I broke an 'unspoken rule' while ordering at a café and now my wife won't speak to me

It is not clear where this happened but I suspect Britain. I have been eatng out for over 60 years and always order my drink and food together. And I have never heard of this "rule". But almost all my dining has been in Australia. I in fact usually order my food first and as soon as the server has taken that down, they ask: "and what do you want to drink?"

A husband has revealed the 'innocent' comment that got him in hot water with his wife - and she refused to speak to him for two days afterwards.

The couple went to a café for brunch but he never expected his request to order food and coffee at the same time would see him labelled 'arrogant' and 'selfish'.

'It wasn't an evening meal to sit back and enjoy the experience; it was a place to get some food, hang with my wife and catch up, then go to work. Nothing fancy,' he said on Reddit.

The man and his wife had already discussed what they wanted to eat, so he told the waitress they were ready to order food when she came up to them.

'The waitress hesitated and said that they were supposed to only take food orders after the drinks had been delivered. But I asked to order at the same time because I had to get to work and I knew what I wanted - I didn't even need a menu,' he said.

The waitress eventually took their orders and left, which caused the man to turn to his wife and share his thoughts on the bizarre policy.

'I always order both at the same time and wait until the food comes to sip my drink. It's also a shorter time from arrival to leaving as I order as soon as I get there rather than being made to wait ten extra minutes.'

However, his wife saw red.

'My wife called me arrogant for [ordering coffee and breakfast at the same time]. She's a waitress and said what I did meant I was jumping the queue and making others wait for their food longer,' he said.

'I said I wasn't jumping any queue as if there were others who hadn't ordered yet, they weren't in line. I didn't demand my food be made before everyone else. I just wanted to be in and out of the café as fast as possible to get to work.

'My wife was furious I didn't see it the same way. I think I'm ordering my food and waiting for it, but saving myself ten unnecessary minutes.'

Still, the couple couldn't see eye-to-eye on the matter.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13414359/husband-wife-fight-cafe-restaurant-unspoken-rule-reddit.html

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California High-Speed Rail Celebrates Completing Bridge to Nowhere

Unbelievable

If critics wanted proof California’s bullet train is a zombie project, they got it straight from California’s High-Speed Rail’s publicity department last week.

A zombie project occurs when government officials refuse to acknowledge that their ambitions have failed. Instead of killing the project because it has become a monstrous waste, they pump more and more money into it. They do that even though they know that throwing good money after bad is a sure recipe for fiscal disaster. They do it because they aren’t willing to admit their failures and because they personally benefit from the wasteful spending.

In the case of California’s zombie bullet train project, the state government’s central planners have been fighting reality itself. That makes California High-Speed Rail’s latest publicity effort to celebrate their “success” stand out. Here’s what they tweeted on X on May 1, 2024:

The pictured Fresno River Viaduct is an impressive concrete structure. It is indeed one of the zombie bullet train project’s first completed high-speed rail structures. A structure featured on Wikipedia, complete with photos of it “nearing completion” in 2017. California High-Speed Rail’s tweet is celebrating an over six-year old achievement.

Does that sound like a healthy construction project making lots of visible progress? Or does that sound like California High-Speed Rail is digging up old stories to make it seem like they are?

If you look closely at the photos, you’ll see some other tip-offs that things are going as well for it as they want it to appear. The viaduct doesn’t connect to anything on either of its ends, making it not a bridge to the future, but a bridge to nowhere. Nor is there any evidence of any current construction to connect it to anywhere in the photos.

Running Out of Taxpayer Money

It also doesn’t help that the project, already billions over budget and years behind schedule, is running out of taxpayer money—again.

California’s high speed rail authority’s business plans include requesting the state deploy its rainy day funds to plug an $8 to $10 billion funding gap. Due to population decline, ridership estimates declined over the past year for the main Los Angeles to San Francisco segment from 31.3 million per year to 28.4 million per year.

The San Francisco to Anaheim high speed rail plan, approved by voters in 2008 with a $9.95 billion bond, is expected to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes via high speed rail. The California High Speed Rail Authority estimates this project will cost between $89 and $128 billion and may be complete by 2040.

The initial Merced to Bakersfield 171 mile segment is estimated to cost between $30 and $33 billion and be completed between 2030 and 2033. $18 billion has already been spent on the total HSR project, including securing land and environmental approvals for the project—422 of 463 miles of the train between downtown San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles have already been cleared....

However, with a major funding gap, and a sunset of California’s cap-and-trade program in 2030—“the only means of ongoing state funding” for the project, the financial future of even the first operating segment is in jeopardy.

Does that sound like a well-managed state government project? Or does it sound more like the plot for a really bad movie featuring slow-moving zombies that won’t die?

https://blog.independent.org/2024/05/10/california-high-speed-rail-celebrates-completing-bridge-to-nowhere/?omhide=true

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Arizona Should Not Look to California for Housing Solutions

“Don’t California my Arizona”—these words can be found on everything from T-shirts to tire covers. The slogan speaks to the fear that the Californians fleeing to Arizona will bring with them the very policies that propelled their exodus.

California’s housing shortage tops the list of troubles that Arizonans wish to avoid. The cost of a home in Phoenix is still modest compared to, say, San Francisco or Los Angeles, but the lack of affordable housing is nonetheless a growing crisis in Arizona’s capital. If legislators are hoping to save Arizona from California’s failures, why are they trying to replicate its policies?

The Arizona House of Representatives recently passed House Bill 2815, affectionately nicknamed the “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) bill. It replicates California’s SB 4, which seeks to make it easier to build affordable housing on lands owned by religious institutions.

Don’t get me wrong—both YIGBY bills would loosen zoning and eliminate discretionary permits for qualifying projects. Onerous zoning and permitting policies are the primary culprits behind California’s high housing costs, and they ought to be liberalized, if not eliminated.

When I wrote about California’s SB 4 for The Orange County Register, I argued that these provisions constitute a tacit admission that zoning and permitting reform are vital to solving the housing crisis. So why does the legislature limit these reforms to certain landholdings?

Put differently, we might ask why Arizona is following California’s practice of granting rights discriminately to privileged groups instead of extending equal rights to all citizens?

Even worse, Arizona’s YIGBY bill also seeks to impose some of California’s most counterproductive housing regulations by requiring every qualifying development to reserve at least 40% of units for low-income housing. This policy, known as “inclusionary zoning,” allows developers to build higher-density residential structures if they cap the rent on some of the units.

California cities began enthusiastically adopting inclusionary-zoning policies in the 1970s, and it has continued to double down on these requirements for the past half-century. Yet housing costs in California are higher than ever, and affordable units remain so scarce that college students sleep in their cars.

Economic research repeatedly finds that inclusionary zoning is not merely ineffective, but actually exacerbates the shortage of affordable housing. The studies show that the cost of affordability mandates outweighs the benefits of upzoning, leading to the construction of fewer affordable units than in areas that were upzoned without strings. The studies also reveal that even high-income housing developments make all housing more affordable by creating vacancies in the existing stock.

Arizona’s YIGBY bill, in short, reflects the irrational habit among lawmakers of addressing problems by duplicating the policies of states where those problems are most acute.

Arizona must instead start learning from those areas of the country where housing is more affordable, not less. Rather than modeling solutions on the recent reforms of failed states, we should follow the blueprint provided by the longstanding policies of places that have kept housing prices below the national average.

Houston is the perfect example to look to when crafting reforms. It has long been among the most affordable major cities for housing, despite rapid population growth, because it never adopted zoning and it issues by-right permits within 10 days of receiving an application.

If Arizona truly wants to solve its housing crisis, the legislature should require cities to dramatically liberalize their zoning and building regulations and provide a simple, transparent, and expeditious system of by-right permitting—for everybody, not just churches. It must also resist the temptation to burden these reforms with impractical affordability requirements that have long proven to do more harm than good. California should be an example to avoid, not imitate.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14924&omhide=true&trk=title

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The (Other) Cost of Inflation

Across the world, people are struggling under the specter of inflation.

In Venezuela, the inflation rate is 360 percent. In Argentina, it’s 160 percent. In Turkey, inflation is about 50 percent, about 10 percent higher than its neighbor Iran.

In Europe, inflation of the euro has finally cooled to about 3 percent, down from more than 10 percent a year ago. Canada and the United States have witnessed a similar pattern.

Even if Europe and North American countries can continue to rein in inflation — and that’s a very big if — the consequences of governments’ inflationary policies have already been realized. The value of people’s earnings and savings has been severely (and likely permanently) eroded.

The depreciation of real income causes serious pain for consumers and families, particularly poorer families who spend a higher percentage of their income on food and housing, commodities that tend to be disproportionately impacted by inflation.

“Lower-income households experienced above-average inflation because of their higher proportional spending on food and housing, categories for which prices were rising more rapidly at the time (especially during 2020, with the onset of the pandemic),” a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concluded earlier this year.

While the pernicious effects of inflation have been exhaustively detailed in recent years, one effect of inflation has received little attention: its impact on morality.

‘During Every Great Inflation’

The idea that inflation could affect morality might sound strange to some readers; It certainly did to me when I first heard the hypothesis. Yet, one of the most famed economic writers in history saw a clear link between inflationary policy and corruption (both public and private).

