Read it.

For normal people, today is Mother’s Day. It may be a marketing conspiracy between flower-mongers, Hallmark Cards, and the premium restaurant industry, but it’s pretty straightforward and celebrates something intelligible.

Unless you are a leftist Democrat in thrall to the Pronoun Police, in which case the world needs to be made unintelligible. The left’s war on human nature, which is the main thing that stands between them and their fever dreams of utopia, produces idiocies like this from Congressperson Ayanna Pressley, proud member of “The Squad.” She thinks “mothers” should be rendered “birthing people” because people with a penis can be women and can. . . give birth? I’m still trying to figure out how that end of the transitive pronoun spectrum works.

Read it.

The New Yorker published an essay Thursday in which Eric Edelman — a “friend” of Cheney’s and a former national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney’s father — said Liz Cheney “was the one who generated” a hit piece on Trump in the Post, written by “ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father.”

“Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump’s efforts to politicize the military,” The New Yorker wrote.

“The congresswoman not only recruited her father but personally asked others, including Trump’s first Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, to participate,” the magazine continued.

Baltimore’s Top Prosecutor Asks FCC Investigate Fox Affiliate Over Negative Coverage, Tucker Carlson’s Show

This is why MAGA nativists are in a panic (Washington Post) Except that they aren’t, not that the Washington Post would know in any case.

Don Lemon: Okay to Trash Tim Scott as an ‘Oreo’ in Private?

Truth or Satire? It’s Getting Harder to Tell

Has Censorship Become Our Baseline Expectation?

Nick Clegg to decide Donald Trump’s Facebook ban fate  Nick Clegg is the British edition of Gavin Newsom.

Afraid to Google a thing because I don’t want the algorithm to think I like it

MSNBC Contributor: I Have to Wipe ‘Stink’ of Tucker Carlson Out of Air

Leading Astrophysicist & Geoscientist talks facts about Agriculture and “Climate Change”

The Amazon Rainforest Now Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Absorbs

Climate Visionaries Explain why a Green Universal Basic Income is Required  The world will be so much better if you just change everything around the way we want you to.

Reporter Questions Biden On Why He’s Wearing A Mask Around Other Vaccinated People  It’s the prog equivalent of the swastika armband.

An Oregon church sued over covid-19 restrictions. Now, an outbreak there has sickened 74. (Washington Post) They don’t actually say ‘Nyah, nyah!’ but you can hear them thinking it. (Nor have 74 ‘sickened’; they’ve merely tested positive for the virus. Whether they actually get sick or not is yet to be determined.)

The Top 10 Absurdities Of The COVID Pandemic… So Far

Imperial College Predicted Catastrophe In Every Country On Earth… Then The Models Failed  The failure of the pandemic models is the poster child for why we ought to ignore alarmism about ‘climate change’.

Leaked, Chinese Document Reveals Malevolent Intent for Coronaviruses

A Medley of Coronamadness

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Florida Man Steals Two Cop Cars — ‘Illuminati, Help!’

Atlanta Mayor Retires Due to Crime Surge  I guess her work there is done.

For Marginalized Groups, Being Studied Can Be a Burden

NYT: OK, We’ve Got a New Spin on Why Ma’K the Knife’s Death Was the Fault of White People, Who Must Pay

Today in Virtue Signaling: Maryland Governor Pardons 34 Victims of Racial Lynching

The decline of the humanist movement

This Week in Campus Insanity Vol. 43

California Population Declined in 2020 as Thousands Fled Newsom-Boudin Axis of Terror

Disney Employees Undergo Critical Race Theory Training

Woke  Science Gives Gender Neutral Name to New Ant Species

TBS’s Sam Bee Just Says It: I ‘Want to Take your Guns’

Why Californians Have Sky-High Electricity Bills

CNN, Don Lemon and the Cancer of Identity Politics

Read it.

After the left’s anti-police agitation went into hyperdrive following the death of George Floyd, the easiest prediction in the world to make was that the chief victims of this ideologically-driven rage would be the very people liberals claim to champion—low income minorities. Heather Mac Donald called it “the Ferguson effect,” after the anti-police riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2015. Told that they are the enemy, the police are curtailing their presence and enforcement activity in minority neighborhoods.

