May 16, 2024

YOU DO REALIZE THAT HAMBURGERS WERE INVENTED IN GERMANY, AND ARE NAMED FOR A GERMAN CITY, RIGHT? Teaching my White Boyfriend to eat “Ethnic Food.” “When you are eating a burger in Germany, you are not eating a burger, you are fully cognizant of the fact you’re eating a bun stacked on lettuce stacked on a beef patty.”

Eating a burger when you’re not from Germany is literally cultural appropriation. Stay in your lane, bigot!

Posted at 12:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PUT NOT THY FAITH IN JUDGES: In an awful 7-2 decision today, the Supreme Court failed to uphold one of the most important constraints on executive power and okayed the bizarre funding mechanism of the CFPB (it gets its money on request from the Federal Reserve.) As I said in response, “Sadly, the Court has given the green light to Congress to abrogate its own power of the purse. We can expect future Congresses to come up with ever more inventive ways to allow the executive branch to fund its whims. The only hope for responsible government is for Congress to rediscover its own prerogatives and repeal unusual funding mechanisms for executive agencies that exercise more power over American citizens than the Post Office – starting with the CFPB.” Justices Alito and Gorsuch got the point exactly right in their dissent – there’s a reason England had a Civil War over this question.

Posted at 11:58 am by Iain Murray

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA:

Refinery capacity is already tight.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

BAILOUT NATION: China considers local government purchases of unsold homes.

China’s property sector has been in a deep slump for years, hit by a debt crisis among developers. Since 2022, waves of policy measures have failed to turn around the sector that represents around a fifth of the economy and remains a major drag on consumer spending and confidence.

Banks have been reluctant to heed Beijing’s repeated nudges to bolster credit to the embattled sector given the risks of more bad loans and continued weak sales. Home sales value of top 100 developers in April slid 45% from a year earlier, according to recent surveys published by CRIC, a major real estate information provider.

The Politburo of the Communist Party held a meeting on April 30, saying it would improve policies to clear mounting housing inventories.

Dozens of cities have offered subsidies to encourage residents to replace their old apartments with new ones, in order to sell their growing stock of new apartments and provide crucial cash-flow to ailing developers.

Local state-owned enterprises would be asked to help purchase unsold homes from distressed developers at steep discounts using loans provided by state banks, according to the report, adding that many of these homes would then be converted into affordable housing.

China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) are already models of Communist inefficiency and overloaded with existing debt, so I’m not sure how this is going to work.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

LINCOLN BROWN: Colorado Town Tries to Shutter Church Homeless Ministry. “For Dys and the First Liberty Institute, the issue is about more than governmental overreach and a case of NIMBY. It is about the First Amendment. Dys told me that Castle Rock is attempting to force The Rock to cease and desist from pursuing its core mission. He added that the First Amendment means something and cannot be dismissed when a municipality says, ‘Because I said so.'”

Posted at 10:10 am by Stephen Green

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