Archive for 2023
January 15, 2023
JOHN STOSSEL: COVID: Who was Right? (Video.)
YOU WILL EAT BUGS AND YOU WILL LIKE IT, CITIZEN! Making the case for using insects as food for both humans and livestock.
COMER DEMANDS VISITOR LOGS FOR BIDEN’S DELAWARE HOME: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is demanding that the visitor logs for President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence be made public.
That log is vital to gaining an understanding of who may have had access to the dozens of classified documents found thus far, and because Hunter Biden, the Chief Executive’s son, who has extensive financial links to the Chinese Communist Party, claimed the residence as his own while reportedly paying $50,000 a month in rent.
Comer is also demanding that the committee be given all documents related to the presence of classified documents at that location and the PennBiden Center. A Special Counsel was appointed last week by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the situation.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Nuclear Power Cell for Space Satellites that are Cup Size Instead of Dishwasher Size.
FRED HOYLE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “Building Blocks of Life” Discovered in Meteorite That Crashed Landed in England.
OUT: BULLETPROOF COFFEE. IN: Sex Coffee.
JON GABRIEL: You know what Biden is missing? That key Nerd to guide the White House.
In business, this might be the chief technology officer, chief financial officer, or something else. On a ship, it’s the Engineer. When The Jerk orders The Nerd to make more widgets; The Nerd tells The Jerk they need the larger Widgetmaker 3400 and 670.2 more square feet of factory floor. He’s read the latest research, studied the schematics, knows what’s possible and how to make it happen. The Nerd might not have social skills, but hand them a spreadsheet and a user manual and they won’t leave their office before knowing everything about everything.
If I walk into a company, I look for each of these roles. It might take a while to suss out since official titles vary. Maybe the chairman really calls the shots while the CEO inherited that title from their parents. But if the organization doesn’t have this Iron Triangle, I know it’s chaotic, inefficient and has high turnover.
The administration may thought the nerd was going to be played by Pete Buttigieg, but he was too lazy to learn his part:
In the case of the latest FAA failure, which grounded more than 10,000 flights, there were complaints for years about the FAA’s creaky, outdated Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) system. (The complaints had even prompted Representative Pete Stauber (R., Minn.) to propose reforms before any of this happened.) Yet the only discernable step taken by Buttigieg was to rename NOTAM in December 2021 from its original name, Notice to Airmen, which was deemed insufficiently gender-inclusive. It speaks volumes about Buttigieg’s values, and the depth of his understanding of DOT’s responsibilities, that this was a higher priority for him than making sure the planes would not get grounded.
It hasn’t helped Buttigieg that there is still no Senate-confirmed head of the FAA. Confirmation should be easy in Chuck Schumer’s Senate, but nominee Phillip Washington — who was nominated in July 2022 after the prior Trump-appointed head stepped down in March — still has not even had a confirmation hearing. This has less to do with Republican opposition than with the baggage that the nominee, presently the CEO of Denver International Airport, brings to the job.
Washington, who ran the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority from 2015 to 2021, was already under fire for lacking long experience in aviation, and then the news broke in September 2022 that he had been named in a Los Angeles County search warrant involving allegations of corruption in a no-bid contract given “to a nonprofit group headed by one of Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metro board member Sheila Kuehl’s friends to shore up Kuehl’s support.” He had other issues: “In one case, he issued a no-bid contract for a nonprofit group to establish a sexual harassment hotline for the agency with a cost that worked out to $8,000 a call.” There is a whistleblower, who
claims that Washington ordered her to pay a bill of $75,000 to Peace Over Violence in 2015, before the MTA had even authorized the contract. “He stated he’d rather not upset any of Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s friends rather than dispute the veracity of the bill,” according to the warrant’s account of witness testimony, adding that Washington said “he would rather pay the $75,000, so he could later use that to his advantage when he needed a political favor from Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.”
It is unlikely that Buttigieg had much to do with Biden’s nomination of Washington, but he obviously didn’t have the knowledge of the field and its players necessary to push back at the choice. That is a recurring issue: Being out of his depth, Buttigieg has to leave the serious work to others. In the rail-freight strike, the Biden administration deployed Labor secretary Marty Walsh as its point man, while Buttigieg — as Jim has again covered comprehensively — was doing public appearances at the Detroit Auto Show, appearing on late-night talk shows, and pushing Democratic talking points about inflation, climate, and race.
