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Belgium is seeing a continuing shift away from traditional names for newborns, reflecting broader naming trends across Europe. As demographics and cultures change through mass immigration, so do names.  This pattern can also be recognised in other big European countries—for example, England or Germany—that have seen a large influx of migration from non-European countries.

In Brussels, Mohamed is the most common first name for newborn boys, followed by the variant Mohammed. Jean, Ahmed, and David also rank among the top five. For girls, Maria and Marie remain popular, but Fatima appears in third place, followed by Anne and Sarah—a reflection of the city’s diverse population.

This variety is also seen in surnames. While names like Peeters, Janssens, and Maes are most common nationwide, the Brussels Region presents a different picture, with Diallo, Bah, Barry, Sow, and Nguyen leading, highlighting how the capital’s demographic landscape continues to change.

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Demonstrations against Israel have consumed much of the budgets of UK police forces since the October 7th pogrom, reporting has confirmed.

The Jewish Chronicle submitted a Freedom of Information request to British police forces, revealing that to date over £59 million (€68.4 million) was spent on policing ‘pro-Palestine’ hate marches—with a whopping £57 million used up by London’s beleaguered Metropolitan Police alone. ?Greater Manchester Police got through £1.7 million.

Commentators have pointed out constructive alternative ways of spending the money; other observers are shocked at how since the first protest—planned during the antisemitic massacre in 2023—blatant lawbreaking has been a normal feature of the demonstrations in London and elsewhere. In contrast to the hands-off approach of various police forces when faced with Palestine marches, they have taken a tough line with pro-Israel counterdemonstrators, such as those declaring Hamas is a terrorist organization (which is supposedly the position of the UK legal system too).

There may be changes in the approach taken by police following the proscription of the Palestine Action Group—29 of whose supporters were arrested for displaying its placards over the weekend—but this is also likely to further push up costs.

Victor Davis Hanson.

After his first-place win in the New York City mayoral primaries, Zoran Mamdani is furiously denying everything that he once glibly thought was cutting-edge and cool.

So, like a good postmodern relativist, Mamdani now claims he didn’t really mean that violence was merely a “construct.”

I suppose Mamdani asked Jewish New Yorkers—the target of 44 percent of all hate crimes in the city—and discovered that their concussions and blood were all too real.

As a good soldier in the ranks of Black Lives Matter, Mamdani now insists he did not trash the police and advocate defunding them. Neither did he really, really mean to claim falsely he was African-American when he applied to college nor did really, really mean to do a video mocking the Jewish holiday of Hannukah.

Mamdani once thought it was cool to boast about defunding the police when he was an edgy, rising, left-wing community activist.

But then it was smarter to play it down as a candidate. And now it is essential to lie and deny it as a front-runner.

As a good communist, Mamdani echoed Karl Marx by bragging about his ultimate agenda: “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

But whose “means of production” would Mamdani start seizing?

Yours. Mine.

Daily Record (UK).

Rob has been fined £150,000 by the NHS in a funding “claw back” effectively for maintaining his patients healthy teeth through regular check ups and preventative work.

It is an example of the widely discredited NHS dental payment contract which is causing dentists to quit the health service in their droves to see only private patients.

How about that super government-provided health care? Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

Well, it’s on its way, if Democrats have anything to say about it.

Daily Record (UK).

Who goes to lunch with an ‘estranged spouse’? Darwin Award material. Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Greek authorities rescued over 750 migrants in the waters south of Crete and the nearby island of Gavdos over the weekend, highlighting the island’s growing role as a key destination in Mediterranean migration routes.

According to the coast guard, 430 people were found aboard a large vessel south of Gavdos, while another 96 were rescued off southern Crete. The migrants—primarily from Egypt, Bangladesh, and North African countries—had departed from eastern Libya.

In another incident, footage released by officials showed dozens jumping into the sea from an overloaded speedboat in a desperate attempt to reach the shore.

These incidents reflect a sharp shift in migratory patterns. Crete, once largely bypassed by smugglers, is now becoming a primary landing point. In the first half of 2025, arrivals to Crete have already surpassed the total for all of 2024, with over 6,500 recorded.

