TAMARA KEEL: Review: Smith & Wesson Shield Plus. “It’s bigger, it’s badder, but it’s not too much to handle.”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG — OTHER THAN EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS? Retreat From Afghanistan Makes Taliban Best Armed Islamist Group on Earth.
OLD AND BUSTED: Establishment leftists fear a Seven Days in May moment:
The New Hotness? Coup: Milley Secretly Took Control of the Military, Despite Not Being Elected to Any Office;
Totalitarian Press Cheers.
THE WATER NEARS THE BOILING POINT: Did you see that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded that Amazon revise its algorithm to stop promoting books and other products with messages that contradict the official Covid narrative? Next, Fox, Newsmax, OAN required to pre-clear program transcripts with CDC?
J.D. VANCE IS NOW OFFICIALLY RUNNING FOR SENATE. I just donated. I’ve known him for years, I think he’d do a lot of good, and while he was initially anti-Trump, he showed himself capable of learning, which puts him ahead of most politicians.
WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR FREEDOM TO SURVIVE IN AMERICA: Bradley Prize winner Mollie Hemingway provides a bracing meditation on what must be done if we are to preserve this great Republic.
EMILY JASHINSKY: The Revolution Will Be Bureaucratized.
Why, wondered Chris, should we spend a second worrying about deficits while the culture is crumbling around us? Why should we waste precious time fretting over the growth of the state when children are being mutilated in the name of social justice, with the full support of our institutions?
Chris came around. President Biden’s new federal vaccine requirements show the dangers of treating these issues as mutually exclusive. Indeed, many on the right are increasingly tempted to treat them as such, exhausted by the useless Republican establishment and animated by the swift radicalization of our institutions.
It’s boring and sounds tired, I know, but ballooning state power is not a silly fear of “Zombie Reaganites” and insufferable libertarians. It’s a vehicle of cultural tyranny as much as economic. It’s a tool for the political establishment to bulldoze our culture from their sad office buildings here in Washington.
Read the whole thing.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICA’S TOP GENERAL AND A CHINESE SPY? “Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. ‘General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.'”
If true, this explains a lot about the decisions our “leaders” have been making lately.
TWITTER WAS LIT LAST NIGHT: Nicki Minaj Calls MSNBC’s Joy Reid A ‘Lying C**n,’ Tells Meghan McCain To ‘Eat Sh*t’ In Vaccine Rant.
Rapper Nicki Minaj called MSNBC host Joy Reid a racial slur Monday night and told Meghan McCain to “eat shit” Tuesday after Minaj expressed hesitancy to get the coronavirus vaccine.
Minaj first accused Reid of racism Monday after the political analyst criticized the songwriter for her thoughts on the coronavirus vaccine.
“To people like Nicki Minaj, I have to say this,” Reid said. “You have a platform, sister, that is 22 million followers, okay. I have two million followers. You have 22 million followers on Twitter. For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives, my God, sister, you could do better than that.”
Reid then accused Minaj of putting people in death’s way.
Minaj shot back in a tweet.
“This is what happens when you’re so thirsty to down another black woman (by the request of the white man), that you didn’t bother to read all my tweets. ‘My God SISTER do better’ imagine getting ur [sic] dumb ass on tv a min after a tweet to spread a false narrative about a black woman.”
Related:
As Jim Treacher responds: “I was told that only Trump voters and other rednecks1 are vaccine-hesitant, but here’s a famous rapper saying things that will shock the liberal intelligentsia. Much like Busta Rhymes rejecting all this masking hysteria. I actually got suspended from Twitter for a week just for quoting him. It’s only ‘misinformation’ when us lowly proles say it, right?”
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: ‘New York Times’ Quietly Removes Claim That Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was ‘Unsubstantiated.’
DOMESTIC TERRORISM UPDATE: Two far-left activists convicted of interfering with track control systems in Washington.
Last year I wrote about two far-left activists who had been caught tampering with train tracks near Bellingham, Washington. Samantha Frances Brooks, 24, and Ellen Brennan Reiche, 28, were caught placing what is called a shunt on the tracks. A shunt is basically just a piece of wire which is connected from one side of the track to the other. That action mimics the electrical signal that is generated when a train passes over the tracks and confuses the automatic control system which is designed to prevent trains from crashing into one another.
