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It’s an open secret that the Biden administration disdains lawful civilian gun owners almost as much as it does the lawful gun industry. But in case there was any doubt, new gun export regulations published late last month by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security make the administration’s position painfully clear: It doesn’t think ordinary civilians can be trusted with firearms.

The interim final rule on gun exports, published April 30, significantly alters licensing policies for U.S. companies seeking to lawfully export guns and ammunition to civilian markets in other countries. And although it doesn’t necessarily affect American gun owners, it does show the Biden administration’s true colors on the natural right of self-defense—but projected into the international arena.

Here are four things to know about how the rule attacks the lawful gun industry and civilian gun ownership more broadly.

ZMan is fed up.

An aspect of modern politics that does not get discussed is that it is less about the practical things politics is supposed to address and mostly about esoteric and abstract ideas that have meaning only because we pretend so. Look at the current crop of campaign ads and the candidates may as well be running against the bogeyman or in favor of the good juju. Without the party labels, it would be impossible to know anything about the candidates.

This was not always the case. The old joke about politics was that every candidate ran around promising two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. The point was they all had plans about how to increase material prosperity. Even though no politician speaks to anything specific these days, the economy remains the top issue with voters because the prevailing assumption inherited from the past is that politics is supposed to be about practical things like fixing potholes.

One reason for the shift in political rhetoric is that the public square has become the domain of clever midwits playing word games with one another. Public discourse is now controlled by credentialed experts who have no idea how anything works, other than the complex game of relationships that defines the managerial class. That means they are good at constructing complicated intellectual structures that are useful in rhetorical jousting but have no connection to reality.

Concur.

Read it.

leader in Gaza, lays out a plan to set up a secret base in Turkey and other terror cells elsewhere to coordinate attacks against Israeli targets in neighboring countries, including NATO members, Israel claims.

The printed document, seen by The Times but not publicly available, was discovered in the home of Hamza Abu Shanab, chief of staff to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

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MIT welcomed six new deans of diversity, equity, and inclusion, one for each of the institute’s main schools, as part of a “DEI Strategic Action Plan” launched the previous year. Aimed at boosting the representation of women and minorities, in part by developing DEI criteria for staff performance reviews, the plan pledged to “make equity central” to the university “while ensuring the highest standards of excellence.”

But according to a 71-page complaint filed with the university on Saturday, at least two of the six DEI officials may not be living up to those standards. The complaint alleges that Tracie Jones-Barrett and Alana Anderson are serial plagiarists, copying entire pages of text without attribution and riding roughshod over MIT’s academic integrity policies.

In her 2023 dissertation titled “Cite a Sista,” which explored how black women in the Ivy League “make meaning of thriving,” Jones-Barrett, MIT’s deputy “equity officer,” lifts a whole section on “ethical considerations” from Emmitt Wyche III, her classmate in Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Education, without any sort of citation.

Read it.

Not that you’d know it form reading the ‘news’.

Watch it.

Pearl Davis points out the inconvenient truth.

Read it.

Safety fears surrounding pro-Palestine protests at the University of Amsterdam have prompted the institution to cancel all classes for two days, on May 14th and 15th, and to close all of its buildings.

Violent clashes have broken out between demonstrators and riot police three times in the past week. Reports say these took place after a group of “masked outsiders” joined the original peaceful group of activists calling for the university to cut its ties with Israeli institutions. Some of the mob caused “serious damage” to the building. The cost of this disruption has not been unveiled, but will be great.

Alex Tabarrok.

Alec Stapp points out that Canada is the only NATO country that has a free trade agreement with the United States. That’s quite remarkable if you think about it. NATO allies are bound by mutual defense commitments, support for military cooperation, and a dedication to democratic principles. Despite these shared commitments, the U.S. still enforces tariffs and quotas on our NATO allies including France, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain. This is like getting married and not having a joint checking account. If they are good enough partners to commit to their defense then surely NATO allies are good enough partners to commit to free trade?

Sarah Hoyt.

