Alma Boykin.

Archaeologists get frustrated when they know something should be there, but no records have been found yet, and what they are looking for doesn’t survive. Grain was traded in the Levant and Mesopotamia, but unless there are sales receipts, or the granary burned down and so preserved the contents, we’ll never know how much and to whom. Ditto fabric. Textiles were probably one of the largest category of long-distance trade, based on later patterns of exchange, but again, unless it burned and archaeologists find traces, no one will ever know.

One of the things archaeologists have peen puzzling over for a few decades is, “What went where that we can’t see?” Food is one of those things. Sometimes the containers survived, like the famous amphorae of the Classical world that one finds all over, including along shipping routes. Apparently some of the wine was tested for quality by the shipping crew while enroute. Olive pits are another thing that sometime survive, along with the amphorae for the oil (and perfume flasks, although those are more rare.) Dried fruit might have been shipped as well, based on cuneiform tablets accidentally baked hard when a city was sacked. Dried meat? Beer? Well, probably not beer, because it didn’t keep well before hops was added as an ingredient. Vegetables of some sort? Probably locally, but how far is local? We’ll never know, unless charred bits are found that are clearly not from the area where they are excavated.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

One of the consequences of the unfolding revelations in Washington is that we must reexamine the past in light of this new data. We now know that the political process was captured by the Blob and used to serve the Blob. That means the alleged policies of past presidents were probably not their policies at all. They were simply staying ahead of the policies put forth by the Blob.

At the same time, much of what we want government to do has gotten worse as the Blob has assumed control. Name a problem and not only has it gotten worse, but the cost of addressing it has grown out of control. One great example is the war on drugs that has tracked closely with the growth of the Blob. The cost of fighting it has spiraled out of control, while the problem has only grown worse.

It is the nature of managerialism to look for things to manage, but managing is not the same as solving or even mitigating. You cannot remain a manager if what the problem you are tasked to manage gets solved. In fact, solving the issue is exactly what you must seek to avoid, which means you become part of the problem. This is what we have seen with the drug war going back to the Reagan years.

Read it.

President Donald Trump has revolutionized the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by ousting 18 Democratic appointees from the board of trustees and replacing them with normal Americans. On Wednesday, the new board unanimously elected a fabulous chairman (Trump) who is determined to preside over a “Golden Age of Arts and Culture” in this country after four years of vapid slop under former president Joe Biden. “I think we’re going to make it hot,” Trump said on a conference call with Kennedy Center board members. “And we made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.”

Liberal elites have grumbled that Trump’s actions amount to a sinister “purge” or “coup.” The New Republic, a once-respected left-wing publication, accused Trump of appointing “the weirdest board ever” at the Kennedy Center. This couldn’t be more wrong, according to an in-depth analysis of the new and outgoing members. Based on the available evidence, it’s safe to say that Trump has assembled one of the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive groups of qualified experts since the Kennedy Center opened its doors in 1971. By purging the board’s ranks of likeminded elites and replacing them with individuals who are more relatable and representative of our country’s beautiful and complex demographic tapestry, Trump has pulled off an impressive coup—for DEI.

The Guardian.

The fact that they were in the U.S. illegally is ‘proof of crime’, although the Narrative Media refuse to admit it.

Read it.

Yes, really.

Because it begins with ‘man’ it is somehow holding back women from going into the manufacturing industry.

Schakowsky, the ranking Democrat member on the House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, for some unfathomable reason, posited that only around 13 percent of people in manufacturing are female because the word itself just “sounds like a guy.”

I guess Biden isn’t the only Democrat with brain-rot.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

In the two months since President Trump won the US election, US industrial production has jumped by the most since Nov 2021 (up 1.5%) to its highest since Sept 2022 (boosted by utilities in a month marked by colder temperatures), up 0.5% MoM in January (better than the 0.3% increase expected). That, along with an upward revision for December, pushed US Industrial Production up 2.00% YoY (its strongest pace of growth since Oct 2022)…

Read it.

The suspect in the car-ramming attack in Munich that left more than 30 people injured appears to have had an Islamic extremist motive, but there’s no evidence that he was involved with any radical network, authorities said Friday.

