[Hillsdale College - IMPRIMIS] The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of "gender-affirming care." The sudden and pervasive rise of this movement provokes two questions: where did it come from, and how has it proved so successful? The story goes deeper than most Americans know.
In the late 1980s, a group of academics, including Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Sandy Stone, and Susan Stryker, established the disciplines of "queer theory" and "transgender studies." These academics believed gender to be a "social construct" used to oppress racial and sexual minorities, and they denounced the traditional categories of man and woman as a false binary that was conceived to support the system of "heteronormativity"—i.e., the white, male, heterosexual power structure. This system, they argued, had to be ruthlessly deconstructed. And the best way to achieve this, they argued further, was to promote transgenderism. If men can become women, and women men, they believed, the natural structure of Creation could be toppled.
Susan Stryker, a male-to-female transgender professor currently at the University of Arizona, revealed the general thrust and tone of transgender ideology in his Kessler Award Lecture at the City University of New York in 2008, describing his work as "a secular sermon that unabashedly advocates embracing a disruptive and refigurative genderqueer or transgender power as a spiritual resource for social and environmental transformation." In Stryker’s best-known essay, "My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage," he contends that the "transsexual body" is a "technological construction" that represents a war against Western society. "I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster," Stryker writes. And this monster, he continues, is destined to channel its "rage and revenge" against the "naturalized heterosexual order"; against "’traditional family values’"; and against the "hegemonic oppression" of nature itself.
It is clear from this and from other transgender scholarship that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. In a collection of essays titled Transgender Marxism, activist writer Rosa Lee argues that trans people can serve as the new vanguard of the proletariat, promising to abolish heteronormativity in the same way that orthodox Marxism promised to abolish capitalism.
#4
I wonder what comrade Stalin would say (and do)?
Stalin needed red blooded males to fight the Germans and then to keep the Iron Curtain closed. Besides, he already had power. He didn't need to destroy the country to control it. Otherwise, I'm sure he had no scruples.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 11:56 Comments ||
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#5
^Abu, all sources agree that he was a very old fashioned male chauvinist pig (A Georgian). Very moralistic in his own way (just didn't believe that human life has any value).
[Real Clear Politics] It is time for blunt talk. Jewish students at universities are being harassed and threatened in unprecedented numbers, with disturbing vitriol. That’s more than a danger for those students. It is a profound danger for a liberal, tolerant democracy. It is time to call it out and oppose it. It’s time to end it.
The attacks and violent demonstrations shine a particularly harsh light on the sorry state of higher education. The public has watched mass demonstrations against Israel on campus after campus. The demonstrators never mention the victims of the Hamas massacres, never condemn the terrorists, and often go beyond their support for innocent Palestinians to cheer Hamas.
University leaders, who postured on every fashionable issue, have responded with bland, spineless statements. It’s no surprise that parents are rethinking which universities their children should attend, and major donors are doubting whether universities are worthy of their support.
For Jewish students, these threats are real. They face harassment, intimidation, and bullying. The situation has been deteriorating for years, but the scale and ferocity of the harassment rose dramatically after Hamas launched its terror attack.
When some brave students have spoken out in Israel’s defense, they have faced the jackboots of campus bullies. Instead of protecting those students, universities have abandoned their fundamental duty to ensure a safe environment and promote open discourse about serious issues. The situation is most toxic at elite universities and schools in major cities, where anti-Israeli students are reinforced by angry local activists.
#1
Actually, IMO, it's easy to fix Western (not just American) universities. All you have to remember is that pig's ears cannot become silk purses.
To wit: 90% of these students should be in trade school, not college. And all the "professors" pushed up by the need to serve such students, should be on the street selling hot dogs.
#2
Back in ancient times, in most high schools we had mandatory 'shop' for guys and 'home economics' for the gals. Trade skills in wood, metal, drafting, and auto mechanic ran two years for the males. Cooking, sewing, and basic budget for the gals. That was all tossed out to make high school a feeder system for the colleges.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2023 10:35 Comments ||
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#8
To wit: 90% of these students should be in trade school, not college. And all the "professors" pushed up by the need to serve such students, should be on the street selling hot dogs.
