The Right Coast

Saagar Enjeti: Media IGNORES Waukesha Killer's Pro-Hitler Past

via www.youtube.com

Biden’s ‘Infrastructure’ Bill Contains Backdoor ‘Kill Switch’ For Cars | The Daily Caller

Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares.

First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents.

via dailycaller.com

Cars will be like washers and driers -- you'll just have to try to keep the old ones running as long as possible so you don't have to use the new ones with all the regulatory grift and monitoring that comes with them.

Why Crime Likely Won’t Be An Issue In The 2022 Midterms | FiveThirtyEight

Violent crime is up. Data from the FBI found that the murder rate increased nearly 30 percent in 2020. And homicides continue to rise in 2021 as well, if not by quite as much.

Americans have noticed. A Gallup poll released in November 2020 found that 78 percent of Americans thought that the national crime rate was higher than the year before — the highest that number has been since 1993, when it was 87 percent. More recently, an October report from the Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of Americans said violent crime was “a very big problem” in the U.S. today — a 20-percentage-point jump from roughly a year earlier.

But despite polls showing that Americans are increasingly worried about crime, there are a few reasons to believe that it may not be a large issue in the midterm elections next year. The biggest of which is that crime doesn’t offer a clear advantage to either political party.

via fivethirtyeight.com

Makes sense, sadly.

The War on American Communities - by Pedro L. Gonzalez

According to the police, Brooks intentionally drove his vehicle into the crowd. And although they claimed he might have been leaving the scene of a domestic disturbance, police also confirmed that they were not pursuing him at the time that he could have but didn’t turn down a side street that would have taken him around the event and smashed through parade barriers intended to block traffic. High-angle camera footage shows Brooks speed into the frame after penetrating the perimeter, slightly decelerating, then carefully steering his SUV into pedestrians. His social media posts present a range of extremist views, from encouraging “knocking out white people” and enslaving them to supporting Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Hebrew Israelites, a militant black supremacist hate group. In one of his rap songs, Brooks bragged about being a “terrorist” and a “killer in the city.”

After the incident, an utterly remorseless Brooks went to a stranger’s house and pretended to be a homeless man pleading for help. The homeowner invited him in, gave him a jacket, and made him a sandwich before police arrested Brooks on his front porch. Along with much of the media, Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson is essentially treating the incident as a mass casualty “accident.” Thompson, who has been reluctant to associate Brooks’ political views with the attack, helped organize a Black Lives Matter march where his officers kneeled with and praised protestors last year.

via contra.substack.com

SUVs Don't Kill People - The American Conservative

The latest outburst of media knavery came in response to last week’s Waukesha parade massacre that killed six innocents, including an 8-year-old boy, and injured more than 40. If your media digest consisted solely of mainstream outlets, however, no one could blame you for thinking the killing was the work of a sentient, evil SUV—and not of Darrell Brooks Jr., a black man with a long rap sheet and a history of anti-white racism.

“Here’s what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by a SUV,” tweeted the Washington Post on Nov. 24, days after the true nature of the event had been established (the tweet has since been deleted). The underlying article was little better: Brooks didn’t make an appearance until the fifth paragraph, and throughout, the paper kept referring to the vehicle, not its driver, as the wrongdoer.

On Sunday, meanwhile, CNN informed us that “Waukesha will hold a moment of silence” to memorialize “one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade.” What a terrible, nasty car. Bad car.

via www.theamericanconservative.com

The problem with this piece is that it appears to be true. It's alarming.

'Checked-out' Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's 'eccentric' life

According to “Hatching Twitter,” Dorsey only found out when a girl told him to message her rather than call. His go-to move for wooing females, meanwhile, was to present them with origami cranes he made himself.

The former Twitter employee believes these ladies are attracted to Dorsey for more than just his billions: “It’s not the money at all. He’s legitimately interesting. That makes him a lot cooler than, say, Zuckerberg.”

Dorsey, worth some $11 billion, according to Forbes, grew up in St. Louis — where his mom was a homemaker and his dad an engineer — and now lives in a glass mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. He’s been said to breakfast on water, salt and lemon and to spend some 75 minutes each day walking from his home to his office. But he reportedly prefers working at home under infrared light, which is supposed to relieve stress. He’s claimed to eat just one meal per day and fast on the weekends.

He’s also, according to the Times of London, endorsed the microdosing of LSD.

via nypost.com

The idea of microdosing LSD is interesting. Trouble is -- what if it leads to brain damage?

LeBron James is the king — of hypocrisy when it comes to China

The grotesque hypocrisy of the Nike-NBA industrial complex and its biggest star, LeBron James, has been underlined in recent weeks by Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter, who has been on a one-man crusade against the Chinese Communist Party and those too cowardly or greedy to call it out. 

