90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Goodbye Dr. Seuss, Hello Ibram X. Kendi

Dr. Seuss is too white to be Dr. Seuss.

After canceling six Dr. Seuss books on spurious charges of racism, the massive German publishing giant and the secretive company that owns the rights to the deceased author’s work announced that they would be unveiling new “inclusive” Seuss books by diverse writers.

Seuss, or Theodor Geisel, an old dead white man is insufficiently diverse for his publishers.

While the names of the new stable of “inclusive” writers haven’t been made public, Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of the German Nazi-linked Berteslman giant, also publishes or distributes prominent racists like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

CEO Markus Dohle recently announced a $500,000 fund to fight against parents trying to keep critical race theory hatred and racist books, like those promoted by Penguin Random House, out of schools. The German subsidiary has also published “Anti-Racist Baby” and other racist children’s books by Ibram X. Kendi through Random House Children’s Books.

Random House Children’s Books is also publishing the new “inclusive” Seuss skinned books.

The line between Penguin Random House and Dr. Seuss Enterprises is hazy at times. Seussville, the cutesy book site, is run by Random House. The two organizations appear to closely collaborate together on finding exciting new ways to strip mine Dr. Seuss’s legacy.

While Dr. Seuss was reluctant to embrace merchandising and exercised careful control over his work during his lifetime, he left behind no real family or children. Since then he has become, in the words of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, a “brand” to be licensed for movie deals, clothes, NFTs, and every kind of junk that those who knew him believed that he would have absolutely hated.

Once told that he could be in the Guiness Book of World Records as the writer who had been paid the most money per word, he had retorted, “I'd rather be in the book as the writer who refused to be paid the most money per word.”. But these days he’s not around to protest.

And so there’s an NFT, a partnership with the anti-American women’s soccer team to promote “girl power”, the Dr. Seuss Experience, and a steady stream of “new books” and “lost stories”.

The launch of Seuss Studios with its “inclusive” authors basing entire books around a single Seuss sketch disguises the cynical strip mining under the veil of identity politics.

When the original six Seuss books were canceled and banned, some conservatives defended it as a decision by a private organization. Dr. Seuss Enterprises is certainly private. It’s so private that there’s surprisingly little information available about...

Armed and ready, I got my gun sight trained on you

Armed and ready, don't let me down tonight

Are you high tonight, are you feelin' right

Is it hard enough, is it loud enough

Are you high!

Public backlash as parents are barred from attending meetings of Texas’ ‘Racial Equity Committee’

For the first time since the district’s “Racial Equity Committee” was formed in 2016, the committee has barred members of the public from attending its meetings.

After trying to park his vehicle in the parking lot of the school hosting the meeting, a disabled Fort Worth resident who tried to attend FWISD’s “Racial Equity Committee” (REC) meeting on Thursday was told to remove it from district property.

“They don’t like the light of truth that we have shown on them, they want to lurk back to the shadows to hide while they waste our money and divide our children, our city,” FWISD parent Hollie Plemmons told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Equity has not helped the students, it’s only made those in the business of equity rich. If that money had been spent on extra teachers to help the kids struggling to read just imagine how much better off the students and scores would be.”

According to CBS DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth), the REC will not hold public meetings and will not post meeting times or locations because there won’t be a quorum of school board trustees present, so it won’t be bound by board policy or the Texas Open Meetings Act.

It’s almost as if they think that parents have no right to...

Visage à trois #97

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

And Joe Biden’s State of the Union pitch to lower drug prices won’t change that.

It took Russia’s naked aggression against Ukraine for Germany to admit that Donald Trump was right all along: Europe needs to stop relying on U.S. subsidies and spend more on its own defense.

In a stunning policy reversal, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would do what Trump was long urging and commit at least two percent of GDP to defense spending.

That the United States has been subsidizing Europe’s defense is well known, thanks mainly to Trump’s harping on it. Another thing Trump thundered about, correctly, is that the United States also subsidizes Europe’s socialized healthcare. Pharmaceutical companies rely upon sky-high U.S. drug prices to render economically viable their ability to sell drugs in other countries. The United States thereby subsidizes socialized healthcare in the rest of the world, especially in the wealthiest European countries.

Here’s how and why—and why Joe Biden’s State of the Union pledge to lower drug prices is dead on arrival.

Drug development is expensive. To defray costs and turn a profit, most pharma companies rely upon the holy trinity of drug approval: The United States, Western Europe, and Japan—usually in that order, for compelling economic reasons.

