News of the World

Some articles that caught my attention:

• "Price of being a sanctuary city: NYC is preparing to spend an extra $1B on hotels ALONE to shelter migrants for three more years"--Daily Mail. 

    The city's contract with the more than 100 hotels-turned-shelters, which was supposed to end this year, will now end in August 2026 and cost a total $1.365 billion - almost five times the original price tag of $237 million.

    The new cost does not include other facilities turned into shelters such as the tent shelters set up in the McCarren Recreation Center in Queens or the Island Shores Assisted Living in Staten Island. 

The city departments and agencies, including essential services, will be cut by a total of 15% by next April to help defray the costs. As usual, the public is getting the short end of the stick on this while large corporations and NGOs will profit.

• Cultural enrichment in Philadelphia as blacks riot and loot overnight. Supposedly this was the result of a judge dismissing a murder charge against a Hispanic police officer who had killed a black perp in self-defense. These were coordinated flash mobs, so probably some group or coalition of groups behind it. 
• "Widespread Mass Looting Overnight in Philly" – PJ Media
• "Philly cops brawl with masked looters after they ransacked Footlocker, Apple and Lululemon before making TWENTY arrests - as one raider is apprehended after LIVESTREAMING herself stealing from smashed up stores"--Daily Mail.
• Karma: "WATCH: The BLM felon who got his bicep blown off after pulling a pistol on Kyle Rittenhouse just got run over by a black dude"--Not the Bee. Gaige Grosskreutz, who has changed his name to Paul Prediger, was struck and run over by the driver of an SUV in Milwaukee earlier this month. "'I went on top of the hood and then was dragged under and stuck underneath the vehicle for a good 20 feet,' said Grosskreutz, who refused to give his name during the interview. He reportedly suffered multiple broken bones and a lacerated liver."
• Living in a leftist paradise: "CVS says it will close NINE HUNDRED stores by the end of 2024 - 10% of all its shops - as it moves to online strategy amid rampant increase in shoplifting"--Daily Mail. The pharmacy chain insists that there are other factors at play as well, including a shift to on-line shopping as a result of the Covid lockdowns. But as the article notes:

    Thousands of stores across the US have been forced to lock up basic products like toothpaste and deodorant following a spike in shoplifting.

    As of April 2023, stores had lost an estimated $86.6 billion to retail theft in 2022 - with projections indicating that by 2025, retail theft may cost stores over $115 billion, according to CapitalOne Research.

• "Harrowing moment thieves attack innocent man from behind, beating him to the ground to steal his backpack as he screams for them to ‘get the f*** off’"--Daily Mail. Chicago and no arrests, of course. Note that the attack begins with the two black men running up behind the victim and punching him in the head and in the torso, followed by kicking him while on the ground. The victim had apparently walked past the attackers earlier. You can see a video of the attack on YouTube.
• "Shocking video shows drive-by cops shooting dead an armed robbery suspect: Officers wielding shotgun and assault rifle toss flashbang out of their SUV before unleashing barrage of rounds"--Daily Mail. This was in Mesa, Arizona. This incident occurred on August 3, 2023, so I'm not sure why it suddenly hit the national news other than perhaps some video was released. The robber was one Ny'Kendreon Damir Au'Mariyah Pride. At the time the police tracked him down, he had committed three armed robberies over a period of just hours. The police tried to get him to drop his gun and surrender, but he ignored verbal orders and a flash bang. As one of the officers started to engage him with bean bag rounds, he apparently started to raise his weapon at the police resulting in a second officer, armed with an AR style rifle, to shoot Pride. Even after being shot, police still had to pry Pride's weapon from his hands. I guess he took the saying, "you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands" quite literally. 
• "Pictured: Nathaniel Huey Jr, suspect in killing of Chicago family-of-four, who was shot dead in burning car - as cops reveal his female passenger has also died after she was found next to him with bullet wounds"--Daily Mail. 

    The suspect in the killing of a Chicago family-of-four and their three dogs has been pictured after he was shot dead alongside a female passenger after a police chase.

