Read it.

The political meaning of Red was once loud and clear. No more—at least in the United States. A unilateral decision was made by the national television networks in the contentious presidential year of 2000 to have Red represent the Republican Party and Blue the Democratic one. One prominent network television executive justified this arbitrary and counter-intuitive decision by pointing out that the Republican Party begins with the letter r, hardly a compelling reason for reversing political symbolism deeply rooted in the political experience of modern man since the late eighteenth century. As a result, American conservatives are now the new “Reds,” a change of language and symbolism that is truly startling if anyone took the time to think about it.

This is not, strictly speaking, true. Back in the 1970s I purchased a board game that was based on American Presidential politics, and it had Republicans as red and Democrats as blue. So I suspect that it’s older than the 2000 election. Nevertheless, it is unfortunate.

Read it.

Recall that, under former Director James Comey’s band of dirty cops, the agency had done something similar in 2016: It spied on the Trump campaign and many top FBI leaders actively worked to flip the election to Hillary Clinton.

So, unlike Nixon during Watergate, Trump not only didn’t know about the “dirty tricks,” he was the victim of them. Numerous reports show that enough Biden voters said they would have voted for Trump to change the outcome had they known Biden was “the big guy” slated to get a secret 10% cut of his son’s China payoff.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Hint: Yes.

Read it.

Former FBI, CIA, NSC, and State Department officials are working in senior-level positions at Meta, Google and Twitter, including several CIA agents at the top ranks in almost every politically sensitive department at Meta, according to a report by Mint Press.

Read it.

There is an interesting controversy this week after ABC’s Martha Raddatz took Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott to task for public comments about the open Southern border as fueling the crisis. Raddatz is being criticized for her claim that President Joe Biden has never encouraged migrants to come over the border — a statement that many objected to as demonstrably false. However, I am more interested in a different aspect of her remarks: the objection to Abbott’s language. It is the type of objection that one finds from a system of state media where the narrative is supposed to be replicated and uniform.

New York residents have mixed feelings about yet another statewide anti-bias program (NPR)

Is the right winning the comedy wars? (Vox)

Five eye-popping spending items in the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill (Fox)s

These natural wonders aren’t US national parks. But they should be (CNN)

Unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies outpace median income in several states, study finds (Fox)

Immigration Attorney And CEO Of Immigration Services Company Convicted At Trial Of Conspiring To Commit Immigration Fraud

What is the mysterious Aspen Institute and why did it hold a Hunter Biden ‘exercise’? (N.Y. Post)

NY Magazine Publishes Story on Twitter Speech Issues…With No Mention of FBI

The US Has Spawned An Entire Generation Of ‘Kidults’ That Simply Refuse To Grow Up  And why ought they? Staying a kid pays better.

Swiss Government Rejects 3rd Gender Option, at Least for Now

Omnibus Spending Bill Will Threaten America’s Public Health, on Purpose

Radio Hosts Exit After Soros Buys Hispanic Stations

Embattled Philly DA Oversees City’s Deadliest Murder Wave Since 1990

Another Girl Assaulted By Trans Student In HS Bathroom, Media Quiet

FBI Says Twitter Infiltration Business As Usual , Slams ‘Conspiracy Theorists’

2022 ‘One of the Most Dangerous Years’ for Police Amid Nationwide Crime Spike, Says Law Enforcement Group

U.S. House committee to release redacted Trump tax filings (Reuters)

House panel Votes to Release Donald Trump’s Tax Report (CNN)

BREAKING: House Committee Votes To Release 6 Years Of Trump Tax Returns (MSNBC)

Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee set to release Trump’s taxes in the coming days (CNN)

Four Big Takeaways from the Release of Trump’s Tax Information (Mother Jones)

No, the Jan. 6 committee didn’t make Trump stronger (Washington Post)

Feds Are ‘Begging’ Congress to Stop Trump Donation Scam (Daily Beast)

Democrats no longer have reason to release Trump’s tax returns (Washington Post) Nor did they ever. Even Jennifer Rubin realizes that.

Susanne Craig: Public release of Trump’s tax returns will show ‘his business is under pressure.’ (MSNBC)

GOP’s usual embrace of Trump muted after criminal referral (Associated Press)

Four Crimes: The Jan. 6th Committee Recommends Prosecution for Trump (The Bulwark) Amanda Carpenter is the Kristol Krew’s Jennifer Rubin.

Piecing Together What Trump Knew and When He Knew It (The Bulwark) The witch-hunt continues.

Executive Summary Of Jan. 6 Report Shows How Trump Ignored Advisers, Spread Election Lies (Huffington Post) None of which is illegal.

I’ve Seen Trump’s Tax Returns and Now You Can, Too (Bloomberg) The disclosure of which is explicitly illegal under Federal law.

Rep. Brady: Releasing Trump’s Tax Returns ‘Dangerous’ Political Weapon  Let’s see Biden’s tax returns.

Read it.

Take whatever action you deem appropriate.

Welfare Programs Based on Race and Gender Identity Demonstrate Where Institutional Wokeness Is Going

Journalists Warn Of Frightening Trend Where Rules Apply To Them  (Babylon Bee)

Washington Post Reporter Asks Musk for Comment, Gets Suspended From Twitter (Daily Beast) The Doxxing Queen finally experiences karma up close and personal.

