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LinkSwarm for March 12, 2021

Friday, March 12th, 2021

Welcome to the one year anniversary of the week the world went crazy.

  • After the passing of the Democratic Party’s giant $1.9 trillion porkulus, “Federal ‘COVID’ Spending Just Hit $41,870 Per Taxpayer.”
  • Two-thirds of Americans think corporate wokeness has gone too far.
  • “California Curriculum Leads Kids in Chant to Aztec God of Human Sacrifice.”
  • Lefties: Liberals are simply better people than those evil conservatives! Science: Not so much:

    According to recent studies, when it comes to how people are treated, conservatives are more likely to treat people equally.

    You read that correctly.

    According to a recent article on Psychology Today, “several recent studies over the past few years cast doubt on” the idea that liberals treat individuals and groups more equally than conservatives despite liberals’ “self-reported support for equality.”

    On Twitter, “liberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly,” one study found.

    Other studies showed that “white liberals presented less self-competence to black than white interaction partners, whereas white conservatives treated black and white interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.

  • The 2020 election is already harming the law-abiding:

    If you think really hard, perhaps you can imagine more disastrous policies than throwing open our country’s southern border and abandoning criminal-law enforcement in city after city. The consequences are already emerging, and they are grim. It is important to examine them without ideological blinders so we can change course before more damage is done.

    Snip.

    The most consequential effect of open immigration and lax criminal enforcement is to undermine the safe, stable environment law-abiding citizens need to go about their lives, free from predation. Providing that environment — and signaling clearly that you intend to provide it — is the first responsibility of government.

    That means punishing crimes. The goal is not vengeance. Nor is it solely to provide justice for the victims, important as that is. It is also to send a strong message to would-be criminals: Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Right now, we are sending the wrong message and, by doing so, we are encouraging law breaking on a massive scale.

    That encouragement is the unifying theme behind these policy disasters, one on the border, the other in our cities. The other unifying theme is their justification under the fashionable rubric of “social justice” and “equity.” What those feel-good arguments ignore is that our criminal laws are democratic efforts to preserve personal safety and community integrity. Failing in those responsibilities harms all law-abiding citizens.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Why Texas was right to reopen:

    Six weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, January 26. On that day, Texas reported 22,796 new cases of COVID-19 and 332 new deaths from the pandemic.

    One month before yesterday was Tuesday, February 9. On that day, Texas reported 13,282 new cases of COVID-19 and 303 new deaths from the pandemic.

    Two weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, February 23, Texas reported 10,090 new cases of COVID-19 and 258 new deaths from the virus.

    Yesterday was Tuesday, March 9. The state of Texas reported 5,119 new cases of COVID-19, and 168 new deaths from the virus.

    It’s not quite a straight or smooth line, but you can see a steady decline in cases, followed by a similar decline in deaths. This doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. But it does suggest that the worst is over. Hospitals across the state now report a significant amount of unused capacity. “State health officials in Texas reported to the federal government that 75 percent of inpatient beds and 80 percent of ICU beds in hospitals across the state were still occupied as of March 6. Around 9 percent of beds statewide were filled by COVID-19 patients, they reported.” (Unused hospital beds are good for emergencies, but not good for the long-term financial health of the hospital.)

    Texas ranks second in the country in the number of vaccine shots administered, with nearly 7.3 million, but it also ranks second in the number of shots received from manufacturers, because doses are allocated to states by population size. As of this morning, the state has used 75 percent of its delivered supply, which is not an impressive percentage. (It is worth keeping in mind that as more doses get delivered, every state’s percentage-used figure is declining a bit; North Dakota and Minnesota lead the country at 87 percent.) Fifteen percent of Texans have received one shot, and 8.2 percent are fully vaccinated. (We used to use the term “received both shots,” but now the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is rolling out.) Obviously, getting hit with a terrible winter storm and experiencing widespread power outages does not help a state accelerate its vaccination program.

    This week, another million doses have arrived or are scheduled to arrive in Texas. A week ago, Texas made all school and child-care workers eligible for the vaccine.

  • The Biden Administration wants to destroy 57 million jobs:

    With the rise of gig economy jobs such as driving for Uber and other forms of independent work enabled by the digital era, more than 57 million Americans now work as freelancers in some capacity. But President Biden just endorsed a radical labor law that endangers their livelihood.

    House Democrats recently reintroduced the PRO Act, which, among many sweeping reforms, would make many commonplace forms of independent contractor (freelance) arrangements illegal. It’s based on a California law that was so dysfunctional even voters in the very blue state voted to change it.

  • Biden is getting worse:

    “He literally forgets the name of his Secretary of Defense, forgets the position, as well as the name of the Pentagon, calling him ‘the guy that runs that outfit over there.'”

  • Slow Joe is not big on news conferences. “Biden has gone longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his 15 predecessors over the past 100 years.”
  • By contrast, after succeeding Warren G. Harding on August 2, 1923, “Silent” Calvin Coolidge held three press conferences in August and seven in September.
  • Entire Nevada Democratic Party staff quits after Bernie Bros sweep every seat.

    Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.

    She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.

