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.

Read it.

Agricultural drones, self-driving tractors and seed-planting robots are among the innovations that could be key to future food supplies, as autonomous farming promises to produce more crops with less effort and less impact on the environment.

Read it.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) claims he doesn’t accept contributions from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists. A Washington Free Beacon review of his campaign finance records tells another story.

“I’m not taking a dime in corporate PAC money,” Bennet says in his first reelection campaign ad. “Washington could learn a lot from Colorado. That’s why I approve this message.” But the Colorado senator accepted more than $60,000 from PACs that accept corporate PAC contributions last quarter alone. Bennet also accepted $3,500 from the Blackstone Group’s corporate PAC in 2021. The same quarter he accepted that donation he claimed on Twitter that his campaign was “setting records without taking a cent from corporate PACs.”

Read it.

I mention all this only in so far as it applies to seventy-one-year-old Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state. Murray won her primary election on Tuesday ahead of what could be a sixth consecutive term in the US Senate. Judging from her habitual expression, she, too, appears to exist in a state of pervasive mental fog. The problem is that while Depp may be quite good at projecting a faux-naif charm to audiences, in the senator’s case, there’s nothing artificial about it. Murray may be just a few fries short of a Happy Meal. She cannot cope, some say. Taken as a whole, her career demonstrates the impossibility of being simultaneously grown-up and an opponent of term limits.

The proud holder of a physical education degree from Washington State University, Murray started out teaching a “parenting class” at a Seattle-area community college before deciding to run for public office amid the Bill Clinton sweep of 1992. She likes to remind people she was prompted to stand after an unnamed (male) work colleague told her she was unelectable because she was “just a mom in tennis shoes.” The exact provenance of the quote still remains fuzzy, but Murray has used it in every one of her campaigns over the last thirty years. In her mind, she’s forever the plucky outsider battling the cruel misogynist establishment, all alone in the world with just her staff, free travel, subsidized healthcare, and $174,000 annual salary.

Read it.

A “Swedish” imam named Basem Mahmoud has gotten himself into a spot of bother by quoting the Koran on the ancestry of Jews. Evidently Mr. Mahmoud has not yet internalized the directive that advises the faithful to remain stumm about such matters until the Ummah has attained full control of the Swedish polity.

Rod Dreher.

Late last week, I made a trip to Krakow, and then to Czestochowa, to visit the Jasna Gora shrine, the spiritual heart of Polish Catholicism. Though I am no longer a Catholic, it was deeply moving to see so many Poles so openly devoted to Christ in the Catholic faith. Though Polish Catholicism faces tremendous challenges — multiple Poles have told me that they fear Poland will go the way of Ireland within a decade or two — for the moment, it is admirable and, for visitors like me from the post-Christian West, moving to see so much open devotion.

The comfort I took from being among Polish Catholics, and the admiration I have for how their faith brought them through so much suffering, only exacerbates the incomprehension I have over how Pope Francis and the bishops seem so dead-set on destroying the Catholic faith — or if not destroying it, per se, then on turning it into something it never has been.

Read it.

One of the more effective ways to fight back against Corona oppression is to sue those who mandate the vax, and then force them to do discovery when they are hauled into court. That’s the only way the contents of the mRNA “vaccine” will ever be publicly revealed, and also the only way the adverse effects of the jab will ever be forensically identified.

One such case is now being brought before a court in the Italian city of Pesaro.

Read it.

Leftist thought leaders insist that we are facing an environmental holocaust unless we immediately, drastically reduce carbon emissions.

Yet, it’s curious. The governing and influence elites demand massive societal sacrifice, while they are apparently not concerned enough to alter their own extravagant lifestyles. They own multiple sumptuous homes, cars, and yachts. They fly individual private jets to their annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland, where they assure each other it is their solemn responsibility to save the rest of us from ourselves.

They refuse to engage in thoughtful debate of any notions that challenge their woke orthodoxy. Instead, those advocating ideas different from their own are dismissed as “climate deniers.”

Take electric vehicles. EVs are touted by enviros as the obvious antidote to carbon-belching SUVs. But they aren’t.

