Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson rebukes ‘large corporations’ for poverty, violence in the city (Fox) So all those black gang-bangers killing people were sent there by large corporations. I see.

Injustice in Nashville (Dan Rather) Still a partisan hack.

Memphians Talk Pearson Ousting: Pearson Confirms Re-Election Plans They’ll just kick him out again. They can do that as many times as the race-hustlers in Memphis re-select him.

The ‘Tennessee 3’ saga highlights the GOP retreat into Fortress MAGA (Washington Post) Greg Sargent continues pushing the Narrative–that is, after all, his job.

‘It’s Racism!’: Don Lemon On the Expulsion of Tennessee Dem Representatives  How unexpected.

Outrage at G.O.P. Could Propel Expelled Democrats Right Back to House (N.Y.Times) Rules are for thee but not for me.

No One Should Be That Shocked by What’s Happening in Tennessee (Politico)

The Latest Front in World War Hair “From the New York Times news section: America needs more Korean immigrants to open black hair care product stores in New Hampshire.”

NBC Tees Up Expelled-Rep. To Label GOP Racists

Tennessee Silencing Black Politicians Is Not New for the South (Daily Beast) And telling lies is not new for the Daily Beast–no black politician was ‘silenced’; two were expelled for violating the rules that they had sworn to obey, but they can be as noisy as they want to be … outside.

Caitlyn Jenner blasts ‘woke’ Nike for making transgender Dylan Mulvaney paid ambassador: ‘This is an outrage’ (Fox)

Doesn’t a transgender sports bra model defeat the purpose? (Washington Examiner)

Nike responds to backlash over Dylan Mulvaney partnership, instructs customers to ‘Be kind, be inclusive’ (Fox) Be buying from some other company.

Millions of Americans at risk of losing free preventive care after Texas ruling on ACA (The Lecture Conversation)

No-Cost Preventive Services Are Now in Jeopardy. Here’s What You Need to Know. (Kaiser Health News)

No-cost preventive services are now in jeopardy. What you need to know (WUSF Public Media)

Ending ACA’s free preventive services will make America sicker (Boston Globe) Because nothing is ever done unless the government pays for it.

How the end of free preventative health care could affect us all (The Hill) But it’s not ‘free’, the taxpayers pay for it.

School’s transgender policy trumped teacher’s religious rights, U.S. court rules (Reuters)

Inside the CEI system pushing brands to endorse celebs like Dylan Mulvaney (N.Y. Post)

Elite white women push idea that there’s no such thing as gender (N.Y. Post)

Chicago Braces For Tax Shock After Uber-Progressive Mayor Elected

Remember when the hard sciences were thought to be the last bastion of meritocracy?

Ban Assault Rifles (Steven Beschloss) Assault rifles are fully automatic weapons, and strictly regulated accordingly. I think what he means is ‘assault-type weapons’, the weasel-phrase that progs use to refer to guns they find scary. But you never know.

Oh, by the way – longshoremen shut down 2 CA ports today (Hot Air) Look for … the Union label….

The Left’s Lightbulb Ban: Welcome to the Age of Unlightenment

With homicide ticking up, D.C.’s justice system is failing victims (Washington Post)

A dizzying, divisive week in politics spotlights America’s raging battle (Washington Post)

CNN Dismisses Baby Size As ‘A Theological Opinion,’ Compares Abortion To Viagra

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Teen Psycho Tranny Arrested After Planning Mass Murder at Colorado Middle School (The Other McCain)

‘Nobody Is Safe’: Former San Fran Fire Commissioner Beaten With Metal Bar

Ignore the courts? Some Democrats say Texas abortion pill ruling demands it. (Politico) After all, court decisions don’t apply to Democrats! They can do whatever they want!

People With Taste Buds Continue Decades-Long Boycott Of Bud Light (Babylon Bee)

California’s Education Priorities Are Focused On Equity Quotas

Tennessee GOP representative explains why he voted to expel Democratic lawmakers (CNN)

House Republicans stain Tennessee with ‘racism of the worst order’ (Knoxville News-Sentinel) Except that racism played no part in it.

Rebekah Jones’ Viral Claims About Her Son’s Arrest By ‘Fascist’ DeSantis Don’t Match Available Evidence (Vice)

7 of the Worst Times Big Tech Censored Christian and Jewish Content

Clarence Thomas says rules are for losers (Law Dork) The Narrative is strong in this one….

Clarence Thomas Defends Undisclosed “Family Trips” with GOP Megadonor. Here Are the Facts. (ProPublica) According to the witch-hunt Narrative, that is. Whether Thomas ought to have disclosed them is opinion, not fact.

The Lawless Ruling Against the Abortion Pill Has Already Prompted a Constitutional Crisis (Slate) No, it’s not–every time a prog position loses, it’s a ‘constitutional crisis’. Sheesh.

Greasy, Nude Florida Man Goes on Drug-Fueled Robbery Spree, Police Say (Daily Beast) What do you think: Republican? or Democrat?

