Nothing to see here, move along, move along

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the city “expects a well-behaved group of protesters from a variety of viewpoints.”

Secret Service Won't Budge in Moving Security Zone Farther From GOP Convention in Milwaukee

Republicans are livid with the Secret Service who are refusing to move the perimeter of the "security zone" at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee further from the Finserv Forum.

The current "free speech zone" for the convention is in Pere Lafayette Park, a mere quarter of a mile from the convention venue. By comparison, the Democrats in Chicago have set up a free speech zone about three miles from the United Center where the convention will be held. There will also be several other "security zones" around the United Center.

Republican officials met with the Secret Service and strongly urged them to move the free speech zone further than a quarter mile from the venue. The agency refused.

The park's location sets up a gauntlet that convention delegates will have to walk through to get to the venue. While most convention gores will arrive on buses, restricting the movement of delegates and guests because of security concerns is unacceptable, say Republicans.

“We have no information that there will be unrest related to that activity,” one Secret Service official said.

In fact, Milwaukee police are claiming the real danger at the convention is from Republican delegates.

Washington Post:

At the meeting, a Milwaukee police captain also said there were concerns within the community that Republican convention attendees might “terrorize Milwaukee citizens” and “harass minorities.”

“There is fear in the community,” the Milwaukee police official said.

…. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote a letter to Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service and demanded to know why the Republican weeks-old request for a meeting with Cheatle hasn't been answered.

“I am deeply concerned about reports that the security perimeter around the Republican Convention site in Milwaukee may be creating a likely — and preventable — area of conflict between protesters and Convention attendees and delegates,” McConnell wrote in the letter. “The RNC and Convention leadership have conveyed they have made a request to meet with USSS Leadership several weeks ago and that has yet to happen. That is unacceptable and I request you personally ensure this meeting takes place next week so that these concerns are heard and adjudicated.”

The Republicans argued that if clashes occur, they would be blamed and it would distract from the convention.

“Do you watch the news?” one Republican official asked. Others cited pro-Palestinian protests on campuses that have led to arrests and some violence. [“Some”. Well, it’s the Washington Post]

Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for Milwaukee, said the city “expects a well-behaved group of protesters from a variety of viewpoints.”

Was Fleming being facetious? It makes one suspect that efforts to disrupt the GOP convention in Milwaukee would be considered regrettable by the Secret Service, the Milwaukee police, and civic leaders but roughing up a few Republicans might be justified.

Senility is not just a privilege reserved for the young

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“We demand the End the use of oil by 2030” How?

TO BE FAIR, THE TWO VANDALS ARE OLD ENOUGH TO BE AMONG THE ORIGINAL SIGNERS: Just Stop Oil Tries to Destroy Magna Carta.

The Just Stop Oil tactic of attacking priceless works of art and other artifacts is an attempt to duplicate the Taliban campaign to erase non-Muslim culture in Afghanistan. It is a tactic of cultural terrorists and, in my view, should be treated in exactly the same manner.

Victor David Hanson (2019): Waging War Against The Dead. “Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past. In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam. In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Mohammed. The West prides itself on the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.”


No man's life, liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session

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Just a few of the geniuses, including hector arzeno, who have decided for you how to run your business

As of June 1st, small businesses must grant employees one week of paid “sick leave” which can be used for any purpose; in other words, a paid vacation.


HARTFORD —  After more than seven hours of debate, majority Democrats in the state Senate late Monday night approved legislation that would phase-in mandatory paid sick days for employees of progressively smaller companies. This came despite Republican claims that it would interfere in traditional negotiations over terms of employment and make it harder to do business in Connecticut.

Workers, including part-timers, would have to accrue 120 days of employment before being eligible for paid time off, for a maximum of 40 hours off per year. There would be an hour of time off earned for every 30 hours of work. While the legislation's title includes the notion of paid sick time, in reality, Kushner, co-chairwoman of the legislative Labor & Public Employees Committee, said the days off could be for any reason, without a physician's note.

Currently, companies with 50 or more employees are required to offer paid time off based on the number of hours worked. Under the legislation, companies with as many as 25 people would have to offer time off starting next Jan. 1. The threshold would decrease to 11 workers in January, 2026, and down to one employee in 2027.

If you run a small business with, say one or two employees, who would you trust best to decide how to run that business: yourself, or Hector Arzeno, the Democrat who represents you in Hartford? Has Arzeno ever even stepped foot in your store, let alone studied your books, or observed how your business operates? The answer is almost surely “not once”, yet Arzeno will answer that he knows better than you; you may differ, but you no longer have that right.

That same Arzeno, together with his fellow Democrats, failed to get gas cars and gas or oil furnaces banned by 2035, but you can be sure that they’ll be back, and with the Governor, Greenwch’s own, Paul Bunyon firmly behind the proposal, it will probably succeed when next these morons assemble.

The Wise Latina speaks

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The Week in Pictures is up, and for some reason — I assume because they’re trending again this week — Powerline posted two old chestnuts; one is accurate, the other, though funny, is not. However, it’s the accurate quote from a sitting justice of the Supreme Court that’s significant and alarming, not an old joke about a horse race.

