Briefly Noted: Cuomo, Covid, PC

At Red State there's an article that draws on Michael Goodwin, columnist at the NYPost who's been all over the Cuomo story, to outline the increasing legal jeopardy that Cuomo is facing:

Are the Walls Finally Closing in Around Andrew Cuomo? NY Post's Michael Goodwin Nails It

The problem that Cuomo is facing is that his closest aides are now receiving subpoenas to produce official documents as well as to testify. Some of these subpoenas are coming as a result of the FBI investigation into the nursing home deaths. Here are two key paragraphs:

The subpoenas, which include demands for testimony and documents, are coming as the result of an FBI investigation into whether Cuomo illegally withheld nursing home fatalities from the Department of Justice and an investigation by the office of Democrat Attorney General Letitia James into the numerous sexual harassment allegations. For those of you keeping score at home, the number of accusers now stands at nine.

The FBI probe presents greater legal jeopardy for Cuomo, because “the prospect of criminal conduct is more pronounced, wrote Goodwin: “There is no doubt Cuomo’s team lied about nursing home deaths and withheld the truth by changing an official Health Department report.” Goodwin laid out one scenario in which a Cuomo aide could throw the governor under the bus in a heartbeat.

In Covid news, or perhaps in Authoritarian Government news:

Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down statewide mask mandate

Basically, the WISC said that "the governor did not have the authority to extend the state's public health emergency beyond 60 days without approval from the legislature." It's good to see government by executive decree finally being challenged in some states.

Finally, Steve Sailer reveals where much of "Wokism" is coming from. It's a good illustration of why philosophy--or ideology, at any rate--actually matters.

New Accusations Against Po-Mo Philosopher Michel Foucault

It's worth noting that the leading lights of the related phenomenon of the Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism were almost uniformly perverts as well. Sailer quotes an earlier article he wrote on the same topic:

MAJOR UPDATES (Not A Pun): Does Zhou Baiden Face 'Major' Liability?

Yesterday I briefly wondered whether Zhou's dog 'Major' should be 'put down,' having bitten a second person. Have you been wondering about this issue, but were too lazy to research it? You'll still have to wonder, but Jonathan Turley clarifies some of the issues regarding dog biting--i.e., dogs biting people, not vice versa--in an article that was picked up by Zerohedge:

Major Liability? Biden's Dog Bites Another Employee After Returning From Delaware Seclusion

The traditional rule in tort law is that a dog is allowed "one free bite" before being classified as a "vicious animal." That's why I wondered whether 'Major'--having had his one free bite and gone on to become a serial biter--should now be put down. Of course, that's not the only remedy. There's also the question of civil--or even criminal--liability on the part of the dog's owner. Turley goes into the, um, ins and outs of all this, with particular reference to DC law.

The Baiden version of the most recent incident is that some was "nipped" by 'Major.' Turley observes that a nip is in the eye of the beholder, or owner, and goes on to clarify the "one free bite" rule:

The difference between “nipped” and “bitten” is that you are bitten by other people’s dogs. Your dog however only nips, which is somewhere on the spectrum between a lick and a complete devouring.

Two Recommended Reads: Election Aftermath And Insurrection--NOT!

Two good articles I wanted to point out. Nothing you won't have thought of yourself, but well expressed and worth a look.

First, Conrad Black--there's a lot of good stuff in this article, but here's a sample paragraph:

The Trump-Hate Coalition Is Crumbling

The wheels are coming off the rickety anti-Trump coalition in all four directions.

...

The FBI and senior echelons of the intelligence services were politically compromised, a massively illegal and fraudulent investigation of the elected president was conducted, two utterly spurious impeachment attempts were thrown at him and the coronavirus pandemic was invoked to produce the most seriously tainted presidential election result in the country’s history. The Supreme Court may have made the correct political decision when it declined to adjudicate the case, given how tempestuous the response would have been if it had overturned the result of the election, but it was still an abdication. They presumably acted as they did to assure that there would be no move to pack the court with Democrats, and they may now be in a position to reassert the Constitution as the controversies generated by the new administration percolate up to it.

It's optimistic, and maybe we need some of that.

Brian Auten And The Russia Hoax Big Picture

Paul Sperry--banned for life from Twitter--has a terrific investigative article today that goes into just about anything you'd like to know about current high level FBI analyst Brian Auten's involvement in the Russian Hoax. Sperry focuses most closely on Auten's involvement with the Steele Dossier:

Meet the Russiagate Prober Who Couldn't Verify Anything in the Steele Dossier Yet Said Nothing for Years

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations

March 30, 2021

I won't attempt to go through the wealth of detail that Sperry has on offer, which is greatly enhanced by his reference to Auten's testimony to Senate Judiciary staffers just last October. Here's a thumbnail summary of what Auten knew no later than January, 2017. In reading what follows, bear in mind that Auten was and is a Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, meaning, he has his own team of analysts at his beck and call:

1. Auten knew that the Steele "dossier" had been funded by the Hillary campaign.

2. Auten knew that nothing--repeat, NOTHING--in the Steele "dossier" that wasn't already public information had been verified or corroborated, despite the representations in that regard that were made to the FISA Court (FISC).

3. Not only that, but Auten knew that Steele was feeding the FBI "bullsh*t" in the "dossier"--supposed facts that Auten was able to debunk. That includes the claim that Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague.

4. Auten would also have been aware of the allegations being made against Carter Page--allegations that were a tissue of falsehoods. I can personally not imagine any scenario in which Auten would have been unaware of the falsity of those allegations--despite his claim that all Crossfire Hurricane investigations were justified. What would you expect him to say, with Carter Page suing?

5. Auten, of course, shared this information with the rest of the Crossfire Hurricane team. He also made no objections when this BS was knowingly submitted--repeatedly--to the FISC as if it were reliable information that satisfied the FISA requirement for probable cause.

But here's the thing. Very little if anything of this is news to investigators. Most of it was known and documented by Michael Horowitz in his FISA Report (Sperry goes into this). Much of it was probably also known by Congressional investigators, despite the best stonewalling efforts of Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray, as described by Kash Patel recently. That Auten hasn't been held to account is an obvious outrage, and so Sperry quotes a pair of former FBI agents:

Briefly Noted: Legal News--And Russia

I had occasion to point out yesterday (An Independent Judiciary?) that President Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) strategy of concentrating on confirming appellate level federal judges is paying dividends. Not all is smooth sailing, of course. The 9th Circuit can still be a problem (as recently in a 2A case), but it's still far better than when Trump took office. A couple of cases on this relatively slow news day (so far) illustrate the impact Trump's appellate judges are having.

Since I mentioned the 2A just now, a case from New Jersey is a good place to start. Defense Distributed is a TX company that distributes various 3d print files for firearms and firearm accessories. New Jersey's Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, sent Defense Distributed letters in TX attempting to restrain Defense Distributed from doing its business in NJ and threatening to prosecute Defense Distributed. The federal district court in TX agreed with Grewal that those letters were insufficient to provide the TX court with jurisdiction in the case. However, the Fifth Circuit disagreed. The SCOTUS has now--by declining Grewal's petition for certiorari--agreed with the Fifth Circuit.

The practical effect of this jurisdictional decision is that NJ will now have to justify its conduct to an unsympathetic federal court in TX. The Truth About Guns points out that the Fifth Circuit

has already made it clear that it believes that governmental efforts to restrict Defense Distributed’s distribution of 3D files have very serious if not fatal First Amendment implications.

This complicates anti-gun matters for crusading officials in anti-2A states. The SCOTUS undoubtedly knew this.

There's more good news from the 6th Circuit (which includes Ohio). You can read a longer account here:

An Independent Judiciary?

