Posts Tagged ‘Bill De Blasio’

LinkSwarm for May 20, 2022

Friday, May 20th, 2022

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration has done everything it can to worsen inflation, The Ministry of Truth’s Scary Poppins dissolves into a puddle, a whole lot of school groomer news from all across the country, and the world’s longest D&D game.

  • On inflation, Biden’s every move has been wrong.

    The Biden administration’s first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn’t a problem. That’s how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one. Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury’s doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn’t a real problem: “Transitory,” they called it.

    And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians. Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the “Putin price hike,” as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That gambit fizzled, too.

    When you don’t have any fresh ideas or real principles — and when your long-term goals are limited by the fact that the president, who was born during the Roosevelt administration, isn’t exactly buying any green bananas — then the easiest thing to do is to throw money at every problem.

    Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.

    Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.

    Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.

    Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.

    The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.

  • Historically, interest rates are are still too low to fight inflation.
  • Speaking of the Biden Administration spreading light and joy throughout America: “Energy Officials Issue ‘Sobering’ Warning About Widespread Summer Blackouts Triggered by Closure of Fossil Fuel Plants.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More Biden magic: “Dow Suffers Longest Losing Streak In 99 Years.”
  • “Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years.” I would treat NBC’s number as a floor rather than a ceiling…
  • Scary Poppins resigns from the Ministry of Truth because all those vicious right-wing bullies were mean to her about her gross bias and constant lying.
  • I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to find Taylor Lorenz attempt to ride to her rescue:

  • Democrats vote to create that national gun registry they swore up and down they were never going to create.
  • More and more Democrats are leaving the party over their fanatical treatment of abortion as the holiest of sacraments.

    I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their “Proud Union Home” yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.

    For the first time in my city’s history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?

    I can’t offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the “made in America” union mentality, that isn’t the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the “Abortion First” party.

    Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party’s Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.

  • “Tucson high school counselor accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student…police officials in the Southern Arizona city said Zobella Brazil Vinik turned herself in to detectives on May 11.”
  • I know you’ll be shocked to find out that Vinik is “a radical queer nonbinary leftist” who put on drag shows.
  • Speaking of public school administrators sexually grooming students, Washington state school board director Jenn Mason tried to throw a party for children in her sex shop.

  • Speaking of sexual predators after your children, this is pretty horrifying: “Texas Teen Goes to Bathroom at NBA Game, Is Found 10 Days Later Sold for Sex in Oklahoma Hotel.”
  • A parent-filed lawsuit comes for the president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees.

    In another action-packed school board meeting in McKinney, the board president was served with a lawsuit for suppressing the free speech rights of citizens who disagree with her policies.

    Civil rights attorney Paul Davis served Amy Dankel, president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees, during the public comments portion of Tuesday night’s meeting.

    “Your outrageous display of tyranny in how you trampled on the rights of the public at the last meeting was shocking,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    In recent months, McKinney ISD’s school board meetings have featured a heavy police presence.

    On several occasions, police officers have ejected citizens, at Dankel’s direction, for failing to observe her rules of decorum during public comments.

    Davis said Tuesday that Dankel’s rules “placed an unconstitutional restraint on First Amendment rights by disallowing signs, clapping, and comments.”

    He also says Dankel enforced her rules unequally.

    She directed police to physically remove people who were wearing green—supporters of conservative trustee Chad Green, who Dankel is trying to oust from the board.

    “Those same rules were not applied to people wearing blue,” Davis said, referring to Dankel supporters. “For that, we have filed a civil rights lawsuit against you.”

    Kevin Whitt is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

    During last month’s school board meeting, the pro-family activist spoke against the district’s failure to proactively identify and remove sexually explicit books found in students’ libraries—a contentious topic in McKinney and other districts across the state since last year.

    Later in that meeting, Whitt was dragged out by City of McKinney police officers for uttering a single word—“disgusting”—after a local mom finished comments that included excerpts from one of the explicit books.

  • Speaking of Texas school boards getting sued parents, Round Rock ISD is being sued over violating parent’s rights.

    The contentious saga in Round Rock ISD continues after two parents filed a federal lawsuit last week against five school board trustees, the district superintendent, and several district police officers.

    Last year, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark on charges of “hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct” following a September school board meeting. Both men were released the next day.

    The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Story’s and Clark’s rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Additionally, the suit accuses the defendants of violating 42 U.S. Code 1983, or misusing their power to deny their constitutional rights.

    The two men attended last September’s school board meeting to protest Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez’s continued employment and a proposed tax increase.

    Texas Scorecard chronicled multiple scandals involving Round Rock ISD in a special report and a podcast series, Exposed, which included investigations into the school district and Azaiez. Five of the district’s seven trustees, dubbed the “Bad Faith Five,” were also brought under scrutiny for allegedly covering up domestic violence allegations against Azaiez.

    At the August 16 board meeting, Round Rock ISD officers removed Story after he referenced the investigation into Azaiez. Amy Weir, president of the school board, instructed district officers to escort Story from the building, claiming his concerns about Azaiez did not follow the meeting’s agenda.

    At the same meeting, trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston walked out after accusing the district of intentionally limiting seating under the guise of following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clark then demanded the board let more citizens in to witness the meeting, and Weir subsequently instructed district officers to escort him out.

    Three days later, Williamson County officers arrested Story and Clark. Although Story’s charges pertained to the August 16 meeting, Clark’s charges dated back to a September meeting of the school board. Their lawsuit, filed May 11, accuses all defendants of suppressing Story’s and Clark’s constitutional rights and claims they were arrested illegally.

    If successful, the lawsuit would void Azaiez’s contract and prevent Round Rock ISD from restricting attendance at school board meetings due to COVID-19.

  • Groomer teachers are even popping up in Ohio:

  • But the school Social Justice bullshit doesn’t stop there: “Fairfax, Virginia Schools May Expel Elementary Students For ‘Misgendering’ People.”

    Tar.

    Feathers.

  • Michigan Businesses Sue Whitmer For Losses Due To COVID Lockdowns.”
  • Speaking of Michigan lawsuits over gross abuse of state power, a couple is suing Highland Park after the police seized their building and legal marijuana business, charged them with no crime, and then offered to give it back if they bought the police department two cars.
  • Speaking of crooked Democratic politicians, you would think that all that graft Bill De Blasio’s wife raked off would allow him to retire in style, but evidently that festering bucket of crooked failure just can’t stay out of the spotlight, and is now running for congress.
  • Texas counties ranks, from most Democratic to most republican.
  • Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that got clobbered when they were caught performing naked shorts of Gamestop stock, is shutting down.
  • Citadel head Ken Griffin threatens to leave Chicago over the spiraling crime rate.
  • People magazine may cease its print version. Bonus: “Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.” Funny how no one gives a rat’s ass about woke royals and the morbidly obese…
  • Larry Correia gives a deserved royal fisking to an article by a leftwing feminist who wonders why her boyfriend reads that primitive “science fiction” stuff rather than modern literary fiction that checks all the required Victimhood Identity boxes.
  • Archeologists in southern Turkey continue to uncover an 11,000 year old pre-agriculture civilization of six-fingered men protecting their penises.
  • Inside a D&D game that’s been running for more than 40 years. Including a truly jaw-dropping amount of painted miniatures and constructed terrain.
  • Good for a smile:

  • LinkSwarm for December 31, 2021

    Friday, December 31st, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to the last LinkSwarm of 2021!

    Remember how all those media pundits opined that 2021 couldn’t help but being better than 2020?

    Yeah, not so much.

    Assuming the official death tolls are accurate (probably not, but I doubt the methodology has changed from 2020 to 2021), there were approximately 375,000 deaths in the United States of America in 2020 from Flu Manchu. With some 821,000+ total deaths, more people have died this year than last year. So much for Joe Biden shutting down the virus…

    Joe Rogan’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone has evidently dropped, but I haven’t watched it yet. Maybe Saturday.

  • Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted of sex-trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein in a story the Democratic Media Complex has done it’s best to pay as little attention to as possible.
  • Ron DeSantis vs. Critical Race Theory.

    Over the past year, DeSantis has emerged as one of the most articulate political spokesmen for the anti–critical race theory movement. His new policy agenda builds on successful anti-CRT legislation in other states but goes two steps further. First, it provides parents with a “private right of action,” which allows them to sue offending institutions for violations, gain information through legal discovery, and, if they win in the courts, collect attorney’s fees. Second, it tackles critical race theory in corporate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training programs, which, DeSantis says, sometimes promote racial stereotyping, scapegoating, and harassment, in violation of state civil rights laws.

    At heart, the battle against critical race theory is a fight against entrenched bureaucracies that have used public institutions to promote their own racialist ideology. “This is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities, and elites in corporate America, and they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people,” DeSantis said. “You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”

    Following his speech, DeSantis invited me to address the crowd. I explained that the reason critical race theory has upset so many Americans is that it speaks to two deep reservoirs of human sentiment: citizens’ desire for self-government and parents’ desire to shape the moral and educational development of their children. Elite institutions have attempted to step between parent and child.

    DeSantis has deftly positioned himself as a protector of middle-American families. One of the guest speakers, Lacaysha Howell, a biracial mother from Sarasota, said that left-wing teachers tried to persuade her daughter that the white side of their family was oppressive. Another speaker, Eulalia Jimenez, a Cuban-American mother from the Miami area, said that left-wing indoctrination in schools reminded her of her father’s warnings about Communism in his native Cuba. Both believed that critical race theory was poison to the American Dream.

    As they begin their next session in January, Florida legislators have the opportunity to craft the gold standard for “culture war” policy. The governor’s team has worked with a range of interested parties, including the Manhattan Institute, which has crafted model language for prohibiting racialist indoctrination and providing curriculum transparency to parents. The battle is ultimately about shaping public policy in accord with public values. “I think we have an ability [to] just draw a line in the sand and say, ‘That’s not the type of society that we want here in the state of Florida,’” said DeSantis yesterday. The stakes are high—and all eyes are on Florida to deliver.

    (Previously.)

  • How the Democratic Media Complex managed to destroy what was left in the public’s trust in it:

  • “Washington State Democrats Want Decreased Penalties for Drive-By Shooters.” Because too many shooters are black. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • All the Republican candidates in Texas Donald Trump has endorsed for 2022. Including incumbents Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton and Sid Miller, plus Dawn Buckingham for Land Commissioner.
  • Speaking of Texas:

  • China’s Xian locks down over Mao Tze Lung.
  • “Houston Grand Jury Indicts Four More Defendants in $35 Million CARES Act Fraud Conspiracy.”

    Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted four men on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering in a scheme to rip off the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by submitting over 80 false applications for forgivable loans and writing checks to relatives and fictional employees, among other fraudulent activities.

    The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in a press release on December 15 that 29-year-old Hamza Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Khalid Abbas of Richmond, 55-year-old Abdul Fatani of Richmond, and 53-year-old Syed Ali of Sugar Land could be sentenced to up to 20 years on each count of wire fraud.

    The indictments against them are the most recent in an apparent scheme that prosecutors say involved 15 defendants from Texas and Illinois, all of whom are accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

    The DOJ stated that Khalid Abbas, Fatani, Ali, and another defendant, Houston resident Amir Aqeel, 53, have been charged with money laundering in the superseding indictment. The money laundering counts carry potential sentences of up to 10 years.

    Last year, a grand jury also indicted Aqeel on a charge of aggravated identity theft. The government accuses Aqeel of using stolen identities to apply for the PPP loans.

    According to the DOJ, several of the accused have already pleaded guilty for their involvement, including Siddiq Azeemuddin, 42, of Naperville, Illinois, Richard Reuth, 58, of Spring, and Raheel Malik, 41, of Sugar Land, all of whom entered their pleas in October. Houston residents Abdul Farahshah, 70, Jesus Perez, 31, and Bijan Rajabi, 68, pleaded guilty in late November.

    Rifat Bajwa, 53, of Richmond, Pardeep Basra, 52, of Houston, Mayer Misak, 41, of Cypress, and Mauricio Navia, 42, of Katy were also indicted last year on charges of participating in the conspiracy and committing wire fraud.

    Why, it’s almost like just about all the defendants share some characteristic in common. If only I could put my finger on it…

  • Speaking of criminals, did mentioned that a second CNN employee was being investigated for child sex allegations? “The allegations against Rick Saleeby, a former senior producer for Jake Tapper’s “The Lead,” appear to be connected to reporting by Project Veritas. Saleeby resigned from CNN this month.” It’s hard to keep the media pedophiles straight without a scorecard…
  • When does Biden apologize to Trump?
  • Aluminum is up 40% this year.
  • “Austin Office of Police Oversight Violated Department Contract, Arbitrator Rules.”

    The City of Austin’s director of the Office of Police Oversight (OPO), Farah Muscadin, abused her authority, a third-party arbitrator decided this week.

    In a 31-page decision, Lynn Gomez, the arbitrator, ruled that Muscadin and the OPO violated Article 16 of the Austin Police Department’s employment contract that was negotiated in 2018. Article 16 governs the parameters of civilian oversight of the department, which progressive groups lobbied hard for during the labor standoff.

    “Contrary to the city’s claim, Director Muscadin was not acting within the scope of her authority…[she] clearly was seeking to dictate some future outcome rather than simply making a recommendation as Art. 16 permits,” Gomez ruled.

    “[T]he evidence and arguments raise[d] by the city indicate that the city does not consider itself or OPO bound by Article 16’s provisions.”

    You may remember Muscadin from such hits as “I’m spending taxpayer money to push Critical Race Theory” and “defund APD and give the money to my radical leftwing cronies.” She should resign.

  • Has the Biden Amdenistration tipped its hand that considers Taiwan too strategically important to not defend it in the case of a Chinese attack?

    Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told a Senate hearing three weeks ago that Taiwan was “critical to the region’s security and critical to the defence of vital US interests”. In words strikingly similar to MacArthur’s, he emphasised the island’s location “at a critical node within the first island chain, anchoring a network of US allies and partners”.

    This may well be remembered as the moment Washington came clean on its intentions regarding Taiwan. In Beijing at least, the statement is being read as dropping all pretence that the US could acquiesce to a unification of Taiwan with China.

    Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in China, believes that US strategic thinking regarding Taiwan has always followed the lines laid out by MacArthur.

    Even after establishing diplomatic relations with China, the US “worked to ensure the continuation of a state of separation across the Taiwan Strait”, Wu said. “When we ask the US if they do not hope to see the unification of China, they deny that. But judging from the US’s concrete actions, it is clear that they indeed do not hope to see China unify. Ely Ratner has now said this out loud.”

    In Washington, too, some observers think the testimony allows little conclusion other than that the US should not allow Taiwan to become part of China under any circumstances.

