Between vulgar anti-Biden chants at athletic events and these billboards in Pennsylvania, a movement seems to be building.

Somehow, this seems at odds with the strong hand Big Tech has brought to bear against people it claims are trying to undermine elections in the United States:

Following Russia’s demand that Apple and Google remove the tactical voting app, and then threats of fines, Apple and Google have dropped the “Smart Voting” app in the country.

The app, devised by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was intended to boost candidates with the best chance of succeeding against incumbents. Apple and Google’s removal came just hours before election voting was due to begin.

The unifying principle seems to be that the tech oligarchs give preference to powerful people who prioritize the exertion of power.  Not really that surprising, actually.

While I’m touching on Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’s insights on the vaccine and marketing thereof, this point is interesting:

A lot of people are afraid of needles — some say it’s over 25% of the population. Does every story featuring the “jab” (maybe also bad marketing — “jab” doesn’t sound very gentle) have to feature a needle? If your goal is to encourage people to be vaccinated, does it make sense to accentuate the part of the process that lots of people fear, and that nobody really enjoys?

True enough, but the question in response is:  What’s the alternative, at least for the people pushing the virus?  Think of every commercial for a medicine.  What’s the presentation?  It’s always freedom… freedom from the suffering and anxiety of the illness.  But the people pushing the vaccine don’t want to sell freedom.  That’s arguably the opposite of their motivation.

So they fall back on a message that, given their personalities, they find persuasive:  everybody else is doing it.

From Peter Malbin on Newsmax:

A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that 39% of young adults reported feeling uncertain about having children, given the state of the environment and the added carbon footprint brought by having children.

The Lancet polled about 10,000 older teenagers and young adults to ascertain how climate change is affecting mental health, and found that the majority were “very” or “extremely” worried about the effects of rising global temperatures.

Putting the legitimacy of climate alarmism, specifically, aside, this finding indicates that 39% of young adults don’t have a framework for understanding the value of children and, for that matter, the meaning of life… at least the meaning of human life.

That’s not a healthy trait in a species.

It’s weird how American progressives can tolerate no conservative policies in other American states to accommodate a different level of respect for human life, greater acknowledgment of natural and traditional qualities of genders, and more reverence for religious freedom, but news like this is apparently not an issue:

The Taliban terrorist group has ordered the majority of women employed in Kabul’s city government to exit the workforce and remain at home, the interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital announced on Sept 19.

During his first press briefing since being appointed by the Taliban, interim Kabul Mayor Hamdullah Namony said that women must remain at home regardless of their employment status, pending a further decision.

It’s almost as if their stated principles and self-professed enhanced empathy for distant people is a bunch of politically motivated baloney.

As Glenn Reynolds points out on Instapundit:

Yes, we’re told it’s a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” but the unvaccinated are disproportionately black. They’re disproportionately in hospitals and ICUs, and they’re disproportionately dying, and they’re disproportionately affected by the Democrats’ playing politics with antibody treatments.

And, of course, they’re disproportionately affected by Democrat-backed vaccine-passport requirements.

If you’re curious, this nationally valid observation is true in Rhode Island, too.  As of this writing, about 56% of white Rhode Islanders are fully vaccinated, along with 52% of Hispanics.  Black Rhode Islanders, however, are only vaccinated at a rate of 48%.

It would be difficult to argue against welcoming an Amazon distribution center in Johnston.  That’s a lot of money that will flow into Rhode Island and one of its municipalities.

There’s even an important and encouraging observation to be made about the fact that it will be in Johnston, with its conservative-Democrat mayor, Joe Polisena.  An electorate that would elect such chief executive — as opposed to a place like Providence, that may without notice elect a socialist — is a sign of stability and reasonableness to a massive company planning an investment of tens of millions of dollars over decades.

The concern is this:  Amazon is going to immediately be a major player (read, “special interest”) in Rhode Island politics.  The other special interests (unions, Democrats, environmentalists) will all make out alright, no doubt, but the average person and small businesses are going to find themselves being ushered a little more toward the back of the bus.

A story in Not the Bee about a teachers union seminar about handling “nice white parents” comes out of Pennsylvania, but one can be sure that Rhode Island unions are talking about how to “limit the power” of “parent groups.”

This should be broadly scandalous, which may indicate that most unions across the country have been smart enough not to publish fliers about such things.  As the Washington Examiner tweets, “no other race or ethnic group is subjected to such a curriculum and government-endorsed demonization.”

The bottom line is that the news media supports progressive Democrats, so its practitioners are not anxious to press their candidates when they decline to answer questions in the service of crafting the news stories.  That’s why it’s entirely natural for Rhode Island General Treasurer to hold a press conference announcing his expected run for governor and then walk away having provided reporters with his canned material.

Magaziner is a consummate Democrat insider, and his time as treasurer has been characterized by the constant PR focus.  In that way, he’s very much the Raimondo-style candidate of this race, although with lighter credentials and less proven competence.

Let’s be blunt about it:  the January 6 protesters being treated so poorly are political prisoners.  In the United States.  Reverse the parties, and we’d be hearing nonstop mainstream media proclamations about how Biden is “literally Hitler.”  The government is actually arguing that stay-at-home-parents are more of a terrorist threat!

