The Right Coast

The fall of Pride can’t come soon enough - spiked

Pride used to be over and done with in a day. Now it lingers around like norovirus. And for an increasing number of lesbians and gay men like myself, it induces similar symptoms.

The whole of June is now given over to Pride Month. And just as the duration has changed, so has the tone. The parades are starting to resemble a rainbow version of the Orange March. Rather than celebrating the liberation of the oppressed, they seem designed to bully the public into supporting the movement.

What Pride celebrates has changed significantly, too. Kink is now the order of the day. Every year you’ll see ‘pups’ (men who dress as dogs) being led on all fours by their dog-handlers. Often these pups are dressed in bright Teletubby colours and children are often seen petting them. What could possibly go wrong?

In recent years, much of Pride’s focus has also turned to trans. In Edinburgh last week, NHS staff staged a Pride march from the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People, where a large trans flag has already been installed in the reception area, to the Royal Infirmary. Some doctors and clinicians, who worry about the over-promotion of gender-identity treatments to vulnerable young people, argued that this march was an attempt to intimidate them into silence. They’re right.

via www.spiked-online.com

SEC Sues Coinbase, Alleges It Is Unregistered Broker - WSJ

WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase COIN 2.81%increase; green up pointing triangle on Tuesday, a back-to-back punch by regulators trying to rein in the crypto industry.

The SEC alleged that Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., violated rules that require it to register as an exchange and be overseen by the federal agency.

via www.wsj.com

This was inevitable. It's not like the state is going to let money get out of its control is it? At least not for ordinary people, that is.

WHO’s Global Digital Health Certification Network

via www.youtube.com

Dr. John seem teed off and I don't blame him.

Ukraine Dam Collapse: Kherson Evacuated and Thousands Threatened As Floodwaters Rise - WSJ

KHERSON, Ukraine—Floodwaters continued to rise on Wednesday after a major dam and power station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine were destroyed, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and throwing a curveball on the battlefield.

The rupture on Tuesday has added another dimension to a humanitarian crisis resulting from a war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. It unleashed a torrent of water that inundated dozens of towns and villages along the Dnipro River separating Russian and Ukrainian-held parts of the southern Kherson region.

via www.wsj.com

Why RFK Jr. flunked the Roger Waters test - Jonathan Tobin

But even those pundits most dismissive of his efforts are admitting to surprise at the level of support that RFK Jr. is generating, as evidenced by the 20% he received in the latest CNN poll. Some are starting to believe that dismissing him as a crackpot extremist might be a mistake for an incumbent who began his re-election effort with only 26% of Democrats saying they wanted him to run again and with a job-approval rating that's been deep underwater for the last two years.

That's why Kennedy's tweet last week in support of aging rock star/antisemite Roger Waters shouldn't be ignored.

Though it was soon deleted and the candidate then tried to rationalize what he had written (which was also eventually deleted), it's worth probing what would have led him to praise Waters after one of his most despicable performances.

Let's start by noting the irony of Kennedy's support for someone who is as dedicated to the destruction of Israel and to defaming the Jewish people as Waters. His father was, after all, murdered by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab who claimed that his crime was revenge for Bobby Kennedy's support for the State of Israel. Though, ignoring all the evidence, RFK Jr. doesn’t believe Sirhan killed his father and wants him freed, a bizarre stand that may, at least in part, help to explain his willingness to embrace Waters.

The timing of the tweet was also appalling.

It came just as Waters was being assailed by critics for a performance in Germany, of all places, where he added images of Anne Frank and dressed in a black costume with red armbands that while reminiscent of his "The Wall" days looked very much like an SS uniform. The Pink Floyd star has long been known for peddling conspiracies involving fictional Israeli crimes against humanity and his hostility to Jews, even as he denies being an antisemite. Not to mention employing antisemitic imagery in his past shows, such as flying a pig balloon with a Star of David.

via jewishworldreview.com

Oh dear. I didn't know this (assuming it's true). I suppose I shall have to withdraw my tentative support for RFK Jr. for runner up for the official endorsement of the RC. The is a problem with People of the Left. Even if some of them are right about some things, so many of them hate Israel.

"We Are Not Alone": US Has Retrieved Craft Of 'Non-Human Origin' Says Whistleblower From Govt. Task Force On UFOs | ZeroHedge

A new report from two veteran (mainstream) journalists citing a decorated whistleblower provides stunning insight into the US Government's history with UFOs.

For those who 'want to believe' - short of a UFO landing on the lawn of the White House, this is it.

For those who think the recent government UFO disclosures are one big psyop, this is it.

via www.zerohedge.com

So either there really are aliens and we have the bodies, or this is a great big psyop by the Big Deep National Security State. I've put on my thinking cap and I put the odds at 60 percent aliens and 40 percent psyop. But tbf at moments I put the odds at 60 percent psyop and 40 percent aliens. But your mileage may vary, as we used to say. But it might be aliens and that might be really bad. But maybe not. It might be just a sham scare to get us to give up our liberties. So keep your eyes skinned and your powder dry, maties!

From Drone Strikes to Ground Incursions, War Comes to Russia - WSJ

Viktor Bondarenko, a Russian art collector, was jolted awake by the sound of explosions over his upscale Moscow suburb on May 30. Russian air defenses were blasting away at Ukrainian drones.

Bondarenko’s wife wanted to shelter in the cellar, he said in an Instagram post, but he “didn’t want to be buried in the basement should something strike.” One good thing, he said: “The kids are in Milan.”

via www.wsj.com

Taste of their own medicine.

Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine Destroyed: What to Know - The New York Times

A critical dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine broke overnight on Tuesday, endangering thousands of people who live downstream. It was not immediately clear who caused the breech. Ukraine blamed Russia, saying there had been an explosion in an engine room. Russia said the Ukrainian forces had carried out a sabotage attack.

Ukrainian officials on Tuesday began evacuating people in the Kherson region as huge volumes of water gushed from the dam’s reservoir. Floodwaters are expected to continue to rise through the night and peak on Wednesday morning, the head of state-owned hydropower company said in an interview.

