UK Prime Minister Plans to Stream Netflix Incel Drama in Public Schools

UK Prime Minister Plans to Stream Netflix Incel Drama in Public Schools 1

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UK Prime Minister Plans to Stream Netflix Incel Drama in Public Schools 2

Have you heard about this show on Netflix called “Adolescence?” I haven’t watched it but the show has been at the top of the Netflix streaming chart for several weeks, making it into the top 10 most streamed series ever.

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The show takes place in the UK and the basic premise is that a 13-year-old boy is arrested for the murder of a female classmate. Here’s the description from Wikiipedia (mild spoilers from here on out if you care about those):

In an English town, armed police raid a family home and arrest Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, on suspicion of murder of a classmate, Katie Leonard. Jamie is processed and held at a police station for questioning, and then remanded in custody at a secure training centre. Investigations at Jamie’s school and interviews by a forensic psychologist reveal that Jamie has been chronically bullied via social media. Other students, including Katie, had targeted him on Instagram, calling Jamie ugly and labelling him an incel. Jamie has come to internalise these things and lashes out when this worldview is questioned. At home, Jamie’s family deals with the community’s backlash against them as they work together to cope with Jamie’s arrest and subsequent detention.

The question of whether or not Jamie is guilty is resolved in the first episode. He is guilty and the murder is apparently caught on camera. The four-episode series is really about unraveling why he did it. The answers to that all revolve around the time he spent online picking up misogynistic messages. Some people are referring to adolescence as an “incel” drama.

The show has been immensely popular in the UK and seems to have struck some kind of nerve, so much so that the show’s creator recently met with Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss showing the program in secondary schools.

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The makers of hit Netflix show “Adolescence ” have sparked a conversation in Britain and beyond on how to protect children from violent misogyny and other harmful content on social media.

Now they have the ear of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who welcomed the filmmakers to Downing Street on Monday for talks on child protection. Starmer’s office said he backed an initiative by Netflix to stream the drama series for free to secondary schools across the country, so that as many teens as possible can watch it…

“It seems like the whole nation is talking about ‘Adolescence’ and not just this nation,” Starmer said. “As a dad, I have not found it easy to watch this with children, because it connects with the fears and worries that you have as parents and adults.”

“There isn’t one single policy lever to pull. It’s actually a much bigger problem than that,” he added. “And that’s the devastating effect that the problem of misogyny has on our society.”

The show’s creator, Stephen Graham, said he was shocked after reading news stories about actual crimes like the one depicted in the show:

“I read an article in the newspaper, which was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death. And … I was stunned by what I was reading,” Graham says. “And then, about three or four months later, there was a story on the news … about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death, and this incident was the opposite end to the country to the first incident that I’d read about.”…

Graham says his initial reaction was to blame the boys’ parents, but then he began to reconsider: “Adolescence is a very difficult age, as we all know. You go through a lot of different things, physically, mentally, and even spiritually in the greater scheme of things,” he says. “My main question was why: Why is this happening?”

As Adolescence shows, there’s no easy answer to that question. The series paints a portrait of young people adrift in chaotic schools where bullying is rampant. Jamie’s parents, though well meaning, are unaware of the degree to which social media, internet culture and toxic masculinity influence their son.

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It’s not clear which actual crimes he was talking about but some have accused him and his co-creator Jack Thorne, of making a fictional tale based on the Southport murders in which a 17-year-old killed three young girls. The teen in that case was black, which has led to accusations that Graham race-swapped the teen offender.

Thorne has denied it.

Thorne, who created the show with Stephen Graham, responded: “They’ve claimed that Stephen and I based it on a story, and another story, so we race-swapped because we were basing it on here, and it ended up there, and everything else. Nothing is further from the truth.

“I have told a lot of real-life stories in my time, and I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real-life story and put it on screen and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.”

Asked by Sopel how he reacted to the criticism, Thorne replied: “That it should have been a Black boy? It’s absurd to say that this is only committed by Black boys. It’s absurd. It’s not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.

“We’re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.”

There’s also a bit of a backlash over the fact that, while the show may be well-made, it’s ultimately a fictional tale. So why is it being treated as if it were a solution to real crime? Here’s a recent argument over that point on Good Morning Britain.

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As I said, I haven’t watched the show. It must be effective as a drama if it’s getting this much attention. But I sort of doubt showing this to kids is going to change things for the better. Children who murder other children probably aren’t going to be dissuaded by a 4-hour mini-series. 

Small UK Energy Utilities Seem to Be Lights Out

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Small UK Energy Utilities Seem to Be Lights Out 4

This is an odd thing happening in the land of the Green Grift.

It seems there have been all these smallish utility companies in the United Kingdom that have, for instance, sold off shares of their windmills or solar to folks – a co-op, if you will – in exchange for breaks on rates on gas or other things.

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It seems many of them are having real trouble.

There was one two weeks ago, Ripple Energy, which announced to its 20,000+ customers it was about to go ‘bust.’

…Ripple Energy, a renewable energy generation firm, asks customers to chip in money to co-own wind turbines or solar farms in the UK.

Rather than being an energy supplier, Ripple lets people buy shares in renewable energy sites. They receive discounted energy from major suppliers, such as British Gas.

This helps keep energy bills – and carbon footprints – low, the company says.

Since rates are sky-high in Britain, I’m not sure how successful that’s been, but people do like to buy into promises. 

Like the revolution the president of Ripple Energy promised not so long ago.

…The firm has 35 employees and is led by Sarah Merrick, who founded the business in 2017.

A clean energy revolution is underway in Britain, and it’s our mission to make sure real people are at the heart of it,’ she said in October.

A Reddit user with stakes in Kirk Hill Coop, a wind farm located in Ayrshire, Scotland, said they received an email from the group confirming Ripple is falling into administration.

Viva la revolution!

What a shame Ripple and its investors/believers are rolling out of it.

At least Ripple says it’s trying to find replacement energy sources for its co-owners of windmills and such modern green marvels.

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That’s not the case for the big boom heard last night when Rebel Energy went under.

Rebel Energy has gone bust – bust leaving 90,000 customers without a supplier. Rebel Energy, which serves about 80,000 households and 10,000 business customers, will cease trading immediately.

Rebel was founded in 2019 by Dan Bates, a former energy trader with the oil company BP, to “make things fairer for customers and the planet”.

It seems that, contrary to Mr Bates’ assertion, things were not always ‘fairer for the customers’ who had to deal with Rebel.

A UK energy supplier with about 90,000 customers has gone bust, blaming a “perfect storm” of soaring wholesale prices and squeezed customers, on the day households face another increase in gas and electricity bills.