Fossil fuels produce most of their electricity. The manufacture and disposal of batteries and the rare metals required have significant environmental impacts. A growing consensus now acknowledges that EVs may produce more net carbon emissions than today’s cleaner-burning gasoline cars.

You would think anyone with genuine concern about the environment might reconsider EV policy. But they don’t engage. Instead they soldier on, funding yet more subsidies, benefits, and charging stations. Taxpayers get dinged for billions with no discernible benefit.

Read it.

Think of Taiwan as China’s Ireland. Even the timelines are similar. In the late seventeenth century, just a couple of decades after Oliver Cromwell brutally suppressed the Irish Catholic Confederation, the Qing Empire invaded Taiwan, bringing part of it under colonial rule for the first time. Even after its partial annexation in 1684, the Qing treated the island as a dangerous frontier, notable mainly for its wild “aborigines” and deadly diseases.

Some parts of the island were never conquered; upland areas with difficult terrain were left alone, so long as they did not interrupt the peace of the lowlands. The Qing regarded these areas in much the same way as British India regarded its Northwest Frontier: places of savagery in need of management and occasional punitive expeditions.

Read it.

Beyoncé named her most recent album after the golden age of creative expression, the era that gave us the greatest art the world has ever seen. Renaissance was supposed to usher in another moment of wild, unbridled innovation. The album was “a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom,” the singer wrote in a letter to fans accompanying the new work. But unlike its namesake, which endured for 200 years and reshaped society, Beyoncé’s Renaissance only lasted a day or two, before the internet’s culture cops stepped in to shut it down.

Border official slams Biden ‘throwing everybody to the wolves’

Biden tests positive for COVID-19, returns to isolation (Associated Press)

Hunter Biden involved in 2018 deal to send grain from Ukraine to China

OPEC agrees to produce slightly more oil as recession fears loom (CNN)

Mr. President, take the winning shot in Ukraine already (The Hill)

Sinema Stalls Revamped Reconciliation Bill, Demands Several Changes

Civil Liberties Group Joins Lawsuit Against Biden And Big Tech

Biden Executive Order on Abortion Travel Funding Appears to Violate Hyde Amendment

White House Lobbies Democrats Against Bid to Deepen Taiwan Ties

US Approves Massive Patriot Missile Deal With Saudis After Biden ‘Rehabilitates’ MbS

Poll: Majority of Voters Believe Dems Ran Economy ‘Into the Ground’

The Art Of Scandal Implosion: The Political & Media Elite Prepare To Drop Hunter Biden In A “Controlled Demolition”

Watch: Biden Energy Advisor Claims It’s “Just Factually Not True” That Gas Prices Were Rising Before Ukraine Invasion  I know for a fact that they were, because I was watching them.

Mika Presses Democrat: Why Would Anyone Question 2nd Term for ‘Really Eloquent’ Biden?

Wife Proposes ‘Household Debt Reduction Act’ Where She Spends Thousands Of Dollars At Target  (Babylon Bee)

Insiders Are Dumping The Most Stocks Since January As Retail Buying-Panic Re-Emerges

“Very Crooked Numbers”: Biden Admin Accused Of Fabricating Low Gas Demand Data To Hammer Price Of Oil

FBI Adds Itself To FBI Watch List  (Babylon Bee)

Statement by President Joe Biden on the Sentencing of Wrongfully Detained American Brittney Griner  Except that she wasn’t ‘wrongfully detained’, she was caught red-handed.

Heritage Foundation Sues Biden Administration for Failing to Share Details on Limiting Deportations

Affirmative Inaction: Why Joe Biden Still Hasn’t Fired ‘Asleep at the Wheel’ Health Secretary

Texas keeps pressure on DC as more migrant buses arrive near US Capitol

Manchin-Schumer spending bill could eliminate 30,000 jobs, new analysis shows

‘Grotesque greed’: immoral fossil fuel profits must be taxed, says UN chief (The Guardian) When I hear ‘grotesque greed’, I automatically think about the U.N.

