It's Liz Wheeler.
She's good and really gets rolling just before the halfway mark, if you want to scroll ahead.
A smart, stunning blonde bombshell with opinions. Love her. She's the best.
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Biden Administration Looks to Extract Americans from Ukraine If Russia Attacks
Yeah. Right.
Let's see how that goes. (*Eye-roll.*)
At WSJ, "Biden Approves Pentagon Plan to Help Americans Fleeing Ukraine if Russia Invades":
WASHINGTON—The White House has approved a Pentagon plan for U.S. troops in Poland to help thousands of Americans likely to flee Ukraine if Russia attacks, as the Biden administration tries to avoid the kind of chaotic evacuation conducted in Afghanistan. Some of the 1,700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division being deployed to Poland to bolster that ally will in coming days begin to set up checkpoints, tent camps and other temporary facilities inside Poland’s border with Ukraine in preparation to serve arriving Americans, U.S. officials said. The troops aren’t authorized to enter Ukraine and won’t evacuate Americans or fly aircraft missions from inside Ukraine, officials said.Instead, the officials said, the mission would be to provide logistics support to help coordinate the evacuation of Americans from Poland, after they arrive there from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, likely by land and without U.S. military support, the officials said. Roughly 30,000 Americans are in Ukraine, and if Russia attacks, some of them as well as Ukrainians and others would likely want to leave quickly, the officials said. Russia has been building up troops along the Ukraine border for months, and Western officials have said an invasion could come within weeks, while the Kremlin has said Russia doesn’t plan to invade Ukraine. Looming over the current planning on Ukraine, defense officials said, is the memory of the rapid evacuation of more than 100,000 Americans and Afghans that U.S. and allied forces conducted in Kabul last August ending the U.S.’s war in Afghanistan. Some of the same military commanders who were part of the Kabul mission are now leading the U.S. effort around Ukraine. “Everyone who lived the evacuation from Afghanistan felt it was remarkable but also chaotic,” one defense official said. “That was a messy, messy withdrawal. We don’t want a chaotic withdrawal from Ukraine.” Other officials said such evacuation planning is a prudent measure regardless of the Afghan experience, which, U.S. officials said, posed a different set of challenges than Ukraine. In Afghanistan, the administration scrambled to deal with the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country and the rapid cratering of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and military. U.S. forces had to be flown into Kabul to augment troops on the ground to evacuate tens of thousands of U.S. citizens and diplomatic personnel and Afghans when the capital was coming under the control of a hostile authority. Ukraine’s government and military, by contrast, are unlikely to fall as Afghanistan’s did, should Russia launch a full-scale invasion, U.S. officials said. Instead, U.S. officials and military specialists see Russia as more likely to seize parts of Ukraine and the incursion could play out over a protracted period. The White House rejected comparisons to Afghanistan...
Of course it did!
No Taliban in the Donbas, no worries!
But look out for Ivan over there with that shoulder-mounted 9K38 Igla homing infrared surface-to-air missile!
Keep reading, in any case. It's only 30,000 the 82nd Airborne's got to evacuate.
Joe Rogan Experience: 'Stephen Pinker on What Has Happened to Being Rational' (VIDEO)
Stephen Pinker's latest book is, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.
And at the Joe Rogan Experience:
Chum Bucket List
Yes, indeed.
And hey, if you like fishing, follow this little angel flipper.
Back on dry land, big (ahem!) conventional rack here.
Forthcoming Investigation of Freedom Convoy's Seized GoFundMe Donations (VIDEO)
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's so fucked up over this he's become a bloody parrot: "This must stop! This must stop! This must stop! ..."
And video, from Monday: "NOW - Canada's PM Trudeau: "Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens' daily lives. It has to stop."
Where'd the money go?
GoFundMe is now GoFuckMe. They royally screwed up announcing the operation was confiscating $10 million in donations to the trucker's convoy --- $10 million! --- and now here comes the inspectors.
At CBNC, "DeSantis, state AGs pledge to investigate GoFundMe removing page for Canadian vaccine mandate protest."
Now watch, at Maria Bartiromo's, on Fox:
'Headlining an intimate show in Austin, Texas before a rapturous crowd of fans, the embattled comic and podcaster tackled his controversies — particularly the widely circulated viral video of the comedian using the n-word on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience...'
This is some twist.
At the Hollywood Reporter, "Joe Rogan Returns to Stand-Up Stage, Mocks His Controversies."
Slow-Motion Suicide in San Francisco
From Michael Shellenberger, "The city is carrying out a bizarre medical experiment in which they are helping homeless drug addicts use drugs. ‘It’s handing a loaded gun to a suicidal person":
Something very different is happening in San Francisco. The city is carrying out a bizarre medical experiment whereby addicts are given everything they need to maintain their addiction—cash, hot meals, shelter—in exchange for . . . almost nothing. Voters have found themselves in the strange position of paying for fentanyl, meth and crack use on public property. You can go and witness all of this if you simply walk down Market Street and peek your head over a newly erected fence in the southwest corner of United Nations Plaza. You will see that the city is permitting people to openly use and even deal drugs in a cordoned-off area of the public square. The city denies that they are operating a supervised drug consumption site. “This site is about getting people connected with immediate support, as well as long-term services and treatment,” a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Emergency Management told the Chronicle. The official line is that they are running what they call a “Linkage Center” in a building next to the open drug market in the plaza. The idea is that the center is supposed to link addicts to services, including housing and rehab. When Mayor London Breed announced it, she promised it would get people into treatment so they could stop using drugs, not simply hide their use. But city officials have told me that in the 19 days that the site has been open, just two people total went to detox so far. And they serve some 220 people per day. “In that tent on Market Street everyone is shooting dope,” complained a senior employee of a major city service provider, speaking of the scene at the plaza. “It’s insane. All the staff standing around watching them. It’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t know how anybody thinks that helping a drug addict use drugs is helping them.” “What’s happening is that everyone that comes in gets a meal, can use the bathroom, gets drug supplies (needles, foil, pipes) and signs up for a ‘housing assessment,” a person with firsthand information about the operation told me over text message. “But there’s no housing. So nothing happens. They just get added to a list.” The parents whose children live on the streets are adamant that the status quo is broken. “I agree with the Linkage Center,” Gina McDonald told me. Her 24-year-old daughter Samantha is a heroin and fentanyl addict who has been on and off the streets for the last two years. “But allowing open drug use does not help. It’s handing a loaded gun to a suicidal person.” If you appreciate groundbreaking reporting about important stories that are overlooked, please consider becoming a subscriber. Last Thursday I returned to the Linkage Center to find out what, if anything, had changed since I first visited. I saw (and video recorded) much more drug use within the supervised drug consumption site, and much more drug dealing around it, than I had two weeks ago...
RTWT.
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Gone Fishing
Seriously!
On Twitter.
Also, Janice Dean, beautiful Fox News meteorologist, high school prom photo flashback.
Plus, lovely Amber.
Lots of Questions About Gold Medal-Winning American Skier Eileen Gu -- Skiing for Team China WTAF?!!
I'm hella impressed with this young woman, only 18-years-old (here).
