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Thursday, July 23, 2026

Links - 23rd July 2026 (2 - Abortion)

End Wokeness on X - "Baltimore Judge Yvette Bryant just let a man off with 0 jail despite beating 2 elderly pro-lifers"
Man caught on video attacking pro-life activists is handed slap-on-the-wrist sentence - "Crosby suffered permanent damage to his right eye as a result of the assault.   “This was not a minor altercation between two parties with differing views on abortion. It was a vicious, targeted assault on two senior citizens whose only ‘offense’ was praying for expectant mothers and offering life-affirming alternatives to abortion,” Tom Brejcha, the president and chief counsel of the conservative law firm Thomas More Society, said in a statement.  “One of the victims was knocked unconscious. The other suffered broken facial bones and a lifelong eye impairment. This was an act of cowardice and cruelty, and sheer mayhem. This crime deserves far more serious consequences than a ‘get out of jail free’ card and a one-year home detention that amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist,” he added."
Luckily he didn't do something truly awful and disgusting, like peacefully protest in front of an abortion clinic, like the victims did. So they got what they deserved

Abortion legislation, maternal healthcare, fertility, female literacy, sanitation, violence against women and maternal deaths: a natural experiment in 32 Mexican states - "Although less permissive states exhibited consistently lower maternal mortality rates, this finding was not explained by abortion legislation itself. Rather, these differences were explained by other independent factors, which appeared to have a more favourable distribution in these states."
So much for abortion improving maternal health

A pregnant brain-dead woman in Georgia was kept on life support. Experts say it raises ethical, legal questions - "the family claims the hospital told them legally she had to be kept on life support to allow the fetus to grow. The family claims doctors told them they were not legally allowed to consider other options, according to local Atlanta station 11Alive... "This is a case that reflects the confusion in the post-Dobbs-era," Michele Goodwin, the O'Neill professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law, told ABC News... Goodwin said the act does not explicitly state that a deceased pregnant patient must be kept tethered to mechanical ventilation and there is no legislative history suggesting this was the intent of legislators who wrote the law. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, believes the hospital could have misinterpreted Georgia's abortion law. "What happened had nothing to do with abortion"... "[The hospital] said they felt they had their hands tied. They couldn't do anything. They might break the abortion laws. Stopping care on a dead body that's pregnant is not an abortion. It just isn't. There is no way it can be. Thaddeus Pope, a law professor and bioethicist at the Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, agreed, saying if the family had declined continuing organ-sustaining treatment for Smith, it would not qualify as an abortion. "Yes, it would cause the death of the fetus, but that would not have been the goal or the intent or the motive, and that's a requirement under the definition of an abortion in the state of Georgia"... In a statement to 11Alive in May, the Georgia attorney general's office clarified that the act did not require Emory to keep Smith on life support... "There's no ethical justification for making unilateral decisions about what happened to Ms. Smith," Caplan said. "The family should have been involved to the extent to which they were capable of doing it." He said if the family felt too overwhelmed, then the next step would be getting a judge to appoint an independent guardian who can make decisions, adding, "You don't have the hospital staff do it.""
All this doesn't stop left wingers claiming that the US prevents dead women from getting abortions and pretending that the law is awful and enslaving women (even if we assume that what happens in one state is representative of the whole country), and then breaking out their ketchup bottle costumes
Clearly, the fact that some people are wrongly charged with murder means we need to decriminalise murder

Meme - Ra3lic @ra3lic: "I might be a monster for saying this, but I don’t want that child to live. Because if it grows to live and have a decent life, then we as women are doomed to never escape the role of an incubator. Adriana Smith was an experiment of a country that hates its women"
philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_: "The family of Adriana Smith, a metro Atlanta nurse who was declared brain dead in February while pregnant, said her baby boy has arrived "He's expected to be OK. He's just fighting. We just want prayers for him?""
There're really a lot of terrible pro abortion people out there

Meme - anna !!! :)) *Palestine flags*: "i think if we come together and work as a team we can get that number to at least 30%"
"28% of Gen Z have been aborted. If you calculate all babies conceived during the Gen Z era of 1997-2012"

Meme - owen cyclops @owenbroadcast: "pro choice person: "ok but what if theres an explosion and a mans semen is rocketed 2000 feet away to a 12 year old who is in a wheelchair and she gets pregnant but a psychopathic genius has a system setup wherein if she gives birth her whole family dies. no abortion for her???"
"i dont want to live in a country where if a rube goldberg style machine accidentally impregnates a child who just had her first period, shes forced at gunpoint to give birth to her baby (who, in this example, has downs syndrome + is missing an arm, and theyre poor)" compelling
[logical person]: what if the baby is allergic to the sun and all materials except sycamore tree bark? are YOU going to stay up all night, illegally harvesting wood, handcrafting a home + crib and toys for this nocturnal baby? of course not, because ur a republican. you dont care"

Meme - *Boy in swing*
*Sad man and boy playing with blocks*
*Sad man playing with blocks*
Woman: "Let him go, the abortion was months ago"
This is so sad

Georgia's anti-abortion law keeps brain-dead pregnant woman Adriana Smith on life support - "Like the others, Georgia’s ban includes an exception if an abortion is necessary to maintain the woman’s life. Those exceptions have been at the heart of legal and political questions, including a major Texas Supreme Court ruling last year that found the ban there applies even when there are major pregnancy complications... “She’s pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born,” Newkirk said. She has not said whether the family wants Smith removed from life support... Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, said while a few states have laws that specifically limit removing treatment from a pregnant woman who is alive but incapacitated, or brain dead, Georgia isn’t one of them.  “Removing the woman’s mechanical ventilation or other support would not constitute an abortion,” he said. “Continued treatment is not legally required.”  Lois Shepherd, a bioethicist and law professor at the University of Virginia, also said she does not believe life support is legally required in this case... The situation echoes a case in Texas more than a decade ago when a brain-dead woman was kept on life support for about two months because she was pregnant. A judge eventually ruled that the hospital was misapplying state law, and life support was removed."
This doesn't stop all the left wingers from going batshit insane, as usual. Trust the Experts - when they push the left wing agenda

Meme - "Went to Starbucks in my scrubs and he wrote on my cup "thank you for saving lives". Sir I work at an abortion clinic"

Meme - Mug: "Don't Talk to Me Until I've Had My Abortion"
Amadna 39: "Looking for romantic friendships with some physicality. like awkwardly touching knees and touching your hair while we watch a movie. I'm still being COVID cautious and masking in public. Would appreciate matching with folks who are doing..."
We're still told that no one is pro abortion

Meme - "My husband left me after I got an abortion
My husband has a strong opinion on abortion. Never in my life I thought I would end up getting an abortion but we had an accidental pregnancy in our which shocked us after I had a medical care years back Anyways I decided to get an abortion. I just don't want to raise another baby especially at our age. We just sent our youngest to college. There's just no way having a baby at our change is a good idea. I just don't want to do this again at our age. I'm too old to be having a baby My husband warned me if I got an abortion he would leave me because he can't love someone that killed his child. But I wasn't going to continue with this pregnancy and I got an abortion. He filed for divorce and I'm posting now because our divorce is just now finalized and this is just a lot for me Hey guys thanks for letting me vent but I'm deleting my account. Some of these comments are truly disgusting and I'm not here for it"

Andy Ngo on X - "Brianna Rivers, the abortion activist who sucker punched Savannah Craven twice during an interview, has started a @GoFundMe for a legal defense, even though the platform says it does not allow fundraising for those accused of violent crimes. Antifa and other far-left extremists have been encouraging their comrades to donate to Rivers' campaign."

Lila Rose on X - "An undercover investigator posing as a pimp asked a Planned Parenthood manager how soon a child slave could return to “work” after an abortion— Pimp: "They still gotta make money, you know?" Planned Parenthood: "Waist up" Defund & prosecute Planned Parenthood!"

Meme - "How Pro-Choicers Think Pregnancy Works:"
Month 1-Month 9: *cells in petri dish*
0.5 seconds after birth: *baby*
"How Pregnancy Actually Works:"
*normal embryo and fetus development of developing baby*

Meme - "Tell me the truth for once!"
"People pretending that they were being told "your body, my choice" must have gotten bored faster than expected, huh?"

Meme - copaseticxarts: "No man should have to pay child support unless they were married, her body her choice her child"

Dr. Ben Braddock on X - "Just two months ago, DC Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Paulette Harlow who is 75-year-old and in poor health to 2 years in prison for praying outside an abortion clinic.  When her husband begged for mercy for fear she would die in prison due to poor health, the Judge mocked their Christian faith saying: "maybe you should make an effort to remain alive because that is a tenet of your religion."
PoIiMath on X - "I'm glad this specific person got a pardon simply because of how astonishingly and openly cruel the judge was in this case"
Freedom of speech is only for pushing the left wing agenda

Meme - Rothmus: "The exception is used to argue for the rule."
"The pregnancy resulted from an incestuous relationship .001%
The woman's life was endangered by the pregnancy .065%
The woman was raped .085%
The woman's physical health was threatened by the pregnancy .288%
The woman's psychological health was threatened by the pregnancy .294%
There was a serious fetal abnormality .666%
The woman aborted for social or economic reasons 6.268%
No reason (elective) 92.330%"

Meme - "Will I see my dead baby ever again?
I'm not religious but I hope and pray to whatever out there that I will be able to see my dead baby again someday.  I had an abortion on Mother's Day and I am awfully devastated. I just want to know, from anyone that follows religion, will I ever be able to reunite with my dead baby on the other side?  I worry my dead baby might have been afraid to have passed on alone and I just want to be able to tell him that I loved him with everything in me. I want him to know that I didn't abandon him.  Is there anyone who can give me an answer or hope?"

