WHY DO LEFTIST EDUCRATS HATE ASIANS SO MUCH? 17 Northern Virginia Schools Withheld Merit Awards From Mostly Asian Students As Gov Calls For Legislation. “About 75% of semifinalists for the National Merit award that were not notified were Asian students, the Fairfax County Times reported.”

Can I call ’em, or can I call ’em?. To be fair, it was an easy prediction.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Are we supposed to believe that 17 schools decided upon this course of action independently? It was obviously coordinated from a central entity. What is that central entity?”

LIGHTENING DEAL: BLUETTI Portable Power Station EB3A. #CommissionEarned

SKYNET SMILES: The latest Boston Dynamics robot video is amazing and a bit scary.

It’s time for Atlas to pick up a new set of skills and get hands on. pic.twitter.com/osOWiiBlSh

— Boston Dynamics (@BostonDynamics) January 18, 2023

“This was all carefully pre-scripted. The steps were set up just so and that handy board was placed in such a way that the robot didn’t have to lift it off the ground. Each element of this had to be tested in software before trying it in the real world. And everything didn’t work flawlessly the first time. So, okay, this thing isn’t ready to replace Jackie Chan anytime soon. But as I was saying a moment ago, the future comes around a lot sooner than you think it will. Disney is already using robotic acrobats for stunts that are too dangerous for people.”

HMM:

Developing…

NO, THE ONES AIMED AT DEMOCRATS ARE FAKE: Not all special counsel investigations are created equally.

Special counsels Robert Hur and Jack Smith have been tasked with investigating President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, respectively, for their mishandling of classified documents.

Although the Nov. 2 discovery of Biden’s first batch of classified documents had not been publicly reported when the Trump special counsel was announced on Nov. 18, the Department of Justice had been briefed. So Attorney General Merrick Garland knew then that if he appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump, he would be pressured into appointing one for Biden when the news eventually broke. Considering he’d already taken the extraordinary step of ordering an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve “sensitive” material, his failure to appoint a Biden special counsel for the same offense would have been impossible to defend.

However, we’re quickly learning that not all special counsel investigations are created equally. The differences between these two investigations could not be more glaring.

By tailoring the scopes of the two special counsels to serve the DOJ’s purposes, Garland accomplished three objectives: he satisfied public calls for equal treatment under the law, he minimized Biden’s potential legal jeopardy, and he provided the DOJ with a ready excuse to withhold document requests from House GOP lawmakers.

Compared to the wide scope of the Trump special counsel investigation, the scope of the Biden investigation is far narrower. Robert Hur is tasked with investigating the “possible unauthorized removal and retention” of the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center and his Delaware residence. And although Hunter Biden had unfettered access to at least one of these locations and is alleged to have engaged in a lucrative influence peddling scheme from which his father, the “big guy,” may have benefited financially, he is not mentioned in the appointment letter, and thus remains out of the special counsel’s reach.

On the other hand, Jack Smith is authorized to investigate Trump’s “efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power” and the “certification of the Electoral College vote,” the classified documents that were held at Mar-a-Lago, his potential obstruction of the government’s efforts to retrieve the documents, and any matters that arise directly from the investigation. Obstruction of justice will be the likely focus of this special counsel.

In addition to the disparity between the scopes of the two special counsels, there are Grand Canyon-sized differences in the DOJ’s treatment of the cases.

That’s because the DOJ is a bunch of political hacks and hit men, presided over by Chief Hack Merrick Garland.

WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION: TikTok May Be A Chinese Superweapon.

TikTok’s capacity to stupefy people, both acutely by encouraging idiotic behavior, and chronically by atrophying the brain, should prompt consideration of its potential use as a new kind of weapon, one that seeks to neutralize enemies not by inflicting pain and terror, but by inflicting pleasure.

Last month FBI Director Chris Wray warned that TikTok is controlled by a Chinese government that could “use it for influence operations.” So how likely is it that one such influence operation might include addicting young Westerners to mind-numbing content to create a generation of nincompoops?

The first indication that the Chinese Communist Party is aware of TikTok’s malign influence on kids is that it’s forbidden access of the app to Chinese kids. The American tech ethicist Tristan Harris pointed out that the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is a “spinach” version where kids don’t see twerkers and toilet-lickers but science experiments and educational videos. Furthermore, Douyin is only accessible to kids for 40 minutes per day, and it cannot be accessed between 10pm and 6am.

Has the CCP enforced such rules to protect its people from what it intends to inflict on the West? When one examines the philosophical doctrines behind the rules, it becomes clear that the CCP doesn’t just believe that apps like TikTok make people stupid, but that they destroy civilizations.

Read the whole thing.

Flashback: Democrat Senator Admits ‘Trump Was Right’ About TikTok.

THE NEW SPIN: Biden doesn’t have a classified documents problem, the government has an overclassification problem. Huh, I don’t remember this argument being made on Trump’s behalf.

