The Latest on the Israel-Hamas Front: 
A Proposal Dismissed. Another Suggested and Not Yet Rejected. Will There Ever Be a Two-State Solution?

Iranians at an anti-Israel rally in Tehran 

If there is one thing I’ve learned from researching the Israel-Arab conflict, it is that Arab terrorist groups have never shown any real interest in ending it. Furthermore, as I eventually realized, they have no real interest in a “two-state” solution.

For 70 years, the US and other nations have attempted to negotiate some sort of mutual peace pact. And each time, the Arabs have either rejected the deal outright or officially agreed to a cease-fire… only to use the cease-fire to rearm and attack Israel again.

It’s happened almost too many times to count.

And yet, the US once again finds itself in the same position: trying to solve this centuries-old problem by working with Israel and the Arabs as if both sides were serious about finding peace.

From the WSJ, April 16:

President Biden’s strategy of pressuring Israel and pleading with Hamas for a cease-fire and hostage deal has met one more dead end. Hamas rejected another offer over the weekend, countering with new demands designed to throw negotiations into disarray.

As State Department spokesman Matthew Miller explained, “Israel moved a significant way in submitting that proposal,” but Hamas rejected it. “It is Hamas right now that is the barrier and the obstacle to a cease-fire in Gaza.” The Times of Israel reports that Hamas rejected every clause of the proposal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.

Hamas now demands a six-week truce in which it releases no hostages while Israel stops fighting, withdraws from Gaza’s cities, and commits to a permanent cease-fire, a withdrawal from Gaza, and the return of all Palestinians (including Hamas) to northern Gaza. In other words, an Israeli surrender.

Since then, the Biden administration has smartly partnered with Saudi Arabia to try another tactic that is getting, for the moment at least, some hopeful reporting.

I’d like to think this new version of the Two-State Solution might work. But I doubt it. I’m expecting it to become, at best, an idea that will satisfy neither Israel or Hamas (or Iran and its proxies). But if the talks can continue for another six months, it may be enough to help Biden get reelected.

Read more here and here and here.

Denver’s New Plan for Caring for Asylum Seekers 

Migrants in Denver 

Denver is cutting $45 million from city agencies, including the police, to help fund a program to deal with a rise in its illegal immigrant population. That $45 million, plus another +/-$45 million in new spending, will be part of “providing a long-term sustainable solution” to the migrant problem, according to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

The $90 million Denver Asylum Seekers Program will help migrants secure housing and work authorization for up to six months after they apply for asylum. “Individuals arriving in Denver after April 10 will be provided a short-term stay at a congregate site along with assistance securing onward travel to another destination,” the mayor’s office said in a news release. “Newcomers who choose to remain in Denver may utilize available local and community support.”

Not surprisingly, most of the reporting on this has been positive, as most of the news agencies covering it lean toward the left. Click here and here and here for some examples.

My guess is that the program is going to be a massive failure. It will quickly blow itself up as the number of migrants looking for free health and human services will skyrocket… and I’m betting it will collapse under its own weight before 2025.

Trends in Wokeness

Don’t Believe What McKinsey Has Been Saying

It doesn’t take a master’s degree from Wharton to understand that DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion), as a business agenda, makes zero sense.

It’s not because those values are ethically, philosophically, or even inherently misguided. (Although one can argue that they are). It’s because the DEI agenda has nothing to do with product innovation, sales and profit growth, or shareholder value.

And so I was surprised to learn recently that McKinsey & Company has been publishing papers for nearly 10 years (since 2015) claiming that there is a direct correlation between companies that embrace DEI practices and corporate success.

Writing in Taki’s Magazine, Steve Sailer summarizes his research into the methodologies, analysis, and resulting conclusions of those papers, and argues that they were intentionally structured to produce data that were not just statistically inaccurate, but that arrived at conclusions that were polar opposites of what correctly applied statistical analysis would have produced.

