Mid-Day Snapshot · May 22, 2024

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“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.

Mid-Day Digest

THE FOUNDATION

“All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.” —George Washington (1790)On this day in Patriot history in 1782, George Washington soundly rejected the idea that he become a king. After receiving a letter from Colonel Lewis Nicola of the Continental Army, Washington forcefully responded that “no occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed.” In fact, he admonished Nicola, “banish these thoughts from your mind.” Instead of himself, he put America first. —Mark Alexander

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

  • Families’ Net Worth Takes a Hit Under Biden
  • Executive News Summary
  • Arresting Netanyahu Would Be Absurd
  • DeSantis Boots Climate Cultism From Government
  • The Placekicker’s Extra(ordinary) Point
  • Mac Donald Warns of a Crime Catastrophe
  • DAILY FEATURES: Videos, Best of Right Opinion, Short Cuts, Memes, and Cartoons.

ON THE WEB

FEATURED ANALYSIS

Families’ Net Worth Takes a Hit Under Biden

One chart is arguably all you need to see to validate feeling like you’re not getting anywhere.

Nate Jackson

Why are Americans so sour on the economy when everything is just hunky-dory? That’s the oft-repeated Leftmedia question accompanying a gaslighting story.

A new chart from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis (pictured above) illustrates the problem: Overall, Americans have made no financial progress since Joe Biden took office. Net worth today, adjusted for Bidenflation, is up just 0.7% since January 2021, and it dipped into the negative for several months. That’s a far cry from the 16% increase during Trump’s first three years. In nominal terms, the numbers are 19% and 23%, respectively, but inflation eats up virtually all of Biden’s gain.

Not to overstate things because presidents are not solely responsible for every economic lever in a free market, but Biden’s record is atrocious, which is why he routinely lies about it.

In a brief story on the situation, The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip repeats the misleading claim that “inflation is falling.” Yes, the annual rate is lower now than it was, but prices are still rising — far faster than the Federal Reserve target of 2%. Cumulative inflation under Biden is close to 20%. Media outlets routinely skew these numbers (rarely reporting that cumulative one) to help Biden.

The Journal points to the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s recent milestone of closing above 40,000 as a “bit of welcome news for President Biden.” That’s certainly true in nominal terms — the market has been one bright spot in an otherwise dismal economy.

Yet even that part of Biden’s record doesn’t match Trump’s. At the time of the Journal’s article, “The Dow is up 28% since he was inaugurated in January 2021.” It rose 57% during Trump’s full term, including fully recovering from the COVID crash.

The stock market is a barometer of consumer confidence, so it’s also a good indicator of American resilience. But given the net worth calculation, does the stock market’s nominal increase actually amount to greater wealth? And which Americans benefit?

Hint: Not Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and aren’t invested.

To illustrate the struggles of regular Americans, recent news indicates trouble in the restaurant industry, which is itself a barometer of spending habits. Red Lobster is closing 87 restaurants nationwide and filing bankruptcy. Cracker Barrel is also closing stores and reporting big losses. Those are just two of a slew of chains that are having trouble keeping customers and workers.

That’s because consumers used to be able to get a meal at such places for roughly the same as fast-food combos now cost. Collectively, fast-food prices have risen more than 77% since December 2019. At McDonald’s, the hike has been 141%. Some individual items are up more than 200%.

So, McDonald’s is trying to drum up business by offering a $5 combo meal. I’m old enough to remember when that was normal, but this one’s just a gimmick. It’s a small amount of food, and the promotion lasts for just one month. Wendy’s is doing the same thing with a $3 breakfast combo — for a limited time only — after running a temporary promotion for Dave’s Single and Dave’s Double hamburgers.

Besides, McDonald’s is busy removing self-serve fountain drink machines and is considering charging for refills. On the bright side, soda is bad for you, and maybe the Bidenflation diet will help a lot of us lose a few pounds.

It’s not just prepared food. The Daily Wire reports, “Groceries for the average cookout will cost Americans about 10% more than they did for Memorial Day last year.”

Here are two other numbers to show why net worth isn’t going anywhere.

