The Political Rise of Ultra-Orthodox Jews Shakes Israel's Sense of Identity

This is interesting.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Fast-growing group of religious conservatives allies with Netanyahu to take on Supreme Court, spawning mass protest movement; mandatory military service emerges as a key issue":

BNEI BRAK, Israel—Since Israel’s founding, mandatory military service for Jewish Israelis has been widely embraced as a unifying force in a divided society.

Now the issue threatens to tear the country apart. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, a fast-growing and potent political bloc, have long shunned military duty along with other aspects of secular society. Their effort to obtain a permanent exemption from service has repeatedly been foiled by Israel’s Supreme Court. Allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, they are pushing for a judicial overhaul to weaken the court.

The first part of the overhaul, which sparked mass protests that have shaken Israel for 28 straight weeks, is expected to be ratified by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, as early as Sunday.

The clash goes to the heart of Israel’s inherent identity issue: Is it a modern liberal democracy or a society defined by religion? Many secular Israelis see the judicial reforms as a step toward increasing the power of people who would use religion to roll back fundamental civil rights.

“Secular society wants a full modern state,” said Gilad Malach, a scholar with the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank. “The ultra-Orthodox aim is to have a strong religious society.”

Ultra-Orthodox Jews such as Yehoshua Menuchin, who at 40 has a wife, six sons and no steady job, refer to themselves as Haredim, meaning those who tremble before God. Many Haredi men don’t work regularly, instead choosing to study holy texts in religious seminaries called yeshivas. They argue that they contribute to the state in their own way by preserving Jewish tradition and providing divine protection for Israel.

“I don’t think we are making any less of a sacrifice,” Menuchin said. “I’ve passed on the pleasures of this world. I’ve given up on restaurants, on the cinema, on going to clubs. I’ve given up many things in my life.”

One element of Israeli society Menuchin and many other Haredim avoid is mandatory military service, a rite of passage in mainstream Israeli society. Most Jewish men and women spend two to three years in the army beginning at the age of 18. Friendships made in the army can also serve as the basis for professional connections after military life.

The Israeli Supreme Court has twice struck down legislation aimed at formally exempting Haredim from the draft, most recently in 2017 on the grounds that it created unequal treatment of citizens. The court has permitted temporary exemptions so that the government can find a solution.

Those decisions exacerbated friction between religious conservatives and the Supreme Court, which has long served as a strong defender of individual liberties, upholding the rights of Israel’s Arab citizens, women and LGBTQ people.

The Haredim now have the political heft to fight back. Their two political parties—one representing Jews of European descent and the other Jews from the greater Middle East—make up the second-largest bloc in the current government after Likud, with 18 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. They are key to Netanyahu’s grip on power, since his alliance controls just 64 seats in total. They have often threatened to leave the coalition if their various demands aren’t met.

The Haredi bloc in the Knesset hopes to enact legislation that would permit separating men and women in some public places. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu called the Supreme Court “the most activist judicial court on the planet,” and said that “there is a growing understanding in the Israeli public that there’s a need for judicial reform.” Still, he says he has aimed to moderate several of the original proposals and instead “proceed in a measured way.”

The government wants to overhaul the system and hand more power to elected officials. Proposals include striking the court’s ability to overturn government decisions and giving lawmakers a majority say on the committee that picks new judges.

The backlash from secular Israelis and some moderate religious Jews has been intense.

In March, Ron Scherf, a 51-year-old reserve lieutenant colonel, helped organize a march through Bnei Brak, Israel’s largest Haredi city. Protesters carried signs urging Haredim to join the military. Some Haredim dropped fliers on protesters saying they would never serve in an “apostate” army.”

“We really believe there needs to be a new contract in Israel between the secular and Haredim,” Scherf said. “I don’t see a way that Israel can exist as a liberal, prosperous and strong country if the current situation doesn’t change.”

“We are getting close to a major clash,” counters Yisrael Cohen, a popular Haredi media figure. “If no side takes responsibility, it won’t end up in a good place.”

Military service aside, many in Israel believe the Haredi way of life represents a direct threat to the future prosperity of the country. About half of Haredi men don’t work. Instead, they pursue religious studies and live off a combination of their wives’s salaries, charity, government grants and subsidies. With a steadily increasing birthrate that today stands at around 6.5 children per female, compared with around 3.0 for the general population, according to the Israeli central bureau of statistics, the roughly 1.3 million Haredim represent 13.3% of the population. As its fastest-growing segment, they are on pace to be nearly one-third of all Israelis by 2065.

Haredim have used their political power to expand discounts on municipal taxes, subsidies for early child care and rental assistance for large low-income families—benefits that are technically available to all Israelis but that tend to favor Haredim because of their demographic characteristics. They or their yeshivas also enjoy stipends or grants for around 140,000 Haredim men who study full-time, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. The Institute, led by a former centrist politician, found Haredim pay one-third less in taxes than non-Haredi families.

In a letter to Netanyahu in May, over 200 leading Israeli economists warned that a plan to increase funding to Haredi educational institutions that refuse to teach secular subjects, along with the increase in stipends for full-time Torah learners, would transform Israel into a “Third World” economy by leaving Haredi children unprepared for today’s workforce.

The Haredim aim to expand religion in even more areas of public life. Since Netanyahu returned to power last year, they have passed a law allowing hospitals to ban bread products from entering public hospitals over the Jewish holiday of Passover. They have also said they hope to enact legislation that would permit separating men and women in some public places or events frequented by Haredim, something widely recognized by Israeli lawyers as unconstitutional.

Haredim already wield tremendous power over many aspects of public life. They control the Rabbanut, a governmental body that oversees marriage and divorce and determines who is a Jew. The Rabbanut’s long-standing refusal to recognize any non-Orthodox branches of Judaism has been a point of tension, particularly among diaspora Jews. They also have managerial control over prominent Jewish holy sites.

The recent protests in Bnei Brak left Yehoshua Menuchin’s wife, Dvora, unimpressed. “The people who are protesting, they don’t know anything about Judaism,” she said. “They are like babies. If they knew about Judaism, they wouldn’t do this.”

Her neighborhood is crowded, loud and vivacious, with pedestrians—including many children—filling the sidewalks on narrow streets lined with sacred book stores and small eateries selling traditional Eastern European Jewish food such as kugel, gefilte fish and cholent. On each corner and by each bus station stand rows of charity boxes, much of which will end up going to yeshiva students and their families...

