Read it.

A prominent Oklahoma Republican has formally endorsed a Democrat running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat against her GOP opponent backed by former President Donald Trump.

Kendra Horn, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, revealed the endorsement from Kris Steele on Twitter on Wednesday, sharing a video of the Republican expressing his support for her.

Steele served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013 and was its speaker from 2011 to 2013, as well as speaker pro tempore from 2009 to 2011.

“I’m honored to receive the endorsement of Kris Steele, former Republican Speaker of the Oklahoma House,” Horn wrote on Twitter.

Read it.

Every four years, the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) stages a Plenipotentiary Conference at which member states decide how the organization will steer the development of communications technologies.

The event is usually only of interest to telco and policy wonks.

But this year’s event has become a geopolitical football – and possibly a turning point for internet governance – thanks to the two candidates running in an election for the position of ITU secretary-general.

…

The possibility of Rashid Ismailov being elected ITU boss, and potentially driving adoption of censorship-enabling tech like New IP around the world, therefore has plenty of people worried – not least because in 2021 Russia and China issued a joint statement that called for “all States [to] have equal rights to participate in global-network governance, increasing their role in this process and preserving the sovereign right of States to regulate the national segment of the Internet.”

 

Ann Coulter looks at immigration. It doesn’t go well.

The massive news coverage of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “political stunt” of sending 50 illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard reminds me of the media’s “political stunt” of referring to illegals as “legal asylum-seekers.”

Number one: They broke into our country. They’re illegal aliens. Number two: All asylum claims are frauds. Every single one.

Asylum is nothing but a conveyer belt to bring the worst people on Earth to our shores. You say you turned your own country into a hellhole? Fantastic! Come right in!

‘You Must Be A Gun Nut’: Closeted Liberal Women Embrace 2nd Amendment

Top Unions Lost Nearly Quarter of a Million Members After Court Struck Down Mandatory Membership

IMF says UK fiscal measures will ‘likely increase inequality,’ urges rethink (Reuters)

IMF gives damning verdict on Britain’s tax cuts (CNBC)

The man who recruited migrants for flights to Martha’s Vineyard says he feels betrayed (CNN)

Unhoused SF residents sue London Breed, SFPD over ‘cruel’ sweeps (S.F. Gate)

Schnitzer: ‘Enough is enough’ of downtown Portland vandalism (KOIN)

Voice assistants could ‘hinder children’s social and cognitive development’ (The Guardian)

Eric Adams ‘frustrated’ by NYC’s migrant crisis — wants national ‘decompression strategy’ (N.Y. Post) Doesn’t give a shit about Texas’ and Arizona’s ‘migrant crisis’, of course.

Transgender Ga. deputy taking county to trial over denied healthcare (WSB-TV)

Virginia Students Walk Out Over Younkin’s Floated Transgender Policies

New York Times Admits That Hundreds of ‘Top Surgeries’ Are Being Performed on Children

Air Force Academy Defends Telling Cadets To Replace ‘Mom And Dad’ With ‘Gender-Neutral Language’

Farmers Jump Off Hemp Bandwagon Amid Lack Of Profit And Underwhelming Performance

Tim Ryan Says Americans Need To Give Up Gas Cars as He Drives Around Ohio in Gas Guzzlers

“All Ages” Drag Show In Tennessee Canceled After Protesters Arrive

What Country Is the Wall Street Journal Living In? (The Bulwark) The Kristol Krew pushes the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

New Poll Debunks Media Claims That Pro-Life Stance Will Doom GOP

Confused NY Times Rejoices GOP Govs Migrant Bus ‘Stunts’ Are ‘Backfiring’

Trump Counties Come Out of Pandemic Better Economically Than Dem-Run Ones

What Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand About War (The Atlantic) But a writer at The Atlantic does, of course.

How to Spin the Upcoming FBI Crime Stats to Help the Democrats,

Pregnant Comedian Kicks Off Peacock Series With ‘Killer Abortion Jokes’

Even the richest San Franciscans think economic inequality is out of control. Here’s how bad it is (S.F. Chronicle) That’s because even the richest San Franciscans are Wokerati.

My children were born in New York but now live in Texas. I sometimes wish we had never moved. (Insider) Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

Why Haven’t Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib Even Mentioned Iran’s Hijab Protests?  Not part of the Narrative.

NYC Council Eyes Buying Back Used Needles From Drug Addicts

Urban Devolution Continues

“Murderapolis”: Ground Zero For ‘Defund The Police’ Movement Now Suffering Horrendous Crime Wave

Major London Department Store Gives Up On Calling Police To Catch Shoplifters

This Montana Democrat Invests in Company She Blames For Housing Crisis

Meyers Fawns Over Alleged Economic Genius, Bernie Sanders

AZ Schools Offers Secretive Sex Chat Rooms for Kids

The Second Amendment Gives No Comfort to Insurrectionists (N.Y.Times) Jamie Raskin pushes the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Fake charities are spending millions to help Democrats win elections (Washington Examiner)

Meta busts first Chinese campaign targeting US midterms

ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN Still Burying Political Murder of Republican Teen

Chris Wallace’s New CNN Show Bombs in Debut

Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

Philadelphia Mayor Issues Ban on Guns at City Parks, Pools  I will be interested whether this will survive the inevitable constitutional challenge.

Fascism Expert Somehow Able to Find Fascism Everywhere (Babylon Bee) Amazing how that works.

Read it.

Imagine if every person in the world had the ability, at their arbitrary whim, to anonymously activate your fire alarm inside your home. That is the reality of the telephone. There is nothing quite as rude as the telephone.

…

The telephone is synchronous. Because callers like myself are only available outside work hours, but the receivers are only available inside work hours, the two can never sync. I hate telephones.

San Francisco is magnificent, and its people are furious (S.F. Chronicle) Cognitive dissonance in print.

