SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Throw a Net Over Her: Climate Lunatic Ties Herself to Net at French Open.

Doomsday prophets warning that “the end is near” used to be rare and fringy; now they’re cutting-edge climate activists. On Friday, during the third set at the French Open tennis tournament as Norway’s Casper Ruud led Croatia’s Marin Cilic 4-1, the match was interrupted for fifteen minutes. Just as Ruud was about to serve, he instead watched incredulously as a “climate activist,” that is, a brainwashed lunatic, ran onto the court and tied herself by the neck to the net, to save the planet or something.

This comes just days after another “climate activist” at the Louvre in Paris jumped up from a wheelchair in front of shocked crowds and tried to smash the bulletproof glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned Mona Lisa, finally settling for smearing the glass with cake. With all this hardcore climate activism going on, how can the planet avoid being saved?

At the French Open, the protester, a young woman (not that I’m a biologist) who looked to be in her twenties sat stone-faced at the net until security personnel cut her loose. While the hysteria was in full swing, the tennis players returned to their dressing rooms, where there were no “climate activists” around to do insane things.

The clock has started on the latest not-so-final-countdown. To be fair though, if the world does come to an end 2.8 years from now, it will be much more likely to be Brandon or Putin’s fault than global warming.

(Classical reference in headline.)

SPENGLER ON THE UKRAINE WAR: ‘It Became Necessary to Destroy the Country to Save It.’ 

Peter Arnett’s celebrated quote — “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it” — was a fabrication during the Vietnam War but has a macabre application to Ukraine. American fecklessness and Russian rapacity together will leave a grease spot where Ukraine used to be. It was all tragically, idiotically unnecessary.

I argued in 2008 and on many subsequent occasions, including the February 2014 note in PJ Media reposted below. The obvious course of action in Ukraine was to permit its people to vote for a divorce, as the Czechs and Slovaks did. Instead we elected to keep the NATO option open for Ukraine, knowing that this was a red line for Russia. Never mind that Putin is a wicked fellow; he is a predictably wicked fellow with a well-defined understanding of Russian national interest, and his response to Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership was entirely predictable.

Flashback: Peter Arnett: Whose Man in Baghdad? “Remember the phrase ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it’? It has become totemic. Arnett was the originator of the phrase. The trouble is, as first B.G. Burkett and then I discovered after a little investigation, the report was wrong. It wasn’t the U.S. that destroyed Ben Tre, (a town, not a village) but the Vietcong. And the soldier Arnett was most likely quoting remembers saying ‘It was a shame the town was destroyed,’ not the fatuity Arnett made famous.”

OKAY, GROOMER: Parenting writer: take your kid to a Pride parade!

Instead of bringing a kid to a Pride parade and potentially scarring them for life, why not bring them to, you know, a playground? Cockburn is certain any child would understand.

It would be remiss of Cockburn not to mention that this article does have a section called “Find the Kid Friendly Pride Activities,” which lists things like food, bouncy castles, and play areas. Yet Cockburn remains unconvinced. If he were ever to take care of a child, he would much rather bring them to Disney World than some woke Pride celebration…wait a second.

Heh, indeed.™

OKAY, GROOMERS: Pizza Hut features ‘drag kids’ book for children as young as kindergarten.

WATCH: Journalist Tries to Crash Uvalde Victim’s Funeral, Bikers Have a Different Idea.

Several members of this biker club, Guardians of the Children, just followed, blocked and surrounded me as I tried to approach the cemetery to meet a photographer. One member says they’re working with police: “They asked us to be here.”

Short post: https://t.co/OfZCAZbUZx pic.twitter.com/5d6wsLKQ0k

— Julian Gill (@JulianGi11) June 2, 2022

If you watch the video, you’ll see the reporter hassle the bikers, saying he’s “just trying to do” his job by entering and taking pictures. They try to explain to him that they are there to help provide space for the family that is mourning. The reporter, not ready to take no for an answer, shoves his phone in one of the biker’s faces, bumping into him. That led to a bit of a verbal escalation before the reporter eventually backed down.

As to the details, the bikers in the video are not part of a “gang,” but rather they are part of a non-profit called “Guardians of the Children.” The group provides security for traumatized children and their families. In this case, they were likely asked to help keep the press at bay, so that the families of the deceased kids could grieve in peace.

Julian Gill, the [Houston Chronicle “health reporter”] in question, lashed out on social media after the incident, asserting that it was crazy that members of a “biker gang” were helping the police. Many in the replies also expressed dismay, as if someone who rides a motorcycle is somehow inherently dangerous or something.

How do you report on or simply in Texas without understanding the ubiquity of motorcycles and their clubs here? Exit quote: “I don’t know who in the journalism profession needs to hear this, but you aren’t special. You do not have a right to invade people’s privacy, and your story is not more important than those grieving.”

