DrColostomy

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Great post, Liz. Instead of posting this on X, you should call your Senator. Senators are the ones who actually WRITE the laws about this.

Let me see if I can find out who your Senator is.

Looking...

Looking...

Oh, here it is. Her name is @SenWarren. Contact her, she can actually DO something about this.

Wait, hold on... I am being told she already had her chance five days ago.

On September 30 the Senate voted on the Stop Insider Trading Act, the House-passed bill that stops members of Congress, their spouses, and their kids from buying new individual stocks. Cloture failed 53-47 with every Republican voting yes and every single Democrat voting no, and that includes you, Senator.

So on Wednesday you voted against a congressional stock-trading ban, and on Monday you recorded a video demanding a congressional stock-trading ban. I have had students pull that exact move on me ("I didn't turn it in, Mr. B, but I really wanted to"), and they got a zero too.

Your caucus says the bill was too weak and had a photo ID requirement attached. Chuck Schumer called it "as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine," which, Chuck, is my line, and I would like royalties. Translated into English, your party would rather let Congress keep trading than ask voters for the same ID they show to buy Sudafed. That position is more confused than a chameleon in a bag of Skittles.

FACT CHECK, BECAUSE SOMEBODY HAS TO

I checked your number before I said a word (science teacher; we don't take numbers on faith, I save faith for Sunday), and it holds up.

o The Office of Government Ethics filing posted September 22 shows 1,156 transactions in July, 716 sales and 440 purchases, somewhere between $79 million and $270 million total.

o His 2025 annual disclosure listed more than 21,000.

o Bloomberg found his accounts have traded more securities than every member of Congress combined since he came back to office.

o Obama and Biden did not trade individual stocks as president. They held Treasuries, mutual funds, and retirement accounts, and I'll give them that, because I grade the test and not the student.

o Some of the July trades were reported after the STOCK Act's 45-day deadline, and the usual penalty for that is a $200 fee, which Congress wrote for itself.

What the 18-second video leaves out is how those accounts run. The White House says outside firms manage them on models that copy indexes like the Schwab 1000, which is called direct indexing: you own every stock in the index one by one instead of buying one fund, and the computer rebalances and harvests tax losses all day, spitting out hundreds of tickets. Bloomberg counted more than 200 days in 2025 when one of his accounts bought a stock while another account sold the same stock the same day. If that is insider trading, it is the worst insider trading in human history, betting for AND against yourself before lunch. That scheme couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.

He does sign the disclosure, though, and he can read his own book after the fact, so it is no blind trust. That is a fair ethics complaint and I'll say it out loud. A computer buying Costco forty times still doesn't show the President traded on secret government information.

Pointing at a Nvidia buy a week before a chip rule and yelling AHA is cum hoc ergo propter hoc, assuming that two things happening at the same time means one caused the other. With 21,000 trades a year, some of them will land next to a headline by pure arithmetic. The broken clock in my classroom is right twice a day and I still had to replace the batteries. I'd grade that logic, Senator, but I don't have a letter below F.

WHO WRITES THE CHECK THE MARKET IS BETTING ON

A stock price is a projection, a guess about how much cash a company will make down the road. For defense contractors, chip makers, drug companies, and solar startups, a huge chunk of that future cash comes from Washington, and Article I, Section 9 says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." Congress writes that law, along with the authorizations, the subsidies, the tax credits, and the multi-year contracts, and committee members see the markup long before the market does. A president can talk a stock up for an afternoon; Congress can hand a company ten years of revenue.

Which brings me to your caucus's favorite stock picker (technically her husband, whose trades she still has to disclose).

o June 2022: Paul Pelosi exercised Nvidia call options worth $1 million to $5 million while the Speaker was moving the CHIPS Act, roughly $53 billion for the semiconductor industry.

o July 26, 2022: he sold 25,000 Nvidia shares, and on July 27 the Senate passed CHIPS. Her office said they don't discuss trades and the sale lost money. Sure, and my students' dogs eat their homework every Tuesday.

o Trackers following the household's disclosures put the strategy around +984% since 2014, against roughly +306% for the S&P 500. That's a tracker estimate and not an audit, but it would make one very lucky man.

o When a ban came up in late 2021, the Speaker said members should be able to participate in the free market.

Jim Quinn's Seventh Law of Liberalism says it's different when you're a Democrat, and here's the proof. A Republican's computer rebalancing an index fund is a constitutional crisis, while a Democrat Speaker's household buying chip options as she pushes a chip bill is "free-market participation." They're muddying the water to make it look deep.

In fairness (and my students will tell you I'm annoyingly fair), your own disclosures show funds and real estate, no individual stocks. Your vote is the problem, Senator, along with Ro Khanna, who sponsors trading bans while his household files trade reports by the thousands. A $174,000 salary does not produce those return curves. My freshmen can do that math, and a few of them still count on their fingers.

WHO ACTUALLY KILLED THE BAN

Trump stood at the State of the Union in February and told Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay. The House passed it in July, 232-198, with 13 House Democrats voting for it, and then your side of the Senate killed it. Jim Quinn's Second Law fits like a glove: if you want to know what liberals are up to, watch what they accuse conservatives of doing.

What's next, Senator? Will you complain that troops went unpaid during a shutdown while every member of Congress got paid on time... wait, I was just told that already happened. A private citizen wrote a $130 million check so our soldiers got paid, and you all collected yours because you wrote the law that way. I broke down the whole racket here, including a real stock ban (no individual stocks for members, spouses, or kids, broad funds or a true blind trust only, and ten times the profit as the penalty): https://t.co/a8kaUTn5th

If you think that's a one-off, take a tour of the worst restaurant in America: https://t.co/Odm2GCHjkB

Congress found $53 billion for chip makers, yet the Major Richard Star Act, about $10 billion over ten years so combat-wounded, medically retired veterans stop having their retirement eaten by an offset, still can't get a floor vote after five Congresses of cosponsors saying nice things and doing nothing for 50,000-plus wounded veterans. I wrote that one for my daughter: https://t.co/tnaDRLFIYZ

So what have you actually done for the people this year, Senator, besides vote no and press record? Most of your bills hand out somebody else's money, and handouts build a dependent voting bloc that has to keep re-electing you to keep the checks coming. You are a snollygoster, which is a shrewd, unprincipled politician (look it up).

And since we're on rich people, I keep hearing millionaire senators say "tax the rich" while knowing every loophole, because their colleagues wrote them. Pay DOUBLE what the IRS says you owe this year, standard deduction only, no itemizing, and then come lecture me about the rich. Until then you're about as useful as a box of white crayons. The history of "tax the rich" starts in 1913, and you're still paying for it: https://t.co/q3IYHlbxS9

Here's a free offer. Ban individual stock trading for every member of Congress, every spouse, every dependent, AND the President and Vice President, with broad index funds or a real blind trust, and make violators give back the profit plus ten times. I'll sign that petition tonight. You can lead a person to Congress, but you can't make them think, so I'll be over here waiting for you to vote yes on literally anything.

IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this. COMMENT below with your take. Should the ban cover the President too, or only Congress? Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube. @TPUSA

But what do I know, I am only a science teacher who actually read the roll call vote before recording a video about it.

#MAGA #Trump #Veterans

[Dustin Grage @GrageDustin]

🚨 BREAKING: Keith Ellison was just EXPOSED by CNN for taking lavish overseas trips paid for by corporate lobbyists.

- Five-star hotels
- First-class flights
- African safari tours
- AND MORE

Ellison appears visibly upset that they’re even asking about the trips. He abruptly ends the interview while staring down the reporter.

Earlier this week, he attacked Ron Schutz for simply owning stocks. Meanwhile, Ellison is accepting lavish trips funded by the very companies he’s suing.

WOW!

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

⚡️ Factory towns absorbed technological displacement for 30 years and the system largely shrugged.

This time it hits the college-educated professional class: the people who write the news, staff the campaigns, vote reliably, and have never been on the losing side of a technology shift.

They won't take it quietly.

The anger goes populist, on both the left and the right.

The last automation wave hollowed out factories.

This one reaches the institutions that explained why the factories had to disappear.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

The word tolerance has been weaponized against you. The weapon was forged in 1965. You should know who forged it and why.

Before there was the French Theory — before Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze made deconstruction elegant and exportable — there was the Frankfurt School. And the Frankfurt School was worse, because it was deliberate. Foucault played with ideas he never expected to have consequences. Herbert Marcuse knew exactly what he was building.

These were not fringe academics. The Institute for Social Research relocated from Frankfurt to Columbia University in 1934 when Hitler came to power. Funded, positioned, and deliberate, they spent the next decades producing the theoretical infrastructure for the dismantling of the civilization that had given them refuge. This is not ingratitude – it is the logic of the project. It was universal – it applied to every Western civilization equally.

Marcuse — godfather of the New Left — published Repressive Tolerance in 1965. The most influential political document most people have never read. Its argument: tolerating wrong ideas is itself oppression. True tolerance requires the suppression of intolerant ideas. Tolerating everything is repressive. Suppressing the wrong things is liberating. The argument is circular by design – it puts the conclusion inside the premise and dares you to find the exit.

The practical implication was stated explicitly: withdrawal of tolerance from movements that are regressive, from speech that reinforces existing hierarchies. The left decides which movements are regressive. Everyone else is silenced – not despite tolerance but in its name. The most sophisticated justification for censorship ever produced, dressed in the vocabulary of liberation.

The French Theory picked up the tools and made them elegant. Foucault made the Frankfurt critique of power literary. Derrida made the critique of meaning philosophical. Deleuze made the critique of identity aesthetic. What had been a political program became a cultural sensibility – which is why it spread further and faster than the original. You can argue with a political program. A cultural sensibility is in the air you breathe.

The generation that read Marcuse went on to run the universities, the media, the foundations, the NGOs, the content moderation departments, and the EU regulatory apparatus. They did not implement his argument cynically – they implemented it sincerely, because they had been taught it as philosophy.

This is why cancel culture does not feel like censorship to the people practicing it. The journalist who demands a speaker be deplatformed genuinely believes she is defending free speech. The HR department that fires the employee for the wrong opinion genuinely believes it is creating an inclusive environment. They have been taught that this is what tolerance means. Marcuse taught them.

Musk has been fighting Marcuse’s argument for four years probably even without knowing Marcuse’s name. Every content moderation policy, every advertiser boycott, every regulatory assault – these are Repressive Tolerance, institutionalized. The DSA is Repressive Tolerance with a legal budget. The fact-checking organization is Repressive Tolerance.

The good news: the argument fails on contact with a free platform – because the suppression becomes visible, the mechanism becomes nameable, and a named mechanism loses half its power. This is why the Counter-Reformation moves so fast against X. Not because X is dangerous. Because X is where Repressive Tolerance gets named.

You are reading this now – which is precisely what Repressive Tolerance was designed to prevent.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Tu ne t'es jamais demandé pourquoi tous les artistes sont de gauche ?

Pourquoi tous les acteurs sont de gauche ?

Pourquoi tous les sportifs qui prennent la parole sont de gauche ?

Ce n'est pas un hasard. Ce n'est pas parce qu'ils sont plus intelligents ou plus « éclairés » que toi.

Ça fait des décennies que tu te fais arnaquer. Et ça a un nom, une théorie et un auteur.

Dans ce post, je t'explique tout 👇

[John Linder @linderje]

THE LINDER LETTER

THIS ELECTION IS DIFFERENT

This election is not about President Trump. This election is about you.

The night President Trump was elected to serve his second term as president was 50 years to the day after I won my first race for the Georgia House of Representatives. Since that time, I’ve served 14 years in the Georgia House,18 years in Congress and have written and spoke on politics for another 20 or so years. I’m old.

There were times during those years when I thought I was pretty important, but then my wife would always remind me of Bill Hudnut. Bill was elected to Congress from Indiana in 1972. He said the first call he received after being elected to Congress was from a lady complaining about her garbage collection. He said, Ma’am, I’ve just been elected to serve you in the Congress of the United States of America. Don’t you think you should call the sanitation department? She said, I really didn’t want to go that high.

Since that night 50 years ago there have been 13 presidential elections and 12 off-year elections. And, as I recall, every one of them was the most important election of our lifetimes.

This election is different.

Let me begin by saying something that may surprise you. This election isn’t about Donald Trump. This election is about you. I know a lot of you have made up your minds about President Trump and nothing I say here is going to change that. That’s fine. I’m not here to talk about him. I’m here to ask you to look past him, at what’s been happening to the party that used to compete with him. Because whatever you think of the past, the ballot in front of you this year is, more than anything, about you and the future.

Thirty years ago, we fought Bill Clinton over welfare, healthcare, crime, the environment, taxes and abortion among other things.

There were “Blue Dog Democrats” who leaned conservative and liberal Republicans who leaned to the left, and all of the debates were fierce, but healthy, and all were among people of good will.

The Democrats sincerely wanted to improve the lives of Americans and were also sincere in believing that the way to do so was through more government programs. A good example was the Clinton Crime Bill that insisted on midnight basketball leagues with mandated diversity among the players and teams. Republicans were more inclined to punish wrong doers. We believed different things. But we debated them honestly.

