The New Neo.

The Israeli response to the Hamas attack wasn’t just an intelligence failure in terms of acting on information, although it certainly was that. But I think that, more importantly, it was a failure to think outside the box and even imagine the sort of attack that occurred. Much like our intelligence prior to 9/11 – an event that showed a sort of evil creativity on the part of the terrorists to come up with a new approach, one that intelligence in the US simply didn’t anticipate. Whether it was because US intelligence agents underestimated the terrorists or had just became complacent in their thinking, they simply did not even imagine what happened – and in order to prevent something, you have to imagine it first.

 

The GOP’s working-class tilt is causing havoc in its ranks (Washington Poop)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Last Gasp (The Atlantic)

Benjamin Netanyahu failed Israel (Vox)

North Carolina Republicans Are Creating a ‘Secret Police Force’ (Daily Beast)

George Santos’ $500K Campaign Loan Was Fake—Until It Wasn’t (Daily Beast) No Republican is too obscure to avoid witch-hunting by the Daily Beast. You’d think they have more important issues to pursue but you’d be wrong.

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Declares Israel’s Siege of Gaza a ‘War Crime’ (But Guess What’s Not?)

Moms for Liberty meets its match: Parents in this swing suburban district are fighting back (Salon)

Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard: Why I called Omarosa a ‘Republican c—t’ on ‘House of Villains’ 

Daywatch: Plea deal in murder case surfaces issues in Kim Foxx’s office (Chicago Tribune)

Top Georgia Senate Republicans Probe Fani Willis

Survivors of the music festival massacre tell their stories (Hot Air)

Dem Rep. Torres Decries Harvard Students Blaming Israel

NBA Star Stoudemire Slams BLM on Hamas, Backs Down

African food is rising in popularity. Here are the chefs, farmers, and businesses making that happen

Black Lives Matter Group Throws Support Behind Hamas Attacks, Calls Murder of Israelis ‘Self-Defense’

Felony Assaults Against Women In New York Up 41% Over The Last Four Years

Mystery solved as Iran-backed judge, who seeks Trump’s arrest, confirms invite to Washington, DC (Fox News)

DERANGED: Liberals Scramble To Blame Trump for Hamas Atrocities (Washington Free Beacon)

Trump Wildly Claims Forbes Is a ‘China Propaganda Machine’ After He’s Removed from 400 Richest Americans List (Daily Beast)

After years of exaggerating his business assets, Trump confronts them in court (Washington Poop)

Special Counsel: Make Trump Declare Legal Strategy

Tim Scott, please drop out, urge others to follow and unite behind Haley (Washington Poop) George Will, the Compleat Cuck, is desperately seeking somebody to stop Trump.

Trump’s Overrated Peace Plan Helped Enable the Horrors in Israel and Gaza (Daily Beast)

Biden admin has let 99% of migrants stay in US since 2021: Congressional report (N.Y. Post)

Prosecutor: Weiss Wanted to Charge Hunter Biden in D.C.

“A Real Trend”: Trump Now Ahead Of Biden In Key Battleground States According To Polls

ABC Skips Biden’s $6 Billion Iran Payment, CBS, NBC Note GOP Criticism

Biden interviewed about classified documents found at his office, home (Washington Poop)

The White House and lawmakers weigh linking Ukraine and Israel aid (NBC News)

Senior Biden Adviser’s Legal Group Pledges To Defend Hamas Sympathizers in New York City

Biden’s 2nd Try to Void Student Loans Moves Forward

Cut to Special-Operations Forces ‘Weakens’ National Security

Biden faces a host of crises and a stress test for his theory of the presidency (Politico)

Obama’s Coming Fourth Term

Bidenomics: National Debt Increases By Another Half-Trillion In Just 20 Days

Navy Misses Recruiting Goal by More Than 7,000 Sailors as Services Fall Short on Efforts to Bring in More Troops

In Search of Kamala Harris (N.Y. Times) Be careful what you look for, you just might find it.

Ticket Fees, ‘Big Pharma,’ and Indigenous Green Energy: Here Are the Issues Biden’s Admin Pushed Ahead of Israel

Iran Has Made $80 Billion in Illicit Oil Sales Since Biden Took Office  Destroying their means of extracting, refining, and shipping oil would be a good first step.

Data Reveals Over 70,000 Illegal Aliens From Terrorist or Suspect Nations Encountered at Border

These are the places that could become ‘unlivable’ as the Earth warms (Washington Poop)

Billions could face lethal heat due to climate change (Reuters)

The Midwest US could be a hotspot for deadly ‘moist heat stress’ as global temperatures climb (CNN)

Humans will find it hard to tolerate searing heat in India, Pakistan by end of this century (Tribune of India) Move to Siberia. It’s cooler–and empty.