Meme - Seamus (FreedomToons) @seam...: "I saw a homeless kitten on the side of the road and ran over it so it wouldnt grow up in poverty
anyone upset w me: have you adopted all the homeless kittens? no? ok cool so dont judge my deeply personal decisions Seamus
oh my gosh you guys are psychotic. no one just rolls over a kitten just because. no one spends the time driving to where the homeless kittens stay just to run them over. no one does that. it was a deeply personal decision between the kitten and my car. grow up"

Women who vote for men to be drafted have been saying "your body, my choice" about men, for years. : r/MensRights - "•

Kamala said it's "not true" that Roe allowed you to get abortions in the 8th to 9th month of pregnancy, so these ladies called clinics to show how easy it is - "Check out these two videos that fact check Kamala in real-time. If late-term abortions do not happen, then it should be very hard to source one, right?... There are many documented cases of abortion survivors being left to die or even actively killed by the abortionist after birth. Former nurse Jill Stanek shared her own horrifying experience of seeing born-alive babies left to die. Harris's running mate Tim Walz, who signed an abortion bill allowing abortions for any reason, through all nine months of pregnancy, including on minor children, without parental knowledge or consent, stripped all language from the bill that would require life-saving care to a born-alive infant."
It is more important to be morally right than factually right. Fact checking is only for people who threaten the left wing agenda

The "teeny tiny" share of late-term abortions actually adds up to horrifically massive numbers of dead babies. Here are some numbers for our vice president. | Not the Bee - "One of the abortion lobby's favorite things to claim is that late-term abortions are vanishingly rare or even nonexistent, and/or that the women who do undertake them do so only when their babies are suffering from unsurvivable ailments.Julia Claire on X - "Putting a baby in a freezer would kill it, but freezing embryos keeps them alive. That's why an embryo isn't a baby. Hope that helps if you're very stupid <3"
Amazing left wing logic. Turning off the ventilator of someone in a coma who needs life support would kill him, but turning off the ventilator for normal people doesn't kill them. Therefore those in comas who need life support aren't people

Meme - The Meme Policeman: "1) This isn't a trick question.
2) It's not a particularly effective gotcha, considering fetuses also can't be frozen."
Feminist News: "Trick question: why can embryos be frozen but babies can't? ..because an embryo isn't a living human."

Meme - Kitten ๐Ÿ’–๐Ÿˆ @kitten_beloved: "Stunning inversion of reality  Every woman in the West is taught from an early age that pregnancy is a life ruining event that destroys her career prospects and her body"
Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald MD @jjfitzgeraldMD: "Women have been collectively convinced that pregnancy is a health-neutral event and I am here to tell you that this is a tactic used to suppress freedom of informed choice."

Terry Newman: Liberals target pregnant Christians seeking counselling - "The Liberals are playing wedge politics again. They’ve released yet another in a long line of official attempts-to-save-their-arse announcements. This time, they’re letting Canadians know that they’ve had enough of pregnancy counselling centres that provide information about abortion — regardless of their faith — but do not offer referrals for the procedure or disclose that fact. No more charitable tax status for you!, the Liberals announced. Unless these clinics give in and go against their religious beliefs, or advertise openly that they won’t. The announcement from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was so strange that when I first read about it, I had no idea what they were talking about. The issue she described sounded so pervasive, so serious and important. The truth of the matter, as is often the case with the Liberals, is entirely different... I’m not convinced that the alleged shadowy cabal of anti-choice pregnancy centres that spurred today’s government announcement even exists. Here’s the thing. There are obviously women out there who can read websites, are Christian, and want this kind of approach. What does it say about this Liberal government that they would like to take faith-based pregnancy counselling away from them?"
Why are Conservatives so keen on division and hate?!

Maggs on X - "Killing your babies isn’t as popular as you bitches thought."

Kangmin Lee | ์ด๊ฐ•๋ฏผ on X - "As a Korean, I can't help but notice the only time an American commercial has an all-white cast is if it's about abortion
Gays and minorities are in every single American commercial these days that it's rare when they only have white people.  And they're doing it only for these pro-abortion commercials lol I can't be the only one who notices this right"
Not to mention how misinformation is good when it pushes the left wing agenda - abortions when they would save the mother's life aren't banned in any state

Olivia Rondeau ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on X - "I find it funny when liberals portray western women as characters in the Handmaid’s Tale when there are real women in other countries who can’t show their hair, face, or voice in public. There are girls being sold to men and you guys are crying bc you can’t rip apart a baby. If political cartoonists were really brave they would draw these women in burkas, not costumes from a book/show."
memetic_sisyphus on X - "Something that’s crazy that I don’t think a lot of Europeans understand, is the most restrictive abortion laws in the reddest states are roughly inline with most of Europes laws. Early first trimester with exceptions for life of the mother or rape. The American left is trying to align our abortion law with the likes of the CCP or North Korea. They’re so insanely radical on the issue and they hide behind “women’s rights.”"

Meme - "Progressives be like
My body my choice.
Your body my economic resource."

Axios on X - "Vice President Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio that she supports eliminating the Senate filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade."
Kyrsten Sinema on X - "To state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide. What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea."

Meme - "Trump repeats the false claim that Democrats support abortion 'after birth' in debate"
"All but two Texas Democrats vote against Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act"

Meme - "How to be a woke progressive woman in two easy steps:
Step 1: casual reproductive activity with multiple partners Step 2: society either owes you abortion or owes you and baby a lifetime of free food, housing, and healthcare b/c you're a victim."

Jess Piper on X - "Can you imagine telling a man that his bodily autonomy should be left up to states?"
Cabot Phillips on X - "Yes. It’s called The Draft. You might not have heard of it — only men have to sign up."
The draft is federal, and you can't travel to another state to avoid it, so there's even less bodily autonomy there

Meme - Woman in mask: "I follow the science"
Other woman: "The science says life begins at conception."
Woman in mask: "Why do you hate women?"
Left wingers get very upset at the science when it doesn't push the left wing agenda

ashley barnhill on X - "men against abortion are just jealous they’ll never know how good it feels to kill a baby"
Weird. I thought no one is pro-abortion

Links - 23rd July 2026 (1 - Left Wing Economics)

Drew Pavlou ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ผ on X - "It’s actually amazing and disgusting how psy-opped Australians have become about America.   I’m going to have to write a massive thing about my trip like Australian Tocqueville. What I’ve concluded is that our media and political class have peddled the myth that every single American is dying on the street of poverty and social collapse solely in order to hide the fact that our own living standards are collapsing.  Their middle class is literally our upper class guys. The top tax rate in Australia of 47% kicks in at the equivalent of 130,000 USD.   MEANWHILE YOU CAN EARN 225,000 USD MANAGING A FUCKING BUCCEES CAR WASH HERE.   THAT IS 325,000 AUD FOR A JOB THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE A COLLEGE DEGREE.   FUCKING NUCLEAR ENGINEERS IN THE UK START ON 20,000 POUNDS!!! (26 K USD, 38K AUD).  THE TOP TAX RATE IN TEXAS IS 37% AND STARTS AT $768,700 USD AS A MARRIED COUPLE. THAT IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A MILLION DOLLAR SALARY IN AUSTRALIA.   WE ARE TALKING A DIFFERENCE OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EACH YEAR IN YOUR OWN BACK POCKET.  My friend moved here for work. On his salary in Australia he would have to pay an extra $15,000 AUD in tax each year. That is literally how much it costs to raise a kid according to latest official estimates. So he’s now planning on having children with his Australian wife. He can finally afford to start a family.  His place is bigger than mine in Australia. He rents it for the equivalent of $600 AUD a week whereas my rent is $900 AUD and I need to have room mates to afford it.  We’re the same age and I think we earn roughly the same income. But lives in his own massive place with his wife and they are now planning kids. Meanwhile I live with room mates in a small rental.   We are so abysmally cucked in Australia. They are living so much better in America. The difference really only comes when comparing how the bottom 10% live in each society. Of course if I was disabled or something I would definitely prefer the social support net in Australia. In America you can completely drop off the cliff into pure social collapse if you’re in the bottom 5-10% in a way that I don’t think exists in Australian society. Thats how you get the phenomenon of Skid Row and fentanyl zombies in Democrat cities like LA and San Francisco (which I saw last week - it was fucked).  But the overwhelming majority of Americans live better than Australians. If you are middle class here it’s the equivalent of being upper class in Australia.   The manager of a BUCCEES car wash would be a top 1% earner in Australia. That’s how much money, wealth and abundance exists in America.   I wish Australians could see it so we could shock ourselves out of our own self imposed decline. It’s completely self imposed but due to Tall Poppy Syndrome we refuse to see it."

Handre on X - "Rome fed 200,000 families free grain by 46 BC, and it called this generosity. Julius Caesar inherited a dole of 320,000 recipients and trimmed it, not out of principle but because the treasury was bleeding. This was the annona, the grain distribution that started as emergency relief under the Gracchi in 123 BC and hardened into a permanent entitlement. Once free grain became a right, no politician could touch it and keep his head.  You already know how this works, because you watch the same play run today. A subsidy arrives as mercy. It stays as an expectation. Then it becomes the thing men vote for instead of working for.  The Roman citizen once farmed his own land, served in his own legion, and expected nothing from the state but courts and roads. By the time Trajan was staging 123 days of games in AD 107, slaughtering 11,000 animals and pairing 10,000 gladiators for the crowd, that citizen had become a spectator. He no longer fought Rome's wars: hired auxiliaries and Germanic mercenaries did. He no longer fed himself: Egypt and North Africa did, shipped in on the public account. He no longer chose his rulers in any meaningful sense: he cheered them in the Colosseum and collected his ration.  The free grain and the free games purchased compliance, not compassion. A man dependent on the state for his dinner and his entertainment does not organize resistance to that state, and every emperor from Augustus onward understood the arithmetic. Panem et circenses was a bribe paid in exchange for civic surrender, and the mob accepted the terms gladly.  Here is the mechanism the welfare enthusiast never grasps. Virtue is not a feeling. It is a practice, and practices atrophy when the incentive to perform them disappears. Take away a man's need to provide, defend, and decide, and you domesticate him rather than liberate him. Rome spent four centuries proving it, then handed the ruins to Odoacer in AD 476 without much of a fight, because the men who might have fought had long since learned to wait for the grain ship instead."