Republicans also want to improve the lives of Americans but we believe that the way to do that is by creating businesses and increasing the number of jobs and increasing the size of the economy. We believe, as President Kennedy believed, that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Whatever happened to the party of John Kennedy? The party of Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Sam Nunn, Zell Miller and Bill Clinton?

Truman began the containment of the Soviet Union and integrated the armed forces by executive order, and did both without batting an eye to the right or the left.

Hubert Humphrey was a Cold War liberal who never apologized for hating communism. He saw the Democrat Party of Minnesota infested with Communists and formed the Democrat Farmer Labor Party which persists today. He never once apologized for America.

Sam Nunn ran the Senate Armed Services Committee like a man who understood that the Soviet nuclear arsenal needed to be dismantled regardless of who was in charge. He partnered with Republican Richard Lugar to actually work on it.

Zell Miller was the Lieutenant Governor of Georgia for 16 years. He was governor for 8 and then Senator. He was the keynote speaker at the Democrat Convention in 1992 and the Republican convention in 2004. He was a friend. I once asked him about changing parties and he said, John, I’m a Democrat through and through. Zell remains, in my view, the finest Georgia public servant of my lifetime.

And Bill Clinton — whatever I said about him thirty years ago, and I said plenty — stood in front of Congress in 1996 and told his own party, “The era of big government is over.” He signed a welfare reform bill and a balanced budget to prove he meant it.

I didn’t agree with these men on most things. But the debate was always inside a framework of a shared America. They believed in a strong military and a dangerous world. They believed work was better than a welfare check. They believed that Communism was an enemy, not a misunderstood alternative. We could fight about taxes and spending the way families fight about money, but inside the same house. And all of them – and all of us – were for secure borders.

In any one of the previous 12 off-year elections one side or the other would win and the debate would again be as to how big or how little to tax and spend. How big or little the government’s role in our lives should be. And we survived.

This election is different.

This past year, Democratic Socialists of America candidates won the New York City mayor’s race and then, months later, in primaries unseated sitting Democratic members of Congress. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a long time New York City political leader, was defeated by Darializa Avila Chevalier. No one saw it coming. Chevalier had founded a group whose stated aim was “the total eradication of western civilization.” Won’t it be interesting to see her take the oath to defend the Constitution.

In Colorado, 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros defeated thirty-year incumbent Diana DeGette. The Mayor of Seattle is a Democratic Socialist as well as the likely winners in November in Washington DC and Los Angeles. The mayor of New York City went on national television and said that a democratic socialist can win any office in America. He may be right.

We now have a radical Islamist leading in the race for the United States Senate in Michigan. His principal advisor is a man who believes that the US deserved 9-11 and that the US is worse than al Qaida in the world.

The analysts will tell you these wins so far are mostly in the bluest ground in America, and that winning a primary in Manhattan isn’t the same as winning a seat Republicans and Democrats both have to fight for. That’s a fair point. But the direction of the Democrat Party is clear. The energy, the money, the volunteers, and now the elected candidates are moving one way. That train has left the station and normal Democrats are racing to get on board.

Democrat Congressman Tom Suozzi from New York formed Promise to America to unite Democrats around four basic declarations.

We are capitalists not socialists. We want safety not lawlessness. We are mainstream not extreme. We are proud, not ashamed of America. Just 13 out of 212 members of the House signed on.

Analysts tell us that Democratic Socialists are not Communists. However, just before the Fourth of July, Ashik Siddique, co-chair of The Democratic Socialists of America appeared on The Will Cain Show. He said, “Our goal is Communism.” Over half of the Board of Directors of the Democratic Socialists of America self-identify as Communists. A recent poll concluded that 67% of Democrats prefer Socialism over Capitalism.

I live by a simple rule – when someone tells you who they are – believe them.

Just eight years ago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated the Chairman of the Democratic Caucus for a seat in the US House of Representatives. She was the first recruit of the Democrat Socialists and was dismissed as a lightweight. Today she is in the top rank of Democrats for the presidential nomination in 2028. Other than bartending, this is her first job. She is 36 years old.

Before her ascension, Chuck Schumer was one of the adults in the room. He was for secure borders and a secure Israel. He now shrinks in her presence and she will take his senate seat if she doesn’t run for president. He is fully on board the train. Quaking at every stop, but on board.

Ten years ago, abortion remained the central organizing principle of the Democrat Party. Today it has to get in line behind support for Gaza, hate against Jews, mutilating children, boys in girls’ bathrooms, men having babies and punishment of success – and, of course, Communism. Everyone in the Party must get on board or get left behind.

This election is different.

And this election will have a direct impact on your life. When Joe Biden was elected, his first actions were to stop the building of the Keystone Pipeline and end the sale of oil leases. Oil, being a futures market, quickly spiked because the future did not look good. Everything you buy is brought to you by oil and the cost of living spiked.

The trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that passed in 2021 was largely a bill to fund green energy projects. Increasing regulations to deal with the climate change myth increased the cost of everything you buy also, including the cost of housing.

The border was opened up completely, the UN and other NGOs situated themselves in Panama organizing foreigners to come to the US. We gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them to help usher 15 to 20 million new people into our country costing local and state governments billions of dollars and increasing the crimes against American citizens. A working paper from the Fed concluded that 30% of the increase in the cost of new housing was caused by those immigrants.

Our Department of Justice not only spent three years and tens of millions of dollars trying to put Donald Trump in jail, they also indicted 72 others who either worked for him or aided his election. They also spied on Catholic churches, prosecuted pro-lifers, deployed the FBI against parents at school board meetings - and tapped the phones of their political enemies.

And when Donald Trump was elected, the Biden Administration spent the next 76 days before Trump’s inauguration shoveling money out the door to get it out of his reach.

$93 billion was given away by the energy department. According to Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, many of these late-stage loans were being directed toward companies that “had no clear business plan or path to financial viability.”

Not to be outdone, the EPA shoveled $20 billion out to a Citibank custodial account to be drawn down by 8 NGOs for green energy projects. One of the recipient NGOs, Power Forward Communities, was organized by Stacy Abrams just prior to the grant. She had $100 in its account.

The EPA modified the grant agreements right before the transition to legally strip the agency of its own oversight powers. The unique structure allowed the eight NGOs to withdraw the money out of the Citibank accounts without requiring any EPA approval or even having a serious plan.

Fortunately, Lee Zeldin caught the fraud, froze the money and is in the process of trying to recover it. They are, of course, suing him.

The world we are looking at today is radically different than the world we lived in just two years ago. Our borders are no longer even a point of discussion. Contact with illegals at our borders is down about 97% and over 3 million have been removed.

Our tax bill is permanent and relief for middle class Americans regarding tips, overtime and Social Security is secure.

