Read it.

Economics journalists, like any writers, aren’t perfect. Perhaps in a previous age, people thought that everything they read in the news was exactly true; perhaps some still do. But reporting is a human activity, and humans make mistakes. In order to get the true story, you have to read multiple sources, and be skeptical of what you read — and even then, mistakes will slip through.

So the purpose of this post isn’t for me to be a pedantic know-it-all, or to insult the economics journalism profession as a whole, or to call out specific writers. But there’s one simple, elementary mistake that almost all econ reporters make very consistently, over and over. And unlike most mistakes, this one has probably had serious negative consequences for American economic policymaking. Therefore I feel like I have to speak up here, and express my frustration a little.

The mistake econ reporters are making is claiming that imports subtract from GDP. Imports do not subtract from GDP. And yet again and again, economics journalists say that they do.

… that it’s impossible to get angry about politics while listening to classic rock.

Bob Seeger and Huey Lewis are the only things keeping me sane.

What this country really needs is more air guitar….

Newsbusters.

Journalists aren’t supposed to make things up.

Unless, of course, you’re the New York Times Editorial Board.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

The National Endowment for the Arts withdrew and canceled grant offers to numerous arts organizations around the country on Friday night, sending a round of email notifications out just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in his next budget.

The move, although not unexpected, was met with disappointment and anger by arts administrators who had counted on the grants to finance ongoing projects.

I have a question: Why do we even have a ‘National Endowment for the Arts’? Especially when we are TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT???? This is none of the government’s business, at any level, much less at the Federal level.

Read it.

Top US virologist Ralph Baric engineered the Covid-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 in his lab at the University of North Carolina as part of his work in connection with the 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal. That’s the story that’s been going round the internet for some months now (and not just in alternative media) and it all looks very damning for Baric and those connected with his research.

Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of US military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).

In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus contains a furin cleavage site in its spike protein, its genome includes the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, it has a receptor binding domain finely tuned to infect the ACE2 human receptor and its genome is around 25% different to SARS. A number of virologists have said that such features make SARS-CoV-2 a smoking gun for an engineered virus.

Supreme Court Justice Gets Standing Ovation for Breaking Cover to Attack Trump (Tom Sanders/The Daily Beast)  Cover? What cover? Who didn’t know that Brown was a partisan Democrat who hated Trump, Republicans, and white people? That’s why she was picked.

Kinzinger Warns Trump May Come For Him, Defends Judge Who Allegedly Hid Illegal Alien  I doubt that Trump has given any thought to Kinzinger since the latter quit Congress and thus became a problem no longer.

Elon Musk Is an Evil Piece of Garbage–and an A-Level Fraud Too (Michael Tomasky/New Republic)  Don’t hold it in–tell us how you really feel.

Pam Bondi turning DoJ into Trump’s ‘personal law firm’, top experts warn (Peter Stone/The Guardian)  As if Democrat Presidents don’t do that as a matter of course.

PBS chief slams Trump’s executive order aiming to cut federal funding for PBS and NPR as unlawful (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Trump Says GOP Should Expel Democrats Seeking His Impeachment

Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Collapses With Rural Americans (Martha McHardy/Newsweek)  Sure, I believe that.

Senate Republicans raise red flags about Trump’s private dinner with his meme coin holders (NBC News)

Trump’s Space Budget Reflects Influence of Elon Musk and SpaceX (Eric Lipton/New York Times)  And who not? They’re actually putting people in space–unlike the government.

Rein In Trump’s Pardon Power (Brian Beutler/Off Message)

Read it.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified a disturbing trend—between 2016 and 2021, rates of alcohol-related deaths increased by 35% in women (and 27% in men). Some researchers hypothesize that changes in social norms may be one of the drivers of increased drinking in women. “Women are now earning more, delaying marriage, and delaying childbirth,” says McKee. “It’s thought that this might create more time and space for drinking.”

Oh, ya think?

Read it.

Mmmmmmmm … brains….