    Nathaniel Huey Jr, 32, and his partner Ermalinda Palomo, 50, were tracked down by cops in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday - more than 650 miles from the brutal slaughter at the family home in Romeoville, Illinois, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

    Huey Jr. sped away from police down the I-44 but smashed into another car and plowed into barriers near the Hard Rock Casino. The car burst into flames - police said nobody got out of the car - and then officers heard two gunshots.

He owned a private security firm, Black Bear Security, which may be significant because one of the photos on his Facebook page shows him holding what appears to be an SBR with a sound suppressor, and none of the neighbors heard any shots as he executed the family and their pets. Per the article:

The police search for Huey came to a deadly and fiery end in Oklahoma after cops were tipped off by a digital license plate reader which identified his car, prompting authorities to initiate a traffic stop. 

• For anyone thinking that they can get around the surveillance using old, dumb cars, think again: "Report: California Looking To Restrict Travel For Classic Cars"--Yahoo. Right now the state is considering letting cities designate "zero emission zones" that would allow them to restrict or ban the use of certain gas vehicles. This was accompanied by surveys sent to owners of cars manufactured before 1979.
• Alien abductions? "Mystery as nearly FIFTY schoolchildren go missing in Cleveland in September alone while over ONE THOUSAND have vanished so far this year in 'alarming' trend that's left Ohio cops baffled"--Daily Mail. 

    The number of missing and runaway children in Ohio for 2023 is nearly double that of states with similar populations, sparking panic among parents and police who in some towns can't keep up with the number of teenagers running away. 

    In this month alone, 45 children have been reported missing in the Cleveland area. 

    They join the total number of 1,072 who have been reported missing since the start of the year. 

• "Texas GOP Passes Unanimous Resolution Calling For Special Legislative Session On Colony Ridge"--Daily Wire.

    The Republican Party of Texas unanimously passed a resolution calling on Governor Greg Abbott to convene a special legislative session to address Colony Ridge, the massive housing development north of Houston that’s become a hub for illegal immigrants.

    The resolution, which passed by a vote of 61-0, says a special legislative session must be convened in order to “prevent further settlement of illegal aliens in Colony Ridge and any other areas of Texas.” The power to call a special legislative session is with Abbott, who has already been urged by the state’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to do the same.

    The party’s resolution honed in on a number of specific concerns highlighted in The Daily Wire’s investigation of the development, noting that “the developer allows for illegal aliens to obtain loans to purchase land using Individual Tax ID Numbers (ITINs) instead of Social Security Numbers” and that Colony Ridge “has grown to an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 inhabitants and spans over 60 square miles.”

    Titled “Resolution Calling for Action in Colony Ridge,” it also calls for Attorney General Ken Paxton to “initiate a full investigation into the development activities of Colony Ridge Land, LLC, and its possible connections to elected officials in the region.”

• "A Wholesome Japanese McDonald's Ad Is Causing Bizarre, Angry Reactions From the Left" – RedState. Leftists are upset that McDonald's is running ads in Japan that show happy, well adjusted, nuclear families. Apparently such things are examples of "white supremacy" and "anti-Semitic". My question to the Left: Isn't it anti-Semitic to suggest that Jews don't support traditional families?
• Lockdowns and their consequences: "Middle School Teacher Admits That His Students Are Performing On A 'Fourth-Grade Level' And No One Is Doing Anything About It"--Your Tango. 

    "We all know the world is behind because of the pandemic, but I don't understand why they're not stressing to you how bad it is," Quis began in his video. He explained that as a seventh-grade teacher, he's noticed that most of the children in his class are performing at a fourth-grade level.

    He continued, saying that almost no one, the other public school administrators or even the parents of these kids are not speaking about it or doing anything to help. Instead, these students are still being passed on to the next grade despite severely underperforming.

