Welcome to the RedState Weekly Briefing  — where we take a quick look at the week’s most viewed stories in case you missed any of them. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with this 21st Century Weekend Edition of your favorite (online) publication! This week’s edition features an extra special “zombie post” — shout out to whoever linked Bonchie’s July 2022 post regarding Dr. Birx’s troubling admission!

#1 – Passengers Applaud as American Airlines Removes Wanna-Be Olympian Who Wouldn’t Put Her Phone Away — by Jim Thompson

Richardson was on track to run in the Summer Olympics but, because she can’t follow rules, she was banned for a failed drug test. She tested positive for dope (not the brain-dead type, the joint/bong type). She knew the rule and decided that she didn’t need to comply. She failed the drug test and missed the Olympics. Would marijuana have helped her track performance? Unlikely, but that isn’t the point.

The point was, there is an across-the-board rule for all prospective Olympians that dictate what you can, and cannot have in your bloodstream even when not competing. She knew the rule and apparently decided they didn’t apply to her. Her inability to follow rules was not a one-off. It seems to be a pattern.

#2 – Deborah Birx Openly Admits to Lying About the COVID Vaccines to Manipulate the American People — by Bonchie

What an incredible thing to just spit out on cable news while promoting a book. You can tell Birx has no remorse and no fear at all that she might face backlash for brazenly lying in order to try to manipulate the American people.

She should have remorse, though. After all, what Birx is admitting to is knowing that vaccine mandates were pointless. How many thousands of people lost their jobs and livelihoods based on a known-false idea that the COVID-19 vaccines stopped the spread of the coronavirus? Yet, Birx didn’t just sit idly by, which would have been bad enough. She actively promoted those mandates while presenting herself as a servant of the public’s health. It’s not just obscene, it’s evil. Does Birx have any ability to feel empathy for the lives she destroyed? I’m not seeing any evidence of that, and her choice to go on a book tour touting her lies as accomplishments is astonishing.

#3 – Laid-off Google Employees Learn the Hard Way That Woke Corporations Don’t Actually Care — by Brandon Morse 

Every corporation wants to present itself as the friend of the family, the helpful neighbor, or the goliath you can rely on. These businesses spend millions and millions of dollars developing marketing campaigns to try to get that idea across.

Google is no different, but despite Google being a company that deals in a very modern and cutting-edge product, it’s still like every other company in that its primary concern isn’t you, it’s your wallet. At the end of the day, a corporation is a corporation.

This is what recently laid-off Google employees were blown away by after the company slashed 12,000 jobs. People who had been with the company for well over a decade suddenly realized that Google wasn’t the personable company they’d believed it was.

#4 – Watch: Reporter Hits Gavin Newsom With Reality Check After Dangerous 2A Comments — by Sister Toldjah

I was so shocked to see this come from the mouth of someone in the mainstream media that I had to do a double take at first to make sure the clip was real and not something that was being misinterpreted. But sure enough, that’s exactly what she said.

O’Donnell was, of course, exactly right. If we didn’t have such an activist media when it comes to issues like gun rights we’d see a lot more step in like she did and point out for the record that the vast majority of Second Amendment proponents are law-abiding citizens who support having the Constitutional right so they can protect themselves and their families – and others, potentially, depending on the situation – from someone who could try to harm them.

#5 – ‘That 90s Show’ Is Everything Wrong With Modern Entertainment — by Bonchie 

Who are the boys in the new show? The answer is two extremely dumb white guys (because white guys must always be written as idiots in modern entertainment) and an Asian kid who is gay. Yes, they replaced Fez, with his accent, woman chasing, and suave styling, with an overweight guy (who looks and acts like he’s a pre-teen) that has a boyfriend in Canada. Why? Because you simply can’t write jokes about a character being foreign anymore, and for a show to not have a gay character these days is a cardinal sin.

But for all the technical diversity of the new show, there’s almost none regarding who the characters are. There’s no Steven to play off of Kelso. There’s no Eric to bring levity to the group. It’s literally just two bland Kelso types, a snarky gay kid, and three girl bosses.