America 2

On January 1, 2020, wage compensation for au pairs rose to $528.63 for a 45-hour work in Massachusetts – a 170 percent increase in the minimum wage. Consequently, the number of new au pairs arriving in Massachusetts in 2022 was 68.1 percent below 2019

***

Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. We’ve seen the letter, and both the circumstances and timing of the IRS focus on this journalist raise serious questions.--WSJ

***

At places like Brown University, the cost of attendance (tuition, room, board and fees) is almost $85,000, well above what the typical US household earns.



America 2


Barnum's original statement was more complex than is known: It is not just that a sucker is born every minute, it is that Americans want to be fooled.


Equality is a difficult aspiration. Remarkably, equality before the law is a cinch compared to other types. There are, after all, a lot of differences among people unless you plan on repealing the bell-shaped curve. And we don't have to go far to find them. Angelina Jolie--Tamara Press, Ray Lewis--Stephen Hawkins. How would equality be created here? Would someone be upgraded? How? And what would be emphasized? Would you make Lewis smarter or Hawkins more physical? Would you make Tamara prettier or Angelina stronger? What about Angelina and Ray Lewis? Or is there some subtle, deeper element of equalization the equalizers are not sharing?

Leveling out is never done by leveling up. Historically, equality is usually achieved by subtraction, not addition. The poor are never made rich, the ugly never beautiful. So Angelina would be scarred, Lewis hamstrung, and Hawkins hit on the head several times. Vonnegut in one of his books tied weights to the legs of athletic ballerinas so the audience would not be ashamed.

The very nature of life is diversity, diversity not for variety or spice, but for competition, destruction, and advancement. It is the true dialectic. The great religions solve this by putting worldly inequity aside and making all men spiritually equal before God. But in the demands of worldly homogeneity, because we are not the same, it must be made to appear we are. This involves fooling ourselves and each other with imitation, disguise, and deception. Participation in the deception creates not equality but similarity disguised as sameness.

Cross-dressing.

America 1

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made her first video on TikTok and used the platform to defend the communist Chinese app from being banned nationwide after TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, donated six figures to a Hispanic caucus of which she is a member.

***

Since Fetterman was sworn in as senator, the U.S. Senate has voted 69 times. Fetterman missed 53 of the last 64 roll-call votes, which is just under 83 percent.

***

Meanwhile, in Canada...
Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explains that proponents of “2 + 2 = 4” are grounded “in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.” Although Rubel acknowledged the equation “literally” equals four, the statement is “used as a kind of basic truth & way to ridicule many critiques of mathematics as white and as western and as exclusionary.”

America 1

There is a wonderful story about America in a book called "Finding Oz" by Evan Schwartz. In October of 1869, in Cardiff, New York, a small town outside of Syracuse, a farmer named William Newell discovered a twelve-foot "petrified giant " while digging a well. He soon placed a tent around it and charged admission. He eventually sold it to a local businessman for 37,000 dollars, a huge amount at the time.

Meanwhile, archeologists examined the giant and declared it a recently created fake. Then a factory owner named George Hull admitted that he had commissioned its creation out of gypsum-just to prove how easy it was to fool Americans--and gave it to his cousin Newell to be "accidentally discovered". This apparently grew out of an argument he had with a local fundamentalist who believed that, according to Genesis, giants once roamed the earth.

Case closed, right? No. People kept coming. People kept paying to see it. P.T. Barnum offered an unbelievable 60,000 dollars for it and, when rebuffed, had his own replica built and advertised it as the real fake. ("There is a sucker born every minute" was apparently coined by the owner of the "original fake.") But Barnum's observation was more profound: "The American people love to be humbugged," he observed.

There was a local man, L. Frank Baum, a Syracuse castor-oil merchant, who watched this evolve and took it to heart. When he wrote "Wizard of Oz" and the wizard is finally revealed as a fraud, he says, "it was the only thing I could do." The people of Oz were eager to be deluded and were willing "to do anything I wished them to."

Other generalizations are yours to make.

The New Apocalypse

Humza Yousaf was confirmed as the first minister of Scotland on Tuesday, becoming the first person of color to head the Scottish government, and the first Muslim national leader in any Western democracy.
U.K. just got its first Hindu leader in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Britain’s capital city is headed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants.