Asmongold Updates on X - "Asmongold reveals the real reason people hate capitalism  "Do you know why people hate capitalism? Because capitalism is the acknowledgement that you are a failure of your own design. The reason why you don't have what you want is because you're not smart enough, you haven't put in enough work, or you haven't come up with a good enough idea to earn that thing."  "Capitalism is accountability. Socialism, communism, this is group consensus accountability. And nobody ever really gets held accountable for doing something right or wrong ever. And that's it.""

Thomas Sowell Daily on X - "Thomas Sowell debunks the myth that the rich get rich by exploiting the poor:  “If it’s true that the rich are rich because they’re keeping the poor poor, then in a country with lots of billionaires you should correspondingly have great amounts of poor people.  But if you compare the actual data, there are more billionaires in the United States than Africa and the Middle East put together; and yet the standard of living of the poor in the United States is higher than that of people in Africa and the Middle East.”"

Echoes of War on X - "FDR is the most overrated president in American history and it is not close.  People treat him like a saint. The reality is he inherited a recession and turned it into the longest depression in the history of the developed world. Every other major economy on earth recovered faster than the United States did under FDR. Sit with that. We had the most resources, the most industry, the most capacity, and we recovered slower than countries that got bombed.  Unemployment was still 19% in 1938. Six years into the New Deal. Six years of "bold experimentation" and one in five Americans still could not find work.  Why? Because his policies were economically illiterate. The NIRA cartelized entire industries and made it illegal to lower prices during a deflationary collapse. He paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow under crops while people stood in bread lines. He launched a war on business so aggressive that investment dried up because nobody knew what insane rule was coming next. Even his own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, admitted in 1939 that they had spent enormous sums and "it does not work" and that unemployment was as high as when they started.  Then in 1937 his policies triggered a second brutal crash so embarrassing the textbooks gave it its own polite little nickname, the "Roosevelt Recession," so they would not have to attach his name to the failure in the obvious way.  A UCLA study in 2004 concluded the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by roughly seven years. Seven years of extra suffering sold to you as heroism.  So what actually saved the economy? Not the alphabet agencies. Not the fireside chats. A world war. Twelve million men shipped overseas and the entire planet's industrial competition reduced to rubble. That is the "recovery." That is the legacy.  Strip away Pearl Harbor and FDR is a guy who took a bad recession and stretched it into a decade of misery with bad economics and a cult of personality. He is not ranked on results. He is ranked on the luck of being in the chair when Hitler invaded Poland.  Greatest marketing job in the history of the presidency. Nothing more."

Meme - "HOW TO KINDLY EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE THAT PICKET LINES AREN'T MEANT TO BE CROSSED *baseball bat breaking someone's knee*"
"So after a hundred years, unions are still mafia-style extortion rackets. Duly noted that you celebrate this. Alive (though maybe not for much longer if some Teamster shows up at my door)."
"sounds like what a manager would say when his crew is on strike"
"well if the crew had work ethics and some form of intelligence they too could be managers."
"intelligence and manager don't belong in the same sentence. The words you're looking for are brown noser skills"
As usual left wingers promote violence and think money falls from the sky and rich people steal it and if they didn't, poor people would be rich

Dr Ellie Murray, ScD on X - "Some of y’all forget the reason we have food safety regulations is because companies used to do things like adding chalk to spoiled milk so it looked normal. Regulations don’t exist because governments enjoy them. They exist because pure unadulterated capitalism would kill us."
Comment (elsewhere): "Isn't JFK Jr trying to regulate tf out of our food industry to include making them remove dyes, chemicals, and other harmful toxins?"
All regulations are good. So we should have 10x the regulations!
Usual left wing straw man. Only the craziest libertarians want no regulation at all

Rock Chartrand on X - "If there were no trillionaires, politicians would target billionaires.  If there were no billionaires, they'd target millionaires.  If there were no millionaires, they'd target anyone with a paid off house and a retirement account.  The level of outrage scales to whatever wealth exists.  That's how you know the issue isn't the number.  The issue is that someone has more than someone else.  The villain is chosen first.  The threshold is chosen later."

Yun-Ta Tsai on X - "One of the most misunderstood facts is that the US was founded with abundance, whereas it was in fact built from scratch.  At the time of founding, Britain was the greatest nation governing the Seven Seas, while China was at its height with total land dominance in the East under the Qianlong Emperor.  The usable land of the US at founding was much smaller than that of either nation. The 13 colonies spanned 430K square miles, while Britain governed 2.5M square miles and China owned 5M square miles of territory.  The trade and economic volume of the 13 colonies was minuscule, consisting mostly of raw materials that barely registered on the charts. Combined, the 13 colonies produced $4B GDP, while Britain made $350B and China $2.5T in today’s dollars.  In other words, the 13 colonies were less than 0.2% of the world economy and much smaller than that of many African nations today.  The wealth of the US was not inherited but earned through survival and competition against stronger nations. Most people who came here brought nothing but empty hands yet built an empire from the ground.  This is something that people who inherit great resources from parents and ancestors cannot understand—like most nations in Europe and Asia, where wealth was dominated by inheritance, not earned. They mistakenly believe what we have now is a privilege. The trees we enjoy today were planted and nourished with sweat and blood by previous generations so that we could cut the wood for warmth.  Be a tree planter, not a wood chopper. Plant your tree today. ๐ŸŒฑ"

The Regressive Effects of Child-Care Regulations - "high cost can have a large negative effect on the poor and can fuel political demands for increased government intervention and spending on child care. Empirical research indicates that parents (poorer single mothers especially) are particularly sensitive to child-care prices when making decisions about entering the labor market. Evidence from a range of studies suggests mothers from poorer families and those with low levels of educational attainment are least likely to be working... child-care prices are driven up by existing variable state-level regulations and policies introduced to achieve other objectives. Input regulations designed to improve the “quality” of care, including requirements on the qualification levels of staff and/or the ratio of staff per child, appear to have a significant effect on child care prices.  These regulations tend to be justified on “market failure” grounds. Some observers claim there are asymmetric information problems in the sector; parents ostensibly have difficulty ascertaining whether child-care providers are high-quality providers. Others claim there are positive externalities—broader social benefits—arising from “high-quality” child care in children’s early years, and those benefits are overlooked when child care is left to private transactions. These failures are said to justify ensuring providers meet minimum standards.   But these theoretical arguments of market failures have always been shaky. After all, direct parental care is an alternative to outside child care, yet there is no political movement for direct regulation of parents. And regulations can raise child-care prices, thereby reducing the spillover benefits from child care.  It is not entirely clear how meaningful the concept of “quality” in child care is, even if it can be divorced from what consumers—in most cases, parents—want for their children... Suppose a regulation increases the staff–child ratio or requires child-care workers to achieve higher qualification levels. The former could theoretically increase quality by increasing staff interactions with individual children, and the latter by increasing caregiver training. Yet at the same time, raising the staff–child ratio may restrict the wages of caregivers by restricting the revenue potential of each caregiver. The lower wages, in turn, may result in lower-quality caregivers. Child-care providers may also respond to higher government certification requirements on caregivers by lowering their standards for support workers or facilities. As a result, the overall effect on quality of both regulations is ambiguous...   A burgeoning empirical literature attempts to shed light on these issues. One finding that appears robust across studies is that stringent staff-to-child ratios increase child-care prices substantially with little beneficial effect on observed quality... the poor suffer disproportionately. Thomas and Gorry show that a small but measurable number of mothers stop working altogether as a result of these regulations. One would imagine that these are likely to be relatively low-income people on the margins of the labor market... tightening the staff–child ratio by one child reduces the number of child-care centers in the average market by 9.2–10.8% without increasing employment levels at other centers. This reduction in supply occurs wholly in relatively low-income areas and leads to lots of substitution to home day care. Increased stringency in the regulation actually increases child-care centers in high-income areas, probably because of the “quality assurance” effect, meaning the overall effect is highly regressive.   As with housing, child care is an example of a sector where government regulations restrict the supply of the service, to the financial detriment of the poor...   The UK offers a cautionary tale of how government involvement begets government control over this sector. Intervention advocates appealed to the positive externalities of higher female employment and greater child achievement, but the resulting policies have left consumers facing high out-of-pocket costs and taxpayers facing higher subsidy payments, including government funding of “free” care for children ages 2–4. Commentators now cite the higher cost as justification for ever-greater government subsidy of child care.  The expanded UK government funding and intervention appear to have yielded little advancement on the stated policy goals. Research indicates that universal government-funded care for 3‑year-olds raised employment levels by only 12,000 workers, at a cost of £65,000 (about $88,000) per new job (many of which were part-time). Though there did appear to be a small gain in educational attainment at age 5, that effect weakened by age 7 and completely disappeared by age 11, meaning the policies had no long-lasting benefit.   These meager results have not given policymakers pause; rather, many claim that “more needs to be done.” These days, the high cost of child care itself is seen as indicative of a market failure, even though that cost is partly the result of regulations and state crowd-out designed to achieve other objectives... there is a philosophical argument that judging child-care “quality” should be left to the parents, especially given the fact that they, themselves, are not required to obtain formal qualifications in child education in order to care for their children."

Dr Jordan B Peterson on X - "To the Americans:  I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.  And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:  You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.  This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.  Success is equated with exploitation. Ambition is looked upon with contempt.  This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.  But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.  This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.  And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:  Thank God for the United States.  Thank God for the wisdom of its founders. Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man. Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.  Long may your admirable country dominate the world.  Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.  May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.  Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.  Thank God for the USA.  Happy 250th.  Dr. Jordan B. Peterson"

Rob Henderson on X - "It’s criminal the CEO makes 400X what the average worker makes but it’s perfectly fine that Taylor Swift makes 100000X more than the people who clean the arena after her concerts. A just society is one that rewards the exceptional qualities of the musician but not the executive."
Konstantin Kisin on X - "This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich.  Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are.  But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar.  They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly.  It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy.  Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure."

