HE USED TO BE A USEFUL SLEAZEBAG, NOW HE ENDANGERS THE NARRATIVE:  Russell Brand a sleazeball? You read it here first, second and third.

WASHINGTON D.C. IS NOW BRAZIL TOO:  Washington Police Advise Lawmakers to Avoid Wearing Jewelry, Keep Phone Calls Brief Amid Rising Crime in Capital.

TARA READ’S ACCUSATION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AGAINST SENATOR BIDEN WAS HIGHLY DETAILED:  Don’t Bother Me About Russell Brand Until You Start Believing Tara Reade.

DISBAND THE FBI, SALT THE EARTH:  Nefarious.

ALSO, FIRST TIME WIDELY POPULAR, SECOND TIME A CONTRIVED MOVEMENT PAID FOR BY LEFT’S BIG POCKETS: THE COLUMN: First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce.

I FOR ONE SUPPORT THE WRITERS’ STRIKE*:  SAG-AFTRA Admits Strike Is Preventing Artists From “Making Their Worldview-Changing Stories” That Push The LGBTQ+ Agenda.

*No, I’m not saying I support the writers. I’m saying I support the strike long may it live. After seeing the opinions these idiots are expressing, I want the strike to go on till they’re all eating crumbs off Los Angeles streets.  And yes, I know it’s not all writers. However even for sane writers the strike is nonsense. My kind of writer never had the option of striking. And that’s a good thing. It allowed us to adapt with the times.

YEAH, WE’RE IN A BAD FIGHT, BUT WE’RE FIGHTING, AND WE’RE NOT LOSING:  Through The Perilous Night.

AND YET IT ENDS UP IN THE CHILDREN’S SECTION OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES:   ‘Gender Queer’ author reacts to Sen. John Kennedy’s viral reading of sexually explicit passages from book.

OH, IT’S MUCH TOO LATE FOR THIS NONSENSE:  Joe Biden announces executive action to create the new Climate Corps.

HOW LONG WILL YOU TOLERATE THIS?  Jimmy Carter’s Malaise on Steroids.

MENTAL MIDGETS THINK THAT THE BIDEN REGIME IS FOREVER:  The biggest jackass at the United Nations General Assembly.

Or that our nation is what the news portray: a nation of woke cringing cowards. Bah.

WHEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FORCES A STATE TO INJURE ITSELF, WE HAVE A GIANT CASE OF FAFO:  Biden administration cuts razor wire in Texas meant to stop illegal crossings.

MORE LIKE THIS:  In South Carolina, a classroom anti-discrimination law is working.

BRAZIL. CHICAGO IS NOW BRAZIL:  Shocking video shows carjackers forcing Audi driver out at gunpoint in crime-ridden Chicago.

AT OBERLIN REALITY IS NOW CONTROVERSIAL:  Oberlin fires coach for totally mainstream opinion.

WELL, IT’S ALL OVER THE WORLD, RIGHT NOW: Vibe Shift.

It’s time to tell the government would-be-totalitarians to butt out.

GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED FOOD PRICES AND GOVERNMENT FOOD STORES HAVE BEEN TRIED:  Politicians taking wrong lessons from grocery store difficulties.

Like all communist ideas the only thing they can do is remove the availability of food.

I’M NOT LOOKING TO A FASHION DESIGNER to “keep my male ego in check.”

From the comments, a correction: “Blaming maleness for his being a jerk is itself a form of aggression and ego. Dude – you do these things not because you are a guy. Don’t think that you can shift the blame to your sex. You do these obnoxious things, you have this pride and sense of entitlement because of YOU, because YOU are the problem, YATA. There is nothing masculine about being an asshole. That’s not what real men do. That’s all on you.”

“CONSPIRACY THEORIES” AREN’T ALWAYS WRONG: THE BIZARRE STORY BEHIND SHINZO ABE’S ASSASSINATION.

