THE FLAG
Posts
🇺🇸 Migrant Meltdown

🇺🇸 Migrant Meltdown

Plus, lemur on the loose!

September 15, 2023

Good morning, and happy Friday. A 12-year-old named Austen MacMillan was able to revive his behavioral therapist Jason Piquette after he partially drowned by using CPR that he learned while watching Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Plus, bounding through a darkened city park, a lemur managed to stay one step ahead of police officers armed only with a large towel.

Also, forget a spoonful of sugar. Today’s sponsor makes healthy drinks a binge-worthy treat.

QUICK CLICKS

Hunter Indicted, Lee Lashes Bermuda, Dow Jumps On ARM IPO

US: Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges (NBC News)

US: Hurricane Lee lashing Bermuda before striking coastal New England and Atlantic Canada (CNN)

US: 'They did it to me': Trump says Biden impeachment inquiry might be motivated by revenge (POLITICO)

World: Venice could be stripped of special status as it faces tourism crisis (Fox News)

US: Dow jumps 300 points for best day since early August as Arm debut revives IPO market hopes (CNBC)

US: ‘Move the F*cking Motion’: McCarthy Reportedly Defiant in Heated Closed-Door Meeting as He Faces Down GOP Mutiny (Mediaite)

World: Chick-fil-A to try again in UK four years after LGBT backlash (BBC)

POWERED BY REXIS BIOTECH

No More Bitter Pills

Just cause it’s good for you doesn’t mean it shouldn’t go down smooth. Rexis Biotech’s groundbreaking Fused Polymorph Nano Fiber Technology™ turns plant-based, hydrophobic molecules into delicious functional foods and beverages.

Better than the rest. Better for the world. Rexis strategically selects every molecule for its underlying list of potential health benefits that support a range of issues from every-day ailments to diagnosed health deficiencies to addiction.

Can you capture a healthy, fulfilled life in a bottle? Rexis is on a mission to put the “science” in science fiction. And with 2 million presales for their first two beverage brands, it’s not an impossible mission. But they can’t do it alone.

Here’s how you can help change the world.

IMMIGRATION

Migrant Meltdown

As of early September, more than 100,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022. Mayor Eric Adams has called it a humanitarian crisis that will cost the city about $12 billion over three years.

Reporting from the Right: NYC Mayor Eric Adams sounds alarm on migrant crisis, warns a ‘financial tsunami’ is ahead (FOX News)

Reporting from the Left: Concern rises in the Biden administration that New York is fumbling its migrant problem, U.S. officials say (NBC News)

From The Flag: The mayor has repeatedly asked the federal government — even traveling to Washington — for more funds and for expedited work authorizations for migrants, so they can become self-sufficient. He has said that President Biden has “failed” the city by not doing more. Here’s what both sides are saying.

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Mayor Adams Sees the Consequence of “Sanctuary Cities”

As illegal immigrants overwhelm his city, Adams is figuring out what Americans in border states have known for a long time.
Mayor Adams’ comments are drawing rebuke from Democrats and Liberals who are comparing him to Former President Donald Trump.
According to Greg Gutfeld, the White House is allowing anyone to cross the border and Mayors in liberal cities are paying the price.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams Is Right: Mass Illegal Immigration Is Destructive John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist: “…it’s nice that Adams is starting to understand this, or at least grasp that when you throw open the U.S.-Mexico border, what soon follows is chaos, violence, human trafficking, and a global stampede to the Rio Grande. But it shouldn’t have taken a crisis of this magnitude in his own city for Adams to wake up to the reality of lax border enforcement and the kind of destruction and misery it always unleashes. … What’s really driving the crisis is an acute awareness on the part of would-be migrants in their countries of origin that if they can just get across the Rio Grande, they’ll be allowed to stay. At the very least, they’ll be detained for a few days and then released, allowed to remain for years with no consequences, wherever in the vastness of America they choose to go.”

Progressives Give Eric Adams the Trump Treatment for Refusing to Ignore NYC’s Migrant Crisis Brittany Bernstein, National Review: “After years of insisting New York City would remain a ‘sanctuary city’ for immigrants under his control, Mayor Eric Adams struck a different, exasperated tone last week when he warned the city could be ‘destroyed’ by an influx of migrants. … While many Republicans lauded Adams’s better-late-than-never change-of-heart, liberal pundits quickly began comparing the mayor to former president Donald Trump. … Ja’han Jones, a writer for MSNBC’s The Reidout Blog, wrote that conservatives are applauding Adams’s ‘rant’ because they feel they’ve made him ‘come around to their bigoted thinking.’ ... ‘That has led some of his critics to label him ‘Black Trump’ And he lived up to the moniker Thursday with an anti-immigrant diatribe that sounded as if it had been ripped from the former president’s social media feed,’ Jones wrote. … MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called Adams a Trump ‘knockoff.’”

