DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Watch it.

designed this John Wick room/man cave for my friend who wanted to redo a part of his basement. Even got to get my hands dirty on this one, which I love. Modeled after Winston’s vault room in the Continental Hotel from the movie John Wick 3. Packed with guns (gun replicas), wall art, and a pool table, this is the quintessential man’s room.

Worth doing, I think. If I had a basement (which I don’t; Texas for some reason doesn’t do basements), I would certainly consider it.

Read it.

You don’t need to sell.

You pay the tax annually on your home equity.

Example in their proposal:

Homes over $2M ? ~$14,700 per year.

Your home becomes a taxable asset.

In Texas we pay such a tax, nominated “property tax”, and that’s a major component of support for local government, especially schools, municipal services, and other infrastructure.

That’s not what’s happening in Canada. What’s happening in Canada is more akin to the Sanders/Warren ‘wealth tax’.

The way we used to be:

Are we better off now than we were then? Well….

Read it.

On his native country’s 250th anniversary, Pope Leo XIV will visit Lampedusa, an Italian sovereign territory off the North African coast that has long been a destination for migrants seeking to enter Europe. In 2013, Pope Francis made it his first papal destination outside Rome. Publication of Pope Leo’s official calendar recalled Vice President JD Vance’s personal invitation to the United States for the anniversary festivities, an invitation the pope seems to have declined. Adding fuel to the fire, unconfirmed Spanish media reports soon thereafter claimed that Pope Leo “warned the [Spanish] bishops that his greatest concern in Spain is the far right that is trying to ‘instrumentalize the Church.’”

To be sure, any conceivable U.S. administration in this political climate would make such an anniversary uncomfortable for a pope—even more so now than when the Vatican released this schedule a couple weeks ago. Pope Leo is probably wise to skip the transatlantic voyage in July. The Lampedusa symbolism, though, is unmistakable as it is deeply misplaced. It also has sparked comparisons to French Catholic writer Jean Raspail’s dystopian 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints.

The novel describes a grotesque armada of one million migrants from the Ganges that sails to the French Riviera. It is a searing indictment of the Western cultural institutions that have grown too nihilistic and narcissistic to perpetuate their civilization. Among the characters is a South American pope more concerned with social justice PR stunts than shepherding the Church. (Interestingly, this “red bishop of Bahia” is named Benedict XVI: “It goes without saying that the pope mentioned in this fictional account is in no way to be taken for Our Very Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, to whom I pledge my trust and my respect,” clarified Raspail in 2006.) “He was a pope in tune with the times, and this was much appreciated by the media,” asserts Raspail’s narrator.

You can find Camp of the Saints on Amazon. I encourage you to buy it and read it. (No, you won’t find it in your local public library.) Then ponder the fact that it was published fifty years ago. At the time, everybody was saying “Nah, this is just exaggeration for the sake of effect.” Little did we know….

Read it.

As the wise man once said, making predictions is hard, especially about the future.

Nonetheless, success comes to those that predict they will be successful. What is happening in Iran today is 47 years overdue because we were afraid to predict success. We are winning. We will win. The bad guys are losing. They will lose.

I will not spend time on why it is foolhardy to assume someone else will react to a certain situation the same way as you would. It is foolhardy, but, some situations are so compelling that a prediction regarding how someone else will react can and should be made confidently.

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The following report cites a study showing German Muslims’ growing support for “Islamism”. Young “radicals” are increasingly following “Islamist interpretations of Islam”.

For those of us who don’t subscribe to the artificial “Islam/Islamism” dichotomy, what the study seems to have measured is the tendency of young Muslim culture-enrichers in Germany to study the core scriptures of their religion and practice the prescribed behaviors as decreed by Allah and revealed to his messenger Mohammed. They learn that Allah has commanded them to wage jihad against the non-believers until the infidels submit to Islam or are killed. If a soldier of Allah is killed during his jihad, he is rewarded with all the perquisites of Paradise, including the well-known 72 virgins.

Such is “Islamism”, which is indistinguishable from Islam. The “Islamist” is simply acting in accord with the central tenets of his religion.

I have often described Socialist regimes — Communism, Nazism, Islam — as political religions, but I think we still underestimate the danger of these regimes because they blur the lines that separate religion and state, which are at the foundations of modern civilization.

