AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Newsom Deploys Giant Can Of Febreze Over San Francisco To Mask Poo Smell.

Meanwhile, Newsom himself tells California voters that Xi Jinping is far more important to him than they are:

NEW: California governor Gavin Newsom admits the only reason Dem leaders cleaned up San Francisco was because world leaders were coming for APEC.

“Folks say: ‘oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.’”

“That’s true because… pic.twitter.com/o2tVpeHvLu

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 13, 2023

SPACE: SpaceX launches final pair of O3b mPower satellites needed for commercial services. “As is now routine for SpaceX, the Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after launch for reuse.”

The satellites themselves, built by Boeing, have been a bit glitchy, though.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Singer Pink Plans to Pass Out Banned Books at Florida Concerts.

Pop singer Pink plans to pass out thousands of books that are prohibited in Florida classrooms when she reaches the Sunshine State during her “Trust Fall” tour.

Pink announced the news via an Instagram post saying, “Did you know there have been nearly 6,000 book bans since the fall of 2021? And nearly 40% of the books bans in the last school year occurred in Florida? As a mom of two young readers, I can’t imagine letting someone else decide what MY CHILDREN can and cannot read! That’s why this week at my Miami, FL and Sunrise, FL shows, I’m partnering with @penamerica and @booksandbooks to give away banned books to the first 1,000 fans who want them at each show!”

The left has been using the phrase “book bans” as a way to make it seem like the right are trying to be dictators and control kids. Realistically, the right doesn’t think that pornographic books should be accessible to young, impressionable minds. The right also doesn’t think that the government should be providing these books to kids!

For example, a book called “Gender Queer” shows vivid images of characters performing oral sex, engaging in intercourse and the practice of masturbation. Another book called “Flamer” talks about sucking someone’s penis. And the book, “Let’s Talk About It,” informs kids why and how to watch porn and how to masturbate with way way way too graphic of images. Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation to help keep some of these inappropriate books away from kids.

Pink, however, thinks that these books and these concepts should be available for any young person to read.

Flashback: There Are No Banned Books. “‘Activists’ buying books at a local Barnes & Noble, where an endless supply exists, and handing them to other people’s children against the wishes of parents isn’t so much “creative” as it is creepy. NPR makes it sound as if these people were risking their lives trading Samizdat one step ahead of the Secret Police. Any dope with a car, a bus pass, a bicycle, legs, or an internet connection can hand some impressionable kid softcore porn. Because there are no banned books.”

More:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1724118635596087578

ROGER KIMBALL: Why Atheism Is Insufficient.

In short, “Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

The answer that secular prophets like Bertrand Russell gave oscillated between a more or less hedonistic nihilism and the sterile liberalism of the do-gooder and social-reformer.

To a large extent, Ms. Hirsi Ali points out, “the God-hole” that secularism has bequeathed to us has been filled not by uplifting nostrums from the liberal catechism but by “a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma.”

The result is a society where zealous groups “prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action—mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theatre on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet.”

The truth of the matter, as Edmund Burke saw, is that “man is by his constitution a religious animal.”

Islamism understands this. That is the secret of its mass appeal.

Christianity also has a profound grasp of this fundamental datum of human anthropology.

The ways in which they schematize that understanding are very different.

We see one alternative working itself out on the streets of London, New York, and other metropolises where the supporters of Hamas are praising Hitler and baying for Jewish blood.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali outlines a different and more accommodating possibility.

As Hirsi Ali writes, “We can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.“

BREAKING: Photos of Cocaine Found at White House Released… And I Have Questions. “You’ll also notice the lockers are numbered and have locks. So we’re expected to believe that the Secret Service doesn’t know who was assigned that locker and provided a key for it. According to reports, there were roughly 500 potential suspects. Are we expected to believe the White House doesn’t have a record of who used which locker on a particular day? Is it possible the White House doesn’t know who has which locker and its corresponding key at a given time? Sure. But, again, this is the White House we’re talking about here. You can’t just waltz in with cocaine and not get discovered. Unless you get to bypass security, of course. As former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino has said, the Secret Service knows exactly who brought the cocaine to the White House, and that someone is likely in the First Family or a friend.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Bold China Mission to Mars Will Obtain Samples Years Before NASA.

