Thicker Than Cold Peanut Butter And Hotter Than A $2.00 Pistol - Everything Else Is Conversation...,

nytimes |   Just like the original Sphinx, the Phoenix Sphinx is blocking the way until those who would move ahead solve her riddle:

What does Kyrsten Sinema want? And why doesn’t she stick around to explain it?

The Boutique Left Strikes Again..., (Thirsty BLM Biddies Big Mad Cause No Met Gala Invitation)

dailymail |   A huge crowd of protesters have gathered outside the 2021 Met Gala in Manhattan just as a host of A-listers arrive for the biggest night in the fashion calendar. 

Multiple arrest have been made as dozens of NYPD officers clashed with the BLM protesters outside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday. 

Police can be heard yelling at demonstrators lining the streets to 'Move back!' in cellphone footage of the event, while the protesters chant 'Black Lives Matter'. 

'The NYPD has a total financial allocation of $11 billion per year. This money goes towards racist policing that destroys Black and brown communities while people who are struggling do not get the resources they need. CARE, not COPS, is the answer,' the flyer read. 

It is still unclear how many protestors were arrested. 

The gala's theme this year is a celebration of the Costume Institute’s newest exhibition, 'In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.' The exhibit will open to the public in the Anna Wintour Costume Center on September 18th.   

The gala usually takes place on the first Monday in May, but was delayed due to Covid-19 fears until tonight. The 2020 event was cancelled entirely due to the pandemic.   

Antoinette Of Color Roasted For Stunting At The Met Gala...,

“We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met ... we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

— AOC at #MetGala pic.twitter.com/UZj22DjMl3

— The Recount (@therecount) September 14, 2021

greenwald  |  As AOC herself put it with her trademarked class consciousness, the very fact that she can attend the Met Gala while you cannot is proof of the potency of the left-wing movement she leads. Standing next to Aurora James, the designer of her dress, AOC revealed the underlying clandestine strategy of her subversive attendance: “We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met ... we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”

In a separate exposition, AOC explained that her appearance at the Met Gala was such a watershed moment for working-class politics because it is vital that she not be confined to dreary poor and lower-middle class venues when spreading her fist-raising rebellion. Instead, she must endure the burden of carrying her cause to the world's richest and most privileged elite and the exclusive salons they occupy. Imagine being so unimaginative and myopic as to be unable to recognize and be grateful for AOC's inventive praxis.

The jealousy-driven attacks on AOC by her cultural inferiors were almost certainly driven by various forms of white supremacy, misogyny and colonialism, as AOC said of those who criticized her in 2018 for wearing an expensive designer dress (“women like me aren’t supposed to run for office”) as well as when she denounced the dismissive and condescending attitudes toward the Squad from Nancy Pelosi (“Nancy Pelosi has been ‘singling out’ freshman congresswomen of color”). Worse, Monday night's traumatic bullying of AOC obscured the far more important fact that, yet again, we saw elites prancing around in the middle of a pandemic maskless, while those paid hourly wages to serve them or desperately try to snap a photo of them were required to keep their pointless faces covered with cloth at all times.

COVID rules are now so convoluted that liberals are able to defend their leaders’ actions while not even pretending to make sense from a scientific or rational perspective. Many defended Newsom and Obama's maskless partying on the ground that it was all “outdoors,” even though both were actually inside tents and people had been shamed for months for taking their kids to deserted beaches rather than keeping them locked away at home. Liberals argue that it is fine for elites at Obama's party and the Met Gala to remain maskless since they are vaccinated, even as they defend the CDC's new mask directives for vaccinated people based on the view that vaccinated people still dangerously transmit the Delta variant to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. They will claim that it is fine for rich Democratic donors at Pelosi's party to sit on top of one other maskless because they are eating even though the video shows they have no food in front of them (they are waiting for the masked servants of color to bring their food) and even though shoveling food into one's open mouth does not actually create a wall of immunity against transmission of the virus from one's open-mouthed table neighbors. The Met Gala's red carpet is said to be “outdoors” even though it is surrounded by tent walls and other structures, and still leaving the question of why workers need to be masked in the same area.

