DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

New York Times.

Agents in South Carolina, the fastest growing state in the country last year, say that many newcomers are Republicans eager to leave the Northeast and West Coast.

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A Paris police official said the man was seen at about 11am local time (0900 GMT) entering the consulate, carrying what appeared to be a grenade and an explosive vest.

The man later left the consulate and on being searched was found not to be carrying any explosives, a police source said. The man’s motives were not immediately clear.

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With the much anticipated Summer Olympic Games fast approaching, and with Macron’s deeply unpopular government scrambling both to ensure the security of international guests and conceal Paris’s visible degeneration, new crime figures show the capital city in a less-than-favorable light and call into question authorities’ ability to keep women safe.

The figures, recorded by Paris Police Headquarters, revealed that 77% of rape cases in the capital solved in 2023 had been committed by perpetrators who do not hold French passports, with the majority of sexual crimes transpiring in and around tourist areas like Champs de Mars—soon to be packed with visitors to the games.

French broadcaster Europe 1, which saw the Paris Police Headquarters report, revealed 97 rapes were recorded across the capital in 2023, a figure up by 2% compared to those from 2022. Before this past year, the number had stayed relatively stable since 2018. Of the total recorded cases, 30 were solved with 36 perpetrators being arrested.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

One of the unremarked things that has happened over the past ten years is the collapse of the so-called man-o-sphere. There may be people still working that land, but all the big names have moved on or disappeared. The pickup artist have all disappeared from the internet entirely. That whole scene just seems to have folded up and gone the way of the dinosaur without anyone noticing.

One reason is the demographic aged out of the material. A guy like Heartiste, for example, could do the pickup artist stuff when he was early middle-age, but once you hit fifty you become a skeevy weirdo, not a Don Juan. The same holds for the other subcultures in that space. Once you reach middle-age, it all starts to sound a bit weird and pointless, even to the people making money off it.

There is another aspect to it. That whole scene was a reaction to the feminization of the culture starting with second wave feminism. The next generation of males have no frame of reference in which to have a reaction. The typical Zoomer has been raised in the longhouse, to use the cool kid’s term. He has no way of knowing that all of this is both weird and unnatural.

That is the point of the show. The male role is not a slippery concept that changes from one generation to the next. It has been revolutionized and pulverized over the last few decades, but that is what makes this age anomalous. The male role in society is timeless, at least in the Western world. There are certain immutable characteristic to being a man that will reassert themselves in the coming years.

The Antiplanner.

axpayers spend billions of dollars a year subsidizing so-called affordable housing, but much of that money is wasted, says a new report from the Cascade Policy Institute. Affordable housing being built today actually costs much more than market-rate housing, and most of the benefits from building such expensive housing are captured by the developers, not low-income families who need housing.

Steve Sailer.

It’s widely assumed, both by Jews and by anti-Semites, that the roots of American progressivism are heavily Jewish.

Yet, Jews had relatively little impact on the crucial first century of the American republic, from the Declaration of Independence through the end of Reconstruction. Yet progressivism that is ideologically ancestral to contemporary “In this house we believe” wokeness was already ascendant during the second quarter of the 19th Century in New England and its cultural satellites upstate New York, and northern Ohio, and triumphed nationally in the 1860s, if only briefly, from say 1862-1868.

For example, one of the first incidents in which I became aware of the Great Awokening was during the winter of 2013 when students at traditionally leftist Oberlin College in northern Ohio had one of their freakouts over the KKK running amok on campus (it turned out, evidently, to be a lady, perhaps homeless, walking around on a cold night with a white blanket draped around her).

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It would appear that at least some of them are.

Huffington Post.

Needless to say, the HuffPo doesn’t have a clue about why. Run a search on ‘hypergamy’ on YouTube and you will find a lot of explanations regarding what is going on, none of them from the middle-aged feminist viewpoint in which the HuffPo specializes.

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The ‘family farm’ is a doomed as the ‘family manufacturing company’ was when I was a child.