Since the January 6 Event the Zhou Baiden regime--through its DoJ and media proxies as well as the usual suspects in Congress--has been feverishly seeking to to advance a narrative of a Right Wing extremist (anyone to the Right of ... Karl Marx?) "insurrection". An attempt to overthrow the government. We've been trying to keep an eye on developments in this regard, because the obvious objective of the Zhou regime is to gin up anti-GOP hysteria and keep this narrative going through Election 2022. It hardly needs saying that the continued military occupation of the Imperial City on the Potomac plays directly into the "insurrection" narrative--the Sedition Hoax.

The thing about this effort, however is that, while the Dems control the Legislative and Executive branches of government, to keep this narrative going requires the cooperation of the Judicial Branch. One of President Trump's great achievements was the appointment of an enormous new number of Appellate Court judges--and, yes, credit for this does go to Mitch McConnell. McConnell put priority on Appellate Court judges rather than District Court judges, and it paid dividends, as several Circuits were flipped. 

The one Circuit that remains firmly in Dem hands, however, is the DC Circuit, which was greatly expanded by Obama. For that reason one might assume that the DC Circuit as well as the many District Court judges in DC would prove friendly to the Sedition Hoax narrative. Such has not been the case. DC judges at both District and Appellate levels have, with some exceptions, shown a willingness to apply establish criminal justice standards regardless of the media and DC Eestablishment's dominant Sedition Hoax narrative. Notably, not only have Clinton judges shown this willingness but Obama appointees have also done so. 

In evaluating these developments it's important to remember that each defendant's case--and the FBI's nationwide dragnet has pulled in literally hundreds of people--must be considered on its own factual merits. The DoJ is seeking to bolster the Sedition Hoax by constructing a case for Seditious Conspiracy--please note that in this statute the use of actual force is a necessary element:

Filibuster--Not So Threatened After All

Late this evening Paul Mirengoff wrote a post at Powerline, BIDEN’S RADICAL AGENDA LIKELY TO HIT WALL, in which he explains why the filibuster is likely to remain. The long and the short of it is simple: There are more Dem senators than just Joe Manchin who, for various reasons, are unwilling to do away with the filibuster. Read the entire post--it's worth it.

Mirengoff bases his post on an article at CNN--Democratic divisions on Biden's agenda broader than just Manchin. He quotes this key passage:

The push by liberal Democrats to enact President Joe Biden’s sweeping agenda is running into problems beyond just Sen. Joe Manchin: A handful of Democrats are not falling in line and could limit the scope of the party’s ambitions on an array of critical issues.

Some Senate Democrats like Sen. Jon Tester of Montana are not yet sold on the House-passed bills to expand background checks on gun sales. Eight Democrats are resisting calls to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

And it’s more than just Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema who are opposed to changing Senate rules so a filibuster can be defeated by 51 votes, rather than 60: The two New Hampshire Democratic senators are resisting those calls as well, in addition to several others who are not yet persuaded that such a change is necessary.

“No,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, told CNN when asked if she would support eliminating the 60-vote threshold. “I think we should look at ways to reform the filibuster, but I don’t think getting rid of it is the best approach.”

New Hampshire’s junior Democratic senator, Maggie Hassan, who faces a tough reelection bid next year, also has “concerns about eliminating the filibuster,” a spokesperson said, though backs some reforms.

Mirengoff goes on to discuss all this at greater length. I offer this simply to talk some commenters in off the ledge. :-)

I don't really mean to make light of the dire straits our republic is in. However, I do believe that the Dems are not in as much control as many fear. It's all bad enough, but it's not time to despair. 

UPDATED: The Question: Can This Go On Indefinitely?

Last night on Tucker Carlson, speaking of the Zhou Baiden March 25 Event, Mark Steyn made an assertion that deserves to be taken seriously--I quote from memory:

"I don't know who's in charge in the White House. If the Deep State can get away with this"--he was specifically citing the March 25 Flummery, but was generally referencing the entire Zhou Baiden regime--"they can get away with anything. They don't need anyone in the White House."

It seems incredible, but it's one of those things that, as long as it lasts, gives the appearance of being able to go on indefinitely. A new normal that by any rational standards is utterly abnormal. 

The flip side of that coin, of course, is the old saw that if something can't go on forever it won't. Reality can't be defied forever--although that's definitely not a guarantee of a happy ending. The piper will have to be paid for all the deceptions and hoaxes, all the way from Russia did it, and Covid, and Zhou, and boys will be girls and girls will be boys, to open borders and Marines and the rest of the military as Social Justice Warriors. This craziness--and so much more--can't be finessed in the long run. Reality will have its say, and it will be decisive--for good or ill. My guess is that most people paid little attention Zhou's March 25 Event. Are most people paying attention to much of anything? They are, although it may not be evident on the surface because the media is covering for the regime madly.

Are there any signs of reality impinging upon the ongoing charade in the Imperial City--still under military occupation?

Never Mind Waldo. Where's ...?

You have to admire Trump for saying this. Bluto Barr and Durham deserve it. What they did--or didn't do--is a disgrace and a slap in the face to all who love what America is supposed to stand for. The nation deserved better, and now deserves an apology and a full explanation. I don't care whether their apology comes before or after a collective apology from the SCOTUS. It seems there's no decency left:

UPDATED: They Say Every Man Has His Price

Or at least that may be the case in our Congress--the best legislature money can buy. Maybe that's unfair, or maybe it's just that some are more concerned about appearances than others. We'll find out soon enough:

Biden nominates Sen. Joe Manchin's wife to federal commission

Gayle Conelly Manchin is Biden's pick for the Appalachian Regional Commission

President Biden has picked the wife of an extremely influential U.S. senator for a federal commission post, the White House announced Friday. 

Biden nominated Gayle Conelly Manchin to co-chair the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development partnership with 13 states designed to boost investment in the Appalachian Region.

Manchin is an educator, past president of West Virginia's State Board of Education and the former first lady of West Virginia.

It's not immediately apparent what qualifications Gayle Manchin has for this position, beyond being the wife of Joe Manchin, whose vote could prove crucial for eliminating the filibuster. In fairness, one assumes that, since the Appalachian Regional Commission was created by President Kennedy "to assist in advancing legislation to bring federal dollars to Appalachia," part of it's reason for existing may also be to bring money and patronage jobs to deserving politicans in those 13 states.

If you're interested in Gayle Manchin's qualifications beyond the obvious ...

Briefly Noted: Education

From Montgomery County, MD. But this could be "education" in most any government schools throughout most of America:

2A discussion questions from my kid’s school today. Notice anything about the tone and tenor of the questions? pic.twitter.com/gV0juqYOJE

— Jack Murphy 🇺🇸 ⚔️ (@jackmurphylive) March 25, 2021

It's obviously propaganda rather than actual civic education.

Lest you think, however, that this only happens in Blue or RINO states (such as MD):

Nebraska education guidelines would begin LGBT indoctrination as early as kindergarten

Gov. Pete Ricketts opposes the age-inappropriate sex education material and urges concerned parents to speak up before it's too late.

Contrast Pete Ricketts with Kristi Noem--both "conservative" governors of "conservative" states. Do words mean anything at all? Kudos to Ricketts, of course, but this illustrates how difficult it has become for chief executives at virtually any level to control what's going on in America. Normals are vastly outgunned financially in the Culture War.

And the sheeple continue sending their children to be "educated" by Big Brother. Because money.

The Zhou Baiden March 25 Event

The first person occupying the Oval Office who will never give an actual press conference. What those who were paid to watch this disgraceful event witnessed--and many of thesm were active participants in America's disgrace--was a staged propaganda event. The purpose was simply to "check a box", to gaslight people into accepting a clear counterfactual: that the American Republic is still functioning according to its constitutional order as we've been told it's supposed to function.