The U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, decried the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, calling it a “monumental humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophe” and “yet another example of the horrific price of war on people.”

via www.nytimes.com

WHO Plots To Use EU Vaccine Passport Tech To Form Global Digital Health Certificates

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced it will adopt the European Union’s digital Covid vaccine passport framework to create a global network of digital health certificates. What was long maligned as a conspiracy theory is coming to pass. The new initiative will be called the Global Digital Health Certification Network.

Read about the dangers of vaccine passports and how they kill civil liberties here.

The WHO said it will “take up the European Union (EU) system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats.”

The EU’s Covid vaccine certificate was enforced in July 2021 and issued to over 2.3 billion people.

In a statement, WHO’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus said that “building on the EU’s highly successful digital certification network, WHO aims to offer all WHO Member States access to an open-source digital health tool.”

“New digital health products in development aim to help people everywhere receive quality health services quickly and more effectively,” he added.

via reclaimthenet.org

Well to hell with this.

Clinton-Appointed Judge Says ‘Gender Identity Is Real,’ Blocks Florida Law Banning Minors’ Transitions | The Daily Caller

A federal judge sided Tuesday with families who sued over Florida’s ban on gender transition procedures for minors, declaring that “gender identity is real.”

A group of families, backed by several LGBT activist groups, sued Florida in March shortly after the rule restricting minors from accessing surgical sex change procedures, puberty blockers and hormone therapy took effect. Northern District of Florida Judge Robert L. Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, granted a preliminary injunction against the law to prohibit it from being enforced against the plaintiffs, and proceeded to make the claim that “great weight of medical authority supports these treatments.”

In much of the developed world, including many Scandinavian countries, sex change interventions for minors are seen as lacking evidence and as largely experimental treatments. Additionally, pioneers in gender dysphoria treatment have come out against modern philosophies that emphasize immediately “affirming” gender-confused minors, while experts have repeatedly poked holes in much of the scholarship claiming child sex changes are medically necessary.

Hinkle also repeatedly argued for the reality of “gender identity” in his ruling.

via dailycaller.com

Ai chihuahua (she/it/her/whatever).

Why AI Will Save The World - Marc Andreessen Substack

The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and boy are people freaking out.

Fortunately, I am here to bring the good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.

First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.

A shorter description of what AI isn’t: Killer software and robots that will spring to life and decide to murder the human race or otherwise ruin everything, like you see in the movies.

An even shorter description of what AI could be: A way to make everything we care about better.

via pmarca.substack.com

AI is so dangerous that it has to be controlled by a cabal of Big Tech oligarchs and Big Fed gruppenfuhrers. What could wrong with that?

How DeSantis Can Win - by William Otis

What does the country really want now?

Polling tells us something, and intuition and common experience — the things you see and hear every day — tell us something at least equally valuable.

Gallup’s polling tells us that economic vitality is by far the single most important issue, mentioned by 29%, with inflation, jobs and the national debt being the most frequently mentioned sub-issues. Outside of the economy, 71% choose from among a long list of other issues. Those most frequently mentioned are, in order, the quality of government and government leadership (mentioned by 18%); immigration; guns and gun control; crime and violence; unifying the country; and race and race relations. Nothing else registers above 3%.

(Dragging up near the rear are abortion, with 2%; climate change/environment, LGBT rights, and school shootings with 1% each; and police brutality and Coronavirus clocking in at less than 1%).

via ringsideatthereckoning.substack.com

DeSantis on the substance! That's my attempt at a slogan.

Slaying the Censorship Leviathan - Tablet Magazine

One year ago, I joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana and several other co-plaintiffs to file a suit in federal court challenging what journalist Michael Shellenberger has called the censorship-industrial complex. While much of the press cooperated with the state’s censorship efforts and has ignored our court battle, we expect that it will ultimately go to the Supreme Court, setting up Missouri v. Biden to be the most important free speech case of our generation—and arguably, of the past 50 years.

Prior government censorship cases typically involved a state actor unconstitutionally meddling with one publisher, one author, one or two books, a single article. But as we intend to prove in court, the federal government has censored hundreds of thousands of Americans, violating the law on tens of millions of occasions in the last several years. This unprecedented breach was made possible by the wholly novel reach and breadth of the new digital social media landscape.

via www.tabletmag.com

This is indeed the most important free speech case of our generation. I hope SCOTUS gets it right and I'm hopeful. But as in jiu-jitsu, a lot depends on whether the State/Corporate elite can set their strangle hold in time before we figure out how to defeat them. Timing is all.

Lockdowns

via www.youtube.com

Spoiler alert: lockdowns were a charlie foxtrot of epic proportions. But hey: the experts told us to do it and they didn't know any better. I don't remember many main stream economists objecting to lockdowns either. On the upside, lockdowns completed the process of "red pilling" some people, such as me, and so contributed to our enlightenment, which is a good thing, I suppose.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Alien Spacecraft In US Military Possession | Breaking Points

via www.youtube.com

Golly. We seem to be going through a phase -- some people call it the "fourth turning" -- in which our institutions lose their authority and we descend into chaos. This will be followed, in this story, by the emergence of new institutions or a return to traditions, or perhaps both. In any event, a lot of hoary old lies seem to be getting caught out, and that's gratifying. Of course, this could turn out to be much less than it appears to be, but it does appear to be a legitimate bombshell. Suddenly a lot of sci fi doesn't look so fi any more. And if I don't toot my own horn nobody else will, so I will just point out to RC readers that we have been on this story for a while.

‘Your speech is violence’: the left’s new mantra to justify campus violence | The Hill

Recently, many people were shocked by a videotape of Hunter College professor Shellyne Rodríguez trashing a pro-life student display in New York. Most were focused on her profanity and vandalism, but there were familiar phrases that appeared in her diatribe to the clearly shocked students.  

Before trashing the table, she told the students, “You’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.” 

