WHY MILLEY READ MARX: A perceptive analysis by journalist Lee Smith of the recent congressional appearance by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“Milley said he reads to understand what other people think, but people who boast of having read Marx are trying to shape what other people think about them. He is addressing the kind of people who think reading Marx is part of the foundation of a well-rounded education.

“In America, these are the men and women of the establishment left who not coincidentally sit on the boards of big corporations and decide who gets to earn a million-dollar paycheck simply by occupying the board seat next to them. Saying you’ve read Marx shows that you’re ok, even if you’ve spent your career with an American flag on your shoulder.”

This is the guy His Fraudulency will depend upon for strategic military advice when China invades Taiwan. And Russia completes its re-conquest of the Ukraine.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Also: All the Lovely People.

SOMETHING POSITIVE FROM FASHION: Femininity makes a comeback? Kind of unexpected but encouraging, no?

WHEN YOU CAN’T KEEP ADVANCE STAFFERS: Monica Showalter looks at Vice-President Kamala Harris’ constant challenge to find staffers who will stay around and take the temper tantrums. This is an especially serious problem when it’s your director of advance and deputy director of advance who head for the exits just as your travel schedule gets hectic.

IT’S FRIDAY, SO EXPLAIN THIS: If Jesus’ disciples made up all that stuff about Him being God, and resurrected and all, why’d they make themselves look so dense in the process?

PS: Like Sarah says, Sursum Corda. Be Not Afraid.

RADICAL LEFT, NOT THE RIGHT, IS THE MAJOR THREAT: Amazing, is it not, how His Fraudulency and his loyal mouthpieces in the Mainstream Media constantly talk about the national security threat allegedly posed by the Proud Boys, “White Supremacists,” and other elements of the “Radical Right.”

They’re not the perpetually rioting mobs burning down Portland, or causing billions of dollars in destruction across dozens of major cities. No, the guys lighting the fires, killing policemen and making American cities unlivable are all from the Radical Left. Issues & Insights has more, much more.

NEXT, BIDEN CONTRACTS-OUT CIA/NSA TO HUAWEI: Unbelievable that five GOP senators would vote to confirm this guy to be general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The five are: Blunt of Missouri, Burr of North Carolina, Cornyn of Texas, Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska. The first two are retiring. Why not the other three as well?

INDY CAR’S SAM SCHMIDT WALKS FOR FIRST TIME IN 21 YEARS: Thanks to an exoskeleton, the Indy car owner and former driver was able to dance with his daughter at her wedding. More stories like this, please.

CORPORATE MANAGEMENT IN ACADEMIC FOG: Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon spent some precious time attending the “Bloomberg Equality Briefing titled ‘Corporate Mandate for Change’ and sponsored by Cisco. To the extent we learned anything at all, it’s that conversations about corporate diversity initiatives are comprised almost entirely of meaningless jargon that is terrifying nonetheless.”

And if that meaningless jargon sounds vaguely familiar, then you must recently have spent some time on campus listening to professors, administrators and students discussing why you are a racist, America is racist, all white people are racist, capitalism is racist, etc. etc. etc.

How long before stockholders wake up to the fact the coming management generation views words like “profit,” “return-on-investment” and “revenue streams” as racist terms that must be forever buried? Like Glenn says, that which can’t go on, won’t.

NEW HILL STAFF PROGRESSIVES GROUP LAUNCHED: Roll Call reports new group seeking Lefty activists to work on Hill staffs has been launched and already has more than 250 members, including at least 100 senior staffers.

Funny, I thought there was already a group attracting left-wing organizers and agitators, the House Democratic Caucus. Don’t laugh, though, as Hill staffers on both sides of the aisle have immense, though mostly unseen, influence on the course of things in Congress.

Historical Footnote: The Republican Study Committee (RSC) was organized in 1973 as a counter to the original group for left-wing staff types, the Democratic Study Group (DSG), which was launched in 1959 and went kaput in the wake of the Contract with America.

IT’S MONDAY, SO EXPLAIN THIS: Critics claim Jesus was just a regular Joe Blow who happened to be a great teacher who got in trouble with the authorities and got himself executed. Then the disciples and church leaders over the next many decades created the myth of the resurrection and that Jesus was God Incarnate. But if that were the case, explain this. 

NO, PHILLY DECISION WAS NOT A WIN FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Margot Cleveland, writing for The Federalist, makes the argument that the Supreme Court’s Fulton v. City of Philadelphia decision doesn’t protect religious freedom because it does nothing to repeal or substantially revise the controlling precedent, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith.

REMEMBER THE NAME ‘CARTER JONES:’ His 29-page memo, as reported by Just the News, about “massive” election integrity and mis-management problems in George during the November 2020 election just may be the end of any doubt that Biden really deserves the moniker, His Fraudulency.

FEDS NOW GET 44 DAYS OFF EVERY YEAR: Lost amid the Left’s Juneteenth celebration is the fact turned up by Open the Books. As a result, the average career bureaucrat gets nine weeks of fully paid time off.

NO, THE KIDS WON’T BE FINE: It’s been a truism since the No-Fault Divorce era whenever the welfare of the little ones involved is mentioned. Now we have 50 years and more of data and it’s clear the kid’s weren’t and aren’t going to be fine as the traditional one man/one woman/staying together come Hell or high water marital model fades. And yes, I was as guilty of saying it as anybody reading this post, so being judgmental isn’t my purpose here.

