Greta Thunberg Fires Back At China For Fat-Shaming Her

Thousands of Future Burger Flippers Stage a Climate Strike

Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters

Following the Money: Covering Climate Now

Is This Concrete’s Breakthrough Moment? (New York Magazine) If concrete didn’t come with ‘steep cost to the environment’, of course, nobody at New York Magazine would give a shit about it.

Civil Rights Group Sues Trump for Saying ‘China Virus,’ Sparking Hate Crimes

Russian Bounties, Find The Fraud, Lab Leak Theory: Here Are All The Media Narratives That Fell Apart

Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

Joe Scarborough Completely Loses His Mind in Bizarre Televised Breakdown Scott Adams characterizes this as a case of ‘narcissistic rage’. Apparently that’s a thing.

Asian American Silicon Valley councilwoman branded racist after saying BLM activist’s texts worried her

Hey conservatives, this is why liberals don’t believe you care about free speech (Washington Post) Hey, liberals, this is why conservatives don’t believe you care about the truth.

AP FIRES Brand-New Reporter for Hot Tweets on Israel, Right Wing Blamed

U.S. seizes $90k from man who sold footage of U.S. Capitol riot

MSNBC Brings on Anti-Semetic BDS Founder to Urge Boycott of Israel

The Capitol ‘armed insurrection’ narrative is crumbling

Paper linking frequency of search terms to violence against women retracted

FLASHBACK: Vile Martin Bashir Said Someone Should ‘S-H-I-T’ on Sarah Palin  Just a reminder.

Investigation of ousted Space Force Commander elevated to IG

University Research Finds AOC, Bernie Sanders Highly Ineffective

The Government’s Emergency Powers Myth

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

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

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

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

Georgia Judge Orders Audit of 147K Fulton County Absentee Ballots

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

These Lefty Celebrities Actively Condone or Support Violence

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

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

THE WOKE SUPREMACY by Evan Sayet

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

Check it out.

This is an excellent analysis by people learned in the law and well worth listening to, repeatedly if necessary. It admirably demonstrates what lawyers being lawyers can do when at the top of their game.

Read it.

The author seems to think that ‘higher arrest rates and stffer punishments’ indicate racism rather than the possibility that black people commit more and more serious crimes.

Axios seems to have become a reliably proglodyte rag. I think I shall cease reading it.

Read it.

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

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

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

Read it. And watch the video, it’s fascinating.

Israel’s Aquarius Engines this week gave the world a first look at the tiny hydrogen engine it hopes can supplant gas engine-generators and hydrogen fuel cells in future electrified vehicles. Weighing just 22 lb (10 kg), the simple engine uses a single moving piston to develop power. Beyond vehicles, Aquarius is developing the engine for use as an off-grid micro-generator.

First created in 2014, Aquarius’ efficient single-piston linear engine has a single central cylinder in which the piston moves between two engine heads. In previous iterations, Aquarius used more conventional fossil fuels to create combustion, but now it’s turning attention to emissions-slashing hydrogen. The company says Austrian engineering firm AVL-Schrick recently completed third-party testing, verifying that a modified version of the engine can operate purely on hydrogen.

Read it.

Not ought they.

Read it.

I find this vaguely disturbing.

Freeberg has a bone to pick.

I’m not in favor of replacing the word “liberals” with “leftists.” It is true that much of the criticism we have for the liberals should more fairly be redirected toward dedicated leftists, and in a lot of cases it is true that the real problem is there, with leftism. But not all the criticism, and not all the cases.

That’s why I rarely use the term ‘liberal’. Gladstone was a liberal; Ted Kennedy was a progressive, and rather tediously so. And AOC is a proglodyte, quite obviously.

Severian is down on academic ‘research’.

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

Read it.

Times propagandist Nicholas Kristof is at it again.