14,300-Year-Old Tree Reveals Apocalyptic Warning for Today’s Humans (Newsweek)

Tree rings reveal evidence of most powerful solar storm on record (New Atlas)

U.S. transition to clean energy is happening faster than you think, reporter says (NPR)

Study finds the gulf stream is warming and shifting closer to shore

Mann Tweets Study Claiming Climate Deniers Are Misogynist Authoritarians

What are the side effects of the new COVID vaccine? Here’s what to know before getting the shot (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram)

When is the best time to get the COVID-19 vaccine? (WCNC)

Frustration grows amid struggle to roll out new RSV, COVID shots for children (The Hill)

As US rolls out new Covid vaccines, some face ‘hiccups’ getting appointments (The Guardian)

COVID Reinfections Clear Faster, Including In Unvaccinated People: Study

Louisiana principal apologizes for punishing student’s off-campus dancing (The Guardian)

Harvard Affiliates, Politicians Slam University Leaders Over Late, ‘Word Salad’ Statement on War in Israel (Harvard Crimson)

NYC protest rally for Palestinians blames Israel for deadly Hamas attack amid retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza (Fox News)

Pro-Israel, Palestine protests continue in NYC (Fox 5 New York) Virtue-signaling at its most narcissistic.

31 Harvard student groups’ despicable letter backing Hamas exposes the deep sickness of US academia (N.Y. Post)

New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Descending Into Pure Chaos (WIRED)

Smith & Wesson Celebrates New Tennessee Headquarters After Ditching Massachusetts

Twitter Files Journo WARNS: Next Generation Is Being Raised on Values ‘Alien’ to US Tradition  (NewsBusters)

Columbia Law School Dean Gives Both Sides Treatment to Hamas’s Terrorist Rampage in Israel

US Gives More Than $4.1 Billion In Grants For LGBT Initiatives Worldwide

Law Firms Modify Diversity Recruiting Amid Legal Challenges

Israel Shows Why Americans Have Right To “Weapons of War” For Self-Defense

After Hamas Strike, Congress Wants to Sanction Terror Group’s Use of Human Shields. But Legislation Is On Ice Until New Speaker is Elected. (Washington Free Beacon)

ESG Investments Face Financial Hurdles

Dems’ bad dream: Menendez taunts party with potential reelection (Politico)

Texas Bused Over 51,000 Migrants to Major US Cities  Sharing the pain.

Pro-Hamas protests sweep the US

EU Commission Will Keep Funding Palestinians

Universities are hotbeds for terrorist-sympathizing antisemitism (Washington Examiner) Fareed Zacharia usually writes for more mainstream Narrative media, but apparently this time was relegated to the fringes.

Heat for NYC-DSA after pro-Palestine rally (Politico)

CBS Hypes Hamas’s ‘Sheer Determination,’ Leader’s ‘Personal’ Revenge  The American Left doesn’t have any particular affection for Muslims except for the fact that they all hate the same people.

AP Worries Vote Fraud Charges by Democrats Will Validate ‘Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists’

Bloomberg News Celebrates Woke Corporate America Genuflecting to Rainbow Mafia

NHL Bans Pride Tape for 2023-2024 Season

Dems Fear Caucus’ Support for Israel Could Falter

Dems Split on Support for Sen. Menendez Challenger

Answers, Please! Why Did George Soros Fund a Radical Pro-Hamas Group?

Hostin Finds Israeli ‘Anger’ ‘Terrifying,’ Behar Ties Hamas Attack to Trump/Putin Alliance

Columbia University Professor Cheers Hamas Barbarity

LA Times Reporter Erroneously Claims Hamas Never Beheaded Babies

California mandates VC firms to release investments’ diversity information

Columbia Law Dean Does Damage Control After Mealy-Mouthed Israel Statement

The Spectator.

Amazingly, Democrats now find themselves constrained to tread lightly around the feelings of cold-blooded murderers so as to avoid offending their deranged apologists — many of whom represent the future of the party. Biden — who is already contending with the awkward fact of having recently bestowed a cool $6 billion on the eliminationist Iranian regime, thus making it indirectly into Hamas’s acknowledgments section — can’t even run effective damage control. His loudest supporters are also the ones whose views are most likely to alienate the country at large. His own people can barely get on message. On Saturday, the State Department scrambled to erase not one, but two statements calling for “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” With bright-eyed young staffers popping off tweets like that, who needs enemies? Disingenuous conciliatory pablum — usually Biden’s stock-in-trade — will now be harder and harder to come by as the genocide stans run roughshod over their senescent babysitter.

Read it.

