WHAT A DRAG: Lia Thomas ineligible for Olympics after new FINA ruling on transgender athletes. “Athletes who transitioned after the age of 12, or achieved Tanner Stage 2 in puberty, will be barred from competing as a female.”
Thomas doesn’t seem to have transitioned in any noticeable way except for his wardrobe.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME…: The Army’s M10 Booker is a tank. Prove us wrong.
In order to determine once and forever more whether the Booker is a tank, we at the Military Times Observation Post developed a legal test* based on Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio.
“I know it when I see it,” Potter famously argued. He may or may not have been describing his method of determining whether a video was “hardcore pornography” and thus in violation of Ohio’s obscenity law, but it’s a convenient way to make up an official-sounding intellectual framework that just happens to support our (correct and esteemed) opinion.
So let’s evaluate the Booker according to the Potter Tank Test: Do we know it to be a tank when we see it?
Yes.
Previously: Meet the Not-Tank Named After Two Army Heroes.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Gingrich Warns That Biden’s Campaign Is Stronger Than We Think.
Please note that it’s Biden’s campaign that’s strong, not Biden.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden’s Border Crisis Is As Bad As Ever, His Admin Is Just Better At Hiding It.
First, the Biden administration is ushering in would-be border jumpers through what it calls a “historic expansion” of granting humanitarian fast-pass entrance slips to intending border jumpers via a cell-phone app called “CBP-One.” This historically expanded program allows those who intended to cross illegally between land ports of entry to now be funneled through them and thus not be counted in the politically problematic monthly “illegal crossings” category.
The “70 percent” decline in “illegal crossings” does not mean 70 percent fewer foreign nationals entered America over the border as implied.
Under the CBP-One rubric, most (if not all) of the administration’s claimed “decline” in “non-citizen” migrants are still pouring into American towns and cities that are, in growing numbers, declaring emergencies and demanding state and federal bailouts. Here’s what a typical CBP-One line into America looks like on the bridge from Matamoros to Brownsville.
The administration so far has maintained the fiction of steep declines in foreign national border entries through secrecy. It will not release the granular-level CBP-One entry data that would tell Americans how many foreign nationals are crossing on bridges and through airports.
As one measure reflecting the administration’s desire to keep CBP-One entries a state secret, the administration ignored my February 2023 Freedom of Information Act request for granular breakdowns of the entries.
Read the whole thing.
ASKING THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS: What the Hell Just Happened in Russia? “At this point, we barely know what we don’t know. But maybe the biggest mystery of all is why Prigozhin stood down just when it looked like he was on the verge of success. We can only conjecture but, out of all the wild-a**-guesses I’ve seen on the news and online, this one is certainly the most interesting…”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CHINA EDITION): Gloom Returns to China Markets as Stimulus Trade Fizzles Out. “Beijing is making it clear that any easing will be targeted and measured, bidding farewell to the days of massive stimulus that drove leveraged buying and inflated asset prices — a distortion that the nation’s leaders are determined not to repeat.”
Repeat or not, Chinese real estate still hasn’t undergone the painful reevaluation needed to restore some sanity.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hmm…Maybe McConnell Shouldn’t Have Kept Merrick Garland Off of the Supreme Court. “OK, don’t get too hung up on the headline, I’m just spit balling here because Garland absolutely wears me out.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring. Are Americans Paying Attention?
In 2022 Norway’s third richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, announced in an open letter to shareholders he was moving to Lugano, Switzerland.
“My capital will continue working in Norway,” wrote the fishing magnate turned industrialist who launched his empire four decades ago with a 69-foot trawler he bought while saving money working on ships off the coast of Alaska.
Røkke, who Forbes estimates has a fortune of $5.1 billion, will cost the Norwegian government an estimated 175,000,000 kroner annually (roughly $16 million) with his departure. That might not sound like a lot of money, but Røkke is not the only wealthy entrepreneur leaving Norway, The Guardian notes.
“More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv,” reports wealth correspondent Rupert Neate. “This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, [the paper] added.”
