It’s almost the weekend, and time for another bite at the 5QT apple.
Starting with the media wars in the Big Apple.
1. Welcome to reality, New York Times!
It only took a year and a half, but now that their side can’t lose an election over the issue the New York Times has finally capitulated to the truth and run a story admitting that yes, Hunter Biden’s laptop computer was abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware and yes, the laptop contained all the atrocious stuff the New York Post reported on back in the fall of 2020.
What the Times didn’t admit was that suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story played a key role in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. But we already know that it did. A post-election survey of Joe Biden’s voters found that some 10 percent of them would not have backed him if they’d known about the slimy dealings the president’s son was engaged in, partially on behalf of “the big guy.”
The Post’s reporting deserves multiple Pulitzer prizes, but of course they won’t get any. What they got at the time was their Twitter account suspended for posting links to their own accurate reporting, and lots of other people who attempted to spread the truth about the Bidens received the same treatment.
Where are the repercussions of all this? Nowhere, of course. But next year, after coming midterm elections deliver the expected result of GOP control over Congress, there must be consequences.
For Big Tech. For the billionaires and activists who openly bragged to TIME magazine about “fortifying” the election. For for lying media outlets like the New York Times who instead of reporting the truth have suppressed it.
2. Are there any Democrats in Congress not bought and paid for by China?
That might sound like a cheap shot, but then again when Eric Swalwell gets caught sleeping with a Chinese spy while serving on the House Intelligence Committee and he isn’t even taken off that panel, you can’t give that party the benefit of the doubt.
Particularly when this happens:
An alleged Chinese spy cultivated ties to Rep. Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y.) and gave maximum donations to his campaign last year.
Suozzi, who is running for governor of New York, met multiple times with Fan “Frank” Liu, the founder of an organization called the World Harmony Foundation. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday accused Liu of spying on three pro-democracy activists as part of a “transnational repression scheme” to silence critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
Suozzi is not referenced in the complaint against Liu, and the two do not appear to have particularly strong ties. But their interactions could raise concerns that Liu cozied up to the congressman on behalf of the Chinese government. Liu touted his interactions with Suozzi on his organization’s website, suggesting he may have used the meetings to provide him with an air of legitimacy.
If the Democrats want to chase Jan. 6 ghosts for the entirety of this congressional term, then it’s completely fair game to crank up a Torquemada-style inquisition into Chinese influence in Congress.
This ought to be done even if it negatively affects a few Republicans. Who should know better.
3. Randi Weingarten is what’s wrong with American education.
We have two tweets to show you. They indicate that the American Federation of Teachers is run by someone so ridiculously incompetent she couldn’t make it in a real job. And also that a teachers union exists primarily to protect bad teachers who wouldn’t survive if education were a marketplace.
The subject is Ukraine, and AFT’s attempts to virtue-signal support for that country’s people in their war effort. Here’s the first one:
a TEACHERS union, @AFTunion, printed the #Ukranian flag upside down for their political grandstanding…and then horribly photoshopped the picture hoping you wouldn’t catch it. These people are why our public school system blows. I circled the best effort prize. pic.twitter.com/djXgyRFypu
— Capitalism Cures (@hardunkichud_d) March 16, 2022
Embarrassing.
But this tops that:
you also misspelled Ukraine https://t.co/0v2ga5vG1q pic.twitter.com/NExWOcW1kn
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) March 16, 2022
The thing about being terrible at your job is that sooner or later you aren’t going to be in it. But people like Weingarten are apparently facts of life, which makes one wonder how much longer AFT will be.
4. This proves Star Trek is a communist show.
We give you … Stacey Abrams, the president of United Earth.
Yes, that was Stacey Abrams with a cameo on Star Trek Discovery as president of United Earth. A proud Star Trek nerd, Abrams has appeared as a guest on fan shows and has talked extensively about how the show shaped her perspective. #gapol pic.twitter.com/V1HbghDERw
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) March 17, 2022
Chris Pine’s solid performance as James T. Kirk in one of the recent reboots notwithstanding, Star Trek is tired. The show was always full of woke socialism even before we knew what that was, but this is jumping the shark.
The Expanse is much better. Plain and simple. The Expanse gives you a socialist global Earth government too, but The Expanse‘s version is a dysfunctional disaster. It’s a far more realistic show.
5. “Lia” Thomas is almost a guilty pleasure at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, this idiocy infecting NCAA women’s swimming is a terrible and embarrassing development. A man should not be eligible to compete in female athletics; it violates every possible definition of fair play and objective truth.
But that said, it’s starting to seem like the whole “Lia” Thomas spectacle is just a massive troll-job, as though when it’s all over the protagonist will confess that yeah, this whole thing was a gag he wanted to see how far he could take.
Thursday Thomas won the NCAA 500-meter freestyle championship in a reasonably close race, with two more races to go. Then he declined to show up for the post-race press conference, which the rules say he was obligated to appear for.
But if the NCAA wasn’t going to stop Thomas, a guy with the anatomy to prove it, from swimming as a girl, it would be even more laughable to think they’d do anything if he blew off questions from the media after winning a championship.
On the other hand, does anybody really think the sports media would ask tough questions like “as a dude, do you think maybe you should be swimming as a dude?” That wasn’t going to happen.
Still, as irritating as this ongoing cultural aggression is, it’s almost worth rooting for Thomas to clean up the NCAA swimming championships even if only to force the NCAA to finally make a stand.
After all, where the hell are the feminists here? It can’t possibly be acceptable to them seeing a man systematically destroying the Girl Power narrative every time he gets into the water. It’s one thing to demand equal pay for equal work, but modern third-wave feminism insists that females can literally do everything men can — and along comes Thomas, who was an ordinary schlub men’s swimmer at Penn State before declaring he was a chick and competing for Penn.
The Thomas fiasco has been allowed to come this far. We might as well see it go all the way. Let’s have the full indictment of the gutless leadership of the NCAA and see what happens.
