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When Luigi Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania, I had a look at his social media account and was struck that it did not appear to be what I expected. On the contrary, he seemed to be something of a moderate.

Luigi Mangione was tweeting Jonathan Haidt, Tim Urban, Thiel, pro-nuclear content, complaining about DEI.

HIs politics seem moderate and sensible.

Maybe the CEO guy just stole his girlfriend? She left him because he was wasting his time on AI safety instead of making money. pic.twitter.com/DspLG2LFsG

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) December 9, 2024

Of course it’s not as simple as that. Mangione had also written a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto in which he seemed to endorse political violence. But his most glowing review on GoodReads was reserved for a book by author Tim Urban. Urban’s most recent book is titled “What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies.” Here’s a bit of the blurb for it.

What’s Our Problem? is a deep and expansive analysis of our modern times, in the classic style of Wait But Why, packed with original concepts, sticky metaphors, and 300 drawings. The book provides an entirely new framework and language for thinking and talking about today’s complex world. Instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis, which is all about what we think, the book introduces a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups.

Mangione read the book and was a huge fan.

I believe this book will go down in history as the most important philosophical text of the early 21st century https://t.co/Ez189GgLm4

— Luigi Mangione (@PepMangione) January 24, 2024

Today the NY Times published an interview with Urban asking him what it was like to have such a big fan commit such a notorious murder.

Tim Urban: Honestly, confusion and sadness. Confusion about how someone who really likes my stuff could also be a person who does this.

If I imagine the Venn diagram circles of “people who not only like my stuff but evangelize about it” and “those who not just support political assassination but do it themselves” … if he is in fact guilty, he might be the only person in the overlap. And what that tells me is that, most likely, he had a really bad mental health break of some kind.

It’s not clear what happened to Mangione but we do know that he disappeared off the radar weeks before the shooting. His mother had even made a missing person’s report to the police. There are also reports that he had back surgery which left him in constant pain, though UnitedHealth was not his insurance company.

But there was a surprise midway through the interview. It turns out that Mangione had written to Urban before the murder to praise him for the book and one particular quote that he loved. But Urban noticed that he got the quote wrong.

He emailed me personally. …

What did he say?

He said he’s a big fan of the blog. He’s been reading it since early high school, and then he was specifically saying he really liked one line. He said, “I think it is the most poignant line I have ever read from you.” But what’s really interesting is that he seems to have misremembered the line. He remembered it as “A high-level thinker sees a foggy world through clear eyes, while a low-level thinker sees a clear world through foggy eyes.” In fact, what I’d written at the time was: “The scientist’s clear vision shows them a complex, foggy world, the Attorney’s foggy vision shows them a world that’s straightforward, full of crisp lines and black-and-white distinctions.”

Clearly, Mangione saw himself as the “high-level thinker” who saw the world clearly. He was smart, top of his prep school class and went to an Ivy League school. And his manifesto ended with a reference to himself seeing things as they are: “Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.” But as Urban points out, he seems to have not only botched the quote but misunderstood it.

On one hand, I could see how someone would read this and become convinced that they had a special ability to see the world with clarity. But when I read the line again, I get confused. Because the message is that the cleareyed person sees the true complexity and messiness of reality. For someone seeing things that way, it would be apparent that Brian Thompson is a human being who had kids, and his kids are going to, for the rest of their life, be kids whose dad died at a young age. When you think of him in those terms, as a three-dimensional human being, you don’t assassinate him. To assassinate him you have to dehumanize him, and call him a monster and a cockroach and a burden on society — which is the simplified worldview of the foggy thinker in the quote.

Political murder is the act of someone who believes the lines are simple. He was convinced he was on the right side of history and that’s all that mattered. But clearer vision would have shown him a world with more nuance, not only about Brian Thompson but about alternative health care arrangements like single-payer. Those systems are not without their own significant trade-offs. Mangione skipped over all of that and became a street thug with a cause.

This is one of the things that happens when you dehumanize your enemies and think in black and white, a murder can just become … whatever. Or that’s just a chess move for our side.

That’s what all of the leftist currently tweeting #FreeLuigi believe. They aren’t clear thinkers either, though I’d bet most of them also see themselves that way.

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Has anyone ever delivered a worse sales pitch at a worse time? The House finally dropped its 1500-page continuing resolution to kick the budget can down the road to March, and critics have already dug out weird and costly tidbits that apparently intend to grease its skids toward passage. 

House Speaker Mike Johson wants to whip House Republicans into backing this CR in order to avoid a government shutdown. The last thing he needed was for Senate Democrats’ #2 in leadership to start promoting the pay raise buried in the bill — and to pick a fight with CNN’s Manu Raju over whether members of Congress deserve increases more than reporters. And yet here we are:

NEW: Number 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin has no clue what’s in the funding bill, is pleased to find out he’s getting a pay raise.

No wonder why our country is $36T in debt.

Durbin got offended after CNN’s Manu Raju asked if lawmakers deserved a pay raise considering all the… pic.twitter.com/GeXBWyuFQQ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 18, 2024

MANU RAJU: The members are giving themselves a pay raise. Do you guys deserve a pay raise?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well, that’s news to me. It’s good news! (LAUGHTER) You know, what is it been ten years or 14 years and no COLA? No change at all. I think it’s about time something’s done.

MANU RAJU: You support giving yourselves a pay raise.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Well I don’t know what it is. How would I not know about a pay raise–?

MANU RAJU: But I mean, people look at the performance of Congress, say, why should we give them more money?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: What about the media? Think about that for a second.

MANU RAJU: We’re not paid by public money.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I know you’re not. But I mean, half of your listeners are not there anymore. You’re still getting the same paycheck? What’s going on?

