Nice Country Gal

On Twitter.

Here, she wants to be your girlfriend.

Halsey here and here.

Germany: What if the Gas Is Cut Off?

At Der Spiegel, "German Industry Prepares for Worst-Case Scenario":

German industry and the government in Berlin are ill-prepared for a possible halt in supplies of natural gas from Russia. A new emergency plan is being developed to prevent an economic meltdown if deliveries cease.

You can find something from Hinrich Mählmann just about everywhere you look in Germany. His company, the Otto Fuchs Group, founded in 1910, literally delivers the things that make the country move. They include wheels and coupling systems for railroads, engine components for the aviation industry and even battery housings for electric cars. Mählmann also sells thermally insulated windows and doors through its subsidiary Schüco. The supplier has revenues of just under 3 billion euros annually and employs 10,000 people.

If the family business in the small town of Meinerzhagen in the western German state of North-Rhine Westphalia was suddenly no longer able to manufacture its goods, the German economy would have a problem. Without Mählmann’s upstream products, manufacturing in entire industries would be at risk – from car factories to construction.

Until now, such a horror scenario seemed unthinkable. To supply what German industry so urgently needs, the company operates aluminum presses "as heavy as the Eiffel Tower," as Mählmann says, plus large furnaces and smelters. The plants consume vast quantities of natural gas, an energy source that the group, like thousands of other companies across Germany, obtains to a large extent from Russia.

Currently, Mählmann is busy preparing for the possibility of the day when natural gas from Russia may no longer flow. It would be a "catastrophe," says the businessman. Turning off a gas-powered furnace for several hours a day is virtually impossible, he says. Doing so would cool them down, and bringing it back up to temperature would consume a disproportionate amount of time and energy. And replacing gas with electric power is out of the question: It would make no sense environmentally or economically. Relocating the machines would also be impossible due to their sheer size and the cost. "The plant would have to shut down," says Mählmann.

He pleads for gas imports not to be frozen completely and for the energy source to instead be rationed if necessary to at least "keep everything running on the back burner."

Germany on the back burner, a country in emergency mode. These are the kinds of considerations Germany is making right now across all sectors, industries and trades. What if Russia turns off the gas? Or the European Union bows to the growing pressure and imposes an import ban itself? Who would then get the much-coveted raw material? Which rules would fall into place? As of today, it seems certain that private consumers and their heating systems would be given the priority. Drug manufacturers and hospitals as well as public infrastructure are also at the top of the list.

After that, things get tricky. Should those industries be supplied with gas, at least in part, whose products are urgently needed by others for further processing? Or is it really a matter of only the most urgent needs, a war economy in which it is the security of supply counts and no longer the continuity of industry?

Germany is extremely ill-prepared for this worst-case scenario. A "Gas Emergency Plan for the Republic of Germany" has been in place since September 2019. But it is based on a fundamental miscalculation: In the very first pages, it states that the natural gas supply situation in Germany is "highly secure and reliable." And that the likelihood of a massive supply crisis is "very low." ...

Keep reading. 

Tiger Woods Is Back at the Masters

Paige Sprinac in her Masters' best below.

And at WSJ, "Tiger Woods Is Back at the Masters—and Says He’ll Play to Win: A historic and embattled golf career makes an unexpected return in Augusta":

What chapter are we on in the Tiger Woods story? We’ve already had the Phenom, the Ascension, the Glory, the Night, the Comedown, the Exile, the Contrition, the Comeback, the Setbacks, the Injuries, the Redemption—and then the magical victory in 2019 at the Masters in Augusta, at age 43, after we wondered if Woods would ever win another major.

Remember that? It felt like a blissful bookend to an incredible career.

Then, in late February 2021, Woods was at the wheel of an SUV when he had a terrifying single-car accident, badly breaking his right leg and foot and prompting serious worry over whether he’d be able to walk, much less play consequential golf.

And now here he is, back at it—in Augusta, of course.

Woods has a flair for the dramatic, this we know. He’s in the highest category of all-time athletes, but he’s also a saga, a combination of historic, groundbreaking talent, moments of personal recklessness, injury ordeals, and, of course, all that tabloid trauma. In his recent years, there has been more equilibrium—Woods seems happier, more grounded—but there remains a public fascination, and it will always be there.

He’s never boring, Tiger Woods.

And now he’s back. Get ready, because this week is going to be cuckoo. It’ll be Tiger Overload, times 10—maybe not quite as manic as his return to the Masters after his personal life unraveled, but more emotional, given how grave his health situation was not so long ago.

Woods all but confirmed his Augusta participation at a press conference Tuesday, announcing he intends to be in the field when the tournament begins Thursday.

“As of right now, I feel like I am going to play,” he said.

It’s a brave maneuver, a comeback at a high-profile major—a very hilly major, a physical challenge which Woods compared with a “marathon”—barely a year removed from a terrible wreck.

It has an echo from the past—Ben Hogan’s 1950 U.S. Open comeback, after a horror crash of his own. It’s a story Woods knows well. He talked about Hogan a few years ago, trying to dissuade reporters from describing his comeback as similar.

“[Hogan] got hit by a bus and came back and won major championships,” Woods said then. “The pain he had to endure, the things he had to do just to play, the wrapping of the legs, all the hot tubs and just…how hard it was for him to walk, period.…That’s one of the greatest comebacks there is, and it happens to be in our sport.”

Is it now a fair comparison? Woods made it clear he still doesn’t think so, considering all the advancements in treatment. Plus, Hogan was just 36 at the time of the accident, the world’s top player. Woods is 46, ranked No. 973. Last fall, he told Golf Digest his days as a “full-time” golfer are over, and outside of charming father-son hits with his younger child, Charlie, he’s kept a low profile.

Still, he’s Tiger. He said he’s in Augusta because he wants to compete on the back nine on Sunday.

“I don’t show up to an event unless I think I can win it,” he said.

Realistically, what would be a good result? Making the cut? Top 40? Top 10? Simply being on the first tee Thursday after multiple leg and foot fractures should be enough—but there will always be hope that Tiger goes Full Tiger.

“He looked phenomenal,” said Augusta savant Fred Couples, who practiced with Woods Monday.

Woods is self-aware enough to know it doesn’t really matter. His legacy is secure. Peak Tiger was a tightly-wound enterprise, but as he’s aged, he’s let us see the human behind the image—not long ago, during his World Golf Hall of Fame induction speech, he talked emotionally about his parents taking out a second mortgage to fuel his budding career, and episodes of racism he faced at some early clubs.

“I was denied access into the clubhouses, that’s fine,” Woods said in his speech. “Put my shoes on here in the parking lot. I asked two questions only: Where was the first tee, and what was the course record.”

For golf, his return is a blessing...

Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing

At Amazon, Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

Zelensky in Bucha

The man looks worn down. He's aged 20 years in just one month. 

Video here, "Ukraine's President Zelensky says Russian actions make 'negotiations harder'."

And at the New York Times, "Atrocities in Bucha Complicate Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks."

And on Twitter, the grief of a nation:

Biden, Blinken, Nuland Have Led Us Into a Dead-End Crisis

The dreaded neocons. 

It's David P. Goldman, at Pajamas, "Putin Won't Go, Russia Won't Collapse — So What Will Biden Do About Ukraine?"

