Republican News

This post was originally published on this site

There’s something not quite right with the mental state of progressives. What’s worse is when they’re in positions of power, they tend to wield it like a cudgel and flatten everyone who disagrees with them.

That’s basically where the governor of Maine, Janet Mills, and the cabal of lunatics she has surrounding and empowering her fall.

It would be laughable as farcical if it wasn’t so tragic for the lives and dreams these authoritarians crush, preening from their virtue-signaling knob of swamp muck.

It burned some collective prog butts when President Trump signed the ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’ order at the beginning of the month.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday intended to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” gives federal agencies wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said at a signing ceremony in the East Room that included lawmakers and female athletes who have come out in support of a ban, including former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the order “upholds the promise of Title IX” and will require “immediate action, including enforcement actions, against schools and athletic associations” that deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms.

Women who had been the victims of the trans insanity and girls who were looking forward to their own dreams of being champions, as well as everyday Americans who were appalled by the unfairness of it all, applauded the return to common sense and biology.

Women’s sport is given back to women in the US. Trump praises @Riley_Gaines_ for leading the fight back. 💪 pic.twitter.com/Mj9sLn5ImU

— FairPlayForWomen (@fairplaywomen) February 5, 2025

Hardcore believers in the trans cult, though entrenched and protected by their blue cocoons, were adamant that the Trump order had no power over them. They were going to continue to victimize their young girls and women by stripping their rights for the sake of the pretenders. Maine stepped forward to fly that trans-cult flag proudly.

The executive director of the primary governing body for high school sports in the state of Maine said athletic teams will continue to determine eligibility based on a student’s stated gender identity, despite the president’s executive order seeking to keep “men out of women’s sports.”

Mike Burnham, executive director of the Maine Principals Association (MPA), said the president’s order conflicts with state law aimed at protecting human rights and, as a result, the MPA will defer to the latter when it comes to determining athletic eligibility.  

“The executive order and our Maine state Human Rights Act are in conflict, and the Maine Principal’s Association (MPA) will continue to follow state law as it pertains to gender identity,” Burnham told local news outlet Maine Public following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order.

The enablers in Maine might not be prepared for the firestorm that’s coming after a mediocre male pole vaulter (formerly John Rydzewski) decided to rename himself ‘Katie‘ and took the girls’ state championship on Monday.

A transgender-identifying male, competing under the name “Katie,” from Cumberland’s Greely High School, came out on top in the girls’ pole vault competition on Monday during the Maine Indoor Track Meet at Bates College.

The student is a biological male who previously competed in boys’ pole-vaulting as a mid-level athlete. Since identifying as a girl, “Katie” has been allowed to compete against female students.

At Monday’s meet, “Katie” jumped 11 feet, a mediocre score for boys, but within just one inch of Maine’s girls’ pole-vault champion, who set an 11-foot, one-inch record last year at the National Pole Vault Summit.

He jumped a full eight inches higher than the second-place winner among the girls.

Adorable, isn’t he? The only nod to remotely being girlish is the Prince Valiant hairdo. 

“The girls are being gaslit and silenced, and the boys are being lied to about biological reality.”

Save Girls Sports https://t.co/lwC0t1braI pic.twitter.com/65pwUe4qOR

— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) February 19, 2025

The blatant scammer’s points also helped his high school fraudulently take the overall championship, so it wasn’t only the girls in the pole vault affected by the dishonesty. The girls’ track teams from the other schools were ripped off and denied their proper placements and kudos for their efforts.

Not only did this boy cheat in the pole vault, but his team, Greely High School, ended up winning the girls’ team state championship because of his points.

The governor of Maine, Janet Mills (D), is a traitor to women for allowing this abuse of girls and confused boys to… pic.twitter.com/qS2ZyDX8Wl

— Beth Bourne (@bourne_beth2345) February 18, 2025

Before the competition, when word of ‘Katie’s’ participation emerged, one of the referees said he’d have no part in working the event because he was condoning it by doing so – stealing a young woman’s rightful championship away.

This is what courage looks like.

Yesterday this man, Allen Cornwall, refused to be an official and pole vault event judge at the Maine state meet in protest of a boy competing in the girls’ pole vault event.

“They’re [trans-identified boy] going to be the conference champion,… pic.twitter.com/8QvVBiy65y

— Beth Bourne (@bourne_beth2345) February 18, 2025

…“They’re [trans-identified boy] going to be the conference champion, quote unquote girls Conference champion. They’ll be the quote unquote girls state champion for the class B athlete. And these girls that have been competing for years, working towards this, are just being sidelined, and it’s really disgusting,” said Cornwall.

‘Disgusting’ is one of the words one could use. God bless him.

But these sick ideologues don’t see a thing wrong with any of it.

From Rep. Katrina Smith:
Who is responsible in Maine for continuing to allow Men in women’s sports and men in girls bathrooms? These people here ⬇️. The ADULTS who consciously made the decision to continue to remain silent while our girls are being disrespected and put into… pic.twitter.com/1uyjxMohdP

— Wessels for Governor 🇺🇸 (@Robert_Wessels) February 19, 2025

…The ADULTS who consciously made the decision to continue to remain silent while our girls are being disrespected and put into dangerous situations.   Reach out to them directly and continue the pressure! Protect our girls!  