It pays not to work in Biden’s America thanks to welfare benefits (N.Y. Post)

15 Million Americans Are About to Lose Their Health Care. Congress Must Act (Newsweek)

Vatican kicks pro-life activist priest out of clergy, alleges ‘blasphemous communications’

Why solar power could be the next victim of San Francisco’s bloated bureaucracy (S.F. Chronicle)

Safety concerns shake Downtown Pittsburgh as businesses fear crime-related issues are threatening the city’s core (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

What Happened When the Bay Area Rejected Growth (Bloomberg)  Nothing good.

Social media should not be thought-policing for Joe Biden

AOC Blasts Musk for Suspending Some Journalists on Twitter  My, what a surprise.

CNN Declares Dictators Will Cite Musk To Clamp Down On Press Freedom

ABC, NBC FREAK OUT Over Twitter Suspending Slew of Lefty Journalists

Candidates backed by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried pledge to donate campaign cash (NBC) Not, you’ll note, return it to the bankrupt company so it can be given back to the people he cheated–oh, no, heaven forfend; there’s no power or influence gained by doing that.

Richmond Children’s Museum Celebrates ‘Pride Night With Legendary Santa’ & Drag Snow Queen

Top Republicans try to tank new ESG rule (Axios)

Democratic lawmakers are looking for the exits in case Twitter implodes

Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit’

US Lawmakers Negotiating Over 7,500 ‘Pork-Barrel Spending’ Earmarks Totaling $16 Billion For Spending Bill

Court Rules Trans Athletes Can Compete on Conn. Sports Teams

THE TWITTER FILES: Twitter… The FBI Subsidiary

Father of July 4 Parade Shooting Suspect Charged With Felony

Judge to halt provision making California gun suits costlier

California Is Impossible For The Middle Class

US Court Rejects Maintaining COVID-19 Asylum Restrictions

NY Court Orders Yeshiva University to Recognize LGBTQ Club  Bare-faced violation of the First Amendment.

Cha-Ching! Jeff Bezos’s Ex-Wife Is Using Her Divorce Settlement To Enrich Radical Left-Wing Groups

Indiana School Board, Superintendent Refuse to Explain Secret Transgender Policy to Parents

Read it.

Twitter’s top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.

More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in October.

The Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter. He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire’s efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.

Read it.

Samuel Johnson’s “Dictionary of the English Language,” first published in 1755, defines the word “woman” as “the female of the human race.” And until Oct. 2022, the word “woman” was still defined as “an adult female human being” in the Cambridge Dictionary.

What transpired on the topic during the intervening 267 years? Not much. Science confirmed what men and women have known since Adam and Eve began talking past each other—not only do the sexes have immutable physiological differences, down to their genetic matter, but they observe, act, and think differently as well.

Yet Cambridge now says the definition of a woman is “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth” (and the definition of a man is someone who “identifies as male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”)

Read it.

Without government, there would be no high prices.

I haven’t had any maple syrup in decades, but if I did, I would insist on Vermont syrup.

School Board Member Quits After Refusing to Vote for ‘Cis White Male’ President (Daily Beast)

Mayor Adams holds summit to brainstorm how to combat retail theft in NYC (N.Y. Post) How about, oh, I don’t know, maybe arresting the thieves?

How Woke Critical Theory is Destroying Science (Real Clear Education)

Oregon Judge Blocks High-Capacity Magazine Ban

Trump, covid slowed down immigration. Now employers can’t find workers. (Washington Post)

Burying the Major Democrat Donor Angle in the FTX Fiasco

Can politics kill you? Research says the answer increasingly is yes. (Washington Post)

FBI treated Twitter as a ‘subsidiary,’ flagged tweets and accounts for ‘misinformation’ (N.Y. Post)

Why American tech giants want to make TikTok a boogeyman (CNN)

In South Africa, private sector steps in to provide services the government won’t (CNN)

Millions of Americans Would Get $3,600 Payments in 2023 Under New Plan (Newsweek)

Oregon Health Survey Asks 6th Graders If They Are Trans, Nonbinary

Tech Groups Ask Supreme Court to Review Texas Social Media Law

Rep. Adam Kinzinger in final House floor speech says ‘limited government’ for GOP now means ‘inciting violence against government officials’  “I am the very model of a modern RINO Congressman….”

Oregon Judge Halts Voter-Approved High-Capacity Magazine Ban

Kentucky Supreme Court Strikes Down School Choice Law

Read it.

It came from the thousands of people that hospitals are required to treat for free. That money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the people that they are allowed to charge.

(The Guardian, like many in the UK, think that if the UK has ‘free’ health care, then everybody ought to have free (taxpayer funded, government provided) health care.

Of course, the long lines for treatment in the UK ought to make it clear what the problem is with this system, but people getting Free Stuff aren’t known for their expertise in economics.

Elon Musk’s Twitter bans CNN, NYT, WaPo journalists without explanation (CNN) Welcome to our world.

Twitter suspends CNN, NYT, WaPo journalists, Elon Musk alleges they’re banned for ‘doxxing’ his family (Fox) Oh, so there is an explanation after all. “Mommeee! Johnny hit me back!”

Pennsylvania school board member resigns after saying she was against voting for a ‘cis, white male’ for board president (NBC)

‘Wiped out’: War in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade (Washington Post) Journalists, of course, can’t be bothered to learn what ‘decimated’ means.

Joe: Boehner’s remarks on Pelosi is the way leaders treated each other (MSNBC) No, it’s the way Deep State apparatchiks treated each other.

How a small group of Democrats won the culture wars (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin declares victory, just in case you didn’t notice.

