Don’t mess around with Texas — just move back to California

Fact check: Arizona audit chief baselessly raises suspicion about 74,000 ballots (CNN) Gotta push that Narrative!

Sorting out Trump’s comments on the Arizona audit (Politico)

Nikole Hannah-Jones said Cuba is among ‘most equal’ countries because of socialism

Julian Assange Case: Keystone Witness Admits He Lied, US Media Ignores

USA warns Hong Kong government may demand business and customer data, run surveillance without warrants

AOC Now Pushing Political Merchandise  KA-CHING!

Even CNN Admits Dems Won’t Press Cuba Because Many Support Socialism

Desperate Humanity Sends Robot Back To 2004 To Stop Mark Zuckerberg From Ever Inventing Facebook

Admitting It: CBS Cheers 1619 Project, Touts Idea That Journalism Should Be Activism

Texas Dems’ DC Fly-Away Will Cost Donors Combined $1.5M

Poll: Majority of Americans Not Confident Kamala Harris Is Ready for Presidency How about those of us who are confident that she is not ready for the Presidency?

Mindless Carnage Continues in Chicago

Man shot in the head during used car sale gone wrong, Fort Worth police say

This Plano woman survived an attack and led police to suspected serial killer Billy Chemirmir

Mass Shooting Casualties Are 72% Higher in 2021 Than in 2019

9 Killed, 50 Wounded in Weekend Chicago Shootings

NY Times Front Still in Texas-Sized Freakout Mode: ‘Can Texas Turn Further Right?’  We can only hope.

Cynical NY Times Whines GOP ‘Ready to Pounce’ on Biden Migrant Policy

‘It’s chilling what is happening’: a rightwing backlash to Biden takes root in Republican states (The Guardian)

The real reason Trump keeps telling the Big Lie (CNN)

William H. Regnery II, 80, Dies; Bankrolled the Rise of the Alt-Right “The reclusive heir to a Midwestern textile fortune, he sought, through funding and organizing, to upgrade and update white supremacy.” (New York Times) Of course, he didn’t do any of that.

Ben And Jerry’s Introduces Fun New Flavor ‘Push The Jews Into The Sea Salt And Caramel’  Babylon Bee.

J.K. Rowling Calls Out ‘Trans Activists’ For Threatening to ‘Rape’ and ‘Assassinate’ Her

Number of Infected Texas Lawmakers Who Fled State Rises to 5

Majority of Covid misinformation came from 12 people, report finds (The Guardian)

Biden is right. Purveyors of vaccine disinformation are killing people. (Washington Post)

Masks should be mandated again indoors in NYC even for fully vaxed: pol

Fed-up NYC parents demand an end to masking in schools

Former surgeon general says CDC mask guidance ‘premature’ and ‘wrong’

Las Vegas cafe owner says he and his employees are ‘shocked’ by renewed mask mandate

99% of Those Who Died from Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

US Surgeon General doubles down on Facebook-bashing amid vaccination information blame game

Children are spoofing Covid-19 tests with soft drinks

Fully Vaccinated GOP Florida Lawmaker Tests Positive for COVID  Boy, I’ll run right out and get that vaccine….

Pediatrics Group Contradicts CDC, Says All Children, Staff Should Wear Masks in School  (Dr. Fauci: Group’s New Mask Guidance for Schools ‘Reasonable’) “Follow the science!” “Which one?”

PARTY OF DEATH: Texas Democrats Put Lives at Risk as Biden’s COVID-19 Body Count Nears 200K

Dangerous Anti-Science Extremists Hold Super-Spreader Event In D.C.  Babylon Bee.

Read it.

You’d be surprised how many reasons people have to go to Yuma, Arizona. They go for the weather, the four thousand yearly hours of baking sunlight. They go for the casinos, rising up by the highway on the lands of the Quechan and the Cocopah. They go to witness the arsenal of the largest standing army in the world at the Yuma Proving Grounds, where mortars and brimstone missiles pummel the Sonoran Desert. And then there are people who go for the same reason I did: because they’re afflicted with aching and rotting teeth, with broken molars and crooked gums, mouths full of pain that follow them around like debts. Because just across the border from Yuma, so close you can walk it, is Los Algodones—Molar City. The dental tourism capital of the world.