That that is not the case was evident throughout this staged event. We pretty much knew that's how it would work out when it was staged during the afternoon rather than during prime time. Obviously there was no confidence on the part of Zhou's handlers that he could function even on a minimal level past the point in the day when he began to anticipate his evening feeding. His attention level for trivialities like a "presidential" "press" "conference" simply could not hold up once he began to sense it was time for dinner--as is the case with most dementia sufferers. Zhou's handlers knew that and planned accordingly.

The American Republic was designed to function with a strong, involved, chief executive--a commander in chief. Anyone who had suspended disbelief to this point, imagining that this was possibly the case under the Zhou Baiden regime was quickly disabused of such self deception yesterday. The greatest disgrace, perhaps, was the complicity of an utterly degraded media in the event.

So here we are. How did we get to this point? Who will object?

I think the answer lies in the quite literal demoralization of the American people. Exhibit one in that regard, in terms of public life, is Covid. On our shopping forays, my wife and I have lately been marveling at what I call the Victory of the Neurotics. To see the masked shoppers--some with face shields, some also with gloves--defying all science and common sense is a remarkable thing. Even after being told that 3 feet should suffice (and, no, we won't go into that supposed science, either) we see anti-social distance being maintained at 10 ft. or more by some of these unfortunates. And they snarl at anyone who ignores their neurotic quest for "safe" distancing.

What explains this is neurosis--the true American spirit of the 21st century. It's an almost total inward focus on personal "safety." The notion that these Covid measures are harming the fabric of our society, let alone our political order, is of little or no moment at all to so many of our fellow citizens. 

What have normal, spiritually healthy human beings lived for over the millennia? For their children and grandchildren, for the health of their social and political order. The social science is readily available. Covid closures harm young people and thus pose a grave danger to a healthy society. Why has American not exploded in anger at the school closures? The harm that is surely being done to an entire generation of young people who may never recover from the school closures should be a matter of intense national debate--and should have been the centerpiece issue of Election 2020.

The evidence that these, and other, closures and restrictions are motivated by greed and selfishness is everywhere. For people so oblivious to these matters--matters that should be a cause for soul searching--it's almost pointless to try to point out the further issue of the use that these measures are being put to for purposes of total social control. Who objects to the coercion to participate in the experimental administration of untested medications?

In a society in which neurosis--the quest for personal "safety" to the exclusion of all other considerations--dominates, is it any wonder that citizens are willing to be gaslighted by the Globalist Guardians of what used to be our Republic?

More Signs That DoJ's Sedition Hoax Is Faltering

Commenter Anonymous linked to a post at CTH earlier today. The significance of the CTH post is that it links to a Reuters article (dated 3/24/21) that presents some pretty good legal reporting on the status of DoJ's Sedition Hoax. Sundance's take is that the Reuter's reporting indicates that DoJ is "walking back" its Sedition Hoax--admitting to Reuters that their "evidence" isn't what they claimed it was, in spite of Michael Sherwin's outrageous 60 Minutes atttempt to bias the jury pool. Sundance is quite correct, although obviously DoJ isn't about to pack it all in and go home:

Interesting that Reuters would outline the walk-backs.  Even more interesting that the details of the walk-backs seem to prove the DOJ never actually intended to win any of these cases, but rather wanted to advance a political narrative about extremists through their earlier statements.

Again, I would caution that they're not simply giving it up. My own position--which is the same in essentials--has been that this is basically "political theater"--which is why I've dubbed it the Sedition Hoax. The purpose of this hoax narrative or "theater" is not simply to maintain the narrative of "extremism." The purpose is more specific: it's to influence public opinion for Election 2022 and prevent loss of the Dem House, as more details of election fraud in Election 2020 keep coming out. That's why it's necessary to keep the military occupation of the Imperial City running as long as possible, and that's why--despite the evidentiary problems--the Dems will try to keep the Sedition Hoax running as long as possible. That's exactly why they're trying to keep the defendants in jail and to get an indefinite extension of the Speedy Trial Act. They don't want any speedy trials--they want political theater that will last from now until November, 2022. Obviously they'll accept some nickel-dime convictions, but that's not the big picture here.

The problem they're running up against is judges with old fashioned ideas about fair trials even for conservatives. Remarkably, among those judges who are raising pointed questions about what DoJ is up to are Obama judges--as we saw yesterday with Judge Mehta's dressing down of DoJ.

With that in mind, let's take a look at what Reuters has to tell us. First of all, it's worth noting that Reuters makes no bones about the fact that the Sedition Hoax is in trouble--as evidenced in the title of the article:

Amid setbacks, prosecutors abandon some claims in U.S. Capitol riot cases

The article is worth a careful read:

More Sedition Hoax, White Supremacy, Christian Terrorism

A hat tip to commenter Dutchmn007 for pointing out a very nice piece at The Burning Platform:

WHO IS SHAKING THE JAR?

The point of the piece is twofold, and develops the ideas that I tried to present yesterday (The Sedition Hoax):

1. American public life, ruled by a prog class that controls most of the means of societal communication, has been characterized in the 21st century by serial hoaxes.

2. The political class, while deeply involved in perpetrating these hoaxes, is to a significant extent controlled by financial interests--including, of course in the "tech" sector (which now embraces much of public communication as we've come to know it in the digital age).

The author provides the evidence in considerable detail, involving more hoaxes--incontestable hoaxes, involving the dissemination by news and social media of undoubted false narratives--than I got into. The point of these hoaxes has all been to present false narratives of reality in America. Those narratives can be boiled down into a simple binary: America is engaged in a struggle between progressive forces of science and enlightened humanism against the forces of racist white supremacy and anti-science obscurantism. There are numerous sub-memes, but that's good enough for government work--and, indeed, that appears to be the narrative that informs the activities of our federal bureaucracy, including those agencies that control the tools of coercion, such as the FBI.

The correct stance for conservatives who wish to understand what's going on is captured in a quote from the writing of a liberal reporter, Glenn Greenwald:

“If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit.” – Glenn Greenwald

Now, obviously Greenwald is addressing the fact that corporate jouralism, as privileged by the SCOTUS line of decisions stemming from NYT v. Sullivan, amounts to scribbling down what the real masters of American tell them to scribble. At the same time, lets be clear about Conservativism Inc.: for most of the 21st century conservatives have generally lionized the Deep State (think, Tom Clancy novels, etc.) and the Tech Giants as embodying the best in America. While progs of the everyday variety remain Benighted for the most part (excepting a few like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald), four years of Trump and the hysterical prog response has led to what appears to be a Great Awakening among conservatives--the scales have fallen from the eyes of many. Evidence for this can be found in the tough sledding that Fox News has faced, and the immediate pushback against Mitch McConnell and other establishment GOP figures to restore their vision of "normality."

Here are excerpts of the Big Picture from the Burning Platform piece linked above (read it all--you won't regret it):

The Sedition Hoax

Today's post is more or less a status update: Where are we, at this point, in the Prog war on America?

Conrad Black sets the stage with his article on HR1. I leave the details of HR1 to others. Black's title sums that up well enough:

H.R. 1 is Emblematic of the Crisis of American Democracy

There is no possibility that properly apprised of the contents of H.R. 1, the American people would approve of it.

HR1 is emblematic--but, bad as it is, it isn't the actual heart of the crisis. It would be bad if perpetrated by conservatives. But, as Progs hope to use it, its intent is to make their transformation of America irrevocable. The real crisis, however, is the hold that Prog ideology has gained over the spirit of America.

