Lies trying to hide how bad the Biden Recession sucks continue to unravel, a mini Texas-vs.-California update, Ukraine makes another oil refinery go boom, true depths of human depravity, some Bill Burr and Critical Drinker links, and two tons of Murica. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Against expectations of a small improvement from -11.3 to -10.0, the headline sentiment gauge dropped to -14.4 (the lowest end of analysts’ forecasts).
Furthermore, the production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell five points to -4.1, a reading that suggests a slight decline in output month over month.
Other measures of manufacturing activity also indicated declines this month.
The new orders index – a key measure of demand – dropped 17 points to -11.8 after briefly turning positive last month.
The capacity utilization index edged down five points to -5.7, and the shipments index plunged from 0.1 to -15.4.
The decline in new orders came alongside a surge in prices as raw materials costs rose to 13-month highs…
That has the stench of stagflation lathered all over it.
Also worse than reported: employment numbers. “Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000.”
We first have to go back to December 2022, when we reported something shocking: as part of its data analysis of the “more comprehensive, accurate job estimates released by the BLS as part of its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program”, the Philadelphia Fed found that the BLS had overstated jobs to the tune of 1.1 million! This is what the Philadelphia Fed wrote in its quarterly Early Benchmark Revision of State Payroll Employment report at the time:
Our estimates incorporate more comprehensive, accurate job estimates released by the BLS as part of its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program to augment the sample data from the BLS’s CES that are issued monthly on a timely basis. All percentage change calculations are expressed as annualized rates. Read more about our methodology. Learn more about interpreting our early benchmark estimates.
So what did this “more accurate”, “more comprehensive” report find? It found that…
In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.
Lots of detailed analysis snipped.
Putting it all together, we now know – as the Philly Fed reported first – that the labor market is far weaker than conventionally believed. In fact, no less than 800,000 payrolls are “missing” when one uses the far more accurate Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data rather than the BLS’ woefully inaccurate and politically mandated payrolls “data”, and if one looks back the the monthly gains across most of 2023, one gets not 230K jobs added on average every month but rather 130K.
Of course, none of that paints Bidenomics in a flattering picture, because while one can at least pretend that issuing $1 trillion in debt every 100 days to add 3 million jos per year is somewhat acceptable, learning that that ridiculous amount buys 800,000 jobs less is hardly the endorsement that the White House needs.
I think I link a story like this every year: “California Leads Among U.S. States Sending People to Texas in 2022. Florida and New York combined sent fewer people to Texas than California.” Leave any leftwing politics behind when you move…
California has a $55 billion deficit. But don’t worry, for the 24-25 fiscal year, it’s a $73 billion deficit.
A Russian-backed “propaganda” network has been broken up for spreading anti-Ukraine stories and paying unnamed European politicians, according to authorities in several countries.
Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.
The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European politics.
Voice of Europe did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Czech media, citing intelligence sources, reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary were paid by Voice of Europe in order to influence upcoming elections for the European Parliament.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel said the money was either handed over in cash in covert meetings in Prague or through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk is alleged by the Czech Republic to be behind the network.
Mr Medvedchuk was arrested in Ukraine soon after the Russian invasion, but later transferred to Russia with about 50 prisoners of war in exchange for 215 Ukrainians.
Czech authorities also named Artyom Marchevsky, alleging he managed the day-to-day business of the website. Both men were sanctioned by Czech authorities.
“$100M missing from Bay area trust fund management company. A Bay area father who counted on a local non-profit to handle a trust fund designed for his daughter’s long-term care feels duped.” And this is a trust for special needs kids.
The radical leftists in control of Baltimore City Hall have plunged the metro area just north of Washington, DC, into apocalyptic levels. We advise readers to entirely avoid the metro area as violent crime spirals out of control.
Failed social justice reforms, defunding the police, and widespread mistrust of the police have resulted in a skeleton police force that will no longer be able to protect residents in some regions of the city.
Fox Baltimore reported last Tuesday that only three police officers were on duty for the Southern Police District, which includes more than 61,000 residents.
Joe Lieberman, RIP. One of the least reprehensible Democratic senators of the last 30 years or so. But I still remember this:
Don’t click on this link unless you want to plumb the depths of human depravity. Noteworthy: “He and his husband.”
Stellantis, AKA The European Monster That Ate Chrysler, just just laid off a whole bunch of white collar workers. Note their mention of focusing on “implementing our EV product offensive.” Oh yeah, they’re boned.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declares victory over Disney, as the latter has dropped their lawsuit over the the elimination of their special district status.
Sean Combs, AKA “Puff Daddy,” AKA “Diddy,” raided by the FBI. “A source close to the investigation told NBC News that the raid was connected to allegations of sex-trafficking and sexual assault and the solicitation and distribution of illegal narcotics and firearms.” “Source close” caveats apply.
The federal government is going to allow a shuttered nuclear power plant to be restarted. “The federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead.” Not wild about the loan part, but restarting America’s nuclear energy growth is long overdue.
Used Japanese homes are worthless Not just because of the shrinking population, but because they’re designed to be.
The Critical Drinker is not impressed with the Road House remake. “The Patrick Swayze original wasn’t exactly peak cinema. It was dumb and over-the-top and silly, and I don’t imagine people were exactly crying out for a remake. But damn, man, it’s like Citizen Kane compared to this version.”
School tries to ban American flag from truck. Result: Two tons of Murica.
Twitch is cracking down on streams that “focus on intimate body parts.” After watching this, I have one question: Where exactly did the lady featured obtain her “automatic butt jiggler?”
Feel-good crime aftermath story:
Dog shot during the robbery given a warm send off by hospital staff after undergoing multiple surgeries..🐕🐾🥺🙏❤️ pic.twitter.com/OnSjqmRt2u
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of 2023! Iranian proxies get pounded, NGO’s help destroy the border, Democrats keep trying to remove Trump from the ballot, and thieves get a taste of their own medicine. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Not only is the Obama/Biden administration undermining American sovereignty and the rule of law by allowing a massive influx of illegal aliens, but a wide variety of NGOs, some “none political,” are also involved.
A network of NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, seems to be playing a powerful role in coordinating the large-scale invasion of illegals at the US southern border.
The new website Muckraker revealed a treasure trove of “mass migration blueprints,” handed out by NGOs across South and Central America to illegals with details about their route to the US.
“The collapse of the US southern border is the result of a carefully planned and deliberately executed industrial mass migration program,” Muckraker said.
MAP #1 – Distributed by Doctors Without Borders (Médicos Sin Fronteras in Spanish).
They seem to be taking that “Without Borders” part way too literally.
What’s becoming increasingly evident is that a network of NGOs funded partly by the US taxpayer but by other countries and corporations are covertly facilitating the invasion of illegals at the US southern border, as well as distributing them across the US into progressive metro areas.
According to an August report by progressive left-leaning media watchdog organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security allocated $363 million to NGOs to assist illegal aliens once in the US.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a press release one year ago detailing how “NGOs may be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on both sides of the border, including in sectors other than El Paso.”
Once across the border, NGOs are also helping migrants with transportation across the US, such as providing seats on commercial airlines.
Also “Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona Inc.”
And speaking of Flu Manchu, here’s another fraud case. “A Georgia attorney and former City of Atlanta police officer has been convicted of fraudulently obtaining over $7 million in loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, 62-year-old Shelitha Robertson from Atlanta conspired to submit PPP loan applications on behalf of four businesses she owned.”