One more opinion piece from the Right: On Illegal Immigration, Mayor Eric Adams Is an Incoherent Mess, Greg Gutfeld, FOX News

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Mayor Adams Is Giving Fuel to Republicans

These comments are not helpful, and it’s giving ammunition for Republicans to use against Democratic stances on immigration.
Mayor Adams’ concerns are overblown, and while it would certainly hurt, NYC is more than capable of handling this crisis.
Michael Bloomberg claims the “Biden administration has failed to address the steep price many cities are paying for a system they didn’t create and borders the cities don’t control.”

Eric Adams Is Handing Republicans a Flamethrower for 2024. Again. Alexander Sammon, Slate: “How best to address the migration issue is an important consideration. But Adams is not only bungling the response, he’s actively choosing to politicize it in a way that helps Republicans. He chose to give a no-bid $432 million contract to house and provide medical treatment for migrants to a company called DocGo that has zero experience furnishing those sorts of services. The company was already under investigation by the state attorney general’s office when he handed over the contract. In a stunt straight out of late-night television, he circulated fliers at the Mexican border saying New York is too expensive, hoping to discourage migrants from coming. The urgency of his rhetoric is nowhere in his actual actions. And Republican groups of all makes and models are delighted with that. Speaker Kevin McCarthy quoted Adams in public remarks and praised him openly.”

What Eric Adams Is Getting Wrong About the Migrant Crisis Errol Louis, New York Magazine: “New York State, standing alone, would be the 12th-largest economy in the world, generating an incredible $2 trillion in economic activity every year — more than the entire gross domestic product of South Korea or Australia, and roughly equivalent to that of Canada. Most of that output is driven by our city and its residents (including the 136 billionaires who live here), who pay enough in taxes to support a $107 billion municipal budget. If, as Adams estimates, helping migrants will cost $4 billion per year over the next three years — what Mayor Worst Case describes as “a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut” — that amounts to 3.7 percent of the budget. Inconvenient and painful, yes. But destroy our city? Not even close. A year ago, Adams ordered agencies to freeze hiring and reduce budgets by 3 percent. Gotham survived.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: How Biden and Congress Should Fix the Immigration Crisis in Our Cities Michael Bloomberg, The New York Times (Paywall)

FLAG THIS

New York Residents View Migrant Influx As a Serious Problem

According to a Siena College poll, by a 46 percent to 32 percent margin, voters said that migrants resettling in New York over the last 20 or so years has been a “burden,” not a “benefit” to the state. Additionally, by 58 percent to 36 percent, voters said New Yorkers have already done enough and should try to slow the flow of them (POLITICO).

FLAG FINDS

Mouthwatering Medicine, Easy Street, Alternative Alternatives

Forget a spoonful of sugar. With Rexis, taking your medicine is as easy as taking a sip of your favorite beverage. Rexis is on a mission to put the “science” in science fiction — helping people to live healthy and fulfilled lives with a single sip. Here’s how you can help.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. But plenty have gotten rich investing in private market alternatives. Add your name to the list on Yieldstreet.

Looking for an alternative to alternative investments? We get it. Show me an attractive asset, and I'll show you someone who's sick of investing in it. But there's always a better alternative, even to alternatives. Check out our list here.

WATERCOOLER

Marilyn’s Skirt, Earth vs. Space, Airborne Boss

On This Day in 1954: The famous picture of Marilyn Monroe, laughing as her skirt is blown up by the blast from a subway vent, is shot during the filming of The Seven Year Itch.

Quillette: Should We Stay or Should We Go?

Big Think: The 2-step “loci method” for memorizing absolutely anything

Lifehacker: These Vegetables Will Still Ripen After You Pick Them

Today I learned Sam Walton founder of Walmart was an avid pilot. He flew his small aluminum plane around to scout new store locations and keep tabs on his stores. One time he dropped in on a Wal-Mart because he noticed from the sky that its parking lot was empty.

Reply

or to participate.