THE WEATHER IS LOVELY, AL GORE HURT MOST:

SHE’S ON PAXLOVID: Is Kamala Harris Sicker with COVID Than the White House Will Admit?

“PROGRESS”: Under Musk, some fear Twitter’s moderation progress could unravel.

FUNDRAISING GOES TO WAR: Buy Part of a Shot-Down Russian Jet, Help Ukraine Shoot Down Another Russian Jet.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S AWFUL: Biden’s Net Approval Rating Is Underwater in 40 States. “Biden’s net approval rating fell by 38 points among independents in Michigan, along with 33-point declines with the group in Georgia and Minnesota.”

WAIT, I’D BEEN TOLD CONSERVATIVES WERE THE BOOK-BANNERS: Amazon Employees Hold Secret Zoom Meeting Plotting to Ban Conservative Children’s Book ‘Johnny the Walrus’ by Matt Walsh.

TAR, FEATHERS: Teacher forced to apologize for bringing in cotton plants during lesson on slavery.

A San Francisco history teacher allegedly was suspended and then forced to apologize for bringing in cotton plants for a lesson on slavery and the cotton gin.

Last month, the Creative Arts Charter School teacher had brought in the plants, called “bolls,” to show “the sharp edges that had pierced hands while picking cotton and pulling out the seeds,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

It took less than a day for the school to begin an investigation into the teacher and the lesson.

Although school officials “declined to confirm” what specific actions were taken, the teacher was absent for five weeks following the lesson. Upon her return just nine days ago, she issued a written apology to school families.

The apology noted the lesson was “sourced from reliable sources” (the report indicates it is “widely available online”) and was “an effort to get the students to understand the difficulty of manually processing cotton prior to the invention of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin.”

But, the teacher added, “I realize that this lesson was not culturally responsive and had the potential to cause harm.”

No, it did not.

RED-PILLED? Rough Week for Lefty Weaklings: Elon Musk Has Jack Dorsey’s ‘Trust.’

COOL, NOW DO NANCY PELOSI: Madison Cawthorn implicated in potential insider trading scheme, experts say.

JOE BIDEN DID THAT: Biden Administration Imposes Further Limits on Arctic Drilling.

WHEN REAL LIFE IMITATES “VEEP”:

I’m sure.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: High School Football Coach’s Prayer Case Goes Before the Supreme Court.

YOU DON’T SAY: Global stagflation won’t be just a squall that’ll blow over. “The new reality with which economies must reckon is higher inflation and slowing economic growth. And a big reason for the current bout of stagflation is a series of supply shocks that have curtailed output and raised costs. The covid pandemic forced many sectors to lock down, disrupted global supplies and produced a persistent reduction in labour supply, especially in the US. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven up various prices. China’s draconian lockdown in major economic hubs has squeezed supplies further. But even without these short-term factors, the medium-term outlook would be darkening. There are many reasons to worry about stagflationary conditions haunting the global economy with higher prices, lower growth, and possible recessions in many places.”

Left out: 80% of All US Dollars in Existence Have Been Printed in Just the Last Two Years.

Also left out from 2020: US industrial production tanks the most in 101 years amid factory lockdowns.

Inflation is when the growth of the money supply exceeds the growth of goods and services. Governments didn’t just print too much money, they crushed the production and delivery of goods and services.

It’s a perfect storm of a disaster our elites conjured up for us, and they didn’t give a damn.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Lib Twitter Tantrum, Day 2—Send Fainting Couches and Diapers. “Imagine millions of grownups taking on the characteristics of a child in his terrible twos who was being raised by parents who had yet to say ‘no’ to him. Alleged adults spent time that they could have used productively engaged in a collective snot-bubble meltdown.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes.

Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a “tsunami” of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users’ personal data. And the “fundamental” problem, the company admits, is that Facebook has no idea where all of its user data goes, or what it’s doing with it, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard.

