Links - 30th May 2026 (3 - Get Woke, Go Broke [including Star Trek, Rings of Power])

Cyberpunk Dwarf | Facebook - "My favorite "Star Trek was always woke" moment is in DS9 when Kira defends a nawtzee filing clerk as innocent of war crimes.  Woke westerners would never try an old dying person for pushing papers during the.... Oh.  Oh wait."
Irmgard Furchner: Nazi typist guilty of complicity in 10,500 murders

Starfleet Academy Defenders SAY Star Trek "Was Always This Way." My Response. - YouTube - "Star Trek Picard was a very nihilistic view of the future, which is what I believe that we've seen a lot these days is a lot of nihilism... Starfleet Academy opens up with a mother and son who were trying to steal food because there wasn't enough, which completely goes against the original idea of Star Trek where they had replicators so that there would not be a food shortage within the Federation... That is a reflection of modern-day progressivism or I would say the progressivism of 5 years ago. Perhaps we've seen trends in media recently where um concerns over toxic masculinity have just spread to all masculinity being toxic. So Starfleet Academy becomes a very feminized show because it was traditionally a franchise for men...  that is a reflection of the modern-day progressivism that sees all masculinity as toxic...  There isn't a lot of truth to these modern-day shows though, which is why I think a lot of people reject them. For example, with the whole body positivity thing in this show, Starfleet Academy, it doesn't make sense. This is a military academy. You need people to be at their peak physical strength. You can't have a lot of 5-ft tall women or people who are clearly out of shape in this military academy. You can't have people who are infantilized and treated like children in this military academy."
"Old Trek written by war vets. New Trek written by Disney adults"

Meme - "NEW "STAR TREK"
Starfleet Academy: 43% Avg. Popcornometer
Section 31: 16% Avg. Popcornometer
Strange New Worlds: 70% Avg. Popcornometer
Discovery: 34% Avg. Popcornometer
STAR TREK
The Next Generation: 90% Avg. Popcornometer
Voyager: 80% Avg. Popcornometer
Deep Space Nine: 89% Avg. Popcornometer
Enterprise: 80% Avg. Popcornometer"

Following Backlash, the New 'Star Trek' Series Falls Out of the Streaming Charts - "The first eleven days of life on our screens have been anything but quiet for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Following the January 15 debut of Episodes 1 and 2, the series was met with review bombing on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with its audience rating currently 43% — just under half the score awarded by critics (88%). Sadly, following the premiere of Episode 3, "Vitus Reflux," on January 22, things have gone from bad to worse for this seemingly ill-fated Star Trek series.  At the time of writing, just three days after the premiere of Episode 3, Starfleet Academy has been ousted from the current Paramount+ streaming charts in the U.S. This is made even more damning when considering the lack of brand-new content providing competition for Starfleet Academy... Despite the backlash, critics have proven much more receptive to this new entry in one of TV's biggest franchises"

And the ratings are out. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiered to 2.1 million viewers, on par with Doctor Who Series 15's premiere, 3 million behind SNW S3's premiere, and 9 million behind Star Wars: The Acolyte (also, 500k viewers behind MrBeast's Beast Games) : r/trektalk - "With an estimated budget of $10 million per episode, that's Paramount spending about $5 per viewer per episode.  Assuming viewership holds, with 4 episodes a month...that's them spending $20 a month to earn their monthly subscription fee of $13.99 from those viewers.  They would have been better off remastering DS9."
"It's even worse cause if that's not new subs.the show effectively made them nothing"

Initial Data Shows ‘Starfleet Academy’ Performing “Well Ahead” Of Other Paramount+ Star Trek Series
Star Trek's Controversial New Spinoff Is More Popular Than Anyone Imagined
The media spin is amusing

When Everyone Is Different No One Is, Star Trek Proves It - "Who stands out from that group? Caleb, because he’s a human, and I am confident I can pronounce his first name. The rest are like the roster of an unsuccessful superhero team with names I can’t remember or say. I don’t know what most of these words are; it’s a bunch of newly invented letter configurations with no real meaning. It all runs together into one big blob of alphabet nothing...
Now here’s the cast of the original Star Trek series...        Among that group, Spock stands out as unusual and exceptional, because he’s very different from the types of people we’re used to. It doesn’t diminish the others, who become extremely well fleshed-out characters through their personalities and actions. However, it does give Spock an unusual starting point.   If I’d never watched Star Trek, I wouldn’t know how to pronounce Uhura, but I also don’t expect to be able to pronounce African names right off the bat. So that’s a good thing.
Let’s try a different Star Trek show. Here’s the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation...  Who stands out in that group? Worf, because he’s a Klingon and that’s weird on a Federation starship.  I know how to say “Worf!” without anyone telling me. Better still, it’s a fun word to say. Try it: “Worf!”  Data also stands out because he’s a robot. He also has a four-letter name, and it’s made up of a word I already know.   What’s going on with that Betazoid? She sounds interesting. Her last name is odd but simple and easy to remember. Would a half-Betazoid stand out if everyone with her on the ship was a half-something? No, no, she would not.
Let’s try Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. That Star Trek show takes place on a totally alien space station, which means if any Star Trek series has a good reason to have a really wild group of characters, it’s Deep Space Nine...        Who stands out in that group? Now it’s getting more complex. But half the cast is still composed of straightforward human characters with straightforward human names, people I can understand without a 5-episode story arc to explain their superpowers...   Deep Space Nine’s strange alien characters also have straightforward, simple names...   Deep Space Nine managed the increased complexity of its cast’s origins and identity and then intentionally kept their names straightforward and simple. Then it gave the audience a lot of human characters mixed in with the aliens, so they had someone to easily identify with, without the need for extensive explanation
When you compare the cast of Starfleet Academy to the shows that came before it, you start to see the problem with the modern push to cram differences into everything. When all characters are a deviation, a subversion, or a novelty, difference isn’t contrast anymore; it’s the baseline.  Classic Star Trek worked because difference was relative. Spock stood out because everyone else was human. Worf mattered because Klingons were rare. Data was compelling because he was the only android in the room. The audience had a stable “normal” to measure against, which made the outsiders meaningful. Identity had narrative weight because it created friction.   In Starfleet Academy, there is no friction. When every character is defined primarily by how unusual they are, uniqueness collapses into sameness. The half-Klingon isn’t strange because there are multiple hybrids. The hologram isn’t unusual because the show already treats the artificial as routine. Nothing challenges the world because the world is already maximally diversified.  Half the fun in classic Trek is in exploring the differences between people who are otherwise the same. Those characters weren’t defined by their identity, which gave them more room to grow into individuals with their own selves, defined by their actions rather than a bunch of made-up words.  By defining your characters with diverse identities, this doesn’t create richness, it creates homogenization. Everyone occupies the same narrative lane: “I’m different, but I belong.” When that’s everyone’s story, it stops being a story and becomes wallpaper. Difference only matters when it’s rare enough to cost something. Without contrast, identity becomes aesthetic rather than dramatic.   In trying to make everyone special, Starfleet Academy and most other modern shows doing the same thing prove that distinction requires limits. Without those limits, all differences blur into none."

Meme - NPC: "The ratings are fine, it's not made for you!"
Normal person: "I know"
Variety: "EXCLUSIVE: "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" will end with its upcoming second season. The show failed to find a significant audience, not ranking on Nielsen's Top 10 streaming viewership charts at any point during its 10-episode first season."
"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to End With Season 2"
NPC: *upset*
Of course, the cope was amusing, with left wingers blaming "incels" for somehow managing to get it cancelled

RUMOR: Secret Hideout Deal Officially Dead as Paramount Cuts Ties with Alex Kurtzman - "The writing appeared on the wall months ago, but now, inside sources are saying Paramount has withdrawn the tentative deal offered to Alex Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout, effectively ending the most controversial era in Star Trek history... Kurtzman’s tenure produced some of the franchise’s most divisive content. Discovery alienated longtime fans with radical departures from established canon. Picard drew criticism for its treatment of beloved characters. Section 31 became universally reviled despite an astronomical budget. Now Starfleet Academy appears to be the final nail in the coffin. Tachyon Pulse reported that “rumblings around the studio are that Starfleet Academy is beyond the disaster that fans were expecting.”... CBS insiders view everything Kurtzman produced as “non-canon” and set in an alternate universe. The studio plans to bring Star Trek production in-house, projecting costs at 25% of Secret Hideout’s budgets through improved efficiency and AI integration."

Fewer Than 40,000 People Watched Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - "his source told him the series has only been viewed 400,000 times. That’s 400,000 views in total for the entire series... If Mike’s numbers are correct, not only does it mean that Starfleet Academy is one of the most colossal failures in the history of streaming, it also means that most of the show’s defenders are bots. It means that the petition to resurrect the show is also fake, since it has 10,000 signatures. Unless you’re willing to believe 1/4 of all the people who watched the series actually found out a petition exists and then went through the trouble to sign it. It’s impossible to overstate just how terrible those numbers are. For comparison purposes, GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s rather small YouTube channel has done numerous videos on Star Trek. Our least-watched Star Trek video got more than 40,000 views. A video we did on what’s wrong with modern Star Trek got more than 250,000 views. Red Letter Media’s new video discussing old episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (in which they broke this news) has already gotten nearly 500,000 views, and it’s less than a day old. There were also similar reports of ratings disasters for the previous Star Trek release, the movie Star Trek: Section 31. And the franchise has already canceled nearly everything else it had going, probably because the ratings simply aren’t there.  All of this calls into question why Alex Kurtzman, the man in charge of Star Trek, still has a job at Paramount. And it makes you wonder who might be behind all the fake bots and paid defenders out there, pumping up the show. Who’d benefit from that kind of fake support? Alex Kurtzman?"
Time to blame the small unrepresentative minority of incel chuds for getting it cancelled despite its immense popularity, and blaming clueless studio executives for listening to them (I've actually seen this cope in woke Star Trek groups)
Clearly, this is a fake leak and it's actually hugely popular, which is why it's being cancelled

Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "Doesn’t matter, it’s the least important detail in regards to how they butchered her character in the most banal ways possible.  In the books, she’s an incredibly ancient, wise sorceress on a quest to rule over her own kingdom in Middle-Earth. She’s a fascinating, complex, powerful being with complicated motivations and a potentially checkered backstory.  In the show, she’s a one-dimensional 20,000-year-old adolescent on a nonsensical petty Dollar Store Da Vinci Code revenge quest. Her only characterization is to repeat reductive stereotypes of women in media wherein women can only be powerful by being petulant, argumentative, and constantly subverting the low expectations of other men. It’s so fucking boring and stupid and poorly written and offensive it’s hard to believe."
"I had this pegged from Season 1, Episode 1. Why is every writers idea of a feminist someone who’s just mean for no reason? I didn’t even finish Season 1. What a disaster."
"In the book, she's considered one of the most esteemed and respected elves in Middle Earth. In the show, she's condescended to and belittled because "she's a womyn""
"It's like a misogynist's vision of what a modern feminist wants to see coupled with a person who only reads novels bought at a drug store's vision of what Tolkien should have been."
"It never ceases to amaze me that people claiming they to want to empower women manage to write women so one-dimensional and cringe. Galadriel is a powerful woman, whom you could write volumes of fascinating stories about... but they chose this."
"It's insane that they claim to be against gender inequalities but they think the best way to "improve" female characters is to make them bad ass, tough-guy, men. It's just lazy ass writing. Great and inspiring female characters are already in the world of Tolkien and only need their stories adapted to the screen, but instead let's make her a middle earth Rambo with the personality of a petulant child."
"It's extra infuriating because the exact same damn character was already portrayed as extremely powerful to the point of being revered by all of our heroes. She was a strong character without being aggressive or arrogant as a means of proving how tough she is. 10"
"It’s even more annoying because as far as I know the Elves didn’t have the kind of social structure where they treated female elves differently - certainly not to the extent that womanhood is treated in the show. It’s just using LOTR as a platform to tell some story about a woman who subverts gender norms and expectations. Galadriel was held in very high esteem and was a well respected sorceress, she didn’t need to prove herself by fighting in battles with a sword. If anything you could probably swap her out with Elrond in the show and take out all the super on the nose women empowerment material and the show would be better, even though Elrond also would not have needed to continually prove himself to his fellow Elves either."
"Great comment that accurately describes what Amazon just “doesn’t get” about lord of the rings. Strength doesn’t have to be only found in subverting gender roles. Instead, amplifying them can show that femininity does not equal weakness, and masculinity does not equal toxicity"
"I think this is because they already had a script before amazon got the filmrights to Tolkiens' works, and the writers were just ordered to rescript it slightly to make it Tolkien-themed. That's where this big disconnect comes from.  Corporate Greed and the belief that branding is all you need, the hallmark of cheap franchise products"
"That’s the thing many that “love” this stuff in Hollywood/streaming services don’t realize… All of the iconic women in media in the past didn’t need these ridiculously stupid tropes to shove to the forefront. They just were iconic. Once they start pushing their identity it ruins everything. Anyone you know that have the qualities you admire, and recognize don’t start their day by being a label first. Everybody that’s written, and is great in the real world is a person that just so happens to be a certain type. Not the certain type pushed before their personality, and achievements."

Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "It never ceases to amaze me that people claiming they to want to empower women manage to write women so one-dimensional and cringe. Galadriel is a powerful woman, whom you could write volumes of fascinating stories about... but they chose this."
"And if you do not like the character you are considered a sexist."
"  Y’all give them too much credit. I don’t think they even do it on purpose anymore, I think it’s just the only thing they know how to do.  They do not know how to portray powerful women without the stereotypes."
"It’s funny because the people pushing it are women that hate men. Yet they write a “powerful” woman by just writing her like a male character lol"

Is Galadriel ever stated to be a good warrior in any of the text? : r/lordoftherings - "people always conflate tolkiens lack of female characters as misogyny. but people don’t consider how even though his execution of 3 different female characters (eowyn, galadriel, arwen) is done in a limited manner, it’s still done gracefully and offers diversity in characterization. rings of power characterization will make you realize what misogyny in writing really looks like"
"And those people are wrong too. Luthien plays the dominant role in saving Beren and stealing the silmaril, Idril saw thru Maeglin and planned ahead before anyone else before the fall of Gondolin, and Eowyn was the hero of the third book along with Sam. He always honored women characters but since the fellowship was all male that’s not good enough for some"

Amazon's $20 Million Cancellation Fee For Rings Of Power Revealed - "Amazon's initial deal was for a five-season run consisting of 50 episodes. If Amazon failed to stick to that plan, then they'd have to pay a kill fee of $20 million per season... One of the biggest questions is how to approach Rings of Power, which hasn't achieved the level of success expected from an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's seminal work...  The first installment cost $465 million, not including marketing costs. Although costs have been reduced for the two more recent seasons, thanks to tax incentives and changing locations, the show has not been a major streaming breakout.
Each season definitely still costs more than $20 million this to make, so at this stage it's about ego and saving face
Even media shills can't pretend it's a success
Given how bad ROP is, maybe the Tolkien estate should waive the $20 million fee so as not to damage the brand anymore

katy 🌸 on X - "Bethany Hamilton speaking about the time Rip Curl dropped her to feature trans surfer Sasha Lowerson in their women's campaign. Many surfers under contract were silenced and unable to voice their disapproval. Shame on you, Rip Curl! Men don’t belong in women sports."
Retailer Closing 21 Stores, Loses $80 Million After Replacing Shark Survivor Model With Man Pretending to Be Woman

In 2015, Anita Sarkeesian had $300 million donated to DEI initiatives by Intel, given game creation time + games flopping, I do wonder.. : r/KotakuInAction

Meme - "Relooted (demo), the BLM game where you steal artifacts from museums, peaked at 22 players and currently has 3."

Meme - "GAME DEVELOPERS TODAY: I DON'T CARE IF A GAME IS GOOD OR NOT! I JUST WANT TO OWN THE CHUDS!"

Kyle Smith on X - "Kind of a blockbuster here: Pixar made a movie about a gay 11-year-old; at a test screening not a single viewer raised their hand to recommend it; gay Latino director fired; America Ferrera quit b/c of this; movie reworked and flopped."
H. Billy Soros on X - "Shocking that the underlying theme of “I’m 11, have no idea what sex is yet, but am 100% confident that I like dick” didn’t resonate with regular people just trying to have some fun at a movie with their kids."

Perfect Dark Level Designer Claims 'Gamers Were a Mistake' - "Kolbe Payne, a level designer on the upcoming reboot of Perfect Dark has a lot to say about the people who might purchase his game. The designer’s longstanding hated of the very people that keep him employed was exposed by John Trent of Fandom Pulse in a recent article. These comments started back in 2021, when gamers voiced objections to figures from Norse mythology being race swapped in God of War: Ragnarok. Norse and Greek mythology, despite being deeply rooted in Norse and Greek culture, are always ripe for the picking when it comes to Hollywood race swaps. When gamers pointed this out, Payne threw a little baby fit over it and called them “racist pigs.” “That fact that it’s 2021 and gamers still get mad over a character being black just boggles my mind,” Payne said, failing to note the cultural significance of these figures in Norse history. “It’s time to grow up, you racist pigs. Angrboda looks absolutely STUNNING. Props to all the devs who worked on her. She’s without a doubt the most interesting character.” The race swapping of Angrboda is a creative decision many attribute to maligned narrative design firm Sweet Baby Inc., which worked on the Santa Monica Studios title. In February 2023, Payne responded to an article on reported harassment brought on actress Laura Bailey for her role as Abby in The Last of Us: Part 2. Payne responded simply by stating, “Gamers were a mistake.” Of course, no one should support harassment or death threats made to anyone. But instead of calling out the bad apples in the gaming world who allegedly undertook such inappropriate actions, Payne decided to make a sweeping generalization of the very audience he serves. Without the “mistake” that is gamers, Payne wouldn’t have a job… “If adding female protagonists to video games is all it takes to make the worst people you’ve ever met not want to play them, we should add female protagonists to every game,” Payne said in another post, this one from December 2023. His desire to push gamers out of gaming has a real, “this job would be great if it wasn’t for all the customers” vibe to it. Payne attacked gamers again in June, referring to them as bigots during Pride month. “Seeing a lot of comments turned off for Pride Month posts,” Payne said. “I wish all bigots to kindly f*** off and learn to love others for who they are. Gaming is for everyone. Everyone except the bigots.” After Fandom Pulse exposed this toxic and hateful rhetoric, Payne deactivated his X account. The reboot of Perfect Dark has already come under fire from the gaming world due to the “modern day” redesign of its main character, Joanna Dark. As has become all too typical in the gaming world, Dark’s jawline was widened, giving her a more masculine appearance. Perfect Dark was announced back in 2020. However, it’s believed that the game won’t actually release until 2026. Perhaps if Payne and his co-workers spent more time working on their game and less time tweeting about gamers, they’d manage to deliver a final product within a reasonable window."
Microsoft cancels Perfect Dark reboot, shuts down studio

Tomb Raider TTRPG that sought to escape the series ''colonial past'' has been cancelled : r/KotakuInAction

T on X - "MARKET UPDATE: Black Rifle Coffee Co., who outed themselves as opportunists with no core values monetizing vetbro culture, is in a plummeting decline despite having drinks in every major gas station in the US.  After disavowing Kyle @rittenhouse2a  in 2020, being glowingly profiled by the New York Times in 2021 where they further disavowed their conservative/right wing constituency, Black Rifle IPO'd in 2022 at a price of $17.50 per share, reflecting an implied valuation of $767,000,000.  Today, the share price is $0.76, which is a 94.76% drop from IPO. If you bought $100,000 of Black Rifle Coffee Company stock in 2022, you have $5,240 today.  While it may feel old hat to say "Get woke, go broke", the consequences of decisions companies made under the Biden admin assuming a Kamala presidency and permanent Obamaism are still playing out. The corporate world moves slowly and the chickens are still coming home to roost."