The videotape revealed one other thing. At Hunter College, and at other colleges, it seems that trashing a pro-life student display and abusing pro-life students is not considered a firing offense. Hunter College refused to fire Rodríguez.

The PSC Graduate Center, the labor organization of graduate and professional schools at the City University of New York, supported that decision and said Rodríguez was “justified” in trashing the display, which the organization described as “dangerously false propaganda” and “disinformation.” 

Rodríguez later put a machete to the neck of a reporter, threatened to chop him up and then chased a news crew down a street with the machete in hand. Somewhere between the machete to the neck and chasing the reporters down the street, Hunter College finally decided that Rodríguez had to go. 

Rodríguez denounced the school for having “capitulated” to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.” She explained that her firing was just a continuation of “attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.” 

via thehill.com

The Campaign To Destroy SCOTUS Is Getting Increasingly Stupid

The dishonest, ginned–up campaign to smear originalists on the Supreme Court has always been predicated on half-truths and innuendo. But Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern is now accusing Samuel Alito of “violating” completely imaginary SCOTUS ethic “rules” in a case involving Phillips 66.

According to Stern, even when originalist justices properly disclose all their investments and then recuse themselves, they’re still corrupt. Why?

The justice did not explain his reason for recusing, one of Roberts’ promised “practices.” To obtain that information, you must dig through his financial disclosures, which reveal that he holds up to $50,000 of stock in Phillips 66, one of the parties. Alito is one of two sitting justices who still holds individual stocks (as opposed to conflict-free assets like mutual funds).

First off, an explanation for recusal is not, in fact, one of “Roberts’ promised “practices.” The “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” plainly states that in “many instances, the grounds for recusal will be obvious,” but that justices “may provide a summary explanation of a recusal decision” or “may provide an extended explanation for any decision to recuse or not recuse.” There is no “rule.”

The above italics are mine. Because the word may, meaning “to express the possibility,” has a different definition than words like “will” or “must,” which denote an obligation or duty. So, for example, one may refer to a person who cynically delegitimizes constitutional governance for the sake of power as an “irredeemable authoritarian hack masquerading as a journalist,” but one is not required to do so.

via thefederalist.com

Heh.

Why Dave Rubin thinks libertarians should back DeSantis

via www.youtube.com

Judge in Missouri v Biden ain't buying what the government's shoveling – HotAir

The Missouri v Biden lawsuit sprang from underhanded censorship dealings the Biden administration began with the social media companies almost the second they ascended to the throne.

Literally 3 days after Biden took office, the government’s censorship operation was flying. The White House immediately launched a pressure campaign on social media platforms to suppress supposed “COVID misinformation.” The Surgeon General launched his signature “disinformation” initiative at a Virality Project event at the Stanford Internet Observatory. And, Biden himself publicly pressured platforms on July 16, 2021—one day after his press secretary Jennifer Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy did the same, as the plaintiffs describe in their filing.

Everyone from COVID lockdown, vax and masking critics to scientists who had conflicting data in their hands, and just wanted to present it to the public – such as the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration – were driven from view, pilloried from the public square, many times hounded out of their jobs and livelihoods their long established, spotless professional reputations were in tatters.

via hotair.com

Ukraine’s Zelensky: We Are Ready for Counteroffensive - WSJ

ODESA, Ukraine—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was now ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive but tempered a forecast of success with a warning: It could take some time and come at a heavy cost.

“We strongly believe that we will succeed,” Zelensky said in an interview in this southern port city as his country’s military girded for what could be one of the war’s most consequential phases as it aims to retake territory occupied by Russia. 

via www.wsj.com

I stand with Ukraine. Yes, we have a ruling class that has glommed onto this cause as a way to advance the globalist agenda. Yes, Soros is active in Ukraine. Yes, the neo-cons never met a war they didn't like, and yes, they want to overthrow Putin, not just get the Russians out of Ukraine. All of these are not reasons to throw the Ukrainians to the wolves. Trump would probably do just that, and that's a reason in my book not to support him. DeSantis seems more reasonable on this issue. RFK Jr. is not so reasonable; a strike against him. Biden might be our next president. Bad for just about everything, but probably good for Ukraine. I hope the coming counter-offensive lives up to my hopes.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The Presidential Dark Horse - Crisis Magazine

So, who is RFK Jr., and why should American voters care? I’ll sketch out the main reasons as to why I believe RFK Jr. could be a strong candidate beyond partisan lines for those who are looking to vote for a person beyond the disappointment of two political parties. At 69 years old, he’s the fourth member of the Kennedy family to run for the Democratic nomination for president. He is an environmental lawyer and the founder and chairman (currently on leave) of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD). 

via www.crisismagazine.com

I'm a DeSantis supporter, but RFk Jr. might be my second choice. He seems to totally get the threat of the alliances between Big Government and Big Business teaming up against the rest of us. He calls it "totalitarian" and he's completely correct about that.

Put an End to the Madness! - Crisis Magazine

Otherwise, I managed to blurt out just before the papal smartphone slammed shut, it would not be possible to acquit His Holiness from complicity in the disasters taking place in the life of the Church. He will own them. Whether wittingly or not scarcely matters anymore. The point is, it has got to stop, and until he steps in to do so the Church will continue to fracture and unravel, spiraling completely out of control.

Will he do so? Will he finally decide to put an end to the madness? 

via www.crisismagazine.com

Prof. Regis Martin.

Twitter Drama Boosts “What Is A Woman?”

Then, at 8:28 pm, Ian Miles Cheong, who frequently interacts with Twitter owner Elon Musk, tweeted that Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, had resigned.

Many speculated that Musk had fired Irwin for the censoring of “What Is a Woman.”

But Twitter was still throttling the film two hours later.

“Our film has been posted for a couple of hours,” tweeted the film’s star, Matt Walsh, at 10:26 pm last night. “You cannot retweet it. It will not appear in anyone’s feed. It has been flagged as hate speech. It has been blacklisted from the trends list. It still has nearly 900 thousand views.”

Then, at 4:50 am this morning, Musk tweeted, in response to Walsh, “Will be fixed tomorrow.”