And as a result:
READER FAVORITE: Wrangler Men’s George Strait Cowboy Cut Original Fit Jean. #CommissionEarned
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Federal government investigating ‘anti-racist’ segregation at UC San Francisco.
Yes, the investigation was spurred by a complaint from Prof. Mark Perry, with whom I talked last week.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Libertarian policy expert wants to slash aid to drive down college costs.
THE ANTI-GUN ATTITUDE IS MORE RELIGIOUS THAN THE REVERSE:
It’s interesting that Auster is writing about death by gunshot when it was so recently — just last year — that his 10-month-old granddaughter died from drugs and his 44-year-old son was arrested for that death and then died from a drug overdose.
And it’s interesting that he disparages the religion-like attitude toward rights, when “He has described right-wing Republicans as ‘jihadists.'” That blithe injection of religion appears in the above-linked Wikipedia bio. And it makes me wonder, given the quote at the top of this post, if he’d call the Black Panthers “jihadists.”
Of course not, that would be bigoted.
WHAT ARE THE ODDS: Gambling isn’t my thing, but if it’s yours and you want to put some cash on where the next batch of Joe Biden’s classified documents are found, this site is taking bets, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
FIGHT THE POWER: COVID-Narrative Dissenters File Lawsuit Against Legacy Media Over Coordinated Censorship. “A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.”
SCHEDULED FOR 5:56 PM ET: Watch a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch a classified military payload today.
MITZI PERDUE ON UKRAINE: Why the Russian invaders make crippling police a priority.
AN ART HISTORY FACULTY STATEMENT on recent events at Hamline University. “The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota writes to address the recent non-renewal of adjunct instructor, Dr. Erika López Prater, from her term appointment at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As has been widely reported, and especially well documented in a New York Times article of January 8, 2023, Dr. López Prater showed a 14th-century manuscript painting depicting the Prophet Mohammad in her art history survey course, prompting student complaint and the subsequent cancellation of Dr. López Prater’s spring semester course. This happened without the due process of formal investigation, without an opportunity for Dr. López Prater to respond to the administration’s ill-informed and unfounded accusations, and without good-faith institutional investment in open dialogue or the restorative practices of communication and relational repair. The blame for the mishandling falls entirely to Hamline’s administration.”
Yeah, Hamline appears to be run by morons.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Some Biden-related questions no one seems to be asking.
THEY NEED GUILLIBLE, UNINFORMED VOTERS: Democrats push to amend Constitution so 16-year-olds can vote. I would tie the drinking and gun-owning age to the voting age.
I SUSPECT THAT A LOT OF “LONG COVID” IS REALLY SOMETHING ELSE: ‘I thought I had long Covid but it was testosterone deficiency caused by ‘male menopause.’
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: New study offers even more proof lockdowns were deadly.
In hopes of containing the pandemic, Americans across the country were forced to suffer through lockdown orders, closed schools, and shuttered workplaces in the spring of 2020. In Democratic-controlled areas, many of these restrictions lingered into 2021. Yet they didn’t work. We all got COVID-19 anyway, more than a million Americans nonetheless died of the disease, and in a dark and ironic twist, most COVID-19 spread actually happened at home .
Meanwhile, those restrictions themselves evidently had deadly consequences. A new study from Casey B. Mulligan and Rob Arnett published in the journal Inquiry finds that non-COVID deaths were highly elevated above expected trends in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021. They report that over this period, approximately 97,000 Americans died annually (not including COVID deaths) above the baseline trend, a statistic known as “excess deaths.”
These deaths included 32,000 deaths from heart disease and hypertension, some of which may have been fueled by the disruption to healthcare services and healthy lifestyles from the COVID restrictions. Meanwhile, deaths due to obesity-related illness, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related causes were all 12,000-15,000 above expected trends. All these factors were heavily influenced by the way COVID-19 lockdowns fueled social isolation, sedentary lifestyles, and mental health issues.
The data “point to a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency,” the study concludes. “COVID-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it.”
Prediction: None of the people who called you a “murderer” if you went kayaking without a mask will apologize, or take any responsibility.
January 14, 2023
THAT ZERO-COVID STRATEGY IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: China admits nearly 60k COVID deaths in the past month but some experts say it’s much higher.
OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for blogging.