Mid-Day Snapshot · Aug. 6, 2021

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IN TODAY’S DIGEST

FEATURED ANALYSIS

Vaccine Passports by Any Other Name…

Democrats and big companies are increasingly using the “stick” approach to vaccination.

Nate Jackson

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That’s a choice that is increasingly being taken away from American citizens by the totalitarians who have found the coronavirus pandemic to be extremely handy for acquiring and exercising power.

On Monday, Mark Alexander covered the efforts and trial balloons coming from President Joe Biden and his handlers to mandate vaccination and masking. If masks work, why get vaccinated? If vaccines work, why mask up? The only answer leftists give to those questions: Shut up!

News broke yesterday that the Biden administration seems to have concluded that the “carrot” approach to its vaccination push isn’t working. Team Biden is now reportedly considering using the “stick” of withholding federal funds in order to get more Americans vaccinated. That could mean blocking money from reaching entities ranging from universities to cruise lines to nursing homes. Even The Washington Post admits this “would amount to a dramatic escalation” in the vaccination push.

Ya think?

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and other Democrats spent 2020 telling Americans not to trust the vaccines, politicizing the issue in order to defeat Donald Trump. As soon as he did defeat Trump, Biden claimed credit for those same vaccines and ramped up the push to get shots in arms. It began with kindly advice but quickly became haranguing and browbeating. It’s no wonder it may soon devolve into coercion.

Which will convince exactly no one to get vaccinated.

Never mind that, though. Leftists always know better than you do. “If you look through history, there are presidents who — even in the absence of legal authority — influence people, you might say,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a medical bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “We keep referring to this COVID thing like it’s an emergency and then we don’t behave like it’s a wartime emergency.” If Emanuel’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was one of the architects of ObamaCare, another thing built in the absence of legal authority. He’s also the guy who once argued that life after 75 pretty much isn’t worth living. But sure, take his advice on vaccination.

Biden has already ordered that federal contractors must be vaccinated or mask up (and they could face a five-year prison sentence for lying), and he’s got the Pentagon considering the same thing. Furthermore, Biden may implement a requirement that all foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. be fully vaccinated — well, at least those coming legally.

How is that not racist and xenophobic? (That’s the accusation Biden threw at Trump when it came to travel restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic.)

Meanwhile, the list of major corporations and other entitles requiring employees to get vaccinated is growing by the day. To varying degrees, and just to name a few, that list includes the NFL, Facebook, Google, Disney, Walmart, Netflix, United Airlines, Tyson, and CNN.

Some city and state governments are likewise cracking down, or encouraging businesses to do so. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has other things to worry about, but on Monday he pushed private businesses to “go to vaccine-only admission.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, Hold my beer. On Tuesday, he announced a mandate that all indoor venues in the city must require proof of vaccination as a condition of entry. “If you want to participate in our society fully,” de Blasio said, “you’ve got to get vaccinated.”

One might ask the Democrat mayor why he won’t allow 69% of blacks in his city to “participate in our society fully.” Or why he’s treating 58% of Hispanics as second-class citizens. Isn’t that racist?

Once again, we come back to the unmistakable truth that leftist bullies are using COVID as an opportunity to consolidate power that they did not or should not have. It’s for your own good, of course.

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Biden Demands Consumers Buy 50% EV by 2030

And lawmakers seek to implement a tax on vehicle milage traveled in the infrastructure bill.

Thomas Gallatin

Democrats will tell you what to buy, when to buy it, and they’ll tax you while you’re at it.

Deep within the 2,700 pages of the bipartisan “infrastructure” deal a group of 20 senators rolled out on Monday is the creation of a program aimed at eventually taxing Americans for every mile they drive. The concept known as the vehicle milage traveled (VMT) tax is not new, but it has recently gained traction as lawmakers seek new revenue sources for funding their massive $1.1 trillion plan.

Back in March, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg acknowledged the Biden administration’s interest in exploring implementing some form of a VMT to help fund infrastructure. “When you think about infrastructure, it’s a classic example of the kind of investment that has a return on that investment,” Buttigieg asserted. “A so-called vehicle-miles-traveled tax or milage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be a way to do it.”