𝐏𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧 – 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐡.𝐝𝐨𝐞@𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞.𝐠𝐨𝐯 

𝐌𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐦: 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧  

𝐦𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐦@𝐦𝐩𝐚.𝐜𝐜 𝐀𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐲 – 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲.𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥@𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞.𝐠𝐨𝐯

Trump’s order ties compliance to Title IX funds – will that be enough to force states like Maine and California into sanity and fairness?

The tide has turned in Maine, like the rest of the nation. Our crazy politicians just haven’t noticed. They will.

— Better Maine (@MaineLogic) February 13, 2025

Or is it going to take – which is what I believe, mad as it sounds – an act of Congress to finally root this evil from our schools?

This is BEYOND ridiculous.

It’s been nearly 2 weeks since @POTUS’s EO getting men out of women’s sports.

Time to vote on my bill and get men out of women’s sports at EVERY level. https://t.co/yOdP1BvayT

— Coach Tommy Tuberville (@SenTuberville) February 18, 2025

Destroying the trans cult is going to be an epic case of life-or-death whack-a-mole. Their sick, deviant, evil-to-the-core tentacles have become so deeply threaded through so many aspects of society in so short a time, from sports to schools to gyms to the military to statehouses and even congressional bathrooms. 

The stench permeates damn near any occasion as ‘trans something’ somehow rears its ugly head in the most benign of circumstances and most basic of discussions.

Maine gets away with their lunacy because they are so small – they fly under the radar. But those girls who live there have the same big dreams girls anywhere else do.

They have a right to expect their worthless governor and her toadies to respect and prioritize those dreams vice the selfish ego trips of the phony ‘Katies’…who will go back to being ‘Johns’ when they’ve stroked their ill-gotten trophies enough.

This post was originally published on this site

Let us not be tempted to rewrite history in a headlong attempt to dodge it — or repeat it. Working to end the war in Ukraine is a rational policy goal. Blaming the Ukrainians for being invaded is something else. 

That’s what Donald Trump appeared to say yesterday, and it’s not the first time he’s suggested it. Trump has tried to arrange peace talks with Russia but appears to have frozen Ukraine out of the process. Volodymyr Zelensky has canceled his trip to Saudi Arabia to protest what amounts to an ex parte proceeding. When asked about it, Trump responded:

“Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it—three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.”

Been where? In their own country? And what deal did Putin offer them, except subjugation to Moscow?

Now, we can have a long debate over whether Ukraine has some political fault in its dealings with its ethnic-Russian population, and whether pursuing closer economic and military ties to Europe was a bad idea. However, none of those issues negates the fact that Russia conducted a full-on, unprovoked military invasion with the intent to conquer all of Ukraine three years ago, and have conducted themselves like a barbarian horde during the entire “special operation.” 

My friend John Podhoretz — no fan of Trump anyway — is understandably outraged over this moral inversion:

You should never have started it. What madness, what cravenness, what repulsive factitiousness, is this? Volodymyr Zelenskyy offended him by raising the perfectly logical problem of a negotiation that included him out, and so Trump began talking about Ukraine’s leader as though he were Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who hasn’t permitted a vote on his leadership in two decades. “Well, we haven’t had an election there,” Trump said by way of explaining why he is insisting that Ukraine go to the polls as part of the peace deal Ukraine is not even involved with! We all assumed this was a Putin condition, but no, Trump said it was his idea. Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine in 2019. He was elected to a five-year term. The Russians invaded in February 2022. Generally speaking, it’s very difficult to hold an election when your country is fending off a near-genocidal action against it, and in any case, there was no requirement that there even be an election under peacetime Ukrainian law Yes, the U.S. had an election during World War II, but we weren’t a battleground.

Anyway, what does Trump care whether there are elections there or not? His claim is effectively that Zelenskyy is illegitimate; according to Trump, Zelenskyy has a 4 percent approval rating. That’s a near-psychotic lie. The last poll, for whatever a poll in the middle of a war is worth, had the Ukrainian leader at 52 percent. Trump wants an election there because he feels Zelenskyy is standing in the way of his effort to see that people stop being killed in this war. 

My friend John Hinderaker at Power Line is a big fan of Trump, and he also asks, “What’s going on?” John can’t quite grasp why Trump is acting as though Ukraine was the aggressor in this conflict either. John looks at the terms that Trump proposes to impose on Ukraine and concludes that they are worse than the Versailles treaty that the Allies imposed on their enemies:

If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924. At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely.

Ukraine has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in resisting the Russian invasion, and its economy is a shambles. Most observers (including me) would say that Ukraine represented the West in its defensive war against an aggressor. So, why such a punitive attitude on the part of the Trump administration?

Meanwhile, President Trump has been negotiating with Russia without consulting Ukraine. Why? Many observers are asking, whose side is he on? President Zelensky has canceled his trip to Saudi Arabia as a protest against Trump’s purporting to settle the future of Ukraine without consulting Ukrainians.

