New Vehicles for Disinformation Spread Unreality Online

A very interesting piece.

At NYT, "Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming":

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal. A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.

They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.

“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”

Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.

In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country.

A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.

Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer.

Job postings and employee LinkedIn profiles associated with Fazze describe it as a subsidiary of a Moscow-based company called Adnow. Some Fazze web domains are registered as owned by Adnow, as first reported by the German outlets Netzpolitik and ARD Kontraste. Third-party reviews portray Adnow as a struggling ad service provider.

European officials say they are investigating who hired Adnow. Sections of Fazze’s anti-Pfizer talking points resemble promotional materials for Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.

For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments.

The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years.

An Open Frontier

The trend emerged after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, experts say. Cambridge, a political consulting firm linked to members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was found to have harvested data on millions of Facebook users.

The controversy drew attention to methods common among social media marketers. Cambridge used its data to target hyper-specific audiences with tailored messages. It tested what resonated by tracking likes and shares.

The episode taught a generation of consultants and opportunists that there was big money in social media marketing for political causes, all disguised as organic activity.

Some newcomers eventually reached the same conclusion as Russian operatives had in 2016: Disinformation performs especially well on social platforms.

At the same time, backlash to Russia’s influence-peddling appeared to have left governments wary of being caught — while also demonstrating the power of such operations.

“There is, unfortunately, a huge market demand for disinformation,” Mr. Brookie said, “and a lot of places across the ecosystem that are more than willing to fill that demand.”

Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services.

Last summer, Facebook removed a network of Bolivian citizen groups and journalistic fact-checking organizations. It said the pages, which had promoted falsehoods supporting the country’s right-wing government, were fake.

Stanford University researchers traced the content to CLS Strategies, a Washington-based communications firm that had registered as a consultant with the Bolivian government. The firm had done similar work in Venezuela and Mexico.

A spokesman referred to the company’s statement last year saying its regional chief had been placed on leave but disputed Facebook’s accusation that the work qualified as foreign interference...

Still more. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

At Amazon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.

Toyota Bet on Hydrogen Power. Now It's Fallen Desperately Behind

A very interesting and informative piece.

There's a bit of muh for me though. 

I haven't driven a Toyota since the mid-1980s, when I drove a maroon little Toyota pickup. Once that thing wore out, my wife and switched to Honda, and we only recently switched makes: My wife now drives a KIA, and I'm cruising all cool and macho (and old) in my Dodge Challenger. *Wink.*

At NYT, "Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now Critics Say It Works to Delay Them":

The Toyota Prius hybrid was a milestone in the history of clean cars, attracting millions of buyers worldwide who could do their part for the environment while saving money on gasoline.

But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, has quietly become the industry’s strongest voice opposing an all-out transition to electric vehicles — which proponents say is critical to fighting climate change.

Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota’s opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks.

Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells — a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries — with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company’s market share and bottom line.

The recent push in Washington follows Toyota’s worldwide efforts — in markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia — to oppose stricter car emissions standards or fight electric vehicle mandates. For example, executives at Toyota’s Indian subsidiary publicly criticized India’s target for 100 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030, saying it was not practical.

Together with other automakers, Toyota also sided with the Trump administration in a battle with California over the Clean Air Act and sued Mexico over fuel efficiency rules. In Japan, Toyota officials argued against carbon taxes.

“Toyota has gone from a leading position to an industry laggard” in clean-car policy even as other automakers push ahead with ambitious electric vehicle plans, said Danny Magill, an analyst at InfluenceMap, a London-based think tank that tracks corporate climate lobbying. InfluenceMap gives Toyota a “D-” grade, the worst among automakers, saying it exerts policy influence to undermine public climate goals.

In statements, Toyota said that it was in no way opposed to electric vehicles. “We agree and embrace the fact that all-electric vehicles are the future,” Eric Booth, a Toyota spokesman, said. But Toyota thinks that “too little attention is being paid to what happens between today, when 98 percent of the cars and trucks sold are powered at least in part by gasoline, and that fully electrified future,” he said.

Until then, Mr. Booth said, it makes sense for Toyota to lean on its existing hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles to reduce emissions. Hydrogen fuel cell technology should also play a role. And any efficiency standards should “be informed by what technology can realistically deliver and help keep vehicles affordable,” the company said in a statement. Last year in the United States, a group of leading automakers reached a compromise on tailpipe emissions standards with California, which sought to impose tougher emissions standards than the Trump administration wanted. Toyota didn’t join that compromise agreement.

More recently, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry lobby group, argued in closed-door meetings in Washington that the California compromise, which is expected to be a model for new standards from the Biden administration, is in fact not feasible for all of its members, according to two of the people with direct knowledge of the discussions. The chairman of the alliance is Mr. Reynolds, the Toyota executive.

The Biden administration wants to use tougher emissions rules to rapidly increase sales of electric vehicles. Congress could also approve billions of dollars for construction of charging stations as well as tax incentives for electric cars and trucks.

 

The Year of the Woke Revolution

It's Lee Siegel, at City Journal, "Year Zero: The roots of the woke revolution":

On the day in March that eight people were murdered in a massage parlor in Atlanta, six of them Asian-American, a Cherokee County, Georgia, police captain gave a media briefing after the alleged murderer was caught. He described the suspect’s motivation as follows: “He was pretty much fed up, and at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

Indignation erupted. How, people cried, could the police captain attribute the murders to someone merely having a bad day? Having determined that the crime was motivated by anti-Asian hatred, the Internet furies concluded that the captain had spoken callously because of his own anti-Asian bias.

Leave aside that anyone who had seen a police movie could recognize as tough-guy talk the captain’s seemingly casual description of an unspeakable act. And never mind that just a few weeks later, President Biden described the slaughter of eight people in a FedEx facility not as a human tragedy but as a “national embarrassment,” as if it had been a messily disputed election. Consider instead what the policeman’s critics cared about. Imagine that the captain had appeared before the media and had said that he believed that the suspect was motivated by anti-Asian hatred and that this hate was the true virus ravaging us all. Would he have been lauded? Yes. But what if he gave this briefing while the suspect remained at large, giving him time to flee? In reality, the entire Atlanta police department was on the scene almost immediately. The suspect was caught shortly after the shootings, before he could harm anyone else. Even if the police captain had been insensitive, why should this matter more than his and his officers’ actions?

Words are crumbling under the weight of moral one-upmanship. One cannot, for example, call both Hitler and Donald Trump “fascists” without the term losing its meaning. But for four years, an imminent fascist revolution sponsored by the Trump movement was a liberal obsession. (Hard to make a fascist revolution, though, without having the military on your side, and Trump spent four years insulting both the military and the state’s intelligence apparatus.) Nor does the term “systemic racism” mean anything if it describes both the structure of apartheid in South Africa and slavery in the antebellum American South and the circumstances we live in today. Apartheid South Africa was systemically racist. Georgia in 1860 was systemically racist. But the New York suburb where I live—Montclair, New Jersey—has a black mayor who succeeded another black mayor; a black superintendent of schools; a black assistant superintendent of schools; several black school principals; a black deputy chief of police; a self-conscious enclave of wealthy black bankers and black lawyers; and accomplished black residents, from a world-famous jazz bassist to a former head of Homeland Security. Montclair is more racially, socially, and economically diverse than any neighborhood in New York City. Yet cries of Montclair’s systemic racism have now swept the town, as well as its public school curricula.... 