That separation grew out of the horrors of the Inquisition, the excesses of Torquemada and the persecution of so-called heretics. Islam today does exactly that, and we tolerate it because we are scared of being labelled ‘racist’.

Religious Socialist entities bypass separation of church and state by pretending to be ‘political’ rather than religious, and thus flying below the constitutional radar.

The French revolutionaries chose the ‘Goddess of Reason’ as their deity. In her name the tumbrels rolled, the guillotines chopped and the ‘Committee for Public Safety’ executed hundreds of thousands, all for their own good. Mass murder comes with the territory.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom had helped set up a state government agency for his wife and then a quasi-government non-profit to which he has directed millions of dollars which in turn helped promote yet another non-profit that puts millions of dollars in the pockets of the Newsoms.

That convoluted arrangement may explain why Newsom won’t turn over his tax returns.

Gov. Newsom promised to be the first California governor to release his tax returns every year, but media outlets have been grumbling that the last time he released a tax return was quite a few years ago when he was legally required to because he was running for reelection.

The questions got louder when he bought a $9 million house in addition to their $6 million house. The new 5,609 square foot estate comes with a spa, sculptures and Brazilian decks, and was bought from a member of the billionaire Pritzker clan, who have been one of Newsom’s major donors, and carries a $6.5 million mortgage with $600,000 in annual payments plus over $100,000 in property taxes. Some have been asking where all that money was coming from.

This may only be the tip of the iceberg considering that in 2019, the Newsoms had paid their household staff $288,000 alone. Assuming that the staffing costs have kept pace, California’s first family should be looking at very some very huge bills to maintain their outrageous lifestyle.

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There was a time when environmental stewardship meant conservation grounded in gratitude rather than condemnation. It reflected a belief that a prosperous and confident society could protect its natural inheritance without repudiating the very progress that made such protection possible. The American conservation tradition grew from strength, not shame. In recent decades, however, much of what is presented as settled “climate science” has drifted from practical environmental management toward a sweeping moral narrative that indicts industrial civilization itself. The debate is no longer confined to atmospheric chemistry or predictive modeling; it has evolved into a broader philosophical claim that humanity’s advancement is inherently suspect.

Science, properly practiced, is iterative and self-correcting. It advances through questioning, testing, and refinement. Yet public climate discourse increasingly exhibits the traits of ideological orthodoxy. Skepticism about model assumptions or policy prescriptions is often met not with counterargument but with moral denunciation. The language of heresy—“denial,” “anti-science,” “existential threat”—is deployed to narrow the field of acceptable opinion. When a discipline presents itself as beyond debate and frames policy disagreement as ethical failure, it ceases to resemble open inquiry and begins to resemble doctrine. This transformation warrants scrutiny not because environmental concerns are illegitimate, but because intellectual humility is essential to credible science.

The philosophical undercurrent of contemporary climate activism reveals a deeper unease with human progress. At its more radical edges, the movement portrays mankind not primarily as steward but as contaminant. Human industry is described as invasive, consumption as pathological, and growth as inherently destructive. Advocates of “degrowth” openly argue that reduced economic output and lower living standards constitute moral improvement. Discussions about limiting childbirth in the name of reducing carbon footprints have moved from fringe to mainstream academic settings. Such arguments rest upon a pessimistic anthropology that views human flourishing as environmentally incompatible.

Newsbusters.

National “Public” Radio can NOT find the story of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji putting “Likes” on pages celebrating the October 7 massacre in Israel. But it CAN find stories where Mamdani is the victim of cruel Republican social media posts. GOP ‘Islamophobia’ is hot news, and Muslim Democrat antisemitism is not.

And that’s why we call it ‘Narrative Media’. They have a point of view and they push it continuously.

The Telegraph (UK).

There’s a strong misconception in Europe that President Donald Trump prefers dictators and authoritarian powers over democratic allies. The fact is that he has just taken out a major Chinese ally (Venezuela), is in the process of taking out another (Iran), and is threatening to take out a third (Cuba).

As we think about the problem set that confronted the United States when he came into office, we see that he inherited a dwindling heavy-industry sector and a rigid US ideology about offering the world free markets, despite extremely unfavourable terms (US tariffs on EU cars were 2 per cent while EU tariffs on US autos were 11 per cent). He also inherited a rising rival in China, which seemed to be eating US manufacturing share every year while gaining dominance in global shipping and energy markets.

