DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: UCLA’s race and equity officer who wished death upon Clarence Thomas once admitted to staging a race hoax.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
April 3, 2022
OLD AND BUSTED: Follow the Science!
The New Hotness? New York City Will Continue Forced Masking of Children Under 5 Years Old:
Last month, everyone in New York City was allowed to stop wearing masks – except for children under five years old, even though they have one of the lowest risks for contracting and spreading COVID-19.
On Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city would continue to force children aged two to four to continue wearing masks, claiming the decision was about “children’s health and safety.” Earlier that same day, a judge on Staten Island had issued an order to invalidate the mandate, which the city appealed. Adams announced later on Friday that an appellate judge had ruled in the city’s favor.
Adams then took to Twitter to say that “Children between 2 and 4 should continue to wear their masks in school and daycare come Monday.”
There’s a lot of leftist wine moms in Manhattan whom Adams owes his job to, who get a serious case of the vapors over the idea of masking their kids coming to an end: “Jill Filipovic is a progressive writer who’s pro-mask but looking for an off-ramp from having to mask forever. She’s learned the hard way what happens when you share that view with a liberal crowd:”
LISTEN, SUG: DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS — AND WEAR A MASK: “Putin’s Armageddon Weapon,” new video from historian Mark Felton:
Here’s a link to the referenced document if you want to see it for yourself.
Flashback: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
QUESTION ASKED: Is Conservative Commentary Getting Too Cocky About the Midterms?
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:
● Shot: Madison Cawthorn: People in politics in D.C. who I’ve looked up to have invited me to orgies.
—Hot Air, Monday.
—Twitter thread by Ben Dreyfuss, Friday. (Found via Iowahawk, who writes, “IMO the finest Twitter thread ever crafted.”)
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER INDIVIDUALS POSSESS NATURAL RIGHTS OR NOT.
When Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that they would be willing to vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson after her questioning during congressional hearings, it practically guaranteed that she would be confirmed.
But they may not have seen the answer that she gave in response to a written question from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). It’s common practice to send the nominee written questions, in addition to grilling her during hearings. But her response is getting a lot of attention — and it’s not hard to see why.
Cruz asked, “Do you hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights, yes or no?”
A simple question, one would think. At least if you believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But if you thought Jackson’s answer about not being able to define a “woman” was a bad answer, this response was even worse.
Her response was not good, to say the least. “I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.”
Related: Ketanji Brown Jackson chose leniency even in baby sex torture cases.
GLENN GREENWALD: Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them.
It cannot be overstated how often and casually corporate media employees like this destroy people’s lives. They confront old women on their Florida front lawn for having promoted a pro-Trump event on Facebook that was supposedly organized by Russians. They threaten to expose their critics unless they promise to cease voicing critiques. They dox workers or the crime of producing videos that mock the richest and most powerful politicians in the country such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And Lorenz has left behind a long list of victims — from teenagers whose old tweets and family history she dug up and published to a businesswoman whose life she destroyed to journalists and others about whom she maliciously lied. She was one of the media leaders mocking and shaming a college student for having published an op-ed in The New York Times on how intolerance for dissent from liberal pieties on college campuses has made her afraid to speak out. She’s the vintage mean girl. So malignant and deceitful and destructive are Lorenz’s shoddy journalistic methods that it took more than an hour for this investigative reporter to document in this great YouTube video all the lies and destruction Lorenz has left in her wake.
Yet look at what NBC just did. While flamboyantly displaying his newly minted credential as a Great Male Ally, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd ended the segment with this sermon: “folks who live online know exactly what they’re doing when they target a journalist.” Do Todd and his fellow weeping actors not realize that they just spent five minutes doing exactly that: targeting journalists by blaming us for the trauma and suicidal ideation of the weeping Washington Post columnist? Why is it permissible for employees of NBC and The Washington Post and the rest to constantly use their platform to malign and demonize journalists, but we cannot criticize them without being accused of unleashing misogynistic violence?
And what about all of Lorenz’s victims? Why do their trauma and the wreckage of their lives from her reports not matter? The answer is obvious. What elites have succeeded in training people to believe is that, somehow, what matters most is the emotional comfort of the society’s most powerful and influential political and media figures. They have the unfettered right to demean and denounce and vilify whomever they want, no matter how powerless, but you cannot speak up or object when they do just that.
Read the whole thing. Back in 2010 at the New Criterion, the late Kenneth Minogue warned:
My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.
And their leftist operatives with bylines, as well.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden Forgets He Was Vice President — but He’s Totally Fine, You Guys. Biden: “I’m deeply proud of the work [Jill is] doing as first lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president.”
JACK DORSEY FEIGNS GUILT PANGS: Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Says He is “Partially to Blame” for the Destruction of Internet Today and Regrets It.
Co-founder Jack Dorsey made the social media app Twitter a household name. He also helped destroy free speech in the United States.
Jack Dorsey banned President Trump from the social media platform allegedly for ‘inciting violence’ but not the Taliban and Iranian leaders.