We all know that Trump's populist nationalism--a nationalism rooted in our traditional constitutional order and culture--was viewed as an existential threat not for simple partisan reasons, but for deeply held ideological reasons. Black captures this well, the reaction that Trump roused. In the wake of Election 2016, the entire Deep State and Establishment was galvanized to prevent Trump or anything remotely like Trump from ever happening again:

The bipartisan political establishment was so shattered by Trump’s victory, and by the subsequent failure to neutralize or remove him through a series of illegal activities, ..., that they confected an elaborate plan not only to dispose of Trump by whatever means were necessary, but to ensure that no reenactment of his horrifying emergence could be staged by an emulator. 

The "elaborate plan" was actually a succession of hoaxes--the Russia Hoax, the Ukraine Hoax leading to the first hoax impeachment, and finally the Covid Hoax. In fact, none of those hoaxes proved sufficient to stop the Trump juggernaut. It ultimately required internal sabotage (h/t Barr and Durham) and election fraud on an unprecedented scale--a virtual hoax election--to prevent a second Trump term. 

Proof GOPers Are Best Informed Sector Of Population

The proof was published, remarkably enough, in the NYT. Of course, the NYT had to try to disguise the truth, namely, that by a significant margin Dems are the lowest information group of three: Dems, GOPers, and Indies.

Here's how the NYT frames the story:

To many liberals, Covid has become another example of the modern Republican Party’s hostility to facts and evidence. And that charge certainly has some truth to it. Yet the particular story with Covid is also more complicated — because conservatives aren’t the only ones misinterpreting scientific evidence in systematic ways. Americans on the left half of the political spectrum are doing it, too.

That’s a central finding from a survey of 35,000 Americans by Gallup and Franklin Templeton. It finds that both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic — in opposite directions. “Republicans consistently underestimate risks, while Democrats consistently overestimate them,” Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup’s principal economist, and Sonal Desai, a Franklin Templeton executive, write.

"Some truth." Of course, the question is really: How much truth in it? Here's the actual question that Gallup and Templeton posed to 35K people:

What are the chances that someone with Covid must be hospitalized?

Ask yourself this: What are the chances that any significant portion of the populace will know the correct answer to that question? And what are the chances that one demographic sector--identified by their politics--will be overwhelmingly more likely to hit upon the right answer? Here's the breakdown:

How Many Balls Can Dems Keep In The Air?

It's no secret that the Dem "grand strategy"--their strategy for perpetual "Dem Supremacy"--involves the supposed demographic shift whereby Americans of Pallor become a minority. By portraying Americans of Pallor as the enemies of Americans of Deeper but Varying Hues the Dems hope to have a permanent electoral advantage in enough states to guarantee their perpetual supremacy. Part of that strategy also involves the appeal to the demographic the Chinese--as Tucker Carlson informs us--refer to as Báizuǒ, variously translated as "stupid people," "white leftists", or "self hating white liberals. For non-Wikipedia references, try this link.

Dems who avoid leaving their echo chamber and meeting non-Báizuǒ are firmly convinced of the inevitable triumph of their grand strategy. Normal Americans are not quite as convinced. One very stable genius American in particular was so skeptical of the inevitability of the Dem triumph that he actually based his campaign strategy on appealing to exactly the demographic groups whom the Dems consider to be part of their "base"--with a degree of success that induced a puckering among Dem strategists.

The fly in the Dem ointment is that not all Americans of Deeper but Varying Hues--People of Color for short--consider that their self interest is bound up with the self interest of other People of Color, and in opposition to People of Pallor. In fact, observers outside the Dem echo chamber have long been aware of significant antagonism between subgroups of the supposed People of Color demographic. Thus, despite the Dems' year long rioting to the theme of BLM--or perhaps because of it--President Trump made significant inroads into the People of Color vote. Rather than reconsidering the "Whiteness Is Evil" strategy, however, Dems have doubled down at every opportunity, most recently with regard to the sex addict shooting in Atlanta.

The underlying antagonisms among People of Color--and, most recently, those between Asian Americans and African Americans--remain on display for all with eyes to see. The statistics don't lie, although committed Leftists do. Today, these antagonisms are on public display in San Francisco.  A Fox News article points toward these underlying tensions in their grand coalition that Dems don't want anyone to notice, but which are part of the American reality:

Was The Military Stand-Down A Good Idea?

Right, so we're talking about the first initiative Lloyd Austin undertook as SecDef, after stepping down from the boards of Raytheon, Nucor, and Tenet Healthcare. Even before purging defense advisory boards of Trump appointees, Austin announced a 60-day stand-down to train service members to "recognize and combat" "extremism" in the military--which is the current euphemism for white conservatives. Or, to be fair, conservatives of any color, because conservativism is a simply a proxy for "whiteness", no matter what color you happen to be. Or so I hear.

Good idea, bad idea? Like so many things in life, that all depends on what you were hoping to accomplish. If the great idea was to transform the enlisted men and women into woke robots, early reports suggest that the stand-down has been a signal failure. It seems the enlisted types--the kind of people who will never be asked to join corporate boards--follow the news and--horrors!--think for themselves. And they're not buying the idea that the January 6 Event was staged by White Supremacists while the months and months of violent BLM and Antifa rioting were actually peaceful--except for a handful of opportunistic criminals, totally unconnected to Leftist ideology. The trainers are doing their best, but it seems the reeducation isn't taking hold.

So, from the standpoint of the Left, the stand-down is looking like a failure, but it may also be turning out--again, from their perspective--to be a Bad Idea to begin with.

Management types will often tell you that getting the little people--worker bee types, or enlisted people in the military--to talk about things can lead to trouble. What often happens is that an Us against Them mentality takes hold--Us being the workers or enlisted people, and Them being management. The lower level types discover that they're not just a lot of isolated individuals. In fact, they learn that many of the doubts and grievances regarding management are shared widely. An Us v. Them dynamic which equates to something like Enlisted v. Officers can lead to big trouble.

So, Zerohedge reported as follows, Defiant US Soldiers From Every Echelon of the Military Openly Questioning Why BLM Riots Weren’t Treated Like Capitol ‘Insurrection’, drawing on an article from Military.com:

Compelling Commentary 3/20/21

I can't recommend highly enough Daniel Greenfield's lengthy analysis of the current crisis in our constitutional order--brought on by the Deep State and Prog Left's reckless determination to seize the presidency (h/t Unknown):

There is No Biden Administration

Only an imminent 25th Amendment crisis and soldiers in the streets.

Exactly. That's why I refer to it as the Zhou Baiden regime. It is a regime, but Zhou is a figurehead, so it lacks the coherence to ultimately be effective on the world stage. And it may lost any semblance of coherence on the domestic stage as well. Hubris on the Left.

As I said, Greenfield's piece is lengthy, but it's also a compelling read that delves into the dynamics of the Left's seizure of the Executive Branch: Who's really in charge, what are the competing factions, etc.? Here's just a brief sample:

Laurence Silberman's Blast At The Judicial Establishment

It would be difficult to briefly characterize Laurence Silberman's position in American politics and the judiciary. His career has been extraordinarily wide ranging and his public perception has varied just as widely over the decades. He is best known for his time on the federal bench in DC--since his appointment by Ronald Reagan--but by then he was already a veteran DC politician in the Executive Branch. Perhaps it would be safest to say that he is a long time GOP establishment figure, known for an explosive temper and a penchant for speaking his mind--characteristics that have sometimes led to the need for further explanations of his views and actions. 

Silberman has participated in a number of notable decisions, including during his time on the FISA Court of Review--reviewing FISC decisions. He has rarely shied away from controversy, which may be why he was never actually nominated for the SCOTUS, although his name was frequently brought up in that regard during Republican administrations. With all that said, he has long been regarded as a leading Republican judicial figure, although he has been in senior status since 2008--twelve years ago, already!

