ORANGE MAN BANNED: Here’s How Twitter Execs Reinterpreted Trump Tweets To Justify Banning Him.

Twitter executives, including former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, reinterpreted then-President Donald Trump’s final Jan. 8, 2021, tweets to overrule the initial finding of the site’s safety team that they were not in violation of the rules, according to internal messages published by journalist Bari Weiss Monday.

Trump first tweeted that the “75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me … will have a Giant Voice long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” before tweeting a follow-up roughly an hour later saying he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021.  Members of Twitter’s safety team initially rejected increasingly agitated calls from Twitter staff to ban Trump, saying that neither message was in clear violation of the rules, as they contained no overt or coded incitement to violence. (RELATED: Twitter’s Safety Team Found Trump’s Final Tweets Did Not Violate Policy, But He Was Banned Anyway)

Less than 90 minutes after this initial assessment by the Twitter safety team, Gadde messaged another higher-ranking staffer that the safety team, suggesting that the team may have been incorrect to interpret the term “American Patriots” as being in reference Trump voters as opposed to the rioters present on Jan. 6., Weiss reported.

“The biggest question is whether a tweet like the one this morning from Trump, which isn’t a rule violation on its face, is being used as coded incitement to further violence,” Gadde messaged the other staffer, whose name was redacted. “Eg use of term ‘American Patriots’ and ‘They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!’”

Read the whole thing.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but this latest look into Twitter’s previous management’s misdeeds will likely have zero traction in the DNC-MSM: Nets Bury Heads in the Stand, Shut Out Mention of Fourth Twitter Files Batch.

On Saturday night, journalist Michael Shellenberger dropped the fourth batch of what’s become known as the Twitter Files and detailed the depths in which Twitter executives in January 2021 sought to concoct a rationale to ban former President Trump from the platform following the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

But like we saw with the previous three tranches from Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss (and an addendum from Taibbi), the major broadcast networks of ABC and NBC continued to ignore the bombshell files showing a pattern of deception, lies, and excuses from Twitter employees to censor conservatives and opposing views to the far-left Twitter workforce. CBS remained out to lunch with their total stuck at 26 seconds they gave to the first release.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their lack of coverage makes perfect sense.
Evergreen:

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Could Sam Bankman-Fried go to prison for the FTX disaster?

Even if the facts seem may seem damning on the surface, lawyers contacted by Fortune cited two potential obstacles to any criminal conviction—though ones prosecutors could likely overcome.

The first is jurisdiction. Since FTX is an offshore business with headquarters in the Bahamas, and did not cater to Americans, defense lawyers could argue the actions of its executives are beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

The Justice Department, however, is good at finding a “nexus” linking overseas defendants to American shores, according to Randall Eliason, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University. Two other lawyers who spoke to Fortune echoed this view, saying it would likely be easy for prosecutors to find a nexus in the FTX case—in the form of a tie between FTX and U.S. banks, emails, stateside meetings, or other interactions.

The second potential obstacle to a criminal prosecution comes in the form of intent. Specifically, Eliason says that any conviction will turn on whether SBF was not simply incompetent but whether he deliberately deceived investors.

“Mismanaging your company and losing a bunch of other people’s money is not criminal. It happens all the time. For a criminal case, there has to be deception,” he said.

Eliason added that he was not familiar with the details of the FTX debacle, but that prosecutors can show deception by means of something like a smoking gun communication, or by showing a pattern of behavior that points to fraudulent intent.

A longtime crypto lawyer, however, told Fortune he has no doubt that SBF’s behavior and FTX’s business practices clearly demonstrated fraud. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to evidence like FTX’s terms of service as well as the company’s investor presentations and public statements by SBF.

Well, this might be a possible answer:

In the meantime though, will SBF show up for this discussion, which was announced by the New York Times in October? Yellen, Zelensky and Zuckerberg Will Speak at DealBook Summit. The conference, scheduled for Nov. 30, will bring together the biggest newsmakers in business, politics and culture.

We are pleased to announce our lineup for the DealBook Summit, to be held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on Nov. 30. Andrew will host a series of conversations with the biggest newsmakers in the world of business, politics and culture.

Among the speakers: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder, chairman and C.E.O.; Shou Chew, TikTok’s C.E.O.; Mike Pence, former vice president of the United States; Andy Jassy, Amazon’s C.E.O.; Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and co-C.E.O.; Mayor Eric Adams of New York; Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chairman and C.E.O.; Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s C.E.O.; and Priscilla Sims Brown, Amalgamated Bank’s C.E.O.

It’s the people who brought you 2022 — C’mon Gray Lady, make this panel happen!

LEGAL CHALLENGE MOUNTED TO ZUCK BUCKS: This has the odor of a rotten scandal developing for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Hayden Ludwig reports that two complaints have been filed with the IRS that focus on three non-profits to which Zuckerberg and his wife gave millions for the express purpose of turning out the vote in 2020.

All three groups claim to be non-partisan, of course, as well they must in order to retain their tax exempt status. But the first of the complaints points out that the actions of the exempt trio indicate they went about their activities in a hyper-partisan manner. The second complaint alleges that the Zuckerbergs claimed improper tax deductions in connection with their contributions to the trio.

Here’s a taste of what Ludwig and his colleagues at CRC found when they dug into the patterns and practices of the Zuck Buck’s recipients:

“In reality, these ‘Zuck bucks’ promoted insecure drop boxes to collect the unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots created by last-minute election law changes—mostly engineered by Democratic elections officials — in key states across the country, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Very little of the money went to personal protective equipment.

“Wisconsin, in fact, was ground zero for the first influx of Zuck bucks to the state’s five cities, which in summer 2020 produced a joint Safe Voting Plan that hinged upon early voting and vote by mail with funds from a private organization, CTCL. Zuck bucks even paid for a mobile voting van — a ‘polling booth on wheels’ — in Racine.

