MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: LEGO Bricks and the Dirty Truth About Recycling.

“I’LL ASK THE QUESTIONS, SIR!” CNN’s Jim Acosta Can’t Handle It When a Guest Says the Border Is ‘Open.’

MICHAEL WALSH: Invasion of the Nation-Snatchers.

I have a cunning plan.

CHANGE: Legal gender clinics are now banning puberty blockers and transgender surgeries for kids – amid fears of being sued down the line.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: The Destruction of the United States Is Intentional. Here’s What Will Happen Next.

BLUE STATE BLUES: California Nursing Homes Are Becoming ‘De Facto Mental Health Centers.’

“It’s a sanitarium,” said Travell Jackson, a nurse with two decades of experience who worked at the facility in 2022. On any given day, she said, there were “patients running around, screaming, yelling, disrobing, defecating in the hallways, on themselves.”

Last year, 7 in 10 residents at Hyde Park had a serious mental illness — defined as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychotic disorder — according to an investigation by LAist, APM Research Lab and The California Newsroom.

Our investigation found that in 2022, hundreds of nursing homes across California — facilities that typically help people rehabilitate after surgery or provide round-the-clock care for the elderly or physically disabled — admitted and housed thousands of people with serious mental illness, often for a year or longer.
…
The consequences — documented in state records — have been horrific. Without proper supervision, residents with serious mental illness have slipped out of nursing homes and gone missing for weeks, and been released with little regard for their needs.

Read the whole thing.

LOL: University’s town hall for LGBTQ-themed crosswalk draws total of two people.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden Admin Lets 221K+ Migrants Fly Directly Into U.S.

While the data is still incomplete and partially redacted, it revealed “221,456 Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans [approved] for ‘travel mode: air’ into still-unspecified interior U.S. ports,” CIS reported Thursday.

It is key to note that these illegal aliens are “inadmissible.” That ought to mean they aren’t allowed into the country.

Much more at the link.

THE BULLYING IS WHAT MAKES DEI FUN: Audio released of DEI instructor berating principal who challenged her assumptions and later killed himself. “‘That’s the lesson of this tragedy, that people are sick and tired of being isolated and cast out from polite society because they have the gall to ask a question or challenge the orthodoxy,’ Ari Goldkind, a Toronto attorney, told The Free Press.”

WHEN THE MEDIAN INCOME WON’T BUY A MEDIAN HOME: You Now Have to Earn Over $100,000 to Afford a Typical Home in the US.

With today’s high mortgage rates and expensive real estate, the median family income of $91,721 isn’t enough to buy a median-priced house.

In fact, it now takes a record income of $104,496 to qualify for a median-priced house at prevailing mortgage rates, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors (as of July). As recently as February, it was only $87,840 — about $3,000 less than the median income.

Even though property prices rose at record rates during much of the pandemic, the ultra low mortgage rates triggered by the economic shock of COVID-19 kept buying a home affordable for the average American household. But mortgage rates have shot up, more than doubling to over 7% amid soaring inflation, and prices are still setting new records because there are so few houses for sale. That’s been a lethal combination for affordability, the NAR data shows.

Previously: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Summer of Love Defund the Police Schadenfreude Edition. “It wasn’t just the Summer of Love that set this in motion. The Democrats have been vehemently anti-cop since His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama decided to become the chief cheerleader for the false narrative about the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO.”

BECAUSE, AS WITH THE COVID MASKING RULES, THE SERVANT CLASS MUST KNOW ITS PLACE: If John Fetterman Can Wear Shorts, Why Not the Senate Pages? “Pages who understand that their role in the Senate is that of employees in positions of service will adjust most quickly.”

LIFE DURING WARTIME: Russia imposes ‘military censorship’ on the internet, ban on public gatherings and strikes in occupied Ukraine.

The Kremlin-backed head of a separatist region in eastern Ukraine is imposing a regime of military censorship — and a ban on going outside during the night — as fierce fighting continues in the self-proclaimed “republic” of Donetsk.

In a decree published Sunday, Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, “imposed military censorship on mail, Internet communications and phone conversations,” Russian state media reported.

The decree also prohibits public gatherings that have not received prior approval from military authorities, according to Reuters. Civilians are likewise banned from going outside on weekdays between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.; workers are also barred from going on strike, per Ukrainska Pravda.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the loyalties of people lucky enough to have been liberated by Russian forces.