The Real Story: “Philadelphia trans activist charged with rape of not one, but two minors.” The Newsweek Story: “Trans Activist Kendall Stephens’ Arrest Sparks MAGA Uproar.” Evidently the left feels that only MAGA Republicans should be upset at the rape of minors…
According to the Department of Emergency Management, San Francisco’s 911 call dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, the latest month available. That’s the lowest share of any month in the last six years, and well short of the department’s goal to answer 95 percent of calls in 15 seconds or fewer.
Staffing is not up to the levels required, which is causing people to burn out, due to mandatory overtime. The bureaucratic hiring practice moves at a glacial pace, and so they can’t hire people to cover retirement and people just quitting due to burn out. They did raise pay some, but there is no indication if that is enough. I guess only time will tell.
The second problem that San Francisco has, in relation to 911 calls, is getting officers to the scene of a “Priority A” incident.
The slowdown in responses has contributed to broader delays San Franciscans face when trying to get help during emergency situations. The city’s typical response time to “Priority A” incidents — defined as the most urgent and serious events, like assaults-in-progress — is slower than it’s been at any point in the last eight years, increasing from about 6.5 minutes in January 2016 to nearly nine minutes this November.
Now this is the media, so there is no mention of any “defund the police” initiatives in San Francisco over the past few years.
“Since President Trump’s win in 2016, black support for him has more than tripled, now exceeding 20 percent in some surveys.” Including Mark Fisher, co-founder of a Black Lives Matter group in Rhode Island
“Two large Pizza Hut operators in California are laying off all their delivery drivers ahead of a new state law that raises the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, Business Insider reports.” Good work, Democrats!
Grocery store manager Gatzke told Bild that the thieves who steal huge bags full of items are usually migrants, with around a third of them being Tunisian.
During one incident at the Edeka supermarket in Regensburg, a man stole €140 euros worth of goods, while the manager has also tried to stop thieves stealing groceries worth €300 euros.
“In the bag were spirits: vodka and liqueurs again. They are Muslims — did they want to resell the alcohol?” asked Gatzke.
“What do you need 10 sea bream and so many shrimp for? Nobody steals that because they’re hungry,” he added.
Gatzke noted that the culprits even steal shopping bags worth up to €2.50 euros.
However, he was denounced as a “racist” for complaining about the mass looting and subsequently criticized by Ferat Koçak, a member of the Berlin House of Representatives for The Left party.
Siding with the criminals, Koçak suggested that the migrants were “entitled” to steal because the government wasn’t giving them enough free money in welfare payments.
Some interesting artillery usage data, via reader Kirk”
Russian tremendous artillery advantage at beginning of war (65k shells/day) down to about 1/10 of that, while Ukraine advantage in platforms & counter battery has grown significantly. Then,… pic.twitter.com/Ak6o0hJmpv
Nothing says “Republican” quite like having Democrats do fundraising for you. “Dade Phelan Fundraiser Hosted by Liberals. Former House Speaker Joe Straus and former Democrat nominee for lieutenant governor Leticia Van de Putte are among those raising cash for Phelan.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a $700 million settlement with Google over anticompetitive practices.
According to the settlement, Google must pay $630 million in restitution—minus costs and fees—to consumers who made purchases on the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive practices.
Paxton secured the settlement alongside attorneys general from all 49 other states as well as the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
would like to share the happiest Christmas memory of my childhood with you, an experience that shaped the young adult and the man I would become as much as any book or teacher ever would. I was accidentally given an inestimable gift – one which unwittingly dared me to grow intellectually and culturally so that I could be properly worthy of it, and which has since comforted me through endless long subsequent years of disappointment, heartache, personal growth, and triumph. And there’s no better time to write about it than during a season of joy. So if you will graciously permit me, on this Christmas Eve 2023 I’d like to take you back to the “not-too-distant future.”
On Christmas Eve 1991, my father suggested we should watch a cassette of an obscure TV show his friend at work had taped off a then-obscure cable channel called Comedy Central a few days before. “A guy and some robots make fun of bad movies” was how he described the premise. Since my dad and I had been talking back to films from the safety of our family-room couch for years already while watching B-movie schlock like USA Up All Night, it was at least something to do. (11-year-olds do not otherwise have a long list of entertainment options.)
Although my dad couldn’t possibly have intended it, what happened next altered the course of my life, and profoundly for the better: I was exposed to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K for short) for the first time. And “exposed” is the right word; the experience was as instantly catalyzing a moment for me as a rapid chemical reaction. It was the Christmas episode from a few days earlier, and the show was mocking something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
“I’ll never forget how comforted MST3K made me feel from that exact moment onward, comforted that there were people out there who had my sense of humor – only they were vastly more funny than me.”
God bless us, each and every one…
“North Carolina has a law that allows people to do practically whatever they want to the official state marsupial.” Which would be the possum. And it only applies five days a year. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Happy Black Friday, everyone! (Here’s my prepping/gift guide, if you haven’t seen it already.) I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Some interesting international election results, unreasonable gun control legislation gets struck down in two different states, more legal trouble for Houston Democrats, and a weed company goes bankrupt. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The average price American families will have to pay to celebrate Thanksgiving with a traditional dinner will be the most expensive in history after years of sky-high inflation that experts attribute partially to President Joe Biden’s policies, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The price of all goods has risen dramatically under Biden following a period of sustained high inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in March 2022 and has since remained elevated, measuring at 3.2% in October, while the index for food rose 3.3% year-over-year for the month. The total increase in costs for a Thanksgiving dinner is about 26% since the beginning of Biden’s term, culminating in the most expensive Thanksgiving dinner in history.
Don’t buy the cookies. “Girl Scouts To Host Training Sessions On ‘Internalized Racism,’ ‘White Supremacy Culture.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
In a surprising turn of events, Argentina has elected the libertarian outsider Javier Milei as its new president. The hotly contested presidential run-off saw Milei defeating left-wing candidate Sergio Massa — a consequential shift in the country’s political landscape. Massa brusquely conceded on Sunday night, stating, “Milei is the president elected for the next four years.”
The victory of Milei, a self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist,” introduces an unconventional leader with what are considered to be radical economic views relative to Argentina’s neighbors. His campaign, characterized by anti-establishment rhetoric and metaphorical gestures such as wielding a chainsaw to show his fervor for cutting taxes, resonated with voters frustrated by Argentina’s economic decrepitude, including triple-digit inflation. One of Milei’s key proposals is the adoption of the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s national currency, an unprecedented move for a country of its size (Argentina is home to some 45.8 million people).
Massa — a lifelong politician and representative of Argentina’s left-wing political establishment — emphasized his government’s actions to address inflation during his tenure.
But Milei’s appeal, particularly among the younger generation, suggests a desire for change to break free from the cycle of economic crises.
Milei’s victory has produced excitement and concern alike. While some see him as the catalyst for much-needed economic reforms, others fear the potential austerity measures tied to his plans, such as shutting the central bank and slashing spending. Despite the uncertainty, Milei’s supporters view him as the only viable option to break the political status quo and address Argentina’s persistent and extreme economic challenges.
The election is not just a political shift but also a generational one, with Milei’s popularity among the youth reflecting a desire for a new direction. The effect of Milei’s win extends beyond Argentina’s borders, potentially influencing trade relationships, especially with his criticism of China and Brazil and his preference for stronger ties with the United States. As for the U.S., the hour is late, and we’ll take all the friends we can get, and Argentina is doubly welcome because the Millennium must be nigh if a libertarian won an election outside of New Hampshire.
Note: Linking to MSN rather than NRO because the latter has now raised it’s war against ad-blockers to obnoxious levels. Year-by-year, the TDS-infected NR has become ever-more sad and useless.