Read it.

The treatment of Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., by her fellow House Republican leaders and colleagues “simply for having a contrary opinion” on former President Donald Trump is appalling, and late President Ronald Reagan would never have approved, presidential historian Craig Shirley wrote in a new opinion piece.

“Cheney’s only crime of course is her belief that the GOP needs to wash its hands of Donald Trump,” Shirley, a biographer for late President Ronald Reagan, wrote for Townhall. “Otherwise, she’s a tried and true conservative. And our movement is big enough to accommodate personal opinions.”

Shirley mistakes the times. When Reagan was President, there was a broad consensus across both parties as to what constituted the national interest and how far government power could legitimately go in pursuing partisan interest. There is now no such consensus and no acknowledgement by the Democrats regarding any limit under government power when they administer it. It is therefore incumbent upon all persons purporting to be Republican to support those who, whatever their personal characteristics may be perceived to be, have demonstrated in their actions that they support and promote the principles and policies that Republicans have historically espoused. Trump does that. One need not like him, or approve of his public performance, to see that he has tremendous support in the country and a firm commitment to peace in the world, economic sanity in the country, and individual liberty, not to mention his pursuit of smaller government and respect for Constitutional rights.

I deny that Cheney is a ‘tried and true conservative’. She’s better than Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, but so is Vladimir Putin. A brief glance at Cheney’s biography on Wikipedia reveals that she  has spent most of her life in ‘government service’ (or with organizations whose dealings are primarily with government); she is a creature of the Deep State with little or no demonstrable connection to the people of the state she pretends to represent in Washington, or discernible acquaintance with either their concerns or their interests. She is a typical Child of the Crust who has never had a Real Job in her life. She has been less successful in dissembling her real status and opinions, and the Powers That Be need to take advantage of this opportunity to flush her out of the garbage chute of political life.

I expect Shirley will be making excuses for the likes of David French next.

The Other McCain peeks behind the curtain.

Ace of Spades points out that The Dispatch, “[f]ounded by conservative thought leaders Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French,” has been avidly defending Facebook’s ban of President Trump, without disclosing that The Dispatch “has a financial relationship” with Facebook.

In case you’ve forgotten, The Dispatch was launched in late 2019 and, by early 2020, had acquired something north of $6 million in investment capital from . . . Well, who, exactly? Good luck on finding news reports with that information, but suffice it to say that it came from rich people who hate Trump voters, and according to Ace, this includes Facebook.

What this means is that Facebook and other rich liberals are paying David French to smear you (and the other 70+ million Americans who voted for Donald Trump) as an extremely dangerous “white supremacist” who should be prohibited from using the Internet at all.

Read it.

Even simple tweaks to the order of items on the menu or the typeface used can have a significant impact on people’s choices. There is now an entire industry known as “menu engineering”, dedicated to designing menus that convey certain messages to customers, encouraging them to spend more and make them want to come back for a second helping.

Read it.

The Washington Post gave its readers a clear-eyed view this weekend of how American intel agencies work with sympathetic reporters to smear and discredit political opponents, ignoring a specific explanation from one of the article’s targets of how reporters were being used, and leading to embarrassing corrections in multiple articles (as well as in The New York Times and at NBC News).

The story targeted Rudy Giuliani and Wisconsin’s Sen. Ron Johnson, excitedly reporting that they were the targets of Russian disinformation campaigns and had been warned of this by the FBI. Sound familiar? Unsurprisingly, there were a number of problems.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine.

The Star Tribune drew on the work of three reporters and its collaboration with “Frontline” (through its Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) for Andy Mannix’s story on the federal indictment of Derek Chauvin and his three former colleagues on federal civil rights charges in the death of George Floyd.

With all hands on deck, I thought the Star Tribune (and its collaborators) might find someone to comment on the redundancy of the federal prosecution or otherwise to provide the rationale, but no. The Star Tribune team finds nothing to see here.