“On a per-capita basis, CTCL’s Zuck bucks overwhelmingly favored Democratic vote–rich cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit over counties that broke for Donald Trump. In Pennsylvania, CTCL grants in Trump counties averaged $0.60 per capita compared with $2.85 in counties Joe Biden won. In Georgia, it was worse: $1.41 per capita in Trump counties versus $5.33 in Biden counties.”

This could get really interesting, so keep an eye on it.

INCOMPETENCE + GREED + A TOUCH OF EVIL = McKINSEY:  I just got through Walt Bogdanich and Mike Forsythe’s explosive new book, “When McKinsey Comes to Town.” Everyone I know (myself included) who has worked in a corporate environment in which McKinsey has operated usually comes to the conclusion that McKinsey has a racket going that beats even the legal profession for sheer sliminess.

In my first hand experience, McKinsey was hired (no doubt at great expense) to “review” and “improve” the faltering Bloomberg TV network. What did they do? First, the “consultants” asked all the employees what they did, and how things worked. Then they created mountains of PowerPoint presentations and simply repeated what they’d been told. Finally, they recommended a “reduction in forces” (corporate-speak for layoffs). This pattern is the modus operandi for McKinsey: “Teach me what you do, and then I’m going to tell you how to do it.” Another pattern is that often consultants convince clients that they ought to be hired “in-house.” McKinsey doesn’t mind that at all because it’s one more “in”, one more tentacle reaching into corporate America.

That’s where the deep investigative work of Bogdanich and Forsythe really makes its mark, by comparing the company’s vaunted “ethical values” with the real-world activities of the company:

“McKinsey’s clients included corrupt governments in Russia, South Africa and Malaysia. There were the Russian companies put under US sanctions to punish Putin for seizing Crimea. And state-owned Chinese companies that provide the economic and military support for it’s powerful ruler, Xi Jinping.”

Worse yet, the revelations show that McKinsey had a hand in helping create or exacerbate severe domestic problems:

‘The most shocking revelation, was McKinsey’s decision to help companies sell more opioids when the abuse of those drugs had already killed thousands of Americans. Two senior partners discussed possibly purging records, apparently to hide their involvement.” […] When best-selling business author Tom Peters was interviewed for the book, he said of McKinsey’s role in increased opioid sales: “It’s nauseating […] How do you do that and pretend you are a values-driven company? How do you have a Values Day and do that shit? It’s unbelievable.”

Oh, it’s believable, all right. And Bogdanich and Forsythe are just the reporters to show the world what’s behind the McKinsey curtain. Bogdanich has taken on huge industries before, including a story about Phillip Morris allegedly “adding” nicotine to its tobacco. That story resulted in an infamous libel suit in which accountants and money-driven executives at ABC News promoted settlement instead of a jury trial. Forsythe is also not one to shy away from offending very powerful interests. By way of disclosure, I worked with him closely on his shattering expose for Bloomberg News about “The Princelings,” a group of secretive, corrupt and litigious young Chinese ultra billionaires who had familial relations with members of the CCP, ranging from Chairman Mao’s cadre to Xi Jinping.

Both are solid reporters and this book tells you in a smooth and well-sourced way what’s at stake when powerful entities with deep political connections run amok.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Do Biden’s words even matter anymore?

On the subject of Taiwan and China, Biden once again stated that Taiwan would be defended militarily should mainland China stage an invasion to reclaim the island. Before the show was even over, the White House had put out a statement saying that America’s One China policy remains unchanged.

Yet most telling was when Pelley accompanied Biden to the Detroit Auto Show, and he took note that the convention was going on without masks or social distancing or vaccine mandates. Pelley asked Biden very directly, “Is the pandemic over?” “The pandemic is over,” Biden responded. “We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over.” This wasn’t a gaffe. This wasn’t a slip-up. He reiterated it again in his response.

This left the White House in yet another bind on issues from student loan forgiveness to immigration restrictions to vaccine mandates, all of which to one degree or another are premised on the idea that we’re in a pandemic. Biden’s words could jeopardize legal cases his administration might be preparing. His usual media defenders, like the Washington Post and NPR, sprang into action to spin Biden’s own words. Politico and CNN were given statements that in fact the pandemic is not over.

Biden’s own staffers are undermining the nominal president’s statement: White House cleans up Biden’s ‘very consistent’ claim pandemic is ‘over.’ “Biden’s press secretary said Wednesday that the president was speaking about public sentiment, not the state of emergency, during a headline-grabbing 60 Minutes interview that appeared to throw into disarray his administration’s agenda. ‘Just to step back for a second, when he made those comments, he was walking through the Detroit car show, the halls of the Detroit car show, he was looking around. We have to remember the last time that they had held that event was three years ago,’ Karine Jean-Pierre said during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday. ‘We are in a different time. He’s been very consistent about that.’”

As Dan McLaughlin wrote in July, “Biden could put a stop to the public walkbacks immediately by firing one or more people for publicly contradicting him. There are two overlapping reasons why he hasn’t done that: He isn’t willing to stand up to his own staff, and at some level, he grasps that they keep walking back things that he should never have said in the first place. If you have spent much time around elderly men with declining faculties, you will recognize the all-too-common pattern of lashing out because they need help for things they could once do themselves, rather than being thankful for the help.”

ROGER KIMBALL: The Grasshopper Elite and Its Enemy. Unfortunately, those loud and troublesome pests, though few, control almost all the levers of political and state police power:

I do not remember when I first noticed these little injections of partisan squid ink, but by now they are ubiquitous in the anti-Trump fraternity. Just one example: in a column Saturday about Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the writer claimed Trump “spent much of his speech focusing on his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election” (emphasis added). To the writing teachers out there, let me ask: Would that sentence have been better—less obviously partisan, hence more persuasive—had the word “baseless” been omitted?

