Veteran-Owned ‘Clean Beef’ Company Says It Would Rather Shut Down Than Accept mRNA Injections In Cattle

“Not Some Fringe Theory”: Flip-Flopping Virologist Thought Lab Leak “Highly Likely” Before Toeing Fauci’s Line

COVID-19 No Longer An Issue For UK Travelers

How Fauci and NIH Leaders Worked to Discredit COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory

PBS Notices Massive COVID Learning Loss, Doesn’t Notice Its Cause: Teachers Unions

SBA Report: COVID Fraud Over $200B

The Southwest’s enduring heat wave is expected to intensify over the weekend (NPR)

Coast-to-coast heat dome sends temperatures soaring, threatens all-time records (Washington Post)

Santa Clarita expected to be ‘easily’ over 100 degrees this weekend (Santa Clarita Valley Signal)

‘Dangerous heat’ forecast to bring temperatures up to 110 to the SF Bay Area (S.F. Gate)

Why is Atlantic City’s sea level rising much faster than the rest of the world? (CBS News) Is it? Is it really?

‘Climate Czar’ John Kerry can’t answer a question about his own staff — let alone his private jet (N.Y. Post)

Kerry erupts after his private jet use is mocked in House hearing, denies ever owning one (Fox)

US refuses climate reparations for developing nations (BBC)

John Kerry Private Plane Questions (C-Span)

4 Takeaways From Climate Czar John Kerry’s House Hearing (The Foundry)

Hummer EV Hype Fades In One Chart

Watch: Climate Czar John Kerry Exposed As Bald Faced Liar Over Use Of Private Jet

EPA unveils $20 billion to finance the fight against climate change (Washington Post) Ka-ching!

Electric Cars Might Not Even Lower Carbon Emissions, Report Finds

Pedal Politics: Bicycle Stunt Draws International Criticism

German Climate Extremists Set SUVs on Fire 

World’s oldest trees reveal the largest solar storm in history

The Heat Wave Scorching the US Is a Self-Perpetuating Monster (Wired ‘Science’)

Why Is Europe’s Latest Heat Wave Called Cerberus? It’s Complicated (Wired ‘Science’)

EPA’s New Vehicle Emissions Rule Would Drive Cars and Trucks Off the Road. It’s Also Illegal.

Plano police arrest second suspect in gun theft (Fox)

If You Don’t Like ‘Conservative Principles Driven by Judeo-Christian Foundation,’ Sen. Tim Scott Says, ‘Choose Another Candidate’

5 Hospitalized After Maryland Shooting

Dennis Prager.

There is a pandemic in the Western world — especially, but not only, in America — that few are talking about, let alone addressing.

This pandemic doesn’t actually kill people. But it does destroy people, ruin lives, crush families and cause permanent, debilitating pain — far more than have the vast majority of cases of COVID-19.

This pandemic consists of adult children who have decided never again to speak to one or both of their parents. The vast majority of these people were never sexually or physically abused. In fact, nearly all were loved by their parents.

So, then, why have these people decided to hurt their mother, their father or both in one of the worst ways possible?

Washington Free Beacon.

Under intense political pressure, California Democrats on Thursday reversed their dismissal two days earlier of a bill that would classify child trafficking as a serious felony.

Assembly Public Safety Committee chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D.), who criticized the legislation on Tuesday for its potential impact on racial minorities, this time voted to advance the bill unchanged along with three other Democrats. The two Republicans voted yes both times. None of the lawmakers spoke about why they were holding a redo vote.

The abrupt and unusual about-face came in an emergency hearing after public outcry over the panel’s first vote, which saw all the Democrats abstain and thereby block the bill from moving toward a vote by the full Assembly. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) had also applied pressure, saying Wednesday that he was “surprised” by the decision.

Read it.

Italian authorities have placed the famous migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking under “indefinite” detention because of safety concerns found during an inspection in the port of Civitavecchia, according to a statement published by SOS Méditerranée, the NGO that owns the vessel. The news appeared on Thursday, July 13th—the same day the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the Commission to force Mediterranean countries to open their ports to NGOs.

According to the statement, the Ocean Viking docked at the port on July 11th, after picking up 57 migrants near the Libyan coasts four days prior. After migrants disembarked, the local authorities conducted a seven-hour inspection of the ship, finding several “technical and administrative deficiencies,” including one that requires further investigation to determine the vessel’s seaworthiness under international safety standards.

To the NGO, the detention appears to be politically motivated, because the problem they found—the lack of qualified personnel to deploy lifeboats—was not flagged in any prior inspections. The organization said it was working on resuming its rescue operations on the sea as soon as possible and condemned any attempt to hinder the work of migrant-saving NGOs.

The NGO ‘Migrant Rescue” Scam:

1. Migrants, often in co-ordination with ‘migrant rescue’ NGOs, get into something that will float and paddle out beyond the territorial waters.
2. NGO ‘migrant rescue ship’ swoops in and ‘rescues’ them.
3. Rather than take them back to where they came from (often in sight), the NGO ship takes them to a European port, where under EU policy they are given ‘asylum’ as ‘refugees’.
4. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is why the European population is increasingly Muslim and non-European.

Read it.

Inside every person, there are sparks of dark flame as powerful and ancient as mankind itself. As a rule, they lie dormant, buried under thick layers of civility and goodwill. However, eventually, they awake and give rise to one of our strongest passions: hatred.

German Climate Extremists Set SUVs on Fire 

You want hate, look to your Left.

OffGuardian.

