NOW OUT FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: The 21 Biggest Lies about Donald Trump (and you!).
DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI: Feckless Fauci Lies About Masks And Nearly Everything Else. “There are so many things wrong with the picture of Dr. Fauci taking in a Washington Nationals baseball game that one does not know where to start – and no it is not the fact that at that moment he is not wearing a mask. The first thing is that he is there at all, unlike the rest of America that he forbids from watching a baseball game. They’d like to take in a game too but only Fauci, secure in the knowledge that he has a regular job and a regular paycheck gets to enjoy America’s new favorite national pastime, players kneeling during the National Anthem. Dr. Fauci took a break from his world tour long enough to take in a game and throw out the first pitch, which was predictably wild and to the left, the latest in a long series of curveballs he has thrown at us.”
THINK OF THE MEDIA AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OPERATION AIMED AT NORMAL AMERICANS AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Mainstream Media Oddly Silent as Virus Case Numbers Rise in Portland and Seattle.
THE RISE OF PRIVATE MILITIAS IS NOT USUALLY SEEN AS EVIDENCE OF ADVANCING CIVILIZATION: In Minneapolis, Armed Residents Set Up Patrols Amid Calls to Defund the Police: The city council approves its first permanent cuts to the police budget; crime has surged in the past two months.
Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing in May. At least one neighborhood has put up barricades to keep away outsiders.
The moves come as the city council on Friday approved its first permanent cuts to the police budget, amid calls to defund the department and generally lower tax revenue due to the economic strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The $193 million police budget will be cut by $10 million, including making permanent some temporary spending measures—including a hiring freeze—put in place in June. Around $1 million from the police budget is being shifted to a program called Cure Violence that tries to prevent things such as retaliatory shootings through community engagement. . . .
Police say the increase in crime follows a pattern seen in Ferguson, Mo., and other places where there have been high-profile officer-involved deaths and protests. Police say that, while some in the city seem to believe police have given up, officers remain on patrol throughout the city.
As riots played out across the city in late May and early June, a group of Black gun owners responded to a call from the local NAACP and patrolled the mostly African-American West Broadway business district for 10 nights, keeping the area free of looting or arson without firing a shot, said Jamil Jackson, a leader of the group called the Minnesota Freedom Fighters, which advocates for Black gun ownership. . . .
Council member Linea Palmisano said armed neighborhood patrols, or even efforts to just keep unfamiliar people out of a neighborhood, opens a Pandora’s box.
“We are lurching for solutions,” she said, noting she doesn’t support the idea of doing away with the police department but supports the idea of letting residents vote on it.
With the neighborhood patrols, “you could very easily create the same things we rally against,” she said.
In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.
“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”
So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.
Neighborhood men also began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.
Kicking out people who “don’t belong.” When the dawn patrol’s got to tell you twice, they’re gonna do it with a shotgun. Well, laboratories of democracy and all that.
As P.J. O’Rourke wrote in his 1995 book, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, In 1970, “I got a job. It wasn’t much of a job. I was a messenger. But it brought in $150 a week and that was wealth as far as I was concerned. We were paid fortnightly. I waited greedily for my $300. But when my pay envelope arrived I found, after federal, state, and city taxes had been deducted and social security, health insurance, and pension plan payments had been made, only $160 was left. I began yelling. ‘I’m a revolutionary! I’ve been a revolutionary since I went to college! I’ve demonstrated! I’ve rioted! I’ve done everything I could to overthrow capitalism! And what do I find when I get my first paycheck from a capitalist company? COMMUNISM!!!’ Of course, it was several years before the implications of what I yelled sank in. At that age I wasn’t listening to anyone, myself included.”
KNOW YOUR OPPONENT: How White Educated Female Liberals Are Destroying the Culture.
FLASHBACK TO 2014: Don’t say you weren’t warned.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Kate Upton sets new hip thrust personal record.