...It also had one of the industry’s worst customer service scores, according to Citizens Advice. The supplier came bottom of the consumer body’s rankings with a score of 2.4 out of 5 with 53 complaints per 10,000 customers between October and December 2024. Its customers waited one minute and 42 seconds on average when they called its helpline, while only 62.9% of emails were responded to within two days.

Rebel’s collapse comes weeks after the energy regulator for Great Britain, Ofgem, began disciplinary action against the company over concerns that it had not properly ringfenced the money it had collected from customers to be used to support renewable energy subsidies.

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What they’re referring to in the story with ‘on the day households face another increase‘ is that, on April 1, the British cap on utility rates increased by a scheduled 6.4%.

Energy bills will rise by 6.4% on 1 April, due to the latest energy price cap coming into effect.

Ofgem’s new price cap will take the typical dual fuel bill to £1,849 per year, an annual increase of £111, although the exact price you pay will depend on your usage. The price cap is reviewed quarterly, meaning this will cover April to June.

The rise follows a 1.2% increase in January and a 10% hike in October 2024, due to volatile wholesale prices. The higher energy bills will be particularly felt by many pensioners after losing their Winter Fuel Payment last year.

Energy customers in the UK have been told to shop around for the best rates, or deals they can wangle, and that’s been especially true with Labour in charge. 

The same Labour Party that stripped away elderly British pensioners’ small winter fuel payment this past winter, which turned into one of the most brutal in years.

But that’s also allowed very small ‘energy’ firms to spring up, sign up customers, and now that things are hideously expensive, also collapse from the strain. Thus leaving their customers scrambling for both energy itself as well as something they can afford.

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It gets more difficult every day in the Climate Cult driven madness that is the UK.

But when the Net Zero nut determining your country’s energy direction is concreting up the last natural gas fracking wells left while his committee of cultists is dictating that the public should ‘cut back on kebabs‘…well, hello.

…While voters might support the idea of reaching net zero emissions in principle, they are loath to make the lifestyle changes Miliband has championed, including the installation of heat pumps to replace their gas boilers and inconvenient low-range electric vehicles instead of petrol and diesel cars. On March 21, Miliband insisted that the Government was “absolutely up for the fight” over net zero. But the extent to which Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, will remain in the trenches with him is in doubt.

The most recent recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, the Government’s official adviser on net zero, were that the public should cut back on the equivalent of two doner kebabs’ worth of meat each week to help the country reach its target.

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I don’t really think a hundred thousand Brits losing their energy supplier and possibly sitting in the dark every couple of weeks or so is really of huge concern to him.

In fact, he’s no doubt thrilled there’s less kebabbing.

With Tesla Sales Down, Will Musk Leave DOGE Soon? (Update: Musk Calls Politico Report ‘Fake News’)

With Tesla Sales Down, Will Musk Leave DOGE Soon? (Update: Musk Calls Politico Report 'Fake News') 5

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With Tesla Sales Down, Will Musk Leave DOGE Soon? (Update: Musk Calls Politico Report 'Fake News') 6

Tesla experience its worst sales decline ever last quarter, with a 13% drop in deliveries compared to last year.

Tesla sales plunged 13% in the first three months of this year, the largest drop in deliveries in its history, as backlash against CEO Elon Musk and growing competition took a large bite out of demand for its EVs.

Tesla reported Wednesday that it delivered 336,681 cars in the quarter, 50,000 fewer vehicles compared to the first three months of last year. The results were the company’s worst sales in nearly three years.

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Tesla pointed out that its factories were closed for several weeks as it switched over to production of the new Model Y but there isn’t much doubt that what we’re seeing here is a left-wing backlash.

“The Street and us knew a bad 1Q was coming but this was even worse than expected,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, who has been a bull on Tesla, in a note to clients Wednesday. “This quarter was an example of the damage Musk is causing Tesla. This continues to be a moment of truth for Musk to navigate this brand tornado crisis and get onto the other side of this dark chapter for Tesla.”

With his high profile, confrontational statements and postings on social media, Musk has become a lightning rod for people opposed to the policies of the Trump administration.

A CNN poll last month found just 35% of Americans express a positive view of Musk, with 53% rating him negatively, making him both better known and more substantially unpopular than Vice President JD Vance (whom 33% of Americans rate favorably and 44% unfavorably.)

Those negative opinions of Musk are bleeding over into negative views of Tesla, especially among those who identify as liberals. Those Americans are a segment of the car buying market most likely to be interested in buying a green electric vehicle.

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I wrote about this dynamic months ago. Musk has turned off a lot of left-wing potential buyers for his products and there never has been a right-wing market for his cars in the US. His political enemies are refusing to buy and so are his political allies, with the notable exception of President Trump.

But the situation for Tesla is even worse in Europe.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has also involved himself in European politics, promoting the anti-immigrant AfD party in Germany in February’s elections. Tesla’s business on the Continent is struggling.

Across 15 European countries, Tesla’s market share declined to 9.3% in the first quarter from 17.9% in the same period a year earlier, according to data tracked by EU-EVs.com. In Germany, Tesla’s market share in battery electric vehicles plummeted to 4% from about 16% over that stretch.

Even in Norway, which has about 90% EV adoption, Tesla sales are down because of Musk’s politics.

If there is anyplace Tesla should be thriving, it’s Norway. Electric vehicles account for more than 90 percent of new car sales in the Scandinavian country, and buyers here are among the most sophisticated in the world when it comes to understanding the nuances of batteries, charging and range.

So it hardly bodes well for Tesla that its sales in Norway have declined more than 12 percent so far this year. Sales for the first three months of the year were even worse in Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Sweden…

Andrea Fresk’s Tesla is caked with a thick layer of late-winter grime, a state of neglect she said reflected her ambivalence toward the vehicle that she and her husband took out a 10-year loan to buy in 2019.

After Mr. Musk bought the social media company Twitter, she began feeling increasingly ashamed about owning the Tesla, but it got worse after Mr. Musk became a regular presence in the Trump administration.

“Then it became really hard to defend having this car,” said Ms. Fresk, a psychologist with Norway’s public family services.

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Has the negative impact on Tesla finally gotten to Musk? Politico Magazine has a story up today claiming that President Trump recently suggested Musk would be leaving his post at DOGE sometime soon.

President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man.

The president remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to describe the evolving relationship…

The transition, the insiders said, is likely to correspond to the end of Musk’s time as a “special government employee,” a special status that temporarily exempts him from some ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. That 130-day period is expected to expire in late May or early June.

So that day is probably approaching quickly. That may be enough to win over some critics and investors who see DOGE as a distraction from Musk’s leadership at Tesla. However, I don’t think the left-wingers who have turned on Musk are likely to forget. As we’ve seen with sales of Bud Light, angering a large group of people with your politics can linger over your business for quite a while. Last month, Fox Business reported this.

