It’s Friday, July 24th, 2020…but before we begin, courtesy of Jeff Foutch and BizPacReview.com, the Dimocrats’ Crazy Uncle in the Basement is at it again, this time…
…confounding health care professionals all across the fruited plains:
Then again, anyone who didn’t conclude months ago Biden’s increasingly been exhibiting signs of dementia…
…isn’t interested in the truth.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, courtesy of G. Trevor and Mark Steyn’s Steyn Online, Tal Bachman (son of Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive fame and singer of one of our all-time favorite songs) details the depths of the politically-correct deception and duplicity currently plaguing the country, as he offers these observations on…
“…Tommasini begins his piece, entitled “To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions“, by decrying the racism and sexism which, he claims, kept the orchestras of yesteryear predominantly white and male. He then pays tribute to the simple practice that helped erase that racism and sexism from orchestra hiring procedures: the blind audition. Starting in the late 1960s, orchestras began ditching traditional face-to-face auditions in favour of auditions that took place behind screens. With orchestra administrators no longer able to see the race or sex of the orchestra applicant, conscious and unconscious bias in hiring choices became impossible.Musical skill became the sole criterion for winning one of those prized professional playing positions.
This meritocratic turn, Tommasini argues, proved especially beneficial to female players. Whereas in 1970, women made up only 6% of orchestras, they now make up somewhere between a third and half of an average orchestra.
I add that audiences also benefited from meritocratic hiring processes as orchestras played increasingly brilliant renditions of the classics. Those improved performances also showed greater reverence for the original composers themselves. In short, the blind auditionwas a big win for all lovers of musical excellence – players, living composers, and fans alike.
So why on earth would anyone now call for their abolition?
Tommasini answers this way:
“Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras. But not enough. American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to black and Latino artists…Ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable“.
In other words, the low number of black and Latino classical musicians means orchestras need to re-institute the old-time racial discrimination Tommasini began his article by decrying. Orchestras need to know which applicants are white and Asian precisely so they can refuse to hire them on that basis, no matter how skilled they are. Blind auditions make racial discrimination impossible, so they must be scrapped. American orchestras, writes Tommasini, should stop “passively waiting for representation to emerge from behind the audition screen”. Instead, they must realize that “removing the screen is a crucial step“.
To summarize: For Tommasini, it’s not just that justice requires injustice. It’s that justice is injustice (injustice in the form of racial discrimination). And if that reminds you of the official slogan of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984 – war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength – you’re not alone…”
At this rate, Orwell won’t have gotten the half of it.
Next, two videos which tell you all you need to know about the truth behind both Chicago’s culture of violence…
…as well as the myth of the “peaceful” protestors:
Which, incredibly enough, makes one wish for the return of the old-time bareknuckle machine politics of Democrat Richard Daley:
Or at least it used to be!
HERE’S a radical idea: How ’bout you…
Three thoughts come to mind: (1). Whoever sent these officers into harms way without helmets, goggles and body armor should be fired, ‘cuz if they didn’t anticipate such a possibility two months into this anarchy, they sure as heck should have.
(2). Who’s paying these cowardly clowns to supply and throw these frozen water bottles and incendiary devices?!? Or is law enforcement at any level incapable of infiltrating these anarchists and identifying their leaders?
(3). Speaking with G. Trevor last night, he asked the question why Republicans won’t take to the streets in orgies of violence if Biden is elected President November 3rd…to which we replied, these people have nothing to lose: no jobs, no prospects, no families whose futures they’re worried about ensuring. And all thanks to Progressives leaders who’ve feathered their own beds on the backs of those who’ll now foot the bill.
“Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed agreement with President Trump’s plan to deploy federal police to the city during a Wednesday evening phone call with the president, according to the mayor’s office.
Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to send 200 officers to Chicago, which recorded an abnormally high number of shootings over the past two months, to quell the surging. The unrest in Chicago differs in kind from that in Portland, Ore., which has seen continuous rioting and destruction of city and federal property over the same period…”
As we stated in our last edition, Trump needs to remember the Pottery Barn Rule:
After all, it’s not like the MSM is going to recount an accurate history of what went down.
Moving on, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger relates what urbanites’ leaders are really telling them:
“On Tuesday the New York City sky was clear, blue and filled with sunshine. That’s it for this week’s good news. We turn now to Portland, Ore.; Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and all of America’s other seemingly Godforsaken cities.
President Trump watches a lot of television, so he’s seeing the same daily urban nightmares we’re seeing.It’s hard not to sympathize with his instinct to send in federal authorities to restore civil order to cities like Portland, as he proposed Wednesday with the expansion of an urban anticrime initiative called Operation Legend to Chicago and Albuquerque.
It’s equally hard to disagree that, other than protecting federal facilities, Mr. Trump should let all of these smug Portlandia American cities stew in their own juices.
I loved it when Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, said the federal presence “is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism.” Where’s Groucho Marx when we need him to make sense of nonsense?
Still, no matter one’s politics, it is sickening to see this happening to any U.S. city—mobs hammering and burning buildings along Portland’s streets and then a carbon-copy mob battering Seattle.
Days before, we’d watched video of two groups of police beaten bloody on the Brooklyn Bridge. Days later 15 people were wounded in a gun battle at a Chicago funeral for the victim of a drive-by gang shooting.
There is a serious matter of civil order at issue here, but if you can look beyond the mayhem, something else quite sad is happening. The irrepressible vitality of these cities—their reason for being—is disappearing, undone by pandemic, lockdowns and a new culture of permanent protest.