(2) M.A. Rothman | Facebook - "๐„๐”๐‘๐Ž๐๐„ ๐ˆ๐’ ๐๐Ž๐– ๐€ “๐–๐ˆ๐๐„ ๐€๐๐ƒ ๐‚๐‡๐„๐„๐’๐„ ๐Œ๐”๐’๐„๐”๐Œ” — ๐€๐๐ƒ ๐“๐‡๐„ ๐‹๐„๐…๐“ ๐–๐€๐๐“๐’ ๐”๐’ ๐“๐Ž ๐‚๐Ž๐๐˜ ๐ˆ๐“
John Stossel asked a simple question: do you want America to be like Sweden? The Left keeps saying yes. A Swedish-born economist says you have no idea what you’re asking for. Fifteen years ago, America and Europe grew neck and neck. Then Europe stalled. Today America is ๐Ÿ“๐ŸŽ% ๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐ก๐ž๐ซ — even though the EU has 100 million more people. The gap is now so wide that the poorest American state out-earns Spain, Italy, France, and Britain per person (Eurostat, Euronews 2026). Stossel’s verdict on the continent the Left idolizes: “๐˜Œ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ’๐˜ด ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ข ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ค๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ถ๐˜ฎ.” Tourist money keeps it running. The growth is gone. Economist Sven Larson — who grew up in Sweden and wrote a book titled ๐˜๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ญ ๐˜—๐˜ฐ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜บ: ๐˜ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฅ๐˜ข๐˜บ ๐˜š๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ, ๐˜›๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ๐˜ข๐˜บ ๐˜Œ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ, ๐˜›๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ธ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ข — explains how they got there. Start with taxes. The activists chant “๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ญ๐˜ญ ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜น ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ฉ.” Larson’s answer: “๐˜‰๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ฉ? ๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ต๐˜ข๐˜น ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ฉ, ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ณ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ.” The average Swedish worker already pays more in tax than you do. Then there’s the “free” health care. “๐˜ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜จ๐˜ฉ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฐ ๐˜ง๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ, ๐˜ฃ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ต๐˜ถ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ข ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ง๐˜ง๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜บ,” Larson says. “๐˜ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ด ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฅ∗๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜š๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ฉ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜บ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฏ’๐˜ต ๐˜จ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ.” European rules make it nearly impossible to fire anyone. “๐˜ž๐˜ฉ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜บ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฅ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ณ ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ง๐˜ฆ?” So they stop hiring. About ๐Ÿ’๐ŸŽ% ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐„๐” ๐ฌ๐ฉ๐ž๐ง๐๐ข๐ง๐  now goes to welfare. Unions act like a mafia — shutting off power, stopping garbage collection, blocking the banks. When non-union Tesla moved in, postal workers refused to deliver the license plates for its new cars. The reward for all that “compassion”? Europe now has ๐ณ๐ž๐ซ๐จ ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ฅ๐’๐ฌ ๐›๐ข๐ ๐ ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ ๐œ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ง๐ข๐ž๐ฌ — you have to scroll into the 20s to find one. The EU has stacked up 395,000 pages of regulation, including an entire AI Act, while America builds the future. So why won’t Europe’s leaders reverse it? Larson gives the honest answer: “๐˜ˆ ๐˜ญ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ช๐˜ข๐˜ฏ๐˜ด, ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ข ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ ๐˜จ๐˜ฐ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ๐˜ต ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ฆ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜บ ๐˜ท๐˜ฐ๐˜ต๐˜ฆ ๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฏ.” That isn’t a bug. That’s the ๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ซ๐ž ๐›๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ฆ๐จ๐๐ž๐ฅ. ๐„๐ฎ๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ๐ž ๐ข๐ฌ๐ง’๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ฆ. ๐ˆ๐ญ’๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฐ๐š๐ซ๐ง๐ข๐ง๐ ."

The Rational Animal ๐Ÿค” on X - "I understand the point, and it's worth taking seriously. Yes, you must work to live. But look at why that's true, because the reason changes everything.  The need to produce isn't imposed by employers or capitalism. It's imposed by nature. A man alone on an island must fish, build, and grow or he dies. That's not a threat from another person. It's the basic condition of being alive. Food, shelter, and clothing don't exist until someone makes them.  So when you say work is "forced" by the threat of starvation, that threat comes from reality itself, not from the man offering you a job. He didn't create your need to eat. He's offering you a way to meet it, a trade, his wealth for your effort. That's not coercion. Coercion is a gun. An offer you can refuse, even a hard one, is the opposite of force.  And here's the part the resentment hides. The employer isn't your enemy in this. He's the one who built the thing that lets you meet nature's demand without fishing alone on a rock. The men who produce the most, the ones who create the factories, the tools, the jobs, are the greatest benefactors of all, because they multiply what every worker can earn far beyond what he could alone.   That's why the moral debt runs the other way. We don't owe our lives to the takers. We owe an enormous debt to the producers, whose ability raises the standard of living of everyone beneath them. The man who gives you a way to live has done you good, not harm."

M.A. Rothman | Facebook - "๐„๐‚๐Ž๐๐Ž๐Œ๐ˆ๐’๐“ ๐“๐Ž ๐’๐“๐Ž๐’๐’๐„๐‹: ๐€๐Œ๐„๐‘๐ˆ๐‚๐€ ๐‡๐€๐’ ๐๐€๐’๐ˆ๐‚๐€๐‹๐‹๐˜ ๐‚๐Ž๐๐๐”๐„๐‘๐„๐ƒ ๐๐Ž๐•๐„๐‘๐“๐˜ — ๐“๐‡๐„ ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ% ๐‘๐€๐“๐„ ๐ˆ๐’ ๐€ ๐’๐“๐€๐“๐ˆ๐’๐“๐ˆ๐‚๐€๐‹ ๐‹๐ˆ๐„
๐˜ž๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฒ๐˜ถ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฐ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ต๐˜บ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ค๐˜ข. ๐˜๐˜ต’๐˜ด ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ด๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ’๐˜ท๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฅ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ช๐˜ต. George Mason economist Don Boudreaux told John Stossel the left’s poverty crisis is a statistical illusion. The Census Bureau says 11% of Americans live in poverty — but it refuses to count the help they actually receive: food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, free school meals. Count those, and ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ฅ ๐ซ๐š๐ญ๐ž ๐Ÿ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฌ ๐ญ๐จ ๐Ÿ.๐Ÿ“%. The typical household in the bottom fifth now has the same amenities a middle-class family had 50 years ago. And the billionaires the new socialists want to tax into oblivion? Research shows the great entrepreneurs ๐ค๐ž๐ž๐ฉ ๐จ๐ง๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐š๐›๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐Ÿ% ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฏ๐š๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฒ ๐œ๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ญ๐ž — the other 98% flows to the rest of us as lower prices, better products, and higher wages. Bezos, Gates, and Google ๐ฆ๐š๐๐ž ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐ก๐ž๐ซ, ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฐ๐ž ๐ฉ๐š๐ข๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ฆ ๐ฏ๐จ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐š๐ซ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฒ. The zero-sum lie — that their billions mean everyone else has less — is ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฌ๐š๐ฆ๐ž ๐Ÿ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐š๐œ๐ฒ ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐Œ๐š๐ฆ๐๐š๐ง๐ข ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐’๐ž๐š๐ญ๐ญ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ฌ๐จ๐œ๐ข๐š๐ฅ๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฌ. And socialism’s real record is the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐ฅ๐ž๐Ÿ๐ญ’๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ๐ฅ๐ž ๐ž๐œ๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐œ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ญ๐œ๐ก ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฌ ๐จ๐ง ๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐๐š๐ญ๐š ๐๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฒ๐ฌ."

Austin Campbell on X - "I am watching the left propose increasingly bad (rent freeze, minimum wage hikes, huge tax increases) proposals that will wreck the economy.  This is driven by anger from young voters, who are priced out of housing, can't get jobs, and feel like the system is rigged against them.  And you know what? They are right. It is.  What I'm not seeing is any politician, Democrat or Republican, courageous enough to point out the real issue:  Boomers voted themselves huge future benefits but did not fund them, so now we are running huge deficits to pay for them while talking about raising taxes on people who weren't even born yet when those things were decided to pay the olds.  The reality is this: young people in the US, to save yourselves, you're going to have to tear down the programs for the Boomers, rationalize immigration laws to ensure you get first look at American jobs and companies have the incentive to put them here, force housing to be built, and massively cut federal (and in many cases, state) spending and the size of the government.  Any politician who is not willing to tell you the truth about this is fucking you. Trump? Fucking you. Mamdani? Also fucking you.  If you can't figure this out, things will get worse from here."