PREVIOUSLY: "'So Clearly There's an Intention for the United States to Be in Ukraine...' (VIDEO)," and "Victoria Nuland, Biden's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Claims Ukraine Has 'Biological Research Facilities' (VIDEO)."

Walking the Transgender Movement Away from the Extremists

This is an amazing essay.

From Jonathan Rauch, at American Purpose, "Today's radical gender ideologues are harming the transgender community the same way left-leaning activists harmed the gay and lesbian rights movement in the early 1990s":

I’m ... well aware that many of the same arguments which were used against gay people are now being deployed against trans people. Gays were (supposedly) redefining marriage; trans people are (supposedly) redefining sex. We (allegedly) smeared all disagreement as homophobic; they (allegedly) smear all disagreement as transphobic. We were usurping democratic majorities, destroying privacy, defying nature, recruiting children, and politicizing science; they’re—well, you get the idea. Seeing the many parallels makes me humble about getting the trans issue wrong.

But I also see a different and more disturbing historical parallel. A generation ago, in the early 1990s, the gay and lesbian rights movement (as it was then called) came under the sway of left-leaning activists with their own agenda. They wanted as little as possible to do with bourgeois institutions like marriage and the military; they elevated cultural transgression and opposed integration into mainstream society; they imported an assortment of unrelated causes like abortion rights. To be authentically gay, in their view, was to be left-wing and preferably radical.

A loose collection of gay and lesbian conservatives, libertarians, and centrists watched with growing concern. We thought that the activists were dangerously misguided both about America and also gay people’s place in it. We resented their efforts to impose ideological conformity on a diverse population. (In 2000, a fourth of gay voters chose Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.) We saw how they played to the very stereotypes that the anti-gay Right used against us. We knew their claim to represent the lesbian and gay population was false...

RTWT.

 

Corina Kopf

Corina, the beauty below.

And more here. 

Still more here.

With Inflation Not Letting Up, Shoppers Cut Back on Staples

I don't recognize my country. We're well into the third decade into the 21st century and Americans are cutting back on bare necessities, WTAF?!!

November is coming. I can't wait.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Consumers are buying detergent, diapers in smaller quantities and switching to store brands; 'It doesn’t smell as nice'":

Household staples are no longer immune to inflation.

American consumers are starting to cut costs on mainstays from toothpaste to baby formula as inflation hits a swath of the economy that had thus far proven resistant to substantial price increases.

Procter & Gamble Co., Clorox Co., Kraft Heinz Co. and other consumer-products giants have made a bet that consumers will pay up for household products even as inflation takes hold. Over the past year, the companies have seen profits and market share grow as they have raised prices on products from detergent and diapers to snacks and soda.

Now consumers, hit by soaring costs for everything from gasoline to child care, are drawing a line, analysts and retailers say. Shoppers are buying staples in smaller quantities, switching to cheaper, store-name brands and more rigorously hunting for deals. The shift is especially pronounced among lower-income consumers who splurged on household products amid the heights of the pandemic, they say.

Private-label brands, after two years in which they lost market share to brand names, have begun to lure back buyers. In the three-week period ended March 13, edible private-label brands increased share slightly and nonedible store brands held steady, according to data from research firm IRI.

Crystal Philips of Adams, Mass., said she has been feeling the pinch of higher prices for months, but started more seriously cutting costs in recent weeks after she spent $92 to fill the gas tank on the family’s vehicle.

Ms. Philips, with four children ages 6 to 18, replaced ornamental plants with vegetable seeds in her backyard garden, started shopping at discount grocer Aldi, and last week ditched her $7-a-bottle Tide detergent for a similarly sized bottle of Purex she found for $2.50 at a Dollar General.

“It doesn’t smell as nice,” she said of the detergent. “But I’m more concerned with feeding my family.” The most recently available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the annual inflation rate had risen to 7.9%, a four-decade high, with oil and commodity market disruptions from the Ukraine crisis expected to add more cost pressures.

The consumer-staples industry “has crossed a threshold,” said Krishnakumar Davey, president of strategic analytics for IRI. “Consumers have been pinched for some time, they are observing that they are paying more and more, and they are beginning to drop some items from their basket because they can’t afford it.”

Grocery-industry executives say consumers are becoming more sensitive to price. They are switching to store brands for some products and increasingly trading down to cheaper items such as ground beef instead of steak.

“I was hoping that by now, things might have eased up a little bit, but it hasn’t slowed down,” said Steve Schwartz, who oversees buying and pricing at Morton Williams Supermarkets. He said he was notified of price hikes from bread and beer companies and expects further increases in the coming months.

Part of that shift is because private-label options are more available now than during the height of the pandemic, when high demand and supply-chain problems led manufacturers to shift products away from store brands in favor of pricier name brands, IRI’s Mr. Davey said. But consumer demand for cheaper items is also a factor, he and other analysts say.

Another telling sign: sales volumes have begun to fall in a number of categories, meaning people are buying mainstays in smaller quantities. Before and during the height of the pandemic, sales volumes of staples increased even as prices rose. On Feb. 22, volume sales of cereal were down 7.2% on a two-year compound basis; cleaning product volume sales fell 5.1% in that same period, according to a Bernstein analysis of Nielsen figures. Prices for those products rose 9.5% and 7.2%, respectively, for those categories.

RBC analyst Nik Modi said cost-cutting on staples is most pronounced among lower-income Americans. In part that is because income groups that typically buy lower-priced household goods switched to pricier brands amid the pandemic, as homebound consumers spent less on travel, dining out and other perks. Now budget-conscious consumers are returning to discount brands, he said.

P&G, for instance, has reported gains in both pricing and volume sales since the start of 2019, meaning consumers bought greater quantities of items at higher prices. The Cincinnati-based maker of Tide detergent and Pampers cut discounts and shifted to higher-end products in an effort to boost revenue. Consumers were willing to pay more, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic, when high demand led to product shortages of mainstays from paper towels to soap.

P&G executives say they are prepared for a downturn in consumer spending, but have told Wall Street they believe consumers will continue to covet items like Tide laundry-detergent pods, Gillette razors and Pampers diapers, which often are the priciest option on store shelves.

“Consumers continue to prefer P&G brands and superior performance they provide even as inflation is impacting household budgets,” P&G finance chief Andre Schulten said in a January call with analysts. The company declined to comment on consumer spending...

Your Priority Is the Emotional Comfort of Powerful Elites

It's Glenn Greenwald on the creepy, vile social media lifestyle reporter Taylor Lorenz and her enablers in the Democrat-leftist "mainstream" media establishment, "Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them" Corporate journalists have license to use their huge platforms to malign, expose and destroy anyone they want. Your moral duty: sit in respectful silence and never object."

David Glantz, When Titans Clashed

At Amazon, David Glantz, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler.

Mass Grave Found in Bucha, Town on Outskirts of Kyiv

Following up from earlier, "Ukraine Condemns Russia for Alleged Civilian Executions, Braces for Onslaught in the East."

CNN's Fred Pleitgen visited Bucha and confirmed on the ground reports of atrocities committed by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians. See, "Here's what a CNN team on the scene of a mass grave in the Ukrainian town of Bucha saw.

Gleen Greenwald was raising questions about the authenticity of reports, which is fair, but the story's been so widely reported it's a huge leap of logic to suggest that that many news organizations would risk their reputations putting out bogus reports.

