He probably thought that he 'd be applauded for his bold stand against racism and Nazis, but he forgot one thing: he wasn't in NYC anymore

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Hands behind your back, sir

There are too many people like this guy here in New England for me to risk my paint job with a political sticker that might offend them, so I’ve gone with a more subtle approach:

Well God DAMN those dastardly Jews!

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(Somehow, I suspect that her choice of emojis is as sarcastic as my own)

As though brandishing bananas weren’t sufficiently evil, now the filthy, pig Zionists” are tossing mice into the peace activists’ playground!

… Another thing that antisemites are very good at is making up ridiculous claims about the 'Zionists' who are always plotting against them. Who can forget the hilarious charge from Palestinians that Israel was using spy cows -- yes, cows -- against them? And not just cows. Israel also has trained sharks, eagles, dolphins, and pigs to achieve global domination. 

The latest addition to the lunatic conspiracy theories about Jews and the animal kingdom is ... white mice. And not just ANY white mice. 'Injected' white mice. Last night, a secret, diabolical Zionist plot against pro-Hamas protesters was uncovered on the campus of UCLA. 

What the poor dears really need is one of the patented Python self-defense classes.

Oh, the Humanities!

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Scheduling the Revolution

David Strom:

In the midst of all the exciting violence, another more prosaic reality lies underneath. 

The revolution is boring without the violence. 

Can you imagine the sheer tedium of having your revolutionary activity scheduled? 

Waking up to "solidary statements," going to drum circles, listening to people who describe themselves as "Latinx" whinge for Hamas. A "teach-in," something called "Maqluba session" (I didn't look it up, because, why would I?). 

They have "abolition letter writing," which strikes me as a uniquely useless activity. Writing to whom? Can these students even write? 

A "water ritual?" These are Princeton students? 

At Stanford, we learn what a "People's University" is, and it looks like a place that is ideal for the next generation of tech geeks. When you set up your own curriculum it appears that comic books are the main reading. At least you can thrift. 

I wonder if a degree from a "People's University" is a ticket to a high-powered job or to a great graduate degree.

At Cornell you can learn the wonders of revolutionary architecture. Apparently the architecture at Cornell is repressive, since it includes an HVAC system and indoor plumbing. 

Best live in a tent. The architecture school is donating one."

Universities and the repressive [police state could end this immediately, if they wanted to. Set a deadline, say, 2:00 PM this afternoon, after which any remaining “campers” would be arrested and sorted: students to be immediately expelled and barred from ever reapplying; participating professors and instructors fired; illegal aliens turned over to I.C.E. and held for deportation, non-students jailed, and any and all arrestees, regardless of status, barred from benefitting from Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

Of course, none of that will happen, but at least let concerned citizens take it on themselves to rid their campuses of these people, like so:

I've been harping and blogging about this issue for a long time — it alone is sufficient reason to stop Biden in 2024

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John Hinderaker:

US SET TO REGRESS FROM MODERNITY

Liberals denounce Donald Trump as a would-be tyrant, but the fact is that he ruled less by executive order than any other recent president. It is Joe Biden who has discarded the Constitution and imposed a blizzard of illegal or probably-illegal regulations on the rest of us.

Lately, they have been coming so furiously that it is hard to keep up with them. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board caught up with just one set, relating to power plants. The intent of the regulations is to set our economy and our material well-being back by as much as a century:

On Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants.
***
Barack Obama’s regulation spurred a wave of coal plant closures. Now President Biden is trying to finish the job by tightening mercury, wastewater and ash disposal standards. EPA is also replacing the Obama Clean Power Plan that the Supreme Court struck down with a rule requiring that coal plants and new gas-fired plants adopt costly and unproven carbon-capture technology by 2032.

The Supreme Court held that Obama’s Clean Power Plan was illegal; Biden’s version likely will meet the same fate. But the damage done in the meantime will be incalculable.

