DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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A temporary monument displaying the names of more than 41 million Americans who have served in the U.S. military will remain on the National Mall through Nov. 12 following an overwhelming response from visitors.

The National Military Monument, presented by the United Services Automobile Association, or USAA, opened July 28 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

USAA announced Tuesday that the National Park Service had approved a 10-week extension of the installation, which had been scheduled to close in early September.

Newsbusters.

As the left and right try to define their opposition ahead of November’s midterm elections, the media are clearly taking sides. According to a new NewsBusters analysis, the media has condemned conservatives and Republicans 86 percent of the time when they compare Democrats to communists or jihadists. However, when liberals compare Republicans to Nazis and fascists, only five percent of such analogies were rebuked.

For this study, NewsBusters analyzed all news programming from PBS, MS NOW, and CNN as well as the morning and evening newscasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC from August 1 through August 15.

The Foundry.

A new study estimates that Democrats’ proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $25/hour would cost the U.S. economy 5 million jobs and especially harm workers ages 16 to 24.

“Politicians on the Left are making empty promises that minimum wage hikes will magically fix the cost of living crisis without doing their research,” Rebekah Paxton, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

“The vast majority of economists agree these mandates will kill jobs, leaving families without the paychecks they depend on,” she added. “Here’s the truth: Sky-high mandates will only make life more unaffordable for millions of Americans.”

The market price is the market price, Every attempt to manipulate prices politically (whether called ‘price controls’ or ‘minimum wages’) leads either to rationing or ‘black-marketeering’. The result of minimum wage laws is that low-skilled workers who aren’t worth that minimum to an employer get no jobs at all. Markets work as markets work, and they don’t care about your legislation or political fantasies.

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The co-founder of the Democrat fundraising juggernaut ActBlue invoked the Fifth Amendment in a closed-door deposition before three House committees, sources familiar with the matter told the Daily Signal.

Matt DeBergalis, co-founder of the platform, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee, the House Administration Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday morning to answer questions about alleged fraudulent donations. The deposition lasted fewer than 30 minutes.

House committees, as well as the Justice Department, are investigating whether ActBlue has adequately policed fraudulent donations through its portal, particularly illegal foreign donations. The organization has denied any wrongdoing and called the investigations politically motivated.

The American Mind.

Widespread use of the word “meritocracy” may only be possible in the world it describes. British sociologist and former Labour Party official Michael Young coined the term in a 1958 satire as a sly alternative to aristocracy, clumsily mixing Latin (mereo: to deserve) with Greek (kratos: power, rule). Young’s friend, a classicist, warned he would be “laughed to scorn” for employing such a barbarism. Her caution was, sadly, optimistic.

Nonetheless, meritocracy’s advocates have attempted to supply it with a noble lineage. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio and former presidential candidate, is convinced the 20th-century term is central to the American experiment going back to 1776. Palantir’s Jordan Chandler Hirsch likewise argues that America was “born meritorious,” defining meritocracy as when government and society operate through objective measures of “quality and talent, open competition based on fair play, and ruthless disinterest in any other factor.”

Yet by Hirsch’s own definition, today’s “objective” meritocracy has little to do with the founding generation’s ideas. As his own source, historian Joseph Kett, describes, “The Founders viewed a man’s public character, his reputation among his peers, as the outward measure of his essential merit…. Nothing would have astonished the Men of Merit more than to be told to take an examination to measure their character.” Indeed, in the founding era there were no standardized examinations, grades, or entrance exams for public service. When Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “natural aristocracy,” he meant one distinguished by “virtue and talents,” not paper credentials and background checks.

The ‘competitive examination’, as satirized in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe, especially for the civil service, started Britain on the road to being ruled by Sir Humphrey Applegate and his brethren.

The economic flaw with meritocracy is that it implies a labor theory of value. Markets reward scarcity and demand, not deservingness. As George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok explains, “A wage is a price”—it does not signify moral worth but guides action. Forcing markets to become genuinely meritocratic therefore would require a powerful administrative state to direct the economy, much like China’s own allegedly meritocratic system.

The world doesn’t owe you anything for your merit. The world has needs; if you can meet those needs, whatever your ‘merit’, you will be embraced by the world. If not, the world will pass you by.