The 24-year-old Afghan, who arrived in Germany as an asylum-seeker in 2016 and lived in Munich, was arrested after driving his Mini Cooper into the back of a labor union demonstration in the Bavarian city on Thursday. Police officers pulled him out of the car after firing a shot at the vehicle, which didn’t hit him, and arrested him.

Prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said that the suspect said “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” to police and then prayed after his arrest — which prompted a department that investigates extremism and terror to take on the case immediately.

Do tell….

Read it.

My father could disassemble and rebuild a car engine in our garage. I, like many of my generation, was steered toward the ‘civilized’ path – white collar work, climate-controlled offices, and an increasing detachment from the physical world. While I grew up loving sports, memorizing baseball stats with religious devotion, and finding genuine joy in the games, something fundamental has shifted in how men engage with athletics today.

In dimly lit rooms across the nation, millions of men gather every weekend, adorned in jerseys bearing other men’s names – not as a complement to their own achievements, but as a substitute for them. We’ve transformed from a nation of players to a nation of watchers.

Like Rome’s bread and circuses, this passive consumption serves to pacify rather than inspire.

I was passive before passive was sorta cool.

The Covid response revealed this agenda with striking clarity. While liquor stores remained ‘essential businesses,’ authorities closed beaches, parks, and gyms – the very places where people might maintain their physical and mental health. They promoted isolation over community, compliance over resilience, and pharmaceutical dependency over natural immunity. This wasn’t just public health policy; it was a dress rehearsal for state dependency. The same institutions that discouraged basic health practices now champion policies that replace family authority with bureaucratic oversight. From school boards usurping parental rights to social services intervening in family decisions, we’re witnessing the systematic replacement of the capable father figure with an ever-expanding nanny state.

Coincidence? I think NOT.

Read it.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reportedly increased grants for migrants from 2020 to 2024, spending more than $22 billion in taxpayer dollars on grants that included money going toward vehicles, home loans, and startup businesses.

The agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), handed out $22.6 billion to a host of nonprofits, effectively acting as a “giant magnet” for migrants crossing the U.S. border and claiming asylum, auditors from OpenTheBooks told New York Post.

The amount of noncitizens eligible to obtain funding that derived from ORR under the majority of former President Joe Biden’s administration soared significantly, with more than $10 billion handed out to grant-receiving organizations in just 2023 alone, the outlet noted.

Read it.

A better question would be: what was the need for this exhibit to exist in the first place? It seems a little…cult-ish…even for a place where the highest aspiration is to be a 5th grade field trip stop. But we digress.

“In the past 48 hours, HHS canceled 62 contract[s] worth $182 million. These contracts were entirely for administrative expenses — none touched any healthcare programs. This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH Museum,” DOGE wrote on its X account this week.

The cut is part of more than $180 million in cuts being made, according to the New York Post.

Read it.

The origins of COVID-19 remain uncertain despite extensive research. A new study published in Advances in Biomarker Sciences and Technology (ABST) takes an AI-driven approach to analyze DNA methylation patterns at 865,859 CpG sites in blood samples from early COVID-19 patients.

Led by Zhengjun Zhang from the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Statistics, the study used max-logistic intelligence to identify strong genetic links. The findings suggest that COVID-19 may have resulted from the natural fusion of two rare infectious diseases — glanders and Sennetsu fever — combined with common human illnesses.

Which, of course, doesn’t speak to whether it arose naturally or by means of ‘gain of function’ research by ill-intentioned people.

Read it.

As we all know, knife crime in Germany is out of control. The following report concerns a knife attack on an elderly man in the town of Ratingen.

Note: There is no indication of ethnicity in this account, so I haven’t credited the assault to cultural enrichment.

The perpetrator was evidently unaware that he was in a knife-free zone.

Quilette.

The thirteenth of February 2025 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the last printed Peanuts comic strip, a closure which eerily coincided with the death at age seventy-seven of its author, Charles M. Schulz, on the same day. In hindsight, Peanuts was not just another highly successful cultural product but one of the last single-authored cultural products to be internationally successful on a grand scale.