MANU RAJU: Well, I mean, you’re taxpayer money, I mean, do you guys deserve a raise?

Let the record note that members of Congress get paid $174,000 a year — and usually only work 37 weeks in DC. They have almost no prohibition on owning their own businesses at the same time, within the bounds of conflicts of interest. Most of them are wealthy, either before coming to Congress or (ahem) become so while serving. They have opportunities to generate income through speaker’s fees and books, not to mention opportunities for seven-figure salaries after they leave public office via lobbying. 

Besides, their compensation already puts them far above that of their constituents. Their base salary for Congress is roughly three times that of the mean household income for Americans, and their pension system guarantees them a comfortable retirement after just serving ten years. Those households just had their own buying power and retirement funds eroded significantly over the last four years thanks to inflation, caused in large part to bills that Durbin himself pushed, and now Durbin wants the 6.6% bump that would result from this language, also the kind of raise that private-sector workers rarely get even in good years.

This is a hell of a moment to plead poverty.

Furthermore, Durbin’s decision to pick a fight over media salaries isn’t just an apples-to-oranges issue, it’s flat-out wrong. Not to defend the media, but as Raju points out, media orgs don’t make payroll by taxing Americans. This may also be news to Durbin, but the media industry has cut thousands of jobs this year alone, as Aaron Blake reminds him:

I would just submit that plenty of journalists *have* actually seen their wages reduced because people don’t consume our product.

Their salaries were reduced to $0. https://t.co/mrJwJtfkBz

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 18, 2024

Durbin makes himself look like an inhabitant of Panem in The Hunger Games with this argument. 

No one’s buying the idea that he didn’t know about the pay raise, either. House negotiators would have to be including Senate leadership on this package in order to ensure its quick adoption on the abbreviated timeline that the current CR expiration is imposing on the process. It would be especially important to have Senate Democrats dialed in on the bill, since they control the floor for the next two-plus weeks. Are we to believe that Durbin’s out of the loop on the last legislative action that he and Chuck Schumer can control? Come on, man. 

Not that the rest of the CR looks much better. Punchbowl News has a decent overview of the details, including the process used to attempt to pass the bill, and Johnson has some ‘splainin to do. And he’ll need a lot of Democrats to bail him out because of that process, too:

The speaker did a temperature check Tuesday with hardliners on the Rules Committee — GOP Reps. Chip Roy (Texas), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — to see whether they’d support a rule for the CR.

But the trio indicated they have a host of demands they’d need in exchange for doing so: adherence to the 72-hour rule for considering legislation, as well as votes on spending offsets and language restricting the sell-off of border wall materials.

Johnson hasn’t agreed to these conditions. So unless something dramatically changes, he’ll have no other choice but to bring the CR up under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. A floor vote has yet to be scheduled, but the general consensus is that the House will take it up on Thursday. That leaves the Senate just one day to clear the measure before Friday’s midnight deadline.

That has Republicans seeing red, ominously including the fellows of DOGE:

This bill should not pass https://t.co/eccQ6COZJ4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

And this has Republicans rethinking Johnson’s position in the next session of Congress, at least provisionally:

House GOP critics of how Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is handling government funding talks are already beginning to float names of possible challengers, people told Fox News Digital.

Two GOP lawmakers told Fox News Digital that House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., were all mentioned in early talks about alternatives.

 This is where the disappointing House results from last month’s election come into play. Johnson has a tiny margin of error on any potential controversial floor vote, and any dissatisfaction would give rise to a challenge on the Speaker vote. Loading up the CR with this kind of pork is precisely what conservatives didn’t want; they wanted to put off these issues for next session’s House and a more rational regular-order process. Why cave to Senate Democrats now rather than wait for GOP control of the upper chamber? Pass a clean CR, force Chuck Schumer to eat it in the final days of Democrat control, and let Schumer own the consequences. 

Stand by for more developments on this CR as its provisions emerge. And let’s see just how anxious Democrats will be to rescue Johnson once the proverbial effluvium hits the proverbial fan, especially with Dick Durbin’s sales pitch ringing in the ears of voters. 

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Given how relentlessly left-wing the Washington Post is (and always has been) it’s always a surprise when the editorial board publishes something reasonable and moderate. On Sunday, the board published a piece about the Supreme Court’s review of a Tennessee ban on gender affirming care and basically agreed that the state is right to be skeptical at this point.

Multiple European health authorities have reviewed the available evidence and concluded that it was “very low certainty,” “lacking” and “limited by methodological weaknesses.” Last week, Britain banned the use of puberty blockers indefinitely due to safety concerns.

“Children’s healthcare must always be evidence-led,” British Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said in a press release. “The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”

In short, health authorities outside the US are walking back their commitment to gender affirming care for minors because the evidence supporting this approach is lacking. And this brings us to the Dutch protocol which was really the foundation backing up gender affirming care. It was a very small study with no control group.

Early studies from a Dutch clinic seemed to show promising results, but the research started with only 70 patients (dropping to 55 in a follow-up study) and no control group. Treatment results that look impressive in small groups often vanish when larger groups are studied.

A British study attempting to replicate the Dutch researchers’ success with puberty blockers “identified no changes in psychological function” among those treated.

Best of all, the Post doesn’t shy away from the elephant in the room, i.e. the ideologically motivated doctors who seem to be hiding research that contradicts their views.

The British lackluster results were published nine years after the study began, after Britain’s High Court ruled that children younger than 16 were unlikely to be able to form informed consent to such treatments. Internal communications from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health suggest that the group tried to interfere with a review commissioned from a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, told the New York Times that a government-funded study of puberty blockers she helped conduct, which started in 2015, had not found mental health improvements, and those results hadn’t been published because more time was needed to ensure the research wouldn’t be “weaponized.” Medical progress is impossible unless null or negative results are published as promptly as positive ones.

