Cannabis Addiction Draws Drugmakers in Search for a Treatment  But I thought weed wasn’t supposed to be addictive? Did they lie to us?

Could Brain Training Help Address Police Brutality?  (Wired ‘Science’) How about criminal brutality?

US Senators Fly To Taiwan, Chinese Media Loses Its Mind

NYT’s Mara Gay: Seeing American Flags on D-Day Anniversary Was ‘Disturbing’

Were Your Ancestors Oppressed, Possibly Entitling You To Reparations? Take The Quiz! Babylon Bee.

Apple’s Chinese wind power partner linked to Uyghur forced labor programs

Read it.

Nearly a year later, Umbrella Man has not been arrested. Charges have not been brought against him. Umbrella Man remains at large. Libor did not identify him in his July 28 story because he has not been charged.

Officer Christensen’s account of events was taken at face value in the numerous news accounts that immediately followed the Star Tribune story, but it is ludicrous. Spectator USA’s pseudonymous Cockburn conducted a reality check in “The curious Umbrella Man myth.” Subhead: “Cockburn hasn’t seen this many people excited about an umbrella since Mary Poppins hit theaters in 1964.” Cockburn drily noted in July 2020: “Cockburn would have thought that the carnage of the past month would render one man’s window smashing a historical footnote. But instead, the opposite has happened, for the usual 2020 reason: it is politically useful.”

I thought Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was responsible for the key event that led to the destruction wrought throughout the Twin Cities following the death of George Floyd. The key event was the abandonment of the Third Precinct headquarters on May 28.

Mayor Frey too remains at large. His dereliction was not illegal.

ZMan follows the scent.

Now that the Covid panic is finally winding down, it is a good time to look at how it quickly became a religion for many people. It is fair to assume that most people looked at Covid as a blend of public health and public policy. They do not know much about either topic, so they trusted what they were told. Others, however, embraced Covid and the rules around it like a new religion. The rituals and statistics quickly became the central point around which they organized their lives.

One of the first signs of this happening were the personal testimonials. By the late spring of last year, the Covidian had stories to tell. “I know of four people who have died from Covid this month” was a popular one. Despite the statistical improbability, millions were telling us about their personal war with Covid. The victims became younger as the age realty became apparent. Finally at the end, we are getting stories about the unvaccinated dying despite being healthy.

…

It is not an accident that the same people who tote grimy canvas sacks to the grocery store were the first to embrace the rituals of Covid. All civic religions in the modern age come with these piety symbols, usually with a corporate logo. Public television stations made millions giving members tote bags with the logo on them. Note that American sports teams quickly rushed out branded face masks. In a world of strangers, displaying your corporate overlord is important.

Read it.

In a story about Dr. Aruna Khilanani, we learn that no matter how many degrees a person has, he or she can become a purveyor of mental illness and hatred. Dr. Khilanani provided a lecture for Yale University, and her sickness was on display for everyone to hear. Bari Weiss received access to the doctor’s talk and you can hear the whole lecture here. Essentially the doctor shared with her audience her unscientific, racist, and hateful attitudes towards white people in general. She felt no need to defend her positions, but instead criticized Bari Weiss, who received access to the taped lecture before the doctor did. Judging from the quality of the recording, it’s possible that it was recorded by someone who attended the event.

Read it.

Everybody is talking about some lady psychoanalyst of Pakistani descent who gave a speech at Yale Law School on “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind” that sounds like some 1980s Eddie Murphy routine about “Kill My Landlord” or “Kill the White People.”

The UN’s anti-racism mission excludes Jews

The UN’s anti-racism mission excludes Jews

Microsoft Blocks Images Of Tiananmen Square Protests On Massacre Anniversary

MSNBC’s Williams Whines About Joe Manchin: What Makes Him a Democrat?

A Middle Class Rebellion Against Progressives is Gaining Steam

Medium sees employee exits after CEO publishes ‘culture memo’ The Big Sort continues. Eventually each company will only have employees who share a political ideology.

NYC’s Soho is unrecognizable after being covered in GRAFFITI as cops struggle with soaring crime

Hate crimes, shooting incidents in New York City have surged since last year, NYPD data show (CNN)

The GOP should think twice before it tries to mess with elections (Washington Post)

Tiananmen Square: The Massacre The Chinese Regime Tries To Erase

Disgraced Brian Williams Cheers ‘Bravery’ of Pro-Abortion Message of Valedictory Speaker

‘I’m Not F*cking Paying For That’: Bill Maher Has Some Savage Words For Liberals Who Want To Make College Free

‘Tank Man’ Image Search Showed No Results On Bing Due To Human Error, Microsoft Claims  Yeah, a very progressive human.

YouTube Deleting Dislikes from White House Channel

Open Season on Catholics in Paris

Are They Activists or Journalists? CNN Pushes for Gun Control With Daily Shooting Tracker  All while carefully not Noticing that most of the shooters are NAMs.

A Modest Compendium of Recent Assaults on the Laws and Traditions of our Nation

Brian Williams Pushes Ad Likening Antifa Terrorists to American Patriots

The US has a problem with guns. Here’s what to know. (CNN)

The once-beautiful streets San Francisco ruined

Next mayor wants NYC to be even more of a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal immigrants

DOE assigns top Manhattan students to troubled schools — and now parents want out

Facebook to Bar Politicians From Posting Content Deemed ‘Deceptive’: Report  That would eliminate nearly all Democrats.