As I noted when the pair were caught, there had been more than 40 such shunts were placed on tracks nearly Bellingham last year. In one case a train carrying hazardous materials was fooled into automatically braking (thinking there was another train up ahead). The breaking was so sudden that one of the couplings came apart and the train was separated into two parts. Authorities noted that this could have led to a derailment in a residential area. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
I wrote several blog posts in the mid-naughts linking to articles with concerns that middle-eastern terrorists would begin to attack America’s rail system. Even I didn’t think America’s left would beat them to the punch.
LOCKDOWN FALLOUT: Farmers hit with most disruptive price hikes, supply shortages in decades as pandemic slowdowns catch up to Colorado. “International markets were upended by pandemic-related disruptions to supply chains, that in recent decades have become increasingly global and responsive. Boats stuck waiting to be unloaded at California ports have ripple effects that blow back to plants in Asia, on to suppliers in the U.S., and eventually hit small business owners, grocery stores and customers. A winter storm that crippled Texas’ infrastructure in February and a shift to more online shopping have further disrupted supply chains.”
WASN’T THERE A LIMBAUGH SKIT ABOUT AL GORE DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS? Researchers potty-train cows to reduce ammonia emissions.
“F*** JOE BIDEN”: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Idahoans Welcome Biden With Large Protests. “Chants of ‘traitor’ and ‘Joe Biden sucks’ greeted the president, with people irate over his unconstitutional new vaccine mandates for tens of millions of Americans announced late last week.”
2019’s SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC Mocked, Criticized After Wearing ‘Tax The Rich’ Dress To Elitist Met Gala, Branded A ‘Fraud.’
“Individual tickets are reportedly priced at $30,000 a piece, a far cry from when [Vogue editor-in-chief Anna] Wintour first took over the running of the event in 1995 when they were just $1,000,” Newsweek reported. “Then there are the tables, typically bought by brands and fashion houses. These reportedly start at $275,000.”
AOC was widely mocked and criticized online, including by her supporters, for the stunt, including:
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Ej Dickson, senior writer at Rolling Stone, tweeted: “Am I the only one who thinks this is really f***ing stupid[?] 1) The dress is ugly, 2) She’s at a $35k per person event and this isn’t nearly the own she thinks it is. 3) The dress is ugly. I mean I love her but come on this is so dumb. Peak girl boss s**t.”
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Glenn Greenwald, a progressive blogger, tweeted: “Lots of people commenting snidely on the lack of masks and social distancing in this opulent indoor event in the middle of a pandemic but — as was true of Obama’s indoor bash — COVID wasn’t invited to the #MetGala and these are the sophisticated people who aren’t in danger.”
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Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) tweeted: “I’m not even mad at the lack of self awareness or hypocrisy anymore. At this point it’s just hilarious. These people are a giant joke.”
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Donald Trump Jr. tweeted: “What makes @AOC a bigger fraud: The “tax the rich” dress while she’s hanging out with a bunch of wealthy leftwing elites or the lack of masks after spending the past 18 months as one of the biggest authoritarian mask Karens in the country?”
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Stephen Taylor, political commentator, tweeted: “This is such a political miscalculation. It’s quite amazing to be watching it in realtime.”
America’s Newspaper of Record explores the brand-extension possibilities: AOC Now Selling ‘Tax The Rich’ Caviar For Just $10,000 A Can.
Meanwhile, NRO’s Charles Cooke reminds everyone that the Democrats remain the party of the working man. Exit question: Why Did the Staff at the Met Wear Masks, While the Celebrities Went Without?
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Half of Americans Call Jan. 6 Suspects ‘Political Prisoners.’
Plus:
- Introducing “genderfae” and “generfloret” because we’re cruel like that
- “Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wore a ‘tax the rich’ dress *to a tax shelter*”
- See the truly dark side of white supremacy
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
RULING CLASS PRIVILEGE: COVID rules are for serfs, not celebrities: None of the passes given to the elite apply to us plebs.
I think this is the most evocative photo from the Met Gala:
Note Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) festooned with “Equal Rights” as she stands maskless in front of identically-dressed underlings who, unlike the celebrity guests, are all wearing masks. And the underlngs are all in black, down to the masks. At least the Handmaids get to wear red.
YOU WANT TAR AND FEATHERS AND GUILLOTINES? THIS IS HOW YOU GET TAR AND FEATHERS AND GUILLOTINES: Fed-up Sarasota County school board bans criticism of members. “At a meeting last week, Vice Chairwoman Jane Goodwin — standing in for Chairwoman Shirley Brown, who lost control of the meeting — directed police to remove citizens who criticized specific elected officials during the public comment period, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports.”
