Closing the tabs ...
Ed: Hope you missed me as much as I missed you!
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I understand why men like Oliver, who've consistently mocked anti-science people on the right, sold out initially. They didn't want to blow up their careers. Taking fashionable anti-women's rights positions was the cost of doing business.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 7, 2025
But it's time to read the fucking room. https://t.co/FyEkqtaxcL
Ed: As I wrote earlier today, boys are being victimized here too, but not nearly as badly as girls and women are. Rowling has taken a lot of cultural heat for her activism on behalf of biological reality, and John Oliver is one of the more despicable ankle-biters.
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A US lawsuit filed on Monday by victims of the October 7 attack claimed that a prominent Palestinian-American businessman, Bashar Masri, aided Hamas through business projects in the Gaza Strip.
The lawsuit argued that Hamas deceived Israel ahead of the invasion by feigning an interest in developing Gaza, and that Masri and his companies were “an integral part of that grand deception.”
“They owned and operated flagship properties in Gaza that they knowingly and deliberately integrated into Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and that were crucial elements in Hamas’s attack plan on October 7,” the lawsuit said.
Ed: If they can prove this, then let's hope a court will make Masri pay through the nose for it. But if it were true, shouldn't the Department of Justice be prosecuting Masri for material support of a State Department-listed terrorist group? The Holy Land Foundation prosecutions were based on similar circumstances.
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BREAKING:
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 7, 2025
President Trump says the United States is holding direct talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/jn5BLB3IY5
Ed: I may write more about this tomorrow. For now, though, keep expectations modest at best. The mullahs have manipulated US administrations in the past, including the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s.
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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday temporarily blocked a trial judge’s order directing the United States to return a Salvadoran migrant it had inadvertently deported.
The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to give the justices some breathing room while the full court considers the matter.
The order came just hours after the administration asked the court to block the trial judge’s order instructing the government to return the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, by 11:59 p.m. on Monday.
Ed: I didn't write about this today because it's not clear to me that Roberts will do anything about this order in the end. I'll wait to see whether the full court intervenes, or whether Roberts ends up releasing the hold.
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On Friday, the White House Roosevelt Room was filled with everyday Americans—the sons and daughters of steelworkers, nurses, and clerks—for a celebration of Beverly Aikins’ 10th year of sobriety.
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) April 7, 2025
An incredible story of redemption for @JDVance’s mother. https://t.co/1Rs0Aksh8t pic.twitter.com/pEUWkOwiVH
Ed: What a great moment for Mrs. Aiken and the Vances -- and for the cause of sobriety in the US.
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As the Vances were led by the Secret Service to their balcony seats, a smattering of boos coalesced into a midsize chorus. Someone said, “J.D. Vance,” and someone else said, “Oh, [f***] him.” And then someone else yelled, “Kill that light!”—apparently hoping that, at the very least, they might be spared the sight of the vice president.
“It was about 20 or 30 seconds of some people booing and delaying the start of the concert, right as the conductor is about to come out, and there were a few other people clapping. J.D. waved at them, and then we enjoyed the show that we had come for,” Usha said.
From their perch, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing someone would record and post to X, where reporters were always sniffing around in search of a story—transforming a date night into a headline.
Usha seemed perplexed by the whole episode: “It’s a really good example,” she said, “of reporting in search of a narrative that tends to occur.”
Ed: Indeed it does. This is an excellent profile of the Second Lady, well worth reading. It's a lengthy essay, so block out some time for it.
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President Trump: "Virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I didn't do what I did over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn't have had anybody who wanted to negotiate... Now they're offering things to us that we would never of even thought of asking them for." pic.twitter.com/8ke6nmFgm5
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 7, 2025
Ed: That's great, but Peter Navarro is publicly insisting that the new tariff regime isn't intended to be a negotiation, and Scott Bessent is backing that up. It might help to get everyone on the same message.
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The first episode, released on YouTube on March 12, got off to a promising start with 335,000 views. But each subsequent episode has struggled to maintain that momentum.
The next episodes released clocked in at:
- 252,000 views
- 225,000 views
- 194,000 views
- 140,000 views
IMO‘s most recent episode — uploaded five days ago – racked up only 62,000 views on YouTube.
That’s a steep decline in less than a month, especially for a show fronted by someone as universally known as Michelle Obama.
Ed: I know that this has come up for ridicule, but those aren't bad numbers for a podcast. Being ranked 34th at Apple and 19th on Spotify isn't peanuts. Mrs. Obama isn't terribly relevant any longer and hasn't been for a while, mainly by her own choice. When I'm getting 200,000 views for a podcast, I'll snark it up, but until then ...
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SecDef Pete Hegseth: "It's been a bad three weeks for the Houthis and it's about to get worse... we know, because we see the reports, how devastating this campaign has been." pic.twitter.com/FX4T8aEvIj
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 7, 2025
Ed: I wonder if the B-2 squadron at Diego Garcia is about to get a combat assignment.
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Underlying these stories is both a deep pessimism about heterosexual relationships, and a view of sex that prioritizes personal satisfaction over human connection, and pleasure over partnership. Marriage is portrayed as a soul-sucking trap, and men are invariably a source of disappointment: If the husbands of All Fours, Babygirl, and Dying for Sex are not bad, per se, they are also clearly nowhere near good enough. But perhaps more importantly, they are unnecessary—because in this fictional universe, sex is a solitary enterprise, a journey to enlightenment that women undertake alone.
That women feel empowered to pursue pleasurable sex is not a bad thing; it was only early in the last century that Freud derided clitoral orgasms as “infantile,” an unscientific and misogynistic notion to which any corrective is certainly welcome. But the strand of feminist thinking that animates stories like Dying for Sex goes a step further, suggesting that while men may sometimes, by necessity, be the vehicle for one’s sexual journey, they should under no circumstances be seen as traveling companions.
Ed: This is another facet in my earlier argument about the denigration of males and masculinity in the dominant American culture. Kat Rosenfeld does a very good job in deconstructing the hostility evident in this approach; Christian and I will talk more about it in our Off the Beaten Path podcast tomorrow for VIP members.
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JUST IN: The LA Dodgers start cracking up after Trump declines to introduce Senators in the room because he doesn't "particularly like them."
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 7, 2025
The world is scrambling because of Trump's tariffs and he is completely unfazed.
"We have a couple of senators here. I just don't… pic.twitter.com/eyv32nTkb8
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