Deadly Devastation: More Than 70 Killed in 'One of the Toughest' Tornado Events in Kentucky History (VIDEO)

Terrible.

Just biblical destruction and death. 

Watch the most dramatic images here. 

Story from the Lexington Herald-Leader, "‘One of the toughest nights in Kentucky history’: 70 or more feared dead in tornadoes":

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The “most severe tornado event in Kentucky’s history” is believed to have claimed the lives of at least 70 people, Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference in Graves County late Saturday morning.

He said the death toll “may in fact end up exceeding 100 before the day is done.”

Beshear said earlier Saturday that four likely tornadoes wreaked havoc on the state with one traveling for more than 200 miles in Western Kentucky, “something we have never seen before.”

More than a dozen Kentucky counties have reported damage from the storms, he said.

Deaths have been reported in multiple counties.

The hardest hit appears to be Graves County in far Western Kentucky, where Mayfield, the county seat, has been devastated, the governor said.

A collapsed roof at a Mayfield candle factory with about 110 people inside resulted in mass casualties and will account for the largest loss of life in the state as a result of the storms, he said.

As of just before noon, Beshear said about 40 of the 110 people inside the plant had been rescued. The last successful rescue there was at about 3:30 a.m., Beshear said, though he said “we still hope and pray that there’s some opportunity for others.”

Eleven people died in Muhlenberg County, Coroner Larry Vincent said. Other counties reporting deaths and injuries were Hopkins, Marshall, Warren, and Caldwell, Beshear said Saturday.

Up to 10 counties may have casualties, he said. Widespread damage was reported in Bowling Green. A Bowling Green police spokesman said Saturday morning that the number of people hurt or killed was not yet known, as first responders were still working to find people amid the wreckage.

The National Weather Service in Louisville said evidence of damage from an EF-3 tornado with estimated wind speeds of 150 mph had been found by its survey team in Bowling Green.

The weather service office in Paducah said in a tweet that crews were out doing storm damage surveys Saturday, but that it will take some time to get a rating on the intensity of the tornado that hit Mayfield.

More than 75,000 Kentucky customers remained without power as of 1:17 p.m. Saturday, according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Keep reading.  

Also, via Reuters, "Six Amazon workers killed after tornadoes reduce warehouse near St. Louis to rubble."

Oh, the humanity. 

More at Memeorandum. 

Lana Mae

On Twitter.

Plus a nice sweetie from Florida Atlantic University. 

And Maya Luxx. 

Covid-Era Travel Risks Are Changing

 At WSJ, "What to Consider So You Don’t Get Stranded: Sudden border closures. Quarantines. Given the new risks, the days of improvised trips for business or pleasure have become endangered in the Covid-19 era":

At least you can see hurricanes coming.

The new Omicron variant did more than prompt governments to quickly close borders and tighten Covid-19-related travel restrictions. It signaled that health disruptions are here to stay as a normal part of travel concerns, right along with storms, strikes and terrorism.

For travelers, this means that you must now consider a new set of risks before making your trip, especially when going abroad. Travel can spread disease. There’s also uncertainty over testing and quarantines.

If you miscalculate or misstep, or just end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could be stranded, perhaps for weeks. Such a high penalty may make some people change where and how often they venture away from home.

“The casualness of travel is gone. I don’t think it’s coming back,” says Jay Sorensen, president of travel consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany.

He thinks 2019 will be viewed as the high-water mark for jumping on a plane spur-of-the-moment and taking a trip to another continent without care or concern.

Travel experts say the rapid reaction of various governments increases the risk of getting stuck in another country. It also appears to be the new standard procedure for any kind of new health risk.

Israel, Morocco and Japan closed borders before the severity or risk of the Omicron variant was clear. The U.S. banned entry for citizens of some African countries and on Monday changed testing requirements for all people entering the country. The new rule requires a negative test within one day of travel instead of three days before takeoff, throwing a curveball at travelers already abroad.

“Travelers will likely have to bake into their travel plans a possibility that a variant will all of a sudden be discovered and start spreading like wildfire,” says Sumedha Senanayake, director of global intelligence for Crisis24, a firm that advises big companies on risks for traveling employees.

