May 4, 2025

METAPHOR ALERT:

Posted at 8:38 am by Glenn Reynolds 5

WELL, THEY PROVIDED LOTS OF REASONS TO DISTRUST THE AUTHORITIES AND THE MEDIA: Alex Berenson: Did Covid lockdowns and school closures swing young people sharply right? Two new polls offer powerful evidence the answer is yes.

“Childhood is achingly brief, and they stole time from these kids, and they stole experiences.”

They — the Donald Trump-hating Democratic blob that includes the public health establishment, teachers’ unions, academia, and the media — sure did.

And for evil, self-interested reasons that have become very obvious.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 6

RAZIB KHAN: Homo with a side of sapiens: the brainy silent partner we co-opted 300,000 years ago. “A plain reading of this result is that modern humans are a synthetic population, and our functions and features are a melange. Most of our biological processes derive from the same lineage that gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans. But, a minority of our heritage is a holdover from some very different and alien population that was notably distinct from the Eurasian hominins likely demographically dominant within Africa (population A). That exotic population, labeled B here, seems to have bequeathed our lineage much more of its cognitive function, and perhaps crucially earned us our self-chosen sobriquet Homo sapiens.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 13

IT’S DESCRIPTIVE:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 82

DEMOCRATS SEE “HISPANICS” AS A UNIFORM WHOLE MOTIVATED ENTIRELY BY RACIAL GRIEVANCE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 53

May 3, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1510

VDH: The Trump Counterrevolution and the Moral Ledger.

Despite the media hysteria, President Donald Trump’s counterrevolution remains on course.

Its ultimate fate will probably rest with the state of the economy by the November 2026 midterm elections. But its success also hinges on accomplishing what is right and long overdue — and then making such reforms quietly, compassionately, and methodically.

No country can long endure without sovereignty and security — or with 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants crossing the border and half a million criminal foreign nationals roaming freely.

The prior administration found that it was easy to destroy the border and welcome the influx. But it is far harder for its successor to restore security, find those who broke the law, and insist on legal-only immigration. Trump is on the right side of all these issues and making substantial progress.

Everyone knew that a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $37 trillion national debt, and a $1.2 trillion trade deficit in goods were ultimately unsustainable.

Yet all prior politicians of the 21st century winced at the mere thought of reducing debts and deficits, given that it proved much easier just to print and spread around federal money. As long as the Trump administration dutifully cuts the budget, sends its regrets to displaced federal employees, seeks to expand private sector reemployment, and quietly presses ahead, it retains the moral high ground.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 128

OH NO! ANYWAY . . .

Posted at 8:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds 190

IT’S COME TO THIS: Shedeur Sanders Fan Sues NFL for Emotional Distress Over Sanders’ Late Draft Pick.

Plaintiff seeks a “formal acknowledgment from the NFL regarding the emotional distress caused by their actions and statements,” a “retraction of the slanderous statements made about Shedeur Sanders, along with an apology,” “[i]mplementation of fairer practices in the drafting process,” and $100M in punitive damages “for the harm caused to [Doe] and the impact of the NFL’s actions on his emotional well-being.”

Plaintiff states that he’s unable to pay the filing fees, so the court will screen it to determine (among other things) whether it’s “frivolous,” which is to say “it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact.” I expect the court to indeed promptly dismiss it as frivolous.

UPDATE: Prof. Andy Geronimo (Case Western) Tweets: “Not sure it’s [intentional infliction of emotional distress] to see your favorite college player fall to the fifth round of the draft, but a claim that you now have to be a Cleveland Browns fan is [plausible].”

Heh, indeed. In other news regarding the Browns’ new backup QB*: CBS analyst recalls time Shedeur Sanders missed pregame obligation with network.

People asked me, NFL people asked me after that game, ‘What did you think of Shedeur?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t get to talk to him.’ Maybe he’s the greatest kid ever, maybe he’s a bad kid. I don’t know. But I told them the story, and they just kind of nodded their head.

“And it just made me wonder how many stories are there like that in which Shedeur did things that were not customary. He did things non-traditionally. It certainly seemed like that was the deal with a lot of the combine interviews and meetings with teams. And especially at that position, I think it makes them very nervous that already in college he was getting out of things that you’re supposed to be doing. What’s he gonna be like if he’s a first-round pick in the NFL Draft?”

More here: What caused Sanders’ draft slide? [Albert] Breer details QB’s interview red flags:

Sanders, the son of an NFL superstar and one of the biggest names in college football last season, isn’t a “blend into the background” type of player. And according to Breer, he didn’t act like it in the lead-up to the 2025 draft.

“He handled the process like he was a top-five (pick) lock,” Breer said, adding that Sanders declined to meet with several teams with the assumption that he’d be taken early in the first round.

“All these teams that either heard the bad stories from the other teams or that (he) refused to meet with or that had a bad experience with (him) personally … now the amount of teams that are willing to (draft him) has narrowed,” Breer said of teams passing on Sanders in the later rounds.

What exactly are those “bad stories” about Sanders? Breer shared two examples he heard from NFL sources, including one that came during a meeting with a team that asked Sanders to install an offensive play to test his football knowledge.

