Update (1445ET): With earnings right around the corner, and having seen the shares rally all day on leak after leak, Twitter shares were halted 'news pending' before these headline hit...

• *ELON MUSK TO BUY TWITTER FOR $54.20/SHR IN CASH

• *MUSK PROVIDING AN ABOUT $21.0B EQUITY COMMITMENT

• *TWITTER: TRANSACTION UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED BY TWITTER BOARD

Full Press Release:

Twitter, Inc. today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company.

Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.

Bret Taylor, Twitter's Independent Board Chair, said, "The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."

Parag Agrawal, Twitter's CEO, said, "Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important."

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk.

"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

Transaction Terms and Financing

The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Twitter Board of Directors, is expected to close in 2022, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.

Mr. Musk has secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an approximately $21.0 billion equity commitment. There are no financing conditions to the closing of the transaction. 

For further information regarding all terms and conditions contained in the definitive transaction agreement, please see Twitter's Current Report on Form 8-K, which will be filed in connection with the transaction.

Share halted for now... (read more)

In Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s genius of a satire (really a documentary, if you think about it), Luke Wilson plays Joe Bowers, frozen by the military in 2005, “who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America, where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism.” (As I said, a documentary. Citations here.)

The “dumb-a** dystopia” depicted in “Idiocracy” has evolved (devolved, rather) because low-IQ individuals, so robust, have out-bred the intelligent (yes, Judge openly references IQ as a measure of intelligence). Consequently, nothing gets fixed. There are garbage avalanches. A Gatorade-like drink has replaced water in irrigation. Because growers don’t know better, nothing grows.

The most watched show on the “Violence Channel” is “Ow, My B-lls!” The “highest grossing movie of all time is called ‘A**,’ and consists of 90 minutes of the same naked, hairy butt on screen.” Audiences are enraptured. All enterprises are sexualized; Starbucks offers a “full body latte.” Costco is an Ivy-League law school.

Or, a medical school, in my tale of woe. Idiocracy is the perfect metaphor for my own visit to a Washington State doctor’s office.

I had scheduled an appointment with this “medical professional,” in the Seattle area. When done right, these things consume time. There are elaborate forms to fill in, which I do meticulously online (especially given my allergies), in hopes of a better outcome in the office.

And the doctor’s office has become its own obstacle course. Combine endemic, Idiocracy-like institutional rot, with the control Covid has bestowed on some exceedingly mediocre and malevolent minds—and one can never be too prepared.

Exhaustive though it was, the “ethnicity” slot didn’t offer the “Jewish” designation, which might have entitled me to a wee bit more grace from the graceless. Inappropriately prurient and medically unnecessary, in this context, information was solicited about the patient’s sex life. These inquiries remained unanswered, obviously.

This was a consultation, nothing more. But this was also Washington State! On the Pacific Coast, kindness, congeniality and rationality don’t come naturally. Neither does an adherence, it would appear, to the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath:

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

State-of-Washington-statists are generally aloof, opprobrious, insular, dour and, it would appear, deeply and studiously dumb. Unkind cuts are an everyday occurrence around here, where the busybody mentality prevails, and where difference is deviance.

Stand still long enough, and they’ll tell you how to live. They’ll even give chase to deliver a “corrective” sermon. A helmeted cyclist once chased me down along a suburban running trail. My sin? I had fed the poor juncos in the dead of winter. (Still do. Bite me, you bully.) This, as the first homeless person just ensconced himself (or herself or its non-binary selves), with the accouterments of homelessness, on one of our little city’s main streets, a thing no one, but no one, will protest.

Washington woke would sooner flout the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath than speak ill of the grotesquerie that is unfolding on our streets. Since the term “virtue signaling” has become a cliché—a term insufficient to the task—let me offer an improvement. The progressive’s preening aims to emphasize his or her own providential purpose in the universe. To that end, progressives like to discredit the rest of us. That’s more like it .

When the appointment was scheduled, not a word of warning was forthcoming about the inquisition, the third degree, that would ensue at the front desk on the day of the visit. I’m healthy, masked and without fever. That ought to have been the end of it.

It was not. Shoved in my face on a stark sheet of paper, bereft of the office’s masthead, was the demand for my vaccination status. Well, of course. Doctor Lexus (diploma via Costco) wasn’t owning this disgrace. This was nothing to boast about.

I refused to divulge my vaccination status.

A commotion ensued, as the front-desk collective drew closer, bristling with hostility. The scene was straight out of Idiocracy. An unscannable, a person without a barcode, was loose among the human herd and it was desperate to recover the safety and security that comes with the warm smell of the herd.

Substitute “Covid” in the dialogue conducted between Joe Bowers, the Idiocracy’s protagonist, and the “tarded” Doctor Lexus, who discovers Bowers doesn’t have the identifying, state-mandated tattoo—and you get an idea of the exchange I had with representatives of one of the Evergreen State’s “tarded” doctors (language a bit salty).

Dr. Lexus (IQ around 60), whose speech embodies the best of Beavis and Butthead’s repartee—his affect even better—first “listens” to his patient, Joe Bowers (who, with an IQ of 100, is the smartest person in America circa 2505). Bowers tells doctor he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s seeing things. It could be because of the drugs the Army put him on. Could the good doctor just get him well enough to get back to base (America circa 2005)?