• "Why Gentrification May Be a Trigger for Gun Violence"--U.S. News. The article relates that "[a]n analysis published this week in JAMA Surgery found the incidence rate for firearm injuries in gentrifying neighborhoods was 62% higher between 2014 and 2019 than in nongentrifying neighborhoods with similar socioeconomic characteristics." 

    Gentrification has been a controversial issue in many U.S. cities for decades. While it can have a positive impact when examining issues like poverty rate, home values and crime rates, the new study says it “may result in social disruption and alterations of social norms that can destabilize the previous social structure as prior residents experience rising costs, increasingly limited housing, and the stress associated with possible displacement into new communities.”

    In other words, residents who have long called a community home – and are often people of color – can effectively be forced to move once rents and property values rise.

    Previous research has found an uptick in firearm violence in neighborhoods that surrounded gentrified communities. The new study also notes another prior analysis that found shootings in a 12-year period moved from gentrified areas to nongentrified ones.

    “Together, these studies paint a nuanced picture of gentrification’s association with firearm injuries, with an initial increase as prior residents are displaced and eventual stabilization and decrease in firearm injury incidence when higher-income residents predominate and firearm injuries are displaced into surrounding (low-income nongentrifying) communities,” the new study says.

The authors of the study suggest that "policies that focus on increasing affordable housing and reducing the impact of resident displacement – as well as interventions that seek to rebuild cohesion within communities that have been disrupted through gentrification – could help mitigate the risk of increased gun violence." It hasn't worked before, but why not try again and expect a different result. 

    As best as I can tell from the article, the researchers have established a correlation but not the cause(s). Is it a simple matter of mixed communities presenting a target rich environment, so to speak, for the criminal elements? Is it a case, as Robert Putnam's research showed, that ethnic diversity leads to a loss of social capital and trust--i.e., a more divisive community? Is it anger over housing becoming unaffordable for one group? A greater criminal propensity among one group? A mixture of these or other factors? 

• A reminder that next year is an election year: "The next pandemic is already coming and it could kill millions more than Covid. We need to prepare for it now... writes experts KATE BINGHAM and TIM HAMES"--Daily Mail. From the lede:

    The next major pandemic is coming. It’s already on the horizon, and could be far worse — killing millions more people — than the last one.

    We don’t yet know for certain what form it will take — just that its arrival, according to global health experts, is not just a possibility but a probability.

    That’s horrific enough. Even more terrifying is the fact that Britain and the rest of the world have so far done very little to prepare for it.

    To combat Disease X — as the World Health Organisation ominously calls it — we will once again need vaccines to be engineered and delivered in record time. But, as things stand, there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen.

• First do no harm: "Doctors 'Euthanized' Woman by Suffocating Her with a Pillow, Family 'Heard Screaming'"--Slay News. They heard screaming and yet didn't intervene. Belgium, where this happens, allows euthanasia. Normally, doctors use drugs (similar to those used to execute prisoners) but those drugs don't always work....

    According to De Telegraph, an autopsy found that Wattiez died of asphyxiation and not the euthanasia drugs.

    An investigation found that the doctor and nurses took turns using a pillow to suffocate Wattiez until she was dead.

• But there were just so many! "FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official"--New York Post. The excuse given was that there were multiple field offices sending CIs to Washington without any coordination between them. Also: "Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund has said that, in addition to the paid informants, the FBI had at least 18 undercover agents in the crowd plus an estimated 20 from the Department of Homeland Security."
• "Mass Arrests Made at China’s Teetering Evergrande Property Giant"--Breitbart. From the lede:

    Chinese police descended upon the financial services arm of doomed property giant Evergrande on Saturday night, arresting numerous employees at the company’s Shenzhen offices, possibly including General Manager Du Liang.

    The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the arrests followed Friday’s takeover of the Evergrande life insurance company by a state-owned firm and Saturday’s announcement that a case had been filed against the Evergrande Financial Wealth Management Company over violations of disclosure regulations.

It isn't just Evergrande in trouble. The article also relates that China's largest real estate investment company, Country Garden, was teetering on the edge of defaulting.