ZMan jerks the cover off.

What we have now is the Lincoln exception to property rights. If people with power can produce a moral cause to justify to themselves the abrogation of your property rights, then for the good of our democracy they not only can take your property, but they also have a duty to do it. We have gone from the government stealing the property of slave owners to save the Union, to the government granting powerful interests the right to root around in your private affairs and publish the results.

Navy Matters.

The supposed savings is estimated at $1B. In the aggregate, that sounds impressive. A billion dollars! Wow! However, across four ships that’s just $250M savings per ship. That’s not nothing but it’s not a miraculous savings, by any means. More importantly, you know those savings will never materialize. With 100% certainty, the ships will come in over budget and behind schedule with a litany of excuses like supply chain disruptions, parts shortages, design modifications, and all the other usual suspects. There won’t be any savings. The absolute best case is that the ‘savings’ (let’s be optimistic and assume there will be actual savings) will slightly reduce the magnitude of the inevitable cost overruns. Again, better than nothing but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we’re actually going to save money.

Babylon Bee.

Satire — read it quickly before it comes true.

Read it.

As a general rule, you can make a generic headline “[black person’s name]’s new book compares [thing Woke people don’t like] to the Jim Crow South.”

Saves a lot of time and effort on everybody’s part.

Headline you won’t ever see: “Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New Book Compares Palestinian Treatment of Israelis to Muslim Massacre at Hebron“.

Read it.

The killing on Friday of Hezbollah’s leader by Israeli forces prompted celebrations across the globe, confirming that Israel is not alone in seeing the terror group as an existential threat.

After news broke of the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah—who Benjamin Netanyahu said was “not a terrorist, he was the terrorist”—and much of the team around him, jubilant civilians gathered in the northern Syrian city of Idlib, honking horns and handing out sweets. Iranians also came together outside the Israeli embassy in London to thank Israel for its action.

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A 41-year-old Syrian man set fire to two buildings, rammed his vehicle into a grocery store, and threatened passers-by with a machete in the western German city of Essen. While authorities and mainstream politicians are treating the case as an act of revenge by a mentally deranged man against his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, the attack bears the hallmarks of Islamist violence.

According to German media reports, the perpetrator set fire to two residential buildings on Saturday afternoon, injuring 31 people, including eight children who remain in critical condition. Photos circulating on social media show people clambering down ladders to try to escape one of the torched buildings.

The fire department said people stood at windows and on balconies for air because they could no longer escape through the smoke-filled stairwell.

New York Times.

In blue states, everybody is forced to do it the Government Way.

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When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.

Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.

That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.

Ortiz, who came to Hartford from Puerto Rico with her family when she was young, struggled with language and other challenges along the way. But a confluence of circumstances, apparent apathy and institutional inertia pushed her haphazardly through the school system, according to Ortiz, her attorney and district officials.

Those officials, in statements that her attorney says display “shocking” educational neglect, have acknowledged that Ortiz never received instruction in reading.

Government schools. Union teachers. Results as you see them.

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The Insider has obtained access to hundreds of official documents related to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death in the Polar Wolf penal colony in the Russian Far North on Feb. 16, 2024. Officially, Navalny’s death was attributed to natural causes, and Russia’s Investigative Committee stated in July that the case “does not have a criminal nature.” However, the contents of the documents in The Insider’s possession demonstrate that Russian authorities consistently removed references to symptoms Navalny was documented to have been suffering — symptoms that did not fit with the Russian state’s official cause of death. As medical experts confirm, these symptoms clearly indicate that Navalny was poisoned.

My,  what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

The NBC-Telemundo poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris with a historically low level of support among Hispanics has begun to trigger some of the usual reactions at MSNBC, including the tired “adjacent to whiteness” trope.

WashPost Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart opened his The Sunday Show segment on the poll by barely being able to put together the words necessary to describe Harris’s 14-point lead among Hispanics in relation to past Democrat nominees.

So, appaarently, do many ‘black’ women, such as Beyoncé.

Read it.

Author and cultural critic Fran Lebowitz added voice to the unhinged calls on the left for trashing the Supreme Court. As I discussed recently in the Wall Street Journal (and in my book), there is a growing counter-constitutional movement in the United States led by law professors, pundits, and celebrities. Lebowitz amplified those calls in a radical demand to simply get rid of the Court.