The EPA rollback of the 2009 endangerment finding on global warming will save American taxpayers and manufacturers over $1.3 trillion in compliance costs, and lower the average cost of a new vehicle roughly $2,400. In addition, there are new lifelines for the oil, gas and coal industries and finally – that mud puddle that forms by the barn after every rain will no longer be considered a wetland that must be protected by the EPA.

Iran, for all the debate over the war, is no longer the imminent threat it has been for 47 years. Their nuclear capability has been neutralized. Their offensive capabilities no longer exist and Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are on their own. Seven presidents have watched while tens of thousands have been killed across the globe. That is over. They still, however, chant Death to America.

When someone tells you who they are – believe them.

And, of course, corruption: Hospice care, child care, adult care, unemployment compensation, organ and tissue transplants, autism care, Covid loans and student loans have all been found to be riddled with fraud. American taxpayers have even been funding a civil war in Somalia. Pure fraud has been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Not a single Democrat has even spoken out about it. That is all coming to an end under the task force let by Vice President Vance.

And, most importantly, a world that has been moving inexorably toward a new world order for 70 years no longer is. The WTO is weak the WHO is neutered, the WEF is laughable, the UN is broke and the International Court has been told by Secretary Rubio that we just aren’t interested in playing, thank you very much. Nationhood is back.

Just as in the security of the border, all of this didn’t take another Congressional law, it just took another president. We are once again respected – and a little bit feared – in the world.

This election is different.

If the Democrats win this election and re-take the Congress, expect every issue we have corrected – the world, the border, the economy, regulations, taxes, green energy scams as well as child mutilation, boys in girls’ sports and punishment of success and, who knows, perhaps even rampant corruption, to return – with a vengeance.

Expect to see congressional investigations into conservatives and every conservative idea. And, of course, another impeachment or two.

Expect their most desired change in 2021, HR1, to return. It is a total re-write of election laws across the country.

We have been engaged in a knock-down drag-out battle over whether one has to be a citizen to vote in our elections and to have a photo ID to prove you are who you claim to be.

We are told by the Democrats and their propaganda arm, the Legacy Media, that election law is a matter for state legislatures. However, their HR1 totally subsumes the states’ role and eliminates voter ID, even in states that have passed it. It expands mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. It also provides for federal funding of campaigns. Every dollar raised by a candidate in amounts below $200 will receive a 6 to 1 match by the taxpayer. Food stamps for politicians!

In the 2024 election AOC would have qualified for a gift from you of more than 120 million dollars. You can do a lot of damage with 120 million dollars. In 2016 Bernie Sanders would have qualified for just under an additional billion dollars.

That did not pass in 2021 because 2 Democrat Senators refused to vote to eliminate the filibuster. Those two Senators are no longer there. Today, if they win, the filibuster will be gone on opening day and HR 1 will pass. We will also have statehood for Washington DC, Puerto Rico and Guam giving the Democrats six more senators.

The Supreme Court will be expanded to at least 13 members giving the Left a 7 to 6 majority immediately. Let us welcome 4 more Ketanji Brown Jacksons to the Court.

The media tell us, of course, that this is all speculation.

I repeat: When someone tells you who they are and what they intend to do – believe them.

Which brings me back to why I didn’t want to make this about one man. Presidents come and go. Policies last forever.

EVERYONE is angry today about our healthcare system. It is too costly, too distant and too out of control. It is the direct result of a policy decision taken by the Democrat Party when they had a huge majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate. The government decides what you must insure and who will provide it. The government will decide. Not you.

If you are a 59-year-old single woman seeking health insurance today you must pay to insure for hair transplants, HIV/Aids treatment, obstetrics and pediatric dentistry. Would you rather not insure for matters that don’t affect you? Your government knows best.

And more is coming. For many years what starts in California ultimately finds its way to Washington DC. Fifty years ago, it was the tax revolt and proposition 13. Today it is a series of proposals that are just revolting.

California has given us five examples just this year.

A young independent journalist named Nick Shirley went to California and filmed taxpayer-funded hospice and daycare corruption — the same kind of corruption he found in Minnesota and New York. The response from Sacramento wasn’t to investigate the fraud. It was to shut down investigations. The state will decide what is and is not corruption. Not you.

California now bars schools from requiring staff to tell a parent if their child asks to be treated as a different gender at school. Supporters say it protects kids in unsafe homes. The state will decide about your child’s needs. Not you.

California recently created the first state agency in America built to verify whether you descended from an enslaved person, as a qualifying test for state benefits in housing, education, and economic opportunity. The state will decide who was enslaved and who will benefit. Not you.

A new state law this year lets the state override local zoning and allow multi-story apartment buildings in neighborhoods zoned for single families. You may think that’s good housing policy. You may not. But the state will decide on your zoning. Not you.

California voters will decide this November on a one-time 5% tax on the assets of any resident worth over a billion dollars. You may think – a billionaire can afford it. But it will be coming to you soon.

The plan doesn’t just tax what you own — it presumes you own whatever you control. Google’s Sergey Brin owns about 5% of Alphabet stock, but his special shares give him voting control over a quarter of the company. Under the plan’s own language, that voting control — not his actual ownership — is what gets taxed. A quarter of a $4.2 trillion company, taxed at 5%, comes to $52.5 billion. To raise that in cash he’d have to sell over $80 billion in stock, about 60% of his holdings, pay tens of billions in federal and state capital gains tax on the sale itself, and crater the share price on the way out the door. Brin and his co-founder didn’t wait around to find out what might happen in the future. They left the state.

Today that line is drawn at a billion dollars. Nobody who has ever watched a tax threshold in this country believes it will stay there. And it’s coming. To a city near you.

Five examples. Five different subjects — journalism, your child, your history, your city, your money. One answer to all of them. They decide. Not you.

So let me tell you why “who decides” is not an abstraction to me. It is the story of my own life. I grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota near two Chippewa Indian reservations. The Indian children went to school with us. Every fifth-grade class I can recall had an Indian child at the top of the class. They were smart. They were artistic. They didn’t graduate. Teen age pregnancies, crime, alcohol, violence. There were no fathers in those homes.

For over a hundred years America gathered the Indians up onto reservations and bureaucrats told them where to go to school, which dentist and doctor to see, where to buy school clothes, and we paid the bill. Soon, the influence of the breadwinner was replaced by a bureaucrat with a government check and the breadwinner left.

I’m the only white man who ever played baseball with the Inger Indians. I was the catcher on that team and we had a pitcher named Richie Robinson. Richie had a curve ball that looked like it was coming at you from third base. He was offered a minor league contract that summer. He didn’t know if he should take it. I said, “Richie, you’re 26 years old and you’ve never had a job. They want to pay you to play baseball. Take the contract.”