In Chicago, the city’s largest children’s hospital offers ‘kink’ and ‘trans-friendly’ sex toys for minors

On multiple fronts, House GOP leaders trip over agenda rollout (MSNBC)

Planned Parenthood Stealth-Edits Website To Match Stacey Abrams ‘Heartbeat’ Claim

ABC’s Donna Brazile: Biden Has Done a Fabulous Job on Economy  Lies, damned lies, and Democrat ‘journalism’.

Jeff Bezos is buying up single-family homes to rent-trap humanity forever (Surviving Tomorrow) I guess being rich swamps his credentials as a reliable proglodyte.

Society OK With Religious People As Long As They’re Not Those Weird Ones Who Actually Believe It  (Babylon Bee)

NBC’s Chuck Todd: Bring in More Migrants to Solve Inflation!

West Point Turns Over 40+ Pages Of Mostly Blacked Out CRT Emails

Dick Morris: Dems to ‘Dump’ Biden, Pick up Hillary in ’24  Bring it on.

Read it.

We found a positive association between the prevalence of depressive episodes and a meatless diet. Meat non-consumers experienced approximately twice the frequency of depressive episodes of meat consumers.

There is a reason vegetarians are such tedious assholes.

Read it.

It’s no secret at this point that the EU is an anti-democratic organization. The leadership isn’t elected, but selected from a pre-determined pool of candidates from within the Party structure.

Everyone with the power to make a decision was placed there not by popular vote but by backroom collusion.

As we approach this weekend’s Italian elections there is real despair in the air that there is any light out of this dark time. That no matter what decisions we try to make, they are only in service of those that seek total dominion.

And yet all you hear from these Eurocrats is that we are in a “war of Democracy versus Autocracy,” as EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen put it in her hellish EU state of the union address to the European Parliament recently.

This is what Democrats and their mouthpieces in the press and academia mean when they say that we ought to be more like the Europeans: Fascism in effect if not explicitly in form.

U.S. abortion restrictions absolutely do not align with European law (Washington Post) Unasked: Why ought they?

Republicans offer their Commitment to Vapid Sloganeering (Washington Post) Although they can’t compete with the professionals in the Democrat party.

The scientist who almost made Mark Zuckerberg president of the World Bank (Calcalistech)

List of Shame: All the Media Outlets Pretending Babies Don’t Have Heartbeats at 6 Weeks

Politicizing College Football, UMass Trolls Liberty University With ‘Pride Day’

“No Longer Employed”: Administrator At $60K Per Year NYC School Out After Project Veritas Exposé

Pelosi Extends Proxy Voting Until Nov. 10

Germany: Greens Plan To Ban Native Germans From A Third Of Jobs To Promote ‘Diversity’

LAPD Reports ‘Troubling’ Increase In Armed Robberies  Gee, I wonder why.

Washington Post Columnist Calls for the End of Impartiality and Balance in Journalism Jonathan Turley points out the Jennifer Rubin is losing her shit.

EU Commission President Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has ‘Tools’ If Wrong Parties Win

This Threat to Democracy Is Hiding in Plain Sight (N.Y. Times) Republicans, apparently.

Conservatism Is Prohibited

NYT Flunky Writes in Column: ‘Giving People Money Is a Great Way to Reduce Poverty’

Youngkin’s meeting with Va. delegation gets heated over trans policy (Washington Post)

New York State Teacher of the Year is too ‘woke’ for our kids: parents

Burn: See MAGA-Era Science Lies Roasted And Debunked By Neil DeGrasse Tyson (MSNBC) He doesn’t have the time it would take to roast and debunk Progressive-era science lies.

Activists subvert poster sites to shame aviation and ad industries (The Guardian) Well, that’s the intent, anyway–like most ‘activism’, it doesn’t have the intended effect.  Mostly it just annoys the people they are supposedly trying to persuade.

Republicans block bill requiring dark money groups to reveal donors (The Hill) How can Progressives cancel them if they don’t know who they are? (In the Narrative media, ‘dark money’ is any money spent not supporting the Narrative. George Soros and Zuckerbucks, for example, can’t be ‘dark money’.)

How Texas’ abortion ban hurts Big Oil’s effort to transform its workforce  (Reuters) Well, maybe they don’t actually want to ‘transform their workforce’.

The Other Scandal Revealed at Mar-a-Lago (Politico) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH!

Woke Gen Z is out to destroy entertainment  Doing a good job of it, too.

How one S.F. neighborhood went from ‘on the upswing’ to break-ins, violence and encampments (S.F. Chronicle)

CNN viewers melting down over Jake Tapper’s primetime promotion

To Corporate Media, Some Criminals and Victims Are More Equal Than Others

NBC Reports ‘Latinos Shifting to The GOP’, Asks Dem Senator Why

GOP’s crime cudgel (Axios)

Soros Prosecutor Twice Sprung Criminal Who Went On To Kill A Man

Switzerland Mulls ‘Gender-Neutral’ Compulsory Military Service For Women

Teachers Unions Fund Campaign To Raises Massachusetts Taxes

After Student’s Death, LA Schools to Carry Overdose Antidote  Think of it as evolution in action.

Will Rashida Tlaib Get Away with Her Antisemitic Comments?  Of course. She’s one of The Squad.

Poll: 77 Percent Won’t Vote for ‘Anti-justice’ Democrat Candidates

Behar: U.S. Abortion Laws Are Like Iran’s Morality Police Killing Women

AOC: US Women Oppressed Like Iranian Women  Except for the whole killing part.

Read it.

Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars. Most manufacturers are switching to touchscreens – which perform far worse in a test carried out by Vi Bilägare. The driver in the worst-performing car needs four times longer to perform simple tasks than in the best-performing car.

Not really news but a useful reminder.

Read it.

As cities across the United States are seeing crime rates rise due to defunding police departments, Soros prosecutors, cashless bail, decriminalizing heroin and meth, as well turning parks and sidewalks into campgrounds, there was a warning that was ignored by city governments across the United States.