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Links - 22nd July 2026 (2 - Canadian Politics)

Damien Kurek: The Liberal plan to silence the House of Commons | National Post - "the Liberals did not win a majority mandate. They also didn’t pick up any new seats in the recent by-elections; they held on to what they had after two high-profile resignations and one result invalidation. Instead of earning a parliamentary majority, or even more importantly, respecting the makeup of the House of Commons that Canadians elected, the prime minister cobbled a majority together. This was only possible because of the five floor-crossers who handed Carney this power. These MPs didn’t just commit an act of disloyalty to what their constituents voted for; they facilitated a profound consolidation of power into the hands of the prime minister and backroom power brokers.  This majority commits a democratic sin far graver than what Jagmeet Singh ever managed, even with his coalition agreement with former prime minister Justin Trudeau, because a majority government has the ability to force changes to the rules, known as the standing orders, of the House of Commons — and as a result change the composition of committees.  Committees are structured based on the makeup of the House of Commons after an election, something carefully negotiated and agreed upon by all parties. For all the years the former NDP leader propped up the previous Liberal government, he at least allowed his NDP caucus to perform the constitutionally essential work of holding the government accountable at the committee level by refusing to give Liberals the majority of the seats.  Right now, most committees have five seats for the Liberals, with four for the Conservatives and one for the Bloc Quรฉbรฉcois; the NDP and Greens, not having official party status in the House Commons, do not have an assigned seat on standing committees. The Liberals are now signalling that they plan to unilaterally rework the structure.  By securing a majority on committees, the Liberals would be weaponizing a system of accountability to silence their opponents. Committees may not get the same airtime as question period and confidence votes, but they are powerful agents of Parliament. They dictate what studies happen and which witnesses testify; they can demand documents and make amendments to legislation, among other powers. Virtually every headline about the federal government, both good and bad, from accomplishments to scandals, involves committee work at some point. Changing the makeup is a massive, unchecked shift of power away from what Canadians voted for and directly contradicts the prime minister’s lofty claims of unity and wanting to work together.  Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon, who routinely takes to the microphones in the press gallery to complain about the opposition, highlights the massive divide between what Liberal partisans say and what they do. Wasting no time making the comments on Wednesday before the new Liberal MPs elected in by-elections were even sworn in, MacKinnon told reporters that he thought it to be “pretty generally accepted” that committee composition should reflect the seats held by the parties in the House of Commons.  But the fact is this Parliament has been relatively productive. To see this you have to look past question period: opposition parties have worked with the government to pass the “Building Canada” Bill C-5, allow votes on budget items, push forward affordability and crime-fighting measures, and constructively amend Liberal bills. Now, don’t mistake these examples as there not being serious disagreement and debate, but despite a light legislative calendar and the prime minister being notably absent from House proceedings in comparison to his predecessors, he cannot claim that the opposition has stalled his agenda.  Canadians did elect the Liberals led by Mark Carney, but likewise, they elected an opposition to hold him to account. Our nation expects MPs to respect that, and committees are one of the places where that respect needs to be realized.  Despite the proclamations, it is clear that the prime minister and the Liberals don’t want a unity government; they just want to govern without scrutiny, free of any opposition. This cobbled-together majority is about more than just confidence votes; it’s about whether the balance of power remains in the hands of the people of Canada, or Liberal insiders."

Meme - Daniel Foch: "Young Canadians keep getting more miserable. Old Canadians keep getting happier. Data from world happiness report: worldhappiness.report"
"A Generational Split in Happiness in Canada
*Under 30 steadily deteriorating from 2010 to 2026*
*Age 60+ starting from the same place as under 30 in 2012 and continually rising*"
Elbows up, indeed. When you know who votes and who doesn't

The Food Professor on X - "La Presse ended my 25-year column, which I wrote for free, for saying out loud what many Canadians are thinking quietly. Subsidies given to private media are a partisan issue, fostering more editorial bias. And now, Ottawa wants to give the media another $6 billion. I’m not surprised." (aka "Censorship and the chilling impact on free speech of government media subsidies")
What a fascist, criticising the media

Meme - "Harper says Canada's difficulties can't all be blamed on Trump in gala speech"
Keep Positive And Vote Liberal: "We agree, that they can also be blamed on you and the rest of your conservative minions, who have stonewalled progress and refused cooperation for the good of the country for the last 10 years......"
"It seems that liberals just like to blame Harper or trump for all the problems they created themselves."
"explain to me how the conservatives have "stonewalled" anything. The Liberals have either had a majority or the NDP voting in step with them at every instance."
"Who was it that refused to move onto the bail reform bill 19 times before finally agreeing on the 20th request?"
Left wing cope - the party that hasn't been in power for over a decade is to blame for the mess the country is in. Of course, the moment the Liberals lose power, they cannot be responsible for anything and it'll all be on the current government

Unapologetically Albertan | Facebook - "I have a question for anyone who has voted Liberal in the past federal election. Respectfully, I’m truly trying to understand the logic behind this one, if someone would be able to politely explain it please I’d be very appreciative. More towards those who despise Trump with unbreakable conviction. Trump has said two distinct things with two very different reactions and I’m curious how to square this circle, so to say. One of them being : “…Then maybe Canada should become the 51st state.” and the second one being “…I think it’s easier to deal, actually, with a liberal and maybe they’re going to win…" Now here’s my question: why such a difference in reaction from one to the other? Trump saying we should become part of the states (jokingly or not, there isn’t any evidence of this actually happening), and it’s all “nope, never gonna happen, elbows up, hashtag Team Canada” etc. But when he says he’d prefer a Liberal government because they’re “easier to deal with” it’s all “makes sense, Trump prefers a Liberal government and so do I”. If your immediate response to anything Trump says or does is to do or think the opposite, why would you still vote Liberal, seeing as that’s what he wanted? I am not simply looking for a “gotcha moment” or trying to tear anyone down here. I’ve been trying to figure this out for some time now and I’d really appreciate some honest & respectful input from those who may think differently than I do.  I hope to open up a dialogue between people who think differently, not just to throw insults and be destructive. Disagreement doesn’t have to mean disrespect.  Thank you for reading."

Jeff Berube on X - "Here we go! The fix is in.  They’re going to use your pension money to invest in Canada’s failing state when you wouldn’t do so on your own.  The vehicle? None other than our very own sovereign debt fund.  First they got the media to push the Global Infrastructure Investment Association’s (GIIA) Pulse Survey that found “Canada to be the most attractive destination for infrastructure investment.”  Survey was off course anonymous.   But… Surprise! Surprise! the CPP Investment fund is one of the founding members of the GIIA along with our dear friends at Brookfield.  This is the next step. If anyone asks, they can justify their investment decision by pointing to the survey they fabricated themselves.  This is how they’re going to pillage the fund and rape Canadians out of their own money.  I can already hear Franรงois Philippe Champagne’s nasally voice:  “Mister Speaker. We’re standing up for Canadians. Why don’t the conservatives want to invest in Canadians?”  Absolute clown show.  If you’re an Albertan federalist, I need you to comment below and explain to me how you justify wanting to remain in this truly corrupted country."

Tablesalt ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on X - "Two polls on the same day:
-Abacus - Carney is surging, and Canadians feel Canada is on the right track.
-Blacklocks leak of an internal government poll: trust in Canada's democratic institutions in a freefall.
Try to circle that square."

Dan Taylor | Facebook - "People are being told the wrong story about parole in Canada, and it keeps getting repeated like fact. There’s something off in how parole gets talked about in Canada right now. You keep hearing claims that the system is “too soft” and that it’s a recent Liberal failure. But the framework being criticized didn’t start there. It comes from the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (1992), passed under Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government. That legislation built the modern parole system:
It established statutory release rules
It set the structure for conditional supervision
It formalized how risk is assessed and managed
It created the framework for reintegration into the community
In other words, the system people are arguing about today is the system that was designed and implemented under a Conservative government. And it wasn’t designed to be “soft.” It was built on a correctional principle that still holds today: managed, gradual release reduces reoffending more effectively than sudden release at sentence expiry with no supervision or supports. That’s not a partisan talking point, it’s the foundation of modern corrections policy. Yes, governments of all stripes have adjusted parts of the system over time. But the core architecture hasn’t changed. The structure being criticized today is largely the one created in 1992. So if the argument is that the system needs reform, that’s fair. Say it clearly:
Longer incarceration?
Fewer releases?
Different risk thresholds?
Those are legitimate policy debates, with real consequences for public safety, prison capacity, and recidivism. But we don’t need to rewrite history to have them. The parole system Canada uses today didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was built here, decades ago, by a Conservative government."  
The chutzpah is amazing. This is even better than blaming Harper
Comment: "Sorry but this misses the point entirely of what people have major issues with. It is with the bail system and criminals offending and being released before trial. THAT is the problem we have today.  2019 (Bill C-75): This legislation was a significant modernization that encouraged a "principle of restraint" in bail, directing courts to impose the least restrictive conditions."

Federal deficit projected to soar to $92B this year: 'Unfair to pass these burdens on,' C.D. Howe Institute says - The report also forecasts deficits of more than $77 billion a year over the next four years : r/CanadianConservative - "Chrystia Freeland in December: “A 62 billion dollar deficit is too egregious, we can’t continue this fiscal mismanagement anymore.”
Freeland now: crickets"

Quebec's $129-billion equalization bonanza idiocy finally sinks in | Calgary Herald - " Quebec has received $129.9 billion in equalization payments in the past 10 years.  Even Ontario receives $576 million this year and $546 million next year; preposterous handouts to Canada’s largest economy by far.  Equalization began in 1957. Alberta has reaped not a single penny since 1965. That was the one and only payment in the past 60 years. Saskatchewan and B.C. have received no payments for 15 years.  Smith demands that the four big provinces — B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec — all receive the same per-capita payments.  She’s not saying that genuine have-not provinces should be denied, especially in Atlantic Canada.  But she points out the farce of huge payments to provinces with big, wealth-generating economies.  And now, a new Angus Reid poll shows a strikingly high level of support for Smith’s idea.  Asked if they agree with her proposal, 60 per cent said yes.  Only 19 per cent are opposed. Twenty-one per cent are unsure.  That’s remarkable. Majority support for reforming equalization is finally afoot in Canada.  Equalization was designed as a way for all provinces to provide roughly similar levels of service for their citizens.  It has become a payoff system for keeping Quebec in Canada; and for some, an irritant that could drive Alberta out. This allows successive Quebec governments to suppress development and cap resource prices, to keep the money flowing.  It’s all about fiscal capacity. Quebec has some neat tricks for keeping its own capacity artificially low.  Because of the equalization cushion, the Quebec National Assembly felt free to pass a resolution banning new oil or gas pipelines through the province.  None of this stops the insults. Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet calls Canada an “artificial country” (which is nonetheless free to supply Quebec with real western wealth). He says Alberta is a doomed petro-state.  Alberta’s referendum on removing equalization from the Constitution passed with 62 per cent in 2021.  The Trudeau Liberals had a constitutional obligation to respond, but simply ignored the vote... Newfoundland and Labrador challenged equalization in court. The case has since been joined by B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan... The poll also found 46 per cent support for ending the tanker ban off the B.C. north coast, and guaranteeing no export tax on Alberta’s resources.  On both issues, the opposition was only 35 per cent, with significant percentages undecided.  Sixty-four per cent of Canadians would back a guarantee of corridors and port access to the east and west coasts for oil and gas.  It’s quite possible that national awareness of Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa hasn’t been this high since the 1980s.  Polling was not so common in those days, but nobody could miss the uproar when Alberta reduced oil shipments to Ontario. They even noticed that in downtown Toronto."
Weird. Left wingers tell us that Alberta used to benefit from equalization, so it cannot complain about it today

Carney MPs Doly Begum and Salma Zahid pose in front of flags of the banned terror organization the Tamil Tigers : r/CanadianConservative
Too bad it only counts if you're PP leaving a trailer with the Diagolon logo on it

Canada's push to diversify trade away from U.S. seeing mixed results: report : r/Narcity - "American propoganda from an American site. Nothing to see"
"Narcity is Canadian, The original article is from The Canadian Press which is also Canadian owned.  What American site are you referring to?"
"The Canadian Press referencing a report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce somehow is American propaganda..."
When you hate on the US and anything American to distract from your problems. Waving around outsiders as a bogeyman is a great way to pretend you haven't failed

Tablesalt ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on X - "‼️CANADA JOINS EQUATORIAL GUINEA in an economic recession. Russia IS NOT even in a recession right now. Ukraine is being bombed and its not in a recession. Afghanistan is NOT in a recession."

