“CLIMATE CHANGE” SEEMS TO INCLUDE A LOT OF MATCHES AND GASOLINE: Authorities Arrest 79 Suspected Arsonists for Igniting Wildfires in Greece: Greek Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Vassilis Kikilias: “Arsonist scum are setting fires that threaten forests, property and, most of all, human lives.”
Archive for 2023
August 29, 2023
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: More students are in ‘big, big trouble’ in reading, math, and they’re not catching up. “Children who were in kindergarten and first grade when the pandemic first hit are now in third and fourth grade, said Huff. Those who missed out on phonics and phonemic awareness can’t cope. ‘If you’re two or more grade levels below in grade three, you’re in big trouble. You’re in big, big, big trouble.'”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Another bad day for Chinese property developers.
BLATANT RACISM FROM NASCAR: ‘Blatantly Illegal:’ NASCAR Bans White Applicants From ‘Diversity Internship.’
MARK JUDGE: I tried to warn conservatives about the American Stasi. They ignored me.
It is in the nature of many conservatives to have faith in institutions, which is odd since nearly every institution has betrayed them.
AP JUMPS THE SHARK ON BIAS: If you run a left-wing nonprofit advocacy group with beaucoup bucks and want to shape how the nation’s oldest and most widely read wire news service covers a particular issue, say climate change, or “democracy,” or race, then the Associated Press is ready to join forces with you.
As the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross explains:
“The Associated Press is also taking nonprofit money to fund coverage of race and climate. The organization’s ‘democracy journalism initiative,’ a division whose reporters cover “the intersection of race and voting,” is bankrolled by nonprofits such as the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. That organization also funds Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and the left-wing activist group Take Back the Court, which advocates for expanding the Supreme Court.”
And that’s just a small slice of how a once-hallowed news operation has sold its soul.
MY NEW SUBSTACK ESSAY: Bears, Boston, and the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM AND BIGOTRY: Conservative Activist Behind Supreme Court Affirmative Action Cases Sues MoFo And Perkins Coie Over Diversity Fellowships.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Americans Are Bailing on Their Home Insurance: Some homeowners who are skipping coverage say they can no longer afford rising premiums.
Homeowners are increasingly forgoing home insurance, gambling that the likelihood of a disaster isn’t high enough to justify the cost of a policy.
Some skipping insurance say they are doing so because they can no longer afford the rising premiums. The national average for home insurance based on $250,000 in dwelling coverage increased this year to $1,428 annually, up 20% from 2022, according to Bankrate.
Others, particularly among the wealthy, say they have enough money saved to rebuild or move elsewhere should their home be destroyed.
The risks of forgoing a policy are significant. When you don’t have insurance and your home is destroyed by fire, you don’t just lose your house and its contents. You might also have to pay for removing your home’s remains as well as the costs to rebuild it.
Few people can financially withstand the loss of an uninsured home, according to financial advisers. It is particularly precarious considering the high price to rebuild or buy a home in many areas of the country.
But under Bidenomics people are feeling squeezed. Related:
Also: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
DEAL OF THE DAY: NOCO Boost XL GB50 1500 Amp 12-Volt UltraSafe Lithium Jump Starter Box. #CommissionEarned
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: DHS hides monthly number of illegal migrants released into U.S after interacting with border agents. “The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States, and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: West Virginia University Banked on Growth. It Backfired. The state flagship, like other universities, faces a deficit and major cuts after years of excessive spending.
Now facing a $45 million budget deficit, administrators have proposed eliminating dozens of programs, including the mathematics Ph.D. and the entire world languages department. Students staged a spirited protest on campus last week, and faculty are pleading with the school’s governing board to reject the recommended cuts.
West Virginia reflects a broader pattern of flagship schools increasing expenditures far faster than they did enrollment, as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal investigation. The proposed cuts have caused concern over the direction of education in the state, among the nation’s poorest, and the school’s role as a steppingstone for local students into the global economy.
University President E. Gordon Gee and current and former members of the board blame the institution’s financial challenges on the pandemic and state funding cuts, as well as competition and demographic changes.
A review of university financial records, however, shows that its spending habits and expansion plans set it on a path to instability.
If only there had been some sort of warning.
The nation’s best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators.
Then they passed the bill along to students.
The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America’s poorest states, paid an average $18,693 to attend in 2021-22.
