Read it.

Did the far left ever really believe its own rhetoric when it came to climate change? True, when it comes to the positions staked out by any politician on the issues of the day, the age-old question is constantly in the back of everyone’s minds: How much of what they claim to believe is based on heartfelt, core convictions, and how much is due to outside political pressure or geared toward generating contributions?

But nowhere is this question more pertinent than when it comes to politicians and their advocacy for climate change. Why? Because it’s difficult to think of anything that comes close to rivaling the number of government mandates implemented and the amount of taxpayer dollars allocated to reshape society as has happened in the name of climate change. Surely, it wasn’t all based on empty rhetoric and misdirection, was it?

Far-left environmental and climate change groups have significantly increased their political spending over the years. In turn, election after election features liberal politicians hammering away on the alleged damage done by the fossil fuel industry. In 2024 they were at it again, highlighting the latest scary predictions about the worst-case climate change scenarios, and fervently warning of the untold horrors that would happen if Donald Trump and Republicans won in 2024.

Guess what? Once more, it all fell flat with most voters. Trump won the presidency, Republicans kept control of both the House and Senate, and across the nation GOP dominance continued in state government.

Read it.

“Public” broadcasting demonstrates how dramatically one-sided it is by allowing only one side of the “LGBTQIA+” debate — because they believe there should be no debate. There is no defensible position in opposition. On Saturday’s Consider This podcast, National Public Radio spent more than 11 minutes mourning the Trump administration’s decision to remove transgender troops from service.

The star of the story was Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former general in charge of troops in Afghanistan under President Obama — until he ripped the adminstration in a Rolling Stone profile. Then he had to go. But since then, McChrystal has become an opponent of Trump, and endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, so he’s good again.

You’ll notice that these ‘transgender troops’ are almost always men pretending to be women, rarely women pretending to be men.

New York Post.

The Justice Department has axed New York’s most lenient immigration court judge, The Post has learned.

Judge Vivienne Gordon-Uruakpa, who ruled in favor of asylum claimants 97% of the time — more than any of her colleagues in the state – was terminated without public notice back in September because of her prolific record of asylum rulings, according to a government official.

Gordon-Uruakpa no longer appears on the web site of the downtown Manhattan courthouse where she used to serve.

She is, of course, a Female Of Color.

Read it.

“I think the customer has spoken. That’s the punchline,” said Jim Farley, the Chief Executive of Ford, as he unveiled a $5 billion annual loss – joining the wider car industry in facing up to a catastrophic collapse in the EV market.

Read it.

California imported a record amount of gasoline in November after major refinery closures tied to years of Golden State leaders imposing strict regulations, Bloomberg News reported Sunday.

Read it.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s newly appointed cabinet secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, is facing mounting criticism following reports that she pushed civil servants to join a “gender non-conforming book club” and devote substantial work time to diversity initiatives.

The allegations date back to her tenure as head of the Department for International Trade (DIT) between 2017 and 2021. Documents cited by The Telegraph suggest one employee was instructed to spend up to 20% of their working hours on “inclusivity” goals. These reportedly included promoting non-binary identities, encouraging colleagues to display preferred pronouns in email signatures, celebrating “non-binary awareness week,” and recruiting non-binary staff.

Joining a “gender non-conforming book club”—where officials read novels centred on intersex and transgender themes—was allegedly written into performance targets that influenced career progression.

The Foundry.

Having removed Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro in January, the Trump administration is now endeavoring to rebuild Venezuela after decades of corruption, neglect, and theft.

Under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela declined from what was once South America’s richest country and among the 20 wealthiest in the world to “a failed petrostate.” Between 2014 and 2021, Venezuela’s gross domestic product shrank by more than 70%.

Today, the country’s infrastructure is in tatters, its judicial system is riddled with corruption and cronyism, and, given Venezuela’s history of expropriating private assets, many foreign investors say the country is “uninvestable.”

Read it.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,” and New York City’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is learning just how right she was, and New Yorkers are going to pay a hefty price for it.

On Tuesday, a mere two months after declaring he would “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” Mamdani announced a $127 billion preliminary budget for fiscal year 2027, a $5 billion increase from the prior year, while simultaneously warning residents of “painful” tax hikes if state officials refused to bail him out to cover his socialist policies.

“That’s a city budget bigger than the state budgets of 47 states. Even the state government of Florida (population 23 million) spends less than New York City’s,” explains The Washington Post editorial board. “And the state still managed to attract hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in recent years.”