Flint Town is an eight-episode documentary about policing in Flint, MI. Flint Town went from a 300-officer police department to a 98-officer police department. 98 officers have to provide 365/24 hours a day service to residents to include investigative service. This means long response wait times and no follow-up criminal investigations.

Flint Town started filming in November 2015. It was completed in early 2017, and released in March 2018. Quality of life issues in policing is like filling potholes. Filling potholes is not as glamorous as ribbon-cutting ceremonies for some city governments. City governments are filled with monument builders and virtue signallers. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Chicago, and New York have become Flint Town. You could include Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas in this list. For some reason, city officials are to the left of Bernie Sanders.

Flint Town was a warning of what was to come for residents in cities across the United States.

Read it.

Proportional representation is how the Nazis got control of Germany in the 1930s.

Proportional representation is why most European governments can’t form stable administrations.

Proportional representation is an idea so stupid only intellectuals will believe it.

Sim NIMBY, the Game Where You Can’t Build Anything

In a first, European Union moves to cut Hungary funding over damaging democracy (Reuters) As if the E.U. were the model of democracy toward which all aspire.

Maybe the US is in a recession, but small businesses don’t know it (The Guardian) Except the ones being shafted by inflation and inability to find workers.

The Nation That Never Was review: a new American origin story, from the ashes of the old (The Guardian) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Still the wrong way to pick judges (The Hill) Pretending that ideological screening is a Republican innovation.

Starbucks makes good on promise to close more stores as crime rages in New Orleans

Denver set to give 140 homeless people up to $12,000 in cash as part of ‘basic income’ program  That’ll buy a lot of drugs.

NASDAQ Nancy holds up bills on congressional trading while the insider rot spreads  What’s the use of having power if you can’t abuse it?

New Orleans Takes Over as Murder Capital of US

Newt Gingrich: ‘Civilization Breaks Down’ in Crime-Ridden Dem Cities

Kurtz Highlights Leftist Media Double Standard on Don Lemon Demotion

Suits to Save Confederate Icons Dropped in South Carolina

How mechanics keep 50-year-old BART trains running: Windows 98, eBay, and scraps

Organized Retail Crime Reaching “Crisis Scale”

Annals of Liberal Cluelessness, Martha’s Vineyard Edition

High School Defends Trans Teacher Who Wore Massive Fake Breasts To Class

Canary In The Tax-Mine? California Sees 11% Drop In Revenue

Meet the Democrat on a Six-Figure Income Who Can’t Afford To Buy Her Kids Shoes

Fetterman Voted To Free Murderer Who Hacked Innocent Man to Death With Garden Shears

Colorado’s Democratic Governor Raised Special-Interest Tax Benefits, Breaking Campaign Promise, New Report Says

The Paradox of Multiculturalist Globalism

Gaming Event for Cancer Charity Overshadowed by Woke Complaining  

After Courts Force Jewish University to Host LGBTQ Campus Group, University Shuts Down All Clubs

Don Lemon Says His New Job As CNN’s Janitor Is Not A Demotion  (Babylon Bee)

In Some States, Endangered Animals Enjoy More Protections Than Unborn Babies  Of course. Endangered animals are scarce, whereas babies … not so much.

The Times’ Anti-Democratic “Democracy”

Success eludes New York’s plan to convert hotels into affordable housing (Politico)

Caving to Demands for Diversity, SNL Hires Funny Cast Member  (Babylon Bee)

Blue State Blues: Customers are stealing shopping baskets instead of buying bags, N.J. supermarkets say

Read it.

In The Student Loan Giveaway is Much Bigger Than You Think I argued that the Biden student loan plan would incentivize students to take on more debt and incentivize schools to raise tuition with most of the increased costs being passed on to taxpayers through generous income based repayment plans. Adam Looney at Brookings takes a deep dive into the IDR plan and concludes that it’s even worse than I thought.

Read it.

Despite Joe Biden’s absurd search for “white supremacist” criminality, the reality is that virtually all political violence comes from the left. The latest case in point occurred on Thursday at the University of New Mexico, where Turning Point USA sponsored a speech by Tomi Lahren. Far-left students, determined not to allow speech they disagree with, created an ugly and dangerous scene….

Book: Trump wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland (The Hill) More leftist fairy tales from the Narrative journo hit-piece The Divider.

Maher claims CRT and LGBTQ curricula in schools will drive voters to choose Trump despite him being a ‘creep’

Rally With Trump? Some G.O.P. Candidates Aren’t Thrilled About It. (N.Y. Times) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

PBS RINO: Abbott, DeSantis Demonstrate ‘Laboratories of Progressively Worse Inhumanity’

Trump used ‘almost mob-style extortion’ to try to convince AT&T to sell CNN to Rupert Murdoch, new book claims (Business Insider) Further leftist fairy tales from the Narrative journo hit-piece The Divider.

What the Martha’s Vineyard Stunt Says About the Trump Wannabes (N.Y. Times) I think it says they’re winning.

Unpacking Apparent Trump-Hillary Double Standard

Echoing Trump, These Republicans Won’t Promise to Accept 2022 Results (N.Y. Times) Like Hillary and the Democrats after 2016.

‘Welcome to fascism’: Top Arizona Republican blasts Trump-backed candidates who might try to overturn future elections (CNN)

U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right regulate online speech (Reuters)

Nicaragua’s dictatorship is criminalizing democracy and fueling migration to the US (The Hill) Daniel Ortega. Remember him?

America’s Christian majority is on track to end (NPR)

The Supreme Court and the uses of history (The Hill) Pushing the Narrative (and bashing Clarence Thomas) in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Kirsten Gillibrand wants to send NYC migrants upstate so cities could get federal funds

Bill Maher blasts Portland Public Schools curriculum as a ‘unified theory of wokeness’ (Oregon Live)

State Democrats send voters pre-filled absentee ballot applications (WWNY)

How ‘social justice’ is corrupting science

Cracks in GOP emerge over abortion policy and messaging (The Hill) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

What Does The Right’s Historic Victory In Sweden Mean For Europe?

