Read it.

Israeli security forces on Friday killed two Palestinians who carried out a shooting attack against police this week, Israel’s military said.

Israeli forces raided the occupied West Bank town of Nablus, the military said, and “both terrorists were killed following an exchange of fire.”

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Israeli troops had cordoned off a house where the two had holed up and that they had been “executed”.

The armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a major faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed the two men as members and said they had carried out the attack on Israeli police.

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

Read it.

The recent controversy surrounding Ben & Jerry’s and its calls to reclaim “stolen Indigenous land” is heating up.

An Indigenous tribe, descended from the Native American nation, originally controlled the Vermont territory where the ice cream giant’s headquarters is located, and its chief wants it back, Newsweek reported Friday.

According to the report, Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation — one of four descended from the Abenaki that are recognized in Vermont — said his tribe was “always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands.”

Ben & Jerry’s has yet to reach out.

Proglodytes have absolutely no capacity for thinking things through. And these guys are supposed to be the smart ones? I think not.

Read it.

Lots of people are arguing about whether college is good, or whether it should be the default, or whether it should look different than it looks now, or whether it’s even a worthwhile institution in the first place. This is no doubt a worthy and important line of inquiry, and yet I am sometimes tempted to bonk such people in the face with the juicy, swollen, succulent, painfully ripe fruit hanging much lower right in front of them: high school.

As a bare minimum, high school is supposed to give kids somewhere to go while their parents are at work and keep them from ending up pregnant, in jail, or dead. Unlike college, which trades off against starting your career immediately, you have to go to high school (or the homeschool equivalent) regardless. And by the time you’re in your mid-teens, you’re probably as smart as you’re going to be – not as worldly or wise as you will be later, but the raw brainpower is mostly there. So you’ve got a four-year chunk during which you’re smart enough to learn anything a novice adult version of you could; don’t have to support yourself with a salary; and have access to a space with lots of peers and shared materials for free. This is absolutely tantalizing, and yet the default model of high school is something we sleepwalked into and thus are utterly wasting.

The thing we’ve landed on, at least in richer areas, is for high school to be used for getting most of its students into college and a few of them into elite colleges, which means teaching them enough to get high standardized test scores and offering them a wide slate of organized activities that they can join and then list on their applications. But if high school is supposed to prepare you for college, and college is supposed to prepare you for the real world, then it’s suspicious that high school looks so little like the real world. So at least one of three things is true: high school isn’t doing a good job of preparing you to get admitted to college; or college admissions officers aren’t doing a good job of picking students who will succeed in college; or college isn’t doing a good job of setting you up to succeed in real life. Regardless of which it is, the best strategy to set yourself on the path toward a successful, happy life as a teenager is to spend your high school years directly trying to create such a life. If this prepares you for college, great; if it doesn’t, then there’s probably something wrong with college.

New York Times.

We might assume that legacy admissions help privileged students at the expense of underprivileged ones. But I would wager that legacy students, if eliminated, are far more likely to be replaced by other kinds of privileged students than by underprivileged ones. And in ways that are far less obvious, legacy students, with their deep social and cultural connections, are part of the reason less advantaged students get so much out of elite schools.

…

Start by asking yourself what students get out of elite schools. I would like to believe that the most important benefit of these colleges is the exceptional knowledge that professors can deliver in the classroom. But if elite schools delivered special intellectual growth and professional training — what social scientists call human capital — privileged students would benefit greatly from them. And there’s no good evidence that they do.

Instead, other forms of capital play a bigger role: symbolic capital (the value of being associated with prestigious institutions), social capital (the value of your network) and cultural capital (the value of exposure to high-status practices and mores). Graduating from an elite school pays off on all three counts: It affiliates you with an illustrious organization, offers you connections to people with friends in high places and acculturates you in the conventions and etiquettes of high-status settings.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

As I race toward decrepitude, my interaction with the healthcare system will increase, thus raising my awareness of its many faults. At this point, I am lucky to only have to see the doctor once a year for a physical. I have had occasional injuries in the past, but none of those required more than a single visit. Even so, the lunacy of the healthcare system is obvious even at this stage of my life.

The thing about the system is that it works to the interest of everyone except the patients, but we insist on calling it private healthcare. There is nothing private about it as every aspect is controlled by corporate interests, which both advance and direct government interests in the system. If you want to understand fascist economics, spend some time in the American healthcare system.

Something I did not mention in the show is that a sizable chunk of what passes for healthcare is either unnecessary or not healthcare. The legions of bureaucrats and functionaries that serve only the interest of the system are a great example of Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy. The system is an upside-down pyramid with the doctors and nurses at the bottom.

The Spectator.

A specter is haunting Europe. In France, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and even Switzerland, the rule of law is being challenged by the rule of gangs. Disaffected young people cut off from society feel nothing but nihilistic contempt for it. Higher temperatures and social media are creating a heated summer. Judging from recent events in Paris and Stockholm, this year could be the worst so far.

The rise of gang violence is associated with immigration. Europe has shown itself incapable or unwilling to control the influx of migrants, some of them genuine asylum seekers, others simply opportunists. Nor have European politicians succeeded in dealing with the problems created by immigration, despite spending billions on social projects. A European summit on immigration in Brussels last week ended without even a joint declaration. Emmanuel Macron was unable to attend. He was preoccupied with riots across France, following the fatal police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a seventeen-year-old boy, in suburban Paris.

The European Commission, deaf to the concerns of voters, has responded to the de facto collapse of the EU’s frontiers by demanding that countries such as Poland, which has largely closed its borders to refugees and is not troubled by the problem of migrant gangs, be fined €20,000 ($21,700) for each person refused.