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Bud Light has not yet recuperated from the Dylan Mulvaney controversy, according to a former Anheuser-Busch executive.

“They haven’t at all [recovered],” former Anheuser-Busch President of Operations Anson Frericks said Tuesday during an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.”…

“I think that’s one of the most interesting parts about this story is that they lost 30% of their customers,” he pointed out. “Millions of customers, billions of dollars of shareholder value over the last couple of years.”

Personally, I have even more respect for Elon Musk being willing to put himself forward to lead DOGE despite the potential costs to his personal business empire. But unfortunately, I don’t think he’ll be able to reverse course anytime soon. The angry progressives in Europe and the US won’t forget. They will continue to punish Tesla for many years to come.

Update: Just a few minutes ago, Musk responded to the Politico report:

Of Course: Liberals Stealing From Bezos Because He Isn’t Sufficiently Leftist

Of Course: Liberals Stealing From Bezos Because He Isn't Sufficiently Leftist 7

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There must be something attractive about being a liberal, and my assessment is that it is the belief that being “virtuous” in one’s own eyes and those of your compatriots amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card for actually being an a$$hole. 

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There are countless examples, and the excuses seem to cover far more than minor sins. Don’t like insurance companies? Kill the executive and become a cult hero. Not happy with something? Riot, kill and maim people, and burn down a city. Want to “protest?” There is no better way to protest than to loot stores and get that massive TV you always wanted. Pissed off at Elon Musk? Burn down Tesla chargers and Cybertrucks, shoot up showrooms, and vandalize random people’s cars. 

Being liberal allows you to liberate your ID, and you can expect that even more self-restrained liberals will make up excuses that amount to “I don’t approve of X, but…” And then they contribute to your legal defense fund. If you are a sociopath, you are stupid NOT to become a lefty. 

We already know that the movement to demonize, destroy, and try to kill Elon Musk is going full bore. And if you think that his assassination is not the goal, you should open your eyes. Plenty of liberals are saying it outright, and lots more are egging them on by accusing him of the most vile crimes. 

They want him dead. The people who call using the right pronoun for a male “stochastic terrorism” are accusing Musk, Trump, and all their supporters of being Hitler reborn. They know what they are doing–and the saw the results of their campaign to kill Trump last year. It almost worked. 

Jeff Bezos hasn’t been targeted to the extent that Trump and Musk have been, but his own turn to the right or at least libertarian philosophy has sparked a movement to destroy Amazon, and the tonier liberals are all-in on this campaign. People who are less inclined to violence have decided that stealing from Amazon is a safer and less self-destructive way to strike back. Since, unlike the radicals, they are employed outside the protest-industrial complex which pays the “protesters,” they want to keep their jobs and not be exposed as dangerous, but they also want in on the virtuous “resistance.” Nothing says “resistance” better than becoming a criminal

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Lee insists he’s “famously” a very good Catholic. He’s a moral person — his mother raised him right. And by his internal calculation, it’s OK to shoplift from Whole Foods. Why? Because of Jeff Bezos.

From about 2020 to 2022, Lee, a 20-something communications professional living in the Washington, DC, area, engaged in what he describes as “grand theft auto-ing” from his local Whole Foods store. He would cheat the scale at the hot bar, pocket spices, or take home four lemons in the self-checkout aisle while only declaring two. Lee has never shoplifted from anywhere else — not Safeway, not a local store. He’s largely stopped taking from Whole Foods because he moved to a different neighborhood that doesn’t have one. However, he told me, there’s one by his gym he’ll pop into — and steal from — from time to time.

Lee has weighed the ethics of what he’s doing. At one point, the guilt got to be so much that he confessed his misdeeds to his mother. Once he explained his reasoning — Amazon‘s market power, Bezos’ wealth, what the billionaire has done at The Washington Post — she came around.

“Good Catholic.” I wonder what his priest says. You can’t be absolved of your sins if you don’t possess a sincere desire to reform, and obviously Lee does not. 

But he doesn’t need to have one, in his own eyes, because he is striking back at “the man.” In his eyes, he is virtuous for stealing, even though his thefts don’t hurt Bezos a whit because “shrinkage” is built into the pricing structure of any business. The prices are higher for everybody just so Lee can get his rocks off by opposing mean ol’ capitalist Jeff Bezos. 

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In the realm of retail theft, middle-class consumers and opportunist thieves are a growing group of culprits. It’s difficult to tease out the exact size and scope of the cohort, given how incomplete retail-theft data can be. Amazon isn’t exactly shouting its shrink numbers from the rooftops, and other companies have even admitted to mistakes in assessing the problem. But as one loss prevention professional put it to me last year, everyday, ordinary shoplifters are “like a giant organized mob, they just don’t know each other.”

If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too.

Many of them abide by a certain code around who they take from, and the swath of small-time larcenists I’ve spoken to consistently say that anything Jeff Bezos-related falls into the “allowed” column. He’s the second-richest man in the world, he’s highly visible, and they don’t love what they know about him personally. They feel like they’re balancing the scales in stealing from one of his companies, undertaking some sort of Robin Hood-esque endeavor where they take from the rich to give to the poor, the comparatively poor being themselves.

“I don’t approve of stealing, but…” 

Yes, yes you do approve of stealing. Just as everybody who “disapproved” of Luigi Mangione right before explaining why he was right to kill an insurance executive. 

Liberals keep accusing conservatives of being fascists, but trust me: if we were a bit less self-restrained in expressing our anger at how liberals are self-consciously destroying society, twisting the rules to their own benefit, and burning down every good thing in sight, they would understand that angering the most heavily armed population in world history would not be feeling so free to break the law, burn things down, cheat at elections, open our borders, and try to turn children into eunuchs. 

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In fascist countries, entitled elites are not applauded by their peers for stealing, threatening to murder “fascist” leaders, adopting Brownshirt tactics against the “fascist” leaders, or stealing from people they dislike. They are censored, fired, made pariahs, and called horrible names–just as happens to conservatives when liberals have the slightest bit of power. 

Fascists wouldn’t let MSNBC, The View, every nightly newscaster, and the hosts of the Sunday Shows spew lies and hate at them 24/7. 

Fascists, when polled, say that people who oppose them in a policy should have their kids taken from them and then be put in camps. 

In January 2022, about half of Democrats supported fines, prison, and quarantine camps for the unvaccinated.

• 55% backed FINES for refusing the vaccine.

• 59% supported permanent HOME CONFINEMENT for the unvaccinated.

• 48% backed PRISON for questioning vaccine efficacy on social media.

• 45% supported placing the unvaccinated in QUARANTINE CAMPS.

• 47% backed surveillance and TRACKING of the unvaccinated.

• 29% supported the government TAKING CHILDREN from unvaccinated parents.

The Democrat Party’s corporate media labeled the unvaccinated as dangerous scum, and many Americans believed them.