Geert Wilders, the Dutch populist whose anti-Islam comments have led to death threats, could become the next leader of the Netherlands following an election upset for his Freedom Party (PVV) on Wednesday.
After 25 years in Dutch politics without holding office, Wilders was set to lead coalition government talks and has a good chance of becoming prime minister.
An exit poll on Wednesday evening showed the PVV in a clear lead, 10 seats ahead of its closest rival, Frans Timmermans’ Labour/Green Left combination.
“We will have to find ways to live up to the hopes of our voters, to put the Dutch back as number one”, Wilders said in his first response, adding that “the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed.”
Maryland is one of 14 states that require background checks for all firearm purchases, whether or not the seller is a federally licensed dealer. Since 2013, Maryland has imposed an additional requirement on handgun buyers: They must first obtain a “handgun qualification license,” which entails completing at least four hours of firearm training and undergoing a seemingly redundant “investigation” aimed at screening out people who are legally disqualified from owning guns. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, that process, which can take up to 30 days, violates the Second Amendment.
In a decision published on Tuesday, a divided 4th Circuit panel concluded that Maryland’s handgun ownership licensing system is not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test that the U.S. Supreme Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Writing for the majority in Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore, 4th Circuit Judge Julius Richardson notes that Bruen “effected a sea change in Second Amendment law,” making a variety of gun control laws newly vulnerable to constitutional challenges. Maryland’s handgun licensing law is the latest example.
Speaking of unconstitutional gun laws being struck down: “It turns out that bullets are an essential part of a gun, and limiting the number of rounds in a gun violates the Oregon constitution. A county judge in Oregon made that decision on Tuesday overturning Measure 114, a citizen-passed measure that outlawed what gun grabbers call ‘high capacity magazines’ and required that Oregon serfs get a permit to be allowed to purchase a gun.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Funny how no Arab nation wants to take in Palestinians. They know the simple truth: They suck.
The Palestinians tried to take over Jordan in the 1970s, leading to the late King Hussein declaring war on them and driving them out. They were booted from Kuwait after collaborating with Saddam Hussein’s forces before the Gulf War. They set off a powder keg in Lebanon, a nation that has yet to recover from its brutal civil war that lasted 15 years. No Arab country wants these people because they bring instability and trouble.
Outgoing Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner gets to enjoy a new host of scandals on his way out.
As term-limited Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner finishes his final days at the helm of the state’s most populous city, a new set of scandals have emerged over city contracts and a dispute over who will pay for a book touting the mayor’s legacy.
In the most recent dustup, an investigation by Houston’s KPRC 2 discovered that city contracts for much-needed water repairs were awarded to two relatives of Houston Public Works (HPW) employee Patrece Lee, including one for $4.5 million to Lee’s brother, who had only created his company six months before the city council approved the “emergency contracts.”
When KPRC reporter Amy Davis attempted to question Turner about the issue at a public event last week, Turner became irate and told his communications director to escort Davis from the room.
“You are not going to get away with this,” said Turner to Davis. “You are rude.”
Late Friday, HPW Director Carol Haddock announced that the employee had been placed on leave while the city’s Office of the Inspector General investigated the allegations.
In another contract scandal, Houston Landing media reported last week that the Midtown Redevelopment Authority had referred information to law enforcement on a since-fired manager who allegedly steered more than $4 million in taxpayer-funded landscaping contracts to himself and another contractor.
The latest developments came hard on the heels of Turner’s squabble with Houston First Corporation, the city’s marketing organization. During the “State of the City” luncheon last September, hosted by Houston First, attendees were given copies of Turner’s book “A Winning Legacy,” which celebrates the mayor’s accomplishments during his eight years in office.
As first reported by Bill King, Turner told President and CEO Michael Heckman that Houston First must pay a $123,979 invoice for the 600 copies, but Heckman refused, saying it was not in the corporation’s budget and not an appropriate expense. Houston First Chairman David Mincberg later told FOX 26 that the corporation would develop a strategy to raise private funds to pay for the books.
Controversy has also surrounded Turner’s management of city finances. Last year, Controller Chris Brown warned that the city was using $160 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds to plug budget holes and even to cover ongoing expenses.
Speaking of governments in trouble for spending Flu Manchu funds on other priorities, Germany is also in trouble for pulling the same trick after their high court told them to stop. As Europeans, spending within their means is unacceptable, so they’re now plotting to suspend debt limits…
Texas Governor Greg Abbott endorses Donald Trump for President. This is interesting in that Abbott is a careful, cautious Republican, who might be more ideologically inclined to endorse Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley. That Abbott has endorsed Trump indicates he thinks Trump is a lock for the 2024 nomination. He may be right.
“Stacey Abrams’ Brother-In-Law Arrested, Accused Of Human Trafficking, Choking Underage Girl…Jimmie Gardner, a well-known Georgia-based youth motivational speaker, is accused of human trafficking, lewd or lascivious touching, and battery…According to the Tampa Police Department, Gardner invited a 16-year-old girl to his hotel room in the early hours of Friday, offering to pay her for sexual acts.” Sounds like the wrong sort of youth motivation…
If you’re stressing over your taxes, you might be slightly relieved to know that they’re not due until April 18. Thus week: More Blue City violence and decline, lots of Social Justice Warrior backlash, Facebook shows snowflakes the door, and Budweiser commits brand suicide.
“Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges. Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.”
Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco’s political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.
On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city, with the valued and talented Lee’s untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That’s expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn’t live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime and come back only for a brief business trip.
On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there’s really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the “crime is down” coverage seen in the political establishment’s house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless “services” as it does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.
Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell’s observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.
The Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian has noted:
Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-rid….
Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.
Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money — for themselves. That’s what’s made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.
Democrats and Social Justice Warriors view homelessness as a huge profit center, and seek to increase the ranks of the homeless at every opportunity.
Also, an arrest was made in the Lee case and it was a fellow tech guy who knew him. “A tech executive named Nima Momeni was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the April 4 killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee…Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.” So not a random gibbering drug-addicted transient.
Speaking of San Francisco street crime, a Whole Food closes one year after opening due to violence and theft.
A St. Louis judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish in major U.S. cities.
Alex Heflin, 23, was held without bond since January after he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action, local media reported. But those charges were recently reduced to involuntary and voluntary manslaughter before he was released, while his April 17 trial has been postponed until June 12.
Judge Theresa Counts Burke ruled in favor of Heflin’s lawyers after they filed a motion accusing a prosecutor under Gardner of violating discovery rules. They alleged that her office did not turn over evidence, including a 911 call recording and DNA evidence.
“The court finds that there have been repeated delays by the state in obtaining discovery and providing it to the defense,” Burke wrote, according to local reports.
“There has been a lack of diligence on the part of the state in following up and providing discovery to the defendant in a timely fashion. As a result of the state’s actions and lack of diligence, the court grants defendant’s second motion for sanctions.”
Under Burke’s order, Heflin will have to remain on GPS monitoring. She also ordered the circuit attorney’s office to hand over their list of witnesses within 24 hours, provide DNA test results within 24 hours, or ask a crime lab for the DNA results.
“Molotov balloons are a ball filled with sulfuric acid, but white strips are a type of paper treated with potassium chlorate and a sugar mix. When the balloon breaks, the acid reacts with the potassium chlorate and sugar, which causes ignition.”
Another girlboss indicted: “Penn grad Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, charged with fraud over $175M JPMorgan deal.” Seems the heart of the indictment is fake users.
Prosecutors and the SEC allege that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMorgan into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used the company’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.
