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“Deeply Unfair Move” – Baltimore Strippers Protest City’s COVID-19 Restrictions

Baltimore strippers showed up enforce at City Hall Wednesday to protest the mayor’s new coronavirus health measures that keep adult entertainment establishments closed, according to local television station WBAL. 

The announcement came from Mayor Brandon Scott earlier this week, who allowed restaurants to partially open with indoor capacity set to 25% and outdoor dining to 50%. He felt optimistic about current COVID-19 health trends in the city. 

However, strip clubs were not permitted to open; this triggered outrage among sex workers who protested the City Hall Wednesday afternoon. 

“This is a deeply unfair move, in our view,” an anonymous spokesperson for adult entertainment business owners in Baltimore said in a statement. “We’re being selectively targeted to stay closed. If you can open a gym or put on a stage show, you can have a gentleman’s club open. There’s some other agenda at work here, and it’s very insensitive to the not inconsequential number of people who make their livings through the adult entertainment industry.”

The statement also pointed out cooks, bartenders, janitors, security guards, and other tradespeople are also affected by the mayor’s harsh coronavirus measures. 

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27% Of All Household Income In The US Now Comes From The Government

Following today’s release of the latest Personal Income and Spending data, Wall Street was predictably focused on the changes in these two key series, which showed a surge in personal income (to be expected in the month when the $900BN December 2020 stimulus hit), coupled with a far more modest increase in personal spending.

But while the change in the headline data was notable, what was far more remarkable was data showing just how reliant on the US government the population has become.

We are referring, of course, to Personal Current Transfer payments which are essentially government sourced income such as unemployment benefits, welfare checks, and so on. In January, this number was $5.781 trillion annualized, which was not only up by nearly $2 trillion from the $3.8 trillion in December it was also $2 trillion above the pre-Covid trend where transfer receipts were approximately $3.2 trillion.

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End the ‘Systemic Racism’ of Affirmative Action

As the nation’s incipient racial reckoning following last May’s killing of George Floyd morphed into the summer’s riotous anarchy, the term “systemic racism” emerged as a fixture of our public discourse. What began as a somewhat arcane dialogue about purported police “militarization” and the “qualified immunity” legal doctrine soon took on a much more insidious tone. America, those like the New York Times‘ “1619 Project” fabulists told us, was rotten to its very core, blemished by the indelible taint of “systemic racism.”

In reality, as many courageously pointed out amid unprecedented “cancel culture” headwinds seeking to stifle all dissent, there is no such thing as “systemic racism” that afflicts all of America’s leading institutions. Despite the claim attaining mythological status, there is no factual basis to support it. There will, sadly, always be individual racists from all backgrounds and all walks of life, but American society in the 2020s simply does not have anything remotely resembling a legally enshrined regime under which its racial majority “systemically” oppresses its racial minorities. America in the year 2021 is not Germany in 1936; it is not South Africa in 1985; it is not—after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the Jim Crow South. This ought to be astoundingly obvious.

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‘We have a hint… it may be possible’: Controversial stem cell therapy repaired injured spinal cords in 13 patients

Using a somewhat controversial stem cell therapy, a joint team of Japanese and US-based researchers have successfully repaired some damage in 13 patients with spinal cord injuries (SCI).

SCIs can often cause permanent loss of movement and physical sensation from resultant nerve damage. While physical rehabilitation programs can partially improve outcomes, actual treatment and recovery of lost mobility and function is nigh on impossible. Until now, perhaps.

According to new results from a phase 2 clinical trial conducted in an experimental collaboration by scientists in Japan and the US, patients treated with an intravenous infusion of their own mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), harvested from their bone marrow, saw significant functional improvements.

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US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense

On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases.

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‘Mein Kampf’ and Other ‘Hate Speech’ Products You Can Still Buy on Amazon

Amazon, the popular online retailer, is under fire after conservative author Ryan T. Anderson announced on Sunday that his 2018 bestseller, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, had been scrubbed from the Amazon website.

The decision to ban the book from its platform came several months after Amazon quietly altered its content guidelines to prohibit the sale of “content that we determine is hate speech … or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive,” which includes content that “promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, [or] advocates terrorism.”

As recently as August 2020, Amazon’s content guidelines for books were significantly vaguer, asserting the company’s right to prohibit the sale of “certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content.” Amazon has yet to offer a sufficient explanation of the updated guidelines.

In the meantime, Amazon continues to permit the sale of numerous books that most casual observers might reasonably classify as “hate speech” or are otherwise incompatible with its updated content guidelines. The company also continues to sell other products that would appear to run afoul of contemporary standards of wokeness, as outlined in its prohibition on selling items (excluding books) that “promote, incite, or glorify hatred.”

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