I believe you are absolutely correct on this matter.
Further, I believe that many of the research grants from the federal government are designed to promote an agenda rather than to advance science. Cut those grants, save the taxpayers some money and cancel the radical professors.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 12:05 Comments ||
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#9
#8 30 years in academia (of course, I wrote my best papers after being kicked out).
#10
But everything is fine at Harvard. Claudine, in her fourth statement on the matter, says she is appointing a committee to study the matter and tell her what to do. Presidential leadership at its finest!
Posted by: Tom ||
11/07/2023 15:50 Comments ||
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#11
Three questions you don't ask.
You don't ask a man his salary.
You don't ask a women her age.
You don't ask a Harvard graduate his grandfather's SS rank.
BLUF:
[Aljazeera] Millions of liberals and conservatives across the country — consciously or unconsciously — harbour anti-Chinese sentiments. They view those of Chinese ancestry and other Asian Americans, as competent and hard-working but also cunning, unidimensional and clannish. After all, if the virus had originated in Sweden, would we be seeing the same kinds of attacks on Scandinavian Americans?
The prevalence and intensity of Sinophobia has shifted with the changing political, economic, and social relationship between the US and China. According to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans hold an unfavourable view of China, up from 47 percent in 2018. The escalating trade war, China’s human rights abuses, and Trump’s rhetoric have triggered the shift.
#1
After all, if the virus had originated in Sweden, would we be seeing the same kinds of attacks on Scandinavian Americans?
But the virus did not originate in Sweden did it. Walmart, Target, and Lowes are not full of Swedish made merchandise are they. Swedish spies have not filled our institutions of higher learning, attempted to purchase large tracks of land, or conducted economic espionage. The Swedes aren't threating to invade free, democratic Taiwan, or attempting to recruit our politicians.
There existed a huge anti-Japanese sentiment following Pearl Harbor. After Imperial Japanese expansionism in Asia was crushed. The sentiment quietly subsided.
#5
I remember after Nixon went to China, Chou En Lai said something to the effect that he had no quarrel with the American people, only the American government. Well, I feel the same way about China.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 12:08 Comments ||
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#6
...and the Russian government and the American government.
#7
Well I think that this is the start of a slippery slope. I do not like the slant of this article at all. It exposes the chink in the armor of the writer. Next thing you know we'll all have to learn Sino language.
[FoxNews] Moving to Arkansas isn't just a pocketbook decision – it’s about quality of life as well
Ask people why they’re leaving blue states like California, and they’ll give you a lot of answers: more freedom, a lower cost of living, a more family-friendly quality of life.
But a lot of them are just tired. Tired of the lockdowns, tired of the crime, tired of the preening politicians who won’t do anything to address the real issues they’re facing.
As governor of Arkansas, I’ve had my chance to ask that question a lot of times. That’s because our state has received a steady influx of new residents for years. Today, there are thousands of California refugees – and thousands more from other states – in our state.
This year alone, about 32,000 new people moved to Arkansas, about 10% of them from California. Arkansas is now one of the top five states for inbound migration. And the flow isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
That’s because my administration is focused on the reforms that will make Arkansas the best state in the country to live, work and raise a family.
Just in my first few months in office, we passed the boldest education reforms in the country, including universal school choice, cut taxes not once, but twice, and are making historic investments in outdoor recreation. We’re cracking down on crime, getting woke nonsense out of our schools, and keeping kids safe online.
I think these changes will be the icing on the cake for those who are already looking at how good we have it in Arkansas. Take our cost of living, for example. It’s nearly 40% cheaper to live in Little Rock than in Los Angeles. Housing is about 60% less expensive; health care is 15% cheaper.
We’re able to slash taxes so heavily because our economy is booming, creating billion-dollar surpluses. As taxes continue to fall, our economy will continue to rise – the opposite of the Left Coast’s downward spiral.
But moving to Arkansas isn’t just a pocketbook decision – it’s about quality of life as well.
Arkansas is also the land of opportunity, where Sam Walton grew a little five-and-dime store into the most successful business on the face of the earth.