Six weeks later he was back home. I asked him what happened. He said, “I just couldn’t make it. I didn’t know how to get an apartment so the owner had to help me. I kept getting confused about changing buses. I didn’t know if I should get a black and white or color T.V. I just couldn’t make all those decisions.”

At age 17 I realized that government decisions had stolen from them the ability to make decisions about their own lives.

Richie Robinson, Esica Ogema, David Cloud, Johnny Wakanabo, Tom Bowstring. They all died young. Not because government did too little. Because government did too much.

Having done so well with the American Indian we replicated the reservation in every major city in America with the very same results. Teen age pregnancies, crime, violence, drugs. No fathers in those homes. Not because government did too little. Because government did too much.

In spite of the total collapse of communism and socialism around the world, the Democratic Socialists of America honestly believe that more government will fix the problems that government has created. They don’t trust your decisions. They trust theirs.

They do not know – as we know – that the human being dreams – not for one more government program – but for freedom. The Soviet Union learned that in just 69 years.

Ilya Ehrenberg, a Russian poet, wrote, “If all the world were covered with asphalt, one day in that asphalt, a crack would appear. And in that crack – grass would grow.” That is the dream of the human spirit. That is the dream of freedom.

I refuse to say that this election is the most important election of our lifetimes. But this election is different.

If they win, the world will never be the same. And it won’t be just how or when you can get healthcare. This will be a new debate, not over how much or how little. This will be a debate over what. And they will decide what.

Bill Buckley founded the National Review in 1955. For the next 35 years, Buckley and his team, including for a time former Soviet spy and National Review senior editor Whittaker Chambers, were in fierce resistance against the threat of communism to the United States.

In 1954 Chambers had written a letter to Buckley laying out his view that the threat of communism was not from without, but from within. Chambers wrote, “It is idle to speak of saving Western Civilization because Western Civilization is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more than snatch a fingernail off a saint on the rack, or a handful of ashes from the faggots and bury them secretly, in a flowerpot, against that day ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there once was something else. That something else is thinkable and need some evidence of what it was and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth.”

I began this by saying that this is not about Donald Trump. This is about you. The future will come down to you and your neighbors and your friends. Are you the little platoons in the cities, in the towns, in the neighborhoods, who dare to believe that the tokens of hope and truth are worth saving? I think that you are. I think you will look at the choices beyond the personalities. I think you will conclude that this election is different and rally to turn out the communists among us and choose instead freedom. And my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will say thank you. As will I. Thank you.

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[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Si t'es réellement pour le bien commun. Si tu veux vraiment sortir les gens de la pauvreté. Si tu veux vraiment que le monde soit meilleur demain qu'aujourd'hui.

Lis ça jusqu'au bout.

Aujourd'hui, je vais te sortir de ton gauchisme mental. Pas parce que tes intentions sont mauvaises. Tes intentions sont bonnes. C'est justement le problème : on t'a appris à juger une idée à ses intentions, jamais à ses résultats. Et c'est là que naît ta dissonance cognitive. Tu veux aider les pauvres, et tu défends les outils qui les maintiennent pauvres.

Commence par les chiffres. En 1820, environ trois quarts de l'humanité vivaient dans l'extrême pauvreté. Aujourd'hui, c'est moins de 10%. Pendant que la population était multipliée par 8. C'est le plus grand miracle de l'histoire humaine, et personne ne te l'a raconté à l'école.

Qu'est-ce qui l'a produit ? Pas la redistribution. On ne redistribue pas ce qui n'existe pas. Ce qui l'a produit, c'est la propriété privée, l'échange libre, l'entrepreneur, le capital, l'innovation. La Chine a sorti 800 millions de personnes de la pauvreté à partir du moment où elle a laissé les paysans vendre leur surplus et les entreprises exister. Pas avant. Corée du Sud contre Corée du Nord. Allemagne de l'Ouest contre Allemagne de l'Est. Même peuple, même culture, même point de départ. Seul le système change. Et les résultats sont sans appel.

Alors pourquoi tu as dans la tête que socialisme = protéger les pauvres ?

Parce que c'est la plus grande opération narrative du XXe siècle. Le marxisme s'est approprié le vocabulaire moral. Il a pris le mot "pauvre", le mot "justice", le mot "solidarité", et il les a collés à lui. Résultat : critiquer l'État, c'est passer pour quelqu'un qui méprise les faibles. Défendre le marché, c'est passer pour un égoïste. La gauche a gagné la bataille des mots pendant que le capitalisme gagnait la bataille des faits. Et toi, tu as hérité des mots sans jamais voir les faits.

Maintenant, la partie qui va te changer la façon de penser : l'économie autrichienne.

En 1920, Ludwig von Mises pose une question que personne n'a jamais résolue. Comment un planificateur central peut-il savoir combien produire de chaussures, de blé, d'acier, sans prix de marché ? Réponse : il ne peut pas. Les prix ne sont pas des étiquettes. Ce sont des signaux. Ils condensent l'information de milliards de personnes, leurs besoins, leurs contraintes, leurs désirs, en un seul chiffre.

Hayek va plus loin. Le savoir nécessaire pour faire tourner une économie n'existe nulle part en un seul endroit. Il est dispersé dans la tête de chaque boulanger, chaque ingénieur, chaque mère de famille. Aucun ministère, aucun comité, aucune IA d'État ne peut le centraliser.

Et là, connecte ça à la théorie du chaos. Une économie, c'est un système complexe. Des milliards d'agents, des interactions non linéaires, des effets papillon partout. On ne pilote pas un système chaotique depuis un bureau. On le laisse s'auto-organiser. C'est ça, l'ordre spontané. Personne n'a dessiné le langage, le droit coutumier ou internet. Ils ont émergé. La richesse, c'est pareil.

Bastiat, un Français, l'avait compris dès 1850 : il y a ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas. On voit la subvention, l'emploi protégé, l'aide versée. On ne voit pas les entreprises qui n'ont jamais été créées, les innovations jamais lancées, les emplois jamais apparus parce que l'argent a été pris ailleurs. Le socialisme est toujours un pari sur ce qu'on voit contre ce qu'on ne voit pas.

La richesse n'est pas un gâteau à partager. C'est un gâteau qu'on agrandit. Tant que tu penses en jeu à somme nulle, tu restes dans la logique du partage de la misère. Le capitalisme est le seul système qui pense en somme positive : je crée de la valeur, tu crées de la valeur, on échange, on est tous les deux plus riches.

Et maintenant, le futur.

La prochaine vague qui peut éradiquer la pauvreté pour de bon, c'est l'IA et la robotique. Des coûts de production qui s'effondrent. Du savoir médical, juridique, éducatif accessible à n'importe qui avec un téléphone. Des biens physiques fabriqués pour presque rien. L'abondance n'a jamais été aussi proche.