Racial, religious, or ethnic discrimination in hiring employees, contracting vendors, pricing products, and maintaining healthy profit margins are all damaging to all businesses, he asserts. And that’s why the most successful investment research companies – despite what some of them say publicly – are leery of investing in companies with a strong DEI culture.

Click here.

Election Watch

Targeting Trump 

In this essay, Taki (of Taki’s Magazine) argues that all but possibly one of the current legal charges against Trump are basically “bills of attainder,” which were expressly forbidden by the framers of the US Constitution.

The End of Western Culture 

Damn Dams!

In December 1997, Steven Tvedten, as a result of a complaint filed by his neighbor with the Department of Environment Quality, a regional government authority, received a letter from that agency giving him six weeks to remove two “unauthorized” and “hazardous” dams from a stream on his property or face prosecution.

Tvedten responded with a letter in which he makes a mockery of the complaint and refuses to comply on behalf of the beavers that had built the two dams. The case made the news and was quickly dropped.

You can read Tvedten’s brilliantly written letter here.

Health Watch 

There Are More Viruses Than Stars in the Sky

“Viruses are everywhere,” says Dr. Toby Rogers in a recent essay on the National Geographic website. “There are a quadrillion times a quadrillion individual viruses on Earth – 100 million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the sky.”

But, contrary to popular belief, viruses as a class are surprisingly bad at killing us. Of those quadrillion-times-a-quadrillion individual viruses on Earth, he points out, only about 200 of them contribute to disease in humans. The rest “function as a sort of divine scratch pad for working out new models of life.”

Election Watch 

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Kennedy? 

I’ve wondered which party JFK Jr.’s independent campaign will hurt the most. If you can judge by the response to it, it’s the Democrats, says Bill Bonner in the April 9 issue of Bonner Private Research. The Dems, he says, “have created a $100 million war chest to stop Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They’ve also refused Secret Service protection, perhaps hoping that the problem will take care of itself. But just in case it doesn’t…

From Politico:

A billboard truck paid for by the DNC has been circling Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign events. Protesters picketed his vice-presidential announcement rally.

From New York Magazine:

Simultaneously, former Biden deputy campaign manager Pete Kavanaugh launched Clear Choice, a super-PAC whose goal is to help liberals coordinate their efforts to minimize third-party candidates’ political influence by the fall.

Bonner continues:

“Were Kennedy to succeed in reducing the reach of the federal government, balancing the budget and bringing the troops home… it would be a remarkable – almost superhuman – achievement.

“The whole country would change… and we would have to change with it. We’d have to abandon our cynicism. We’d have to put on a happy face, from dour to delighted… and change our outlook, from negative to positive.

“For better or for worse, we doubt we’ll be called upon to make those changes. America’s drift – towards a decrepit, dysfunctional, and corrupt empire – is not likely to be stopped by RFK Jr. or Donald J. Trump. Why? There are too many powerful groups that don’t want it to be stopped.”

Michelle Obama Is Popular, but Not That Popular

Given concerns about Biden’s age, Michelle Obama has been repeatedly floated by some pundits as a potential Democratic alternative to Biden. But a new poll from J.L. Partners and The Daily Mail suggests she would fare no better against Trump in a head-to-head matchup. The survey of 1,000 likely voters found that 47% would back Trump in a race against the former first lady, who secured 44%. Trump led Biden by a narrower 46% to 43% spread in the same poll.

This is not surprising. As I’ve said before, if the Democrats wanted to assure a victory in November, it would be Gavin Newsom for president and Michelle Obama for VP.

A Rare Win for Election Integrity

A federal appeals court has just ruled that mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have to be dated in order to be considered valid. Click here.

Trends in Wokeness

Are Right-to-Die Activists Making Suicide Contagious? 

State-assisted euthanasia is a trend that is growing. And studies have shown that when countries legalize suicide, the number of people that take that option increases significantly over time.

As someone who has experienced severe depression and anxiety, I’m 100% sympathetic to anyone who chooses death over living in extreme pain. But I do find the rate at which euthanasia climbs when it’s legally (and perhaps socially) sanctioned disturbing.

