Friday, January 15, 2021



Conservative Commentator Says AIG Canceled His Insurance Over His Social Media Posts

The more this sort of thing goes on, the more conservatives will set up their own alternatives to restricted services. That is already happening with alternatives to mainstream social media. There are already several alternatives to Twitter and Facebook available.

The Left are not content to let that happen of course. They have already shut down Parler, a conservative-oriented alternative to Twitter but it seems unlikely that they will be able to shut down all the alternatives. Gab.com, in particular now seems to have its own servers.

And business generally will in time provide alternatives to other services. In the case at issue below, there will undoubtedly be other insurers willing to give cover to customers rejected by AIG

If the Left go full Fascist however and manage to shut down all alternatives to sites that they control, that will be a real red rag. It will invite retaliation that could be violent. Many Trump supporters are military or ex-military men. And as such they are usually trained marksmen. So if the Left are authoritarian enough, some of the oppressed may see that the gun is the only alternative left to them. Sniper attacks on major Leftist targets could be expected. Would anyone working at the NYT be safe?

At an extreme, a real-life dystopia could emerge, whereby all Democrat officials had to drive around in armoured cars for their own safety. And that is not as improbable as it sounds. One should not forget that, during the Obama years, it was guns that restrained the law enforcement response to Cliven Bundy's protest against loss of his traditional rights.


Conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling says that AIG canceled his insurance policy over his “social media profile,” a new level of deplatforming not yet seen.

“We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my “Social Media profile,” tweeted Schilling.

“The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management,” he added.

While innumerable Trump supporters have lost their Twitter and Facebook accounts due to social media censorship and cancel culture, cases of individuals being cut off by banks and other financial services are now growing too.

The purge has gone beyond the realm of simply silencing people on major platforms for their opinions, but punishing them for expressing them by trying to make their lives unlivable.

Numerous respondents pointed out the obvious – that without insurance it’s impossible to mortgage a home or register a vehicle.

However, other leftists applauded the move and said that Schilling deserved it for his support of Trump. “You’ve definitely earned it,” remarked one.

“I mean…. capitalism right? They calculated the risk and decided your premiums weren’t worth the long term exposure?” added another.

Another White Liberal Busted for Peddling a Racial Hoax for Career Gain

I mean, how many times are we going to see this happen within the world of white liberals? Rachel Dolezal, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Baldwin (not calling her Hilaria), and now some human rights lawyer who claimed to be Puerto Rican and Colombian but is really some white girl from Georgia. It’s the liberal America exception again, folks. It’s bad to culturally appropriate. It might be racist, and you should be shamed and destroyed for doing so, but if you’re a liberal and fighting for like-minded causes — it’s ok. You get a hall pass. Alas, the lack of principles at the core of American liberalism. It’s nothing but rot.

For a slice of the country that wants to get us all "woke" and change past racial and ethnic norms, there sure are a lot of these people who have straight-up lied to get ahead, huh? This is just as bad as putting "Native American" or whatever down on college applications. It’s a fraud. So, what’s this white woman from Georgia’s name? It’s Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, and she’s been claiming to be Hispanic for nearly a decade (via NY Post):

She serves senior counsel at the Latino Justice Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Records obtained by the site say Bannan’s family arrived in the United States from Ireland, Italy and Russia.

On Monday, Bannan, 43, clarified that she’s white in response to the report

“I am racially white, and have always said that. However my cultural identity was formed as a result of my family, both chosen and chosen for me, and that has always been Latinx,” the attorney wrote.

“My identity is my most authentic expression of who I am and how I pay honor to the people who have formed me since I was a child.”

And there it is. That’s the red flag. Only white liberals use "Latinx." Only white liberals think that’s a thing. It’s not. You cannot be Puerto Rican or Colombian if you don’t have a drop of blood running through your veins. I was raised by Italians and Irish. That’s not my cultural identity. I mean, it’s American, but I can’t say I’m full-blooded Italian. People would look at me as if I’m nuts — and they’d be right. The pretzels these clowns twist themselves into to justify stealing racial heritages to further their careers is some high-class white privilege, which again I was told was not good.