The system of a federal gas tax intended to fund the Highway Trust Fund has fallen short of generating enough revenue, lawmakers claim, hence the desire to find another means of milking hardworking Americans. Never mind the fact that this massive “infrastructure” bill allocates $550 billion in new transportation spending even as the national debt has ballooned to a whopping $28 trillion. No tax will ever be enough for these spendthrifts.

However, beyond a potential national VMT on top of the current gas tax (of course they won’t end that revenue stream), there are concerns regarding Americans’ privacy rights. In order for a VMT to work, an elaborate tracking system would need to be developed — one that would essentially track everywhere Americans go. This has Fourth Amendment violations written all over it.

But why are lawmakers pushing a VMT? Well, Biden’s latest executive order may provide some of the answer. On Thursday, Biden issued an order setting 2030 as the target date for 50% of all new vehicles sold to be electric or carbon free. If, as Biden desires, 50% of new cars sold by 2030 are electric, then that represents a huge cut in gas tax revenue. The solution: tax vehicle milage.

The constitutional problems, meanwhile, are numerous. “If you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator,” Biden said in October. So much for that. Why wait for Congress when there’s a power grab to be made?

This is yet another case of the federal government abusing the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, seeking to direct and limit Americans’ purchasing freedom. Furthermore, it is a rejection of the concept of free market enterprise and its superior ability at technological innovation. When consumers are free to choose what they buy, they buy what works best for them, which may not be what those in positions of power would want. But that’s how a truly free society and free market economy operates.

What Biden will do is manipulate the market, in part by engaging in crony capitalism to prop up big businesses that have already heavily invested in EV technology. His order will ensure the purchase of their products while also limiting outside competition from startups.

Lost in all the feel-good high-fives over electric cars is the fact that our nation’s electrical grid cannot handle millions of additional electric vehicles without major overhauling and upgrading. Thus, as usual, the government’s “solution” to one problem will create another (big) one.

To be clear, the development of EV technology is not ultimately the problem, though EVs are not as clean as ecofascists would have you believe and there are hurdles to overcome. Rather, the problem is the government manipulating the market and mandating consumer choices. Technological innovation develops most efficiently when driven by free market forces, not government fiats.

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Cori Bush Hates Cops but Loves Security

The St. Louis Democrat doubles down on her “defund the police” lunacy.

Douglas Andrews

It must be nice to be able to afford $70,000 on private security for oneself, while at the same time denying basic security to poor folks in crime-ridden neighborhoods who don’t have a spare 70 grand lying around.

Who would do such a thing? Cori Bush, that’s who.

Bush, the freshman Missouri Democrat congresswoman and ardent Black Lives Matter apologist, embodies all that’s wrong with our elected class. Let ‘em eat cake, she seems to be saying to her St. Louis constituents, few of whom can afford to hire a private security firm, but all of whom live in one of the most murderous cities in the nation. Whether unwitting or uncaring, Bush has doubled down on her demands for defunding the police while at the same time ensuring that she herself doesn’t have to deal with the awful blowback of her idiotic anti-cop policies.

How do we know that defunding the police is an idiotic policy? Because even Bush’s fellow Democrats have been tripping over themselves to run away from it.

Try as they might, though, they won’t be able to shake last summer’s self-inflicted wound from the George Floyd riots, when one Democrat after another got caught up in the “defund” hysteria.

Here’s what Bush said:

I’m going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have too much work to do there, too many people that need help right now for me to allow that. So, if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend 10 more dollars on it — you know what? I get to be here to do the work. So suck it up. And defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets.“

“I can’t stress enough how insulting it is to the families who’ve lost loved ones and kids to the rise of violent crime here in Missouri,” said the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, who also noted that Bush’s St. Louis district saw a 50-year high in homicides in 2020.

In short, Bush conducted a master class in electoral alienation. And she did so with maximum efficiency. As National Review’s Rich Lowry quipped, “How to combine out-of-touch high handedness with a commitment to a outlandishly radical and unpopular policy position in one 30-second clip — very impressive.”

No less a leftist organ than CNN understands how toxic Bush’s position is. “There is no issue better for Republicans in swing districts (and worse for Democrats in swing districts) than the idea that Democrats in Washington want to defund the police,” CNN regretfully reports.

The numbers bear this out. A USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted in late June and early July showed that just over one in five Americans support defunding the police, while 77% oppose it.

But if you ask Bush about all the hullaballoo, she’ll say that “a white supremacist, racist narrative” is trying to stifle her. Uh-huh.