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Alumni lawsuit against Yale over trustee petition ballot ban moves forward.

Plaintiffs Victor H. Ashe, who has served as an ambassador to Poland as well as a state legislator and mayor in Tennessee, and Donald G. Glascoff, Jr., retired chair and co-partner of one of Wall Street’s oldest firms, filed the lawsuit alleging that Yale’s governing body “is engaging in the most obvious form of voter suppression and denial of rights of free expression of opinion,” according to the court complaint.

The President and Fellows of Yale consists of 19 trustees, six of whom are alumni trustees elected by Yale alumni. The corporation also includes the Connecticut governor and lieutenant governor as ex officio members. The Connecticut General Assembly in 1872, established that six trustee seats should be held by alumni who were voted on by eligible alumni.

Since 1929, Yale has had two paths by which alumni could be nominated and receive a vote for the alumni trustee position – nomination by a committee consisting of Yale Alumni Association board members and officials, or by petitioning for and receiving at least 4,397 Yale alumni signatures.

Ashe petitioned for and received over 7,000 signatures to get on the ballot for an alumni trustee position in 2021, campaigning to make Yale more transparent and highlighting that Corporation meeting minutes are embargoed for 50 years. Ashe eventually lost out to David A. Thomas President of Morehouse College in Atlanta, who was nominated by the committee.

Reached for comment, Ashe says he has no problem with losing the election. His concern in filing this lawsuit is the elimination of the petition process and creating a secretive, insular process limited only to insiders.

Connecticut should amend Yale’s charter to require more open procedures, in the public interest.

IT MEANS “BIDEN 2024” IS LOOKING LESS LIKELY: It Looks Like Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal Is About To Explode. “The decision to search more places for documents is a troubling development for Joe Biden and the White House team, who have clearly been caught off-guard by a scandal they had hoped to keep under wraps before it was leaked to the media a couple of weeks ago. But what exactly does it mean?”

ON SUNDAYS I RUN A PROMO POST MOSTLY FOR INDIE AUTHORS:  Book Promo and Vignettes by by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

And yeah, this one I had to show off my new covers, which are now up. Look, some writers are like that. So full of themselves. All the self promotion. What can you do, even when they’re you?
However, I give space to more interesting writers too.

POST-CPR TRAUMA IS REAL:

Nothing really prepares you for CPR, even if you’re certified. Compressions on a mannequin pale in comparison to pressing on the chest of a person who was walking and breathing moments ago, and suddenly stops. Real-life CPR is not light and glamorous like the movies may portray it. It’s exhausting and forceful, violent even — enough to break ribsopens in a new tab or window. The first time I did CPR, on a frail, elderly man who’d collapsed in the street, his chest gave way with a cracking sound that made me sick. Performing CPR is gut-wrenching and terrifying, and witnessing it is no better.

Dealing with human bodies that are in trouble is often messy and disgusting.

HERS ARE BETTER THAN MINE:  Spambots of the day.

IF IT’S ON TIKTOK IT MUST BE TRUE:  You’re wearing turtlenecks all wrong, according to TikTok.

‘NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT’ CAN BE PROBLEMATIC WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF TO THE RIGHT OF ACTIVISTS:  Protesters heckle AOC with song over her support for aiding Ukraine.

SADLY PROBABLY NOT THE DUMBEST THING WE’LL READ ALL YEAR:  Claim: Solar Powered Refrigerators would Solve African Food Waste.

NEWS FROM 2005: Wokeness Is Coming For Classical Christian Education.

I WILL NOT SHUT UP. I WILL NOT SIT DOWN. AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU:  Democrats Propose Overturning The First Amendment.

GIGGLES. SNORTS. CHORTLES:  Talking Heads Strangely Quiet on Biden After More Classified Docs Found at Delaware Home.

LOOKING WILDLY FOR A DISTRACTION: China’s Xi Tells Border Troops To Be ‘Ready For Combat’ Amid Rising Tensions With India.

COOL, BRO. NOW DO THE AMA:   “American Bar Association, in its role as an accreditor, should not be partisan in [the current culture] war”.

THE PROBLEM IS WHAT THE CCP INSTILLED AREN’T THE VALUES OF A CONFIDENT CULTURE:  American Mom Who Praised China Gets Flak.

They’re the values of a totalitarian culture. National socialism (which is what China is) always sounds confident. But it’s rotted at the center.

Our culture has reason to be confident, we just have to pierce through the international socialist overculture holding us down. And we can do it with Freedom. Come join the counterculture. We’re fighting back.

MARINATING IN GREY GOOSE:  Nancy Pelosi: In The Pink, Living Her Best Life.

SURE. WHY NOT. THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE:  Biden Took Classified Documents While Senator.

AGAIN, WHEN YOU FORGET THE RELATIVE PROPORTIONS OF THE POPULATIONS, YOU SAY REALLY STUPID THINGS:  Trans Women Threaten Real Women With Decapitation.