Saturday Miscellany

First, we do not know whether it is causation or correlation, but, since Obamacare became law in 2009, life expectancy in America has declined by two years and insurance premiums have increased by nearly 50%.

Go figure.

Second, give him some credit for honesty. New York’s Mayor Eric Adams has said that he does not see any way to solve the city’s homeless migrant problem.

But, as the city is flooded with illegal migrants, Adams has declared that he wants the city to remain a sanctuary city. 

The bottom line is simple. Either you revoke the dopey idea of making the city a sanctuary or you shut up about your inability to solve the problem. Even the mayor of New York cannot have it both ways.

Third, the Biden administration, in its ongoing war against the weather, has been working to shut down oil drilling. They prefer to make the country energy poor and to buy petroleum products from bad actors around the world. They do not care about high gas prices as long as they can feel like they are saving the world. Overgrown adolescence, don't you think.

Now, the administration’s Interior Secretary and indigenous person, Deb Haaland, has revoked the drilling permits that the Trump administration granted to Alaska. She canceled seven leases on the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Did you guess that this incompetent fool based her decision on her “indigenous knowledge,” something that she possesses, for being indigenous?

This is the kind of stupidity that infests policymaking when you promote people on the grounds of diversity and inclusion.

Fourth, were you suitably horrified when New York City schools were shut down during the pandemic years? If you were not, you were not paying attention.

Have you kept up with the stories about how this policy inflicted learning loss and psychological damage inflicted, especially on minority children?

At the time, educators and teachers’ union activists reassured us that the children would make up for the learning loss. In truth, as recent reports have made clear, such is not the case. They fell behind and are still falling behind. This is especially the case for minority children, the ones whose parents could not make up the loss.

Now, as though that were not bad enough, New York City’s public schools have been flooded with a surfeit of illegal migrant children. These children cannot read or write or count. They do not know English.

The educational bureaucracy is optimistic about their ability to integrate, but they have failed to recognize the potential disruption that will occur when a large number of children cannot follow the lessons.

Again, minority children will be sacrificed to the gods of wokeness.

Fifth, you are fully aware of the doom loop that has destroyed downtown San Francisco, among other blue cities. 

For some reason, people have ignored the fact that the same problem has come to infest Beverly Hills, California. Given the way that the denizens of that enclave vote, you will not feel sorry for them. 

The New York Post reported:

Beverly Hills is becoming a ghost town, as high-end retail stores exit the once-luxurious Los Angeles city amid a spate of high-end smash and grab gang robbberies.

Videos posted on Tik ToK by self-proclaimed “Nostalgic Angelino” cody90210 show off more than a dozen Beverly Hills retailers and restaurants now completely shuttered and not replaced by new businesses, leaving their empty storefronts as a shell of their former glory.

Some of the businesses include luxury staples like Barneys New York and Escada, with the once-popular brands having filed for bankruptcy in recent years.

Other big name stores now lying empty include former locations for Chanel, Rite Aid, Barnes and Noble, Niketown, and restaurants like Chipotle and Starbucks.

Sixth, you are well aware of the fact that our military, being more concerned with equity and inclusion, and being all-in with gender reassignment surgery, has had some very serious recruiting problems.

The military will not take drug addicts or people who are too obese. As always, we are totally understanding.

And yet, in a New York Post report, we learn that potential recruits can also be disqualified from military service for having had therapy. Fancy that. 

No details were offered, but still, it’s a strange omen. 

Seventh, novelist Lionel Shriver offers a robust defense of state laws against child mutilation in the Spectator.

No sensible or sane individual defends transmania these days, but still, many people think that it must be respected. Obviously, they drank too much Kool-Aid.

For those who have missed the point, Shriver offers this screed:

Slamming these bans histrionically as ‘genocide’ (four in 15,000 patients of the Tavistock or on its waiting list committed suicide between 2010 and 2020, but according to propaganda it’s up to 50 per cent of trans kids who try to kill themselves), the American left claims withdrawal of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex ‘reassignment’ surgery for children violates the ‘rights’ of trans kids. Yet progressives never seem indignant over the gross unfairness that children can’t buy alcohol, purchase cigarettes, join the army, get a tattoo, work in factories, marry or consent to sex with an adult. Why doesn’t being prevented from snagging a packet of Marlboros violate children’s rights?

Shriver exposes the demented thinking of the American left:

But according to the American left, which used to decry female genital mutilation, 12-year-olds are mature enough to decide to halt the progress of puberty (potentially imperilling their brain and skeletal development), commit to a costly pharmaceutical regimen replete with irksome side effects for the rest of their lives, have healthy body parts hacked off, accept a future of sexual dysfunction and forego parenthood altogether.

Sometimes it takes a novelist to express things clearly and concisely, so that everyone can understand. It takes a novelist to cut through the claptrap and the irrationality to get to the truth.

Eighth, I cannot imagine what this means, and I don't even want to try, but our great country is running out of laxatives.

Does this mean that Bidenomics has caused chronic constipation, or else, that too many Americans are just full of it.

Ninth, the news from Minneapolis gets our attention. This belongs in the “hoist with her own petard” folder.

A Democratic Party official in Minneapolis was carjacked in her own driveway. With her young children witnessing the attack, the criminals bloodied her face and broke her leg.

As it happened, irony of ironies, the woman in question,   Shivanthi Sathanandan, is the second vice chairwoman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in Minneapolis.

In 2020 she was a major proponent of abolishing the Minneapolis Police. At the time she wrote this: “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me.” 

Now that she has been mugged by reality, this Democratic official has changed her tune. She wrote this on social media.

Catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM. 

PERIOD.

Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.

It’s today’s Democratic Party in action. When their policies inflict violence on everyday citizens, they do not give a damn. But, when the war comes home, to their own driveway, they are up in arms, disputing and repudiating their own policies.

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