Are Palo Alto’s public schools, such as the former Terman Middle School in Palo Alto, which has the highest test scores in the United States, so superb more because of their budget or because of the IQs of the parents of its students? What would the Termans, both father (Louis Terman, the Father of American IQ Testing) and son (Fred Terman, the Father of Silicon Valley) say? Well, we know what they would say, so Terman Middle School was cancelled and renamed after a city councilwoman who introduced bike lanes to Palo Alto. After all, what did the Termans ever do for Palo Alto property values?

In reality, this question has been studied endlessly, and, it turns out, black students have more spent on them per capita than white students.

Read it.

For decades, studies have shown that boys and girls generally prefer playing with toys typically associated with their biological sex: toy trucks for boys and dolls for girls, to give a rough example.

Gee, one might almost suspect that the reason toys became gender-typical because people observed gender-typical behavior on the part of children.

Read it.

Waseem Awawdeh, 23, was arrested and charged with gang assault, menacing, hate crime assault and criminal possession of a weapon, according to the NYPD. Law enforcement officials arrived on the scene after a 911 call reported the assault, an NYPD spokesperson told the DCNF.

Jen Psaki Incorrectly States ‘A Number Of Officers’ Died On Jan. 6

Biden’s good cop approach to Israel irks growing number of Democrats

HHS prepared to double migrant kids capacity at Texas facility

32 Mexican Nationals Wearing Camouflage Captured By Border Patrol, Says Chief Agent

FBI Employee Indicted For Stashing National Security Documents In Her Home

House Intel GOP: ‘Significant Circumstantial Evidence’ of Wuhan Lab Leak

Biden Hollows Out Trump-Era COVID Protections At The Border

OOPS: PolitiFact Quietly Retracts ‘Pants on Fire’ It Gave Tucker Carlson on COVID Last Fall

Dogs More Effective Than PCR Tests At Detecting COVID

JPMorgan Bankers Return To The Office As NYC Subway Returns To 24-7 Service

Windows not Windex

‘They Will Never Take The Precious From Us!’ Hisses Liberal Tightly Clutching Mask In Dark Cave  Babylon Bee.

White House Says No Plans to Require Vaccines for Foreign Visitors  I guess it wasn’t panic-worthy after all. Good to know.

Texas Judge Finds Biden Admin Engaged In Racial, Gender Discrimination In Pandemic Relief Program  Which ought to come as no surprise to anybody.

Aussie Banks Grilled on “Climate Virtue Signalling”

Greta Crestfallen After ‘World’s Largest Iceberg’ Turns Out To Be Part Of Normal Cycle

Millions of electric cars are coming. What happens to all the dead batteries?

US Judge Orders That Dakota Access Oil Pipeline Can Remain Open

Nancy Pelosi Seen On Video Hugging, Chatting While Maskless In Crowded White House Room

Despite Her Own Policy

Lego Unveils New Genderless Bricks With No Male/Female Connectors Babylon Bee.

Lawyer Preparing Lawsuit Over Fatal Jan. 6 Ashli Babbitt Shooting

The Rise of Corporate–State Tyranny

American democracy is in even worse shape than you think (Washington Post) Mostly because of Narrative Media like the Washington Post.

Dems Successfully Moved the Goal Posts

POUNCED! The Hill Cries ‘Republicans Have Pounced’ on High Inflation & Abysmal Jobs Growth  Republicans are always ‘pouncing’ on something (maybe because Democrats are always giving them something to pounce on…)

‘Tax Me More’ Millionaires Don’t Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are

Jews Attacked In Broad Daylight In Times Square As Anti-Semitic Attacks Spike Nationwide

Women’s Group Demands CNN Suspend Chris Cuomo, Investigate How He Advised His Brother On #METOO Allegations  Good luck with that.

Don Lemon: ‘I’m Not Partisan’ But Dems Must Save America From Insane, Obsolete GOP  He’s not racist either but he hates white people.

CNN Freaks at Gun Rights Defender McCloskey Running for Senate

Why Did Former FBI Director Freeh Give $100k To A Trust For VP Biden’s Grandkids In 2016?

Hollywood Mogul Gives $3 Million To Help Shield Gavin Newsom From Recall

Democrats Worry Of Dark Future Where They Can’t Murder Children For Being Inconvenient  Babylon Bee.