Dr. Lexus (critical faculties dulled, grinning dementedly but affably):

“Right, kick-a**. Don’t wanna sound like a d-ck or nothing, but it says here in your chart that you f-cked up. You talk like a f-g, and your sh-t’s all retarded. What I do is like (stops for a Beavis and Butthead interluding chuckle as he loses train of “thought”), err, like you know what I mean, like ah ah ah.”

AND: “Don’t worry scro,” Doctor Lexus assures his panicked patient. “There are plenty tards out there living really kicka** lives. My first wife was ‘tarded; she’s a pilot now.”

Time to pay:

Doctor (borderline retarded): “Ok. It will be this many dollars. And if you could just go ahead and, like, put your [Covid] tattoo in that s-it.”
Joe (realizing the date on the bill is 2505): “That’s weird. This thing has the same misprint as that magazine. What are the odds of–”
Doctor (trembling with fear, panic rising; he has encountered an unregistered individual): “Where’s your [Covid] tattoo? Tattoo? Why don’t you have this?”
Joe: “Oh, God!”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo?”
Joe: “Oh, my God.”
Doctor (squealing): “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”
Doctor (on the verge of hysteria): “Why come you don’t have a tattoo? You’re not an unscannable, are you?

Yes, the office of the Washington doctor had encountered an unscannable: me. The process of rejection took time. First, greedy mitts reached for my medical insurance card, but were told (slowly), “No service rendered; no payment.”

An exceedingly pleasant office manager then appeared. She presented the Covid Protocol on a plain sheet of paper, again without any identifying office markers but pock-marked with contradiction and medical disinformation. We talked through the contradictions to which the poor girl copped and for which she apologized, ashamed.

The first sentence declares that, “Patients who will not answer the question regarding their vaccination status will be seen, but the healthcare provider needs to know your vaccination status as part of your total care.” A medical lie. My general practitioner doesn’t ask this question. Neither does the optometrist. Contradictory bureaucratese then follows, stating that, “Patients refusing to disclose their vaccination status will be asked to reschedule their appointment for when they are prepared to disclose their vaccine status.”

Me to Office Manager: You are aware that I could shed as much virus whether vaccinated or not?

OM: I know. I’m sorry.

Me: So, if I don’t divulge my vaccination status?

She: You may come back when you are ready to.

Me: So, if I confess to being unvaccinated, will the doctor examine me?

OM: Yes, but he will leave the door open and the fan on.

Me: Having stripped me of my dignity, will he at least remove my mask, for that is surely necessary for a complete examination?

Office Manager: No.

Me: That’s not medicine. It also implies that I will be receiving inferior treatment and possibly an inferior outcome to a vaccinated individual.

She: I’m sorry. You are being very nice and polite about this. I just work here.

Unlike this medical Idiocracy, the wily little RNA strand that is Covid acts rationally.

The COVID index that matters is mortality; not the number of infected, with which we must learn to live. Covid is morphing in ways evolutionarily conducive to its long-term survival. It is, for the most—and just like the flu—living with its hosts, not killing them off.

The trajectory of a pandemic is such that it sees the infectious agent powering it become less lethal, not more lethal. COVID is thus now endemic. While the current BA.2 variant du jour is more transmissible, it is also much more benign than previous variants. It is as it should be. This, independent, honest epidemiologists will confirm. For their part, human beings have been acquiring natural immunity; and communities herd immunity.

The only deviants in this sad saga are those who’ve empowered themselves to deploy Covid as a cudgel against their betters.(read more)

The theatre troupe ThisEgg described their show as a “fun and silly performance about the painfully AWKWARD subject of sex, exploring names and functions, boundaries, consent, pleasure, queerness, sex, gender and relationships”.

Organisers suggested that the show would be suitable for children as young as five, despite featuring naked performers and covering sex in detail.

The group’s website also hosts a glossary of terminology to supposedly educate children on sexual concepts, including terms such as “hand job”, “squirting”, and “cum”.

Touting their leftist bona fides, the show claimed to be informed by an “intersectional, feminist, non-binary, anti-racist & sex-positive take on Relationships and Sex Education.”

The Family Sex Show also hosts a podcast in which they promote LGBT ideology, introducing each host by their gender pronouns and even apologising to future listeners if their language has become “dated” and offensive. Topics covered by the podcast include pornography and “pleasure”.

The planned performance drew considerable public backlash after it was highlighted by the anti-woke Reclaim Party’s Laurence Fox, who promoted a petition to shut down the show, which to date has already amassed over 39,000 signatures from the public.

Following the backlash, a statement posted on the Tobacco Factory Theatre website on Tuesday stated: “Performances of The Family Sex Show by ThisEgg at Tobacco Factory Theatres have been cancelled.

“This is due to the unprecedented threats and abuse directed at our building and team. We are sorry for the disappointment this causes to those who’ve booked. You will be contacted and refunds will be made available.”