Students of pattern recognition may detect a certain sameness to the theme of the quotes offered on the federal case (not to mention the ancient hatred for which both Keith Ellison and Al Sharpton have both fanned the flames).

Basically, Federal ‘civil rights’ laws give the government a way around the Constitutional bar against trying somebody twice for the same crime, as well as a second bite of the apple when the first trial doesn’t go the way they want it to. This would have certainly struck the Founders as the sort of tyranny against which the American Revolution was fought.

Read it.

Unfortunately,  this article confuses ‘number of people voting’ with ‘number of people who could have voted’. The fact that a whopping percentage of people voted in a certain election, which percentage was greater than anyone would have predicted, doesn’t address the question of how many people were eligible to vote but were somehow (circumstance unspecified) not able to.

It’s ‘analysis’ like this that is causing people’s brains to rot. Spakovsky ought to be ashamed of himself.

Read it.

From its fused inception, rock ‘n’ roll was already a racially integrated American invention being blasted in teenage bedrooms as early as 1955, but as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum going into 1960, the genre was being commercially segregated, on the sly, into white (British Invasion) and black (soul) music by the (WASPy) establishment.

I still remember being pissed off by the way the British Invasion groups, like the Beatles and the Stones, yanked all of the attention away from the native American rock, like the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean.

If rock & roll is dead, it’s a very healthy corpse. I was getting my hair cut the other day and the radio they were playing in the shop, in addition to the modern WOE-OH WOE-OH nonsense, played Styx and Journey — songs from fifty years ago, yet apparently intended to be familiar (and pleasing) to modern young people. What would people my age have thought, in the ’70s, of a modern music station playing something that was popular from the ’20s? The question answers itself.

Read it.

Lucky us.

Read it.

“The placenta is essentially a fascinating organ because it allows for two human beings that are genetically very different. Because half of the fetus is maternal, but the other half is paternal, and yet the pregnancy can go on for nine months without the mom’s body destroying it,” Barroeta said. “And that, from an immune standpoint, is fascinating, because if you were to receive a piece of someone else and insert that under your skin, that would not last there for three days, your body will actively reject it.”

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

The Republican party in Texas is drawing Hispanic voters disillusioned by the Democratic party’s extreme values, two female Hispanic Republican leaders with Democratic backgrounds told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

South Texas saw both a liberal decline and a conservative surge during the 2020 election, the New York Times reported, a surge that has emboldened Republicans hoping to win in Latino communities throughout the United States. Hispanic female Republicans are stepping up to the plate, the publication reported.

Torrent Of Federal Cash Stifling Return To Work As Fed Repeats Historic Error… In Reverse

Biden’s National Day Of Prayer Proclamation Forgoes ‘God’ For ‘Climate Change’ And ‘Racial Justice’

Biden Struggles On

Biden administration excusing top officials with union backgrounds from ethics rules

ABC, CBS Blind to Biden Administration’s ‘Shell Game’ With Migrant Kids

Pfizer Rescued Biden by Shutting Down Its Vaccine Trial Until the Day After Election, But Biden Stabs Them in the Back Anyway

More Than 2,000 Migrants Living In Makeshift Camp In Mexico

Biden Exempting Former Union Bosses In His Admin From Ethics Rules  Conflict of interest is what the Deep State is all about.

Shocking Study Finds Paying People Not To Work Makes People Not Want To Work  Babylon Bee.

Biden’s Era of Big Government

Biden Admin Withdraws Plan To Collect DNA, Other Biometrics From Immigrants

CNN Host Says People Who Don’t Take The Vaccine Should Be Socially Ostracized By Friends & Family  Party of Fear – Party of Hate – Party of Death.

MSNBC’s Reid, Steele: Stefanik Is Human Feces Swimming in Trump’s ‘Golden Toilet’

REPORT: Liz Cheney ‘Secretly Orchestrated’ Former Defense Secretaries To Write Op-Ed Slamming Trump

Rep. Zoe Lofgren embarrassed Republicans with their own words. Now they seek to silence her. (Washington Post) Uh, not exactly….

