It’s Monday, February 27th, 2023…but before beginning, in honor of the great Thomas Sowell, we offer a brief random thought on the passing scene, inspired by our recent viewing of Indictment: The McMartin Trial, a recounting of one horrific instance of the mass hysteria which gripped so much of the country in the late 80’s to mid 90’s, as law enforcement, parents and so-called child abuse experts concocted cases against day care center operators across the country.

Watching as adults cajoled and coerced unbelievably bizarre stories of secret rooms, tunnels, animal sacrifice, flights to Mexico and even flying witches out of children only too willing to tell whatever tale their parents and other questioners wanted, we were struck by the similarity to today’s dramatic rise in children identifying as transgender.  There’s no doubt in our military mind the vast majority of these kids have been convinced by parents, teachers or other adults, to question their gender just as certainly as the McMartin accusers were brainwashed into believing they’d been abused.

Meanwhile, those with genuine gender dysphoria are celebrated rather than provided the psychological treatment they so desperately need, which in turn results in their increased rate of suicide.

And when irresponsible adults aren’t convincing children God mistakenly made them, they’re abrogating their responsibilities as disciplinarians, as in the case of the 17-year-old “special needs” student who used his 6’7″ frame and 270 lbs. to almost kill a student teacher who’d taken away his Nintendo game:

He also spit on her and threatened to kill her if she returned.  He’s “special needs”, alright; In special need of a good a*s whuppin’!

Then there’s adults who fill impressionable minds with DEI and CRT claptrap, like the…

Florida teacher on leave after accusation he had White students bow to Black students in his classroom

‘It was in good fun. There was no political agenda behind it,’ the teacher said

 

“…Some students and parents spoke out in favor of Hooper, saying that they wanted to participate in the video. 

“We all agreed to it,” said a student in Hooper’s class. “He didn’t really do anything wrong.” “The fact that the students really devised the content specifically means that it’s something that matters to them. And to say that they were used as pawns is false,” a mom in the district said…

She continued, “The other example my daughter showed me was for Black History Month.They put some Black students on the chairs, and then the White students were fanning them and making them comfortable. You know, it’s awesome, it’s beautiful, it’s celebratory, and I loved it.“

Fortunately, at least thus far, the school administrators don’t share this mother’s enthusiasm for Hooper’s style of instruction.

Here’s the juice: Something tells us had the roles of the races in this good-time-was-had-by-all event been reversed, the mother quoted above wouldn’t found it at all awesome, beautiful or celebratory; Rather she’d have been screaming “racism” from the rafters.

Never have generations of children been so ill-served by those tasked with raising and molding them for the future.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, meet the poster child for a nationwide imposition of the death penalty:

Florida cop killer on death row eats last meal before execution

Florida death row inmate Donald Dillbeck fatally stabbed a woman after escaping from police custody while serving time for another killing

 

“…Dillbeck, 59, is slated to be put to death at 6 p.m. local time at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman during a carjacking at a mall in Tallahassee in 1990. The stabbing came two days after he escaped from custody while serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff’s deputy in 1979…”

…Though Dillbeck used his last words to to criticize and insult Ron DeSantis, two of the children of his second victim, Faye Vann, expressed gratitude to DeSantis for carrying out the sentence. It had been 32 years since Dillbeck was sentenced to death, and Lamb wasn’t his only victim. At the time of her murder, Dillbeck had escaped from a work-release catering job in Gadsden County, where he was serving a life sentence for killing Lee County Deputy Dwight Lynn Hall, 31.

Dillbeck trudged in the woods along Highway 90 to Tallahassee and tried to carjack a vehicle, according to court documents. Vann, who was sitting in the car while her sons and grandchild returned clothing inside, resisted. Dillbeck stabbed her to death and slit her throat with a paring knife…”

Dillbeck was 15 years old when he shot and killed Dwight Hall with his own revolver back in 1979, and 27 when he brutally murdered Faye Vann.  While we understand the unwillingness of a judge and jury to condemn a 15-year-old to death, and that capital punishment doesn’t always serve as a deterrent, particularly in crimes of passion, one thing’s for certain: Had it been imposed on Dillbeck after he killed Deputy Hall, it would certainly have deterred him from committing a second murder…and Faye Vann would have lived to see her grandchildren grow up. 