Four Republican presidential candidates are slated to attend a closed-door summit in Utah today sponsored by Sen. Mitt Romney and his 2012 presidential running mate, former House speaker Paul Ryan.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are scheduled to attend the event in Park City where they can make their case to a network of “influential” donors, the Washington Post reported.

The usual second-tier suspects.

ZMan has some fun.

Since the wrecking ball known as Donald Trump swung through the walls of conservatism almost a decade ago, there has been a desperate attempt to either rebuild the wall or fill the void left by the old conservatism. The Never Trump project was mostly an effort to chase the barbarians out of the city so the good people can rebuild the wall and restart the old politics. For the most part, this project has failed as the massive hole in the wall remains.

A good recent example of this is this post by neoconservative writer Mathew Continetti in Commentary Magazine. He claims that the populists supporting nationalist policies and candidates are actually Marxists. This has become a popular theme with the East Coast Straussians, of which the neocons are a part. It is a hilariously insane line of thought, owing to the steep decline in the human capital we see everywhere in politics, but especially in the neoconservative subculture.

On the other hand, the project to recreate the old dynamic of Left and Right, has quietly plodded along with a new generation looking to create a New Right. Many are just the hucksters we have come to expect in this age. These are the people who live on social media and front-run whatever is happening at the moment. Others are rejects from the old conservative rackets hoping for a fresh start. These are the buzzards that arrive at the end of every movement.

Quilette.

The terrorist invasion of Israel by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, is the worst instance of mass murder of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Its barbarity may be shocking to many observers, but it will not have surprised those familiar with the ideology of the perpetrators. This latest outburst of violence is the logical outcome of the Jew-hatred that Hamas has openly expressed since 1988, and it rests on a strand of Islamic antisemitism that emerged in the early 20th century and fueled the Arab war of rejection in 1948. The ideology that inflames the Hamas leadership was the product of the fateful fusion of Nazism and Islamism in the 1930s and 1940s, and it has always rejected the legitimacy of a Jewish state (or indeed any polity that isn’t explicitly Islamist) anywhere in what, before 1948, had been British Mandate Palestine.

Read it.

Rivian R1T pickup owners should be wary of even minor fender benders, as the vehicle’s complex design could result in a massive repair bill.

EV blog InsideEVs says the owner of a Rivian R1T pickup in North Carolina was recently quoted $41,000 – nearly half the value of the vehicle – to fix a minor dent on the driver-side rear panel bumper.

BEASTMODE: NBA Legend Amar’e Stoudemire Says ‘F— You’ to ‘BLM People’ Not Supporting Israel

The U.S. Government Is Preparing for a Fentanyl WMD Attack (The Intercept)

How Medicine Suffers “When We Ignore the Fact That Half of Us Have Breasts” (Mother Jones) No mention of the inconvenient fact that half of us have XX chromosomes.

The Supreme Court will hear a case that could overturn a 40-year-old legal doctrine (NPR) The Chevron doctrine is a cornerstone of the Deep State. (‘Since 1984’ is a ‘long time’?)

Chief Judges of D.C.’s Local Courts Must Answer for Questionable Conduct

Oakland Police Tell Residents Not To Confront Auto Burglars

Alabama Deploys National Guard In Response To Illegal Immigration Crisis

Flipping Kansas Blue? Governor Struck Deal With Left-Wing Groups Likely to Drive Up Democrat Vote 

“We No Longer Feel Safe!” Paris Residents Fear Next Wave Of Migrants Arriving From Lampedusa

Reshoring Mentions By Top Execs Soar In Earnings Calls As ‘Made In USA’ Gains Traction 

The Insincerity of the Left

Islamo-Leftists in the West Celebrate Hamas Attacks

Hundreds Cheer Hamas Slaughter of Israeli Civilians in Protest Backed by the Squad’s Socialist Party

Oh, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Don’t Call Hamas a ‘Terrorist’ Group

RFK Jr. Ditches Democrats To Pursue 2024 Presidential Bid As An Independent

UN Women’s Group Ignores Horrific Assault on Israeli Women, Celebrates ‘Trans Lesbians’ Instead

Dem Rep. Slams ‘Squad’ Members on Israel Statements

‘Get This Story Right’: ADL’s Greenblatt BLASTS MSNBC Siding With Hamas

WTF? CNN Guest: Hamas Has ‘Mainly Attacked…Military’ Sites, Hostages Were Soldiers

UN Honors Trans Lesbian Day As Hundreds of Israeli Women Are Killed

Nobel economics prize awarded to Claudia Goldin for women’s role in workplace

Hamas and the American Left

Court Blocks School District Policy Forcing Pronoun ‘Respect’

It’s a global climate solution — if it can get past conspiracy theories and NIMBYs

‘Freak of nature’ tree is the find of a lifetime for forest explorer (Washington Poop)

The EU Just Kicked Off Its Biggest Climate Experiment Yet  And it will bite them right square on the butt.

