Hola! It’s Wednesday, May 5th, Cinqo de Mayo 2021…but before beginning, indulge us, por favor, as we offer a few random thoughts on the passing scene.
Random Thought One: What are the odds this August 31, 2020 tweet from the uncle of Brandon Mitchell, “Juror #52″…
…will be forming part of Derek Chauvin’s appeal?
Whether the applicable courts, aware of the explosive significance of such a revelation find it constitutes grounds for appeal is another matter. BREAKING NEWS: Floyd’s attorney just filed an appeal.
Random Thought Three: In response to this CIA promotional video, “I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder“, we’d suggest the politically-correct powers-that-be have seemingly forgotten the CIA, like our Military, is an organization tasked with protecting America, NOT promoting Progressive inclusion and diversity initiatives. Thus its only criteria for hiring should be whether or not the applicant is best suited to perform whatever duties they’re expected to complete. In other words, the only pertinent question when it comes to any organization concerned with national security is…
As Harry Callahan observed in Magnum Force…
But when Progressive politicians and the spineless paper-pushers at the Pentagon place a higher value on political correctness than force effectiveness, someone’s going to pay the price for their misguided policies, as this clip from The Enforcer reminds us:
Said price may well have been inadvertently paid of late by a young Black male whose reluctance to be arrested precipitated an encounter in which a 26-year-veteran female officersomehow, someway…
…discharged her Glock after inexplicably mistaking it for her Taser.
“You probably know someone who never got COVID but whose whole life was transformed by the pandemic; it now has a meaning. They were the most cautious, the most locked down, the most disgusted by “deniers” in the White House or in their extended family. They didn’t see their adult parents for over a year. They refused in-person-learning options for their kids. The pandemic warped their relationship to their neighbors, whom they now treated as vectors of disease, and even as moral cretins because they did yard work without a mask. They posted their second “Fauci ouchie” on Instagram a month ago. But they are still double-masking or even putting goggles on their children, even infants, because they read something about COVID spreading through their eyes. (And still not going to church, despite making repeated trips to grocery stores, home improvement centers and other retailers.)
At some point, the pandemic — the provisional and practical judgments in favor of caution that can justify restrictive behaviors — became an unshakeable moral purpose. Actual weighing of risks went out the window: There’s a deadly disease out there; my actions can contribute to the end of the disease or to its spreading in perpetuity.
It’s as if a circuit has been fused. While caution and restrictive behavior can be justified by a conscience informed by the risks, the human mind can also make calculations based on superstition. And one frighteningly common one is the equation of science with truth, fear with realism, and caution with virtue.
…And this faulty equivalence of truth, fear, and caution doesn’t afflict only individuals or the environment of major cities. It afflicts our institutions. It is why the Centers for Disease Control can get bullied by the teachers’ union into delaying its recommendation to fully reopen schools. The teachers’ unions have no public-health expertise, no special knowledge of epidemiology. What they had on their side was a pervasive reflex that more caution can never be wrong or harmful. (Along with gargantuan contributions to Progressive politicians!)
The association of danger with permissiveness has warped the “expert class” that is supposed to inform the public. Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have betrayed their view that they do not trust the public with good news; they seem to fear that an inch given will be a mile taken. And so, even during one of the most successful vaccine rollouts in the world, CDC director Rochelle Walensky warned of “impending doom” just a month ago. But no doom was in the offing.
And the expert class has also corrupted itself. The short circuit of the pandemic has led to a dramatic tightening of groupthink among public-health pundits. One would normally expect that a variety of experts would come up with a variety of recommendations, precisely because, like everyone else, they value the risks differently. But instead, public-health pontificators have tried to guard their authority with an ersatz sheen of unanimity.