At 8:19 am, conservative populist Tim Pool tweeted, “Elon is facing the reality of going up against the world's political powers,” to which Musk responded, a few minutes later, “I am on team humanity.”

A few minutes later, Musk responded to Wash’s tweet from yesterday, which said that the video was still blocked, saying “Works now. Only limit is that it will not be placed next to advertising.”

Musk’s statement suggests that the origin of the conflict was indeed that some corporate advertisers, likely large and powerful ones, did not want the film near their ads, perhaps fearing a boycott from LGBT activist groups like Human Rights Campaign, which, as Public reported last week, was behind the closure of the Michigan’s Womyn Festival for excluding transwomen.

By 8:25, Musk was actively promoting “What is a Woman.” Tweeted Musk, “Every parent should watch this. Consenting adults should do whatever makes them happy, provided it does not harm others, but a child is not capable of consent, which is why we have laws protecting minors.”

Musk tweeted “Absolutely,” in response to Peterson tweeting, “Prison. Long term. Without parole. No mercy. And maybe for the compliant ‘therapists’ as well as the butchers they enable,” referring to the surgeons who modify the genitals of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and who believe they are the opposite sex.

via public.substack.com

Well finally, a bit of a victory. Elon comes through and the Head of "Trust and Safety" is out. Elon is a shifty fellow and deals from both sides of the deck, but he's right about this movie. I haven't watched it because there are enough sick-making things in my life already. But I'm sure you should. Elon also gets the main issue 100 percent correct -- minors cannot consent to be chemically or surgically altered permanently. Adults can do as they will. Leave the kids alone.

Twitter Drama Boosts “What Is A Woman?”

Then, at 8:28 pm, Ian Miles Cheong, who frequently interacts with Twitter owner Elon Musk, tweeted that Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, had resigned.

Many speculated that Musk had fired Irwin for the censoring of “What Is a Woman.”

But Twitter was still throttling the film two hours later.

“Our film has been posted for a couple of hours,” tweeted the film’s star, Matt Walsh, at 10:26 pm last night. “You cannot retweet it. It will not appear in anyone’s feed. It has been flagged as hate speech. It has been blacklisted from the trends list. It still has nearly 900 thousand views.”

Then, at 4:50 am this morning, Musk tweeted, in response to Walsh, “Will be fixed tomorrow.”

At 8:19 am, conservative populist Tim Pool tweeted, “Elon is facing the reality of going up against the world's political powers,” to which Musk responded, a few minutes later, “I am on team humanity.”

A few minutes later, Musk responded to Wash’s tweet from yesterday, which said that the video was still blocked, saying “Works now. Only limit is that it will not be placed next to advertising.”

Musk’s statement suggests that the origin of the conflict was indeed that some corporate advertisers, likely large and powerful ones, did not want the film near their ads, perhaps fearing a boycott from LGBT activist groups like Human Rights Campaign, which, as Public reported last week, was behind the closure of the Michigan’s Womyn Festival for excluding transwomen.

By 8:25, Musk was actively promoting “What is a Woman.” Tweeted Musk, “Every parent should watch this. Consenting adults should do whatever makes them happy, provided it does not harm others, but a child is not capable of consent, which is why we have laws protecting minors.”

Musk tweeted “Absolutely,” in response to Peterson tweeting, “Prison. Long term. Without parole. No mercy. And maybe for the compliant ‘therapists’ as well as the butchers they enable,” referring to the surgeons who modify the genitals of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and who believe they are the opposite sex.

via public.substack.com

Well finally, a bit of a victory. Elon comes through and the Head of "Trust and Safety" is out. Elon is a shifty fellow and deals from both sides of the deck, but he's right about this movie. I haven't watched it because there are enough sick-making things in my life already. But I'm sure you should. Elon also gets the main issue 100 percent correct -- minors cannot consent to be chemically or surgically altered permanently. Adults can do as they will. Leave the kids alone.

No Laughing Matter: ‘Life of Brian’ is the Latest Battleground for the Future of Comedy - The Messenger

The attack on Cleese’s script should be the height of ironic humor. The movie featuring humorless, clueless activists with no sense of self-awareness is now being targeted by some of the very same characters in real life.

The problem is that the loss of such humor will only increase the rage in society. The ability to laugh about ourselves and others can help vent social pressures and force people out of their myopic, monotonous perspectives.

In the movie Good Morning, Vietnam, comedian Robin Williams left the country rolling in laughter over his role as disc jockey Adrian Cronauer, who savaged every possible political, religious and racial group. His nemesis, Lt. Steven Hauk, fails to replace him on-air with Hauk’s own safe, unfunny jokes.When a general refuses to take Cronauer off the air, Hauk defiantly declares: "Sir, in my heart, I know I'm funny.”

He wasn't funny, of course, which is why he needed a comedy horn to show people when to laugh. That is why we prefer to have comedies written by people like Cleese as opposed to government functionaries.

via themessenger.com

"Life of Brian" is a deeply nihilistic movie, but it is hilarious. Think of the lyrics to "Look on the Bright Side of Life:" "Life's really a piece of sh*t/When you come to think of it." Well, that's rather a socially unproductive POV. And obviously anti-Christian. But what do the censors latch on to? The scene where [what's his name] declares that he is now a woman and wants to have a baby. Ok, I get it, and it's funny. And I would not want to ban the movie. But it's just sad that that's the scene the censors want to cut out.

McCarthy Earns the Speakership - WSJ

What a turnabout. Amid a “humiliating” 15 ballots to be elected speaker in January, the press insisted Mr. McCarthy was crippled, the token head of a “ragged GOP” stumbling “through the wilderness,” assuming a speakership that would be a “nightmare” as it failed to manage “MAGA radicals,” “rebels” and “anarchy.” As recently as mid-April, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer smirked on the sidelines, chiding Mr. McCarthy not to “bother with partisan wish lists” given that he lacked the GOP votes to pass them.