    Hopefully true, but betting on Joe Biden’s stalwart fortitude is putting your hopes on an extremely weak horse…

  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spotted in Miami Beach while New York City Flu Manchu cases hit alltime highs. As always, Covid Theater rules are for the little people.
  • Incoming New York City mayor Eric Adams is keeping Bill De Blasio’s private employer vaccine mandate. Because even nominally sane Democrats still hate you and your freedom to say no.
  • Family Guy sticks it to China:

  • Everything we know about famous psychological testing is wrong.
  • Sometimes the inevitable does happen: Betty White dead at age 99, just 18 days shy of 100. Still a hell of a run…
  • Remembering that we also lost Norm Macdonald this year, here he is slamming Carrot Top.
  • For those who didn’t get enough Harry Reid bashing in my obituary, here’s a classic Dennis Miller rant on the late senator.
  • A Twitter thread on electronic warfare during The Battle of the Bulge. Why yes, this is relevant to my interests. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The challenge of moving a 17 ton magnet.
  • Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia gets a new tower.
  • I really should have bought this for Dwight for Christmas.
  • The Critical Drinker is not thrilled at the latest Matrix film:

    Ultimately The Matrix Regenerations fails on just about every level possible. It fails to properly honor the past by leaving it well enough alone. It fails to tell a compelling new story, or add new ideas to the world it created. It fails to establish interesting new characters, or take old ones in a new direction. It fails to surpass the spectacle, energy and originality of a 20 year old film. And most of all it fails to deliver a compelling reason for its own existence. The Matrix Retaliations is a film that never should have been made in the first place.

  • Left-wing sponsors vs. right-wing sponsors:

  • “Pfizer Assures That Vaccine Is Almost As Safe For Kids As COVID.”
  • “After Conviction For Sex Crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell Announces New Job At CNN.”
  • Abandoned Christmas puppies find homes.
  • Happy New Year, everyone!

    A Rant on the Biden Economy

    Tuesday, December 14th, 2021

    I left a good bit of these as a comment on a Louis Rossmann video, and then decided not to let a good rant go to waste. The topic was whether inflation would continue to rise, and whether the economy would get better or not and why.


    The economy won’t get better in the near term because the people at the top of the Biden Administration don’t seem care if the economy gets better.

    Inflation is running at the fastest pace on record, and Biden Administration cronies are busy trying to gaslight the American people by claiming it doesn’t exist or is “transitory” or not that bad for poor people.

    The thing the Biden Administration is most concerned with is Social Justice garbage that the rest of America is actively hostile to.

    $5 a gallon gas? They don’t care. If they cared, they wouldn’t have killed Keystone. They want oil prices high so they can force conversion to the Green New Deal schemes that they seem to have numerous investments in (see, for example, John Kerry’s investment in Hillhouse China Value Fund).

    Milk increase by 40% or 50%? They don’t care. Few of them have children, and an additional $20, $50, or $100 a week for basic necessities has no effect on their lifestyle.

    The thing the Biden Administration seems to deeply care about is graft, fraud, social justice, transexualism, pronouns, and protecting the inroads Critical Race Theory has made into America’s educational system. Victimhood Identity Politics, AKA wokeism, AKA Critical Race Theory, AKA “Sex as Social Construct” are all part and parcel of the “Successor Ideology” that is the new religion of America’s leftwing elites. They regard fighting American parents who oppose CRT as much bigger political priority than opposing Communist China.

    That, and letting in millions of illegal aliens to provide new Democratic Party voters via amnesty down the line, and imposing vaccine mandates on an already reeling economy.

    Trump wasn’t perfect. He didn’t restrain government spending and took too long to wake up to the threats posed by CRT etc. to the republic. But he did care deeply about America having robust and growing economy with low unemployment, and set about implementing polices (selective deregulation, renegotiating trade agreements, controlling illegal immigration to increase American wages) to help grow the economy, despite being hampered by getting “jammed at the line” by the Russiagate hoax.

    His successors in the White House seem to want to undo every Trump policy that helped grow the economy simply because they were Trump policies. They’ve made everything worse.

    Yes, oil prices were always going to rebound from the 2020’s misguided lockdowns. But the Democratic Party’s active hostile to American oil production (cancelling Keystone, forbidding drilling) has made things worse.

    Yes, the Fed printing money is a huge problem. But it’s a much bigger problem now that Democrats have weakened the country by undoing Trump reforms and we’re no longer importing deflation from China. We should audit the Fed (at the very least). But clearly that will not be done under the current Administration.

    How do we get out of the current jam? We could balance the budget, stop spending money we don’t have, and audit spending programs to see exactly where that money went. (Remember how Bill De Blasio’ wife just happened to “lose” $850 million of taxpayer money?) None of that is going to happen under a Biden Administration.

    And the inflation is not just a Fed problem, it’s a global problem, with just about every Western nation running budget deficits and encouraging “quantitative easing” by their respective central banking authorities.

    This is turning into a long rant with many topics that require a great deal of explanation and research to unpack. But the upshot is that one big reason that our economy is lousy is that current Administration doesn’t care that our economy is lousy, because they’re focused on other goals (mostly antithetical to the interests of average working Americans), and because actually fixing the economy offers them no opportunities to get their beaks wet.

    And they won’t address the real causes of of current supply chain issues (union featherbedding rules at California ports) because that would mean forcing some Democrats to stop getting their beaks wet.

    And we can’t have that.

    Trump was not perfect, and criticize his flaws all you want. But I think I speak for most Americans when I say that I would gladly put up with an endless stream of mean tweets if it means we could have the late 2019 Trump economy back.

    De Blasio Imposes New Vaccine Mandate And New Yorkers Scream “Enough!”

    Tuesday, December 7th, 2021

    On his way out the door, uniformly loathed New York City Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced one final kick in the balls to the city’s struggling small business owners by ordering them to enforce a vaccine mandate on private businesses.

    Effective December 27 and applying to 184,000 businesses, the mandate requires that all workers in private companies in the city present proof of vaccination as a condition of employment.

    “We’re going to announce a first-in-the-nation measure,” de Blasio said. “Our health commissioner will announce the vaccine mandate for private sector employers across the board. All private-sector employers in New York City will be covered by this vaccine mandate.”

    After imposing a vaccine mandate for those who patronize leisure businesses and certain indoor venues such as restaurants and movie theaters a few months ago, de Blasio expanded that order Monday to include children aged five to eleven, a demographic recently approved to receive the shot. That “Key to NYC” program, under which customers only had to verify that they had one dose, has been updated to a two-dose requirement.

    The mayor said additional guidance regarding enforcement and compliance will be issued on December 15.

    One wonders what constitutional authority de Blasio thinks makes him God-Emperor of New York City.

    Most businesses are already not complying with the existing mandates, and people are announcing they won’t comply with this one:

    Here’s Louis Rossmann announcing he won’t comply:

    He also said that one of his employees came down with a horrible case of myocarditis and a mild heart attack after the second dose of the vaccine. Maybe he just got terribly unlucky, or maybe myocarditis is a much more prevalent side effect than we’ve been led to believe.

    Back to Rossmann:

    “That employee is then going to tell me to gargle his balls. And when he says that, that’s not going to be sexual harassment, that’s just going to be the natural response to when somebody demands that you get a medical procedure in order to keep your job.”

    “The other reason I am against these mandates [is] because they create culture wars that are detrimental to actually getting people vaccinated and caring about public health.”

    Correct. This would suggest that vaccine mandates are no longer about public health (of they ever were).

    “This is going to create more anti-vaxxers than that would have ever existed otherwise.”

    Correct. Maybe that’s the intent. Or more likely, the intent is to impose compliance to government mandates for the sake of imposing compliance to government mandates. To better prepare the population for the next mandatory compliance measure coming down the pike that our elite ruling class will feel free to ignore.

    Every. Knee. Must. Bend.

    “It’s one of those things where I genuinely believe that it might just be the kick in the ass necessary to actually get people here to consider alternatives to being in New York City as a business.”

    Rossmann is the sort of moderate that’s being redpilled by Democratic politicians’ relentless drive for greater regulation. (To say nothing of their manifest incompetence and the baleful effects of their soft on crime policies.)

    With Biden’s federal vaccine mandate already permanently blocked by the the courts, it seems unlikely de Blasio’s mandate would pass constitutional muster either. And incoming mayor Eric Adams may immediately eliminate the mandate.