IF YOU HAD “CHAINSAW WIELDING BRITISH BABOONS” ON YOUR 2020 BINGO CARD, PLEASE COLLECT YOUR WINNINGS: Baboons ‘armed with knives and chainsaws’ spotted in British safari park.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT:
“Peaceful demonstration intensified.” George Orwell would be impressed by the level of gaslighting.
Speaking of which: After 59 Days of Riots in Portland, ABC Claims ‘Weeks’ Since Protests Were Violence.
METEOROLOGIST MARTY CONIGLIO LEAVES DENVER’S 9NEWS AFTER COMPARING FEDERAL TROOPS TO NAZIS:
Meteorologist Marty Coniglio, a staple of Denver TV weather for three decades, left [local NBC affiliate] 9News Friday, a day after he compared, on social media, federal troops in U.S. cities to Nazis.
Coniglio, in a text message, confirmed his departure but said he would “not be able to talk about the situation for at least a week or so.”
Mark Cornetta, the station’s president and general manager, said in an email that “Marty is no longer employed by 9News.” He declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding his exit.
Thursday morning, Coniglio tweeted “Federal police in cities … now where have I seen that before?” with a picture of Nazi soldiers posing in front of a Swastika banner.
ROGER SIMON: Whirlwind: It Will Be Worse for Democrats If They Win.
One thing that will not be happening is conditions in the country getting better. Biden’s economic plans, heavily under the influence of AOC and others from his left he seems terrified of confronting, will only make things worse.
In a short while, the radical groups will be back in the streets again, demanding changes that can never be satisfied short of revolution—and even then, if history is any guide, will continue on Robespierre-style into oblivion.
Critical race theory—again with ninety-nine percent not knowing what the hell it is—will reign, dividing us even more. Many will unfairly be accused of racism and punished severely, in a way eerily similar to what happened to Evgenia Ginzberg for being called a “Trotskyist.”
The limousine liberals of Brentwood, Calif. or Malibu who backed Biden so adamantly, whether as a last resort or not, will be starting to sweat. The revolution will be coming for them.
How could they not have known? DIdn’t they see “Dr. Zhivago”? Some of them may even have helped make it. (Well, maybe not in today’s Hollywood.)
If you think things are bad now, just wait.
Read the whole thing.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Training is Just as Important as the Firearm You’re Carrying.
MOSTLY PEACEFUL: Austin Protest Turns Deadly; One Killed. “According to a source with knowledge of the events that transpired Saturday night, the protesters surrounded the wrong car. The driver was armed, as is legal in Texas, and fired when the man with the rifle approached the driver’s car and pointed his gun at the car window.” Well, stay tuned, but blocking streets and threatening motorists is a violent act, and it is dangerous for all concerned. It’s malpractice for police to allow this to happen.
Possibly related: Black militia member accidentally shoots his comrades during face off with Three Percenters in Louisville.
FOLLOW THE MONEY… OUT OF NEW YORK:
It’s interesting to watch idiot politicians set out to destroy a city. In fairness, the idiot politicians were elected by idiot voters, so, we must conclude that these voters are getting what they voted for.
Being of less than surpassing intelligence, they vote for the political party that promises to support and care for them. And they discover that the very same political party believes that the best way to do it is through higher taxes on the rich. Since they are not rich they are all for taxing other people. But then when the rich start fleeing the high tax state, the voters who believed that they had voted themselves a living suddenly discover that the goose has stopped laying the golden eggs. So, naturally, they blame Donald Trump.
QED
Anyway, the Zero Hedge blog has offered two recent stories on a slightly arcane issue: taxing stock transactions. You see, in many stock markets around the world, the local government takes a tiny piece of every transaction. Obviously, when you have billions of stock trades, those tiny pieces end up being real money. New York State does not do so because some four decades ago the stock exchange threatened to move out of the city.
Now, with New York’s tax base shrinking and the city and state being in the hands of idiot politicians, the idea is rising from the dead.
Related: New York, London Get Hit Hardest in Mega-Mansion Sales Plunge.
While Covid is mentioned in the brief Bloomberg article, no mention of riots, protests, or other reasons that could be driving the real estate plunge.