CNN Founder Couldn’t Fathom Why People Hated North Korean Dictator

Is Showtime Doing Damage Control for the Disgraced Lincoln Project?  My, what a surprise.

Martha’s Vineyard Takes Revenge On DeSantis By Shipping Him 50 Karens (Babylon Bee)

Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense (The Atlantic) According to the Narrative.

TikTok Won’t Promise To Stop Transferring US Data To China: COO

This Is Not Bail Reform, This Is Insanity

‘Zuckerbucks 2.0’: Lawmakers Eye Private Money to Get Out Vote in Milwaukee Elections

‘Never sleeps, never even blinks’: the hi-tech Anduril towers spreading along the US border (The Guardian) Along the border: BAD! In social media: GOOD!

‘The threat is real’: Dems press big donors to target state races “And now that we have your name, you go on the list for when we start Soaking The Rich.”

Poll: Abortion, Trump boost midterm prospects for Democrats (NBC News) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Martha’s Vineyard flights leave migrant advocates scrambling (Washington Post)

Republicans in key battleground races refuse to say they will accept results (Washington Post) Like Hillary and the Democrats in 2016. Or Stacy Abrams to this day.

The Other McCain turns over a rock.

Most people know, although they are reluctant to acknowledge, the meaning of “good schools.” You don’t have to be Ibram X. Kendi to see the systemic racism embedded in that common bit of code-speak. When people are looking to buy a house, they’ll pay a premium for a “good school district,” by which they mean a majority-white district.

What has always struck me about this, as a longtime critic of our education system, is how little attention such parents pay to the curriculum. What upscale suburban parents seems to care about most is the relative prestige of their child’s school — is this the fashionable district? do a high percentage of students go onto college? are the SAT scores high? — and never mind what is actually being taught.

…

.Notice that both of these teachers, who profess themselves “distraught” by a policy they regard as “cruel” to “marginalized” students, have been employed a long time by Bucks County schools. We may be certain that, when Becky Cartee-Haring was hired in 2006, there were no controversies about pronouns and “gender identity” in Bucks County schools. We know this because the sudden vogue of youth transgenderism didn’t begin until about 2014, and the acceleration of this trend has been driven mainly by online social media. Yet here are teachers adamantly defending beliefs that didn’t even exist when the students at Central Bucks West High School started first grade.

The Other McCain.

Yesterday, Ace of Spades jabbed Jonathan V. Last as one of “True Conservatives Conserving Conservatism at The Bulwark” — a jab richly deserved, but it filled me with a sense of sadness, because Last used to be so good, before he fell victim to Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Philadelphia voters say Fetterman’s health won’t impact their vote, citing Biden’s age and health

US libraries face ‘unprecedented’ efforts to ban books on race and gender themes (The Guardian)

Giant refugee puppet joins ‘huddled masses’ in New York (Reuters)

What Liberals Don’t Want to Admit About Influxes of Migrants (Daily Beast)

Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law (Politico)

More than 200K transgender Americans face barriers to voting in midterm elections (The Hill)

Culture war spills out on the diamond, Arkansas Travelers rightfully dragged (Arkansas Times)

US Army’s Recruiting Crisis Worsens As Test Scores Drop, Disqualifications Rates Surge

Will The Polls Overestimate Democrats Again?  (FiveThirtyEight) The question answers itself.

Adam Kinzinger’s big regret (CNN) I’ll bet you didn’t know that David Axelrod could read minds.

Foxx to announce charges against 2 CPD officers after on-duty shooting (WGN)

There is not a bipartisan urgency among voters for preserving democracy (Washington Post) In the Narrative media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

Democracy, are you OK? What recent history tells us about the state of politics (NPR)

The successful policy that progressives love to hate (CNN)

Schools are going online in disasters, worsening disruption (Associated Press)

‘Defund the Police’ aftermath created ‘ripple effect’ that endangers everyone, law enforcement source says

Philadelphia ‘Soda Tax’ Completely Backfired: Study

Soros-Backed Arizona DA Candidate Partners With Abortion Clinics That Sold Fetal Organs

China Expanding Overseas Secret Police Stations, Including 1 in NYC

Democrats Buoyed by Abortion and Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds (N.Y. Times) Push-polling the Narrative in the run-up to the mod-term elections.

New California Law Wil Target ‘Disinformation’ Online  In the Narrative media, ‘disinformation’ means accepting reality rather than the Narrative.

Stephanopoulos Declares Journos ‘Have To Risk Looking Partisan’

After Dealing With Martha’s Vineyard HOA, Migrants Decide Go Back And Take Their Chances With The Cartels  (Babylon Bee)

Facebook Spied On Private Messages Of “Conservative Right-Wing Individuals”, Then Reported To FBI For Domestic Terrorism

Fetterman cast lone vote in failed bid to free man convicted of murdering woman with scissors; DA speaks out

Chrissy Teigen Changes Story: Claims ‘Miscarriage’ Was Actually An ‘Abortion’

Massachusetts gov calls up National Guard over 50 Martha’s Vineyard migrants

Illegal Immigrants Get the Boot After One Day on Martha’s Vineyard

New York City ‘Nearing Its Breaking Point’ With Influx Of Illegal Immigrants From Texas: Mayor

Surprise Is Key Part of Migrant Travel From Florida, Texas

Migrants Decline Newsom’s Offer Of Asylum In CA Since They Just Came From A Collapsing Communist Hellhole With No Electricity  (Babylon Bee)

Give Iran Nukes, Says Quincy Institute’s New Iran Expert

Top Trans Medical Group Mysteriously Removes Age Recommendations for Minors Seeking Transgender Surgeries, Hormones, Puberty Blockers

Google, Amazon Censored Campaign Exposing School Counselor Association’s Agenda, Education Group Says

CNN Nukes Morning Show, Far-Left Don Lemon Demoted to Sunrise Duty

Dozens of migrants arrive on Martha’s Vineyard via charter flights (ABC)

Ron DeSantis sends two planes of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard

Migrants’ plane lands on Martha’s Vineyard: island mobilizes, with many unanswered questions (New Hampshire Public Radio)

Governor signs disaster declaration, calls up National Guard to assist with migrants bused from Texas (Chicago Tribune)

Illinois calls up National Guard to handle migrants, Chicago wants federal money diverted from Texas

Elena Kagan to her colleagues: You’re why the Supreme Court has lost legitimacy (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

Kagan repeats warning that Supreme Court is damaging its legitimacy (Politico) According to the Narrative.