Local authorities have scrambled to accommodate the influx, converting sports halls and exhibition spaces into temporary shelters.

As we recently reported, the Greek island of Lesbos has all but stopped illegal migrant landings—a strategy that Europe would be well-advised to follow.

The migrant problem is a result of Ghandi Judo: People who do not share European principles are using those principles against them.

If the Europeans would sink every migrant boat and let them drown, pretty soon you would have no migrant influx. But they’re not willing to do that, and so they will continue to suffer from their own self-imposed pain.

Washington Free Beacon.

Philadelphia’s public school system has become an “absolute cesspool” of anti-Semitism and anti-American hatred, according to local parents, who say Gov. Josh Shapiro (D.) has “completely ignored” their pleas for help.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Philadelphia school officials have publicly defended terrorism, called for the release of convicted cop killers, claimed Israel is an “apartheid theocracy,” and denounced the United States as a “criminal Amerikan empire.” The Philadelphia school district settled a federal discrimination case with the Department of Education last year after students allegedly taunted their Jewish classmates with Nazi salutes, swastika graffiti on doors, and threats to “kill the Jews.”

Frustrated parents told the Washington Free Beacon that they have tried to raise these issues with the governor but that his staff has done nothing in response and eventually stopped taking meetings with them.’

People make a lot of noise about Shapiro being Jewish but never seem to remember that he’s a Democrat first.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Left.

Feminist ‘journalism’: Start off with a tear-jerking anecdote, and then pretend that it is a general rule that supports whatever your a-priori political agenda happens to be. (Season with a generous dose of schadenfreude for the alleged victims who, after all, only got What Was Coming To Them.)

Just because you vote for somebody doesn’t mean he knows that you did, or would care about you as an individual even if he did know. You are not Elon Musk. Your support is not that significant.

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I’d start with Dave Ramsey’s books.

Dave Ramsey is the poster child for the one-size-fits-all financial advice you can get from any ‘Certified Financial Planner’ in the country–for a significant fee, of course. His advice is aimed toward people who are too stupid or too lazy to actually do the work to become financially literate; and they are the very people who won’t take it, because it will pinch them. And if they are of the psychological bent to profit from it, they’re doing it already, because It’s Obvious.

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I have a bookmark folder on X called “Democrat hate.”

When I think about it, I toss especially hateful posts into the folder as potential fodder for articles. I rarely dip into them unless some particularly prominent person utters some particularly hateful thing. Still, it is striking how many posts I find of Democrats wishing death or suffering on people for the crime of seeing things differently than they do.

The Other McCain.

Say hello to Da’shontay “Day Day” King and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because Day Day got shot to death by a cop in Racine, Wisconsin, in May 2022. The reason I’m writing this up now is kind of a long story, and let me preface this by repeating what I’ve often said before: Crime is a people problem. If you want to prevent crime, you must first understand that the vast majority of violent crime is committed by a relatively small percentage of the population, i.e., habitual criminals. These are repeat offenders, who generally begin their criminal careers while still juveniles, and are more or less constantly involved in criminal activity their entire adult lives. The public is never safe as long as these habitual criminals are on the street, and so the goal of law enforcement should be to identify these hard-core types and, when they are apprehended for one of their many crimes, make sure they go to prison for the maximum sentence. I’ve called this “The Al Capone Rule” — it was difficult to get criminal convictions against the Chicago gang boss, so the feds indicted him for income tax evasion and put him away. It didn’t matter what charge Capone was finally convicted for — he’d obviously gotten away with all kinds of crimes, including murder. What really mattered was getting Capone off the streets. If modern-day law enforcement would use the same approach with habitual criminals, we’d have a lot less crime. And so . . . felon in possession of a firearm….

Imagine how low the crime rates would be if young black males were prohibited from possessing firearms.

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A ship traveling through the Red Sea is reportedly on fire after coming under attack Sunday by armed men firing guns and launching rocket-propelled grenades, authorities said.