I wrote about Johanna Olson-Kennedy here and here. She admits to sitting on the results of her own study because they didn’t show what she wanted them to show. She is also being sued by a detransitioner who claims (with evidence) that Olson-Kennedy pushed her toward medicalization after a single meeting. By age 13 she was on testosterone and by age 14 she had a double mastectomy.

The story about WPATH’s meddling in Johns Hopkins research is also revealing. 

From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins team’s work. In December 2017, for example, Donna Kelly, an executive director at WPATH, told Karen Robinson, the EPC’s director, that the WPATH board felt the EPC researchers “cannot publish their findings independently”. A couple of weeks later, Ms Kelly emphasised that, “the [WPATH] board wants it to be clear that the data cannot be used without WPATH approval”…

in May 2018 Ms Robinson signed a contract granting WPATH power to review and offer feedback on her team’s work, but not to meddle in any substantive way. After wpath leaders saw two manuscripts submitted for review in July 2020, however, the parties’ disagreements flared up again. In August the WPATH executive committee wrote to Ms Robinson that WPATH had “many concerns” about these papers, and that it was implementing a new policy in which WPATH would have authority to influence the EPC team’s output—including the power to nip papers in the bud on the basis of their conclusions.

The Hopkins team published only one paper after WPATH implemented its new policy: a 2021 meta-analysis on the effects of hormone therapy on transgender people. Among the recently released court documents is a WPATH checklist confirming that an individual from WPATH was involved “in the design, drafting of the article and final approval of [that] article”. (The article itself explicitly claims the opposite.) Now, more than six years after signing the agreement, the EPC team does not appear to have published anything else, despite having provided WPATH with the material for six systematic reviews, according to the documents.

Simply put, this is not how science works. You don’t cancel studies that don’t show what you hoped they would. WPATH is acting as an advocacy group and shouldn’t be trusted. The Post editorial board concludes there is no substitute for quality medical research in deciding how to approach these issues and clearly until we have that research there is room for states to act to protect minors.

Also today, the Post has introduced an entirely new commenting system which looks a lot like the much superior one used by the NY Times. Already, the results are improved. Here’s the top (most upvoted) comment.

Far too often, usually in comments sections, people attribute using caution regarding treating trans youths as being just a “Republican/Christo” plot.

Completely ignoring the fact that caution is the view of many scientists, most of whom are liberals.

I have a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt. Until I retired I was a professor of psychology and had an active therapy and consulting practice. I have read the research, a lot of it.

I retired 20 years ago. If, before I retired, a parent brought their child to me for help with this issue this is the approach I would have taken: If the child had been displaying signs of gender confusion since he was a toddler then that suggests a quite different approach from the current situation of girls identifying as trans when they reach adolescence. We have known about this small group of trans children (usually boys) for decades. The latter is a new phenomenon.

I would NOT recommend to parents a clinic where trans surgeries are done. Those folks have a financial interest in operating contrary to the research. And are not unbiased.

I would recommend this: That the parents and perhaps the child spend several months with me reading the Cass Report, which is the most complete and thorough and sensitive approach to the issue that exists. But it is long, and would be difficult for someone not trained in research to follow. In other words, my job would be to provide all parties the BEST information science has to offer, so their decisions would be ones they had the best chance of living with in the long run.

When you read criticisms of the Cass Report, ask those criticizing it whether they have a financial stake in providing treatment in any way. Or whether they belong to or adhere to any trans advocacy groups It is the epitome of good science.

This is a big improvement on the usual garbage that infests the Post’s comment section.

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The culture may be healing, but the Pravda Media is so committed to The Narrative that they keep pushing out the same old s**t that destroyed their credibility in the first place. 

I suppose that is good, in a way. The further down this path they go, the more insane they look. 

pic.twitter.com/Gh2GXWty1F

— Andreas Koureas FRAS FRSA 🇬🇧🎗️ (@AndreasKoureas_) December 18, 2024

The latest bit of insanity–no doubt funded by the pay-for-play climate coverage grant that ensures that the Associate Press keeps pumping out climate change propaganda day and night–is this profile of Kamala Harris’ favorite drag queen, Pattie Gonia.

Patti, you see, is on a mission to save the earth by looking fabulous while spouting nonsense. 

@pattiegonia all parks are gay now, those are the rules. #pride #yosemite #queer ♬ original sound – pattiegonia

And the Associated Press is convinced enough that Pattie Gonia will help save the world that they devote a profile including a lot of video time to ensuring that the world follows his efforts to save humanity–at least save humanity until civilization collapses from cultural rot. 

@pattiegonia so…what is queer nature to you? 🌈#queer #nature #lgbtq #drag #queernature #dragqueen #queernessinnature ♬ original sound – pattiegonia

Pattie is now touring to bring his message of Queer environmentalism to the world, and I gather that this is supposed to be inspiring a new generation of degenerates to love Gaia and fight the heteronormative racist sexist homophobic capitalist pigs who are destroying Mother Nature. 

NEW YORK (AP) — Dressed in a sequin-laced, sleeveless top and puffy pink skirt, drag queen Pattie Gonia strides around the stage in white high-heeled boots that come up to the knees, telling the crowd that nature must be a woman.

“She is trying to kill us in the most passive-aggressive way possible,” joked Gonia, lip-syncing audio from a routine by comedian Michelle Wolf. “It’s not some sort of immediate fire or flood or a cool explosion. She’s just like, ‘What? I raised the temperature a little.’”

“Are you uncomfortable?” continued Gonia, who has a neatly trimmed mustache, long black eyelashes and a wig of long and flowing red hair. “Maybe I wouldn’t have (raised the temperature) if you had taken out the recycling, like I asked!

