PREFERRING A WARZONE TO SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: WAITING LIST DISGRACE Ukrainian refugees who fled to Ireland are flying back to warzone for medical treatment to avoid HSE wait misery.

OPEN THREAD: Don’t panic.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China outlines Chang’e-8 resource utilization mission to the lunar south pole.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: What is Google hiding in its unprecedentedly secret antitrust trial?

KEVIN MCCARTHY BOWS OUT OF HOUSE SPEAKERSHIP RERUN AFTER HISTORIC OUSTER.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So what do I think? I think ousting McCarthy was a mistake. I’m inclined to agree with Rep. Thomas Massie, who pointed out that he was all-in on efforts to remove John Boehner and Paul Ryan, but says that McCarthy has done a better job of running the House than any GOP speaker in decades. I understand the anger over not getting regular order, etc., but this has consequences that go far beyond internal GOP politics. It’s risky.

How risky? Heck, if I’m the Democrats, I vote somebody tolerable as President Pro Tem of the Senate, then have Biden and Kamala both step down. With the Speakership of the House vacant, they could pick a succesor president that easily. If I’m Chuck Schumer, I’m scheming for that right now . . .

A FREE SPEECH VICTORY: In NCLA Victory, Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Social Media Censorship.

HERE’S THE BACKSTORY ON MCCARTHY OUSTER: It all came down to a question of who do you trust.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Excerpt:

Kevin McCarthy became the first-ever speaker of the House of Representatives to be ousted, after eight of the most conservative Republicans on Tuesday gave up on the California Republican’s leadership, saying he failed to deliver on promises he made in January, including especially to fight for cutting federal spending back to pre-COVID pandemic levels. . . .

Key to understanding why the day’s events came about as they did is found in one word, “trust,” according to multiple Republican House members interviewed by The Epoch Times, most of whom spoke on background.

“The reason we got to this point was a failure of Kevin McCarthy. All he had to do to avoid where we are was keep his word, keep his commitment and at least fight for that, but he did not do that in August,” one of the McCarthy opponents told The Epoch Times before the vote.

“He dillied and he dallied and stopped and started and couldn’t decide. He was a feckless leader who didn’t cast a vision to drive us to do that, to get those spending bills through. That’s what he should have done, that’s what he promised to do but he didn’t,” the representative said.

He was referring to Mr. McCarthy’s promises when he was elected speaker in January to cut federal spending back to pre-COVID levels, to avoid at all costs resorting to continuing resolutions (CRs) or omnibus spending bills, and instead return the House to “regular order.”

The regular order of both chambers in Congress is to write a dozen major spending bills in committees during the spring, then debate, amend, and finally pass them in the summer and early fall before the Sept. 30 end of the federal government’s fiscal year.

Regular order and budgetary constraint would be nice.

AS GOD AND ROBERT HEINLEIN INTENDED: Mission to Put a Radio Telescope on The Moon Planned to Launch in 2025.

GOOD: Defending Against Memory Loss: Prior Training Shows “Profound Benefits” in Cognitive Aging.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: No, puberty blockers are not the same as the pill.

Last Thursday, the Metro published an article by Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic ‘transwoman’. The article was entitled: ‘We accept teenagers taking the pill – why don’t we feel the same about puberty blockers?’

This title, in and of itself, was disingenuous, dangerous and disgraceful.

I immediately wrote to one of the lead editors at the Metro, expressing my concern with the piece, and requesting that they allow me to write a response piece, in the interests of balance.

After a few days, I finally heard back, being told: “it wouldn’t be one for us on this occasion”.

This was disappointing but not surprising, given the Metro’s increasing tendency to push partisan gender ideology on its readers.

So, here is the response piece that the Metro refused to publish.

Read the whole thing.

THE 1970s CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR ECONOMIC POLICY BACK: Price Controls Don’t Fight Inflation: 40 Centuries of Evidence.

The 1970s called and they want their economic policy back. This may sound like a cheap quip against the growing popularity of attempts to control prices in the face of inflation. After all, France is implementing price controls right now, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also forced grocery stores to come explain price hikes with the hint that he might start doing the same. These policies and scapegoating of businesses are the same as in the 1970s, hence the quip. But I could have quipped about any number of historical examples – the 1940s, the 1930s in Germany, the 1910s, the 1790s in France, and on and on. After all, as one aptly titled book made explicit – “forty centuries of wage and price controls” teach us exactly “how not to fight inflation.”

The best way to understand why is by invoking an analogy about thermometers and temperature that Milton Friedman employed when inflation was a big issue during the 1960s and 1970s. Prices function somewhat like a thermometer inside your house. They indicate the point where the quantities that producers are willing to supply to the market match the quantities consumers demand, based on their available budget. Monetary policy for its part, is the thermostat. If the thermometer says that the temperature is going up, it’s either because there are changes in the economy in general (i.e., the outside temperature) or because someone turned up the thermostat. Sometimes, it can be a mixture of both factors (i.e., loose monetary policy and supply shocks occurring simultaneously). Distinguishing between them is not an easy task. People who propose to impose price controls are essentially trying to break the thermometer by preventing it from showing the rising temperature and claiming the problem is solved.