They can be reached here. Their group photo seems rather Karenish. There’s only one man.
Our political class increasingly seems to think it shouldn’t have to care what voters think. That’s how you turn voters into protesters, rioters, and revolutionaries.
FASTER, PLEASE: A fountain of youth for ageing stem cells in bone marrow.
ANOTHER STICKER FOR YOUR COLLECTION: 3inch Joe Biden Funny Sticker, That’s All Me I Did That Decal. I love that people are applying these at gas pumps across the country as gas prices rise.
TO BE FAIR, HE MAKES A LOT OF THOSE: Joe Biden Just Weakened His Cyber Redline With Russia. That’s A Mistake. “Since cyberspace attack on all US targets was already illegal, the list moves US redlines higher, to allow for more criminal activity, since the list implies *other than these targets,* the United States won’t even consider inflicting unacceptable costs for illegal Russian attack on US territory. Toothless indictments – yes; counter cyberspace attack — no. By not defending them, President Biden and his national security advisors are erasing these international norms and redlines. Under international law, you defend norms and sovereignty by *physically defending them,* not by abandoning them.”
ROGER SIMON: Has the Time Come to Break Up America?
So here I am writing a very tentative, very early, article about how we might achieve this separation, partial or complete, as the case may be, or at least think about it.
Please understand what I have in mind is not a civil war, anything but. Part of my intention is to diminish the violence that’s escalating throughout the nation, dial down the hatred, and certainly to avoid deaths.
It’s a peaceful, gradual, and negotiated separation I wish to explore based on two societies recognizing they have different goals and approaches and deciding to go their separate ways.
In other words, if a serious majority of blue state residents want to be “woke,” teach their children critical race theory, allow them to choose their sex at age eight and so forth, much as I abhor these things, they should have that ability, just as the majority of red state citizens who wish to preserve our constitutional republic for future generations should be able to do that as well.
This division shouldn’t be all that surprising at this point, considering what Jefferson said about a revolution being necessary every few decades. The United States of America has grown into something so large as to be nearly ungovernable, an unwieldy nation of some 330 million, a number far greater than the Founders could have conceived in the late 18th century.
Nevertheless, if states’ rights were honored to the degree those same Founders intended, it’s doubtful we would even be having this discussion.
But they’re not and we are.
As Bertolt Brecht famously wrote, “Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people And elected another?”
IT’S COME TO THIS: Biden’s Ninth Circuit Nominee — Was Just Unanimously Overturned by the Ninth Circuit.
How exceedingly awful was Koh’s ruling?
“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (unanimously) reversed a 2019 ruling by a federal judge who found that Qualcomm had abused its monopoly position in wireless chips and overcharged mobile phone makers for its patents….
“The District Court judge, Lucy Koh,…(issued) a 233-page decision that could have forced Qualcomm to renegotiate its licensing contracts with phone makers and license its technology to rival chip makers.
“But the appeals court panel was not persuaded.
“In a 56-page ruling, the judges concluded that Qualcomm had no duty under antitrust law to license its competitors. They also ruled that Qualcomm’s policy of not supplying chips to any handset maker that had not licensed its patents did not work like an illegal surcharge on chips sold by competitors.
“‘Anti-competitive behavior is illegal under federal antitrust law,’ the judges wrote. “Hyper-competitive behavior is not.”
The Ninth Circuit totally obliterated Koh’s ruling — and her alleged legal thinking behind it.
And now Biden has nominated Koh for a promotion — to the Ninth Circuit.
The court that totally obliterated Koh’s ruling — and her alleged legal thinking behind it.
Those Court colleague lunches should be really…interesting.
You only promote Koh — if you’re primarily interested in destroying the judiciary, IP, the economy and the country.
To be fair, based on the past eight months, you could make the argument that that is precisely the Biden administration’s goal.
#REFUNDTHEPOLICE: Austin Hits All-Time Homicide High. “Higher crime rates in Austin are a direct results of a homeless policy that lured more transients to Austin, of police budgets that were cut so more taxpayer money could be diverted to leftwing activists, and of a Soros-backed county DA that has installed a revolving door to put dangerous criminals back on Austin’s streets without prosecuting them.”
TO BE FAIR, SHE’S NEITHER TERRIBLY SMART NOR TALENTED AT POLITICS: Kamala Harris Uses Anti-Vax Messaging to Justify Vaccine Mandates.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Farnsworth’s Classical English Style.