China’s Belt And Road Being Built With Forced Labor

California Teachers’ Union Activist Has History of Anti-Semitic Posts  My, what a surprise.

Hong Kong cracks down on Tiananmen commemorations, arrests vigil organiser

ABC Reporter Shocked Pro-Abortion Teen Isn’t Getting More Hate From Right  Unlike the Left, the Right aren’t mostly haters. Any girl with a last name for a first name is trying (or her parents are tryingO to be upper class, and the upper class is Woke — no surprises here.

The Media Proclaim Themselves ‘Infrastructure’

Crushing The “Struggling Women Can’t Work Due To Childcare Crisis” Narrative Once And For All

‘It’s Just Reprehensible’: Connecticut Representative Rejects Bill Declaring Racism A Public Health Crisis in State

Here’s How Wealthy Some Of America’s Most Prominent Socialists Are  Being an obnoxious socialist actually pays pretty well.

Black Lives Matter Leader Resigns but Organization’s Radical, Marxist Agenda Continues

CBS in ‘Awe’ of Abortion Activist’s Fight Against ‘So-Called’ Heartbeat Bill  And I’m sure the girl TOTALLY didn’t expect or want this to happen. Stand by for the Ivy League colleges lining up to offer her scholarships.

Cornell University To Proceed With Controversial China Partnership

Nigeria Suspends Twitter After Twitter Suspends Its President

Severian is delightfully dyspeptic today.

As y’all undoubtedly know, mental illness is something of a badge of honor in the ivory tower. Screw HIPAA; most people in academia are willing, indeed eager, to tell you all about their mental problems. The students mostly do it to get out of classwork, of course — the minute you get the letter from Student Services, you can go ahead and start filing the “incomplete” paperwork with the registrar — but grad students and professors collect DSM diagnoses and SSRI prescriptions like the Japanese collect Pokemon and used panties.

Given that, and given how lunatic professors’ actual beliefs are, there’s pretty much nothing you can’t get away with saying in the ivory tower if you play your cards right. In much the same way Jon Stewart rode his “clown nose on / clown nose off” act to adulation from the smart set, you can say whatever you want if you keep it ambiguously crazy. (You know how it goes — if you agree with Stewart, he’s doing straight political commentary; but if you disagree with him to the point where he might lose sponsors, c’mon man, he’s just a tv comedian).

Read it.

San Francisco is coming undone. In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed.

In the city’s Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.

The city has become a web of contradictions. There are thousands of new millionaires and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness.

The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa. Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.

The GOP Can Win Without Waging War on Democracy (New York Magazine) But the Democrats can’t, given their apparent commitment to vote fraud.

American democracy is about to show if it can save itself (CNN)

RI mom says she could face lawsuit after demanding answers on CRT curriculum in elementary school

Historian Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The 2nd Amendment (NPR)

‘Time To Lay Off The Potatoes’: Glenn Greenwald Blasts Brian Stelter Over CNN’s Low Ratings

Drivers Of The New UFO Narrative Keep Absurdly Saying They Could Be Dangerous ETs

MSNBC to Audience: Shut Up, We’ll Tell You What to Think on Transgender Athletes

Nets Ignore Home of GOP Rep. Mace Getting Vandalized By Leftists

Ocasio-Cortez — The Socialist Who Owns A Tesla — Gets Roasted On Social Media For Not Helping Grandma In Puerto Rico

Fulton County Election Officials Sure Are Acting Like They Have Something To Hide

Pennsylvania Republicans Say They Want a 2020 Ballot Audit

Media Hype Leftist Doomsday ‘Scholars’ Predicting End of Democracy

‘Weirdly Optimistic’ Chuck Todd Cheers for Dems in Redistricting Battle

Celebs Show Their Overwhelming Support for High School Graduation Speech on Killing Babies

Ocasio-Cortez Says Building Less Jails Will Reduce The Number Of People Who Go To Jail  And I suppose making more people poor will reduce income inequality….

Volunteer Snitches? Twitter Launches Birdwatch to Fact-Check Tweets

CNN Host Says Valedictorian’s Speech That Went After Texas Abortion Bill ‘Didn’t Feel Political’  So biased he can’t even see straight.

Read it.

Buckhead is a well-to-do district in Atlanta with around 86,000 residents. It has not been exempt from Atlanta’s crime wave (homicides in Atlanta are up 59 percent from this time last year, when the city ended up with its highest total in two decades). One new Buckhead resident was victimized by break-ins to her vehicles twice within a period of a few weeks. Then, there was a shootout on her street.

In response to this crime surge, some residents and business leaders are pushing for Buckhead to become its own municipality. This would enable residents to use their tax dollars to take effective crime prevention measures, something the city is failing to do.

Severian is delightfully dyspeptic today.

