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.
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:
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...
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...
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...
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?...
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...
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
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).
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...
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...
It's Batya Ungar-Sargon, at the Hill-TV:
And check out her book, at Amazon, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.
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...
