OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Panama Canal backlog risks chardonnay shortage.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Boston City Hall roiled by email party invitation for ‘electeds of color’ sent to all.

A Wu administration official, on behalf of the mayor, mistakenly sent all Boston city councilors an email Tuesday inviting them to a holiday party that was meant exclusively for “electeds of color,” prompting an apology and mixed reactions.

Denise DosSantos, the mayor’s director of City Council relations, told the body’s “honorable members” that, “on behalf of Mayor Michelle Wu,” she was cordially inviting each of them “and a guest to the Electeds of Color Holiday Party on Wednesday, Dec. 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Parkman House, 33 Beacon St.”

Approximately 15 minutes later, however, DosSantos sent out a follow-up email to city councilors, apologizing for the prior email, which was apparently only meant for those who were invited. The body includes seven white councilors and six of color.

“I wanted to apologize for my previous email regarding a Holiday Party for tomorrow,” DosSantos, a Cape Verdean Black woman, wrote. “I did send that to everyone by accident, and I apologize if my email may have offended or came across as so. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”

Whether the email offended the excluded councilors was unclear, several of whom chose not to respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

Outgoing City Councilor Frank Baker, who is white, described the mayor’s decision to exclude some members as “unfortunate and divisive,” but said the email didn’t offend him personally.

“I don’t really get offended too easily,” Baker told the Herald. “To offend me, you’re going to have to do much more than not invite me to a party.”

Baker said he wasn’t sure what the reasoning behind the mayor having a separate party based on racial lines was, but said he didn’t think it was a “good move,” given the recent tensions on the City Council.

A Boston reader coments:

Haha, the apology is not for staging a racist, exclusionary holiday party … in luxury city-owned digs … but for inadvertently sending the invite to white people.

That’s pretty fkkn precious. Makes Claudine Gay look … OK, no, that doesn’t make her look less Nazi.
Do these people not listen to themselves?

OK, white pol throws a party for white pols only, inadvertently sends invites to pols “of color.” Withdraws it with an “oops!”

You’d have people looting and burning shit over that one.

That’s different because shut up.

WHOA: Tesla Just Recalled HOW MANY Cars?

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE NIXONIAN: Defiant Hunter Biden Blows Off Subpoena, Bails on Congressional Testimony.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: After 15 months Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft will finally fly again.

The uncrewed New Shepard 24 test flight will refly the science payloads that were aboard the New Shepard 23 flight, which experienced an engine nozzle failure at 1 minute and 4 seconds following liftoff in September 2022. The capsule’s emergency escape system performed as intended, rapidly pulling the spacecraft away from the disintegrating rocket and allowing Blue Origin to recover the payloads flown for NASA and other customers.

Blue Origin finished its accident analysis this spring and implemented a fix to the problem, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the company said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation.

The company originally targeted an uncrewed return-to-flight mission in early October; however, two sources told Ars that the additional two-month delay was caused by an issue with certifying an engine part intended for flight.

Plus: “Tuesday’s announcement came amid a tidal wave of changes in leadership at Blue Origin this month, with several high-profile retirements and the arrival of its new chief executive, who has come to the company from Amazon, Dave Limp.”

I wouldn’t turn down a free tourist flight on New Glenn but at some point, the company has got to put some mass into orbit.

THE COMING WAVE OF FRESHMAN FAILURE. The COVID shutdown gifts just keep on giving…

GOOD QUESTION: Issues & Insights (I&I) wonders where is America’s Javier Milei. The thinkers at I&I are correct, the Mainstream Media here and elsewhere portray Milei as “a radical, a far-right outsider and a right-wing reactionary, if the press is to be believed. But he’s not at all the demon that the mental-case media claims he is. Javier Milei is the type of elected official – note that we didn’t say ‘politician’ – that this country needs. In fact, every nation on the planet could use a Javier Milei.”

I have to confess to being skeptical that Milei will be around very long, but other people who are much smarter than me think otherwise. More here.

THIS IS LOVELY: A Georgia Community Rallies Around a Couple to Keep a Christmas Tradition Going After Disaster.

READER FAVORITE: COOFANDY Men’s Muscle Fit Dress Shirts. #CommissionEarned

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT INFLATION WAS ILLUSORY, A HIGH-CLASS PROBLEM, TRANSITORY, AND OVER ALREADY: Rise in US core inflation highlights stubborn price pressures.

FIGHT THE POWER: Med schools redo ‘diversity’ programs after federal complaints.

TO BE FAIR, EVERYTHING THE LEFT SAYS IS PROJECTION: ‘Trump As Dictator’ Is a Simple Case of Left-wing Projection.

ELIMINATIONISM: Food Fight: Yale dining hall removes ‘Israeli’ from couscous dish.

MELTDOWN POSTPONED: Treasury Market Stress: Primary Dealers Taking Up Slack As Foreign Demand Fades.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Another Step in the Joe Biden Impeachment Slow Dance. “Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been insisting that there is no evidence which indicates that Joe Biden was involved in any of his son’s foreign grifting. They’re going at it so hard that it makes it appear that they’re certain that there is most definitely something to be found.”