The Z Man’s essay today is on electric cars, which prompted me to comment with a story from my professing days. You’ve heard me say quite often that the nicest car in the faculty lot always belongs to the wildest-eyed Marxist. Given what we know about the stiffness of the “most insane Marxist” competition among eggheads, it seems to follow that the faculty lot must look like a rap video — Bugattis and Bentleys and Maybachs everywhere. But that’s not the case, comrades.*

Not because academics are worried about anything so prole as hypocrisy — as we know, cognitive dissonance only affects the Dirt People — but because eggheads operate on a different scale of values. Bentleys etc. are what those people drive — we all know it, but we can’t say it — so professors have to kick it bobo style.** Thus the faculty lot is filled with Priuses (Prii?), Teslas, and so forth. Back when The Simpsons was funny, it had a throwaway joke about Ed Begley Jr. driving a car so eco-friendly, it was powered entirely by his own sense of self-regard. If they actually marketed those, every professor in America would have one… but since they don’t, the “eco-pimp my ride” competition continues unabated.

Victor Davis Hanson.

During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded them.

They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into rest homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable.

Their rules of prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask-wearing, or violent protesting hinged on political grounds. Their spending bills on “infrastructure” and “health care” were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements.

Read it.

The Big Tech social media giants are having to rethink their policy of censoring anybody who suggests that COVID originated from a lab near Wuhan, rather than through some local chowing down on sweet and sour pangolin testicles. This is because it now seems quite possible, if not probable, that the virus was kindly bestowed upon us by Chinese scientists. I don’t know either way, but I would suggest that a suspicion that the virus was man-made, given the proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, scarcely qualifies as a lunatic conspiracy theory to be banned from public utterance. But that’s what the Big Tech companies decided — almost certainly for political reasons. They did not like Donald Trump making such aspersions, nor his tendency to refer to COVID as ‘Chinese flu’ (because it came from China) and still less ‘Kung flu’.

By and large the major liberal institutions concurred: the utterly hopeless World Health Organization refused to entertain the suggestion that the virus had leaked from the WIV and the major liberal broadcasters in the US scarcely covered the suggestion at all. A couple of leftish American journos were invited into the WIV and marveled at how clean everything was, what nice space suits everyone wore and how people definitely weren’t throwing chunks of COVID out of the windows every few minutes, and thus gave it a clean bill of health. The idea thus got pushed into the conspiracy theory dungeon, a realm of racists and reactionaries. The banning of this idea, that the virus was man-made and leaked from a Chinese lab, was not because it was wrong, necessarily, but because it came from the political right and challenged the liberal view. How kind it is of them, then, to think again.

After Touting Texas Dem Stunt, ABC Decries Gov. Abbott Withholding Pay

City On Fire: Over Half Of LA County Blazes Caused by Homeless  Time to leave.

Chinese State Media Urges Preparing for Nuclear War With US

War Memorials Vandalized Over Memorial Day Weekend, Police Say

‘It’s Scary To Me Now’: Longtime Los Angeles Resident Goes On Viral Tirade Blasting Homeless Crisis  Time to leave.

Washington Post finally recognizes that Portland has a violence problem

Squad Acolyte Jamaal Bowman Cozies Up To Controversial Turkish Advocacy Group

Willful blindness about the America’s violent crime wave

FRANTIC MSNBC Cries: How Can Feds Overturn State Election Laws?  By ignoring the Constitution, obviously.

California Teachers’ Unions Embrace Anti-Semitic BDS Movement

CNN’s Keilar Loses It on TX Republican: ‘Why Are You Ok’ With ‘Suppressing’ Black Voters?  Because those black voters don’t exist.

Cuomo to Host $10,000-a-Ticket Campaign Fundraiser in NYC  Looks as if his base is stupid rich people. (Or maybe crooked rich people.)

Pandering to the .6%: NPR Partners With Gay Lobby To Update Gender Language

Gun Sales Continue to Surge Amid Fear of Violence, Crime  Gee, I wonder why.

Psychologists Hope to Combat Antisemitism as an Illness

‘I’m With You Joy:’ Chris Matthews Rants Republican Voter Laws Turning Country Into ‘Autocracy’

Hillary Clinton Praises Teen Who Secretly Switched Valedictorian Speech To Bash Texas Abortion Law

Kay C. James.

As a black conservative for more than 40 years, I’m an expert on being canceled. I was canceled by the political left long before cancel culture was all the rage. If there’s one thing liberals and leftists dislike more than a conservative, it’s a black conservative.

Liberal America doesn’t want to hear from African American conservatives because we go counter to their narrative that black people needed liberal saviors, especially ones who come bearing gifts of more government.

But we weren’t just canceled by liberals. For decades, liberals worked to put a wedge between black conservatives and our own communities. As a result, many African American leaders wouldn’t invite us to the table and wouldn’t allow us to offer our ideas to help solve problems in our own communities. We weren’t considered “authentically black”—whatever that is.

Read it.

Last year, Davon Brown, a former fashion model turned homeless activist, conned his way into an LA Ritz-Carlton luxury suite alongside Jed Parriot, the son of a producer on Grey’s Anatomy.

t was May Day, Brown was wearing a blazer and sunglasses. The former fashion model and son of a wealthy producer were there to ‘occupy’ a luxury suite for the homeless. And demand that the city take over hotel rooms and hand them out to the population of junkie vagrants.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti held a press conference and assured Brown that he would get him a room. When the son of the Grey’s Anatomy producer was asked how to spell his name, he sneered, ““Parriott, like Marriott—which has 900 empty rooms.”

