The Right Coast

‘Net Zero’ Fails the Cost-Benefit Test - WSJ

A new special issue of the journal Climate Change Economics contains two ground-breaking economic analyses of policies to hold global temperatures to 1.5 degrees and its practical political interpretation, mandates to reach net zero, usually by 2050. Though more than 130 countries, including most of the globe’s big emitters, have passed or are considering laws mandating net-zero carbon emissions, there’s been no comprehensive cost-benefit evaluation of that policy—until now.

One of the Climate Change Economics papers is authored by Richard Tol, one of the world’s most-cited climate economists. He calculates the benefits of climate policy using a meta-analysis of 39 papers with 61 published estimates of total climate change damage in economic terms. Across all this, Mr. Tol finds that if the world meets its 1.5 degree promise, it would prevent a less than 0.5% loss in annual global domestic product by 2050 and a 3.1% loss by 2100.

If that sounds underwhelming, blame one-sided reporting on climate issues. While headlines tend to focus on stories of violent climate catastrophes and modeled worst case scenarios, the data reveal a far less frightening picture. Despite a drumbeat of stories this summer about rising heat deaths, higher temperatures also prevent cold deaths, and so far in much greater number. Globally, the result has been fewer overall temperature-related fatalities. Writ large, the damage the world experiences each year from climate-related disasters is shrinking, both as expressed in fraction of GDP and lives lost.

While media coverage tends to hype the benefits of climate policy, it plays down the costs, which Mr. Tol’s analysis shows are substantial. Based on the latest cost estimates of emission reductions from the United Nations climate panel, he finds that fully delivering on the 1.5-degree Paris promise will cost 4.5% of global GDP each year by midcentury and 5.5% by 2100. This means that likely climate policy costs will be much higher than the likely benefits for every year throughout this century and into the next. Under any realistic assumptions, the Paris agreement fails a basic cost-benefit test.

via www.wsj.com

The Fight for the Future of Publishing | The Free Press

On September 19, 2022, Elle Griffin, a freelance writer in Salt Lake City, published the first installment of her new fantasy novel, Oblivion, on Substack, under the title “We will create a more beautiful world.” 

Since then, Griffin, who has written for Esquire and Forbes, has picked up a few hundred paid subscribers. She’s now earning more than $30,000 annually from her writing—more than she’s ever made. 

By contrast, if she’d gone the traditional route and landed an agent and a major publisher, Griffin said, the best she could have hoped for would have been a $10,000 advance, and she would have been lucky to sell 1,000 copies—meaning no extra money. 

Plus, serializing the novel on her newsletter means she can include her 11,000-plus subscribers in the creative process. 

“They can comment on each chapter,” Griffin told me. “I’m crowdsourcing my wisdom from them.” 

via www.thefp.com

And a good thing too.

Biden’s AI Boondoggle - The American Mind

Who is the greater fool, Polybius asked: someone who milks a billy goat or the one who holds a sieve to catch it? The first is Silicon Valley, which has promoted the biggest bubble since the dot-com craze of the late 1990s, and the second is the Biden Administration, which wants to regulate artificial intelligence, the black box that is impermeable to after-the-fact analysis. The saddest part is that AI offers earth-shaking benefits to manufacturing and logistics, an aspect of the technology that Silicon Valley and the Biden Administration have ignored.

A week before the Biden Administration promulgated an Executive Order on AI, one of the most-heralded AI projects came to a crashing halt after California’s Department of Motor Vehicles suspended operations of General Motors’ autonomous driving subsidiary, Cruise. Wired reports, “The suspension stems from a gruesome incident on October 2 in which a human-driven vehicle hit a female pedestrian and threw her into the path of a Cruise car. The driverless Cruise car hit her, stopped, and then tried to pull over, dragging her approximately 20 feet.” The DMV accused GM of lying about safety features and attempting to cover up the full extent of the snafu.

It turns out that AI doesn’t do a very good job of replicating driver intuition. There are billions of possible variants of accident scenarios, and AI models can’t game them all in advance. When the machine has to adapt to something new the results can be gruesome.

Prior to the suspension, GM had projected $50 billion in revenue from its driverless car operation by 2030. The subsidiary was valued at $30 billion in a 2021 funding round. “A GM spokesman declined to comment on Cruise’s most recent valuation,” reported the Wall Street Journal on November 16. To be sure, $30 billion is chump change compared to the nearly $1 trillion increase in the market capitalization of Microsoft, the main investor in OpenAI (which operates ChatGPT), and a similar bulge in the market cap of Nvidia, the premier designer of AI processor chips.

“Artificial intelligence” is an oxymoronic term that can mean, alternately, making machines behave like humans or replacing human drudgework with machine learning. AI does a wretched job of writing sonnets, explaining jokes, or emulating intelligent conversation. It works wonders, though, in picking defective parts off a conveyor belt, informing a farmer when to harvest soybeans, detecting wear and tear on industrial machines, and other menial tasks.

via americanmind.org

David Goldman.

ChatGPT does a better job than I could writing sonnets though I hope I can do just as well emulating intelligent conversation -- except chat bots can talk intelligently about nearly any subject. This does not mean Biden's EO is not just an attempt to stick government's nose into this technology. However, tech will probably stick its nose into government first.

Tucker Carlson Tonight 11/28/23 E.P 42 | Tucker Carlson Tonight November 28, 2023

via www.youtube.com

Free Speech Groups Call on Congress To Block NewsGuard Funding

As many as 36 groups advocating free speech, the Free Speech Alliance, have turned to US Congress with a request to stop any further funding of NewsGuard.

NewsGuard is an outfit that describes itself as countering “misinformation on behalf of news consumers, brands and democracies.”

That “mission” also includes (trust) rating system for news sites – right in people’s browsers.

But members of the Free Speech Alliance, and those supporting it are not buying this pitch, summing up and denouncing NewsGuard instead as an ideologically-motivated “internet traffic cop.”

And they are warning that taxpayer money should never have been spent on financing it, and its ilk – and even less so, that the US authorities should continue to spend taxpayer money on what is described as politically motivated censorship of speech.

And these free speech groups want Congress to make sure the Biden White House is prevented from bankrolling such an organization – a particularly sensitive issue given the stage of the election cycle in the country – via the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

via reclaimthenet.org

SCOTUS needs to shut down all this speech policing ASAP. Whether it does or not will tell us a lot about where things are going.

Free Speech Groups Call on Congress To Block NewsGuard Funding

As many as 36 groups advocating free speech, the Free Speech Alliance, have turned to US Congress with a request to stop any further funding of NewsGuard.

NewsGuard is an outfit that describes itself as countering “misinformation on behalf of news consumers, brands and democracies.”

That “mission” also includes (trust) rating system for news sites – right in people’s browsers.

But members of the Free Speech Alliance, and those supporting it are not buying this pitch, summing up and denouncing NewsGuard instead as an ideologically-motivated “internet traffic cop.”

And they are warning that taxpayer money should never have been spent on financing it, and its ilk – and even less so, that the US authorities should continue to spend taxpayer money on what is described as politically motivated censorship of speech.

And these free speech groups want Congress to make sure the Biden White House is prevented from bankrolling such an organization – a particularly sensitive issue given the stage of the election cycle in the country – via the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

via reclaimthenet.org

SCOTUS needs to shut down all this speech policing ASAP. Whether it does or not will tell us a lot about where things are going.

