(Images: Getty Images)
IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S A...PLANE! That sound you heard this past weekend was plane parts falling out of the sky as a United Airlines plane had an engine deconstruct itself while trying to fly to Hawaii. Luckily no one was hurt as huge parts of the engine hit the turf. I really just included this to remind you that as we all focus on the sometimes deadly coronavirus and how not to die from it, we forget that crap can always fall on our heads and kill us anyway. There's your uplifting Monday thought!
Y'ALL, CAN YOU IMAGINE IF DONALD TRUMP HAD SAID THIS PART #34 I have a feeling a lot of these are going to pop up, but in his Town Hall last week, President Biden actually said that the reason there is inequity in minorities getting the virus is because many of them don't know how to get online to get in line. One African-American gentleman did not take kindly to that assertion and made his point thusly:
Now imagine what we would have heard about non-stop from last Tuesday until the end of time if Trump had said it. Go ahead, imagine it.
THERE ARE SOME INEQUITIES IN VACCINE DISTRIBUTION But hold your horses before you go screaming "RACISM" for a hot minute. CBS Sunday Morning (which is back to it's excellent, Pre-Trump form) had an interesting story on vaccine hesitancy in minority communities. I don't put this here and an indictment of anyone, but we need to make sure that people who are most prone to dying from covid are getting vaccinated. Period. And that seems to include minorities so we need to fix this. Watch the story here.
WE HAVE A HERO IN THE COMING WAR ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY And you've likely never heard of Jodi Shaw, a staffer at Smith College. Or at least she was a staffer at Smith College until she resigned last week in protest of Smith's bigotry and use of race as a bludgeon in the name of Social Justice. What makes Jodi Shaw an unlikely hero is that she is a lifelong liberal, probably cemented by Smith College as she was a student there as well. And she has come forth to call out the other cowards who are too afraid to speak out against a toxic ideology that seems to aim to be as bad as what it says it's trying to stop. Critical Race Theory is a horrid stew whose only purpose it to divide us further and must be stopped, but as someone who leans right, my protestations are seen as a sign of white supremacy. Maybe someone will take Jodi Shaw seriously.
WHAT, EXACTLY IS THE DISTRIBUTION PLAN WITH COCAINE CORNFLAKES? As I typed Cocaine Cornflakes I realized that is an excellent name for a band, so you're welcome. So a bunch of boxes of cornflakes coated with cocaine has been seized by the feds. I just wanted you to know that since I know that now. It does explain Tony the Tiger's endless energy.
EVEN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL THINKS THE ROCKIES WILL SUCK THIS YEAR As they tweeted out odds showing the Rockies have a .1% chance of winning the NL West. Don't miss the POINT before that ONE. That's a rousing endorsement to be sure, I guess our new fan mantra is "Thank goodness for Baltimore!" Read more here if you'd like.
ONE REASON OUR HOUSING IS SO UNAFFORDABLE? GOVERNMENT. When you look at housing in Houston, the median home price is $240,000. For Denver, it's $380,000. Why? One big one is the way government tries to manage growth here. By trying to dictate where people can build homes and businesses, they have created a land shortage that has driven home prices way, way up. Great if you OWN a home, but horrible if you're renting and want to buy. Joshua Sharf writes about it here. But instead of looking at the ways THEY are responsible, government raises taxes in some bid to build affordable housing, which is just dumb. Get out of the way and let the market decide.
IF YOU SEE AN ARTICLE ABOUT VOTER FRAUD IN COLORADO You may want to read this rebuttal before you send it. And this rebuttal is not written by a leftie, not hardly. The biggest takeaway for me is that Republicans have lost 100,000 voters in the state since 2016. That is the headline for me.
AND NOW BILLIE THE BADGER
SOLAR FARMS IN THE SAHARA COULD CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING And I'm not making this up, some scientists modeled what would happen if 50% of the Sahara was turned into a solar farm (as is being considered) and it pretty much ruins the Amazon rain forest. Read it here.
LARRY ELDER HAS SOME BLACK HISTORY HE WANTS TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW As it is Black History Month, he adds some interesting facts about The New Deal, gun control and illegal immigration that I bet your kids aren't learning in school. I bet most black Americans don't know it either, which is why they still vote Democrat.
DON'T FIGHT WITH A GUINEA PIG OVER A BLADE OF GRASS Because they are next level
BEFORE YOU CHEER THE STIMULUS BILL YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT'S IN IT Aside from recovery crushing extended unemployment benefits and actual dollars related to covid relief, there is more than a TRILLION dollars in Democratic pork, much of it to bail out the Democratic Governors who killed their own economies. From the article in the Wall Street Journal:
• The bill includes $86 billion to rescue 185 or so multiemployer pension plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Managed jointly by employer sponsors and unions, these plans are chronically underfunded due to lax federal standards and accounting rules. Yet the bailout comes with no real reform.
• Elementary and secondary schools get another $129 billion, whether they reopen for classroom learning or not. Higher education gets $40 billion. The CBO notes that since Congress already provided some $113 billion for schools—and as “most of those funds remain to be spent”—it expects that 95% of this new money will be spent from 2022 through 2028. That is, when the pandemic is over.
• Enormous sums go to expanding favorite Democratic programs. The package adds $35 billion to pump up subsidies to defray ObamaCare premiums. The bill eliminates the existing income cap (400% of the poverty level) on who qualifies for subsidies, and lowers the maximum amount participants are expected to contribute to about 8.5% of their income, down from 10%.
This is a huge spending bill to give Democrats all over the country some dough for their support. That's it. It's shameful.
ISRAEL IS THE PETRI DISH WE ARE ALL WATCHING As the tiny nation has managed to roll out vaccine distribution faster than anyone else. Now we watch as they fully re open their economy as so many Israelis are either fully vaccinated or half vaccinated. Watch this very closely.
THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW INTO THE DEATH OF ELIJAH MCCLAIN IS OUT And they found that the officers escalated the situation prematurely and did not have enough justification to search Mr. McClain during the stop. Those actions escalated the situation that eventually led to the chokehold and ketamine administration by paramedics, who were also called out for giving the ketamine without fully accessing the situation properly. These are the same questions I had when I saw the bodycam video that was released and as far as I can tell, there is not good answer for why a stop and check went from "hey bud, what's up" to taking McClain to the ground. Now what do we do with this report? I still don't think anything in this horrible situation rises to the level of a crime, but something has to be done to insure it doesn't happen again if possible. The whole thing is just so tragic.