Read it.

Without mind-reading there would be no conspiracy theories.

(I love the smell of conspiracy in the morninng….)

Read it.

In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments.

The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Earlier this week, Hanna showed that starting with mouse stem cells, his lab could form highly realistic-looking mouse embryos and keep them growing in a mechanical womb for several days until they developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds.

You’re just a clump of cells, right? So it’s back to the factory for you.

New York Times.

Since January, judges in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio have found that Republican legislators illegally drew those states’ congressional maps along racial or partisan lines, or that a trial very likely would conclude that they did. In years past, judges who have reached similar findings have ordered new maps, or had an expert draw them, to ensure that coming elections were fair.

All the maps complained about, of course, were drawn by Republicans. No mention of any maps drawn by Democrats, who are all as pure as the driven snow.

FLASHBACK: Democrats created gerrymandering—they must own it

ZMan looks at the Big Picture.

One of the great problems Enlightenment thinkers tried to solve is why it is that human beings live in ordered societies. Further, why are some people in charge of those societies and others subject to the will of those people. What explains this and more important, what is the correct system of organization? The recently rediscovered Greeks offered some insights. Scripture offered understanding of man’s nature but offered little to explain social hierarchy.

It is fair to say that Western intellectual life has been dominated by the search for the right answer as to how best to organize society. The utilitarian school gave us the claim that the goal of any social policy it to maximize total happiness. The Marxists gave us the argument that the goal of social policy is reducing exploitation. By exploitation they meant compulsion. Social contract theory gave us the general will, the idea that policy should be supported by the majority of the people.

The modern age fumbles around looking for a new answer to the great questions, having decided that the prior answers are not quite right. Restorative justice borrows a bit from all three schools. It starts with the assumption that everyone should benefit equally from society. This is an assumption that is never justified or even explained, but simply assumed as an axiom of the universe. It is the motivation to act and the authority to do just about anything to restore equal outcomes.

Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act is ‘economic malpractice’: Economist

White House condemns Indiana abortion law (Indianapolis Star)

Automakers say 70% of EV models don’t qualify for tax credit under Senate bill

Hunter Biden attributes his penis obsession to ‘body dysmorphia’

Biden Wants China Hawks To ‘Put The Brakes’ On Bill Gutting 40 Years Of Taiwan Policy

Where Is Jorge Ramos’ Scathing Column Against Biden’s Border Wall?

Biden steps out of the room and finds legacy-defining wins (Associated Press) He says it best when he says nothing at all.

Homan slams Mayor Bowser, Mayor Adams for immigration hypocrisy and ‘out-of-control crime’ in sanctuary cities

Taxes, housing, sunshine: Don’t count on Florida’s new arrivals to go back to New York  (Palm Beach Post)

Nearly 2,000 NYPD cops quitting before getting full pensions — a 71% jump from 2021  Gee, I wonder why?

US library defunded after refusing to censor LGBTQ authors: ‘We will not ban the books’ (The Guardian) I guess ‘democracy’ only counts when it’s Woke.

The new Yellowstone: Chris Pratt’s new Navy thriller The Terminal List defies woke critics’ scathing reviews to shoot up ratings chart with 1.6 BILLION minutes of streams (UK Daily Mail)

Sens. Sanders, Warren set to give billionaires free pass after years of knocking tax loopholes for wealthy

California will soon start giving kids free money for college. Here’s what families need to know (S. F. Chronicle)

Democrats plan to challenge parliamentarian on insulin cap (The Hill)

A challenge for antiabortion states: Doctors reluctant to work there (Washington Post) I guess PRIMUM NON NOCERE doesn’t mean anything any more.

The Corruption of Medicine Heather MacDonald.

Despite Strict Gun Control, California Had The Most Active Shooter Incidents In 2021: FBI

NPR Reporter Upset by Republicans ‘Shunning Mainstream Press’ for Their Liberal Bias

Republicans have long feuded with the mainstream media. Now many are shutting them out (NPR) “Mommmeee! Johnny hit me back!”