Warren Demands Probe of 'Sandwich Shop Monopoly' – HotAir

Roark already owns the sandwich-serving chains Arby’s, Jimmy Johns, McAlister’s Deli, and Schlotzky’s. Warren said that adding Subway to that list could create a “sandwich shop monopoly.” …

Her attack on America’s alleged “sandwich shop monopoly” scores new points for pettiness. It also shows just how broad (and therefore meaningless) the word “monopoly” has become in modern political discourse—and at Lina Kahn’s FTC.

It’s easy to assert that something is a monopoly if you narrow your focus on the market or product being discussed. There are, after all, only so many national fast-casual restaurant chains focused on serving deli sandwiches. If Roark snatches up Subway, then ownership of that particular ham slice of the market may in fact look pretty consolidated.

via hotair.com

I'm for doing whatever improves the quality of Subways current lamentable and awful imitations of heroes. Maybe being acquired by a private equity fund is exactly what Subway needs. That said, the last time I ate at Arby's it was dreadful as well. I've never eaten at Jimmy Johns or McAlister's. I doubt Sen. Warren has either. And with $70 million in the bank (if reports are accurate) I doubt she will any time soon.

Night of the Living Ed: Zombie Public Schools, Drained of Pandemic Lifeblood, Haunt the Land | RealClearInvestigations

“I visited one school that takes up an entire city block but there were only five classrooms used, plus a library, a computer room, and an afterschool room,” said Sam Davis, a member of the Board of Education in Oakland, California. “As our budget officer said, if you don’t have enough students for two teams to play kickball, there are a lot of other academic activities that are not going to be sustainable either.”

But nothing in public education is more controversial and difficult than closing a neighborhood school. The protests that recently flared up in cities like Oakland and Denver over proposals to shut low-enrollment schools, which also tend to be the worst academic performers in districts, are just a prelude of the reckoning to come, according to interviews with school leaders, researchers, educators, and charter officials.

via www.realclearinvestigations.com

Nothing is more inefficient than public schools. They can't even die efficiently.

Not Only Can Trump Win, Right Now He's the Favorite To Win | RealClearPolitics

There’s a strange disjunction in the discourse about the 2024 elections. On the one hand, when presented with the proposition “Trump can win,” people will nod their heads sagely and say something along the lines of: “Of course he can; only a fool would believe to the contrary.”

At the same time, whenever polling emerges showing that Donald Trump is performing well in 2024 matchups, a deluge of panicked articles, tweets (or is it “X”s?), social media posts, and the like emerge, reassuring readers that polls aren’t predictive and providing a variety of reasons that things will improve for President Biden.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Elections analysts seem to know that they are obliged to mouth the words that Trump can win, but deep down, they don’t believe them. The notion that Biden is the favorite is deeply internalized, likely for a variety of reasons.

So let us set the record straight: Trump can win. Not in a “maybe if all the stars align and then Russia changes the vote totals (even somehow in states like Michigan that use hand-marked paper ballots)” kind of way. Just flat out: Trump can win.

As of this writing, Trump leads Biden by 2.6 percentage points nationally in the RealClearPolitics Average. This is Trump’s largest lead in the RCP average to date. Not for 2024, mind you. Ever.

Let’s put this in perspective. In 2016, Trump led Hillary Clinton for all of five days in the national RCP Average, each of those days in the immediate aftermath of the Republican convention. He led in 29 polls taken over the course of the entire campaign, 10 of which are recorded in the RCP averages as Los Angeles Times/USC tracking polls.

In 2020, Trump never led Biden in the national RCP Average. He briefly closed to within four points in early January of 2020, but that is it. He led in five polls all cycle.

So, counting the L.A. Times tracker as a single poll, Trump led in a total of 24 national polls. This cycle? He’s led in that many since mid-September. He’s led in more polls in the past three weeks than he did against Biden in all of 2019-2020.

via www.realclearpolitics.com

Sean Trende. I find Sean pretty reliable.

Team Biden's great double quarter pounder 'misinformation' campaign | Washington Examiner

'MISINFORMATION' CAMPAIGN. On Sept. 20, Politico published an article headlined "Biden's campaign set to counterpunch on misinformation." The story reported that President Joe Biden's 2024 reelection campaign is "overhauling" its strategy to fight "misinformation" on social media. The new effort includes "recruiting hundreds of staffers and volunteers to monitor platforms." To supervise the work, the campaign hired a former Biden White House staffer named Rob Flaherty, who was described as a "bulldog" and a "controversial figure" whose "combative emails to social media firms have become part of a Republican-led federal court case and a congressional investigation."

That's important. The federal court case is Missouri v. Biden, a landmark COVID-era case involving government censorship of social media. Discovery in the case brought revelations that the Biden White House and other Biden administration officials, working with outside activist groups, "held biweekly meetings with tech companies over how to curb the spread of misinformation during the pandemic," with Flaherty "in constant contact with social media executives," in the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The White House claimed it was just "flagging problematic posts ... that spread disinformation." But the Wall Street Journal continued: "Officials weren't merely flagging false statements. They were bullying companies to censor anything contradicting government guidance." Flaherty demanded that social media companies ban alleged offenders from big platforms like Facebook. After the companies' initial hesitance, Flaherty and his administration colleagues got their way. "All 12 people dubbed the 'Disinformation Dozen' by the Center for Countering Digital Hate were censored, and pages, groups, and accounts linked to them were removed," the Wall Street Journal said. Flaherty's work also led to Twitter banning the vaccine skeptic writer Alex Berenson. And then: "The private intimidation was amplified by public threats to use antitrust action and regulation if tech companies didn't follow orders," the Wall Street Journal wrote.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Byron York.

Man pleads not guilty to shooting three Palestinian students

via www.youtube.com

He totally does not look like the sort of gentleman who would commit such a crime. Just sayin'.

A viral $16 McDonald’s meal won’t go away, and that’s a problem for Democrats | CNN Business

Despite the inflation hangover keeping prices elevated, the economy, by almost any measure, should be one of the biggest feathers in President Joe Biden’s cap over the past three years. But American voters keep telling pollsters that they aren’t feeling all the good news that economists are seeing in the data.

In a CNN poll released earlier this month, 72% of all Americans say things in the country are going badly, and 66% said the economy will be “extremely important” when deciding whom to vote for next year.

A majority — 58% — told CNN in a poll released in September that Biden’s policies have made economic conditions worse.

Even the seemingly isolated incident of the $16 McDonald’s meal reached the desk of the White House Office of Digital Strategy, which tracked it as one of many exaggerated claims about the economy that the Biden administration is struggling to counter, according to the Washington Post.

via www.cnn.com

It's shocking when you think about it.

Former Trump Economist Breaks Down the Biden Economy

AMAC Newsline spoke with Casey Mulligan, a professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the former chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump White House, to find out the truth about how the economy is doing and why most Americans don’t share the White House’s cheery outlook.

Though Biden administration officials generally point to metrics like the unemployment rate and GDP growth as proof that the economy is doing well, Mulligan said it remains understandable why “people aren’t buying that.”

