“San Francisco police have been staking out retail and grocery stores to catch shoplifters and have arrested 60 people since the covert operation launched last month, officials said. “Retail theft is not a victimless crime. It hurts our local business,” SFPD spokesperson Adam Lobsinger said in a statement, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “It hurts our workers who are getting their hours cut or losing their jobs,” Lobsinger added. “It hurts people who are shopping to feed their families, and it hurts our seniors who depend on neighborhood pharmacies that are forced to shutter.”
Details of the operation are slim, but police said that officers have been deployed to monitor pharmacies, grocery stores and retail stores across the city. The stores include Walgreens, Old Navy, Target, Whole Foods, CVS and Macy’s, the Chronicle reported. “These operations have resulted in 13 felony bookings, over 47 misdemeanor citations, and they will continue,” SFPD said in a statement. Roughly half of the 60 arrested suspects were offered diversion, while the other half are facing prosecution ranging from commercial shoplifting to grand theft.
Raj Vaswani, deputy chief of the department, said the operation will last at least another month. “We’re going to assess it and see how successful it is,” Vaswani said. “Of course, we also have to look at the overall resources and how sustainable it is.”
“Operations like this not only yield results in arrests and prosecutions, they also send a message that there will be consequences when you cross the line in San Francisco,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed added in her own statement, according to the Chronicle. “There has to be accountability in this city and we will keep building on the strong partnerships with our retailers to address theft in their stores so we can create a safer space for both residents and workers.”
…West Coast police unions pinned the smash-and-grab crimes on Proposition 47, which passed in 2014. Under the law, charges theft of items valued at $950 or less were lowered from felonies to misdemeanors. The measure was supported by various Democratic state leaders, as well as the ACLU. “San Francisco voters were lied to by the ACLU. Voters were told that prosecuting thieves was really a racist attack on people of color whose only real crime was poverty. So Proposition 47, the so-called Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, lowered felonies to misdemeanors for theft of goods valued at $950 dollars or less,” San Francisco Police Officers Association President Tony Montoya told Fox News Digital last year…”
In other words, at the urging of bleeding-heart Liberals, unsavory individuals were granted a license to steal by voters too ignorant to know the truth, leaving law enforcement to clean up the mess. As to how to go about it…
Though a bit over-the-top in these politically-correct times, Harry’s solution certainly eliminates the problem of repeat offenders.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First, two headlines which should make you afraid…VERY afraid…on the unchecked power of the federal government:
“It is not legitimately possible to convict Trump of inciting a violent crime because, whether you accept that he meant it or not, he explicitly called for peaceful protest. The committee well knows that, but it studiously purged Trump’s allusions to nonviolence throughout its performances. The Justice Department doesn’t get to do that. The law mandates that prosecutors disclose exculpatory evidence . . . and when there is exculpatory evidence that negates a core element of a crime, the Justice Department does not indict the case in the first place. It’s not that the DOJ wouldn’t love to charge Trump with a violent crime; it’s that the DOJ doesn’t want the egg of acquittal on its face.
…The vapidity of the committee’s referrals is magnified by its awareness that the exercise is, at best, meaningless. But it’s worse than that. There is no doubt that the Justice Department is trying to make a January 6 case against Trump. I’m glad they’ve resisted. To the extent the DOJ feels pressure to satisfy the Democratic base’s craving for charges against Trump, a prosecution based on his retention of sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago would be much cleaner.“
We should note that last assertion is shared by Jonathan Turley as featured in our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 at the top of the page immediately below our Quote of the Day.
Moving on, in the interest of accuracy, Madeleine Kearns confirms…
“When the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015, then-president Obama said that there were “Americans of goodwill” on either side of the issue.He stated that opposition was, at least for some people, “based on sincere and deeply held beliefs.”And he emphasized the need to “revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.”Just seven years later, in signing a bill which requires states to recognize same-sex marriage should Obergefell ever be overturned, President Biden took a very different approach.If you’re not fully on board,you’re a bigot.
Biden’s litany of bigotry reads like an intersectionality checklist.“Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia — they’re all connected,” the president said. Racism is an ancient evil, from slavery to the KKK and beyond.What does enslavement and lynching have in common with opposition to experimenting on children confused about their gender by lying to them, chemically stunting their growth, sterilizing them, and removing healthy body parts?As recently as ten years ago, opposing medicalized gender transitions for minors was common sense.But in his speech, Biden called out “callous, cynical laws introduced in the states targeting transgender children, tarring families and criminalizing doctors who give children the care they need.”
…In the United Kingdom, the women’s-rights campaigner Maya Forstater won the right to express views critical of transgenderism without losing her job.The judge, ruling in her favor, deemed her beliefs to be “worthy of respect in a democratic society.”The belief in traditional marriage also qualifies as such. It wasn’t too long ago that Biden thought so, too.“
Joe Biden would lie about the circumstances of the deaths of his wife or son if he thought it would advance his political career. Oh,…that’s right: He already has, and that repeatedly.
Since we’re on the subject of a man who’s a complete stranger to the truth, writing at The Washington Free Beacon, Collin Anderson tell us…
“The Biden administration is casting its plan to phase out the use of natural gas in federal buildings in favor of clean energy as a “cost-effective” move that will save taxpayers millions each year.