UPDATE: How molecular traffic cops guide development of the human brain.

Mmmmmmmm … brains….

Read it.

John Lithgow’s reaction to journalists pressuring him to reconsider his part in the new “Harry Potter” series says it all.

This isn’t 2020 anymore.

The actor will play Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming Max series, one of the most talked-about projects in Hollywood. The role originally played by Richard Harris and, later, Michael Gambon represents a key figure in the Potterverse.

Most actors of a certain age would jump at the chance. Lithgow, 79, did just that.

Famous for his part as Dr Emilio Lazardo in BUCKAROO BANZAI and the popular meme “Laugh while-a you can, monkey boy”.

Read it.

That is, apparently, the most important qualification.

The New Neo.

The civil rights division of the DOJ has been undergoing changes under Trump and Harmeet Dhillon (assistant AG for civil rights at the DOJ), and the left hasn’t been happy (the article is from a few days after Trump’s inauguration):

Justin Levitt, deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division under Obama, expressed concern over Dhillon’s nomination, saying most of her casework has focused on “cultural grievance issues.”

Interesting way to trivialize it. More:

He argued that Dhillon largely hasn’t focused on the traditional mission of the Civil Rights Division, which was established by the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination against all people in the United States, with a focus on vulnerable groups.

See that shift? The Act bars discrimination against all people in the US. But it’s the left that gets to define what “vulnerable groups” are and therefore which ones deserve defending, and by their definition it’s not Christians or white people or women in sports.

Read it.

Democrats and their media allies have been comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler since 2015. It didn’t work. It never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but… it might work now?

Liberal activist Larry David wrote an op-ed for the New York Times last month comparing Trump to Hitler, which a Times editor described as “different.” One day later, Politico published an “exclusive” interview with former vice president Al Gore, who “compared President Donald Trump’s administration to Nazi Germany.” A blogger at MSNBC slammed Trump for governing “in a fashion reminiscent of Nazi Germany.” On Easter, the Atlantic ran an op-ed by a Hitler historian about the Nazi dictator’s fondness for tariffs.

These efforts by liberal journalists and politicians to equate Trump with Hitler can be dismissed as partisan nonsense. What these comparisons fail to take into account are the many ways that Democrats are literally just like Hitler, according to an actual historical analysis based on objective facts. Here are five reasons why Democrats are the same as, if not worse than, Adolf Hitler.

Read it.

A panel of black voters spoke with CNN political analyst Van Jones and thoroughly eviscerated any theories about there being some regret when it comes to Trump supporters.

The three individuals, each defined as not supporting the President before ultimately voting for him, had little hesitation when Jones asked if they were currently having second thoughts.

Their comments show the media’s coverage of ‘buyer’s regret’ has been little more than wishcasting on their part.

Read it.

It’s certainly not free to the American taxpayer.

UPDATE: Trump Rightly Defunded PBS and NPR’s Long History of Anti-Conservative, Pro-Leftist Content

UPDATE: CNN’s Stelter Pulls His Hair Out Over Trump’s EO Defunding PBS/NPR

Read it.

Read it.

The scorpion stings the frog.

A ship transiting the Mediterranean Sea carrying aid intended for Gaza was attacked by what organizers of the humanitarian vessel called a drone attack.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group behind the mission, said it was on the Conscience off Malta’s coast when the vessel was attacked, which caused a fire and “substantial breach in the hull,” according to a statement released by the group.

Read it.

More than 125,000 New Yorkers relocated to Florida over a recent five-year span, draining the Empire State of nearly $14 billion in income, according to a new report from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, reported on by the New York Post.

Roughly a third of those fleeing New York City—some 41,251 residents—resettled in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward counties between 2018 and 2022, resulting in a $10 billion loss in adjusted gross income (AGI) for the city. An additional $3.8 billion in income was lost to other Florida destinations.

“They are getting something more beneficial to them,” said CBC President Andrew Rein. “The key is with any place you need the benefits to outweigh the cost. The question right now for New York is what do we offer?”