“There are probably two things that make them unwilling to accept that. One is that they’ve kind of set the bar low for themselves. Normally when you recover from recession, you get quite rapid growth. And the fact that maybe we are getting average growth when we should be getting above average—that’s disappointing,” Mulligan said.

Some of the Biden team’s self-proclaimed economic figures, Mulligan continued, amount to little more than an exercise in “cherry-picking” that allows them to “brag about” a mediocre economy—particularly when it comes to metrics like consumer spending and retail sales. “When you’re coming out of a recession, you ought to be breaking some records, or getting near it. It should be very rapid growth coming out of a downturn.”

For a measure that more accurately describes how the economy is doing, Mulligan said, Americans should turn their attention to one key metric: real wages.

“Normally, real wages are increasing a percent or two every year on average—and since Biden’s been in office for three years almost,” real wages have “not even gotten close to returning to previous trends”—and “maybe haven’t even kept up [with] the old level” prior to the pandemic.

Another issue preventing a more vigorous economic recovery, Mulligan continued, is what he describes as “human capital problems”—which include factors like poor health and lack of career advancement in the private sector, each of which has continued to disproportionately affect the livelihoods of young and middle class Americans.

Mulligan indicated that another metric worth keeping an eye on is private employment on a per capita or per adult basis, which has “barely been growing” over the last year and a half. “Private employment is serving consumers who have kind of a choice about things,” whereas the government employment only serves “what the government thinks [is] valuable”—but “whether people think it’s valuable is a totally different question.”

via amac.us

NewsGuard Sells Government-Funded Censorship Tool

The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex.

NewsGuard launched a Thanksgiving-week attack on the social media company former known as Twitter, claiming some 200 ads from prominent advertisers appeared on feeds of users spreading lies about the Israel-Hamas war. Elon Musk returned fire, calling NewsGuard “a propaganda shop” that “uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their ‘fact-checking’ services.”

“It’s a profit over any principle model,” the X owner countered.

The verbal sparring between Musk and NewsGuard is likely to continue for some time, but the war on free speech being waged by NewsGuard extends much beyond X and is being subsidized by our tax dollars.

via thefederalist.com

Margot Cleveland.

Free speech in incompatible with their "Democracy." Who is that political theorist who wrote about the ideology of "democritism"? She won't find it easy to get a job, except maybe at Hillsdale.

NewsGuard Sells Government-Funded Censorship Tool

The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex.

NewsGuard launched a Thanksgiving-week attack on the social media company former known as Twitter, claiming some 200 ads from prominent advertisers appeared on feeds of users spreading lies about the Israel-Hamas war. Elon Musk returned fire, calling NewsGuard “a propaganda shop” that “uses these reports to pressure companies to buy their ‘fact-checking’ services.”

“It’s a profit over any principle model,” the X owner countered.

The verbal sparring between Musk and NewsGuard is likely to continue for some time, but the war on free speech being waged by NewsGuard extends much beyond X and is being subsidized by our tax dollars.

via thefederalist.com

Margot Cleveland.

Free speech in incompatible with their "Democracy." Who is that political theorist who wrote about the ideology of "democritism"? She won't find it easy to get a job, except maybe at Hillsdale.

The New Normal?

Earlier this week, another sharply diverse pair joined the steadily growing ranks of the New Right. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid) led for the past quarter-century by Geert Wilders, won 37 seats, thereby doubling its pre-election total and placing it 12 seats ahead of Labour and the Green Left. Nearly 7,500 miles to the south-west and four hours behind, Javier Milei, an economist and popular talk-show host, won the presidency in Argentina by a considerable margin.

There are at least as many differences between these parties and individuals as there are similarities—in their national contexts, histories, and party cultures. But the fundamental lesson these results impart is that the New Right parties are increasingly—if often reluctantly and controversially—accepted. The cordons sanitaires erected around them when they first emerged was designed to keep them in the political and (more importantly) moral wilderness until their support collapsed. That strategy has not worked, leaving Germany’s Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) as the only untouchable major party.

Yet even the AfD’s pariah status is waning. The German centre-Right will be forced to concede that there is no alternative to an alliance with the party once it scores over 20 percent in the opinion polls. Wilders has also been saddled with pariah status during his decades in opposition (albeit less definitively than in Germany, where Thomas Haldenweg, head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency, called on Germans to boycott the AfD). The other main Dutch parties are now hedging their bets, either remaining silent about coalition possibilities, or saying they would accept Wilders’s support, but not as a prime minister.

via quillette.com

‘Fleece Vest’ and ‘MAGA Hat’ Discuss Donald Trump - WSJ

Sometimes, if I listen really carefully, I can hear in my head the fragments of a dialogue between two voices capturing the ambivalence thoughtful conservatives feel about their current political choices. Yes, I’m hearing voices so you might not want to take anything I say seriously. But before you demand my immediate institutionalization, at least listen to the conversation, and, as Donald Trump builds an unassailable lead in the barely-started-but-already-apparently-over Republican primary, ask yourself if maybe you might not be hearing the same things. It goes like this:

Fleece vest-wearing conservative: “How can you possibly vote for Trump?”

MAGA hat-wearing conservative: “How can you possibly not vote for Trump?”

Fleece vest: “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to explain yourself.”

MAGA hat: “You go first.”

via www.wsj.com

Gerard Baker.

Where Free Speech Ends and Lawbreaking Begins | The Free Press

In drawing the line between speech and conduct, some cases are easy. 

Beating someone up, as has happened at Columbia and Tulane, is assault. Crowding around someone in a threatening manner, like a group of Harvard students—including an editor of the Harvard Law Review—did to an Israeli student who filmed their protest, is commonly known as the crime of “menacing.” A pattern of actions designed to frighten and harass someone, like forcing Jewish students into the Cooper Union library while pounding on the doors and windows, is stalking. Defacing someone’s property by spray-painting swastikas and slogans, as happened at American University, is vandalism. So is tearing down posters—at least on private property and in most campus settings. And masking at a protest, also a hallmark of events sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine organization, is illegal in many states—a remnant of the battle against KKK intimidation.

The proper response to such behavior, regardless of how “expressive” someone may claim it to be, is the same response we’d have to instances of assault, stalking, intimidation, and other crimes in any other context: identify, arrest, and prosecute the perpetrators. And in the campus setting, expel them. 

via www.thefp.com

Rural America has lost its soul - UnHerd

But as the Farm Aid website suggests, the Jeffersonian myth persists. Many Americans continue to believe that the small-scale “family farm” is at the heart of American agriculture, and even more politicians parrot that rhetoric. This celebration of the family-farm fantasy is one of the few remaining tropes shared by both political parties.

