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It was about about nine years ago when consulting company BCG first suggested that in a time of out of control spending and soaring debt loads, the only fiscally sustainable “solution” was to implement a wealth tax (see “There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis”).

While the idea was well ahead of its time in 2011, and was quickly shut down in the court of public opinion, several years later none other than the IMF resurrected the idea of a wealth tax, which has only gained momentum in recent months, and despite widespread grassroots pushback, the concept of a “wealth tax” has moved front and center and most recently the chairman of Capital Economics, Roger Bootle, said that the world’s wealthiest could be subjected to higher tax rates as governments scramble to fund spending and repair their economies amid the coronavirus crisis.

Fast forward to today when the ultra-liberal state of California is now ready to take this “socialist” idea from concept to the implementation phase, with the SF Chronicle reporting that a group of CA state lawmakers on Thursday proposed a first-in-the-nation state wealth tax that would hit about 30,400 California residents and raise an estimated $7.5 billion for the general fund.

The proposed tax rate would be 0.4% of net worth (most likely ended up far higher), excluding directly held real estate, that exceeds $30 million for single and joint filers and $15 million for married filing separately.

That will clear out the tech companies that California depends on for its budget toute de suite. It’s amazing how reliably statists always shoot themselves in the wallet with such policies.

Ah, well. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

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Dozens of people were injured and 14 were killed in 62 shootings in New York City over the last week.

According to the New York Post, the number of shootings was an increase of 26 from the same week in 2019. And the number of murders was 10 more year-over-year.

Seventy-six people were wounded.

My, what a surprise.

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According to online real estate company Zillow, there is a mass exodus of people looking to get out of San Francisco real estate – as the housing market is on fire in the Bay Area suburbs, all the way to Lake Tahoe.

According to the company’s “2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report,” home prices in the city have fallen 4.9% year-over-year, while inventory has jumped 96% during the same period, as a flood of new listings hit the market.

I believe that the relevant technical term here is ‘voting with their feet’.

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Peggy Noonan joined the crowd turning on George W. Bush in what I thought was (in Noonan’s case) a grossly unfair manner in 2008. It wasn’t just unfair, it was cowardly. I wrote critically about one of Noonan’s weekly Wall Street Journal columns in which she identified with the public disapproval of Bush that April in “Season of the witch.”

Having turned on George W. Bush, Noonan moved on to support the election of Barack Obama later that year. Noonan all but endorsed Obama in her 2008 column “Obama and the runaway train.” The anti-Bush and pro-Obama columns fit neatly together

I’ve been very disappointed in Peggy Noonan ever since. I used to read her stuff religiously but I can’t stomach it any more.

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But you knew that.

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The key thing about America is, every disaster fits somebody’s business model.

James Altucher.

Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

“NYC has experienced worse”. No it hasn’t.

A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.

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Rich and famous used to flock to beautiful beaches, Malibu, Hollywood, and Los Angeles. Now, they are getting out, citing homelessness, overcrowding, violence, drug abuse, safety, and untenable politics.

Among the next might be Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, who has already announced a $1 billion Tesla factory in Texas and sold his four-home compound in Bel Air for $62 million.

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Tech industry millionaires are moving the Democratic Party to the left on almost every issue except government regulation. Unions beware.

The Other McCain keeps up with this crap so that you don’t have to.

There is no “crisis.” What there is, apparently, is a paranoid delusion that ORANGE MAN BAD is trying to “steal” the election.

Democrat hopes for stealing the election focus on extensive mail-in ballots, which can’t require photo ID, and that can be manipulated in various ways. The Post Office is key (Don’t laugh. I’m serious.) in this scheme.

You will note that there is no ‘UPS crisis’ or ‘FedEx crisis’. Why? Because those companies exist to provide a service for the public, rather than as a featherbedding enterprise for Democrat-voting public sector union employees, and actual have to be effective and efficient, something that the Post Office is notorious for not being.

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The Chicago police arrested 43 people who participated in the looting spree along the city’s Mag Mile earlier this week. Who were these looters?

According to the Chicago Tribune, they were “an odd mix of peer-pressured college students, out-of-work parents, and convicted felons.” It would be interesting to know how much time the convicted felons had served, and for what crimes. Their looting could be another product of America’s under-incarceration problem.

Ostensibly, the looting was a response to a police shooting in the Englewood neighborhood. Yet, according to the Tribune, none of arrested looters was from Englewood.

In fact, no one who made a statement in court upon being arraigned even mentioned the incident. Not only was the police shooting a pretext for the looting, it was so far from the looters’ consciousness that they forgot to mention it.

