Posted on March 23, 2023 by Scott Johnson in Media, Minnesota, Ron DeSantis

Giving it up for Walz

As I have mentioned a time or two previously, the Star Tribune is a pathetic excuse for a newspaper. My theory is that (a) owner Glen Taylor has a high tolerance for mediocrity and (b) gets his news from the paper, so he thinks it’s doing pretty, pretty well. Today the Star Tribune is featuring Brianna Biershcbach’s contribution to DFL public relations in “Gov. Tim Walz draws contrast between Minnesota and conservative GOP-led states” (and bragging on it its Morning Hot Dish newsletter). Biershbach’s story is flackery up to the Star Tribune’s mediocre standard. Doing my work for me, a reader comments:

You had a good post a few weeks ago — “The Star Tribune throws stones” — about the Star Tribune editors attacking FOX News as “propaganda” and inviting them to take a look in the mirror. You may want to send them a full-view mirror with a bow and your article attached after their latest hit job on Ron DeSantis (their fifth article on him in the last four days). Get a load of this garbage:

Gov. Tim Walz picked up copies of literary classics including “Lord of the Flies” and “Of Mice and Men” off a table of books Wednesday before reaching for Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel about a patriarchal group that overthrows the federal government. ”
We are keeping this fully in the fiction section of Minnesota,” Walz said, holding up his selections before tucking them inside a Little Free Library, a book exchange box he parked in the lobby outside his office.”

Let’s be very clear,” Minnesota’s Democratic governor said. “These books are banned in the state of Florida. That’s where freedom goes to die.”

That’s right, the same guy who falsely told the media (including and especially the Star Tribune) that a Ramsey County judge ordered that payments be continued to the fraudulent Feeding Our Future racket — and called for an investigation of that judge for having done so, no less — is now claiming that the State of Florida has actually banned classic novels like Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies. (What would even be considered the least bit controversial in either?)

And despite this demonstrable lie having previously been proven as exactly that by fact-checkers — e.g., here (Reuters), here (Associated Press), and here (PolitiFact) — Walz received no pushback from the Star Tribune whatsoever.

One would think that after the Star Tribune got burned in the FOF scandal by acting as the Walz administration’s stenographer, they would at least be somewhat circumspect in carrying water for the man once again — especially when he makes such a preposterous and laughable assertion that the third largest state in the country banned a Steinbeck novel. But no. Apparently Star Tribune readers do not deserve to know that their governor either blatantly lies about whatever topic happens to stream into his vacuous mind or that he’s so hopelessly gullible and ineffective at detecting bull that he’s strongly considering appointing Jussie Smollet as his Victim Advocate czar.

But “shame on FOX News for being propaganda,” so says the Star Tribune….

Posted on by Steven Hayward in The Daily Chart

The Daily Chart: Federal Spending Trends

With a gargantuan national debt whose runaway growth shows no signs of abating, and a systemic budget deficit, it is worth keeping in mind that defense spending is not the driver of either the deficit or the growing debt. Here’s the last 100 years of federal spending by major category. Notice that we’re not far from the moment when interest on the national debt will come to exceed defense spending. And a lot of that interest will be paid to the nation we’re most anxious to defend against: China.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Judicial nominees, Judiciary

Dumbing Down the Judiciary

If you look up “courtly southern gentleman” in a dictionary, you just might find a picture of Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (a former Democrat, by the way). He’s rapidly becoming my favorite senator in committee hearings, for his polite questions and unrancorous demeanor with Biden nominees that expose their ignorance or ideological bias. He’s bit like detective Columbo; he lets the nominees hang themselves with their own words.

This week he exposed the fact that a Biden judicial nominee for a federal district court judgeship, Kato Crews, doesn’t have the first clue about “Brady motions,” a key doctrine in criminal law. The nominee thinks it has something to do with gun control, confusing it with the Brady handgun law.

It’s almost as if Biden was appointing Stanford Law graduates on purpose.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Biden Administration, Biden corruption, Hunter Biden

KJP on the Biden family business

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer obtained a set of records documenting $1,00,000 in payments from a Chinese energy company that were distributed to members of the Biden family. Rep. Comer summarized his findings in a memo he posted online here. I noted the story in Hallie Biden in family business.”

When a foreign reporter had the temerity to ask President Biden about it over the weekend, he commented: “That’s not true.” John posted the video here.

I wondered what KJP would have to say about it if asked at a White House press briefing. Peter Doocy (who else?) asked her yesterday (transcript here, video below). This is how it went:

Q House Oversight says they’ve got bank records showing a Chinese energy company paying three Biden family members through a third party. What were they paid for?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Look, I’m — I’m just not going to respond to that from here. Look, we have heard from House Republicans for years and years and years how — how — the inaccuracies and lies when it comes to this issue. And I don’t even where to begin to even answer that question because, again, it’s been lies and lies and inaccuracy for the past couple years. And I’m just not going to get into it from here.

Absolutely stunning.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Communism, Free Speech, Higher education, Law

Inside the Stanford shoutdown

I have repeatedly noted the role played by the National Lawyers Guild chapter at Stanford in the shoutdown of Judge Duncan at the March 9 Federalist Society event that has disgraced the law school several times over. The National Lawyers Guild is an old Communist front group that seeks to spread the old-time religion despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. Alan Dershowitz now reviews the role of the Guild at length in the Gatestone column “Stanford Law Disruptions Were Orchestrated by the National Lawyers Guild.”