Arkansas is my home, and we’d love to welcome you here too, as a tourist, as an investor, and even as our newest neighbor. Come and see what we have to offer. I promise you won’t regret it.
#3
I'm not so sure, Grom. The people who are leaving are tired of insane housing prices, crowds, smog, crumbling infrastructure and the creepy tyrant in the governor's mansion. I would wager that most of them don't think much about politics. They just want to buy some property and walk down the street without having to step over the drug addicts who are passed out on the sidewalk.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 10:54 Comments ||
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#4
Oh, I forgot taxes. I'm lucky we bought our house back in the early 1990s and, thanks to Proposition 13, our property tax isn't based on the current assessed valuation. But I know people who are paying way more in property taxes than I ever paid for the mortgage. If I had to buy my house today I could not do it. I don't know who has that kind of money.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 10:57 Comments ||
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#5
^Yea, well, lets see the stats for the next elections from Arkansas
#6
If I had to buy my house today, I might be headed for Arkansas myself. Hell, if Mrs. Uluque wasn't so hung up on this place, I'd have been gone a long time ago.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/07/2023 12:12 Comments ||
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#7
liberals are fundamentally different from conservatives. The reasons they are leaving for are not seen as their fault. They see "injustice and inequality" in any concept to right of left, even moderate. So they, by nature, can not ditch their politics and beliefs, hence they will metastasize if enough of them congregate. Furtethermore, as West Coasters, they will have no concept of Southern identity and a hard time uderstanding those things which exemplify Southern ness. They will just see it as being unfamiliar, uncomfortable and wrong.
#9
A perfect example are the anti Israel protests labels pro Palestinian. The non religious liberal raging out there because it feels good thinks they are all brothers in the fight. They think chants don’t have real world meaning. They have ZERO understanding that for the Muslim’s it is a religious war and it is zero sum. You don’t see large numbers of counter protesters because Conservatives are different.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2023 12:51 Comments ||
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#11
"Cash-strapped California has proposed to set electricity rates based on one's income, not one's consumption.
What could go wrong?"
"The proposed fixed-rate bill fundamentally operates on an income-based charging model, where the more one earns, the higher the flat-rate electricity charges. This scheme would impose fixed monthly charges based on your income before a single kilowatt-hour is used."
"The danger here is that California is more likely than ever to see electricity shortages, given that the cost incentive to use less will be gone with this new proposed policy. People will just leave the power on, given that there is no difference in the rate for doing so."
#12
Can you say "market distortion," boys and girls?
I knew ya could...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2023 13:22 Comments ||
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#13
Generally I don't care for female politicians, but I am certainly willing to make an exception for her!
Posted by: Tom ||
11/07/2023 15:52 Comments ||
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#14
Leaving California for Arkansas... because there's a steep learning curve elsewhere?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/07/2023 15:58 Comments ||
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#15
CA? Let's check in on my hometown news..what's this? Some cholo killed his grandma, cut off her head then ran around town with his "trophy"? Standard for wine country these days. But then, Santa Rosa also gave us Deep Throat (Watergate, not the movie), Jussie Smolette and the Zodiac killer. Fun li'l town. So yeah, folks leaving CA are doing it right.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
11/07/2023 16:28 Comments ||
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#16
I left California for Texas. Tired of the madness
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Vladimir Kornilov
[RIA] The West is actively forcing Ukraine into peace negotiations with Russia. The American TV channel NBC News reported this on Saturday , citing various sources in the US and Europe. This, without exaggeration, sensational message became a kind of cherry on the cake after a series of publications by leading Western mouthpieces regarding Ukraine.
Let us recall the chronology of the past week.
First, Time magazine published damaging material about the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, accompanied by an insulting cover to him. This was immediately followed in The Economist magazine by an interview and article by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, which caused a stunning response in the West. It is very significant that for the first time the office of the President of Ukraine openly entered into a correspondence skirmish with the general, which hitherto seemed incredible. And here is the end of the week - a message from NBC News, which in Kiev itself had the effect of a bomb exploding.
