RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND: ‘Bone-chilling’ country ballad about working class struggle goes viral: ‘Overtime hours, bulls–t pay.’

The left’s response is that the singer is some sort of Crisis Actor or something.

OPEN THREAD: Thank God it’s Sunday, only one more working day until Monday.

I ASSUME THAT ALL THE LEGENDS ABOUT MAGIC SWORDS, SPEARS, ETC. STARTED WITH METEORIC IRON: Meteorite that crashed to Earth 3,500 years ago carved into arrowhead by Bronze Age hunters.

INSERT HUNTER BIDEN JOKES HERE: Tampa mayor finds big catch off Florida Keys: 70 pounds of cocaine.

MARK SIMON: A Lifeline to China Is A Mistake: Lilly and Scowcroft Were Wrong in 1989. Let’s Not Be Wrong in 2023.

MICROBIOME NEWS: “Although truly exciting, the increasing focus on microbiome research has unfortunately also brought with it hype and entrenched certain misconceptions.”

ARNOLD KLING: We’re All Wrong About AI: Remember when we thought personal computers were for tracking recipes?

ANOTHER LEFT MYTH – EVANGELICAL MEN = ‘TOXIC MASCULINITY’ – BITES THE DUST: Evangelical Protestant men are most likely to be abusive, oppressive, patriarchal tyrants, right? In fact, if you believe the data, Evangelical Protestant men who are regular church attenders are the least likely to fit the Progressive Left’s stereotype. Check out my review of Nancy Pearcey’s masterful “The Toxic War on Masculinity” on PJ Media.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China, Lawfare, and the Contest for Control of Low Earth Orbit: The Chinese government seeks strategic advantage in space through attacks on the Western private sector.

BOOK OF THE DAY: Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide: Food, Shelter, Security, Off-the-Grid Power and More Life-Saving Strategies for Self-Sufficient Living. #CommissionEarned

HMM: The End of Progressive Elitism? The Ivy League’s theory of legitimacy is under attack from two directions.

Gutmann wasn’t the president of just any university. She was the president of an Ivy League university, and that made all the difference. Her relationship with the Biden family is a perfect distillation of the immense influence of the Ivy League and its peer institutions—and it points to how that influence might come undone.

Armed with billion-dollar endowments, America’s most selective universities have in recent decades transformed themselves into “the makers of manners” for the nation’s mass affluent population. By mixing the children of the rich and powerful with the children of designated disadvantaged groups, they’ve given rise to a new progressive elite that holds enormous sway over the nation’s cultural and political life. Now, as Ivy-plus admissions practices come under intense scrutiny from left and right, this potent alchemy is at risk, opening the door for a new set of elite-making institutions. . . .

This in turn could create an opening for a different set of higher-education institutions committed to a different set of values—perhaps even a revival of the midcentury vision of elite institutions that would promote social mobility while instilling patriotism and a sense of civic obligation.

That, at least, seems to be the impetus behind a slew of new higher-education initiatives in red and purple states, where many voters, policy makers, and philanthropists are wary of Ivy League progressivism. The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, a public research university that has seen surging enrollment in recent years, is pioneering an approach to civics that welcomes debate and encourages a deep understanding of the nation’s founding principles. In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee is creating a similar institute, which aims to inculcate an “informed patriotism,” through the state university system.

And then there is the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, a new initiative that is being led by Will Inboden, a distinguished scholar of international relations who most recently taught at the University of Texas at Austin. With more than 60,000 students at its Gainesville campus, UF is already one of the nation’s most respected public universities and, in light of the Sunshine State’s rapid economic and demographic expansion, it is well positioned for further growth. The Hamilton Center, aimed at fostering diversity of thought and improving the quality of civic education on campus and throughout the state, represents a bet on UF’s enormous potential. One possibility is that it will serve as the seedbed of a new liberal-arts college that would compete with the likes of Penn and Harvard, attracting bright and capable students from a wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds.

The Ivy League’s loss of cultural authority stems in part from its growing ridiculousness. “Luxury beliefs” have to be somewhat crazy to fill their role — if they were obviously true and practical, everyone would believe them and they wouldn’t be elite signifiers. But that’s an arms race of silliness that leads to further and further distance between elite institutions and the social mainstream.

Flashback:

It is worth inquiring into the nature of this madness. When I read that attack on Bari Weiss, what sprang to mind was Albert Camus’ play Caligula, a retelling of the well-known tale of the deranged third emperor of Rome. In the play, the initially benign ruler suffers an existential crisis. Realizing that he alone wields absolute power, he decides to follow the logic of that power to its ultimate conclusion. “It’s just because no one dares to follow up his ideas to the end that nothing is achieved,” he says. “All that’s needed is to be logical right through, at all costs.”

