SO I FINISHED HIAWATHA BRAY’S THRILLER, Power in the Blood, the other day. A page-turning thriller with an interesting protagonist who sounds a bit like Hiawatha himself, but hopefully not too much so. Recommended!
OPEN THREAD: Did you ever look at the news and wish we could erase and rewind a few years?
WARNING LIGHTS ARE FLASHING DOWN IN QUALITY CONTROL: This recession indicator is flashing a warning sign.
I’d cure it soon — abolish Monday mornings, and Friday afternoons.
Plus, a prophecy.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Terran Orbital stock cleared for trading on NYSE.
FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE MUST BE SHUT DOWN TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!! Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth’s Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist. “In fact, in 350 years, some experts predict the weight of our digital bits could outweigh all the atoms on Earth.”
#PANIC
#DOOM
I wonder what actual percentage of people in those age groups actually feel that way.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: With Babylon Bee Off Twitter, Users Forced To Get Fake News From CNN.
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Biden’s Cognitive Decline Proved to Be REALLY Dangerous This Week.
And that story was written before Biden ad-libbed calling for regime change in Russia: White House Rushes To Clean Up Disastrous Remarks Biden Made About Putin During Speech.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Tonight is Earth Hour. Here’s how you can participate.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! AND TRYING TO AVOID WORLD WAR III: In a Stunning Reversal, White House Walks Back Biden Statement That Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power.’
AND THE ANSWER IS NONE. NONE MORE GRAUNIAD: I let a baby bird nest in my hair for 84 days. He fell asleep in my palm. As far as he was concerned, I was his mother.
THIS IS EFFECTIVELY A THREAT TO KILL PUTIN, SINCE HE CAN’T SURRENDER POWER AND LIVE: Biden goes there: For God’s sake, Putin cannot remain in power.
That seems unwise. “If unrest in Russia over the war ever does begin to boil over, it’ll be child’s play now for the Kremlin to convince Russians who are on the fence that anti-Putin demonstrators are stooges of the U.S. government. The specter of western-backed regime change isn’t just propaganda aimed at exploiting Russian patriotism, though. Putin fears it to his marrow. Reportedly he was haunted by the scenes of Moammar Qaddafi being killed by his subjects in Libya during an uprising supported by the U.S. and Europe.”
Well, and given that we had previously guaranteed Qaddafi’s safety, it means we can’t credibly promise anything here. Plus: “A few days ago, Putin’s spokesman was asked under what conditions he would consider using nuclear weapons. His answer: If Russia is facing an ‘existential threat.’ Putin might not distinguish an existential threat to Russia from an existential threat to his own power, though.”
RADICAL CHIC, THE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE YEARS: White House celebrates Maoist Yuri Kochiyama, who cheered bin Laden, communist massacre in Peru.
BEST SELLER: THISWORX Car Vacuum Cleaner – Portable, High Power, Mini Handheld Vacuum w/ 3 Attachments. #CommissionEarned
UKRAINE CHANGES THE FACE OF WAR FOREVER: New video from Reason TV.
OVERVIEW: Longevity and Rejuvenation Technology.
QUESTIONS WITH OBVIOUS ANSWERS: How urban warfare imperils utilities, public services, and civilians.
DEMOCRATS ARE PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859: In Fit of Racially Charged Outrage, Democrats Target Supreme Court’s Only Black Justice for Impeachment. Party’s ugly segregationist past resurfaces as prominent interracial couple comes under attack.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF “WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW” AND “BASED:” Paralyzed man with brain chip says first words in months: ‘I want a beer.’
HMM: How fingers could point to a link between low testosterone and COVID hospitalizations. “The researchers observed that patients with “feminized” short little fingers relative to their other digits tend to experience severe COVID-19 symptoms leading to hospitalization, and more importantly patients with large right hand—left hand differences in ratios 2D:4D and 3D:5D—have substantially elevated probabilities of hospitalization.”