LIKE THE REST OF THE GOVERNMENT: FEC commissioner says agency ‘weaponized’ against GOP.

SHOCKER: NBC poll, too: 59% of voters have “major concerns” about Biden’s mental competency.

CHUTZPAH: Indicted Senator Bob Menendez to Announce Reelection Bid Monday.

DON SURBER: Journalists adopt lefty language: The better to promote government control of everything. “By misinformation research, the Bezos Post meant censorship. By political disinformation, the Bezos Post meant Republicans telling the truth about such lies as the Russian dossier. By the quality of medical information online, the Bezos Post meant mocking treatments that work on covid (such as ivermectin) and promoting actions that failed to stop the virus (such as wearing a cloth mask or standing six feet apart). . . . Freedom of speech protects journalism’s lies from censorship but it does not mean we must believe them.”

OUT: DR. DEMENTO. IN: PRESIDENT DEMENTIA. WATCH: Biden Praises ‘Congressional Black Caucus’ During Address to Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

AT LEAST HE’S HONEST ABOUT IT: Education Secretary says he doesn’t ‘respect’ parents thinking ‘they know what’s right for kids.’

Speaking about what he views as attacks on education during an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Cardona said, “I’ve never seen it where it is now,” and that we used to be able to “have healthy conversations around what’s best for kids.”

Parents are increasingly expressing concerns regarding their children’s education and attending school board meetings to voice their opinions, but Cardona said he does not think highly of such people.

“I respect differences of opinion. I don’t respect people who are misbehaving in public and then acting as if they know what’s right for kids,” he said, referring to parents who speak up at school board meetings.

Maybe Cardona isn’t quite as honest about his goals as other lefties, but give him time.

HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW: Patanjali Kambhampati: My ‘lived experience’ tells me that diversity, inclusion and equity is antithetical to human liberty.

YOU WOULD NEED A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: What I Saw While Working at Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. “I came to the Center for Antiracist Research with hope and passion. I left with nothing but grief and exhaustion. During my final month, I attended a staff retreat. It felt more like a funeral. Given the mass layoffs that just happened, maybe it was. The center that so many believed in is now effectively dead. . . . Antiracism has become more of a buzzword than a movement. Real antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign, or path to self-promotion.”

Actually, that’s all it ever was. The thing is, there’s no there there. It was always just a grift, and now that’s become obvious even to (many of) the true believers.

VICTORIA TAFT: California’s ‘Scorched Earth’ War on Gun Rights Presses On Despite Court Smackdown. “For the left, the process is the punishment. And, oh, what a grinding process this has been and will continue to be. This is the plan, after all.”

MEN’S LIVES ARE BEING RUINED, WOMEN HARDEST HIT. “The struggling American man is one of the few objects of bipartisan concern. Both conservatives and liberals bemoan men’s underrepresentation in higher education, their greater likelihood to die a ‘death of despair,’ and the growing share of them who are not working or looking for work. But the chorus of concern rarely touches on how male decline shapes the lives of the people most likely to date or marry them—that is to say, women.”

Never suggested is that women should lower — or modify — their standards.

According to Inhorn, these numbers explain why, today, educated women who want a male partner to parent with are hard-pressed to find someone displaying the characteristics she calls “the three e’s—eligible, educated, and equal” (and, I would add, “eager” to commit) as they seek “the three p’s of partnership, pregnancy, and parenthood.” Egg freezing is, as Inhorn puts it, “women’s technological concession to a U.S. gender problem.”

I hear single women talking about the “three sixes” — at least six feet tall, a six figure income, and a six-inch penis. The Venn diagram where those characteristics overlap doesn’t offer much hope.

Related: Women Find 80% Of Men Unattractive. “Women are often thought of as picky, especially where men are concerned. Some single women are known to have lists of characteristics that their ideal man must possess, like great abs, a sense of humor, a six-figure income, and a nice car. When a woman meets a potential mate, she has to decide which of these traits are deal-breakers and which she can let go. No matter how selective a woman might be, some have strict physical attributes from their must-haves list, as an OkCupid study found that women find 80 percent of men unattractive.”

Also related: Hillary Clinton: “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”

Plus:

The consensus that emerged in the 1970s that marriage didn't matter and the really important thing for kids was happy parents, the wishful thinking about alternate family structures being just as good and probably better … those were decisions, not natural disasters.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) September 20, 2023