Headline we thought we'd never see

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Washington Post Editorial Board: Democrats' Shutdown Demands Are Irresponsible


The U.S. national debt stands at $37.9 trillion, a figure that dwarfs the annual gross domestic product of every other country. It has grown dramatically since the pandemic. In the 2019 fiscal year, the federal government spent $5.47 trillion but took in only $4.26 trillion. Five years later, spending clocked in at $6.75 trillion as revenue failed to keep up with this dramatic expansion of government...

Yet Democrats have demanded that Republicans agree to extend the covid-era insurance subsidies without proposing any way to pay for it. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this will cost $350 billion over the next decade. These temporary benefits were included in the American Rescue Plan of March 2021 and extended the next year in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act until the end of 2025.

John sexton: “But this may be my favorite part of all, in which the Post recounts the failure of the Affordable Care Act to be affordable.:

The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable. President Barack Obama’s signature achievement allowed people to buy insurance on marketplaces with subsidies based on their income. The architects of the program assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.

To salvage the program, Democrats expanded subsidies to entice more people to buy plans. Many poor families wound up getting insurance for free, and the rolls grew: 24 million people now have coverage through the ACA exchanges. 

Sexton: “As I pointed out here last week, Dems' emergency spending on Obamacare succeeded in roughly doubling the number of people enrolled in the program. And that was largely thanks to a jump in the number of people eligible for free insurance. After fifteen years, Obamacare has barely worked as a marketplace but it has always worked as a giveaway. That was always part of the design. It was a single payer starter project which could be expanded by simply shoveling more government money into it over time. That's what Democrats are trying to do now with this shutdown.

“Again, I can't believe this is the Washington Post, but this next paragraph ought to be plated in bronze and set in stone outside the building so Post staffers see it on the way in to the office every day.”

This is how entitlement programs work. Once you habituate people to some generous government handout, they grow dependent on it. And it becomes politically perilous, if not impossible, to fully claw it back. Conservatives fought so hard to stop Obamacare 15 years ago because they anticipated fights like this one.

The editorial ends in the somewhat dejected conclusion that Republicans might eventually give in to Democrats' demands.

The likeliest outcome of the shutdown is that both sides agree to spend more money without paying for it, let alone being honest with voters about the tradeoffs too many have ignored for too long.

And then there’s this:

Dems’ Claims on Health Care Cuts Contradicted by Facts; Federal Safety Net Spending at Historic Highs

Price cut

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Cutler Road as “improved”

20 Cutler Road, which I mentioned here last month when it came on at $6.295 million, has dropped to $5.995. It was purchased for $3.5 million in April, just ahead of the foreclosure auctioneer’s hammer, dolled up a bit, and returned to the market. I applaud the would-be flipper for removing the FEMA tarp from the sunroom on the left, but I’m still not awfully impressed with the final product.

Circa april ‘25

It’s not quite Fort Sumter, yet, but we seem to be drifting that way (Updated) and Updated again

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It Has Come to This: Chicago Police Told to Abandon ICE Officers Who Were Attacked in a Gunfight

David Strom: I guess it is on-brand for the Chicago Police to ignore gunshots, but generally speaking, law enforcement officers respond promptly when other law enforcement officers request assistance when their lives are endangered.

Local cops were initially readied to help the agents, but were ordered to stand down by the chief of patrol, according to shocking dispatch audio transmissions.

“Younger male Hispanic wearing all black … wanted for the hit and run, this guy fled from the scene,” a female dispatcher blares in response to a call for help by the surrounded ICE agents on audio shared by ExxAlerts.

“When the offending vehicle crashed, they ran the federal agent off the road, they fled on foot westbound.”

A male voice then comes on the radio channel, telling the dispatcher to direct officers to head to the scene and “stay put” a few blocks away and await further instruction, which she relays.

A few seconds later, the male voice is heard again, saying tersely: “Per the chief of patrol: clear everybody out, we’re not responding over there.”

No agents were injured in the incident. An armed woman who tried to run over fleeing agents was shot but drove herself to the hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

The female dispatcher then tells officers on the way to the distress call, “per the chief of patrol, all units clear out from there, we’re not sending anybody out to that location.”

A male officer responds over the sound of sirens wailing in the background, saying, “We’re going to clear out as soon as we can, we’re like blocked in over here so we’re going to do the best we can to get out of here as soon as we can.”

An internal department memo sent to Chicago cops and obtained by Fox News confirms the shocking reversal.

“PLEASE CHIEF OF PATROL NO UNITS WILL RESPOND TO THIS AS RELATED FROM 04-Oc5-2025/12:34:44…CALLER IS 1 OF APPROX 30 ARMED PATROL AGENTS (ICE) WHO ARE BEING SURROUNDED BY A LARGE CROWD OF PEOPLE REQUESTING CPD,” the dispatch message read.