Silberman is back in the news. Fox carried the story yesterday, regarding Silberman's dissent in the decision of a three judge Appellate panel in DC in the defamation case of Tah v. Global Witness Publishing, Inc. Silberman.

Federal judge warns 'dangerous' media has 'very close to one-party control' in blistering libel case dissent

Judge Laurence Silberman calls New York Times, Washington Post 'virtually Democratic Party broadsheets'

Fox provides the essential background for the case:

Increasingly Hard To Hide: Zhou Baiden Regime Stumbling

By now most will have seen the painful video of Zhou Baiden stumbling three times while trying to board Air Force One--and, admittedly, he did eventually succeed in getting up the stairs under his own, um, power? Still, it was touch and go for a while. In future the Secret Service--or whoever, ask Dan Bongino--had better not leave Zhou on his own. This could easily have wound up with Zhou tumbling all the way back down, with conceivably fatal consequences. Imagine that--first "president" to perish in futile attempt to board an airplane?

After Mocking Trump’s Walk, Joe Biden Just Got Completely Owned By A Set Of Stairs

Joe Biden just fell 3 times in a row trying to go up the stairs to Air Force One pic.twitter.com/gTUTckUH32

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 19, 2021

But that seems increasingly like a metaphor for the entire Zhou Baiden regime's attempts at projecting that they're in charge of things. I use the plural advisedly, since it's terribly clear that Zhou is in charge of next to nothing in his life at this point--definitely not his dogs and likely not even the Oval Office fireplace.

The rest of the world has not been slow to pick up on this. Zhou's personal attempts at bluster--to mask the personal ineffectuality of this "chief executive"--have fallen utterly flat, and the supposedly competent handlers are being treated with contempt by other nations that actually do have competent regimes. For example ...

Red State writes today:

Briefly Noted: Stimulate This!

If the Zhou Baiden regime doesn't want you to own guns, why are they giving you the money to buy guns? You'd need to be a liberal government bureaucrat to figure that one out--in other words, someone who doesn't have a clue about real people. We're from the government and we're hear to help you--Ha ha! Anyway, that seems to be what's going on, according to Forbes--and lots of anecdotal evidence: 

Americans Are Spending Their Stimulus Checks On Guns

Americans are looking forward to another round of stimulus checks and gun shops are looking forward to another round of stimulus stockpiling. 

As the House takes its final vote Wednesday on the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, many Americans are looking forward to spending their $1,400 stimulus checks at the gun store. 

“Stimulus check equals gun money,” said Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks in Delray Beach, Florida. ... 

... 

Al Tawil, owner of Towers Armory, a gun store and range in Oregon, Ohio, said that his weekly sales jumped by about 20% right after mid-April 2020, when many Americans received the first $1,200 stimulus payments from the federal government. He has every reason to believe it will happen again. 

“We’re expecting another big sale when the stimulus comes out,” he said. “They’ve got the extra money and people go indulge themselves with something they can’t normally afford. Some people want a car. Some people want a gun.”

Or both? Have gun, will travel? 

Instead of Covid relief, call it 2A Relief. If we can't have a fully employed citizenry, well ...

There are downsides to this generally excellent program, of course--it wouldn't be a government program if there weren't downsides. For some people it's drug money. (H/T Don Surber)

ADDENDUM: For everyone who's interested in that really weird video of Zhou supposedly talking to reporters, I recommend Andrea Widburg's account: It’s not possible that the White House is faking Biden press moments, is it? The answer seems to be, ... but, no, I won't toy with your intelligence. These are the people--politicians and press--who specialize in hoaxes.

UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Schools, Scams, Jobs

Three good reads that tell us a lot about America.

First, 

Cancel Public School

If we took the future of the nation seriously, we would end public schools tomorrow.

This article is built around an anecdote. The author recounts a friend's experience. The friend teaches Sunday school to 4th graders from Harlem, in NYC. The friend came across two "students" who were unable to read. They had been passed through the first four grades but simply had never learned to read even simple English. 

He goes on to point out:

The New York City public school system spends $28,800 per student per year—more than anywhere else in the world. A brand-new public school teacher with a master’s degree and zero prior experience starts at $65,000 a year, plus benefits.

We know that this really does happen in America, and we know that these kids usually come from minority and low income communities--those who need a good early foundational education if they're ever going to become productive, reasonably satisfied citizens. These, according to several mainstream studies by outfits like the WaPo are the kids who have been hurt the most by the government teacher unions that have kept schools closed.

Interesting: Semi-Serious Social Science Study On January 6 Event

Victoria Taft wrote this up for PJ Media, but I got it through Zerohedge:

Study Shows Very Few Capitol Hill Rioters Were QAnon Red-Staters With Ties To 'Right-Wing' Groups

The study comes from the prestigious University of Chicago, and includes some interesting information about the people who participated in as well as those who were arrested at the January 6 Event. For example, the researchers were rather impressed with the level of intellectual sophistication of those involved. They also had to come up with a whole new category for people participating in protests: Business Owners! Go figure, eh? At a rally of conservatives we find ... business owners!

Read it all, but here are some highlights. The researchers labored from the usual stereotypical perspectives and narratives. What's interesting is that they found themselves struggling to come to grips with a reality that didn't fit their usual categories and stereotypes:

Poison, Mutilate, and Sterilize

That's the title of Steve Sailer's latest book review, and in a normal country "poison, mutilate, and sterilize" would seem a very odd agenda for a fashionable upper class social craze. But maybe this isn't a normal country we're talking about. The review is of Abigail Shrier's book:

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

and the review begins:

Nothing exemplifies the madness of our times more than the fervent push since 2013 by therapists, educators, social workers, and journalists to poison, mutilate, and sterilize girls who have self-diagnosed themselves with the novel social-media-transmitted hysteria now known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD).

Hence, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, an op-ed freelancer for The Wall Street Journal, is one of the most valuable (as well as sensible and lively) books of recent years.

If I may put Sailer's implicit thesis--and presumably Shrier's, as well, since I haven't read the book--the current craze seems to have been empowered or, in a manner of speaking, put on steroids (we are talking about powerful drugs, after all) by the internet generally and smartphones in particular. The result is that the current craze is far more contagious than similar past crazes for escaping reality. Here is how that works:

Interesting: McConnell Threatens "Scorched Earth"

Mitch McConnell is definitely a mixed bag. Leaving the downside for some other time, the upside is that he's a great guy to have on your side when the going gets rough in the Senate.

Today he gave a speech in the Senate threatening a "scorched earth" approach if the Dems eliminate the filibuster. I had no idea that the GOP had alternatives, but it turns out that they do. Zerohedge--McConnell Flips Out Over Filibuster, Threatens 'Scorched Earth Senate' If Dems Pursue Power Grab:

If Dems 'blow up the filibuster,' McConnell says he'll require a quorum for every piece of Democrat legislation - which VP Kamala Harris couldn't become a tie-breaker for, and that previous actions would seem like "child's play."

...

In short, McConnell is threatening to make Congressional Democrats' lives miserable if they push for a power grab through the elimination of the filibuster, while Democrats know they'll have to negotiate in good faith if they want infrastructure - or any major legislation - to pass with the support of moderate Democrat Joe Manchin - described in January as the most powerful Senator due to this exact scenario.

That's not "flipping out." That's just splashing some cold water in your face. Looks like the GOP may have more cards in its hand than anyone thought. I sure hope so.

Zerohedge has all sorts of analysis of this, but the above looks like the bottom line.