The prevailing motive of this “odd mix” wasn’t “police brutality,” it was the desire to snatch free stuff and, at least some cases, to smash things. In other words, envy and resentment, not “social justice.”

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It is always amazing to see just how virulent is the liberal media’s addiction to hypocrisy.

This current obsession with race surfaced, but of course, with the selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. As journalists were cheering the Democrat — her mother is from India, her father from Jamaica — a legal scholar raised the question of whether Harris was eligible under the Constitution as a “natural born citizen.” She was born in Oakland, California, which should resolve the question.

This issue has been used against 1964 GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater. Why? Because Goldwater was born in Arizona – when it was a territory and not yet a state. In 1968 it was used against GOP Michigan Governor George Romney — father of Mitt — when he ran for the GOP nomination. Why?

Because Romney was the son of Mormon missionaries -who were living in Mexico when Romney was born. Then of course, there was Senator John McCain, said to be ineligible because he was born in Panama when his father was stationed there early in his military career in the US Navy.

Joy Behar declared herself a “Cruz birther.” In 2016, ABC had little outrage about the citizenship attacks on the conservative senator. The New York Times raised the birther issue against McCain.

D.C. Police Arrest 41 People Who ‘Engaged In Rioting Behavior’ Overnight

‘Slaughter In Our Streets’: US Attorney Steps In To Give Gunman Who Crippled Philadelphia Store Owner 14 Years In Prison

Chicago Store Owner Spent $300,000 To Reopen Destroyed Business After Riots, Only For It To Be Struck Again By Vandals

Is COVID-19 Racist?

‘White Fragility’ Author Robin DiAngelo Reportedly Slated To Make $20,000 For 3-Hour Anti-Racism Workshop At UConnecticut

‘What About This Boy?’: Nancy Grace Draws Attention To Cannon Hinnant’s Fatal Shooting

UAB Football Player Allen Merrick Dies After Being Shot

Chicago Shuts Down Its Business District Overnight This Weekend Due To Continued Riots And Looting   BRAAAAAAAINS!

Following Far-Left’s Orders: CNN Labels Attacks on Kamala Racist and Sexist

The battle over a German town’s black patron saint

MSNBC’s Velshi to Booker: Trump Only Attacks You Because You’re Black

Who’s ‘Nasty’? NYTimes ‘News’ Pages Smear Trump, GOP as Sexist, Racist To Kamala  Talk about your hate speech….

Andrew Cuomo Claims Trump Has ‘Some Liability’ For Spike In NYC Crime  Uh, what, exactly?

Kook Alert: PBS Pundit Claims Trump Post Office Moves ‘Nothing Less Than Bull Connor’

‘You Earned This Endorsement’: New York City Police Union Backs Trump

Reliance on Wind and Solar Will Lead to Blackouts

Trump EPA Rescinds Burdensome Obama Climate Change Methane Leak Regulations

Greenland Ice Sheet has melted to the point of no return  Women and minorities no doubt hardest hit.

Rolling Blackouts in California? Who could have guessed?

California Forced Into Rolling Blackouts As Heatwave Sparks First “Stage 3” Energy Crisis In 20 Years  Your woke tax dollars at work.

Our Collapsing Cities

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Everyone knows that rural America has gone deep red. That trend came last to the Upper Midwest, but it has arrived in Minnesota with a vengeance. Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, home to the state’s mining industry, is heavily unionized and was long a Democratic Party bastion. No longer: the 8th, along with the rest of Greater Minnesota, is now Trump country. It is represented by Republican Pete Stauber, a former police officer and union member, who has been endorsed for re-election by every private sector union. Today it would take a miracle for a Democrat to win that seat.

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“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

This is why you ought not to believe anything you read in print unless you can somehow verify it.

For examples, listen to Scott Adams.

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As temperatures soar into the the triple digits, the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance says such names will spark public awareness and encourage safety measures.

I am not making this up.

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This week, Pew Research released a study on the use of the non-binary non-word Latinx that confirms what we’ve already known to be true: that the term, despite being shoved down the throat of the Hispanic community, has no acceptance within.

I’m with Jeremy on this one.

Read it.

The non-scientific mind has the most ridiculous ideas of the precision of laboratory work, and would be much surprised to learn that, excepting electrical measurements, the bulk of it does not exceed the precision of an upholsterer who comes to measure a window for a pair of curtains.

—Charles S. Peirce (1908)

Read it.

Actually, I’m prepared to believe it. Certainly they resemble Romney Republicans.

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Wouldn’t surprise me.