If you are talking to a communist, or another religious believer in science or theory, they will want you to prove that you are correct if you say that they are practicing magical thinking. Since magical thinking was evolutionarily favored for reason of making reactions fast, without stopping to reason, evaluate proofs or logic, a magical thinker might be closed to the most obvious proofs that they are indulging in such.

Read it.

In March, Joe Biden declared Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility” in a move which outraged many and was received as an assault on the holiest day of the year. In one sense, this was of course deeply shocking. Yet it is not as shocking as one might initially presume and is actually somewhat consistent with the fact that transgenderism, as a political and ideological movement, is profoundly religious in its orientation, particularly in its contrast with Christianity. Amidst the noise about the death of God and the decline of faith, the political climate of the West has become charged with religious ideas and impulses masquerading under the supposed secularism of the social movements gripping our culture which, properly explored and unearthed, will aid us in better addressing this descent into heresy.

Transgenderism is a false view of anthropology, based upon a series of premises contrary to reason and reliant upon distinctly religious ideas that happen to be false and should not be accepted as true, good, or beautiful. Its power as an ideological force—observable in its dramatic capture of the political debate in recent years—can, to some degree, be attributed to the religious nature of its presuppositions, which also demonstrates the importance of decisively rejecting its religious conclusions and proscriptions. But first, let us recap just a few of the quite astonishing consequences of this movement and the effects it has had on our society—all of which a mere decade ago would have been considered unthinkably absurd.

StrategyPage.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has decided to seize or try to seize Taiwan before the end of the decade. Xi realizes Taiwan has a say in this matter and wants to mobilize sufficient forces and create the right psychological conditions in China and Taiwan. This includes having Chinese naval and air forces operating near Taiwan on a regular basis so the Taiwanese military is not alarmed every time Chinese forces operate near the island.

Some of these forces that regularly appear off the Taiwanese cast are those that would be used if China were seeking to blockade Taiwan. Chinese military forces will eventually blockade Taiwan and prevent any ships from getting in or out.

Read it.

It’s about time.

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The Salafist group organizers claimed unfair censorship after strict conditions were imposed on Muslims calling for a caliphate in Germany and against anti-Semitic rhetoric…

Read it.

The Education Department’s ongoing meltdown due to its failed implementation of its new website for its Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) should, on the merits, be an ongoing major national story. But the Regime Media have chosen only to cover the story in a very sparing manner, shielding those responsible for the FAFSA meltdown from any scrutiny or accountability.

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Taxpayer millions allocated to border crisis charities are being diverted to unconventional expenses like music therapy and “people-plant interactions” for migrants, alongside hefty salaries for staff, a recent report reveals, the N.Y. Post reported.

Read it.

Newly released images of China’s new aircraft carrier undertaking sea trials have further highlighted the scale of the country’s naval modernisation efforts as it continues to carve out of sphere of influence into, though, and beyond the western Pacific.

Publishing a series of images on 8 May 2024, China’s Ministry of National Defense stated that the Fujian had completed its maiden voyage as the vessel begins to undertake sea trials required before it can enter service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy, also known as the PLAN.

Beijing is set on spending enormous sums of money on expanding and modernising its armed forces with defence expenditure recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% during 2019–23 and was forecast to register a CAGR of 6.6% from 2023 to value $323.7bn by 2028.

China’s Ministry of National Defense is also expected to spend $1.4trn over 2024–28 on the procurement of military hardware and the modernisation of its armed forces, according to GlobalData forecasts.

Power Line.

Vice President Kamala Harris is apparently at last unburdened by what has been, and has reached what can be, speaking today before the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Relations, and it apparently involves kicking and breaking a lot of things, followed by cackling.

Read it.

A federal judge has handed down a 27-year prison sentence to the suspect who pleaded guilty to attacking a trio of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2022 in the name of radical Islamic extremism.

Isn’t it amazing that Christians and Jews don’t do this kind of shit? I wonder why that is.

UnHerd.

Cokes, pilsners and passion-fruit-flavoured vapes. Many smoke rollies, some do ket and cocaine. Eyes rarely widen at the mention of such things; bring up the Pill, however, and you elicit a flurry of disdain and lively debate.