Schulz’s drawn characters—along with their catchphrases like “Good grief!” and “You blockhead!”—have become as immortal as Waiting for Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon, Catch-22’s Yossarian, and Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. But his real achievement lies not in any single comic strip or character, but in the sheer extent of his fifty-year body of original work. Between October 1950 and December 1999, Schulz drew almost 18,000 unique Peanuts episodes, in addition to innumerable Peanuts posters, calendars, greeting cards, and advertisements. Peanuts is a modern saga, or, as illustrator Ivan Brunetti put it, “an epic poem made up entirely of haikus.” A handful of other twentieth- and twenty-first century works have enjoyed a similar longevity, but few or none of them have stemmed so exclusively from the creativity of one individual, and yet become so familiar, day by day, over a period of five decades.

Read it.

Scientists have uncovered a new way that cells control their genes — and it may rewrite our understanding of “epigenetics.”

Epigenetics is a form of DNA modification that doesn’t affect the DNA sequence itself. Instead, it describes when chemical groups attach to specific genes, thus switching those genes on or off, or else changing the 3D shape of chromosomes.

Now, in a study published Jan. 17 in the journal Cell, scientists have uncovered a whole new method of gene regulation that involves epigenetic tweaks made to both DNA and its molecular cousin RNA, at the same time.

Read it.

Details are still emerging, but the U.S. Navy supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman has collided with a merchant vessel identified as the Besiktas-M in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Egypt’s Port Said.

The U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet released the following statement:

“The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.”

“The collision did not endanger the Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) as there are no reports of flooding or injuries. The propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition. The incident is under investigation. More information will be released as it becomes available.”

Read it.

The University of California, Los Angeles, is temporarily suspending its Students for Justice in Palestine and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters after members harassed Hollywood talent agent and regent Jay Sures and his family while vandalizing his home.

Some 50 masked protesters pounded drums and blocked Sures’s street and driveway in the early morning of Feb. 5, with police responding at 6:15 a.m., according to the SJP groups’ social media posts and police reports. The protesters imprinted red handprints on the outside walls of Sures’s house and plastered fliers on his garage door, Deadline Hollywood reported.

While announcing the chapters’ suspension, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said the protesters even surrounded the vehicle of one family member. They also held a sign that read, “Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day.”

Newsbusters.

Democrats and their corporate media allies like to quietly redefine political terms to suit their needs. Threats to “democracy” are really threats to unaccountable, left-of-center government bureaucracy; “misinformation,” along with its “dis-” and “mal-” cousins, is any fact or narrative that is inconvenient for the political left; and basically anyone or anything who runs afoul of the Democratic party’s agenda can instantly become a “racist.”

One such term that had lain dormant for much of the Biden presidency has re-emerged this week: “constitutional crisis,” — defined as anything that the Trump-run Executive Branch does which Democrats disapprove of but are powerless to stop.

On January 20, President Trump renamed the the Obama-era United States Digital Service to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As the media’s recounting of events goes, Trump then handed the reins over to Elon Musk, and within moments, a torrent of constitutional crises erupted all over the country.

Read it.

Once again, RINO Mitch demonstrates that he’s fully imbedded in the Deep State.

Read it.

An Afghan asylum-seeker drove a car into a labor union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 28 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack.

The suspect, an Afghan asylum-seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 election.

Participants in a demonstration by the service workers’ union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10:30 a.m. when the car overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police said.

The American Mind.

As Donald Trump was sworn in as president for the second time, he was surrounded by the men who deplatformed and silenced him four years ago. Google CEO Sundar Pichai banned Trump from YouTube and removed his app, Truth Social, from Google Play. Mark Zuckerberg sat flanked by Republican politicians despite banning Trump on Facebook and Instagram following the January 6 protest at the Capitol.

Whether it’s due to political opportunism or a real change of heart, the tech moguls’ now cozy relationship with Trump is one of necessity. It was easy to censor someone they thought would never become the most powerful man in the country again.

The Other McCain.

