The shirt for the dog park people. The cat people who already know what the void wants. The Frenchie owners who pay the drama tax.

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The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5-2 on May 18 that Children’s should resume providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, deciding in favor of transgender patients who had sued the hospital.

The state’s highest court returned the case to a lower court, saying a judge should issue an injunction requiring the hospital to resume care. That lower court judge, Denver District Judge Ericka F.E. Englert, issued the injunction Thursday, and Children’s confirmed Monday that care would resume, at least as an offering in the hospital’s array of services.

In an emailed statement, Children’s said the hospital had “reinstated medical gender-affirming care into our scope of services” — and then added that every medical doctor in the gender-affirming care clinic “has independently decided they will not prescribe or renew gender-affirming medications for patients under age 18.”

That was written nearly a month ago.

The hospital initially had suspended these services because the feds had threatened to cut off Medicaid funding, which is a huge source of the hospital’s income. After the lawsuit from the parents, the doctors are still refusing to provide the drugs because they say they are afraid of being held criminally liable.

The hospital continues to provide “mental health care” for such children. That is very appropriate; the medications are not. I’ve written extensively on that subject and am not going into it again here.

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… [T]he mullahs have had the ability for some time to put a dirty bomb on the Temple Mount or Tel Aviv . Dirty bomb would actually be more worser than a true nuclear device because of the isotopes involved . 1000 years without the wailing wall.

They have not done so. Maybe we should have just left the crazies alone. We could always kill them later.

I think that sounds like a topic worth tackling.

First, on the dirty bomb question:

While it remains doubtful that Iran has developed a nuclear weapons capability, it is widely believed to have access to sufficient radioactive material for use in dirty bombs, particularly from civilian nuclear and industrial sources.

Unlike nuclear weapons that require fissile materials such as uranium or plutonium, dirty bombs can be assembled using radioactive isotopes from civilian sources such as cesium?137, cobalt?60, or americium?241, paired with conventional explosives. Though not designed for mass lethality, a well-placed dirty bomb can cause localized surface contamination, psychological trauma, and economic disruption, as well as significant cleanup costs …

Depending on their size, most dirty bombs and similar devices can only impact an area the size of 1-2 city blocks, but winds can disperse the radioactive particles over a few square miles …

This potential form of asymmetric escalation fits within Iran’s doctrine of warfare and long-standing reliance on proxy actors, offering a plausible but risky retaliatory tool, should Tehran perceive that it faces an existential threat …

The article mentions that Iran could use Hezbollah or the Houthis as the conduit. It also states what is rather obvious, which is that fear of massive retaliation – perhaps nuclear retaliation – could also discourage a dirty bomb’s use. In my opinion, that’s one reason why Iran has been so eager to pursue its own conventional nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles – to finesse such retaliation.

In addition, the article points out that a dirty bomb could end up hurting Israel’s Muslim neighbors, because the radiation is difficult to control and unpredictable.

Therefore, I don’t think it’s at all surprising that Iran has never used a dirty bomb. I also think – as I’ve written before – that Iran’s leaders are somewhat unpredictable because they display a mix of pragmatism and of extreme apocalyptic fanaticism. Which tendency will win out, and when? We can’t afford to risk finding out if it’s the apocalyptic fanaticism, but does the current war increase or decrease that danger? Iran is also not just a self-contained tyranny only affecting the Iranian people, but has ambitions (some of which have already been carried out) of takeover of other countries and the spread of worldwide Islamic terrorist jihadism against other Muslim counties and the West.

Here’s another relevant article:

[Trump’s] methods [of deal-making] have produced impressive results in all sorts of unexpected areas, but for them to work, his counterparts need to be rational actors capable of understanding and acting in their own self interest.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a rational actor.

From its very earliest inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has mirrored founder Ayatollah Khomeini’s belief that the United States (“the Great Satan”) and Israel (“the Little Satan”) are affronts to Islam that must be fought and destroyed. Catspaws Hezbollah and Hamas believe that the founding of Israel (“the Zionist entity”) was a literal affront to God that must be expunged through violent jihad. …

And don’t forget that Iran’s fundamentalist Twelver Shiia regime has devout apocalyptic eschatological beliefs about the return of the occulted Mahdi, one in which the Islamic Republic will create the conditions to hasten his return and reign before the Day of Judgment. Asking them to stop supporting terrorism in the wake of bombing and hyperinflation is like asking an Evangelical to give up their belief in the Rapture and the Second Coming in order to lower their gasoline bill. By the standards of economics, traditional geopolitics and game theory, they cannot be considered “rational actors.”

Some observers have argued that the U.S. has already “won” the war against Iran by shattering its nuclear program, decapitating its leadership and destroying numerous military assets while taking extremely few casualties. But the United States won just about every battle it fought in Afghanistan and Vietnam, but still lost those wars by letting its adversaries survive.

We’re not going to be putting boots on the ground in Iran. It’s a big country with a deeply entrenched (and somewhat decentralized) military, and ruthlessly devoted to putting down dissent in a violent manner. Regine change is probably necessary for victory, but at this point I don’t see how it can be achieved, or how regime change for the better could be guaranteed. But leaving the regime in place just kicks the can down the road.