The big story on the market downturn: The wealth bubble is popping (The Hill)

Students banned from taking photos of trans teacher with Z-sized prosthetic breasts (N.Y. Post)

German official dedicates legal win against Twitter to Fauci (Associated Press) After all, they’re on the same team.

Luxury San Francisco condo prices nosedive as crime, drug use continue battering city: study

Condo prices in San Francisco plummet as drug abuse and crime soar

NY Times’ Front Page Screams Over ‘Far Right’ ‘Hard Right’ ‘Ultraconservatives’

Congress approves removing statue of Supreme Court chief justice who wrote Dred Scott decision (NBC)

By embracing anti-Fauci and QAnon conspiracies, Musk tests how low Twitter can sink (L.A. Times) Who is this ‘QAnon’ of which the Left seems so afraid?

The Republicans Need a Reckoning (The Atlantic)

Senate Dems prepare to join the investigative fray (Politico)

Antiabortion movement sets sights on putting people in jail (Washington Post) Well, that’s what happens when you break the law. Especially when you break the law by MURDERING CHILDREN.

Scarborough: DeSantis Is ‘All Hat, No Cattle,’ Bad Retail Politician (Who Won by 19 Points)

Criminal referrals could be announced sooner than expected by the Jan. 6 panel (NPR)

Republicans Don’t Have a ‘Candidate-Quality Problem,’ They Have a Crazy-People Problem (New York Magazine) Jonathan Chait loses his shit. (Crazier than Fetterman? Hard to believe.)

Musk Didn’t Even Vote in Midterms He Cared So Much About (Daily Beast) Scraaaaaaape that barrel….

‘Bigot’ JK Rowling Funds Women-Only Rape Help Center Libs Say ‘Excludes Trans People’

The View: GOP Hates Interracial Marriage, Voted Gay Marriage for Lovers

Elon Musk Accused Of Being A “Dangerous” Right Wing QAnon “Terrorist” After Tweeting Rabbit Emoji

Conservative Activist Poured Millions Into Groups Seeking to Influence Supreme Court on Elections and Discrimination (ProPublica) How dare he do that! Only WE can do that!

MSNBC and CNN Blame Conservatives for Club Q, Violent Threats

Even 74% of Dem Voters Believe Big Tech Censors News, Commentary Due to Political Bias

QAnon is finding new life in Elon Musk’s conspiracy theories (Washington Post) Like Bigfoot, ‘QAnon’ is much talked about but never actually seen.

Right-Wing Student Leader’s Racist Post Sparks Firestorm at Mizzou (Daily Beast)

Kanye West’s Love of Hitler Allegedly Goes Back 20 Years (Rolling Stone) When you’r a witch, you’re a witch all the way….

Company in Probe of Dem Senator Bob Menendez Tied to His Crooked Donors (Daily Beast)

I Think I Found Kyrsten Sinema’s Side Hustle (Slate)

SCOOP: VA Claims It Offers Religious Exemptions for Abortion Mandate; Nurse Was Told ‘No Process Exists’

Watch: Dem Rep. Says Term ‘Pedophile’ Is Discriminatory  Indeed it is, and intentionally so.

Newly Revealed Texts Show Mark Meadows Is a Liar (Mother Jones) Uh, not really. Seems he didn’t say everything they wanted him to say, so therefore he is a ‘liar’.

MRC’s Houck Takes on Chinese-Owned TikTok as CNN’s Darcy Blames Pushback on Fox

A New York Gala Draws Incoming G.O.P. Lawmakers, and Extremists (N.Y. Times)

Rudy Giuliani Likely Committed Misconduct Over 2020 Election, DC Bar Panel Finds (Bloomberg)

Colbert Hypes 2024 GOP Primary as ‘Gonorrhea’ and ‘Racist Gonorrhea’

Taylor Lorenz Lashes Out at Younger, More Successful Journalist in Cruel Anti-Semitic Tirade

NPR Smears Twitter Files as ‘Ugly’ Musk ‘Stunt,’ Claims Twitter Favors Conservatives

Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Blames Republicans for Attack on Her Father  Of course she does.

‘No, you leave!’ Eric Adams vows NYC will stick with 2% paying half of all taxes (N.Y. Post)

Pelosi’s blunt talk about abortion rights skewers U.S. bishops (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin takes a break from bashing Trump.

What’s the boeuf? Gender neutral pronouns spark fury of French establishment (Euronews)

New Leila Khaled Talks Remain on YouTube Despite Her Praise for Terrorism

STUDY: Twitter Files Make Up Less Than 0.5% of Coverage on CNN, MSNBC

‘Horrified and Outraged’: Murder Victims’ Families Rip Oregon Governor for Commuting Death Sentences

Mother of Child Rape Victim Sues Virginia Soros Prosecutor in Federal Court

Florida Subpoenas Nearly Two Dozen Organizations Pushing Hormones, Transgender Surgeries For Children

Teacher Sues Ohio School District After Being Fired for Refusing to Use Preferred Pronouns

Tillis Amnesty Deal Is Dead

California reparations task force dives into what is owed (Associated Press) GIVE US MONEY!

Emails Show CDC Removed Defensive Gun Use Stats After Gun-Control Advocates Pressured Officials in Private Meeting

NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, & MSNBC Have Spent Just 14 Minutes Combined Covering The ‘Twitter Files’: Report

‘The Cleaning Lady’ Season 2 Finale Promotes Sanctuary Cities, Pushes Deportation Myths

Get Woke, Go Broke: Washington Post Staff Meeting Erupts Into Chaos As Layoffs Announced

Mark Your Calendar! Largest Ever Drag Queen Story Time Coming to Florida In January

GLAAD Invents ‘Dragphobia.’ Really.