Zelensky is clearly confused. And this is not an exaggeration, since he himself openly admitted his “surprise” when answering questions from journalists on Saturday following the results of a Kiev meeting with the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen . Zelensky repeated several times in one minute: “I don’t know who is publishing this,” “I don’t know why this is being done,” “I’m surprised by this,” “I don’t know who is doing this,” and so on. Yes, with his answer he tried to refute NBC's message about the enforcement of peace, but it all came down to the words "I don't know."
And this, as we all understand, is not about the fact that Zelensky was not given the names of the authors of publications or the names of magazines. He knows them very well - he has given them interviews more than once and has appeared on their covers. But his surprise indicates that even the Kiev comedian, far from understanding how world politics works, began to understand: “This is not without reason.”
Over the past year and a half, Zelensky has become accustomed to the fact that Western propaganda praises him to the skies, presents him to the public as a Ukrainian Churchill , showers him with compliments and even invents catchphrases for him that emphasize his heroism. And suddenly he reads publications that the Ukrainian king turned out to be naked!
And who writes them! Simon Shuster, who wrote the scandalous article in Time, is not just an iconic employee of the magazine, he is also the author of a book glorifying Zelensky, and almost the official interviewer of the family of the Ukrainian president. In particular, he was awarded last year the order “for the popularization of the Ukrainian state.” It is no coincidence that the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak , was so accustomed to Shuster writing materials glorifying Zelensky that when the article appeared in Time, without even reading it, he immediately recommended that everyone read it, calling it “a very important report.
Of course, a few minutes later (apparently after reading the article), Ermak quietly removed his recommendation. After which the resources under his control began to present Shuster (we emphasize: hitherto the court herald of Bankova!) almost as a “Kremlin agent”, and with a long-term pro-Russian background. I’m tempted to ask: if you all knew that the author of Time had been an “agent of Moscow” all these years, why did they award him the order last year?
Of course, Zelensky’s instincts do not let him down. He may not know how the Western “rules-based world” works, but as a former professional comedian, he understands PR quite well. And when the main Western media hit yesterday’s “Ukrainian Churchill”, he had a clear understanding of the coordination of the attack. This, by the way, is evidenced by another curious fact: on Friday, simultaneously with the release of the printed versions of Time and The Economist, the British newspaper The Times published (of course, with the permission of the authors) a reprint of Schuster’s article on its pages.
Typically, such publications do not reprint each other. But here everything looks like custom advertising (in this case, more like anti-advertising). Hence Zelensky’s surprise: “I don’t know who is doing this.” It’s as if he doesn’t realize where the single “control center” is located, which can simultaneously influence publications that are so iconic for the Western world! Certainly not in the Kremlin!
That is, there is no doubt even in Kiev: Washington gave the go-ahead for Zelensky’s leak. Most likely, this happened after the Ukrainian comedian president once again prevented the White House from carrying out an operation against his former benefactor and sponsor Igor Kolomoisky .
After this, Washington was finally convinced of the lack of trustworthiness of its Kyiv subordinate. And off we go!
From all sides they are already making it clear to Zelensky: he is tired of the West, has failed to cope with the assigned tasks on the front against Russia and no longer fits into the new ones. In fact, for now they are offering him to leave on good terms, by organizing fake elections, during which it will be possible to replace him with a more suitable figure.
Well, what if the comedian doesn’t agree? Well, the US has a lot of experience in this regard. The other day, a significant anniversary was celebrated: 60 years ago, the military generals of South Vietnam (sort of Vietnamese scumbags), under the strict leadership of the White House, overthrew and shot dead their dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. But a few years earlier, the US President called him “the Asian Winston Churchill” (reminds me of something, doesn’t it?).
So Zelensky has something to worry about and something to fear. In fact, his overseas masters leave him with a choice between bad and very bad options. While he is just beginning to realize this, he has less and less time to make a decision.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Astrakhan
[REGNUM] The issue of women in the army comes up on the agenda with a certain regularity. It has become overgrown with such powerful elements of ideology and ideological positions that it is almost impossible to get clear answers to the main question: about the effectiveness of women military personnel.
In some circles, statements about the possibility of serving for women in at least some positions other than traditionally female medical ones are equated to selling the Motherland. Since it is generally accepted that such ideas come to us from the West, where since the 90s the US Army (and after it the rest of the NATO armies) has been increasing the percentage of women military personnel and the positions available to them.