“Revolution Has Begun”: 75,000 Brits To Stop Paying Power Bills Amid Inflation Storm

You Know It’s Bad When… Bernie Mocks Dems’ “So-Called Inflation Reduction Act”

‘Stampede’ Quitting NYPD Even Before Reaching Pension Status

Bill Maher Slams “Fat Celebration” And “Body Positivity”

Amnesty is now utterly morally bankrupt

Washington Post publishes book preview claiming ‘sick’ GOP set for ‘destroying the world’s oldest democracy’

Tennessee college alumni lobby to remove Supreme Court Justice Barrett from school’s ‘hall of fame’

Justice subpoenas of Trump counsel mark turning point (The Hill)

Facebook quiet on election misinformation efforts as midterms loom (NBC News)

Trump’s grip on GOP activist class on display at Texas conclave (Politico) ‘Activist class’? Do the Democrats have an ‘activist class’?

Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers

Ben & Jerry’s Suing Its Owner to Keep Israel Boycott in Place

How colleges are preparing for a new public health threat: monkeypox (NPR)

Low neutralization of Omicron BA.5 after four doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (News-Medical) That’s some fine ‘vaccine’ ya got there, bubba.

Larry Brilliant Says Covid Rapid Antigen Tests Are Bad for Public Health (Wired)

Woke Medical Organizations Are Hazardous to Your Health

US University Admits It May Have Broken Law In Contract With Wuhan Lab

Susan Quinn: Deborah Birx– not Anthony Fauci – Was the Covid Ringleader

Why the international climate community isn’t popping champagne over the US energy bill

Nature can affect human well-being in many more ways than you think (Washington Post)

Environmental watchdogs, researchers urge caution with new and legacy threats of contamination (WXYZ Detroit)

‘Change is coming’: Meet the Englishman prepping for climate apocalypse in an old German barracks (The Guardian)

Study Finds World Can Switch to 100% Renewable Energy and Earn Back Its Investment in Just 6 Years (My Modern Met)

What’s driving the massive, destructive rainfalls around the country (Washington Post) Why, ‘climate change’, of course!

Craft brewers’ latest challenge: Carbon dioxide shortage (Washington Post)

Will the Inflation Reduction Act Make the Carbon-Capture Business a Reality? (New York Magazine) Oh, so the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ is actually a climate bill! Who knew?

Red States Fighting ‘Woke’ Banks That Push Anti-Fossil Fuel Policies (Epoch Times)

What my generation is facing — A high schooler’s take on the climate crisis (Deseret News) Yeah, we let high-school students make our climate policy.

EPA says it is looking for “super-emitters” of methane gas in Texas’ Permian Basin (Texas Tribune)

Everyone loves e-bikes – except some who have to share roads with them

Paul Ehrlich’s Cloud of Blue Steam

Sorry, CNN, Great Barrier Reef Is Setting Records, Fearmongering Won’t Work

Pacific Typhoons Defy Climate Experts’ Dire Forecasts…Trending Downward 70 Years!

CBS Sunday Morning Frets ‘Human Extinction’ from ‘Climate Change’

The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims To Believe

Carbon offsetting is just another form of greenwashing

Guardian: We Should Consider Prepping to Survive the Climate Apocalypse

“The only people who care about Lynne Cheney are the people related to Lynne Cheney and the people who plan to vote against Lynne Cheney. Nobody else gives a shit.”  — ZMan

Read it.

Technology’s default mode is to constantly call for my attention. Attention is engagement, engagement is profit.

And thus a big chunk of the economy devotes itself to grabbing my attention by increasingly coercive means. It took considerable effort to get technology to just shut the fuck up.

This is what this post is about; making technology quieter, and building a healthier relationship with it.

Hear, hear.

Read it.

It was less than a day since the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending pregnancy on demand across America. And to Campbell, things seemed a little too quiet.

Campbell’s fears were confirmed June 25 when she arrived from home to learn that the pregnancy center had been attacked.

“They had taken crowbars to almost all of our windows, two of our doors, and just shattered all of the glass,” Campbell told The Daily Signal. “They had spray-painted [the shapes of] coat hangers on the sidewalks, on the brick facing of the buildings, and [wrote] political things like ‘Vote blue.’ In red on the stamped concrete, it read ‘If abortion ain’t safe, you ain’t safe.’”

Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center, in Lynchburg, Virginia, is one of about 40 pro-life organizations attacked since May 2, when someone leaked the Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion in the case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Nobody hates like a proglodyte.

Interesting Engineering.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

As prices surge, store brands – also known as private labels, white labels or generic brands – have become an even more attractive option for inflation-fatigued shoppers who are looking to switch from pricier name brands. Store brands can be anywhere from 10% to 50% cheaper.

But the origins of store brands remain largely secretive.

…

Although store brands ostensibly compete with manufacturers’ national brands, manufacturers often have excess capacity on their production lines. To generate additional profit, some will use that extra capacity to make private labels.

I always buy ‘store brands’ when they are available. They’re almost always of adequate quality and superior price.

Andy Matuschak.

Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.

…

Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.

UPDATE: Why Books Don’t Work: Constructivism Over Transmissionism

Very useful response to the above article. The concept of ‘generative learning strategies’ is especially attractive.

Read it.

The number of U.S. jobs jumped 528,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% from 3.6%, matching a five-decade low. But that top line masks the drop in July of the labor force participation rate to 62.1% in July from 62.2% in June.

This is still far below the 63.4% labor force participation in February 2020, which translates to millions fewer people who would otherwise be working today compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read it.

Yesterday the New York Times attacked Republican governors for sending a handful of the illegal immigrants who have invaded their states to other jurisdictions. The Times headline was “G.O.P. Governors Cause Havoc by Busing Migrants to East Coast.”

No. The havoc was caused by the Biden administration luring illegals to the border and inviting them to cross without consequences. A tiny fraction of the havoc the Democratic Party has inflicted on red and purple states is now coming home to roost in blue states. That is a good thing.

The Other McCain is on the case.

A Baltimore ex-gang member who uses graffiti to designate ‘no shoot zones’ to discourage gun violence around the city was shot in his back, neck and jaw on Wednesday.

Jury awards $45.2 million in punitive damages in Alex Jones Sandy Hook trial (Reuters)

A jury finds Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim (CNN)

A big looming victory for Biden could put Trumpists on the defensive (Washington Post)

Just when you thought Josh Hawley couldn’t stoop any lower … (Washington Post)

Donald Trump Just Had His ‘Worst Day’ Yet: Watergate Prosecutor (Newsweek) From one witch-hunter to another.

How ‘Loyal Dog’ Sean Hannity Went From King of Fox News to Has-Been (Daily Beast) Best high-school journalism in America.

‘Morning Joe’ Focused Their Daily GOP Rant on ‘Dope[y]’ Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

3 steps tech companies can take to avoid ‘greenwashing’ accusations (TechCrunch) Assuming, of course, that they care.

Don’t let firms get away with greenwashing bluster (The Guardian)

Climate change causing poorer fitness in children: study

California wants more ethanol and carbon capture. That would lock in pollution for decades (L.A. Times)

What does the US-China row mean for climate change? (The Guardian)

White House condemns China for ‘fundamentally irresponsible’ move to close communications with US on climate

Upcoming heat wave could scorch corn crops, experts fear (The Hill)

Summer Melting in Svalbard (NASA) NASA is fully on board with the Narrative.

The Guardian view on accelerating global heating: follow the science (The Guardian) As long as it’s the Correct Science, of course.

Floods, storms and heatwaves are a direct product of the climate crisis – that’s a fact, so where is the action? (The Guardian)

Twelve angry children: young jurors call adults to account for climate crisis in The Trials (The Guardian)

Washington DC lightning strike that killed three offers climate warning (Reuters)

UK Environmental Activist Urges ‘Shutting Down Animal Farming Altogether’ Because ‘It’s One of The Greatest Causes of Climate Breakdown’

“Unprecedented” Flash Flooding Traps 1,000 People In Death Valley  I guess ‘climate change’ is to blame.

