Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

CNN Bureau Chief Says ‘Carrot’ is No Longer Working in Drive to Vaccinate Americans

A leaked internal email from CNN’s Washington bureau chief complains that the “carrot” is no longer working in terms of convincing Americans to get vaccinated and that authorities need to start using the “stick.”

The message, which was mistakenly sent to conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was only intended to be seen by other CNN colleagues.

Although Fox News didn’t name the individual responsible for the comment during an interview segment between Tucker Carlson and Kirk, CNN’s Washington bureau chief is also the network’s senior vice president, Sam Feist.

The email’s subject line was, “FW: #NEWS: A majority of unvaccinated Americans say they’re unlikely to get the Covd-19 vaccine, regardless of outreach efforts.”

“This is the point re: carrot vs. stick. The carrot is no longer going to work,” wrote the author in the body of the email.

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Democrat Florida Gubernatorial Candidate Admits Corporate Media Is Controlled By The Left

In an act of striking transparency, Florida Agricultural Commissioner and self-proclaimed “qualified candidate for governor” Nikki Fried accidentally admitted that the corporate media is controlled by the Democratic Party.

“Ron DeSantis has Fox News, but we have everyone else. Florida will be blue in 2022,” Fried tweeted.

The Democrat Florida gubernatorial candidate’s tweet displays her confidence not only in the corporate media’s overwhelming left-wing bias but also that this bias can and will be leveraged to propel her and other Democrats to electoral success in the 2022 elections. But while Fried boasts about this one-sidedness, Americans’ trust in the media has spiraled downward, with the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, shared exclusively with Axios, revealing it is at an all-time low. 

“For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media,” Axios said in January, citing the poll and reporting that 58 percent of Americans believe that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” 

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Senate Dems prepare legislation that would require women to register for military draft

As women assume larger roles in the American military, Senate Democrats are attempting to overturn the decades old male-only draft.

Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-RI) prepared draft language for a provision to be added to the upcoming annual National Defense Authorization Act to require all Americans — including women — to add their names to the list of potential draftees, regardless of sex. Reed provided the proposed legislation to Politico, which reported on the subject on Monday.

The proposal comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the male-only draft, which requires only men to sign up. In response, President Joe Biden’s administration called on the court to allow Congress to handle the issue through legislation, rather than have the Supreme Court render an opinion on the draft.

The provision comes in the wake of a “friend of the court” amicus curiae brief from a group of 10 retired U.S. generals and admirals who called for women to be added to the draft pool. “Including women in the selective service would double the pool of candidates available to draft, raising the overall quality of the conscripted force and enabling the Nation to better meet its military needs,” they argued. 

In the language of Reed’s proposed provision, the military draft requirements will be extended to “All Americans,” striking any previously male-specific references from existing legislation governing the law.

Calls to include women in the draft system have accelerated in recent years, particularly since 2015, when the Obama administration opened all combat roles to female service members. 

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You’re More Likely to Get Murdered in Chicago Than Be Hospitalized for COVID-19

“The Delta variant does not appear to be especially deadly,” says Dr. Joel Zinberg in a Tuesday New York Post op-ed.

Zinberg — who practiced medicine for 30 years at Mt. Sinai Hospital — notes that “despite rising numbers of Delta cases in July, hospitalizations have only increased moderately.” Delta victims, he notes, “are no more likely to be hospitalized or die than with other variants.”

Not only that, but as I noted elsewhere here at PJ Media on Wednesday, you’re more likely to get murdered in Chicago (18 murders per 100,000 people) than a senior citizen is to be hospitalized for the Wuhan Flu (2.9 per 100,000), Delta variant or no Delta variant.

While Zinberg adds that most of the increase “is concentrated in areas with low vaccination rates,” the actual COVID death rate is “lower than it was three weeks ago.”

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Texas Democratic lawmaker who fled to DC with other Dems to hamper election security bill likens arrest threat to plight of runaway slaves

Texas state Rep. Senfronia Thompson — among many Democratic lawmakers who fled the state as a way of hampering the passage of a Republican-led election security bill — likened the arrest threat from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to the plight of runaway slaves.

“We refuse to be a hostage, to remain a hostage within the state of Texas,” Thompson said at a Friday news conference. “And I know that there are search warrants out for us, and I’m ready to be arrested. What do you do to a slave if you don’t do nothing but arrest them when they flee?”

“We fled Texas, and if they want to arrest me, go ‘head,” Thompson added. “I’m ready to be arrested.”

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New Study Puts the Nail in the Coffin of the Myth that ‘Marijuana is a Gateway Drug’

Politicians defending the criminalization of recreational marijuana use have long riled up voters with dire warnings that the substance acts as a “gateway drug.” They insist that even if deaths directly caused by marijuana usage are virtually nonexistent, pot will eventually lead many users to more dangerous drugs.

President Biden himself has long made this claim, stating in 2010 that “I still believe [marijuana] is a gateway drug.” Only in 2019, while campaigning for president, did Biden begin to walk back this position. Yet he still does not fully support federal marijuana legalization. And the “gateway” position is still held by many other politicians clinging to their opposition to a widely popular legalization movement. For example, Republican Congressman Andy Harris recently referred to marijuana as “a known gateway drug to opioid addiction” while arguing against legalization.

However, a new study suggests that the notion that marijuana is a “gateway drug” is little more than political fiction.

Economists examined the impact that recreational marijuana laws passed in 18 states and the District of Columbia have had on metrics key to the “gateway” narrative. The analysis is the first to “comprehensively examine the broader impacts of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on a wide set of outcomes related to hard drug use, including illicit nonmarijuana related consumption, drug-related arrests, arrests for property and violent offenses, mortality due to drug-related overdoses, suicides, and admissions for drug addiction-related treatment.”

Across four different nationwide databases, the researchers “find little consistent evidence” that recreational marijuana laws have gateway effects to hard drugs. The study finds “little compelling evidence to suggest” that marijuana legalization leads to more increases in drug use, arrests for hard drug offenses, drug overdoses, or admissions for drug addiction treatment.

They say there is even “suggestive evidence that legalizing recreational marijuana reduces heroin- and other opioid-related mortality.” Ultimately, the authors conclude that critics’ fear of marijuana’s supposed “gateway” effect appears “unfounded.”

Unfounded, indeed. But don’t expect critics to change their tune.

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