The first Amazon union!

Christian Smalls celebrates following the vote for the unionization of the Amazon Staten Island warehouse. (Andrea Renault via Getty Images) Nellie Bowles reports,

A historic labor union for Amazon warehouse workers: One determined former warehouse employee in Long Island, Chris Smalls, has successfully organized the first union of Amazon workers, a group of people who are worked to the bone in a physically demanding job with a higher than average injury rate. Small’s opponent: President Barack Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney, who said Smalls was fired for not properly social distancing during a protest and in internal emails another leader called the organizer “not smart or articulate.”

Smalls’ team: himself. He was not affiliated with any national labor union; no national labor union has successfully unionized any Amazon warehouse. Smalls raised his funds on GoFundMe and called it the Amazon Labor Union. Progressive celebrity Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York area congresswoman, flaked on the one rally she was supposed to attend before the vote. When Smalls was asked to talk about whether he has a message for her now that he won, he said: “Hell no. She don’t deserve this moment.”

Read more here: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-face-off-edition-068?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNTcxNDgwMSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTE4NjQzNjgsIl8iOiJSbXlMKyIsImlhdCI6MTY0OTQzMTczOCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ5NDM1MzM4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjYwMzQ3Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.hdKIRnGmAkLkPnH5jHy7Mwesn6NPTjUOVIwOUaKzpjo&s=r

New York City still masking toddlers!

Nellie Bowles writes,

Wait, New York City toddlers are still masked?! New York City attorney and mother of three Daniela Jampel posed as a reporter to ask Mayor Eric Adams a question only to reveal herself as the mayor’s own employee! Jampel, who is out on maternity leave, demanded he “unmask our toddlers.” The mayor immediately fired her.

Here’s what Jampel wrote about it: “I am an attorney for the city. I have represented cops who lie in court, teachers who molest children, prison guards who beat inmates. It is a job I have done proudly. Until tonight. Fighting to keep masks on toddlers is shameful. I am ashamed of my office.” She later deleted the statement—no doubt this mom is under a lot of pressure right now. The idea that there is a mask mandate only for toddlers sounds like Babylon Bee satire, not real life. And yet here we are.

Found here: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-face-off-edition-068?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNTcxNDgwMSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTE4NjQzNjgsIl8iOiJSbXlMKyIsImlhdCI6MTY0OTQzMTczOCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ5NDM1MzM4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjYwMzQ3Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.hdKIRnGmAkLkPnH5jHy7Mwesn6NPTjUOVIwOUaKzpjo&s=r

When Biden threatened to make a Black woman the first in history to have her nomination killed by filibuster!

Mark Thiessen reminds us in the Washington Post,

President Biden wants credit for nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. But here is the shameful irony: As a senator, Biden warned President George W. Bush that if he nominated the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, he would filibuster and kill her nomination.

The story begins in 2003, when Bush nominated Judge Janice Rogers Brown to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit is considered the country’s second-most important court, and has produced more Supreme Court justices than any other federal court. Brown was immediately hailed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. She was highly qualified, having served for seven years as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court — the first Black woman to do so. She was the daughter and granddaughter of sharecroppers, and grew up in rural Alabama during the dark days of segregation, when her family refused to enter restaurants or theaters with separate entrances for Black customers. She rose from poverty and put herself through college and UCLA law school as a working single mother. She was a self-made African American legal star. But she was an outspoken conservative — so Biden set out to destroy her.

Biden and his fellow Democrats filibustered her nomination, along with several other Bush circuit court nominees, all of whom had majority support in the Senate. Columnist Robert Novak called it “the first full-scale effort in American history to prevent a president from picking the federal judges he wants.” Democrats argued that she was out of the legal mainstream, but Republicans responded that she had written more majority opinions than any other justice on the California Supreme Court — and she was reelected with 76 percent of the vote, the highest percentage of all the justices on the ballot.

When Democrats derailed her nomination, Bush renominated her in 2005. Brown was eventually confirmed by a vote of 56 to 43 — after Democrats released her and several other Bush nominees in exchange for Republican agreement not to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations. Biden voted a second time against her nomination. He never explained why, if Brown was so radical, Democrats let her through but killed 10 other Bush nominees.

The following month, when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, Brown was on Bush’s shortlist to replace her. She would have been the first Black woman ever nominated to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. But Biden appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to warn that if Bush nominated Brown, she would face a filibuster. “I can assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight and she probably would be filibustered,” Biden said. Asked by moderator John Roberts “Wasn’t she just confirmed?,” Biden replied that the Supreme Court is a “totally different ballgame” because “a circuit court judge is bound by stare decisis. They don’t get to make new law.”