Recently, Alec Baldwin’s wife, who allegedly claimed to be from Mallorca, Spain, got busted for peddling a similar ethnic scandal. She’s a white woman from the greater Boston area. All five of her kids have Spanish names. She put on a fake accent. She was featured in the Madrid-based magazine Hola! For years, she was described as Spanish. She’s not. And any good public relations person would have pointed that out to her regarding this fake part of her biography. Why didn’t they? Maybe "Hilaria" didn’t think she’d be caught. I don’t know, but the evidence exposing this circus was both cringeworthy and flat-out hilarious.

Only in California: Where “Affordable Housing” Costs More than Five-Star Luxury

Have you ever dreamt about living in luxury on the beach in Maui? Sadly, this is just a dream for most of us because of its cost. But I am guessing you haven’t dreamt of living near the extremely busy I-680 freeway in Milpitas, California, at the local Extended Stay America, which consists of 300-square-foot units that include a kitchenette, a small living area, and one small bedroom and bathroom.

But buying the Extended Stay motel and flipping it into “affordable” apartments will cost you more per square foot than top-of-the-line digs on the shores of Hawaii. Santa Clara County, the county home of Milpitas, is paying about $725 per square foot for buying this property and flipping in into low-income apartments. Yes, this is outrageous, and there is no reason it needs to be this way. By accepting this insanity and failing to reform housing policies, California legislators are increasing California’s cost of living enormously and failing their constituents.

At this per-square-foot price point, Santa Clara County would need to spend close to $1 billion to satisfy the number of affordable housing units that the state is demanding of the county to deliver in the next two years. With an annual budget of about $8 billion, there is little chance the county will achieve this goal. And this also shows why Governor Newsom’s target of 3.5 million new housing units, one of his principal campaign promises, is a pipe dream. Even before COVID-19, California’s housing construction rate was 49th in the country.

“Affordable housing” is a myth in California, at least in areas near the coast, because a housing cost of $725 per square foot is anything but affordable. Building housing for low-income households at this cost means that taxpayers must enormously subsidize these projects.

Why is the cost so high? As always, the devil is in the details, so let’s look under the hood. There we will find that the costs of the small number of improvements that the state is planning on implementing are grossly overpriced, to the point that auditors—and taxpayers—should be taking a critical look.

The property in question sold in July for $14 million, which provides a realistic estimate for its value in its present condition. And as far as projects go, this isn’t much of a project, if one at all. According to a just-completed environmental impact report, the property and structures are in good condition and well maintained, without needing major renovations and repairs.

This property is a prime flipping candidate. Some paint, shampoo the carpets, a touch-up here and there, and we are good to go, yes? How much would this cost to flip if done by a private flipping specialist? About $20 per square foot, according to the evaluation tools provided by a private home flipper. Other flipping estimates are similar. And at $20 per square foot, this cost includes replacing carpet and hard flooring. But hey, this is California, where it costs more to do everything, so let’s double that $20 per square foot to $40 per square foot, which means a flipping budget of $1.5 million, and a grand total of about $15.5 million, give or take.

But the county’s budget to convert the Extended Stay into apartments is $29.2 million, nearly twice what it should cost. Where does that extra $14 million go? The answer to that question sheds much light on California’s housing crisis. And it is easily fixable, if policy makers are willing to do it.

The remaining items include building a laundry room and community kitchen, and outside, about 10,000 square feet would be used for a community garden, sports courts, a barbeque area with picnic tables, a dog park, and a pet washing station. Some units will also be converted into meeting rooms and into two larger manager units. Finally, there are reports—including a 222-page environmental impact report on a property that will be almost unchanged from its current usage—planning, permitting, and other administration costs.

Somehow, all this will apparently cost nearly $14 million. Scratching your head? I did as well, so I called a developer who specializes in apartments, and who lives outside of California, and asked him to guesstimate these costs at a “moderate” quality level if he were to do this project in his state.

His answer: $300,000. This includes plans, permits, overhead, and builder profit. The kitchen was the highest cost item, and he questioned why this was included in an apartment complex, given that each unit has an existing kitchen and that most apartment complexes do not have this feature. The laundry room was also expensive, but he noted that most apartment buildings cover these costs with currency-operated washers and dryers.