Witness Describes Moment When U.S. Army Private Travis King Crossed the Demilitarized Line Into North Korea (VIDEO)

Following-up, "U.S. Army Soldier in North Korean Custody After Crossing Border 'Voluntarily'."

It turns out the kid was in big trouble and was in the midst of being sent back to the U.S., apparently for some kind of disciplinary action. Private King may have literally defected.

At WSJ yesterday, "Travis King, U.S. Soldier Held in North Korea, Had Been Detained in South Korea: The American’s ‘willful’ entry to the North instead of facing disciplinary actions creates fresh challenge for Washington and Pyongyang."

The Autism Surge

This is an amazing article. 

I mean, there's just so much information here. As a parent of a child "on the spectrum," it's quite refreshing.

At the Free Press:

"Autism? We had hardly heard the term growing up, and we had nothing remotely like it up our family trees. Yet here we were, handed a devastating diagnosis. All around us grew a rapidly rising tide of autism."

An enormously powerful piece by @JillEscher:https://t.co/il9qv9HKhN

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) July 20, 2023

Allie Forever!

This woman, oh god.

On Instagram:

U.S. Army Soldier in North Korean Custody After Crossing Border 'Voluntarily'

This is really bizarre.

I'm still figuring out this story. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Soldier Held in North Korea After Crossing Border: American man on a tour of South Korean side of the Joint Security Area crossed over the military demarcation line without permission, U.N. says."

A U.S. National on a JSA orientation tour crossed, without authorization, the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident. pic.twitter.com/a6amvnJTuY

— United Nations Command 유엔군사령부/유엔사 (@UN_Command) July 18, 2023

'Push'

It's Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty:

Heather Mac Donald, When Race Trumps Merit

At Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., In Hot Water After Comments Suggesting Chinese and Jews Were Spared Covid (VIDEO)

Kennedy's desperately denying things on Twitter. 

But he says it.

At the New York Post, "RFK Jr. says COVID may have been ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews."

And here comes the New York Times with the antisemitism angle: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese."

You be the judge:

The 2024 Election Is a Fight Over America's Way of Life

Yeah. Isn't the next election always the one to save the American way of life? How's that been working out?

At WSJ, "GOP voters see a country corrupted by liberal ideals":

To win Jason Stewart’s vote, a presidential candidate should talk about stopping illegal immigration, taming inflation and keeping academic theories about race out of the classroom. But one overarching task is more important to the 51-year-old Republican than any single issue: rescuing American culture from liberals.

“Democrats and liberals have invaded every aspect of culture for the past 40 or 50 years, and we’re at a line-in-the-sand moment for conservatives,” said Stewart, a sales executive and Army veteran who lives outside Philadelphia. “What I’m looking for in a candidate is someone who can put up a fight across multiple fronts.”

The animating force in the Republican presidential primary, many voters and policy leaders say, is a feeling that American society—the government, the media, Hollywood, academia and big business—has been corrupted by liberal ideas about race, gender and other social matters. Democrats, in turn, feel that conservatives have used their political power in red states and in building a Supreme Court majority to undermine abortion rights and threaten decades of work to broaden equal rights for minority groups.

That has turned the next race for the White House into an existential election, with voters on both sides fearing not just a loss of political influence but also the destruction of their way of life.

“My biggest fear is about advancing that far-right agenda,” said Laurie Spezzano, 68, a Democrat and insurance agent in Louisville, Ky., who believes one of her own senators, Republican Mitch McConnell, subverted the legitimacy of the Supreme Court by using his leadership post to block a Democratic nominee to the court and to advance GOP nominees. Abortion rights have been diminished, she said, and gay rights in employment and marriage are at risk.

“I’ve never been against all Republicans, but it’s gotten to where they’re really scary now,” she said.

Republican Julie Duggan, by contrast, sees conservative values and traditional gender roles under attack amid social change that is moving too quickly. “It’s like half the country has lost their minds. People don’t even know what gender they are,” said Duggan, 31, a public safety worker in Chicago. If Republicans lose again, “it’s going to be the downfall of our society.” The Heritage Foundation, the conservative policy institute, has brought together 60 right-of-center organizations to compile a 900-page document of policy specifics to guide the next Republican president. But the group’s president, Kevin Roberts, says those specifics take a back seat to a broader goal. The next election, he says, “may be our last, best chance to rescue the nation from the woke, Socialist left.” “Their vision is to destroy everything that makes America America—our values, our history, our rights,” Roberts said recently at the group’s leadership summit. In an interview, he added, “We have lost our K-12 schools to radical-left activists. We’ve certainly lost our universities to the same, and other institutions,” including large businesses and even churches. “Everyday Americans,” he said, are being forced “to bend your knee to the rainbow flag.” Democrats and others say the GOP culture war is a backlash against greater acceptance of the nation’s growing diversity, which is long overdue in America, and that no one is being forced to bend a knee or otherwise get involved. Richard Blissett, 33, a Democrat and university staff member who lives in Baltimore, said that some Republican complaints are at odds with the party’s traditional faith in free markets. “There’s a big difference between government and Hollywood. If Republicans want more Republican movies, they can make them. No one is stopping them,” he said. The heightened feelings on both sides are reflected in a poll that found that about 80% of Republicans believe that the Democratic agenda, “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.” About the same share of Democrats had the same fear of the Republican agenda, saying it would destroy the country, an NBC News survey found last fall. The GOP’s sense that U.S. culture has gone off-track snarled legislation in Congress this week, as House Republicans pushed through a set of contentious social-policy amendments to an annual defense bill. The measures stripped money for diversity initiatives in the military and added restrictions on abortion and transgender care for service members. GOP lawmakers said they acted because liberal ideology was weakening the military. But the amendments endanger the bill’s path in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Many Republican voters say the pace of social change has left them off-balance, with schools and businesses pushing for racial diversity and transgender Americans raising difficult questions for parents, schools and sports officials. In Wall Street Journal-NORC polling this year, three-quarters of Republicans said society had gone too far in accepting transgender people. More than half said society had overstepped in accepting gay and lesbian people, and that businesses and schools had gone too far in promoting racial and ethnic diversity. Far fewer Democrats held those views.

In an Ipsos poll this March, about half of Republicans agreed with the statement, “These days I feel like a stranger in my own country.” Fewer than 30% of Democrats agreed.