But she pisses me right the fuck off. She's skis for the genocidal totalitarians in Beijing! She was born in San Francisco, fer cryin' out loud, and she's headed to Stanford in the fall. And she's actually fucking skiing for China?!!
She's allegedly renounced her citizenship, as China *supposedly* doesn't allow dual citizenship and other Americans now competing for China have surrendered their American passports. But she's a freakin' hotsie-totsie high-fashion cover model who's graced the front of Vogue Hong Kong.
Spoiled brat. Talk about privilege. Smart though. She easily slips questioning about her citizenship status --- and boasts a 1580 on the SAT, so what can you do, I guess?
She's a bonafide champion now, taking the gold medal in the women's big air freestyle last night, in an apparent surprise win, as the big air is not her signature event.
But about that citizenship (arches eyebrow), see the Wall Street Journal, "Eileen Gu’s Beijing Olympics Begin With Gold in Big Air -- And Citizenship Questions":
See what I’m talking ‘bout. Fucking brilliant. 🎿 ⛷ https://t.co/yFjLo0nVeB
— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) February 8, 2022
Eileen Gu’s Beijing Olympics Begin With Gold in Big Air—And Citizenship QuestionsBEIJING—A surprise gold medal by Eileen Gu, the U.S.-born freestyle skier competing for her mother’s homeland of China, set off jubilation in the Chinese public but spurred renewed questions about her citizenship status. Gu’s win for China in Tuesday’s big air event secured the country’s third gold medal in these Olympics—briefly putting the country atop the gold-medal count—and came before the U.S. has won any golds. Gu was a slight underdog to French phenom Tess Ledeux in her Beijing Olympics debut, but won on the third and final run by nailing a trick she had never done before in competition. It featured four-and-a-half horizontal rotations and two flips. On her final run, Ledeux couldn’t surpass Gu’s feat, and Gu finished with an overall score of 188.25 to Ledeux’s 187.50. Gu grinned and covered her mouth in shock as she watched her score post. Hundreds of Chinese spectators erupted in cheers at Gu’s victory, some brandishing red and gold placards that read, “Gu Ailing, add oil”—a Chinese phrase of encouragement. Gu Ailing is her Chinese name. The 18-year-old Gu’s unexpected win swept Chinese social media. On Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, six out of the top 10 trending topics were about her. Hashtags included “Gu Ailing takes on the world’s most difficult jump,” and “Gu Ailing Gold Medal.” Memes and moments of her victory flooded Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Gu was still coming back to earth when she faced questions in a post-event news conference about her citizenship status. Western reporters asked several versions of the question but Gu deflected each one. Olympians must be citizens of the nations in which they compete, and China’s policy is not to allow dual citizenship. Yet Gu hasn’t made clear whether she has relinquished her U.S. passport. On Tuesday, she again emphasized that she considers herself Chinese when she’s in China, where she has spent nearly every summer of her life, and American when she’s in the U.S. “I don’t feel as though I’m, you know, taking advantage of [China or the U.S.] because both have actually been incredibly supportive of me and continue to be supportive of me,” she said. “Because they understand that my mission is to use sport as a force for unity, to use it as a form to foster interconnection between countries, and not use it as a divisive force. So that benefits everyone, and if you disagree with that then I feel like that’s someone else’s problem.” Gu’s decision to compete for China, little-noticed when she made it a few years ago, has spurred controversy in recent days, particularly in the U.S., where she was born and still lives with her mother and grandmother in San Francisco. Some Americans say she is a product of U.S. ski-area infrastructure and instruction, and that her switch to China was motivated in part by gaining access to its vast commercial market. The ambiguity around Gu’s nationality raises questions about whether Beijing has bent the rules for a top athlete, and whether her star power among some Chinese brands and more nationalistic supporters might suffer if it emerges that she hadn’t given up her U.S. citizenship. In earlier interviews, Gu had explained her decision to switch national affiliations by saying she felt she could make a greater impact in China than in the U.S., which she felt had no shortage of role models for young people. Yet these Games—and Gu’s sudden starting role in them—arrived at a time of escalating tensions between China and the U.S., which is carrying out a diplomatic boycott over what it describes as China’s human-rights abuses particularly in its Xinjiang region. Beijing has defended its treatment of Uyghur Muslims there as an effort to combat extremism. On Tuesday, Gu positioned herself as a unifier of cultures, evading questions about her citizenship status or responding as though they were critiques of her or her mission. “If other people don’t really believe that that’s where I’m coming from, then that just reflects that they do not have the empathy to empathize with a good heart—perhaps because they don’t share the same kind of morals that I do,” she said. “And in that sense, I’m not going to waste my time trying to placate people who are, one, uneducated, and two, probably are never going to experience the kind of joy and gratitude and, just, love that I have the great fortune to experience on a daily basis,” she continued. “If people don’t like me, then that’s their loss. They’re never going to win the Olympics.” Gu has said she wanted to inspire girls to take up skiing because it has brought her joy and taught her physical and mental toughness. On Tuesday, Gu also sidestepped questions about the well-being of Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player at the center of a global firestorm after an allegation of sexual assault against a retired high-level Chinese official appeared on her social-media account in November. Peng, who along with Olympic officials has since tried to deflect attention from her accusations, was in the audience watching Tuesday’s big air final. Earlier this week, Gu was the only athlete Peng mentioned by name in an interview with French sports publication L’Equipe, referring to her as “our Chinese champion, Eileen Gu, who I like a lot.” At Tuesday’s post-event news conference, Gu’s interactions with some foreign journalists contrasted with those with their Chinese counterparts. Gu flitted between English and Chinese, which she spoke with a Beijinger’s accent, and said she was “fluent culturally in both.” One Chinese journalist called Gu a “Beijing girl” and asked about her favorite local cuisine. “I have eaten a lot of pork and chive dumplings the last few days and I really look forward to trying some Peking duck,” she said in Mandarin...
Majority of Americans Says It's Time to Live With the Virus
Well, one would think.
The only thing that's changed is the polls, now scaring the living shit out of our authoritarian "knowledge working" pajama-clad overlords who haven't manned the front lines of our entire freakin' economy for the last two years. Dolts. All of them.
We're talking some big majorities too.
At NYT, "Americans Are Frustrated With the Pandemic. These Polls Show How Much":
A wave of polls taken as the Omicron variant crested across much of the United States shows new signs that the public’s resolve to combat the coronavirus pandemic is waning. The surveys depict an increasingly frustrated and pessimistic nation that is as worried by the specter of an endless pandemic as it is fearful of the disease. While a majority of voters remain concerned about the coronavirus, the balance of recent polling suggests that the desire to return to normalcy has approached or even overtaken alarm about the virus itself. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that 46 percent of respondents thought Americans should “learn to live with” the pandemic “and get back to normal,” while just 43 percent thought “we need to do more to vaccinate, wear masks and test.” A Republican firm, Echelon Insights, had similar findings, reporting that 55 percent of voters thought Covid-19 should be “treated as an endemic disease that will never fully go away,” like the flu, while 38 percent said it should be “treated as a public health emergency.” The results are especially striking at a time when coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and even deaths are near record highs. Indeed, the same polls showed that the public’s concern about the virus increased during the Omicron wave. But in a telling indication of the public’s attitudes toward the pandemic, greater worry about the virus has not translated to greater support for measures to stop its spread. Instead, fears of the virus apparently have been outweighed by mounting frustration with the inconveniences of a pandemic that has stretched into its second year. Three-quarters of adults described themselves as tired or frustrated with the pandemic in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Fully 70 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “it’s time we accept Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives” in a recent poll by Monmouth University. That survey found that support for vaccine mandates has dropped to just 43 percent from 53 percent in September, while support for masking and social distancing guidelines dropped to 52 percent from 63 percent over the same period. The findings come at a possible turning point in the pandemic, as several Democratic governors announced intentions to ease some mask mandates over the next month. The growing frustration with pandemic restrictions may help explain some of those early announcements — even as cases reach record levels. The polls create a delicate challenge for the Biden administration, which never regained its political standing since the rise of the Delta variant dashed last summer’s hopes of a return to normalcy. The growing unease with the pandemic seems to have added to the president’s political woes, and may help explain why the public disapproves of Mr. Biden’s handling of the coronavirus for the first time...