But unlike so many previous American presidents, Trump looks at these problems differently. He sees different problems – inherited from his years as a businessman – and he responds differently.

The Telegraph (UK).

Left-wing activists have started a shoplifting spree across Britain in protest against “billionaires hoarding wealth”.

The people on the left side of the IQ bell-curve seem to have this mistaken notion that ‘billionaires’ keep all of their ‘wealth’ in a giant money bin, like Scrooge McDuck, just because they can. In truth, ‘billionaires’ are wealthy because they invest what they have, providing products and services that make life better for everybody and, not incidentally, provide employment for a whole shitload of people.

Members of Take Back Power, which is viewed as the successor to Just Stop Oil, stole food from supermarkets in four cities on Saturday morning and donated it to food banks.

The activists claimed “liberating” produce from the branches of Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco was “non-violent action to resist the super-rich”.

Police have made no arrests in response to the shoplifting, a spokesman for the activists said.

And that’s why Britain is going to shit.

Read it.

On X (formerly Twitter) there has been some exchanges between Professor Gad Saad and Ambassador Richard Grenell. Saad has authored several books and his latest, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, is scheduled for release May 12, 2026. Saad’s experience as a Lebanese Jew whose family narrowly escaped Islamic violence shapes his understanding of Islam. His studies have helped him understand how the West is an enabler and may well fall as a result. Grenell has pushed back on some of Saad’s posts decrying painting all practitioners of Islam as a threat. Grenell also emphasizes the First Amendment protections for beliefs and peaceful practice.

As I followed this exchange I saw a truth in both viewpoints. As a firm believe in the First Amendment (and all civil rights recognized by our Constitution) I struggle with how America battles Islam within a constitutional framework. Can it be done? I don’t know, but maybe this reframing of the issue is a start:

Islam is a violent/invasive political movement that uses its non-violent practitioners as “human shields” to invoke First Amendment protections for its persistent and embedded civil rights violations.

Recall that the First Amendment isn’t limited to religious belief and practice. It also includes political beliefs as well. That is why the Communist Party was never illegal, and a belief in Communism was never outlawed. What is outlawed is advocating the violent overthrow of the United States (but see discussion of Brandenburg v Ohio below). American history is littered with small communist organizations — communes — that came into and out of existence as the ultimate un-sustainability of its structure asserted itself.

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For years Democrats argued that “Antifa” is not a real organization; rather, they claim it is a set of ideals with no concrete membership. This illusory definition of the movement is quite deliberate in that it is designed to protect Antifa members from being defined as terrorists or facing direct consequences for their actions.

Legal questions have been growing over the use of federal terrorism laws against leftist activists. Democrats claim they’re engaging in constitutionally protected civil protest – rationale used justify attacks on ICE agents during the execution of deportations. It was also used extensively as legal grounds for violence and property destruction during the BLM riots.

Now, there’s been a conviction.

On Friday, nine defendants accused of being part of a North Texas “Antifa Cell” were convicted by a federal jury in Fort Worth. The incident in question took place on July 4th, 2025, at the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas – where anti-ICE protests functioned as cover for the vandalization of government property (vehicles, guard shack, security cameras), the use if exploding fireworks at the facility, and the shooting of a police officer.

If everyone were allowed to shoot anyone wearing a hammer-and-sickle or swastika, a lot of our problems would go away.

The Register (UK).

Openreach claims its fiber network infrastructure can detect leaks in nearby water supply pipes, which could save millions of liters of the precious fluid… if the water companies can be bothered to fix them.

The infrastructure arm of Britain’s former state-owned telco BT says it has conducted a trial with Affinity Water and the developer of the technology, Lightsonic.

According to Openreach, the pilot demonstrated that its fiber-optic cables can double as sensors to detect and pinpoint any leaks from water pipes in the surrounding subterranean environment.

Check it out.

A reference guide to the world’s most strategic waterways.

Read it.

There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional, power user — and assigns you a product. It is helpful. It is responsible. It has very little interest in what you might become.

The MacBook Neo has attracted a lot of these reviews.

The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.

Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.