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Secret Service Opened Fire on Three Thugs in Front of Biden’s Granddaughter’s Home.

Crime, and carjackings specifically, is so out of control in Washington, D.C. that this wouldn’t even be a story if there was not a connection to the president’s granddaughter. As of late October, more than 800 carjackings were reported this year. That is more than double the number reported in 2022. Juvenile crime is a big problem. 64 percent of carjacking arrests involve juveniles.
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Last week an armed 17-year-old was arrested for carjacking. Instead of cracking down on theft and carjackings, D.C. officials were busy passing out air tags to residents so that if their vehicle was stolen they might be able to track its whereabouts. Unreal.

So, in this Democrat-run city, the car thieves are running loose because the Secret Service not only missed the shot that was taken at one of them, but the three got away. It’s disturbing that they got away but even more disturbing that the Secret Service agent missed the shot.

The Secret Service is not the organization we used to think it was.

WELL, GOOD:

It is basically now too late to save the Hamas formations in Gaza and the left, unable to rescue the battalions, will try to pluck out the symbolic colors. The IDF will soon conduct tours of tunnels under hospitals, and the left will proclaim: Hamas is dead, long live Hamas.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) November 13, 2023

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES:

At least Newsom is willing to say the quiet part out loud. Democrat leaders only care about cleaning up their cities for foreign leaders and major sporting events. Their own citizens aren't even an afterthought. https://t.co/QM0j1Gt8N2

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) November 13, 2023

HMM: New Study Reveals Universal Blood Pressure Reduction Strategy, Effective Even With Medication.

MICHAEL WALSH: Was St. Malachy Right? “While the canonicity of Malachy’s famous prophecies of the popes is roundly disputed (and I generally discount ‘prophecy’ across the board), perhaps we should heed his words. The loss of faith at the top levels of the Church, the diminution of its adherents in the West — not to mention the weird rush to canonize the line of largely failed popes from John XXIII to John Paul II (strong on politics, weak on dogma), including the cipher, Paul VI — indicates an institution in serious trouble.”

That institutions will over time become corrupt and ineffectual is a safe prophecy to make.

FLASHBACK: Chicago sings blue-model blues.

It’s only gotten worse! Chicago is so unpleasant migrants are fleeing BACK to Venezuela.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?

Antifragility applies to emotional health as well. When you guard children against every possible risk – do not let them outside to play or walk home alone – they exaggerate the fear of such situations and fail to develop resilience and coping skills. Stresses are necessary to learn, adapt and grow. Without movement, our muscles and joints grow weak. Without varied life experiences, our minds do not know how to cope with day-to-day stressors. Measures designed to protect children and students are backfiring. Fragility is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think certain ideas are dangerous, or are encouraged to do so by trigger warnings and safe spaces, you will be more anxious in the long run. Intellectual safety not only makes free and open debate impossible, it setting up a generation for more anxiety and depression.

Haidt and Lukianoff use an array of data that shows a shocking increase in American youth anxiety, depression, and suicide in the last five years, but particularly for young women. By 2016, one out of every five American girls met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year – an increase of almost two-thirds over five years. There has also been an increase in male suicide by one-third, and female suicide has doubled since the early 2000s, reaching the highest recorded since 1981.

And these temper tantrums, by people attending what holds itself out as one of America’s most elite schools, is the inevitable result of the intersection of Safetyism, and well, Intersectionality:

The antisemitism we encountered at Columbia is the WORST we've seen yet. See for yourself. pic.twitter.com/FMxBdbDw2Y

— Adam Guillette (@adamguillette) November 13, 2023

PROGRESS: All-female city council makes history in St. Paul, Minn.

RIP: Former Assemblyman Jim Morrissey, RIP (1930-2023).

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Examining Seven Accusations of Harassment Against Moms for Liberty.

GUEST COLUMN: God Here. Megan Rapinoe’s Career-Ending Injury Is Proof That I’m Real.

God Almighty
November 13, 2023

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN—Hey, folks. God here. I’m writing in response to recent comments from Megan Rapinoe, a human female best known for playing the so-called sport of soccer, or “Satan’s Folly” as we call it up here.

