Upon discovering that it’s permissible to sip hard liquor, I’ve been getting into whiskey in the past year.  From that perspective, I find this approach from Heaven Hill distillery simply bizarre:

To celebrate what they view as a just outcome, some whiskey lovers began purchasing bottles of “Rittenhouse Rye.” The brand name is derived not from the recent court case but from Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, an open-space park designed by William Penn and named for an early 19th-century papermaker. …

Heaven Hill evidently wasn’t happy about the free advertising, tweeting, “We have been disheartened to learn that some individuals and businesses have been using our Rittenhouse Straight Rye Whiskey brand to celebrate the Kyle Rittenhouse case verdict, despite the profound loss of life from those events.”

Presumably, the company has a better sense of who buys its products than I do, but these declarations about who should buy their products and for what personal purposes used to be limited to self-righteous musicians.  We should return to that state of affairs.

Daniel Greenfield’s look into three billionaires funding the Democrat dark money machine is worth a read:

Politico recently reported that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the leading dark money machine of the Left, had pumped $410 million into Dem 2020 efforts to defeat Trump and Republicans.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund had raised a record $390 million that year and half the money came from just 4 donors. While the names of the donors are secret, the article did note the names of three major known STF backers: Pierre Omidyar, Hansjörg Wyss, and George Soros.

Funny how the involvement of billionaires is only lamented by RI’s elected officials when they help the other side.

As I predicted, the murderous attack on a Christmas Parade in Wisconsin isn’t getting as much air time as it objectively merits:

Prominent media outlets have already lost interest in the vehicular massacre that took place on Sunday at the Waukesha Christmas parade, a Washington Free Beacon analysis has determined.

Since I last wrote about it, the narrative that the assailant was running from a crime scene hasn’t panned out, so the attack appears even more malicious.  This moves the story from the “ambiguous politics” path toward the “undermines progressives” path, which dictates less coverage.

I’ve found it very strange.  Simply, plainly things like “equity audits” in our public schools are exercises of critical race theory (CRT).  It’s just a straightforward observation, as far as I can see.

Nonetheless, people will object, even people I thought were relatively conservative and relatively clear of thought.  They’ll insist they are not the same, although they won’t explain where one ends and the other begins.

As far as I can tell, their attitude is essentially the same as claiming that a school that’s teaching children to differentiate shapes is not teaching geometry and, further, that teaching geometry is not teaching math.  Mike LaChance points to a Christopher Rufo tweet of a video in which a CRT expert gives the game away.  CRT is the “container” for all the anti-racist stuff:

LEAKED: CRT cofounder Kimberlé Crenshaw tells NEA president Becky Pringle that “critical race theory traditionally is a law school class,” but is “now the huge container for anti-racist work [and] anti-racist education” in K-12 schools—vindicating my reporting over the past year. pic.twitter.com/iessDqPY5v

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) November 23, 2021

Five days is a long time in the social media world, but this comment on the Rittenhouse verdict from progressive Democrat state senator for Providence Tiara Mack is worth memorializing:

THERE IS NO REST. We must all learn how white supremacy impacts everyone, including white people. We know our systems are broken and we must hold everyone accountable to change.

The vilification of “whiteness” is simply a negative god to the woke.  It’s an article of pure faith, and every circumstance must be made to conform with it.

Stephen Green refers to this policy change as “the Pedophile Protection Act”:

Joe Biden’s Department of Education is seeking to roll back a Trump-era effort to collect data on teacher-on-student sex crimes.

“The department’s Office for Civil Rights will not ask school districts questions regarding teacher-on-student sexual assault allegations as part of its 2021-2022 Civil Rights Data Collection, proposed Thursday,” reports the Washington Free Beacon. According to an Education Department spokesman, the change is designed to “reduce burden and duplication of data,” but not everyone is buying that explanation.

For a variety of reasons, this morning, I’ve been thinking about how support for Democrats has mainly to do with (1) purchased votes and (2) a false, long-cultivated image of the party.  This policy is a good illustration of both.

It is in the teacher unions’ interest to focus on the members who are most in need of protection (i.e., most deserving of lower salaries and losing their jobs), and it is in the interest of the Democrats to maintain that cash cow, activist base, and voting bloc.  Meanwhile, children don’t vote, and parents aren’t single-issue voters, even to the extent the media tells them what’s going on.

During the flu season of 2018, newspapers published a number of heartbreaking articles profiling people who’d died from it.  That was a pretty bad flu season, but still, almost everybody recovered from the flu.  As those articles rolled out, though, it changed how the illness felt.  The stories provided a context of unease.