Holly Doan on X - "New data confirms sharp generational divide between Canadians who rely on TV newscasts and those who get their news via internet. “Typical cable television subscriber in Canada is over 55” and “more likely to be satisfied with the news & information they receive than younger Canadians.”  — @CRTCeng   https://blacklocks.ca/cable-tv-audie nce-over-55/  #cdnpoli"
Older people are also more likely to support the Liberals, so.

Wayne Mathison | Facebook - "That’s the deeper problem. A healthy media culture is supposed to pressure power, question narratives, and reflect reality back to the public, even when it’s ugly. Instead, a lot of Canada’s legacy media behaves like a taxpayer-funded mood stabilizer for the managerial class. The boiled frog effect matters here. If living standards collapsed overnight, people would revolt. But if housing gets worse every year, taxes creep up every year, productivity drifts downward every year, and debt piles up quietly, many NPCs normalize decline because the screen keeps telling them everything is “stable,” “compassionate,” and “historic.” And the subsidy culture makes it worse. Once media, industries, and institutions depend on government money to survive, criticism becomes risky. You stop being a watchdog and slowly become a house pet. Not always through conspiracy either. Mostly incentives. The hand that feeds you gradually edits your worldview. That generational divide is real too. Older TV audiences often still assume the anchor is filtering information honestly. Younger people grew up online seeing competing narratives, raw footage, independent creators, leaks, long-form podcasts, and real-time corrections. Messier? Absolutely. But also harder to centrally manage. The danger is that people start mistaking narrative control for competence. But reality eventually punches through propaganda. Empty factories, unaffordable homes, weak productivity, collapsing trust, and rising dependency are hard to hide forever. Arithmetic is undefeated."

wealthmoose on X - "Well, Canada is officially in recession. That should increase Liberal support if I am understanding this country correctly."

Canada's cultural protection attempts are having the opposite effect - "  We’re deeper in the arms of America now.  And for that you can thank the people whose job it has been for half a century to keep us safe from the threat of the USA’s cultural imperialism.  The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last month shifted the burden of sustaining the nation’s film, television, music and news industries to Donald Trump’s America.  Its May 21 decision, the latest in a series designed to implement the goals of the Online Streaming Act, demands that major companies such as Netflix and Spotify dedicate 15 per cent of their Canadian revenues to certified Canadian content, Indigenous content and broadcast newsroom subsidies. In a previous, preliminary, decision, the CRTC set the contribution level from streamers at five per cent.   While tripling down on streamers, the CRTC simultaneously decided to lower the burden on licensed domestic broadcasters to 25 per cent from between 30 to 45 per cent. Contributions by cable and satellite companies remain at five per cent of revenues.   The outcome, given the growth in streaming and declines in traditional platforms, essentially surrenders Canada’s ability to fund its primary cultural industries domestically and permanently ties the survival of the $10 billion domestic film and television industry (half of which is certified Canadian content) to levies imposed on American companies. The lowering of Canadian spending obligations for domestic production will also mean Corus, Bell, TVA and Rogers will have more freedom to spend on the acquisition of low-cost American content and there will be fewer opportunities for Canadian entertainers and sports on domestic platforms. The system won’t be entirely akin to that of a 51st state, but it will be close... The decision is certainly inconsistent with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to lessen Canada’s economic dependence on the United States and become less subordinate to it. But it is entirely in line with the goals of the 2023 Online Streaming Act which was, as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet ministers described it, all about getting “money from web giants.”   The web giants, however, have never been real keen on that idea. A coalition of companies including Spotify, Amazon, Disney and Netflix challenged the initial five per cent decision in federal court. The outcome of that remains pending, after which another challenge regarding financial disclosure requirements may be heard.  Chief among their complaints has been the imposition of an obligation to fund Canadian newsrooms. The logic for that remains elusive given that none of the streamers — music or video — delivers news and therefore competes for news consumers... “This burdensome framework unfairly targets global streamers with requirements that directly violate Canada’s obligations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).  “This decision triples the cost of doing business in Canada and will spark even more inflation in the market, making further investment and innovation less attractive. For years, the MPA has consistently made clear that Canada’s Online Streaming Act is an unfair trade practice. We urge the Canadian government to reconsider this approach.”...   What was needed from the start was a 21st-Century communications act centred on the internet, with an entirely new regulator focused on opportunities. But that train has left the station and the one the government chose to ride is now a broken down wreck. Every year, we grow deeper into the arms of America."

This Week in Canada: Your Anti-Racism Is Not Anti-Racist Enough - "Canada’s long-standing “CanCon” regime—short for Canadian content—which requires broadcasters and streaming platforms to privilege content deemed sufficiently Canadian by regulators. The problem is that no one really knows what Canadian content is anymore—and that ends up hurting domestic creators at the expense of legacy broadcasters. This is yet another piece of illiberal, Trudeau-era legislation that Carney seems determined to hang on to. Read more of my reporting on the Online Streaming Act. I still stand by something else I wrote at the time. Justin Bieber, who built his career on YouTube long before regulators took an interest in curating Canadian feeds, might never have been discovered if the Online Streaming Act existed back then. Maybe that’s a good thing, depending on your taste in music."

Brian Lilley on X - "BREAKING: Carney government will reverse horrible CRTC decision to charge streamers and Canadian broadcasters for fund to make Canadian content."

Here we go again. : r/TTC - "I will never understand why this was green lit before other more needed work. The to-scale ttc map just looks ridiculous with how long line 1 has become. Why not improve the existing GO service? It 100% feels like a metrolinx/OPC vote grab for the 905"
"This has been in the works for a quarter century, and by the time it opens it will have taken over 30 years from concept to opening. Three lines and two extensions have been funded and started construction between then and now.  The TTC first studied this extension in 2001. It's been in York Region's official plan since 2002. The initial environmental assessment started in 2006, provincial funding was first promised in 2007 and it was first approved in principle by Toronto council in 2009. It's going to open in 2033. And you're complaining. LOL.  Bad takes like this are why the Toronto subway system only added five stations over a period of 35 years."
"This has been planned for regional grrowth and connection between York Region and TTC for awhile, being even Province lead during McGuinty years.  Here’s the whole environmental report on it. https://www.yrrtc.ca/PDFs/YSE/2009_ReportEnvironmentalProject.pdf  Oddly enough a Scarborough and Etobicoke of the system would be more bigger TO scale than just the Richmond Hill extension. Richmond Hill Centre is the same distance form Union is UTSC."
Building public transit is bad when conservatives do it

A Salient Example of Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s Canonical Islamic Jew-Hatred—Introduction, Text, and Commentary (3/X)

Part 1
Part 2

A Salient Example of Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s Canonical Islamic Jew-Hatred—Introduction, Text, and Commentary (3/X)

"Commentary [Ed: On Proclamation of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in 1937]

Just before his concluding admonition for a jihad to annihilate the Jewish community of historical Palestine, Hajj Amin el-Husseini recapitulates the dominant thematic narrative, woven together from a myriad of specific, canonical Islamic motifs, throughout the 1937 proclamation:

[T]he Arabs have learned best how they really are, that is, as they [the Jews] are described in the Koran and in the sacred scriptures… The verses from the Koran and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it.

El-Husseini‘s own apt summary assessment of the proclamation raises basic, important questions for those, in particular, who expound the view that his Islam was a form of modern "ideological chimerism," spatchcocked from "fundamentalist elements" of the Muslim creed, engrafted, fiendishly, to Nazism. 50 What do attentive, full tallies, comparing the numbers of Islamic and non-Islamic motifs cited by El-Husseini, demonstrate? Specifically, regarding the latter, what examples (if any), derived from Hitler‘s Mein Kampf, or the writings of Nazi racial theorists can be adduced? Do invocations of the Czarist Russian era forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, accompany, or complement these references to Nazi ideology? Is there any evidence that central themes from European Christian antisemitism are invoked, to confirm Paul Berman‘s fulmination about how "Nazified Islam" strove to demonstrate "that European and Christian superstitions ought to be regarded as authentically Middle Eastern and Islamic"?

What in fact can be readily gleaned from a careful, objective reading of el-Husseini‘s proclamation is there are no concrete, substantive references to any of these major non-Islamic sources of antisemitism. This absence of references contrasts starkly with the numerous and specific antisemitic motifs from Islam‘s canonical texts—the Koran (consistent with its gloss in authoritative Koranic commentaries), hadith, and sira—which el-Husseini‘s declaration invokes continuously, from opening to closing...

Within the first century of Islam‘s advent, this aphorism was coined, which highlighted the importance of the Sunna (and, by extension, the hadith): The Sunna can dispense with the Koran but not the Koran with the Sunna.” The hadith compiled by al- Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) are considered, respectively, to be the most important authoritative collections...