Professor Dershowitz takes up the history:

Let us understand what the National Lawyers Guild is. Begun in the 1930s as an alternative to the American Bar Association, its original membership consisted of traditional left-wing liberals and communists. After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, most of the liberals resigned. Adolf Berle, a prominent “New Dealer,” quit because it had become obvious that the Guild “is not prepared to take any stand which conflicts with the Communist Party line.”

When Hitler then broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, the Guild changed its policy and rejected Hitler. After Japan attacked the United States in 1941, the Guild “remained silent” rather than oppose the internment of more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent.

In 1948, the Guild “supported the establishment of the State Israel” because that was the position of the Soviet Union. In 1967, the Soviet Union began to turn against Israel and increased support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), so did the Guild. Since that time, the Guild has been a strong supporter of Palestinian terrorism and other efforts to destroy Israel.

The Guild, in addition, refused to support Soviet or Cuban dissidents.

The Guild has never abandoned its Marxist-Leninist provenance. It supports Antifa…which also employs violence to disrupt speakers.

The National Lawyers Guild is not a liberal organization. It does not support civil liberties, due process or freedom of speech. It is the epitome of “free speech for me but not for thee.” It will not be swayed by the argument that hateful, dangerous speech should be tolerated at any cost, and defines such speech broadly to include judicial decisions by Judge Duncan.

Whole thing here.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Biden Administration, Coronavirus, Dr. Fauci

Dr. Tony Fauci: The light and the way

PBS broadcast “Dr. Tony Fauci” in its American Masters series this past Tuesday evening. It is a two-hour episode that requires a toxic overexposure to the wit and wisdom of the fallacious Dr. Fauci. Unless one seeks a lesson on the perils of powers and celebrity, two hours with Dr. Fauci is roughly two hours too many. It should have been subtitled “The light and the way.”

Ken Burns draws on the voice of Peter Coyote as the voice of God in his documentaries. His services were unnecessary here. Dr. Fauci assumes the role in this tribute to himself.

The episode is available for viewing at the moment here. I’m not recommending it. I’m just noting its availability. You can check out what I say here if you doubt what I say. One can pick up the message we are to take from the documentary in Mark Kennedy’s AP story.

This is the authorized version of the gospel according to Dr. Fauci. It turns out that he let a camera crew follow him over a period of 23 months beginning in January 2021. The documentary takes us inside his northwest DC home. It takes us inside his NIAID office at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. In these personal spaces, Fauci is surrounded by icons and mementos of himself.

To say that Fauci is an egomaniac is something of an understatement. Dr. Fauci personifies the phrase “a legend in his own mind.” No one thinks more highly of him than he does himself. He has no detachment, ironic or otherwise, from his celebrity and renown. He basks in it.

In January 2021 Fauci watches the inauguration of President Biden at home on television. He is overcome with emotion. He suffered during the Trump administration. He has suffered for our sins. Biden represents the dawn of a new era. At long last science and transparency and truth will reign. Fauci is to receive his due.

Fauci is almost as emotional when he joins a World Health Organization meeting remotely to declare that the United States is back on board. We are rejoining “the world,” or something likd that. The merits of the WHO are to be taken as self-evident — they did such a good job investigating the origin of the virus, mitigating its effects, and preventing its spread.

We have previously been instructed by him that Dr. Fauci is the science. The documentary further instructs us that he is the truth. He seeks to turn us away from false gods.

Fauci is depicted giving contradictory advice to mitigate the Covid epidemic. Nevertheless, he was always right. He was right for what was known at a given time. He is right now. He is unerring in that sense.

Research that fails to vindicate the efficacy of mask regimes remains unmentioned or on the cutting room floor. The mask regime never looked more ridiculous than it does in the documentary, but looks are deceiving. Masks too are the way. (Jeffrey Anderson’s City Journal column “The mask of ignorance” is the most recent on the subject.)

Fauci recognizes an outer darkness inhabited by unbelievers. The unbelievers are Republicans in red states. Their ignorance is invincible. Their divergence from the gospel according to Dr. Fauci is malicious. The documentary dwells on the case of Senator Rand Paul.

The documentary more or less presumes the answer to every controversial question it raises. Masks and vaccines are efficacious. Dr. Fauci appears to admit and justify what is commonly understood as gain-of-function research on a virus, but he had no hand in such research on the SARS CoV-2 virus, or something like that. Out of the public eye, he uses the phrase “molecularly impossible.” The documentary leaves it at that. Why is this man smiling?

In another scene Fauci joins DC Mayor Muriel Bowser on a mission to convert nonbelievers to vaccination. Hilarity ensues. No one ever said the messianic gig is easy.

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Steven Hayward

Monty Python On Trump

A few days back the cheeky folks at the Babylon Bee posted up a controversial item claiming “Man Disappointed To Learn ‘Quoting Monty Python’ Not A Marketable Skill.” This seems quite wrong. Monty Python quotes are indispensable weapons against wokery, among other things. (Just refresh your memory of the “Loretta” scene from Life of Brian (which, incidentally, YouTube/Google now attach a warning label that the scene may be “inappropriate” for some viewers; wonder which ones they have in mind?).

Proof of the enduring utility of Monty Python is YouTuber StevenVoiceOver adapting Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail for the current drama over whether Trump will be arrested.

This one is pretty funny, too: