I hope you’re enjoying America’s 245th Birthday today. In celebration, enjoy some vaguely-related videos. Here are some fireworks fails, complete with lots of cussing:
This is a video about Sharks! More specifically, about Sharks! the art project, and about the war between conceptual artists and a London-area conservation planning bureaucracy:
Plus a side story about how The Guardian is garbage.
I got my Mac back on Monday with the battery, bottom and trackpad replaced, and everything works fine. But between contractors redoing my bathroom and cleaning ladies coming in today to get ready for July 4, this week, has, if anything, been even busier than last week. So enjoy this low-calorie LinkSwarm substitute featuring only the crowd-pleasing LinkSwarm favorites: The Babylon Bee, dogs, guns and explosions.
WATCH: Sky9 was overhead when police attempted to detonate a stash of illegal fireworks that ended in an explosion in the 700 block of East 27th Street in South L.A. https://t.co/KpWiAEoyqvpic.twitter.com/UbIXLDoZjh
Gun owners in San Jose, California, will soon face a yearly tax and be required to carry additional insurance after their city council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to impose the new measures.
The forthcoming fee for gun ownership in the city has not yet been determined, but officials said that anyone found to be in noncompliance will have their weapons confiscated.
The city council’s aim is to try to recoup the cost of responding to gun incidents such as shootings and deaths. According to the Pacific Council on Research and Evaluation, which studied the issue and sent a representative to testify before the panel, gun-related incidents cost the city roughly $63 million every year in the way of paying for police officers, medics and other expenses, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Chief Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and here the attempt is to destroy lawful gun ownership by imposing collective guilt on the law-abiding for the actions of the criminal and turning law-abiding gun owners into criminals for refusing to comply with an unconstitutional, punitive tax. The endgame, as always, complete civilian gun confiscation.
Next up: A tax on sober drivers to pay for the actions of drunk ones.
Meanwhile, in other California war against guns news, various challenges to various California gun law are pending an en-banc hearing on Duncan v Bonta. (Previously.)
This sounds like a naked power grab by Harris County Democrats:
In a 3 to 2 party-line vote on Tuesday, Harris County Commissioners Court approved a proposal from Judge Lina Hidalgo to dramatically realign county government and grant expansive decision powers to an appointed administrator despite public outcry asking for more time to consider the consequences.
“We have enormous challenges in Harris County and the crux is we have to modernize our organizational structure,” said Hidalgo.
The new administrator will have an initial budget of $2 million and wield the authority to appoint and dismiss many employees, including department heads. One exception included is for department heads or positions that state law says must be appointed by commissioners court. In those cases, Hidalgo’s plan calls for the commissioner’s court to appoint, but on the recommendation of the county administrator.
Hidalgo’s motion to create the new office also immediately named current Budget Management Director David Berry to the post. He will continue to serve in both capacities until a replacement can be found for the budget management department.
Berry will be tasked with developing new organizational and reporting structures, and a transition plan, all to be presented to commissioners court for approval within 45 days. The reporting structure will not apply to elected officials, except “for the purposes of increasing coordination.”
Only unveiled last Thursday, many speakers at Tuesday’s meeting scolded Hidalgo for not giving residents enough time to understand and consider the proposal.
Stacie Fairchild of the Houston Super Neighborhood Alliance said her organization was not aware of the plan until last Friday and said a 162-page study that recommended the change was not made available to them until Tuesday morning just before the vote.
“On behalf of the Super Neighborhood Alliance, I am asking you to table this item until fair and equitable public engagement can be done to educate our community about the impact of the study’s recommendations.”
The plan to reorganize the county came as a recommendation from PFM Consulting Group: an outside organization the county has paid more than $5 million to study the county and suggest changes. Prior to working with Harris County, the group advised the City of Houston in 2017, and has provoked controversy since Managing Director David Eichenthal advocates for defunding police.
