GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: Blue City Only Issues Seven New Housing Permits In Two Months Despite Housing Crisis: Report.

The city of San Francisco has only issued seven new housing permits in the first two months of 2024, The San Francisco Standard reported Monday.

San Francisco committed to building 82,000 housing units by 2031 in a plan adopted in 2023, according to the outlet.

(RELATED: California Building Fewer Homes As Residents Continue Getting Smacked With Astronomically High Rent)

The number of approved new housing does not count a number of scenarios such as refurbishment and conversion projects, The San Francisco Standard reported. The city reportedly claimed it had permitted 341 new housing units in three months since the start of 2024. The outlet observed that under the current rate of approvals, it would take the city decades build 82,000 new housing units.

As Thomas Sowell has written, it’s “The Housing Price of Liberalism.”

In this part of California, liberalism reigns supreme and “open space” is virtually a religion. What that lovely phrase means is that there are vast amounts of empty land where the law forbids anybody from building anything.

Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that preventing the supply from rising to meet the demand means that prices are going to rise. Housing is no exception.

Yet when my wife wrote in a local Palo Alto newspaper, many years ago, that preventing the building of housing would cause existing housing to become far too expensive for most people to afford it, she was deluged with more outraged letters than I get from readers of a nationally syndicated column.

What she said was treated as blasphemy against the religion of “open space” — and open space is just one of the wonderful things about the world envisioned by liberals that is ruinously expensive in the mundane world where the rest of us live.

As Sowell writes, “Much as many liberals like to put guilt trips on other people, they seldom seek out, much less acknowledge and take responsibility for, the bad consequences of their own actions.” San Francisco is a crumbling, endlessly multifaceted example of precisely that.

GETTING RE-ELECTED:  For some of the California Senators I’m trying to discourage from putting ACA7 on the ballot, following my advice seems like simple prudence.  Their constituents hated Proposition 16, and ACA7 is just a Proposition 16 with a thin disguise.

@MHurtadoCA @senator_hurtado This is a map of the counties where Proposition 16 won and lost. In Kern County, 72% of voters were AGAINST, in Kings, 73.8% were AGAINST, in Tulare, 71.9% were AGAINST. ACA7 is just Prop 16 redux. Please vote NO. pic.twitter.com/B66qgSvc3s

— No on ACA-7 (@NoACA7) April 10, 2024

It seems kind of suicidal for a politician to go against that many of their constituents.  But who knows what motivates these politicians?  My colleagues and I will keep giving them good reasons to vote NO, and we’ll see what happens.

HAVE A STEAK AND A SMILE: Keto Diet May Slow Down Alzheimer’s, Mouse Study Reveals.

READER FAVORITE: FLANCCI Mens Slim Wallet with Money Clip. #CommissionEarned

‘THE ANXIOUS GENERATION’ IS AN EXCELLENT AND IMPORTANT BOOK … [h]owever, as a free speech advocate and First Amendment lawyer, I believe some of Jon’s proposals that reach beyond norms and into government legislation go too far and would restrict free speech rights.”

WELL, GOOD: New Technique Can Quickly Detect Fentanyl and Other Opioids.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: After Being Completely Exposed By Its Own Editor, NPR Responds in the Worst Possible Fashion.

The NPR article responding to Berliner goes on to miss the point yet again by bragging about how four out of 10 staffers are “people of color.”

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR’s leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

It’s like talking to a wall. They just can’t grasp how stocking the newsroom with DEI hires instead of hires based on actual viewpoint diversity could possibly lead to the outcome Berliner exposed in his piece.

Former NPR CEO John Lansing, who resigned a month prior to this writing, defended his tenure this way.

“The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?” Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner’s piece. “I’d welcome the argument against that.”

Sure, I’ll provide the argument against that. DEI does not “make sure it sounds like all of America” because left-wing ideologies are naturally self-selective. In practice, diversity quotas as produced by organizations like NPR create bubbles where only those who agree with DEI in the first place have their opinions heard and published. Thus, you get the insane bias and censorship demonstrated by NPR.

Naturally, no lessons will be learned and Berliner, who is himself a left-wing Democrat, will be cast into the abyss for speaking the truth. Meanwhile, NPR’s ratings will continue to flatline all while looking to the federal government for hand-outs. The cycle repeats.

As Don Surber adds, responding to Berliner’s article at Bari Weiss’ Free Press: DEI opens a liberal’s eyes.

The goal is not to diversify views because the MGIPOC and the LGBTQIA selected are all socialists. The goal is to convert the rest of the MGIPOC and LGBTQIA.

The biggest selling point to the MGIPOC and LGBTQIA is that white people caused all their problems, particularly the straight men. He pointed out that the union contract with NPR is a tool for DEI.

Berliner said, “In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.”

Well, well, well, what do we have here? A white boy is complaining about paying union dues to make it harder for a white boy to make it at NPR.

They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. We will see how true that is because DEI just mugged Uri Berliner.

Berliner claims that “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.” Fair enough on that last point — “scolding” would require dropping the famously tepid NPR announcer voice, if only temporarily. But the rest of those boasts seem ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t already drunk the leftist Kool-Aid pre-Trump. At Power Line, Steve Hayward links to a hilarious 1993 article by Glenn Garvin. The references are of their time, but the point is made nonetheless: How Do I Hate NPR? Let Me Count the Ways.

UPDATE: ‘Amazing!’ Here’s Who Was Picked to Defend NPR’s ‘Journalism’ Integrity.

How can we ever forget NPR's courageous stance to ignore a major, relevant story on the eve of a presidential election.

True journalistic heroism. pic.twitter.com/bC5dSAK2wB

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 10, 2024

MICROBIOME NEWS: Study: Gum disease treatment after heart rhythm ablation reduced risk of recurring AFib.