The Government Pays You to Stay Small

Of course, this is proof that benefits eligibility needs to be expanded so people continue working:

Jeff Thompson | Facebook

The Government Pays You to Stay Small

*Why the government punishes you for trying to level up*

 

Picture a single mom in Atlanta. Two kids. Renting an apartment in East Point or Decatur. She's making $27,000 a year.

 

Her kids are in subsidized daycare under Georgia's CAPS program. A Section 8 voucher keeps her rent to about thirty percent of her income. SNAP covers most of the grocery bill. Medicaid handles her doctor visits, PeachCare handles the kids. It's not a glamorous life, but the bills get paid and nobody's hungry.

 

She's been busting her ass at Walmart. Maybe Target. Maybe both, since she picked up a weekend shift last fall. For the last eighteen months, after the kids go down, she's been doing nursing school online. Certified Nursing Assistant. The kind of credential everybody says she should have. Show up. Work hard. Get the paper. Climb out.

 

One Tuesday afternoon, two doors open at once.

 

Her manager at Walmart calls her into the back office. She's impressed. They want to promote her to Team Lead. $40,000 a year. A $13,000 raise. Her name on a little plaque. First rung on the management ladder.

 

Same week, she passes her CNA exam and her instructor tells her the Atlanta market is wide open. Emory, Piedmont, Northside, Grady. Everybody's hiring. New CNAs are starting at $38,000.

 

She's doing exactly what we tell people like her to do. Education. Initiative. A credential. A promotion. Two promotions, if she wants both. She's leveling up.

 

She's also about to get crushed.

 

The Raise That Costs Her Money

 

Take the Walmart job. $40,000 gross. Sounds great until you look at what happens to the rest of her life.

 

SNAP disappears. The program cuts off at $34,645 in gross income for a family of three. Not a phase-out, a hard wall. One dollar over and the whole thing vanishes. There goes $4,280 a year in groceries.

 

Section 8 takes 30 cents of every extra dollar she earns. Her rent goes from roughly $7,200 a year to $10,400. Three grand off the top.

 

The Earned Income Tax Credit phases out hard through this range. She loses 21 cents off every additional dollar.

 

Childcare gets ugly fast. If she stays under the CAPS income limit for her family size, her copay still climbs. Cross $42,000 and the whole subsidy vanishes. Full-price daycare in metro Atlanta runs $16,800 a year for two kids, and that's being conservative.

 

She loses Medicaid. Georgia didn't expand it, so she's on the ACA marketplace now with premiums and deductibles that weren't in her life last month.

 

Federal tax, state tax, and FICA all climb with her gross.

 

Run the numbers. At $27,000 she had about $27,200 in actual spendable cash after taxes, rent, childcare, and health. At $40,000, she has about $21,200.

 

The $13,000 raise cost her $6,000. She paid the government to accept a promotion.

 

The CNA job at $38,000 is no kinder. Slightly less damage because of the smaller raise, but she still lands around $23,100 in disposable cash. Eleven grand more gross. Four grand less in her pocket.

 

Her effective marginal tax rate on the Walmart promotion is about 146 percent. Nobody on Wall Street pays that. Nobody at the top bracket pays that. The woman working two jobs and raising two kids in East Point pays that.

 

Look at the Chart

 

Here's what's going on, visualized.

 

The dashed diagonal line is what she earns. Gross income. A straight climb from zero on the left to $105,000 on the right. That's the line we all think about when we think about getting ahead.

 

The solid line underneath is what she actually has to spend after the government takes its piece or takes away her benefits. Taxes, her share of rent, childcare copays, health costs, lost benefits. Food money. Gas money. Car-repair money. Savings. Everything else.

 

Start at the left. At zero earned income, the solid line sits at about $12,000. That's SNAP plus a small TANF benefit, basically. She's not starving, but she's got nothing.

 

Follow the green segment up the climb. From zero to $25,000 earned, the disposable line actually climbs faster than the earnings line for a while. Benefits and credits are adding to what she brings home. At the $25,000 mark, the two lines meet. She's earning $25,000 and has $27,265 in spendable cash. Benefits still exceed her costs. This is the sweet spot, marked by the green dot at the peak of her disposable-income curve.

 

Now follow the red segment. Earning goes up. Disposable goes down. Counterintuitive. That's the whole point. Between $25,000 and $45,000, her disposable income collapses from $27,265 to $15,840. She's earning twenty grand more and has eleven grand less.

 

The red dot at the bottom is $45,000 earned, $15,840 disposable. This is the deepest part of the trap. The gap between the dashed line and the solid line has opened up to $29,000. That's what the system is eating out of her earnings through a combination of taxes, higher rent, full-price childcare, and lost benefits.

 

Between $55,000 and $70,000, things don't get worse, but they don't get meaningfully better either. The red line creeps upward at a crawl. She's working harder, earning more, and barely moving in terms of what she can actually spend.

 

At $70,000 the Section 8 voucher runs out. She's now paying full market rent, which in Atlanta is brutal, but she's also finally past the worst of the benefit cliffs. The green segment resumes. The line turns upward again.

 

Watch where the disposable line crosses the horizontal dotted reference. That's the second green dot. Same height as the sweet spot at $25,000. Same $27,265 in her pocket. She's now earning $76,300 a year.

 

Let that sink in. She got to $76,000 and she has the exact same amount of real spendable money she had at $25,000. Three times the gross. Same groceries. Same gas tank.

 

The entire stretch from $25,000 to $76,000 is a trench. Fifty-one thousand dollars wide. Every promotion, every raise, every side hustle, every new credential inside that trench makes her poorer in real terms than she was before.

 

That is the welfare cliff. That is what's keeping people stuck. Why work harder? Why get a raise? Unless your raise is from $27,000 all the way to $76,000 that raise will take money out of your pocket.

 

This Isn't About Her

 

People want to make this type of story about lazy welfare recipients. It's not. It's a structural problem in how the programs were built.

 

Each one was designed in isolation. SNAP has its own eligibility formula. Section 8 has a separate rule book. CAPS childcare runs on its own schedule. Medicaid and PeachCare have their own thresholds. The EITC phases out on its own timeline. Nobody coordinates the phase-outs. Stack them together for a real family and you get effective marginal tax rates well over a hundred percent across a wide band of income.

 

Milton Friedman saw this coming in 1962. He proposed a negative income tax to solve it. One program, one smooth phase-out, one predictable incentive. Friedman wasn't some bleeding-heart progressive sneaking a handout into the code. He was a libertarian economist and Nobel laureate who looked at what we were building and said it was going to destroy the work ethic of the people it was supposed to help.

 

Sixty-four years later, we're running the same broken machine, adding new programs with new phase-outs, and acting surprised that multigenerational poverty in this country doesn't respond to anything we throw at it.

 

What It Does to People

 

Once you understand the math, the behavior you see in working-poor neighborhoods stops looking irrational and starts looking like a correct response to a bad system.

 

Why do so many people work for cash? Because cash doesn't hit the W-2 and doesn't count against benefits. A braiding appointment, a house-cleaning gig, a side job fixing cars. All of it keeps her under the cliff. The cash economy isn't a moral failing. It's the rational response to a system that punishes reportable income.

 

Why do couples live together but not marry? Because marriage means the spouse income counts. A woman earning $25,000 with two kids is better off cohabiting with a $40,000 earner than marrying him. The marriage penalty stacked across these programs is devastating. We've been quietly gutting marriage rates in poor neighborhoods for sixty years through this one incentive, and then we turn around and give speeches about the importance of two-parent households.

 

Why don't people save? Several of these programs have asset tests. Build an emergency fund over $2,000 or $5,000 and you can lose Medicaid or SNAP eligibility. So money goes out as fast as it comes in. Car breaks down, back to zero. Which reinforces dependency.

 

Why do people turn down overtime, cap their hours, or refuse the promotion? Because they ran the numbers and the math says stay small. That's not laziness. That's arithmetic.

 

The Real Cost

 

The worst part is what it does to the next generation. Her kids watch her work the system. They learn that working harder doesn't pay, that the paycheck is worse than cash, that marriage is a financial trap, that saving is for suckers. That lesson gets transmitted regardless of what anybody says out loud about education and personal responsibility.

 

This is what people mean when they say welfare creates dependency. It's not that recipients are lazy or morally defective. We built a system where dependency is the correct answer, and we punish the people who rationally solve for their own best outcome.

 

Why It Won't Get Fixed

 

The fix has been known since Friedman. Smooth the phase-outs across all programs simultaneously. Eliminate the cliffs. Kill the asset tests. Either a negative income tax or a consolidated benefit that tapers gradually at a sane marginal rate across every program at once.

 

It doesn't happen because every program has its own agency, its own caseworkers, its own advocacy groups, its own congressional committee, and its own constituency for the status quo. Consolidation means some bureaucracies go away and some advocates lose their relevance. Nobody with power benefits from the fix. The people being punished don't vote enough or write enough op-eds to shift the calculus.

 

So the machine keeps running. Atlanta moms turn down the Team Lead promotion. New CNAs look at the math and realize they can't afford the job they just spent eighteen months training for. The rest of us agree that something should probably be done, while making sure nothing actually changes.

 

Where This Leaves Her

 

She did everything the universe told her to do. Got educated. Worked two jobs. Earned the credential. Earned the promotion. And our system, built with the stated goal of helping her, structured the incentives so that saying yes to opportunity makes her poorer.

 

She's not the problem. The policy is the problem. Until we fix the stacking, nothing else we do in housing, workforce development, or anti-poverty spending is going to matter. We'll keep running the same treadmill and acting confused about why the working poor stay poor.

 

The math says stay small. The government pays you to stay small. And until that changes, people who run the numbers will keep making the rational choice, no matter how much we wish they'd do otherwise.