James — the owner of four NBA championship rings, who has appeared in a jaw-dropping 10 NBA finals and is perhaps the greatest of all time — has views on all sorts of public controversies and doesn’t hesitate to air them so long as they are comfortably within the fashionable woke consensus. 

via nypost.com

RTWT -- it's brief.

Last Gasp of the Plumed Knight?

Maine says it never had a Blaine Amendment, and its Attorney General merely determined that “public funding of religious schools would violate the Establishment Clause.” Meanwhile parochial schools can receive state funding if they are “willing to provide a nonsectarian education.” Maine also suggests that the Christian religion of two of the parents in the case “neither requires them to send their daughter to a Christian school nor prevents them from sending her to a public school.”

Can a secular government decide Christian teaching? No wonder lawyers for the Christian parents want the Supreme Court to resolve the question it dodged in 2020. They point to an earlier parochial school funding case, Mitchell v. Helms, in which Justice Thomas’ plurality opinion said that “nothing in the Establishment Clause requires the exclusion of pervasively sectarian schools from otherwise permissible aid programs.” Said he: “This doctrine, born of bigotry, should be buried now.”

via www.nysun.com

Hear hear.

Workers Quit Jobs in Droves to Become Their Own Bosses - WSJ

The pandemic has unleashed a historic burst in entrepreneurship and self-employment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own as consultants, retailers and small-business owners.

The move helps explain the ongoing shake-up in the world of work, with more people looking for flexibility, anxious about covid exposure, upset about vaccine mandates or simply disenchanted with pre-pandemic office life. It is also aggravating labor shortages in some industries and adding pressure on companies to revamp their employment policies.

The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic, Labor Department data show, to 9.44 million. That is the highest total since the financial-crisis year 2008, except for this summer. The total amounts to an increase of 6% in the self-employed, while the overall U.S. employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic.

via www.wsj.com

Well, good. One good thing comes out of this at least.

Waukesha suspect shared social media posts promoting violence towards white people | Daily Mail Online

The suspect accused of plowing into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin and killing five on Sunday shared social media posts promoting violence towards white people.

Today, eight-year-old Jackson Sparks was named by relatives as the sixth victim, having died in hospital from his injuries.

A now-deleted Facebook account belonging to Darrell Brooks Jr., 39, showed the alleged killer had encouraged knocking 'white ppl [the f**k] out' and also appeared to support the controversial Black Hebrew Israelites. 

Brooks was charged on Tuesday with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide and is expected to face more charges. 

Police are yet to determine the motive behind the deadly rampage, however, records reveal Brooks is a career criminal with a rap sheet dating back to 1999 and had been bailed twice this year. 

Facebook posts also show the amateur rapper, who went by his stage name, MathBoi Fly, had shared a series of links and memes relating to race and white privilege in June 2020, when protests erupted over the death of George Floyd. 

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Murder is wrong, whatever the race of the victims. Murder is wrong, whether it advances some political narrative or not. Its victims should be remembered, not erased from our memories. We're watching this awful thing happen before our eyes, yet we're afraid to speak of it, because we're afraid if we speak of it we'll be calumnied. But we should mourn these six, and save some tears for our country.

Will Twitter Become an Ocean of Suck?

Jack Dorsey, the extend-o-bearded CEO who co-founded Twitter and whose fame grew with that of his increasingly powerful platform during the Trump years, resigned today. His departure is the latest plot point in a long-developing Internet tragicomedy, which has seen what was supposed to be a historically democratizing technological tool transformed into a dystopian force for censorship and control. The departure of Dorsey, the rare CEO who not only has a conscience but appears to consult it more than once every few years, is bad news for those who already had complaints about the company, which during his tenure came to occupy a central role in what’s left of American intellectual culture.

via taibbi.substack.com

Matt Taibbi.

Twitter is currently a shallow pool of [bad stuff] with eddies of goodness. It's addictive at least to the addiction-prone. I don't agree with Matt that Dorsey kept it mostly clean. Twitter is utterly biased in who and what it bans. Remember Hunter's laptop? And many other examples. But still, it could get worse, and probably will.

The big, bushy man o' the woods beard is the new goatee. I expect to see some little parasites leap out of it at any moment. And it requires a lot of grooming just to look ungroomed. Ridiculous.

Convicted killer who fought terrorist in 2019 with Narwhal tusk speaks of 'deep regret' for murder | Daily Mail Online

A convicted killer who used a narwhal tusk to help bring down the London Bridge terrorist has spoken about the attack as well as his 'deep regret' for a murder that saw him locked up for life.

Steve Gallant, 43, chased and helped pin down jihadist knifeman Usman Khan, 28, during the 2019 terror incident.

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Knife-wielding intruder shot, killed while rushing Marines at San Diego base | American Military News

Marine Corps personnel shot and killed an individual armed with a knife trying to breach a gate checkpoint to Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, Calif. on Friday around noon local time.

The individual was driving a vehicle that had attempted to enter the base through the Gate 5 checkpoint and was stopped by base personnel. The driver exited the vehicle and approached personnel with a knife, ignored warnings, and was shot dead.