Undefeated Comes Unhinged: Race-Baiting ESPN Blog Condemns America

School Might Backpedal On ‘Equity Statement’ Calling To Dismantle ‘White Advantage’ After Parents Say ‘It Incites Racism’

Defeat For UK’s BLM As Cecil Rhodes Statue Won’t Be Removed

‘Just Leave Our Country’: Joe Scarborough Rants Against ‘Unworthy’ Republicans Who Believe Trump’s ‘Lies About The American Republic’  Sorry, Joe, we were here first.

Fake Outrage Over Cheney ‘Ouster’; Dems ‘Ousted’ Bernie Twice

Google Launches ‘Inclusive Language’ Warnings for ‘Offensive,’ and ‘Gendered’ Words

Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison to prosecute Daunte Wright manslaughter case  Grab those headlines!

Women hide when they game online to fend off sexist comments, discrimination and harassment  They’re so oppressed.

Nature: Tackling Systemic Racism Requires the System of Science to Change

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith: Tebow Signing Just More White Privilege

Racist Joy Defends Racist 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones as Victim of….‘Cancel Culture?’ They’re so oppressed.

40 Years In Prison For Repeat Offender Who Held Screwdriver To Neck Of Plano Pharmacist  He’s so oppressed.

Judge Dismisses Charges Mid-Trial Against Cops Accused of Killing Black Man

Law and Order Spin-off Show: Police Kill ‘Young Black Men With Impunity’

Black Lives Matter has inspired protests around the world  All totally independently, of course.

Thousands of retired Black NFL players fight back against racial bias in brain injury payouts  The Narrative trumps The Science every time.

Kwame Brown Rips ‘Fake Woke N****s’ Who Support Joe Biden, Says They’re ‘The New Version Of The KKK’

Tulsi Gabbard Demands Chicago Mayor Resign For ‘Blatant Anti-White Racism’

Don Lemon Claims Democratic Party Is The Only One ‘Living In Reality’ And Also That He Is A ‘Journalist’  Two lies in one sentence – not bad.

Tulsi Gabbard Slams “Abhorrent” Chicago Mayor’s “Blatant Anti-White Racism” – Demands Resignation Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath.

Read it.

Israeli researchers have developed a set of “molecular tweezers” that can pick apart the biofilm which protects some bacteria.

Certainly sounds uncomfortable.

Glenn Greenwald.

My responses to The Washington Post’s article and Daily Beast’s questions about accusations from The Intercept that I have “endangered” their writers.

Read it.

Support for Israel used to be a bipartisan element of American foreign policy, but as our nation has grown more divided, bipartisanship is rare on any issue. As many have noted, politics in the U.S. has become largely a team sport–many of us cheer for our “team,” more or less regardless of the facts. And it has now become clear that Hamas is part of the Democratic Party’s team.

Read it.

All the candidates want “more affordable housing” in the city, and one is in favor of eliminating single-family zoning all over the city, which would completely change the character of the city. No one is in favor of changing the rules that make the city one of the most expensive to live in (no gas heating in new buildings, mandatory “clean energy sources”).

The choices presented to Seattle voters are: Left, hard-left, Socialist, and Communist. No wonder the city is turning into a cesspool.

This is a reflection of the electorate. People get the government that they deserve.

Read it.

A Jewish family was leaving a synagogue when a group of men drove by and insulted the family until an armed bystander got between them, a local CBS affiliate reported Thursday.

Eric Orgen said he was walking with his wife and daughter when the men yelled and threw garbage at the family, according to CBS12 News.

“They just started screaming some derogatory things towards Jewish people out the window,” Orgen told CBS12 News. The men said, “free Palestine, die Jew, F you Jew, I’m gonna rape your wife,” according to Orgen.

Severian makes my point.