The Farm Bill, a vast, sprawling, and expensive piece of legislation, is up for renewal during this legislative session. Whatever its final details, it will undoubtedly provide an almost bottomless grab-bag of subsidies and other goodies for industrial-scale agricultural producers, as it has for the last 50 years. I’m guessing, however, that the elected officials who will shape the legislation will sing the song of the American family farm yet again, and voters will cheer in genuflection. This is a myth that will not die.

via unherd.com

After my second year of law school, one of the law firms I interviewed at was a small firm, filled with former Supreme Court clerks and with a reputation for employing the best and the brightest. I didn't like it at all; one of the more reasonable young lawyers I talked with thought that prisons were so bad, no one should ever be sent to one, no matter how depraved his crimes. The name partner was a particularly obnoxious piece of work. He was a former Justice official from the Kennedy administration. He told me that they had a firm party every summer where all the young lawyers went out his horse farm in Virginia and "put up the hay." As if that were just some sort of rural idyl. I grew up in Idaho and I've "put up the hay" a few times. You walk along side the hay truck, lift up 80 pound bales and drop them on the elevator, which lifts them up to the bed of the truck, or if the farmer doesn't have an elevator, and sometimes they don't, you lift up the dusty, prickly, unwieldy 80 pound bale to the bed of the truck, where another guy wrestles them into place. You do that about a thousand times. In fact, "bucking bales," as it was called, was thought to be good training for the wrestling team. It was hot, dusty, dirty work, went on all day, and left your sinuses impacted with all manner of dust and manure powder. The farmers provided a hearty lunch, which was good, and you got to rest for an hour at lunch time, but then you were back again soon enough, bucking bales. How anyone could lure people to his farm and get them to buck bales, well, it struck me as about as fraudulent as the rest of his firm. Though they're still going strong I heard.

Farming is hard, hard work. Not to mention dangerous. Many accidents are caused by the exhaustion of farm workers. If you've never done the physical part of farming, you really can't imagine how hard it is. I have nothing but respect for farmers. When America was industrialized, young people flocked to the cities partly to get away from the drudgery of farm labor. Yes, I love animals and the country life, but I don't like back breaking labor. Jefferson's celebration of farming is just another pean from one who never did it.

Could humans ever be venomous? | Live Science

Could humans ever evolve venom? It's highly unlikely that people will join rattlesnakes and platypuses among the ranks of venomous animals, but new research reveals that humans do have the tool kit to produce venom — in fact, all reptiles and mammals do.

This collection of flexible genes, particularly associated with the salivary glands in humans, explains how venom has evolved independently from nonvenomous ancestors more than 100 times in the animal kingdom.

"Essentially, we have all the building blocks in place," said study co-author Agneesh Barua, a doctoral student in evolutionary genetics at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. "Now it's up to evolution to take us there."

via www.livescience.com

How do you explain venomous people then?

Why does Australia have so many venomous animals? | Live Science

Put another way, some already venomous species simply got stuck on Australia when it became an isolated landmass. Venomous arthropods there include trap-jaw ants (genus Odontomachus), which can inflict a painful bite; but these insects also live in other tropical and subtropical regions around the world, not just Australia. Similarly, Australian bulldog ants (genus Myrmecia), which can simultaneously sting and bite, are among the deadliest ants in the world and have reportedly killed three people since 1936, according to Guinness World Records. These venomous ant lineages were already on Gondwana at the time of separation and stayed there once Australia became its own continent.

As for spiders, funnel-web spiders (genera Hadronyche and Atrax) are the only exclusively Australian ones that can kill humans with a venomous bite, Arbuckle said. Male Sydney funnel-web spiders (Atrax robustus) are thought to have killed 13 people, although no human deaths have been recorded since antivenom was introduced in 1981, according to the Australian Museum. An Australian species of widow spider, the redback (Latrodectus hasselti), can also kill with a venomous bite. Their ancestors, too, predate Australia as a separate continent.

Likewise, venomous cephalopods, including squid, octopus and cuttlefish, have existed for up to 300 million years. They've lived in the surrounding waters for eras before Australia existed on its own.

via www.livescience.com

Science evidently says it doesn't really, support the idea that Oz harbors lots of venomous critters that is. But on this I'd go with popular opinion rather than the lizard lovers.

Elizabeth Warren applauds FTC’s sandwich monopoly probe of Subway acquisition

Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., took to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday to applaud a federal antitrust probe focused on the potential acquisition of sandwich giant Subway.

Subway announced in late August that it reached an agreement to sell the family-owned sandwich chain to private equity firm Roark Capital in a deal reportedly worth more than $9 billion. The firm owns sandwich shops such as Jimmy John’s, Arby’s, McAlister’s Deli and Schlotzky’s. 

The private equity firm’s holdings prompted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to launch a probe earlier this month to examine whether the deal gives the company a monopoly over sandwich shops and other brands in the fast-food industry, according to a report by Politico.

via www.foxbusiness.com

I don't know about the acquisition but it's probably fine. But friends don't let friends eat at Subways. Try Jersey Mike's instead. And Submarina if it's still around.

Sage fire in Jamul revised to 39 acres; pilot error blamed

Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornett said crews on the scene Friday had a line around the fire, and were handling clean-up duties. He added that some light rain on Friday helped reduce the fire threat. Earlier, the blaze "burnt hot and fast, and then they were able to just stop it,'' Cornett said.

Pascua added: "The fire burned just like a fire in mid-summer would burn, meaning tall flame lengths, fast moving and moonscape terrain left behind by the fire when all was said and done. This is a good example of why we can't let our guard down in San Diego in regards to wildfires and having defensible spaces around our homes.''

The cause of the fire remained under investigation. Cornett said the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service sent firefighters to assist Cal Fire.

via www.10news.com

Well that's cheering.

Conor McGregor Is Being Investigated for “Hate Speech” Over Social Media Comments

The mixed martial artist, professional boxer, and former UFC champion, Conor McGregor, finds himself under official scrutiny by Irish authorities following his online speech concerning the mass migration challenges and violence in the country.

Related: Ireland’s Leader Leo Varadkar Pushes for New “Hate Speech” Laws

McGregor’s commentary occurred in the wake of a vicious stabbing incident against three children in Dublin, reportedly committed by an immigrant – an attack that sent shockwaves through Ireland.

McGregor argued that mass migration is exacerbating an already severe housing crisis in Ireland and that this made “basic living unaffordable for many citizens.”

via reclaimthenet.org

Unbelievable.

Israel kills senior Hamas commanders in underground targeting - Hamas - Israel News - The Jerusalem Post

Hamas confirmed on Sunday that the IDF killed the commander of its Northern Brigade, Ahmad Al Ghandour, and of its Rocket Division, Ayman Siam.

The military reported during the night that a total of five senior Hamas officials were killed, with the targeted assassinations occurring before the ceasefire began on Friday morning.

Walla has reported that their bodies were taken out of the ruins of a tunnel, a fact that could mean that this was the first underground elimination of terrorists.

via www.jpost.com

Joe Biden is tanking the US Treasury - The Post

the Biden administration has decided to ignore all sound practice when it comes to fiscal policy. Keynesian economists, who recognise that Government borrowing can sometimes be good for the economy, advocate that monetary policy and fiscal policy should work together. That is, the Government should borrow and spend when the central bank is lowering interest rates, and it should rein in borrowing and raise taxes when interest rates are rising.

The Biden administration has decided to break all the rules in this regard. The Federal Reserve is trying to slow the American economy by raising interest rates, and the White House is trying to speed it up by injecting enormous amounts of fiscal expenditure through its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In normal times, this would be considered chaotic policy, but since the 2016 election, economists have become unwilling to criticise Democratic ministries, lest it result in another Trump presidency. 

While Joe Biden’s runaway spending is leading to clear problems in the market for Treasuries, it is arguably not the worst problem. If the situation got out of control and interest rates started to spiral, the Federal Reserve could, against its better judgement, reverse its QT programme and start buying up Government debt again. This would end any pretence of central bank independence, but it would also end a debt crisis in a pinch.