    But the continued drive among so many nations worldwide to impose lockdowns and mandates in the face of evidence that they seem to have no effect on the spread of Flu Manchu, and generate widespread opposition from their citizens, indicates that something other than reasonable health policies are at work here.

    Update: De Blasio’s mandate has already been blocked.

    Charter Schools Work. No Wonder Democrats Want To Kill Them.

    Tuesday, January 5th, 2021

    Jonathan Chait has a New York Magazine piece on charter schools that’s worth looking at:

    In the dozen years since Barack Obama undertook the most dramatic education reform in half a century — prodding local governments to measure how they serve their poorest students and to create alternatives, especially charter schools, for those who lack decent neighborhood options —

    I’m gonna stop you right there. Charter schools were first passed into law in 1991 under Bush41. The number of charter schools doubled under Bush43, who was a far bigger supporter of school choice than Obama was. That school choice continued to expand under Obama is a credit to him not screwing up their existing momentum, but let’s not pretend that Obama did any of the heavy lifting.

    – two unexpected things have happened. The first is that charter schools have produced dramatic learning gains for low-income minority students. In city after city, from New York to New Orleans, charters have found ways to reach the children who have been most consistently failed by traditional schools. The evidence for their success has become overwhelming, with apolitical education researchers pronouncing themselves shocked at the size of the gains. What was ten years ago merely an experiment has become a proven means to develop the potential of children whose minds had been neglected for generations.

    And yet the second outcome of the charter-school breakthrough has been a bitter backlash within the Democratic Party. The political standing of the idea has moved in the opposite direction of the data, as two powerful forces — unions and progressive activists — have come to regard charter schools as a plutocratic assault on public education and an ideological betrayal.
    The shift has made charter schools anathema to the left.

    In fact, neither of these outcomes is remotely unexpected for anyone living outside the liberal reality bubble. As for charter schools succeeding, Democrat-controlled inner city schools have long been failing, government monopolies seldom produce desirable results in the absence of competition, and ordinary Americas escape government control of their lives any chance they get.

    Likewise, teachers unions hate both alternatives to their monopoly and giving up money and control to charter schools. teacher’s unions are one of the most powerful forces inside the Democratic coalition, and their endorsement brings both money and muscle to Democratic politicians. Compared to that, the wishes of inner city black parents for better education for their children don’t count at all. Likewise, social justice warrior cadres think the government monopoly on schools is a dandy way to impose woke ideological conformity on tender young minds. Why teach inner city students to succeed when you can manufacture new SJW cadres by telling them to current system is hopelessly rigged against them and needs to be destroyed?

    “I am not a charter-school fan because it takes away the options available and money for public schools,” Biden told a crowd in South Carolina during the Democratic primary, as the field competed to prove its hostility toward education reform in general and charters in particular. Now, as Biden turns from campaigning to governing, whether he will follow through on his threats to rein them in — or heed the data and permit charter schools to flourish — is perhaps the most unsettled policy mystery of his emerging administration.

    To head the Department of Education, Biden floated the names of fierce critics of charter schools, including the ex-president of the country’s largest teacher union and the former dean of the Howard University School of Education, who has called urban charters “schemes” that are really all about controlling urban land. Then, in a surprise move, Biden formally tapped Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education chief — a nonideological pick who offends neither the party’s opponents of reform nor its remaining defenders.

    Cardona has at least given lip service to charter schools in the past, so he’s probably among the least bad picks Biden could have made.

    The achievement gap between poor Black and Latino students in cities and rich white students in suburbs represents a sickening waste of human ability and is a rebuke to the American credo of equal opportunity. Its stubborn persistence has tormented generations of educators and social reformers. The rapid progress in producing dramatic learning gains for poor children, and the discovery of models that have proved reliable in their ability to reproduce them, is one of the most exciting breakthroughs in American social policy. For many education specialists, the left’s near abandonment of charter schools has been a bleak spectacle of unlearning — the equivalent of Lincoln promising to rip out municipal water systems or Eisenhower pledging to ban the polio vaccine. Just as the dream is becoming real, the party that helped bring it to life is on the verge of snuffing it out.

    Once again Chait is pushing the myth that Democratic politicians were big backers of charter schools. They were not. They are not. Save a few laudable exceptions, they never have been.

    In college, I had a brief experience tutoring bright students who’d been taught depressingly little by the public schools of Detroit, which impressed upon me the cruelty of a system that denied so many kids any chance to develop their talent. But it wasn’t until I met my wife that I got interested in charter schools. Robin has devoted her career to education policy: She studied it in graduate school, taught at a low-income school, worked in local and federal education departments, researched for a liberal think tank, did executive-level work for a charter-school network. Her current role is with a nonprofit organization, consulting for and providing technical assistance to schools and state education bodies. Because of Robin, I’ve gained a window into a siloed world of experts who grasp both the state of research on charter schools and its staggering moral implications. Once you have scrutinized a machine that systematically squanders the intellect of an entire caste of citizens before they have reached adulthood, then glimpsed an alternative that reliably does the opposite, it is hard to stop thinking about it.

    Charter schools face a crisis in large part because people don’t understand them.

    No, they’re in crisis because powerful factions in the Democratic Party find them a threat to their business model. To quote Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary:

    A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.

    “Down, you base thing!” thundered the Moral Principle, “and let me pass over you!”

    The Material Interest merely looked in the other’s eyes without saying anything.

    “Ah,” said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, “let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed.”

    The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare.

    “In order to avoid a conflict,” the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, “I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me.”

    Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. “I don’t think you are very good walking,” it said. “I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water.”

    It occurred that way.

    Back to Chait:

    Today, teachers unions have adopted a militant defense of the tenure prerogatives of their least effective members, equating that stance with a defense of the teaching profession as a whole. They have effectively mobilized progressives (and resurgent socialist activists) to their cause, which they identify as a defense of “public education” — rather than a particular form of public education — against scheming billionaires.

    Imagine the progressive stance on education as a series of expanding concentric circles with the peripheral actors only barely aware of the core dispute: at the core, a tiny number of bad teachers, protectively surrounded by a much larger circle of union members, surrounded in turn by an even larger number of Democrats who have only a vague understanding of the issue as one pitting heroes (unions) against villains (rich privatizers).

    In the recent book Slaying Goliath, Diane Ravitch, a Democrat turned conservative turned populist leader of the education-reform backlash, jubilantly declares the charter-school movement dead. While that declaration is premature, she is correct that her struggle to redefine charters schools as toxic among progressives has succeeded almost totally. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Elizabeth Warren bashed them, and even as clumsy a candidate as Bill de Blasio understood that his hostile relationship with charters was one of his few selling points. “No one should ask for your support or be the Democratic nominee unless they’re able to stand up to Wall Street and the rich people behind the charter school movement once and for all,” he said at one forum. “I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate’ — our teachers taught us not to — I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.” Perhaps the most instructive candidacy, though, was that of Cory Booker.

    As mayor of Newark between 2006 and 2013, Booker had overseen a major charter effort; his goal, he said at the time, was to make the city the “charter-school capital of the nation.” The project worked. A recent study documenting the gains found that Newark’s students, whose performance on statewide tests had once ranked in the 38th percentile, had vaulted nearly 40 points. Newark’s charter-school students now exceed the state average in math and language, an extraordinarily impressive result given their high poverty rate. And the report found gains among charter students had not come at the expense of students in traditional schools, who were also gaining, albeit not as rapidly as the charter students. This was one of the most impressive executive achievements any candidate in the field could boast. But Booker was unable to tout his success. Instead, the issue played as a liability. News stories assessing his candidacy presented his support for charters as a kind of dark secret in his past, for which he “faced scrutiny” and “could create still more problems.”

    Snip.