***

When President Biden’s official White House Facebook account announced the suspension of J&J’s COVID vaccine, Facebook’s algorithm censored the account for encouraging vaccine hesitancy—an algorithm that had been implemented at the request of Biden’s administration.

***

Is there some ambivalence about the judgment of the Nashville shooting, like that of Ted Kozinski?

***

The New Apocalypse

It's nice to see that the environmental movement is continuing basic human themes and traditions.

"Greenism shares with its Biblical precursor an obsession with days of judgment, with vengeance upon the wicked, and the dream of a redeemed world. But there’s a vital difference between the Biblical apocalypse and its green iteration. Those to be judged today are not a portion of sinful humanity. No, they are all of humanity. And the redeemed world dreamt of by climate activists is not the kingdom of God promised by earlier apocalyptic narratives. Instead, it is a kingdom of nature, and it is distinctly opposed to humanity. In short, the green End Times amount to a very anti-human apocalypse.

At the forefront of the arms race in catastrophic prophecies is Extinction Rebellion. (XR)

XR co-founder Roger Hallam puts it in one blog post, XR members must ‘understand that redemption only comes through suffering and the only honorable life is to move into that suffering in an act of faith that there will be another side to come out of, into a state of grace’."--Crowley

One can only hope that those old tried and true judicial arms, like inquisitions, won't be necessary.

Spies for Peace

What’s wrong with the 1619 Project is that it is factually preposterous. The essence of the story is that Americans fought the American Revolution because Lord Dunmore said that slaves fighting on the British side would be emancipated. Well, he said that in November 1775 – after Lexington and Concord, after the Boston Tea Party, after the Boston Massacre, after the Stamp Act. The war was up and running, and this is after George Washington had been put in charge of the troops.
So it is factually illiterate to say this. And that is why, to use your term, it’s not a good-faith kind of argument. It’s tendentious, meretricious, and propagandistic.--will

***

Federal prosecutors in November charged eight people with running an international operation to poach wild monkeys. Among those charged were two Cambodian wildlife officials, one of whom was arrested in the U.S.—while traveling to an endangered species conference. About 60% of the 30,000 biomedical research monkeys imported annually to the U.S. used to come from China, but Beijing banned those exports during the pandemic, forcing American companies to pivot to Cambodia

***

National Public Radio (NPR) claimed that “there is limited scientific research” supporting the idea that biological males have a “physical advantage” over biological females in competitive sports.

***

Spies for Peace

The Greenbrier Resort, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of America's most famous luxury hotels. Underneath the sprawling property was a bunker about the size of a Walmart, that would be able to house every member of the House and the Senate in the case of a nuclear attack. The bunker used special technology to keep radiation out, had space for over 1,100 people to store belongings, a special room to allow Congress to be held while underground, and a six-month food supply.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that there needed to be a place for Congress to go as the threat of nuclear warfare became imminent. In 1958, government workers began building the bunker, in an operation known as "Project Greek Island."

So, in case of a national disaster, at least all the giant brains in the country will be protected. Britain had a similar plan years ago, saving the government. Knowing your priorities is very important.

Sunday/ Lazarus

The political left has never understood that, if you give the government enough power to create “social justice,” you have given it enough power to create despotism. Millions of people around the world have paid with their lives for overlooking that simple fact.--Sowell

***

In early February, nearly five million people weren’t working because they were caring for children who weren’t in daycare or school, according to the Census Bureau.

***

More than 550 Americans are reported missing in Mexico. Soaring violence and government dysfunction have fueled a crisis that’s left at least 112,150 people missing, according to government records

***

Social Security and Medicare. Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs are the drivers of our current and future debt. And to drive home the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.

Lazarus

Today's gospel is the raising of Lazarus. You would think that would be enough but Christ magnifies the event. On hearing Lazarus is ill Christ says ambiguously, 'This sickness will not end in death, but it is for God's glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.' Mary and Martha will be rewarded, but not just yet.

Back to Bethany.

Bethany was dangerous territory for Christ. "The disciples said, 'Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'"
And Thomas, just a great human guy: "Then Thomas -- known as the Twin -- said to the other disciples, 'Let us also go to die with him.'"

In it, Christ is upsettingly emotional. Seeing Christ cry is unnerving as the gospels never report He ever laughed. But His intensity points to one thing: death is the lynchpin in all of life's discussions. This passage does not recoil from the ironic horror that Kazantzakis exploits later in The Last Temptation of Christ where Lazarus follows Christ around as a living, decaying man.

