THREE YEARS AGO TODAY:

Three years ago [today], the World Health Organization declared the spread of what was then called the novel coronavirus to be a pandemic. Some 4,200 Covid-19 deaths had been confirmed at that point. Almost 7 million would follow, though the true number of lives lost is believed to be much higher. In March of 2020, the pathogen had already spread to more than 100 countries. Horrific waves would sweep across Europe and the US, which for much of the pandemic suffered the worst death toll of all. No part of the planet would be untouched, as India later suffered a crushing surge and, more recently, China after the sudden lifting of precautions. The constant wail of sirens that punctured the night in cities like New York—an initial epicenter of the global disaster—has receded. But with close to 1,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths every day all over the world, the pandemic isn’t over.

Bloomberg continues to track the global coronavirus pandemic. Click here for daily updates.

How odd. Joe Biden told me that he was going to shut down the virus:

It’s not all that surprising that some quarters of the authoritarian left wants the pandemic to continue indefinitely: The sinister cruelty of lockdown has been laid bare. We now know just how drunk on tyranny the political class was during the pandemic.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Colorado school district hires “genderqueer shapeshifter witch” to train staff on transgenderism.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Dem-Olition Derby Edition.

HEY, ISN’T THE LEFT ALL FOR FOLLOWING WHAT THE EUROPEANS ARE DOING? Norway puts brakes on pediatric sex change experiment, places severe restrictions on hormone therapies and surgeries for minors.

UPDATE: Swedish schools stayed open because we followed science. It was a clear assessment: children were at little risk from Covid but faced a very serious threat from missing out on critical education.

WHY FEED THE BEAST? Glenn Youngkin’s rookie CNN error.

Youngkin is a talented politician but that is completely beside the point. The Virginia governor had to stand on a stage for up to an hour and accept Jake Tapper and CNN’s framing of the issues. That’s what has to change with Republicans ahead of the next national election. There is nothing to be accomplished by walking into this kind of environment — both CNN and Jake Tapper know this, even in the new, “more centrist,” less well viewed Chris Licht era. Youngkin ultimately only boosts CNN’s faulty ratings as they try to generate controversy around a fairly popular governor and possible future presidential candidate.

CNN’s agenda is not to have an honest debate. Not on gender, race, guns or schools. Under Jeff Zucker, CNN was interested in the show trial. It appears that under Licht, nothing has changed. Eventually, maybe Youngkin and Republicans will learn this lesson.

I know one Republican who has — but how does he avoid the DNC-MSM entirely during a White House run? Not Good Enough, Andrea: ‘Was a Blatant Lie:’ DeSantis Team Rejects Andrea Mitchell Saying She Was ‘Imprecise’ on Gov’s Education Views, Vow to Freeze Out NBC.

ALZHEIMER’S VERSUS AYAHUASCA: Will Joe Biden Debate Marianne Williamson?

HANOI JANE SHARPENS HER KNIFE:

No sooner had we forgiven Jane Fonda for her sins of many years ago than she gives fresh reason to condemn her. Today on The View–my God, does someone actually watch that show?–she suggested that pro-lifers should be murdered:

* * * * * * * *

Unfortunately, liberals’ tolerance of this kind of talk has had real consequences. Most notable, of course, is James Hodgkinson’s devastating attack on the Republican Congressional baseball team. And when Nicholas Roske set out to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh, it is likely that he had extremist pro-abortion rhetoric in mind. But I see no significant effort by sane Democrats (assuming their increasingly unicorn-like existence) to distance themselves from the excesses of “activists” like Jane Fonda.

When someone who once sat atop a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun grinning from ear to ear says she wants half of America to be killed, I’m prepared to take her at her word. Naturally though, she’ll avoid any consequences among her fellow leftists by playing the “botched joke” get out of jail free card: Oh, sure! Jane Fonda says comment about murdering pro-life Republicans was ‘obviously in jest.’

IDIOCRACY WASN’T INTENDED TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: ‘So You’re in This as a Threesome?’ Dem Congresswoman Humiliates Herself During Twitter Hearings.

IDIOCRACY WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: The dumbest five minutes of Congress, ever: Dems demand sources from journalists who exposed government-media censorship complex.

Get ready for seven minutes of brain-warping idiocy on those points, on top of which Democrats apparently now think journalists have a duty to reveal sources to government. And if you think Garcia’s lack of research into Substack is the stupidest moment in this utter fiasco, just wait until she asks about Bari Weiss:

The winner of the stupidest congressional comment of the day, and hopefully the year, the decade, and the century, is this: “So you’re in this as a threesome?”

YGBFKM.

This is five-plus minutes of total non-sequiturs, bizarre demands for one-word answers when witnesses were willing to give full answers, and a smear campaign to paint Taibbi and Shellenberger as paid campaign activists. At no point in this does it appear that Garcia has the slightest comprehension of the subject matter, nor of the work that either of the witnesses do or have done. Or indeed even the work that they did in exposing the government attempts to suppress and censor dissent and debate, the evidence of which they exposed from Twitter’s communication files.