This logic leads Caligula to believe that he is beyond good and evil. Thus, he is free to choose evil. So he does; nothing, after all, can stop him. He initiates a reign of terror over his subjects, rapes the women of the nobility, randomly orders executions, declares himself a god, kills his wife, and in the end invites his own assassination.

Rereading Caligula while writing this piece, I was shocked by the extent to which Camus had anticipated the Woke phenomenon.

Indeed.

DOES IT REALLY? 2023 Jeep Gladiator FarOut Edition Marks the Diesel Engine’s End.

GAMECHANGER: Chuck Todd admits Gov. Abbott was ‘right’ about bussing migrants to blue cities: Dems are ‘upset’ at Biden.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Hospitals struggling to find chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics as drug shortage crisis escalates.

SACRAMENTO TURNED INTO GOTHAM CITY SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Watch: Thieves In Lawless California Use Forklift To Steal ATM.

HMM: Raising awareness of long COVID ‘blue legs’ symptom.

BURNING MAN BURNOUT? People Selling Off Their Burning Man Tickets Like Mad This Year, Market Flooded With Extra Tickets.

SCIENCE: 17 years after launch, NASA spacecraft could offer better image of sun’s mysteries.

DEATH TOLL FROM MAUI WILDFIRE REACHES 93, MAKING IT THE DEADLIEST IN THE US IN MORE THAN 100 YEARS: Live updates.

HMM: Risks of mammograms may outweigh benefits for some women over 70.

GENDER PAY GAP! Turns Out Women In Biden’s White House Make Way Less Than Men.

Remember how President Joe Biden and his ilk have blathered on and on about the so-called “gender pay gap” that supposedly forces oppressed, subservient American women into making mere pennies for every whopping paycheck their male coworkers get?

Turns out that on top of not actually being true, it also doesn’t seem to be a major concern for the Biden White House beyond being a convenient political talking point – because according to this, the women-supporting Biden Administration pays female staffers on average about $0.80 for every dollar a male employee makes.

Which, if you’re keeping track, is even less than the 83 cents leftists complain women make compared to every dollar earned by a man.

Per the White House payroll data analyzed by Mark Perry, an economist and senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, the median salary for women in 2023 was just $84,000, while the median salary for men was $105,000. Which, regardless of any legitimate reason for the discrepancy, we’ve been told is a major no-no, and is supersexist.

Yet another way that the Biden (p)residency is simply Obama’s third term. Flashback: Glass Ceiling at the Obama White House? Female Staffers Earn $8,270 (and 10.75%) Less Than Their Male Counterparts.

THIS IS CNN: A guide to neopronouns, from ae to ze.

Some of the most common words in the English language have gender markers, including pronouns. But not all of them are binary. Consider the singular “they,” preferred by some nonbinary and trans people for whom gendered pronouns do not fit.

And then there are neopronouns (“new” pronouns), gender-neutral or nonbinary pronouns that are distinctfrom the common she, he and they. Neopronouns include terms like “xe” and “em,” and some of them even date back several centuries, when they were introduced by writers as a solution for referring to subjects without assuming gender. Now, they’re also commonly used by nonbinary and trans people.

All pronouns indicate identity and can be used to include or exclude people they describe — neopronouns included, said Dennis Baron, one of the foremost experts on neopronouns and their histories and an emeritus professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Neopronouns should be used and respected like any other pronoun, he told CNN.

“People like to have a say in how they’re identified,” Baron said. “Refusing to let people self-identify is a way of excluding them.”

Update Newspeak Dictionaries accordingly, comrade!

AUGUST 2016 FLASHBACK: GOP insiders: Trump can’t win.

SHOCKER: Boeing’s struggling Starliner craft won’t fly astronauts until at least 2024.

RONMENTUM: Rubicon Crossed: DaTechGuy Endorses Ron DeSantis For President in 2024.

The goal is to win, without the votes of people like this in states that aren’t already deep red we don’t win.

Yeah it’s unfair how Trump has been treated, yes it’s unfair that the last election was stolen from us, yes he did a great job as president and his list of accomplishments are something to sing about, it’s unfair that we have to operate under these circumstances, and it’s unfair that we have to take irrational hatred into consideration when making a choice, but you know what, we’re conservatives and we know Life Isn’t Fair.

We don’t need to like or be liked by these irrational people, we don’t need these people to agree with us, but if we want to win we DO need these people to vote with us come election day 2024.

If they don’t we don’t win, if we don’t win . . . .

And let’s be blunt about another fact of life: Where does Donald Trump expand his vote count over 2024 with? What voter will he get this time that he didn’t get the last time around?

Read the whole thing.