Why that order? The United States is nearly always first because the highest prices can be obtained there. Through their “market access” functions, pharma companies negotiate prices with the “payers”: large healthcare organizations, hospital systems and insurers. These discussions often involve byzantine structures of rebates and third parties known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). But the main goal is always the same: to convince the payers to accept the highest price possible for U.S. sales.

The Trump Administration briefly tried to enact “most-favored nation” status for the United States, under which American prices could be no higher than the lowest approved prices elsewhere. That proposal went nowhere fast. The same will happen with Biden’s State of the Union pledge to “let Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs.” Pharma companies donate a lot to politicians of both parties. Therefore, neither “most-favored nation” nor negotiated Medicare prices will happen.

The pharma companies have no interest in changing the status quo, as their business models explicitly depend on high U.S. prices. Without being propped up by American consumers and taxpayers, the economic viability of selling drugs in Europe and beyond nosedives. The European health authorities, on behalf of their largely single-payer systems, know they have the upper hand with the drug companies, as everyone acknowledges that high U.S. prices are intended to subsidize lower prices in Europe. This, of course, props up their socialized medicine schemes by...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #273

Twitter Blows Up After Shocking Match of Suspect Sketch for Madeleine McCann Disappearance with Ghislaine Maxwell

Internet sleuths were buzzing in December with a new theory regarding the alleged crimes of Ghislaine Maxwell.

Those theories posit that Maxwell may have been involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

According to BBC News, McCann went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia de Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday.

Despite her case being one of the most heavily reported on at the time, her whereabouts continue to remain unknown.

The more recent internet theories have linked Maxwell to the disappearance because a sketch of one of the suspects in the case looks eerily similar to Maxwell.

Although at this point the Maxwell-McCann connection is a conspiracy theory at best, given the current crimes levied against her, it would be no surprise to learn she was connected to another missing-persons case involving a little girl.

During Maxwell’s trial, one of her accusers — identified as “Jane” — gave graphic accounts of the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of both Epstein and Maxwell.

Jane was only 14 years old at the time the abuse started.

Also, according to Jane, Maxwell didn’t just groom her for abuse — she also participated in the abuse herself.

“I was abused pretty much every time that I would go over to his house, and it all started to seem the same after a while — whether it was just him or there were other women involved, or me and Jeffrey and Ghislaine, it all started to seem the same,” Jane testified.

“After a while, you just become numb to it.”

Maxwell was eventually convicted on five of six charges related to her reported complicity in the many sex crimes committed by notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein, who is now dead, but her case is now under review for a potential mistrial after a juror revealed he had previously been sexually assaulted as a child.

The McCann suspect sketch wasn’t the only eerie connection linking Maxwell to an old missing-persons case.

Another viral photo that reemerged on social media in December depicts someone who looks like Maxwell in a picture with JonBenét Ramsey, a child beauty queen who was found murdered in her Colorado home on Christmas Day 1996.

Even if these Maxwell connections turn out to be...

There is a behind-the-scenes story to President Biden’s sudden announcement Saturday of more arms for Ukraine as Vladimir Putin tries to swallow up the former Russian possession.

For weeks, the White House National Security Council and Pentagon have been “slow-rolling” Kyiv’s long-standing request for more weapons as Russian President Putin deployed a massive troop buildup, a congressional source told me. The Biden team did not want to “escalate” — meaning they were intimidated by the Russian president.

“DOD and NSC lawyers are slow-rolling the re-supply of weapons to Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics over concerns it will draw the United States into the war,” the source said. “The Baltic nations need more Stingers and Javelins to replenish their inventory which was depleted by transfers to Ukraine.”

Stingers are the shoulder-mounted heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles that sent Soviet troops retreating from Afghanistan. Javelins are the U.S. Army’s top anti-tank weapon. President Trump made the first-time shipments to Ukraine. The Baltic states have sent U.S. Stingers.

In January, the administration briefed House members that sending Stingers “might escalate the situation,” the source said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flak jacket in place, is defying the Russian strongman and his huge approaching army by staying put. He rejected an offer by Biden aides to spirit him to safety.

“I need ammunition, not a ride,” he said.

The brave president underscores what the congressional source is telling me: The Biden team has been too slow to beef up Ukraine even as Mr. Biden repeatedly served as a crisis broadcaster of a sure invasion.

The irony of the sudden rush to send arms by Mr. Biden now that Mr. Putin has invaded was not lost on Richard Grenell, President Trump’s former top...