The NYT recently raised the price of my subscription to $29/month (maybe it was $8/month before?). Given that half of their content isn’t news, but rather a daily reminder that Democrats still hate Donald Trump, I clicked “Cancel Subscription” and that put me into a pipeline where I was offered a $1/week deal for a year ($52/year rather than $348/year; an 85% discount).
What was on the front page when I canceled? Trump is bad because of something he did or said about Ohio. People in Iowa are more sophisticated than progressive New Yorkers previously thought because it turns out that Iowans also hate Trump. A member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community in New Hampshire might become a senator.
A week ago, mostly peaceful demonstrations in cities across France devolved into clashes between protesters and the police. Then looters entered the fray, breaking into stores, supermarkets and shopping malls, and hauling off whatever they could.
Selected by the New York Times editors, a photo of the typical protester, apparently a huge French patriot:
What is shown on X from the same event in Marseille? Translation from Grok: “In Marseille, my city, to my great despair, it is not the French flag that flies but that of Hamas.”
à Marseille, ma ville, à mon grand désespoir ce n'est pas le drapeau français qui flotte mais celui du hamas pic.twitter.com/W9tdMnoQlt
(Given our failure, thus far, to force the Iranians to surrender, this is perhaps not the best time to joke about the official French flag being white. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal suggests that Trump’s painfully slow strategy might be working. “Iran’s Fleet of Shadow Tankers Has Run Out of Oil After Monthslong U.S. Blockade” says “Tehran had millions of barrels of crude in tankers in Asian waters that gave it a steady flow of cash. Now, that oil has dried up.” See also “Iran Is Now Losing Overland Trade Routes to U.S. Pressure” (WSJ). On the third hand, what difference does any of this make if Iran can use domestic materials to make electrical power, drones, and missiles?)
Separately, who will be watching the Paris NFL game tomorrow? France wasn’t violent enough and, therefore, they had to import violence from the U.S.? ESPN:
The article notes that the “real football” fans won’t be able to see too many dusty old paintings and sculptures:
Major museums, including the Louvre and Orsay Museum, are closed Saturday, though tourists were lined up to enter Notre Dame Cathedral. French authorities are intent on preventing a repeat of recent violent unrest.
I learned today from scanning headlines that a self-driving Tesla had killed a pedestrian, e.g., “Tesla in ‘self-driving’ mode kills pedestrian”. In other words, Elon Musk has not only killed our democracy, but his machines are gradually killing us as individuals.
I had assumed from the headlines that the Tesla had been blinded by some glare and had run over an unfortunate U.S. resident in a city crosswalk. Some hours later, I clicked on one of the articles and learned that the crosswalk was on a six-lane portion of Interstate 80 Vallejo, California. The “pedestrian” was attempting to cross the Interstate at about 2:30 am. He stepped from the shoulder directly into the path of the car.
(Update: It seems as though the “pedestrian” may not have been killed by Evil Elon at all. SFGate reports “Though the dash camera footage reviewed by officers showed the Tesla braking as it steered to the left, the right side of the car struck the pedestrian, CHP said. After the Tesla crash, the pedestrian was lying in the traffic lanes and was hit by another driver, CHP said. The driver of the second car did not stop and has not been identified by authorities. The pedestrian had fatal injuries, and the Tesla driver, a 26-year-old man from San Francisco, remained at the scene, CHP said.” So the crossing-attempt victim was whacked by the side of a slowing-down Tesla and then run over by a full-speed human. Presumably it was the second encounter with a steel behemoth that resulted in death.)
None of the heroic journalists behind these articles mentioned that it is illegal for anyone to walk on or across Interstate 80 in Vallejo, California. CA Veh Code § 21960 has one exception to this rule, but it does not permit crossing:
… Notwithstanding any order, ordinance, or resolution to the contrary, the driver or passengers of a disabled vehicle stopped on a freeway or expressway may walk to the nearest exit, in either direction, on that side of the freeway or expressway upon which the vehicle is disabled, from which telephone or motor vehicle repair services are available.
