Remember back during the early days of the pandemic, when massive hand sanitizer shortages gripped the nation, and distilleries stepped up to fill the void by manufacturing hand sanitizer? According to Reason, those distilleries are receiving a rude surprise to end the year: a letter from the FDA informing them that they owe over $14,000 in fees, thus proving the adage that no good deed goes unpunished, especially by the regulatory state.
"The Overton Window is a concept that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support. They will generally only consider initiatives that are accepted by a critical mass of society as viable options.
Such policies are said to lie inside the Overton Window.
Although other policy ideas exist, politicians risk losing popular support (and elections) if they pursue them.
These policies lie outside the Overton Window.
To open the Overton Window means to let in ideas that were previously toxic to politicians.
In other word, ideas that heretofore were verboten are now considered respectable for debate in the political world.
...Donald Trump is the exception.
He opened the Overton Window wide to let in a whole host of issues that the ruling class had long kept out of the public dialogue.
These issues can be grouped under an umbrella called America First or Make America Great Again (MAGA). This is Donald Trump's major accomplishment...On foreign affairs, putting America First was on the outside of the Overton Window before Trump came to town...
...For all of this, Trump drew the hatred of the establishment.
...Hopefully enough conservative Republicans will step up to the plate and build on what President Trump has made possible...Read all.
"George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes a dystopian future dominated by a totalitarian government that uses surveillance, language, and propaganda to subdue its citizens.
Leftists on American college campuses took its precepts for a test drive in 2020.
While George Orwell's famous dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is a work of fiction, it is widely regarded as a warning against totalitarian regimes, especially those that seek to quash freedom of expression.
This year, some of the most prevalent themes in the novel presented themselves on America's college campuses.
Thought Police
...The student newspaper at Princeton University published an editorial in November encouraging the university’s administration to “act against racist speech.”
“For too long, white people, and particularly white men, in this country and on this campus, have held the power to decide what constitutes acceptable speech and action,” reads the piece. “They have consistently deemed racist, and particularly anti-Black, fictions acceptable.”...
Ministry of Truth
...A student newspaper at Johns Hopkins University removed an article featuring a university study claiming that COVID-19 did not significantly increase the United States death rate.
Using publicly available data from the CDC, a university employee found that “the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19.” She also noted that “the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same” between 2019 and 2020.
Regardless, the newspaper pulled down the article after it had allegedly been used to spread “dangerous inaccuracies” online.
2 + 2 = 5
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens of Oceania were forced to accept irrational ideas — “doublethink” — in order to signal their submission to the Party. "...
...In August, professors at Brooklyn College and other universities asserted that “2 + 2 = 5” on social media. Many alleged that Western concepts of mathematics are rooted in racism and “white supremacist patriarchy.” Another professor said that the United States “colonizes” math...Much here, read all!
According to a report from CBS News, 42 people who believed they were being administered a dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine were mistakenly instead injected with Regneron, an antibody cocktail that is often used to treat people who have already contracted the disease.
Department of Justice Files Nationwide Lawsuit Against Walmart Inc. for Controlled Substances Act Violations | OPA | Department of Justice:
"In a civil complaint filed today, the Department of Justice has alleged that Walmart Inc. unlawfully dispensed controlled substances from pharmacies it operated across the country and unlawfully distributed controlled substances to those pharmacies throughout the height of the prescription opioid crisis...Read all.
"Richmond, Virginia School Superintendent Jason Kamras accepted the “heartfelt” apology by 2019 National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson for calling for the beating of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
“Who are Mitch McConnell’s neighbors? I’m just saying Rand Paul’s neighbor did what a true Kentucky hero should do. It’s your turn to step up.”
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...Kamras has not responded to a question by this writer about arecent racistcomment by Robinson in which he warned parents of Black and brown students about white women teachers,“Parents of black and brown children really need to pay closer attention this week to their kids’ classes. Remember 55% of white women voted for Trump and they are nearly 80% of the teaching profession.”
New Mexico's Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham fined two churches $10,000 apiece for violating the state's social distancing requirements, and her communications director released a statement accompanying the fine implying that the pastors involved were "pro-virus," according to a report from Daily Wire.
“This is not about finding a guilty country or a guilty authority,” Fabian Leendertz, a scientist at the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s infectious disease agency, told the French media outlet Agence France-Presse.
