COVID FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY: “They got covid 100% wrong,” Don Surber wrote on Boxing Day of 2022:

On April 3, 2020, the Daily Breeze reported, “Malibu surfer in handcuffs after enjoying empty, epic waves.”

Los Angeles County sheriff deputies arrested a man who was by himself in the ocean, in the name of stopping the spread of covid. The deputies were unmasked. It was a crazy time in which authorities erred on the side of authoritarianism to stop the spread of a virus.

The experts sided with closing down the world.

[On April 2nd, 2020], The LA Times reported, “Kim Prather, a leading atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wants to yell out her window at every surfer, runner, and biker she spots along the San Diego coast.”

She told the paper, “I wouldn’t go in the water if you paid me $1 million right now.”

Why?

Covid is a virus. Viruses spread from person to person — or according to those covering up for Red China, from bat to person. And yet the government ordered everyone inside.

That was dumb. But it is worse. We now know by staying indoors and vegetating, people made themselves weaker.

NPR reported two days before Christmas, “A regular exercise routine may significantly lower the chances of being hospitalized or even dying from COVID-19, recently published research shows.

But so much for aquatic exercising in the once-Golden State. As Jack Dunphy noted at the PJ Mothership on April 6th of 2020: Crackdowns on Lone Surfers and Paddleboarders Threaten to Erode Respect for Law Enforcement Even Further.

Despite, as Surber noted, their getting covid 100% wrong, corporatists on both sides of the equation weren’t afraid to use their power to bend reality: The Twitter Files show the unholy alliance of state and corporate power.

Even if social media content is not protected by the First Amendment, and even if Twitter, as a private company, can create its own “terms of service” and just decide to banish whomever they want, a key question posed by the Twitter Files is: what if the government is telling this private company to do so?

Isn’t that just an end run around the First Amendment’s protections of our right to free speech? I’m no lawyer but it sure seems so.

And, even worse, what if the cozy relationship between government and social media evolves to the point that platforms censor users without needing to be specifically asked to do so by the government? Like a Mafia don ordering a hit with a sideways glance, no words are ever spoken, but the order is made clear.

Just like that, an unholy alliance has been created, with government and private companies working in lockstep to censor our guaranteed right to free speech.

There’s a name for when private companies and the government work hand in hand: fascism. Benito Mussolini said that “fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

As indicated in the Twitter Files, access to Twitter’s bureaucratic censors, de-boosters and outright platform banners was equal opportunity — Republicans could make a call just as easily as Democrats. But what is also made clear is that the Democratic Party loyalties of Twitter employees are close to 100 percent.

So who was being censored? Anyone who challenged Democrats. Which goes a long way towards explaining why those 11,000 people who questioned Covid lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and vaccine effectiveness were given the boot.

“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State,” to coin a phrase.

Related: Additional bonkers moments from 2020 here: Greater Exercise Activity is Tied to Less Severe Covid-19 Outcomes, a Study Shows.

UPDATE:

Everything you read makes sense if you simply translate "experts" as "crazy people".

— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) March 31, 2024

(Updated and bumped.)

DON SURBER: Looks like we Trumped Red China: His protective tariffs ignited a worldwide backlash against the commies. “China’s population growth is done. Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving the country. Optimism is dimming among Chinese youth. The Chinese stock market is tanking. Foreign direct investment is in freefall, as global business seeks alternatives to the ‘world’s factory’ that don’t come with the same geopolitical risk, and Big State political meddling. The economic indicators are so bad that Beijing is pulling many of them from public view.”

HE’S NOT EXACTLY CORRECT, BUT HE’S NOT EXACTLY WRONG: CNN faceplanted themselves by assuming that RFK Jr. would agree with their supposition that Trump represents a greater “threat to democracy” than Biden. As The Good Professor pointed out here, RFK wasn’t buying it.

