READER FAVORITE: Glocusent LED Neck Reading Light. #CommissionEarned

ADDRESS A HOUSING SHORTAGE BY BUILDING HOUSING? That’s crazy talk!

THEY’RE WAGING WAR AGAINST THOSE THEY’RE MOST AFRAID OF, THEIR OWN CITIZENRY: HOW DHS WENT FROM FIGHTING JIHADISTS TO TARGETING YOUR TWEETS.

NO, THEY’LL WAIT UNTIL THERE’S A STORY THAT NEEDS BURYING OR AN ELECTION TO BE INFLUENCED: If the Government Has UFO Crash Materials, It’s Time to Reveal Them.

HOMER SIMPSON HARDEST HIT: Connecticut court rules that obesity is not a disability.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Caltech prototype funded by O.C. donor beams solar power from space — a terrestrial first.

QUESTION ASKED: Has the influencer bubble burst?

If you ask anybody under twenty about their life plan, social media will likely play some part in the answer. A friend’s nine-year-old son has just launched his own YouTube channel. My prepubescent cousins are telling their parents that TikTok is “the key to financial freedom.”

When I was their age, my entrepreneurial skills went as far as selling single cigarettes to my classmates for loose change. The appeal of the influencer life isn’t hard to understand. Over the last decade, it’s been touted as the sexy, well-paid, democratic career of the future. A 2019 Morning Consult survey found that one in ten young people consider themselves “influencers.”

But now these micro-celebrities are trading in their tripods and ring-lights for real jobs. The age of the influencer is swiftly coming to an end, or at least changing, in a way we have never seen before.

Hopefully, the spokestroll bubble has burst as well: The Rise and Fall of the Spokestroll.

As for change, trans activists already achieved a tectonic shift in the popular understanding of sex and gender, affecting a change so massive as to override the institutional acceptance of biological reality. Biological male athletes have been shellacking female competitors for years now. And the country’s leading medical organizations have all thrown in their support for so-called gender-affirming care of trans youths, with Boston Children’s Hospital at one point claiming that babies can accurately determine that their sex and gender are mismatched.

What’s left for an activist to do?

Well, gloat. Get in everyone’s face—even those who sympathize with you—and rub their noses in your triumph. So that’s what popular trans activists have been up to for a while—trolling. It’s what, for example, Dylan Mulvaney does, caricaturing feminine sensibilities and behaviors with the delicacy of a wigged wrecking ball. It’s what other TikTok influencers do when they rattle on about spreading the good word of transgender ideology in kids’ classrooms. It’s already in kids’ classrooms, and they know it. They just want to remind you.

Trolling is a strange approach to activism. Its purpose is to elicit rage, not sympathy. And that’s what it’s done. Predictably, Americans are now losing patience with these sore winners. The majority of the country opposes biological males competing in sports with biological females, and most believe that gender is determined by biology, not choice. The trans movement will reckon with its self-inflicted loss in due time.

But spokestrolls will continue to receive the support of the Weimar Republic in the meantime: Federal judge rules Tennessee restrictions on drag shows unconstitutional.

GET READY FOR MORE ‘BUD LIGHTING:’

A lot of conservatives are very excited about “Bud Lighting”—a freshly minted term for boycotting companies that cater to various “woke” causes, particularly transgender issues.

The term derives from the spectacular implosion of Bud Light in the wake of their decision in March to enlist transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand. Bud Light’s sales have plummeted, averaging weekly declines of about 25 percent. Parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev has lost more than $15 billion in value. Sales of rival brands have soared, even as many retailers have slashed prices for Bud Light. Some stores are even giving Bud Light away for free—or trying to.

I am very skeptical that the Bud Light example can be replicated over the long haul, but I’m convinced that we are entering a new era of Bud Lighting on the right and left.

First, some background. The most remarkable thing about the Bud Light boycott is that it worked, because boycotts usually don’t—if your definition of success is actually affecting sales and stock price in a significant way. PETA’s been boycotting KFC for 20 years to little or no effect. KFC’s biggest challenge hasn’t been from boycotters, but from rivals like Chick-fil-A, which has been going gangbusters despite facing plenty of boycotts of its own.

Bud Light exec Alissa Heinerscheid is the advertising equivalent of Pete Buttigieg: To paraphrase a Tweet about Buttigieg, Heinerscheid is so awful at her job that people actually know who the former(?) marketing vp of Anheuser-Busch is.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Heinerscheid’s notoriety is important here. Boycotts are fine when there’s a spectacular self-own like the Bud Light matter. But personalizing things with CEOs and managers, (freeze and isolate, in Alinsky methodology) is what the left does most of the time, and it’s very effective. Of course, the left has more traction with managers’ peer groups usually, but post-Bud Light there’s more fear there. And as Alinsky also said, you have the power people think you have in these matters.

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT IS SHOVELING LIES: Judge in Missouri v Biden ain’t buying what the government’s shoveling. “The contempt for constitutional rights from the Biden administration is not only breathtaking in its arrogance and scope, but baldly and repeatedly expressed, even in court testimony as this lawsuit exposing the treachery goes forward.”

DON SURBER: Mock them till they cry.

The congresswoman who thinks she’s Evita eventually tweeted, “FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility.

“It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread.

“I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”

Um, it is clearly marked parody, but since she checks two boxes (female and Hispanic) she shall not be mocked.

