EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Youth, young adults are dying from suicide and homicide at highest rates in decades, CDC report says.
Related? Fewer teens having sex, doing drugs but more are depressed.
Archive for 2023
June 16, 2023
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: FBI Source: Bidens ‘Coerced’ Burisma Exec to Pay $10 Million in Bribes.
VROOM, VROOM: Automakers can’t quit manual transmissions so they’re cramming fake stuff into EVs. “Toyota is toying with an EV prototype that mimics driving a manual transmission, complete with a stick shift that doesn’t do anything and fake engine noises.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: JISULIFE Portable Neck Fan. #CommissionEarned
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Emails show what was behind closure of San Francisco mall.
People are still going to the mall, just not in downtown San Francisco. An hour south in more suburban San Jose the Westfield owned mall is booming:
“Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose has begun to attract visitors and retail activity at levels that top the big shopping mall’s activity even prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus.”
The retail center is going through a stretch where it is attracting merchants at a brisk pace, according to Sue Newsom, senior general manager with Westfield Valley Fair…
“Our foot traffic has been exceptional,” Newsom said. “We now are way beyond our pre-COVID retail sales and foot traffic.”
That story is from March. The NY Times pointed out this week that malls nationwide are seeing increases in sales.
“At San Francisco Centre, sales fell 35 percent from 2019 to December 2022. In one of the group’s malls in nearby San Jose, it said, sales increased 66 percent during that same period. Sales across its 18 U.S. malls rose 23 percent.”
So it’s not malls in general or even the Bay Area in general that is the problem. People are choosing not to go to this particular mall.
The question isn’t whether there aren’t enough shoppers in downtown San Francisco because the offices remain empty, three years after COVID, or whether the offices remain empty because there’s nothing to do downtown any longer.
The question is why nobody wants to go downtown — which is odd because everybody knows the answer and nobody in San Francisco wants to do anything about it.
PLENTY OF DOWNSIDES, THOUGH: Dem Expert Witness Couldn’t Cite Evidence of Benefits of Trans Procedures for Children.
JAW, JAW IS BETTER THAN WAR, WAR: African Leaders Bring Peace Proposal to Ukraine as Kyiv and Moscow Vie for Support.
African leaders arrived Friday in Ukraine on a mission to help broker an end to the war, as both Moscow and Kyiv court the developing world for support.
The presidents of South Africa, Zambia, Senegal and the Comoros began the first leg of their trip with a visit to the site of a mass grave of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha.
The African leaders—accompanied by Egypt’s prime minister and senior officials from the Republic of Congo and Uganda—were due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv later Friday before traveling on to St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.
African officials and others involved in the mission have kept expectations low for any major breakthroughs resulting from the talks led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Well, yeah. Kyiv refuses to talk until Moscow evacuates to Ukraine’s 1991 borders and Moscow refuses to talk until Kyiv recognizes Moscow’s control over areas they haven’t even managed to occupy.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE (CONT’D): American flag causes ‘anxiety’ for Marquette professor.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Springfield College tells students to avoid using terms ‘mother’ and ‘father.’
IRREDENTISM: Russian State TV Presenter Just Said The Quiet Part Out Loud.
Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov appeared to lament the break up of the Soviet Union during a recent broadcast.
The anchor of an evening show on the Russia 1 state TV channel that bears his name, Solovyov has repeatedly framed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a proxy battle between Moscow and the West. His rhetoric includes calling for missile strikes on countries supporting Kyiv, as well as decrying Ukraine and the West that supports it as “satanic.”
But during his radio show Full Contact, he seemed to hanker for a Cold War world, according to a video tweeted by Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko.
“Give back the territory,” Soloyvov said, “give back the Soviet Union its territory.”
Soloyvov didn’t really say anything Putin himself didn’t imply years ago.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The DeSantis/Newsom Gubernatorial Throwdown Is a Welcome Distraction. “What’s happening in California is truly tragic. It remains one of the most physically beautiful places on Earth. It was once a land of great promise for people seeking any number of variations of the American Dream. Only Democrats could ruin something so grand. They did it rather quickly too.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Virgin Galactic sets first commercial space tourism flight for this month. “Virgin Galactic on Thursday said the flight, called Galactic 01, is targeting a launch window that opens June 27 and runs to June 30. Virgin Galactic then plans for its second commercial flight to follow in ‘early August,’ with ‘monthly’ commercial flights after that.”
I THOUGHT ONLY EXTREMISTS BELIEVED THERE WAS CHEATING: Voters see ‘cheating’ everywhere, 54% expect it in 2024 election.
Maybe demanding that nobody talk about cheating wasn’t the most persuasive response.
THIS IS CNN: Why Chris Licht Was Not the Problem and Shows CNN Is Far from Getting Repaired.
One takeaway from the Stelter piece is not just how resistant to change many at CNN had been, but that many feel there is no need to fix something. This is patently delusional. The network has been hemorrhaging viewers since the 2020 election with no sign of recovery. Among just cable news shows, the best-rated shows on CNN struggle to crack the Top 30, even following Fox News shrinking with the removal of Tucker Carlson.
Another revelation to emerge was a New York Times report that showed many major players inside CNN are still turning to deposed leader Jeff Zucker for therapy and guidance. Says Benjamin Mullin: Zucker is “now serving as a kind of grievance switchboard for current and former employees of the news network.” That Zucker was working to sabotage Licht and possibly pave a pathway for a return is not speculation. Mullin alludes to this very plan: Could Jeff Zucker Fix CNN? He Seems to Think So.
What’s clear is many inside CNN lack objectivity – both in their presentation of the news and in surveying basic operations. They preferred the Zucker era, where they were encouraged to run with their bias and attack Trump, Republicans, and conservatives, as well as pushing select narratives. What they miss is that CNN had begun its spiral well before Licht’s arrival. Things were not working under Zucker, despite their preference to deliver their version of the news.
What a mess.
ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE:
still a science writer at the new york times ! https://t.co/0fzIY2wKN3 pic.twitter.com/4ThlJOLRuW
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) June 14, 2023
Related:
“COVID planners gave ‘potentially massive’ lockdown impact ‘very little thought’…the COVID Inquiry has heard…‘there appears to have been a failure to think through the potentially massive impact on education and on the economy.’”https://t.co/LmNTBP8UB3
— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) June 14, 2023
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Ron DeSantis Calls Gavin Newsom Out. “California was probably the height of opportunity for middle-class Americans for many, many decades. In this country… people were drawn to there, and yet he’s the first governor that’s overseen a massive exodus out of California.”
LIKE THE BARBARIC AND REPRESSIVE MISSISSIPPI LAW EMMANUEL MACRON DENOUNCED even though it was more liberal than France’s. Gallup poll shows most Americans would vote for a 15-week abortion ban. “Again, this isn’t new. Gallup has always found that a majority believe second-trimester abortions should be illegal.”
As I’ve said before, had the Supreme Court stayed out of it, American abortion law would probably look a lot like Europe’s.
PRIVATE IS BETTER: Cape Canaveral, version 2.0
RECENTLY FRIENDS ARE LEAVING THE FIELD AND WHISTLING AS THEY GO: With Many A Winding Turn.
ECONOMICS IS A SCIENCE: Minimum Wages and Homelessness.
WELL, OF COURSE: How the DEA is behind the continued Adderall shortage.