“During every great inflation there is a striking decline in both public and private morality,” Henry Hazlitt, the author of Economics in One Lesson, once observed.

One of the authorities Hazlitt cites is the historian Andrew Dickson White (1832–1932), author of Fiat Money Inflation in France. White, an abolitionist and graduate of Yale University who cofounded Cornell University weeks after the conclusion of the Civil War, had a deep interest in monetary policy and French history.

During his European travels, which stretched back to before the American Civil War, he collected an impressive array of primary sources from Revolutionary France — “newspapers, reports, speeches, pamphlets, illustrative material of every sort, and, especially, specimens of nearly all the Revolutionary issues of paper money” — which he used to publish his book in 1912.

In his work, White discusses how money printing in France led to not just monetary decay, but moral decay, and explains how it happened:

Out of the inflation of prices grew a speculating class; and, in the complete uncertainty as to the future, all business be­came a game of chance, and all businessmen, gamblers. In city centers came a quick growth of stockjobbers and speculators; and these set a debasing fashion in business which spread to the re­motest parts of the country….In this mania for yielding to present enjoyment rather than providing for future comfort were the seeds of new growths of wretchedness: luxury, senseless and extravagant, set in. This, too, spread as a fashion. To feed it, there came cheatery in the nation at large and corruption among officials and persons hold­ing trusts. While men set such fashions in private and official business, women set fashions of extravagance in dress and living that added to the incentives to cor­ruption…

Harvard Researchers: ‘A Positive Relationship Between Corruption and Inflation’

White’s book, which is freely available online courtesy of Project Gutenberg, is worth reading for anyone interested in history or monetary policy. While I find his thesis persuasive — White offers copious examples to show how loose money creates loose behavior — many readers will argue there’s an obvious problem: It’s unfalsifiable.

In one sense, they have a point.

While there’s no shortage of academics who argue morality can be measured — see Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory and the Schwartz Value Survey — I’m skeptical that humans can agree on a universal moral code, let alone accurately quantify morality in human populations.

Still, like just about anything, morality can be studied, and empirical evidence can be gathered. And there’s persuasive evidence that supports the idea that inflation corrupts.

For example, a prominent 2004 study conducted by Harvard researchers Miguel Braun and Rafael Di Tella found that higher levels of inflation variability tend to lead to more government corruption (and less capital investment).

“We document a positive relationship between corruption and inflation variability in a sample of 75 countries,” the authors wrote.

‘A Nursery of Tyranny, Corruption, and Delusion’
Corruption is just one way to measure public morality, of course. Crime levels are another.

The hyperinflation Weimar Germany (1918–33) experienced during the early 1920s is well known. Less well known is the surge in crime during the inflationary period, though it’s something Hazlitt discussed.

“It is no coincidence that crime rose sharply during the German inflation,” he wrote. “On the basis of 1882=100, the crime rate, which stood at an index number of 117 in 1913, rose to 136 in 1921 and 170 in 1923. It declined again in 1925, when the inflation was over, to 122.”

The rise in crime, however, was just one example of a much broader collapse in virtue and stability during the Weimar period. The historian Richard Evans touched on this topic in his 2005 book The Coming Third Reich:

Money, income, financial solidarity, regularity, economic order, and predictability had been at the heart of the bourgeois values and bourgeois existence before the war. A widespread cynicism began to make itself apparent in Weimar culture… It was not least as a consequence of the inflation that Weimar culture developed its fascination with criminals, embezzlers, gamblers, manipulators, thieves and crooks of all kinds. Life seemed to be a game of chance, survival a matter of the arbitrary impact of incomprehensible economic forces.

Evans’s description of the consequences of inflationary policy is but a longer, more artful version of that offered by the esteemed French statesman Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau, who at the dawn of the French Revolution warned, in a private letter, that inflationary policy was “a nursery of tyranny, corruption, and delusion.”

Mirabeau was right, but this didn’t stop him from pushing paper notes to finance public works while a Member of the Constituent Assembly, a policy that no doubt contributed to France’s descent into tyranny.

Mirabeau died of pericarditis early in 1791 at just 42 years of age, not long after yielding to pressure to pass a paper-money scheme. He never witnessed the full tyranny he predicted (and his own policies helped bring about): the Reign of Terror.

‘Developed in Obedience to Natural Laws’
White’s point is that the tyranny in France did not come about accidentally. It stemmed directly from its monetary policy.

Figures from the French Revolution are hard to come by (especially if you don’t read French), but a new paper published in European Economic Review described France’s monetary policy as “an explosion of paper money called the assignat,” which resulted in a hyperinflation Europe would not experience again until the twentieth century.

White goes so far as to suggest that the horrors of the French Revolution were an unavoidable consequence of France’s inflationary policies.

“Thus was the history of France logically developed in obedience to natural laws,” he writes.

This is similar to Hazlitt’s thesis that bad money will inevitably result in bad behavior. This might be a tough thesis to swallow — particularly for those who live in the age of fiat money — but other historical examples are easily found. Henry VIII’s lavish lifestyle and many wars were enabled by expansionary monetary policy — what historians refer to as The Great Debasement. Even the Bible hints at a link between inflation and moral decay.

“Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water,” the Prophet Isaiah chided (1:22).

Isaiah was preaching at a time during which the people of Israel, particularly its leaders, were morally wretched, or so we’re led to believe.

I’ll leave it an open question for readers to decide whether the United States’ own expansion of the money supply has resulted in a collapse of private and public morality. Though I’ll point out that Hazlitt, writing during the Carter administration, argued that the rise of public immorality was already well underway, and that it stemmed directly from its debauched currency.

I also suspect that White, if the great scholar was alive today, would look at American society — its endless wars, public corruption, and questionable taxpayer-funded initiatives — and simply say, “I told you so.”

https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/05/14/other-cost-inflation/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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A wonderful example of an angry lady



It was at a High School LaCrosse match in Utah

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Time is running out for Congress to fix the looming financial insolvency of Social Security, the program's own trustees say

In just nine years, the oldest Gen Xers will reach Social Security’s normal retirement age of 67. But they will have a rude awakening when they learn that the program’s trust fund is empty, leaving it able to pay out only as much in benefits as it takes from the paychecks of those then working.

That’s straight from the Social Security trustees 2024 report. It also notes that without congressional action, benefits will have to be cut by 21% across the board—including for those already retired—beginning in 2033.

Cuts or Taxes

For the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 a year from Social Security, that 21% cut will translate into a loss of $4,600 per year. As Social Security benefits will grow faster than payroll taxes for the foreseeable future, benefit cuts will reach 31% at the end of the trustees’ 75-year projections.

Simply maintaining currently scheduled Social Security benefits would require large tax increases. The program’s trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%, adding $2,500 to the median household’s annual Social Security taxes.

Even that projected hike may be too conservative. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 17.5% tax, or an extra $3,800 per year for the median family, is necessary to maintain current Social Security benefits.

Such high tax rates are a far cry from Social Security’s original intent. The program started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised it would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks.

And for a program that currently replaces about 40% of workers’ earnings during retirement (and will decline to 32% beginning in 2033), the current 12.4% tax is a hefty price to pay. If workers invested that amount in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds, they should have enough at retirement to replace at least 75% of their earnings.

Even as Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of income in retirement, its rising taxes have made it increasingly difficult, particularly for lower- and middle-income workers, to save for retirement.

In fact, Social Security’s growing size and scope could be exacerbating wealth inequality because the hard truth is that Social Security is not a savings program, and workers have no ownership of the Social Security taxes they pay.

Despite Social Security’s original intent to be a predominantly prefunded and effectively a forced-savings program, it now functions as a pure intergenerational transfer program. That happened because Social Security’s benefits increased more than its tax hikes.

A Bad Deal

In every year since 2011, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has received in tax revenues. This means that workers’ payroll tax “contributions” aren’t saved and don’t earn a positive rate of return over time.

Although the formula that determines retirees’ benefits is based on what they paid in Social Security taxes, their actual benefits come directly from younger workers’ paychecks. After 2033, retirees’ benefits will be entirely dependent on how much future lawmakers are willing to extract from workers’ paychecks.

The fact that Social Security taxes aren’t saved makes the program a bad deal for most Americans. It can also exacerbate wealth inequality among low-income and minority Americans who have lower life expectancies.

One out of every four black men dies between the ages of 45 and 64, having paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in Social Security taxes. But because they have no ownership of their contributions, they and their family members receive little or nothing in return.

What could have been a $350,000 retirement account that a low-income worker would have to pass on to his family is often just a $255 death payment instead.

With less than a decade left before Social Security runs out of money and automatic 21% benefit cuts ensue, lawmakers must act now to prevent insolvency and to improve the program for future generations.

Some commonsense solutions include gradually shifting to a universal benefit based on years of work instead of total earnings, automatically updating the program’s eligibility age to align with changes in life expectancy, and using more accurate statistics to adjust benefits.

Not much time

These reforms would translate into bigger paychecks for all Americans by allowing Social Security’s tax rate to decline over time.