Bill Gates: We’re on the Verge of a Remarkable Moment for Congress and the Country (N.Y. Times)

Reuters on Climate Attribution

Schumer calls economists ‘wrong’ who are cautioning Manchin’s spending bill will increase inflation  I guess Schumer doesn’t feel any obligation to ‘follow the science’.

GOP governors sent buses of migrants to D.C. — with no plan for what came next (NPR) The plan is that ‘sanctuary city’ mayors have to put their (or their taxpayers’) money where there mouth is. Talk (especially virtue-signaling) is cheap.

How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Have the Last Laugh on Samuel Alito (Politico) The farce is strong in this one.

How the climate bill could save you money on electricity, cars and appliances (CNN) That’s our Narrative, and we’re sticking to it.

New data sheds light on one method to combat election lies (NPR) Apparently the plan is to double down on the Narrative.

If Dems Fought an All-Out Culture War, They’d Win (Daily Beast) They are, after all, the Party of Hate.

A dad and his daughter came from Brooklyn to S.F. for Outside Lands. Then their rental car got broken into (S.F. Chronicle)

State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy (The New Yorker) In the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

ABC, NBC Promote ‘Historic,’ ‘Massive’ Democrat Spending Bill, Omit Criticism

UN Chief Urges Tax On Oil Industry For “Grotesque Greed”  How about a tax on the U.N. for ‘grotesque greed’?

FLASHBACK: CBS Exposed Danger of Illegal Border Crossings… From Canada

Lena Dunham’s VILE New Film Features First ‘Abortion Baby Shower’  I guess it’s a cascade of blood from between her legs.

Absurd MSNBC: Racist, Transphobic, Flat-Earth Pro-Lifers Want To Criminalize Miscarriage

The Liberal Media and the Criminalization of American Politics

s

FBI Director Wray admits alleged bias in Hunter Biden probe ‘deeply troubling’  Not that he’s going to do anything about it, of course.

Blinken flies into ‘superpower’ battleground in Africa Smiling for the cameras all the way.

White House stands by Inflation Reduction Act after CBO warns inflation won’t drop as a result  Whatever happened to ‘follow the science!’?

Does the Inflation Reduction Act violate Biden’s $400,000 tax pledge? Expect ‘a different answer depending on who you ask,’ says analyst (CNBC)

A Recession by Any Other Name Is Still a Terrible Economy

The Biden administration is preparing for legal psychedelics within two years

Biden Admin Seeks to Extend COVID Emergency Declaration Past Midterms

Hey, Joe, Don’t Give It a Go (New York Times) Maureen Dowd starts the ball rolling to ease Biden out.

White House Says it Is Working to Push Assault Weapons Ban in Senate  That didn’t work for Clinton and it’s not going to work for Biden.

John Leguizamo Slams James Franco’s Casting as Fidel Castro: ‘He Ain’t Latino! How Is This Still Going On?’ (Variety)

Heap Big Trouble for Those WAYCIST Germans

John Leguizamo: James Franco Isn’t Racially Pure Enough to Play Fidel Castro

After 246 Years, Marine Corps Gives 4 Stars to a Black Officer (New York Times) And, of course, his skin color is the only sigificant thing about him.

Read it.

The situation in Germany, and elsewhere in the West, has come to resemble more and more the scenario in “The Marching Morons”, a novella written in the early 1950s by C.M. Kornbluth. The increasing use of advanced technology has reduced the employment opportunities for low-skilled, less intelligent workers, whose numbers are increasing. In a high-tech society this creates a pool not just of the unemployed, but of essentially unemployable people. As pointed out by the translator of the following article, a large (but not precisely known) number of work-averse culture-enrichers may be added to the pool of citizens who subsist on what has become for all practical purposes a Universal Basic Income.

In the following report, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU (the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel), criticizes the state subsidy of hundreds of thousands of people who do not work, but are perhaps capable of doing “simple jobs”. He isn’t specific about what sort of work these not-so-bright people could do — perhaps polishing the shoes and the limousines of state functionaries such as himself.

Read it.