Shoreline Management Plans Based On Fake Sea Level Rise Projections

Heat Waves in the Ground Are Getting More Extreme—and Perilous (Wired ‘Science’)

Apple TV+’s ‘The Morning Show’: ‘Climate Destruction’ Will Kill ‘Upwards of a Billion People’  So long as it’s the right billion….

Correct, WBUR, Many Climate Scientists Don’t Tell the Truth

Poll: Republicans Want New Speaker Loyal to Trump (NewsMax)

Trump: Israel, Ukraine Attacks Wouldn’t Occur Under Me  (NewsMax) He’s probably right.

A Major Victory for President Trump in the Clown Show NYC Trial: MSM Media-Crickets

Team Trump Is Using ‘Fyre Festival Strategies’ in N.Y. Fraud Case (Rolling Stone)

Jack Smith: ‘No Reason’ to Delay Trump’s Florida Docs Trial

White House slammed for hosting BBQ with live band as war rages in Israel (Fox News)

So Sorry! CNN’s Dana Bash Bows to Blinken Over Biden Team’s Failures on Israel and Iran  Is ‘Dana Bash’ a great name for a Narrative media hack, or what?

“This Is Unacceptable”: Blue States Blast Biden Over Border Blunders As Backlash Intensifies  You can deal with reality, or you can run with the Democrat herd. You can’t do both.

NY Times Won’t Call Hamas Terrorists, Defends Biden From GOP on His $6B to Iran

Biden Promotes Climate Change At The Expense Of More Global Poverty

Biden Admin Adamant Its $6 Billion Hostage Deal Had No Connection to Hamas Attacks. Critics Are Not So Sure.

FLASHBACK: Biden Officials Admit Palestinian Aid Money Likely To Benefit Hamas, Free Beacon Reports

Biden Considering Huge $100 Billion Ukraine Spending Package: Telegraph

Biden Ends Day at Noon Without Commenting on Americans Killed and Taken Hostage in Israel

Biden Admin Gave $100k to Gaza University That Praised the ‘Righteous Martyrs’ Who Attacked Israel

As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts (Washington Poop)

There’s not a chief of naval operations to help Israel due to Tommy Tuberville’s protest: Retired Commander (Raw Story) This is horseshit. The CNO is a staff officer; he has nothing to do with ‘helping Israel’. The operational chain of command goes from the President to the individual theater commanders to the actual operating units. Neither the CNO nor the Secretary of Defense is in that chain.

Rubin And Tribe Under Fire For Using The Massacre In Israel For Bizarre Attacks On Political Figures To pretend that Jennifer Rubin is a ‘conservative columnist’ is one of the more ridiculous lies perpetrated by the Washington Poop.

Liz Cheney is right about Jim Jordan’s involvement in Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election (The Dean’s Report) Yet another little proglodyte mushroom of hate.

Elon Musk Deletes Tweet Telling People to Follow Antisemitic Account for War Updates (Rolling Stone) How can an ‘account’ be anti-semitic?

Renegade House Republicans Aren’t Sorry Congress Has Ground to a Halt Amid Israeli War. Kevin McCarthy Has Words for Them. (Washington Free Beacon)

Fact Check: Jim Jordan Did NOT ‘Terrorize’ Sunny Hostin in a 2019 House Hearing (NewsBusters)

‘The Diciest Thing’ Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan Are Battling Over (Daily Beast)

Republicans respond to attack on Israel by demonstrating their unfitness (Public Notice) Yet another little proglodyte mushroom of hate.

Influential Texas activist Jonathan Stickland hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Fort Worth office (Texas Tribune)

Putinite Republicans are disgracing America (Washington Examiner) The Examiner joins the Narrative media.

The Roots of Today’s Authoritarianism Come From a 19th Century Supreme Court Ruling (Politico) Plessy v. Ferguson was gutted by Brown v. Board of Education. The roots of today’s authoritarianism come from the Democrat administration of Woodrow Wilson and the erasure of the right to Freedom of Association by the Civil Rights Acts, primarily through efforts of Social Justice Warriors like the author.

Harvard Dean, 33 Student Groups Blame Israel for War

Jim Jordan Tried to Help Trump Mount a Coup. Now He Gets to Be Speaker? (Mother Jones)

Hostin Looks to Blame Israelis for Hamas’s Barbarism Against Civilians (NewsBusters)

‘Rudderless and leaderless’: House GOP lurches forward after Israel attacks (Politico)

‘Fraudulent’: Whitmer Faces Call To Resign After Omitting ‘Israel’ From Statement On Hamas Terrorism

Starbucks Union Championed by Bernie Sanders and AOC Celebrates Hamas Attacks

Read it.