New executive director of liberal dark money education group has repeatedly called to defund the police  Apparently the first thing one does on getting a new job these days is go back and delete all of your old tweets.

‘The battle continues to grow’: Deep-pocketed education group targets contested states (Politico)

California’s woke kindergarten lessons: ‘This is the greatest outrage’

California school district paying 20K for ‘Woke Kindergarten’ consulting

6 books beyond ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ that explore the loss of reproductive rights (CNN) In the Narrative Media, ‘reproductive rights’ means the right not to reproduce by killing your child.

‘Morning Joe’ Tees Up Anti-Birth Dem to Spread ‘Dangers’ of a ‘Post-Dobbs America’

Report: Wikipedia Will Only Allow Approved Editors to Alter US ‘Recession’ Articles

Excusing Illegal Immigration Comes Back to Bite Mayors of DC, NYC

Leaked Email Shows NYC Struggling To Cope With ‘Drastic Influx’ Of Illegal Aliens Amid Border Crisis

Navarro on Kansas Support for Abortion: GOP Has Mistresses Too!

How prestige outlets like The Guardian get away with copypasta “First, there is the practice that undermines any notion their purpose is to inform their readers. Which is that they don’t fucking cite anything. Ever. There are zero, zip, nada, links or citations.”

In boosting Trump acolytes, Democrats become what they once condemned (Washington Post) Megan McArdle.

Get Woke, Go Broke: $90 Million BatGirl Movie Gets Canned  The actors don’t care. You can bet that they got paid – they just don’t get their usual gross points.

Sex Redefined (Nature)

DeSantis Removes State Attorney Who Vowed Not to Prosecute Abortions

Another One Bites the Dust: Netflix Cancels Lesbian Vampire Show

Newsom Demands Hollywood Return to California for Abortions, Tax Cuts

Déjà Vu: Another Democrat Thinks Parents Shouldn’t Have a Say in Their Children’s Education

It’s Official: The View Announces Hire of 2 Faux Conservative Co-Hosts

Shipping’s New ESG Rules Could Starve Millions

COVID Variant Update: BA.5 Continues to Dominate in U.S. as Another Strain Slowly Gains Steam (NBC Chicago)

Monkeypox isn’t just transmitted by sexual contact. See how you could be at risk (WBAL-TV Baltimore)

Further SARS-CoV-2 variants, and intermittent epidemics may become the ‘new normal’ (News-Medical)

An intranasal ASO therapeutic targeting SARS-CoV-2

CDC expected to ease Covid-19 recommendations, including for schools, as soon as this week (CNN)

As school revs up, this is what public and private schools are saying about COVID, monkeypox (Clarion-Ledger)

The Lockdowns Kicked Off This Depression

Guardian: “Many People – Even Many Queer People – Have Internalized the Idea That Contracting Sexually Transmitted Infections Is Bad”

The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought (Wired ‘Science’)

Don’t Look Now, But China Just Locked Down A Million Wuhan Residents Again  Sometimes it is good to be a totalitarian tyranny.

Rand Paul: Congress Is Not Allowed To Know About ‘Top Secret’ Gain-Of-Function Research-Committee

US Declares Monkeypox Outbreak a Public Health Emergency

San Francisco Leather Fetishist Gay Street Festival Goes on Despite Monkeypox, But at Least It Demands Proof of Covid Vaccination

Read it.

Houston city officials banned 3D-printed firearms at future gun buyback events after one man recognized an opportunity to exploit the system and print money.

The anonymous man told local news Fox 26 that he made 62 3D-printed guns and handed them over in Houston’s first gun buyback event last weekend. He said the city offered him $50 per gun, cutting him a check for $3,100.

The man said the cost of production per gun was $3, netting a profit of $47 per weapon. He said, “the goal was not personal profit, but to send [Houston leaders] a message about spending $1 million tax dollars on something that has no evidence of any effect on crime…”

He added another goal: to make the city “pay fair prices [at gun buyback events], use private donations rather than tax dollars, and don’t destroy historic guns.”

You always get more of what you pay for. Markets work even when you don’t expect them to.

Read it.