But history matters. RFK erred wildly in saying Biden was “the first and only president to censor political speech.” That’s just not so. I wouldn’t expect a dope from CNN to challenge him on this, but any of us who studied US history, let alone the First Amendment, know that President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798. According to the Bill of Rights Institute:

“Federalists enacted the Sedition Act of 1798 to silence the opposition of the partisan Jeffersonian-Republican press. Most newspapers were favorable to one of the parties, and although parties had emerged early in the decade, there was no idea in American politics at the time of a loyal and legitimate opposition. Members of both parties considered the other party to be enemies of the republic. The new law prohibited publishing or saying anything “false, scandalous, and malicious” against the federal government, the president, or Congress. Those convicted were fined up to $2,000 (an enormous amount in the 1790s) and imprisoned for up to two years. Congress passed the Sedition Act, once again along party lines, with Federalists supporting and Jeffersonian-Republicans opposed.”

Newspaper editors who did not toe the government line were imprisoned. Moreover, eerily predictive of the “threat to Democracy” line espoused by Adam Schiff (D-Crazyworld) and others, none other that Abraham Lincoln’s government ordered arrests of editors who were accused of “supporting” the Confederacy by publishing dissenting views:

“In New York and New Jersey, two grand juries drew up presentments against newspapers that had been critical of the Union effort, which one paper called the “unholy war.” One grand jury presented a list of newspapers that encouraged the rebels, explaining, “The Grand Jury are aware that free governments allow liberty of speech and of the press to their utmost limits, there is, nevertheless, a limit. If a person in a fortress or an army were to preach to the soldiers submission to the enemy, he would be treated as an offender. Would he be more culpable than the citizen who, in the midst of the most formidable conspiracy and rebellion, tells the conspirators and rebels that they are right, encourages them to persevere in resistance and condemns the effort of loyal citizens to overcome and punish them as an ‘unholy war’?”

So, to be clear, I agree with RFK that the Obama-Biden regime presents a far greater threat to democracy than we’ve seen in centuries, but I wish politicians did their homework. I suppose it’s asking too much that so-called “journalists” do the same.

THAT’S HOT: ‘Artificial sun’ sets record for time at 100 million degrees in latest advance for nuclear fusion.

This announcement adds to a number of other nuclear fusion breakthroughs.

In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in the United States, made history by successfully completing a nuclear fusion reaction which produced more energy than used to power the experiment.

This February, scientists near the English city of Oxford announced they had set a record for producing more energy than ever before in a fusion reaction. They produced 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, roughly enough to power 12,000 homes for the same amount of time.

But commercializing nuclear fusion still remains a long way off as scientists work to solve fiendish engineering and scientific difficulties.

Nuclear fusion “is not ready yet and therefore it can’t help us with the climate crisis now,” said Aneeqa Khan, research fellow in nuclear fusion at the University of Manchester in the UK.

Nuclear fission is and has been ready for a long time.

“POLITIFACT” LEFTISTS LONG FOR THE NOSTALGIA OF A BYGONE ERA: “PolitiFact” Ridiculously Calls Babylon Bee Satire Piece About Transportation Secretary Buttigieg ‘False.’

The hopelessly biased fact-checking business has had a hell of a time trying to figure out The Bee. Of course, they know The Bee’s a satire site but they simply can’t stop making fools out of themselves over Bee Sting after Bee Sting.

Anyway, back to Buttigieg. A March 27 headline on The Bee read: “Buttigieg Praises Cargo Ship For Helping Dismantle Racism in America.”

As I suggested earlier, any objective and reasonably intelligent person would immediately realize that The Bee headline was satire. And remember, the closer to reality satire is, or any form of comedy, the funnier it is. Hence, this Bee Sting really stung the left.

Sure enough, on Friday, two days after The Bee piece dropped, PolitiFact trotted out a goofy “fact-check,” headlined with The Bee’s headline in quotes.

PolitiFact’s Ciara O’Rourke then spewed utter stupidity — on multiple levels.