Or how about this bit from later on in the piece: “Trump spent much of his speech touting the accomplishments of his term as president . . . and promoting the lie that the 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen’” (again, emphasis added). What do you think?

Or how about this: Trump was in Wisconsin “ostensibly” to stump for Tim Michels, the person Trump backs for Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary, but he devoted much of his speech “focusing on his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.”

This last sentence offers connoisseurs of cant not one but two morsels to chew on. The first is the deployment of the word “ostensibly,” meaning “apparently so” but “not really.” You might have thought Trump came to Waukesha to help his favored gubernatorial candidate. Really, though, he came to dispense “baseless” claims that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

I do not know whether this spreading linguistic tic is the result of a directive from on high—from editors demanding that their troops insert such adjectival props—or whether it is a more organic phenomenon, a matter of the zeitgeist pushing the adoption of these expressive ornaments and curlicues. It’s a little of both, I suspect. I don’t doubt the influence of management—and the diktats, I’d wager, come from much higher up the political food chain than any publisher’s office. But I suspect that in many, maybe most, cases, it is simply the expression of what the late Joe Sobran identified as “the Hive.” “Liberals laugh at conspiracy theories that assume that because there is a pattern there must be some central control,” Sobran observed; “but the fact that there is no central control doesn’t mean that there is no pattern.”

Read the whole thing.

THE WORLD ECONOMY IS IMPERILED BY A FORCE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT:

Most of the challenges tearing at the global economy were set in motion by the world’s reaction to the spread of COVID-19 and its attendant economic shock, even as they have been worsened by the latest upheaval — Russia’s disastrous attack on Ukraine, which has diminished the supply of food, fertilizer and energy.

“The pandemic itself disrupted not only the production and transportation of goods, which was the original front of inflation, but also how and where we work, how and where we educate our children, global migration patterns,” said Julia Coronado, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, speaking this past week during a discussion convened by the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Pretty much everything in our lives has been disrupted by the pandemic, and then we layer on to that a war in Ukraine.”

It was the pandemic that prompted governments to impose lockdowns to limit its spread, hindering factories from China to Germany to Mexico. When people confined to home then ordered record volumes of goods — exercise equipment, kitchen appliances, electronics — that overwhelmed the capacity to make and ship them, yielding the Great Supply Chain Disruption.

The resulting scarcity of products pushed prices up. Companies in highly concentrated industries from meat production to shipping exploited their market dominance to rack up record profits.

The pandemic prompted governments from the United States to Europe to unleash trillions of dollars in emergency spending to limit joblessness and bankruptcy. Many economists now argue that they did too much, stimulating spending power to the point of stoking inflation, while the Federal Reserve waited too long to raise interest rates.

Now playing catch-up, central banks like the Fed have moved assertively, lifting rates at a rapid clip to try to snuff out inflation, even while fueling worries that they could set off a recession.

Also deeply exacerbated by the lockdowns: Supermarkets, Restaurants Hire Security, Limit Hours to Combat Crime.

Food-oriented establishments and consumers are airing increased concerns over crime as U.S. consumers have resumed shopping in stores and dining out, after governments and businesses lifted Covid-19 restrictions. Forty-four percent of 1,005 adults surveyed earlier this month said they were more fearful to be in public because of bad behavior and rising violence, up from 39% in March, according to a national online survey by food-service research firm Lisa W. Miller & Associates LLC.

Violent crime has been on the rise in the U.S. since the onset of the pandemic, with cities including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York reporting a surge in shootings and killings. Murder rates have also soared in rural areas. Local officials and law enforcement point to pandemic-related stress, a proliferation of guns and increased alcohol sales, among other factors.

While violent crimes in restaurants and grocery stores remain a small part of the overall U.S. total, incidents have increased in recent years, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics. The number of aggravated assaults that took place in restaurants increased by 60% from 2018 to 2020, the FBI data showed, and the number in grocery stores increased by 73% during the period.

Becky Mulligan said she answered a call this month from one of her Mod Super Fast Pizza Holdings LLC store managers, who said an armed robber had hit one of the Bellevue, Wash.-based chain’s stores.

Ms. Mulligan, senior vice president of operations for the 520-store pizza chain, said she has had to respond to more incidents of violence, theft and robberies affecting the chain over the past six months, particularly as gas prices have risen and the economy has cooled.

“There seems to be a layer of stress going into the restaurants, more than it used to,” she said. About six weeks ago, after an armed gunman entered one of Mod’s West Coast stores, a manager put herself in front of a young crew member working at the cash register, Ms. Mulligan said.

Mod is installing more panic buttons in its stores, and offering emotional support resources to employees after an incident. Employees are instructed to never leave the back doors of restaurants open, and the company limits hours if working at night feels unsafe, she said.

Why, it’s as if: America’s Cop-Hating Cities Will Soon Face an Ugly Reckoning. “Many of the big ‘defund the police’ cities quickly realized the error of their ways and tried to undo some of the damage they’d done, largely to no avail. It turns out that blaming cops for everything kind of sticks with the cops. It’s a dangerous and difficult profession as it is, why would anyone want to do it in a city run by people who would rather side with criminals?”

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! White House worried about Jimmy Carter parallels to Biden presidency as approval rating remains low: report.

The Biden White House is reportedly worried that the parallels to former President Jimmy Carter’s presidency are going to stick as gas prices and inflation continue to increase and the president’s approval rating remains low.

Politico reported on Sunday that President Biden and his aides were feeling defeated by their efforts to counteract the many challenges the Biden administration currently faces.

“Morale inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is plummeting amid growing fears that the parallels to Jimmy Carter, another first-term Democrat plagued by soaring prices and a foreign policy morass, will stick,” Politico’s Jonathan Lemire wrote.