The View, Pelosi Whine About Mean Tweets, Question First Amendment

More snow and rain is falling in the Arctic (BBC)

Arctic rapidly turning warmer, wetter and riskier: report (Axios)

‘Firmageddon’: Oregon conifers suffer record die-off as climate crisis hits hard (The Guardian)

Wealthy nations offer Vietnam $15bn-plus deal to shift from coal (Financial Times)

G7 nations to provide Vietnam with $15.5 bln to cut coal use (Reuters)

Logged tropical forests have amplified and diverse ecosystem energetics (Nature)

The surprising reasons parts of Earth are warming more slowly (Washington Post)

HSBC updates climate policy to stop funding new oil and gas (Associated Press)

Fusion power is tantalizing, but it won’t save the planet (Washington Post)

Biden May Be About to Sign Off on a Huge Alaska Oil Drilling Project (TIME)

We’re Succeeding on Climate. We’ll Fail on Biodiversity (Washington Post)

Climate justice needs more than a fund. It needs accountability (Al Jezeera)

EU Reaches Deal To Impose World’s First Carbon Border Tariff

Polar bear habitat update: Winter conditions well on their way across the Arctic except in Svalbard

More Climate Misinformation and Factual Errors in the Seattle Times. Should You Care?

How COVID-19 Immunity Works at This Point in the Pandemic (TIME)

COVID-19 spike protein could cause organ failure: study (KRON4)

COVID: what we know about new omicron variant BF.7 (The Conversation) We know we need to PANIC!

en Griffin sues the IRS after his tax records were disclosed (CNBC)

Dr. Fauci: Twitter has become ‘almost a cesspool of misinformation’ (MSNBC) But it’s not a cesspool of his misinformation, which is why he’s so upset.

Hospitals are opening triages in parking lots amid ‘tripledemic’ surge (CNN)

Fearmongering about vaccine side effects ignores the true threat (The Hill)

US to Pay Pfizer Nearly $2B for More Paxlovid Courses in 2023  KA-CHING!

Montana Law That Bars COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates In Health Care Settings Is Unconstitutional: Judge

Masks Creeping Back Into Major US Cities

Read it.

One by one, they go to start their business day only to find a baffling message from their payments app informing them: “You can no longer do business with PayPal.”
There is little or no explanation. They have somehow offended the sensibilities of someone somewhere deep inside the bureaucracy.
They are simply told via an email from PayPal’s Risk and Compliance Department that, after an internal review, “we decided to permanently limit your account as there was a change in your business model or your business model was considered risky.”
In case there is any doubt, the email adds: “You’ll not be able to conduct any further business using PayPal.”
Then, toward the bottom: “If you have funds in your PayPal balance, we’ll hold it for up to 180 days. After that period, we’ll email you with information on how to access your funds.”

Don’t. Use. Paypal. I tell you three times.

An emergency declaration gives Karen Bass new powers. How will she use them? (L.A. Times) Proglodytes just LOVE declaring emergencies. Especially if it comes with ‘new powers’.

LA Mayor Karen Bass declares state of emergency on homelessness (Fox)

Prosecution of accused cop killers raises questions about Kim Foxx’s conviction integrity chief (Chicago Sun-Times)

The Fed needs to stop raising interest rates (The Guardian) Robert Reich pretends to be an economist.

Europe wants more people to take the train (The Economist) Better yet, get a bicycle!

SEC Chairman Gensler Scrubbed Evidence Of Clinton, Soros And Pelosi Meetings: FOIA Lawsuit

New Yorkers Flee For Greener Pastures

Prenatal cannabis exposure associated with mental disorders in children

New Zealand bans citizens born after Jan 1 2009 from ever buying cigarettes

Germany Wants To Remove ‘Anti-Democrats’ From Civil Service

Poll: 71% Say Accurate Reporting of Hunter’s Laptop Could Have Altered 2020 Election  Which is why they didn’t do it.

Ex-Twitter Exec’s Pro-Groomer Tweets Resurface as Musk Tackles Platform’s Child Exploitation

Deal to prevent another Jan. 6 included in spending package, Schumer says (Politico) Because any excuse will do for more spending.

Will Secular Conservatives Have Conservative Grandchildren?  Dennis Prager thinks not.

Musk Dissolves Pro-Censorship Twitter Trust and Safety Council

Analysis: Highest Death Rate in NYC Jails in 25 Years

Chicago News Outlets Say Mayor Suppressing Crime Reporting

Higher education’s sea change (Axios)

Concern as US media hit with wave of layoffs amid rise of disinformation (The Guardian)

The big-deal bills Congress needs to pass before the end of the year (Vox)

A plea to conservative Christians on gay marriage (Washington Post) E.J. Dionne rises from the dead.

Election Group That Gave ‘Zuckerbucks’ in 2020 Renews Grants

German Chancellor Mulls Quitting Twitter Over Musk

Cause of death: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America (Washington Post)

New York Times ‘Best Of 2022’ TV & Movie Lists Reveal the Ideological Splits on Rioting

The media’s silence on the ‘Twitter Files’ is shameful (N.Y. Post) What else can they do? (Silence of the shams)

Who wants to be a Minneapolis cop?  Nobody, it would appear.