Running the “Four Years Ago Today” headlines over the past few weeks to remind readers of when Big Government decided to really get its inner fascist on flex its muscles once again, I can’t blame “PolitiFact” staffers for tacitly longing for the good old days, pre-March of 2020. Prior to that, life was so carefree that leftist “fact checking” sites such as Snopes suddenly decided to get a, err, Bee in their bonnets over conservatives mocking all of their sacred cows: The Babylon Bee Satirizes the Absurdities of American Politics. Snopes Doesn’t Seem to Get the Joke.

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Trump Posts Bond, Letitia James Most Hurt.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Why China Might Beat the U.S. Back to the Moon.

HE’S NOT WRONG, EITHER: CNN Baited RFK Jr. With This Question About Trump. They Weren’t Expecting This Answer.

RFK Jr says Biden poses a bigger threat than Trump: "Biden is the first president in history that has used federal agencies to censor political speech to censor his opponent. No president has even done that. The greatest threat is not somebody who questions election returns." pic.twitter.com/Hctekzdqvb

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) April 2, 2024

THREAD:

Scotland's Hate Crime Act comes into effect today. Women gain no additional protections, of course, but well-known trans activist Beth Douglas, darling of prominent Scottish politicians, falls within a protected category. Phew! 1/11 pic.twitter.com/gCKGwdjr5m

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 1, 2024

And this from Rowling’s concluding tweet: “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

Developing…

UPDATE: JK Rowling hate law tweets not criminal – police.

Well, that didn’t take long — but I wonder if next time Rowling will redouble her efforts.

ONLY WHEN THERE’S NO OTHER CHOICE: Gov. Hochul, answer widow Stephanie Diller’s question: When will you protect New Yorkers?

And then halfheartedly at best.

HEY, WHEN THEY’RE RIGHT, THEY’RE RIGHT: Christine Blasey Ford Was No Hero, Says … WaPo?

KRUISER IS NOT GETTING COCKY: Political Polls Are Lucy and Republican Voters Are Charlie Brown. “Back in the Tea Party days, I used to say that any Republican candidate polling lead under six percent wasn’t outside the margin of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Now that early voting starts sometime around Super Bowl Sunday and Election Day is Election Seven or So Weeks, I’ve revised that. If a Republican isn’t up by at least eight points in a poll, he or she is not outside the Margin of Magic Mail Ballots.”

89 INVESTIGATIONS OF CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM SINCE OCTOBER, NO PROGRESS FROM DEPT OF ED. Consider this: campuses have been openly recruiting faculty (and even students) who are highly racist and hostile towards those of European descent for decades, to change the culture in ways the ruling class prefers. It turns out that when you do this, a lot of those people turn out to also hate Jews, and probably plenty of other ethnicities as well. (Why wouldn’t they? Principle?) If ED really investigated these incidents, this would be impossible to hide. So they won’t. It’s that simple.

NOW OUT: From Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. #CommissionEarned

A SOLUTION SO OLD, MAYBE IT’S WORTH TRYING AGAIN: Maybe the cure to math anxiety is to teach kids math.

RIP, COUNT FLOYD: Joe Flaherty, SCTV and Freaks and Geeks Star, Dies at 82.

SMEARING POLITICAL OPPONENTS AS TERRORISTS IS THE DEMOCRATS’ STRATEGY: Former terrorism officials question ‘radicalization’ study that lists peaceful pro-lifers. They do that to provide an excuse for government repression.

Flashback: University program linking Christians, Republicans to Nazis granted DHS funds under ‘anti-terror’ initiative: Biden admin funding controversial efforts to treat conservative groups as radical, watchdog warns.

HOW IT STARTED: Rent control policies are gaining support nationwide. Here’s why economists still think it’s a bad idea.

—CNBC, March 15, 2023.

How it’s going: Biden to cap rent rises at 10% in new affordable housing ploy: White House to unveil plan that could stop landlords upcharging on millions of homes.

—The London Daily Mail, March 29^th, 2024.

Will Sundown Joe’s handlers go the full Nixon, next?

On Sunday night television, Nixon presented his New Economic Policy, a cynical plan that helped his political prospects at substantial cost to the long-term economy. He immediately closed the gold window, ending the convertibility of dollars to gold. He imposed temporary wage and price controls. He asked Congress for a tax credit that was frontloaded for maximum impact pre-election, even as he slapped a surcharge on imports.