THE ATLANTIC: Are Pandemic Hospitalization Numbers Misleading Us?
The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21.
Just like any other successful virus, COVID-19 is becoming more contagious but less dangerous — unlike Joe Biden’s diktats to “combat” it.
Plus this from Matt Margolis:
There are some drawbacks to the study, however. Patients in the VA system are not representative of the U.S. population, as the VA patient populations tends to be older, with few women and no children. The VA also has a policy to test every patient for COVID, while this is not a policy in all hospitals. The study does show, however, that “the introduction of vaccines strongly correlates with a greater share of COVID hospital patients having mild or asymptomatic disease.”
If anything, using older patients would skew the results towards the studied cases being more serious than the national average. The study’s numbers then might be even more encouraging than they appear at first glance.
BUT THE NARRATIVE! COVID-19 vaccine boosters unnecessary for most, say FDA advisers reportedly resigning over issue.
Unlike our military brass during the lead up to Biden’s bungled bugout from Afghanistan, at least people at FDA are resigning in protest.
COLLUSION: Stanford professors ask DOJ to stop looking for Chinese spies at universities in US. I remember when all the best people were ready to turn America upside down over nonexistent Russian collusion claims.
Of course, to be fair, DOJ is supposed to be finding real spies, not making up fake ones.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Black Mark of a Bachelor’s Degree. “Let’s hire anybody but a college graduate. We’ll teach him what he needs to know for our work. Check out the homeschoolers—they are a really sociable lot.”
That’s just shocking.
NPR KEEPS UP THE PANIC PORN: I Got A ‘Mild’ Breakthrough Case. Here’s What I Wish I’d Known. So this guy’s vaccinated, gets Covid anyway, and is pretty sick. Not deathly ill, but like worst-case-of-flu-ever sick. “My legs and arms ached, my fever crept up to 103 and every few hours of sleep would leave my sheets drenched in sweat. I’d drop into bed exhausted after a quick trip down to the kitchen. To sum it up, I’d put my breakthrough case of COVID-19 right up there with my worst bouts of flu. Even after my fever cleared up, I spent the next few weeks feeling low.”
But hey, it’s a good thing he got vaccinated! “‘You probably would have gotten much sicker if you had not been vaccinated,’ Francesca Torriani, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Diego, explained to me recently.”
Well, maybe. My own case of Covid — unvaccinated — was much, much milder than he described. Never ran much of a fever, didn’t feel especially bad except for a bit of a headache and loss of smell, recovered pretty fast. And what he describes is, I’d say, probably about a 60th or 70th percentile case in terms of severity — remember that nearly half of infections are essentially asymptomatic, and many are more like a cold.
Did the vaccine make his particular case milder than it would have been? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe it reduces your chance of hospitalization, but the “hospitalization” statistic turns out to be far less useful than you might think:
Here’s a non-paywalled report on the study:
A recent nationwide study may lead health ofificials to rethink how to analyze COVID-19 hospitalizations as a pandemic metric, The Atlantic reports.
After examining the electronic records for nearly 50,000 patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 at 100 Veterans Affairs hospitals across the United States between March 2020 and June 2021, researchers found that a significant number of the patients actually had mild or asymptomatic infections. Patients who required supplemental oxygen or registered a blood oxygen level below 94 were considered moderate to severe.
Until mid-January 2021, when the vaccine drive really gained steam and the Delta variant had yet to take hold, 36 percent of patients were considered mild or asymptomatic. But in the next six months, that figure jumped to 48 percent, while an ever greater proportion — 57 percent — of vaccinated patients, who make up a much smaller share of admissions to begin with, had less severe cases.
There are probably a few explanations behind the data, per The Atlantic. Many of the patients may have been admitted to the hospital for an unrelated illness and tested positive upon entrance. Others may have been treated as a preventative measure because of comorbities, and some may simply may have just needed quick, relatively easy treatments before leaving.
Actual study is here. None of this is to say the vaccine is useless, of course, but it’s definitely being oversold in this story.
UPDATE: Coincidentally, the Urban Dictionary’s word of the day is NPR-American.
DANGER IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: ‘Defund police’ Squad members are biggest spenders on private security.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: COVID Panic Merchants Might Want To Try Not Lying. “I’ve also heard anecdotal evidence from acquaintances in the medical profession who work in hospitals about rather expansive interpretations of what constitutes a COVID patient for the records. None of this is proof of complete systemic rot, of course, but it’s obvious that there are some flies in the truth ointment.”
