Triumphs of Biden's first 100 days: Canadians to snap up US shares; menthol cigarettes to be banned; and so much more!

Last night, before a joint session of Congress, the fraudulently elected President of the Paranoid States of America mounted a campaign-style attack on Ronald Reagan, whom he seems to think he beat last November. He also gave himself an hour-long pat on the back for all the big announcements he's made in the first 100 days of his presidensity.

Sleepy Joe bragged about plans to spend over a TRILLION dollars -- raised by mortgaging America's future -- to get the economy moving again, so Americans can all enjoy a cookout on July 4th.** Part of the money has been earmarked for the purchase of new printing presses, as the existing ones are already showing the strain of printing so many banknotes and cheques of diminishing value. 

Value is measured by the worth of the once-mighty greenback against other currencies. In November of 2020 it took 75 American cents to buy one lousy Canadian dollar. This morning, if you want a "loonie", it'll cost you nearly 82 cents in real money. You'll find out next time you go to Niagara Falls!

As surely as day follows night, more reckless government spending is followed by higher taxes. Mr Biden-Harris seems very happy to "tax the rich". Unfortunately raising capital gains tax will hit the small investor [like me with my 100 shares of Tesla. Ed.] just as much as the vile Koch Bros who helped get Sleepy Joe elected.

What Mr Biden-Harris apparently doesn't realize is that his proposed hikes to corporate and capital-gains taxes could compel family-owned US companies to sell their businesses, creating opportunities for foreigners -- especially those greedy Canucks -- to make cross-border acquisitions. 

Sleepy Joe's alleged plan would reverse President Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% . The Biden-Harris plan will raise the rate back up to 28%.

The levy on long-term capital gains will rise to 39.6%, up from the current 20%. The unintended (?) consequence will be family-owned enterprises cashing out before the Biden-Harris shit-hammer crashes down. Smart, eh?

But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more! The Biden-Harris administration is set to alienate millions of Americans who voted for them -- voters of the coloured persuasion (aka BIPOCs) -- by banning the sale of menthol cigarettes!

The Food and Drug Administration says that 19.5 million Americans, most of them younger and, errr, darker, smoke menthol cigarettes.  Among black smokers, 85.8% smoke menthols, compared with 28.7% of smokers of paler complexion.

Right on cue, the SJWs -- the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice, etc etc -- warned that the move to ban menthol cigarettes "would disproportionately impact communities of color, result in criminalization of the market, and exacerbate mass incarceration," according to a letter sent this week to HHS Secretary and Chief Prosecutor of Nuns Xavier Becerra.

The ACLU and other groups claim the ban on menthol smokes has the potential to create "large underground, illegal markets.... In addition, underground cigarette sales would be a massive law enforcement problem for states, counties, and cities, since all states treat unlicensed sale of tobacco products as a crime – usually as a felony punishable by imprisonment."

The letter goes on to say that "in the end, tobacco policy will no longer be the responsibility of regulators regulating, but police policing." Do they mean that the police, who aren't allowed to arrest black rioters and looters, are going to feel the collars of POCs selling smokes on street corners? 

Oh yes, sez the ACLU. "'Our experience with alcohol, opioid, and cannabis prohibition teaches us that that is a policy disaster waiting to happen, with Black and other communities of color bearing the brunt." Well, at least no-one will be able to accuse Biden-Harris of being soft on crime!

Footnote: Even CNN's Anderson Cooper noticed that Mr Biden-Harris barely mentioned the little problem at America's southern border, and clearly has no clue about what to do about it. See "Axelrod: Biden 'Didn't Offer a Solution' for His 'Biggest Problem' at the U.S.-Mexico Border" (referencing remarks by David Axelrod, former advisor to the Prez), Breitbart News, 29/1/21.

**Another footnote: Please sit down while you look at this little graph, scraped from the Economist, and consider its implications for your future.

Diversity does NOT make us strong, sez Ann Coulter

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I am sick, sore and tired of having pro-diversity propaganda shoved down my throat by the lamestream media 24/7. Fifty years ago the aim of all progressive and right-thinking people was "integration". It didn't take long for people to realize that "integration" lasts from the moment the first black family moves into the neighbourhood until the last white family moves out. So, in much the same way as "global warming" morphed into "climate change", yesterday's push for integration became today's shove towards "diversity", the more the better. Because diversity makes us strong. Right? Well, I call BS on that!

"Diversity is a strength" is a big black crock of bullshit, a Big Lie of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud. That's not just my opinion, but that of Ann Coulter, expressed very forcefully in Adios America! (Regnery Publishing, 2015), which I am just now getting around to reading. [My keyboard won't make the upside-down !. Ed.] Here, by way of my strong recommendation, is an excerpt.

The companion lie to the "America is a nation of immigrants" lie is "diversity is a strength." Praising diversity is simply part of the PC dogma, a mantra constantly being pounded into our heads. Repeat after me: Diversity is a strength. Diversity is a strength. Diversity is a strength. It's like the shrieking radios permanently attached to bright people's ears in the Kurt Vonnegut story "Harrison Bergeron", to prevent them from using their superior intelligence. Contrary to everything you've heard, never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a disaster.

Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations. Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also review the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare -- I mean the "beautiful mosaic" -- in Third World disasters like Afghanistan, Rwanda, and South Central LA. If diversity is their strength, I'd hate to see what their weakness is. The fact that we have to be incessantly told how wonderful diversity is only proves that it's not....

In response to the wanton slaughter of thirteen American troops at Fort Hood by a disgruntled second-generation Muslim immigrant, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Army Chief of Staff General George Case went on Meet the Press and said, "Our diversity, not only in our army but in our country, is a strength." Then a few years later, after two Chechen immigrants bombed the Boston Marathon, former CIA director Michael Hayden told a Fox News Sunday panel, "We welcome these kinds of folks coming to the United States." Really? The kind that launch murderous attacks on Americans? Do people even listen to themselves when they spout these bromides, or is it just background music? Saying he was speaking "as the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency," Hayden added, "Immigration to this country contributes to our national security." The 9/11 attackes must have been fantastic for national security!

Hayden also made the strange announcement that America is "required to look like the world." Is that in the CIA charter? I know it's in the Democratic Party's platform and also in the wedding vows of John Kerry and Teresa Heinz. This wasn't some nut from the ACLU. It was a former government official -- the head of the CIA. At least it becomes less of a mystery why no one at the CIA saw 9/11 coming.

A few days later on MSNBC, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California responded to Muslim immigrants' bombing the Boston Marathon by saying, "The American-Muslim community is a source of great strength to us...our strength in America has always been our diversity." Do these people have a silicone chip in their brains that makes them say that? How about a rousing chorus of: "Four legs good, two legs bad!" This is the sort of brainwashing Americans are relentlessly subjected to, day after day, from every major news outlet. The good news is, even after years of wall-to-wall propaganda, Americans still aren't sold on the idea.

Thus endeth the excerpt. Buy or borrow Adios America!, and read the truth the government and the lamestream media won't trust us with.

Why cops shoot so many black Americans

As Walt told you earlier today, President Obama has asked Americans to search their souls about the terrible treatment given by (mostly white) American cops to "African-Americans". In what he called "a slow-rolling crisis", he referred to "troubling police interactions with black citizens". Here are some specifics, as recorded by the FBI and reported in the current Economist.

No-one knows how many people die in contact with America's roughly 18,000 law enforcement officers. Incomplete FBI figures (police forces are not required to submit data) show that at least 461 people died in "justifiable homicides" in 2013, an increase of 33% since 2005. Other sources suggest the true number could be as high as twice that.

Here are the stats from one of America's most violent cities, Chicago. The Windy City's cops shoot dead about 50 "suspects" each and every year. Over 75% of them are black. The police are mostly white or Hispanic.

Why does this happen? Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago's Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project* did some research -- or maybe it was soul-searching -- and came up with the amazing conclusion that, consciously or otherwise, the mostly white police tend to associate blacks with criminality. Fancy that!

Why do they do that? Well, about 70% of murders in Chicago are committed by "African-Americans", who account for about 33% of the city's population. Is it any wonder that, according to a 2014 survey by the ACLU, black Chicagoans were subjected to 72% of all stop-and-frisk searches. And, as surely as night follows day, a disproportionate share of take-downs and police killings.

Where, then, does the problem lie? With the police or with the so-called black community? As the Prez sez, search your souls, folks.

Worth reading: "Baltimore shows police killings America's real state of emergency" - Neil Macdonald (WM, 58), senior Washington correspondent for CBC News, explains why American police scare him.

* Note from Ed.: It's a good thing the U of Chicago stuck "Police" in the name of that project, otherwise it would have had an awkward acronym.

Paramilitary police rule the Paranoid States of America

Walt is a year older. [Than what? Dirt? Ed.] I'll answer that... I'm so old I can remember when people could write and speak grammatical English. I can remember when popular music had melodies you could hum and lyrics you could sing in decent company. And I can remember when children were taught that policemen -- there were no policewomen or policepersons in those days -- were our friends, human and caring people, the sort who would take a runaway kid back home. [Remember the kindly beat cop in Going My Way? Ed.

But times have changed. Cops have changed. Now, whether as a result of the War on Drugs or the War on Terror -- or the War on Poverty ?? -- North American police see themselves as warriors, "serving and protecting" by keeping "law and order" in our cities by using deadly force against terrorists, criminals and, errr, the rest of us... whenever and wherever they feel like it.

Why do they do that? For the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because they can! Police in the Paranoid States of America [Canada too! Ed.] have been thoroughly militarized. What the lamestream media are now calling the "unrest" in Ferguson MO is just the latest example of how that militarization can play out in city streets.

The cops occupying the St. Louis suburb are -- like most state and local police forces -— outfitted with the armoured vehicles, battering rams and flashbang grenades once reserved for troops. Police and "protesters" have clashed every day and every night since Michael Brown, an apparently unarmed black kid, was shot by an as-yet-unnamed policeman on Saturday. Vandalism and looting broke out the next day. A store was set on fire. Al Sharpton arrived.

