GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: San Francisco Giving Homeless Vodka, Courtesy of Taxpayers.

Homeless alcoholics in San Francisco are getting vodka, wine, and beer at the expense of taxpayers, thanks to a crazy program that claims to provide health benefits and save lives. At this point, the reality of life under Democrat rule is far loonier than any satire or slapstick comedy.

The zany program in Democrat-run San Francisco allegedly aims to “curb excessive drinking” among the excessively large homeless population of the city, The UK Daily Mail reported on May 10. The unhoused (to use a silly leftist phrase) can booze it up to the tune of $5 million a year on the taxpayer dime, as vodka shots, wine glasses, and beer bottles are distributed by the City of San Francisco. Instead of aiming to sober up the homeless, the government there is allegedly only trying to provide small and short-term health benefits.

Nurses from the woke city’s “managed alcohol program” administer alcohol to the homeless addicts, the Daily Mail explained, allegedly helping curb the extreme addiction by controlling how much booze the individuals consume. The city claims success from the program, but we know that assurances on expensive and moronic government programs from Democrats are far more worthless than a can of Mulvaney-endorsed Bud Light. Does the program really keep homeless people out of jail or hospital? Who knows for sure? And, of course, it is responsible taxpayers who have to foot the bill.

In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

FIGHT THE POWER: Custodians’ union to sue Columbia, says didn’t protect staff from ‘bratty,’ ‘privileged’ protesters.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: CNN, Media Freak When GOP’s Rep. Scott Perry Accurately Ties KKK History To Democrats.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, the New Republic and The Daily Beast  and others in the liberal media jumped on this as well. The New Republic termed Perry’s remarks “bizarro” while The Daily Beast settled for “bonkers.”

In the Inquirer story the reporter quoted “Matt Jordan, director of the Pennsylvania State University News Literacy” who said that after its founding in 1865 by Democrats “it became an extra-legal terror organization that was never the wing of any political party.”

Where to start with this wildly ignorant understanding of basic American history?

The hard historical fact, per, among many, Columbia University historian Eric Foner is that the KKK was in fact “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan was as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”

Indeed, the Klan was so tied to the Democrats that the party’s 1924 Convention in New York City has been dubbed the “Klanbake” because so many of the delegates were Klan members.

The Klan’s favorite for the presidential nomination that year was one William Gibbs McAdoo, who had served Democrat – and Klan supporter  – President Woodrow Wilson as Secretary of the Treasury. Wilson, recall, was such a staunch Klan supporter that he hosted a White House screening of the pro-Klan, decidedly racist Hollywood blockbuster Birth of a Nation.

Evergreen:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

⬇️ Biden in 1992 on Bush41 vs. Shamir:

“Why is there any incentive for the Arabs to make any compromise.. if they know that they must only wait — for the U.S. will do their bargaining for them…

“The absurd notion that publicly vilifying Israel will somehow change its policy.” pic.twitter.com/N521CdSR9o

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) March 15, 2024

UPDATE: Flash-forward to 2024: Bombshell: Biden Administration Has Been Hiding Intel on Location of Hamas Leaders in Betrayal of Israel.

NOW THEY TELL US: NY Times Editorial Board: Cancel Culture Created the Campus Crisis.

JEWISH VOTERS MOVING RIGHT: Republican campaign strategists see Jewish voters moving to the GOP in the biggest races of 2024.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Compare and contrast @Wharton @UofPenn response to protesters’ calls for the genocide of Jews, a global intifada, and the encampment with the faculty’s response to the removal of LGBTQ+ stickers from six office doors and/or desks in a faculty office suite on campus.

Do you… https://t.co/R43KXEcfPQ

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 9, 2024

Also:

Penn faculty, students break down in tears after cops sweep pro-Hamas encampment

Related:

Organizations that supported antisemitic “protests” on college campuses and enabled Hamas’s agenda in the U.S. should lose their tax-exempt status. https://t.co/7SM4skB3UE

— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) May 10, 2024

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Victorinox says it’s developing Swiss Army Knives without blades. “The development of the new tools come as Victorinox CEO Carl Elsener Jr. told Swiss media outlet Blick that he was concerned about laws in some countries that prohibit people from carrying knives.”

RIP: Roger Corman, Pioneering Independent Producer and King of B Movies, Dies at 98.

Legendary B-movie king Roger Corman, who directed and produced hundreds of low-budget films and discovered such future industry stars as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, has died. He was 98.

Corman died May 9 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., surrounded by family members, the family confirmed to Variety.

“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that,’” the family said in a statement.

Corman’s empire, which existed in several incarnations, including New World Pictures, and Concorde/New Horizons, was as active as any major studio and, he boasted, always profitable. He specialized in fast-paced, low-budget genre movies — horror, action, science fiction, even some family fare — and his company became a work-in-training ground for a wide variety of major talents, from actors like Nicholson (“Little Shop of Horrors”) and De Niro (“Boxcar Bertha”) to directors like Francis Ford Coppola (“Dementia 13”) and Scorsese (“Boxcar Bertha”).