“Base personnel issued verbal commands to stop the vehicle at which point the individual exited their vehicle and approached with a knife and hostile intent. After several warnings the individual was shot by base personnel,” Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego said in a statement provided to American Military News.

“Emergency services were called and the individual was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:16 p.m.,” the statement added.

via americanmilitarynews.com

Suicide by Marine.

Federal court blocks Biden's vaccine mandate for health workers in 10 states

A federal court in Missouri has blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a coronavirus vaccine mandate for health care workers at federally-funded facilities in 10 states.

Why it matters: Monday's decision is the first victory for opponents of the rule, which requires health care workers to get vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022. The case is one of four lawsuits challenging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule and argues that the mandate will exacerbate staffing shortages.

via news.yahoo.com

I don't think anybody, inside or out of the Biden administration, thinks these mandates will pass judicial muster.

Does Abortion Promote Equality for Women? - WSJ

Here’s a measure of how far American women have progressed since 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade: Then, no woman had ever been elected attorney general of a U.S. state, and none would be for another dozen years. Now, Mississippi’s attorney general is defending the constitutionality of her state’s law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. Earlier this year Lynn Fitch appointed Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart, who on Wednesday will make the state’s case to the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“Everything has changed in the last 50 years,” says Ms. Fitch, 60, a Republican who was elected in 2019, in an interview. “Our laws are much different. The culture is different today than it was 50 years ago. And certainly the workforce and the workplace has changed.” That’s part of the reason the justices should uphold Mississippi’s law, the state argues.

Roe, as Mississippi notes in its brief to the court, “suggested that, without abortion, unwanted children could ‘force upon’ women ‘a distressful life and future.’ ” Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) asserted that the “ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” Mississippi disagrees: “Modern options regarding and views about childbearing have dulled concerns on which Roe rested.”

Ms. Fitch elaborates. “Maternity leave is very commonplace, where it wasn’t 50 years ago,” she says. Paternity leave “was unheard of 50 years ago.” A 2020 Society for Human Resource Management survey found that 55% of employers in the U.S. offer paid maternity leave and 45% offer paid paternity leave.

via www.wsj.com

I find it very difficult to believe that SCOTUS will overrule Roe v. Wade.

Voters are saying ‘no’ but Biden isn’t listening - The Spectator World

That’s what they are saying, repeatedly, at the ballot box. In the heavily Democratic city of Buffalo, for example, the party’s mayoral nominee, an avowed socialist, lost to a write-in candidate, the city’s former mayor. In South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, a Republican narrowly defeated the Democrat in a city Biden carried by forty points only a year ago. In New York City — the biggest prize of all — the far-left incumbent, Bill de Blasio, will be succeeded by a former police officer. Voters there recoiled from pervasive violence on streets and subway platforms. They know “broken windows” policing once worked in the city and made it much more livable. What they see now is “please break our windows” policing, and they don’t feel safe.

via spectatorworld.com

Prof. Charles Lipson.

China Is Using Academia Like a Trojan Horse | Opinion

Across western higher education, elite institutions are normalizing authoritarian political systems—such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—when they should instead be under scrutiny.

via www.newsweek.com

Israel Bans All Foreigners Except Beautiful Women Due to Omicron Variant

Despite Israel being one of the first countries to close its borders due to concerns around the new Omicron COVID variant, it is still planning to host a cavalcade of beautiful women at the Miss Universe pageant at the Red Sea resort city of Eilat in December.

Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov made the announcement on Sunday, a day after Israel said it was banning all foreigners from entering the country.

The minister told reporters that participants at the Miss Universe beauty pageant would be given waivers while possibly undergoing PCR testing every two days, as well as other precautionary measures.

via www.newsweek.com

Well, ok.

Heavily mutated Omicron variant puts scientists on alert

Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.

A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.

“We’re flying at warp speed,” says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose lab is gauging the variant’s potential to dodge immunity from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of reinfections and of cases in vaccinated individuals, but “at this stage it’s too early to tell anything”, Moore adds.

via www.nature.com

For obvious reasons, I'm not feeling terribly pro-virologist these days. But I suppose not all virologists are in the business of creating viruses that kill more people than the Holocaust did, so I should give those of them that are trying to manage the viral outbreak the benefit of the doubt. So perhaps you will excuse the peppy, science-writing tone of this article. We're all in this together, etc., etc.