But digit ratios are about prenatal testosterone exposure; they don’t indicate current levels or people who got testosterone therapy would have new finger growth.
THEIR APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: California’s big cities are shrinking.
How’s that Welcome Wagon program coming along?
I DOUBT THAT CASES OF TUBERCULOSIS DID THE SAME: Diagnoses of tuberculosis dropped during COVID-19 pandemic.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Babylon Bee Writers Trying To Slowly Tunnel Out Of Twitter Jail Behind Poster Of Gina Carano.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: AOC: Biden Faces ‘Collapse’ of Support From Key Democrat Voters.
A QUESTION FOR READERS OF WIRED:
When you read a Wired piece making the factual claim
Black and brown people are prosecuted for crimes at higher rates and arrested at higher rates than non-Black and brown people
does it at all occur to you to ask, “Do they also commit crimes at higher rates”? On the one hand, I’d expect the aspergery techie crowd, which, presumably Wired‘s readership would draw upon, to be more transgressive in asking the logically obvious questions. On the other hand, the crimestop is hard-wired at the neural synapse level these days. . .
Indeed.
STILL POPULAR: Levi’s Men’s 505 Regular Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned
JIM TREACHER: Feminists Demand: Get Your Wife in Line, Clarence Thomas.
Remember when America was this close to turning into The Handmaid’s Tale? Glad those days are over. Also, women are now the property of their husbands.
“Every woman is the author of her own life… er, unless we really hate her husband!” Libs will cast aside everything they claim to believe, just to gain a moment’s advantage. Then they wonder why we don’t trust them.
Ginni & Clarence are the new Bonnie & Clyde. Also, Hunter Biden has nothing to do with his dad.
If it turns out Clarence Thomas did something unethical or even criminal, let the chips fall where they may. But I don’t hate a black man for being a conservative on the Supreme Court, so I’ll leave the shrieking to the libs.
QED: Ilhan Omar: Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas because his wife texted Mark Meadows.
When did the leftist overculture become The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club?
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Federal investigation launched into MBA program that excludes white males.
It takes 13 paragraphs until his party is revealed: “The case against Cutler is one of the highest-profile ones ever brought against a prominent Maine political figure. Cutler, a wealthy lawyer born in Bangor, was an aide to U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and President Jimmy Carter in the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a major figure in international business and greater Portland’s civic world. He returned to Maine politics as an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2010, narrowly losing to Republican Paul LePage after a late surge past the Democrat in the race. Cutler ran for governor again in 2014, but only mustered an also-ran performance at 8 percent of votes.”
WELCOME BACK, CARTER! The bad old days: Biden’s America is a throwback to the 1970s.
Under Carter, the country saw double-digit inflation. Meat prices surged, with beef up 39% in one year. Energy prices were so high that Carter urged the public to put on a sweater and turn down their thermostats. The cost of gas doubled between Carter’s first year in office and 1981.
Today, a similar situation is unfolding. Biden’s reckless spending is making everything more expensive. New data show that consumer prices spiked by nearly 8% over the past year, the fastest rate in 40 years. Gas and electricity are respectively up 38% and 9% over last year. Staples such as milk and eggs are up 11%. And used cars will cost you 41% more — if you can even find one. These prices are hitting the public in the pocketbook. Sixty-four percent of people say they are now living paycheck to paycheck. And voters rank rising prices as one of their biggest concerns.
The Biden administration’s response to surging energy prices? Buy an electric car.
Meanwhile, a crime wave to rival the 1970s is sweeping the nation. Fourteen major Democratic-run cities set all-time homicide records last year. Police officers have seen a 115% surge in ambush-style attacks since 2020. And on top of the surge in violent crimes, there’s been an uptick in carjackings and organized “smash-and-grab” robberies in stores.
As Glenn wrote in the New York Post: Don’t pretend that high prices and American suffering are a ‘bug’ for the establishment — it’s a historic feature.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Race and Resistance Studies’ major trains future ‘racial social justice’ activists with ‘Radicalism and Revolution’ course.