Liberal Outrage After Abortion Pill Blocked Nationwide By Order From Texas Judge

You Can’t Say ‘Leftist Agitators Storm State Capitols’

A Zealot Judge Has Ordered a Nationwide Abortion Pill Ban (The Nation) Disagree with the Narrative = You’re a ‘zealot’.

Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Benefactor Collects Hitler Artifacts (Washingtonian) Scraaaaaaape that barrel….

The Smearing of Clarence Thomas (Wall Street Journal)

The Anti-Abortion Movement Will Sacrifice Anything to Control Women (Jill Filipovic) Straddle the jump between ‘you can’t kill your baby’ to ‘controlling women’.

For DeSantis, Overflowing War Chest Obscures the Challenges Ahead (N.Y. Times) No, it doesn’t. They’re just spreading Narrative FUD, as usual.

Abortion was a 50/50 issue. Now, it’s Republican quicksand. (Politico) According to the Narrative, that is. I’m sure they’re longing to believe that.

New Research Uncovers Potential Explanation for COVID Vaccine Blood Clot Connection (SciTechDaily)

Can Air Pollution Weaken the Effect of Your COVID-19 Vaccine? New Research Suggests So! (The Weather Channel)

Air pollution associated with lower Covid-19 vaccine responses (earth.com)

Can air pollution lower antibody responses to Covid vaccine? See study here (Mint)

New Medical Codes For COVID-19 Vaccination Status Used To Track People, CDC Confirms

Cop28 president: world needs business mindset to tackle climate crisis (The Guardian)

‘Headed off the charts’: world’s ocean surface temperature hits record high (The Guardian)

I’m no genius with genuses, but your garden is killing the Earth (Washington Post) Dana Milbank is indeed no genius.

Logging Plan on Yellowstone’s Border Shows Limits of Biden Greenhouse Gas Policy (Inside Narrative Climate News)

Climate change adding 50 homers a year in MLB, study says (Associated Press)

A Parasite Is Killing Sea Otters. Is Cat Poop to Blame? (Wired ‘Science’)

Cybernaut.

Digital minimalists are using simple talk-and-text devices to spend
less time online, curb distraction, and navigate internet addiction.

Not to mention increased privacy.

Quillette.

The recent tumult surrounding the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion reminds us that the American body politic is closely and intensively divided on many contentious political, social, religious, cultural, and economic issues. One of those issues is the question of whether affirmative action, particularly in college admissions, passes constitutional muster.

Roger Simon.

In the immediate aftermath of the murders the police informed us the obviously emotionally disturbed shooter was transgendered, something that was ratified by the video of the killings at the Christian school showing the female-by-birth Audrey Hale dressed entirely like a macho terrorist.

Further, they told us she had left behind documents and a manifesto, explaining her actions.
Then, as if by magic, we heard no more of the word transgendered in any of its forms, from the media or anywhere, nor, almost simultaneously, anything of the manifesto, except that it had been handed to the FBI for review.

…

As for the FBI, no word so far on when they will release the manifesto, in original or redacted form.

Sound familiar?

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Mehdi Hassan hosts a weekly show on MSNBC. I hadn’t heard of him or it until Matt Taibbi previewed his appearance on the show in the entertaining post “Eat me, MSNBC,” originally titled “MSNBC sucks.” Hassan invited Taibbi to appear on the show and, in the event, subject himself to attacks that I found to be astounding in their substantive irrelevance, triviality, and error.

In his preview Taibbi explained: “I accepted the invitation because it would have been wrong to refuse, on the off chance he was planning a good-faith discussion [of Taibbi’s work on the Files]. If you’re reading this, things have gone another way.” Taibbi has posted a follow-up here. Even I could infer that Taibbi found Hassan to be conducting himself in bad faith. Video of the 30-minute interview is posted immediately below in its entirety.

Read it.

Thinking that billionaires are a policy failure has become pervasive in the United States. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge in the demonization of billionaires. Left-leaning politicians and their allies think that billionaires corrode society by accumulating large fortunes, which amplify inequality. As such, many propose taxation as a tool to promote fairness by redistributing resources, yet such intentions are not always virtuous and could instead be guided by envy.

Envy is the foundation of the modern Democrat party.

However, a shocking research finding is that envy and self-interest play a pivotal part in explaining support for redistribution. According to evolutionary psychologists in a 2017 paper: “evolved motives for navigating interpersonal interactions clearly predict attitudes about redistribution, but a taste for procedural fairness or distributional fairness does not.” More recent evidence also points to the influence of malicious envy in initiating support for redistribution.

A single billionaire gives more to charity in one year than all of the Democrats in Congress will make in their entire lives, even with their corrupt dealings.

Read it.

A jury in Travis County, Texas found Army Sgt. Daniel Perry, 33, guilty of murder on Friday, nearly three years after he shot a BLM protester who had a history of threatening people with rifles, after a Soros-funded DA withheld nearly 100 pages of exculpatory evidence from the grand jury according to the lead investigator in the case.