“This is about understanding what happened to avoid that in the future, to reduce the risk,” Leendertz said.
This is like trying to understand math while ignoring the existence of numbers.
Just to be clear: The Wuhan Virus is called that because it originated in Wuhan, a city in Communist China, and was allowed to spread internationally by the Chinese Communist Party.
If it seems like Insanity Wrap is pointing a finger at a guilty Party, that’s because we are doing exactly that...Read all!
1823 - Stephen F. Austin received a grant from the Mexican government and began colonization in the region of the Brazos River in Texas.
1833 - Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. About 150 years later, Argentina seized the islands from the British, but Britain took them back after a 74-day war.
1871 - Henry W. Bradley patented oleomargarine.
1888 - The drinking straw was patented by Marvin C. Stone.
1925 - In Italy, Mussolini announced that he would take dictatorial powers.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was clear: do not come to Times Square for New Year's Eve. Watch it at home on television. In case anyone missed the point, the city erected barricades to keep pedestrians away. The only people who would be allowed downtown would be the performers for the show, along with a few dozen carefully screened front-line workers.
Don’t look now, but Google is in trouble. The end of 2020 has brought with it a flurry of lawsuits targeting the tech giant’s allegedly unlawful business practices. In late October, the Justice Department pursuedantitrust charges for “[using] anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising,”accordingtoThe Wall Street Journal.
"WASHINGTON – The majority of the cadets involved in the worst academic cheating scandal at West Point in 45 years are athletes, including 24 members of the football team that is scheduled to play in a bowl game on Thursday, according to West Point officials.
In all, 55 of the 73 cadets accused of cheating on a calculus final exam in May are athletes, including 17 who remain on the football team, according to figures released to USA TODAY by West Point.
...They're allowed to play because West Point's superintendent in October suspended a policy that limited or prevented cadets found in violation of the academy's honor code from representing the academy in public, including athletes at sports events.
Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, the superintendent, in an Oct. 23 memo, wrote to the faculty that the policy "has resulted in an inequitable application of consequences and developmental opportunities for select groups of cadets."...Read all!
Republican Minnesota State Sen. Scott Jensen suggested health care dollars are affecting the official COVID-19 death rate.“When the Department of Health and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] decided to change the rules that had been in place for 17 years by encouraging the diagnosis of COVID-19 in situations that we never would have otherwise, they were abandoning their long-held commitment to precisely identifying the inciting or the initiating event that would lead to a sequence of events that would lead to a person’s demise,” Jensen said.
Wealthier communities will turn to private policing as cities deplete their own police departments
"Atlanta, like most major cities this year, is experiencing a surge in violent crime.
The city is also playing out the next logical chapter of the “defund the police” movement: private, supplemental police forces for affluent communities.
...This is the natural result of the movement to defund police.
If cities decide not to direct enough resources to their police departments, wealthier communities such as Buckhead will fundraise for supplemental police forces.
Less affluent communities won’t have that privilege; instead, they will have to rely on an insufficiently funded police department in a time when homicides and aggravated assaults have spiked...Read all.
Pandemic, civil unrest likely contributed to more than 50% increase in Chicago homicides in 2020, experts say - Chicago Tribune
"In a year marred by a deadly pandemic and rocked by civil unrest over policing in America, Chicago endured a level of violence in 2020 that reversed recent progress, with homicides increasing by more than 50%, according to official statistics.
Through Sunday, Chicago had recorded 762 homicides this year, a 55% jump over the same period in 2019, when 491 people in the city were slain, according to official Chicago police data.
It is among the highest year-over-year increases in recent city history...Read all.
From the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic to the riots to the 2020 election, the left-leaning legacy media has twisted, subverted, and outright suppressed the news it is supposedly tasked with reporting. It is impossible to cover every instance of media bias against President Donald Trump, for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., or propping up the far-Left’s increasingly stifling orthodoxy, but I have compiled what I believe to be the ten most egregious examples from 2020.
"The Overton Window is a concept that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support. They will generally only consider initiatives that are accepted by a critical mass of society as viable options.
J.R.R. Tolkien 1892
"WASHINGTON – The majority of the cadets involved in the worst academic cheating scandal at West Point in 45 years are athletes, including 24 members of the football team that is scheduled to play in a bowl game on Thursday, according to West Point officials.
