California Defaults on $18.5B Debt, Leaving Businesses Holding the Bag

Gov. Gavin Newsom makes surprise visit to S.F.’s Tenderloin to talk about fentanyl (S.F. Chronicle) Not do anything about it, but just talk.

‘Enormous rise’ in San Francisco overdose deaths in 2023 (S.F. Chronicle) Think of it as evolution in action.

Millionaires asking Congress for 90% top tax rate confronted with pledge to pay more voluntarily (Fox) They push for a high rate on wage income, but they don’t have a lot of wage income; they basically want working people to pay higher taxes that won’t affect them all that much.

Opinion: Why millionaires like us want to pay more in taxes (CNN) So write a check. Nobody stopping you.

I’m a multimillionaire: On this Tax Day, I demand to be taxed more (The Hill) So write a check. Nobody stopping you.

Students Walk Out in Response to Pronoun Policy (The Pilot)

The Bullet Train Epitomizes Golden State Corruption

As Soros-Backed Prosecutor Fights Attempt To Oust Her, Judge Sets Separate Contempt Hearing

Semi-automatic Rifle Ban Passes Wash. State Legislature

Transgender Athlete Barred from Australian Women’s Basketball League

REI To Close Portland Store, Citing ‘Safety Of Our Employees’ And ‘Out-Of-Control’ Thefts

NHL Former PK Subban On Pride Jerseys: “We Cannot Push Everyone To Be An Activist”

UN, Globalists Seek To Decriminalise Sex With Minors

Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement In Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

Not 1 Democrat Votes to Protect Girls’ Sports

Dem Dark Money Kingpin Quietly Awards Grant to Liberal Group To Fight Dark Money in Politics

Portland Is Now a ‘No-Go Zone’

Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington

The Tablet.

The number of Jews on major Ivy League campuses has been cut in half or more over the past decade by new elite doctrines that downplay merit in favor of amorphous definitions of ‘diversity’ and ‘privilege.’ But one Ivy may be bucking the trend.

Read it.

Ticket from Miami to Port-au-Prince: $124.

Ticket from Port-au-Prince to Miami: $1,000-3,000.

Jonathan Turley.

We recently discussed how Wake Forest Psychology Professor S. Mason Garrison described conservatives as “guilty, anxious, and unable to handle stress well as children.” It was indicative of the overt hostility often encountered by Republicans and conservatives on our campuses today. Now, another psychology professor is under fire for a quiz that matter-of-factly explained that white men are characterized as a group for their abuse of others and lack of remorse for their violence and deceit. Like Professor Garrison, the resulting outcry reportedly led Professor Kirsten Bradbury to rescind the quiz. However, the incident reflects both the orthodoxy and hostility that now characterizes higher education. It also follows a familiar pattern when academics are called to account for such biased attacks.

Professor Bradbury gave a quiz as part of her “Personality Psychology” class and included a question that stated “[n]either race nor gender is determinative in Antisocial Personality Disorder.” It then asked:

“However, if we must go there, which sociodemographic group is most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others in a pattern of behavior that includes violence, deceit, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse?”

Bradbury then added an addendum stating “Hint: They also happen to hold the most social power and because of that they can get away with the most wrongdoing.”

She gave four choices with three obviously absurd choices of middle class Latino families, female dentists and Asian men of all economic groups. The correct answer was, of course, wealthy white men.

American Mind.

Modern regimes are investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor and control society. From China’s surveillance state and emerging social credit systems to Russia’s disinformation campaign in Ukraine to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launching domestic cyberattacks on political opponents, dictatorships are using armies of hackers, bots, and trolls to gather data on citizens in order to manipulate algorithms and mold public opinion.

But when does focusing on data result in knowing less about a country? One answer is when it comes at the expense of what the military calls HUMINT, Human Intelligence, which is information gathered through direct interpersonal contact with human sources. Through spies and informants, HUMINT is said to be the only source of intelligence capable of revealing the group dynamics of insurgent and terrorist groups. And beyond HUMINT, person-to-person relationships connecting government and citizens are just as important for building a society as for shutting down terrorists.

Overreliance on statistical data at the expense of direct communication with citizens can lead to misperceptions and knowledge gaps. Rather than relying on feelings or hearsay, statistical data gives governments quantifiable—and therefore useful—information about society. But data is not enough; collecting statistics about citizens is not the same as knowing citizens.

Steve Sailer.

Ever since the transgender school shooter in Nashville, the mainstream media has been on the warpath to impose more point-of-sale gun control…while continuing to encourage Soros-funded prosecutors to weaken the kind of point-of-use gun control that not long ago succeeded in reducing New York City murders to Joe DiMaggio-era levels because it tends to put black criminals behind bars.

Yet, this level of flagrant effrontery requires tremendous narrative discipline. On Monday, the front page of NYTimes.com gave a master class in how it’s done across three contrasting articles.