The dynamic changed entirely one week later, when the Californian got his four-vote majority to deliver the only debt-ceiling bill in town, forcing the White House to the table. That was the master stroke, and it’s worth dissecting how Mr. McCarthy did it. Because it wasn’t Lady Fortune or a sudden outbreak of GOP kumbaya. It was a deliberate, well-considered strategy that required hard work.

via www.wsj.com

Kimberly Strassel.

Erm, I'm not so sure about her take.

AI's Future: Liberty or License? – John O. McGinnis

In his recent congressional testimony, Sam Altman, the CEO of the company that created ChatGPT, called for the establishment of a new government agency to regulate artificial intelligence. According to Altman, such an agency would require AI companies to obtain a license before developing AI products on a significant scale, with a stringent focus on demonstrating safety. Altman got a good reception on Capitol Hill from both parties.

But establishing a federal AI licensing agency would be harmful. It would retard AI research because investors would hesitate to back companies that might fail to get a license. Given the speculative nature of the risks associated with novel AI technologies, granting significant discretion to government bureaucrats through the licensing process would also open doors for companies to lobby the government to suppress the competition. Altman’s company as well as others already established in the field would be better able to navigate the government bureaucracy than startups. Decreasing the number of companies going into AI exacerbates the risks we face from problems that AI may help address, such as climate change. It also aids our geopolitical adversaries by limiting American advances in AI. Ironically, an agency with remit to license only AI firms it believes are safe will make Americans less safe.

via lawliberty.org

Russel Brand, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger EXPOSE Censorship Industrial Complex: Rising

via www.youtube.com

Confronting the Student Behavior Crisis | City Journal

Misbehavior appears to be associated with pandemic-era school closures and their length. The EdWeek article reported that “districts in which nearly all learning was remote or hybrid in 2020-21” saw “51 percent of principals and district leaders report[] rising rates of student threats of violence,” while the proportion was lower for schools that had more in-person instruction. Though correlation does not equal causation, social isolation and sudden increases in screen time seem to have combined with background mental-health problems and broader social pathologies to aggravate behavioral issues that predated the pandemic.

Indeed, poor student behavior before the pandemic may have been an under-discussed driver of prolonged school closures. In March 2020, teachers suddenly found themselves freed from the exhausting, frustrating, and occasionally frightening need to manage students’ behavior. While many teachers will admit that Zoom school was awful, it had one major benefit: a new behavior-management tool—the mute button.

Yet the behaviors that many teachers and administrators were relieved to avoid are now significantly worse. In Newport News, Virginia, a teacher who was shot by a six-year-old student is suing the district and the school board because administrators had been told the child had brought a gun to school before but did not intervene. In Salem, Oregon, teachers are suing the Salem-Keizer district and the Oregon Department of Education for failing to “take action to protect employees from students known to have violence issues.” They have documented more than 1,000 incidents where teachers were harmed. An eighth-grader at a Portland middle school, where schools were effectively closed for 18 months, recently testified to the school board: “Over a third of my classes are taught by subs instead of full-time teachers and many of the classes watch movies all day or do nothing that looks like learning.”

via www.city-journal.org

Why on Earth Are We Still Building Aircraft Carriers? | The New Republic

Members of Congress support supercarriers not for reasons of strategy but because they create civilian jobs. Yes, carrier assembly takes place only at one shipyard, Newport News Shipbuilding, in only one state, Virginia. But, as the state’s Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner pointed out last year when they introduced a resolution celebrating the aircraft carrier’s centennial, the Ford Class supply chain consists of 2,450 companies in 48 states and 364 congressional districts, employing 13,100 people along the way. And the Newport News shipyard alone employs 25,000 more. The resolution cleared the Democratic Senate by unanimous consent but never made it out of committee in the then-Democratic House. Even though many experts on military strategy have come to agree that it’s time to forget the Ford, the political class that decides how Pentagon money is spent just can’t quit their love of expensive and oversize vessels.

via newrepublic.com

One hopes we will learn this lesson in some way besides the USS Gerald Ford being sent to the bottom of the South China Sea.

Breadcrumbs From An FBI Source Lead To A Bigger Biden Scandal

After a confidential human source claimed then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions, FBI agents used what’s called an FD-1023 form to record the allegation. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is defying a May 3 congressional subpoena to provide this form. On Tuesday, in response to Wray’s refusal to hand over the documents, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer announced the House will move to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress. 

It isn’t that announcement — or even the other explosive ones released over the past year by Comer’s Senate colleague, Chuck Grassley — that prove the most telling, however. Rather, it is the combination of all the details, big and small, that suggests the scandal set to unfold over the coming weeks will be bigger than anyone imagined.

via thefederalist.com

So stay tuned I guess.

Out on Private American Patrols in the Smuggler-Blighted Border Badlands of Arizona | RealClearInvestigations

The AZBR is a private group with no authority to arrest the mules, but for years its members have run patrols and cameras along the hundreds of trails and washes that web an area the group has dubbed Baby’s Head Gap. It is so named for a Mexican doll’s head atop a spike in the desert, an apparent warning to anyone wanting to cross that passage is done only with the cartel’s permission.

The uneven landscape, with ravine ridges marked by trees and bushes running along the top, offers low visibility for Sinaloa cartel agents carrying fentanyl, as well as for AZBR teams out on days-long operations during which they share intelligence and photos with U.S. officials.  

The presence of U.S. authorities in this open, gashed wasteland is light; on a recent operation AZBR members saw an occasional Blackhawk helicopter dart across the sky, but there were no foot patrols. At least in the area they patrol, AZBR leaders agree with former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who told a House committee on May 23 that Mexican drug cartels “control everything that crosses that Southwest border,” including “illegal migrant crossings” that “create gaps in border security.”  