Prosecutors said when JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) sought to verify the number of Frank users and the amount of data collected about them, Javice fabricated a data set. She is alleged to have an unnamed co-conspirator who first asked Frank’s director of engineering to create an artificially generated data set. Prosecutors said the director of engineering declined the request after expressing concerns about its legality.
Javice, according to prosecutors, then approached an outside data scientist and hired him to create the synthetic data set — which was then provided to an agreed-upon third-party vendor in an effort to confirm to JPMorgan that the data set had over 4.25 million rows.
Based on that alleged fraudulent data, prosecutors said JPMorgan agreed to buy Frank for $175 million. As part of the deal, the nation’s largest bank hired Javice and other Frank employees. Prosecutors said Javice received over $21 million for selling her equity stake in Frank and, per the terms of the deal, was to be paid another $20 million as a retention bonus.
Prosecutors said as the fabricated data set was being created, Javice and her co-conspirator sought to purchase real data for over 4.25 million college students to cover up their misrepresentations.
Treading the fine line between “fake it until you make it” and “interstate wire fraud.”
Bud light tranny pander wrecks brand. “I’ve never seen such little sales [as] in this past few days.”
The Biden Recession picks up downhill speed, liberals are spending $160 million to seize control of elections, Biden wants to starve your children until you accept transgenderism, and another Soros-backed DA gets the heave-ho from voters. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
GDP shrunk by .9% in Q2, making the Biden recession official, no matter how much Biden Administration officials and their Democratic Media Complex toadies attempt to spin it otherwise.
Two big money liberal operations, ready to spend $80 million each, are trying to determine who controls elections and how in the years ahead.
“The overall objective of the political left is to change the way you conduct overall elections,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, which advocates clean elections, told The Daily Signal.
One of the two liberal groups, Run for Something, is a political action committee founded by a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer. In the spring, Run for Something established its Clerk Work project with the goal of electing clerks, election supervisors, registrars, recorders, and other local officials charged with running elections.
The PAC says it will promote thousands of election administrators in the years ahead. But for 2022, it reports endorsing 11 candidates competing in races in California, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Local election clerks generally are empowered to interpret and enforce state election regulations. They often have discretion on matters such as whether to count absentee ballots that come in after Election Day, how strictly to enforce voter ID or signature-matching requirements, and how closely poll watchers may monitor the ballot counting on Election Day.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, county-level election officials are elected in 22 states. In 10 states, elected officials appoint members to a local board of elections. Another 18 states divide election administration duties between two or more offices.
In any case, donating to specific candidates to oversee elections could directly or indirectly affect who holds these positions.
Some practices of local election administrators also could be guided by another $80 million effort by the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a coalition of mostly left-leaning organizations financed in part by Big Tech executives to train local officials in running elections.
Snead and other critics say they see parallels between Run for Something and efforts to elect liberal prosecutors financed by liberal hedge fund manager George Soros. They also see strong similarities between the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s election administration grants in the 2020 election cycle.
“What we shouldn’t lose track of is they are playing the long game,” Snead said. “They are going to look for every possible way to impact elections, and they can make substantial changes in the long run through this kind of program that they wouldn’t have been able to make in 2020.”
When Soros-backed socialist son of convicted terrorists Chesa Boudin was recalled as San Francisco DA, the writing was on the wall. “Decarceration” is a disaster for everyone . . . except criminals.
Now another Soros-backed “decarceration” state’s attorney has lost her reelection bid. It’s not clear if the multiple crimes for which Marilyn Mosby has been charged are the impetus for Baltimore’s voters deciding it’s time to move on or if it’s the shocking crime rates in the city as a result of her radical anti-law and order agenda. Maybe both.
Mosby rose to national attention in the wake of the Freddie Gray riots and for her hyper-politicized botching of the prosecution in those cases.
Fox News reports:
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby lost her reelection bid to defense attorney Ivan Bates in the Democratic primary after she was indicted by a grand jury on federal charges alleging that she used coronavirus hardship as a reason to take money out of her city retirement account.
The Associated Press called the race in favor of Ivan Bates, a defense attorney, on Friday night. Bates is a former prosecutor in Baltimore who served from 1996 to 2002 before becoming a defense attorney.
Mosby, a Democrat, directed her office to stop prosecuting offenses such as drug possession, prostitution, urinating in public, and more during the coronavirus pandemic in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading in jails and prisons.
In May, the Biden administration announced that any school that participates in the federal school lunch program (which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service) must allow students to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers and play on the sports teams aligning with their gender identity if they want access to funds for the program — effectively holding money meant for ensuring student nutrition in exchange for compliance on radical leftist gender ideology.
Now, twenty-two Republican attorneys general are fighting back by suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture over that new guidance.
“We all know the Biden administration is dead-set on imposing an extreme left-wing agenda on Americans nationwide,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said. “But they’ve reached a new level of shamelessness with this ploy of holding up food assistance for low-income kids unless schools do the Left’s bidding.”
According to the Washington Times, nearly 30 million students take advantage of the National School Lunch Program at about 100,000 public and non-profit private schools and residential childcare institutions. The Biden administration policy was seen as a direct assault on the 18 states with existing laws barring male athletes from participating in female sports.
The lawsuit argues that the Biden administration (again) violated the Administrative Procedures Act by issuing regulations without going through the rulemaking process and that Bostock v. Clayton, the 2020 Supreme Court’s 2020 decision on employment discrimination, doesn’t apply to Title IX as the Biden administration claimed when they announced the guidance.
“This case is, yet again, about a federal agency trying to change law, which is Congress’ exclusive prerogative,” Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III said. “The USDA simply does not have that authority. We have successfully challenged the Biden Administration’s other attempts to rewrite law and we will challenge this as well.”
Greetings, and welcome to the Halloween season! Manchin and Sinema are the only thing that stands in the way of a giant, economy-destroying meteor of leftwing pandering, energy crises ramp up in China and Europe, Biden nominates a commie, and more Flu Manchu shenanigans.
Inflation hits a 30 year high, yet Democrats are furious two of their own party aren’t letting them run even bigger deficits.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin calls the giant runway Porkulus fiscal insanity.
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” Manchin said in a statement Wednesday.
Manchin says that any reconciliation bill must include a Hyde Amendment to bar federal taxpayer funding of abortion. I’m pretty sure Democrats would prefer kicking Manchin out of the party than give compromise on their holy of holies.
‘What if — and hear me out here,” writes Robert Reich, “we stopped letting two corporate Democrats singlehandedly block every single progressive policy we elected Democrats to pass?”
Okay, Robert. But how, exactly? The Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate. To pass a bill through reconciliation, the Democrats need 50 votes in the Senate. Two of the people who hold those 50 seats do not agree with the rest of the party on “every single progressive policy.” If the other 48 senators do agree — which is far from clear — the Democratic Party will have 48 votes for its agenda, two short of what it needs. Those two, not the Robert Reichs of the world, are the ones with the power to “stop” things.
“Should all of this just hinge on those two?” Representative Cori Bush (D., Mo.) asked yesterday. “Absolutely not.” But should doesn’t enter into it. The question is does “all of this” hinge on Sinema and Manchin? The answer is yes. Yes it does. And why? Because, again, “all of this” requires 50 votes in the Senate, and two of those votes aren’t on-board.
Underneath the complaints that Reich and Bush have leveled sits the erroneous implication that, come election time, American voters are obliged to press a button marked “Republican” or “Democrat,” and that, having done so, they are shipped a drone-like representative of the winning team from a central repository in Washington, D.C. Reich complains that “we elected Democrats.” But this is correct only in the aggregate. In fact, 50 different “we”s elected one hundred senators and 435 Representatives, who between them make up our majority and minority parties. There is nothing in this deal that obliges those emissaries to agree with one another.
