THE ENEMY WITHIN:

EXCLUSIVE: The teachers union in Portland, Oregon, has created a curriculum that teaches kindergarteners that "Jewish people" are "settler-colonial" oppressors, prepares them to attend "protests," and celebrates Palestinian "martyrs."

Inside Portland's kindergarten Intifada. 🧵

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 5, 2024

Read the whole thread.

AT ONE POINT IT LOOKED LIKE HE SOILED HIMSELF: Biden’s Visit to Normandy Was the Awkward Mess We All Predicted It Would Be.

WELL, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT SHE’S DOING: ‘My Mama Didn’t Raise A Fool’: John Kennedy Accuses Janet Yellen Of Giving Economy ‘Sugar High’ To Help Biden Win.

“Because of the inverted yield curve, that means that you’re gonna pay more in interest on short-term debt than say 10-year debt,” the senator said. “Now that’s a fact. You can go check the numbers of Treasuries yesterday. First, that costs taxpayers a lot more money in the interest. And number two, you’re working at cross purposes with the Federal Reserve because what you’re doing is stimulating the market. You’re pumping money into the economy and Jay Powell’s over here beavering away trying to reduce inflation. And you’re beavering away trying to increase it.”

Yellen appeared to begin to dispute Kennedy’s claims but he continued, talking over her.

“By paying an interest rate that is 100 basis points higher than you would have to pay,” he said. “And the only reason I can figure that y’all are doing that is, is to try to give the economy a sugar high five months before an election. Why else would anybody want to borrow at 5% when you can borrow at 4%?”

I’d just add that wages still haven’t caught up with Bidenflation and that despite the low unemployment rate, we still have fewer full-time jobs (and a lower labor participation rate) than we did in 2019.

For all of Yellen’s sugar high, to mix metaphors, the Biden recovery is mostly smoke and mirrors.

IFT-4 WAS THE BEST SHOW (ALMOST) ON EARTH: The Massive Starship That Could.

THERE ARE PLENTY OF ALTERNATIVES TO ADOBE:

Photoshop is SPYING on you now.

This is nuts. @Photoshop has new terms that require you allow them to view everything you create, and reserves the right to deactivate your @Adobe software if you make stuff they don't like. Of course they say "for legal purposes" but we all know… pic.twitter.com/LsZejsE77u

— Grummz (@Grummz) June 5, 2024

I hate software-as-a-service and end-user license agreements are even worse.

HUMAN NATURE NEVER CHANGES: Amazonian Tribe Gets the Internet, Predictable Results Follow.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Consumers say they’re pulling back on tipping servers, drivers and hair stylists.

CHANGE: Say What? Black Panther Founding Member Supports Trump.

NICE HAIR, TIN EAR: Furious Californians tear Gavin Newsom to shreds as post boasting about the number of Fortune 500 companies in the state spectacularly backfires: ‘The rich is getting rich and the middle class is becoming poor.’

The embattled governor was keen to trumpet a Fortune Magazine story suggesting that 57 of America’s biggest firms now call the state home, overtaking Texas and New York and putting California at the top of the list for the first time in 10 years.

‘More than Texas. More than Florida. 57 incredible and booming companies, right here in the Golden State,’ he boasted.

But many were keen to point out that people have been heading in the other direction with 340,000 more leaving than arriving in 2022.

Los Angeles has 340,000 fewer people than it did in 2019, while San Francisco, San Diego and Santa Clara counties are each around 40,000 people short.

Florida meanwhile gained nearly 250,000, while Texas had 174,261.

California’s population is 1.2 percent less than it was in 2019 will not reach pre-pandemic numbers until around 2032 on current trends.

The ratio between the number of people who receive benefits to those whose taxes pay for them is worsening, too.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Dem ‘Convicted Felon’ Eunuch Chorus Isn’t Gaining an Audience. “Ever since former President Donald Trump was handed a kajillion bogus felony convictions for the equivalent of a handful of parking tickets, his haters have been squawking ‘Convicted felon!’ like short bus parrots. The insane repetition of the phrase is obviously intended to cause damage to Trump’s reputation and election chances.”

GODSPEED…

Now targeting 7:50 a.m. CT for launch of Starship’s fourth flight test. Weather conditions are 95% favorable. The webcast will go live ~30 minutes ahead of liftoff → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/Qf8bnsvysd

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 6, 2024

SPLC IS A HATE GROUP: SPLC Warns of ‘Christian Supremacy’ as a Fundraising Gimmick.

GRADUALLY AND THEN SUDDENLY: How Debt Ate Chicago.

According to the group Truth in Accounting, Chicago continues to live up to its moniker “Second City” in at least one respect: it has the second-worst debt load of any big city in America—about $43,000 per taxpayer, or almost $40 billion in total. The first is New York City, but Chicago residents also have to deal with Illinois’ debts, which total $42,000 per taxpayer, third worst in the nation. Thus, a family moving to Chicago suddenly becomes the inheritor of almost $85,000 in liabilities. By this metric, Chicago is no longer second but has by far the worst debt burden of any major city.