…During New York’s 1970s financial crisis, the Daily News ran a famous headline about then-President Gerald Ford —“Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Here’s the update—“Progressives to Cities: Drop Dead.”
People living and working in these cities, most of whom consider themselves liberal, are being sold out by progressive politicians and activists blinded by politics to the quality of daily life.
Progressive prosecutors refuse to prosecute. Cops are holding back because progressive mayors and governors don’t have their backs.
Responding to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s directive that no alcohol can be served without food, many bar owners say they won’t survive. The state’s Labor Department just reported an unemployment rate in the Bronx of 24.7%, Depression level.
The progressive ruin of major cities inhabited by liberals is a significant political event. Consequences that might have emerged over years have been compressed into months by the pandemic and protests.
It is doubtful many will check the box for Mr. Trump in November, but who knows? Their alternative is Joe Biden, whose contribution to the urban chaos this week was: “There is no reason for the president to send federal troops into a city where people are demanding change peacefully and respectfully.” Which city is he looking at?“
Only that which is politically expedient!
Since we’re on the subject of the politically expedient, consider this manifestly meaningless headline from FOX News:
“News of the latest milestone also comes amid a controversial debate over school reopenings for the fall. President Trump, pushing for schools across the country to reopen, said during a coronavirus briefing he would be comfortable sending his son and grandchildren back to school in the fall.
“I would like to see the schools open, open 100 percent, we’ll do it safely, we’ll do it carefully,” Trump said, adding that children have “very strong immune systems.”“
As Jim Freeman notes at Best of the Web., Trump’s reason for advocating the resumption of sticks and bricks learning is built upon a solid scientific foundation:
“Just how small is the risk for teachers returning to school classrooms this fall? The Times of Londonreports:
There has been no recorded case of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, according to one of the government’s leading scientific advisers.
Mark Woolhouse, a leading epidemiologist and member of the government’s Sage committee, told The Times that it may have been a mistake to close schools in March given the limited role children play in spreading the virus.
Around the world, citizens have perhaps become more wary lately of the claims of epidemiologists. But at a minimum this report puts new pressure on lockdown advocates to produce evidence of alleged harms to justify school closures. This also creates a rather awkward moment for U.S. teachers unions and their media friends. Recently in the New York newspaper called the Times (no relation), a teacher named Rebecca Martinson opined:
Every day when I walk into work as a public-school teacher, I am prepared to take a bullet to save a child. (Is this a teacher, or Rambo?!?) In the age of school shootings, that’s what the job requires. But asking me to return to the classroom amid a pandemic and expose myself and my family to Covid-19 is like asking me to take that bullet home to my own family.
Perhaps a bit overstated? Charlotte Hays of the Independent Women’s Forum calls Ms. Martinson’s op-ed “An Emotional Plea To Play Hooky” and observes:
Nobody can or should be forced to continue in a job that she deems too dangerous.
But what struck me about Ms. Martinson’s piece is that she never lets on about her risk. She doesn’t tell us if she lives with elderly, vulnerable family members. She doesn’t tell us whether she has underlying conditions that would make her susceptible to COVID-19.
The most prominent fact cited is that 75 “school-based” employees of the New York City Department of Education lost their lives to COVID-19 between March 16, 2020 and June 22. While each of these losses is undeniably tragic, to make these numbers meaningful, we need to know which ones contracted the infection because of their jobs. New York City’s public schools began shutting down in mid-March.
The Times report from the U.K. suggests that the number is zero. The London paper quotes Prof. Woolhouse, chairman of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, saying that school-age kids are “minimally involved in the epidemiology of this virus.” He adds that youngsters are “vanishingly unlikely to end up in hospital or to die from it” and “rarely transmit” the virus to others. Mark McLaughlin, Marc Horne and Rosemary Bennett of The Times also report:
Dr Gabriel Scally, president of the epidemiology and public health section of the Royal Society of Medicine, said that reopening schools should have been one of the top priorities of lifting the lockdown. “It is a real indictment of our society that we can manage to open pubs and nail bars but we can’t open schools,” he said.
And here we thought The Left was all about the science!
BTW, some 135,000 people are employed by the New York City Department of Education, so 75 deaths puts the Wuhan-related fatality rate (assuming they weren’t run over by a bus, then tested positive for COVID-19!), at least by our math, at a whopping .06%! Not 6%; .06%!!! Mathematics is also a science.
Here’s the juice: Wanna get panicky pedagogues at every level of education level back in the classroom? Start laying them off as unneeded. After all, if kids are going to learn online, a district need employ only one teacher for each grade or subject to prepare lessons plans for use across the entire school system.
No more pencils, no more books, no more…teachers’ unaffordably obscene pension plans!!!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from the lovely Shannon…
…along with four more utterly accurate memes from Balls Cotton…
…as well as these little bon mots from Mark Foster detailing some of the more positive aspects of life in Texas:
Finally, since we’re on a Texas tear, we’ll call it a week with this entry from Badass of the Week, courtesy of Speed Mach:
John B. Armstrong
“The Texas Rangers were tough-ass motherf*ckers who were absolutely not to be messed with for any reason ever, and among the most famous and decorated of the Rangers was a dude named John Barclay Armstrong…”
And therein lies a tale, made even better in the tellin’ as John Barclay Armstrong was Mrs. Mach‘s great, great-grandfather. Among his numerous deeds of incredible daring, Armstrong lead the team of Rangers who arrested John Wesley Hardin, the most prolific pistolero in the Wild West, a man with some 47 notches in his guns, one man simply for snoring.
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