AOC Goes Nuclear...
Welcome To Our First Weekly “Three Dot” Column
Drumroll For Three Dot
We’ve named this new weekly column after legendary newspaper columnist Herb Caen, who coined the term “three dot journalism” for his daily column connecting disconnected news items … through three dots between them.
AOC Goes Nuclear? Greta Tilts at Windmills?
We just had the wildest dream. In it, Greta Thunberg was fighting an industrial wind energy project, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was explaining on Instagram why we should not fear Fukushima and nuclear waste.
And then we realized it wasn’t a dream at all. It was really happening.
Greta is defending the traditional lands of the Sami indigenous people, who are reindeer herders. In 2021, Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that wind turbines violated the rights of the Sami, but nothing has been done to dismantle the renewable structures of oppression. “It is absurd that the Norwegian government has chosen to ignore the ruling,” said Thunberg.
On Instagram, AOC describes a visit to Fukushima and to France. “For me, understanding + studying the science and scale of radiation puts me more at ease,” she wrote about Japan.
Is this what winning looks like?
Maybe Don’t Get Too Excited
It’s not all good news. John Jet Set Kerry, Biden climate envoy, now claims that the threat of offshore wind farms to an endangered species of whale is “disinformation.” Seeing as no less than the Biden Administration’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has made that specific case, Kerry seems to be accusing NOAA scientists of ignoring “science and facts” and contriving a “phony excuse” because they’re “opposed to the acceptance of the idea of a climate crisis.”
At least he’s going easy on the jet setting. Kerry sold his family’s private jet, a Gulfstream GIV-SP, to a New York-based hedge fund after he was harshly criticized (ahem) for his carbon footprint.
Jussie Smollett Was Right
Since the election of Lori Lightfoot as mayor of Chicago, murders have spiked to 800 in 2021 and 695 killings last year, a 40% rise since 2019. Uniqlo, Gap, Macy’s, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Timberland have fled downtown because of looting. The commercial vacancy rate rose from 5% to 30% since 2017.
Never mind all that, says Lightfoot, the first mayor to lose re-election in 40 years. The reason she lost, including to a black man, was racism and sexism, which were apparently absent when she was elected in 2019.
It’s cliche to say but it’s hard not to wonder if there’s some projection going on. In 2021, Lightfoot announced she would only grant interviews to non-white journalists.
The tossing aside of Lightfoot by Chicago voters should inspire the people of San Francisco, who are increasingly victims of brazen armed robberies like this one caught on video.
Why is this happening? When San Francisco Mayor London Breed took office in 2019, the city was short 200 officers. In 2020, she called for defunding the police. Today it is 540 officers short.
Woke-Induced Psychiatric Disorders
We’re all aware that teen girls are more depressed than ever. But it turns out there’s a variable that may be just as important as gender: politics. Liberal girls and boys are disproportionately depressed. Conservative girls are less depressed than both liberal girls and boys, and conservative boys are the least depressed of all.
Matt Yglesias thinks that thinks this might have something to do with how the left encourages everyone to catastrophize all the time: climate change means the end of the world; America is a hopelessly racist dystopia; we’re on the brink of a fascist takeover of the country; etc. Obviously, we agree.
“I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously negative long-term consequences, especially to young people, coming from this reliance on the language of harm and accusations that things one finds offensive are ‘deeply problematic’ or even violent,” writes Jill Filipovic in a post worth reading.
Twitter Files Go to Washington
Michael and Friend of Public Matt Taibbi will testify to Congress next week on the abuses of power and threats to freedom of expression that the Twitter Files revealed. Watch it all on CSPAN! It could get spicy.