Responding to the statement, Laurence Fox wrote on social media: “Threats and abuse? Or a visceral hatred of child sexual exploitation? You choose. We are watching.”

Defending the supposed lewd content of the show, a spokesman for the theatre company told the local Bristol Post that they crafted the Family Sex Show “with input and guidance from education and safeguarding specialists.”

“The nakedness in the show is not of a sexualised nature,” the spokesman added.

On social media, ThisEgg went on to say that while the Spring tour of the show has been cancelled, the group is still planning on putting on “private” performances and intend on staging the show for the public in the future.

Leftist theatre troupes in Britain have previously come under criticism for targeting children with lascivious content. In a notable example, the Redbridge Central Library in London hosted the ‘anti-racist’ performance arts group Mandinga, in which a man paraded around children in a rainbow monkey suit with a dildo attached to the front of his costume.

The event was held as a part of the library’s “Summer Reading Challenge”, which they put on in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The organisers described it as a “very special nature-themed Challenge that will inspire you to stand up for the planet.”

A London library sparked intense backlash after it hired a self-described anti-racist carnival troupe with a performer dressed up as a monkey with a large dildo hanging between his legs for a children’s reading event. https://t.co/HP7kHz9laI

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) July 12, 2021

Update (13:15 ET): What was largely a theoretical modeling exercise until moments ago, is set to go live because Reuters reports that the EU is set to declare a full embargo on Russian oil after this weekend's French election:

• EU GAS PRICE TO SHOOT UP AS EU TO DECLARE EMBARGO ON RUSSIAN OIL AFTER FRENCH ELECTION NEXT WEEK - SOURCE

Why wait until after the election to launch the embargo? Simple: Europe's bureaucrats are correctly terrified that the coming oil price spike to push the vote in Le Pen's favor, which is why Europe will wait until after the election (when Macron will supposedly be the next president of France, as Belgium hopes) to announce it publicly.

With that in mind, JPM now estimates that Russian production shut-ins will amount to 1.5 mbd in April, vs its initial forecast of 2 mbd (the forecast of a 1 mbd loss of Russian exports for the rest of the year remains unchanged for now). 

Underlying JPM's projection is the assumption that European buyers will cut their purchases of Russian oil by about 2.0-2.5 mbd by the end of the year and that Russia will be able to re-route only about 1 mbd out of that.

The three ways JPM gets to its 2.0-2.5 mbd estimate are:

1. Russian crude spot contracts account for about 1.8 mbd of total exports, while about 0.3 mbd of products are sold on spot terms, giving us a likely disruption of 2.1 mbd,
2. As of today, nine European countries plus the US, Canada and the UK have committed to cut their imports of Russian oil by ~2.1 mbd,
3. 26 major European refiners and trading companies have suspended spot purchases or intend to phase out 2.1 mbd of Russian imports.

Of course, it will come as no surprise to anyone that aggressive purchases of Russian oil by China and India - who have both ramped up purchases of Russian oil in the past two months, and Turkey has also increased volumes to pre-COVID levels - have offset some of the loss. Given time, JPM estimates that together these three countries can likely import an additional 1 mbd beyond what they are importing today.

Which brings us to the big question: if Europe follows through on its warning to expand sanctions to all Russian oil, what happens to the price? Well, according to JPMorgan, nothing good.

As JPM's commodity strategist Natasha Kaneva writes, she has reviewed various scenarios should Europe expand its sanctions to include Russian oil, and warns that "any immediate embargo measure taken by the European Commission will have a severe impact on the global oil market with risks to price entirely to the upside in the short-term."

The bank has examined three potential tools the EU could use to sanction Russian oil, from the most aggressive, a full embargo on imports from Russia, to the more conservative, taxes or price caps on Russia oil imports. In any scenario, to avoid the extreme price spikes, the market needs time to adjust.

A look at the various scenarios, starting with the most draconian:

• A full and immediate embargo is likely to hurt European consumers more than Russian producers in the near term. More importantly, a full, immediate ban would likely drive Brent crude oil prices to $185/bbl as more than 4 mbd of Russian oil supplies would be displaced with neither room nor time to re-route them to China, India, or other potential substitute buyers.

Some more details on the "full embargo" scenario:

Though India has already increased its imports of Russian oil to three times 2021 levels, its ability to continue to act as a sink for displaced Russian oil supply remains in question as the US warns India not to increase imports further.

• However, if Europe implements an embargo more slowly, e.g. over a period of months, similar to the European ban on Russian coal imports where a wind-down period of four months is in place, prices are unlikely to rise much higher than current levels.
• In a slower phase out, Russia would have more time to adjust its oil flows toward friendlier buyers and global ex-OPEC+ supply growth would have time to grow sufficiently to fill at least some of the Russia-sized hole in global oil supply.

The Suezmax also received SPR crude from Aframax Eagle Hatteras, which loaded at same terminal in first week of April.

The Advantage Spring was chartered by Atlantic Trading, an affiliate of  [French oil company] Total, ship fixtures data show.

It appears that somehow the definition of emergency now includes making a profit at the expense of American consumers because sooner or later a real emergency will hit and then it will be too late, while easing the true energy emergency over in Europe.