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt.
The program, known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists. Today, it shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process, the documents show. Some users are “whitelisted”—rendered immune from enforcement actions—while others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come.
At times, the documents show, XCheck has protected public figures whose posts contain harassment or incitement to violence, violations that would typically lead to sanctions for regular users. In 2019, it allowed international soccer star Neymar to show nude photos of a woman, who had accused him of rape, to tens of millions of his fans before the content was removed by Facebook. Whitelisted accounts shared inflammatory claims that Facebook’s fact checkers deemed false, including that vaccines are deadly, that Hillary Clinton had covered up “pedophile rings,” and that then-President Donald Trump had called all refugees seeking asylum “animals,” according to the documents.
A 2019 internal review of Facebook’s whitelisting practices, marked attorney-client privileged, found favoritism to those users to be both widespread and “not publicly defensible.”
“We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly,” said the confidential review. It called the company’s actions “a breach of trust” and added: “Unlike the rest of our community, these people can violate our standards without any consequences.”
It’s their platform. They can do whatever they like. Act accordingly.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Biden Isn’t Even Pretending His Vaccine Mandate Is About COVID. “The White House doesn’t care about protecting immigrants in this country from COVID. Heck, they don’t even care about Americans getting COVID from immigrants. We’ve known for months now that COVID-positive immigrants have been coming in through the border and then brought into the interior of the country by the Biden administration.”
Stacey Lennox: This Finding About COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects in Teens Are Troubling. “Any society willing to place burdens on children to make adults feel better has lost its collective mind.”
Yours Truly: Here’s the Real Reason Ben Stein Was Suspended From YouTube. “Stein and his panelists may publically exude their bellyfeel for COVID vaccines or vaccine mandates, but to debate those issues could encourage dangerous wrongthink among the proles or Outer Party members.”
TAMARA KEEL: Lights Out.
September 13, 2021
INSANE CLOWN POSSE: FBI fires Whitmer kidnap case agent amid wife beating allegations.
It’s clowns all the way down.
COME THE REVOLUTION, SHE’LL BE FIRST AGAINST THE WALL:
I remember the old Soviet joke, where Leonid Brezhnev showed off his mansion, his country house, his limousine, and his helicopter to his mother. But instead of being impressed, she looked worried: “But Leonid, what if the communists come back?”
ANTHONY BLINKEN HAS TROUBLE TALKING ABOUT being interviewed by the FBI over Hunter Biden’s issues.
Related: ‘That’s A Failure On You!’: Mark Green Tears Into Blinken Over Afghanistan Evacuations.
Keep hearing rumors that Blinken will be the fall guy for this failure, but while he’s terrible, Milley and Austin need to go more.
GERARD VAN DER LEUN: The Wound.
OPEN THREAD: I think it’s the best work you’ve ever done. You son of a bitch.
FILE UNDER “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR“: Facebook and Ray-Ban announced that they are rolling out “smart” Wayfarers that have a built in camera, with a tiny lens capable of recording, well, just about anywhere. Where have we seen this before?Oh yeah…Google tried it a while back, and it turned out to be a very very bad idea. “Lots of people are comparing it to the failed disaster that was Google Glass (which gave rise to the term “Glassholes”).”
I remember “glassholes” being punched in the face in more than a few bars, and as Techdirt pointed out, Facebook’s attempt at limiting their liability is, well, stupid:
“[T]hey seem to think that they can stop people from covering the LED light that goes on when you’re recording… by claiming that it’s a terms of service violation. That’s what a Facebook VP told Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos, whose article on the whole Facebook glasses thing is absolutely worth reading. But this bit is just pure silliness and makes Facebook look ridiculous…”
But as always, the Law of Unintended Circumstances is going to bite more than a few Silicon Valley types right in the butt. Allow me to explain.
Many states (including California, Michigan and Florida) have “two-party consent” privacy laws that cover surreptitious recording, and usually the question will turn on “public interest” or “newsworthiness” (bye bye, Gawker) or whether instead the parties recorded without consent were in a place with a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Now here’s where it gets interesting.
For decades, the corporate media and their “say yes to anything” lawyers had convinced most courts that when sued on these laws, the location and circumstances of recording offered no such reasonable expectation. For example, in Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., media lawyers convinced Seventh Circuit Judge Gerald Posner, after undercover cameras were used to expose a crooked doctor that:
“The test patients [wearing hidden cameras contrary to Illinois law] entered offices that were open to anyone expressing a desire for ophthalmic services and videotaped physicians engaged in professional, not personal, communications with strangers (the testers themselves). The activities of the offices were not disrupted […] Nor was there any “invasion of a person’s private space.”