Pennsylvania State University spent so much money that it now has a budget crisis—even though it’s among the most expensive public universities in the U.S.
The University of Oklahoma hit students with some of the biggest tuition increases, while spending millions on projects including acquiring and renovating a 32,000-square-foot Italian monastery for its study-abroad program.
The spending is inextricably tied to the nation’s $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges have paid for their sprees in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.
“Students do not have the resources right now to continue to foot the bill for all of the things that the university wants to do,” said Crispin South, a 2023 Oklahoma graduate. “You can’t just continue to raise revenue by turning to students.”
Unfortunately, they’ve been alienating alumni and legislatures with woke politics.
FIGHT THE POWER: NCLA Asks Federal Court to Halt Illegitimate U.S. Dep’t of Transportation Administrative Proceeding. “DOT has hauled gh Testing into its in-house tribunals, where agency officials violate the due process of law by acting as both prosecutor and adjudicator. DOT’s in-house administrative adjudicators are further illegitimate under Article II of the Constitution because they are not appointed by the President or DOT Secretary and are improperly shielded from presidential removal. Such tribunals cannot exercise judicial power to adjudicate DOT’s claims because Article III of the Constitution vests such power exclusively in federal courts. Finally, DOT’s in-house proceedings run afoul of the Seventh Amendment by depriving gh Testing of its right to a jury trial.”
Reminder/disclosure: I’m on the NCLA’s advisory board.
JUST IN TIME FOR ELECTION SEASON: Here Comes Da Bug. “Just in time for back-to-school, not to mention the start of the 2024 presidential primaries, the drabs and trollops of the Corporate Media have begun beating the drums for the Biden regime and the CDC/Big Pharma shills to announce the Return of the Black Death, aka Covid. If you liked the Covid Hoax the first time, you’re going to love the redux. The Thing that Destroyed the Trump Administration, ruined our election system, smashed the American economy, wiped out two or three years of schooling, and effectively repealed the First Amendment — not because of disease, mind you, but via bureaucratic fiat — now wants back in our lives.”
August 28, 2023
OPEN THREAD: It’s here on schedule.
THAT WOULD HAVE LOOKED PRETTY, I’LL BET: Landslides on Mars suggest water once surrounded Olympus Mons, tallest volcano in the solar system. The tallest mountain in the solar system, rising out of an ocean, I mean, not so much the landslides.
MY NEW SUBSTACK ESSAY: Bears, Boston, and the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Iconic Retailer Nordstrom Closes Shop In San Francisco Thanks To Rampant Crime.
OH, SEATTLE! Watch This Wacky Home Invader Guzzle Gasoline as Police Move in to Make Arrest.
It’s unfathomable why anyone would do that to himself. “Swallowing gasoline can cause a wide range of problems for your vital organs,” advises Healthline. I can’t imagine it tastes very good, and it can produce miserable symptoms such as difficulty breathing, burning pain in the throat, abdominal pain, vomiting, loss of vision, convulsions, and loss of consciousness.
Obviously, there was a mental crisis in progress. Perhaps this burglar attended the same wacky class as David DePape, the 42-year-old who broke into Paul Pelosi’s house, also wielding a hammer. At any rate, his thirst for petrol seemed unslakable:
Officers gave multiple commands for the suspect to exit the vehicle, but he refused and continued to consume more gasoline. With the suspect endangering his own life and the hazard the gasoline created, police broke the driver side window and removed the man from the driver seat.
The suspect resisted officers while they pulled him out of the vehicle, but he was eventually taken into custody. Seattle Fire provided aid to the suspect at the scene.
To boldly go where one Korean War veteran has gone before:
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden will observe 9/11 in Alaska instead of the traditional NYC, Virginia or Pennsylvania events.
Biden will not participate in any of the observances at 9/11 memorial sites in New York City, Virginia or Pennsylvania. Instead, the president will stop in Alaska for a Sept. 11 observance at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on his way back to Washington after a trip to Asia.
Biden is scheduled to travel to India from Sept. 7-10 to attend a summit with other world leaders, followed by a stop in Vietnam.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will participate in the annual observance at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan.
First lady Jill Biden will lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.
Alaska reduces the odds of an iPhone capturing yet another Biden gaffe, or worse:
This also gives Harris a chance to act (try not to laugh) as presidential as possible for what will be a widely covered event.
But like John Larroquette at the end of Stripes, would it possible to transfer the (p)resident to Alaska permanently?