Links - 30th May 2026 (2)

‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture : r/anime_titties - "This article has no substance. It references Top 40 band as far right, but doesn't name the band. References generative AI making it easier for far right groups to produce material. Yet it's written like a generative AI horror story with the "far right" Boogeyman hiding everywhere. If everything you disagree with is far right, then the term loses any meaning. At this point, I'm not sure what is actually far right anymore from the perspective of these media sources."
‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture : r/anime_titties - "The article is about a divorced mom that is worried about her son listening to music, that she doesn't like. Perhaps she should spend more time raising her son and not writing articles about what he is listening to? Or that's a far right take now a days?"
‘It’s frightening’: How far right is infiltrating everyday culture : r/anime_titties - "10 yrs after this immigration wave, 10 yrs of undeniable issues and big problems, 10 yrs of overrepresentation of those immigrants in certain criminal categories... and people are still surprised, why the general population is unhappy"

Meme - "UK KEEPING SOCIETY SAFE FROM CRIME... ONE THOMAS & FRIENDS BUTTER KNIFE AT A TIME."
"No ID No Sale"

Meme - kanav: "Someone built a Google translate for Linkedin"
English: "i have been arrested for fraud"
LinkedIn Speak: "I'm thrilled to announce that I'm starting a new chapter! I've recently been given the unique opportunity to step back and reflect on my professional journey from a high-security environment. This unexpected pivot has taught me so much about risk management, regulatory compliance, and the importance of transparency in the financial sector."
Kagi Translate
There's also: Corporate Jargon, Dothraki, Elvish (Sindarin), Emoji Speak, Gen Z, High Valyrian, Klingon, Middle English, Na'vi, Pirate Speak and Reddit Speak

Meme - English (US): "i just shit my pants"
LinkedIn Speak: "Today I faced an unexpected challenge that forced me to pivot instantly and embrace a complete change in my environment. It was a messy situation, but it taught me the importance of being prepared for the unpredictable and always having a backup plan. Growth happens when you're out of your comfort zone. #Resilience #Agility #LessonsLearned"

Meme - "Detected (English): unemployed and avoiding opportunities
Linkedin Speak: Taking a strategic sabbatical to focus on personal growth and intentional career alignment."

Meme - "Son come closer! I must tell you a secret, son! I wear panties, son! Japanese style women's panties! I lived my life in shame but I had my panties. Bury me in my panties, son."
"My father went on to live another 17 years" *sad father and sad son*

Meme - Joe Rogan: "Have you watched The Lord of The Rings, man? Yeah? If you remember, there's this little dude, Gollum, he's a fuckin' genius, man. Eats nothing but raw meat, fish; dude's got his paleo diet down to an art, man. Bear-crawls everywhere, always swimming, rock-climbing; dude's athletic as fuck. He should not look as scrawny as he does, he should be one scary-looking motherfucker, all muscle. No offense to Tolkien, but he doesn't know shit about fitness. I've started eating live fish and bear crawling everywhere, and I gotta tell ya I feel incredible; best shape I've ever been in. I'm telling you, man, Gollum's like a Hobbit chimpanzee."

Meme - *Gandalf the White removing cloak at Edoras to reveal him standing in underwear*

A very nerdy lilium - "The funniest thing about LOTR is Aragorn constantly overstepping the Elves’ personal boundaries. They come from a race where touching your heart is one of the highest signs of affection and he’s over here pulling them into bear hugs and slapping shoulders like a brawny middle-aged dad"
"Okay but what this potentially says about Elrond and the rest of the elves he was raised by is absolutely heartwarming. Because IRL humans need a certain amount of touch and affection and hugs and stuff. It’s particularly important for things like brain development and while it varies from person to person it’s still more than what elf kids need And it honestly looks like Aragorn is not only comfortable with this kind of physical affection, he’s used to it. Which makes me think that instead of looking at young Aragorn, and asking him to be more like an elf to fit in with those around them. Elrond looked at this kid and and thought to himself “how can I be more like what this child needs to thrive” Aragorn has been raised by Elves since he was only 2 years old. So if we’re going by Piaget’s theories of child development, that puts Aragorn, (who would have been called Estel at the time) in the pre-operational stage. Or somewhere thereabouts. So Elrond is raising this kid when he’s learning to talk. When he’s constantly asking “why?” about everything. Young Estel would have grown up surrounded by elves and elf children and just by virtue of not being an elf, he probably would have had to deal with feeling less capable than those around him. He wouldn’t have been able to do things like run across snow, and didn’t have the ability to see as far as they did with their “elf eyes” and I am imagining all manner of bruises and skinned knees as he tries to keep up anyway. And it would take some getting used to his new surrounding, but I can’t stop picturing the first time tiny little Estel runs full tilt across the room and hugs Elrond’s leg. And instead of scolding him or asking him to be more like an elf to fit in, Elrond consciously sets aside his own discomfort in the face of what this child needs to thrive. And if what Estel needs is hugs, then hugs he shall have. Elrond picking up itty bitty Aragorn in a great big hug, and being just as uncomfortable about it, but hiding it well because this child was entrusted to his care and he will not let the boy grow up feeling unwanted or unloved. And so Aragorn grew up surrounded by elves, but he grew up to be someone who naturally and unselfconsciously displays affection. I think that speaks volumes about Elrond. He raised this kid from age 2 to age 20 (so the majority of his formative years and well through his teens) and it was around then that Elrond’s own daughter gets back form visiting her grandmother Galadriel and meets this boy for the first time. So I have NO IDEA what the various stages of child development would be for an elf, but I doubt their exactly the same. Sure, Elrond might seem distant now, but there is no way Aragorn became the guy who is constantly overstepping elves personal boundaries to display affection without Elrond choosing to sacrifice his personal boundaries for the sake of a child’s well being."
"Considering Elrond was born half-elven and was eventually made full elven by choice, while his twin chose to be human (and thus started Numenor) it makes sense, as Elrond didn’t grow up fully elven. Elrond probably knows what it’s like to grow up as not-elven, around full blooded elves and knows what humans need. He’s probably the one elf remaining on Middle Earth that COULD comprehend what Aragorn needed growing up, as a human."
"Aren’t children like, very deeply treasured by Elves? What if Elves are incredibly affectionate with Elven children? And with Aragorn they’re like “well he’s only 150, we can’t stop cuddling him just because he got tall!”"

Meme - Woman made up to look like Gandalf: "I lied. Put your clothes back on. We're watching The Lord of the Rings."
*topless Sydney Sweeney*

Meme - Frodo: "It's some form of Elvish, I can't read it."
Gandalf: "The language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here."
Frodo: "Why not?"
Gandalf: "Because you're going to love the look on Elrond's face when I do it in Rivendell."

I@sarahreesbrennan on Tumblr - "I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know"
"I think...you might be right"
"In names brought to you by popular fiction, please join Dora (Dickens), Olivia (Shakespeare), Wendy, Heidi and Lestat…"

Christian Heiens 🏛 on X - "This is how every conversation about “uniting with the Left” goes:
Normies: “The Left-Right divide was manufactured by the elites to keep us fighting each other instead of uniting against the REAL enemy.”
Rightists: “Sounds good to me. So, what are my fellow Progressives willing to offer the Right in exchange for this grand post-political alliance? A repeal of Hart-Celler? An end to birthright citizenship? A total ban on anti-White DEI policies? How about we start off with something really benign, like no more transing kids or backwashing historical figures in movies and video games?”
Leftists: “What are you, some sort of fascist?”
When people talk about a “post-political culture,” they have this idea that the Left and Right have a common enemy against “the elites.” This is a fantasy. If you permit me to use a fictional reference that normies would understand, “uniting with the Left against the elites” is like granting Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers to fight the Separatists and uncover the true identity of Darth Sidious. You idiots. The Left ARE the elites. That's been the problem this entire time. The two are one and the same."
When left wingers talk about "unity", they mean other people shutting up and falling into line

Is it chocolate? Your chances of finding the real thing are shrinking - The Globe and Mail (aka "Where’s the chocolate?") - "Some ‘chocolate’ is tasting waxy and flat, thanks to cheaper formulas that include oil and filler"

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "When Australian courts heard Ben Roberts-Smith's war crimes defamation case in 2021, they accepted anti-BRS testimony from three illiterate Afghan villagers who told the court in cross-examination that they hated Australian soldiers and saw them all as ''infidels.'' The court ruled that their testimony against Roberts-Smith was still reliable despite the fact that they expressed open religious hatred towards him as an ''infidel.'' It also turned out that Nine News Media essentially paid these witnesses to testify - one of Australia's biggest mainstream media companies paid local Afghan fixers to transport these witnesses and their extended families to Kabul where they covered their accommodation, food, and transport for months. Again, the court found that this did not impact their reliability as witnesses. It's very hard to see this all stacking up at an actual criminal trial where the burden of proof will be far greater. More than 20,000 Australians have signed my petition in support of Ben Roberts-Smith. Please sign here: https://drewpavlou.com.au/brs"

Wokal Distance on X - "I don't think people realize the degree to which so many social and political influencers live lives totally disconnected from what they say online. I know a lot of these people and Ive seen what's going on: Trad wives who sleep around, leftists who hoard money, social conservatives who are gay, feminists who chase men, fitness influencers take ozempic instead of using their own diet plans, both the libs who are performatively non-judgmental about polyamory and the manosphere guys claiming to have harems are almost always in mongamous relationships, wife guys who cheat, feminist men who abuse women, dating coaches who can't get a date, marriage counselors who are divorced, women who hate whiteness always date white men, racists with black girlfriends, feminists dating racists, uber-libs and trads are of course dating (and fucking), the feminst influencers and a number of based religious patriarchy types live exactly the same way - they have gender roles but their moderate. Almost all of these people are theater kids at heart, and everything they do here is a performance. Nothing you see online is real and you need to remember that."

Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 on X - "Someone just sent me the ISIS magazine that recently called for my death"
Dan Burmawi on X - "Muhammad began this tradition of killing anyone who disrespected him. Islamic sources record that whenever Muhammad was offended by someone, he would ask his followers his infamous question: “Who will rid me of so-and-so?” Today, ISIS is trying to rid Muhammad of @TRobinsonNewEra . But let me be clear: the vast majority of Muslims would not object to seeing Tommy killed, just as millions of Muslims celebrated the killing of Silwan Momika. However, because we live in a time of law and order, and Muhammad’s barbaric laws no longer operate openly, only ISIS dares to call for Tommy’s death."

Basil the Great on X - "🚨ABSOLUTELY DISGRACEFUL One of the most sadistic and disgusting articles I have ever read This is NOT FAKE. It's COMPLETELY REAL The Left are JUSTIFYING migrant assaults on women because it may 'end racism' I have no words"
Kirsche 🥥 🧁 on X - "I almost got fooled by the afru website a few years ago it's satire but it's very difficult to distinguish from current year acolytes"
Kirsche 🥥 🧁 on X - "QRT my post for even more visibility The Afru website added a link to their discord, and that makes this very obviously a high effort shitpost. Please make sure if people are quoting Afru they know it's satire 👌 Haven't seen shitposting this in depth in a hot minute."

Insect farming startups received $2 billion to grow bugs for human food — and livestock feed. Now the industry is collapsing. - "There’s a ring of truth, it turns out, to the conspiracy theory that the globalist elites want us to eat bugs... the past decade has shown that even if you build an insect farm, the global market may not come. Of the 20 or so largest insect farming startups, almost a quarter have gone belly up in recent years, including the very largest, Ÿnsect, which ceased operations in December. All told, shuttered insect farming startups account for almost half of all investment into the industry... Beyond the financial woes of the insect farming industry, some philosophers worry about the ethical implications of potentially farming tens of trillions of bugs for food, as emerging research suggests insects may well have some form of consciousness and hold the capacity to feel pain and suffer... insect farming startups haven’t only sought to put insects on our plates or grind them into protein bars; many want to sell insect meal (ground up insects) as feed for other farmed animals. It’s a sustainable alternative, they argue, to the soy fed to factory-farmed chickens and cattle, much of which is grown on deforested land. Insect meal could also replace fishmeal (largely composed of small, wild-caught species, like anchovies and sardines), which is fed to farmed fish and heavily contributes to overfishing. This approach of farming insects for livestock feed, however, isn’t materializing either, and much of it comes down to cost... Farmed insects are typically fed agricultural “co-products” — like wheat bran and corn gluten — most of which is already fed to livestock, and so insect farmers have wound up in competition with big meat companies to buy up these ingredients. This simple fact weakens the narrative often driven by insect farming startups that they are putting food scraps that otherwise would’ve been thrown away to good use... And it’s not guaranteed that insect meal will be more sustainable than soy or fishmeal. According to a UK government report, the environmental impact of insect farming depends on a number of factors, including what insects are fed and whether startups power their farms with fossil fuels or renewable energy. Energy usage explains a lot of the industry’s cost challenge. Farmed insects require warm temperatures, and in Europe, where so many of the startups are based, energy prices have sharply risen in recent years."

Australian author faces jail over child abuse novel - "Lauren Mastrosa, from Australia, could face jail after publishing the “undeniably offensive” Daddy’s Little Toy under the pen name of Tori Woods in an online pre-release to 21 readers in March. The 210-page novel is about an 18-year-old woman named Lucy who works in a toy shop and pretends to behave as a toddler with an older man. The front cover is coloured pastel pink and the title letters styled in children’s alphabet blocks. It includes trigger warnings such as “age gap” “daddy kink”, “infantilisation” and “sexually explicit scenes”."
Role playing is illegal in Australia

“What makes Baba Nyonya descendants less deserving for Bumi status than Indian Muslims?” - "IN the wake of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim stating that applications from Indian Muslims for Bumiputera status would be assessed individually, a netizen has wondered shouldn’t the Peranakan Chinese, too, be accorded a similar status given the Baba Nyonya heritage represents a true ‘assimilation’ of both Malay and Chinese cultures. Given that they have a distinct culture which is not Chinese nor Malay, ng(Gua+Pi) (@xgpingx) who claims to be from a Luk Kreung ancestry (Siamese and Chinese) reckoned that “forcibly categorising Baba Nyonya descendants as Chinese is a form of cultural genocide”. “You may not agree with me but you will never change the fact the Baba Nyonya, Sino-Kadazans, the Peranakan Jawi (Straits Indians) and Hokkien Siamese like me have Bumiputera heritage in our blood,” he penned on his X account. Referring to a Sinar Daily report, ng(Gua+Pi) further claimed that the Peranakan Chinese were stripped of their Bumiputera status as the “Baba” ethnicity status recognised in their birth certificates during the 1940s but was omitted soon after... Beyond the Baba Nyonya community, ng(Gua+Pi) also shared that there are other ethnicities in Malaysia who are products of assimilation between Bumiputera and the non-Bumiputera ethnics. Notable groups include:
Kristang (European + Malay)
Jawi Peranakan (Indian + Malay)
Sino-Native (Sabah Dayaks + Chinese)
Sino-Dayak (Sarawak Dayaks + Chinese)
Luk Kreung (Siamese + Chinese...
This led to a pro-Pakatan Harapan (PH) current issue observer pointing out that little wonder “why some of the second-generation Indian Muslims, Indonesians, Pakistanis or Middle Eastern origin citizens end up having Bumi status due to religion and marriage”. “But six generations of non-Muslim Malaysians who had worked hard for the country are still treated as second-class citizens,” lamented Hector of Sector 470 (@BigJoe470)."

Restaurant threatening to sue over bad Google review : r/canadianlaw - "People in the restaurant business have famously large egos and can take things very personally, especially since they often go into severe debt and stretch themselves way too thin to keep their business running."

Meme - "Since Bert and Ernie's coming out I look at my first coat hanger differently. "Sesamstraat" *Bert and Ernie holding coat hooks so it looks like they're holding their penises*"

Britain for Trump on X - "Celebrities on the decay of London. 🇬🇧
Ricky Gervais, "Welcome to London, don't forget your stab vest."
Ed Sheeran, "Every area of London is sketchy and dangerous."
Nigel Farage described London as "Lawless" and "in a state of collapse."
Piers Morgan saying about Sadiq Khans knife crime epidemic in London saying he's "Bottling it" to act.
Liam Gallagher on London's slogan London is open he replied "Open for what? Knife Crime."
Hugh Grant in an X post he later deleted, "Who exactly effed London?"
Jeremy Clarkson, "I have travelled a great deal over the years and have always said London is the best city in the world. But Kahn is seriously fucking it up."
President Donald J. Trump, "London has been changed so much that it wants to go to Sharia law."
Kirsty Gallagher after being mugged in London stated that such violent incidents are "becoming commonplace."
John Cleese saying London is "no longer an English city,"
Noel Gallagher describing London as a "f***ing dump."
London was once the greatest city in the world reduced to a crime ridden no-go zone, sad."

Meme - Town of Wasaga Beach: "Hi Sandra Fanson - Could you please remove the Town's logo (or anything that looks like it) from your Facebook page? The Town's logos are trademarked and paid for by taxpayers, and staff are responsible for making sure they're used properly. We prefer (and we're pretty sure residents prefer) not to spend taxpayer money to stop unauthorized use - so we appreciate your help in taking it down."
"Sandra Fanson updated her profile picture. *WTF*"
When governments don't understand fair use and parody, taxpayers are bad people for making them waste taxpayers' money launching frivolous lawsuits

Couple Fined Over $4000 Because Thief Who Stole Their Car Didn't Wear Seatbelt - "We may have a new dictionary definition for the term "adding insult to injury." According to a report by 9 Now Australia's Today, a couple were victims of a home invasion and had their Lexus SUV stolen in the process ... followed by the man and woman receiving a $6258 AUD (roughly $4400 USD) fine in the mail, because the alleged thief wasn’t wearing a seatbelt during the getaway. According to the report, Leila and Hamid were sleeping in their Gold Coast home when a gang of masked intruders broke in, allegedly ransacking the home looking for valuables and car keys. Hamid was woken up by the noise, chased the thieves from the home, and called the police—but he said the cops never arrived, and the thieves came back a short time later. This time, they took a Lexus SUV, then made their escape. Hamid said called the police a second time, but they reportedly never showed up to the property; according to the report, it has been three weeks since the incident, and the police have yet to visit the home. However, Leila and Hamid did receive some correspondence from the authorities—just not at all what they were expecting. The coupe say they received a hefty fine because a traffic camera caught the thief driving their SUV while not wearing a seatbelt. The couple has until March 3 to pay the $6258 AUD fine, or they may face additional fees. Hamid spoke to a detective about his case, according to the report, and was told that break-ins in that area are “only going to get worse.” Hamid asked the question that many of us were thinking: How can the traffic cameras take a picture of the thief and issue a fine to the rightful owners, but authorities can’t capture the suspect who was behind the wheel?"

‘monkey Attack’ Foils Man’s Bid To Rape 6yo Girl | Meerut News - Times of India - "A troop of monkeys purportedly intervened to save a 6-year-old girl, a UKG student, from a rape attempt in Baghpat."