National Geographic faced up to its racist past. Did it actually get better? (Vox)

FEC drops Trump hush-money investigation

The evidence is piling up: Trump’s iron grip over the GOP has been institutionalized (Axios)

Politico Reporter on Morning Joe: I’ll Get ‘In Trouble’ For Saying FL Election Law Not So Bad

Derek Chauvin, 3 former officers indicted on federal civil rights charges

‘Get That In Your Thick, Dumb Skulls’: Donny Deutsch Predicts Trump Will Be Indicted By 2024  I’ll bet against that.

‘View’ Sounds Alarm Over ‘Dangerous’ ‘Dishonest’ Fox ‘Hurting Journalism, Country’

‘Ignorant A-Hole’: Jimmy Kimmel Rails Against Caitlyn Jenner Following Hannity Interview On CA Homeless Population  Gee, I was about to say the same thing about Jimmy Kimmel.

China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Exceeded The Rest Of The Developed World Combined, Report

The Cooling Side of Greenhouse Gases

The Guardian Finally Wakes Up to the Climate Friendly Hydrogen Economy Joke

Biden’s U.S. Emissions Reduction Scheme Repeats Past Failures That Promote More Global Emissions Increases

Rise of the Climate Change Stinkies: NYT Wants you to Shower Less and Stop Using Toilet Paper

Climate Activists Protest In DC, Vandalize Wells Fargo With Black Paint  More accurately ‘climate terrorists’.

Eco-anxiety  Have you scared your kid today?

Twitter Is Suspending Accounts That Post Donald Trump’s Statements From His Website

America’s Race Toward Two Cultures

NFL Hires Woke Former Obama Official Katie Hill

Univision DOUBLES DOWN on Its Fake Reporting of Florida’s Election Law

To Whom Have We Outsourced Our Freedom of Speech?

America already has a realistic solution to Republican authoritarianism (Washington Post)

Why Republicans won’t walk away from the ‘Big Lie’ (CNN)

Woke Racism Is a Systemic Problem in America (Newsweek)

NPR at 50 Years — Still a Liberal Sandbox  Tim Graham.

Maricopa County Officials Refusing to Turn Over Routers to Auditors

Ocasio-Cortez Requests Earmarks For Two Hospitals That Perform Abortions

GMA Predicts ‘Blockbuster Jobs Report,’ Then Silent on Abysmal Numbers

California Reports First Ever Yearly Population Decline  People voting with their feet.

witter Censors Accounts for Sharing Trump Statements from His New Site

Masks In Cars — What’s Behind America’s COVID-19 Insanity?  Virtue signaling knows no time or place.

What’s Behind Masks in Cars and Other COVID-19 Insanity

Children Are Far More Likely To Die From Diarrhea Than COVID-19

Johns Hopkins Doctor Dismisses Walensky Fear-Mongering: “Most Of The Country Is At Herd Immunity”

‘We Were Discriminated Against’: Mom Says Family Was Kicked Off Flight Over Fears Her Disabled 3-Year-Old Son Would Remove His Mask

REPORT: Upcoming Superman Movie To Star Black Actor In Superhero Role  Krypton had Africans? News to me.

Violent Crime Surged In These Cities After Mass Black Lives Matter, Anti-Police Protests

White Liberals Watch In Amazement As Black Man Acquires ID  Babylon Bee. Ah, but can he find his way to the polling station?

Racial self-segregation is the new black

Colorado lawmaker under fire for calling colleague ‘Buckwheat’

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Will Not Seek Re-election

“No Units To Send” – Baltimore City Shortage Of EMS Personnel During Night Of Shootings 

CBS Lets Vacation Buddy Gayle King Interview Michelle Obama

Couple Vacationing In Florida Beaten Up By Man In Broad Daylight For No Apparent Reason

“Many of us still live in fear”: Michelle Obama speaks out on Chauvin verdict  She’s so oppressed.

Read it.

The Ohio Republican Party censured Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, and 9 other GOP representatives Friday for voting in February to impeach former President Donald Trump, in a nearly unanimous vote of the powerful central committee.

The vote made the Cleveland congressman the 8th of the 10 defectors to be rebuked or censured by a state or local party. Efforts against two others failed to take hold.