Home prices are at a record high of 7.64 timesthe median household income. Car insurance is up 22.6% in just the past year. Whereas prospective homebuyers can stay put, anyone who drives a car is required by law to carry insurance. Neither buying car insurance nor foregoing the acquisition of a new home helps net worth.

In the upcoming debate with Biden, Trump needs only ask this question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

Executive News Summary

The Mar-a-Lago “deadly force” dust-up, DEA admits cartels are in all 50 states, Biden taps oil reserves again, and more.

Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler

Cross-Examination

  • The Mar-a-Lago “deadly force” dust-up:Far be it from our media — left, center, or right — to fan the flames in order to manufacture news where none exists, but that appears to be the case with the story that erupted yesterday about the Biden Justice Department’s authorization of deadly force during the FBI’s 2022 raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. According to court documents, the operations order for the raid contained a policy statement reading, “Law Enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.” This is much ado about nothing, said the bureau in a statement yesterday: “The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.” Indeed, this sounds like boiler-plate language, and FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle confirms it. “The DOJ deadly force policy is literally in EVERY FBI op order and read verbatim to every agent involved prior to the op,” saidO’Boyle. “This is a giant nothingburger. … The [Mar-a-Lago] raid is dubious at best. This policy is not.”
  • Trump’s defense rests, closing arguments next week: Donald Trump’s defense lawyers rested their case yesterday in the hush-money trial against him, having thoroughly discredited the prosecution’s star witness, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen. Still, the deeply conflicted judge in the case, Juan Merchan, continues to move with sloth-like urgency, setting a date of next Tuesday on which to begin closing arguments. As the AP reports: “Merchan said he expects closings to take a full day, maybe longer. After that, he said, he’ll instruct jurors in the law for about an hour before sending them to deliberate. He said that could happen as early as next Wednesday.” All this, of course, keeps Trump stuck in a courtroom and off the campaign trail, which is precisely the point of the Left’s lawfare campaign against him. A clearly frustrated Trump vented yesterday that Merchan “has thus far been the exact Conflicted Democrat Operative his Comrades expected,” but said he should instead be “dismissing the Biden Election Interference Witch Hunt brought by Soros funded D.A. Alvin Bragg.” Fat chance of that, but we can’t blame Trump for trying.
  • Biden’s DEA admits cartels are in all 50 states: Mexico’s two “most powerful and ruthless” cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, are operating in all 50 states, the Drug Enforcement Agency recently revealed. According to the DEA, these cartels are leading the “dangerous shift from plant-based to synthetic drugs” like fentanyl and methamphetamine, which account for “nearly all of the fatal drug poisonings in our nation.” The cartels produce the drugs in “clandestine labs in Mexico” and then transport them across the border to sell on U.S. streets. The cartels “rely on chemical companies and pill press companies in China to supply the precursor chemicals and pill presses needed to manufacture the drugs.” Furthermore, the cartels use “underground banking systems” based in China to move money from drug sales in the U.S. to cartel bosses back in Mexico. It would make it easier for the DEA to fight drug trafficking if not for Joe Biden’s open border.
  • Yet another student loan transfer: Joe Biden is transferring another $7.7 billion in student loan debt onto the backs of taxpayers. Biden announced, “My administration is canceling student debt for 160,000 more people, bringing the total number of Americans who have benefitted from our debt relief actions to 4.75 million.” Biden is using the Department of Education’s new SAVE Plan to justify this latest debt transfer action by applying it to individuals who work in the public service sector. And make no mistake about it: This is a debt transfer, not a debt cancellation. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the combined total of Biden’s student loan cancellations thus far will cost taxpayers $1.4 trillion. But for Biden, it’s about buying votes. “I will never stop working to cancel student debt — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” he said.