A whistleblower inside Twitter exposed and recorded CEO Jack Dorsey and sent Project Veritas the recording.
Project Veritas released a video of Jack Dorsey laying out the roadmap for future political censorship — censoring Trump was just the beginning.
“We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration,” Dorsey said in a video recorded January 8, 2021.
Twitter also suspended the Gateway Pundit account indefinitely after we announced more videos of TCF Center fraud would be released in the coming days.
Questioning the fraudulent election will no longer be tolerated by the social media giant.
* * * * * * * *
Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter last year.
Now, the former CEO said in his recent tweet that he is “partially to blame” for the current state of our internet today and claimed that he regrets it.
“The days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing. centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it,” Dorsey said on his tweet.
Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.
Related: Dorsey and Facebook COO stepping down from Walt Disney’s board.
A conversation between MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., quickly became heated when Cramer claimed the media would have treated the Hunter Biden laptop story differently if he was one of former President Donald Trump’s children.
* * * * * * * *
“Here’s the reality,” Cramer began. “If Hunter Biden’s name was Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump you guys would be treating the war in Ukraine like—
“Don’t what-about … Enough of this,” Todd interjected, waving his hand. “”That is the laziest attack. It is not about the media. It doesn’t matter about the media.”
“It’s also honest,” Cramer said as the two continued to speak over each other.
Just think of Todd as a former and current Democratic Party operative with a byline, and it all makes sense.
Arians, who had called his allegedly strained relationship with Brady “bulls***,” up and decided it’s the perfect time for him to step aside and hand the reins to defensive coordinator Todd Bowles.
A sudden change by Arians that supposedly occurred because of Brady’s unretirement, but in a way that is 180 degrees counter to anything previously reported. According to Arians, he’s stepping aside now because he wanted Bowles to coach a team with Brady at the helm — not because Brady wanted to play for a team that didn’t include Arians in the head coaching seat. And Brady supposedly unretired without having any issue with this. Despite all his respect and admiration for Arians, he’s also totally cool if the guy isn’t around on the coaching staff in 2022.
Sure. That makes total sense. There’s nothing wonky about this storyline at all. Nor the fact that it all seemed to come together after Brady met with Buccaneers ownership in London prior to his unretirement.
Lest anyone forget, this change also comes with Arians being put into the team’s ring of honor and “elevating” him to a still-undefined position in the franchise’s administrative layer. And while he’s in that position, a source tells Yahoo Sports that he will earn the same money written into the contract extension he signed only nine months ago. It’s a great payday for those who can just step aside into it.
By the way, this is the same Arians who said in January he was definitely coaching in 2022 and told NFL Network that same month, “I’m coaching until I can’t.” Also the very same Arians who spoke defiantly at the NFL scouting combine in early March about not letting Brady play anywhere else and sounded like he was all-in on next season — even to the point of starting to vet his next suite of quarterback options.
I can’t recall a previous era when a player could dictate who he wanted — or at least didn’t want as his head coach. Perhaps the closest equivalent was John Elway refusing to play for the Baltimore Colts before entering the 1983 NFL draft.
GOODER AND HARDER: Bay Area poll finds fear of crime is a deterrent to people returning to downtown.
If you’ve tried to search for a recipe or product review recently, I don’t need to tell you that Google search results have gone to shit. You would have already noticed that the first few non-ad results are SEO optimized sites filled with affiliate links and ads.
Google still gives decent results for many other categories, especially when it comes to factual information. You might think that Google results are pretty good for you, and you have no idea what I’m talking about.
What you don’t realize is that you’ve been self-censoring yourself from searching most of the things you would have wanted to search. You already know subconsciously that Google isn’t going to return a good result.
I’m far from the only one who thinks Google is dying:
Read the whole thing. (Via Virginia Postrel.)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Brace yourselves: It looks like the great college exodus may have finally begun! “Colleges across America face a daunting challenge: Their student head count has shrunk more than 5% since 2019, according to a national estimate, as debate over the value of higher education intensified during the public health crisis and economic tumult. That’s an enrollment loss of nearly 1 million students. Some drifted out of college, while others never started. Many colleges are on an urgent quest to keep current students and recover their lost freshmen.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Public Schools Are Cesspools of Debauchery. Get Your Kids Out Now, Before It’s Too Late.
ROGER SIMON: Self-Destructive Disney Finds a New (More Permanent) Way to Terrify Children.
Remember the Evil Queen in Disney’s animated classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937)? “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” and all that. She was pretty scary.
But not nearly as scary as what Disney is doing today.
It’s hard to conceive how twisted and immoral Disney Studios—where I once worked on two feature films—has become, but I will let the estimable Chris Rufo of City Journal explain what went on at one of the company’s meetings, dubbed the “Reimagine Tomorrow Conversation Series.”
