MY FAVORITE PRIEST MIKE TESS IS ON TODAY He's visiting so I'm dragging him in studio and we're going to talk about compassion for the homeless addicts and more. He's on at 1.
WE ARE DONE AT 2 TODAY As Spring Training is here and cuts the show short.
PEOPLE UNDER 65 DRANK THEMSELVES TO DEATH IN 2020 And did so at an alarming rate. During the pandemic, more people under 65 were killed by alcohol than by covid. Take a beat for that one. The New York Times pointed it out here:
Among adults younger than 65, alcohol-related deaths actually outnumbered deaths from Covid-19 in 2020; some 74,408 Americans ages 16 to 64 died of alcohol-related causes, while 74,075 individuals under 65 died of Covid. And the rate of increase for alcohol-related deaths in 2020 — 25 percent — outpaced the rate of increase of deaths from all causes, which was 16.6 percent.
But that's not all. Over 100,000 people died of drug overdoses, up nearly 30% from prior years. First off, we need to completely and utterly dispel the notion that alcohol is not brutal on our bodies. The main cause of death is liver disease and its complications so that indicates long term drinking. Second, we all need to figure out how to deal with our stressors that doesn't involve booze and third...I have no idea how to really solve this problem. If you drink regularly and a lot, please have your liver checked on a regular basis and if you decide to quit, get medical help if you need it.
THIS CITY ATTORNEYS OFFICE STORY SHOCKED ME Because I genuinely don't know people like the nasty three described in this story about a black attorney who was targeted and pushed out by the colleagues that were supposed to be helping her. An earlier story told how three City Attorneys working in the Prosecution and Code Enforcement Section used a city owned chat to disparage their bosses and do a victory lap when the other attorney had a nervous breakdown because of their treatment. Read some of the petty, small garbage they wrote and their admissions of just sitting around wasting time all day and you begin to understand why nothing is getting done about crime and whatnot. Do you have co workers like these? Because I do not. Or if I do they don't bring this nonsense to me.
JON CALDARA REMINDS US THE GOVERNOR APPOINTS LOONEY IDEOLOGUES TO POWER POSITIONS This column has a litany of appointments made by Governor Jared Polis (not by Re-Election Jared who loves oil, gas, guns and cows) since taking office and though I knew most of them, some were new. Read more here lest you be swayed by Re-Election Jared anytime soon.
ERIN KANE IS THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT OF DOUGLAS COUNTY SCHOOLS And I am THRILLED by this and am a huge Erin Kane fan. I can't wait for her to prove all the naysayers wrong when she doesn't try to privatize schools or push vouchers or otherwise do the horrible things the other side has been saying about her. Read more here.
ICYMI: DON'T FALL FOR THE UNION PLAYBOOK IN SCHOOLS My friend Krista Kafer wrote a great column about how the teachers unions attack when they don't get their way. Read it here.
PLANNING TO TAKE THE TRAIN TO THE AIRPORT? YOU MAY WANT A BACKUP PLAN Because RTD is cancelling A Line trips the airport because of staffing issues. This is not how you get people back on mass transit.
RTD IS MAKING CHANGES TO UNION STATION Because they know crime is out of control. They will be adding more security cameras and some sort of turnstile or barrier that will only allow ticketed passengers to access the lower level that is currently infested by addicts and criminals. I especially love the part where the CEO of RTD reminds us that this is a societal problem so we don't think it's their fault. I don't expect them to fix society, but I do expect them to fix Union Station.
TRUMP SHOWS AGAIN LOYALTY ONLY GOES ONE WAY By rescinding his endorsement of one his staunchest allies in Congress Mo Brooks. Brooks is running for Senate in Alabama and Trump had endorsed him. Trump took back the endorsement because Brooks had the nerve to say we should move on from the 2020 election. Seriously, that's all it took. Trump only cares about loyalty when it flows TO him, he has ZERO loyalty to anyone else except himself and his children. Zero.
COLORADO DEMS ARE TRYING TO MAKE HOUSING EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE And we've already seen what this is like in Louisville and Superior where new green building codes have made rebuilding prohibitively expensive for some. Now the Colorado Democrats want to force those standards onto the entire STATE, which would jack up the cost of housing even more. In my mind, housing codes exist for one reason: safety. You want to make sure that homes are built to withstand as much of Mother Nature as they can without failing. Building codes should NOT be used to force lifestyle choices onto the people building them. If I want a gas stove, I damn well want a gas stove regardless of what some green weenies wants me to have. Go pound sand. Joshua Sharf writes about it here.