  • Biden taps oil reserves again: On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced it would soon be releasing one million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). So, what emergency necessitates once again tapping the SPR, which Joe Biden has yet to refill after his previous draining? Well, it’s Biden’s slumping poll numbers. The Energy Department is touting this latest misuse of the SPR as a move aimed at helping to “lower costs for American families and consumers.” Of course, the reason gas prices are so high in the first place is due to Biden’s war on fossil fuels. Meanwhile, by draining the SPR, Biden is setting up the nation for even more of a disaster should a genuine emergency require the reserve. To put things in perspective, when Biden first took office, the SPR contained enough reserves to supply the country for 40 days. Now, the total reserves can supply the nation for only 17 days. Furthermore, thanks to Biden’s anti-fossil fuel agenda, the cost of refilling the SPR is now exponentially higher.
  • The American Nightmare: The average home price is now 7.64 times greater than the median household income. This disparity is worse than during the housing bubble in 2006, just before the collapse that triggered the Great Recession. In ‘06, the disparity between housing price and median income peaked at 6.82 times greater. However, today, unlike in 2006, high housing prices are coupled with high interest rates. Furthermore, the disparity is expected to worsen, expanding to eight times greater. And almost all of this problem can be laid at Joe Biden’s feet for two reasons. First has been his administration’s runaway spending. Biden spent over $20 trillion in his first three years, more than any other president in U.S. history. This spending has fueled inflation and ensured that it remained high. Second, Biden’s anti-fossil fuel agenda has resulted in high energy costs, directly making everything else cost more, especially new home construction. This disparity nightmare will only continue if Biden remains in office for another four years.
  • Biden threatens veto over gas furnace standards: In a welcome show of anti-Biden bipartisanship, the Senate approved a resolution yesterday to roll back the Energy Department’s gas furnace efficiency standards. The move, though, likely sets up a veto from the green-obsessed Biden. As the Washington Examiner reports, “The disapproval resolution, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), would overturn a finalized rule from the DOE that would mandate energy efficiency standards for residential gas furnaces.” The Senate measure passed 50-45, with all Republicans who were present being joined by a handful of Democrats who are up for reelection on November 5. Those vulnerable Democrats include Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, who calls herself an independent but caucuses with the Democrats. West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who’s retiring at the end of his term in January, also voted with the GOP. “This administration,” said Cruz, “doesn’t care that their radical climate agenda will have a catastrophic impact on American families and small businesses. Eliminating all non-condensing natural gas furnaces will only serve to further hurt families who are already struggling to get by.”
  • Burnishing a butcher’s reputation: It’s generally in poor taste to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of erstwhile Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died of deceleration trauma on a mountain in northern Iran on Sunday, we should’ve made an exception. After all, this was the guy who, as Reuel Marc Gerecht writes at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “earned the sobriquet ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ when he served as the prosecutor general of the city between 1989 and 1994 [and] participated in a so-called death commission that ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.” Nevertheless, as Congressman Andy Biggs observes, “Joe Biden’s State Department sent official condolences for a tyrant who murdered political opponents.” Moreover, the UN Security Council, including the U.S. ambassador, saw fit to hold a moment of silence for Raisi. “Death to America,” says Raisi’s government, which sent its Hamas proxies against our ally Israel and to hold Americans hostage. Maybe even worse, the Senate chaplain offered a prayer for Raisi. What a disgrace.