Jed, a Democratic Socialists of America activist, appears to live in a $1.3 million home in Silver Lake owned by a trust controlled by his parents: a prolific TV producer and a TV actress.

Just good clean fun, right? Kids being kids?

Brianna Moore, a talented 18-year-old concert violinist with offers from MIT, decided to get involved in the summer of protests. After a series of Black Lives Matter marches, she joined the homeless cause, and died in an Echo Park tent after taking cocaine laced with fentanyl.

Think of it as evolution in action. Natural Selection doesn’t care about your good intentions, only about what you do.

10th Walgreens to close since 2019 in San Francisco  SF risks becoming a ‘drug store desert’ due to rampant shoplifting and government inaction.

NY Times Memorial Day Editorial: Social Gatherings Unpatriotic (Except Protests?)

Silly David Brooks on PBS: ‘I’m No Progressive,’ But I Endorse Biden’s $6 Trillion Budget  He’ll do until a ‘real’ progressive comes along.

Murder Has Quintupled in Portland  Time to leave.

Time Magazine Takes Chinese Cash To Promote Controversial Drone Business

Retired Police Officer Goes After Jeff Bezos Over ‘Blue Lives Murder’ Products On Amazon

Showtime Character Throws Drink at Crucifix, Yells “F**k You God!”

Crybullies

Trump Telling Allies He Expects To Be ‘Reinstated’ By August, NYT Reporter Claims  Gee, that sure sounds like a lie to me.

Antifa Vandalizes GOP Congresswoman’s Home

Disney Channel Classic ‘The Proud Family’ Getting Woke Reboot Featuring Interracial Gay Dads

Apple launches new Pride music page celebrating LGBTQ+ artists

Belarus has temporarily banned most of its citizens from leaving  The very fingerprint of a totalitarian state.

Columbia Journalism Review Sets New Standards For Biased Reporting

In The Wake Of Anti-Semitic Assaults, Democrats Call Out Islamophobia  The problem isn’t Islamophobia but Islamophilia.

Our Garbage Media Strikes Again

Amid Recall Effort, Paramount Pictures Shells Out $40,000 To Help Gavin Newsom Remain Governor

Democrat Pilot And Republican Co-Pilot Argue Over How Fast They Should Fly Plane Into Ground  Babylon Bee.

China Allows Families To Have Up To 3 Children Amid Dramatic Drop In Birth Rates  That’s very white of them.

‘Blue Lives Murder’ Merchandise For Sale On Amazon

New York Times Opinion Editor Denies They’re Progressives or Partisans And if you believe that one they’ll tell you another one.

Woman Catches State Police Attaching Tracker to Her Car, Now They Want It Back  So give it back. Use a hammer on it first, though.

Read it.

In order to carry out the business of increasing property values, the HOA enacts and enforces a series of rules designed to ensure that neighborhood standards of conformity are met. You?ve probably noticed that HOA neighborhoods tend to have dozens or hundreds of substantially identical homes. This is by design. Conformity is easier to enforce in similar homes. Customization of any kind becomes easier to spot.

The HOA will limit what color you can paint your house, how many people can live in it, how many – and what type of – vehicles you can park in the driveway, how often you need to paint the exterior, where you place your garbage dumpsters, and the condition of your landscaping. They can also prevent you from adding on to the house, or maintaining out-buildings, like tool sheds or a tree house for your kids. And that?s just the general stuff.

Once you?ve been prohibited from doing something with your property, or made to do something you don?t want to, you begin to get a clearer picture of what?s really going on.

To add insult to injury, should you be found to be in violation the HOA has the legal right to impose legally enforceable fines on you, that are automatically attached to your property.

They give you a very good look at America under Communism, with Karens in charge. You don’t want that.

Sarah Hoyt says what we all know to be true.

Prove to me that we’re not being run by a cabal of our enemies. Prove it.

Watch it.

In this special edition of The American Mind Podcast, Michael Anton, former Trump official and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is joined by Curtis Yarvin, formerly “Mencius Moldbug” of the successful blog “Unqualified Reservations.” The two debate what to do if and when the current regime crumbles under the weight of its own incompetence. Yarvin makes his case for a Big Tech CEO-turned-monarch.

Yarvin is one of the most outrageous people you will ever encounter. Unqualified Reservations, although now no longer current, is easily found archived on the Internet; it’s lots of fun.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data.

In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked according to logical and even “scientific” principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological- or myth-driven zealots.

Not now. “Progressives,” especially the media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else.

What is critical race theory, and why do Republicans want to ban it in schools? (Washington Post) Damage control from the Narrative Media.

Younger Latinos confront immigrant parents on race, Black history (NBC News)

Dalton parents enraged over ‘masturbation’ videos for first graders

Students sign fake petition to cancel Memorial Day, call it a celebration of ‘US imperialism’

DC students eagerly sign fake petition to cancel Memorial Day over ‘American Imperialism’

Anniversary of the Mostly Peaceful Protests Intensifying

New York Mayoral Race Tests Dem Stance on Defunding Police

Italian Court Fined For “Playing Down Gender-Based Violence”

In Mexico, Cartels Are Hunting Down Police at Their Homes

New York Times Channels Leftists Upset at Biden’s Alleged ‘Silence’ on Abortion

Thousands March in Colombia’s Bogota to Demand End to Protests, Roadblocks  Not the Babylon Bee.