Precinct 2 resident Sarah Casper said she had attempted to call both her commissioner and the county judge yesterday, but that neither office provided her with more information about the proposal.
Several residents told The Texan they too had repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to call Hidalgo’s office Tuesday morning. One woman said the phone rang for five minutes and then disconnected.
Charles Blain of Urban Reform, a group advocating for conservative policy solutions, also urged Hidalgo to delay the decision.
“What you guys are doing today is considering pushing through a major restructuring of one the largest entities in the country with little public notice and little public input,” said Blain. “If you truly feel what you’re doing is right you wouldn’t rush this through and you would take the time to sell this to the people that you guys work for.”
This has all the hallmarks of a naked power grab by Democrats. I suspect this enabling law will let the new hard-left SuperAdministrator:
Direct more money to leftwing activist groups.
Entrench victimhood identity politics (Critical Race Theory, radical transgenderism, etc.) as county policy without messy public hearings.
Fire any county officials not onboard with the radical agenda.
Get their hands more thoroughly in control of election machinery in advance of state reforms.
Lay the groundwork for defunding/takeover of departments they can’t directly control, such as the Sheriff’s Department and Constable’s Office.
Let the SuperAdministrator do things behind closed doors the Harris County Commissioners Court would never be able to get away with in public.
Probably a half dozen more abuses I haven’t thought of yet.
This seems ill-conceived, dangerous, and possibly illegal. I wonder if Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton can look into stopping this anti-Democratic move…
The Texas Department of State Health Services is using close to $45 million to create the Office of Health Equity Policy and Performance. Purportedly, the office will work with state and local public health entities to address disparities in health outcomes in various demographics.
“Equity” is the CRTspeak tipoff here, because equality and color-bind policies don’t give the hard left enough opportunities to stick their noses into other people’s business to promote their racist theories.
If this sounds familiar, it is because Democrat State Rep. Garnet Coleman (Houston) authored a bill during the 87th Legislative Session that would have created the Office of Health Equity within the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, which is an entity of the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The bill was included in the healthcare legislative priorities of Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan as a part of his “Healthy Families, Healthy Texas” legislative package announced in early April.
The bill passed the Texas House of Representatives on May 5 by a vote of 77-51 and included 16 Republicans.
Those Republicans were State Reps. Steve Allison (San Antonio), Brad Buckley (Salado), Gary Gates (Rosenberg), Dan Huberty (Humble), Todd Hunter (Corpus Christi), Kyle Kacal (College Station), Ken King (Canadian), Stephanie Klick (Ft. Worth), John Kuempel (Seguin), Stan Lambert (Abilene), Morgan Meyer (Dallas), Geanie Morrison (Victoria), Chris Paddie (Marshall), Four Price (Amarillo), John Raney (Bryan), and Jim Murphy (Houston).
Murphy is also the House Republican Caucus chairman.
When the bill arrived in the Texas Senate, it was never even referred to a committee and granted a hearing, sealing its fate—or so you would have thought.
Snip.
When the news broke that the Texas Department of State Health Services was creating this office of its own accord, former State Rep. Matt Rinaldi, a current candidate for the Republican Party of Texas chairman, took to Twitter to ask, “Why is the Texas executive branch using $45 million of taxpayer money to create an agency that will implement critical race theory in health policy after the Legislature defunded the agency in 2017 and the [S]enate blocked its implementation this year?
When Coleman’s bill was being deliberated in the House of Representatives, State Rep. Jeff Cason (R–Bedford) spoke out against the bill on the House floor and said, “Today, we gather here voting on legislation that assumes our healthcare system is institutionally racist and that certain people are oppressed when receiving health care due to their gender or color of their skin.” He continued, “No one in America is turned away from a hospital. Healthcare has been open to all who seek it.”
Absolutely nothing good can come of catering to radical Critical Race Theory proponents, no matter how much proponents might swear up and down that their version of “Equity” somehow won’t be used to carry water for the radical left. You can’t let the camel’s nose in the tent.