Ok, we get it. Let’s fast forward to 2019. The Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, was determined to prove that Planned Parenthood was violating federal law and “selling” baby parts. So, like ABC News in Desnick, they sent in some people wired for video and sound, posing as potential purchasers of the “baby parts” to have lunch in a public restaurant to get Planned Parenthood staff to talk about financial arrangements. And talk they did. The undercover video shows Dr. Mary Gatter, the Planned Parenthood senior executive who infamously laughed “I want a Lamborghini” about payments for aborted fetal parts, again haggling over per-specimen pricing for livers, lungs, and brains.
Planned Parenthood went ballistic, and sued CMP in federal court in San Francisco, where the judge did a fair amount of mental gymnastics (“the cases […] consider contextual facts in addition to the fact that the recorded conversation was in a public and open space”) to hold that whether a conversation in a public restaurant was made with a “reasonable expectation of privacy” was a matter for a jury to decide. So off to a jury it went, where, unsurprisingly, the San Francisco jury found the CMP liable for more than $2 million in damages.
So what does all this have to do with GoogleGlass 2.0 and Facebook? This is where the Law of Unintended Consequences comes in. The corporate media put aside their “right to know” arguments used previously to record people surreptitiously, and sotto voce, cheered the result of the CMP case and a parallel criminal case pushed by Planned Parenthood. That’s all well and good, and frankly, I don’t care whether you are for or against abortion-on-demand. That’s your business.
But my business is safeguarding the public’s right to know about matters of public concern and seeing all the facts, especially regarding a 501(c)3 that essentially does its thing at the expense of the public fisc. The corporate media were eerily silent on the CMP case. When salacious headlines (and profit) can be had, corporate media has no problem at all weighing in, waving the flag and demanding the “right to know.” I have personally been involved in such “intervenor” motions, and have no shame in having done so. But the major corporate media and their law firms stayed silent here.
So the $64 question is: When some dope uploads a video made in a restaurant or bar embarrassing another person, and yet more dopes at Buzzfeed, CNN, or The Washington Post republish that video without asking the most fundamental of questions, how can they get around — let alone dispute — the CMP opinion’s holding that it has to go to trial? The corporate media editors and their lawyers — generally smart people — missed the boat, and it seems sadly clear to me that their alleged vow to protect and defend the First Amendment is only contingent upon where in the political spectrum their bill-paying clients fall.
SHUT DOWN GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, AND TWITTER — TO SAVE THE PLANET! Global computing’s carbon footprint is bigger than previously estimated.
HOPE AND CHANGE: I’m starting to see these around town.
UPDATE: I saw in the comments that these are sold out, here is another set of decals that looks promising. (Bumped)
FASTER, PLEASE: New hope for antibody to treat muscular dystrophy.
NOBODY TELL BIDEN ABOUT THIS: The Grill, Major Food Group’s $30 Million Ode to the Mad Men Era, Finally Reopens.
Midtown power dining spot the Grill — the crown jewel of Major Food Group’s dining empire, which it poured $30 million into building out — is shaking off the dust and reopening tonight for the first time in 18 months. The critically acclaimed restaurant, housed in Midtown’s storied Seagram Building, has remained closed for the duration of the pandemic as the office-heavy neighborhood emptied out and workers vanished. Predictably, the return has generated some excitement: Reservations are nearly sold out for the rest of September.
* * * * * * * *
The restaurants join a mixed bag of upscale Manhattan dining spots that are just now beginning to turn the lights back on. Union Square Hospitality Group’s two-Michelin-starred the Modern reopened in July, while Grand Central Oyster Bar is set to reopen on September 20.
More like this, please.
WELL, FOR THE NEXT TWO AND A HALF YEARS, AT LEAST: American Consumers Believe Inflation Is Here to Stay, NY Fed Survey Finds.
THE COMING COLLAPSE IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE: Someone has to foot the bill for empty office space. “Behind the posturing, a consensus is slowly emerging that white-collar desk-warriors should be allowed to stay at home more often post covid-19—and that many probably will. Office landlords, however, and those who bankroll them, continue to pretend that no storm is coming. With billions of dollars sunk in undesirable buildings, they face a reckoning.”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Acts Like Crazy Person During 9/11 Ceremony.