The uptrend is similar to the uptrend in people with gender dysphoria that choose to “transition.” On the one hand, I think, “They are adults. They have the right to decide what to do with their lives.” On the other hand, I think, “Surely, some of these people are making these irreversible decisions based not on unbearable pain, but in order to feel, at least momentarily, socially significant.”

Click here to read a thought-provoking article from a recent issue of The Free Press.

The End of Western Culture

Trespassers Welcome

I’m not sure why, but in the last year, I’ve read a lot of stories about how the law protects squatters. In this clip, John Stossel makes the point that they are not only legally able to stay in a place without paying rent but feel entitled to do it.

And what are our lawmakers doing about this problem?

* Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) blasted the woke notion of “squatter’s rights” during an interview last week where he again went against the grain in his party by signaling support for law enforcement. Click here.

* In Florida, Gov. DeSantis signed legislation to end what he calls “the Squatters Scam” in his state. Click here.

* In New York, a State Assemblyman from Long Island filed a bill that would make it easier for a homeowner to remove a squatter from the property. Click here.

Conspiracy Watch 

Was the Bridge Collapse Sabotage? 

After a cargo ship took down the Francis Scott Key bridge in Twin Tower fashion last week, I was not entirely surprised to learn that some people wondered if it was a planned event. I even read a few pieces that got me wondering. But then, thanks to GM, I read this take on what happened that was written by a certified master helmsman with lots of port transit time. I found it convincing:

“The ship in question is the MV Dali. The Dali has a fixed pitch prop, meaning the ship cannot go in reverse. She has an electric bow thruster, but that only really works at slow speeds and requires electrical power.

“The videos show the ship losing power and engines as it approaches the bridge. When the power goes out on a ship like that, the hydraulics that control the rudder stop working.

“After losing power, the helmsman likely turned the wheel all the way over to starboard in a futile effort to steer as the ship was drifting out of alignment. The rudders did not respond due to the power-outage. Then suddenly the engine (or auxiliary generator) kicks back on, which is the cause of the black smoke you see. Once the engine kicks back on, the power to the hydraulics is restored and the rudder immediately swings hard to starboard because the wheel is already turned over to that position. It would have taken the helmsman a few seconds to realize what was happening as rudder authority suddenly returns.

“A second ill-timed power-outage seals the fate, leaving the rudders locked hard to starboard just a few seconds too long.

“You can see him try to swing the rudder back over to the port side once he realizes the rudders are working again, but by then it is too late. The rudders on those ships are slow to respond. It can take over 10 seconds for the rudders to swing all the way over from one side to the other.

“I’ve had power-outages like this happen on a warship at sea with far more redundancy than this cargo ship has. Things like this can happen. Even with backup generators running, managing the electrical load on a ship like this is complex. It would have taken the engineers some time to figure out how to address an outage. As you can see from the video, the outages did not last long. They just happened at the worst possible time.

“There is no conspiracy.

“I would need to see some proof of sabotage before I believed this was planned. Killing the power also means killing the ability to steer. If the ship can’t be steered, there’s no way to intentionally aim it at the pier.

“I also see lots of questions about anchors. Anchors need to be manned. They typically can’t just be dropped by the push of a button. Further, it’s unlikely that even if they did have the anchors manned and managed to drop them that it would have managed to stop the ship in time. I doubt the captain even thought about it. I’m sure he was more concerned about keeping the ship on course. This all happens in just seconds. It’s easy to Monday-morning-quarterback this.”

Health Watch 

I Was Way Ahead of My Peers…

When I was in my mid-forties and most of my friends and colleagues were wearing glasses, I wasn’t. I felt proud of that and mentioned it to my doctor.

“You are in a very small club,” he said. “More than 90% of people your age are already using glasses.”

“Does that mean I might never need them?” I asked.

“No,” he said smiling. “You’ll be wearing glasses in about 12 to 18 months.”

That shocked me. But this graphic on eyesight (and hearing) made it easier to understand.