Longtime blog buddy Dana Pico is usually our go-to source for all Philadelphia-related news, but for some reason he had no comment on the Eagles winning the Super Bowl and the subsequent riot.

 

Read it.

Greensplaining why more ice means the world is getting warmer.

Read it.

As President Donald Trump unleashed a suite of executive orders targeting DEI, the University of Michigan School of Nursing began quietly revamping its website.

A “diversity” tab with links to DEI resources was removed from the homepage. Pages with “DEI” in the title were renamed and purged of the offending adjective, according to web archives reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, while the main page for the school’s diversity office—which stated, “We are not excellent if we do not reflect diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our community”—was taken down entirely.

In its place was a new page for “Community Culture,” which declares that “culture is at the heart of everything we do.” None of the revised pages use the terms “diversity” or “DEI.”

Read it.

The dangerously spiralling mental health crisis in America was on full show Tuesday as the City Council in Worcester Massachusetts voted in favour of becoming a “sanctuary city for the transgender community.”

City officials voted to enshrine a commitment to transgender rights, and not to prevent people seeking so called ‘gender-affirming care.’

The measure will also prevent information on transgender identifying and ‘gender diverse’ individuals being shared with out-of-state agencies.

The vote was brought after Councilor-at-Large Thu Nguyen, a non-binary identifying member of the board, alleged that ‘they’ had been harassed and misgendered by other city officials.

A parade of individuals spoke for hours in public comments about how unsafe they feel since President Trump’s signed an executive order outlining that the federal government recognizes only “two sexes, male and female.”

Practically every person who spoke at the hearing appeared and sounded completely unhinged, again underscoring that this is a mental health problem that shouldn’t be normalised.

Read it.

Yemen’s Houthis have declared “our hands are on the trigger” ready to resume attacks on Israel and especially Red Sea shipping of the Gaza ceasefire falters.

“Our hands are on the trigger, and we are ready to immediately escalate against the Israeli enemy if it returns to escalation in the Gaza Strip,” said leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi on Tuesday.

The ceasefire is indeed teetering, given Netanyahu’s security cabinet has backed Trump’s ultimatum demanding the return of all remaining Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity or else “let hell break out” and the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza would continue. He gave a noon Saturday deadline.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

She’s got a point.

Read it.

Five unions sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, seeking to block what they called the possible mass firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees who resist pressure to accept buyouts.

In a complaint filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the unions accused the White House and others in the Executive Branch of undermining Congress’ role in creating and funding a federal workforce, violating separation of powers principles.

The plaintiffs include the United Auto Workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Labor unions add tremendous amounts of friction to economic activity, making innovation and economic corrections at times almost impossible, leading to the sort of sclerosis that eventually destroys companies, institutions, and ever communities.

Read it.

The US Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the state of New York and key officials over the state’s 2019 “Green Light” law, which has allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, while blocking federal immigration and border enforcement agencies from accessing the state’s motor vehicle database.

The lawsuit, filed in US district Court in Albany, was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi during a Wednesday press conference.

Aside from the state of NY, Governor Kathy Hochul, state Attorney General Letita James, and DMV Commissioner Mark Schroeder were named as defendants.

Read it.

The federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze all funding pauses while federal spending is being assessed, has a history of anti-Trump and woke activism.

Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island can be seen in video footage from 2021 accusing Trump of being “a dictator” and claiming that “racism is a white people problem” and that “we all have racism inside of us.”

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday voted against confirming former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, sending a strong message to fellow GOP senators, some of whom privately doubted her qualifications to hold the job.

McConnell was the only Republican senator to vote against Gabbard, who came under heavy scrutiny over her past opposition to expanded surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and her refusal to call former government contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for stealing 1.5 million classified documents.

The Kentucky Democrat lawmaker flagged Gabbard’s refusal to label Snowden a “traitor” as a serious concern.

RINO Mitch is at it again, straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

Read it.

Lawfare hasn’t stopped since Donald Trump became president again, but has been repackaged into civil litigation to stop his second term agenda—and most of the civil lawfare can be traced to groups affiliated with a coalition known as Civil Service Strong.