The Puritans were something new. Translate their elaborate, Latinate prose into the parlance of our times, and they sound exactly like SJWs — at once unbearably self-righteous and cripplingly insecure. They were almost certain that they, personally, were among the Elect… but since the only infallible sign of being Saved was “an irresistible attraction to Puritanism,” they were caught in exactly the same vicious purity spiral as our modern SJWs. Who, truly, can say xzhey are #woke, when there’s always the possibility of someone, somewhere, being #woker? If you want a slightly easier passport to their heads, try Perry Miller’s The New England Mind. It was written in the 1930s, so be prepared — surprisingly little untranslated Latin, since the Puritans wrote mostly for themselves, but still fairly ornate prose.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Summer is here in Lagos. We went from cold mornings and moderate afternoons a week ago to cool mornings and hot afternoons. Next week is the unofficial start of summer in the U.S. and the start of high killing season here in Lagos. There be lots of pent up homiciding, so we are expecting a banner year. In preparation I am taking next week off from the show and the Sunday show. Next week is one of the slowest traffic weeks for the site, so it is a good time for a break.

…

Getting back to the coming of summer, it is looking like an interesting culture war here in Lagos over the dropping of the masks. Last week, the Tubby Tyrant in charge of this dump dropped the mask edict. In theory, you are no longer required to wear a mask when going into stores or offices. We never wore masks at the office, but if you wanted to go in a store, you had to wear one. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

Israel Strikes Gaza Tunnels, Palestinian Rocket Attacks Persist

Hamas’s Decisions Again Drag Gazans into War  Jihad is jihad. Hamas doesn’t care.

Hamas Targeting Dimona Nuclear Reactor & Oil Sites Among Other Sensitive Infrastructure 

The Invasion That Never Came: IDF Deception Reportedly Lead To Massive Surprise Attack Against Hamas Terror Tunnels

Rockets Launched From Syria Into Israel, IDF Says

Migrants Flood Lampedusa

Gaza Tower Housing AP, Al Jazeera Collapses After Missile Strike

Afghan Pres. Secured His Brother Lucrative Mining Deals w/ US Defense Contractor  How is this news?

French court upholds ban on pro-Palestine Paris demonstration

The Cultural Enrichment of Europe From Sardinia to Potsdam

Israel Says Gaza Tunnels Destroyed in Heavy Airstrikes

Top Islamic Jihad Commander Killed As 3,000 Total Rockets Were Fired From Gaza In 1st Week  A perfect opportunity to clean house.

Luke Skywalker Condemned For Blowing Up Associated Press Office Located On Death Star  Babylon Bee.

Turkey Remains the Main Supporter of Hamas Hostility

Iran Preps Return To Oil Market As Vienna Talks “Within Reach” Of Agreement

Israel Strikes Gaza Tunnels as Truce Efforts Remain Elusive

Who Are the Jew-Haters of Malmö?

CBS Blames Israel for the Conflict, Pushes Misinformation on Evictions

Arab American activists to protest Biden’s Michigan visit over Israel support

“Hamas Achieved Nothing but Ruining Gaza”

Dem Leaders Thwart Leftist Attempt To Delay Military Assistance to Israel

In photos: Palestinians strike across occupied territories, Israel in show of unity  Unity with the terrorists showering rockets on civilian areas, including those same ‘Palestinians’.

Eric Zemmour on François Mitterrand’s “Welcome Refugees” Policies

Hamas, not Israel, is to blame for the latest bloodshed

Jewish Diners Attacked in L.A. by Pro-Palestinian Caravan

Pakistani MP: ‘We don’t need missiles, atomic bombs or a huge army if they can’t be used to liberate Palestine’

SpaceX Introduces New Reusable Rockets That Israel And Hamas Can Fire Back And Forth  Babylon Bee.

Biden Condemns Erdogan’s Gaza Tirade As “Anti-Semitic” & “Reprehensible”

Palestinians vs. Israel: The Berlin Front

71% Of French Say “We’re Full”: No More Immigration

European Parliament Votes To Suspend Talks For Turkey To Join EU

The organised anger of Israel’s Arab citizens

Read it.