Only loosely related… my dream of a “pedestrian”-killing Tesla Y L seems to be receding ever deeper into 2027. The range-squanderingAWD version is the only one available (“Launch Edition”) and it wouldn’t be delivered until, probably, March 2027:
Yesterday was a day of wonder, according to the New York Post’s front page:
By contrast, the word “Tesla” does not appear on the NYT’s front page as of 10:30 am. Nothing happened that anyone might have watched last night via streaming on X on in person. Elon is mentioned, but only as a pernicious political influence destroying our sacred democracy:
(I do also wonder why anyone is interested in noncitizen voting. An American whose family hasn’t worked in four generations can vote, presumably to increase government spending on the welfare that has enabled the four generations of relaxation. Why does it matter if Kilmar Abrego Garcia (still Maryland’s leading resident, if not exactly “citizen”) can vote for more pupusas and margaritas? When the U.S. was young, a man started work at age 13 and started to vote at age 21. Since there was no welfare state, essentially everyone who voted had worked for at least eight years. Today we have people voting at age 18 who might not enter the workforce or pay taxes until they’re 28+. If they don’t vote for student loan forgiveness then they’re irrational!)
Nonprofit profiteers bleeding taxpayers dry in Minnesota, according to the New York Post, in order to fill the U.S. with humans from one of the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies (Somalia):
In the NYT, a nonprofit NGO is featured for its valuable work:
Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. … Spoljaric travels to all sides of active war zones — Gaza, Ukraine, Iran — meeting with the heads of governments and armed groups alike. [where’s her hijab?] … (We spoke before Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the government would be live-streaming a public execution — another sign that the old rules and norms are eroding.) Many world leaders “simply don’t care anymore,” she told me. “And this lack of empathy, this lack of anger, is what I find most dangerous at the moment.”
(i.e., Pete Hegseth is far more dangerous and destructive to American interests than anyone in Gaza or Iran.)
The real problem, from the ICRC’s point of view, is not that the Gazans killed civilians across the border into what they call “the Zionist entity” and took, held, and sometimes later killed hostages from Thailand, Eritrea, Israel, the U.S., etc. It is that a
What happened to Gaza and in Gaza to Palestinians and Israelis supersedes every legal, moral and humane standard. There are so many people complicit in what happened there and continues to happen. The worst now is the fact that people are deprived of human dignity. The perception created that if there’s enough food, that’s good enough — for some people it’s good enough to just barely survive in rubble, and for other people it is only good enough if they can return to normalcy and bring their children back to a normal school.
Safe to say that by “There are so many people complicit in what happened there” she doesn’t mean the overwhelming majority of Gazans polled who supported the October 7, 2023 attack and who continue to support the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? (And why didn’t this heroic female travel to Cornell where the real genocide happened?)
Let’s turn back to matters purely domestic… In the New York Post, it was a private citizen with a no-doubt-illegal-to-bring-into-the-school gun (which common sense tells us a private citizen shouldn’t have been allowed to own).
In the New York Times, the real heroes are police who investigate after all of the shooting has stopped (The Other Guys whereas the dad featured in the New York Post was either Danson or Highsmith?).
Speaking of Danson and Highsmith, how awesome would it be for a sequel to The Other Guys to feature resurrected Danson and Highsmith pursuing criminals in a rocket-equipped Tesla Roadster? Maybe they would bust into a Cornell fraternity party 2nd floor bedroom window balcony with the car/aircraft?
As long as we’re talking about demure college gals and The Other Guys….
And since we’re talking about “Gator” and the Tesla Roadster, here are some Floridians who are passionate about both:
Did you see the @Tesla flying car? Well, we may or may not have sent this one over to Fleet Services for approval…
Patrol is interested. The Traffic Unit has questions. And we’re still trying to figure out where to put all the equipment!
The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
NY Post readers and Facebook/Twitter users thus occupied parallel universes, each with its own truths regarding the Biden family.