Every year roughly 120,000 Canadians and Americans cross the border into Los Algodones. There they spend millions of dollars on dental care that costs a fraction of what it does back home. The town’s population hovers around five thousand, but it’s home to over five hundred practicing dentists who power the local economy and contribute to the booming global medical tourism industry.

Medical tourism is a deceptively sunny phrase for the lengths a person will go to escape their pain. It’s a type of migration that can only exist under certain asymmetries of care and certain conditions of capitalism. When health is a commodity it feels realer the more dearly you have paid for it. But medical tourism is the inverse: health as a bargain, health as a matter of exchange rates. Health as a gamble.

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Two New York City Ivy League lawyers will stand trial in March 2022 for allegedly firebombing a police cruiser and distributing Molotov cocktails during the George Floyd riots last summer.

Defense lawyers for Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman have been in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors since February but have not come to terms, prompting U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan to set a trial schedule for both defendants. Pretrial motions are due on Sept. 17 and jury selection will begin on March 14, 2022.

The accused enjoy widespread support and sympathy from New York’s legal and media elites. Rahman is represented by one of the city’s best defense attorneys, and a former Obama administration official guaranteed her bail in the amount of $250,000. Both have been the subject of favorable profiles in New York magazine and NPR, among other venues.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently issued a “first in the nation” executive order on gun violence, declaring it a “disaster emergency” in his state and vesting himself with the authority to treat it as a “public health crisis” just like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuomo, a Democrat, also signed into law a bill to hold gun manufacturers and sellers liable for otherwise lawful conduct that nonetheless is deemed to create a “public nuisance.”

The new law effectively opens up the floodgates to frivolous lawsuits designed to kneecap a lawful industry and, with it, lawful gun ownership around the state of New York.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine turns over a rock.

Over the weekend FOX 9’s Tom Lyden reported the sordid details of DFL state representative John Thompson’s domestic assault charges going back a decade and more. Following the publication of Lyden’s story, the DFL establishment turned on Thompson. Every member of the DFL establishment called in unison for Thompson’s resignation.

Since he first appeared on the public scene in the summer of 2020, Thompson has manifested as an obvious racial hustler, thug, and nut. He has a screw or two badly in need of tightening. Yet the DFL stood behind Thompson until Lyden’s story broke this weekend.

Thompson’s initial statement attributed Lyden’s story to “an amplified showing of systematic racism[.]” It has become a conspiracy so immense that it extends to the state’s DFL leadership.

That of course includes “light-skinned Native woman” Peggy Flanagan, our lieutenant governor. Calling for Thompson’s resignation on Saturday, Flanagan sacrificed the mention of the credential she otherwise invariably cites when she opines on matters of public policy.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine brings up some inconvenient truth.

We learned via Twitter last night that two more of the Texas Democrats who fled from Austin to Washington have contracted Covid-19. That brings the number to five out of a group of “nearly 60” (per the Austin American-Statesman here).

Putting the press release below together with Saturday’s previous release, we are advised that the Texas Five were all fully vaccinated — this at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to overcome vaccine “hesitancy” (forgive me) and censor vaccine “misinformation” (according to Ms. Misinformation herself).

I am a cynical guy. I hear the clock striking 13. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…”

Either the vaccines have proved remarkably ineffective or someone is lying. It appears to me that the news stories are simply regurgitating the press releases.

Yup.

It does indeed.

Read it.

groups and fringe research circles, the controversy over cold fusion (sometimes called low-energy nuclear reactions or LENRs) refuses to go away. On one hand, ardent supporters have lacked the consistent, reproducible results and the theoretical underpinning needed to court mainstream acceptance. On the other, vehement detractors cannot fully ignore the anomalous results that have continued to crop up, like the evidence for so-called “lattice-confinement fusion” adduced last year by a group at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

Scientists at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division have pulled together a group of Navy, Army, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) labs to try and settle the debate. Together, the labs will conduct experiments in an effort to establish if there’s really something to the cold fusion idea, if it’s just odd chemical interactions, or if some other phenomenon entirely is taking place in these controversial experiments.