UPDATED: The REAL Story

I avoid stories that I can't possibly keep up with, but this is one you've all read about and which is worth pointing to. I'm talking about the Fake News--or maybe I should just come out and say Hoax Journalism--about Trump's supposed "obstruction" in his phone call to the GA Secretary of State's lead investigator. The WaPo, which ran with the story has, as you know, tried to slip a retraction past John Q. Public after their fraud was exposed by the WSJ--I won't be resubscribing to the WSJ, but a hat tip to them nevertheless.

Now enterprising journalists are taking a closer look to see what this means. Obviously, the fact that the Dems actually referred to this hoax at their Hoax Impeachment 2.0 is a rather big part of the story--what the hell kind of "impeachment" is it that goes with unverified newspaper articles attributed to anonymous sources? But that may be only part of the bigger picture.

Here's a tweet by the Washington Examiner's Beckett Adams that points toward that bigger picture:

you all are missing the real story re: WaPo's correction of its Trump/Ga. investigations chief "scoop."

the real scandal is that a bunch of newsrooms claimed at the time they “confirmed” the details of the "scoop" with their own anon sourcing.https://t.co/4Xqxt3mcHk

— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) March 15, 2021

The link in the tweet, of course, is to Adams' full article on this story. Here's what he's referring, citing chapter and verse of the "news" organizations that were in on the hoax:

A New Concept: Sovereign Crime

Yesterday I offered a few Tentative Signs Of Hope? Today, a splash of cold water. Tentative signs of hope isn't the same as rampant optimism. I do try to offer tempered optimism--remember disgraced former AG Bill Barr, Justice Amy, etc.?--but I don't turn away from reality.

Today, starting soon, I'll be taking a bit of a mental health break--at least for the morning. Mental, not physical, health--the wrist/hand is much better, thanks to the brace and keyboard shortcuts (I have tried a trackball but am not crazy about it).

In the meantime, here are two related and highly recommended reads. There remain signs of hope, even as we suggested in Things Fall Apart, but these are very dark days for the Republic. What comes out on the other side of the tunnel we're in may look very different--for better or worse.

First (h/t Ray So-Cal) from AmThinker, Jay Valentine:

Briefly Noted: Tentative Signs Of Hope?

Will Leftist excesses finally make a difference? It's too early to tell, but there is an election coming up in the not too distant future, and the amount and degree of craziness on the Left shows no signs of abating or receding. Here are a few items that indicate that more and more people are taking notice.

Recently we ran a long post regarding the degree of wokeness being jammed down students' throats--even at expensive private schools. The wokeness is also being jammed down the parents' throats, and they're not all pleased. At The Atlantic Conor Friedersdorf expresses misgivings about what's going on, with specific reference to the most dominant form of wokeness:

What Happens When a Slogan Becomes the Curriculum?

A curriculum inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement is spreading, raising questions about the line between education and indoctrination.

Don Surber has a very nice examination of the article: BLM and the limits of propaganda, with long quotes from the article itself:

Is Covid The Product Of Bioweapon Research At The Wuhan Lab?

When the Covid scare first became a reality my first focus was on the possibility that it was a product of a Chinese bioweapon research program. That was natural, given that the last 12 years of my career had been spent working PRC CI matters. This focus was also a factor in leading me to accept--with less than the amount of knowledge and skepticism than I should have had--the official narratives. I spent a bit--but just a bit--of time this morning trying to figure out when I got away from official narrative. As nearly as I can figure, nothing really rigorous, it must have been in the late Spring or early Summer, because in Informed Opinion On Covid? (dated June 27, 2020) I began the post with these two paragraphs:

My wife and I were lamenting yesterday the glaring lack of transparency regarding SARS CoV-2 (i.e., Covid). I've long since come to the view that this lack of transparency on the part of most of our State and local governments and the public health authorities can only be explained by political motives. There's no health related reason why, at this point, we should not have access to the data that they have. Not to put too fine a point on it, Lib Prog fear mongering must be behind the lack of transparency. The fact of the matter is, you know and I know that--after months of the pandemic--there is no lack of relevant data out there, collected by government health officials. Yet somehow that relevant data is, for the most part, not being pushed out to the people (you and me) who need it to respond rationally. It's as if there are people or 'folks' who don't want us to know, who don't want us to be part of the decision making process.

Amid the talk of a new surge of "cases", I want to know what a "case" is, how that relates to hospitalizations and deaths, and who these people who have become "cases" actually are. More, I'd like to know how they became "cases."

For the past several weeks, at least, there's been a steady stream of information coming out, all of which tends to confirm what was apparent at an early date--that the outbreak of the new version of the SARS virus that we refer to (in shorthand) as "Covid" originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Today Just The News has a piece that repeats this conclusion but adds some authority to the report by quoting a prominent investigator in the field of detecting weapons programs: 

UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Perspective On The Border

An excerpt from Wayne Allen Root's Has Joe Biden Sold America out to the Mexican Drug Cartels? (I linked to FR to avoid all the extraneous "stuff" on Townhall pages.)

Experts estimated the money made on drug trafficking by the cartels at around $500 billion a year. That's half a trillion dollars a year -- "trillion" with a T.

Who quotes that figure? Republican senators. See what Georgia Sen. David Purdue said in 2019: "At half a trillion dollars -- $500 billion -- that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart, to put it in perspective. So this is larger than our largest companies."

But that figure is bipartisan. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein quotes a figure in a similar range: "The illicit drug trade is a business, valued at anywhere between $426 and $652 billion."

That was all before Joe Biden's lax open-borders policies.

But that's just drugs. What about human trafficking? Nearly 100,000 migrants crossed the U.S. border in just the past month. Multiply 100,000 migrants times 10,000 ($10,000 is a common going rate for smuggling humans). That's $1 billion for human trafficking in a month. Now add in child sex trafficking.

Follow the link to read the rest. 

Obviously, Root has an interesting--if not entirely original--theory working here: Follow the money. What in the world are the cartels doing with all that money, year after year? Who ever heard of getting fabulously rich and not paying any taxes--taxes or something? Or, to put it in Root's own cynical words: "Who would you pay if you were a Mexican drug cartel kingpin?"

According to Reuters, 'Migrant president' Baiden stirs Mexican angst over boom time for gangs. Lopez-Obrador longs for the good old days of El Presidente--Donald Trump. He knows that this Progressive open borders scam will vastly empower the cartels vis a vis the Mexican government. One can only imagine his inner thoughts when Zhou told him: 

“We look at Mexico as an equal, not as somebody who is south of our border. You are equal."

Also, we'll respect you in the morning.

Things Fall Apart?

We saw how the Second Faux Impeachment quickly fell apart, but even so the Dem's laughable insurrection narrative continues to grind on--undergirded by a massively corrupt FBI and DoJ. However, even as the the FBI continues to conduct grotesquely overwrought "operations" supported by armored vehicles, against women and children, to arrest persons whose only apparent offense is to have been in the Imperial City on the Potomac on January 6, or to have spoken to fellow citizens, even liberal judges have been pushing back against these abuses.

One particularly egregious example of over the top federal behavior was documented yesterday at TGP:

Joshua James is a war hero, a veteran, a Godly man, a provider, and a business owner. Joshua James DID NOT commit any violent crime. He attended the January 6th speech by President Trump at the Ellipse along with a million other Americans.  He volunteered to work security with other members of the Oath Keepers.

The FBI is holding him until trial because he was seen speaking with two other members of the Oath Keepers that day.

James was lured away from his home and then arrested--follow the link for details. Then, the FBI showed up to search his home, where only his wife and 3 year old were present when this rolled up:

UPDATED: Too Good To Pass On

I'm sure everyone's aware that the US MIlitary launched a coordinated strike on Tucker Carlson yesterday--in retaliation for that video of his that I included yesterday. That's what our storied military has come to. This morning Don Surber comments:

ITEM 2: The Daily Caller won the headline of the day with "U.S. military launches coordinated strikes against American TV host."