Mais il y a un seul truc qui peut tout bloquer : la coercition étatique. Les permis, les licences, les régulations écrites par les gros acteurs pour tuer les petits, les taxes sur l'innovation, la planification de "l'IA responsable" par des bureaucrates qui ne savent pas coder. Ce n'est pas de la protection. C'est du socialisme qui ne dit pas son nom. Et si on le laisse faire, on passera à côté de la plus grande opportunité de l'histoire de sortir l'humanité de la pauvreté.

Dernière chose. Tu sais où siégeait Bastiat à l'Assemblée ? À gauche. Les premiers libéraux étaient la gauche. Ceux qui se battaient contre le roi, contre les privilèges, contre l'arbitraire du pouvoir. Le vrai progressisme, historiquement, c'est la liberté.

Donc si tu es de gauche au sens noble, si tu veux vraiment que les plus faibles s'en sortent, alors sois libéral. Sur tout. Économie, société, innovation.

Lis Bastiat, La Loi. Hayek, La Route de la servitude. Mises, L'Action humaine. Thomas Sowell, n'importe lequel.

Juge les idées à leurs résultats. Pas à leurs intentions.

[Bob @Shariakill]

Islamic scholar left Islam and gives harsh warning to the west, they’re using your ignorance to conquer you.

Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam.

Muhammad is the biggest terrorist according to Muhammad himself.

Islam has two faces, there is only temporary treaty in Islam until they’re strong enough to subjugate you.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

Let’s make it simpler:

They muddied the world. On purpose.

Most things are simple. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t spend what you don’t have. Own the value that you and your ancestors created. A child needs a mother and a father. A crime is a crime. A border is a border.

Philosophy departments can debate all of this forever – that’s their job. But ordinary people need something else: good, tested rules to judge the world and act in it. That is the inheritance of our civilization. These rules are good because they were tested – evolutionarily, over centuries, by every society that kept them and survived, and every one that dropped them and didn’t.

No one designed them. No professor could. They hold more knowledge than any single mind ever will.

To dissolve them is an act of destruction – centuries of tested experience, thrown away by people who never had to build anything.

And the muddying is not an intellectual accident. It is a tool of domination and control.

You know the moment. You say something obvious and hear: "It’s more complicated than that." The conversation ends – and you walk away made to feel like the simpleton.

That is the mechanism. Once nothing is simple, you are no longer competent to judge. You need an expert, a commission, a journalist to tell you what you are seeing.

Property is the ground under your feet. Inherited rules are the ground under your mind. Communism took the first by force. Its heirs take the second by confusion.

A man without property depends on whoever distributes. A people without rules depends on whoever interprets.

And a people without rules gets rulers – ones it never elected, and can never vote out.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Dans mon dernier post, j'ai posé le constat : les entrepreneurs ne font plus confiance à l'université. Maintenant je vais vous expliquer comment on en est arrivé là. Parce que rien de tout ça n'est un accident. C'est l'aboutissement d'un projet intellectuel de cent ans.

Tout commence dans une cellule de prison italienne.

Années 1930. Antonio Gramsci, fondateur du Parti communiste italien, est enfermé par Mussolini. Il se pose une question qui va changer l'histoire : pourquoi la révolution promise par Marx n'a-t-elle jamais eu lieu en Occident ? Sa réponse est d'une intelligence redoutable. Parce que le pouvoir ne tient pas seulement par la police et l'armée. Il tient par la culture. Par ce que les gens considèrent comme normal, moral, évident. Il appelle ça l'hégémonie culturelle. Conclusion : avant de prendre l'État, il faut prendre les esprits. L'école, l'université, la presse, les arts.

Gramsci meurt en 1937. Son idée, elle, ne mourra jamais.

Au même moment en Allemagne, un groupe d'intellectuels marxistes a fondé l'Institut de recherche sociale de Francfort. Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse. Leur projet, la théorie critique : ne plus seulement critiquer le capitalisme, mais toute la civilisation occidentale. La famille, l'autorité, la tradition, la raison elle-même. Quand Hitler arrive au pouvoir, ils fuient. Et où vont-ils ? À New York. À Columbia. L'École de Francfort s'installe au cœur de l'université américaine. Marcuse y restera et deviendra dans les années 60 le maître à penser de la Nouvelle Gauche sur les campus.

Pendant ce temps, la France sort de la guerre. 1945. Le Parti communiste, auréolé de la Résistance, est le premier parti de France. De Gaulle doit reconstruire le pays et acheter la paix sociale. Les communistes entrent au gouvernement. Le plan Langevin-Wallon, porté par deux scientifiques communistes, dessine l'école de l'après-guerre. Syndicats enseignants, université, édition, cinéma : pendant des décennies, le monde intellectuel français vit dans l'orbite du marxisme. Sartre écrit que le marxisme est « la philosophie indépassable de notre temps ». La droite garde l'économie. La gauche prend les esprits. Gramsci aurait applaudi.

Puis arrive Mai 68, et avec lui sa descendance : Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard. Leur message est simple et dévastateur. La vérité n'existe pas, il n'y a que des rapports de pouvoir. La raison universelle n'existe pas, il n'y a que des discours. Le savoir lui-même devient suspect.

Et la France fait alors ce qu'elle fait de mieux : elle exporte. En 1966, Derrida débarque à un colloque à Johns Hopkins. En quelques années, la déconstruction conquiert Yale, puis les départements de littérature, puis toutes les sciences humaines. Les Américains baptisent ça la French Theory. Sur ce terreau poussent les gender studies, les postcolonial studies, la critical race theory. Toujours la même grille : oppresseurs contre opprimés. On a simplement remplacé les classes sociales de Marx par des identités.

En 1967, l'Allemand Rudi Dutschke donne un nom à la stratégie : la longue marche à travers les institutions. Et c'est exactement ce qui se passe. Les étudiants de 68 deviennent professeurs dans les années 80, doyens dans les années 90, administrateurs dans les années 2000. Ils recrutent à leur image. Ils écrivent les programmes. Ils créent des bureaucraties entières dédiées à faire respecter la nouvelle orthodoxie.

Résultat aujourd'hui : à Harvard, moins de 3 % des professeurs se disent conservateurs. Harvard termine dernière du classement de la liberté d'expression sur les campus américains. L'institution qui devait former les esprits les plus libres du monde est devenue celle où l'on a le plus peur de parler.

L'université n'est plus là pour apprendre à penser par soi-même. Elle n'est plus là pour transmettre ce qui fait avancer la civilisation. Elle est là pour servir une idéologie mortifère qui apprend aux enfants de l'Occident à haïr l'Occident.