Perplexity Computer for Beginners: Everything You Need to Know

You will own nothing, and you will be happy….l

Perplexity: Everything is Computer, everything is AI, Computer is everything, AI is us (The Register [UK])

Larry Elder.

Former President Barack Obama long ago surpassed the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton as America’s most influential race hustler. The country got a reminder when Obama spoke at Jackson’s funeral, even though Jackson’s son urged the speakers “not to bring their politics” to the service.

Obama said: “Every day you wake up to things you just didn’t think were possible. Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other, and to turn on each other. And that some Americans count more than others.” Same old Obama.

In his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, he famously declared, “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.” It was the line that launched him and made millions across party lines believe he could bridge divides.

Obama won the presidency with just over 52% of the popular vote, but he entered the Oval Office in January 2009 with a nearly 70% approval rating. Polls in late 2008 and early 2009 showed both Black and white Americans believed race relations would improve under his leadership.

By the time he left office in 2017, polls showed majorities or pluralities of both Blacks and whites thought race relations had gotten worse.

Read it.

This is quite a remarkable development. Someone in the Toronto airport captured video of Iranian Cleric Hojjatoleslam Morteza Tayebi arriving in Canada yesterday [Video Here]. As the story is told, apparently 700+ members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who carry out regime terrorism, reside or have dual citizenship in Canada. [HERE]

“The individual observed in the Pearson Toronto Airport videos, carrying a suitcase while dressed in clerical attire, is Hojatoleslam Morteza Taieb. According to some reports, he holds residency or citizenship in Canada and travels between Iran and this country.” {Source}

Canadian Member of Parliament Melissa Lantsman has been trying to draw attention to the issue for several years, claiming the IRGC is carrying out domestic terrorism in Canada while supporting the activity of the Iranian government.

Read it.

I first read this book in February of 2013 and read it again in 2015 in the face of attempts by Muslims, media, Obama and others to claim that “Islamic terrorism is not Islamic” after Paris. Probably time to bring it out again to at least skim my highlights.

Such claims fly directly in the face of history, the Koran, Islamic tradition, and numerous events and discussions, including the response to Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture covered in this book, which I consider to be extremely important for the trinity of faith, reason, and truth in our time — both relative to Islam and secular attacks on that holy trinity of meaning.

The proximate reason that the political left and Islam reacted to the speech was Benedict’s use of a quote from a 14th century dialogue between Byzantine Christian emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar relative to violence in Islam which reads:

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,”

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The Trump administration on Friday invoked the Defense Production Act to boost oil production off Southern California’s coast as it looks to contain oil prices sent soaring by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Global prices have surged above $100 a barrel, the highest since 2022, driven by significant supply disruption fears following the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran and threats to the Strait of Hormuz.

The Defense Production Act, a Korean War–era law enacted in 1950, gives the president broad authority to direct private industry to prioritize and produce materials deemed essential for national defense and emergency preparedness.

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Except for criminals, of course.

Gun control advocates do not just oppose civilian gun ownership; they also argue that guns in the hands of police make people less safe.

In January, a Border Patrol agent in Portland shot and wounded two Venezuelan nationals who belonged to the violent Tren de Aragua gang after they allegedly tried to run agents over with their vehicle. In response, Kris Brown, president of Brady United, tweeted the following:

“We don’t know the details behind the shootings of 2 people by a Border Patrol agent in Portland. But I know one thing for certain: whether in the hands of federal officers or everyday Americans, guns do not make us safer. Yet Trump is reshaping our country based on this lie.”

What were the Border Patrol agents supposed to do when an illegal alien with a criminal record tries to run over an agent? How are unarmed agents supposed to apprehend and detain violent gang members?

Currently on its website, Brady United explains: “Why Police violence is gun violence … As we work to tackle the gun violence epidemic in America, we cannot ignore police violence or its devastating effects.”

The same claim is made repeatedly by other gun control groups.

Newsbusters.

As the war in the Middle East rages, let’s take a pause and a walk back through some history of the media and America at war.

Let’s start specifically with the war in Vietnam.

As someone (ahem!) old enough to recall the media coverage of the Vietnam War there is plenty to remember. And specifically to remember the slow and then rapid change of pace with the media of the day going from supportive to questioning to an outright anti-war coverage that was televised nightly into American living rooms.