Members of the coalition scored federal court wins in recent days to temporarily block Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, to delay a federal employee buyout, and to halt the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The member groups have also been involved in numerous other lawsuits against the Trump administration, including challenging the Schedule F executive order on civil service protections; a suit to block the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative from accessing information; and a lawsuit to prevent disclosure of FBI information.

Babylon Bee.

BOYERS, PA — The Iron Mountain Federal Records Center has reportedly lost access to all federal retirement files after miners dug too deep and awakened an ancient Balrog.

Read it.

Whatever a government publicly desires, it appears as though the lawyer classes will always find one human rights clause or another to do the opposite.

There have been numerous calls this week for Parliament—and therefore, ultimately, the British people—to have control over who can settle in the UK, rather than judges. This comes after a court granted Palestinian migrants the right to live in the country.

A family of six seeking to leave Gaza and join a brother in Britain applied through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees and were originally refused on the grounds their case was outside the programme’s rules. Understandable, given that they are Palestinian, not Ukrainian.

But a report in the Telegraph reveals that this decision has since been overturned by an upper tribunal judge—the son of a former ‘anti-Israeli’ Guardian journalist—on the basis of their right to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

This judge, said Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch UK, “epitomises the thinking of our courts and judges when it comes to immigration and asylum.”

The rot thickens….

Read it.

Patryk Jaki MEP (Law and Justice; PiS) is beginning his “special trial” in Poland, after ‘liking’ a Twitter post back in 2018 that showcased real security footage of migrant criminals.

Polish prosecutors requested a three-year prison sentence for this ‘hate crime,’ while leftists in the European Parliament began the procedure to strip Jaki of his diplomatic immunity for “inciting hatred against Muslim immigrants.”

The trial of the co-chair of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group comes against the backdrop of Polish PM Donald Tusk’s entire liberal government becoming the subject of an official probe over a suspected “coup d’etat” last week due to its blatant rule-of-law violations, such as ignoring high-level judicial rulings, taking over public institutions, and unlawfully persecuting the conservative opposition—something that Jaki’s case perfectly illustrates.

Poland, of course, doesn’t have our Bill of Rights.

Read it.

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Dexter, whoever the hell she is, provided a moment of pure clarity when she was told she had just half a minute to speak at the never ending Screechfest protest they’re holding.

When required to boil down the Democrats’ agenda into a sound bite, Dexter, or ‘Madder Maxine’ if you prefer, came up with “we have to fuck Trump.”

That perfectly encapsulates their outlook on every issue, no matter how sensible Trump’s policies might be.

I don’t think she’s got the looks for it. She sure doesn’t have the money (yet)….

UPDATE: Oregon Rep Asks Trump To Be Her Valentine (Babylon Bee)

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

But in interview from her home in Colombia, Mr. Castillo’s sister Yajaira Castillo said her brother was not a gang member to be feared, but rather an everyday Venezuelan who had fled his country because of its economic crisis.

She broke down repeatedly during the conversation, crying as she described her pain and confusion around her brother’s situation.

“My brother is not a criminal,” she said. “This is all discrimination and xenophobia, just because he’s Venezuelan.”

If he is present in this country contrary to law, he is by definition a criminal. You don’t just get to follow the laws you like and ignore the ones you don’t like.

ZMan juggles some labels.

One of the many interesting aspects of the Trump era has been the collapse of what was called conservatism in America and the rise of a new coalition to replace it as the dominant force in the Republican Party. Most pundits have been happy to call it Trumpism or MAGA, as they hope it is temporary. Others have tried to jam it into the populist bucket, despite the fact it is not a populist movement. Beyond these superficial attempts at labeling, not much has been said about it.

Not everyone in the coalition is thrilled by what they are seeing. Many older conservatives, the paleo variety, are happy to see Conservative Inc. head off to bankruptcy, but they are a bit uncomfortable sharing a pew with people like Robert Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard. They wince when Tucker Carlson gets along with old school lefties like Jimmy Dore or Aaron Maté. They spent their lives on the opposite side of these people and now they share the same movement.