Sira, which can mean "epistle," "pamphlet," or "manifesto," also means "biography," "the life and times of". Ibn Ishaq of Medina (d. 767-770) composed the earliest full-length biography of Muhammad, Sirat Rasul Allah (Biography of the Prophet of Allah), nearly 150 years after the Muslim prophet‘s death...

A simple enumeration conveys el-Husseini‘s extensive use of references from Islam‘s canonical texts: ten explicit references to Koranic motifs (including eleven separate verses quoted directly in the proclamation), with an additional six implicit references; two explicit citations of the sira, and five implicit references; and two major, explicit citations (with quotation) of hadith, accompanied by three additional implicit references to the hadith literature. These citations are complemented by an explicit reference to the great early Muslim scholar al-Tabari (d. 923), and his monumental History.

How does el-Husseini‘s interpretation of the eleven Koranic verses he quotes, directly, compare with their authoritative exegeses, classical, and modern?

Maulana Muhammad Shafi (1898-1976), a former grand mufti of India (prior to the August, 1947 partition), was the author of Maariful Qur‘an, which remains the best-known work of tafsir (Koranic commentary) in Urdu. He also wrote more than three hundred books, and in addition to these literary works, broadcasted tafsir of the Koran on Radio Pakistan for a number of years. Here is Mufti Shafi‘s commentary on Koran 2:109, from Maariful Qur‘an, bearing in mind el- Husseini‘s reference to the verse as an example of the Jews‘ efforts to "discredit Muhammad‘s teachings":

Some of the Jews, pretending to be the well-wishers of the Muslims, were always inventing new stratagems to make them turn away from Islam, and, in spite of repeated failure in this effort, did not refrain from it. The verse warns the Muslims against their intentions, which are motivated, not by sincerity and friendship, but by envy—which in its turn arises not from anything the Muslims do, but spontaneously from within themselves even after they have come to understand clearly what the truth is. The verse also asks the Muslims not to give way to their justifiable anger at such misconduct, but to forgive the Jews, and wait till Allah sends a new commandment with regard to such matters. Thus, the verse gives an indication that Allah is soon going to lay down a law for the preservation of peace and order on the earth which would guide the Muslims in dealing with mischief-makers – the law, of course, being the permission to go to war against the enemies of Islam. The Muslims were actually conscious of their own weakness and the strength of their foe, and could have wondered how they would be able to act upon the new law. So, the verse reminds them that Allah's power extends over everything, small or big, ordinary or extraordinary…This command to show forbearance towards the Jews was proper to the situations of the Muslims at that time. Later on, Allah fulfilled the promise made in verse [2:]109, and sent down the injunction with regard to Jihad. Then, this new law was applied to the Jews as well as to other miscreants - in order to prevent disorder and to make peace and order prevail on the earth, Muslims went to war against them, and the mischief-makers were either killed, or forced into exile, or made to pay jizya.” [emphases added]

Two renowned classical Koranic commentators, Qurtubi (d. 1273), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) earlier concurred that the sentiments expressed in Koran 2:109 regarding tolerant forbearance toward the Jews, were indeed abrogated by the jihad verses in the Koran‘s "final revealed chapter," sura 9, both citing verses 9:5, and 9:29, specifically.

El-Husseini maintains that Koran 59:2 is about how "Muhammad saw himself constrained to drive the (Medinan) Jews (of the Banu Nadir tribe) out by force," for their perfidious "disbelief." His understanding of this verse comports with its classical exegesis in the seminal Tafsir al- Jalalayn, which, as the contemporary Dutch Islamologist Johannes J.G. Jansen notes in his treatise, The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt, remains one of the most popular, as well as the most authoritative Koranic commentaries in present day Egypt. Here is the gloss on Koran 59:2 from Tafsir al-Jalalayn:

"It is He who expelled those who disbelieved among the People of the Book"—meaning the Jewish clan of the Banu Nadir—"from their homes" in Medina "to the first gathering-place" on the way to Syria; the final step was when Umar [b. al-Khattab, the second "Rightly Guided" Caliph] exiled them from Khaybar when he was khalifa. "You" believers "did not think they would leave; and they thought that their fortresses would protect them from" the punishment of "Allah." "Then" the command and punishment of "Allah came upon them from where they least expected it"—from the believers, which possibility had not occurred to them—"and cast terror into their hearts" by the killing of their leader, Ka‘b ibn al-Ashraf. "Their houses were pulled down by their own hands and by the hands of the believers. People of insight take note!"

... According to el-Husseini, Koran 5:49 is yet another depiction of the Jews‘ efforts to "sew dissension among Muhammad‘s followers," and even cause Muhammad to act against the Sharia, Allah‘s "divine law," in effect, apostasizing. Ibn Kathir‘s classical gloss, and the modern commentary of Maulana Muhammad (Mufti) Shafi in Maariful Qur‘an are entirely consistent this interpretation."

Links - 22nd July 2026 (1 - Hating Elon Musk: Becoming a Trillionaire)

Elizabeth Warren on X - "If Elon Musk paid my ultra-millionaire wealth tax, we could pay for child care for all three and four year olds in America."
Clown World ™ ๐Ÿคก on X - "Elon Musk’s wealth is in shares, not a checking account. Force a tax like that and he has to sell stock, the company loses value, thousands of employees lose their jobs, and the government still doesn’t get anywhere close to what you’re promising. This take is what happens when you’ve never run a business in your life."
Guy Swann on X - "• You and your friends would steal 80% of it
• you’d come in 300% over budget and still spend 3x what you taxed
• you’d start 2 useless departments that soak up billions yearly forever going forward
• the entire mess would be riddled with bribes, fraud, and fake daycares
• you’d be proposing a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and then permanent wealth tax to deal with the “gross underfunding” of your corrupt “childcare for everyone” empire.
The icing on the cake? Childcare costs in the US would increase by 40% in 2 years."
NotKennyRogers on X - "There are currently 190,000 children in Chicago living below the poverty level. For the price of the $900 million Obama library, we could have given each one of these poor children in Chicago $4,736. Am I doing this right?"
mert on X - ""ive been in office for 13 years and our yearly budget is 7 trillion but we can't help children unless we steal from the guy doing spaceflight""

mert on X - ""we couldn't do anything useful for citizens in my 14 years of office allocating 60 trillion USD. but if we can just steal from the rocket science electric car guy, then we can solve all your problems.""

wokeandwoofing on X - "If I had Elon's money I would solve world hunger instantly.๐Ÿ˜ก Sent from a device purchased with with a sum of money that could have been used to feed an Ethiopian family for a year, but wasn't, because my generosity is purely hypothetical."

Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'sadly,' it makes the world a worse place | Fortune
Weird. Left wingers hate Elon Musk because he supposedly could've donated $6 billion to end world hunger. Yet they are good with MacKenzie Scott literally murdering people (including children) by not donating $6 billion to end world hunger (since they claim stopping USAID fraud killed 600,000 people)

Alice Smith on X - "They don’t want Elon Musk to give his trillion to the poor. They want Elon Musk to give his trillion to them so they can take their cut, split it with their comrades and causes, then look virtuous by throwing to the poor whatever scraps remain."

Renatta Oxendine on X - "Good news for those who hate billionaires: Elon Musk is no longer a billionaire."

Melissa Chen on X - "Today’s flood of Western media hit pieces and ridiculous commentary on Elon and SpaceX is yet another sign that the West is rotting from the inside.   EVEN the Chinese Communists treat their national champions with more respect than these pathetic hacks.  The CCP and its state mouthpieces aren’t half as deranged with envy. They may leash guys like Jack Ma and slap them down hard when they step out of line, but at least they’re smart enough to understand that they need their best talent and innovators to deliver prosperity for their people, dominate global markets, project raw power across the planet, and forge their nation into a ruthless superpower. The Chinese see them as vital strategic national assets and would never publicly insult or attack the ambitious, high-achieving mindset that creates these winners in the first place.  SpaceX is, without a doubt, America’s national champion.   Elon built the first reusable orbital rockets (Falcon 9), slashed launch costs, launched more missions in a single year than entire nations, revived American space dominance, sent NASA astronauts to the ISS aboard Crew Dragon, built the Starlink constellation that now beams high-speed internet to millions across the globe (including battlefields and disaster zones), and is developing Starship - the most powerful fully reusable rocket ever built, designed to make humanity an inter-planetary species.   Yet the Western press and Democratic officials are almost unanimously attacking the one man going above and beyond to secure prosperity, technological supremacy, and raw national strength for our civilization.  These people are vile soul-sucking wreckers who despise all excellence. The only thing they can produce is endless grievance and failure. All they know to do is tear down the successful, insult greatness, and wallow in their own mediocrity."

tetsuo on X - "History's first trillionaire is a guy who catches rockets out of the sky with chopsticks and beams internet to every dead zone on the planet.  Same guy ships cars that drive themselves, humanoid robots for the factory floor, brain chips that let paralyzed people move a cursor with pure thought, and an AI running on a supercomputer his team stood up in months instead of years.  And the people crashing out about his net worth are doing it on the app he owns. The same app governments spent years trying to censor.  You cannot legislate a rocket into orbit."

Bill Ackman on X - ".@BernieSanders  , it is a time to celebrate. @elonmusk  has created enormous value for society by building @SpaceX , driving down the cost of rocket launches and creating a global satellite communication network that has brought high speed, low-cost internet and communication access to hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people along with critical advantages for our military and our nation’s defense.   SpaceX and its technologies will cause an acceleration in the growth of wages and wealth creation globally, including in some of the poorest communities in the U.S. and around the world.   Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere.   SpaceX will materially bring down the cost of compute, advancing AI and humanity.   Meanwhile, 4,000 SpaceX employees yesterday became millionaires, including hourly wage employees who you claim you are trying to help.   The Elon Musks of the world drive growth, global GDP, and provide access to goods and services at lower cost that would otherwise not exist.   Elon’s nominal trillionaire status is due to his ownership of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, the Boring Company and his other initiatives that have brought new technologies that improve our everyday lives.   Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon’s companies don’t pay dividends. They reinvest all of their capital to accelerate innovation and value creation.    Elon is working 24/7 for all of us. He deserves respect and appreciation, not smears.   Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built. Socialism has only proven to impoverish mankind and lead to death and destruction.   We need to create the conditions for more SpaceXs to be built, not attack the great entrepreneurs who are helping to advance our country."