Newsom's lifting California's indoor mask mandate next week, along with now-quivering Democrat governor's around the country trying to innoculate themselves as voters' wrath this November.
West Palm Beach: 79-Year-Old Woman Falls to Her Death After Drawbridge Opens as She Walked Her Bike Across (VIDEO)
This is absolutely infuriating!
How can something like this possibly happen --- falling down a drawbridge 12 stories to your death is not a thing?!!
Heinous, reckless disregard for human life.
At the Palm Beach Post, "West Palm Beach police say 79-year-old woman fell to her death from Royal Park Bridge: The woman was about 10 feet away from safety when the bridge started to rise Sunday afternoon, West Palm Beach police said."
And WESH 2 News Orlando, "Detectives identify woman who fell to her death from Florida drawbridge as 79-year-old":
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Officials have identified a woman who fell about 50 feet to her death from a Florida drawbridge Sunday. Investigators said the 79-year-old West Palm Beach resident was walking her bicycle in the pedestrian lane of the Royal Park Bridge connecting the town of Palm Beach to West Palm Beach around 1 p.m. She was coming from the island to the city of West Palm Beach when the incident happened. Detectives say the woman's name will not be released due to Marsy's Law, but she was positively identified by authorities on Monday night. According to a news release from police, the woman was approximately 10 feet from the westernmost section of the elevating bridge span, approaching the stationary segment of the bridge, when she attempted to hold on to a railing, then lost her grip and fell about 50-60 feet to her death. A skateboarder on the fixed span tried to help but could not reach her. "There was a man who tried to help this woman as she was holding on to the elevated bridge, but unfortunately he was not able to rescue her,” said Mike Jachles, public information officer for the West Palm Beach Police Department. "Unfortunately and tragically, she fell, landing about 50 to 60 feet below, where the mechanical parts to the bridge are, and she died on impact." The bridge remained closed for six hours while the on-scene investigation was conducted...
The story notes that "the bridge tender was 'very upset'."
You think?
Laguna Hills High School Crowd Yelled Racial Slurs at Black Basketball Player from Portola Hills High School in Irvine (VIDEO)
I saw this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. Damn this is bad!
At the time, I'd only read that "racial slurs" had been yelled and the black student's father confronted the Laguna Hills coach and then an assistant coach basically told the father to "step outside." The boy's father was escorted out of the basketball game. The boy's father! Maybe the head coach should be escorted right out of that school district. The whole coaching staff. Sheesh.
The crackers in the crowd were yelling, "Where is his slave owner?!," "He's a monkey!," and "Chain him up!!"
Watch and listen to the video here, at the Los Angeles Times, "Video captures Laguna Hills student shouting racist slurs at Black basketball player."
And the full story here, "After a Black student faced racist slurs, some wonder: Will O.C. ever change?":
Watching his son play basketball at Laguna Hills High School, Terrell Brown couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. He has felt it before in Orange County, where he and his family are often the only Black people in a room. Fans of the home team, the Hawks, and the visiting Portola High Bulldogs slammed their feet against the wood bleachers and screamed. It was a type of energy that often makes for an exciting game. But the vibe was off, Brown recalled. He was soon proved right. His son, Makai, became the target of racial slurs shouted from the stands by a Laguna Hills student. A video capturing the slurs at the Jan. 21 basketball game has generated widespread outrage. The family was interviewed by Don Lemon on CNN. A group of local businessmen gave Makai a $20,000 college scholarship. But Brown and others are wondering what will change in a county where racial taunts of students of color, particularly at sporting events, still happen with alarming regularity. Brown, who moved to Irvine from the Atlanta area about four years ago, said the overt racism of the South is in some ways easier to deal with than Orange County racism. “The microaggressions here are worse,” said Brown, 48. “The guy with the Confederate flag, he’s letting you know he’s a racist. He’s making it very clear. But here, you don’t even know.” For Black people, life in Orange County can be particularly challenging. They are 2% of the population in a county where whites are a minority and two-thirds of residents are Latino or Asian. With all the crowd noise, the Browns didn’t hear the insults at the time. Makai, 17, a senior point guard at Portola High, discovered them the next day while studying game footage. “Where’s his … slave owner? Who let him out of his chains? Who let him out of his cage? He’s a monkey!” the student yelled as Makai shot free throws. For several days, the Browns dealt with their shock and pain mostly alone. Then, Makai’s mother, Sabrina Brown, posted the video on Instagram. It was viewed more than 171,000 times in just over a week...
At at the Laguna Hills High School homepage:
Hawk Community, The Laguna Hills High School administration, staff, and students are devastated by the racial commentary captured on video at the home basketball game on January 21st with Portola High School. The words used by the student are absolutely contrary to our core beliefs and the values of our greater community. Those awful words go against LHHS’s vision of empowering our students to build a better world through mutual respect and intercultural understanding. This is not who we are, Hawks. We have had several meetings with the Orange County Human Relations Commission this week to develop our plan to make our school a better place as a result of this terrible scenario. As a result, LHHS is building out a schedule for a series of listening sessions over the subsequent weeks which will enable students, staff and families to express their respective feelings through guided conversation. Our objective is to utilize the information derived from the listening session process to inform our action plan as we move forward with next steps toward ensuring respect for all. Faculty and staff will be meeting Monday for our first listening session. Information will be coming out Tuesday for our students and parents to sign up for listening sessions on Tuesday, February 15th, and Wednesday, February 16. Hawks, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to make sure our school is better in response to this event. Racism is not tolerated at Laguna Hills High School. Please join me in this call to action. Bill Hinds Principal, Laguna Hills High School
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Lindsey Pelas, In the Meantime
I apologize for the light posting. My classes start tomorrow, they're all online, and it takes a shit-ton of time preparing the remote-teaching Canvas learning management system.
I should have a better posting rate over the next week. In the meantime, I'm sure Ms. Lindsey can hold you over.
On Twitter.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Whoopi Goldberg 'Apologizes' for Holocaust Comments on 'The View,' Then Doubles-Down on 'The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert' (VIDEO)
This is just the most appalling, disgusting, insidious thing I've heard in a long time, and that's saying a lot. People are outraged and rightly so, and even some ABC News insiders are saying Whoopi's got to go.