Travis county is the blue pustule in the center of red Texas, containins Austin and its environs.

While driving for Uber, Perry shot protester Garrett Foster during a July 2020 protest in downtown Austin, after Foster and other protesters surrounded his car. After Foster raised his rifle at Perry, the Army Sergeant shot and killed Foster, then called the police to report what happened.

Perry told police he shot in self-defense, which both the Austin police department and the lead detective in the case agreed with – concluding it was justifiable homicide.

José Garza is a blight on Texas law enforcement.

WIRED.

But how far into the depths of coffee connoisseurship have you really dived? There are 124 coffee species out there and just two of them—arabica and robusta—account for around 99 percent of global coffee production. Even the most adventurous coffee fans rarely stray beyond these two headliners. But relying so heavily on just two coffee species is starting to look foolhardy. In our warming world, coffee plantations are coming under increased pressure from diseases, drought, and poor growing conditions. Coffee prices have almost doubled in the past two years, largely due to droughts and frosts in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer.

Enter liberica. It’s the hipster bean that some coffee aficionados hope will herald a more resilient—and delicious—future of coffee. “It’s surprising a lot of people,” says Aaron Davis, a coffee specialist at Kew Gardens in London and author of a new paper in the journal Nature arguing that liberica’s time has come. Coffee importers and sellers are starting to pay attention to liberica, he says, thanks to its distinctive taste and because it can grow in conditions other species can’t. It could be time for this previously much-maligned bean to come back to the big leagues.

So it’s not so much about the coffee as it is about your image of yourself as being on the cutting edge of fashion. I see. (There’s a lot of money in narcissism these days.)

National Geographic.

A Harvard-affiliated Canadian company is making a liquid fuel that is carbon neutral, and they hope the economics will be in their favor.

Good luck with that.

Read it.

Funny, no whining from liberal women who see abortion as ‘controlling women’.

Funny how the progs wringing their hands about ‘democracy’ never mention that there is no ‘democracy’ in Islamic countries. Not one. (Turkey came close, but Erdogan put paid to that.)

UPDATE: Turkey’s Erdogan: Muslims Must Unite Against Israel

Read it.

In response to Creationist lists of “scientists who doubt evolution”, the National Center for Science Education put together their own list of scientists who support it. All of the signatories are named Steve, or some variation thereof.

Ars Technica.

When a London man discovered the front left-side bumper of his Toyota RAV4 torn off and the headlight partially dismantled not once but twice in three months last year, he suspected the acts were senseless vandalism. When the vehicle went missing a few days after the second incident, and a neighbor found their Toyota Land Cruiser gone shortly afterward, he discovered they were part of a new and sophisticated technique for performing keyless thefts.

It just so happened that the owner, Ian Tabor, is a cybersecurity researcher specializing in automobiles. While investigating how his RAV4 was taken, he stumbled on a new technique called CAN injection attacks.

Read it.

This Easter season, while Muslims are in the midst of Ramadan, the French public statistics agency INSEE has published a report on the state of religious practice in France. For the first time, Muslims appear to be more numerous than Catholics.

The Other McCain.

“The failure of our education system to teach America’s young people their own history,” I wrote nearly four years ago, “is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that almost no one under 40 today knows anything about Sam Adams except as a popular brand of beer.” And many have suspected that this historical ignorance is not accidental, but rather that the dumbing-down of American education serves a specific political agenda, as those who are conscious of the pedigree of their liberty are apt to be more zealous in defense of their rights. Our liberties were “purchased . . . with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood,” Sam Adams declared in 1771, and thus Americans should never allow themselves to be cheated out of their inheritance.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Americans are fleeing the cities for suburban and rural areas, as well as moving en masse from blue states to red states.

Read it.

Israel began calling up police and army reservists Saturday after separate attacks killed three people, including an Italian tourist, in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank.

Despite appeals for restraint, violence has surged since Israeli police clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, with Israel bombarding both Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The Italian was killed and seven other tourists wounded when an Israeli Arab ploughed a car into pedestrians on the Tel Aviv seafront on Friday evening and flipped over before being shot dead, police and emergency services said.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Especially if
You might be a Jew.

Politico.

Gavin Newsom is showing up behind political enemy lines, taking on conservatives in southern states like Alabama and Texas, where the California governor’s presence is not always welcome — even among the people he’s supposedly there to help.

…

Many Democrats will be glad to spend his money, but it’s far less clear that they’ll want his advice or his obsessive focus on the culture-war contrasts between Democratic and Republican states.

Democrat lawmaker suggests she avoided expulsion from Tennessee legislature because she is White (Fox)

‘Insurrection’: Tennessee House Boots Out Democrats Who Participated in Capitol Protest

Congressional Black Caucus heaps criticism on Tennessee lawmakers for expelling Black lawmakers (The Hill) The CBC is composed entirely of Democrats, and refuses membership to black Republican (or any Republican) legislators.