The International Air Transport Association, an airline group, clearly sensed the change with a Nov. 26 statement blasting quick border-closing decisions as a threat to air-travel recovery.

“Governments are responding to the risks of the new coronavirus variant in emergency mode, causing fear among the traveling public,” says Willie Walsh, the director general of IATA and former British Airways chief. “As quickly as possible we must use the experience of the last two years to move to a coordinated, data-driven approach that finds safe alternatives to border closures and quarantine. Travel restrictions are not a long-term solution to control Covid variants.”

Other travel groups quickly sensed a change. The American Society of Travel Advisors, which represents travel agents, called on the Biden administration to revisit the new, stricter travel rules as soon as possible. Existing testing and vaccination requirements should be enough to combat viral spread, ASTA says, “without destroying an entire sector of the U.S. economy in the process.”

Of course, most countries have made these tough calls that often end up giving priority to people’s health over the financial well-being of the travel industry. This pattern is likely to continue, travel-risk experts like Mr. Senanayake say, raising the risk of getting delayed or stranded.

There’s also widespread confusion and hassle over what you need to cross borders these days. There’s no uniformity in what countries require in terms of vaccination, documentation or specific Covid tests and how soon before-flight tests need to be performed.

“If there was uniformity, a lot of this would be a lot easier. But there is never going to be uniformity,” Mr. Senanayake says. The new restrictions haven’t prompted airline panic. OAG, which tracks airline schedules, says industry capacity world-wide, measured by the number of seats in schedules, is down only 0.5% this week compared with the previous week.

Mr. Sorensen issued a report last week to travel-industry clients suggesting that airlines, hotels and others are going to have to bear more risk of disruption if they want people to keep traveling. Change-fee penalties and nonrefundable reservations got temporary waivers during the pandemic, but they have already started creeping back in, making the consumer largely responsible for losses from unexpected disruptions.

Instead, he thinks travel companies are going to have to bear more risk to entice travelers, either by making 

eservations refundable or by providing insurance that will accommodate health risks and fears at airline expense. “If there’s a whole lot of pain and effort required to get there, why do I want to go there?” Mr. Sorensen says.

Travel insurance is one tool that can give travelers some protection against the costs of disruption. If you happen to test positive abroad and need to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days, unexpected costs can be huge. When flights shut down, you may need to find a new way home that becomes a lot more expensive.

Squaremouth, a travel insurance comparison and sales site, says sales rose 53% after news broke of the Omicron variant. That compares with a jump of 20% following news of the Delta variant. Travelers are learning to quickly seek protection...

Still more.

 

Jussie Smollett Found Guilty of Lying to Police in Fake Hate Crime

At the Other McCain, "GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! Chicago Jury Convicts Jussie Smollett in Fake ‘Hate Crime’ Hoax." 

RELATED: From Batya Ungar-Sargon, "The liberal elites believed Jussie Smollett for the same reason they don't want to confront America's crime wave - because it doesn't fit their racial world-view, says BATYA UNGAR-SARGON."

This is quite something. https://t.co/MWEuY79cI7

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 10, 2021

Fauci Strikes Again

At AoSHQ, "Fauci: Families Should Require Vaccine Passports Before Allowing Relatives Into Their Homes for Christmas."

San Francisco Out of Control

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: 'San Francisco’s vaunted tolerance dims amid brazen crimes' — and after 30 or so years of a city in decline, the AP is finally on it!"

Another smash & grab in #SanFrancisco. This time the victims, including 2 toddlers, were inside the van when it happened. The victims visiting from a Chicago say the suspects stole a bag w/ a laptop, headphones, passport & the kid’s birth certificates.More tonight on @kron4news pic.twitter.com/31q1BUKjhP

— Taylor Bisacky (@TaylorBisackyTV) December 9, 2021

Which America Do You Want to Live In?

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit,"ROGER SIMON: COVID May Be Waning, but Will They Tell Us?." 