‘Blue’s Clues’ Releases Song Featuring Same-Sex Couples, Transgender Children And Drag Queens

Read it.

A Stockton, California high school principal was escorted off of school property by law enforcement officers after his controversial graduation speech, telling the crowd, “Successful people stomp on each other,” on Thursday.

Stagg High School Principal Ben Nakamura gave the graduating class of 2021 a lot to think about in his commencement speech Thursday morning. While the school board said they got many complaints saying Nakamura inappropriately used the graduation as an opportunity to complain about personal issues, some community members have said it was unfair that he was removed from the graduation.

In an email to Newsweek, Melinda Meza, a spokesperson for Stockton Unified School District, said they “received several complaints from parents that the principal at Stagg High School used the graduation as a platform for his personal grievances.”

California.

Oregon Is Proof That Leftist Politics Ultimately Lead To Tyranny And Decay

CNN, AP, Daily Beast headlines refer to illegal immigrant convicted in Mollie Tibbetts murder as ‘farm worker’

Virginia teacher placed on leave after speech disputing ‘biological boy can be a girl and vice versa’

NBC Ignores Mollie Tibbetts’ Murderer Found Guilty; ABC Hides Immigration Status

Read it.

YOU COULD fill a small library with books on right-wing populism. Some authors argue that these movements emerged in reaction to relatively recent events, such as the financial crisis of 2007-09 or the advent of social media. Others look to longer-lasting regional trends, like European integration or racial politics in America.

Thomas Piketty, an economist, became famous for a book that analysed 200 years of data on wealth inequality in a wide range of countries. This month he published a paper, co-written by Amory Gethin and Clara Martínez-Toledano, which applies a similar approach to the relationship between demography and ideology. Its findings imply that the electoral victories of Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign in 2016 were not an abrupt departure from precedent, but rather the consequence of a 60-year-old international trend.

…

The paper finds that income and education began diverging as predictors of ideology long ago. In 1955 both the richest and the most educated voters tended to support conservative parties. Conversely, both poorer and less-educated people mostly chose labour or social-democratic ones.

Today, wealthy people still lean to the right. In contrast, the relationship between education and ideology began to reverse as early as the 1960s. Every year, the 10% of voters with the most years of schooling gravitated towards left-wing parties, while the remaining 90% slid the other way. By 2000, this had gone on for so long that, as a group, the most educated voters became more left-wing than their less-educated peers. The gap has only grown since then.

The Other McCain gives you the details.

Say hello to Joshua Nazario, 22.

Daley was waiting for a train on the southbound N/Q/R/W platform around 10 p.m. Wednesday when suspect Joshua Nazario, 22, crept up from behind and started hacking away at her neck and shoulders, cops said.

David Chipman Will Tax And Register Your AR-15 If He Can’t Ban Them

GASLIGHTING: AP ‘Fact Check’ Tries to Protect Biden from Rising Gas Prices

Teacher Compares Disputing ‘Anti-Racism’ To Sexually Abusing Children

Facebook to Resume Funding Candidates, but Only Those Who Certified Biden’s Win

McAuliffe Takes Thousands from Teachers’ Union as Leader Defends 1619 Project

Defund Police Protest Canceled After Someone Steals All Their Signs Babylon Bee.

Black Lives Matter and the Psychology of Progressive Fatalism

The Space and Air Forces Launch an LGBTQ Task Force  (Wired ‘Science’)

LOL: Jake Tapper Imagines Himself as ‘Not Particularly Opinionated,’ He’s Just Pro-‘Truth’

Tech Trade Groups Sue Florida Over Social Media Law Signed by DeSantis

2 Men Charged With Allegedly Blazing Up Police Car During George Floyd Protest

First Major Teachers’ Union Backs Israel Boycott

Princeton No Longer Requires Classics Majors To Learn Latin Or Greek — Another Case In The Dumbing Down Of American Education  At least at Princeton.

GLAAD Rubber Stamps Hulu’s Trans Propaganda Film

What’s Going On With Mexican Politics? 88 Mayoral Candidates Murdered, 18 Register As Trans Women For “Gender Parity”

Read it.

Antagonism to Big Health is making unlikely allies of crunchy moms and right-wing trads.

Why conservatives really fear critical race theory (Washington Post) The mind-readers at the WaPo know all about it, of course.

The Tortured Saga of America’s Least-Loved Policy Idea (Politico) Least-loved by proglodytes, that is. Plus the usual conservative-bashing; can’t forget that.

People Are Calling Out “Normal” Parenting Tactics That Are Actually Toxic, And It’s So Important (BuzzFeed) The proglodyte war against normality is heating up.

Why income inequality is growing at the fastest rate among Asian Americans (CNBC) They say that like it was a bad thing.

Illinois Constitutional Amendment Is “A Monstrous Giveaway To Public Unions”

Ireland Rejects US Plan For Global Minimum Tax, Will Keep 12.5% Rate

CNN Guest: Police Are Like ‘Weeds’ You Have to ‘Kill’ to Make Grass Greener

‘The Hamas Caucus’: Republicans Launch Explosive Term For Ocasio-Cortez ‘Squad’

New Amazon Bond Film Will Feature 007 Assassinating Small Business Owners  Babylon Bee.