House, Senate Democrats rally behind expelled Tennessee lawmakers: ‘We all lost today’ (The Hill) Rules are for thee but not for me.

Tennessee GOP succeeded where MAGA failed on Jan 6: They overturned an election to preserve White Supremacy (Dean Obeidallah) The issue is not white supremacy, but black privilege. All this handwaving attempts to distract from the real issue.

The Stupidity. It Burns. (The Bulwark) The Bulwark continues to carry water for the Left.

Obama Center ‘Displacing Thousands Of Black Families’ In Chicago, Neighbors Say

VP Harris to Meet Tennessee Lawmakers After Expulsion  Apparently the President is endorsing disruptive illegal behavior, so long as it’s done by Democrats.

Long-term protection and high efficacy of bivalent BA.1 booster confirmed in older adults (News-Medical)

FDA to allow second updated COVID-19 booster (Eyewitness News WTVO WQRF)

The CDC keeps pushing COVID boosters on kids despite real health risks (N.Y. Post)

Report: Spring COVID booster to be authorized for high-risk people in US (Ars Technica)

First FDA-Approved RSV Vaccines Expected Later This Year: The Top Vaccines And Their Effectiveness (Forbes)

House Seeks Testimony From Teachers Union Chief  Weingarten on School Closures During COVID-19

Doctors Appeal Ruling In Favor Of FDA Over Ivermectin Posts, Urge Court To Intervene

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Church Attendance Habits

Fauci Inks Deal With New Italian ‘Anti-Pandemic’ Bio Lab

Biden’s green war created this billions-dollar tax on all of us (Fox)

How Joe Biden’s oil bet went sideways (Quartz)

Biden at his weakest after Saudi oil power grab (The Telegraph)

Biden’s Ineffectual Energy Play Sticks Americans with the Bill (Newsweek)

Biden Administration Blames Trump for Disastrous 2021 Afghanistan Withdrawal (Daily Beast)

Sarah Sanders hits back after Karine Jean-Pierre says ‘a child’ and parents should decide on trans surgeries (Fox)

Probe widens into federal watchdog over missing Jan. 6 Secret Service texts (Washington Post)

White House pulls its punches over GOP judicial nomination blockade (Politico)

‘Disgraceful’: Foreign Affairs Chair Rips WH’s Deflecting Afghan Exit Blame to Trump

White House deflects criticism of Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal (The Hill)

Former Biden Aide’s Testimony ‘Undermines’ White House Narrative On Classified Docs: Comer

Statement from President Joe Biden on Expulsion of Tennessee Lawmakers for Acting on Gun Safety (WhiteHouse.gov) Except that they weren’t expelled for ‘acting on gun safety’, they were expelled for blatantly violating the rules of the house by helping to disrupt proceedings. Lies, lies, lies….

WATCH: Joe Biden’s Senior Moment of the Week (Vol. 37)

Beyond Baghdad Bob (Power Line)

Biden Slams ‘Unprecedented’ Expulsion Of ‘Disorderly’ Democrats From Tennessee House

3 Days After Hunter Biden Joined Burisma Board, VP Biden Pushed for Fracking in Ukraine

Raytheon Unveils New Dylan Mulvaney-Branded Patriot Missile  (Babylon Bee)

Aspen Institute conducted ‘pre-bunk’ of Hunter Biden laptop story in June 2020

Rep. Doug LaMalfa makes anti-transgender statement while addressing Chico school board (Sacramento Bee)

Florida Senate advances proposal to protect Confederate monuments (The Hill)

Florida senators target monument removals (CBS Miami)

Supporters of confederate monuments could sue over their removal under a new proposal (WUSF Public Media)

MSNBC Host Makes Matt Taibbi Squirm Over His ‘Twitter Files’ Errors (Daily Beast)

Taibbi: Eat Me, MSNBC

The new Clarence Thomas revelations are shocking. Democrats must act. (Washington Post) Call me when Greg Sargent talks about the Biden Crime Family.

NY Times on Trump Court Date: Right-Wing Soros Criticism ‘Tinged with Antisemitic Bigotry’  Apparently Soros is Jewish. Who knew?

The GOP Civil War That’s Already Making 2024 Awkward (Daily Beast) Maybe for the Narrative Media.

The GOP’s epic losing streak (Axios)

WATCH: Riley Gaines whisked to safety after being assaulted at San Francisco event (Washington Examiner)

No, Ron DeSantis, the Federal Reserve is not coming for your guns (Washington Post) They would if they could.

MSNBC Questions If Tennessee Ever Left The Days Of The KKK I question whether (not if) MSNBC ever left the days of KGB.

After the Nashville School Shooting, Tennessee Should Pass A Red Flag Law Instead of Subverting Democracy (Washington Monthly) Notice now the Narrative Media are ignoring the fact that the reason the Democrat legislators were expelled was not ‘subverting democracy’ but BECAUSE THEY VIOLATED THE RULES, the same reason why Nancy Pelosi fined Republican House members because they wouldn’t wear masks.