Senators Manchin and Sinema are not a pair of uninvited interlopers who are unexpectedly gumming up the gears; they, themselves, are among the gears. This being so, the duo cannot be said to be “blocking” the Democrats’ de facto Senate majority so much as they are sustaining the Democrats’ de facto Senate majority. Why? Because their decision to caucus with the Democrats rather than the Republicans is the only reason that majority exists in the first place. To hear progressives talk, one would assume that in order to take one’s place within the firmament one must first swear a blood oath to Dick Durbin. Shockingly enough, one is obliged to do no such thing.
If there’s one thing we know about the looming debt limit crunch and the warnings about the dire consequences of default, it’s this: The government is not going to default.
The recurring brinksmanship over the debt limit and the partisan refusal to get Republican fingerprints on the increase don’t say much for our political class. But the U.S. Treasury isn’t full of stupid people, and they’ve been through this drill before. Back in July 2011, when the debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion was about to be reached, the Washington Post reported:
The Treasury has already decided to save enough cash to cover $29 billion in interest to bondholders, a bill that comes due Aug. 15, according to people familiar with the matter.
You can bet they’re making similar plans today. The difference is that 10 years later the debt ceiling is $28.4 trillion, just about doubled, and we’re about to bump into it again.
Back in that summer of discontent I talked to a journalist who was very concerned about the “dysfunction” in Washington. So am I. But I told her then what’s still true today: that the real problem is not the dysfunctional process that’s getting all the headlines, but the dysfunctional substance of governance. Congress and the president will work out the debt ceiling issue, probably just in the nick of time. The real dysfunction is a federal budget that doubled in 10 years, unprecedented deficits as far as the eye can see, and a national debt (more accurately, gross federal debt) yet again bursting through its statutory limit of $28.4 trillion and soaring past 120 percent of GDP, a level previously reached only during World War II.
The Cornell University law school professor [Saule Omarova]’s radical ideas might make even Bernie Sanders blush. She graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Thirty years later, she still believes the Soviet economic system was superior, and that U.S. banking should be remade in the Gosbank’s image.
Snip.
Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.
In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” She’d also like the U.S. to create a central bank digital currency—as Venezuela and China are doing—to “redesign our financial system & turn Fed’s balance sheet into a true ‘People’s Ledger,’” she tweeted this summer. What could possibly go wrong?
The FBI’s annual report Monday made official what most unfortunately presumed: The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murders since the start of national record-keeping 60 years ago.
The Uniform Crime Report detailed a murder increase of nearly 30 percent.
The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7 percent increase back in 1968. The national rate of murders per 100,000, however, still remains about one-third below the rate in the early 1990s.
The FBI data show around 21,500 total murders last year, which is 5,000 more murders than in 2019. More than three-fourths of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, the highest rate ever reported.
Now before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all.
That’s right, the same people who want us all to live in mortal fear of being breathed on by a stranger at Kroeger are trying to poof away a pile of bodies.
Speaking of Flu Manchu, here’s NBA player Jonathan Isaac calmly explaining why he doesn’t feel he needs the vaccine:
This is a calm, intelligent, respectful statement as to why @JJudahIsaac is hesitant about getting the Covid vaccine. Instead of screaming at those who are still figuring it out, listen to his response. pic.twitter.com/Q1xMLw8boX
The Lancet just gives up on trying to determine the origins of Flu Manchu, much like OJ has given up on finding the real killers.
China is trying the classic idiot price controls strategy for its self-inflicted energy crisis:
China is officially panicking.
Now that the global energy crisis has slammed China’s economy, leading to the first contractionary PMI since March 2020 as a result of widespread shutdowns of factory and manufacturing, not to mention hundreds of millions of Chinese residents suffering from periodic blackouts, Bloomberg reports that China’s central government officials “ordered the country’s top state-owned energy companies to secure supplies for this winter at all costs.”
Translation: Beijing is no longer willing to risk social anger and going forward China will be subsidizing coil and nat gas, which will lead to even higher prices, which will lead to even higher prices for other “substitute” commodities such as oil, which is why oil surged on the news.
The news follows a report on Wednesday that China will allow soaring coal prices to be passed on to factories in electricity prices. But prepare for a surge in PPI, which will likely not be allowed to be passed on to CPI due to ‘common prosperity’. Which logically means margin collapse, and shutting down – so even more structural shortages. Unless we get state subsidies of some sort, or differential pricing for the foreign and domestic market. There used to be a name for that kind of economy. Wall Street used to pretend it didn’t like it.
“We don’t want normal,” said activist Earnest Greer. “We want radical change. What if everything goes back to the way it was without us completely dismantling and rebuilding the system?”
Liberals saw the pandemic as an opportunity to get people less clingy to individual freedom and more accepting of government planning significant parts of everyone’s lives. Normal would mean relinquishing that power, which is anathema to the Left.
Lefties: Liberals are simply better people than those evil conservatives! Science: Not so much:
According to recent studies, when it comes to how people are treated, conservatives are more likely to treat people equally.
You read that correctly.
According to a recent article on Psychology Today, “several recent studies over the past few years cast doubt on” the idea that liberals treat individuals and groups more equally than conservatives despite liberals’ “self-reported support for equality.”
On Twitter, “liberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly,” one study found.
Other studies showed that “white liberals presented less self-competence to black than white interaction partners, whereas white conservatives treated black and white interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.
If you think really hard, perhaps you can imagine more disastrous policies than throwing open our country’s southern border and abandoning criminal-law enforcement in city after city. The consequences are already emerging, and they are grim. It is important to examine them without ideological blinders so we can change course before more damage is done.
Snip.
The most consequential effect of open immigration and lax criminal enforcement is to undermine the safe, stable environment law-abiding citizens need to go about their lives, free from predation. Providing that environment — and signaling clearly that you intend to provide it — is the first responsibility of government.
That means punishing crimes. The goal is not vengeance. Nor is it solely to provide justice for the victims, important as that is. It is also to send a strong message to would-be criminals: Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Right now, we are sending the wrong message and, by doing so, we are encouraging law breaking on a massive scale.
That encouragement is the unifying theme behind these policy disasters, one on the border, the other in our cities. The other unifying theme is their justification under the fashionable rubric of “social justice” and “equity.” What those feel-good arguments ignore is that our criminal laws are democratic efforts to preserve personal safety and community integrity. Failing in those responsibilities harms all law-abiding citizens.
Six weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, January 26. On that day, Texas reported 22,796 new cases of COVID-19 and 332 new deaths from the pandemic.
One month before yesterday was Tuesday, February 9. On that day, Texas reported 13,282 new cases of COVID-19 and 303 new deaths from the pandemic.
Two weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, February 23, Texas reported 10,090 new cases of COVID-19 and 258 new deaths from the virus.
Yesterday was Tuesday, March 9. The state of Texas reported 5,119 new cases of COVID-19, and 168 new deaths from the virus.
It’s not quite a straight or smooth line, but you can see a steady decline in cases, followed by a similar decline in deaths. This doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. But it does suggest that the worst is over. Hospitals across the state now report a significant amount of unused capacity. “State health officials in Texas reported to the federal government that 75 percent of inpatient beds and 80 percent of ICU beds in hospitals across the state were still occupied as of March 6. Around 9 percent of beds statewide were filled by COVID-19 patients, they reported.” (Unused hospital beds are good for emergencies, but not good for the long-term financial health of the hospital.)
