GOT WOKE, WENT…: Scotland’s Humza Yousaf resigns after conflicts over climate change, gender identity weakened government.

Flashbacks:

● Scotland Just Banned a Surgical Anesthetic Because of Climate Change.

● SNP frontrunner Humza Yousaf says transgender double rapist Isla Bryson is ‘not a genuine trans woman’ and ‘is trying to play the system’ – after outcry over initially sending sex predator to all-women’s prison.

● UN says Scotland’s proposal for gender self-ID poses risk to women and girls.

● Women in Scotland outraged as country’s first ever Period Poverty tsar is announced as a MAN.

● Scotland hate crime bill seeks to criminalize ‘dinner table’ conversations.

Exit Quote: Humza Yousaf is everything that’s wrong with modern politics. “Many of us find ourselves wondering what will happen to the West when the woe-is-us bourgeois youths of the 21st-century campus enter politics, bringing with them their hyper-fragility, blacklisting lunacy and BS about ‘structural racism’. Wonder no more. Yousaf’s Scotland is what will happen. This first minister with his innate wariness of his fellow citizens and his seemingly boundless capacity for self-pity is woke made flesh.”

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RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: How to End the Craziness on College Campuses. “Let’s be clear: I am not recommending that the JDL be reborn, or saying that violence is the answer. But we need to consider the situation we are all seeing today: College graduations being canceled, Jews being threatened and even killed (may Paul Kessler rest in peace), temples being vandalized, and a hatred of Jews that rivals anything the world has seen since Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The terrorism that ended up being the practice of the JDL by the 1980s is not the answer, but what is?”

GASLIGHTING: It’s Not Me, It’s You: Blaming the Public’s “Perception of the Economy.”

MICHAEL WALSH: Mephisto’s Revenge.

And so the War of the Baby Boomers has now come full circle, and for those of us who were in college at the end of the Sixties it’s déjà vu all over again. The urgent need of the postwar generation to protest something, anything, is now — like them — in its dotage but still lashing out at the thing it’s always hated: the United States of America. Only this time, they’re on the receiving end of the nasty activism of which they were the first modern practitioners.

And it’s happening precisely at Ground Zero of the anti-American revolution: Columbia University, the American home of the Frankfurt School. The tragic irony is that an “intellectual” movement of largely German-Jewish Marxists, refugees from National Socialist Germany, has now been weaponized against the Jews themselves, with anti-Semitic outbreaks on campuses and elsewhere across the country — this time with the Jews cast in the role of the Nazis. (The current moment is not, it should be noted, the first time Columbia’s had a Jewish problem.)

Read the whole thing.

FASTER, PLEASE: SpaceX making progress on Starship in-space refueling technologies.

Speaking to the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee April 26, Amit Kshatriya, NASA deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, said SpaceX achieved one step towards refueling of Starship with a demonstration on the latest Starship test flight March 14.

During that flight, SpaceX performed an in-flight propellant transfer demonstration under a NASA Tipping Point contract awarded in 2020. SpaceX planned to transfer at least 10 metric tons of liquid oxygen from a header tank to the main tank within the Starship upper stage while in space.

While SpaceX said the day of the flight that it performed the demonstration, neither the company nor NASA provided any updates since then. At the advisory committee meeting, though, Kshatriya said the test appeared to go well.

“On Flight 3, they did an intertank transfer of cryogens, which was successful by all accounts,” he said, adding that analysis of the test is ongoing.

The next major milestone is a demonstration planned for 2025 where two Starships will dock in orbit, with one transferring propellants to the other.

Artemis depends on SpaceX perfecting orbital refueling and, more broadly, getting to the Moon (and Mars) with enough stuff to stay there depends on it, too.

BRYAN S. JUNG: Establishment Corruption in Big Art. “Art is the only unregulated business that I know of in the world outside of the illicit drug business since the public had to be protected from criminal abuses in the stock and real estate markets over a hundred years ago.”