Et elle produit désormais trois types de profils.

La masse, docile, qui sort en récitant ce qu'on lui a appris à réciter : décroissance, culpabilité, déconstruction.

Les génies, qui sentent l'imposture et partent. Elon Musk entre en doctorat à Stanford et en ressort au bout de deux jours pour construire. Peter Thiel a fait mieux : il paie les jeunes les plus brillants du monde pour qu'ils quittent l'université. De sa fellowship sont sortis le créateur d'Ethereum et le fondateur de Figma. Ceux qui construisent le monde sont souvent ceux qui ont refusé d'être construits par l'université.

Et entre les deux, ceux qui restent et montent : ministres, journalistes, juges, régulateurs, hauts fonctionnaires. Les élites dirigeantes de presque tout l'Occident sortent de ce moule. Voilà pourquoi nos pays sont gouvernés par des gens formés à douter de leur propre civilisation. Voilà pourquoi l'Occident fonce dans le mur en klaxonnant.

C'est pour ça que Karp forme ses propres étudiants. C'est pour ça que les bâtisseurs construisent à côté. Ils ne fuient pas l'éducation. Ils la sauvent.

Gramsci avait raison sur un point : celui qui tient l'école tient l'avenir.

Il est temps de la reprendre.

[Andreas @sf_andreas]

Woody Allen über den Judenhass heute, und wie kaputt Schreihälse und Mitläufer sind.
Und das auf unnachahmliche Art.

„Wissen Sie, ich habe immer gedacht, der größte Vorteil von New York sei, dass man dort neurotisch sein kann und niemand es bemerkt. In anderen Städten wird man zum Arzt geschickt, wenn man mit sich selbst spricht. In Manhattan bekommt man dafür eine Kolumne in einer Zeitschrift angeboten.
Gestern bin ich losgegangen, um Lachs zu kaufen. Das ist übrigens die einzige stabile jüdische Tradition, die Babylon, Rom und meine Beziehungen zu Frauen überlebt hat.
Ich lief durch Brooklyn und dachte über den Tod nach. Nicht, weil ich Philosoph bin. Sondern weil ich inzwischen über neunzig bin, obwohl ich ursprünglich höchstens bis siebzig geplant hatte.
Und plötzlich – eine Menschenmenge vor einer Synagoge. Zuerst dachte ich, dort tritt ein berühmter Psychoanalytiker auf. In New York stehen Menschen stundenlang Schlange, um zu hören, warum ihre Mutter an allem schuld ist. Obwohl Juden das eigentlich auch ohne Vortrag schon wissen.
Aber nein. Sie schrien etwas über „Intifada“. Und wissen Sie, was mich am meisten erstaunt hat? Wie viel Energie diese Leute haben. Woher nehmen sie die? Ich will nach zwei Treppenabsätzen schon mein Testament schreiben. Und die sind bereit für eine Revolution, ohne vorher auch nur einen anständigen Kaffee getrunken zu haben.
Ein Typ schrie etwas von „Dekolonisierung“. Mein Gott. Als ich jung war, bedeutete „Kolonisierung“, dass Tante Frieda drei Monate lang unser Sofa besetzte und sich weigerte auszuziehen. Heute ist es plötzlich ein zionistisches Komplott.
Überhaupt ist moderner Antisemitismus viel zu intellektuell geworden. Früher hasste man uns einfach. Ganz direkt. Heute nicht mehr.
Heute erklärt Ihnen irgendein Mann mit Schal, der aussieht, als würde er Gedichte über seinen eigenen Bart schreiben, mit Hilfe von Heidegger und Nietzsche, warum die Existenz von Juden eine Form von Aggression und eine Bedrohung für die Menschheit sei.
Und ich stand da und dachte: Früher wurden wir wenigstens von Leuten ohne Hochschulabschluss verprügelt. Heute kommen die Pogrommacher mit Diplom von der Columbia University.
Dann sagte ein Mädchen neben mir: „Wir sind gegen Zionismus, nicht gegen Juden.“ Das ist ungefähr so, als hätte meine Exfrau gesagt: „Ich habe nichts gegen dich. Ich bin nur gegen alles, was du sagst, tust, fühlst – und besonders gegen den Sex mit dir.“ Die Bedeutung bleibt dieselbe.
Und dann schrie jemand: „Zionisten sind Nazis!“ In diesem Moment hatte ich das Gefühl, meine Großmutter hätte sich im Grab so schnell umgedreht, dass sie einen Teil von Queens mit Strom hätte versorgen können.
Meine Großmutter hat übrigens echte Nazis erlebt. Sie versteckte sich in einem Keller in Polen mit einem Mann, der so schrecklich hustete, dass die Deutschen sie allein am Bronchialgeräusch hätten finden können.
Und jetzt erklärt mir irgendein Junge aus einem Elite-College, dessen größtes Trauma im Leben ein kalter Kaffee bei Starbucks war, was Faschismus bedeutet.
Ich lebe wirklich in erstaunlichen Zeiten.
Heutzutage sprechen alle wie Menschen, die versehentlich eine Universitätsbibliothek verschluckt haben. Niemand sagt mehr: „Entschuldigung, ich bin ein Idiot.“ Nein. Heute heißt es: „Ich dekonstruiere das dominante Narrativ.“
Hören Sie, ich bin unter Juden aufgewachsen. Wir dekonstruieren keine Narrative. Wir erschaffen Narrative.
Ich kam nach Hause und schaltete den Fernseher ein – denn wenn man Angststörungen hat, wirkt Fernsehen wie eine ausgezeichnete Idee. Das ist ungefähr so, als würde man Alkoholismus mit einem Martini auf Eis behandeln.
Dort erklärte Roger Waters wieder einmal die Welt. Rockmusiker machen mir immer Angst, wenn sie älter werden und plötzlich anfangen zu reden wie Paranoiker, die beim Anblick einer schwarzen Katze eine Verschwörung wittern. 1/2

[Elizabeth Barcohana @E_Barcohana]

😬These are the 🔵Dem v. 🔵Dem races in California I am very, very worried about:

⚠️House: CA-14: Swalwell’s seat fell to CAIR/DSA in the low turnout August special election. Hernandez has another shot in November

⚠️CA Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen is the LA establishment versus SF CAIR/DSA/Commie Kim

⚠️CA Senate-24: This open seat in West LA is between pro-law enforcement Goldsmith vs. DSA Erickson. If GOP voters don’t vote, this seat will fall to the hard Left

⚠️CA Assembly-66: Seo is a pro-public safety Dem up against a radical sociopathic activist

⚠️Los Angeles Mayor: DSA Raman is FAR to the Left of Bass and Bass is already far enough

⚠️Los Angeles City Attorney: DSA Roy is another Gascon; McKinney is an anti-Gascon

If these two seats fall, the DSA will have captured the City of Los Angeles.

