Wow!
Sammy Braddy looks spectacular (at the photo).
Plus, a peekaboo hottie takes it off, and the beautiful Megan Fox.
Friday, July 16, 2021
Africa's Covid Crisis
Well, maybe they're waiting for Bill Gates or Bono to come to the rescue? *Shrug.*
At the New York Times, "Africa’s Covid Crisis Deepens, but Vaccines Are Still Far Off."
The Delta variant is sweeping across Africa, but only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated.
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 16, 2021
Rich nations have bought up vaccine doses and hundreds of millions of shots from a global vaccine-sharing effort have failed to materialize. https://t.co/0svi9wnYnG
Kasie Hunt Leaving MSNBC After Eight Yeas
She signed off her show yesterday with the announcement she was baling out for greener pastures.
What she didn't announce, according to Variety, is that she's apparently heading to CNN after a $1 million to $1.5 million enticement from CNN, which is launching a major effort in live news streaming.
I like her --- she was the only one at MSMBC I could take seriously. In fact, she seemed more a traditional journalist --- mainstream even --- than all the other clowns on that network.
See, "CNN Snares Kasie Hunt From NBC in Big Bet on Streaming (EXCLUSIVE)."
Some personal news, as they say — thank you to all of the viewers, reporters, lawmakers and everyone else who’s gotten up extra early to help make @WayTooEarly better. I loved doing this show. More soon! #WayTooEarly pic.twitter.com/k3ULeqRZJI
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) July 16, 2021
Thursday, July 15, 2021
The Professionals — 'Little Boys Like You, They Got a Job to Do...'
The Professionals — "Little Boys."
Teen Gender Transition (VIDEO)
Home Portable Counter-Top Ice Machine -- Great for Mixed Drinks and Holiday Parties
BONUS: Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.
Looting and Rioting Break Out in South Africa (VIDEO)
At the Los Angeles Times, "Death toll rises to 72 in South Africa rioting after jailing of ex-president":
And watch: "Looting and rioting break out across South Africa in wake of former President Zuma’s imprisonment."More than half of South Africa’s 60 million people live in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 32%, according to official statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs and an economic downturn, has increased the hunger and desperation that helped propel the protests triggered by Zuma’s arrest into wider rioting.
Biden Lobbies for Democrats' Infrastructure Scam (VIDEO)
Passage of the bill really depends on one person: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
At the New York Times, "Democrats Roll Out $3.5 Trillion Budget to Fulfill Biden’s Broad Agenda."
George Floyd Mural Struck by Lightning (VIDEO)
Leader McConnell May Back Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle
Apparently this is the one piece of the Dems' legislative agenda that McConnell will support --- probably because the bill is larded with billions in bipartisan pork-barrel spending.
At Politico, "Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win":
Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.
Other than questioning its financing, McConnell has aired little criticism of the bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, even as he panned Democrats’ separate spending plans on Wednesday as “wildly out of proportion” given the nation's inflation rate. His cautious approach to a top Biden priority reflects the divide among Senate Republicans over whether to collaborate with Democrats on part of the president’s spending plans while fighting tooth and nail on the rest. Many Democrats predict McConnell will kill the agreement after stringing talks out for weeks, but the current infrastructure talks are particularly sensitive for the GOP leader because one of his close allies, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is the senior Republican negotiator. McConnell is aware of the conventional wisdom that he will ultimately knife the deal and is taking pains not to become the face of its opposition...
RTWT.