Indeedy. Recycling rates–recycling, outside of perhaps aluminum and a few other products, is actually worthless and occasionally destruct–will undoubtedly rise because the people drawn to Pattie Gonia were indifferent to these issues prior to his Queer lectures. 

Un-huh. Got it. 

The show aims to inspire the audience to talk about climate change, caused by the burning of fuels like gasoline and coal, while making people laugh. The show combines disparate things to create absurdities, such as changing the lyrics of Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” song to, “Baby, you are a plastic bag,” while Gonia pulls plastic bags from her breasts. While drag queens and drag kings enact scenes that could be interpreted as metaphors for harming or preserving the Earth, like crashing a car or riding a bike, somber statistics flash on the screen, like 20 large corporations are responsible for a large portion of all the greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere and heating the planet.

I am well beyond caring that Pattie Gonia is out there doing his thing–drag queens are a dime a dozen, and climate change nutters are ten times as common. As long as I am not paying for this insanity (and, for the moment, we can be sure that tax dollars are getting funneled into this stupidity), I have no problem with Pattie being Pattie. I’m sure it is a good living, and Pattie seems to have a half-life longer than Dylan Mulvaney when it comes to keeping the grift going. 

No, my focus is on the degeneracy of the Associated Press and the fact that they are so corrupted by the money being dished out to them in order to cover such drivel that they have given up on providing hard news. 

What we get is climate and Alphabet propaganda. 

“Save Her!” is part of a larger trend of art and popular culture that increasingly wrestles with climate change. Around the world, there are numerous art exhibitions, interactive museum displays and movies that recount environmental degradation, Indigenous peoples’ stewardship of land, forced migration and numerous other issues related to climate change. It’s a far cry from two decades ago, when environmentalist and author Bill McKibben wrote in an op-ed for Grist that art was crucial to combat climate change.

“Where are the books? The poems? The plays?” wrote McKibben.

Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group, which organizes New York’s Climate Week, said the annual gathering has morphed from its start in 2011, when it was largely focused on climate as a business issue, to one that now includes hundreds of varied events, including poetry readings, plays and art exhibitions.

“The creative industries are really important for anything where you’re trying to connect with people, bring the subject alive,” said Clarkson. “What I don’t want is anyone to ever be like, ‘Do you end up with hope or do you end up with despair?’”

This is why the Pravda Media is losing its audience. As it focuses on the niche issues that matter only to the transnational elite, the rest of us are finally moving on to fixing the world in ways that matter to people. 

I could point out that if Pattie Gonia really listened to Mother Nature, he might reflect that sexual dimorphism is natural and gender fluidity is not, but what is the point? It’s a lost cause fighting with the climate cultists and gender benders. Our task is to ridicule the elite who think we should care about these fringe figures. 

@pattiegonia attended the GLAAD awards last night and took this message with me. #drag #dragqueen #gaza #palestine #GLAAD #lgbtq #queer #gay #environment #redcarpet #protest ♬ original sound – pattiegonia

Americans are turning their backs on this nonsense, but we have to drive a stake through its heart. Just as Robby Starbuck has conducted a successful war against DEI in corporations, we have to destroy the forces in the Pravda Media that have been shoving this down our throats. 

It’s not enough to watch it shrivel because, even as woke is dying a slow death, its influence in our schools, universities, and media remains. If we don’t make it toxic, it will remain a hot ember in the woods just waiting to reignite the wildfire that almost destroyed our culture. 

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There has only been one constitutional convention, the one that happened in Philadelphia in 1787. But all it takes to hold a new one is a call for it from two-thirds of the states. According to some observers, that threshold has already been met.

Republican U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, the chair of the U.S. House Committee on the Budget, said a constitutional convention should have been called in 1979 because the state threshold was met at that time. To keep track of it all, Arrington has introduced legislation that would require the National Archives to collect state applications for conventions.

A “bare-bones” website called the Article 5 Library is also keeping count, according to the New York Times. It indicates that more than 34 states have standing requests for a convention, some of which are more than 150 years old.

You might imagine that in order for a constitutional convention to be held you would need 34 states to agree on a specific topic at a specific time, but the Constitution itself doesn’t say that. In theory any standing call for a convention, even one from 100 years ago could be considered a valid vote for holding a new convention. And that possibility has some Democrats worried.

Democratic California state Sen. Scott Wiener this week filed legislation to recall all of the state’s requests for a U.S. constitutional convention, citing concerns about how a Republican-controlled federal government could strip away rights and change the document that serves as the country’s foundation…

“We are getting dangerously close to the number of states required to actually trigger a constitutional convention, and although there are many things I’d like to rewrite in the Constitution, we are in a situation where we have an extremist, right-wing national government, and I personally don’t want Jim Jordan and Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Johnson controlling what a constitutional convention looks like,” Wiener told KCRA 3 in an interview.

California isn’t alone. Other blue states have been rescinding their prior calls for a convention.

If Mr. Wiener’s legislation is enacted, California would follow the path of other Democratic-led states that have withdrawn their calls for conventions since 2016, including New Jersey, Oregon and Illinois. New York most recently did so by passing a law this spring that rescinded all of its previous applications, including one from 1789…

Given the broad control that Republicans will have in Washington next year, other Democratic-led states may be motivated to rescind their constitutional convention requests. Lawmakers in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut previously introduced resolutions to take back their applications, but those measures stalled.

The most recent call for a constitutional convention came from California last year. Gov. Newsome called for one to put in place a ban on gun sales. No one else in any other state has seconded that call, but again calling for a new convention doesn’t require that everyone agree about the purpose of it.