The Chicago Police Department disputed the claims, saying its officers were on the scene.

CPB officers requested help from the Chicago Police, but they were instead ordered away from the scene. We have the actual audio of the exchange between dispatch and the officers, and written confirmation. Yet the Chicago Police are disputing the facts, because...Democrats. 

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson sees the same theme:

In blue cities across America—Portland, Oregon, especially—often violent protesters now seek to surround ICE facilities to stop federal officers from fulfilling their assigned and legal duties of arresting illegal aliens.

Some 10 million or more illegal aliens were allowed to enter the U.S. during the Biden years—illegally and thus without criminal or health checks.

Neither Antifa nor liberal urban America objected to such a flagrant disregard for the law. But both are now as intent on obstructing the legal enforcement of the law as they were earlier in favor of its illegal non-enforcement.

Much less did they care about the consequences of sending millions of foreign nationals into cities and counties where they swamped social services, spiked crime, and flooded emergency rooms and schools.

ICE has repeatedly presented data that show in its first rounds of deportations, it is concentrating on removing either criminal illegal aliens or those who have already been processed with deportation orders, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of all current apprehensions.

No matter.

Left-wing protesters are swarming ICE headquarters in Portland to violently oppose all deportations, even those of known criminals and those who have already exhausted efforts to remain here illegally.

Why? The Democratic Party apparat knows that the public wants both secure borders and deportations of illegal aliens. Indeed, in part, it lost an election by its open-borders advocacy.

But Democrat officials feel that if street thugs like Antifa can surround and besiege ICE facilities in Portland, Oregon, then deportations will stop. Then, a de facto amnesty will follow for millions who entered the U.S. illegally—and will soon become Democratic constituents.

As a result, they do not fully enforce the law when thugs attack federal law enforcement. Antifa and its spin-off groups favor the night, when they try to block all entries and exits of ICE vehicles and personnel, and can commit their violence with greater anonymity.

The masked rioters assault anyone in their way. They count on exemption from punishment for committing violence against federal officers through the goodwill or indifference of kindred local and state officials who hate the Trump administration more than they respect the law. An Orwellian scenario follows in which federal officers are attacked by Antifa, which in turn counts on the non-intervention of local police.

Summed up: the city of Portland’s armed officers are in a de facto proxy war with their federal counterparts—in our version of something out of 1860, on the eve of a real civil war.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek feel their constituents want open borders and thus should have the right in their own city and state to do as they please—and federal law be damned.

But by doing so, both the Democrat Party officialdom and the street armies of Antifa are on the proverbial wrong side of history.

America for almost 200 years has already decided, in formal law and court rulings, that no local or state entity can disrupt the enforcement of federal laws or usurp Washington’s powers. To do so with impunity would unravel the American nation in short order.

We know that from our own violent history. Andrew Jackson, in 1832, like Trump, threatened to send troops to stop South Carolina’s nullification of federal tariff laws.

America fought a Civil War over Confederate states’ efforts to ignore federal law and confiscate or occupy federal property within their state jurisdictions.

As late as 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace thought he could nullify federal law by using his state guard to deny black students’ enrollment in the University of Alabama—until the Kennedy administration federalized all state troopers and sent in additional federal troops.

So what we are witnessing in Portland—and elsewhere—is a neo-Confederate attempt to supersede federal law and, in reactionary fashion, invoke states’ and cities’ rights.

Oregon and Portland believe that they are more moral than the federal government and thus have a natural right to side with street mobs by both not enforcing their own laws against Antifa violence and ignoring the innate civil rights of ICE personnel.

The latter are denied freedom of movement, association, and the ability to fulfill their job duties by what has turned out to be a near city-sanctioned siege of their facilities.

The Democrats are fine with all this. They think the violence against ICE will be portrayed daily as general chaos by their allied media. Thus, the proverbial people who keep clear of the siege and its detritus will simply want all the bother to go away—and supposedly blame those enforcing, not breaking, the law. In sum, the Democratic Party is the official face of the left. Antifa provides the street shock troops, and the media serves as its propaganda arm.

So, the left-wing logic is to allow the violence and siege to continue in a “safe space” for Antifa. A strapped ICE will supposedly eventually shut down operations and move on. And any violence that occurs can be chalked up to Trump’s federal government “baiting” Portlanders.

UPDATE II

Told you it would work

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Just 17 days ago I reported that 49 Sumner Road had been put up for sale for $3.495 million, and noted that, although its last foray onto the market in 2020 had lasted 270 days and resulted in an ultimate selling price of just $2.640 million, this new agent had changed the description of the otherwise-untouched kitchen from a mere “state of the art Gourmet Kitchen” to a “sun-filled Gourmet Kitchen” and that, I promised, would make a huge difference in market performance. It went into contract Friday.

It’s not (just) about killing Charlie Kirk; this is who they are, this is what they do

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