We’ve seen that many times escalated during the COVID pandemic, but this Epoch Times article about airline workers who’ve had terrible reactions to the vaccine is a reminder of what we aren’t seeing from the mainstream:  the sorts of stories they’d publish if they weren’t promoting the government’s preferred solution:

“I sat down in the chair at the minute clinic, rolled up my sleeve, prayed, asked God to forgive me, and cried,” Williams told The Epoch Times. “The minute they stuck that needle in my arm, pain went up through my neck and I have not been the same since.” …

The day that she received the vaccine, Williams began having severe headaches and muscle spasms that would wake her from sleep. She said she went to bed and stayed there for four days in an “almost coma-like state.”

Via Legal Insurrection:

So, ho hum, 32 American students were chosen to study at the University of Oxford via Rhodes Scholarships, and surprise, surprise, the AP report amplifies the progressive stories within the story.  But at what point do the headlines stop promoting the disproportionate distribution of prestigious awards to females?

The class of U.S. Rhodes scholars for 2022 includes the largest number of women ever selected for the scholarship in one year, the Rhodes Trust announced Sunday.

Of the 32 students chosen to study at the University of Oxford in England, 22 are women, the office of the American secretary of the trust said in a statement.

Nationally, females are already disproportionately enrolled in college (about 54%), and this result shows they’re even more disproportionately recognized by the Rhodes Scholarship organization (69%).

If that’s how a merit-driven process shook out, whatever, but at some point shouldn’t the narrative change from proclaiming girl power to wondering what’s going on with boys?

That billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is giving Barack Obama $100 million for his foundation points to the reality that we really have to rethink our concept of money in politics:

“I’m told the $100 million was midwifed by Jay Carney, Bezos’ political sherpa and the former Obama press secretary. Carney ran point for Bezos, and Obama eventually spoke directly with the Amazon C.E.O. earlier this year. The two are not close, but ‘have seen each other socially from time to time,’ Valerie Jarrett, the Obama family’s longtime aide-de-camp told me,” Theodore Schleifer of Puck News reported, adding, “The gift, the largest single donation ever made to the Foundation, has no restrictions on its use. … The Obama Foundation, for instance, has already raised over $720 million from donors toward its $1.6 billion goal, including about $170 million in 2020 and $140 million in 2019, according to recent tax filings.”

Gifts of this size doubtless have politicians salivating across the country, and the rising tide of their spittle shows what a long view corrupt people can take of a quid pro quo.

This morning, I wondered out  loud what the public narrative would have looked like had somebody taken action to stop the driver from plowing into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin yesterday.

Writing about Kyle Rittenhouse, David Burkhead may provide a hint of the answer:

“He shouldn’t have been there” is a stupid argument. As a free citizen in a free country on publicly accessible property he had every right to be there. As a free citizen in a free country he had every right to be armed for his own protection. As a free citizen in a free country he had every right to move to stop an incipient disaster (a burning dumpster on its way–never mind how for the moment–to a gas station where it might well set off a conflagration that could kill hundreds).

Burkhead goes on to detail that a burning dumpster when combined with a gas station could have resulted in many more deaths, and certainly much more destruction that night.  It appears that Rittenhouse stopped that.  Unfortunately, in this life we’re not always able to take credit for the bad things that would have happened had we not intervened.

Bob Walsh, the head of the National Education Association of Rhode Island teachers union, perfectly illustrates the problem with so much insider thinking in the Ocean State with this comment:

Perspective: If you supported the extra $600 per week that unemployed workers received during the pandemic but are critical of a $3000 stipend (less than $40/week) for those who spent the last 80 weeks working during the pandemic you need to think hard about your values.

The government stepped in to help people who were thrown out of work, often because the government forbade their employers from opening.  Walsh thinks that entitles government employees who were never forced to stop working and who may even have had an easier time at work, inasmuch as their offices closed down at times without stopping the paychecks, they were able to work from home, and/or their clients’ access to their offices was severely restricted.

So, government workers are insulated from the effects of economic challenges, and still they want an added “equity” benefit mirroring help that was offered to those who suffered.

“Am I the only one who quit singing along,
Every time they play a Springsteen song.”

Hat tip Lara Logan.

Something about the way Ted Nesi puts this question about possible hospital mergers in Rhode Island strikes me as odd:

Will Rhode Island and its residents be better off with roughly 80% of hospital services controlled by a single powerful entity?

One wonders how many of the people who fear that “an institution so large would be effectively uncontrollable” are just fine with a single powerful entity having nearly 100% control over healthcare, provided we call it a government?