But all of this stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic. One can locate in all of this jumbled and always-shifting rationale various forms of control, shaming, stigma and hierarchy, while The Science™ is nowhere to be found.

Ain't Nobody But The Designer Talm'bout Antoinette Of Color's Chick Fil-A Looking Dress...,

vanityfair  |  Everyone is talking about what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wearing—again. The New York Congresswoman donned a white gown for the Met gala on Monday night that read, “Tax the Rich” in red type. And, as often happens when AOC puts a finger on the cultural scale, everyone from Trumpworld zealots to New York Times writers chimed in to comment on it. 

“Cost per Ticket: $30,000,” tweeted Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “Virtue signaling to your base while partying—without a mask—with the people you claim to hate: Priceless.” Donald Trump Jr. struck a similar note, writing, “What makes @AOC a bigger fraud: the “tax the rich” dress while she’s hanging out with a bunch of wealthy leftwing elites or the lack of masks?” Tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the New York Post chimed in. “America’s No.1 champagne socialist,” read the headline of a Daily Mail piece claiming that Ocasio-Cortez “wanted to enjoy the limelight while trying to pass it off as a political protest.” 

Times fashion director and chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman wrote that “attending the $35,000-a-ticket” event in such a dress “is a complicated proposition,” adding in a follow-up tweet, “Just seems she might have wanted that money used for something other than an elite party ticket.” (Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s similarly statement-making dress prompted an entirely different reaction from Friedman.) 

“There’s no way I’d be doing this if it wasn’t with a woman of color and with the intent to grow the table and empower women that look like me,” she said in a press release circulated by a communications firm representing James. “Despite being held in New York City, the culture of the Met Gala is everything but. NYC is often synonymous with inclusivity, inviting millions of people from different walks of life to call this city home. The Met Gala, on the other hand, is seen as elite and inaccessible. I’m attending today because I want to change just that and spotlight women of color who are often not included during events like these.”

Joy Ann Reid Big Clowned Yesterday..., Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah..., I'm Loving It!!!

3 lies in a row from huge news platforms. I cited my young child as why I didn’t want to travel. But notice how NONE of them mentioned that? Ask yourself why that was. pic.twitter.com/vQjorbKCCO

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021

 

The two white men sittin there nodding their heads cuz this uncle tomiana doing the work chile. How sad. https://t.co/4UviONyTHy

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 14, 2021

AOC La Polla Loca...,

The ACLU USED TO Denounce Coercive Mandates...,

Greenwald |  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of fighting COVID. “Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties,” its Twitter account announced, adding that “vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."

If you were surprised to see the ACLU heralding the civil liberties imperatives of "vaccine mandates” and "vaccine requirements” — whereby the government coerces adults to inject medicine into their own bodies that they do not want — the New York Times op-ed which the group promoted, written by two of its senior lawyers, was even more extreme. The article begins with this rhetorical question: “Do vaccine mandates violate civil liberties?” Noting that "some who have refused vaccination claim as much,” the ACLU lawyers say: “we disagree.” The op-ed then examines various civil liberties objections to mandates and state coercion — little things like, you know, bodily autonomy and freedom to choose — and the ACLU officials then invoke one authoritarian cliche after the next (“these rights are not absolute") to sweep aside such civil liberties concerns:

[W]hen it comes to Covid-19, all considerations point in the same direction. . . . In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. . . . .

[Many claim that] vaccines are a justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity. That may sound ominous, because we all have the fundamental right to bodily integrity and to make our own health care decisions. But these rights are not absolute. They do not include the right to inflict harm on others. . . . While vaccine mandates are not always permissible, they rarely run afoul of civil liberties when they involve highly infectious and devastating diseases like Covid-19. . . .

While limited exceptions are necessary, most people can be required to be vaccinated. . . . . Where a vaccine is not medically contraindicated, however, avoiding a deadly threat to the public health typically outweighs personal autonomy and individual freedom.

The op-ed sounds like it was written by an NSA official justifying the need for mass surveillance (yes, fine, your privacy is important but it is not absolute; your privacy rights are outweighed by public safety; we are spying on you for your own good). And the op-ed appropriately ends with this perfect Orwellian flourish: “We care deeply about civil liberties and civil rights for all — which is precisely why we support vaccine mandates.”