Once seen as a tool of sexual liberation, the Pill is now often spoken of as a pharmaceutical menace, wreaking havoc with female moods and increasing the risk of cancer. It was first rolled out on the NHS in 1961 — for married women, of course. And though still the most popular method of birth-control, its use is plummeting — data published in June last year showed that community pharmacies dispensed 7.2 million items of progestogen and combined contraceptives in 2022-3. In 2014/15, the number was 8.5 million.

A world away from the groans associated with the Pill, there is an enticing optimism to the chatter around the contraception app of the moment, Natural Cycles. To look at testimonies online is to find yourself in the lexical world of the farmers market — words like “harmony” and “rhythms” crop up just as a wrinkling of the nose, an eye roll, follow any mention of the Pill. How good might it be, I think between big rips of a vape, to be free of chemicals?

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As North Carolina’s public university system considers a vote on changing its diversity policy, the system’s flagship university board voted Monday to cut funding for diversity programs in next year’s budget.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees approved a change that would divert $2.3 million of diversity spending from state funds to go toward public safety and policing at a special meeting to address the university’s budget. The board’s vote would only impact UNC-Chapel Hill’s diversity funding, which could result in the loss of its diversity office.

UNC will join the ranks of other notable public universities that have stripped diversity spending, such as the University of Florida in Gainesville, which announced in a March memo it was reallocating funds to faculty recruitment. But unlike UF, which implemented its funding rollback after the state Legislature passed a bill banning diversity program spending at state universities, UNC “set the tone” on funding cuts before the North Carolina Legislature stepped in, budget chair Dave Boliek said.

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Chinese students pursuing an education at western universities are faced with intimidation by Chinese authorities and their proxies—fellow Chinese students.

This is the conclusion of an Amnesty International report that draws on dozens of testimonials from students in Europe as well as the U.S.

While students feel quietly intimidated by their more ‘patriotic’ peers, such tactics can be also applied to their family members.

Read it.

The Liberal Democrats, sometimes viewed as Britain’s third largest political party, have tolerated a “hostile environment” for Christians and deselected a parliamentary candidate because of his Christian faith, in breach of equality law, some of its members have claimed.

David Campanale, who is an award-winning former BBC journalist and, crucially, an Anglican, is set to be replaced as a prospective MP candidate for Sutton and Cheam after what The Daily Telegraph described as “a two-year campaign against him by members of his local party and a number of LGBT activists.”

Human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers said the action against Campanale amounted to “persecution.” It is reminiscent of Tim Farron’s time as leader of the Lib Dems, which came to an end in 2017 after just two years when he concluded that “remaining faithful to Christ” was incompatible with leading the party.

Read it.

Whose side will Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson be on if protesters become lawbreakers at the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and how will he direct police to respond?

Concerns that Johnson will side with lawbreakers already are common, and Johnson’s interview published Sunday by the Chicago Tribune should increase those concerns.

The American Mind.

I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today for sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” – Senator Joe Biden, 1975

Major political and social phenomena do not spring up fully armored and ready for battle, like Athena from Zeus’s head. They have powerful motivations that drive them and gestate for years before they can come into being—they also have powerful interests that they serve. I believe that many of the fundamental trends in anti-white politics and rhetoric serve a common ideological purpose. That purpose is to create an intellectual and cultural environment to justify the expropriation of land, property, and other wealth from whites while instituting a permanent regime of anti-white employment and legal discrimination.

While this statement may seem alarmist, in fact, this expropriation is already ongoing. In many cases, it is still on the margins of our popular politics, but like so many other leftist political movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, what was marginal will soon become mainstream.

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Looking at what the kids are up to these days–I’m good with that.

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The NATO country with the second largest military in the alliance has just admitted to aiding and abetting a US-designated terror organization.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in surprisingly frank statements acknowledged that Turkey is currently treating over 1,000 Hamas members in various hospitals across the country. In the remarks he stressed that Turkey does not consider them terrorists, but as part of a “resistance movement” against Israel.