What Biden threatened was unprecedented. There has never been a successful filibuster of a nominee for associate justice in the history of the republic. Biden wanted to make a Black woman the first in history to have her nomination killed by filibuster. Bush eventually nominated Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Today, Biden calls the filibuster a “relic of the Jim Crow era.” But he threatened to use that relic as a tool to keep a Black woman who actually lived under Jim Crow off the highest court in the land. The irony is that now he wants to get rid of the filibuster, and claim credit for putting the first Black woman on the court.

There were many conservatives on Bush’s shortlist whose legal philosophy Biden opposed. But Biden only promised to filibuster the one Black woman. Why? Perhaps a clue lies in another confirmation fight that Biden helped wage. In 2001, Democrats blocked the nomination of Miguel Estrada to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. According to internal strategy memos obtained by the Wall Street Journal, they targeted Estrada at the request of liberal interest groups who said Estrada was “especially dangerous” because “he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” They did not want Republicans to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. So, Biden and his fellow Democrats killed Estrada’s nomination — the first appeals court nominee in history to be successfully filibustered. It paid off when President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice.

Found here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/01/biden-black-woman-janice-rogers-brown/

Back from the streets!

How long will Republican voters put up with this?

It begins!

The Masters golf tournament begins today. Here is a picture of the 12th hole with Hogan's bridge over Rae's Creek. Despite being just 150 yards from tee to green, the hole can be very deceiving and hard to figure out the wind.

via Uncle Beal

Bragging about people not paying their debt!

Haisten Willis reports,

As President Joe Biden and Democrats stare down a tricky midterm election cycle that could see them lose majorities in both the House and Senate, the recently extended student loan pause could be one way to help keep young voters engaged this November.

While the new deadline is Aug. 31, it's likely to be extended beyond the November midterm elections. A group of nearly 100 Democratic lawmakers, including heavy hitters like Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, signed a letter asking for the loan pause to last through the end of 2022.

While student loan debt affects voters of both parties, it tends to be concentrated among younger voters, who tend to favor Democrats. Republicans have mostly called for the pause to end, with Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton calling the extension "an insult" to those who pay their debts.

A poll conducted by left-wing think tank Data for Progress found that nearly half of respondents indicated that broad student loan forgiveness would motivate them to vote, and a Morning Consult poll found that pushing back the repayment date was broadly popular with younger voters.

Justification for the pause has gradually shifted away from the pandemic and toward the shock that requiring payments would create, particularly with inflation running high. For example, the letter from 100 Democrats argues that most borrowers are not financially prepared to repay loans due to inflation.

However, the pause itself contributes to inflation, argues Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Read more here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/biden-aims-to-energize-young-voters-with-student-loan-pause?

Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino join Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon for potential prosecution!

Juliegrace Brufke reports,

The House voted largely along party lines to hold former senior Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 select committee’s subpoenas on Wednesday.

The referral will now move to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution.

The House previously voted to hold former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump ally Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress last year.

So far the Department of Justice has only filed charges against Bannon and demanded that the former senior advisor turn over all records and documentation requested by the panel.

Read more here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-trump-aides-peter-navarro-and-dan-scavino-held-in-contempt-of-congress?u

"Move back!"

Texas National Guard soldiers in riot gear running drills in the RGV on how to respond to a “mass migration” event when Title 42 drops next month.
DHS projects up to 18,000 illegal crossings per *day* when that time comes. That’s more than double the current volume. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/8Or3KCEUP0

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) April 7, 2022

Speaking truth to power!

Jim Jordan has a lot to say here: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/06/fwiw-at-least-someone-said-it-out-loud/#more-231288

You cannot comply your way out of tyranny!

"When something doesn't feel right, it is almost always because it isn't right!"

Sundance suggests the following position be taken by his readers.

…”There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”. There is only information you accept and information you do not accept. You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions.”…

Personally, I am an absorber of information – perhaps on a scale that is unusual. But I do not discount information from any form until I can put context to it and see if the information makes sense given all the variables present. When something doesn’t feel right, it’s almost always because it isn’t right.

Read more here: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/07/biden-administration-admits-to-creating-strategic-disinformation-for-their-intents-in-ukraine-meanwhile-big-tech-claims-they-will-target-anyone-who-intentionally-uses-disinformation/#more-231330

Slander, payoffs and scare tactics

Abusing children, trafficking women, putting crack dealers in jail? Maybe some day!