Anyways, it's really and despicable. 

Ukraine Condemns Russia for Alleged Civilian Executions, Braces for Onslaught in the East

Glenn Greenwald's warning us not to jump to conclusions about Bucha, the town outside Kyiv where mass atrocities have been committed. 

Look, if all the major newspapers are reporting this, and respected sources on the ground are tweeting photos photos of bodies and mass burials, the reports sure look credible to me. The best proof, for me, will be when CNN has reporters on the ground at the scene broadcasting live images. I haven't checked yet, but will after I get this posted.

At the Los Angeles Times, "LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces braced for an intensified Russian onslaught against the eastern Donbas region Sunday as officials from Ukraine, the U.S. and other countries condemned Moscow over allegations of civilian executions":

A gruesome cleanup was underway in the northern suburbs of Kyiv, the capital, following the withdrawal of Russian troops. Ukrainian soldiers were removing bodies from streets, homes and other sites in the towns of Bucha and Irpin, which had been recently occupied by Russian forces.

“Bucha massacre proves that Russian hatred towards Ukrainians is beyond anything Europe has seen since WWII,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter. “The only way to stop this: help Ukraine kick Russians out as soon as possible. Partners know our needs. Tanks, combat aircraft, heavy air defense systems.”

Ukrainian officials accused Russia of large-scale killings of civilians, alleging that some of the victims’ bodies in Bucha had been found with their hands tied. Russia has reportedly denied the allegations.

“Kyiv region. 21st century Hell,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the Ukrainian president, tweeted on Sunday alongside photos of bodies on the streets. “This was purposely done. ... Stop the murders!”

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called for an investigation into the alleged atrocities: “Appalled by reports of unspeakable horrors in areas from which Russia is withdrawing,” she wrote on Twitter. “An independent investigation is urgently needed. Perpetrators of war crimes will be held accountable.”

Authorities in the battered outskirts of Kyiv were also clearing mines, unexploded ordnance, destroyed Russian armored vehicles and other rubble. Civilians in those suburbs had for weeks been trapped between Russian bombardments and Ukrainian forces trying to protect the capital. That toll was becoming increasing evident as retreating Russian soldiers — plagued by logistical and morale problems — left a landscape of ruin.

Every day we collect the bodies of our residents from the streets,” Oleksandr Markushyn, the mayor of Irpin, told local media, adding that at least 200 civilians had been killed in Irpin. “Under the rubble there are also the bodies of the dead.”

Meantime, several booming explosions broke the pre-dawn calm in the strategic southern port city Odesa, which had been quiet in recent weeks. Targeted were an oil-processing plant and fuel depots, according to a statement from the Russian military, which said missiles were fired at Odesa from ships and aircraft.

There were no casualties, the mayor of Odesa said. Images showed a huge plume of black smoke arising in the aftermath of the attacks.

The Odesa attacks continued a pattern of Russian missile strikes on fuel depots and defense infrastructure facilities throughout Ukraine. On Saturday, Russian missiles destroyed a refinery and surrounding fuel facilities in the central city of Kremenchuk, authorities said.

The war, which began with a Russian thrust into Ukraine on Feb. 24, has left thousands dead, forced almost one-quarter of Ukraine’s population of 44 million from their homes and created a broad swath of destruction across the nation.

Despite the widespread ruin and death, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that the country’s forces continue to regain control of various areas — including the outskirts of Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv — that were previously occupied by Russian forces...

 

Ukraine Strikes Fuel Depot in Belgorod, Russia (VIDEO)

At Forbes, "In Night Raid, Choppers Blow Up Fuel Depot On Russian Soil Near Ukraine." (With video on Twitter.)

And Kyiv's denial is here, at the Guardian U.K. "Ukraine rejects Kremlin claim it sent helicopters to attack oil depot in Russia: If Moscow’s accusation is true, the airstrike would be first raid on Russian territory so far in the war."

Actually, Ukraine neither denied nor confirmed, which makes it all the more interesting --- and freaky for Russia. Perhaps Putin's not doing so well. 

'There are many reasons the Democratic Party shouldn't be allowed near power, and this issue has quickly vaulted itself to the top of the list...'

At the Washington Examiner, "Transgender policies poll poorly as Democrats and liberals make them top priority."

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bring Back Scholastic Aptitude Test

I saw this first at NYT, "M.I.T. Will Again Require SAT and ACT Scores."

Now from Kathryn Paige Harden, at the Atlantic, "The SAT Isn’t What’s Unfair: MIT brings back a test that, despite its reputation, helps low-income students in an inequitable society."

The Problem With Jon Stewart

I cant't block quote this one. You gotta read the whole thing.

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "How painfully, cringingly super-woke must a comedian get to stay relevant?"

Frank McDonough, The Hitler Years

At Amazon, Frank McDonough, The Hitler Years: Triumph, 1933-1939.

Sydney Sweeney's Grandparents Are, er, Freakin' Wild

They must really love their granddaughter and all her success with that massive rack.

At W Magazine, "Sidney Sweeney's Grandparents Think She Has the "Best Tits in Hollywood." 

Enjoy it while you're young babe. There'll be another super buxom blonde celebrity coming after you in no time.

Putin Has Made NATO Stronger

From grand strategist Edward Luttwak, at UnHerd, "America's leadership is now uncontested":

War is the domain of paradox, contradiction, and boundless surprise. It is not merely because of ignorance or stupidity that military history is a record of crimes, follies, defeats, and very few victories worth their cost. Even so, the Ukraine war is exceptional in the amplitude of its paradoxes, the extremity of its contradictions, and the magnitude of its surprises.

For the “post-Pacifist” German mainstream, the most bitter paradox of all is that the Russians might not have attacked Ukraine had they foreseen Germany’s response: that the Bundestag would cancel the new Russian gas pipeline, invest in regasification terminals, send weapons to Ukraine, reaffirm its fealty to Nato, and move to drastically upgrade its armed forces with a €100 billion injection.

The Russians could not possibly have known these things. The day before Putin launched his invasion, the German government declared that the new Russian gas pipeline would be inaugurated no matter what, and that they would send no weapons to Ukraine; it even affirmed it would prevent Estonia’s delivery of 122mm howitzers to Kyiv because those guns had briefly belonged to Germany when the West German army absorbed East Germany’s. Yet more egregiously, Germany also denied overflight permission for British transports delivering weapons to Ukraine. As for Nato, Germany reiterated its refusal to spend 2% or even 1% of its GDP for defence. If there were to be collective defence at all, let it be European, and directed by the decidedly civilian European Commission.

In that remote past of a month ago, those were all decidedly mainstream preferences throughout Europe, albeit with a north-south divide. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden had all resurrected their ancient Baltic connections and therefore viewed Russia as a live threat. But in Italy and Spain such attitudes were rare, and declared Putin admirers could become ministers in coalition governments. As for France, Macron did not oppose the effectively pro-Russian stance of the German government because he also wanted a European defence, led by France, of course, as the only European nuclear power.

All this has now slipped into oblivion in today’s Europe, where Nato’s centrality and its US leadership are largely uncontested. The Russians assessed Nato as weak because it was weak, and therefore attacked Ukraine. Yet because they attacked, Nato is stronger than it has been for decades.