According to Matt Smith, oil analyst at commodity data firm Kpler, this is the first export of SPR crude since last November. Which means the oil was apportioned from Biden's shock SPR release.

One wonders what is behind Biden's decision to make US emergency SPR oil available across the Atlantic; one can only hope that it doesn't mean that in the coming midterms mail in ballots will also be made available to Europeans... (read more)

CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CF), a leading global manufacturer of hydrogen and nitrogen products, today informed customers it serves by Union Pacific rail lines that railroad-mandated shipping reductions would result in nitrogen fertilizer shipment delays during the spring application season and that it would be unable to accept new rail sales involving Union Pacific for the foreseeable future. The Company understands that it is one of only 30 companies to face these restrictions.

CF Industries ships to customers via Union Pacific rail lines primarily from its Donaldsonville Complex in Louisiana and its Port Neal Complex in Iowa. The rail lines serve key agricultural areas such as Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California.

Products that will be affected include nitrogen fertilizers such as urea and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) as well as diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), an emissions control product required for diesel trucks. CF Industries is the largest producer of urea, UAN and DEF in North America, and its Donaldsonville Complex is the largest single production facility for the products in North America.

“The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers,” said Tony Will, president and chief executive officer, CF Industries Holdings, Inc. “Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.”

On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective immediately. The Company was told to reduce its shipments by nearly 20%.

CF Industries believes it will still be able to fulfill delivery of product already contracted for rail shipment to Union Pacific destinations, albeit with likely delays. However, because Union Pacific has told the Company that noncompliance will result in the embargo of its facilities by the railroad, CF Industries may not have available shipping capacity to take new rail orders involving Union Pacific rail lines to meet late season demand for fertilizer.  (read more)

Things get increasingly curious when you look at who owns majority stakes in CF Industries (manufacturer), and who owns Union Pacific (distribution):

The top two shareholders of CF Industries are Vanguard and Blackrock. (read more)

A Pennsylvania school board has rejected an after-school Satan Club for an elementary school.

Northern Elementary School in York, considered the introduction of the Satan Club at Tuesday night’s meeting. The club, which was proposed and pushed by a parent at the school, was initially rejected by the principal. However, the club was up for a probationary vote at the school board.

"The After School Satan Club is an after-school program that promotes self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students," the Satanic Temple states on its website.

The Satanic Temple has been making a concerted effort to push into elementary and grade schools in opposition to Christian after-school clubs.

The Satanic Temple opened an after-school "Satan Club" in a Moline, Illinois, elementary school, as part of its nationwide campaign to push back against the Christian Good News Clubs offered to schoolchildren after regular-hour classes.

Parents protested outside the Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline when the first after-school Satan Club met there in January.

The Satanic Temple, which runs the program, said students would be offered activities such as science and crafts projects, puzzles and games — and that they would learn about benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving and creative expression, too.

Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple spokesperson, told Fox News about the clubs, "I'm hoping that with our presence, people can see that good people can have different perspectives, sometimes on the same mythology, but not mean any harm." (read more)

“Hey, conservatives: I present to you a no-lose issue with broad-based appeal. Schools are teaching that biological sex doesn’t exist, ‘women’ are a social construct, and small children should be told they can swap genders. You can ride this one to victory!”

Establishment conservatives: “No way we’re touching that. We plan on winning the tranny vote by pointing out that the Democrats are the real transphobes.”

MAGAs: “We’ll take it, but we’ll make our response needlessly complex and divisive until we’ve shifted and muddied the entire debate. MAGAs AWAAAAAAAY!”

Transgenderism is an ideology pushed by the mentally ill and their enablers who insist that if we don’t “see” what trannies see (that a man in a wig is as much a woman as your mom), mass suicides will result.

As I wrote five years ago,

Trannies need us to play along or the entire illusion comes crashing down. Think “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” but with a psychologically fragile monarch and a kingdom full of subjects afraid that if they speak the truth, the emperor will kill himself. Viewed that way, the little boy at the story’s end is the villain.

The trans lobby has already done a real job on teens, using the cognitive peculiarities of the teen brain to their advantage. Teens strive to be popular, so you make trans acceptance an instrument of popularity. For teens who feel like outcasts, you tell them, “Be trans and we’ll accept you.” For “rebel” teens, you tell them, “Go trans; it’ll really piss off mom and dad.” And for teens afflicted with idealism, you tell them, “Trannyism is the civil rights movement of the 2020s!”

The lobby’s been so successful that, according to the University of Winnipeg’s Dr. Marilyn Simon, it’s become social death at high schools and middle schools to call yourself “cis” (Simon cites cases of “cis” kids being bullied, another instance of the lobby exploiting a teen weakness: the desire to bully).

However, studies have found that of teens who identify as “trans,” between 65% to 94% grow out of it once removed from the high school terrarium.

Therefore, indoctrination at a much younger age is needed. Get ’em in kindergarten—imprint the brains when they’re soft ’n’ spongy. Kindergartners don’t possess teenage cynicism; they believe whatever teacher says (again, exploiting cognitive vulnerabilities).