... We are now living in a new golden age of American racism. So long as you talk the proverbial talk—and, if you really need extra cover, make the obligatory accusations and issue the compulsory condemnations—you can actually indulge racist impulses. You can inveigh against racism at your local school board meeting and then, a year or two later, quietly move your children into the whitest private school you can find. You can fawn so fulsomely over your white daughter’s black friend that the friend will never return to your house. You can be so excessively polite yet calculatedly distant with black people that you will ensure that none will enter your life. If you are a Coca-Cola executive, you can declaim against the new Georgia voting laws, even as you market your product extra-aggressively in poor black neighborhoods, where the obesity and diabetes caused in part by regular soda consumption has by now afflicted generations of black children. Maybe the hope among Coca-Cola executives is that, thanks to the new rhetoric of morally superior denunciation, you can start addicting liberal white kids in the suburbs, too: “Woke Goes Better with Coke.” And why not? Apple tells me that in order to “protect the environment,” it will no longer include a power adapter and earphones at no extra charge with its new phones. However, Apple will gladly sell them to me.

Excellent piece (emphasis added).

Keep reading.

Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved

At Amazon, Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice.

Detroit Residents Far More Worried About Public Safety Than Police Reform (Which is Really Defunding the Police)

The ratio's 9:1 in favor of public safety.

And don't forget, Detroit's population is almost 80 percent black. Folks up there obviously think crime's a major problem.

At USA Today, "Exclusive poll finds Detroit residents far more worried about public safety than police reform."

Anti-Racism at Berkeley and UCLA

The "big lie" of university admissions --- and it's hurting the life chances of black and brown students.

Here's John McWhorter, on Substack:

No more SAT at the University of California? Classic racist antiracism, and it's not going to end well.https://t.co/S5AxQRCV7f

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) July 25, 2021

In Rhode Island, Parents Push Back Against Critical Race Theory (VIDEO)

It's a grassroots revolt.

At Legal Insurrection:

Border Patrol's Mission Evolves

On Twitter, Bill Melugin below, who's been at the border for a few days, recording first handout the scale of the crisis. (Scroll down his feed for lots of videos.)

At LAT, "Why Border Patrol is doing more to rescue and identify missing migrants":

That’s a wrap on this border trip. Back to L.A. for a bit to recharge, then right back to TX again next weekend for trip #7 during this border crisis. This heat here is no joke 🥵

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) July 25, 2021

FALFURRIAS, Texas — A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent scrutinized video of a dying migrant on her cellphone, trying to match the background to the ranch she was searching for his body last month.

“Can I see the picture real quick, the background?” another agent asked.

Agent Nancy Balogh held out her phone. In the two minutes of video, 25-year-old Yoel Nieto Valladares lay on the sandy ground, shirtless and sweating, jeans cinched with a rectangular metal belt buckle. Nieto was barely able to sip from a Coke as another man fanned him with a black cap. The dying man’s hands twitched, a tattoo of his father and younger brother’s initials visible on his arm. His eyes rolled.

“How do you feel, guy? Hey, how do you feel?” the man filming asked, panning to show a dozen others dressed all in black, the color favored by smugglers working at night.

Nieto shushed him, smiling.

“This is bad, he’s delirious,” said the man filming.

The dying man groaned.

Moments later, in a second minute-long video, Nieto’s black polo shirt was on and his arms lay atop it, limp. His eyes were open, staring.

A smuggler had sent the videos to Nieto’s family with GPS coordinates. “I really hope we find him,” Balogh said.

Several years ago, the U.S. Border Patrol launched a Missing Migrant Program in Arizona — though the agency’s primary mission remained apprehending migrants — that has since expanded border-wide. Their relationship with migrant advocates had grown strained. In recent years, the Border Patrol had even helped prosecute some who left water and other supplies for migrants in the desert.

But the agency’s approach has now evolved amid an increase in migration and deaths.

Brooks County — about 75 miles north of the Rio Grande Valley — has become the Border Patrol’s laboratory, a place to test approaches they’re already extending across the border. A three-person missing-migrant team trained in forensics is working with an intelligence officer to help identify migrant remains.

The agency also added equipment and technology to help locate stranded migrants faster. It installed more than 1,400 rescue signs across the region labeled with GPS coordinates. Agents obtained GPS coordinates for more than 22,000 landmarks that can be referenced during a migrant’s 911 call — from power poles to windmills, pipelines and cattle guards. And they positioned 30 mobile, solar-powered rescue beacons in remote areas with little to no cellphone reception. The beacons are equipped with cameras that have already led to the rescue of a migrant.

By summer’s end, the beacons will alert agents’ cellphones directly. By year’s end, they plan to have 170 beacons nationwide, which can be used to rescue migrants and investigate, Supervisory Agent Brandon Copp said.

Despite the summer heat, which usually decreases migration, the number of migrants arriving at the border last month — 188,829 — was the largest in years. The busiest area for crossings was south Texas, where agents earlier this month stopped 736 migrants in three groups near the Rio Grande. As of last month, they had helped recover more than 324 migrant remains and conducted 9,201 rescues nationwide, 81% more than all of last year.

“If we get facial recognition of a guide, we can tie them to that migrant’s death,” Copp said.

Like many of Texas’s 254 counties, Brooks — population 7,100 — doesn’t have a medical examiner. Death investigations are handled by justices of the peace unless the county pays an outside expert. Local funeral homes historically cut corners burying migrant dead. Researchers investigating unmarked migrant graves at a local cemetery in recent years found multiple migrant bodies buried together, some in plastic bags and milk crates. They had to exhume and catalog DNA in international databases to help identify them.

Now the sheriff’s office is working with the Border Patrol to more quickly identify and release migrant remains without sending them for autopsies or DNA testing, which can be expensive and time-consuming. The sheriff just got a secondhand refrigerated trailer on loan from the state funeral home association, used for COVID dead during the pandemic. Deputies and Border Patrol agents now store unidentified bodies there as they investigate.

Because of changes in county ordinances, some of the Border Patrol agents in south Texas, El Paso and Tucson have trained to photograph dead migrants’ fingerprints to help consulates identify them. They also learned to recover fingerprints from bodies that have decayed or been submerged in water...

Still more. 

J.Lo Celebrates No. 52

Honestly, she doesn't look a day over thirty. 

She certainly celebrates in style, in any case. On Twitter (scroll through her feed for more).

See, "Inside J.Lo’s 52nd Birthday French Yacht Celebration."

Also, Bella Thorne and Abella Danger.

And at the Hostages, "Big Boob Friday: NSFW."

Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson

This links to the paperback book, of which I own a copy. 

It's bit expensive, though (to say the least), so perhaps click on the hard-copy version, which is selling for as low as $3.51.

At Amazon, Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson.

Judge Jeanine Slams Extremist Left's Attack on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (VIDEO)

I used to post Judge Jeanine's opening monologues quite often.

She's a real treasure (and doesn't take any crap). 

At Fox News:

San Francisco Considers 'Congestion Tax' on 'High Earning' Drivers

This is a total scam.

As if Frisco couldn’t drive out residents any faster. *Eye-roll.*

At Fox Business, "San Francisco considering congestion tax on high-earning drivers: The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying the prospect of congestion fees."