In every country’s military, the equally abrupt reversals are causing no end of trouble for the staff officers and civil servants working on next year’s budgets. The infantry is once again the queen of the battlefield, empowered as it is by anti-tank missiles that pursue armoured vehicles until they destroy them, and by portable anti-aircraft missiles that are the doom of helicopters, even if they cannot intercept much faster jets. This means that current combat helicopter and armoured vehicle purchases should be cancelled until they can be redesigned with much better protection; that is active defences that detect and intercept the incoming missiles — a process that might take years. (So far only Israel has active defence systems for its armoured vehicles )

By contrast, killer drones that can reliably destroy armoured vehicles and anything else beyond the horizon are grotesquely underfunded given their demonstrated combat value, largely because they are captive to air force priorities, set by pilots and ex-pilot senior officers. Only with political intervention can the stranglehold of the flying fraternity be overcome — they are today’s reactionary horse cavalry that resisted tanks in the Twenties. But the main thing, of course, is to have more infantry and to train it very well, and that raises the need for compulsory military service which only Sweden has confronted so far — by re-instituting it.

Because Nato has not instituted a no-flight zone, for the excellent reason that it would lead to air combat that the loser might try to nullify by escalation, and with everything happening much too fast for adult supervision, no new air combat lessons have been learned. While the heroism of Ukrainian pilots flying older models of Russian aircraft against newer models is highly admirable, it adds nothing that is not already written in The Iliad.

At the level of grand strategy, the largest and by far most consequential discovery is that in spite of decades of talk about the “diffusion of power”, particularly with the rise of China but also of Turkey, Iran, Brazil and South Africa, it is still the same old G7 countries that hold the keys of the world...

Keep reading. 

 

Will Smith Expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The headline claims he resigned, but when you read his comments, it's clear the Academy left him with no other choice. 

At the New York Times, "Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars":

The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him.

LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”

The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.

“I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday.

“I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.”

He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.”

“Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”

Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility.

Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time.

In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.

Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”

“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”

In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.”

“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.

Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said...

 

The Left Doesn't Want to Diddle Your Kids

I said basically the same thing the other day, with a similar explanation in brief, here: "'Real Time' Panel Discusses Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Legislation (VIDEO)." 

Oh sure, there are definitely a few heinous groomers around here or there. 

They're evil. But in toto, the left is gunning for ideological hegemony over all of U.S. politics and culture, which Andrew Breitbart perceptively warned about years ago. Honestly, it may be too late to turn back the tide, so you have to put up pockets of resistance, like I do with my college students. I do a *ton* of ideological deprogramming. Young people don't read. Students today basically know nothing. The entertainment social media culture --- with an epidemic of youth narcissism  and privilege --- has destroyed their brains, and therefore their intellectual skills, critical thinking abilities, and the gift of perspective. So they glom onto anything that's trendy and allegedly cool. 

It's a fucking tragedy. 

In any case, I saw this dude Josh Daws on Twitter last night expounding like he was *the* expert on all of the. Okay, not too bad:

I'm seeing a lot of people on the right share this meme. While it may be a strong satirical response to those who get lost in nuance, it fundamentally fails to recognize why the left wants to talk to your kids about sexuality. Let's connect some dots. 🧵 1/23.

The left doesn't want to diddle kids. They want to create little revolutionaries. To do that they need to sever the bond between students and the parents they believe are raising their children to be hateful bigots. 2/23.

In order to sever the bond between parents and their children, the left is using a two-pronged approach. Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology (properly known as Queer Theory) are not two unrelated sets of ideas. They are two parts of the same strategy. 3/23.

CRT is usually the first set of ideas to be introduced. This is often enough to radicalize racial minorities, but it's merely step one for white (or white adjacent) students. 4/23.

CRT instills in these students a negative self-identity as they're taught to believe they're recipients of enormous privilege that was stolen from others and that they are complicit in historic and ongoing injustice. In child terms, they're taught to believe they're bad. 5/23.

Apart from the shame and guilt, this also gives them a worldview at odds with the one their parents grew up with and are trying to pass on to their kids. Step one is complete. 6/23.

Once CRT is done tearing down these kids and leaving them with a negative self-identity, Queer Theory (QT) is introduced and offers them a wide assortment of positive self-identities to choose from. 7/23.

Instead of living with the shame and guilt of being a member of the oppressive dominant culture, these students can be celebrated for coming out as gender nonbinary or pansexual. 8/23.

In an instant, these kids can trade their negative self-identity and all the accompanying guilt and shame of being an "oppressor" for a positive self-identity as a much-venerated "oppressed" minority. 9/23.

At this point, the left desperately wants this new identity to stay at school so it has time to be cemented before the parents find out. In the guise of helping these students, schools withhold this information about their child's new identity from mom and dad. 10/23.

Once the parents do find out about their child's new identity it's firmly in place and an adversarial relationship between the child and parents has been manufactured. It takes extraordinarily deft parenting to repair the relationship once it has reached this stage. 11/23.

The parents' tendency will be to overreact and push the child further into the arms of the woke radicals who now have the little revolutionary they wanted from the beginning. The bond between parents and child has been severed ending the perpetuation of hate and bigotry. 12/23.

The left is determined to replicate this process in as many families as they can using whatever means at their disposal. It's not about diddling kids. It's about capturing the minds of impressionable children. 13/23.

Unfortunately, this creates environments where actual predators can thrive. When young children are isolated from their parents, encouraged to adopt different beliefs, and keep secrets from their parents, they are made easy targets for abusers. 14/23 "But my school has Christian teachers and a Christian principal. They couldn't possibly have this agenda." Aha. This is where we turn to @joe_rigney and connect another dot. 15/23.

Hear me loud and clear on this. Most teachers love the kids in their classrooms and want only the best for them...

Still more.

 

Why the West Must Win in Eukraine

The new edition of the Economist is out, and it's a dandy.

See, "Why Ukraine must win: A decisive victory could transform the security of Europe":

When vladimir putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine he was not alone in thinking victory would be swift. Many Western analysts also expected Kyiv, the capital, to fall within 72 hours. Ukrainian valour and ingenuity confounded those assumptions. As the war enters its sixth week, the side that is contemplating victory is not Russia but Ukraine—and it would be a victory that redraws the map of European security.

Speaking to The Economist in Kyiv on March 25th, President Volodymyr Zelensky explained how people power is the secret to Ukraine’s resistance and why the war is shifting in his nation’s favour. “We believe in victory,” he declared. “This is our home, our land, our independence. It’s just a question of time.”

The battlefield is starting to tell the same story as the president. After several weeks in which the Russian assault stalled, Ukrainian forces have begun to counter-attack. On March 29th Russia said that it will “fundamentally cut back” the northern campaign. Its retreat may well be only tactical, but Russia has in effect conceded that, for the moment, it cannot take Kyiv.

Yet a lot of Ukraine remains in Russian hands, including the strip of land on the southern coast that the Russians now claim was their focus all along. A large chunk of the Ukrainian army, in the Donbas region, is vulnerable to encirclement. Nobody should underestimate Russian firepower. Even if its forces are depleted and demoralised they can dig in. Victory for Ukraine means keeping its Donbas brigades intact and using them to deny Russia a secure hold on occupied territory.

For that, Mr Zelensky told us, the West must impose tougher sanctions on Russia and supply more weapons, including aircraft and tanks. Sanctions deplete Russia’s ability to sustain a long war. Arms help Ukraine take back territory. But nato countries are refusing to provide him with what he wants. Given what is at stake, for the West as well as Ukraine, that betrays a reprehensible failure of strategic vision.