At a Nara police station, the suspect—a 41-year-old named Tetsuya Yamagami—admitted to the shooting barely 30 minutes after pulling the trigger. He then offered a motive that sounded too outlandish to be true: He saw Abe as an ally of the Unification Church, a group better known as the Moonies—the cult founded in the 1950s by the Korean evangelist Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Yamagami said his life had been ruined when his mother gave the church all of the family’s money, leaving him and his siblings so poor that they often didn’t have enough to eat. His brother had committed suicide, and he himself had tried to.

“My prime target was the Unification Church’s top official, Hak Ja Han, not Abe,” he told the police, according to an account published in January in a newspaper called The Asahi Shimbun. He could not get to Han—Moon’s widow—so he shot Abe, who was “deeply connected” to the church, Yamagami said, just as Abe’s grandfather, also a prime minister and renowned political figure in Japan, had been.

Investigators looked into Yamagami’s wild-sounding claims and found, to their alarm, that they were true. After a quick huddle, the police appear to have decided that the Moonie connection was too sensitive to reveal, at least for the moment. It might even affect the outcome of the elections for the Upper House of the Diet, set to take place on July 10. At a press conference on the night of the assassination, a police official would say only that Yamagami had carried out the attack because he “harbored a grudge against a specific group and he assumed that Abe was linked to it.” When reporters clamored for details, the official said nothing.

After the election, the Unification Church confirmed press reports that Yamagami’s mother was a member, and the story quickly took off. The Moonies, it emerged, maintained a volunteer army of campaign workers who had long been a secret weapon not just for Abe but for many other politicians in his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which remains in power under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Later that month, the Japanese tabloid Nikkan Gendai published a list of 111 members of parliament who had connections to the church. In early September 2022, the LDP announced that almost half of its 379 Diet members had admitted to some kind of contact with the Unification Church, whether that meant accepting campaign assistance or paying membership fees or attending church events. According to a survey by The Asahi Shimbun, 290 members of prefectural assemblies, as well as seven prefectural governors, also said they had church ties. The rising numbers exposed a scandal hiding in plain sight: A right-wing Korean cult had a near-umbilical connection to the political party that had governed Japan for most of the past 70 years.

I mean, compared to this the idea that the Chinese own much of the Washington Establishment is much less far-fetched.

OPEN THREAD: Hold forth.

YEP: Biden DOJ targeting of Elon Musk is intimidation, pure and simple.

ROCKETRY IS ABOUT LEARNING THROUGH FAILURE: Rocket Lab suffers anomaly during launch, Earth-observation satellite lost.

ICE, ICE, BABY: Stunning NASA Image Peeks Into The Perpetual Darkness of The Lunar South Pole. “Astronomers in China plan to send a mini flying probe to the crater in 2026 to drill for evidence of lunar water-ice. In the meantime, NASA is relying on ‘night goggles’ to peer into the perpetual darkness.”

SLEEP HYGIENE MATTERS: Night Owl Phenomenon: The Hidden Dangers of an Evening Chronotype.

BLUE CITY UPDATE: Atlanta has entire families living in parks.

UPDATE: An Atlanta reader emails:

I’ve lived here since 2001 and until a few years ago I had never seen a tent under a highway overpass. Now they seem to be everywhere.

Not defending it, but being homeless is easier than ever because of technology.

With only a smartphone, one can have and manage a bank account, receive income (like public benefits), make online payments, communicate with friends and family, hire transportation to/from your location, schedule medical appointments, have food delivered to your location, purchase items on Amazon delivered to a nearby dropoff point, arrange drug deals, find customers for sexual services, etc.

A homeless person in America with a smartphone can shop, select, and have their preferred tent delivered to them from China to a nearby Amazon locker within a few days, as well as any other “camping” supplies they desire.

In balmy Georgia for 9/12ths of the year, that is a “home-free” lifestyle that is completely feasible from a tent under I-75.

Good point. (Bumped).