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Details are very thin and fleeting at the moment, but it seems clear that Israel has launched its counterstrike against Iranian interests in response to the large-scale attack directly on Israeli territory that occurred over the weekend.

The news began developing around 3:00 AM local time in Israel that explosions occurred in Iraq and in towns in Iran where well-known nuclear program-related facilities are located. There was also talk on social media of jets being heard flying very low in Eastern Syria and Iranian-related targets struck in Iraq, as well.

UPDATE: Futures Tumble, Oil And Gold Soar On Reports Of “Huge Explosions” In Central Iran, Israeli Airstrikes In Iraq And Syria

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Wednesday to protest Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for an additional $70 million in taxpayers’ funds to be spent on tackling the city’s migrant crisis, while a petition that would give residents the right to recall the mayor is gathering serious traction.

The progressive mayor, who has vigorously defended the city’s sanctuary policies in the past, wants aldermen to greenlight the extra cash in a vote on Friday despite the Windy City having already poured $300 million into housing, food and health care for the recently arrived migrants, according to the city’s latest numbers.

However, critics of the spending spree blasted the mayor during Wednesday’s gathering, where aldermen were initially expected to vote on rubber-stamping the new funds. Aldermen deferred the measure, using the council tactic to stall consideration.

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The White House is weighing an unprecedented declaration of a national climate emergency to crack down on the oil industry and advance President Joe Biden’s climate policies, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Declaring a national climate emergency would allow the Biden administration to more easily reduce oil exports, offshore drilling, and greenhouse gas emissions, individuals familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations told Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity.

The administration, however, will likely not make a final decision anytime soon, with the president’s advisers still divided over whether such an unprecedented move to advance the green energy agenda is appropriate, especially as Biden looks to win over voters ahead of his rematch this fall with Republican nominee Donald Trump.

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Democratic officials are throwing billions at California high-speed rail projects that have yet to be built, funding thousands of jobs specifically for union members.

Despite funding initially being approved by a referendum in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail project currently has less than a quarter of its expected length under construction and was initially supposed to have connected Los Angeles and San Francisco by 2020, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents 48 local unions and more than 150,000 members in California, boasted of the creation of 13,000 unionized construction jobs due to continued funding of California’s high-speed rail project.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority, in its community benefits agreement regarding the construction of the rail, lays out that it will exclusively bargain with union representatives for craft labor and that no employee will be required to join a union, but workers who are at the site for more than eight total days will be required to pay union dues.

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Google said Thursday it terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.

My favorite line from the movie Jackie Brown: “Is white guilt supposed to make me forget I’m running a business here?”

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1 in 3 Muslims living in the UK want Islam to be declared the national religion and for everyone to live under the brutal system of Sharia law which calls for beheadings and amputations.

Less than 1 in 4 Muslims opposed the move while the majority were unwilling to commit.

Among younger Muslims 18-24, 1 in 5 believed that making Islam “our national religion” was “very desirable”, and a total of 43% supported redefining the UK as an Islamic state.

Only 16% opposed it.

Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology under the guise of a religion with which no co-existence is possible.

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In the past, teachers’ unions concentrated on fighting to keep all teachers employed—competent or otherwise—laying off teachers by seniority when necessary and soaking taxpayers every chance they could. While those activities are still part of their mission, they have, over time, increasingly delved into the political/social realm, promoting Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, DEI, class warfare, gender-bending, etc. And their current level of engagement is staggering.

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An effort to recall a progressive, George Soros-funded district attorney in California has received enough signatures from voters to advance amid an upswing in crime, officials say.

Organizers seeking to oust Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price collected 74,757 verified signatures in support of their effort to hold a recall election, over 1,000 more than needed, county Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis announced Monday.

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Monica Cornejo, an assistant professor of interpersonal communication, was forcibly removed from a Cornell University event this week after disrupting a speech by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. She is only the latest faculty member to seek to prevent others from hearing opposing views. The question now is what Cornell will do about her conduct.