How Wisconsin Republicans Got So Angry (The Atlantic) Not satisfied with The Bulwark as a vehicle for his water-carrying for the Left, Charlie Sykes jumps into the Atlantic to do the same.

Defense officials warn of potential impact Tuberville hold on nominations will have on military (CNN) All they have to do is address his concerns, which they refuse to do.

Riley Gaines ‘Ambushed’ by Trans Activists

Three More Countries Join in LGBT Lawsuit Against Hungary

Former NCAA Swimmer Riley Gaines Assaulted By Trans Activists At San Fran University Speech

CBS Warns TN Republicans Left Dems No Choice But to Get Violent  But of course only Republicans engage in political violence.

“Try To Cancel Me”: NBC Sports Broadcasting Legend Quits Job To Speak Truth To Power On Podcast

NYC Couple Gets Married Next Door to Trump Arraignment Site: ‘It’s Dope’ (Daily Beast)

Breaking down the 10 words Trump said during his hour-long arraignment (Washington Post) Scraaaaaaape that barrel….

Trump Attacks Judge From Afar, But Turned Meek When He Was In The Same Room (Huffington Post) Where the judge could charge him with contempt. Really, the HuffPo needs to hire brighter writers.

Revenge-Obsessed Donald Trump Is Pushing the Right to New Levels of Retribution Rage (Mother Jones) And the Narrative Media are pushing their TDS to new levels of mouth-frothing.

‘Revenge politics’: Trump indictment threatens to ignite a new age of political retribution (Washington Times) Yeah, people got a bit of a break after the Clintons left office. Break is over….

It’s All About Trump’s Election Criminality (The Bulwark) The Bulwark continues to carry water for the Left.

California school board votes to uphold so-called ‘parental secrecy policy’ for transgender students (Fox)

Chico Unified board votes to keep current ‘parental secrecy’ policy (Action News Now)

Superintendent clarifies Greater Johnstown School District’s gender policy (WJAC Johnstown)s

Eric Adams orders city agencies to cut budgets as migrant costs rise (N.Y. Post)

NYPD raises come in spite of department’s continued failure to achieve budget savings mandated by Mayor Adams (N.Y. Daily News)

Bill allowing ‘deadnaming’ in schools 1 vote away from governor (NBC Montana)

Arkansas lawmakers OK restrictions on trans student pronouns (KATV ABC)

Indiana Senate pares down bill targeting student pronouns (Indianapolis Star)

Rep. Stefanik grills Pentagon over ex-‘woke’ school equity chief’s new job (N.Y. Post)

Tennessee Republicans Expel Two Democratic Lawmakers Who Joined Gun Control Rally (Mother Jones) Rules are for thee but not for me.

Lawsuit Targets Ohio Amendment That Would Enshrine Abortion in State Constitution

How Millions From George Soros Fueled Democrats’ Court Victory in Wisconsin

The Powerful Media Pretend They Are Powerless

Growing list of Nashville Council members vows to reappoint Justin Jones to the state House (The Tennesseean) Hey, racist dicks are entitled to representation, too.

Another “Trans” Mass Murderer Stopped

Nets Ignore JPMorgan Chase CEO Suggesting Seizing Private Property to Aid Climate Goals

Shareholders Say JPMorgan Chase Has ‘Disturbing Trend’ Of Political Bias

Newsom Touring The Country As Even He Can’t Stand Being In California Anymore (Babylon Bee)

Bystander ignored dying Cash App founder Bob Lee as he begged for help  The culture that is San Francisco. Time to leave.

Stabbing of Cash App Creator Raises Alarm, and Claims of a Lawless San Francisco  No shit.

USA Cycling champion dies after being struck by car in San Francisco’s Presidio  Time to leave.

Pensions Are Defunding Philadelphia Police

In California, Parents May Soon Effectively Lose Custody of Kids 12 and Older   Time to leave.

School’s Trans Policy Trumps Teacher’s Religious Rights: US Court

Read it.

I’ll believe it when it happens. Pakistan is a ‘country’ founded by Islamic militants for Islamic militants; I doubt that it will change.

Read it.

Infarm, a Germany-based vertical farming company, announced its harvest in November. Spokesperson Pádraic Flood credits Infarm’s success with its focus on optimizing the growth environment and crop cycle time.

The experiment showcases what’s possible not just for growers looking to move their cereal crop indoors, but for global food security in general. Growing these staple crops indoors, in regions previously unable to support them, could benefit millions of people.

However, there are challenges when shifting from produce to grain.

If vertical farming is ever going to be anything other than a hobby, it needs to be able to grow the staple grains–wheat. rice, maize, barley, and rye–in a cost-effective manner.

Anything else is just recreational.

Check it out.

A folding, single-shot .22 caliber pistol that’s no bigger than a stack of credit cards. At .5 inches thin and weighing less than 7 ounces, LifeCard® will be the last gun you’ll leave behind.