Moreover, if coupled with a personal ownership option, Social Security reform could help more Americans build wealth that could increase their retirement incomes and provide a leg up to help their children and grandchildren pursue goals like education, homeownership, or starting a small business.

Whatever lawmakers do, they must act soon. Time isn’t on our side.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/13/someones-going-have-pay-lot-your-social-security/

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Businesses Destroyed by Rampant Crime

The iconic Macy’s department store on Union Square in the heart of San Francisco is closing because of rampant theft and the societal rot that have infected the city.

The massive 400,000-square-foot flagship building, which anchors an entire side of Union Square, has been in business for more than 70 years at this spot, and Macy’s has been in San Francisco for more than 100 years.

Employees at the store told the Daily Mail that thieves take “at least four blazers, 10 wallets, and 20 packs of underwear every day.” Another employee said that thieves routinely steal “men’s Ralph Lauren Polo, women’s North Face, and Levi’s clothing.”

With dozens of store closures in and around Union Square, and the dangerous conditions caused by open-air drug use and mentally ill people living on the streets, fewer and fewer people come downtown to shop.

See the Daily Mail’s map of store closures.

The closures are caused in large part because of lax enforcement of petty-theft laws by rogue prosecutors George Gascon and Chesa Boudin, who served as district attorneys in San Francisco from 2011 to 2022.

Read more about their rogue pro-criminal, anti-victim policies here, here, and here. For a deeper dive, read our book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Cities.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/13/societal-rot-part-1-businesses-destroyed-rampant-crime/

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‘We Ceased Being a Democracy’: Former Australian PM Calls for COVID-19 Royal Commission

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has raised fears Australia could be placed under lockdown again if a full Royal Commission investigation into the pandemic response is not held.

Mr. Abbott, who served in the top job from 2013 to 2015, said Australia stopped being a democracy for a couple of years during the pandemic.

The former Liberal Party leader spoke to his former Chief of Staff Peta Credlin following the release of a submission from the former Liberal Health Minister Greg Hunt to the current government’s COVID-19 inquiry.

Then presiding federal health minister during the pandemic questioned the measures implemented by state and territory leaders at the time, who rolled out vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and domestic border closures

Mr. Abbott told Sky News Australia said the cure was worse than the disease.

“The policy to deal with COVID turned out to be far worse than the disease itself. And when you go back and look at this honestly and dispassionately, you'd have to say that the first mistake that governments made was throwing out the carefully prepared pandemic plans that we all had in panic in early March 2020 because of the dire photos coming out of overwhelmed Italian hospitals,” Mr. Abbott said.

“But I think that had a lot more to do with the Italian hospital system than it did with the severity of the disease itself.”

Mr. Abbott also echoed calls from several Australian senators for a Royal Commission, raising fears the country could experience lockdowns again.

“My fear is that without a fair dinkum Royal Commission-type inquiry into the whole response to COVID, next time a pandemic happens, and it will, we will take the over-the-top response to this one as the model for all future actions.” Mr. Abbott said.

“But the last thing we'd want to be is locked up for several years, again, in response to a disease that turned out to be relatively mild.”

While he supported the medical advice, Mr. Abbott felt this should not come at the expense of Australia’s democracy.
“I’m confident that inside the Coalition a lot of these issues would have been more debated than they seemed on the surface, but there’s no doubt for a period of time we ceased being a democracy and became a kind of a ‘doc-docracy,’” he said, in reference to the influence of doctors and medical experts on public policy.

“Now I am all in favour of taking expert advice seriously, but in the end, we’ve got to remain and open, transparent accountable democracy, and I am afraid we weren’t for a couple of years during the pandemic.”

Liberal National Party Senator Matt Canavan and One Nation Senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson have pushed strongly for a COVID-19 Royal Commission, following news that the AstraZeneca vaccine was being withdrawn globally.

Despite calls for a Royal Commission, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese instead opted for a COVID-19 Response Inquiry to examine federal actions during the pandemic.

More than 2,000 submissions have been received so far, chaired by Robyn Kruk, as well as panel members Professor Catherine Bennett, and Dr. Angela Jackson.

Victoria’s Pandemic Restrictions Against Medical Advice: Hunt

Former Health Minister Hunt revealed in his submission that the then-Victorian government’s decision to restrict movement to five kilometre (3.1 miles) radius from home, and implement curfews went against medical advice.

Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews introduced these measures during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns in metropolitan Melbourne.

However, Mr. Hunt said the curfews and restrictions were not subject to federal advice, or to the best of his knowledge, medical advice.

“National Cabinet developed a series of step-up and step-down distancing measures as part of the COVID Roadmap. This included nationally agreed restrictions on gatherings following medical advice,” Mr. Hunt said (pdf).

“Subsequent unilateral decisions of some states outside of the National Cabinet framework, such as Victoria’s curfews or five kilometre movement restrictions were not the subject of Commonwealth advice, and nor to the best of my knowledge has the medical advice for such restrictions been either released or affirmed at state level.”

In the future, Mr. Hunt recommended states commit “not to take unilateral decisions” against National Cabinet decisions unless there is published and signed medical advice to the contrary at the deputy chief health officer level or above.

He also suggested that a Memorandum of Understanding should be signed between the Commonwealth and states that commits to the continuous use of the National Cabinet for future pandemic management.

World’s Longest Locked Down City

During the pandemic, Melbourne became one of the world’s longest locked-down cities.

“The strengthened settings will see a curfew imposed from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. every night. There will be increased police presence across metropolitan Melbourne to ensure public health measures are enforced,” the former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said in August 2021.

“Exercise and shopping are still limited to five kilometres from your home. If there’s no shops in your five kilometre radius, you can travel to the ones closest to you. You are also able to travel more than five kilometres to get a vaccine if you need to.”

Mr. Andrews said at the time that the restrictions were hard work for every Victorian, but the rules were in place for a reason.

“Everyone wants this pandemic to be over, but the rules are in place for a reason—we know they work and if we follow them together, we’ll be able to lift them sooner,” he said at the time.

Economically the city and state continues to recover from the impact of lockdowns with 7,606 businesses de-registering from the state in 2022-23.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/we-ceased-being-a-democracy-former-pm-calls-for-covid-19-royal-commission-5647420

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Salt may increase risk of stomach cancer by 40%, study suggests

Groan! Another witless attack on salt below. The journal article is here:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10120-024-01502-9

I have written previously on the salt phobia here:

http://jonjayray.com/short/salt.html

And here:

http://jonjayray.com/short/salt2.html

And here:

http://jonjayray.com/saltsum.html

And for what it is worth, I have always been a keen salt user but I had a gastroscopy recently which showed my stomach to be completely notmal, which is pretty good for an 80-year-old guy.

OK. On to the latest bit of nonsense. Once again it was an extreme-groups analysis in which they had to throw away half of their data to find something to talk about. So it seems probable that there was in fact NO significant linear relationship between illness and salt consupption.

And it's almost amusing that they found the association only with REPORTS of salt usage not with an estimate of actual salt usage. Bleah!

The one undisputable finding of salt research is that LOW salt can kill you. There is even a name for that: Hyponatremia

A new study might make you think twice before reaching for the salt shaker at your next meal.

Nutritionists from the Center for Public Health at the University of Vienna discovered that people from the UK who added salt to most of their meals were 41 percent more likely to develop stomach cancer than those who used the topping sparingly.

Previous studies in China, Japan and Korea have linked a salty diet to stomach cancer - but this is one of the first to show the link in Westerners.

Though the Austrian study was merely observational, older studies have suggested that excess salt might erode the protective coating on the stomach, causing damage to the tissue there and leading to cancerous mutations.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13401167/additive-increase-risk-stomach-cancer-salty-salt.html

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You can't win: diet soft-drinks are just as likely to lead to heart problems as sugary ones

The hazard ratios were all very low, indicating that there was only a tiny chance of any of the drinks being responsible for anything. The lowest "risk" was for people who mainly drank pure fruit juice. My favourite drink is cold water, followed by iced coffe, followed by pure orange juice so I kinda liked this article. The journal article is here:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCEP.123.012145

Drinking artificially sweetened beverages, such as sodas and juices, has been linked to a slew of dangerous health conditions, the United Kingdom-based study has concluded this week.

Published in the journal Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, the research follows the drinking habits of roughly 202,000 adults aged 37 to 73 in the United Kingdom, examining the results of a 24-hour diet questionnaire.

Specifically, the findings of the study suggest a strong correlation between adults drinking no to low-sugar beverages and their risk of developing atrial fibrillation.

According to the Heart Foundation, atrial fibrillation is the most common recurring arrhythmia found in clinical practice, prevalent in two to four per cent of the population in developed nations such as Australia.

Individuals who reported consuming more than two litres of artificially sweetened drinks in the 24-hour time period were found to have a 20 per cent higher chance of developing the condition (that’s roughly six standard cans).

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a serious cardiovascular disease defined by having a heartbeat that is too slow, too fast or irregular. Additionally, patients diagnosed with AF report symptoms such as lightheadedness, chest pain, extreme fatigue, and shortness of breath. Most notably, atrial fibrillation has been found to be the leading cause of stroke in the United States.

