Briahna Joy Gray, co-host ofThe Hill’sonline morning showRising, has drawn fire from staffers at the Beltway political outlet for what some describe as her “pro-Hamas” and “fringe” commentary. ...
“We also have to hold space for 140 Palestinian children who have been killed in this last weekend of conflict,” Graysaidon Wednesday. “And it is awful, even if we don’t have the same images of them and even if they were killed from bombs from the sky instead of in hand-to-hand combat.”
He points to food prices having gone up about 20% since Biden took office, here, because this index is up that much since Biden took office. He wonders why food prices are actually up much more than that.
He obviously doesn't understand how this works.
On a quarterly measure, and year over year, the increases for this index are as follows after Biden taking office in 1Q2021:
2Q2021 0.9%
3Q 3.3%
4Q 6.1%
1Q2022 8.7%
2Q 11.6%
3Q 13.2%
4Q 12.1%
1Q2023 9.9%
2Q 5.9%
3Q 3.0%.
Assume the worst example from the shopper's list:
"A pound of turkey breast went from $3.14 to $6.72, a 114% increase" from late 2020 until now.
$3.14 goes to $3.17 in 2Q2021, and so on down the list until you come up with $6.41 by 3Q2023, pretty close to the $6.72 from the example. Remember this index is for all food at home, not turkey specifically nor any other individual food item. Some food prices go up more than others.
There's actually a turkey index. It's up a whopping 214%, not 20%. The shopper could be paying a lot more than $6.72 right now. Year over year prices were up 20% in 2021, and 72% in 2022 in the wake of an avian flu epidemic which wiped out the supply. In the first half of 2023 prices were up another 47% year over year.
Unless there's actual deflation in overall food prices, that is, sustained negative year over year reports instead of quarterly increase yoy after quarterly increase, higher prices are here to stay.
Rep. James Comer, here, as of August 8th has a letter from a Penn Biden Center employee indicating:
March 18, 2021 – Annie Tomasini (Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the
President and Director of Oval Office Operations) went to Penn Biden Center to take inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials.
The next panelist I had only ever seen in heavily photoshopped headshots. Mary Trump, the anti-Trump author and psychologist, looks so much like her uncle Donald under the stage lights it is hard to concentrate on what she's saying. That's just as well, because it's getting late and the self-avowed expert on Trump's "physic energy" has just repeated her baselessaccusationthat the former president enabled the Hamas atrocities in Israel.
You can throw all the billions you want at educating the masses, but you still can't make a purse out of a sow's ear.
A sane country would train the other 79% for careers which don't require college, but ours is not a sane country, otherwise we wouldn't have 1:1 ratios of administrators to students all over the place. College is producing some mighty fine jobs for the education industry and for the 20% who belong there, but God help you if you borrowed money to learn that one day you will die.
When I was a kid the unemployed PhD was the joke. Now it's the unemployed BA. You can see where this is going.
. . . after mounting pressure, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
condemned the “bigotry and callousness” at a pro-Palestinian rally
aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in New York
City. ...
In a sign of the growing pressure on progressives, Ocasio-Cortez
earlier this week criticized the DSA-aligned rally in New York City’s
Times Square, a stance that came after she was chided for supporting a
ceasefire.
The rally, which was held in support of Palestinians, drew swift
rebukes from leaders across the political spectrum. Ocasio-Cortez, whose
district is not far from where the protests were held, eventually
released a statement condemning it.
You know, before the government almost shut down, it came down to a
couple hours. I was in my office and they finally came over from the
House and they were like okay, well, this has to be unanimous in the
Senate. Out of 99 of us, if one single one of us would've said no, the
whole government would have shut down.
And the US and EU should recognise that Hamas is not just a military force but also a political one.
It cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor – one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people – can the west begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the west’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result. Ultimately, however, lasting peace depends on the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel.
The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, condemned Carter at the time.
(LWI] – The Lutheran World Federation is deeply concerned about the attacks of Hamas on towns and the civilian population in Israel, and the subsequent actions of the Israeli army, which have claimed lives on both sides, and led to injury and mayhem in an already volatile region.
"On all sides" = moral equivalence for the animals of Hamas.
What's important is "the status quo of the holy places", not that defenceless Jews were literally butchered by the hundreds.
They want no war in response to war. All the Jews would die, then. Is that what Catholics really want?
“On October 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, the world watched
the operation launched from Gaza and the rapid call to arms from Israel
that ensued. Almost 50 years to the day of the launch of the 1973
Arab–Israeli War, once again war is spilling out in the Holy Land. With
it brings the mounting casualties and hostilities unfolding on all
sides, and increased threats to the Status Quo of the Holy Places among
Jews, Muslims, and Christians further dimming any hope for peace.
“The world is once again shocked and horrified by the outbreak of
ferocious violence in the Holy Land. Reports have surfaced indicating
large numbers of wounded and dead, including many civilians.
“I join with Pope Francis in his call for peace and his condemnation
of this widespread outbreak of violence. As he stated in his Sunday
audience, ‘May the attacks and weaponry cease. Please! And let it be
understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but
only to the death and suffering of so many innocent people.’
“May all who love the Holy Land seek to bring about among all the
parties engaged in the fighting a cessation of violence, respect for
civilian populations and the release of hostages.