Texas ranks second in the country in the number of vaccine shots administered, with nearly 7.3 million, but it also ranks second in the number of shots received from manufacturers, because doses are allocated to states by population size. As of this morning, the state has used 75 percent of its delivered supply, which is not an impressive percentage. (It is worth keeping in mind that as more doses get delivered, every state’s percentage-used figure is declining a bit; North Dakota and Minnesota lead the country at 87 percent.) Fifteen percent of Texans have received one shot, and 8.2 percent are fully vaccinated. (We used to use the term “received both shots,” but now the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is rolling out.) Obviously, getting hit with a terrible winter storm and experiencing widespread power outages does not help a state accelerate its vaccination program.
This week, another million doses have arrived or are scheduled to arrive in Texas. A week ago, Texas made all school and child-care workers eligible for the vaccine.
With the rise of gig economy jobs such as driving for Uber and other forms of independent work enabled by the digital era, more than 57 million Americans now work as freelancers in some capacity. But President Biden just endorsed a radical labor law that endangers their livelihood.
House Democrats recently reintroduced the PRO Act, which, among many sweeping reforms, would make many commonplace forms of independent contractor (freelance) arrangements illegal. It’s based on a California law that was so dysfunctional even voters in the very blue state voted to change it.
“He literally forgets the name of his Secretary of Defense, forgets the position, as well as the name of the Pentagon, calling him ‘the guy that runs that outfit over there.'”
Slow Joe is not big on news conferences. “Biden has gone longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his 15 predecessors over the past 100 years.”
Entire Nevada Democratic Party staff quits after Bernie Bros sweep every seat.
Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.
She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.
On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.
Democrats: We must destroy coal! Coal workers: Hey, we’re starting to take this personally. “Within two decades, your profession goes from being championed by the Democratic Party and labor officials to one that they want to destroy.”
Bad cop: “Dallas police officer allegedly hired hitmen to kill two people.” “Officer Bryan Riser, 36, was arrested Thursday in the unrelated slayings of Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 60, after one of the men charged in Saenz’s death told investigators he kidnapped and killed them at the officer’s direction.”
NYT‘s Maggie Halberstam just admits that Trump drove her crazy. Why does anyone think ordinary Americans will ever trust MSM outlets like New York Times ever again?
Matthew McConaughey teases a run for Texas Governor again. I don’t know enough about his politics to consider him a viable candidate (though he’s probably more viable than Beto O’Rourke on day 1), but the idea of him beating Greg Abbott isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it was a year ago, before Abbott maintained the coronavirus lockdown long after data said it was ineffective.
In a Wednesday evening Twitter video, with State Reps. Craig Goldman (R–Fort Worth) and Phil King (R–Weatherford) on either side of him, Abbott claimed Big Tech competitor Gab was “antisemitic” and that such companies “have no place in Texas and certainly do not represent Texas values.”
He offered no evidence to back up his claim against Gab. He also praised legislation from Goldman and King “that fights antisemitism in Texas.”
“I’m not on Gab a lot but I wouldn’t consider the platform as ‘anti Semitic’ …and I’m a Jew,” a citizen named Lisa replied to Abbott’s tweet. “Stop this nonsense.”
Gab recently skyrocketed in popularity, claiming more than 2 million new users in January after Twitter permanently banned then-President Trump and Amazon, Apple, and Google teamed up to shut down conservative social media app Parler.
Abbott’s attack on the free speech platform contradicts his words from last week when he defended free speech and berated Facebook and Twitter for their censorship.
“They are choosing which viewpoints are going to be allowed to be presented,” Abbott said at the time. “Texas is taking a stand against Big Tech political censorship: We’re not going to allow it in the Lone Star State.”
Mainstream media coverage of Gab has attacked its free-speech approach to moderation, labeling it a haven of “QAnon conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-Semitic commentary […] .”
“Gab is not an ‘anti-semitic’ platform,” the company replied to Abbott’s tweet. “We protect the political speech of all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, because in this age of cancel culture nobody else will.”
“The enemies of freedom smear us with every name in the book because they hate America and they hate free speech,” Gab continued. “It’s a shame to see a GOP politician fall for this trap when conservative values are under sustained attack all over the country.”
Behind the Covid19 news, outside the 1619 wars, far more important than Dr Seuss, and much more far-reaching than dismantling the classics, a real line is being crossed in American education, and therefore American society as a whole. It’s the accelerating abandonment of standardized tests, the one objective measurement of students’ ability and potential in our society and culture: 77 percent of high school seniors sent in SAT scores in 2019-20; only 44 percent this year; and many schools want to keep it that way. What was initially a temporary suspension of tests because of Covid has become an opportunity to tear down the entire system.
The rationale for the SAT abolition movement is — surprise! — critical theory, which insists that any measurement that results in different outcomes among ethnic or racial groups is a priori racist. (Except for all cases when non-whites and non-Asians do better than whites or Asians, in which case, never mind.) In the words this week of Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York: “Standardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism.”
His argument is pure Kendi: the results are solely and exclusively what determines if a test is racist. Not the test itself; not evidence about its fairness or otherwise; not data about how it is constructed; not studies that examine its effects alongside every other way of measuring academic potential. Just the results.
There is no countering this argument because it is not an argument. It is a threat. All it tells us is that the power of the term “white supremacist” will be ruthlessly deployed to shut down anyone who dares to argue that the SAT is, in fact, the least culturally biased of all measurements, the one thing wealthy kids cannot buy, and the most helpful tool in discovering the potential of poor, first-generation immigrant, black and Hispanic children, and rescuing them from the restrictions of class as well as race.
Portland Antifa is at it again, trying to storm banks and break into the federal courthouse again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Milo Yiannopoulos now says he’s ex-gay. “I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.” Whatever. His agent provocateur pose has worn pretty thin over the years. But I suspect this is one “lifestyle choice” liberals won’t be celebrating.
Local man Craig Trudeau gave thanks to the good Lord above today that he’s an American so he doesn’t have to pretend to care about the royal family at all.
Trudeau said he is extremely humbled and grateful to have been born in the best country ever created by God, especially because it means he doesn’t have to care about Meghan Markle or Prince Harry.
“Lord, thank you that I was born in your chosen country of America, so that I don’t have to give a wooden nickel about whoever this prince and princess or king or duke or whoever they are,” he said Monday as he cleaned his AR-15 and shot off fireworks in front of his house, because he lives in America and so can do whatever he wants.
In the past, writing these annual reviews, we have said harsh things about previous years. We owe those years an apology. Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.
This was a year of nonstop awfulness, a year when we kept saying it couldn’t possibly get worse, and it always did. This was a year in which our only moments of genuine, unadulterated happiness were when we were able to buy toilet paper.
Which is fitting, because 2020 was one long, howling, Category Five crapstorm.
We sincerely don’t want to relive this year. But our job is to review it. If you would prefer to skip this exercise in masochism, we completely understand.
Snip.
Back in mid-December, the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment, after which Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, handed out souvenir signing pens. Everyone expected that Pelosi would then send the articles to the Senate. But as of early January the Senate has not received them. People are wondering if Pelosi, what with her various official duties and hairdresser appointments, simply forgot to send the articles. Or maybe she tried to send them, but because of a bureaucratic snafu they wound up at a different federal entity, such as the Coast Guard.
Eventually, however, the articles arrive at the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch “The Undertaker” McConnell promises that the impeachment issue will receive full and fair consideration. He is of course joking, but this is not obvious, because even when Mitch is in a jovial mood he looks like a man passing a kidney stone the size of the Hope Diamond.