Technology Org.

According to the experienced M1A1 Abrams tank crew member, even during missions, their vehicle never looked as poorly maintained as the Russian T-90A.

A former M1A1 Abrams tank machine gunner spoke negatively about the Russian T-90A tank that was recently delivered to the United States. He wrote about it on his Twitter account.

A US soldier says he literally lived with his crew in an M1A1 Abrams tank for 20 months while in service. During that time, it never looked like the trophy T-90A does.

Chicago police encourage people to enjoy what city ‘has to offer’ day after ‘Teen Takeover’ chaos (Fox) You first.

2 teens shot in the Loop during large disturbance (WGN)

‘A gamechanger’: this simple device could help fight the war on abortion rights in the US (The Guardian)

Trans Florida teacher worked for weeks after saying she ‘wanted to shoot some students’ (N.Y. Post)

Univision HIDES Crime as Reason for Chicago Walmart Closings

Washington State House Approves Bill Authorizing Hiding Of Children Seeking Transgender Medical Intervention From Parents

Dem Lawmaker: California’s ‘Travel Ban’ on Red States Didn’t Work

These Senate Dems Pledged to Return SBF’s Political Donations. Records Show They Still Haven’t.  The money! It clings!

Memos Show US Fish and Wildlife Head Pushing ‘Woke’ Agenda

Boy Scouts Weighs Eliminating Native American Culture in Program

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Melts Down After Twitter Labels It ‘Government-Funded Media’

Citing Crime Wave, REI Packs Up Its Tent in Portland

Energy ‘Equity’: California Electricity Companies Propose Billing Based on Income

Another One: Fourth Democrat State Legislator Switches Party in a Month

The US Could Use Some Separation Of Media And State

Washington bill to allow medical transgender interventions on minors without parental consent (N.Y. Post) Time to leave.

Mayor Lightfoot, Mayor-Elect Johnson Issue Statements on Large Gatherings Downtown Chicago (NBC Chicago)

‘Teen Takeover’ terrorizes Chicago as hundreds of teenagers destroy property, attack tourists (Fox) I’d be interested in the ‘ethnic’ composition of this riot.

Let’s be blunt — legal weed is turning New York workers into zombies (N.Y. Post)

CVS ‘Gender Transition’ Guide Requires Use Of Preferred Pronouns, Sharing Bathrooms

Is Free Speech Killing Us? FDA Commissioner Declares “Misinformation” A Medical Risk

Italy’s Meloni Declares ‘State Of Emergency’ As Illegal Immigration Quadruples  When are they going to call it what it is, an invasion?

Humorless ‘Saturday Night Live’ Lets Non-Binary Comedian Lecture on Trans Kids

How Walmart Pushed Arkansas Public Schools to Go Woke (Washington Free Beacon)

What happened when US police teargassed protesters – a visual investigation (The Guardian) Like most on the Left, The Guardian think that ‘protesters’ have a right to wander around doing whatever they want to do without interference–if they’re on the left.

650 Illegal Immigrants Make It to Spain in Single Week

As Walmart shuts down four stores in crime-ridden Dem-led Chicago, DailyMail.com lists all the big box shops – from Macy’s to Target – which have closed due to millions in losses from rampant theft (UK Daily Mail)

OMITTED: CNN Segment on Boston Marathon Bombing Skips Jihadi Terrorist Brothers

‘Teen Takeover’; Liberal Networks Refuse to Cover Latest Lawlessness in Chicago

We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage (The Guardian) And thereby increase unemployment among the unskilled. Great idea, Bernie.

Watch First ‘Nonbinary’ SNL Cast Member Hang From the Ceiling and Shout About Trans Kids (Washington Free Beacon) Or don’t.

Illinois Supreme Court Justices Received Massive Donations From Dem Gov Pritzker. They Won’t Recuse Themselves From Case Against Pritzker’s Gun Ban.  Hey, they aren’t Clarence Thomas, so it doesn’t matter, right?

Indiana Public School Officials Admit Lying to Parents About Critical Race Theory  Don’t send your kid to a government school.

CBS Slobbers Over Conservative-Hating Jordan Klepper, Omits Failed Show

Disney announces LGBTQ event night at its California resort immediately after DeSantis threats (Raw Story)

Non-Binary SNL Cast Member Also Comes Out As Non-Funny (Babylon Bee)

New York Times.