The CBC attributes the exodus to a mix of affordability concerns, public safety, quality of life, and lingering pandemic effects. Only 30% of New Yorkers rated city life as “good or excellent” in 2023—down from 50% pre-pandemic.

Read it.

Islamic honor killings among the New Germans are now being concealed by describing them as “femicide”, the general politically correct term for murder when the victim is female. The rationale behind this obfuscation is that acknowledging the true culture-enriching motive for such killings would encourage “racism” and “discrimination” against the third-world invaders.

Thousands to rally against Trump, Musk in nationwide May Day protests (Christopher Cann/USA Today)

Trump’s Quest for Crypto Riches Is a Constitutional Scandal Waiting to Happen (Joel Khalili/Wired)

Scoop: White House launches Drudge-style website to promote Trump (Alex Isenstadt/Axios)

This Was Chosen As ‘Photo Of 2024’ By TDS Impaired Media…

Elon Musk talks Lincoln Bedroom stays, late-night ice cream as he steps back from DOGE (USA Today)

Stocks and the economy down? Watch the Trump bait-and-switch. (Glenn Kessler/Washington Post)

Ex-Trump Official Targeted for Investigation Loses Global Entry Status (Maggie Haberman/New York Times)

Trump is Terrified of Tariff Blowback (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

Trump vs. America’s National Parks (Pamela Herd/Can We Still Govern?)

Senate Rejects Bipartisan Measure to Undo Trump’s Tariffs (Robert Jimison/New York Times)  Bipartisan = Democrats + the Usual RINOs.

The Baby Hoax: Reporters Repeat False Narrative Over Child Deportations

Trump says the stock market isn’t his. For now, GOP senators are humoring him. (Bryan Metzger/Business Insider)

Colbert and Psaki Mourn 100 Days Of Trump’s ‘Fire Hose of Dirty Water’

Spooked By Trade Wars, Trump Officials Hoard Supplies: ‘It Would Be Stupid Not To!’ (Asawin Suebsaeng/Rolling Stone)

Vice President Vance casts tie-breaking Senate vote to kill bipartisan effort to rebuke Trump’s trade policy (CNN)

The Fight Against Trump Isn’t a Movement, but It’s Gaining Momentum (New York Times)  They hope….

The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Intentionally Offensive (Ross Douthat/New York Times)

North Korea Stole Your Job (Bobbie Johnson/Wired)

Microsoft Drops Law Firm That Made a Deal With Trump From a Case (Noam Scheiber/New York Times)  The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners.

Republicans Coalesce Around Medicaid Work Requirements, Pretending It Won’t Impact Millions Of Enrollees (Emine Yücel/Talking Points Memo)

Republicans Vote Against Move To Stop ICE Deporting US Citizens (Billal Rahman/Newsweek)

Judge Bars Deportation of Venezuelans from South Texas

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he warned Americans during his campaign of a tariff ‘transition period’ (Daniel Dale/CNN)  Another Narrative Media ‘fact check’ bounces.

Kamala Cackles Back at Trump

What the First 100 Days Taught Us About Resisting Trump (Nicholas Grossman/The Bulwark)

Justice department civil rights division loses 70% of lawyers under Trump (Sam Levine/The Guardian)  Good.

RFK Jr.’s Bats**t New Conspiracy About ‘Fetus Debris’ in Jabs Exposed (Janna Brancolini/The Daily Beast)

Trump Administration Cancels $1 Billion in Grants for Student Mental Health (Michael C. Bender/New York Times)  I must have missed where the Constitution says that student mental health is the responsibility of the Federal government.

Amid DOGE-induced turmoil, National Science Foundation in crisis (Washington Post)  They might have to go back to doing actual science! The horror!