So, is it really surprising that a new poll shows 28% of Democrats are rooting for President Trump’s assassination?

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Of Course: Liberals Stealing From Bezos Because He Isn't Sufficiently Leftist 8You see the same fascist tendencies among liberals on many issues. Don’t like the opposition candidate? Throw them in jail or ban them from the ballot. That’s been happening in Western Europe to the applause of the transnational elite, and the lawfare against Republicans is transparently obvious.

How many Secretaries of State tried to kick Trump off the ballot? Who do you think funded those efforts? Maine and Colorado tried. It took a U.S. Supreme Court decision to settle the matter. 

Liberals only engage in this sort of behavior because they know something they won’t admit: conservatives are not only not fascists but the people desperately trying to avoid going down that path. We still believe that what separates America from tyrannies is respect for the rule of law, even when the law is abused to intolerable extremes. 

Do you want proof of how restrained conservatives are? American private citizens own almost half the guns that exist in the world. If we were inclined to use them to impose our will, you would know it. We don’t because doing so is wrong. If we were fascists, you would know. 

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But every step that leftists take expressing their own disdain for the law is a step closer to the breakdown of order. You can only burn so many buildings, beat up so many 60-year-old women driving Teslas, assassinate so many executives, and take potshots at our political leaders before Americans lose hope that we can recover our country. 

It may seem a small thing that liberal “good Catholics” permit themselves to break the law–in defense of “norms,” you know–before people give up. Riots, opening the borders to rapists and murderers, arbitrary limits on liberty, forcing people to inject experimental and barely tested “vaccines” under false pretenses, closing schools, mob action, and lawlessness cannot be tolerated forever. 

I don’t know where the breaking point is, but I do know that history says there is one. 

Man Who Sought to Assassinate Kavanaugh to Plead Guilty

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Nicholas Roske is the California man who traveled across the country in 2022 with the intent of assassinating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He made it to Kavanaugh’s house and then changed his mind when he saw secret service agents near the house. After talking to his sister by phone, he called the police on himself and was arrested. 

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Roske had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him but today his attorneys revealed he will change his plea to guilty.

The California man accused of plotting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh intends to plead guilty, his attorneys said in a letter to a federal judge filed in court Wednesday morning.

Nicholas Roske, 29, will admit to trying to assassinate a justice of the United States, according to the letter. Roske was scheduled to be tried in the case in June in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The letter sent to the judge in his case says he will plead guilty to one count of trying to assassinate Kavanaugh and stipulates that if the case were to go to trial, he would lose.

The problem for Roske’s attorneys is that their client confessed to everything both on the 911 call made from Kavanaugh’s neighborhood and shortly thereafter when speaking to the police. In January his attorneys made a last ditch effort to have all of that evidence suppressed.

Defense lawyers for Roske released a bevy of new details about his arrest and interrogation as they urged a judge to block prosecutors from introducing much of the key evidence in the case. That evidence includes Roske’s statements to police and the FBI, as well as the fact that he carried two bags to Kavanaugh’s Maryland home containing a Glock pistol, a knife, zip-ties and pepper spray…

The legal motions submitted to U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte argue that police lacked a warrant to search Roske’s belongings after they arrested him in the early morning hours of June 8, 2022. They also contend that Roske wasn’t given Miranda warnings before being questioned at the scene and that his statements weren’t voluntary because he was suffering from a mental health crisis while being interrogated at a police station in Bethesda…

“My plan was to kill Mr. Kavanaugh and then myself,” Roske told FBI agents, according to a transcript attached to one of the defense motions.

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The documents filed by his attorneys in January also revealed that Roske was motivated by the release of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“I’ve been suicidal for a long time, and when I saw that the leaked draft, it made me upset and then it made me want to — I don’t know,” Roske allegedly said. “I was under the — I was under the delusion that I could make the world a better place by killing him.”…

“And was it just the leaked decision that made you angry, in what way?” an interrogator asked. I’m just curious. You don’t need to answer that. It has nothing to do with anything.”

To which Roske allegedly replied: “From a civil rights perspective.”

Roske also said he was worried the Supreme Court might loosen restrictions on guns so he decided to become a pro-abortion, anti-gun assassin. He found information about where Kavanaugh lived online:

Roske said he found the name of Kavanaugh’s Maryland neighborhood on Wikipedia and got a more precise address by looking at news coverage of abortion-rights protests at Kavanaugh’s home following publication of the draft opinion.

“There was an article that had a picture of the family’s house and [I] looked at the house number,” he told FBI agents. “So I just came out here.”

You may recall there was a group of protesters calling themselves “Ruth Sent Us” who encouraging people to march to the homes of several of the conservative justices at this time. The group posted a map with pins near the homes of each of the conservative justices. Those pins did not include exact locations but they also posted TikTok videos which did include house numbers. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

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While the map did not contain house numbers, the group also posted Tik Tok videos of protesters at each of the six homes. In several cases those videos showed protesters slowly walking past a sign or mailbox with the house number. In others cases they simply showed the house. The Tik Tok videos were linked on the same site with the map so anyone making a small amount of effort to connect the dots could find the exact residence in each case. Yesterday Google took down the group’s map for violating its terms of service.

Roske doesn’t mention a map or TikTok, he claims he saw house numbers in a photo published with an article. I’m not sure which story that was. The Washington Post did publish a story about one of the protesters and that story included photos taken near Kavanaugh’s home, but I don’t see a street address visible in those photos. So my best guess is that Roske got the exact address from the Ruth Sent Us website but there are other possibilities.

Roske’s trial was set to being in June but a hearing on whether to suppress the evidence of his confessions and the search of his belongings was coming up soon. It looks like someone realized he was going to lose on those requests and that meant there was plenty of evidence to convict him. He’s now facing a maximum sentence of life in prison, plus a possible fine. No word yet on when his sentencing will take place.

Given what is happening in the Luigi Mangione case, you have to wonder if Nicholas Roske would have become another leftist folk hero if he’d followed through with his plan. It’s a definite possibility.

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Cory Booker Personifies April Fool’s Day with a Talking Filibuster

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Cory Booker Personifies April Fool's Day with a Talking Filibuster 12

Cory Booker is the senior senator from the state of New Jersey. He is not the senior senator due to his political acumen, knowledge and opinions on issues, or for his overall intellect or even his impact on legislation in the upper chamber. He’s the senior senator only because the Garden State’s other senator, Andy Kim, just got elected in November, replacing Bob “Gold Bars” Menendez, currently a resident of the Graybar Hotel. 

Booker has envisioned himself a presidential contender in the past, and considers himself a viable candidate in the future. Of course, Booker has been, is, and will be a fool long into the future. Monday night at 7pm, Senator Spartacus took to the well of the Senate and began talking. As of mid-afternoon  Tuesday, he’s still talking. He’s cosplaying as Jimmie Stewart, conducting a good, old-fashioned talking filibuster. 