Josh Boswell reports,

The source who distributed Hunter Biden's laptop to congressmen and media has fled the US to Switzerland, saying he fears retaliation from the Biden administration.

Jack Maxey gave DailyMail.com a copy of the hard drive from Hunter's abandoned laptop in the spring of 2021.

He also gave copies and material from it to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Senator Chuck Grassley in his role as ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee – but he claims they all sat on it for months.

Maxey, a former co-host of ex-Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon's podcast the War Room, claims he and his colleagues have found '450 gigabytes of deleted material' including 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archived emails.

Hunter abandoned his laptop at a Delaware computer store in 2019. The owner, John Mac Isaac, gave a copy to Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who passed it on to Maxey.

The former Bannon podcast co-host said he is livid at the FBI, who he believes slow-walked their investigation into Hunter and failed to enter the laptop they received from Mac Isaac into evidence for months.

According to the New York Times, files from the laptop are now part of the evidence in Hunter's federal prosecution for alleged tax fraud, money laundering and illegal foreign lobbying.

Read more here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10689445/Whistleblower-handed-Hunter-Bidens-laptop-congressmen-fled-Switzerland.html

Drugging our kids!

Chuck Ross reports,

The Biden administration promoted the use of puberty blockers for transgender children by citing a study from an LGBT group funded in part by a manufacturer of the controversial drugs used in gender reassignment.

In statements commemorating "Transgender Day of Visibility," the White House and Department of Health and Human Services cited research from the Trevor Project to support the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-reassignment procedures in children seeking to change genders. Two of the Trevor Project’s donors, AbbVie and Allergan, make drugs and medical products used in the medical gender transition process. The charitable foundations of both companies gave at least $50,000 to the Trevor Project, according to a review of tax documents and the Trevor Project’s website. The Trevor Project did not disclose the funding in its research.

The Biden administration’s support for "gender-affirming" care, the progressive buzzword for gender transitions, comes as conservatives push to stop the prescription of hormones and puberty blockers to children. Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) has called on the state’s child welfare service to open abuse investigations into parents who give puberty blockers and hormones to children. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (R.) subpoenaed AbbVie and drug maker Endo Pharmaceuticals, claiming both companies improperly promote the use of puberty blockers in transgender children.

The Trevor Project study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health and cited by numerous news outlets, claimed that teenagers with access to drugs and procedures to change genders were less likely to have depression and suicidal thoughts. The organization polled nearly 12,000 transgender and nonbinary youth, offering gift cards to some participants. In citing the study, HHS said "early" use of the drugs was "crucial" to the well-being of transgender children.

A group of scientists, including a physician who has taken part in clinical research for AbbVie, wrote in a 2019 letter published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism that the therapies could cause sterility, sexual dysfunction, and cardiovascular problems. The researchers also said that limited data from people who have undergone gender transitions "fail to demonstrate long-term success in suicide prevention."

Pfizer is a sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights organization that was also cited in the HHS document touting treatment for transgender children. The document also cited research from the Endocrine Society, a medical group that has endorsed the use of puberty blockers for children seeking a gender change. AbbVie, Pfizer, and other drug companies that make drugs used in the gender transition process are corporate liaisons for the Endocrine Society. AbbVie gave $20,000 to the Endocrine Society in 2020.

Read more here: https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/white-house-pushes-puberty-blockers-for-trans-kids/

Jackson confirmed to the Supreme Court

Kevin Daley reports,

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Thursday, fulfilling President Joe Biden's pledge to base the nomination on identity and place the first black woman on the Supreme Court.

The vote was 53-47 with 3 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats in support of her confirmation. The judge's confirmation was not seriously in doubt after swing voters in the chamber announced they would support Jackson, even if the process was bumpier than the early signs suggested.

Jackson will have ample opportunity to assert herself next term if she wishes to do so. Starting in October, the Court will run a veritable gauntlet of social controversies by hearing cases involving anti-Asian bias at Harvard, a Christian website designer who declined to set up wedding websites for same-sex couples, the application of the Voting Rights Act to legislative redistricting, and the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal statute prized by tribes. Other marquee cases are lurking on the Supreme Court's docket and may yet be set for argument.

New justices are always carefully watched, and Jackson will be studied more carefully still, in part due to the historic nature of her confirmation and given her limited record as an appeals court judge. One initial question is whether Jackson will lunge into the thrust-and-parry of Supreme Court business or be more circumspect. Some new members, like Justice Neil Gorsuch, asserted themselves immediately through aggressive questioning at oral argument and prolific production of separate opinions. Other new arrivals, like Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, have kept a lower profile, deferring to senior members during questioning and seldom writing separately.