The main story's here, "Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Saying Holocaust Was 'Not About Race': Ms. Goldberg’s comments, on Monday’s episode of "The View," came amid growing ignorance about the Holocaust and rising antisemitism."
Yeah, obviously a faux apology. Commenting on Whoopi's "The Tonight Show" appearance, Batya Ungar-Sargon's not having it: "How can you say it's about race if you are fighting each other?" is how Whoopi Goldberg describes a GENOCIDE. The fact that most Jews had light skin to her—and many others on the woke Left—means they weren't victims but just the other side of a skirmish. Just unspeakably gross."
Watch:
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Now Leftists Want Masks Off Our Children
The political winds have changes, showing --- once again --- just how craven is the progressive left.
See Michelle Goldberg, at the New York Times, "Let Kids Take Their Masks Off After the Omicron Surge":Perfect example of medical professionals NOW admitting their "professional" advice since the beginning of the lockdown was bull. 💉😷💉 #BacktoSchool https://t.co/ceCPy4IiVc
— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) January 30, 2022
Elissa Perkins, the director of infectious disease management in the emergency department of the Boston Medical Center, told me she spent most of 2020 “imploring everybody I could in every forum that I could to mask.” In the beginning, she said, this was to flatten the curve, and later to protect the vulnerable. But masking, she said, “was intended to be a short-term intervention,” and she believes we haven’t talked enough about the drawbacks of mandating it for kids long-term. “If we accept that we don’t want masks to be required in our schools forever, we have to decide when is the right time to remove them,” she said. “And that’s a conversation that we’re not really having.” At least, people in deep blue areas weren’t having it until recently. But as the Omicron wave begins to ebb, that conversation — sometimes tentatively and sometimes acrimoniously — has begun. This week Perkins co-wrote a Washington Post essay calling for schools to make masking optional. The Atlantic published an article titled, “The Case Against Masks at School.” “Coming off the Omicron surge, I think there’s going to be a tipping point with more and more people questioning does this need to continue in schools,” said Erin Bromage, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Bromage worked with the governor of Rhode Island to reopen schools there, and later helped schools in southern Massachusetts reopen. He believes in the importance of Covid mitigations, but his views on school masking have evolved in recent months. There comes a point, he said, “at which the reduction in risk that comes from the mask is balanced or begins to be outweighed by the detrimental side of things that come with masking.” The debate about masks in schools can quickly turn vicious because it pits legitimate interests against one another. Many people who are immunocompromised, or live with those who are, understandably fear that getting rid of mandates will make them more vulnerable. But keeping kids in masks month after month also inflicts harm, even if it’s not always easy to measure. “I think it would be naïve to not acknowledge that there are downsides of masks,” said Perkins. “I know some of that data is harder to come by because those outcomes are not as discrete as Covid or not-Covid. But from speaking with pediatricians, from speaking with learning specialists, and also from speaking with parents of younger children especially, there are significant issues related to language acquisition, pronunciation, things like that. And there are very clear social and emotional side effects in the older kids.” That’s why I believe that mandatory school masking should end when coronavirus rates return to pre-Omicron levels. I fully accept that, in future surges, masks might have to go back on, but that’s all the more reason to get them off as soon as possible, to give students some reprieve. Otherwise, I fear that, at least in very liberal areas, a combination of extreme risk aversion and inertia means that school masking will persist indefinitely. The chief executive of the Prince George’s County public schools in Maryland recently downplayed the idea of a future without masks, saying: “The only off-ramp I want is the one where Covid no longer exists. I don’t think that that off-ramp will exist.” I hope this attitude isn’t widespread, but if it is, it will be incumbent for progressive parents desperate for an off-ramp to push back. There’s some question about how well masks in school really work; many studies are confounded, since communities with school mask mandates tend to adopt other Covid mitigation measures as well. Much of The Atlantic’s “The Case Against Masks at School” is devoted to reviewing studies either conducted or cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it concludes that the “overall takeaway from these studies — that schools with mask mandates have lower Covid-19 transmission rates than schools without mask mandates — is not justified by the data that have been gathered.” The fact that experts can poke holes in some studies of masking does not mean that masks don’t make a difference...
Doctor, My Eyes ... Tell Me What is Wrong...
Jackson Browne:
Cause I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams
People go just where they will
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it's later than it seems
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it's too late for me...
Pressure on Parents to Vaccinate Kids Intensifies
Look, this pandemic is over, as Bari Weiss so accurately stated last week, to the enraged consternation of the left's foaming, raging partisans.
At the New York Times, "As Covid Shots for Kids Stall, Appeals Are Aimed at Wary Parents":
Getting more young school-age children vaccinated is crucial for ending the pandemic, public health officials say, and many are focusing on that group. For weeks, the school principal had been imploring Kemika Cosey: Would she please allow her children, 7 and 11, to get Covid shots? Ms. Cosey remained firm. A hard no. But Mr. Kip — Brigham Kiplinger, the principal of Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C. — swatted away the “no’s.” Ever since the federal government authorized the coronavirus vaccine for children 5 through 11 nearly three months ago, Mr. Kip has been calling the school’s parents, texting, nagging, cajoling daily. Acting as a vaccine advocate — a job usually handled by medical professionals and public health officials — has become central to his role as an educator. “The vaccine is the most important thing happening this year to keep kids in school,” Mr. Kiplinger said. Largely through Mr. Kiplinger’s skill as a parent-vax whisperer, Garrison Elementary has turned into a public health anomaly: Eighty percent of the 250 Garrison Wildcats in grades kindergarten through fifth grade now have at least one shot, he said. But as the Omicron variant has stormed through America’s classrooms, sending students home and, in some cases, to the hospital, the rate of vaccination overall for America’s 28 million children in the 5-to-11 age group remains even lower than health experts had feared. According to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation based on federal data, only 18.8 percent are now fully vaccinated and only 28.1 percent have received one dose. The disparity of rates among states is stark. In Vermont, the share of children who are fully vaccinated is 52 percent; in Mississippi, it is 6 percent. “It’s going to be a long slog at this point to get the kids vaccinated,” said Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president at Kaiser who specializes in global health policy. She says it will take unwavering persistence like that of Mr. Kiplinger, whom she knows firsthand because her child attends his school. “It’s hard, hard work to reach parents.” After the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized for younger children in late October, the out-of-the-gate surge in demand lasted a scant few weeks. It peaked just before Thanksgiving, then dropped precipitously and has since stalled. It now hovers at 50,000 to 75,000 new doses a day. “I was surprised at how quickly the interest in the vaccine for kids petered out,” Dr. Kates said. “Even parents who had been vaccinated themselves were more cautious about getting their kids vaccinated.” Public health officials say that persuading parents to get their younger children vaccinated is crucial not only to sustaining in-person education but also to containing the pandemic overall. With adult vaccination hitting a ceiling — 74 percent of Americans who are 18 and older are now fully vaccinated, and most of those who aren’t seem increasingly immovable — unvaccinated elementary school children remain a large, turbulent source of spread. Traveling to and from school on buses, traversing school hallways, bathrooms, classrooms and gyms, they can unknowingly act as viral vectors countless times a day. Parents give numerous reasons for their hesitation. And with their innate protective wariness on behalf of their children, they are susceptible to rampant misinformation. For many working parents, the obstacle is logistical rather than philosophical, as they struggle to find time to get their children to the clinic, doctor’s office or drugstore for a vaccine. In some communities where adult opposition to vaccines is strong, local health departments and schools do not promote the shots for