The key point here is that the indoctrinators are spreading a belief system. They’re mentally scrambling kids on gender. But the goal is not to physically rape them. To reduce this complex dynamic down to “sexual grooming” is misleading, because what’s going on has way more in common with the Khmer Rouge than it does with Albert Fish.

Yes, there are pedo teachers. But the in-class conditioning (“Who here has a penis but feels like a girl on the inside? Yay, you’re a hero!”) is not in the service of teachers wanting sex. It’s ideologues trying to remake mankind. It’s New Soviet Tran.

The “say groomer” crusade on the right is coming from the wrong place. You do it because you think it cheeses off leftists. But this fight is too important to be sidetracked by your self-indulgence. Some of you are so immersed in Twitter, you see the entire world as you vs. leftist tweeters. Like Breitbart.com’s John Hayward, who frames the entire matter as rightist activists vs. leftist activists. They call us “racist,” we call them “groomers.” Fight ugly! Dirty! Like they do! Take that, leftist Twitter.

This guy’s fighting an imaginary war between himself and his left-wing mirror images. It’s a fight that can’t be won. Neither side will ever say, “You’re right, I’m a racist” or “You’re right, I’m a groomer,” and even if that happened, nothing would change on the ground regarding schools. These are just man-children war-playing with cap guns.

Your desire to “cheese off” leftists takes you out of the real fight and into Hayward’s virtual one. All focus should be on “Schools shouldn’t teach small children that gender doesn’t exist and teachers shouldn’t quiz first graders on their ‘sexuality.’” But you’ve launched a side skirmish that’s fun for you but irrelevant to the main battle. Why do you think the media’s devoting so much ink to the “groomer slur” thing? You think leftists are giving the right’s groomer crusade attention because they’re “running scared,” they’re “nervous,” “rattled,” because you’re “onto them”?

Stop flattering yourselves. The media’s amplifying the “say groomer” crusade because it distracts from the core issues parents care about. You think “say groomer” is the most brilliant strategy ever, so you interpret the media attention as “It’s working!” Because you can’t imagine being wrong. And that’s how you get played.

This debate doesn’t need your strategizing. Stopping trans propaganda in schools sells itself; your catchy slogans aren’t needed, Don Draper.

Last week I described the educators who labor quietly and single-mindedly to further the tranny agenda as “worker bees.” They’re successful because like all worker bees, they’re banal. Yes, we all love to mock those “libs of TikTok” videos of freakish tattooed teachers with pierced septums. But they’re the minority. Think of every pro-CRT, pro-tranny school-board member you’ve seen. They’re ordinary people you wouldn’t notice at the grocery store.

They’re invisible, doing their work out-of-sight. They’re predominantly women, and they’re not trying to have sex with kids. They’re working with quiet, fanatical dedication to remake how children see gender and themselves, in service of an ideology, not their own personal sexual desires.

But whereas leftists have worker bees, every rightist activist wants to be a mastermind, to stand out for their brilliance and bravery. Hence why so many “say groomer” rightists boast on Twitter about what genius strategists they are.

An army of generals! And when has an army of generals ever won a war? Worker bees always beat “masterminds,” because masterminds are in it for the personal glory and the public fight, whereas worker bees quietly do their thing in secret.

You people spent four years moaning about the “deep state,” and yet apparently you never grasped how the “deep state” actually works, how as Trump was out there being a mastermind, a legion of quiet gray-suit faceless bureaucrats embedded in the system thwarted him.

So stop being a mastermind for one minute and look at these polls. Parents don’t like the educational system in general (by a wide margin), but they like their own kids’ schools and teachers (by a wider margin).

What do you take away from that, oh great masterminds? Anything?

Assailing the character of teachers as a group, calling them groomers and pedos, will alienate parents, because parents like the teachers they personally know, and they’ll lose trust in you if you tell them something about their teachers that they know isn’t true.

The overwhelming majority of America’s teachers are women (76%; 89% at elementary-school level). Parents will have difficulty picturing old schoolmarm Schumaker as a pedo. And I can hear you right now yelling, “Ghislaine Maxwell was a groomer! Women can be groomers!” So now you’ll find yourself in a debate with parents over that, creating yet another side skirmish that draws everyone away from the main battle.

In The Federalist last week, Kylee Zempel straight-out lied about the ABA’s definition of groomer. She declared that groomers needn’t be working toward actual physical molestation; a groomer can just be sexualizing kids for some future pedophile “system.” And she claimed that the ABA backs that up, but the ABA link she provided(!) makes it clear that the term always applies to someone seeking direct sexual contact.

Debating/distorting the meaning of groomer helps parents how? Another side-side skirmish, another distraction, another gift to the left.

Also, because you’re trying to push the notion of a nationwide cabal of groomers, you’re conflating old debates with the current existential threat. The debate over sex ed in schools goes back to the 1970s at least. The debate over telling kids about masturbation goes back to the AIDS crisis and Joycelyn Elders. These debates have been going on for generations. A lot of today’s parents grew up with a positive view of sex ed in the classroom. Focus on that and you’ll lose those parents. Concentrate on what those parents didn’t grow up with, on the unfamiliar, on what they’ll find shocking: children at their most impressionable age being taught that “girl” and “boy” are fake concepts, as they’re quizzed on their own sexuality and whether they’re “cis, trans, or bi.”