The White House’s plan is to get Biden out on the road to talk about his progress, and they hope to pile on their attacks against the GOP and paint the party as too extreme, highlighting the issues of gun control and abortion.

Biden is reportedly very frustrated that his approval rating has dipped below former President Donald Trump’s, who Biden believes is the “worst president.”

The report says that the president “erupted” over not being kept up to speed about the baby formula shortage. The president reportedly went against his staffer’s advice when he declared the news of the shortage reached him.

So when does Biden do something about his staff? When Does Joe Biden Start Firing People?

Biden could put a stop to the public walkbacks immediately by firing one or more people for publicly contradicting him. There are two overlapping reasons why he hasn’t done that: He isn’t willing to stand up to his own staff, and at some level, he grasps that they keep walking back things that he should never have said in the first place. If you have spent much time around elderly men with declining faculties, you will recognize the all-too-common pattern of lashing out because they need help for things they could once do themselves, rather than being thankful for the help.

Earlier: “I see the contrast coming into view. Joe Biden is making Jimmy Carter look like a good president.”

Was this the moment when everything went pear-shaped?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I paid $5.19 for gasoline today. In Knoxville where it’s usually cheap.

AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Epileptic Child Has Seizure After Gazing At Latest Pride Flag.

—The Babylon Bee, May 24th.

The Brooklyn Nets today: Hold my beer!

Related: The History of TV Color Bars, One of the First Electronic Graphics Ever Made.

UPDATE: Another prophecy from the Bee came true today: Powerful: Military To Allow Troops To Replace Camo With Colors Of Their Gender Identity Flag.

—The Babylon Bee, March 13th, 2021.

The Marine Corps today:

DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats face nightmare scenario, ‘biblical disaster.’

Inflation, immigration, the war in Ukraine and the still-lingering COVID-19 pandemic make for a dreadful political atmosphere for President Biden’s party.

The problems are compounded by Biden’s weak approval numbers and the historical pattern whereby a president’s party typically loses seats in the first midterms of his tenure.

Some Democrats believe a turnaround is still possible, or at least that losses can be kept modest.

But others, granted anonymity to speak candidly, sound a louder alarm.

“I think this is going to be a biblical disaster,” said one such Democratic strategist, who did not wish to be named. “This is the reality we are in as Democrats and no one wants to face it.”

Well, they’ve been able to implement so many of the policies they wanted – what did they think would happen?

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Xi Jinping’s Faltering Foreign Policy.

To say that Xi has consolidated power in China is to state the obvious. Few dispute that Xi holds a singular position within China’s bureaucratic apparatus, and it is increasingly hard to deny that something akin to a personality cult is developing in state media and other propaganda channels. Yet the implications of this reality are insufficiently appreciated, especially its impact on the behavior of the Chinese party-state.

Consider a pattern that has emerged across authoritarian political systems in which leaders remain in office far longer than their democratic and term-limited counterparts. The longer a leader stays in power, the more state institutions lose their administrative competence and independence as they evolve to fit that leader’s personal preferences. Successive rounds of purges and promotions shape the character of the bureaucracy, moving it incrementally in the same direction as the leader’s grand vision. What might begin as formal punishment for explicit opposition to the leadership eventually becomes a climate of informal self-censorship as members of the bureaucracy come to understand the pointlessness of dissent and grow better attuned to unspoken expectations of compliance. The leader also becomes more distant and isolated, relying on a smaller and smaller group of trusted advisers to make decisions. Most of those individuals remain at the table because they display absolute loyalty.

This small circle, in turn, acts as the leader’s window to the world, leaving much dependent on how accurate a depiction of external reality its members choose to provide. Such an opaque decision-making process makes it difficult for external observers to interpret signals from the central leadership. But even more crucially, it makes it hard for actors within these autocratic systems to anticipate and interpret their leaders’ actions. The result is an increasingly unpredictable foreign policy, with the leader formulating snap decisions in secret and the rest of the bureaucracy racing to adapt and respond.

Putin is is a similar situation and started a war because, apparently, his generals told him he could win quickly and at a reasonably low cost. What he’s gotten is an expensive slog. Worse, it’s revealed serious weaknesses in the Russian military that a decade’s worth of reforms and modernization were supposed to have fixed.

Maybe Xi can learn from Putin’s bad example, or maybe he’s so cloistered that he can’t.

OUT ON A LIMB: Your Bubble is Not the Culture.

n 2020, the year Rowling made her most pointed statements on transgender issues, Harry Potter sales went up for its British publisher, Bloomsbury. In fact, “the paperback edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was the fifth-bestselling children’s book of 2020 to date, 23 years after it was first published.” This past June, the biggest Harry Potter store in the world opened in New York City to rave reviews. HBO is currently airing several specials celebrating 20 years since the first Harry Potter movie. And despite the pandemic, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has reopened on Broadway. The persistent popularity of Potter probably explains why outlets whose critics insist that the Potter party is over keep publishing pieces about the franchise. Insider, for example, has run over 80 such items—from “What It’s Like to Visit the Real-Life Diagon Alley” to “28 Major ‘Harry Potter’ Movie Deaths, Ranked From Least to Most Heartbreaking”—in the last year alone…

Rowling herself is doing just fine as well. The latest entry in her successful Cormoran Strike detective series, which she writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, was an international best seller and moved more copies upon release than any prior book in the series. In May, it won Best Crime and Thriller Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. (Insider, on the other hand, called this same book “poorly received.”) Rowling’s October children’s book, The Christmas Pig, another international best seller, sold over 60,000 copies in just its first week. (The entertainment site Giant Freakin Robot: “JK Rowling Facing Brutal Fan Reactions to New Children’s Book.”) Simply put, Rowling sells more books in a day than the critics claiming she’s been shunned will sell in a lifetime.