I WOULDN’T BRING UP PARIS, IT’S POOR SALESMANSHIP: NBC’s Howard Fineman wants us to pause and appreciate an unpopular president’s decades of foreign policy experience. Biden’s foreign-policy record is long, but it’s also pretty awful.
STANDING UP AGAINST GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP: NCLA Takes on U.S. Surgeon General’s Censoring of Alleged Covid-19 “Misinformation” on Twitter.
A reminder that when private organizations censor at the behest of government officials, that constitutes a First Amendment violation. The “private companies can do what they want” rule doesn’t apply. Though to be honest, in 2022 it’s not clear that “private companies” apart from government influence really exist at this level.
SURPRISED THIS WAS AN ISSUE IN UTAH, BUT UTAH HAS SURPRISED ME A LOT LATELY: Utah Legislature overrides Gov. Cox’s veto of transgender athletes sports ban.
A LOT OF STUPID CLAIMS WERE ADVANCED IN TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT TRIAL: Houston Community College v. Wilson Reaffirms That Elected Officials Have Free Speech Rights.
ANOTHER RECORD: Average price of gas tops $6 per gallon in L.A. County.
Flashbacks:
In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
Exit quote: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
GOING AFTER A BLACK MAN VIA A WHITE WOMAN? Criticism of Ginni Thomas seen as backdoor, racist squeeze on Justice Thomas.
It’s also sexist to suggest that spouses can’t have their own independent beliefs and actions, as we’d constantly be told if this were, say, Elena Kagan’s spouse.
KICK’EM WHEN THEY’RE DOWN (AND BLACK, CONSERVATIVE AND INTER-RACIALLY MARRIED): The Squad and the Mainstream Media are now targeting the Supreme Court’s lone Black Justice, Clarence Thomas, who was just released from the hospital earlier this week, and wife, Virginia Thomas, who, oh by the way, just happens to be White. Rather than “The Squad,” how about the “Raving Lunatic Lefty Caucus” (RLLC)?
WAS IT OVER WHEN J.K. ROWLING BOMBED PEARL HARBOR INVADED UKRAINE?! Putin: The west wants to cancel Russia just like it canceled J.K. Rowling for criticizing transgenderism.
EVERYTHING’S GOING UP EXCEPT BIDEN’S POLL NUMBERS: ‘It’s All Going Up’: Americans Bemoan Inflation, Call for Energy Independence in New Tuberville Video.
DEAL OF THE DAY: NEXPOW Car Battery Starter Portable,12V Car Battery Jump Starter Power Pack with USB Quick Charge. #CommissionEarned
GET RID OF THE CLASSICS? You might as well get rid of man’s ability to think logically, recognize genuine beauty and appreciate the enduring virtues. Other than that, says Jessica Hooten Wilson on this morning’s HillFaith, no big deal.
A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE, AND SOONER OR LATER, YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT REAL MONEY: 10 Insane Ways Local Governments Wasted Biden’s ‘COVID’ Bailout Money.
I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE PROMISED SMART DIPLOMACY AND THE RESPECT OF OUR ALLIES: Editor Of Saudi Daily: ‘Biden Is Becoming A Master At Losing Friends And Alienating Allies’; Everyone Harmed By The Current Oil Crisis Should Realize Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Responsible For Their Plight.
Hey, he’s not wrong about that.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden tells 82nd Airborne they’ll be in Ukraine in apparent gaffe. “‘You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground’,’ Biden said. The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for clarification.”
March 25, 2022
OPEN THREAD: Drive safely.
THIS WILL TURN OUT WELL:
INSURRECTION: Hot Mic Catches School Board Member Asking to ‘Set Marsha Blackburn on Fire.’ “During a meeting of the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education this week, a hot mic caught board members apparently pondering ‘can we just go set Marsha Blackburn on fire?’ — the latest instance of public school boards saying the quiet part out loud and revealing their partisan hostility against conservatives and Republicans.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: For Artemis moon missions, science will reign supreme.
