Kennedy's desperately denying things on Twitter.
But he says it.
At the New York Post, "RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews."
And here comes the New York Times with the antisemitism angle: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese."
You be the judge:
Office workers. Are the coming back in the new economy?
Elon Musk say employees working from home are like Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake! (Like the folks who have to deliver your groceries every day and can't "work from home.")
Kevin O'Leary is great.
WATCH:
The CDC chief resigned this morning, rather abruptly, it turns out.
Here's Christina Laila, at Gateway Pundit, "BREAKING: Rochelle Walensky Resigns as CDC Director":
During the height of the pandemic, the CDC announced a 60-day moratorium on evictions. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky acted independently and signed the order – no congressional authorization needed. Walensky is queen and what she says goes...
My wife briefly worked there. Briefly. It wasn't her most memorable or rewarding job.
The company made a bad bet on its own-store brand lines, alienating longtime customers who shopped there for deals on major brand names.
At the Wall Street Journal, "Bed Bath & Beyond Files for Bankruptcy":
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY -2.17%decrease; red down pointing triangle filed for bankruptcy protection to wind down its business after years of losses and failed turnaround plans left the once-powerful retailer short of cash. The company had warned of a potential bankruptcy for months. It needed a $375 million loan to get through the holidays. It struck an unusual $1 billion financing deal with a hedge fund in February to put off a bankruptcy filing, then scrapped the deal and tried this month to raise $300 million from other investors. None of the moves were enough. Nor were efforts to stem losses by closing hundreds of stores. Sales evaporated and its stock price tumbled well below $1 in recent weeks, as the rescue efforts dimmed. The retailer filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, N.J., and said it expects to close all of its 360 Bed Bath & Beyond and 120 Buybuy Baby retail locations eventually. Top lender Sixth Street Partners has put up $240 million in financing to keep Bed Bath & Beyond operating through the liquidation process, the company said. Bankruptcy gives Bed Bath & Beyond the breathing room to conduct going-out-of-business sales at its physical stores and solicit interest from potential buyers for its remaining assets, such as its branding. Individual investors who continued to back Bed Bath & Beyond during its final months, when it was flooding the market with shares, will likely be wiped out in chapter 11, which prioritizes the repayment of debt over shareholder recoveries. As Bed Bath & Beyond’s situation worsened, suppliers stopped shipping goods to the retailer. Photo: Johnny Milano/Bloomberg News If a bidder emerges for the business in bankruptcy, Bed Bath & Beyond said it would pivot away from its liquidation plans to pursue a sale. Once a pop-cultural phenomenon, Bed Bath & Beyond has long been losing shoppers to rivals and struggling to stock its stores. Replacing KitchenAid mixers and other name brands with private label goods further alienated vendors and customers. Bed Bath & Beyond joins a growing list of once-ubiquitous retail chains seeking court protection. Some like J.C. Penney Co. continue to operate hundreds of stores; others like Sears and Toys ‘R’ Us closed most of their locations; while Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things disappeared altogether. The country’s largest wedding dress retailer, David’s Bridal LLC, recently filed for bankruptcy and said it would shut all of its stores if it doesn’t quickly find a buyer. It was the chain’s second bankruptcy filing in less than five years....Bed Bath & Beyond didn’t have an unprofitable year as a public company until 2019—when it reported its first annual sales decline. By then, the rise of Amazon.com Inc. and other online retailers had started to eat into the business. “We missed the boat on the internet,” Mr. Eisenberg said. A group of activist investors forced the co-founders, who had relinquished their executive duties in 2003 but remained co-chairmen, off the board in 2019. The reconstituted board hired former Target Corp. executive Mark Tritton as chief executive. Mr. Tritton moved quickly to put his stamp on the company. He sold many of the company’s noncore businesses, including Christmas Tree Shops. Then, in January 2020, he signed a deal to sell roughly half the company’s