Ted Cruz of Texas previously held the record at 21 hours, set in 2013 in a futile attempt to defund Obamacare. You’ll be surprised to learn that Obamacare still exists, and Cruz’ filibuster, wildly entertaining at times, ultimately didn’t do anything to kill the Affordable Care Act. But Ted Cruz has retained his sense of humor about his record. As Booker carried on, Sen. Cruz put this on X.

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I mentioned Senator Spartacus a bit ago without giving context. Here was Booker in 2019 trying to block now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.

He will never get out from under the meme avalanche that followed. It was such an embarrassment, even CNN’s Anderson Cooper threw shade at Booker for his stunt.

But to Sen. Spartacus’ credit, his ego compels him every day to continue grandstanding, overacting wildly in the process. Forget Jimmie Stewart. If you’re going to make an analogy to an actor, Cory Booker is the William Shatner of senators. 

I won’t bore you with a lot of Booker’s theatrics, but just in case you were curious what he might sound like going into his 18th hour of ranting, it’s pretty much as you would imagine. 

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I’ve seen eyes like that before. In 1976’s The Gumball Rally, Chuck Courtney played Lapchik, a deranged Hungarian trying to run a coast-to-coast illegal road race on a motorcycle. YouTube won’t let me embed it here, but it’s a funny scene worth watching in the link below.

So what exactly is Senator Booker railing on the floor to defend? 

We’ll hear more from Senator Banks in a little bit. Booker, and the Senate Democrat conference enabling him, are defending waste. They’re defending bloat. They are drawing a line in the sand that not one federal worker can be laid off. Every bureaucrat is an essential bureaucrat – even the 1,400 IRS agents whose sole job is to provide laptops and cellphones to other IRS workers. 

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Meanwhile, on the waste and bloat front, the downsizing of HHS and its sub-departments has begun in earnest. Wailing and gnashing of teeth has ensued among the left, but the cutting of the workforce in just this department alone is significant. 

Sam Stein of The Bulwark (Never Trump, Inc.) and MSNBC (stark-raving lunatics) calls it a bloodbath.

The echo chamber on the left is predicting that millions of Americans are going to die as a result of all these scientists getting the pink slip. Here’s the thing. These are the same people that gave you the COVID response in 2020 – the masking, the social distancing, the lockdowns, the postponement of life-saving medical tests, remote work, remote education, the lying and obfuscation about the origin of the disease and how it’s spread, the age cohort most susceptible and the least, but mandating policies that ignored the science. The same people that said gain of function would save lives ended up partially funding what ended up killing millions globally. These are the science types about which we’re to feel pity now that they’re out of a federal pension-earning gig. Sorry. All out of sympathy. Learn to code.

Fortune’s article about the downsizing underway has an interesting passage 12 paragraphs into their story. 

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The department’s leadership will target positions in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology. Positions in “high cost regions” or that have been deemed “redundant” will be the focus of the layoffs.

Talk about burying the lede. Nowhere in human resources, procurement, finance and information technology do I see a murderer’s row of vital scientists. 

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was on Fox and Friends Tuesday morning with Ainsley Earhardt, and talked about the kinds of steps he’s taking in order to rebuild some sense of credibility back into NIH. Keep in mind, this is the same agency that gave us Dr. Francis Collins, who in the name of science conspired with Anthony Fauci to publicly destroy anybody that got too close to the truth behind COVID. 

Can’t have that enter the public bloodstream. We must take it down. 

It’s a new day at NIH with Director Bhattacharya.

One way to restore trust is to blow out all the clowns who squandered that trust.

And speaking of clowns, and tying this back to freshman Indiana Senator Jim Banks, a former HHS worker allegedly axed as part of a Valentine’s Day purge ambushed the senator going from his Senate office building to the elevator down for the ride to the subway underneath the street that takes senators and staff to the floor. This alleged former staffer, and his lady friend, were outraged at his ouster over a month ago, and wanted Banks to do something about it immediately, on camera. Banks didn’t even flinch. He said you probably deserved it. 

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You seem to me to be a clown. And…scene. The timing of the closing of the elevator doors is exquisite. 

Booker has now exceeded the 21-hour mark. Cruz’ record falls today, as does the roster of the federal workforce. Well played, Spartacus. You accomplished, checks notes, nothing. 

Luna’s Lunatic Proxy Voting Theater

Luna's Lunatic Proxy Voting Theater 13

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I know I am going to come off sounding as if I am a curmudgeonly old school traditionalis…

Well. Hang on a minute here.

That’s what I am.

While we can all have a good howl at Spartacus and his Day of Senatorial Emotive Performance Art – the only thing missing was the literal toga – it was much ado about nothing. Booker isn’t much of anything, and his barking at the moon affected nothing. There was no bill, no resolution to be stymied or heroically bolloxed. It was just a lonely man swaying, bug-eyed, at a podium in a cavernous, dark, empty chamber that echoed much like the voices in his cranium do.

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However, what has been happening in the House has been a Theater of the Absurd. What makes it even more appalling is that it’s been led by one of the MAGA media darlings who looks great on camera while spewing all the tough talking points until it comes to her own personal convenience following longstanding rules.

I’m referring to one of Florida’s representatives, Anna Paulina Luna, who quit the ‘Freedom Caucus’ in a huff this week because those GOP ingrates wouldn’t back her motion to allow a rules change for new Congressional parents to vote by proxy.

WHUT

She’s just ‘shattered’ by the betrayal, you know.

Anna Paulina Luna resigns from House Freedom Caucus, says ‘mutual respect’ was ‘shattered’

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is resigning from the House Freedom Caucus, she announced in a letter to fellow conservatives on Monday.

It’s the latest escalation in her fight against House GOP leaders and a small group of members on the right flank of their conference over the issue of proxy voting. Luna has teamed up with Democrats and several other Republicans on a mechanism aimed at forcing consideration of legislation that allows new parents in the House to vote remotely for 12 weeks around their baby’s birth.

“I have consistently supported each of you, even in moments of disagreement, honoring the mutual respect that has guided our caucus,” Luna wrote. “That respect, however, was shattered last week.”

Holy smokes, snowflake. I couldn’t believe it when I read that. Get over yourself.

But sweet thing wasn’t through yet.

What Luna did next to circumvent House leadership was introduce her bill to change the rule as a ‘privileged’ resolution.

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Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is forcing a vote on legislation to enable new parents serving in Congress to vote remotely in the weeks surrounding the birth of their child.

Luna introduced the measure as a “privileged resolution” on Tuesday, which gives House leaders two legislative days to take up the measure.