And quoting National Review:

And it’s ending, despite Biden and Fauci’s dreams of endless lockdowns: “On Saturday in New York City you needed a vaccine passport to eat in a restaurant or grab a drink in a bar, work out in a gym, go to a movie, or attend any sporting event. Just four hours to the west nearly 110,000 maskless Penn State Nittany Lion fans who had to provide no health records to anyone to attend the game reveled in their school’s biggest football game in two years, packed as close together as possible all clad in white in one of the great football cathedrals of this country. Watch this video and tell me which America you want to live in, the one where you have freedom and embrace life or the one where you either bow down to the authoritarian whims of a group of leaders who don’t even follow their own rules or have no ability to do anything.”

R.T.W.T. 

 

Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa

At Amazon, Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912.

A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution

I thought I'd posted on this topic earlier. The Times has been running a series on global demand for cobalt, to supply manufacturers of electric vehicles with, apparently, the most basic mineral needed in the industry.

Behold green neoimperialism.

I'll post more, but for now, see, "The quest for Congo’s cobalt, which is vital for electric vehicles and the worldwide push against climate change, is caught in an international cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship":

KISANFU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming.

For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. Now a Chinese mining conglomerate has bought it, and is racing to retrieve its buried treasure: millions of tons of cobalt.

At 73, Kyahile Mangi has lived here long enough to predict the path ahead. Once the blasting starts, the walls of mud-brick homes will crack. Chemicals will seep into the river where women do laundry and dishes while worrying about hippo attacks. Soon a manager from the mine will announce that everyone needs to be relocated.

“We know our ground is rich,” said Mr. Mangi, a village chief who also knows residents will share little of the mine’s wealth.

This wooded stretch of southeast Democratic Republic of Congo, called Kisanfu, holds one of the largest and purest untapped reserves of cobalt in the world.

The gray metal, typically extracted from copper deposits, has historically been of secondary interest to miners. But demand is set to explode worldwide because it is used in electric-car batteries, helping them run longer without a charge.

Outsiders discovering — and exploiting — the natural resources of this impoverished Central African country are following a tired colonial-era pattern. The United States turned to Congo for uranium to help build the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then spent decades, and billions of dollars, seeking to protect its mining interests here.

Now, with more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production coming from Congo, the country is once again taking center stage as major automakers commit to battling climate change by transitioning from gasoline-burning vehicles to battery-powered ones. The new automobiles rely on a host of minerals and metals often not abundant in the United States or the oil-rich Middle East, which sustained the last energy era.

But the quest for Congo’s cobalt has demonstrated how the clean energy revolution, meant to save the planet from perilously warming temperatures in an age of enlightened self-interest, is caught in a familiar cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship that often puts narrow national aspirations above all else, an investigation by The New York Times found.

The Times dispatched reporters across three continents drawn into the competition for cobalt, a relatively obscure raw material that along with lithium, nickel and graphite has gained exceptional value in a world trying to set fossil fuels aside.

More than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents show that the race for cobalt has set off a power struggle in Congo, a storehouse of these increasingly prized resources, and lured foreigners intent on dominating the next epoch in global energy.

In particular, a rivalry between China and the United States could have far-reaching implications for the shared goal of safeguarding the earth. At least here in Congo, China is so far winning that contest, with both the Obama and Trump administrations having stood idly by as a company backed by the Chinese government bought two of the country’s largest cobalt deposits over the past five years.

As the significance of those purchases becomes clearer, China and the United States have entered a new “Great Game” of sorts. This past week, during a visit promoting electric vehicles at a General Motors factory in Detroit, President Biden acknowledged the United States had lost some ground. “We risked losing our edge as a nation, and China and the rest of the world are catching up,” he said. “Well, we’re about to turn that around in a big, big way.”

China Molybdenum, the new owner of the Kisanfu site since late last year, bought it from Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining giant with a checkered history that five years ago was one of the largest producers of cobalt in Congo — and now has left the country entirely.

In June, just six months after the sale, the Biden administration warned that China might use its growing dominance of cobalt to disrupt the American push toward electric vehicles by squeezing out U.S. manufacturers. In response, the United States is pressing for access to cobalt supplies from allies, including Australia and Canada, according to a national security official with knowledge of the matter.