John’s question is easier to answer. Trump resents the vast amount of American resources that went into Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion (and he’s not alone in that either), and he wants to claw as much back as possible. A lot of those dollars got spent in the US, though, as the support mainly came from shipments of materiel rather than cash. 

That smells a lot like Munich 1938, in which we sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler for some worthless guarantees of peace. The Brits and the French sidelined Czechoslovakia in those talks too, and treated them as the problem rather than the victim of Nazi aggression. The UK and France forced them to sign what turned out to be their death warrant by threatening to end their security arrangements altogether if the Czechoslovakians refused. Six months later, the Nazis invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, and the West didn’t lift a finger to save their ally — and the strategic position it occupied, which would have been very useful in the war that came six months after that. 

This is dangerous ground for another reason. In 1994, we guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereign territorial integrity in the Budapest Memorandum in exchange for the transfer of nuclear weapons back to Russia. We didn’t explicitly commit to US military intervention, but we didn’t exclude it either. At the time, we worried that the former Soviet republics would start selling those weapons on the black market to groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and countries like Iran and North Korea to resolve hard-currency crises.  Caving to Putin on Ukraine would undermine our already-shaky credibility on mutual security arrangements and encourage other bad actors to invade first and ask questions later. 

This has nothing to do with whether Ukraine is corrupt or Zelensky should have held an election last year. It has to do with keeping our word when we benefit from an exchange, and having the moral clarity about who invaded whom in this war. (Trump has been notably clear on that reality in Gaza and with Hamas, thankfully.) That shouldn’t keep us from trying to find a negotiated solution that will provide an end to this conflict while ensuring the security of the combatants; in this case, because of the realities on the ground, Ukraine is not going to get a return to status quo ante. That’s hard enough without pretending that Ukraine started the war so as to get a deal with the real aggressor at any cost necessary. 

We don’t need another Munich. And we don’t need a moral inversion to settle the war — and if we did, then the war wouldn’t end anyway, as Munich I taught us.

This post was originally published on this site

Want to know how DEI proliferated in corporate America, especially with federal contractors? Just follow the money … while you still can.

Over the last several months, major American corporations have retreated rapidly from the progressive quota system in hiring and promotions, in virtue signaling as well. Earlier, I wrote about the financial industry hitting reverse on policies they adopted just a few years ago, presumably after discovering just how unpopular those turned out to be with Americans. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration has ordered executive-branch agencies to no longer consider DEI compliance in contracting, removing the financial incentives from the rotten progressive structure:

The Trump administration is directing federal agencies to no longer consider a company’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices when deciding whether to procure its goods or services, according to an announcement from the General Services Administration.

The new policy reverses a Biden administration initiative that asked the government to weigh a company’s internal DEI practices as one of many factors when considering whether to purchase that company’s products or services.

GSA also put an end to paper-straw replacements within the executive branch, which also reversed a Joe Biden policy that would have required no governmental use of plastic straws by 2035. That’s small potatoes, however, compared to the reach of GSA’s reversal of incentives in federal contracting for DEI implementation. The existence of these requirements likely explain why corporate America was so eager to pursue these policies in the first place — they went where the money was.

It also helps explain why so many of these corporations are willing to reverse these policies. Biden and his team had GSA set up these incentives as both carrot and stick. Comply and get rewarded; refuse, and find yourself locked out and grant your market competitors a significant advantage. That is how many of the requirements for federal contracts work; a large number of them have nothing to do with actual deliverables, but with social engineering based on punishing those who refuse to embrace the ideology of the moment. 

Nice business ya got there … shame if something happened to it, if ya know what I mean.

Note too how the Trump administration has ended that practice with DEI. They are not requiring contractors to not use DEI practices to qualify for federal contracts; they are just removing the incentives for social engineering via discrimination. The companies can continue to use those practices if they want, but as we have seen, most of them now don’t want to do so. Even besides the general unpopularity of DEI practices, it’s not tough to see why, since these discriminatory practices inevitably turn into quotas that necessarily pit identity groups against each other for priority, which is hardly healthy for private-sector companies. 

However, federal contracting involves a lot more social engineering than just DEI. GSA also announced that the Trump administration planned to overhaul a lot more of these set-asides and other social-engineering incentives. There may be a limit to how much they can reverse:

The moves are the first in what the GSA says will be an overhaul of federal procurement practices. The set of acquisition regulations “has grown to more than 2,000 pages. It’s burdensome, outdated, and doesn’t allow agencies to buy at the speed of need,” said Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service.

For decades, the government has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for rules governing federal contracting that many found to be cumbersome. It isn’t clear what sorts of reforms the government can make without the permission of Congress, however. Many preferences given to certain types of companies, such as those owned by people with disabilities or Native American tribes, are set by Congress.

Republicans and Democrats may have complained for decades, but they haven’t done anything about it. Why? For the same reason Congress won’t use a simplified income-tax system; they want to use federal contracting and the tax code for their preferred social engineering. In doing so, they lard up both of these systems — not to mention the massive regulatory regimes in the federal government — with so much complexity that it’s nearly impossible to comply with it all, or even enforce it except when particular incentives dictate enforcement. 

I do not necessarily subscribe to the Uniparty belief, but this is a good demonstration of it.