It's not clear when Jackson will join her new colleagues at the High Court. Breyer's retirement is effective on the confirmation of his successor, but the Court's annual summer hiatus provides a natural transition window for the new justice. And Breyer will likely have outstanding business to finish before leaving the Court at the end of June.

Read more here: https://freebeacon.com/courts/senate-confirms-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-the-supreme-court/

Romanticizing mental illness!

Arnold Kling writes,

Unfortunately, as Lukianoff and Haidt point out in The Coddling of the American Mind, the Woke approach approach is the opposite of best practices for mental health. People ought to try to see themselves as agents able to make the best of our circumstances, rather than regard themselves as pure victims who can only cry out in rage and anguish.

I had not thought to connect therapeutic culture to Woke culture, but now I see the fit. Both use the moral dyad, in which one person can have either agency or feelings, not the two together. Those with agency are the oppressors, who cause all of the suffering in the world. Those with feelings are the oppressed, who have no causal role in their own suffering.

Read more here: https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/im-dysfunctional-youre-dysfunctional?s=r

How six presidents took on the Washington D.C. Swamp

At The Daily Signal, several people discuss the problem of the Washinton D.C. swamp. It focuses on six presidents who tried to fight aainst the power of the Swamp. Read more here: https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/05/historian-explains-how-6-presidents-fought-washington-swamp/?

Texas governor develops plans for sending busloads of illegals to the nation's capitol!

Jim Hoft reports,

BREAKING: Texas Governor Greg Abbott Announces He Will Use Charter Buses to Send Illegal Immigrants to Washington D.C (VIDEO)

According to Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin, Texas Governor Greg Abbott will begin using up to 900 charter buses to ship illegal immigrants to Washington D.C.

Read more here: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/breaking-texas-governor-greg-abbott-announces-use-charter-buses-send-illegal-immigrants-washington-d-c/

"Everyone is just faking everything!"

Suzy Weiss writes about Lia Thomas, the transexual swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania.

As much as wingspan, heart size, lung capacity, bone density, or nanomoles of testosterone per liter of blood, the story of Lia Thomas is a story about the Ivy League and the class of people that tends to populate it. These kids and their parents are ultra-competitive—in swimming, in schooling, and socially. In some cases, these families passed up scholarships to D1 schools so that the kids could swim for Columbia, or Dartmouth or Cornell or Yale and pick up a more elite diploma along with a varsity letter. Getting here meant a decade or so of early practices, endless carpools, faraway meets, college visits, charity projects, SAT prep and AP classes.

But getting in doesn’t mean an end to the prep and the striving. There are still job prospects, summer internships, and graduate school admissions to worry about. They love prestige, and they love rules. Rules got them and their kids where they are; these are the highest-scoring rule-followers in the country. But now the rules—Thomas has followed all of the Ivy League and NCAA ones—have turned on them. “Whether you think it or not, you can’t go against her,” says the Brown dad. “No one wants to take the hard stance because they don’t want to be demonized.”

One of the Penn moms says her own daughter warned her against speaking out. “She’s worried about getting into grad school, and she doesnt want my name or hers to come up on Google attached to this.” (Her daughter is hoping to get a graduate degree in biology.)

The parents say their daughters know it’s wrong that Thomas is swimming against them but that they will not risk getting smeared with the label transphobe.

What about Mike Schnur, the Penn coach, who is wearing a mask with a trans flag on Saturday night, where Thomas swims in the 100 yard freestyle? “Politically, he’s as conservative as they come,” says a Penn dad. “He just loves winning and loves his job.” A Penn mom stares at me. “Everyone’s just faking everything.”

Read more here: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/watching-lia-thomas-win?s=w

"Reality just can’t penetrate into the fantasy world of the climate campaigners."

Francis Menton writes,

OK guys, how exactly are you going to “halve emissions by 2030” with China going all-out to build new coal plants on a scale far beyond anything the world has ever seen, and India (with population almost as large as China) not far behind, and the rest of Asia and all of Africa waiting in the wings? You will not find the answer. Go through the press release and the SPM and all you find is studious avoidance of any mention of the development plans of places like China and India. Even the names “China” and “India” appear to be on some kind of taboo list. For example, here from the SPM is a chart of total world GHG emission since 1990:

Read more here: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-4-5-reality-cannot-penetrate-into-the-fantasy-world-of-climate-campaigners