Pete Kaliner

Pete Kaliner

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Pete's Prep: Friday, July 6, 2018

EPA Chief resigns amid scandals

Sleazeball or fallguy?

Scott Pruitt is out as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. He resigned yesterday, and President Trump announced it on Twitter.

From USAToday:

Pruitt, a former Oklahoma state attorney general, was accused of spending extravagantly on travel and security, asking aides to run personal errands and accepting favorable terms for the rental of a condo owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist.

A government watchdog agency concluded this year that the installation of a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth for Pruitt violated congressional appropriations law.

To be clear, the Left's opposition to Pruitt was not rooted in a desire for good government, but rather Pruitt's efforts to roll back EPA regulations.

But Pruitt appears to be pretty slimy, prompting more than a dozen investigations into his spending. Here's a list.


Asheville crime increases

The progressive experiment in the Paris of the South is proceeding apace.

From WLOS:

APD released a comparison of the six months from January to June of this year and last. It shows murders, rapes, aggravated assaults, thefts, burglaries, larcenies and car thefts are all up.

According to the Asheville Police Department, the crime spike is largely concentrated in "specific inner city neighborhoods, including Hillcrest and several other subsidized housing developments."

APD has increased patrols in those areas, despite progressives' opposition to any increase in policing - including the hiring of more officers.

Murders are up from five to nine between January and June in 2018. APD reports 29 reported rapes in the same 2018 time period, compared with 18 in 2017 during the same six-month window. Aggravated assaults are up by nearly 100 cases, along with the number of stolen cars.


MAGA hat attacker arrested

San Anotinio Police arrested the jerk who ripped the MAGA hat off a teenager's head before throwing a drink at the kid.

From MySanAntonio.com:

30-year-old Kino Jimenez was located by robbery task force detectives in Universal City, police said, and taken into custody on a warrant for theft of person.

Jimenez was also fired from his part-time job at a bar.



Who killed the center-Left?

It's pretty obvious that the "center-Left" is collapsing in America. But Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon says it's happening globally, as well. 

First, on the domestic leftward lurch of the Democratic Party:

The only civil war happening at the moment is within the Democratic Party. The old-guard corporatists are under attack from activists with radical goals and immoderate tempers. You can trace a line from Occupy Wall Street in 2011 through Black Lives Matter in 2013 through Bernie Sanders in 2016 through the Women's March a year later, Tom Steyer and Maxine Waters's impeachment campaigns, the growing prominence of Democratic Socialists of America, and the movement to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement today.

Continetti argues that the American example shares a "common denominator" with what's happening in other nations. And that common denominator is migration.

The overthrown establishments all benefited from the economics of illegal immigration and used migrants as chits in a humanitarian sweepstakes in which the leader who signals the most virtue wins. Migration became a symbol for the "flat world" of globalization where not just people but also cultures, goods, and investments flowed freely, borders had little meaning, and sovereignty was pooled upwards to transnational bureaucracy as identity was reduced to racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual characteristics. The fantastic wealth produced by the global marketplace enriched the center-left to such a degree that its adherents became walled off from the material, social, and cultural concerns of the working people they professed to represent. And so middle-class workers who believe a country's leadership ought to be accountable to a country's citizens went elsewhere—devastating the ranks of the center left and creating a vacuum for the neo-socialists of the twenty-first century.

You can see this playing out in comedy, actually.

Leftists have a remarkably under-developed sense of humor, unless they are finding creative ways of calling non-Leftists stupid. They are sapping comedy of its essence, in an infantile pursuit of moral preening.

Look at this, from the Guardian, involving the legendary Monty Python cast:

[Terry] Gilliam was commenting on the row over diversity triggered by the BBC’s unveiling of its new comedy programming, announced in June, at which the BBC’s controller of comedy commissioning Shane Allen emphasised the corporation’s commitment to “the stories that haven’t been told and the voices we haven’t yet heard”. In response to a question about Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Allen said: “If you’re going to assemble a team now, it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world.”

Speaking at a press conference at the Karlovy Vary film festival, where he was presenting his new film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam said: “It made me cry: the idea that ... no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented... this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian... My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”

He added: “[Allen’s] statement made me so angry, all of us so angry. Comedy is not assembled, it’s not like putting together a boy band where you put together one of this, one of that everyone is represented.”

Gilliam follows fellow Python member John Cleese’s angry response to Allen’s comment, who tweeted: “Unfair! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME ... We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners.”

Attacking and judging people based on racial and ethnic traits is the lowest form of collectivism, which is why it's almost always a feature of socialist experiments.

And it's why the left is growing more and more violent as they encounter greater resistance to their efforts.



But, wait! There's more!

The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules in favor of free speech.

Canada's Prime Minister is accused of groping a woman.

A former Thai Navy SEAL died trying to re-supply stranded kids in an underwater cave.


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