Can Trump convince Congress to take action to demolish these mechanisms? It depends on how much the removal of DOGE-uncovered grift impacts the political incentives for members of Congress — and how much they worry that Trump’s populism could overcome the inertia of the deep state that Congress has kept fed for so long. 

This post was originally published on this site

Holy smokes. Stephen Miller was spitting fire yesterday afternoon on CNN, leaving his interviewer shellshocked If I am reading my body language correctly. 

CNN’s Brianna Keilar and Miller went a few rounds on her program, and to be fair, she did get a few licks in over an embarrassing snafu that never should have happened at the Department of Energy. I wouldn’t have wanted to have to defend the screw up that led to the momentary firing of people who manage our nuclear weapons.

Stephen Miller mocks CNN’s Brianna Keilar on her own network: “I understand that even a temporary interruption in federal employment is a great crisis, a catastrophe for you and for CNN.”pic.twitter.com/iLquVhJVKT

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) February 18, 2025

Move fast and break things is the Silicon Valley motto, and that was a glitch that shouldn’t get repeated. 

But whatever political capital Keilar gained in that zinger evaporated when she appeared to be horrified that illegal aliens who defrauded the government of child care subsidies might get deported for breaking the law. 

MILLER: “The federal government will find every illegal alien who is stealing American taxpayer dollars & that’s what Americans expect to happen. I don’t even fathom the premise of your question!”

“No one is given permission to break the law anymore!” pic.twitter.com/P0MfzdWgKP

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 18, 2025

Miller looked like he was set on fire, and Keilar looked genuinely stunned that somebody could be so cruel as to punish people for felony theft. 

Keilar is trying to use the “DOGE is going through your private information” argument to trip Miller up, obviously ignoring the fact that the IRS goes through our private information all the time. You may recall that the Biden IRS put in a rule that required every transaction of $600 to be reported to the government and the media made fun of Republicans for objecting. 

Biden increased the IRS budget enough to hire tens of thousands of agents to audit you and me, and Democrats were over the moon. 

But root out fraud and punish the illegal aliens committing it? That is appalling! The IRS is supposed to be weaponized against citizens who are presumed tax cheats, not non-citizens who are actual tax cheats. 

That’s not sporting, I suppose. 

Trump’s critics are flailing. They blame Donald Trump for plane crashes in Toronto and worry more about an audit of government spending than they did China getting into every Treasury Department computer. They choose a theme a day because nothing seems to be working, and in the process, they are making themselves look really horrible. 

The Department of Energy screw up was real, but now it is just one of a million things that people are hearing about and it all sounds the same. 

DOGE bad! Bureaucrats good! Illegal immigrants good! Elon Musk is mean Nazi. 

The elite has a basic problem about which, at the moment, they can do little: they have blown all their credibility and keep doing so. It may seem shocking to Keilar that deporting people who committed tax fraud is something that seems obvious to most people, so she looks like an idiot when questioning Miller. 

CNN’s shrinking audience may snigger at Stephen Miller’s assertion that felons should be prosecuted even if they are illegal aliens, but that is common sense to most people. The more that the elite keep revealing their real opinions, the less people will trust them. 

At some point, the Trump winning streak will be broken, but right now, he has all the momentum. 

This post was originally published on this site

Closing the pot-luck tabs … 

Ed: Get ready for a never-ending list of nonsense spending. This is exactly what Trump and his team need to do every day: stand up and list these absurd expenditures. These are slam-dunk political winners, and a very good demonstration of why taxpayers need DOGE to protect their funds. 

===

Stephen Miller gets fed up with CNN’s Brianna Keilar:

“The federal government will find every illegal alien who is stealing American taxpayer dollars, and that’s what Americans expect to happen! I don’t even fathom the premise of your question.” pic.twitter.com/3bsrM8j2U3

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 18, 2025

Ed: This needs to keep happening, too. Don’t allow the mainstream media to set the context of the questions in this corrupt manner. 

===

Over the past three decades, Republicans have generally given birth to more kids than Democrats have. But during those first years of the first Trump administration, the partisan birth gap widened by 17 percent. “You see a clear and undeniable shift in who’s having babies,” Dahl told me.

That isn’t to say 38,000 couples took one look at President Trump and decided, Nope, no baby for us! But the correlation that Dahl’s team found was clear and strong. The researchers also hypothesized that George W. Bush’s win in 2000, another close election, would have had a noticeable effect on fertility rates. And they found that after that election, too, the partisan fertility gap widened, although less dramatically than after the 2016 election. According to experts I spoke with, as the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans has grown, so has the influence of politics on fertility. In Trump’s second term, America may be staring down another Democratic baby bust.

Ed: Gee, maybe if Democrats didn’t champion killing babies in the womb … 

===

Ed: Joe Biden refused to admit that prices went up for a full year! He didn’t do anything about it for three-plus years, and yet we have the new DNC chair crabbing that Trump has gone four weeks without solving the crisis Democrats created. 

===

The Border Patrol made roughly 29,000 arrests in January, according to newly released government data, down from about 47,000 in December.