    On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Democrats: We must destroy coal! Coal workers: Hey, we’re starting to take this personally. “Within two decades, your profession goes from being championed by the Democratic Party and labor officials to one that they want to destroy.”
  • Here’s a Twitter thread documenting how the media repeatedly fluffed the National Man Boy Lincoln Association.
  • Bad cop: “Dallas police officer allegedly hired hitmen to kill two people.” “Officer Bryan Riser, 36, was arrested Thursday in the unrelated slayings of Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 60, after one of the men charged in Saenz’s death told investigators he kidnapped and killed them at the officer’s direction.”
    

  • NYT‘s Maggie Halberstam just admits that Trump drove her crazy. Why does anyone think ordinary Americans will ever trust MSM outlets like New York Times ever again?
  • Judge allows Texas to remove Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
  • “Illegal Alien Family Unit Apprehensions in Texas Nearly Triple in February.”
  • Matthew McConaughey teases a run for Texas Governor again. I don’t know enough about his politics to consider him a viable candidate (though he’s probably more viable than Beto O’Rourke on day 1), but the idea of him beating Greg Abbott isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it was a year ago, before Abbott maintained the coronavirus lockdown long after data said it was ineffective.
  • Speaking of Abbott, he really stepped in it this week when he said that Gab was an antisemitic platform:

    In a Wednesday evening Twitter video, with State Reps. Craig Goldman (R–Fort Worth) and Phil King (R–Weatherford) on either side of him, Abbott claimed Big Tech competitor Gab was “antisemitic” and that such companies “have no place in Texas and certainly do not represent Texas values.”

    He offered no evidence to back up his claim against Gab. He also praised legislation from Goldman and King “that fights antisemitism in Texas.”

    “I’m not on Gab a lot but I wouldn’t consider the platform as ‘anti Semitic’ …and I’m a Jew,” a citizen named Lisa replied to Abbott’s tweet. “Stop this nonsense.”

    Gab recently skyrocketed in popularity, claiming more than 2 million new users in January after Twitter permanently banned then-President Trump and Amazon, Apple, and Google teamed up to shut down conservative social media app Parler.

    Abbott’s attack on the free speech platform contradicts his words from last week when he defended free speech and berated Facebook and Twitter for their censorship.

    “They are choosing which viewpoints are going to be allowed to be presented,” Abbott said at the time. “Texas is taking a stand against Big Tech political censorship: We’re not going to allow it in the Lone Star State.”

    Mainstream media coverage of Gab has attacked its free-speech approach to moderation, labeling it a haven of “QAnon conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-Semitic commentary […] .”

    “Gab is not an ‘anti-semitic’ platform,” the company replied to Abbott’s tweet. “We protect the political speech of all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, because in this age of cancel culture nobody else will.”

    “The enemies of freedom smear us with every name in the book because they hate America and they hate free speech,” Gab continued. “It’s a shame to see a GOP politician fall for this trap when conservative values are under sustained attack all over the country.”

  • The woke brigade wants to kill off the SAT:

    Behind the Covid19 news, outside the 1619 wars, far more important than Dr Seuss, and much more far-reaching than dismantling the classics, a real line is being crossed in American education, and therefore American society as a whole. It’s the accelerating abandonment of standardized tests, the one objective measurement of students’ ability and potential in our society and culture: 77 percent of high school seniors sent in SAT scores in 2019-20; only 44 percent this year; and many schools want to keep it that way. What was initially a temporary suspension of tests because of Covid has become an opportunity to tear down the entire system.

    The rationale for the SAT abolition movement is — surprise! — critical theory, which insists that any measurement that results in different outcomes among ethnic or racial groups is a priori racist. (Except for all cases when non-whites and non-Asians do better than whites or Asians, in which case, never mind.) In the words this week of Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York: “Standardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism.”

    His argument is pure Kendi: the results are solely and exclusively what determines if a test is racist. Not the test itself; not evidence about its fairness or otherwise; not data about how it is constructed; not studies that examine its effects alongside every other way of measuring academic potential. Just the results.

    There is no countering this argument because it is not an argument. It is a threat. All it tells us is that the power of the term “white supremacist” will be ruthlessly deployed to shut down anyone who dares to argue that the SAT is, in fact, the least culturally biased of all measurements, the one thing wealthy kids cannot buy, and the most helpful tool in discovering the potential of poor, first-generation immigrant, black and Hispanic children, and rescuing them from the restrictions of class as well as race.

  • “Whitmer’s Michigan State Health Department Refuses To Release Nursing Home COVID Death Data. Gee, I wonder why? (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)
  • Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in Canada despite everyone in the nursing home being vaccinated?
  • In Hollywood, vaccine lines are for the little people.
  • Portland Antifa is at it again, trying to storm banks and break into the federal courthouse again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Milo Yiannopoulos now says he’s ex-gay. “I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.” Whatever. His agent provocateur pose has worn pretty thin over the years. But I suspect this is one “lifestyle choice” liberals won’t be celebrating.
  • “10,000th Victim Comes Forward To Accuse Cuomo Of Inappropriately Killing Her Grandma.”
  • “Biden Finally Visits ‘On The Border’ To See Crisis Everyone’s Talking About.”