🤷🏻‍♀️It is tempting to shrug these races off as “not our problem,” or even be an ⏩accelerantionist bc the more radical the Left gets, the more it drives voters to the Right➡️🔴. I get that mindset.

😑But abstention in these races is NOT a neutral act. Abstention HELPS the radical Left gain more power, by lowering the number of votes they need to successfully mount their soft revolution.

🛠️Therefore, Republicans who stay out of these 🔵/🔵 races are not “voting their conscience” or taking a principled stand by letting the Democrats eat each other, but rather they are allowing themselves to become a tool of the radical Left taking over America.

🇺🇸 We should not do that.

[DrColostomy @DrColostomy]

We don’t have to imagine him. He actually exists. We must make sure he never gets to the White House.

[Tony Heller 🇺🇸 🇯🇵 @TonyClimate]

Imagine having someone this stupid in the White House

[Ambassador Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee]

This guy @YehudaMeitav produces some incredible & creative content online. Biting humor, satire, & clever use of historical facts. BANGER stuff. This is just a sample. Check out his videos...but WARNING! If you hate Jews, it will make your head explode!

[Steak 'n Shake @SteaknShake]

America’s corporate governance system is broken, and it’s killing public companies. Look no further than Cracker Barrel: Decades of brutal mismanagement have seen one incompetent CEO after another walk away with a massive paycheck while customers and actual shareholders take a beating.

Why does this keep happening? Because proxy advisory firms like ISS are corrupt. They blindly rubber-stamp failing boards year after year, protecting the corporate elite while burning shareholder value to the ground.

The root of the rot is index funds. There's no question that indexing one's money is a smart financial move for most people. But just because you passively index your investments doesn't mean your corporate votes should be handed over to the managers of your fund so they can play politics. Right now, passive funds hold massive, unchecked voting blocks while having zero skin in the game themselves.

It is time for a simple rewrite of the rules: We need to index the votes of index fund investors.

Passive index funds should be forced to automatically split their votes to proportionately mirror those of retail and active institutional shareholders — the people actually doing the research, risking their capital, and fighting for performance in the companies they hold shares in. No more rubber-stamping. A change like this will immediately strip corrupt gatekeepers like ISS of their toxic influence.

True accountability happens when lazy, overpaid boards actually answer to the stakeholders they represent, rather than screwing them over.

Actual, logic-driven governance when your money is passive happens when your vote passively follows the voting decisions of the actual market.

We need to stop letting passive capital protect active incompetence. By stripping index funds of their arbitrary voting power and empowering engaged investors, we will finally torch corporate cronyism and usher American capital markets into a golden age of capitalism.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

The Archbishop of Canterbury has given Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi an award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation.

He's the chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council - a group of Islamic scholars.

The lady next to him is his wife.

But why did the Church grant him this award? 🧵

[DrColostomy @DrColostomy]

Actually, the drink mix was “Flavor Aid”, not Kool Aid. Kool aid was mistakenly reported as the mix used by the media at the time and it stuck.

[LD Basler @ArmaLite15OU812]

I see I lost some followers over expressing my concerns and opinions. That's OK, they were just the mindless, cultist simps who probably walk around with their Trump watches and sneakers on with their Trump trading cards in their back pockets.

Being MAGA doesn't mean you can't think for yourself or direct criticism when criticism is due. Some of you need to reevaluate your lives. You're probably the same ones that would have drank the Jim Jones kool-aid back in 1978.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸 Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is putting serious money into defeating California’s voter ID measure.

State campaign-finance records show Hastings gave $1 million to the campaign opposing Proposition 39, while his wife, Patty Quillin, contributed another $1.5 million to a separate anti-Prop 39 committee.

Together, that’s $2.5 MILLION against the measure.

Prop 39 would require government-issued ID for in-person voting, identifying information on mail ballots, and “best efforts” by election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters.

So one of Silicon Valley’s richest couples is now spending millions to help kill voter ID in California...

Writer: Sol

[Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley]

In California, property owners are protected from this outcome by Proposition 13. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association keeps it that way. @hjta

[My name is M. Only M @musicandsoularg]

¿Y si el mayor peligro para nuestra sociedad no fuera la maldad, sino la estupidez?

La alarmante teoría de Dietrich Bonhoeffer que explica el mundo de hoy.

La Teoría de la Estupidez de Bonhoeffer:
El peligro silencioso
Durante los años más oscuros de la Alemania nazi, el teólogo y pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflexionó desde su celda sobre cómo una sociedad culta y moderna había caído en la barbarie colectiva.

Su conclusión fue revolucionaria y alarmante:
la estupidez es un enemigo del bien mucho más peligroso que la maldad misma.

👉 ¿Por qué es más peligrosa que la maldad?
Contra la maldad se puede luchar:
se puede denunciar, combatir e incluso legislar en su contra.
El malvado, en el fondo, suele tener conciencia de que está rompiendo las reglas.

Con la estupidez, en cambio, estamos completamente indefensos.
La persona dominada por ella es impermeable a los argumentos lógicos y a los hechos objetivos.
Si se le presentan pruebas que contradicen sus dogmas, simplemente las ignora o las tacha de irrelevantes.
Al sentirse completamente segura de sí misma, se vuelve agresiva y sumamente peligrosa al ser confrontada.

No es un defecto intelectual, sino moral
Bonhoeffer aclaró que esto no tiene nada que ver con el coeficiente intelectual o el nivel educativo. Existen mentes brillantes que operan bajo una profunda estupidez y personas sencillas que desbordan sabiduría moral.
La estupidez ocurre cuando un individuo renuncia voluntariamente a su capacidad de juicio propio.

👉 El contagio social y el rol del poder
Para el pensador, la estupidez es un fenómeno sociológico.
Observó que el ascenso de una fuerte estructura de poder (política o religiosa) infecta de estupidez a gran parte de la población.
Al integrarse a un grupo o adoptar ciegamente una ideología, el individuo sacrifica su independencia interior.

En este estado, la persona ya no piensa por sí misma:
se convierte en un repetidor de eslóganes, consignas y narrativas prefabricadas.
Al delegar su conciencia al colectivo, se transforma en una herramienta dócil capaz de cometer o justificar las mayores atrocidades sin experimentar remordimiento alguno.

👉 La conclusión de Bonhoeffer
La estupidez no se cura con más instrucción o datos, sino con un acto de liberación interna y coraje moral.
Hasta que el individuo no recupere la valentía de examinar sus ideas de forma autónoma y de tolerar la incomodidad de contradecir a su propio grupo, seguirá atrapado en este peligroso letargo.