All that’s needed to help parents fight gender indoctrination in schools is to expose the classroom materials and lesson plans and there, that’s it. Let the foulness of the material do the talking. Teachers are trying to force a belief system on kids, and now you’re doing the same thing to parents, because the idea that teachers pushing tranny ideology are pedo groomers is itself a belief system. You might think it’s true, but it’s still something that must be taken on faith.

So you’re trying to fight a belief system by pushing a counter belief system. That’s retarded, because the facts are on your side (the abhorrent lesson plans). But that’s not enough for you. You need to enforce your own belief system because you’re so in love with your own smarts, and because there ain’t a silk purse in creation that rightists can’t turn into a sow’s ear.

You love the fight more than the win, while worker bees do nothing but labor toward the win.

Just give people the what. Let them speculate about the why. That way, you can assemble a broad-based coalition of voters. A recent poll by Yahoo/YouGov found (much to Yahoo’s dismay) that only 52% of Democrats oppose DeSantis’ recently signed law.

Two takeaways:

(1) The Dems who support DeSantis’ law aren’t part of the rightist “say groomer” circle, so why enforce an orthodoxy that pushes them away? Why play word games when you’re winning a case on the merits?

(2) Apparently, the leftist strategy of demanding that the law be referred to as “don’t say gay” isn’t working. Why mimic a losing strategy by pushing your own “must say” words to match theirs, when theirs are failing?

The rightist cap-gun generals are responding to critics of “say groomer” with exactly the predictability that makes them so manipulable. Anyone not down with the crusade is a “cuck” or a “shill” who lacks the balls to fight Breitbart-style!

The pressure’s so strong, it’s likely that soon enough parents who protest their local school board will feel the need to say groomer or else Tucker won’t support them.

And that’s exactly what the left hopes will happen. Make a mainstream movement appear fringy and cultish, with its own vocabulary and doctrine. The left wants you to ensure that parents no longer say, “I’m here to protest this lesson plan, which I’ll read from,” but instead say, “I’m here to fight the cabal of pedo groomers,” so they look like loons.

Go ahead, masterminds—walk straight into that trap.

You’ll blow an easy win. (read more)

Now, the Biden DOJ finds themselves in a hot political place.  Biden is stuck between the mentally and emotionally unstable Covidians (10%) and the normal Americans (90%).  If the DOJ doesn’t challenge the ruling, the Covidians will be even more mad. [Psaki Transcript Here]

(WASHINGTON DC) – […]  White House press secretary Jen Psaki, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to New Hampshire, said the Justice Department was still reviewing the ruling and noted that these reviews typically take a few days. She pointed out that the CDC had said previously it needed 15 days to evaluate public health data related to the mask mandate.

“Public health decisions shouldn’t be made by the courts. They should be made by public health experts,” Ms. Psaki said.

Republicans and some Democrats praised Monday’s ruling by the judge, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, a Republican. “It’s about time,” said Rep. Sam Graves, the top Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “This hypocritical and overreaching mandate was never about health or science.” (read more)

“It was a wonderful surprise to hear of Judge Mizelle’s ruling yesterday that vacated CDC’s unlawful Federal Transportation Mask Mandate,” said Janviere Carlin of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, a JetBlue pilot based in Boston who coordinated the enormous amount of signatures on the amicus curiae brief filed in support of 13 flyers from nine states and the District of Columbia who brought six lawsuits challenging the TSA’s legal authority. “Despite this wonderful judgment striking down CDC’s ability to force masking, we still filed our brief in the Wall v TSA case because we are not fooled into thinking that this administration will give up so easily.”

In their 36-page brief with 17 exhibits, the airline workers argued that TSA must be permanently enjoined from ever again issuing health directives that have nothing to do with transportation security. Pilots and flight attendants told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that TSA’s mask mandate violates Federal Aviation Administration safety regulations; creates chaos in the sky, recklessly endangering aviation safety and security; the agency failed to take into account that airplane cabins pose little risk for coronavirus spread; masks pose serious health risks to humans forced to wear them, including those who work in the transport sector; and it fails to comply with Occupational Safety & Health Administration rules for face coverings.

“We are subject to the Mask Mandate every hour we are working, with an exception only for pilots on duty in the cockpit due to safety reasons,” according to the filing. “While passengers only have to endure forced masking when traveling on public transportation, we are expected to obstruct our oxygen intake nearly all the time while at work. This endangers our health and imperils aviation safety.”

The 13 petitioners, 11 of whom can’t wear masks due to medical conditions, filed their final opening brief this morning as well as a letter stating their intent to continue prosecuting the case even though TSA yesterday said it would stop enforcing the mask mandate, at least for now, while the government weighs whether to appeal.

Friendly briefs were also filed by two disabled women discriminated against by Delta Air Lines for their inability to wear masks and the Advocates for Disabled Americans.

Carlin and many other signers are members of Americans Against Mask Mandates, a coalition with 14 active lawsuits attacking the mask mandate’s legality, including those filed last month by 10 pilots and nine flight attendants.