Lachlan Phillips exo/acc 👾 on X - "I'd argue that grunge was one of the first clear demoralisation campaigns, and gangster rap was the next. Empowering music kept creeping in (in rock, rap and other genres) and kept being replaced by satanic, nihilistic genderslop. Songs that were popular around me growing up were "freak", "creep", "freak on a leash", "suicide", "loser", "weirdo" and "I hate myself and I want to die" These were the affirmations that well adjusted happy go lucky kids would listen to on the radio. Similar sentiments in rap when I was informed by the radio that African American culture was being in gangs, robbing and shooting people, selling drugs and owning women. Britney Spears wasn't presented as a schoolgirl, but a whore. She was at the epicenter of this and you can see the effect it had on her today. Modern versions have Sam Smith and Little Nas X dressed as the devil promoting antinatalism. Mind you all of this under the watchful eye of known criminals like Puff Daddy, or Epstein pals like Geffen and Motolla. I assume most of the canon of corporate media - while many great artists produced great bodies of work - was fundamentally influenced and curated to create the generation of leaders who have been leading us into this current period of self loathing, uncertainty and nihilism. A large part of why I'm hopeful that a decentralised AI infrastructure layer for the internet might help people genuinely express themselves, and form distribution networks around their true wants, needs, hopes and dreams. I don't trust the corporate canon and I'm increasingly compelled to unlearn many of my tastes."

Our Nakba

The difference being that the Arabic Nakba is actually their failure to kill the Jews:

Our Nakba
How the Arab World Expelled Its Jews and Called the Result Colonialism

The German ambassador to Egypt works out of a house that used to belong to a Jewish family. So does the Swiss ambassador. So does the American one. The homes were confiscated in 1956, when the Egyptian government declared, in a proclamation read aloud from the minarets of Cairo and Alexandria, that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state. The families were given one suitcase. They signed documents “donating” everything else to the government. Then they left. The houses are still there. The families are not.

This is where the argument about Israel begins. Not in Europe. Here.

---

There is a story told about Israel with remarkable confidence in universities, at the United Nations, in the opinion sections of newspapers that should know better. The story goes like this: European Jews, traumatized by European persecution, arrived in a land populated by indigenous Arabs and established, by force, a settler state. European guilt. European migration. European power. Colonialism wearing a Star of David.

The story requires you to ignore the majority of Israelis.

Mizrahi Jews, those whose ancestry traces to Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, and Lebanon, constitute the largest demographic bloc in Israel’s Jewish population, somewhere between 45 and 61 percent depending on how intermarriage and self-identification are counted. No serious demographer disputes the basic fact. They are not European. They are the descendants of communities that lived in the Middle East and North Africa for over two thousand years before the word “Europe” carried any political meaning. Many trace their origins to the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE. Their families were in Baghdad before Rome was a city. They were in Sana’a and Cairo and Tripoli while the ancestors of today’s loudest anti-Zionists were still pagans in northern forests.

By every definition that the language of indigenous rights claims to honor, they are indigenous people of the Middle East.

The colonial thesis does not complicate this fact. It requires its erasure.

These communities did not arrive in Iraq and Yemen and Egypt from Europe or from nowhere. They arrived from the Land of Israel, carried there by the conquests and expulsions that defined the ancient world. The Babylonian exile of 586 BCE brought Jews to Mesopotamia when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the First Temple and deported the population of Judea. Later waves followed the Assyrian conquest, the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the subsequent dispersions that scattered Jewish communities across the region. The Jews of Baghdad, of Sana’a, of Cairo, of Tripoli were not immigrants to the Middle East from somewhere else. They were the exiled children of the Land of Israel, living in the lands to which conquest had driven them, maintaining their language, their texts, and their memory of home across two thousand years. When they came to Israel in the twentieth century, they were not arriving as colonizers. They were returning.

---

To understand what was lost, you have to know what existed.

The Jews of Iraq were among the oldest continuous Jewish communities on earth. Their roots in Babylonia stretch to the destruction of the First Temple. They did not merely survive in Iraq. They built there. The Talmud, the central text of Jewish law and life that has governed Jewish practice for fifteen centuries, was composed in Babylon, in the academies of Sura and Pumbedita, on the soil of what is now modern Iraq. By the early twentieth century, Jews made up roughly a third of Baghdad’s population. They were merchants, musicians, government officials, doctors, bankers. They spoke Judeo-Arabic and prayed in Hebrew and had done both, without interruption, for two and a half millennia.

The Jews of Yemen maintained a liturgical tradition so ancient and so isolated from the rest of the Jewish world that scholars of Hebrew phonetics study it today to understand how the language was originally pronounced. They had been in the Arabian Peninsula since before the rise of Islam. Their piyyutim, their sacred poetry, carried melodies that the rest of the Jewish world had forgotten.

The Jews of Morocco and Algeria predated the Arab conquest of North Africa. The Persian Jewish community traced its origins to the era of Cyrus the Great, who is named in the book of Isaiah as the instrument of Jewish liberation. The Jews of Egypt were ancient. The Jews of Syria were ancient. These were not transplanted peoples. They were rooted ones, with sacred texts, living languages, and unbroken communal memory reaching back to the earliest chapters of Jewish history.

In 1948, there were 135,000 Jews in Iraq. 265,000 in Morocco. 140,000 in Algeria. 105,000 in Tunisia. 100,000 in Egypt. 60,000 in Yemen. 38,000 in Libya. 30,000 in Syria.

Today, there are fewer than ten Jews in Iraq. Fewer than ten in Yemen. Fewer than ten in Libya.

---

The end of each community had its own texture, but the pattern was the same everywhere.

In Baghdad, the unraveling began on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in June 1941. Nazi influence had reached Iraq through the German ambassador Fritz Grobba, who funded antisemitic newspapers, bankrolled a youth movement modeled on the Hitler Youth, and cultivated a pro-Axis officer class. When a short-lived pro-Nazi government collapsed and British forces moved toward the city, mobs took to the streets. Over two days, roughly 180 Jews were killed, hundreds were wounded and raped, and 1,500 homes and businesses were looted and destroyed. The pogrom is called the Farhud. It is not taught in schools. A decade later, Iraq criminalized Zionism, seized Jewish property, stripped Jews of their citizenship, and arranged the conditions under which 120,000 Jews boarded planes to Israel in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, leaving behind the land where the Talmud was written.

In Egypt, President Nasser’s government waited until the Suez Crisis of 1956. Then the proclamation went out from the mosques. Zionists. Enemies of the state. One suitcase. Sign the form. Leave. Between 1948 and the late 1960s, more than 80 percent of Egypt’s Jews fled, most to Israel, some to France and the Americas, all to a life rebuilt from nothing in a country that was not theirs.

In Yemen, anti-Jewish riots erupted in late November 1947, triggered by protests against the UN Partition Plan. Over three days, more than 80 Jews were killed, over 100 Jewish-owned businesses looted, synagogues burned. In 1949 and 1950, in an operation the Israeli government called On Wings of Eagles, nearly 49,000 Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel. Many had walked for days through the desert to reach the airstrip. They arrived carrying almost nothing. They brought their Torah scrolls.

In Libya, the Jews had been present for over two thousand years, their roots in the region traceable to before the destruction of the Second Temple. In 1945, Arab nationalist riots killed more than 140 of them and destroyed hundreds of their homes. Another pogrom in 1948. More dead. More homes burned. When Gaddafi came to power in 1969, he confiscated all remaining Jewish property by law. By 1970, the government declared Libya Judenrein. Two thousand years of Jewish presence, ended by decree.

The same pattern completed itself across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Sometimes through mob violence. Sometimes through bureaucratic suffocation. Property laws requiring Muslim business partners. Passports withheld. Citizenship stripped. Bank accounts frozen. The Jewish communities of the Arab world were liquidated across three decades through a combination of persecution, pauperization, and periodic slaughter, until more than 99 percent were gone. The land confiscated from those who fled amounts to 40,000 square miles. Five times the size of Israel in 1948. The property losses, documented across 22 archives and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, are valued at $263 billion in current terms.

There is no UN agency for these refugees. No annual day of mourning recognized by the General Assembly. No special rapporteur. No international fund. No permanent refugee population maintained across generations as a political instrument. The word Nakba is not applied to them, though by every measurable standard, what happened to nearly one million Jews across the Arab world was a larger, more total, and more deliberately engineered displacement than the Palestinian exodus to which that word is exclusively applied.

The silence is not an oversight. Oversights get corrected when you point them out.

---

This is where the argument has to be named precisely.

The people who advance the colonial thesis about Israel are not, in general, ignorant of Mizrahi Jews. They are educated people. They read. They know that Israel is not a monoculture. The problem is not that they lack information. The problem is that the information does not serve the argument, so the information is not used.

The colonial framing is load-bearing. Remove it and the entire ideological structure collapses. Acknowledge that the majority of Israelis descend from communities expelled from Arab lands, and you must also acknowledge that Arab states conducted ethnic cleansing against their Jewish populations. Acknowledge that, and you cannot sustain the clean binary of indigenous Arabs against colonial Europeans. Acknowledge that, and the people demanding the dismantling of Israel as an act of decolonization are demanding that the refugees of Arab ethnic cleansing surrender the one place that took them in.

The Mizrahi Jews do not complicate the argument. They end it.

So they are disappeared. Not through a conspiracy. Through a habit of selective attention so consistent and so convenient that it functions as policy. They are the people the argument needs not to exist. And for the most part, in the discourse that shapes how the world talks about Israel, they don’t.

The erasure is not ignorance. It is maintenance.

---

Israel is a country whose majority population descends from Jews expelled from the Arab world. Those Jews came from communities that predated Islam, that built the Talmud on Babylonian soil, that maintained ancient Hebrew liturgy in Yemeni mountains, that had been part of the fabric of Cairo and Baghdad and Tripoli for longer than most modern nations have existed. They were dispossessed by Arab nationalism, stripped of citizenship and property, forced onto planes and into transit camps and into a new country that was the only country that would have them. They are not colonizers of the Middle East. They are its expelled children, returned.

And those Arab states bear direct responsibility for the demographic reality they then spent decades condemning. Nearly 900,000 Jews left Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria, driven by persecution, pogrom, and state-sponsored dispossession. Some left under direct expulsion order. Others left because staying had been made impossible. The distinction matters less than the result: they are gone, their property was taken, and not one Arab state has ever offered to keep them, protect them, or compensate them for what was taken. Some 650,000 went to Israel, because Israel was the only country that would receive them without conditions. The rest went to France and the Americas. They expelled the Jews, closed every door behind them, and then condemned where those Jews ended up. The population that the colonial thesis calls a European imposition was built, in its majority, by refugees the Arab world itself created. The indictment and its cause are the same people.