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving set of people.

Read it.

Hee Hee….

Read it.

The young, overeducated, underpaid, and disproportionately new arrivals that gave New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani his electoral margin of victory last November have no memory of how badly run and unlivable the city was before Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg cleaned it up. Judging by Mamdani’s first budget proposal, however, they are about to experience ideologically driven mismanagement firsthand.

After promising an explosion of new spending on free buses, free child care, and lower rents, Mamdani unveiled his first budget this week, which is a $127 billion plan for a city of 8.5 million people. To put that in perspective, the state of Florida has a population almost three times that of New York City, 23 million, and manages to provide government services for $10 billion less, $117 billion, than the Big Apple does.

Of course, Florida is run by Republicans.

Read it.

Legendary and liberal director Steven Spielberg has moved from California to Manhattan as some of the state’s wealthiest residents weigh leaving the Golden State ahead of a controversial wealth tax targeting billionaires that voters are set to consider.

The proposed 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, sponsored by the healthcare union Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time levy on California residents worth more than $1 billion, taxing the equivalent of 5% of their assets.

Supporters say it could generate about $100 billion in revenue for the state.

Spielberg spokeswoman Terry Press insisted that the move is not related to the tax, but had been “both long-planned and driven purely by his and [wife] Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” The New York Post reported Friday.

Press did not respond to questions about Spielberg’s views on the proposed tax.

The rats, having chewed numerous holes in the hull, flee the sinking ship.

UPDATE: Legendary director Steven Spielberg is latest billionaire to flee California in another blow to state (Matt Troutman/New York Post)

UPDATE: Steven Spielberg Flees California Amid Raging Wealth Tax Battle

Read it.

Federal officials are investigating Portland Public Schools in Oregon for alleged racial discrimination in the district’s Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) program, the U.S. Department of Education stated on Feb. 17.

“CBSE’s guiding principles pledge to ‘center Blackness unapologetically’ by offering black students year-round academic interventions in math and literacy, tutoring, food assistance, and transportation support,” the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) said in a statement.

“According to a complaint filed with OCR, a recent $1.2 billion bond includes tens of millions allocated for academic interventions, wraparound support, facilities, and family programs exclusively for black students, despite PPS [Portland Public Schools] data showing other student groups face similar or greater challenges.”

According to the department, PPS data from 2021–2022 showed “widespread academic struggles” among various racial groups.

Read it.

More than 240 million gallons of raw sewage has spilled into the Potomac River since a pipe burst last month, and the lackluster response of the DC Water Board is raising questions about the competency of those in charge.

Dr. Unique Morris-Hughes was appointed as Chair of the DC Water Board by the Democratic Mayor of Washington D.C. Muriel Bowser, despite lacking expertise in wastewater management or engineering.

Though Morris-Hughes has an extensive background in administering federally-funded workforce programs, that experience has done little to mitigate the effects of what may be the largest sewage spill in U.S. history.

Victor Davis Hanson.

The Left typically “pounces” on anyone daring to suggest that the Biden administration had green-lighted illegal immigration to gain new constituents for agendas that otherwise were without broad public support.

The Left smears critics of open borders as racist conspiracists spreading the “Great Replacement Theory.”

Yet for years, Democrats and leftists themselves had written triumphalist books with titles like The Emerging Democratic Majority. And often they crowed that “Demography is Destiny.”

A few left-wing globalists even boasted of a new borderless world, in which anyone could live anywhere he wished.

The Times (UK).

Sir Keir Starmer has appointed Dame Antonia Romeo as Britain’s first female cabinet secretary.

Romeo, the current permanent secretary at the Home Office, will replace Sir Chris Wormald, who was sacked by Starmer last week.

Downing Street said the appointment had been made after a “detailed due diligence process” overseen and approved by the first civil service commissioner.

The Feminist Party keeps on destroying the British government and British society.

This will end badly.

Watch it.

Tim Pool lays it out.

The Foundry.

Former CNN host Don Lemon has pleaded not guilty to federal charges for his role in the invasion of a Minnesota church last month, claiming he was merely covering the “protest” as a journalist, but the church’s pastor says Lemon was “in on the terror.”

Jonathan Parnell, the pastor of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, had been attempting to read aloud from the Bible when agitators opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement disrupted the Jan. 18 service. He wrote about the event for WORLD magazine Tuesday.