“We will continue to fight against illegal mandates and demand accountability in our government and its agencies so that they will never forget that they work for us, we the people, not the other way around,” she said. “As airline workers commandeered by CDC and TSA to be the mask police, resulting in chaos in the sky, we have been closely following the many cases against the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate. We filed this amicus brief because the Court of Appeals case exposes that, in addition to being unsafe and necessary, the mask mandate also discriminates against Americans with disabilities who can’t tolerate having their breathing blocked. We all share the same end goal of making sure that an unelected government agency can never do this again.”

Just like CDC lacks legal authority from Congress to mandate what travelers places on their faces, the 309 pilots and flight attendants contend that “TSA’s role has always been limited to security issues, i.e. preventing intentional attack on our transportation system. The pre-eminent goal of the agency is to prevent another Sept. 11, 2001. TSA has never been granted authority or funding to conduct a general safety mission such as preventing accidents from happening – much less a public health mission.”

Petitioners in the six cases, which were filed around the country but then consolidated in Washington, ask the court to declare the TSA orders illegal and unconstitutional, vacate them immediately, and permanently enjoin TSA from ever requiring masks in the future. They argue the FTMM must be struck down because it violates the Air Carrier Access Act; the Fifth Amendment right to due process; the constitutional guarantee of freedom to travel; the 10th Amendment; TSA and CDC’s statutory and regulatory authority; the Administrative Procedure Act; the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act; and two international treaties.

“We filed this brief because we need to stand up for our rights as human beings,” said Laurie Parke of Clermont, Florida, a Delta flight attendant based in Orlando. “These masks negatively affect our job in so many ways, including our ability to work safely.”

Tammy Gipp of Las Vegas, Nevada, who is on medical leave due to her inability to wear a mask, praised yesterday’s ruling but cautioned it’s only a victory in one battle; the war against mask mandates must continue.

“We are thrilled and once again have faith in the judicial system of our country,” she said. “We are hopeful that this ruling will set precedent, but all these other cases must proceed so they too can serve as a backup to uphold our great Constitution.”

Cristina Field of Sumter, South Carolina, a pilot for PSA Airlines (American Eagle), described it as emotional watching flight attendants break down in tears of celebration yesterday after two years of forced masking and having to police passengers.

“The fact that ours was the last industry that the federal government clung to controlling with a mask mandate will not soon be forgotten,” she said. “The mental-health issues incurred from being ordered to enforce this mandate or lose our jobs will take many years to recover from. We will continue to fight to ensure nothing like this ever happens again, which is why it was so important for hundreds of us to band together to support the petitioners in the Court of Appeals attacking TSA’s legal authority to impose health regulations. After countless times sitting in my car in the employee parking lot, psyching myself up, dreading going into work to only see a sea of faceless, angry people, I finally look forward to seeing smiles again.”

Kathryn Gill of Alexandria, Virginia, a United flight attendant based in Washington, expressed her gratitude to Judge Mizelle in Tampa, Florida, for “striking down the overreach of CDC and the Biden Administration on the mask mandate. Masks should be a freedom of choice. Now we have to make sure TSA can never reimpose this tyrannical mandate.”

Beth Ellis, a JetBlue pilot from Blackstone, Massachusetts, said that “after taking a moment to celebrate this exciting news, it is important to make certain this never happens again. Medical decisions are personal and not the concern of the government. We are born with certain unalienable rights and the government can’t take those rights away. It’s time to choose liberty over mandates of tyranny. It is important to support the other litigants in their fight against TSA’s totalitarian policy that Congress never approved.”

The consolidated case is Wall v. Transportation Security Administration, No. 21-1220, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Download the docket. (read more)

A parent dressed in an Easter Bunny costume caused “chaos” after handing out eggs filled with candy — and some packed with unopened condoms — at an elementary school in Austin, Texas.

“Not sure this is the Austin weird I signed up for,” parent Nathan Jensen said in an April 14 social media post.

The candy and condom giveaway happened during pickup time, Jensen said.

Gullett Elementary School officials sent a letter to parents explaining what happened and saying that the visit had not been planned or approved by staff, KXAN reported.

“We are working to review our safety protocols to ensure this does not happen again,” a district spokesperson told the outlet. “It was an incredibly careless and inappropriate action of a parent.”

Officials spoke with the parent in the costume, and the Austin ISD Police Department is investigating whether to press charges, KEYE reported.

But it may have all been an accident, Jensen wrote in a tweet.

The parent is a pharmacist who was taking part in a safe sex clinic while dressed in the bunny suit, Jensen said in a tweet. Afterward, she went to pick up her second-grade student from school and decided to hand out candy, in costume.

The parent “got mobbed by kids” and called her husband to bring more candy-filled eggs, the tweet said. “Her husband brought the wrong eggs,” and “chaos ensued.”

McClatchy News has reached out to Austin ISD officials for comment. (read more)

So, Musk, freed from Tesla’s financial, shall we say creativity, now has real Fuck You Money. Not stock. Not assets. Cash.

And that cash he’s putting on the line today to force the moment of Twitter’s malfeasance as a public entity to its crisis point.

He has succeeded brilliantly.