Additionally, the findings indicated that the individuals who reported consuming beverages with added sugars had an increased risk of the disease by up to ten per cent. On the flip side, consuming unsweetened juices, such as natural orange juice, was associated with a reduced risk of up to eight per cent.

“Our study’s findings cannot definitively conclude that one beverage poses more health risk than another due to the complexity of our diets and because some people may drink more than one type of beverage,” says lead study author Dr Ningjian Wang, a professor at the Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.

https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/health/health-news/this-common-drink-increases-the-risk-of-serious-heart-condition-study-finds/image-gallery/c1442ee9ef82a08436afe5a7f4b9558d

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Why the End of the Boy Scouts Matters

The Boy Scouts are no more. The organization, once well known for helping shape boys into good men, allowed girls to join in 2017. Now the group is going a step further, announcing its new name as of February will be Scouting America.

What a loss for Americans—both men and women.

In recent days, we’ve seen examples of good American men. Fraternity brothers at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill protected the American flag from pro-Palestinian protesters.

And Mario Torres, a 45-year-old custodian at Columbia University, said he tried to “protect the building”’ and ended up in a physical altercation with a protester. “He had a Columbia hoodie on, and I managed to rip that hoodie off of him and expose his face,” Torres told The Free Press.

Unfortunately, though, our modern culture largely doesn’t value manly virtues—or men.

It would be one thing to see the further gender neutralizing of the Boy Scouts of America if the boys and men of America were thriving. But they are not.

Fewer men than women attend college. Among men deemed prime working age, those ages 25 to 54, 11.4% were not in the workforce as of 2022, according to the San Francisco Fed. That’s up from 5.8% in 1976.

“In 2020, only 25% of men ages 17-24 … qualified for military service; the majority were disqualified for being overweight, having issues with drug abuse, for mental health and medical/physical reasons, or for a combination of those factors,” writes Brenda Hafera, a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Simon Center for American Studies.

The data doesn’t suggest that men are happy with the status quo. In the United States, around four times as many men die by suicide as women do. Men are two to three times as likely to die of a drug overdose than women. They’re also more likely to binge drink or be hospitalized in relation to alcohol use. Among men ages 18 to 45, a horrifying 44% have thought of suicide in the past two weeks, according to a 2023 Equimundo survey

“Many of the young men who came to see me were struggling,” writes Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in his book “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” recalling his time working as law professor. “Some lacked confidence, some lacked direction; others could not seem to get motivated.”

“They were afraid to fail, to venture out and take a risk, but felt at the same time dissatisfied with their lives as they knew them,” Hawley continues. “One after another said … I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with my life. And yet they felt they were failing at whatever that was.”

Perhaps the politically correct expungement of male-only spaces is part of the reason why men are struggling so.

In recent decades, even as women-only spaces have remained popular (and accepted), male organizations have drifted into inclusivity. Richard V. Reeves, who heads the American Institute for Boys and Men, notes that that the Boys Clubs of America became co-ed in 1990. Reeves adds: “In 1978, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) banned all gender discrimination, and now focuses on the wellbeing of children, young people and the wider community with no specific orientation towards boys or men.” A total of 25 women’s colleges exist, but for men, only three single-sex colleges remain.

Why are we so against these men-only spaces?

As a woman, I’ve long valued female-only spaces. Attending a conservative Catholic college, I lived in a women-only dorm. Men darkened the doors only to fix things and even then, like lepers of old alerting townspeople with a bell, they had to bellow “man in the dorm” at regular intervals to make clear their intrusion.

It was fantastic: The dorm truly became a refuge, a place where I and other women were free to commiserate, study, and have fun together in a way many of our romance-addled brains could not quite manage when our crushes were potentially present.

Post-college, I’ve appreciated girls’ nights and girls’ trips with friends. I’ve been grateful for those moments of unique solidarity I’ve sometimes found with female colleagues, some of them fellow journalists.

Why should men be denied these joys, these delightful moments of shared understanding and interests?

Furthermore, there’s real evidence that the Boy Scouts, in its male-only incarnation, did help boys become good men. In 2012, Baylor University researchers compared Eagle Scouts—the highest level of Boy Scouts—to non-scouts and found that Eagle Scouts were:

34% more likely to have donated to a nonreligious charity in the past month.

53% more likely to have donated to a religious charity.

62% more likely to have volunteered for a nonreligious organization.

56% more likely to have worked with a neighbor to address a problem or improve the community.

55% more likely to have held a leadership position in their workplace.

In addition to these findings, which showed how Eagle Scouts truly contribute to their communities, Baylor researchers also found evidence that Eagle Scouts enjoyed better social relationships than their peers. Compared to non-scouts, Eagle Scouts were 38% more likely to be close with siblings, 37% more likely to be close with friends, and 87% more likely to belong to four or more groups.

That’s important—because too many men these days lack crucial social support.

Among men, 15% had no close friends in 2021, up from 3% who said so in 1990. That’s significantly higher than the percentage of women who say they have no close friends (10%), according to The Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Over half of men are unhappy with the size of their friend circle.

About a quarter of younger men (ages 18 to 45) said they saw no friends or family during the past week, and 22% said they had no one locally they are close to or could depend on, according to a 2023 Equimundo survey. Almost half of these younger men said they found their online lives more fulfilling than their actual lives, while about 60% said they viewed porn once or more a week.

So, sure, let’s kill one organization that had successfully helped men socialize with each other.

Of course, the Boy Scouts of America isn’t a perfect organization. The revelations about the organization’s sexual abuse crisis have been horrifying. Far too many boys weren’t protected from predators. A lawsuit was settled for $850 million in 2022 after tens of thousands of men said they had been abused as Boy Scouts.

And although the Boy Scouts laudably resisted much of the woke culture longer than many, they too waved the white flag. In 2011, Kathleen Arnn, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, compared the 2009 Boy Scout Handbook with the original from 1910.

“[D]ecades of aggressive political correctness have had their effect, and the Scouts have lost some of the confident American boyishness that loves heroes and makes for heroes,” wrote Arnn.

The original Boy Scott Handbook told boys: “A good Scout must be chivalrous” and “[H]e should be as manly as the knights or pioneers of old. He should be unselfish. He should show courage. He must do his duty.”

The handbook also profiled American heroes, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed, and even Betsy Ross.

But by 2009, the “chapter on Chivalry has been completely removed,” wrote Arnn, adding: “American heroes, so numerous and colorful in the original handbook, are almost absent. Washington and Lincoln are each mentioned one time.”

Perhaps someone can resurrect a new version of the old Boy Scouts, complete with the old handbook. Or start an entirely new organization, one that cultivates manly virtues in a boys-only space.

But what’s clear is we need to do more to support our boys and men. No (sane) feminist benefits when men fail; this isn’t a zero-sum game. Both men and women lead happier lives when men are living up to their potential, holding down jobs, and being great husbands and dads.

Our current society isn’t working for men. It’s time to change it—and bring back, for both boys and men, male-only spaces where they can connect and, hopefully, flourish.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/11/a-womans-plea-bring-back-the-boy-scouts/

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Leftists want to force their faith on Christians

A religious civil war is raging but only one side understands that it is a battle over theology.

At stake is whether the ascendant state morality will drive deeper into the ancient institutions of faith and force believers to submit to its temporal commandments.

Nationally, the Australian Law Reform Commission’s final report on religious exemptions from anti-discrimination law is just another sortie in a long campaign over what the state will allow you to believe and how far it is prepared to go to force apostates to heel.

Queensland’s proposed anti-discrimination bill also seeks to narrow the rights of the faithful. Alex Deagon, from Queensland University of Technology, argues it will “significantly undermine the ability of religious organisations to employ persons in accordance with their faith”.

The ALRC admits one of its recommendations may limit “the freedom to manifest religion or belief in community with others, and the associated parental liberty to ensure the religious and moral education of one’s children in conformity with one’s own convictions”. This, it says, is balanced by the overall effect, which “would be to maximise the realisation of human rights”.

The ALRC wants section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act, which allows religious schools to hire those whose lives and ideas accord “with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of a particular religion or creed”, to be abolished.

When you lose the freedom to manifest your faith, abide by your beliefs and the liberty to ensure your children are educated in your creed, what is left? The commission is erasing the right of a religious school to organise around its own ethos.

This is an extreme form of laicism, driven by a fierce “progressive” crusade against Christianity. In a multifaith society that means all believers are on this battlefield, as the institutions of government are mobilised against them. Like many things dubbed progressive, it is the latest incarnation of the despotic tendencies of the Bureautoracy (n): the ubiquitous, unelected technocratic blob bent on imposing its notion of utopia on the mob. Its relentlessly mutating dogma has spread like Paterson’s curse through all the institutions.

In a profound irony we are witnessing the final metamorphosis of Christianity as zealots torch the last idol: belief in a power that transcends the state.

The child has turned on a parent it does not recognise because the source code of this secular faith is the notion of universal human rights. That idea was born with the belief that each individual is valued by God, an avowedly Christian concept and part of a set of revolutionary beliefs that the early faithful simply called “The Way”.