Parnell recalled that “several individuals scattered throughout the sanctuary rose together and, like a flash mob, converged with chants and clenched fists.” When the mob shouted, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” that led worshippers to flee, “fearing it was an active shooter situation.”

My first reaction to hearing “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” would be to shoot. But that’s me.

Read it.

Workers following weeks of debate and opposition from Jewish groups over their potential ban.

“After careful deliberation, IFSW members voted against this motion,” the National Association of Social Workers, the U.S. affiliate of the International Federation of Social Workers, said in a statement.

The vote to suspend or expel the Israeli union on Wednesday would have required 75% of the union’s 67 voting member nations to vote for the measures.

The vote stemmed from a complaint issued by the Irish, Spanish and Greek affiliates of the federation, who accused the Israeli union of failing to seek an exemption from mandatory military service for its members.

Read it.

This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) joined the many Californians now seeking their fortune elsewhere. The difference is that Newsom is planning to come back to California, even as billionaires, investors, and companies flee his state for greener pastures.

Newsom and Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were selling a brave new world that looked a lot like the broken old world. It was an ironic moment. They were addressing countries at the Munich Security Conference that had previously destroyed their economies through socialist and far-left policies.

The rush of liberal Democratic officeholders to Europe was telling.

A new poll shows that a record 58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.”

But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.

Occasional-Cortex never opens her mouth except to stick her foot in it.

Read it.

Eilish’s look of constant eyes-half-closed makes her look like a dullard.

At this year’s Grammy awards, pop artist Billie Eilish made national headlines not for her music, but for a political statement wrapped in an award acceptance speech.

After thanking her supporters and fellow artists, she added, “As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything, but, that no one is illegal on stolen land.”

This comment echoed two familiar positions of modern, progressive left-wing ideology: first, that the United States should allow unrestricted immigration and, second, that Americans are living on land illegitimately taken from Native Americans.

While it may be tempting to dismiss such rhetoric as another example of celebrity activism at an awards show, doing so would miss a more troubling reality. The idea that America is fundamentally “stolen land” is not confined to award show stages, it has become increasingly embedded into the schools that teach America’s children.

Read it.

The Polish Defense Minister has cancelled a supplementary training course for military personnel that focused on “gender perspectives in military operations.” The move follows criticism from the conservative opposition and alleged discontent among soldiers, which prompted W?adys?aw Kosiniak-Kamysz’s change of plans.

The topic of supplementary gender training was proposed by the chairwoman of the Council for Women’s Military Service and approved by the defense ministry’s human resources department, the ministry stated on Monday.

The Foundry.

Anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement activists in Minneapolis are setting up blockades.

They’re demanding ID from drivers.

In short, they’re setting up their own borders—against America’s laws and law enforcement.

It’s not the first time “protesters” have done this.

The Foundry.

Oh, ya think?

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Nothing is more inevitable than the formula “Elect a socialist => Taxes get raised”.

No socialist ever lowered taxes.

No socialist ever lowered government spending.

UPDATE: New Yorkers Report Warmth Of Collectivism Feels Strangely Like Crushing Tax Hike (Babyulon Bee)

UPDATE: Mamdani says tax hike is needed to stop ‘fiscal crisis.’ Critics aren’t buying it.

The Foundry.

A Minnesota activist group encouraging protests against immigration enforcement will host a training to teach attendees to let guilty criminals walk.

Defend the 612 will instruct viewers of the Feb. 23 virtual “Jury Nullification Training” on how to use false jury verdicts to fight “unjust laws and political persecution,” according to an event description on its website first reported by Alpha News.

The Trump administration has charged hundreds of people with impeding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations around the country, including at Minneapolis protests during ICE’s enforcement surge in the Twin Cities that is now winding down after weeks of immigration arrests.

Defend the 612 did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

On today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes.

These students were not cynical, but adaptive. In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe.

The result is not conviction but compliance. And beneath that compliance, something vital is lost.

The Telegraph (UK).s

A gunman who identified as a woman killed two people and injured three others at a high school hockey match in Rhode Island on Monday.

The 56-year-old, thought to have been the father of one of the hockey players, shot a woman and her child in the stands at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena before turning the gun on himself.

Tina Goncalves, the Pawtucket police chief, told a press conference on Monday night that the gunman used the name Roberta Esposito.

