READER FAVORITE: UABRLA Tire Inflator Portable Air Compressor. #CommissionEarned

COVID IS OVER: Weekly COVID deaths hit new record low, CDC data shows.

YEP:

Calvin Coolidge said that if you see ten troubles coming down the road toward you, nine of them will wind up in the ditch before they arrive. But that’s still a question of odds . . .

HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO: Flappr’s French Revolution Doc a Conservative Game Changer.

The film shows how our modern-day notions of left vs. right descend from the fact that during assembly French conservatives were seated on the right side of the aisle while the Communist Jacobins occupied the left.

The colorful language and historical anecdotes can’t hide the core message – the entire enterprise gave way to Napoleon and, as Professor Jimbo points out, achieved the opposite of what was intended.

The narrator’s arch voice, EQ-ed to sound like it’s coming out of an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, gets a bit grating after a while, but as guest blogger Greg Jones notes, “Professor Jimbo cares not for political correctness, but his historical knowledge is impeccable.” Click over to watch.

BUT GAVIN NEWSOM ASSURES ME THAT CALIFORNIA IS STILL AWESOME: It’s official: North Texas lands another headquarters move from California.

Irving City Council has given an economic incentives package for Kelly-Moore Paint Co. the green light, spurring forward the independent paint retailer and manufacturer’s headquarters move from California to Dallas-Fort Worth.

As part of the agreement, Kelly-Moore is expected to receive a $75,000 economic development grant.

Kelly-Moore, currently based in San Carlos, California, plans to move its base of operations to 15,000 square feet within 500 E. John Carpenter Freeway. It must do so by year-end 2024 per the agreement with the city.

The company is required to create 30 new, full-time jobs with an average salary of $100,000, as part of the arrangement.

Kelly-Moore previously relocated its manufacturing operations to Hurst [TX] in 2017.

Flashback: Yes, U-Haul Ran Out of Trucks for People Moving Out of California.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: The Unbearable Bud Lightness of Being.

JOEL KOTKIN: The End of the Silicon Valley Dream.

ALL WE KNOW IS THAT HE’S CALLED THE STIG: NBC disinformation reporter is actually a partisan opinion writer.

[Ben Collins’] work doesn’t focus on breaking news stories nearly so much as it does on spreading naive disinformation. Collins’s intent appears to rest with scoring cheap Twitter hits and accruing the associated endorphin release gained when his sympathetic colleagues then praise his hot takes. Take what happened on Thursday when the SpaceX Starship rocket lifted off and shortly thereafter exploded over the Gulf of Mexico. This was a result predicted by SpaceX founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk and by engineers on the massive project. Still, Collins couldn’t help but weigh in on his Twitter feed, saying, “The kid gloves we in the press give this man is unbelievable.”

To be sure, Musk isn’t perfect. His commitment to free speech is flexible, for example. But again, Collins’s rhetoric isn’t exactly reporter-style rhetoric. It’s clearly a statement of loaded opinion. Of course, this isn’t the first time Collins has prioritized scoring cheap points against Elon Musk. Indeed, he was reportedly suspended by NBC News for a brief period for his rabid hyperventilating surrounding Musk’s purchase of Twitter.

Just a day prior to Collins’s foray into rocket science, he reacted after Twitter suspended a journalist from Wired for soliciting hacked information pertaining to conservative commentator Matt Walsh. That solicitation was a violation of Twitter’s terms of service. But Collins instead offered his familiar hyper-partisan glibness, tweeting, “Fun fact: This is the very same rule that was used to block distribution of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden, the greatest First Amendment violation in American history.”

Related: Are the Walter Cronkite journalism awards for real? “Ben Collins, the NBC News reporter who cried on television and demanded reporters do better in the wake of the Club Q nightclub shooting, received special recognition from the Cronkite Awards.”