Border Patrol officials have said that the administration’s new policy of completely ignoring asylum claims—the legality of which is being challenged in court—has meant that migrants, no matter their circumstance, can be quickly deported back to Mexico or loaded onto removal flights. The administration has opened several new deportation avenues, including striking a deal with the Venezuelan government to return some of its citizens and persuading countries including Panama and Costa Rica to at least temporarily take on migrants from third countries in the Middle East and Asia.

Ed: Trump is solving that crisis that Joe Biden created and ignored, just like inflation. 

===

An update on Senate procedure—

~5:30pm ET, the Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to executive session for @Kash_Patel. Then we’ll file cloture to put him on the clock. Procedure aside — he’s set to be confirmed by Thursday.

Let’s get it DONE!@howardlutnick is next. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/wuAghyXaL5

— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) February 18, 2025

Ed: This one’s already in the bag, almost certainly. At least we hope so.

===

A black, queer woman will play the part of Jesus Christ in “Jesus Christ Superstar” at this summer at the Hollywood Bowl. Cynthia Erivo, 37, who played Elphaba in film production of “Wicked” identifies as queer and bisexual.

In an Instagram story from Erivo, the actress said, “Just a little busy this Summer, can’t wait,” next to a post from Official Broadway World announcing the role with Erivo. The post from the page stated, “Cynthia Erivo will be playing Jesus in the upcoming Hollywood Bowl production of Jesus Christ Superstar!“

Ed: Forget it, Jake. It’s Hollywoodtown. But keep this bookmarked when people ask, “What do you mean, progressives have lost touch with American voters?”

===

Ed: This story looks a lot different from when it first started. Batya Ungar-Sargon is up next with a pretty good assessment of where it’s likely to end up.

===

The story that emerges from Baldoni and his legal team is that, in an attempt to rescue her reputation, Lively tried to cast herself as the ultimate victim: a #MeToo victim. But unfortunately for her, she miscast the role of her alleged oppressor, choosing a man-bun feminist who’s spent his life “believing all women,” anxiously validating every word that comes from the fairer sex. He was just the kind of man most likely to be vindicated by the evidence.

The entire episode reveals the flaws of the #MeToo movement. Believing all women are vulnerable to the predations of all men fails to account for the real-world messiness of how sexuality actually intersects with power. But it also reveals the flaws of the man-bun feminism Baldoni has personified for his entire career.

Ed: This is an excellent essay, which I believe may be paywalled at The Free Press. At first, Lively seemed like the wronged person in this conflict, but it’s looking like everyone involved may be an ass instead, including Ryan Reynolds. It’s a good lesson on why it’s best to wait for the evidence before jumping to conclusions. 

===

This post was originally published on this site

Today I read this interview of Democratic congressman Jake Auchincloss published by the NY Times. It’s long and covers several different topics. Some of it I found interesting, but one part of it really struck me as incredible. Rep. Auchincloss suggests maybe the government should be taxing people’s attention. I had never heard of such a thing but I guess this could be the next frontier in things Democrats wish to tax. Times columnist Ezra Klein is asking the question (in bold).

You should think about attention as a collective resource, a public good. A crucial question in a democracy is the quality and quantity of attention the public can bring to civic and daily life.

One of the things that I see in what you’re saying here is that the quality of American attention has been degraded. And it’s a little bit tricky to talk about how you would try to increase the supply of attention.

I’ve said this a million times on the show, but as a parent, I am terrified about how to help my kids have a healthy attentional capacity in the world they’re growing up in. I’ve never really seen anybody come up with anything in public policy on this. Many governors, both Democratic and Republican, are coming around to phone bans in schools — God bless Jonathan Haidt on that.

But you’ve talked about a tax on attention. I’m a little skeptical of its workability, but I’d like to hear you make the case for it. What are you describing, and how would you do that?

We use a phrase that I think hints at what this might look like. When you’re scrolling on your phone and when you’re looking at content, you are “paying” attention, right? And if you’re paying attention, they are buying attention. In the real world, that could be subject to a sales tax, a value-added tax. In the digital world, it’s nonmonetized and thereby is not taxable.

The degradation of attention and the greed for our attention spans that these corporations exhibit suggests that we need to update our tax code to reflect not an industrial economy but an attention economy. And these companies will come back and say: If you try to do a value-added tax, it’s going to be unworkable, and here are 55 reasons it’s unworkable.

Is it going to be challenging to implement that? Yes. But it’s also challenging to do capital gains taxes on private equity. Our tax code and our tax enforcements update themselves.

But I think the core thesis is very well grounded: When you are paying attention and they are buying attention, that has value. And we know it has value because they go turn around and bundle it for a price to advertisers. And we simply say: You’re paying a V.A.T. based on that. And the V.A.T. is not going to go to the general fund. The V.A.T. is going to go to a separate, chartered entity that disperses funds for local journalism.

It takes a while to really tease out what Rep. Auchincloss is suggesting here but basically it comes down to another tax on social media, but not apparently on streaming media:

I’m not talking about a V.A.T. on the back-end monetization of data. I’m talking about a V.A.T. on the front end of how much time is spent onscreen — taxed not to the user of the service but taxed to the service provider.