“We have identified the person, the suspect, by a birth name. The birth name was Robert Dorgan,” said Ms Goncalves. “We have also learned that the person does go by the name of Roberta and also uses the last name of Esposito.”

‘Trans’ people are crazy. Crazy people are dangerous. Avoid crazy people.

Tim Pool covers it.

Read it.

There are growing calls in France for violent left-wing activists to be classified as terrorists following the death of 23-year-old Quentin, who died from his injuries caused by a brutal attack in Lyon on Thursday.

The political world in France and beyond has been left horrified by this act of violence. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the “far left” was “clearly” behind the attack and pointed to the possible involvement of the ‘antifascist’ La Jeune Garde group, founded by leftist MP Raphaël Arnault.

Read it.

The Spanish government has asked the European Commission to help facilitate the redistribution of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands to other parts of Europe as part of a broader package of measures aimed at easing the demands placed on the archipelago.

Apparently the Spanish government has about the same opinion of the intelligence of the EU government that we do.

Read it.

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion.

Althought an affection for the Aggregation Fallacy persists in certain quarters, even unto old age (yeah, I’m looking at you, ‘economists’…).

There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.

…

Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure.

A more elegant description of the Democrat party I’ve never enc0untered.

Read it.

The British countryside is “too white.” At least that is, according to Defra—the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, as reported earlier this month in these pages. Following a report in 2019, National Landscapes—a charity mostly funded by Defra—has been launching outreach programs aimed at encouraging ethnic minorities to break the stranglehold of “white communities,” “white spaces,” and “white environments.”

The initiatives focus on ‘people,’ ‘pubs,’ and ‘pets’—the three P’s of rural racism, surely? In terms of people, regrettably, the British countryside appears to cater to “white English culture”—which obviously has to change. Pubs traditionally involve drinking, which is unwelcoming to some communities. And pets—specifically dogs, are encouraged to be kept on a tighter leash, because Muslims do not like them. It’s worth pinching yourself and realising that this is not April 1st; this is real, and taxpayer money has been spent to reach these conclusions.

Neither is this Mother Nature’s first rodeo in terms of racism allegations. Only last year, it was reported that the British countryside was “overwhelmingly white” and was in need of more halal food. A year prior, rural England found itself a “racist colonial” white space, according to wildlife charities.

Britain is full of white people, and there’s a reason for that.

Britain is undergoing the most extensive invasion of foreigners since Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and there’s a reason for that, too.

Ponder the result of that last invasion, and see the future.

CNN, THE Voice of the Crust.

The Trump administration delivered a deadly blow to longstanding US climate policy on Thursday, finalizing rules that revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate pollution.

No, it didn’t. It revoked the EPA’s excuse for over-regulation in the name of preventing climate pollution.

First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government’s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country’s contribution to the global crisis.

When you’ ve said Obama Administration, you’ve said it all.

“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy “disastrous.”

Trump said repealing the regulations “has nothing to do with public health.”

“This was all a scam, a giant scam,” Trump said on Thursday. “This was a rip off of the country by Obama and Biden.”

Indeed it was. The EPA is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Read it.

into the position of Virginia’s governor. In spite of her record as a progressive, people believed that she had gone through a major transformation and had become a moderate. Or, they were your typical low-information voters, and simply paid no attention.

Don’t say ‘low information voters’; say ‘low brain voters’, which is more accurate.

The chief defect is that the vote of a moron and the vote of a genius are worth exactly the same.

Read it.

“The inmates are running the asylum.”

There’s an expression we’ve all heard, particularly in more recent times.  According to TheFreeDictionary.com, it means the following: The people least capable of running a group or organization are now in charge.  Said especially when the result is total chaos or calamity.  Example: the Biden administration.

Okay, that last sentence wasn’t in the dictionary, but it could have been.  In any case, inmates running the asylum is something that could fairly be said about many of our cities, states and institutions these days.  (See, Minneapolis, California, public education, science, medicine, sports, Hollywood, et al.)

And then there’s New York City, one of the biggest “asylums” of all.  It just elected as mayor a guy who is in love with the most miserable, failed and murderous ideology in history: collectivism.  But neither he nor the people who elected him are much impressed by historical statistics that tallied up something in the neighborhood of one hundred million corpses that were the cost of his beloved collectivization.  Those were just the proverbial “cracked eggs” necessary to make the proverbial “omelet.”