At the same time, in the Western world one can often come across the opinion that in modern armies women in combat positions are a product of the USSR. And there are reasons for this. It was in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War that a huge number of military specialties, including combat, became available to women. Soviet female sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko shocked conservative American society at one time and is still one of the icons of feminism.
Let us note that at the moment when she received a personalized Colt and Winchester as a gift, American women had many more years to fight for access to various professions and for full equality. And this is not to mention Soviet female pilots, including senior officers, the first female diver, the only female ace in the world history of fighter aviation, anti-aircraft gunners and many others. There was no such thing as we had during the Great Patriotic War and there is no other army in the world.
After the Great Patriotic War, the need for such measures subsided, and the army returned to its traditional state. But the next attempts to en masse place women in combat positions have already taken place in the West. Of course, they were also associated with the need to fill the staff of a professional army, because if you double the conditional pool of candidates, this becomes much easier. And with political and ideological games. Every incident involving women has been put under a microscope, and trials are still ongoing in some cases.
For example, the first female carrier-based fighter pilot in the US Navy crashed along with her navigator-operator, one of the few men who trusted her and agreed to fly in her crew. Officially, the causes of the disaster were, of course, recognized as unrelated to the actions of the pilot. However, the family of the deceased navigator has been proving for 20 years that it was the pilot who was to blame for the disaster and that for the sake of political dividends, the command falsified data on her qualifications.
Such cases were not isolated and gave rise to a wave of mistrust in the qualifications of female military personnel. But the process was irreversible, and from filling support staff and "second line" positions it inevitably moved towards maximum equality, except for positions for which women simply could not qualify.
As women appeared in the armies, a host of everyday problems surfaced - from the lack of separate bathrooms to the inability to send a military investigator on rape issues to a submarine during a combat campaign. One way or another, today in the United States women serve in a large number of combat positions, including the Marine Corps, which, due to its high standards, has held out longer than other branches of the military.
In Germany there are already women in SOF teams, although their positions are not always clear. In the UK, the first woman joined army intelligence. In addition, over 20 years of integration, senior female officers have also emerged. Just a couple of years ago, in the conservative English army, the husband handed over command of the regiment to his wife.
But, of course, the Israeli army has long occupied the lead in gender equality. Women serve in the IDF by conscription; the list of positions for them is very wide. And it simply cannot be otherwise; Israel simply does not have enough population for war if women are not recruited en masse. Therefore, both supporters and opponents of women in the military are closely watching Israel in search of arguments in favor of their positions.
And the latest wave of heated discussions was associated with videos of women captured in the hands of Hamas. Of course, the spectacle was far from the standards of heroic cinema. Most likely, Hamas militants deliberately abused women in an attempt to use such videos as an element of psychological warfare. I don’t know how this affected the morale of the IDF, but it certainly had an effect on the Russian-language Internet, where Israeli military girl tik-tokers were actively discussed and their videos (beautiful, I like them) were compared with videos of captivity.
I want to point out that these are bad arguments. In captivity, no one looks good at all, especially if you put effort into it. Moreover (fortunately, I did not have the opportunity to verify this, but I am almost sure), a male soldier after gang rape will look no better than a woman. At the same time, the IDF began distributing videos of the work of its military, where you can see female soldiers in quite combat positions and with normal fighting spirit.
Is this propaganda? Of course, but many moments are very difficult to falsify. For example, in a video of female shooters on board a boat, their habit of holding on and working at different speeds is clearly visible. I once participated in exercises with boats and I will note that, but our main goal was not to drown the machine gun and, preferably, each other.
It is obvious that we have entered a period of long wars of varying intensity, and the Northern Military District does not promise a quick end either. Very massive mobilizations took place in the DPR and LPR, partial mobilization took place in the Russian Federation, plus massive recruitment of volunteers.
And the army will not quickly return to peacetime states, so questions about its recruitment will remain in the foreseeable future. Of course, it is very tempting to remember the good old days and sneer about “women in the army” and the corrupting influence of the West. About the same as they joked about American equipment, which is being copied in a hurry today.
