK, MANAGEMENT GURU? Why the Twitter owner’s ruthless, unsparing style has made him a hero to many bosses in Silicon Valley. “But as I’ve called around to C-suite executives and influential investors in Silicon Valley over the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised by how many are rooting for Mr. Musk — even if they won’t admit to it publicly. Mr. Musk’s defenders point out that Twitter hasn’t collapsed or gone offline despite losing thousands of employees, as some critics predicted it would. They see his harsh management style as a necessary corrective, and they believe he will ultimately be rewarded for cutting costs and laying down the law. . . . Tech elites don’t simply support Mr. Musk because they like him personally or because they agree with his anti-woke political crusades. (Although a number do.). Rather, they view him as the standard-bearer of an emergent worldview they hope catches on more broadly in Silicon Valley.”
It’s basically a worldview in which companies are run by the people who own and manage them, not by some blue-haired twentysomething in HR — “a belief that the people who build and run important tech companies have ceded too much power to the entitled, lazy, overly woke people who work for them and need to start clawing it back.”
SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND: Concord Opens Up About Its $300 Million Deal For Genesis And Phil Collins’ Music Rights.
A LOOK INSIDE A PRIVATE STASH OF RARE MUSCLE CARS: This stash of COPOs, Shelbys, and Hemi-Powered Dodge and Plymouth muscle is not open to the public.
Tucked away in a large building in Salem, Oregon, with no external signage and no obvious entrance from the street, is a truly large and astonishing car collection and museum. It is not publicized, and is hard to find. Most significantly, it is not open to the general public. Those who are fortunate enough to get in usually arrive by pre-arranged tours through special car clubs or, recently, as a fundraiser for a local charity group. The operation of the museum itself is unique. Its location is known, though there are no efforts to publicize it. The identity of the owners is a closely guarded secret. (Several websites have claimed to know, but they are likely in error.) Word is the brothers that own it do have some plans eventually to open the collection up to more public view, but that’s some time off. For the time being, tours can be arranged for a fee, with the proceeds going to charity.
In its more than 117,000 square feet of display area are housed some 600 automobiles, all in fully restored condition, including more than 350 muscle cars from the 1960s onward to the present era. Seen in its entirety, the collection is eclectic, and includes various classics from the Thirties, vintage cars from the Forties and Fifties, exotics from across three decades, and even a couple of wooden hydroplane racing boats—one a Ferrari and one a Maserati—from the 1950s.
If your name isn’t Al Gore, Greta Thunberg or, alas, Boris Johnson, read the whole thing.
I’M MORE INCLINED TO BELIEVE THIS THAN I WAS JUST A FEW YEARS AGO: Insider Tells Tucker Carlson That CIA Was Directly Involved in JFK Assassination.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Who is ready for Blue Origin Space Rangers?
Variety reports that a production company co-founded by Michael Strahan, who flew to space on New Shepard in December 2021, is working with Blue Origin to develop an animated space adventure series for kids. It will be called “Blue Origin Space Rangers.” Stop laughing. I’m being serious over here.
Coming soon to Amazon Prime? … The show will include appearances of an animated Jeff Bezos as well as Strahan, a former NFL star. That might make it worth tuning in to, at least once. According to the producers, the show will “create multiple touchpoints for kids and families to explore, learn and deliver a one-of-a-kind space experience.” I’ll try to be positive and say it’s great to try to get kids interested in STEM. But I certainly hope this is not a distraction to all of the other work on Blue Origin’s plate.
Distraction? Blue Origin has yet to launch a single gram into orbit — it would be fair to ask after all these years if they ever had any focus.
ICYMI, FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: Musk Is Cutting Twitter to the Bone, and the Lamentations of the Karens Are Glorious. “The story could begin — and end — with what Musk did when he found dead-ender execs racking up six figures worth of chartered jets right before he bought the company. But the story just keeps getting better, even after that.”
HOLIDAY DEAL: DEWALT 20V Max Cordless Drill. #CommissionEarned
THIS IS SILLY: Trump’s new NFT collection is already losing value in the secondary market.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Trump vows if elected to crack down on left-wing censorship, reclaim free speech in America.
In the first policy-related announcement of his 2024 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to sign an executive order after being elected that would ban the federal government from “colluding” with groups that impede free speech and ban federal taxpayer dollars from being spent on government-led efforts to label speech as misinformation or disinformation.
He promised to fire federal employees who have tried to censor “lawful speech” and block federal funds from going to universities that wrongfully curtail speech.
Timing is everything.
Trump is usually such a consummate showman that I don’t understand why he timed the silly NFT release to step all over an important policy statement.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: James Lileks on “dragphobia.”
Oh look, a new word.
There is no such thing as “dragphobia,” unless it falls under coulrophobia, or fear of clowns. From the Cleveland Clinic:
Coulrophobia brings on feelings of fear when you see clowns or clown images. It’s a specific phobic disorder that causes anxiety, a racing heart, nausea and profuse sweating. Most people can avoid clowns. Some need exposure therapy, a type of psychotherapy, to help manage their reactions to clowns and clown images.
Most people can avoid clowns. Not these days.
“Dragphobia,” like all the faux-phobias, is meant to delegitimize dissent. If you have a specific objection to a behavior, an idea, a means of practicing one’s religion, you are reacting irrationally.
Why is GLAAD giving the aura of a penumbra of an emanation of appearing to be pro-grooming?
REMEMBER THE ‘I’M PRO-LIFE PERSONALLY BUT’ DEMOCRATS? The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson points to the emergence of the “I’m Pro-Marriage Personally But” Republicans.
IF IT WEREN’T FOR FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM, HOW MANY WOULD THERE BE? Images debunk accusation professor used blackface for MJ ‘Thriller’ Halloween costume: Picture, video shows professor in traditional zombie makeup, not blackface.
A TWITTER FILES FOOTNOTE: “The Twitter Files reveal the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Biden family corruption at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating. The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle). Holman Jenkins takes it up in his Wall Street Journal column ‘Hunter Biden’s Laptop and 2020’s First Big Lie.’. He puts it this way: ‘The absurdity of the intelligence veterans’ claim was obvious at the time. The people who run America’s major news outlets (at least those who aren’t idiots) knew it. So obvious was the lie that America’s biggest news organizations have to remain silent now because of their own complicity.'”
For all their bleating about “our democracy,” America’s ruling class was so eager to shut down Donald Trump’s presidency that they were willing to do root-structural damage to that very democracy to do so, at the cost of destroying tens of millions of Americans’ faith in our institutions’ basic fairness and honesty. On the other hand, it’s now clear that that faith was misplaced.
And now they turn to making Elon Musk public enemy #1, because they hate and attack any effective resistance.