Socialism is inefficient for anything but to loot and inflict tyranny. Even public areas like parks are vastly better when maintained by the private sector, as John Stossel demonstrates:

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.

Where moonbattery prevails, objective reality becomes illegal. In Sweden, professors at Lund University face prosecution by the Ministry of Education for noticing that rape is mostly committed by immigrants.

Via National Pulse:

The data in question relates to the identities of rapists in Sweden, which culminated in the paper “Swedish Rape Offenders — A Latent Class Analysis.”

The published results reveal that immigrants are disproportionately overrepresented in rape cases and commit the vast majority of sexual violence, though the authors did not originally set out to find a link between the variable and rape.

Everyone knows that Sweden became the Rape Capital of the West due to its massive importation of a new citizenry from the Third World. However, for academics to confirm the price paid for liberal policies constitutes thoughtcrime. It may even invite rebellion.

The scientists were also criticized for insufficient evaluation as they failed to indicate how their research should “reduce exclusion and improve integration.”

It is not enough to refrain from reporting facts that undermine the liberal narrative. Research must actively advance the leftist agenda.

On a tip from AintYerPa.

Among the lessons learned on this day in 1941 was that inviting aggression by appearing weak comes at an extravagant cost. Under liberal rule, this lesson may have been forgotten.

Now it is China that wants to dominate the Pacific. It has no fear of the corrupt, feckless, and incompetent Biden Administration.

By the way,

Joel Abbott reminds us that “we have a bunch of cargo ships stuck off our coast right now.” They are largely from China.

Like they say about those who fail to learn from history…

On a tip from Dragon’s Lair.

Sometimes a single song captures the spirit of an era. If the worm turns on the authoritarians who have been exploiting Covid, that song for our era will be “Stick Your Vaccine Mandate Up Your A**”:

Meanwhile, in New York City,

[Mayor Bill] de Blasio has already required vaccines for city government workers, teachers and anyone who wants to eat at a restaurant, use a gym or see a show in the city. This has harmed small businesses and tourism. Yet apparently these mandates aren’t coercive enough for Hizzoner. So now he’s giving the unvaccinated an ultimatum: Get one shot by Dec. 27, leave the city or stay unemployed.

That’s the date by which all private workers are required to be vaxxed.

While vaccines are protective against severe illness, they don’t prevent infection or transmission. Unvaccinated workers are mainly a threat to themselves. Mr. de Blasio’s mandate threatens small businesses struggling under the city’s tax burden and expensive labor regulations.

Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said businesses “were blindsided” by the mayor’s announcement, adding “there’s no forewarning, no discussion, no idea about whether it’s legal or who he expects to enforce it.”

The mandate—the first nationwide, as far as we know—is a nasty and needless infringement on liberty.

Also from NYC:

Children as young as 5 will be required to get vaccines in New York City to enter restaurants and other indoor venues, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday morning. …

Children between 5 and 11 will also be required to get vaccinated to participate in high-risk extracurricular activities. These activities include sports, band, orchestra, and dance.

The virus is no more of a threat to small children than the flu, and the long-term effects of the vaccines are unknowable. Advancing public health is clearly not the motive for the mandates.

Tyrannical moonbats and those who want to live free are speeding trains heading in opposite directions on the same rails. We are in for a hell of a crash.

On tips from 100Bravo and Varla.

The happy news doesn’t stop. First, we hear from Biden that the supply chain crisis is no more serious than a shortage of Cabbage Patch dolls. Now the Future of the Democratic Party informs us that the tsunami of smash & grab looting, which has retailers so terrified that the stores on San Francisco’s Union Square have been boarded up for Christmas, actually does not exist:

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was slammed by Republicans and business leaders following an interview where she cast doubt on whether rampant smash-and-grabs are actually occurring.

“A lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not actually panning out,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The Washington Times last week.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter riots, AOC told us that out of control crime in New York City was a matter of poverty-struck parents stealing bread for their hungry children. Progressives progress. Now the crime doesn’t even exist.

Walgreens, which has been forced to close stores due to the rampant looting, begs to differ:

“Organized retail crime is one of the top challenges facing” the company, Walgreens told The Washington Times, adding that the crime “has evolved beyond shoplifting and petty theft to the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods online.”

When theft is effectively legal thanks to Democrat rule, organized crime turns shoplifting into big business.

Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks said Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were “tone-deaf and offensive” to the family of Oakland security guard Kevin Nishita. The former San Jose police officer was shot and killed in November while defending a news crew reporting on a smash-and-grab crime.

AOC’s name isn’t long enough to convey the full heft of her pretentiousness. It should be extended to Alexandria Tone-Deaf and Offensive Ocasio-Cortez.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association also sounded off on this lame attempt at gaslighting by AT-DaOO-C:

“Respectfully, the Congresswoman has no idea what she is talking about. Both the data and stack of video evidence makes fairly clear that this is a growing problem in need of solutions,” Jason Brewer, RILA senior executive vice president of communications said in an email. “If she is not concerned with organized theft and increasingly violent attacks on retail employees, she should just say that.”

That’s what she did say, unless she actually expected someone to take her words at face value.

Even Gavin Newsom has acknowledged the smash & grab crime wave. He is trying shift the onus to local mayors, as if the entire Democrat establishment were not to blame for being light on punishment and heavy on glorification of looting (a.k.a. “mostly peaceful protesting”) and of scumbag criminals in whose name much looting has occurred.

“When society removes accountability for bad behavior, criminals get emboldened to commit more crimes, drug addicts thumb their noses at mandatory treatment and vandalism and petty theft turn into riotous looting and murder,” the president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, Craig Lally, told Fox News last week.

Society didn’t remove accountability. The Democrat Party/liberal media axis of evil did.

On a tip from Varla.

On a tip from Nate.

Covid tyrants are like drug addicts. The more they indulge in their preferred poison, the more of it they need. Hopelessly addicted to authoritarianism, our moonbat overlords now want to ban talking while eating or drinking:

A central objective of Covid tyranny is to atomize the population, so that we do not unite with each other to oppose our rulers. This is why New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant called upon Australians not to talk to each other, and why a ban on talking in restaurants and bars is sure to be imposed when leftists think they can push us that far.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

Great news: our fearless leader informs us that the supply chain crisis, which along with grotesquely excessive government spending and his War on Energy has been driving inflation into the sky, is actually no big deal:

“Now, I can’t promise that every person will get every gift they want on time. Only Santa Claus can keep that promise. But there are items every year that sell out, that are hard to find,” Biden said. “Some of you moms and dads may remember Cabbage Patch Kids back in the ‘80s or Beanie Babies in the ‘90s, or other toys that have run out at Christmas time in past years when there was no supply chain problem.”

No wonder Biden’s alleged Secretary of Transportation spends months at a time canoodling with his “husband” rather than addressing the crisis. It is no more serious than a shortage of Cabbage Patch Kids.

Meanwhile, the very federal bureaucracy of which Biden is the figurehead has gotten bogged down in supply chain issues. From the VA’s Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs:

Due to supply chain and staffing shortages, the vendor contracted by the Government Publishing Office to provide printing services for the Department of Veterans Affairs is experiencing delays in printing and mailing notification letters to Veterans and claimants. The disruption may impact the ability of some claimants to meet required deadlines via written correspondence with VA.

The staffing shortage side of the problem should be easy enough to fix: just drop the vaccine mandates and stop paying people not to work.

On tips from Bluto and 100Bravo.

The vortex created by the sinking of erstwhile Love Gov Andrew Cuomo has pulled down his dumb brother Chris (a.k.a. Fredo), whose show was sadly the best thing CNN had going for it in terms of ratings. Having recently predicted that Fredo would be back after the holidays, CNN’s media expert Brian Stelter proved wrong once again:

CNN has fired embattled anchor Chris Cuomo after initially placing him on an indefinite suspension.

The network made the announcement after “additional information” reportedly emerged during an investigation resulting from newly released documents that indicated how involved the ex-anchor reportedly was in attempting to protect his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) from scandals — including allegations of sexual harassment.

In the #MeToo era, the allegations of sexual harassment are a much bigger deal than Cuomo killing thousands by forcing nursing homes to accept Covid patients, and then covering it up.

The documents showed that Cuomo appeared to have worked tirelessly alongside his brother’s handlers in order to keep bad publicity at bay, including leaning on media sources who reported on the allegations against his brother.

This makes it too obvious that CNN is a political project, the purpose of which is to manipulate public opinion on behalf of Democrat politicians, so over the gunwale goes Fredo.