Trump, brushing aside separation of church and state, establishes religious liberty commission (Irie Sentner/Politico)

ABC News Host Suggests Trump RIGGED 2024 Presidential Election

100 Days of Solitude: Trump and the Retreat of America (New York Times)

Trump’s Recession Has Begun (Timothy Noah/New Republic)

House Democrats fume at rogue Trump impeachment push (Andrew Solender/Axios)

The First 100 Days for the Trump-Hating Left

Microsoft drops a law firm that appeased Trump, hires firm that’s fighting Trump (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

Maine Teacher Calls for Secret Service to Assassinate Trump, Administration

Economic Illiterate Kamala Harris Attacks Trump Tariffs As ‘Absolute Chaos’

Kamala Harris Attacks Trump’s “Self-Serving Vision For America”

Read it.

After progressives and greens for years pushed for a transition away from internal combustion engines to (allegedly) more ‘environmentally friendly’ EVs, suddenly ideological purity has become more important than air quality.

Tesla owners in Vienna have started finding threatening notes on their cars, Remixreports, telling them to sell their cars—or they will be vandalized.

“Our condolences! It’s not your fault. It will only be your fault if you don’t act now,” says one flyer found by Austrian Tesla owners, which goes on to tell them that their car is associated with “right-wing agitator” Elon Musk:

Maybe a few years ago you simply wanted to buy a cool car … Now you own a car that you may be ashamed of, whose value has gone to its knees and you have to be afraid every night that someone will scratch a big ‘f**k Tesla’ into your paintwork.

Other European Tesla owners have reported similar harassment. In Paris and Berlin, Teslas have been vandalized with paint and stickers, and Amsterdam has seen protestors confronting drivers for owning “capitalist machines.”

Read it.

The parliament of the state of Lower Austria has approved a set of new measures aimed at tackling radical Islam and handing out stricter penalties for families deemed “unwilling to integrate.”

Parents of kindergarten children who are unwilling to comply with certain obligations, such as attending parent-teacher meetings, could face a fine of up to €2,500 or up to six weeks in prison.

The new measures also introduce a burqa ban for state employees, and prohibit public sector workers from attending “radical mosques” or being involved in the activities of radical Islamic associations.

Read it.

The 16-year-old suspect in custody for the brutal triple murder in Uppsala, Sweden, is of Somali origin, Swedish media report. Documents obtained by the daily Expressen show that social services were concerned about “the people XX associates with, that they are involved in crime, suspected of drug offenses and other types of violent crimes”

For nearly a decade, the teen—now a murder suspect—has been known to social services, with concerns raised both about his care and his own behavior. The father has served short prison terms for various crimes and has a history of khat use and suspected domestic violence.

The family had been offered therapy and drug testing, Expressen’s sources said.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Something that has gone largely unnoticed is that the people who used to litter the streets screaming “racism” have disappeared. They have not gone away, but they have suddenly been marginalized. They spend their days on sites like Bluesky wondering why no one seems to care what they have to say anymore. The sites that used to pay for them to be pests are no longer interested in their material.

One possible reason for this is that racism may have run its course. This novel moral concept that emerged a century ago may have finally burned itself out in the last great moral panic. White people are no longer concerned that their observations of the world may be at odds with the morality of these strange people who demanded we worship a violent drug addict like George Floyd.

It is hard to imagine, given that racism as a sin has been with us since anyone can remember, but it is a novel concept. A century ago, few people would have understood the word at all, much less incorporated the concept. Even fifty years ago it was possible to dismiss the idea. In the long history of human civilization, this weird idea is nothing more than a strange middle-class fad.

Read it.

Eduardo Flores Ruiz, 30, was locked up in the Ozaukee County Jail awaiting further court action as of April 30.

He is accused of injuring three people in a recent domestic dispute, online records show.

The Mexico native is the defendant whom Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of assisting in an April 18 incident at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

Flores Ruiz appeared at the court for a hearing on that date, but it didn’t proceed, federal authorities say, after Dugan allegedly took actions to thwart Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who were poised to arrest the defendant and begin deportation proceedings.

Federal officials accuse the judge of helping Flores Ruiz and his lawyer to exit through a restricted-use door. Officers, however, were able to arrest him after a foot chase outside the courthouse.