Educational attainment has not replaced race in that respect, but it is increasingly the best predictor of how Americans will vote, and for whom. It has shaped the political landscape and where the 2024 presidential election almost certainly will be decided. To understand American politics, candidates and voters alike will need to understand this new fundamental.
Americans have always viewed education as a key to opportunity, but few predicted the critical role it has come to play in our politics. What makes the “diploma divide,” as it is often called, so fundamental to our politics is how it has been sorting Americans into the Democratic and Republican Parties by educational attainment. College-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees — especially white Americans, but increasingly others as well — are now more likely to support Republicans.

sAnheuser-Busch CEO responds to backlash after partnership with trans influencer (NBC News)

Bud Light blasted on Twitter for ‘TGIF’ post amid Dylan Mulvaney controversy (Fox)

Big brand threw money at Dylan Mulvaney… but at what price? From obscure actor to TikTok star praised by the White House, Nike trans poster girl has sparked a backlash against WOKE advertising (UK Daily Mail)

The making of Dylan Mulvaney (Spiked)

Property guru Kirstie Allsopp, of all people, defends TikToker Dylan Mulvaney amid anti-trans backlash (Pink News)

Plus-sized traveler demands free seats, better accommodations on airlines (N.Y. Post) In the Narrative media, ‘plus sized’ means ‘morbidly obese’.

Furious Viewers Complain En Masse About New UK TV Show With Adult Men Stripping Naked For Kids  The UK appears to be the California of Europe.

Capehart: Declaration of Independence ‘Rings Hollow’ Amid Pro-Life Laws

CNN Promotes ‘Two-Spirit’ Trans Mexicans in Eva Longoria COOKING Show

IMF Unveils New Global Currency Known As The “Universal Monetary Unit” To “Transform” World Economy  With them in charge. What could possibly go wrong?

Anheuser-Busch Transitions Into Damage Control Mode – And People Aren’t Buying It

SEC Sides With Conservatives Over Launching PayPal Discrimination Probe  This has been a problem for years, and they’re just now getting around to it?

How AI Can Track, Manipulate Voters

The Global Great Awokening

Most want abortion pill to remain available — CBS News poll (CBS) Does it surprise you that a CBS poll would say this?

Gun absolutists don’t trust democracy because they know they’re losing (Washington Post) I’m sure ancient proglodyte retreat E.J. Dionne would like that to be true. But it’s not. Almost half of the states are now ‘constitutional carry’ states that allow bearing guns without needing a license. That sounds like winning to me.

Community Leaders Furious Over Businesses Leaving Chicago – Refuse To Take Responsibility

Not Leftist Enough? Sanders Gets NASTY With Psaki Over MSNBC’s Coverage

Community Leaders Indignant Over Walmart’s Decision to Shutter 4 Chicago Stores  Can’t make any money when fashionable minorities keep stealing stuff from your stores. (Irony in Chicago)

Steve Sailer.

As I asked back in 2013, why were the Boston Bomb Brothers in America anyway? My best guess is because their Uncle Ruslan, was, for four years, the son-in-law of CIA insider Graham E. Fuller, the former CIA station chief in Kabul. Uncle Ruslan is a D.C. lawyer involved in negotiating energy deals in Central Asia. If Chechnya ever breaks away from Russia and becomes an American client state, Uncle Ruslan would be a reasonable candidate for Minister of Energy in the new state.

This is not to say that the Boston Marathon Bombing was a false flag or a Washington operation, but that there remain a lot of interesting questions about who let in the Bomb Brothers and why.

I should like to point out that the younger of the two is still alive.

Gates of Vienna.

The following article (translated from the German) concerns the demographic crisis in France, which is well on its way to becoming a third-world country.

It’s all very well for the alarmists to issue their warnings now, but in my opinion it will make no practical difference. The point of no return was passed a long time ago, probably more than a decade ago. Nothing can prevent the dénouement now. The situation will inevitably end in a general collapse or civil war, or more likely a combination of the two. Assuming we don’t hit a nuclear winter before that.

The rest of the West is headed for the same destination. France and Sweden may be a couple of cars ahead of us, but we’re all on the same train.

Florida’s upcoming 6-week abortion ban will disproportionately impact Latina and Black women, advocates say (NBC News) “Women and minorities hardest hit.”

Mayor Adams: Ditch the RoboCops: Surveillance technology is not good public policy (N.Y. Daily News)

California wants a bigger piece of Cupertino’s tax earnings from Apple (Apple Insider) Lefties complain about ‘corporate greed’ but that’s nothing compared to government greed.

Colorado Governor Signs Abortion, Transgender Care Bills (Huffington Post)

Missouri Becomes First State To Crack Down on Sex-Change Treatments for Adults

Supreme Court makes it easier to challenge structure of federal agencies (Washington Post)

Bud Light halts promotion with Dylan Mulvaney, transgender ‘influencer,’ after share value plummets (Washington Examiner)

What The Bud Light Fiasco Reveals About The Ruling Class (Brownstone Institute)

The Unprincipled and Unhinged Left: Marcy Wheeler as Case Study

Hard lessons in life “Novel gender identities and orientations allow people to claim to be oppressed without suffering any hardship.”

Read it.

Modern colleges are training grounds for political insurrectionists.

The pro-crime movement that swept America began in part with an article by Angela Davis, “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition.” Davis, a UCLA academic, started by quoting Michel Foucault, a French academic with the Collège de France.

Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’, which Davis described as “arguably the most influential text in contemporary studies of the prison system” remains widely studied on college campuses along with Davis’ racial spin that long since entered politics and pop culture in the form of police defunding and other allied efforts to eliminate prisons, prosecutions and the justice system.

The two activist academics were not really interested in crime and the penal system as a field of research. They were bent on fomenting a civil war that would put the Left in power.

Read it.

The United Nations is seeking vast new powers and stronger “global governance” tools to deal with international emergencies such as pandemics and economic crises, a new U.N. policy brief has revealed, and the Biden administration appears to support the proposal.

The plan to create an “Emergency Platform,” which would involve a set of protocols activated during crises that could affect billions of people, has already drawn strong concern and criticism from U.S. policymakers and analysts.

Read it.

I was disappointed in 2021 to read that Stanford had been sued by a number of its athletes when the school, without warning, told them it had decided to drop 11 varsity sports teams. Those sports included men’s volleyball, wrestling and rowing. Women were to lose sports like synchronized swimming, rowing and fencing. President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Provost Persis Drell and Athletic Director Bernard Muir said the cut was a budget necessity, and was needed to keep Stanford “competitive” with other schools. That turned out not to be true. In fact, the school rejected alumni financing of the sports. I was further angered when I read that Tessier-Lavigne may have co-authored a number of scientific papers with “manipulated images.” I was then saddened to read about Stanford soccer player Katie Meyer, who had committed suicide last March after a badly botched disciplinary action Stanford attempted to take against her. Her parents filed a lawsuit against Stanford in October.

These are some of the more serious scandals involving the school in the last three years. There have been less severe missteps taken by those who are supposedly in the business of running an elite, world renowned university, but even these smaller mistakes seem to indicate a larger problem. One of my classmates (I graduated in 1970) complains that the administration is of late “rudderless,” stumbling from one crisis to another. He may not make his annual donation to the school as a result. I think it is time to ask: exactly who manages Stanford? And how are they making decisions? Is it the President? The Board of Trustees? Or a small group of individuals known only to a few?

Steve Sailer.

About thirty years ago I attended a presentation by an executive at a vast snack and beverage company. She announced that her firm’s goal was to have their delicious sugary and salty products within arm’s reach of every American at all times. Maybe they’d never quite fully succeed, but damn it, they were going to try.

“Uh-oh,” I said to myself. “The future is going to be fatter.”

And so it was.

America, with 42 percent of our population being obese as of 2017–2020, up from 31 percent at the turn of the century, is now the fattest country outside of some beefy Pacific islands. We’re even worse off than traditionally sedentary Muslim cultures like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. But the rest of the Anglosphere isn’t too far behind us. Countries that I long associated in my mind with healthy outdoor exercise, such as Australia and New Zealand, are now tipping the scales too.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

Americans are fleeing blue states, and especially blue cities, in historic numbers. Can things possibly get worse? They can, indeed they can.

Take San Francisco. Things are so bad there that Whole Foods, an iconic liberal company, has shut its flagship store in that city after just one year of operation, due to rampant crime and drug use that, the company said, made it impossible to assure the safety of its employees. But when it comes to commercial real estate, San Francisco, while very bad, is not the bottom of the barrel.

John Phelan reports on a series of corporate departures from downtown Minneapolis. The numbers are grim.

They’re not divided at all. The ‘rich’ are already tax at more than ‘their fair share’.

Washington Free Beacon.

A United Nations official tasked with overseeing an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes publicly stated that the Jewish state does not have a right to defend itself against terrorism, leading to calls from international activists for the official to be fired.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, claimed over the weekend that Israel’s efforts to combat a deadly wave of Palestinian terror strikes are unjustified, writing on Twitter, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but can’t claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses/whose lands it colonizes.”

Her comments come amid a deadly spurt of Palestinian violence that has killed several Israeli civilians and put the nation on high alert. Albanese, who is overseeing the United Nations’ investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes, is under fire from pro-Israel activists who accuse her of pushing her “relentless, systematic, and unhinged bias against Israel,” according to a letter sent Tuesday by the International Legal Forum (ILF). The forum, a group of more than 4,000 lawyers, is calling on the United Nations to fire Albanese for her “anti-Semitism and virulent bias.”

Lifehacker.

This problem can easily arise when your bank gets bought by another bank. My wife and I had a bank that started as a credit union, then became a mutual savings bank, then was bought by another bank, which was in turn bought by another bank. The final bank in the series was shitty, so we found us another credit unions. In general credit unions are better then banks in almost every respect.

9to5Mac.

Over the past years, we’ve seen the problem of “juice jacking” grow at public charging stations for phones and other devices. Now the FBI considers the risk of juice jacking so high that it’s telling Americans to completely avoid using public chargers in airports, hotels, and malls.