It’s the latest in an increasingly high-stakes fight between Luna and House GOP leaders, who have teamed up with some of Luna’s now-former House Freedom Caucus colleagues to ensure she cannot force a vote on the legislation.

Luna’s initial plan to fast-track her bill despite opposition from House GOP leaders involved a discharge petition, a mechanism for getting a bill onto the House floor if it gets a majority of lawmakers’ signatures – which Luna’s resolution did.

…Luna’s bill, which is co-led by Rep. Brittney Pettersen, D-Colo., would give new moms and dads serving in Congress the ability to vote by proxy for up to 12 weeks surrounding the birth of their child.

Luna not only worked with Democrats to sidestep both the Speaker of the House and a hard and fast constitutional rule…

…but pissed off Johnson to the point where he shut the whole circus down.

Before I offer up some supporting facts and opinions, let me just state for the record my own – I think this is an abominable way for Luna to behave. Being a member of Congress is a privilege, and with that comes following the rules, some of which are locked in stone for a reason.

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Proxy voting is one of those and a Pandora’s box of the first magnitude. Your giving birth doesn’t confer some special additional status on you as a member of Congress, as you can always resign to spend that time with your child. Likewise, those new fathers.

But what’s so infuriating about this entire exercise is that, unlike, say, me as a military mother, Rep Luna and her fellow actors in the virtue-signaling parade of ‘FOR THE CHILDREN‘ petitioners…

…have a brand-new $12M daycare facility right there.

I mean, I had to go begging for people to watch a tiny Ebola all those years on active duty and still pay for before and after care when he got old enough for grade school. When one of us was on a scheduled six-month deployment – or, in major dad’s case, off to war or some 3d world s**t hole like Somalia – talk about a daycare nightmare. You learn some world class panic care juggling skills.

You are also very poor paying for the best child care you can find.

But here are Congresswomen, some of the most privileged people on Earth, trying to remove one of the most sacrosanct mechanisms for preventing Congressional voting abuse purely for their convenience? When they already have assets for childcare – and hugely affordable ones – available?

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How dare they.

No corners were cut building the U.S. House daycare. It’s a state-of-the-art, 26,000 square-foot facility, complete with a miniature version of the National Mall in the playground.

To employees of the U.S. House, however, it represents more than just a top-end daycare. For a lot of them, the chance to send their kids to any daycare at all is nothing short of a miracle.

The average wait time for a U.S. House employee to get their children into government daycare is three years. For a mother in politics, that means the only way to get childcare in order to keep representing the people who voted you into power is to get on the waiting list before you’ve even conceived.

…The new U.S. House daycare, which will provide care for up 120 children, is expected to bring that waiting list down from 3 years to 1. Once in, House representatives won’t get free care. The $1,100 to $1,700 monthly charge, however, will be significantly lower than the average private daycare in the D.C. area

While Luna may have gotten Democrats and a few turncoat squishes to roll with her, there’s a good amount of seething anger. Not one Republican woman voted for her, and you would think if it were so almighty a woman’s issue, they would have.

MTG had something to say about that.

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…As a mom, I know all about seasons of life. If you aren’t capable of doing the job your constituents sent you to do, then you should step aside and let someone else do it. 

We have critical bills to pass to prevent illegals from voting and to stop judges from vetoing President Trump’s agenda. 

It’s a shame that selfish politicians are putting themselves before the American people.

If you can’t hack it, nothing says it’s indentured servitude.

Please go home.

There is little sympathy among the knuckle-dragging class for this charade.

And, as this Xweet says, the tactical implications of being the first through that long-unopened door are so unbelievably horrifying, why on Earth would they allow it?Luna's Lunatic Proxy Voting Theater 14

Can this be undone?

I’m no Congressional procedural expert – I only play one here at HotAir – but I’m getting the impression it’s up to Luna to pull it back. What about the ‘proxy is unconstitutional’ part of it?

I haven’t the first clue.

What a stupidly self-centered piece of vanity art to blow yourself up on.

Some people tend to start believing their own press, and I guess this is what happened here.

We’ll have to see how much of a darling she is when this all shakes out and, if she’s successful, when the damage starts rolling in.

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Beege ADDS: You know lemme add something that makes me sound even more unreasonable. All I can think about with this whining is a guy named Caesar Rodney, whom I’ve always thought of as a paragon of patriotism and duty.

On the night of July 1-2, 1776, through a blinding line of thunderstorms, that man climbed on his horse to ride the 80 miles from Dover, Delaware to Philadelphia to break the tie in his delegation so the Declaration of Independence would be approved.

No, there wasn’t a ‘congress’ yet, but he was one of Delaware’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress.

In his 30s, as well as suffering from asthma, he’d been diagnosed with cancer on his face, the excision of which left a bone deep hole ‘extending from his eye to his nose.’ He always wore a scarf over it.

That afternoon, when the call came to his Delaware home, Rodney was terribly ill.

But only he could cast that vote.

…As of July 1, only nine of the 13 colonies planned to vote in favor of independence from Great Britain.  New York planned to abstain from the vote, and South Carolina and Pennsylvania opposed the resolution.  The two delegates from Delaware reached a stalemate; George Read opposed severing ties with the British while Thomas McKean favored independence.  While at home in Delaware, Rodney received notice of the deadlock. 

Weak and ill, Rodney, aged 48, hopped on a horse and rode the 80 miles to Philadelphia during a thunder storm.  Rodney’s arrival set off a series of events culminating in the approval of the Declaration of Independence.  Rodney entered the building now known as Independence Hall, ready to break the tie ensuring Delaware’s support for independence.  Shortly after, South Carolina changed their vote to favor independence.  The Pennsylvania delegates opposing the Declaration stayed away, and the remaining delegates voted in favor.  With New York abstaining, on July 2, the colonies passed the resolution with a 12-0 vote.  On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress agreed on their final draft, which had undergone substantial debate and revision over the previous week. 

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His courage and commitment gave courage to the others who were wavering. He changed history.

Hard to do from the couch.

Atlas Intel Proved Itself Again in WI Election–Unfortunately

Atlas Intel Proved Itself Again in WI Election--Unfortunately 15

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Atlas Intel Proved Itself Again in WI Election--Unfortunately 16

Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, which sucks. 

And you can’t blame MAGA for not showing up to vote–Trump and Elon did an amazing job of mobilizing their voters, boosting conservative turnout by about 25% over the last Supreme Court election, which already had a high turnout compared to a more normal off-year election. The losing conservative in 2023 got 818,000 votes in that year. Schimel received 1,050,000 this year. 

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That’s a very nice turnout boost for the conservative in the race, so you can’t claim that there was a lack of interest, effort, or that Trump and Musk should have done more to mobilize their base. 

