May 16, 2024

I NEVER THOUGHT THEY WERE: Crypto-Libertarian Erik Voorhees Warns Your Chatbot Queries Are Not Safe. “In the best case that’s not that big of a deal, but in reality, what it means is – all your information – and essentially like parts of your mind like think your intellectual inquiries that you pursue – the things you think – the things you want to debate – the questions you have about life – and like big topics um can be known by Third parties.”

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Milestones on the Slippery Slope. “While you sip your coffee or eat your biscuits and gravy, let me draw your attention to a couple of stories that haven’t been on the radar this week.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

FRUITS OF CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Look Who Threatened to ‘Erase’ All White People. “A black man from New Jersey has been federally charged with threatening to mass murder white people in a genocide-scale shooting rampage. The would-be shooter wanted to “erase…all of them”—that is, eradicate the white race, according to the FBI.”

Maybe he can get a professorship at Harvard or Penn.

Posted at 8:54 am by Glenn Reynolds

BORDER? WHAT BORDER?

This is not an accident.

More here.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

ISN’T THIS INTERESTING! Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has an interesting donor in Pennsylvania who just happens to be the best buddy of Turkey’s Erdogan. Just coincidental, right? Right??

Posted at 8:27 am by Mark Tapscott

ALL OF THE MSM’S BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE QUESTIONS: You’re reading it first here … well, actually Daniel Oliver’s roundup of utterly predictable questions the MSM debate moderators will ask Biden and Trump is over at American Greatness.

Posted at 8:23 am by Mark Tapscott

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE FRENCH?

To be fair, those look like the dorm beds when I was in college, which were notably unsuccessful at preventing sex.

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ INDEED: Is this a political blockbuster-in-the-making? Latest Cygnal Battleground Survey of 1,500 Likely Voters in 39 key congressional districts finds that 55 percent of the Blacks responding consider the Democratic Party to be more extreme than the Republicans. That’s a 20 percent increase over the responses in March when the same question was posed. Cygnal also found significants shifts away from the Democrats among married and college-educated women.

 

Posted at 7:55 am by Mark Tapscott

RED ALERT:  Stewart Baker writes at the Volokh Conspiracy:  “Congress is Preparing to Restore Quotas in College Admissions … and Everywhere Else–as a Very Quiet Part of the Bipartisan ‘Privacy’ Bill.”  I haven’t had a chance to review the bill yet.  But the conservative civil rights lawyers who have had that opportunity all agree that this “bipartisan” bill will, if passed, be a disaster.  I assume the GOP staffers involved simply didn’t understand the ramifications of the “disparate impact” provisions in the bill.  But I’ll know more once I’ve read the bill myself.  In the meantime:  Dear Congress:  Please don’t pass this bill.

(Yes, I noticed Glenn posted this last evening, but it’s important enough to post again.)

 

 

Posted at 7:54 am by Gail Heriot

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Inflation Puts More Retirees at Risk of Running Out of Money: Rising prices require bigger withdrawals from retirement savings.

Retirees took more money out of their savings to keep up with rising prices, raising the risk of depleting their nest eggs.

The rise in spending since 2021 shows how pernicious inflation can be for those in or near retirement, especially since higher prices can also erode the value of the cash and fixed-income investments many plan to live on in the near future, according to a study Boston College released Wednesday.

“High inflation later in life is often harmful to retirement security,” said Laura Quinby, a senior research economist at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research and co-author of the study.

Though inflation has cooled from the 9.1% pace it set for the 12 months ended in June 2022, it remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% annual target rate. Prices rose 3.4% in April from a year earlier, according to the latest Labor Department data released Wednesday, compared with an annualized 3.5% pace in March.

Higher withdrawals are one reason Boston College projects that inflation caused a 14.2% decline in the financial wealth held by middle-income retirees between 2021 and 2025. (If rising interest rates trigger a recession, their wealth would decline 16.6%.)

Note that “inflation has cooled” just means the rate at which prices are rising has slowed. Things still cost more than they used to, and they’ll still cost more next year than they do this year. It doesn’t actually mean that things have gotten better, just that they’re getting worse more slowly.

Posted at 7:45 am by Glenn Reynolds

CONSUMERS GOT A BRIEF RESPITE FROM RISING INFLATION LAST MONTH BUT…: Wholesale prices rose 0.5% in April, more than expected. “Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the core PPI also rose 0.5% compared with the 0.2% Dow Jones estimate. Excluding trade services from that core group showed a 0.4% increase on the month and 3.1% on a 12-month basis, the highest level since April 2023.”

PPI is a leading indicator for consumer inflation.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green