American automakers like Ford, General Motors and Tesla buy cobalt battery components from suppliers that depend in part on Chinese-owned mines in Congo. A Tesla longer-range vehicle requires about 10 pounds of cobalt, more than 400 times the amount in a cellphone.

Already, tensions over minerals and metals are rattling the electric vehicle market.

Deadly rioting in July near a port in South Africa, where much of Congo’s cobalt is exported to China and elsewhere, caused a global jump in the metal’s prices, a surge that only worsened through the rest of the year.

Last month, the mining industry’s leading forecaster said the rising cost of raw materials was likely to drive up battery costs for the first time in years, threatening to disrupt automakers’ plans to attract customers with competitively priced electric cars.

Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, said the mineral supply crunch needed to be confronted.

“We have to solve these things,” he said at an event in September, “and we don’t have much time.”

Automakers like Ford are spending billions of dollars to build their own battery plants in the United States, and are rushing to curb the need for newly mined cobalt by developing lithium iron phosphate substitutes or turning to recycling. As a result, a Ford spokeswoman said, “we do not see cobalt as a constraining issue.” ...

Still more. 

David Van Reybrouck, Congo

At Amazon, David Van Reybrouck, Congo: The Epic History of a People.

Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan

At Amazon, Carter Malkasian, The American War in Afghanistan: A History.

Schools Confront Wave of Student Misbehavior, Driven by Months of Remote Learning

It was practically guaranteed to happen.

At WSJ, "Districts respond with more counseling, increased patrols and fewer suspensions":

School districts across the U.S. say they are seeing a surge of student misbehavior in the return to in-person learning, after months of closures and disruptions due to the pandemic.

In the hallway between classes one afternoon this fall at Southwood High School in Shreveport, La., two boys exchanged words. All at once, they jumped at each other, witnesses said. Dozens of other students joined and they all fell into a heap, kicking and punching, until teachers pulled them apart.

The fight was one in a series of brawls in Southwood’s courtyards and hallways on three subsequent days that led to 23 students being arrested and expelled. School officials say they had never seen anything like it before at Southwood, known for its Cowboys football team, its biotechnology program and its scenic location on a former cattle ranch. The academically strong school has a 99% graduation rate for its student body of more than 1,600.

“We knew it was going to be a problem with kids transitioning back from virtual, because they haven’t been in school for a couple of years,” said Southwood’s principal, Kim Pendleton. “You have eighth-graders that are now 10th-graders or seventh-graders that are now ninth-graders, and no time to really acclimate.”

Schools have seen an increase in both minor incidents, like students talking in class, and more serious issues, such as fights and gun possession. In Dallas, disruptive classroom incidents have tripled this year compared with pre-pandemic levels, school officials said. The Albuquerque, N.M., superintendent sent a letter to parents warning of a “rise in violence and unacceptable behaviors posted to social media” that have disrupted classes. The National Association of School Resource Officers said it has seen a rise in gun-related incidents in schools.

Some schools are responding to the disciplinary problems by dispatching more staffers to patrol school grounds or by hiring more counselors. Others are reducing student suspensions, or in Dallas, eliminating them altogether in favor of counseling. Some districts have enacted what they call mental-health days, closing schools around holidays to give students and administrators a break. Peoria, Ill., is planning a special school that would be dedicated to students with issues caused by the pandemic. Educators at disadvantaged schools, often in low-income neighborhoods, said they had anticipated students would return to in-person learning with mental-health scars from Covid-19. The issues are also coming up at schools that previously had few serious incidents, such as Southwood. Schools have seen an increase in both minor incidents, like students talking in class, and more serious issues, such as fights and gun possession. In Dallas, disruptive classroom incidents have tripled this year compared with pre-pandemic levels, school officials said. The Albuquerque, N.M., superintendent sent a letter to parents warning of a “rise in violence and unacceptable behaviors posted to social media” that have disrupted classes. The National Association of School Resource Officers said it has seen a rise in gun-related incidents in schools.