  • “Man Glad He’s American So He Doesn’t Have To Pretend To Care About Royal Family.”

    Local man Craig Trudeau gave thanks to the good Lord above today that he’s an American so he doesn’t have to pretend to care about the royal family at all.

    Trudeau said he is extremely humbled and grateful to have been born in the best country ever created by God, especially because it means he doesn’t have to care about Meghan Markle or Prince Harry.

    “Lord, thank you that I was born in your chosen country of America, so that I don’t have to give a wooden nickel about whoever this prince and princess or king or duke or whoever they are,” he said Monday as he cleaned his AR-15 and shot off fireworks in front of his house, because he lives in America and so can do whatever he wants.

  • Russian scientist has a simple plan for resurrecting the dead that involves constructing Dyson Spheres and super-powerful AIs trading information with other universes in the multiverse. Why it’s all so simple! I’m sure the illustrious government functionaries fighting to fire people over pronouns will get right on that.
  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

  • I think he was hungry:

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    Dave Barry’s Year End Review for 2020

    Sunday, December 27th, 2020

    It’s that time of the year again, when Dave Barry summarizes the what we all went through in 2020:

    In the past, writing these annual reviews, we have said harsh things about previous years. We owe those years an apology. Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.

    This was a year of nonstop awfulness, a year when we kept saying it couldn’t possibly get worse, and it always did. This was a year in which our only moments of genuine, unadulterated happiness were when we were able to buy toilet paper.

    Which is fitting, because 2020 was one long, howling, Category Five crapstorm.

    We sincerely don’t want to relive this year. But our job is to review it. If you would prefer to skip this exercise in masochism, we completely understand.

    Snip.

    Back in mid-December, the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment, after which Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, handed out souvenir signing pens. Everyone expected that Pelosi would then send the articles to the Senate. But as of early January the Senate has not received them. People are wondering if Pelosi, what with her various official duties and hairdresser appointments, simply forgot to send the articles. Or maybe she tried to send them, but because of a bureaucratic snafu they wound up at a different federal entity, such as the Coast Guard.

    Eventually, however, the articles arrive at the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch “The Undertaker” McConnell promises that the impeachment issue will receive full and fair consideration. He is of course joking, but this is not obvious, because even when Mitch is in a jovial mood he looks like a man passing a kidney stone the size of the Hope Diamond.

    Meanwhile in other political news, all eyes are on Iowa as it prepares for the caucuses, which are closely scrutinized because they are the first opportunity for a tiny group of unrepresentative voters to engage in an incomprehensible and deeply flawed process by which they anoint presidential candidates who traditionally go on to fail. This year, in an effort to modernize the caucuses, the Iowa Democratic party has upgraded from its old-fashioned manual reporting procedures to a modern, state-of-the-art “app” based on the same software used in the Boeing 737 MAX airliner.

    Snip.

    In other political news, Iowa Democratic party officials sense that there may be a problem with their new “app” when it declares that the winner of the state’s caucuses, with 43 million delegates, is Walter Mondale, followed by the Houston Astros (who also win the Super Bowl). This fiasco does not sit well with the other Democratic candidates, who realize they have wasted an entire year trudging around Iowa eating fried objects on sticks and pretending to care about Iowans.

    Things go more smoothly for the Democrats in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, with Bernie Sanders emerging as the clear front-runner, which only seems to make him angrier. A new challenger emerges in the form of charisma-impaired billionaire Mike “Mike” Bloomberg, who uses his personal fortune to hire a vast army of consultants to supply him with a powerful arsenal of focus-group-tested policies, retorts, memes, jokes and humanoid personality traits. Nevertheless he struggles in the debates, the low point coming when Elizabeth Warren, during a heated exchange about non-disclosure agreements, pulls the waistband of Bloomberg’s underpants over the top of his head, a debate tactic known as the “atomic wedgie,” first performed by Lincoln on Douglas in 1858.

    Snip.

    And then, unfortunately, comes…
    MARPRIL

    …which starts off calmly enough, as the Democratic party, desperate to find an alternative to 132-year-old white guy Bernie Sanders, settles on 132-year-old white guy Joe Biden, who cruises to a series of primary victories after replacing “No Malarkey” with a bold new campaign slogan: “Somewhat Alert At Times.” Biden is endorsed by most of his Democratic opponents, including “Mike” Bloomberg, who spent more than $500 million on his campaign, which seems like a lot of money until you consider that he won the American Samoa Caucus, narrowly edging out Tulsi Gabbard, who spent $13.50.