In reality, women military personnel already occupy many positions. In the units of the DPR NM they also held combat positions, including Hero of the Russian Federation (posthumously) Olga Sergeevna Kachura, commander of the MLRS division.
Yes, many positions require banal endurance and strength, and this must be taken into account. But the issue of expanding the presence of women in the army, one way or another, will have to be resolved and systematized. Undoubtedly, we do not have the problems of Israel and there is someone to fight. But, on the other hand, mobilization also did not please many... Yes, if you compare a female soldier with a professional “dog of war,” more often than not the comparison will not be in her favor. But if you compare a professional female soldier with a reservist, and not in the best health and not the youngest age, everything is no longer so obvious.
You can often hear that a woman lacks the “warrior instinct”, so she is always worse in battle. Ok, let's say. But how many positions require this instinct? A huge number of military personnel are engaged in work that requires rather perseverance and attention during monotonous work.
It hardly makes sense in Russia to urgently create and fill quotas for reporting (as they do in the army of our enemy to please NATO). But the issue deserves consideration. At a minimum, it is necessary to bracket out the ideological, religious and other parts of this discussion that are not related to military affairs. And consider it from a practical point of view.
#2
^ this is true for Russia. Here the egg supply isn't producing or interested in producing anyways. Great time to engage in real equity and make up for over two hundred years of the oppression of males. Draft women.
[Hot Air] JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania — Two months ago, 30,000 truckers at Yellow lost their jobs when one of the nation’s oldest and largest trucking companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Last week, Convoy, the digital freight broker that was supposed to reinvent the wheel and disrupt the trucking industry in a positive way, also abruptly shuttered its doors.
These kinds of closings by both freight carriers lay bare the uncertain state of trucking, an industry that is an indicator of the mood of the consumer and also the beating heart of our economy.
"In my opinion, this industry is heading in the wrong direction, and when trucking and supply chain freight is heading in the wrong direction, so is the country. I am just not sure that people understand there is a problem," said Rick McQuaide, who runs a freight company in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, as well as in Florida.
"The damage started when people went on a spending spree during COVID-19. The government was giving out cash, and people started ordering things in a way they have never done before," McQuaide explained.
As a result, McQuaide said, new trucks were on the road to meet the consumers’ needs.
Beginning last year, that need started to recede when consumers’ spending spree started to ebb, and, as a result, several different things have happened in the industry, beginning with too many trucks in comparison to the amount of freight that is available.
#1
So class - trucking, ocean shipping and air freight demand is down simultaneously. What does that tell us about the actual state of the domestic economy?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/07/2023 8:48 Comments ||
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#3
Drove up the center of Florida on Saturday, every little town was having a community wide yard sale. If people would give up on shiny new Chinese crap, buy existing stuff and the country generate a healthy industry of refurbishment / repair shops, we could re-make the "consumer economy" in ways that would benefit the USA instead of the rest of the world.
Of course, nobody (WEF, cough, cough) wants that.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2023 8:49 Comments ||
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#4
I will add, who was walking around at all those sales? Immigrant families.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2023 8:49 Comments ||
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#6
Used to love hearing WWL's Road Gang show during night shifts when I was too busy or too tired to read. Nothing like shivering at the weather in Revelstoke while soaking and sweating in the muggly stuff between two fans. Dragged me taste in country music kicking and screaming into the '50s.
[Blaze] As you watch hundreds of thousands of military-age men storming the southern U.S. border, your eyes should be trained more on our cities than on the border itself. That is where all these criminal and belligerent elements are settling — and where they are changing our culture, society, and security for the worse.
What we are witnessing is the counterintuitive immorality of the open-border left on display in real time, as we allow our cities to become the very hellholes from which leftists supposedly want to save migrants.
The Daily Mail last week reported that among the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans entering the United States, ex-communist security forces, gang leaders, and state-run militias from Venezuela have saturated neighborhoods in Miami, Dallas, and Chicago.