1. Jeff Bezos: Democrat  (1a. Mackenzie Scott: Democrat)
2. Elon Musk: Was a Democrat, but he’s been mugged by reality, so who knows?
3. Mark Zuckerberg: Democrat
4. Bill Gates: Democrat
5. Larry Page: Democrat
6. Sergei Brin: Democrat
7. Larry Ellison: Democrat
8. Warren Buffet: Democrat
9. Steve Ballmer: Democrat
10. Michael Bloomberg: Democrat who pretended to be a Republican to get elected Mayor of New York.

Well, I’m glad we know who to blame.

Read it.

Global warming religion is international, and the same anti-farming movement is coming soon to the U.S., the world’s number one agricultural economy. The first target will be nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are a principal foundation of the world’s ag productivity. Without fertilizers, the world will go hungry.

That leads to target number two: animals, especially cows. By far the largest crop in the U.S. is corn, and that corn is fed to cows and pigs to produce steaks, ground beef, bacon, pork chops, and so on. Liberals will argue that this is “inefficient.” People should live on vegetables and insects, and animal husbandry should be phased out. The fact that cattle also emit methane, primarily by chewing cud, makes their decline an added bonus from a global warming perspective.

…

Making food scarce and expensive, so that much of the population is threatened with starvation, has another benefit for liberals. They can respond by writing people checks representing food subsidies. Thus they turn millions of formerly self-sufficient Americans into government-reliant serfs. It’s a win-win, if you are a liberal.

Read it.

Jobs data reported this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that, as of the last business day of June, there are 10.7 million job openings. Hence, according to the numbers, there are many more available jobs than willing workers.

At the same time, the U.S. unemployment rate’s just 3.6 percent – near a five-decade low. So, by the numbers, the economy is at full employment and still overflowing with jobs to be filled.

The U.S. economy couldn’t possibly be in a recession, given this robust and healthy jobs market, could it?

…

“Today’s job situation has nothing at all to do with a booming economy.  All those jobs are sitting there open because NO ONE WANTS THEM.  The people who once filled jobs like that don’t want to work.  That is not the sign of a strong jobs market.  It is the sign of a very sick job market.  What it means is that the labor market is no longer able or willing to supply labor.  That’s called “broken.”  

Heated.

A GOP-linked dark money organization is running deceptive ads on Google and other platforms in an attempt to kill historic climate legislation.

Be sure you’re hunting the right witch.

Read it.

Sen. Maggie Hassan’s reelection campaign ads tout that the Granite State Democrat is the “most bipartisan” lawmaker in the Senate. But state residents across the political spectrum say they consider Hassan a reliable vote for the Biden administration.

Sean Chambers, a 43-year-old construction worker and registered independent, said Hassan’s time in the Senate has been “nothing but broken promises.” He said he has yet to decide on whether he will vote Republican in November but refuses to back Hassan.

“She says she’s for the worker but hasn’t done anything,” Chambers told the Washington Free Beacon. “I don’t buy the bipartisan talk. There’s a big divide and nothing is getting done.”

I’m sure she still gets paid. That’s what Democrats mean by ‘getting stuff done’.

Read it.

Democratic lawmakers spent the better part of two years assailing their Republican colleagues for not taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough for their liking. Nevertheless, these same Democrats are flagrantly disregarding COVID safety protocols to ensure the timely passage of a massive tax-hike and spending bill before Congress adjourns for the summer recess.

Gee, you’d think there wasn’t a Pandemic Panic going on.

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work. (Wait ’til you see the kevlar ceramic inserts….)

A public information campaign on the climate crisis is urgently needed (New Scientist) People aren’t buying the Narrative! We have to push harder! (I guess these guys don’t read the ‘news’ much.)

Global heating means almost every sea turtle in Florida now born female (The Guardian) I thought being born female was a good thing? Are we to look for trans turtles?

Climate change proposals putting American food supply at risk, says dairy farmer

California scorns fossil fuel but can’t keep the lights on without it  Unicorn farts will only get you so far.