There will come a time when you’re sitting in a smoke-filled place from the out of control wildfires, the chicken balls you had for lunch might be crickets in disguise, the cat and the dog both have bird flu, the mosquito that just bit you probably has Oxitek’s Zika, the water you’re drinking is full of chemicals, nuclear threats from the Ukraine cover the media outlets, artificial intelligence thinks you’re stupid, one egg is worth more than the dollar in your pocket, outside the parades of celebration are really testaments to indignation and random murders compete with random heart attacks for worry of the week, you’ve already used up your allotted 15 minute city day trip and you read about how daffodil extract will save the planet from cow flatulation.

(And the scientists who want to block the sun haven’t checked with the ones who are making solar panels. I don’t think they like each other.)

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

To the Western ear, the phrase “closed society” brings to mind hermit kingdoms like North Korea or totalitarian societies like the old Soviet Union. That is because the ideology of the American empire is the open society. The open society is tolerant and open to minorities while the closed society is intolerant. The former is always good while the latter is always bad, very very bad.

The open society is not the norm for human organization. In fact, the very idea of human organization requires both discrimination and intolerance. All human organizations must have rules to determine who is outside the group, who is inside the group and how this is enforced. An organization where anyone can come or go as they please is just an ad hoc mob, not an organization.

Therein lies the debilitating contradiction in the open society. If the goal is a society where all opinions are tolerated and given a fair hearing, it means tolerating ideas that run counter to the open society ideal. This is where Karl Popper’s famous phrase, “the paradox of tolerance”, comes into the conversation. In order to maintain the tolerant society, you must be intolerant of intolerance.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

After an 11-day alleged investigation, the Secret Service announced today that it cannot identify the person who left cocaine in the White House. The Service says that there were no usable finger prints on the bag that held the cocaine, and not enough DNA for an identification. So the investigation is being closed.

No one is going to buy this. The general area is under video surveillance, and there is a log of people who enter the West Wing.

NBC News.

The U.S. FDA said it did not agree with the cancer research group’s conclusions that linked aspartame to cancer.

James Rikards.

Attention spans are short, and Americans have already moved on to stories about political scandals, the next election, and the usual celebrity glamour gloss. Outside of the U.S. warmonger elites and a few critics (myself included), Americans don’t seem to care.

That’s a mistake. The war is as hard fought as ever and the geopolitical stakes are even higher than at the start of the war as we keep climbing up the escalation ladder.

Today I’ll look at the military situation, the economic sanctions, the bigger picture of global recession, and the impact of the war on energy prices.

No Labels Says Efforts to Quash Plans Prove it Can Win (NewsMax)

Fox News sued for defamation by Trump supporter Ray Epps over Jan. 6 conspiracy claims (CNBC)

House Republicans Accidentally Released a Trove of Damning Covid Documents (The Intercept)

COVID scientists accused of lab leak ‘cover up’ feared ‘s— show’ after blaming China for spread (Fox)

Rapid Covid tests miss 90% of asymptomatic cases

Expanding heat wave leaves more than 112 million under alerts (Axios)

Florida’s Environmental Failures Are a Warning for the Rest of the U.S. (TIME)

Waiting For ‘Buyers To Come’: Unsold Electric Vehicles Piling Up In Car Dealerships, Says Report

Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink (Washington Post)

Airline Blaming Delays on Climate Change Is ‘Absurd’ Excuse (NewsMax)

NPR Talk Show Boosts Author Who Wants to ‘Eliminate’ Dissent on Fossil Fuels

The complacence of environmentalist urbanism

The Last Gasp of the Anthropocene?

The Arctic Is a Freezer That’s Losing Power (Wired ‘Science’)

Last week was the hottest ever recorded — here’s why we keep smashing records (Science News)

Kerry ADMITS to MSNBC Environmentalist Agenda Too ‘Tricky’ for Investment

Climate Czar John Kerry Takes Xi Jinping at His Word. That’s the Problem.

Kerry: US ‘Under No Circumstances’ Will Pay Climate Reparations

30% Of Americans Believe Breaking The Law Over ‘Climate Crisis’ Is Justified

Top Automakers Blast ‘Unrealistic’ Biden Plan To Force EV Transition

2022 Nobel Prize Winner: “Climate Science has Metastasised into … Pseudoscience”

WH Warns Journalist His Press Pass in Jeopardy (NewsMax)

On Affirmative Action, Media Once Again Prove They Have No Idea What Black People Think (Washington Free Beacon)

The White Media Has Missed a Key Part of the Affirmative Action Ruling (The Nation)

PBS NewsHour Affirms Racial Quotas for Doctors: ‘Diversity’ Saves Lives (NewsBusters)

Whitehouse’s White Office: Rhode Island Senator Has One of the Least Diverse Dem Staffs

Republican AGs Warn Fortune 100 Companies Against Using Race in Hiring

Black Lives Matter Celebrates 10th Anniversary By Burning Down 10 More Black Neighborhoods (Babylon Bee)

German Regional Spy Agency Declares AfD Youth ‘Right-Wing Extremists’

America’s far right is operating in Canada. Why don’t we consider that foreign interference? (Toronto Star) Perhaps because ‘foreign interference’ means interference by a foreign government, not just people doing what people do? (Apparently there is no native ‘far-right’ in Canada….)

CNN Still Foaming Over the Left Losing Bud Light Culture Battle

It’s Not Just Trump. Right-Wing Defendants Keep Saying the DOJ Framed Them, Too. (Mother Jones)

Why can’t the right-wing bubble give up on Ray Epps? (Washington Post) Philip Bump loses his shit.