Meanwhile in other political news, all eyes are on Iowa as it prepares for the caucuses, which are closely scrutinized because they are the first opportunity for a tiny group of unrepresentative voters to engage in an incomprehensible and deeply flawed process by which they anoint presidential candidates who traditionally go on to fail. This year, in an effort to modernize the caucuses, the Iowa Democratic party has upgraded from its old-fashioned manual reporting procedures to a modern, state-of-the-art “app” based on the same software used in the Boeing 737 MAX airliner.
Snip.
In other political news, Iowa Democratic party officials sense that there may be a problem with their new “app” when it declares that the winner of the state’s caucuses, with 43 million delegates, is Walter Mondale, followed by the Houston Astros (who also win the Super Bowl). This fiasco does not sit well with the other Democratic candidates, who realize they have wasted an entire year trudging around Iowa eating fried objects on sticks and pretending to care about Iowans.
Things go more smoothly for the Democrats in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, with Bernie Sanders emerging as the clear front-runner, which only seems to make him angrier. A new challenger emerges in the form of charisma-impaired billionaire Mike “Mike” Bloomberg, who uses his personal fortune to hire a vast army of consultants to supply him with a powerful arsenal of focus-group-tested policies, retorts, memes, jokes and humanoid personality traits. Nevertheless he struggles in the debates, the low point coming when Elizabeth Warren, during a heated exchange about non-disclosure agreements, pulls the waistband of Bloomberg’s underpants over the top of his head, a debate tactic known as the “atomic wedgie,” first performed by Lincoln on Douglas in 1858.
Snip.
And then, unfortunately, comes…
MARPRIL
…which starts off calmly enough, as the Democratic party, desperate to find an alternative to 132-year-old white guy Bernie Sanders, settles on 132-year-old white guy Joe Biden, who cruises to a series of primary victories after replacing “No Malarkey” with a bold new campaign slogan: “Somewhat Alert At Times.” Biden is endorsed by most of his Democratic opponents, including “Mike” Bloomberg, who spent more than $500 million on his campaign, which seems like a lot of money until you consider that he won the American Samoa Caucus, narrowly edging out Tulsi Gabbard, who spent $13.50.
And then, sprinkled in amid all the political coverage, we begin to see reports that this coronavirus thing might be worse than we have been led to believe, although at first the authorities still seem to be saying that it’s basically the flu and there is no reason to panic, but all of a sudden there seems to be no hand sanitizer for sale anywhere, which makes some sense although there is also no toilet paper, as if people are planning to be pooping for weeks on end (ha) and then we learn that Tom Hanks — Tom Hanks! – has the virus and now they’re saying it’s a lot worse than the flu and we need to wash our hands and not touch our faces and maintain a social distance of six feet and use an abundance of caution to flatten the curve (whatever “the curve” is) but they’re also saying we don’t need face masks no scratch that now they’re saying we DO need face masks but nobody HAS any face masks but hey here’s a funny meme about toilet paper but ohmigod look at these statistical disease models WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE but Trump says maybe this hydroxysomething medicine will work no it won’t work yes it will work no it won’t and now they’re saying there won’t be enough ventilators or hospital beds or PPE and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are saying everybody has to shelter at home or else WE ARE ALL DEFINITELY GOING TO DIE hey here’s another funny toilet-paper meme but seriously what is PPE and is that different from PPP and where will we get the ventilators and there won’t be enough hospital beds and there is still no hand sanitizer and I keep touching my face and they just canceled the NBA can they even DO that wait now they canceled ALL the sports and closed all the schools the colleges the stores the restaurants the bars the theaters the hair salons the parks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and now they’re saying we need to stay at home for HOW LONG what about the toilet paper I can’t stop touching my damn face are you seriously telling me all this is because somebody ate a freaking bat maybe Amazon has toilet paper ohmigod they’re sold out too WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE TOILET PAPER not another Zoom meeting I am so tired of shouting at people in little boxes maybe I should take a shower but what’s the point hey here’s a bunch more funny memes ohmigod look at the Stock Market the price of oil maybe I’ll just take a peek at my 401k oh NOOOOOOOO and WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING WITH ALL THIS TOILET PAPER and how long do we have to keep being abundantly cautious what did Trump say about the ventilators and what did Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci say about what Trump said about the ventilators and what did Trump say about what they said about what he said about the ventilators ventilators ventilators LOOK AT THESE MODELS WE ARE STILL GOING TO DIE but do we really want to go on living in a world where there’s no toilet paper and every single TV commercial sounds like “as we navigate these difficult times together, the National Association of Folding Chair Manufacturers wants you to know that we are committed to running these TV commercials with a somber narrator voice telling you how committed we are” and WHY WOULD SOMEBODY EAT A DAMN BAT these memes are getting old hey do you think that Carole Baskin woman actually fed her husband to a tiger maybe we should order pizza tonight wait I think we had pizza last night are you sure it’s Tuesday because it feels more like Thursday no please God not another freaking Zoom meeting stop already with the memes if the tiger ate her husband shouldn’t there be a skeleton somewhere are we flattening the curve yet Dr. Fauci Dr. Birx because we’re in a recession no wait maybe it’s a depression look at the unemployment numbers we are never going to recover from this if the virus doesn’t kill us we will starve to death we need more money from the government we need billions no we need trillions no we need MORE trillions where is this money coming from we have to open the economy up but if we do WE WILL ALL DIE hey I found some toilet paper oh no it’s one-ply which is basically the same as using your bare hand thank God I also found some hand sanitizer and speaking of good news Bernie Sanders is endorsing Joe Biden so apparently they’re both still alive if I see one more meme I am going to puke in my facemask I’m afraid to get on a scale my thighs are basically two armadillo-sized wads of pizza dough hey Dr. Birx Dr. Fauci when will we have a vaccine when will we have herd immunity when can we go outside when can we go back to work what is the “new normal” good lord what did Trump say about disinfectants DON’T INJECT CLOROX YOU IDIOTS what about the food chain what about reinfection what about the second wave hey they’re showing the NFL draft and Georgia is opening the tattoo parlors and holy crap now it’s…
MAY
…and we are, as a nation, exhausted. We are literally sick and tired of the pandemic. But amid all the gloom, there is a ray of sunshine: As we go through this harrowing experience — affecting all Americans, in both red states and blue states — we are starting to realize that our common humanity is more important than our political differences.
Ha ha! Seriously, we hate each other more than ever.
Snip.
Meanwhile, in a basement somewhere in Delaware, Joe Biden and his campaign team have managed to procure a “webcam,” which they intend to use to “log on” to the “Internet” so that Joe’s campaign message can go “viral,” just as soon as Joe decides what it is.
In scandal news, the justice department moves to drop all charges against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Outraged Democrats claim this is a travesty of justice; outraged Republicans claim it is proof that the Deep State tried to stage a coup. And thus we are back to arguing about the 2016 election, which we are going to keep arguing about until everybody involved has been dead for 50 years.
Snip.
Here we should at least mention the arrival of the Asian murder hornets. In any other year they would have been a huge story, comparable to famous celebrity pests of the past, such as the killer bees, or the cast of “Jersey Shore.” But in 2020 there is simply too much competition, and the murder hornets end up living in a cheap motel near the Canadian border, their dreams of fame shattered.
Snip.
For their part, the Democrats, fed up with the longstanding pattern of systemic racism and police misconduct in major U.S. cities, vow to bring about real reform, just as soon as they can figure out who, exactly, is in charge of these cities. One much-discussed reform proposal is defunding the police, which is clearly defined by its proponents as “taking the funding away from the police” as well as “not taking the funding away from the police.”
Snip.