'I Love You More Today Than Yesterday'

Here's Spiral Staircase:

Herschel Walker's Prospective Senate Campaign May Be Hampered by Alleged Past Incidents of Threatening Behavior

At Business Insider, "As Herschel Walker eyes Senate run, a turbulent past emerges."

Trump Rallies His Base with Endorsements Ahead of 2022 Midterms

Following-up, "Trump Endorsements Reshape Republican Party (VIDEO)."

This woman fears Trump will rally his base and primary her for 2022, and she's not stupid, putting her finger to the wind.

At the New York Times, "Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted":

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace had just delivered the kind of red-meat remarks that would ordinarily thrill the Republican voters in attendance here on a recent sweltering evening, casually comparing liberal Democrats to terrorists — the “Hamas squad,” she called them — and railing against their “socialist” spending plans.

But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.

“I didn’t like that she back-stabbed Trump,” Ms. Brockbank said. “We have to realize that she got in because of Trump. Even if you do have something against your leaders, keep them to yourself.”

Ms. Brockbank was referring to Ms. Mace’s first weeks in office immediately after the Jan. 6 riot, as the stench of tear gas lingered in the halls of the Capitol and some top Republicans were quietly weighing a break with President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Mace, a freshman congresswoman, placed herself at the forefront of a group of Republicans denouncing Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election that had fueled the assault and appeared to be establishing herself as a compelling new voice urging her party to change its ways.

But these days, as Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they have no intention of turning against Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace has quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold. Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to “stop fighting with each other in public.”

After setting herself apart from her party during her first week in office by opposing its effort to overturn President Biden’s victory, Ms. Mace has swung back into line. She joined the vast majority of Republicans in voting to oust Representative Liz Cheney from leadership for denouncing Mr. Trump and his election lies. She also voted against forming an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot.

And rather than continuing to challenge party orthodoxy, Ms. Mace has leaned in to the most combative Republican talking points, castigating Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top health official who is a favorite boogeyman of the right, accusing Democrats of forcing critical race theory on children, and publicly feuding with progressives.

Her pivot helps explain why the Republican Party’s embrace of Mr. Trump and his brand of politics is more absolute than ever. It is not only the small but vocal group of hard-right loyalists of the former president who are driving the alliance, but also the scores of rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him, as Ms. Mace has — who have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge him.

“She’s a little bit like a new sailor; she tried to get her sea legs, but she’s also looking out over the horizon, and what she saw was a storm coming in from the right,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist in South Carolina. “So she immediately started paddling in another direction. The problem is, is that everything you say and do, there’s a record of it.”

Ms. Mace declined through a spokeswoman to be made available for an interview, but said in a statement that “you can be conservative and you can be a Republican and be pissed off and vocal about what happened on Jan. 6.” (Ms. Mace’s most recent statements regarding the Capitol attack have been explanations of why she opposed commissions to investigate it.)

“You can agree with Donald Trump’s policies and be pissed off about what happened on Jan. 6,” Ms. Mace said. “You can think Pelosi is putting on a sideshow with the Jan. 6 commission and still be pissed off about Jan. 6. These things are not mutually exclusive.”

Ms. Mace is facing a particularly difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston, which she won narrowly last year when she defeated Joe Cunningham, a Democrat. Her immediate problem is regaining the trust of the rock-ribbed conservatives who make up her base. It is all the more pressing because political observers expect Republicans to try to redraw Ms. Mace’s district to become more conservative, and possible primary challengers still have a year to decide whether to throw their hats in the ring.

Her predicament bubbled below the surface on a recent evening here at a pork-themed “End Washington Waste” reception overlooking the Charleston Harbor and the docked Yorktown, a decommissioned Navy aircraft carrier. Voters signed the hocks of a paper pig urging Democrats to cut extraneous spending from the infrastructure bill and exchanged printed-out “Biden bucks” for cocktails, as some reflected on Ms. Mace’s balancing act...

Still more.

 

Trump Endorsements Reshape Republican Party (VIDEO)

Remember Michael Wolff had an essay up at the New York Times the other day, "Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024."

At the video, Trump's rally in Phoenix yesterday. 

He'll be traveling the country holding "Stop the Steal" rallies like this right up to next year's midterm elections.

More, at the Los Angeles Times, "Mar-a-Lago primary: Trump wields power with endorsements, but some in GOP fear midterm damage":

WASHINGTON — Former President Trump, again upending American political norms, is moving to remake Congress and the Republican Party in his own image.

Since leaving the White House, he has issued a spate of endorsements of House and Senate candidates for next year’s crucial midterm election, including an array of political outsiders, conspiracy theorists and others who — like Trump himself — break the traditional mold.

While most former presidents have steered clear of politics, Trump is intervening in Republican primaries like an old-style ward boss: rewarding allies, punishing enemies and trying to use his vast popularity among Republican voters to keep himself and his agenda at the center of the GOP.

Targeting one of his most prominent Republican critics, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Trump plans to meet this week at his New Jersey golf club with Wyoming Republicans who are running against her. His goal: to endorse one, clear the field of others and set up a head-to-head contest.

But Trump’s heavy hand in GOP primaries carries risks for his party. Some Republicans fear that some of his endorsements — those based not on electability but on candidates’ loyalty to him and his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen — could make it harder for the party to win in swing states.

“If we as Republicans continue to relitigate a past lost election, we will not position ourselves to win in the midterms,” said John Watson, former Georgia Republican Party chairman. “We have the issues on our side if we will just get out of our own way.”

A former NFL star Trump is promoting for a potential Senate run in Georgia — Herschel Walker — is beloved in the state where he started his career as a Heisman Trophy winner. But he is an untested political novice, and it’s been decades since he lived in Georgia.

In North Carolina, Trump is backing Rep. Ted Budd to replace the state’s retiring Republican senator. Budd, a gun store owner, is an ardent defender of the former president but has trailed in early polling and fundraising.

In Arizona, many Republicans believe Gov. Doug Ducey would be the best candidate against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. But Ducey, who has been pummeled by Trump for not doing more to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, has said he won’t run.

Trump derided him on Ducey’s own turf Saturday, recalling in a Phoenix speech his reaction to Ducey’s possible candidacy. Trump said he was asked, “Sir, would you like him to run for the Senate?” and replied, “He’s not getting my endorsement, I can tell you.”

Trump allies argue that the party would face far graver political problems if he were not so engaged. Many see him as essential to motivating GOP voters in 2022’s high-stakes election, especially since turnout usually drops in midterms.

“This is largely going to be a turnout-based election. If the candidate is Trumpy, that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said a person familiar with the former president’s thinking. “The wishy-washy vanilla candidate is going to be problematic in a race that is really all about energy and turnout and excitement.”

The aggressive endorsement strategy also is a gamble for Trump himself: If his candidates lose, he may end up looking like a paper tiger...

More.

 

Democrats Are Bankrupting America (VIDEO)

Wyoming Senator John Barraso:

Sen. John Barrasso: "The Democrats seem to be determined to bankrupt America. This spending spree is a reckless tax and spending spree. It really does seem to be Bernie's [Sanders] effort to socialism. It's his manifesto." pic.twitter.com/Om9TEtKdvv

— The Hill (@thehill) July 25, 2021

On CNN, Fauci Tells Tapper That CDC Will Call for Maks for All American as Delta Variant Sends Caseloads Surging (VIDEO)

At AMN, "Video: Fauci says CDC may ask vaccinated Americans to wear masks again."

