Fiona Hill reflects on ‘terrible spectacle’ of Trump-Putin summit ahead of Biden’s meeting with Russian President (CNN)

Wealth secret of the super rich revealed: be born into a rich family (The Guardian)

Navy’s highest-ranking officer confronts Republican critics and stresses importance of combating racism and misinformation (CNN)

Petition to deny Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spaceflight reentry to Earth making the rounds

Why Mike Lindell Can’t Stop (Politico)

Researchers say they have unmasked a major QAnon influencer (The Hill)

Fox Affiliate Fires Reporter After Release Of “Censorship” Clips Via Project Veritas

The Battle Against CRT Gets Physical

P

ressley urges Mass. lawmakers to shift funding away from school police to counselors, nurses (Boston Globe)

Emails From Michigan Attorney General Nessel’s Office Gives Rare Look Into Her Vindictive Office

School board member tells graduating high schoolers to remember their ‘jihad’ and brace for a world of ‘white supremacy’

Exposing the Media’s Blatant Partisanship on Election Laws

MSNBC MANIA: We’ve Seen ‘Last Free & Fair Election’ If HR1 Doesn’t Pass

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Exist; They Must Be Banned (IEEE Spectrum) One of the characteristic delusions of Progressivism (which has, these days, captured all professional organizations like the IEEE) is the banning something is sufficient to make sure it doesn’t happe. This is most obvious in the Gun Control forum, where the focus is always on more and more ban-x ban-y laws rather than on figuring out really effective ways of keeping guns out of the hands of those who will abuse them (like black males).

So Much for Childhood: 30 Kids Shows, Toys Push LGBTQ Agenda Over A Year

CBS’s Shocking Spin for Shoplifting Crime Wave: ‘Act of Desperation,’ ‘Not Getting Rich’

How Blue City Governance Is Destroying Blue Cities

‘Racism is Racism’ Parent Calls Out Elite Private School For Racist Video Against White Women

Biden Wants to Make Catholics Pay for Murder

Liberal Activists Rebrand Sex Changes as ‘Gender-Affirming Medical Care,’ and the Media Is Following Their Lead

Stanford Mental Health Workers Say University Counseling Ignores and Intimidates Jews

Education Secretary Prioritizes Transgender Students Over Biological Girls, Does What Supreme Court Hasn’t

Japan’s Canon Institute For Global Studies (CIGS) Presents New Working Paper On Climate Science Data Inconsistencies

Celebrate: We’ve Finally Hit an “Irreversible” Climate Tipping Point

Read it.

Proteins are molecular origami at its finest. Classically, a protein is imagined as a chain of amino acids that folds into a single stable configuration, one that evolution has selected over the ages for a particular function. But in the last few years, biophysicists have learned how numerous and extraordinary the exceptions to that rule are — including some two-faced proteins that can refold as needed in an instant.

Life as we know it only uses a fraction of the tools available in theory.

Read it.

According to analytics provided by Nielsen Media Research, Wallace’s 4 p.m. show Deadline: White House has seen a nearly 80 percent drop in viewership since January 2021 in the critical 25-54 demographic. At the end of May, just 147,000 non-geriatrics above the age of 25 tuned into her two-hour MSNBC program per day.

Be careful what you wish for.

Read it.

Amazon has just introduced its “Just Walk Out” technology into a full-size 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh grocery store. The system uses overhead cameras, pressure sensitive-shelves, and biometric data to determine what customers put in their carts. The new store will be open on June 17 in Bellevue, Washington.

“Bringing Just Walk Out technology to a full-size grocery space with the Amazon Fresh store in Bellevue showcases the technology’s continued ability to scale and adapt to new environments and selection. I’m thrilled it’ll help even more customers enjoy an easier and faster way to shop and can’t wait to get their feedback on this latest Just Walk Out offering,” Amazon’s vice president of Physical Retail and Technology, Dilip Kumar, said, according to The Verge.

Read it.

Who will be the first to sue to block him? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen….

ZMan lays it out.

The renewed interest in the origins of the Covid virus is a good reminder of several threads running through the modern political discourse. The most obvious being the reactionary nature of the establishment Left. Trump pinned the blame on China, so the establishment Left made it their mission to defend China. This fit in well with their corporate paymasters, who are happy to wash the feet of the Chinese government in exchange for access to Chinese consumers.