For Ukraine, a decisive victory would deter yet another Russian invasion. The more convincingly Ukraine can see off the Russian army, the more able it will be to resist the compromises that could poison the peace. Victory would also be the best basis for launching a post-war democratic state that is less corrupted by oligarchs and Russian infiltration.

The prize for the West would be almost as great. Not only could Ukraine invigorate the cause of democracy, but it would also enhance European security. During 300 years of imperialism, Russia has repeatedly been at war in Europe. Sometimes, as with Poland and Finland, it was the invader. Other times, as with Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France, it was seen as a lethal threat and itself fell victim to aggression.

A strong, democratic Ukraine would thwart Russia’s expansionism—because its borders would be secure. In the short term an angry, defeated dictator would be left in the Kremlin, but eventually Russia, following Ukraine’s example, would be more likely to solve its problems by reform at home rather than adventures abroad. As it did so, nato would become correspondingly less of a drain on budgets and diplomacy. The United States would be freer to attend to its growing rivalry with China.

Alas, much of the West seems blind to this historic chance...

More at the link.

 

No April Fool's Joke

Linking Neo-Neocon, Ed Driscoll writes, "Neo’s post is strictly in the spirit of April Fools. But this tweet by Rob Reiner is apparently not satirical, given his far left world view: Rob Reiner tweeting rave reviews of Biden’s presidency doesn’t appear to be an April Fools joke."

Florida Legislators Considering Repealing Special Law That Gives Disney Effective Self-Government On the Lands It Owns

The culture war in Florida escalates. 

At AoSHQ, "Hitting Disney where it hurts: Florida GOP threatens to strip Walt Disney World of its right to build anything it wants inside its theme park as feud over 'Don't Say Gay' bill escalates."

Former Yale Official Admits to She Stole $40 Million in Tech Equipment in Eight-Year-Long Fraud Scheme

Graeme Wood writes, on Twitter, "Yale administrator stole $40-million in $10k increments, to avoid detection. That means she stole $10k twice a day for 8 years, and no one caught on."

At Yahoo, "Yale employee stole $40 million from medical school for homes, luxury cars, prosecutors say":

A former Yale School of Medicine employee stole $40 million in computers and electronics from the school and sold the goods to fund a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, multiple properties and trips, prosecutors said.

Jamie Petrone, 42, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return Monday in federal court in Hartford, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut announced in a news release.

She is alleged to have run a scheme for eight years starting in 2013, causing Yale to lose $40,504,200, prosecutors said.

Petrone started work for the medical school in the emergency medicine department in 2008, officials said. She most recently was the department's director of finance and administration.

Petrone had the authority to make and authorize purchases for the department with a cap of $10,000, the release said.

Since no later than 2013, she ordered or had other staff members order millions of dollars’ worth of electronic hardware, such as iPads and Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, from vendors using Yale Med funds, prosecutors said. Petrone then arranged to have the hardware shipped to an out-of-state business in New York, which resold the goods, they said...

Keep reading.

 

Beautiful Paige in Red Flower Petals

She's risque.

On Twitter.

Parents in Baltimore File Lawsuit Against the City and School District for Failing Students, Some Graduating With 1.0 GPAs

At the Blaze, "Baltimore parents sue city after student graduates high school not being able to read; shocking number of students have failing GPAs":

With the lawsuit, which is still in its early stages, the couple is accusing Baltimore city officials and BCPS of failing to educate area children — and in the meantime wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money.

"We’ve heard for decades about some of the failures to educate and things like social promotion, lack of resources," Jovani [Peterson], who ran as a Republican for city council president in 2020 on a platform of accountability in education, added. "[Yet] year after year, time after time, all we hear is, 'Well, this is the way it’s always been. This is the way it’s always going to be.'"

His wife, Shawnda, has firsthand experience in the classroom. She worked as a public school teacher in Baltimore for almost a decade. She recalled how low standards and oversized classrooms led to educational failures.

"Most of the time, my class size was pushing 40 kids with no assistant. To effectively teach 40 children, that is a challenging task," she said, adding that teachers are not the ones at fault. Rather, "it’s just the way that the system is run."

Now, the couple hopes their lawsuit will serve as a message to the city and the school system that their management of the education system will no longer be tolerated...

I've never heard of anything this bad. It's really incredible and extremely sad. 

Still more. 

 

The Right's Cancel Culture Comes for Disney (VIDEO

This is from Charles Sykes at the Bullwark.  

I don't like these people, although I'm interested in this story. 

Here, "You can be forgiven if you didn’t have “Right-Wing Jihad Against Disney” on your bingo card for 2022":

But I regret to tell you that the entrepreneurs of culture war have grown tired of ginning up indignation about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” CRT, and the cancellation of Dr. Seuss. And so they have found a bright new shiny object of outrage, that bastion of moral decadence and wokeness, the Walt Disney Company.

This is, of course, the Disney of Mary Poppins, Frozen, Snow White, Moana, Encanto, High School Musical, Finding Nemo, 101 Dalmatians, Fantasia, Coco, Epcot Center, Bambi, Cinderella, Ratatouille, Splash Mountain, Beauty and the Beast, Mister Toad’s Wild Ride, Space Mountain, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, The Princess and the Frog, Remember the Titans, The Mighty Ducks. Old Yeller, and the It’s a Small World After All ride.

But the company has now spoken out against Florida’s new law regulating instruction about sexuality (read gayness), and, since clickbait doesn’t click itself, the new hotness is canceling Disney.

[Image of tweet from activist Christopher Rufo.]

You remember Rufo, of course. He’s this guy:

Rufo has become one of the go-to critics of CRT. His work has appeared in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Fox News, and the NY Post; he has also been featured by Hillsdale College; and touted by the Heritage Foundation.

Rufo also reportedly inspired Trump’s personal interest in the issue…

But here is Rufo, essentially giving away the game. For Rufo, it is all about “branding,’ and the audacity of his charlatanry is breathtaking:

[Another couple of tweets from Rufo, who is a dogged oppenent of the leftist culture agenda, though he goes to far in calling for a ban on *all* instruction in critical race theory, all the up to the university level. That's actually dumb. Grappling with stuff like CRT, which started in law school journals decades ago, is what you do at university.]

Now, he’s moved on, leading the attack on all things Disney. This week, Rufo fired up the jihad with what he excitedly described as a SCOOP: “Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, "as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child," she supports having "many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories" and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities.”

And he attached a video with the smoking wokeness...

Here's the video:

Keep reading.  

The Lynching of Justice Clarence Thomas

 At FrontPage Magazine, "A hospitalized justice, a racist campaign, and the media heckler’s veto":

Even as Justice Clarence Thomas was hospitalized, a leftist lynch mob rallied on social media calling for his impeachment or death. They weren’t especially picky about which one it would be.

The same radical faction championing Biden’s selection of a black woman for the Supreme Court as a groundbreaking step forward and berating Republicans for refusing to support her were simultaneously demanding that the only sitting black justice on the court step down.

The calls for Thomas’ death are based on pure unadulterated hatred. And so are the calls for his impeachment. None of them have even the faintest basis in anything resembling the law.