children vigorously for fear of backlash. Pharmacies may not even bother to stock the child-size doses. Despite the proliferation of Covid-crowded hospitals, sick children and the highly contagious aspect of Omicron, many parents, still swayed by last year’s surges that were generally not as rough on children as adults, do not believe the virus is dangerous enough to warrant risking their child’s health on a novel vaccine. Health communication experts additionally blame that view on the early muddled messaging around Omicron, which was initially described as “mild” but also as a variant that could pierce a vaccine’s protection. Many parents interpreted those messages to mean that the shots served little purpose. In fact, the vaccines have been shown to strongly protect against severe illness and death, although they are not as effective in preventing infections with Omicron as with other variants. And caseloads of children in whom Covid has been diagnosed only keep rising, as a report last week from the American Academy of Pediatrics underscores. Dr. Moira Szilagyi, the academy’s president, pressed for greater rates of vaccination, saying, “After nearly two years of this pandemic, we know that this disease has not always been mild in children, and we’ve seen some kids suffer severe illness, both in the short term and in the long term.” Recognizing the urgency, proponents of Covid shots are redoubling their efforts to convince parents. The American Academy of Pediatrics has put together talking points for pediatricians and parents. Kaiser has its own parent-friendly vaccine-information site. Patsy Stinchfield, a nurse-practitioner who is the incoming president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, keeps up an exhaustive speaking schedule, answering Covid vaccine questions from parents, teenagers, pediatricians and radio talk show hosts. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has just posted a free, online training course to help give pro-vaccine parents language and ways to approach their resistant friends. It provides vaccine facts, resources and techniques to engage them. One tip is to share personal stories about Covid, to ground the purpose of the vaccine in real-world experience. Another is to normalize Covid vaccination by proudly telling friends and family when children get Covid shots. Rupali Limaye, an associate scientist at Bloomberg who studies vaccine messaging and developed the course, said that giving parents tools to persuade others about Covid shots could improve uptake rates, particularly now that some hesitant parents are rejecting the advice of pediatricians. Peer “vaccine ambassadors,” as she calls them, have more time and exert less of a power dynamic than harried doctors. “This is a supersensitive topic for a lot of people,” Dr. Limaye added...
L.A. Rams Must Snap Their San Francisco Losing Streak to Make It to the Big Rodeo
San Francisco's beat the Rams the last six times they've played, which is why I consider Los Angeles the underdog in tonight's divisional championship game at SoFi Stadium.
At LAT, "Rams determined to punch Super Bowl ticket and end losing streak vs. rival 49ers":
IT'S CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAY. pic.twitter.com/bq1dCgmFof
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) January 30, 2022
🗣 CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAY AT THE #RAMSHOUSE! pic.twitter.com/d8TZsEMJyC
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) January 30, 2022
The Rams have done nearly everything to fulfill their mandate to play in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium. Before the season they traded for star quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Sony Michel. At midseason they traded for star linebacker Von Miller and signed star receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who helped the Rams win the NFC West. Last week, they defeated Tom Brady and the defending Super Bowl-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Now, here they are, in the NFC championship game. All that stands in the way of the Rams playing in the Super Bowl is the San Francisco 49ers, a team that has beaten the Rams twice this season and six times in a row dating to 2018. The Rams aim to end that streak on Sunday at SoFi Stadium — and take the final step to play in the Super Bowl at home. “At this point it’s just a story,” Beckham said of the Rams’ struggles against the 49ers. “And either you choose to buy into it, or you choose to rewrite it …. What better way to rewrite the story than to win the NFC championship against the team who you’re 0-6 against, or whatever the record is? “It just doesn’t seem to have a better ending than to make it to the Super Bowl.” It’s been more than three decades since the Rams had the chance to defeat the 49ers in the NFC championship game. In January 1990, the 49ers routed the Rams 30-3. Sunday’s game is not expected to be as one-sided for either team. In November, the 49ers defeated the Rams 31-10 at Levi’s Stadium. Last month, in the regular-season finale at SoFi Stadium, the Rams blew a 17-point lead and lost 27-24 in overtime. The 49ers have run the ball effectively against the Rams and kept quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo out of harm’s way with a quick-strike passing attack that features multitalented receiver and running back Deebo Samuel and tight end George Kittle among others. A pass rush led by ends Nick Bosa and Arik Armstead asserted itself in the finale against the Rams and in playoff victories over the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. The star-studded Rams rely on Stafford to trigger an offense that features record-setting receiver Cooper Kupp and Beckham, tight end Tyler Higbee and running backs Cam Akers and Michel. Three-time NFL defensive player of the year Aaron Donald anchors a defensive front that includes Miller and edge rusher Leonard Floyd. “I don’t think there’s many secrets,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said. “There’s not much things we can surprise them with and same with them with us, which I think is kind of the most fun way. “It’ll be two really good teams and a really good football game where you can’t really trick each other. You have to go out and beat somebody.” Stafford agreed. “Not a bunch of secrets,” he said. “Just who can step up to the plate and make the plays when we need to make them.” So, what must the Rams do to beat the 49ers?...
The Totalitarian Left's Joe Rogan Freakout
These people are bloodthirsty.
Indiscriminate too, as Joe Rogan's really not a conservative.From Glenn Greenwald, "The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals: Censorship":
The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals: Censorshiphttps://t.co/SAMtK31UY8
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 29, 2022
American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by "liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party). For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of "hate speech” to mean "views that make us uncomfortable,” and then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech." Their political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship. Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful. When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is "disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely. This "disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, “misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of "disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard. The data proving a deeply radical authoritarian strain in Trump-era Democratic Party politics is ample and have been extensively reported here. Democrats overwhelmingly trust and love the FBI and CIA. Polls show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the internet not only by Big Tech oligarchs but also by the state. Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly. Democratic officials have used the pretexts of COVID, “the insurrection," and Russia to justify their censorship demands. Both Joe Biden and his Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, have "urged” Silicon Valley to censor more when asked about Joe Rogan and others who air what they call “disinformation” about COVID. They cheered the use of pro-prosecutor tactics against Michael Flynn and other Russiagate targets; made a hero out of the Capitol Hill Police officer who shot and killed the unarmed Ashli Babbitt; voted for an additional $2 billion to expand the functions of the Capitol Police; have demanded and obtained lengthy prison sentences and solitary confinement even for non-violent 1/6 defendants; and even seek to import the War on Terror onto domestic soil. Given the climate prevailing in the American liberal faction, this authoritarianism is anything but surprising. For those who convince themselves that they are not battling mere political opponents with a different ideology but a fascist movement led by a Hitler-like figure bent on imposing totalitarianism — a core, defining belief of modern-day Democratic Party politics — it is virtually inevitable that they will embrace authoritarianism. When a political movement is subsumed by fear — the Orange Hitler will put you in camps and end democracy if he wins again — then it is not only expected but even rational to embrace authoritarian tactics including censorship to stave off this existential threat. Fear always breeds authoritarianism, which is why manipulating and stimulating that human instinct is the favorite tactic of political demagogues...