Shut up, Bush’s fellow Democrats must wish they could explain to her. But such is the life of a privileged Beltway politician who’s utterly out of touch with the American people.

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Why Black and White Relations Hit a New Low

The division we’re seeing is driven by Democrats and their Leftmedia mouthpieces.

Brian Mark Weber

On a daily basis, we’re told that race relations are worse than ever.

But in the real world outside of the media bubble, millions of black and white Americans work, play, study, worship, and live together in peace. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any issues or problems to be resolved, but today’s media have created an alternate universe that doesn’t reflect reality.

Indeed, in that alternate universe, it sure does feel like something is wrong. And that’s thanks entirely to the divisive efforts of Democrats and their media mouthpieces. Given the 24/7 propaganda, it’s no wonder we’ve seen a shift in the way everyone perceives race in America.

A recent Gallup poll, for example, reveals that as recently as 2013, 70% of U.S. adults viewed race relations in a positive light. Today, that number is only 42%.

No, America hasn’t become more “systemically racist” in the past eight years. We’ve just been led to believe it. The division plays right into the hands of the Marxist Democrats who benefit from a nation in chaos, even if the chaos also hurts people of color in the process (as it almost always does.)

It’s shameful that some of our fellow citizens seek to tear apart the fabric we’ve worked so hard to mend throughout our history. But like anything else that comes from radical leftists, it’s not that hard to figure out their long-term objective.

Leftist race-baiter B. Duncan Moench penned an article, titled “Americans Hate Each Other,” in which he concluded that the only answer to this problem is to dissolve the United States and “start an American Union that works more like its European counterpart.”

As they say, the devil lies in the details.

Moench doesn’t think we’re smart enough to see that the breakdown of our society and institutions is the objective of the radical leftists champing at the bit to take power when it all comes tumbling down. As the inimitable Thomas Sowell wrote a few years back: “Mob rule is not democracy. It threatens democracy, as it threatens lives — black or white.”

Race hustlers like Ibrim X. Kendi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders hope America dissolves so they can create a new world built on Marxist lies. And let’s not forget that it was Barack Obama who promised a post-racial America only to spout identity politics from the White House.

But this is about much more than dividing us along racial lines; it’s about a broader effort to turn America against its history, institutions, and traditions. Americans are now taught to hate those things and seek their remaking, revising, or outright destruction.

The poll isn’t surprising. For too long we’ve been told America is a country built on lies and designed to oppress anyone who isn’t white. Every instance of real racism is exaggerated, while progress is swept under the rug by journalists and politicians.

As Sowell biographer and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason R. Riley writes: “The political left has a stake in overstating both the existence and effects of racism so that it can advocate for more and bigger programs to combat it. And the media has long been willing to do the left’s ideological bidding. Social media allows for wide publicity of statistically rare incidents.’”

Consequently, the media have the power to frame opinions and conversations and influence the way we think and interact with one another. But we can’t afford to let them divide us any longer.

We’re truly at a crossroads. Americans can either let the powerful media and political elites convince us that we hate each other, or we can ignore them and continue the progress we’ve made toward building a colorblind society.

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USMC Lowers Standards for Race and Gender ‘Equity’

Reducing training requirements for Marines is an egregious and dangerous error.

Lee Crockett

In an era of an unprecedented susceptibility of Department of Defense (DOD) leadership to the whims of socialism’s drive for race and gender-based “equity,” the United States Marine Corps’ senior leaders have proven themselves no less susceptible than the rest.

Driven by a self-mandated “Diversity Accession” mission to contract a specific quantity of black, Hispanic, and “Other” officers per annum, the Marine Corps generated 231%, 213%, and 205% increases in the rate of new ethnically diverse second lieutenants (2ndLts) in 2020 than it did 10 years prior for those three ethnic subsets, respectively. Driven by a late Obama-era push for an increase in female officers in combat arms, the Marine Corps has also generated a 161% increase in the annual rate of new female 2ndLts since the Obama administration issued that mandate in 2015.

As one might expect, the rate of white male new 2ndLts has dropped from approximately 60.5% of all new 2ndLts in 2016 to approximately 55.8% in 2021. If one assumes no change in the relative total quality of each new 2ndLt from 2016 to 2021, then that assumes 4.7% of the new 2ndLts in 2016 would not have had a chance to become 2ndLts in 2021 in the name of “diversity.”