* * * * * * * *

Much of the current divergence between elite discourse and popular preference can be reduced to a simple heuristic: Most critics are on Twitter; most consumers are not. If you examine the coverage proclaiming the end of Harry Potter or Lin-Manuel Miranda, or castigating any other wildly successful cultural product or personality, you’ll quickly spot a pattern: The only evidence they tend to cite is an assortment of tweets.

But just because something makes waves on Twitter doesn’t mean it actually matters to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions.

Why, it’s like “Twitter sentiment is a Styrofoam iceberg. You may think 9/10 of it is underwater, but actually, 9/10 of it is visible,” to coin an Insta-phrase. Somebody should write a book about this stuff.

SHOCKER: Fauci Was Told Privately by Key Scientists That COVID-19 Natural Origin Was ‘Highly Unlikely,’ Newly Unredacted Emails Confirm.

Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, scrambled in early 2020 to respond to public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

This response, which included a secret Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference, was loosely detailed in previously released and heavily redacted emails. Those emails strongly suggested that Fauci and a small group of top scientists sought to promote the natural origin theory, despite having evidence and internal expert opinions that pointed to the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan lab.

Unredacted versions of some of the emails made public by lawmakers on Jan. 11 further confirm this.

The newly unredacted emails, released by House Oversight Committee Republicans, confirm and illustrate a pattern of lies and coverup. From the emails, it appears the effort was spearheaded by Fauci himself but also involved his boss, recently retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, as well as Jeremy Farrar, the head of the British Wellcome Trust.

It was previously revealed that at least two scientists, both of whom had received funding from the NIH, had told Fauci during the teleconference that they were 60 to 80 percent sure that COVID had come out of a lab.

The most significant new revelations in the unredacted emails come from two of these scientists, Robert Garry and Mike Farzan, who both noted the difficulties presented by the presence of a furin cleavage site in the COVID-19 virus—a feature that would later be cited as the defining characteristic of the virus.

Farzan, an immunologist who in 2005 discovered the receptor of the original severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, sent his post-teleconference notes to Farrar, who then shared them with Collins, Fauci, and Lawrence Tabak—top officials at the NIH. In those notes, Farzan wrote that he was “bothered by the furin site” and had difficulty explaining it “as an event outside the lab.” Farzan noted that it was theoretically possible the virus’s furin cleavage site could have arisen in nature but that it was “highly unlikely.”

The furin cleavage site is the defining feature that gives COVID-19 the ability to easily infect humans and has long been puzzled over by scientists, since no such site has ever been observed in naturally occurring SARS-related coronaviruses.

Farzan, like scientist Kristian Andersen, who has received funding from Fauci’s NIAID, works at the Scripps laboratory. As was already known from previously released emails, Andersen had privately told Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020 that the virus looked engineered. Andersen would later spearhead Fauci’s efforts to promote a natural origin narrative. . . .

In layman’s terms, Farzan concluded that the pandemic likely originated from a lab in which live coronaviruses were passed through human-like tissue over and over, accelerating virus mutations with the end result being that one of the mutated viruses may have leaked from the lab. Farzan placed the likelihood of a leak from a Wuhan lab at 60 to 70 percent likely.

The emails indicate that Farzan was cognizant that the Wuhan lab conducted these types of dangerous experiments in Level 2 labs, which have a very low biosecurity standard. This fact was later admitted by the Wuhan lab’s director, Shi Zhengli, in July 2020. Notably, since the start of the pandemic, Farzan has received grants totaling almost $20 million from Collins’s NIH and Fauci’s NIAID.

Do tell.

Plus: “Garry’s privately stated view is even more remarkable because only a day earlier, on Feb. 1, 2020, Garry had helped to complete the first draft of the Proximal Origin paper that promoted the idea that the virus had originated in nature. That paper became the media’s and the public health establishment’s go-to evidence for a natural origin for the COVID virus. It was published online on Feb. 16, 2020, and firmly excluded the possibility of a lab leak.””

SCOTT ALEXANDER: Much more than you wanted to know about Ivermectin.

So what do you do?

This is one of the toughest questions in medicine. It comes up again and again. You have some drug. You read some studies. Again and again, more people are surviving (or avoiding complications) when they get the drug. It’s a pattern strong enough to common-sensically notice. But there isn’t an undeniable, unbreachable fortress of evidence. The drug is really safe and doesn’t have a lot of side effects. So do you give it to your patients? Do you take it yourself?

Here this question is especially tough, because, uh, if you say anything in favor of ivermectin you will be cast out of civilization and thrown into the circle of social hell reserved for Klan members and 1/6 insurrectionists. All the health officials in the world will shout “horse dewormer!” at you and compare you to Josef Mengele. But good doctors aren’t supposed to care about such things. Your only goal is to save your patient. Nothing else matters.

I am telling you that Mahmud et al is a good study and it got p = 0.003 in favor of ivermectin. You can take the blue pill, and stay a decent respectable member of society. Or you can take the horse dewormer pill, and see where you end up.

In a second, I’ll tell you my answer. But you won’t always have me to answer questions like this, and it might be morally edifying to observe your thought process in situations like this. So take a second, and meet me on the other side of the next section heading.

Alexander’s hypothesis is fascinating, though, well, it’s fascinating. But the more troubling thing is that, as he says, certain scientific arguments, even when supported by evidence, are now excluded so that people don’t seem to be The Wrong Kind, Dear. And that reliance on social ostracism over reasoned argument is (one of) the worst things about our current elite.

Plus: “I want a world where ‘I did a study, but I can’t show you the data’ should be taken as seriously as ‘I determined P = NP, but I can’t show you the proof.'”