Chicago’s accumulating debt might be bearable if the city had low taxes and therefore room to raise them and pay down some of the liabilities. But taxes in the Windy City already rank among the nation’s harshest. According to a national study, Chicago’s combined city and state taxes would eat up over 12 percent of a U.S. median family income. The only large cities with higher proportionate taxes are Rust Belt towns with much smaller populations, such as Detroit and Newark. Chicago imposes the highest sales tax of any major city (10.25 percent) and punishing property taxes, too.

Chicago’s taxation is also brutal on businesses. A recent study of 53 cities found that Chicago’s tax on industrial properties was nearly double the average of other cities. Chicago’s commercial property-tax rate, at more than 4 percent per year, was by far the worst of any major city and more than twice the average.

High debt and taxes might be manageable if the city’s economic fundamentals were strong. They’re not. Chicago relied for years on commercial properties, especially downtown offices in the Loop, to power its economy and fund the city’s excesses. But those jobs are fleeing. Downtown Chicago’s office vacancy rate recently approached 24 percent, a record high. Boeing has moved its headquarters from the Loop to Northern Virginia. These white-collar firms will not pay the city’s higher taxes in the future; they won’t even pay their existing leases.

Making matters worse, Chicago’s population is shrinking.

That last item requires no explanation.

JUNE 6, 1944 — BY THE NUMBERS, BY THE MEN: The Great Crusade Was Greater Than You Know.

GIVE MSNBC ANOTHER DAY OR TWO AND THEY’LL TOP IT: This Might Be the Most Insane Take on Biden and the ‘Rule of Law.’

THIS ISN’T SURPRISING: Stress literally eats away at your brain’s cognitive reserve.

There are few more stressful jobs in the world than POTUS — and Joe Biden didn’t take office three years ago with an abundance of cognitive reserves.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: What a Damn Shame for Our Combat Veterans.

STAR BORES: ‘The Acolyte’ – Woke, Wobbly and Steeped in Feminism. “It’s all an imitation, an attempt to recreate a fabled universe and the passion it once stoked.”

ANOTHER TORPEDO CIRCLES BACK: The Trump Verdict Continues to Backfire on Biden.

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

Preteen boy holding a Palestinian flag screams that he wants to be a shahid — a martyr.

Gaza?

Nah.

Massachusetts.pic.twitter.com/dEtA4qQwOg

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) June 5, 2024

Colonialism, straight up.

UPDATE: Pro-Palestinian Protesters Arrested at Stanford After Takeover of President’s Office.

As Glenn asked earlier today, “When can we start the purge?”

BIDEN DOESN’T HAVE THE JUICE: Americans still not sold on EVs despite Biden push, poll shows. “Despite hefty tax incentives for purchasing all-electric cars, a majority of U.S. adults — 6 in 10 — of those surveyed cited high prices as the major reason they would not buy an EV, and some 25% cited cost as a minor reason.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: How Did So Many Sex Offenders Get Jobs In Texas Schools? “Both Texas Scorecard and The Texan have done good work highlighting a disturbing reality: Numerous public school teachers of all grade levels have been arrested for sex offenses, many involving children.”

BECAUSE IT IS: It feels like the social order is crumbling in Germany.

The rise in political violence combined with a rapidly shifting party landscape in which a right-wing force is emerging as a major player reminds many Germans of the 1920s and 30s. AfD politicians and voters have long been called ‘Nazis’ by their opponents, but now a new spate of scandals has sparked fears that far-right sentiments may be more embedded than political polling suggests.

Over recent months, videos have appeared of people singing Nazis slogans to the 1999 party tune L’amour Toujours by the Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino. In October last year, young people sang ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out’ (Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus) when the song was played at a harvest festival in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Recordings were posted on social media, and it became a trend with further cases being reported to the police across the country.

It then made the headlines when a group of revellers at an exclusive bar on the island of Sylt filmed themselves singing the ‘foreigners out’ version. One man was seen doing a Hitler salute and mimicking the dictator’s moustache with two fingers. The footage went viral, and the German press, politicians and public figures condemned the group as ‘champagne Nazis’. In another incident, students of the private school of Louisenlund in northern Germany were caught doing the same thing at a school party. Such blatant disregard for the country’s post-war taboos by members of the wealthy elite cast unsettling doubts over the idea that this only about the great unwashed.

It’s a fascinating article but it barely touches on the source of Germany’s current angst: uncontrolled immigration by Muslims who, at best, have no intention of assimilating.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Most Delusional Paul Krugman Headline in the History of Delusional Paul Krugman Headlines.

ELON’S GONNA NEED A FASTER STARSHIP: Scientists discover potentially habitable planet 40 light years away. “The exoplanet, named Gliese 12b, orbits a cool red dwarf star situated in the constellation Pisces and is about 27 per cent the size of our sun and 60 per cent of its temperature, according to the two studies published last week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.”