A GREAT SECOND AMENDMENT CHRISTMAS GIFT: To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment. From my friends (and in the latter case former student) Bob Cottrol and Brannon Denning. (Bumped).

NO ONE’S LIFE, LIBERTY, PROPERTY, OR PRIVACY IS SAFE WHILE THE LEGISLATURE IS IN SESSION: The Trojan Horse That Would Force Your Barista To Spy on You.

Even more outrageous is a problematic provision tucked away in this “reform” bill but not so much as mentioned in the committee’s report. Section 504 of the House Intelligence bill requires that those who have access to the “equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store such communications” shall be treated as “electronic communication service providers” and thus subject to Section 702’s general requirement to (secretly) disclose our data to the government.

Let us unpack this: Under current law, electronic communication service providers include Internet service providers such as Google, Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft. It also includes telecom providers such as AT&T and Verizon. Under the law, these big companies are routinely compelled to hand over billions of foreign communications in addition to vast amounts of Americans’ communications that are “incidentally” caught up in this surveillance net.

But the House Intelligence bill’s expansion to include “equipment” would cover, for example, any small or medium-sized business that simply provides Wi-Fi or stores data. This means that your business landlord, Airbnb host, hotel manager, or coffee shop barista will have a legal obligation to give the government any of your emails, texts, or phone metadata that ran through their equipment. Larger entities, such as data centers, would also be enlisted in spying on Americans.

Send your congresscritter a message that the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act is unacceptable.

SO HARVARD ALREADY KNEW ABOUT THE CHARGES: Harvard Attorneys Protected Claudine Gay After New York Post Confronted School in October About Possible Plagiarism in Her Works.

OUT: ELECTION FRAUD IS A MYTH. IN: 1 in 5 Mail-in Voters Admit Engaging in Election Fraud.

Other surveys have shown that sizable groups of voters agree the election was plagued with fraud, but this is the first in which voters told a pollster they were involved.

Among the findings shared with Secrets:

Twenty-one percent of likely voters who voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election say they filled out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child, while 78% say they didn’t.

Thirty percent voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in the 2020 election.

Nineteen percent of those who cast mail-in votes say a friend or family member filled out their ballot, in part or in full.

Seventeen percent of mail-in voters said they cast a ballot in a state where they were no longer permanent residents.

Among all voters, mail and in-person, 11% said a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance has admitted to them they filled out a ballot on behalf of another person in 2020.

No more.

“GOD’LL GET YOU FOR THAT”

Turkish MP threatens violence against Israel saying the Jewish state will suffer the ‘Wrath of Allah.’

Moments later he has a heart attack and collapses.

pic.twitter.com/EEsXkkAC0d

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) December 12, 2023

UPDATE:

IDF soldiers operating in Jenin last night, lit the Channukah candles in the same place where terrorists in Jenin gather and incite from. pic.twitter.com/JWyVqQahNz

— Documenting Israel (@DocumentIsrael) December 13, 2023

FASTER, PLEASE: We May Be One Step Closer to Seeing Jeffrey Epstein’s Flight Logs.

HAPPY ARMED JEWS WEEK.

AT AMAZON, last minute deals. #CommissionEarned

DAVID KOPEL: Law Enforcement Officers Are Part of “the People,” Not Above Them.

Two weeks ago, I filed an amicus brief in U.S. District Court in Colorado, in Gates v. Polis, a case challenging the Colorado legislature’s 2013 ban on magazines over 15 rounds. The brief was on behalf of Sheriffs and law enforcement training organizations: the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, the Colorado Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association, the Western States Sheriffs Association, 10 elected Colorado County Sheriffs, and the Independence Institute (where I work).

Some of the brief explains the practical mechanics of armed self-defense, and why bans on standard magazines do not impair mass shooters, but do endanger ordinary citizens, especially when attacked by multiple criminals. Another part of the brief shows that the key data created by some of the Colorado Attorney General’s expert witnesses is obviously false.

But in this post, I will focus on a more fundamental argument in the brief. The law enforcement amici reject the claim that arms universally recognized as appropriate for ordinary law enforcement officers should be banned for ordinary citizens.

Indeed.

I’d add that I know of at least one Colorado gun shop that openly sells banned magazines, frequently to LEOs.

MATT TAIBBI: Tireless Busybodies Again Target Substack: Substack faces another deplatforming campaign, triggered by a clarion-call from America’s flagship of suck, Atlantic Magazine. “As an aside: a big reason people read Substack is because of the terribleness of magazines like The Atlantic, which is edited by a guy, Jeffrey Goldberg, who won a pile of awards for blowing the WMD story in spectacular fashion for years on end, making him a walking, talking symbol of the failing-upward dynamic in corporate media. If that magazine wants people to read Substack less, it might consider not filling its pages with exposés about the Alfa Server fantasies or plaintive defenses of the Steele dossier or other transparent propaganda, instead of demanding deplatforming here.”

Hey, it’s a competitor. Substack offers access to the kind of writing and reporting that The Atlantic used to be known for, before it went woke.