Facebook seems to be reprising this for the #BelieveJaneDoe era. I’m in a free-for-all discussion group on Facebook. One of the users is a Big Law partner who yet still has time to post maudlin sympathy for cash-seeking survivors such as the person variously known as Jane Doe/Lucy Craig/the Cornell Skank/Jane Hoe/The Cornell Plaintiff/etc. Let’s call her “The Cornell Plaintiff” here for concreteness. In response to one of his outpourings, I posted, without comment, a text message exchange obtained by TMZ and, after passing through their editorial process, published by the New York Post (link). In the exchange, The Cornell Plaintiff says “our body our choice asf”:
Facebook removed this post, along with a variant that highlighted Jane Doe saying that nothing “illegal” had occurred, because it is an example of “coordinating harm and promoting crime” (that allegedly occurred in 2024?):
Maybe this was a mistake by AI? No. Facebook says that a human was involved in the suppression of anything contrary to #BelieveJaneDoe:
I still hate Elon Musk for (1) not making a self-driving minivan, (2) not offering a max-range RWD version of the Y L, and (3) being a lot richer than I am (#SickWithEnvyEveryDay). But I think it is important to recognize that his takeover of X created an entire universe of facts that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. (Of course, Musk didn’t create the New York Post, but without X it would be impossible to see in one place the kinds of things that the New York Post publishes from 1,000+ different sources worldwide.)
The Cornell Plaintiff’s myriad defendants had better hope that at least some people on the jury are X users. Otherwise, The Cornell Plaintiff is going to be the richest person ever to have attended Cornell. The complaint, which contains some seemingly absurd demands, e.g., that her 20-year-old self be considered a minor with respect to the sorority defendant, has already been removed by quite a few web sites, but it seems to survive at least in one link. There are some deep pockets, not least Cornell’s $12 billion (maybe all of that could be transferred to the Plaintiff to compensate her for the genocide that she suffered?).
Many American Muslims have faced a quarter-century of suspicion and hostility since the Sept. 11 attacks … the city’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. But anti-Muslim prejudice still endures, echoing the Islamophobia that arose in the earliest days after Sept. 11.
“I think that day belongs to everyone who lived it and what came after belongs to a smaller group of us,” said Mr. Awawdeh, 39, who is now the president and chief executive of the New York Immigration Coalition and a confidant of Mr. Mamdani. “That part of the story this country still has not told itself honestly.”
… backlash faced by high-profile Muslims in politics or the arts, and attacks on Islamic religious expression, including the construction of mosques and the wearing of religious clothing like hijabs.
“Muslim America now has a greater cultural footprint, more institutional power and a lot more support from allies, comrades and friends all throughout the country,” Mr. Dandia said. “Now when people think of Muslim America, they have names and faces they can point to.”
How many haters are there?
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this year, 43 percent of American adults said Muslims are less patriotic than other Americans, and 42 percent said Muslim Americans are having a negative impact on the country. When asked to explain their views, respondents often cited the Sept. 11 attacks.
In March 2002, 25 percent of American adults said Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, but that number had risen to 51 percent in the survey conducted this year.
Who are the haters?
Those views have become highly polarized, with Republicans expressing far more negative views of Islam than Democrats, a change from after the attacks when supporters of both parties held similar views.
Let’s close with a fatwa from a scholar of the Quran and the Hadiths…
Jason Arday had the distinction of being the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. … Black academics know that we will always be held to a different standard … Prof. Claudine Gay was hounded by accusations of plagiarism and ousted by Harvard, who bent to those who simply could not stomach a world where a Black woman was president of such a storied institution.
As pointed out in Plagiarist Claudine Gay getting paid $3.1 million/year after “resigning” from Harvard, anyone with access to ChatGPT and/or Google could determine within less than one minute that Claudine Gay was still on the Harvard payroll (not “ousted”) and with a little more diligence, determine that she was being paid a higher-than-average wage.
If the NEJM didn’t fact-check this article what else aren’t they fact-checking?
A Mexican national whom we are informed was shot at random by ICE (they were looking for an undocument migrant and shot the unfortunate Mr. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo for no reason and, as it happened, Mr. Araujo was also an undocumented migrant (what are the odds in a country where we’re informed that only a tiny percentage of residents are undocumented migrants?)):
Lindsey Graham, whose entire life can be reduced to, simply, “Trump Ally”:
Democrat connections on Facebook are filling up their feeds with glee regarding Senator Graham’s death. Some examples:
“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” — Clarence Darrow, “The Story of My Life”, 1932
According to Dante, Lindsay’s final destination would be Antenora.
X users who previously expressed support for the Gazans and hatred of Israel are also happy. Example from someone affiliated with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee:
I know we’re supposed to feign sadness over everyone’s death. If I can’t do that, I generally don’t say anything.