There was something of a tradition among Corman’s protégés to give their former boss cameos in their films. Corman himself appears briefly as one of the US senators grilling the Corleones in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II. In the classic “terminate with extreme prejudice” scene at the beginning of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen is handed his mission to kill Col. Kurtz, his superior officers are named Col. G. Lucas and Gen. R. Corman, played by a young Harrison Ford and veteran character actor G.D. Spradlin, respectively:

ANN ALTHOUSE ON MAUREEN DOWD: “Dowd seems to approve of using the criminal process not for its proper purpose — to enforce specific written law — but to expose and humiliate one’s political enemy. . . . It’s so exciting — sexually and politically — that she doesn’t see the downside. The aggressive desire to humiliate and crush him makes him sympathetic and makes you look like a bully.”

Not just look like. Plus: “I’m imagining the jurors talking about this testimony and trying to connect it to the elements of the crime — assuming they can get their mind around what this crime even is.”

And from the comments: “Dowd is just saying the quiet part out loud: She will vote for a known rapists like Joe Biden and Bill Clinton but Trump is bad! Well actually that isn’t it. What every single person in the world is realizing is the part about there being no actual crime here.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

USA vs China maritime industries at a glance pic.twitter.com/yvQ66SI0cx

— Mike Schuler (@MikeSchuler) May 9, 2024

The reason there will be no major reindustrialization in the US is because our environmental laws are written in a way where a single activist group with funding from China can prevent the construction of a chemical plant for a decade through environmental impact reviews.

— Nathan Carson (@ndcarson) May 10, 2024

LIMITED TIME DEAL: HexClad Hybrid Nonstick Frying Pan. #CommissionEarned

HE’S RIGHT OF COURSE: Columbia Law Professor Says Columbia University Violated Federal Laws, Fostered A ‘Hostile Environment’ On Campus. “If Mitts’ analysis is correct, the consequences for Columbia for violating Title VI and Title VII could be severe. While it is likely that Columbia would take whatever remedial action the government or courts demanded to avoid severe penalties, a standoff could lead to dire consequences potentially including a loss of federal funding. . . . Columbia’s profit margins are razor thin—$200 million in operating income on $6.1 billion in revenue—meaning that liability or federal sanctions would likely force the university to either cut costs, borrow money, or eat into its endowment and thereby reduce its long term competitiveness.”

Nobody thinks that Columbia — or any of the other top universities — would take such a mild line with a group denouncing, abusing, and physically attacking black students, or gay students, or trans students.

Make them pay.

Related: Pushback Works.

NATURE HAS A SAD: The Importance of Distinguishing Climate Science From Climate Activism.

FLASHBACK:

Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class. . . .

One of the most famous things about the Tea Partiers was that — as befits a relentlessly bourgeois protest movement — they left things cleaner than they found them. Rich Lowry reported from Washington, DC: “Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.” . . .

Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared “I’m not a fan of this movement.” After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives. . . .

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

Just a reminder of how we got here. And who’s responsible.

WELL, HE’S NOT WRONG: Trump blasts Biden as ‘total moron’ before crowd of 100K at NJ rally: ‘Whole world is laughing at him.’

But while Biden’s laughable, what he’s doing isn’t funny:

Why was this intelligence previously withheld? Did the Biden Administration intentionally withhold intel that could have led to the rescue of American hostages?

The Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC is largely responsible for making this policy determination. https://t.co/ihELxCD8Cc

— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) May 11, 2024

WELL, GOOD:

NEW: The “Queers For Palestine” protesters who blocked the highway exit to Disney World in Orlando, FL, have been arrested by Florida Highway Patrol. I’m told they were arrested within 11 minutes.
Florida continues w/ zero tolerance for blocking traffic.

Photo credit: @FLHSMV pic.twitter.com/F6sif5EP6Z

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 12, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Just do it.

HEH: Harvard Struggles To Find Class Day Speaker Less Than 2 Weeks Before Ceremony. “What was explained to us was that obviously this year is probably a rougher year for someone to affiliate themselves with Harvard, especially if they don’t have an existing connection.” Indeed.

Plus: “Zafar said the Senior Class Committee is not the only Harvard group struggling to bring prominent speakers to campus.” Why go? Speaking at Harvard doesn’t carry the prestige it once did. Plus the risk of being (literally, not figuratively) mobbed.

SO MANY FUNCTIONARIES WITH STASI-LIKE INSTINCTS: Maine SecState Wanted to Lock Up Local Journalists a la Jan 6 After Trump Ballot Debacle.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Serbia becomes latest country to join China’s ILRS moon base project.

UPDATE: Nailed it! A friend messages: “OK, so China’s moonbase with international backing of third-world shitholes will provide support for China’s claim of moon ownership.” That’s absolutely the plan. Or at least a plan, depending on contingencies.

HMM: A Common Sleeping Pill May Reduce Build-Up of Alzheimer’s Proteins, Study Finds. Of course, the theory that amyloid plaque buildup is the cause of Alzheimer’s is now looking a bit shaky.

HMM: Revolutionary AI Device Mimics Human Brain With Few-Molecule Computing.

HMM: Lesbian and bisexual women die earlier than straight women, decadeslong study finds.

WELL: Tested! The 845-HP 2024 Tesla Cybertruck Beast Annihilates Supercars and Common Sense. “Doesn’t matter if the Tesla’s foe has a massive forced-induction engine or a trick multi-motor electric powertrain—the so-called Cyberbeast will beat it.”

There are also tradeoffs.