Many of the minds at Camp David, and at other advice sessions, opposed components of the plan. Shultz, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, fought the wage and price controls. But the economists eventually went along, telling themselves that concessions were the price of being policy makers.

“Ideologically, you should fall on your sword, but existentially it’s great,” Ben Stein, the son of Herb, told his father.

The short-term results of the New Economic Policy were as splendid as hoped. The Consumer Price Index, now manacled, dutifully declined to 1.7 percent from 4.1 percent the preceding year. Unemployment didn’t rise.

By July 1972, four months before voters would choose between Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, Stein, then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, held a press conference at which he claimed second-quarter data was “the best combination of economic numbers to be released on one day in all of history, or at least the Christian era.” (Reporters politely protected him by editing this down to “the best results in a decade.”) Gross domestic product for 1972 grew more than 5 percent. McGovern didn’t stand a chance.

But the long-term outcome, as Stein, an admirably honest thinker, later noted, was abominable. In the post-Nixon years, unemployment started rising again. International markets recognized that without the threat of gold withdrawals to keep officials’ spending in check, the Federal Reserve, Congress and the Treasury might inflate with impunity.

Inflation therefore also accelerated, as Stein noted regretfully in his memoir, “Presidential Economics.” The combination of inflation and unemployment was something so novel that Americans created a new word to describe it: stagflation. The homebuyer paid for the euphoria of Camp David with the worst mortgage interest rates in the history of Christianity, or at least the postwar period: more than 18 percent in 1981.

—Amity Shlaes: What not to do in an economic crisis, the Orange County Register, August 8^th, 2011.

THAT IS THE GOAL, AFTER ALL: Biden’s Next EV Mandate Is Out and It’s Going to Break America.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Even after condemning her ideas as ‘racist’ UCSF still employs medical prof who suggested that ‘Zionist doctors’ are a threat to patients. Racism is the worst thing in the world unless it’s on behalf of approved groups.

WOEING FALLOUT: United asks pilots to take unpaid time off, citing Boeing’s delayed aircraft.

United confirmed the request for voluntary, unpaid time off. The airline previously said it would pause pilot hiring this spring because of aircraft arriving late from Boeing, CNBC reported last month.

The union said it expects United to offer more time off “for the summer bid periods and potentially into the fall.”

United was contracted to receive 43 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes and 34 Max 9 models this year, but now expects to receive 37 and 19, respectively, according to a company filing in February. It had expected Boeing would also hand over 80 Max 10s this year and 71 next year. That model hasn’t yet been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, and the airline removed them from the delivery schedule because it is “unable to accurately forecast the expected delivery period,” it said in the filing.

The sad thing is that Boeing is the only American option remaining for large passenger jets.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hamas Isn’t the Only Terrorist Group Getting a Boost From Biden. “The more that these wildfires keep popping up, the harder they are to extinguish. Joe Biden is essentially a foreign policy arsonist at this point. It’s global crisis wildfire whack-a-mole now. The Biden administration is too overwhelmed to do anything now even if it wanted to toughen up and address a problem like the resurgent ISIS.”

MICKEY KAUS: The Pepcidammerung. “The issue is not just where Biden is now but where he’ll be in 2026 or in 2029, when his second term would end. And he’s taking a drug that seems as if it’s likely to make any decline down that slope go faster. Yikes.” Maybe two drugs. But who’s counting?

THE TYPICAL INCOME NO LONGER BUYS THE TYPICAL HOUSE: Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a typical home in nearly half of U.S. states. “A combination of high mortgage rates, rising home prices and low housing inventory over the last two years is pushing homeownership further out of reach for would-be homeowners, especially first-timers. To afford a median-priced home of $402,343, Americans need an annual income of $110,871, according to a new Bankrate analysis. That’s nearly a 50 percent increase in just the last four years.”

FIGHT THE POWER: RFK Jr. campaign claims it has enough signatures for ballot access in North Carolina.