By the count of David Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on constitutional conventions, the highest number of active requests for a convention on one specific topic is 28, for a balanced budget. But, he said, if Article V is interpreted as allowing any request to count toward convening a constitutional convention, the 34-state threshold has already been reached.

“If Congress declares under whatever crazy counting theory the convention advocates support that we’ve met the threshold, then we’ll have a convention,” Mr. Super said.

Common Cause, a left-leaning watchdog group which is against calls for a constitutional convention, has published a couple of articles this year warning that it could happen. David Super, the professor quoted above, was featured in a Common Cause video about this. This clip is 5 years old but you can still feel the panic radiating from it.

Republicans are eager to eliminate the freedom of speech or other elements of the 1st Amendment? That’s a scare tactic and not a very convincing one. If anyone would be likely to alter our freedom of speech and religion it’s the progressive left who don’t seem committed to either. If anything, it seems far more likely that Democrats would be eager to eliminate the 2nd Amendment and limit the 1st Amendment if given a chance.

As noted above, the one issue that seems most likely to trigger a convention is the demand for a balanced budget. That’s obviously something Democrats would not like to see happen since it would cut off their supply of endless government money for whatever new programs they can dream up. If they are afraid of a constitutional convention, this is probably their top worry.

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2020 was our annus horriiolis. The pandemic, the George Floyd riots. Creeping tyranny. The vast expansion of the censorship regime. Election rigging, at the very least through Zuckerbucks, and, of course, the massive increase in murders throughout America. 

2020 sucked, big time. So bad that it gave us Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which while not a fate worse than death, at least a fate that made us wish for the Sweet Meteor of Death. 

SMOD did not arrive, and if we are smart we can learn many lessons about how not to deal with national crises. 

Link: https://t.co/rcgL9g3gl5

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) December 17, 2024

One lesson that we should take to heart is that kneejerk reactions to national crises are almost always bound to make things worse, and by a lot. That certainly was true for the COVID lockdown of the economy. We are all familiar with the direct effects of the lockdown–the massive shift of wealth from the middle up and the damage done to children–but we are still coming to grips with many of the secondary effects that are not so obvious. 

The Brookings Institution reveals one of the many fallouts from those lockdowns: the sudden rise in murders. 

Most people would assume that the rise in murders that began in the second quarter of 2020 was caused by the fallout from the George Floyd incident, but Brookings’ study tells a much different story. The rise in the murder rate began well before the George Floyd riots, and the trajectory of the increase didn’t really change much as the riots and social discord gained steam. 

In 2020, the average U.S. city experienced a surge in its homicide rate of almost 30%—the fastest spike ever recorded in the country. Across the nation, more than 24,000 people were killed compared to around 19,000 the year before.

Homicides remained high in 2021 and 2022, but in 2023 they began to fall rapidly. Projections suggest the national homicide rate in 2024 is on track to return to levels close to those recorded in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet that spike in murders continues to deliver major costs in terms of the lives lost, the people incarcerated, and the perception of decreased safety across the country.

Some commentators have suggested the increase in homicides during 2020 was a response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May of that year. Others hypothesized that it was caused by a police “pull back,” in which officers chose to do less work in reaction to the protests that followed Floyd’s death. 

As more information has become available, these theories appear to be less supported by evidence than some initially thought.¹ The evidence indicates that the national homicide rate was already on track to reach a peak far above the previous year even before Floyd was killed.

This may seem counterintuitive for many reasons. How can pandemic policies cause such a huge spike in violence compared to the George Floyd riots, but perhaps we have our chain of causality wrong on the issue. Is it possible that the pandemic lockdowns actually contributed to the violence of the riots, as people who suddenly had little to do and a lot of repressed anger latched onto the death of Floyd as an excuse to express their rage?

Cell phone data show this is when residents started leaving home more often as lockdown policies eased and the weather grew warmer. During the 6-week period from April 12 to May 23 (weeks 16 to 21 in Figure 1), homicides went up by an average of 17 murders each week.

After Floyd was killed on May 25, the national homicide rate continued to follow this trend, with additional increases during the 2 weeks around Memorial Day and the 2-week period around July 4. But even the highest point of these additional increases was less than 40 murders above the pre-existing trend. While it’s true that homicides did temporarily rise more than they were already on track to following Floyd’s death, these additional increases are unlikely to explain the 5,000 additional murders seen during the year.   

This leaves us with a question: What happened that could have caused homicides to spike in 2020, remain high for 2 years, and then start to decline rapidly in 2023?

New data offers a potential explanation. In this report, we analyze thousands of police records and compare them to changes that occurred in U.S. cities just before homicides started to surge. This showed that the spike in murders during 2020 was directly connected to local unemployment and school closures in low-income areas. Cities with larger numbers of young men forced out of work and teen boys pushed out of school in low-income neighborhoods during March and early April, had greater increases in homicide from May to December that year, on average. The persistence of these changes can also explain why murders remained high in 2021 and 2022 and then fell in late 2023 and 2024.

This is consistent with other trends, such as the major spike of carjackings committed by teens–often as young as 12–who were out of school and at wit’s end and unsupervised. In Minneapolis, carjackings were so few before the pandemic that statistics weren’t even kept. During and for a while after the pandemic they were rising so fast that a new category of crime statistics was created. 

In 2021, the City of Minneapolis averaged two carjackings a day. 

Kids who are out of school find ways to fill their time, and for young men from poorer neighborhoods one common way to do so is to engage in crime.

Studies suggest there are three characteristics that set people engaged in violence apart.

• Most are teenage boys and young men in their twenties. Males under the age of 30 commit more than half of all murders in the United States.
• They are more likely to be high school dropouts. Estimates suggest that around 40% of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons did not graduate from high school or earn a GED, compared to about 9 percent of all adults in the country.
• They are more likely to be unemployed. Studies have found that more than one-third of people who are incarcerated did not have a job at the time their crime was committed. This is 3 times higher than the rate for all men between the ages of 25 and 54.

