Posts Tagged ‘PIGS’

LinkSwarm for July 1, 2022

Friday, July 1st, 2022

Welcome to the second half of 2022! The Biden Economy suckage becomes more obvious, the world’s most taboo lawsuit wants justice for real women being raped by fake women that the state of California forced on them, the Supreme Court slaps the EPA with a ruler over regulating carbon dioxide without congressional authority, and Eric Adams finally realizes he’s running a hellhole. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • U.S. first-quarter GDP shrank 1.6%.” And the second quarter will probably suck as well.
  • $10 a gallon gasoline coming? If anyone can make it happen, it’s the Biden Administration.
  • Russia has taken Severodonetsk and is pounding Lysychansk. They have also successfully crossed the Donets River.
  • However, Russia has withdrawn from Snake Island.
  • Welcome to the world’s most taboo legal case, a lawsuit over imprisoned woman having the right not to be raped by men who “identify” as women.

    On November 17, 2021, the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, filed a civil rights lawsuit in California that drew almost no coverage. A press corps gearing up to be outraged en masse by the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation case had zero interest in a lawsuit filed by far poorer female abuse victims.

    Janine Chandler et al vs. California Department of Corrections targeted a new California state law, the “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act,” a.k.a. S.B. 132. The statute allows any prisoner who self-identifies as a woman — including prisoners with penises who may have stopped taking hormones — into women’s prisons. There was nothing TV-friendly about the scenes depicted in the complaint:

    Plaintiff Krystal Gonzalez (“Krystal”) is a female offender currently incarcerated in Central California Women’s Facility. Krystal was sexually assaulted by a man transferred to her unit under S.B. 132. Krystal filed a grievance and requested single-sex housing away from men; the prison’s response to Krystal’s grievance referred to her assault by a “transgender woman with a penis.” Krystal does not believe that women have penises…

    After a week spent denounced for reviewing the Matt Walsh documentary What is a Woman?, and for saying things I think will be boring conventional wisdom within a year, I was ready to never go near trans issues again and move to the impending financial disaster. But accident sucked me back. I’d made a point of pride of not reading a line of commentary about Heard-Depp, but listened to an episode of Blocked and Reported that touched on it after it was over, and learned three things that made me furious and think immediately of Chandler.

    One, the ACLU, in apparent exchange for a pledge of $3.5 million, ghost-wrote Heard’s offending editorial, and in particular a line about her having “felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Two: Guardian writer Moira Donegan declared, “We are in a moment of virulent antifeminist backlash.” Three: Vice proclaimed without irony, “We’ve all failed Amber Heard.” Almost as one, the establishment press declared itself concerned with the suffering of a rich actress. However, there’s a gaping loophole in their concern for women, and Chandler sits in the middle of it.

    Let’s talk about “the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out” in the context of this case:

    Chandler is the headline legal action in a nationwide battle over whether or not prisoners who self-identify as women, including those with histories of rape or sexual abuse, should be allowed to transfer to women’s correctional facilities. There have been both official and unofficial policy changes on this front in a growing collection of states across the country. These often happen with little to no public debate, because this issue may be the most impenetrable media taboo in America now.

    The group bringing the suit, WoLF, has been targeted from every conceivable angle by pressure and censorship campaigns. While we at least heard about protesting Canadian truckers having their GoFundMe campaigns frozen, WoLF didn’t even bother trying to raise money on that platform, “because they just ban you really easily,” as legal director Lauren Adams put it.

    They moved to a purportedly speechier platform, GiveButter, hoping they would have “less of a censorious kind of view.” But even GiveButter soon gave WoLF the boot (I reached out to the company, which hasn’t provided public comment yet). “It was just a general fundraiser,” Adams explains. “And they said we violated their community standards. So now we’re on GiveSendGo, which is a Christian crowdfunding site.”

    If there’s a better illustration of the upside-down state of politics in 2022 America, it’s a feminist activist group forced to seek cyber-refuge in a Christian fundraising company.

    Snip.

    Most of the cross-dressing men claiming a “transgender identity” and granted transfer… are sex offenders, most are heterosexual men who want to be housed with women to get penis-in-vagina sex, most stop taking any feminizing hormone medications right after getting into women’s prison, they all refer to themselves as men when speaking to the women inmates, many have threatened to “fight you like a man” to women inmates, many have threatened to rape us, and they all have working penises that they are using to have sex with female inmates.

    Transexism is now so central to the social justice victimhood politics ideology that controls the Democratic Party that it leads to letting men rape women rather than question the holy tenant that a man can magically become a women by declaring it so.

