July 30, 2026

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN FAVOR OF LOCKDOWNS:

In case you don’t, here’s how fast the narrative flipped: Kern County doctors use disputed data to suggest Stay Home orders be lifted.

But at the same time, some doctors say the death rate of COVID-19 isn’t nearly as high as officials are leading the public to believe, and are now calling for the stay home orders to end, and the economy to be reopened.

“There are widespread cases, and a small amount of death,” said Dr. Dan Erickson of Accelerated Urgent Care in Kern County. “It’s similar to the flu, as a matter of fact.”

Dr. Erickson, along with colleague Dr. Artin Massihi, held a news conference earlier this week that is now going viral. They even take shots at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“We’re actually seeing the patients,” said Dr. Massihi. “Dr. Fauci hasn’t seen a patient in 20 years.”

YouTube has since removed the video, saying in a statement that they “quickly remove flagged content that violate our community guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.”

—L.A.’s ABC7, April 29th, 2020.

Fast-forward to the beginning of June 2020: The Apex of the Pivot.


 

Posted at 7:46 am by Ed Driscoll

LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE: Dept of Education opens investigation into Minnesota over plan to target young children with gender-swapping trans dolls. “We are deeply grateful the Education Department is taking immediate action to protect Minnesota students from being subject to UMN’s appalling ‘My Gender Dolls,’” said Defending Education Founder and President Nicole Neily in a statement. “It is deeply perverse – and biologically false – to impress upon children that genitalia can be swapped out like Mr. Potato Head parts, with no lasting damage. And for the state to wrest control of these conversations from parents (while using their tax dollars to do so, no less) is truly insult to injury.”

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

OVERPRODUCTION OF ELITES: Degrees of Discontent: How Higher Education Created a Downwardly Mobile Elite: America has produced more credentialed elites than the economy has room for—and the DSA is where the surplus is landing. “Those attracted to the DSA appear to be people whose credentials are misaligned with their economic outcomes. Its members are disproportionately rich in credentials yet occupy positions that fall short of the status and financial success their credentials were expected to deliver. . . . Rather than producing a prosperous professional class, American higher education has produced more graduates with elite aspirations than the economy has elite careers to offer. The result is a growing class of frustrated members of an overproduced elite.”

Kenneth Anderson was onto this back during the “Occupy” Movement (remember that?)

rofessor Kenneth Anderson of American University has suggested that the Occupy movement is best understood as a struggle between the upper and lower tiers of the elite. In recent years, the upper tier, composed of bankers, financiers, etc., has become decoupled from the lower-tier sub-elite of “Virtue Industry” workers in fields like education, nonprofit activism, social work and the like—with the latter feeling betrayed and abandoned.

Mr. Anderson writes: “It was, after all, the upper tier New Class, the private-public finance consortium, that created the student loan business and inflated the bubble in which these lower tier would-be professionals borrowed the money. It’s a securitization machine, not so very different from the subprime mortgage machine. The asset bubble pops, but the upper tier New Class, having insulated itself and, as with subprime, having taken its cut upfront and passed the risk along, is still doing pretty well. It’s not populism versus the bankers so much as internecine warfare between two tiers of elites. The downward mobility is real, however.”

Still true.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

YES, PLEASE:

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green

THE SCIENCE IS UNSETTLED:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Posted at 7:07 am by Glenn Reynolds

THIS:

Torches and pitchforks.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

July 29, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IS SOCIALISM A FAD OR FULL-ON THREAT? Are the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) just a passing fad or a real, long-term threat to the Democratic Party and ultimately America? That’s the question discussed on the latest edition of the Outstanding podcast by host Casey Harper, The Washington Stand’s Managing Editor for Broadcast, Matt Carpener, chief of Family Research Council (FRC) Action, and yours truly.

Posted at 9:08 pm by Mark Tapscott

HAHA:

Not as good as Tony Soprano’s version in general, but it fits this setting perfectly.

Posted at 8:55 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CHECKS OUT:

Posted at 6:40 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 5:38 pm by Stephen Green

REQUIRED READING:

“It is amazing, yet not surprising, that for all the left’s protestations about ‘injustice’ they purposely overlook, even celebrate, the most egregious abuse of power in my lifetime.”

Posted at 5:23 pm by Stephen Green

SPINAL TAP WAS NOT INTENDED AS A HOW-TO GUIDE: Katy Perry got stuck in a giant plastic bottle at her concert and the crowd wouldn’t roll her back toward the stage. “This was at the Isle of MTV Malta festival on the 22nd, and apparently she thought the best way to start the show was to hop inside a giant inflatable water bottle and crowd surf in it:”

Derek Smalls did it so much better, many decades ago:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOD NAME: U.S. military tests Hammer of the Gods in new sea trial. “Hammer of the Gods is not a weapon in the traditional sense of something that fires a projectile. It is an emitter, a piece of hardware that broadcasts electromagnetic signals, built to deliver an expanded suite of command-and-control capabilities alongside a wider set of electronic warfare functions from a highly deployable, low-signature platform. Electronic warfare covers the broad category of military operations that use the electromagnetic spectrum, the invisible range of radio waves, radar, and satellite signals that modern militaries depend on, either to disrupt an adversary’s systems or to protect friendly ones from being disrupted in turn. Because Hammer of the Gods keeps a low electromagnetic signature, meaning it does not broadcast in a way that makes it easy for an enemy to detect and target, it can push forward into contested areas and deliver what the Army describes as multi-domain effects at the forward edge of operations, essentially projecting electronic warfare capability into the thick of a fight rather than staying safely in the rear.”

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green