Source: Orange County Register
by John Phillips

“On April 1st, California’s brand new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers took effect, and surprise surprise fast food chains are jacking up their menu prices across the board. According to data from Kalinowski Equity Research and cited in The New York Post, Wendy’s has hiked prices by roughly 8 percent, while Chipotle raised theirs by 7.5 percent, Starbucks went up by about 7 percent, Taco Bell by 3 percent, and Burger King increased theirs by 2 percent, the report found. What’s next? The McDonald’s drive-thru lane may have to start charging tolls. Burger King could offer free estimates. A lay-away plan at Wendy’s? Also, Wendy has an OnlyFans page now. Some franchises even raised their prices ahead of time, in anticipation of the new law. … I guess we should count our blessings. At least America wasn’t experiencing record-breaking inflation when all of this nonsense happened.” (04/23/24)

https://www.ocregister.com/2024/04/23/john-phillips-californias-fast-food-follies/

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times demonstrates what is a warped interpretation of the term ‘patriotism.’ The op-ed is about former football player Pat Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan twenty years ago. It’s written by Bill Dwyre, a former sports editor for the Times. Dwyre reminds us that Tillman was motivated to join the military after the 9/11 attacks. He gave up a $3.6 million football contract to join the U.S. military and was hoping to be sent to Afghanistan to fight the terrorists. … One of the fascinating aspects of Dwyre’s op-ed glorifying Tillman’s patriotism is what he leaves out of the op-ed. Tillman was an outspoken opponent of Bush’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq. Dwyre doesn’t even mention that, which is revealing.” (04/24/24)

https://www.fff.org/2024/04/24/a-warped-view-of-patriotism-on-pat-tillman/

Source: Washington Post
by Ramesh Ponnuru

“Of course Donald Trump is being persecuted. That’s not to say that he is innocent of all charges, or to deny that the prosecutors — and the millions of Americans rooting for them — are partly motivated by their conviction that he is a serial lawbreaker. But he wouldn’t be facing all of these charges all at once if he were not a serious contender for president. … Trump isn’t just playing the victim. He is a victim of unfair, law-bending prosecution. When we think about political persecution, however, we typically have in mind someone who has done nothing wrong but challenge the powerful. That’s not the picture here: In each of these cases, Trump’s underlying conduct is indefensible. That fact helps to explain the widespread support for the legal campaign against Trump. His efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, especially, were despicable.” (04/23/24)

https://archive.is/m2IoF

Source: Public Substack
by Michael Shellenberger

“X owner Elon Musk should be thrown in prison, said a senator in Australia yesterday, because he refuses to delete a video of a recent stabbing from X globally. ‘Whatever Elon Musk is on,’ said Senator Jacqui Lambie, ‘it’s disgusting behavior. Quite frankly, the bloke should be jailed.’ But what’s truly disgusting behavior is calling for the incarceration of someone for refusing to censor the entire global Internet on behalf of a single nation. It is not the right of any nation to decide what should be on the Internet around the world. ‘No president, prime minister, or judge,’ responded Musk on X, ‘has authority over all of Earth!’ He’s right.” (04/23/24)

https://public.substack.com/p/cia-recruit-is-pursuing-global-internet

Source: The Atlantic
by Adam Serwer

“Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint. On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as ‘the nascent pogroms at Columbia.’ Last week, Cotton posted on X, ‘I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.’ He later deleted the post and reworded it so that it did not sound quite so explicitly like a demand for aspiring vigilantes to lynch protesters. This is a long-standing pattern for Cotton, who enjoys issuing calls for violence that linger on the edge of plausible deniability when it comes to which groups, exactly, are appropriate targets for lethal force.” (04/24/24)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/columbia-national-guard-tom-cotton/678163/

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“All the frenzied shrieking about pro-Palestine protests at universities these last few days makes it clear that our civilization is so twisted and insane that it sees protesting a genocide as far worse than committing one. Which is about as backwards as any society could possibly be. Seriously, try to imagine a crazier, more upside-down civilization than one which gets more angry at people protesting genocidal atrocities than it does at people committing them. A civilization where people wear their pants on their head and walk backwards all day? That would be less crazy. A civilization where the dogs own the people and the children go to work while the parents go to school? That would be less crazy. It’s as wrong as you can possibly get anything in this world. It’s actually hard to imagine how anyone could get anything more wrong.” (04/24/24)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/04/25/in-this-dystopia-opposing-a-genocide-is-considered-worse-than-committing-one/