    Polls show that the backlash against charters has been mainly confined to white liberals, while Black and Latino Democrats — whose children are disproportionately enrolled in those schools — remain supportive. It’s not that upscale progressives don’t care about minority children. Their passion is quite evidently sincere. Rather, they have convinced themselves that better schools by themselves do little good, because only structural reform to the entire economy and social system is worth pursuing. In 2019, Nick Hanauer wrote a widely circulated Atlantic essay titled “Better Schools Won’t Fix America.” Hanauer, a former charter-school donor, argued that the economy has deeper problems that education alone cannot solve. On its own terms, the point is obviously true: Good schools can’t eliminate inequality. For that matter, eliminating inequality can’t solve climate change, and solving sea-level rise can’t eliminate racism. The world has lots of problems. It is odd to dismiss the value of solving one problem by pointing to the continued existence of other problems.

    Hanauer was echoing a theme that critics of education reform have been developing for years. They dismiss the very possibility of better education outcomes as unimportant or impossible on the grounds that poor children cannot learn at the same level as middle-class ones. “The biggest correlation in education is between poverty and test scores,” Ravitch has said. “If you think the test scores are too low, go to the root causes.” The education-reform critic Richard Rothstein has claimed that we will “never fix education in America until we fix the poverty in our society.” The left-wing social critic Joshua Mound has written in Jacobin that “increases in equality tend to increase educational attainment, not the other way around.” And so on. The message to poor urban parents who want to send their kids to a decent school is that they simply need to wait for the revolution.

    For social justice warriors, reform is the enemy of revolution. Educating poor inner city blacks doesn’t help them destroy capitalism or “whiteness” and so holds no value for them. The only black lives that matter are those that can further the cause by dying at the hands of police.

    Chait has done a good job of mapping out that: A.) Charter schools work, and B.) the Democratic Party is implacably hostile to them, but makes the error of assuming that if Democrats just understood how well they worked, they would be in favor of them. He’s wrong. You can’t convince a man of the error of his thinking if that very error is central to his business model.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

    LinkSwarm for December 25, 2020

    Friday, December 25th, 2020

    Welcome to a special Christmas day LinkSwarm! And by “special,” I mean “because Christmas falls on Friday.”

  • Explosion rocks downtown Nashville. “Around 6:30 a.m., police received a call for a suspicious RV with no tags parked across from the Davidson County courthouse. As officers arrived, the RV exploded, blowing out the windows of nearby buildings and leaving extensive damage.” They’re calling it an “intentional act.” Maybe, especially across the street from a courthouse. But it could still be a meth lab cooking off. As always, remember that much of the early reporting around such events are usually wrong.

    Update: Assuming the message in this video is real, it does appear to be a premeditated act of which authorities were warned:

  • The UK and the EU have reached a Brexit deal:

    The deal comes in just eight days short of the hard-Brexit deadline. Rather than erecting trade barriers to which some had resigned themselves, the two sides are looking toward a more cooperative than contentious relationship, reports the Wall Street Journal:

    Under the terms of the accord, both sides will continue to trade free of tariffs but there will be significant new bureaucracy for importers and exporters. The free flow of workers between the two economies will end and trade in services will be much reduced. London’s vast financial center will no longer have guaranteed access to European markets.

    The deal gives Britain significant freedom to depart from EU regulations and sign free-trade deals with countries like the U.S. But as the price for securing a deal without tariffs, the U.K. agreed that it wouldn’t seriously undercut EU standards on issues such as labor and the environment and would maintain similar constraints on the subsidizing of private industry.

    The agreement must formally be ratified by the European and U.K. parliaments and signed off by EU leaders before the end of the year. Capitals have insisted they need proper time to comb through the text before approving it. Though their approval is likely, France has warned it could veto a deal if some of its key concerns, including access to British waters for its fishing fleet, aren’t met.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • President Donald Trump is right to call the $900 billion stimulus package a disgrace.

    Here’s the short version: One main problem is that the 5,500-plus page legislative package was drafted behind closed doors by party leaders, then quickly unveiled hours before a vote.

    As voices as disparate as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash have pointed out, this meant that most members of Congress had to vote for or against the package before actually getting to read the legislation.

    That’s right: Trillions of taxpayer dollars were doled out, and the members of Congress who voted for it don’t even know where much of it is going.

    This bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into preexisting stimulus programs that were rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, without meaningfully addressing any of the problems. You can expect more stimulus checks sent to dead people and more runaway fraud to plague the expanded unemployment benefits.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Tables Turned: Detroit Sues Black Lives Matter Group for ‘Civil Conspiracy’ to Riot and Attack Police.” The group in question is Black Lives Matter umbrella group Detroit Will Breathe. Discovery should be extremely interesting… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Andrew Cuomo hates ordinary people and non-bankrupt restaurants so much that he’s barred patrons of outdoor dining from using a restaurants restroom. Who does he think he is, Werner Erhard?
  • Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. It would be very difficult indeed for Yang not to be a vast improvement over the burning Porta-Potty stuffed with dead clowns that is the De Blasio administration. As a moderate Democrat, I would expect Yang to be a better mayor than de Blasio or David Dinkins, but not as good as Rudy Giuliani or Ed Koch. I would expect a Yang mayoralty to be about on par with Bloomberg’s, with maybe more upside if he’s willing to shake up the corrupt status quo and not push his disasterous pet guaranteed income idea.
  • Another thing President Trump disrupted: stale, self-serving conventional wisdom about peace in the Middle East:

    In an address to the UN Security Council on Monday during a monthly session on the Middle East, US Ambassador Kelly Craft asserted that President Donald Trump’s policies had “overturned” long-held views about diplomacy in the region.

    “For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the world would only see normalized international relations with Israel following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,” Craft told the virtual meeting. “But we have proven this assumption wrong.”

    She touted the Trump administration’s pursuit of “economic and cultural ties” between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has led to normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Similar deals with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, among others, could also be in the offing.

    “All of us here should think long and hard about what else we may have missed or misinterpreted over the years.”

  • “UK: Muslim rape gang ringleader released back onto the streets 8 years into his 26-year term.”
  • “Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress ‘Hyper-Partisan Sites’ in Favor of ‘Mainstream News’ (The NYT) is a Fraud:

    The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

    Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.

    Snip.

    The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.

    The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.

    It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.

    As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.

  • Kurt Schlichter on our stupid establishment:

    The Establishment decided that instead of having a vigorous debate and discussion over the safety and efficacy of these prophylactic potions, they would just short circuit the whole messy truth determination process that Western civilization has relied upon for a millennium – argument, debate, and eventually consensus after everything is fully and freely hashed-out – and move right to the Official Truth. All the smart set decided that the Official Truth would be that these vaccines were all perfect and necessary and that we needed to stamp out any hint of dissent lest people pause and think for themselves and thereby disrupt the plan by raising unapproved notions. And the tech overlords would do their part by ensuring that any info, ideas, or interplay that was not inline with the narrative would be suppressed.

    It’s so much more efficient, you know, to tell people what they think than to take the time to convince them and refute counter-arguments.

    Not everyone was foolish. It was very smart and good leadership for Mike Pence to take the shot in public in front of cameras. That a couple of tentacles didn’t sprout out of his clavicles was reassuring. That’s leadership, and that’s what our leaders should be doing. But most of our ruling class instead thinks that if they lie to us and suppress our debates and call us stupid enough, we’ll fall into line.

    When has that worked for long?

  • A roundup of climate predictions for 2020 that were horribly wrong. Remember how snowfall would be a thing of the past?
  • Israel hits Syria again.
  • “US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon.”
  • Rush Limbaugh signs off, possibly for the last time.
  • Austin restaurants and bars under Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions again. Thanks a lot, China. And Mayor Adler.
  • Rand Paul presents the airing of the Festivus grievances:

    Among Paul’s instances of waste were several health studies, including more than $36 million spent on studying why stress makes hair turn gray, more than $1 million spent studying whether people will eat ground-up bugs, and more than $3 million spent interviewing San Franciscans about their edible cannabis use.