The press is going to elect Donald Trump again. They did it once, tried again four years later, and now they’re on the hunt a third time. They hate him, but they keep doing him favors, the latest being an attempt to kill off his biggest primary rival.

Not to mention all the Wokery that alienates a lot of people. Like activists lying down to block rush-hour traffic, their efforts to ‘raise consciousness’ merely raises the consciousness that they’re jerks and piss people off.

Read it.

Members of the Howeitat tribe are being expelled from their homes to build the megacity, with the conflict turning deadly in a shooting in northwestern al-Khuraybah.

You may remember Auda abu Tayi, of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA fame, who was a Howeitat.

Read it.

It was called the gold standard. Franklin Roosevelt killed it. We’ve been increasingly poor ever since.

When Roosevelt was elected President, a $20 gold piece contained an ounce of ‘coin gold’.

Google the price of gold and find out how far our money has been devalued.

Read it.

In Washington things are rarely what they seem. It’s why Congress labels bills with names they think will be more palatable to the public rather than a name that would accurately reflect the content of the legislation. Notice how many times over the years the word “civil rights” has appeared in legislation that often has had little or nothing to do with civil rights.

Now Democrats have junked the original title of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” massive spending plan and rebranded it “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” Clearly this was in reaction to poll numbers showing the public blames the president and Democrats for the rise in food and gas prices, increased mortgage rates and so much else.

It appears the name change and some behind-the-scenes bargaining was enough for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to end his opposition to the original bill, which he used to say would add significantly to the debt and not produce the results claimed by the administration.

That just ups his price.

Read it.

There is no Right but the Far-Right.

Democrats faced a backlash Wednesday — including from within their own ranks — after inserting themselves into a GOP primary in western Michigan, helping a far-right candidate who has embraced false claims about the 2020 election to topple a Republican who had voted to impeach Donald Trump.

Help the Dems by screwing your own party and they’ll … screw you right back.

Chicago 911 dispatcher resigns, blasts Mayor Lightfoot’s ‘lies and corruption’: ‘I don’t stand for that’  BRAAAAAAAINS!

VIDEO: Why Do Successful Black Conservatives Drive Liberals Crazy?

L.A. Times Columnist: White Americans Working from Home in Mexico Are Disgusting

How Does the Democrat Party Fall Apart? This Might Be How

Anti-Israel Dems Can’t Stop Blaming Their Primary Losses on the Jews

No evidence the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is connected to the monkeypox outbreak (Austin American-Statesman)

Monkey business and monetizing Monkeypox (Villages-News)

Omicron better at invading young noses than other variants; smell loss may predict memory issues (Reuters)

Fact check: Can your childhood smallpox vaccine protect against monkeypox? (AOL)

Biden’s Covid relapse sparks talk of ‘Paxlovid rebounds’—what to know about the pill, and if it could happen to you (CNBC)

Discovery of Separate Monkeypox Strain Suggests Two Outbreaks Are Happening (Newsweek) Get ready for the next PANIC!

New, more contagious COVID-19 variant raising concerns in South Dakota So maybe we still need to PANIC!

COVID Vaccine Injuries Quietly Being Compensated Around The World

As Monkeypox Spreads, Mortality Remains Low

A cheap nasal spray cuts COVID-19 risk by 62%  We won’t know that it works until the FDA bans it.

Monkeypox Superspreader? San Fran Holds ‘Kink and Fetish’ Festival

Judge allows Capitol riot officer lawsuits against Trump to go forward (CNN)

Arizona GOP primary tests power of Trump’s election lies (Associated Press)

Trump loyalist wins GOP nod to oversee Arizona elections (Associated Press)

Kyrsten Sinema, Decisive Vote on Spending Bill, Targeted in New Arizona Ad (Newsweek)

There’s a good reason Jon Stewart is angry at Ted Cruz (CNN) And there’s a good reason Ted Cruz doesn’t care.

Colbert: ‘Some veterans would like to bump Ted Cruz with their fists’ (The Guardian) I doubt that Colbert knows any actual veterans … and some veterans (I’m among them) would like to bump Colbert with their fists (and feet).