(Via Maggie’s Farm, which is loaded with many more links for your reading and blogging pleasure.)
ANOTHER TRUMP PUBLIC HEALTH TRIUMPH: Trump’s Executive Order Will Drop the Price of Insulin Down to Pennies a Day.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? If You Thought ‘Defund the Police’ Was Insane You’ll Love ‘Abolish Prisons’ in Seattle.
SEE YOU LATER — OH, WAIT. American crocodiles likely left Africa more than 5 million years ago.
I STICK WITH NICE, SAFE, BURGERS AND FRIES — BEST THING FOR YOU! Parasitic infection linked to bagged salad spreads to 641.
BRYAN PRESTON: Why Seattle Is Likely to See More Riots and Violent Crime.
Chief Best is telling Mayor Durkan and the city council that they’re about to get people killed. But police officers won’t be among the casualties if Chief Best can help it.
Mayor Jenny Durkan and the city council have voted to take non-lethal tools out of the hands of police, which is in effect a vote for violence, property destruction, and anarchy. So that’s what they’re more likely to get now. We’ve seen the consequences of this before, recently.
Good luck, Seattle. Elections truly do have consequences.
Or as Roger Kimball writes: It Doesn’t End Well.
YOU’LL MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE: Italy laments the loss of the US tourist.
LARRY ELDER: Who’s Next on the Cancel Culture Docket — Martin Luther King Jr.?!
It’s turtles cancels all the way down.
WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: Florida mistake on child COVID-19 rate raises question: Can Florida’s numbers be trusted? “An error by the Florida Department of Health produced a COVID-19 positivity rate for children of nearly one-third, a stunning figure that played into the debate over whether schools should reopen. A week after issuing that statistic, the department took it back without explanation. The next weekly report on children and COVID-19 showed the rate had plunged to 13.4%. The department blamed a “computer programming error” for the mistake, in response to questions from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Experts said the change and the failure to explain it to the public calls into question the state’s data at a time when accurate and trustworthy information is crucial to a society grappling with an unprecedented health crisis.”
Plus: ‘It’s unacceptable to publish information that changes so dramatically that it warrants explanation, and then to not provide any explanation,’ said Jason Salemi, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health in Tampa. ‘I’m trying to get an understanding of why the number changed so much, what underlies it — and can we trust this new number.'”
PRETTY MUCH SETTING THINGS UP FOR TRUMP TO INVOKE THE INSURRECTION ACT IF HE WANTS TO: Police Tell Business Owners in Seattle ‘You’re On Your Own.’
IN THE MAIL: From Ben Shapiro, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
U.S. NAVY MINE NEUTRALIZATION VEHICLE: Sailors aboard the mine countermeasures ship USS Pioneer lower a mine neutralization vehicle into the water during a mine warfare exercise off the Japanese coast. The remote-controlled MNV wears shark’s teeth war paint. Here’s a photo from 2011 of a multinational mine warfare exercise in the Arabian Gulf. The ships in the photo are mine countermeasures ships (yes, minesweepers). This StrategyPage Surface Forces update from March 2020 discusses current trends in naval mine and counter-mine warfare. Note it says western navies prefer to use unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs) to destroy bottom mines. The article also includes a detailed historical discussion of 20th century mine warfare.
STACY MCCAIN: “Antifa is not a political movement, it’s a mental-health crisis.”
SHOCKER: VIDEO: Surveillance footage appears to back Texas A&M cops’ claim of student race hoax.
The demand for racial hatred in America exceeds the supply.
WHEN BLACK LIVES MATTER, AND WHEN THEY DON’T: Black Trump supporter stabbed by Antifa militant in Portland riot speaks out. “Trump supporter and conservative videographer Drew Duncomb, who goes by the name Black Rebel on social media, was allegedly stabbed amid the Portland protests by Antifa militant and convicted pedophile Blake David Hampe. Hampe was arrested on Saturday with a bail set to $250,000 for felony assault.”