The Women's March called for the impeachment of Justice Thomas because his wife, Ginni, had advocated against election fraud. Or as the racist leftist hate group put it, "The revelations that Ginni Thomas advocated for the overthrow of our democracy are disqualifying — not just for her as a human being of any decency, but for her husband.”

A “human being of any decency” wouldn’t be going after a judge by targeting his wife.

The only possible reason for disqualifying Thomas would be the presumption that men are obligated to control their wives. And prevent them from expressing political views in public.

Is this the exciting new feminist position that the Women’s March would like to debut?

Would any of the great minds at the Women’s March like to contemplate the legal implications of creating a male guardianship for women of the kind that might have existed in the 18th century?

Justice Breyer’s wife is a member of the English nobility, it doesn’t mean he answers to the Queen.

Judges whose spouses have an “interest” in a case are obligated to recuse themselves from it. But having political views about a national issue is not the same thing as having an “interest” in it. I doubt there’s a single judicial spouse who didn’t have an opinion on the 2020 election. And many of them may have signed petitions, posted comments, or otherwise urged an outcome.

Or participated in the Women’s March attacking the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election.

That’s political activism, it’s not an “interest”.

The New York Times and the New Yorker cited a federal law stating that judges must rescue themselves if their spouses have “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.” A point of view is not an interest. If it were, there could be no married judges.

Nevertheless law professor Lawrence Tribe tweeted, “That clearly applied here.” How?

“By writing to Meadows, who was chief of staff and active in the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, she joined the team resisting the results of the election,” Stephen Gillers, an NYU prof quoted by the New York Times, convolutedly argued. “She made herself part of the team and so she has an interest in the decisions of the court that could affect Trump’s goal of reversing the results.”

Millions of Americans have phoned, sent letters and emails to members of Congress advocating particular policies. Did they all join the “team” of every single public official whom they contacted? Should any judges they’re married to have to recuse themselves from those cases?

Had Ginni Thomas been formally employed by the Trump team, it would be another story. Instead she was an activist urging members of the team to do everything they possibly could.

It doesn’t make her a member of the team.

If that weren’t absurd enough, both media outlets have cited a law stating that “any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Is there any federal judge, appointed as part of a partisan process, whose impartiality can’t be reasonably questioned in partisan cases?

As usual the Left has invented a standard that it doesn’t intend to apply in any other cases. Certainly not in any cases where it would inhibit its stable of unconstitutional judicial activists.

“What did Justice Clarence Thomas know, and when did he know it?” a New York Times op-ed demanded. The author, Jesse Wegman, a Times editor, presumably knows the political views of his wife, Kyra, and also, presumably, he writes his own views in his columns. Not hers.

This isn’t a complicated concept for any functional adult.

Supreme Court justices are aware of the storm of controversy over the cases in front of them. They’re expected to follow the law and rule accordingly without taking into account the views of family members, friends, and New York Times editors. That’s what they do for a living.

Thomas married Ginni in 1987. By then he was nearly 40 years old and had worked as a lawyer, a prosecutor, and as a civil rights official in the Reagan administration. He had developed his own point of view on the world. A unique one as testified by his rulings over the years.

Leftists and their media would like us to believe that the only reason Justice Thomas believes anything or rules on anything is because his white wife tells him to do it. That’s stupidly racist.

Even those who violently hate Thomas ought to be able to admit that he has a developed judicial philosophy and that his rulings reflect that unique worldview. The idea that a man who has defied expectations throughout his life, who has persevered despite being repeatedly hit with every racial slur in the book, is just following his wife’s lead is dumb beyond belief.

And yet this is the argument that the lynch mob targeting Justice Thomas is going with.

After all the fury over his wife’s activism, what does this amount to in Justice Thomas’ rulings? Where is the evidence of any conflict of interest or any violation of the law? It doesn’t exist.

The New York Times noted that "Justices Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr." responded to the Supreme Court rejecting an election lawsuit by Texas by "issuing a brief statement suggesting the majority had acted too soon in shutting the case down." Actually Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas joining him, on procedural grounds. At the time the dissent was issued, the media and its legal experts argued that it was not a ruling on the election, but on jurisdictional standing.

The paper also misleadingly notes that, "Justice Thomas addressed election fraud in a dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to turn away a challenge to Pennsylvania’s voting procedures." The Supreme Court had previously deadlocked several times over the issue with previous dissents by Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas, and the Thomas dissent highlighted by the paper had focused on the importance of providing "clear rules for future elections."

The media and its legal experts, shoddy as they may be, know all this perfectly well. They know that the paper is deliberately misrepresenting these cases in order to single out Thomas.

And that there’s no basis for doing so.

Thomas wrote as one of the court’s two leading conservatives, along with Alito, and there was nothing unique in his dissents that deviated from his judicial philosophy. Using his wife to attack him is the despicable tactic of a ruthless totalitarian movement with no shred of decency.

Having run out of any credible legal arguments, the lynch mob once again borrows the familiar logic of Russiagate to argue that their smear campaign proves that Thomas must recuse.

“Judging by the nature of the text messages and the uproar over them, that provision alone is enough to require Justice Thomas’s recusal, legal experts said,” the New York Times argued.

Since the New York Times and its media partners are the source of the “uproar”, conservative judges would have to recuse every time lefties launch a vocal smear campaign against them.

That’s using the media as a heckler’s veto to bar conservative judges from cases.

And that’s what this is really about.

Russian Strategy in Ukraine Shifts After Setbacks, and a Lengthy War Looms

I've been lagging on my Ukraine blogging since the slapping blowout at the Oscars!

Back at it now, in any case.

At WSJ, "Moscow’s new focus on Donbas and retreats from Kyiv set the stage for a protracted war of attrition":

Russia’s war on Ukraine shifted gears this week, as Moscow, lacking the strength to pursue rapid offensives on multiple fronts, began pulling back from Kyiv and other cities in the north, and refocused for now on seizing parts of the country’s east.

The pivot, after five weeks of intense fighting, was a gauge of the intensity and effectiveness of Ukrainian resistance and signaled a decision by the Kremlin to pursue what is likely to become a prolonged war of attrition.

Ukraine’s counterattacks—including a helicopter strike inside Russian territory—and Moscow’s redeployment toward Donbas in Ukraine’s east suggest that both sides believe they can win, making it unlikely that peace talks will result in a deal anytime soon.

Russia’s “military and political strategy hasn’t changed, it remains to annihilate Ukraine,” said Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian minister of defense who advises President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. But he said, “Now, their capabilities no longer match their strategic vision.”

That could be a recipe for a prolonged conflict, increasing the stakes for both sides’ ability to raise troops and money and access weapons, ammunition and supplies.

For Ukraine, with its smaller military resources, such a shift to a lengthy conventional war heightens the need for shipments of heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia’s declared shift toward trying to seize Donbas could allow it to concentrate firepower on a smaller front, shorten supply lines and make air support easier, giving Moscow a better chance at military success. It would also position Russia to try to encircle some of Ukraine’s best units, which are stationed there.

The Russian pullbacks from Kyiv, however, also allow Ukraine to redeploy additional resources to the eastern Donbas front—and to do it much faster because of shorter routes. Ukrainian officials were initially skeptical of Russian announcements that Moscow would limit military operations near Kyiv and Chernihiv, but lengthy convoys of Russian armor began leaving these areas Thursday, and scores of villages in northern Ukraine have been retaken by Ukrainian troops.