So much did the media coverage of the war become a hot and then hotter topic in the day that it has even earned its own space in places like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Read it.

n adult Fairfax High School student has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery amid accusations that he was groping girls in the halls during school.

7News Reporter Nick Minock was the first to break this story and spoke exclusively with the victims’ parents.

“There’s a group of about 12 individuals that have reported this assault,” one mother told 7News. “It was all perpetrated by a single individual who is a stranger to the girls. He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs. It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab. It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months.”

Israel Flores Ortiz is almost 19 years old, and he’s in the 11th grade at Fairfax High School.

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When an ICE agent shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good after she allegedly obstructed immigration authorities with her vehicle, disobeyed their commands, and attempted to flee – drawing fatal fire from an officer nearly struck by the vehicle – politicians and pundits decried her death as murder. They called it particularly unjust because she was not acting as a protester but a legal observer.

The legal term is ‘accessory’. It is also a crime.

After federal agents arrested Don Lemon for allegedly disrupting a St. Paul church service in protest of the same Twin Cities immigration enforcement surge Good had opposed. His lawyer defended the former CNN anchor as a journalist, persecuted by the Trump administration for having carried out “constitutionally protected work” in violation of his First Amendment rights. So too did myriad media organizations ranging from the National Association of Black Journalists to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

While Good’s shooting presents a distinct issue, her case and Lemon’s highlight the complex legal issues surrounding those who claim to be chronicling protests. Legal observers and journalists have long worked on the frontlines of civil unrest, the former documenting instances of alleged police misconduct in violation of constitutional rights to peaceably assemble, and the latter chronicling the assemblies. Their efforts have brought transparency and accountability. But what happens when legal observers and journalists act, or are seen by authorities as unlawful protestors rather than the neutral parties they are supposed to be? To what degree do their titles afford them special protections from prosecution in a court of law?

 

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investigating whether signature collectors in San Francisco illegally offered to pay people to sign ballot petitions using false names.

A video posted Monday on X shows a sign that says “Sign petition for $5” and a line of people waiting along the sidewalk. A woman sitting at a folding table appears to be instructing the name and address to use to fill out the petition. When the person recording asked what the petitions were for, the woman said, “Just sign it.”

The California secretary of state’s office said in a statement that it was “aware of, and investigating, the matter.”

Democrats are cheaters every age.

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A recent attack by an illegal alien that took place on the New York City subway perfectly represents where concentric circles of awful leftist policies meet to damage free societies.

On Sunday afternoon, 34-year-old Bairon Hernandez allegedly shoved an 83-year-old Air Force veteran, Richard Williams, and another young man onto the subway track in the Upper East Side. Fortunately, the younger victim, Jhon Pena, was able to pull Williams off the track before a train arrived, though the vet remains in serious condition.

The suspect, according to Pix 11, is a four-time deportee with 15 prior arrests for, among other things, “simple assault, domestic violence, obstruction of police, possession of a weapon, drug possession, and aggravated assault.”

Hernandez first entered the country in January 2008 and was last deported in July 2020, according to the New York Post. He re-entered the country sometime after then.

Welcome to Mamdaniville, where octogenarian veterans are pushed onto train tracks by demented illegal alien career criminals while the mayor whines that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “a rogue agency, one that has no interest in laws, no interest in order.”

Uh huh.

Read it.

Calls for “bleed kits” to be rolled out across London’s bus network have gained traction, with the London Assembly unanimously backing a motion to install them in major bus stations and trial them on high-risk routes.

These kits, designed to stem severe bleeding from deep wounds, are pitched as a lifesaver in emergencies—yet their sudden necessity speaks volumes about the city’s descent into chaos under unchecked policies.

The push comes from the London Youth Assembly, highlighting how young people feel increasingly unsafe on public transport.

Read it.

Someone asked a good question. I’d written a post arguing that what the industry calls “AI agents” are flowcharts with good marketing, and that the mathematics to do better has existed since the 1960s. A commenter on LinkedIn replied: “So why did it stop being widely used?”

It deserved more than a comment-length answer.

The short version is: path dependence, disciplinary silos, and the seductive convenience of not having to specify your objectives. The long version requires a brief tour through the recent history of artificial intelligence, which turns out to be less a story of progress than of fashion.