L. A. Times.

Doing the jobs that Americans won’t get a chance to do.

Country’s Largest Grid Operator Must Process and Connect Backlogged Clean Energy Projects, a New Report Says (Inside Climate News)

83,000 Hawaii homes dispose of sewage in cesspools. Rising sea levels will make them more of a mess (Associated Press)

El Niño plus climate change means record-breaking heat (NPR)

Wind Industry Blackmails UK Demanding Huge Ramp-Up Of Subsidies

New Month, Another Movement: Corporate Media Refocuses Energy On Climate Doom

Why a sudden surge of broken heat records is scaring scientists (Washington Post) Which ‘scientists’?

The Folly of Wind

The Arctic Is Farting ‘Ancient’ Methane and It’s Scary as Hell (Rolling Stone) Eco-Nazis have this obsession with farts….

The world needs hundreds of thousands more offshore wind turbines – where will they all go?

Heat Records Fall Around the Globe as Earth Warms, Fast (N.Y. Times) Still waiting for ‘rising sea levels’ to flood the New York subways. That would be entertaining.

Bloomberg Columnist Hypes $200 Trillion Climate Change Scam as ‘Bargain’

SMH: “[AU] $300 trillion is needed to stop global warming, and that’s a bargain”

Philadelphia shooting suspect isn’t trans, officials say, but speculation continues (NBC News)

The Craziest Recommendations from California’s Reparations Task Force

Inside Barbados’ Historic Push for Slavery Reparations (TIME) Does that mean we Irish get reparations for the Potato Famine?

Why Is Biden’s FTC ‘Helping China Win The Tech Race’?

‘Missing’ Biden corruption case witness Dr. Gal Luft details allegations against president’s family in extraordinary video (N.Y. Post)

WATCH: White House Declines To Acknowledge Biden’s 7th Grandchild: ‘I Don’t Have Anything to Share’

White House Won’t Call for Prosecution of Whoever Left Cocaine in West Wing

Biden’s Plan B on student loan forgiveness relies on Higher Education Act: What to know (ABC News) According to the Narrative.

‘Something Just Snapped’: Consumers Panic Search “Pawn Shop Near Me”

Bypassing Biden: Democrats Think of What Could Have Been (Politico)

Does She Even Try? KJP Plays Clueless to Reporters on Questions About WH Cocaine

Cocaine found in the White House was in a different location than previously reported, sources say (NBC News) My, what a surprise.

Biden’s disgraceful nomination of Elliott Abrams (Responsible Statecraft)

Judge brands Biden’s Covid social media crackdown ‘Orwellian’

DC Police Say They May Never Discover Who Left Bag Of Cocaine Labeled ‘Property Of H. Biden’ At White House (Babylon Bee)

Biden Loses Another Contest with His Teleprompter

New details of Trump Mar-a-Lago search warrant request unsealed (Washington Post)

Trump wanted his own personal mercenary army like Putin’s Wagner force: Ex-Homeland Security aide (Raw Story) Speaking of conspiracy theories….

Lawyer who advanced Trump’s stolen election claims announces retirement (NBC News) Bias? What bias?

Trump Begins to Sour on ‘Spotlight Hound’ Kari Lake for VP (Daily Beast) And they know this how? (They don’t. They’re just making shit up.)

The evidence mounts: Hispanic voters are drifting toward the GOP (Washington Post)

When is a high school debate not a debate?

Yes, Trump is getting more reckless on social media (Washington Post) The witch-hunt continues apace.

CDC gives guidance for trans people ‘chestfeeding’ kids, accused of failing to consider possible health risks (Fox)

Bill Ackman explains why he embraced RFK Jr.’s skepticism on Covid vaccines (CNBC)

Wall Street Investor Bill Ackman Says RFK Jr. Is Asking “Important Questions” About COVID Vaccines

EU Signs Contract for Pandemic Vaccine Production 

The banality of occupation: How sewage and imports drive West Bank conflict (Times of Israel)

Jenin: Palestinians fear escalation after destructive West Bank assault (BBC)

Israel ended a huge military operation in Jenin. Here’s what you need to know (CNN) According to the Narrative.

Violence in Jenin foreshadows the next phase in an endless conflict (Washington Post) David Ignatius refuses to accept that all this violence is initiated by ‘Palestinians’.

What a landmark new study on homelessness tells us (VOX) According to the Narrative.

LA Restaurant Adds 4 Percent Staff Health Insurance Charge

New Book Details Government Unions Using Taxpayer Dollars to Push Radical Ideology on the Nation

British corporation demands that Americans return land to Indigenous Americans (Hot Air)

Speaking Truth to Powder: CNN Laughs About White House Cocaine

Politico Helpfully Preparing the Public: ‘White House Cocaine Culprit Unlikely To Be Found’

Nets Continue Ignoring Hunter’s Possible Role in WH Cocaine Discovery

Congratulations To Washington State For Topping California On Nation’s Highest Gasoline Prices

Ban On Recording Without Consent Is Unconstitutional, US Court Rules

Meta will nuke your Instagram account if you delete Threads profile

Meta Launches Data-Harvesting Twitter Clone, Immediately Starts Censoring

Maryland Republican Dan Cox Says Someone Committed Fraud By Filing Election Paperwork In His Name

Disinformation Researchers Fret About Fallout From Judge’s Order (N.Y. Times)

The Hidden Side Of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Driving Transgender Mental Health Problems And Suicide

Hong Kong slashes number of directly elected council seats (Reuters)

UN “Pact For The Future” Seeks Permanent Emergency Powers For “Complex Global Shocks”

America’s Largest Teachers Union Recommends Sexually Explicit Book For Educators

‘Missing’ Eyewitness in Biden Family Scandal Comes Forward, Nets Yet to Report

CDC Backs ‘Chestfeeding,’ Accused of Ignoring Risk to Infants

Unilever Loses $2.5B Over Calls to Boycott Ben & Jerry’s

Uber, DoorDash Sue NYC Over Minimum Wage Law

Eric Adams’s Fallen Cop Photo Is a Fake

United Methodists Lose One-Fifth of US Congregations Over LGBTQ Issues

The trans proliferation – Part II: What’s the rationale for transgender medical treatment and surgery for minors?