“In a featured presentation at the meeting, executive producer Latoya Raveneau laid out Disney’s ideology in blunt terms. She said her team was implementing a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ and regularly ‘adding queerness’ to children’s programming. Another speaker, production coordinator Allen Martsch, said his team has created a ‘tracker’ to ensure that they are creating enough “canonical trans characters, canonical asexual characters, [and] canonical bisexual characters.’ Corporate president Karey Burke said she supported having ‘many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories’ and reaffirmed the company’s pledge to make at least 50 percent of its on-screen characters sexual and racial minorities.”
Oh, good. And lest you think the theme parks will be spared, such fogeyish, discriminatory terms as “ladies,” “gentlemen,” “boys,” and “girls” are to be eliminated in favor of making family excursions to Anaheim and Orlando “magical and memorable for everyone,” evidently including 4-year-old transexuals.
One can imagine—“reimagine tomorrow,” in their parlance— that the nightly procession of Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy, et al., that traditionally ended an evening at Disneyland will now resemble the annual Gay Pride Parade in West Hollywood or even the Fulton Street Fair that is the highlight of San Francisco’s “Leather Pride Week.”
What’s going on here—other than the destruction of Western civilization as we knew it, leavened by a rather significant dollop of sickening child abuse?
Well, part of it is evidently rage at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s new Parental Rights in Education Bill that is called the “Anti-Gay Bill” by the braindead choir in the mainstream media (I even saw it in a supposedly neutral AP headline), although the words “gay” or “homosexual” aren’t mentioned even once in the bill whose obvious intention is that children only learn about sexuality of any kind in an age-appropriate manner.
We might add that while this is going on, education in our country, in general, is execrable. Our kids may be being force-fed some “woke” version of sexuality but they sure aren’t learning much about reading and math.
Schools everywhere are giving up on the SATs. They might as well. The tests were already dumbed down and readjusted significantly about 20 years ago, when the average score, meant to be 500, had fallen into the low-400s.
As for Disney, it’s important to remember this isn’t just a one-off collection of wokeys enjoying their minimal power at a secret meeting (whose contents are only known because of a leak, obviously for fear it will be found out and people will stop attending their offerings).
The Walt Disney Co. is, next to Comcast, the biggest entertainment and communications company in the entire world. They own not only Walt Disney Studios, but also Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, and Searchlight Pictures.
Related: War! DeSantis Suggests Ending Disney’s Special Self-Governing Status.
DISPATCHES FROM GROUND ZERO OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Appeals Court Upholds Gibson’s Bakery Massive Verdict Against Oberlin College.
DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: ‘That’s like saying black people like chicken:’ Whoopi Goldberg claims that calling out Hollywood for being full of out-of-touch elites is akin to racism as she defends A-lister who clapped Will Smith.
Maybe get World War II and the moon landings sorted out Whoopi, before defending modern-day Hollywood.
SARAH PALIN AMONG 50 CANDIDATES RUNNING TO FILL REMAINDER OF DON YOUNG’S TERM IN US HOUSE:
Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin entered the race late Friday afternoon to fill the remaining months of Congressman Don Young’s term.
“As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight,” Palin said in an emailed news release.
Palin joins more than 50 other people who have filed to represent Alaska in the U.S House of Representatives.
The left’s many attempts to destroy Palin were key mile markers on the road to Trump. It would be fun to watch her respond to interviewers as a sitting congresswoman.
THE GHOST OF MILTON FRIEDMAN IS HAUNTING PRESIDENT BIDEN:
Friedman’s view used to be somewhat crudely summarized as saying that inflation comes from “too much money chasing too few goods” and that neatly captures the situation here. The inflation that is damaging the Biden administration so badly, to say nothing of the finances of ordinary Americans, is playing out just like Friedman would have predicted. When it comes to monetary economics, Friedman certainly is still running the show.
Related: Blame Insane Government Spending for Inflation.
Many people still blame today’s inflation on snags in globe-spanning supply chains. The chief proposed solution is to dismantle decades of globalization and bring production home. Some are also pushing for measures to offset inflation, including robust child subsidies and tax rebates for gas and food.
These proposals are rooted in a misunderstanding of the true cause of inflation: namely, government-induced demand. More spending, therefore, will only fuel the inflation fires.
Over the course of the pandemic, the Treasury Department issued roughly $6 trillion, $2.7 trillion of which was monetized by the Federal Reserve. Americans were sent $5.1 trillion through various programs, including individual checks and unemployment bonuses. Overall federal debt has since risen by about $6 trillion.
This response assumes the 2020 recession was sparked by a demand shock leading to a fall in aggregate demand, rather than the strangling of aggregate supply caused by the pandemic and lockdowns. Under these circumstances, sending people and companies money was never likely to impact output. Instead, it greatly inflated demand for the durable goods still being produced.
Even by the Keynesian economic standards that prompt this sort of fiscal response, COVID-19 relief was larger than any “output gap”—the difference between what the economy is producing and the most it could produce. In March 2020, the gap was $2.3 trillion, and that year alone, the government spent $3 trillion through several relief bills.
More: Biden Is Clueless About Inflation. New video from Reason TV, though the title is two words too long:
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: Don’t pretend that high prices and American suffering are a ‘bug’ for the establishment — it’s a historic feature.