Today's Takes: Friday, July 16

The Pamphleteer -

The fracas around the recently fired Tennessee’s Health Department vaccination chief Dr. Michelle Fiscus has grown into a flame war receiving national coverage. CNN, the NY Times, and MSNBC all gave the story airtime. Fiscus went on MSBNC and penned an op-ed in the Tennessean titled 'I am afraid for my state' where she claims, "I have been terminated for doing my job because some of our politicians have bought into the anti-vaccine misinformation campaign rather than taking the time to speak with the medical experts."

At the center of the controversy sits a document outlining how to handle unaccompanied children who wish to receive the vaccine. Fiscus, unsurprisingly, thinks it fine to vaccinate unaccompanied minors. The politicians she accuses of giving into "anti-vaccine misinformation" by opposing her view are just reflecting the desires of their constituents. In a Republic, this is an admirable characteristic.

Putting a wrench in her narrative, documents from the Department of Health (DOH) retrieved by Main Street's Vivian Jones, and reported on yesterday, tell a different story. The documents make Fiscus out to be a poor leader and manager who was subject to frequent employee complaints. Two of her senior staff members resigned in response to her treatment. Fiscus had also set up a non-profit (whose sole employee was herself) devoted to distributing information about vaccines and requested funds from the Department of Health, an obvious and flagrant conflict of interest. Additionally, Fiscus lied about the aforementioned memo. She claimed the memo had been approved by the DOH and the governor's office, neither of which was true according to both the DOH and the governor's office. This was likely the final straw. Trying to go over her superior's heads with a memo she knew they would review and alter.

Further complicating the story, Fiscus revealed yesterday that she was anonymously sent a muzzle two days prior to her firing—a fact curiously absent from all of her public interviews. Tomorrow, we expect news to break of verbal abuse from Twitter trolls—maybe some "white supremacy" for good measure.

Today's Headlines

📰 General News

  • LA County To Require Masks Indoors Starting Saturday Regardless Of Vaccination Status (KCAL)
    • "Trust the Science"
  • Core Inflation Stands at 29-Year High, Rises Faster Than Wages (Epoch)
  • Fed's Powell keeps to script on jobs recovery, feels heat on inflation front (Reuter)
  • Delta Variant Widens Gulf Between ‘Two Americas’: Vaccinated and Unvaccinated (NY Times)
    • Rural vs. Urban; Rich vs. Poor; Black vs. White; Left vs Right
    • How many more ways can we invent to divide people up to make them easier to sort in the NSA's database?
  • Michigan Anti-Lockdown Group One Step Closer to Removing Governor’s Emergency Powers (Epoch)
  • U.S. Drug-Overdose Deaths Soared Nearly 30% in 2020, Driven by Synthetic Opioids (WSJ)
  • The Kids Are Not Alright: Chaos at the College Republican National Committee (National Review)
    • Even the kids are into electoral fraud these days

🌎 From Around the Globe

  • Black Lives Matter Blames Cuba Crisis on ‘Cruel’ U.S. Embargo (National Review)
    • Reminds you of the "White Supremacy is responsible for Black on Asian crime" headline
  • South Africa reels from the worst violence since apartheid (The Economist)
    • The footage from South Africa is horrific to watch
  • Europe Unveils Plan to Shift From Fossil Fuels, Setting Up Potential Trade Spats (NY Times)
  • Protests in France against COVID-19 'health pass' rules (Reuters)

💰 Money!

  • California’s eviction moratorium extension: What’s in it for tenants and landlords? (CalMatters)
    • The state of California will cover resident's, who make under $75k/year, rent going back to April 2020
  • You may need to work longer, ramp up investment risk to afford retirement, BlackRock CEO Fink says (CNBC)
    • "Sorry bout that, big guy."