‘CBS Mornings’ Downgrades Women to ‘Menstruators,’ Period Products Should Be ‘Gender-Inclusive’

Massachusetts Senator Says Sex Change Treatments for Minors Are a ‘Human Right’

Virginia County Sees 40% Surge in Shoplifting Under Soros Prosecutor

BlackRock Confirms ESG On Hold Until They Can Come Up With Another Name For It That Nobody Knows About (Babylon Bee)

This Barbie is a ‘Transgender’ Woman: New Movie Gone Woke

North Carolina Governor, a Democrat, Vetoes Bill That Would Protect Women’s Sports From Biological Men

Pennsylvania Governor Drops School Choice Agenda Under Pressure From Teachers’ Unions

Mothers Swing at CDC for Equating Male Nipple Secretions to Breast Milk

Critics Have Scoop for Ben & Jerry’s: US Not Built on ‘Stolen’ Land

‘ATTACK ON PARENTS’: Ohio Abortion Amendment Clears Hurdle as Critics Warn of Trans Ramifications

CNN’s Blackwell Presses Teamsters on Striking Despite Top Dollar Pay

Philly Dem Mayor: US ‘Needs to Reexamine Its Conscience’ (NewsMax) No, Democrats need to quit blaming guns and start blaming shooters.

Prosecutors Face Conspiracy Theories in Jan. 6 Trial (N.Y. Times)

Morning Joe Goes on ‘Disinformation’ Power Trip, Touts Censorship

Rainbow Mafia Calls for Big Tech to Censor So-Called Disinfo and Hate Speech

MAGA Lawyer Lin Wood Calls It Quits Rather Than Face Disbarment (Daily Beast) MAGA is the New Nigger.

Republicans Target Minority Scholarships After Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling (Rolling Stone) Proglodytes astonished that Republicans target racist preferential scholarships.

Australian minister calls Donald Trump Jr a ‘big baby’ over canceled tour (Reuters)

New York Times Hypes ‘Far-Right,’ ‘Arch-Conservative, ‘Ultraconservative’ House GOP

Watchdog Group Warns Universities Of Lawsuits If They Fail To Observe Supreme Court Affirmative Action Rulings

My Deeply Unsettling Return to the Moms for Liberty Conference (Mother Jones) I’m shocked, shocked that a writer for Mother Jones would find Moms For Liberty Conference deeply unsettling.

Democrats eyeing suburban women to launch new gun control effort (The Hill)

PROJECTION: Reid Mourns SCOTUS No Longer Has ‘Capacity To Surprise’

5 Noteworthy Falsehoods Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Promoted (N.Y. Times) The witch-hunt continues.

Burgum Educates Mitchell On Supreme Court, Religious Freedom

The GOP primary electorate tilts older, whiter and ‘very’ conservative — and it’s changed since 2016 (NBC News)

Target Rejects Levin’s ‘The Democrat Party Hates America’

Two former employees accuse Florida Rep. Fabian Basabe of sexual harassment (Miami Herald) He’s a Republican, of course. The witch-hunt continues….

Freedom Caucus member says Marjorie Taylor Greene has been expelled from the group (Raw Story)

Marjorie Taylor Greene is no longer a member of the Freedom Caucus after a vote last month, according to one member of the conservative group’s board. (Politico) I’m sure she cries herself to sleep every night.

Rep. Greene: Ban Illegal Immigrants From Voting in D.C.  Sounds reasonable to me.

Earth’s average temperature matches record high set a day earlier (Associated Press)

Read it.

If you had to estimate the dimensions of a room without the benefit of a tape measure, you might walk its perimeter heel to toe, counting your steps. To estimate the height of a wall, you might count hand spans from floor to ceiling. In doing so, you’d join a long human tradition. Most human societies around the word—perhaps all—have employed similar body-based measurement strategies, according to a first-of-its-kind study published today in Science. And these informal body-based systems can persist for centuries after a culture has introduced standardized units of measure because, the authors argue, they often lead to more ergonomic designs of tools, clothing, and other personalized items.

 

The American Mind.

The former Yale psychiatry professor Bandy X. Lee spent the four years of the Trump presidency trying to convince Congress to remove him from office on mental health grounds. She was not the only shrink advocating the president’s removal, whether via special congressional committee or the invocation of the 25th Amendment (which removes power from the president if he is unable to perform his duties). But she was far and away the most prominent. She convened a notorious Yale conference on the presidential wits in early 2017 that resulted in a diagnostic book of that year called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Having failed to convince elected leaders to enact her agenda through, as she called it, “the [Mueller] special counsel’s report, impeachment, or the 25th Amendment,” she told the Mark Levin Show in 2019 “my last resort is to be a service to the public.” That meant launching a campaign to remove President Trump via the administrative declaration of a public health emergency that would suspend democratic rights nationwide due to what she called a “Trump mental health pandemic.” Although she rejoiced that “the healthy part of the population” won the 2020 election, making the emergency declaration unnecessary, the reprieve was temporary. It was urgent, she said, that Congress enact special measures to prevent anyone of Trump’s ilk from gaining office again given that half of the national electorate was, in her view, unfit to vote.