“Quiet quitting” is understandable — but it won’t save us from predatory capitalism (Salon) Or even predatory socialism.

Ohio school board meeting gets heated over ‘woke’ policy keeping parents in dark about kids’ gender changes

Disinformation via text message is a problem with few answers (NBC) In the Narrative media, ‘disinformation’ is anything that disagrees with the Narrative.

Anti-abortion groups are getting more calls for help with unplanned pregnancies (NPR)

McDonald’s plans to expand West Loop HQ, but CEO says city needs to ‘face facts’ about downtown business climate (Chicago Tribune)

Eric Adams wants to put thousands of migrants to work in New York Doing jobs that Americans won’t do!

Chicago daylight robbery outside an Apple store thwarted by suburban mayor’s armed security detail

Advocacy groups say Fairfax is not doing enough to curb deportations (Washington Post)

CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Launches Tax-Funded Abortion Website

Half Of Americans Think US Will No Longer Be A Global Superpower Within Ten Years; New Poll Finds

Mitch McConnell’s Refusal to Seat Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court Is Coming Back to Haunt Him (The New Republic) On the contrary, I’m sure he thanks God every day (as I do) that Merrick Garland is not on the Supreme Court.

Can This Lawsuit Overturn California’s 3D-Printed Gun Ban?

Why ‘Voter Suppression’ Is a Myth

Captiongate: How a Single Zoom Call Propelled Canada’s Greens Into Pronoun Meltdown

23% of Congress Is Over Age 70, Compared to 4% in 1981

Democrats Finally Have the Upper Hand in the Culture Wars (The Atlantic) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Democrats’ No. 1 fall goal: Try not to ‘poke the bear’ (Politico)

Delaware Judge: State’s Vote-by-Mail Law Unconstitutional

Persecuted at Home, Iran’s Christian Converts Finding Europe’s Doors Closed

Tax-Happy Congresswoman Penalized for Tax Delinquency

Montana Judge Blocks Anti-trans Birth Certificate Rule

Read it.

Saw that comin’.

What will American religion look like in 50 years? (Deseret News)

U.S. Christian majority could fade in coming decades, models find (Washington Post) Models! That proves it! Just like climate change!

‘Public Safety In Chicago Is A Joke,’ Chicago Democrat Says

New York City homeless man sleeps on sidewalk with toaster oven, crisis worst ‘since Great Depression’

Is being transgender a medical condition? (Washington Post)

Illinois mayor says Gov. Pritzker owes his community an ‘apology’ for sending 90 migrants with little notice

Two more buses with migrants from Texas arrive in Chicago area (CBS)

Well-paid millennials left New York and California in their THOUSANDS in the early pandemic, many for lower-tax living in Florida, Texas and Washington state, study shows (Daily Mail)

California will send you hundreds of dollars next month (S.F. Gate)

US News college ranking under scrutiny after Ivy League university plummets (The Guardian)

‘Viewpoint diversity’ will lead to indoctrination and ignorance (Knoxville News Sentinel)

Democrats outpacing Republicans by tens of thousands of absentee ballot requests in key midterm state  Setting up the steal.

Chicago Tribune wins fight for public records that Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration sought to keep secret  BRAAAAAAAINS!

Seattle police staffing drops to 30-year low, officers leaving in ‘droves’ after defunding

Boston Marathon Offers ‘Non-Binary’ Option to Applicants for First Time

Anti-War Vandals Deface 9/11 Memorial at Michigan State University

Not Just Nancy: Lawmakers Have Been Trading Like Drunken Insider Sailors

Arizona Can’t Enforce New Election Law In 2022 Election: Clinton-Appointed Judge

WATCH: Journalists Tout ‘Good News’ of 8.3% Inflation as Stock Market Plummets

House members roll out bipartisan election bill aimed at preventing future coups (NBC) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections. In the Narrative media, ‘coup’ means ‘Republicans winning an election’.

San Francisco Makes It Insanely Hard to Build Housing

Chicago Mayor Supports State of Emergency Over Migrant Crisis  BRAAAAAAAINS!

Joel Kotkin.

For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.

But now, for the first time in its history, the population of Los Angeles is in decline, falling by 204,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. LA was once a magnet for investors. But recently many of the area’s corporate linchpins – including aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Hilton Hotels – have left, taking with them high-paying jobs and philanthropic resources.

Read it.

In January of 2022, the San Francisco-based law firm Girard Sharp, which specializes in class action lawsuits, announced its investigation into the adverse effects of puberty blockers on transgender-identified children. These adverse effects can include low bone density, psychological problems, and potentially, per a July 2022 FDA warning label, pseudotumor cerebri, a condition which can cause brain swelling, headaches, nausea, double vision, and permanent loss of vision. Across the Atlantic, as of August 2022, the U.K.’s Tavistock Centre, a gender transition clinic, is expecting a class-action lawsuit from at least 1,000 families of children who were prescribed puberty blockers. Meanwhile, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare released in February of 2022 new guidelines on transgender medicine, recommending that doctors not prescribe puberty blockers outside of “exceptional cases,” as their use is built on “uncertain science.” The reality that so-called “gender-affirming” medicine is not safe is now becoming too obvious to deny, and its implications could not be clearer: we are entering the long-overdue lawsuit phase of the transgender movement, and it is in lawsuits that this movement ends.