    And then, sprinkled in amid all the political coverage, we begin to see reports that this coronavirus thing might be worse than we have been led to believe, although at first the authorities still seem to be saying that it’s basically the flu and there is no reason to panic, but all of a sudden there seems to be no hand sanitizer for sale anywhere, which makes some sense although there is also no toilet paper, as if people are planning to be pooping for weeks on end (ha) and then we learn that Tom Hanks — Tom Hanks! – has the virus and now they’re saying it’s a lot worse than the flu and we need to wash our hands and not touch our faces and maintain a social distance of six feet and use an abundance of caution to flatten the curve (whatever “the curve” is) but they’re also saying we don’t need face masks no scratch that now they’re saying we DO need face masks but nobody HAS any face masks but hey here’s a funny meme about toilet paper but ohmigod look at these statistical disease models WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE but Trump says maybe this hydroxysomething medicine will work no it won’t work yes it will work no it won’t and now they’re saying there won’t be enough ventilators or hospital beds or PPE and Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx are saying everybody has to shelter at home or else WE ARE ALL DEFINITELY GOING TO DIE hey here’s another funny toilet-paper meme but seriously what is PPE and is that different from PPP and where will we get the ventilators and there won’t be enough hospital beds and there is still no hand sanitizer and I keep touching my face and they just canceled the NBA can they even DO that wait now they canceled ALL the sports and closed all the schools the colleges the stores the restaurants the bars the theaters the hair salons the parks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and now they’re saying we need to stay at home for HOW LONG what about the toilet paper I can’t stop touching my damn face are you seriously telling me all this is because somebody ate a freaking bat maybe Amazon has toilet paper ohmigod they’re sold out too WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE TOILET PAPER not another Zoom meeting I am so tired of shouting at people in little boxes maybe I should take a shower but what’s the point hey here’s a bunch more funny memes ohmigod look at the Stock Market the price of oil maybe I’ll just take a peek at my 401k oh NOOOOOOOO and WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING WITH ALL THIS TOILET PAPER and how long do we have to keep being abundantly cautious what did Trump say about the ventilators and what did Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci say about what Trump said about the ventilators and what did Trump say about what they said about what he said about the ventilators ventilators ventilators LOOK AT THESE MODELS WE ARE STILL GOING TO DIE but do we really want to go on living in a world where there’s no toilet paper and every single TV commercial sounds like “as we navigate these difficult times together, the National Association of Folding Chair Manufacturers wants you to know that we are committed to running these TV commercials with a somber narrator voice telling you how committed we are” and WHY WOULD SOMEBODY EAT A DAMN BAT these memes are getting old hey do you think that Carole Baskin woman actually fed her husband to a tiger maybe we should order pizza tonight wait I think we had pizza last night are you sure it’s Tuesday because it feels more like Thursday no please God not another freaking Zoom meeting stop already with the memes if the tiger ate her husband shouldn’t there be a skeleton somewhere are we flattening the curve yet Dr. Fauci Dr. Birx because we’re in a recession no wait maybe it’s a depression look at the unemployment numbers we are never going to recover from this if the virus doesn’t kill us we will starve to death we need more money from the government we need billions no we need trillions no we need MORE trillions where is this money coming from we have to open the economy up but if we do WE WILL ALL DIE hey I found some toilet paper oh no it’s one-ply which is basically the same as using your bare hand thank God I also found some hand sanitizer and speaking of good news Bernie Sanders is endorsing Joe Biden so apparently they’re both still alive if I see one more meme I am going to puke in my facemask I’m afraid to get on a scale my thighs are basically two armadillo-sized wads of pizza dough hey Dr. Birx Dr. Fauci when will we have a vaccine when will we have herd immunity when can we go outside when can we go back to work what is the “new normal” good lord what did Trump say about disinfectants DON’T INJECT CLOROX YOU IDIOTS what about the food chain what about reinfection what about the second wave hey they’re showing the NFL draft and Georgia is opening the tattoo parlors and holy crap now it’s…

    MAY

    …and we are, as a nation, exhausted. We are literally sick and tired of the pandemic. But amid all the gloom, there is a ray of sunshine: As we go through this harrowing experience — affecting all Americans, in both red states and blue states — we are starting to realize that our common humanity is more important than our political differences.

    Ha ha! Seriously, we hate each other more than ever.

    Snip.

    Meanwhile, in a basement somewhere in Delaware, Joe Biden and his campaign team have managed to procure a “webcam,” which they intend to use to “log on” to the “Internet” so that Joe’s campaign message can go “viral,” just as soon as Joe decides what it is.

    In scandal news, the justice department moves to drop all charges against former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Outraged Democrats claim this is a travesty of justice; outraged Republicans claim it is proof that the Deep State tried to stage a coup. And thus we are back to arguing about the 2016 election, which we are going to keep arguing about until everybody involved has been dead for 50 years.

    Snip.

    Here we should at least mention the arrival of the Asian murder hornets. In any other year they would have been a huge story, comparable to famous celebrity pests of the past, such as the killer bees, or the cast of “Jersey Shore.” But in 2020 there is simply too much competition, and the murder hornets end up living in a cheap motel near the Canadian border, their dreams of fame shattered.

    Snip.

    For their part, the Democrats, fed up with the longstanding pattern of systemic racism and police misconduct in major U.S. cities, vow to bring about real reform, just as soon as they can figure out who, exactly, is in charge of these cities. One much-discussed reform proposal is defunding the police, which is clearly defined by its proponents as “taking the funding away from the police” as well as “not taking the funding away from the police.”

    Snip.

    COVID19 cases continue to rise sharply in some southern states, accompanied by what the World Health Organization describes as an “alarming” spike in smugness in some northern states, notably New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveils a poster, for sale at $11.50, commemorating, in a cartoony manner, New York’s pandemic experience. Really. It is as if the White Star Line sold whimsical souvenirs of the Titanic.