Michael Morse tells a cute story about how he used his one phone call from prison to explain to his future wife why he had missed their date.  Before going on read how he tells it and come back.  Here’s the summary with the key details for this post.

Morse was racially profiled as some other white guy and asked for ID.  That turned out to have consequences, because he had missed a court summons for driving with an expired license.

I can testify from experience that these sorts of things happen to young men who are still trying to figure out how to balance respect for the rules with the challenges they present.  So, you take a risk, and sometimes that leads to the next step in enforcement.

Now change his race, and way people would tell the story changes.  The way the participants engage in the incident changes, too.  Maybe indignation even turns into confrontation and tragedy.  Then political drama increases the likelihood of conflict in other cases.

Months to get a car part.  No juice boxes at the super market.  Computer prices shooting up.  Paper towels disappearing from BJ’s.  And now simple bloodwork has to be scheduled weeks in advance.

Any chance I’d feel like the only person observing these phenomena if there were a Republican in the White House?

Remember the massive coverage and overheated rhetoric (continuing to this day) when the FBI tangled General Michael Flynn into a “false statement”?  Compare that memory with this just-the-facts coverage of a Democrat National Committee lawyer’s predicament in the New York Times.  

The headline is in the passive voice: “Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties.”  The lede emphasizes that “he denies wrongdoing.”  The reporters imply that the matter is only newsworthy because, if it goes forward, the case “is likely to attract significant political attention,” in true “Republicans pounce” fashion.  Oh, and by the way, “an indictment is not a certainty.”

The New York Times treated such “political attention” cases quite differently when the people in the spotlight were on the other side, with headlines like:  “Trump Team Knew Flynn Was Under Investigation,” “What (if Anything) Does Carter Page Know?,” and “Ongoing Trump Migraine: His Initial Foreign Policy Team.”

The Times led the way in drumming up scandal, making them seem real rather than “political,” and pinning things on President Trump.  Now they’re doing the opposite.

GoLocalProv is reporting that Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza won’t be following through with his plan to seek the governor’s office.  It’s the obvious move to make, given the state of political play in the state right now.  I suppose it would be too much to hope, however, that Elorza has realized he’s out of his depth already and the governor’s office would only be more so.  It boggles my mind that some of these people even want to go down this path.

At least the Northeast isn’t completely gone.  Particularly encouraging, here, is how deeply the lawsuit is framed in terms of our complete loss of rights under perpetual “emergency” declarations.

This is surreal and shocking:

Add it to the sense that public health experts, right down to people’s doctors (anecdotally) seem to be following political winds in their advice related to COVID-19, and it sure feels like our society is drifting in a stormy sea.  The people in roles meant to safeguard our democracy are proving that their support for the principle is contingent on their getting their own way on the important things.

The story of Ray DeMonia is floating around social media.  The short version is that the Alabama man had a heart attack, but it took so long for his family to find a hospital with a cardiac ICU bed (because they were all occupied by people who hadn’t gotten the COVID vaccine) that he died.

An NPR story clarifies that this was the explanation his family wrote into his obituary.  What’s remarkable is that this was left to the very end of a relatively long news article:

A Cullman Regional Medical Center spokesperson, who declined to give specifics of DeMonia’s case citing privacy concerns, confirmed to NPR that DeMonia was transferred from CRMC, but said the reason was that he required “a higher level of specialized care not available” at the hospital.

Wait for facts, folks.  The lost credibility of public health officials and vax advocates is hurting the cause of vaccination.

Add this to the list of progressive policies’ harmful effects:

According to The Oregonian, people dialing 911 are often left waiting over two minutes for their call to be answered, far longer than the national standard of 15 to 20 seconds.

People calling 911 to report a Sept. 4 shootout at a Pearl District restaurant and other emergencies in the following half-hour waited an average of more than 7.5 minutes before a dispatcher answered, The Oregonian reported, adding that this was just “the latest example of serious problems plaguing the city’s emergency dispatch system.”

More chaos and violence (cough… Antifa… cough) is producing more calls at the same time the ideological sources of that chaos demand less policing, which is also inspiring people to leave law enforcement.

Somehow, this feels related to the New York hospital system closing its maternity unit because it’s losing staff over its vaccine mandate.

Priceless.  And photos are from two angles, so it’s really unheard of Photoshopping if it’s fake.

And the boy in the red shirt 🤣 pic.twitter.com/oML0EqumNe

— CLE mama 🇺🇸 (@cle_mama) September 12, 2021

Thursday, issue one of the most direct rhetorical assaults on tens of millions of Americans that most of us have ever heard from the White House.  Friday, call for unity and respect… on the same day news comes out that he accidentally drone-killed an ally and his young children during a performative counterattack against ISIS.

Anybody buying it?  You couldn’t write a fictional character this bad, because nobody would believe it.

This is too perfect:

“I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress,” Midler said on Twitter while responding to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 vote to deny an emergency request to block the Texas law, deemed by critics as the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country.

First, if pro-abortion women stop having sex, then the problem of abortion is largely solved.  See, in almost all cases, women can choose not to do that which produces children if they aren’t willing to give birth to them when they’re conceived.

But second, note the logical consequence of Midler’s position.  Withholding sex for abortion policy implies that sex — and, therefore, abortion — is primarily for the benefit of men.

Fight the patriarchy!