Not so when it comes to foreign buyers of Treasuries heading for the exit. It is well-known that the United States runs a large trade deficit, and so needs to borrow money from abroad in very large quantities. Much of this is undertaken by issuing Treasury debt to foreign borrowers, but now they are stepping back. This begs the question: why?

via unherd.com

Election of Milei, Wilders and Cogswell Has the Left Worried › American Greatness

Wilders made a name for himself combatting the murderous rage of Muslim extremists. The Guardian doesn’t like what it describes as his “anti-migrant agenda.” But since most of those “migrants” are Muslim, a good many of whom have indicated their preference for establishing Sharia law in the Netherlands, I think that Wilders has political reality, if not progressive ideology, on his side.

Will he actually be able to form a government? That remains to be seen. I’d say the odds were in his favor, especially at a moment when lunatic jihadists groups like Hamas have not only indulged in their favorite kinetic sport of killing Jews en masse but have also mobilized anencephalic progressive ideologues on campuses across the Western world.

We don’t have to wait to to discover the political fate of Javier Milei. He handily won the presidential election on November 19, 56 percent to 44 percent, and will take power on December 10.

I think Milei is one of the most refreshing figures to appear on the political scene in a long time. I suspect that his flamboyant style makes him easy to underestimate. How appalling, for example, that this son of a bus driver should dismiss the Argentinian political establishment as “shit socialists” and “libtards,” “collectivists” who want to destroy  their opponents. “You can’t give them an inch,” he warns, “you can’t negotiate with leftards   because they will kill you.” Impolitic, yes.  But is it untrue?

In a remarkable speech he gave on November 24, Milei used burgeoning power to speak truth to power.  He has not come, he said in a phrase he has used often, to “guide lambs but to awaken lions.” A new Argentina is impossible with “the same old people.” But the party is over, Milei warned. Henceforth, politicians, formerly the privileged elite, will be treated like ordinary honest Argentine citizens. The people, he said, are those awakening lions who will “devour the thieving politicians. They will devour the prebendary businessmen. They will devour the unionists who betray their people.”

Milei believes that a turning point has been reached and that change of the sort he envisions is inevitable. “This works just like an exponential function,” he said. “At some point, there was a turning point and now they cannot stop it!”

via amgreatness.com

I'm less optimistic the Roger Kimball, and tbh he's not all that optimistic. For all the caterwauling about democracy, the people do not have all that much power, as much of our recent history illustrates.

The polls keep getting worse for Biden - POLITICO

President Joe Biden’s poll numbers keep getting worse.

November started with New York Times/Siena College polls showing Trump ahead in four of the six swing states, but more indicators of Biden’s electoral peril soon followed. The president’s standing in head-to-head matchups with Trump is falling: Among the latest surveys this month from 13 separate pollsters, Biden’s position is worse than their previous polls in all but two of them.

via www.politico.com

Russia Targets Ukrainian Cities with Waves of Explosive Drones - WSJ

KYIV—Russia sent waves of explosive drones to strike cities across Ukraine in the largest attack since last winter that likely marks the start of a fresh campaign aimed at demoralizing and dislocating Ukrainians.

Ukraine’s military said it intercepted all but one of 75 Shahed drones overnight, most of which were targeted at Kyiv. Authorities in the capital said five people were slightly injured, including an 11-year-old child, and several buildings damaged.

Russia has spent much of the year rebuilding its stocks of explosive drones and missiles with the aim, Ukrainian officials say, of trying to knock out power and heat in cities over winter. By forcing Ukraine to use air-defense systems to defend cities, Russia is also seeking to divert them from the front line and use up precious missiles, allowing Russian warplanes more freedom to launch attacks on Ukraine’s military.

via www.wsj.com

So we talked to Luke and Anya this morning and wished each other a happy Thanksgiving. The first snow has come to Kyiv and the heat's turned on, so that's good. The drone strikes interfere with everyone's sleep, making everyone angry. They're coming to visit over Christmas, which is like heaven to us.

Mike Benz: "Economic Hitmen" Target Competitors Of Legacy Media | Video | RealClearPolitics

"Foundation For Freedom Online" director Mike Benz comments on the "economic hitmen" who target independent media during an interview with Jack Posobiec:

MIKE BENZ: These media allies depend on these economic hitmen to take out their media opposition.CNN is on the side of these political operatives because these political operatives are killing outlets. They're trying to get "Human Events" censored, they're trying to get "Real America's Voice" censored. These are competitors to CNN and NBC, they are all in it together.

This is a whole-of-society censorship industry framework. Where the government, the private sector, the civil society institutions, and the news media and fact-checking orgs on the legacy side, have all created this whole-of-society fusion in order to mutually prop each other up and to provide the necessary resources at all of those levers to pull in order to take out opposition media and opposition political organizing.

I can tell you, as somebody who spends the lion's share of my day inside these peoples' Zoom calls and inside their source documents, the amount of attention that they pay to framing things is most of what they do. These people will be on 15-person Zoom calls, consensus-building meetings, where they will be talking about some new censorship technique they want to roll out. They'll be describing it in certain terms, and then they will say, "Actually, before we go public with this, we're going to need a better way to describe it."

There's one example when Alex Stamos, the head of the Stanford Internet Observatory, was doing a recorded talk at one of the Stanford University Lecture YouTube videos where they're talking about the need to kill -- at this point, there was this "Plandemic" movie at the beginning of the Covid outbreak that was highly, highly censored. They were talking about this and they said the question is whether we nuke this from orbit. They said, "We need to find a better way, if we say 'nuke from orbit' it is going to look bad."

via www.realclearpolitics.com

When It Comes to BlackRock's ESG Pullback, Don't Take Larry Fink at His Word | RealClearMarkets

BlackRock released self-reported data that their support of ESG through proxy voting in 2023 declined from previous years. Its support of “E&S” shareholder proposals declined from 43% in 2021, to 24% in 2022, to just 7% in 2023. The firm largely blamed overly prescriptive proposals and other changes to the content of the resolutions themselves instead of claiming an ESG about-face. 

However, a look at the data shows that BlackRock’s ESG activism may have already accomplished much of its goals and may be why Fink and other activist asset managers are publicly pulling back from ESG.  

But don’t take Fink at his word.

BlackRock and others’ high level of ESG proposal support in 2021 and 2022 pushed many companies to take on ESG initiatives that are largely standard practice across corporate America now. This includes reporting GHG emissions, setting net-zero emissions targets, publishing diversity data, meeting board diversity thresholds, and more. Proxy voting was merely the last resort if BlackRock did not get its way through negotiation or “engagement meetings” as the firm describes it. BlackRock reported nearly 4,000 “engagements”lobbying the C-suite on diversity and climate issues during the 2021-2022 proxy season. If unsuccessful in private, the investment manager often voted with others against management or board members and supported shareholder resolutions to force behavior.   

BlackRock and others became more careful about voting behavior in 2022 as scrutiny increased, but the world’s largest asset manager used its might when it mattered. So did State Street. An analysis of the ten most supported resolutions filed by ESG activist coalition As You Sow in 2021 and 2022 (see table) shows that BlackRock supported 80% in 2021 and 70% in 2022, and State Street 70% in both. 

via www.realclearmarkets.com

Harvard under fire for helping elite skip the queue

For centuries, the streets of Harvard's red-bricked campus have borne the heels of America's future leaders, from Teddy Roosevelt to Mark Zuckerberg. The ability of the oldest university in the US to propel students into the upper echelons of politics, business and tech has made admission highly coveted. But the way it chooses who gets the golden ticket is being closely scrutinised.

