Posts Tagged ‘Dungeons and Dragons’

LinkSwarm for May 20, 2022

Friday, May 20th, 2022

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration has done everything it can to worsen inflation, The Ministry of Truth’s Scary Poppins dissolves into a puddle, a whole lot of school groomer news from all across the country, and the world’s longest D&D game.

  • On inflation, Biden’s every move has been wrong.

    The Biden administration’s first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn’t a problem. That’s how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one. Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury’s doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn’t a real problem: “Transitory,” they called it.

    And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians. Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the “Putin price hike,” as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That gambit fizzled, too.

    When you don’t have any fresh ideas or real principles — and when your long-term goals are limited by the fact that the president, who was born during the Roosevelt administration, isn’t exactly buying any green bananas — then the easiest thing to do is to throw money at every problem.

    Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.

    Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.

    Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.

    Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.

    The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.

  • Historically, interest rates are are still too low to fight inflation.
  • Speaking of the Biden Administration spreading light and joy throughout America: “Energy Officials Issue ‘Sobering’ Warning About Widespread Summer Blackouts Triggered by Closure of Fossil Fuel Plants.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More Biden magic: “Dow Suffers Longest Losing Streak In 99 Years.”
  • “Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years.” I would treat NBC’s number as a floor rather than a ceiling…
  • Scary Poppins resigns from the Ministry of Truth because all those vicious right-wing bullies were mean to her about her gross bias and constant lying.
  • I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to find Taylor Lorenz attempt to ride to her rescue:

  • Democrats vote to create that national gun registry they swore up and down they were never going to create.
  • More and more Democrats are leaving the party over their fanatical treatment of abortion as the holiest of sacraments.

    I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their “Proud Union Home” yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.

    For the first time in my city’s history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?

    I can’t offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the “made in America” union mentality, that isn’t the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the “Abortion First” party.

    Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party’s Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.

  • “Tucson high school counselor accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student…police officials in the Southern Arizona city said Zobella Brazil Vinik turned herself in to detectives on May 11.”
  • I know you’ll be shocked to find out that Vinik is “a radical queer nonbinary leftist” who put on drag shows.
  • Speaking of public school administrators sexually grooming students, Washington state school board director Jenn Mason tried to throw a party for children in her sex shop.

  • Speaking of sexual predators after your children, this is pretty horrifying: “Texas Teen Goes to Bathroom at NBA Game, Is Found 10 Days Later Sold for Sex in Oklahoma Hotel.”
  • A parent-filed lawsuit comes for the president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees.

    In another action-packed school board meeting in McKinney, the board president was served with a lawsuit for suppressing the free speech rights of citizens who disagree with her policies.

    Civil rights attorney Paul Davis served Amy Dankel, president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees, during the public comments portion of Tuesday night’s meeting.

    “Your outrageous display of tyranny in how you trampled on the rights of the public at the last meeting was shocking,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    In recent months, McKinney ISD’s school board meetings have featured a heavy police presence.

    On several occasions, police officers have ejected citizens, at Dankel’s direction, for failing to observe her rules of decorum during public comments.

    Davis said Tuesday that Dankel’s rules “placed an unconstitutional restraint on First Amendment rights by disallowing signs, clapping, and comments.”

    He also says Dankel enforced her rules unequally.

    She directed police to physically remove people who were wearing green—supporters of conservative trustee Chad Green, who Dankel is trying to oust from the board.

    “Those same rules were not applied to people wearing blue,” Davis said, referring to Dankel supporters. “For that, we have filed a civil rights lawsuit against you.”

    Kevin Whitt is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

    During last month’s school board meeting, the pro-family activist spoke against the district’s failure to proactively identify and remove sexually explicit books found in students’ libraries—a contentious topic in McKinney and other districts across the state since last year.

    Later in that meeting, Whitt was dragged out by City of McKinney police officers for uttering a single word—“disgusting”—after a local mom finished comments that included excerpts from one of the explicit books.

  • Speaking of Texas school boards getting sued parents, Round Rock ISD is being sued over violating parent’s rights.

    The contentious saga in Round Rock ISD continues after two parents filed a federal lawsuit last week against five school board trustees, the district superintendent, and several district police officers.

    Last year, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark on charges of “hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct” following a September school board meeting. Both men were released the next day.

    The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Story’s and Clark’s rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Additionally, the suit accuses the defendants of violating 42 U.S. Code 1983, or misusing their power to deny their constitutional rights.

    The two men attended last September’s school board meeting to protest Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez’s continued employment and a proposed tax increase.

    Texas Scorecard chronicled multiple scandals involving Round Rock ISD in a special report and a podcast series, Exposed, which included investigations into the school district and Azaiez. Five of the district’s seven trustees, dubbed the “Bad Faith Five,” were also brought under scrutiny for allegedly covering up domestic violence allegations against Azaiez.

    At the August 16 board meeting, Round Rock ISD officers removed Story after he referenced the investigation into Azaiez. Amy Weir, president of the school board, instructed district officers to escort Story from the building, claiming his concerns about Azaiez did not follow the meeting’s agenda.

    At the same meeting, trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston walked out after accusing the district of intentionally limiting seating under the guise of following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clark then demanded the board let more citizens in to witness the meeting, and Weir subsequently instructed district officers to escort him out.

    Three days later, Williamson County officers arrested Story and Clark. Although Story’s charges pertained to the August 16 meeting, Clark’s charges dated back to a September meeting of the school board. Their lawsuit, filed May 11, accuses all defendants of suppressing Story’s and Clark’s constitutional rights and claims they were arrested illegally.

    If successful, the lawsuit would void Azaiez’s contract and prevent Round Rock ISD from restricting attendance at school board meetings due to COVID-19.

  • Groomer teachers are even popping up in Ohio:

  • But the school Social Justice bullshit doesn’t stop there: “Fairfax, Virginia Schools May Expel Elementary Students For ‘Misgendering’ People.”

    Tar.

    Feathers.

  • “Michigan Businesses Sue Whitmer For Losses Due To COVID Lockdowns.”
  • Speaking of Michigan lawsuits over gross abuse of state power, a couple is suing Highland Park after the police seized their building and legal marijuana business, charged them with no crime, and then offered to give it back if they bought the police department two cars.
  • Speaking of crooked Democratic politicians, you would think that all that graft Bill De Blasio’s wife raked off would allow him to retire in style, but evidently that festering bucket of crooked failure just can’t stay out of the spotlight, and is now running for congress.
  • Texas counties ranks, from most Democratic to most republican.
  • Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that got clobbered when they were caught performing naked shorts of Gamestop stock, is shutting down.
  • Citadel head Ken Griffin threatens to leave Chicago over the spiraling crime rate.
  • People magazine may cease its print version. Bonus: “Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.” Funny how no one gives a rat’s ass about woke royals and the morbidly obese…
  • Larry Correia gives a deserved royal fisking to an article by a leftwing feminist who wonders why her boyfriend reads that primitive “science fiction” stuff rather than modern literary fiction that checks all the required Victimhood Identity boxes.
  • Archeologists in southern Turkey continue to uncover an 11,000 year old pre-agriculture civilization of six-fingered men protecting their penises.
  • Inside a D&D game that’s been running for more than 40 years. Including a truly jaw-dropping amount of painted miniatures and constructed terrain.
  • Good for a smile:

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