WAIT, FOR MONTHS THE PRESS WAS TELLING ME THAT BORIS JOHNSON’S INCOMPETENCE MEANT EVERYONE WAS GOING TO DIE: The U.K.’s Response to Covid-19 Has Been World-Class: One country has done more than any other to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
In sum, the best life-saving medicine and the best candidate vaccine both come from the U.K. For sure, there might be some elements of coincidence here, but the same can be said for the more effective public-health responses as well.
By the way, if you are looking for the second leading candidate in the race to fight Covid-19, the most plausible answer is the U.S., which has produced the useful antiviral remdesivir and is working on a broad array of vaccine candidates, with generally promising results, even if none of them is as far along as the work at Oxford. The U.S. may yet pass the U.K. for overall contributions, but as of mid-July in per capita terms the British are the winners by a landslide.
Well, that kind of harshes the narrative, doesn’t it?
JUST TAKE A GAP YEAR: Double Standard: Tulane threatens students with ‘expulsion’ for large gatherings; protests OK because they ‘wore masks.’
Someone needs to point out to Tulane President Mike Fitts that this is a bad look for his institution.
AN UNTRUE CLAIM IN THE NEW YORKER SPEAKS VOLUMES:
Reading the latest copy of the New Yorker magazine, published exactly a week ago, I came across this sentence in a piece by Jill Lepore:
One study suggests that two-thirds of Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four who were treated in emergency rooms suffered from injuries inflicted by police and security guards, about as many people as the number of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles.
—Jill Lepore, New Yorker
This in a 5,000 word feature on the history of policing in the United States, which draws a link between the early role of police in suppressing slave rebellions, and police killings of Black Americans in the twenty first century.
* * * * * * * *
Why does this one sentence matter? Well, firstly, it misinforms readers, several of whom (based on my Twitter search for the article’s URL) also alighted on this claim, but unlike me took it on trust. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it tells us something about the political climate in a publication like the New Yorker, which was once famous for its rigorous fact checking.
Read the whole thing.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT, UH, WORK: DC returns to work — and online porn, up 1,600%. “Online porn viewing in Washington, dormant since most offices closed in March, has started to spike as more workers have returned to their cubicles in the federal city. According to one popular website, Stripchat, weekly users have gone from about 3,000 in Washington during the coronavirus shutdown to about 55,000.”
IS JOE BIDEN DEMENTED OR JUST DUMB? Joe Biden: ‘People’ don’t distinguish between Chinese and other Asians.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar ‘in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.’
GOVERNANCE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Meltdown: Minneapolis violence nearing annual records — in July.
FINALLY, EDITORS WITH A SPINE: The Wall Street Journal hits back at staff’s ‘cancel culture.’
As Glenn noted in USA Today when Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times over its stifling uber-woke culture, “The proper response to a bunch of junior staffers complaining about articles that a newspaper publishes is something between ‘Go, write a piece explaining why that piece is wrong’ and ‘Fetch my latte.’ Journalism jobs are hard to come by and, for every troublesome staffer at The Times, there are undoubtedly at least a dozen candidates out there who would do at least as good a job and with less overweening self-importance.”
Hopefully the off-the-record response from the Journal’s editors to their young charges included a similar reminder.
THEY’RE UTTERLY IGNORANT OF HISTORY, BUT THEN AGAIN THEY GO TO DUKE: Saying policing is rooted in ‘slave patrols,’ Duke students demand all campus policing be abolished.
Student “demands” should be ignored, especially when they represent the views of a tiny fraction of students. Which they pretty much always do.
SANCTIONS AGAINST SLAVE LABOR WOULD REALLY HURT NIKE: Calls Growing for Woke Big-Name Fashion Brands to Stop Profiting Off of Uighur Labor.
MEET IGGY DANCHENKO, THE STEELE DOSSIER’S ‘PRIMARY SUBSOURCE:’ Paul Sperry of RealCearInvestigations has a stunningly detailed description of Danchenko, a Russian in the U.S. on a work visa, and his long connections to Christopher Steele, as well as the significant role played by the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbot, in funneling the Steele Dossier to the State Department.