Prosecutors of Biden Family Corruption Witness Gal Luft Donated to Joe Biden, Other Dems (Washington Free Beacon)

Ultra Right Beer Ad Takes Swipe at Woke Schools (NewsMax)

G.O.P.’s Far Right Seeks to Use Defense Bill to Defund Ukraine War Effort (N.Y. Times) For the NYT, there is no ‘right’ but the ‘far-right’.

MSNBC: SCOTUS Took Down Whites Only Signs & Put Up Straights Only

Senate appropriators to debate Supreme Court ethics proposal (Washington Post)

WashPost Reporter Blasts GOP For Attacking ‘Hallowed’ FBI For Mistakes

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly suggested that chemicals in water are impacting sexuality of children (CNN)

McCarthy-backed House candidate is getting help from an antisemitic podcaster who wants political leaders assassinated (Media Matters for America)

Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists (ProPublica)

Bluesky now checks against this array of slurs when creating a username

“Suburban sprawl is a much worse problem than skyscrapers”

Ray Epps To Be Criminally Charged For Role In January 6th, Blames Tucker

How Our Efforts to Bring Competition To Television Unknowingly Helped Create the Fox Disinformation Machine (boulderpreston.com)

House to Vote on Abortion Access for Military, Bowing to the Far Right (N.Y. Times) For the foreigners who write for the NYT, there is no right but the far-right.

2 IRS Whistleblowers to Testify Before Oversight (NewsMax)

Yes, Joe Biden Is Old. Is That All Republicans Have to Run On? (Vanity Fair) Old and demented. Don’t forget the important part.

Biden Administration Helping CCP By Restricting Domestic Mining: Minnesota Senator

Biden Proposal Would Give Foreign Climate Group Veto Power Over U.S. Military Contracts

Biden Aids Al-Qaeda

Bidenomics Fail: Nationwide Spike In Family Homelessness

Secret Service concludes cocaine investigation, no suspect identified (CNN) The coverup proceeds apace.

Secret Service ends White House cocaine investigation with no leads (NBC News) “I see nothing! Noooooooooothing!”

Secret Service Fails to Find Answers in White House Cocaine Probe (NewsMax)

FTC Chair Called a ‘Disaster’ as Congressional Hearing Starts

Trump to Carson: Secret Service Knows WH Cocaine Truth

White House Looks To Prevent Oversight Of Ukraine Aid “Ten percent for the Big Guy!”

Unsolved Mystery: Secret Service Throws In The Towel In White House Cocaine Investigation

US Strategic Petroleum Reserve Will Not Be Replenished Anytime Soon  We don’t need no stinkin’ oil … it’s all gonna be electric!

Conservatives Urge Senators to Oppose Gen. Brown for Chairman of Joint Chiefs

Watch: America’s ‘AI Czar’ Kamala Harris Explains “First Of All, It’s Two Letters”

Kerry erupts after his private jet use is mocked in House hearing, denies ever owning one (Fox)

Rep. Mace: ‘Lying’ Always Part of Bidens’ Activities

Time to Get Tested, Joe!

Biden Loses Cool, Berates Female Finnish Journalist Over NATO ‘Instability’ Question

Federal Agencies Using Just 25 Percent of Their Office Space, Watchdog Reveals

A.I. Czar Harris Announces She Has Figured Out What A.I. Stands For  (Babylon Bee)

Disney’s Feminist Indiana Jones Sequel Bombs Hard – Media Pretends They Don’t Know Why

CBS & NBC Ignore GOP Grilling FBI Director, ABC Whines Over GOP ‘Attacks’

1 In 3 Federal Student Loan Borrowers Spent Money They Thought They Wouldn’t Have To Pay Back (Intelligent.com)

Democrats Try a Novel Tactic to Revive the Equal Rights Amendment (N.Y. Times)

Alex Soros In His Own Words

EU Nature Restoration Law Set To Reignite Dutch Farmer Protests

‘No Way in Hell’: Ilhan Omar Announces Boycott of Israeli President’s Address to Congress

Pence Calls Out Omar for ‘Sickening’ Attacks on Israel

New York Is Ordered by Appeals Court to Redraw House Map (N.Y. Times)

‘Racist,’ ‘grooming’: Why parents are trying to ban so many picture books (Washington Post)

WATCH: Nadler Miserably Attempts to Run Cover for FBI’s Big Tech Collusion

WATCH: CNN Anchor Apologizes for ‘Misgendering’ Dylan Mulvaney

‘A Whole New Level of Awful’: Seattle Public Schools Offer Free ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ to Kids

New WHO Regulations Set to Control Healthcare, Information

GOP Rep. Calls Out CNN’s ‘Cute And Lawyerly’ Attempt To Avoid The Hyde Amendment

These 49 Senators Voted to Confirm Biden EEOC Pick Seen as Likely to Force Transgender Ideology on Employers

Kansas Judge Upholds Order Barring Gender Change on IDs

California Dems Can Now Set Wages for Private Businesses. Critics Say This Will ‘Destroy Jobs.’  Time to leave.

Boston Mayor Wu Announces Residential Conversion Program for Office Buildings

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

The White House must be the most heavily guarded and surveilled building in the United States. Yet the case of the cocaine baggie outside the Situation Room is apparently damn near impossible to crack, if I may use that term in this context. I’m not sure if the White House is still taking the line that the area is “highly trafficked,” but that is the line that Politico persists in peddling.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Washington Free Beacon.

