Photo by KWON JUNHO on Unsplash

 

By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – What in the world was in the water in DC last week that the crazy “ban on gas stoves” got so much traction?!

Have we got nothing else to talk about?! To regulate?!

Incredible.

Apparently we are through talking about $6.00/dozen eggs and it’s a good thing because you won’t be able to fry those eggs on a gas stove if the internet is to be believed.

So, no, the government isn’t coming for your gas stove but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to. Full disclosure: I have a gas stove, I’ve always had a gas stove, my parents and both sets of grandparents had gas stoves. We are all part of the 35% of homes in the United States that use gas stoves. In fact, when the power grid went down in the last winter storm my gas stove stood by steadfastly ready to heat my water for coffee and we were still able to cook meals.

I have never been able to properly make a roux on an electric stove; I find them incredibly unreliable.

So yes, it concerns me a great deal to think the government has nothing else to do (or to regulate) than my gas stove.

They are “a health hazard,” proponents of this say, but my gas stove has never hurt me in over sixty years. I think I’m pretty safe. And in fact I don’t know a single person who has ever been attacked by their gas stove.

Oh, I know. They’re citing a “toxic stew” of chemical pollution and elevated cases of asthma in homes with gas stoves. Maybe we should all go back to cooking on campfires. Or will they regulate wood next?

I just can’t take this seriously and am sick to death of over regulation.

If they’re really running out of things to regulate I can give them some suggestions. Just saying.

So let me get this straight.

In Boston a statue purchased by people who were actual slaves and suffered all the humiliations and pains of slavery and deliberately placed in Boston because of their connection with the abolition movement is out because it was “offensive” and it’s replaced by a giant bronze image of two disembodied arms that from a particular angle looks like someone holding a giant brown penis.

And everyone’s OK with this?

In fairness what do actual slaves know about oppression and humiliation, I bet not a one of them was ever misgendered or had the someone use the wrong pronouns in their presence.

Envy is s deadly sin but oppression envy is the worst form of it.

Final thought. I think I’ll trust the opinion of actual ex-slaves on Lincoln over modern activists every time.

By John Ruberry

America’s worst big city mayor, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, finds herself in trouble again. 

Last week, Chicago’s PBS station, WTTW, reported that Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager, Megan Crane, sent an email to Chicago Public Schools teachers and City Colleges of Chicago instructors, telling them the campaign was seeking students to volunteer as “externs” for Lightfoot’s reelection effort. “Lightfoot for Chicago is seeking resumes from any volunteer interested in campaign politics and eager to gain experience in the field,” the email read. Later in that message comes a quasi-bribe, “Externs are expected to devote 12hrs/wk to the campaign. Students are eligible to earn class credit through our volunteer program.”

When the email became public, the campaign quickly defended its call for volunteers, avowing in a statement that the request was done “to provide young people with the opportunity to engage with our campaign, learn more about the importance of civic engagement and participate in the most American of processes.”

But in a second statement, the campaign said it would “cease contact with CPS employees” citing an “abundance of caution.”

Finally, a couple of hours later, in a third statement, they finally surrendered. “All campaign staff have been reminded about the solid wall that must exist between campaign and official activities and that contacts with any city of Chicago, or other sister agency employees, including CPS employees,” the campaign said, “even through publicly available sources is off limits. Period.”

Last summer, after Willie Wilson, a gadfly candidate who is running for mayor, gathered a lot of attention for gasoline and grocery giveaways, Lightfoot followed suit with her giveaways. But unlike Wilson’s generosity, the mayor’s handouts were paid for by taxpayers.

Laura Washington, a liberal Chicago Tribune columnist, had this to say back in August in a behind-the-paywall op-ed:

Thanks to an “avalanche” of federal stimulus funds, Lightfoot is “running for reelection armed with a seemingly bottomless gift bag of giveaways that includes everything from gas cards, Ventra cards, bicycles, locks and helmets to more than $1,000-per-household in rebates to defray the cost of security cameras, outdoor motion sensor lighting, cloud storage and GPS trackers to hunt down vehicles in the event of an auto theft or carjacking,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June. 

Lightfoot’s “Chicago Moves,” is the city’s $12 million transit response to skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation. It will distribute up to 50,000 prepaid $150 gas cards and 100,000 prepaid $50 transit cards to Chicago residents. 

Earlier this year, Lightfoot pushed through a controversial guaranteed income program for low-income families. The pilot program will provide no-strings-attached $500 payments to 5,000 Chicago families per month for a year. The recipients were chosen through a lottery system.

“By coincidence,” Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery sarcastically opined this morning on his Flannery Fired Up program, “each [gas and public transit] card had Mayor Lighfoot’s name emblazoned right on it.”

The ACLU of Illinois forcefully condemned the campaign’s call for student volunteers. “It is striking that Mayor Lightfoot presented herself four years ago as a candidate who would eschew the old corrupt patronage ways of Chicago politics,” the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement, “Now her campaign employs practices that harken back to the worst days of the Chicago political machine.”

And the ACLU of Illinois says the call-for-volunteers email may have violated federal law.

Crime has skyrocketed since Lightfoot took office. And it shouldn’t surprise you that Chicago’s population is declining. “The city is dying,” former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has said at least a couple of times in his Chicago Way podcast.

Lightfoot faces eight opponents in next month’s first round of voting for mayor. In the likely scenario that no candidate achieves a majority in the initial round, the top two candidates face the voters again in April.

In the only opinion poll so far on this race, Lightfoot finished third.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

This is huge:

A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.

This is at the Zerohedge (via Insty) The story continues:

“By their own admission, members of the TNI have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,” the complaint reads.

The revelations of the Twitterfiles combined with the continuing number of “unexpected” and “excess” deaths particularly among the young and healthy are really going to drive this suit.

When you see parents outside the courtroom with pictures of their dead kids that’s going to have an impact and if this suit succeeds the class action suits that will follow are going to be tremendous, not only by families of the deceased and the crippled but by those who have lost jobs and livelihoods because of the false narratives advanced and the suppression of truth.

I imagine there are lawyers licking their chops at the thought of it. Bezos has very deep pockets.