Wow. Just wow.

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eBay has banned the sale of Dr. Seuss books

A spokeswoman for the website told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that it would no longer be allowing sellers to list six books that have been deemed by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company that preserves Theodor Seuss "Ted" Geisel's legacy, as containing racially insensitive imagery.

"At eBay, we have a strict policy against hate and discrimination to ensure our platform remains a safe, trusted and inclusive environment for our global community of buyers and sellers," eBay Corporate Communications Specialist Parmita Choudhury said. "We're currently sweeping our marketplace to remove these items. It can take some time to review all existing listings and provide education to impacted users. We're also monitoring the newly published list to be reviewed."

It’s funny (ha-ha): erasing Plato, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Mark Twain, even Faulkner and Harper Lee, for God’s sake, is a far more harmful attack on western civilization, but this attack on Dr. Seuss may bring home to millions of citizens what’s happening here. Most know Dr. Seuss, while they probably haven’t studied Plato since kindergarten, and the lunacy is more apparent.

UPDATE: You can, however, still buy copies of Mein Kampf. “We did look at that”, an eBay spokesman told FWIW, “and we decided that Herr Hitler would have been really, really against the existence of Israel, so that’s okay.”

It’s the great gaslighting of America: one day the author of beloved children’s books is revered, the next day he’s a horrid racist who must be erased from history and his books banned. In 24-hours! One day, Amazon would “permit” readers to buy books challenging the transgender fad, the next day the book has disappeared, forever. It’s happening with increasing frequency, and the frustrating thing is that the corporations doing this are too big for individual actions to have any effect; I could cancel my Amazon Prime and never order another product from them and their computers wouldn’t even notice.

I don’t know what to do about this, but I really don’t want to see what America looks like in five years.

Because a Panic is Too Good to Waste

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wake me up when it’s over

wake me up when it’s over

Biden Team Ordered CDC not to release new guidelines

The guidelines were scheduled to be announced today and were going to relax, a little, the shutdown advice, but the White House ordered it the “experts” to hold off.

No reason was given, but the speculation that seems most plausible is that, with the pork barrel bill still fighting its way through Congress, any suggestion that things are getting better would risk losing ‘the fierce sense of urgency” that’s enabled these petite dictators to ruin the country.

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Barbieri takes a price cut after just 3 weeks

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55 Binney Lane, from $4.995 to $4.595 million.

Joe’s a smart fellow (I taught him everything he knows, though he may dispute that), and he’s done it exactly right here. If your house hasn’t received a decent offer in three weeks, in this market, cut its price.

Of course, it might not be the price, but the use of the squashed zebra. old greenwich buyers tend to go for the traditional and expected.

Of course, it might not be the price, but the use of the squashed zebra. old greenwich buyers tend to go for the traditional and expected.

Land sale on Meadowcroft

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33 Meadowcroft Road (no link because listings are now yanked as soon as a property is reported pending), $3.7 million, slightly above its ask of $3.695.

2.55 acres in the R-2 zone, listing agent Joe Barbieri first brought it on the market in 2016 at $4.995 million but that listing expired unsold in 2018, and the exiting 1959 house was rented out (for $7,000, which gives an indication of its condition). Joe brought it back on at that same price in May 2019 and two years and several price cuts later has a buyer.

There have been quite a number of tear-down sales this past year; which should mean the next 2-3 years will be good years for builders.

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The "scandal" here is Congress' inaction and political warfare

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Pelosi’s bosom buddy, CT’s own Rosa DeLauro is now your new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Feel better?

Pelosi’s bosom buddy, CT’s own Rosa DeLauro is now your new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Feel better?

STAT is reporting that Trump took money from hospital relief funds to pay for Operation Warp Speed. Because Congress refused to fund it!

“Hospitals in need of the funding would be outraged to know that some of the money was siphoned off, even for important uses, because Congress was clear that this money was for providers and clinicians,” said Chip Kahn, CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals.

Former White House budget office director Russ Vought, one of the key officials involved in the deliberations, defended the decision. He told STAT the expenditure was necessary to support the successful development and purchase of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

“We had to draw from the Provider Relief Fund and had the authority to do so. It was the right thing to do in order to move as quickly as possible because lives were on the line. Thankfully we did. We would do it again,” Vought said in an email.

The Operation Warp Speed program was created by the Trump administration, not Congress, so officials pulled funding from existing pools of money. But by late summer last year, the Warp Speed accounts were running dry, a former senior HHS official said.

Officials didn’t want to slow down support of vaccines and therapeutics, so they scrambled to find more funds. The $175 billion fund lawmakers created to help health care providers recover from the pandemic proved a tempting target.

Politics played a role as well — the money was running out in the contentious run-up to the presidential election. Lawmakers were widely expected to pass an additional Covid-19 relief bill in July last year, but negotiations ultimately dragged out until December.

Congress gave HHS permission to move money between accounts to respond to the pandemic, but the authority came with a catch — the agency had to notify Congress, and specifically, its appropriations committees, at least 10 days in advance of a transfer. Evan Hollander, a spokesperson for House Appropriations Committee Democrats, said the Trump administration did not notify the committee of any such transfer, and did not request additional funding for Operation Warp Speed.

“It is unfortunate the Trump administration preferred to divert billions of dollars from the Provider Relief Fund instead of submitting a request to Congress for the necessary funds,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in a written statement.

Criminals — De Lauro among them