The Woke-Industrial Complex

Despite Initial Claims Drop, Almost 16 Million Americans Remain On Government Dole

Far-Left Groups Are Inciting Violence Across Colombia, and the Media Is Providing Cover With a Disinformation Campaign

ABC’s ‘A Million Little Things’ Pushes BLM Narrative for Third Straight Week

Teen Valedictorian Ordered to Remove God from Graduation Address

City Councilman Who Voted To Withhold Funds From The Police Has Car Stolen By Kids In Broad Daylight

New York resembles a war zone

CNN Teams Up With Democrats to Trash New Texas Concealed Carry Law

California Public School Gives Third Graders Assignment About ‘Place on Gender Spectrum’

Mayor Lightfoot Pushes Permanent 10pm Curfew On Liquor Store Sales In Chicago  BRAAAAAAAINS!

Local Christian Parents Pay University $100,000 To Totally Destroy 18 Years Of Their Hard Work  Babylon Bee.

From Mickey Mouse to Tony the Tiger, Brands Improperly Target Kids for Pride Month

NPR Claims BLM Is NOT Marxist, When Founder Clearly Admits She Is!

Elite anti-Semitism at the Boston Globe

Democrats Dismiss Complaint Against Zoe Lofgren Without Investigation After GOP’s Claims She Broke House Rules

CNN Loses Nearly 70% Of Its Viewers Since Trump Left Office

It’s not just Arizona: Push to review 2020 ballots spreads

Being Fake ‘Hate-Crimed’ Makes POC Student ‘Chad’ Popular in TBS Comedy

World Bank: Russia Should Consider Minimum Income to Fight Poverty  They did that for seventy years, and it didn’t work.

NY Times Flips From ‘Xenophobia’ to ‘Grass-Roots Tradition’ on Ballot Initiatives

The Office Of The DNI Tweets A Photo Of OnlyFans Star Tiffany Poindexter

Army Introduces New Gender Reveal Grenades For Trans Soldiers  Babylon Bee.

Former Seattle police chief says media bias inside CHOP made protests appear less violent than they were

‘He Took A Guess’: Joy Behar Says Trump Scapegoated China, It’s Just A ‘Lucky Break’ That He Was Right

AOC Added To Iwo Jima Memorial For Surviving Capitol Riot  Babylon Bee.

Seattle Suburb Backs Down From Ban on Abortion Clinic Protesters

Censored: USA Today Retroactively Changes Op-Ed to Use Woke Trans Language

Read it.

The main BLM group, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, supports a primary objective of Hamas: the annihilation of the Jewish state. On its official Twitter page, the group proclaimed:

Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Palestinians. We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation. (always have. And always will be). #freepalestine

The New York Post quickly reported on BLM’s support for the terrorists in the current conflict, pointing out there is nothing new in this. Virtually since its founding in July 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the half-Peruvian man who shot Trayvon Martin, BLM has been anti-Israel.

1984, here we come….

17,000 tweet ‘Hitler was right,’ and Big Tech barely reacts

Cities That Pushed For Defunding The Police Reckon With Record-High Crime Rates  Gee, whoda thunkit?

The Child Soldiers of the Culture War

The Fall of the American Establishment and Its Consequences

I Was Robbed in San Francisco While the Cameras Rolled

EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

Package With Death Threat Sent to Rand Paul

Romney: ‘I Would Support the Bill’ to Create Jan. 6 Commission  Of course he would. Anything to smear Trump.

How Fact Checkers Abuse Their Role To Boost Democrat Causes

Cereal Killer: Kellogg’s Teams Up With GLAAD for LGBTQ Breakfast

Teachers At Seattle School Urge Mayor To Address ‘Out Of Control’ Homeless Camp Behind Building  Good luck with that. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

CBS Doesn’t CARE About Lies of 1619 Project, Skips Distortions as Question of ‘Focus’

Morning Joe: DeSantis Protecting Political Speech Violates First Amendment!

‘We Should Check Our Strategy’: Sean Lennon Says Political Correctness Is Not Working  Have you ever seen a more hipster-looking guy in your life?

China Defends Belarus in Airplane Hijacking One hand washes the other.

Adidas Funds Nonprofit That Posts Anti-Semitic Content

Woke Takeover of US Military Endangers Us All

Chinese Propaganda Outlet Paid Millions to American Newspapers and Magazines, Records Show

Leftists, Media Go Berserk After DeSantis Signs New FL Free Speech Law

Minority Employees Slam House Dem Plan To Boost Diversity at State Department

Space Force firing case proves touchstone for raging debate over conservatives and the military

If the GOP is now home to ‘evil lunacy,’ it’s time to leave (Washington Post)

Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera: US ‘Complicit’ in ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

The Rise of Righteous Online Bullies

Biden’s Justice Dept. Fights Order to Release Trump-Russia Probe Memo

Elizabeth Warren Bill Would Force Banks To Reveal ‘Account Flows’ To Catch Wealthy Tax Cheats, Focus On ‘Racial Inequities’  Professor Umbrage is on the warpath again.