Because they have no law enforcement power and carry weapons only for self-defense, AZBR members are more witnesses to the disintegrating border than a force of deterrence.  

via www.realclearinvestigations.com

Clayton Fox: Drone attacks on Moscow

After a drone attack on May 3 against the Kremlin, U.S. intelligence officials said it was likely orchestrated by a Ukrainian special military or intelligence unit. As the war seems to be expanding to include more strikes inside Russia proper, Sam Bendett, an adviser on Russian Studies at CNA, a nonprofit research organization based in Virginia, told The New York Times that Russia may be vulnerable to drone strikes because its air-defense systems are designed to counter larger threats. The latest attack comes at a pivotal moment, as the United States has agreed to start training Ukrainian pilots on the American-made F-16 fighter aircraft, indicating a potential future supply of the aircraft to the war effort, something President Biden had previously promised would not happen. 

On Monday, chief of the general staff of the Czech armed forces, Karel Řehka, told his parliament that while war between NATO and Russia would be the “worst-case scenario,” it’s not only possible, but increasingly probable. He said Russia is “on a course towards conflict with the alliance” and that “it is necessary to prepare for it in the long run.” In April, as if on cue, new NATO member and Russian border buddy Finland became the first nation to purchase the Israeli anti-missile system David’s Sling.

via thedailyscroll.substack.com

Although the drone attacks are obviously justified, they do increase the risk of escalation, in particular war with NATO.

Why a Recent Arrest Is Terrifying to CCP Leadership

There has been a profound shift in relations between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The significance of this can’t be understated, yet it appears to have gone largely unnoticed. This is bigger than U.S. sanctions on high-tech chips. This is bigger than the previous arrests of Chinese spies. This hits on something deeply held by the CCP as one of its core interests, and changes a seemingly unspoken agreement in America to leave the issue untouched.

It was easy to miss. On May 26, two suspected Chinese spies were arrested by U.S. authorities. The Department of Justice said in a release that John Chen and Lin Feng were charged in a bribery scheme that was directed by the Chinese authorities. They face charges of conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering.

What matters most though is the story behind these charges. The two were allegedly involved in a CCP plot against Falun Gong right here in the United States. They’re accused of trying to bribe an IRS official to go after an entity tied to Falun Gong practitioners. But this is a case not just about the CCP exporting one of its largest human rights abuses onto American soil. This is a case of the American government taking a stand where it previously would not.

via www.theepochtimes.com

Crossroads is a Falun Gong outfit, so this might be exaggerated. OTOH I would not put it past the CCP.

Hassabis, Altman and AGI Labs Unite - AI Extinction Risk Statement [ft. Sutskever, Hinton + Voyager]

via www.youtube.com

The Doomer Case for DeSantis - by David Reaboi

So you're starting to answer the question before I ask it. You and I believe the same thing: that, whether it's the spending, the degeneracy, the culture, the demographics, the weaponization of our agencies, our government is a bigger threat to us than anything. I view the federal government as not something that needs to be fixed—because it just won't be—but something that we need to defeat and to protect ourselves from. 

Even a guy like DeSantis, as great as he is: does he give us false hope that we can change things? Ten years ago, I would've been dancing from the rooftops; typically, we’d have the worst Republicans as the front-runners for president. And here you have a guy that has all the qualities—the heart, the brains, the implementation, the ability to raise money and organize, the articulateness. And he could go the distance, potentially. Yes, there's a part of me that’s excited—but at the same time, Dave, what do we expect to accomplish with him as president? And are we just distracting from our goal of making red states red again and creating that Noah's Ark sanctuary from the federal government rather than a Pickett's Charge, an ill-fated attempt at fixing the federal government?

via davereaboi.substack.com

Interviewing David Horowitz. Also a DeSantis fan.

A Club for the Cancelled | The New Yorker

Every month, more than two hundred people from the media, academia, and other intellectual circles are invited to a private hangout in New York City, which is known as the Gathering of Thought Criminals. There are two rules. The first is that you have to be willing to break bread with people who have been socially ostracized, or, as the attendees would say, “cancelled”—whether they’ve lost a job, lost friends, or simply feel persecuted for holding unpopular opinions. Some people on the guest list are notorious: élite professors who have deviated from campus consensus or who have broken university rules, and journalists who have made a name for themselves amid public backlash (or who have weathered it quietly). Others are relative nobodies, people who for one reason or another have become exasperated with what they see as rampant censorious thinking in our culture.

via www.newyorker.com

U.S. Government Now Confiscating Private Legal Fund Donations to Jan. 6 Defendants – PJ Media

Holy extra-constitutional abuse of political prisoners, Batman!

Via the Associated Press (emphasis added):

Less than two months after he pleaded guilty to storming the U.S. Capitol, Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s then-Fox News show and promoted a website where supporters could donate money to Goodwyn and other rioters whom the site called “political prisoners.”

The Justice Department now wants Goodwyn to give up more than $25,000 he raised — a clawback that is part of a growing effort by the government to prevent rioters from being able to personally profit from participating in the attack that shook the foundations of American democracy.

An Associated Press review of court records shows that prosecutors in the more than 1,000 criminal cases from Jan. 6, 2021, are increasingly asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters of the Capitol rioters.

The U.S. legal system is now transparently weaponized against what the DHS has alternatively described as “domestic terrorists” and “white supremacists” — according to the Department, the #1 terror threat in the country.

via pjmedia.com

Face in hands emoji.

Journalists for Censorship: Because it's good for you

Michael Schellenberger in Public:

In its attack on the Twitter Files, Politico repeats the party line of the EU, the Democratic Party, and the broader censorship industry. “What is worrying here is how efforts to stop foreign interference, hate speech, and other malign influences on U.S. democracy are being weaponized in ways to serve a political agenda,” Politico writes. “...this work is about holding platforms to account for their own terms of services and policies on combating harmful speech online.”

As such, the Politico attack on the Twitter Files is part of Wokeism, or victimhood ideology, which is the organic substructure to the superstructure of the Censorship Industrial Complex. All offensive speech, from saying that natural disasters are declining to natal males aren’t women, is, prima facia, “harmful,” and thus must be censored.

After making its sweeping claim that social media favors right-wing over left-wing voices, Politico writes, “Caveat: That article was done in collaboration with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank specializing in tracking online extremists that has been accused of being part of this ‘complex.’”