  • Notice how that “giant backlash” against the overturning of Roe vs. Wade seems to be limited to leftwingers freaking out on social media? Here’s a good explanation why:

  • Another salutary Supreme Court decision: The EPA cannot regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant absent explicit congressional authorization to do so.
  • “U.S. and Canada Tell G7 That Climate Change Policy is More Important Than Feeding People.”
  • I’ll take “Headlines That Surprise No One” for $400: Top Three Worst-Run US Cities Are Controlled By Democrats. D.C., San Francisco, and New York City.
  • Speaking of which, New York City mayor Eric Adams is shocked, shocked to discover that the city he runs sucks.

    During an exclusive interview conducted as Adams rode the subways overnight for more than three hours last week, the former NYPD transit cop said he was astounded by the botched “deployment of resources” that has New Yorkers on edge amid a nearly 40 percent surge in major crimes this year.

    “Let me tell you something: When I started looking into this, I was shocked at how bad this place is,” he said of the city.

    Adams — who campaigned on a promise to restore order to an increasingly lawless Gotham — said the scales fell from his eyes when he began reviewing internal city operations following his swearing in moments after midnight on New Year’s Day.

    Yet somehow I could tell that despite living some 1,700 miles away, thanks to the magic power of “paying attention” and “not depending on the MSM for news.”

  • California’s Attorney general wants to revoke Second Amendment rights for citizens based on their political beliefs.
  • More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year.”

    Nowhere is the shift more pronounced — and dangerous for Democrats — than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump’s Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back. Over the last year, far more people are switching to the GOP across suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Republicans also gained ground in counties around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa.

  • Who has the highest debt in the EU? Exactly who you would think: The PIGS (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, in that order), then France, Belgium and Cyprus.
  • Supreme Court to Louisiana Democrats: No, you can’t have another Democratic congressional seat. Not yours.
  • Methinks thou hast punched thy ticket in a shade most pink. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Following other western tech giants, Cisco plans to exit Russia permanently. Unless you’re in the sector, you might underestimate just how many pies Cisco has fingers in. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The $37 billion road project that’s changing Indonesia.
  • Project Farm rates blue jeans.
  • Dear Bed Bath and Beyond: Turning off the air conditioning is not a way to win customers in Texas during the summer. (They deny the charge.) (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Authorities Warn Tonight’s Protests May Escalate From ‘Mostly Peaceful’ To ‘Somewhat Peaceful.'”
  • Update on the Coming Euro Collapse (and Our Own)

    Monday, June 6th, 2011

    Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph (via McArdle, via Insta) has a sobering look at what will happen when Greece defaults (“It is when, not if”). It starts out:

  • Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
  • The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.
  • The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.

  • And then gets even less pleasant, including martial law and the European Central Bank going insolvent. The real European crisis hasn’t happened yet, and when it does, it will probably be much worse than the current U.S. recession.

    Meanwhile, Greeks continue to protest long-overdue austerity measures. I am doubtful Greece is willing to actually implement real austerity. After all, the Greek government only recently decided that it might want to stop paying pensions to the dead. instead of solving the problem of an out-of-control welfare state, the ECB and the IMF have decided to let Greek slip even further into debt in exchange for implementing reforms and austerity they’ve shown no signs at all of being willing to implement; in other words, to kick the can down the road and hope that gives the other PIGS time to get their respective houses in order before the Euro collapses.

    Meanwhile, Ireland’s crisis is so severe that not only are they going to start taxing private pension funds, they’re actually going to start fining trustees that don’t hand over pensioner’s money. “Threatening scheme trustees with huge fines that are not covered by trustee indemnity insurance if they refuse to or cannot collect the levy, is a guaranteed way to stop anyone coming forward to be a trustee. I expect the other consequence of the Finance Bill (no 2) 2011 will be the resignation, post-haste of hundreds of scheme trustees.”

    The chances that various transnational and euro bureaucrats will succeed in rescuing all the PIGS (and thus the Euro) is slim to none: “The ‘troika’ [ECB, IMF, EU] is doubling down on its losing bet in Greece and is playing with the dice loaded against them.”

    How bad is it going to get?

    Austerity is going to mean hellishly bad deflation, high and rising employment, and depression in the indebted countries.

    There is $600 trillion in derivatives now loose in the world. Who knows which banks have written them and to whom? Who are the counterparties? We did not fix this with the last political fix. The next crisis has the potential to be just as bad or worse than 2008, which is why I think Europe’s leaders are so dead set on avoiding a day of reckoning. If you look under the hood, as they most assuredly have, it must be frightening. And with pushback from voters?