Fact check: False claim that Kentucky Derby winner rejected White House invite is a years old joke

Quote dates to at least 2018 

This same quote has appeared regularly after various horse races in recent years.

This time last year, USA TODAY debunked the claim when the quote began circulating on social media about the jockey for 2021 Derby winner Medina Spirit.

It appeared to originate from a 2018 joke posted on Reddit. That post in r/Jokes attributes the fabricated quote to the horse: “In breaking news, triple Crown winner Justify has turned down an invitation to White House. When asked why he answered, ‘If i wanted to see a horse’s ass, i would have finished second.”  

Since the 2018 Reddit post, a version of the quote, often including the president at the time, has appeared on social media after various other races as well. Last year, a version of the claim referenced a trip to see former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago rather than the White House.

But there's no record of this year's winner, Leon, saying any such thing after the early May race.

Cloward and Piven may have been Americans, but their plan has metastasized across the western world

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chicagoans protest their displacement by illegal aliens

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

DAVID STROM 3:20 PM | May 10, 2024

I once angered a friend by suggesting that one reason that the United States has a housing crisis is that we are importing millions of people and have no place to put them.

They were furious. It was such a xenophobic thing to say. 

Of course, I was merely pointing out that supply and demand are a thing. Even if unlimited immigration were otherwise a good thing, you can't dump millions of people into a constrained market and not expect price increases. 

… Ever since Tony Blair decided to remake Britain into a multicultural utopia, Britain has imported millions of migrants, forever changing its demographics. For instance, in 2022, Britain's net migration was 725,000, with about 2/3rds coming from outside the European Union. 

Aside from the cultural implications--all those videos of London's streets filled with antisemites protesting Israel speak volumes--are the merely practical issues, such as answering the simple question of where you put everyone. 

Building new housing in Britain is pretty difficult--think Portland or San Francisco rather than Texas or Florida and you will get the idea--and not enough is getting built to house everybody. I've written about Brits being kicked out of their homes to house migrants (yes, that is a thing), but there is a more common problem: rents are skyrocketing even faster than baseline inflation, which is a key part of why inflation is so high in Britain. 

So says the Chief Economist for the Bank of England, and he is right. Further, he says about 90% of the shortage is caused by importing more migrants than the country can house. 

…. [T]here has been a belief that immigration is good for the economy. It boosts GDP, or at least it should. 

However, a new study that was just released seems to contradict that assumption. As the percent of Britain's foreign-born population has increased, economic growth has slowed quite considerably. This may seem counterintuitive, but the statistics show it pretty plainly. 

While illegal immigration recently hit record highs in the United States, legal immigration poses a significant issue for the U.K., where legal migration levels are more than 25 times the level of illegal levels, according to a report Wednesday from the Centre for Policy Studies, a U.K. think tank and advocacy group.

The percentage of foreign-born people in the U.K. nearly doubled over two decades, with 9% of the population being foreign-born in 2001 to 17% in 2021, which is even higher than the U.S., where 14% of people are foreign-born. 

We can speculate as to why the inflow of migrants has suppressed economic growth, but the data is there. I suspect that the explanation is pretty simple: non-European migrants are undereducated and have values that are dramatically different from the average Briton's. They don't appear to integrate well, either. 

A Dutch study shows the difference is pretty stark. When measuring the net economic impact of migrants from different regions it's pretty clear that immigrants from the Anglo-Saxon and East Asian countries bring the most benefit, and those from underdeveloped countries the most cost. 

This was not an anti-immigration group that concluded this; it was the University of Amsterdam's School of Economics. 

Related:

POSTED ON MAY 8, 2024 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMMIGRATION, SWEDEN

SWEDEN SHAKEN BY CRISIS OF VIOLENCE

The Financial Times headlines: “The violent gang crisis shaking Sweden.” Spoiler alert: it all has to do with immigration.

Sweden has suffered an extraordinary spate of violence in recent months, particularly in Uppsala and its neighbour to the south, capital Stockholm. At its worst in September and October, barely a day went by without a shooting, bombing or hand grenade attack — sometimes several.

The Nordic country has gone from having one of the lowest levels of fatal shootings in Europe to one of the highest in just a decade. …

In a televised addressed at the end of September, Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, offered his diagnosis for the unprecedented violence, directly blaming “irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration”.

“I cannot over-emphasise the seriousness of the situation,” added the leader of the centre-right Moderate party. “Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like it.”

The issue has shaken the full strata of society in the Nordic country. “This is a social earthquake in Sweden,” says Jesper Brodin, chief executive of furniture giant Ikea’s retail arm and one of the country’s most high-profile business leaders.

“If this continues for the next two decades, Sweden is lost. It’s tearing us apart,” says Richard Jomshof, head of the Swedish parliament’s justice committee and an MP from far-right Sweden Democrats.