He was previously deported to his home country in 2013, before being accused in the domestic violence case that was assigned to Dugan, officials said.

The Foundry.

It appears the legacy media and the Democrat (I repeat myself) narrative about the deported El Salvadoran “Maryland dad” is reaching its endgame as more information about his behavior comes to light.

According to multiple reports, House Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has privately told fellow Democrats to stop taking junkets down to El Salvador to visit the deported man in prison to perform supposed “welfare checks.” Jeffries has denied the report, but it wouldn’t be surprising.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, this long saga is about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged MS-13 gang member who was deported back to his home country as the Trump administration prioritizes deporting illegal aliens who are convicted criminals and gang members.

Read it.

Sectarian fighting in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana left dozens killed, and Israel is already looking to parlay that into a new excuse for military action against the Syrian government, with the idea that they need to “protect” the Druze minority militarily.

The Israeli military reported attacking the Damascus suburb of Sahnaya, and that they targeted an “extremist group” that was planning new attacks on the Druze. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz issued statements demanding the Syrian government take action to prevent further attacks on the Druze.

Read it.

The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to repeal a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency waiver that allowed California to ban the selling of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles by 2035.

The vote was 246-to-164, with 35 Democrats crossing party lines to join all 211 Republicans who were present in support of the joint resolution. The measure now goes to the Senate, where under the Congressional Review Act it would only need 51 votes, rather than the usual 60-vote filibuster-proof majority, to pass.

Read it.

The Department of Homeland Security released a second protective order filed by the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in which she claimed he could kill her and no one “could do anything to him.”

Read it.

The Trump administration is suing both Michigan and Hawaii over the states’ plans to take oil companies to court over their alleged role in causing global warming and environmental damage.

In complaints filed late Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the two states’ planned actions against the oil and gas industry would directly counter the Trump administration’s efforts to boost domestic energy production, enforce federal emissions laws, and conduct foreign affairs. The state’s lawsuits, by blaming oil companies for weather-related damages, could decimate and bankrupt those companies, presenting an existential threat to the industry.

The unexpected complaints are a clear signal that the Trump administration is prepared to go to great lengths in defending the American oil and gas industry, even if it means intervening in state-level litigation. It also opens up the possibility of the administration intervening in similar climate litigation that has already been filed by several states and dozens of local governments nationwide.

Newsbusters.

With damning new evidence piling up in the case of deported MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego García and the media trapped defending his gang tattoos, there is a clear need for a new exemplar to promote against the perceived excesses of Trump immigration policy. Tonight, a new consensus poster boy may have emerged in Mohsen Mahdawi.

…

Coverage was glowing, casting Mahdawi as a victim of the Trump administration, and made sure to find the time to frame him as brave and defiant, resisting the evil tyrant Trump. In many ways, coverage mirrored that of Abrego García. That is, until the drip-drip-drip of damning evidence came to light- to wit: allegations confirming Abrego Garcia as a gangbanger going back to 2018, and a 2020 petition for court order alleging that Abrego Garcia bragged about being able to kill his wife with impunity.

Don’t look now, but the drip-drip-drip with Mahdawi has already begun….

New York Post.

Harvard University has admitted the ugly truth: The left’s long march through its faculty and administration has borne poisonous fruit in the form of blazing Jew-hatred and the overall ruin of its campus climate and curricula.

Don’t take our word for it: Just read the elite Ivy’s own report on the Tentifada that sprang up in support of Hamas after Oct. 7.

The committee tasked with looking into this antisemitic conflagration detailed how over decades what began as a tense, even rancorous zone of disagreement on campus — specifically, over Israel’s efforts to defend itself from terrorist aggression and the national aims of various Palestinian political factions — changed into an “attempt by student activists to drive Israeli students (and Jewish students who feel connected to Israel) out of student life.”

UPDATE: Harvard’s Report on Campus Antisemitism Is Damning

Read it.