Crime In NYC on X - "Elon Musk's contribution to the national economy:
Over 2021–2025, Musk's companies (Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company) reportedly injected ~$338 billion directly into the U.S. economy via:
• $110.7 billion in wages/salaries (supporting • 200,000+ employees at competitive pay).
• ~$46 billion in taxes (corporate, payroll, etc.).
• $182 billion+ in supplier spending (e.g., Tesla alone spent heavily on U.S. batteries, chips, steel).
Source: https://odaily.news/en/post/5207545
- - - -
- During his lifetime, Bernie Sanders has contributed approximately $0.00 to the national economy."
Bernie's contribution is negative, actually

David Knight Legg on X - "Globe & Mail reporter Chris Gay told Canadian readers ‘how to properly hate’ @elonmusk for becoming a trillionaire via SpaceX. Here’s an idea:
- Maybe Mr Gay could explain to readers why Canadas fed govt lost $50bn betting against Tesla on EVs - and is in the process of losing billions more backing no-launch capacity Telesat to compete with StarLink - SpaceX.    Our federal govt is lighting on fire billions we don’t have betting against a guy changing the lives of millions with reusable rockets, global internet, EVs, nueralink, boring company etc.   Capitalism creates wealth as markets embrace life-improving goods and services.  Which is why our teachers will get an $11bn windfall via their pension betting with Musk.   Socialism destroys it through the politics of envy and statist central planning and loss-making ‘investments’ which is why this federal govt is so awful at capital allocation.   @globeandmail  - pls tell the whole story."
Left wingers will still claim the Globe and Mail is "centre-right" and that Carney is "conservative" (because he's not destroying the economy as fast as Trudeau was)

Melissa Chen on X - "These are the exact same people who made “countering hate” their entire identity.  They were the first to plant “Hate Has No Place Here” signs on their lawns.  They insist “hate speech isn’t free speech.”  They proudly fund groups like Hope Not Hate and Stop AAPI Hate  They still chant “Love Trumps Hate” like it’s scripture.  Yet here they are, in the pages of The Globe and Mail, publishing a guide on “how to properly hate” Elon Musk for the crime of building SpaceX into a company that could make him the world’s first trillionaire.  Proof positive that their “anti-hate” crusade was never about hate.  They are, in reality, full of hate. It was always about who they’re allowed to hate"

David Yelland on X - "What has Elon Musk taken from you? So ask many including Andrew Neil. Here's the answer: He has taken our peace of mind. He has purposefully pushed us apart, divided us further and profited from our loss of community. And that is hard to ever forgive."
Left wingers - the party of "coexist", "love" and "empathy" - are seething with hatred and envy

Melissa Chen on X - "lol these people need to grow up.   They don’t build. They don’t create. They just sit on their asses, consume, complain, and then have the audacity to claim someone like Elon “took their peace of mind.”  Bro, your peace of mind was never real. It was a curated illusion maintained by gatekeepers who banned dissent, shadowbanned wrongthink, and lied through their teeth for years. The second the feed stopped being a safe little bubble where your opinions were treated like gospel, you all lost your minds.  You say Elon “divided us.” No, he just stopped letting you pretend the divisions didn’t exist while you censored the other half of the country into silence. I suppose I shouldn’t expect someone who works for the BBC to acknowledge this.   Low-agency people don’t have an internal engine. Their entire emotional state is outsourced to external conditions.   If the world doesn’t validate their feelings 24/7, if someone dares to speak freely, if reality doesn’t bend to their narrative, they collapse into petulant toddler mode:  “Waaah, HE destroyed my inner peace!”   I’m sorry, does the universe owe you inner peace? Or is it an internal state that you achieve when you stop being a reactive little bitch and start taking responsibility for your own life?  That’s the fundamental split.   High-agency people look at problems and say “how do I fix this or beat it?”   Low-agency people look at problems and say “who’s responsible for making me feel this way so I can cancel them?”   One group moves the world forward while the other just seethes, copes, and demands the rest of us accommodate their fragility.  The leftist mindset is more or less synonymous with low-agency. The problem with media historically is that there are many of them working as journalists."

Kat on X - "People want to hate on Elon because he shows you what's possible. Your excuse that it's too difficult to create is out the window. Do 1 millionth of what Elon does and you'll be considered successful."

Meme - Melissa Chen @MsMelChen: "It's true that large pools of capital can have distortionary effects on markets and democracy. But until leftists can show they've criticized Soros or Singham for it, nobody should buy their anti-oligarch virtue signal. Where are the receipts? Yeah, thought so"
"No results for roy singham neville No results for soros from:lewis_goodall"
Lewis Goodall: "Musk as a trillionaire- anyone as a trillionaire- is a grotesque economic, moral and political problem. We cannot have individuals with that level of power, whatever they might have achieved."

Threads - "I’m so confused as to how Elon Musk is the first trillionaire when he MADE UP the valuation for SpaceX. He pulled it out of his ass. If he sells the company, he won’t get a trillion dollars because no one has a trillion dollars. Including him."
Left wingers don't understand anything. That's why they're poor

Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿš€ on X - "Can I just point out how funny this is, given the paper is owned by Canada’s wealthiest billionaire family, all of whom inherited their wealth. Should we hate them for that? Of course not, because that would be gross. But, it reflects our tall-poppy syndrome at its finest. Personally, I’m glad that the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan is getting a nice payout, as will many others who took a big risk investing in SpaceX.   I wish we had more audacious entrepreneurs making big bets and generating great jobs and wealth here in Ontario. I want to create an environment that makes it even more likely.  The world is not zero sum. The size of the pie is not fixed. If we make more, everyone can get a big piece."
Bruce Arthur on X - "Were I running for a political leadership position in Canada I would simply not simp for Elon Musk, who is responsible for an incredible number of deaths, and is currently encouraging race riots in Ireland"
Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿš€ on X - "What did I say that you actually disagree with? As you just pointed out there are plenty of other reasons to dislike Musk. We have an incumbent “intellectual” class that eschews debate, thinking, and nuance, and thinks politics is healthy when leaders do the same."
Bruce Arthur on X - "Beyond the implicit moral shallowness, it’s not good for anyone to be worth a trillion dollars, much less someone as monstrous as Musk, even before you get into the boring rot of trickle-down economics"
Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿš€ on X - "There is nothing implicitly or explicitly morally shallow about this.  Bruce, what is the right level of cutoff for the level of wealth that someone should be able to create? What is the right level to inherit? Why?   To me, a competitive entrepreneurial economy with risk taking creates wealth but also interesting work for people, which also means opportunity that we wouldn’t have had before.   My concern, in government, is to tax that fairly to provide a level of welfare befitting of an advanced and prosperous society that sees value in every individual.   This is the promise of a liberal economy. And that to me allows us the luxury to be morally and ethically good."
Bruce Arthur on X - "Not shallow, huh"
Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿš€ on X - "You really don’t want to engage on the question eh?"
Bruce Arthur on X - "Just tag the Shopify guys next time, they might get excited"
Left wingers can't answer the question, because really the criteria for someone being too rich is to be richer than them and on the wrong side

Jonathan Kay on X - "Watching this guy flounder around when he gets called out on his inanities is hilarious"
Doug Jordan on X - "Absolutely deplorable performance for a journalist. But this is what we’ve come to expect of the Toronto Star."

Henrick Johansson on X - "Elon Musk is about to become a trillionaire.  If he agreed to pay just 80% of that as a wealth tax to the EU, the EU government could use its efficient operating experience to fund bicycles with solar panels attached to them for over 40 residents of the Netherlands.  Elon is being selfish by not paying the wealth tax"

Shruti on X - "Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.  400 of them are now worth over $100 million.  These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce in stock instead of higher salaries.  Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a $28 an hour contractor welding job in 2015. He says he didn't even know what SpaceX was. The company gave him a $10,000 equity grant and let him buy more shares through payroll deductions. That stake is now worth $880,000.  Trevor Hise's parents wanted him to take a stable job at General Electric. He picked SpaceX instead, stayed 12 years, and accumulated over 100,000 shares. At the $135 listing price that's $13.5 million. He's 37 and semiretired. His words: "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous."  The most telling detail came before the listing. Over 100 employees quietly banded together and negotiated a group wealth management deal covering up to $5 billion, because none of them had ever needed a wealth manager before.  Software IPOs have minted millionaires for 30 years. This is the first one where the money went to the factory floor."

Aakash Gupta on X - "Google's IPO created roughly 1,000 millionaires. Facebook's did about the same. SpaceX just created 4,400, with 400 of them above $100 million each.  The structural reason matters more than the feel-good stories.  Companies that stay private for decades usually concentrate the upside in VCs and founders. By the time regular employees get liquid, the 100x already happened on someone else's cap table. SpaceX stayed private for 24 years, the longest run to a mega IPO in history, and routed that compounding into payroll. Stock grants at every level, plus share purchases through paycheck deductions, down to welders and cafeteria staff.  Run the math on what that meant. SpaceX was valued around $12 billion in early 2015. The IPO priced it at $1.77 trillion. That's 147x in 11 years, roughly 57% annualized. A welder buying shares with $200 paycheck deductions compounded at a rate most funds never touch once.  The part people gloss over: this was financing, and the workforce carried real risk. In 2008 the company was weeks from bankruptcy after three failed Falcon 1 launches. Below-market salary plus rocket startup equity was a terrible deal in every timeline where the rockets kept blowing up. For two decades the employees were, collectively, one of SpaceX's largest investors.  Thousands of startups pay in equity. Almost all of that paper expires worthless. This bet only paid because the company survived 24 years, landed the rockets, and went public at the largest valuation in IPO history.  4,400 people just got paid for holding through every one of those filters. The factory floor was the venture capital."

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