Research also helps explain why the teen boys and young men who engage in violence would have difficulty completing high school and joining the workforce. People who become involved in violence have often been victims of violence themselves, are more likely to have been abused when they were children, and have higher rates of mental health issues. Due to these challenges, it is not surprising that they also have greater levels of alcohol and drug abuse. 

The laser focus on doing SOMETHING to address the COVID pandemic–even things that had limited to no actual benefit in disease reduction–blinded policymakers to the second-order effects of their policy choices. 

Public Health officials such as Francis Collins have “admitted” that he and his colleagues didn’t really consider those second-order effects because they were laser-focused on saving lives, and that perhaps that was a mistake. But that just demonstrates that they sucked at doing public health in the first place. 

Even the most modest knowledge about public health ethics warns officials that the unintended consequences of coercive policies on society can turn out to be worse than the problem they are trying to solve. The job of officials is to inform and recommend to citizens more than to impose policies, and that potential unintended consequences ensure that there are landmines everywhere. 

Smarter minds, such as Jay Bhattacharya, warned that this was the case, as did Marty Makery and others, but they were vilified as granny killers. 

But, of course, that was nonsense. Their goal was to both save lives and save society. 

You can’t upend the social order without paying a high price. And that isn’t just true for pandemic policies; it applies to CRT, climate policies, and Alphabet ideology too. 

This post was originally published on this site

It seems as if the Denver, Colorado suburb of Aurora has finally worked its convulsive way through all the stages of grief about the uninvited guests the city council, to their credit, did make an effort to keep out of town.

Illegals imported by the Biden administration foisted on unhappy blue suburbs by the virtue-signaling sanctuary policies of the larger cities to which they are tethered. Cities defiantly flying the welcome flag became targets for the export of illegal immigrant border state overflows.

Texas governor Greg Abbott determinedly ensured that mayors and governors talking the sanctuary talk were forced to walk the walk and share the pain overwhelmed TX border towns were slammed by.

Aurora has an interesting political landscape to deal with, too. The city council is majority Republican, but conversely, darn near every last elected state and federal representative is a Democrat. The area leans blue in voting patterns. Schizophrenic and leads to some friction.

Last February, Aurora tried to declare itself a ‘non-sanctuary city’ in hopes that Gov Abbott would remove them from the bus-schedule cross-hairs he already had Denver in. The lefty Denver Post immediately ridiculed the city council for being such backward, weak-kneed knuckle-draggers.

You BIG weenies, the Post sneered at both Aurora and like-minded Colorado Springs.

Aurora and Colorado Springs bend their knee to Gov. Abbott as they stoke fear among migrants

Seven of Aurora’s 10 City Council members used their time and power on Monday night to reiterate that police in the city will check the immigration status of people and tell ICE what it wants and needs to know for potential deportation cases.

The message is loud and clear: If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in Aurora without legal status, you should be more than a little leery of the police just in case U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has your name on a list.

We already spent time last month decrying silly resolutions that are needlessly divisive and have zero actual impact on public policy. Our local and state elected officials can stop spitting in the wind anytime they get tired of the blowback.

Did Aurora City Council members really think this resolution would magically erect a wall along the city’s border to prevent refugees and asylum seekers from entering from Denver? No, far more likely is that the seven members of the council who approved the message were hopeful it would appease Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott so he wouldn’t target them as a final destination for people who recently crossed the southern border.

The Post says, “The message is loud and clear” to the thousands of immigrants “without legal status” that ICE is watching – as if that’s a bad thing.

DENVER – YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

Tensions simmered all spring until the situation exploded onto the national scene – and became a presidential campaign issue – when video emerged of what were purported to be illegal Venezuelan gangs running amok, terrorizing and evicting residents while controlling an entire apartment complex in Aurora.

🚨BREAKING: Newly released video shows armed gang of Venezuelan illegals take over apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado.

Aurora, a quiet community with a population of 390,000 has become a base of operations for the brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which already has… pic.twitter.com/mNW8FF5mXa

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) August 28, 2024

It was all thanks to the efforts of frustrated tenants who had finally found a sympathetic ear in conservative councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky. After trying to work with the police chief, Jurinsky went public on Facebook with what she had. Her assertions, particularly of a Tren de Aragua take-over, were immediately dogpiled by local officials, with the governor of CO stepping in it himself to pooh-pooh the councilwoman’s hysteria and anti-immigrant bias.

“But, according to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis dismisses migrant gang takeover of apartments as “imagination” — despite video, mayor confirming truth:
https://t.co/IzsSXxN9bW

— Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) August 29, 2024

Especially since Trump had gotten ahold of the story. Awkward having it blasted out like that during a campaign with the ‘Border Czar’ running from ever being the ‘Border Czar’ and immigration vying with inflation for the Number One thing pissing Americans off the worst about the Biden administration.

This wasn’t hysterical stories about eating pets – this was video of a cartel warzone from Caracas dropped into a US zipcode.

The mayor looked like a vacillating tool. At first, ‘yes, there’s gang activity.’ Then, a waffling, “No, I agree with the police chief.“

IT’S NOT A GANG, IT’S A CLUB

Claims about a Venezuelan gang’s activity in Aurora have included conflicting statements from the city’s mayor, Mike Coffman. On Friday, Coffman went back to saying he agrees with police that there hasn’t been an apartment complex “takeover.”

Apartment complexes in Aurora, owned by the same company CBZ Management, are at the center of a national media frenzy.  Conversations locally about a city-wide “takeover” began earlier this summer. 