Physicists have been playing hard and fast with the speed limit of light pulses for a while, speeding them up and even slowing them to a virtual stand-still using various materials like cold atomic gases, refractive crystals, and optical fibers.

This time, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester in New York have managed it inside hot swarms of charged particles, fine-tuning the speed of light waves within plasma to anywhere from around one-tenth of light’s usual vacuum speed to more than 30 percent faster.

Microaggressions and straight-up racism are exhausting Black people (NBC News) They’re so oppressed

.Racism Derails Black Men’s Health, Even as Education Levels Rise (U.S. News) They’re so oppressed.

Chicago’s mayor to discriminate against reporters on the basis of race  BRAAAAAAAINS!

New York Police Search Home of Rochester Mayor, Detain Husband in Criminal Probe  Why do fat ugly black women find politics so attractive?

Deshaun Watson Returns To Instagram For The First Time Since He Was Hit With More Than 20 Lawsuits

Latino Reporter Refuses To Interview Lori Lightfoot After She Decided To Only Give Interviews To Black, Brown Journalists  BRAAAAAAAINS!

CNN Defends Chicago Mayor’s RACIST New Policy for the Press, Nets Ignore

Fox News Panel Flames Lori Lightfoot: ‘She Ought To Declare War On Crime Rather Than White Journalists’

World’s largest iceberg breaks off from Antarctica  (CNN) Wonder what happened to the last ‘world’s biggest iceberg’.

World’s first, satellite-based monitoring system goes global to help save coral reefs I’m sure that will fix EVERYTHING.

Largest Iceberg Spotted in Antarctica   Latest in a series.

Claim: Most People Think Climate Change is Serious, but Other Problems are More Important

The 1.5°C Hysteria

Irreproducible science and US government regulation

Biden issues executive order that requires new steps on climate-related financial risk

How COVID Put An End To Your Right To Due Process

Jarred by Loosened CDC Mask Guidance, NYT Cheers on Forever Maskers

New coronavirus cases fall by 20%

Politifact Quietly Admits COVID-19 Lab Escape Not ‘Debunked Conspiracy Theory’

Hundreds of PPP Loans Went to Fake Farms in Absurd Places

Do Unpaid Landlords Not Have Bills? CBS Airs Segment Whining About ‘Epidemic of Evictions’

Unmasked Individuals Must Show Proof Of Vaccination Status In Oregon  Papieren bitte!

Survey Finds 100% Of Americans Will Continue To Wear Masks In Walmart Bathrooms

Trump Orders Republicans to Block Investigation Into the Insurrection He Caused  (Daily Beast)

Satirical Impressions of Dr. Anthony Fauci Banned on TikTok

Stephen A. Smith Compares The Jaguars Signing Tim Tebow To George Floyd Dying

Morning Joe Urges Democrats: ‘Push Through’ Jan. 6th Investigation On Purely Partisan Basis

Kamala Harris keeps assets in tax-advantaged trust, appearing to violate own ethics pledge

Biden Hollows Out Trump-Era COVID Protections at the Border

Despite Claims Drop, There Are Still Around 16 Million Americans On Some Sort Of Government Dole

Cutting Out The Middleman: Middle Eastern Countries Will Now Just Lob Giant Sacks Of American Tax Dollars At Each Other  Babylon Bee.

White House Economic Office Pushing For Higher Minimum Wage Offers Unpaid Internships

Republicans Demand Department Of Education Withdraw Rule Forcing Critical Race Theory In Schools

Nearly 20% Of Seattle Cops Quit Amid National Protests, Budget Cuts

POLL: Majority Of Portland Residents Think City Is ‘Very Unsafe’ After Dark, Want More Cops  Well, you’re not gonna get ’em. Time to leave.

Biologically Male Sexual Predators Housed In Washington Female Prisons, Court Documents Show

Walgreens Closes 17 San Francisco Stores Due To “Out Of Control” Shoplifting  Time to leave.