RIP: Sophie Freud, Critic of Her Grandfather’s Gospel, Dies at 97.

Sophie Freud, who fled the Nazi onslaught in Europe and escaped to the United States, where, as a professor and psychiatric social worker, she challenged the therapeutic foundation of her grandfather Sigmund’s theories of psychoanalysis, died on Friday at her home in Lincoln, Mass. The last surviving grandchild of Sigmund Freud, she was 97.

Her daughter Andrea Freud Loewenstein said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Professor Freud, who taught psychology at Simmons College (now Simmons University) in Boston, devoted her career as a psychosociologist to the protection of children and to introducing feminism into the field of social work.

One of the few surviving members of her family to have known Dr. Freud personally, she was raised in what her mother called an “upper-middle-class Jewish ghetto” in Vienna in a turbulent household in which her parents led separate lives and her grandparents, aunts and other relatives from all sides mingled.

* * * * * * * *

“I’m very skeptical about much of psychoanalysis,” she told The Boston Globe in 2002. “I think it’s such a narcissistic indulgence that I cannot believe in it.”

* * * * * * * *

While he often challenged the Victorian era’s patriarchal view of female sexuality, she wrote, “he mirrored in his theories the belief that women were secondary and were not the norm.” As for his conclusion that “women are forever falling in love with their male therapists,” she said, he sanitized such attachments as transference.

“He said it doesn’t matter, women get over it afterward,” Professor Freud said, “but I disagree. Women then go to another therapist to get over that one.”

She ratcheted up her criticism in an interview for a Canadian television film, “Neighbours: Freud and Hitler in Vienna” (2003), saying, “In my eyes, both Adolf Hitler and my grandfather were false prophets of the 20th century.” They shared, in her words, “the ambition to convince other men of the one and only truth they had come upon.”

“Never could he be wrong,” she said.

Exit question: What would the world have been like if Marx or Freud had never lived?

‘THERE IS [A] HUGE APPETITE:’ Former Disney executive believes Johnny Depp may be called to reprise his iconic role as the Captain Jack Sparrow role in the ‘billion-dollar global franchise.’

In contrast: After trial, insiders say comeback will be ‘very hard’ for Amber Heard.

Related: Rod Dreher on “Amber & Johnny & Who & Whom.”

TENN. CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE ROBBY STARBUCK WINS HIS CHALLENGE AGAINST STATE GOP — WILL BE PLACED BACK ON AUGUST BALLOT.

FOLLOWING BIDEN’S GUN CONTROL SPEECH, AN INCONVENIENT STORY SURFACES:

To give context to the fundamental errors in Biden’s speech, overnight another, seemingly unrelated news story surfaced. It tells of the end of a manhunt for a convicted murderer who had escaped from a prison bus in Texas on May 12.

The fugitive, Gonzalo Lopez, was killed in a shootout with Texas lawmen late Thursday night after he crashed the truck he had presumably stolen from a residence in Centerville, Texas. An adult and four children were found dead in that residence.

So far, none of the stories I’ve seen about this incident indicate how the family was slain, or whether Lopez, who had been on the run for three weeks, already had a gun when he broke into their vacation cabin. Some reports say that, in addition to the pickup truck, Lopez had stolen firearms from the home, but this belief has not been confirmed.

I doubt that too many more details of this story will be forthcoming. In fact, I predict that this story will fade away in short order. It’s an inconvenient story, coming as it does on the heels of Biden’s appeal for stricter limits on gun ownership and on the type of firearms that citizens should be permitted to keep and bear.

Related: Biden gun control speech pushes four empty solutions.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Is swinging back? “In 1974 I was living in San Francisco when I got a phone call from a man who said, ‘I’m having a few people over to have sex with my wife, would you care to join us?’ Back in the 1970s, people like this were called swingers. I politely declined. To my amazement I was recently invited by a couple in their sixties to go to one of London’s secret swinging parties with them. This one, they assured me, was for the ‘older swinger.’ (I didn’t think there were any still alive!) To swing or not to swing? That is the question I never thought I’d ever face again. It was a kind offer, but frankly I’m too old for those sorts of sexual shenanigans. And besides, the thought of all that drooping, flapping flesh and those dangling wobbly bits bumping and bouncing in a bed — and that’s just me naked! — put me off. So again, I politely declined.”

CONAN, WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE? John Nolte: Woketard Leftists Whine as Top Gun: Maverick Continues to Overperform.

TAYLOR LORENZ STILL KNOCKING IT OUT OF THE PARK AT THE WAPO: Washington Post issues two corrections after stealth-edit scrubbed false claim from Taylor Lorenz report.