Democrats, too, mobilized their base, and I’m not sure you could argue that they did a better job of it than Republicans, as tempting as that argument is to make. If this were just a base election, instead of one more like a general election where less motivated voters turn out, the vote totals wouldn’t be so off-the-charts high for an off-year election. Supreme Court elections have tended to be sleepy affairs, and even with all the ridiculous amounts of spending (Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, pointed out that Schimel had more money spent against him by over $10 million than was spent in Walker’s gubernatorial campaign), getting people to vote on April Fool’s Day is an impressive achievement. 

That means that swing voters–at least swing voters made nervous by the Trump revolution–were motivated to vote and went to the polls to vote for Susan Crawford. I wish that this weren’t so, but there it is. MAGA and some swing voters went Schimel to defend two House seats from redistricting challenges, but anti-MAGA forces and more swing voters came out to oppose Trump. 

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Most polls showed a tight race leaning toward Crawford, but once again Atlas Intel–the most accurate pollster of the 2024 election, came through again in 2025. They didn’t QUITE hit the nail on the head–doing so would be a matter of luck more than skill when using polling methods–but they came darn close. 

Their poll, with a margin of error of 4%, showed a 7-point race. The final margin was 10. They came much closer than their competitors, although another new pollster SoCal Strategies also did well. That pollster had more undecided voters, missing Crawford’s ultimate support by a larger margin. 

Scott Rasmussen’s RMG Research also did well, but their poll was too long ago to know how accurate would be in an election more than a month later. I like Scott, but it’s hard to credit a poll more than a month out from election day with a big win. 

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The lessons from this election, to the extent we can extrapolate, seem to come down to a few basic ones. First, massive spending can drive interest enough to boost turnout, especially when the stakes seem high. Second, MAGA turnout really IS motivated when Trump pushes people to show up–this election was not lost due to Republican indifference-. And third, there is a not insignificant number of swing voters who are nervous about Trump’s revolution and want some balance to rein him and MAGA in. Fourth, and unsurprising, is that negative messagine works. Schimel was pounded on air–I saw anti-Schimel commercials during the March Madness games. 

I don’t read the election as a backlash against Trump, but more as a warning sign that Democrat messaging is working to some extent. There is a substantial number of people who are nervous about Trump doing too much too fast. People look around and don’t like all the storm and strife. They see all the pushback and perhaps think that where there is smoke, there’s fire. 

It’s not a movement against Trump with swing voters, at least not yet. But all the noise and anti-Trump propaganda is taking the shine off the Trump agenda with voters who were skeptical before and whose confirmation bias has kicked in. And Democrats, who were depressed before, are angry enough now to march to the polls to take on the Republicans. 

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A lot of establishment Republicans will take the lesson that slower is better, and in that they are 100% wrong. The opposite is true. The reality is that Trump’s reforms are necessary to save the country from bankruptcy, and none of the reforms are possible without momentum that is fleeting. People dislike radical change, even when it is necessary. 

So best to rip the band-aid off or rip the loose tooth out than extend the inevitable pain. 

Unfortunately, establishment-types prefer lesser and longer pain and irritation than quick jolts of pain and rapid recoveries. They are p**ssies. 

The Real Conspiracy Theorists Are the Ones Who Still Believe the Pravda Media

The Real Conspiracy Theorists Are the Ones Who Still Believe the Pravda Media 17

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The Real Conspiracy Theorists Are the Ones Who Still Believe the Pravda Media 18

There is a reason why conspiracy theorists are generally disdained. We all know that some people look for wild explanations for easily explained phenomena, seemingly willing to believe the most outlandish things in order to buttress their unique view of how things work. 

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There are plenty of implausible conspiracy theories out there, and some of them are associated with the Right, while others are just idiosyncratic. 

But the biggest and least talked about conspiracy theory that is far too outlandish for a rational person to believe is that the Pravda Media is interested in the truth, our government elite is looking out for our interests, that the government is not fundamentally corrupt, and that the people running our country are doing so with any amount of integrity. 

With all that we know, Occam’s Razor says that all the madness we have lived through over the past decade or two are the result of very bad people doing very bad things for very bad reasons. They lie, create hoaxes, plunder our tax dollars, and have contempt for the ordinary citizen. 

“The border is secure.” Yeah–then how to explain the 95% decrease in border crossings once Trump took over? “Joe Biden is sharp as a tack.” “You cannot get COVID if you get the vaccine.” “Kids are resilient” and won’t be hurt by school closures. Russia collusion. Steele Dossier. General Milley calling China. Censorship. Misinformation. 51 Intelligence officials. 

The list of lies, harmful policy choices, exposed corruption, media malpractice is too long to list. How many “now it can be told” tell-alls from reporters are coming out–contradicting everything they told us when Biden was in office? 

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Gee, now that Biden is out of office Todd has changed his tune a bit. Is it because of an epiphany? No. He knew Biden was evil. But Biden was his guy until he wasn’t, and he lied. Case closed. 

By now NOBODY has an excuse to believe that our elite is anything but a bunch of lying parasites who hate us and want to remake America in their image, and will do just about anything to accomplish that goal. This is not a conspiracy theory: the evidence is irrefutable.

It is the people who deny this who are the new conspiracy theorists. They have a view of the world, and no amount of contradictory evidence will shake them from it. They are the people who see two planes crash into the World Trade Center and then assert that government agents planted explosives in an hour and took the towers down with a controlled implosion to cover for Jewish terrorists. 

It’s insane. Planes hit the towers, fires weakened the steel reinforcements, and buildings came down once the structure was weakened enough. No explanation is needed. Any decent engineer can explain it with provable facts. 

Trusting the media is no different than the “Mossad or CIA blew them up” conspiracy theories. You have to go out of your way to create the most implausible explanations for obvious things. 

A great example of how corrupt our elites are is the case of the Hunter Biden laptop and the censorship of its public revelation. As everybody knows, the FBI knew that the laptop was real, but told Twitter and Facebook it was disinformation that should be suppressed. And now an investigation by Catherine Herridge and Public’s Michael Schellenberger shows that an FBI agent even blurted out the fact that the laptop was real in a meeting with Twitter, causing panic and a coverup by his superiors. 

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his is a CatherineHerridgeReports 

@C__Herridge

 / Public Investigation

In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.

“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.

“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”

For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees.

The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.

The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions.

Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel.

An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).” 

In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”.In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.According to the IRS whistleblowers, DOJ prosecutors blocked standard investigative protocols that might have led to Joe Biden ahead of the presidential campaign.“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” said Joseph Ziegler, the IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden probe.. “And it related to the president’s son. So not even the candidate.”The FBI chat is cryptic and the heavy redactions make it difficult to discern context. For example, an employee says to Chan that “[redacted] has a gag order from [redacted]… got checked by [redacted] had to backtrack – sorry!”

