“Progressive Paradise” – Page 20

I wanted to leave California before it was cool

When I was about eleven years old my favorite Barbie was Midge from the California Dream collection. Barbie’s BFF, she had auburn hair and freckles. Midge came with roller skates and a blue visor and I loved her. My sister had California Dream Barbie and we would pop in the Beach Boys Greatest Hits cassette tape and pretend we were living in California for hours upon hours, day after day. We wore that cassette tape out, screaming the lyrics to “California Dreamin’” on cold winter days in Connecticut. I imagined Midge was me, cruising down the boardwalk with the wind in my hair and the sun on my cheeks. My dreams of being a California girl began in those afternoons lost in fantasyland.

by Blazingcatfur•October 5, 2022October 4, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise", California

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler LAUGHS at woman who confronts him over homelessness crisis

A woman who says she moved to Portland, Oregon for its progressive values has accused the mayor of scoffing at her after she confronted him over the city’s homelessness crisis.

At a virtual city council meeting on Wednesday, Gillian Rose slammed Portland’s handling of its homeless population, saying the squalid encampments that are pervasive around the city make life miserable for residents.

‘You have to stop enabling this,’ said a visibly emotional Rose. ‘I’m angry and I’m sad and I’m fed up, and I’m so sick of having politicians pander to a woke agenda that’s been nothing short of an epic failure.’

by Blazingcatfur•October 2, 2022October 2, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

A postcard from Portland

Lost in pathological compassion, much of the city is allied with ‘campers’ and criminals

Portland is one of the nation’s most beautiful cities, positioned at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers. But fading livability hangs over it like a raw gray drizzle. After years of political mayhem and an explosion of drug-related homelessness and crime, the city’s fabled quality of life is plunging. Every taxpayer in the 2.5 million metro area knows it.

by Blazingcatfur•September 27, 2022September 27, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

San Francisco loses another 39,000 taxpayers

Since the days of the Gold Rush, California has been a magnet for those seeking wealth. A backwater barely a century ago, with just over 3 million residents compared to nearly 40 million today, the Golden State established dominance over everything from agriculture and film to space travel and the internet.

But new data suggests that the tide may be turning, and a rich hegira is afoot.

by Blazingcatfur•September 21, 2022September 21, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

San Francisco’s Slide

Disorder poses a danger to its future.

This past spring, activity in downtown San Francisco reached just 31 percent of its 2019 level, as measured by comparing visits to points of interests such as restaurants, retail shops, and grocery stores between the two years. No other North American city of the 62 reviewed in a University of California, Berkeley analysis fell that far. Is “the City,” as its residents like to call it, destined to hollow out and become synonymous with urban decay? Or can it reverse its decline?

by Blazingcatfur•September 17, 2022September 17, 2022•0•"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Progressive Paradise"

McDonald‘s CEO Urges Chicago to Fight Crime: ‘Our City Is in Crisis‘

McDonald’s plans to move its innovation center into central Chicago, but CEO Chris Kempczinski voiced concern Wednesday about plaguing crime.

“We are betting on Chicago in the long term because we think it makes good business sense,” Kempczinski stated during an event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Bloomberg reported.

by Blazingcatfur•September 16, 2022September 15, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

Reports of Human, Animal Feces on San Francisco Sidewalks Increased 400 Percent Since 2012

The average San Francisco, Calif., neighborhood saw a nearly 400 percent increase in calls about human or animal waste from 2012 to 2021, the San Fransisco Chronicle found.

by Blazingcatfur•September 14, 2022September 14, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise", WTF?

The fall of Los Angeles

The ‘progressive’ elites have run the city of the future into the dirt.

For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.

But now, for the first time in its history, the population of Los Angeles is in decline, falling by 204,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. LA was once a magnet for investors. But recently many of the area’s corporate linchpins – including aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Hilton Hotels – have left, taking with them high-paying jobs and philanthropic resources.

by Blazingcatfur•September 10, 2022September 10, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

Viral video shows homeless fighting in squalid conditions on San Francisco street

A viral video making its rounds on social media offers a grim new snapshot of San Francisco’s surging homelessness crises as two men can be seen brawling amid squalid conditions on a city sidewalk.