Leading National Health Service (NHS) executives participated in a scheme where they were “reverse-mentored” by Muslim staff on their “lived experience.” This follows the earlier circulation of a guide for ‘New Muslims’ across the service aimed at general staff.

According to GB News, the NHS’ chief strategy officer and its director for people volunteered to meet, under the direction of the NHS Muslim Network, with staff and listen to their “lived experience as a Muslim colleague.” The two civil servants, Chris Hopson and Em Wilkinson-Brice, will then have to meet with their Muslim reverse-mentees for a minimum of one hour per quarter.

Separately, the published guidebook sets out the process of conversion to Islam, while referring to the reader as the “convert.” It also advises that modest dress, that is “loose-fitting, modest clothing covering all parts of the body aside [from] the face, hands and feet” be adopted, as “by doing so, you are abiding by an obligation passed to us by God.” Typically, such advice would run contrary to the dress requirements of a sterile medical environment.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

I guess being Progressive trumps being Jewish. Good to know.

Read it.

Climate models have been the basis for concern about climate change for more than 35 years. The US government, the United Nations, and organizations across the world have used model projections to warn about global warming and to demand a shift to renewable energy. But Trump administration budget cuts at NASA, NOAA, and other federal agencies threaten to shut down the models, the heart of climate change alarmism.

…

There are more than 40 climate models operating across the world, with 13 of the leading models located in the US. The US models are operated by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in New York City, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Department of Energy (DOE) in Boulder, Colorado. Each of these organizations has been ordered to reduce staff as part of Trump administration budget cuts.

The White House may soon tell NASA to focus work on space programs, not climate change. In February, the administration denied NASA officials permission to travel to an international climate meeting in China. At the same time, NASA management cut off funding for a support contract for the 7^th Assessment Report of the IPCC. NASA has been a primary contributor to previous IPCC Assessment Reports. Preliminary government spending plans for fiscal year 2026 would cut NASA’s science budget by almost half, to $3.9 billion.

ZMan cuts to the chase.

A recurring feature of human society is the class of people who set themselves apart from the rest of society to function as the keepers of public morality. They usually set themselves apart through self-denial, which is a way of showing themselves to be purer than the rest of the lot. It is thought that the Jewish prohibition on eating pork, for example, is a way to set the Jewish people apart from the rest of the people by abstaining from what was considered a dirty animal.

This is why every religion has both dietary laws and prohibitions on certain types of common behavior. It may be that these only apply to the holy men, as was common in the pre-Christian world. They can also be standards against which people measure themselves, as in the Christian world. The ancient shaman was someone expected to sublimate his urges as a sign of his purity. Christians, of course, have many rules that are guides for adhering to Christian ethics.

In the post-Christian age, the priestly class follows a similar pattern. The people we call the managerial elite and their performative proxies in the media have many ways of demonstrating their purity. In fact, we have the phrase “purity spiral” to describe when a group of these people engage in a competition in which they try to prove they are the purest of the bunch. Many of the moral panics over the last decades have been the result of purity spirals that spun out of control.

…

We see the same thing in this age. Public figures kneeling in front of the cameras, allegedly in solidarity with the blacks, was no different than the ancients sacrificing a bull to the gods. When they forced their employees to kneel, it was another way of signaling their virtue to each other and the rest of us. The Covid panic, in many respects, was nothing more than a purity spiral among the managerial elite. It is why it had so many outward symbols of obedience to the god of Covid.

Freeberg nails it.

John Hawkins, writing at Culturcidal, offers five reasons.

As you’d expect from the people who invented the concept of “microaggressions” and “safe zones,” liberals have a tendency to wildly overreact to things most people would barely notice. They also tend to spend their lives terrified of imagined dooms that never happen…Really, it’s no surprise so many liberals mentally break when they spend their days endlessly being spoon-fed imaginary apocalyptic scenarios…

I have noticed, in my dealings with dedicated liberals outside of politics, there’s often this tension arising where I’m waiting on them to make a delivery of some kind. And rather than the product or service, what I see them bringing is drama. It gets to the point where I start wondering what the drama is going to be, and stop wondering if I’m going to get what I contracted to have delivered. The initiative is lacking, and they seem to be drawn to distractions like a moth to a flame.

