Archive for 2022
June 15, 2022
CHANGE: Mexican-Born Texas House Candidate Rides Rightward Latino Drift to Historic Victory.
Related: GOP’s historic win in Texas portends nationwide ‘red wave’ disaster for Democrats in November.
But as Glenn likes to say, “Don’t get cocky. If you care about this election, you need to be donating and/or volunteering. Commenting on Internet blogs doesn’t count.”
DOMESTIC TERROR: “Open season”: Pro-abortion radicals threaten violence against pro-life outfits after 30-day “deadline” expires.
Will Merrick Garland sic the FBI on them, the way he did on parents speaking out at school board meetings?
Haha, I crack myself up.
TITANIC REARRANGES DECK CHAIRS: Biden hires former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms as top adviser — will it make a difference?
“MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE:” Consumer Sentiment Hits Absolute Rock-Bottom All-Time Historic Low as The Economy Enters a Recession.
From John Sexton, a Financial Times survey of economists finds that a majority expect a recession next year.
Next year?
Okay sure whatever.
The US economy will tip into a recession next year, according to nearly 70 per cent of leading academic economists polled by the Financial Times…Jay Powell, the Fed chair, has conceded that the central bank’s efforts to moderate inflation may cause “some pain”, leading to a “softish” landing that sees the unemployment rate rise “a few ticks”.
But many of the economists polled are concerned about a more adverse outcome given the severity of the inflation situation and the fact that monetary policy will need to shift towards much tighter settings in short order to address it.
Yeah so we didn’t have to wait until next year: At least according to the Atlanta Fed tracker, the economy is predicted to post a 0.0% growth rate in the second quarter, which, combined with the negative growth in the first quarter, means we’re gone two quarters of zero or negative growth.
(Corrected: This is a predicted growth rate not a “posted” one as I said originally.)
We’re in a recession.
Related: Fed hikes rates by 0.75 percentage point, biggest increase since 1994.
AND UNDERESTIMATE HOW MUCH THEY EAT. Most Americans overestimate how healthy their food choices are.
WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF VIOLENCE? House GOP calls on Garland to investigate attacks on anti-abortion groups as domestic terrorism.
“MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE:” Reuters: Biden demands oil companies explain lack of gasoline as prices rise.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday demanded oil companies explain why they aren’t putting more gasoline on the market, sharply escalating his rhetoric against industry as he faces pressure over rising prices.
Biden wrote to executives from Marathon Petroleum Corp, Valero Energy Corp, and Exxon Mobil Corp and complained they had cut back on oil refining to pad their profits, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters.
“At a time of war, refinery profit margins well above normal being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable,” Biden wrote, adding the lack of refining was driving gas prices up faster than oil prices.
“The lack of refining capacity – and resulting unprecedented refinery profit margins – are blunting the impact of the historic actions my Administration has taken to address Vladimir Putin’s Price Hike and are driving up costs for consumers.”
The letter is also being sent to Phillips 66, Chevron Corp, BP and Shell, a White House official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Joe Biden, it’s time to meet Joe Biden!
● Biden’s plan to cancel Keystone pipeline signals a rocky start with Canada.
—The Washington Post, January 19th, 2021.
● Biden pulls 3 offshore oil lease sales, curbing new drilling this year.
—The Washington Post, May 12th.
● Biden administration won’t appeal judge’s ruling revoking Gulf of Mexico drilling leases.
—The Washington Post, February 28th.
Flashbacks: Why Aren’t Democrats Dancing for Joy About Sky-High Gas Prices?
In the service of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats have long openly worked to raise the price of fossil fuel energy. They have done so by proposing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, higher leasing fees, and other measures to jack up costs so people burn less of it. This is why Barack Obama said, in answer to a related question about electricity, that his energy plan would make prices “necessarily skyrocket.” This is why Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna praised BP’s CEO less than six months ago for pledging to reduce oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. Reductions in oil production and rising gasoline prices are part of the Democrats’ agenda and the Paris climate agenda.
There’s even more to it than that. Over the past decade, the Democrats’ overt hostility toward fossil fuels has even driven companies in the industry to sideline production, purely for public relations purposes, while prioritizing meaningless, politically correct carbon emissions goals. How can Democrats suddenly feign outrage at their incredible success in influencing the industry?
Is it a mystery why Democrats aren’t doing a sack dance and celebrating the salvation of planet earth?
There’s the small matter of their political survival, of course. It would be unseemly — like doing a jig at an Irish funeral — to celebrate other people’s pain. And it would cost many Democrats who are secretly jubilant about high gas prices their political careers.
Instead, Democrats are pretending to look for a way to “ease consumers’ pain.”
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.”
● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
(Classical reference in headline.)
UPDATE AND BUMP (FROM GLENN): Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
OKAY, GROOMER: Michigan AG says ‘drag queens make everything better,’ suggests ‘drag queen for every school:’ report.
[Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel] the first openly gay person elected to statewide office in Michigan, made the comments during a civil rights conference while speaking out against what she describes as efforts to divide Americans, Craig Mauger of The Detroit News reported on Twitter.
“Drag queens make everything better. Drag queens are fun,” Nessel said, according to Mauger.
“A drag queen for every school,” she added.
Mauger wrote that Nessel “acknowledged the ‘drag queen for every school’ line had not been poll tested.”
Kinsley Gaffe alert!