Unless she were a conservative. Then it is open season.

Snopes swooped in to tell the world that a parody account’s tweets are a parody.

It said, “No, AOC Didn’t Say ‘Printing Money Is the Only Way Out of Inflation.’”

Snopes is fact-checking jokes. I await its declaration that the chicken did not cross the road and that Who really isn’t playing first base.

Politico — which never fact-checked RussiaGate — announced, “No, that isn’t the real AOC you may have seen on Twitter.

“An account impersonating the New York congresswoman cropped up over the weekend, going viral and catching the attention of Twitter’s owner and the lawmaker herself.”

Reuters routinely Fact Checks conservative jokes, hoaxes and mistakes — but never lefty ones such as the J6 insurrection (it was a protest).

Its fact check on the parody account said, “A tweet stemming from a parody account impersonating U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being taken seriously by users online.”

Oh no. More damaging is lies about Trump spread by the media are taken seriously by millions of people.

The media was never alarmed about Trump parody accounts.

So why are the media wagons circling to protect AOC from jokes? Because the jokes are funny and they sting. Let’s look at the Rules for Radicals written by Saul Alinsky, a Chicago communist, 52 years ago.

Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

It took conservatives a while but the Internet gives us the opportunity to point at liberals and laugh. They do not like it.

They sure don’t, as this 2019 Reason TV reminds us: The Babylon Bee Satirizes the Absurdities of American Politics. Snopes Doesn’t Seem to Get the Joke.

IT’S NOT THAT HE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH IT’S THAT HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE TRUTH: Let’s Clarify Florida’s New Permitless Carry Law for Ignorant Politicians Like Gavin Newsom.

LET ME BE STORMY AND LET ME BE CALM, LET THE TIDE IN AND SET ME FREE: Mark Judge: Cold-Water Eden: Surfers Spread the Love of Christ. Summer’s here and the time is right for reflecting at the beach.

I’M NOT SURE THEY’RE ADDRESSING THE REAL PROBLEMS: South Africa’s power blackouts: Solutions lie in solar farms, battery storage at scale, and an end to state monopoly.

ANITA REVIEW: Anita Pallenberg Gets Her Own Documentary, and It’s One of the Darkest Portraits of the Rock World.

OUT ON A LIMB: JPMorgan COO: ‘There will be a recession at some point.’

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Cancer drug shortage is forcing doctors to decide which patients get treatment.

WOEING: Boeing finds new problems with Starliner space capsule and delays first manned launch.

IT’S ALREADY OVERTAKEN BIDEN THINKING: Biden warns AI could ‘overtake human thinking.’ Of course, so have hamsters.

DEAL OF THE DAY: KDG Hand Grip Strengthener 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned

The Power Line Week In Pictures: Down Goes Biden!

MAOISM WITH AMERICAN CHARACTERISTICS. “Intersectionality is a Woke standard, but what is it? Where does it come from? The history of the concept isn’t that hard to trace, and where it leads us is back to some of the worst regimes in history. Kim Crenshaw tends to be credited with Intersectionality, but she got it from the radicals in the Combahee River Collective. They put the idea together, in their turn, from the advocacy and activism of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was copying Mao, who was completing ideas laid down by Stalin for completing the perfect Soviet Union.”

AF ACADEMY SANDBAG EXPOSED AS DOMESTIC TERRORIST: The sandbag that without warning and suddenly from out of nowhere jumped up and tripped President Joe Biden at the Air Force Academy has now been exposed as a sinister tool of the biggest and most evil threat to American national security, those domestic terrorists espousing white supremacy who seized the Capitol on January 6.

LUCAS ELECTRICS: THE NEXT GENERATION. Jaguar Recalls Thousands Of I-Pace EVs Over Fire Risk, Tells Owners To Park Outside.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is recalling 6,400 I-Pace electric SUVs delivered to the US because the high-voltage electric battery may overheat and catch fire.

The documents posted Wednesday by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the recall covers I-Pace vehicles delivered between 2019 and 2024.

The problem is centered around the EV batteries produced by LG Energy Solutions. The NHTSA is investigating LG because its batteries have forced five other automakers to issue similar recalls due to fire risk. Most notable has been the fire risk around Ford F-150 Lightnings.

Kamikaze Jags that set themselves on fire. How Jaaaaaag is that?

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Santa Barbara public schools to offer ‘healing spaces’ for black students only.

SANDY’S WAR: For Ocasio-Cortez, The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Never End.

The COVID-19 pandemic is over for everyone — everyone but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The pandemic lives on for the New York democratic socialist — at least according to an automated phone message that reportedly plays when people call her congressional office in Washington, D.C.

“Thank you for calling the office of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Federal, state and local officials have advised that social distancing is critical to preventing the spread of COVID-19,” the recorded greeting from a male staffer says, according to the New York Post.

“As such, staff in the congresswoman’s DC and district offices will shortly begin telecommuting. Meetings and other business will be conducted by phone or video. Thank you for your understanding.”

Huh? Who’s still doing any of that? Way back in August 2022, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) got rid of its social distance requirement, which called for people to stay six feet from others. And last September, President Joe Biden declared, “The pandemic is over.”

AOC’s peak was in 2019, so it’s no surprise she’s fixated on the following year, which diverted America’s attention away from her.