Russia appears determined to retain a smaller, blocking force around Kyiv to threaten the Ukrainian capital and prevent a large Ukrainian redeployment to Donbas, Ukrainian officials say. But a threat of encirclement of these Russian forces, northwest or northeast of Kyiv, could still precipitate a full withdrawal toward the Belarus border in coming days, they say.

“The enemy is not fully successful in retaining the areas that it wishes to keep. Our forces are kicking them out in the northwest and northeast, pushing the enemy away from Kyiv and making another attempt at storming it impossible,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Friday.

Russia sent some of its best units to Kyiv and northern Ukraine. Many of them have been battered by fierce fighting, and would need considerable time to be reconstituted and prepared for redeployment, military analysts say.

U.S. officials estimate that some 10,000 soldiers out of Russia’s 190,000-strong force in Ukraine have been killed, with tens of thousands of others injured or taken prisoner. The elite 4th Guards Tank “Kantemirovskaya” Division lost 46 of its estimated 220 T-80 tanks, according to visual evidence compiled by military analysts.

Seeking to replenish its forces, Russia has been calling up reserves, sending to Ukraine troops deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia as well as conscripts. Some of these troops, particularly from the Russian National Guard, which usually performs mostly internal-security duties, have refused orders to deploy to Ukraine.

British Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who headed operations for the British Defense Ministry and also helped create Britain’s military training program in Ukraine, said Russia no longer has many additional reserves to throw into new offensives.

“Most of the effective combat power is already assigned to the war,” he said. So Russian President Vladimir Putin “has to build some more, which is tricky without mobilizing and under sanctions, or concentrate the combat power that he has.”

Russian nationalists, dismayed by the retreat from Kyiv, have called on Mr. Putin to mobilize for all-out war...

Still more.  

Markets End Down for First Quarter, Worst in Two Years

I hope my retirement accounts didn't take too drastic of a hit. I'm not getting any younger!

At WSJ, "Stocks Post Worst Quarter in Two Years Despite Strong Finish":

A head-spinning quarter came to a disappointing end, with major stock indexes suffering their worst performance in two years and other markets recording some of the most extreme moves on record.

The action reflects a sense of dislocation shared by many traders and portfolio managers who are confronting challenges not seen in years. Yet their unease has been offset in part by a fierce determination among many investors to take advantage of any price declines to add to positions in stocks, bonds and commodities.

Inflation has surged to its highest level in four decades, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rattled already stretched supply chains and the Federal Reserve has embarked on a rate-increase plan whose pace investors are struggling to handicap.

All three major U.S. indexes declined more than 1.5% on Thursday, with losses accelerating in the final hour of the session as traders dumped stocks to end the quarter. The declines have dragged the S&P 500 down 4.9% over the past three months, snapping a seven-quarter streak of wins. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite have lost 4.6% and 9.1%, respectively, this year.

U.S. oil futures cleared $130 a barrel in early March, a level that flashed a warning signal for many economists. But the futures have since declined to around $100, a price that likely limits immediate economic damage but still marks the biggest quarterly gain since 2008.

“There are different parts of this market that rhyme with history, but really not even that well,” said Eric Veiel, head of global equities at T. Rowe Price, which oversees $1.5 trillion in assets. “This is a truly unique time.”

Underpinning the uncertainty that permeated the first quarter was the Fed’s plan to raise rates. In doing so, the central bank removed a historic wave of stimulus that had driven stocks to dozens of records over the past two years and fueled a rush into some of the most speculative investments in the market.

That made the recent market downturn markedly different from the crash in 2020, which was abnormally short and severe.

“The changes to our market views are just as dramatic as they were when the Covid-19 pandemic emerged two years ago,” Erik Knutzen, multiasset class chief investment officer at Neuberger Berman, wrote in a note to clients after the Ukraine invasion, adding that he is pessimistic about stocks over the next year.

Few assets were left untouched by the volatility. Investors have dumped bonds, sending yields on corporate and municipal bonds as well as Treasurys sharply higher. The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index—largely U.S. Treasurys, highly rated corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities—returned minus 6% in 2022 through Wednesday, headed toward the biggest quarterly loss since 1980.

Wheat prices have climbed 31%, logging the best quarterly performance since 2010. The swings in nickel prices during the Ukraine crisis were so large that the London Metal Exchange closed trading in the commodity after a huge run-up in prices inflicted severe financial pressure on producers that sold nickel as a hedge.

“That’s not rational behavior for an instrument, and that’s terrifying,” said Paul Britton, founder of Capstone Investment Advisors, an investment firm specializing in trading volatility. He says he expects the turbulence to continue the rest of the year.

Adding to the pain for many investors was the decline among shares of big technology companies, the biggest market leaders of the past decade.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., lost about $232 billion in market value in a single session after posting disappointing earnings, the biggest loss in market value for a U.S. company in history. The next day, Amazon.com Inc. recorded the biggest-ever one-day gain in market value.

Meta had its worst quarter since its shares started trading publicly in 2012 and has been one of the biggest losers within the S&P 500. Other former market leaders also struggled. Netflix Inc. has lost 38% this quarter, its worst period since 2012. PayPal Holdings Inc. has also lost around 39%, its worst quarter on record, and Salesforce.com Inc. finished its worst quarter since 2011.

The S&P 500 outperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite by about 4.2 percentage points, the greatest margin since 2006, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Other corners of the market have fared better. The S&P 500’s energy sector has soared 38% and notched its best quarter in history. Energy stocks like Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Halliburton Co. have skyrocketed more than 95% and 65%, respectively.

​Some optimism crept back into the market recently. After the Fed raised rates in March for the first time since 2018, a familiar pattern emerged. Investors piled back into stocks and stepped in to buy the dips in shares of tech and growth companies, as well as more speculative bets that had suffered to start the year.

Bitcoin prices have rebounded in March. Meme stocks like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. have soared, gaining more than 30% for the month.

Some analysts said individual investors appeared to be piling back into the market, driving some of the gains, a move reminiscent of last year...

 

Nice Catch

I mean the one in the middle.

On Twitter.

Also, Nalva Souza.

And Kari Nautique.

Governor Ron DeSantis Floats Revoking Disney Company's Independent Governing Status in Florida (VIDEO)

This is blowing up the culture war, dang!

At Fox News, "DeSantis broaches repeal of Disney World's special self-governing status in Florida":

Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed on Thursday the suggestion of repealing a 55-year-old state law that allows Disney to effectively govern itself on the grounds of Walt Disney World, following the company’s public opposition to a controversial parental rights law in Florida.

"What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power," DeSantis said during a press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday...

Laura Ingraham's video is embedded at the article, "Angle: Disney turns its back on millions of Americans."

'Real Time' Panel Discusses Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Legislation (VIDEO)

I hate this debate. I'm just sickened by it. 

I also hate attacks on opponents as "groomers." Maybe their are some, but those at the forefront of the opposition are radical trans activists pushing cultural Marxism on society to destroy the nuclear family and incite social revolution (as if that's not happened already). "Groomer" is a bigoted attack on legitimate interest group actors, and it's puerile. 

Fucking just beat these people at the polls, damn! 

The bill, now signed into law, is called "CS/CS/HB 1557 - Parental Rights in Education," and if you read it, it's just common sense. 