Washington Post op-ed warns of ‘mini-Trumps’ threatening ‘democracy’

Fox News Anchor Loses It When Manchin Questions Her Patriotism (Daily Beast)

Rep. Greene Loved Vibe Of Golf Tourney Funded By The Regime Behind Journalist’s Murder (Huffington Post) Of course, the HuffPo can’t dream of why anybody would want to murder a journalist.

The oft-maligned tax increase on the verge of becoming law (Politico) The Democrat base are too stupid to realize that corporations don’t pay income tax, they merely collect it; it’s paid by their customers through higher prices. Call it a tax on left-wing stupidity.

It’s Time for the GOP to Let Trump Go (Newsweek) It’s time for the Narrative Media to let Trump go.

Guy Reffitt’s Daughter Calls for ‘Life in Prison’ for Donald Trump Over 1/6 (Newsweek)

The Republicans Who Want Election Laws to ‘Stay Broken’ (Daily Beast) Broken, that is, from a proglodyte viewpoint.

Trump tries to topple a powerful Wisconsin Republican in his futile quest to reverse his 2020 loss. (N.Y. Times)

Election-denier Mark Finchem wins Arizona GOP secretary of state primary, NBC News projects (NBC News)  In the Narrative Media, ‘denier’ refers to somebody who lives in the real world rather than in the proglodyte fantasy-land.

CNN ‘New Day’ Crew Parrots Dem Tropes: ‘Democracy on Ballot, Election Denier, Big Lie’

Facebook is fine when punishing others financially, but cries when others do it to them

Obama Aides Warn Colbert GOP Wants To ‘Make Life Worse and Shorter’

The Violent Fantasies of Blake Masters (N.Y. Times)

How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right (N.Y. Times) dunh-dunh-DUNHHHHHHH….

House’s Jan. 6 Committee Fails to Make Case Against Trump

CNN’s Tapper to Australian Leader: Please Tell Us How Stupid America Is on Guns, Climate

Mark Finchem is the latest in a wave of election deniers moving toward controlling elections (Arizona Mirror) ‘Election denier’ is their new slur, like ‘nigger lover’ was back in the sixties.

How election deniers are campaigning to control voting in four critical states (Georgia Recorder)

NPR Reporter Compares ‘Hardline’ Republicans on Immigration to El Paso Walmart Mass Shooter

Greenwashing is driving our descent into climate catastrophe. But we can stop it (The Guardian) Nobody has climate expertise like … an actress?

The climate crisis is so boring – but I also hate the idea of burning to death (The Guardian)

Two ultra-rare floods in a single week; a wildfire generating its own weather. Here’s how it’s connected (CNN)

Kentucky flooding: Gov. Andy Beshear wonders ‘why we keep getting hit.’ 4 experts explain (Courier-Journal)

Climate protestors block rush hour traffic in downtown Boston  A move carefully calculated to win converts to their cause.

Has Joe Manchin saved the planet?  Hard to believe.

America’s Green Transition Sparks Power Grid Instability

Taylor Swift Tops List Of Private Jet Polluters  Much the best thing I’ve ever heard about Taylor Swift.

Claim: Climate Change: Potential to End Humanity is ‘Dangerously Underexplored’ say Experts

Join Us for RE:WIRED Green (Wired ‘Science’) We’ve got all this Kool-Aid and we can’t drink it all ourselves.

The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76M American Lives

Claim: “AI Can’t Fix Climate Change, But It’s Great for Preparation”

The US grid is ready for 100% renewables, says DoE  And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

White House adviser ‘fact-checks’ voters’ outrage over high gas prices, inflation

Biden’s climate agenda faces yet another obstacle: Kyrsten Sinema (The Guardian) The problem with Democrats is that they don’t stay bought.