Authentic Autism, or Aspirational Asperger’s?

From Steven Tucker, writing in Taki’s Magazine:

“Apparently, the current psychological condition du jour is autism, according to a new report from a pair of London clinicians… which warns that, since 1998, there has been a ninefold increase in autism diagnoses across the UK.

“Do many such new patients genuinely have autism, however, or have they just been groomed to think they have, thereby stealing away scarce medical resources from those genuine sufferers who actually need it?”

Read more here.

Trends in Wokeness 

The Trump Camp and the White House Clash Over… Now What?

In 2021, Joe Biden proclaimed March 31 “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Because the date unfortunately overlapped with Easter Sunday in 2024, he is facing criticism from Donald Trump’s campaign and religious conservatives for this “years-long assault on the Christian faith.” Click here.

The End of Western Culture 

Disparate Impact: Do You Know What That Means?

In this essay, conservative political commentator Heather Mac Donald bravely articulates the facts about the concept of “disparate impact” and how it this seemingly innocuous phrase represents a way of thinking that is fast diminishing the requirements and standards of virtually every educational and professional association in America.

It’s impossible to read her argument without wondering: Can lowering our standards for achievement in academia, the professions, and business possibly make America a better, stronger, and wealthier country?

Health Watch 

A Persuasive Argument for Vitamin D Supplementation

I’ve been following Dr. John Campbell for quite a while. He’s always struck me as reasonable, restrained, and believable. In this short but informative video, he talks about how good levels of Vitamin D can protect people from all sorts of health dangers, including some forms of cancer and all sorts of viruses, including COVID-19.

As to Vaccines, Texans Are Pro-Choice!

The Texas GOP polled more than 2 million voters in their March 12 primary, asking if they thought they should be free “to give or withhold consent for any vaccine without coercion.” 91.7% said yes and 8.43% said no.

Trends in Wokeness

Trudeau’s Canada Just Keeps Getting Woker and Woker! 

Tell me this is a hoax:

Bill C-6, a new law proposed by Trudeau’s party, will make any crime designated as a “hate crime” punishable by life imprisonment.

Here’s the language:

“Everyone who commits an offense under this act or any other act of Parliament, if the commission of the offense is motivated by hatred based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for life.”

It gets scarier. Another provision offers cash rewards to Canadians that anonymously snitch on their neighbors:

“It [C-6 bill] allows someone to make a complaint of a discrimination anonymously… if that hateful complaint is found legit, a maximum of 20,000 [Canadian] dollars goes to that person.”

Someone Among the COVID Skeptics Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize This Year: 3 Reasons

I promised to publish my “controversial” essays as Special Issues. And I am working on several of them right now. But last week, I found this little list somewhere (maybe on The Vigilant Fox website), and I felt compelled to reproduce it here. (Note to self: Keep record of all sources!) Knowing my longstanding views on COVID, the lockdowns, and the vaccines, it won’t surprise you to know that I agree with the points made below. 

Why someone involved in battling against the worldwide governmental response to the COVID insanity should receive the Nobel Peace Prize:

1. Stood up against the most egregious assault on human rights and civil liberties in modern history.

This included violations of bodily integrity and informed consent, the spread of a surveillance state, the closure of small businesses, and the dehumanization of people who wanted to be left alone.

2. Displayed great courage and made significant sacrifices to stand up for essential human values.

Previous Peace Prize recipients “typically paid a heavy personal price for their defense of human, women’s, and children’s rights.” COVID dissidents lost jobs, doctors who did not conform had their licenses threatened or taken away, and many lost lifetime relations with loved ones for not going along with the narrative.

3. Created supportive communities, took matters into their own hands, and overcame censorship in the face of tyranny.

* COVID-19 necessitated the emergence of citizen journalism, where regular people with full-time jobs dedicated their free time to covering the other side of the story, a.k.a. the truth.

* Others created and bolstered spaces for dissenters to coalesce. Platforms like Rumble and Telegram allowed citizen journalists to grow a following. And later on, Twitter unbanned accounts from the COVID resistance.