Read it.

A front page news article in today’s New York Times refers to “President Biden’s economic agenda, which aims to reduce the nation’s $7 trillion of uncollected tax revenue and use the funds to combat climate change, curb prescription drug prices and pay for other initiatives prized by Democrats.”

The phrase “$7 trillion of uncollected tax revenue” was a new one to me. What you and I think of as “private property,” Biden and the New York Times refer to as “uncollected tax revenue.”

Treasury Secretary Yellen is out talking about this “$7 trillion” number publicly. On April 4, she said, “Absent our new investment in the IRS, the tax gap – the gap between taxes owed and those actually paid – was estimated at around $7 trillion over the next decade.”

…

I thought maybe $7 trillion was a typo or a Times error, but it comes straight from the Biden administration Treasury Department, which claims that “wealthy taxpayers…are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe” via “opaque income sources that accrue disproportionately to higher earners—like partnership income, proprietorship income, and rental income.”

The Biden Treasury attributes the fantastical estimates about vast sums available for extraction (“noncompliance can reach 55 percent”) to “academic researchers.”

Yet the two papers cited by the Treasury are sketchy. Neither one was been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. The lead author of one paper is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina; the article was published in Tax Notes, a “nonprofit” that is behind a paywall with a subscription pricing structure that could teach high earners something about opacity. If Treasury want to rely on this research for the claim that there is $7 trillion in “uncollected tax revenue” out for the picking, let Treasury make a non-paywalled copy of the research available to the public for inspection.

Read it.

Police chief calls on Israelis with a gun license to carry their weapon after the attack, which was first reported as a traffic collision before bullet traces were found in the car in which the three Israelis were found.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Especially if
You might be a Jew.

Washington Post.

Narrative Media experts, of course. Bringing a bullhorn to the floor of the state house and joining the disruptions by left-wing protesters isn’t dissent, it’s insurrection.

Read it.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday explained his failure to disclose trips paid for by a friend, conservative billionaire Harlan Crow.
Thomas said in a statement that Crow and his wife, Kathy, are “dearest friends” and that he and his wife have joined them on family trips for years.
“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said.
“I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines,” he added.

Exactly so. If you have a billionaire friend, and you are both going to the same place, and he invites you to ride along with him on his private jet, do you refuse so that you can fly commercial? Only if you’re stupid. There is no evidence, there is no allegation, that Crow received any kind of favors from Thomas, or had any matter before the Supreme Court; if he did, I will bet you a paycheck that Thomas would recuse himself for precisely this reason.

This is just another chapter in the eternal witch-hunt for the Oreo On The Supreme Court, just as the pack baying after his wife is an extension of the same. Nothingburger. Big time.

UPDATE: Justice Thomas Crushes Left’s ‘Billionaire-Funded-Trips’ Impeachment Dreams

Washington Examiner.

That’s when we learned that Second City voters narrowly elected Brandon Johnson as their next mayor. This is a city that was flattened during the reign of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lost in the first round of voting for Chicago mayor because she didn’t finish in one of the top two spots. Lightfoot, elected in 2019 after a career as a federal prosecutor who then held several appointed positions in Chicago, shut down the city for more than a year during COVID-19. She also bankrupted small businesses, allowed rioters to burn down whole neighborhoods, presided over the worst crime wave in 50 years, and let the schools go to hell.

Now, the voters have selected Johnson. Elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2018, Johnson narrowly won the mayoralty of America’s third-most-populous city on April 4 over Paul Vallas, a former Chicago schools CEO and a Democrat who presented himself as a political moderate compared to the far-left Johnson.

The incoming mayor may turn out to be a worse mayor than Lightfoot. Johnson’s occupation is an organizer for the teachers unions. The unions spent several million dollars on the race. They got their man.

Read it.

Joris Hébrard, a Rassemblement National deputy and former mayor of the town of Le Pontet, a small town in Provence, caused outrage after it was revealed on social media that he had inaugurated a large Turkish-influenced mosque in his town. The party imposed a reprimand on him and he eventually resigned from his parliamentary post.

On March 17th, videos and photos showed him smiling, cutting the ribbon of an imposing building together with the local Muslim authorities and the Turkish consul. This was not just another public obligation, but a conscious strategy: “France is changing its face, Reconquête [Zemmour’s party] will have to accept it,” he declared provocatively on the sidelines of the inauguration.

The Fatih Mosque—or ‘the Conqueror’—is named after the man who took Constantinople from the Christians and belongs to the Franco-Turkish Cultural Association of Avignon. It is destined to become the largest in the Vaucluse department, which has a very large Muslim community.

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

An indication that Christianity has declined over the last decades is the fact that Easter has slowly faded from the public space. It used to be that stores would have sales for the things that go along with holiday. The grocery stores would have an aisle dedicated to candy and treats popular with Easter. You would see ads for children’s clothes, as Easter was typically a time to get the little ones new gear.