The conflict has competing claims. They deserve honest accounting. That accounting cannot begin until all the people are on the table.

The people who built the colonial thesis around Israel knew, or should have known, all of this. They constructed the argument anyway. They invoked indigenous rights while erasing the most indigenous Jews on earth. They demanded historical accountability while granting total immunity to the Arab states that liquidated their Jewish populations and kept the stolen property. They called Israel a European project while ignoring the Yemeni Jews who walked through the desert carrying Torah scrolls to reach a plane to Tel Aviv.

You cannot make that argument in good faith. You can only make it by deciding, in advance, that certain people do not count.

The Mizrahi Jews count. They were there when the argument was being built against them. They were there when the world decided not to notice. They are there now, the majority of the people in the Jewish state, the expelled children of the Arab world, home. No thesis survives that. Only the decision to keep pretending it doesn’t exist.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

Links - 30th May 2026 (1 - Donald Trump [including White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting])

Matt Walsh on X - "Just to be clear, the theory that leftists are running with is that the Trump Administration somehow convinced a registered Democrat to volunteer to go to prison for the rest of his life so that they could use him as a patsy for a third staged assassination attempt -- one that, they apparently believe, was concocted mostly to justify building a White House ballroom that's already being built anyway. That's their theory of the case here."

Clay Travis on X - "On Wednesday @RepJeffries called for “Maximum Warfare Everywhere All The Time,” with a picture of Trump. Again, this attempted assassin didn’t go rogue. Democrats created him with their rhetoric. He believes he’s a hero. They told him to kill Trump & he tried to do it."

Skeletor 🧼🧽🫧 on X - "For a party that wants to take away guns, Democrats certainly love using them to murder conservatives."

ThePersistence on X - "HOLY COW. The gunman that opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is 31-year-old Cole Allen — a teacher from Torrance, California. It appears that Cole donated via ActBlue to Kamala Harris for President. Another radicalized democrat assassination attempt."

'This Is A Both Sides Issue,' Says Side That Shot President Trump, Assassinated Charlie Kirk, Tried To Assassinate Kavanaugh, Tried To Shoot Trump Again, Shot Steve Scalise, Firebombed Governor Shapiro, Tried To Shoot Trump A Third Time, (cont'd) | Babylon Bee - "(cont'd) murdered schoolkids in Minnesota, murdered schoolchildren in Nashville, burned an elderly Jewish woman to death in Colorado, murdered a couple at the Jewish embassy in D.C., seized campus buildings and held janitors hostage, assaulted students on campus who appeared Jewish, ambushed ICE officers in Dallas and shot an officer in the neck, assassinated FBI officer David Underwood, assassinated the United Healthcare CEO, cheered the murder of over 1,200 civilians on October 7th, murdered schoolkids in Colorado in 2019, injured over 700 police offers in 2020 riots, murdered retired police captain David Dorn, murdered a 16-year-old boy in "CHAZ", burned down Minneapolis, firebombed a Washington ICE center, murdered six people in Waukesha, assassinated five Dallas officers in 2016, assassinated three police in Baton Rouge in 2016 (you know what, we're going to stop now, this is getting sad)."

Chad Prather on X - "While you hacks talk about Karoline Leavitt’s use of a common phrase like “shots fired” at what is traditionally a political comedy roast, let’s discuss @jimmykimmel calling Melania Trump an “expectant widow” just prior to actual shots being fired."

Mari Otsu on X - "As my colleagues and I walked toward the Hilton for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a man shouted “F*** you!” right at us — simply because we were attending. Later that night, after the shooting, we were running to the White House for the briefing when we passed three teenage girls glued to their phones, reacting to the news. One of them said, “Aw man, I wish they got him,” and her two friends giggled. That moment stopped me cold. When our young people casually cheer for violence like it’s a game, we have a serious problem. Radicalization isn’t some abstract issue — it’s showing up casually in everyday conversations and in our kids’ attitudes."
Damn violent right wingers! We need to jail them all!

Donnie Cope on X - "Another Leftist tried to take out President Trump because he believes the Epstein lies that Liberals spread about him being guilty of crimes against children, despite there being ZERO evidence of that. The Left does not care about the truth. They don't care about what's real. They HOPE they'll influence the craziest among them to actually k*ll people. This is the reality of the Left. 👈🙄"
This won't stop left wingers continuing to lie to try to manifest reality

Donnie Cope on X - "The shooter:
🔷 Was a 31 year old Black male from California.
🔷 Was a teacher, engineer, and scientist.
🔷 Was awarded, "Teacher of the Month," in 2024.
🔷 Listed "he/him" pronouns in his LinkedIn bio.
🔷 Donated to the Kamala Harris 2024 Presidential campaign.
🔷 Was armed with a shotgun, a pistol, and multiple knives.
🔷 Shot an officer in the chest while storming the security perimeter.
This doesn't appear to be some desperately lost mentally unstable outcast. This appears to be a highly educated mainstream Leftist, with a functioning mind and a decent career, who simply put his mainstream Leftist beliefs into action by trying to kill his political opponents. You can't spend 10 years teaching young Americans that Conservatives are, "evil threats to our democracy," while routinely implying support for assassinating them, and then act surprised when young men grow into attempted assassins."
I guess this false flag cost a lot, because they had to pay off the officer who got shot

Matt Walsh on X - "I’m officially convinced. It was a hoax. The Trump Administration recruited a leftist Kamala Harris voting Trump hater to participate in a staged assassination that would include the shooter getting shot at and then locked in federal prison for the rest of his life. The Kamala Harris voter agreed to this plan, that works against his political and personal interests, because he’s just like a really generous guy. Meanwhile the Trump Administration, despite dastardly planning multiple assassination hoaxes, decided to keep their patsy alive and a permanent liability to them, rather than just killing him like they could have easily done. They did this because they also are really strangely generous in a very odd and specific way. So in summary we have a plot where all parties involved are working against their own interests with no real discernible benefit to any of them. There is no evidence of this plan and it doesn’t even make any intuitive sense and the motives for everyone are unclear if not insane, but still I believe it because I’m a very smart person."

Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "The left
>calls for Trump to be assassinated every single day
>has prominent left-wing pundits who openly encourage “someone” to “do it”
>murdered Charlie Kirk and incessantly mocks his widow
>celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk with dancing, memes, and open glee on social media
>lamented that Thomas Crooks missed when he tried to kill Trump
>shoots up Christian schools and targets houses of worship
>the most mentally unstable group of people on the planet in the history of humanity
>celebrates the assassination of healthcare CEOs and glorifies the murderer
>engages in firebombings and armed attacks on ICE facilities, shooting at officers and federal agents
>stages violent riots that burn down cities, attack police, and destroy businesses under the banner of “mostly peaceful protests”
>doxxes, harasses, and incites violence against political opponents, journalists, and ordinary Trump voters
>defends and platforms "activists" who physically assault conservatives, smash windows, and use bike locks as weapons
>pushes rhetoric that dehumanizes conservatives as “Nazis,” “fascists,” or “threats to democracy” to justify violence against them
>routinely threatens or praises violence against pro-life centers, churches, and conservative speakers on college campuses
>maintains a culture where political violence is treated as righteous when aimed at conservatives
And you actually believe it’s more plausible that every Trump assassination attempt is fake and staged… than a deranged leftist snapping and trying to murder him? Any "right-winger" pushing these truly unhinged conspiracy theories with zero evidence actively runs cover for these leftist terrorists who would cheer if you and your family were dead."

Rep. Andy Ogles says journalist under a table said, "I hope they kill the orange MF" as the Trump assassin opened fire | Not the Bee

Chris Waites | Facebook - "Okay. Let's say the Trump assassination attempt was staged. Just for a little thought experiment. If it were proven to be real. For example, if the assassin succeeded. What would your reaction be? Would it be horror? ... I bet it wouldn't be. We already saw how you laughed when a son and father imploded in a sub and said you wished more of them died that way. We saw how you reacted when just some guy with the wrong job was fucking assassinated, and we have seen you literally publicly adore his sufficiently handsome killer. We've seen how you reacted when a father-- and a young one at that-- was shot in the neck in front of thousands for offering to publicly debate extremely mainstream middle of the road opinions which you declared "fascist" despite being shit your own father with high probability agrees with significant amounts of. We've seen how you've treated his widow for not being "the perfect victim". Did you know this isn't a term I made up? When women make claims of victimhood in a way the left is sympathetic towards but do not behave in any way that would denote victimhood and people comment on this, you-- rightly-- accuse them of condemning a woman who isn't "the perfect victim". So, let's go back to Trump. Lets say it hadn't been fake and the guy succeeded. What would your reaction be? My guess is that there would not be a moment where you realize you have gone too far. Maybe some of you would? But not enough for a collective pause. You are consistently picking whatever position is the opposite of empathy. You are openly, wantonly, and unapologetically being sociopathic sadists who seem to have a sort of near-sexual kink for celebrating pain and misery if its directed at whatever you can connect to your pyramid of power, even when it contradicts who would have been on your pyramid of power a week ago. If it wasn't staged not one part of your behavior would change. This is evil. And while I wouldn't suggest you are beyond redemption-- hell, even Fucking Darth Vader realized at the last second that he couldn't take any more evil-- collectively it is a moral decay that is making you all miserable and, moreover, miserable to be around. Let me just repeat this one more time: If it wasn't staged, nothing about your behavior would differ."