The new variant is out of control:

Dr. Anthony Fauci says US is "going in the wrong direction" as the number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise, particularly among unvaccinated Americans. https://t.co/BtMUrX2WfD #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/QxPOQ3d2J3

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) July 25, 2021

Vaccine Refusal

Here comes the New York Time to argue that the Delta virus, or the Alpha or Omega, or whatever, is gonna put us all back in lockdown. I'll still be teaching online this fall semester, and in total it'll be about 20 months online if indeed my college goes back on campus with in-person in Spring 2022. 

See, "The Delta Variant Is the Symptom of a Bigger Threat: Vaccine Refusal":

Public health experts have fruitlessly warned for months that the virus — any version of it — would resurge if the country did not vaccinate enough of the population quickly enough. Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, predicted in January that Florida might have a rough summer. Now one in five new infections nationwide is in Florida.

True, the speed and ferocity with which the Delta variant is tearing through Asia, Europe, Africa and now North America has taken many experts by surprise. It now accounts for about 83 percent of the infections in the United States.

But Delta is by no means the wickedest variant out there. Gamma and Lambda are waiting in the wings, and who knows what frightful versions are already flourishing undetected in the far corners of the world, perhaps even here in America.

Every infected person, anywhere in the world, offers the coronavirus another opportunity to morph into a new variant. The more infections there are globally, the more likely new variants will arise.

The United States will be vulnerable to every one of them until it can immunize millions of people who now refuse to get the vaccine, are still persuadable but hesitant, or have not yet gained access. The unvaccinated will set the country on fire over and over again.

 

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

At Amazon, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. 

My High School Taught Me Critical Race Theory Six Years Ago and Tried to Reeducate Me When I Fought Back

From Spencer Lindquist, at the Federalist, "Critical race theory has just recently become one of the primary targets for the right, and for good reason. But CRT's presence in K-12 education isn't new":

One step backward. They asked another question. One step forward. The PA system buzzed back to life. Another question, another step forward. Then another, and another. It had been decided.

It was 2015 during my freshman year of high school. I had just been exposed to critical race theory for the first time. We were in the midst of a privilege walk, a racial shaming exercise that uses selective questioning to substantiate claims of privilege and oppression.

Now, six years later, critical race theory has just recently become a target for the right, with various different states outlawing it and parent groups forming to oppose it. This cancerous ideology has had a presence in our K-12 public schools for much longer than many realize, however. I know because my high school attempted to indoctrinate me with it and, when I fought back, to reeducate me.

Taxpayers Paying for Indoctrination

I went to high school at a mid-sized government school in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The student body was highly diverse, with large Asian and Hispanic populations and a white plurality. The Public School Review noted my school was in the top 20 percent of the most multiracial schools in California, a state that’s already far more multi-ethnic than most of the rest of the country.

My first encounter with critical race theory was in my freshman year, when we skipped our P.E. class to engage in a racial struggle session, hosted by a teacher and a special cadre of students who had been handpicked and placed in her equity advisory class.

I began to catch on when the presenters played a video titled “What kind of Asian are you?” The clip features a buffoonish caricature of an insensitive white man, the video’s antagonist, who becomes the subject of scorn after he commits several “microaggressions” as he attempts to relate with the video’s heroine, an Asian woman. She then humiliates him and trots off.

I was beginning to wonder if our conversation was really about advancing “equity,” or if it was about scapegoating those who pose an obstacle to progressivism’s long march. They didn’t leave me wondering for long. Shortly after the video, we were taken into the school courtyard, where chalk lines had been meticulously drawn on the pavement, where we were then told to stand on the center line. We then started our privilege walk.

The presenters asked us a series of questions, telling us to step forward or backward depending on our answers to inquiries like “Have you ever felt like you’ve been racially profiled?” or “Did your parents graduate from college?” By the time it was over, whites were in the front, then Asians, Hispanics, and finally African Americans. The verdict was in.

But while trivial questions like “Can you easily find Band-Aids that match your skin tone?” were used to substantiate sweeping claims of privilege and oppression, more pertinent inquiries that would’ve jammed the narrative were excluded.

We were never asked, for example, to take a step back if we’d be systematically discriminated against when we applied for college. Nor were we asked if we had ever felt that the media had ever weaponized our ancestry against us to brand us as oppressors, or if violence against us had been ignored because of our race, either in America or abroad.

Similar exercises held today likely don’t ask questions that account for recent developments, like multi-million-dollar organizations branding phrases like “It’s Okay To Be White” as hate slogans, critical race theory teaching white children to hate themselves, or the adoption of the language of genocide by academics who dub whiteness a “parasitic condition” without a “permanent cure,” or fantasize about committing acts of racial violence against white people.

The selective questioning was intended to create a certain outcome, a prime example of a conclusion in search of evidence...

Keep reading. 

Wildfires in Arizona, New Mexico, and Even Florida

At LAT:

More than 4,000 personnel are working to contain the stubborn Dixie fire, Carhart said Friday, including firefighters from Arizona, New Mexico and even Florida https://t.co/EwwHZVfs8f pic.twitter.com/fILXd1NA3i

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 24, 2021

Optimism About America Crashes

At ABC News, "Americans' optimism about country's direction over next year drops nearly 20 points since May: POLL: In May, a little more than a third were pessimistic. Now, it is a majority."

Patients Show Remorse After Not Getting Vaccinated (VIDEO)

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

Zion Graham in Greensboro, North Carolina

The kid's plugging away in summer school with the hopes of beating the zombifcation of learning. 

At NYT, "In Mrs. McQueen’s Summer Classroom, an 8-Year-Old Races to Catch Up":

GREENSBORO, N.C. — In second grade, Zion Graham bounded to school. He loved math. His favorite book was about a slow turtle who took all day to get dressed.

Then came the pandemic, and months of joyless remote learning. Zion lost confidence in reading. His performance in third grade plummeted.

Zion, now 8, is spending his summer racing to catch up, back at Hunter Elementary School in Greensboro, N.C. When Zion and his schoolmates arrive by 7:45 a.m. each morning, they face a challenge — and a deadline. How much can they learn before fourth grade starts, to avoid falling even further behind?

Around the country, children are attending summer school like never before, as the United States pushes billions of dollars into education to help children recover from the pandemic. The Biden administration has identified summer learning as one key strategy, allocating at least $1.2 billion in federal stimulus money for it. From San Diego to New York City to Miami, hundreds of thousands of children are attending programs this year, some for the first time. In Guilford County, N.C., the school district that includes Greensboro, summer school enrollment has skyrocketed to 12,000, from 1,200 two years ago.

Yet summer school, by its very nature, is short, and the pandemic’s impact on students is expected to stretch months, even years. “You have kids who have the potential to catch up relatively easy — I mean, before Christmas,” said Tonette McQueen, Zion’s summer teacher. “Then you have some kids who will experience some growth, but will be behind for years to come.”

Though the pandemic hurt almost all students, creating learning gaps for some, and deepening existing gaps for others, research suggests that the students who suffered the most are like those in Mrs. McQueen’s classroom — students of color, low-income students, English language learners and other historically marginalized groups. Hunter Elementary is almost 90 percent Hispanic and Black, and nearly all students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

“It has definitely widened the gap for poor kids and kids of color,” said Tomeka Davis, a sociologist at Georgia State University who studies education, with an emphasis on race and class...

Still more. 