Also:

So “believe experts”? That would have been better advice in this case. But the experts have beclowned themselves again and again throughout this pandemic, from the first stirrings of “anyone who worries about coronavirus reaching the US is dog-whistling anti-Chinese racism”, to the Surgeon-General tweeting “Don’t wear a face mask”, to government campaigns focusing entirely on hand-washing (HEPA filters? What are those?) Not only would a recommendation to trust experts be misleading, I don’t even think you could make it work. People would notice how often the experts were wrong, and your public awareness campaign would come to naught.

Indeed. As Alexander notes, once people have figured out that experts lie — and they do — it’s much harder to argue that “yes, but this isn’t the sort of lie they usually tell.”

Again, to have a high trust society, the people in charge of institutions must be trustworthy. When they’re untrustworthy but full of hauteur, they aren’t trusted entirely independent of whether they’re right or wrong this time.

Also: “And now let’s return to that first word, ‘hostile’. 95% of biology professors are Democrats. Plus medical organizations keep rubbing more and more salt in the wound. . . . If we want to make people more willing to get vaccines, or less willing to take ivermectin, we have to make the scientific establishment feel less like an enclave of hostile aliens to half the population.”

The problem is, America’s gentry class utterly depends on not simply feeling superior to the others, but on loudly denigrating the others, for its self-image. And it values its self image more than objective reality. Sadly, there appears to be no treatment or vaccine for that ailment, which is far more destructive than Covid.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Brain changes during orgasmic meditation, study finds. “In a first-ever study, orgasmic meditation, a unique spiritual practice that uses stimulation of a woman’s clitoris as its focus, has been found to produce a distinctive pattern of brain function, according to a study published in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology on Nov 11th.”

CHAIN OF COMMAND: General Milley Often Went Rogue.

A witness from inside the administration has suggested that rogue behavior wasn’t abnormal for Milley.

E. Casey Wardynski, a former assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, claimed that Milley — who, according to the book, “Peril,” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, called his Chinese counterpart twice to tell him that the US would not attack Beijing — routinely violated the bounds of his authority.

Wardynski said Milley and chief of staff of the US Army Gen. James McConville engaged in a “pattern of behavior” to thwart President Donald Trump.

Wardynski also called Milley a bully who had no intention of supporting the president.

Milley’s job is to give advice and follow orders — not behave like the Woke version of a four-star Hollywood heavy.

RICE UNIVERSITY: OOPS, OUR TESTS WERE WRONG.

We’ve discovered some anomalies with the test results we received this week from one of our three providers. I’m going to explain in detail what we’ve discovered and how we discovered it, but the bottom line is this: Dozens of people whose initial tests showed them to be COVID-positive have been retested twice and all but one of those have turned out to be negative. . . .

When we examined the results a few days ago, we suspected something was wrong. Those results didn’t seem right for a number of reasons: Over 90% of the positive infections came from a single test provider; three-quarters of the positive tests were from people who reported no symptoms; the positive results were widely scattered across various groups in our population, with only one potential cluster that seemed more likely to be associated with their proximity to a particular testing location; and over 90% of the reported infections were for people who were fully vaccinated.

We then reviewed the detailed data and noted some very unusual patterns in the results that suggested there was a possible issue with a testing provider rather than a broader campus outbreak. When we consulted with that provider, we learned that they had begun using a different protocol than they had previously used at Rice, resulting in significant differences in how test results are decided. This change in testing protocol had not been disclosed to Rice. We asked that they immediately revert to their prior testing protocol and they have done so.

Then we retested about 50 people who initially tested positive. Each of them was tested two additional times, on two different days, by two different test providers, and all but one came back negative. Based on the anomalies and the two follow-up negative tests from other providers, we concluded that these people who were previously treated as positive were in fact negative, so they were released from isolation. The people whose positive tests were verified remain in isolation.

These testing data anomalies were part of the reason we decided to take most of our classes on-line for the first two weeks, until Sept. 3, as a precautionary measure. We’ll largely leave those plans in place, because many of our students and faculty have already made their own plans in accordance with that schedule. We will use this time to assess any other possible measures that we might put in place. We’re going to make some operational adjustments that will be announced shortly, but right now we anticipate returning to fully in-person classroom instruction in two weeks.

Students who we asked to delay moving on campus until after Sept. 3 are now welcome to move in as soon as they want.

Good catch, but how many other tests elsewhere are wrong?

MORE FROM ARKANSAS LAW: Naming of Little Rock law professorship raises questions: A missing memo led to a Little Rock law school professorship being briefly named for former President Bill Clinton in 2020 and then to questions from lawmakers on Thursday.

The professorship at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law was the subject of a legislative hearing after questions from two professors. Now known as the Distinguished Professorship in Constitutional Law, it was funded by a 1999 donation from the school’s namesake, according to a letter to legislators from UALR Chancellor Christina Drale. . . .

John DiPippa, dean emeritus of the law school, started using Clinton’s name on his position in the summer of 2020, under the guidance of current Dean Terri Beiner. Beiner gave that guidance based on a staff member’s discovery of the 1999 letter giving permission for the professorship to be named for Clinton, having assumed that was “the final word on the matter and that the omission of the Clinton name on the professorship was an oversight,” Drale wrote.

DiPippa retired in January.

In May, one of the law school professors, Tom Sullivan, raised an issue about the substance of the Clinton professorship, and another, Robert Steinbuch, asked how the professorship came about, Beiner told the committee.

Beiner and Steinbuch both testified before the House and Senate Committees on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs. Steinbuch had applied for the professorship, which ultimately went to another faculty member.
The Senate committee chairman, Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, said the rollout of the professorship’s name seemed odd. The name was the subject of several opinion columns by Mike Masterson in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this summer.

“We do have an interest in making sure that things are done appropriately, that fairness is reigning true, and that we don’t overpoliticize things,” he said, adding that he was “just wondering about the timing of it.”
Beiner said it took time for the administrators to go through the relevant documents and didn’t scour all the law school records until receiving an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request from Masterson.
She said it was “absolutely nothing political” and had to do with making sure the intent of the donor was carried out. Neither Bowen nor Smith are still living.