This is a world where Netflix is then going to be disclosing a calculation to, I guess, the Internal Revenue Service saying: This was the total amount of time people spent bingeing or watching content on Netflix. And then Netflix pays a surcharge based on that amount of time.

Netflix is not a great example because Netflix is a subscriber model, so that is actually a monetized exchange.

Free television is still broadcast and available with an antenna. Should the networks be charged an attention tax for people who watch without a cable contract? On the other end of things, Elon Musk’s X also uses a subscription model (though it’s optional at this point). Would X subscriptions be exempt from the tax? Could Facebook or TikTok avoid the tax by adding a $5 subscription? The answer is probably not.

So if TikTok moved to a model where it charged me five bucks a month, they’re out of this tax system?

What’s interesting about this is that some jurisdictions actually require that the social media corporations offer a subscription. So they’ve already had to put forward what they think the monetary value is of monthly usage, which is a pretty good indication of what it might end up being.

But the short answer is: No, I don’t think that’s a get out of jail free card.

Rep. Auchincloss did say this wouldn’t be aimed at every recipe blog or small site on the internet but apparently there would be some threshold. So the big social sites like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube would all need to pay up not for the number of people they host but for the number of viewers they have.

My first instinct is that this sounds pretty nutty and unworkable but if Democrats see a pot of money at the end of this rainbow they may pursue it. Anything to grow the size, scope and control of the government—even taxing your attention—they are willing to try.

This post was originally published on this site

I don’t know what gives with some of these European countries.

It’s just as well they’re all anti-gun – they’d shoot themselves for real.

Belgium just shut down ANOTHER nuclear reactor last night.

It’s all so tiring.

In the dead of winter, enough cheap clean power for a million houses – gone.

Europe is intentionally destroying itself as America turns nuclear plants back on and prepares to build new ones. pic.twitter.com/zpPWZgYBCR

— Mark Nelson (@energybants) February 15, 2025

They did try to extend the life of the plant – Doel-1.

Unit 1 of the Doel #nuclear power plant has been taken offline for the final time after 50 years of operation and disconnected from the grid. Its closure is in line with Belgium’s 2003 nuclear phase-out policy https://t.co/0IDj051bxc pic.twitter.com/oXssJV7Qow

— World Nuclear News (@W_Nuclear_News) February 17, 2025

It had been humming along for fifty years. 

Unit 1 of the Doel nuclear power station to the north of Antwerp in Belgium has been permanently shut down, bringing the number of commercial reactors in operation in the country to four.

Doel-1 operator Electrabel, the Belgian subsidiary of France’s Engie, said the 445-MW Westinghouse-supplied pressurised water reactor unit was taken offline for the final time at 21:37 local time on 14 February after 50 years of operation.

Belgium used to have a fleet of seven commercial reactors, but two of them – Doel-3 and Tihange-2 – had already been shut down in 2022 and 2023, with Doel-1 now following.

The country had been exploring extending the life of their other reactors, but then the European Union stepped in with fits about ‘their rules.’

We all know how well those have worked out for everyone.

Belgium’s new government is looking to double its nuclear power capacity from 4 gigawatts to 8 GW by building new reactors, Energy Minister Mathieu Bihet was quoted as saying by financial daily Tijd on Tuesday.

…In December 2023, Belgium and French power group Engie reached a deal to extend the life of two nuclear reactors, Doel 4 and Tihange 3, which make up 35% of the country’s nuclear energy capacity.

However, this agreement triggered an EU competition investigation over potential breaches of the bloc’s rules.

Besides now floating dreams of new nuclear reactors, the Belgians are going to have to get off their duffs and do something if they don’t want to turn into the Germans.

And they are on track to shut down the perfectly functional ‘twin’ reactor of the one they turned off this week this coming November.

…The shutdown phase for Doel 1 will be slightly different to that for the other reactors, as Doel 1 and 2 are “twin” reactors that share certain systems, such as the control room and the engine room. These parts will only be shut down when Doel 2 is definitively decommissioned on 30 November.

Belgium will then have only two active nuclear reactors: Doel 4 and Tihange 3. Their operating period has been extended by 10 years until 2035 and the new federal government hopes to extend them for another decade. 

The government ‘hopes’ to be able to have their last two operating reactors have their service lives extended.

HOPES

I guess it hasn’t occurred to anyone in the government to tell Brussels to blow their ‘rules’ out a cooling tower?

Didn’t think so.

They did have plans to invest in one of those big Green scheme Scandinavian ‘energy island’ projects the Danish have been fond of lately, but that came to naught thanks to time, money, and, well, reality constraints. They pulled out fo the project last August.

…As of today, it was another “IF” too far for the languishing Danish project – if Belgium was willing to pick up some of the excessive freight of paying for the project.

Alas.

The Belgians said they were out. Those partners folded their hand, left the game, and the Germans aren’t answering their phones.

Denmark will delay by at least three more years construction of a planned North Sea energy island to supply renewable power to three million European households, a government minister said on Wednesday, citing rising costs and high interest rates.

The projected investment exceeds 200 billion Danish crowns ($29.81 billion) and would require about 50 billion crowns in state support, Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told Reuters. He declined to say how much the cost had increased from original projections.