    Snip.

    By far the month’s most disturbing event occurs on July 15 when Twitter, responding to a cyberattack, temporarily suspends many verified blue-check accounts. Within minutes emergency rooms in Washington and New York are overwhelmed by media thought leaders whose brains are literally exploding from the pressure of unreleased insights. Meanwhile in the rest of the nation, non-elite Americans wander the streets aimlessly, with no way to know what they should think. Fortunately this situation lasts only a few hours, but it highlights the urgent need for a federally maintained Blue Check Media Emergency Tweet Reserve, similar to the National Helium Reserve, but more gaseous.

    Snip.

    Meanwhile at home the nation’s mood is increasingly tense and angry as Americans are bombarded all day, every day, with a constant stream of news about protests, boycotts, disruption, despair and rage. And that’s just on SportsCenter.

    California, as it traditionally does at this time of year, bursts into flames. Adding to the citizens’ misery are rolling electrical blackouts, possibly related to the fact that the state legislature has banned all sources of electricity except windmills and 9-volt batteries.

    Snip.

    The federal deficit reaches $3.3 trillion, as the government continues its unchecked descent into horrendous, unsustainable levels of debt, with neither political party even seriously acknowledging the danger, let alone taking meaningful action to prevent future generations of Americans from being permanently screwed.

    Snip.

    The Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett after she successfully completes the traditional Judiciary Committee hazing ritual, in which she must answer questions for three consecutive days without saying anything.

    Joe Biden enters the final stretch of the campaign with a schedule that sometimes has him doing as many as one appearance per day. Also taking a brutal toll on the former vice president is the fact that he must repeatedly, day after day, deal with the grueling physical strain of not telling reporters what he thinks about packing the Supreme Court. At one appearance, when asked about this, Biden says (this is an actual quote): “the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be on the answer to that question.” While reporters wrestle with the Confucian profundity of this statement, Joe is whisked back to Delaware.

    Snip.

    In social-media news, Twitter blocks a New York Post story about incriminating emails allegedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, on the grounds that the story is of questionable origin. This is of course a violation of Twitter’s extremely strict accuracy policy, under which every single tweet that Twitter does allow to be published is 100 percent vetted and legit.

    In sports, the coronavirus causes major disruptions in the fall football schedule, the result being that on a single afternoon the New York Jets wind up losing to both the Kansas City Chiefs and Vassar. On a happier note, the World Series, for the 11th consecutive year, does not in any way involve the New York Yankees.

    Snip.

    The good news is that several drug companies announce that they have developed promising vaccine candidates, while Budweiser reports “significant progress” on a hard seltzer that also can be used as hand sanitizer.

    The bad news is that the number of cases, in what feels like the 37th wave, is spiking once again, and American consumers are once again creating shortages of toilet paper by buying enough rolls per household to wipe every butt in Denmark for a year. Many states impose tough new COVID restrictions, most notably California, which bans “all human activity not personally involving the governor.”

    Read the whole thing.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

    What Rough Porkulus Shambles Out of Washington?

    Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020

    People asked why Nancy Pelosi delayed passing a Wuhan coronavirus relief bill until now. One obvious reason was to avoid helping President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. Now that both houses of congress have passed this 5,593 page monster of a bill, another reason is evident: To cram as much special interest pork into it as possible.

    How serious is this bill? Not very, but it spends serious money on unserious things. Tom Elliott of Grabien points out a few of the ridiculously beside-the-point items in this bill. They’re gobsmacking.

    Snip.

    Don’t worry. The Kennedy Center is getting yet another bailout. Why, exactly? Are they putting on shows right now? How many bailouts does it take to keep the lights on and the development department still working the phones calling on all those rich lobbyists living in the DMV?

    And — thank God! — the government COVID stimulus package is there to keep teenagers from hooking up — as if there aren’t dozens if not hundreds of other programs doing the same thing. And let us take a moment to say thanks to all the HIV workers in other countries by giving them new cars. Funding for this is in the COVID bill. You? Buy used.

    Other pork in the bill:

    A minimum of $3.3 billion in grants to Israel.

    Also included is $453 million to Ukraine, on top of the $400 million Trump eventually released. No word on how much of that goes to the ‘big guy.’

    $10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan.

    $1.3 billion to Egypt, and $700 million to Sudan.

    $135 million to Burma, $85.5 million to Cambodia, $1.4 billion for an “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act,” and $130 million to Nepal.

    If we have to pay money to Sudan for it’s peace deal with Israel, then the price is too high.

    There’s so much pork in the bill that President Trump has threatened to veto it:

    He notes that the bill provides stimulus checks for the families of illegal aliens, “far more than the Americans are getting.”

    Alas, President Trump is a late convert to fiscal sanity. The budget deficit was just shy of $1 trillion in FY2019, before coronavirus shutdowns wrecked the economy. Alas, since the Senate passed the bill 92-6 (Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Rick Scott were the only senators to vote against it), a veto override seems likely.