The ‘Twitter Files’ are the final nail in the media’s credibility (Washington Examiner)

Inside the secret $32M effort to stop ‘Stop the Steal’ (Politico) Add a deep wallet to a guilty conscience and what do you get?

‘Google at It Again,’ Search Giant Favored Warnock in Search Results in Neutral GA Precinct

Rand Paul: “Republicans Are Not Perfect. But Are Not Pushing Your Child To Have Surgery To Remove Their Genitalia”  He’s got a point.

Washington State to Give Health Insurance to Migrants  Your tax dollars at work.

Nervous Morning Joe Tries to Laugh Off Hunter Biden Laptop Investigation

Nets Bury Heads in the Stand, Shut Out Mention of Fourth Twitter Files Batch

Seattle Is Finally, Irretrievably, Lost

NBC News Reports on Liberal Angst Due to Unwillingness to Leave Twitter  They can’t stand not being a part of the mob.

Canadian Healthcare System Introduces Punch Card Where On Your 10th Visit You Get Free Suicide (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

Someone has been attacking power plants all over the country, and federal authorities are trying to determine who it is.  In recent days, we have seen significant sabotage on both the east and west coasts, and so it can’t just be one individual that is responsible.  During the first eight months of this year, there were a total of 106 attacks on the electrical grid in the United States, and that represents the highest number ever recorded in a single year.  Hopefully authorities will be able to get to the bottom of this mystery, because winter will soon officially begin.  If power goes out in your neck of the woods for an extended period of time during the months ahead, what will you do?

Generac is your friend.

A widening gender rage gap? No wonder: women have a lot to feel angry about (The Guardian)

Nearly 25% of U.S. homebuyers want to move — this state is the top destination (CNBC)

Justice Jackson is smashing right-wing legal claims at Supreme Court hearings (MSNBC)

S.F.’s graffiti cleanup team scrapes and sprays, helping tagged businesses avoid fines (S.F. Chronicle)

Louisiana to decide on an amendment allowing only U.S. citizens to vote in the state’s elections (The Hill) Which ought not even to be necessary–but these are crazy times.

Oregon looks to create first-in-nation universal health care plan

Florida teachers flee county with ‘egregious’ student behavior, like spitting, biting, drug use, theft

Former French Secret Service Head: Mass Migration “Threatens Civil Peace”

CNN, WashPost Omit ‘Democrat’ from Segregationist Origins of Georgia Runoff

Following Sinema’s Exit, Romney Announces Intention To Remain In Democratic Party (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

The white flags of surrender are flapping in the breeze, thanks to Republicans willing to accept as permanent the “emergency” election rules that Democrats demanded during 2020’s COVID hell.

Longing for the elusive red wave, some GOP officials and operatives are suffering Stockholm Syndrome: They think it’s time to surrender to Democrats, swallow their dodgy vote schemes, and eventually sink them with early, mail-in, and trafficked ballots, drop boxes, and ballots received and counted days and weeks after polls close, etc.

Rather than switch, Republicans should fight. They have nothing less than federal law and the U.S. Constitution on their side. The GOP should litigate this matter all the way to the Supreme Court before ever yielding to Democrats’ rabid vision of how Americans should vote.

Dutch farmers battle technocratic forces driving them into oblivion

Chicago school at center of Project Veritas hit offers affinity groups for pre-K, says White kids can’t attend (Fox)

Victories against ESG Starting to Accelerate

Project Veritas: Chicago Dean Brags About Giving Underage Students Sex Toys During Pride Month

Buying the Presidency: George Soros Dumps Another $50,000,000 Ahead of 2024 Election

State Attorneys General Say FedEx And UPS Help Feds Track Gun Sales

New Zealand Takes Baby From Parents Demanding “Unvaccinated” Blood For Heart Surgery

Neocons Are Not Conservatives

Media Tiptoe Around Colorado Nightclub Shooter’s Preferred Pronouns

STUDY: Trevor Noah’s Daily Show Guests Were 86 Percent Democratic  My, what a surprise.

As Noah Departs, CBS Mourns Decline in Late Night Viewership

The politics of Kyrsten Sinema’s party switch (Washington Post) Except that it wasn’t a party ‘switch’, unless there’s an Independent party of which I am unaware.

George Soros: The Money Behind Leftist Media & Censorship

Germany Considers €20,000 Basic Inheritance  Will it be subject to the crippling inheritance taxes that the Left so love?

NHS waiting lists in England hitting new high of 7.2M people  How’s that government-provided health care working out?

Low nutritional quality in vegetarian meat substitutes

VA School Resubmits Application For After School Satan Club

Read it.

Police launched 16 raids across Belgium’s capital Friday as part of a probe into corruption and money laundering involving the European Union parliament and an unidentified Gulf country, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

Four people were detained for questioning, and investigators recovered around 600,000 euros ($633,500) in cash and seized computer equipment and mobile telephones during the Brussels raids, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The statement did not name the four but said one was a former member of the European Parliament.

The raids targeted in particular assistants working for EU lawmakers, the statement said. The EU assembly has 705 elected members from the bloc’s 27 member nations. Each lawmaker has a number of assistants.

Centralizing power makes corruption that much more profitable.

The European Deep State is even more corrupt than that in D.C.

Read it.

Christine Lagarde is no longer the only (alleged) criminal in charge of a money-printing operation: on Friday, French prosecutors said they had opened a corruption investigation into top central banker Sylvie Goulard, who simultaneously stepped down from the Bank of France.