MEASURING the speed of sound on Mars.
AGAIN? Biden Just Stuck His Foot Straight in His Mouth in a Way That Could Set off WWIII.
Flashback: Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.
I’m talking, of course, about Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., who at his shambolic Wednesday press conference gave Russia the go-ahead to invade Ukraine, though it was quickly walked back by backwalker-in-chief Jen Psaki, his press secretary.
The last time something like that happened was in 1950, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave North Korea what appeared to be a green light to invade South Korea. The result was the Korean War. One hopes Biden’s blunder will not bear similar consequences.
Oops.
UPDATE: From the comments:
Just remember the modern function for Impeachment.
It’s for trying to remove a President who would have prevented this disaster from happening.
And then why they haven’t impeached him yet makes more sense.
Ouch.
Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
ANOTHER UPDATE: At least there’s some comic relief along with the tragic incompetence:
NO FLIGHT, NO BITE: ‘Mosquito grounding’ bed net nearly halves malaria infection in Tanzanian children. “Unlike other insecticides which kill the mosquito via the nervous system, the effects of the new bed net mean the mosquito dies from starvation or being unable to fend for itself.”
Every time a mosquito dies, the world becomes a slightly better place.
IT’S AS IF THE LEFT OPPOSES ALL FORMS OF EARNED EXCELLENCE: MSNBC Op-ed: If You Exercise, You’re a Neo-Nazi.
SOME PARTS OF THIS MAY SOUND FAMILIAR: Origins of the Spanish Civil War.
Just do your best to sidestep the little bits of history repeating.
MY DOC HAD ME TAKE LOW-DOSE ASPIRIN WHEN I HAD COVID, AND FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS AFTER: Aspirin linked to lower risk for death in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Also HCQ, doxycycline, zinc, and quercetin.
BE PREPARED: Carhartt Men’s Billfold and Passcase Wallets. #CommissionEarned
REALLY? YOU FIND THIS BAFFLING? Many baffled by Taliban reneging pledge on girls’ education. “The United Nations children’s agency told The Associated Press on Thursday they were blindsided by the announcement.”
Yeah, who could have seen this coming?
THEY SHOULD DO SOMETHING TO THEMSELVES FOR SURE: Anti-Gun, Anti-Hunting Academics Should Educate Themselves.
INCENTIVES MATTER. SO DO DISINCENTIVES: Child Porn Offender Who Got Lenient Sentence From Ketanji Jackson Continued to Seek Images of Children.
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Artificial sweeteners may not be safe sugar alternatives: study.
FRAGGING? Russian soldier reportedly runs over commander with tank in protest.
A Russian soldier reportedly drove over his colonel with a tank — while two other service members were caught venting about strongman Vladimir Putin’s “bulls—” invasion of Ukraine amid reports of heavy losses.
The Russian soldier who was behind the wheel of the tank “blamed the commander of the group, Col. Yury Medvedev, for the deaths of his friends,” Ukrainian journalist Roman Tsimbalyuk said on Facebook.
“Having waited for the right moment, during battle, he ran over the commander with a tank as he stood next to him, injuring both his legs.
Take all battlefield reports with a grain of salt, of course, but this is far from the first of these stories to show up in my feed.
I DON’T KNOW PERFORMANCE ART BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE: Epic Troll Makes Boring Board Meetings Great Again in Denton, Texas.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Daily coffee may boost heart health, lower mortality.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Democrats Promise Free Gas Money for Everybody! “Never to be outdone in spending other people’s money, California Governor Gavin “Let Them Eat French Laundry” Newsom has an even bigger, bolder, stupider plan for the shrinking zombie hordes still populating his state.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Socialist students blame Campus Reform for Karl Marx’s name being removed from library room. “Following a Campus Reform report, a University of Florida spokesperson informed this publication that the name and accompanying plaque would be taken down due to the current situation in Ukraine.”