The cultural ills associated with Latin American socialist juntas have been imported in large numbers thanks to Biden administration policies. "The same people so many migrants left Venezuela to escape from are now here," Miami-based attorney Rolando Vazquez told the Daily Mail. Government forces — the military and the police — would force Venezuelan businesses to pay a protection fee to President Nicholas Maduro. Now they are walking around Venezuelan communities in south Florida doing the same thing.
#2
I will explain. Before illegal immigration on a massive scale became a major problem, if you needed to earn a reasonable income but did not have a job, you could go to a day labor store fronts early on the mornings where businesses like warehouses would call for laborers for that day. Those went away when illegals flooded in and took all of the day labor jobs.
#3
illegals flooded in and took all of the day labor jobs
Kind of a broad brush there, Captain.
I can still hit the corners and get day labor.
Pounding Tposts, clearing brush, tree trimming, welding, painting, barn cleaning, concrete, trench digging, etc.
Some immigrants, some felons. Some good, some risky, some lazy, some drunks. Some will work when it's 100+ degrees.
I have to provide transport, water, tools(chain saws, brush knives, shovels) and materials (paint, fencing). I also have to be around for any questions, and take them back to the corner at night.
#5
While I'm not thrilled with the Biden administration's border policy, I'm also not down with this newfangled "evil Venezuelans" thing. These people, a lot of whom seem to be pretty educated, are fleeing something similar to Cuba or eastern Europe under the communists. Many of them are going to be worth keeping, and most aren't socialists, progressives or anything like that. In fact we may be looking at another "Cuban" community in the making.
[Townhall] This is it, Election Day in Virginia. If you don’t live there, I can understand why your eyes would gloss over and you’d move on without reading more. Then again, you clicked on this headline, so you’re at least interested in the topic, so keep reading. Because the election in Virginia isn’t just about Virginia, it’s like looking through a wormhole into the future, as the campaigns run, at least by Democrats, are pretty much what the Democrats will be running from Joe Biden on down.
I live in Maryland, but very close to the Virginia border. That means I’m "treated" to campaign ads from both states (and the District of Columbia, but the only real contest in those elections is in the Democrat primary). While Maryland isn’t in the midst of an election cycle at the moment, Virginia has off-year elections for their legislature. Every seat is up for grabs in the states House and Senate.
Republicans control the House, Democrats have the Senate. If Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin can flip the Senate and hold the House, he will be able to get much, maybe most, of his agenda through and his stock in the veepstakes increases exponentially. If Democrats hold or gain, Youngkin’s remaining tenure (Virginia limits governors to one term, which is kind of stupid because there’s little accountability to voters) will be essentially pointless.
#1
If the Republicans win, it really wasn't about Trump. If the other side wins, its all about Trump. That will be the DNC talking points tomorrow for their propaganda outlets.
[American Greatness] There are many reasons for any sane person to regret the existence of Hamas, the savage Sunni Muslim militia that controls the Gaza Strip in Southern Israel. Founded in 1987, the group has specialized in terror attacks against Israelis while maintaining vigorous side-concessions fomenting anti-Western sentiment and keeping their own populace in a state of wretched poverty.
Such are the convoluted workings of providence, however, that the world may eventually find itself grimly grateful for what one percipient observer called "the Sabbath Massacres": the barbaric slaughter perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which left some 1,400 dead, thousands wounded, and more than 200 kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
The main reason to be grateful for this horrific carnage follows from the revelation it afforded. In the first place, by acting with such savage and sanguinary abandon—deliberately targeting the young and helpless, the old and infirm, raping, mutilating, beheading—Hamas in effect signed its own death warrant.
We’ve seen all the usual suspects fulminating against Israel, "the Zionists," "the Jews." A prominent Hamas spokesman called Ghazi Hamad said in an interview that the Sabbath Massacre of October 7 was only the start, that there would be many more and similar attacks "until Israel is annihilated."
But that is idle, impotent imprecation, of a piece with King Lear’s aposiopetic rant against his daughters [I somehow wrote "sisters": thanks to an alert reader for that correction]:
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What Job?
(a) If you leave the Gazooks in place, you'll get new Hamas in a decade.
(b) The "Protests" show that Western societies have a huge problem - and every minute dealing with it delayed, makes it bigger.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
