Archive for 2023

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: COVID With a Side of Crazy Is on the Liberal Thanksgiving Menu. “Yes, that’s the head of the CDC trying to act as if we’re all stuck in some sort of ‘Groundhog Day’ time loop, reliving the heyday of the pandemic freakout. It’s amazing that anyone at the CDC can talk or tweet about stuff like vaccines and masks with a straight face. Rarely has an organization so full of highly educated experts been proven so wrong about so many things in such a short time. At present, it’s the biggest federal clown car in a bureaucracy full of clown car agencies.”

ENEMY OF THE STATE: Moscow puts popular Ukrainian singer on wanted list, accusing her of spreading false information about Russian military.

The reports said an Interior Ministry database listed singer Susana Jamaladinova as being sought for violating a criminal law.

The independent news site Mediazona, which covers opposition and human rights issues, said Jamaladinova was charged under a law adopted last year that bans spreading so-called fake information about the Russian military and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, is of Crimean Tatar descent. Jamala, who performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in December, won the 2016 Eurovision contest with the song “1944,” a title that refers to the year the Soviet Union deported Crimean Tatars en masse.

Her winning performance came almost exactly two years after Russia annexed Crimea as political turmoil gripped Ukraine. Most other countries regard the annexation as illegitimate.

Russia protested “1944” being allowed in the competition, saying it violated rules against political speech in Eurovision. But the song made no specific criticism of Russia or the Soviet Union, although it drew such implications, opening with the lyrics “When strangers are coming, they come to your house, they kill you all and say ‘We’re not guilty.'”

To be fair, that is how Crimea went from Tatar to Russian.

AN ARGENTINE FRIEND WRITES: “Dear stupid media: ‘far right’ are the fascist thieves that ruled Argentina for (give and take) 75 years, and who turned a country which was once the 3rd wealthiest country in the world into the ruin it is today. ‘Far right’ is NOT the libertarian candidate who won today with the promise of ending the kleptocracy. That doesn’t mean he will succeed, but you, the media, have all your values turned upside down.”

THAT LOSER: Fauci is singing a different song on vaccine mandates. “Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is now a professor at Georgetown University. But the man who was the architect of the government’s pandemic response still occasionally moonlights as a pundit on the television circuit, and in recent months, Fauci’s policy prescriptions have taken a stark turn.”

These are my scientific conclusions. If you don’t like them, I have others.

UNIPARTY STRIKES BACK AGAINST TUBERVILLE: When the Senate returns next week, one of the first items on the agenda is likely to be S. Res. 444, authored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) ostensibly to enable consideration of groups of military nominations, thus negating the holds placed on them by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to protest the Pentagon paying abortion travel expenses.

But the backstory to this saga is the damage that will be done to the Founders’ vision of a cautious, deliberative Senate capable of checking assaults on individual liberty and common sense by temporary House majorities. Read all about it in my latest Premium Report for The Epoch Times.

MINDING THE CAMPUS: Gerber For Faculty Positions.

These are all cases that, prior to the outbreak of pro-Hamas festivities on campus, had already tarnished the reputations of these law schools. Doubtless if I had time and my readers had the patience, this list could be extended to many other law schools. But I’ve assembled this list not as part of a general indictment but rather to set the stage for a positive proposal.

Any of these schools could take a major step towards re-gaining public respect by showing that it is willing to hire to its faculty a recognized critic of DEI.

And I have the candidate for you: Scott Gerber.

I trust you have heard of him. But for readers who have not, Dr. Gerber was until about a week ago a tenured professor of law at Ohio Northern University. He is perhaps best known right now as the author of an article published in May in The Wall Street Journal, “DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School,” in which he recounted the frightening attempt by his law dean to fire him, by pulling him out of class under armed police escort.

No doubt the drama was meant to stigmatize Dr. Gerber in the eyes of students as guilty of some dark deed. But the issue was simply that he had raised objections to his university’s aggressive DEI initiatives, as is his legal right and academic freedom to do.