The left is having a complete meltdown in real time : r/libsofreddit - "The left: "KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP KILL TRUMP"
The left: attempts to kill Trump
The left: "STAGED STAGED STAGED STAGED STAGED STAGED STAGED""

Media Still Stumped As To Motive Of Gunman With Manifesto Titled ‘Why I'm Going To Kill Donald J. Trump’ | Babylon Bee

Collin Rugg on X - "Man who went viral for remaining in his seat as he ate food during the WH Correspondents' Dinner shooting says he didn't want his new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. He also said he is from New York, so he hears sirens and activity all the time. "I’m a New Yorker. We live with sirens and activity happening all the time," Michael Glantz, an agent at Creative Artists Agency, said. "I wasn’t scared. There are hundreds of Secret Service agents hurtling themselves over tables and chairs, and I wanted to watch." "First of all, I have a bad back. I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And No. 2, I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening.""
If you consistently apply left wing logic, this means he was in on the conspiracy of the staged shooting

Barack Obama on X - "Although we don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night's shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, it’s incumbent upon all us to reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy. It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay."
Sarai (Sarah Idan) Miss Iraq on X - "If you’re wondering why he would make a statement this ridiculous, from a psychological point of view, this is what it does: it creates doubt where clarity already exists. That is a classic political manipulation tactic. You don’t deny the evidence directly; you simply imply that the public should “wait for details,” which SLOWS moral judgment and protects the side whose ideology may be implicated. He is not speaking to people who already know the facts. He is speaking to people who need permission not to process the facts. His language gives them a psychological escape hatch: “We don’t know yet,” “Don’t jump to conclusions,” “Maybe there are other motives” That protects them from cognitive dissonance. The genius of this kind of framing is that it can manipulate the opposition too. It forces people to waste energy proving what is already visible, while his supporters accuse them of being partisan, MAGA, or inflammatory. That is how gaslighting affects opposition: it turns reality itself into the battlefield. This is how propaganda and political indoctrination work: deny clarity, create doubt, then accuse anyone who names the truth of being partisan."

Tyler Black, MD on X - "Obama: 11, including a guy who fired 25 rifle rounds at the White House. Biden: 5, including one arrested 4 miles from his house with an AR-15 and a checklist ending "execute."
Harris: 2 federal prosecutions.
Clinton: a pipe bomb intercepted at her home and a militia."
Thread by @politicalmath on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The 11 Obama "assassination attempts" include (not making this up)
- a Hispanic man shot 25 rounds at the White House from his truck when Obama was in another state
- an accountant was at a waffle house when he said he wanted to kill Obama
- an extremist Irish Islamist gave an interview to a major newspaper and said he wished that he could assassinate Obama
- a "death ray" plot in which 2 rednecks planned to use x-rays to kills Obama (and also Jews)
- a Walking Dead actress sent Obama a letter with ricin in an attempt to incriminate her husband
The attempts to assassinate President Trump have resulted in 1 death, 2 people wounded, and 1 Secret Service agent shot The assassination attempts on Obama were not anything like this. Stop bullshitting people."

Jenni on X - "Barack Obama was targeted 11 times in assassination attempts during his two terms. We don't remember any of them because they were handled through proper channels, professionally, and he isn't a whiny bitch."
Left wingers can't tell the difference between assassination attempts and assassination plots. But they can't tell the difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, or even men and women either, so
Comment (elsewhere): "Wait, wait, wait 🤣🤣🤣 like 3 days ago the whole left wing thing to prove it was staged is that "murica racist, nobody tried to kill barry and mike, so these must be faked" 🤣🤣🤣"

Tim Pool on X - "Trump is a blundering idiot who can't do anything right, there is no plan, he even bankrupted a casino. Also he orchestrated an assassination false flag with a fake Democrat intel sleeper in front of hundreds of journalists pulling off a circuitous plan to justify his ballroom"

Meme - Kirsche 🥥 🧁 @KirscheVerstahl: "nothing pisses me off more than this level of blatant lying and the people who fall for it or defend it as if we are all retarded" *Gretchen Whitmer with "8645" standup*
Governor Gretchen Whitmer @GovWhitmer: "I am relieved that everyone is safe following last night’s horrifying shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The violence has to stop now. It is not who we are. I am grateful for the swift action of law enforcement."

Meme - Secret Service Agent: "MR. PRESIDENT, A LEFT-WING TERRORIST IS HERE TO ASSASSINATE YOU AND YOUR SUPPORTERS AGAIN!"
Trump: "AHH... IE ONLY WE COULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT ALL THIS FAR-LEFT VIOLENCE." *surrounded by DHS, NSA, FBI, DOJ, CIA and Secret Service*

Suspect in D.C. gala shooting was 'strongly anti-Christian': Trump - "The man accused of storming the White House Correspondents’ Dinner spent years quietly acquiring his arsenal, purchasing a shotgun from a Torrance, California, firearms dealer eight months before the attack and a semi-automatic pistol two years earlier, according to a law enforcement intelligence profile reviewed by Bloomberg... The attack will likely put new scrutiny on train security. Unlike air travel, passengers are not required to declare firearms on Amtrak. Blanche said investigators have not yet determined how Allen transported the weapons across state lines but pushed back on calls to tighten protocols."
How many radicalised left wing terrorists are out there, waiting to strike?
Crossing state lines is only bad when it hurts the left wing agenda (like with Kyle Rittenhouse)

Study shows women are more likely to vote for Trump during their 'fertile window' - but it's not because they have a crush on him - "Researchers in New York City revisited 2010 study that looked the impact of a woman's menstrual cycle on who they voted for in the 2008 election between Barack Obama and John McCain. The original work suggested that while they were ovulating - which is when the risk of pregnancy is highest - female voters favored Obama due to 'genetic fitness,' such as age and attractiveness. However, the study had a small sample size with little diversity, as most participants were young, white women. This led a team of psychologists at the New School for Social Research to conduct a follow-up ahead of the 2020 election against Trump and Joe Biden. Among more than 500 participants, the researchers found a small but 'statistically significant' relationship between female voter fertility and their candidate preference. They noted that women in their fertile window had a slightly increased preference for Donald Trump over Barack Obama. Interestingly, they found that this was due to his intelligence rather than attractiveness."
Fertility Fails to Predict Voter Preference for the 2020 Election: A Pre-Registered Replication of Navarrete et al. (2010)

Trump is taking on the historical revisionists | The Spectator - "Ahead of Independence Day last week, CNN went live to its correspondent Leyla Santiago. Here is how she described the upcoming celebrations: ‘Kicking off the Independence Day weekend, President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore, where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans.’ She went on to report that the President was expected to focus on efforts to ‘tear down our country’s history’. And where might the President have acquired such an idea? Even a few years ago it would have been unthinkable for a major network like CNN to have described Mount Rushmore in such nakedly hostile terms. America still had its agreed-upon holy sites, people and ideas — revered as unifying points of the nation’s past and necessary for any conceivable future. Not any more. Today every element of the American past is up for grabs... It is stunning to watch, this unweaving of a nation. While it has been going on for decades, the latest orgy of iconoclasm has seen crowds assail statues of the Founding Fathers with equal ferocity to that aimed at Confederates. A statue of George Washington pulled down in Portland, Oregon had ‘genocidal colonist’ spray-painted on it. A statue of Thomas Jefferson, pulled down outside a school, was graffitied with ‘slave owner’ as well as the name of George Floyd. Far from spontaneous, this is the logical conclusion of a radical, revisionist view of American history that has been fomented for years. This sees Christopher Columbus as the start of the problem, slavery as the country’s other characterising sin, and everything since then as typified by ‘white supremacy’ and racism. The campaign has been very well organised. Last year the New York Times launched its ongoing ‘1619 Project’... Despite its factual and moral sloppiness, the project was awarded a Pulitzer prize. Statues downed in recent weeks have been tagged with ‘1619’, and when one commentator suggested that the recent nation-wide riots in America be called ‘The 1619 riots’, the project’s creator Nikole Hannah-Jones responded: ‘It would be an honour. Thank you.’ Nor is it just about the statues. One poll last month revealed that 70 per cent of self-identified ‘liberals’ want the US Constitution to be rewritten. Similar numbers want the national anthem to be changed and the school curriculum to take in more of the bigotry-founded-in-sin view of US history. It is in this context that President Trump chose to address the nation from Mount Rushmore... His Mount Rushmore speech was an important event. It constituted the strongest pushback a president could make against a divide that has festered during his presidency. Part of it was spent identifying enemies new as well as old. Trump talked of the ‘new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance’. He spoke of how this ‘left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American revolution’. He mentioned the absurdity of an education system which teaches children ‘to hate their own country’. But the speech was more subtle than this makes it sound. The problem, as the President said, is that in this new view of history, ‘all perspective is obscured’. He — or his speechwriters — then did something very simple. He gave a succinct history lesson on each of the four figures carved into the mountain behind him. It was a wonderful thing to hear. Not the hostile, monochrome, ahistorical register in which all dead figures have lately come to be described, but a succinct reminder of why George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt came to be immortalised. Demonstrating that this is an inclusive, not exclusionist, story, his speech wove other heroes into this tradition. Trump talked of Dr Martin Luther King’s urge to his fellow citizens ‘not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage’. And, announcing a new park to celebrate the heroes of America, he listed some of these great Americans, including Frederick Douglass, Jesse Owens and Louis Armstrong. As he finished reeling off this genuinely diverse list, he added: ‘Only America could have produced them all.’ Trump’s critics responded in the only way they know how. The Washington Post ran a column claiming the President was running ‘an openly racist campaign’ and that ‘everyone knows that what he is really defending is not “our freedom” or “our history” but, rather, “white power”’. CNN asserted that in his speech, the President had ‘defended Confederate monuments’, when he had done no such thing. And Senator Tammy Duckworth (one of the women Joe Biden may choose as his running mate) claimed that the President had ‘spent all his time talking about dead traitors’. Asked whether statues of George Washington should come down, she ducked what has become a difficult question... in fighting back against the 1619 view of American history, he is doing something important not just for his own survival, but for the survival of the republic. After all, if Mount Rushmore is ‘stolen’, then what of the rest of the country? And if all the land is stolen, the Founding Fathers were only slavers and the Constitution is a product of ‘white supremacy’, then what exactly holds this grand, quarter–millennial project together?"
From 2020