OUT ON A LIMB: Minneapolis Mayor Comes to Striking Conclusion That Defunding the Police Increased Crime.
Or to flowchart the progression:
Archive for 2021
May 12, 2021
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to clean resistance bands.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Rashida Tlaib Relaxes After Long Day By Watching Heartwarming Concentration Camp Scenes From ‘Schindler’s List.’
That’s gonna leave a mark.
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS ON SABBATICAL: Reporters Must Get ‘Approval’ Before Publishing Biden Admin Quotes—and They Don’t Seem Bothered By It.
STUDY: Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired? “Gun buyback programs (GBPs), which use public funds to purchase civilians’ privately-owned firearms, aim to reduce gun violence. However, little is known about their effects on firearm-related crime or deaths. Using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System, we find no evidence that GBPs reduce gun crime. Given our estimated null findings, with 95 percent confidence, we can rule out decreases in firearm-related crime of greater than 1.3 percent during the year following a buyback.”
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT: New GMU diversity hiring practice encourages selecting for skin color over qualifications.
I WOULDN’T CALL IT NEW: Governor Gavin Newsom Has a New Plan to Beat His Recall: Flat-Out Bribery. “The guy whose party has done more to hoover up what’s left of Californians’ bank accounts now says he wants to cut ‘the people’ a $600 check – just in time for his recall election. Even Politico can’t unsee this.”
Related: The Dirty Little Secret Behind California’s Budget ‘Surplus.’
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: POLL: Over 40% of Harvard profs say that school’s standing is worsening. With the pandemic shock it’ll be a year or two before we can tell, but I suspect the risibility of American higher ed will seriously reduce the number of lucrative foreign students coming here to study.
GOODER AND HARDER: Security cut at half the major parking garages in SF amid uptick in car break-ins. “According to data compiled by the San Francisco Police Department as of March, burglary crimes have increased 51-percent from last year. Auto thefts have increased 18-percent.”
51% is an “uptick.”
Also this:
Bay Area burglars really do get the royal treatment.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Points and Figures: Welcome to the 1970s.
To be honest, a rerun of the Carter years is now a best-case scenario.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Tyler O’Neil: Lockdowns in Vain? Homes More Dangerous for COVID Spread Than Work and School, Study Claims. “Instead, the evidence suggests that ‘households show the highest transmission rates’ and that ‘households are high-risk settings for the transmission of [COVID-19].’”
Stephen Kruiser: Hate Is Exhausting, Bring on the Frivolity. “Anger is exhausting. Anger is a monumental waste of time. Anger makes people look like Hillary Clinton.”
Yours Truly: The Dirty Little Secret Behind California’s Budget ‘Surplus.’ “My sons, ages 15 and 10 and ineligible to vote because they aren’t Democrats, are among the millions getting stuck with the tab for bailing out a state that’s swimming in cash.”
KAROL MARKOWICZ: Kids will pay a steep price for this War on Merit in schools.
Look: Parents don’t have their kids apply for these programs because they are racist; they do it because they know the regular curriculum their kids get in regular city schools is weak. Math is usually a joke; reading and writing often even more so. A G&T program might mean their kid has to actually try to succeed, instead of just coasting through classes. Yet parents clamoring for more difficult work for their kids get called “racist.”
Not content with removing the G&T test, the DOE is now pushing to get rid of G&T programs themselves. Middle schools have already scrapped “screens,” such as test scores and grades, for admission this year in favor of lotteries. The city’s most competitive (and often best-performing) high schools constantly fear they’ll be forced to water down their standards.
Bad ideas may start in places like New York and California but don’t necessarily stay there. Seattle’s school board has begun the process of discontinuing its gifted programs. Denver’s largest high school has done away with tracking students into honors classes. In Stamford, Conn., they’ve dropped Advanced Placement exams. Discussions on whether to end accelerated programs are taking place in school districts in Virginia. This trend is spreading faster than COVID.
Leftism is bad for children and other living things.
OUR POLITICAL CLASS IN A NUTSHELL: Carjacking victims told to pay DC tickets racked up by the criminals who took their car. “They said for six months the communication had been a series of one-way interactions where they presented the facts and the District’s only response was to tell them to pay all of the tickets and then it would decide whether the payment was justified.”
BYRON YORK: Republicans push FBI over ‘suicide by cop’ outrage.
Last month some House GOP lawmakers revealed the previously unknown fact that the FBI ruled the June 14, 2017 shooting attack on the House Republican baseball team to be an act of “suicide by cop.” It was stunning news. How could the FBI do such a thing? The shooter, James Hodgkinson, expressed bitter hatred for Republicans, brought guns when he moved to the Washington area, had a hit list of GOP lawmakers in his pocket when he approached the baseball practice, checked to make sure the men on the field were in fact Republicans, and then opened fire. He nearly killed House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, badly wounded a lobbyist, and hurt two others before being shot to death by Scalise’s security detail and Alexandria, Virginia police.
It was absolutely clearly, without any doubt, an act of domestic political terrorism. And yet in November, 2017, when the FBI briefed House lawmakers on the investigation, they announced that they had determined the attack was an episode of “suicide by cop” — that is, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Hodgkinson was trying to kill himself, not Republicans.
Now, GOP lawmakers are pushing FBI Director Christopher Wray to explain how the bureau came to that conclusion.
No enemies to the left.
DON’T REWARD IRANIAN VIOLENCE BY ENDING ECONOMIC SANCTIONS: The column begins with a look at the Navy’s recent seizure of a “stateless” dhow smuggling weapons via the Arabian Sea.
To quote the U.S. Navy’s official announcement, on May 6 the cruiser USS Monterey “seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international waters of the North Arabian Sea.” The list of weaponry aboard the dhow included advanced Russian-made anti-tank missiles, around 3,000 Chinese assault rifles, several hundred light machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers and “advanced optical sights.”
On a battlefield, those weapons set could arm a light infantry brigade of 4,000 soldiers — or guerrilla fighters.
More:
Smugglers prowl the north Arabian Sea (an arm of the Indian Ocean), moving narcotics, stolen electronics, even Persian rugs. But smuggling a calculated weapons mix like the USN seized?
Iran’s dictators scream plausible deniability but their corrupt state planned, assembled and shipped the weapons.
Why? The junta is intrinsically violent.
Read the entire essay.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Everything Is Fine—Biden Naps While World Falls Apart. “The world doesn’t do well with a weak leader in the United States. It does even worse with one who disappears. Forget having the stamina to be president, Biden doesn’t seen to have the stamina to watch television for a few minutes after dinner.”
BLUE ANGEL SUPER HORNET: The Blue Angels perform during the Wings Over South Texas Air Show. The 2021 show season is Blue Angels’ first year flying the Super Hornet. Photo taken May 2, 2021.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM THE TROOPS-AND-RAZOR-WIRE ADMINISTRATION? Biden DOJ Defends Cops Who Cleared Lafayette Square for Trump.
COLORADO DEMOCRATS ON CANDID CAMERA: Bennet caught maskless, Hick eats from Styrofoam!