Just over a year ago, Denmark announced a previous delay, citing cost, of the artificial island that is designed as a hub for collecting and distributing power generated by surrounding offshore wind turbines.

Initially, it was planned as a Danish-Belgian project.

Aagaard said that was no longer viable following increases in raw materials prices and in interest rates, but it could be redesigned to include power cables linked to Germany, adding the earliest completion date was 2036 from a previous estimate of 2033.

The new government was elected last June but not formed until the 31st of January, which isn’t helping the situation in the least. Now that they have decided who’s willing to work with whom, the newly named ‘Arizona coalition’ (I have no idea why) is doing the scramble to come up with a plan. 

…”In terms of energy, the agreement provides for the development of a long-term strategy ensuring an affordable, safe and carbon-neutral energy mix composed of renewables, nuclear energy and other forms of carbon-neutral energy, which guarantees security of supply, affordability for citizens and businesses, and sustainability,” Les Engagés said. 

“It will also involve lifting the ban on the construction of new nuclear capacities in the very short term and taking all necessary measures to extend the life of units that meet safety standards. Specifically with regard to Doel 4 and Tihange 3, the agreement aims to extend their lifetime by at least 10 additional years in addition to the 10 years already agreed.”

The nuclear industry in Belgium was like, ‘Great, fellas – quit talkin, time’s wastin’.‘ 

BELGIUM ENDING NUCLEAR PHASEOUT

The new government has just agreed to scrap the 2003 phaseout law, the world’s most extreme.

Nuclear was half of Belgium’s power. The cheap half.

Now comes a nasty battle with the owner, a French gas company.

They want the reactors gone. pic.twitter.com/x6QcVR1THE

— Mark Nelson (@energybants) February 1, 2025

Particularly as the company that runs the reactors has made it abundantly clear they’re not keen on extending the plant operation past the ten years they’re already approved for.

…The agreement announced by the Arizona coalition partners was welcomed by the Belgian Nuclear Forum, saying it “puts the revival of nuclear power at the centre of its major concerns”.

The organisation said it was now “urgent” to set up a task force bringing together all stakeholders “who will enable this revival of nuclear power”.

“It is important that we get to work immediately so that this relaunch of nuclear power in Belgium is carried out on time and within the budget planned to deal with the electricity shortage announced, in particular by [transmission system operator] Elia,” it said. “We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past by working in separate silos. We call on governments at different levels of power (federal, community, regional and communal) to work together, in close collaboration with the task force mentioned above.”

The one thing you can say is at least the government’s moving in the right direction. 

It remains to be seen if they’ve gotten their act together in time and what the nuclear nemeses in Brussels will do to hamstring their lurch toward energy independence when they get moving on it.

This post was originally published on this site

If you’ve been following the saga of San Francisco over the past several years, you may recall that there was a time, pre-Covid, when San Francisco was regularly making news for filthy streets, rampant homelessness, open drug abuse and petty theft. 

Arguably there was some effort made at improving the situation over the past 7-8 years, especially as it became clear many SF residents had had enough. Voters recalled DA Chesa Boudin and elected a mayor who promised to clean up the streets. But looking back over nearly a decade of promises and activity it’s not clear the city has made that much progress. 

The city did hire a PR firm in 2023 to work on its image and that seemed to help for a while, but just 18 months later you still see the same old problems popping up in local news reports. And with SF facing a big budget crisis, some of those old problems seem to be on the verge of getting worse.

For instance, after years of efforts to clean the sidewalks to get rid of used needles and human feces it’s possible the public works budget is going to be cut.

With the city facing an $876 million deficit and potential layoffs, the department in charge of scrubbing excrement off sidewalks and sweeping litter out of gutters could reduce its services, according to an initial budget proposal from the Department of Public Works.

If the trims occur, it would be a gut punch in a city battling a national perception of dirty, chaotic streets. It would also make Mayor Daniel Lurie’s job much more challenging: In addition to tackling homelessness and the fentanyl crisis, he has promised to make San Francisco sparkling clean. 

“We don’t want to see cuts in street cleaning,” Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon told The Standard. “But it is a possibility in San Francisco.” Gordon clarified that the budget is in the early draft stages and won’t be finalized until the summer.

Even worse than that, the city has a growing problem with rats, a problem that reports blame on climate change.

A study of 16 major cities (14 in North America, plus Amsterdam and Tokyo) over an average of 12 years, published last month in Science Advances, found that climate change is fueling a hemisphere-wide population boom for Rattus rattus, the black rat. In the case of San Francisco, the population has grown by more than 10% — more than every other city in the study besides Washington, D.C.

If you keep reading you eventually find out there’s more to the story of why rat populations are suddenly surging in SF.