When Dr. Martin Kulldorff expressed his view that the pause of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would do more harm than good, the CDC threw him offits vaccine-safety advisory committee.Four days later, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was made available again, but the visible dissent was too much to abide. Kulldorff had pioneered many of the processes by which the CDC detects the safety of vaccines. But he had expressed his view that the urge to vaccinate everyone was as superstitious as being anti-vaccine. Twitter, preposterously, put a misinformation tag on this tweet, based on the superstition that there is only one valid “expert” answer — and no valid debates among experts. Kulldorff’s worst crime, apparently, was expressing his views in person in the presence of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
I used to think that the COVID era would snap to a close once vaccines removed the danger from the most vulnerable — and that the human urge to connect would assert itself dramatically in a new roaring ’20s. Now I’m not so sure. A significant portion of the public and some of our leading institutions have internalized entirely new habits of thought and life. The circuit between truth, science, fear, and caution and virtue needs to be unwired — and reprogrammed.“
We’d suggest just as…
…so too do the fears fabricated by the ruling elites to rule and control the masses. The over-the-top reaction to the Wuhan scamdemic proves K had it right: While certain individual persons may be smart…
BTW, they’re trying to move the Wuhan goalposts once again, as the Old Grey Nag has begun suggesting the country may NEVER achieve herd immunity, conveniently conflating complete eradication with gaining current control. It’s almost as if the paper of record is unaware variants of the Hong Kong flu, along with most every other virus in recorded history, are rarely if ever totally eliminated rather than simply managed via updated vaccines and…drumroll please…herd immunity! It’s why the annual flu vaccine is an ever-changing cocktail designed to combat whatever virus variants pose the greatest threat at that time. It’s also why the poliovirus, which was once for all practical purposes deemed eliminated, is staging a comeback of sorts due to the fears of certain anti-vaxer parents.
Here’s the juice: The unprecedented lockdowns were not only both unnecessary and life-destroying, but in many respects unconstitutional, the most unconstitutional component being prohibitions against religious gatherings. But when many Christians demonstrated they didn’t trust the God who created the universe to protect them from a man-made microbe by meekly complying with such edicts at the same time “peaceful protestors” were permitted to seize control of our streets to demonstrate and destroy and liquor stores declared “essential businesses”, elected officials and health bureaucrats at every level of government quickly realized they were onto something. Meaning this won’t be the last time they try it.
In a related item concerning the brainwashing of America forwarded by Keith Calcote, courtesy of the WSJ, John Ellis correctly concludes the proper response to the transparent propagandists masquerading as erudite educators is…
“An advanced society functions by creating a series of institutions, telling them what it wants them to do, and funding them to do it. Institutions like the police, fire departments, courts and schools do the jobs society creates them to do. But one American institution—higher education—has decided to repurpose itself. It has set aside the job given to it by society and substituted a different one.
Higher education had a cluster of related purposes in society.Everyone benefited from the new knowledge it developed and the well-informed, thoughtful citizenry it produced. Individual students benefited from the preparation they received for careers in a developed economy. Yet these days, academia has decided that its primary purpose is the promotion of a radical political ideology, to which it gives the sunny label “social justice.”
That’s an enormous detour from the institutional mission granted to higher education by society—and a problem of grave consequence. For the purpose that academia has now given itself happens to be the only one that the founding documents of virtually all colleges and universities take care to forbid pre-emptively. The framers of those documents understood that using the campuses to promote political ideologies would destroy their institutions, because ideologies would always be rigid enough to prevent the exploration of new ideas and the free exercise of thought. They knew that the two purposes—academic and political—aren’t simply different, but polar opposites. They can’t coexist because the one erases the other.
The current political uniformity of college faculty illustrates the point. It meets the needs of the substitute purpose very well, but only by annihilating the authorized one. Analytical thinking requires exploring a range of alternatives, but political crusades require the opposite: exclusive belief and commitment. That’s how far off course academia has gone in its capricious self-repurposing.
…This illicit conversion of a vital social institution to an alien use deprives all Americans of the benefits of a properly functioning system of higher education. It also means that a destructive and long since discredited political ideology is now using colleges and universities to gain a degree of influence over society that it could never have achieved at the ballot box. That’s election interference on a scale not remotely matched by anything that was alleged in the 2020 election.