The shameful silence on the Waukesha massacre - spiked

Is silence still violence? If it is, then a whole lot of people, from the Hollywood set to the virtue-signalling left, are guilty of some serious violence right now. Their silence on the Waukesha massacre, on the slaughter of six innocents by a man wielding his SUV as a deadly weapon, is deafening. More than that, it is sinister. Dancing grannies, an eight-year-old boy, people singing and cheering at a Christmas parade, all mown down. Six killed, 62 injured, in what police are treating as a suspected act of intentional homicide. That is, mass murder. And yet there’s been nothing from Hollywood stars who normally love to hold forth on terrible acts of violence. Influencers seem to have been struck dumb. There are no blacked-out squares on Instagram. The big woke corporations aren’t pumping out pained, concerned press releases. It’s just tumbleweed, everywhere.

via www.spiked-online.com

Chinese titan lavished Hunter Biden with 3-carat gem, offer of $30 million

James Gilliar, a wiry, 56-year-old British ex-SAS officer, got to know Ye Jianming, the 40-year-old chairman of CEFC, when they were both working in the Czech Republic.

CEFC was a Chinese conglomerate, one of the largest energy companies in the world.

Ye’s task at was to spend $1.5 billion as quickly as possible to ensure the Czech Republic would become China’s “Gateway to the European Union,” a priority of President Xi.

To that end, Ye bought everything from a football team and a brewery to an airline, before being named “special economic advisor” to Czech President Milos Zeman.

Now he was looking for an influential partner to help with acquisitions in other locations around the world that had strategic significance for the Chinese state.

Gilliar had an idea who could help: The Biden family.

via nypost.com

Only in the Post and the other tabloids. I'm guessing this isn't "news that's fit to print."

I would really like to know how extraordinary this turn by nearly all of our media to being overt propaganda actually is. Was this how it was before newspapers etc. starting posing as being objective? Has it always been this bad but we just didn't know it? Or have things just really gone all to hell remarkably quickly?

Beijing Keeps Trying to Rewrite History

For more than two decades, the city passed Galschiøt’s assessment. Students and activists gathered every spring to ceremonially wash the structure, which across its base reads The old cannot kill the young forever. The ritual was the first in a sequence of events held every year in Hong Kong to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre culminating with the candlelight vigil. Now, though, the pillar is caught in a sort of purgatory—unwanted by the university, which has tried to remove it but faced fierce resistance, and Galschiøt’s attempts to retrieve it have gone unanswered. The awkward situation is representative of the city itself, not entirely subjugated by Beijing but not as free, open, or vibrant as it once was.

via www.msn.com

In Hong Kong, students are fighting to keep a statue and not forget the past.

The Cynical and Dangerous Weaponization of the "White Supremacist" Label - by Glenn Greenwald - Glenn Greenwald

Within hours of the August 25, 2020, shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin — not days, but hours — it was decreed as unquestioned fact in mainstream political and media circles that the shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse, was a "white supremacist.” Over the next fifteen months, up to and including his acquittal by a jury of his peers on all charges, this label was applied to him more times than one can count by corporate media outlets as though it were proven fact. Indeed, that Rittenhouse was a "white supremacist” was deemed so unquestionably true that questioning it was cast as evidence of one's own racist inclinations (defending a white supremacist).

Yet all along, there was never any substantial evidence, let alone convincing proof, that it was true. This fact is, or at least should be, an extraordinary, even scandalous, event: a 17-year-old was widely vilified as being a white supremacist by a union of national media and major politicians despite there being no evidence to support the accusation. Yet it took his acquittal by a jury who heard all the evidence and testimony for parts of the corporate press to finally summon the courage to point out that what had been Gospel about Rittenhouse for the last fifteen months was, in fact, utterly baseless.

via greenwald.substack.com

I'm just going to charitably put a lot of this utterly indefensible hostility to the truth down to the collateral effects of The Covid. If it's not that, and it may well not be, then the Woke Left, or whatever else you want to call it, is just *really bad*. A lot of it, perhaps most of it, is the product of a nasty collaboration of Social Media and the legacy media. In any event, let's hope it goes away, hanging its head in shame.

Fans Pour Funding—and Faith—Into a Hit Drama About Jesus - WSJ

MIDLOTHIAN, Texas—Last winter 2,000 people costumed in robes and headscarves gathered on a grassy slope here to shoot the season finale of a drama with no ties to any Hollywood studio, network or streaming service. “The Chosen,” a saga about the adult life of Jesus and his disciples, is financed completely by its audience. Most of the extras had paid $1,000 each to be part of the climactic scene leading up to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Now, down the hill from that spot, construction crews are building a roughly $20 million production complex dedicated to “The Chosen.” They’re pouring concrete for a soundstage the size of a football field, soon to be flanked by a cafeteria and workshops for sets and costumes. Next, they’ll break ground for a replica of Capernaum, an ancient village on the Sea of Galilee.

Dallas Jenkins, the filmmaker who created “The Chosen,” says the show’s style is modeled more on “Friday Night Lights” than other Christian TV shows and movies. Mary Magdalene relapses into vice. The apostle Matthew is on the autism spectrum. Jesus’ miracles get back stories.