Rapinoe invoked my name on Saturday after injuring her Achilles tendon in the opening minutes of the National Women’s Soccer League Championship. It was the final game of her professional career.

“I’m not a religious person or anything and if there was a God, like, this is proof that there isn’t,” Rapinoe told the demonic cretins you call journalists during the post-game press conference. “This is f—ed up. It’s just f—ed up. Six minutes in and I eat my Achilles.”

LOL!

I knew this would happen, obviously, but that doesn’t make it any less hilarious. The last game of Rapinoe’s career—the league championship, no less—and she injures herself immediately then has to watch her team lose from the sidelines. I’m still laughing about it.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I technically “created” Rapinoe and “love” her the same as all my “children,” even the ones who deny my existence. Even the ones who worship Satan and play soccer, to the extent there is a difference.

Needless to say, it would be providential to read the whole thing.

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: When Hollywood Did It Right: PREDATOR.

There is no doubt that it has become much more difficult to make relatively inexpensive “one quadrant” movies like PREDATOR in an era where the corporatized major studios only seem interested in movies that can generate a billion dollars in box office (and eight or ten sequels). But the problem is that those billion dollar franchises aren’t working the way they used to. Box office is down across the board, and the big titles like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pixar and those from Marvel and DC are suffering badly. There are all kinds of reasons why, but I believe that one of the biggest reasons is that Hollywood has spent the last two decades trying to reinvent not just the wheel, but human nature altogether. Somewhere along the way, Hollywood decided that rough male talk is bad, that masculinity is toxic and that part of making ours a better world includes taking those things that appeal primarily to aggressive young men out of the movies they like and replacing them with “better”, woker things.

For instance…

I love how the men of Dutch’s platoon ruthlessly dunk on each other in that way only very close friends can do. Watch the scene on the helicopter as they’re being inserted into the LZ. I hate to break this to all of you non-men, but this is how young men, particularly aggressive Alpha Males, behave around one another when they are alone in an exclusively male “safe space”… in the parlance of our times. If you were in the target audience for PREDATOR, which is to say a young man who grew up in the years before the turn of the millennium, then it’s likely that you found this scene endearing because it’s exactly what you did with your guy friends when you hung out together.

But this kind of male behavior has been branded toxic by the broader culture and it has mostly disappeared from the action genre. Men, it has been decided, cannot be allowed to see other men behaving this way because if they do, well then they might want to emulate it, and we have determined as a culture that this kind of aggressive male behavior must be stamped out.

Of course, this behavioral morality sensor only ever seems to point in one direction. A scene where guys ruthlessly dunk on each other and which includes salty officially unapproved language like “faggot” and “pussy” would be branded toxic and unacceptable today… but women engaging in what is clearly unhealthy or even self-destructive social behavior in shows like SEX AND THE CITY, GIRLS, THE IDOL or EUPHORIA are more likely to be labeled “empowering” or described by critics as “a gritty depiction of the realities of modern dating.”

…Anything but “toxic”… that label, it seems, is one our culture has reserved exclusively for describing male behavior.

Girls are allowed to be girls in any way that they want… but boys are allowed to be boys only within tightly scripted cultural parameters. It seems to me that if Hollywood is serious about getting audiences back into theaters, one way to do that might be to let boys be boys again.

Read the whole thing.

LOL, ELIE MYSTAL: Mystal: The Republic Can’t Survive the Invalidation of Trump’s Bump Stock Ban.

JOURNALISTS ARE HYPOCRITICAL SACKS OF CRAP? “It’s somehow delightful when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum,” but Trump got clobbered for calling his political antagonists “vermin.” What’s the rule here? It’s certainly not respect the humanity of all human beings.”

LOL: OMG, This is REAL! Prankster Calls Harvard Admissions About Admitting Her Hamas TERRORIST Son (Listen).

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Introducing the Biggest Damn Thing to Fly in Almost 100 Years.

READER FAVORITE: DIBBATU Fire Blanket Emergency for Kitchen. #CommissionEarned

FASTER, PLEASE: For the first time, gene-editing provides hints for lowering cholesterol.

TRUMP/JOHNSON TEAM IN 2024? Not as a president/vice-president ticket, but rather as an engine of reform. It will almost certainly come about if Trump is returned to the White House and Johnson retained as Speaker of the House.