Facebook Whistleblowers Reveal Campaign To Censor Vaccine Hesitancy

CNN Invites David Hogg to Condemn Gun Owners as Racist Bigots

CNN Uses Six-Year-Old To Push Left-Wing Fear on Race, Policing

Public School In Illinois Drops Thomas Jefferson From Name Due To Slavery Links

DC Attorney General Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Amazon

NYT’s Op-Ed: These Attacks On Jews Are Especially Bad Because It Makes Republicans Look Right

Sagging NBA Demands Congress Crack Down On America’s Police Officers

Trump Supporters Unequivocally Support Extremism, According To Pentagon Official Overseeing Efforts To Root Out Extremism

Severian really doesn’t care.

I’m told Hamas is firing rockets at Gaza, and that Israel is striking back. I don’t care. I used to care what happens in the Middle East, on the not-unreasonable theory that the total destabilization of the planet’s most oil-rich region, and a massive international trade hub, is the kind of thing that starts world wars. But dressing your airborne troops in red high heels, ordering strongly encouraging your embassies to fly the “black lives matter” flag*, and instructing your ambassador to publicly take a dump on his own country are also the kind of things that start world wars, so what’s the diff?

Needless to say, I also used to care about what happened in the Middle East on the theory that one should try to uphold civilization and resist barbarism, but I knew that was foolish even as I was doing it. Hamas et al might be stone-age savages, but all they want to do is commit genocide. I heard some egghead advocating five ideas more repugnant than that every day in the ivory tower. Needless to say I consider genocide bad, but at least Hamas knows which bathroom to use. From the perspective of “the long-term survival of the human race,” which is worse? We lost the “uphold civilization” battle the minute we started subsidizing student loans.

Can’t say he’s wrong.

Read it.

Yet a question infrequently answered is how, in the apparently civilised and enlightened 21st century, leaders are able to get away with such brazen acts against their own populace and with flouting international law.

The reason is, quite simply, due to fear and a sense that the West will never stand up to the world’s dictators. On the home front, Lukashenko has no need for cyber hacks or population monitoring when he has a police force ready and willing to detain or batter political opponents – and when the price of resistance is so brutally high, there is little incentive to join rallies and marches. Leonid Volkov, Alexei Navalny’s chief of staff, told me during an interview for this magazine that over a million Russians would flock to the streets to protest Vladimir Putin’s regime. In the end there were between 7,000 to 9,000 protestors in Saint Petersburg and 10,000 to 15,000 in Moscow, with over 1,700 people ultimately being arrested at the rallies. In short, few people were willing to risk being arrested.

Western sanctions never affect those who dominate politics in Minsk and Moscow.

Read it.

The Federal Reserve Bank, which is charged with setting monetary policy, appears to be going woke, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., warns.

Toomey cited the focus of the Fed’s 12 regional banks on “structural racism” as the leading cause of inequality in the United States as part of a series of virtual events titled “Racism and the Economy.”

Read it.

Some time ago I found myself in the middle of a discussion about race relations and minority experiences. When it was my chance to speak, I mentioned some statistical data that appeared to challenge the common narrative that racism is widespread and systemic. My interlocutor’s reply was that he simply did not care about the data—his own experiences as a person of color were more important and trumped any appeal to statistics. Another party to the discussion agreed, saying that people matter more than numbers.

The title of a recent article by Dawn Butler, a British MP, echoes this sentiment: “Unless you have lived experience of racism there’s no guarantee you’ll understand it.” A host of other politicians have leveraged appeals to lived experience in support of their policy goals. Elsewhere, a reporter for Time describes her lived experiences as a “source of expertise” as opposed to an “emotional bias.” Lived experiences have taken on a near-sacred status under which they cannot be questioned. Case in point: the Facebook group for the news website Vox bans “comments that invalidate the lived experiences of group members.”

But are lived experiences really that special? No. Quite simply, appeals to “lived experiences” are exercises in bad statistical reasoning.

One person’s ‘lived experience’ has no validity for anyone other than that one person, and sometimes not even then.

How high taxes, rampant crime, streets littered with addicts are blamed for ruining the Golden State

‘Breyer Retire’ Campaign Is Effort to Focus Liberals on Court Picks

‘Defund’ Movement Inspires Gun Boom And Private Policing

G-7 Reportedly Nears Deal On Yellen’s Global Minimum Corporate Tax Proposal

Andrea Mitchell Pushes Anti-Israel Propaganda on Gaza Civilian Casualties

School Places Teacher On Leave After Assigning ‘Sexual Temperament’ Survey From Book On How To ‘Transform’ Sex Life

Ilhan Omar: ‘Antisemitism Wouldn’t Be A Problem If We Got Rid Of All The Jews’  Babylon Bee.

NFL Mimics Other Left-Wing Orgs by Embracing Anti-Asian Bigotry

12 Mass Shootings Over Weekend As America Descends Into Chaotic Summer 

The Undefeated Writer Fumes Over Declining Support For BLM, Police Defunding

Associated Press Doubles Down on Left-Wing Rhetoric

Read it.

Activist government’s dysfunction is not only a pervasive problem, but a worsening one. Things used to work better. It took “two decades, with huge cost overruns,” Walters observes, “to replace one-third of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge [after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake], even though building the entire bridge originally took just four years in the 1930s.” Similarly, economists Leah Brooks and Zachary Liscow found that, even after adjusting for inflation, the cost to build one mile of interstate highway tripled between the 1960s and the 1980s.