On June 20, Lee lost her appeal in federal court against a lower court ruling that upheld Yale’s decision of 2020 not to renew her courtesy appointment as a clinical professor. The reasons for the Yale decision are both technical and substantive. Lee was not a regular faculty member, so she could not appeal to academic freedom or even full-time employment protections. She had become a nuisance at Yale because of her repeated violations of the basic rule of psychiatry, namely that one should examine a “patient” before delivering a diagnosis, even if they are a public figure.

Read it.

It wasn’t President Macron who brought six days of rioting in France to an end, nor the brave bands of mothers who called for calm in some of the inner-city estates. It wasn’t even the presence of 45,000 police and gendarmes on the streets that persuaded the rioters, arsonists, vandals and looters to stand down. Instead, it seems that it was the drug gangs who decided enough is enough. Having so many boys in blue patrolling the streets was bad for business and so gang leaders exerted their influence and ordered the young hoodlums back to their bedrooms.

That, at least, was the news broken to Macron at the start of this week when he dropped by a police station in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. Pressing the flesh with his worn-out police officers, Macron asked: “But these kids, who do they listen to?” Back came the response: “The dealers, Monsieur le President.”

It was a brutal reality check for the president of the Republic — and an embarrassing one given that it was widely picked up the French press.

ZMan peeks behind the curtain.

On July 4th, a Federal judge in Louisiana issued an injunction against the Federal government barring various departments from contacting social media companies with regards to censoring speech online. This is a practice that started in the Trump years but took off under the Biden administration. On a daily basis government actors contact the censors at these companies and tell them which posts to remove, users to ban and topics that are to be suppressed that day.

In the Trump years, this practice consisted mostly of government officials calling to complain about things that were obviously fake about the White House. Given the lunacy of the people running these companies, the complaints were ignored, but the complaints from fellow partisans were not ignored. A working relationship between the censors and the FBI, DHS and other agencies evolved. Under Biden it is one click away from being enshrined in government regulation.

Most people alive today remember when the media proudly refused to cooperate with the government on this stuff. They would make a big deal about not going along with government requests to suppress stories. It was all a lie, of course, but they felt the need to make a big show of it. The secret police had long ago infiltrated the major media companies to shape the news. Operation Shamrock and Operation Mockingbird we both used to control the media.

USA Today.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a former public school educator, used his broad authority this week to sign into law a new state budget that increases funding for public schools ? for the next four centuries.

Wisconsin governors have expansive partial veto power, and Evers got creative with his use of it in this budget. He crafted the four-century school aid extension by striking a hyphen and a “20” from a reference to the 2024-25 school year. The increase of $325 per student is the highest single-year increase in revenue limits in state history.

The surprise move will ensure districts’ state-imposed limits on how much revenue they are allowed to raise will be increased by $325 per student each year until 2425, creating a permanent annual stream of new revenue for public schools and potentially curbing a key debate between Democrats and Republicans during each state budget-writing cycle.

Evers told reporters at a press conference in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Wednesday his action would “provide school districts with predictable long-term increases for the foreseeable future.”

This is why Democrats can’t be trusted with the reins of government.

Yusef Salaam Is Declared Winner of Harlem City Council Race (N.Y. Times) Ironic now many black people adopt Muslim-sounding names, considering the huge role Muslims played in the African slavery business.

Biden’s hydrogen bombshell leaves Europe in the dust (Politico)

Monday was hottest day for global average temperature on record, as climate crisis bites (The Economist)

Monday Hottest Day in Recorded History, for Now  According to the Narrative.

Revealed: UK plans to drop flagship £11.6bn climate pledge (The Guardian)

Climate change: World’s hottest day since records began (BBC)

Earth Keeps Breaking Temperature Records Due to Global Warming (Bloomberg)

This July 4 was hot. Earth’s hottest day on record, in fact. (Washington Post) I don’t believe that.

University of Warwick Pushes Climate Coercion to Kill Gas Heaters

Tuesday set an unofficial record for the hottest day on Earth. Wednesday may break it. (Associated Press)

The planet saw its hottest day ever this week. The record will be broken again and again (CNN) The Narrative is strong in this one.

Judge Blocks “Egregious” Biden Officials, Academic Watchdogs From Manipulating Social Media Narratives

Bidenomics: Big Government, Industrial Policy And Centralized Control

Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.

Former GOP congressman and Jan. 6 select committee adviser Denver Riggleman now working with Hunter Biden (CBS News)

Suddenly, Hunter Biden’s ‘Love Child’ Is Front-Page News

Joe Biden Wants to Ban ALL Your Home Appliances

The Biden Administration Begins Student Debt Relief Plan B (The American Prospect)

Watch: Biden Wanders Around Lost, Slurs Through July 4 Speech

Biden’s DOJ Is Pressuring Journalists to Help Build Its Case Against Assange (Rolling Stone)

Karine Jean-Pierre Has Answered Exactly One Question About Hunter Biden All Year

Hidin’ The Biden: White House Aides Warned Not To Talk About Hunter’s Daughter Non Grata

After action review: Biden’s response

Biden Burns Fossil Fuels Traveling for Speeches Condemning Them

The Cruelty Is the Point: Biden Orders WH Staff to Deny Granddaughter’s Existence

RFK Jr. Decries Biden Admin’s Withholding Of Some JFK Assassination Records

The Bidens’ Existential Threats to American Rule of Law

White House cocaine culprit unlikely to be found: Law enforcement official (Politico) The Crust takes care of their own.