David One, Goliath Zero

 “When you are told that all (stock) repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEO’s, you are listening to an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive)”.--Buffett

***

Clarence Darrow defended John Scopes in his trial over teaching evolution. Williams Jennings Bryan was prosecutor and Darrow succeeded in having him called to the stand as a bible expert. This was a pivotal exchange in favor of Darrow and Scopes:

Darrow: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"

Bryan: "Yes, sir; I have tried to.... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy."

Darrow: "Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?"

Bryan: "I believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."

***

Importantly, we find that bans or restrictions that specifically target “assault weapons” increase demand for handguns, which are associated with the vast majority of firearm-related violence.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Sarah Moshary, Bradley Shapiro, and Sara Drango.

***

David One, Goliath Zero


One wonders about leadership, particularly in top-down, narrow hierarchies. 

We usually give our opponents more credit than they deserve. 

Biden welcomed Zelenski to the U.S. asylum. He did not want or need it. We always assume that Chinese leadership is smarter than ours. But the idiot radicals here are bred in the same toxic philosophies as the Chinese leadership. Maybe such philosophies and hierarchies have their own inherent flaws and expiration dates.

Take China's relentless bullying of the Philippines.

After a decade of suffering China's aggressive acts against Philippine vessels, fishermen, and energy exploration efforts in waters within the archipelago country's Exclusive Economic Zone, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently welcomed an expanded US military presence.

Marcos now has responded to continued Chinese belligerence by granting US forces access to five additional military bases on Philippine territory.

In a direct rebuke to China, two of these new bases are on Palawan, one of the disputed Spratly Islands, which are also claimed, as is much else, by Communist China. A US military presence in Palawan will be a direct challenge to the Chinese Communist Party's plan to ultimately seize Taiwan: Palawan is the closest large Philippine island to Taiwan and the equally disputed waters of the South China Sea. US air and naval assets in Palawan could potentially play a large role in supporting the Free World forces against China.

China, by bullying its neighbors, is bringing about what it fears the most: a united phalanx of Asian powers under an American umbrella that is ready to prevent China from expanding to what it claims as its historic land and maritime borders. (from Franklin)

The Logistics of Extortion

The global commercial surrogacy industry grew to an estimated $14 billion in 2022. By 2032, that figure is forecast to rise to $129 billion. In Georgia, as in Ukraine, commercial surrogacy programs cost around $40,000-$50,000, while in Mexico they are about $60,000-$70,000. That compares with an average of $120,000 and higher in the U.S.

***

The peso is the top-performing major currency this year, according to Bloomberg, and has more than recovered from its coronavirus pandemic weakness. It has risen 8.5 percent this year to trade above 18 to the dollar…
Foreign direct investment in Mexico hit $35.3bn last year, the highest level since 2015, according to economy ministry data. Transport manufacturing accounted for 12 percent of that.
Another source of foreign income has been resilient remittances from Mexican migrants in the US. The transfers from abroad now make up 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Even after growing to record levels last year, in January remittances were 12.5 percent higher than the same month a year earlier, according to Bank of Mexico figures.

***

An interview with an MIT professor discusses China’s lackluster technological innovation and why declining foreign investment is more of a concern than a declining population.

***

The Logistics of Extortion

The geniuses in the race industry have begun to ask funny questions, like where will the reparations come from?

Vaguely sensing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Hannah-Jones asks where the federal government would get the money to pay such a massive amount. Wouldn’t taxes have to be raised, she queries. [Duke University economist Sandy] Darity confidently asserts that no such action is necessary.

“It’s a matter of the federal government financing it in the same way that it financed…the stimulus package for the Great Recession” and the COVID-era CARES Act, Darity continues. To do so, the federal government needs only “spend the money but without raising taxes.” (David Henderson and Phil Magness)

There is a kind of symmetry between the mindless 1619 cult and the mindless view of economics the devotees and hustlers bring to fund it. And stupid ideas and behavior can be innocuous when small and contained. But...

The Ultimate Minority

 

Worker or capitalist, both are slaves to making things for others. Only the artist is free. Such progressive or conservative terminology is like calling an exchange of harsh words “verbal rape.”
We need terms for the physical violence entailed in actual slavery and in actual rape, and should not cheapen them by applying them to our middle-class vexations in NW6 or Marin County.--McCloskey

***

School attendance, possibly through mechanisms of status competition and bullying, seems to raise the rate of youth suicide

***

In two years’ time, the French capital will ban non-essential through-traffic from its city center. The plan, which is expected to eliminate around half of the daily car journeys through Paris’ core, has been a long-term objective for the city, part of its overall drive to slash the number of cars on the roads.