Everything is Racist: ‘View’ Plugs Academic Pushing to Reform Systemically Racist Taxes

Networks Censor Palestinian Extremists HUNTING Jews on U.S. Streets

‘Repeating Hamas Propaganda’: Katie Pavlich Blasts Geraldo Rivera Over Claim US Is ‘Complicit’ In ‘Crime Against Humanity’

Destroying Institutions: Nets Skip First Meeting of Court-Packing Panel

ABC’s Drama: History Book ‘Whitewashes’ US, Ignores ‘Terrible Things It’s Responsible For’

UNHINGED MSNBC Guest: Israelis Are Like a Jim Crow Mob Who Killed Black Americans

House Democrats introduce bill to close existing gun loopholes and prevent mass shootings  I’m sure that will fix EVERYTHING.

Quick, hide your Bibles!

CCP or Democratic Party Line? Who Can Tell?

The challenges of being a chief diversity officer

MSNBC Host INSANELY Suggests U.S. Give Missile Defense to Terrorist Hamas

Federal Judge Sides With Biden, Rules Christian College Must Allow Biological Men To Share Showers With Women

Portland Resumes Homeless Camp Removal As Needles And Trash Pile Up

New Yorker Magazine Union Posts Anti-Semitic Tweet in Solidarity With Palestinians

Democrat Congresswoman Appears To Claim Israel Should Be Blamed For Hamas Firing Rockets

In Solidarity With Hamas, AOC Straps Some Palistinean Children On To Defend Herself From Attacks  Babylon Bee.

Sen. Tim Scott Says Democrats’ Voting Bill ‘Would Actually Make It Easier To Cheat And Harder To Vote’

Fines Dropped Against Two Lawmakers Over Metal Detectors

Apple employees circulate internal letter calling on the company to support Palestinians

Bethany Mandel.

The pandemic is quickly coming to a close thanks to herd immunity brought on by vaccines and infections. It’s a tough pill to swallow for those who want to live in “forever pandemic” land, wearing masks and social distancing into the rest of the decade, but for those of us who actually enjoy living, it’s a welcome development. But here’s the problem with our return to normalcy: There are people who are trying to hold us back in “forever pandemic” land, due to either their own paranoias or opportunism.

Read it.

Astonishing scenes this week, whereby the Tory government announces a White Paper to re-nationalise the railways. The union bosses and Guardianistas who have called for such policy for decades immediately decided that actually it’s a terrible idea, or that this doesn’t count as re-nationalising because it’s the Conservatives doing it, or that calling the new entity “Great British Railways” just because it will run Great Britain’s railways is so offensive that the entire project should be called off. It’s all very tribal, and very silly, and very 2021, alas.

Read it.

Having neutered the notoriously toxic masculinity of Mr. Potato Head, progressives are continuing their long march through the toy industry. Lefties intent on remaking the world in their image know their project depends on indoctrinating the young.

Thus, Lego has announced “‘Everyone is Awesome,’ its first LGBTQ-themed set,” according to USA Today’s Christine Fernando. Lego is launching the toys in “Pride Month” in June, which, as we know, is Ramadan for the leather speedo set.

Read it.

“F___ the Jews! F__ their mothers! Rape their daughters!” they shouted through the streets of London. At the Holocaust Memorial in Amsterdam, Muslims issued the battle cry, a death threat to the Jews: “Khaybar, Khaybar ya yahud! J’aish Mohammed sa ya’ud!” (Khaybar, Khaybar, oh, Jews! Mohammed’s army will rise again! It is a reference to the 7th-century Muslim massacre of Jews in the Battle of Khaybar). Elsewhere in the Netherlands, Islamist groups flew the flag of the Islamic State, chanting “One state – the Caliphate!,” while in Berlin, demonstrators burned Israeli flags or flew the banners of Hamas.

Indeed, across Europe last weekend, in protests against the latest violence erupting between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military, thousands of Islamist extremists, members of pro-Palestinian groups, far-left activists, and neo-Nazis joined together in calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jews.

ZMan scans the hype.