    As Stephen Kruiser notes:

    All of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    Alas, I would not expect any fiscal process reform from a Biden-Harris Administration…

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats | 3 Comments »

    Paris Burning and the Existential Crisis

    Saturday, December 8th, 2018

    So French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to delay implementation of his carbon tax hike because the peasants were revolting French citizens were blocking traffic, burning vehicles, and battling police throughout the streets of Paris.

    Nearly 300,000 protesters, many wearing yellow vests, took to the streets, including tens of thousands in Paris. Participation in the “yellow vest” protests, named after the yellow vests French drivers are required to keep in their vehicles for emergencies, fell to approximately 166,000 with 8,000 in Paris in the second weekend, but by the third weekend the protest gained momentum and violence.

    The protests were sparked by Macron’s plans to increase taxes on gasoline, diesel, and electricity, and to enforce stricter limits on emissions from vehicles, in an effort to force people out of their cars and suburban homes, and onto public transit and back into densely populated cities. In Paris, protesters sang the national anthem and carried signs saying “Macron, resignation” and “Macron, thief,” and stormed barricades erected by the 3,000 to 5,000 security forces deployed to guard the presidential palace and National Assembly. Outside of Paris, protestors blocked highways, overran motorway toll booths, and obstructed access to gasoline stations and shopping malls.

    On average, French gasoline costs a whopping $7.00 per gallon, and diesel more than $6.00 per gallon, with a majority of the price coming from fuel taxes imposed by the national government. These taxes had been scheduled to increase annually in the coming years, to meet Macron’s carbon dioxide emission reduction goals.

    “We’re going to tax you until you bleed until you adopt a lifestyle more in tune with the way we think you should live.” For global leftists elites, global warming is not just a holy cause, but an existential struggle whose high stakes (“We’re all going to die!”) require ignoring any democratic pushback from the less-enlightened masses. And we’re just supposed to ignore the fact they write themselves cushy green energy tax breaks while imposing the overwhelming majority of the costs for such policies on ordinary people who live differently than they do. (While Paris burns, Macron is conspicuous by his absence.)

    But it’s important to remember that conservatives have an existential threat of their own (deficit spending triggering hyperinflation that will destroy the economy), the solution to which (cutting back on the welfare state) is also deeply unpopular with wide swathes of the populace.

    The difference, of course, is that the doomsday scenario of anthropocentric global warming is entirely conjectural, while hyperinflation has happened several times throughout history.

    This is why you’re seeing the signs of that weird left-right populist nationalist fusion across Europe: No taxes increase, but also no welfare state cuts, while also restricting immigration so only natives get the cushy welfare handouts. That seems like an obvious recipe for electoral success in countries where even the EU’s weak tea “austerity” is increasingly unthinkable. But it’s not a recipe for growth, and can’t stave off the inevitable doom of a demographically unsustainable welfare state. In America it takes the form of President Donald Trump, a dogged tax-cutter and deregulator working diligently to get the economy growing again, but not someone who has tried to pare back the deficit or the welfare state in any meaningful way.

    Europe’s sclerotic economy and demographic decline are going to bring on a crisis there long before it hits here, but it will eventually hit here. In the long run, the big government welfare state is likely to be seen as one of the longer-running mass delusions in history.

    There will come a reckoning. The only question is whether you and I will be there to see it…

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    Posted in Budget, Economics, Global Warming, video, Welfare State | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 23, 2018

    Friday, February 23rd, 2018

    Another week in which I had zero free time! Enjoy a LinkSwarm, and hopefully I’ll have something a little more substantial next week.

  • “Officials Identify More Rotherham Victims, Number Up to 1,510.”
  • Nancy Pelosi wants you to know that keeping more of your own paycheck is “unpatriotic.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of Pelosi, just how did she triple her net worth during the financial crisis?
  • “President Donald Trump’s immigration hard-liners proved [last] Thursday it is possible to win even when the outcome of a battle is, on paper, a draw.”
  • On a per-capita basis, the United States doesn’t even rank in the top 10 of mass shooting fatalities.
  • “Florida Shooting Survivor Claims CNN Denied His Questions on School Safety, Provided Scripted Questions.” CNN: Potemkin Village media.
  • The experience of Israel proves that the NRA is right on school shootings.
  • “Republicans now sympathize with Israel (as opposed to the Palestinians) by a whopping 52-point margin over Democrats—79 percent to 27 percent—the greatest spread between the two parties in the last 40 years. Republicans have never been more favorably disposed toward Israel, while for Democrats, the opposite holds true.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Remember: When a powerful female liberal Democratic politician sleeps with a married subordinate, it’s different. Because feminism. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Also:

    Within months of taking office, Mayor Megan Barry recommended the adult daughter of the head of her security detail — the man with whom she later admitted to having an affair — be hired for a job in the city’s legal department.

    The daughter got the job.

    The position as an entry-level city attorney was the first newly created job in Nashville’s legal department in two years. It was not part of the existing budget. Barry approved the new job opening. No other candidate was considered.