What makes the ACLU's position so remarkable — besides the inherent shock of a civil liberties organization championing state mandates overriding individual choice — is that, very recently, the same group warned of the grave dangers of the very mindset it is now pushing. In 2008, the ACLU published a comprehensive report on pandemics which had one primary purpose: to denounce as dangerous and unnecessary attempts by the state to mandate, coerce, and control in the name of protecting the public from pandemics.

Across The Board Mainstream Media Just Lied About Ivermectin In Oklahoma

Admitting some really safe, and inexpensive treatments like Invermectin have great value would diminish fear and slam the brakes on expensive treatments. I do not know this hypothesis to be true, but if there ever is a strong perception that the most influential members of the American medical community plus much of the media has decided that allowing Americans to suffer and die because otherwise it just opens a can of worms regarding activities in 2020, well, what will be found? Under such a hypothesis, “leaders” may be shocked that it is September 2021 and they still can’t move out of the trenches they dug even while all kinds of countries concern themselves with treating the sick effectively.

reason |  KFOR, an Oklahoma news channel, reported last week that rural hospitals throughout the state were in danger of becoming overwhelmed by victims of a very specific poisoning: overdoses of ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug promoted by vaccine skeptics as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

The story went viral, and was seized upon by the mainstream media. But its central claim is substantially untrue.

The meat of the story is a series of quotes from an Oklahoma doctor, Jason McElyea, who appears to attribute overcrowding at local hospitals to a deluge of ivermectin overdoses.

"The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated," McElyea told KFOR's Katelyn Ogle.

The story ran under the headline: "Patients overdosing on ivermectin backing up rural Oklahoma hospitals, ambulances." It was quickly picked up by national news outlets, such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News. Numerous high-profile media figures, including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, tweeted about ivermectin overdoses straining Oklahoma hospitals—the implication being that the right-wing embrace of a crank COVID-19 cure was dangerous not only for the people who consumed it but for the stability of the entire medical system.

It was a story that appeared to confirm many of the mainstream media's biases about the recklessness of the rubes. But it's extremely misleading. There is, in fact, little reason to believe a purported strain on Oklahoma hospitals is caused by ivermectin overdoses; one hospital served by the doctor quoted in the KFOR article released a statement saying it has not treated any ivermectin overdoses, nor has it been forced to turn away patients.

This is yet another example of the mainstream media lazily circulating a narrative that flatters the worldview of the liberal audience, without bothering to check on any of the details. Additional reporting was sorely needed here, and has now completely undermined the central point of the story.

 

But, But.., Ivermectin Formulated And Prescribed For Humans Is As Cheap And Harmless As Aspirin....,

abcnews  |  Washington County's sheriff confirmed Tuesday night that jail inmates had been prescribed ivermectin, but did not say how many. It wasn't clear if all the inmates who were prescribed the medication had tested positive for COVID-19.

“There is an open investigation and we can’t comment on it right now," Embry told The Associated Press.

Dr. Rob Karas, the jail's physician, has said no inmates were forced to take the drug.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ivermectin for use by people and animals for some parasitic worms, head lice and skin conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. According to the FDA, side effects for the drug include skin rash, nausea and vomiting.

“Using any treatment for COVID-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in a warning about the drug.

Embry declined to say who was the target of the board's investigation. The board has authority over physicians, but not jail facilities.

Sheriff Tim Helder did not return a message Thursday, and a spokesperson for the sheriff's office did not immediately respond to questions about the drug's use.

In a lengthy statement released to the AP Thursday, Karas defended the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Karas said he has prescribed it to inmates and patients at his clinics who are significantly sick with COVID-19 since late 2020. He did not respond to questions about the investigation and the number of inmates who have have been prescribed the drug.

“I do not have the luxury of conducting my own clinical trial or study and am not attempting to do so," Karas wrote. “I am on the front line of trying to prevent death and serious illness."

The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the sheriff's office said Helder had learned of the drug's use at the jail on Tuesday. In a July 20 email to Helder, Karas recommended the sheriff's staff take it as a preventive measure against COVID-19 but did not mention its use on inmates. Karas has said he's taken the drug, as have members of his family.