On July 29, conservative councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky wrote on Facebook about a large gathering at a shopping center parking lot. “Venezuelan flags” were flying among thousands who “took over and completely shut down a part of our city”, she wrote.

Two days later on July 31, Mayor Coffman shared a similar thought on talk radio. 

…One month after receiving the law firm’s 10-page report, Mayor Coffman shared a different opinion. On Friday, he wrote on Facebook he now agrees with APD’s Interim Chief that “a Venezuelan gang is not in control of either of these two apartment complexes.”

Here we are, only a scant two months past the arguments of September. How are the officials elected to protect citizens in Aurora now – post-election – describing the “without legal status” club members who enjoy the amenities offered to them in the pleasant little community?

(David also noticed this yesterday.)

Well, it seems an agreement has been reached.

IT’S NOT A CLUB, IT’S A GANG

NEW: Aurora, Colorado police chief says the kidnapping incident where 14 illegals tortured a couple was “without question a gang incident.”

Another conspiracy theory that turned out to be true.

Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said almost everyone involved was Venezuelan and says… pic.twitter.com/w7HCnpkpGb

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 17, 2024

…Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said almost everyone involved was Venezuelan and says there was a “high assumption” that they were affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. 

“They were pistol-whipped, they were beaten, they were mistreated. So does that fall in the category of torture for me? Yeah, it does.” 

“This is without question a gang incident. I don’t know which gang they are affiliated with yet… there is a high assumption that they may be affiliated with the TdA [Tren de Aragua] gang.” 

The incident just so happened to take place at the apartment complex that landlords claim was taken over by the Venezuelan gang.

Oh, goodness. They seem nice. At least they stick close to home, as it was the exact same apartment complex where Gov Polis had sneered the gang activity allegation was *checks notes* a “FEATURE of Councilwoman Jurinsky’s IMAGINATION.” 

 …Aurora police responded to a report of an armed home invasion on the 1200 block of Dallas Street around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. About six hours earlier, an unspecified number of suspects, a mix of men and women, had entered an apartment where two people lived, police said. Suspects allegedly bound both residents and stabbed one.

The suspects allegedly moved the two victims to another apartment on the property, where they were held against their will. Meanwhile, the victims’ apartment was burglarized.

Aurora police said the victims were able to convince their captors to let them go and promised not to call the police. After the victims were released, they drove to a friend’s house somewhere in Aurora and called 911.

A man suffered a non-life-threatening injury from a stab wound. Both victims were taken to the hospital. No other injuries have been reported.

According to other reliable reports, “torture” is an apt description.

NEW DETAILS: My local police source, close to the alleged Venezuelan mob attack in Aurora, shares that investigators on scene found that the female victim “had her fingernails intentionally pulled out”.

He states that this is why he believes the police chief used the term… pic.twitter.com/v31iQUl9Sc

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) December 17, 2024

Remember? Once, it was just a figment of Jurinsky’s ‘imagination’, and now everyone’s talking about the Venezuelan gang problem. Coincidentally, also why Aurora got themselves a new police chief. Weird step to take if you don’t have a problem, no?

Following the detainment of 14 people Tuesday morning, city and state leaders are weighing in on how to tackle ongoing crime and gang problems in pockets of Aurora. 

…Jurinsky has been one of the leading voices in Aurora since safety problems at select apartment buildings started coming to light earlier this year and is the chair of the city council’s Public Safety, Courts and Civil Service Committee. She has been especially vocal about gang activity at The Edge at Lowry apartments. 

“Stop saying that everybody is welcome here. Because no, not everybody is welcome here. Tren de Aragua you are not welcome here,” Jurinsky said. 

Jurinsky said she hopes the arrests put Aurora back in the national spotlight because she believes it will be a catalyst for change. 

“I hope Operation Aurora is talked about again. I hope they come to Aurora first,” she said. 

Operation Aurora is a reference to a campaign promise by President-elect Donald Trump to deport migrant criminals, which he said will begin in Aurora, Colorado. 

Gov Polis had a ‘Yo, go, coppers!’ statement. No apologies for downplaying any of it.

…“Governor Polis congratulates the city of Aurora and the Aurora Police Department for these arrests. The state added staff and resources to the task force in July and convened federal officials over the summer. The state stands ready to assist Aurora PD. Governor Polis is calling for additional public safety investments during the upcoming legislative session to crack down on crime and urges the legislature to approve those requests to make Colorado safer.”

Not sure about The Denver Post…or, for that matter, Martha Raddatz.

MARTHA! DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF?

OCTOBER: Media tried to gaslight you into believing it wasn’t a problem for only “a handful of apartment complexes” in Aurora to be taken over by gangs of illegals.

TODAY: 14 more people were detained at the same complex in Aurora.

This IS A PROBLEM.
Trump and Vance WERE RIGHT. pic.twitter.com/6vvFFwph8U

— Congressman Byron Donalds (@RepDonaldsPress) December 17, 2024

Acceptance is the last step, and Aurora sounds like they’re there.

This post was originally published on this site

Swarms of drones have inexplicably filled the skies on the northern Atlantic seaboard. No one has an explanation for their sudden appearance and persistence. Their presence interferes with airport operations in America’s biggest city. Even prominent Democrats such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Senate Majority (for now) Leader Chuck Schumer demand answers from the federal government about their presence.

After a few weeks, Joe Biden finally addressed the issue publicly by, er … offering up a Chip Diller:

Biden finally addresses the drones that have been hovering above the East Coast for weeks: “Nothing nefarious, apparently.”

“I think one started and they all got— everybody wanted to get in their deal.” pic.twitter.com/x6M2iJRAIp

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 18, 2024

President Joe Biden dismissed conspiracy theories surrounding the rash of drone sightings across the Northeast over the last few weeks after President-elect Donald Trump claimed the federal government appeared to be withholding information on the reports.