Critical Witchcraft Theory

At American Greatness, "'Systemic racism' is not a sociological theory. It is theology. More precisely, it is a demonology: a theory of witchcraft."

Lifeless, Detached Students Have Returned to My Classroom

Writes Jeremy Adams, at the Los Angeles Times, "The Rise of the Zoombies":

Almost every teacher I know has noticed the same sinister reality this summer: Kids have come back to the classroom. But the classroom hasn’t come back to the kids.

Far from it.

More to the point, they are back, they are sitting at their desks, but in many ways they now embody the detached, lifeless malaise of a hipster zombie incapable of showing the slightest patina of zest or zeal. This isn’t their fault, mind you. They have spent the last year in a learning ecosystem that was decidedly not of their choosing — watching Zoom classes, learning through omnipresent pixilated screens that demanded little from them and, in too many instances, taught them even less.

And now?

Now, they are perpetually chilled out, difficult to intellectually prod or verbally poke. They resist verbal engagement with me — or with each other. At the end of the day, we usually have a few minutes to spare before the bell rings. But nowadays there’s little talking. No socializing. No teenage gossiping or flirting. Instead, they silently self-medicate on their devices. For decades the bell would ring and students would fly out of the classroom like it was on fire. Now, their departure is, at best, a leisurely gait.

So we meander forward during this summer school session, making our way through the world history curriculum. The students are oddly obedient. They never argue. Never talk over me. They do everything they are “supposed” to do. But they ask zero questions. They make zero connections. It’s hard to make them laugh, and I can’t tell if they are smiling behind their masks. I am skeptical that they are learning anything of substance despite my best efforts. Their eyes are distant. I can’t decide if they are confused, disoriented or bewildered by the COVID-caused whirlwind they have endured.

My class is almost entirely populated by students who haven’t learned traditionally in nearly a year and a half. And they don’t pull any punches about the difficult pedagogic terrain that lies ahead...

RTWT.

 

Rep. Ronny Jackson Predicts Biden Won't Finish Term

At the New York Post, "Rep. Ronny Jackson, ex-White House doc, predicts Biden will be forced to resign":

Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician-turned-congressman, says he’s “terrified for our country” in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous town hall this week — and that he doubts whether the commander in chief has the cognitive ability to make it through a full term.

“He’s completely LOST it!” Jackson (R-Tex.) tweeted Saturday, along with a video clip — recorded this week — in which Biden bizarrely answered a reporter’s question about defunding the police by claiming that Republicans accuse him of “sucking the blood out of kids.”

“Needs a cognitive exam NOW!” Jackson posted...

More. 

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

At Amazon, C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.

Exclusive: Congressional Republicans Seek to Give Biden War Powers for Cuba.

At the American Conservative:

West Virginia GOP Rep. Alex Mooney is planning to introduce a new congressional joint resolution to grant President Joe Biden the ability to use war powers to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba amid growing unrest in the country.

Images of the resolution reviewed by The American Conservative show that “The Authorization for the Use of Military Forces Against Cuba to Ensure the Delivery of Humanitarian Aid” has three specific goals:

* “ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba, including but not limited to food, water, and medicine;” * “create a safe zone in Cuba for the Cuban people to safely receive humanitarian aid;” and 

* “prevent humanitarian aid from being stolen by the Cuban government or its forces.” Mooney’s office stated, “The Congressman hasn’t introduced any legislation related to Cuba. If he does introduce legislation we’ll be happy to comment at that time. Our office doesn’t comment on hypothetical legislation.”

Congressional Republicans have also held separate, virtual, member-level meetings regarding how to respond to the protests in Cuba and have invited representatives of large corporations to them. Emails also reviewed by The American Conservative show an official from Sen. Rick Scott’s office coordinated a meeting on July 19 with members of Congress and representatives with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Verizon, and the wireless communications trade association CTIA.

Sources detailed that senators spoke to companies from Silicon Valley to see what was technically feasible as far as getting internet access into Cuba...

Keep reading.

 

A Shocking Number of College Grads Wish They Had Been Taught More Life Skills

 At Pajamas, "According to a poll from SWNS digital, 81% of college grads wished they had been taught more life skills before graduation. Instead, they learned the importance of pronouns and social justice activism. It seems that many students leave a college clueless about budgeting and what to do when you can’t afford DoorDash."

I Can't Leave My Spouse — I'll Lose My Healthcare

It's Jessa Crispin, at the Guardian U.K., "Like millions of Americans, I can never leave my spouse. I’ll lose my healthcare":

It was around the second dose of fentanyl going into my IV bag that I stopped trying to control how much all of this was going to cost. I had been arguing with every decision the caregivers at the emergency room were making – “Is this Cat scan actually necessary or is there another diagnostic tool?” “Is there a cheaper version of this drug you’re giving me?” – and reminding them repeatedly that I was uninsured, but either the opioids in my bloodstream, or the exhaustion of trying to rest in a room next to a woman who, given the sounds she was making, was clearly transforming into a werewolf, forced me to surrender.

I walked out of there four years ago alive, yes. And, as the doctors and nurses kept reminding me, if I had waited another 48 hours to discover I didn’t actually have the magical ability to self-diagnose and self-treat serious problems with Google and herbs, I might have gone septic. But all said and done, I was also walking home to a $12,000 bill, which was approximately half of my annual income as a single woman.

It took me several years of hardship, contributions from my friends and the assistance of the hospital’s charity program to pay off the $12,000.

Then, last month, it started again. I was at home. I turned my head a little, the whole world started sliding away from me, and I crashed to the floor. I tried to crawl back into bed, insisting, “It’ll pass, it’ll pass.” My husband, on the other hand, was raised in a country with compulsory public health coverage, so his first instinct upon something weird happening isn’t to lie down for 48 hours and see if it goes away. He immediately started plotting the route to a hospital on his phone.

I was back, but this time I was married. The whole hospital visit cost us $30, including the prescription. Everything was covered by his insurance. That’s when I realized I can never divorce my husband.

The first emergency room visit might have been an anomaly – a freak health problem that the nurse explained as “sometimes these things happen”. The intense vertigo was the result of the deterioration of the condition of my ears. It has been a problem since childhood, one left in “let’s wait and see what happens” condition until a weird virus last year – yes, I was the big idiot who caught a debilitating non-coronavirus virus during a coronavirus pandemic – forced me to a doctor, who discovered significant hearing loss and structural damage that will require lifelong treatment and intervention.

As a freelance writer who has tried and failed for years now to get a real job with real benefits, the costs of the surgeries and hearing aids and other treatments the doctor sketched out as part of my future would be suffocating. But almost all of it is covered by my husband’s insurance, making my health and ability to access healthcare dependent on his presence in my life.

While I convalesced from the virus last year, I watched the discussion about health insurance take over the Democratic primary debates. I had little hope that the bright, sparkly Medicare for All plan championed by candidates like Bernie Sanders would be made reality. But still I despaired of the excuses other candidates made for why they did not support guaranteed coverage for all. It angered me to see Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and the eventual winner, Joe Biden, defend their plans to largely maintain the status quo – a system in which employment and marriage determine access to healthcare – as though they were protecting our “freedom” to “choose” coverage that was right for us.