Identity politics is best understood as a moral caste system. Buying into variants such as critical race theory means accepting that your actions matter less than your race, gender or sexuality. The promised liberation of identity politics imposes the collectivist understanding that nothing you do truly matters outside the constraints of your caste. Who you were born is who you are.

Identity politics denies that any particular human being is an individual and regards him or her simply as an instance of a specified class. Most people don’t even push back; “I am an X” or especially “As an X” is one of the most frequent thing you’ll hear out of most people’s mouths.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Steve Sailer.

Back in 1992, East Palo Alto, CA briefly became the murder capital of America with 42 killings. So an enterprising Stanford professor invented a acoustics listening devices for triangulating where gunshots were fired: ShotSpotter.

Ever since, ShotSpotter has been accused of racism since it tends to find that the most gunshots are fired in black neighborhoods, thus leading to black residents being unfairly targeted by excessive policing. Of course, those are precisely the neighborhoods where the most people are murdered by guns each year, but you aren’t supposed to think about Occam’s Razor explanations like that these days.

What are you? A Razorist?

Read it.

During the first Christmas holiday break that followed 9/11, I cracked open a copy of the Koran and read it through. I was well and truly thunderstruck by what I found there. The contents were, of course, appalling, what with their explicit anti-Semitism, genocidal ideation, and the thoroughgoing denial of the deity of Christ. But what I found more shocking than any of those things was the extent to which the text of the Koran, easily found by anyone with even a smidgen of curiosity, was so starkly at odds with everything then being said about Islam by the political class and the media. It was so shocking to me — just how divorced the “official pronouncements” were from what was staring anyone in the face who bothered to look.

Popular Mechanics.

Every eye color links directly to the volume of melanin in the iris. Green eyes, even more rare than blue, marks a reduced level of melanin, thought not as reduced as blue eyes. It only takes a miniscule change to shift from brown to blue. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” Eiberg says. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.”

He refers to that that switch as a specific genetic mutation event, and believes that it only produced the first-ever blue-eyed human thanks to the mutation of the regulating HERC2 gene. The combination is the only known way eyes can turn blue (in contrast, red hair can happen for one of nearly a dozen reasons). That mutation remained in place for the next generation, meaning the reduced production of melanin in the iris allowed for the continued dilution of brown to blue.

Read it.

Following a day of protests after a former Philadelphia police officer had murder charges tossed by a judge, looters ransacked an Apple Store in Philadelphia’s Center City on September 26.

The thefts, as well as others at other stories throughout the city that night and for several days afterward, had been openly planned on social media, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. More than 60 people had been arrested after the first two nights of looting throughout the city, although it’s not clear how many of them had been at the Apple Store specifically.

As is usually the case with display iPhones and other items stolen from stores, the stolen devices did not work, and the thieves could be seen on viral videos dropping the useless phones on the ground.

Shooting Kills 2 Men and Wounds 3 Others in Possible Targeted Attack Near Los Angeles Inglewood is 38% black, 51% Hispanic, and 4% white.

California Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Banned Caste Discrimination

Appeals Court Rules For Trump Amid NY Fraud Trial

Ex-Washington Post Editor Martin Baron Implies Any Interview with Trump Is a ‘Big Mistake’

‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening (The Guardian) Surprising all of these ‘right-wing codes’ that only proglodyte ‘journalists’ can read.

Fmr NATO Commander: McCarthy Ouster ‘Great Day for Putin’

RINO Alert: Attack on Israel underscores ‘irresponsibility’ of Republicans paralyzing House with speaker fight: Christie (ABC News) There is absolutely no connection between the two, other than Christie’s compulsion to polish his status as a tool of the D.C. establishment.

Kylie Jenner quickly deletes pro-Israel post after receiving backlash amid Hamas attack

Washington Post Lectures on the History of ‘Corporate Genocide’ Behind Pumpkin Spice  You can’t make this shit up.