Of course, that leads into another subplot to the modern age. The willingness to submit everything to the marketplace, real and imagined. This is a root cause of the current crisis in America. Just because it is good for the economy in the short term to do business with China does not mean it is good to do business with China, but in the hyper-marketized world of today, no one questions it. Like everything else, right and wrong is left to the market to decide.

…

China is like a kid in a toy shop these days, as everything in the West is for sale at discount prices. Everything must go and no offer will be refused. Need a member of Congress who sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence? Short on cash? No problem! How about someone to run cover for letting a deadly virus loose on the world? You are in luck, as they are in stock and priced to sell! Everything must go!

 

Read it.

A Lebanese businessman with reported close ties to Hizballah’s weapons procurement network has established new “business shields” to disguise his activity, a new report released on Tuesday by the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center watchdog finds.

The report focuses on Ali Abd Al Nur Shalan (nicknamed Mouyas’ar).

“Shalan is multi-skilled in buying and transporting weapons and chemical compounds. He has been doing this for many years,” former IDF intelligence officer Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, who heads Alma’s research department, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Shalan also plays other key roles that serve Hizballah.

The Other McCain sounds the alarm!

Are you encouraging skepticism toward the Biden administration’s policies? That’s “malicious content,” you extremist! Got a Trump bumper sticker on your car? Your neighbors will rat you out to the Department of Homeland Security, because obviously that’s “threatening behavior.”

Hey, let’s talk about “unindicted co-conspirators” for January 6.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Giant Ice Shelf Crumbling Faster than Expected (‘Scientific’ American)

Is A “Climate Lockdown” On The Horizon?

Several More New Studies Show Drought Is Now Less Common And Severe Than Centuries, Millennia Ago

MSNBC Lashes Out: Any Criticism of Kamala Harris Is Sexist and Racist!

Columbus police say shooting spree was racially motivated

We can’t fight racism if Whites see any remedy as a threat and an insult (Washington Post) Ought to read ‘We can’t push racism…’

Police: 4 Dead, 4 Hurt in Shooting on Chicago’s South Side

How Should I Persuade Pundits That BLM = Black Lives Murdered?

NY Mayoral Candidate Maya Wiley Hosted Event With Anti-Semite Dropped From Women’s March

Media: Conservative Reaction to Critical Race Theory Is ‘White Privilege’

US Civil Rights Commissioner Slams Chicago Mayor for Barring White Reporters From Interviews  BRAAAAAAAINS!

Schools To Get Around CRT Bans By Just Beating White Kids With Sticks  Babylon Bee.

Senate Unanimously Approves a Bill to Make Juneteenth a Public Holiday

Biden Gaffes Deliver New Embarrassments

An Apparently Confused Biden Goes Silent After Fielding Question About Putin

Biden Admin Prepared to Lift Sanctions on Iran’s Top Terrorism Financers, Senator Says

Biden Refuses To Issue Erdogan Meeting Details: “I’ll Let The Turks Tell You About It”  ‘Who is this Erdogan guy again?”

‘No One Comes Through the Border Illegally Without the Cartels’ Authorization’: How Biden’s Policies Feed a Criminal Monopoly

Joe Concha blasts NPR op-ed criticizing Tom Hanks on race: ‘So profoundly stupid’

Fox News Holds Cringe Segment Declaring Tom Hanks Has Been ‘Canceled’ by the Left (Media-ite) Which, indeed, they tried to do.

Like the U.S., Israel bids goodbye to an unhinged leader (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin pushes the Narrative.

North Korean defector says ‘even North Korea was not this nuts’ after attending Ivy League school

Kim Jong Un Attends Ivy League University To Learn New Brainwashing Techniques  Babylon Bee.

HATEFUL MSNBC Bashes America: Blame U.S. for Getting on Omar’s ‘War Crimes’

Baseless Israel Bashing Permeates Science, Medicine, and Education Unions

Tensions Rise As G7 Attendees Accidentally Refer To Justin Trudeau Using Masculine Pronouns  Babylon Bee.

Apple faces criticism for censoring LGBTQ+ apps on the App Store in 152 countries

MSNBC Host Blames Republicans for Murder of Canadian Family

America’s Navy Is Leaving Readiness and Morale in Its Wake to Be More Woke

McConnell Calls for ‘Actual Consequences’ for Leaking Tax Info  Good luck with that.

Read it.

Process developed at MIT could turn concentrated brine into useful chemicals, making desalination more efficient.

I’m astonished that they’re not already using it to make gourmet sea salt.

Read it.