While past GOP primary races have turned in part on policy disputes, such as remaking Medicare or scrapping the current tax code for a flat tax, the differences among candidates this year over matters such as abortion policy and aid to Ukraine have been a more muted part of the discussion. “Very few people are talking about tax reform, and everybody is talking about the cultural issues,” said Jondavid Longo, a Republican and mayor of Slippery Rock, a borough outside of Pittsburgh. Within both parties, he said, “they see politics as almost a life-or-death situation. Many voters believe that if their candidate does not win, then doom will follow.”

Wes Anderson, a Republican pollster who recently conducted focus groups with GOP voters, said the feeling of cultural alienation among Republicans stretches well beyond issues of race and gender to include the economy. “It’s all one and the same—there’s a cultural glue that goes from taxes and inflation to transgender policy,” he said. “Our base believes that we’re losing our country, and that the left has become radicalized to a point that they no longer believe in America and want to burn it all down and remake it in their image.”

GOP voters, he said, are asking two main things of candidates: Do you understand that we’re on the verge of losing our country? And can we trust you to fight back?

ormer President Donald Trump’s defining characteristic as a politician is his eagerness to both challenge the norms of Washington and fight culture-war battles. He regularly uses heightened rhetoric to emphasize what he sees as a threat from the left, warning of “pink-haired Communists teaching our kids” and promising to “keep foreign, Christian-hating Communists, Marxists and socialists out of America.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is also responding to the hunger among Republicans to take up cultural battles...

In Rolling Hills Estates, Million Dollar Homes Slide Down the Canyon (VIDEO)

Terrible.

At the Los Angeles Times, "In pricey Palos Verdes, the ocean view is great — until your house slides into a canyon."

Kaddy Reeves

Just wow.

On Instagram.

Video Animation of Titan Implosion Gets 5 Million Views in 11 Days (VIDEO)

Interesting viddy.

At the New York Post, "Animation of Titan sub’s demise garners 5 million views in 11 days."

It's got 15 million hits now.

Cocaine Found in White House Library: The Big Mystery!

Apparently, Hunter Biden was at the White House over the weekend, though no one in the leftist media would dare mention the possible of the president's son blowing lines amid the presidential stacks.

At AoSHQ, "Secret Service Now Tasked with Solving the Mystery: Who Could Have Possibly Left a Bag of Cocaine in the White House?," and "Secret Service Promises We May Never Know Who Left the Cocaine in the White House; Karine Jean-Pierre Doubles Down on Blaming Anonymous Tourists."

Aubrey

On  Twitter:

Patrick J. Deneen, Regime Change

At Amazon, Patrick J. Deneen, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.

This is really something. 

I've got CNN on. There's a bit of a freak-out happening, although I haven't been over to MSNBC yet, lol.

At the New York Times, "The decision is likely to reshape college admissions at elite schools. Here’s what to know":

Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority on a contentious issue of American life.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.

Universities can consider how race has affected a student’s life — a topic they may write about in an application essay, for example — but he warned schools not to use such considerations as a surreptitious means of racial selection. “Universities may not simply establish through the application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he wrote.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench — a rare move that signals profound disagreement. The court, she wrote, was “further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”

“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she said.

President Biden assailed the ruling in remarks hours after it was handed down in a televised address, saying the court had walked away from decades of precedent. He also offered guidance to colleges about how to move forward, proposing they take into account the adversity a student has overcome.

“Discrimination still exists in America,” he said, pounding his lectern and repeating his words for emphasis. “Today’s decision does not change that.”

Mr. Biden paused before leaving his remarks as a reporter asked if the court was “rogue.” “This is not a normal court,” he responded...

Via Memeorandum.

Also at the Wall Street Journal, "Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action in College Admissions."

And, "Affirmative Action Timeline: Key Dates."

Kenny Xu, An Inconvenient Minority

At Amazon, Kenny Xu, An Inconvenient Minority: The Ivy League Admissions Cases and the Attack on Asian American Excellence. 

Alexander Etkind, Russia Against Modernity

At Amazon, Alexander Etkind, Russia Against Modernity.

Submersible Passengers Died in Implosion (VIDEO)

We all know now.

But this was the big breaking letdown for so many yesterday. I personally saw no hope of survival, and the more we saw the more my initial intuition proved correct.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Search crews found debris from craft on ocean floor near Titanic shipwreck."

There's more at NPR (a great piece), "James Cameron says the Titan passengers probably knew the submersible was in trouble."

And an incredibly lucid and scientifically-informed interview with Cameron, at CNN with Anderson Cooper:

The interview continues here, "James Cameron on the 'surreal irony' of Titanic wreck and Titan implosion."

Stephen McGinty, The Dive

At Amazon, Stephen McGinty, The Dive: The Untold Story of the World's Deepest Submarine Rescue.

Debris From OceansGate Search Confirmed as Coming From External Body of 'Titan' Sub

It was almost beyond hope, but now we know.

The U.S. Coast Guard press conference on the loss of the OceansGate submersible is about to begin. 

The company issued a statement, per CNN. Follow along:

JUST IN: Debris discovered within the search area of the missing Titanic submersible has been assessed to be from the external body of the sub, according to a memo reviewed by CNN https://t.co/AD7UcVJ3zQ

— CNN (@CNN) June 22, 2023

As Many Reps As Possible

Watch, "Work out with Alexandra Daddario":

Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook (13″)

At Amazon, Lenovo - 2022 - IdeaPad Flex 5i - 2-in-1 Chromebook Laptop Computer - Intel Core i3-1115G4 - 13.3" FHD Touch Display - 8GB Memory - 128GB Storage - Chrome OS.

Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms

At Amazon, Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex

At Amazon, Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy.

Why the U.S. Electric Grid Isn't Ready for the Energy Transition

Right.

And California is banning gasoline-powered, internal-combustion engines by 2035.

We won't be ready.

At the New York Times, "To start with, there is no single U.S. electric grid":

America’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change. https://t.co/F35tJbxJMg

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 12, 2023

The U.S. electric grid is often described as a vast, synchronized machine — a network of wires carrying electricity from power plants across the country into our homes.

But, in reality, there is no single U.S. grid. There are three — one in the West, one in the East and one in Texas — that only connect at a few points and share little power between them.

Those grids are further divided into a patchwork of operators with competing interests. That makes it hard to build the long-distance power lines needed to transport wind and solar nationwide.

America’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change. Tapping into the nation’s vast supplies of wind and solar energy would be one of the cheapest ways to cut the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet, studies have found. That would mean building thousands of wind turbines across the gusty Great Plains and acres of solar arrays across the South, creating clean, low-cost electricity to power homes, vehicles and factories.