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue is indeed one of the 50 top censorship organizations in the world, as identified by Matt Taibbi’s Racket, and one of the main propaganda arms of the US and UK governments, receiving funding from the U.S. State Department. It is currently lying and spreading disinformation about my views towards climate change. And we at Public recently caught it lying about “hate speech,” misclassifying Tweets criticizing George Soros and the World Economic Forum as “anti-Semitism,” allowing it to spread the Big Lie that “hate speech” is increasing, particularly on Twitter.

For Politico to wholly adopt the ISD message results from political alignment and, perhaps, money. Axios was receiving advertising money from Pfizer, including creating a video defending Big Pharma’s monopoly power and pricing, when its reporter, Ashley Gold, emailed Twitter to ask why it hadn’t de-platformed Berenson. We emailed Politico and Axios for comment but did not hear back.

Unfortunately, such financial motivations appear to be the rule, not the exception. The Guardian is, at this moment, preparing a hit piece on whale conservation organizations for opposing industrial wind energy development off the East Coast while taking money from the wind energy companies that stand to benefit. Pfizer poured money into news media organizations to promote not just its vaccine but also the crackdown on disfavored speech, like that of Berenson. And groups like ISD have vast US taxpayer funding to crank out “studies” that reporters at BBC, Politico, and other news media organizations don’t scrutinize.

Why are journalists attacking journalists and demanding censorship? It’s clear that there are both organic cultural and ideological reasons, as well as partisan political motivations. But there are also financial ones. Consider the mass media attacks on Joe Rogan, whose podcasting model has drawn viewers away from traditional media and up-ended the economics of the news industry. In other words, it’s not just that independent Substack journalists like Berenson threatens establishment orthodoxies. It’s also that we threaten the media’s credibility and viability.

BRENDAN O'NEILL: A revolution against wokery on Oxford University campuses has begun | Daily Mail Online

This evening at the Oxford Union debating society a similar scene will play out — but on a grander scale. The visit of the feminist academic Kathleen Stock to give a speech is expected to be met by up to a thousand LGBTQ protesters and their supporters.

The 51-year-old Stock has committed the great thought-crime of our times. Like J.K. Rowling, she does not believe it is possible to change sex. She does not believe ‘trans women are real women’. For holding these views, Stock has already paid with her job — she felt forced by student protests into quitting as a professor at Sussex Univesity in 2021.

And over the past weeks she has faced concerted efforts to stop her from speaking at the Oxford Union, as the university’s various student bodies have lined up to call for her to be uninvited.

Those efforts having failed, LGBTQ protesters have now set out to disrupt the event. Not only Kathleen Stock is to be intimidated. Anyone who wishes to attend her talk — irrespective of whether they agree with her — will have to run the gauntlet behind the barricades that will protect them from the activists seeking to stifle free speech.

Yet something reassuring happened last week — a glimmer that gives me hope that these campus tyrants, who have long stifled open discussion, may soon be facing their comeuppance.

A brave group of more than 100 Oxford students issued a call-to-arms by writing an open letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. They fear that freedom of speech is in peril.

These students are understandably outraged by how Kathleen Stock has been treated by their contemporaries. Oxford University was founded with ‘the key aim of discussing ideas which some may find challenging’, they say.

And then the killer point. ‘There is much to gain from hearing opposing views on important topics,’ claim these young dissenters from the woke ideology.

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Good.

Target's trans-the-kids agenda goes deeper than you think – HotAir

GLSEN’s mission is to bring alphabet ideology into the schools, and you have to hand it to them: they have been succeeding. They promote alphabet curriculum and policies that encourage schools to trans kids behind the parents’ back–to actively hide both the curriculum and the medical/behavioral records of students from their caregivers.

via hotair.com

Well that's news to me. I need to pick up some chargers today. I guess it will be Staples instead of Target. Gay is fine with me, but they ought to leave the kids alone. For one thing, trans-for-kids is anti-GL, whatever they say.

Covid: Top Chinese scientist says don’t rule out lab leak - BBC News

As head of China's Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Prof George Gao played a key role in the pandemic response and efforts to trace its origins.

China's government dismisses any suggestion the disease may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

But Prof Gao is less forthright.

In an interview for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Fever: The Hunt for Covid's Origin, Prof Gao says: "You can always suspect anything. That's science. Don't rule out anything."

A world-leading virologist and immunologist, Prof Gao is now vice-president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China after retiring from the CDC last year.

In a possible sign that the Chinese government may have taken the lab leak theory more seriously than its official statements suggest, Prof Gao also tells the BBC some kind of formal investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was carried out.

"The government organised something," he says, but adds that it did not involve his own department, the China CDC.

We asked him to clarify whether that meant another branch of government carried out a formal search of the WIV - one of China's top national laboratories, known to have spent years studying coronaviruses.

"Yeah," he replies, "that lab was double-checked by the experts in the field."

It's the first such acknowledgement that some kind of official investigation took place, but while Prof Gao says he has not seen the result, he has "heard" that the lab was given a clean bill of health.

"I think their conclusion is that they are following all the protocols. They haven't found [any] wrongdoing."

via www.bbc.com

If this keeps up, Bing's chatbot will have to change its line.

Unfollow the Science: 300 COVID Articles Pulled, Many Over Lack of Ethical Standards – PJ Media

More than 300 COVID-19-related articles have been retracted — long after they’d done their damage — due to a lack of scientific truthfulness and ethical guidelines, according to Retraction Watch, a website that monitors retractions of science-related articles.

A total of 330 COVID-related papers have been retracted thus far.

According to Gunnveig Grødeland, a senior researcher at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Oslo, many researchers took ethical shortcuts when writing their essays.

“It will, of course, be withdrawn when it is found that ethical guidelines have been breached,” Grødeland quipped to Khrono, an academic news publication.

via pjmedia.com

Damage done.

More businesses require teens to be chaperoned by adults, curbing their independence | AP News

PARAMUS, N.J. (AP) — Jennifer Sepulveda used to drop off her 14-year-old son, Jorden, at the local mall on a Friday or Saturday night, where he would catch a movie with his friends and then hang out afterwards at the food court or elsewhere.