The coercions built into American social welfare programs limit freedom, not preserve it. People who are not financially independent are forced to maintain ties with family members who might be abusive or violent unless they want to relinquish their housing, healthcare or other forms of support. And as outlined by Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, the dismantling of protections like food and financial aid in the 80s and 90s had the express purpose of increasing familial obligations in the name of “duty” and “responsibility”. Single parents seeking public support for their children’s well-being now had to first seek assistance through their partners, no matter how fraught or harmful those relationships might be. While politicians spoke of “strengthening families” and repairing the social fabric, one of the consequences of these policy changes was to limit the ability for people to make the basic decisions required to live the lives of their choosing, unless they had the money that in this country is our substitute for freedom...

Still more.

 

Covid-19 Vaccine Holdouts Face Restrictions in Europe as Delta Variant Spreads

Following-up, "Large Protests in France Over Covid Restrictions (VIDEO)."

At WSJ, "Proof of vaccination is increasingly required to enter restaurants and other public spaces":

European governments worried about the rapid spread of the Delta coronavirus variant are nudging, and in some cases pushing, people to get a shot by introducing restrictions to daily life for those without a Covid-19 vaccination.

In most cases, vaccination still isn’t obligatory, with a few exceptions such as healthcare workers in Italy. Yet by closing off the unvaccinated from aspects of daily life such as indoor dining at restaurants or going to the gym, governments are looking to make life more difficult for people holding out against getting vaccinated.

The governments have the dual objective of overcoming hesitancy among people who don’t have a hard-core ideological stance against vaccinations, while stemming the need for new lockdowns that would damage European economies. Politicians and public-health officials are pushing the idea that vaccination equals more individual liberty, not less.

The tool being used in most European Union countries to separate the vaccinated from the holdouts is the digital Covid-19 certificate, which has different monikers in different nations.

The certificates, called green passes in Italy and health passes in France, were designed principally to facilitate travel between countries, but now have found an expanded use. They have a unique QR code and can be printed or stored on a mobile phone. In most countries, they can also be accessed through official coronavirus contract-tracing mobile-phone apps.

“The green pass is a means by which people can continue to do their activities, with the guarantee they are doing it in the presence of people who aren’t contagious,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Thursday as he presented a series of new restrictions.

If France, Italy and other European countries succeed in getting the undecideds to roll up their sleeves for a shot, their efforts could become a blueprint for the U.S. and other countries that have seen their vaccination drives stall.

The restrictions have had early success, pushing millions of French people to sign up for vaccination appointments in the past week and helping turn around a stalled campaign. The most recent data show that on average, 298,000 first shots have been administered a day, compared with 161,000 a day in early July.

In Italy, the number of daily first doses ticked up in the past two weeks as the government discussed making activities unavailable to the unvaccinated. In several of the country’s 20 regions, requests for a first shot doubled on Friday, the day after the new measures were announced, compared with what they had been at the beginning of the week.

“We can’t force people to get vaccinated, but those who don’t do it will have fewer opportunities,” Walter Ricciardi, a professor of public health and an adviser to Italy’s health minister, said in a newspaper interview.

But in deference to one of the daily rituals of millions of Italians, the vaccination requirement for indoor dining and drinking doesn’t apply to people having an espresso or cappuccino while standing at a bar.

In most countries that have introduced restrictions on the unvaccinated, proof of recovery from Covid-19 or a negative test will open the same doors. The restrictions usually apply to everybody older than 12, the youngest age for which vaccines have been approved.

In Greece and other countries, indoor dining is only open to the vaccinated, recovered or tested. Italy will follow suit on Aug. 6, adding the requirement for those taking part in indoor sports such as swimming, going to a gym and attending large events like concerts, whether indoors or outside. Trade fairs, museums and a host of other venues are on Italy’s off-limits list for the unvaccinated. In France, the government has set restrictions for museums and movie theaters, and plans in August to extend them to venues including restaurants, both indoors and outside...

Still more.

 

Hispanics Aren't Marginalized, Oppressed Victims

At Fox News, "Rev. Samuel Rodriguez: Hispanics, Latinos thriving – we are not marginalized, oppressed victims: Please stop calling us marginalized, oppressed victims."

Large Protests in France Over Covid Restrictions (VIDEO)

This is the second weekend in a row for these protests.

At NYT, "Large Covid-related protests hit France, Italy and Australia":

Over 160,000 demonstrators took to the streets in France on Saturday to protest the government’s Covid-19 health pass policy, with brief clashes between largely unmasked protesters and police officers in Paris followed by wafts of tear gas that were reminiscent of the Yellow Vest turmoil of several years ago....

In France, presenting the health pass — paper or digital proof of being fully vaccinated, a recent negative test or recent Covid-19 recovery — is mandatory to attend large events in stadiums and concert halls, and to enter the country’s cultural venues, including cinemas, museums and theaters...

Health passes?

Gawd, what a nightmare.

Still more.

U.S. Moves to Evacuate Afghan Translators as War Winds Down

Man, you'd think we'd be getting these people out of the country --- they be the first to the firing squads once the Taliban topple the regime in Kabul.

At the New York Times, "U.S. scrambles to move translators from Afghanistan while leaving many in limbo:"

An additional 4,000 Afghans who worked with American forces, many of them interpreters, had been approved to relocate to the United States with their families in light of the withdrawal of U.S. troops, State Department officials said on Wednesday.

But officials added that evacuations were only taking place out of Kabul, the capitol, and any eligible Afghans in remote areas were on their own in figuring out how to make the difficult, and likely dangerous, journey if they wanted to take advantage of the offer.

“In order to come on an evacuation flight, they would have to get themselves to Kabul,” a senior official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the plan in detail, said on a call with reporters. “Obviously, we don’t have extensive U.S. military presence. We don’t have the ability to provide transportation for them.”

“If they’re staying in the north of the country and they don’t feel safe staying in Afghanistan, they could go to a neighboring country” and finish their application process there, the official added.

The United States also will not provide security to applicants outside Kabul, many of whom are under direct threat from the Taliban for cooperating with coalition forces during the war.

With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan, the White House has come under pressure to protect Afghan allies and speed up the process of providing them with special immigrant visas, and President Biden has vowed to do so...

Still more.

 

All-Out Attacks on the Vaccinated

It's not just this Leana Wen (former head of Planned Parenthood) who's demonizing vaccinating folks, making them pay for the sins of the unvaccinated. I'm seeing all kind of idiots make this same argument. 

Pfft. No doubt Dr. Wen is perhaps the biggest stooge on CNN.

Via Melissa Mackenzie, who is a medical doctor: 

You're either vaccinated and safe or you're not. Which is it?

Otherwise, people can decide what level of risk they're willing to live with. https://t.co/oJMeQw110I

— Melissa Mackenzie (@MelissaTweets) July 22, 2021

Paulina Porizkova, 56, Shows Off Abs in Topless Photo with Friend After Announcing Her Split from Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin

This woman was my absolute favorite way back in the 1980s, when I was about 21-years-old.

The woman's still looking tasty!

Biden Splits with Voting Rights Activists on New Federal Legislation

Maybe he's not that radical after all. Thus far, it seems nothing on the extreme left's wish-list hasn't been granted.  

At NYT, "Democrats’ Divide on Voting Rights Widens as Biden Faces Pressure":

WASHINGTON — A quiet divide between President Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open on Thursday, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions.

In the letter, signed by civil rights groups including the Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, activists argued that with the “ideal of bipartisan cooperation on voting rights” nowhere to be found in a sharply divided Senate, Mr. Biden must “support the passage of these bills by whatever means necessary.”