As a refresher, juice jacking is when hackers install malicious code into public charging stations to read and steal data from mobile devices as well as track them. While it’s more likely to impact Android smartphones than iPhone and iPad, the latter are not invincible to such attacks.

Companies That Get ‘Woke’ Aren’t Going Broke — They’re More Profitable Than Ever (Rolling Stone)

Washington state Senate passes bill banning production, sale, and importing of assault weapons (Fox)

Senate passes ban on assault weapons. Here’s what would be banned under the law (The Olympian)

Assault weapon ban passes Washington Senate (KING 5 Seattle)

Detransitioner slams clinics, media for politicizing ‘gender affirming care’: ‘They do everything for profit’ (N.Y. Post)

Iowa Stops Paying for Rape Victims’ Plan B, Abortions

Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges

Half Of America’s Top-Selling Beers Have Gone ‘Woke’

Led By “Fat Activists”, New York Considering Bill To Ban Weight Discrimination  There is no abnormality too ridiculous that proglodytes will not embrace it.

Read it.

On a video podcast the other day, I made reference to the lockdown orders of March 2020. The host turned off the recording. He said it was fine to talk about this subject but from now on please refer to “the events of March 2020” with no specifics.

Otherwise, it will be taken down by YouTube and Facebook.

He needs those platforms for reach, and reach is necessary for his business model.

Free speech? What free speech?

I’d have got up and walked out. But that’s me.

Read it.

Two Colorado child care workers will go on trial this June for presiding over a day care center where a 5-year-old pulled down a 3-year-old’s pants.

Amy Lovato and Roberta Rodriguez of The Schoolhouse day care center in Poncha Springs face criminal charges for not reporting this incident to the authorities quickly enough, and for putting the children in danger.

“Let this fact not be obscured: We are here because one preschooler pulled down another preschooler’s pants,” Jason Flores-Williams, Lovato’s attorney, told 11th Judicial District Judge Brian Green on Thursday, asking him to dismiss the charges.

Read it.

Soccer Moms are giving way to Single Woke Females – the new “SWFs” – as one of the most potent voting blocs in American politics. Unmarried women without children have been moving toward the Democratic Party for several years, but the 2022 midterms may have been their electoral coming-out party as they proved the chief break on the predicted Republican wave. While married men and women as well as unmarried men broke for the GOP, CNN exit polls found that 68% of unmarried women voted for Democrats. 

Caitlyn Jenner blasts ‘woke’ Nike for making transgender Dylan Mulvaney paid ambassador: ‘This is an outrage’ (Fox)

Doesn’t a transgender sports bra model defeat the purpose? (Washington Examiner)

Nike responds to backlash over Dylan Mulvaney partnership, instructs customers to ‘Be kind, be inclusive’ (Fox) Be buying from some other company.

Millions of Americans at risk of losing free preventive care after Texas ruling on ACA (The Lecture Conversation)

No-Cost Preventive Services Are Now in Jeopardy. Here’s What You Need to Know. (Kaiser Health News)

No-cost preventive services are now in jeopardy. What you need to know (WUSF Public Media)

Ending ACA’s free preventive services will make America sicker (Boston Globe) Because nothing is ever done unless the government pays for it.

How the end of free preventative health care could affect us all (The Hill) But it’s not ‘free’, the taxpayers pay for it.

School’s transgender policy trumped teacher’s religious rights, U.S. court rules (Reuters)

Inside the CEI system pushing brands to endorse celebs like Dylan Mulvaney (N.Y. Post)

Elite white women push idea that there’s no such thing as gender (N.Y. Post)

Chicago Braces For Tax Shock After Uber-Progressive Mayor Elected

Remember when the hard sciences were thought to be the last bastion of meritocracy?

Ban Assault Rifles (Steven Beschloss) Assault rifles are fully automatic weapons, and strictly regulated accordingly. I think what he means is ‘assault-type weapons’, the weasel-phrase that progs use to refer to guns they find scary. But you never know.

Oh, by the way – longshoremen shut down 2 CA ports today (Hot Air) Look for … the Union label….

The Left’s Lightbulb Ban: Welcome to the Age of Unlightenment

With homicide ticking up, D.C.’s justice system is failing victims (Washington Post)

A dizzying, divisive week in politics spotlights America’s raging battle (Washington Post)

CNN Dismisses Baby Size As ‘A Theological Opinion,’ Compares Abortion To Viagra

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Teen Psycho Tranny Arrested After Planning Mass Murder at Colorado Middle School (The Other McCain)

‘Nobody Is Safe’: Former San Fran Fire Commissioner Beaten With Metal Bar

Ignore the courts? Some Democrats say Texas abortion pill ruling demands it. (Politico) After all, court decisions don’t apply to Democrats! They can do whatever they want!

People With Taste Buds Continue Decades-Long Boycott Of Bud Light (Babylon Bee)

California’s Education Priorities Are Focused On Equity Quotas

Ars Technica.