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When lefties switched from class warfare to identity politics, they became hopelessly mired in tribalism. Their old animating principle of an egalitarian society has long since given way to a tribal society in which certain groups will have more power than others because equality can only come about through massive doses of inequality. But even that is considered hopelessly old-fashioned liberalism. The new wave of identity politics doesn’t even justify its demands for special treatment by promising that one day we’ll all be equal. The tribal premise of inherent inequality is the essence of intersectionality.

Read it.

Machetes were very, very active yesterday in the city of Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia. And so were matches: they just suddenly started lighting buildings on fire. And a truck kept running into buildings! What makes those inanimate objects so malicious?

The fact that a Syrian happened to be wielding all three types of weapon is not something that needs to be discussed. Only racists would do that.

The following news video gives a brief account of what happened in Essen, but without mentioning cultural enrichment.

Read it.

The Balearic Islands are often overlooked in reports about illegal immigration. The Spanish ministry of the interior effectively leaves out statistics related to the Balearic archipelago in its reports, even though it is currently the fastest-growing migration route compared to last year. The situation is becoming critical, and the threat of a migration surge looms larger over the islands each day.

Challenge: How many of the provinces of Spain can you identify?

Read it.

Well, you pick one up and you put it in your pocket. Nothing to it.

The real problem is finding the pawpaw patch.

The Register.

Beijing has published its proposed regulations for satellite broadband, including a requirement that operators conduct censorship in real time.

In its latest draft rules, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposes any organization or individual using terminal equipment with direct connection to satellite services is not allowed to “produce, copy, publish, or disseminate content prohibited by laws and administrative regulations, such as content that incites subversion of state power, overthrows the socialist system, endangers national security and interests, damages the national image, incites secession of the country, undermines national unity and social stability, promotes terrorism, extremism, ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination, violence, pornography, and false information.”

It clarifies that terminal equipment includes civilian handheld, portable, and fixed terminals, as well as terminals installed on aircraft, ships, and vehicles – essentially any device that enables users to access satellite communication systems for voice calls, text messaging, and data exchange.

The document states that providers must align their operations with national security and network security requirements, and prevent illegal activities.

Whatever it may be out there, in here is forever 1984.

Read it.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) on Sunday announced plans for a widespread strike at all Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports, scheduled to begin at 12:01 am on Tuesday, October 1, 2024.

With just 36 hours remaining before the expiration of the current ILA-USMX contract, negotiations between the ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) have reached an impasse. The strike would involve 85,000 ILA members and impact ports from Maine to Texas, the ILA said in a Sunday update posted to Facebook.

“United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) refuses to address a half-century of wage subjugation where Ocean Carriers profits skyrocketed from millions to mega-billion dollars, while ILA longshore wages remained flat,” the update said.

The offered 30% raise was apparently insufficient.

“Look for … the Union label….”

Read it.

On Sunday Iran vowed severe revenge against Israel not only for the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah during massive bombings on Friday in Beirut’s southern suburbs, but for the death of a top Revolutionary Guard official in the same airstrikes.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi gave high level confirmation for the first time that IRGC Deputy Commander, Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan – who apparently was meeting with Nasrallah at the time – was killed.

Read it.

Democrats aren’t even bothering to hide any more that they’re the real fascists.

Read it.

Muslims think it’s war. When will non-Muslims wake up? Just before their heads come off?

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Tensions are rising in Vienna’s 10th district, Favoriten, as local residents express anger over a project to house refugees in 110 newly built, luxury apartments.

Read it. 

This is Beyoncé, an alleged black woman:

For comparison, this is a real black woman;

The National Interest.

Sweden’s Gotland-class submarines, first commissioned in the 1990s, are renowned for their stealth, maneuverability, and cutting-edge technology. Designed to operate near Sweden’s Baltic waters, these submarines use advanced Stirling engine air-independent propulsion, making them nearly silent and hard to detect.

In 2005, during a U.S. Navy wargame, a Gotland-class submarine famously “sank” a U.S. aircraft carrier, demonstrating its effectiveness. With a displacement of 1,580 tons and armed with heavyweight torpedoes and mines, these subs play a crucial role in Sweden’s maritime defense.

Now a NATO member, Sweden’s Gotland-class strengthens Western naval capabilities against Russia in the Baltic Sea.

