Does this mean we can expect a fire sale of the Greenwich Invisible Ladies’ Belle Haven mansions?

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Do three-year-olds really need to know about and discuss sex at all? Of any kind? And must parents turn them over to their schools to train them?

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Gorsuch and Maryland school district lawyer have wild exchange over children's LGBTQ storybook: 'Not bondage'

“A leather-clad ‘woman doesn’t refer to bondage and discipline, she/he/it/whatever is just simple drag queen.”

Phew! That’s a relief.

Here’s the rest of the text:

Imagine going back in time to any point—even just a few years ago—and explaining that this is considered a serious argument. What I find most remarkable about the exchange is the attorney’s acknowledgment that their intent is to “influence” children. He begins to explain that the goal is to install “civility,” which is the “natural consequence of being exposed to—” before he is cut off. Was he going to say that “civility” results from exposure to sexual content at a very young age? What could “civility” possibly mean here?

MR. SCHOENFELD: Pride Puppy was the book that was used for the pre-kindergarten curriculum. That’s no longer in the curriculum.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: That’s the one where they’re supposed to look for the leather and things—bondage, things like that, right?

MR. SCHOENFELD: It’s not bondage. It’s a woman in a leather—

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Sex worker, right?

MR. SCHOENFELD: No. That’s not correct. No.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: I thought—gosh, I read it.

JUSTICE BARRETT: It’s a drag queen in drag.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Drag queen in—drag queen?

MR. SCHOENFELD: So, correct. The leather that they’re pointing to is a woman in a leather jacket, and one of the words is drag queen in this—

JUSTICE GORSUCH: And they’re supposed to look for those?

MR. SCHOENFELD: It is an option at the end of the book, correct.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Yeah. Okay. And you’ve included these in the English language curriculum rather than the human sexuality curriculum to influence students, is that fair? That’s what the district court found. Do you agree with that?

MR. SCHOENFELD: I think, to the extent the district court found that it was to influence, it was to influence them towards civility, the natural consequence of being exposed to—

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Whatever, but to influence them.

MR. SCHOENFELD: In the manner that I just mentioned, yes.

Instapundit: https://instapundit.com/716155/

Nuke the Gay Whales for Jesus

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A bumper sticker slogan dreamed up by three of us attending a trial practice seminar back in the 80’s during the “Save the Whales” and “No Nukes” campaigns, but still fun (“For Jesus” was contributed by a couple from Oklahoma, where they know about such things)

Ed Driscoll:

SAVE THE EARTHLINGS FROM EARTH DAY:

Google up “Taihang mountains solar panels” to see multiple images of previously beautiful green hills in China now totally covered in black panels.

The material progress of our species is directly tied to increasing our energy density. Using much less of the Earth to get a whole lot more power from it is how we advance. Humans nearly hunted whales to extinction so we could obtain tiny trickles of oil from them, and we once deforested vast hunks of wilderness just to create fire.

Switching to land-devouring wind and solar energy would be a giant leap backward.

Nuclear power, America’s largest source of carbon-free electricity, is a functionally miraculous alternative. To get the energy embedded in 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 120 gallons of oil requires a uranium pellet no larger than the end of a small adult’s thumb. A nuclear power plant is almost as gentle on land use as a natural gas powerstation, but is the most reliable source of power we have and one of the safest.

But don’t attend Earth Day to hear this good news because the Earth Day Network hates nuclear power. In 2021 the nonprofit co-signed a letter sent to President Biden that made this request: “Phase out nuclear energy as an inherently dirty, dangerous and costly energy source.”

Last year’s Earth Day theme— “Planet vs Plastics”— also portrayed environmental progress as a problem. The Earth Day Network’s website for the event proclaimed they were “unwavering in our commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health.”

Trees, turtles, and elephants are just the start of a long list of creatures and resources that were once consumed with reckless abandon but are now conserved because we use plastic instead. Innumerable plastic health and safety devices save and prolong human lives every day. We waste less food, and pay less for it, because low-cost plastic keeps it fresh. Most household consumer products, from toothbrushes to televisions, are made with plastic.

More: Earth Day 2025: Our Power, Our Planet, Our Propaganda.

The leftist opposition to fossil fuels has nothing to do with environmental quality or climate issues or any of the other rationalizations repeated ad nauseam. It is instead a central component of the fundamental anti-human core of left-wing environmentalism, a stance that studiously ignores the relationship between fossil fuel use and human flourishing. In 1990, the late Alexander King, cofounder of the Club of Rome in 1968, argued in the context of the use of DDT to control malaria:

My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time, the birth rate had doubled. … My chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.