real estate to a private-equity firm and lease back the space. With the world in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Tritton pushed through what the company called the biggest change to its assortment in a generation. It replaced name brands such as KitchenAid mixers, All-Clad cookware and OXO spatulas with private-label goods manufactured just for Bed Bath & Beyond. The rationale was sound: Private-label merchandise carries higher margins and helps retailers differentiate their offerings from competitors. The playbook has worked for countless chains from Target to Macy’s Inc. But it failed at Bed Bath & Beyond for several reasons, according to former employees and analysts. Mr. Tritton made the switch at a time when supply chains had been upended by the pandemic. Factories had temporarily closed and shipping delays were proliferating, along with rising costs, making it difficult for retailers to keep goods flowing to their stores in a timely manner. The company also rolled out too many private brands too quickly, before it had the infrastructure to support them, the former employees said. It planned to launch eight new brands in 2021 alone. At first, the results of Mr. Tritton’s strategy looked promising. Bed Bath & Beyond’s sales rose 49% in the spring quarter of 2021, compared with a year earlier when stores were closed for Covid lockdowns. Mr. Tritton presented results to the board showing that some of the early private-label launches—such as the Simply Essential line of bed, bath, kitchen, dining and storage items—were well-received by shoppers, according to people with knowledge of the company. Some of that buying was due to consumers stocking up while sheltering from the pandemic. As that demand ebbed, the gains quickly evaporated. By August 2021, sales were falling, and they continued to drop, as losses piled up. “You know if you buy Cuisinart what you are getting,” said Sheryl Bilus, a 68-year-old retired bank manager who lives in Canton, Ga. “But with their own brands, you don’t know what the quality is like.” Mr. Tritton had planned a similar overhaul of the Buybuy Baby chain by replacing Gerber and other children’s brands with private-label goods. But he was pushed out in June 2022, before he could make many of those changes. Sue Gove, a veteran retailing executive and Bed Bath & Beyond director, was named interim CEO. Meanwhile, Bed Bath & Beyond’s stock went on a wild ride after Ryan Cohen, the billionaire founder of pet retailer Chewy Inc., took a big stake in the company and agitated for changes, including the sale of Buybuy Baby. The board considered strategic alternatives for the baby chain, but decided against selling because separating it would have been time-consuming and costly, and they needed to nail down a new strategy before marketing it to potential bidders, people familiar with the situation said...
This dude, at Liberals Leaving, has the rap down!
From Claire Berlinski:
I now know that a great number of my fellow Americans are bonkers. Not even passingly acquainted with the Reality Principle.Stark staring nuts. Off their trollies.
— Claire Berlinski. (@ClaireBerlinski) January 2, 2023
I spent the better part of my life having no idea this was so.
It's weird to know better, now.
And, seen earlier on Twitter, at thread:
⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵pic.twitter.com/VAEvF0ALg9
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 19, 2022
Interesting article, though it downplays leftist indoctrination in the schools. Otherwise, do doubt America's teachers are fucked.
See, "Empty Classrooms, Abandoned Kids: Inside America’s Great Teacher Resignation."
Good video at the link.
This story is completely accurate. I'm teaching on campus this semester, and whereas I normally have 40 students (the cap) in my Comparative and International Politics courses, neither class cracked 20 students at the start of the fall semester.
I also have a U.S. government class on campus, and it's full, but then, there aren't as many in-person, face-to-face classes scheduled compared to online remote (distance learning).
The pandemic has indeed changed things.
At the Los Angeles Times, "Overwhelming demand for online classes is reshaping California’s community colleges."
Oh gawd, here we go again. It's going to be a long winter. *Eye-roll.*
At the Los Angeles Times, "Coronavirus subvariant BA.2.75.2 appears in L.A. County. How worried should we be?"
I'm not worried. At all.
I bought a brand new Toyota pickup when I was in my early twenties, in the early 1980s, and interest raters were astronomical. What did I know back then? (*Eye-roll.) Double-digits, sheesh.