  • “Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said too many young people do not qualify for military service due in part to obesity and criminal records,” and being too stupid to pass the ASVAB. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Another way in which President Donald Trump is like other recent Republican Presidents: ignoring deficits.
  • Austin experiences a significant uptick in violent crime since 2013.
  • Vox lays off 50 people. I didn’t know they even had 50 people to lay off…
  • Payoffs to college basketball players are widespread.
  • School enrollment at Evergreen State College drops 18.5%. How’s that “All Social Justice Warrior, all the time” format working out for you?
  • Billy Graham, RIP.
  • Boston Dynamics teaches robot to fight back against humans. Joke that follows should be: A.)”, find Sarah Conner,” B.) “What could possibly go wrong?”, or C.) “I for one welcome our new robot overlords!”
  • UK Kentucky Fried Chickens running out of chicken. Verily the endtimes are upon us…

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Jihad | No Comments »

    Protestors March Against UK’s Non-Existent Austerity

    Saturday, June 21st, 2014

    I see that #NoMoreAusterity is trending on Twitter this morning. It seems the usual leftist protest sorts are rallying against the Cameron government’s “austerity.”

    The only problem is it doesn’t exist.

    Real austerity is cutting government spending until it matches receipts. Under David Cameron, deficit spending has merely gone from 11.4% of GDP in 2010 to a projected 5.8% in 2014. So the UK government hasn’t practiced austerity, it’s merely slowed the rate at which it’s digging its own grave.

    For the protestors, this simply will not do. They want government to give them things, and if it means having the moribund economies of Greece and Spain, so be it.

    But unlike Greece and Spain, the UK won’t be able to get Germany to bail them out, nor to hold down the hyperinflation that is the inevitable endpoint of excess deficit spending.

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    Posted in Budget, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    Dave Barry’s Year-End Roundup for 2013

    Monday, December 30th, 2013

    It’s time once again for Dave Barry’s Year End Roundup. Some highlights:

    it turned out that Obamacare, despite all the massive brainpower behind it, had some “glitches,” in the same sense that the universe has some “atoms.”

    Did anything good happen in 2013? Yes! There was one shining ray of hope in the person of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford , who admitted that, while in office, he smoked crack cocaine, but noted, by way of explanation, that this happened “probably in one of my drunken stupors.” This was probably the most honest statement emitted by any elected official this year, and we can only hope that more of our leaders follow Mayor Ford’s lead in 2014. (We mean being honest, not smoking crack in a drunken stupor.) (Although really, how much worse would that be?)

    [January] begins with a crisis in Washington, a city that — despite having no industries and a workforce consisting almost entirely of former student council presidents — manages to produce 93 percent of the nation’s crises. This particular crisis is a “fiscal cliff” caused by the fact that for years the government has been spending spectacular quantities of money that it does not have, which has resulted in a mess that nobody could possibly have foreseen unless that person had a higher level of financial awareness than a cucumber. At the last minute, congressional leaders and the White House reach an agreement under which the government will be able to continue spending spectacular quantities of money that it does not have, thus temporarily averting the very real looming danger that somebody might have to make a decision.

    Also stepping down is Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, after decades of public service, resigns as secretary of state so she will finally have a chance to spend some personal quality time with her team of campaign advisers.

    As the federal budget deadline passes without Congress reaching agreement, the devastating, draconian, historically catastrophic sequester goes into effect, causing a mild reduction in the rate of increase in government spending that for some inexplicable reason goes unnoticed by pretty much everybody outside the federal government.

    Iran announces that it is constructing a new uranium enrichment plant, which according to a government spokesman will be used for “youth sports.”

    In sports, organizers of the Tour de France announce that this year they’re going to skip the bicycle-riding part and instead just gather all the competitors into a room and see who can do the most drugs.

    the Obama administration decides to once again pivot back to the economy, which continues to falter because — economists agree unanimously on this — not enough presidential speeches have been given about it.

    In politics, San Diego Mayor Bob “Bob” Filner resigns as a result of allegations that he is a compulsive serial horn dog who groped pretty much the entire female population of Southern California. He immediately becomes a leading contender in the New York City mayoral race.

    The federal government, in an unthinkable development that we cannot even think about, partially shuts down. The result is a catastrophe of near-sequester proportions. Within hours wolves are roaming the streets of major U.S. cities, and bacteria the size of mature salmon are openly cavorting in the nation’s water supply. In the Midwest, thousands of cows, no longer supervised by the Department of Agriculture, spontaneously explode. Yellowstone National Park — ALL of it — is stolen. In some areas gravity stops working altogether, forcing people to tie themselves to trees so they won’t float away. With the nation virtually defenseless, the Bermudan army invades the East Coast, within hours capturing Delaware and most of New Jersey.

    By day 17, the situation has become so dire that Congress, resorting to desperate measures, decides to actually do something. It passes, and the president signs, a law raising the debt ceiling, thereby ensuring that the federal government can continue spending spectacular quantities of money that it does not have until the next major totally unforeseeable government financial crisis, scheduled for February 2014.

    Things do not go nearly as smoothly with the rollout of Obamacare , which turns out to have a lot of problems despite being conceived of by super-smart people with extensive experience in the field of being former student council presidents. The federal Web site, Healthcare.gov, is riddled with glitches, resulting in people being unable to log in, people getting cut off, people being electrocuted by their keyboards, people having their sensitive financial information suddenly appear on millions of TV screens during episodes of “Duck Dynasty,” etc.