***

The Ultimate Minority 

We have now moved from a democracy, where the majority has a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority, to where the majority must take the minority so seriously that, in most cases, they must defer to them. The Flat Earth Society gets interviewed. People who believe the U.S. faked the moon landing speak wryly on nighttime television shows. A child who wants to change his gender gets a contract instead of therapy.

The individual, the ultimate minority, is now the cynosure of the West. Everything he does has its own inherent value and validity. The Bell Curve is now irrelevant because we accept no norms. The Adam Smith community of productive, self-interested, and industrious individuals have had, insinuated into their midst, the inept, the disinterested, and the deranged--all of whom, in our brave new world, have their own value and story, too. Only the Nationalist seems to have allegiance less to an idea and more to some sinister, unseen group.

Recall the tremor that went through the academic community when the Unabomber was caught, the conflict, and ambiguous reflections. The guy was a bright, serious student and his social concerns overlapped those of many sensible, concerned observers of the new technological world. But you don't get a "Good Content-Bad Conduct Gentleman's C" in living. You can't get your murderous, vicious acts offset by a childhood Eagle Scout badge. No society can function on "compartmentalism;" Mussolini did make the trains run on time. But that is not enough. There is a bigger picture here. Ted Bundy was charming. World War II was loud. Goebbels had a PhD and a good first novel.

It's really quite simple: "By their fruits you will know them." Murder, chaos, mendacity, destruction. These are not faults in a greater, purer whole: These are the whole.

Another Visit to the Church of Unintended Consequences

Scott Adams told the Washington Post in a story published Monday that he'd lost 80 percent of his income as a result of his quote about white people leaving Black communities because of Black hostility. He insisted then that he's against racism.

***

 The States shown in Blue above Have A Smaller Population Than Los Angeles County   

***

Children’s horror author R.L. Stine has accused his publisher of editing references to weight, mental health, and ethnicity in over a dozen of his books without his permission.


***


Another Visit to the Church of Unintended Consequences

At some time, the people of the world are going to have to look at their so-called leaders with a lot more skepticism.

China is scrambling to facilitate a baby boom and reverse its stagnant birth rate, as the country has fallen into a population crisis of unprecedented proportions.

From 1980 to 2015 the country implemented a brutal one-child policy, which restricted the vast majority of Chinese families from having multiple children — for fear of overpopulation.

The policy, which often relied on forced abortions and sterilizations, was hugely effective at slowing population growth, but created a slew of cultural, economic, and social setbacks.

Because of the cultural preference for male children, millions of families aborted female babies with the hopes of making their one child a son who could carry on their family line and provide financial support down the road. That contributed to China having the largest gender disparity of males to females of any country on Earth — for much of the early 2000s, for every 100 Chinese girls born, 130 boys were born.

Now… China has 30 million more young men than young women, creating a crisis of young men unable to find wives. This is worse in rural areas where women have left for better jobs in the city. There have been reports of Chinese farmers raiding neighboring countries for women.

In response, the parents of many young women in the country are demanding enormous dowries in exchange for marriage, while the scarcity of potential brides has forced many Chinese men to leave the country in search of a wife.

The average Chinese woman went from having 6 children in 1970 to 3 children in 1985, then fewer than two children by 2010.

In 2016, in response to that decline, the CCP abandoned the one-child policy and raised the limit to two children per couple. When that didn’t lead to any sort of meaningful birth rate increase, they raised it again in 2021 to three children per couple.

Then last year – for the first time since the widespread Chinese famines of the 1960s – the country saw a population decline, with more people dying in 2022 than were born.

There were fewer births in China last year than at any point since 1790.

For decades, China had the world’s largest workforce. But with such low birthrates, as older workers retire, there simply aren’t enough people to replace them.

More importantly, as life expectancy goes up, hundreds of millions of people are approaching retirement age and will need to be taken care of. In 2020 around 14% of the country’s population was over the age of 65. By 2050, that number is expected to be 35%.

Contracting workforce, increasing population demands. What they need is a porous border.