At the Wall Street Journal, "As More Cars Hit Dealership Lots, Buyers Feel Pinch of Rising Interest Rates":
Improved supply chain lifted dealer inventory and sales, but economic obstacles are weighing on customers. More new cars and trucks are finally trickling into dealerships as supply-chain troubles ease and auto makers increase factory output. Now, rising interest rates and other economic pressures are starting to put a damper on the car-buying mood. Several major auto makers reported U.S. sales declines in the third quarter as inventory levels remained pressured, despite some improvement in recent months. General Motors Co. posted a 24% jump in third-quarter U.S. sales as its vehicle availability increased after it was disproportionately hit last year by supply-chain constraints resulting from Covid-related shutdowns in Asia. The auto industry has grappled for nearly two years with choppy factory schedules and thin dealership stocks, stemming from semiconductor shortages and other supply problems. Those troubles are easing and vehicle availability is slowly improving, the car companies say. Auto executives continue to express confidence they will be able to fill a big backlog in consumer demand as production normalizes. But a worsening economic picture and higher interest rates are raising questions about whether consumers will still keep snapping up cars and trucks at the same pace once stock levels improve. “There’s a lot of negative consumer sentiment in the marketplace. So we’re obviously concerned about that,” Hyundai Motor America Chief Executive Randy Parker said Monday, citing rising rates and stock-market declines. Hyundai’s third-quarter sales rose 3%. Still, Mr. Parker said it was too early to say whether demand is weakening significantly and said he is cautiously optimistic that it will hold up. He said sales slowed last week partly because of Hurricane Ian’s impact on the Southeast, making it more difficult to gauge underlying consumer demand. Auto makers pointed to continued low vehicle inventories as the reason for weaker third-quarter sales. Toyota Motor Corp. said sales fell 7% in the July-to-September period. Stellantis NV’s dropped 6%, with the Jeep maker citing continued supply constraints, and Nissan Motor Co. reported a nearly 23% drop in U.S. sales for the third quarter. Overall, industrywide sales in the U.S. for the third quarter were about 3.36 million, roughly flat over the prior-year period, according to Wards Intelligence. Ford Motor Co. is set to report U.S. sales results on Tuesday. Electric-vehicle leader Tesla Inc. on Sunday said global vehicle deliveries in the third quarter rose about 42% to a record 343,830, but were hampered by vehicle-shipping capacity. The deliveries total fell short of Wall Street estimates. EV startup Rivian Automotive Inc. also reported on Monday that it had produced 7,363 vehicles at its factory in Illinois and delivered 6,584 to customers during that same period. The figure remains in line with Rivian’s target of producing 25,000 vehicles this year, the company said. Rivian’s stock was up more than 6% in after-hours trading Monday. Rising interest rates are making it harder for U.S. buyers to afford record-high pricing on new vehicles, a byproduct of the scant inventory at dealership lots. Gone are the days of 0% financing on new vehicles, which car companies and dealers have long used as a staple promotion to sell cars. The average interest rate on a new-car loan in the U.S. hit 5.7% in the third quarter, the highest in three years, according to research site Edmunds.com. Americans also are financing more of the purchase price than ever, reflecting record-high car prices. The average amount financed per vehicle in the third quarter was $41,347, compared with $38,315 a year earlier, according Edmunds.com. And 14% of auto-loan customers during that same period took on a monthly payment of $1,000 or more, up from 8% a year earlier, the firm found. “It seems likely that much of the pent-up demand from limited supply is quickly disappearing as high interest rates eat away at vehicle buyers’ willingness and ability to purchase,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist with research firm Cox Automotive. The firm last week lowered its 2022 U.S. sales forecast to 13.7 million new vehicles, which would be down 9% from last year. In the five years leading up to the pandemic-plagued year of 2020, the industry sold more than 17 million vehicles annually. So far, though, car companies and dealers say that most new vehicles that get shipped from the factory are quickly snapped up by buyers. There were nearly 1.3 million vehicles on dealership lots or en route to stores in August, up 10% from July and 19% higher than a year earlier, according to research firm Wards Intelligence. That represented a 29-day supply, the highest in months but still roughly half historical norms. “There is still really strong consumer demand, and huge replacement demand,” said Duncan Aldred, head of GM’s Buick and GMC brands, during an interview at the Detroit auto show last month. “I think that will probably overcome a lot of the economic headwinds.” GM said Monday that semiconductor availability has improved and output has stabilized, allowing it to stock more cars and increase sales. The number of vehicles on dealership lots or en route to stores at the end of the third quarter rose 45% from a year earlier, GM said. Auto executives have said the semiconductor shortage that has plagued output for nearly two years is gradually easing. Still, shortages continue, and the impact tends to be felt unevenly across regions and companies...
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