But many spots with the best sun and wind are far from cities and the existing grid. To make the plan work, the nation would need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines — large power lines that would span multiple grid regions.

To understand the scale of what’s needed, compare today’s renewable energy and transmission system to one estimate of what it would take to reach the Biden administration’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity generation by 2035. Transmission capacity would need to more than double in just over a decade....

There are enormous challenges to building that much transmission, including convoluted permitting processes and potential opposition from local communities. But the problems start with planning — or rather, a lack of planning.

There is no single entity in charge of organizing the grid, the way the federal government oversaw the development of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and ‘60s. The electric system was cobbled together over a century by thousands of independent utilities building smaller-scale grids to carry power from large coal, nuclear or gas plants to nearby customers.

By contrast, the kinds of longer-distance transmission lines that would transport wind and solar from remote rural areas often require the approval of multiple regional authorities, who often disagree over whether the lines are needed or who should pay for them.

“It’s very different from how we do other types of national infrastructure,” said Michael Goggin, vice president at Grid Strategies, a consulting group. “Highways, gas, pipelines — all that is paid for and permitted at the federal level primarily.”

In recent decades, the country has hardly built any major high-voltage power lines that connect different grid regions. While utilities and grid operators now spend roughly $25 billion per year on transmission, much of that consists of local upgrades instead of long-distance lines that could import cheaper, cleaner power from farther away.

“Utilities plan for local needs and build lines without thinking of the bigger picture,” said Christy Walsh, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Study after study has found that broader grid upgrades would be hugely beneficial. A recent draft analysis by the Department of Energy found “a pressing need for additional electric transmission” — especially between different regions.

The climate stakes are high... 

Laura Ingraham Interviews Cornel West (VIDEO)

Brother Cornel's announced he's the Green Party candidate for the presidency in 2024.

An interesting exchange:

Alternative for Germany Party Gains Ground Ahead of Elections

Hmm.

At Der Spiegel, "Normalization on the Extreme Right":

The far-right Alternative for Germany party is polling better than it has in several years. With elections approaching next year in a trio of eastern German states, the AfD is seeking to find its way even closer to the political mainstream.

The world wars, says Tino Chrupalla, head of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), were "a catastrophe" for Germany and Europe. They "divided the continent and weakened it permanently."

Chrupalla speaks of Germany’s "defeats." He doesn’t, however, speak of the millions of dead, nor does he make mention of the Holocaust.

Instead, Chrupalla says that he finds it problematic "to always link remembrance with the question of guilt." Culpability issues should be "superseded by the question of the accomplishments of every civilization." That, he says, is a process the AfD would like to initiate. "Historical guilt should no longer determine the way we act."

Those who may still have been wondering where the AfD stands on the political spectrum and what to think of the party’s leader – who is fond of referring to himself as a mainstream conservative – such utterances should make it abundantly clear. The quotes come from an interview Chrupalla gave to the right-wing extremist blog "Sezession," which appeared two weeks ago – right around the time when the rest of Europe was observing Victory in Europe Day.

Chrupalla’s comments are reminiscent of the rather shocking claims of his predecessor Alexander Gauland, who is today honorary chairman of the AfD. In 2018, Gauland said that Germany had a "glorious history that is much longer than 12 years." And: "Dear friends, Hitler and the Nazis are but a spot of bird shit on German history."

Five years ago, Gauland’s statements triggered widespread indignation. Leading politicians from all of Germany’s democratic parties condemned his comments, the German government branded them as "shameful" and all major media outlets covered the story. There were even voices within the AfD itself demanding an apology, which Gauland then half-heartedly delivered. He regrets the impact they made, he said.

But following Chrupalla’s comments? Crickets. There were no objections worthy of note from his own party nor from other politicians – despite the fact that Chrupalla went even further than Gauland. Gauland at least mentioned the Nazis. Chrupalla, though, did not, nor did he say anything about their crimes.

Getting Used to the Party

The incident shows once again just how entrenched the AfD has become, how the party has become an accepted part of Germany’s political landscape. Ten years after its founding, so many have grown used to the party and its beliefs that not even historical revisionism is sufficient to trigger a debate. Instead, other parties have begun cooperating with the AfD time and again, particularly the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), which is part of Germany’s current governing coalition.

Despite being monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, on suspicions of right-wing extremism, the AfD doesn’t just have representatives in almost all of Germany’s state parliaments and in the Bundestag, the federal parliament in Berlin. It is also polling higher in public opinion surveys than it has in five years. A broad feeling of uneasiness with the current situation could be feeding the rise, as could the fact that the number of refugees arriving in Europe has once again ticked upwards. But are such explanations sufficient?

Keep reading. 

Groomer-In-Chief (VIDEO)

At MEDIAite, "DeSantis War Room Posts Bizarre Video Suggesting Biden Is a Groomer: ‘Keep Your Hands Off Our Kids’."

Keep your hands off our kids. pic.twitter.com/X7WqniRLO4

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 15, 2023

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It

At Amazon, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year.

Kaddy

On Instagram.

Pro-Pence Super-PAC, 'Committed to America', Launches First 2024 Campaign Spot (VIDEO)

The background's here, "Pence allies launching super PAC to back former vice president’s expected 2024 candidacy."

Also, at MEDIAite, "Brutal Ad from Pro-Pence Super PAC Hits Trump Over Jan. 6, Abortion, Putin: ‘A Weak Man’."

The Radical Strategy Behind Trump's Promise to 'Go After' Biden

At the New York Times, "Conservatives with close ties to Donald J. Trump are laying out a “paradigm-shifting” legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president":

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.

There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers...

How Putin's KGB Years in East Germany Helped Shape Him

At the Los Angeles Times, "Super Spy or Paper Pusher." 

Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse

Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival.

Michael John Witgen, Seeing Red

At Amazon, Michael John Witgen, Seeing Red:Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.

GreenLife Soft Grip Diamond Healthy Ceramic Nonstick, 7" and 10" Frying Pan Skillet Set

At Amazon, GreenLife Soft Grip Diamond Healthy Ceramic Nonstick, 7" and 10" Frying Pan Skillet Set, PFAS-Free, Dishwasher Safe, Black.

BONUS: Marcus Collins, For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.

Sophia

What an amazing woman!

On Instagram.