Section 111 of the Clean Air Act says the EPA can regulate pollutants from stationary sources through the “best system of emission reduction” that is “adequately demonstrated.” Carbon capture is neither the best nor adequately demonstrated. As of last year, only one commercial-scale coal plant in the world used carbon capture, and no gas-fired plants did.

Existing carbon capture technology will badly degrade our ability to produce electricity:

Because carbon capture uses 20% to 25% of the electricity generated by a power plant, less will be available to the grid. That means more generators will be needed to provide the same amount of power. But new gas-fired plants won’t be built because the technology will make them uneconomic. Talk about a catch-22.

Another problem: CO2 must be stored underground in certain geologic formations, largely in the upper Midwest and Gulf Coast. Permitting new wells for CO2 injections can take six years. Pipelines to transport CO2 can take even longer. Green groups oppose pipelines for CO2 as they do for oil and natural gas.

All of this regulatory uncertainty will discourage the development of new gas-fired plants even as coal plants that currently generate about 16% of the country’s power are forced to retire.

So the federal government is forcing us to produce less electricity. Meanwhile, the demand for electricity is growing:

All of this will hit while demand for power is surging amid new manufacturing needs and an artificial intelligence boom. Texas’s grid operator this week raised its forecast for demand growth for 2030 by 40,000 megawatts compared to last year’s forecast. That’s about seven times the power that New York City uses at any given time.

Texas power demand will nearly double over the next six years owing to data centers, manufacturing plants, crypto mining and the electrification of oil and gas equipment.

We are on a collision course with disaster. And to what end? These new rules will do no good whatsoever, except for those who are on the Democratic Party’s “green” gravy train. They will get many billions of dollars, if not trillions, at the American people’s expense.

By the way, EPA plans to unveil soon another rule to reduce CO2 emissions from existing gas-fired plants, so some of them may also have to shut down. Meantime, China has added about 200 gigawatts of coal power over the last five years—about as much as the entire U.S. coal fleet. The Biden fossil-fuel onslaught will have no effect on global temperatures.

Hinderakers’ concluding paragraph is spot on:

Why is Biden destroying our electrical grid and dragging the United States back into the 19th century, to the immense benefit of the Chinese Communist Party? Occam’s Razor suggests that he is doing it on purpose. Even Joe Biden isn’t dumb enough to fail to understand where these policies are leading. I don’t know whether it is sheer, malicious anti-Americanism, or whether the millions of dollars that Biden and his family have gotten from China have made him the Manchurian Candidate. But, one way or another, the disastrous consequences of the Biden administration’s energy policies are obvious to anyone who pays attention.

An above-ask sale in Balliwood

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10 Balliwick Woods Circle, priced at $1.995 million, has sold for $2.250.

This development has a tennis/swim club that celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. There’s an interesting history of the club’s founding here. Interesting, because it details the reason for its founding, which was that, back in the ‘60s, all of our finest clubs were “restricted” which meant, in gentlemen’s terms, no Jews, blacks, or any other “others”. Standards had slipped as early as the 1950s, and a few Irish were admitted in limited numbers, but otherwise, if you wanted to join a club and you hadn’t prepped, you were advised to start your own.

So this group did.

Why bother going all the way down to Tod's, when Kings has a ready supply of bases and a parking lot in which to use them?

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¡Nunca lo pasamos tan bien en Venezuela!

You think you have barbecue skills, but do you have sword-skewer-on-a-shopping-cart barbecue skills?

Check out this Santa Monica man barbecuing over a shopping cart, using a sword as a skewer.

I mean the best part about that whole set up is how mobile it is.

You can literally barbecue on the go.

Too bad, he didn't go faster, as he got picked up by the Santa Monica police.

The grilling man is facing misdemeanor charges of theft, for having the shopping cart, reckless burning, because of the open flames, and resisting arrest, according to Santa Monica Police Lieutenant Erika Aklufi.

Luckily, as he was using the sword as a cooking utensil, he won't be facing a weapons charge, which gives me an idea to avoid all the gun confiscations in California.