🧳 Media Tactics

  • The Moral Collapse of J. D. Vance (Atlantic)
    • Tom Nichols, an "Orange Man Bad" conservative, does a hit piece profile of J.D. Vance that amounts to an "Ackchyually" meme writ-large
  • Dan Schneider Once Reigned Over Children’s TV. What Happened? (NY Times)
    • Schneider's career has been marked by wildly successful children's shows like 'Drake & Josh' and 'iCarly' and rampant accusations of pedophilia
    • Schneider's former business partner, Brian Peck, was charged with 8 counts of sexual abuse against children in 2004, and he still works in Hollywood
    • Additionally, Drake Bell, the co-star of the aforementioned 'Drake & Josh', was recently arrested on pedophilia charges
    • You are the company you keep
    • All these details (and many others) are naturally absent from the fluff piece

👁 Woke News

  • Shark advocates call for rebranding violent attacks as ‘interactions’ (NY Post)
    • Another group of advocates motions for rebranding shootings as 'misunderstandings' for unfairly maligning the perpetrators as violent criminals
  • Boston Pride Organization ‘Dissolves’ Over Allegations Of Structural Racism, Anti-Transgender Bias (Daily Wire)
  • Top U.S. General Said Trump Preached ‘Gospel of the Führer’ (NY Mag)
    • Mark "🏳️‍🌈" Milley reminds everyone how much of a loser he is. How many wars have you won there, big guy?
  • UK to ban online racists from games after Euro 2020 uproar (PBS)
    • ...all seven of them

Yesterday's Comments Today

💬 From a reader regarding the title of Robin DiAngelo's new book:
"I agree with DiAngelo’s title. White progressives are the most racist people in the country. Have destroyed black communities and done more to harm race relations than the Klan could ever dream of."

🇮🇹 From an Italian reader regarding the charge that the Italian team was too White:
"Italy is mostly white, if we have to pick black players just because the actual players are not black enough, that's racist and makes no sense. I should email the Economist and apologize that we are not France."

Nashville Politics

  • White House: 1.2 million Tennessee children will benefit from federal tax credits (TNJ)
  • Former Nashville Mayor David Briley announces run for circuit court judgeship (Tennessean)
  • Tennessee Officials Deny Shuttering Child Vaccine Information Program (Epoch)
  • Vast Differences in Funding for Opposing Sides in Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act Battle (Star)
    • You might be surprised to learn that the establishment coalition aligned against the referendum has significantly more money
  • Metro Nashville Public Schools Drops Mask Requirement for Fall Semester (Star)

Nashville News

  • Nashville's increasingly raucous reputation rebuffed by tourism leaders (Tennessean)
  • Vintage World War II warbirds to arrive in Clarksville (Main Street)
  • Tennessee unemployment rate drops to 4.9% in June (Homepage)
    • Wonder if ending juiced up unemployment benefits had anything to do with this
  • Census: The fastest shrinking place in Tennessee is in Davidson County (Main Street)
    • The city of Belle Meade has the fastest shrinking population in Tennessee, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently home to an estimated 2,280 people, Belle Meade’s population declined by 21.1% from 2010 to 2019. Meanwhile, Tennessee’s population expanded by 7.6% over the same period.

Nashville Development

  • Series of issues with custom builder makes tough market tougher for out-of-state buyers (Homepage)
  • Daycare property in Franklin sells for $5.1M (Homepage)
  • On-site work looms for Bob Dylan project in SoBro (Post)
  • Image, details released for Music Row project (Post)
  • $19B regional player buying Reliant (Post)
  • Brentwood-based Reliant Bancorp bought by South Carolina bank for $517 million (Biz Journal)
  • Three-story hotel planned for Green Hills (Post)
  • Chicago firm pitches 15-story tower in Midtown (Biz Journal)
  • New York creative firm buys former Gibson Guitar headquarters (Biz Journal)

From Tucker Carlson

💣 Two bombshell segments on Tucker Carlson's show Wednesday night produced hard evidence of electoral fraud in Georgia and accused the US military of flying illegal migrants around the nation covertly. The obfuscation and import of votes.

Stat of the Day

📊 From a poll conducted on 500 San Franciscans (Read):

  • 70% of residents feel that the quality of life in San Francisco has declined
  • 88% see homelessness as having worsened in recent years
  • 80% see addressing this homelessness crisis as a high priority
  • 76% of San Franciscans believe that it should be a high priority for the city to increase the number of police officers in high-crime neighborhoods
  • 40% of residents plan to move out of the city in the next few years

Something to Look At

Enjoy the new "pregnant man" emojis. Next up, "menstruating man" and "rapist woman" emojis.

One Good Read

🍷 Welsh red: ex-postal worker and retired nurse grab gold with a pinot noir (Read)

Palette Cleanser

Words of Wisdom

'In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.' — Thomas Mann

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!

– W.B Yeats, 'Politics', May 24, 1938

Have a great weekend!