It's The Smell..., That 80 Year Old Pelosi Smell....,

thesun  |  The event was hosted in Napa Valley over the weekend and the clip of the dozens of guests sitting side-by-side was shared online by Dem donor and winemaker Kathryn Walt Hall.

Critics were quick to slam Pelosi for attending the event in an area where Covid-19 cases are once again spiking.

"Speaker Pelosi wants to lock you down again while she wines and dines with her political donors," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.

"It's utter hypocrisy."

Controversial QAnon Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene also took shots at Pelosi's fundraiser, alleging that Democrats only care about "controlling you."

"[Speaker Pelosi] does not care about Covid," she wrote on Twitter. 

"Democrats don’t care about covid. They only care about controlling you.

"Magical covid science: The virus stops spreading the minute you sit down to eat or when you speak in a microphone or if you are one of the elites. Liars."

This is not the first time Speaker Pelosi has been slammed for flouting Covid-19 restrictions while California was dealing with outbreaks.

Last year, she was caught on video inside a hair salon with no mask on while such establishments were supposed to be closed due to the virus.

Pelosi was widely slammed online for ignoring rules that she adamantly supported when speaking publicly.

She later alleged that the owner of the hair salon set her up.

 

Political Management Of The Oligarchic Gerontocracy Is Fed Up With Disobediant/Non-Compliant Pissants...,

taibbi  |  On This Week With George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday, a gathering of Washington poo-bahs including Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Margaret Hoover, and Donna Brazile — Stephanopoulos calls the segment his “Powerhouse Roundtable,” which to my ear sounds like a Denny’s breakfast sampler, but I guess he couldn’t name it Four Hated Windbags — discussed vaccine holdouts. The former George W. Bush and Giuliani aide Hoover said it was time to stop playing nice:

If you’re going to get government-provided health care, if you’re getting VA treatment, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, anything — and Social Security obviously isn’t health care — you should be getting the vaccine. Okay? Because we are going to have to take care of you on the back end.

Brazile nodded sagely, but Emmanuel all but gushed cartoon hearts.

“You know, I’m having an out of body experience, because I agree with you,” said Obama’s former hatchet man, before adding, over the chyron, FRUSTRATION MOUNTS WITH UNVACCINATED AMERICANS:

I would close the space in. Meaning if you want to participate in X or Y activity, you gotta show you’re vaccinated. So it becomes a reward-punishment type system, and you make your own calculation.

This bipartisan love-in took place a few days after David Frum, famed Bush speechwriter and creator of the “Axis of Evil” slogan, wrote a column in The Atlantic entitled “Vaccinated America Has Had Enough.” In it, Frum wondered:

Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth — and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another… [But] the reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld…

Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself. Have you?

I’m vaccinated. I think people should be vaccinated. But this latest moral mania — and make no mistake about it, the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” PR campaign is the latest in a ceaseless series of such manias, dating back to late 2016 — lays bare everything that’s abhorrent and nonsensical in modern American politics, beginning with the no-longer-disguised aristocratic mien of the Washington consensus. If you want to convince people to get a vaccine, pretty much the worst way to go about it is a massive blame campaign, delivered by sneering bluenoses who have a richly deserved credibility problem with large chunks of the population, and now insist they’re owed financially besides.

There’s always been a contingent in American society that believes people who pay more taxes should get more say, or “more votes,” as Joseph Heller’s hilarious Texan put it. It’s a conceit that cut across party. You hear it from the bank CEO who thinks America should thank him for the pleasure of kissing his ass with a bailout, but just as quickly from the suburban wine Mom who can’t believe the ingratitude of the nanny who asks for a day off. Doesn’t she know who’s paying the bills? The delusion can run so deep that people like Margaret Hoover can talk themselves into the idea that Social Security — money taxpayers lend the government, not the other way around — is actually a gift from the check-writing class.