Clearly, the Marine Corps’ “Diversity Accession” mission comes at the expense of and discrimination against qualified white males seeking an opportunity to lead Marines and serve their country.

There are obviously outlying factors that contribute to these figures, such as propensity to join among each “diverse” community, selection rates on the Corps’ officer selection boards, and attrition rates at entry-level training. But if standards remain the same at entry-level training, then one would assume the Marine Corps’ newest leaders are still of the same high caliber as they have been in years past, regardless of race or gender.

Shockingly, however, leaders at the Marine Corps’ entry-level officer training institutions want even more diversity, and they are lowering training standards across the board in order to achieve it.

Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS), the first point at which the Corps can weed out the bad apples from among its officer candidates, has dramatically reduced physical fitness standards for graduation. The course used to include three mandatory forced marches under load, and any candidate who failed to complete those hikes would not be permitted to graduate. The commanding officer recently eliminated the longest hike from the course and removed hike completion from the list of graduation requirements. The Obstacle Course, a hallmark of every Marine Officer’s training and once a right of passage for all Marine officers, is no longer a graduation requirement. Neither is the grueling Endurance Course, which begins with the Obstacle Course followed by a three-mile run. OCS leaders indicated that they made the change in 2020 in order to cater to shorter candidates (i.e., female candidates) who may have a harder time getting over tall obstacles. (Ask any female Marine Officer, who undoubtedly beat the Obstacle Course just like any other Marine Officer, what she thinks about the Marine Corps telling her she needs extra help. I doubt she’ll be grateful.)

That means an officer candidate could fail both hikes, fail the Obstacle Course, fail the Endurance Course, and still become a Marine Officer.

New 2ndLts then attend the Basic Officer Course (BOC) at The Basic School (TBS), whose mission is to “Train and educate newly commissioned officers in the high standards of professional knowledge, espirit-de-corps, and leadership to prepare them for duty … with particular emphasis on the duties, responsibilities, and warfighting skills required of a rifle platoon commander.” The school is unique among the other branches of service in that it is a requirement for all officers, regardless of their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). Evidently, however, the “high standards” spoken of in the school’s mission are too high for some. TBS removed the requirement for students to complete the Obstacle Course (the same one that OCS no longer requires to graduate) unassisted in order to graduate, as students under 5’6″ (read: females) can now receive assistance to complete the course.

Apparently, having the will to get over a wall, fence, or obstacle in combat without allowing your height to limit you from succeeding is no longer a skill required of a rifle platoon commander. Ask any rifle platoon commander what he or she thinks of that — don’t be surprised when you get hit in the face.

Army Major General John Evans recently said, “We’re trying to encourage our female officers and our officers that are ethnically diverse to choose combat arms branches to provide greater opportunities for them in the long term.” His words, no doubt, demonstrate the Army’s attempt to create more female and ethnically diverse general officers later on down the line. The Marine Corps evidently intends to accomplish the same, only not by “encouraging” its females and ethnically diverse officers to join combat arms, but instead by forcing them to do so. The commanding officer of TBS was recently proscribed diversity quotas for combat arms when assigning an MOS to graduates of the BOC. In other words, females or ethnically diverse officers who have zero desire to become a Combat Arms Officer can now be forced into those career fields based solely upon their gender or the color of their skin.

Pause for effect.

Depressing and utterly unacceptable as these changes are, they pale in comparison to the coup de gras of the Marine Corps’ mediocrity: In an effort to achieve more diversity in the Infantry Officer MOS, which eventually yields more generals in the Corps than any other MOS, TBS has dramatically relaxed graduation standards for the Corps’ infamous Infantry Officer Course (IOC). IOC is designed to forge stoic, hardened, tactically proficient infantry officers with an indomitable will through the rigors of some of the most mentally and physically demanding training in the DOD. That training includes numerous timed hikes under upwards of 150+ pounds of load over distances up to 10 miles in order to emulate the environment in which an Infantry Unit must operate in combat.

Apparently, that training is too hard for the DOD to achieve its diversity quota.