And most of them tend to be women. Coincidence? I think not….

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foreign meddling in U.S. elections, congressional Republicans say.

Amid the ongoing crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border, the lawmakers decried flyers posted at the migrant services center near Brownsville, Texas, that tell illegal aliens: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States.”

“Joe Biden has sacrificed our nation’s safety and security in his pursuit to get as many people here as possible. Why? Because he believes these are future Democrat voters,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told The Daily Signal.

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Brussels authorities shuttered the National Conservatism Conference on Tuesday, sending police to block entry to the conference and announcing that those inside would be permitted to leave but not to return. However, the action was not the result of any public disturbances or threats. It was a political action by left-progressive politicians who do not like the views being ventilated at the conference—and who fear the increasing success of nationalist and conservative ideas in European politics.

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Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he is willing to vote with Democrats to dismiss impeachment articles against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

I don’t even have to say anything, do I?

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A tenured professor is suspended throughout the rest of the semester after writing an essay celebrating Hamas’ attack on Israel.

“McCarthyism is real. I’ve been relieved of teaching responsibilities,” Hobart and William Smith Colleges Professor Jodi Dean wrote Saturday on X. “Don’t stop talking about Palestine.”

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A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute revealed that 28% of likely voters would be willing to engage in illegal voting activity if it would help their preferred candidate win the 2024 presidential election.

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For much of the past year, we had joked that behind the facade of western Democratic ideals, was a cold hard truth: the price of oil must not be allowed to go up in an election year. This was obvious in Biden’s “kid gloves” treatment of Iran’s regime, it was obvious when the US implemented “sanctions” on Russian oil that were breached within months with zero enforcement, it was also obvious when the US president became best friends with Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro last October when, in exchange for a few thousands barrels of Venezuela’s oil, the US lifted sanctions on the person that for years was one of western “democracies” biggest enemies.

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Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will get you punished.

Vox.

Take, for example, when tech journalist Kara Swisher’s Burn Book came out this February. A host of other books hit the Kindle store along with it. They all had bizarre, SEO-streamlined titles, like those new businesses that are named Plumbing Near Me to game the Google algorithm.

If you do stuff by algorithm, it can be gamed. God forbid you should actually, you know, have real people doing the work for you. (Ain’t Nobody Got Time For Dat.)

“I found ‘Kara Swisher: Silicon Valley’s Bulldog,’ and ‘Kara Swisher Book: How She Became Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Journalist,’ and ‘Kara Swisher Biography: Unraveling the Life and Legacy,’ by a ‘guy’ who ‘wrote’ four biographies this month,” said Ben Smith when he interviewed Swisher for Semaforum.

Swisher was less than flattered by the biographies. “I wrote [Amazon CEO] Andy Jassy and I said, ‘You’re stealing my IP! What is going on?’” she told Smith. (Disclosure: Swisher works for Vox Media.)

And that’s the key. If it had been something by, say, Alex Jones, or Andrew Tate, would they be so upset? I think not. (Unmentioned: That Vox is a Voice of the Crust–one of the worst–and full of ‘garbage pseudo-journalism’.)

Note that Amazon was NOT ‘stealing her IP’. The books complained about were entirely different from Swisher’s book; you would think that a professional writer would spend the effort to learn the basics of copyright law. (Not to mention the fact that ‘intellectual property’ is to actual property as ‘gay marriage’ is to actual marriage.)

Here is almost certainly what was going on: “Kara Swisher book” started trending on the Kindle storefront as buzz built up for Swisher’s book. Keyword scrapers that exist for the sole purpose of finding such search terms delivered the phrase “Kara Swisher book” to the so-called biographer, who used a combination of AI and crimes-against-humanity-level cheap ghostwriters to generate a series of books they could plausibly title and sell using her name.

And, most importantly, dilute the impact of her book, which promotes the Woke agenda under the guise of being about tech.