Buttigieg Blames Weather; FAA Blames Air-Traffic Controller Shortage On Flight Disruptions

Supreme Court May Soon Deal Biden Another Blow on Taxation

‘An Almost Dystopian Scenario’: Judge Says Biden’s Social Media Censorship Likely Trampled on First Amendment

Biden Promise To Restore Decency In White House Fulfilled As Crack Found Was Of Highest Quality (Babylon Bee)

Media Try To Sell a Dubious Public on the Benefits of ‘Bidenomics’

Joe Biden – Who Helped His Granddaughter With UPenn – Wants To Crack Down On ‘Privilege’ In Education

More Than 105 Million Working-Age Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now

WHITE HOUSE RECORDS: Biden Personally Met With SPLC Staff 6 Times, Foreshadowing Renewed Attacks on Parent Groups

Anthony Fauci on Larry Kramer and Loving Difficult People (N.Y. Times) And the lies just keep on comin’.

Moderna to Ask for Approval of Adult RSV Vaccine

Oath Keepers Leader Warns Trump About Trial (Newsweek)

Insight: Swing state Republicans bleed donors and cash over Trump’s false election claims (Reuters) Bias? What bias?

Oath Keepers leader convicted of seditious conspiracy warns Trump: ‘You’re going to be found guilty’ (Washington Times)

The Age of Insurrection review: how the far right rose – and found Trump (The Guardian)

Violence in Jenin foreshadows the next phase in an endless conflict (Washington Post) David Ignatius refuses to see that the violence is entirely the fault of ‘Palestinian’ terrorists; if they would just refrain from attacking Israelis, the violence would cease. (Israeli Military Says Terrorists Hid Explosives, Weapons at Jenin Mosque)(Ex-Israeli General to Newsmax: Hamas Bent on Destroying Israel)(Terror in Tel Aviv: At least nine wounded in stabbing, ramming attack)

To tip or not to tip? Three reasons why tipping has gotten so out of control (NPR)

French Riots Already Cost €1 Billion In Damage

‘Building an Antiracist America’: Top Pennsylvania School District Pushes Teachers To Infuse Critical Race Theory Into Their Lessons

It pays to be censured: Schiff scores record haul after GOP rebuke (Politico)

Key ‘Russiagate’ Players Also Involved in Italy Spy Fiasco

Conservatives go to red states and liberals go to blue as the country grows more polarized (Associated Press)

Democrats Confused By Parades Where Everyone Keeps Their Clothes On And Doesn’t Swing Sex Toys Around (Babylon Bee)

Barriers to transgender health care lead some to embrace a do-it-yourself approach (NBC News)

San Diego Opens Safe Camp Site for Homeless

Bill De Blasio and Wife Announce They’re Dating Other People But Still Live Together

Bill de Blasio’s wince-inducing separation announcement

Groomers Delight as Aussie Netflix Dramedy Sexualizes Young Children for Laughs While Dancing to Cardi B’s ‘W.A.P’

New LA County Coalition Battles Massive Tax Hikes

Suspect in mass shooting that left 5 dead fired randomly at victims, Philadelphia police say (CNN)

2 Youths, 7 Adults Wounded in D.C. Shooting

Gunman arrested for Philadelphia mass shooting which left 5 dead is BLM activist who wore women’s clothes: sources (N.Y. Post)

Glutton For Punishment? Nikole Hannah-Jones Tweets Out Her Loathing For The 4th

ABC’s ‘The Wonder Years’ Character ‘Not…Interested in Moving Next to White Folks’

Pittsburgh Schools Push CRT Curriculum

ABC Uses Neutral Pronouns for Trans Philly Shooter, Edits Out DA Saying ‘Man’

Americans Can’t Even Agree on What Our Country Is (Daily Beast) We used to, before the rise of the Wokerati who hate America.

WNBA player shredded after calling America ‘trash’ ahead of July 4th: ‘Quintessential Gen Z-er’ (Fox)

Watchdog Group: Biden Administration Pushing To Make A.I. Inherently Left-Wing

It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama (N.Y. Times)

Watch: Woke Demonstrators Protest Supreme Court Rulings With Bizarre Ritual

PBS Hosts LGBTQ Journalist-Activist to Label SCOTUS Winners a ‘Hate Group’

Inside the House GOP’s plan to go after FBI and DOJ (Politico)

Ben & Jerry’s July 4 Memo: ‘US on Stolen Land’

Biden faces renewed pressure to embrace Supreme Court overhaul (Washington Post)

A Georgia teacher’s plight exposes the essence of anti-woke MAGA fury (Washington Post) MAGA is the New Nigger.

Senate Republicans fear abortion could derail hopes for majority (The Hill) At least the Narrative media would like you to think that, because that’s what they would be thinking.

Why Josh Hawley’s fake historical quote matters (MSNBC)

Happy 4th: Ben & Jerry’s Says ‘US Exists on Stolen Indigenous Land’

Man Charged After Trans Double Rapist Lodges Hate Crime Complaint

Taliban compounds misery for women in Afghanistan with order to close all beauty salons (CNN) The horror! The horror! Somebody call Human Rights Watch!

BBC Host Nukes Her Twitter, Claims Israel Is ‘Happy To Kill Children’  But at least they don’t close down beauty salons!

The Far Right Is Already Using the Philadelphia Shooting to Smear Trans People (Vice) To Vice, there is no Right but the Far Right. (Smearing people on the right is okay, though.)

Kappa Kappa Gamma Turns On Sisters For Wanting All-Female Sorority House

‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children,’ BBC anchor tells ex-PM Bennett (Jerusalem Post) ‘Palestinians’ still have them beat ten-to-one.