As noted here two days ago, police responded in full riot gear. Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down the airspace above Ferguson as a precautionary measure. Against what, for heaven's sake?! You'd think war had been declared. Oh, wait... Surely a more appropriate response to riots -- for that's what they are -- would be officers armed with pistols and billy clubs, not M-16s and grenade launchers.

Writing in Business Insider, Paul Szoldra, asks "Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants?", referring to the pattern designed for the US Marine Corps, or MARine PATtern. When he was serving in Afghanistan, Szoldra says, they used big trucks and uniforms intended to project an image as occupiers. When, he asks, did this became OK on domestic soil?

As Walt told you last spring in "SWAT teams abuse your right -- 1000s of times a year!", studies by Prof. Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, show that between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the percentage of cities of 50,000 or more, like St. Louis, with a paramilitary unit almost doubled to 89 per cent.

Smaller cities, with populations of 25-50,000, saw an even greater jump –- from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. "These trends would mean little if these teams were relatively inactive," he wrote, "This was not the case."

Once the police are equipped and trained in the ways of the military -- the art of war -- they naturally want to put all that training and all those big-boy toys to use. Cops like bullying people! Cops like shooting people! It is their nature... like the dog mentioned above...

Prof. Kraska found that between 1980 and 2000, there was a 1,400% increase (!!) in police "paramilitary deployments". The majority of the deployments were for drug raids in private homes, not the intended goal of a SWAT team, which is emergency situations like hostage takings and shooter scenarios where the extra weaponry might be required.

Two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report ominously titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing". Their statistics for the years 2011-2012 confirm the trend identified by Prof. Kraska.

Of more than 800 SWAT deployments in those two years, 79% were to search the homes of private citizens, largely in drug probes. If it hadn't been the police carrying out these operations, we'd call them "home invasions", for that's what they are -- "legalized" home invasions.

The ACLU criticizes US policing for becoming unnecessarily and dangerously militarized. "Neighbourhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," said the report. Any further comment from Walt would be superfluous.

Aggressive secularism trumps Christianity in Ohio

Portraits of Our Lord Jesus Christ similar to this one are to be found in thousands, perhaps millions of homes and churches around the world. And in some schools too. One such used to hang in Jackson (Ohio) Middle School from 1947 until... this Easter.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation devoted to attacking all religions and all displays of religious faith, got a student and two parents to bring a lawsuit against Jackson City Schools, demanding removal of the "offending" painting, which they called "an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity". The militant secularists were supported by... wait for it... The American Civil Liberties Union.

Jackson City Schools at first resisted the challenge, saying that the portrait of Jesus was private student speech displayed in a "limited public forum" and was not school-endorsed "governmental speech."

But, at a hearing in the US District Court yesterday, the school board threw in the towel, and agreed to remove the painting. Although they said they believe in the school's right to keep the painting up, they simply can't afford to fight the court battle, nor can they pay for insurance against costs which might be awarded against them.

Today's report from the Columbus Dispatch quotes a statement from Superintendent Phil Howard saying that "our insurance company denied coverage, and we cannot risk taxpayer money at this time."

The painting has now been removed from its place of honour, and placed in a storeroom -- out of sight and, sadly, out of mind.

Update on Islamization of Toronto schools

In "Tolerant Toronto", Walt told you how the Toronto District School Board, champion of keeping religion out of Ontario's public schools, was providing facilities for Muslim prayers at its Valley Park Middle School. A protest is to be mounted by Canadian Hindu Advocacy.

Now comes news that two other powerful advocacy groups are joining the anti-Muslim chorus. [Don't you mean "speaking out for separation of church and state"? Ed.] The usual suspects now advocating freedom from religion now include the Canadian Secular Alliance and the Jewish Defence League.

No surprises there, then. Oh... wait... The Jewish Defence League??!! The Canadian Secular Alliance, Walt can understand. The name says it all. But is the JDL really saying that the TDSB is going too far in inviting a religious leader to lead services on school property? Suppose the services were being organized for the Jewish kids and led by a rabbi? What would the JDL say then?

Let me guess at the answer. The Jews might well say that they have their own schools in which little Jewish kids can learn Hebrew and practise their religion. Because that's the case. Toronto's Jews are an older, more established community than Toronto's Muslims. And, yes, richer. They don't need the "accommodation" of the TDSB.

But let us not accuse the JDL of inconsistency. Those of the Hebrew persuasion have always been in the forefront of the fight to get religion -- meaning Christianity -- out of the schools and other public institutions in Canada and the USA. Look at the names of those who have led and supported the JDL, the ACLU/CCLA, and other secular and humanist organizations. You won't find many O'Rourkes or Husseins.

What Toronto is seeing is another skirmish in the jihad, the "holy war" against Christianity and Christians. The camel's nose is now in door of the public schoolroom. How long will we have to wait to see the demand for "equal accommodation" in the Catholic schools? And will the private schools follow? What would the JDL say about that?