NPR, the chief propaganda organ of the Crust.

Call me when the number of U.S. war dead exceeds that of the average trans-perpetrated mass shooting.

CBS News, a Voice of the Crust.

A man shot and killed by Dallas police earlier this week was a familiar figure in North Texas law enforcement – and part of the security detail for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, sources told CBS News Texas.

Multiple law enforcement sources tell CBS News Texas the man, known publicly as Mike King, had been using aliases while running a business that placed officers in off?duty jobs.

King was killed Wednesday night after a standoff with Dallas police SWAT officers. Police say he fled into a hospital parking garage, barricaded himself inside a vehicle, and was forced out by tear gas before pulling a gun on officers.

Sources say he was wanted for impersonating a law enforcement officer and had claimed to be one while operating Off Duty Police Services, an online platform connecting North Texas officers with off?duty work. Authorities have not released his real name.

Johnathan Turley.

There has been an ongoing struggle between district court judges and the Trump Administration over a variety of policies. In the first year, some district court judges issued nationwide injunctions that were largely rejected by the Supreme Court and appellate courts. These conflicts have continued and the intracourt tensions have increased. That was evident with the recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which delivered a virtual haymaker in reversing Judge Sara Ellis, an Obama nominee.

The panel criticized Ellis for limiting the operation of federal officers in Chicago, saying that she “effectively established the district court as the supervisor of all Executive Branch activity in the city of Chicago.”

Protesters and journalists went to Ellis to restrain “Operation Midway Blitz.” They challenged the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the First and Fourth Amendments, specifically raising the use of tear gas and other chemical agents. Judge Ellis issued a preliminary injunction described by the panel as “sweeping”: “It enjoined all law enforcement o?cers in the Northern District of Illinois, as well as federal agencies and the Secretary of the DHS, from using certain crowd control tactics and tools. It also required the defendants to regularly inform the court of its e?orts at implementing the injunction.”

Read it.

The Minnesota Senate rammed through sweeping gun control measures on Friday, after deliberately sidelining the state’s largest pro-Second Amendment organization with just 6 minutes of testimony, while gun control supporters got 32 minutes of speaking time on the flagship gun ban bill.

The Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, chaired by Sen. Ron Latz (DFL), advanced S.F. 3655 – a near-total ban on semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 rounds – on a strict 6-3 party-line vote. Latz admitted they “prioritized individual testifiers over organizations” – yet anti-gun groups still got slots while the state’s biggest 2A voice was frozen out.

Before allowing input from the public, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus – representing tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens – warned the public yesterday that committee staff had already told them the hearing schedule was “full” – effectively blocking them from offering in-person testimony on the core bills: the semi-auto ban, the magazine ban, repeal of state preemption (opening the door to a patchwork of local gun laws), and new carry restrictions at the State Capitol and schools.

Read it.

Seattle, which is home to Amazon and Microsoft, currently employs some 193,000 well-compensated Washingtonians working in the tech sector. One major reason that Seattle emerged as the first big tech hub outside of California is obvious: It is the only West Coast state with no state income tax. Its state constitution forbids an income tax. High wage workers and entrepreneurs seeking a piece of the relatively laid back, outdoors-focused Pacific Northwest lifestyle can move to Washington without taking a state-mandated pay cut.

For the progressive Democrats who dominate state politics in the Pacific Northwest, money in the pockets of anyone other than the government and its political allies is wasted. To grab more of it, legislative Democrats in Washington are pushing through an income tax in the guise of a “millionaire’s tax” that would levy a 9.9% tax on incomes over $1 million. Just yesterday, as the “millionaire’s tax” neared the finish line in the Washington legislature, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced he and his wife have relocated from Seattle, where they lived for 47 years, to Miami. Florida has neither a state income tax nor a state income tax masquerading as a “millionaire’s tax.”

The constitutionality of the bill rests on progressives’ expectation that the Washington Supreme Court will completely abandon decades of precedent deeming income taxes unconstitutional. The expectation may not be unfounded: Five of nine justices were appointed by Democratic governors. Democrats also voted down an amendment to forbid applying an income tax to lower income levels, signaling the “millionaire’s tax” is likely to become a “thousandaire’s tax” if Democrats get their way.