The Washington Post issued two lengthy corrections to its report from its “internet culture” columnist Taylor Lorenz, which was previously stealth-edited.

Lorenz wrote an article Thursday about how content creators were the real winners of the explosive Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation lawsuit that concluded this week due to larger followings and spikes in revenue during the six-week trial.

* * * * * * * *

After Fox News previously reached out for comment and published its story about the stealth-edit, the Post issued a correction at the bottom of Lorenz’s report.

“A previous version of this story inaccurately attributed to Adam Waldman a quote describing how he contacted some Internet influencers. That quote has been removed,” the Post wrote. “The story has also been amended to note The Post’s attempts to reach Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy for comment. Previous versions omitted or inaccurately described these attempts.”

The Post later followed with an even lengthier correction, this time at the top of Lorenz’s article that read, “The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time. During that process, The Post removed the incorrect statement from the story but did not note its removal, a violation of our corrections policy. The story has been updated to note that Mazeika declined to comment for this story and ThatUmbrellaGuy could not be reached for comment. A previous version of this story also inaccurately attributed a quote to Adam Waldman, a lawyer for Johnny Depp. The quote described how he contacted some Internet influencers and has been removed.”

Late on Friday, the Post quietly changed “correction” to “editor’s note” while maintaining the text of the errors.

And the hits just keep on coming:

Earlier: The Washington Post and Taylor Lorenz Lie to Smear (and Maybe Deplatform) Law YouTubers Who Got the Amber Heard Defamation Story Right.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Over Heard Edition.

PETER NAVARRO ARRESTED: “And, of course, you remember when the FBI arrested Holder and put him in leg irons on the same charge that is being brought against Navarro. No, wait… Navarro told the court today that he would represent himself rather than hiring a lawyer. But the biggest problem he faces is not the absence of counsel, it is the fact that his case will go before a jury of D.C. Democrats.”

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Alameda County to reinstate indoor mask mandate starting Friday amid rising COVID cases and hospitalizations.

AMAZON CALLED OUT AS ‘ANTI-TRANS’ DURING PRIDE FLAG CEREMONY:

LGBTQ groups dislike Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, who has donated millions to support gay groups and same-sex marriage campaigning for well over a
decade. So chances are, you’ll never get on the ‘Nice’ list as common folk.

Just sayin’.

The rainbow-colored claws were out against Bezos yet again on Wednesday when an internal Amazon LGBTQ group (“No Hate at Amazon”) called out the company as an opponent of trans rights and safety for permitting the sale of books deemed “hurtful” toward the transgender community.

Around 30 protestors organized a “die-in” on Wednesday during the Seattle HQ’s raising of the Pride flag. The angry attendees lay on the ground during the ceremony, wrapped in trans flags to protest the alleged violence caused by permitting the “anti-trans” publications.

“Amazon does have standing policies against hate speech in its content and technically, they say we don’t sell it,” said an anonymous protestor via The Washington Post. “But we’ve obviously seen through a number of these books that that’s not the case when it comes to transphobic material.”

Amazon has been criticized for permitting books that have been deemed problematic by the trans community, including “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier and Matt Walsh’s “Johnny the Walrus.”

Eight-year Amazon senior software engineer, Lina Jodoin, quit her job as part of the outrage.

“As much as it’s about the books being for sale, for me personally, this is also very much about the response that we’ve gotten from leadership as we’ve tried to escalate,” said Jodoin.

Amazon needs to take a cue from Netflix, and steal their “Culture Memo,” and rewrite it with book-related language (or maybe expand it, and keep the existing language to cover Prime Video): Netflix Fires Major Warning Shot At Its Woke Employees With New ‘Culture Memo.’

Variety reports that the change in Netflix’s company culture appears to be in large part due to the backlash the streaming service faced from woke employees last year over its Dave Chappelle special, which the employees claimed was transphobic.

The updated Netflix Culture memo includes a new section called “Artistic Expression” that states that it will not “censor specific artists or voices” even if employees consider the content “harmful.”

“If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you,” the memo states, later adding that employees may be required to work on projects that they “perceive to be harmful” and that if they have a hard time accepting their work assignment, they might want to consider working somewhere else.

“Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. So we offer a wide variety of TV shows and movies, some of which can be provocative,” the new section reads, later adding, “we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with” and that “we let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”

Netflix reportedly fired the leader of a trans organization within the company last October who allegedly organized a walkout to protest the company backing Chappelle over his special “The Closer.”

The Verge reported:

The employee was terminated on suspicion of leaking metrics to the press related to the Dave Chappelle special. Those metrics — about how much Netflix paid for The Closer and how many people it reached — subsequently ended up in a report on Bloomberg. While the employee had shared the metrics internally, they spoke out against the leaks to colleagues, worried they might hurt the walkout movement.