The socialist mayor of South Fulton, Ga., returned to work this week, days after police arrested him for entering a resident’s lake house.

Khalid Kamau, a vocal Democratic Socialist and cofounder of the Atlanta chapter of Black Lives Matter, is charged with first-degree trespass and burglary after a homeowner caught him entering his home on Saturday.

“We have never backed down from courageous conversations, but now is not the time for those discussions,” Kamau said upon his return Tuesday during a city council session. “We have city business to get to.”

He noted that “a lot has happened in the past few days” and he will “announce a time and place for those conversations to happen.”

If he were Republican, the Narrative media would be howling (HOWLING) for him to resign.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Thirty-five years ago Tom Wolfe wrote “The Great Relearning” for The American Spectator, in which he predicted we’d lapse into some of the same mistakes of the 20th century, and need to re-learn some fundamental truths again from bitter experience. This imperative comes back to mind watching our big cities and criminal justice system, to name just two items, seem determined to repeat all of the liberal mistakes of the 1970s and 198os, which took a long time to recognize and crystalized into policies that work, such as locking up criminals.

Yesterday the Washington DC city council, which only months ago wanted to reduce criminal penalties for carjacking, passed new crime policy by a 12 – 1 vote that is a clear reversal of the leftist nostrums about crime of the last few years. Small wonder why. Last year saw a 33 percent increase in violent crimes, with 17 percent more homicides. This is the third straight year when DC clocked more than 200 homicides. Carjacking is out of control, up 94 percent from 2022, with 140 carjackings in June alone.

Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy set to meet key Nato leaders as Russia strikes Kyiv for second night in a row (The Guardian)

Zelenskyy outraged after Biden rejects Ukraine’s NATO membership: ‘unprecedented and absurd’ (Fox)

Should Ukraine Join NATO? Don’t Kid Yourself: It Already Has (Newsweek)

‘The Feckless 400’: These companies are still doing business in Russia–and funding Putin’s war (Fortune) Let’s have a witch-hunt!

Report: 36 Percent of US Navy Attack Subs Out of Commission

Russia’s Crude Oil Exports Start To Show Signs Of Decline

ARTILLERY: Iranian Shells for Russian Guns

INDIA-PAKISTAN: Resisting the Resistance

China Targeted State Department Emails in Microsoft Hack, U.S. Officials Say (N.Y. Times)

Inside the Ring: China financial moves a sign of coming war, analyst warns

Trump Is Picking Fights in Iowa, No Matter the 2024 Consequences (N.Y. Times)

Former lawmakers plan new group to stop No Labels presidential bid (Washington Post) We must exclude anyone outside of the Establishment!

Author slams Iowa legislature special session for new abortion restrictions (MSNBC) Oh no! An author disapproves! How will we cope?

Abortion, LGBTQ and race: McCarthy confronts far-right demands on Pentagon policy bill (Politico) For Politico, there is no ‘right’ but the ‘far-right’.

Clarence Thomas’ Trip on Dolphins Private Jet Back in Spotlight in Wake of Ethics Questions (The New Times)

Notre Dame Professor Sues Student Newspaper for Covering Her Abortion Promotion

The G.O.P. Backed Him on Hunter Biden Claims. Now He Has Been Indicted. (N.Y. Times) And the NYT apparently sees nothing incongruous in this.

McCarthy summons GOP factions to counter threat of a new conservative rebellion (Politico)

In Its Next Term, the Supreme Court Could Claim More Power for Itself (The American Prospect) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

Supreme Court Independence Jeopardized by Leftist Fanatics

Nets Ignore Corruption from Obama SCOTUS Judge

Illinois Law Forces Landlords To Rent To Illegals Or Face Civil Rights Violations

NY Times Goes to Florida, Laments LGBTQ, NAACP Travel Warnings Ignored

MSNBC Mocks GOP for Investigating Hunter: ‘A Bunch of Morons’

Rees-Mogg Pushes Anti-Discrimination Law As UK Banks Are Accused Of Shutting Accounts Over Personal Views

Notre Dame Professor Sues Student Paper After They Exposed Her Pro-Abort Advocacy

MSNBC Mourns GOP ‘Defies Logic’ As They ‘Tarnish’ The FBI

RFK Jr.’s Campaign Gear not Made in US or by Unions  (NewsMax) The horror! (Bad look for a Democrat….)

WATCH: Jake Tapper Takes Shot at Mother of Hunter Biden’s Unacknowledged Child

NBC Bemoans Iowa Republicans Standing Up for Life, Fret ‘Battle Lines’ Being Drawn

CNN Comes to the DEFENSE of FBI Spying on Catholics in Virginia

Journalists Stop By Shelter To Inform Trafficked Children They Are A QAnon Conspiracy (Babylon Bee)

Eric Adams Blames Media for New Yorkers’ Worries About Crime

Manchin to Headline No Labels Event as Democrats Race to Stop Third-Party Bid

Horror Stories About LGBT Education Lead California Democrats To Support Crack Down…on Parents Telling the Stories

Can You Spot All The Instances Of Far-Right Fascism In This Picture Of Two Guys Lifting Weights? (Babylon Bee)

Scientists downplayed COVID lab leak theory for fear of ‘s–tshow’ if China was deemed responsible for releasing virus: panel (N.Y. Post) So ‘scientists’ let their political agenda affect what they told everybody. (Bias? What bias?) Guess they’re totally trustworthy.

Scientists at House hearing refute claims they were bribed and influenced to deny Covid-19 ‘lab leak’ theory (CNN) They did it for free.