* And then there are the people who took to the streets, who deserve all the praise in the world. In [our] opinion, the Freedom Convoy will go down as one of the most important demonstrations in history. The efforts of the truckers and their allies almost single-handedly swung public favor against despotic vax mandates.

As such, “There should be no shortage of potential candidates for the Peace Prize to recognize their brave efforts to keep the flame of freedom flying through these dark times.”

Election Watch

Jon Stewart on “Electile Dysfunction”

Jon Stewart is an interesting person. He’s indisputably an accomplished comic performer who has been remarkably successful at lampooning public issues and figures for decades.

I think his longevity comes from the fact that he’s committed to the moral requirement of the best type of comedy, which is to gently poke at what seems false about what the world takes as true, and to make fun of what is clearly bad about ideas, strategies, and policies that governments and media giants tell us are good.

Which is to say that I believe Jon Stewart strives to do just that, which isn’t easy, because it requires the performer to maintain an open, independent, and critical mind, while also working to maintain as large an audience as possible.

From what I’ve read about his history, Stewart began his stand-up career as a conventional liberal/leftist and continues to hold many of the sentiments of that viewpoint in his heart. But his brain has been troubled lately by the idiocy of the ideological left, and this has somehow energized him to satirize the left’s most obviously idiotic ideas. For a mainstream American celebrity, this is a dangerous game to play. But he decided to play it and has so far managed to make it work. I don’t know how he is doing in terms of the ratings algorithms, but he still has a job on mainstream media, and that, in itself, is a considerable accomplishment.

Don’t get me wrong. I am impressed by Stewart’s natural and hard-earned talents, and I admire his drive to build his comedic career on his version of what is – and is not – good and true.

The one thing I don’t like about him is that he sometimes seems to see himself as a public “intellectual,” like Jordan Peterson or Thomas Sowell or Ben Shapiro. As a well-known comedian who is accustomed to speaking about controversial issues, the level of his thinking is considerably more nuanced than, say, Stephen Colbert’s. But he’s way too conventional (timid?) in his thinking to rank alongside the truly great (which always means brave) ones like Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, and Bill Burr.

Still, in his own uncertain way, I see Jon Stewart as a challenger of mainstream morals and ideas and a successful entertainer willing to risk some of his popularity (and personal income) by working on the front lines of culture. And for that, he merits my admiration and respect.

Here’s an example, a piece he did Feb. 12 in his first reappearance as the host of “The Daily Show,” where he talked about the 2024 Trump vs. Biden rematch.

Trends in Wokeness 

Freddie deBoer on the Ugly Reality of the College Admissions Process 

“Let me stress one basic point,” writes my favorite self-proclaimed Socialist in a recent post, “You cannot make a competitive selection process equitable, as the entire point of competitive selection is to identify inequality.”

Read his entire argument here.

Wins and Losses in the Gender Wars 

Following threats of a lawsuit… 

A Minnesota school district is allowing the children of Muslim families to opt out of LGBTQ classes. Click here.

The Blue State vs. Red State Population War Continues

New York isn’t the only state losing entrepreneurs and high-income earners to lower-tax and lower-cost-of-living states like Florida and Texas. California is having the same experience. And for similar reasons.

California has the highest state income tax in the country. Californians with incomes over $1 million pay a whopping 13.3%. That’s on top of federal taxes for such people, amounting to the state and federal governments taking 50% of the income of the state’s most productive residents.

California is a beautiful state. In addition to its great climate, there are lots of reasons why one would want to live and work there. But if you are a high earner or an owner of a business that employs hundreds or thousands of people, this kind of taxation makes it very tempting to move to a state that is much less punitive with its taxes.

And people are moving away. A recent study indicates how much tax revenue income California is, in fact, losing every year and is likely to lose in the future as it keeps jacking up its taxes on the “wealthy.”