Biden Justice Department sues Idaho over state’s abortion restrictions in first post-Dobbs lawsuit (CNN)

Stimulus Check Update: Millions to Get $750 TABOR Refunds in Mail (Newsweek)

‘Major Problems Down The Road’: Biden Drains Petroleum Reserves Of Crucial Type Of Crude

Yellen Says Manchin Bill Won’t Raise Taxes for Families Earning Less Than $400,000 a Year (Bloomberg) Which is a lie. (The Manchin-Schumer Taxes Would Hit Both Rich and Poor Americans)

Even Biden’s Favorite Economist Says Inflation Reduction Act Won’t Reduce Inflation

Two Top House Dems Decline to Say Biden Should Run in 2024

These Harm-Reduction Facilities Are Slated for Biden Administration Grants. They’re Also Distributing Crack Pipes.

“I Don’t Feel The Pain Of Inflation Anymore” Says Wealthy SF Fed Chair From Ivory Tower

Texas Democrat Gives Up on White House Talks to Solve Border Crisis

Why Biden Hasn’t Scrapped Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy  He’s stupid but he’s not crazy.

Read it.

Democrats haven’t stopped trying to take over elections, they just have new tactics to do so under voters’ noses.

Employees throughout the federal government who are carrying out President Joe Biden’s executive order directing them to get involved in state elections are likely all violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, besides interfering in the election process and using federal resources in what seems to be a get-out-the-vote operation for the party in power in the White House.

And the administration is doing everything it can to hide its activities in violation of the federal open records law.

Read it.

Three of the 10 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump were up for reelection in Tuesday’s primaries, with one losing his bid to a Trump-backed candidate and the other two appearing to hold leads in their races, which have not yet been called.

Typically such tricks are pulled by people who are almost Democrats and live in almost Democrat districts, and so are warded from retaliation. Few are as stupid as Lynne Chaney.

Read it.

That would be nice of them.

Read it.

The United States helped bring about the 9/11 attacks because it sees “itself as one above equals in international relations,” a history book assigned to high school seniors in Turkey says. It is among a series of disturbing lessons in Turkish school textbooks.

According to research by exiled Turkish journalist Abdullah Bozkurt published by the Middle East Forum, at least two books issued by Turkey’s education ministry contain disturbing references about jihad and other elements of Islamism.

ZMan draws a distinction.

What we think of as freedom and liberty come from the feudal era. The two words are used interchangeably today, but it was not always so. Liberty was the right to act within the context of the rules. Freedom was a state in which there were no rules. In the feudal age, liberty was the range of actions for people of a class. Freedman had different liberties than Knights or serfs. Freedom, on the other hand, was being free from those reciprocal relationships that defined the system.

…

As Americans have been freed from the old rules of life, like marriage, family and community, the power of the government has grown. The weakening of state and local government by direct intervention by the federal government has corresponded with the collapse in things like property rights and freedom of association. Young women are no longer dependent on a man, but they are entirely dependent on government. It is impossible to live without interacting with government now.

The conventional conservative critique argues that personal liberty has declined because the power of the state has increased. In reality, personally liberty has declined because freedom has increased. As people have been freed from their particular obligations to one another, their liberties have declined, which is what has allowed the power of the federal state to grow. Each new “freedom” comes with less liberty and therefore a declining ability to resist the state.

Read it.

The hanging of 38 Sioux Indians at Mankato, Minnesota in 1862, following a brief military conflict, is often seen as the ultimate evidence of oppression of Native Americans by whites. Each year, a long horseback ride is conducted to honor those who were hanged; Minnesota’s left-wing governor participates annually in the ride.

But this conventional view is wrong. In reality, the Great Sioux Massacre of 1862 is the blackest moment in the history of the native peoples’ slaughters of white settlers. Along with hundreds of women and a smaller number of men, many of whom were off fighting the Civil War, the Sioux murdered 100 white children under the age of 10. Those who were hanged were guilty of murder or rape–gang rapes were plentiful–not fighting in battle. In truth, many more than 38 should have been hanged, but some massacres had no survivors left to testify, and in other cases survivors could not identify specific Indians responsible for the slaughter. Also, no doubt, some who should have been hanged were killed in battle.

Read it.

The entire global financial system is now essentially a technocommunist black ops money laundering crime scene.

Some people are addicted to cozy mysteries; I’m addicted to conspiracy theories.

Read it.