When a London man discovered the front left-side bumper of his Toyota RAV4 torn off and the headlight partially dismantled not once but twice in three months last year, he suspected the acts were senseless vandalism. When the vehicle went missing a few days after the second incident, and a neighbor found their Toyota Land Cruiser gone shortly afterward, he discovered they were part of a new and sophisticated technique for performing keyless thefts.

It just so happened that the owner, Ian Tabor, is a cybersecurity researcher specializing in automobiles. While investigating how his RAV4 was taken, he stumbled on a new technique called CAN injection attacks.

Washington Examiner.

That’s when we learned that Second City voters narrowly elected Brandon Johnson as their next mayor. This is a city that was flattened during the reign of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost in the first round of voting for Chicago mayor because she didn’t finish in one of the top two spots. Lightfoot, elected in 2019 after a career as a federal prosecutor who then held several appointed positions in Chicago, shut down the city for more than a year during COVID-19. She also bankrupted small businesses, allowed rioters to burn down whole neighborhoods, presided over the worst crime wave in 50 years, and let the schools go to hell.

Now, the voters have selected Johnson. Elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2018, Johnson narrowly won the mayoralty of America’s third-most-populous city on April 4 over Paul Vallas, a former Chicago schools CEO and a Democrat who presented himself as a political moderate compared to the far-left Johnson.

The incoming mayor may turn out to be a worse mayor than Lightfoot. Johnson’s occupation is an organizer for the teachers unions. The unions spent several million dollars on the race. They got their man.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The wokeness of American big business is one of the most curious phenomena of our times. What is driving it? And how can it be stopped? The mantra “Get woke, go broke” is popular on the right, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be particularly true.

…

Most recently, Mulvaney has been signed on by Anheuser Busch and Nike. Nike has been left-wing for a long time, so their going “trans” isn’t a surprise. What may be surprising is that Nike has Mulvaney posing in a bra and leggings to promote its women’s sports line. Is this really the image that Nike wants to present to women? “I want to wear a Nike sports bra, like that guy?” Seems doubtful.

Read it.

Inspired by reading Coming Apart, in this piece we’ll discuss a non-obvious way elites have abandoned their responsibility to the masses: they have stopped celebrating the habits and structures that they abide by in order to be successful, and have indirectly encouraged the opposite.

Betrayed by the Crust, who have mistaken themselves for the Filling.

Pareto called this the aristocracy of lions vs. the aristocracy of foxes. Lions are proud, forceful aristocrats who explicitly own their position as leaders. Foxes, however, are humble servants who will forever deny that they’re in charge. While lions want to run the world, foxes want to save the world.

Because our new elites are foxes and not lions, they no longer feel comfortable celebrating productive habits for the rest of society.

Read it.

Pizza delivery, it turns out, is based on a fundamental lie. The most iconic delivery food of all time is bad at surviving delivery, and the pizza box is to blame. “I don’t like putting any pizza in a box,” Andrew Bellucci, a legendary New York City pizza maker of Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, told me. “That’s just it, really. The pizza degrades as soon as it goes inside,” turning into a swampy mess.

A pizza box has one job—keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house—and it can’t really do it. The fancier the pizza, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees? Forget it. Sliding a $40 pie into a pizza box is the packaging equivalent of parking a Lamborghini in a wooden shed before a hurricane.

Young migrants take over Paris building in protest at treatment (The Guardian) Hello! We want to live in your country! Give us money!

This woke Pentagon video delivers a dangerous message (Fox)

New Mexico Enacts Bill to Shield Abortion Providers From Out-of-State Threats (Daily Beast)

Nike faces online uproar over paid partnership with trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney (N.Y. Post)

Plans for new sites in UK for asylum seekers ‘risk humanitarian catastrophe’ (The Guardian)

Gay nightclub stokes backlash for sign asserting two biological genders: ‘Transphobic’ (Fox)

The Cost-of-Living Crisis Reaches Breaking Point (Newsweek)

NPR protests as Twitter calls it ‘state-affiliated media’ (Associated Press) Which it obviously is.

Twitter labels NPR’s account as ‘state-affiliated media,’ which is untrue (NPR)

Indiana Bans Transgender Procedures for Minors

US Now A Majority Permitless Carry Country After DeSantis Signs Gun Rights Law

CBS, NBC Hype Lib High Schooler Tantrums Demanding Gun Control

Idaho Passes Law To Restrict Interstate Travel For Abortion Care For Minors (Huffington Post)

NBC Swoons Over ‘Groundbreaking’ Leftist New Zealand PM’s Farewell Address

Expulsion vote thrusts Tennessee politics onto the national stage, could set precedent (The Tennesseean)

Pro-Transgender Protesters Occupy 4 State Capitols in a Week

The Great Gun-Control Myth

PBS’s Woodruff Uses MSNBC’s ‘Center-Right’ Charlie Sykes as Her Guide to Wisconsin Politics