Hinderaker: "As always, ‘far right’ means ‘not crazy about mass immigration from third-world countries.’ So most people are, in fact, ‘far right,’and the Sweden Democrats are now one of Sweden’s largest parties.

Sweden currently has a rate of homicide committed with a firearm that is nearly twice that of any other EU country. That is a brand-new phenomenon, attributable entirely to Sweden’s welcoming attitude toward “refugees,” of which it has imported two million. The Financial Times article quotes Swedes who attribute the problem to a lack of assimilation of immigrants:

[T]he nearest thing to agreement across the political spectrum is that Sweden itself has not done enough to integrate its immigrant communities.

Almost all Swedish cities have at least one so-called vulnerable area, where immigrants often make up a majority of the population. Crime rates there tend to be high and schools struggle to keep students or maintain discipline.

“I don’t want to say migration is what went wrong; I would rather say integration [went wrong],” says Jens Lapidus, a criminal defence lawyer turned crime author…

Hinderker: “That is almost a tautology. But hasn’t it become obvious that some groups of people are easier to assimilate than others? And wouldn’t a sane immigration policy, such as the U.S. formerly had, prioritize immigration from countries that are culturally compatible? The answer obviously is Yes, and yet posing the question, let alone answering it, is anathema on the American Left, as on the Swedish Left. But at least in Sweden, they are having an intelligent debate.”

And this:

Joe Biden's border crisis and the 'shadow system' that makes it easier for migrants to get into the U.S.

Yet another little-known policy implemented by President Joe Biden last year allows migrants in the U.S. on parole to serve as sponsors for other parolees – and border hawks are not happy with the revelation.

While the number of migrants in the country who are only allowed in because they are being supported by other parolees is unknown, it's thought at least hundreds of thousands could be utilizing this policy.

Any migrants on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or in the U.S. on asylum claims, as well as parolees, refugees and recipients of deferred action, Deferred Enforced Departure or DACA are all able to serve as the support for other migrant parolees, according to policies implemented in January 2023. 

This creates a 'chain parolee' system where parolees are able to bring into the U.S. other parolees by promising to financially support and sponsor them.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green told DailyMail.com that the policy 'makes a mockery' of immigration laws as well as national and border security in the U.S. 

The policy is part of a push by the Biden administration to prevent former President Donald Trump from removing illegal immigrants if he gets back in the White House next year, NumbersUSA Director of Research Eric Ruark claimed in an interview with DailyMail.com 

'He's doing it in a very smart way. He knows what he's doing. This isn't incompetence. This is deliberate and willful.'

Well, the Royal Navy used the same concept and conquered the world, so maybe ….

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Rum, Buggery and the lash: San Francisco is handing out free drinks to its winos, 4X a day

The City of San Francisco is handing out bottles of beer, glasses of wine and shots of vodka to homeless alcoholics - and spending $5m a year on the program. 

The alcoholic drinks are served by nurses as part of the city's 'managed alcohol program', which has been running for four years, as a way of taking care of vulnerable homeless people. 

The program is designed to curb the amount of alcohol homeless people drink. It still allows them some, but in a more managed way, in the hope of curbing their addiction in a controlled manner. 

I know quite a few alcoholics, active and recovering, and I don’t think either group would say that 4 shots of vodka a day was (a) adequate for active alcoholics; or (b) do anything except keep the home fires burning, and spur them to go out looking for more fuel.

Then again, I’m no scientist, and can’t even grasp the San Francisco science that tells us there are 363 different sexes, so what do I know?

any port in a storm — the high life on san francisco bay

Nicely done

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When the city of Seaside, Calif., ordered resident Etienne Constable to build a fence to cover the boat parked in his driveway, he complied. But the puckish way he did it — hiring his artist neighbor to paint a realistic mural of the same exact boat on his fence — has brought him viral attention.

“We kind of hit the sweet spot between following the rules and making an elegant statement to the contrary,” says Constable.

Constable, who works in business development, has lived in the same house in Seaside for 29 years. For most of that time, his boat trailer — often with a boat attached — has sat in his driveway without issue. But in July 2023, he received a letter from the city, asserting that the municipal code requires that boats and trailers be “screened on the side and front by a six-foot-high fence,” and threatening him with a citation and a $100 fine if he failed to comply. (The Washington Post has reviewed the letter.)

Pending on (Greenwich) Shore Road

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215 Shore Road, $3.250 million, 9 days to pending status, so we can assume there were multiple bids. The listing describes it as “located in the heart of downtown” which strikes me as a tad generous; I might have said, convenient to I-95 and the municipal sewage plant, but, obviously, at least several people didn’t care who its neighbors are, and that should provide encouragement to other sellers of homes in compromised locations.

Antique on Taconic Road has sold, and at a very good price

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264 Taconic Road, built in 1848, has sold for $3,.7 million on an initial asking price of $3.9. Beautifully restored, and owned by two great people, so what a pleasing result. I had worried that the slender market for truly old houses would drive the price much lower than this, but buyers from LA’s Pacific Palisades stepped up an paid what it was worth. It’s nice when that happens.