The issue is of paramount importance to Democrats: Republicans have passed roughly 30 laws in states across the country this year that are likely to make voting harder, especially in Black and Latino communities, which lean Democratic. Several of the laws give state legislators more power over how elections are run and make it easier to challenge the results.

In a fiery speech in Philadelphia last week, Mr. Biden warned that the G.O.P. effort was the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”

But the president and voting rights advocates are increasingly in disagreement about how to pass that test.

Mr. Biden, a veteran of the Senate who for decades has believed in negotiating on the particulars of voting rights legislation, has faced calls to push Democratic senators to eliminate the filibuster, which would allow the two major voting bills proposed by the party to pass with a simple majority. The president and his advisers have repeatedly pointed out that he does not have the votes within his own party to pass federal voting legislation, and does not have the power to unilaterally roll back the filibuster even if he supported doing so.

But voting rights groups say that Mr. Biden is not expending sufficient political capital or using the full force of his bully pulpit to persuade Congress. They point to the contrast between his soaring language — “Jim Crow on steroids,” he has called the G.O.P. voting laws — and his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster.

“As you noted in your speech, our democracy is in peril,” the groups said in their letter. “We certainly cannot allow an arcane Senate procedural rule to derail efforts that a majority of Americans support.”

Ultimately, the advocates fear that the Biden administration — currently focused on a bipartisan infrastructure deal and an ambitious spending proposal — has largely accepted the Republican restrictions as baked in, and is now dedicating more of its effort to juicing Democratic turnout.

In private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to “out-organize voter suppression,” according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.

“I have heard an emphasis on organizing,” said Sherrilyn A. Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who visited the Oval Office to meet with the president two weeks ago. But, she added, “we cannot litigate our way out of this and we cannot organize our way out of this.”

Several Biden advisers involved in the private calls said this week that they did not recall telling attendees that voter suppression could be out-organized, but said organizing was integral to the administration’s efforts.

Broadly, Mr. Biden’s advisers insist that the administration is committed to protecting access to the ballot and passing two federal bills: the For the People Act, an overhaul of federal election laws that was considered more of a political statement than viable legislation when it was first introduced in 2019, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore important parts of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court stripped away in 2013.

Republicans have castigated the For the People Act as overreaching and partisan. And Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, has said there is no need for a bill restoring parts of the Voting Rights Act.

White House officials privately note that even if Mr. Biden came out in support of ending the filibuster, moderate Democrats, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have publicly resisted such a move. Mr. Manchin has also called the For the People Act a piece of “partisan” legislation...

You Lift, Bro?

Seen on Twitter.

Alopecia is some kind of immuno-system response that affects the hair follicles. 

Chimp with alopecia reveals a truth usually concealed in fur: Chimps. Are. Ripped. https://t.co/eKYaFdNkwM pic.twitter.com/J7VhOgeWMv

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) July 23, 2021

Japan Olympics Diversity

Japan's population is 98 percent Nihon. For reasons of ethnic chauvinism, fear of the outer world (like the U.S. and Commodore Perry's expeditions to that country in 1853-1855), or outright racism, it's unreasonable to expect much "diversity" to be coming to that nation's shores anytime soon.

Frankly, given the above, I'm not sure what's the purpose of this article. *Shrug.*

At LAT, "Tokyo Olympics: Diverse faces are representing Japan. Does it reflect real change?":

TOKYO — With millions around the world watching, Rui Hachimura walked onto the gleaming white floor of Japan’s Olympic Stadium on Friday waving the country’s red-and-white flag.

The 6-foot-8 Washington Wizards forward with a Japanese mother and Beninese father led his nation’s athletes in procession, a beaming smile peeking out of the sides of his face mask. Towering 20 inches over his fellow flag bearer, wrestler Yui Susaki, the 23-year-old’s careful steps signaled a changing face of Japan.

But in an unpopular Games, echoing with protests outside the largely empty Tokyo stadium, the discontent and ire over the influx of foreign visitors in the midst of a pandemic threatened to overshadow the inclusive image Japan had intended with Hachimura.

Even apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the years and months leading up to the Games have been marked by a series of disappointments over promises to highlight diversity. The planet’s biggest sporting event has been troubled by high-profile resignations following scandals involving sexist and discriminatory remarks. The Olympic moment will come and go with neither a highly anticipated new anti-discrimination law nor immigration policies that reflect Japan’s fast-changing needs and norms.

It has left a conflicted feeling for Japanese like Hachimura or tennis great Naomi Osaka, who lighted the Olympic torch capping Friday’s ceremony, who haven’t always felt accepted. Some Japanese cling to notions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity even as the country needs young people to replace the world’s fastest-aging population. Though cities like Tokyo have become more cosmopolitan over the last half century, only 2% of babies born in Japan have at least one foreign parent.

Athletes like Hachimura are “one of the few people that can bring major changes for us,” said Alonzo Omotegawa, who has a Japanese mother and Bahamian father and has lived in the Tokyo area his entire life. Yet he has been repeatedly told: You are not Japanese.

The 25-year-old English teacher said he questions whether Hachimura’s popularity and symbolism will be enough to stifle the discrimination he faces on a daily basis — change the minds of landlords who refuse to rent to him because of his skin color, children who ask if it will wash off or police who stop and search him without a warrant, saying people with dreadlocks like him “tend to carry drugs.”

“The country is only on our side when it wants to be,” he said.

Organizers devoted a chapter of Friday night’s opening ceremony to a performance featuring children of diverse ethnic backgrounds assembling the Tokyo Olympics emblem. For months, the slogan “Unity in Diversity” had been pasted on posters around the city, projecting at least for the international media that this nation of 126 million was pledging to become more nuanced and accepting.

At the same time, the pandemic, as it has elsewhere, has brought out in Japan suspicion of those who look different, and a fear they may bring danger. That unease has been amplified in recent days as tens of thousands of athletes and others from around the globe have filtered into a nation that had kept its borders heavily restricted, even keeping out many foreign expats who’d long called Japan home.

Gracia Liu-Farrer, a sociologist at Tokyo’s Waseda University who studies migration and inequality in Japan, said of the Olympics: “It’s ironic. It’s not a moment of change but a moment of almost intensification of xenophobia because of this global health crisis.”

Even so, she said, the international attention around the Olympics has led to soul-searching and introspection over discriminatory opinions and remarks that may have previously gone unchallenged. The week before the opening ceremony, a director who’d made a Holocaust joke years ago and a composer who admitted to once bullying disabled classmates stepped down from their roles...

 Still more.

Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual

At Amazon, Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership.

'Make Coffee Great Again'

Very interesting.

At New York Times Magazine, "Can the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right?"

Author Michael Wolff Roasts Brian Stelter Live, on His Own Show (VIDEO)

This was from a few days back, and lots of folks were tweeting the segment at the time.

From Tucker Carlson, at Fox News:

Plus, Wolff had an essay up at the New York Times yesterday, "Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024."

Eleven-Year-Old Boy with Autism Dies After Being Left in Hot Car Close to Two Hours

My youngest boy's on the spectrum, which makes this story even sadder for me.

At KUTV Salt Lake City:

Developments in hot car death: Boy had autism, state investigating, center on notice https://t.co/g6WL2mRz5i

— Heidi Hatch KUTV (@tvheidihatch) July 23, 2021

Oakland Tries to Save Walgreens Pharmacy (VIDEO)

There's a lot of reasons for the closure.