Headlines

  • Fulton County DA Fani Willis bests Democrat primary opponent (National Review)
  • Top takeaways from Tuesday’s contests in five states (Washington Examiner)
  • Biden says maimed American Hersh Goldberg-Polin is “here with us today” at Rose Garden party — despite still being held by Hamas (NY Post)
  • None of the aid Biden has sent to Gaza through pier has reached Palestinians; much of it stolen (Daily Wire)
  • Ireland, Spain, Norway announce recognition of Palestinian state (Reuters)
  • Why auto insurance rates are out of control (American Prospect)
  • Top general warned Biden admin ahead of Afghanistan withdrawal, says Washington didn’t get “the risk” (Daily Wire)
  • Bud Anderson, last triple ace pilot of World War II, dies at 102 (Washington Post)
  • Humor: Jews announce they have developed terraforming machine that can, say, quickly build a mountain in front of a flying helicopter (Babylon Bee)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here.

Follow Thomas Gallatin and Jordan Candler on X/Twitter.

Arresting Netanyahu Would Be Absurd

According to the ICC’s delusional prosecutor, Israel and Hamas are morally equivalent.

Emmy Griffin

The International Criminal Court, a 2002 creation that has little to no power and even less jurisdiction, has issued an arrest warrant application for both Israeli and Hamas leaders. Under the advisement of a panel of five advisers including Amal Clooney — human rights lawyer and wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney — ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan articulated his intentions on Monday.

On Israel’s side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were the individuals named. The ICC cites the following bogus infractions via prosecutor Kahn: “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

Israel has been held to a wholly unreasonable and unattainable standard for conducting warfare against an opponent that uses civilians as human shields, but even worse is that the charges are spurious.

However, Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh gladly and proudly cop to their war crimes. Sinwar is one of the architects of the October 7 attack, which Kahn correctly states included “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”

After Kahn pronounced that he sought the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes against humanity, the United States immediately came to the defense of Israel, which is a change of tune from a few weeks ago when President Joe Biden withheld military aid because the Israel Defense Forces went into Rafah. Biden said: “Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken later added in a much more detailed statement: “We reject the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans.”

Netanyahu excoriated the ICC, saying:

The outrageous decision by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against the democratically elected leaders of Israel is a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court.

Israel is waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hamas massacred 1200 Jews, raped Jewish women, burned Jewish babies, [and] took hundreds hostage.

Now, in the face of these horrors, Mr. Khan creates a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas. This is like creating a moral equivalence after September 11th between President Bush and Osama bin Laden, or during World War II between FDR and Hitler.

Hamas leaders also denounced the ICC, statingthat it “equates the victim with the executioner.” This is rich considering that the Palestinians consider the Israelis the executioners even though the former were the butchers on October 7.

Most importantly, regardless of what the ICC decides to do in terms of arrest warrants, it has no jurisdiction and no right to stick its nose into this matter. Israel, as well as other world powers like China, Russia, and the U.S., do not recognize its authority.

Israel isn’t a signatory member of the ICC. “Palestine” is and has been since 2015, but Palestine isn’t a country.

At the end of the day, the ICC has no real power beyond being a nuisance. Case in point: The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin last year for war crimes against Ukraine. The Russian dictator, probably while laughing to himself, issued a counter-warrant for the arrest of the ICC members.

The ICC is also setting a bad precedent. If any country that isn’t popular with the ICC goes to war to defend itself, are its leaders in danger too of being issued arrest warrants?

The ICC would do well to back down from this fight.

DeSantis Boots Climate Cultism From Government

The Florida governor recently signed legislation that removes “climate change” from official consideration by state government agencies.

Thomas Gallatin

The radical Left climate cultists have had their way in forcing their green religion onto much of the nation. Extremist terms like “climate change” and “carbon footprint” have become so common that many don’t even realize they are being manipulated into a cultist worldview.

As Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, a critic of modern climate change alarmism, observes, these climate change cultists are effectively anti-human. Human flourishing is not their objective; rather, it’s furthering their earth-worshiping agenda, which ironically does not actually benefit the earth, let alone humanity.

One need look no further than Joe Biden’s own green energy agenda to see this reality at play. Biden has ridiculously gone to war against fossil fuels, all in the name of “fighting climate change.” Of course, there is no actual, quantifiable data to support the administration’s pie-in-the-sky claims regarding the supposed impact his green policies will have on the global climate. Indeed, the only reason the U.S. has seen its carbon emissions decrease over the last couple of decades is due to fossil fuels, specifically clean-burning natural gas.

But it’s the narrative that matters, not the facts, as climate change alarmism is preached as if it were incontrovertible truth.

Thus, there is predictable blowback when a bold and forward-thinking leader like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis calls foul over the dubious alarmism surrounding climate change. On the campaign trail back in 2018, DeSantis declared: “I’m not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists. I’m just not.” Can we get an “amen”?

However, more than merely exposing the fraudulent agenda behind the climate change cult, DeSantis and his fellow Republicans have acted to reverse the cult’s continued promulgation throughout the Sunshine State’s government.