Read it.

House Democrats are trying to use a massive climate and infrastructure bill to change how Americans get around — by breaking states’ decades-old fondness for building highways.

Legislation the House passed this month is the biggest advance yet in Democrats’ efforts to bake climate policies into transportation, addressing the largest single contributor to the United States’ greenhouse gas output. It would also represent an historic shift away from the roads-first approach to federal transportation spending that has reigned since Dwight Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System.

Anything to prevent people from going their own way.

New York Magazine can’t wait for it.

Last fall, Deutsche Bank warned its clients that millennials were coming for their wealth. In a research note, the bank’s strategist Jim Reid predicted that the generation’s impending attainment of political supremacy will “be a potential turning point for society and start to change election results and thus change policy.” As this younger generation ages into its prime voting years — and boomers steadily age out of the electorate — the intergenerational “balance of power” will shift.

“Assuming life does not become more economically favourable for Millennials as they age (many find house prices increasingly out of reach),” Reid continued, “such a shift in the balance of power could include a harsher inheritance tax regime, less income protection for pensioners, more property taxes, along with greater income and corporates taxes … and all-round more redistributive policies.”

But not all financial analysts are wringing their hands over what millennials will take from the boomers. Some are licking their chops over what they’ll soon receive from their elders.

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Because, as you know, the cupboard is pretty bare when it comes to pasta shapes.

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For all the IITs’ proficiency at training and placing students, though, the coders, programmers, product developers, and engineers fanning out to global tech bring with them the troubled legacy of India’s caste system. On campus, students are surrounded by—and in some cases participate in—a culture of discrimination, bullying, and segregation that targets fellow pupils from India’s Scheduled Castes, also known as Dalits. The IITs officially discourage such harassment, but the prejudice against these students remains quite open.

Caste in India speaks, as race does in America, to centuries of social, cultural, and economic divisions. Unlike in the U.S., though, India has since 1950 had a national system of affirmative action designed to undo the legacy of bias. Among its provisions are ones that help Dalits and other oppressed groups get into and pay for college. For nearly half a century, IIT admissions have been subject to a reservation system that’s still hotly debated on the campuses. In recent years, the schools have opposed attempts to extend affirmative action to faculty hires, arguing it would dilute the quality of the applicant pool and undermine their meritocratic image.

Check it out.

As the possibilities of biotechnology innovations were revealed, the idea of resurrecting the Woolly mammoth quickly captured the imagination. The pursuit of this project has helped to identify immediate potential benefits to Asian elephant conservation. There is also a compelling climate change resilience rationale for this de-extinction project.

Read it.

Gerd Gigerenzer, a sixty-nine year German psychologist who has been studying how humans make decisions for most of his career, doesn’t think so. In the real world, rules of thumb not only work well, they also perform better than complex models, he says. We shouldn’t turn our noses up on heuristics, we should embrace them.

That view is increasingly gaining global attention. Partly because of the failure of complex models in predicting major events, such as the financial crisis in 2008, and the election of Donald Trump last year. Partly because Gigerenzer is backing what he says with some cutting edge research.

Read it.

As the American left argues openly for socialism, it’s helpful to keep in mind just how dreadfully those policies have failed—and just how viciously socialists have responded to those who got in the way—in countries throughout the world. Watch the recent protests in Cuba and you will see how regular people feel about the direction the American left wants to take. They aren’t happy.

Since the communist revolution in 1959, leftists in America have celebrated purported Cuban progress in areas such as health care and education. Little mention was made in those quarters about the Cuban government’s human rights abuses, which include political executions, arbitrary imprisonments, an unfair legal system, and severe limits on freedom of expression, free association, free assembly, free movement, and, of course, a free press.

Gaetz and Greene Hold Bizarre Outdoor Protest After Multiple Venues Bailed (Daily Beast) Bizarre!