It is no accident that the Democratic Party’s most radical constituency consists of post-grads with relatively modest incomes.

Exactly so.

The New Neo.

But the working class in the US doesn’t seem to think so; they don’t vote for the DSA candidates, for the most part. The DSA gets its support from the dissatisfied and yet well-educated scions of the comfortable and wealthy.

Trust fund kids have no problems with socialism. Somebody else has been paying their bills all of their lives, and so they want the same treatment from the government. Arrested adolescents, the lot of ’em.

Newsbusters.

Women on the Left have no hesitation in attacking women, so long as they are Not On The Left—and sometimes even when they are. It all depends on how many Diversity Pokemon Points the target has and who winds the Virtue Signaling Stakes.

The Atlantic.

David Frum was once a conservative writer for National Review, as Joe Scarborough was a Republican Congressman. Both Saw The Light And Cashed In.

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Social Security is fundamentally an intergenerational transfer program. It is not a personal savings account in which each of us has accumulated a pot of money earmarked exclusively for our own retirement. “Our” Social Security payroll taxes were immediately distributed as benefits to then-current retirees. Payroll taxes collected today are used primarily to pay benefits to today’s beneficiaries. To make that clear … today, the Social Security benefits we retirees receive come mainly from our kids’ Social Security taxes. In turn, the benefits today’s workers eventually receive will depend largely on the contributions of future workers.

That distinction matters.

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Gee, I wonder why?

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It is true that OPD is severely understaffed by hundreds of officers. Mayor Barbara Lee is attempting to shrink the staffing gap, with plans to increase the number of officers.

But historical data throws into question whether increasing staffing will rectify OPD’s chronic overtime overspending. A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.

Recent financial pressures have caused the city to lay off scores of civilian employees and freeze spending across a range of programs. Meanwhile, the number of police officers bringing in six-figure overtime packages rose dramatically.

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I used to get one of those meal delivery kits sent to my house, the kind that comes with a new recipe card every week. It ended up being a great way to learn how to cook, different techniques, little tips, methods I never would’ve picked up just winging it on my own.

What none of those recipe cards ever really nailed though was the format itself, long blocks of text you had to read start to finish just to figure out when to add the eggs.

Turns out someone solved that problem decades ago.

Too lazy to do the work? (Me! Me!) Go here.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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The same voices who demand “fairness” and insist every community must share the burden of mass illegal migration suddenly discover local democracy the moment the coaches might stop near their postcode.

A Mail on Sunday poll has laid bare the gap between principle and practice. Just 15 percent of people are happy with the idea of more illegal migrants arriving in their own area. Fifty-seven percent actively oppose it.

Yet many of those who back Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s call for affluent and rural places to “play their part” draw a firm line at their own front door.

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In Islam, there is no separation between mosque and state. The goal is to use the state to make everyone submit to Islam. If you want to see what this looks like, just check out almost any country in the Middle East that has a Muslim majority. They don’t believe in freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Do you want to know how many churches there are in Saudi Arabia? The answer is zero, because churches are banned in Saudi Arabia. Now this same ideology is spreading in America, and that should deeply alarm all of us.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.

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The chief reason to eliminate the rich is because their kids all turn out to be socialists.

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The following German video examines the case of a single African migrant who, after years of legal process, simply cannot be deported, because he has no documents and consistently lies about his country of origin.

Multiply this example by the millions of migrants who have flooded the country in the last ten or fifteen years, and it becomes clear that the future prospects for the Country Formerly Known as the Bundesrepublik Deutschland are grim indeed.

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A federal regulation intended to combat workplace racial discrimination has become a weapon for the race-obsessed diversity, equity, and inclusion movement—but President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to get rid of it.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, has required specific employers to file an annual report summarizing data on their employees’ race and sex. The regulations currently apply to more than two million employers, at an estimated cost of $275 million each year and $4 million for the agency to administer the data collection.

While the government required this data collection to prevent racial discrimination, it has arguably undermined the key goal of securing a colorblind workplace.