One report said the unidentified vessel was later hit by what may have been bomb-carrying boats, setting it ablaze.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which comes as tensions remain high in the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war and after the Iran-Israel war and airstrikes by the United States targeting Iranian nuclear sites.

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

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Eleven state agriculture commissioners called on the Trump administration and Congress to yank funding from United Nations programs that they say are hurting American farmers.

“The federal government should stop using American taxpayer dollars to fund the United Nations International Maritime Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the United Nations Environment Program, because each of these organizations’ net-zero policies will have devastating effects on American consumers, farmers, and ranchers, and further endanger food security for the poor in America,” said the July 1 letter.

“Net-zero” refers to policies that aim to reduce the net amount of carbon emissions to zero by the year 2050, either by fully eliminating them or by offsetting them.

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Let this article be Exhibit A in the case against climate policy by fiat. And remember: when someone tells you fossil fuels are living off your tax dollars, ask them to show the receipts. Odds are, they’re pointing to a spreadsheet full of make-believe.

Hey–it could happen….

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I am an engineer by training with the questionable instinct to run towards problems, especially problems that should not be problems. When I heard that the United States could not produce sufficient 155 mm artillery shells to supply Ukraine, I thought it sounded odd. I knew essentially nothing about artillery save I would not want to be on the other end of one. I was generally aware the industrial base for the defense industry had either atrophied or specialized or both, depending on your perspective. Maybe this was just over-specialization? A dependency on a single part? Maybe it is a reliance on something exotic? Surely, there must be an explanation, something that would help me understand why we are so ill-prepared. Maybe there is some new technology that could be applied? This is a record of what I learned for the benefit of a more-educated citizenry and to save time for anyone else investigating the issue.

Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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It turns out that the appendix appears to have two related functions. The first function is supporting the immune system. The appendix has a high concentration of immune tissue, so it’s acting to help the immune system fight any bad things in the gut.

The second function that it serves is what we refer to as the safe house. So this was a hypothesis that was put forward by a team from Duke University in 2007. And they argued that the appendix may serve as a safe reservoir for the beneficial gut bacteria that we have.

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After a proposal of ‘forced integration’ was approved at the party congress in May, the Swedish Social Democrats are now outlining what their plan is, should they return to power after next year’s parliamentary elections.

The fact that native Swedes—as well as immigrants—tend to gravitate toward living in communities with people of similar background is a problem, according to the Social Democrats. To solve the problem, their proposal includes ending asylum seekers’ right to choose their own housing, banning the placement of newcomers in so-called vulnerable areas, and restricting moves there by threatening to cut social benefits.

In an interview with Svenska Dagbladet, Sara Kukka-Salam, a member of the party leadership, says native Swedes who want to live among other native Swedes are racist.

“We have a housing market where you can live wherever you want. But choosing not to live next to someone based on their last name is racism,” she said.

The essence of totalitarianism, of which socialism is an ancient flavor, is “You have to live the way I want you to live, not the way you want to live.” Totalitarianism entered the United States officially with the Civil Rights Acts, which eliminated the formerly undoubted right of Freedom of Association. When the government tells you with whom you may and may not associate, you are not free.

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Abstract
Governments originally meant for civil asset forfeiture laws to take the profit out of crime and show that crime literally does not pay. Since governments keep the seized assets for themselves, however, these laws lead to perverse incentives. Instead of police using resources to fight crime that has actual victims, police go after drug buyers to find assets to seize to increase the police budget. This paper attempts to show that police are ordinary, rational people who attempt to maximize their welfare. Police unions lobby to block regulations that limit forfeiture laws; seized assets and drug arrests have gone up while drug usage has not. Instead of trying to reduce crime, the police become the criminals by taking honest people’s belongings. This paper also shows the effect of forfeiture on drug prices and how law enforcement has no incentive to reduce arrests for victimless crimes.

Give people an excuse to take your stuff, and they will take your stuff.

Read it.

In my previous article, The Problem is Not Plagiarism, but Cargo Cult Science, I claimed that upwards of 90% of non-STEM academic papers should be classified as Cargo Cult Science. This assertion prompted a challenge from a HackerNews commenter who said I should “Pick a field and debunk it if you can.”