ABOUT THAT ‘MAGICAL SKY DADDY:’ Erik Manning explains why calling belief in the Christian God a resort to magical thinking is merely a rhetorical device, not a logical argument. This guy is really good on the white-board, too.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EXTENSIVE IS CHINESE PROPAGANDA IN THE U.S.: Capital Research Center’s Sarah Lee puts it into a fact-based context for The American Conservative that ought to be sobering for all of us. Consider this graph:

In Alaska, [Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Foreign Affairs Chief Yang Jiechi told a stunned [newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken, “Many people in the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” He was merely echoing what China has already trained many young Americans to think by directly or indirectly funding American nonprofits. Younger Americans had already heard this message on their college campuses and in some cases even earlier, in primary and secondary school. Given the state of political discourse leading up to the 2020 election, there’s evidence to suggest they were dutifully spreading the word as China no doubt intended.”

One of the most important but unheralded consequences of Trump’s attempt to negotiate a new economic relationship with China was the discovery of just how deeply ingrained the CCP’s messaging apparatus had become here in the U.S.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS TACTICS EXPLAINED: Peter Boghossian offers a handy reference chart. HT: Thom McKee, The Daily Gouge.

SO NICE OF NEWSOM TO RELEASE HIS POLITICAL PRISONERS: That would be the entire state of California, according to Issues & Insights, which also notes these fascinating datapoints:

“Seven-day moving averages of infection rates peaked at 114 cases per 100,000 in California, but only 82 in Florida and 79 in Texas, states that had far fewer restrictions and mandates, and reopened much earlier than California. Deaths peaked at 1.72 per 100,000 in California, 1.21 in Texas, and 0.86 in Florida.”

Next question: Why are the politicians, public health “experts” and mainstream media buffoons so totally, absolutely determined to get every human being on God’s green earth vaccinated for this particular virus? At the present rate, soon we will be told unborn babies must be vaccinated, too.

Could it be that the virus really was engineered in a lab somewhere and at some point in the near future everybody who got the vaccine will suddenly shut up and stop yammering about things such as individual liberty, the Constitution and political accountability?

Asking for a friend.

HOW BIDEN’S BUDDIES LOBBY FOR RUSSIA’S PIPELINE: The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross and Adam Kredo pull the curtains back on how His Fraudulency’s lobbyist buddies do their thing for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline without having to register as foreign lobbyists. It’s a profitable gig, too.

FILIBUSTER SAFE, HILL STAFFERS SURVEY SAYS: Roll Call’s reporting is reliably shaped by liberal assumptions, but there is often valuable and/or insightful news in its regular Capitol Insiders Survey of Hill staffers. Consider this, for example:

“Not a single Democratic aide thought senators would eliminate the legislative filibuster, and just 28 percent of them said they thought the Senate would weaken it, while 59 percent said the Senate would preserve it. Meanwhile, Republicans are confident Manchin will stand his ground, with 84 percent expecting the filibuster rule will remain.”

Lots of other interesting tidbits of insight here, too.

GOP MUST THINK IN A NEW (Old) WAY ABOUT ANTI-TRUST: Mike Davis, chief of the upstart Internet Accountability Project (IAP) is now on Substack and offers a bracing analysis of why Republicans need to wake up to reality about Big Tech and monopoly:

“The path forward for Republicans is to think about Big Tech and antitrust in the same way we increasingly think about China: our old operating modes with respect to both were driven by economic theories that did not pan out. In the early 1990s, we were reliably informed by neoliberal economists, including the Chicago School, that if China were allowed to engage in free trade and join multilateral organizations that the country would gradually democratize and embrace America as the world’s only superpower.

“We know now that this theory missed the mark by a wide margin. Instead of democratizing, China became a surveillance state (thanks in large part to the U.S. internet). Contrary to the Chicago School theory, China never engaged in free or fair trade. Three million jobs shipped from the U.S. to China over the past twenty years — and our children get defective toys and contaminated baby formula.

“It took President Trump to wake us from our China slumber before it was too late. Similarly, the Chicago School economic theory applied in Big Tech markets has suffered a similar fate.

“We were told by the Chicago School [‘modern anti-trust] experts that market power in these markets would be fleeting because entry barriers were low and someone would eventually build a better mousetrap. We were also informed by these experts that Big Tech markets—in which many services are provided for free—defied application of the consumer-welfare standard.

“Therefore, there could be no ‘harm,’ as narrowly defined by the Chicago School, to consumers in Big Tech markets. We got that one wrong too, making it time to move on.”

Definitely a Must-Read.

PAY RAISES COMING FOR HILL STAFFERS: Prospects are growing that Congress, or at least the House of Representatives will reverse a decade-long trend and authorize more funds to improve compensation for personal and committee aides.

Conservatives and libertarians who are properly predisposed against any sentence containing the words “government” and “more” should think twice before opposing better pay for Hill aides. The Founders wisely made Congress the “first branch,” with all of the constitutional perogatives needed to win any battle with either of the other two branches.

But Congress under Democrats and Republicans for the past 50 years has steadily ceded its powers, especially in the regulatory fields, to the executive branch and the courts. The result has been more unaccountable bureaucrats and judges.

It will do no good, however, to pull that power back if Congress doesn’t ensure it has sufficient staff to do the tremendous amount of day-to-day work required to do effective oversight. At least voters can toss the rascals in Congress out when they don’t do their jobs properly.

IT’S FRIDAY, SO EXPLAIN THIS: Lots of ancient authors wrote about Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Jesus and Alexander the Great. So why only reject what they wrote about Jesus? It’s an important question these days because flawed historiographies contributes to flawed worldviews, as seen in the 1619 Project.

G7 AND OUR COGNITIVELY CHALLENGED PRESIDENT: Issues & Insights reports the Brits are having trouble believing His Fraudulency is actually representing the United States.

MAY I CROW FOR JUST A MINUTE: Guess who is the single fastest-growing U.S. news site? The Epoch Times, according to the Press-Gazette, which is a UK-based media industry publication. They don’t sound too happy about it, but the data is there. Check out the tremendous growth for Newsmax, too.