Recent questionable search results show Google appearing to conflate the opposing terms socialism and capitalism. A Google search for “socialism and racism” shows that Google may be confused about the definition of socialism. When the search is completed, Google includes results for “capitalism and racism” by default, forcing the user to click another link in order to show results only for the initial query, “socialism and racism.” The “including results from” feature is often used when search terms are misspelled. It will include search results for the original term and the suggested alternative by default. This results in a better user experience without the user having to correct the error and start the search over. Several years ago, some users noticed that Google was offering more navigational suggestions using this feature. For example, a search for “face” would include results for “Facebook,” and a search for “pint” would include results for “Pinterest.” It is unclear why Google would choose to include results for “capitalism and racism” when a search is conducted for “socialism and racism.”

Aussie Government Asks the UN to Dismiss an Indigenous Climate Case

Trump lifts Obama-era regulations on methane, a potent climate-warming gas

Climate change spelled doom for woolly rhinos 14,000 years ago, study says

Claim: Warming Greenland ice sheet passes point of no return

Angela Eaton, Environmental Urbanist

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deploy the Charlottesville hoax to stir up racial pain and anger.

Krugman: Trump’s Racist, Statist Suburban Dream, by Steve Sailer

‘No Other Words But Disgusting, Racist’: Don Lemon Condemns Trump Over ‘Dirty Racist’ Attack On Kamala Harris

HuffPost Harangue at Trump: Do You Regret ‘All the Lying…You Have Done?’

Man Charged in Boy’s Death That Sparked Federal Task Force

Man Charged With First-Degree Murder In Killing Of 5-Year-Old Boy On Bicycle

Kindergartners To Learn About White Supremacy In PA School District

Kamala Harris Is an Affirmative Action Candidate

Looting May Drive Macy’s from Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, by Steve Sailer

Newspaper In Australia Refuses To Apologize For Cartoon Showing Biden Calling Kamala Harris ‘Little Brown Girl’

Nation’s Top Black CEO: US Should Consider Slavery Reparations

CNN Obsesses Over ‘Schmucker’ Carlson’s Mispronunciation of Harris’ Name  Who can’t pronounce Jambalaya?

Donny Deutsch’s Deplorables: ‘1 in 3 Americans Are Racists’

‘Do Something About It’: BLM Protesters In Seattle Call On White People To Give Up Their Homes

R. Kelly’s Manager Reportedly Hit With Charges After Saying A Shooting Would Happen At Theater Showing ‘Surviving R. Kelly’

‘Politics Of Fear, Big Government Edition’: Dr. Marc Siegel Blasts Biden For Demanding Mandatory Masking Outside

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

Ardern extends Auckland lockdown as New Zealand struggles with new infections 

“Stop Playing Politics With The Virus” – Trump Slams Biden’s Call For Mandatory Mask-Wearing

Read it.

It’s always bizarre when Hollywood decides to produce media versions of well-known Republicans or conservatives. These are people they can’t possibly relate to. But that doesn’t prevent liberals from continuing to make movies or television programs that showcase evil Republicans.

The latest example of this concept is an upcoming film tentatively entitled College Republicans, a “fact-inspired” movie about young versions of such “political titans” as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove as they were decades ago, when America witnessed the “dirtiest election in its history.”

ZMan’s weekly podcast.

I read a study once that claimed that people who enjoyed the suffering of their enemies were healthier and happier. Things like schadenfreude and revenge fantasies are not only normal, but part of a healthy lifestyle. Seeing bad people suffer, even slightly, reinforces our sense of justice, which in turns gives us confidence that the world does operate by a fixed set of rules. The suffering of the wicked confirms those ordinary modes of thoughtJohn Derbyshire described.

Fishing around for material this week, I stumbled upon some stories that brought a smile, because they featured the unhappiness of bad people. Naturally, I thought a whole show on the suffering of the wicked was a good idea. It is easy to succumb to self-pity and despair, so it is important to look at the bright side of life on occasion in order to avoid those temptations. Given what faces us this fall, there will be plenty of time for weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Gunman On Watch List With ‘Islamist Sympathies’ Takes Multiple People Hostage In French Bank

UK Names ‘Channel Threat Commander’ as Boat Crossings Surge

American Who Pledged Allegiance To ISIS, Directed Others On How To Attack New York Pleads Guilty

Revolting Migrants in Treviso Don’t Like Being Quarantined

Outrage Grows During a Summer of Honor Killings

Stolen childhood: Niger’s girl brides

US Military Delivers 260 Tons of Supplies to Beirut in Wake of Explosion  And not one word of gratitude will they ever get.