The shocking scene was filmed and posted to Twitter by J. Terrell Allen, who said he stumbled upon the wild fight in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood on an evening walk.

On my evening walk. SOMA isn’t safe. Just happened. This is disgusting @MattHaneySF. I’ve written to your office and you and failed to take action. Why??? Is it worth your time? pic.twitter.com/cLwAtb4ZGU

— J. (@jterrell) September 9, 2022

by Blazingcatfur•September 10, 2022September 10, 2022•0•"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Progressive Paradise", WTF?

Paralympian leads class-action lawsuit against Portland because their wheelchairs can’t get past squalid homeless encampments blocking sidewalks

Residents of Portland, Oregon with physical disabilities have filed a lawsuit accusing the city of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to clear homeless encampments from city sidewalks.

The federal class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday says that Portland has failed to keep the sidewalks accessible to people with mobility issues by allowing encampments to proliferate unchecked.

by Blazingcatfur•September 10, 2022September 9, 2022•0•"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Progressive Paradise"

‘Soft-touch’ San Francisco leaders now call for ‘IDEAS’ to be given to them within 90 days to end open-air drug markets ‘without anyone going to jail’

San Francisco officials on Tuesday unveiled what they said was a deliberately ‘soft touch’ scheme to deal with the city’s relentless drug crisis – insisting that under their plan ‘nobody’s going to jail,’ but remaining vague on how to end the problem.

With nearly 1,700 fatal overdoses since the start of 2020, San Francisco’s drug crisis has resulted in almost double the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June, the city’s mayor, London Breed, announced that their notorious taxpayer-funded open-air drugs market will close at the end of the year.

by Blazingcatfur•September 9, 2022September 8, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

‘We’re done with Portland’: Residents say they are fed up with crime and homelessness

It has only been about 2 weeks since KGW 8 aired a report about people leaving the city of Portland because of crime and homelessness. A few days ago the site published another story along the same lines. People are just fed up with the city’s problems and are ready to abandon ship.

by Blazingcatfur•September 4, 2022September 3, 2022•0•"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis", "Progressive Paradise"

Female troops saw the highest level of unwanted sexual contact since DOD began collecting data

WASHINGTON – A new Pentagon survey shows women in the military endured the highest level of unwanted sexual contact since the Defense Department began tracking the data sixteen years ago, a startling finding that shows sexual crimes rising steadily despite hundreds of millions spent to curb the problem and vows by senior leaders to tackle itt.

The Pentagon estimates that sexual assaults among women service members surged an estimated 35% from 2018 to 2021. The survey shows that 8.4% of women and 1.5% of men in the active-duty military said they had been the victim of a sex crime, ranging from from groping to rape, according to results of the survey obtained by USA TODAY. In 2018, an estimated 6.2% of women in the armed services were victims of unwanted sexual contact.

by Blazingcatfur•September 1, 2022August 31, 2022•0•"Peak Woke", "Progressive Paradise"

Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans in 1945

Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself is one of the best books about Nazi Germany I’ve read. The author is 55-year-old Nuremberg native Florian Huber, who wrote his PhD on British policy regarding the postwar occupation of Germany. The book was first published in Germany in 2015. It became a bestseller. Penguin published an English translation in 2019. Huber’s writing is as crisp and gripping as prize-winning fiction. His style is a bit like Hemingway’s. The main text of the book is 267 pages, followed by 20 pages of notes. Promise Me is a quick read that covers an astounding amount of history. It opens with the mass suicides prompted by Nazi Germany’s defeat. It goes on to describe why so many Germans felt that suicide was the only possible response to that defeat.

by Blazingcatfur•August 26, 2022August 26, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise"

Don’t Talk to Your Children

It’s hard to be a kid these days.

Your blue-haired teachers appear on Libs of Tik-Tok videos bragging about selling you into sex slavery, and people go “Ho-hum. How cute. Don’t judge.”

by Blazingcatfur•August 23, 2022August 22, 2022•0•"Progressive Paradise", "They really do want your children"