All of this means that to buy the book you want — to buy Kara Swisher’s Burn Book instead of Kara Swisher Book: How She Became Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Journalist — you have to know what you’re looking for and pay a modicum of attention to your purchase.

Who wants to do that? Especially in a marketplace like Amazon, where we are trained to buy quickly and thoughtlessly with a single click and where writers have been trained to send their wares without even thinking about it because where else are you going to sell an ebook.

In other words, Amazon has to step up and compensate (at great expense) for the fact that people are unwilling to act like adults and do some due diligence. These kids today….

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If you pay New York state taxes, you’re paying top dollar and getting bupkis. Nothing in the budget deal announced in Albany on Tuesday changes that.

State tax money is supposed to provide services and improve the state’s economic outlook. But a report released last week shows the state’s economic prospects plunging to dead last among the 50 states.

As for services, New York ranks 47th, fourth from the bottom, in what residents get for the money, according to WalletHub.

New York spends the most per public school student, but students perform worse by every measure than students in neighboring states.

New York’s roads rank 45th, according to MoneyGeek. The potholes and pavement roughness cost the average New York driver $715 a year in repairs, fuel and wear and tear. You need a Sherman tank to navigate the Bruckner Expressway.

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South Dakota state Sen. John Wiik likes to think of himself as a lookout of sorts — keeping an eye on new laws, programs and ideas brewing across the states.

“I don’t bring a ton of legislation,” said Wiik, a Republican. “The main thing I like to do is try and stay ahead of trends and try and prevent bad things from coming into our state.”

I like him already. Would that more elected officials made that their priority.

This session, that meant sponsoring successful legislation banning cities or counties from creating basic income programs, which provide direct, regular cash payments to low-income residents to help alleviate poverty.

While Wiik isn’t aware of any local governments publicly floating the idea in South Dakota, he describes such programs as “bureaucrats trying to hand out checks to make sure that your party registration matches whoever signed the checks for the rest of your life.”

Sounds like he’s been paying attention.

You always get more of what you are willing to pay for. If you pay people who aren’t working, you’ll always get more people not working. To have the income of as many people as possible dependent on the government is the cornerstone of modern progressivism.

CNN.

When asked whether Tabassum will still be permitted to participate in the graduation ceremony and what security measures were in place to secure her safety, Bartlett said she didn’t have that information. A Chino Hills, California native, Tabassum studied biomedical engineering with a minor in resistance to genocide and an interest in global health care equity.

Which tells you pretty much what her graduation speech would be about. (Hint: not biomedical engineering.)

Would a Jewish student who planned to denounce Islamic terrorism have faced the same strictures? (*That’s a trick question, because no Jewish student would have been allowed to be valedictorian of a large public university to begin with.)

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A Democrat-controlled city announced $45 million in funding for programs to help deal with the skyrocketing number of migrant arrivals it is facing, resulting in over $8 million in budget cuts for the police department.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced last week a package of $45.9 million to fully fund programs for “newcomers” for 2024 and avoid worst-case scenarios projected by the city. That’s in addition to $44 million in spending already secured for the program through previous budget moves.

Spending on migrants in the city skyrocketed last year from $2 million a month in August to $15 million in December. In January, migrant numbers peaked at around 5,000 in shelters but have since dropped to around 1,000, according to official figures.

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Not that he would them them if he had.

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Two conservative Colorado counties—Douglas and El Paso—have sued the state of Colorado and its Democrat governor over laws that prevent local law enforcement from working with federal agents to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.

Pretty sad.

The Spectator.

We live now in an age of reverse gaslighting.

Ordinary gaslighting — the term was popularized by the 1944 movie Gaslight — describes a process of psychological manipulation whose goal is to make ordinary people question their sanity.

Reverse gaslighting, by contrast, aims to convince us that insane realities are perfectly normal.

Perhaps we can call it ‘lightgassing’.

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Perhaps because he’s in favor of it.