Warnings religion’s role in Australia is ‘under attack’

Universal equality is captured in Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Another epoch-changing idea rings from the first sentences of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the word (logos). And the word was with God. And the word was God.”

The New Testament was written in Greek and logos means both word and reason. So, in the Christian tradition, God is reason itself. Christianity is the singular encounter between Greek philosophy and Jewish mysticism, the marriage of reason and faith. The theology that evolved was a thoroughly different way of thinking. Let’s call it wisdom.

This wisdom elevated the poor, the meek, the righteous, the merciful and peacemakers. Faith in God demands you “treat others as you would like them to treat you”, and not to act with reason is contrary to the nature of God.

Christianity is born in the East, informed by the West and takes on its historically decisive character in Europe. Europe is defined by its faith and its faith is defined by reason. Faith and reason set Europe on the road to liberal democracy.

Through all its failures, and its many crimes, reason pushes the West forward and demands that it learn and evolve. And the excesses of both church and state always had to contend with its Christian conscience.

The savage colonisation of the Americas was fiercely denounced by Dominican friar Bartolome de Las Casas, the evil of slavery collapsed when it confronted the faith of William Wilberforce. Despite often spectacularly failing to abide by its ideals, Christianity demanded the West slowly bend towards realising the radical demand of the central tenet of its faith. The new commandment to “love one another” excludes no one.

As historian Tom Holland demonstrates in his epic work Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, “To live in a Western country is to live in a society that is utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.”

It is, of course, a heritage that the zealots of the New Way deny. To them their belief system is self-evident because it just is. It is neutral. It is agnostic. That is a delusion. The New Way exhibits some of the best and all the worst features of a proselytising religion. It looks to uplift, to guide, to build a better, more just world. It is also deeply intolerant of dissent and has established the institutions of inquisition to police heresy, in state and federal human rights commissions.

It’s hard to criticise anti-discrimination laws but the growth of objective penalties for subjective crimes should trouble those who care about liberal democracy. Such penalties are how American journalist Robert Wargas defines totalitarianism.

What standards will be applied? The notion of transgender identity, for example, is a rapidly moving target. Even the Australian Human Rights Commission’s website admits the “terminology is strongly contested”.

So, this latest assault by the state on the faithful is a battle of competing theologies, as the disciples of Caesar seek to mount his image in every temple. And the insurgents know nothing of faith because, as anyone who has any dealings with religious schools knows, most have no desire to discriminate and are far more tolerant of difference than “progressives”.

What religious institutions don’t want is to be forced to submit to state diktats that deliberately undermine the ethos of their institution. Here let’s recall that the Labor Party pledge demands its members not be a part of any other organisation that is inimical to its ideals. Why shouldn’t religious schools enjoy the same right?

The arc of history has bent out of shape. Those who claim the heritage of reason have discounted the role of faith in their enlightenment. They discriminate and call it equality. They unreasonably seek to force the faithful to heel.

This is not wise.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/progressive-crusade-to-bend-arc-of-history/news-story/0dbb230e3fa6b1af49fd8a15aa27184b

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Fresh health warning over ultra-processed foods as 30-year study warns they marginally raise your risk of an early death

The academic source of the article below is:
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-078476

Its conclusions are utter rubbish, reflecting the biases of the authors rather than what their data shows. It is an extreme quartile study -- meaning that they had to throw away half of their data before they could show any correlations. And even then only very weak associations were shown in only some cases.

And given the large number of possible correlations examined, an experiment-wise error-rate approach to significance testing should have been used, as in a Bonferroni correction, which would have reduced ALL relationships in this study to a nullity.

The study is good evidence therefore that ultra-processed foods are NOT harmful to you. Pathetic!

Conservatives are used to Leftists ignoring facts in favour of their theories and epidemiologists are much the same. Both groups show a common human tendency to adopt simple generalizations to explain their world. Sadly for us all, reality is complex and unforgiving so simple theories can lead to conclusions that are radically contrary to the truth -- e.g. Affirmative action has not removed black failure and simple foods are not safer than complex ones


Eating too many ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may send you to an early grave, a study suggests.

Ready meals, fizzy drinks and ice creams appear to pose the greatest danger to human health.

Harvard University researchers tracked 115,000 healthy US adults over the course of three decades.

Four per cent more deaths occurred among participants who ate around seven servings of junk a day, compared against a group who ate half as much.

While the risk was only small, the team argued their findings echoed calls to limit certain types of UPFs.

The umbrella term is used to cover anything edible made with colourings, sweeteners and preservatives that extend shelf life.

Ready meals, ice cream and tomato ketchup are some of the best-loved examples of products that fall under the umbrella UPF term, now synonymous with foods offering little nutritional value.

They are different to processed foods, which are tinkered to make them last longer or enhance their taste, such as cured meat, cheese and fresh bread.

Yet dietitians argue this sweeping judgement wrongly fingers 'healthy' options like fish fingers and baked beans.

Ultra-processed foods, such as sausages, cereals, biscuits and fizzy drinks, are formulations made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives.

They contain little or no unprocessed or minimally processed foods, such as fruit, vegetables, seeds and eggs.

The foods are usually packed with sugars, oils, fats and salt, as well as additives, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilisers.

Ultra-processed foods are often presented as ready-to-consume, taste good and are cheap.

The new paper adds to growing evidence illustrating the health risks of UPFs, which have been vilified for decades over their observed links to cancer and dementia.

Over the 34-year follow-up period, the researchers recorded 48,193 deaths, including more than 13,000 due to cancer and just over 11,000 attributed to cardiovascular diseases.

However, no specific relationship between total UPF consumption and cancer or heart disease deaths was observed.

Instead, the elevated risk — amounting to an extra 64 deaths per every 100,000 person-years — was only seen for deaths from all causes.

They also found no link between premature death and condiments, sauces and savoury snacks.

Even with sugary drinks and ready meals, the risk was less pronounced after researchers factored in the overall diet quality of the participants, who were quizzed about their eating habits every four years.

The risk was up to 13 per cent for some UPFs.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the scientists said: 'The findings provide support for limiting consumption of certain types of ultra-processed food for long term health.'

But experts today criticised the research.

Sir David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, said: 'This study shows weak associations of ultra-processed foods with overall mortality.'

Dietitian Dr Duane Mellor, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said: 'It is also noticeable that those who consumed most ultra-processed foods tended to eat few vegetables, fruit, legumes and wholegrain.

'It might not be as simple as that those who ate more ultra-processed foods are more likely to die earlier — it is quite possible that these foods might displace healthier foods from the diet.'

He added: 'Not all groups of UPFs are associated with the same health risks, with sugar and artificially sweetened drinks and processed meats being most clearly associated with risk of an early death.'

Professor Gunter Kuhnle, an expert in nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, said it was 'impossible to know how reliable the results are' because of how the study was carried out.

He said: 'Results, therefore, should be treated with a lot of caution. 'I don't think this study provides evidence suggesting limiting certain foods just because of their level of processing.

'Public health policy should be informed by evidence, and there is very good evidence about the health effects of foods based on their composition — which is largely confirmed by this study.

'In contrast, there is still virtually no robust evidence for an effect of 'ultra-processing' specifically on health.'

The UK is the worst in Europe for eating UPFs, which make up an estimated 57 per cent of the national diet.

They are thought to be a key driver of obesity, which costs the NHS around £6.5billion a year.

Often containing colours, emulsifiers, flavours, and other additives, they typically undergo multiple industrial processes which research has found degrades the physical structure of foods, making it rapid to absorb.

This in turn increases blood sugar, reduces satiety and damages the microbiome - the community of 'friendly' bacteria that live inside us and which we depend for good health.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13395481/ultra-processed-foods-30-year-study-risk-early-death.html

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The People Setting America on Fire

Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of support for terror on elite college campuses. At Columbia, Yale, Princeton, NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, Texas, and elsewhere, masked mobs have occupied schools with tent encampments, established self-proclaimed “autonomous zones,” clashed with police, harassed and threatened visibly Jewish students, and issued demands for their universities to divest from Israeli “genocide.”

Politically, moreover, the protests have displayed an incoherent mix of campus progressivism, hardcore Islamism and Arab nationalism, and revolutionary anarchism and communism, including open praise for North Korea. The only unifying thread would appear to be opposition to Israel and its alleged imperial patron, the United States.

Have America’s college students suddenly converted en masse to anarcho-communist-jihadism? Not quite. Many are far left and anti-Israel. Some are foreigners, or the children of foreigners, who have imported the conspiracies and hatreds of their homelands. More, admitted under relaxed pandemic-era admissions standards and proudly ignorant of both American and world history, are taking the “decolonial” half-knowledge pushed by their elders to its logical conclusion.

But students are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, faction active in the campus protests. As in the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, “outside agitators”—professional radicals and organizers, black bloc antifa thugs, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and Palestinian and Islamist radicals—have played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests, just as they have organized and escalated the wider anti-Israel protest campaign that began almost immediately after Oct. 7.

This largely decentralized network of agitators is, in turn, politically and financially supported by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party.

