Lots of bad stuff has happened on April 19, but at dawn on this date in 1776, just about 20 minutes from where I grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, 700 British troops on the way to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock and snuff out the rebellion of the colonists, marched into Lexington. Just 77 minutemen were gathered on the town’s common, Lexington Green, to stop them, having been warned that night by Paul Revere and William Dawes. The Patriots lost the battle, of course, but the Revolution had begun, and the world should be grateful for it. The Green is still there, but it is in the middle of a traffic circle now; it’s hard to imagine that the great American experiment, a nation created to embody ethical values, started in such a place.
1. Madness! Rice is a main food source for about 3.5 billion people, but some of the climate change cultists want it banned. The AFP News Agency posted a video on Twitter that argued, “Rice is to blame for around 10 percent of global emissions of methane, a gas that over two decades, traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Scientists say that if the world wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rice cannot be ignored.” This is, of course, bonkers, though whether it is more or less bonkers than the climate change fanatics insisting that we stop eating meat and start learning to like bugs is a matter of, uh, taste. After Legal Insurrection flagged the video, those who thought it would be persuasive propaganda had second thoughts, and this is all that remains today:
Remember: this is a cult. Causing a famine and widespread death and suffering to “save the planet” is a necessary trade-off to such fanatics.
2. Someone needs to explain to Biden Administration “historic” and “diversity” hires that they still can’t get away with embarrassing the government. Well, they can’t count on it, anyway. Kayla Denker is a transgender activist who U.S. Forest Service and tweeted a video showing her with a gun accompanied by the message, “While advocating for trans people to ‘arm ourselves’ is not any kind of a solution to the genocide we are facing, I do want to say that if any of you transphobes do try to come for me I am taking a few of you with me.” Then a trans ex-student shot up a Nashville Christian grade school, and the tweet went “viral.”
She was fired. Of course she was. Good. But Kayla doesn’t get it. “I’ve been fired from my job with the Forest Service because of the lies published by the Daily Mail, Newsweek, and other right-wing tabloids. But more poignantly: I was fired by the Biden administration for being a trans woman that owns a gun,” she whined in a tweet. Kayla was fired for making the Forest Service look irresponsible for employing someone who threatens to shoot people. And now we know she also won’t be accountable for her own words and actions.
Aside: I wonder how extreme Left someone has to be to regard Newsweek as a “right-wing tabloid.”
3. “First Do No Harm.” The combination of the right drugs, diet and walking Spuds has my various blood numbers down to a normal level where I may not even have Type II diabetes any more. Ozempic has been part of my treatment, but for three weeks I haven’t been able to fill my prescription. The manufacturer is scrambling to fill demand, and the reason is that wealthy people and celebrities who regard the drug as a magic weight loss elixir are getting illicit prescriptions from their doctors, though that is not what Ozempic is supposed to be used for. The delay isn’t likely to affect me much, bu for other Type II diabetes sufferers, not having access to the drug can be dangerous.
4. Apparently I can’t trust Substack. The subscription repository of opinion newsletters got me to subscribe to receive Glenn Greenwald’s reporting. I admire Greenwald, but personal issues caused him to write nothing for subscribers over a couple of months time. I received no notice of this (other than the fact that no new newsletters arrived) and no refund, either.
5. “Fair,” if you’re a Marxist. A new state law requires utility companies in California to develop a fixed rate plan to help make billing more equitable. SDG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison have entered a joint proposal to charge people based on their income.
- Households earning less than $28,000 a year would pay a fixed delivery rate of $24 per month.
- Households earning under $69,000, that fixed price goes up to $34.
- Households earning between $69,000 and $180,000, that price goes up to $73.
- Households earning over $180,000 dollars will pay $128.
Ethics Alarms 
#5 Some people chastise me or cast me off as some kind of wacko conspiracy theorist for making statements that the 21st century social justice warriors have already won the battle of the minds across our society, well this story is just another piece of evidence that supports my claim if not society wide then for large segments of our society. The puzzle patterns are there, people just have to open their eyes and be willing to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Yet another reason to stay on welfare rather than get a job.
Steve, the numbers may very well be skewed and quite possibly by a lot because of MSM bias and bad/sensational news is what gets reported. There is probably an un- woke silent majority, but therein lies the problem. Too passive and silent.