Sorry, commentor, that’s not the way science works. You have to demonstrate that your ‘science’ actually works, not the other way around.

To reiterate, Richard Feynman considers the main feature of Cargo Cult Science to be the following:

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science.  That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation.  It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly.  It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.  For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

That sure sounds like psychology to me. (Also economics, but let’s not go there.)

I’ve selected psychology as my Cargo Cult Science field of choice primarily because it’s one of the most obviously fraught subjects and due to my own brief academic detour into this field after dropping out of engineering (a very questionable decision in hindsight).

In psychology, papers are either p-hacked garbage that doesn’t replicate or, more commonly, have no scientific value due to their methodology or subject of study. These papers aren’t necessarily “false” per se, as much as they don’t produce any valuable knowledge by design, serving mainly to advance the careers of the authors through journal publications and the gathering of press and citations. I consider all these Cargo Cult Science.

While p-hacking and the replication crisis are widely acknowledged, albeit not solved, problems, I argue that these are minor compared to the four major issues that undermine psychology: reliance on surveys, disregarding indexicality, studying nouns, and using statistics.

This post will discuss the weaknesses in psychological research outside of clinical psychology. In a subsequent post, I plan to explore the problems with “mental illnesses” (especially depression) and their treatment.

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Yet another stunning example of ‘go woke, go broke’ has come to pass after high end car brand Jaguar has seen vehicle sales fall off a cliff following a mind blowingly stupid non-binary rebrand.

Natural Selection is a stone-cold bitch.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Six traits can determine your ‘it’ factor, according to researchers who measured coolness around the globe.

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

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On Nov 13, 2015, Muslim terrorists attacked a concert at the Bataclan theater in Paris, opening fire on the crowd while shouting, “Allah Akbar.” The Muslim attackers took 20 hostages, killed 90 concertgoers and left hundreds wounded. A year later the theater reopened under new ownership with ‘Insallah’ or ‘If Allah Wills” by Sting to support the Muslim migrants invading Europe. One of the members of the American band that had been playing during the attack was banned from attending the commemoration because he had been accused of ‘Islamophobia’.

A few years later, there was a Bataclan concert featuring a Muslim rappers supporting Jihad. After Oct 7, the Bataclan was filled with shouts of ‘Free Palestine’ at yet another Islamic concert.

By then Muslim terrorists had racked up multiple concert massacres at the Open Festival suicide bombing in Germany in 2016, the Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017 which killed 22 people, some of them children, and wounded over 1,000, the Nova festival massacre which killed nearly 400 people and the Moscow concert hall attack in 2024 that killed 145 people and wounded over 500.

The Other McCain.

But, yeah, mainly it was the gunfire.

Imagine how low the crime rates would be if young black males were prohibited from possessing firearms.

Newsbusters.

You have to love the humorless leftist media when President Donald Trump is fact-checked over his joking statement regarding alligators when he toured the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida.

“We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison. Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this,” Trump said, as he moved his hand in a zigzag motion. “And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.” AP felt they had to fact-check the joke:

Alligator experts suggest it is better to dash in one direction in the rare situation when the reptile gives chase, according to a website run by the University of Florida.

This was amplified by leftist websites like RawStory. They headlined it: “Trump’s guide to outrunning alligator gets fact-check — he wouldn’t make it far.”

Washington Free Beacon.

interstates. It isn’t that she’s avoiding speeding maniacs—you can find them on any Pittsburgh street—but she loves to see the local color and variety one can spy on pre-1950s U.S. highways.

This tells us something essential about Zito’s worldview: that she’s acutely conscious of place, as she compellingly demonstrates throughout this powerful and often charming book. On July 13, 2024, Zito was in Butler, Pa., to interview Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump right after an outdoor rally at the county Farm Show Complex. When Trump narrowly avoided death as a gunman’s bullet nipped his right ear, Zito was just feet away. A memorable Associated Press photograph shows her splayed out face-down on the ground, easily identifiable to friends and fans by her signature tricolor cowboy boots.