The main reason for the decline in Easter, of course, is the decline in the number of people attending Christian churches. In some parts of the country, like New England, church attendance has collapsed. In those states, about half the people never attend services, while only about a quarter attend regularly. Only a few states have a majority of people attending church regularly.

Of course, the churches have succumbed to the rot. The Episcopal church is mostly about sodomy now. Drive around the east coast and it seems like every rainbow ends at an Episcopal church. The Catholic church is in steep decline due to the homosexual priest scandals. Even the Baptists have decided that it is better to please the lunatics than tend to the faithful. The result is a lot of empty pews.

The Spectator.

It’s been obvious for some time that Democratic mandarins badly want Trump to be the 2024 GOP nominee. So Bragg’s arguably counterproductive ploy must have them wetting themselves in excitement.

Trump is the only credible Republican nominee the Dems think Joe Biden can beat.

Yeah, well, Hillary thought that too.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The wokeness of American big business is one of the most curious phenomena of our times. What is driving it? And how can it be stopped? The mantra “Get woke, go broke” is popular on the right, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be particularly true.

…

Most recently, Mulvaney has been signed on by Anheuser Busch and Nike. Nike has been left-wing for a long time, so their going “trans” isn’t a surprise. What may be surprising is that Nike has Mulvaney posing in a bra and leggings to promote its women’s sports line. Is this really the image that Nike wants to present to women? “I want to wear a Nike sports bra, like that guy?” Seems doubtful.

Steve Sailer.

Three decades ago, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) sobered up enough to make his final contribution to American social science, Moynihan’s Law of Proximity to the Canadian Border: school test scores went up the closer a state was to the Canadian border.

In this map of average age of death, we can see a fascinating addendum: life expectancy goes up close to the Mexican border. This is because Mexicans are remarkably long-lived for their socio-economic status. Wikipedia has a long article review the theories attempting to explain the Hispanic Life Expectancy Paradox.

Vox.

For many Americans, doing your taxes isn’t all that complicated. It’s just data entry.

The actual work of doing your taxes mostly involves rifling through various Internal Revenue Service forms you get in the mail. There are W-2s listing your wages, 1099s showing miscellaneous income like from one-off gigs, 1098s showing mortgage interest or tuition payments, etc.

But here’s the thing about those forms: The IRS has them, too. For many people, the IRS has all the information it needs to calculate their taxes, send taxpayers a filled-out return, and have them sign it and send it right back to the IRS if everything looks in order.

It’s even worse than that. Once you send in your tax return, the IRS plugs it into their machines and recalculates your return, comparing it to the information it has already received, to make sure you are being honest.

But of course tax return preparation is a huge industry, both for the Big Boy tax preparation services like Intuit and H&RBlock and TurboTax, and for individual accounting practices. And those guys have a lot of money to spread around to politicians to make sure that their rice bowl isn’t disturbed. You can tell where this is headed.

I have yet to file a tax return that the IRS didn’t send me a nastygram about how I Done Them Wrong and informing me of what they did to fix it. In fact, my wife and I had taken to filling out the return and signing it, leaving the tax calculation blank, and letting the IRS figure the tax and send us a bill. (They will charge you interest, which is trivial these days, but no penalty if you pay up before the grace period ends.) My life would be substantially easier if I had a rough IRS-generated draft to start with. But NOOOOOOOOOO…

Read it.

Inspired by reading Coming Apart, in this piece we’ll discuss a non-obvious way elites have abandoned their responsibility to the masses: they have stopped celebrating the habits and structures that they abide by in order to be successful, and have indirectly encouraged the opposite.

Betrayed by the Crust, who have mistaken themselves for the Filling.

Pareto called this the aristocracy of lions vs. the aristocracy of foxes. Lions are proud, forceful aristocrats who explicitly own their position as leaders. Foxes, however, are humble servants who will forever deny that they’re in charge. While lions want to run the world, foxes want to save the world.

Because our new elites are foxes and not lions, they no longer feel comfortable celebrating productive habits for the rest of society.

Read it.

Pizza delivery, it turns out, is based on a fundamental lie. The most iconic delivery food of all time is bad at surviving delivery, and the pizza box is to blame. “I don’t like putting any pizza in a box,” Andrew Bellucci, a legendary New York City pizza maker of Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, told me. “That’s just it, really. The pizza degrades as soon as it goes inside,” turning into a swampy mess.

A pizza box has one job—keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house—and it can’t really do it. The fancier the pizza, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees? Forget it. Sliding a $40 pie into a pizza box is the packaging equivalent of parking a Lamborghini in a wooden shed before a hurricane.

Read it.

French startup Meropy has developed an agricultural robot that autonomously inspects crops from both above and below, saving farmers time and money.

Black tech execs don’t mince words over Silicon Valley failures (MSNBC)

Company Asking for Only White Candidates in Job Application Sparks Outrage (Newsweek)

Outrage over white-only job ad drives tech firm to delete website (Ars Technica) Would there be similar outrage over black-only job advertisements? Of course not–they happen every day.