…

Progressives like to think of themselves as forward-looking—thinking about tomorrow, candidate Clinton said in 1992, by way of Fleetwood Mac. Or, as Clinton’s hero John F. Kennedy declared in 1960, the modern liberal “welcomes new ideas” because he is “someone who looks ahead and not behind.”

But yesterday is not gone, Kennedy, Clinton, and Fleetwood Mac to the contrary notwithstanding. William Faulkner was closer to the truth when he said that the past isn’t even past. Its continuing, pervasive effects frustrate progressives’ desire to confine retrospection to criticizing our ancestors’ misdeeds or surpassing their achievements.

Read it.

Police in the U.K. are searching for thieves who stole a set of gold rosary beads that Mary Queen of Scots had carried to her execution in 1587, police announced Sunday.

Sussex Police said the rosary beads were stolen Friday night, when thieves set off an alarm after breaking into a window at Arundel Castle in West Sussex, located roughly 65 miles southwest of London.

Read it.

A coordinated effort giving Facebook one-star reviews on the App Store, and elsewhere, is being treated as severe by the social media giant.

Facebook’s average rating on the App Store is reportedly going down.

Facebook’s app on both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store have reportedly been targeted by activists protesting against the company’s alleged censorship of Palestinian posts. The campaign has been sparked by claims that existing censorship has increased during May’s conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Read it.

Michael O’Leary says the forced diversion of a Ryanair flight to Belarus was a “state-sponsored hijacking”.

The airline’s CEO says it appears authorities removed a journalist and his travelling companion from the plane, while the company also believes there were some KGB agents on board the flight.

The plane – which was flying from Greece to Lithuania – was escorted by a Belarusian fighter jet after reports it had explosives on board, but none were found.

It was forced to divert from Minsk, where an opposition blogger – Roman Protasevich – was arrested.

European leaders will discuss a response to the incident today, after several officials called it “utterly unacceptable”.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has described it as “aviation piracy that’s state-sponsored”.

UPDATE: EU Threatens Sanctions After One Country Diverts Flight, Orders Fighter Jet To Escort Plane With Journalist To Its Capital City

I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it an unfair fight. (USA Today)

Australia’s Defense Chief Bans All “Woke” Events Which “Distract” From Military’s Mission

PBS Loses Video Link of David Brooks Just When He’s Going to Gush Over Biden

We’ll be Lucky if Murders Are Only “Spiking”

Belarus ‘diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist’

Belarus Sends MiG Fighters To Divert Foreign Airliner, Arrests Anti-Lukashenko Journalist On Board

2 Jewish Boys Beaten After Refusing To Repeat ‘Anti-Jewish Statements,’ Police Say, Before Rescue By Anonymous Driver

LA Forms Neighborhood Watch for Jewish Safety Amid Attacks

San Francisco fact of the day

University Research Finds AOC, Bernie Sanders Highly Ineffective

The Government’s Emergency Powers Myth

14 Cities In LA County Issue No-Confidence Resolutions Against Soros-Backed DA

NY Times Dishonestly Conflates ‘Racial Equity’ With ‘Racial Equality’ on Front Page

MSNBC’s Joy Reid fawns over ‘phenomenal’ 1619 Project, calls traditional American history teaching ‘BS’

California Democratic lawmakers look to remove penalty for possessing firearm during crime Time to leave.

Georgia Judge Orders Audit of 147K Fulton County Absentee Ballots

More than 70 officers have left the U.S. Capitol Police since Jan. 6 riot  Except that it wasn’t a riot, it was a ‘mostly peaceful’ demonstration.

These Lefty Celebrities Actively Condone or Support Violence

MSNBC Radical Tiffany Cross on Law Enforcement: ‘Time to Burn It Down’

CNN’s Hitler-Loving Freelancer Is a Symptom of a Dangerous Media Problem  Not every Hitler-lover is on the Right.

THE WOKE SUPREMACY by Evan Sayet

Are Democrat Voters Learning from What’s Happening?  Doesn’t seem that way.

Read it.

Many Americans seem to believe their vote is an important moral statement serving as a badge of honor in determining the outcome for America – and even all of humanity – from someone’s personal moral construct.

The belief that one’s vote is evidence of personal virtue is actually dangerous politically. I’ve seen this attitude becoming more prevalent over the last several decades.

No longer is your vote just your two cents, your marginal self-interest, a lesser evil, or maybe just your “best guess” between two choices. No. Now it’s something that defines everything important about you personally. Something for which you should be either proud or ashamed.

Severian is down on academic ‘research’.

If you’ve done any academic work at all, in any field — scratch that, if you’ve done any competent, diligent work in any field — you’ve experienced the frustration of the “phantom cite.” This is where you see a startling assertion in Jones. You check his footnote — see Smith. You go pull Smith off the shelves, and his footnote says “see Williams.” Williams cites Parker, Parker cites Adams, Adams cites Rogers, until finally, you pull Rogers and… nothing. Not the “oh gosh, I’d have to travel to the British Museum to check this, and it’s in Medieval High Bulgarian anyway” kind of nothing, but the bald-ass assertion kind of nothing.