CBS Lets Rachel Maddow Warn of ‘Ultra-Right’ Fascism Coming to America

Making lawns more eco-friendly (NPR)

‘I wasn’t the obvious choice’: meet the oil man tasked with saving the planet (The Guardian)

The big mistake in Pope Francis’s new climate change scolding (Fox News)

Current Climate: The Pope Urges The World To Solve Climate Change (Forbes)

Should We Cut Down All the Oak Trees? The Unexpected Link Between Trees and Air Pollution (SciTechDaily)

Instead of Purifying the Air, These Plants Could Further Worsen Air Pollution! New Study Explains How (The Weather Channel)

Study finds limiting oaks and poplars may aid climate control

Should we cut down all the oak trees? (earth.com)

The Danger Upstream: In Disposing Coal Ash, One of These States is Not Like the Others (Inside Climate Narrative News)

Top grain traders ‘helped scupper’ ban on soya from deforested land (The Guardian)

ERCOT Readies ‘Retired’ Gas Generation for the 2023/24 Winter Peak

Four NY offshore projects ask for almost 50% price rise

Geoengineering: A Futile Attempt to Fix a Non-Issue and Dangerous as Well

Enraged Portuguese Motorists Clear Climate Roadblock

New study definitively confirms gulf stream weakening (phys.org)

Starlink carbon footprint up to 30 times size of land-based internet (New Scientist)

Investigations are exposing the Bidens’ influence-peddling dynasty (The Hill)

Higher interest rates mean greater danger for U.S. debt (Washington Poop)

Huge US government borrowing adds to bond market pain (Financial Times)

Terrorist group’s attack on Israel is yet another Biden geopolitical failure (Washington Examiner)

Hunter Biden Raided Daughter’s College Fund For $20,000 To Buy Hookers And Drugs: Report

Biden Admin Returns To Supreme Court In Ongoing ‘Ghost Gun’ Battle

GOP criticism that White House funded Iran ahead of Israel attack is ‘false narrative,’ Blinken argues (ABC) You may have thought that we gave them $6 billion, but you’re wrong.

Haley SCHOOLS NBC’s Welker on Biden’s Terror Money to Iran

Nikki Haley: Blinken ‘Irresponsible’ for Denying Impact of $6B Payout

Investment titan BlackRock has taken massive hits because of its use of ESG (N.Y. Post)

Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen (Washington Poop)

Angus Deaton on inequality: ‘The war on poverty has become a war on the poor’ (The Guardian)

Chicago residents enraged by migrant housing plan displacing seniors, youth: ‘Blatant disrespect’ (Fox News)

Chicago, New York mayors ask for federal help amid migrant influx (CBS News)

Conversion of West Side park into migrant shelter leaves youth football team in the dark (WGN)

Chicago aldermen request end to migrant housing at Inn of Chicago due to safety concerns (Fox 32 Chicago)

We’re deporting asylum seekers so fast they can’t get attorneys or justice

San Francisco’s Newly Approved Homeless Plan ‘Most Expensive’ Ever: Legislative Analysts

The Squad’s Socialist Party Rallies in Support of ‘Palestine’ Hours After Hamas Terror Attacks

At Shooting Ranges, More Women Pull the Trigger (NewsMax)

Knife Attacks At German Train Stations Have More Than Dubled Since 2019

Raspail’s Dystopian “The Camp Of The Saints” Novel Warning Of Immigration Influx Has Been Realized 50 Years Later

A Cornucopia of Cultural Enrichment in Italy

Once, Democrats Were Discreetly Anti-American. Today, They’re Less Discreet.

The pronoun ritual

The Bottomless Swamp Of Regulatory Capture

‘I’d still vote for’ Biden if he was ‘dead’: Pa. voters react to Trump-Biden 2024 rematch (NBC News) Which is why they elected Fetterman, I presume. Idiots.

‘The Squad’-Backed Democratic Socialists Of America Hold Times Square Protest ‘In Solidarity’ With Palestine

WEF: Somebody Has To Be In Charge Of Rationing Freedom

MSNBC Provides ‘Context’ to Terrorist Attacks Against Israel

Born poor, stay poor: what my $120k student debt says about class in the US  (The Guardian) Feel entitled to be upper class, borrow to get the necessary credentials, discover that nobody wants you in the upper class, and whine about how oppressed you are. Classic Guardian article.

“Go Back To Jersey, You Migrant-Hating Creep”: NYC Mayor Heckled In Unusual Trip To Colombia

Thousands of young people are fleeing Toronto – economists say city will suffer

Rand Paul says ‘without question’ Fauci belongs in jail (The Hill)

Read it.

Swedish startup Luvly is developing an ultra-efficient electric microcar — and like the furniture made by its compatriot Ikea, Luvly’s tiny EV will ship flat.

Read it.

Hamas’s invasion was no mere act of terrorism. It was, rather, an act of war carried out by what is effectively a state. Prime Minister Netanyahu got it right when he said, immediately after the invasion was launched, that Israel was at war.

The difference is important. If the invasion was just another in a long series of terrorist outrages, then selective reprisals, as in the past, are the presumptive response. In other words, doing again what hasn’t worked before–destroying a few military installations and taking out a handful of political or military leaders. War is different. A war ends only when one side internalizes the fact that it is beaten and loses the will to continue.

