Opinion
By Jeff Childers
11-29-22
Good morning, C&C, it’s the last Tuesday in November! Our terrific roundup includes: London’s new driving tax; a crazy ironic death in DC; the WaPo outs its groomer self; the awful Balenciaga story offers optimism; and exiting Fauci admits the truth even while weaseling.
🗞*WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🔥 That didn’t take long! ZeroHedge ran a story yesterday headlined, “London Mayor Unveils ‘Crippling’ Vehicle Emission Charge For All Of London, Despite 80% Opposition.” The gist is, Mayor Khan took an existing $15 daily tax for driving “non-compliant vehicles” in London’s “low-emission zone,” and extended the tax to cover the entire city of London.
The daily tax applies to all cars and trucks older than a 2005 model year if gas fueled, or 2015 model year if diesel. So, it is a tax on non-élites, who are more likely to own an older vehicle, and on small businesses’ delivery vans and trucks (‘lorries’ in the UK). Estimates suggest over 200,000 vehicles could be subject to the new ‘tax’ which, if accurate, would fill the city’s coffers with up to THREE MILLION DOLLARS A DAY.
The money printer goes brrrrrrrrr.
As the headline suggested, the World Economic Forum might approve, but Londoners are seriously not happy with Mayor Khan over his awesome driving tax. He’s facing pushback from consumers, business owners, and conservative politicians. According to ZeroHedge, the Federation of Small Businesses opposed the tax, insisting it would harm many members in Outer London, and the Alliance of British Drivers claimed the move was just a smokescreen to fix the disastrous budget of Transport for London, the city’s public transportation agency.
Now you might be asking, how could he possibly justify this driving tax? Why, it’s for SAFETY, of course! Mayor Khan is directing his wrath towards air pollution, the silent killer.
When you think about it, if this logic holds, there is literally NOTHING that couldn’t be done in the name of “cleaner air.” Next up, they’ll be banning bovines, burritos and barbecue beans.
Folks, this is what happens when you let politicians arbitrarily change the rules for “safety” from a virus. We never should have let them get away with that. Now everything they want to do — like make it too expensive and inconvenient to drive our own cars — can just be draped in the sticky fabric of ‘health and safety’ and — ta-da! — walked right by near-unanimous public disapproval.
We’ll see if this sticks. I have a funny feeling it won’t last.
🔥 Don’t get me wrong. I would never celebrate the untimely end of someone’s time on this Earth, not in any way, not even when I say that sometimes, life serves up a special course of ultimate irony, as this next story perfectly illustrates. TownHall.com ran an article last week headlined, “D.C. Activist Who Pushed for City’s Soft-on-Crime Bill Shot and Killed.”
Kelvin Blowe, 32, pictured below, served five years in prison for abducting a man and forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM in 2017. When Kelvin got out last year, he joined up with liberal nonprofit ‘DC Justice Lab,’ which advocates for rewriting DC’s criminal code, mainly to install lighter sentences and remove mandatory minimum sentences. Recently the DC Justice Lab was promoting a bill to further reduce DC’s already-lenient mandatory minimum sentences for gun offenders or felons possessing illegal weapons.
Oddly, more lenient sentencing for illegal weapons possession is kind of crazy, when it’s coming from the same political team opposing owning guns at all. You’d think they would want harsher sentencing for illegal gun possession.
So. Weird.
Anyway, Kelvin was passionately working on the proposed new bill, and he testified personally in support at the City Council last December. Last week he was driving home with some co-workers at 5:30am, and got into a traffic accident. Kelvin got out of his car, walking toward the car that hit him, a stolen silver Lexus. A man jumped out of the Lexus, guns blazing, shot and killed Kelvin, and fled.
No arrests have been made.
Four HOURS later, the City Council unanimously voted and approved Kelvin’s bill to reduce sentencing minimums for illegal gun possession.
So.
Republicans in the House and the Senate dislike the bill. Representative Jame Comer (R-KY), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told Townhall that legislators would try to stop the bill from becoming law, that is if deranged DC Mayor Muriel Bowser actually signs it. The federal government has jurisdiction in DC.
Sadly, Kelvin will never see the fruits of his passion, he won’t attend anymore city council meetings, and he definitely won’t kidnap anybody, since he’s now established underground somewhere. But at least we can be comforted knowing that the guy who shot Kelvin will get a lighter sentence, due in part to all of Kelvin’s diligent advocacy.
It’s what Kelvin would have wanted.
🔥 People keep telling me that corporate media are working overtime, they’re sweating buckets, doing everything they can to normalize pedophilia. But I keep saying, look, I realize there’s very little that corporate media WOULDN’T do, but there ARE limits. I mean, come ON.
Painful though it is, I must admit I was wrong. A smidge. Maybe a lot.
The Washington Post ran a shocking article in its “Theatre and Dance” section last week headlined, “‘Downstate’ Is a Play About Pedophiles. It’s Also Brilliant.” One wonders which is worse: if the WaPo knew it would be controversial but ran it anyway, or if they really didn’t know.
The play sympathetically portrays four convicted pedophiles living in a group home together. The sympathy is generated by illustrating how hard their lives are, and even by contrasting the mens’ difficult circumstances with those of their victims, who in at least one case are deliberately shown to be doing much better — at least economically — than are the men who abused them.
Poor babies.
WaPo waxes eloquent, describing the play as “a stunning demonstration of the power of narrative art to tackle a taboo” that compels “us to look at a controversial topic from novel perspectives.” The ‘novel perspective’ being ‘pedophiles are people, too,’ and that they deserve compassion and shouldn’t be marginalized or ostracized or something. Because it’s mean.