Turkey doesn’t belong in NATO now that communism is dead in Russia.

Read it.

As Stacy McCain likes to say, crazy people are dangerous.

Axios.

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki claims in her new book that President Biden never looked at his watch during the ceremony for soldiers killed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — contradicting news photos and firsthand accounts of Gold Star families.

Who are you going to believe, Jen or your lyin’ eyes?

New York Magazine.

Jamaal Bowman, the two-term congressman from Westchester County and the would-be future of the progressive left, is tired of the questions about George Latimer. “Yeah, I mean, I think it says something about his character, his integrity, and his actual leadership for the district. But enough of him. When are we going to talk about me?”

“You’d  be surprised by what you don’t need.” — Rollo Tomassi.

David Freer.

Some bloke posted on X that the ambitions and hobbies of all men are chosen to improve their chances of finding a mate. Now, I am sure this is true for him, and like so many people he does assume all others at least of his sex are absolutely identical to him. His theory, for what it is worth, was that desire to reproduce is primal and dominates all other things. Tell that to a man who is cold and wet to the point of hypothermia, or hungry, or even thirsty. Deal with the actual survival primaries, and yes, once you’re warm and comfortable enough, if you don’t breed you can think of it, long-term, as evolution in action.

David Freer is one of my Recommended Writers. (See sidebar on the right.)

Read it.

If you had to identify a specific type of real estate that has seen its value increase because of changing consumer eating habits, global demographic shifts, worldwide pandemic preparedness, and US export policy — while its importance to reducing global carbon emissions and adapting to climate change rise in tandem — refrigerated warehouses may not be your first pick.

But there’s a strong case to be made that the expansion and evolution of the cold-storage industry — often called the “cold chain” — will play a significant role in energy, environmental, and economic news in the 21st century. Cold storage facilities aren’t fun places to visit; some are kept so frigid, at minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, that the workers who toil in these windowless spaces rotate in 15-minute shifts, despite their heavy protective gear.

Power Line.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a possible VP choice, continues to take heat for gunning down a vicious canine. That invites a look at Vice President Biden’s response to a mass shooting of American soldiers by U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who billed himself as a “soldier of Allah.”

On November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood, Maj. Hasan yelled “Allahu akbar” and blasted away with two handguns. He shot dead Capt. John P. Gaffney, Spc. Frederick Greene, civilian physician assistant Michael Cahill, Maj. Eduardo Caraveo, Staff Sgt. Justin Michael DeCrow and Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, who took a fatal bullet in the back. Hasan killed Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, Pfc Michael S. Pearson, Capt. Gilbert Russell Seager, and Pfc. Kham See Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minnesota. The terrorist’s victims included three women.

Pfc. Francheska Velez, 21, was pregnant and yelled “My baby! My baby!” Hasan shot her in the chest, and her pre-born child was never counted among the murder victims. The soldier of Allah also shot dead Lt. Col. Juanita L. Warman, 55, and Staff Sgt. Amy Sue Krueger, 29, who took a fatal bullet in the chest.

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The Arizona grand jury that recently indicted 18 people for allegedly trying to help former President Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election with so-called ‘fake electors’ went completely rogue and took ‘aggressive steps to haul in witnesses,’ to the point where they ‘even brought charges against some’ who were told by prosecutors that they weren’t under investigation, Politico reports.

Read it.

The U.K.’s cumulative net migration in the 25 years up to 1997 was just 68,000. In the 25 years to follow, cumulative net migration was at least 5.8 million,” a damning new report co-authored by Britain’s former immigration minister Robert Jenrick finds, exposing the myths perpetuated by the Western liberal mainstream.

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A new analysis suggests that school-based mindfulness programs, widely implemented in recent years, do not significantly benefit adolescents’ mental health or well-being.

Imagine that.

Power Line.

