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3) Hands off That Toothpaste and Aspirin
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Progressives continue to insist that the so-called “shoplifting epidemic” is vastly exaggerated.
The Council on Criminal Justice insists that shoplifting has decreased in 17 out of 24 major cities it surveyed and “is now fairly rare” outside of the anomaly of New York City.
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But why then are Walmart and Target locking up underwear and socks – the latest items it says have to be guarded from thieves – in markets all over the country?
'It comes to the point of how ghetto does it look that they have to lock up the socks or whatever it is that they have under the key,' shopper Olga Leon told NBC in San Francisco.
The shorts and socks lockup means that at understaffed stores, busy commuters have to wait between ten and thirty minutes for a staff member to retrieve their purchase.
Seven in ten retailers think organized shoplifting has been more common in recent years, says the National Retail Federation.
Even California Governor Gavin Newsom has finally given in and introduced legislation to toughen penalties on retail theft.
Even though store lockups are spreading nationwide, the people hurt most by them are in poor neighborhoods. Target recently closed nine stores in lower-income areas due to rampant theft, forcing shoppers to travel further to get basic items like toiletries or prescriptions.
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4) COVID Hospitalization Peak Was January 3, Lowest Ever Winter Peak
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As we predicted, the Covid fear-hype was another total dud. The wave peak (red line) now looks pretty firmly in:
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The national COVID (including people who are in the hospital for some other reason but incidentally test positive, which is more than half the total) inpatient census print for January 13 is already down 17.7% from the January 3 peak, which was itself down 28% from last year's January 4, 2023 peak.
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Can we now stop with the alarmist headlines every winter? Cold and flu season is cold, flu, and COVID season now, and it happens every year.
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5) Now The Media Wants to Cancel Trump
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Those who saw Trump’s outstanding Iowa victory speech on Monday night – he was actually magnanimous and humble – weren’t watching MSNBC or CNN because they never or only partially aired it.
Marco Rubio appeared on Maddow and rightly excoriated this decision:
"What's really changed is not just the partisan tone of the coverage. But now this effort to say we're not going to carry his speech, we're not going to let you hear what he has to say. We will interpret it and we will put out the snippets that we want you to hear but we've made the decision to no longer carry it. This is exactly how state-run media is used by authoritarian governments. To delegitimize, to discredit, to basically make people believe there is no alternative but to regime and to their rule. And that's destroying the media in this country. It's why at this point no one believes anything they see or hear anymore."
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6) Biden’s Hypocrite Czar
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