I find it impossible to do that in the case of Lindsey Graham, who used his position of power to relentlessly advocate for war, often successfully, and exhibited no…
The mere existence of an American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee seems like something that evolved during Lindsey Graham’s adulthood (until Hart-Celler in 1965, Arabs generally weren’t eligible to immigrate to the U.S.). Let’s look at what else has changed since Lindsey Graham was born in 1955.
Lindsey Graham served in the USAF for 33 years, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, unusually, did not become disabled by his work at a desk. VA Benefits cost $4.5 billion in 1955. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about 55 billion 2026 mini-dollars. That’s during a period where nearly 100% of American men were veterans of three brutal wars (WWI, WWII, and Korean). The population was smaller because we hadn’t discovered the miracle of open borders and, thus, the U.S. was home to only about 22 million living veterans in 1955. Today, VA benefits, not including military pensions earned via length of service, cost about $440 billion. There are only about 16 million living veterans and a high enough percentage of them are classified as “disabled”, thus forcing taxpayers to pay out more than $200 billion in disability compensation, e.g., to Graham Platner in Maine. The average American who actually pays any significant federal income tax will work approximately 2-3 hours per week to fund payments and services to veterans, despite the fact that it is tough to think of any war that we’ve won since Korea. ChatGPT: “real federal spending per veteran has risen by substantially more than a factor of eight”.
(Note that we will soon be spending more on disability payments to veterans than the Chinese spend on their entire active-duty military. The majority of disabled veterans were never in combat so we can’t blame our enemies becoming tougher for this epidemic of disability. A majority of veterans who left the U.S. military during the Biden-Harris administration were classified as disabled. There are some tough-to-quantify costs of these disability ratings. Veterans who receive TDIU (Total Disability based on Individual Unemployability) can’t work without risking the loss of the taxpayer cash. Veterans who are rated 100 percent disabled, such as Graham Platner, pay no property tax on a primary residence in Florida (imagine if this fearless fighter were to move into Ron DeSantis terrirtory!).)
Lindsey Graham started out wanted to give nearly every undocumented migrant in the U.S. “amnesty” and a passport. The percentage of immigrants in the U.S. has risen from about 5 percent when Lindsey Graham was born to at least 15 percent today (Pew). If we were to look at “immigrants plus children of recent immigrants” the growth would be much more dramatic due to the U.S. having closed its borders in 1924. If we corrected Pew’s numbers with the 2X likely population of undocumented migrants that Yale found, the percentage of the U.S. population that was foreign-born would likely be around 20 percent (and maybe 30 percent for immigrants plus children of recent immigrants since immigrants have higher fertility than the native-born Americans whom they are definitely not “replacing”).
Not in any way related to this enrichment via immigration, the cost of an existing single-family house (i.e., not one in some exurb) relative to median income, is now 2-3X what it was in 1955, relative to median male worker’s earnings, depending on how one adjusts for square footage.
Graham was, like all members of Congress, responsible for setting federal spending levels. Federal debt was about 65 percent of GDP in 1955, not too long after massive borrowing to fund WWII. Today it is 125 percent of GDP. Federal spending has grown from 16.5 percent of GDP to about 23 percent (don’t forget state and local as well!). ChatGPT: “The decline in military spending since 1955 was more than fully absorbed by the growth of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, other transfers, and interest on the debt.”
The New York Times repeatedly informs us that we are currently facing a Climate Emergency, that our democracy is being eliminated by Donald Trump (the 2026 elections will, presumably, be suspended indefinitely; also it would be a tragedy if this #1 threat to our democracy were to die), and that various other dire issues demand our attention (and our votes for Democrats).
Dubai follows Sharia law and, in theory, people with too much Pride could be executed, but more likely “under Article 409 of the UAE Federal Crimes and Penalties Law, consensual same-sex relations are criminalized with prison sentences starting at six months.”
Canada also combines Pride and Islamic rule:
Toronto Dyke March participants chant “We’re here! We’re queer! Free Palestine is our demand!” pic.twitter.com/b9afLvH1Yu
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 27, 2026
Mayor Olivia Chow screams "Free Palestine" at Toronto Pride parade.
You know, the same two words terrorists have screamed before murdering and butchering their victims. pic.twitter.com/gTA0VTffJL
— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) June 29, 2026