    As far as taxpayer dollars spent aiding other countries, $8.62 billion was spent in Afghanistan on counternarcotics efforts, more than $37 million was spent helping deal with truant Filipino youth, and more than $3 million was spent on sending Russians to American community colleges for a “gap year.”

    Among funds spent on the environment, energy, and scientific research, more than $1 million was spent walking lizards on a treadmill, nearly $200,000 was spent studying how people cooperate while playing e-sport video games, and more than $2 million on developing a wearable headset to track eating behaviors.

    The military had several particularly high expenditures this year that Paul listed as waste, including repurposing $1 billion in coronavirus response funds for unrelated acquisitions, more than $ 715 million in lost equipment designated for Syrians fighting ISIS, and $174 million on drones that were lost over Afghanistan.

    Other eyebrow-raising expenses included more than $4 million spent on spraying alcoholic rats with bobcat urine, more than $10 million spent on would-be coronavirus test tubes that turned up as used soda bottles, and nearly $6 million spent building three bicycle storage facilities at Washington, D.C. Metro stations.

  • Titania McGrath, prophet of our times.
  • Man of the year: Jeffrey Toobin. “Toobin’s grip on the media was relentless. In 2002 he joined CNN and became the network’s chief legal analyst, a cocksure critic of Republicans…” (Hat tip: HashtagGriswold.)
  • Good idea:

  • Heh:

  • “Can I interest you in some propane? Or some propane explosions?”
  • How badly do you want a drink?
  • Oh the weather outside is frightful:

  • Christmas with the Sex Pistols.
  • Merry Christmas, everyone!

    LinkSwarm for September 4, 2020

    Friday, September 4th, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! President Trump’s approval rises among black people, more antifa behaving badly, and a look at just how badly Lebanon is screwed.

  • President Trump’s approval rating among Black voters jumped by 60% during the Republican National Committee even as Democrats and progressives sought to brand the Republican president as racist. A HarrisX-Hill poll released Friday showed Mr. Trump’s net approval with Black voters from Aug. 22-25, which included the first two days of the RNC, rose to 24%, up from 15% in the pollster’s Aug. 8-11 survey.” If those numbers are accurate, and hold, all by themselves they could put Pennsylvania out of reach for Democrats, since they lost by 50,000 votes in 2016, and have to rack up huge black totals in Philadelphia to balance out their disadvantage in the rest of the state. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Dirtbag dirtnapped: “Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, died in Lacey, Washington, where federal agents were attempting to take him into custody for the shooting — the same night his interview on the shooting aired on Vice News.”
  • Chicago gangs form a pact to murder any Chicago police officers with a drawn weapon.
  • President Trump orders to begin defunding cities who refuse to control rioters and defund police:

    President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime, The Post can exclusively reveal.

    Trump on Wednesday signed a five-page memo ordering all federal agencies to send reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget that detail funds that can be redirected.

    New York City, Washington, DC, Seattle and Portland are initial targets as Trump makes “law and order” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign after months of unrest and violence following the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police.

    “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.

    “To ensure that Federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our Government’s promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.”

    Good.

  • How antifa operates at the street level:

    The course of the nightly action against the PPB followed a fairly predictable pattern: a contingent of notional BLM protesters rendezvoused with a group of antifa black bloc at a public park close to their objective. As they moved towards the police building which was their target, “corkers” -a sort of bicycle-mounted blocking force- closed off side streets and the scouting line -typically on mopeds- moved ahead and on the flanks. Behind them came the main contingent of black bloc. Upon arrival at the PPB the streets were blocked with vehicles and burning dumpsters, with the “corkers” stationed to direct traffic away from the action and the scouts setting up a picket line extending out several blocks, watching for police reinforcements and creating the strong impression of antifa control of territory.

    The black bloc then engaged in an steadily-escalating level of vandalism and property damage directed at their target, including unguarded police vehicles parked nearby. If uninterrupted, this quickly escalated to arson and serious destruction to the facilities.

    By this point the scouting line often detected the flanking lines of riot police and a riot was formally been declared. Blocs armed with shields deployed defensively to allow time for the rest of the rioters to disengage. These “shield walls” provided a tempting target for a police “bull rush”, video of which can then be used for propaganda purposes. Behind the shield wall other bloc members threw commercial fireworks, frozen water bottles, and paint-filled balloons. The paint balloons are often mixed with sand or abrasive material that scratches clear shields and visors when cleaning is attempted damaging expensive riot suppression equipment. Meanwhile the main element of the antifa black bloc continued to retreat into bordering residential areas.

    Antifa chooses the residential areas for specific reasons. As the police deploy flashbangs, tear gas, and assorted non-lethal munitions in order to control the ongoing riot, the disruptive effects are experienced by the local residents. Additionally, as the action moved further into the poorly-lit neighborhoods, small groups of rioters and black bloc would break off to either escape, or engage in vandalism against the original PPB target (if left unguarded) or other nearby targets of opportunity.

    The action concluded at some point in the early morning hours, usually 4-5 hours after the assembly in the designated park. The location was almost always shifted to a different location every night, very rarely going to the same location on successive nights. This means it’s rare for the same location to be targeted more than twice in one week.

    Plus suggested tactics on countering it.

  • “Flamethrower-Packing Antifa ‘Entered Fetal Position And Began Crying’ After Unsuccessful Escape From Cops.” This was in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I can’t believe I didn’t have a “flamethrower” tag until now.

  • Madison City Council approves illegal, racist, quota-driven police oversight board.
  • Goya CEO Bob Unamue, tells Democrats that “the ‘hatred and destruction’ are moving Latinos to Trump.” Plus a comparison to communist enforcement mobs. (Hat tip: @txpoliticjunkie.)
  • In an effort to prove how reasonable Democrats are, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser considers removing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Former Trump skeptic changes mind, thinks Trump saved the GOP from itself.

    Like a lot of observers at the time, I thought Trump had no real policy agenda to define his campaign beyond a vague pro-America sentiment and a withering disdain for the political establishments of both major parties. I thought his political inexperience was a liability, that his penchant for insulting his opponents would turn voters off, and that the GOP had missed an opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton by nominating someone else—anyone, really, besides Trump.

    But it turned out Trump was the best candidate to beat Clinton because Clinton embodied nearly everything voters had come to hate about America’s political class: the falsity, the naked hypocrisy, the barely disguised disdain for ordinary people. For all his obvious faults, Trump wasn’t a professional politician, had no record to defend, and was unconstrained by the conventions of ordinary political rhetoric. He was uniquely positioned to call out and exploit Clinton’s faults and shortcomings, and expose the contradictions at the heart of the Democratic Party.

    For Republican voters, Trump offered the promise of something different from the seemingly endless pattern of politicians who promised one thing and did another, especially on immigration and free trade. For decades, incessant Republican boasting about “securing the border” never actually secured the border as mass illegal immigration continued apace. Expressions of sympathy for the American working class never produced policies that might actually help the working class. Trump zeroed in on these things, and his message resonated because it was true (and still is).