Satellite Image Shows Pakistani Submarine With Chinese Navy

US: Iran Briefly Seizes Oil Tanker Near Strait of Hormuz

DOJ Takes Down Militant Groups’ Cryptocurrency Fundraising Effort

US seizes millions of dollars from Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s cryptocurrency accounts

Knife Jihad at the Duomo in Milan

Calais Mayor Accuses UK “Declaration Of War” Over Attempts To Stop Illegal Boat Migrants

Kabul Begins Release of Final 400 Taliban, Talks to Follow

Turkey grants citizenship to Hamas operatives plotting terror attacks from Istanbul

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In the early 1960s, Julia Child and her husband handed Barbara Ketcham Wheaton the keys to their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The famous couple was going to California for the summer, but they wanted their young neighbor to be able to continue one of her favorite activities: perusing Child’s collection of historical cookbooks.

Now an honorary curator of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Culinary Collection, Wheaton was then in her early 30s, with young children at home. She had left an art history PhD program a few years before to marry historian Bob Wheaton, but she still had a passion for the past. When she discovered her love of cooking, and her neighbor’s trove of unique books, Wheaton wondered: What if she turned the same methodology she had learned in art-history classes to a more humble text—the cookbook?

Read it.

The village of Sileby, in Leicestershire, began the small market in the parking lot of The Free Trade Inn earlier this summer. Every Tuesday stalls would be set up so that local businesses could sell foods and flowers. However, they have now been ordered to stop by Charnwood Borough Council, which represents the nearby town of Loughborough.

The council states that the pop-up market breaches a Royal Charter signed by King Henry III in 1227, which gave Loughborough the right to hold a market two days a week. Furthermore, the charter prohibits any other market ‘within six and two-thirds miles’ of this town. Sileby lies just within that boundary.

Only in Britain….

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As a senator, Sanders voted for many of the policies that granted billions in subsidies and incentives to Musk and his companies.  For example, Sanders voted for passage of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, which boosted the solar energy tax credit from 10 percent to 30 percent of the cost of a solar installation.

Sanders also voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that provided tax credits of up to $7,500 to purchasers of electric vehicles. Tesla Motors sold 200,000 electric cars to buyers able to claim this credit.

Senator Sanders and presidential candidate Joe Biden support the “Solving the Climate Crisis” report that was issued in June by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The report calls for extension of the 30 percent tax credit that provided more than $1 billion to SolarCity. It also proposes a national mandate “to achieve 100% sales of zero-emission cars by 2035.” The report calls for billions of dollars in additional subsidies for green energy that would flow to the companies of Elon Musk and other green billionaires.

It appears that billionaires don’t deserve to grow their wealth except when they build green energy companies.

Audacious Epigone runs the numbers.

The inverse correlation between favoring stricter gun laws and Donald Trump’s share of the 2016 presidential vote is a remarkable .95. That is a staggeringly strong relationship for the social sciences. Indeed, it is effectively a perfect correlation after sampling noise is accounted for. More than abortion, immigration, taxation, race relations, war, or any other cultural or political issue, a person’s approach to gun rights is a better predictor of how he’ll vote than anything else is.

Steve Sailer.

Tiny is a 6’6? Samoan.

But obviously a White Samoan. (Although I have to say, just from his picture, that he’s less White than Jambalaya Harris….)

Read it.

Trump is going to hammer it up their noses.

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The U.S. government has for the first time seized vessels allegedly loaded with Iranian fuel in violation of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing U.S. officials.

U.S. prosecutors filed a lawsuit last month to seize the gasoline aboard four tankers that Iran is trying to ship to Venezuela, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to increase economic pressure on the two U.S. foes.

…

The four vessels, called Luna, Pandi, Bering and Bella, were seized on the high seas in recent days and are now en route to Houston, the WSJ said https://on.wsj.com/3auMVJ2, citing the officials, adding that senior administration officials are expected to meet the tankers at an event scheduled to mark the docking.

Kamala Harris’ Record: Lawfare Against Climate Skeptics, “A Level of Indifference” to the Violation of Constitutional Rights

Baghdad heat is world’s climate change future  Washington Post.

Air pollution is much worse than we thought. Climate change is far from the only problem with fossil fuels.  Vox. Women and minorities hardest hit.

McIntyre on Kaufman et al 2020

More Solar Cyclomania

‘Abolish The United States Of America’: Radical ‘Youth Liberation Front’ Active In Portland Encourages Violence, Explicitly Rejects Peaceful Protesting

Chicago PD Launches Video Website Seeking Tips on Looters  Good luck with that.