'Shark Tank's' Kevin O'Leary, 'I have 54 companies in every state and nearly every sector, and we now know what the percentage is, it's just under 40 percent --- 40 percent are never coming back!' (VIDEO)

Office workers. Are the coming back in the new economy? 

Elon Musk say employees working from home are like Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake! (Like the folks who have to deliver your groceries every day and can't "work from home.")

Kevin O'Leary is great.

WATCH:

Martha Stewart Becomes Sports Illustrated's Oldest Swimsuit Cover Model

She's amazingly hot at 81!

At WSJ, "At 81, the domestic goddess fronts the magazine in glamorous swimwear that leaves little to the imagination. Her motivation? ‘Showing people that a woman my age can still look good and feel good’."

Be sure to tune into Squawk Box on CNBC this morning at 7:25am ET. I'll be talking about my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover - pick up an issue of #SISwim23 tomorrow at newsstands. @ruvenafanador @mj_day @daisybeautytoye@djquintero @margotzamet @pniddy @sevaneveritt pic.twitter.com/jXEuFDANNC

— Martha Stewart (@MarthaStewart) May 17, 2023

Russia Retakes Bakhmut (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Bakhmut Is Largely Under Russian Control, Says Ukrainian General":

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy says Ukrainian forces are still clinging to a tiny part of the city.

KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—Ukrainian forces have lost effective control of the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukraine’s top commander in the region said, as Moscow declared its first significant conquest since last summer after months of relentless fighting that has cost thousands of lives and obliterated the city.

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy said Ukrainian forces clung to a tiny part of Bakhmut and were advancing around its flanks, but acknowledged that the city was largely under Russian control.

The city’s capture would mark the only significant success of a monthslong Russian offensive that has severely depleted its military.

The question of who really won the battle of Bakhmut, military strategists say, will be decided not by control over the shattered city but by the next phase of the war. Kyiv fought street by street and at great cost to grind down Russian forces and prepare its forces for its own offensive aimed at seizing back territory occupied by Russia. Fighting has also cut into Ukrainian forces after Kyiv committed additional units to its defense.

The fight for Bakhmut has highlighted how limited Moscow’s war aims have become. Russian media, which at the start of the war reported on its army’s lightning thrust toward Kyiv, has in recent days instead given daily updates on the fights for streets and even single buildings in a city once home to around 70,000 people.

That Ukraine was able to inflict very heavy losses on the Wagner group and Russian forces in Bakhmut for more than six months remains a success for the defenders, said Nico Lange, a former chief of staff to the German Defense Ministry and a fellow of the Munich Security Conference, a think tank.

“The complete takeover of Bakhmut does not make any strategic difference,” Lange, who visited the front lines as part of a study trip. “Ukraine will continue the defense in well-developed positions a little further west and at the same time may even get the Russians into trouble on the flanks.”

Ukrainian forces have been clinging to a shrinking patch on the western edge of Bakhmut for several weeks while launching counterattacks against Russian forces around the city.

On Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner paramilitary group that has been spearheading the offensive to take the city, said his forces had taken control of Bakhmut...

Bwine GPS Drones and Gel Ball Blaster

Deal of the day, at Amazon, Bwine GPS Drones and Gel Ball Blaster.

BONUS: Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song. 

Sohrab Ahmari, Tyranny, Inc.

At Amazon, Sohrab Ahmari, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It.

Pauline

On Instagram:

Sex and Candy

Marcy Playground:

Civil War at CNN as "Journalist" Christina Amanapour Attacks CEO Chris Licht for Daring to 'Platform' the Front-Runner for the Republican Nomination for President -- My Conclusion: Licht is a Dead Man Walking

At AoSHQ, "But this is a news organization, right? CNN staffers have been in a "fury" since the Trump townhall. In fact, they were angry about it even before Trump exposed Kaitlin Collins as a callow, hollow leftwing sloganeer."

Jamaal Bowman Finds His Voice. Some Republicans Don't Like the Sound

Interesting.

At NYT, "The Democratic congressman has made a habit of brashly confronting Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, often in public displays meant to attract attention":

Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Rep. Thomas Massie just got in something of a shouting match off the House floor over gun control pic.twitter.com/xvRAoxQQPL

— Emily Brooks (@emilybrooksnews) March 29, 2023

Many of his colleagues had already left for the night, but as Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, stepped out onto the Capitol steps on Wednesday, he had business left to do: heckling Republicans.

“Have some dignity!” he yelled toward Representative George Santos, the New York freshman who is fighting federal fraud charges, and to a sea of TV cameras waiting below.

“Listen, no more QAnon, no more MAGA, no more debt ceiling nonsense,” he said as he pivoted to another confrontation, this time with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who stood nearby. The theatrical back-and-forth ended as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow member of the left-wing “Squad,” gave a slight tug to Mr. Bowman’s arm, repeating, “She ain’t worth it, bro” — but not before a handful of lawmakers whipped out cellphone cameras to capture the soon-to-be viral spat.

In this hyperpartisan era, the country has no shortage of politicians willing to savage each other from across a hearing room or on social media. But Mr. Bowman, a media-savvy democratic socialist from the Bronx, has rapidly made a name for himself this spring by going where most of them have not: up to his opponents’ actual faces.

Mr. Bowman’s platform includes far-reaching left-wing policies that split his party. Still, his style — “middle school principal energy,” he calls it — appears to have captured the id of even more moderate Democrats and has fueled party speculation about his ambition.

A video in which an AR-15-owning House Republican from Kentucky tells Mr. Bowman, 47, to “calm down” as they argue over how to stop gun violence has already been viewed more than seven million times. A friendlier confrontation, with a conservative House colleague, spawned a full CNN debate.

“I don’t mean any harm,” Mr. Bowman said in an interview. “I ain’t trying to hurt nobody. But we’ve got to take America to the next level, and we are not moving with urgency.”

The approach also carries risks, especially for a Black man, some of which came into sharp relief on Thursday. That is when Ms. Greene, a combative Georgian with a history of spouting conspiracy theories and directly confronting her own political opponents, said that she had felt threatened by Mr. Bowman, even though video showed her smiling as they sparred.

Ms. Greene said that Mr. Bowman had called her a white supremacist, an insult she claimed was “equal to” someone “calling a person of color the N-word.”

Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.

She then said that the congressman’s “physical mannerisms are aggressive” and accused him of leading a “mob” targeting her when they both appeared outside a Manhattan courthouse where former President Donald J. Trump was being arraigned — an apparent reference to a crowd that consisted largely of members of the news media.