Congress is finally addressing climate crisis with Inflation Reduction Act (The Hill)

The Biggest Threat to the CHIPS Act? The Green Left

The Climate Cult Is Eager To Take Advantage Of Europe’s Energy Crisis

The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims to Believe

Miners Explore Amazon Basin to Support “Green” Energy; New York Times Horrified

How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action (New York Times)

No, the Puffin is not a Bellwether of Climate Change

Randi Weingarten blasts ‘right-wing extremists’ for fighting ‘culture wars’ in conference speech  American Federation of Teachers comes out of the closet.

Why is a Hungarian autocrat and Putin ally in Dallas? (Dallas Morning News) A Voice of the Crust is not afraid to ask the easy questions.

College is increasingly out of reach for many students. What went wrong? (NPR) Government paying for college.

Wisconsin Dem Senate candidate spent nearly $600k on police detail while cozying up to defund police movement  Safety for me but not for thee.

A stunning GOP losing streak since Dobbs could remake the midterm landscape (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin indulges in some wishful thinking. “I think we can! I think we can!”

Judge Rules Medicaid Must Cover Transgender Surgeries

Law-Abiding Gun Owners Will Not Harm You. But Criminals Will.  Armstrong Williams points out some inconvenient truth.

Michigan Town Votes to Defund Library Over LBGT Books

Post Roe v. Wade Ruling, Will We See More Startups Offering Abortion Pills?

Gideons Now Smuggling Thomas Sowell Books Into Public Schools (Babylon Bee)

Higher ed unites against Asian students in Supreme Court’s Harvard discrimination case

Adams asks for photos of city job applicants in effort to increase diversity: report  In other words, he wants to be able explicitly to discriminate on the basis of race and gender.

Dr. Strangelove Explains White Privilege

Manufacturing white criminals: Depictions of criminality on Law and Order

Gang Fight at the Mall of America

NFL Picks Ex-New Jersey AG for Deshaun Watson Appeal

Jalen Rose Thinks ‘Mt. Rushmore’ Is An Offensive Term

Big City Mayors Welcome Illegal Immigrants, Except When They Don’t

Sen. Cruz grills DOJ official on lack of prosecutions for protesters at Supreme Court justices’ homes

Nets Ignore FBI Admitting Hunter Payments Might Be ‘Malign Foreign Influence’

Biden Administration Calls For Censorship On Energy

Amtrak Execs Rewarded Despite Rail Service’s Woes

Reuters Mocked for Fact Checking Biden Ice Cream Truck Meme… and Not Biden

Nets Bury: Prisoner Swap Will Release Terrorist-Plotter Who Tried to Kill Americans

Biden Admin To Review Whether Grant Recipients Distribute Crack Pipes

Harris Jailed California Pot Users, Now Demands Griner’s Release

Biden tests COVID-19 positive for seventh straight day (The Hill) A great excuse to keep him out of camera range. It might even serve as an excuse to can him before his turn is up.

DOJ Attacks Pro-Life States With Bogus ‘Preemption’ Argument

WATCH: Joe Biden’s Senior Moment of the Week Vol. 5

Federal Employees’ Job Satisfaction Surged Under Trump, Slips Under Biden, Survey Finds

UN nuclear chief: Ukraine nuclear plant is `out of control’ (Associated Press)

Ukraine Intelligence Chief Accuses Russians of Using Putin Body Double

Russia’s Shortfalls Create an Opportunity for Ukraine, Western Officials Say (N. Y. Times)

‘Realists’ have it wrong: Putin, not Zelensky, is the one who can end the war. (Washington Post)

Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians (Amnesty International)

Why The West Is Easing Its Sanctions On Russia

NATO Chief: Russia Must Not Win Its War In Ukraine

Social Media Post: Ukraine Strike Killed 6 Russian Commanders

U.S. readies new $1 billion Ukraine weapons package (Reuters)

Trump blasted by Dick Cheney as former vice president stars in his daughter’s latest ad

Josh Hawley’s problem with masculinity (Washington Post) When it comes to ‘masculinity’, Jonathan Capehart and the Washington Post are not my first stop.

WaPo op-ed condemns Hawley, warns conservative masculinity is more about ‘prejudice than manliness’  Hawley’s mistake was getting into this pissing contest in the first place.