By fleshing out biblical characters across multiple seasons, the show has inspired fan discussion, debate and squabbling on a level more typical of the Marvel or Star Wars series. Except that for “Chosen” fans, the dynamic is fueled by religious faith.

via www.wsj.com

LWJ loves this show. Personally, not so much. But I bet it's the future.

Move Over, GE. The Tech Conglomerates Are the New Leaders of Industry. - WSJ

The eulogies for the corporate conglomerate have been pouring in fast. But in fact, these monsters of modern business are now bigger, more powerful and perhaps more world-consumingly durable than ever—they also look very different than in the past.

The dismantling of General Electric, Toshiba, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, DowDuPont, United Technologies and other sprawling business empires in recent years has been heralded as the end of the conglomerate and the demise of the idea that brilliant management teams can succeed operating in very different industries. But just as those giants of traditional industry are being dismembered, today’s tech giants have arisen as latter-day conglomerates—what some even call “neo-conglomerates.” They boast valuations bigger than any other companies in history, and have diversified their businesses through acquisitions and new starts just like conglomerates of old.

via www.wsj.com

Probably mostly corporate BS, but informative.

If critical race theory is in Missouri classrooms, it’s likely in yours

I am a proud Parkview HS Viking who graduated from Springfield Public Schools, deep in the beautiful Ozarks of southwestern Missouri. It’s part of the Bible Belt area, deeply conservative. Former President Donald Trump last fall carried Greene County (Springfield is the county seat) by a whopping 59 to 39 percent. He won neighboring Christian County 75 to 24 percent and Webster County 79 to 19 percent.

So it was a shock to read reports that Springfield Public Schools is instructing teachers that they are white supremacists for requiring use of the English language or calling police on a black criminal suspect. SPS teacher training also listed such examples of “covert white supremacy” as “education funding from property tax,” “mass incarceration,” “treating kids of color as adults” and the phrase “All lives matter.”

The stated purpose of the more-than-40-slide training deck, obtained by investigative journalist John Solomon (my former boss), is to combat “systemic racism and xenophobia.” It features an “oppression matrix” identifying “privileged” oppressors including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”

via nypost.com

Well, they might have a few white supremacists in Missouri -- who knows? But this woke nonsense seems like a silly way to combat it. Far better would be to teach the traditional "content of our character not the color of our skin" material. CRT only gives such racists are there may be an excuse to oppose equality.

Was It a Lab Leak? The Mysterious Origin of COVID-19

via www.youtube.com

Exclusive: Notre-Dame interior faces woke 'Disney' revamp

Paris’s fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a “politically correct Disneyland” under controversial plans for its renovation seen by The Telegraph.

Critics have warned that the world-famous cathedral will be turned into an “experimental showroom” under plans to dramatically change the inside of the medieval building.

Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.

There will be themed chapels on a “discovery trail”, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame,” said Maurice Culot, a prize-winning Paris-based architect, urbanist, theorist and critic who has seen the plans.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

Ugh.

South African Medical Association Says Omicron Variant Causes 'Mild Disease' - 27.11.2021, Sputnik International

"It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home", Coetzee said

via sputniknews.com

If true, good news. Too bad for the panic seekers in legacy media.

The O variant

via www.youtube.com

The New “Omicron” Covid-19 Variant Spreading in Southern Africa: What to Know - WSJ

The configuration of the variant has given rise to concerns among experts that it will spread faster and evade vaccines more effectively than earlier strains. But how it really behaves in the real world isn’t yet clear.

Four people in Botswana with the variant were vaccinated—ahead of planned travel. However, all variants show some ability to evade vaccines. So researchers are now racing to discover whether a disproportionate number of vaccinated people are being infected by the new version and whether people infected with it are getting more or less sick than patients infected with other strains. It is still too early to say whether symptoms associated with the new variant are different.

At the same time, scientists are busy building replicas of the new variant in the lab, which will allow them to test how it reacts to antibodies triggered by Covid-19 vaccines or a previous infection.

Already, the variant is driving an exponential increase in infections in South Africa, from less than 300 new daily cases just over two weeks ago to more than 2,400 new cases on Thursday. That, scientists say, suggests that it may be more contagious than the Delta variant that was until recently dominant in the country.

“We expect unfortunately to see a very fast increase of the cases,” said Tulio de Oliveira, who heads the Center for Epidemic Response & Innovation at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University.

via www.wsj.com

Democrats Have a Waukesha Problem - WSJ

Here’s the common reaction to the Waukesha, Wis., murders: It’s nuts that the suspect, with his long criminal history, was free on $1,000 bail posted days before the automotive rampage.

Here’s New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a tweet the day after the Waukesha murders: “Today, we sent a letter . . . to NYC’s 5 District Attorneys requesting information on excessive bail in the NYC court system.” The letter was also signed by fellow New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney and Maryland’s Jamie Raskin.

via www.wsj.com

The unanswered questions of the Peng Shuai case | Financial Times

Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star, made an allegation of sexual assault against a senior Communist party leader, disappeared for weeks, then reappeared in a series of videos released by state media. Her case has shown the dilemmas of dealing with a country that has a vast and growing market, but scant respect for human rights, freedom of expression or the rule of law. One international sporting body — the Women’s Tennis Association — handled its dilemma well. Another — the International Olympic Committee — did not.

via www.ft.com

The WTA is correct. The IOC is, well, I am no longer using vulgar terms.