Marx was German.
MAKE AMERICA FLORIDA: DeSantis Poised to Sign Further Protections for Free and Fair Elections.
STILL POPULAR: Levi’s Men’s 505 Regular Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned
COLLUSION, STRAIGHT UP: How Russia got stronger as Bidens and Clintons got richer.
In the years before Moscow twice invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from such oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals that still haunt America today.
Our best-selling book “Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties” chronicled how a failed “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations led by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton relied on an appeasement strategy that ultimately backfired with Russia.
Putin’s spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.
The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden.
The appeasement policy began in February 2009. Russia had invaded its neighbor and former client state, Georgia, six months earlier. The lame-duck George W. Bush administration planned to put missile defense structures in Eastern Europe to deter Russian aggression against its neighbors.
But one of the Obama-Biden administration’s first foreign policy maneuvers was to cancel that plan via a “secret letter” to Putin’s placeholder, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Why? U.S. leaders apparently wanted to make deals with Russia, and giant missile silos in Putin’s backyard were a nonstarter for Moscow.
Read the whole thing.
ROGER SIMON: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Big Lie to Sen. Blackburn Exposes Progressivism.
When Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word “woman,” during Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she got the response “I can’t.”
When Blackburn responded with an incredulous “You can’t?” Jackson replied: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”
It takes a biologist to define “woman”? Does Jackson think we’re morons?
In a way, yes. Or she doesn’t care.
She’s a progressive, and progressives have been redefining language—English and many others—to fit their purposes dating back to the Spanish Civil War and undoubtedly earlier. (See Davis Hunt III at The Pamphleteer.)
Jackson very well knows what a woman is. The nominee has known this all her life, as we all have. But these days, in her part of the political world, she’s not supposed to.
So she lied.
She simply parsed her words in order not to offend a constituency that has become imbued with “transgenderitis.” By that I mean a group taking what we all know—that a small percentage of people suffer from gender dysphoria to a degree that they seek to change sexes—and extending it into absurd public policy for reasons of power and control and, ultimately, money, not to mention a completely distorted and harmful view of gender itself. (In this case, see swimmer Lia Thomas.)
Those with that form of dysphoria, as do all with serious problems, deserve our sympathy and support, but no more so than everyone else with difficulties.
Nevertheless, they’ve been singled out for now and are being manipulated and exploited by the left, just as many minorities before them have been.
The transgendered are the favored class du jour. Tomorrow—I’m sorry to tell them—it will be someone else.
In the meantime though, Blackburn’s query is “The Freeport Question of Our Time,” Steve Hayward writes at Power Line:
The “Freeport Question” refers to Abraham Lincoln’s devastating question posed to Stephen Douglas in his second debate against Douglas on August 27, 1858, held in Freeport, Illinois. The question was seemingly simple: “Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?”
Douglas’s answer split the Democratic Party in half, and helped to assure Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election. Douglas’s answer was Yes, a territory could exclude slavery prior to applying for statehood if the residents of the territory so chose. But the Democratic Party’s southern slave interest was demanding a federal “slave code” that would permit them to take slaves to any territory as a matter of federal legal right (a prospect made more possible by the lamentable Dred Scott decision), no matter what a majority of the residents thought. As such, Douglas’s answer was unacceptable, and so was his candidacy in 1860, which is why the Democratic Party split in half in the summer of 1860 and ran two tickets in the November election.
Today’s Freeport Question—the question that has the potential to split the Democratic Party off from a majority of voters—is: what is a woman?
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: The Masked Generation: Young adults struggle with isolation, loneliness.
TIM BLAIR: Today’s noticeboard is brought to you the enduring mystery of woke sports reporters.
Theory: sports reporters feel ashamed because they’re wasting their lives writing about inconsequential games, so turn political to compensate.
If so, they are mistaken. Sports reporting is an honourable calling. Politics, not so much.