In the last decade or so I had the misfortune of watching this phenomenon rise within both parties. After 2008, the “We’re pulling the oars, so we should steer the boat” argument dominated the GOP. Offshoots of Ayn Rand-ian thinking about ubermenschen producers and their dubious obligation to society’s masses of parasitic looters provided talking points both for TARP recipients (who insisted America needed to be invested not just in their survival but their prosperity) and the Tea Party. Remember Rick Santelli on CNBC, calling for a referendum on whether or not we should “subsidize the losers’ mortgages” or whether we should “reward the people who carry the water, instead of drink the water”?

As The NYTimes Has Amply Demonstrated - Captive Media Does NOTHING Good For Democracy

NYTimes |   The Substack model has no shortage of skeptics. “A robust press is essential to a functioning democracy, and a cultural turn toward journalistic individualism might not be in the collective interest,” Anna Weiner argued in The New Yorker last year. “It is expensive and laborious to hold powerful people and institutions to account, and, at many media organizations, any given article is the result of collaboration between writers, editors, copy editors, fact-checkers and producers.” Most of the journalism that thrives on Substack is commentary, which is often cheaper than news to produce.

But that doesn’t mean that traditional news organizations are somehow safe from the competition. As Will Oremus writes in Slate, commentators have historically acted as subsidies for the more expensive and less glamorous work of local reporting — and, I would add for news operations like this one, international coverage.

“The Times’s digital success has been built partly on a major expansion of its opinion section; magazines such as The Atlantic and Mother Jones have relied on their best-known columnists to support their originally reported features and investigations,” Oremus writes. “It’s those personalities that Substack is going after and poaching.”

As a result, the paid subscription newsletter business is likely to favor writers who already have a national platform. “If you visit Substack’s website,” Clio Chang wrote for The Columbia Journalism Review last year, “you’ll see leaderboards of the top 25 paid and free newsletters; the writers’ names are accompanied by their little circular avatars. The intention is declarative — you, too, can make it on Substack. But as you peruse the lists, something becomes clear: The most successful people on Substack are those who have already been well served by existing media power structures.”

It’s doubtless a good deal for that small coterie of writers. But whether the citizenry will benefit in the long run is another question. Sarah Roberts, a professor at the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, has gone so far as to call Substack “dangerous” and a “threat to journalism.”

“People not inside journalism or media may not know the specifics, but they often have a nebulous sense that there are norms — independence, disclosure of compromise, editorial oversight and vetting of the reporting,” she tweeted in February. By decamping to an independent newsletter, “An investigative reporter who has earned her bona fides in a newsroom and under both strict editorial and journalistic principles, has just cashed out and turned herself into an opinion writer.”

Toxic Pathologies In Liberal Discourse

greenwald |  While I used my social media platforms to denounce the false accusations voiced by Uygur and Kasparian against Maté, none of this would merit an article or stand-alone commentary if not for the fact that the two weapons they chose — false accusations that someone is a paid Russian agent and exploited sexual harassment accusations — have become extremely commonplace in Democratic Party politics, liberal circles and U.S. politics more broadly. It is long past time — way past time — that these tactics be rejected and scorned by everyone regardless of ideology or personality preferences.

I decided to analyze and dissect this conflict not in order to narrate everything that happened here or to arbitrate who is right and wrong with respect to every disagreement these parties are having. Instead, it is worth examining because the way this nasty exchange unfolded provides such a vivid and illuminating case study of two metastasizing cancers at the heart of liberal discourse. Both of these weapons are ethically repugnant and corrupt — obviously so — yet somehow have become as common and accepted among Democratic Party followers as they are toxic and reprehensible.

From Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean to Rachel Maddow and countless other liberal cable hosts, casually and falsely smearing people as paid Russian agents is now completely normalized behavior in liberal culture. And the list of people whose reputations have been destroyed from evidence-free and cynically deployed sexual harassment allegations or other vague accusations of sexual misconduct is too long to comprehensively chronicle. I examine these two issues in the format of video, which can be watched on the player below, because that is where so much of it has played out and because it seemed that is how the severity and magnitude of these abuses could be most effectively conveyed:

Sloppy Toppy Prof. Of Globalization Ian Goldin Self-Glazes As Embarrassingly As Karl W. Smith...,

voxeu |   Despite the tragic deaths, suffering and sadness that it has caused, the pandemic could go down in history as the event that rescued humanity. It has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our lives and societies onto a sustainable path (Schwab and Malleret 2020, Zakaria 2020). Global surveys and protests have demonstrated the appetite for fresh thinking and a desire not to return to the pre-pandemic world. 