The first hint that the protests are not entirely organic is their striking resemblance to previous rounds of organized far-left agitation, from the “uprising” of summer 2020 to the rolling antifa vs. Proud Boys brawls of 2016-17. The creation of “liberated” or “autonomous” zones on campus, for instance, is a hallmark of anarchist organizing familiar from Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and New York’s City Hall Autonomous Zone four summers ago.

Familiar, too, is the governance of these zones, with masked security details prohibiting filming from outsiders and directing reporters to trained media representatives. During clashes with police or with counterprotesters, students and their allies have deployed classic “bloc” tactics, covering their faces and dressing in matching outfits to promote anonymity, linking arms to interfere with police attempts to conduct arrests, and attempting “de-arrests”—i.e., the coordinated swarming of police officers—to rescue apprehended comrades.

At Yale, student activists doxxed the police officers sent to clear them out of the encampment—another harassment tactic frequently deployed by antifa.

These resemblances are no accident. All of these tactics require a degree of instruction and training. Footage from Columbia showed the professional “protest consultant” Lisa Fithian, a veteran of Occupy, BLM, Standing Rock, and Stop Cop City, teaching students at Columbia how to barricade themselves into Hamilton Hall.

Recent video from inside the protest encampment at UCLA, meanwhile, showed masked men leading a hand-to-hand combat training. When police cleared out encampments at the University of Texas-Austin and Columbia and the City University of New York last week, roughly half of those arrested—45 of the 79 in Texas, 134 of the 282 in New York—had no connection with the university at which they were arrested. Some, like the 40-year-old anarchist heir James Carlson, arrested at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, had protest related rap sheets going back two decades.

“What you’re seeing is a real witches’ brew of revolutionary content interacting on campuses,” says Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and an expert on far-left domestic extremism. “On the left-wing side, you have a broad variety of revolutionary leftists, who serve as rent-a-mobs, providing the warm bodies for whatever the leftist cause of the day is. And on the other side you have the Islamist and Palestinian networks: American Muslims for Palestine and their subsidiary Students for Justice in Palestine, CAIR, the Palestinian Youth Movement. We’re seeing a real mixture of different kinds of radical foment, and it’s all being activated at the same time.”

The far-left groups active in the protests include antifa and other anarchists: Anarchist literature has been distributed in the encampments, and antifa websites have published dispatches from “comrades” on the inside. They also include various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition, a PSL front group that worked with several Muslim groups to organize the Jan. 13 March on Washington for Gaza, at which protesters flew the black jihadist flag.

On April 29, for instance, shortly before masked assailants stormed Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside, The People’s Forum—a Manhattan event space affiliated with the PSL and funded by Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy businessman who “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide,” according to an August profile in The New York Times—urged its activists to rush up to Columbia to “support our students.” Similar calls for an “emergency action” were distributed throughout radical networks in New York City.

These groups, Shideler says, typically operate in a decentralized manner, using successful tactics drawn from decades of anarchist organizing and spread through left-wing activist networks via word-of-mouth, as well as through formal trainings by professionals such as Fithian or the nonprofit “movement incubator” Momentum Strategies. “If you look at Fithian,” he says, “she has consulted with hundreds of groups on how to do these things: how to organize, how to protest, how to make sure your people don’t go to jail, how to help them once they’re in jail.”

There is no one decision-maker; rather, decentralized “affinity” groups work together toward a shared goal, coordinating out in the open via social media and Google Docs. This can create an impression of centralized planning. Shideler cites the matching tents that have cropped up on a number of campuses, prompting speculation that some shadowy entity is buying them en masse. “People keep pointing out, They all have the same tent!,” he says. “Well, yeah, it’s because the organizers told them to buy a tent, and sent around a Google Doc with a link to that specific tent on Amazon. So they all went out and bought the same tent.”

In fact, it is a mistake both to view the campus protests as a “student” movement and to regard the outsiders as “infiltrators” or somehow separate from the movement. Rather, student activists have been working together with outsiders, with whom they are linked via overlapping activist networks and nationwide organizations. The “student” revolts, in turn, exist on a continuum with the broader anti-Israel protest movement. The campus encampments, for instance, began immediately after the nationwide “economic blockade” on April 15, which saw protesters block the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and “flood” Wall Street in New York City. Calls to participate in the “A15 Action” were disseminated widely in anarchist and far-left networks, while Palestinian and Islamist groups—SJP, AMP, CAIR, and Within Our Lifetime—simultaneously called for an April 15 “Strike 4 Gaza.”

Given reporting that nationwide campus “liberation zones” and “encampments” were planned as early as November 2023, it seems likely that the timing of the university protests was decided by “the movement” well in advance.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/people-setting-america-on-fire-soros-tides-wespac

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What is Happening with the Catholic Vote? Polling Shows Biden’s Numbers Plummeting Especially with Hispanics

A brand-new study on Catholic voters has alarming news for President Joe Biden when it comes to courting the Catholic vote in November. Catholics – particularly Hispanic Catholics – are expressing a significant decline in support for Biden compared to four years ago.

According to an April 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, former President Donald Trump now leads Biden among Catholics as a whole by twelve points, 55 percent to 43 percent. This marks a significant shift compared to 2020 when Trump won Catholics by a single percentage-point, 50 percent to 49 percent.

Hidden among this striking shift is the real group Biden has to worry about – Hispanic Catholics. White Catholics voted for Trump by a comfortable fifteen-point margin in 2020 and show a moderate increase in support for Trump now. However, Hispanic Catholics supported Biden by 41 points in 2020 but plan to split there votes nearly evenly in November.

Pew’s survey shows that Hispanic Catholics, who make up close to 40 percent of the American Catholic population, say they plan to support Biden in November by just two percentage points after supporting Biden by 41 points in 2020. Hispanic Catholics are now planning to support Biden by a razor thin margin of 49 percent to 47 percent, after supporting Biden by a margin of 67 percent to 26 percent in 2020.

According to Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, Hispanic Catholics are shifting away from the Democratic Party, despite the left’s best attempts to court them. “They [Hispanic Catholics] were once reliable votes for Democrats, but they are now splitting down the middle”, Pecknold told the National Catholic Register. “What this suggests is that, despite their best attempts at buying their votes through political favors, Democrats are losing one of the identity groups they’ve worked hardest at keeping.”

As Hispanic Catholics have made a pivotal turn away from Biden in the last four years, white Catholics have further consolidated behind Trump. According to Pew’s survey on how Catholics plan to vote in November, Trump secures around 61 percent of white Catholics to Biden’s 38 percent.

While recent polls shows that economic issues in particular are pushing Hispanics and blue-collar voters away from Biden, social issues also play a significant role when it comes to the Catholic vote.

Catholics are less likely to support the left-wing cultural agenda, opposing both transgender ideology, abortion, and same-sex marriage at high rates according to survey data. A 2022 poll from RealClear Opinion Research found that Catholics hold distinctly traditional views on a wide range of social issues including abortion, transgender ideology, and parents’ rights in education.

The survey found a full 82 percent of likely Catholic voters support some form or abortion restrictions, and 58 percent reject the idea of forcing doctors to perform procedures which violate their moral convictions, including abortion.

On transgender issues, American Catholics are significantly opposed to forcing biological males into female environments. Sixty-seven percent of Catholic voters reject the idea of biological males competing against biological females in school sports, and 67 percent reject allowing transgender males to use girls’ bathrooms and showers.

The Catholic population as a whole firmly believes that parents’ rights should be respected regarding the curriculum their children are taught as well. The Real Clear survey shows that 90 percent of Catholic voters say parents deserve more information on what their children are learning in school, and 65 percent believe parents deserve to play a role in deciding what is taught in public schools.

It is important to note that regular church attendance among Catholics is highly predictive of holding more conservative social views, and the opposite is true as well. Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey of American Catholics finds that those who attend church at least weekly are significantly less likely to favor the church recognizing LGBTQ marriages or encouraging women to become priests.

Practicing Catholics who attend church at least weekly say by a 32-point margin, 65 percent to 33 percent, that the church should not recognize gay marriage. Less-practicing Catholics who attend church less than weekly say the exact opposite. By a 24-point margin, 61 percent to 37 percent, those who attend church less than weekly say the church should recognize gay marriage.

The Biden Administration’s corrosive social agenda, driven by the most radical elements of the cultural left, is turning off a variety of voters, including independents, swing voters, parents, and Hispanics. Hispanic Catholics are further distancing themselves from the left after favoring Biden by double-digits in 2020. The radical left’s transgender ideology, infiltration of the school system against the will of parents, and violent abortion agenda is only further isolating Catholics from the Democratic Party.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/05/what-is-happening-with-the-catholic-vote-polling-shows-bidens-numbers-plummeting-especially-with-hispanics/

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How did our anti-racist left become so openly anti-Jew?

I have never before felt shame in my country. Frustration, irritation and incomprehension, occasionally, but never shame.

Now I am ashamed of our opportunist anti-Semitism, cynically tolerating Hamas murders by weaponising the appalling plight of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. I am ashamed of fellow citizens, openly or snidely anti-Jew; of universities too frightened to let Jews speak; and Pontius Pilate governments, washing their hands of dead Jews out of political convenience or fear.