California venue cancels Gaetz, Greene’s ‘America First’ rally (The Hill)

Dozens arrested in Los Angeles as anti-trans protest outside spa turns violent (The Guardian)

The only reason the media tries to cancel Joe Rogan: He terrifies them

Arizona Election Officials: Trump Was Wrong About Voter Fraud (Daily Beast)

Democrats and Hyperbole

Deadly floods shook Europe. Is it ready for future climate change-related disasters? (NBC ‘News’)

Great Salt Lake is shrinking fast. Scientists demand action before it becomes a toxic dustbin (CNN)

‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World (N Y Times)

West’s Energy Transition Narrative Ignores The Reality in Asia

Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures  Did you miss them? (I thought not.)

A New Law Of Climate Change

Law & Order actor is charged with murder for ‘shooting man 10 times in a daylight execution in NYC’

Fans, players flee Nationals Park after gunshots ring out during game

Eric Adams wants to rename NYC streets and buildings that honor slave owners Washington Square Park, for example.

Man arrested for attempted kidnapping in Queens attacks officer while in custody: Police

Zuma’s Bullyboys Declare War on “White Monopoly Capitalism”

Shooting Outside Washington Baseball Stadium Empties Stands

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance (Washington Post)

Shocking Video From Brooklyn Shows Point Blank Shooting Outside Convenience Store In Broad Daylight

What anti-vaxxers sound like to me (CNN)

Say goodbye to your carefree Covid summer (CNN)

Politicians, health experts condemn vaccine misinformation as cases surge; first COVID-19 case at Olympic Village (USA Today)

In this summer of covid freedom, disease experts warn: ‘The world needs a reality check’ (Washington Post)

In France and Germany, those who reject vaccines find doors increasingly shut (Washington Post)

Long COVID Has Over 200 Symptoms, And They’re More Widespread in Us Than We Thought

Three Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C. test positive for coronavirus Guess they ought to have worn masks on the plane, like us Dirt People have to do.

‘Everyone is dying’: Myanmar on the brink of decimation  Used to be that ‘journalists’ knew what ‘decimation’ meant. I guess no more.

Toxoplasmosis: An important risk factor for acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection

Toxoplasma – The Most Successful Parasite in the world

French Face 6 Months In Jail For Entering A Bar Or Restaurant Without A COVID Pass

UK Government Minister Suggests New Lockdown Before The Current One Has Even Ended

As Clock Strikes Midnight, Los Angeles Reinstates Masks – Sort of

Dana Trash: CNN Host Asks Surgeon General If Fox News Is ‘Killing People’ with COVID Opinion

Howard Stern staffers score fast buyers for their homes amid NYC exits

CNN’s Cuomo Tries to Prove Illegals Commit Less Crime, But It Backfires

Wikileaks Co-Founder: Site Now Promotes Leftist Establishment Propaganda

‘The Government Is Losing Ground’ Residents Say as Gangs Take Territory in Venezuela’s Capital

Dozens Arrested As Antifa Clash With Police Outside Controversial Korean LA Spa  But Trump is obviously to blame.

Republican Confidence In “Science” Collapses: Gallup  With good reason.

Telemundo: Texas’ Election-Security Law Is Just Like Brutal Communist Cuba Repression

Calls for Biden to withdraw Land Management pick over alleged ties to eco-terrorists

Facebook Official: Biden Using Us as ‘Scapegoat’ for Vaccine Failures

Legal Group Investigating Biden Admin’s Coordination With Big Tech

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Childlessness is a self-correcting problem Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

For whatever the truth of the charge he levels, Francis himself seems to have weaponized the Latin Mass in the very act of suppressing it. The obvious goal of the motu proprio is to dissolve certain communities devoted to it, communities that have been a thorn in his side for too long. In the waning days of his pontificate, the thorn is being plucked.

It is rumored that earlier drafts were less charitable than the final documents. Yet the measures are draconian and the tone, though dignified, remains severe. To make matters worse, Francis has assigned to diocesan bishops the difficult task of suppression while reserving to Rome the right to veto particular acts of clemency, including (at article 4) any permission granted new ordinands to say the Latin Mass. For this, few of his brethren will thank him. Some, who themselves love and respect the vetus ordo, will resist him.

Read it.