GOP probes covid origin paper as authors protest ‘absurd’ allegations (Washington Post)

The EU finds fault in its Covid response (Politico)

Santa Clara University Students Must Take COVID Vaccines Or Withdraw

Lancet Paper On Post-Vax Autopsies Nuked After Attracting ‘Special Attention’: Dr. Peter McCullough

It Was Politics, All the Way Down

Uncovering COVID-19’s Origins: How Team Biden Is Stonewalling (The Foundry)

Germany Scraps 80 Million COVID Vaccines for Low Demand

Japanese Take Classes To Relearn How To Smile After Years of Masking

A ‘perfect storm’ is unfolding this summer and it’s ‘supercharging’ the weather, scientist says (CNN) A scientist! That proves it!

Climate change linked to increase in extreme weather events in US: “Likely to get worse” (Global News)

The “new abnormal”: The rise of extreme flooding, briefly explained (Vox) According to the Narrative.

Heavy rain to become more frequent with climate change, experts say: ‘We’re heading into a new normal’ (Boston Globe)

United CEO: Most carbon offset programs are ‘fraud’ (Politico)

Antarctic sea ice has been at record low levels for months — here’s what that means (CNBC) Because you’re to stupid to figure it out by yourself.

WMO: Antarctic ice levels reach record low (Reuters)

NOAA: Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches an Early Winter Record Low in June 2023 (Sierra Sun Times)

Antarctic ice levels see ‘massive decrease,’ global climate researcher says (CBC)

Extreme Heat Is Pushing The U.S. Toward A Grim New Fossil Fuel Milestone (Huffington Post)

US power use to slide in 2023 on slower economic growth (Reuters)

Environmentalists worry about buoys being installed in middle of Rio Grande (Border Report)

Boiling the Ocean (The Atlantic)

Hundreds Of Human Rights Violations Found In “Green” Mineral Supply Chains

Vermont Floods Show Limits of America’s Efforts to Adapt to Climate Change (N.Y. Times)

Watch: Virtue-Signalling Spanish Environmental Minister Bikes To Climate Conference With Escort Of Gas Cars

UAW to Biden: Where are those Good Paying Green Jobs?

Luxury Carbon Taxes: Dressing Up Wealth Redistribution in Green?

The Whale Killing Study the Feds are Afraid to Do

Geopolitics in a hotter world

In Phoenix, Heat Becomes a Brutal Test of Endurance (N.Y. Times) I guess we’ve moved from vanilla ‘climate change’ back to ‘global warming’.

WATCH: John Kerry Worries Bombing in Ukraine Will Release Greenhouse Gases You’ve got to admire his focus.

Climate Change Is Literally Changing the Ocean’s Color (Daily Beast) Good. The old one was boring.

Reality Check: No, we didn’t just have “the hottest week in 100,000 years”

Concerns over focus on skin colour in newborn checks (BBC)

Eliminating child support for Black fathers in CA will make more hurting single mothers and kids: Larry Elder (Fox)

California faces backlash as it weighs historic reparations for Black residents (The Guardian)

‘We’re going to wake up the world’: San Francisco’s bold reparations plan has a revolutionary spirit (S.F. Chronicle)

More Black Americans Support Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling Than Oppose It: Poll

Affirmative Action: The Left’s Only Answer is to Repay Injustice with Injustice.

With ‘Friends’ Like This …

Black Caucus Fights Judicial Nominations Process The ‘Congressional Black Caucus’ won’t let black Republicans join, so it’s actually the ‘Congressional Black Democrat Caucus’.

Biden Admin Opposes Provision Requiring Military Promotions Only Be On Merit (Not Gender, Or Race)

Iowa Republicans pass bill banning most abortions after about 6 weeks (NPR)

Iowa Republicans pass a new 6-week abortion ban (NBC News) Notice that it wasn’t the legislature that passed the ban; oh no, it was Republicans, as if Republicans were the only people who had anything to say about it.

Defund the police movement wrecks America’s third-largest city (Fox)

Exclusive: Razor wire along the Rio Grande is blocking border agents from reaching at-risk migrants (Houston Chronicle) The job of border agents is not to ‘reach at-risk migrants’, it’s to keep them out of the country, which razor wire does very effectively.

You Might Be Safer in Afghanistan Than in Nation’s Capital (The Foundry)

Idaho Sued for Making It Crime to Help Minors Get Abortions Minus Parents’ OK

Liberal Nonprofit Finds Solution to Portland’s Homeless Crisis: A Million Dollars for ‘Equity and Inclusion’  When in doubt, spend more other people’s money.

Parents Stunned by Woke Girl Scouts’ New ‘Culture Code’

Rise of the NIMBocrites

Sotomayor Busted Muscling Universities Into Buying Her Books

Legacy Media Gasps As Spain’s Elections Tilt ‘Far-Right’

Ex-Twitter Exec Promoted GDI to DHS Subcommittee (NewsMax)

S.F.’s Anchor Brewing is shutting down after 127 years (S.F. Chronicle) Blue state blues.

California Democrats Block Bill To Lock Up Repeat Child Sex Traffickers: Prison Is Not the Answer

Major League Baseball Has Turned Its Back on America’s Pastime

Seattle Public Schools to Offer ‘Gender Affirming Care’

The Foundry.

Republicans can only imagine what it would feel like to win four national elections in a row—wielding executive and legislative power for more than a dozen years.

Franklin Roosevelt, who died early in his fourth presidential term, had that kind of tenure. He used it to build the modern welfare state.

