Luke Ford

01:00 ‘We Will Not Be Frightened’: Young Israel Of Century City Synagogue Vandalized, https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2021/05/28/we-will-not-be-frightened-young-israel-of-century-city-synagogue-vandalized/
11:00 ‘Mail-in Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139307
19:00 Life After Globalization (Peter Zeihan), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kch4Z1GpNOQ
24:00 NYT: Efforts to Advance Racial Equity Baked In Throughout Biden’s Budget, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139726
29:00 The social conservative core of the Republican party
34:00 Why the lab leak theory matters, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/29/opinion/wuhan-lab-leak-theory-covid.html
39:10 Peter Zeihan says China will be a failed state in a decade, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yttug-a3sWI
40:00 Who will Dominate the Geopolitical System in this Decade?
45:00 China’s $18 Trillion Ticking Time Bomb Threatens ‘V-Shaped’ Boom, https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2021/05/25/chinas-18-trillion-ticking-time-bomb-threatens-v-shaped-boom/?sh=5b6ec53814af
48:00 Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain The World’s Sole Superpower, https://www.michaelbeckley.org/book-project
49:00 Michael Beckley essay on China vs USA, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00066
51:00 Why would America leave globalism?
53:30 China is not a Superpower | Professor Paul Dibb, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYgZkNWep0
1:04:45 China’s Economic and Demographic Problem, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P13r6teKIW4
1:19:45 The U.S.A. as a Rogue Superpower | Michael Beckley, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LDMzqvEcBo
1:22:00 A Summer of China | George Friedman Interview 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCKRCtdAkNE
1:27:50 China will not attack Taiwan | George Friedman April 2021
1:49:00 Deep Rig, https://www.infowars.com/posts/new-film-deep-rig-proves-the-2020-election-was-stolen/
1:52:00 Patrick Byrne: pro-Trump millionaire pushing election conspiracy theories, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/29/patrick-byrne-trump-fundraiser-election-conspiracy-theories
2:02:00 Russian collapse
2:04:40 U.S. Alliances in the Western Pacific Archipelago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAco4W5kuUQ
2:12:00 Stained Steel And A Tricky Trade Truce, https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillevy/2021/05/18/stained-steel-and-a-tricky-trade-truce/?sh=2dc526d67709
2:14:00 Disunited Nations 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwVaUntpNQ
2:15:00 Naftali Bennett Joins Forces with Yair Lapid to Form Unity Government
2:33:40 Peer-reviewed science papers
2:46:00 Mid-West vs Southern attitudes towards investment

From The New York Times:

Sprinkled throughout the president’s enormous spending plan are scores of programs amounting to tens of billions of dollars intended to specifically bolster the fortunes of Black people, Asian people, tribal communities and other historically underserved groups in the United States.

…That idea — of focusing special attention on the distribution of taxpayer money across racial groups — has never been approached as methodically as it has this year by Mr. Biden, advocates say.

…That approach has incited anger from conservatives, who accuse the president and his advisers of pursuing a racist agenda against white Americans. Fox News ran a headline accusing Mr. Biden of trying to “Stoke Nationwide Division With ‘Racial Equity’ Push.” And The New York Post published an editorial, titled “In Push for Woke ‘Equity,’ Biden Abandons Equality,” that accused the president of being “un-American.”

A group called America First Legal, which is run by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, two top aides to former President Donald J. Trump, won a preliminary injunction this week from a Texas judge against an effort by Mr. Biden’s Small Business Administration to prioritize grants from its $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund to businesses owned by minorities or underserved groups.

“This order is another powerful strike against the Biden administration’s unconstitutional decision to pick winners and losers based on the color of their skin,” the group said in a statement.

I don’t think the pandemic fueled gun sales. It was the violence surge initiated by BLM/Antifa that has led to this.

America did not have a surge in murders until after the George Floyd death on May 25 and accompanying protest movement. Prior to that, crime was stable.

New York Times:

“There is a breakdown in trust and a breakdown in a shared, common reality,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who writes about political violence. “There is also all this social change, and social change is scary.”

…Sales did not change much under former President Donald J. Trump, but they exploded in 2020, up by 64 percent from the previous year. The single highest month last year was in June, as protests swept across the country after the murder of George Floyd.

…But while research has shown that higher gun prevalence is associated with a higher rate of gun deaths — including suicide — the question of whether a sudden surge in gun sales prompts a corresponding rise in gun violence does not have a clear answer…

Violent gun death rates in the state dropped by about half from 1989 to 2019, said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, compared to a 13 percent drop for the nation.

Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, said laws were often less effective than gun control advocates say. He said controls that targeted high-risk individuals, like mentally ill people, seemed to work better than those that sought to prevent young people from buying guns. Mass shootings, he said, were the least likely type of violence that laws would be effective against.

I suspect gun deaths dropped in California for reasons of changing demographics (fewer young people) and tougher sentences for criminals (three strikes law).