The Babylon Bee—”America’s newspaper of record,” as Glenn Reynolds likes to put it—has established itself as a premier humor and political satire site of our time. They’ve pretty much put The Onion out of business, though one reason for this is The Onion slowly succumbed to wokery, and hence has trouble in the humor department. (Check it out if you want; it’s pretty weak these days.)

Read it.

Biden’s tax proposals would effectively increase the top federal marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains to 44.6%, a record high since the tax was enacted in the 1920s. As a result, taxes paid on long-term capital gains would reach levels above 50% in some states after accounting for state capital gains taxes. Biden also proposed increasing the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28% and presented a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains for individuals whose net worth exceeds $100 million.

These proposals present two problems. First, they showcase a disregard for the personal property, earnings, and lives of the individuals and organizations subject to the taxes. Second, these taxes would have dire consequences for economic growth and, thus, would negatively impact the living standards of everyday Americans.

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attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus.

Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.

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Chloe Veltman, a correspondent on National Public Radio’s “Culture Desk” who last year celebrated the “Nation’s first ‘drag laureate,'” is still guarding the far-left ramparts of U.S. culture for NPR with Saturday’s “The Met Gala has fueled backlash against stars who are silent about the Gaza conflict.”

Read it.

When happens when your city pisses away all of your tax revenue on trying to feed, shelter and coddle activists and homeless people? You wind up having to make budget cuts. And, in Seattle, those cuts could be coming in the form of closing up to 20 elementary schools.

The district’s budget deficit has reached more than $100 million, according to new reporting from MYNorthwest.

And Superintendent Brent Jones’ proposal for ‘Well-Resourced Schools’ might lead to the shutdown of over a quarter of the district’s 73 elementary schools, the report says.

Read it.

The 66-year-old star of “Fargo” and “Boardwalk Empire” was assaulted late Wednesday morning in Manhattan and taken to a nearby hospital with bruising, swelling, and bleeding of his left eye.

“Steve Buscemi was assaulted in Mid-Town Manhattan, another victim of a random act of violence in the city,” according to a statement Sunday from his publicist. “He is ok and appreciates everyone’s well wishes.”

‘Random act of violence’ about sums up Blue State life.

UPDATE: Actor Steve Buscemi Assaulted in New York. Here’s How the Big Apple Became Sucker Punch City.

The Atlantic.

Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. “Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”

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1 in 10 college students answered that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had created the New Deal. And only 1 in 10 knew James Madison’s role in shaping the Constitution.

That survey from the ‘American Council of Trustees and Alumni’ was one of several warnings about the catastrophic illiteracy of college students and graduates.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute did its own survey of over 28,000 undergraduates from 80 colleges and the average score on the civic literacy exam was an F. At top schools, including Yale, seniors actually knew less than freshmen. A Collegiate Learning Assessment found that after two years almost half of students showed “no significant gains in learning”.

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CBS reporter Robert Costa put together a puffball interview for HBO Real Time host Bill Maher on their show Sunday Morning. They let him claim he’s not ideological and didn’t laugh when he said “I speak for the normies. I speak for that vast middle that is tired of the partisanship. I don’t want to hate half the country, and I don’t hate half the country.” Bill Maher represents the “vast middle,” the “normies”? Conservatives across America would make a face at that. At bottom, Maher is a bit of shock jock, so that when Democrats are in power he’s going to mock them as well, just as he suggested on Friday night that the Democrats “blew it” in all their legal warfare on Trump. What was amazing in this profile was Costa imploring Maher to lay off mockery of the Left, just shine the spotlight on the right-wingers!

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A paralegal from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford’s (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted, raising questions about evidentiary integrity.

In a bid to challenge some of the evidence being put forward in President Trump’s business records falsification trial in Manhattan, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider in court on May 10 about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.

Mr. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed some deletions. He acknowledged that some phone call records from 2018 between Mr. Cohen and Keith Davidson (Ms. Clifford’s lawyer) had been deleted, along with some records of conversations between Ms. Clifford’s manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard about Ms. Clifford’s claim that she had an affair with President Trump.

Watch it.

Wisdom. Attend.

(Love me that pull-down shelving.)