What really bemuses me is that modern anti-Semitism in Australia comes from the left when it traditionally has been a product of the populist right. After all, Adolf Hitler was no social liberal.

But our own Jew-baiters now cluster visibly on the left. Bits of the Labor Party, various trade unions and innumerable faux-Trotskyist committees peddle propaganda, supposedly just anti-Israel but founded in a deeper racial and religious loathing. Most visibly the correct thought that offspring of privilege demonstrate enjoyably on university campuses, routinely eliding the old convenient distinction between Israel and Jewry.

This progressive anti-Semitism is easy to observe but much harder to explain. Why are people who endlessly propound human rights, revile racism and foster gender diversity so negatively obsessed – at best – with one of the smallest, historically most persecuted minorities in the world?

Part of understanding is to accept that, while Australia and its British tradition have inflicted less persecution on Jews than almost any other Western society, our record is not perfect. Way back, the Plantagenet kings milked, murdered and banished Jews. The Victorians who produced our liberal Constitution also manufactured that Semitic monster Fagin.

But in the new colonies of Australia anti-Semitism was beside the point. The troops were much more worried about Indigenous guerrillas, convicts and the feckless Irish. They may not positively have liked Jews but had little interest or energy to persecute them.

Famously, by the 1930s Australia had enjoyed a Jewish army commander in John Monash, a Jewish chief justice of the High Court in Isaac Isaacs, and a Jewish governor-general, also the irrepressible Isaacs. What was left was a limited, legacy anti-Semitism. Some people thought the Jews were too clever, too grasping, too sharp. But as the nation developed, it became reprehensible to talk like this. Good, ordinary people were not even passive anti-Semites.

A critical factor here was the Holocaust. The two Great Generations saw its consequences live on horrific newsreels. They were revolted beyond revulsion. They passed their horror to their children, and they to theirs. Anti-Semitism was a brand name for mass murder. But, incredibly, even the Holocaust has faded. A 66-year-old Australian (like me) was born only a decade and a bit after Auschwitz, and was minutely instructed in its meaning. Younger millennials were born 50 years after the Holocaust. It is remote history, not part of ethical family upbringing.

The consequence is that younger people do not understand the Jews as a nation reared in utter horror. They are just another minority, to be liked or deprecated as circumstances demand. Which contributes to our current confronting circumstances.

A pro-Israel protest at Sydney University to address the safety of Jewish students. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift
A pro-Israel protest at Sydney University to address the safety of Jewish students. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift
First, anti-Semitism is entrenched in the left as an instinctive, sometimes unwitting default position. Second, with the horrific chaos in Gaza, anti-Semitism suddenly is chic. People now routinely utter race libels that until recently would have had them ejected from any decent cocktail party. Correspondingly, anyone contradicting them will be abused or frozen into silence. Third, and chillingly, anti-Semitism is strongest among those who are young, trendy and left.

The same university students who ostentatiously agonise over climate change and social housing protest about the Jews. They do this through a self-confirming lens on the horrors of Gaza. If questioned, they smile pityingly, wave their banners and move on to the couscous. As the mayor of Gomorrah doubtless remarked on that fatal night, what on earth is going on? When did being left mean being an anti-Semite?

One obvious point is that if the state of Israel is conflated with the Jews, both are natural targets of the left as proxies for the US. Rent-a-Trots wanting to condemn the evils of modern liberal capitalism can take Israel and its difficulties as a bitter case in point.

Interestingly, the old nostrum that “I’m not anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel” seems to be waning. In the current Gazan atmosphere of fear and loathing, the claim is not only implausible but unnecessary. Casual anti-Semitism is the new black.

The other odd thing about targeting Israel as the servant of the Great Satan is that other running dogs receive far less attention. Washington has numerous client states around the world. What, other than the obvious, automatically selects Israel?

For many years Israel could counter this type of argument with an entirely different narrative. What we saw was a band of plucky Jews in army uniforms, repeatedly invaded by bully larger nations, yet invariably victorious in improbable circumstances. But as Israel has succeeded, not only militarily but economically, its status as a David against Goliath has dissipated. As demonstrated in Gaza, right or wrong, Israel is a superpower in the Middle East. Yes, it is beset by intractable enemies such as Iran, and yes, groups such as Hamas are vicious murderers who hold the whole Palestinian people as hostages. But Israel as the underdog is a slogan that no longer flies.

The reality of Israel’s success is that it has augmented the armoury of the left. If Israel is no longer the 97-pound weakling, it can be portrayed as a bully. The international terms for a nation-state bully are invader, oppressor and aggressor.

Jews must wonder at these terms, all of which are highly personal. Not only states but people can be aggressors and oppressors. If Israel has these qualities, it follows that its people have the same, and most of those people are Jews.

Everyone loves to hate a stereotype. In the Middle Ages, Jews were thieves, cheaters, carriers of disease and killers of Christian babies. Today they are rightist brutes, genocidal murderers and ethnic cleansers. The current language of the left is a recognisable translation of medieval charge sheets. Where are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion when you need them?

Funnily enough, the idea of Israel as rogue state primarily composed of recently arrived Jews feeds directly into the grand obsession of the Australian crazy left. This is the devalidation of the Australian nation-state.

You know the trope. The first Europeans in Australia were mere invaders who warped into settlers. They had no right to inhabit the continent. Crucially, their collective posterity was no better, as they were tainted settlers by blood. The result was a perpetual settler state.

It follows that nothing done by our own settler state – such as making a constitution, let alone uncongenial laws – can be valid. Where this deconstruction of Australia leads is hard to guess but it certainly means that European Australians collectively are perpetually nasty, brutal, exploitative invaders. We are racially invalid occupants of the continent. Sound familiar?

Israel is constantly derided as a settler state. The Jews who came to their historic homeland during the past two centuries are dismissed as invaders. As articulated by Hamas, Israel should be destroyed and “the Jews”, not the Israelis, driven into the sea. This narrative is deeply attractive to the loopier Australian left because it validates their own national narrative.

This type of analysis is greatly assisted by the collapse of substantive education in our schools and our universities. Into the 1970s, kids would come out of school with at least a smattering of history and geography. They would know which river and which sea, and the reality of a historic Israel. Today, most students have never heard of King David, let alone Philistines or Moabites. They could not point out Jerusalem on a map. In this puddle of ignorance, prejudice and shallow leftism can wallow together.

In Mosman and Paddington, we can discuss the Jews and Israel quite free of content. It helps that the Carlton set’s dislike of the Jewish state is exactly the type of cause that delights the cultural left. They have no actual skin in the game. There is lots of flag-waving, lots of chanting. Naturally, there is no risk you will ever have to do anything.

But there are satisfyingly identifiable enemies. As Jewish students and speakers are harassed at universities, and Jewish schools have armed guards at their gates, the argument that this is all anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic is as implausible as the Loch Ness monster.

All of these intellectual failures are standard components of the leftist rejection of Jews, Jewishness and a Jewish state. But there are at least three concepts grounding the structure of Australian progressive anti-Semitism that are rarely identified. The first has been mentioned: the direct identification of European Australians and European Australia with Jews living in Israel and a Jewish state.

This is not playing for peanuts. In Australia, there are people who routinely deny our nation and nationality. Lidia Thorpe is merely a technicolour example. But these sorts of views are expressed routinely in most universities and sympathetic parts of the media.

This type of rhetoric has the potential to undermine national confidence when we need to confront a new and dangerous world. When we hear there is no valid state of Israel, that Jews in Israel are merely settlers, and Jews generally are problematic, we should understand that the bell tolls for us, too.

The second confronting reality is that there are some fundamental characteristics of Jews and Jewishness that are abhorrent to the left – including the Australian left – and will never be accepted by “progressives”. The point of being a progressive is a desire for constant, sweeping change. Everything is wrong and I know how to fix it. From climate change to home ownership, our country is detestable, but I am here to help you.

Psychologically and practically, however, Judaism is adamantly opposed to a culture of constant goyim transformation. Despite the best efforts of Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Richard the Lionheart, Jews have remained Jews. If the laws of the Medes altereth not, the law of Moses is unkillable. This is an enormous ideological difficulty for progressives. The concept of values and teachings that are immutable is an assault on their existence. Jews are a problem for progressives in much the same way as the Catholic Church: each exists outside time and temporary relevance. Little wonder that when the Australian Catholic Church was deservedly flattened by its child abuse scandal, ordinary Catholics who patently had no role in the horror were astonished by the personal vilification they received. Now, with Israel in Gaza, our local Jews can receive just punishment.

The third crucial element in the disdain of the Australian left for all things Jewish has been the development of a soft anti-Semitism. Particularly mastered around the conflict in Gaza, this is the practice of constantly professing sympathy for Jews, in the Middle East or domestically, but consistently refusing to recognise their rights, interests, realities and sensibilities.

This technique is important for governments as it allows them to avoid charges of anti-Semitism while holding and occasionally expressing views fundamentally hostile to Jews. It is particularly important in practical politics, where some electorates are dominated by large numbers of people hostile to Israel, and realistically to Jews. But you cannot simply come out and yell “Three cheers for Hamas!” The Albanese government, occasional wriggling aside, has been a master of this sort of calculated nuance. Nervously condemning the Hamas murders, it seems almost relieved whenever some semi-plausible account of Israeli atrocities emerges.