Ohio Northern University? What kind of law professor pursues his career in such a place? Judge the man, not the school. Cambridge University Press has just published his fourth academic book, Law and Religion in Colonial America. He has edited two others, and he also has had four novels published. He earned his Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Virginia, clerked for U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, and is a member of the Massachusetts, Colorado, and Virginia bars, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court bar. He is the four-time winner of the Fowler V. Harper Award for excellence in legal scholarship—five-time winner, actually, but ONU’s law dean withheld the award from him this spring so as not to make the summoning of armed police to his classroom look even more outrageous than it already did. He likewise is the three-time winner of the Daniel S. Guy Award for excellence in legal journalism, and has received awards for excellence in teaching and has lectured at universities around the country, including yours. He was a visiting professor at Brown University’s Political Theory Project during the 2018-19 academic year.

I am not going to pack his resume into this article—just enough to indicate he is a serious scholar long buried in an out-of-the-way place, where he apparently annoyed his colleagues as a rate-buster. Everything they did, he did a hundred times better—and then he refused to get on the DEI bandwagon.

Jealousy is a major part of academia.

CENSORSHIP: We Knew It All Along.

There’s a new poll from Issues & Insights and TIPP Insights that provides us with some fascinating information about Americans’ attitudes toward government and Big Tech censorship. The poll of 1,400 adults shows that 43% of Americans disapprove of censorship (26% “strongly” and 17% “somewhat”), while 36% approve of censorship (evenly divided between “strongly” and “somewhat”).

Those results are awfully close, but when you dig deeper, you’ll see some interesting trends. I&I’s Terry Jones writes that “the relative closeness of the response is deceptive. When broken down by demographics and political affiliation, surprisingly sharp differences between and within different groups emerge.”

That’s putting it mildly. Democrats overwhelmingly approve of government and Big Tech gatekeepers reining in unapproved opinions. A whopping 57% of Democrats surveyed are down with censorship, with 35% strongly approving. Only 25% of Democrats disapprove.

Read the whole thing.

NOT YET, THERE’S A LOT OF RUIN IN A COMPANY:  Disney’s descent into obscurity.

But heaven knows they’re trying. They’re very, very trying.

WOULD A POLE-DANCING STRIPPER BE APPROPRIATE?  My kid’s day care invited a drag queen to entertain on family day — is this appropriate?

May I register my complete and utter bafflement at this “trend” of hiring drag queens to perform for tiny kids? I attended a couple of burlesque shows in the 70s and 80s with drag queen performers. Much more sophisticated and a higher level of humor than any of this seems to be, btw (and often by straight men.) It was okay, for a certain type of edgy comedy for grownups. One I remember as being way better than the run of the mill of acts.  However, it wasn’t something I needed to attend or that changed me one way or another.  I know these people are virtue-signaling, but I don’t understand the thought process of:

Get drag queens to gyrate in front of confused toddlers/preschoolers/elementary schoolers.
????????????????????????
World peace!

I mean what the heck are these shows supposed to do for society or even for entertainment, exactly?

ANALYSIS: WHEN SHE’S RIGHT SHE’S RIGHT:  Megyn Kelly defends Elon Musk, lashes out at Media Matters: ‘Vile, disgusting, dishonest’.

CHASERS:

1- Megyn Kelly blasts TikTok ‘morons’* who praised bin Laden: ‘Cretins who hate America’.

2-  Megyn Kelly blasts Gayle King for interview with Israeli dad of Hamas hostage: ‘Show some damn sensitivity!’

*Disambiguation: absolutely no relationship and not to be confused with Ace of Spades HQ self-proclaimed “morons.” – hugs and kisses from an old time, if mostly silent, ‘ette.

 

TURNS OUT THE BABYLON BEE WAS JUST EARLY, WHEN THEY “REPORTED” JOURNALIST FORGETTING TO REMOVE THE HAMAS HEADBAND:  NBC cuts ties with journalist arrested by Israel for glorifying Hamas attacks.

In the words of General Sherman, “If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”