LinkSwarm for June 26, 2020

Super-busy week for me, and I’m throwing out links to things like unrest in Seattle because they’re more than a week old.

  • Appeals court to judge attempt to drag Michael Flynn case on: which part of “dismiss this case” was unclear, you idiot?
  • “Nearly 300,000 New Jobs in May Indicate Texas Unemployment in Recovery.” Let’s hope so.
  • She seems nice: “Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead essayist on New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, wrote a letter to the editor in Notre Dame’s The Observer stating that ‘the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.'” (Hat tip: Sean Davis.)
  • Tampa police drawn into ambush involving hundreds of people. This is the left today
  • Theoretical phsyicist Dr. Stephen Hsu forced to resign VP position after bogus accusations of sexism and racism:

    “The attacks attempt to depict me as a racist and sexist, using short video clips out of context, and also by misrepresenting the content of some of my blog posts. A cursory inspection reveals bad faith in their presentation,” Hsu posted on June 12. “The accusations are entirely false — I am neither racist or sexist.”

    “The Twitter mobs want to suppress scientific work that they find objectionable. What is really at stake: academic freedom, open discussion of important ideas, scientific inquiry. All are imperiled and all must be defended.”

  • “‘Tolerant’ Liberals Target Black Republican Tim Scott with Threats and Racist Voicemails.” (Hat tip: John Richardson.)
  • America’s first black billionaire doesn’t think much of Social Justice:

    Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and the first black billionaire, mocked Cancel Culture and the “borderline anarchists” who topple statues and monuments, claiming that black people “laugh” at the white people engaging in such violence. Even when white liberals topple a Confederate statue, Johnson insisted, “black people don’t give a damn.”

    “Look, the people who are basically tearing down statues, trying to make a statement are basically borderline anarchists, the way I look at it,” Johnson told Fox News on Wednesday. “They really have no agenda other than the idea we’re going to topple a statue.”

    The first black billionaire, who has called for $14 trillion in reparations payments to descendants of slavery, argued that vandalism and attacks on statues do not help the black community.

    “It’s not going to give a kid whose parents can’t afford college money to go to college. It’s not going to close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid. And it’s not going to take people off welfare or food stamps,” Johnson insisted.

    He insisted that the rioters tearing down statues “have the mistaken assumption that black people are sitting around cheering for them saying, ‘Oh, my God, look at these white people. They’re doing something so important to us. They’re taking down the statue of a Civil War general who fought for the South.’”

    “You know, black people, in my opinion, black people laugh at white people who do this the same way we laugh at white people who say we got to take off the TV shows,” Johnson added. He said these attempts to purge American culture of supposedly offensive monuments and media are “tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on a racial Titanic.”

    “It absolutely means nothing,” the BET founder insisted.

    “White Americans seem to think that if they just do sort of emotionally or drastic things that black people are going to say, ‘Oh my God, white people love us because they took down a statue of Stonewall Jackson.’ Frankly, black people don’t give a damn,” he quipped.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Know who else isn’t impressed with Social Justice Warriors? Muhammad Ali’s son.

    “Don’t bust up s**t, don’t trash the place,” Ali Jr. told the Post. “You can peacefully protest. My father would have said, ‘They ain’t nothing but devils.’ My father said, ‘all lives matter.'”

    With regard to the Black Lives Matter movement specifically, Ali Jr. said he believes BLM is “racist” — and his father would have, too.

    “I think it’s racist,” he said. “It’s not just black lives matter, white lives matter, Chinese lives matter, all lives matter, everybody’s life matters. God loves everyone — he never singled anyone out. Killing is wrong no matter who it is.”

    “It’s pitting black people against everyone else. It starts racial things to happen; I hate that,” he added of the BLM movement.

  • “Chinese Communist Party Snared in a Multidimensional War“:

    Communist China has decided it must crush Hong Kong because it knows the city presents an information-streaming ethnic, geographic, political and ideological alternative to the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian police state.

    The CCP police state promises China’s citizens prosperity’s material goodies — cellphones, electric cars — in exchange for silently accepting communist dictates no matter how harsh and malign. Hong Kong, however, is not a promise. It is an existing democratic example of 21st-century Chinese prosperity.