The people at Gr?v Technologies think farmers can produce wheatgrass for their herds with less land and water using the method.

Read it.

Brown University researchers have shown that tiny channels between graphene sheets can be aligned in a way that makes them ideal for water filtration.

Babylon Bee.

The New York Times called The Babylon Bee dangerous far-right misinformation but has now retracted that claim and issued a correction after reviewing the data and admitting The Babylon Bee actually has a really high accuracy rate in predicting the future.

Read it.

On Monday, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but President Joe Biden wants to end its use. Biden is the first United States president to oppose the death penalty publicly.

Democrats are why we can’t have nice things.

Read it.

Noise as a solution makes sense, in theory: No thief wants attention, so make something that’ll draw lots of it. Problem is, we (police included) have become desensitized. We know how easy it is to accidentally trigger the those horrific whines and screeches —a heavy truck rumbling by, a motorcycle that’s had the baffles removed (another issue on its own), or just someone accidentally brushing against the side of the car while walking by. Even if the alarm is triggered during an honest-to-God break-in, what exactly are good Samaritans supposed to do? If anyone has ever rushed into the street at the sound of every car alarm, ready to go full vigilante on some ne’er-do-well shattering a window, I want to meet that person. In the city, a guy conspicuously stealing a bicycle doesn’t even get a second glance—how is a someone quickly smashing a window and running off supposed to rate?

 

Read it.

O’Rourke became a national celebrity in 2018 by failing to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and a national embarrassment in 2020 by launching a presidential campaign on the cover of Vanity Fair before failing to receive a single vote in the Democratic primary. He is reportedly considering a failed run for governor.

In addition to having a teaching gig at Texas State University, the failed politician has become a community organizer of sorts, registering voters and rallying local Democrats to support the national party’s campaign against so-called Republican voter suppression.

Texas gets hot in the summer, so this line of work involves a lot of perspiration, even for the average Democrat. O’Rourke, however, is anything but average when it comes to his capacity to sweat. The opening line of a 2018 BuzzFeed puff piece described him as a “prolific, prodigious sweater.”

We do what we must, because we can.

Read it.

Uptown was, until recently, one of Minneapolis’s principal entertainment and shopping areas. Now, in the wake of Winston Boogie Smith’s shooting by law enforcement–he apparently opened fire first–a chunk of Uptown has been closed off to traffic and turned into an “autonomous zone” that is referred to by some as Boogie World. The area encompasses Lake Street, one of the city’s principal roadways, from Hennepin Avenue–another principal roadway–to Fremont Avenue. At this point, Uptown is essentially dead.

Read it.

You never know what you’ll turn up.

(And these were the fastest turtles on the planet….)

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said that he’s exploring the idea of a one-time tax on the wealth of the richest Americans as Democrats seek to increase taxes on the rich in order to pay for spending priorities.

In an interview with The Hill on Friday, Suozzi said he’s in the early stages of looking at what he called a “patriot tax.” This would be a one-time surcharge of 2.5 percent on wealth between $50 million and $100 million and a 5 percent tax on wealth above $100 million. Wealthy people would be able to pay the tax over five years.

Read it.

As anticipated, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency yesterday by executive order for the sixteenth month in a row (the fifteenth by renewal of his original order). He let on that the end is in sight — somewhere over the rainbow.

Walz’s current 30-day renewal is not as egregious as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s entry into the sixteenth year of his four-year term, but it as about as willful. By contrast with Abbas’s reign, Walz’s comes with a pretense of legality. We will have to settle for that.

Read it.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week are expected to discuss if pro-choice Catholic politicians should be able to receive Holy Communion.

The mere fact that this is considered to need discussion underlines the extent to which the Roman church in the U.S. has become corrupt.

Freeberg nails it.

For the past several years I have occasionally read “psychological profiles” and the like, struggling to triage a borderline mental illness that is Trump support. It’s actually Trump hatred that is more mystifying and more baffling. I’m sure history will ultimately record it that way. It is the #NeverTrump types who more closely resemble the witch hunters in Salem. And those witch hunters are the ones on the wrong side of history, whose wounded consciences and mental enfeeblements continue to fascinate us. Isn’t that obvious? If we could time travel back to 1692 and put one faction, or the other, in straight-jackets and padded cells, it would be the hunters, not the witches or their defenders. We relate to the hunters, but we think the worse of ourselves when we do, and that’s what makes The Crucible a dark story. It makes us wonder what’s wrong with us. That correlates to the Trump-phobes, not the Trump-philes.