This framing is what the Republicans now face. Most would like to go back to being the bland shadow of the Democrats. That was easy and fun. It required little risk, as all they had to do is wear little American flag lapel pins and be mean to Democrats. Until the 2016 debacle, being a Republican was simple. You waited for the Democrats to step on a rake, and then you talked about it on Fox News. Come the election you told your voters that they had to vote for you or the Democrats would win.

The one thing the Republicans seem to have figured out is the old approach is not going to work, even if the evil orange menace has been purged from their city. Maybe it is the threat of Trump running in 2024 or their own internal polling, but they seem to have figured out that the old product is not going to sell. They need a new product to take to their voters if they hope to win future elections. This is the gist of this memo circulated by the House GOP leadership last month.

Read it.

There are times when the term ‘clueless’ seems totally inadequate.

Read it.

In his 1944 lecture “The Inner Ring,” C. S. Lewis made a profound observation about social exclusivity, one applicable to today’s institutions of higher learning. Exclusion, Lewis explained, is not an evil in and of itself; it can be “accidental” to groups dedicated to substantive activity. But a problem arises when an exclusive dynamic exists for its own sake, when elitism develops in the absence of substance. “Your genuine inner ring,” Lewis stated, “exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion [for the inner ring] is no accident: it is the essence.”

Steve Sailer.

In the past, many examples of language reform tended to come from the “euphemism treadmill,” where a term has become associated with empirical tendencies toward bad things, so a new term is invented to make people forget the statistical correlations. But then they notice them anyway, so a yet another new term has to be invented.

In contrast, not using “schizophrenic” to mean “multiple personalities” would be language reform to make language more empirically realistic. Perhaps there isn’t much of a constituency for that?

Read it.

The Assad government is bankrupt because of lost Iranian subsidies and the need to concentrate on paying its security forces rather than rebuilding infrastructure to restore electricity and improve the roads damaged and neglected since 2011. As the Assads seek to regain control over more territory, improving standards of living has low priority. The Assads currently rule sixty percent of pre-war territory and an even higher percentage of the population. Unfortunately for Syrians, the Assads are skilled at running a police state, not an economically strong one.

While many Syrians welcomed the return of peace over the last few years, the economic conditions have steadily deteriorated. The government makes an effort to prevent starvation, especially in Damascus, the capital and long a peaceful and prosperous island in a desert of warfare and scarcity. While most of Syria is no longer a warzone, that has turned out to be a liability as well. For example, more European countries agree that parts of Syria are no longer a warzone and have stopped granting asylum to Syrians based on people living in a warzone.

Read it.

In early May, the U.N. released a report updating its investigation into the horrid crimes perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorists against almost every group in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. The goal of the investigation is bold — to hold accountable the ISIS thugs who committed the atrocities.

Steve Sailer blows the whistle.

In other words, they are paid to empire-build. Not surprisingly, they often succeed in hiring more people like themselves to build even bigger empires of wokeness.

The Antiplanner explains it all.

Everybody knows that the purpose of living in cities is to keep public transit systems operating. Thus, says Bloomberg News, people who work at home are “threatening” transit for everyone else (meaning all of the 1 percenters who ride transit).

Not to worry. Someone named Kristin Schwab, over at Marketplace, has a plan to “lure riders back” to transit. (Is that like luring little kids with candy?) Transit is safe from COVID, she claims, but to overcome public perceptions that it is not, transit agencies should still require people to wear masks and regularly clean transit vehicles. Okay, that’s not so much a plan as it is wishful thinking.

Back at Bloomberg, San Francisco writers Tiffany Chu and Daniel Ramot say that we should fix transit by (1) giving it dedicated funding, meaning funding that transit agencies are sure to get no matter how poorly they perform; and (2) tie funding to outcomes, meaning transit agencies only get money if they produce results. These contradictory suggestions are made worse by the “outcomes” Chu and Ramot suggest, including “expanding access to jobs, improving cost efficiency, driving equity and reducing carbon emissions.

Note that actually attracting transit riders isn’t considered an important outcome.