ZMan looks under the hood.

For most people this sounds logical. You start every project with the end in mind and you see that is the Yarvin – Rufo debate. In fact, that is the primary appeal of both Chris Rufo and Curtis Yarvin. They hold up this image of a possible future and if you like what you see, you support their program. This has been how political debate has been framed in the West since the French Revolution. You are presented with two images of the future and asked to pick one of them.

The problem with this, the reason that ideology must always fail, is that it never considers if the end is possible or even plausible. This is not because the ideologue is incapable of doubting the ideology. It is because ideology must always rest on the assumption that all societies are intentional societies. What we see is the product of human labor, therefore the goodness or badness of society reflects the goodness or badness of the people who made it.

Good people not only follow a certain code, but they must constitute the telos of the society of which they are a part. No ideology ever concludes that the ideologue must disengage with society, other than if it helps him engage with fellow ideologues in plotting to overthrow the present order. Ideology assumes you must be engage in the project of moving society toward the desired end. Otherwise, you are assumed to be working against those who are doing so.

This is why both libertarianism and modern-day conservatism must inevitably fail.

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Not from the river to the sea, but from sea to shining sea the Kill the Jews crowd was out in force blocking bridges and roadways around the United States yesterday. They did their thing in San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Seattle, and points elsewhere in the United States. In the heart of the country they temporarily shut down travel into Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

For the average American April 15 was a day to get tax returns filed. For the Kill the Jews crowd it was a day display their support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime — all self-professed genocidal killers — by putting taxpayers at risk of harm to their safety and livelihoods. Their actions are heedless and lawless. The scene below is from the San Francisco Bay area.

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If idealistic politicians succeed in removing U.S. LNG from the global market, it will lead to the double whammy of increased coal and dirtier natural gas from emissions-agnostic countries like Russia. Like nuclear, the LNG export sector is highly vulnerable to political disruptions.

The Foundry.

Ever since losing control of the Supreme Court to a nominally conservative majority, many of the same liberals who have brazenly called for “packing the court” are now just as brazenly seeking to unpack it.

If ever there was proof that the Left views the Supreme Court as just another legislative body to lobby for their agenda, it’s their shameless efforts to pressure liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 69, to retire before the presidential election in November so President Joe Biden can nominate a younger—and equally or more liberal—replacement.

According to a pair of March 27 articles in The Huffington Post and at AboveTheLaw.com, two leftist law professors are among the loudest voices calling for Sotomayor’s resignation. “I would love to see Sotomayor retire,” one of them, Lucas Powe Jr., a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “I would love to trade her for a 50-year-old justice.”

Presumably one with two brain cells to rub together.

Washington Free Beacon.

Michigan public schools used nearly half of their pandemic relief spending on employee compensation, according to a new report from a Michigan policy watchdog. Many of the state’s students, meanwhile, continue to perform below pre-pandemic testing benchmarks.

So far, Michigan public schools have spent 47 percent of their $1.2 billion in COVID relief expenditures on staff salaries and bonuses, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The watchdog group says state data show staffing levels did not increase significantly enough for new hires to explain away the heavy spending on teacher salaries and benefits.

“Overall, staffing levels did not increase drastically enough to suggest that the $1.2 billion of Covid aid slated for compensation was primarily devoted to mitigating learning losses incurred by prolonged school closures,” the report states. “Although a portion of the funds may have been used to hire new employees, these findings support the idea that school districts mostly used Covid relief funds to pad existing employees’ compensation levels.” Over half of Michigan’s pandemic relief funding for schools left must be spent by September.

As Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying, the purpose of government is to hire and pay government workers. Like it or not, public school teachers are government workers, and (as history has demonstrated time and time again), the objective of government workers (and of the Unions that now represent them) is to get as much money as possible for as little work as they can get away with.