Next, writing at…GASP!!!…the New York Times, Bret Stephens writes…

The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?

 

“The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.

“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”

But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks? “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.

What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates? “They were convinced by non-randomized studies, flawed observational studies.” (We’re of a mind they needed little convincing!)

What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration? “There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”

These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.

No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.

But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.

Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.

That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.

But the costs go deeper. When people say they “trust the science,” what they presumably mean is that science is rational, empirical, rigorous, receptive to new information, sensitive to competing concerns and risks. Also: humble, transparent, open to criticism, honest about what it doesn’t know, willing to admit error.

The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.

It also betrays the technocratic mind-set that has the unpleasant habit of assuming that nothing is ever wrong with the bureaucracy’s well-laid plans — provided nobody gets in its way, nobody has a dissenting point of view, everyone does exactly what it asks, and for as long as officialdom demands. This is the mentality that once believed that China provided a highly successful model for pandemic response…”

Guess, like love, being a public health bureaucrat means never having to say you’re sorry, let alone completely and utterly wrong!

Since we’re on the subject of those who’ll never admit they’re wrong, NRO‘s Nate Hochman relates…

The Left Already Knows That DEI Is a Lie

Conservatives should understand that they won’t be able to shame progressives by pointing out DEI’s inherent hypocrisy.

 

“As “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) spills out of the faculty lounge and euphemizes its way into the nation’s elite institutions, conservatives have begun to notice something’s amiss. “One Type of Diversity Never Seems to Matter,” Carrie Lukas declared in Forbes, pointing out that DEI doesn’t give a fig for “political or ideological diversity.” “‘Equity’ doesn’t mean what the left says it means,” a headline from Matt Clark, the president of the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty, argued. In the Washington Times, Everett Piper polemicized against left-wing “hypocrites” who supported censorship and illiberalism while invoking “inclusion,” “diversity,” and “tolerance.”

Allegations of hypocrisy, of course, are merited. Scott Yenor’s recent report on the rise of the equity regime at Texas A&M (TAMU) provides a glimpse into the gap between DEI’s public claims and its real, material meaning. Formally, Yenor notes, “diversity” is portrayed as the principle that “everyone and every group should be valued” by “embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of difference”; in practice, it represents “an identity-based approach to society,” intended to box out “now-disfavored groups like whites and males through ‘political quotas.’” Formally, “equity” is allegedly aimed at “overcoming challenges and bias to achieve equal opportunity”; in practice, it redounds to “equality of outcomes plus reparations.” Formally, “inclusion” means “bringing the formerly excluded into activities and decision-making so as to share power”; in practice, it’s “enforced segregation of people by race” and “restrictions on speech” for disfavored groups. Yenor substantiates those claims with a startling statistic: As the DEI regime advanced through TAMU — to the tune of well over $11 million, and an array of new programs, departments and salaried sinecures for diversity czars — white, black, and Hispanic students all began to feel more alienated from the university. From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of white students “who agreed or strongly agreed that they belonged at A&M” declined by 10 points. Over the same period, the percentage of Hispanic students who said they belonged declined by 12 points. For black students, the percentage declined by a whopping 27 points.

It should come as no surprise that the stated intention of DEI is at odds with its material effects. But that dissonance has been evident from the start. In reality, DEI is only a more blatant iteration of a project that predates the newest round of buzzwords, and arrived under the guise of other catchphrases — few, if any, of which actually meant what progressives claimed…

…Just as the formal claims of DEI are very different from the true nature of the ideology, the Left’s invocation of “academic freedom” was never really about a pluralistic attitude toward the expression of different views on campus. It was a convenient argument to make, for a time, to demand a tolerance of progressive values in previously conservative institutions. Once those institutions complied, progressives were all too happy to leave “academic freedom” by the wayside, and quickly set about establishing new orthodoxies and dogmas that brooked no dissent.

In the same way, DEI isn’t about authentic “diversity” or “inclusion.” Nor is “equity” really about equal opportunity or treatment, at least as conservatives — and probably most Americans — understand those terms. Last year, two education writers “watched nearly 100 hours of leaked videos from 108 workshops held virtually” in 2021 by a flagship equity conference that “sets standards for more than 1,600 independent schools in the U.S., driving their missions and influencing many school policies,” and reported on their findings in a Wall Street Journal essay: “Equity requires dismantling all systems that Bipoc members of the community believe to cause harm,” they concluded. “Justice is the final stage of social transformation to ‘collective liberation.’” One quote they captured from a “DEI practitioner” at one of the sessions summarized the real purpose of DEI — a stark contrast with its friendlier, corporate-buzzword iterations: “The ongoing act of deconstructing, dismantling, disrupting . . . colonial ideologies and the superiority of Western thought.”