He doesn’t even need to actually take control of Twitter. He’s already won.

By forcing Twitter’s board, who doesn’t own any shares in the company, to adopt a Poison Pill strategy, Musk has revealed them to be more interested in maintaining Twitter as a social control response engine rather than as a public company with a responsibility to shareholders.

The fact is, Twitter is a poison pill for society at large, all Musk did was put a price on it.

And I have to give Musk his due here, he’s performed one of the greatest public services in recent memory exposing the lengths to which Davos et.al. are willing to go to maintain their power. Because that’s what mass media to them is, a conduit of their power.

This goes far beyond Twitter’s obvious censorship and editorial bias. Musk is absolutely right that Twitter is broken. But the board and its investors willfully broke it years ago to serve a larger agenda.

The Skinner Box Bot Army

He’s also exposed just how seductive the power Twitter wields is to the people who work there. The histrionics of the employees, treating Musk’s offer like Armageddon itself, tells you they see Twitter as their personal Skinner Box to shock people into submission to their warped and solipsistic worldview.

This is the true face of stakeholder capitalism. It’s the future they have planned for us through ESG, no different really than the tyranny of the Human Resources Officer or the Compliance Officer.

When news of Musk’s bid went viral, the voices of a million Wesley Mauch’s cried out in protest.

After all, they have a revolution, or at least personal revenge fantasies, to carry out to inject poison pills into the public discourse ad nauseam.

Twitter has become a plaything of big money oligarchs using it to fuel a bot army to enrage you and waste your time. Simultaneously using those distractions to pursue a policy of blatant bias while hiding behind a broken regulatory model.

Tucker Carlson pointed out in his recent monologue that Musk has risked far more here than it looks like at first glance. The hatred and vitriol he’s uncovered goes all the way up to the SEC and the DoJ who are now investigating Tesla, further proving that these institutions are about protecting the government from the people rather than the people from thieves.

But it’s also yet another example of just how brittle and unstable these control systems are. Because who owns Twitter shouldn’t be this important. But it is.

Control systems work best when they are invisible.

Like the Doomsday Device from Dr. Strangelove which only works if everyone knows about it, Twitter as social control system only works if everyone doesn’t know it’s being used that way.

Forget the cartoons like Max Boot, Julia Ioffe, Brian Stelter and the rest of the blue-checkmarked Stasi in the media who still think they have power, the real threat to the public discourse is the unaccountability of functionaries who work at these anti-social media companies and the people who empower them.

The Persona’s The Thing

I know it’s all cool and edgy to hate Twitter, but used properly micro-blogging is a powerful tool. On the other hand, I’ve been post-Facebook for over four years and I don’t miss it a bit. I identified it then as fake intimacy and:

… a pale simulacra of real life interactions with people you are supposed to care about.

But, I don’t care about 99% of the people I went to high school with. I went to college 1100 miles from those people and barely looked back. The people I truly value from that part of my life mostly feel about Facebook the way I do.

That’s what makes them people I value.

They value the value of their closely-held opinions and don’t dilute it by publicly sharing their banality. They realize that being friends is more than dropping political stink bombs in someone’s digital living room and saying, “I dare you to not breathe.”

So, here you are on a platform that is supposed to be all about you and the last thing anyone really wants to be on Facebook is … themselves.

But Twitter is different, it’s a brilliant tool for advertising and networking. It’s also the place where the battle for ideas should play out. Twitter isn’t about being you, it’s about preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet, to quote T.S. Eliot. Used as a means to build a public persona who is both you and not you is part of its inherent charm.

Unfortunately, it’s been co-opted by culture warriors whose ideas can’t stand up to public scrutiny for the purpose of turning the public sphere into a 24/7/365 struggle session.

And this where Twitter’s real value lies and what Musk must restore if he wins this fight, in puncturing the veil of moral superiority, virtue signaling and ‘the latest thing’ of its NPC sycophants and spit in the eye of the naked emperor.

I believe Musk understands this perfectly, since he’s created the perfect Twitter persona, the billionaire of the people who can leap tall narratives in a single tweet.

It’s why they fear him and why we should back his play.

Not for his ego, but for ours.

Residual Poison

It’s been a year since r/WallStreetBets took us on a wild ride in Game Stop. Now Musk can take his finely crafted persona and turn it into an army ready to take the front lines of the culture war from the chat room to the board room.

There are many ways to beat a poison pill strategy adopted by Twitter’s board. The main one being what Musk’s already done, offer them more than the company is worth. The other is to gather a coalition of investors ready to overthrow the board without triggering the poison pill itself.

And if the board and Twitter’s Skinner Box Commandos would rather burn it to the ground than let it fall into the hands of their enemies, then so be it.

At that point, we can let a thousand flowers bloom in the ashes of Twitter’s dumpster fire.

This is the path to unlock Twitter’s value to society and free it from all editorial constraints and government censors. Force the poisoners of society to take the poison pill themselves and let the truth free.

If Musk is successful he should rebuild the company culture from the ground up and build the tools necessary to allow people to naturally curate content they want, their way and let the best ideas win.

Win or lose, are we all not entertained? (read more)