EEOC Chair Andrea R. Lucas said in July that the reports require data collection “disconnected from any allegation of a Title VII violation or related commission enforcement proceeding,” and thus “stand in direct tension with Title VII’s requirement that employment practices be colorblind.”

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The higher education racket is being exposed in America as diminishing standards, collapsing public trust, and a cult-like, often unlawful devotion to DEI ideology pushes its mid-20th century model past the point of breaking.

For several generations, going to a premier public or private university provided a smooth path to success for most Americans.

Sure, plenty of people made money by starting businesses—and a handful of entrepreneurs became monumentally wealthy—but for most Americans looking to get going on a good, high-paying, rewarding career, going to college was the path to success.

Now that path isn’t guaranteed and hasn’t been for decades. Employers have begun to view degrees from once-prestigious schools, even advanced degrees, as irrelevant or a marginal advantage at best.

These overproduced pseudo-elites—many of whom are high on self-esteem but short on what they see as an equivalent paycheck—constitute the foot soldiers of the angry, fanatical DSA class.

The hordes of frustrated college grads will undoubtedly shape American politics in coming years. But what of the colleges and universities that produced them?

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Pearl Davis speaks truth to fantasy.

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Tim Pool explains what is going on.

Just as the old Soviet Union didn’t bother to follow its own laws and constitution, Minnesota Democrats appear to think that they can ignore the law and constitution whenever it benefits a Magic Negro.

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Import Turd World people, get Turd World problems.

Newsbusters.

The auto-pen writes, and, having written, moves on.

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Well, what else was he going to do with them?

$53 million to settle lawsuits from families whose loved ones’ donated remains were allegedly sold on the black market by former morgue manager Cedric Lodge.

Those Facebook Marketplace sales can be pretty awkward, so hopefully this body salesman didn’t go that route!

Yuk yuk! Get it? ‘Black market’?

New York Post.

‘Virginia Man’? No. He was a Tajik. From Tajikistan. That’s like arresting an American in Mexico and calling him “Mexican Man”.

Who the fuck gives a mental patient, an actual murderer, a 48-hour pass? Who?

Did they leave him his passport? How else did he ‘flee the U.S.’?

Worse on Purpose.

Over the past two centuries the things we buy were quietly rebuilt so that most of what determines their quality exists where no buyer can see it. At the same time, we lost the skills that enabled us to judge quality on the parts that still show.

Both losses have a single cause.

On the maker’s side, production withdrew into factories and distant trades. When things were made in the household or the town, the manufacturing processes sat in plain sight. We knew what went into the objects we owned because we saw them being produced. Now the things that determine whether a product will last are completely hidden from view.

Meanwhile, the same forces pushed each of us deeper into narrower fields of work. We do one thing for a living and outsource the rest. But the ability to judge how well a thing is made comes from having made things. The fewer kinds of things we make, the fewer kinds of things we can judge.

That’s Atlanta drug trafficker Walter Lee Muhammad, whose prison sentence for dealing fentanyl was shortened by Joe Biden by way of a pardon.

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Wow, what are the odds?

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And, no doubt, ‘other valuable considerations’.

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Maybe her mom ought to sue for full custody.

John C. Wright.

The basic questions fall into these categories: 1. truth, 2. virtue, 3. beauty, 4. reason, 5. liberty, 6 romance., 7. salvation.

Leftism is Gnosticism, which inverts all of these.

The traditional answers in Christendom hold truth to be sacred, virtue to be true, beauty to be a correct reaction to virtue. Reason is objective, liberty is obedience to reasonable laws, romance is found in lawful passions, in marriage and childrearing, and salvation is found in Christ, who is sacred.

In Leftism all these questions are inverted, and turned into paradox and nonsense.

Truth is subjective. Virtue is tolerating the vice, while vice is stunning and brave. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but true beauty is brutalism and absurdity, meant to shock the bourgeoisie. Reason is racist. Liberty is disobedience to all law, including the laws of reason. Romance is only found in sterile perversion, loveless and childless, which, being vice, is stunning and brave. Salvation is rebellion against all authority, especially divine authority, truth and reason.

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A man previously recognized as an “outstanding refugee” by the Minnesota Department of Human Services has been charged over an alleged Medicaid fraud scheme, according to news coverage.

Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Monday that his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit had charged two men for allegedly stealing more than $1.5 million from the state’s Medicaid program. Salman Ahmed Elmi was charged in the first case with eight felony theft offenses linked to Reva Health allegedly billing over $1,000,000 in Medicaid-funded services that were either never provided or were ineligible for reimbursement, per the announcement.

Elmi previously received the “Outstanding Refugee Award for Entrepreneurship” from the Minnesota DHS, CBS News reported, citing state records.

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At first glance, a car factory hardly seems like a matter of military security. But the possible establishment of Chinese manufacturer SAIC in Ferrol, on Spain’s Atlantic coast, raises a major security concern. What happens when a company linked to the Chinese state sets up operations next to infrastructure used by NATO forces?

=> cunning Chinese, stupid Europeans.

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Import Turd World people, receive Turd World problems.

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An Italian jeweler was recently convicted for shooting to death two of three thieves who had just ransacked his shop.

The video report below says that the thieves “attacked” the jeweler during the robbery, and also tied up his wife and daughter. Under Italian law, however, that was not enough to excuse his lethal response as an act of self-defense.

Suppose the robbers had, say, pistol-whipped one of the women. Would that be enough to justify the shooting? Or what if they had raped his daughter?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. In the more northerly parts of Europe, the state generally holds an absolute majority on violence, so that nothing ever justifies a lethal act of self-defense. But Italy may not be that insane — not yet.

The Cascade Policy Institute has published the Antiplanner’s policy brief about Portland’s War on Cars in three parts:

1. How Portland is losing the war;
2. The benefits of automobiles that Portland has ignored;
3. What Portland should do instead of fighting a losing war.

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Of the 42,338 people that entered Italy via NGO operations since October 2022, 22,513—just over 53%—arrived aboard vessels linked to German organisations. If organisations of other nationalities operating German-flagged ships are included, the figure rises to around 27,000.

Italy received 157,651 people by sea in 2023, 66,617 in 2024, and 66,316 in 2025. Vessels operated by these types of organisations—some of which have been accused of people trafficking—accounted for approximately 8% of all arrivals in 2023.

The role of German NGOs in dumping tens of thousands of migrants in Italy has now become a political issue between Rome and Berlin.

Here’s now the scam works:

1. Traffickers overload boats and rafts with ‘migrants’.
2. ‘Migrants’ paddle out beyond the origin contry’s territorial waters.
3. Libtard NGO boat, often colluding with the traffickers, swoop in and ‘rescue’ the deliberately overstuffed vessel full of ‘migrants’. (Sometimes they don’t make it in time, and many ‘migrants’ die. Traffickers don’t care; they got paid.)
4. NGO boat carries they the rest of the way to the invasion beach, where they all promptly claim asylum and enter the ponderous EU claim system, meanwhile living on welfare benefits paid for by the destination country’s taxpayers, in shantytowns rife with disease and piled high with trash, amusing themselves by sexually assaulting local European women.

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Climate alarmists treat fossil fuels as the producer of soot and environmental damage, yet the record is more complicated and quite positive. New research shows nitrogen deposition from the burning of hydrocarbons has helped to expand plant growth and the greening of large parts of the planet.

The Other McCain.

Florida’s 25th District is the main House “battleground” in the state this fall, after the district was redrawn to give the GOP a 10-point edge. The incumbent Democrat, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, won by a margin of less than 5 percent in 2024, and his seat is one of the most vulnerable for Democrats nationwide in the midterm fight to control the House.

Controversial left-wing podcaster Hasan Piker endorsed Moskowitz’s primary opponent, DSA-backed Oliver Larkin — and got stomped.

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Brand-new polling shows a horse race in the U.S. Senate race in Michigan and suggests that the controversial topic of Muslim immigration to that state could provide the key differentiator in the contest.

As reported in earlier polling in Michigan, by a 6-to-1 margin, Michigan voters believe that there is too much Muslim immigration to their state vs. too little. Even among Kamala Harris 2024 voters, the margin declaring “too much” Muslim immigration is nearly 2-to-1 in the Great Lakes State. This new Michigan poll dives deeper into that issue and shows a clear opportunity against a candidate who openly aligns himself with extreme Muslim public figures and issues.