Read it.

There was a gunfight today at the Not-OK Corral, a.k.a. Uppsala, in which three “Swedes” were killed. When the shooters squared off against each other, it wasn’t the Earps vs. the Cowboys, or even Sven vs. Nils, but rather Ahmed vs. Muhammad.

There is no doubt that the slaughter was 100% culturally enriched, but it wasn’t jihad, it was just run-of-the-mill warfare between street gangs, fighting over turf or drug shipments or perceived earlier slights. In other words, business as usual in Modern Multicultural Sweden.

ZMan isn’t happy.

If you are a Twitter user, one of the things you may have noticed is that the site is increasingly difficult to use as intended. The “slop accounts” fill the site with posts intended to game the payment system. It is also infested with “influencers” who, like the slop accounts, seek to gain attention, but instead of doing it for money, they do it for the “clout.” As a result, many popular accounts have reduced their activity on the site, which magnifies the problem.

This is not just a Twitter issue. YouTube suffers from the same problem as artificial intelligence makes it easier for slop merchants to churn out content. They use AI to create a slideshow and voiceover about a topic. It is not a video in the conventional sense, but it is close enough for their purposes. If you watch a video on your favorite historical figure, you will be flooded with artificial intelligence slop videos in your recommended feed. If you are not careful, you end up awash in these slop videos.

Like the slop on Twitter, the slop on YouTube is mostly about gaming the payment system, and most of it originates from India. Even a small amount of money from slop farming goes a long way in a land without indoor toilets. The advance of artificial intelligence might end Indian call centers and coding shops, but it will come with the proliferation of Indian slop centers. The big social media platforms will be swamped by this content unless they figure out how to stop it.

This is why Rumble and Substack exist.

Power Line.

Self-deportation is the only practical way to deal with more than 10 million illegal immigrants, and the federal bureaucracy is similar. It is hard to fire government employees, so getting them to quit can be an optimal solution. That is what is happening in the Department of Justice:

Quillette.

In American politics, the main beneficiaries of “dark money” have in recent years tended to be Democrats. Google representatives were reported to have visited the White House at least 427 times during Barack Obama’s two terms. And in 2024, big spenders like Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Marc Benioff, Alex Soros, James Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and various donors from Wall Street helped Kamala Harris raise over US$1.5 billion for her campaign, the highest figure in history.

Which demonstrates convincingly that one cannot ‘buy’ an election, popular mythology to the contrary notwithstanding. You have to have a good candidate, not an empty suit like Harris.

This also undercuts the premise of the article pretty thoroughly. Oligarchs have power only to the extent that money gives them access to politicians, who are the people who have the Real Power (that of the gun). Rich people have a lot of carrots at their disposal, which give them influence, but power grows from the barrel of a gun, and the sticks are firmly in control of the bureaucrats. This is why any talk of American ‘oligarchs’ is pure hysteria.

To be in this party, you either need Big Bucks or Big Tits.

Wall Street Journal.

Pennies these days are more likely to end up lost or buried under couch cushions than to be used for transactions, according to detractors. Each one cost 3.7 cents to make last year.

It wouldn’t be a problem if the government hadn’t been inflating the currency so badly for the last 80 years.

When I was a kid, you could still buy something for a penny.

‘Inviting a recession’: Kamala Harris assails Trump over economy, democracy in return to stage (Politico) I doubt that Harris can even spell ‘recession’.

Kamala Harris says ‘courage is contagious’ in major speech excoriating Trump (The Guardian) More word salad.

Kamala Harris comes knives out against Trump in first speech since leaving office: ‘Absolute chaos’ (Fox News)

We asked 100 Michiganders about Trump’s first 100 days: Here’s what they said (Detroit Free Press) Sure, let’s ask a lot of people who voted for Harris about Trump and try to leverage that into it sounding other than partisan.