    Contagion, thy name is Europe. And with the US economy slowing down, it might not take much to push us over the edge

    And that’s the best case scenario, the one where the PIGS actually bite the bullet and implement austerity. It’s entirely possible that one or more of them will reject austerity measures and, in doing so, set off a run on the Euro.

    Also via Insta comes news that China has divested itself of 97% of its holdings in Treasury Bills. As Mark Steyn has pointed out, where Greece is now is where Obama wants to take us, with ObamaCare as just the down-payment on a full-blown European welfare state. We’re not nearly as far along as Greece is to financial collapse, but our debt is already starting to look like a bad bet.

    Certainly we’re not so far along that we can’t turn back, but the Paul Ryan Roadmap is probably the minimum we need to be doing to get our debt under control. Less than that and we’re asking for serious trouble. It’s already looking like Carter era stagflation is here.

    As the recent Texas legislative session showed, it is in fact possible to actually shrink the size of government, not just slow the rate of increase. Or at least it’s possible when you have Republican Supermajorities in the House, Senate, and Executive branch. By contrast, the Obama administration and Harry Reid’s Senate have shown no sign of being willing to address the problem, or even to admit it exists. They too want to kick the can down the road and keep piling blocks of debt onto the backs of your children. But, as the Euro crises shows, such actions have a way of catching up with you sooner rather than later.

    You can only kick the can down the road so far before you run out of road.

    LinkSwarm for Monday, May 9, 2011

    Monday, May 9th, 2011

    A few links of potential interest:

  • “Candygram.”
  • Al-Zarqawi complains about his new roommate.
  • Cracks in the Eurozone. Deficits have consequences.
  • “Each hid his homosexuality, each was racist, each took pains to manufacture favorable coverage, each was driven by petty hatreds instead of shining ideals.” Who’s that? Would you believe Gandhi and Malcolm X?
  • I don’t know why people think the SEIU is a communist organization. I mean, it’s not like they held a parade with the communist party and marched with pro-communist signs. Wait, what?
  • I’m in favor of allowing concealed carry in more place, but not extending that expanded right only to state government employees. That’s like letting legislators drive 10 mile and hour faster than the speed limit because its “convenient.” If this bill was for all CHL holders, I’d be for it, but it’s not. Evidently some animals are more equal than others.
  • LinkSwarm for Saturday, November 20, 2010

    Saturday, November 20th, 2010

    Time for another LinkSwarm, with a good dollop of Texas political news:

    Socialism Works Its Usual Magic In Spain

    Sunday, February 21st, 2010

    You may have heard about how Greece is fuxored thanks to a combination of high taxes, stagnant economy, restrictive job rules, and widespread tax evasion. Indeed, the sins of the Greeks may be enough to bring the Euro crashing down. It may come down to that, or else getting a bailout from an already-resentful Germany.

    Somewhat less reported is the fact that the other members of Europe’s PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) aren’t doing a whole lot better.

    In particular, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero seems to have worked socialism’s usual magic on Spain’s economy:

    Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. Nearly 20 percent of working-age Spaniards (or 4.5 million people) were without a job at the beginning of 2010. That compares with an average rate of 10 percent among the 16 countries that use the euro currency.

    Spain is also facing an exploding budget deficit. The collapse of the labor market, which has resulted in a steep drop in tax collections, and the Zapatero government’s haphazard (and spendthrift) policy response of increasing unproductive public sector spending skyrocketed the deficit to nearly 12 percent of GDP in 2009 (or five times higher than in 2008).

    The combination of negative GDP growth, rising unemployment, and a high deficit has raised concerns about the sustainability of Spain’s finances.

    Hmmm: High unemployment, out-of-control spending, a huge budget deficit. Where have I heard that before?

    In response to Spain’s economic crises, Zapatero has admitted that his socialist policies were a mistake, and set out a platform for lowering taxes, cutting the budget, an monetary reform.

    Ha! Just kidding! He’s ordered Spain’s secret service to hunt for “Anglo-Saxon conspirators” as the cause of Spain’s problems. It’s always easier to scapegoat America than make hard choices, or face the consequences of your own failure.

    At this point, I don’t it’s a question of if the Euro will crack, but rather when. Despite Obama’s mismanagement, the basic U.S. economy is still a lot more resilient and flexible than Europe’s. Europe has huge demographic problems combined with an unsustainable welfare state. Combine that with the the anti-democratic elites in Brussels, plus the fact that certain number of nations (the PIGS, certainly, but not limited to them) that are playing fast a loose with the EU’s deficit guidelines, and the chances are good that the Euro will crack sooner rather than later.

    And the fallout from that isn’t going to be pretty for the U.S. economy either.