Paige's Playoff Pics
She's very good at this stuff.
She’s good at this lol. 🤣#SanFrancisco49ers #LosAngelesRams #DivisionalChampionships #NFL https://t.co/HE6Lu7WUk6
— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) January 30, 2022
Saturday, January 29, 2022
Allison Fluke-Ekren, American Battalion Commander for Islamic State in Syria, Charged with Providing Material Support to Terrorist Organization (PHOTO)
The Department of Justice filed charges in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Man this is wild.
A mild-mannered Kansas school teacher? (On right at the photo.)
Pretty mind-boggling.
At the New York Times, "American Woman Accused of Prominent Role in Islamic State":
The F.B.I. has arrested an American woman who federal prosecutors said had risen through the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria to become a battalion commander, training women and children to use assault rifles and suicide belts, the Justice Department disclosed on Saturday.
The woman, Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, a former teacher from Kansas, was charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization. The circumstances of her capture in Syria were not immediately known, but the F.B.I. flew her to Virginia on Friday to face prosecution. Prosecutors described Ms. Fluke-Ekren as playing an unusually outsized role in the Islamic State as a woman and an American. Charges against American women involved with the Islamic State have been rare. Investigators said Ms. Fluke-Ekren was smuggled into Syria in 2012 from Libya. She traveled to the country, according to one witness, because she wanted to wage “violent jihad,” Raj Parekh, a federal prosecutor, wrote in a detention memo that was made public on Saturday. According to a criminal complaint that was filed in 2019, a witness told the F.B.I. that Ms. Fluke-Ekren and her husband brought $15,000 to Syria to buy weapons. Her husband, the witness said, eventually rose to be the commander of all snipers in Syria in 2014. He later died in an airstrike while conducting a terrorist attack on behalf of the Islamic State, investigators said. Ms. Fluke-Ekren met her husband in the United States, according to court documents. The same witness also told the F.B.I. that Ms. Fluke-Ekren had a plan in 2014 to attack a college in the United States using backpacks filled with explosives. Prosecutors did not reveal which college she had wanted to target. The criminal complaint said her plan was presented to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State at the time, who approved it for funding. The witness said the attack was put on hold after Ms. Fluke-Ekren learned she was pregnant. Ms. Fluke-Ekren had multiple children, but it is not clear how many. Prosecutors said Ms. Fluke-Ekren moved to Egypt in 2008, lived there for about three years and then traveled to Libya, where she stayed for about a year before sneaking into Syria. According to one witness, Ms. Fluke-Ekren departed Libya because another terrorist organization, Ansar al-Sharia, was no longer conducting attacks in that country and she wanted to wage violent jihad. In his memo arguing to keep Ms. Fluke-Ekren behind bars while she awaits trial, Mr. Parekh said she had been a “fervent believer in the radical terrorist ideology of ISIS for many years.” The prosecutor said the government had numerous witnesses who were prepared to testify against her. According to the detention memo, the mayor of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital, approved the opening of a military battalion to train women to help defend the city. Ms. Fluke-Ekren, investigators said, soon became the leader and organizer of it. Witnesses said that Ms. Fluke-Ekren taught classes for members of the battalion, and on one occasion, a young child of hers was seen holding an assault rifle. One witness said that more than 100 women and girls had received training from Ms. Fluke-Ekren. She had hoped to create a cadre of suicide bombers that could infiltrate enemies’ positions, but the effort never materialized, according to the complaint. Ms. Fluke-Ekren told another witness about her desire to attack a shopping mall using a remote-detonated vehicle full of explosives. The witness said she wanted to kill large numbers of people. Court documents said that after the death of her husband, Ms. Fluke-Ekren married another Islamic State terrorist, a Bangladeshi man who specialized in drones and was working on a plan to drop chemical bombs from the air. He also died. She then married an Islamic State military leader who was responsible for the defense of Raqqa, a witness said. A witness also said that Ms. Fluke-Ekren claimed to have tried to send a message to her family with the goal of tricking them into believing she was dead so the U.S. government would stop trying to find her. She told the witness that she never wanted to return to the United States and wanted to die a martyr in Syria. Federal prosecutors in Virginia have mounted an aggressive effort to prosecute terrorists captured overseas. The cases can be extremely difficult because witnesses and other evidence can often only be found in war zones, as well as because of geopolitical considerations...
And at the DOJ's page, "American Woman Who Led ISIS Battalion Charged with Providing Material Support to a Terrorist Organization" (via Memeorandum).
Two Wunderkind Coaches Get a Second Crack at the Super Bowl
This is very good.
At WSJ, "The Rams’ Sean McVay and the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan have established themselves as two of the NFL’s brightest young coaches. Now they both have a second chance to take their teams to the Super Bowl":
Five years ago, two teams in the same division made the same decision. The Rams and 49ers placed their futures in the hands of young, offensive-minded, first-time head coaches. Both had last names that had been familiar in football for decades. Los Angeles tapped Sean McVay. San Francisco picked Kyle Shanahan. The hirings jump started a rivalry and years of success for both clubs, but they have never coached against each other with as much on the line as Sunday: a second chance at a Super Bowl for both of them. One of them is guaranteed to coach in the final game of the NFL postseason because the other won’t. The 49ers and Rams will play in this year’s NFC Championship after both teams secured thrilling upsets, over the Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, last weekend. Those victories, which ousted Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, were two more crowning achievements for coaches who have already spawned disciples across the league. Yet they both still lack the same accomplishment: a Super Bowl win. What’s uncanny about the similarity in profile between these two coaches is how far back it extends. Both came from football families, got their professional starts under the same coach and even coached together. McVay’s grandfather, John McVay, was a coach of the New York Giants and longtime executive—coincidentally, for the 49ers. Shanahan’s father, Mike Shanahan, won back-to-back Super Bowls coaching the Denver Broncos. After Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan got their first NFL gigs at different times under Jon Gruden in Tampa Bay, they were on Mike Shanahan’s staff together in Washington. They went on to establish reputations as offensive wizards. When Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in 2016, the team had one of the most productive offensive seasons in NFL history. McVay lasted just three seasons as Washington’s offensive coordinator, from 2014 to 2016, before he became a 30-year-old head coach. The Niners and the Rams hired them both within weeks of each other in 2017. The Rams’ bet on a coach barely old enough to run for the U.S. Senate has paid off spectacularly and quickly. In McVay’s first season, he took an offense that had been the NFL’s worst and transformed it into the best in the league. The success didn’t stop. The Rams have had a winning record every season under McVay. They have made the playoffs in four of those five seasons. They made it all the way to the Super Bowl in McVay’s second season, before losing to Brady and the Patriots. McVay’s success sent ripples across football. He has gone from the youngest coach in modern NFL history when he was hired to an archetype. A number of his former assistants have gone on to be head coaches, including another still alive in these playoffs: Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor, who had been Los Angeles’s quarterbacks coach. There is one coach, though, against whom McVay has struggled. That happens to be the coach who will be on the opposing sideline this weekend...