Black Chicago Residents Say Obama Center Is Pushing Them Out of Neighborhood

Chicago Drinks the Hemlock

Chicago Votes for More Crime

Biden admin slammed for ‘breathtaking’ proposal slashing dairy access for low-income moms, kids (Fox)

LAME: Journo Asks KJP to Defend NPR After Twitter Labels It ‘State-Affiliated Media’

At least two Republican DAs want to prosecute Bidens: Rep. James Comer (N.Y. Post)

Hola, Homosaurus: Biden Admin Shells Out Six Figures To Translate Gay Dictionary Into Spanish

Why Are Underage Central Americans in US Factories?

Small Businesses File For Bankruptcy At Record Pace, Surpassing COVID Crash

Air Force Loosens Standards To Make Room for Overweight Recruits

Biden review of chaotic Afghan withdrawal blames Trump (Associated Press)

A once reluctant Harris embraces her biracial identity in Africa (L.A. Times) Pandering–it’s not just for race hustlers any more.

Biden Report Blames Trump for Afghanistan Withdrawal Chaos  Of course.

DoD Official Testifies That The Military Must Be A ‘Safe Space’ For The Non-Binary

The Biden connection

Probe widens into federal watchdog over missing Jan. 6 Secret Service texts (Washington Post)

Cartels, Not US Government, Are ‘Choosing Who Enters This County,’ Sen. Sinema Says

Biden Admin Finally Offers Explanation for Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal: It Was Trump’s Fault

Biden Rule Would Bar Full Ban on Trans Athletes, but Allow Exceptions

Biden Admin Unveils New Rules Requiring Inclusion of Transgender Athletes

Anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. files to run for president as Democrat (The Hill)

Why I don’t believe there ever was a Covid virus

Young migrants take over Paris building in protest at treatment (The Guardian) Hello! We want to live in your country! Give us money!

This woke Pentagon video delivers a dangerous message (Fox)

New Mexico Enacts Bill to Shield Abortion Providers From Out-of-State Threats (Daily Beast)

Nike faces online uproar over paid partnership with trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney (N.Y. Post)

Plans for new sites in UK for asylum seekers ‘risk humanitarian catastrophe’ (The Guardian)

Gay nightclub stokes backlash for sign asserting two biological genders: ‘Transphobic’ (Fox)

The Cost-of-Living Crisis Reaches Breaking Point (Newsweek)

NPR protests as Twitter calls it ‘state-affiliated media’ (Associated Press) Which it obviously is.

Twitter labels NPR’s account as ‘state-affiliated media,’ which is untrue (NPR)

Indiana Bans Transgender Procedures for Minors

US Now A Majority Permitless Carry Country After DeSantis Signs Gun Rights Law

CBS, NBC Hype Lib High Schooler Tantrums Demanding Gun Control

Idaho Passes Law To Restrict Interstate Travel For Abortion Care For Minors (Huffington Post)

NBC Swoons Over ‘Groundbreaking’ Leftist New Zealand PM’s Farewell Address

Expulsion vote thrusts Tennessee politics onto the national stage, could set precedent (The Tennesseean)

Pro-Transgender Protesters Occupy 4 State Capitols in a Week

The Great Gun-Control Myth

PBS’s Woodruff Uses MSNBC’s ‘Center-Right’ Charlie Sykes as Her Guide to Wisconsin Politics

Stop confusing kids

Pakistani ‘Grooming Gangs’: The Left’s Cover-up Continues

More Entitlement Red Flags as Politicians Tout Inaction

On DeSantis turf, Newsom decries conservative education push

King Charles signals first explicit support for research into monarchy’s slavery ties (The Guardian)

Tennessee Democrats face House expulsion vote after gun control protest (Reuters)

Study: Anti-CRT Movement Going Strong

ABC’s ‘Abbott Elementary’ Mocks Identity Politics Replacing Meritocracy

Travis Tritt Drops Anheuser-Busch Over Trans Deal

Kansas lawmakers override governor’s veto, enacting ban on transgender athletes (KCUR)

Chicago’s Mayoral Race Pits the Teachers Union Against the Police Union (N.Y. Times)

Travis Tritt, ‘Other Artists’ Dumping Bud Products Over Dylan Mulvaney Deal

Lawsuit: NYC Permits Make Gun Ownership ‘Impossible’

CNN Defends Tennessee Dems: ‘No One Cares About The Rules’

Elitist Soros-Funded Group Tries Teaching Reporters How to Fight So-Called ‘Disinformation’

Missouri School Offered ‘Sweet Prize’ to Students for Reading Sexually Explicit Books 

Not Just Nashville: Attacks Against Churches Nearly Tripled in 2023, Report Finds

Christians Must Take Children to Transgender Procedures or They Can’t Adopt, Oregon State Law Says

Bob Lee’s Murder Fuels Tech Exec Concerns San Francisco is Deteriorating

Maine Mother Sues After School Helps Daughter Transition