But the following day was almost equally unforgettable. “Good morning, Salena! It’s Donald Trump. I wanted to see if you and your daughter Shannon and Michael are okay. And I wanted to apologize that we weren’t able to do the interview.” Zito was stunned; her photojournalist daughter and son-in-law had been introduced to Trump just before the rally, too.

Washington Free Beacon.

MAGA is the New Nigger.

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The Trump administration recalled its top diplomat in Colombia, John McNamara, for “urgent consultations” on Thursday in response to what it described as “baseless and reprehensible” statements from senior Colombian officials. While the State Department did not specify which remarks prompted the move, it indicated that further actions would follow. In response, Colombian President Gustavo Petro recalled his country’s ambassador to the U.S., citing the need to reassess the bilateral relationship.

Tensions between the two nations have been rising, exacerbated by the recent shooting of opposition Senator Miguel Uribe, which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed on inflammatory rhetoric from Colombia’s far-left government.

Earlier in the year, President Petro refused to accept deportation flights from the U.S., prompting President Trump to threaten tariffs and sanctions; however, that dispute was ultimately defused. Colombian Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia resigned amid the diplomatic fallout.

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The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a major deportation victory on Thursday. On the same day, the GOP-led House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a narrow 218–214 vote—legislation that paves the way for over one million deportations annually. Meanwhile, the first illegals arrived at “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, with outbound flights soon to follow. With these massive wins stacking up, Trump has secured yet another victory: the hearts of the American people, who overwhelmingly support this effort to restore national security.

Let’s start with news from the Supreme Court. In short, the nation’s highest court ruled that an activist lower-court judge had severely overstepped by attempting to block the deportation of eight criminal illegal migrants to South Sudan, despite a prior order from the high court authorizing the removal.

In a 7–2 decision, the Supreme Court sharply rebuked U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy—an appointee from the radical leftist Biden-Harris regime era—for defying its June 23 ruling, which permitted Trump officials to proceed with deportations of criminal illegal aliens to third-world countries. The majority held that Murphy lacked the authority to enforce a previous injunction that the justices had already stayed.

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Prompted by military losses and shifting regional geopolitics, the Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah is considering a major strategic shift that would see the group undertake a major disarmament, Reuters has reported, citing three sources familiar with the group’s deliberations.

In solidarity with Gaza, Hezbollah began attacking Israel on the day after the Oct 7 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, but suffered mightily for doing so. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hammered Lebanon with airstrikes and then an invasion. In September 2024, Israel unleashed a devious mass attack on Hezbollah members, detonating thousands of pagers that Israeli intelligence had loaded with the explosive PETN. Nearly 3,000 people were wounded and at least a dozen killed, including two children. That same month, an Israeli airstrike killed the group’s leader for 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah.

Pursuant to the November ceasefire that ended its recent war with Israel, Hezbollah has turned over security responsibilities south of the Litani River to the Lebanese Armed Forces. Alongside that shift, the group has also handed over weapons depots in that part of the country, Reuters reports. Now the group’s leadership is considering a handover of its formidable missile and drone arsenal — which pose the greatest threat to Israel — provided Israel withdraws its remaining troops from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah would retain lighter weapons, including antitank missiles.

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Initial signs suggest a shift in federal posture toward increased scrutiny of rogue non-governmental organizations (NGOs) potentially engaged in domestic color revolution operations aimed at sowing chaos and destruction. These NGOs are reportedly backed by a mix of left-leaning (and often anti-American) high-net-worth individuals, U.S. taxpayer funds, corporate donations, and potentially hostile foreign actors.

Shortly after the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles last month, FBI Director Kash Patel stated, “The FBI is investigating any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.”

Patel’s comments are merely a hint that federal investigations are intensifying on a network of leftist NGOs. Some of these NGOs are assessed to be deeply aligned with Marxists and are allegedly advocating for the dismantling of capitalism through color revolution operations aimed at collapsing the system as part of a broader ideological realignment—a so-called “great reset” oriented toward socialism and, ultimately, digital communism.