Weis is pretty gracious about Garcia’s unpreparedness and general cluelessness:

I am dead. Couldn’t get to D.C., but nothing but love for @ShellenbergerMD and @mtaibbi who do a heroic job of not completely breaking down here. https://t.co/Wpp41oiweX

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) March 9, 2023

As John Nolte likes to say, “Democrats sure got it good.” If the parties were reversed this material would lead every network’s 6:30 newscast.

Related: Watch: Jim Jordan Drops Receipts on House Democrats During Contentious Exchange on Government Censorship.

UPDATE:

https://twitter.com/MelissaTweets/status/1634020481358495745

(Updated and bumped.)

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: The Thing That Swallowed Britain.

A doctor rushes to the side of a patient who has just collapsed on the way to the toilets in the emergency wing. He checks for signs of life—pulse, circulation, breathing. He has never seen the patient before. How serious, he wonders, could this be? The doctor calls out: “Does anyone know anything about her?” The senior nurse, who has just come over, looks shocked.

“Him!” she practically shouts at the doctor. “You refer to that patient as him!”

And the doctor thinks to himself: “So I’m supposed to check the patient’s pronouns before I check his pulse.”

This story—I heard it from the doctor himself, David Mackereth—illustrates a salient point about what I call the Thing, that combination of postmodern identity theory, religious fervor, pseudo-therapeutic “empathy,” dogmatic moralism, private bullying, and ritualized public humiliation which has swept through Western societies over the last decade. The Thing may seem an irresistible force, but in truth, it can only take possession of an institution if that institution has already lost its identity.

If an organization knows and cherishes its history, if it empowers its members, if they understand their role in society, their vocation and contribution to the common good—then it is significantly less likely to be captured by the Thing.

But when you talk to people in the National Health Service, or the labor movement, or the police, you hear an eerily similar account of what has happened: a forgetting of the social role that used to give that institution meaning; a transfer of power from those on the front line to a remote administrative class; vocation edged out by bureaucracy; pronouns instead of pulses.

The next update to Peter Hitchens’ The Abolition of Britain is writing itself these days.

RIP: Robert Blake, TV’s Baretta Who Was Tried for Murder, Dies at 89.

THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD: Colin Kaepernick accuses white adoptive parents of ‘problematic’ upbringing, perpetuating racism.

One of these disagreements illustrated in the novel was a fight over his hairstyle.

Kaepernick, in an attempt to idolize basketball player Allen Iverson, wanted to embrace his blackness by wearing cornrows, but his mother pushed back.

“He’s getting what rolls?” his mother, Teresa, is cited as saying in the book.

In reality, she allegedly told him: “Oh, your hair’s not professional. Oh, you look like a little thug.”

The conversation with his mother has continued to impact Kaepernick’s life decades later, he said, even influencing his now-famous afro hairstyle.

“It also is informed why I have my hair long today,” Kaepernick said Thursday.

So for those keeping score at home, Kaepernick has compared police officers to pigs, compared the NFL draft to slavery, and his parents of perpetuating racism. To borrow a line Dennis Miller said regarding former President Obama, if Kaepernick’s “skin were any thinner, he’d have a reservoir tip on top of his head.”

BEN SHAPIRO: What We Weren’t Shown About Jan. 6.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, ANTI-LOCKDOWN AUTHORS ATTACKED AS “FASCIST C**TS:” Authors Attacked At Stolen Youth Book Launch, Attendees Called ‘Fascists C***s.’

“Our book is a calm, rational take on the indoctrination and forced conformity happening in America today and the way it is aimed at children,” Markowicz noted. “Their protest proved our point.”

Earlier: Glenn and Helen interview Karol Markowicz and Bethany Mandel about their new book, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.

CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL. Please Don’t Call It Capitalism: It’s Not Just about the Money!

By calling the system of economic freedom, or (alternatively) commercial republicanism, by its Marxist label, its advocates are implying that the battle between socialist and free regimes was really about the competing interests of labor and “capital.” That is, socialist regimes supposedly advance the interests of workers (the vast majority of human beings) while capitalist ones just benefit greedy, materialistic plutocrats. As the current slogan of the American Communist Party puts it, Communists supposedly serve “People and Planet Before Profits.” (Stalin, Mao, and their cohorts, who lived in luxury while their subjects starved, would have a good, if private, laugh at that line!)

As already mentioned, the Times’s “1619 Project” exemplifies the error of blaming on “capitalism” what are really the consequences of arbitrary, corrupt, or merely private-interest-based government regulations that improperly interfere with the operation of the free-enterprise system – as well as, to the extent that their effects are still felt, of the pre-“capitalist” practices of slavery or serfdom.