Read it.

In 2009 Paul Graham wrote a thoughtful essay titled “Cities and Ambition.” There he proposes that a great city is defined by the sort of ambitions it kindles—or perhaps more accurately, the sort of ambitious it gathers.

…

When I discussed this essay on Twitter many of my followers took issue with Graham’s premise. Millions of human beings call a city like New York, San Francisco, or London home. The dreams of these millions cannot be shrunk down to one prestige occupation. Folks in Los Angeles were particularly resistant: the Angeleno who works in law or shipping resents when his city is reduced to its most vapid industry.

These objections are obviously true yet somewhat irrelevant to Graham’s larger point: Every city has its own aspirational ideal, and this ideal influences who a city holds in high honor. Packed as they are with so many millions, large cities contain almost every kind of ambition—but not every city will esteem each ambition equally. “Professors in New York and the Bay area are second class citizens,” Graham comments, “till they start hedge funds or startups respectively.”2 Likewise, in Cambridge the financier and the founder will be held in high esteem—but less esteem than the scientist or the scholar.

Read it.

Tom Thumb in Plano, Texas. Star Market in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Pavilions in Newport Beach, California. Jewel-Osco in Glenview, Illinois. What do these regional grocery chains have in common? They’re all owned by Albertsons, the Boise, Idaho-based company with more than 2,200 locations under about two dozen banners.

Over the past three decades, the traditional supermarket industry shrunk as a handful of big-name grocers acquired their smaller local and regional rivals. Now Walmart, Kroger, Aldi (Süd) and Albertsons own a third of all U.S. grocery stores locations, according to a Washington Post analysis of OpenStreetMap location data.

But the marquee companies could further concentrate their dominance: A federal judge in Portland, Ore., is deciding whether Kroger and Albertsons can proceed with a merger in what would be the biggest supermarket union in U.S. history.

The hand-wringers of the Washington Poop appear to think this is an impending crisis. Pish and tush. Within a five-minute drive of my house, at least four of the ‘giant chains’ are represented, and others are only an internet click away in this pick-up-and-delivery world. I routinely get grocery deliveries from Costco, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Tom Thumb, Sams, and Walmart; I don’t think I’ve been ‘grocery shopping’ in person in months, and then only when it was on my way and my need was urgent. (Not to forget Braum’s, which has the freshest produce and the most cook-for-two-people-friendly packaging I’ve ever encountered.)

Read it.

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

If Bonta flew roundtrip from Sacramento to New York City to appear at Climate Week, he would have flown approximately 5,000 miles and emitted about 2.26 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to calculations done on Sustainable Travel.

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The Islamization of the Western world proceeds apace.

Some regions are farther along than others. Major urban areas in the UK, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, and France are effectively autonomous enclaves ruled by sharia. Infidels must conform to certain norms of behavior when they enter those zones, but that is no guarantee that they will remain unmolested, since they are infidels, and therefore legitimate prey for Muslims under Islamic law.

Read it.

On that date in 1929, “3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes, and daggers marched through the Jewish quarter of Hebron,” writes Yardena Schwartz. Before the day was over, the streets of the ancient city in British Mandate Palestine ran red with blood; 67 Jewish men, women and children were murdered, and the rest of the 800-strong Jewish community fled.

In her new book, “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Schwartz examines the day’s violence in forensic detail, and argues that the pogrom in Hebron, part of a spate of anti-Jewish riots that August, inspired the extremism on both sides that continues to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so intractable. Having revised her original manuscript after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, she argues that there is a direct line between the two attacks in how they shaped a century of bloodshed.

“If we continue to ignore that history and the role religion plays in this conflict, I think we’re just going to be destined to another 100 years of wars and massacres,” she told me in an interview on Thursday, a little over a week before the one-year anniversary of what she calls the “Black Sabbath.”

There is nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

Yeah, they all voted straight Democrat. Mission accomplished.

Read it.

On Friday, ICE revealed that it estimates there are roughly 13,000 non-citizen murderers running loose in the country, but only NBC found time to mention it on their Friday evening newscast. ABC and CBS, meanwhile, not only failed to cover it, but tried to spin the border situation as positive.