Thanksgiving is Awesome - by Matt Taibbi - TK News

Where’s all this headed? In the space of a generation America has gone from being a country brimming with undeserved over-confidence, to one whose intellectual culture has turned into an agonizing, apparently interminable run of performative self-flagellation.

Whether or not to enjoy Thanksgiving is not the hard part of the American citizen’s test. Thanksgiving is awesome. Everything about it, from the mashed potatoes to the demented relatives to the pumpkin pies to the farts, is top-drawer holiday enjoyment. The only logical complaint about modern Thanksgiving involves forcing the poor Detroit Lions to play a marquee role every year. I think we can all agree that whole situation is a net minus, especially for them, no matter how funny the first fifteen minutes of those games usually are.

But the historical self-mortification has gotten out of hand. American exceptionalism used to mean 300 million yahoos being so convinced they were a unique force for good in the world that history before 1776 was irrelevant. We’re now living through the moronic inverse: America is such a unique evil, we’re told, so much the standard-bearer for the oppression of innocent peoples everywhere, that human suffering before 1776 is hardly worth mentioning.

via taibbi.substack.com

I agree. It is awesome. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Trans professor, 34, who defended pedophiles as 'Minor Attracted Persons' RESIGNS | Daily Mail Online

The trans Old Dominion professor who defended pedophiles by saying society should refer to them as 'Minor Attracted Persons' has finally resigned after 15,000 people signed an online petition to have them removed from their teaching role.

Dr. Allyn Walker, 34, who goes by the pronouns they/them, was placed on leave by Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, last week after a swell of outrage over their remarks and views.

Working as an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice since 2019, Walker has written a book that tries to destigmatize pedophilia and encourages people to refer to pedophiles as 'Minor Attracted People', saying they shouldn't be ostracized for their urges, which can't be helped.

In their research, Dr Walker also suggested that pedophiles should also be provided with child-like sex dolls to satisfy their urges.

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Nobody likes pedophiles, or almost nobody. But if this Old Dominion professor was tenure track and forced to leave, this is bad. Their views should not be disqualifying for keeping their job, however odious they may be. But maybe they were just a contract prof and OD admins could remove them (boy this pronoun stuff is annoying) without cause. His (I give up) views on pedophilia seem pretty reasonable in fact. If you are born that way and not likely to change, then you probably should be taught ways to deal with it other than abusing kids. You should not be punished for articulating this view. OTOH maybe it's just a step in the way of normalizing the vice.

The new (Nu?) South African COVID variant looks like seriously bad news – HotAir

The variant is called B.1.1.529. Only a few dozen cases have been confirmed so far but its genetic profile is sufficiently alarming to virologists that the WHO is meeting about it tomorrow. Just as B.1.617.2 became known to the world as Delta, B.1.1.529 is expected to be assigned the Greek letter Nu. For months, Delta crowded out all other variants globally because of its extreme transmissibility, outracing the viral competition by spreading to non-immune hosts before any other variant could get to them. But in one province of South Africa, it’s Delta that’s now being outraced.

When scientists took a close look at Nu, the variant that’s beating Delta, they found a shocking variety of mutations on the virus’s spike protein.

via hotair.com

China Brief: CCP propaganda is getting clumsier

That was followed by an increasingly creepy series of pictures and videos posted on the Twitter account of Hu Xijin, the editor of the Global Times, a party-owned nationalist tabloid. One of them showed the 35-year-old Peng, whom Hu also referred to as a “girl” with a “sunny smile,” posing with cuddly toys. (I used to work for the Global Times’ English-language edition and know Hu a little.)

As CCP influence expert Mareike Ohlberg pointed out, the crudeness and obviousness of the propaganda was in itself an exertion of power. This is a strategy commonly deployed against dissidents, who are, for example, forced to write letters to family claiming they are fine and grateful to the party. CGTN, the TV station, also has a record of broadcasting forced confessions.

via click1.crm.foreignpolicy.com

AI surveillance takes U.S. prisons by storm

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the sheriff in Suffolk County, New York, requested $700,000 from the U.S. government for an artificial intelligence system to eavesdrop on prison phone conversations, his office called it a key tool in fighting gang-related and violent crime.

But the county jail ended up listening to calls involving a much wider range of subjects - scanning as many as 600,000 minutes per month, according to public records from the county obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Beginning in 2019, Suffolk County was an early pilot site for the Verus AI-scanning system sold by California-based LEO Technologies, which uses Amazon speech-to-text technology to transcribe phone calls flagged by key word searches.