Anyways I watched this episode below on HBO because Batya Ungar-Sargon was scheduled and I like her a lot. 

If you haven't yet, get your copy of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy. It's an outstanding book which should be winning all kinds of awards. 

WATCH: 

Frank McDonough, The Hitler Years

At Amazon, Frank McDonough, The Hitler Years: Disaster, 1940-1945.

Inflation Is Taking Biggest Toll on Nonwhite Voters, WSJ Poll Shows

Batya Ungar-Sargon can't say it enough: Democrat Party identity socialists, woke-leftist mainstream media goobers, craven corporate America, Marxist university elites, and Silicon Valley tech-totalitarians hate the very people they purport to champion and support. 

Biden's now set to release "a million barrels of oil a day" from the strategic petroleum reserves, which won't make a dent in the rising price curve for gasoline, groceries, consumer goods, heavy industry, manufacturing, shipping, and more. 

Inflation's the number one issue driving the concerns of everyday Americans, that is, the American voters. Add the crazy gender assault on morality and the schools, and the Democrats are looking to put themselves out in the political wilderness for a generation. 

It's bad.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Black women and Hispanic men reported the highest levels of inflation worry among different demographic groups":

Nonwhite voters are more likely than white voters to say the highest inflation in four decades is triggering major financial strain in their lives and that appears to be giving Republicans an opening with a growing segment of the electorate that traditionally favors Democrats, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows.

Eight months before the midterm election, 35% of Black, Hispanic, Asian-American and other voters who said they were something other than white expressed that level of inflationary pain, compared with 28% for white voters. Black women and Hispanic men, both at 44%, reported the highest proportions of major strain among various demographic and gender combinations.

People with the lowest incomes also were most likely to report major financial challenges from inflation. Almost half with incomes of less than $60,000 reported major financial strain, while just 13% of those making $150,000 or more did so.

Some poll participants said they blame President Biden for inflation because he has taken actions to limit oil-and-gas drilling and pipelines in the U.S.

Roger Stephens, a 62-year-old mostly retired airplane mechanic who is Black and lives in the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles, said gas is running close to $6 a gallon in his area. He is troubled by prices at the pump and those at grocery stores and restaurants.

“Uncle Joe has put us on a diet,” he said in a reference to Mr. Biden. “I like to have a steak once or twice a month. I can’t do it now.”

Mr. Stephens is a registered Democrat who said he twice voted for Democrat Barack Obama for president and then for Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He said he was more likely to back Republicans than Democrats in this year’s election. Inflation, he said, is one of the issues he is weighing.

The inflation numbers help explain why almost two-thirds of voters think the economy is headed in the wrong direction even as jobs are plentiful, wages are rising, home values are up and stock prices remain above where they were when Mr. Biden took office. Rising energy, food and services prices pushed inflation to 7.9% last month compared with a year ago. The Consumer Price Index, which measures the cost of goods and services, hasn’t been this high since it reached 8.4% in January 1982. Overall, 58% of poll participants said inflation was causing them major or minor financial strain, up slightly from 56% in a similar survey taken in mid-November.

In a potentially troubling sign for Democrats now running Washington, a 47% plurality of voters said they think Republicans can best tame inflation, compared with 30% who listed Democrats.

Almost 9 in 10 Republican voters think the economy is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 36% percent of Democrats.

Among independent voters—a key group in most close elections—71% say the economy is going the wrong way. Hispanic voters are even more likely to feel that way, with 78% expressing a negative view.

Stronger dissatisfaction with the economy among nonwhite voters could translate to softer support for Democrats in November if things don’t improve before then.

“They’re sour economically,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster whose firm conducted the poll with the firm of Democratic pollster John Anzalone...

  

Rural Voters Key to Battleground Races in November's Congressional MIdterm Elections

I love this.

From Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal, "Over half of this year’s toss-up races are in districts with a sizable rural constituency. That reality makes holding the House—or even staying within striking distance—more challenging for Democrats":

The story of Democratic success since the Trump era has been one of political shifts in the suburbs. Well over half of President Biden’s voters in 2020 hailed from the suburbs, and he won suburban voters by a whopping 11 points. Of the 41 House seats Democrats picked up in the 2018 midterms, 38 of them were located in predominantly suburban districts. The suburbs remain the preeminent battleground in the country, as Republicans in 2022 gained back much of the ground they lost with Democrats.

But in this year’s House races, a disproportionate number of battleground races are taking place in either rural districts or districts with a significant rural segment. Of the 20 races that are ranked as toss-ups by The Cook Political Report, over half have a sizable rural constituency. It’s a reminder that Democrats can’t take rural America for granted, at least if they hope to hold a House majority for the long term.

Several of the rural House battlegrounds are newly drawn districts, like North Carolina’s 13th, which combines the burgeoning, Democratic-trending Research Triangle exurbs with the deep-red rural outposts of Harnett and Johnston counties. One is a brand new seat, Colorado’s 8th District, which includes parts of Weld County where “cattle sun themselves on grazing land and feedlots,” as The Denver Post put it. Others have always been competitive, like Maine’s expansive 2nd District, home to one of the most independent-minded Democrats in the House.

The best chance for Democrats to hold down their losses this year is to win many of those seesawing suburban seats. But even if they make a miraculous suburban turnaround, they still could lose their majority by failing to hold onto the smaller number of rural seats held by their party. As national Democrats cater to urban, progressive interests, they’ve all but abandoned the rural constituencies that once made up a major part of their coalition.

As former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock warned in The New York Times: “The Democrats are in trouble in rural America, and their struggles there could doom the party in 2022.” He urged Democrats to “show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America” by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. A good start would be to spend time investing into the pivotal competitive House races taking place there....

If the Democratic Party can’t moderate its message on social issues, for instance, it’s easy to see even the most adept lawmakers getting swept up in the tide. The first step to getting things right is recognizing that, as important as the suburbs are, Democrats can’t write off rural America entirely. A winning political message for Democrats is one that accommodates their coalition to the interests of those being left behind..

 

Disney Admits It Wants to Queer Your Kids

From Rod Dreher, at the American Conservative, "Well, here you go."

BONUS: It's Karol Markowitz, at the New York Post, "I’m quitting Disney after seeing it boast about pushing ‘gender theory’."

Flaming Skull: Washington Post Verifies Some But Not All of Hunter Biden's Laptop Using Third-Party Cryptographic Signature Analysis ... Which the Daily Caller Did 17 Months Ago and Thereby Verified All of the Laptop's Contents

At AoSHQ, "Thanks to ... for that great 'Hunter Biden Flaming Crack Pipe' gif. I hope you'll forgive me for using it again. John Sexton at Hot Air reports on that, and in the except here, notes that the Post has finally verified that a Ukranian energy tycoon met with Joe Biden -- and Hunter Biden; but note "The Big Guy" was here for this meeting ... Twenty fucking months after the New York Post confirmed it."

'Hot Fun in the Summertime'

Sly and the Family Stone:

Emily Ratajkowski at Vanity Fair Oscar Party

At London's Daily Mail, "Emily Ratajkowski puts on a VERY busty display in racy orange split top at the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar party."

Wow, she did!

PREVIOUSLY: "Flashback, "Nude Emily Ratajkowski Stars for Jonathan Leder´s Limited Edition Photobook."