A Constitution protects rights only when the judiciary agrees. Look at what the U.S. Supreme Court did when draftees challenged conscription for World War I on the grounds that it violated the 13th Amendment, which it obviously does.

What makes this proposed tax truly egregious, however, is its attempt to stop voters from having any say in it. The Democrats’ tax bill includes a necessity clause that precludes a voter referendum that could overturn the new income tax. So long as the majority-progressive-appointed state Supreme Court goes along, progressives will have upended 90 years of constitutionally prohibited income taxes while shielding it from a vote of the people.

Democrats are the most un-democratic group of people in the country.

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In the rugged interior of Newfoundland, an hour’s drive west from the Canadian Forces Base in Gander, sits a dormant mine with profound implications for the nation’s security and prosperity. Beaver Brook could be the largest North American producer of antimony — a critical mineral threaded through the entire spectrum of modern military hardware, from small arms and artillery shells to advanced missile seekers and night-vision goggles.

But China owns the mine and shut it down in early 2023 — one year before Beijing imposed export controls blocking antimony sales to U.S. military end users, driving prices from about US$5,900 per tonne to more than US$50,000.

Antimony forms in crystalline masses, often clustered in dark silver needles — nature’s own suggestion of the gunmetal world it enters. It was little known before Washington recognized that Beijing had quietly secured a near-monopoly over the world’s critical mineral supply, antimony among them. The metal fires every conventional round, hardens military components, and provides the infrared edge that defines lethality in modern conflict. Armies could not sustain combat for even a single day without it — a reality that has driven urgent U.S. efforts to stockpile it, revive domestic processing, and cut reliance on China and Russia.

I guess the Canadian government is just stupid.

The Telegraph (UK).

The central principle of democracy is that power is vested in the people and expressed by their elected representatives. We expect that governments will seek to align themselves with the views and opinions of the people, while protecting the views and opinions of minorities. Yet Britain is currently demonstrating a different phenomenon: at times, and under the right circumstances, governments are seeking to align themselves with the views and opinions of minorities while failing to protect the views and opinions of the people.

Take this Labour Government, which at present appears to be in a blind panic. With local elections approaching, Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues are desperate to win back the approval of Muslim voters they had long taken for granted. The results of this risk going beyond pure politics – shaping Britain and British society for years to come.

This week, the ramifications were plain for all to see: a highly-contentious definition of anti-Muslim hostility being proposed despite vocal opposition from other minority faiths and the majority, and policy on the war in Iran driven by torturous attempts to balance maintaining the special relationship with America and winning over Muslim voters. There was also much agonising about whether to ban a march whose organiser has previously met Iran’s late ayatollah Ali Khamenei to hand him a dossier complaining of anti-Muslim hatred in Britain. The march will go ahead on Sunday as a “static protest”.

The Telegraph (UK).

Volunteers have been left “beyond angry” after flower bulbs they planted were mowed over by a Green Party-led council.

More than 70 volunteers planted almost 30,000 bulbs in St George Park in Bristol on Saturday after raising thousands of pounds to fund the initiative.

But thousands of the bulbs were “shredded” days later when council workers mowed the grass of the park.

• “Verified by NBC News” = Trust me, bro.
• “Adding evidence, experts say, that an American missile likely hit…” = We have no actual proof.
• “…hit a compound once home to a military base” = This is a buried lede, please don’t pay attention to it.
• “Weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis” = Here’s a left-leaning DC thinktank nerd to make our scant evidence seem more concrete than it is.
• “4 other weapons experts, who agree” = Trust me bro, Part Dos.
• “NBC News spoke on the phone with a father who said his 8-year-old daughter, Zahra, was killed…” = Let’s end with a sad story of a random Iranian man so the audience really hates Trump.

Read it.

Japanese motor company Yamaha is saying sayonara to California after their US headquarters was located in the Golden State for half a century.

The business-hostile state is driving the Japanese company out.

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And apparently running as a Republican would just be a waste of time & money.

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Now that Rohan has been thoroughly pillaged and the hordes of Mordor are approaching Minas Tirith, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is leaving the shores of Middle Earth.

Ardern rose to fame for her totalitarian lockdown measures during Covid. Her government essentially locked the island nation down for two years. The tourism industry – huge in New Zealand – was devastated. The economy stagnated.