President Trump’s first 100 days marked by DOGE, tariffs and deportation (NPR) They say that like it was a bad thing.

RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory (Beth Mole/Ars Technica)  No, he doesn’t, although you won’t know that from following the witch-hunts in the Narrative Media.

Trump officials must report efforts, if any, to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, judge rules (Ben Finley/Associated Press)

Democrats are all but done with Trump impeachment talk (David Weigel/Semafor)

New Mideast Project Is Latest Trump Company Deal Tied to a Foreign Government (New York Times)

President Trump’s Threefold Opposition

DOGE hits Trump country (Politico)

The religious right is headed toward a revolutionary victory in the Supreme Court (Ian Millhiser/Vox)  Religion is of course anathema to the Narrative Media.

The GOP plan to fund Trump’s agenda is running into a major roadblock: Trump (Politico)  There’s no pleasing some people.

The little-known database at the heart of Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracy theory (Brandy Zadrozny/NBC News) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

PBS News Hour Marks 100 Days of Trump: ‘A Path of Perfect Lawlessness’

Lovefest or Cabinet meeting? For Donald Trump, it’s both (Seung Min Kim/Associated Press)

RFK Jr. Goes Full Tinfoil, Pledges to Stop Chemtrails in Latest Dr. Phil Interview (Ed Cara/Gizmodo)

Judge Orders Trump Admin To Disburse $12 Million In Funding To Radio Free Europe

Trump ran on boosting prosperity. Now economic worries grow. (Washington Post)  Mostly in the Narrative Media.

New Oklahoma curriculum includes pro-Trump conspiracy theories (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

Fight Like Our Democracy Depends on It (New York Times)

Activists to Rally Worldwide on May Day, US Protests Target Trump Policies

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Amazon.com said it would spend more than $4 billion to expand its U.S. rural delivery network by the end of 2026, doubling down on faster shipments to drive up demand from shoppers in small towns and the countryside.

And all without a government program!

Don’t they understand that, if the government doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done?

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They won’t have to look far.

The Chinese regime is increasingly sending groups that pose as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the United Nations in an effort to suppress criticism of its human rights record, according to a report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on April 28.

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As the Trump administration launches multiple probes of the Harvard Law Review in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report on the journal’s race-based policies, the law review itself will be conducting its own investigation—not into the evidence of discrimination revealed by dozens of documents, but into who leaked those documents to the Free Beacon.

The journal’s top editors asked members of the law review last week to come forward with any information that might help identify the leaker, writing, “The information contained in the article should not have been shared.”

“We are looking into the matter,” the editors said Friday in an email. “Our inboxes and offices are open to anyone with information about these recent events. We will update you with developments.”

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In what the Telegraph refers to as a “highly unusual move”, a serving member of the Royal Marines, an elite corp, has publicly warned about the lowering of standards for female trainees, stating that lives could be at risk.

The commando says that up to 1,000 of his fellow Marines backed a private letter to military chiefs raising fears that so-called diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies were in danger of creating an “unrecognisable, weak and compromised version of the corps”. The letter claimed that some women at the Commando Training Centre were being “artificially pushed through training”, resulting in what was described as “unearned paper-passes”.

Given that this same process of lowering standards for female trainees has been observed in the past in the US military, it’s not surprising that the same thing is happening in Britain. And given the British government’s cult-like obsession with far-left ideology, the imposition of DEI will probably be unstoppable and catastrophic for fighting forces.

But the problem goes well beyond the risks of war. The soldier in question has now been reportedly held by Police Scotland while entering the country after a holiday, and detained under the British “Terrorism Act” because he has voiced such warnings. He says government officials initially dismissed the letter or petition as a product of “Russian bots”, then held an internal inquiry to investigate the soldiers involved.

Remember: No matter how bad it gets in the U.S., Britain has it worse.