The review’s author concluded saying that he loved the play, but softened it by suggesting it also turned him inside out, whatever that means:
“Downstate” is proof positive that you can love a play that turns you inside out.
I looked it up. I still don’t know what he meant when he said you can love the play but it turns you inside out.
I suspect the review’s author, Peter Marks, just ‘loved’ the play, without more. But he tacked the “turns you inside out” on because he thought he needed, well, SOMETHING, and that sounded good enough, and more importantly, it was virtuously uncritical.
Fortunately, the comments to the review were mixed, about two sharply critical comments for every three posted. For example:
My view is the WaPo ought to cool it with all the pro-pedo-chatter. Get woke, go broke.
Wait, IS wokeness pro-pedo? It’s so hard to keep up.
🔥 A similar, bigger story was making the rounds yesterday, and is ultimately very encouraging. You’ll have to give me a minute to explain why. For the last two weeks or so, countless outlets have poured out mounting images and stories about fashion designer Balenciaga, which you probably never heard of, but which is attached to popular celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Nicole Kidman.
Two weeks ago, the fashion designer came out with a series of new ads featuring unhappy-looking kids holding purses made out of teddy bears, which were wearing metal-studded, black leather S&M bondage straps and chokers. Here’s a tame one.
One wonders what exactly is going on in élite brains these days. This picture mixes alcohol (empty wine glasses) and sex (S&M gear), with KIDS (little girl and teddy bear). Remember, these fashions are for ADULTS. They’re trying to sell fashions and accessories to grownup women using these pictures. A related campaign even featured photos including some of mommy’s ”work” papers that, when blown up, turned out to be a court case about CHILD PORNOGRAPHY LAWS.
So, they know. It wasn’t even well-hidden.
There was also a lot of attention shined on Balenciaga’s newest runway show, which featured unhappy models made up to look physically abused.
The backlash was sudden and furious. Over the last couple days, the controversy forced corporate media to give in and cover the story.
Even the View waded in. View anchor lady Ayssah Griffin worried that the ad — which the chyron described as the “bdsm ad” — was “particularly distasteful in this moment.” She fretted that Balenciaga was reinforcing an anti-LGBTQ sentiment on the far right, because the sexualized kids “carrying things that represent sex acts” reinforce the stereotype that trans people are groomers.
Imagine that.
Another View anchor lady admitted, “We can’t even show the picture because it’s so distasteful.” That tells you something right there.
For its part, less than a week into the scandal, Balenciaga started publicly apologizing, pulled the new line, and has already filed suit against the set designers, alleging it was hoodwinked.
Under exquisite pressure, Balenciaga was forced to delete their twitter account:
And two days ago, the brand’s biggest celebrity name, Kim Kardashian, announced she was reconsidering her involvement with Balenciaga.
Kim has not been treated well in the comments. Folks seem to think she shouldn’t be “re-evaluating” her “relationship with the brand” so much as chucking it out the airlock.
Even the New York Times was forced to weigh in, in an article published late yesterday. Check out this headline: “When High Fashion and QAnon Collide.” The Times called the story an “explicit collision of internet culture, politics, fashion and conspiracy theories.” The Times seemed shocked by the brand’s sudden downfall, reporting that it took less than two weeks for the designer to retreat into abject apology for its admittedly “grievous errors”:
On Nov. 28, almost two weeks after the storm started brewing — and after a series of Instagram apologies that failed to quell it — the brand issued a statement admitting “a series of grievous errors for which Balenciaga takes responsibility.” The fashion house announced ongoing “internal and external investigations” and “new controls” and said it was reaching out to “organizations who specialize in child protection and aim at ending child abuse and exploitation.”
“We want to learn from our mistakes and identify ways we can contribute,” the statement read.
The Times reported that since the teddy bear campaign images were released, the photographer, Mr. Gabriele Galimberti, said he has been inundated with hate mail and death threats, has had jobs canceled, and has been doxxed.
Too bad.
Now, a totally understandable take that I’ve seen before in the C&C comments would be revulsion, disgust, and disappointment because of the condition of the world. However I think that’s the wrong take. In under two weeks, this revolting élite brand has been badly damaged, probably beyond recovery, and has forced the left to draw a line, however delicately, and however tepid the View ladies’ condemnation actually was.
In other words, the resistance to this kind of evil is becoming better organized, better coordinated, speedier and more effective. Finally, after everything we’ve been through over the last three years, a line may have at last been crossed, and the sleeping giant may, after his distressingly long slumber, be waking up.
🪳 In what CNN billed as his “Exit Interview” yesterday, Jake Tapper asked that disgusting cockroach Fauci about the anticipated Republican hearings on covid’s origins. Specifically, the anchor asked if there were any connections between U.S. health agency investments and what was going on in the Wuhan lab? Jake even pressed Fauci, it’s possible, right?
Fauci answered with a bunch of word salad and mumbo jumbo about how the Wuhan bat viruses were genetically distant to the covid-19 virus. Which only proves covid-19’s lab engineering, if you ask me. But toward the end, Fauci allowed “maybe there’s a lab leak, but it’s not with the viruses that the NIH was funding. That’s almost certain that’s the case.”
That’s ‘almost’ certain. ALMOST. Weasel words, again!
That’s as close to an admission as we’ll ever get from that insect.
Have a terrific Tuesday, and I’ll catch you back here tomorrow for more.
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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