The leaking of internal data is highly unusual at Netflix. While the company prides itself on transparency, employees are told that the culture can only thrive when Netflix data remains internal.

Over to you, Jeff.

LUXURY BELIEFS: Michael Barone on Politics as the Leisure of the Theory Class.

Politics has increasingly become, for many Americans, the leisure of the theory class. That’s a phrase from the early 20th century sociologist Thorstein Veblen, which I turned on its head in a recent column. He was condemning the showy consumerism of the contemporary rich for having no economically practical purpose. I, on the other hand, was describing the political preoccupations of contemporary people, mainly high-education liberals but also low-education populists, as having no practically achievable goals.

One prime example is the abortion question, which was brought into the political foreground by the leaking of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Within 30 days, we’ll see whether this view prevails.

But for most voters, abortion is, increasingly, an abstract concern. Statistics compiled by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute, and largely relied upon by those with other views, too, show that the abortion rate, or the number of abortions per woman ages 15 to 44, peaked in 1980, just seven years after Roe was handed down. That’s 41 years go. The absolute number of annual abortions in the United States peaked in 1990, 31 years ago, even though the national population has since increased from 250 million to 330 million.

Read the whole thing.

HMS BIDEN HITS ICEBERG: Karine Jean-Pierre on latest White House departure: “But not everyone is leaving.”

POWER IS NOT A MEANS; IT IS AN END. ONE DOES NOT ESTABLISH A DICTATORSHIP IN ORDER TO SAFEGUARD A REVOLUTION; ONE MAKES THE REVOLUTION IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH THE DICTATORSHIP: Why is the left so ruthless and so determined to take power and keep it forever?

WAPO: WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW — Complete with Maoist Struggle Sessions: Washington Post spirals out of control after a writer retweets a ‘reprehensible’ joke about women.

A spokesperson for the Washington Post issued an apology after a writer retweeted a sexist joke and other writers at the news outlet objected vocally on Twitter.

Dave Weigel retweeted a joke about women on Friday and immediately regretted it after he was criticized heavily for joking on Twitter.

Weigel deleted the tweet, but it was saved for posterity by random people on Twitter and other writers at the outlet, like Felicia Sonmez, who objected to the sexist message.

“Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual,” read the tweet.

“Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” replied Sonmez sarcastically.

“Or perhaps @daveweigel the correct diagnosis: they’re just not that into you,” responded Stephanie Ruhl, the MSNBC host.

Kristine Coratti Kelly, a Wapo spokesperson, quickly issued an apology for the offensive joke tweet.

“Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated,” said Kelly.

Live look at the Post’s inter-office discussions:

Also at the Post today: The Washington Post and Taylor Lorenz Lie to Smear (and Maybe Deplatform) Law YouTubers Who Got the Amber Heard Defamation Story Right.

(Classical reference in headline.)

BREAKING: Dave McCormick concedes to Dr. Mehmet Oz #PASEN. “Dr. Oz, a retired heart surgeon, will take on John Fetterman, a candidate who will be off the campaign trail because of a heart problem.”

Speaking of Fetterman: Fetterman’s doctor finally reveals: Yes, he has an underlying heart problem.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I’m in a relationship with my 1998 Chevy — and our sex life is so special.

Unlike most people, this driver loves ramming his car.

An Arkansas man known only as Nathaniel — for, uh, privacy reasons — is revving back into the headlines after saying he has “sex” with his 1998 Chevy Monte Carlo.

The randy motorist, 37, revealed he was in a sexual relationship with his racy red automobile back in 2012, when he was featured on an episode of TLC’s “My Strange Addiction.” However, vintage YouTube clips of his bizarre auto erotica are just now going viral — globally.

“I like to lean over his fender and across his hood and kind of press up against him,” Nathaniel said of how he engages in intercourse with his vehicle, which he has gendered as male and affectionately named “Chase.”

“One of the more bold positions is for me to be underneath him,” he added, describing the sexual act as “special.”

Found via Iowahawk — who has questions:

The Lamborghini Miura? Endorsed.

JIM TREACHER: What Is Biden Lying About Today?

If there’s one thing Joe Biden has learned during his half-century in Washington, it’s that there are no consequences to lying his ass off. It got him where he is today, and he’s not about to stop now.

No matter how stupid he sounds:

[BIDEN: “Since I took office, families are carrying less debt, their average savings are up…more Americans feel financially comfortable…”]

KINSLEY GAFFE: Rep. David Cicilline: ‘Spare Me the Bullsh*t About Constitutional Rights.’ “Democrat Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island said a bit of the anti-gun left’s quiet part out loud in a House hearing on Thursday when he went on a rant against the constitutionally protected rights of the American people.”

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The New Gay Pride Flag, Explained.

It’s satire — or is it?