GRANNY-KILLER CUOMO: NY Nursing Home Case Involving COVID Death Will Move Forward. “In stripping away the legal immunity that Andrew M. Cuomo gifted to hospital and nursing home operators, this case represents a bellwether event for families seeking justice for what happened to the loved ones they lost. We’re surprised the story hasn’t yet been covered by larger news outlets – we discovered it during our weekend sweep of stories from smaller outlets.”
Surprised, really?
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Rising Food Prices Could Spell Social Unrest, Demand Destruction and Less Bacon.
With the world economy already shackled by Covid-related shortages and now reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices of such basics as bread, meat and cooking oils have jumped across the world, sending shock waves through the commodity markets and damaging the global food system.
For the most vulnerable societies—think Yemen, which imports 90% of its food in the midst of a grinding conflict and depreciating currency—this poses a genuine risk of hunger. Elsewhere, it triggers worries about what economists call demand destruction, a phenomenon when goods get too pricey to purchase.
“The cupboards are bare,” said Julian Conway McGill, head of South East Asia at consultancy LMC International, “and consumers will have to reduce their intake.”
Food inflation is just getting started.
IT’S A TRANS, TRANS, TRANS WORLD: Pipe Down, Ladies, and Know Your Place: Female Cyclists Warned Not to Complain About Men Competing in Their Sport.
CHRIS HEDGES: On Being Disappeared. “The entire archive of six years of my show On Contact has been removed by YouTube.”
The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. None of the shows I did on mass incarceration, where I interviewed those released from our prisons, are any longer on YouTube. Gone are the shows with the cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth. Melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind.
A harsh reminder that “the cloud” really just means “someone else’s hard drive.”
IT WOULD CERTAINLY MAKE ALL THE RIGHT HEADS EXPLODE: Donald Trump as Speaker of the House Next Year?
HMM: Senate Judiciary Committee Delays Jackson Vote. “With 11 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, Jackson needs majority approval to advance. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., granted the Republicans’ request to allow a one-week delay in sending Jackson’s nomination vote to the full Senate for a vote.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Biden’s COVID Relief ‘The Biggest Fraud in a Generation.’
Plus:
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
KOWTOW: GOP senators want answers on DOJ decision to kill program to catch Chinese spies. “Led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the lawmakers penned a letter to Garland last week inquiring about the recent termination of the so-called China Initiative, which was launched by the Trump administration in 2018 to preserve America’s technological edge. The program was specifically designed to identify and prosecute those engaged in hacking, stealing trade secrets, and conducting economic espionage for the Chinese government inside the U.S.”
Background: Biden Kowtowed to Xi AGAIN — This Time on the Eve of War.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Stacey Lennox: What Role do Demographics in Russia and China Play in Escalating Global Conflict? “Conquering new populations might be a form of survival for these authoritarian regimes. In the next decade or two, both China and Russia will face severe demographic holes that will impact productivity and financial health in the near term. Adding population may be the only way they can keep their economies viable.”
Matt Margolis: The Left’s Never-ending Obsession With Impeachment. “Democrats can’t stand losing at the ballot box, and they want revenge when they do. With Trump, it was impeachment. As for Republicans who questioned the results of the 2020 election, Democrats have been suing to disqualify them from being able to run for office. Now, the next frontier has become ousting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the hopes of giving Joe Biden a second pick before the 2022 midterms.”
Yours Truly: The Shocking Truth About Solar. “When it comes to solar, government efforts to get us to go ‘green’ just hit another concrete wall at high speed.”
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Biden’s Commitment For US LNG To Supply Europe Faces Strong Headwinds.
While committing the US to help Germany and other European nations wean themselves off of Russian natural gas seems to be a noble goal, there is just one problem: The President apparently didn’t talk the US LNG industry about it before he made the agreement. Reading the quotes from executives at Tellurian in the New York Times article linked here, it is apparent that they were caught off-guard by the President’s announcement. “I have no idea how they are going to do this, but I don’t want to criticize them, because for the first time they are trying to do the right thing,” said Charif Souki, the Times quotes executive chairman of Tellurian as saying.