Recently, DeSantis signed into law three bills to remove this alarmism from the state’s government. As DeSantis explained, “The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state.” He added: “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots. Furthermore, we’re going to ensure foreign adversaries like China have no foothold in our state.”

The new law, HB 1645, which goes into effect on July 1, removes climate change alarmist ideology from government consideration in decision-making, specifically regarding energy generation. This means that when it comes to decisions regarding state agencies purchasing products, they will no longer be required to be “climate-friendly,” nor will rented meeting spaces have to meet some “green lodging” requirement.

DeSantis has long noted what many conservatives have pointed out regarding the climate change agenda: that it is really not about the climate at all. Instead, it’s about top-down government control. As DeSantis observed last year, Biden’s climate policies are “part of an agenda to control you and to control our behavior.” Exactly.

Meanwhile, Leftmedia outlets have ridiculed both DeSantis and Florida’s Republican-led legislature for this action against climate alarmism. The Washington Post’s headline is telling: “DeSantis signs bill scrubbing ‘climate change’ from Florida law.” And its subhead is even more so: “Climate advocates said the bill is a bid for national attention from a Republican governor eager to use global warming as a culture war issue.” While the Leftmedia outlet clutches its pearls, the headline is actually quite accurate. DeSantis has been a leader in taking on the Left, meeting it in the trenches over the major culture war issues that threaten Americans’ freedoms.

The Biden climate agenda has proven costly and crippling to the economy and Americans’ freedom to make their own choices. Energy costs have soared thanks to Biden, and so has the cost of vehicles, thanks to his de facto EV mandate.

DeSantis has done the opposite of what the radical Left has done, which is to use the power of government to force its ideological views onto the American public. Thankfully, DeSantis has been quite effective in meeting and beating the Left, and in doing so, he’s showing other Republican governors how to do the same.

The Placekicker’s Extra(ordinary) Point

We pretend to celebrate diversity and inclusion — then one person dares to contradict the new orthodoxy, and the world goes nuts.

Jack DeVine

It shouldn’t have been controversial at all. A devout Catholic named Harrison Butker was invited to give the commencement address at a Catholic college, and he delivered a profoundly Catholic message. What’s wrong with that?

But snippets of his address leaked out, and within hours we learned, to feminists’ horror, that Mr. Butker had poisoned the Benedictine College graduates’ impressionable young minds with his Neanderthal views about life and family. By nightfall, his incendiary remarks were big news coast to coast, eliciting heaps of abuse.

Until last week, the name Harrison Butker was well-known only by serious football fans. He is the placekicker for the NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs. As a rule, kickers are ignored —until they miss an extra point or a critical field goal, whereupon they are vilified unsparingly. Butker is one of the best at his job — he’s learned to thrive close to that edge, perhaps making it easier for him to toss out thoughts that just might upset a few folks.

His commencement address was well crafted and well delivered, a positive, uplifting, personal, and thoroughly Catholic message. One of his central themes — the one that set his detractors’ hair on fire — was directed to the women graduates. “Some of you may go on to successful careers,” he said, “but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

Heresy! The reaction was swift and vicious. The instant media interpretation was that Butker believes women should be relegated to the dreary life of a homemaker — either incapable or undeserving to share in the cornucopia of professional success long available to men. The critics were aghast. How can anyone in this day and age be so clueless about the glass ceiling that has imprisoned women for generations? This dolt probably spends his free time watching “Leave It to Beaver” reruns!

The National Football League piled on immediately, disowning Butker’s remarks via a statement from the league’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer: “The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.” Evidently, the league’s dedication to inclusion does not extend to Butker’s views on family life. And note the stark distinction between the NFL’s swoon over Colin Kaepernick’s ugly America-hating antics a few years ago and Harrison Butker’s testament last week to the fundamental importance of family.