In fairness, it is even more difficult for the old school lefties, because for them, politics defines their life. That means they are now faced with supporting that which they were sure was evil until not so long ago. It also means their conception of evil may have been wrong, which means their conception of themselves was wrong. This is why it is difficult for an ideologue to adjust to new evidence. Unlike the non-ideologue, such adjustment requires a reexamination of their soul.

…

For as long as anyone has been alive, the consensus in American politics has been the radicalism at the heart of progressivism. Egalitarianism, universalism, and the blank slate are the three legs of this ideological stool. What motivates and justifies using this stool to smash up American society and go abroad to smash up other cultures is the intense belief that they are commanded by history or history’s God to impose this ideology on the people of the world.

Cato Institute.

America traditionally had few immigration restrictions, but since the 1920s, the law has banned most aspiring immigrants. Today, fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move permanently to the United States can do so legally. Immigrants cannot simply get an exception to immigrate any more than restaurateurs in the 1920s could simply get an exception to sell alcohol. Instead, just as Prohibition granted only a few exemptions for religious, industrial, or medical uses of alcohol, people seeking an exception to immigration prohibition must also fit into preexisting carve-outs for a select few.

Many Americans have the false impression that these carve-outs are realistic options for potential immigrants to join American society, but the government’s restrictive criteria render the legal paths available only in the most extreme cases. Even when someone qualifies, annual immigration caps greatly delay and, more frequently, eliminate the immigrant’s chance to come to the United States. Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: it happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case.

This study provides a uniquely comprehensive, jargon-free explanation of U.S. rules for legal permanent immigration. Some steps are simple and reasonable, but most steps serve only as unjustified obstacles to immigrating legally. For some immigrants, this restrictive system sends them into the black market of illegal immigration. For others, it sends them to other countries, where they contribute to the quality of life in their new homes. And for still others, it requires them to remain in their homeland, often underemployed and sometimes in danger. Whatever the outcome, the system punishes both the prospective immigrants and Americans who would associate, contract, and trade with them. Congress and the administration can do better, and this paper explains how.

Read it.

An ethnic German schoolgirl in Lower Saxony was badly beaten by a gang of migrant girls, to the extent of having a traumatic brain injury. But the school doesn’t want to know — it says she’s exaggerating.

 

Read it.

An explosive new study conducted within the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) own laboratory has revealed excessively high levels of DNA contamination in Pfizer’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.

Tests conducted at the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Maryland found that residual DNA levels exceeded regulatory safety limits by 6 to 470 times.

The study was undertaken by student researchers under the supervision of FDA scientists. The vaccine vials were sourced from BEI Resources, a trusted supplier affiliated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), previously headed by Anthony Fauci.

Read it.

The seven NGOs in the chart below, in my view, represent the Uniparty. Each of these organizations receives substantial financial support from USAID or the Department of State.

Around 2019, the phrase “democracy in danger” began to dominate public discourse, amplified by the media. This was odd—after all, the U.S. is a democracy (or more precisely, a constitutional republic). But as I traced the influence of these NGOs, a pattern emerged: they are controlled by establishment politicians, they play a major role in shaping political narratives worldwide, and their core mission is always framed as “protecting democracy.”

Originally, these NGOs were created to support U.S. democratic efforts abroad—many of them emerging during the Cold War to combat the spread of communism. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, their original purpose faded. Instead of dissolving, they redefined their mission. Now, they have positioned themselves as the guardians of democracy itself.

This shift explains why Trump’s re-election was framed as a “threat to democracy.” To these NGOs, “democracy” means themselves. Their survival depends on maintaining that role, and any challenge to their authority is perceived as a direct attack on democracy itself.

Victor Davis Hanson.

Affirmative action was created during the civil rights era, 1964 and ’65, and then, now, it has been with us almost 60 years. But remember what it was originally designed for—to address the historic racism and oppression of black Americans through slavery and Jim Crow, de facto segregation in some of the Northern states, but de jure segregation in the South.

And it said that because of that African Americans had not been given equality of opportunity. Statute never said anything about quotas or equality result. That’s something that came in later. But the point I’m making, affirmative action was envisioned for this historic minority that made about 12% of the population.