In a recent interview in New York Times Magazine, energy expert and polymath Vaclav Smil found himself being pressured by his interviewer to acknowledge that climate change was either a catastrophe or not a problem. The famously cantankerous Smil bristled at the framing: “I cannot tell you that we don’t have a problem because we do have a problem. But I cannot tell you it’s the end of the world by next Monday because it is not the end of the world by next Monday. What’s the point of you pressing me to belong to one of these groups?”

Because proglodytes are binary people. You are either with the program or a Denier; you are either good or bad.

Read it.

As the virus pandemic upended office life in big Northeast cities, people reconsidered working arrangements and where they lived. Many folks migrated from New York City to South Florida for relaxed health restrictions, a friendly business environment, low crime, and fantastic weather. The influx of new people presents challenges for South Florida, including new property development.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported skyscrapers as high as 500 feet could start popping up across Fort Lauderdale (not just in the downtown district) if a new proposal gets approved that raises the height cap on buildings that get special zoning.

Read it.

Those familiar with George Monbiot’s journalism – to use the word in its loosest and most absurd sense – will know of his strange, almost pathological obsession with farmers. He writes endlessly about abolishing livestock farming and rewilding agricultural land, but shows little care or consideration as to what should happen to the families and communities for whom farming is not just a livelihood but a way of life. His new book Regenesis continues in this misanthropic vein.

One must admire the clever way in which Monbiot has critic-proofed this book: the first chapter is so piercingly dull that no one other than manic greenies will bother reading it. A whole 26 pages are dedicated to a lump of soil that Monbiot unearthed from his allotment.

George Monbiot is one of The Guardian’s favorite eco-cranks, the British version of Robert Reich.

Read it.

This is truly silly. The purpose of allowing a deduction for children on taxes is that children require support, which involves extra expenditure and (like the corresponding tax credit) the government gives people a break. Certainly pregnancy involves a bit of extra expense but nothing like what a born child would cost.

On the other hand, I love seeing people able to deduct stuff from their taxable income and thereby reduce the amount the government is allowed to confiscate. And I suppose any economic incentive for women to carry their children to term rather than kill them is a good thing.

Read it.

The Michigan Republican Party said it canceled a Tuesday evening primary watch party in Lansing after a man came to the party’s headquarters and threatened to shoot up the building and burn it down.

I’m sure it would have been ‘mostly peaceful’, though.

Read it.

Andrew Yang, the failed Democratic presidential candidate (of which the country has no shortage) has launched a third political party called Forward! (and then backtracked a bit and described it as a “Political Action Committee) instead. The media are describing this new political party or PAC as a “centrist” alternative to the Democrat and Republican parties. Here are some of the centrist party’s centrist policies that are centrist.

• Universal Basic Income
• State-run (“universal”) health care
• Private financing of political campaigns replaced by government-allocated “democracy dollars”
• “Human-centered capitalism” and “alternative measures of economic growth”

Look kinda left-wing to me….

Read it.

Additive manufacturing is on the cusp of being adopted more widely by industry, as large corporates Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Boeing as well as small innovative start-ups prove it can work well at scale in manufacturing.

In May, Goodyear opened a $77 million plant in Luxembourg that centers on 3-D printing and can make tires four times faster in small batches than with conventional production. Goodyear also is testing its new 3-D printed airless tire technology on Tesla electric vehicles and Starship Technologies’ autonomous delivery robots. It has been working for the past several years on improved manufacturing techniques at an R&D center near Columbus, Ohio.

Kyrsten Sinema and bipartisan group of senators introduce bill to restore abortion rights (Arizona Republic)

Bipartisan senators introduce bill to codify abortion rights (The Hill) In the Narrative Media, ‘bipartisan’ means ‘we’ve gotten the Usual RINOs on board’.

Blue State Blues: GEICO closes all California offices, lays off workers: report

Cognitive decline linked to ultraprocessed food, study finds (CNN) Not just processed, but ULTRAprocessed!

Passenger fined $1,874 after two undeclared McMuffins found in luggage (CNN) “Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said a “range of undeclared risk products,” including the fast food items, were detected in the passenger’s rucksack by a biosecurity detector dog named Zinta.”