When academia’s astonishing message to society is, “We’ll take your money, but we’ll do with it what we want, not what you want,” the response ought to be simple: “No you won’t.” The question is, can the millions of people who make up that wonderful abstraction called “society” act in a way that is sufficiently concerted and organized to deliver the message effectively? Many have already made a good start. But the rest need to join if we are ever again to have college campuses that aren’t as academically incompetent as they are politically malevolent.“
Next, courtesy of The Hill via James Nichols, we turn to a subject who not only represents a toxic blend of incompetence and malevolence, but adds in a healthy measure of non compos mentis, as Joe Concha insightfully suggests…
Truth was (and still is) that the former “Apprentice” star and real estate mogul was a modern version of the late Howard Cosell, who in a 1970s TV Guide poll was voted as simultaneously the most liked and disliked man in America. That sums up the ratings explosion during the Trump presidency, in which a rising tide (OK, a tsunami) lifted all media boats in terms of ratings and clicks, to heights we may never see again.
So, it was no surprise to see President Biden‘s ratings fall far short of Trump’s in the viewership department after he finally gave an address to a joint session of Congress. The differential was staggering: For Trump’s 2017 address to a Joint session, 48 million people tuned in. For Biden’s address, just 27 million tuned in.
For a guy who received more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history, it would seem on the surface that this would be seen internally as bad news for Team Biden.
But this seems to be exactly what they want: a stealth presidency. One that is tightly scripted in taking the protagonist off the stage while maintaining all of the power he has as a “Leader of the Free World” whose party also happens to have control of the House and Senate. Despite the promises we heard at the beginning of this administration that Biden would be the most honest, transparent president we’ve seen in modern times, the plan appears to be to avoid being the center of attention.Given how poorly this president does when speaking away from a teleprompter, it is understandable why, although it doesn’t remotely excuse avoiding accountability and scrutiny.
Overall, during Biden’s first 100 days, MSNBC has seen its viewership drop from an average of 1.3 million viewers in the last week of January to 868,000. CNN has plummeted from 1.2 million viewers on average to just 749,000. On the online and print side, it’s the same deal, with clicks down significantly at most publications.
So, while relatively few Americans are paying attention, Biden and Congress are looking to pass some of the biggest spending packages in U.S. history in a short period of time…”
Out of sight, out of mind. Unfortunately, the captain currently piloting our ship of state is out of his!
Moving on, we offer ten more items specifically selected for inquiring Conservative minds:
Here’s another shot of the juice: The unrestricted slaughter of the unborn is completely antithetical to what Scripture teaches, and while some who advocate for it may…may, mind you…have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t change the fact they’re promoting a pagan practice which was, is and always will be an utter and complete abomination, a stench in the very nostrils of God.
Amtrak hemorrhages cash while providing subpar service…so naturally, 46* wants more of it!
(3). If WaPo “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler exerted the same effort exposing the patent falsehoods contained in the claims of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as he did Tim Scott’s recollections of his family history, he’d have time for little else. Kessler’s latest assault on the truth confirms what we already knew: You literally cannot trust a word his rag prints, as its pages, from front to back, including its sports section, are packed with Progressive propaganda presented as impartial reporting.
(4). Tucker Carlson provides us with more of that sh*t you couldn’t make up if you tried, as we learn House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is bunking with Google lobbyist and nominally-independent pollster Frank Luntz.
(5). As this YouTube clip of Kommielaa demonstrates, what’s often most important isn’t what they show you, but what they edit out.
(8). But as this item from Balls Cotton relates, sometimes having no one at the controls is better than a corrupt flight crew…as certainly seems to be the case with Wayne LaPierre and the leadership of the NRA. To borrow a favorite phrase of The Left, “Hey hey, ho ho, Wayne and Friends have got to go!”