Stop confusing kids

Pakistani ‘Grooming Gangs’: The Left’s Cover-up Continues

More Entitlement Red Flags as Politicians Tout Inaction

On DeSantis turf, Newsom decries conservative education push

King Charles signals first explicit support for research into monarchy’s slavery ties (The Guardian)

Tennessee Democrats face House expulsion vote after gun control protest (Reuters)

Study: Anti-CRT Movement Going Strong

ABC’s ‘Abbott Elementary’ Mocks Identity Politics Replacing Meritocracy

Travis Tritt Drops Anheuser-Busch Over Trans Deal

Kansas lawmakers override governor’s veto, enacting ban on transgender athletes (KCUR)

Chicago’s Mayoral Race Pits the Teachers Union Against the Police Union (N.Y. Times)

Travis Tritt, ‘Other Artists’ Dumping Bud Products Over Dylan Mulvaney Deal

Lawsuit: NYC Permits Make Gun Ownership ‘Impossible’

CNN Defends Tennessee Dems: ‘No One Cares About The Rules’

Elitist Soros-Funded Group Tries Teaching Reporters How to Fight So-Called ‘Disinformation’

Missouri School Offered ‘Sweet Prize’ to Students for Reading Sexually Explicit Books 

Not Just Nashville: Attacks Against Churches Nearly Tripled in 2023, Report Finds

Christians Must Take Children to Transgender Procedures or They Can’t Adopt, Oregon State Law Says

Bob Lee’s Murder Fuels Tech Exec Concerns San Francisco is Deteriorating

Maine Mother Sues After School Helps Daughter Transition

Steve Sailer.

I’ve been banging this drum for 22 months, but, finally, here’s one of the first article in the Respectable Press to mention that the depolicing of bad driving after George Floyd is probably a big reason for the huge surge in traffic fatalities.

Will wonders never cease.

Read it.

In the 10 days since a transgender individual shot and killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, many LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and progressives have posted insensitive or disturbing images online or stormed state capitols and statehouses.

These activists also threaten to retaliate against those they claim are taking away their “rights” to perform transgender procedures on minors and to hide students’ changes in names or personal pronouns from parents at public schools.

Read it.

“What woke you up?” Since early 2016, I’ve heard family, friends, group chat acquaintances, and perpetually online Twitter users describe what led to their political second sailing.

In nearly everyone’s story, the ruling class’s revealing actions and rhetoric during events of national significance caused them to jettison their former normie views. For some, the turning point was seeing Catholic high school student Nicholas Sandmann slandered as a racist MAGA troll by a coterie of mainstream media stenographers and a bipartisan commentariat class. Others recoiled in disgust as they watched the campaign to destroy then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh with fabricated claims of sexual assault. The 2020 riots, when armed mobs burned down entire city blocks while the media downplayed events happening in the backgrounds of their own live reports, was another possible flash point. Whatever else the current American regime may lack, it certainly offers ample opportunities for political awakening.

Steve Sailer.

David Rozado has done another study of news media obsessions during the Great Awokening of the last 10-12 years, this time looking around the world.

…

It looks like Sweden and Canada tended to be out ahead of the US in the early years of wokeness. Note that each country’s use of woke jargon terms is graphed against its own low point (0.0) and high point (1.0), not against each other. Sweden shows up on all six separate graphs and Canada on two.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Did Chicago just vote to commit civic suicide Tuesday by voting in Brandon Johnson as their next mayor? Did Chicago voters get confused about what “Let’s go Brandon” means? The vote for a mayor who is even further to left and more beholden to the teachers union than Lori Lightfoot is inexplicable; even San Francisco had the wit to toss out its soft-on-crime district attorney.

The vote pattern is even more disturbing: the areas suffering the highest crime voted for Johnson in the highest proportion.

Read it.

I have documented previously a post-2010 sharp increase of words used to denounce prejudice (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc) in US and UK news media content. Some have referred to these trends and related shifts in US public opinion about increasing perceptions of prejudice severity in society as the Great Awokening or wokeness.

Read it.

Adam Smith once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is much less room for ruin in a city, as Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have proved in recent years, and Detroit, Memphis and Gary, did even earlier. Now, Chicago has decided to join that dismal parade.

The Windy City was already marching toward the abyss under its outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. She was elected four years ago with over three-quarters of the vote. This year, she got so few votes in the first primary (about one sixth) that she was eliminated from the runoff. That second election, held on Tuesday, pitted Brandon Johnson, an African-American organizer for the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, against Paul Vallas, a Greek American who had led several major school systems around the country. Vallas’s résumé was far more impressive than his achievements in those jobs. His bumbling campaign against Johnson revealed those shortcomings once again.