Like every other industry in the United States, U.S. LNG is a private enterprise made up of an array of competing companies that operate in a capitalist, free market system. Given that reality, we are left to wonder how the President and his senior advisors plan to go about ensuring that the US meets the promises the President made in the agreement with the European Union? Does he plan to order his regulators to streamline permitting processes? Does he plan to somehow order banks and ESG investor groups to stop denying capital to companies in the industry, capital needed to fund their $10 billion LNG export facilities?
No, Biden planned to say something that would play well on TV.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Media’s ‘Reaganesque’ Biden Spin Is WAY Too Much to Stomach. “I’ve had it with the Biden water carriers in the mainstream media. OK, I know I am always in various states of ‘had it’ with them but the you-know-what covering the flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been doing since the speech President LOLEightyOneMillion gave in my ancestral homeland Poland last week has been a bit rough even on my cast-iron stomach.”
THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT: Biden’s Red Queen Justice: The Border Agents Remain Under Investigation Six Months After Debunked Whipping Scandal. “Biden and the media spread a false story based on a misleading picture of mounted agents using a whip to guide his horse. While the Administration promised a conclusion to the investigation within days or weeks, it has continued to refuse to release any results and insists that it remains ‘under investigation.’ The concern is that the Administration does not want to contradict the President who proclaimed the guilt of the agents and promised that they would be punished before they were investigated, let alone adjudicated.”
MEGAN FOX: Will Smith Has Deeper Issues Than Not Being Able to Take a Joke, and It All Starts With Jada. “Will’s violent outburst at the Oscars wasn’t because of that stupid G.I. Jane joke that Chris Rock told. This is a man whose existence is synonymous with being publicly humiliated by his wife over and over again. Last night was no exception.”
SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Penn State comms professor calls for assassination of Trump: ‘Should’ve been Lincoln’d.’
BATTLESWARM BLOG: Former CIA Officer Mike Baker On Bad Intelligence And Putin. “If you look at what he did in Chechnya, if you look at what he did helping Assad in Syria, if you look at what he did annexing Crimea, if you look at Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. Every step of the way he’s been following in his mind this stated desire, that he’s made very public over the years, to rebuild his sphere of influence.”
FEEL LIKE A REFUGEE: Can a Hunted Man Get Asylum in Joe Biden’s America? “‘UCA News reported back in November 2020 that “posters offering a reward of 10 million rupees (US$62,860) to kill a Pakistani Christian,’ Faraz Pervaiz, ‘for posting anti-Islam content on social media have appeared in Karachi in southern Pakistan.’ Since then, Pervaiz told me Sunday, the bounty has grown to $375,000 and has followed him halfway around the world, to Thailand, where he is being actively hunted by Muslims who are enraged at his alleged ‘blasphemy.'”
JUSTICE: Louisiana Supreme Court rules BLM organizer can be sued by people injured during riot. “Mckesson is named as the principal defendant in the lawsuit because of his role and planning an promoting the demonstrations. Considering violence during previous protests, and that Mckesson had prior knowledge of the events, the lawsuit alleges he is responsible for the resulting violent criminal actions that occurred.”
HAPPY EASTER, MR PRESIDENT: Easter bunny battered by candy business inflation. “A Post survey of seasonal sweets shows the average cost of an Easter basket has skyrocketed to $61.83, up from $50.46 in the pre-pandemic spring of 2019. That’s an increase of 22.5%, more than double the already historic 9% percent inflation rate in the same period.”
RUSSIAN RESET: Is Putin Signaling an End Game to the Ukraine War?
SUSTAINABILITY: Mortgage rate soars closer to 5% in its second huge jump this week. “With both rates and prices considerably higher, the median mortgage payment is now more than 20% higher than it was a year ago.”
Rates are going to have to go considerably higher before prices come back to Earth. As things stand now, mortgage rates are still below the inflation rate — free money, so why not bid up prices?
MATT MARGOLIS: I Thought Reporters ‘Don’t Root for a Side’? “On Sunday’s episode of Meet the Press on NBC, host Chuck Todd expressed panic over the Republican Party’s edge in his network’s latest generic congressional poll—calling it a ‘huge red flag.'”
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