The probe covers suspicions of accepting bribes, influence peddling, illegal conflicts of interest and breach of trust, the national financial prosecutor’s office said, confirming a report from daily Liberation. Graft-fighting group Anticor triggered the probe by filing a criminal report in June, with the investigation launched in September.

Centralizing power makes corruption more profitable.

So what’s next for the corruption-tainted Goulard? Will she quietly ride off into the sunset of retirement? Why of course not – she will do what so many alleged criminals ends up doing: work for the government.

According to the Bank of France, Goulard Se wished to “return to the foreign ministry” where she started her civil service career.

Nobody gets fired, nobody goes to jail.

As John Derbyshire likes to say: ‘Get a government job!’

Read it.

Open the borders! What could possibly go wrong?

College degree value plummets as woke insanity spikes (Fox)

Number of ‘top’ surgeries performed on trans children has risen 13-FOLD in last decade — with girls as young as 12 getting irreversible ops (Daily Mail)

Internal documents reveal Oregon teachers union exodus is a crisis of its own making

ABC Claims SCOTUS Backing Religious Liberty Would Undo ‘Long’ ‘Settled’ Civil Rights

Raphael Warnock: I Support Abortion Because “It’s Exactly What Jesus Would Do”

“My Jaw Hit The Floor” – Musk Fires Twitter’s ‘FBI-Russiagate’ Lawyer Over Vetting Debacle

Walmart CEO Warns Retail Thefts Will Lead To Price Hikes, Store Closures

PBS Gushes Through Democrats Week In Review

The Hijacking of Pediatric Medicine

Walmart CEO Warns of Higher Prices, Store Closures Over Shoplifting

AP’s War on Plain English: Don’t Use the Term ‘Late-Term Abortion’

All Four College Football Playoff Teams Gain LGBT Approval

James Cameron Releases Testosterone-Free Cut Of ‘T2’ Where Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Replaced By Kip From Napoleon Dynamite  (Babylon Bee)

House Republicans ‘May Dig Their Own Grave’ With Fringe Political Investigations (The Bulwark) The Kristol Krew are sounding more and more like garden-variety Democrats.

The View: ‘White Guys’ in GOP Vote Women/Minorities to Control Them

Florida Town Tightens Up Code of Conduct Rules After Pride Festival Fiasco

AOC Under Investigation by House Ethics Committee

Rantz: Beloved Seattle restaurant suffers 18th break-in by thieves the Democrats enable

Read it.

An examination of the “gatekeeping” that has taken place in the American conservative movement will bring me sooner or later to the subject of purges. This theme has engaged my interest as an historian of the conservative movement because it is key for understanding the vicissitudes of American conservatism. Purging unwanted dissenters has often been presented as the movement’s sensible reaction to extremism. It has supposedly allowed conservatism to become respectable—or at least so it seemed before the American media ceased to recognize anything as being respectable that was not recognizably part of the Left.

As late as October 27, 2005, on the fiftieth anniversary of National Review, Jonah Goldberg praised his magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, Jr., for “throwing friends and allies off the bus from time to time.” Further: “The Randians, the Rothbardian anarchists and isolationists, the Birchers, the anti-Semites, the me-too-Republicans: all of these groups in various combinations were purged from the movement and masthead, sometimes painfully, sometimes easily, but always with the ideal of keeping the cause honest and pointed north to the ideal in his compass.”

Curiously, Goldberg’s praise was echoed in the New York Times and elsewhere in the national press, which depicted the by-then venerated WFB as a high-minded conservative who had dealt heroically with right-wing extremism among conservatives. Only a handful of commentators, either libertarians or on the far Left, bothered to notice that Buckley’s targets in the 1950s and 1960s were hardly neo-Nazis. Most of them were Jewish isolationists who differed with his view of foreign policy.

Any prospect that the ‘Conservative movement’ might escape from being the Washington Generals of American politics is met with an instant and scorched-earth pogrom. One need only look at the Kristol Krew (The Bulwark) and the Goldberg Group (The Dispatch) and the doddering relic of National Review (and don’t get me started on David French) to see that this syndrome is healthy and vigorous.

The main difference between proglodytes and ‘movement conservatives’ is that proglodytes never forget which side they’re on.

Some of us remember.

In Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Address, Kamala Harris Urges Nation Not To Forget January 6  (Babylon Bee)

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Babies are a huge opportunity cost. Financially speaking, they are like winning the lottery but backwards. You can’t even think of having one without cancelling your subscription to a good night’s sleep. And if you take into account inflation, economic recession, and the rest of the news cycle’s highlight reel, even a one-child family can seem to have one too many mouths to fish Lego pieces out of. Honestly, I don’t see how babies could possibly come back as the preferred lifestyle choice for couples in their 20s unless they start powdering their own butts and side-hustling on Fiverr to cover some of their expenses.

And don’t get me wrong, I love a childless plane ride as much as the next coach-flying light sleeper, but at this pace, the world’s population is going to flatline at around 10 billion in 50 years, and then what? We’re all gonna smell of damp old book by then, and if we don’t spawn enough young blood now we’re gonna see the extinction of the soccer mum van — for there won’t be enough kids to even fill up the seats of a Vespa moped.

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Berlin is known for some of the most generous social programs in the entire country, and many hold the German capital up as an example of progressive policies that should be implemented elsewhere. However, there are some major catches.