SPACE CADET: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee tells schoolkids that moon is a ‘planet’ and ‘made up mostly of gases.’

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) stunned attendees at a high school solar eclipse event Monday by claiming the rock-solid moon is a “planet” that is “made up mostly of gases” — before adding she still wants to be “first in line” to learn how to live there.

The former top Democrat on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee badly botched elementary lunar facts while speaking during the gathering at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston.

“You’ve heard the word ‘full moon.’ Sometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases,” Jackson Lee, 74, told teenage pupils who gathered on a sports field ahead of the rare celestial event.

* * * * * * * *

In a statement to The Post on Tuesday, she admitted she was wrong to describe the moon, which has virtually no atmosphere, as being composed mostly of gas to the schoolkids.

“Obviously I misspoke and meant to say the sun, but as usual, Republicans are focused on stupid things instead of stuff that really matters. What can I say, though, foolish thinkers lust for stupidity!” she said of GOPers who swiftly criticized her glaring gaffes.

This isn’t the first time that the final frontier has vexed Jackson Lee:

During a 1997 visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Jackson Lee, who was then serving on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees U.S. space policy, asked a guide whether the Mars Pathfinder would be able to show an image of “the flag the astronauts planted there before.” When it was subsequently pointed out that the flag to which she was referring was in fact the one that Neil Armstrong had planted on the Moon—not Mars—in 1969, Jackson Lee complained that she was being mocked by bigots. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then-chief-of-staff wrote angrily in a letter to the editor.

How bad have Jackson Lee’s gaffes been over the years? Even her fellow leftists at the Daily Beast has goofed on her worst moments: The Constitution Is 400 Years Old and More Pearls From Sheila Jackson Lee.

UPDATE: Citing Jackson Lee, America’s Newspaper of Record reports: American Transition To Idiocracy Running Ahead Of Schedule.

KAKISTOCRACY AT WORK:

BIDEN: "Elect me. I'm in the 20th Century."

We are in the 21st Century.

This guy has the nuclear codes… pic.twitter.com/HxndFlYLIw

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) April 10, 2024

ED MORRISSEY: Devil’s Triangle and a Media Shame-Storm: An Interview With Mark Judge.

WELL, GOOD: 2025 Toyota 4Runner Is Finally Here and Appears Worth the Wait.

A BLOW FOR FREEDOM: House FISA bill tanked by hard-liners in latest blow to Speaker Johnson’s leadership.

WHAT ABOUT AI? Regardless if you are fascinated or terrified by what Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be able to do in the future or already is capable of today, Dr. Robert Marks of Baylor University likely has all the answers — Facts and Fictions — you need, today on HillFaith.

DEVELOPING: Several people shot near end of Ramadan event in Philadelphia: report.

UNEXPECTEDLY! Inflation unexpectedly rises to 3.5% — plunging Dow Jones down 450 points and all but ruling out a summer cut to interest rates.

The ghost of Milton Friedman smiles.

HOLY SHIT!!!🤣🤣🤣

Shopping during Bidenomics!!!

Whoever made THIS👇🏼 FREAKING ROCKS!!!😆😂 pic.twitter.com/g6TB3K29nM

— SaltyGoat (@SaltyGoat17) November 13, 2023

MY FIRST AMENDMENT CONCERNS WITH WITH MY COAUTHOR JON HAIDT’S NEW BOOK ‘THE ANXIOUS GENERATION.’

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Another Brave Israeli Buys His First Firearm.

SELF-DEFENSE: Straight Talk: Technology and Tactics Evolve. Not me — still proudly point-shooting a Police Positive in .38 Special.

TYLER O’NEIL: The True Force Behind the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex.’

Benjamin Weingarten, editor-at-large at RealClearInvestigations, also attributed “the leading edge of all the attacks on Donald Trump as an avatar for tens of millions of dissenting Americans” to the administrative state and the “deep state” within it. (The “deep state” refers to bureaucrats who oppose the agenda of the duly-elected president.) These entrenched bureaucrats “felt most threatened that [Trump] would upend the uniparty foreign policy blob,” he said.

“You also had the tech companies identify that what happened in 2016 could never happen again,” Weingarten said, referring to both the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election victory.

“They kind of used the pretext of Russian mis-, dis-, and malinformation, grafting a Cold War paradigm” to define a new enemy—Americans who disagree with their agenda, he said. “We are the enemy that’s engaging in wrongthink that threatens to undermine their power.”

After 2016, “Big Tech platforms became perceived as—rather than vehicles for free and open discourse—now they needed to be weaponized as assets of this security state, essentially.”

And they were weaponized. But then Elon Musk took one of their weapons away and now he must be made to pay for that.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Everything We Thought We Knew About Elections Is Changing.

GET IN SHAPE: ASICS Women’s Gel-Nimbus 26 Running Shoe. #CommissionEarned

IF THE EXPERTS ARE BAFFLED BY THIS, IN WHAT WAY COULD THEY POSSIBLY BE CONSIDERED EXPERTS? Biden DOJ Slow-Walks ‘Slam Dunk’ Case Against Man Who Allegedly Tried To Kill Justice Kavanaugh, Baffling Experts.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: US Navy warship commander mocked for holding rifle with scope mounted backward.

“Several people also pointed out that Yaste’s shooting stance and technique were not exactly on the level of, say, a US Marine. One user fired off the first salvo on X, where he wrote: ‘US Navy just killing it on Instagram,’ alongside laughing and cringing emojis. ‘Man. The scope is annoying, but that grip placement is downright WILD,’ another responded.”

THIS WORM GEAR SEEMS AWFULLY HEAVY: Smugglers melted and spray painted $10 million in gold to look like machine parts.