Gas-fired stoves are emerging as a burning issue as American cities consider phasing out natural-gas hookups to homes and businesses to reduce carbon emissions.

Many restaurant and home chefs prefer cooking on gas-burning ranges, and persuading some to switch to electric stovetops is proving to be a hard sell—a sentiment the natural-gas industry has seized on to rally opposition to new local ordinances.

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I am putting all these links in one spot for my own convenience. If any reader of mine find this convenient also, please look at these items before YouTube removes them.

I have marked those I discovered had been removed.

It is rather remarkable how quickly Americans grow accustomed to censorship. It is now routine on every news and commentary channel I regularly watch, to hear the pundit simply state there are topics and words he cannot mention without being punished. Several mention their shadow banning and demonetizations.

Read it.

Something very similar is at work in the operations of Big Tech, acting as a political arms of the Biden administration. Using the pretext of suppressing “misinformation,” Facebook and other platforms are identifying and silencing the administration’s opponents and, even though this is happening in full view of anyone paying attention, you’re not going to know anything about it if you get your news from CNN, MSNBC or one of the broadcast network troika of NBC/ABC/CBS.

In fact, the liberal media are engaged in “fact-checking” that labels reporting about this censorship as (you guessed it) “misinformation.”

Read it.

News reports now recognize the challenges of vaccinating an entire population, but the sophistication of the current collective vaccine-promotion strategies have evolved more slowly and focus on alleviating vaccine anxieties related to efficacy and safety.2 However, for much of the estimated 39% of the US population currently not vaccinated or reportedly not planning to receive the vaccine as soon as possible,3 vaccine apathy rather than true hesitancy may be an important major concern, and addressing apathy necessitates an entirely different communication approach than addressing hesitancy.

I have an idea: Let’s discuss, not hesitancy, not apathy, but aversion. That would be a change.

Read it.

To date, there are no effective antidotes against most virus infections. An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed a new approach: they engulf and neutralize viruses with nano-capsules tailored from genetic material using the DNA origami method. The strategy has already been tested against hepatitis and adeno-associated viruses in cell cultures. It may also prove successful against coronaviruses.

Eating less Meat won’t save the Planet. Here’s Why

NY Times’s Ezra Klein Yawns at Murderous Eco-Terrorism: ‘A Wave of Bombings…’

For 40% Of The EU And US To Drive EVs, 56,000-70,000 Km² Of Land Must Be Cleared For Wind Turbines

MSNBC’s Hunt Lets Dem Gov Blame Wildfires on Global Warming

Explosive Interview Directly Implicates Trump in Tax Scheme (Daily Beast) Gee, if only we could believe you.

The GOP’s Hurting the Kids to Own the Libs in Tennessee (Daily Beast)

The Desperate Laundering of the Trump Reputations (Daily Beast) The desperate lies of the Narrative Media.

Fox News reporter Peter Doocy’s ‘spying’ blunder (Washington Post)

First Thing: what the Kremlin papers said about Trump (The Guardian)

In Texas, vigilantism replaces the rule of law

Chelsea Handler: White Men Are the Only Comedy Targets Left  And she’s okay with that.

TV News Is the Titanic: Americans Abandon Sinking Ship of Poisonous Partisans

‘Defund the Police’ Advocate Rep. Cori Bush Spent $54,000 On Private Security Company

NYPD Investigating Assault on Jewish Man as Hate Crime

Six-Year-Old Killed, 5 Others Wounded in Friday Night DC Shooting

‘Buying Votes’ Is Good, Actually

Who is Assata Shakur, convicted cop killer granted asylum in Cuba and praised by Black Lives Matter

Betting On The Everything Bubble: Governments Worldwide Are Testing The New Limits Of Debt

Two-thirds of Southern Republicans want to secede  I’m surprised it’s that low.

“Let Them Die”: Fairfax PTA & NAACP Officer Calls For The Death Of Those Who Oppose CRT

Only 2 Networks (Barely) Mention New Record in Border Crisis, All Skip Hunter Biden Scoop

Biden Mulls Intervention In Cuba To Provide WiFi Remotely  I’m curious as to how this is the business of the U.S. government.