Marjorie Taylor Greene led early in the House’s crazy stakes. But a dark horse has emerged. (Washington Post) Dana Milbank polishes his Woke credentials. (Hey, pays the bills, know what I mean?)

Boeing Restarts Donations to Members of the So-Called ‘Sedition Caucus’ (Daily Beast) So-called by the Daily Beast, at least.

Read it.

It looks like Endgame is fast approaching for Modern Multicultural Sweden. Municipal leaders in the Gothenburg — the country’s second-largest city — are calling for the army to be sent in to control cultural enrichment in the city’s gang-ridden no-go zones.

Read it.

From taxpayer-funded abortion to suing the Little Sisters of the Poor, the dogma lives loudly in our very Catholic president. So, Tuesday morning, he’s popping into the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. Never wanting to miss a photo-op, Team Biden asked that the president attend mass with the Pontifex Maximus. Maybe Joe could make intercessory prayers to St. Margaret Sanger and Pachamama.

Read it.

Staff at the chain Johnny & Jugnu in Lahore were rounded up at 0100 (2000 GMT) on Saturday and held overnight.

“This is not the first time something like this has happened… at our restaurant,” a statement by the burger chain said.

It’s not that bad here … yet.

AstraZeneca’s COVID Jab Should Be Halted For People Over 60: EMA

Watch: Fox Host Wallace Attempts To Shift Blame To Trump Over Wuhan Lab-Leak

Dots That Don’t Connect

Workers Push Back Against Hospitals Requiring COVID Vaccines

Brian Kemp May Be Outfoxing Donald Trump (New York Magazine) Ed Kilgore pushes the Narrative.

This Militia-Fighting GOP Sheriff Thinks Jan. 6 Was Just the Start (Daily Beast) At least he’s not The Fighting Priest Who Can Talk To The Young.

Virginia school board member tells graduates they’re entering world overwhelmed by racism, individualism  And other, you know, bad stuff like that.

Teachers across the country protest laws restricting lessons on racism

Dems Shocked, Disappointed To Learn The New Israeli Prime Minister Will Still Be A Jew Babylon Bee.

The View’s Sunny Hostin Defends Bigoted Ilhan Omar, Rants at ‘Islamophobic’ GOP

Sorry, Forrest: NPR Blasts Hanks for Encouraging ‘White American Exceptionalism’

NYT Buckles to Legal Pressure from The Babylon Bee, Removes Smear

CNN Skeptical of Report Absolving Trump Over D.C. Anti-Riot Actions

CNN Graphic Hypes Dem Senator Smear: GOP ‘Doesn’t Give a S***’ About Gun Violence

Here We Go Again! Facebook Fact-Checker Flags MRC Video ‘Partly False’

Deranged MSNBC Leftist: We Aren’t Prosecuting Enough U.S. War Criminals!

NYT Goes GAGA for ‘Anti-Racist’ Governor Blackface’s ‘Complex Story’

What About His Gaffes? Joe Biden Bumbles His Way Through G7 Summit

Relieved Nets Cheer Biden Foreign Trip: ‘Era of Donald Trump is Over’  Hurray, we can start losing again!

Texas Based Border Zones See 70 Percent of All Illegal Migrants

In Honor Of Pride Month, Biden Announces He Will Also Sniff Men’s Hair  Babylon Bee.

Ahead Of Putin Meeting, Biden Confuses Syria With Libya 3 Times In Less Than 90 Seconds

Zogby Poll: Most Americans Believe Media Protects Biden

Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller Made Their Fortunes Thanks to Capitalism. Now, Their Foundations Seek to Undermine It.

Biden’s Biggest Danger Is Democrats Afraid to Tax the Rich (New York Magazine) Jonathan Chait pushes the Narrative.

Is it time to limit personal wealth? (Washington Post) Maybe it’s time to limit envy and fascism instead.

The Delusions of the Radical Centrist (New York Magazine) The never-ending slog of pushing the Narrative.