Other 2023 awardees stand out, like ABC News’s Terry Moran. Moran earned his national program award for a Hulu special about voter fraud, and was at least partially recognized for his incredibly dogged reporting “from a Tudor Dixon rally in Michigan”. Remarkable stuff! Members of VICE News were awarded for “airing death threat voicemails to poll workers — and calling the perpetrators back.” One judge called the hard work of pressing play on another person’s iPhone “compelling and courageous.” Jordan Klepper, a comedian with The Daily Show who, naturally, only pillories the political right, received a “special recognition for using humor to inform and engage audiences.”

Walter Cronkite was not the perfectly objective journalist that some older generations like to romanticize. But he certainly was a lot better than the clowns who are receiving honors under the award named after him!

Or was he? Walter Cronkite: Liberalism in the Guise of Objectivity.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law student suspended for questioning Covid policies shares story: ‘These people put us through hell.’

TAMMY BRUCE: The Parasitic Nature of the Left’s Attack on American Children.

Attempts to legitimize the destruction of the nuclear family continue apace. This time the monstrosity of the argument is presented in virtual Technicolor glory by New York Magazine. In a featured opinion piece titled “Children Are Not Property” by Sarah Jones, a senior writer for the magazine’s politics coverage treats readers to an argument that is so predictably absurd some have wondered if it is actual satire or even written by artificial intelligence.

But sadly no, we must presume that Jones actually sat down and wrote the screed declaring parents threaten the well-being of children and somehow a bunch of strangers unrelated to children are a better alternative to raise and influence the most vulnerable among us. After the public school/teacher’s union debacle with our children and the continuing obsession with teaching them to be racist and transgender, you will be forgiven if you laughed out loud spurting that milk you were drinking through your nose. You’re not alone.

Jones writes: “Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win. Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing.” Moreover, as the New York Post reported, she bleats “’right-wing Christians’ have embraced the parental rights movement in a bid to mold their children how they choose, ‘much like any domesticated animal.’”

Great moments in projection. But it’s one that’s Comcast approved:

And it’s Nation magazine approved as well:

You may not be interested in the Gleichschaltung, but the Gleichschaltung is interested in you (and your kids).

THE TRUTH. THEY’RE AFRAID OF THE TRUTH. ‘What are they afraid of?’: Student govt. rejects hosting anti-woke survivor of Maoist China.

OPERATION GET-RID-OF-SLOW-JOE IS UNDERWAY: NY Times: IRS Whistleblower Claims Administration Is Mishandling Probe Of Hunter Biden. I mean, the other possibility is a sudden appearance of journalistic integrity, but the way to bet is that the establishment wants an excuse to ease Biden out and replace him.

And maybe not just Joe: “The letter said the client had information that would contradict sworn testimony to Congress from a senior political appointee, an apparent reference to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.”

DNC-MSM CONTINUES TO SHOW STRANGE NEW RESPECT FOR ORANGE HITLER: ‘To Trump’s Credit:’ CNN’s Don Lemon, Alyssa Farah Griffin Pounce on Chance to Bash DeSantis With Trump Praise.

HEH:

Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show. As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 21, 2023

IF THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT IT, IT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO THINK AND FEEL THE THINGS YOU’D THINK AND FEEL IF YOU DID KNOW ABOUT IT: Nashville Police Deny Daily Wire’s Request For Trans Shooter’s Manifesto.

It has been 25 days since the shocking shooting spree, in which the killer — a woman who identified as a man and who this publication is not naming to avoid giving notoriety to shooters — carried out the massacre at the Covenant School before being gunned down by police. City Council members said shortly after the incident that there was a “manifesto” and that it would be released. But since then, state and local police have gotten “assistance” from the FBI in psychologically profiling the killer, which has been used as a reason to block release of the materials.

If it contained something bad for Republicans, it would have been leaked by now. Is that cynical of me? Yeah, and also correct.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN NEW YORK TIMES STAFFERS MELTED DOWN OVER SENDING THE TROOPS IN: Gov. Gavin Newsom calls in CHP, National Guard to help combat San Francisco’s ongoing fentanyl crisis.

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Reuters photos of young kids at Indiana NRA event slammed as ‘set-up’ by parents who say they never gave consent.