Rescue offers no guarantee of a better life, but it does make it possible. Like refugees whose rescue from a cataclysmic fate allows them to envisage a better future, we now have the potential to create a better world. First, though, we have to traverse a no-man’s-land; we are leaving the old pre-pandemic world but have not yet entered into a new one. This will naturally create anxiety and a desire to return to familiar territory. This is the greatest danger, and recalls the words of Jay Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Set in the Jazz Age of the Roaring Twenties, the depiction of the exuberance following from the devastating pandemic of 1918 and WWI could well be repeated, as the pent-up desire to socialise and spend creates a roaring 2020s. A century ago, that ended in tears, with the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and WWII.

Bouncing back is bad

In a recent book (Goldin 2021), I argue that that returning to ‘business as usual’, or ‘bouncing back’, means we would be heading in the same direction that brought us to the catastrophe we are in today. Other widely used expressions are similarly worrying. ‘Bouncing forward’ implies we are leaping ahead along the same tracks which lead over a precipice. A Great Reset, as called for by the World Economic Forum, or ‘reboot’, another popular phrase, can suggest that we should go back to what has already been programmed, when what is needed is a different operating system. ‘Building back better’ – the slogan used by the Biden–Harris presidential team – is more encouraging but still worrying; if there is one thing that Covid-19 has taught us, it is that our system is built on shaky foundations. Building back on unstable foundations guarantees future collapse. To prevent future pandemics, which could be much more deadly than Covid-19, and to stop catastrophic climate change and other crises, we need to change direction. Is this possible, and in what way?

Clearest Possible Affirmation That Wokeness Is A Tool Of The Establishment

Wolves Out'Chere Shearing Sheeple...,

khn |  Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the company’s air-purifying devices could kill covid-19 virus particles but could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its trials. In the company-funded study, the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic centimeter.

In September, the company’s founder incidentally mentioned that the devices being offered for sale actually deliver a lot less ion power — 13 times less — into a full-sized room.

The company nonetheless used the shoebox results — over 99% viral reduction — in marketing its device heavily to schools as something that could combat covid in classrooms far, far larger than a shoebox.

School officials desperate to calm worried parents bought these devices and others with a flood of federal funds, installing them in more than 2,000 schools across 44 states, a KHN investigation found. They use the same technology — ionization, plasma and dry hydrogen peroxide — that the Lancet COVID-19 Commission recently deemed “often unproven” and potential sources of pollution themselves.

In the frenzy, schools are buying technology that academic air-quality experts warn can lull them into a false sense of security or even potentially harm kids. And schools often overlook the fact that their trusted contractors — typically engineering, HVAC or consulting firms — stand to earn big money from the deals, KHN found.

Academic experts are encouraging schools to pump in more fresh air and use tried-and-true filters, like HEPA, to capture the virus. Yet every ion- or hydroxyl-blasting air purifier sale strengthens a firm’s next pitch: The device is doing a great job in the neighboring town.

“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people buy these technologies, the more they get legitimacy,” said Jeffrey Siegel, a civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s really the complete wild west out there.”

Marwa Zaatari, a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ (ASHRAE) Epidemic Task Force, first compiled a list of schools and districts using such devices.

Schools have been “bombarded with persistent salespersons peddling the latest air and cleaning technologies, including those with minimal evidence to-date supporting safety and efficacy” according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Green Schools and ASHRAE.

Zaatari said she was particularly concerned that officials in New Jersey are buying thousands of devices made by another company that says they emit ozone, which can exacerbate asthma and harm developing lungs, according to decades of research.

“We’re going to live in a world where the air quality in schools is worse after the pandemic, after all of this money,” Zaatari said. “It’s really sickening.”

The sales race is fueled by roughly $193 billion in federal funds allocated to schools for teacher pay and safety upgrades — a giant fund that can be used to buy air cleaners. And Democrats are pushing for $100 billion more that could also be spent on air cleaners.