“I’m very concerned about Jamaal Bowman,” Ms. Greene said, “and he’s someone that people should watch.”

Target Earnings Squeezed as Shoppers Stick to Basics

Target's getting hammered. Their grocery business takes just 3 percent of the share of total grocery sales in the U.S. And folks aren't shopping for the quasi-fashionable Target brand --- Tar-Jay. 

Maybe Target's the next Bed Bath & Beyond?

At WSJ, "Consumers cut back on nonessential items as sales come in flat; rise in theft cuts into profit."

Sad-Posting on Tik-Tok

It's all bad for you, all of social media. 

These platforms seem to be getting worse, though. Either that, or more scrutiny is revealing how lethal they are.

At WSJ, "Self-harm, sad-posting and disordered-eating videos abound on the popular app":

Calls to ban TikTok in the U.S. are growing louder. Government leaders are trying to keep the popular China-owned social video platform away from schools, public workers, even entire states, on the grounds that users’ data could wind up in the wrong hands.

Data privacy, though, might be less worrisome than the power of TikTok’s algorithm. Especially if you’re a parent.

A recent study found that when researchers created accounts belonging to fictitious 13-year-olds, they were quickly inundated with videos about eating disorders, body image, self-harm and suicide.

If that sounds familiar, a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2021 found that TikTok steers viewers to dangerous content. TikTok has since strengthened parental controls and promised a more even-keeled algorithm, but the new study suggests the app experience for young teens has changed little.

What teens see on social media can negatively affect them psychologically. Plenty of research backs this up. The simplest evidence may be found in my earlier column about teens who developed physical tics after watching repeated TikTok videos of people exhibiting Tourette Syndrome-like behavior.

A TikTok spokeswoman said the company has a team of more than 40,000 people moderating content. In the last three months of 2022, TikTok said it removed about 85 million posts deemed in violation of its community guidelines, of which 2.8% were suicide, self-harm and eating-disorder content. It also considers the removal of content flagged by users. “We are open to feedback and scrutiny, and we seek to engage constructively with partners,” the spokeswoman added.

Two-thirds of U.S. teens use TikTok, and 16% of all U.S. teens say they’re on it near constantly, according to Pew Research Center. Kids’ frequent social-media use—along with the potential for algorithms to lure teens down dangerous rabbit holes—is a factor in the American Psychological Association’s new recommendations for adolescent social-media use.

The group this week said parents should monitor their younger kids’ social-media scrolling and keep watch for troublesome use. The APA also urges parents and tech companies to be extra vigilant about content that encourages kids to do themselves harm.

‘Every 39 seconds’ The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, tested what teens see on TikTok. Last August, researchers set up eight TikTok accounts to look like they belonged to 13-year-olds in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia. For 30 minutes, researchers behind the accounts paused briefly on any videos the platform’s For You page showed them about body image and mental health, and tapped the heart to like them.

TikTok almost immediately recommended videos about suicide and eating disorders, the researchers said. Videos about body image and mental health popped up on the accounts’ For You pages every 39 seconds, they added.

After the researchers published their findings, many of the videos they flagged disappeared from TikTok. Many of the accounts that posted the material remain. Those accounts include other videos that promote restrictive diets and discuss self-harm and suicide.

TikTok does take down content that clearly violates its guidelines by, for instance, referring directly to suicide. Videos where people describe their own suicidal feelings, however, might not be considered a violation—and wouldn’t fall under moderator scrutiny. They could even be helpful to some people. Yet child psychologists say these too can have a harmful effect.

TikTok executives have said the platform can be a place for sharing feelings about tough experiences, and cite experts who support the idea that actively coping with difficult emotions can be helpful for viewers and posters alike. They said TikTok aims to remove videos that promote or glorify self-harm while allowing educational or recovery content.

The company said it continually adjusts its algorithm to avoid repeatedly recommending a narrow range of content to viewers.

‘Sad and lonely’

The Center for Countering Digital Hate shared its full research with me, including links to 595 videos that TikTok recommended to the fake teen accounts. It also provided reels containing all of the videos, some of which are no longer on the site. I also looked at other content on the accounts with flagged videos.

After a few hours, I had to stop. If the rapid string of sad videos made me feel bad, how would a 14-year-old feel after watching this kind of content day after day?

One account is dedicated to “sad and lonely” music. Another features a teenage girl crying in every video, with statements about suicide. One is full of videos filmed in a hospital room. Each of the hospital videos contains text expressing suicidal thoughts, including, “For my final trick I shall turn into a disappointment.”

Users have developed creative ways to skirt TikTok’s content filters. For instance, since TikTok won’t allow content referencing suicide, people use a sound-alike such as “sewerslide,” or just write “attempt” and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination. Creators of videos about disordered eating have also evaded TikTok’s filters...

Best Gifts for Mother's Day

Shop now, at Amazon, Mother's Day Gift-Finder. 

Kimberly Ells, The Invisible Family

At Amazon, Kimberly Ells, The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can't Win.

The U.S. Censorship and Laundering Complex

This is stunning.

Benjamin Weingarten's testimony before House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, May 11, 2023.

See, "“Censorship Laundering: How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Enables the Silencing of Dissent”."

Schizophrenic Woman Arrested After Physically Attacking People on Chicago's Northside

The woman was apparently off her medication.

At the Other McCain, "Crazy People Are Dangerous."

BONUS: "In Terms of ‘Owning the Libs,’ Nobody Else Even Compares to Donald Trump."

Seattle Halts Mail Delivery to Southside

Mail theft has gotten so bad.

At Instapundit, "GOODER AND HARDER: Mail Delivery Halted for an Entire Zip Code in Seattle."

Lisa Kennedy Montgomery on the Fall of MTV News

This is so right on. She's awesome.

Kennedy:

After 36 years, Paramount Media Networks President Chris McCarthy announced that the network will be shutting down @MTVNEWS. @KennedyNation reflects on her time with the network and provides insight at to why it is coming to a close. https://t.co/qjGnLKkqDp pic.twitter.com/xpnxuw7vXw

— FOX News Radio (@foxnewsradio) May 11, 2023

The Impending Thermidor Reaction in Jacobin America

It's Victor Davis Hanson, at American Greatness, "At peak woke, our reign of terror is beginning to lose momentum because its continuation would destroy all the work of 247 years of American progress and sacrifice":

The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent. American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects.

Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.