Letters From Melbourne: A “Ghost Town Police State” Under Brutal COVID Lockdown

Pushback: California Megachurch Defies COVID Order, Brings in Thousands

San Francisco Shuts Down Homeless Hotels With Free Booze And Drugs After Meth Lab Found, Reporter Tells Tucker Carlson

Instagram blocks Kamalaharris.info in private messages

Homeless camp in Manhattan’s Chelsea district angers local business owners and residents

Police Declare Riot in Portland, Push Protesters Out

New York: ‘I Don’t Want to Leave, But I Don’t Feel Like I Have a Choice Now’

Pushback: 1,500 New York Gyms Go to Court in Bid to Reopen

Oregon Sanctuary City Demonstrators Block ICE Bus, Clash With Federal Agents

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Fandom Represents White Privilege, by Steve Sailer

Chicago Rioters Struck Ronald McDonald House While More Than 30 Families And Sick Children Slept Inside

Kamala Harris Lies Repeatedly in First Speech as Biden’s Running Mate

Kamala Harris Got Into Law School Through an Affirmative Action Program, by Steve Sailer  My, what a surprise.

Georgia shop blasted for ‘racist’ promotion that waived fee for people of color  Which it obviously is.

How Do I Tell My Friend She’s Not “African American”?

NOW Member Updates Race From White to Asian American, Runs for Board

What a Surprise: TV News Declares Kamala Criticism ‘Racist’ and ‘Sexist’

Media Ignore Kamala Harris’s Lies

The dangers of unconscious bias training

Media Bury Execution-Style Slaughter of Child in Front of Family

Leaked Docs Show US Gov Nuclear Facility Held ‘3-Day Reeducation Camps’ For White Men

Chicago Rioters Attacked Charity Building With Sick Children Inside

Creator of New York Times’ 1619 Project Changes Tune to Insist It’s Not History

Justice Department Probe Into Yale Finds Civil Rights Violations, Discrimination Against Asian American And White Applicants

Kamala Harris Blames Trump for ‘Millions of Americans’ Unemployed

Details of Bob Woodward’s New Trump Book, ‘Rage,’ Revealed

Weekly Jobless Claims Fall Below 1 Million for First Time in Pandemic  This must be the unemployment that Harris is blaming Trump for.

Obnoxious O’Donnell: No Lies From Dem Ticket, Trump ‘Lives in Fear’ of Harris  Yeah, he’s afraid he won’t be able to get a 1 MOA group.

MSNBC: Kamala Harris Will Seek Vengeance Upon ‘Ba’ath Party’ Trump Supporters

Who Stands To Benefit? Group Behind ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Plans 50-Day “White House Siege”

Read it.

Steven Donziger, the attorney with connections to the Obama and Cuomo administrations who was at the center of a massive effort to extort billions of dollars out of Chevron, has been disbarred for “corruption of a court expert and ghostwriting his report, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and judicial coercion and bribery.”

Read it.

‘Activist’ is a modern Politically Correct euphemism for Leftist Troublemaker.

Mike Forcia, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, is charged with criminal damage to property. Forcia, also a Twin Cities American Indian Movement activist, organized the June 10 American Indian Movement rally at the Capitol that resulted in the toppling of the statue, which came as many similar monuments were being pulled down worldwide after Floyd’s death in late May.

The toppling came after a State Patrol captain warned Forcia of criminal consequences and urged him to work through a Capitol planning board to remove the statue, according to the complaint.

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America has witnessed months of civil unrest in cities around America following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Many of the protesters decry income and net worth “inequality.”

But the most serious “inequality” is the unequal percentage of fathers in black households, a phenomenon that has been encouraged by government policies that normalize and reward out-of-wedlock births.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was assistant secretary of labor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, published “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” At that time, 25% of blacks were born outside of wedlock, a number that this former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, future adviser to President Richard Nixon, future U.S. ambassador, and future Democratic senator from New York, said was catastrophic to the black community.

Moynihan wrote: “A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken homes, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure—that is not only to be expected, it is very near to inevitable.”

Bethany Mandel.

On social media these days I’ve noticed a funny phenomenon: People will post pictures and videos and make claims that we know on their face are bonkers. Like “we’re enjoying this socially distanced hangout!” and the folks in the picture are inches from each other.

…

But here’s what’s annoying about these bald-faced lies: They always come from folks who spend all of their free time shaming everyone under the sun for the same kind of behavior.

Like the poor, the hypocrites we have always with us.

ZMan looks down the road.

For most people who plan to vote in the upcoming election, the choice is clear and they don’t have to think about it very much. They know their guy is the right choice and the other guy represents the end of the world as we know it. There is nothing anyone could say to them to change their mind. In fact, the number of persuadable people probably rounds to zero. The issue in this election, like most elections, is which side is able to get their partisans to vote, either in person or by mail.

Or by fraud (*cough* Democrats *cough).