The resolution to censure that was approved by the committee called Trump’s second impeachment process meritless, unprecedented, unconstitutional and purposeless. Along a narrower vote, the committee also approved a second resolution, which hadn’t been on the agenda, calling on Gonzalez to resign.

Severian looks at the ‘news’.

Y’all know, of course, that under Stolinism — which is Stalinism with late-stage dementia — there’s no truth in the news and no news in the truth. So with everything put out by The Media, you have to ask yourself, not “What part of this is true?,” but “Why did The Regime choose to publish this?” Everything in The Media is a worked shoot, as they say in rasslin’, an attempt to set an agenda. So you must always ask yourself, what agenda are they setting up?

Here’s an example. It’s from a sports site called “Outkick the Coverage” — recently acquired by Fox Media, which should be your first clue — but it cites reports from The New York Times and “The Daily Wire”… which is Ben Shapiro’s outfit, in case you had any doubts that this is a grift, but the important thing for our purposes is that “The Daily Wire” sells itself as not just “conservative,” but “edgy.” In other words, this must be a serious problem, if the Old Gray Lady of respectable bourgeois Leftism and the most radical of rightwingers agree it’s a problem!!

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

I have a segment on Liz Cheney. Her life may as well have been lived in another solar system. Technically, she is supposed to be representing the interests of Wyoming in the people’s house. In reality, she is the Cloud People’s representative to the Dirt People of Wyoming. She may as well correspond with them via video link, like the alien overlords in sci-fi movies. “People of Wyoming, this is your humanoid representative. Obey and listen to instructions.”

And that says pretty much everything you need to know about Liz Chaney.

Again, all societies, regardless of the form of government, have a ruling elite that is often at odds with and out of touch with the people. That is why there are subsystems that provide feedback to the decision makers. That is the problem that parliaments are supposed to solve. How best to keep the rulers and the ruled in communication so both sides understand the other enough to avoid conflict. Today, those feedback loops no longer exist. The political system operates in isolation from us.

And that says pretty much everything you need to know about modern politics.

Read it.

Across the country, restaurant operators are reporting steep staff shortages, and are struggling to hire both cooks and wait staff. While some of the hiring crunch may be temporary, alleviated with time or more enticing pay and perks, industry insiders also see potential for challenges to persist as restaurant expansion exceeds workforce growth.

Read it.

Canadian YouTuber NileRed shows how he made a thin piece of balsa wood transparent. The video has picked up more than 2 million views since it was uploaded last week.

The video is long – 43 minutes – and fairly technical (NileRed has a degree in biochemistry). But he tries hard to present it in a simple fashion. All required chemicals were purchased through Amazon.

Read it.

As many of our readers who are parents know, it’s college planning time, and high school seniors scanning the amenities of the campuses they’ve chosen may be surprised by a particular feature they hadn’t expected: dorms and events for persons of color only, no whites allowed.

Steve Sailer.

Is closing your downtown HQ a good way for a firm to reduce its chance of being held hostage by woke employees? If you appeal more to suburban and small town workers, you are less likely to have to deal with an internal crisis if, say, the CEO forgets somebody’s pronouns than if you make them work in downtown San Francisco.

Read it.

Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State solved a complex problem that had baffled scientists for decades, until now.

Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still trying to understand.

The research team, in partnership with DuPont Water Solutions, solved an important aspect of this mystery, opening the door to reduce costs of clean water production. The researchers determined desalination membranes are inconsistent in density and mass distribution, which can hold back their performance. Uniform density at the nanoscale is the key to increasing how much clean water these membranes can create.

“An American Tragedy”: Restaurants Ready to Hire, But Government Payments Keep Workers Home

‘Don’t Take Questions’: Jen Psaki Says They Often Tell Biden To Avoid Impromptu Interviews There’s no telling what he might forget to say.

$250 Billion Fund CIO Fears “Hidden Costs” Of Biden’s ‘Faustian’ Policies’ “Darker Sides”

Biden Admin Hiding Damning Report on Student Debt Crisis, Lawmakers Say

Next Superman Movie to Have Black Lead Actor, Director, Scriptwriter

Covid: Black leaders blame lower vaccine take-up on racism (BBC) Of course they do.