    Fortunately, as the initial rush of applicants tapers off, the system starts to work a little better, and by the end of the second week U.S. Secretary of Blame Kathleen Sebelius is able to announce that the program has amassed a total enrollment, nationwide, of nearly two people, one of whom later turns out to be imaginary. But this is not good enough for a visibly angry and frustrated and, of course, surprised President Obama, who promises to get the Web site fixed just as soon as somebody answers the Technical Support hotline, which has had the White House on hold for 73 hours.

    public dissatisfaction with Obamacare continues to grow as many Americans discover that their current insurance plans are being canceled. A frustrated and — it goes without saying — surprised President Obama reveals to the nation that “insurance is complicated to buy” and clarifies that when he said “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” he was using “you” in the sense of “not necessarily you personally.”

    I hardly need to tell you to read the whole thing, do I?

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    Posted in Budget, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for March 5, 2013

    Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

    Had a busy weekend, so here’s a late LinkSwarm:

  • Liberals are casting their greedy gaze on your 401K,
  • Charles Krauthammer: Hail Armageddon!
  • As Mark Steyn put it: “those Mayan guys only hold an apocalypse every few thousand years. Washington now has a Mayan apocalypse every six weeks, whether it’s the fiscal cliff or the debt ceiling, or now the sequestration…it’s talking about $44 billion dollars, or about what the United States government borrows every nine days.”
  • Americans speak English, but Washington speaks a strange dialect where increasing spending by $1 trillion dollars is “holding the line on spending”.
  • Obama’s weak hand on the sequester (though I disagree than gun control is a long-term winning issue).
  • News flash: ObamaCare is still unpopular.
  • The idea that there are more black men in prison than college? Bunk. (via Instapundit)
  • Student suspended for brandishing gun, threatening to shoot someone. Oh wait, no, the student was suspended for tackling the gunman. What the hell, Florida?
  • Syrian rebels take city of Raqqa.
  • The MSM idea of objectivity: quoting a Paul Sadler employee as a neutral observer on Ted Cruz.
  • Speaking of Cruz, he continues to garner a superb list of enemies.
  • Cruz will also be the keynote speaker at CPAC.
  • Groupon’s gun-hating, money-losing CEO got fired.

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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Guns | No Comments »

    If You Do One Thing Today, Write Congress to Support Budget Cuts

    Monday, December 31st, 2012

    Write your senators and congressmen to let them know you oppose any “Fiscal Cliff” deal that doesn’t include substantial entitlement reform and real spending cuts, not dummy out-year cuts that will never happen. Write them now, because they will come under tremendous pressure to cave into big spending, big taxing Democrats desperate to keep that deficit spending heroin flowing.

    Deficit spending will destroy our economy. The problem is not that we’re undertaxed, the problem is that the federal government spends insanely more money than we have in order to fund a vast array of crony capitalists, special interest groups, and permanent dole underclass for Democrats to milk for votes. If we continue down the current road, we will end up like Greece. There’s time to avoid going over the falls, but it’s getting shorter all the time.

    Without spending reform, there’s a good chance that this nation of the people, by the people and for the people may very well perish from this earth.

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats | No Comments »

    The Real Apocalypse

    Friday, December 21st, 2012

    I hope you’ve been enjoying your mythical Mayan Apocalypse.

    But there’s a real, slow motion apocalypse that’s been going on all around you, and nobody is panicking about it, at least not in the open. I’m not talking specifically about the fiscal cliff, which is only a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself.

    The real apocalypse is out-of-control federal spending, and the tsunami of debt it’s creating. And I don’t feel “apocalypse” is too strong a word. Excessive debt destroys economies. When the money printing presses run unchecked for years on end, hyperinflation is the inevitable result.

    The only reason we’re not suffering from hyperinflation right now is that Europe is sucking worse than we are. The Spanish economy is failing. The Greek economy has already failed. Were it not for that, it’s likely our huge budget deficits and the Fed’s printing presses would have already caused the Euro to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And, as Mark Steyn is fond of pointing out, Germany’s economy is big enough to bail out Greece and Spain. No one’s economy is big enough to bail us out.

    Obama and the Democratic Party has wagered our future on the proposition that they can run trillion dollar deficits for years on end without destroying the value of the American dollar. If they’re right, they deserve to win, since everything we know about economics is wrong, and we can just print dollars until we’re all rich.

    But the fundamental laws of economics haven’t been repealed. A reckoning is coming, and it’s going to destroy savings, economies and lives. And professional politicians, the Democratic Party, lobbyists and their mainstream media enablers would prefer to talk about anything else but the looming catastrophe. No wonder they want to talk about gun control and “the war on women.” Anything to keep the con game going until they’ve sucked the body politics dry. Just keep that deficit spending heroin coming.

    The only question about that reckoning is exactly when it’s coming, and exactly how bad it will be. If we’re lucky, it will only be as bad as Argentina 2001. If we’re not, then we’re talking Weimer Germany 1921-23.

    Get ready.

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    Posted in Budget, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 1 Comment »

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