What could conservatives accomplish with an opportunity like that?

The answer from across the Atlantic is: not much, if Republicans make the mistakes Britain’s Conservative Party has made since 2010.

Britain’s ‘Conservative’ party isn’t, really, any more.

The Spectator.

Never trust a scholar of Sesame Street to know her legal terminology. Tamara Kay, a sociology professor at Notre Dame who studies the TV show’s cultural transfusion around the world, is suing conservative student publication the Rover for its coverage of her abortion activism.

Kay claims that two of its articles contained “defamatory and false statements.” The only trouble is that the Rover seems to be able to prove that what it published about Kay is true — and the paper has the receipts. Alas, another case of the decline of the American intellectual?

The feud between the two began in 2022 when the Rover published an article on Kay’s comments at an abortion panel. After the event, Rover editor-in-chief Joe DeReuil interviewed Kay with a recorder, an exchange which Kay denied happened after the article was published. Kay later told New York magazine’s the Cut that DeReuil did in fact introduce himself and ask her questions though “he did not say he was interviewing me.” But DeReuil sent National Review a recording of his conversation in which he identifies himself as the editor of the Rover before asking her questions.

The Spectator.

One of the first things my fiancé and I did after purchasing our first home was install a security system. This included a Ring-style doorbell camera that alerts us when people approach our front door and automatically starts recording video and audio. The resulting clips are saved in a mobile app and can be exported with ease.

Imagine my surprise when I learned this week that wanting to monitor my home is racist!

I had a Ring but changed to another brand because Ring proved to be undependable and easily hacked. But a security system is a good idea … even though waaaaaaacist.

The Foundry.

Media outlets on the Left constantly berate pro-lifers and accuse them of forgetting about children after they’re born.

They push false narratives that the pro-life movement wants to deprive women of opportunities and prevent children from obtaining a safe and fair upbringing.

In actuality, pro-lifers have a long history of assisting women and families with options, materials, and a hopeful message that supports their lives.

Concretely, pro-life states across the country have spent the first six months of 2023 enacting a wide array of measures to support mothers and their children, especially in the post-Roe v. Wade era.

The Spectator.

Signs announcing roadside picnic tables once peppered America’s secondary roads and highways. Or so we call those byways now. Before the limited-access interstate system arrived in the 1960s, these roads were primary. America then was laced with a tangle of serviceable two-lane, hard-surfaced highways. Look at an old oil-company roadmap, if you can find one, to get the idea. Some roads were federal, some state, but all were emphatically open-access: get on anywhere, pull over wherever you like. They led through cities and towns, not around them; they traversed the countryside more than they cut through it. They required two-hands-on-the-wheel alertness in drivers, who got to know and respect the lay of the landscape.

“Roadside Table One Mile” signs invited you to pull over, switch off the ignition, stretch your legs, uncork that thermos of coffee and have lunch. They were as common, and as eagerly watched-for, as the standardized signage that guides us to branded “services” along the interstates today: “Food Next Exit / McDonalds, Burger King, Cracker Barrel.” Oh boy.

ZMan peeks behind the curtain.

One reason popular politics looks like a carnival is that we can measure popularity through polling and voting. If fifty percent plus one think candidate X is best, then he is the best, even if he is a brain damaged hobo. This is why political actors degrade themselves for attention. The math of politics says that X percentage of people who notice you will agree with you, so the goal is to always increase the number of people who take notice of you. That is the math of the circus.

The best part of being retired is not having to go to meetings.

Florida is now America’s inflation hotspot (CNN)

How AI will turbocharge misinformation — and what we can do about it (Axios)

CNN Claims Media Isn’t Anti-DeSantis, Ignore Screaming Biden Story

‘Not what it was’: House Freedom Caucus wrestles with its future amid split over tactics and Trump (CNN)

Clarence Thomas’ ethics mess goes from bad to worse (MSNBC)

Fox News Goes Cold on MAGA Youth Org TPUSA (Daily Beast)

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville Unsure if White Nationalists Are Racist (Daily Beast) Would that we could all read minds as well as lefty ‘journalists’. Too bad none of them know the difference between ‘if’ and ‘whether’.

MSNBC Calls ‘Mini Fascist’ DeSantis a ‘Leaner, Meaner Donald Trump’

‘Woke or KKK’: NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Antiracism’ Workshop for Public School Parents

Mar-a-Lago Jury Selection Will Be a MAGA Country Minefield (Daily Beast) MAGA is the New Nigger.

The Ever-Expanding Definition of Trauma

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books (Associated Press)

Now Waaaaaaiiiit a Minute! Presidential Candidates Keep Stumping At the Animal House Frat. (Politico)

The rot in the federal judiciary goes deeper than the Supreme Court (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin loses her shit. (She’s right, although not for the reason she thinks.)

Tommy Tuberville Is Either Extremely Dumb or Extremely Racist (Rolling Stone) And there you have the Narrative in its essence.

Are you fit? You are a fascist! (Hot Air)

NYU Hosts Whites-Only ‘Anti-Racism’ Workshop

No Labels Donor Has Financial Ties to Jared Kushner (The New Republic) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

How DeSantis’s own lawyers accidentally exposed his anti-woke deceit (Washington Post) Greg Sargent, taking a page from the playbook of his mentor Jennifer Rubin, loses his shit.

Steele: Scott Not Smearing America As Racist To Win ‘White Male Vote’  Steele has long since discovered that being a Democrat houseboy pays better than being a conservative black Republican.