(10). But just as every coin has two sides, other voters seem content to live under tyranny, provided, of course, the tyrants represent a particular political party…and continue to hand out free stuff…purchased with other people’s money. To wit, and just in time for the wedding season, in a complete 180 from her recent loosening of unnecessary Wuhan restrictions, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowwow just banned dancing during weddings based on her stated belief it leads to behavioral changes…such as touching! We’ll allow Florida’s Ron DeSantis to retort:
We seem to recall health experts concluding over a year ago the Wuhan virus was NOT transmitted by physical contact, but hey, what to they know?!?
Contributor James Nichols used the occasion of Bowwow’s latest edict from on high to recall an old joke: Why don’t Southern Baptists have sex standing up? ‘Cuz it might lead to dancing. And after that, card playing!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from the lovely Shannon…
…and Ed Hickey…
…along with one more from the man who put the “M” in F=MA showing the worst President in American history visiting the third-worst:
The question isn’t what’s with the photo’s funhouse distortion, but rather, where are everyone’s masks?!? More importantly, why, particularly in light of Mayor Bowwow’s prohibition against dancing-’cause-it-leads-to-touching, is Dr. Jill in skin-to-skin contact with Jimmy the C.?!? Though if they just sat down after a torrid tango, it would prove Muriel Bowwow’s point. Most importantly, why isn’t The Groper sniffing Rosalyn’s hair?
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with News of the Bizarre, and this just in from Poland courtesy of the New York Post:
“The commander of a US Army aviation battalion has reportedly resigned after its “drugged” executive officer was bitten on the nipples by strippers at an off-limits club — and went AWOL for two days. The drunken escapade involving the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade’s “No Mercy” battalion occurred during a nine-month rotation in Poland when about 40 members of the Apache chopper unit traveled to Gdansk to visit World War II battlefields, Stars and Stripes reported.
…At the end of the first day, the unit ate dinner at The Legendary White Rabbit Saloon, where they celebrated their sergeant major’s 40th birthday, but several members went to other bars and became “heavily intoxicated” before returning to their hotels, the military paper reported. Some of the soldiers — including the battalion’s XO, Maj. Matthew Conner — reportedly ended up at the off-limits Club Obsession, where patrons are scammed out of thousands of dollars after consuming drinks spiked with drugs.
One officer told investigators that during the ride back to Powidz after the fateful excursion, Conner said he received several lap dances and that strippers “bit his nipples to keep him awake, and repeatedly had his credit card swiped,” according to the report.
The pilot showed the soldiers in the car driven by Fix several receipts adding up to 50,000 — though it was unclear whether the money was in dollars or local currency, which would amount to about $13,000. Conner “also expressed a belief that the champagne he had been given at the club had been laced/drugged,” the report cited by Stars and Stripes said…”
Immediately after which Major Conner went from XO to ex-XO. Almost as good as the story is the reaction of a DoD spokesman at a press conference subsequent to the debauchery:
We don’t know which surprises us more: That a reporter could honestly believe such an event would adversely impact U.S. relations with Poland, or that a Pentagon spokesman wouldn’t be aware it had occurred.
Magoo
P.S. Until the Coca-Cola Company seriously changes its ways…
…any Conservative, ourselves included, purchasing their products is helping fulfill the apocryphal prediction often attributed to Lenin: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Video of the Day
Speed forwarded this Sharyl Attkisson account of Ashli Babbitt’s murder at the hands of a plain-clothes Capitol Police lieutenant, which, undoubtedly because the victim was a White Trump supporter, has generated no outrage from the usual sources. BTW, the assertions by the former Baltimore deputy police commissioner are beyond laughable, something on which the attorney didn’t touch.
Tales of The Darkside
Brit Hume weighs in on the recent election results in Texas. FYI, we took the time to edit this clip’s ending so you didn’t have to endure listening to a Sean Hannity promo.
On the Lighter Side
Though funny, it’s pathetically funny, primarily because it shows the doddering old man purportedly running the country can’t even recall what grade these kids are in. Still, we had to laugh as he introduced his wife as “Doctor Biden”, as if her having a night school PhD would somehow impress them, and the responses of the kids are priceless, particularly towards the end.
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