“They give players an install, and there are mistakes intentionally put in the install,” Breer said, noting that this is a common practice among NFL teams. “He didn’t catch them and got called on it, and it didn’t go well after that. … He was pissed that they did that to him.”

The other example came during an NFL Combine meeting with a team that asked him to explain one of his interceptions.

“He throws a bad interception. It was a deep throw early in the game,” Breer said. “They go in the meeting, they show the interception and they say, ‘What happened here?’ (Sanders responds,) ‘Well, I like to get into a rhythm earlier in the game.’

“They get into it over that, and (Sanders’) conclusion is, ‘Well, maybe I’m not a fit for you.'”

“The person who told me that story was like, ‘I’ve never heard that before.’ It was in a combine interview when you’re just going from team to team trying to put your best foot forward.”

* Not yet: “Sanders faces an uphill climb to win the QB job in Cleveland, which currently has five signal-callers on its roster in Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Gabriel and Sanders.”

Posted at 6:56 pm by Ed Driscoll 144

AXIOS BURIES THE LEDE: In his column at Spectator World, “Cockburn” concludes:

President Trump signed an executive order last night withdrawing government funding from PBS and NPR. “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens,” the order reads.

The move ends a longstanding debate over why, exactly, the US government was pumping money into outlets that so regularly and vociferously espoused very progressive viewpoints. A fact sheet circulated by the White House highlighted some of the most egregious examples: a PBS station in New York that produced a kids’ program about drag queens, including one called “Lil’ Miss Hot Mess”; a PBS segment on “wokeness” and “white privilege,” and an NPR interview about why genderqueer and trans people love dinosaurs that name-checks the “trans-ceraptops.” How educational!

Spectator contributing editor Stephen L. Miller has been banging the drum for the defunding of NPR for years. “The world will be a great place when our schools have all the funding they need and NPR and PBS need to hold a bake sale,” he told Cockburn this morning.

Cockburn understands the lamentations about how the executive order is another “attack on the press” – but it could have been worse for them. Imagine if Trump had treated the outlets like the Kennedy Center and installed a top loyalist at the top? Would it have been less of an affront to norms to have a Kari Lake-led PBS or a Sebastian Gorka-run NPR? (Gorka may find himself otherwise occupied, if speculation that he’s under consideration to be the next national security advisor prove true.)

Compounding the media’s woes is the fact that the White House is getting into the content aggregation game. This week, while much of the media struggles for traffic and audience capture, White House Wire was launched, as a more MAGA alternative to the Drudge Report. “I’m considering a $1 trillion lawsuit!” Matt Drudge told Axios.

Wait, the real Matt Drudge? He’s actually alive? Has Axios confirmed this? Wouldn’t they have many questions about what happened to the site that bears his name in recent years?  A year ago Outkick.com noted, “No One Can Find Matt Drudge.” If Axios has tracked the reclusive former conservative down, don’t they owe it to the readers to get to the bottom of what happened to him? Or as Don Surber asked in December of 2023: Merry Christmas, Matt Drudge: Did you flip because you were bored, you sold the site, or you feared the FBI?

Posted at 6:31 pm by Ed Driscoll 68

YES, THERE’S A REASON WHY PEOPLE HATE THEM: Dear Bicyclists: The Roads Were Built for Cars. I’m convinced that so many people hate cyclists because they’re perceived as cheaters, demanding the rights of cars when it suits them, then running traffic lights or u-turning in traffic without a thought.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 383

RICK MCGINNIS: Truth, Myth or Both? Getting History Right in Battle of Britain:

The film made $13 million on a $14 million dollar budget (not helped by the cost of the aerial unit) and only turned a profit years later with home video sales. There’s been plenty of pictures set during the Battle of Britain made since then, but Hamilton’s film is still the only one that’s about the whole of the battle as a hinge upon which history turns and not just a backdrop.

“Given time,” [Michael] Korda writes, “all historical events become controversial*. That is the nature of things – we question and rewrite the past, glamorizing it or diminishing it according to our inclinations, or the social political views of the present.”

“Nobody in academe,” he adds, “gets tenure or a reputation in the media by examining the events of the past with approval, or by praising the decisions of past statesmen and military leaders as wise and sensible.” And yet nobody has managed to debunk the victory of Dowding and the RAF over Goring’s Luftwaffe. “As at Trafalgar,” writes Korda, “the British got it triumphantly right” and that might explain the longevity of Guy Hamilton’s Battle of Britain – a deeply unfashionable film that we’d never be able to make today.

Read the whole thing.

* Tucker Carlson, Kier Starmer, and David Lammy could not be reached for comment.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 249

EVERYTHING IS PROCEEDING AS TRUMP HAS FORESEEN: China Erupts: Furious Workers Riot As Factories Collapse Under Trump’s Tariffs. “Workers throughout China are flooding the streets in revolt as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs slam the fragile Chinese export economy. From the cramped streets of Sichuan in the southwest to the cold outskirts of Inner Mongolia in the northeast, furious workers are demanding back pay and protesting mass layoffs as factories shutter under pressure from Trump’s tariffs.”

Posted at 4:32 pm by Glenn Reynolds 332