It’s Monday, January 21st, 2023…but before we begin, Dave Rubin gives you a taste of what we in The Democratic Republic of Maryland get as a Republican governor:
Does anyone other than Larry Hogan even remember WTF Charlie Baker was?!? Fortunately for Maryland and the country, Hogan’s political future is about as bright as George Santos’.
By the way, things work precisely the same way north of the border in Canada:
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, Clay Travis weighs in on the Ivan Provorov persecution:
It’s life once more imitating art, in this case, the classic Seinfeld ribbon scene:
“On Saturday morning, Fox News’ Gianno Caldwell was asked to leave a restaurant in North Miami, Florida because his Conservative views “don’t align” with the opinions of the owners. The restaurant, Paradis Books and Bread, posted on their public Instagram account (@paradis.bb) with a caption that alluded to Gianno and his group, stating that “their behavior and their words made other folks in the space as well as the one of us working very uncomfortable.”
“This situation reminds me of something that MLK said in 1963, a very simple truth. He said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And what I experienced yesterday, me and some of my neighbors, who I’m just getting to know, was an injustice. It was a grave injustice,” the Fox News political analyst said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” Sunday.
On Saturday morning, the restaurant owner approached Caldwell and said that she had been “listening” to their conversation and decided that they “were not welcome” in her restaurant. Caldwell said he asked if he had said something “triggering” to the owner, to which she explained that they were being removed because their politics do not align. Caldwell and his group promptly exited the restaurant in response…”
Here’s the juice: Please explain, if you’re able, how a Socialist denying someone service over the substance of a private conversation is any different than a Christian baker opting out of crafting a custom cake for a gay wedding? And why has the latter been the cause célèbre for numerous frivolous lawsuits while the former is allowed with impunity?
And yes, given The Left’s unending penchant for hypocrisy and double standards, the questions are somewhat rhetorical.
Next up, writing at the Weekend Jolt, Judson Berger suggests, in a typical example of Socialist overreach…
“With a single document, a San Francisco committee has managed to warp the common understanding of reparations beyond recognition and damage the cause the authors aim to advance.
A city advisory panel’s draft recommendations on reparations, released last month but getting noticed this week, not only would expand eligibility for individuals who are not descendants of slaves but put to paper an astronomical monetary figure that, if honored, would necessarily open new wounds in the attempt to heal old ones. From Brittany Bernstein’s news report:
[The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee] has recommended paying out hefty reparations to the city’s longtime black residents, including a $5 million payment per qualifying person and a supplemental income to low-income residents for 250 years.
One problem with this exercise is there’s always a higher number. Two years ago, Evanston, Ill., became the first U.S. city to approve reparations-style payments to black residents, aiming to distribute $25,000 to qualifying households for home repairs or down payments. Now the going rate is $5 million, proving inflation is still with us. The San Francisco proposal, if taken national, would blow out of the water BET founder Robert Johnson’s once-shockingreparations estimate of $14 trillion. If one were to send the San Francisco sum to even half of black Americans, the cost would exceed $100 trillion.
Why not $200 trillion?
The San Francisco plan is discreditingto a movement that has encountered a difficult enough time attracting commitments from policy-makers — even if most accept that the stain of slavery, segregation, and discrimination has disadvantaged many Americans of color, disadvantages that persist to this day. Does anyone truly believe that the typical financial advantage enjoyed by white families is anywhere near $5 million? One need only look at household-finance data for clarity: Most white people aren’t sitting on that amount of money. The 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances found that white households had a median wealth of $188,200, compared with $24,100 for black households. The gap is stark, to be sure; but as that same survey notes, it is also observable in comparison with Hispanic families (median wealth: $36,100) and other minority groups.
If the goal is to redress discrimination and resultant disparities in wealth, and not just slavery, then by that logic they too should be made whole. Herein lies another big problem. As California was not a slave state, the San Francisco draft proposes reparations to a range of people affected by repression in various forms (the document leans on a United Nations definition of reparations as measures that “redress violations of human rights”). So, descendants of slaves along with many others would be eligible; applicants would have to be black, 18 years or older, and meet any two of a list of other criteria ranging from having been born in the city between 1940 and 1996 and lived there for at least 13 years to having been incarcerated by the “failed War on Drugs.”
While the San Francisco committee is not the only group taking a flexible view toward reparations eligibility — Evanston also did — such interpretations leave unclear where to draw the line. Presuming one is drawn, the massive payouts would be invidious and give rise to new grievances, especially among immigrant taxpayers with no generational link to slavery.
If reparations are based on injustices and discrimination other than slavery, there is a far weaker case for singling out a single group for benefits. If anything, California and San Francisco have a much more egregious history of injustices done by the government towards Native Americans and people of Chinese and Japanese descent. Those injustices include laws that prevented Asian Americans from owning guns or testifying in court.