As the Journal review of the Hulu series by economists David Henderson and Philip Magness demonstrates, the “1619 Project” inadvertently makes the case for economic freedom, since most of the contemporary injustices it cites resulted from government interventions that undercut free markets and property rights and therefore limited the opportunity for black advancement. These include the abuse of eminent domain, racial red-lining of Federally subsidized mortgages, minimum-wage laws originally designed to protect white workers in the North from competition by black migrants from the South who were willing to work for less, and governmental support and enforcement of labor monopolies by unions that systematically excluded blacks.

Read the whole thing.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart Meets the Divisive Country He Helped Create.

Speak the “wrong” truth and you’ll be chased from polite society. Embrace free speech, a la Joe Rogan, and you’re a MAGA-hat wearing Trumpster. J.K. Rowling went from beloved author to pariah by deviating from part, but certainly not all, of the trans community’s agenda.

Dave Chappelle, the comedy GOAT, nearly saw his career collapse for telling jokes about the trans community.

And we have Stewart to partly blame for this corrosive mindset.

And yet, presented with that truth, Stewart would simply put the clown nose on, and declare that he’s simply a comedian.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: ‘Why can’t I identify as a black lesbian?’ Piers Morgan highlights the absurdity of radical gender ideology.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Did Tucker Hit a Nerve? Axios Wants to Move On From January 6.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: MSNBC’s Hayes Smears The Daily Caller, Claims NYT ‘Not a Liberal Paper.’

—NewsBusters, yesterday.

Chaser: Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.

—Daniel Okrent, the New York Times, July 25, 2004.

28 GIRLS HOSPITALIZED WITH ‘ANXIETY’ AFTER PLAYING WITH OUIJA BOARD:

They’re not in good spirits.

Nearly 30 schoolgirls have been hospitalized with anxiety attacks after allegedly playing with Ouija boards at their school in Colombia.

“There were 28 possible cases of anxiety in school students,” said Hugo Torres, head of the Galeras Educational Institution in Galeras, where the incident took place, per Jam Press.

According to the outlet, alarm bells went off after the girls reportedly suffered signs of fainting, anxiety and other symptoms at school. They were subsequently admitted to a municipal hospital accompanied by parents and school faculty.

Info on the students’ diagnoses has yet to be released, however many parents blame the in-school use of Ouija boards, a Jumanji-esque pursuit that uses a sliding pointer to spell out messages in a mysterious way. Created in the US in 1886, Ouija boards have become a fixture in occult lore due to their alleged ability to communicate with the dead.

While Ouija boards may be causing difficulties in Colombia, they’re certainly approved in some areas of the District of Columbia: Sally Quinn, Georgetown’s Madame Blavatsky.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOU DO HERE? J6 committee co-chair: None of us watched the surveillance video, actually. “[Bennie] Thompson’s [D-MS] aside strongly suggests that the panel spent most of its time preening for the cameras while outsourcing its duties entirely. That would certainly explain its output, especially the panel’s insistence on prime-time hearings to push narratives rather than any in-depth review of the myriad issues surrounding the riot. And it also explains why the committee members and their supporters are so anxious to make sure no one else gets a chance to look at the raw evidence — and reach their own conclusions not just about January 6 but also the January 6 committee.”

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Cori Bush’s Bodyguard Says He Can’t Be Anti-Semitic Because He’s a Jewish High Priest.

Davis, who claims he is a 109 trillion-year-old spiritual guru named Aha Sen Piankhy, demanded the Free Beacon retract a report on his relationship with Bush and history of advancing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Davis, a former member of the vehemently anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party, said it’s impossible for him to be anti-Semitic because he himself is a member of the Tribe of Issachar, one of the lost tribes of Israel.

“That makes me Hebrew. How can I be anti-Semitic?” Davis asked the Free Beacon, adding “You’re literally dealing with the priesthood, literally.”

Literally.

RIP: Chaim Topol, Tevye in Film and Stage Versions of Fiddler on the Roof, Dies at 87. “Chaim Topol, who became professionally known solely by his last name in a career that included starring in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ on stage and screen and co-starring in the James Bond movie ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and the sci-fi film ‘Flash Gordon,’ died Thursday in Tel Aviv after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.”

DISPATCHES FROM AIRSTRIP ONE: 1984 Is Now as Britain Outlaws Thinking the Wrong Thoughts.

According to the Herald, the new law criminalizes “any form of ‘influence’ outside of all abortion facilities, including silent prayer.” Offenders will be fined £100 ($118) the first time they are arrested for wrongthink; if court proceedings are deemed necessary, the fines could increase to £1,000 ($1,183). Amid the debate over this measure, a Conservative MP, Andrew Lewer, injected a note of sanity: “Police shouldn’t be asking ‘What are you thinking about?’” Indeed. And what if the person praying denies the offense? The World Economic Forum has been touting brain implants, and it’s easy to see how handy they’ll be for British police: the bobbies (do they still call these sinister Orwellian figures “bobbies”?) will simply be able to consult a readout of your thoughts, and if prayer shows up, you’ll have to pony up.

In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.”

As a wise woman once wrote, “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.”

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Hershey’s Ad Features Trans ‘2SLGBTQUIA+’ Biological Male – to Celebrate International Women’s Day.