The plan was meant to address racism in the school district. Now, it may not get passed  (CNN)

Hollywood Agency Asked Black Assistants To Pose As Agents In An HR Video For Diversity

‘Do Not Rely On The Government To Protect You’: Black Gun Ownership Is Soaring, Here’s Why

Rappers Quavo, Saweetie Reportedly Not Facing Charges For Elevator Altercation

Trey Songz Sued For Allegedly Throwing Punches At A Bartender During Cardi B Concert

‘Uncertainty is not our friend’: Scientists are still struggling to understand the sea level risks posed by Antarctica  (Washington Post)

Antarctica’s ice sheet is critical to the fate of coastal cities. How much it will melt remains a big question (CNN)

Climate alarmists could ‘cancel’ your pets

Climate Wars: IEA Warns Governments To Stockpile Battery Metals 

Wild Exaggeration and Egregious Lies

A sweeping U.N. report says methane is far worse for the climate, human health than previously thought

Climate change: how bad could the future be if we do nothing?  Still waiting for property values to drop in Malibu.

Corrupt Unions — Not COVID — Locked Kids Out of School

Canadians Are Flying South To Cut The Line For American COVID-19 Vaccines  How about that government-provided health care, eh? Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

FAA Hitting ‘Unruly,’ Maskless Passengers Hard in Wallet

Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists Opens The Wuhan Virus Pandora’s Box

Patents are Not the Problem!

Head Of German Police Union Calls For Ban On Anti-Lockdown Protests

CNN Lets Guest Slam Fox, Rush Limbaugh Show Over COVID Theory CNN Also Pushed

Trevor Noah: “Why Are People Who Get The Vaccine Still Being Made To Wear Masks?”

COVID-19 Mask Apostacy

California Bar Owner Busted for Peddling Fake COVID Vaccine Cards

Liz Cheney: The GOP is at a turning point. History is watching us. (Washington Post) Boy, she sure talks like a proglodyte.

A Giant Organic Farm Faces Criticism That It’s Harming The Environment (NPR)

“The” Science Is Coming For You Again!

YouTube deletes links to Russian anti-government voting project

Holder Gets Swiss Billionaire’s Backing for Partisan Gerrymandering Group

Don’t worry, the Central Intersectional Agency is watching you

Congresswoman Cori Bush Refers To Women As ‘Birthing People’

Due Process Is the Opposite of Social Justice  Ben Shapiro.

Ocasio-Cortez Praises Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider For Saving Babies  You can’t make this shit up.

So It Looks Like Nationalizing Student Loans Has Simply Turned Into One Giant Ponzi Scheme

USA Today: Cowboys Should Stop Promise Keepers From Mainstreaming ‘Hate Speech’

MSNBC’s Bardella: GOP Has Done More Damage Than Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, Taliban Combined

The GOP’s utterly embarrassing capitulation to Donald Trump, in 1 photo (CNN)

‘Nancy Drew:’ ‘Obvious Racism’ Leads to Innocent Black Woman’s Death by Police

Roger Daltrey: The “Woke” Generation Is Creating A Miserable World

Is BMI Racist?

St. Louis Prosecutor Who Charged McCloskeys Faces Misconduct Allegations

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

Rep. Liz Cheney seems destined to lose her position in the GOP House leadership. One could almost infer from her actions that she’s determined to lose it.

The mainstream media is playing Cheney’s likely ouster for all its worth. Cheney is now portrayed as a hero who is too good for the current, Trump-dominated Republican Party. (These are some of the same lefty media stalwarts who portrayed Cheney’s father as evil, the way they now depict Donald Trump.)

Some conservatives are advancing a similar view of Liz Cheney’s situation. They acknowledge that her vote to impeach Trump and her subsequent anti-Trump screeds make her less than suitable for a leadership position in this GOP caucus. However, they contend that this reality damns the caucus.

Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru puncture that narrative. Lowry points out that Cheney survived her vote to impeach Trump, a fact that can’t easily be reconciled with claims that the caucus is in the thrall of Donald Trump.