Then, there are the legal and moral problems with giving people money on the basis of race without requiring them to show that they have ever suffered injustice. . . . Its list of proofs of suffering past injustice is quite elastic, including black immigrants from foreign countries to San Francisco as late as 1996 and those who were “Personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs.” Giving someone $5 million for being a heroin trafficker does not seem like justice.
The obligatory caveat is that this proposal is a draft (prepared by city Human Rights Commission staff) and represents recommendations only. Other places are similarly exploring the issue: Cities from Boston to Kansas City have moved recently to study reparations; California has its own task force; Representative Sheila Jackson Lee continues to push for a commission in Congress; and Jen Psaki said in 2021 that President Biden would support a study. The Biden administration has not gone beyond that statement, though the president has a poor track record lately of saying “no” to the most ambitiousprogressive projects imaginable.
While we agree with Berger’s central focus on the utter unworkability of the entire concept of reparations, we question one assertion he makes:
“even if most accept that the stain of slavery, segregation, and discrimination has disadvantaged many Americans of color, disadvantages that persist to this day.“
WE certainly do not accept the stain of slavery, segregation and discrimination as ever having disadvantaged many if any living Americans of color, let alone doing so to this day. Any contemporary disadvantages Americans of color experience are the direct result of utterly counterproductive Progressive policies born of LBJ’s hopelessly-misnomered Great Society, six decades of ruinous, exclusively Dimocratic urban mismanagement and the ignorant and uneducated believing charlatans, scam artists and race hustlers their lot in life is the result not of their own personal choices, but systemic racism and bias based on their skin color.
“The Covid-19 pandemic recently marked its third year. Life has seemingly returned to normal for people in many countries. But Covid itself lingers. Milder variants with significantly higher lethality rates than the seasonal flu circulate. Long-Covid symptoms still plague those afflicted. The official worldwide Covid death toll tops 6 million, while the excess-death count is above 20 million. Just weeks ago, China abandoned its zero-Covid policy overnight without proper preparation, inducing a catastrophe of millions dead under the Omicron wave, as many elders were not vaccinated. Japan recently recorded a new peak in Covid deaths as of December 2022. To paraphrase Yogi Berra — the pandemic ain’t over until it’s over.
Against this backdrop of human tragedy, a pandemic that not only took human lives but also altered social norms and deepened political fault lines, mainstream media have neither critically covered nor objectively scrutinized the central question covered nor objectively scrutinized the central question regarding the origin of Covid-19. Similarly, national leaders and international agencies have remained callously silent during the most recent summits of the United Nations, G7, and G20 — not a single word about the need to ascertain the origin of this existential risk. In the United States, where the Democratic Party had controlled Congress from 2021 until now, Congress failed to take action, such as issuing subpoenas for relevant U.S.-based research entities that partnered with Wuhan coronavirus labs.
It is the essential duty of the government to find the origin of any major disasters and formulate reforms necessary to prevent future occurrences. Imagine if there had been no government investigation after catastrophes such as the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, or other such disasters. We would have been deprived of essential information to obviate future similar incidents.
Investigating the origin of Covid is a comparably urgent priority. It is a public-health disaster of unfathomable magnitude that has killed 1 million Americans, more than the total American casualties in World War II.
…Additional misconduct related to the general origin inquiry comes unexpectedly from the anti-scientific behavior of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership, who support GoF research, and a small clique of GoF virologists, some of whom have undisclosed connectionsto Wuhan labs. Meanwhile, in public, they attack people as conspiracists and racists for merely suggesting the lab-leak possibility. There are many renowned voices outside of the GoF circle who are asking for a real investigation, including Drs. Richard Ebright of Rutgers, Alina Chan of Harvard/MIT, David Relman of Stanford, David Baltimore of Caltech, Marc Lipsitch of Harvard, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia, who leads the Lancet Covid-19 Commission, and many other scientists from multiple countries. These scientists are not right-wing extremists.
The indifference to the origin of Covid from the Democratic side is rather perplexing. After all, Democrats and many on the left are intensely worried about the danger of climate change accelerated by human activity, which they consider an existential threat to mankind. Former vice president Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth detailed this case, though not without some skeptical pushback, which Democrats dismiss.
Now, however, the Democrats are facing their own version of an inconvenient truth: GoF research offers no tangible scientific benefits while risking a pandemic in the event of a lab leak. Moreover, Fauci and GoF virologists seem hell-bent on destroying public trust in science with misleading origin narratives that impede a lab-leak investigation. Their motive is to protect their legacy and maintain research grants, not pursue the public good. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Democratic President Barack Obama banned GoF experiments in 2014.
In recent years, the likelihood of viruses’ escaping from labs has only increased due to a proliferation of research facilities studying dangerous viruses, some of them being GoF viruses in dense-population areas such as Wuhan, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, as well as Boston, Mass., and Raleigh, N.C. Building more labs without proper oversight simply increases the probability of lab leaks. Consequently, when we are debating the creation of man-made GoF viruses that can affect our entire civilization, then, just as with climate change, the world must have a say. This can’t be the exclusive domain of GoF virologists. There is absolutely no reason for Democrats to focus on one existential risk but ignore another. The same goes for Republicans.