  • The lockdowns have been ten times as deadly as the Wuhan coronavirus.
  • Evidently Democrats want to bankrupt any NYC restaurants they haven’t already: “Bill De Blasio Says NYC Indoor Dining May Not Happen Until June 2021.”
  • Joseph P. Kennedy III loses his senate primary to incumbent Ed Markey, who seemed to run to Kennedy’s left.
  • Speaking of members of the Kennedy clan running for office, NJ Democratic congressional candidate Amy Kennedy calls for lifting sanctions on Chinese companies. In one of those amazing coincidences, she also owns substantial amounts of Chinese stock. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The Media Lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse. A liberal journalism professor not only omits the fact that Rittenhouse was attacked, but also thinks that the Kenosha riots will hurt Trump.
  • The rap sheets of Kyle Rittenhouse’s attackers.
  • Speaking of which, Twitter suspends the account of Rittenhouse’s lawyer, L. Lin Wood.
  • How is it that #BlackLivesMatter always chooses repeat felony offenders as their poster-children?
  • Dozens of “controversial” Joe Rogan episodes missing from Spotify.
  • Here’s a really meaty Art Keller Quillette piece on the fall of Beirut:

    The effects of the explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the port of Beirut, Lebanon on August 4th was not restricted to 170+ deaths and 3,000+ injuries. The explosion’s metaphorical shockwaves may prove to be the death knell of Lebanon’s domestic politics and economy. Both were already collapsing from extreme corruption even before COVID struck. Add an explosion that caused billions of dollars of damage to an already bankrupt country, and the result is a failed state in the making.

    Lebanon is failing in no small part because the Shia terror group Hezbollah, which translates as “Army of God,” makes its home there. Hezbollah’s continued residency and effective Lebanese governance seem to be mutually exclusive propositions.

    Except calling Hezbollah merely a terror group is too simplistic, and nothing in Lebanon is ever simple or easy to explain.

    Hezbollah is responsible for countless murders, kidnappings, and terror attacks, including the 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines. But Hezbollah is also a charity operating in refugee camps. It’s a social service provider for Shia Lebanese, operating clinics, hospitals, and schools (which teach wildly anti-Semitic propaganda). It operates a satellite TV channel. It smuggles guns, sells drugs, and launders money. It has a finger in almost every pie in Lebanon, and influence in Syria, Iran, Iraq, the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), and Venezuela. (Click to see the Washington Institute’s regularly updated interactive map of Hezbollah’s globe-spanning activities, and the actions taken to counter them.)

    Beyond all that, Hezbollah is also a powerful paramilitary group with 30,000+ fighters, armed with tens of thousands of rockets, as well as precision munitions like guided ballistic missiles. Hezbollah fought Israel’s last incursion in Lebanon in 2006 to a standstill, and Hezbollah is often considered the winner of the clash, despite Israel’s access to the latest weapons tech.

    Yet, like every other organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah is in very deep shit.

    Lebanon’s current chaos is due to decades of previous chaos spawned of ongoing demographic and power shifts in the post-WWII era among Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and the Druze (a splinter Shia sect). The brutal Lebanese civil war fought by sectarian militias from 1975 to 1990 ended with a peace deal splitting political power along explicit sectarian lines. By law, the Shia nominate the Speaker of the Parliament, the Sunni get the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Christians select the Lebanese President. The sectarian structure of the government mandated by the peace deal effectively embedded political corruption into law. Each sect controls a piece of the Lebanese government and economy, and each has installed a patronage system dispensing favors and money to their upper echelons, with little of the wealth trickling down to the sects’ underclasses.

    Enlightening, and depressing. Read the whole thing.
    

  • “Iowa Judge Voids 50,000 Absentee Ballot Requests.” “The Trump campaign argued the forms should have been blank except for the election date and type, per the Iowa secretary of state’s directions. Local officials in Linn County, which is home to Cedar Rapids, ignored those directions and sent out the applications with more information anyway.”
  • Boom:

  • Ordinary people are getting tired:

  • “Shirtless, spear-wielding man allegedly stabs teen in Times Square.” Later in the piece: “The man appeared to have mental issues.” Ya think?
  • The Brontosaurus is back, babies!
  • No endorsement of smoking, but this is pretty damn cool:

  • “Antifa Unveils New Pumpkin Spice Molotov Cocktails For Fall Protests.”
  • “Proud Mayor Lets His Entire City Burn To The Ground Just To Make Trump Look Bad.”
  • “Politicians Officially Exempted From Lockdown Rules Since Lizard People Can’t Catch COVID.” Well, Pelosi is pretty Icke…
  • “Rioters Beginning To Worry They Can No Longer Loot Safely.”
  • The Babylon Bee provides a handy guide to Wuhan Coronavirus safety:

  • I think he was hungry:

  • Visualize whirled peas:

  • Is New York City Dead Forever?

    Saturday, August 22nd, 2020

    In the wake of this post on how the Wuhan coronavirus, widespread antifa/#BlackLivesMatter looting, and the general rise in crime and disorder under the mayorship of Bill de Blasio have sent citizens feeling, comes a new piece saying that not only is New York City dead, it’s dead forever:

    I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.

    Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. I could start any type of business. I could meet people. I had family, friends, opportunities. No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.

    Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

    “NYC has experienced worse”. No it hasn’t.

    A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.

    Every day I see more and more posts, “I’ve been in NYC forever but I guess this time I have to say goodbye.”

    He says people move to New York City for three reasons: business, culture and food, and all are dead.

    Midtown Manhattan, the center of business in NYC, is empty. Even though people can go back to work, famous office buildings like the Time Life skyscraper is still 90% empty. Businesses realized that they don’t need their employees at the office.

    In fact, they realize they are even more productive without everyone back to the office. The Time Life building can handle 8,000 workers. Now it maybe has 500 workers back.

    Snip.

    Another friend of mine works at a major investment bank as a managing director. Before the pandemic he was at the office every day, sometimes working from 6am to 10pm.

    Now he lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “As of June,” he told me, “I had never even been to Phoenix.” And then he moved there. He does all his meetings on Zoom.

    I was talking to a book editor who has been out of the city since early March. “We’ve been all working fine. I’m not sure why we would need to go back to the office.”

    One friend of mine, Derek Halpern, was convinced he’d stay. He put up a Facebook post the other day saying he might be changing his mind. Derek wrote:

    “In the last week:

    • I watched a homeless person lose his mind and start attacking random pedestrians. Including spitting on, throwing stuff at, and swatting.
    • Ive seen several single parents with a child asking for money for food. And then, when someone gave them food, tossed the food right back at them.
    • I watched a man yell racist slurs at every single race of people while charging / then stopping before going too far.

    And worse.

    I’ve been living in New York City for about 10 years. It has definitely gotten worse and there’s no end in sight.

    My favorite park is Madison Square Park. About a month ago a 19 year old girl was shot and killed across the street.

    I don’t think I have an answer but I do think it’s clear: it’s time to move out of NYC.

    I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. In my building alone, the rent has plummeted almost 30 percent – more people are moving away than ever before.

    Snip.

    People say, “NYC has been through worse” or “NYC has always come back.”

    No and no.

    First, when has NYC been through worse?

    Even in the 1970s, and through the 80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, and even when it was the crime capital of the US or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning: it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity), it was culturally on top of its game – home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing, and it was probably the food capital of the US.

    NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were going paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.

    This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS.

    In early March, many people (not me), left NYC when they felt it would provide safety from the virus and they no longer needed to go to work and all the restaurants were closed. People figured, “I’ll get out for a month or two and then come back.”

    They are all still gone.

    And then in June, during rioting and looting a second wave of NYC-ers (this time me) left. I have kids. Nothing was wrong with the protests but I was a little nervous when I saw videos of rioters after curfew trying to break into my building.

    Many people left temporarily but there were also people leaving permanently. Friends of mine moved to Nashville, Miami, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Austin, Dallas, etc.

    As for culture, author James Altucher owns a standup comedy club in New York City.

    We have no idea when we will open. Nobody has any idea. And the longer we close, the less chance we will ever reopen profitably.

    Broadway is closed until at least the Spring. Lincoln Center is closed. All the museums are closed.

    Forget about the tens of thousands of jobs lost in these cultural centers. Forget even about the millions of dollars of tourist and tourist-generated revenues lost by the closing of these centers.