Almost two years into the lockdowns, Ardern finally gave citizens permission to visit their friends and joked about letting them use their friends’ bathrooms.

A 2022 study looked at the mental health effects on New Zealand due to New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of the world combined with these strict policies, “considered amongst the most stringent response to the pandemic globally.”

Like many other places, the closure of schools and businesses led to depression and suicide that killed many more young people than the virus ever would. It delayed learning and social skills for an entire generation and destroyed social cohesion and trust in government.

None of these measures stopped the spread of Covid.

The Other McCain.

Two decades ago, the phrase “Dearbornistan” became common among conservative bloggers during the Global War on Terror, because of the notorious cluster of Islamic radicals in the Detroit surburb of Dearborn

As soon as I heard about Thursday’s attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield — before anything had been reported about the suspect’s identity — I checked to see how far the synagogue was from Dearborn. It’s about 20 miles, but the distance is a bit shorter to Dearborn Heights, which is six miles west of Dearborn itself. Both communities are part of Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, which sends Democratic “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib to Congress.

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The scientific community has seriously betrayed the American public, and their reliability and reputation are in jeopardy as a result of the deceptions and fraudulent acts they have perpetrated. After the poor guidance and literal lies that the members of medicine and science have told us over the last few years, we have to ponder: where do we go for the truth?

There are many reasons for science taking a deceptive approach to their research, and by exploring them, we may learn how to overcome their compulsion to misrepresent their results.

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Senator John Cornyn is in the fight of his life. In a throwback to the Tea Party primaries of the early 2010s, the senior senator from Texas (first elected in 2002) has been forced into a runoff for the first time in his career by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023, managed to effectively tie Cornyn in the initial primary, with both receiving around 42% of the vote. While Cornyn is favored to win a runoff, particularly if President Donald Trump endorses him, it is by no means a sure thing.

Cornyn and his team may be wondering how they got to this point. They are not alone. Across the Western world, center-right individuals and parties are in deep trouble and seem unable to figure out why.

In Europe, the “respectable” center-right is a political dinosaur on its way to extinction. The German CDU is neck-and-neck (though more often than not, in second place) with the populist-right Alternative for Germany. Austria’s Freedom Party has been leading for the past three years, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy has led the country for over four. Poland’s right wing is dominated by two parties: a populist-right party and one that’s even further to the right. France and the United Kingdom have both seen their center-right parties decimated, replaced by the populist-right National Rally and Reform parties, respectively.

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When a 7-year-old’s heartfelt sketch promoting equality gets twisted into “racism” by leftist school officials, it’s a chilling sign of how far indoctrination has gone—now finally overturned in a resounding First Amendment victory.

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Don’t lose your shit over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.

There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.

The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025.

Don’t hold your breath for the LCS to do anything productive.

Newsbusters.

The hits just kept coming for CNN this week. Amid criticism of the network’s biased reporting from Iran, bias about the conflict, and how they got access to the country, two high-ranking CNN officials were caught at the Iranian Embassy in London attending a celebration for the founding of the Islamic regime. Additionally, the daytime edition of CNN News Central on Thursday aired four-uninterrupted minutes of Iranian state television delivering a purported written statement from the latest ayatollah, who’s in a coma.

On March 12, the U.K.-based newspaper The Telegraph published an article about the unfolding scandal engulfing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government where his Foreign Ministry attended a February 12 celebration at the Iranian Embassy to mark the founding of the Islamic Republic. The party was happening at the same time they were slaughtering thousands of their own citizens in the streets. The newspaper reported:

UPDATE: In the hours since NewsBusters put a spotlight on the imagine of CNN officials at the Iranian Embassy shared by The Telegraph, the newspaper has removed the image from the story. You can still see the image below.

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Court documents show less than two years after Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was released from prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State group, he opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him.

The shooting that left one person dead and two others injured has raised questions about why Jalloh, who the FBI identified as the gunman, was imprisoned and the conditions of his release — with some elected officials questioning how someone with known ties to the Islamic State group was able to carry out such an attack.

“The horrific tragedy that occurred today on ODU’s campus never should have happened,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, who represents the congressional district neighboring the university, wrote on Facebook.