Earlier this year, a landmark Supreme Court decision dismantled affirmative action, making it illegal for Harvard and other universities to give admission preference to under-represented minorities.

Harvard said the change would make it harder for it to recruit a diverse student body. But the court proceedings also blew open what many had long suspected - that the school gives preference to the children of alumni.

The policy, known as legacy admissions, is practised by dozens of elite American universities, including the eight schools in the Ivy League, as well as many other private and elite public universities. It means if a close relative attended that university then you might be preferred to an applicant of similar strength whose parents did not.

via www.bbc.com

Not just related to alumni, but alumni who make substantial donations, as in $1M plus. Anything less might get you a second look, but probably no more.

Collusion vs. Stop the Steal - WSJ

A recent column observed disconcertingly that election denial appears to have been a successful strategy for Donald Trump. But how exactly? Larry Kudlow, his former White House economic adviser, points out that many voters like Trump policies, which is true. How does “stop the steal” advance their cause? One might also ask how and why collusion continues to work for Democrats. Both began as a set of claims but became something else, a litany, an article of devotion, a thematic glue to hold together a standard stump speech.

My inbox is as revealing about collusion as it is about stop the steal, with some Democrats clinging to whatever they heard first, including the legend of the Moscow hotel room, long since debunked by the U.S. Justice Department. The harder-working insist, “Didn’t Trump do business with Russia, didn’t Russian lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya gain entry to a Trump Tower meeting by promising ‘dirt’ on Hillary, didn’t Mike Flynn share confidences with the Russian ambassador, didn’t a report by Senate Democrats claim without citing any source that an ex-Manafort consulting partner was a Russian intelligence officer?”

The same is true on the GOP side. They point to isolated cases of vote fraud, inevitable in any election. They point to states and localities changing their election laws in questionable ways, to dishonesties about the Hunter Biden laptop, though neither amounts to vote fraud.

One difference: Collusion enlisted a broad, voluntary effort by the establishment, including the news media. Mr. Trump, who mostly prosecuted stop the steal from his own mouth, didn’t fabricate evidence, as the Hillary Clinton campaign did, since evidence was largely beside the point for his purposes.

His behavior was bad but included nothing like the organized malfeasance of CIA veterans lying to the public about the laptop, or the FBI protectively putting a collusion fabricator on its own payroll while knowingly trafficking in the false Steele dossier. Vladimir Putin knows the truth about the secret “Russian intelligence” that justified the FBI’s improper actions in the Hillary email case. The American people don’t. A government report on the episode remains classified, a high official emphatically tells me, because it’s “embarrassing.”

As even the Justice Department special counsel takes pains to point out, Mr. Trump’s colorful lying about 2020 was perfectly legal in itself. Democrats can be expected to cling to Jan. 6 as a precious heirloom, but whatever else that day was, it was also a mishap. Organized malcontents with genuinely insurrectionist motives were present but Democrats should look at some of the people who show up at their own events. Crowd control by the Capitol Police was the pivotal failure, without which a great deal would be different today.

via www.wsj.com

Holman Jenkins. As usual, all quite true.

San Diego firefighters halt spread of Thanksgiving Day Jamul brush fire, evacuation orders lifted – NBC 7 San Diego

Cal Fire Firefighters stopped the spread and gained containment on a fast-moving brush fire in Jamul that sparked on Thanksgiving Day, according to the agency.

By 3:43 p.m., forward spread was stopped at 39 acres and firefighters had achieved 5% containment, Cal Fire San Diego wrote on X.

Shortly after the fire broke out, evacuation orders were issued in Jamul near Lyons Valley Road.

Get San Diego local news, weather forecasts, sports and lifestyle stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC San Diego newsletters.

The fire was first reported on the 1300 block of SR-94 across the 13000 block of Vista Sage Lane in Jamul. At around 2:46 p.m., Cal Fire said the fire grew to 30-35 acres with a critical rate of spread and an immediate structure threat to the area.

via www.nbcsandiego.com

By the time we figured out we actually were in the mandatory evacuation area, the fire was already almost out. Not that we would have left anyway. We have a bit of evacuation inflation here. My sister and I had just finished an epic hike above the area of the burn before it lit off. We got home, smelled smoke, looked up in the sky, and saw a big plume just over the ridge. If either of us smoked, we surely would have worried we might have started the conflagration. But I have to say, CalFire was on this blaze fast, with helicopters dropping water almost as soon as the fire started, or so it seemed. BTW Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone. Hope your holiday was as jolly (all things considered, which is quite a bit in fact) as ours was.

Husband 'uses a venomous COBRA to kill his wife and two-year-old daughter by releasing it into their bedroom as they slept' | Daily Mail Online

On October 6, Ganesh allegedly released the snake from a plastic jar in the room where his wife and daughter slept.

They were both found dead with snake bites the next morning, while the father claimed to have slept in another room.

Ganesh told his neighbours that a snake entered his house and bit his wife and child.

The villagers killed the snake and rushed the mother and daughter to a nearby hospital where they were declared dead.

Ganesh lodged a complaint with police and a case of unnatural death was registered.

Superintendent of Police Jagmohan Meena said Ganesh's father-in-law accused him of murder. Ganesh was arrested a month after the incident.

Suspicion began to grow about the circumstances of the death and police questioned snake charmers in the local area.

via www.dailymail.co.uk

I feel like Kipling must have written a story about this.

The Wilders Message From the Netherlands - WSJ

Voters are fed up with a stale consensus on issues such as immigration and climate policy. The PVV’s biggest campaign issue for two decades has been immigration. Some 400,000 immigrants arrived last year in a country with a total population of nearly 18 million. While last year’s number may have been skewed by refugees from Ukraine, immigration has exceeded 200,000 every year since 2016.

This creates a substantial fiscal burden under the generous Dutch welfare state and strains the housing market. It’s also becoming a culture-war issue as voters worry the country isn’t properly assimilating Muslim migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Mr. Wilders can present himself as a tribune of these fears, having lived under police protection since an Islamist murdered film director Theo van Gogh in 2004.

Centrist politicians heap scorn on Mr. Wilders’s proposed solution, which is to ban the Quran, new mosques and Islamic schools. This is extreme, and Mr. Wilders had to walk back those proposals to achieve the vote totals he did Wednesday. But if any other Dutch politician has better ideas for achieving assimilation, voters would be all ears.

Another signature Wilders pledge is to withdraw from various global climate agreements. Environmental policy has roiled Dutch politics for years, with farmers protesting draconian plans to curb nitrogen emissions. That uproar offered a taste of what’s to come once the anticarbon left turns its sights on agriculture, which is a major industry in the Netherlands. Mainstream Dutch parties have been slow to respond, so farmers formed their own protest party which is now the largest bloc in the upper house of the parliament.