Independent researcher and content creator Nate Friedman (27, New York-based) has released a series of videos on X detailing the command and control structures of these dark-money-funded NGOs operating in New York City. Some of these NGOs are aligned with Marxism, potentially receiving overseas funding. His findings suggest these organizations are engaged in destabilization operations.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

Instead of calling them ‘conspiracy theories’ we ought to call them ‘spoiler alerts’.

The Bulwark’s top editor shares how the anti-Trump site tripled its subscriber base in a year — and why it’s betting on YouTube (James Faris/Business Insider)  And there you have it. The whole point of The Bulwark is to be anti-Trump; and apparently that’s a profitable business model.

Dutch Artist’s ‘Shamed’ Lady Liberty Mural Targets Trump

Trump is Putting the American Dream Out of Reach (Adrianna Tomasello/Democrats)  The American Dream has been out of reach since the Democrats started pissing on the economy.

AOC Warns of ICE ‘Explosion’ After ‘Big Beautiful’ Bill Passes (Emell Derra Adolphus/The Daily Beast)  OH NOES THE SKY IS FALLING!

BRICS Nations to Denounce Trump Tariffs  They can put tariffs on us, no problem, but God forbid we should put tariffs on them.

China sees Trump’s new law as ‘one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm’: analyst (Carl Gibson/Alternet.org)

Don’t call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a concentration camp. (Andrea Pitzer/MSNBC)  WE CONTROL THE NARRATIVE!

Trump’s Politicized F.B.I. Has Made Americans Less Safe (New York Times)  As opposed to Biden’s (and Obama’s) politicized FBI?

Congo Braces for HIV Surge After U.S. Funding Stops (Nicholas Bariyo/Wall Street Journal)  Because, as we all know, preventing HIV in the Congo is TOTALLY the responsibility of the U.S. government–and the U.S. taxpayer.

Trump ramps up deportation spectacle with new stunts and ICE funding (Axios)

I’m Scared Children Will Die of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (Perri Klass/New York Times)  Betcha any money that she supports ‘abortion rights’.

MSNBC’s Capehart Denounces Trump Keeping People ‘In Cages’—Ya Mean, Like Obama?

Critical Read About the BBB, Federalism and the Future of American Democracy (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)  ‘Critical’ means ‘we’re bitching about Trump doing stuff that we were prefectly okay with Obama and Biden doing’.

A Road Map for Undoing the Damage of the Big, Awful Bill (Jason Furman/New York Times)

What Trump–And the U.S.–Can’t Understand About Air Strikes (Phillips Payson O’Brien/The Atlantic)  But a scribbler for The Atlantic of course does.

Trump branded, browbeat and prevailed. But his big bill may come at a political cost (Seung Min Kim/Associated Press)

Trump got $170 billion for immigration. Now he has to enact it. (Myah Ward/Politico)

The GOP’s Big Bill Is Massively Unpopular — If People Actually Know About It (Kevin Robillard/HuffPost)  I.e. they get steeped in the Narrative.

Trump White House calls out Smithsonian for pushing ‘one-sided, divisive political narratives’ (Jasmine Baehr/Fox News)

The Secret Police Are Here — While the Professional Moderates Clutch Their Pearls (Mike Brock/Notes From The Circus)  Guess he was asleep under previous Democrat administrations.

‘He likes the game too much’: Why Trump isn’t sweating his lack of trade deals (Politico)

The Head of NATO Thinks President Trump ‘Deserves All the Praise’ (Lulu Garcia-Navarro/New York Times)

Kamala Harris Sparks MAGA Meltdown With Fourth of July Post (Will Neal/The Daily Beast)  Projectile vomiting I can believe.

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A day after citing a Gallup poll showing collapsing patriotism among Democrats, we didn’t have to look far for proof: highly educated Boston leftists proudly proclaiming they’re “not proud to be American.” Yet, despite their anti-American rhetoric, they still choose to live here. Strange, isn’t it?

The Boston Globe—owned by Boston Globe Media Partners and run by John W. Henry, the billionaire owner of the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group, along with his wife, Linda Pizzuti Henry, the co-owner and CEO—shared a short-form video on Instagram featuring a series of interviews with residents about their patriotic views.