The extreme cost of this project is not a one-off. In San Jose, the cost of installing 8-by-10-foot tool sheds as temporary housing, along with a communal kitchen, meeting rooms, and a dog park, as in the case of the Extended Stay, costs about $700 per square foot. And, like the Extended Stay, it appears nearly all the cost is wrapped up in reports, administration, permits, and building a kitchen and laundry facilities. Almost entirely funded by taxpayers.

You must wonder why someone involved in this process doesn’t demand accountability, doesn’t say, “No more, this is nuts!” Perhaps this will happen one day, but all too often, the problem is that of people who spend other people’s money. As long as the owner of the checkbook doesn’t complain, checks just keep on getting written. It is much easier to do that than to rock the political boat, because there is so little for anyone to gain by doing that.

The fundamental problem with government is that there is no profit motive to impose discipline on spending and incentivize efficiency. Consequently, voters must constantly ride herd on elected officials. California voters don’t do this nearly enough. This is why California politicians spend $725 per square foot on down-market housing without batting an eye. And why they’ll continue to do this.

Shopify Bans Trump Store. Marginalization of Trump Support gears up

Not being familiar with either Shopify or the Trump Store and wanting to see what kinds of things it sold, I clicked on the link in Bloomberg’s tweet, only to get the notice that “This shop is unavailable.” Apparently the Trump Store website is run through Shopify, which describes itself as “the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business,” unless, apparently, one’s political views are undesirable.

So while I was unable to discover what exactly the Trump Store sells, I rather doubt that it’s balaclavas, Molotov cocktail mix, and maps to the Capitol. The people who work for the Trump Store have nothing to do with President Trump’s claimed incitement of mob violence at the Capitol yesterday. They are now essentially being deprived of a livelihood, at least temporarily, because the political and media establishment would have us believe that anything associated with Donald Trump is irremediably tainted. Shopify and its ilk seem to be working from the assumption that allowing anything connected with Trump a platform is apparently tantamount to accepting and even propagating the noxious brew of racism, xenophobia and “hate” that is all support for Trump is about, as far as they’re concerned.

Shopify is clearly just the beginning. Also on Thursday, Rick Klein, political director at ABC, tweeted: “Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part. Cleansing the movement he commands is going to be something else.” Klein didn’t say how he proposed to “cleanse” Trump supporters. Special showers, maybe? Or is it just our brains that he wants to wash? In any case, Klein is just the latest prominent Leftist to call for the reeducation of Trump supporters, and it is worth noting that neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris, nor any other Democrat leader, has dismissed, much less condemned, this idea.

As David Horowitz has memorably put it, “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out,” and at this point it’s clear: They’ve gotten out. The Left seems to be bent on criminalizing and thereby marginalizing all opposition to its agenda, and that will require pretending that every Trump supporter is the maniac redneck with a gun of Leftist fiction, just itchin’ to get inside that thar Capitol building and bag some Democrat varmints and then, power secured, go out and oppress blacks and women. It’s a lurid and ridiculous fantasy, of course, but Democrat leaders are today in no mood to treat opposition to high taxes and support for secure borders and protection of the First and Second Amendments as if they were any more reasonable. It is much easier to silence one’s opposition, and not be challenged in doing so, once one has succeeded in portraying him as evil in the eyes of the world — irrational, tending to violence, and well beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and behavior.

The Left has done this for years. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s hit list of “hate groups,” treated by the social media giants as an infallible index to what is lawful and what is prohibited, is a sophisticated, well-financed, ongoing exercise in defamation and libel, seeking to drive individuals and groups from public life and destroy them utterly without discussion or appeal, solely because they do not reflect the Left’s worldview, agenda, and goals. With all the certainty of medieval Churchmen burning heretics at the stake, and with less opportunity afforded them to respond to the charges and clear their name, the SPLC has become the Inquisition of our age, identifying heretics on the right and burning them accordingly.

But the SPLC’s activities have been restricted to a relatively small number of conservative groups and individuals. Now, with their Reichstag Fire of Trump supporters in Capitol building yesterday, the Left is moving quickly to expand the heretics list by about 75 million people. Once these thought criminals are identified, these new Inquisitors will duly destroy their lives, and thus ensure the purity of the new totalitarian order. And why not? There is nothing and no one who can stop them now.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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