(Most from the Daily Wire via Don)

An Endpoint

In recent decades, death rates from poisonings, suicides, and alcoholic liver disease have dramatically increased in the United States. We show that these “deaths of despair” began to increase relative to trend in the early 1990s, that this increase was preceded by a decline in religious participation, and that both trends were driven by middle-aged white Americans. Using repeals of blue laws as a shock to religiosity, we confirm that religious practice has significant effects on these mortality rates. Our findings show that social factors such as organized religion can play an important role in understanding deaths of despair. (paper)

***

Estimates vary widely, but some put the underground economy at 11% to 12% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In the third quarter of 2022, U.S. GDP was estimated at $25.7 trillion, which puts the underground economy at more than $2.8 trillion.

***

Our findings suggest that shifting child care from the home to the market increases labor force participation and improves child outcomes.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Jonathan Gruber, Thomas Kosonen, and Kristina Huttunen. Note that the results may irritate both some social conservatives and some proponents of extremely generous maternal leave arrangements.

***

An Endpoint

The Turkish government's top religious authority under Erdoğan, Diyanet, is giving permission for adoptive parents to marry, and consummate the marriage with, the adopted children who survived the earthquake.

Most recently, in November, Turkey heard that a prominent Islamic sheik, the leader of a religious order fiercely devoted to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had married off his six-year-old daughter to a 29-year-old disciple.


It will be interesting to see how those adults, eager to educate young children in American schools about sexuality, react to this most definitive realization of their wishes.  

Equality/Equity Under Attack

Interesting discussion between Sanders and Maher on HBO. Maher asked Sanders the definition of 'Equality' vs. 'Equity' and which he preferred. It was clear Sanders preferred to confuse the two but, when pressed, chose 'Equality.' The others on the stage got upset. Forcing the definition and clarifying the distinction unmasked even Sanders.

***

The House and Senate passed an anti-ESG bill.

***

Four U.S. citizens have been kidnapped after gunmen opened fire on their vehicle in the northern Mexico border city of Matamoros, the FBI said Sunday.

***


"The Bad People thought the lab leak might be true, therefore as journalists we couldn't be expected to actually evaluate the evidence for it."--Nate Silver


***

Equality/Equity Under Attack

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brains of men and women shows women have a far greater capacity for communicating with and evaluating people than men do. Women have between fourteen and sixteen areas of the brain to evaluate others' behavior versus a man's four to six areas.

The female brain is organized for multitracking -- the average woman can juggle between two and four unrelated topics at the same time. She can talk about several unrelated topics in one conversation and use five vocal tones to change the subject or emphasize points. Most men can only identify three of these tones and often lose the plot when women are trying to communicate with them. 

Vision is a factor too. Most men's close-range and peripheral vision is far poorer than women's.

Sunday/Transfiguration

Equity-language guides are proliferating among some of the country’s leading institutions, particularly nonprofits. Most of the guides draw on the same sources from activist organizations and these guides are staffed by a few people, giving terrific leverage to a small clique.

***

Israel's Supreme Court is not so Supreme, having a tenuous hold on Israel's division of powers. Netanyahu is trying to disrupt it and many want the US to intervene. Intervene!

***

The White Lotus is a strange series with terrible people played by fine actors wrapped in incomprehensible storylines energized by your college roommate's philosophy of life.

***

Sunday/Transfiguration

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Despite its drama, it was never formalized in the Church until after the Tenth Century. In it, Christ is transfigured on a mountaintop with Moses and Elijah while Peter, James, and John watch in amazement.

It is often seen as the point in the Gospel where Christ and the apostles are both energized by this glimpse of heaven.

But it is a remarkable, almost posed, artistic and philosophical moment. A distillation of the New and Old Testament conflicts and resolutions, it is a potent mixture of spirituality and humanity, Christ and the great prophets and the apostles all swirling in opposition and conformity.

And light.

We have always had great respect for light. In Genesis, right after the creation of the formless heaven and earth, light displaces the dark. Even Lucifer (appearing only once in the Old Testament) means "the morning star" or "light-bringer."

The architect Wren, on deciding to avoid stained glass windows in his churches, said ""Nothing can add beauty to light." 

Edison's first commercial electric light system was installed on Pearl Street in the financial district of Lower Manhattan in 1882.

Before that, the world was lit only by fire.