Did you catch that? More “super rich” Norwegians left Norway in 2022 than during the previous 13 years combined. The reason wealthy Norwegians are fleeing the country is not a secret.
Following its 2021 electoral victory, the Nordic nation’s Labor Party made good on its promise to soak the rich. Norway is one of just a handful of OECD countries that still taxes net wealth, and the Labor Party increased the country’s wealth tax to 1.1 percent despite warnings that such a move would “trigger capital flight and threaten job creation.”
Capital flight is exactly what happened, and it has left the Norwegian government with less revenue.
Yes, but it gave Labor lawmakers something to feel good about.
But here’s the buried lede, way down at the very end of the report:
Musk also said that SpaceX has made well over 1,000 changes to the Mars-focused Starship, which exploded and failed to reach orbit in April during its first test launch. “The probability of the next flight working—or getting to orbit—is much higher than the last one,” he said. “Maybe it’s like 60%.”
Godspeed.
CHRIS QUEEN: Chicken Little Leftists. “You would think that being proven wrong so many times would lead leftists to can the histrionics, but they don’t show any signs of stopping anytime soon. But when your policies sound like hysterical middle school girls, so do your tactics.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco Mayor London Breed floats idea of DEMOLISHING Westfield mall in crime-ridden downtown and replacing it with a sports stadium – as she brushes off city’s retail apocalypse because ‘a lot of people’ shop online. “A Westfield mall could become, you know, something completely different than what it currently is… we could even tear down the whole building and build a whole new soccer stadium.”
Not a massive homeless shelter?
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: IRS Whistleblower Says Justice Department Slowed and Stymied the Hunter Biden Tax Investigation.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: New North Dakota law bans mandatory diversity training in higher ed.
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: The Naked Truth About Florida Drivers. “This week we have a partly naked shoplifter, a half-naked shopper, and a mostly naked guy who drove his SUV around the elementary school running track.”
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT RESEARCHERS? Researchers: ‘Queering nuclear weapons’ can strengthen national security.
Previously: Nonbinary Biden nuclear official charged with stealing woman’s luggage at airport.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Photo From Hunter Biden’s Laptop Corroborates Bribery Claims From Whistleblower.
CHANGE: Overstock.com snaps up Bed, Bath & Beyond brand, but not stores, in liquidation sale. “Overstock submitted a low-ball “stalking horse” bid of $21.5 million last week and, according to The Washington Post; Bed Bath & Beyond confirmed on Thursday it had accepted the offer. If approved by a New Jersey bankruptcy court at a hearing next week, Overstock will acquire Bed, Bath & Beyond’s brand name, business data and digital assets. Physical stores aren’t part of the deal. At its peak, Bed, Bath & Beyond operated over 1,500 stores but, as of early May, was down to around 350 locations.”
That really is a fire sale price.
AT THIS POINT, ANYTHING HUNTER BIDEN-RELATED SHOULD BE COVERED BY THE FREE CENTER SPACE: We’ll Bet You Didn’t Have Hunter Biden’s Secret Club on Your Bingo Card.
STOP LOOKING POOR: China’s Solution to Inequality? Cracking Down on Displays of Wealth and Poverty.
Back in 2013, as public anger simmered over the country’s yawning wealth gap, authorities banned the advertisements of luxury products on state radio and television channels. In 2021, social media sites in China removed thousands of videos and accounts that featured large amounts of cash and luxury items. And just last year, a state-owned investment bank asked its employees to stop flying business class.
It’s not just displays of wealth that Beijing wants to make disappear. Content about the lives of people living in poverty has also been subjected to sweeping censorship, the New York Times reported in March, citing the erasure of a viral video of a retiree living on a monthly pension of $14.50 and a singer’s tongue-in-cheek song on dismal job prospects.
“The government has long realized that [economic inequality is] a threat, and they need to do something,” Shan Wei, a senior research fellow of Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore, tells TIME. “But so far, I think what they have successfully done is control the flow of information on inequality issues.”
“Control the flow of information” is about the only thing Communist governments do well, right up until they don’t.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.