Quick Jots: May 2022
Disinformation Governance Board "on pause"
#freespeech
Well, that was quick. The Department of Homeland Security put the Ministry of Truth on pause just three weeks after its announcement. There is no knowing what the duration of this pause will be. Meanwhile, Taylor Lorenz penned a government propaganda piece on the Washington Post, singing the praises of Nina Jankowicz, who resigned from the position, while burying all the legitimate criticisms of her. In her article DHS public relations press release, she talks about how the right-wing focuses their energy on a person, usually someone of (insert generic accusation of bigotry here), then hounds them until they resign or are removed from their post. What she really did was pen the left-wing playbook. Just ask Rand Paul, Joe Rogan, Nick Sandmann, Martina Navratilova, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Dave Chapelle, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopolous, Candace Owens, Jordan Peterson, Barry Weiss, etc. Think what you will about those people, I certainly disagree with many of them a lot, but to think that this is exclusively a right-wing thing is completely disingenuous with reality (disinformation?). The term "cancel culture" isn't around because it's the right-wing doing it. It's because the left-wing was following the Lorenz Playbook. Taylor Lorenz, by the way, is the "journalist" who was on television crying about being doxxed, then shortly after, doxxed the founder of Libs of Tik Tok. She tried to excuse herself, saying the person in question was a "powerful influencer", said the Washington Post journalist about a regular person with a social media account. Take caution before believing people like this.
Baby formula shortage
#economics
Abbott Nutrition had issued recalls of its baby formula that caused bacterial infections in infants, resulting in two infant deaths. This recall resulted in the supply stock dropping by 40%, as Abbott has a 43% market share in the domestic market, with it and three other companies owning 90% of the baby formula market share in the United States. This domination of market share, and therefore, the massive shortage from a single point of failure, is due in no small part to strict FDA regulations, that fail many global suppliers, even though those suppliers sell in large numbers to other regions such as the EU, with no known health issues. Additionally, crippling heavy tariffs on formula that can be shipped into the US add to the shortage, resulting in 98% of the baby formula sold in the United States being manufactured in the United States. Much of the reason why foreign formula is banned is because of the FDA's rigid rules on labeling. The FDA has since announced that these rules will be relaxed, indicating that these rules weren't really about safety, after all. Idiot politicians such as New York City mayor Eric Adams decided that anti-gouging policies during a shortage would be the best way to go, clearly not understanding that anti-gouging is the modern-day buzzword for price-fixing. As anyone with even a cursory understanding of economics knows, price-fixing results in...shortages. Er...well, in this case, even more shortages.
Buffalo shooting
#gunrights #race
There have been shootings in the past that which I have expressed doubt about the mainstream progressive view of racial motivation, such as the shooting at the Asian massage parlor or the Kyle Rittenhouse incident. This one, however, looks like it really was racially motivated, as a white shooter went to a grocery store in a black neighborhood and opened fire, killing 10 people, almost all black people. His manifesto was an insane and lengthy rant about replacement theory, which I won't bother getting into. He had a troubled past, but although some say this is a failed implementation of red flag laws, this is really an example of the inherent flaws of red flag laws. It is easy to look in hindsight and see all these troubling signs, but in looking forward, it is impossible to filter all the noise to actually catch the person that is actually going to commit violence and not just trolling Reddit. Aggressive implementation of red flag laws would really just ensnare tens of thousands of innocent people that would otherwise have not done anything wrong, as these behaviors could be applied to tens of thousands of youths across the country. But the implementation would have prevented many from responsibly owning guns, potentially someone who could have used a gun defensively.
Shooting at Taiwanese church
#china #gunrights
A man born in Taiwan shot up a Taiwanese congregation in Geneva Presbyterian Church. His motivation was his hatred of Taiwanese independence, though, to my knowledge, his diary has not been released. Although I try not to ascribe motivations toward an entire ideological group, I somehow am not surprised by the side on which the shooter was in the Taiwanese independence debate. John Cheng, an attendee at the church and a hero, charged at the shooter. He was shot and killed but disrupted the attack enough to where Billy Chang threw a chair at the shooter and several others mobbed the shooter and restrained him. Cheng was the only one killed, though several others were wounded. RIP, John Cheng. You truly are a hero.