That’s baloney, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of federal data, which indicates that a Biden administration statement touting the plan’s frugality excludes the administration’s own findings on the increased cost of green energy sources as compared with natural gas.
In that statement, President Joe Biden’s Energy Department says the proposed natural gas phaseout “would save taxpayers $8 million annually in upfront equipment costs,” a figure that stems from the department’s Dec. 6 estimate of the plan’s budgetary impact.That estimate, however, also acknowledges that so-called clean electricity is roughly four-and-a-half times more expensive than natural gas, leading to “increases in energy costs across the board” that outweigh the savings on equipment expected under the plan.As a result, Biden’s transition away from natural gas will actually cost taxpayers up to $5 million annually, the Energy Department estimate says, a statistic that does not appear in the department’s statement…”
Imagine that: Someone in the Biden clown car willfully misleading the American people. As this tweet from Dan Crenshaw suggests, it’s just life in the Biden White House…
“This column has been making the case that replacing efficient forms of reliable energy with politically favored intermittent power sources is not as easy as it looks. Some jurisdictions seeking to replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear plants with wind power may not have adequately considered the costs and benefits.
Perhaps no political class outside of California has been as hostile to cost/benefit analysis as the elected officials of Massachusetts. Now Jon Chesto reports for the Boston Globe:
The state’s nascent offshore wind industry suffered a big setback on Friday when Avangrid told state regulators it wants to end its contracts with three major utilities to build a massive wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard…
In September, chief executive Pedro Azagra said Avangrid would postpone construction of Commonwealth Wind, which could eventually provide enough power for up to 750,000 homes, by pushing its completion date out to 2028, and would need to rewrite the contracts because of a sharp increase in commodity costs. With Friday’s move, Avangrid has given up on those renegotiation efforts.
Some readers may feel like they’ve been hearing about how close wind power is to commercial viability for virtually their entire lives. Regardless, this seems to be another reminder that the desires of politicians cannot change the underlying physics and economics. The Boston Globe report continues:
This move just adds to the pressure on policy makers. Offshore wind power is considered crucial for Massachusetts to meet its ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 from 1990 levels. Representatives for the Baker administration and Governor-elect Maura Healey expressed disappointment with Avangrid’s decision.
This broad spectrum of disappointment brings us to another lesson: the fact that an idea is bipartisan does not mean it will work.
Another lesson that must constantly be taught to policy makers is that every method of producing energy brings with it some kind of environmental footprint, some costs along with the alleged benefits. There is no free lunch…”
At least not for taxpayers. Those keeping themselves in power through the disbursement of other people’s money are on a different meal plan.
As for the whales, there’s more in Jim’s Tuesday edition.
Then there’s this sextet of special selections certain to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds:
NEW: N.C. Congressman @RepDanBishop (R) says his team is reading through the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, and there is language in it that prohibits CBP funding from being used for border security, “except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.” https://t.co/bVZTDyYmpM
This while at the same time requiring $410 million “remain available” to reimburse Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman…wait for it…for enhancing THEIR border security. You just can’t make sh*t like this up!!!
Let’s not forget the $1.438 billion for membership in the U.N. and other similarly useless international organizations, $70 million for salmon, $3 million for the Pollinator-Friendly Practices on Roadsides and Highway Rights-of-Way Program, $3.6 million for the “Michelle Obama Trail – PATH Trail Project” in Georgia and $575 million in spending for family planning or reproductive health specifically aimed at “areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.”
All in all, this monstrosity contains $858 billion in defense spending and $772.5 billion in non-defense discretionary fraud, waste and abuse. And if you’re wondering how on earth a SINGLE Republican signed on to this, the Kentucky State Turtle offers a hint
MCCONNELL: “Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans.”
(6). Just when you thought The Left couldn’t get any crazier, NRO‘s Andrew Follett informs us the Canadian government is providing a second block of funding to a “Decolonizing Light“, a group who freely admits “The purpose of our project is not to find new or better explanations of light; we are not seeking to improve scientific ‘truth. Rather, our project initiatives are motivated by the marginalization of women, Black people, and Indigenous peoples particularly in physics.” As Follett notes:
“…These forays into purportedly decolonized astronomy and allegedly anti-racist plant science are representative of a growing trend. From physics to botany, hitherto serious scientific fields are being infected by radical identity politics — what Elon Musk has called “the woke mind virus.” The ideological extremism that was until recently mostly confined to the humanities, explicitly identity-focused fields (e.g., fat studies, “Latinx” studies, queer studies, etc.), and certain areas of the social sciences, is gradually extending its reach into the hard sciences.
The “Decolonizing Light” project has indeed shed light on something: It has demonstrated that no academic discipline is immune to the threat of takeover by the radical Left.”
A shining example of contemporary educated idiocy.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…
…the lovely Shannon…
…Speed…
…and The Patriot Post:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Sports Section, and this question: What’s the best aspect of this headline?
Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley not only neatly sums up the utter nothing burger which was the January 6th Committee, but also correctly identifies Trump’s true trouble.
Tales of The Darkside
Tucker relates an America which must have the Founders rolling over in their graves!
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