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Police across the United States arrested dozens of “Free Palestine” protesters Monday as part of a “multi-city economic blockade” targeting major airports, highways, and bridges. Those defendants are set to receive free bail money and legal assistance thanks to an online fundraiser hosted by ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s primary fundraising platform that earns a cut off of each contribution.

The “bail and legal defense fund,” organized by A15 Action and Community Justice Exchange, remains live on ActBlue’s website roughly 24 hours after the protests caused chaos in cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. The fundraising platform—which is used by President Joe Biden and every major Democratic congressional campaign—earns a 3.95 percent transaction fee each time a donor contributes to the fund, according to its policies.

ActBlue’s website states that its fundraising platform is exclusively available to groups whose “work is not at odds with values including, but not limited to, social equality; women’s rights; LGBTQIA2S+ rights; racial justice; diversity; freedom of speech; disability rights; and respect for scientific inquiry, discovery, and data.”

The link between ActBlue raising funds for activists that deliberately “coordinate[d] to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital” in solidarity with “Palestine” highlights the blurred boundary between the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel faction and its mainstream establishment.

ActBlue did not respond to a request for comment.

Newsbusters.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell closed out her Tuesday show by deciding to pick a fight with math. Reacting to Monday’s WNBA draft, Mitchell called “sexism” on the fact that number one overall pick Caitlin Clark will have a roughly $76,000 rookie salary while her male counterpart makes slightly north of $12 million.

Mitchell reported that “Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking streak continues with what could be the most watched WNBA Draft ever. Clark was the number one pick, of course, last night, scoring her place with the Indiana Fever. Clark stands to make millions from endorsements, but fans are outraged over the massive gender pay gap in her salary. Clark will reportedly earn, get this, $76,000 for her rookie season. Compare that to the $12 million, million dollars, last year’s number one NBA draft pick made in his rookie year.”

Missing from this monologue was any discussion of revenue. The NBA projected that during its 2021–22 season it would bring in over $10 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, last season, the WNBA’s projected revenue was around $200 million. As of 2018, the league was losing around $10 million a season. Still, Mitchell smeared Americans as sexist for not eliminating the gap overnight, “That gender inequality and the sexism facing women’s sports is a big focus on Saturday Night Live.”

To progressives, ‘revenue’ is only relevant when the government wants to spend some of your money. In their minds, the money that employees are paid just magically drops from heaven into the pockets of management, who are then responsible for distributing it in an ‘equitable’ fashion. But, as Margaret Thatcher famously observed. the trouble with such socialism is that eventually you run out of Other People’s Money.

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The Biden administration’s top criminal prosecutor served on the board of directors of a “social justice law firm” that during her tenure called to defund police departments and free cop killers from prison, records show.

Nicole M. Argentieri, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division, served on the board of the Legal Aid Society of New York from January 2019 to May 2022, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings. During her tenure on the board, the Legal Aid Society of New York endorsed “the movement to #DefundNYPD” and promoted a “March to Defund the NYPD” rally.

The Legal Aid Society also represented some of New York City’s most notorious cop killers when Argentieri served on the board. In 2019 and 2020, lawyers for the nonprofit represented Black Liberation Army members Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim in their parole cases. The pair were convicted of assassinating two New York City police officers in May 1971 and murdered a San Francisco police officer inside a patrol station in August 1971. They were granted parole over the objections of their victims’ families and then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.

The Foundry.

A California public school district that attempted to hide pro-Hamas course material from parents now faces legal action.

The Deborah Project, which describes itself as “a public interest law firm that defends the civil rights of Jews in education,” filed suit April 8 against the Berkeley Unified School District, accusing it of “intentionally trying to prevent parents from knowing what their kids are learning.”

The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, also accuses the school system of “teaching kids mendacious and malicious lies about [Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel] that are grossly inaccurate and, on the basis of this false information, fomenting hatred against the Jewish State.”

Read it.

Plenty of room at Guantanamo Bay.

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Why bother? It’s not as if they intended to do anything about it.

The Beatles – Taxman (Remastered)