As winter nears here in the Northeast, it sure is nice to know that part of the just-passed-the-House “Build Back Better” plan is a tax increase on natural gas. As  Eric Boehm of Reason reports:

Buried inside the “Build Back Better” plan that cleared the House of Representatives on Friday morning is a new tax on natural gas production that will likely translate into higher heating bills for American households.

The new tax is aimed at curbing methane emissions and will apply fees to companies that produce, process, transmit or store oil and natural gas starting in 2023. The specific fees will depend on where the natural gas is produced and will vary depending on how much methane is released into the atmosphere during the process. Overall, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new “methane fee” will generate about $8 billion over the next 10 years.

The natural gas industry says that money will end up coming directly out of consumers’ wallets.

This must have been the brainchild of some west coast environmentalist who doesn’t have to worry about cold winters. Or not.

The proposed methane fee is based on legislation introduced earlier this year by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.). In a statement when the bill was introduced, Whitehouse said the new fees would slow climate change and improve air quality.

And make his own constituents pay more.

In keeping with my earlier post about being open to contextual details that may change how we ought to feel about events, note a bit of information from former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles (about halfway down this page), concerning an article she wrote about the devastation to small businesses in Kenosha, which the paper’s editors deliberately held until after the election:

Eventually the election passed. Biden was in the White House. And my Kenosha story ran. Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority. The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore. The old man who tried to put out a blaze at a Kenosha store had his jaw broken. The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign in June 2020 amid staff outcry for publishing a piece with the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.”

The elites are crafting a narrative to keep themselves in power.

I’m not sure this is the way to a solution:

A bipartisan collective of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Nov. 9 that would require Big Tech providers such as Facebook and Google to allow users to opt-out of content selected by algorithms, providing additional transparency regarding content.

The measure, dubbed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act in the House (pdf), would make platforms with more than 1 million users and $50 million in annual revenue notify users of algorithm usage and allow users to determine settings.

Politicians shouldn’t be coming up with solutions and tweaking the services of private companies.  Again, the emphasis of government should be on safeguarding rights, not on regulating an industry to conform with lawmakers’ sense of fairness.

Rather than require businesses to provide features — which the tech folks will find ways around faster than government can regulate them, and which will create barriers to the real solution, which is competition — government should emphasize prevention of fraud.  In this case, that would probably mean allowing users to access information about how an algorithm is affecting them.  Then let consumers, providers, and the courts sort it out.

Look, nobody should be surprised that Governor Dan McKee’s administration has apparently agreed to give members of state employees’ biggest labor union $3,000 for full vaccination status.  That’s how this works.  If you’re in the private sector, government gives you the choice of being vaccinated or losing your job.  If you’re in the public sector, you get a bonus for doing things most people were going to do anyway.

Biden and Congressional Democrats poured money into state and local governments, and so people who have every advantage in government will… take advantage.

This is just the same scam they are continually running.

Cal Newport describes an interesting natural experiment created by the way Facebook rolled out from one campus to the next:

The authors of this paper connect a dataset containing the dates when Facebook was introduced to 775 different colleges with answers from seventeen consecutive waves of the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a comprehensive and longstanding survey of student mental health.

Using a statistical technique called difference in differences, the researchers quantified changes in the mental health status of students right before and right after they were given access to Facebook.

They found that the effect was about one-fifth as large as losing your job, which is (let’s say) pretty big.

I’m not sure we can stop this train now, however, which suggests the importance of the other side of that comparison. Some people lose their job and fall apart, while others set to work to wind up in an even better place.  Just so, social media can create huge opportunities; we just have to learn (and teach our children) to manage it.

In South Carolina, school districts and now the governor have taken parental concerns about explicit material in school libraries, as Matt McGregor reports for The Epoch Times:

“It has come to my attention that public schools in South Carolina may be providing students with access—whether in school libraries, electronic databases, or both—to completely inappropriate books and materials, including sexually explicit and obscene images or depictions,” [Governor Henry] McMaster said in a memorandum to the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) on Wednesday.

McMaster referred to an incident in the Fort Mill School District in which he said parents petitioned to remove “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe.

In Rhode Island, by contrast, North Kingstown Superintendent Philip Auger insists the book supports “the overall health and well being [of] LGBTQ youth.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it characterized as “doubling down” before when a party to a lawsuit has appealed to a higher court, but here’s Sarah Doiron on WPRI:

Several parents who are challenging the state’s school mask mandate are doubling down on their efforts by appealing a Rhode Island Superior Court judge’s decision last week to uphold it.

As lead plaintiff Richard Southwell suggests, the court did suggest children are being harmed, only finding that the government’s interests were overriding.  However one feels about that balance, it’s a legal question that should be answered, and that requires the highest available court.