The lesson is that if voters conclude they have only one alternative, they’ll grasp it for good or ill. In Mr. Wilders’s case there is some ill. He opposes aid to Ukraine, although giving Russia a free hand in its invasion would be against Dutch interests. Centrist politicians also fret about Mr. Wilders’s desire to hold a referendum on Dutch membership in the European Union. But if they have ways to use EU institutions to solve the problems that bother voters, they have yet to tell anyone.

Instead, Europe is set to descend into another round of name-calling, and expect to hear the word “fascist” a lot. The fear is that formerly fringe parties such as the euroskeptic, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany or the National Rally in France are gaining popularity. In places like Italy or, now, the Netherlands they’re winning elections outright.

via www.wsj.com

Voters See American Dream Slipping Out of Reach, WSJ/NORC Poll Shows - WSJ

The American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background—has slipped out of reach in the minds of many Americans.

Only 36% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal/NORC survey said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys of adults by another pollster. When a Wall Street Journal poll last year asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead in this country, some 68% said yes—nearly twice the share as in the new poll.

via www.wsj.com

Why oh why are these irrational little worker bees so grumpy? Don't they listen to Prof. Krugman? He's happy and we should be too.

Misunderstanding Milei – G. Patrick Lynch

Milei’s main, nay fundamental, policy proposals are all in the context of this backdrop. His firm commitment to abolishing Argentine central banking and cutting social spending is straight out of Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman, and it is completely appropriate given the circumstances. The only way that an “anarcho-capitalist” could be elected was in a situation of failed governance and welfare statism so dire that he could crack the door open slightly and introduce ideas unknown by the mainstream intelligentsia, let alone the average Argentine on the street.

The language used by the international media, the gigantic “blob” of interests in the World Bank and international aid community, and the mainstream economists who oppose him is designed to delegitimize Milei. They don’t want another success story like Chile in the region. Two nations that adopt “neoliberal” policies that work mean their jobs and narratives are at risk. They are and should be terrified.

via lawliberty.org

Full speed ahead and pass the popcorn.

Federal appeals court deals a blow to Voting Rights Act, ruling that private plaintiffs can’t sue

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Monday ruled that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act, a decision that contradicts decades of precedent and could further erode protections under the landmark 1965 law.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis found that only the U.S. attorney general can enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires political maps to include districts where minority populations’ preferred candidates can win elections.

The majority said other federal laws, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, make it clear when private groups can sue but said similar wording is not found in the voting law.

“When those details are missing, it is not our place to fill in the gaps, except when ‘text and structure’ require it,” U.S. Circuit Judge David R. Stras wrote for the majority in an opinion joined by Judge Raymond W. Gruender. Stras was nominated by former President Donald Trump and Gruender by former President George W. Bush.

The decision affirmed a lower judge’s decision to dismiss a case brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel after giving U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland five days to join the lawsuit.

Chief Judge Lavenski R. Smith noted in a dissenting opinion that federal courts across the country and the U.S. Supreme Court have considered numerous cases brought by private plaintiffs under Section 2. Smith said the court should follow “existing precedent that permits a judicial remedy” unless the Supreme Court or Congress decides differently.

via news.yahoo.com

Well this is interesting. I'm guessing this scaling back of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is one of those originalist interpretations of the statute, overruling more expansive "yes there is a private right of action even though the statute doesn't *explicitly* say so" readings.

The humiliation of the Dutch establishment - spiked

With almost all the votes now counted, Wilders’s PVV has won 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, with 24 per cent of the vote, trouncing his nearest rivals, a coalition of the Labour and Green parties. Make no mistake: this is a humiliation for the Dutch establishment and another political earthquake in Europe.

Before yesterday’s elections, European elites would have told you that a ‘sensible’ country like the Netherlands was immune to populism. The 2017 elections were heralded across Europe as the death of Dutch populism, when the PVV lost to long-serving centrist prime minister Mark Rutte. Wilders’s party slumped further in 2021, scoring just 11 per cent of the vote. With the peroxide-haired right-winger seemingly sent packing, moderation and centrism had apparently prevailed. Anti-establishment anger had been quelled. Or so they thought.

via www.spiked-online.com

This is important I reckon. I'm not the least surprised. Are you?

Leaf Blower Fight Roils Greenwich, Conn., Home to World’s Most Perfect Lawns - WSJ

Svetlana Wasserman, a 53-year-old former management consultant, moved from a nearby town in Westchester County, N.Y., for a home with a bigger yard in 2019. “One of the first things that jumped out at me when I moved here, despite living in the back country and 5-acre estates, is how friggin’ noisy it is,” she said. 

Even among spacious lots with few neighbors, Wasserman said she can’t escape the leaf blowers. She puts on earbuds and plays music when she needs a reprieve, she said.

“Sometimes I play Radiohead,” said Wasserman, also of Quiet Yards Greenwich. “Usually it’s some pretty angry music.”

Sophie Koven, another member, said one pivotal moment for her occurred last year during her son’s eighth-grade graduation, further solidifying her opposition to the tools. Midway through the outdoor ceremony, the blare of a gas-powered leaf blower coming from the adjacent property began drowning out the student speaker, who could barely be heard above the buzz.

 “One person operating one leaf blower can just ruin an event for 800 people, and no one can do anything about it,” said Koven, 49, who works as a mediator.

via www.wsj.com

Dutch Election Results Deliver a Turn to the Far Right - The New York Times

The Netherlands, long regarded as one of Europe’s most socially liberal countries, woke up to a drastically changed political landscape on Thursday after a far-right party swept national elections in a result that has reverberated throughout Europe.

Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, which advocates banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers, won 37 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, making it by far the biggest party, in a clear rebuke of the country’s political establishment.

The results, tabulated overnight after Wednesday’s voting, give Mr. Wilders enough support to try to form a governing coalition. Centrist and center-right parties long wary of the firebrand have left the door ajar to a possible partnership, giving Mr. Wilders a chance to become the Netherlands’ first far-right prime minister.

While people across the political spectrum expressed surprise at the election outcome, and the Dutch reputation of liberalism persists, experts say that Mr. Wilders succeeded by tapping into a discontent with government that dates back at least two decades.

via www.nytimes.com

Not just the far right, but the super-deduper extra far right!

The Democratic oligarchs funding pro-Hamas nonprofits - UnHerd

For the radical Left, which find its values endorsed by nearly every prestige institution in the country, from Harvard to the CIA, it provides reassurance that they really are an embattled, anti-establishment minority bravely speaking truth to power. For the moderates, not least Jewish Democrats horrified to see Left-wing college students cheering the murder of Israeli women and children, it functions more as a defence mechanism, sustaining them in the illusion that the party is still run by and for people like them.

But the division between the activist Left and the party establishment is little more than a politically useful fiction. In reality, the radical cadres are bankrolled by the same nexus of progressive oligarchs and dark-money slush funds that finance the party establishment.

via unherd.com

Prepare for a New, Less Affluent America - The Messenger

Perhaps the Fed, as a pragmatic matter, felt that it had no real choice but to keep interest rates low and take the path of least resistance. After all, the Treasury got a pass from all those years of low interest rates on its debt.

The eye-popping analyses in the Aspen reports describe some of the most immediate money problems the country faces. For example, the aging of the American population, along with a persistent drop in the birth rate, have created significant hurdles. People over 65 have increased from 12% to 17% of the populace in the last 20 years and are expected to reach 22% by 2050. Meanwhile, between 1976 and 2018, the mean number of offspring born per woman declined from three children to two.