For one, Berlin benefits from wealthier areas of Germany, with taxpayer money funneled into Berlin at the expense of states like Hessen or Bavaria. In fact, Bavaria alone pays up to €9 billion into the state fiscal equalization scheme, while Berlin takes in €3.6 billion. These payments are partially related to Berlin and other Eastern German states’ economic setback following the end of communism, which served as a major economic shock to the east of Germany at the time.

This money, in part, helps Berlin afford free daycare and schools along with free school lunches. “Afford” is a term used loosely though, as the city is currently sitting on a time bomb of debt amounting to €66 billion, with few signs of this debt slowing. From 2019 to 2021, the total debt level rose €8.3 billion, moving up 13 percent.

One of the most debilitating proglodyte myths is that Money Comes From The Government And That Money Is Free. Then reality, which sticks around even when you wander off into fantasy-land, arises to bite you in the butt. Hard.

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For background, I first came to live in Manhattan in 1992, while the crack epidemic still raged. After Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, quality of life in the city improved dramatically. Conditions continued to improve on sound policies through the Michael Bloomberg era. However, after Bill de Blasio came to power, things began to deteriorate as they often do, first slowly and then suddenly.

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This is a fascinating story that lays open an obscure aspect of the financial services realm in easy-to-grasp language.

I once worked for a company that did credit monitoring. The gateway to sales for this company was the CHECK YOUR CREDIT SCORE FOR ONLY $1! scheme, which I’m sure you’ve encountered. This, in turn, made them a piñata for fraudsters checking whether the card info they had just stolen was still ‘live’. The company had an entire team of six statisticians and coders, including two PhDs, to develop automated systems to weed such people out, because the penalties for accepting charges against accounts that eventually turned out to have been hacked was eating the company alive.

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“But we don’t have blasphemy sdslaws,” I hear people say when someone protests about some perceived slur on their God or Prophet. Indeed, we do not. Essentially moribund, they were abolished in England in 2008 and in Scotland in 2021. If we did, our prisons would be overflowing with the people who blaspheme against Christianity. Appropriately, British blasphemy laws only ever protected Christianity and, even then, only the Christianity of the established churches. However, the lack of such laws did not protect the right of the public to watch a film of which some Muslims disapproved or a teacher from having to go into hiding with his family for showing a cartoon they did not like. In France, the consequences for upsetting the Islamist mob can be more serious, and even fatal. Islamic extremists require no laws to discourage blasphemy; they simply take the law into their own bloody hands.

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There’s a new kind of colonialism afoot in rich nations, and much like the old colonialism, this one, too, purports to be for the good of the colonized. Today’s colonialists are Left-wing environmentalists exporting their vision of “climate justice” as a way to deal with global inequality. But despite the high-minded morality implied by the latest green agenda, just like older forms of colonialism, it creates a relationship of dependency that undermines the true interests of the colonized.

Environmental colonialism was on full display at a recent guilt fest, the UN’s latest climate summit, known as the COP27. The idea cooked up by the billionaires of Silicon Valley, London and Wall Street and agreed upon at the November summit by born again zealots like President Biden, is to provide “loss and damage” funding for countries hit hard by climate disasters. In other words, we’ve just committed to paying climate reparations.

Of course, governments in these countries will take the loot, and perhaps send some of it to useful pursuits. But what the developing world needs most is not a handout but the very technologies—including fossil fuels—that have served to reduce poverty globally. What poor countries and poor people everywhere need is not green blood money but help increasing the electricity supply that is critical for industrialization.

House Republican calls efforts to vacate Speaker’s chair a ‘stupid idea’ (The Hill) Well, at least one House Republican. In the Narrative Media, there is no right but the far-right.

McCarthy says GOP holdouts on Speakership vote would be ‘squandering this majority’ (The Hill)

New York cannabis launch turning into bad trip, social justice critics claim (N.Y. Post)

Trump grasps the importance of the National Archives to democracy. Why don’t Democrats? (The Hill)

Harvard musical reimagines Jesus, Judas relationship as ‘Gaysian love story’

Central Coast business owners respond to hateful messages over drag events (S.F. Gate)

“Highly Experimental And Unproven”: Scientist Tells Judge Transgender Treatments For Minors Fraught With Risk

San Francisco Is The Canary In The Coal Mine For Where Wokeism Is Headed

WashPost Arrives on Twitter Files on Hunter Biden: Not Even Close to a ‘Bombshell’!

Paralympian claims Canada offered to euthanise her when she asked for stairlift

Iowa caucuses, built on myth, lose place at head of the line (Associated Press) Watch the new Democrat Narrative being constructed in front of your very own eyes.

How Democrats’ New Primary Calendar Changes the Chessboard (N.Y. Times) Watch the new Democrat Narrative being constructed in front of your very own eyes.

Democrats Vow To Find New Social Platform That Will Censor The News About What They Did On Twitter (Babylon Bee)

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Michel Houellebecq—one of France’s preeminent writers known mainly for his novels, poems, and essays, but who is also an occasional actor, filmmaker, singer, and rapper—has said that the Great Replacement, a term used to describe the gradual replacement of people native to France by foreign populations, is a fact.

Victor Davis Hanson.

First, you would surrender our prior energy independence.

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I’m thinking of two well-known financial analysts who are unsurpassed in their analytical brilliance and knowledge of markets and who rightly regard the bureaucratic Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) as the father of bubbles, busts, stagnation, and market privilege. In their articles, Peter Schiff and David Stockman hammer the Fed relentlessly and rightfully for its cluelessness, corruption, and threat to our material and spiritual well-being. They have authored engaging bestsellers on the state of the economy and place blame where it belongs, on the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.