Bottomline: The Democratic side of the Washington Establishment was up to its collective neck in the effort to discredit Donald Trump and elect Hillary Clinton as President. When that effort blew up on election day, the discrediting campaign became both an attempt to subvert Trump’s presidency and a defensive coverup of the whole rotten, subversive conspiracy.
Sperry’s fine work should be read in conjunction with the Julie Kelly piece for American Greatness that Glenn linked late yesterday that comprehensively lays out the Brookings role in the conspiracy.
THE THING IS, BASICALLY NOBODY ACTUALLY BUYS THIS WOKE CRAP: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 75% of American Adults think the term ‘racism’ refers to any discrimination by people of one race against another.” “Just 15% say it refers only to discrimination by white people against minorities. These findings have changed little in surveys for the past several years…. Eighteen percent (18%) say most white Americans are racist. But 25% believe most black Americans are racist.”
DEMOCRATS ALWAYS TREAT ASSOCIATION WITH THE OPPOSITION AS AN ETHICAL VIOLATION: Democrats Press Trump Appointees to Recuse From Felon Voting Case.
It’s nonsense, of course, but they know the press will back them.
July 25, 2020
OPEN THREAD: Is it inscribed on human fate that man must grow wicked to seem wise; and the path of politics be forever encumbered with briers and thorns?
Because I am not cruel, I will spare you the confusion that Google may not dispel: This is a departure from the song-lines: This is from the journal of Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania, deploring the negotiations over the Judiciary Act of 1789. Which actually turned out okay.
SUPPORT FOR SPACE HAS BEEN PLEASANTLY BIPARTISAN: Democratic Party voices support for NASA in 2020 platform. Nothing specifically about private companies, but a policy of benign neglect would be just fine.
WOKE WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE WORST: From Black lives to ‘white spectacle,’ Portland protests have lost focus, civil rights leaders say: “The focus has been moved from where it is supposed to be and made to be a spectacle, a debacle,” said the president of the Portland NAACP.
You turn your protest over to Antifa, this is going to happen.
UPDATE: Black Portlander Changes His Mind About the Nightly Protests After He Attends One. “Gabe Johnson, a 48-year-old African American man who served in the Marines, now says that the Portland Police should use any means necessary, including force, to sweep the riots off the streets and end the nightly violence.”
LIFE IN DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: FDNY official defends excluding famed 9/11 firefighter from procession for being white. “A top FDNY official says it’s ‘most definitely’ acceptable to exclude a white firefighter from a ceremonial unit based solely on his skin color, The Post has learned. Cecilia Loving, the department’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, is defending a decision to kick Lt. Daniel McWilliams — one of three firefighters in the iconic 9/11 Ground Zero flag-raising photo — off a color-guard procession so it would be all-black. . . . Loving said it’s okay to replace a white member with an African-American to ‘uplift our identities and our separate ethnicities in order to instill a sense of pride and community and support for one another.'”
It’s almost as if the real role of “Chief Diversity Officers” is to justify blatant racial discrimination.
THEY LAUGHED AT ROBERT CONQUEST, BUT NOW THERE’S THIS: How to Prepare for a Communist Coup. In terms of responding, you kill commies, especially the ones at the top, before they get all forted up.
But I sincerely doubt we’re heading that way. It’s more likely that in a year, everyone will be saying they had doubts about BLM and the Wokeness Revolution.
LOONY LOCKDOWN GOVERNORS MAKE A MEAL OF DEFINING WHAT A MEAL IS.
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record put it: Governor Cuomo Orders Restaurants To Put Pineapple On Their Pizza.
WHEN WOKE IS A JOKE: Calls Growing for Woke Big-Name Fashion Brands to Stop Profiting Off of Uighur Labor.
JIM BOVARD: How Intellectuals Cured ‘Tyrannophobia.’ It’s not clear that the intellectual class has been a net benefit to society.
WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE: Nine Lessons Learned from Re-Watching Classic Star Trek.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Woman maces couple for not wearings masks in San Diego park (video).