Read it.

We’ve all been asked to speak to some particular lie of the present regime. First, though, a word on that word.

We, or at least I, have been taking some flak recently for using it. It is said that we mean it as a pejorative. But when I say “regime” in reference the present ruling order, I am speaking as a political scientist. “Regime” means “ruling order” or “form of government.” How, then, could using this clinical word possibly be pejorative?

…

In the case of the fake “conservatives,” I believe they know our regime has changed, they welcome that change, and so attack those who notice but don’t welcome it. This is the Law of Salutary Contradiction married to the Celebration Parallax: they get to say it because they like it; when we say the same thing, it’s a dangerous conspiracy theory. The role of these fake “conservatives” is therefore to gaslight you into believing that the founders’ regime still rules, and, failing that, to denounce you for saying otherwise. Telling the truth about the present regime is not a privilege allowed to its critics.

ZMan peers ahead.

A feature of this age is lots of talk about the future, but not in the practical sense as was the case in the past. A century ago, industry would promise labor saving devices to make material life better for regular people. Today, the managerial elite talks about the future in vague terms, sometimes awful and sometimes glorious. In the future, we will go about in self-driving electric cars, unless Gaia burns creation to a crisp over the use of fossil fuels and inappropriate pronouns.

The fact is the managerial elite does not speak in specifics about the future because they do not have a clear vision for it. The only thing they are sure of is they will be in charge of it and as such, it will need their constant attention. Like the members of a committee, the managerial class can only imagine the next meeting. The future is always more of them doing what it is that makes them possible. As a result, the future they work towards is more of an aesthetic than a real place.

Read it.

In November 2020, a report from McKinsey & Co. to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority predicted that transit ridership would recover to as high as 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels by 2025. Now McKinsey has revised that number downward to as low as 70 percent. Even that is probably optimistic considering that recent data indicate that New York subway ridership has been flat at least since February 2022, and has even declined somewhat since June.

More than in most cities, transit in New York depends on fare revenues. Before the pandemic, fares covered more than half the operating costs of New York City transit but only about a quarter of the costs elsewhere. A decline in ridership hits the city’s transit budget harder than almost anywhere else, so it’s no surprise that both national and local media are focused on the “fiscal cliff” that MTA is likely to hurdle over when it runs out of federal COVID relief funds, probably in 2024.

As the New York state comptroller noted in a recent publication, this is more than just a question of increased subsidies vs. reduced service. Instead, it is truly an existential issue for transit agencies nationwide.

New York is the poster child for mass transit–if it can’t be viable there, where can it be?

Read it.

Just when it seems like we can’t possibly go any lower, we always manage to top ourselves. In the old days, every once in a while I would come across a story that would make me shake my head in disbelief because it was just so absurd. Now it is happening on a daily basis. In this article I am going to share some examples with you. I realize that some of these things are difficult to believe, but all of them are true. Our country really is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes, and the pace of our national decline only seems to be accelerating. If we are not able to turn our cultural decay around, eventually we will not have a country at all.s

Read it.

Pandemic travel has been chaotic and frustrating. But for the most part, it has been relatively clean, with many airlines committing to robust sanitation practices early in the pandemic, and numerous virus-wary travelers additionally wiping down their areas.

Over the past week, two widely shared videos of particularly filthy planes have raised concerns that the days of clean flights may be going the way of mask wear. They also sparked a debate about whether flight crew or passengers carry the responsibility for messes.

When Teens Find Misinformation, These Teachers Are Ready (N.Y. Times) Ready to push the Narrative.

BlackRock strikes back at ESG critics (Axios)

Chicago Suburb Says It Didn’t Know Dozens of Migrants Were Being Sent From Chicago as More Buses Arrived in City (NBC)

Senators preview details of religious rights amendment to gay marriage bill  I’d love to know what provision of the Constitution givers the Federal government the power to legislate on this subject.

Same-sex marriage bill teeters on verge of GOP filibuster (Politico)

China’s “ESG” Funds Include Coal Companies And Firms Tied To Alleged Human Rights Violations In Xinjiang

Morning Joe Suppresses That Suspect In Journalist Murder a Democrat

Young Democrats are flocking to register to vote in Texas after abortion ruling, data shows (Houston Chronicle) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Student Loan Forgiveness As Class Warfare

Mom Accuses Educators, Therapist of Driving Her Autistic, Gender-Confused Child to ‘Catastrophic Ruin’

The Right to Free Speech Is Not the Right to Monologue (The Atlantic) ‘Shut up!” he explained.

Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business

What I Noticed Was Missing at James Madison’s Montpelier Home

California Man Takes Fiancée Out Of State For A Romantic Lightbulb-Lit Dinner

DOJ appeals special master ruling in Trump Mar-a-Lago probe (Politico)

‘This cannot continue’: MAGA influencers are creating hell for California elections offices (S.F. Gate)

William Cohen labels Trump a ‘clear and present danger to democracy’ (The Hill)

Michael Cohen claims DOJ is ‘tip-toeing’ around Trump as if he were ‘the supreme leader’

Five things to know about Aileen M. Cannon, the judge who granted Trump a special master (The Hill) According to the Narrative.

In ruling for Trump, low-profile judge Aileen Cannon invites scrutiny (Washington Post) And a witch-hunt.

Grand jury issues subpoenas seeking information on Trump-aligned PAC (Politico)

U.S. reveals more classified records may be missing in Trump probe (Reuters) Pushing the Narrative in the run-up to the mid-term elections.

Former U.S. attorney dishes on how he held line against Trump White House (Washington Post)

An ugly GOP election scam in Michigan unmasks a big right-wing lie (Washington Post) Greg Sargent loses his shit.

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb calls him ‘deeply wounded narcissist’ who acted in ‘criminal’ way to overturn Biden win (CNBC) The small fry try to monetize their status by biting the hand that fed them. The witch-hunt continues.

‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says (The Guardian) Somebody needs to primary Romney.

Freeberg nails it.

It’s a one-party state, but it’s their party and they see nothing wrong with it. So their bosses can tell them…the wildfires are climate change…the power outages are climate change…the budget shortfalls are due to climate change…crime is out of control because of climate change…we’re just forcing you to suck up smaller sodas through these paper straws, and use these grocery bags, and buy an electric car you can’t charge, because of climate change. And they’ll buy all of it. There are no signs of possibly incompetent management. None are needed. It’s their guys running things.

Read it.

Social media deplatforming and algorithmic manipulation remain huge problems demanding clear, forthright public policy responses, but the same underlying sentiment—the arrogant and malicious impulse to subjugate and “other”-ize the “deplorable” half of American society, humiliating them into second-class subjection—is already playing out in other industries as well.

De-banking—the politicization of lines of credit and the severing of basic financial services to “controversial” conservatives—is already very much here to stay. Just ask (recent congressional candidate) Laura Loomer about PayPal, or ask the spirited Canadian truckers (remember them?) about GoFundMe. In recent years, moreover, conglomerates such as Bank of America have stopped lending to certain firearms manufacturers—the very defenders, in this case, of the Second Amendment. Other examples abound.

Read it.

If California, our most populous state, were its own nation, it would rank as the world’s fifth largest economy and boast the highest average household income (outside a handful of “countries” like Monaco or Luxemburg).

And, yet, the governor is begging its citizens to stop using their appliances, turn off their lights and keep their thermostats at a stifling 78, lest they suffer more rolling blackouts, like some junior mandarin in a Third World country.

Of course, I kid when I say that California is already experiencing the effects of the Green New Deal. A state that still derives more than 66% of its energy from non-renewable sources, has tens of trillions of dollars to go before it meets President Joe Biden’s promise of a 65% reduction in emissions by 2030. The flooding of an already rickety grid with undependable renewables offers only a small taste of the “transition” to “clean energy.”

Because you can scaremonger about climate change all day long and ratchet it up to insane levels, but no one escapes the laws of physics or economics. California has been forced to extend the life of its last nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon and gas-fired power plants to save the state from being plunged into darkness rather than the occasional blackout.

As it turns out, most people are only theoretically fans of deindustrialization.

Read it.

Ah, Sri Lanka.

In 2020: a beautiful, agriculturally self-sufficient island nation full of tea and tourists and holder of the highest “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investor rating in the world.

And then, as part of the larger “green” effort spurred on by international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), woke capital, and, seemingly, a desire to sit at the big table at the various and sundry global initiative conferences, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned the use of manufactured fertilizer in order to create a more climate-friendly sustainable farming sector. In April, 2021, the country went all-organic overnight.

What could possibly go wrong?

By the end of last year, Sri Lanka became unable to feed itself, prices for food (especially rice) and fuel and other daily basics skyrocketed, the tea crop – and the hundreds of millions it earns in international trade – was decimated. The nation defaulted on its foreign debt, had rolling power blackouts, the tourists are staying away in droves, and Sri Lanka, already wracked by corruption and COVID, spiraled out of control.

ZMan holds a wake.

Imagine a poll that reported a majority of people thought there are little green men visiting earth on a regular basis. You do not have to imagine it. There was a big global survey half a dozen years ago that claimed a majority of people on earth think there are little green men out there. A majority of Americans believe in ghosts. More people think psychics are real than think Ron Paul is real. Big Foot is ten times more popular than the vice president of the United States.

The point is, most people are stupid, at least when it comes to understanding things that have no direct impact on their lives. They may know accounting or chemistry, but they can also think disagreeing with the government is bad for democracy. This has always been the argument against democracy. Most people lack the desire or capacity to master the material necessary to make good political choices. Giving them a ballot is like giving a toddler a hand grenade.

Read it.

Teachers in Seattle Public Schools overwhelmingly vote to strike. It is against the law for public employees to strike. That has not stopped the teachers in Seattle and Kent from striking. Law-breaking with no consequences.

Seattle man who harassed, punched business employees at Pike Place Market could see trial. Could?

And, in other news: Seattle City Council passes resolution to move forward with gas leaf-blower ban.

Seattle police and firefighters are leaving in droves. Parents are pulling their kids out of Seattle Public Schools to send them to private schools, or leaving town. Crime skyrockets.

And the City Council votes to ban gas-powered leaf blowers.

No further comment necessary.

Joel Kotkin.

There’s much talk today, from left and right, about threats to democracy, yet little focus on the social dynamic critical to its survival. In this respect, we may see the current, and troubling, escalation of violent political rhetoric, and even political violence, not so much as the cause of polarization but the result of changing class dynamics, most notably the increasingly perilous state of the yeoman middle class.

The United States, and much of the high-income world, is going through a revision of class relations resonant with gilded age, or even feudal models. A recent British parliamentary study projects that by 2030, the top one percent will expand their share to two thirds of the world’s wealth, with the biggest gains overwhelmingly concentrated at the top one percent of the top one percent—the top 0.01 percent.Similarly, in this country, since the mid-1980s, the share of national wealth held by those below the top 10 percent has fallen by 12 percentage points, the same proportion that the top 0.1 percent gained.As one conservative economist put it succinctly in 2018, “The economic legacy of the last decade is excessive corporate consolidation, a mas­sive transfer of wealth to the top 1 percent from the middle class.”

Read it.

There must be a reason why some people still live in Portland, but I don’t know what it is. The city has become a hellhole, devastated by crime and overrun by homeless drug addicts. Antifa is rampant, and the city’s political leaders are–if this is possible–even more ineffectual than the leaders of San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis.

The Daily Mail takes note, in a story titled “‘I’m done with Portland’: Homeless people are forcing ‘terrified’ residents to sell their homes.” Sometimes you have to go to the U.K. press to get the straight story on events in the U.S. The Mail article is profusely illustrated with photographs and deserves to be read in its entirety.

