Trump team says Christie ‘will waste no time eating DeSantis’ lunch’ Former NJ Gov. Chris Christie filed Tuesday to run his second presidential campaign: Andrew Mark Miller

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-team-responds-christies-imminent-presidential-run-will-waste-no-time-eating-desantis-lunch

The Trump team responded to the presidential candidacy of former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie, announced today, with a message warning that it will mean bad news for his current top challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

“Ron DeSantis’ campaign is spiraling, and President Trump’s dominance over the Republican primary field has opened a mad rush to seize the mantle for runner-up,” Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the PAC Make America Great Again Inc. said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Ron DeSantis is not ready for this moment, and Chris Christie will waste no time eating DeSantis’ lunch.” 

The DeSantis campaign pointed Fox News Digital to a statement DeSantis made in an interview with KCCI-TV in Iowa last week where he said, “Regardless of who decides to run or not run, for us, it’s really just background noise.”

“We believe we have a message that will win. We believe we have the plan to be able to get that done and it’s basically just about execution for us.”

Christie, who served as governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018, previously ran for president in 2016 and lost the GOP primary to Trump.

Is Genocide Too Powerful a Word? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/is_genocide_too_powerful_a_word.html

Genocide is a potent word.  It refers to the decimation of an entire group.  It results in destruction on a massive scale.  It defies the imagination even though we have often witnessed it in the 20th century.

To most people, it is the concerted evisceration of a particular group, whether they be Jews annihilated by the Nazis, Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or the Ukrainians by Stalin.  Of the latter, the term Holodomor comes to mind.  It was a man-made famine that affected the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, causing mass starvation in grain-growing regions.  In acknowledgment of its scale, the famine is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).”

These events need to be understood as the prelude to global actions that are now convulsing the world and whose ultimate goal is the destruction of human life.

Often begun as a bid for the welfare of humanity, these decisions must be regarded as the “alibis of tyrants” with resultant deadly consequences.

Consider the dictates that have caused and will continue to cause food shortages and starvation.

‘Feminist’ mini-golf course debuts, courtesy of Middlebury College By Eric Utter

The feminist golf course consists of 11 holes, each of which focuses on a “reproductive justice” topic such as “foster care, incarceration, abortion, contraception, sex education [and] crisis pregnancy centers.”

The first-ever “feminist” mini-golf course debuted recently at Middlebury College’s Kenyon Arena, courtesy of professors and students from a class called “Feminist Building.”

Middlebury College is famous—or infamous– for its unparalleled wokeness. For example, the school’s counseling director purports to believe that all psychological suffering is due to “whiteness, heteronormativity, [and] patriarchal systems.” Alrighty then. Its administrators have promised students that they would do everything in their power to prevent conservative speakers from coming to campus. (Middlebury students rioted when Charles Murray attempted to give a talk there.)

According to the Addison County Independent, the feminist golf course consists of 11 holes, each of which focuses on a “reproductive justice” topic such as “foster care, incarceration, abortion, contraception, sex education [and] crisis pregnancy centers.” Fun for the whole family! Course design director Rayn Bumstead stated, “The places where reproductive injustices occur are all around us, which means that possibilities for resistance are also all around us.” (Especially on hole number 3!)

Valley News dutifully reported: “[A]s players traversed the hand-built greens, putting balls through landscapes built to replicate sites where reproductive issues play out — a hospital, a kitchen, a courthouse, a classroom, a bar — they were confronted with manifestations of feminist ideas that were grounded in physicality.” A kitchen?

Yes. At the hole dubbed “Care Work,” participants must hold a baby doll “while putting their golf ball through a makeshift kitchen.” Because?

But there are other notable holes, of course. To wit, hole 6 offers players two entrances — one to an abortion clinic and the other to a crisis pregnancy center. The latter has “an infinitely more difficult putting trajectory” because it “articulate[s] the impact of crisis pregnancy centers, which aim to discourage people from getting abortions.” Which, of course, is bad.

D.A. Boudin Goes to UC Berkeley The pro-crime reject will now be educating the next generation of advocates, policymakers and thought leaders. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/d-a-boudin-goes-to-uc-berkeley/

“Rather than seek another elected office in 2024, I’m choosing a different path for now — one that is still consistent with my lifelong commitment to fixing the criminal legal system, ending mass incarceration and innovating data-driven solutions to public safety challenges.”

That was former San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, excited about his new post.

“This week, I was named the founding executive director of Berkeley Law’s new Criminal Law & Justice Center. The center will serve as a national research and advocacy hub focused on critical law and policy changes to advance justice in the criminal legal system. We will participate in impact litigation and help to educate the next generation of frontline advocates, policymakers and thought leaders emerging from the UC Berkeley School of Law.”

The new executive director explains why he’s qualified for the job.

“Both of my biological parents were arrested when I was a baby and spent a combined 62 years in prison. A lifetime of visiting them behind bars, together with the years I spent as a public defender and then an elected prosecutor, taught me how catastrophically California and the nation’s current approach to justice are failing.”

His biological parents were Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, Weather Underground terrorists and violent criminals. They were arrested for their involvement in a 1981 armored car robbery in New York State in which the terrorists killed security guard Peter Paige and two police officers, including the African American Waverly Brown.

Indian Land That Is Part of China’s Hawkish Policy by Mohshin Habib

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19702/india-china-border

India feels a giant demon breathing on her shoulder.

The more China strengthens its military and economic power, the more threatened India feels. The main reason is China’s aggressive actions along the China-India border.

Tibet [in 1914] was an independent country that had every right to negotiate border agreements with any bordering countries.

In 1950, China invaded and fully occupied Tibet. Since then, China has been claiming a right to Arunachal Pradesh and denying the Tibet-India agreement. Even though the McMahon Line is the clear boundary between the countries, the dispute between China and India increases as skirmishes flare up. Each time, the region and the world hold their breath.

Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh was the site of one of the meetings in March. However, China did not participate in that meeting and also skipped the meeting held in Kashmir on May 22-24.

Day by day, relations between the two world’s most populous countries, both nuclear powers, continue to deteriorate, with no signs of peace talks in sight.

India feels a giant demon breathing on her shoulder.

Why AI Can’t Think David Goldman

https://lawliberty.org/why-ai-cant-think/

Just for fun, I tease the hell out of ChatGPT in spare moments. Chatbots have no self, that is, no purpose for existing, and therefore can’t think. There is no such thing as thought in the abstract: thought is always someone’s thought, and mental activity doesn’t constitute thought unless it comes from a thinker who has a reason for thinking. To think, we must distinguish between significant and insignificant objects of thought, that is, those that matter to us and those that don’t (the exception that proves the rule is paranoid schizophrenia, which makes everything significant).

Higher thought is self-conscious, in that it involves awareness of how we think. Kant distinguished between Vernunft, usually translated as “reason,” as opposed to Verstand, the simple categorizing and sorting function of the mind, or “understanding.” The English translation doesn’t quite convey the difference: Vernunft derives from the same root as Vernehmen, “to interrogate.” It implies a critical examination of how we think.

That helps explain why ChatGPT does so badly with self-referential jokes that it hasn’t heard before. GPT has no self, and the switch of the vantage-point of subject—what makes self-referential jokes funny to begin with—leaves it confused.

DeSantis Gains on Trump in Iowa after Campaign Kickoff, New Polls Show Carolyn Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-gains-on-trump-in-iowa-after-campaign-kickoff-new-polls-show/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

Governor Ron DeSantis is gaining on former president Trump in Iowa since he launched his 2024 campaign, new polls indicate.

Despite Trump’s Super PAC shelling out $18 million in ads targeting DeSantis, the former president’s lead in Iowa has shrunk significantly, Axios reported, based on two internal polls provided by Never Back Down, the governor’s Super PAC.

One poll taken in mid May showed DeSantis polling at 24 percent compared to Trump’s 48 percent — a 24-point deficit for the governor. However, a subsequent poll of 655 respondents taken from May 30 to June 1, right after DeSantis’s swing through the state, showed that margin has narrowed to ten points, with Trump garnering 39 percent to DeSantis’ 29 percent.

Nationally, DeSantis is still coming up short by 27 points, with Trump generating 53 percent support to his rival’s 26 percent, according to a CNN survey conducted on May 24.

Owner of Two of San Francisco’s Largest Hotels Pulling Out of City: ‘Path to Recovery Remains Clouded’By Ryan Mills

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/owner-of-two-of-san-franciscos-largest-hotels-pulling-out-of-city-path-to-recovery-remains-clouded/

The owner of two of San Francisco’s largest downtown hotels is stopping mortgage payments and going into foreclosure on the properties, stating that the city faces “major challenges” and that reducing exposure to the market is in the best interest of investors.

Park Hotels & Resorts said Monday that it was stopping payment on a $725 million loan secured by the two hotels, the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square and 1,024-room Parc 55.

The Hilton is San Francisco’s largest hotel, and Parc 55 is the fourth largest.

Thomas J. Baltimore Jr., CEO of the Virginia-based company, called the decision “very difficult, but necessary,” noting record-high downtown office vacancy, “concerns over street conditions,” and reduced convention business.

“After much thought and consideration, we believe it is in the best interest for Park’s stockholders to materially reduce our current exposure to the San Francisco market,” Baltimore said in a prepared statement. “Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges – both old and new.”

The announcement comes less than a week after the San Francisco Travel Association launched a $6 million ad campaign – it’s biggest ever – to lure tourists back to the troubled California city.

The Always San Francisco campaign calls San Francisco “the most beautiful city in the world.” It features images of iconic San Francisco landmarks, opening with a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. The opening ad has scenes of people dancing, drinking, and eating, and includes one pink-haired drag queen, Lady Camden, a one-time contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The millenarian harms race Is there a risk that the bottom might be falling out of the apocalypse market? Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-millenarian-harms-race?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The adviser on artificial intelligence (AI) to the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, says the world has about two years to prevent AI from threatening the human race.

Almost every day, it seems, experts are making bone-chilling predictions about the imminent threat to humanity from AI. Godfrey Hinton, the computer scientist who is considered to be the Dr Frankenstein to this monster, warned weeks ago about his own creation:

These things could get more intelligent than us and could decide to take over, and we need to worry now about how we prevent that happening.

Last month, more than 350 executives and researchers from the world’s biggest AI laboratories issued a joint statement that 

mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.

Scientists at the Future of Life organisation wrote in an open letter:  

AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.

Yet almost every day, it seems, experts are making bone-chilling predictions about the imminent threat to humanity from climate change.

“Cover Those Nazi Symbols, Please?” The New York Times releases a small disgusting detail about reporting in Ukraine Matt Taibbi

https://www.racket.news/p/cover-those-nazi-symbols-please

The New York Times just released a story called “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,” about whether or not it means anything that some Ukrainian soldiers have been photographed wearing Nazi Death’s Head or “Totenkopf” symbols. One passage stands out:

In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.

The institutional obstacles to getting clear information about the war in Ukraine are formidable, from embedding rules barring journalists from entering “red zones” (and requiring escorts in “yellow” areas), to casualties undercounted by officials on both sides, to open use of planted stories, to harassment of voices who go against official messaging. Journalists asking soldiers to remove Nazi patches is a new level of insanity. With the line between propagandist and reporter all but dissolved, how long before embeds are offered NATO uniforms? Who thinks this is a good idea?