Another cryptic exchange came from Laura Dehmlow, the FBI employee who told House investigators that an FBI employee had accidentally confirmed that the laptop was real. “WTF(redacted) No COMMENT.”An employee whose name is also withheld wrote, “nope, just a domestic hit job, yay” to which Dehmlow responded, “Yup.”The exchange may be referring to the FBI’s knowledge that the laptop was authentic and not a foreign “hack and leak” or “Russian information operation,” as 51 former senior intelligence officials alleged at the time.The IRS whistleblowers said there was no basis for the statement from the former intelligence officials….

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We know the FBI had the laptop for about a year before this, were investigating, yet they still reached out to social media companies to warn them off of allowing people to discuss the laptop story, telling them it was disinformation, likely from Russia. 

There is no innocent explanation for this. None. Zip. Nada. You need to create a crazy map with cross-connecting lines and bizarre explanations for why this was not a coverup to help Joe Biden–about whom the FBI top brass told their investigators to ask no questions despite obvious connections between him and Hunter’s business interests. 

It was, in short, using the power of the FBI to interfere in the election through unconstitutional censorship of speech. 

Yet there are vast numbers of people who still believe the Pravda Media because it tells them what they want to hear. Imagine voting for a candidate who ran on sterilizing and mutilating children and taking gender-confused kids away from their parents. The media told you this was “life-saving” care, and you believed them. 

Now, imagine learning that it was even worse than giving lobotomies to children. What mental gymnastics would you NOT go through to deny that you were complicit in human rights atrocities? 

Multiply that by 1000–your belief that Democrats are compassionately led to the decline of America’s cities, with hundreds of thousands of deaths from fentanyl, a homeless crisis, increased violent crime, and all the dysfunction in America’s Blue cities. Would you want to admit that you were wrong and responsible for all that? 

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Especially if by waiting just 10 years, you can be assured that the world will end because of climate change. All the best people in the elite have told us so. 

Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t want to risk admitting to myself or others that I trusted the wrong people and helped them commit atrocities. It would be like getting Fauci to admit he funded the creation of COVID. 

So people believe the media because the alternative is worse. 

But belief in the goodness of our elites is the equivalent of a conspiracy theory. Occam’s Razor shows us that the disasters we are dealing with are intentional. The hijacking of USAID for left-wing causes was intentional. The use of “color revolution” tactics on Americans was intentional. 

If you believe Fox News and Republicans concocted all this evidence to fool Americans, you are nuts. It’s there for all to see. It is not, as the media would try to have you believe, “cheap fakes.”

Men landed on the moon. the towers came down because planes crashed into them, and the transnational elite is evil. If you still believe the lies and hoaxes, it is because you have a screw loose or don’t want to face reality. 

At Howard University the Percentage of Black Men is Small and Declining

At Howard University the Percentage of Black Men is Small and Declining 19

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At Howard University the Percentage of Black Men is Small and Declining 20

This genuinely surprised me. A story about enrollment at Howard University, a leading HBCU founded in 1867, reveals that Howard’s student population is only 25% male. Apparently, this is not that unusual for HBCUs.

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Howard, one of the most elite historically Black colleges and universities in the nation, is only 25 percent men — 19 percent Black men…

Howard is not unique. The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has plummeted across the board. And nowhere is this deficit more pronounced than at historically Black colleges and universities, or H.B.C.U.s. Black men account for 26 percent of the students at H.B.C.U.s, down from an already low 38 percent in 1976, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men. There are now about as many non-Black students attending H.B.C.U.s as there are Black men…

“Everybody knows that the women dominate this campus,” said Tamarus Darby Jr., a 20-year-old sophomore at Howard.

“You see predominantly women out here running for positions, and then you see their friends, young women, showing up for them and supporting them,” he said. “It’s different for the men.”

This has obviously been a problem and getting worse for some time but the article then takes a detour attempting to pin future failures on the Trump administration.

…now programs designed to nurture Black academic achievement may be dismantled by the Trump administration, which deems them “racist” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Cultural centers, mentorship programs, work force recruitment activities and scholarship programs are all threatened by the White House’s promise to cut funding to universities that do not eliminate what it calls racial preferences.

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This strikes me as an exercise in missing the point. If black male enrollment is already at 19% at Howard and dropping, concern that Trump might make things worse seems like a distraction. How about dealing with why the enrollment is so low in the first place. All we really get on that point is one paragraph:

The causes are many. Higher college costs, the immediate financial needs of Black families, high suspension rates in high school and a barrage of negative messages about academic potential all play roles in the decline of Black male enrollment and college completion. Howard estimates that its cost of attendance for undergraduates easily exceeds $50,000 a year.

The cost issue doesn’t really make sense in this context. If there are plenty of college-age black women who can afford to attend Howard, there ought to be just as many college-aged black men who could afford it as well. Presumably it’s either a matter of taking out loans, which both men and women can do, or it’s about relying on family money, which both men and women can do.

Putting that aside, we’re left with half a sentence about “high suspension rates in high school and negative messages about academic potential.” That’s really the only explanation offered in the entire piece, which seems odd.

This very much seems like a problem worth addressing. As someone quoted in the story points out, it’s hard to achieve upward mobility in today’s world if you don’t go to college. But I also wonder if this isn’t a case where something has changed more generally and black male students are just a leading indicator. There have been plenty of recent stories about a gender gap among all students headed to college.

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Nationwide, women comprised 58% of all college students in 2020, up from 56.6% six years earlier. Women have outnumbered men among college students for decades, but the gap continues to widen. In 1979, about 200,000 more women were enrolled in college than men. By 2021, that difference had grown to about 3.1 million more women than men in college.

Using data from the U.S. Department of Education for fall 2020 college enrollments, The Chronicle found that women students outnumbered men in every state. In 13 states, women made up 60% or more of college students. West Virginia, where 50.2% of college students were women, had the lowest percentage difference between men and women students.

Women outperform men in ever state. Why is this happening? It’s not because of discipline issues, at least not primarily. Girls just seem to perform better in high school, setting themselves up for future success.

Differences in the academic records of the sexes begin well before college. Girls significantly outperform boys in tests of reading in early grades. Girls complete more college-preparatory courses than boys in high school.

A 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Education shows that 46.4% of high school girls took either an AP course or an IB course compared to only 37.8% of boys. While 12% of high school girls participated in dual enrollment programs, only 9.7% of high school boys did so. When these numbers are broken out by race, girls in all racial and ethnic groups were more likely than boys to earn credits in these pre-college courses.

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The gender gap among all students isn’t as great as the one at Howard, at least not yet, but clearly there is a change taking place that impacts all races. We may all be headed for a future where most colleges look more like Howard does now. We should probably try to work out why that is happening before we get there.