Friday, January 28, 2022
Biden Sanctions Plan Targets Russian Banks, Companies and Imports If Ukraine Is Attacked
Economic sanctions won't stop Putin. If there's to be war, it will come, and for Putin, it's all a win, even if sanctioned.
At WSJ, "The plan, which is still being finalized, would prohibit a range of activities":
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is narrowing its targets for a barrage of economic sanctions against Russia if it attacks Ukraine—hitting major Russian banks, state companies and needed imports, though the strategy faces obstacles that have hindered previous pressure campaigns. Administration officials said the planned actions are being finalized and are unparalleled in recent decades against Russia, putting teeth into President Biden’s threat to apply punishing financial and other sanctions in the event of a Russian assault. While final decisions haven't been made, the officials said, the potential targets include several of Russia’s largest government-owned banks, such as VTB Bank, the banning of all trade in new issues of Russian sovereign debt and the application of export controls across key sectors such as advanced microelectronics. Past U.S. efforts to wage economic warcraft have produced mixed results. Iran and North Korea, for example, have adjusted over time to broad economic embargoes over their nuclear weapons programs, though not without ongoing pain for their economies and people. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration went after some energy technology, sovereign debt and some government-owned banks and firms, though their narrow scope didn’t exact deep damage. Russia is better prepared now, with deeper foreign currency reserves, less reliance on foreign debt, faster economic growth and rising prices for oil—the country’s primary revenue source. Russia’s role as a top exporter of oil and gas and its economic integration with Europe have previously deterred the U.S. from applying broad sanctions out of concern that they would upset global markets and European allies. Off the table, for now, are sanctions on oil and natural gas exports or disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, the basic infrastructure that facilitates financial transactions between banks across the world, said one of the officials. Still, this time around, the administration officials said, the U.S. is doing away with the incremental approach that blunted the impact of the 2014 and other efforts—and instead is moving to prohibit a broader range of activities from the start. “We would start high and stay high, and maximize the pain to the Kremlin,” a second official said. European allies are also more in sync with the U.S. than in 2014, the officials said, given that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands go beyond Ukraine this time to include a reworking of post-Cold War security arrangements in Europe. Europe understands “that if we’re going to change Putin’s calculus, we have to be ready together to impose massive consequences,” the second official said. The U.S. and European Union actions won’t be identical, but will “deliver a severe and immediate blow to Russia and over time make its economy even more brittle,” the official said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that the sanctions threats are part of the West’s “militaristic frenzy.” Russia, he said, is “ready for any developments.” VTB, Gazprombank and Sberbank didn’t respond to requests for comment. The possible blacklisting technically prohibits U.S. banks and other American entities from doing business with the targeted banks, and the administration may grant exceptions. But the risk of violators being punished by the U.S. usually encourages foreign banks to comply. “Banks in Paris and London aren’t going to be doing what U.S. banks aren’t doing,” said Brian O’Toole, a former top Treasury sanctions official in the Obama administration and now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. Government-owned companies are also targets of similar sanctions, the U.S. officials said. Though the officials didn’t specify which companies, some financial analysts said blacklisting firms like Russian insurance giant Sogaz, which insures companies tied to the Kremlin, and Sovcomflot, a large energy-shipping company, would hurt the Kremlin and, longer-term, the economy. Sogaz didn’t respond to a request for comment...
The Left's Culture War as Class War (VIDEO)
It's Batya Ungar-Sargon, at the Hill-TV:
And check out her book, at Amazon, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.
I'm a Public School Teacher. The Kids Aren't Alright.
From Stacy Lance, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "My students were taught to think of themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves":
I am proud to be a teacher. I’ve worked in the Canadian public school system for the past 15 years, mostly at the high school level, teaching morals and ethics. I don’t claim to be a doctor or an expert in virology. There is a lot I don’t know. But I spend my days with our youth and they tell me a lot about their lives. And I want to tell you what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing. Since the beginning of the pandemic, when our school went fully remote, it was evident to me that the loss of human connection would be detrimental to our students’ development. It also became increasingly clear that the response to the pandemic would have immense consequences for students who were already on the path to long-term disengagement, potentially altering their lives permanently. The data about learning loss and the mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves. When we finally got back into the classroom in September 2020, I was optimistic, even as we would go remote for weeks, sometimes months, whenever case numbers would rise. But things never returned to normal. When we were physically in school, it felt like there was no longer life in the building. Maybe it was the masks that made it so no one wanted to engage in lessons, or even talk about how they spent their weekend. But it felt cold and soulless. My students weren’t allowed to gather in the halls or chat between classes. They still aren’t. Sporting events, clubs and graduation were all cancelled. These may sound like small things, but these losses were a huge deal to the students. These are rites of passages that can’t be made up. In my classroom, the learning loss is noticeable. My students can’t concentrate and they aren’t doing the work that I assign to them. They have way less motivation compared to before the pandemic began. Some of my students chose not to come back at all, either because of fear of the virus, or because they are debilitated by social anxiety. And now they have the option to do virtual schooling from home. One of my favorite projects that I assign each year is to my 10th grade students, who do in-depth research on any culture of their choosing. It culminates in a day of presentations. I encourage them to bring in music, props, food—whatever they need to immerse their classmates in their specific culture. A lot of my students give presentations on their own heritage. A few years back, a student of mine, a Syrian refugee, told her story about how she ended up in Canada. She brought in traditional Syrian foods, delicacies that her dad had stayed up all night cooking. It was one of the best days that I can remember. She was proud to share her story—she had struggled with homesickness—and her classmates got a lesson in empathy. Now, my students simply prepare a slideshow and email it to me individually. My older students (grades 11 and 12) aren’t even allowed a lunch break, and are expected to come to school, go to class for five and a half hours and then go home. Children in 9th and 10th grades have to face the front of the classroom while they eat lunch during their second period class. My students used to be able to eat in the halls or the cafeteria; now that’s forbidden. Younger children are expected to follow the “mask off, voices off” rule, and are made to wear their masks outside, where they can only play with other kids in their class. Of course, outside of school, kids are going to restaurants with their families and to each other’s houses, making the rules at school feel punitive and nonsensical. They are anxious and depressed. Previously outgoing students are now terrified at the prospect of being singled out to stand in front of the class and speak. And many of my students seem to have found comfort behind their masks. They feel exposed when their peers can see their whole face. Around this time of year, we start planning for the prom, which is held in June. Usually, my students would already be chatting constantly about who’s asking who, what they’re planning on wearing, and how excited they are. This year, they’ve barely discussed it at all. When they do, they tell me that they don’t want to get their hopes up, since they’re assuming it will get cancelled like it has for the past couple of years. It’s the same deal with universities. My students say, “If university is going to be just like this then what’s the point?” I have my own children, a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son, who have spent almost a third of their lives in lockdown. They’ve become so used to cancellations that they don’t even feel disappointed anymore...