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THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME:

And they said millennials were self indulgent, ignorant, and ego maniacs pic.twitter.com/WnEh1u90EE

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) April 28, 2024

“I would like to observe that the older generation had certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing it on to us. They gave us this Thing, knocked to pieces, red-hot, threatening to blow up; and then they are surprised that we don’t accept it with the same enthusiasm with which they received it.”

— John F. Carter Jr., “These Wild Young People’ by One of Them,” in the Atlantic, 1920.

However, according to America’s Newspaper of Record, the cris de coeur of Sofia and her friends are having a major impact! Israel Withdraws From Gaza After Learning Of Protest By 19-Year-Old Fine Arts Major Roxy Barnett.

INFLATION, ONCE SET LOOSE, IS DIFFICULT AND PAINFUL TO REIN BACK IN: ‘We expect Powell to make a hawkish pivot’—Fed meeting to headline busy week for global markets. “We expect Powell to make a hawkish pivot. At the minimum, he’ll likely indicate the median FOMC participant now expects ‘less’ cuts this year. In a more hawkish direction, he could hint at a chance of no cuts — or even suggest a hike might be on the table, though not the current baseline.”

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! ‘Honors College’ for black students receives $250K from Cal State system.

IN NEWSWEEK, AN ACTUAL GAZAN TELLS CAMPUS PROTESTERS THEY’RE IDIOTS:

You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas’ atrocities. Instead, the protesters routinely chant their desire to “Globalize the Intifada.” Apparently they do not realize that the Intifadas were disastrous for both Palestinians and Israelis, just as October 7 has been devastating for the people of Gaza.

They should be speaking up for the innocent victims of Hamas—both Palestinian and Israeli. Instead, they endorse Hamas’s ideology with posters announcing resistance “by any means necessary” and chants of “from the river to the sea,” effectively glorifying the Al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’ military wing, whose ideology is entirely based on the elimination of more than 6 million Israelis from the land.

I assumed individuals who initiated these slogans were uninformed about what they were advocating for. I saw the LGBTQ flag frequently flown among people chanting lines from Hamas’s charter, and I initially wanted to educate them, to warn them that the group they are honoring would most likely toss them from the top of a building or murder them like they did to Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander accused of homosexuality. Hamas harasses women who don’t cover their heads. Hamas tortures those who demonstrate against their authoritarian rule, as they did me when I protested.

All of this seems to be lost on the people who have named themselves our allies, to our misfortune.

Hate speech on college campuses starting with the one at Columbia has recently reached a frightening pitch. I’ve seen people yelling antisemitic things at Jewish students, including “Jews go back to Poland” and other horrible phrases. It has deteriorated to the point that Jews are no longer attending university classes due to the current hostile environment, and they are attending their classes online to avoid the demonstrators.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from these demonstrators’ silence concerning Hamas’ atrocities and their antisemitic chanting is that they are not concerned with protecting Palestinians. They are out in their tents because of a hatred of Jews and Israelis.

Well, that, and also because they’re morons. Or quite frequently both.

Campus protesters have been given a spurious moral legitimacy since the 1960s. But that’s not because they’re morally superior, or even moral. It’s just because they’re useful for the left.

SHE ACTUALLY DID THE TROPE: ‘Shoot the Dog’ Made Noem a Hollywood Villain.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Kink’ instructor teaches Northwestern students that US is an ‘empire of white supremacist imperialist policing.’

SUPPLY AND DEMAND, HOW DO THEY WORK? Home Prices Stagnate in Florida and Texas as Supply Soars. “Housing supply is soaring because both states have been building a lot of homes, which is limiting home price growth. Buyer demand is also lackluster because many people are priced out.”

The former should help with the latter, no? But the author is “particularly interested in the issues of climate change, race and gender equality and housing affordability,” and might have missed Econ 1. And as Milton Friedman liked to say, “Everything we know in economics we teach in Econ 1, and everything else is made up.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Polls Are Usually Garbage, But There Is One Thing Worth Noting in 2024. “Trump has had the overwhelming numbers of the mainstream media aligned against him all along. They’ve always hated Republicans, but they super ultra mega hate Donald Trump. Until Elon Musk purchased Twitter and rebranded it with a gentleman’s club name, all of social media was working against Trump.”