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
The C.R.T. Scam
From Jason Riley, at WSJ, "Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle":
Ultimately, Critical Race Theory is about blaming your problems on other people—based on their race—which might be the last thing we should be teaching our children, writes @jasonrileywsj https://t.co/RGzagC1qOv
— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) July 14, 2021
A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the learning losses from pandemic school closures. Whenever someone asks me about critical race theory, that statistic comes to mind. What’s the priority, teaching math and reading, or turning elementary schools into social-justice boot camps? Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be lagging academically, it’s a question that anyone professing to care deeply about social inequality might consider. Learning gaps manifest themselves in all kinds of ways later in life, from unemployment rates and income levels to the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and involvement with the criminal-justice system. Our jails and prisons already have too many woke illiterates. Wealthier parents will make sure their kids receive a decent education, even if it means using private schools or hiring tutors. But the majority of children are relegated to the traditional public-school system, where progressives now want to prioritize the teaching of critical race theory. In addition to being a horrible idea, the timing couldn’t be worse. As the country rapidly diversifies—for more than a decade, U.S. population growth has been driven primarily by Asians and Hispanics—liberals want to teach children to obsess over racial and ethnic differences. What could go wrong? Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon. At its annual meeting earlier this month, the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is “reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.” More, the organization pledged to “fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric” and issue a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.” There was no proposal vowing to improve math and reading test scores, alas. Meanwhile, the NEA’s sister outfit, the American Federation of Teachers, has joined forces with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites. “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” Mr. Kendi asserted in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” Sadly, that sort of circular drivel is what passes for deep thinking on race today. Mr. Kendi spoke at an AFT conference last week, and the union announced that it will donate copies of his writings to schools, AFT members, educators and youth mentors. Critical-race ideology is also entering the classroom via the New York Times “1619 Project,” which claims that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and earned its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize. In a forthcoming book, “Woke Racism,” the humanities professor John McWhorter argues that proponents like Mr. Kendi and Ms. Hannah-Jones have mostly been given a pass because they’re racial minorities, they’re on the left, and criticizing them is politically incorrect. “On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones’s claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true—because she’s black,” Mr. McWhorter writes. “Someone has received a Pulitzer Prize for a mistaken interpretation of historical documents about which legions of actual scholars are expert. Meanwhile, the claim is being broadcast, unquestioned, in educational materials being distributed across the nation.” Mr. McWhorter is right to point out the racial double standards at work in elevating shoddy pseudoscholarship...
A lot could go wrong, apparently.
Still more.
The Sackler Family's Opioid Settlement and Billionaire Justice
On the opiod crisis, at the New York Times, "This Is What Billionaire Justice Looks Like":
In 2016, a small-time drug dealer in Leesburg, Va., named Darnell Washington sold a customer a batch of what he thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. The customer shared it with a friend, and the friend died from an overdose. To combat the opioid crisis, prosecutors have begun treating overdose deaths not as accidents but as crimes, using tough statutes to charge the dealers who sold the drugs. Washington had never met the person who overdosed. But, facing a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 years for “distribution resulting in death,” he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of distribution and is now serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison. I thought about this the other day when it became clear that members of the billionaire Sackler family will most likely soon receive a sweeping grant of immunity from all litigation relating to their role in helping to precipitate the opioid crisis. Through their control of Purdue Pharma, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler made a vast fortune selling OxyContin, a powerful prescription opioid painkiller that, like fentanyl, is a chemical cousin of heroin. Though they are widely reviled for profiting from a public health crisis that has resulted in the death of half a million Americans, they have used their money and influence to play our system like a harp. It is hardly news that our society treats people like Darnell Washington with sledgehammer vengeance, and people like the Sacklers with velvet gloves. But it’s worth asking: How did they pull this off? For a long time, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler simply evaded scrutiny, pruning their public image so that people knew about the philanthropic contributions like the Sackler Library at Oxford, but not about the source of their wealth. After the press started writing stories, in 2001, about how OxyContin had given rise to a wave of addiction, high-price spin doctors labored to keep the Sackler name out of the controversy. As the death toll associated with OxyContin grew, Purdue continued to argue in its marketing campaign that the drug was rarely addictive. When journalists raised tough questions, the company sent its lawyers to intervene with their editors. This “can I see your manager” approach works even with law enforcement. In 2006, federal prosecutors in Virginia were preparing to charge Purdue with felonies. They focused on three senior lieutenants who worked for the company, expecting them to flip on the Sacklers — the ultimate target, according to the lead prosecutor — when faced with potential prison time. But Purdue had enlisted two former U.S. attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Mary Jo White. Ms. White telephoned Paul McNulty, who was then the deputy attorney general: “It’s Mary Jo White,” Mr. McNulty recalled recently. “It’s somebody who thought of herself as having access.” The Justice Department informed the federal prosecutors in Virginia that they could not charge the executives with felonies, robbing them of their most significant point of leverage: the threat of jail. The executives did not cooperate with efforts to implicate the Sacklers; instead, they pleaded guilty to misdemeanors while maintaining that they had done nothing wrong. The company pleaded guilty to felony “misbranding” and paid a $600 million fine. You would not be alone in detecting a whiff of La Cosa Nostra...
Still more at that top link.
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