THAT’S NOT THE STEREOTYPE: Neanderthals may have had a weak pain threshold.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF JEREMY CORBYN’S PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Director of Biggest UK Muslim Charity Branded Jews ‘Grandchildren of Monkeys and Pigs.’
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Jewish group asks head of Philadelphia NAACP to resign after anti-Semitic Facebook post.
An image allegedly posted by [Rodney] Muhammad showed images of actor and rapper Ice Cube, Philadelphia Eagles star DeSean Jackson and TV host Nick Cannon – all three who have recently made anti-Semitic posts – and a man crushing people with his hand with the words: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
“A horribly disgusting image of DeSean Jackson and an image of a hook-nosed Jewish man pushing people down,” said [Steve Rosenberg, the chief operating officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.] “To call the Jewish people oppressors with everything that we had to overcome over all these years is wrong in every level.”
Just to bring things full circle, the quote, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” often incorrectly credited to Voltaire, “is most often attributed to Kevin Strom, an American white nationalist, neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier,” according to the London Guardian.
A screen capture of the above image is included in the video atop the above article at Philadelphia’s ABC affiliate, WPVI.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: Joe Rogan is leaving Los Angeles and moving to Texas because there’s more freedom there.
—The Blaze, yesterday.
Chaser: Bernie Sanders faces ire over Joe Rogan ‘endorsement.’
—The BBC, January 24th.
As Steve asked last month, “Say, when is Texas going to get serious about Glenn’s welcome wagon proposal?”
RIP: LEGENDARY TV HOST REGIS PHILBIN HAS DIED AT THE AGE OF 88, REPORTS SAY.
While best remembered for Regis & Kathie Lee, I preferred his more experimental psychedelic phase co-hosting with Joey Bishop in the late 1960s:
I HOPE THEY’RE CLOSE FRIENDS: This Truck Camper Sleeps 6 People.
DISPATCHES FROM THE SUMMER OF LOVE: Seattle Police Chief To Residents: The Police cannot enforce the law. You are on your own.
This likely won’t end well. As Glenn has written, “we’ll see a lot of vigilante justice. And what are people gonna do about it? Call the cops? Remember, in the end the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Will 2021 Be 1984?
What should we expect then if Biden wins and either steps down or more or less is left as a diminished figurehead controlled by the hard Left?
First, there is one theme that unites “the Squad,” Black Lives Matter, the globalist technocracy, and the international Left: unapologetic anti-Semitism. We will see overt anti-Semitism in a way this country has not seen since the early 20th century, all couched in ideological and politically correct attacks on “Zionists” and “the rich” and “Wall Street”—and why Israel has no business being a “Jewish state.”
It has already begun with an NFL player voicing Hitlerian tropes and praising Louis Farrakhan, and then being seconded by an array of rappers, woke Black Lives Matter activists and “Free Palestine” demonstrations. To smear “the Jews” no longer is grounds for an immediate and expected apology, but more “So what are you going to do about it?” Anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within the DNA of the BLM movement—and professional sports as well, as we saw recently from the warnings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charles Barkley.
“Eat the rich” sloganeering and plans for a wealth tax, and jacking up capital gains and income tax rates, all seem like they are aimed at the super-rich. But don’t think weaponizing the tax code, the government bureaucracies, and the culture itself will do much to the immense wealth of Jeff Bezos, the heirs to Steve Jobs, the Google zillionaires, George Soros, the Walmart fortunes, the lesser tech billionaires, the Facebook clan, or Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. None of them will be touched.
1984’s ever-shrinking Newspeak dictionary has already been updated significantly this year: These are the innocuous words progressives want to ban you from using.
LOTS OF DISEASES SEEM TO HAVE INFLAMMATORY ROOTS: Drugs for inflammation might help with severe depression, study says.
