UPDATED: 14 Children, One Teacher Dead in Texas Elementary School Shooting.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott identified the shooter as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a student at the local high school.” I knew the shooter wasn’t a white male Trump supporter because all my lefty friends on social media are going on about guns, instead of racism and blame for Tucker Carlson.
HMM: Jury Orders Ford to Pay $7 Million to Family of Mustang Crash Victim. “The jury found Ford was 99 percent at fault for Bumgarner’s death.”
NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS BLAMES SUBWAY SHOOTING ON GUN: Just listened to the Mayor’s response to Sunday’s subway murder and arrest of the suspect. It’s all the gun’s fault. The gun is a career criminal, with multiple charges, had just been released by the courts. Oh wait, that wasn’t the gun, that was the guy who pulled the trigger.
EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND.” Modern Journalism: Prostitutes Or Partisan Hacks?
CLARK KENT IS SO SCREWED: New York City removes last public pay phone in an end of an era.
WAIT, I WAS JUST WARMING UP TO THE MONKEYPOX! Experts: Syphilis surge is ‘next’ public health emergency.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Merrell Men’s Moab 2 Vent Hiking Shoe. #CommissionEarned
20,000 MILE TEST: 2021 Chevrolet Corvette Z51. Including surprisingly good snow handling.
WHAT THEY REALLY THINK OF PARENTS: NSBA letter drafts called for National Guard and military to be deployed. “Early demands from the National School Boards Association to the White House included calling for the deployment of the Army National Guard and the military police to monitor school board meetings, according to an early draft letter the organization’s independent review released Friday.”
BLUE CITY BLUES: ‘The City is Not Safe’: Suspect in NYC Subway Shooting Had 19 Prior Arrests. “As part of a progressive criminal justice reform effort, New York abolished cash bail in 2019 for most misdemeanor and nonviolent charges. Opponents of the bail law have credited it with an ongoing rise in crime in municipal areas as the law permits more repeat offenders.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: These Are the Only Five Bourbon Bottles You Need.
MAINTAIN YOUR CHEMISTRY: One dirty pool can spread many cases of E.Coli, experts warn ahead of summer.
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Who’s Afraid of Elise Stefanik?
We thought the Washington Post hit some kind of bottom last week when it tried to blame the third-ranking House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), for a madman’s shooting spree at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
We were wrong. They followed up on Monday with a thinly veiled political attack aimed at pressuring corporate donors to sever ties with the Republican conference chairwoman. Democracy dies when opinionated young women hold leadership positions, or something.
The first article, by Marianna Sotomayor, dredged up a Facebook ad Stefanik’s campaign ran last year, arguing that she is guilty of having “echoed” a version of the so-called great replacement theory espoused by the Buffalo shooter, which holds that the Left is engaged in an electoral ploy to replace white Republican voters with Democrat-voting immigrants.
Earlier: The Left Created the ‘Great Replacement Theory:’ Great Replacement Theory is fueled by woke progressives gloating about America becoming non-white.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Stupid Is Whoopi Goldberg, Really?
HMM: Court upholds the block on Florida’s social media ‘censorship’ law. “The 11th Circuit ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by NetChoice and CCIA, the same trade groups who filed an emergency application with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after a similar Texas social media law went into effect earlier this month. The court found that Florida’s argument that social media giants are not entitled to First Amendment rights doesn’t hold up.”
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: The Economic Doom Loop Has Begun.
If interest rates are less than inflation, it makes holding cash a losing proposition.
But in this environment, raising interest rates will cause a cascade of problems. The higher interest rates will slow the economy and cause unemployment. It will also swallow up tax revenue as the government has to pay interest on its massive debt. But more critically, it will increase the rate of default on home mortgages. Those defaults will make mortgage-backed securities less valuable and more unpredictable. That’s how the 2008 housing market seized up.
Thus, the doom loop.
The more the Fed props up the mortgage industry, the more it encourages inflation. The more inflation increases, the more urgent it becomes to stop printing money. When the printing press stops and interest rates rise, those MBSs likely will turn toxic again, freezing the market at the exact moment the Fed needs buyers for its bonds.
Related: Is The Housing Crash Starting?
More: Jim Geraghty asks, “We must wonder if, on the horizon, the U.S. is facing runaway inflation, unprecedentedly high energy prices, a recession, a labor shortage, a crashing stock market, lingering supply-chain problems, and the bursting of a housing bubble simultaneously.”
HE UNDERESTIMATED JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: My Biden-Voting Friend Had ‘No Idea’ Things Could Get This Bad. Buckle Up, Buddy, We’re Just Getting Started.
Ability or willingness? You make the call.
COVID IS DOING FOR XI WHAT UKRAINE IS DOING FOR PUTIN:
First, despite Xi’s claim that the zero-tolerance strategy toward Covid is scientific, it is evident that China’s approach from the very beginning has been more political than scientific. Led by Xi, the CCP has sought to prove a point to Chinese citizens and to the world at large that its handling of the Covid pandemic has been far superior compared to the disorder and inefficiency of the western world that has suffered far more deaths. The CCP has been very consistent in its messaging that its “good governance” is down to its political system that is far better than chaotic democracies.
Two years of relentless propaganda has constricted Xi’s space for manoeuvring to such an extent that a reversal now carries an intolerable risk of rising in a contagion that will puncture the halo around Xi and every death henceforth will be blamed on him. Moreover, while the Chinese public might be suffering from Covid-related restrictions, the political challenge arising from this scenario is insignificant compared to the loss of public trust that may happen if the policy — that has been at the core of CCP’s propaganda — is overhauled so close to the crucial party conclave. It will be an admission of Xi’s personal failure after two years of claiming that ‘zero-Covid is the best’, and the coveted third term may become elusive.
This may explain why the CCP general secretary was forcefully claiming during the recent politburo standing committee meeting that “our policies can stand the test of time, and our measures are science-based and effective.”
As analyst Yun Sun of Washington-based Stimson Center told CS Monitor, “In China’s political culture, the reorientation of policy … raises a lot of questions. The first question is, was that policy wrong?… With his (Xi’s) policy currently, he’s already creating a lot of complaints and … dissatisfaction within the country, so for him to change the policy now is going to be politically even more risky than not changing it.”
And, as with Putin, there’s strong pressure to tell the big guy what he wants to hear: “The centralization of hard power in Xi’s hands means that dissent within the party must reach a tipping point before it can pose even a remote political challenge to Xi. On the other hands, ambitious workers and local government functionaries know that fidelity to Xi’s policy prescriptions is the only way to climb up the power ladder.”
The Chinese like to say that their autocracy is less chaotic than democracy. But the problem with autocracy is that it makes you stupid, and the longer they stay in power, the more stupid the autocrats become.
“ALL HELL IS ABOUT TO BREAK LOOSE:” Ricky Gervais released a Netflix special today slamming the trans cultists and hoo boy grab your popcorn. “Remember how Netflix sent a memo to all its woke staff telling them to cowboy up and stop being so offended at everything? Yeah, I think this Netflix special from Gervais was the reason!”
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