    There are thousands of performers, producers, artists, and the entire ecosystem of art, theater, production, curation, that surrounds these cultural centers. People who have worked all of their lives for the right to be able to perform even once on Broadway whose lives and careers have been put on hold.

    I get it. There was a pandemic.

    But the question now is: what happens next? And, given the uncertainty (since there is no known answer), and given the fact that people, cities, economies, loathe uncertainty, we simply don’t know the answer and that’s a bad thing for New York City.

    Right now, Broadway is closed “at least until early 2021.”

    As for food:

    My favorite restaurant is closed for good. Ok, let’s go to my second favorite. Closed for good. Third favorite, closed for good.

    I thought the PPP was supposed to help. No? What about emergency relief? No. Stimulus checks? Unemployment? No and no. Ok, my fourth favorite, or what about that place I always ordered delivery from? No and no.

    Around Late May I took walks and saw that many places were boarded up. Ok, I thought, because the protesting was leading to looting and the restaurants were protecting themselves. They’ll be ok.

    Looking closer I’d see the signs. For Lease. For Rent. For whatever.

    Before the pandemic, the average restaurant had only 16 days of cash on hand. Some had more (McDonalds), and some had less (the local mom-and-pop Greek diner).

    Yelp estimates that 60% of restaurants around the United States have closed.

    My guess is more than 60% will be closed in New York City but who knows.

    I think this 60% figure is inaccurate, at least for the nation as a whole, a telephone-game misunderstanding of 60% of Wuhan coronavirus restaurant closures being permanent and only 40% temporary. But it says nothing about restaurants that stayed open during the crisis (if only for takeout). But it wouldn’t shock me if that 60% closure figure is accurate for New York City (and even higher in Manhattan).

    He also talks about college students staying away and the collapse of the real estate market.

    His conclusion:

    OK, OK, BUT NYC ALWAYS COMES BACK.

    Yes it does. I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.

    And in 2008/2009, much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.

    But…this time it’s different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, etc I hope you’re right.

    I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.

    But this time it’s different.

    One reason: bandwidth.

    In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high quality video.

    There’s a before and after. BEFORE: no remote work. AFTER: everyone can remote work.

    Everyone has spent the past five months adapting to a new lifestyle. Nobody wants to fly across the country for a two hour meeting when you can do it just as well on Zoom. I can go see “live comedy” on Zoom. I can take classes from the best teachers in the world for almost free online as opposed to paying $70,000 a year for a limited number of teachers who may or may not be good.

    Everyone has choices now. You can live in the music capital of Nashville, you can live in the “next Silicon Valley” of Austin. You can live in your hometown in the middle of wherever. And you can be just as productive, make the same salary, have higher quality of life with a cheaper cost to live.

    Snip.

    And then people will ask, “wait a second – I was paying over 16% in state and city taxes and these other states and cities have little to no taxes? And I don’t have to deal with all the other headaches of NYC?”

    Because there are headaches in NYC. Lots of them. It’s just we sweep them under the table because so much else has been good there.

    NYC has a $9 billion deficit. A billion more than the Mayor thought they were going to have. How does a city pay back its debts? The main way is aid from the state. But the state deficit just went bonkers. Then is taxes. But if 900,000 estimated jobs are lost in NYC and tens of thousands of businesses, then that means less taxes unless taxes are raised.

    Does the author overstate the case? Slightly. His pieces focuses on upper and upper middle class reasons to live in New York, but the port of New York/New Jersey is the third largest in the country, and neither the port nor its many blue collar jobs are going away anytime soon. And someday Broadway and other in-person cultural events will come back, even if much demolished. But it is indeed very possible that New York City has already peaked, and could lose 1-3 million of its population in the near-term.

    And all this to still achieve the highest coronavirus death rate in the country. Thanks, Andrew Cuomo!

    Democratic office-holder incompetence, Chinese coronavirus, high taxes and social justice have finally struck New York City a more devastating blow than Osama bin Laden ever could.

    Scenes From The Destruction of New York City

    Sunday, August 16th, 2020

    The New York City riots were just a blip in the largest series of coordinated antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots sweeping the country then, but this video indicates that the looting and destruction in de Blasio’s New York City was far more more extensive than the media let on.

    I had a friend who recently visited NYC, and he says from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge through lower Manhattan almost everything was still boarded up and covered with graffiti, with lots of trash on the sidewalk. “Looked like a scene from an early Scorsese movie.” Is it any wonder that people are fleeing the city in droves?

    It’s not just a few Upper West Siders who are fleeing New York: Moving companies say they’re swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city — even though the COVID crisis has waned.

    One likely reason: The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    Snip.

    It’s been “insanely busy,” Roadway Moving president Ross Sapir told Fox. Indeed, he says this has been the busiest summer ever for the company. “For the last three months, we couldn’t keep up with demand.”

    Oz Moving says the number of relocations continues to rise at a “substantial rate.” It was booked to capacity earlier in the year than in any of the previous 27 years.

    United Van Lines, too, cites a whopping 95 percent spike, year over year, in interest in moving out of Manhattan between May and July, versus just 19 percent nationally.

    Sure, many of those who’ve headed out were merely trying to escape COVID, which socked the city in the spring. Some may even return; a reported spike in storage-space business is a sign they will.

    Yet the fact that the rush for the exits continues to grow, even as new coronavirus cases have plummeted, suggests other reasons. Like the crime wave: The number of shootings per day, for instance, has doubled since last year. Other crimes are up, too.

    City and state officials have fueled crime, setting inmates at jails and prisons free and handcuffing cops, and they refuse to do anything meaningful to roll it back. Prosecutors, too, are declining to prosecute. Judges are letting suspects walk.

    Last month, Bronx Criminal Court Judge Jeanine Johnson released an illegal-immigrant rape suspect, on no bail. Last year, she let a convicted killer and reputed gangbanger walk bail-free after a gun bust.

    Quality of life has plunged, as well. Even the owner of an Upper West Side hotel the city’s now using to house homeless derelicts has put his nearby mansion up for sale, as The Post reports Wednesday.

    Lousy schools and even worse online classes provide yet another reason for folks to skedaddle.

    Ditto for high taxes, which de Blasio — and fellow Democrats in the Legislature — are itching to raise even more.

    It’s so bad that Andrew Cuomo is begging rich New Yorkers to return.

    It took 30 years and Rudy Giuliani to rescue New York City from its reputation as a crime-ridden hellhole. It’s taken Bill di Blasio, George Soros and one disasterous year to undo all that.

    Joe Rogan Interviews Ben Shapiro (Again)

    Tuesday, August 4th, 2020

    Joe Rogan has interviewed Ben Shapiro at least twice before. This time they tackle the current controversies of this glorious year of 2020.

    Some topics and quotes:

  • The huge explosion of homelessness in LA.
  • The huge hypocrisy of Democrats allowing #BlackLivesMatters protests during lockdowns.
  • How cops stood down during the protests and how the media lied about them.
  • “O.J. Simpson was mostly peaceful that night.”
  • “If you’re protesting, that’s First Amendment activity. If you break a window, you should go to jail.”
  • “At some point somebody has to restore some semblance of order.”
  • On White Fragility: “A greater pile of horseshit has never been produced by a bevy of horses.”
  • SJW/antiracists think that “meritocracy and individualism is an aspect of whiteness…in order to be anti-racist, you have to want to tear down the entire system. They literally say this.”
  • The garbage of the 1619 Project.
  • “The greatest predictor of poverty in America remains single motherhood.”
  • My biggest question, as it usually is when Rogan talks about poverty, is whether he’s read Charles Murray’s Losing Ground. If you’re concerned about poverty in America, that’s a bedrock text for understanding it…