Without such change, this sort of thing is inevitable:

Alarming new satellite images show signs that the Iranian regime appears to be rebuilding its suspected nuclear facilities at Pickaxe Mountain and Parchin.

Footage of both areas – which sustained extensive damage during US and Israeli-led bombing campaigns that began in late February – reveal “major signs” of activity …

The regime puts these efforts very high on its “must do” list.

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Some of history’s greatest empires have devolved into genocidal lunacy—often with shocking compliance from their own people. What methods can create this madness?

In Manufacturing Delusion, acclaimed conservative commentator and former CIA officer Buck Sexton offers answers. Drawing on his intelligence experience, expertise in crowd psychology, knowledge of propaganda, and research into some of history’s darkest totalitarian chapters, he equips you to identify mind control tactics used to form compliant citizens. He explores the eight tactics of mass delusion through examining:

— How Stalin used Pavlovian mind games to establish absolute control
— How Chinese thought reform transformed opposition into terrorized pawns
— How Jihadist preachers replace shared humanity with weaponized fear

Using these examples and others, Sexton walks you through a history of controlling regimes and the methods they used to create passive citizens. More importantly, he shows you how some of the early stages of mass delusion have already occurred right here in the United States of America, on issues of public health, gender, and racial justice.

I heard about the book through this interview with the author. Although the book’s title only mentions the left, he says in the interview that he also sees it on the right (or the former right, or the pretend right – aka Carlson and Owens). However, that is still a fringe group on the right, whereas it’s a widespread and mainstreamed tool of the left.

Here’s the interview:

In the interview, Sexton also mentions a much older book, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost A. M. Meerloo. It was first published in 1956 and this is from Amazon’s description:

In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective “truth” on their victims’ minds. In “The Rape of the Mind” he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The “Rape of the Mind” is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov’s Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom — Our Mental Backbone

I think “our mental backbone” has gone rather squishy lately.

The reason I have highlighted the Meerloo book, though, is that – strangely enough – I read it when I was about ten years old. Did I understand it? Certainly not deeply. But the topic already interested me so much that I plowed through it.

How did it fall into my hands? My family had received a free and unsolicited catalogue in the mail from Marboro Books, which was (according to Google AI) “a notable discount book retailer and publisher founded in 1947, famous for selling remainders and overstock books at steep discounts through retail stores and mail-order catalogs, the chain was acquired by Barnes & Noble in 1979.” When the catalogue came, I pored over it, fascinated. It was the first time it occurred to me that I could order an adult book – and by “adult” I certainly don’t mean anything to do with sex.

My childhood interests were a portent of things to come as a blogger, because not only did I order that Meerloo book with my allowance, but I also ordered Charles MacKay’s classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. That one was first published in 1841:

The subjects of Mackay’s debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetisers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics.

I think I’m going to order the Sexton book. I seem to have lost the others along the way, although I had them for a long long time.

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pic.twitter.com/gQzOXBJHJz

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 10, 2026

Note the sign-off. After all the more formal jargon, we have this:

F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the hearts.

Solidarity forever,
Graham Platner

I think one of his motives with the sign-off was to embarrass the Democrat politicians who initially supported him and then abandoned him. Then again, he could have done a lot worse there at the end, this being Platner.

So we have those two big progressive causes – anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian. What does “up the hearts” mean? It seems to be a reference to the Portland (Maine), soccer team, the Portland Hearts of Pine. And “Solidarity Forever” is an old labor movement song:

The iconic labor song “Solidarity Forever” turns 109 years old today. Written in defiance of early 20th-century oppression, it railed against the forces that “would lash us into serfdom” with the abiding counsel that the “union makes us strong.”

Will Platner manage to keep himself in the spotlight somehow? I think he’d certainly like to.

The post Platner officially drops out and proves what a class act he is appeared first on The New Neo.

The case against Robinson is about as strong as a case can be. It’s not just that there isn’t a reasonable doubt, there is simply no doubt. And that’s been obvious for quite some time. But that doesn’t stop the conspiracy theorists. They thrive on something about human nature: cynicism, suspicion, the urge to doubt authorities (an impulse which, unfortunately, is sometimes quite justified), and the need to feel superior to the common gullible masses.

It’s also a kind of club thing: we are the cognoscenti and you are not. Or maybe a sorority, because people who study such things say that Owens’ followers tend to be women. Although it’s certainly possible that a great many are bots, I have little doubt that a significant number are real people. There is a big market for such things – including and perhaps especially the virulent Jew-hatred that Candace spreads.

It’s certainly not limited to Jew-hatred, either, although that’s a large part of it. Owens also has been viciously attacking Ericka Kirk, whom she’s painted not only as being in on her husband’s murder, but as having never been what she says she is but rather is – among other things – a child trafficker. Owens acolytes (and/or bots) roam around the internet, commenting on videos featuring Kirk and casting her as a villainess extraordinaire. It is actually a sickening thing to behold.