Some schools are responding to the disciplinary problems by dispatching more staffers to patrol school grounds or by hiring more counselors. Others are reducing student suspensions, or in Dallas, eliminating them altogether in favor of counseling. Some districts have enacted what they call mental-health days, closing schools around holidays to give students and administrators a break. Peoria, Ill., is planning a special school that would be dedicated to students with issues caused by the pandemic.

Educators at disadvantaged schools, often in low-income neighborhoods, said they had anticipated students would return to in-person learning with mental-health scars from Covid-19. The issues are also coming up at schools that previously had few serious incidents, such as Southwood...

So they expel students down in Louisiana? I guess all that leftists "restorative justice" hasn't oozed all the down south. 

Abigail Shrier

She's wonderful.

See, "What I told the students of Princeton."

What I told the students of @princeton tonight:

Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom.https://t.co/he3Um6oSjQ pic.twitter.com/JFJce3ImWP

— Abigail Shrier (@AbigailShrier) December 9, 2021

Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept

At Amazon, Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor.

80th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Attack (VIDEO)

Yesteryear's heroes are slipping away.

We have not too many of them left to tell the stories of the history of World War II.

At Reuters, "U.S. observes 80th anniversary of attack on Pearl Harbor," and "Pearl Harbor Day 2021: 80th anniversary of ‘date which will live in infamy’."

Here's Jerry Yellin at the video. He's reported to have flown the final combat mission of World War II in a North American P-51 Mustang against a military airfield near Tokyo on August 14, 1945.

Melting Away the Symbols of the Capital of the Confederate States of America, and Our Country's History (VIDEO)

Leftists attack the slogan "heritage not hate," and that's because they hate our heritage and are destroying it, steadily ever more, piece by piece, into oblivion.

It makes me sad. We know this eliminationist process doesn't stop with statues of Confederate Generals. Last month, President Thomas Jefferson's statue was removed from the chamber's of City Hall in New York City. 

Now the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, on behalf of the Charlottesville City Council, will have Robert E. Lee's statue melted down and "repurposed." A sign of the times.

At the New York Times, "Charlottesville’s Statue of Robert E. Lee Will Be Melted Down":

The City Council of Charlottesville, Va., voted on Tuesday to donate a statue of Robert E. Lee to an African American heritage center that plans to melt the monument, the focus of a deadly white nationalist rally in 2017, into bronze for a new piece of public artwork.

The 4-0 vote by the council followed years of debate over the fate of the statue. Four years ago, a plan to remove the statue drew scores of white nationalists to Charlottesville for a “Unite the Right” rally that led to violence, including the killing of a counterprotester by an Ohio man who plowed a car into a crowd.

The statue’s fate was left to a prolonged fight in court that concluded in April, when Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the city could take down two statues of Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee’s. Over the summer, workers hoisted it off its granite base.

After taking it down, the city accepted proposals from bidders who wanted the statue. But the council on Tuesday decided to give it to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which submitted a proposal under the name “Swords Into Plowshares.”

An Indiegogo campaign page for Swords Into Plowshares said that its leaders wanted to “transform a national symbol of white supremacy into a new work of art that will reflect racial justice and inclusion.”

The project’s leaders have not decided what the new artwork will look like. The campaign page said the decision would be “informed by a six-month community engagement process where residents of Charlottesville can participate in forums to help determine how the social value of inclusion can be represented through art and public space.”

Andrea Douglas, the center’s executive director, said in a video that Swords Into Plowshares “is a community-based project.”

Residents, she said, “will be able to articulate what we want in our public spaces, as opposed to objects that were given to our community that highlighted a particular ideology that we no longer share.”

The council’s decision followed an announcement from Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, on Sunday that the pedestal where a Robert E. Lee statue had stood in Richmond would be removed soon. Mr. Northam said that the removal process of that pedestal would be “substantially complete” by Dec. 31.

“This land is in the middle of Richmond, and Richmonders will determine the future of this space,” Mr. Northam said. “The Commonwealth will remove the pedestal and we anticipate a safe removal and a successful conclusion to this project.”...

 

Richard B. Frank Tower of Skulls

Richard Frank is stupendous. His earlier work, Guacalcanal, is essential reading for the Pacific War.

