Wednesday Potpourri

First, a new word salad from Kamala herself:

“And that's what our election is about. Our election is about understanding the importance of this beautiful country of ours in terms of what we stand for around the globe as a democracy.”

“As a democracy, we know there's a duality to the nature of democracy. On the one hand, incredible strength when it is intact. What it does for its people to protect and defend their rights, their liberty, and their freedom, incredibly strong and incredibly fragile.”

Second, there is a nasty rumor going around, to the effect that Kamala is not stupid-- she is often drunk. 

I have no idea whether or not it is true, but it shows quite an effort to absolve her of the charge that she is an idiot.

Third, Don Lemon tried to explain to a man on a New Jersey boardwalk that the economy was doing much better than the man thought it was. The man laughed in his face.

As for the statistics that show a roaring economy, consider that the jobs reports, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are being revised downward.

Zero Hedge blog reports:

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will downward revise jobs for the April 2023-March 2024 period by up to 1 million. This means that all "beats" recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US job market is in far worse shape than the admin would admit.

Someone tell Paul Krugman. The Times propagandist is in serious need of enlightenment.

Fourth, scenes from socialized medicine. In Canada, where medical care is run by the state, hospital emergency rooms are not always open. Apparently, socialized medicine produces physician and nurse shortages.

Chris Brunet explains:

Americans probably can't even wrap their heads around this, but in Canada, hospital emergency rooms are not open 24/7. They often shut down randomly due to a lack of doctors and nurses.

Fifth, apparently, DEI programs are no longer in fashion in Silicon Valley. Who knew?

The Washington Post reports:

Girls In Tech, a nonprofit dedicated to recruiting women to the tech industry, was a Silicon Valley darling, with major companies eagerly partnering with the group after its 2007 launch.

But in a single week in late 2023, five key donors pulled their funding, citing market turbulence.

To stay afloat, the group’s founder, Adriana Gascoigne, considered merging with Women Who Code, a nonprofit with a similar mission backed by corporate giants including Microsoft, Google and Boeing. Days after she floated the idea to members of her board, Women Who Code shuttered.

With money drying up, Gascoigne dissolved her own 130,000-member group in July.

Girls In Tech was part of a network of nonprofits and consultants that blossomed in the early 2010s to promote race and gender representation in Silicon Valley. The network has struggled amid a growing political backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

Backlash or no backlash, DEI is alive and well in the Democratic Party, which is nominating its leading diversity candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Sixth, speaking of gang violence, Norway is currently suffering a spate of it, perpetrated by what they call Swedish gangs. 

Apparently, the problem derives from Sweden’s failed immigration policies. One suspects that this is a nice way to say that the gangsters are not native born Swedes-- but you knew that already.

Seventh, I have occasionally suggested that the advent of hookup culture has something to do with feminism. The reasoning was-- why else would a man date a feminist?

Admittedly, that is not very nice. Yet, a recent serious piece of academic research has discovered that being a feminist makes a woman more likely to endorse hookup culture. From Psypost:

Women who identified as feminists or held feminist beliefs reported higher endorsement of hookup culture compared to non-feminist women with non-feminist beliefs.

Eighth, did you believe that we were going to save the planet by transitioning into clean fuels? If you did, you are about to be disabused.

The Wall Street Journal reports that many clean fuel projects have become boondoggles:

Startups promising to power planes, ships and trucks with clean fuel are sputtering before they get off the ground, showing how hard it will be to wean many industries off oil and gas.

A company backed by United Airlines that raised hundreds of millions of dollars to turn trash into jet fuel appears to have shut down. Another, backed by Airbus, JetBlue and GE Aerospace, that was working on using hydrogen to power planes went bust. Chevron, BP and Shell, meanwhile, are scaling back projects to make biofuels from cooking fats, oils, greases and plant material. 

Ninth, back in the day Mark Penn worked for Bill Clinton. Today, he offers a commentary on Joe Biden’s valedictory address Monday evening.

Biden’s midnight speech so caved to the anti-Israel lobby that he did not even use the word ‘Israel’ and spoke only of ceasefires and hostages adding that there are good people on both sides…No talk of the 1200 raped and murdered on October 7th. No condemnation of Hamas or Iran. No mention of the right of Israel to defend itself from attacks on 3 fronts. This is how far this almost former president will go to bow down even in disgrace to the anti-Israel left rather than be a true leader.

Well said.

Tenth, every group that hates Americans and that hates Jews was given a permit to protest in Chicago. The only group that was denied a permit was Jewish.

How do you spell discrimination.

The New York Post reports:

This week, citizens will gather in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention to voice their support for Israel and protest the abuses of Hamas.

However, this largely Jewish gathering will not be marching. Instead, they will gather on a small private lot blocks away from the convention as thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters march through the streets.

The reason is that Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson has refused to grant their request for a permit.

While pro-Palestinian protesters have been given an array of accommodations by the city (and received a shoutout from President Biden in his convention address), the Jewish protesters are only able to gather due to the donation of a private lot by an owner for their use.

Eleventh, Joe Biden, when he was not railing about Charlottesville, declared Monday night that the “protestors out on the street have a point.”

What point was it? Shabbos Kestenbaum comments:

Those protestors out on the street have, in the last 12 hours alone, harassed Chicago cops, waved Hezbollah flags, held signs reading “we stand with Hamas,” and threatened to beat up Jews.

And Kamala Harris says they “Are showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”

Twelfth, leading the field in the lowlife derby is Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. He managed to wish that a member of JD Vance’s family get pregnant by rape.

When asked whether he wants to apologize or retract his words, Gov. Lowlife refused. 

Thirteenth, meanwhile over in once-Great Britain, the new Labour prime minister is emptying the jails of violent criminals in order to fill them with people who send out the wrong retweets.

As it happens, Britain has now become the rape capital of the world. How much of it is committed by migrants? We do not know, but we have our suspicions.

Stephen Green reports:

An explosion of violent crime in the United Kingdom has made England and Wales into what one economist calls "the rape capital of Europe by a sizeable margin."

In the city of Bournemouth, where anti-immigration protestors were rounded up by authorities two days ago, rapes increased from 98 in 2010 to 342 last year — three and a half times as many as before.

Meanwhile, His Majesty's Labour government responded by preparing to empty the jails of 5,000 criminals, some of them violent, to make room for the people protesting against Britain's immigration-fueled crime wave.

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