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Purity, Sorcery, and Cancel Culture. “The quest for purity informs cancel culture. It pushes partisans to ever-greater extremes, even when those positions are politically self-defeating. It turns historical heroes /into villains and closes nuclear power plants in the face of climate change. It makes the ideal the enemy of the improved, the perfect the exterminator of the better. If we want to understand our cultural moment, we need to think seriously about purity. . . . Purity is about identifying and eliminating contaminants—anomalies that are sources of danger. The danger may be physical, spiritual, cultural, or moral. To purify is to purge whatever is out of place. It establishes what belongs by banishing what does not. ‘The quest for purity is pursued by rejection,’ writes anthropologist Mary Douglas in her landmark 1966 book Purity and Danger. . . . The 21st-century American version of sorcery allegations are charges of racism, sexism, harassment, and similar offenses. Many examples of ‘cancel culture’ occur in enclaves—fan groups, for instance, or loose professional associations. In 2020, the online knitting community was torn apart by what British journalist Gavin Haynes dubbed a ‘purity spiral,’ in which people who thought of themselves as kind-hearted liberals were suddenly ostracized and boycotted for alleged white supremacy.”
I don’t care for puritanism in any form.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: 30-year mortgage rate surges to 6.28%, up from 5.5% just a week ago.
SHOT: China’s J-20: A 5th-Generation Fighter The U.S. Should Not Dismiss. “The J-20 has many of the same capabilities, including stealth and supercruise, as the F-35.”
Chaser: Air Force Unveils First F-35 Aggressors Dedicated To Chinese Threats. “The U.S. Air Force formally re-established the 65th Aggressor Squadron (AGRS) on June 9 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The unit will exclusively fly the F-35A Lightning II and dedicate its work to replicating the advanced airpower capabilities that are emerging from China.”
STEVE SCALISE: We’re Not Having the Tough Conversations We Need to Have About School Shootings. The conversation he means is not the conversation the left wants.
THIS WOULD BE A BIGGER STORY IF ANYONE INVOLVED HAD THE LAST NAME “TRUMP”: Texts reveal Hunter Biden’s meltdown over discarded gun incident.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Everybody at the Federal Reserve on Drugs?
READER FAVORITE: Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. #CommissionEarned
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Anatomy of Woke Comic Fail.
“Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill” lets the “Paper Tiger” star tell a few jokes of his own before introducing his “killer” friends. That list includes Michelle Wolf, Jimmy Carr, Steph Tolev, Jeff Ross, Dave Attell, Ian Edwards, Joe Bartnick, Jessica Kirson, Dean Delray, Ronny Chieng and Josh Adam Meyers.
Ross and Attell are comedy institutions who don’t need a boost like this. The same is true for Wolf, who had her own Netflix talk show and made waves with her angry, uber-partisan gig at the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner.
Wolf’s part of “Friends Who Kill” inadvertently gave us a lesson Woke Comedy 101.
The host of Netflix’ short-lived “The Break with Michelle Wolf” immediately went woke with her 10-minute set. She complained about how rare it is to find female leaders in the U.S., noting Vice President Kamala Harris as the exception that proved the political rule.
Rather than dig into Harris’ pathetic approval numbers or legendary gaffes, Wolf lectures the crowd about other nations that routinely have women in charge.
Read the whole thing.
UNEXPECTEDLY! Retail sales in May slip 0.3% amid surging inflation. “Americans trimmed their spending unexpectedly in May compared with a month before, underscoring how surging inflation on daily necessities like gas is causing them to be more cautious about buying discretionary items. U.S. retail sales slipped 0.3% last month, down from a revised 0.7% increase in April, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.”
Also equally “unexpectedly:” Breaking: US Economy Technically Enters Recession.
THAT’S BECAUSE POSTDOCS ARE EXPLOITED, UNDERPAID, AND TREATED LIKE CRAP: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for structural change in academia intensify.
I’m in favor of structural change in academia, too.
JIM TREACHER: Biden Punishes Border Patrol Agents for Imaginary Crime.
“It’s one thing to be addicted to Twitter. Lord knows, I have no room to talk. But governing the United States based on Twitter trends is maybe the second-dumbest thing any president has ever done. I don’t think even Trump ever tumbled into a Twitter-hole the way these rubes have. They fell for an unsubstantiated claim somebody tweeted, and they’re not honest enough to admit they’re wrong. Nothing means less to them than the truth. What’s the point of writing and passing laws if you’re just going to punish people for enforcing those laws, based on a lie somebody told online?”
AND YET THERE ARE ALREADY SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM: Karine Jean-Pierre Proves How Bad She Is at Her Job With One Statement.
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Vitamin D deficiency directly linked to dementia. “In some populations as much as 17% of dementia cases might be prevented by increasing everyone to normal levels of vitamin D (50 nmol/L).”
I think it’s P.D. Mangan who prescribes “sun, steak, and steel:” Eat a steak, get some sun, and lift some weights to be healthy. Good advice, anyway.
COLORADO: Demand grew for educator firearms classes after Texas school shooting. “Demand to enroll in the program typically jumps in the days and weeks after a mass shooting. However, Carno said the demand since the mass school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas is 10 times greater than anything she’s experienced before.”
Uvalde police sent quite the warning — to teachers.
SOMETIMES THE LEFT HAND DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE FAR LEFT HAND IS DOING:
Shot: Biden to oil companies: Produce more gasoline, fewer profits to alleviate pain at pump.
—The Washington Times, today.
Chaser: John Kerry: We Don’t Need to Drill More for Oil and Gas.
—Townhall, yesterday.