And we can be sure that a misguided collectivist like Zohran Mamdani is not going to make wise personnel choices regarding the governance of the city he has so foolishly been put in charge of.  Case in point: Mamdani has appointed Stanley Richards, an ex-con, to run the city’s — guess what? — Department of Correction.  So . . . inmate running the asylum.

“Stanley will make history in this role as the first-ever formerly incarcerated person to serve as commissioner,” said the mayor.  “I will turn to Stanley as we work to build a city where justice is at the heart of our corrections system.”

So, another historical first!  Yay!  But when he uses the word “justice,” what exactly does he mean?  Well, of course, he means “social justice,” and there’s your cracked-egg recipe for disaster.

The Telegraph (UK).

The transgender teenager responsible for Canada’s worst school shooting in nearly 40 years struggled with his physical appearance and was fixated with guns and drugs.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old from the remote town of Tumbler Ridge who was born a male, wrote online about his 6ft frame and his desire to be a “petite” woman.

He shot dead his mother, Jennifer Strang, and his 11-year-old stepbrother on Tuesday afternoon before walking to his former school 10 minutes away and opening fire on pupils and staff, killing eight before taking his own life.

Police initially described the shooter as a “gunperson” and a “female in a dress”. They later revealed that Van Rootselaar had begun transitioning at the age of 12 and publicly identified as female.

‘Trans’ people are crazy. Crazy people are dangerous. That’s pretty much all that needs to be said.

The Telegraph (UK).

To say that grammar schools are competitive would be a gross understatement: with more than 30 candidates for each place at some schools, getting a place for your child now requires military-style levels of strategy and ruthlessness.

There are stories of children as young as six being privately tutored for the 11+ exams, and families applying for schools hundreds of miles away (some as far away as China). The average house price in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, which is in the catchment area of several outstanding grammar schools, now exceeds £1.1m.

Grammar schools are no longer just about serving local talent; they are a national – and increasingly international – race for an elite educational opportunity. One that is, crucially, free.

Free because they are paid for by the taxpayers. Yet another thing that in America would be private but in Britain is controlled by the government.

Many have been quick to blame the under-representation of white children in grammar schools on anti-white discrimination, but the idea that entrance is awarded on the basis of some sort of ethnic favouritism is nonsense.

Firstly, grammar schools are often located in quite demographically diverse areas. Secondly, students sit the same test regardless of background. For most schools, there is no pass threshold, so places are simply allocated in descending order of exam mark (although around two thirds of grammar schools have policies prioritising candidates from disadvantaged homes or on free school meals).

Apparently, these people don’t even read what they write, or are so steeped in cognitive dissonance that obvious inconsistencies don’t even register.

Read it.

Yesterday, the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

From a financial perspective, each Seahawks player will take home $178,000—payment for that particular game.

Now, given that the Superbowl was played in California—and the players earned money playing in the game— it’s reasonable for the state of California to tax that specific income.

But that’s not the way California looks at it.

Instead, the state will go back in time, all the way to the start of the NFL season in September, and take their ‘fair share’ of the players’ ENTIRE salaries over the entire season.

Read it.

According to everyone from Sen. Patty Murray to the International Press Institute, breaking into a church and interrupting a religious service is “First Amendment activity”. But if preventing other people from praying is “First Amendment activity” then what is the church service itself?

First Amendment activity entails expressing your opinion, your belief or your religious practice, but the moment your actions interfere with and prevent someone else from engaging in their expression or activity while they are within their space, it’s an assault on their rights.

The Left has normalized attacking churches and synagogues, like Adas Torah in Los Angeles, ‘occupying’ campuses and public buildings, even vandalizing them and assaulting employees and worshipers, while describing this vandalism and thuggery as “First Amendment activity”.

Read it.

Latvia has taken a firm stand against the European Union’s new Migration and Asylum Pact, openly rejecting both the relocation of migrants and the financial penalties foreseen under the scheme.

Speaking during the annual foreign policy debate in the Latvian parliament on January 29th, Foreign Minister Baiba Braže made it clear that Riga will not comply with the forced migration policies imposed from Brussels.

“When it comes to migration, which has been the subject of much discussion, I think the government’s position is absolutely clear: no to illegal migration. We have strengthened border protection,” Braže said, stressing that Latvia will neither accept new migrants nor pay for them. Under the new pact, member states must either take in migrants from other countries or contribute around €20,000 per rejected migrant. For Latvia, both options are unacceptable.