It’s not the impeachment vote that will likely cost Cheney her position, it’s her constant stream of anti-Trump pronouncements. As Lowry puts it, “all [Cheney] had to do was be a little politic — something often required of politicians — and she wouldn’t be on the verge of getting dumped from leadership.” I would add that being “a little politic” is almost always a requirement for members of leadership.

Read it.

A single mistake in journalism can be forgiven. Perhaps the story was based on faulty information from a bad source and rushed through without a thorough vetting — probably due to a desire to be first to report — and then transparently corrected for the audience. But if the same mistake is repeated, over and over again, by the same news outlets who have taken leave of their basic journalistic duties, then alternative motives have to be explored. Something nefarious on behalf of these organizations and their sources may be afoot.

Since Joe Biden’s election, there have been three major instances of journalists publishing a story, watching it trend for days on social media and be discussed on cable news, only for it to be partially or completely retracted later. Damage done. The latest case involved Rudy Giuliani allegedly being warned by FBI sources that he was briefed on being a target for Russian intelligence campaigns. Like other similar stories it followed a particular pattern — story breaks, other news outlets ‘confirm’ story with anonymous sources, story falls apart, outlets suffer reputational damage. NBC News, the Washington Post and the New York Times were the perpetrators this time (as they so often are).

They don’t consider it a mistake, any nore than Goebbels considered any of his lies a mistake, They are pushing a political agenda, which means eyeballs and clicks, and they know (as many do not) that everybody reads the news but nobody reads ‘corrections’ except white supremacists.

Read it.

Not me.

Vice President Kamala Harris is not historically very popular. Her approval rating rarely topped 40 percent during her campaign in the Democratic presidential primary. Her poll numbers sagged in her home state of California. It wasn’t until Biden chose her as his running mate that Harris enjoyed consistently higher approval ratings, but even as of April of this year, her unfavorability ratings were just about as high.

Despite being pretty unlikable (and as that nervous laugh suggests, awfully inauthentic), Harris has managed to maneuver herself into arguably the most powerful position in the country. If she does eventually run for president, who would be her base? Who actually likes Kamala Harris?

I’m sure Trump does. I’m sure he’s praying that she runes for President.

Read it.

Blair Whitten, a 28-year-old Minnesota resident, tried to run over funeral attendees with her SUV on Saturday at Riverside Cemetery in Fargo, North Dakota, according to KVRR. Witten managed to miss every single mourner but has been charged with aggravated reckless endangerment, the outlet reported.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

… or does Melinda Gates look like a transgender?  I must say that I would never consider marrying anybody who looked like that.

ZMan turns critic.

One of the stranger things about the political system that has evolved since the end of the Cold War is the declining reality of politicians. No, not their declining grasp on reality, which is a real thing. It is the fact that our politicians are less and less like normal human beings and more like sketches of human beings. As the role of politician has become more of a role, performed by someone good at public performance, their back stories have grown smaller and less important.

Go back to the last two Cold War presidents and you see men with long and detailed back stories that were relatable. Reagan was the midwestern guy who went to Hollywood to become a star. He ended up on television as a pitchman but became the head of the actor’s union. Poppy Bush came from an old blue blood family. He was in the war and then had a life in politics. He was even the head spy for turn. We knew a lot about these men before they entered the White House.

The first post-Cold War president was a different matter. We know a lot about his time in Arkansas, mostly because of he and his wife’s personal corruption, but none of that was known before he hit the national stage. It was only after he was in the White House that his backstory came into focus. How much of it is true and how much of it is missing is something we will never know. Bill Clinton was the first president who started out as mostly an idea, a sketch of a man, rather than a real person.

Read it.

At present, automatization and 3D printing are comparably upturning conventions in the building industry with the promise of replacing mass fabrication with near-infinite customization. HANNAH’s investigation of the new material began with Additive Architectural Elements — a series of design experiments that poke at the ornamental and structural possibilities of this emerging construction process. The highly tactile Elements begins to answer what 3D printed concrete should look and feel like, probing its structural capacity and seeking an honest language that showcases the process itself.