The company and law enforcement officials say it is a crucial tool to keep prisons and jails safe, and fight crime, but critics say such systems trample the privacy rights of prisoners and other people, like family members, on the outside.

via news.trust.org

I don't have a problem with AI being used to monitor calls from prisoners, but you know they're using or will be using on us as well.

CVS, Walgreens and Walmart Fueled Opioid Crisis, Jury Finds - The New York Times

A federal jury in Cleveland on Tuesday found that three of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains — CVS Health, Walmart and Walgreens — had substantially contributed to the crisis of opioid overdoses and deaths in two Ohio counties, the first time the retail segment of the drug industry has been held accountable in the decades-long epidemic.

After hearings in the spring, the trial judge will determine how much each company should pay the counties.

The verdict — the first from a jury in an opioid case — was encouraging to plaintiffs in thousands of lawsuits nationwide because they are all relying on the same legal strategy: that pharmaceutical companies contributed to a “public nuisance,” a claim that plaintiffs contend covers the public health crisis created by opioids.

via www.nytimes.com

Sounds pretty dubious to me.

Jamie Dimon Apologizes for Joke About JPMorgan Outlasting China’s Communist Party - WSJ

On Wednesday, Mr. Dimon said, “I regret and should not have made that comment. I was trying to emphasize the strength and longevity of our company.”

In a second statement later in the day, Mr. Dimon added, “I regret my recent comment because it’s never right to joke about or denigrate any group of people, whether it’s a country, its leadership, or any part of a society and culture.”

On Wednesday afternoon in Beijing, Zhao Lijian, an official from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sidestepped a question about Mr. Dimon’s remarks during a daily press conference and dismissed media reports on it as attempts to draw eyeballs.

via www.wsj.com

Nobody expects the Chinese Communist Party.

The CCP is not known for its sense of humor.

Opinion | Can Liberals Survive Progressivism? - The New York Times

In the meantime, shoplifting has become endemic, brazen and increasingly well organized, culminating in mobs of looters ransacking stores and terrifying customers in the Bay Area last week. Local shops are closing, neighborhoods are decaying, encampments of drug addicts have proliferated, and streets are befouled by human excrement — a set of failures Michael Shellenberger calls in his thoroughly researched and convincing new book, “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities,” “the breakdown of civilization on America’s West Coast.”

As for the rest of the country: Can anyone seriously say that Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia or New York has been improved in recent years under progressive leadership? Why did rates of homelessness register their biggest jumps between 2007 and 2020 in left-leaning states like New York, California and Massachusetts — and their biggest decreases in right-leaning ones like Florida, Texas and Georgia?

via www.nytimes.com

The only thing remarkable about this column is that it appears in the NYT. Maybe its readers are beginning to see the big elephant in the room.

New Olympic Committee Rules Essentially End Women’s Sports

The new rules are couched in ideas of anti-discrimination, but they are only about not discriminating against gender-nonconforming biological males who identify as transgender and use female pronouns, and in so doing, they directly discriminate against women.

The rules say that sports organizations’ eligibility criteria should “not systematically exclude athletes from competition based on their gender identity, physical appearance, and/ or sex variations.”

Overturning the entirety of human history and understanding about biology, the IOC states that “No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged, or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”

via thefederalist.com

It would appear that men have more influence on the IOC than women do.

Fed’s Lowest Lowball Inflation Measure Spikes to Worst-Hottest 31-Year High. Powell Groans and Mutters | Wolf Street

The lowest lowball inflation measure that the US government produces, “core PCE,” which excludes the now soaring food and energy prices and understates inflation by the most, is used by the Fed for its inflation target: a symmetrical 2% “core PCE.” And this core PCE in October, released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, spiked by 4.1%, more than twice the Fed’s inflation target, and the worst-hottest inflation reading since January 1991:

It’s not temporary, Fed Chair Jerome Powell groaned and muttered this morning upon seeing this inflation monster blow out, following his $4.5 trillion in money-printing in 21 months.

via wolfstreet.com

Inflation could still be temporary however. We'll just have to wait and see, given that we seem determined to blow federal spending out to the moon. In my old-fashioned way, I think wasting trillions on boondoggle schemes and crony projects of all sorts is a classical Bad Idea. But who knows. Maybe MMT is right. But I doubt it very much. Alternatively, maybe there are so many Eurodollars sloshing around that even 5 trillion or whatever it is we're adding will just be a drop in the bucket, and we can go on lavishly spending other countries' money and paying them with green pieces of paper. The everything bubble will eventually pop, but it could be 5 or 10 years from now. Or it could be next month.

Homo naledi discovery: Child skull found deep in cave suggests these hominins buried their dead | New Scientist

The skull of a small child belonging to a different human species has been found deep in a cave system in South Africa. The team that made the discovery has named the child Leti and believes the skull shows that the Homo naledi species buried their dead.

via www.newscientist.com

RIP little ape man.