As a result of the overwhelming evidence against Robinson in the legal proceedings, will conspiracy theorists abandon the murky webs they’ve spun regarding Kirk’s death? There might be a couple of people here and there who do so, but not the major players and not the bulk of their followers. They will simply wiggle out of it or change the focus slightly. Not only is it a money-making endeavor for people like Owens, but for her followers it has become a deep belief.

[NOTE: Over the years, I’ve written many posts about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists. The majority of Americans still do not think that Oswald killed Kennedy or that he acted alone (see this). However, the evidence that he did is totally overwhelming, as I’ve explained in many previous posts.

I’m not going to rehash it here, having already spent so much time doing so. Suffice to say that I recommend the book Reclaiming History to anyone interested. You can find the text (or at least most of it) online here. As I said, I’ve written many posts on the subject, but here’s one of my posts that’s an overview.]

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I happened to see this relevant clip yesterday. I’ve cued up a one-minute excerpt:

However, I don’t think Trump is necessarily finished with negotiating, no matter what he says.

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Enjoy:

RIP Bonnie Tyler.

Speaking of kinky male heroes, it reminds me of the dilemma facing the Democrat Party, one that Graham Platner’s candidacy spotlighted. Some people wonder why Platner was chosen in the first place to run for office, and pushed by certain factions who thought he’d be a good candidate. I think the answer isn’t obscure: he was their designated working-class hero. At least, he could be presented that way. Because it’s all about casting. And sometimes an actor has to be replaced while the play is still in production.

Democrats have lost many members of a demographic that used to be a goodly portion of their base: white, male, working class. They don’t need those votes in deep blue states or cities, and are free to run rich Communists with a foreign background such as Mamdani. But in purple ones and in nationwide elections it’s a riskier proposition, although it can still happen (see Michigan and El-Sayed; but Michigan has a particularly large Muslim voting bloc). But Democratss would very much like to have those white working-class men voting for them everywhere.

Thus, you had the nomination of the abominable Tim Walz as Harris’s VP. It was an effort that failed because Walz was a leftist’s idea of a masculine guy, but he fell very short of that and just came across as weird (a descriptor he used for J. D. Vance but that fit Walz far better).

Vance, by the way, really did start out as a white working-class guy – or even more poor than that – but rose higher by dint of brains and hard work.

Initially Platner must have seemed like a good solution to the problem. Male, “oyster farmer,” young, tattooed, veteran, Maine native, possessed of a rugged quality. A leftist who didn’t look like a leftist. For a while he polled quite well against Susan Collins, who is old and female and has been in office for a gazillion years. But Platner had a past, and the past wasn’t all that long ago.

Who chose Platner? Like most of these working-class heroes and foreign academic Communists, he was chosen by people whose specialty it is to find them and back them:

Welp… pic.twitter.com/e3TgHWaf9T

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 10, 2026

It’s about one of these “finders,” Daniel Moraff. The Times article said, “He looks for a particular type: military veterans with blue-collar jobs and no electoral experience but an interest in politics and (typically) labor unions.”

Next in line in Maine for the role seems to be Troy Jackson. The difference is that he really is from a working-class background and really was a logger, although he lacks a history of military service. He also has been a Maine politician for about twenty-five years and was the president of the Maine Senate. However, he’s got the usual political baggage, in his case that he was originally an abortion-opposing and same-sex-marriage-opposing Republican and switched both his party and his positions. There’s also this:

Jackson initially maintained a close political alliance with Platner, with the two frequently appearing at campaign rallies together and running in a ranked-choice voting alliance during the 2026 primary cycle. However, after multiple scandals involving Platner, including allegations that he raped a former girlfriend, Jackson has distanced himself from Platner.

On Israel, Jackson adheres to the requisite Democrat Party line:

“Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza. It has to end, and we as Americans have the power to end it.” Jackson added that he will “never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel” as a senator.

The article says that’s the first time he’s spoken much publicly about Israel, and it happened yesterday. Funny thing, that – he’s hopping on the bandwagon in an attempt to replace Platner. Jackson is also backed by Hasan Piker and Bernie Sanders. The same article helpfully lists the other contenders for the nomination as well, and mentions their attitudes on the Israel question. They exhibit different degrees of anti-Israel sentiment. But only one candidate seems to be supportive of the country, and that’s Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state of Maine.

One more thing about Troy Jackson – this allegation has emerged:

A progressive advocacy group on Tuesday accused former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson of striking a female colleague with a bottle he threw during a state Senate caucus dispute years ago, complicating his emergence as the leading Democrat contender to replace Graham Platner on the November ballot against Republican Sen. Susan Collins. …

In a post on X, the group said Jackson, “in a heated disagreement, struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her” during a caucus meeting when he served as Senate president, and it described the episode as “a widespread open secret” in Maine politics that was “not an isolated incident.”

The group conceded that people close to Jackson were denying the account.

The Democrats have until July 27 to make a decision. It will be the Party regulars of Maine who will choose Platner’s successor. They have an interesting task ahead – how to thread the needle.

[NOTE: If anyone’s interested in how it is that Platner can be on total disability from the service, here’s an article about that.]

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