Weapon?

Oh no, officer!

This is my long-distance meat tenderizer.

I like this comment:

Two explanations; unfortunately, the correct one won't fit on Twitter, so college students won't read it

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Global warming, eh? Here’s an alternative view from Rainer Zitelmann

Venezuela: Socialism of the 21st Century

In the course of the 20th century, Venezuela went from being one of the poorest countries in Latin America to becoming the richest. In 1970, it ranked among the 20 richest countries in the world with a higher per-capita GDP than Spain, Greece and Israel, and only 13 percent lower than the UK.

Venezuela’s reversal of economic fortune started in the 1970s. From 1974 onwards, labor market regulations were tightened to a level that was unprecedented almost anywhere else in the world – let alone Latin America. Increasing state interference in the economy and massive over-regulation led to the situation in the once rich country constantly deteriorating. 

But the example of Venezuela shows that when the economic situation worsens, voters may well opt for a supposed solution that makes their situation much worse. Many Venezuelans put their faith in the charismatic socialist leader Hugo Chávez as the savior who would deliver their country from corruption, poverty and economic decline. 

Chávez, who was elected president in 1998, had plenty of admirers among left-wing intellectuals and parties in Western countries. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, praised Chávez, as “an inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics in Europe.” 

Thanks to Venezuela’s oil deposits – the largest in the world – and the oil price explosion that coincided with Chávez’s presidency, filling his government’s coffers to the brim, his large-scale experiment in 21st century socialism got off to a promising start, although it would eventually descend into economic disaster, hyperinflation, hunger and dictatorship.

In 2007, in an attempt to secure a controlling interest of at least 60 percent in Venezuelan oil ventures for PDVSA, the Chávez government forced foreign oil companies to accept minority stakes or face nationalization. When Chávez first came to power, over 50 percent of oil production profits went to the government. By the time of his death in 2013, the government take of over 90 percent was one of the highest in the world.

Following his re-election in 2006, Chávez nationalized an increasing number of industrial enterprises, starting with the iron and steel industries. Government takeovers of the cement and food sectors, power utilities and ports soon followed. Between 2007 and 2010 alone, around 350 businesses were moved from the private to the public sector. In many cases, executive positions in the newly nationalized enterprises were awarded to loyal party members. With one in three workers employed in the public sector by 2008, the government payroll ballooned.

Badly managed public enterprises received generous subsidies, which enabled them to retain more employees than they needed. The payment of oil revenues into a rainy-day fund had already been stopped in 2001, and investment in the oil industry – the very basis of the country’s livelihood – was also sacrificed in favor of ever more ambitious social spending plans. After Chávez’s death in 2013, his successor and former second-in-command Nicolás Maduro accelerated the nationalization of dairies, coffee producers, supermarkets, manufacturers of fertilizers and shoe factories. 

A 2016 survey by the Central University of Venezuela found that four out of five Venezuelan households lived in poverty. Some 73 percent of the population experienced weight loss, with the amount lost averaging 20 pounds in 2016. In 2021, 77 percent of the Venezuelan population lived in extreme poverty. 

Chávez had gradually abolished the separation of powers. Under his successor, Nicolás Maduro, the government became increasingly authoritarian. In recent years, Venezuela has increasingly developed into a classic socialist dictatorship: The political elite is corrupt to the core. Freedom of the press and freedom of assembly only exist on paper. Venezuela ranks fourth to last worldwide in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. 

Several United Nations institutions identified evidence of crimes against humanity by the Maduro regime in 2020 and 2021. According to the UNHCR, more than 7 million people had left Venezuela – equivalent to a quarter of the population. This is not only the largest refugee and migration movement in South America’s recent history, but there is hardly any other region in the world where so many people have left their country.

And how have socialists around the world, who once so euphorically praised Venezuela’s “Socialism for the 21st century,” responded? They react as they have after every failed socialist experiment: They say, “That wasn’t really socialism at all.” But next time, they promise, it will work.