The commanding officer has removed the requirement for students at IOC to pass all of the hikes in order to graduate. Additionally, whereas the course director (a Marine Corps major) used to retain the right to dismiss a student from training for failure, the commanding officer of TBS (a Marine Corps colonel in line for promotion to brigadier general) now retains that right solely. That means a student could fail every single hike at IOC, receive a recommendation to be dismissed from the course by every instructor at the course, and still be forced to graduate by the TBS CO (who you’ll recall has been instructed to reach female and diversity quotas in Combat Arms MOS).

Though none of these figures or information are classified, the Marine Corps has kept them under wraps. Many Marine officers who are reading this are likely hearing it for the first time, and any enlisted Marines reading it should wonder why the Corps is deliberately lowering the standards of physical and mental toughness (once the Marine Corps’ hallmarks) for its leaders.

As taxpayers, all Americans should ask these questions: Are these decisions making the Marine Corps better? Is the Corps more lethal now? Are its junior officers in its most critical occupational specialties better leaders because of these lower standards? And can we trust the commanding officers of these schools, who deliberately lowered standards for the sake of race and gender, to make ethical, righteous, hard decisions in the future?

Those answers are all clearly “no.” Reducing training requirements for Marines is an egregious and dangerous error.

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The High Cost of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Tuition continues skyrocketing at institutions of higher learning as the cost of leftist indoctrination grows.

Thomas Gallatin

The recent infiltration of Critical Race Theory into nearly every aspect of life may appear to have exploded into mainstream culture out of nowhere, but the reality is that CRT has been an ideological cancer metastasizing within the halls of American higher education for several decades.

Unlike cancer, however, CRT’s spread throughout higher education has been anything but organic. Rather, it owes its existence to an active and aggressive effort to spread Marxist ideology via the deceptively named “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs on college campuses.

Under the guise of concerns for ensuring fairness and equality, these DEI programs have expanded both within and across America’s universities to the point where DEI program staff outnumber history professors (if not other departments as well) at most institutions.

In a recently released report by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, Jay Greene found that on a typical college campus there were “1.4 times as many DEI personnel as tenured or tenure-track history professors.” Furthermore, “The average university has 45.1 people tasked with promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The University of Michigan has 163 staff directly tied to the school’s DEI program.

What an organization values is evident by where the money and resources are spent. In the case of America’s institutions of higher learning, it’s clear that DEI programs hold high priority. As Greene’s report notes, “DEI staff listed by universities totaled 4.2 times the number of staff who assist students with disabilities in receiving reasonable accommodations, as required by law.” Furthermore, “The average university had 3.4 people working to promote DEI for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members.”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently noted that the ballooning cost of education is tied to what he called the racket of the federal government nationalizing and subsidizing unlimited student loans, because schools then jack up tuition and other prices. “It has resulted in universities, people on staff and administration getting paid six-figure sums not to teach … but to engage in administration,” Cruz asserted. “Take the University of Michigan. … An in-state student can expect to spend $130,000 during four years … [while] an out-of-state student can expect to spend $300,000. … Why is it so expensive? Well, I’ll tell you; there’s massive overhead. For example, Michigan has 163 diversity and inclusion employees, whose job it is to be administrative overhead. To put that in perspective, [UM] has 2.3 diversity and inclusion officers for every one member of the history faculty. Our universities don’t teach anymore. They are instead paid sinecures for people who go and work for the government — and by the way, they have become some of the biggest donors to Democrats. … And what Democrats are now proposing to benefit universities and keep jacking up costs is to transfer money from working men and women. The top 25% of households with incomes above $173,000 hold 34% of outstanding student loan debt and yet Democrats are proposing a massive wealth transfer away from working men and women.”

Yet the number of DEI staff in America’s schools only tells part of the story, as demonstrated by the outsized ideological impact they have upon the entirety of campus culture and all fields of academic study. Campuses are, after all, full of professionals of all stripes who spend an inordinate amount of time advancing not education but leftist indoctrination.

The result of these DEI programs is ironically exactly the opposite of what the title implies. It’s similar to how the advocates of CRT’s “anti-racism” dogma promote actual racism and racial division. DEI programs seek to recruit and indoctrinate revolutionary activists who in turn take and spread their “woke” ideology across the rest of country. Yesterday’s “diversity” trained student is today’s woke corporate CEO.

The ultimate cost of these DEI programs may not be measured in monetary terms but in social decay, as evidenced by growing divisions, tribalism, and hatred expressed toward the one nation whose hallmark has been promoting freedom and individual rights. Ideas that have literally changed the world for the better are the ones most under assault.