Mark Dice looks back on the shameful career of a Covid hypocrite and riot inciter:

In contrast to Fredo’s cancelation, fellow disgraced CNN propagandist Jeffrey Toobin continues to stick it out.

On tips from KirklesWorth and Varla.

Leftism has produced an epidemic of crime in California. Normally liberal elitists are isolated from the damage their ideology inflicts on the rest of us, but the chaos now reaches even into wealthy enclaves. Meanwhile, a story from San Francisco demonstrates how police are treated:

On Friday, three San Francisco police officers frequented the Hilda and Jesse restaurant – that offers “Breakfast without boundaries.” The police officers were seated, but shortly after, the “staff felt uncomfortable with the presence of their multiple weapons.”

The police officers were then “politely asked them to leave,” according to the restaurant.

The owners of Hilda and Jesse reportedly issued a response that said, “Our restaurant is a safe space – particularly for queer and BIPOC individuals.”

How safe do these moonbats figure their restaurant will be for politically sacred identity groups or anyone else without police protection?

“Community engagement is a core principle of SFPD’s 21st century police reforms, and we are intentional about asking our officers to support local businesses and get to know those they’re sworn to safeguard,” [San Francisco Police Chief Bill] Scott wrote on Twitter.

It isn’t easy to engage with a community that hates your guts — or to feel motivated to put your life on the line for it. If the police were less professional, owners Kristina Liedags Compton and Rachel Sillcocks would be likely to find them too busy to respond when the rising tide of anarchy forces them to make a 911 call.

On tips from Mr Freemarket.

At elite universities, the master class tests new extremes of moonbattery that before long will be inflicted on the rest of us. Stanford has taken anarchotyranny so far into the realm of sheer lunacy that wearing a Covid muzzle is mandatory but wearing anything else is not.

Campus Reform reports on the Naked Run, a Stanford tradition, hosted by the Ram’s Head Theatrical Society:

The Stanford Review reports that ahead of this year’s event, students received an email from one of the show’s producers informing them that masks are mandatory, and that they could wear as little clothes as they want, keeping in mind that is a “naked run.” …

Although Stanford has a 95% vaccination rate, the university is still enforcing strict COVID-19 regulations.

The school requires students to wear masks indoors, even if vaxxed. If they are smart enough to get into Stanford, they must be wondering why they bothered to get the vaccine, especially considering that Covid is not as serious for young people. No matter; proof of full vaccination will be required of all students by the end of the year.

On a tip from R F.

Don’t expect the crime tsunami that has engulfed California to go away any time soon — not so long as the state is run by moonbats:

Authorities in Los Angeles on Thursday announced more than a dozen arrests in recent smash-and-grab thefts at stores where nearly $340,000 worth of merchandise was stolen, part of a rash of organized retail crime in California. Fourteen people were arrested in connection with 11 brazen robberies between November 18 and 28, but all were released from custody, police Chief Michel Moore said. Most bailed out or met no-bail criteria, and one is a juvenile, he said.

Eliminating cash bail is a major objective of demented leftists.

A statewide policy of imposing $0 bail for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies ended last year, but it was kept in place within the LA County Superior Court system.

Combine this with California’s effective legalization of shoplifting under $950 worth of merchandise and the liberal establishment’s embrace of looting as an affirmation of civil rights, and the anarchy on display in the erstwhile Golden State was inevitable.

On a tip from Chris Neilson.

Just how far will Democrats extend “Two Weeks to Stop the Spread”? In deep blue Oregon, the answer may be forever. The state’s liberal rulers are taking steps to make an indoor mask mandate permanent:

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) convened a Rules Advisory Committee (RAC) on Thursday. The RAC provided feedback on the indoor mask rule. The point of the committee is to suggest what should and shouldn’t be included in the ruling and discuss the impact it will have on the public. …

This is the first step in making the rule permanent.

Technocrat Paul Cieslak of the OHA assures us that making it permanent doesn’t mean it will go on forever. It can be repealed. However, that will probably require Oregonians to elect Republicans — not a likely prospect in this colony of California.

Bureauweenies say they must make the mandate permanent in order to extend it. If they still want to extend it now, why would they ever let it end? Even if Covid ever goes away, there is always the flu — plus, you never know when the ChiComs will oblige them by cooking up a new virus.

On a tip from Dragon’s Lair.