Ukraine and the American Crack-Up
It's Caroline Glick:
From Washington to Berlin to Warsaw to Kyiv, everyone says that only Russian President Vladimir Putin knows what he plans to do with the 120,000 troops he has deployed to the Ukrainian border. But at this point, even if Putin decides not to invade, even if he withdraws all of his forces from the border zone he has already won a strategic victory of historic proportions against the United States. Without firing a bullet, Putin and his 120,000 soldiers have fomented the unofficial – but very real – break-up of the NATO alliance. NATO is rightly considered one of the most successful military alliances in history. It was founded in 1949 at the outset of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Its purpose was to deter the Soviets from trying to expand their empire from Eastern and Central Europe into Western Europe. NATO’s success derived from two main factors. First, NATO member states were by and large agreed that their common interest in preventing Soviet expansion outweighed their separate national interests, and so required collective action under the U.S. strategic umbrella. Second, the Soviets and America’s NATO allies all believed that the U.S. was strategically credible. The Soviets believed that the U.S. was serious about fulfilling its commitments to its NATO partners. And NATO members believed that the U.S. would make them pay a very severe price if they opted to blow off the alliance and cut a separate deal with the Soviet Union. Today, NATO cannot act collectively against Putin in a coherent way because Germany no longer views Russia as a strategic threat, and no longer views the U.S. has a leader it needs to follow. How has this situation come about? Much of the credit goes to Putin, who has been working towards this point for 15 years. Putin recognized that when used strategically, Russian energy exports could drive a wedge between NATO members. Traditionally, Russian natural gas exports to Europe went overland through Poland and Ukraine. This meant that energy supplies to Germany and Western Europe were dependent on Russian energy exports to former Soviet bloc countries, and Germany needed to protect Poland and Ukraine to protect its own interests. In 2006, Gazprom, Russia’s oil and gas conglomerate unveiled its plan to lay an underwater pipeline across the Baltic Sea that would transport natural gas directly to Germany, bypassing Poland the Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, then German Chancellor Gerhardt Shroeder left office. And a month after he departed the chancery, Shroeder announced that he had taken a position as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Gazprom’s subsidiary responsible for laying the gas pipeline. The message was clear. Germany had agreed to delink its strategic energy and economic interests from the former Soviet republics and Poland, which had joined NATO in the aftermath of the Cold War, and from Ukraine. Today we see that Putin’s Baltic Sea gas pipeline – now known as Nord Stream 2 – did precisely what he hoped it would do. Over the past few weeks, the Germans have made little effort to hide that they are siding with Russia against Ukraine and their NATO allies. Germany prohibited NATO member Estonia from transferring weapons to Kyiv. And when Britain sent an arms shipment to Kyiv earlier in the week, the British were careful not to fly over Germany. They didn’t ask the Germans for permission to overfly their airspace, because they assumed the Germans would deny their request. In other words, London recognized that Germany, the linchpin of NATO is pitching for the other team, but didn’t want to didn’t want to make a stink about it. But with all due respect to Putin and his successful use of energy exports as a strategic weapon, Putin couldn’t have pulled Germany away from NATO without Biden. Indeed, gas exports from Russia are more an excuse than an explanation for Germany’s moves. The Germans feel free to walk away from their commitments to their NATO allies because they realize that the Biden administration won’t make them pay a price for their behavior. Like German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz, Biden has no intention of lifting a finger to protect Ukraine from Russia. When Nord Stream 2 was announced, the Bush administration immediately understood the implications for NATO and strongly objected to the project. Barak Obama and his vice president Joe Biden also strongly opposed the pipeline. As the construction of Nord Stream 2 neared conclusion in 2019, then President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on all firms involved in the project. Trump’s intention was clear. Since Nord Stream 2 is geared towards breaking up NATO by driving a wedge between Germany and the Western European members on the one hand and NATO members Poland and the Baltic states on the other, to protect NATO, Trump decided to make every entity that endangers it pay a steep price. Given Biden’s long record of opposing Nord Stream 2, going back to his days in the Senate, there was good reason to believe that he would maintain Trump’s sanctions. But President Joe Biden rejected the views of Vice President and Senator Biden. Last May President Biden cancelled Trump’s sanctions on Nord Stream 2 participants. And last August, the Biden administration cut a deal with Germany over Nord Stream 2. The deal was one which no German leader in their right mind could object to, and no U.S. President who sought to prevent the NATO crack up could support. Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. dropped its opposition to the operation of Nord Stream 2 in exchange for a vague German commitment to do something for Ukraine. If Biden’s abandonment of U.S. opposition to Nord Stream 2 wasn’t enough to convince Germany and Russia, (and Ukraine) of his rank unseriousness in everything related to Ukraine and NATO, Biden’s amazing acknowledgment during his news conference last week that “a minor incursion” of Russian forces into Ukraine would not be met with a unified response from NATO ended any residual doubt. Despite the administration’s fervent clean-up efforts, Putin got the message, and so did the rest of the world. It’s important to note that Biden’s decision not to block Russia from invading Ukraine is eminently defensible. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. And while the U.S. certainly supports Ukrainian independence, America’s interest in Ukraine’s sovereignty does not outweigh its interest in avoiding a war with Russia. Had they been inclined to do so, Biden and his advisors could have easily made the case for non-intervention in a way that would have secured both NATO and America’s credibility as a superpower to its adversaries and allies alike. Biden could have expressed support for Ukraine while noting rightly that Russia’s aggressive behavior threatens the nations of Europe more than it threatens the U.S. And while the U.S. would be happy to stand with its European allies to confront Russia, it will not confront Russia for them. That would have put the ball in Germany’s court, and whatever the outcome, the U.S. would have emerged unscathed. Instead, seemingly on an hourly basis, the administration is ratcheting up its war mongering rhetoric and threats against Russia. Tuesday Pentagon spokesman James Kirby said that Biden had ordered 8,500 troops in Europe on alert. Apparently, the Russians, Ukrainians and the rest of the world were supposed to take Kirby’s announcement as proof of Biden’s seriousness of purpose. But the opposite is the case. Kirby’s statement was utterly meaningless. He didn’t say which troops were on alert, or on alert for what. He didn’t mention what mission the alerted troops had received. And almost at the same time Kirby made his meaningless announcement, Biden said that no U.S. forces would be deployed to Ukraine. More than Biden’s surrender on Nord Stream 2, it is the complete disconnect between Biden’s actual policy and his strategic messaging policies that make governments like Germany’s realize that they will pay no price for acting with U.S. adversaries against the U.S. Busy turning America into a joke on the world stage, Biden will have no interest in punishing Berlin for betraying NATO, and America. Ukraine is far from the only place where there is zero connection between the Biden administration’s policies and its communications strategy. Biden’s Iran policy is equally disingenuous and self-destructive. Biden and his team claim that the purpose of the nuclear talks with Iran in the Vienna is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state. But the agreement the U.S. is negotiating with Iran will guarantee Tehran will become a nuclear armed state in short order. The implications of Biden’s foreign policy for the United States are clear enough. Not only is the administration enabling the break-up of NATO. The Biden administration is destroying America’s deterrent power and superpower position. As for Israelis, and other threatened U.S. allies watching from the sidelines, the take-home lesson of Ukraine is clear. No U.S. security guarantee can outweigh independence of action. To survive, a nation requires strategic, economic and energy independence, and the will to wield it.
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