Steinbuch said the name issue was part of a pattern of politicization at the law school, which had he said become an environment of “cryptoleftism wokeism.” He said no other professorships at the school are named for politicians.

After about 45 minutes of discussion, Rapert said the school needed to make a better effort of handling those types of issues in-house.

Who names a professorship for a disbarred, sex-harassing, politician? Well, now we know.

ON CUOMO, THE MEDIA OWES ITS AUDIENCE AN APOLOGY (AND SOME REFLECTION):

Major media outlets loved Andrew Cuomo, and it absolutely breaks their hearts that they have to report on the sexual harassment scandal now. They didn’t want it to end this way. They wanted him to be a winner through all this.

What these outlets owe their audience is an apology and a promise to reflect inwardly on how their skewing of the coverage created this whole scandal. Yes, Andrew Cuomo is apparently a monster with or without the media’s help, but because they made him out to be such a hero in the first place, they had to ignore clear signs of problems and abuse as they popped up.

Cuomo’s accusers popped up for weeks and received very little coverage. At no point was the media really interested in following the pattern. They absolutely dropped the nursing home deaths scandal as quickly as they could. They wanted nothing to do with any of it, and in the end, their propping up Cuomo actually makes him look like more of a monster because he had that much further to fall in the public’s eyes.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, who spent the last quarter century propping up Bill Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal, defending Al Gore and his doomsday rhetoric, pretending that John Kerry was the second coming of Patton, that Obama was the second coming of God, and that Hillary and Biden had track records worthy of the White House, and you’ll know that no apologies or circumspection will ever be forthcoming.

DAVID HARSANYI: Biden Is Off to a Disastrous Start.

What else can the president control? Nationalizing elections isn’t the president’s job. Controlling the southern border is. Yet, when Biden isn’t blaming Donald Trump or seasonal migration patterns for the crisis on the border, he’s pretending nothing is wrong.

There were 178,622 apprehensions on the border in April, according to Customs and Border Protection — the highest total in more than two decades. To put the number in context, last April, there were 17,106 apprehensions.

The president can’t control the movement of migrants outside our borders. But Biden helped trigger this crisis by, among other things, undoing the Trump administration’s “public-charge” policies that barred immigrants from participating in welfare programs and rolling back the “remain in Mexico” policy that impelled migrants to wait in Mexico while their claims were being adjudicated. Moreover, most modern Democrats talk about laws that govern illegal immigration and border control as inherently racist and unnecessary. All of this incentivizes the anarchy we’re seeing at the border.

Demanding we wear masks isn’t the president’s job. Conducting foreign policy is. And since Biden took the reins, the Middle East has dramatically destabilized.

But other than that, how did you enjoy the first 100 days, Mr. Harsanyi?

JOEL KOTKIN: The Geography of Covid-19. “The ongoing pandemic is reshaping the geography of our planet, helping some areas and hurting others. In the West, the clear winners have been the sprawling suburbs and exurbs, while dense cores have been dealt a powerful blow. The pandemic also has accelerated class differences and inequality, with poor and working class people around the world paying the dearest price. These conclusions are based on data we have repeatedly updated. Despite some variations, our earlier conclusions hold up: the virus wreaked the most havoc in areas of high urban density. This first became evident in the alarming pre-lockdown fatalities that occurred in New York City and the suburban commuting shed from which many of the employees in the huge Manhattan business district are drawn. Similar patterns have been seen in Europe and Asia as well.”

Flashback: Coronavirus lessons on density, mass transit, bureaucracy and censorship: They kill.

(UPDATE: Typo in link corrected.)

ROGER KIMBALL: Joe Biden’s dire opening chapter on the world stage.

The whole performance was positively shaming. Both sides had agreed on opening statement of two minutes. Blinken and Sullivan followed the rules. Yang went on for nearly 20 minutes, explaining how the US, with capitulation to Black Lives Matter, antifa and other radicals, was in no position to lecture China. He has a point. A canny friend of mine says that he would rather be governed by the Chinese than the Yale faculty. I am not ready to go that far, but I see his point.

The Anchorage outrage was not an isolated incident. On the contrary, though it is early days yet in the Biden-Harris (or Harris-Biden) administration, a pattern of contempt for America and its leaders seems to be taking hold. In the course of a ‘what-flavor-is-your-milkshake’ valen- er, interview with George ‘I <3 Hillary’ Stephanopoulos, Biden was asked if he thought Russian president Vladimir Putin was a ‘killer’. He answered yes, in response to which Putin said he wished Biden the best of health and suggested they livestream a debate. Can you imagine what that would be like?

Joe Biden can barely make it up the stairs to Air Force One without tripping (not once but thrice). It was ‘the wind’ said a White House spox. Remember when President Trump reached for the handrail after speaking at West Point? You would have thought he was about to expire from the hysterical media coverage.

The Swamp has continued its bizarre deflection of the greatest threat to the United States — an increasingly bellicose China — in order to cultivate their favorite meme: the dastardliness of Putin’s Russia. Really, you cannot encounter a news story from the Fake News Conglomerate without the canned strains of ‘Russian interference in the election’. And now HuffPo and kindred outlets are excitedly peddling the non-news that Russia was somehow behind the Hunter Biden laptop story. Sure, they circulated the story, which as far as I know was broken by the New York Post, but the entity behind thestory, the person at the origin, was Hunter ‘Ole Cokehead’ Biden himself.

Joe Biden has been in office for just two months. Has any US president had such a disastrous opening chapter on the world stage? None that I can recall.