The allegation that DEI is hypocritical is true, of course. But it also misses the point. By focusing on the ideology’s failure to achieve its stated intentions, or defending a more “authentic” version of its goals (“diversity, equity and inclusion are all fine things, but DEI officialdom is typically about a very different agenda,” the New York Post editorial board argued in 2021), conservatives fail to recognize that intellectual consistency was never the intention to begin with. For the Left, diversity, equity, and inclusion have very little to do with their formal public meanings. They are about a concerted assault on one set of values, and the assertion of another, radically different one in its stead.“

In related item also courtesy of NRO, Caroline Downey records how…

Doctors, Nurses Say They Risk Career Ruin If They Challenge Health Care’s DEI Obsession

 

“Across the country, doctors and nurses have been bullied into demonstrating their loyalty to diversity, equity, and inclusion to preserve their careers and reputations — and have been punished when they refused to do so. Laura Morgan, a registered nurse with 40 years of experience, faced a dilemma between protecting her job and challenging the narrative that she is inherently biased against patients of other races.

In September 2021, Morgan’s employer, the Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health health care system, assigned its staff a mandatory training that included a module on “overcoming unconscious bias.” After raising concerns about the training with superiors, Morgan was told there’d be no exceptions to the requirement. She received notice that failure to complete the course could result in disciplinary action including termination.The module ended with five ideologically charged questions, which “you had to answer in an affirmative way,” Morgan told National Review. The last read: “Are you willing to challenge your biases in the moment of decision making so you don’t unintentionally treat someone unfairly?”

Morgan said the training materials assumed that doctors and nurses harbored biases based on their patients’ race, gender, weight, religion, and age, citing dubious studies from left-leaning sources like the American Academy of Medical Colleges and Harvard Business Review to substantiate the charge. “Patients don’t want you to address your biases in the moment of decision making. They want you to address their medical problems,” she said.

On the day of the deadline for the course, Morgan was released for the weekend and given one last chance to complete it by Monday. After she refused, she was subsequently fired by her hospital. Morgan has since joined forces with the nonprofit Do No Harm, which fights against the progressive capture of the medical field...”

Here’s a second shot of the juice: When it comes to our healthcare, we don’t care if our doctor or nurse is the living embodiment of Inspector Callahan…

…just as long as they’re as good at their job and operate with the same equanimity as Harry.

Turning now to International News of Note, Andy McCarthy sagely suggests…

America’s Interests Are Not Necessarily the Same as Ukraine’s

 

“Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. A two-year anniversary is highly likely, and a stalemate much longer than that is entirely foreseeable.

Russia’s way of war is, as ever, barbaric: Its supply of missiles to bombard civilians and civil infrastructure is bottomless, but its third-rate armed forces, which have never traveled well, spend much of their time in retreat, and have — according to U.S. intelligence estimates — sustained a mind-boggling 100,000 casualties (killed and wounded). The Ukrainians have fought with valor befitting people defending their homeland against a ruthless aggressor. It is their misfortune, however, that this aggressor is their covetous neighbor, whom they may be able to frustrate and bleed, but whom they can neither decisively defeat nor dissuade from a revanchist sense of entitlement to territory that is rightfully Ukraine’s.

The war has become as existential for Putin as it is for Ukraine. That complicates ending it.

So here is a question for you: Are you in for somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion a year, for however long it takes? According to U.S. estimates, the tab for Ukraine aid so far is $113 billion; the Zelensky regime, factoring in assurances it says it have been given, says the total is more like $196 billion. Are we willing to pay that much annually for another two or five or eight years? If so, what are we prepared to cut to persist in that level of aid? If we’re not prepared to cut anything, is the plan to have our children and grandchildren pay the freight?

…We should support Ukraine because Russia is our enemy, and because we owe that much to Ukraine, having in 1994 and 2006 persuaded Kyiv to divest itself of its nuclear and conventional weapons on the fantasy that Russia was no longer a threat.