Gov. Newsom is not oblivious to the real-world effects of high taxation. But instead of dealing with the problem directly, he has reacted to the flight of wealthy people and companies from his state by trying to punish them with costly penalties. Which seems sort of third-worldish, don’t you think? Click  here.

On the Other Hand…

It’s not all bad news for New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul surprised many at the end of last year by vetoing two bills that would have driven more businesses and high earners out of her state.

One of the bills would have crippled non-compete agreements.

In my business (the digital publishing business), non-compete contracts usually don’t work. They are either written so tightly that they would be rejected as unreasonable or so loosely that they can easily be skirted by designing the new job in such a way that it falls outside the restrictive language.

Another way of putting it is that in my industry, the most valuable assets are inside individual people’s brains – their ability to conceive of interesting and salable ideas year after year or the ability to know how to sell those ideas to the public.

These are skills, not templates or blueprints or algorithms. They cannot be copied. Or codified. Or stolen. Or even defined.

But that’s my business. When it comes to technology businesses, what is often most valuable is knowledge – knowledge in the form of templates and blueprints and algorithms. Information that can be financially profitable for anyone that has possession of it. To protect against the widespread thievery of this kind of knowledge, we have laws to protect the investors, the creators, the distributors, and everyone else involved in turning a new technology into cash.

In explaining her veto, Hochul said she tried to negotiate a compromise with the legislature “to protect middle-class and low-wage earners while allowing New York’s businesses to retain highly compensated talent.” But progressive legislators weren’t interested.

The governor also vetoed a bill that would have required every corporation registered to do business in New York to consent to being sued in New York’s courts.

I know. That one sounds reasonable. But what a bill like this really does is create an industry of corrupt attorneys that make a living by suing out-of-state corporations that do business in multiple states. I’ve seen this in action. It has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It’s all about extortion.

Election Watch 

1. Back to My Prediction re the 2024 Election

Late last week, in response to special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified information, the Dept. of Justice admitted that Biden did, indeed, violate the law. And that the violation of that law is a criminal act.

Why, then, you might ask, didn’t Hur move to indict Biden, as the Dept. of Justice did in Trump’s case?

The answer, and this was stated repeatedly in Hur’s report, was that those who questioned Biden about the case believed that, because of his mental degeneration, he would not be convicted. Hur’s conclusion was that, in a trial, Biden would appear to any reasonable jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” rather than a man with a functional memory that broke the law intentionally.

This is good news for Biden, but an embarrassment for the media and the millions of voters that have been insisting that Biden is compos mentis. So now there is much debate among Democrats and the mainstream media about whether our president is fit to be, or even can be, elected to lead our country in 2024.

If you don’t believe me, read any issue of the NYT or watch any program on CNN that talks about the 2024 election.

What is happening is precisely what I predicted more than a year ago: Biden will not be the Democrats’ nominee. I said back then that his mental incapacity was already obvious to anyone that knew him, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others that are hoping for a Democrat victory. Biden cannot win against Trump this time around, but a slate consisting of Gavin Newsom and a prominent Black personality (not Kamala Harris) would have the best possible chance.

Why, you might wonder, would the press and the Democrat planners so blatantly abandon Biden after protecting him for so many years? The answer is that he refused to step down around Thanksgiving, which is when he was supposed to in order to give Newsom time to build momentum. And they realized that the best chance now of getting him gone will be at the Democrat National Convention in August.

2. Poor Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley always struck me as a B performer in the political arena – in every way. She’s not charismatic. She’s not commanding. And I’ve never heard her say a single thing that I thought was original or provocative. Still, I feel embarrassed for her for what happened last week in Nevada’s Republican presidential primary.

Because Trump was not on the ballot, she was considered the frontrunner. Yet voters resoundingly chose “none of the above” over her – making her the first presidential candidate from either party to lose a race to nobody.

3. News Like This Is Not Good for the Democrats

It seems clear that Republicans will be running on two wedge issues in 2024: rising crime and gutless law enforcement (which was a big part of their platform in 2020), and border security (a big part of Trump’s platform in 2016).