Not anymore.

Starting April 18, Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey — the second largest mall in the state — is requiring anyone under 18 years old to be accompanied by a chaperone at least 21 or older on Fridays and Saturdays after 5 p.m.

The move, according to the mall, follows “an increase in disruptive behavior by a small minority of younger visitors.” That included a reported brawl in the food court last year and a fight in March that brought swarms of policemen to the center but ended up being a smaller altercation than initially reported.

Sepulveda of Passaic, New Jersey said she was fine with the new policy.

via apnews.com

I suppose one use of AI could be to facially recognize bad teens and keep them out of the mall, while more well behaved teens would be allowed to enter. Good thing? Bad thing?

Spain's conservative PP elbows Socialists out in regional elections | Reuters

MADRID, May 28 (Reuters) - Spain's ruling Socialists suffered heavy losses to opposition conservatives in Sunday's local election, with around 95% of the votes counted, showing their electoral vulnerability ahead of an end-of-year general election.

>Only three of the 12 regions holding elections will retain Socialist dominance by very narrow margins, with the rest likely go to the conservative People's Party, albeit with coalitions or informal support agreements with the far-right Vox party.The map changes completely and is a boost for Alberto Nuñez Feijoo - the new leader of the PP - ahead of the elections at the end of the year," said Ignacio Jurado, professor of political science at the Carlos III University.

via www.reuters.com

Olay!

Engineering Racial Outcomes | City Journal

In the affirmative-action debate, all eyes are on the Supreme Court, which will soon make two high-stakes rulings on the subject. Meantime, a 2-1 decision from a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel offers a sideshow worth watching.

In the case at issue, the leaders of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, or TJ—a highly selective public magnet school in Fairfax County, Virginia—bemoaned the demographic imbalance that resulted from the school’s academics-focused admission policies. (The class of 2024, for example, is more than 70 percent Asian, and Hispanics and blacks fall far short of their general-population proportions in the overall school district.) The school board then switched TJ to a different system that, while not considering race directly, reduced Asian admissions by about a quarter. Among other changes, the new policy ditches standardized testing and guarantees admission to at least 1.5 percent of each middle school’s eighth-grade class.

Last year, a district court held that this policy violated the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantee, in a ruling I wrote about for City Journal. The Fourth Circuit majority disagreed.

The case raises important issues for education at all levels. Historically, different rules have applied to the use of race in college vs. K–12 admissions: colleges have more leeway to consider race directly in the interest of promoting diversity. But if the Supreme Court ends the explicit use of race in college admissions, as now appears likely, college administrators will engage in much behavior that strongly resembles the decision-making at issue in the TJ case.

via www.city-journal.org

Robert VerBruggen.

As the litigation over TJ high school shows, the struggle (I suppose that's the correct word) to keep on discriminating by race in spite of the upcoming SCOTUS decision is well underway. One can see it even at my small and formerly cute university. It's not particularly difficult. One just excludes white males from the applicant pool and deny that one has done anything of the sort. And make sure one doesn't let anything untoward go down in writing. It's a rare applicant or job seeker who will sue anyway.

One more reason to be glad I'm getting out. It's one thing to be associated with moral wrongs and another with moral and legal wrongs. The first is like working for the legal junk food industry, the latter like working for a Cartel. But I suppose at least some narcotrafficantes know what they're doing is wrong.

Correction: Transgender Surgery Provides No Mental Health Benefit - Public Discourse

A major correction has been issued by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The authors and editors of an October 2019 study, titled “Reduction in mental health treatment utilization among transgender individuals after gender-affirming surgeries: a total population study,” have retracted its primary conclusion. Letters to the editor by twelve authors, including ourselves, led to a reanalysis of the data and a corrected conclusion stating that in fact the data showed no improvement after surgical treatment. The following is the background to our published letter and a summary of points of the critical analysis of the study.

via www.thepublicdiscourse.com

H/t D.

Correction indeed.

Dept. of Really Bad Ideas -- Virus Hunting for Fun and Fame

Boffins are on the hunt for more pesky viruses. What could go wrong.

 As the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the globe in January 2020, virus hunters pushed for funding to uncover more “yet-to-be-recognized deadly viruses.” They believed that cataloging viruses in wildlife could help prevent future pandemics.

“In China alone, we sampled >10,000 bats and ~2,000 other mammals, using PREDICT protocols to discover 52 novel SARS related-CoV’s, including the closest relative of the Wuhan nCoV [SARS-CoV-2],” boasts a University of California, Davis letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein requesting federal support for programs like PREDICT, the government’s flagship virus-hunting program.

However, the letter didn’t mention the risks of collecting and studying SARS-related viruses, which have the potential to be lethal or highly transmissible. The U.S. Energy Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the World Health Organization now recognize that a research accident with SARS-CoV-2 may have sparked one of the biggest pandemics in history.

Jeremy Corbel on Breaking Points about 29 Palms UAP event

AI helps paralyzed people to walk

Some good news for a change, from Nature:

A spinal cord injury interrupts the communication between the brain and the region of the spinal cord that produces walking, leading to paralysis1,2. Here, we restored this communication with a digital bridge between the brain and spinal cord that enabled an individual with chronic tetraplegia to stand and walk naturally in community settings. This brain–spine interface (BSI) consists of fully implanted recording and stimulation systems that establish a direct link between cortical signals3 and the analogue modulation of epidural electrical stimulation targeting the spinal cord regions involved in the production of walking4,5,6. A highly reliable BSI is calibrated within a few minutes. This reliability has remained stable over one year, including during independent use at home. The participant reports that the BSI enables natural control over the movements of his legs to stand, walk, climb stairs and even traverse complex terrains. Moreover, neurorehabilitation supported by the BSI improved neurological recovery. The participant regained the ability to walk with crutches overground even when the BSI was switched off. This digital bridge establishes a framework to restore natural control of movement after paralysis.