Utopia, you are standing in it!

Superb piece by Richard Davies (HT: JP Koning blog).

Davies tracks the economies and currency markets in prisons in Louisiana (also called as Angola):

In many ways, a prison’s official economy is like that of a regular town. In Angola there is a world of work, with jobs and pay, promotions and demotions. And there is a world of shopping, with consumer goods and stores. But prisons are economic systems in which the cost of goods bears no relation to wages or the buying power of the workforce. The most important connections of a market economy – the prices that link work and pay, demand and supply – have been severed, intentionally, by the authorities. The official prison economy exists, but it may as well not, leaving the prisoners to build their own underground markets.

In the underground prison economy, things that might seem simple are hard, and things…

A vegan activist named Mythical Mia attempted to steal rabbits from a Spanish farm was attacked by angry farmers last week while trying to rescue the animals. It has now been reported that more rabbits died resulting from her effort than were saved. Then again, that may be what she intended. While there is no way to verify any of Mia’s allegations in the below video, her tears shouldn’t gain much sympathy since she took the risk of trespassing on private property and stealing the animals that resulted in their deaths. No doubt she and her colleagues carefully planned what they were going to do including targeting the animals in question to result in the most deaths. Hopefully Spanish authorities will arrest and prosecute her and her accomplices.

“Vegan activist who ‘rescued’ 16 rabbits killed nearly 100 in the process,” By Chris Perez, September 9, 2019 | New York Post

Here’s the announcement I found on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SarahTheHaider/status/1169186105016639488

The Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) just put up billboards in three cities—Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston—basically stating that a substantial proportion of Muslims raised in the U.S. have become apostates, and implicitly affirming that that’s okay (of course, to many Muslims apostasy is a capital crime). According to the EXMNA announcement, they had some trouble doing this:

After several rounds of rejections, changes, and even one contract termination from companies afraid of offending religious sensibilities, the billboards are scheduled to be placed on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 3rd and 4th, 2019.

“In a dozen Muslim-majority countries, ex-Muslims are condemned to the death penalty”, said Muhammad Syed, President of Ex-Muslims of North America. “In the West, our existence is not a crime, but we still face isolation, threats, and abuse by our own families and former faith community. Unsurprisingly, many former Muslims…

I was just starting to think that because Trump had finally made so many missteps,  and because so many Republican legislators are bowing out of 2020 re-election bids, that maybe we Democrats had a chance to recapture the White House (and perhaps the Senate?) in 2020.  And then along comes New York Times columnist David Leonardt, a thoughtful and Left-leaning writer, to warn us that the Democratic candidates for President (well, at least two of them) are pushing policies that, as I’ve noted previously, weren’t popular with Americans in general. (This is a no-brainer; many people, as well as several polls, have noted it.)

The two areas are immigration and healthcare, as discussed in Leonhardt’s new column below.

So, on to Leonhardt’s views, and some depressing data:

Over the past two decades, incomes for most Americans have barely grown. Median wealth has declined. Americans are frustrated, and a…

Here’s a segment from this week’s “Real Time” show in which Bill Maher addresses the epidemic of obesity among Americans. While he, like me, is against “fat shaming”—telling obese people that they need to lose weight (that’s their doctors’ job), we both object to the recent movement to de-stigmatize obesity by pretending that it’s not harmful. Of course it is: it’s associated, as Maher says, with nearly every health issue you can imagine. Yet with the rise of the “body acceptance movement,” we constantly see claims that you can be “healthy at every size“.

But that’s not true. On average, you’re less healthy if you’re obese. In a 2010 National Institutes of Health study, researchers found a decrease in longevity with every ranked step up on the body mass index (BMI).  And overweight people know this. As Grania used to tell me, “You don’t have to tell people…

The inevitable backlash against wind power started in Germany and it’s spreading, fast. The fact that chaotically intermittent wind power can’t be delivered as and when power consumers need it means the wanton destruction of pristine wilderness, bucolic landscapes, rural communities, and millions of birds and bats (including plenty of species on the brink of extinction) is pretty hard to justify.

Even the most delusional eco-zealots are struggling. And, apparently, cognitive dissonance has lost its ability to overcome their niggling internal doubts.

In Australia, Dr Bob Brown, former leader of the Australian Greens, was one of the first to break ranks when a few of these things were threatened for the remote North-West of his home State, Tasmania: Hyper-Hypocrites: Greens Love Wind Power – In Your Backyard – But Never In Theirs

In Germany, real environmentalists are mounting a well-oiled revolt against the destruction of forests – the natural habitat of…

Bari Weiss is a New York Times columnist who, like me, is a Trump-hating Leftist who criticizes the Left. The result, of course, is that she’s been demonized by the Left, and by many writers at her own paper. Her generally pro-Israel views don’t help, either.  Weiss’s new book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism will be out September 10. In this 75-minute discussion with political journalist Michael Barbaro, Weiss not only discusses her book, but anti-Semitism in general.

Among the topics Weiss covers are why Jews should oppose Trump and the Republican party, why BDS (and “anti-Zionism”) is anti-Semitic, why Jews are considered “white” and Palestinians are not, why anti-Jewish hate crimes don’t make the news, how and why anti-Semitism manifests itself on the Left, and why the UN repeatedly condemns Israel a gazillion times more often than it condemns far worse regimes. She’ll let you know why she says, “Anyone…

Today we have an All Video Edition of Caturday felids. The first shows the best five Cat Moments from the BBC Earth series. It’s 15 minutes long, but well worth watching for the impatient.  The segments:

1. Baby tiger is introduced to the water. (It’s my dream to hug one of these beauties.)
2. A leopard mom protects her cubs from wild d*gs
3. A tiger kills a wild boar. The board struggles and squeals, but to no avail. (Trigger warning: Nature red in tooth and claw.)
4. After two years of rearing in captivity, a jaguar is released into the wild. This is how I feel when my ducks fledge and fly away for the year.
5. A pride of lions take down a buffalo—a dangerous pursuit. It looks like the lions win, but the buffalo miraculously survives and chases the lions away.

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What do you think would happen if a man faked…