URLs du Jour

2021-05-28

Our Eye Candy du Jour is Michael Ramirez's take on The Hollywood Grovel.

[The Hollywood Grovel]

Note the name of the theater and the car in the movie poster. Geez, he's good.

  • I Liked 'Anything Goes' Facebook Better. Of all the "respected" institutions that dismissed skepticism about the official COVID origin story, The WSJ is particularly brutal today about one: Facebook’s Lab-Leak About-Face.

    As long as Democratic opinion sneered at the lab-leak theory, Facebook dutifully controlled it. But ideological bubbles have a way of bursting, and the circumstantial evidence—most of which has been available for months—finally permeated the insular world of progressive public health. This prompted officials like Anthony Fauci to say more investigation is needed, while the White House issued new intelligence directives reflecting lower certainty of a natural emergence.

    Facebook acted in lockstep with the government: “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,” it said Wednesday.

    The shift is better late than never, but note the apparent implication: While a political or scientific claim is disfavored by government authorities, Facebook will limit its reach. When government reduces its hostility toward an idea, so will Facebook.

    Of course…


  • That's Why We Have The Babylon Bee. To inform us of the latest: Facebook Now Banning Anyone Who Says Virus Wasn't Created In Wuhan Lab.

    MENLO PARK, CA—Facebook has updated its community standards today, declaring that anyone who says the COVID-19 virus wasn't developed in the lab in Wuhan will be banned for sharing fake news.

    Mark Zuckerberg, may he live forever, announced the change from his royal throne today to a group of reporters gathered in his royal throne room.

    "Hear ye, hear ye!" Zuckerberg announced. "From henceforth, anyone saying the virus wasn't created in a lab shall be banned! While previously, those who said the virus was created in a lab were hanged, this royal decree hereby reverses the order, and now, those who deny the obvious truth that it was created in a lab shall be declared anathema and sentenced to die!"

    Satire! Right?


  • Magic 8 Ball Says "Outlook Not So Good". John Osterhoudt interviews Dr. Lee Gross, an advocate of "direct primary care", who describes What Free Market Health Care Would Actually Look Like.

    If you have health insurance but no primary care physician, the process for getting a physical can be a bit complicated. Whether or not you get your health insurance through an employer, you'll probably have to find a practice in your area that is in your network. Then you'll have to find out if it's accepting new patients. You may have to wait months until the office will let you come in for a physical. You'll have to figure out if you're responsible for a co-pay. Even after the visit, you may need to cover the additional cost of any blood work or other tests, and you probably can't figure out how much you'll be billed for that ahead of time. At some point, you'll also have to decide whether it's worth the trouble to set up a tax-advantaged account to cover the unpredictable costs of this visit or any future ones.

    Or you could just find a direct primary care doctor who's accepting new patients and pay a flat monthly fee that covers all your in-office services and tests. If you need an out-of-office test or a prescription, the practice may also give you access to steep discounts compared to what it would cost with insurance.

    Were I in a different life situation, I'd be tempted to check it out. The local Direct Primary Care facility is Freedom Family Medicine of NH in North Hampton. They sound nice.


  • Maybe The Last Pun Salad Post On This Subject… Lee Edwards on Confucius Institutes: China's Trojan Horse.

    When the Left and the Right agree on something in these disputatious times, the wise man will want to know what it is. And what has brought these warring factions together, however briefly? The Confucius Institutes that dot American campuses.

    The progressive New Republic magazine and the conservative National Association of Scholars (NAS) both warn that the Institutes are not the innocent cultural centers offering Chinese language instruction they pretend to be. They are, rather, a key stratagem of China’s “soft war” against America, crafted, in the words of NAS senior researcher Rachelle Peterson, to “teach political lessons that unduly favor China.”

    Writing in the New Republic, Isaac Stone Fish referred to “an epidemic of self-censorship at U.S universities” that funnels students away from “topics likely to offend the Chinese Communist Party.” Topics like the disastrous Great Leap Forward from 1958-1962 that enforced collectivization in the towns and countryside and resulted in the deaths of 30 to 50 million Chinese.

    The web page for the Confucius Institute at UNH is still up as I type, but it's supposed to (according to NHPR Commie Radio) go away on July 30: Citing Pressure, UNH Ends Contract With China-Funded Confucius Institute


  • Funny How That Works David Harsanyi notes oddness: Suddenly, Democrats Are Offended by Reductio ad Hitlerum.

    Republican Jewish-space-laser kook Marjorie Taylor Greene offered up a nonsensical Holocaust analogy the other day, comparing vaccine passports to yellow stars worn by Jews during the Holocaust. Though Greene has problems grasping historical context, she apparently possesses the ability to induce the entire left wing to pretend they are offended by dumb Nazi analogies.

    It’s a quick turnaround. The media spent four years acting like the 2017 inauguration was akin to von Hindenburg handing power to Hitler. What am I saying? They’re still doing it. This very week you can read, for example, a Chris Cillizza piece headlined, “A majority of Republicans are living in a fantasy world built around the Big Lie.” The “Big Lie” — highly popular among Democrats (and Donald Trump) — is, of course, referring to a tactic the Nazis deployed against their political enemies. No one seemed upset when President-elect Joe Biden claimed Ted Cruz was a latter-day Goebbels spreading the “Big Lie.” If challenging the legitimacy of an election is tantamount to fascistic disinformation, Democrats have been running the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for the past five years.

    It's an NRPLUS article. You should subscribe. (But if not, here's a NYPost link.)


  • Betteridge's Law Of Headlines Applies, Example 834 Neal McCluskey asks Should You Have to Pay for Their Truth? And to find out what he means by that:

    Suppose you have an open patch of ground in your yard and you think, “I’d like some flowers. But which ones?” Suddenly a landscaper arrives and says, “Flowers? I’m a landscaper, and the truth is you need weeds.” An assistant then takes your wallet and gives the landscaper your money, telling you, “Be happy – you just got truth from an expert.”

    Would your reaction be, “He’s an expert so he can keep the money and I should be grateful”? Or, “I didn’t ask for this, I still want flowers, and I am calling the police.”

    Most people, I suspect, would go with the latter. But a response to my recent blog post looking at the Nikole Hannah‐​Jones tenure dispute at the University of North Carolina, which highlights liberty and accountability problems when academic freedom is coupled with taxpayer funding of public universities, essentially says the right response is to let the landscaper keep your money, and be thankful for the enlightenment.

    Note the applicability to New Hampshire House Bill 544.


Last Modified 2024-02-01 6:02 AM EDT