COVID19 cases continue to rise sharply in some southern states, accompanied by what the World Health Organization describes as an “alarming” spike in smugness in some northern states, notably New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveils a poster, for sale at $11.50, commemorating, in a cartoony manner, New York’s pandemic experience. Really. It is as if the White Star Line sold whimsical souvenirs of the Titanic.
Snip.
By far the month’s most disturbing event occurs on July 15 when Twitter, responding to a cyberattack, temporarily suspends many verified blue-check accounts. Within minutes emergency rooms in Washington and New York are overwhelmed by media thought leaders whose brains are literally exploding from the pressure of unreleased insights. Meanwhile in the rest of the nation, non-elite Americans wander the streets aimlessly, with no way to know what they should think. Fortunately this situation lasts only a few hours, but it highlights the urgent need for a federally maintained Blue Check Media Emergency Tweet Reserve, similar to the National Helium Reserve, but more gaseous.
Snip.
Meanwhile at home the nation’s mood is increasingly tense and angry as Americans are bombarded all day, every day, with a constant stream of news about protests, boycotts, disruption, despair and rage. And that’s just on SportsCenter.
California, as it traditionally does at this time of year, bursts into flames. Adding to the citizens’ misery are rolling electrical blackouts, possibly related to the fact that the state legislature has banned all sources of electricity except windmills and 9-volt batteries.
Snip.
The federal deficit reaches $3.3 trillion, as the government continues its unchecked descent into horrendous, unsustainable levels of debt, with neither political party even seriously acknowledging the danger, let alone taking meaningful action to prevent future generations of Americans from being permanently screwed.
Snip.
The Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett after she successfully completes the traditional Judiciary Committee hazing ritual, in which she must answer questions for three consecutive days without saying anything.
Joe Biden enters the final stretch of the campaign with a schedule that sometimes has him doing as many as one appearance per day. Also taking a brutal toll on the former vice president is the fact that he must repeatedly, day after day, deal with the grueling physical strain of not telling reporters what he thinks about packing the Supreme Court. At one appearance, when asked about this, Biden says (this is an actual quote): “the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be on the answer to that question.” While reporters wrestle with the Confucian profundity of this statement, Joe is whisked back to Delaware.
Snip.
In social-media news, Twitter blocks a New York Post story about incriminating emails allegedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, on the grounds that the story is of questionable origin. This is of course a violation of Twitter’s extremely strict accuracy policy, under which every single tweet that Twitter does allow to be published is 100 percent vetted and legit.
In sports, the coronavirus causes major disruptions in the fall football schedule, the result being that on a single afternoon the New York Jets wind up losing to both the Kansas City Chiefs and Vassar. On a happier note, the World Series, for the 11th consecutive year, does not in any way involve the New York Yankees.
Snip.
The good news is that several drug companies announce that they have developed promising vaccine candidates, while Budweiser reports “significant progress” on a hard seltzer that also can be used as hand sanitizer.
The bad news is that the number of cases, in what feels like the 37th wave, is spiking once again, and American consumers are once again creating shortages of toilet paper by buying enough rolls per household to wipe every butt in Denmark for a year. Many states impose tough new COVID restrictions, most notably California, which bans “all human activity not personally involving the governor.”
People asked why Nancy Pelosi delayed passing a Wuhan coronavirus relief bill until now. One obvious reason was to avoid helping President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. Now that both houses of congress have passed this 5,593 page monster of a bill, another reason is evident: To cram as much special interest pork into it as possible.
How serious is this bill? Not very, but it spends serious money on unserious things. Tom Elliott of Grabien points out a few of the ridiculously beside-the-point items in this bill. They’re gobsmacking.
Snip.
Don’t worry. The Kennedy Center is getting yet another bailout. Why, exactly? Are they putting on shows right now? How many bailouts does it take to keep the lights on and the development department still working the phones calling on all those rich lobbyists living in the DMV?
And — thank God! — the government COVID stimulus package is there to keep teenagers from hooking up — as if there aren’t dozens if not hundreds of other programs doing the same thing. And let us take a moment to say thanks to all the HIV workers in other countries by giving them new cars. Funding for this is in the COVID bill. You? Buy used.
Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’
$10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan.
$1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan.
$135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.
If we have to pay money to Sudan for it’s peace deal with Israel, then the price is too high.
There’s so much pork in the bill that President Trump has threatened to veto it:
He notes that the bill provides stimulus checks for the families of illegal aliens, “far more than the Americans are getting.”
Alas, President Trump is a late convert to fiscal sanity. The budget deficit was just shy of $1 trillion in FY2019, before coronavirus shutdowns wrecked the economy. Alas, since the Senate passed the bill 92-6 (Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Rick Scott were the only senators to vote against it), a veto override seems likely.
All of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”
So French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to delay implementation of his carbon tax hike because the peasants were revolting French citizens were blocking traffic, burning vehicles, and battling police throughout the streets of Paris.
Nearly 300,000 protesters, many wearing yellow vests, took to the streets, including tens of thousands in Paris. Participation in the “yellow vest” protests, named after the yellow vests French drivers are required to keep in their vehicles for emergencies, fell to approximately 166,000 with 8,000 in Paris in the second weekend, but by the third weekend the protest gained momentum and violence.
The protests were sparked by Macron’s plans to increase taxes on gasoline, diesel, and electricity, and to enforce stricter limits on emissions from vehicles, in an effort to force people out of their cars and suburban homes, and onto public transit and back into densely populated cities. In Paris, protesters sang the national anthem and carried signs saying “Macron, resignation” and “Macron, thief,” and stormed barricades erected by the 3,000 to 5,000 security forces deployed to guard the presidential palace and National Assembly. Outside of Paris, protestors blocked highways, overran motorway toll booths, and obstructed access to gasoline stations and shopping malls.
On average, French gasoline costs a whopping $7.00 per gallon, and diesel more than $6.00 per gallon, with a majority of the price coming from fuel taxes imposed by the national government. These taxes had been scheduled to increase annually in the coming years, to meet Macron’s carbon dioxide emission reduction goals.
“We’re going to tax you until you bleed until you adopt a lifestyle more in tune with the way we think you should live.” For global leftists elites, global warming is not just a holy cause, but an existential struggle whose high stakes (“We’re all going to die!”) require ignoring any democratic pushback from the less-enlightened masses. And we’re just supposed to ignore the fact they write themselves cushy green energy tax breaks while imposing the overwhelming majority of the costs for such policies on ordinary people who live differently than they do. (While Paris burns, Macron is conspicuous by his absence.)
But it’s important to remember that conservatives have an existential threat of their own (deficit spending triggering hyperinflation that will destroy the economy), the solution to which (cutting back on the welfare state) is also deeply unpopular with wide swathes of the populace.
The difference, of course, is that the doomsday scenario of anthropocentric global warming is entirely conjectural, while hyperinflation has happened several times throughout history.
This is why you’re seeing the signs of that weird left-right populist nationalist fusion across Europe: No taxes increase, but also no welfare state cuts, while also restricting immigration so only natives get the cushy welfare handouts. That seems like an obvious recipe for electoral success in countries where even the EU’s weak tea “austerity” is increasingly unthinkable. But it’s not a recipe for growth, and can’t stave off the inevitable doom of a demographically unsustainable welfare state. In America it takes the form of President Donald Trump, a dogged tax-cutter and deregulator working diligently to get the economy growing again, but not someone who has tried to pare back the deficit or the welfare state in any meaningful way.
Europe’s sclerotic economy and demographic decline are going to bring on a crisis there long before it hits here, but it will eventually hit here. In the long run, the big government welfare state is likely to be seen as one of the longer-running mass delusions in history.
There will come a reckoning. The only question is whether you and I will be there to see it…