Tens or hundreds of millions of the world’s poor have died from malaria as a direct result of the multination ban on the use of DDT, driven by false assertions about its harmful effects on various bird species, promulgated from the very first Earth Day in 1970. Then there was the observation made in 1971 by Michael McClosky, the former executive director of the Sierra Club, during an Ethiopian famine:

The worst thing we could do is give aid…. the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance and to let the people there just starve.

For left-wing environmental ideologues, humans are nothing more than environmentally destructive mouths to feed without moral standing. (The Nazi term was “useless eaters.”)….

So, Gideon's been at me to do this for a long time, and I finally got over my embarrassment enough to try it

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I’ve been at this for 20 years now, and for much of that time I was able to easily defray the costs of maintaining the site: access to the MLS for real-time reporting of sales activity; a webmaste on retainer; etc., through real estate commissions generated by readers who retained my services. Those have pretty much dried up, yet the annual costs — in the $5,000 range — remain. I thought to run advertising, but after just two months the censors at Google informed me that the topi discussed here: global warming, kindergarten transvestites, COVID skepticism, and, generally, just “oooh, we’ve never been so offended in our lives!” So I was banned from AdSense.

In December, after forking over another $1,000 to the Greenwich Association of Realtors and facing another hefty round of fees this spring, I told Gideon that I was going to give it up. He urged this alternative, so what the hell, I’m trying it.

Here’s Gideon’s pitch, originally drafted in late December and finally seeing daylight today, however briefly. If you care to chip in, thank you. If not, that’s absolutely fine, but beware of Gideon ponding on your door on a dark and stormy night, demanding tribute.

        LET’S KEEP THIS BLOG ALIVE!

Do you read Chris Fountain every day? Is this blog the first thing you turn to in the morning? Does any other site even come close to providing this kind of crazy, funny, deadly-accurate content? 

Exactly. So, let’s keep Chris properly incentivized. This is “brother Gideon” speaking, the one who Chris seems to delight in poking fun at, but yes, even I can’t resist reading his damned blog several times a day. 

I haven’t been able to convince him to plaster the site with advertising, but he is letting me make a pitch for my idea of an annual fund-raiser. 

So, if you get $20 worth of enjoyment from this blog each year, I want you to click the PayPal link below. There are options to contribute more, especially if you really, REALLY love this blog, so please donate according to your level of Chris Fountain-caused happiness.

This is a once per year thing, so I won't bother you again till January 2025.

  • $19.95

  • $29.95

  • $59.95

  • Other (The sky’s the limit, be a Golden Benefactor!)

Okay, but what about Generalissimo Franco — he's still dead, right? (Updated)

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VATICAN CITY — CNN journalists on the ground at the Vatican are reporting that behind closed doors, Pope Francis remains focused, sharp, and brimming with energy.

Though videos circulating online have purportedly showed Pope Francis to be dead and lying in state at Saint Peter's Basilica, CNN stated these videos were "deepfakes" and part of a right-wing misinformation campaign.

"Claims of the Pope being dead are completely ridiculous. Francis has so much energy, we can barely keep up with him," said Kaitlan Collins. "These videos use deceptive editing and clever angles to make it appear that Pope Francis is dead and lying in a casket. Bad-faith actors are attempting to deceive people in order to push Francis out of power. Off-camera, Pope Francis continues to be as mentally fit as ever."

UPDATE

The Bee’s on a roll today:

Is there a college student or recent graduate who doesn't believe this? (Updated)

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UPDATE Let David Strom break the news to her and to her believers:

What is important is that money is an abstraction, and it is abstracted from value. Ultimately, the value of money is tied to the goods and services that can be purchased with it, so if you expand the money supply without expanding the goods and services, the only thing that changes is the dollar's value. Nobody gets any richer unless more actual wealth is created. 

That's why increases in the minimum wage are a fool's solution to a perennial problem: some people make more money than others, and people whose labor or contribution is low on the value scale--say, fry cooks whose sole skill is being surly while making fries--will not make sufficient money to satisfy their desires. 

People in Oakland are not poor because they aren't paid enough. They are poor because they produce little of value compared to those around them in one of the wealthiest places in the world--San Francisco and the Silicon Valley region. When you are competing with Googlers for resources, being a minimum wage worker is a real problem. You are competing for limited resources with people who can outbid you by a wide margin. 

That doesn't make you a bad person--although there are LOTS of bad people in Oakland, which truly IS a s**thole--it just means that you live in the wrong place and have the wrong skills and likely temperament to thrive there. Economically speaking, Oakland's land would be put to better use providing housing for people who are more productive, but economics is not the only factor in this world, nor should it be. 

Poor people have to live somewhere, and Oakland is where poor people live in the Bay Area. But their poverty will not be relieved by magic bullets like an increase in the minimum wage. If the wage goes to $50/hour, those people will become unemployed tomorrow, and businesses will bail immediately.