Originally, the idea of curbing the power of a Bourbon king through a parliamentary republic became lethally counter-revolutionary.

Soon even attacks on the Catholic Church and the abolition of the monarchy entirely were deemed insufficient. The king himself and his consorts had to be beheaded. Monasteries and churches were to be ransacked, and priests exiled or lynched.

The sometimes moderate Girondins, who favored constitutional government, were mostly executed by their former friends among the Montagnards. In turn, the latter were soon deemed too conservative for the emerging crazy Jacobins. So they, too, had to be decapitated. The ensuing year-long reign of terror guillotined thousands of innocents, deemed guilty of being guilty of something.

By 1793, the revolution had turned nihilist and suicidal. The foundational date of France was recalibrated (not as 1619 but) as 1789—or “year one.”

Jacobins sought to wipe out religion, both materially and spiritually. They replaced God, first, with the atheistic “Cult of Reason” and then a stranger still “Cult of the Supreme Being”—a dreamed-up, living, humanistic god that only the murderous Robespierre could fully envision, but eerily similar to our own Green New Deal deity.

The months of the year themselves were renamed, the days of the week renumbered and relabeled. Statues were toppled, first at night, later in shameless daylight. Place names were erased and renamed. The original revolutionary heroes were not to be mentioned; their uncouth successors deified. Money was printed to “spread the wealth”—until it was worthless.

Murderous cancel culture ran unchecked. Yesterday’s French revolutionary became today’s counterrevolutionary—and tomorrow’s decapitated.

Almost everyone who originally had opposed the absolute monarchy, and, like the Americans, wished for a constitutional replacement, was eventually executed by revolutionaries who were then executed by more radical revolutionaries. The longer and more radical the revolution ran, the meaner, dumber, and more deadly the revolutionaries who emerged from the woodwork.

Finally, what could not go on, did not go on, as French society unraveled. Then the so-called Thermidors put an end to the madness of the Robespierre brothers and their sidekick, the 26-year-old Saint-Just, and did to them what they had done to thousands.

The final revolutionary correction saw a Directory, then a Consulate, and finally the dictator Napoleon—the self-described emperor who claimed he was the final absolutist manifestation of the “Revolution.”

A Revolution of the Disingenuous

We are swept up in similarly scary revolutionary times, after the perfect storm of the 2020 rioting, the COVID destructive lockdowns, and a radical socialist takeover of the old Democratic Party...

Keep reading.

 

Robert Draper, To Start a War

At Amazon, Robert Draper, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq.

Naughty Girl

On Twitter.

'There is no way Joe Biden can make it to election day next year...'

At Power Line, "THE BIDEN COUNTDOWN CLOCK": "His growing incapacity to function is becoming more obvious by the day."

'Millions of Deportations' (VIDEO)

It's Tomi Lahren:

Bronte

On Instagram.

Ben Kaufman Cabana Stripe Beach and Pool Towels

At Amazon, Ben Kaufman Cabana Stripe Beach & Pool Towel - Large Cotton Terry Beach Towel - Soft & Absorbant - Assorted Colors - 30" x 60" - 6 Pack.

BONUS: Hawaiian Tropic SPF 50 Broad Spectrum Sunscreen, Sheer Touch Moisturizing Protection Sunscreen Lotion, Coconut, 16.0 Fl Oz , 2 Count (Pack of 1).

Demand for Property in Alys Beach, Planned Community on Florida's Panhandle, Has Soared Over the Past Few Years

 At the Wall Street Journal, "The Houses Must Be White, and the Designs Preapproved. Everybody Wants In":

When Covid hit in 2020, Iain and Ronni Watson were planning a cruise in Greece with their friends David and Jackie Weill. So instead of heading to the Mediterranean, the Watsons ended up visiting the Weills at their new home in Alys Beach, a coastal planned community on the Florida Panhandle. 

But the Watsons quickly discovered that Alys Beach had more in common with their intended destination than they thought. With its all-white, stucco homes and cobblestone streets, Alys Beach reminded them of the Greek Islands.

The Watsons were so besotted with the community that they made an offer on a five-bedroom home during the visit. By December, they had moved full-time from California to Alys Beach with their two daughters.

White walls and roofs are among the requirements that create the unusual aesthetic of Alys Beach, a 158-acre community on the Gulf of Mexico off Scenic Highway 30A. The look has proven popular with home buyers: Over the past several years, demand for homes there has increased and prices have ballooned, according to local real-estate agent Jonathan Spears with Compass. In the first quarter of 2023, the average sale price in Alys Beach was $5.74 million, up about 25% from $4.59 million during the same period of last year, he said.

“Most of the families that we’ve met here, 20 to 25 families, have bought in the last three years,” said Dr. Weill, 59, an organ-transplant specialist and author. He and his wife live primarily in New Orleans and spend about 170 days a year in Alys Beach.

When Alabama residents Elton B. Stephens and his wife, Alys Stephens, started vacationing on the Panhandle about 70 years ago, what is now Alys Beach was vacant land. At the time, the area had yet to become a popular vacation spot, according to their granddaughter, Alys Protzman. “I can only imagine what the roads must have been like,” she said. “Many people were not vacationing down there at that point.”

In the 1970s, Mr. Stephens purchased the land that would become Alys Beach through his company, the Birmingham-based conglomerate Ebsco Industries. The Stephens family held on to the land for decades as beach communities grew up around it. In the early 2000s, they felt the time was right to develop the land into a second-home community, Ms. Protzman said. They named it after her grandmother, Alys Stephens, who had died by the time construction commenced in 2004.

Ms. Protzman’s cousin, Jason Comer, spearheaded the project with urban planners Andrés Duany and Galina Tachieva of DPZ CoDesign. Mr. Duany had been part of a team in the 1990s that coined the term New Urbanism, which refers to the creation of mixed-use, walkable communities. DPZ CoDesign has been behind the design of several New Urbanist communities on the Panhandle, including Rosemary and Seaside.

In designing Alys Beach, Mr. Duany said the goal was to create a community that was both walkable and private. To do this, many of the homes are built around individual courtyards, a design that was inspired by courtyard homes in Guatemala. They are also close together, some sharing party walls, which creates a cohesive sea of white along the community’s narrow streets. “With the conventional American house, you need a large lot to achieve privacy,” Mr. Duany said, “but the courtyard provides privacy in a relatively small lot.” This allows Alys to have a high density and enough people to support the restaurants and public life, he said.