Salon.

“Google argues that it has the right to collect your most sensitive data, as long as it flows across an open WiFi network,” PrivacySOS.org said last month after Google announced a $3.2 billion acquisition of  Nest, which sells WiFi-controlled home heating appliances. “Now do you want to let this company inside your home?”

“Uhm… I hate to break this to the ACLU—given they’re supposed to be on the cutting edge of the privacy debate—but the thing is, Google’s already in our homes,” commented PandoDaily’s Yasha Levine. “It has been in our homes for a long, long time. And not just in our homes, but at work, in our cars and even when we’re walking down the street.”

“As many have pointed out the privacy concerns of this development are huge,” wrote two other PandoDaily writers, Carmel Deamicus and Michael Carney. “Nest products track detailed information about their users’ movements, in addition to things like a user’s WiFi IP address, and whether the specific address is a home or a business.”

Why Ken Burns Is Exposing America’s Evils During the Holocaust (Daily Beast)

‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American history (The Guardian)

Corporations are fueling abortion bans – Black Floridians are paying the price (Tallahassee Democrat) Apparently the right to kill your child is a ‘reproductive right’.

This House Race is New Ground Zero in the MAGA Civil Wars (Daily Beast)

Quiet quitting, real quitting, unionizing — what else are American workers up to? (NPR) Apparently anything but working.

Elite NYC Private School Director On Leave After Admitting To ‘Sneaking’ Political Agenda Into Classrooms  Maybe that has something to do with the teacher shortage.

Maloney says Biden ‘on the way back and so are House Democrats’ (The Hill)

Dem election committee chair: ‘We’re on a roll’ despite country facing ‘serious problems’

California Gov. Newsom Reaped $10.6 Million In Campaign Cash From 979 State Vendors Who Pocketed $6.2 Billion

“They Are Trying To Assassinate”: Bannon Accuses Biden Of Stirring Anti-Right Hatred After Home ‘SWATed’ Again

Judge Dismisses Carter Page Lawsuit Against FBI Despite ‘Deeply Troubling’ Surveillance

Why Are Leftists Obsessed With Destroying Hero Culture?

From Sri Lanka to Salinas

NPR Cheerleads for New ‘All-Trimester Abortion Clinic’ in DC Area

Amazon Blocks Negative Reviews Of Its Woke Lord Of The Rings Series

American Library Association Removes Webpage Promoting ‘Secret’ LGBT Messaging In Libraries

Vulnerable Dems Shunning Progressive Policies to Survive

It’s Time for Corporate Media to Tell the Truth About America’s Crime Problem

Dan Rather schooled on Twitter for wondering ‘what is going on’ with CNN: ‘Gone full MAGA’

What the end of the Pelosi era could cost California (L.A. Times)

Violent threats against lawmakers have Congress on edge (The Hill) The focus is, of course, on threats against Democrats. Nobody cares about threats against Republicans.

When ‘wokeness’ comes to Middle-earth: Why some say diverse casting ruins the new ‘Lord of the Rings’ series (CNN)

Dollar store workers in the South have a labor movement. Just don’t call it a union (NPR)

Virginia teacher sues district over pronoun policy: They think they know better than parents

Android Central.

Google does a lot of stupid things. All giant corporations are the same in that regard. But it takes special effort to do something truly terrible. That’s where Google’s Project Nimbus comes in on the spectrum.

Project Nimbus is a joint effort of Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government that provides futuristic surveillance capabilities through the use of advanced machine learning models. Like it or not, that’s part of the future of state security, and not any more terrible than many other similar projects. Many of us even use similar tech in and around our homes.

Over 10,000 govt docs without classified markings were seized from Mar-a-Lago, DOJ says (NBC) So what?

Bernie Sanders joins striking British rail workers, calls out “corporate greed” (Reiuters) What about Union greed? What about political greed?

Joe Biden says Trump ideology threatens US democracy (BBC) What ‘Trump ideology’? Guarding the border? Cutting taxes? Increasing security against China? Honest elections? What, exactly?

Now Would Be a Good Time to Investigate Ginni Thomas (Daily Beast) The witch-hunt continues.

Trump pick for Michigan secretary of state race Kristina Karamo threatened to kill her family, court records claim (CNBC)

In Michigan, one of the most brazen GOP attacks on democracy yet (Washington Post)

Twitter account Libs of TikTok blamed for harassment of children’s hospitals (Washington Post)

Dear Insurrectionists and Fascists: I’m sorry I offended you (Washington Post) Dana Milbank is, of course, not sorry at all, and uses this opportunity to double down.

Max Boot: OK, the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory Is Actually True, But That’s a Good Thing Because I Hate You

Reality Check?? CNN’s Avlon Tries to Paint Dems as Moderate, GOP as Extreme

Biden Official Complains Big Tech Doesn’t Censor Enough: Report

S.E. Cupp: ‘Courageous’ Biden ‘Correctly’ Calls GOP Semi-Fascists

MSNBC Wishes Biden Included Reagan In Denunciation of GOP

Google releases details on how it will combat misinformation in advance of midterm elections (CNN)

Trump-aligned Pa. governor nominee Mastriano sues Jan. 6 committee (Politico)

Hamas Praises Google Worker Who Quit Over Company’s Ties to Israel

New Mexico governor commits $10 million to building new abortion clinic near Texas border

NPR Turns to Aussie Leader To Trash Fox, Murdochs as Undermining Democracy

NY Times Plugs UN Report’s Demand for Abortion, Reparations, Gun Control in US

GROSS: Nets Gush Over ‘Blistering,’ ‘Fiery’ Biden Speech Calling GOPers a ‘Threat’

If an Alternative Candidate Is Needed in 2024, These Folks Will Be Ready (N.Y. Times) David Brooks does his pet (pseudo)conservative act.

Nets Skip Liberal Bail Fund Releasing Abuser to Kill His Girlfriend