Back home in Kansas City, a petition demanded that the Chiefs fire their misguided kicker. An op-ed in the Kansas City Star proposed replacing him — a player who contributed mightily to the team’s huge success in recent years — with a female kicker. (While they’re at it, they might want to swap out a couple of their big, knuckle-dragging, overly aggressive, and probably sexist linemen in exchange for players who better reflect the organization’s journalists’ core values. No worries, the fans will understand…)

But of course, there’s another side. Don’t take at face value the media’s assertion of universal outrage over Butker’s message. The Benedictine College graduates, faculty, and guests sure seemed to like it — they responded with a standing ovation. And reportedly, sales of Kansas City Chiefs jerseys with Butker’s #7 are currently outselling those with the Chief’s MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s number, as well as those of celebrity tight end Travis Kelce. (That strikes me as another of those implicitly valid indicators of true public reaction, not unlike beer drinkers’ wholesale rejection of Bud Light.)

But most importantly, we should recognize that this kerfuffle is not just another silly partisan argument between woke folks and the rest of us. There is intractable truth in Butker’s message that deserves serious consideration.

Let’s connect a few dots from among the worrisome trends of American life:

  • For decades, we have been trumpeting the successes of women in professional roles, with the unintentional effect of simultaneously devaluing the role of mother and homemaker.
  • We’re seeing lower marriage rates, higher divorce rates, and a crushing increase in single-parent (usually single-mom) child-rearing — often with devastating consequences.
  • There is the new confusion posited by the transgender movement. Butker touched on that issue, although if he’d mentioned that only biological women can produce babies, he might have ignited World War III.
  • And, quite possibly linked to the above, we are facing a dangerously declining birth rate in this country and worldwide.

No, Harrison Butker has not stumbled on a magic fix to what ails a civilization that seems to be in steady decline. But he reminded us — all of us, thanks to our media’s compulsion to pass on any bad news — that the nuclear family is the core building block of a stable, healthy, and productive society. His message was wholly consistent with his Catholic faith, but it was not really a religious message at all — it is a fundamental truth.

He expressed his views thoughtfully and clearly, and he did not force them on anyone. There is no reason in the world why we can’t all respect those views, and there are very good reasons why we should take them to heart.

Mac Donald Warns of a Crime Catastrophe

California’s so-called Racial Justice Act helps spring convicted criminals from prison by allowing them to claim racial bias.

Douglas Andrews

You’ve heard the cliché: As goes California, so goes the nation. We’re not sure it’s true anymore, given what an awful one-party mess that state has become in little more than a generation.

Still, as Michael Anton wrote in his prescient book on the 2020 presidential race, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, “With apologies to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, America’s bicoastal oligarchs and tastemakers celebrate ‘Californification’ as a heady brew of technological innovation, economic futurism, environmental consciousness, social enlightenment, and political progressivism.”

It’s these last two, though — the “enlightenment” and the “progressivism” — that have combined to make the state a lawless wasteland. And the indomitable Heather Mac Donald has taken notice.

“California is about to demonstrate what a world constructed from the tenets of critical race studies looks like,” she writes at City Journal in an article titled “California’s Looming Crime Catastrophe,” which warns about the recent passage of a law that “will likely bring the state’s criminal-justice system to its knees.” Mac Donald continues: “The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020 without meaningful public review, turns long-standing academic tropes about implicit bias and white privilege into potent legal tools. And the floodgates are about to open. Starting this year, the RJA allows anyone serving time in a California prison or jail for a felony to challenge his conviction and sentencing retroactively on the ground of systemic racial bias.”

In essence, then, the RJA was a ticking time bomb. And now it joins the growing list of disparate-impact racial excuse-making that is wrecking our country.

Mac Donald’s piece begins with an account of a series of gang-related murders in Contra Costa County, whose four perpetrators were ultimately caught and sentenced to life without parole. Their sentences were recently thrown out by a superior court judge on the grounds that the county’s sentencing for black gang members had been “historically biased.” Mind you: Neither the convicted murderers nor their legal representatives said they’d been treated unfairly by the judicial system. But, racial bias. Mac Donald explains:

The Racial Justice Act operationalizes the proposition that every aspect of the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks. But according to the act’s legislative authors, it’s too hard to prove such bias in the case of individual arrests and prosecutions. Therefore, the act does away with the concept of individual fault and individual proof. From now on, statistics about past convictions are sufficient to invalidate a present trial or sentence.