Boston Globe journalists and editors somehow failed to find a single person proud to be an American. In fact, every interviewee was reading a script—authentic, right? Not one of these highly educated locals could speak off the cuff?

New York Post.

Self-described “nepo baby” Zohran Mamdani declared a measly $2,000 in the bank on his latest state disclosures.

That’s despite his privileged upbringing and family money — and an annual salary of $131,000 as a state lawmaker, a job he’s had for five years.

The $2,000 on his form comes from a retirement plan from the housing-focused social-justice organization Chhaya, where he worked briefly as a “foreclosure prevention counselor” in 2019, before he was elected in 2020 to represent Queen’s 36th District in the state Assembly.

So he’s never had a Real Job, just been sucking on the public teat all his working life. A perfect Child of the Crust.

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Forgive us, Emma Lazarus, our second thoughts about those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . the wretched refuse of your teeming shore(s).

That was then and this is now. O, beautiful for spacious skies (but, why so many contrails criss-crossing overhead from the New York Island to the gulf stream waters?).

O, land of tattooed grandmas, hostages of the tiny screens, the sexually confounded, the illiterate and innumerate, the lawless and the feckless, brainwashed youth marinated in Marx, the deranged, befuddled, the bought-off, the bug-eyed and bewildered, the lame, the halt, the addicts, grifters, hustlers, porn-stars, drugstore cowboys, alpha dogs, beta boys, shrieking Karens, and sundry victims of future-shock — whither, this hallowed experiment in nationhood?

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The Department of Homeland Security is closely monitoring a series of attacks near Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities that happened in Texas and Oregon.

“We are closely monitoring the attacks on DHS detention facilities in Prairieland, TX, and Portland, OR, and are coordinating with the USAOs and our law enforcement partners. The Department has zero tolerance for assaults on federal officers or property and will bring the full weight of the law against those responsible,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X.

Late Friday night a shooting occurred near the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado Texas. One officer was injured, and multiple armed suspects are in custody according to authorities. The injured officer was flown from the scene to a Fort Worth hospital, was treated and later released, according to the Alvarado Police Department.

Watch it.

I am not making this up.

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When you start learning or doing almost anything interesting, you will initially be bad at it, and incur a temporary penalty in the form of looking a little dumb. You will probably sound awful at your first singing lesson. If you publish writing on the internet, your first piece will not be your best work.

My husband calls this the “Moat of Low Status,” and I have gleefully stolen the phrase because it’s so useful. It’s called a moat because it’s an effective bar to getting where you’re trying to go, and operates much like a moat in the business sense — as a barrier to entry that keeps people on the inside (who are already good at something) safe from competition from the horde of people on the outside (who could be).

The Moat is effective because it’s easy to imagine the embarrassment that comes from being in it. It’s so vivid, it looms so large that we forget the novel upsides that come from transcending it. Easy to imagine the embarrassment from your first months of singing lessons, because you’ve faced embarrassment before. Harder to imagine what you’ll sound like as a trained singer, because that’s never happened to you before.

“Learn by doing” is the standard advice for learning something quickly, and it’s what I try to follow. But it’s hard to learn by doing unless you first learn to love the Moat. It’s embarrassing to learn by doing, whether you are trying to learn a language by embedding yourself with native speakers or learning to climb by falling off a wall at the gym over and over again.

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Former Presidents George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s farewell messages to staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development this week reinforce the perception that critics have called the “uniparty” culture in Washington.

On Monday, the staff of USAID received video messages from the two former presidents, along with one from Bono, the ultraliberal Irish frontman of the rock band U2. Monday was the last day for foreign assistance programming by USAID, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced would be moved under the purview of the State Department. The former presidents and Bono spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference.

The messages were a remarkable display of bipartisan support for an agency plagued by mission creep that has been almost entirely left-wing. “You had a one-sided uniparty apparatus here [in the State Department and USAID] funding only one side of the political equation,” Max Primorac, who previously served as USAID’s chief operating officer, explained in an interview with “The Signal Sitdown” podcast in February.