In April, Global Plasma Solutions said further tests show its devices inactivate covid in the air and on surfaces in larger chambers. The company studies still use about twice the level of ions than its leaders have publicly said the devices can deliver, KHN found.

There is virtually no federal oversight or enforcement of safe air-cleaning technology. Only California bans air cleaners that emit a certain amount of ozone.

U.S. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chair of the education and labor committee, said the federal government typically is not involved in local decisions of what products to buy, although he hopes for more federal guidance.

In the meantime, “these school systems are dealing with contractors providing all kinds of services,” he said, “so you just have to trust them to get the best expert advice on what to do.”

 

 

Eric Schmidt Bet The Future On Cuomo And Cuomo Fscked It Up Beyond All Recognition

Politico  |  Embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, continuing an April tour of the state with another press-free press conference in Buffalo, got a vote of confidence Friday from one of the biggest names in tech: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Cuomo, who faces an impeachment inquiry and multiple investigations into allegations of misconduct, has been parading around the state in the days since he cut a deal with lawmakers on a state budget. 

As the governor signed one of the budget bills Friday, Schmidt joined Cuomo to help tout an effort to expand broadband access — and give the Democrat a public boost of confidence.

“Governor, your leadership in general over this pandemic has been extraordinary,” Schmidt said.

As with other events in recent weeks, Cuomo was flanked by supporters who praised his handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

“I trust Gov. Cuomo’s leadership,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said. “I’ve worked with him long enough to know that he truly cares about our great city … Thank you for your vision and your bold leadership toward building back a better and stronger New York."

Key context: The purpose of Friday’s event was to sign the Education, Labor and Family Assistance portion of the budget, which Cuomo was due to act on by Monday.

The participants were focused on a portion of this budget bill that requires broadband companies to charge low-income families no more than $15 per month for access. A grant funded by Schmidt’s foundation will cover costs for 50,000 students.

Another closed press event: Cuomo stopped letting reporters attend these events in December, citing concern about the spread of Covid-19.

The Buffalo event was his fourth one this week. One closed press event held at an apple orchard on Tuesday was outside. On Wednesday, his schedule said the media was prohibited from an event at Belmont Park “due to COVID restrictions” — a few hours later, the governor announced that it is now safe for more than 20,000 spectators to attend races there.

 

What U.S. Elites Disdain Is What Their Sockpuppets Term "Divisive"

FAIR |  New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (Twitter, 12/29/20) described a $2,000 Covid relief check as “divisive,” even though 75% of Americans (and 72% of Republicans) wanted the government to prioritize another universal payment. All too often, words such as “divisive,” “contentious” or “controversial” are used merely as media codewords meaning “ideas unpopular with the ruling elite”—what FAIR calls “not journalistically viable.”

Medicare for All is a prime example of this. At least since the issue began receiving national media attention as a result of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, a majority of Americans have supported some form of national, publicly funded healthcare system. Some polls have found nearly three in four support the idea, including a majority of Republican voters. Yet corporate media continue to disparage universal public health insurance, labeling it “divisive” (Axios, 2/14/20), “controversial” (Christian Science Monitor, 6/4/19; Time, 10/24/19; New York Times, 1/1/20) or “politically perilous” (Associated Press, 3/25/19).

In an article entitled “Medicare for All Is Divisive (in the Democratic Party),” the New York Times (3/18/19) described giving people free healthcare “immensely contentious,” framing it as a risky and enormously expensive gamble that centrists in swing districts could ill afford to take coming up to an election. The reality, of course, was the opposite: Every single Democratic incumbent in a swing district who endorsed Medicare for All won reelection in 2020. The same cannot be said for those that did not endorse it.

There can be few policies that would so directly and immediately benefit so many Americans as raising the minimum wage to $15 (though that’s still not enough to afford rent in most US states). Forty percent of the country told Reuters/Ipsos pollsters in February that they or someone close to them would be positively impacted by such a change. The same poll found that supporters of raising the minimum wage outnumbered opponents by 25 percentage points. Regardless, increasing it is often described as “divisive” (e.g., Bloomberg, 10/2/17; Politico, 3/16/21; Delaware News Journal, 3/10/21).