Just think of the effects of Bidenomics as Milton Friedman’s revenge.

ED MORRISSEY: House Republicans make history by decapitating themselves. Now what? “The most likely way out of this impasse will be to find someone acceptable to enough Democrats to overcome the Rebel Alliance in the GOP. That’s what McClintock means, and that will be precisely where Gaetz et al will have led the Republican majority. And to get there, the GOP will likely have to give up its investigations into Biden Inc in order to get the House back underway. House Republicans will meet in an hour or so to discuss their next steps. Good luck finding them.”

SPACE: Holland America Implements Starlink on its Ships. “The company said it has received positive guest and employee feedback from sailings in Alaska, the Mediterranean and Canada.”

BIDENOMICS WORKING AS PLANNED: Dow loses more than 400 points and goes negative for 2023 as interest rates spike.

ROBIN HANSON: A Fertility Reckoning.

Those who consume too much alcohol or other recreational drugs often make excuses. Like “I’m no worse than many others”, “I still manage to get to work most days”, or “Let’s wait til my problem gets worse, like I can no longer walk”, or “They’ll soon make a version without bad side effects”. Such folks can benefit from associates pushing them to a reckoning, by making it clear that their life seems at risk. While the values that drive their drug habits may be authentic and honestly fulfilling, such values are nonetheless in conflict with something else they also value deeply, namely staying alive.

Our dominant world culture today seems in need of a similar reckoning regarding fertility.

Paul Ehrlich may still turn out to be the biggest monster of the 20th Century, a century highly productive of monsters.

KEVIN MCCARTHY OUSTED AS HOUSE SPEAKER, THRUSTING CONGRESS INTO CHAOS.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your phone will emit a blaring emergency alert tone tomorrow — unless you do this.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So I guess 2:20 tomorrow is the perfect time for a coup or something. Everyone will ignore any reports.

DISPATCHES FROM THE SWAMP: Meet the Activist Wife Who Networks the Anti-MAGA White House While Her Prosecutor Husband Puts January Sixers in Jail.

BREAKING: House Will Vote on Removing McCarthy.

Updates incoming as the vote proceeds.

IT MUST BE CHEAP, BECAUSE WHEN I ASKED THE PRICE THEY SAID “DON’T EVEN ASK.” 2023 Mercedes-Benz G550 Professional Is the G as It Should Be.

ED MORRISSEY ON 20 Years in the Blogosphere, and the Danger Ahead. “The real crisis didn’t come from professionalization. It came from Big Tech platforms, which first partnered with bloggers and independent voices — and then worked to curtail or even silence them.”

Plus: “Now we know the extent of the interventions by the CDC, HHS, the FBI, and other government agencies, but we only know that because Elon Musk bought Twitter and published all the correspondence — and the FTC is now targeting Twitter/X. If you believe that’s a coincidence, you haven’t paid enough attention.”

TAKIN’ IT TO THE STREETS: Denver business owner whose ‘poop’ protest against City Hall went viral demands solutions on homeless problem.

A Denver think tank president and radio host who went viral last week for transporting the human waste left on his building to City Hall is demanding politicians start seriously enforcing the laws against the homeless people and “vagrants” leaving waste around Colorado’s capital.

Jon Caldara, a local columnist and the head of libertarian think tank Independence Institute, told FOX News Digital he is frustrated and angry over Denver politicians not doing anything about the “biohazard” that homeless people and drug users have left in the city’s streets.

“People should be able to walk around and go to work without stepping over bottles, puddles of urine and vomit. And human feces,” Caldara declared.

The issue has gotten so tiresome for Caldara that last week, he took feces that was left on the premises of the Independence Institute and dumped it on the steps of the Denver City and County Building. He took a photographer with him and talked to Denver media afterward.

I wonder if City Hall can take what it dishes out.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. No, It’s Not ‘People Experiencing Homelessness.’

READER FAVORITE: Carhartt Men’s Relaxed Fit Tapered Leg Jean. #CommissionEarned

UNEXPECTEDLY: As It Redefines ‘Rich,’ the IRS Is Coming Aggressively For You.

While there was a brief burst of news stories earlier this year alleging that African-American taxpayers were being audited at higher rates than others, and that poor taxpayers were as well, there’s really no question about what’s about to happen. “(The IRS) needs access to information about opaque income streams—like proprietorship and partnership income—that accrue disproportionately to high-earners,” read another IRS release.

So they’re making no bones about it. But the Tax Foundation’s data says that the top 1% of earners income level starts at $550,000 – which a successful two-earner family can easily reach these days. That means that it’s not just the private jet crowd that the IRS is coming for. The top 10% of earners in the U.S. pay 74% of all income tax collections in the US – and that income cohort starts at just $155,000.

That’s not “rich” by anyone’s definition except the IRS’s. A policeman married to a schoolteacher can easily hit this threshold – as can a solo income IT professional. So increasingly, all successful working people are “rich people” to the IRS.

They’re from the government and they’re here to help.