EP Coalition Goes After Conservative Countries in Mediterranean Migration Dispute

Excluded for the Crime of Whiteness

Anti-Free Speech WaPo Cries for More Election Censorship

Republican women learn the hard way: Complicity will not protect you (Salon)

Disinformation! MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Ben Collins Deny Any Big Tech Censorship

Musk, Rogan Mock MSNBC Writer’s ‘Far Right’ Exercise Claim

MSNBC’s ‘Fitness=Fascism’ Article Resurfaces As Rogan And Musk Tweet It Out

Tommy Tuberville triples down on claim that white nationalists are unfairly labeled racist (ABC News)

‘We Got It Wrong’; Insider Caught Peddling FAKE NEWS About Florida’s Population

Instagram Suspends Tiny Parents’ Rights Account Amid Bid for ‘Friendly’ Social Media Dominance

Abortion, LGBTQ and race: McCarthy confronts far-right demands on Pentagon policy bill (Politico) For Politico, there is no right but the far-right.

Obese Man Explains To Doctor He’s Just Fighting Far-Right Extremism (Babylon Bee)

New Hampshire Democrat Likens Parental Rights Group to Taliban

Montana GOP Senate candidate’s old Facebook includes lewd photos of women, racist costumes, and homoerotic jokes (Insider) Kind of like Hunter’s laptop.

dsArizona’s GOP Went All-In on Trump’s Big Lie—Now It’s Broke (Daily Beast)

Trump’s “Done Nothing But Sucker” Supporters to Pay Bills: Ex-GOP Staffer (Newsweek)

Arizona Republican Party may be close to broke. But it has a larger problem (Arizona Republic)

Trump co-conspirator seeks delay in Mar-a-Lago documents case (The Hill)

Under oath, John Kelly raises serious allegations against Trump (MSNBC)

There’s Good News and Bad News for Trump in a New Survey (Politico)

Trump Lawyers Seek Indefinite Postponement of Documents Trial (N.Y. Times)

Trump’s GOP rivals struggling as they try hodgepodge of attacks on him (Washington Post)

Grand jury to be chosen ahead of potential Georgia Trump indictment (CBS News)

Unprecedented ocean temperatures “much higher than anything the models predicted,” climate experts warn (CBS News) I guess their ‘models’ aren’t worth shit, then.

As Texas Cranks Up the AC, Congested Transmission Lines Cause Renewable Power to Go to Waste (Inside Climate Narrative News)

Preliminary data shows hottest week on record. Unprecedented sea surface temperatures and Antarctic sea ice loss (World Meteorological Organization)

Florida ocean temperatures at ‘downright shocking’ levels (Washington Post)

Climate Disasters Daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal.’ (N.Y. Times)

White House to invest $5M to manage extreme heat across US (The Hill) And that totally ought to fix it, right?

More Nauseating Climate Grief from the Guardian

PBS Hosts Apocalyptic Climate Author: Extreme Heat May Cause Another Pandemic!

Extreme Weather Attribution or Just Sharpshooting in Texas?

Unsold electric cars are piling up on dealer lots (Axios) All our cars must be electric! (You first.)

Think tank leader who claims to have given FBI info on Hunter Biden charged by Justice Department (The Hill) No good deed goes unpunished.

DOJ indicts missing man who claims to have provided FBI with info on Biden family’s China business dealings (Fox)

US think tank founder charged with acting as Chinese agent (BBC)

US-Israeli analyst charged in New York with being covert China agent, arms dealing (Times of Israel)

Bidens Do the Crimes, but Not the Time

Watch: Biden Can Barely Walk As He Holds On To King Charles III

Biden Seeks To End Cheaper Obamacare Alternatives, Expect Another Supreme Court Smackdown

Networks Ignore Axios Report of Biden Screaming & Cursing at Staff

Dana Bash Struggles on Damage Control for Biden Grandkids Scandal

Prosecutor Rebuts I.R.S. Official’s Account of Request in Hunter Biden Case (N.Y. Times)

Biden Closing Gaps in Trump Border Wall

Biden’s Unpopularity Is More Mysterious Than It Looks (New York Magazine) It’s not mysterious at all. It’s perfectly reasonable.

Report: Biden Needed ‘Cue Cards’ for Meeting With British PM

Foreign Interference? FBI Colluded with Ukrainian Intelligence Agency to Censor Americans

Rep. Jordan Pushing for New FBI HQ in Alabama

Social Media Censorship BACKFIRES: Biden Admin Flags Itself, Pro-Ukraine Accounts as Russian Disinformation, Docs Reveal

Whistleblowers Reportedly Say FBI Ignored Orders in Free Speech Ruling

6 Michigan Congressmen Join Trump’s Leadership Team

Joy Behar Gets ‘Turned On’ By Angry Joe Biden Screaming at White House Staff My, what a surprise.

Texas Rolls Out Giant Nets To Stop Migrants Crossing Rio Grande  Doing the jobs that Democrats won’t do.

Toyota Calls Biden’s EPA Plan To Boost EV Sales “Unrealistic”

Hunter Biden’s Chinese Partners Recruited Ex-CIA Director to do Beijing’s Bidding

White House Fights to Strip Tough-On-China Provisions From Annual Defense Spending Bill

Joe Biden Is an Asshole (National Review) Charles C. W. Cook says the quiet part out loud.

ESTABLISHING INFLUENCE: Alex Soros Met with Biden Officials 20 Times  If you control an amount of money with three commas in it, nobody refuses to see you.