That support, however, is not without limits. As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight, we should provide them with a level of matériel support that enables them to punish and deplete Russia without drawing us into combat. But we ought to stop the hyperbole about “Russian victory” and “letting Putin win.” Putin is not winning, and a Ukraine skeptic does not become a clandestine agent of the Kremlin merely by voicing what should be the incontestable point that Ukraine cannot be given a blank check — because we must reserve such checks for American national security, and nothing else. A disastrously punishing war in which Putin, after trying to take the whole country, is ultimately forced to settle for additional slices of Ukraine — slices where insurgencies will continue to drain him for the foreseeable future — is an acceptable outcome for the United States. And the sooner that happens the better, even if Putin tries to spin a paltry, uncertain annexation as a win.

The suggestion that this would only encourage China to seize Taiwan is mistaken. U.S. and allied support for Ukraine has been surprisingly strong, even if it does not satisfy zealous Ukraine hawks. Beijing can’t be encouraged by that. What it might well find enticing, though, is the alarming depletion of U.S. defense stocks, our reluctance to arm Taiwan to the teeth due to our other priorities, and our armed-forces-recruitment crisis. These are direct results of our unwillingness to make adult fiscal choices between national defense and other spending, and of the perception that progressive governance has turned our military into a woke seminar that many would-be warriors would find unappealing. If Xi Jinping decides the time is ripe to make a move on Taiwan, these will be the reasons — not Ukraine.

In Ukraine, where Kyiv needs our support to continue fighting, our objective should be an end of the war as soon as practicable on terms favorable to the United States. As our editorial concedes, that won’t be total victory for Ukraine. Necessarily, that means total defeat for Russia is not in the cards, either. Let’s not confuse that with “Putin wins.”“

In a related item, NRO’s Andrew Stuttaford echoes McCarthy’s harsh dose of reality. 

Moving on, here’s a septet of special selections certain to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). The Journal is reporting the “experts” at the Department of Energy have belatedly recognized the obvious link between the WuFlu virus originating in one of three places on the planet (the other two being in the United States) where gain-of-function research was being conducted, namely the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  In Wuhan, China.  The one facility of the three with grossly substandard safeguards and protocols.  The one where three researchers became sick enough in November of 2019 to require hospitalization.  In a country whose leaders obfuscated the nature of the pandemic while refusing to cooperate with international efforts to uncover the truth. 

What concerns us is not the DoE’s delayed denouement, but rather the motivation behind other intelligence organizations clinging to the conclusion the virus jumped from some still unknown animal directly to humans, absent any facts to support their position, all the while ignoring the glaring truths to the contrary.  As always, we suggest following the money, particularly the taxpayer dollars Dr. Faux Chi and other public health bureaucrats provided the ChiComs to fund the research which birthed COVID-19, and which explains why most of The Swamp continues to doggedly defend the fantastical.

(2). Proving Progressives aren’t the only ones who can exert pressure, a world-wide outcry has forced the publisher of Roald Dahl’s children’s classics to agree to keep the author’s original texts, though the woke version, incorporating P.C. terminology intended to spare the over-sensitized feelings of the Perpetually Offended Class, will also be available.  We’ll be curious to see which edition flies off the shelves faster.

(3). AEI nonresident fellow Andrew Ferguson offers his thoughts on the rewriting of history which has accompanied the MSM’s rather ghoulish glorification of a dying Jimmy Carter:

“…Inevitably a kind of one-upmanship set in. Public commentators are so competitive. Mia Farrow went on Twitter—it’s not clear she ever gets off—and called Carter a “great, great man.” “Hold my beer,” said the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, metaphorically. (He doesn’t strike me as a big drinker.) Carter, Kristof tweeted, was “a great, great, GREAT man,” thus beating Mia Farrow’s two greats with a third. Maybe Twitter pays him by the word. (Thanks, Elon.) Kristof also tweeted that Carter “leaves this planet so much better than he found it,” presumably by moving humanity forward every single day. It’s helpful, too, that Kristof specified Carter was from this planet. There were moments back in the ’70s when a lot of Americans were unsure.

…How pleasing it would be if we had a media culture that knew how to handle such a legacy, if we had a public square where balance, self-restraint, and tasteful candor were valued over the unctuous seductions of graveyard prose and partisan water-carrying.