Knives Out in New York: Squad-Backed Democrat Launches House Campaign Against Gretchen Whitmer’s Sister

CNN Wants ‘Controlled Conversation,’ Disparages Objectors

A Tale of 2 Philadelphias: Moms for Liberty Gather ‘Joyfully’ and Protesters Lose Their Minds

In its tech war with America, China brings out the big guns (The Economist)

CIA Director Calls Ukraine War Major ‘Opportunity’ For Recruiting Spies

Xi Jinping warned Vladimir Putin against nuclear attack in Ukraine (Financial Times) And the FT know that how? Did Xi send them a press release? (Kremlin Denies Xi Warned Putin on Ukraine Nukes)

Russia has lost half its combat capability in Ukraine, says UK armed forces chief (Financial Times)

US Navy: Iran Tried to Seize 2 Oil Tankers

UK, Canada, Sweden, Ukraine Sue Iran at Top UN Court

Ex-Top Chinese Official Says Export Curb On Key Metals Is “Just The Beginning”

US Navy Thwarts Iranian Attempt To Seize 2 Oil Tankers, Shots Fired

Ukraine Says Western Allies Have Already Failed On F-16 Pledge

Awkward: Russian And Ukrainian Soldiers Arrive At The Same Nuclear Power Plant To Blow It Up And Blame On Each Other (Babylon Bee)

WATCH: Iranian Navy Opens Fire on Oil Tanker

The Foundry.

Over the weekend, Ohio lawmakers passed a state budget that expands eligibility for the state’s EdChoice Scholarships to all K-12 students. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Monday, making Ohio the eighth state in the nation to pass a universal school choice policy and the sixth state to do so this year, following Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah.

Universal school choice is when education choice is offered to all students in a state, not just those who are low income or who have special needs.

Several other states also expanded their education choice policies already this year, including Alabama, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Starting this fall, children from Ohio families earning up to 450% of the federal poverty line ($135,000 for a family of four) will be eligible for full scholarships worth about $8,400 (up from about $6,150 last year). Children from families earning above that threshold will be eligible for partial scholarships that will be adjusted based on income.

Read it.

Here’s a Lincoln Project tweet that states some true facts. The same facts stated by MSNBC. These true facts, taken in isolation, are on the order of crying, “my mother died after five minutes alone with that man!” when the man was a priest giving Last Rites to the afflicted mother.

Human Rights Watch.

• Lebanese Armed Forces have summarily deported thousands of Syrians, including unaccompanied children, back to Syria between April and May 2023.
• Syrians in Lebanon are living in constant fear that they could be picked up and sent back to nightmarish conditions, regardless of their refugee status.
• Lebanese authorities should enable Syrians to regularize their status in the country. Donor governments should ensure that funding does not contribute to rights violations.

Apparently it is a ‘human right’ to remain in somebody else’s country illegally.

Read it.

In April of this year, Christine Lagarde gave a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in which she warned that “we are witnessing the fragmentation of the global economy into competing blocs”. Regular readers of this Daily will be familiar with the speech; we made quite a big deal of it at the time, because it is a big deal! We have been warning of this fragmentation for a number of years. Great Power competition is back, and we’re not going back to the halcyon days of US hegemony, ever-liberalising trade, secularly lower inflation and assumptions of the death of history anytime soon.

The Lagarde speech will be rightly viewed as a watershed in years ahead. Much like “whatever it takes”, or comments from Paul Volcker in the late 1970’s when he told students at Warwick University that “it is tempting to look at the market as an impartial arbiter… But balancing the requirements of a stable international system against the desirability of retaining freedom of action for national policy, a number of countries, including the United States, opted for the latter… Controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s.”

We’re watching the global economy being re-organized before our eyes and, like Volcker in the 1970’s, policy-makers are prioritizing freedom of action for national policy. Increasingly, we are seeing financial markets and global trade being more clearly subordinated to national policy objectives. There are no atheists in a foxhole, and no free-market liberals in a multipolar world (at least not in the halls of power).

The Critic.

In England, it costs over 40 percent of the average person’s take-home pay to put a one-year-old child in daycare. In London, where nursery schools can cost upwards of £20,000 per year per child, that figure is even higher. These costs are not just steep: for many, they are literally impossible to manage. Even selling a kidney — something the most desperate person can only do once — might not cover a year’s fees for one child.

This has predictable consequences. Many young couples take it as read that they will have to leave London if they want to have children; either that or they just don’t do it at all. Birth rates in the UK, which have been below replacement levels for the last half-century, reach new record lows every year, with fertility in the capital even lower than the rest of the country. Many specifically cite the impossibility of paying for childcare as the reason they are not reproducing.

Allowing costs to remain this high is a form of slow-motion national suicide. But most discussion of this issue seems to focus on subsidising this enormous cost, rather than wondering why it is so high in the first place. In the latest budget, the Conservatives announced a plan to pour more money into the system with a radical new expansion of subsidies to much younger children, an approach which Labour seem likely to mimic in their manifesto for the next general election.

Read it.

Some U.S. senators have famously kept a pocket Constitution handy to use as a prop at political rallies; a few may have even read it. But at this point in American history it no longer matters whether they, or anyone else, can read the words of the Constitution because the words no longer mean what they say.

Take, for instance, the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that state legislatures do not have the sole discretion to determine how federal elections will be run in those states. Instead, state courts are given veto power over the decisions of the legislature.

The mainstream media (and of course their Democratic Party allies) celebrated the court’s decision in Moore v. Harper that rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. The New York Times called the theory “dangerous.” Vox said the ruling was a “big victory for democracy.” Those who supported the independent state legislature “theory” were called extreme, fringe, radical, and worse. In other words, they were Trump supporters.