When I say “one side,” I don’t mean military or political leaders, who face their own imperatives and may or may not ever choose to give up. I mean the civilian population (acknowledging that in Gaza it is not easy to tell who is a civilian, but that doesn’t matter for this purpose). Why did the Allies fire-bomb Dresden? Not to achieve some discrete military objective, but to horrify the German people and convince them that continuing the war would lead only to further catastrophe. Likewise with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In total war, the situation in which Israel finds itself, destroying the will of the civilian population to resist is the ultimate military objective.

Read it.

The Palestinians who invaded Israel have focused on kidnapping civilians, mostly young women. This was facilitated by the fact that there was a “rave for peace” going on near Gaza that many young people attended. The Palestinians no doubt knew this, and planned to attack the event. They took a number of young women captive there.

This video has been seen millions of times. There is a naked young woman in the back of a truck, murdered (and God knows what else) by the Palestinians. The Arabs in the truck are yelling “Allahu Akbar!” “God is great!” Terrific religion they’ve got there.

What is notable, I think, is the jubilant reaction of the crowd. Note the boy who spits on the woman’s corpse. The idea that what is happening is a “terrorist attack” by “Hamas” is a fiction. Hamas is a political entity that rules Gaza with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians who live there. It is much like Nazi Germany–most Germans were not members of the party, but the vast majority supported Hitler until it was clear that Germany was losing the war. Same thing here, except that until now, it hasn’t been clear that Hamas was losing. Hamas appears to command the loyalty of nearly all of Gaza’s residents.

It turns out that the murdered woman in that video was not an Israeli, but rather a German citizen who attended the music event that the Palestinians attacked. She was advocating for “peace.”

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

Washington Free Beacon.

“Congratulations: TO THE TRUTH!”

No, that’s not a tweet from Jennifer Rubin or @NaztyWmn4Biden on Election Day 2020. It’s what famed reporter Bob Woodward wrote in a signed copy of his Watergate book, The Last of the President’s Men, given to Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House staffer whose “explosive” testimony before the January 6 committee in 2022 fueled several weeks’ worth of hysterical commentary on CNN and MSNBC.

Hutchinson, as expected, has written her own book. (Her name and face appear on the cover, at least.) Enough is a memoir, both personal and political, recounting the author’s breakneck journey from abandoned daughter to homework aficionado to Capital Hill intern to low-level staffer in the Trump White House to high-level staffer to subject of a congressional investigation to divine apostle of TRUTH, hero of the anti-Trump #Resistance, and published author.

The book, as intended, has titillated journalists (and other activist Democrats) with splashy headlines about Rudy Giuliani’s cold-fingered gropey hands and sordid tales of how the Trump White House was “more chaotic than previously known.” Whether out of a cynical desire for clicks and ratings, or due to some undiagnosed mental health disorder, these people insist on making Donald J. Trump the lead character in every story about American politics.

Enough isn’t a book about Trump, it’s a book about Cassidy Hutchinson. For that reason, it’s one of the most authentically compelling (and terrifying) accounts of the inner workings of official Washington, D.C., sometimes referred to as “The Swamp,” at least since Veep went off the air in 2019. For starters, it’s the first political memoir I’ve seen that is dedicated to the author’s attorneys. It won’t be the last.

Washington Free Beacon.

Let’s say you’re scanning a few labels of convenience foods you have on hand. The “modified starch” in your tub of rice pudding sounds more innocuous than hydroxypropyl distarch phosphate, one of its scientific synthetic names. But maybe the “yellow prussiate of soda” vs. sodium ferrocyanide in your rolled oats is a closer call.

No matter. You as an average consumer in an industrialized nation probably don’t give either of them much thought, even though you are estimated to ingest 17.6 pounds of food additives per year. You assume they have been deemed safe for consumption and that they serve a purpose: to emulsify or stabilize, to extend shelf life, to keep bits from clumping together. Better living through chemistry!

What these ingredients have in common, though, is that they are among the thousands of “self-certified” industrial substances on the FDA’s list of GRAS additives, or Generally Recognized as Safe. Certified, as in, declared safe not by government standards, but by or on behalf of the companies who make and use them.

Read it.

Last month Cboe Global Markets CEO Ed Tilly warned that if Chicago slaps the financial industry with transaction taxes, amid a crime wave that has employees afraid to come in to work.

“We don’t want to leave… But we cannot be disadvantaged in the world’s most competitive markets,” Tilly said in light of an $800 million tax proposal from Mayor Brandon Johnson aimed at plugging a $538 million budget deficit projected for next year, and increasing costs driven by a cocktail of inflation and rising numbers of destitute asylum seekers.

Now, CME Group, Inc. – which has over a century of history rooted in Chicago, is warning much the same. According to CEO Terry Duffy, they’ll cut bait and drop Chicago like a hot stone – and in fact, have begun the process of uncoupling from the dysfunctional city.