But we don’t, so we can’t. We’re left to blather.“

Here’s a third shot of the juice: Only Joe Biden and Barack Obama have been worse for America as President than Jimmy Carter, from his hopelessly inept foreign policy to establishing the utterly useless Department of Energy…

…Jimmy was as over his head in the White House as Mayor Pete in East Palestine.  And no amount of concocted accolades will change that.  What we’ll say about Jimmy, a term we’d never use when describing the other two, is he was apparently a good man. 

(4). NRO’s Noah Rothmann records how, in response to the Dims finalizing Atlanta and Chicago for their 2024 convention, “without the slightest hint of irony, this New York Times dispatch alleges that Georgia’s gun laws — specifically, its concealed-carry statutes — render Atlanta an unsafe environment in contrast with Chicago.”

(5). Speaking of unsafe, having declined to down the Chinese spy balloon only until after it completed its intelligence-gathering mission over a multitude of sensitive military installations (so as to not annoy his family’s primary source of funding), Biden’s weak-kneed bootlicking has been met with a predictable response, as Beijing intercepted a Navy P-8 over international waters, radioing the threat, “No approaching any more or you will pay full responsibility.”  

(6). Madeleine Kearns examines whether being a Christian now disqualifies politicians from positions of leadership, as “a ridiculous uproar in Scotland shows how secular public life in Britain has become.”

(7). A Californian confirms why the once-Golden State is now The Land of Fruits & Nuts.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…the lovely Shannon…

…and Speed:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with two titillating tales torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter.  First, a…

Georgia woman intentionally crashes vehicle into Popeyes over missing biscuits

 

“A Georgia woman allegedly drove her vehicle into a Popeyes restaurant on purpose after biscuits were mistakenly left out of her order, according to officials.

The store’s manager told police Miller became angry when she discovered no biscuits with her order and that she then drove her SUV into a restaurant entrance. The manager said the restaurant corrected the mistake and gave her the biscuits prior to the crash. The manager also said the woman threatened staff before the incident, including calling the store and threatening to drive her car into the building…”

Hope she had time to finish her biscuits!

Then there’s the case of a…

Texas man released on bond in murder case, hit with new weapons charge and released on bond again

 

“A Texas man accused of murdering his friend in Harris County in March 2021 was released on a $100,000 bond, then picked up a charge for unlawfully carrying a weapon in November 2022 and was released on bond again, this time for $10,000, according to court records. 

…The Harris County District Attorney’s Office requested a $150,000 bond in the murder case, but Judge Josh Hill (D) allowed him to post a $100,000 bond. Over a year later in November 2022, Sotelo was charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon in Montgomery County, which neighbors Harris County to the north. He was released on a $10,000 bond in that case, according to court records. 

Days after that incident, the Harris County District Attorney filed to revoke his bond in the murder case, but Sotelo was instead ordered to go on 24/7 house arrest. 

…Andy Kahan, the director of victim services for Crime Stoppers Houston, expressed frustration about the way the criminal justice system handles suspected violent offenders. “If you’re on bond for murder and charged with having a firearm a gun that should be an automatic you go back to jail to see what happens with those cases, but that’s not happened,” Kahan told Fox 26 Houston. “So now he’s on bond in 2 different counties, for me it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”“

Yeah,…somewhat like placing a convicted cop-killer serving a life sentence like Donald Dillback in a work-release program and allowing him to walk away and immediately kill again.  Or, as recounted in our last edition, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner failing to file a motion to revoke the bond of 21-year-old armed robber who had violated the conditions of his house arrest on 104 separate occasions, though Gardner’s refusal to enforce the law only cost a teenage girl both her legs.

Magoo

P.S. We’re scheduled for a procedure late Monday afternoon to remove an infection in our right elbow, and we’re not certain whether the incision will make typing problematic the next day.  So you’ll understand if we’re radio silent Wednesday.  If so, ’til Friday…

Video of the Day

No,…no cognitive decline HERE, America. Nothing to see here, racists…please move along.

Tales of The Darkside

This guy isn’t the most eloquent messenger, but the witness offers absolutely NOTHING in response to his legitimate question. His GOD?!? As if she believes in ANY god other than Progressivism?!? Wow!!!

On the Lighter Side

Joe and the Hoe: Story telling obviously ain’t their strong suit. Likewise they are total strangers to both the truth and reality.