There’s no question that Joe Biden is a bad president. The past eight months have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. And it’s not as if he’s going to get any better. The only question is whether Biden can be held legally responsible for his many, many failures. Is he just too mentally incapacitated to understand how mentally incapacitated he is?
Here’s the latest example of this confused old fossil’s strange and inappropriate behavior:
Read the whole thing.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: President George W. Bush Blew It in Shanksville.
Why is it that whenever President Bush spends his vast goodwill to engage the modern debate, he trains his fire at the right? Why do we hear Bush attack “nativists” more than the budding totalitarian culture that [“Death to America”-proudly retweeting KU student body president] Niya McAdoo represents?
You would think he would remember what the institutional left did to him.
Bush missed an opportunity at Shanksville to address the real causes of our nation’s division. Bush could have provided a fuller accounting of the “malign forces … at work in our common life,” but didn’t.
It is true that the first part of Bush’s tribute at Shanksville was soaring. No American alive on September 11, 2001, could hear it without reliving those dark uncertain weeks and months and being grateful for President Bush. Bush will live through history as a president who kept America safe after that day, and he deserves it.
Bush, like Trump, did not flinch from framing world events as a never-ending battle between good and evil, because it is true.
But then at Shanksville, Bush pivoted and blew all this goodwill by attacking the right, his own political base that defended him loyally. As Byron York wrote, Bush’s attacks at Shanksville were “jaw dropping.”
Earlier today, I wrote:
Not surprisingly, the party whose organizing method is “the moral equivalent of war” views American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head. And as the past month has illustrated, they’re far more focused on fighting against American people and industries, rather than Middle Eastern terrorists.
I wasn’t expecting to see Dubya joining them on the 20th anniversary of September 11th, but apparently, here we are.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Conspiracy theory of the day: Democrats are planning to provoke a riot at the coming protest over the 1/6 detainees, and Bush is trying to protect himself.
DOCTORS, ETHICISTS BLAST COLLEAGUES WHO THREATEN TO WITHHOLD TREATMENT FROM UNVAXXED.
In Germany, this was dubbed “Lebensunwertes Leben.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Henry-Levy: It’s Never a Good Sign When Retired Military Members Put Themselves Back in Service.
NOT THE HERO WE DESERVE BUT MAYBE THE ONE WE NEED: Worried Dems Taming Tax Hikes After Joe Manchin Opposes. “Tax hikes are as American as soccer, stroganoff, and Apple Tarte Tatin — and now have feckless Dems wondering if one of their own will let them get away with jacking taxes up ever higher.”
BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Yoga Fitness for Men: Build Strength, Improve Performance, and Increase Flexibility.
RECALL: San Fernando Valley residents have trouble casting recall ballots.
At El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, some voters say they were told the computers showed them as already having voted, even though they had not.
West Hills resident Estelle Bender, 88, said she was far from the only person who was being told incorrectly that they had already voted.
In addition to friends of hers who experienced the issue and two other women outside the polling place, Bender said that inside, “the man next to me was arguing the same thing.”
Bender said she filled out a provisional ballot and “left really angry.”
Bender added that, to her knowledge, many of those affected by this issue are self-identified Republicans, and she’s suspicious.
“I’d still like to know how I voted,” Bender said.
I have a guess.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Washington State high school cancels 9/11 tribute, says it could offend some students.
PEOPLE USED TO THINK CIGARETTES PREVENTED COLDS, WHICH OFTEN COME FROM CORONAVIRUSES: Drugs that mimic effects of cigarette smoke reduce SARS-CoV-2’s ability to enter cells.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE. Karol Markowicz: No sports, no clubs, no talking during lunch and other joys of COVID schooling.
We used to understand that it is important for kids to get exercise with friends. But we have forgotten everything we have ever known about child development in the name of fighting a virus that poses a minuscule risk to children.
A New York state Education Department health guide for the 2021-22 school year worries a lot about kids’ outrageous breathing. “Due to increased exhalation that occurs during physical activity, some sports can put players, coaches, trainers and others at increased risk for getting and spreading COVID-19. Close contact sports and indoor sports are particularly risky. Similar risks might exist for other extracurricular activities, such as band, choir, theater and school clubs that meet indoors.”
Kids all over the city will be eating lunch only outdoors while sitting on the ground. Some schools proscribe speaking during lunch. One Manhattan elementary school sent parents a survey asking what they should do in case of inclement weather. One of the options was actually “skip lunch.”