BUT THEY DON'T HAVE TIME TO REFELONIZE FENTANYL PROPERLY The Colorado Legislature passed a criminal comfort bill in 2019 that has lead in part to the horrible drug situation we have in Denver right now. You'd think they would want to fix that, but no. The bill they have proposed would still allow possession of up to four grams of fentanyl, which is enough to kill a couple thousand people, as a misdemeanor. Idiots, every single one of them. We get the government we deserve, but a big thank you for providing a really big issue for Republicans to run on.
WRITERS AT THE BABYLON BEE ARE EXHAUSTED TRYING TO STAY AHEAD OF CRAZINESS
RAISING KIDS IN THE 1970S
TABLET MAG CHECKS THE FACT CHECKERS AND GUESS WHO FAILS? I LOVE it when people smugly send me a "fact check" that allegedly disproves whatever I'm saying because they are often so laughable and the sources are so tainted. This article is the best takedown of the "fact check" industry which currently exists to shield Democrats from any criticism. From the story:
Yet in reality, when it comes to benefiting from state censorship, Democrats and Republicans are not created equal. Another driving force behind the growth of the fact-checking complex is the necessity of enforcing loyalty to progressive ideas that can’t survive on their own. Stripped of their specialized language and social and bureaucratic context, key articles of Progressive Church faith are repulsive to most ordinary voters, regardless of gender or race. That is true of the racialized approach to education that was just roundly rejected by San Francisco parents in recent school board elections. It is also true of calls to defund the police, to teach transgender ideology to kindergarteners, and of approaches to addiction that appear to promote continued drug use. Policies that Biden administration officials would have boasted about in front of an audience of academics and public health administrators sound different—meaning, crazy—to people who have not been socialized to accept professional class bullshit. That’s where the fact-checkers come in with their tin badges and unearned air of authority. They can declare that a story is not merely mistaken or overwrought but dangerously defective—because we, the fact-checkers, paid by the tech giants and NGOs that are in turn funded by a seemingly endless tide of dark money from billionaires who want to be woke, or at least buy a woke insurance policy, said so.
Politics aside, fact-checkers fill a gap in the American system of government, which increasingly and for at least several decades now has looked nothing like the system described in high school civics classrooms and textbooks. Because the U.S. state now routinely exercises its power through administrative decrees, rather than through laws passed by the elected representatives of the people, it must rely on subcontracted nonofficials to enforce compliance with its dictates. This method of governance relieves policy makers of any obligation to build broad majorities that support their ideas. Maybe it really is a good idea to distribute crack pipes to addicts because it will save lives, as advocates claim. But if they believed they had the truth on their side, we might expect to see the people who champion these policies arguing for their merits and convincing a coalition of voters to support them. Instead, we see the opposite: the naked use of power and coercion to stifle arguments by people who believe they have a mandate of heaven, and the truth is whatever they say it is.
You should read the whole thing.
THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP IS THE DEFINING MOMENT OF THE FACT CHECKERS And they failed and failed miserably. This is a great column about the level of collusion that took place to hide the damning story and prevent Joe Biden from having to answer questions about his families involvement with the Chinese communist party and Ukraine and Russian oligarchs. Seems kind of pertinent now.
HOW CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS IN SCHOOLS IN ONE LESSON When liberals say snotty things like "Critical Race Theory isn't in ANY curriculum in the country" it makes my head explode because it IS in our schools in a myriad of ways. This column shows one example and tells us how and why it's part of the Marxist playbook.
THE NEW COVID VARIANT IS CONTAGIOUS BUT NOT AS DEADLY Because the virus is evolving as viruses evolve to be more contagious and less deadly.
LET'S PUT THE OSCARS OUT OF THEIR MISERY Or more accurately, out of our misery. They are this weekend and I am not watching, are you? The Wall Street Journal makes the case that awards shows have jumped the shark here.
THESE PICTURES NAUSEATED ME They are daredevils taking pictures in high places and no.
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO IN A TORNADO? If you get caught in a car and a tornado is imminent, good luck. This article shares your lousy options and choices in this scenario.
SECOND GRADERS WRITE TO HELP CATS AND DOGS GET ADOPTED And this is literally the cutest story I've seen in so long. If you have a kiddo doing persuasive writing assignments maybe consider this as an option.
STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS ARE STILL ON HOLD Because screw the lenders, the Dems need votes! It's not that cut and dried but almost. Read more here.
WHY CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BE OVER Our nerdy economist pal Stephen Moore wrote this column about how the Democrats obsession with climate change has become their undoing. Read it here. I used that headline because we all know what happens when Dems get polling back that is unfavorable to getting re elected (mask mandates I'm looking at you) so I fully expect the discussion to shift from STOPPING climate change to mitigating climate change anytime now.
AND NOW, JUST A DOG LIVING HIS BEST LIFE PARAGLIDING