At Amazon, Richard B. Frank Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: July 1937-May 1942.

Democrats Plot Escape From Biden's Poll Woes

At Politico, "The party’s own polling has the president in the red. Lawmakers know they need to get better at selling his agenda to avert midterm disaster":

Rep. Jared Golden is facing one of the toughest reelection battles in the country. One thing he says doesn’t keep him up at night, though, is President Joe Biden’s sinking approval rating. “I really don't care at all. I've got my own approach to doing things,” the Maine Democrat said, adding that he handily outran Biden in Trump country. “What I know about his approval ratings right now versus my own is that I'm outpacing him by about 30 points."

Golden's nonchalance is rare.

Most Democrats are worried that Biden’s flagging polling numbers — with an approval hovering in the low 40s — will lead to a thrashing at the ballot box. With historical headwinds and a GOP-dominated redistricting process already working against them, they fear that unless Biden pulls out of his current slide, Congress will be handed to the Republicans in next year's midterms.

Even the party's own polling has the president in the red. A poll from House Democrats’ campaign arm earlier this month showed the president down in battleground districts across the country, with 52 percent of voters disapproving of the job he’s doing, according to three party members briefed on the data.

Of course, the election is 11 months away, an eternity in politics. Democrats say once they finally clinch their full agenda, Biden will recover and so too will their prospects for keeping their slim majorities. But there’s plenty of handwringing about where Biden stands. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), for one, said Biden’s recent numbers are “scary.”

“We’re in a difficult period now. One of the challenges we have is, we’ve been legislating this year, as he has,” said Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, whose state represents Democrats’ best chance of picking up a GOP-held Senate seat. “While you’re legislating, you’re not communicating.”

Just three years ago, former President Donald Trump's unpopularity sank the GOP House majority, though a favorable map helped Republicans keep the Senate. Biden and Democrats in Congress may face a similar dynamic next year. They have only a handful of vulnerable Senate seats, but a veritable cavalcade of at-risk House seats.

But even a favorable Senate map might not be enough. Morning Consult found Biden underwater in the battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona. Democratic senators are generally running ahead of the president, according to the House Democratic campaign arm's poll — the question is, how much they need to do so in order to win.

Democrats acknowledge they have a big problem. Their proposed antidote: Finish the battles over legislating as quickly as possible, then spend their next few months talking up their infrastructure and coronavirus relief laws, as well as their forthcoming social spending bill.

“Maybe it would be the first time that the Democratic Party has ever been disciplined on message,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “But theoretically we could finish a historic year of legislating for the middle class in the next month and spend all of our next year talking about what we did.”

Still, some fret that even if they do pass Biden’s marquee agenda item — the $1.7 trillion climate and social policy bill — it won’t bring the big bump at the polls that Democrats are hoping for. House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) advised his party to focus on “seizing credit.”

“The messaging challenge is pretty apparent. When you look at the individual parts of what we’ve done, they’re all not just marginally popular, but they’re wildly popular with the American electorate,” Neal said...

 

New York City to Impose Vaccination Mandates for Private Employers (VIDEO)

New York is literally the fucking worst. DeBlasio's insane. 

At the New York Times, "Covid Live Updates: New York City Announces Vaccine Mandate for Private Employers":

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate for all private employers in New York City on Monday morning to combat the spread of the Omicron variant.

Mr. de Blasio said the aggressive measure, which takes effect Dec. 27 and which he described as the first of its kind in the nation, was needed as a “pre-emptive strike” to stall another wave of coronavirus cases and help reduce transmission during the winter months and holiday gatherings.

“Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,” he said in an interview on MSNBC. “The timing is horrible with the winter months.”

New York City has already put vaccine mandates in place for city workers and for employees and customers at indoor dining, entertainment and gyms. Nearly 90 percent of adult New York City residents now have at least one dose of the vaccine.

But Mr. de Blasio said the city must go further to combat another wave of the virus in New York City, once the center of the pandemic. Some private employers have required employees to get vaccinated, but many others have not.