This summer may be one of the most consequential in US democracy (The Guardian)

Economist slams Facebook for ‘absolutely Orwellian’ fact-check upholding Biden’s recession denial

Where does Mitt Romney stand on proposed law to protect same-sex marriage? (Deseret News)

Manchin disputes data showing social spending bill would raise taxes on middle class during recession

In Mattapan, bike lanes divide the community: ‘They’re just trying to push us out’ (Boston Globe)

Blue State Blues: S.F. legacy restaurant says goodbye after 45 years, plus more recent closures

Counterfeit, Black Market Abortion Pills Flood Internet With Help of Corporate Media

Blue State Blues: NYC Store Locks Down Cans Of Spam Amid Crime Wave

Chetty: Charles Murray Was Right in “Coming Apart” But Let’s Obscure It

Democrats’ Approval of Supreme Court at Record-Low 13% (Gallup) I’m not surprised.

Pennsylvania Dems Are Switching to Republicans by the Thousands  I’m pretty sure it’s just Democrats trying to game the Republican primary. But still.

Atlanta Will Spend $300k To Dodge Pro-Life Laws, Citing Racism and Bidenflation

Twitter Still Allowing Communist Chinese to Post Threats as Pelosi Visits Taiwan

‘Absolutely Orwellian’: Facebook Censors Economist For Correctly Defining ‘Recession’

Private Equity Giant Taps Schumer’s Son-in-Law as Lobbyist

As Crime Soars, Democratic Voters Turn on Left-Wing Prosecutors

The Great Awokening Is as Just as Feverish in the UK as the US

Climate change: More studies needed on possibility of human extinction (BBC)

BBC: Scientists are Not Taking Climate Driven Human Extinction Seriously

African nations expected to make case for big rise in fossil fuel output (The Guardian)

This giant ‘water battery’ under the Alps could be a game-changer for renewable energy in Europe (CNN)

Hotter than Dubai: US cities at risk of Middle Eastern temperatures by 2100 (The Guardian)

Rising sea levels are forcing Fiji’s villagers to relocate (Reuters)

The Energy Transition Runs Into a Ditch in Rural Ohio (Inside Climate News)

Scientists Warn Of Devastating Mass Extinction Event Caused By Climate Change (Futurism)

‘Dirty ol’ coal’ is making a comeback and consumption is expected to return to 2013?s record levels (CNBC)

Manchin-Backed Spending Bill Would Tax Oil Companies $25 Billion And Spend $370 Billion On Climate Change

Oh No – The Guardian is too Climate Alarmist even for Michael Mann

Florida Power & Light operates an exclusive, invite-only lounge for lawmakers and lobbyists (Politico) Considering how much arbitrary, ideologically-driven power ‘lawmakers and lobbyists’ have over their operations, that ought not to surprise anybody.

Barbados Plays the Climate Card

Climate endgame: exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

The New Pause lengthens to 7 years 11 months

Bragg’s bad choice: A prosecutor shines new light on his Trump decision (N.Y. Daily News)

Will Ivana help Donald Trump with tax breaks from beyond the grave? (The Guardian)

Juan Williams: GOP will stop at nothing if it wins midterms (The Hill) Proglodytes assume that Republicans will act the same as Democrats would.

What to expect from the DOJ’s investigation of Donald Trump (The Hill) A lot of hot air and innuendo, but no actual charges.

Trump Must Be Charged for ‘Crimes’ or They’ll Be Repeated: Glenn Kirschner (Newsweek) Except that they haven’t managed to come up with any, you know, actual crimes.

Retired DC cop who testified before January 6 committee says Trump ‘adamantly’ wanted to go to Capitol (CNN) Is that a good thing or a bad thing? What’s the Narrative this week?

Leftist TikToker: “Normalize Spitting Into The Drinks Of Trump Supporters”

The View: GOP Unwilling to Kill Terrorist Leaders Like Dems Are

CNN Deceptively Edits Audio to Pass Off Sunday Host as Hungary’s Orban