A judge unleashed a tirade on a prominent Jan. 6 defendant for his post-plea comments (NPR)

Merrick Garland has sped up his investigation. He cannot let up now. (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

How a Trumpy Billionaire Is Single-Handedly Reshaping Campaigns (Daily Beast) It’s Peter Thiel’s turn on the bonfire.

California Gov. Newsom asks Hollywood to stop filming in conservative Georgia, Oklahoma after abortion ruling  Come to California, where we can tax you!

In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment (Washington Post) Dana Milbank loses his shit.

Dining across the divide: ‘I was bewildered when she said Donald Trump was intelligent’ (The Guardian) Which he is, certainly more so than anybody at The Guardian.

Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict Trump (The Guardian) Larry Tribe loses his shit.

Ex-WH Adviser: ‘I Was in the Room’ When Trump Requested National Guard for Jan. 6

Viktor Orbán’s racism not a deal breaker for the right in the U.S. (MSNBC) In the Narrative Media, ‘racism’ means ‘preferring one’s own countrymen to foreigners’.

‘Echoes of History’: CNN Implies Hungary’s Orban Will Launch a Second Holocaust

Orban at CPAC brings the ‘far-right international’ into focus (Washington Post) There is no Right but the Far-Right.

Orange Man Bad … But Florida Man Worse

The New Right Finds a Home at the Intersection of Populism and Elitism (The Dispatch) The Goldberg Group joins the Kristol Krew in RINOland, continuing the Buckley tradition of peeing on their ideological neighbors rather than fighting the Left.

Trump Leaves RNC Ensnared In Criminal Probes Of His Coup Attempt (Huffington Post) Or, more accurately, the Left’s attempt to make everybody pretend that there was a coup attempt.

Malicious Vox Editor Fantasizes About Justice Alito’s Death

‘Bull in a china shop’: Ukrainian-born GOP lawmaker rankles colleagues with her aggressive criticism of Kyiv (CNN)

NewsGuard Fails Fox News, Still Gives Phony BuzzFeed News a Perfect Credibility Rating

Trump’s Pre-Jan. 6 Actions Demolish Democrats’ ‘Coup’ Fantasies

‘Never Has America Faced A Greater Threat Than Donald Trump,’ Says Guy Who Started Two Wars And Shot A Dude In The Face  (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

While peddling the ludicrously named Inflation Reduction Act on CNN this past week, Sen. Joe Manchin claimed that Democrats were merely trying to “close the loopholes and collect the taxes that are owed to the Treasury and the United States people.”

In Washington, a “loophole” is a euphemism for a perfectly legal policy that Democrats have decided they want to regulate or tax. The word “loophole” suggests that some ambiguous wording or omissions in the text of a bill have allowed people to exploit the law. Few of the Democrats’ “loopholes” meet this definition. Indeed, in most cases, the “loopholes” they’re talking about were deliberately written to exist in their present form.

Many of them by Democrats to favor campaign donors and other ‘friends’.

Read it.

There’s been a lot written about the trust freefall. People haven’t trusted politicians for years (U.S. Congress: 18% approval), but now even formerly highly trusted institutions like the church (now at 31% confidence) and the U.S. military (trust down 25% since 2018) are in a trust freefall.

You may expect national leaders to be racking their brains on how to rebuild this trust, yet there is no sign of that. Instead, the attitude seems to be, “What the hell is wrong with the American people?” Leaders bemoan the rise of populism yet refuse to give even the briefest thought to its root causes.

Read it.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model politely mocks its Democratic inflation-reduction claims. “The Act would very slightly increase inflation until 2024 and decrease inflation thereafter,” University of Pennsylvania economists reckon. “These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation.”

The Inflation Reduction Act would fight inflation through higher government spending. That’s like battling alcoholism with just one more round of drinks.

Read it.

George Will almost sounded like a conservative columnist again in Thursday’s Washington Post. The headline was “How the economics of news altered the news itself.” Will was promoting as “newsworthy” an article titled “How the Media Polarized Us” by Andrey Mir in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

In his article, Mir blames the rise of the internet for depriving newspapers of advertising revenue. Classified advertising collapsed. Corporate advertisers realized Google was much better at targeting their potential customers. In 2000, advertisers gave newspapers $19.6 billion — about a third of papers’ revenue. In 2013, Google’s $51 billion in ad revenues eclipsed American newspapers’ total ad revenues of $23 billion. By 2018, revenue from the classifieds was just $2.2 billion.