ABC White House correspondent Mary Bruce took the lead on Friday’s World News Tonight when she hyped Kamala Harris’s trip to the border, “Tonight, Harris promising if she’s elected, she will add 1,500 more border agents and officers, crack down on fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking, and surge resources to the border. Much of this was included in the landmark bipartisan border security bill that Harris supported but that Donald Trump urged members of Congress to tank, just as the campaign was heating up.”

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An entire HR team was terminated after their manager discovered and confirmed that their system automatically rejected all candidates – including his own application.

It’s no secret that the job market has become increasingly competitive and the job search process can be daunting. Many applicants send out numerous applications without receiving a response unless they have connections who can help them secure a job.

Unsurprisingly, receiving rejection emails almost immediately after applying can be frustrating. This often indicates that no one has even reviewed your resume. In one manager’s case, this was due to a ridiculous oversight that led to the termination of many employees.

Read it.

No. Chemicals are not killing people. People are killing themselves (and occasionally others) by using chemicals in search of a utopia that doesn’t require any work. If it weren’t fentanyl, it would be heroin, or meth, or crack, or oxycontin, or whatever’s fashionable this week.

People make choices, and sometimes those choices are stupid. Think of it as evolution in action: Natural selection always acts to remove the weak and foolish, and there’s a point to that, to make sure that such do not reproduce. The modern ideology is that it’s the government’s job to save people from themselves (and the taxpayers’ job to pay for it), regardless of what those people themselves choose to do. Nature always wins, sooner or later.

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Springfield is the archetypal town of the forgotten man. Trump’s constant refrain has echoed throughout the rusted beams and derelict barns of this place. It has one problem: the wrong people remembered. And those people have come to finish Springfield off, once and for all.

I didn’t come in search of cats and dogs on grills, although I found that too. I came to learn why the political representative of the American people was determined to replace them with others. It turns out that the explanation is simple: they did it for money, for a feeling of moral superiority, and because it could be done.

My investigation discovered a long rotten beam extending from the Mayor down to NGOs, pastors, corporations, and local mediocrities looking to make a fast buck. Everyone is on the take. And Springfield is not an outlier. It is a standard example of local partnerships with federal and corporate resettlement programs working together to profit themselves.

Know the feeling.

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Laurence Garnier, a member of the LR party and the new Secretary of State for Consumer Affairs, has had to bear the brunt of this hidden censure. She was anticipated to take up the post of Minister for the Family, but in the end had to make do with a much more modest portfolio. Emmanuel Macron even made it known that he did not want her in the government. This was due to her vote against enshrining abortion in the constitution a few weeks ago, as well as her stance against gay marriage, medically assisted procreation (PMA) for women, and the ban on conversion therapies.

The left-wing newspaper Libération has launched a true witch hunt. On its front page, the paper denounced “the reactionary pact” and went looking into the past of members of the government to award them diplômes d’infréquentabilité—‘certifications of non-reliability.’ Patrick Hetzel, Minister for Higher Education, and Othman Nasrou—though loyal to the very centrist Valérie Pécresse—have been condemned for having, one or more times in their careers, expressed conservative views in favour of the family or a reasoned vision of bioethics.

But what is more serious is the pressure that the Left intends to exert from outside, now that the team is in place, to ensure the government’s ideological rectitude. Left-wing commentators on X are entertaining the fantasy of a resurgence of reactionary policies and worrying that societal ‘rights’—abortion, gay marriage, LGBT rights—might be called into question even though there has never been any question of this and, from our humble point of view, we can even deplore the timidity of the new ministers on these crucial issues. Planned Parenthood says it is “worried.” Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal sent a very clear message to Michel Barnier: he took the liberty of asking for guarantees that there would be “no backtracking on PMA, abortion, or minority rights.” He said he was “personally offended” by the past positions of certain ministers.

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Although the end of October is a long way away, the first Halloween items have crept into retail stores here in Southern California. Of course, what most Europeans see in Halloween is yet another American importation—and one of ghoulish or even Satanic orientation at that. One could hardly blame such a reaction, especially as this observance is preceded by a long list of other such, including (but not confined to) Black Friday, Santa Claus, KFC, McDonald’s, and on and on. Not being aware of either the slightly-terror-tinged-but-wholesome thing that Halloween was in my childhood, or of its Christian and Celtic roots, one can easily forgive the devout European for this conclusion. But the whole thing is rather more complex. It is not merely a question of Halloween, but of the whole body of weird lore that underlies Europe’s cultures—and in a sense may be a bulwark of tradition in the fight for her future. There is also the question of whether that lore is strictly fictional, or if it contains some unpleasant realities that are ignored only at one’s peril—even if one wields political power.