    Why add “information streaming”? Despite the best efforts of the CCP’s censors, cyberbullies, digital surveillance brigades and police threats, what happens in Hong Kong doesn’t stay in Hong Kong. Information about Hong Kong’s political, economic, social and cultural vitality manages to spread throughout mainland China.

    The Chinese people also know Beijing lied about the COVID-19/Wuhan virus. The virus originated in China. Only former Obama administration media flacks argue otherwise. The CCP may have tried, but it failed to control human-to-human stories of mourning families. In February and March, the Chinese people knew why demand for funeral urns had spiked in the Hubei province.

    The preceding four paragraphs sketch the domestic political threat the CCP confronts. Tiananmen Square proves the CCP sees this threat as a war.

    The CCP cannot answer this question: How long can the prosperous tyranny continue to survive trading smartphones and quality American pork for political subservience by the roughly 400 million people in China’s quasi-middle class?

    Snip.

    Recent economic news suggests China is teetering. A China-EU investment and trade deal has snagged. Bloomberg reported defaults “in all sectors” of China’s offshore bond market have exceeded $4 billion, double that during the same period of 2019. First-quarter 2020 percentage profits, capital expenditures and retail sales may be the lowest since the 1990s.

    Big Picture: The goodie-producing economic engine that braces the CCP’s domestic political strategy needs international markets. China’s domestic economy can’t sustain it.

    CCP international aggression magnifies the vulnerabilities. Recent vile aggression abounds.

  • Plus there’s that possible war with India, where China is building up troops on the border.
  • “54 Scientists Given NIH Grants Fired for Failure to Disclose Foreign Ties.” Most to China.
  • Wuhan coronavirus deaths have fallen dramatically since April. A downward trend that continued after the lockdown was lifted. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Moreover: “Least Restrictive States Have Lower CCP Virus Death Rates; Most-Closed States Have Highest.”

    States with the least restrictions on their citizens’ movements and businesses due to the CCP Virus pandemic have the lowest death rates on average from the disease that prompted a national lockdown beginning in mid-March, according to a new study.

    Conversely, the most restrictive states show higher death rates on average from the disease known as COVID-19 caused by the CCP virus and originating in late 2019 in China.

  • You know all that “Wuhan Coronavirus is overwhelming Houston hospitals!” panic? Yeah, not so much. (Hat tip: Aaron Glenn.)
  • More on the subject:

  • Democratic Party lawsuit to reinstate straight ticket voting in Texas fails.
  • Due to the unrest in downtown Seattle, a billion dollar investment company is picking up and moving to Phoenix.
  • Tesla actually seems to be serious about its move to Texas:

    Tesla is said to be in negotiation with Travis County, Texas, home to the state capital, Austin, for property tax abatements on what is said to be up to a $25 billion investment bringing up to 30,000 jobs to the region. Since Texas collects most of its taxes through property taxes, abatements are often offered as an incentive for industry to locate in the state and can be worth millions.

    The proposed Tesla gigafactory in Austin would build the company’s new Cybertruck electric pickup and serve as a second site to build the Model Y SUV.

  • “Truck Drivers Say They Won’t Deliver To Cities with Defunded Police Departments.” Enjoy your Social Justice with a side order of starvation.
  • Sean Parnell is running against Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Conor Lamb. I like the cut of his jib:

  • I’d never heard of Wirecard before last week, but evidently CEO Markus Braun resigned over some massive financial shenanigans that involved missing billions.
  • A few writers you’ve never heard of: “How dare J. K. Rowling question the sacred trans movement by saying there are two sexes! You must drop her immediately and send your staff for ‘reeducation!'” Literary agency: “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! That’s funny! There’s the door!”
  • Humans battle to reclaim Thai town from violent, sex-mad monkeys.
  • Monica Stephens of Steve Jackson Games, RIP.
  • “‘I Think We’ve Found All The Institutions Founded By Racists And We Can Just Stop Looking For Them Now,’ Says Planned Parenthood Spokesperson Nervously.”
  • “Modern-Day Good Samaritan Sees Injured Man On Side Of Road, Angrily Tweets About Republicans.”
  • This one is Evergreen: “Nation’s Liberals Devastated After Learning Hate Crime Didn’t Actually Happen.”
  • I just put out a new book catalog. Drop me a line if you want a copy.
  • Ooopsie!

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