“Nothing nefarious, apparently,” Biden said Tuesday when queried by reporters at the White House. “We’re following it closely. So far no sense of danger.”

Biden’s comment reaffirmed a joint statement issued this week by the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, FAA and the Pentagon saying that − based on preliminary investigations − the sightings appear to include legal commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones, as well as airplanes, helicopters and “stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

“Nothing nefarious, apparently“? There’s a confidence builder! Note that Biden doesn’t actually have any explanation to offer, and in fact sounds as though he hasn’t paid much attention to the issue despite public demands from Hochul, Schumer, and other high-ranking officials who clearly aren’t convinced. Even Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did better than Biden:

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones. And I want to assure the public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology, to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”

 In other words: Come on, man. 

Biden’s explanation — such as it is — doesn’t make much sense either, although it might explain part of the phenomena. Hobbyists and law enforcement have used drones for years now. This is not a new industry, and the experimentation phase passed long ago. Are a few of the sightings related to hobbyists and law enforcement? Possibly, but that doesn’t explain the sudden rapid increase in drones over the tri-state area, especially given the higher-end models that witnesses have described. Both groups know better than to fly drones into air traffic spaces too, and not to fly them over potentially sensitive locations:

In recent weeks, a wave of drone activity has been reported across New York and New Jersey. Speculation is growing over why the number of sightings has increased, where the drones may have come from and who is flying them.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement officials are investigating the sightings, some of which took place near critical infrastructure sites and military installations, but authorities have offered few conclusive answers, leading to rampant speculation among members of the public.

Needless to say, Biden’s vague reassurances won’t satisfy people who see this as anything but aviation business as usual. That includes even more Democrats, such as Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. She told Boston 25 News that “it’s very important for Congress to act” on the drone wave, especially in allowing states to deal with drone intrusions. There’s no other way to read that as anything other than a slap at the Biden administration’s lack of response to this series of events. 

It’s not any better for Biden on Capitol Hill, either. House Intel chair Jim Himes (D-CT) told reporters after a classified briefing that “we have no idea who owns these drones, assuming these drones are in fact drones.” If these are in fact airplanes, the FAA would be able to identify them and debunk the idea of drone swarms easily.  The fact that “we have no idea who owns these drones” not only suggests that they’re not normal airplanes, but that there is something potentially nefarious going on given their flight patterns — and that the Biden administration has no idea what it is or how to deal with it. 

Biden’s statement adds another impression: He doesn’t much care about it, either, except in how much it allows Donald Trump to point out the sheer incompetence of his administration. 

I’d give Biden a Chip Diller Award for this statement, but Diller really sold it better. 

This post was originally published on this site

Most of the criticism aimed at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services has come from establishment Democrats. 

But one group of conservatives have expressed a lot of concern, even though the Pravda Media has mostly ignored them: pro-lifers. 

You see, RFK Jr. is as pro-choice as any Democrat can be, and that worried the heck out of people for whom this is a top issue. We’re all for making America healthy again, but we want as many Americans as possible to be here to enjoy that good health. Aborted children never get to be healthy. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Commits to Restoring Key Pro-Life Policies https://t.co/jjevNb7nC9

— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) December 18, 2024

Trump has already made clear that pro-life issues will not be at the top of his agenda, which added to those concerns. But as Kennedy Jr. is making the rounds talking to senators, he is making it clear that the policies he would pursue in his job would be those of the president, and the president is going to reinstate federal policies of his first administration. 

But Kennedy assured senators in multiple meetings on Capitol Hill today that he will ensure President Trump restores a host of pro-life policies that will save babies from abortions.

In a post on X, pro-life Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri detailed the pro-life policies Kennedy assured him would be back in place after Trump is inaugurated as president.

“Today I got to sit down with @RobertKennedyJr – we had a substantive discussion about American healthcare & his plans to take on Big Pharma. We also had a good discussion, at length, about prolife policies at HHS,” Hawley said.

Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ

“He committed to me to reinstate President Trump’s prolife policies at HHS. That includes reinstating the Mexico City policy & ending taxpayer funding for abortions domestically,” Hawley explained. “He supports reinstating the bar on Title X funds going to organizations that promote abortion.”

“He pledged to reverse the Biden Admin’s Section 1557 rule and also said all of his deputies at HHS would be prolife. He told me he believes there are far too many abortions in the US and that we cannot be the moral leader of the free world with abortion rates so high,” Hawley added. “RFK also pledged to reinstate conscience protections for healthcare providers.”

I find none of this surprising. RFK Jr. is coming to fix big food and big pharma, not to fight for abortion on demand up until birth. Getting into battles over issues that are primarily now in the hands of the states would be especially stupid, and anybody who has followed RFK Jr. for more than a few hours knows that pushing radical pro-choice policies is not what motivates him. 

So, this isn’t much of a concession for him, and without it, he would never have had a chance to implement changes that matter to him. 

It is remarkable how much more smoothly the second Trump transition is going than the first. Sure, Trump has had time to game things out and knows where the land mines are this time, but it’s also true that his choices for Cabinet positions are infinitely more controversial as a group than in 2016/17. Back then, Trump was talking about change, but the personnel weren’t really there to make it and make it stick. 

Trump’s first team seemed to be as much about putting obstacles in his way as helping him achieve his goals; this time around, the opposite is true, yet it looks like he will have a much easier time filling out the top spots in his administration. 

It’s almost as if the 2020 loss and the reset it provided will turn out to be a blessing in disguise for him. His second term will likely wind up as the most consequential for any president in memory. Instead of fading momentum, he is just picking up steam.