Governor Abbott should put a stop to this nonsense, or explain to Republican voters why he won’t.
Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners – an investment firm led by Hunter Biden – was a lead financial backer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm that has partnered with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, an investment fund founded by Biden and John Kerry’s stepson in 2009, that counted Biden as a Managing Director.
Among the companies listed on archived versions of the firm’s portfolio is Metabiota, a San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases, The National Pulse can reveal.
Financial reports reveal that RSTP led the company’s first round of funding, which amounted to $30 million. Former Managing Director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – also sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors.
Since 2014, Metabiota has been a partner of EcoHealth Alliance as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) “PREDICT” project, which seeks to “predict and prevent global emerging disease threats.”
As part of this effort, researchers from Metabiota, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on a study relating to bat infectious diseases in China. “Sensitive and broadly reactive RT-PCR assays were performed at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,” the paper notes.
The Biden administration is failing big time with its inability to control illegal immigration, adding it to one of several issues that could doom Democrats if left unchecked.
In a new Harvard/Harris poll, an overwhelming 80% said that illegal immigration is a serious issue and one that needs more attention than what President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris are giving.
What’s more, 68% said that signals from Biden’s White House are encouraging illegal immigration, and 55% believe that former President Donald Trump’s border closing policies should have been left in place.
The fears of illegal immigration were a key part of Penn’s analysis of his June poll for Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll.
He wrote: “Sixty-four percent of registered voters want the Biden administration to issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people across the border. Only 7% of voters could accurately call out the amount of monthly illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. with 84% underestimate the number, suggesting we should expect stronger voter reactions if the crisis evolves further. Overall, 74% of voters view the current surge in illegal immigrants as a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately, and 56% do not view climate change, racism, and sexism as root causes of migration from South and Central America.”
Nor are Americans any more enamored of Critical Race Theory:
And despite liberal media efforts to dismiss the debates in school districts around the country over the teaching of critical race theory, the poll found that it too was a hot issue.
“On schooling and education, another sleeper issue, 61% do not believe students should be taught that America is structurally racist and is dominated by white supremacy,” said Penn in his email.
Americans oppose critical race theory because it’s racism, and they’re not racist.
Will the Biden Administration change directions in the face of these findings? Almost certainly not. Democrats view both Critical Race Theory and amnestying illegal aliens as tickets to permanent electoral majorities. DNC leadership no doubt views all the House Democrats who will lose races in 2022 as acceptable collateral damage to avoid changing course…
A few days ago, I found it strange that my MacBookPro lid wouldn’t close properly. Then it seemed to spontaneously reboot. Then yesterday I noticed this:
That, dear reader, is the bottom of my Mac bowed outward due to the swollen battery issue. A trip to the Apple store ensued. They’re going to replace the battery, and possibly the bottom of the case, due to the issue, free of charge, despite it being out of warranty. Plus the Mac was still working, so I was able to back everything up just in case they need to swap out the drive. And I have a backup MacBookPro, a lovely parting gift from my previous employer, so I’m not dead in the water. So all I lost was two hours.
But let me tell you: two hours is a lot when you’re constantly running the needle into the red. This week I’m finishing up cranking on a project at work that ships today, I have to get started on a new Lame Excuse Books catalog that’s already more than a month later than I usually send it out, I’m trying to get up to full speed on my summer exercise regime, etc. Frankly, I need a break. So I’m using the repair time to enjoy a blogging semi-hiatus for a week or so.
But a semi-hiatus for me is going to look like a lesser mortal’s blog at full tilt. I think I’ve managed to put up something here every day for probably over 700 days (maybe 1,000 or more), and I want to keep that streak alive, but expect something more like a single video or tweet each day rather than full-blown posts. Just don’t expect long, detailed posts for a bit.
I need to use the time to get some work done around the house, and clean up in advance of a July 4th gathering.
Next week: Maybe two LinkSwarms. We’ll see how it goes…