Exit questions: “Adults in the United States are largely moving on with their lives, going to football games, concerts and galas — while kids are treated like lepers. The real question is: When does it end? Will these restrictions ever go away? What’s the off-ramp for this level of cruel irrationality?”
PEOPLE OF ALL RACES WERE MURDERED THAT DAY: Washington State High School Cancels 9/11 Tribute for Being ‘Racially Insensitive.’
JOANNE JACOBS: Philosophy prof resigns from ‘social justice factory.’ “The university ‘has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division,’ Boghossian writes.”
WOULD IT NOT BE EASIER FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER? Poll: Democrats see Trump supporters, unvaccinated as more dangerous than Taliban, China.
Not surprisingly, the party whose organizing method is “the moral equivalent of war” views American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head. And as the past month has illustrated, they’re far more focused on fighting against American people and industries, rather than Middle Eastern terrorists.
But why is the Democratic Party such a cesspit of racism? “They’re Experimenting On Us” — Why Black New Yorkers Don’t Trust The Vaccine.
JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO CIVILITY: Pro-Abortion Protesters Plan to Terrorize the Kavanaugh Family at Home.
YEP: Inflation quality adjustments were always tricky. COVID-19 broke them. “What if used cars aren’t an outlier? The price of used cars today is more than 40 percent higher than it was a year ago. There is a very simple story for this inflation: demand for cars remains high, but the supply of new cars has been constricted by an acute shortage of the computer chips used in the electronic systems. This is clearly an outlier in the data, a fact the White House, eager to combat bad news, has highlighted. They have also constructed inflation data removing cars and other outliers. This approach gives me pause. As we saw above, cars are one of the easiest products to value objectively. The same properties that make it easy to measure auto quality in normal times make it obvious what kinds of strains the market is facing in these difficult times. By contrast, changes elsewhere—even just in new cars—might be a bit more subtle.”
Plus: “If the official statistics miss quality changes and therefore understate recent inflation, then using those statistics for inflation adjustment will lead us to overstate progress in measures like real GDP per capita or real consumption per capita.”
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY. Piers Morgan: It made me sick to watch a once-male special forces combat veteran beat up a woman on TV — it’s time to stop this trans sport insanity before women start being killed.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Every Gentile And Secular Jew Needs To Know: A Yom Kippur Primer.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: California Gov. Gavin Newsom Poised to Survive Recall Effort.
Related: Gavin Newsom’s California is falling apart — yet the governor, the essence of white privilege, will likely weather the storm of a recall election.
KURT SCHLICHTER: With Blue Senate Seats in Play in 2022, Bet on GOP Winners.
If you want to see change, you need to be donating and volunteering. Commenting on the Internet won’t do it.
WHAT’S SO AWFUL ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING? One Year Ago The Abraham Accords Were Announced. Biden Stopped Their Growth.
CHANGE? Virginia Gubernatorial Race Heats Up as McAuliffe and Youngkin Vie for Votes. “Polling suggests the race leans in McAuliffe’s favor by anywhere from 8-10 points, though some believe it’ll be closer due to President Joe Biden’s falling popularity.”
#1 BEST SELLER IN GLASS & GLASSWARE: Crock Pot: 1001 Best Crock Pot Recipes of All Time.
CHANGE? Andrew Yang, Democrat Who Endorsed Joe Biden, To Start New Political Party. “It’s unclear whether Yang has already left the Democratic Party — which he identified with during his rise to prominence — or what role he sees the new party playing in politics going forward.”
It’s clear to me, even though I don’t agree with Yang on much of anything.
Nationally, Democrats are in complete thrall to their craziest supporters and more corrupt and incompetent leadership, and Yang doesn’t seem to be crazy, incompetent, or corrupt.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student government official caught red-handed yanking flags from 9/11 memorial.
THIS SURE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A COUNTRY THAT GAVE BIDEN 81 MILLION VOTES: Trump Embraced by Cops, Firemen, and Sports Fans as ‘F Biden’ Sweeps the Nation.
NOW OUT FROM THE EXCELLENT TOBY HARNDEN: First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: American Studies department’s only 9/11 event focuses on ‘anti-Blackness.’
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: New book reveals how Biden’s family used his position for profit.
WHEN DO THEY APPOINT ZAMPOLITS TO ENSURE TOTAL LOYALTY TO THE PARTY? Biden Administration Orders Ideological Purge Of U.S. Military Academies.
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