TESTED SPACE PARTS: NASA’s Super Guppy waits in Mansfield, Ohio. The special transport is carrying parts for the Orion spacecraft project that underwent engineering tests at the Glenn Research Center in Sandusky, Ohio. Here’s a full frontal photo of the Super Guppy that shows the size of the cargo bulb. The Orion has been under development for quite some time and has stirred controversy. This StrategyPage Space update from Fall 2019 discusses the development of American manned spacecraft alternatives to the Russian Soyuz, the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX’s commercial efforts. Since that article was published the Starliner has suffered major test failures and NASA has concerns about quality control. Here’s an Orion capsule test from 2018.
ANDY NGO: Portland protests have no goal except violence and anarchy. “‘We’re at a point where none of us knows what to do,’ says a Portland police officer who asked to be unidentified. ‘Some are thinking we just need to give the vocal minority and the politicians what they want: We go away and let the city burn.’”
RIP: FLEETWOOD MAC CO-FOUNDER PETER GREEN DIES AGED 73: Singer-songwriter and guitarist behind one of band’s all-time classics ‘Albatross’ passes away ‘peacefully in his sleep’, reveal family. “Under his direction, the band produced three albums and a series of well-loved tracks including ‘Black Magic Woman’ and ‘Oh Well.’ Green left Fleetwood Mac after a final performance in 1970 as he struggled with mental health difficulties and spiralling drug use…He was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in hospitals undergoing electro-convulsive therapy during the mid-70s.”
B.B. King once said that Green “has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”
Jimmy Page (no slouch himself in the British blues guitarist department in his younger days) told an interviewer that, “Personally, I don’t think you’re going to find a better example of British blues than the original Fleetwood Mac, with Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green.”
Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross” was the inspiration for the tone of the Beatles’ “Sun King” on Abbey Road.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: A Put-Up Job. “Growing evidence that officials involved in the Russia collusion investigation knowingly acted without cause is undermining our governing institutions.”
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: A&E Loses Half Its Viewers After Canceling Live PD.
“WELCOME TO THE POST-TRUTH WORLD:” Portland protesters chant fabricated Black Lives Matter “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan.
GOODBYE, WASHINGTON DC: Mayor Bowser broke her contract with residents like me. So we’re leaving.
I used to go for afternoon tea at the St. Regis Hotel on 16th Street; it’s now been renamed to “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” Tea was expensive, excessive, and extremely elegant served impeccably in a magnificent room to properly attired patrons who politely spoke in hushed tones, a little taste of a bygone era when etiquette and formality were still appreciated.
The St. Regis is now girded with plywood barricades that have been spray painted with curse words. Outside, people routinely set fires and have fights with the police. If I went back, I’m sure some neo-liberal philosopher of the BLM cult will tell me that clotted cream is a microaggression. The tea just isn’t worth it anymore.
Nothing in DC is anymore. Not to me, at least.
The pact we made to live here has broken. What am I paying for? A defunded police force? More murder? More violence? Do the property taxes I’ve faithfully paid for years not protect the CVS I can see from my bedroom—a building which recently had every window smashed and was looted because of “justice”? When the metro was lousy, we turned to Uber. When the schools were failing, parents turned to charter schools. When one area turned bleak another neighborhood popped up. But when chaos and destruction permeate, and an exhausted people asking for relief are told their indifference–not violent looters—is the true culprit, then there is no alternative but to leave.
* * * * * * * *
Gay? Black? Trans? No offense, but, so what? We are city people: we have seen it all—literally, all—our entire lives. You are our neighbors, our friends, the president of our HOAs, our coworkers. The great beauty of the city is that we come from all walks of life and we get along. We accomplish this by leaving each other alone.
That’s why, when DC’s Mayor Bowser spray painted “Black Lives Matter” in front of my tea spot, I knew I was done. Not because of the issue itself or the cause (remember I don’t really care) but because through her actions, Browser effectively mandated empathy. This was government-sanctioned compassion. The mayor used taxpayer dollars—the one’s I’ve forked over for years—to force her beliefs on me. And, just like that, the pact was broken.
Read the whole thing.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Canada Approves “Glory Holes” For Safe Sex During Pandemic.
IN THE MAIL: Mission Beyond Darkness.
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