The only problem is that if the theory is extreme, then so is the U.S. Constitution, because no matter how much the 6-3 majority insists otherwise, it isn’t a theory at all. It is the plain language of the Constitution. Check it out for yourself.

UK COVID Inquiry Reveals Just How Vast International Communist Conspiracy May Be

Will El Niño on top of global heating create the perfect climate storm? (The Guardian)

Your next BBQ could feature an electric grill (Canary Media) No, it couldn’t. Trust me on that.

ESG Investing Isn’t Doing Much For The Environment; Yale Study Confirms

Only 5% of national TV news segments on the record-shattering heat wave that scorched Texas mentioned climate change (Media Matters for America) Well, first of all, it’s not ‘record-shattering’. I’ve lived in Texas for forty years, and it’s no hotter this year than any other year.

The Myth Of Replacing Fossil Fuels

Claim: Australia is Opposing an International Shipping Carbon Tax Proposal

‘Could we do with less ice?’: Scientific American touts climate-inspired ICE CUBE restrictions! Mag pushes end to ‘unsustainable’ ice cube practices & urges ‘Climate-friendly Cocktails’

Will “Climate Denial” Become an International War Crime?

June Extremes Suggest Parts of the Climate System Are Reaching Tipping Points (Inside Climate Narrative News)

Every month seems to be the hottest, the driest, the wettest, or whichever record-breaking event it is.

Correct, CBS News Texas, Wind Energy Struggles in Heat (And Other Conditions)

Biden’s latest eco regs blasted by small businesses, manufacturers: ‘Will do terrible damage’ (Fox News)

Fed Economists Warn Of Looming Disaster Due To High Interest Rates

Officials: Lull in Border Crossings Won’t Last

Gallup Poll: Confidence in US Government Lowest in G7

So, now it’s time to get serious about Biden’s brain? (The New Neo)

Why Democrats Should Primary Biden (Politico) I guess they’ve decided that it’s time to drop Biden.

The Bidens’ Existential Threats to the American Rule of Law (Victor Davis Hanson)

Former Sen. Gregg: Loan Relief ‘Biggest Vote-Buying Scheme Ever’  And quite obviously so.

Obama White House looped in Hunter Biden in email to his VP dad about Ukraine (Washington Times) This isn’t just about Biden; Obama was in it up to his neck.

WATCH: Veep Thoughts with Kamala Harris (Vol. 11)

Substance found in White House library tests positive for cocaine (N.Y. Post) Apparently the Hunter Fairy came to visit.

Republicans Are Divided on Impeaching Biden as Panel Begins New Inquiry (N.Y. Times)

Hunter Biden Plea Deal Prosecutor Has Conflict of Interest

The highest office! White House guessing game begins after cocaine found in library forced Hazmat evacuation – two days after recovering drug fiend Hunter Biden was on the property (UK Daily Mail)

US Military Can’t Afford To Fool Around With Feel Good Green Initiatives

Biden Urges Tighter Gun Laws After Rash of Shootings  We don’t need ‘tighter gun laws’; we need ‘tighter shooter laws’. Forbidding young black males from possessing guns would cause the crime rates to plummit–but of course if you say that you’re waaaaaaacist.

Bidenomics Means The Most Expensive Independence Day Cookout Ever

Federal Complaint Says Harvard Legacy Preferences in Admissions Violate Civil Rights Act (Harvard Crimson)

Pro-choice Catholics fight to seize the narrative from the religious right (The Guardian) There is no such thing as a ‘pro-choice Catholic’. If you’re ‘pro-choice’, you’re not Catholic, period.

At UChicago, a Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying (N.Y. Times)

Judge Blocks Wyoming School District Gender Policy

Vietnam bans Barbie movie over pro-Chinese map of disputed S. China Sea

Ariz. AG Won’t Enforce State’s Abortion Laws, ‘Period’

Migrant Workers Flee Florida as New Immigration Law Takes Effect (Wall Street Jornal) Not back where they came from–Oh, no! Perish the thought!

“The World Is Laughing At Us”: U.S. Army Shares Story Of Suicidally Depressed Transgender Major

Judge Blocks Elections Law Banning Noncitizens From Handling Voter Forms

Radley Balko Finally Finds a Single Data Point to Support His Life’s Work

“We’re Coming for Your Children:” Activists Against Childhood

A viral left-wing Twitter account may have been fake all along (Washington Post)

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Corporations Are Realising Going Woke Kills Business

Indiana Supreme Court Rules Abortion Ban Is Constitutional

California Reparations Report Hits Child Support Debt  God forbid that black men be required to support their children. Baby mama, you’re on your own. (With the government’s help, natch.)

The illogical but popular affirmative action attack on Clarence Thomas (Washington Examiner)

You Won’t Fix Racism With More Racism

How a White Man Got Rich Denouncing ‘Rich White Men’  Which is why they do it.

NPR says Asian Americans should love affirmative action

Democrats Kill Each Other in Baltimore; Mayor Blames … Texas, Florida, Alabama?

Macron Warns Rioters If They Don’t Calm Down He’ll Call Kyle Rittenhouse (Babylon Bee)

Philadelphia mass shooting suspect identified as 40-year-old black male Kimbrady Carricker

Head of school linked to Amy Coney Barrett’s faith group abruptly resigns (The Guardian) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH….

The Tragedy of John Roberts (N.Y. Times)

House Progressives Call for Supreme Court Changes

Elton John: US Is ‘Going Backwards’ on LGBTQ Rights  Yeah, that’s the point.

Ron Desantis Just Posted One of the Weirdest and Most Vile Ads in Political History (The New Republic) Don’t hold it in, guys, tell us how you really feel.