The document was written last year by Facebook privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team, whose mission is “to make meaningful connections between people and businesses,” and which “sits at the center of our monetization strategy and is the engine that powers Facebook’s growth,” according to a recent job listing that describes the team.

What it comes down to is this: So long as your data is how Facebook makes money, the company has no vested interest in what happens to it after they’ve gotten their cut.

YES, PLEASE: Dear Corporations: This ‘Pride Month,’ LEAVE US ALONE.

INDEED:

HMM: Russian explosions point to Ukraine’s embrace of the British special forces model.

Storage tanks at a major oil depot in the Russian city of Bryansk exploded early on Monday. Was Ukraine responsible?

Before you answer, consider first that this is only the latest disaster to afflict Russian critical infrastructure near the Ukrainian border. Another oil depot on Belgorod was targeted by a Ukrainian helicopter strike in early April. Prior to that, Russian railway lines near the border were sabotaged. A Russian missile research center and a chemical plant also recently suffered explosions.

These incidents all appear to fit well with Ukraine’s military strategy.

Bryansk, 62 miles from the Ukrainian border, is beyond the range of most drone systems in Ukraine’s possession. Unconfirmed video from the Bryansk incident indicates the sound of a missile in the terminal attack phase. Considering this noise and Bryansk’s relative distance from Ukraine, short-range ballistic missiles may have been responsible. Regardless, the explosion will disrupt energy replenishment efforts for Russian military forces in Ukraine.

The explosion also dilutes Putin’s credibility in claiming that his war on Ukraine is not a war, but rather a limited “special military operation.” When stuff keeps blowing up in Russian cities, it’s hard to convince the residents of said cities that Russia isn’t at war.

If Ukraine is hitting back in ways that A) Slow the Russian offensive and B) Hit Putin right in the prestige, then good.

MATT MARGOLIS ASKS: Will Elon Musk Let Me Back on Twitter?

ENDORSED: Accounts Elon Musk Should Restore.

TRUTH: Trump Has a Message for Nancy-Boy Bed Wetters Worried That He’ll Return to Twitter.

DEAN OBEIDALLAH: Democrats should embrace being woke and make 2022 about GOP’s extremism. “I’m not saying Democrats should ignore ‘kitchen table issues’ — especially given that inflation has a real impact on people’s lives. But there’s no easy way to address that issue. There is when it comes to extremism.”

This is solid advice and I dearly hope Democrats follow it to the letter.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Did Steve Martin Just Kill Cancel Culture? “On the 44th anniversary of its debut, I come to praise King Tut, not to entomb it.”

Plus:

• Is Hunter Biden HIV-positive?
• A Utah college is teaching pr0n because otherwise nobody would know how to do that stuff
• “Not Sure” for President!

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 25. “Russian forces conducted precision missile strikes against five Ukrainian railway stations in central and western Ukraine on April 25 in a likely effort to disrupt Ukrainian reinforcements to eastern Ukraine and Western aid shipments. A series of likely coordinated Russian missile strikes conducted within an hour of one another early on April 25 hit critical transportation infrastructure in Vinnytsia, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, and Zhytomyr oblasts.[1] Russian forces seek to disrupt Ukrainian reinforcements and logistics. The Kremlin may have additionally conducted this series of strikes—an abnormal number of precision missile strikes for one day—to demonstrate Russia’s ability to hit targets in Western Ukraine and to disrupt western aid shipments after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s surprise visit to Kyiv over the weekend. However, Russian precision strike capabilities will remain limited and unlikely to decisively affect the course of the war; open-source research organization Bellingcat reported on April 24 that Russia has likely used 70% of its total stockpile of precision missiles to date.”

Much more at the link, but it sure looks like everybody is settling in for a long war.

GOOD: Human Rights Watch, ACLU, Amnesty International Clutch Their Pearls in Horror At Elon Musk’s Purchase of Twitter.

I don’t know if Musk can “save” Twitter or even whether the platform is worth saving. But he’s certainly annoyed all the right people.