The RJA explicitly repudiates a key Supreme Court precedent that had governed bias challenges in criminal trials. The plaintiff in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), Warren McCleskey, a black man, was facing the death penalty for murdering a white police officer in Fulton County, Georgia. McCleskey presented a study purportedly showing that killers of all races in Georgia were more likely to be sentenced to death if their victim was white. Blacks who killed whites were at greatest risk of capital punishment. That alleged historical disparity in sentencing invalidated his own death sentence, argued McCleskey. The Court, in a 5-4 decision, disagreed.

In McCleskey, the High Court ruled that defendants must show that the system was “purposefully biased against them,” not just historically biased, in order to overturn a conviction under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. But that specific proof of bias is no longer necessary — at least not in California. All that’s necessary for turning black murderers loose in Gavin Newsom’s crime-plagued state are statistics that show a pattern of past bias.

So now, as Mac Donald notes, based on a dubious statistical analysis, not only are the four aforementioned gangster-murderers entitled to new sentencing, “but all 30 black gang convicts in the historical pool who had received life without parole can now sue to reopen their sentences thanks to the RJA’s retroactivity provision.”

This is madness, of course, but it’s the reality in our nation’s largest and most consequential state — unless the voters revolt en masse and overturn the Racial Justice Act. In the meantime, the question for the rest of us is whether we as a nation have reached Peak California.

By now, we suspect that the citizens of the other 50 states have stared into the leftist abyss that was once the Golden State and said, No thanks. Time will tell. But if so, it might be that the Racial Justice Act was the last straw.

VIDEOS

  • Not Enough Babies — The world is facing not a baby boom but a planet-wide baby bust.
  • She Doesn’t Know Why She’s Single — A woman went viral after posting an emotional video asking the Internet why she’s still single at 29 years old even though she’s built a great life for herself and wants marriage.
  • Harrison Butker Was Absolutely Right About Women — His “controversial” address wasn’t controversial in the least, despite the media’s attempts to portray his traditional Catholic views as fringe and deeply unpopular.
  • Satire: Butker’s Bigoted Speech — Can you believe the Catholic man said Catholic things at a Catholic event? What has the world come to?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

SHORT CUTS

Jordan Candler

Non Compos Mentis

“Here with us today is Hersh Goldberg-Polin. … He is not here with us, but he’s still being held by Hamas.” —Joe Biden

“Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz … is responsible for this occurring, having sponsored this early on back when she was 12 years old.” —Joe Biden

For the Record

“I don’t think it’s much better than 50/50 that [Joe Biden] shows up on June the 27th. … Why risk it?” —Democrat strategist James Carville regarding debating Donald Trump

Circling the Wagons

“It didn’t really sound like stealing $30,000. It sounded a lot like Michael Cohen doing the little that he could … to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved, and it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he’d gotten the year before.” —MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell

Dumb & Dumber

“When the entire country says, ‘We’re all border states,’ no, we are not all border states.” —New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

“[Illegal immigration] has now become a really harsh political issue. … Shame on Republicans.” —Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

“[The International Criminal Court’s] chief prosecutor announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. … There is genocide taking place in communist China today. What is the ICC doing about that? There is a brutal civil war going on in Sudan. What is the ICC doing about that? Christians are being slaughtered in Nigeria. What is the ICC doing about that? I don’t recall the ICC bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.” —Gary Bauer

The Village Academies

“Parents take serious risks when they send their child to college. … How many young people return home after four years at college (let alone additional years in graduate school) a finer, kinder, more moral or intellectually more developed person? Let’s just say it’s rare.” —Dennis Prager

Upright

“How cool is it as a woman to hear your spouse praise you and have such gratitude towards you? … That’s a beautiful thing. Isn’t that pro-woman? … Harrison Butker, thank you for your courage. Don’t change. We need you.” —former ESPN anchor Sage Steele 

Follow Jordan Candler on X/Twitter.

TODAY’S MEME

For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.

TODAY’S CARTOON

For more of today’s cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive.

“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.

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