 Exterminator Maria Talacona, cofounder of the Bay Area’s Mighty Men Pest Control, is all too familiar with it. “We’re definitely seeing an increase in rodent activity anywhere buildings are extremely close together,” Talacona said, adding that this living nightmare is “my favorite thing to talk about.”…

Talacona said, the other reason for the exploding rat population is the state’s new approach to poison. To protect the health of birds, mountain lions, and other animals that may consume poisoned rats, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2024 that prohibited the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, leading the Center for Biological Diversity to crow that “California OKs strongest rat poison restrictions in nation.” Talacona likened that approach to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Protecting mountain lions and and coyotes from poisoned rats doesn’t make much sense because neither mountain lions or coyotes are likely to be prowling through the inner city environments where rats are making their homes. In other words, if the goal here was to create or restore some kind of natural predatory-prey relationship, it’s not going to work in the center of the city.

And then there’s crime. Violent crime and even property crime dropped last year but the city still has persistent problems with theft. A Safeway store that just closed in the Fillmore district was seeing $7,000 worth of shoplifting per day.

Safeway said it will close its 1335 Webster St. store Feb. 7 due to rampant theft and safety fears. 

One Gardaworld private security guard, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimated the store loses roughly $7,000 a day to shoplifters.

A story published Sunday by the SF Chronicle gives an example of how the same frequent flyers keep making life difficult for SF business owners thanks to a judicial culture that passes them along time after time.

For the past two years, San Francisco cafe owner Hrag Kalebjian said, the same man has stolen more than a thousand dollars worth of merchandise from his establishment. The man comes into Henry’s House of Coffee in the Sunset District and grabs drinks and food without paying, sometimes cursing at or spitting at Kalebjian and his staff, he said.

The pattern has continued despite Kalebjian’s repeated calls to the police. Officers are always sympathetic, he said, but the man is usually gone by the time they arrive…

In November, the man was arrested for theft but it’s not clear where it took place, court records show. After he failed to show up for his court date in December, police arrested him, but he was let out on diversion over the objection of a prosecuting attorney. He was also arrested in January for petty theft and other charges after allegedly stealing from a business in San Francisco. He was then released without bond and ordered to complete a theft awareness class or five hours of community service…

His next court date relating to the January theft charges at another business is in July. It’s unclear if he’ll continue to stay away from Kalebjian’s cafe.

Here’s my prediction for the outcome of the next case: Nothing will happen. The homeless person will get a slap on the wrist and be released and then will go back to stealing all over again.

This is really a metaphor for the city as whole. Everyone is aware of the problems but nothing ever seems to change despite lots of talk and promises to make improvements. My guess is that this same thief will still be on the street five years from now, still mentally ill and/or drug addicted and still stealing routinely from local business owners. It’s a shame but at this point it’s hardly a surprise.

This post was originally published on this site

If you were a member of the British Royal Society, wouldn’t you want to hobnob with Elon Musk?

Whatever you think about his politics, the man runs a slew of interesting science-related companies, including one that can catch the largest rocket launched in history right out of the air as it comes streaking down to earth. 

Elon was elected to the Royal Society in 2018 before anybody cared about his politics. Now that he is associated with Trump he is persona non grata. 

NEW @thenatpulse: Scientists Call for Elon Musk’s Ban from UK Science Club.

Elon Musk faces expulsion from the Royal……

READ ON:https://t.co/xRLM3OQtHU

— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) February 18, 2025

No doubt, if anybody suggested expelling any members of the Royal Society who are or ever have been communists, the world world explode in rage, despite communism being responsible for the deaths of over a hundred million people. 

There are no enemies on the left and no friends to the right. 

Elon Musk faces expulsion from the Royal Society, a prominent British scientific institution, due to his association with and work for U.S. President Donald J. Trump. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, among other companies, has been a Fellow since 2018. However, more than 2,700 scientists have signed an open letter calling for his removal, citing violations of the Society’s code of conduct.Biologist Stephen Curry authored the letter, highlighting concerns about Musk’s shift towards right-wing politics and his behavior online. Musk has been criticized for associating with alleged conspiracy theories, targeting figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and labeling British politician Jess Phillips an apologist for Muslim rape gangs. His involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump’s administration also drew scrutiny for its alleged impact on scientific research.

The Royal Society has scheduled a meeting on March 3 to discuss the conduct of Fellows and public pronouncements. The Society, founded in 1660, is home to many distinguished scientific figures—though more recently, the organization has become increasingly partisan. Recent resignations include those of Oxford psychologist Dorothy Bishop and Edinburgh biologist Andrew Miller, both protesting Musk’s behavior and the Society’s inaction.

Anthony Fauci, by the way, is also a fellow at the Royal Society. His work only killed tens of millions of people and ruined the lives of many more, so nothing objectionable there. 

Robert Conquest’s rules of politics fits here:

On 25 June 2003, John Derbyshire wrote in the National Review Online‘s blog The Corner that “[a]s best I can remember”, Conquest conjectured three laws of politics:^[50]

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Even right-wing organizations drift left over time without renewal. Think “Tories” or the George W Bush/John McCain/Mitt Romney Republican Party. 

The Royal Society kicking out Elon Musk will do no harm to Elon. Does anybody think he cares about what those codgers think? And it is guaranteed that if he wants to speak to anyone in the Royal Society they would take his phone call. 

He’s Elon Freaking Musk. OF COURSE you take his phone call. While you are on the phone, ask for a pass to see a Starship launch!

It’s all just virtue signaling, and it is stupid.