Move along, nothing to see here:

I wonder how or if Saturday Night Live will cover Biden’s fall. Probably not like this, from the good old days, when SNL’s utter contempt for Gerald Ford would cause one writer to mutter, “The president’s watching. Let’s make him cringe and squirm:”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Via a friend, SNL will ignore this, but the memesmiths aren’t:

And how far are they willing to go to protect Biden from critics? This far.

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND’S LASTING VICTORY:

By the time I came of age and started reading about the New Left, nearly all of Haut California assumed that the whole ordeal was behind us—an interesting subject for KQED documentaries but otherwise confined to the past. At that time, the state’s former conservative Republican governor was president of the United States. He would be succeeded by his own vice president, who would in turn be succeeded by a “New” (read: centrist) Democrat. “The Sixties,” or at least their most radical aspects, were well and truly behind us.

* * * * * * * *

Nordlinger’s piece is historical, so it might seem unfair to judge it by its failure to look the present (and future) squarely in the face. But when the past bears so directly on the here-and-now, I don’t see how the criticism can reasonably be avoided.

A telling fact Nordlinger does not mention is that the biological son of one of the villains of his story, Kathy Boudin, and the adopted son of two others, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, is now the elected District Attorney of San Francisco County. It may be reserved to God to visit the sins of the fathers unto the sons, but what of those sons who, like Michael Corleone, enthusiastically embrace the family business—and then expand it into the corridors of power à la Damien Thorn?

Chesa Boudin differs from his parents, biological and adoptive, in one respect only: rather than fighting the system to inflict harm, create chaos, and do evil, he puts the system to work toward those ends. It’s not just that Boudin works to make everyday life more awful by refusing to enforce what he dismisses as mere “quality of life” (e.g., open drug use and public defecation) and “victimless” (e.g., burglary and auto theft) crimes, so that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rates and arguably the worst quality of life of any big city in the nation. Boudin is also against using the powers of his office to go after what even he is forced to admit are non-trivial offenses.

On his second day in office, the brand new radical-chic DA fired his seven most-experienced prosecutors because they were too good at their jobs. Two weeks later, he ordered his office never again to request cash bail for any offense, guaranteeing that dangerous criminals would roam the streets and that many would never face trial for their crimes. Earlier this year, a parolee plowed a stolen car into two pedestrians, killing both. The “driver”—Troy Ramon McAllister—had been arrested by the SFPD five times in the prior eight months, only to be released without charges on Boudin’s orders every single time.

As Boudin has redefined his role, it is no longer to convict criminals but to further “social justice.” He favors babying the violent with so-called “restorative justice.” It’s unclear what, exactly, “restorative justice” entails; it’s easier to say what it’s not: punishment or deterrence. Early in Boudin’s tenure, after two (nonwhite) young men assaulted an elderly man (also nonwhite) who was collecting cans to recycle, the SFPD did its job and arrested the assailants. The DA, though, declined to press charges. This pattern has since been repeated enough times—including, most recently, the homicide of an 84-year-old—that local media and the intelligentsia realize they can no longer ignore it. And so, to cope, they blame … “white supremacy” and Trump.

Read the whole thing.

Related: In Tinseltown, a Glimmer of Hope on Law and Order. “A recently launched effort to recall Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón might represent the first encouraging sign for opponents of the ‘progressive-prosecutor’ movement in American cities—among the most consequential developments in criminal-justice policy in recent years. From Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Boston to Chicago, St. Louis, and Dallas, cities have handed the job of representing victims and holding criminals accountable to self-styled ‘reformers’ and former defense attorneys who campaigned on promises to restructure our nation’s criminal-justice system.”

IN MUST-WATCH CLIP, TRUMP ATTORNEY “MICHAEL VAN DER VEEN, CITIZEN” DESTROYS MEDIA:

[CBS News anchor Lana Zak] seemingly didn’t know what to say, and wanted to follow up on van der Veen’s assertion that the House managers doctored evidence.

To be clear for our viewers, what you’re talking about now is a checkmark that’s a verification on Twitter that did not exist on that particular tweet, a 2020 that should have actually read 2021, and the selective editing, you say, of the tapes. Is that how — is that the doctored evidence of what you’re speaking?

At that point, van der Veen is all of us when he lost it on her.

Wait, wait, wait, wait…that’s not enough for you? That’s not enough for you?

Zak indignantly jumped in to argue with him, not believing that he dared to question her.

It’s not okay to doctor a little bit of evidence. The media has to start telling the right story in this country. The media is trying to divide this country. You are bloodthirsty for ratings, and as such, you’re asking questions now that are already set up with a fact pattern. I can’t believe you would ask me a question indicating that it’s alright just to doctor a little bit of evidence. There’s more stuff we uncovered that they doctored, to be frank with you, and maybe that will come out someday.

To be fair, accepting faked evidence from the government par for the course from the network that brought you Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and Scott Pelley.

WHEN EZRA KLEIN HAS NOTICED. . . . California Is Making Liberals Squirm: If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else? “California, as the biggest state in the nation, and one where Democrats hold total control of the government, carries a special burden. If progressivism cannot work here, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?”

Once you start looking for this pattern, you see it everywhere. California talks a big game on climate change, but even with billions of dollars in federal funding, it couldn’t build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The project was choked by pricey consultants, private land negotiations, endless environmental reviews, county governments suing the state government. It has been shrunk to a line connecting the midsize cities of Bakersfield and Merced, and even that is horribly over budget and behind schedule. . . .

The vaccine rollout in California was marred by overly complex eligibility criteria that slowed the pace of vaccinations terribly in the early days. Those regulations were written with good intentions, as California politicians worried over how to balance speed and equity. The result, however, wasn’t fairness, but sluggishness, and California lagged behind the rest of the nation for the first weeks of the effort. Eventually, the state reversed course and simplified eligibility.

When you prize wokeness over results, you get wokeness over results.