In addition, rising health care expenses, together with everything else we are spending on, are expected to push the federal debt to 180% of GDP by 2053. The pace at which Medicare, Social Security, health care, and defense costs are rising is simply unsustainable.

The Aspen reports also describe how such large amounts of federal debt reduce the “fiscal space” for the country to be able to address temporary sudden domestic needs ranging from pandemics to wars. Apart from crowding out other non-government forms of debt, which also can have adverse impacts on the capital markets and private-sector economy, this also naturally limits the country’s capacity to provide for its citizens.

The impact of the debt load on the country has put it in the unappetizing political and financial position of having to raise taxes or cut Social Security, Medicare and defense spending. Given the caliber of our current political leaders, the absence of any responsible sense of compromise, and the sheer enormity of the country’s fiscal issues, we would be foolish to expect a solution anytime soon. The die seems cast.

We face the specter of diminished economic strength, higher taxes, fewer social services, and a weaker military in an ever-increasingly dangerous, inhospitable world.

Our economic chickens are coming home to roost. As they do, it won’t matter which politician or party is responsible. In the end, we will have failed ourselves by allowing elected officials to get away with ignoring issues, decade after decade, that will threaten the quality of life of our children and our grandchildren.

via themessenger.com

Thomas P. Vartanian

Elon Musk exposes Media Matters as an ideological shakedown operation

Elon Musk just opened a new front in the war for free speech in a Fort Worth federal court.

There, his X launched a legal missile against Media Matters for America, the longtime left-wing speech assassin and smear merchant that masquerades as a “progressive research and information center.”

X alleges the nonprofit — founded by Democratic hatchet man David Brock, funded by the likes of progressive billionaire George Soros and fixated on canceling conservative voices such as the late Rush Limbaugh and hosts on Fox News — has trained its sights on obliterating the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Media Matters sought to defame and damage the platform by executing the dirtiest of dirty tricks.

According to X’s suit: “Looking to portray X’s social networking platform as being dominated by ‘white nationalist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,’ Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform.”

Media Matters apparently manipulated X’s algorithms to cook up the desired guilt by association.

According to X’s investigation, the scheme worked like this: First, the tax-exempt left-wing attack dog created an account to follow exclusively “fringe” X users on the one hand and X’s biggest paid advertisers — major corporations like Apple, Comcast and IBM — on the other.

via nypost.com

Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory - WSJ

A search committee seeking a professor of military history rejected one applicant “because his diversity statement demonstrated poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.” Another committee noted that an applicant to be a professor of nuclear physics could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to “an immigrant in Texas in the Age of Trump.”

These examples come from more than 800 pages of “Diversity Faculty Recruitment Reports” at Ohio State University, which I obtained through a public-records request. Until recently, Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences required every search committee to create such a report, which had to be approved by various deans before finalists for a job were interviewed.

In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.

via www.wsj.com

John Sailer.

Elon Musk Just Detonated His 'Thermonuclear' Lawsuit – PJ Media

Musk says MMFA's manipulations interfered with their advertising contracts, defamed Twitter/X with malice aforethought, and drove away business. Besides wanting to drive a stake through MMFA, Musk demands the site delete a particularly egregious article clunkily entitled, "As Musk Endorses Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory, X Has Been Placing Ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, and Xfinity, Next to Pro-Nazi Content From its Web." 

MMFA CEO Angelo Carusone doubled down on the website's allegations on Sunday, saying that Musk's Friday complaints confirmed their story. Twitter/X user and target of the MMFA assassin squad Libs of TikTok found some interesting anti-Semitic comments in Carusone's past, and no one had to manipulate the algorithm to find them. 

via pjmedia.com

Lawyers will win on this one. I predict MMFA will be crushed by Musk but I'm biased.

Shellenberger: The Alliance Between Advertisers And Democrats Pushing Censorship | Video | RealClearPolitics

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It sounds shocking. It sounds like if you are on X, formerly known as Twitter, you are being served up neo-nazi content and it is being tied together with these big brands.

As it turned out, they created fake accounts to follow neo-nazis and say they got those ads served. Well, we did the same thing, as any journalist should have done when they heard about this. We created fake accounts and followed the exact same pro-Nazi accounts that Media Matters claims, and we couldn't get any ads. We refreshed constantly, we went into the actual content itself. We followed three times more pro-Nazi accounts, same thing, we couldn't get any ads served up to us.

First of all, we were not able to replicate Media Matters. We asked Media Matters to respond, to explain how they gamed the system to be shown the ads after having already followed neo-Nazi content. We didn't hear back from them. I think that tells you that what is going on here, there is more than meets the eye, I would say.

...

I'm a huge First Amendment advocate, I want free speech. People even have the right to lie, but you can't commit fraud, that is one of the restrictions on free speech. You can't do what Media Matters appears to be doing here, which is to manipulate a situation, to lie about what is actually going on with a business in order, specifically, to hurt that business.

They created the story they wanted to sell here, which is that somehow there is a lot of antisemitism on X, that somehow brands are associated with antisemitism, and they had that in mind before they did their research. This is clearly a case where they are using fraudulent methods to lie to, to manipulate that platform, to lie to businesses on business questions. That starts to look like fraud and can be very expensive and dangerous for Media Matters.

via www.realclearpolitics.com

Why that darn Media Matters. That's just sneaky.

Democratic dark money kingmaker pumps millions into 'nonpartisan' Supreme Court watchdogs | Washington Examiner

"Nonpartisan" Supreme Court watchdogs demanding conservative justices disclose more about their finances hauled in millions of dollars combined in 2022 from the largest Democratic-allied dark money network in the United States, according to tax forms.

The cash transfers, which became public on Wednesday upon the release of new financial disclosures, underscore how groups leading a campaign targeting Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito over trips and gifts they accepted, but did not report, rely on influential left-wing grantmakers to help keep their lights on. Several of these self-described watchdogs took heaps of cash from nonprofit organizations managed by Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm overseeing an anonymously funded network that spent over $1 billion last year propping up liberal causes.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Hoard of 100,000 centuries-old coins discovered in Japan | Live Science

A number of large coin hoards have been found in Japan, but why they were deposited is a subject of debate among scholars.

"The hoards may have functioned as a bank. Another theory is that hoarding had a symbolic meaning, possibly religious," William Farris, a professor emeritus of Japanese history at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa who wasn't involved with the find, told Live Science in an email. "I favor the theory that the coins were a type of bank for safe-keeping."

Another idea is that the Japanese buried them in times of war. "They are heavy and bulky to take with you if you have to flee hostile forces," Segal said. However, some scholars "have proposed that coins were buried as offerings to the gods," Segal said, noting that "there is no scholarly consensus."

via www.livescience.com

If the purpose was religious, this seems a contrast to the Christian and probably Judeo-Christian view of the proper use of coin. Last Sunday at our Catholic church we heard the parable of the three servants entrusted by their master with three sets of coin, five, two and one. The first two servants invested their coin, made a 100 percent return (we're not told over how long) while the third buried his coin and got zero return. The first two were praised by the Master when he got back from his trip and the third summarily fired and cast out on the street. I suppose this means that it's wrong to just sit on top of your horde and not invest it. But lots to unpack here in any event.