White House Admits To Flagging Posts To Be Censored By Facebook

Biden wanted a climate alliance with Europe. He’s getting a carbon trade war

Southern Border Sees Record-Breaking Surge In Illegal Crossings Despite Extreme Heat

On Voting Rights, MSNBC Attacks ‘Failing, Delusional, Hypocritical’ Biden

Los Angeles County sheriff will not enforce new mask mandate: ‘Not backed by science’

Los Angeles Reinstitutes Mask Mandate Amid Concerning Spike Of Freedom  Babylon Bee.

Olympic Staffer Hospitalized In First Serious COVID Case Tied To Summer Games

Mass Infection Is Not an Option: We Must Do More to Protect Our Young

Networks Promote Biden Claiming Facebook Is ‘Killing People’ with COVID Misinformation

Kamala’s Husband Spreads Misinformation, Says COVID Vaccine ‘Only Thing’ That Will Prevent ‘Dying Or Getting Really Sick’

Facebook Responds With Facts After Biden Proclaims Big Tech Is “Killing People” By Not Censoring Speech

“This Is Worrying Me Quite A Bit”: mRNA Vaccine Inventor Shares Viral Thread Showing COVID Surge In Most-Vaxxed Countries

Read it.

Researchers at Yale have discovered that psilocybin — the magic in magic mushrooms — can increase connections between nerve cells in the brains of mice.

Mice get all the best stuff.

Read it.

People once folded their correspondence in intricate ways, known as “letterlocking,” to keep out snoops. A fancy new imaging technique sees right through it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

One of the great ironies of 20th century history: Marxist revolutionaries could only ever seize power in the wrong countries. Marx imagined a revolution of industrial proletariat; he expected that this proletariat would at first achieve its aims in highly industrialized nations like England and Germany. His theory of socialism presupposed that a successful transition from autocratic “feudalism” to a liberal bourgeois socio-economic system had already occurred. But of course, all of the world’s Marxist regimes were established in very different circumstances. The communist parties that successfully seized authority built their power in rebellion against non-democratic regimes, in countries where industrialization still lay far on the horizon. They justified their power in the name of an ideology whose own precepts predicted they should not exist.

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In March 2019, tax expert Maya Forstater was dismissed from her job — legally, according to a later judicial ruling — for voicing the view that “sex is a biological fact, and is immutable.” When author J.K. Rowling came to Forstater’s defence, she was bombarded with abuse, including an invitation from one lady to “choke on my fat trans cock”. The case became a cause célèbre. But it is only one of many such cases. Today, anyone who ventures a controversial opinion on “trans”, race, disability, Middle Eastern politics and a handful of other issues risks being fired, insulted, intimidated and possibly prosecuted.

Read it.

It wasn’t easy to ruin California, but the Democrats have accomplished it.

Read it.

MSNBC, the network that turned vicious, hateful attacks against conservatives, independents and Americans in general into a depressingly regular occurrence, turned 25 this week. And while the venom spewed from the cable network may not shock anymore, we thought MSNBC’s birthday was a good time to recall the five of the worst examples.

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I’ve stayed away from the story of DFL state representative John Thompson’s July 4 wee hours traffic stop by a St. Paul police officer for the past few days. Thompson is a racial hustler who rode his call to burn down Hugo, Minnesota last summer all the way to the state legislature in November 2020.

Thompson is the true face of Minnesota’s DFL. He stands for something far larger than himself. He would have you believe it’s racial victimhood. The story of the traffic stop is worth pausing over, as I have done in posts — here (July 10), here (Thompson’s statement, July 13), and here (officer’s bodycam, later that day).

I would like to update my notes in a set of bullet points to assess where we are while trying to give readers enough to get to the heart of the something larger that Thompson represents.

Read it.

Researchers at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) have developed a way to make lab-grown chocolate — adding a sweet treat to the lengthening list of lab-grown foods.

Read it.

Quietly, proceeding by stealthy cat-like steps, the open-borders lobby has decided that permanent legal status for illegal aliens is something that Congress must cram into the “reconciliation” legislation.

Read it.

We have the technology.

This reminds me of the efforts to use lasers to play vinyl records.