1) Applying the typical globalist woke strategy to the methane gas madness is a simple and elegant solution. Just cancel anyone who thinks it is a good idea to starve billions of humans because of rice methane. We must begin the depopulation program somewhere. There are various definitions of cancel in this particular context.
2) Really Kayla genocide? Are you a trans-cretin? Any stats to support your delusion?
So-called ‘trans genocide’ is a shockingly widespread mass delusion. A person I used to respect smeared another as supporting this “identify-as-cide” (since it has zero relation to genetics) and thus not to be followed for advice. Had to do way more diging than I should have to find out that this smear was because of an occasional joke that he identified as a vehicle.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world…
Concord Hymn
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837
Now the Concord bridge, in contrast, is out in farmland, and looks pretty much like it did in 1776…
The other reason (perhaps the main one, as suggested by their using 700 troops) for the British excursion was to seize the colonists’ supply of arms at Concord. Apparently unfamiliar with irony, the ATF posted this “Happy Patriot’s Day” tweet:
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
#1: We should get off corn-based ethanol before we go after rice.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ft6-dOYWYAI-tZ9?format=jpg&name=small
^^^^^ From the ATF …unfamiliar with irony, it seems.
RE #3: congratulations on getting your blood numbers in order. Presumably the market will adapt and more Ozempic will be available in the future (even though I want to insert stainless steel spikes in my ears every time that horrible TV ad comes on).
RE #4: Greenwald has moved to another platform from Substack – he’s now streaming live most midweek nights via Rumble and posting the transcripts via locals.com. My subscription, originally billed through Substack, carried over – because it was re-upped shortly before he moved. He’s very active once again, and well worth reading.
#5. How does income based rates promote equity? I could understand basing that part of the billing on usage as the amount of average demand per customer relates to amount of infrastructure needed to produce and deliver current. Lower income people have fewer appliances and smaller homes so the amount of power demanded is smaller. Conversely, someone living in 5000 square foot home will impact the utility far more than someone in a studio apartment. So adjusting the delivery fee to reflect customer impact could be rationalized. This is how most water and sewer utilities establish connection and base fees for different types of users. A large manufacturing business will pay much higher connection an base fees than a residential home.
#1: Remember that those who demand such policies, policies that would lead to the certain death of hundreds of millions, maybe billions, are these days termed activists, not extremists. The term “extremist” is reserved for people who are really out there, like parents who don’t want their daughters to be forced to change in front of biological males, or Catholics who attend Latin mass.
I am glad you brought the Latin Mass into the mix. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the Holy See has issued proclamations limiting or banning the use of Latin in Masses during Ordinary Time. Is it because those churches who celebrate Mass in Latin are perceived as anti-Second Vatican Council? I asked our parish pastor but he didn’t give much of an answer.
jvb
Re #5: Doesn’t that mean that likely every California resident that gets gas and electric service will use roughly the same amount of G&E that the most wasteful user does now? That sounds like an efficient sustainable pricing model, no?
(The left is not stupid; they know what they’re doing and where it leads.)
1. I would bet that no one in today’s educational system, both student and teacher, can associate the date of April 19 with the world-changing event. They would probably ask, “Who is Paul Revere?
2. Ozempic’s efficacy to aid in the control of type 2 diabetes is apparently not recognized by Medicare or Tricare (veteran’s health care). It remains on their list as experimental. To receive it the patient and their provider have to traverse a bureaucratic minefield. The same with continuous glucose monitors (CGM) which have been shown to be highly beneficial.
3. What would be historic is for this administration and all administrations to hire competent folks with a strong work ethic.
3. First they came for the wheat, now they want the rice, who will stop them when they come for the soy?
4. Those utility rates are all cheaper than mine here in Alabama. I have replaced windows and doors, added insulation, replaced the roof, and upgraded my HVAC systems. All these changes were touted as being able to decrease my utility bill, yet it keeps climbing. I would take those bills knowing it is merely a temporary respite because the industry is doomed to financial ruin.
#5
I’m…. Amazed. Are your energy rates actually that inexpensive? I mean, I get it. California. Canada. I have winter, but in the summer, my heating bill is basically replaced by my air conditioning bill, and my equal pay plan for electric and gas is like $250/month for a 2000 sqft building.
That’s exactly what struck me – I have an averaged electric bill that alone is higher plus gas and water.
Is that the only thing in California that’s cheap?