The World
by Henry Vaughan

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.
The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit’s sour delights,
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,
Yet his dear treasure
All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flow’r.

The darksome statesman hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog mov’d there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts (like sad eclipses) scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digg’d the mole, and lest his ways be found,
Work’d under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did see
That policy;
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries
Were gnats and flies;
It rain’d about him blood and tears, but he
Drank them as free.

The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves;
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugg’d each one his pelf;
The downright epicure plac’d heav’n in sense,
And scorn’d pretence,
While others, slipp’d into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor despised Truth sate counting by
Their victory.

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shews the way,
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God,
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
More bright than he.
But as I did their madness so discuss
One whisper’d thus,
“This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,
But for his bride.”

The Civil Rights of the Cartels

SpaceX's Crew-6 astronaut mission successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) early Friday morning.

***

95% of violent crimes in Mexico go unpunished.

***

MMA fighter turned actress Gina Carano looked destined for big things as part of the Star Wars franchise cast as Cara Dune in The Mandalorian. She soon became a recurring presence in the Disney+ series. She was fired from the series, and essentially blacklisted in Hollywood. Since then, she's been relegated to Daily Wire-produced stuff like "Terror on the Prairie," a movie that made only $804 at the North American box office this January.

***


The Civil Rights of the Cartels

From what we have seen, how would you assess the integrity of our political leaders and their judicial arm? Now picture an almost unimaginable amount of money accompanied by remorseless violence as it inches across the border creating a growing band of criminality, bribery, and intimidation. Drug use aside, what do you see as the long-term impact on American culture and life?

Former Attorney General William Barr wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Thursday advocating for the use of the U.S. military to attack Mexican drug cartels within Mexico's borders.

Barr argued that the Mexican government has allowed fentanyl and other deadly drugs to be shipped into the United States and that, under such circumstances, the U.S. has the right to defend itself.

The article, titled, "The U.S. Must Defeat Mexico’s Drug Cartels", contended that the cartels are a national security threat "more like ISIS than the American mafia" and "America can no longer tolerate narco-terrorist cartels."

He supported legislation introduced by Republican Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Texas, and Michael Waltz, Fla., that would give the president "authority to use the U.S. military against these cartels in Mexico."

Keep in mind, Mexico is our biggest trade partner and, as a middle economy, has a workforce that out-produces China. If we move away from China, Mexico is the logical substitute.

Bits and Pieces

Bits and Pieces


Xi plans what looks like a purge in China, solidifying power and sharpening ideology.

***

Israel has no strict constitution and their Supreme Court is informal. There is a plan to delegitimize the Court completely. Chaos

***

Big tank battle in Ukraine. The Russians lost.

***

Garland's testimony in front of the Senate committee about the AG's anti-Catholic activity would be hysterically funny if it were not so scary.

***

Biden will veto the ESG bill today.

A Lack of Curiosity

Cash flows into US sustainable funds plummeted last year as the broader market took a beating and anti-ESG crusaders targeted money managers including BlackRock Inc. for “woke capitalism.”

***

Lightfoot's loss in Chicago is being analyzed as meaningful. As if this will make a difference.

***

Research by Clarion Security Systems estimates that there are over 7,371,903 CCTV cameras in the UK, meaning there is 1 CCTV camera for every 11 people in the UK. You are likely to be captured on UK CCTV up to 70 times per day.

***

A Lack of Curiosity

So....it looks as if the Covid outbreak that occurred in Wuhan where there is a viral lab that does research on dangerous viruses and changes their basic genetic makeup might, MIGHT, be connected. Now only a college professor would think that a relationship between the two is not sort of obvious.

There are many questions here but the very important one is, "Why would so many important Americans--politicians, journalists, and news broadcasters--fly up in furious indignation at that suggestion?" A new virus...China's main virus research lab...why did the suggestion of a connection stimulate such sardonic vitriol, especially when everyone knows the ChiComs wish the world ill? And, now that the DOE--and the FBI-- raised the connection, why do these people diminish it?

That is simply strange.

A second question: despite the outbreak--that the ChiCom officials knew about--why did China suddenly fill the air with flights around the world, virtually seeding the world with the virus. It has been said that the Chinese recognized the political, social, and economic destruction that would follow the illness and wanted to be sure that the damage was spread evenly--egalitarianly--so they would not be at a disadvantage.

Idealogues "leveling the playing field."

They wouldn't do that, would they?