Atlanta

State officials and nonprofit leaders often chatter about economic diversification and a just transition for Appalachia. But old habits die hard. Many still dream of large factories and firms returning to the region, bringing economic wealth — and tax revenue.  The divide between smokestack chasers and economic diversifiers has an extra urgency as the federal government directs more money into the region than they have in decades. But the diversification versus big business divide threatens to squander the money from federal legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.  Swinging for the fences promises the revival of a golden era, when Appalachia was dotted with coal mines and factories.

Against the advice of her lawyers, Fani Willis just gave an incredible display in court. Her rise to the stand in Georgia to defend herself against her surrounding foes played out like a scene from a latter-day Tom Wolfe novel. The erstwhile recipient of laudatory coverage from the New York Times, TIME magazine and the rest of the #Resistance media was now in the sights of an antagonistic case that the Gray Lady framed through a classically racist lens: the strong black woman, set upon on all sides by the judgement of mostly white and almost certainly racist southerners.

President Biden’s wisdom and penetrating intelligence sometimes escape him. So far, they have stayed away for fifty years and show no signs of returning. They are often accompanied by wild exaggerations, invented personal stories and hyperbolic attacks on opponents. Examples are not hard to find, and the public is catching on. The latest fulmination came during a campaign-style rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, aimed at supporting his bill to nationalize election laws. Since that bill contravenes America’s long, constitutionally enshrined tradition that state legislatures control voting rules (as long as they don’t violate individual civil rights), the bill will fail in the Senate, blocked by the filibuster. Biden, once a man of the Senate, has long supported the filibuster.

What makes a tragic death a major news story? The races of the perpetrators and the victims, of course. As the media goes all in on critical race theory, many journalists have decided to only provide obsessive coverage of horrific crimes when they can be used to advance the idea — as so eloquently explained by NBA star LeBron James — that minorities are being 'literally hunted' by evil white people. Proof of this phenomenon has never been so clear as in the past several weeks. It all started when a white man was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at three different massage parlors in the Atlanta area.

The bodies of the victims hadn’t gone cold, the families had barely begun grieving, when the familiar cottage industry of activists and journalists jumped in to speculate and spread misinformation on social media. What drove someone to slaughter eight people in three Asian massage parlors in Atlanta on Tuesday? A clear storyline took hold: this was white supremacy at work. A young, white man murdered six Asian women and two 'others' made the framing a foregone conclusion. Not even new information from the investigators could slow down the risk to judgment. Atlanta police chief Rodney Bryant said that it was too early to classify the shooting as a hate crime and FBI director Christopher Wray affirmed that it 'does not appear to be racially motivated’.

With the last dominoes of Georgia and Pennsylvania falling, there is now clarity on the 2020 election cycle. Based on all of the data available at the time and, more fundamentally, the political antennae cultivated over the last three decades, I predicted Donald Trump would be reelected with a 305 to 233 electoral vote victory. My presidential tally was wrong. Joe Biden will secure at least 306 electoral votes, assuming North Carolina also doesn’t fall when final numbers are released next week.But (there is always a but), in my defense, I was also right.

‘I understand black lives matter. But that’s not my movement, right now. My movement is to let them know that was my son. Horace Lorenzo Anderson was my son.’ And his son is dead. In a gripping, gut wrenching, heartrending, half-hour interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Sr tearfully beseeched social justice warriors and anyone watching that his son’s black life mattered, too. Horace Jr. was just 19 years old when he was shot and killed at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Ongoing Protest (CHOP), the police-free, six-block city encampment created with the blessing of Democratic officials.

It is the law that makes us 'the best of animals.' So saying, Aristotle had a very specific conception of justice in mind: 'The law is reason free from passion.' Committed to live under it, mankind is 'perfected.' There is, however, a flip side. 'When separated from law and justice,' as happens when passion overwhelms reason, mankind 'is the worst of all.' Which would make this the worst of times. The streets of America’s greatest cities are aflame. Some of it is anarchic. Most of it is methodical mayhem. Cultural Marxists are not merely desecrating statuary, they are erasing history. Naturally, this is done under the guise of ideals such as ‘anti-racism’, ‘anti-fascism’, and ‘equality’.

These riots are not just about pent up frustration over police brutality and the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. In part, they’re about a population being locked up for three months while 40 million people lose their employment.Politicians like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio cracked down on Jewish funerals and schools. They remained silent last night as hundreds of people joined protests which turned into riots in Brooklyn, injuring police officers and resulting in the arrest of several members of the Blac Block anarchist group, antifa.Mayors in Atlanta and Minneapolis condemned the violent crowds which had gathered by the hundreds to turn on corporate businesses and small businesses alike and even the CNN headquarters building.