KURT SCHLICHTER: Why Are the Red State Republicans So Soft?

HMM: Joe Manchin refuses to say if he is a Democrat or not.

THE GREEN SCAM: Dark money group pushing gas stove crackdown has significant financial stake in green energy.

Alex Laskey, Saul Griffith and Ari Matusiak – who together founded Rewiring America in 2020 – have all pursued various wind, solar, electrification and energy efficiency ventures, some of which have netted them millions of dollars in buyouts or received significant federal funding. The three co-founders have simultaneously advocated for policies benefiting those ventures through the nonprofit.

“It’s a shocking amount of money that they’re hauling in with this scheme of theirs,” Tom Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I call it Big Green Inc. It is literally a business for these guys and they cloak themselves in the mantra of trying to save the planet. But, really, this is just very sophisticated self-dealing.”

“Congress needs to be an aggressive watchdog precisely because of organizations like Rewiring America.”

Even better: Curtailing Washington’s money and power to prevent all kinds of rent-seeking and grift.

AS USUAL, TECH TAKES POLITICAL SIDES: Slack ‘Permanently Suspends’ Libs Of TikTok From Using Their Software.

MARK JUDGE: Jazz and Our Non-Dualistic Nature.

COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP: Cops Called In, Students Suspended for Qur’an Desecration…in the U.K.

ACADEMIA IS MENTALLY TROUBLED: The Big Myth Is Full of Recycled Anti-Capitalist Cheap Shots: A new entrant in the anti-neoliberalism genre fails to land any blows.

Historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote that “the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.” A compelling case could be made that this affliction has taken hold among the highest ranks of Hofstadter’s own profession. New academic “histories” now appear on a near-monthly basis, each blaming a variety of social ills on the conspiratorial machinations around a single idea: the free market.

Almost everything in this genre follows the same formula. When the American electorate fails to embrace the political priorities of an Ivy League humanities department, these disheartened authors cast about for a blameworthy culprit. They settle on “market fundamentalism” or “neoliberalism.” The explanation then takes a paranoid turn, declaring the targeted theories a “manufactured myth” arising from the “inventions” of 20th century business interests, which allegedly hoodwinked voters into accepting the “magic” of the free market as a matter of received wisdom. Certain that they have found the source of their political obstacles, these historians then claim to uncover a “secret” history that has been hiding in plain sight. All eventually settle on a mundane conspiracy of business interests and libertarian economists, who allegedly derailed America from its progressive path by convincing people that markets work better than government at solving problems.

To be fair, it’s pretty easy to convince people that markets work better than government at solving problems, since, you know, markets work better than government at solving problems.

BOYCOTTING MEDICAL SCHOOLS, DIVERSITY AND MERIT. “What these schools are really saying is that meritocracy can’t coexist with diversity. This is a presumptuous—and dangerous—perpetuation of the negative stereotype that students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine are of lesser quality or unable to compete.”

THE TALL POPPIES GET CUT DOWN: To Increase ‘Equity,’ This California High School Is Eliminating Honors Courses.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Coofandy Men’s Cotton Linen Henley Shirt. #CommissionEarned

YOU DON’T SAY: Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says. “The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.”

I’m so old, I remember when even suggesting the possibility was enough to get a blogger deplatformed and demonetized.

ICYMI: #JOURNALISM: This is a stunning admission. The news organizations are saying that if more January 6 footage is released, it “risks…the legitimacy of…the various federal investigations and prosecutions of January 6 crimes.” Gosh, why might that be?

SLIPPAGE: 2022 Bar Pass Rate Fell 2 Percentage Points Due To Fewer 1L Academic Dismissals After Spring 2020 Covid Semester.

“PROFOUNDLY EMBARRASSED?” YOU SPELLED “FACING JAIL TIME AND PERSONAL RUIN” WRONG:

ON SUNDAYS I RUN A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE WRITERS: Book Promo and Vignettes by by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

There is also a fun vignette challenge.

HAR-DE-HAR-HAR: How will the GOP survive without Paul Ryan?! He might boycott the 2024 convention if Trump is the nominee. Perish the thought!

My days of not caring about Paul Ryan are definitely coming to a middle.

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CONFORM: Washington State Dems Want ‘Minority Report’ Commission to Destroy Conservative Wrong-Think.

ICYMI: LIMIT IT TO 18 AND ABOVE: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence. “Journalists should stop saying that the evidence is just correlational.”

FRED HOYLE MIGHT YET BE VINDICATED:  Fascinating New Research Focuses on Origins of Life.

AT LAST OUR LONG INTERNATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS ENDED?  James Bond books scrubbed by ‘sensitivity experts’ ahead of 70th anniversary.

This is horrifying and disgusting. I feel like I’m living in Fahrenheit 451. Memorize the books that are important to you (and civilization) while you can. These children of presentism by historical illiteracy are incapable of understanding works of art or literature in the context of their writing.

As for “sensitivity experts” they should be taught some useful work, like perhaps tickling caterpillars or counting ants.

OR, YOU KNOW, STOP BOMBARDING THE GULLIBLE WITH CLIMATE DOOMERISM:  Nature: Treat Climate Anxiety by Encouraging Personal Climate Action.

THE TRUTH OF THE EXISTENCE OF RACISM IS NOT ITSELF RACIST:  Hundreds of newspapers cancel ‘Dilbert’ comic strip, accuse Scott Adams of racism.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE CHANCES ARE THEY’D FIND SOMEONE BETTER:  Is the Mayor of New Orleans about to be fired?

I DON’T THINK THEY CAN GET ANY WORSE, BUT THEY’LL PROBABLY SURPRISE ME:  Chicago May Reject Lightfoot. Then What?

IN THE END, THE GUY WHO WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT, NOT THE ONE WHO WAS FRAUDED IN, ACTS LIKE THE REAL PRESIDENT:  Biden’s Ukraine Serenade.

Some great repository of societal knowledge for the west had something on this.  “By their fruits thou shalt know them” or something.