Read it.

When you live under an empire that’s held together by lies, you’ll be asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid bullshit. Here are the top ten dumbest things the propagandists of the US-centralized empire try to get us to swallow.

Like North Korea, North Carolina is the part run by Communists. And don’t get me started on North Dakota….

Trump Loves Sharing National Security Secrets With Random Strangers (The New Republic)

“Tip of the iceberg”: Experts sound the alarm after Trump blabbed nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago (Salon)

In Her Jan. 6 Courtroom, Judge Who Will Hear Trump’s Case Is the Pot Calling the Defendant Incendiary

Trump’s Latest Gamble Is Outlandish—but It Just Might Work (Daily Beast)

The One Thing Trumpies and Swifties Have in Common (Politico) Thumb-sucking for fun and profit.

How not to cover Donald Trump’s bizarre 2024 campaign for president (L.A. Times) Just ignore him and maybe he’ll go away.

CBS News: No Evidence Trump Shared Nuclear Secrets With Australian

DC’s Revolving Door Is Swinging Briskly For The Eco-Green Eyeshade People

Time To Tell America’s Climate Cult “Stop!”

The Dangers Of Investigating Big Pharma

Some Embalmers Say White, Fibrous Clots Showing Up; Others Say It’s A Conspiracy Theory

Science Journals Publish Pro-Lockdown Reports, Censor Anti-Lockdown Studies: Authors

Ibram X. KeChing Is Back in the News,

Biden Blames ‘Negative’ Media for Americans’ Poor View of the Economy

Biden defends administration’s move to extend border wall (NBC News)

WATCH: Joe Biden’s Senior Moment of the Week (Vol. 63)

Is the FBI targeting MAGA?

Feds Spent $3.3 Billion On Furniture During Pandemic Years

G.O.P. Candidates Use Attacks on Israel to Criticize Biden for His Iran Deal (N.Y. Times)

Jim Jordan, Who’s Running For Speaker, Played A Key Role In Trump’s 2020 Election Plot (Huffington Post)

PBS Fetes Hillary, Both Endorse Biden’s Bashing of MAGA GOP as ‘Semi-Fascist’

FLASHBACK: Media Blamed GOP ‘Hard Right’ After Boehner’s Exit, Too

Robert F. Kennedy is headed for a breakup with the Democratic Party (NBC News) Considering they way they’re treating him, I’m not surprised.

Mitchell Blames Terrorist Attack On Israelis, Saudis Ignoring Biden

Doja Cat slammed for wearing shirt with ‘neo-Nazi’ comic Sam Hyde on it

Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen (Washington Poop) The truth is out there.

WH: GOP Spreading ‘Disinformation’ on Israel Attacks

The Great Sort: Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out. (N.Y. Times)

Portland Residents Told Not To Call Police For Help

Jeffries Slams Eviction of Pelosi, Hoyer From Capitol Offices

ACLU Sues a Tennessee City Over Anti-Drag Ordinance

The Problem Isn’t Book “Banners”, It’s Public Schools…

“They Took My Sushi”: Lawmakers Sleeping In US Capitol Due To ‘Very Dangerous’ Crime Wave

When will the European Union take France’s Islamist concerns seriously?

Empty speaker’s office aggravates House-Senate beef (Politico)

Hell Freezes Over, Pigs Fly, and Democrats Demand Closed Border

NBC Breaks Out ‘Extreme Right’ Label as Israel Works to Save Hostages

Violent Crime Is Surging in D.C. This Year: ‘We Just Stood There and Screamed’

School Choice Foes’ Tuition Increase Claims Refuted by Study

UH-OH! NPR Morning Anchor Steve Inskeep Infuriates the Lefties on MSNBC

How Elite are the New Elite?

“What would the Romans do?” is always a useful way to consider issues of public policy. This is not to say they got everything right – their views on women were a bit iffy while about their attitudes to slavery, the less said the better (even if, on both, the reality was more nuanced than is often assumed). On the other hand, a civilisation which built the largest ramp ever constructed by man just to mop up the remnants of a failed revolt would probably not take 20 years to build a train line.

The Romans invented decimation. ‘Nuff said.

For whereas Roman society started with aristocrats and forced them to become meritocrats, the New Elite is composed of self-described meritocrats who are trying to become aristocrats. Membership of the caste is often hereditary – Goodwin, perhaps flippantly, suggested one test for membership is whether one’s parents have a Wikipedia page –  and a range of signalling mechanisms have been developed to allow members to display their status – declarations of pronouns in one’s biography standing in for a coat of arms, knowledge of the latest progressive fashions replacing a familiarity with courtly etiquette.