Scarborough Disses Nicolle Wallace: Biden Ditched Her To Impress ‘Important’ Al Sharpton!

AOC Wants Supreme Court Justices Impeached In Retaliation For Doing Their Job

Watch: Army Veteran ‘Sick Of Guns In Texas’ Destroys His Own Gun In Protest  The Narrative media specialize in turning an exception into a rule.

Laura Ingraham’s show has often flown under the radar. But she has been central to Fox News’ controversies. (Media Matters for America)

The housing community that will require ‘patriots’ to fly the US flag (The Guardian)

When it comes to the economy, how does Tim Scott define ‘worse’? (MSNBC)

Teacher Scolded for Failing Student Who Wrote ‘Biological Women’

Elon Musk Really Broke Twitter This Time (The Atlantic) If he’s not doing it Our Way, then it’s Broken.

Michigan Hate Speech Bill Would Make Using Wrong Pronouns A Felony With $10K Fine, Prison Time  Time to leave.

El Dorado County Group Mulls Secession From California

PBS, VICE News Smear Parents Group Moms for Liberty as Violent Harassers

The Supreme Court Has Kicked the Door Wide Open to Jim Crow–Style Bigotry (The Nation)

‘We didn’t want to live in fear’: Exodus of workers begins as Florida’s extreme anti-immigrant law goes into effect (Raw Story) Pity the poor lawbreakers, ‘living in fear’.

NPR: Racist Whites Are Exploiting Asians to ‘Bamboozle’ People on College Quotas

The GOP has a glaring Mormon problem (Washington Post) The correct term is ‘Latter Day Saint’; I’m shocked, shocked that so Woke an institution as the WaPo, who are so supportive fo the Pronoun Police, would make such a hateful misstep.

Germany’s Far Right Sees Its Opening (Again) (Foreign Policy) For Voices of the Crust, there is no Right but the Far Right.

The GOP field is more diverse than ever. The GOP isn’t heralding the achievement. (Politico) Why would they, any more than Democrats will point out that they are more rich and white than ever?

Farage ‘Banking Ban’ Sparks UK Govt Probe Of Blacklisting Accounts Over Political Views

How Wingnuts Made Violent Extremism the New Normal (Daily Beast) He is of course not talking about Antifa or BLM.

DeSantis is squeezing the sunshine out of Florida’s public records law, critics say (NBC News)

Watch: RFK Jr Pushes Back When Accused Of Being A Candidate Who “Traffics Routinely In Conspiracies”

‘Squad’ Members Scold Americans on July 4th: ‘Enslavers, Stolen Land’

Trump Showed Docs to People at Mar-a-Lago’s Dining Room Patio Claims Former White House Press Secretary (MEDIAite)

Poll: Trump Most Electable Republican

The Republican Not Heading to a July 4 Parade? Trump. (N.Y. Times) He doesn’t need to. Everybody knows he’s a patriot. (What part of Make America Great Again don’t you understand?) (New York Times Touts USA as a Global Danger, But Trump’s Somehow the Unpatriotic One)

Read it.

When looking at how gun laws across the United States have changed over the past few years, there’s a lot to be hopeful for. Just this year, Nebraska became the 27th state to pass a “constitutional carry” bill into law, following in the footsteps of Florida, which passed similar legislation just a few days prior.

The residents of Florida and Nebraska now join 25 other states where American citizens can freely carry firearms concealed without needing a permit, just as our founding fathers intended when they wrote the Second Amendment into the Constitution.

Those two States won’t be the last to pass permitless carry bills either. There are several different bills at different stages of the legislative process in multiple states nationwide.

But let’s not forget, just a mere 15 years ago — the Second Amendment was not considered an individual right. If we look further back to the 1980s, there was only one constitutional carry state, Vermont. In addition, very few states would even allow carrying with a permit.

Washington Post.

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies, in an extraordinary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment.

The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections. The Trump-appointed judge’s move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.

The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of enabling a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers, and for conservatives who’ve accused the government of suppressing their speech. In their filings, the attorneys general alleged the actions amount to “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”

Think about it.

Off-Guardian.

In Part 1 we explored the reasons why the basis for the BBC’s “Marianna in Conspiracyland” podcast series is fundamentally flawed. Spring claims that her intention is to investigate “the people at the core of the conspiracy theory movement.”

Not only is there no such thing a “conspiracy theory movement” nor is their any plausible definition of a “conspiracy theorist.”

“Conspiracy theorist” is just a state propagandist’s label for someone who holds an anti-Establishment opinion that questions power and is sceptical of authority. You can read more about the history of how that “label” came into being here.

Read it.

Sweden’s latest Quran-burning demonstration, which this time saw an Iraqi national set fire to the Islamic holy book outside of Stockholm’s central mosque on Wednesday, June 28th, as Muslims celebrated Eid al-Adha, has prompted widespread fury across the Muslim world and a diplomatic debacle for the Swedish government as well.

Sweden’s ruling center-right coalition, despite having condemned the desecration of the Islamic holy book and insisting the stunt “in no way reflects the opinions” held by the government, has faced significant backlash on multiple fronts, including—but not limited to—having its embassy in Baghdad, Iraq stormed by an angry mob, the state broadcaster SVT Nyheter reports.

Incensed by the Quran burning, dozens of protesters led by the Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr gathered outside of the Swedish embassy in the Iraqi capital on Thursday, June 29th, before storming and occupying the building for 15 minutes prior to the deployment of local security forces. Luckily, no one was injured as the embassy’s staff had vacated the premises before its walls were breached by the protesters.

Freedom of speech is not a Muslim value. (Imagine the yawns if they had burned a Bible instead.)