The Antiplanner.

Twenty-seven percent of Portland-area offices remain vacant, according to commercial real estate firm Colliers. That’s a slight decline from the previous year, but vacancies in downtown Portland are 34 percent and rising. Nationally, downtown office vacancies are only 19 percent.

“Portland’s prolonged commitment to remote work, ongoing concerns around tenant safety, and high tax rates compared to nearby locales hamper the downtown office market and cloud occupancy projections,” says Colliers. Problems with homelessness and drug use are supposedly declining, but that hasn’t stopped restaurants from recently closing.

My friends who still live in Portland say it is still a great place to live as long as you avoid downtown and a few other areas. However, TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, hitched its future to downtown by using it as a hub for most of its bus and light-rail routes. Light-rail ridership is currently running about 58 percent of pre-pandemic numbers, while bus is doing better (but still less than the national average) at 75 percent.

Read it.

Guardian author Alex Clark wants the world to “move beyond” GDP as a measure of wellbeing. The experiment should start with The Guardian.

The Foundry.

Agitators opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement made quite a ruckus when they invaded a Minnesota church in the middle of a service last month, but they weren’t the first to disrupt Americans during worship.

The Justice Department has charged nine people in connection with the interruption of a service at Cities Church in St. Paul last month, notably including former CNN host Don Lemon. According to the indictment, the agitators coopted the service, chanting activist slogans and preventing worshippers from leaving the church building.

The agitators said they targeted Cities Church because one of the church’s pastors works with ICE. Now, they face charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (which also protects houses of worship) and the Ku Klux Klan Act (which criminalizes attempts to interfere with Americans’ constitutional rights).

The Cities Church invasion drew nationwide attention, yet this did not represent the first time agitators disrupted a church service.

Read it.

A good education is said to be the best investment, and New York City‘s top private schools hope people keep adhering to that adage as tuition surges to new highs.

The annual cost of attendance at eight of the city’s most elite schools will eclipse the $70,000 mark for the 2026-27 academic year, charging more than even the country’s best colleges, according to a new analysis published by Bloomberg.

All this to get the same Grievance Studies non-education indoctrination they could get at PS 527 for free.

I guess it’s the prospect of their kids rubbing shoulders with less-Woke and less-affluent people that impels this expenditure.

The Verge, purportedly a technical publication, actually a Voice of the Crust.

How thousands of 3D-printed whistles are derailing ICE.

Only the Left celebrates conspiracy to impede law enforcement and the degeneration of their own culture.

The Times (UK).

No white male need apply.

Read it.

Until regulators and policymakers confront the reality that these projects are wiping out key predators in the natural food chain, it is dishonest to market this form of power as environmentally benign.

Read it.

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has appeared at a summit along with autocratic and undemocratic leaders from Georgia and Burundi to talk about protecting citizens and democracy. Fascinating. It is very revealing.

tirades against alleged techno-oligarchs. However, the evidence shows that beneath the supposedly “noble” goal of protecting minors, there is an agenda that includes the introduction of digital identities, biometric control for all, and prior censorship accompanied by state surveillance.

It is obvious to everyone that the objective is to silence independent media.

If the digital control law had been implemented in 2018, the corruption scandals surrounding the Socialist government would never have come to light. Koldo García, accused of embezzlement, would still be a member of the board of public train company Renfe today; Jose Luis Ábalos, under investigation for various corruption scandals, would still be minister; Salazar, investigated for sexual assault, would be an exemplary socialist; Venezuela’s dictatorship’s Delcy Rodriguez would be a VIP nighttime visitor; and the Socialist party’s number two, Santos Cerdán, would still be “Super Santos.” For Sánchez, all those cases were “disinformation” and “fake news” from the “far right”; do not forget it.

Seems to be a trend among socialists these days.

Gates of Vienna.

This post started out as an examination of a phenomenon that is not at all controversial in the little niche of cyberspace that I inhabit: the essentially religious nature of the extremely violent rhetoric that currently dominates our political culture. The frothing homicidal madness is more prominent on the Left than on the Right, but both sides of the political spectrum are prone to it. It’s all but impossible to read about political issues without encountering at every step the fervent wish that one’s opponents should die for their opinions, preferably painfully.

I say “read”, but I assume the same is true of videos. I tend to avoid them if I can, partially due to my hearing difficulties, but it seems unlikely that video discussions are any less likely to descend into frothing madness.