The Democrats are working furiously to tamp down the nationwide upset over Biden’s recent endorsement of a bill that basically puts back in place all of Trump’s policies. Meanwhile, the issue of skyrocketing crime, including violent crime and murder, is getting increased attention from the media. And not just the conservative media, because the stories are just too sensational to make them disappear. For example:

* Mike Gill, former Chief Operating Officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during Trump’s administration, was fatally shot Jan. 29 during an attempted carjacking. Gill was parked on the sidewalk in front of his wife’s office, just a few blocks from the White House, waiting to take her home. After Gill was shot, the suspect continued the rampage, committing at least two more carjackings and one attempted carjacking, killing another victim.

* A group of young, male illegal immigrants that savagely attacked two NYC police officers on Jan. 27 were booked and immediately released under the city’s progressive “cashless bail” protocol. (Watch a video of the attack here.)

4. This Isn’t So Good, Either… 

For 138 days of 2023, 37% of the year, President Biden was away at a vacation spot or retreat, according to a report from The New York Post. In 2022, Biden was away for 38% of the year.

Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton wrote The Post to defend her boss: “The President works every single day of the week, whether he is in Washington, Delaware, Camp David, or anywhere else – and those around him and reporters who cover him closely know that.”

Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL) had a different perspective: “President Biden’s entire presidency has been a vacation from reality,” he said.

Trends in Wokeness 

This week, it’s all about the gender identity wars…

1. But He’s a Boy! I Don’t Want to Sleep with Him!

An 11-year-old, fifth-grade girl, on a 2023 JCPS-sponsored trip to Philadelphia and Washington, DC, was told by the trip director that she had to spend the night in a room with a male student who “identified” as a girl.

According to a complaint filed by her parents, the JCPS had told them that the boys and girls would be on different floors and would not be allowed to visit one another. “This practice renders it impossible for these parents to make informed decisions about their children’s privacy, upbringing, and participation in school-sponsored programs,” reads the demand letter.

Click here.

2. Woke Mom, Woke Clinic, Woke Judge, Broke Dad

It began with Dennis Hannon’s ex-wife treating their son as a girl at age three, calling him Ruby Rose, without telling Dennis. When the boy was five, she took him to a clinic, and a doctor there recommended starting him on puberty blockers.

When Dennis found out about it, he went to court. But the court decided against Dennis, chastising him for not supporting necessary medical care for his son because he didn’t agree with the treatment. A year later, after having spent all his savings, nearly $150,000, in the court battle, “Ruby Rose” announced that he wanted to go back to identifying as a boy.

Click here.

3. State Department Spends Billions on LGBTQ Dance Programs… in Peru!

The US is $33 trillion in debt, but the State Department isn’t worried about that. They are still spending billions of dollars they don’t have on Woke projects that don’t work. Much of the funds are being directed through an agency called the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund (CDAF), whose stated goal is “Strengthening democratic institutions and fighting disinformation; Protecting the environment; Human rights, refugees, and migrants; Building community through arts, sports, language, and technology; Fostering alumni network development.”

Click here.

4. The State of Justice in Woke England Today

“Something is going very badly wrong…”

Click here.

And, finally, this:

5. Mothers Sacrificing Their Kids for Status

Click here.

Conspiracy Watch 

1. Dominion Voting Machine Vulnerability Exposed in Courtroom Testimony 

Remember that crazy right-wing conspiracy theory that the Dominion voting machine, which was widely used in the 2020 election, was somehow rigged in favor of Biden?

In a Federal Court in Atlanta, GA, University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman testified that the machine was, in fact, able to be manipulated. He demonstrated by changing a machine’s totals using only a pen (borrowed, for effect, from Dominion’s defense attorney).

Here’s an interview with a journalist who was there.

2. The Jan. 6 “Insurrection”

At a House Republican press briefing last week to promote a resolution declaring that former President Trump did not engage in an insurrection, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) criticized attempts to remove Trump from the ballot and insulted reporters for their coverage of Jan. 6. Watch it here.