“As we pray urgently for peace, we recall especially all the families
and individuals suffering from these events. We call on the faithful,
and all people of good will to not grow weary and to continue to pray
for peace in the land Our Lord, the Prince of Peace, called home.”
But where are the university presidents who gave clear statements about
all these other causes that mattered, Black Lives Matter . . .?
Why are they silent on dead Jews? Why is my inbox empty with messages from CEOs from major religious movements?
Compared to November 2020, my new budget plan payment for combined natural gas and electric for the coming winter will be 42% higher than it was three years ago, despite the fact that natural gas prices have normalized almost to the penny.
Electricity is up 25% since Green Energy Joe got elected and isn't coming down, but that can't account for it since I consume far less electricity than natural gas on an average basis. More than 65% of my energy consumption in kWh is from natural gas in the last year, as it is every year, less than 35% is from electricity.
A 25% increase to 35% of my old bill would result in a total payment today less than 9% higher. Instead it's 42% higher.
Remember that the utility uses natural gas to generate the electricity, too, and it's paying normal prices today for the gas, not the inflated prices of the recent past.
Recent Harvard graduate, gun control activist, and president of Leaders We Deserve David Hogg has absolutely nothing to say about hundreds of slaughtered, gunless Israelis on his feed.
He is indeed the Leader We Deserve from America's premier university.
"We have reports that several Americans may be among the dead. We are very actively working to verify those reports," the U.S. secretary of state said on "Meet the Press." ...
Meanwhile, in an interview onCBS' "Face the Nation," the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, indicated that Americans are among Hamas’ hostages.
The founders set up a country in which aristoi would rule alongside and with the people, first among equals, primus inter pares, but
not over them in the monarchical or oligarchic sense. Nobody would have
a permanent or divine right to rule in the United States. The founders
had had a sense of duty to rule honorably, and a sense of humility that
their governance wasn’t an end in itself — but a means of preserving the
rights of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This man is a small sea of confusion, who writes that aristocracy is "rule by the few".
. . . on England, and on Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the rest.
The libertarian impulse to go Galt, to run away, is a feature of America, not a bug, a built-in self-destruct mechanism which went off most spectacularly and destroyed the root in 1861.
The rest of the plant has been withering and dying on the vine ever since, overtaken by tenacious weeds.
Freedom for Christian religion combined with plenty of Lebensraum, home country memory, and time made it seem otherwise in the face of the steadydecline, but here we are with Scylla and Charybdis for choices come November 2024.
The Declaration of Independence was a repudiation of politics. Two thirds of the country was not down for the struggle. Secession was a repudiation of politics. There was resistance to military conscription everywhere, but especially in the Confederacy. We were content to let the world burn for more than two years before the Japs forced our hand on December 7, 1941. We have rightnow the unthinkable European land war in its 20th month and sports is what trends on Twitter day in and day out. Mao killed by the tens of millions during The American Century. Americans quietly go to church every Sunday while tens of millions are aborted. It all began with migration, the most basic form of repudiating politics.
We do not need, in short, to relearn to think politically. Most of us have never thought politically in the first place. Apolitics is our politics, but this horrorvacui is why the left seems to have won and why we hate them. We hate politics. As polarized as we think we are, as rigged as our politics is, 100 million eligible Americans still did not vote in 2020.
You do not get political blood from this turnip.
Ultimately, nothing could be more un-American than to give up on America.
The American idea, alas, is precisely to stay out of it.
A studypublished in the European Journal of Endocrinology showed that all trans people were at a “significantly higher risk” of a host of serious and potentially deadly medical conditions, including heart attacks and strokes.
“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressmanHenry Cuellarsaid. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.
The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas
FILE - A border wall section stands on July 14, 2021, near La Grulla, Texas, in Starr County. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, the Biden administration announced that they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers — a tactic used often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted theannouncement on the U.S. Federal Registrywith few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
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Although no maps were provided in the announcement, aprevious mapshared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area.
“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the highest-elected official in the county, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
Starr County is home to about 65,000 residents spread over about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that includes ranchland and part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental advocates say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and animal species like the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
“A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
During the Trump administration, about450 miles (724 kilometers) of barrierswere built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts as part of hisongoing immigration enforcementfrom the state level after the Biden administration initially halted them at the start of his presidency.
The DHS decision on Wednesday contrasts the Biden administration’s posturing when aproclamationto end the construction on Jan. 20, 2021 stated, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment.
The announcement prompted political debate by the Democratic administration facing an increase of migrants entering through the southern border in recent months, including thousands who entered the U.S. throughEagle Passat the end of September.
“A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
“After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
The governor signaled that, while he was committed to naming a woman
of color, he didn’t want to give Lee the advantage of appointed
incumbency. This was a new standard, developed by Newsom since his last
appointment of a senator in 2021, when he chose Alex Padilla
to replace newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris. As an appointed
incumbent, Padilla ran for and easily won a full term in 2022. This
time, Newsom said, he wanted to make an “interim appointment”—indicating
an apparent preference for a caretaker senator who would merely finish
out Feinstein’s term and then leave the Senate.
It was an absurd calculus, offering the prospect of a brief rather
than ongoing expansion of representation for Black women in the Senate,
and Lee called him out for it. The representative said
in a statement, “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only
as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black
women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to
victory election after election.”