Most people in the community walk or ride bicycles, said Dr. Weill. “We stay most of the summer there, and I can go a month without getting into the car,” he said.

Home designs in Alys Beach must be approved by Marieanne Khoury-Vogt and her husband Erik Vogt, the designated town architects, and other members of a review committee. At first, the style of the homes in the community was inspired by Bermudian architecture, according to Mr. Duany. But it has since evolved into an unusual blend that includes everything from Mediterranean to Moorish influences, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said. Alys Beach has a list of approved builders and architects that homeowners can choose from, although they can apply to use a different architect.

White is the color of choice, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said, because it is timeless and reflects heat. (Elements such as doors, window surrounds, shutters and gates can be different colors, she said.) The absence of color pushes architects to give each house distinctive carvings and parapet walls, said Jeffrey Dungan, an architect who has been designing homes in Alys Beach for over a decade. Homes are also required to be masonry, although materials like wood, stone and metal can be used judiciously to introduce warmth and texture, Ms. Khoury-Vogt said.

There are also guidelines for vacation rentals in Alys Beach. In order for homeowners to rent out their homes, for example, they are required to have specific glasses, linens, and serveware: cotton-sateen blend Garnier-Thiebaut linens, and dinnerware and flatware from Fortessa. These items are purchased through the community’s vacation rental program.

Alabama-based real-estate agent Matt Curtis and his wife, Courtney Curtis, bought their four-bedroom, roughly 3,900-square-foot home in Alys Beach for about $6.4 million with the intention of spending a few weeks there with family, then renting it out the rest of the year. They spent about $5,170 to purchase the required linens, Mr. Curtis said, plus a $100 monthly replacement fee. No family photos can be displayed while a property is being rented, he said...

Six Books About British Monarchs and Coronations

In alphabetical order, in honor of King Charles III's inauguration.

At Amazon, Tracy Borman, Crown & Sceptre: A New History of the British Monarchy, from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II.

And, William Jones, Crowns & Coronations: A History of Regalia.

Plus, Penny Junor, Queen Consort: The Life of Queen Camilla.

More, Sally Bedell Smith, Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.

Still more, Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of the British Monarchy.

Finally, Tony Trowles, Treasures of Westminster Abbey.

BONUS: Caronline Elkins, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire.

'Rochelle Walensky is a monster for what she did during the Covid pandemic...'

The CDC chief resigned this morning, rather abruptly, it turns out.

Here's Christina Laila, at Gateway Pundit, "BREAKING: Rochelle Walensky Resigns as CDC Director":

During the height of the pandemic, the CDC announced a 60-day moratorium on evictions.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky acted independently and signed the order – no congressional authorization needed. Walensky is queen and what she says goes...

Mary Harrington, Feminism Against Progress

Mary Harrington, Feminism Against Progress.

Sophia & William 6-Person Round Cast Aluminium Outdoor Dining Table

At Amazon, Sophia & William 6-Person Round Cast Aluminium Outdoor Dining Table, Patio Bistro Table with 2.2" Umbrella Hole for Porch Backyard, Bronze.

BONUS: Char-Broil Classic 280 2-Burner Liquid Propane Gas Grill with Side Burner.

Scott Jennings Hammers Randi Weingarten on Pandemic School Closures -- on CNN! (VIDEO)

This exchange received pretty big news coverage last week. 

WATCH:

Royal Oak Classic Briquets

At Amazon, Royal Oak Sales 192-294-328 7.7Lb Regular Charcoal, 7lb.

BONUS: Cuisinart CCG190RB Inch BBQ, 14" x 14" x 15", Portable Charcoal Grill, 14" (Red).

Uncool Blue Checks

Since anyone can get the blue check now, for $8.00, they're not that glamorous any more.

At the New York Times, "Are Blue Checks Uncool Now?":

Once a coveted status symbol, Twitter’s verification badge — which can be purchased for a monthly fee — is no longer fashionable, according to some users.

Twitter’s blue check mark was once a coveted status symbol. Now, some users are calling it “the dreaded mark” or that “stinking badge.”

Last week, Twitter began stripping the verification symbols from the profiles of thousands of celebrities, media personalities and politicians. The shift came as Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, continued to roll out Twitter Blue, a subscription service that offers special features like tweet-editing in addition to the blue badge — for $8 a month.

Now that anyone can purchase a blue check, many users find the symbol newly uncool. The icon makes its owner appear “desperate for validation,” according to the rapper Doja Cat. To others, it signals support for Mr. Musk amid his bumpy takeover of the platform. Users who value the symbol enough to pay for it are being shouted over by a chorus of prominent users who say verification is no longer worth it.

Can the blue check remain desirable now that it has lost its air of exclusivity?

“The idea that you would pay for status, and that it’s something that’s not conferred upon you, seems to be fundamentally undesirable for people who have status,” said Robyn Caplan, a senior researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute.

Jacob Sartorius, 20, a musician and content creator, said he was elated to get a blue check in 2016. “It was an honor. It was kind of a symbol of, wow, something’s happening,” he said.

Mr. Sartorius said he would now rather spend $8 on a sandwich from Subway than on Twitter Blue. “It’s not something that’s cool anymore,” he said.

Twitter users’ self-consciousness when it comes to their blue checks speaks to the symbol’s evolution from a tool designed to prevent impersonation into a fickle marker of cultural relevance. Twitter introduced verification badges in 2009 during what Dr. Caplan called the “red carpet era” of social media, when companies were trying to coax celebrities and brands onto their platforms. The badges reassured public figures that they would not be impersonated, and the recognition served as an ego boost.

Because so many public figures received badges, and the faceless masses did not, jockeying for verification became something of a blood sport — and the blue check a symbol of victory. Guides proliferated online advising users on how to gain entry to the club.

Mr. Musk sought to undermine that two-tiered approach, which he called a “lords & peasants system.” He has framed Twitter Blue as a move to democratize the platform.

Waves of blue-check paranoia began to sweep across the platform last year, when Mr. Musk said he would soon start removing check marks from users’ profiles. After allowing the expected judgment day to come and go at the start of this month, Mr. Musk began removing the badges on April 20. (Mr. Musk has long shown an affinity for the number 420, which is often used to allude to marijuana, once dropping it into a tweet that landed him in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and an email to Twitter’s communications department was automatically replied to with a poop emoji...

Now that Musk let the rabble in, Twitter's no longer an insider's club of elite bad actors who have no interest in preserving the regular, majoritarian values of the this country.