…

The corruption suffusing the latest Chicago mayoral election was perfectly legal and hiding in plain sight. Virtually all of Brandon Johnson’s funding and his legions of campaign workers came from the Chicago Teachers Union, plus several other public-sector unions. Those union friends went door-to-door singing his praises and putting up campaign signs all over town. It was a very effective strategy.

Steve Sailer.

Last week, millions of college acceptances and rejections were sent out to high school seniors. While the 2023 data won’t be available for some time, using 2022 numbers we can now begin to assess the impact of 2020’s dual body blows to higher education: the “racial reckoning” and the Covid-excused Not So Great Reset in which standards were lowered and policies made lazier and stupider.

I’ll focus on the 2022 admissions statistics for the most famous public college system, the ten-campus University of California.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

My introduction to San Francisco came in the late 1970s, when I spent a lot of time there as a young lawyer. For a Midwestern guy, the San Francisco of that era was a revelation: great restaurants, famous hotels on Nob Hill, fog drifting in off the Bay. But today’s San Francisco is, sadly, something else.

NewsMax.

In a post Tuesday on his Truth Social platform, Trump also celebrated a legal victory against Daniels.

“Alvin Bragg shut down New York City, brought in 38,000 NYPD officers, and will spend an estimated $200,000,000 of NYC funds, for a totally legal $130,000 NDA,” Trump wrote. “On top of all that, the 9th Circuit Court just awarded me $122,000 — over the $500,000 already awarded, from Stormy ‘Horseface’ Daniels!”

Trump was referring to action taken by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, which earlier Tuesday awarded Trump nearly $122,000 in attorney fees stemming from a failed defamation lawsuit Daniels filed against Trump when he was president.

Dennis Prager.

My field of study in graduate school was communism. As a fellow at the Russian Institute of Columbia’s School of International Affairs, I was, if I remember correctly, one of seven students in the entire university to major in what was known at the time as “Communist Affairs.”

I cite this in order to make this point: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined what I was studying would ever apply to the United States of America, the freest country in world history.

…

All these years later, I see that I was wrong. Communism—or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism—is coming to America and Canada, and (a bit more gradually) to Australia and New Zealand.

New York creates list of ‘disadvantaged communities,’ ruffles feathers in the process (Gothamist)

Preventative healthcare may soon get more expensive in North Dakota (CBS News)

A Texas Judge Hits Preventive Health Care With a Gut Punch (Washington Post)

American Ramble review: a riveting tale of the divided United States (The Guardian)

Trans Activist Reveals the Pride at the Heart of the Transgender Movement in Comments About God  Completely out of touch with reality.

Did Bud Light Go ‘Woke’ With Trans-TikTok Star? Boycott Calls Intensify

Kentucky Governor Signs Bill Banning ESG Investment In Public Pensions

From agitator to insider: The evolution of AOC (Politico)

The Big DEI Gulf On Campus: It’s Much More Than He Said/Ze Said (Real Clear Wire)

Federal Judge Blocks Tennessee Law Banning Drag Shows With Minors Present

They’re the Democratic Party’s Top Operatives—and Lobbying for a Company Accused of Destroying Black Heritage Sites  (Washington Free Beacon)

Centrist Democrats hatch secret plan to head off debt ceiling calamity (Politico) How secret can it be, if Politico knows about it? (I guess it’s a ‘calamity’ that the government can’t borrow as much money as it wants to. You would almost think that the debt ceiling was put there to do that.)

‘A dangerous force’: Chicago mayor’s race tests teachers union clout (Politico)

Madonna Hosts Fundraiser For Nashville’s ‘Queer Community’ Following Covenant Shooting

ECHR Orders Italy To Compensate Deported Tunisians

ABC’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Performs Step-by-Step Abortion, Depicts Pro-Lifers as Violent, Bloodthirsty Maniacs

Boston Kids Doc Urges Blue States to Prepare for Gender Surgery Boom

Cornell Rejects Student Proposal for Trigger Warnings

Read it.

Images from the scene reveal some of the boxcars were full of Coors Light and Blue Moon beer products.

 

Read it.

Read it.

It used to be that Congress were the biggest criminals in D.C. Now they have competition.

In February, Rep. Angie Craig was assaulted by a career criminal in the elevator of her D.C. building. The attacker, who had previously been busted 13 times for assault, decided to go for his 14th outing by punching the congresswoman in the face while trying to force her inside.

Rep. Crag, a Democrat who had once attended a Black Lives Matter rally, wisely refused to let her attacker inside her apartment and threw hot coffee at him instead. In that moment, Craig perhaps decided that Congress Lives Matter more than those of oppressed criminals.

Had Craig been armed, she might have done better than rely on her coffee remaining hot for self-defense, but last year she had complained that “attempts to address gun violence in this country have been stymied by gridlock, special interests and career politicians”.

John  Hinderaker at Power Line.

The liberal philosophy, reduced to its essence, is that most people need to be poorer, to consume fewer resources. To do less. To enjoy less. But not them, of course. Us.