Texas shooting
#gunrights #police
In Uvalde, Texas, a gunman shot and wounded his grandmother before entering an elementary school where he brutally murdered 19 children and 2 adults. This unspeakable act was the worst mass school shooting since Sandy Hook. The police on scene lied about their initial engagement with the shooter and waited nearly an hour, focused on threatening and blocking desperate parents from entering the school than de-escalating the situation or evacuating the school. Some officers did run into the school, but only to grab their own kids. Anyone paying attention to how police typically react, this is not surprising, as courts have ruled over and over that the police do not have a duty to protect.
As would be expected, politicians launched into their cringeworthy hot takes. Immediately, Democrats went into gun-grabbing mode without any evidence that any of their plans would do anything to reduce these crimes. Similarly, Republicans launched into tirades against immigration, even though the shooter with a Hispanic name was born in South Dakota. People have also taken to misrepresenting facts, claiming 27 mass school shootings this year alone when in reality, there have been 13 since 1966. Even showing the correct statistic without context right after a major tragedy like this is misleading, as it leads readers to believe that there were 27 similar incidents this year so far. This is not so. The vast majority of those incidents were parking lot incidents where an argument caused one person to get shot, with death counts between zero and one. While still a problem, it is nothing even approaching absolute horror that was the Uvalde shooting. As a father of a three-year-old, I cannot even wrap my head around this. All I'll say about this, other than criticizing the police response as well as others for their moronic hot takes, is that my heart goes out to the victims and I hope the families get closure soon.
Biden claims 9mm is "large caliber"
#joebiden #gunrights
Speaking of moronic hot takes, this one takes the cake and deserves special mention. In a short tirade, Joe Biden exhibited everything wrong with politics around guns. Politicians, particularly Democrats, seem to not know the first thing about firearms. He claims a trauma center told him that a .22 caliber will "lodge in the lung" while a 9mm will "blow the lung out of the body." That is just a ludicrous claim for anyone that has any knowledge of firearms or even just watched an episode of Mythbusters involving firearms shooting through ballistics gel. Even if you're using a hollow point, it's not going to "blow the lung out of the body", even if you account for hyperbole. It's like claiming that a standard nail gun fired into a 2x4 stud will demolish it into splinters. He went on to say, as a conclusion to an idiotic premise, that a 9mm "has no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting." Does he really not know that the 9mm handgun is the most popular caliber for police officers and secret service personnel? I mean, he's surrounded by secret service 24/7. Could he not have just asked one of them? He continued to dig himself into a deeper hole, claiming that the Second Amendment did not let people buy cannons when it was passed, which was simply not true. Even Politifact rated that statement as false. I mean, even ignoring that a cannon is completely different than a 9mm handgun, it's not that difficult to read the Second Amendment. It's one sentence long. To his credit, he did say he could not ban a weapon by executive order.
Jerome Powell reconfirmed as Fed Chair
#economics #federalreserve
An architect designed houses that kept falling down on the residents of the homes. Instead of adding the appropriate cross bracing to prevent the torsion failures, he decided that removing more cross bracing was the best way to address the issue, while stating that the problems were "transitory". Houses fell at a higher rate, at which point he begrudgingly swapped out half a dozen two-inch nails in the house for three-inch nails, which did literally nothing to stop houses from falling. When his contract was up, all of his clients renewed his contract to continue designing houses for them.
Of course, this never happened, ever.
A Fed Chair kept lowering interest rates and inflation was high, hurting many poor and middle-class families. He cheered on the $2 trillion spending spree by Congress. Instead of raising rates or allowing rates to go to the free market, he kept rates low, continuing to print cheap money, while stating that inflation was "transitory". Inflation kept rising, at which point he begrudgingly raised the interest rate half of a percent, which did literally nothing to curb inflation. When his term was up, the Senate voted 80-19 to keep him in office.
This did happen. Take a wild guess why the former would never happen and the latter regularly happens.
Netflix tells narrow-minded employees to sod off
#freespeech
It's been no secret that woke Netflix employees have been throwing a tantrum over Dave Chapelle's standup shows, among other outrages du jour. Netflix has finally issued a firm statement on this: "Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you."
Good job, Netflix. I didn't know you had it in 'ya. This is so incredibly reasonable that it is shocking to see. If you hate what Netflix is producing, why in hell would you continue to work there? If you don't like it, GTFO and create your own bullshit content platform content curated to pass your narrow personal views, which will get twelve daily views, which is coincidentally the size of your political support group plus your mother. But you aren't going to because you are a weak, pathetic human being that at the age of 28, still needs to be babied by HR, like college administrators babied you, which was like how your parents babied you from birth.