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On the Web

EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY

Jordan Candler

Government & Politics

  • Funding for Biden’s $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” plan comes up hundreds of billions short (Washington Times)
  • “No turning back” from electric vehicles, Biden says while signing executive order on carbon-free automobiles (Washington Examiner)

National Security

  • “We know MS-13 is still trying to sneak into the country. They’re just more successful now”: MS-13 arrests plummet amid border surge (Washington Times)
  • Hong Kong residents granted deportation amnesty to protect them from Chinese crackdown (Washington Times)

Annals of the “Social Justice” Caliphate

  • We’re shocked — shocked! Female prisoner pregnant after California allows biological men to be housed with women under new trans policy (PM)
  • Virginia school shares “Woke Kindergarten” video: “I feel safe when there are no police” (Fox News)

Annals of Integrity

  • Taking a stand: U.S. soccer star Carli Lloyd opts not to join teammates in pre-match kneeling (Fox News)

Other Notables

  • Payrolls increase 943,000 in July as unemployment rate slides to 5.4% (CNBC)
  • 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka dies at 72 (National Review)
  • Moderna says its COVID-19 shot 93% effective six months after second dose (Reuters) | CNN terminates three employees who came to office unvaccinated (The Hill)
  • What could possibly go wrong? Apple to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse (AP)
  • Iran’s hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi sworn in as president (CNBC)

Closing Arguments

  • Policy: Getting a better return on education: The right incentives can encourage colleges to help low-income students succeed (City Journal)
  • Satire: Biden calls on Cuomo to resign: “Leave some women for the rest of us” (Babylon Bee)

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit Headline Report.

The Patriot Post is a certified ad-free news service, unlike third-party commercial news sites linked on this page, which may also require a paid subscription.

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VIDEOS

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism — including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?” —Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Upright: “You cannot be the leader of the free world if you want to appease socialism and communism.” —House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

For the record: “Today, China is already carrying out the biggest illegal wealth transfer from one nation to another in the history of mankind. Today, the Chinese Communist Party has more control over what Americans can say, what we can hear, what we can read, what we can watch, than any foreign government has ever had in our history. And they have weaponized our openness, they have weaponized our decency, and they have weaponized a corporate lust for profits against us. And if we don’t wake up, and we don’t address this now, the America our children are going to inherit very soon could very well be one where the sanctimonious preachings of a genocidal communist tyranny will be the only thing that Americans will be allowed to hear or say about China.” —Senator Marco Rubio

Pretty much: “Joe Biden is the Olympic badminton competition after a WWE match; he’s elevator music after a heavy-metal concert; he’s the sparkler after a fireworks display.” —Rich Lowry on Biden post-Donald Trump

Friendly fire: “Putting your hand up a woman’s shirt and touching their breast is not generational. … Talking to 20-something-year-old women, asking them if they’d date an older guy and then leering at them — this is not acceptable behavior.” —NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio regarding Governor Andrew Cuomo

Why would you think that? “I thought maybe [Andrew Cuomo] would have … a conscience and step down.” —Democrat Congresswoman Kathleen Rice

Non sequitur: “The president has been clear and outspoken about the importance of women being respected and having their voices heard and being allowed to tell their stories and people treating them with respect.” —White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Handsy Joe Biden

Non compos mentis I: “VACCINE MANDATES and PASSPORTS protect our public health. Glad to see them sweeping the nation. VOTING RIGHTS protect our democratic health. Hope to see that getting the same action.” —Dan Rather

Non compos mentis II: “As long as we’re banning masks in schools, let’s ban helmets in football and paint without lead.” —Dan Rather

D’oh! “Let me clarify the masking message that I garbled… Vaccinated parents who live in communities with high COVID transmission rates should mask when out in public indoor settings to minimize risks to their unvaccinated kids. No need to mask at home.” —NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins

Huh? “I actually define racism as a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity, and are substantiated by racist ideas.” —Ibram X. Kendi (Racism is racism that leads to racism substantiated by racism. Got it.)

And last… “Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.” —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis telling Joe Biden to zip it

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TODAY’S MEME

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For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.

TODAY’S CARTOON

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1 thought on “Mid-Day Snapshot · Aug. 6, 2021”

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