So their business model shifted to rely on readers rather than advertisers. Mir asserts they went from journalism to “post-journalism,” by which the media elite supply not news but “news validation.”

Read it.

Gone are the days when Hillary Clinton could bank $250,000 for a one-hour speech to the Drug, Chemical, & Associated Technologies Association. Nevertheless, she persists.

The failed presidential candidate was the guest of honor last month at a Martha’s Vineyard gathering hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), aka “Jews Against Coups,” a group that touts itself as “the only national organization combining Jewish values advocacy with a Democratic political agenda.”

Clinton, who donned a bold pant-suit and jacket combo, discussed “the importance of electing Democrats with the strong support of Jewish voters” and “made clear that Democrats have a path to victory in November.” (Note: There is no evidence to support this claim.)

Read it.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young was on the CBS Mornings show to promote a children’s book he wrote with his daughter and I noticed a real generation gap between Young and the younger folks interviewing him. Young march in Birmingham with Rev. Martin Luther King at a time when Black owned homes and churches were getting bombed by the Klan. He has experienced racism in a way that the shows hosts have not.

When Young states that the United States of America is better than anyplace else in the world, the one host interjects, “still hopeful?” Young replies, “No, not hopeful. It’s real.”

For Democrats today (and I won’t pretend some working for CBS news is anything but a Democrat), the idea that America is great is something they don’t want to admit to. It can be great because of what it can become, but not because of what it is and what it has done. A younger Young had to fight against a racist system because he, and others like him, did not want to be victims. Somehow today, victimhood is the ultimate goal of the Left. Because society has changed, victimhood has changed from having your church blown up to Chuck E Cheese not giving you a high five.

Read it.

“The View” announced Thursday morning that Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro will be joining the ABC talk show’s panel as co-hosts, adding two conservative perspectives to the mix.

“Adding two conservative perspectives”? Not even close. They’d do better with Lynne Cheney and Jennifer Rubin. Or maybe Joe Scarborough.

Read it.

A French mayor says conditions on Mont Blanc are now so dangerous that climbers should pay a €15,000 (£12,640; $15,370) deposit to cover rescue and possible funeral costs.

Jean-Marc Peillex is mayor of Saint-Gervais, a village at the foot of Western Europe’s highest mountain, whose summit is at 4,807m (15,774ft).

Those who ignored warnings and took the Goûter route up the mountain were playing “Russian roulette”, he said.

I think that’s a great idea. Nothing is more common these days than bozos heading up a mountain or into a wilderness who ought to be in a city somewhere, and the first thing they do when their incompetence does its thing is to call on public authorities for help or rescue.

Mayor Peillex said the average cost of a rescue on the mountain was €10,000 and funeral costs were €5,000. “It is unacceptable for the French taxpayer to cover those costs,” he said in a press release.

Would that American politicians were as sensible.

The ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

The big news this week was the primaries in key states. The amusing bit was how the crazies went nuts over the Kansas abortion referendum. They do not have much to celebrate so it makes sense to make a huge deal over one small win, but it was amusing to see the deluge of stories in the media. Sprinkled in were some reassuring tales of obscure MAGA candidates losing local elections.

That is the real story. Trump endorsed candidates seem to be doing very well, despite general Trump fatigue and the efforts of his party. Many of these candidates are fakers and liars, but some are genuinely ticked off people. The woman running for governor in Arizona appears to a polished up Marjorie Taylor Green. Blake Masters, also running in Arizona, is as close to one of us as you can get.

That is what does not show up in these news stories. People are probably more angry and restless right now than during the leadup to the 2016 election. The antiwhite pogroms have radically changed attitudes. Normie seeing ads featuring everyone but white people, unless it is a white woman with a black man, has had reality jammed in his face for a couple of years now and he does not like it.