The story cited a headline at the Official Taxpayer-Paid DOD web site, "Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military."

...

Unless Tucker Carlson (the host in question) made a factual error, the Pentagon press secretary should shut his trap. 

But our military is politicized and part of this anti-American cabal of Washington politicians, the media, the deep state, and corporate America that are hellbent on destroying everything that made America great.

...

The spokesman in question, retired Admiral John Kirby, is a former CNN commentator, which raises questions of ethics.

The new Marine Hymn: "From the Halls of Tucker Carlson, to the shores of New Jersey. We will fight the P.C. battles, for the L, G, B, and T."

Nevertheless, it is serious that this is the state of our polity.

UPDATE: Oh, here's a name from the Russia Hoax past, also via Don Surber: Marc Elias. Call this one, Federal Judge launches coordinated strike on top DNC lawyer:

ITEM 10: Bloomberg reported, "One of the Democrat Party’s top election lawyers was hit with sanctions by a federal court for violating ethics rules in a suit against Texas over straight-ticket voting, a rare rebuke for a seasoned attorney following months of tumultuous litigation over the November election.

"Marc Elias and other lawyers with Perkins Coie LLP were ordered Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans to pay legal fees and double costs to Texas. The order was issued in a suit Elias filed in August on behalf of the Democrats’ Senate and congressional campaign committees."

"Rare" rebuke? I'd call it pretty much unprecedented. Follow the link at Elias' name if you need a refresher course re Elias. He was an integral part of every aspect of the Hillary coverups and all related hoaxes--the Russian "hacks", Fusion GPS, Chris Steele, FBI. You name the swampy dealings and he was there. So, it's nice to see this on his record.

In CA Recall News

While those following CA politics are mostly focusing on the recall campaign against Gavin Newsom, Monica Showalter has a very full report on the start of what could be another very important recall campaign. That campaign involves Chesa Boudin, the Soros DA for San Francisco. (I urge you to follow the link and read up on Boudin's Weather Underground pedigree if you're not already familiar with it--his father is still in prison for the infamous 1981 Brinks robbery.) As Showalter reports, 

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — The San Francisco Department of Elections cleared a campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, which will allow them to collect signatures for a recall vote.

As far as I know, this is the first Soros DA to face a possible recall. In my own county a controversial Soros DA has been elected and reelected.

Boudin was elected District Attorney in San Francisco in 2019. Showalter has lots of detail on the Soros inspired agenda--repeated around the country by other Soros DAs--this radical son has followed, especially the release of repeat offenders and the refusal to prosecute violent offenders. Some of it is quite disturbing, including the usual brutal attacks on small, elderly East Asian men by much larger and younger assailants.

Sowing this type of disorder follows the usual Left tactic of inciting chaos in the hope of using it to take control. I got this from CTH:

Maybe a groundswell of relative normality could nip this in the bud.

UPDATED: Zhou On TV Last Night--Why?

I won't spend much time on Zhou Baiden's appearance on TV last night, not in the sense of parsing what he read. It's the type of thing that, if you waste much time thinking about it, will probably just make you stupid. If you roll in that kinda stuff, well, you start to smell like it. That's what my father used to say when I was young, and it's still true. Moreover, there are plenty of others to do that--Andrea Widburg, for example, does a terrific job: Biden’s scary, boring, and bizarre address to the nation.

However, I will take a stab at the Why? question. What was the real point of this exercise, if it wasn't to communicate information in the normal sense of: facts?

Until I learn otherwise, my assumption is that this was the best substitute for a Zhou SOTU that his handlers could dream up--something they thought they could pull off and maybe get away with. They must not have believed at this point that they could pull off a full blown SOTU in front of the nation. Nor a full blown press conference--the two traditional things that legit, mentally there, presidents do very early on in their administration. I assume that the Zhou Baiden regime feels that it's between a rock and a hard place. They knew all along that they'd need to pull a switcheroo and foist Kama Sutra on the nation, but they also knew--despite the brazenness of Election 2020 in all its aspects--that that move would take some finessing. That means they felt they would need some time to prepare the nation because, let's face, nobody actually voted for Kama Sutra. But here they are, they need time, yet Zhou's mental state may force action sooner than they'd like. The only dodge is to try to put off the demands for the constitutionally mandated SOTU or the traditional presser by feeding the public--and even the press--this pablum.

In the meantime, I'll second a point that Widburg made:

The Elite And Control

I've been having some right hand, arthritis related, problems lately. Last night, having overdone mousework during the day (I'm trying to integrate more keyboard shortcuts) I decided to try reading some Christopher Lasch--whom many praise. I tried The Culture Of Narcissism: American Life In An Age Of Diminishing Expectations (1973), but found it turgid. So I picked up The Revolt Of The Elites And The Betrayal Of Democracy (1994). That, so far, is much more to my taste and has the advantage--again, so far--of being far more connected to our current situation. I was struck by this passage in the first chapter which, in a partial way, plays into the themes we explored a bit yesterday (The Plight of Privileged Private Education):

Control has become [the Elite's] obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves from risk and contingency--against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life--the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.

The culture wars that have convulsed America since the sixties are best understood as a form of class warfare, in which an enlightened elite (as it thinks of itself) seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority (a majority perceived as incorrigibly racist, sexist, provincial, and xenophobic), much less to persuade the majority by means of rational public debate, as to create parallel or "alternative" institutions in which it will no longer be necessary to confront the unenlightened at all. (20-21)

Lasch speaks, even two and a half decades ago, of a growing 'populist' sentiment in America. He describes the Elite's obsession to control not only their own lives but the lives of their children as well--to guarantee their children's place within a type of hereditary or, at the least, ideological elite. That certainly resonates with Bari Weiss's description of the privileged parents, who will tolerate or remain silent about almost anything in order to ensure their own and their children's continuing elite status. Of course the children are insulated from Deplorable America by attending the right Left schools, as the parents are by living in Holmby Hills. Above all, however, these are class markers, and these parents are engaged in a gentrified form of class warfare.

Now, it's true that we're seeing far more aggressive efforts on the part of the Left to coerce the majority. Note that well. The Left is not engaged in what Lasch calls "rational public debate." In fact, "rational public debate"--how surprised would Lasch really be at this development?--is now viewed as an instrument of White Supremacy by the people who run elite schools and most of our public life. They are interested in conditioning, control, coercion--they feel that they have an ascendancy fueled by social media. But at bottom this is still mostly a defensive effort at insulation from the real world, as Lasch says.

Briefly Noted: DSA in NV, Money, Jesus

I'm guessing that this is an indication that the Left is also adept at forming the circular firing squad--it's not just a GOPer thing. Not to be outdone by the Dem circus in DC, the Democratic Socialists of America took control over the Dem party in Nevada, and that result seems unpopular with the mainstream knuckleheads:

Entire Staff of Nevada Democratic Party Quit Over New Democrat Socialist Leadership

In the meantime, Thomas Lifson had a campaign finance update yesterday. It appears that the GOP is doing just fine, despite all the corporate donors who threatened to cut off the GOP after the January 6 Event:

The Plight of Privileged Private Education

There's a lengthy article out today by Bari Weiss that's trending strongly. The easiest way to provide a feel for the article is to simply provide the link:

The Miseducation of America’s Elites

Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret.

I can't imagine any concatenation of themes to grab the interest of concerned Americans of even moderately traditional views than those that Weiss evokes in her title and subtitle: Education of our children is where we all either live currently or lived in the past; Elitism in this Age of Trump resonate strongly, too; The terror inspired by the organized and Woke Left, in increasing control our lives and on the march in the streets and in the culture (especially the schools). Wrapping all that together with an inside view of how our ruling class itself is increasingly concerned by these trends is sure to get the attention of the rest of us.