How Hunter Biden’s Firm Helped Secure Cobalt for the Chinese - The New York Times

An investment firm where Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was a founding board member helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr. Biden and two other Americans joined Chinese partners in establishing the firm in 2013, known as BHR and formally named Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company.

The three Americans, all of whom served on the board, controlled 30 percent of BHR, a private equity firm registered in Shanghai that makes investments and then flips them for a profit. The rest of the company is owned or controlled by Chinese investors that include the Bank of China, according to records filed with Chinese regulators.

via www.nytimes.com

YouTube Penalizes 'Breaking Points' For Criticizing China On Peng Shuai

All of America’s tech giants have a fraught relationship with China, but perhaps none more so than Google. While the company performatively plays to the American norms of standing for freedom of speech and human dignity, when pressed they are more than happy to bend the knee to Chinese censors.

On Friday, they were at it again. Google’s YouTube announced it was de-monetizing — that is, removing ads — from a segment of the popular YouTube show Breaking Points. The show’s two hosts, Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball, had run a segment discussing the disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, after she accused a senior Chinese Communist Party official of rape.

“After manually reviewing your video,” YouTube wrote to Breaking Points, “we’ve confirmed that it isn’t suitable for all advertisers. As a result, it will continue to run limited or no ads.”

via thefederalist.com

Byron York's Daily Memo: For Democrats, the word is 'transform' | Washington Examiner

When Bernie Sanders pledged to "transform" the United States, he envisioned mind-boggling expenditures — say, $10 trillion — that would touch every aspect of American life. He didn't win the White House, but he won the argument. During Biden's presidency, Congress has passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill (that had little to do with COVID relief) and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, and now the House has passed the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act. In the end, Biden is likely to win about $5 trillion in extra spending just this year — about half of what Sanders wanted, but still mind-boggling. And it will touch every aspect of American life.

Finally, when it comes to rhetoric, there's no doubt Sanders has won a smashing victory. The Biden White House sounds like Bernie Sanders. The Democratic leadership sounds like Bernie Sanders. The party's interest groups sound like Bernie Sanders. You could say that the old socialist senator, once an outsider and lone voice, has managed to, yes, transform his party.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Get ready to forget the Waukesha attack - The Spectator World

The Waukesha attack is everything our establishment media and politicians pretend never happens. White people are supposed to be the perpetrators. Violent criminals can be let out of jail with zero repercussions. White men are automatically considered terrorists, even when acting in self-defense, but we can never know the motives of left-wing and minority perps. Don’t be surprised when this dreadful calamity recedes from your airwaves so that the media doesn’t have to confront inconvenient facts.

via spectatorworld.com

Sounds about right.

Arc of encirclement appearing around Russia - Asia Times

The UK media have reported, quoting sources, that hundreds of British special force troops and paratroopers are also ready to deploy to Ukraine amid rising tensions in that region. 

On Tuesday, Wallace visited Kiev on what was billed as a show of support at a time when Ukraine and NATO countries have expressed concern about Russian troop movements near Ukraine’s borders. 

A joint statement issued in Kiev after his talks with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov stated among other things that stemming out of an Intergovernmental Framework Agreement signed in London this month between the two countries, joint projects will be undertaken to develop the capabilities of Ukraine’s naval forces in the Black Sea and for increasing interoperability. 

Britain and Ukraine also recently finalized a treaty that will enable Kiev to seek loans from London to buy British warships and missiles. Sky News reported that “on Ukraine’s £1.7 billion [US$2.3 billion] shopping list are two minehunters, the joint production of eight missile ships and a frigate, as well as the purchase of weapons for existing vessels.” 

As well, Britain will build two naval bases for Ukraine in the Black Sea.

Without doubt, Global Britain has seized the migrants issue and the war hysteria over Russia amassing troops on Ukraine’s borders to strengthen its strategic positioning in Central Europe and the Black Sea. 

via asiatimes.com

Go Brits.

Waukesha Christmas Parade Suspect, Darrell Brooks, Charged With Homicide - WSJ

WAUKESHA, Wis.—Police said five people, ranging in age from 52 to 81, were killed Sunday when an SUV plowed through a downtown Christmas parade, and the suspected driver was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide.

Officers alleged that the suspect, 39-year-old Darrell Brooks, was fleeing the scene of a domestic disturbance when he drove through the parade. Besides those killed, 48 people were injured, including two children who were in critical condition Monday, police said.

Five people were killed, ranging in age from 52 to 81, and 48 people were injured, including two children in critical condition, police said.

Mr. Brooks has a history of prior arrests and had been released on cash bail less than two weeks before the parade. Authorities haven’t found indications that the crime was related to terrorism, according to Waukesha Chief of Police Daniel Thompson, noting that the investigation was in its early stages. Police said more charges could come later.

“We are confident that he acted alone,” Chief Thompson said.

via www.wsj.com