Yet, strangely, their recommendations stop short of eradicating the cancer altogether.

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One of the most astonishing things about the woke is their high boredom threshold. They seem to have the same thoughts about the same subjects, expressed in the same language, all their waking lives. They never tire or let their vigilance down. They look at Raphael or Botticelli and see only social injustice. They are terrible bores.

The explanation of their persistence, which resembles that of flies on a corpse, is that truth, which holds no interest for them, is not their object, but power, the cynosure of every ambitious mediocrity’s eyes. To change the metaphor slightly, the lunatics have taken over the asylum or, in the case of the museums, the philistines.

Chris Cillizza Headlines Massive Round of CNN Layoffs (Daily Beast) There is no joy in Muddville.

Florida pulls $2 bln from BlackRock in largest anti-ESG divestment (Reuters)

U.S. Senate panel deadlocks on abortion rights lawyer’s judicial nomination (Reuters)

A Billionaire Got the Chicago Mayor’s Support to Lease Public Land. Then He Wrote Her Campaign a $25,000 Check. (ProPublica) BRAAAAAAAINS!

The cost of health care: how to make it affordable (The Economist) Make it ‘free’, of course.

CNN Starts Layoffs And WaPo Ends Sunday Magazine Amid “Economic Headwinds”

Gun Rights Groups Challenge Restrictive Oregon Law

Democrats’ ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Myth Debunked Again as Early Voting in Georgia Runoff Tops 1 Million

California Senator Accused Of Faking Anti-LGBTQ Threat  Whose turn is it to be the victim?

Ruhle, Lefty Journo Panic Over Rise of Authoritarianism in US

Lila Rose Shares Why Abortion Supporters Want a Culture of Consequence-Free Sex

At Canadian Universities, Race and Gender Quotas Have Become a Way of Life

Democrats Tried to Enlist IRS to Attack Conservative Nonprofits

Marauding Bands Of Looters Are Stealing Billions Of Dollars Worth Of Merchandise As America Descends Into Lawlessness  But only in blue states. (And blue cities in red states, which is almost all of them.)

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Contrary to popular belief, the United States is no longer home to the best education system in the world. According to the World Top 20 Project, an international organization that gathers educational data from more than 200 countries, the U.S. lags well behind countries like Finland, Denmark, and South Korea. From elementary schools to colleges and universities, the U.S. education system is in crisis. Academic standards have drastically slipped, with a woke madness gripping classrooms across the country. And no school is immune—not even the most prestigious medical schools in America.

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Democrats think the perennial battle over gun control has now swung in their favor. They are vowing to enact new gun control measures, allegedly in response to recent high-profile mass shooting incidents. Of course, we already have hundreds of statutes and regulations on the books relating to firearms. When someone engages in a mass shooting (or any shooting) he violates multiple statutes of the most serious kind.

An obvious question is, if the hundreds of statutes and regulations already in place didn’t stop the latest outrage, why would adding one more make a difference? In reality, we have plenty of laws that make it illegal to shoot someone, or to acquire or use firearms in various ways. Unfortunately, enforcement of those laws is generally pathetic. Which is why we see the same criminals committing one crime after another.

The mystery of rising prices. Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation? (NPR) How about greedy politicians?

Montgomery County MD approves bill to ban fossil fuel use in most new buildings (WTOP)

Montgomery County, Md. passes bill restricting gun possession in public places (WJLA)

Disney CEO Bob Iger tells employees he wants to ‘quiet’ down culture wars, ‘respect’ the audience (Fox)

Senate passes bill to protect same-sex, interracial marriages (Washington Post) Which is plainly unconstitutional. But they don’t care.

Pennsylvania County That Ran Out Of Paper Ballots Fails To Certify Election Results

New York Times Plea: Don’t Trust GOP or New York Post, NYC Crime Isn’t So Bad

Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk (The Intercept) ‘Mommeee! Johnny hit me back!’

University of Florida Medical School Scrubs Web Pages of Woke Content in Wake of Exposé

Germany: FDP Rejects Interior Minister’s Radical Naturalization Plan

Germany: AfD Files Lawsuit Against State of Berlin Over Anti-Democratic Proceedings

Saxony’s Interior Minister Calls for Migrant Admissions to be Suspended Amid Massive Influx

Report: Authoritarianism on the Rise as Democracy Weakens

Study: Pedophiles Released in California

Colbert, Ex-CNN Reporter Claim Free Speech Responsible For Dictators

Jewish Professors Accuse College of Retaliation

Bob Iger Vows To Cut Back To Only 7 LGBT Characters In Every Kid’s Movie  (Babylon Bee)

Report: EU Threatens To Ban Twitter Over Musk’s Lack of Censorship  Lack of Europeans is a feature, not a bug.

Liberals Are Furious NYC Mayor Wants to Take Dangerous Mentally Ill People Off The Streets

NY Times Claims Balenciaga Pedo Scandal Is QAnon Conspiracy Theory

Flu season intensifies with 6M infected in US: CDC (Fox)

China protests: Uncertainty reigns for foreign firms (BBC)

‘Negative Efficacy’ Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations In Their Tracks

Fauci has destroyed the credibility of the public health establishment (Washington Examiner) Not by himself, of course–he had help: Every person who has an MD and a government paycheck.

Why China Is Still Stuck in a Zero-Covid Nightmare  (Wired ‘Science’)

21 GOP Governors Sign Letter Opposing Military Vaccine Mandate