OUT NEXT WEEK: From Cheryl Mendelson, Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite. A look at marriage and commitment through time.

UNEXPECTEDLY: California Fast-Food Chains Are Now Serving Sticker Shock.

Consumers picking up burgers, burritos and chicken sandwiches at chains in the Golden State are grappling with prices that for months have been rising at a faster clip than in other states, according to market-research firm Datassential.

Since September, when California moved to require large fast-food chains to bump up their minimum hourly pay to $20 in April, fast-food and fast-casual restaurants in California have increased prices by 10% overall, outpacing all other states, the firm found in an analysis of thousands of restaurants across 70 large chains.

Prices at Chick-fil-A, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Jack in the Box, and other fast-food chains have increased since September, the firm found. Chipotle said in an investor call Wednesday that prices at its nearly 500 California restaurants climbed 6% to 7% during the first week of April compared with last year, playing out across its menu.

“The state isn’t making it easy,” Chipotle Chief Executive Brian Niccol said in an interview.

California raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour in April, a 25% increase from the state’s broader $16 minimum wage. Supporters, including Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the law would improve wages and working conditions for hundreds of thousands of fast-food employees in the state.

About that last part: Fast food chains find a way around $20 minimum wage: Get rid of the workers.

Previously: California, Poverty Capital.

HMM: What Uncle Sam Can Do About Our Baby Bust.

HMM: New Bombshell Evidence Emerges: Was Trump Set Up in Classified Docs Saga?

INSURRECTION: Harvard Protesters Raise Palestinian Flags On University Building, In Spot Reserved For American Flag: Harvard protesters chanted ‘Shame!’ when university staff removed the flags.

Related: Netanyahu Decries ‘Anti-Semitic Mobs’ Overtaking American Campuses.

WAPO OP-ED: Punish Columbia Professors, Not Student Protesters, For The Intellectual Degeneration On Campus.

Related: Education Apocalypse Now?

COMMUNISTS RUN OUT OF EVERYTHING: Long lines form and frustration grows as Cuba runs short of cash.

Long lines outside banks and ATMs in the capital, Havana, and beyond start forming early in the day as people seek cash for routine transactions like buying food and other essentials.

Experts say there are several reasons behind the shortage, all somehow related to Cuba’s deep economic crisis, one of the worst in decades.

Omar Everleny Pérez, a Cuban economist and university professor, says the main culprits are the government’s growing fiscal deficit, the nonexistence of banknotes with a denomination greater than 1,000 Cuban pesos (about $3 in the parallel market), stubbornly high inflation and the nonreturn of cash to banks.

“There is money, yes, but not in the banks,” said Pérez, adding that most of the cash is being held not by salaried workers, but by entrepreneurs and owners of small- and medium-size business who are more likely to collect cash from commercial transactions but are reluctant to return the money to the banks.

This, Pérez says, is either because they don’t trust the local banks or simply because they need the Cuban pesos to convert into foreign currency.

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners in Cuba have to import almost everything they sell or pay in foreign currency for the supplies needed to run their businesses. As a consequence, many end up hoarding Cuban pesos to later change into foreign currency on the informal market.

Converting those Cuban pesos to other currencies poses yet another challenge, as there are several, highly fluctuating exchange rates in the island.

For example, the official rate used by government industries and agencies is 24 pesos to the U.S. dollar, while for individuals, the rate is 120 pesos to the dollar. However, the dollar can fetch up to 350 Cuban pesos on the informal market.

So long as Washington is adding another trillion to our $35 trillion deficit every 100 days or so, we don’t have much room to chide Cuba.

ABOLISH THE IVY LEAGUE: Antisemitic Left-Wing Activists Are Showing Who Is Really in Charge on Ivy League Campuses.

PLAUSIBLE:

Ilhan Omar Paraglides Into Columbia Campus To Lead Protests https://t.co/dw9VL2IkzE pic.twitter.com/0xXer2c974

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 27, 2024