UN Report Castigates Religion for Stymieing the Sexual Orientation-Gender Identity Agenda

San Francisco’s Honduran Drug Dealers Are Building Mansions Back Home: Report

Irrelevant, Mistake-Prone Liberal Justice Is Supreme Court’s ‘Voice,’ Media Say

The Smiling Face Of Censorship: Welcome To Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness”

Vanlords – A New Form Of Urban Encampment

Nearly 40% of students at Brown University identify as LGBTQ+ — doubling what it was in 2010 (N.Y. Post) Whose turn is it to be the victim?

The New Dark Ages? Draft New Zealand High School Curriculum Drops Mentions of Hard Science

Americans’ Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply (Gallup)

Where Is Everyone? Disney World “Just About Empty”

Sotomayor Uses Supreme Court Staff To Hawk Her Books  Who is surprised by this?

NYC Cancels Free Bus Rides For Arriving Migrants

Tennessee Law Banning ‘Gender Transition’ of Minors Sees Initial Win in Federal Court

It’s a Man’s World: Trans Former Violent Prisoner Threatens ‘TERFs’ While Waving Antifa Flag

Texas A&M recruited a UT professor to revive its journalism program, then watered down the offer after “DEI hysteria” (Texas Tribune) The TT is the local fringe lefty ‘news’ org for Austin. The professor in question was an affirmative-action hire and the TT got butt-hurt because Texas is fixing that sort of thing.

Cycling Competition Creates Third Category for ‘Transgender’ Athletes

The Global Immigration Backlash (N.Y. Times)

Transgender-Identifying Man Beats Out Women to Win Netherlands’ Miss Universe Pageant

Megan Rapinoe blames Dave Chappelle for ‘violence’ against trans people (N.Y. Post)

Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-For-All Would Destroy America’s Health-Care

Reckoning With the Marxists of Black Lives Matter 10 Years Later

Judge Tosses Reparations Lawsuit Stemming From Tulsa Riots

Georgia Democrat defects to GOP after she says Dems ‘crucified’ and ‘abandoned’ her (Fox)

Read it.

There’s a debate raging over who’s responsible for the surge in homicides and violent crime across the country. California Gov. Gavin Newsom blames Republicans, saying that “8 of the top murder states are red.” Left-leaning think tank Third Way claims it’s “red” state-level leadership and policies that are responsible for the nation’s homicide problem. And Politico’s recent analysis on gun violence claims the problem is most acute in places “where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.”

The problem with those arguments is that local governments, and not states, are overwhelmingly responsible for managing crime. Yes, state officials set criminal penalties and some broader parameters, but it’s mayors who control police and policing, local prosecutors who decide what to prosecute, and district/county judges who determine who to sentence.

State-level gun laws are often cited as the key factor explaining murder rates, but gun-friendly Maine, Idaho, Utah, Iowa have some of the nation’s lowest homicide rates, according to most-recent CDC data. Then there are states like Illinois, Maryland and Delaware that have strict gun laws and yet have relatively high homicide rates. Illinois often complains that the permissive gun laws of its neighboring states are to blame, but that doesn’t explain why its neighbors have much lower homicide rates.

The answer is that it’s not a red vs. blue state debate, but rather a red vs. blue city one. And when you look at America’s homicide hotspots, the vast majority are run by blue leadership and they have been for decades. The evidence is overwhelming.

Read it.

If you’re taking vacations in your former home country, how much of a ‘refugee’ can you be?

The American Mind.

As a sample of his engaging new book, War on the American Republic (WAR), Kevin Slack has laid out an energizing roadmap for the New Right. A recovery of Western Christianity and its concomitant worldview as the foundation for American civilization and the means of “moral aggression”; a reinvigoration of republican virtue; true citizenship as the antidote to corrupt national bureaucracy; and “genuine nationalism” over and against “false patriotism and tribalism.” All this is most welcome. Slack rightly indicts the over-intellectualized conservatism of yesteryear for its inattentiveness to action, its penchant for in-house theory—endless academic programs, conferences, and panels to no end—and effeminate aversion to conflict. WAR deserves three cheers for its masculine, overtly Christian, and unapologetically American mood, not to mention its fiery prose. Slack isn’t squeamish about asserting nationalist economic policy or protectionist immigration restrictions.

Like many New Right commentators, Slack is best at issue spotting. That is, he is a peerless critic of the conservative malaise, and amoral progressive insanity, that is the impetus for the nascent New Right. This is no less true of Slack’s jabs at the conservative legal movement (CLM), always dominated by libertarians, and to which so much intellectual capital has been expended over the past several decades with negligible returns.

Given the illegitimacy of our current “kleptocracy” amidst a “managed national decline,” Slack is right to note the increasingly farcical nature of “legal appeals to the Constitution and precedent.” Originalism and “judicial engagement” as dueling jurisprudential theories have produced not-so-dueling results, viz., simultaneously bloated bureaucracy and a web of regulatory exemptions that empower predatory, unaccountable corporate monopolies. Hence, kleptocracy.

The Antiplanner.

Like San Francisco BART, the DC Metro rail system is facing a fiscal cliff, with a $750 million projected shortfall in operating funds in 2025. So why is the agency considering spending tens of billions of dollars on a new rail extension that will increase annual operating costs by $200 million?

Like BART, DC’s rail system historically has covered a high percentage of its operating costs with fares. Though that has declined from 68 percent in 2011 to 48 percent in 2019, the agency was still more vulnerable to ridership declines than agencies such as San Jose’s VTA, which before the pandemic covered less than 10 percent of its operating costs out of fares.