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Newport News Shipbuilding informed the Department of Justice that there may be intentionally faulty welds on non-critical components located on in-service submarines and aircraft carriers, according to a report by USNI News Thursday.

The faulty work was discovered by internal quality assurance systems and early indications show that some of the welding errors were intentional, according to a statement to USNI News.

“We recently discovered through internal reporting that the quality of some welds did not meet our high-quality standards. Upon this discovery, we took immediate action to communicate with our customers and regulators, investigate, determine root cause, bound these matters and insert immediate corrective actions to prevent any recurrence of these issues,” the statement reads.

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Beirut has been rocked by huge explosions, with Israel confirming that it carried out airstrikes against Hezbollah’s main military headquarters in the Lebanese capital. Information is still emerging, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is said to have been the target, while this afternoon’s raids were the biggest to hit Beirut since the start of the current conflict in the Middle East, almost a year ago.

In Beirut this afternoon, a series of explosions were heard across the city, leaving multiple huge plumes of dark smoke. Smoke was even visible from the city of Batroun, roughly an hour’s drive north of the Lebanese capital.

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The uptown Manhattan district office of New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat and the surrounding area was vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti on Thursday night.

According to security footage police viewed at the scene the following morning, the vandalism took place at around 11 p.m., on a night when pro-Palestinian protests took place around the city, on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

The district office is in a heavily Jewish area, close to several synagogues and Jewish schools. The graffiti covered a window that, for much of the past year, has displayed fliers with the faces of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The office, which was closed Friday morning as police investigated, is regularly picketed by small groups of pro-Palestinian protesters.

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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I’d have cut off an ear on each one of them. But that’s me.

Read it.

Charles Piller and the team here at Science dropped a big story yesterday morning, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should. It’s about Eliezer Masliah, who since 2016 has been the head of the Division of Neuroscience in the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and whose scientific publication record over at least the past 25 years shows multiple, widespread, blatant instances of fraud. There it is in about as few words as possible.

Read it.

People who are raised in cultures not based on Judeo-Christian values are treasured resources to criminal enterprises.

Read it.

Researchers in Australia have found a whole new type of cell that fills a major hole in our understanding of how the mammal body heals.

For over a century, scientists have hypothesized that a cell like this existed – and now, an adult version has been found at last, hiding in the aorta of grown mice.

The discovery was nine years in the making. Researchers have named the cells ‘EndoMac progenitors’, and the team is now searching for similar players in the human body.

Fortune.

After complaining that Gen Z grads are difficult to work with for the best part of two years, bosses are no longer all talk, no action—now they’re rapidly firing young workers who aren’t up to scratch just months after hiring them.

According to a new report, six in 10 employers say they have already sacked some of the Gen Z workers they hired fresh out of college earlier this year.

Intelligent.com, a platform dedicated to helping young professionals navigate the future of work, surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. leaders. It found that the class of 2024’s shortcomings will impact future grads.

After experiencing a raft of problems with young new hires, one in six bosses say they’re hesitant to hire college grads again.

Meanwhile, one in seven bosses have admitted that they may avoid hiring them altogether next year.

I wouldn’t hire any of these entitled slackers.

Read it.

There’s only one official crossing guard at P.S. 127, the Aerospace Science Magnet School in East Elmhurst, Queens. But every morning, Stephen Cameron, a 78-year-old grandfather of four kids at the school, dons an NYPD hat and neon yellow windbreaker with a police patch and voluntarily guides children through traffic.

“The most important thing is for them to cross here and get security for them,” said Cameron, who is retired from his job as a detective in Trinidad and Tobago. “All the buses come at the same time, everybody getting out at the same time … it makes it a little hectic.”

Not only hectic, but sometimes also tragic: Two students at the school have been killed in traffic in the last two years. They were each walking with a parent near school, navigating a neighborhood full of tricky triangle intersections where parents say it’s hard to figure out who has the right of way as drivers speed through. Just blocks away, kids navigate busy Astoria Boulevard, where they must often dart across multiple lanes of traffic to catch the bus.