Friday Links - 2 August

Kevin T. has a new Substack, and so he is up first with "Home? What is this 'home' you speak of, my Russian brother?"

Despite what it says on the license plate, though, Nevada is not home. It’s just where I live.

I’m not unique. A lot of service brats and other Third Culture Kids have the same problem of never quite feeling at home anywhere, of being “On the outside/Looking in”, as that James McMurtry song says. We’d like to belong somewhere, but after bouncing around so long, we get the feeling that we’ve been too long in the wasteland.

Meep at Stump - Taxing Tuesday: Betting on Tax Policy? Plus: Soda Tax Retrospective! That would be Cook County (Chicago), Illinois' short-lived soda tax.

While I think soda taxes are stupid when one is claiming to try to help people lose weight (as an obese person who doesn’t drink soda) — I mean, come on. The sole intent is to raise revenue. Stop lying.

Jeff Childers at Coffee and Covid - ☕️ IRREDEEMABLE ☙ Wednesday, July 31, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

🪖🪖 Yesterday afternoon, several alert C&C readers quickly sussed out that my legal trip to New York this week was to defend James O’Keefe and O’Keefe Media Group in federal court in the Southern District of New York. The clue was a tweet by James O’Keefe saying that.

Only Guns and Money - Holy Crap!

Holy crap! I’m shocked and amazed that my reporting on NRA affairs actually was discussed in the trial. I have been told that my blog was being read by some within the NRA and even perhaps was being noticed by the Attorney General’s Office.

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 31 July 2024: No Kids Allowed Edition

Meta (Facebook) is paying Texas $1.4 billion in fines over using customers biometric data without permission. (Texas Tribune)

Facebook was running facial recognition on every photo uploaded to the platform, without ever asking for permission. This has been illegal under Texas law since 2009.

Granite Grok - “Crooks was a Pro-Lockdown, Pro-Immigration, Left-Wing Joe Biden Supporter.”

In a second video, where Marsha Blackburn questions him, Torba says they are still confirming ownership and details, so there’s more to come. However, the initial reporting on Crooks is that he was a weird little leftist patsy, which I regard as a redundant statement of fact.

The Other McCain - So Far, Israel Has Neither Confirmed Nor Denied It Assassinated Hamas Leader

So there’s all kind of intrigue involved in the sudden change of Hamas leadership in the wake of Haniyeh’s death and, as I pointed out, Israel so far has had no comment on this incident, which could be to the next World War what the assassination of the Austrian archduke was to the First World War. Gavrilo Princip could not be reached for comment.

Juliette Ochieng - No Pandering

After watching Donald Trump's interview with the NABJ I thought of this phenomenon. Most journalists and politicians who are white tip-toe around black people in fear of being labeled as racist. In contrast, President Trump treats blacks, whites, etc. as individuals. (I was especially amused when the former president lambasted the interviewers for being on CPT.)

Again from The Other McCain - What Part of Genesis 12:3 Do I Need to Explain to These Crazy Jew-Haters?

Yesterday, my brother was skeptical of the Iranian claim that it was an Israeli missile attack that took out Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and it turns out that Kirby’s skepticism was justified, because those crafty Jews are even craftier than any Iranian could imagine