Few current writers are more qualified than Weiss to present the concerns of the these affluent, and increasingly concerned, parents. Many readers may know Weiss's name as the ousted editrix at the NYT--ousted by a woke journalistic mob of her co-workers there. In fact there's much more to her career than her tenure at the NYT, so I urge you to read the Bari Weiss Wikipedia page.

What you'll quickly realize is that Weiss is anything but a conservative, herself, and abominates all things Trump. That pedigree allowed her to encourage the parents she interviewed to speak freely--even if anonymously. Before we get into the substance of the article, however, it may be well to paste in here the entire Wiki section on Weiss's political views--no editing:

Briefly Noted: Covid Meds, Zhou's DoJ, Taxes By State

Here are a few quick links to get started today.

Last week Merck publicized the effectiveness of its experimental anti-viral drug, molnupiravir, against Covid: Merck says study shows COVID-19 drug causes quick reduction in virus. The trials are set to be completed in May, at which time this at-home treatment could be put on the market.

Today Eli Lilly is reporting excellent success with its own "drug combo" treatment: Eli Lilly COVID-19 drug combo cuts risk of hospitalizations, deaths by 87%. It's also reported to be effective against the dread The Variants:

Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, Lilly's chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories, said in a news release posted Wednesday. "These compelling data ... give healthcare providers additional information regarding the use of bamlanivimab and etesevimab together as a potentially life-saving treatment to help those most at risk for severe complications of COVID-19."

Skovronsky added that the results show the drugs remain effective despite the recent concerning variants, "particularly" those coursing throughout the U.S.

IMO, this is what we need--not vaxxing.

How Are Popular Uprisings Triggered?

Late in the evening yesterday Matt Taibbi published at Zerohedge the beginning of his new article: The Prophet Of The Trump Era. Taibbi's full article is, as usual, behind a paywall, and I certainly don't begrudge him a reward for his labors. However, I'm not willing to pay, so I'm working off the Zerohedge come-on.

Taibbi is riffing off the ideas of Martin Gurri. He describes Gurri as "the former CIA analyst of open news sources." I'm not sure how descriptive that really is of Gurri's past employment. Gurri himself says he "is a former CIA analyst specializing in the relationship of politics and global media," which raises flags.

I'll say this right up front: I'm not much of a fan of "analysts," nor of their increasing roles in the Intelligence Community. Think back through the Russia Hoax and attendant hoaxes and you'll see "analysts" constantly popping up. As far as I've been able to determine over the years the role of the analyst is to parrot the Conventional Wisdom. The CW is acquired at mainstream institutions of higher education and through the MSM. That means that the CW is filtered through varying degrees of a Lib/Prog perspective.

In that regard Gurri doesn't disappoint. Checking around on the internet he appears to be depressingly shallow in most respects. I specify "depressingly" because, after all, he spent a career with the CIA studying "the relationship of politics and global media" without apparently learning much of anything beyond the CW.

To give you a brief example of just how shallow he can be ...

Right after the January 6 Event Gurri wrote this for Discourse Magazine:

Briefly Noted: Kushners, SCOTUS, Etc.

We start the week with a bit of a news roundup--one which points toward the road ahead for conservatives.

Gavin Wax has takedown of the influence the Kushners--Jared and Ivanka--had over Trump. And probably still have: 

The 800 Pound Gorilla in Trump’s Inner Circle

If the president cannot learn from his most glaring mistake, Jared Kushner, it is time for the Republican Party to move on and find a worthy successor for the MAGA revolution he started.

The list of Kushner related miscues is long and disquieting. Most involve the Kushners' obvious antipathy for the Trump base, especially social conservatives. It also involves the Kushners advancing unqualified and venal cronies, such as Brad Parscale. This is a highly recommended read.

Where we may see some of this play out in coming months could be with Trump's endorsements. There are a number of GOP senators who will not be running for reelection in 2022 or who richly deserve to be primaried. The question will be, Will Trump make smart, principled choices when it comes to endorsements? Choices that will truly advance the agenda he has proclaimed and that has been embraced by so much of the country. 

This next is hardly news:

Briefly Noted: Michael Jordan On Politics, Race

I just read this: Michael Jordan: Playing Above the Rim. Here's the part that caught my attention:

In the Netflix series The Last Dance, MJ opens up about his views on politics and activism during his playing days, and comments, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” It occurred during the 1990 U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, when his mother wanted him to support a candidate running against incumbent Republican, Jesse Helms. Michael wisely told her he would not get involved with someone he didn’t know.

On the road with two teammates, Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen, off camera, he made the remark about Republicans and his biographer exposed it. Jordan claims it was not a formal statement, but I think it reveals qualities that appear absent in the modern NBA. Was Michael a sell out? If he was, so was every other Capitalist. Wasn’t he just saying all lives matter?

Michael described “a country that has provided my family and me the greatest of opportunities. The problems we face didn’t happen overnight and they won’t be solved tomorrow.” He also said, “I never thought of myself as an activist, I thought of myself as a basketball player.” Additionally, “I wasn’t a politician," he noted. "I was playing my sport. You know, I was focused on my craft. Was that selfish? That’s where my energy was.”

Equality? Unfairly talented? 

UPDATED: Paradox For The Day - With Bonus Paradox!

Catching up on Twitter. Nice to see a WH reporter reading serious authors: 

"Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality..."

— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) March 6, 2021

But does this suggest a problem at the heart of Classical Liberalism with it's talk of "equality". As previously discussed, "equality" makes sense in a universe based on a realist philosophy that upholds objective knowledge of an objective human nature created by God. However, in the ideology of tolerant diversity of views such objective knowledge is excluded. In a society that embraces that ideology "equality" then takes on a dissolvent quality with regard to all societal standards and institutions. We've been on a slippery slope for a long time and we're seeing the results.

Bonus paradox:

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.” -P.J. O'Rourke

— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) March 6, 2021

UPDATE: To expand just a bit. When a society and its government sees the imposition of "equality"--which is a condition that simply does not and never will exist within the human race--as a legitimate and desirable goal of government, the logical outcome is tyranny to one degree or another. It is driven by an anti-realist ideology, an effort to impose an concept upon the recalcitrant reality of actual human nature and human beings. We have seen the evolution in that direction everywhere Classical Liberalism has been adopted. That's the thought behind what Legutko is saying and its the thought that also makes sense of O'Rourke's witticism. That is NOT to say that some other form of government is perfect--perfection is not attainable in a necessarily imperfect world. But a government and society based on an ideology that is in principle opposed to the order of creation and of nature is headed for big trouble. Limited government in such an ideological environment will never remain limited, will never be content to leave individuals alone to rise or fall to their own level of human thriving. This is why the whole dynamic in American history is the movement from Liberal Democracy to Progressive forms of tyranny.

On the other hand, a society and its government that is grounded in a realist philosophy of objective human nature is readily able--at least on principle--to address problems of fairness and justice among its citizens and institutions in ways that take into account individual differences. This doesn't guarantee outcomes that are fair and just, but it does allow for rational discussion of what is good or bad for human nature and for individual humans, without proposed policies for attaining human happiness being forced to conform to the artificial mold of "equality."

Two Recommended Reads: Russia and Teachers Unions

 Quite disparate. First, Russia Policy:

An Ignorant Media and Defense Establishment Prevents a Sober Russia Policy

We can only hope that America will one day see Russia as a competitor with rational motivations, not as a target for the ever-shifting ideological agendas of the U.S. government.

Second, teacher unions trying to keep schools closed:

LA Teachers’ Union Pushing Racial Division in Fight Over School Closures

Union wants to know race of parents pushing for reopening