As one shopper explained, "'I mean, this was in the neighborhood, but look what happened. They stole a lot of stuff from there, ok? I don’t know. Just look around. So much stuff is happening here in Oakland, you know'," says Martha Stolaroff, who grew up in Oakland.

Watch:

How Did the Party of J.F.K. Become So Woke and Stupid?

It's V.D.H., at Fox News, "How did the Democratic Party of JFK, Bill Clinton turn into a woke neo-Maoist movement? Democrats used to talk nonstop about the 'working man'."

Charles Mills, From Class to Race

At Amazon, Charles Mills, From Class to Race" From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism".

To Ban or Not to Ban Critical Race Theory

That is the question.

At Quillette, "Should Critical Race Theory Be Banned in Public Schools? — a Conversation with Christopher F. Rufo."

Growing Opposition to Critical Race Theory

At the Epoch Times, "CRT Opposition Grows Stronger, Bolder, and More Organized: ‘You Have to Fight Fire With Fire’":

Despite growing opposition to critical race theory (CRT) and a growing number of states passing laws to ostracize it from classrooms, edification and teachers’ cumulations are vowing to edify the controversial subject matter anyway. But one candid Florida mom verbalizes it’s time to “fight fire with fire.”

“I cerebrate parents have realized you have to fight fire with fire,” Quisha King told the Epoch Times. You have to be as vigorous, as forceful, and as unrelenting as they are.

King is the Florida mother who gained notoriety when she blasted the Duval County school board with vigorous opposition to CRT. In replication to the National Education Association’s threat to go after those who dared oppose CRT, King verbally expressed bring it on.

In an effort to avail denizens fight back against the behemoth inculcation system, Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA) is now distributing a 46-page booklet (pdf) edifying parents and students how to get organized in their effort to fight back. As described on its website, the United We Stand toolkit is a component of TPPA’s campaign to inspirit people to attend their local school board meetings to oppose CRT, and to urge a full return to in-classroom ordinant dictation.

I cerebrate it’s good to avail parents understand how to apperceive (CRT) and how to detect it because they don’t genuinely understand how it’s being worked into the system, King verbalized. “It’s a great, handy guide so they’re armed with something.”

“I cerebrate we require more things like that,” she integrated, verbally expressing she has additionally endeavored to avail parents by engendering informative videos.

We embolden every parent and concerned denizen who cares about the future of our country to attend their local school board meeting, learn what is going on locally, and ascertain schools are plenarily open,

TPPA Honorary Chairman Jenny Beth Martin verbally expressed in a verbalization regarding their incipient anti-CRT campaign. Teachers should be edifying reading, inditing, arithmetic, and history without indoctrination.

I cerebrate there’s a sense of exigency with this because kids are in school for 12 years or 13 years if you include kindergarten, Martin explained to The Epoch Times. I don’t cerebrate it’s fair to wait just for the elections. We’ve got to understand what’s transpiring and work to unwind it at a policy level as well.

“Obviously the first thing is to commence peregrinating to school board meetings,” Vero Beach, Florida, activist Susan Mehiel told The Epoch Times. The second thing is to commence electing school board members who are true to their word. According to Mehiel, people need to commence electing “non-edifying people on those boards,” rather than perpetually pulling from the same barrel of rotten apples. She additionally suggests people establish a good relationship with their local representatives. In June, Mehiel organized the “Save our Students” town hall meeting in Vero Beach to rally community members to verbalize out against proposed edification materials that pushed critical race theory in K-5 English Language curriculum.

“If parents genuinely want to make a difference,” Mehiel exhorted, they have to have numbers and they have to have clout at the state level.

At Moms for Liberty, we believe that it is essential for every denizen to amalgamate together to avail parents reclaim their rights in America’s public-school classrooms,

Tiffany Justice, co-progenitor of Moms For Liberty told The Epoch Times. We applaud the work of organizations that give denizens resources and a roadmap for engagement with all levels of regime...

 

Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle Won't Pass

Good thing. *Phew.*

At the New York Times, "G.O.P. Blocks Infrastructure Debate in Senate, Raising Doubts About a Deal":

WASHINGTON — Republicans blocked the Senate on Wednesday from taking up an emerging bipartisan infrastructure plan, raising doubts about the fate of a major piece of President Biden’s agenda even as negotiators continued to seek a compromise.

The failed vote underscored the intense mistrust between the two parties, which has complicated the effort to complete a deal. Both Republicans and Democrats in the group seeking a deal say they are still making progress toward agreement on a package with nearly $600 billion in new funds for roads, bridges, rail, transit and other infrastructure, which could be the first major infusion of federal public works spending since the 2009 stimulus law.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, forced the vote in a bid to intensify pressure for a swift resolution to the talks, acting over the pleas of centrist Republicans who said they needed more time to solidify their deal with Democrats. With many Democrats harboring concerns that Republicans will drag out the process only to withhold support from a final bill, he argued that there was still time to iron out final details.

“This vote is not a deadline to have every final detail worked out — it is not an attempt to jam anyone,” Mr. Schumer said before the vote, adding that negotiators would have “many opportunities” to add their plan to the bill “even if they need a few more days to finalize the language.”

But Republicans said they were not ready to commit to considering an infrastructure measure, and warned that putting the matter to a vote risked scuttling a potential bipartisan breakthrough. On Wednesday, as they shuttled between meetings and votes, Republican negotiators said a final deal could emerge in the coming days, about a month after they first triumphantly announced agreement on a framework.

“We’re optimistic that once we get past this vote today, that we’re going to continue our work and that we will be ready in the coming days,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a key negotiator. She said members of the group “think that we will be largely ready on Monday.”

With all 50 Republicans in the Senate opposed, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes that would have been needed to move forward with an infrastructure debate. All 50 members of the Democratic caucus initially voted to proceed, but Mr. Schumer switched his vote to enable him under Senate rules to bring up the measure again.

It was an inauspicious beginning to what Democrats had hoped would be a period of intense activity on Capitol Hill, with action on a bipartisan infrastructure measure and a far more ambitious, $3.5 trillion partisan budget blueprint that would include money to address climate change, expand health care and education and broaden child care and paid leave.

Instead, senators spent Wednesday voicing frustration over their failure to begin debating the infrastructure plan and privately meeting to work through the details of how to structure and finance the package...

Still more. 

Biden Administration Admits Attempting to Censor Conservative Websites

From Katie Pavlich, at Town Hall, "White House Communications Director Admits They’re Trying to Censor Conservative News Sites":

During an interview with CNN this week, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield admitted the Biden administration's censorship efforts are specifically targeting conservative news sites for publishing "misinformation."

"You've heard the president speak very aggressively about this. He understands this is an important piece of the ecosystem but its also the other thing, the president has pointed out and spoke to when he was asked about this yesterday, it is also the responsibility of the people creating the content and again I would go back to, there are conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content that's sharing misinformation about the virus," Bedingfield said...

RTWT.

PREVIOUSLY: "Jen Psaki's White House Disinformation."

Mark Levin, American Marxism

At Amazon, Mark Levin, American Marxism. 

Oscar Blasts Off

Hilarious.

Call us next time you want to ride a wiener into space… pic.twitter.com/cmAnDeh6nS

— Oscar Mayer (@oscarmayer) July 21, 2021

'We're An American Band'

 It's Grand Funk Railroad: