What is most encouraging about the near-guaranteed success of the upcoming implementation of communism/socialism, i.e., it being done right? The cast of characters:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14): Armed with an overpriced Boston University international relations degree, her pre-political résumé boils down to slinging cocktails and a pathetic home-based children’s book startup that died instantly.
Rashida Tlaib (MI-12): Textbook career grifter who leveraged her law degree into instant taxpayer-funded state gigs and cozy progressive nonprofit sinecures.
Ilhan Omar (MN-05): Glided from a political science degree straight into municipal nutrition busywork and policy aide handouts—a lifelong parasite on government institutions. Though, to her credit, she prepped for her Feeding Our Future fraud by having a background in nutrition.
Ayanna Pressley (MA-07): Dropped out of college to latch onto congressional staff gigs and city council, scoring a flawless lifetime on the government teat with zero private-sector contamination.
Greg Casar (TX-35): Vaulted from elite campus activism into a decade of cushy municipal/federal paychecks, utterly unburdened by anything resembling private-sector reality.
Summer Lee (PA-12): Weaponized her law degree exclusively for pro-protest organizing and activist directing before sliding into legislative luxury.
The publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, however, was a wholly unexpected blow. No one was ready for the obscene horror and grotesque scale of what Solzhenitsyn called “Our Sewage Disposal System”—in which tens of millions were shipped in boxcars to concentration camps all over the country, in which tens of millions died, in which entire races and national groups were liquidated, insofar as they had existed in the Soviet Union. Moreover, said Solzhenitsyn, the system had not begun with Stalin but with Lenin, who had immediately exterminated non-Bolshevik opponents of the old regime and especially the student factions. It was impossible any longer to distinguish the Communist liquidation apparatus from the Nazi.
Yet Solzhenitsyn went still further. He said that not only Stalinism, not only Leninism, not only Communism — but socialism itself led to the concentration camps; and not only socialism, but Marxism; and not only Marxism but any ideology that sought to reorganize morality on an a priori basis. Sadder still, it was impossible to say that Soviet socialism was not “real socialism.” On the contrary — it was socialism done by experts!
Concurrently, IngSoc was not having much luck in Old Blighty in the 1970s. But I’m sure the current crop of DemSoc wiz kids will get it right this time around.
This sign at an Oregon theatre is objectively untrue.
We don't have exact points in history for either, but the Odyssey was written around 700 BCE, and the earliest mention of Israel came in 1213 BCE, with Jews undoubtedly having been around a lot longer before then.
A Lake Oswego [Oregon] movie theater known for provocative marquee messages drew rebukes from members of the Jewish community this week after its latest sign compared Jewish history to “The Odyssey,” the ancient Greek epic that inspired Christopher Nolan’s newest movie.
The marquee for the Lake Theater & Cafe in downtown Lake Oswego read, “Before there were the Jews, there was The Odyssey,” ahead of the film’s highly anticipated release Friday.
The message was removed from one side of the marquee on Thursday but remains on the other side, according to local residents who saw it Friday.
The foremost criticisms of the marquee missive included that the statement was incorrect – and that it might spark antisemitic acts, such as the death threat scrawled on Northwest Portland’s Congregation Beth Israel building in 2022.
“It’s historically inaccurate. That’s the first piece,” said Rabbi Eve Posen of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Southwest Portland. “It’s a movie that doesn’t need much to get people to come see it, so why the theater would make this decision knowing that it’s historically inaccurate makes no sense.”
Historians generally date “The Odyssey” to the eighth or seventh century B.C.E., while the Jewish people predate that period by centuries.
Posen said she began receiving complaints Wednesday morning from congregants who were offended by the message. Others in the community also were outraged by the theater’s message.
In an email to the theater, West Linn resident Abby Farber wrote: “I think your marquee advertising ‘The Odyssey’ contains an inappropriate reference to Jews. If it’s an attempt at humor, it falls flat. Moreover, in this era of rising antisemitism, I think it’s also highly distasteful to everyone who is a fair-minded person.”
Farber continued: “What do Jews have to do with this piece of fictional art? Why bring up a religion? Definitely not funny.”
Marla-Svenja Liebich – who was born a man and named “Sven” before registering as a woman – was extradited on Wednesday from the Czech Republic to a prison in Chemnitz, Saxony.
The German far-Right provocateur, who has been photographed at rallies in a Nazi-style uniform, disappeared last August.
He had failed to attend a different women’s prison to serve a one-and-a-half-year jail sentence imposed in 2023…
The following year, while appealing against the sentence, the 55-year-old registered as a woman, exploiting a reform that made it easier to change legal gender.
His “transition” was widely seen as intended to mock the self-determination act…The reforms introduced by [Germany’s] centrist coalition simplified the process of changing a person’s name and gender on official documents.
Liebich, who now appears in public wearing women’s clothing and a moustache, claimed the gender change and request to serve the sentence in a female prison were in order to avoid “discrimination” from male inmates.
A male neo-Nazi was sent to a woman’s prison in Germany? Kamerad, you have no idea were a Nazi-curious politician almost went in America:
First it was spray paint. Then eye drops. Now, even ground beef is under lock and key.
A San Jose Walmart has reportedly taken anti-theft measures to a new level, placing pricey cuts of beef and even packages of ground meat inside metal security cages to keep would-be shoplifters at bay.
Influencer Tony Bartleson — better known online as “Meatdad” — posted a video from inside the California store showing rib-eye steaks and ground beef wrapped in wire security devices.
Holding up a cowboy rib-eye priced at nearly $16 a pound, Bartleson quipped: “Welcome to California.”
The video also showed a three-pound package of ground beef locked inside its own metal cage. The clip has racked up more than 3.8 million views.
Bartleson said he was stunned by the response.
“Seeing basic food items locked behind cages is sad,” Bartleson said in a statement to The Sun.
“My hope is that we can get to a point where measures like this aren’t necessary anymore—where people don’t have to steal just to eat, stores don’t have to lock up food, and everyone has reliable access to the necessities they need.”
“I think most of us want to live in a world where people can put food on the table with dignity, and I hope we continue moving in that direction,” he added.
It’s not so much the wire around the meat, as the anti-theft tag attached to it, which trigger the store’s alarm if someone tries to tamper with it, or shoplift it.
Mr. “Meatdad” was quoted above saying, “I think most of us want to live in a world where people can put food on the table with dignity, and I hope we continue moving in that direction.” No, thanks to leftists in Sacramento, California is moving away from that direction. In December of 2022, Virginia Postrel wrote in the Wall Street Journal:What Shopping Did for American Equality.
The urban palaces of early department stores, the climate-controlled corridors of suburban malls, the endlessly scrolling pages of Etsy, the utilitarian aisles of Walmart and the chatty reveals of haul videos aren’t merely sites of envy or exchange. They’re places where Americans—both buyers and sellers—work out who we are and who we want to be. Since the mid-19th century, modern retailing has tested the practical meaning of equality and freedom.
When A.T. Stewart opened his multistory dry goods store in 1846, the Manhattan merchant introduced two revolutionary practices that we now take for granted. He let anyone come and browse freely, whether or not intending to buy, and he charged every customer the same price. Both policies changed the everyday meaning of social equality.
At Stewart’s, wrote a journalist in 1871, “you may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.” The store and its many emulators established a new social norm. Any well-behaved patron, regardless of class or ethnicity, could freely examine the merchandise without being pestered or pressured to leave.
Unfortunately, there are less and less “well-behaved patrons” and more and more looking to fleece businesses – sometimes on an industrial scale – and thus more and more goods enclosed in cases and security tags.
The reason Nixon is important for the right,” said Christopher Rufo, a conservative culture warrior who has advised Trump on dismantling the modern administrative state, “is that America has been essentially stuck in the year 1968.”
The progressive ideas that animated Nixon’s enemies now motivate the opposition to Trump, Rufo said, setting the stage for what he described as “a counter revolution.”The first step in that rebellion for the right, he said, was for conservatives to recapture the memory of their own heroes: “It is a way for conservatives to regain their self-confidence, and to reject delegating their self-perception to the left.”The White House welcomes the comparison between the two presidents.“President Nixon exposed the treachery of the Deep State and Fake News media,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.“Decades later, President Trump has consistently, and successfully, fought against these same entrenched interests for the American people and put our country first every single day.”Nick Solheim, 29, began to notice an uptick in discussions about Nixon during the Biden administration.“I see this argument among young people going through our programs all the time about whether Nixon was all great or all bad,” said the CEO of American Moment, a conservative organisation dedicated to training right-of-centre policy staffers.“I’d say the consensus is a little bit of both.”Peyton Mikolayek, 19, regularly shows off her large collection of pins, posters, and other Nixon memorabilia to her nearly 500,000 followers on TikTok.“I get a lot of strange old men in my DMs,” said the rising junior at Johns Hopkins University, who said she leans liberal.“Maybe it’s just because I’m Gen Z, but there’s this certain emotional distance from his presidency,” Mikolayek said in explaining her interest in Nixon.Asking her about Watergate, she said, “is almost like asking someone what they think of the Teapot Dome scandal.”Mikolayek said she prefers a more complete picture of Nixon that includes the lows of Watergate, but also the highs of his accomplishments such as changing the voting age and Title IX.At the Nixon Library, Vance compared Nixon’s 1972 win to Trump’s latest victory, arguing that the coalitions that returned both Trump and Nixon to the White House were broadbased and more durable than the one that made Ronald Reagan president.
“Reagan could not have won his landslide in 2024,” Vance said because of national demographic change, before adding “Richard Nixon maybe could have.”
Both the right impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998 and the left impeaching Trump twice during his first term (and they’ll catch another case of impeachment fever if they win one or both houses of Congress in November), have made Watergate look far less tectonic than when it was sold to the American public by the DNC-MSM in the 1970s. As Glenn has written, “Recent Events Have Made Me Doubt the Entire Watergate Story:” Nixon’s Revenge.
Your tax dollars are now subsidizing illegal food carts while 100 legitimate restaurants go out of business every year in LA. We live in a cuckoo clock.
Are they gonna give restaurants free stoves, too? Or is this only for people who violate all the rules and pay no fees? pic.twitter.com/Cw6ovUXeFw
In one of the books I wrote, I outlined a scenario.
I used to come here via Forest Lawn Drive, which is a long stretch of road that runs along the cemetery. It’s kind of long—you guys may know it—and it doesn’t have cross streets or anything like that. So people tend to speed on Forest Lawn Drive because it’s just long, and there’s rarely any traffic on it. People in L.A., when there’s no traffic, think, “All right, let’s make up a little of this time.”
So the scenario is this: I would drive down Forest Lawn Drive and see, on one side of the road, a motorcycle cop who would back his bike up a driveway in a shaded, wooded area near the Jewish cemetery next to Forest Lawn. He’d be back there with his radar gun out, waiting for citizens to speed. I’d see him pull over soccer moms in minivans because, inevitably, they’re going 57 in a 45, and they get pulled over. Okay, fine.
On the other side of Forest Lawn Drive were many illegal immigrants selling flowers that they’d bought downtown to resell without a business license or any other form of regulation—just cash and carry. On the other side of the street, a bunch of people were selling flowers to those visiting their dead nana in a mausoleum.
The City of Los Angeles—and, in general, California—is this way: it has no interest in the illegal activity happening on one side of the street. That’s people engaging in illegal behavior.
Now, there’s a florist up the street, and that person has to carry all kinds of insurance, pay all kinds of taxes, worry about being sued by an employee for wrongful termination, deal with OSHA, and so on. There will be very vigorous compliance enforcement for the taxpayer, and it’ll be very vigorous for the soccer mom. But for the illegal vendor? No problemo.
If you go to SoFi Stadium, you can buy shots of tequila outside the stadium while illegal vendors sell you Tecate beer and “ghetto dogs” right next to cops who are doing security.
The city has declared a war on taxpayers and regulated them to death. But if you’d like to sell food illegally, you can pop up on any corner and do whatever you want. They walk right past those people. They never shut them down, and they never send them a summons.
The city council agrees with this. They agree that you should be regulated out of business and taxed out of business. But if you want to create a street black market where you sell food, you can do it.
By the way, every time you send a health inspector over to my business, you’re doing it under the guise of safety. Except you don’t seem to have a problem with people cooking whatever food they want on a sidewalk and selling it to people. No thoughts.
Once cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles do this—once you essentially look the other way for the homeless, junkies, illegal immigrants, criminals, or whoever it is, while shining a spotlight on taxpayers with overregulation, over-permitting, and trying to manage every grain of their lives, versus saying to illegal immigrants, “Go do whatever you want,” or to the homeless, “Go shoot up wherever you want or sleep wherever you want”—then you’ve lost it.
L.A.’s there. San Francisco’s there.
Look, if you’re not a taxpayer and you don’t have a checking account, whatever city you’re in, they’re not going to be nearly as interested in you as they are in the people who have a checking account, pay taxes, and can be compliant.
Basically, the compliant people are paying them. So it’s like, okay, who do you make money on? When you’re running a city and you need to keep the lights on, who do you go to?
Well, I’d go to Mark Geragos or Adam Carolla because those guys have businesses. We can charge them for permits. We can charge them taxes—land taxes, business taxes, whatever.
Okay, what about the homeless guy with a load of shit in his pants over there? Well, that guy costs us money. He doesn’t have anything. He costs us money because we’d have to take him somewhere, incarcerate him, process him, put him in housing, or something like that.
So that guy costs us money. These guys make us money.
Then they go, “Well, why don’t we focus full-time on these guys because they make us money, whereas the illegal immigrants, the homeless, and the junkies cost us money?”
You go, “Okay, well, that sounds like a plan.”
But you focus too hard on these guys. Those other groups start flourishing in terms of numbers, and then these guys say, “Fuck it. I’m moving to Nashville because I’m tired of you being up my ass if you’re not going to do anything about these guys. I’m running a business, these guys are camping in front of my business, and you want me to pay taxes on my business, but you won’t do anything about them.”
And when that starts, that’s the beginning of the end of a society.
The Brits call it “managed decline,” but for L.A., it’s a rapid descent into anarchy.
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