Membership In The American Ruling Class Means Never Having To Audition, Campaign, Or Fundraise

NYTimes  |  America’s most powerful people have a problem. They can’t admit that they’re powerful.

Take Andrew Cuomo. On a recent call with reporters, the embattled Mr. Cuomo insisted that he was “not part of the political club.” The assertion was confounding because Mr. Cuomo is in his third term as governor of New York — a position his father also held for three terms. Mr. Cuomo has also served as state attorney general and as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Or think of Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence. After her appointment was announced, Ms. Haines declared, “I have never shied away from speaking truth to power.” That is a curious way of describing a meteoric career that includes stints at exclusive universities, a prestigious judicial clerkship and important jobs in foreign policy and intelligence before her appointment to a cabinet-level office overseeing a budget of more than $60 billion.

This sort of false advertising isn’t limited to Democrats. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, has embraced an image as a populist crusader against a distant “political class.” He does not emphasize his father’s career as a banker, his studies at Stanford and Yale Law School, or his work as clerk to prominent judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts. The merits of Mr. Hawley’s positions are open to debate. But his membership in the same elite that he rails against is not.

And it’s not only politicians. Business figures love to present themselves as “disrupters” of stagnant industries. But the origins of the idea are anything but rebellious. Popularized by a Harvard professor and promoted by a veritable industry of consultants, it has been embraced by some of the richest and most highly credentialed people in the world.

Examples could be multiplied, but these cases are enough to show that the problem of insiders pretending to be outsiders cuts across party, gender and field. The question is why.

Part of the explanation is strategic. An outsider pose is appealing because it allows powerful people to distance themselves from the consequences of their decisions. When things go well, they are happy to take credit. When they go badly, it’s useful to blame an incompetent, hostile establishment for thwarting their good intentions or visionary plans.

We All Know They're Lying - They Know We Know They're Lying - Yet The Lying Continues...,

tomluongo |   It doesn’t matter what issue we’re discussing: masks, vaccines, election fraud, racism, Joe Biden’s health, climate change, the sovereign bond markets, lockdowns.

No matter the issue or the question Biden’s Press Secretary, the uniquely incompetent Jenn Psaki, will be happy to ‘circle back to that later’ but never doing so hoping to just get through the next news cycle without a revolt.

Everyone’s doing the ‘believe me’ look that body language experts talk about all the time.  It’s all so tiresome and exhausting.  And you can feel the level of frustration building like John Cleese’s anger in the sketch.

It even looks to me like the people in the media are getting fed up with having to disseminate the lies.  But, since their access to power and livelihoods depend on playing along with the charade even the best ones act out on the stage prepared for them.

We all know they are lying.  They know we know they are lying.  We know they know that we know they are lying.

And yet the lying continues. 

Worse than that, the dying continues. 

Because that is the net outcome of all this lying, the wasted time and energy billions of people who eventually are asked to fight wars on behalf of these venal liars desperate to retain power and privilege.

The endless lying comes from the need to sell us on a future we don’t want for a price we can’t afford to pay.  That the pols in D.C. think they can bribe us with a couple thousand bucks of stimmy money after they’ve destroyed our quality of life is the clearest sign ever that they are completely out of touch.

But what is clear as well is that they do not care.  They don’t have to care because our government has openly morphed into the phone company from the old Lily Tomlin sketch of a few years after the Pythons’ heyday.

This absurd level of lying betrays the elites’ utter contempt for us.  They’re obsessed with squashing all traces of the only truly four-letter word in Brussels and D.C. “populism.’

Populism is the bane of tyrants and comedy like the Dead Parrot sketch can no longer be tolerated in the coming brave new world where you’ll own nothing and like it… or else.

I can’t stress enough that this obsession with narrative control is equal parts terrifying and hilarious at the same time.

Terrifying because the real world consequences are destroyed businesses, suicidal children, bombed cities, starved local populations, sanctions, threats, embargoes and migrations.

Hilarious because these people are patently absurd.  And we all know that comedy is, unfortunately, tragedy plus time. 

Because if we don’t laugh at this just a little bit the only recourse is insanity and violence.