The Three Caballeros.

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for breakfast, leaving many parents frustrated. Introduced by new management as a step toward inclusivity, the policy has instead fueled accusations of cultural bias, with parents claiming their concerns were ignored or ridiculed.

A new catering policy at the municipal daycare center Hasenwinkel in Bad Harzburg, Lower Saxony, has sparked frustration among parents after the facility introduced an exclusively halal sausage (that conforms to Islamic law) selection for breakfast. The change, introduced under new daycare management in office since January 2024, was not a mistake but a deliberate decision aimed at promoting inclusivity.

An internal memo obtained by Apollo News outlined the rationale behind the move, stating that the goal was to establish a ”unique selling point” that would allow children from all cultural backgrounds to confidently help themselves at the breakfast buffet. As a result, all non-halal sausage options were removed.

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Heat waves in Western Europe are occurring earlier and earlier. They are no longer confined to July and August but now spill over into June and September. The ‘energy transition’ is seen as the universal remedy for ‘global warming’: with the help of heavily subsidised programmes, the aim is to imagine an ecologically correct future in which technology will lower the thermostat. In the meantime, mass housing is becoming unliveable, and children are baking in concrete schools where temperatures are reaching 40°C.

The unsuitability of homes and public buildings for the heat is the result of several decades of frenzied modernisation of the built environment in the years following the Second World War. As the countryside was being permanently depopulated, cities were surrounded by belts of low-rent buildings intended to house first the baby boomers and then, once that generation had passed, immigrants. These mass housing structures, built quickly using cheap materials, are now proving totally unsuited to rising temperatures.

And what about the public buildings that have sprung up in so many cities, built with glass and concrete? Libraries, community centres, administrative buildings, schools, and colleges have multiplied, with soulless, characterless architecture and materials that cannot withstand the test of time. Today, their ‘modernity’ is no longer attractive.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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So-called ‘international’ bodies are among the most totalitarian in the modern world.

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When reality does not mesh with the “narrative,” the left’s standard tactic is to turn to censorship, and the French left is no different. The French Greens and other left-wing parties now want to make sure that news stories are not used for ideological purposes by the “far right,” claiming that certain media outlets are causing a “moral panic” around immigration due to migrant murders.

According to a parliamentary amendment tabled on June 25, 2025, by a group of Green and left-wing MPs in the National Assembly, news stories of actual events that have happened, and actual lives lost, are being improperly used by the right.

Another post from the French Observatory for Journalism ,wrote: “BREAKING NEWS | Green and left-wing deputies submit an amendment to REDUCE the coverage of crime stories in PUBLIC media. The authors believe these stories are used for ‘political exploitation;’ the text cites the murders of Lola and Thomas.”

Newsbusters.

Last week, we reported on how PolitiFact threw a “False” flag at President Trump for calling New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a “communist lunatic,” despite contrary evidence, like his 2020 tweet in support of a communist mayor in India, suggesting that’s the kind of mayor New York needs. On Thursday, in reaction to a White House spokesperson, PolitiFact doubled down on its ruling, dismissing Mamdani’s clearly Marxist talk of seizing the means of production.

The distinction between a socialist and a communist matters only to another socialist/communist. Splitting hairs over political nuances on the Left are of no importance when the consequences for their victims are much the same.

LiveScience.

Notice that they spend exactly no time of discussing WHY men are taller, merely on HOW men are taller, i.e. the genetics of the thing.

The reason WHY men are taller is very straightforward: Natural Selection. Women prefer men who are taller than they are, something that anybody who grazes in the fields of Twitter, FaceBook, or TikTok knows perfectly well.

Bring up YouTube and type ‘short men’ into the search box.

Naval News.

U.S. Navy budget documentation released last week is adding a series of new capabilities to the current AN/SLQ-25 Nixie countermeasures suite, including a new hard-kill capability via deck launchers, set to be deployed to over 168 different front-line ships in coming years.

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Feel free to laugh. I did.

Natural Selection is SUCH a bitch….