Child Worker’s Spirits Really Lifted By All The Pride Merch He’s Making For Major Corporations

Vast Majority Of Democrats Support Employers Forcing Workers To Get COVID Jab, New Poll Finds

Biden Administration Uses Term ‘Birthing Person’ Instead of ‘Mother’

Why The New Yorker’s Stars Didn’t Join Its Union

PolitiFact Isn’t Partisan? Pants On Fire

2 Republican Lawmakers Sue Over House Metal Detector Fines

Fleeing Venezuela

Feinstein Accepts Lifetime Achievement Award From Bush Scion’s CCP-Backed Group

Fairfax Board Member Rails Against The Dangers Of “Excessive Individualism”

Report: 40 Percent of Teachers Say Civics Education Should Focus On Critical Race Theory

How Zuckerberg Millions Paid for Progressives to Work With 2020 Election Officials Nationwide

Man, 25, Dies After Austin Shooting, 1 Suspect at Large

Batty ‘Batwoman:’ Black People ‘Shot For No Reason’ By Police  The guns and drugs had absolutely nothing to do with it.

BLM Inserted into ’80s Showtime Comedy: ‘Insane How Many Cops Are White Supremacists’

UK Charity Teaches Staff ‘White Women Reporting Rape By Black Men Support White Supremacy’

Looting for Winston Smith or someone like him (4)

‘Black & Brown Storm Chasers?’ Helen Hunt Tried to Make Super Woke ‘Twister’ Reboot

Gun Violence on Track to Exceed 2020, Deadliest Year in Decades

CNN Could Have Promoted a Person of Color To Replace White Masturbator Jeffrey Toobin. The Network Refused. Why?  The Crust take care of their own.

Ronald Kessler: The Myth of Humans Causing Global Warming Is Shattered

Poll: Most Americans Do Not Think Climate Change ‘Greatest’ Security Threat

Sea Level Rise Fastest in 2000 Years (Or Not!)

Read it.

Earlier this month I posted about the presumed honor killing of a Pakistani girl in Italy by members of her extended family. The body of Saman Abbas has yet to be found, but her parents have decamped to Pakistan without her, and her little brother has told the authorities that she was killed for refusing an arranged marriage with a cousin.

“A dead enemy is the next best thing to a friend.”

— M.A.R. Barker, Prince of Skulls

Glenn Greenwald.

On the fifth anniversary of the PULSE nightclub massacre in Orlando, numerous senators, politicians and activist groups commemorated that tragic event by propagating an absolute falsehood: namely, that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was motivated by anti-LGBT animus. The evidence is definitive and conclusive that this is false — Mateen, like so many others who committed similar acts of violence, was motivated by rage over President Obama’s bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and chose PULSE at random without even knowing it was a gay club — yet this media-consecrated lie continues to fester.

Read it.

Does it catch fraud or manipulations of data? No, patently not: peer reviewers are not omniscient, so they cannot divine made-up data, nor can they check all the outputs of a lab to see when they’ve simply copy-and-pasted data between papers. If they were, we wouldn’t have the website PubPeer stuffed to the gills with people flagging potentially serious misdemeanors in published papers, nor Retraction Watch’s endless reporting of papers so dodgy they’re expunged from the literature.

ZMan waxes philosophical.

One of the underappreciated aspects of liberal democracy is that it always pits morality versus objective facts, always creating a false choice. Every public debate is between one camp that demand we do “the right thing” and another camp that insist on doing “the correct thing”. The right thing is defined as the moral thing while the correct thing is the factually accurate or effective thing. The choice is failure while on the moral high ground or succeed and be seen and inhumane or indifferent.

We see this in the perennial proglodyte push for ‘soak the rich’. The premise (never stated, always just assumed) is that income/wealth inequality is somehow immoral, so we are morally obliged to rob productive people of their property, however gotten, in order to ensure a Right Moral Order. (If that means that you can distribute the swag among your Underclass followers and thereby ensure your own power, well, that’s an added bonus – who deserves it more than the Paragons of Virtue?)

Read it.

Differing from the normal ‘explosion’ in some way, I suppose.

Read it.

When a mass shooting erupted early Saturday morning in downtown Austin, the local media refused to quote a police description of the suspects for fear of “perpetuating stereotypes.”

…

Police haven’t issued descriptions of the suspects in any of these mass shootings, but at risk of “perpetuating stereotypes,” I’m going to take a wild guess and say none of the shooters were Trump voters.

Read it.

Until the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Janus case in 2018, citizens of a number of states, including Minnesota, were essentially taxed to support local teachers’ unions. In those states, no one could legally teach in a public school without paying the union out of his or her salary–which, of course, came entirely from taxpayers. That this situation was allowed to persist for decades should have been a scandal.

Teachers’ unions, like all public sector unions, have always been pro-government and therefore liberal. But I suspect most people do not understand how partisan, and how radical, the teachers’ unions are.