American journalists frequently refer to the sports department as the equivalent of working in a candy or toy store, compared with the hard news sections (or what passes for such things these days). When the late Mike Wallace interviewed Bill Parcells for 60 Minutes in 2004, he even used that metaphor on Parcells. After describing the 14 hour days Parcells put in as a head coach, Parcells told Wallace, “If you want to stay competitive, this is one of the most competitive businesses there is.” Wallace replied with an incredulous tone, “This is the toy department!”, confusing his own profession’s view of sports journalists, with the people they cover. It’s an insulting metaphor to say to a man who had spent nearly his entire adult life coaching college and professional football.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fauci’s Folly Has a Disturbing Non-COVID Body Count. “The reason I singled out Fauci in the headline today is because the leftists elevated him to god-like status and it’s been obvious from Day One that he’s an attention whore who relishes being the face of the government’s faux battle against COVID. So tag, he’s it.”
GOODER AND HARDER: ‘Gotta get that inflation down’: Students are worried about getting a job.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘Mega Emergency’ Unfolds For World’s Top Coffee Growers As Fertilizer Costs Spike. “Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries in the world, are having trouble affording high fertilizer costs. Some farmers are substituting organic waste as a low-cost solution to nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash fertilizers. The move, however, will result in significantly reduced harvests of the bean.”
If the coffee runs out there’s going to be serious trouble.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Quarantine Slaughterhouse: Non-COVID Deaths Spiked During Lockdowns.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Resistance is rising to woke colleges’ and corporations’ race and sex discrimination.
JOANNE JACOBS: Students’ search for meaning. “Wokeism has infected universities with ‘an already weakened intellectual immune system. Students haven’t learned to think, so they lack the means to spot its inconsistencies, its hypocrisies, its absurdities.'”
Mission: Accomplished.
HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG?
● Manhattan led US in population loss during year of pandemic.
—The New York Post, yesterday.
● L.A.’s population dropped by 176,000 in 1st full year of pandemic, 2nd largest drop nationwide.
—L.A.’s ABC-7 yesterday.
There’s another issue that’s very likely playing a factor. As the Wall Street Journal noted in June of 2020: Liberal Cities, Radical Mayhem: Democratic mayors and governors seem unable to stop the destruction of their own cities.
The “broken-windows” school of policing says that you can help maintain public order by taking care of even small examples of disorder—such as fixing broken windows. Liberals scorned that policy in the last decade as somehow racist. Well, in recent days we’ve learned that America’s left does have a broken-windows policy: Let rioters break enough windows and loot enough stores and maybe their righteous anger will be satisfied.
That’s certainly how it looked when the June sun rose Tuesday over the broken glass, looted storefronts, burnt-out cars, and vandalized buildings in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Madison and other American cities. Public officials let rioters exploiting the memory of George Floyd run wild in the streets. Even after nearly a week of violence, these and other liberal Democratic cities let lawless radicals harass and plunder almost at will.
* * * * * * * *
This isn’t merely about damage to property. It’s about destroying the order required for city life. Non-criminals are afraid to go into these cities to make a living. The police pull back from active policing, which creates more opportunity for criminals, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods. Businesses that are finally starting to emerge from government lockdowns have new costs to absorb and more reasons for customers not to return.
What all these cities have in common is that they are led by Democrats who seem to have bought into the belief that the police are a bigger problem than rampant disorder. They are either cowed by their party’s left, or they agree that America is systemically racist and rioting is a justified expression of anger against it. They offer pro forma disapproval of law breakers but refuse to act to stop them.
CTRL-F “Riot” brings up zero results from both articles, curiously enough.
Related: From AP yesterday: LA police: Wearing expensive jewelry could make you a target.
WELL, THAT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE HE DID: More believe Biden ‘perhaps profited’ off son Hunter’s schemes.
THE CRAZY YEARS CONTINUE: Washington State “Schools Adopt Race-Based Discipline, White Students to Get Harsher Punishment.” (Yes, of course, this is illegal.)
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