It was challenged in the courts for years. And it was often challenged by not just so-called whites but Asians as well because their SAT scores—to take the example of college admissions—or their GPAs were often 200 or 300 points, in the case of the SAT, and GPA, 4 versus 3.2, in the case of GPAs.

By that I mean, African Americans were being admitted with less impressive statistics than whites, but especially, Asians. And then something happened to this paradigm. When the Obama administration came in, they saw that that constituency was not big enough for the type of woke agenda that they were envisioning.

Read it.

DOGE head Elon Musk said on Tuesday that DOGE is going to investigate federal employees whose net worths have exploded despite their comparatively low pay.

And about time, too. Let’s take a look at AOC and Ilhan Omar while we’re at it.

The announcement – which came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to work with DOGE, follows a bombshell report that Samantha Power, former head of USAID, saw her net worth explode to $30 million despite an annual salary under $250,000.

Power, a former ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama, and was sworn in as head of USAID in May of 2021, reported a net worth between $6.7 million-$16.5 million in January of 2021 on a disclosure form. Her net worth is now estimated as high as $30 million, according to the website Biden’s Basement.

I wonder whether she forked over 10% for the Big Guy.

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it had fired four employees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including the agency’s chief financial officer, over their roles in disbursing federal funds to house migrants in New York City hotels.

The firings capped a startling chain of events that began on Monday with an early-morning social media post by Elon Musk who claimed, misleadingly, that FEMA had recently sent $59 million meant for disaster relief to New York City to pay for “high end hotels” for migrants, and who called the expenditure unlawful.

New York City officials raced to clarify that the federal money had been properly allocated by FEMA under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year, adding that it was not a disaster relief grant and had not been spent on luxury hotels.

Nonetheless, just two hours after Mr. Musk’s post, FEMA’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, announced that the payments in question “have all been suspended” — even though most of the money had already been disbursed — and that “personnel will be held accountable.”

Watch it.

Chris Williamson interviews Rory Sutherland.

The concept of ‘album politics’ is a useful one.

Read it.

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) have been documented to prey on white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), in some cases causing localised shark displacement and triggering ecological cascades. Notably, a series of such predation events have been reported from South Africa over the last decade, with killer whales specifically targeting sharks’ liver. However, observations of these interactions are rare, and knowledge of their frequency across the world’s oceans remains limited. In October 2023, a 4.7?m (total length) white shark carcass washed ashore in southeastern Australia, coinciding with reports from citizen scientists of killer whales hunting a large, unidentified prey item in the area. Visual inspection of the carcass revealed that the liver, digestive, and reproductive organs were missing, and the presence of four distinctive bite wounds, one of which was characteristic of killer whale liver extraction as seen in South Africa. Genomic analyses performed on swabs taken from the bite wounds confirmed the presence of killer whale DNA in the major bite area, while the other bites were embedded with genetic material from the scavenging broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus). These results provide confirmed evidence of killer whale predation on white sharks in Australia and the likely selective consumption of the liver, suggesting predations of this nature are more globally prevalent than currently assumed.

Victor Davis Hanson.

There’s a lot of controversy about Elon Musk, and let’s just dispel some of it right at the start. He is not a freelancer. He was appointed a government official. Donald Trump, by an executive order, created the Department of Government Efficiency, and he made Elon Musk the head of it, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, who now has resigned.

Elon Musk has statutory authority. This Department of Government Efficiency is not a Cabinet agency. He does not have to be approved by Congress. And it only is going to last until July 4, 2026. It’s not a permanent agency, but he has the same power, or lack of such, as the national security adviser, who does not have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

…

As far as the executive orders that created the DOGE program and eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development—that was perfectly legal in itself. USAID was created by John F. Kennedy in 1961 by an executive order. There was a statutory direction for the president to disperse foreign aid into a comprehensive body, but it didn’t say USAID—he could do whatever he wanted.

Read it.

So what will change?

Read it.  (Not the Babylon Bee.)

Deal. We’ll give them $50 and a first round draft pick.