WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU FEEL SAFE FLYING AGAIN? I'm talking to Chris McLaughlin of Denver International Airport about restoring traveler confidence and what that means for getting through the airport using contactless, biometric solutions to reduce customer contacts. There is some cool stuff happening so join us at 1 for that.

SOME SANCTIMONIOUS LIBS SIGNED A LETTER ABOUT CANCEL CULTURE And now, in what can only be described as ENTIRELY predictable, some of them are now apologizing for co-signing the letter to be published in the next issue of Harper's Bazaar. The letter is here:

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

July 7, 2020

The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

And it signed by a bunch of people I've never heard of plus Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem and JK Rowling. And since we ALL KNOW JK Rowling (the billionaire author of the Harry Potter series) is the Devil Incarnate because she believes that trans women are NOT the same as biological women, and trans men are NOT the same as biological men, others on the letter are not APOLOGIZING BECAUSE THE MOB CAME FOR THEM. This is HYSTERICALLY funny in an ironic way. Here's the thing. If any of these people REALLY cared about making sure opinions are being heard, they would have stood up for the right wingers that have been cancelled already. But they didn't. They only got concerned when it started happening to them. They can all suck it as far as I'm concerned.

IF REP ILHAN OMAR WERE A REPUBLICAN AND WHITE SHE'D ALREADY BE UNDER INVESTIGATION Because her campaign has funneled $900,000 to her new husband's firm since she took office. This after he said in his divorce filings from his first wife that he was "almost broke" and his business was floundering. Here's the kicker...this isn't against the law. But it damn well should be. And now that I'm on this horrible woman, did you see this? Just watch the first five minutes.