Mr. de Blasio said the new measure would apply to about 184,000 businesses. Employees who work in-person at private companies must have one dose of the vaccine by Dec. 27; remote workers will not be required to get the vaccine. There is no testing option as an alternative.

The city plans to offer exemptions for valid medical or religious reasons, Mr. de Blasio said. City officials will release detailed guidelines about issues like enforcement by Dec. 15 after consulting with business leaders. The mayor also announced that the rules for dining and entertainment would apply to children ages 5 to 11, who must have one dose to enter restaurants and theaters starting on Dec. 14, and that the requirement for adults would increase from one dose of a vaccine to two starting on Dec. 27, except for those who initially received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul held a news conference last Thursday to announce New York State’s first five cases of the Omicron variant, and several more have been announced in New York City since then. The number of coronavirus cases in the city has increased rapidly in recent weeks; daily case counts have increased more than 75 percent since Nov. 1.

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat with less than a month left in office, said he was confident the new mandate would survive any legal challenges and he noted that past city mandates had been upheld.

“They have won in court — state court, federal court — every single time,” the mayor said on MSNBC. “And it’s because they’re universal and consistent.”

Eric Adams, the mayor-elect who takes office on Jan. 1, is on vacation in Ghana this week. His spokesman, Evan Thies, said in a statement that Mr. Adams would evaluate the measure once he is mayor...

 

White 'Antiracist' Teacher Fired in Tennessee

This is a the Washington Post, via Memeorandum, "A White teacher taught White students about White privilege. It cost him his job."

The guy's employed was terminated in 2020. He lost his appeal in October -- and the dude was tenured. 

Here's the story at Education Week, "Teacher Fired for Lesson on White Privilege Loses Appeal":

A Tennessee teacher was fired justifiably last school year for teaching his students that white privilege is a fact of life

rather than a theory, an outside hearing officer overseeing his appeal process ruled late last week.

Matthew Hawn, a Sullivan County, Tenn., contemporary issues high school teacher, was insubordinate and unprofessional and violated the teacher code of ethics when he failed to provide students “varying viewpoints” on the existence of white privilege during a lesson on police brutality against Black men, hearing officer Dale Conder said in his decision.

“Despite knowing he was to provide varying viewpoints, Mr. Hawn did not provide a viewpoint contrary to the concept of white privilege,” Conder wrote in his decision.

Hawn, reached by Education Week over the weekend after the ruling, has not yet decided whether to appeal Conder’s ruling.

“I really thought that I was going to be teaching in Sullivan County. I thought we made a great case,” said Hawn, 43, who grew up in the county and had been teaching in the district for 16 years. “I’m just extremely disappointed and defeated.”

The ruling comes amid a raucous national debate over whether districts and states should censure the ways teachers talk to students about America’s racist past.

As his case gained national attention, Hawn, who was tenured, decided to appeal the firing, asking for a hearing to determine whether the district acted legally.

Hawn taught a contemporary issues class at Sullivan Central High School for more than a decade, where he brought up current events in his classroom for students to debate and discuss. In September 2020, Hawn told his contemporary issues students, “white privilege is a fact,” while juxtaposing the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, and the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who walked away unharmed after fatally shooting two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis.

On Sept. 10, Hawn was told by his principal in an email to allow room for classroom discussion and not make declarative statements about the topics he brought up in class. Undeterred, he later that year assigned a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay called “The First White President” about Donald Trump, which calls the former president a white supremacist.

After a parent complained, Assistant Director of Schools Ingrid Deloach issued Hawn a reprimand for failing to provide varying perspectives, which is a requirement under Tennessee’s Teacher Code of Ethics.

When Hawn wanted to discuss former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s verdict for killing George Floyd with his class in June, he chose to show a video of Black poet Kyla Jenee Lacey reciting her poem, “White Privilege.” This time, he also assigned students to read Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking an invisible knapsack” and CNN writer John Blake’s opinion piece, “It’s time to talk about Black privilege.”

Conder did not consider any of these to be a “varying perspective” to the poem, because they did not question the existence of white privilege.

“These articles do not challenge the concept of ‘white privilege,’” he said in his decision...