First, regarding the current tight state of the race, this TIPP Insights poll of 1,528 registered voters in Michigan for the League of American Workers shows Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed leading Republican nominee Mike Rogers by 4 points, 43% to 39%, in a poll with a margin of error of 2.6%. Currently, 11% of voters are unsure and 7% say they will vote for someone else.

But when voters are informed that El-Sayed campaigned in Michigan with Hasan Piker, who declared that America “deserved” the 9/11 terror attacks, 64% of Michigan voters say they are less likely to support the Democrat nominee. In fact, nearly a majority of Democrats declared themselves “less likely” given that information, at 47%.

Also reflecting that unease with the radicalism of El-Sayed, almost one-third (29%) of Democrats and independents said they were “not satisfied” with the Democrat nominee.

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The Minnesota voting scandal is reaching epic proportions as a number of stunning investigative reports have made it clear: Election integrity in the deep blue state is an absolute joke.

This is an Election Judge training video for Carver County, Minnesota, from 2024.

“Do not ask to see an identification card.”

“If a voter presents identification, thank the voter & inform them that an identification card is not required if they are registered.”

The New Neo.

The left says the right is to blame for Arday’s death. But exposing the truth doesn’t kill someone. The left that rewarded his lies set him up for exposure, and if he killed himself (it’s not official, but it’s fairly clear that he almost certainly did), then it’s the tragic outcome of that plus his own actions.

Exactly so. Whatever happens, it’s never the fault of the Magic Negro.

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North Carolina’s Democrat Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a bill that requires the state to cross-check voter registration rolls with death records.

An obvious attempt to disfranchise a major component of the Democrat base.

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Gee, I wonder why?

The Antiplanner.

Most subsidized housing projects are rentals, but a developer called Alberta Alive Condiminiums, the townhouses squeeze three bedrooms and two-and-one-half baths into 1,400 square feet. To keep the footprint small in land-poor Portland, each townhouse occupies three floors.

CDP plans to sell each townhouse for $299,000. But it is spending more than $6 million building eight such townhouses, or $754,000 apiece. Thus, taxpayers are providing a $455,000 subsidy to each buyer. Buyers will be restricted from reselling the properties for more than they paid for them plus inflation, thus denying them one of the benefits of homeownership that most others enjoy. The land the condos are on will be owned by a “community land trust” that will charge the homeowners HOA fees for land management.

Socialism by any other name is just as unpleasant.

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involving Texas residents, Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison is calling for the Texas Legislature to enter a special session to address the threat of Sharia law.

Last week, Harrison posted an interview on WBAP with radio host Matt Locke to discuss why he is calling for a special session “to deal with the threat of Sharia law.”

During the interview, Harrison told Locke that he believes the threat is growing. He pointed to what he described as two functioning Sharia tribunals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

According to Harrison, elected officials in Texas have repeatedly stated that Sharia law is banned in the state, but he said that is “completely false.”

“Texans have been told that their government has been handling this problem, when they objectively have not been,” Harrison told the Daily Signal.

The problem, as always, is in the cities, where the Blue Plague tends to concentrate.

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Does Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., secretly want Republicans to lose the midterm elections?

Rather than pass the SAVE America Act and other key legislation, the majority “leader” adjourned the Senate for a 36-day break. SAVE’s absence makes Capitol Hill even steeper to climb, if Republicans hope to maintain control after November.

Thune’s less-than-flaccid “leadership” rivals his lassitude. His work ethic lags that of a Skid Row panhandler. It takes real energy to rattle a tin cup all day long. Too bad Thune lacks such stamina.

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LBJ bared his belly to show us his gallbladder scar.

Too much information.

AOC has bared hers to show us her quest to freeze her eggs in order to preserve her chances to have children. Also too much information. But certainly more interesting information, considering that this is a practice – purposely delaying conception and using medically-assisted means in an effort to get pregnant later at the “right” time – that has become more common.

The Left never ceases to try to force reality to fit their fantasies. From hormonal birth control to in-vitro fertilization, the push to turn women into fake men is never-ending.