Yet there is little evidence that the world is taking this threat seriously. In the recent G7 meeting, climate security was at the top of the agenda, but GoF biosafety was nowhere to be found. Without a real investigation into the origin of Covid, world leaders simply lack urgency to address this issue. The inconvenient truth is that the Covid pandemic has killed millions already while climate change has not. GoF biosafety wasn’t discussed at all at the G20 summit in late 2022, either. In the leaders’ declaration, Covid was mentioned 14 times in the context of vaccines, financial stability, and global supply chains. Even tourism recovery got a full paragraph. However, there was not a single word on the origin of Covid…”
We must confess we question Lin and Yang accepting any WuFlu death figures at face value, but there’s little if any doubt the Wuhan virus was genetically engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China with the direct financial aid and assistance of a number of Americans, including Dr. Faux Chi and Peter Daszak, unconscionably irresponsible acts for which they frankly both deserve death.
Then there’s this from Townhall.com, as Derek Hunter examines…
“You hear it all the time – so and so is “historic” because of their skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or some other meaningless characteristic. Democrats seem to celebrate those “accomplishments” almost exclusively. This person is “historic” because they’re the first non-binary weirdo to hold whatever job they’ve just been hired for. Honestly, who cares? If who you sleep with defines who you are, you aren’t worth knowing. Yet, these irrelevant characteristics are what the left celebrates, and in many cases, all they see. It’s dehumanizing to the people being “celebrated” and an attempt to control everyone else.
…You saw this on display in stories about allegedly serial luggage thief Sam Brinton. Touted as the “first non-binary” person appointed to a political position in government, this mutant was billed as “historic!” for that very reason. His firing was just as historic, being the first weirdo fired for stealing people’s suitcases, but it didn’t get the same amount of coverage as his appointment.
The same goes for Rachel Levine. The mentally confused man was known for ordering nursing homes in Pennsylvania to accept COVID positive patients at the start of the pandemic, causing thousands of deaths, while moving his mother out of one without telling the public. But because he thinks he’s she he is billed as “historic” and was promoted to Assistant Secretary for Health in the Biden administration. If you’re some kind of mentally confused gender dysphoria-suffering Democrat you are “historic” and literally cannot fail, even while advocating for the butchering of the bodies of children to suit your delusions.
If you are gay, same thing. If you are not white, same thing. It’s funny how the whitest man to ever hold the presidency, with a long and storied history of racism, is milking having the first gay, black press secretary in history as if it’s one of his (limited) accomplishments.
If you play the left’s game, Karine Jean-Pierre is “historic” for those reasons. If you live in reality, Karine Jean-Pierre is “historic-ally” bad at her job, quite probably the worst. She can’t answer basic questions without reading them from a script provided to her, likely by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Any self-respecting person who’s quit over being forced to serve as a puppet to a senile clown, but KJP is historic!
The term “historic” is tossed around like it’s an accomplishment in and of itself. It is not. Elizabeth Holmes, for disgraced former CEO of Theranos, was declared “historic” because she was the first female Silicon Valley billionaire and was immediately put on magazine covers and every “people to watch under 30” list the left-wing media had to offer. The only problem is no one was watching her. She was a con artist who ripped off investors of billions. They were too busy celebrating her gender to bother to look at whether or not she was a fraud. It wouldn’t have taken much to see it, but it’s amazing what people can miss when they deliberately do not look for it.
Attaching the label “historic” to everything they love, Democrats have stripped it of its meaning related to actual accomplishments. They do not celebrate accomplishments – Elon Musk is a prime example of someone who has made truly historic developments in his fields of business and who is demonized because of his skin color, gender, and, most importantly because he’s exposing the power-plays of the left through Twitter. Musk is more accomplished than anyone Democrats celebrate, and in fields, they insist are wildly important to their agenda (electric vehicles and space travel), but he’s the wrong configuration of human. If he weren’t white or were gay… lookout. (Not now, of course, he’s on the enemies list for wrong-think, but before.)
Simply declaring someone to be “historic” ignores whether or not they’re qualified; whether or not they are capable of doing a job and, more importantly, whether or not they’re any good. The moon landing was “historic” and so were the Hindenburg and Titanic, just for very different reasons. Individuals are no different…”
Moving on, here’s another sextet of special selections certain to sate the curiosity of inquiring Conservative minds:
Two of the more intriguing points Stuttaford raises are this unreasoned EV insanity is greatly aiding the ChiComs, and not even far more dependable, common-sensical hybrids are good enough for the environmentally holy:
“Europe’s ban will also cover hybrids, one of the better, less disruptive pathways to lower greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. But like many of the religious cults it resembles, climate fundamentalism is characterized by a perpetual quest for purity. Tainted by gasoline, the hybrid had to go.“
(2). The Journal‘s Dan Henninger provides a brief primer explaining why, when some 50 years ago Congress voted to insulate itself from external discipline,federal spending exploded.
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