With the horrifying deaths through an Israeli drone strike on aid workers delivering desperately needed food in Gaza, genuine horror seemed faintly tinged with relief that Israel finally had attracted a degree of opprobrium. That Foreign Minister Penny Wong almost simultaneously was ventilating the possibility of a two-state solution, without current practicality or principle, was entirely fitting. It certainly was a thoughtful Easter gift for Hamas.

Perhaps it is unfair to call these behaviours even soft anti-Semitism. Probably we need a new term, such as “Asemitism”. This describes a dead-eyed refusal even to see Jews in any dire situation such as Gaza. Just as agnostics and atheists disbelieve in God, Asemites cannot accommodate the actual possibility of a Jew. If I were an Australian Jew, I would be musing along this same dirty track.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/how-did-our-antiracist-left-become-so-openly-antijew/news-story/12d30a0ccbd2d706c2e770e48d1aca11

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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MAGA voters are moving to Russia 'because it feels like America during the 1950s and 20% of local women look like supermodels'

I too once had a positive view of Putin but his decision to invade Ukraine was clearly a disastrous overreach and I no longer feel any support for him.

The Americans who commented on the good looks of Russian women are right. I particularly admire Polish women but all Slavic women are at an advantage. My girlfriend is Slavic and I think she is unusually good-looking for her age


MAGA voters have explained why they turned their backs on the US for a new life in Russia, claiming the former communist state is a 'positive vision of 1950s America'.

Conservative men have cited the country's Christian values, beautiful women and stunning scenery as the reasons behind their move.

After losing faith in their hero Donald Trump, some have moved as far east as Siberia, unfazed by the prospect of being led by an autocratic dictator.

They have even expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, choosing to believe his narrative about his decision to invade Ukraine.

'I think he's a good man,' ex-pat Peter Frohwein, 62, told the Free Press. 'This lie that he's somehow a dictator — just because he was in the KGB doesn't mean he's ever killed anybody.'

Frohwein is divorced with no kids, but has hopes of starting up a family. He moved from Atlanta to Yalta in the Crimea in July 2023.

'Twenty percent of the women could be supermodels,' he said, explaining he anticipates his children would speak three languages: English, Russian and Mandarin.

'I wouldn't seriously consider starting a family in the U.S. today,' he added. 'The U.S. is a political mess. Socially, things are a mess. Spiritually, things are a mess.'

Bernd Ratsch, 56, agrees with this assessment of US politics and moved to Moscow from Texas in 2019.

'Is Trump better than Biden? Of course. But do I want him? Would I vote for him again? No. It's just, "Boy, shut your mouth for a while,"' he explained.

Meanwhile, family man Joseph Rose has managed to carve out a career with his YouTube channel documenting his new life in Moscow.

'I would say that Russia is becoming a bastion of Christianity and that America is becoming the opposite of this,' Rose explained.

'I do think it was God leading me to where I needed to be right now. I was put in a spot where I could be used.'

Rose, 49, relocated to Russia from Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife and children and has not looked back since.

'I often say it feels like our positive vision of 1950s America,' he explained.

One program manager from Texas, who wished to remain anonymous, suggested Russia offered a simpler way of life.

'People are running around in America wondering why we have so many problems with suicide and depression, and they’ll virtue signal and talk about the phones, and it’s this and that, and the reality is children are not allowed to be children,' the father-of-six said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13396031/MAGA-voters-moving-Russia-conservative-values.html

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Seattle Regretting Minimum Wage for Delivery App Drivers

As a regular Doordash customer myself, I hope this folly does not spread. I get excellent service at the moment

Seattle became one of just two cities across the nation to impose a minimum wage for delivery app drivers in January—and now it is having a bit of buyer’s remorse.

The Seattle ordinance mandates that such workers receive the equivalent of at least $19.97 an hour. In a completely predictable fashion, delivery app companies such as Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart decided that they could not absorb these added costs and reacted by passing the costs onto consumers in the form of additional customer fees ranging from $5 to as much as $25 per delivery.

As I noted in a column for The Hill earlier this year, New York City’s latest minimum wage increase, to nearly $18 an hour, similarly prompted delivery app companies to impose higher delivery fees, and food delivery workers realized smaller tips and reduced hours and flexibility as a result. The same thing is happening in Seattle.

A recent NPR story noted that many restaurant owners, and some drivers who realize how the law may negatively affect their income, have raised concerns and made their opposition to the ordinance known. Peter Pak, who owns a Korean restaurant in the city, testified against the new minimum wage law at a city council meeting, explaining that orders at his restaurant had dropped by around 40 or 50 percent since it went into effect.

While Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson indicated that she sympathizes with such concerns and wants to find a way to reduce costs, she still does not seem to grasp basic concepts of economics and running a business.

“My interest is to come to an agreement that makes those fees go away so that the cost of deliveries is lower, so that it drives demand up,” Nelson told NPR.

But her proposed solution is to get the delivery app companies to agree to reduce their delivery fees in exchange for compensating drivers less for their time and mileage.

As the saying goes, however, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” The costs must be borne by someone. You can’t use the force of government to impose significantly higher costs on businesses and then simply wish them away. So Nelson and her ilk are trying to fix things by micromanaging businesses even further by telling them to foist more of the costs on drivers and less on consumers (as if that would solve the problem).

Of course, if she were genuinely interested in making the “fees go away so that the cost of deliveries is lower, so that it drives up demand,” all Nelson and others on the city council would need to do is repeal the costly mandates that they imposed on businesses in the first place. But that would be far too sensible.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/05/03/seattle-regretting-minimum-wage-for-delivery-app-drivers/?omhide=true&trk=title

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Miss Israel is branded a 'war criminal' and threatened with a KNIFE for wearing sign saying 'I'm an IDF soldier' while walking through New York City

A face of hate

Miss Israel Noa Cochva has been blasted as a 'war criminal' and had a knife pulled on her in New York while inviting people to ask her questions about being in the IDF.

The beauty queen filmed herself carrying a poster that said 'I am an IDF soldier. Ask me anything' around Washington Square Park on Monday.

One onlooker slammed Cochva telling the 25-year-old, 'You are a war criminal.' 'How do you sleep at night,' one person asked.

Cochva responded, 'I sleep really well because I know that I'm in the right side of history.'

'I heard there was a Zionist here,' said a woman wearing a camouflage crop top and pants.

She then pulled out a knife and bite off the cover in front of Cochva saying she works on boat.

The woman put her face in the camera saying 'you little Zionist' as the crew tries to backway.

'This is f*****g stupid. You guys should go home,' said one man. 'I don't think there can be peace now,' another said.

An American Air Force soldier asked Cochva how she felt about being required to join the military at a certain age.

'It's the best thing ever. When I served my duty, I felt like I had a really big purpose,' Cochva said. Many people approached the beauty queen and thanked her for her service.

'I'm with your people and I thank you for being so brave and showing that,' a woman said.

Cochva posted the video to Instagram along with an emotional response to the critics.

'The amount of hate that people had for me today. I was just trying to have peaceful conversations with them,' she said.

'But it's a whole different experience to witness something like that. We can't let things like this happen.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13397337/Miss-Israel-Noa-Cochva-New-York-City-IDF.html

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Judge Blocks Suspensions of Middle School Female Athletes Who Refused to Compete Against Male Student

A West Virginia judge granted a preliminary injunction allowing several middle school girls to compete after the school district banned them from competition after refusing to play against a biological male, according to 12 WBOY, a local media outlet.

Five middle school female athletes forfeited their positions at a track meet in April after they were informed that they would have to compete against a biological male, prompting the school district to allegedly bar the girls from future competitions, according to WDTV News. The students sued and Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia filed an amicus brief in support of the students.

A Harrison County judge ordered that the school’s decision be temporarily halted while the lawsuit plays out, according to 12 WBOY.

“I want to say to these students and their parents: I have your backs,” Morrisey said in a press release. “You saw unfairness and you expressed your disappointment and sacrificed your personal performances in a sport that you love; exercised your constitutionally protected freedom of speech and expression.”

The Harrison County Board of Education argued during the injunction hearing Thursday that it had not targeted the female students but that the district’s rules dictate that athletes who voluntarily remove themselves from a meet will also have to skip the following competition, according to 12 WBOY News. The board reiterated this in a statement following the judge’s decision.

“The students were permitted to engage in their selected form of protest without issue,” the board said in a statement, according to a press release. “In fact, the coaches and principal were aware of the likelihood of the protests and permitted the students to remain on the roster for their events. Those students, like all of the other students on the team, however, were subject to a team rule that any player who scratches in an event cannot participate in that event at the next track meet. This neutral, school-specific rule was in place before the students’ protests and has nothing to do with those protests in any way.”

Two of the students claimed, however, that they had never been made aware of the rule and that they had been made to do additional drills at the following practice as punishment, according to 12 WBOY News.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/06/judge-blocks-suspensions-of-middle-school-female-athletes-who-refused-to-compete-against-male-student/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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