It’s been nearly six months since the first installment of the Twitter Files—the journalistic effort by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and many others to expose the myriad channels by which the U.S government cooperated with Twitter on content moderation and censorship—was first published.

For six months, not much of consequence has happened, either in Washington or the mainstream media, in response. Those who owe us mea culpas have not provided them, tending instead to attack the individual reporters or ignore their findings.

Why? Because not many commentators understand the interconnected tendrils of a single censorship apparatus. Michael Shellenberger and his colleagues Alex Gutentag and Matt Taibbi are now undertaking a monumental attempt at defining that apparatus: they call it the Censorship Industrial Complex.

Shellenberger and Gutentag are two of the few journalists who not only take the reality of increased government censorship efforts seriously but also consider it a systemic, unified, and global threat, as opposed to a few discreet but regrettable extensions of U.S. political power.

Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday.  His one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS.

This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker. It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House.  “Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed.  “You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”

Sure enough, the House voted 221-210 to repeal the extra IRS funding.  “Promises made,” the newly minted speaker said Jan. 9, banging the gavel on the first bill of the Republican-controlled House.

What about promises kept?  Fuhgeddaboudit.

[In this compendium of current Leftist insanity, VDH asks: “Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide—to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?”  But he has no answer.  Do you agree that the answer was given 20 years ago in “Beyond Treason”?  That all the passions of the Left are frenzies of masochism, that the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy-appeasement?]

The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.

Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Anheuser-Busch has destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand. Disney has rebranded its films, amusement parks, and television with  billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers. A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.

All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide?

[This is absolutely one of VDH’s superbly best, a 100% must-read]

The sign of a civilization in headlong decline is its embrace of absurdities. Unfortunately for the United States, we are witnessing an epidemic of nihilist nonsense. Here are a few examples. We’ll start with Reparations, and continue through Inequality before the Law, Woke Nullification of Federal Law, Rogue Federal Agencies, and Printing Money.

This can’t go on and yet it does. The longer it does, the more catastrophic will be the end.

Putin watches single tank drive down Red Square in scaled-back Victory Day Parade

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has warned of the potential of another Russian revolution akin to that of 1917 unless the strategy of the war in Ukraine is drastically altered.

Russia’s top mercenary leader said in a post on Telegram that the number of casualties suffered by common people in the war in Ukraine while elites in Moscow “shook their arses” could lead to widespread unrest and that the imposition of martial law could be required to prevent a full-blown revolution.

“We are in such a condition that we could effing lose Russia – that is the main problem… We need to impose martial law,” Prigozhin said according to a translation by the Reuters news agency.

“First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up,” he continued. “There are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed. And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”

“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” the Wagner boss warned, referencing the communist overthrow of the Romanov royal family by the communist uprising led by Vladimir Lenin a century ago.

Former President Donald Trump has the unique ability to launch a lawfare offensive against the media that could be so effective it would force a media transformation, an essential step to turning the country around.

Trump can prove the media knowingly engaged in spreading lies about collusion between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign and so much more. It seems malice would be awfully easy to prove as the evidence is in clear view. It would also be easy to show that all of the slander and libel caused material damage to Trump companies.

I tweeted about this last week as one of my most fervent dreams. And to my delight, a few days later, Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, filed a $3.78 billion lawsuit against the Washington Post in a Florida state court in Sarasota County, where Truth Social is based.

This is a pathway Trump companies can pursue whether he were to become president again or not. Trump is in the unique position to upend the media in a way that might radically reform how it functions in America.

Will it work? Put me in the camp of let’s find out.

This past weekend, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) reminded voters, and a skeptical press that has spent an inordinate amount of time writing his political obituary before he even launched his candidacy, that he not only possesses the promise and nimbleness needed to be a candidate for president but that he also has the staff and network needed to pull off just the right move to strike a blow against his rival, former President Donald Trump.

People underestimate DeSantis only at their own peril.

DeSantis and Trump were scheduled on Saturday (5/20) to be in Iowa, the state with the first-in-the-country contest for 2024, but Trump’s team canceled the event after the threat of a tornado warning. DeSantis took full advantage of his absence with an impromptu stop in the same area Trump was supposed to be, thus casting shade on the former president, who has spent months maligning DeSantis’s character.

“My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida, we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines,” DeSantis said to a cheering and surprised crowd at the barbecue as he and his wife Casey stood on a picnic table outside. “So thank you all for coming out. It’s a beautiful night. It’s been a great day for us.”

DeSantis’ unscheduled stop speaks to the scope of the organization he already has in Iowa and its competency. Several Iowa Republicans said they were surprised that when Trump decided to cancel the rally, he didn’t try to do something else, even if it were on a smaller scale.

One day, America’s black citizens will realize that Democrats always make promises they will not or cannot fulfill. The latest example is the reparations folly currently playing out in California. Black Californians are beginning to realize they were watching Kabuki reparations theater.

Last week, the state’s “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans” approved a comprehensive “reparations” plan costing $800 billion. Despite the task force only being advisory, blacks really believed that its recommendations would send money their way.

Not gonna happen. Knowing that the state was running out of money may explain why Gavin Newsom announced that there would be no reparations money for any blacks.

The problem is that, once you’ve raised people’s expectations, you can’t pull an Emily Litella and say to them, “Never mind.” Do that, and people will feel as if you’ve defrauded them, making promises you never intended to keep. Dems, you in a whole heap a’trouble, boys…

Recently there has been a spate of horrific murders.

The killers, whether committing mass shootings or single homicides, are hard to stereotype.

They can be clearly either mentally ill or simply innately evil. They can kill for revenge, for ideological purposes, out of hatred, for notoriety—or for no known reason at all.

Unfortunately, these tragedies increasingly have become politicized. Our media and politicians do not apply a common standard of reporting about either the victims, the killers, or the apparent motives and circumstances of the violence.

Instead, each horror is quickly analyzed for its political usefulness. Then its details are electively downplayed or emphasized, depending upon the political agenda at work.  Here are the current examples.

Federal prosecutors last week announced the indictment of U.S. Representative George Santos (R-N.Y.) on a host of charges, including misuse of federal campaign funds and wire fraud, almost all of them resulting from his pathological lies.

Certainly, Santos deserved the attention of prosecutors for lying on federal documents and affidavits that may have helped him win a congressional seat as well as personal lucre.

Are federal and states prosecutors now setting a new moral and legal standard by criminalizing Santos’ lies? If true, congratulations—it is long overdue.

Now can we please extend the long arm of the law to reach far beyond a bit player like Santos?

Why not reboot with the really big liars? Their lies far more undermined the integrity of our key agencies and indeed our national security.  Let’s start with Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, and work our way through a long list to The Big Guy, the greatest prevaricator of all.

MATAMOROS, Mexico — For two red-hot weeks, this Mexican city across from Brownsville, Texas was the hottest spot for the massive flood of illegal immigration on the southern border.

But no more, thanks to a very unique, forceful and controversial Texas intervention of Gov. Abbott’s that looks to become a long-term influence on national immigration policy.  When DHS’ Mayorkas suggested the Texas operation was illegal and under review by the Department of Justice, Abbott doubled down.

This is an extraordinary story unfolding before our eyes. Here is my eyewitness report.

The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 shell companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee — a system GOP lawmakers said was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals in a press conference today (5/10).

At least nine Biden family members received payments, according to committee chairman James Comer. That includes Hunter Biden; James Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; the late Beau Biden’s wife, Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”

Much of the money came from Chinese nationals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Multiple Biden family members received money after it passed through an associate’s account.  The Bidens received “millions of dollars from China,” with Comer saying it is “inconceivable that the president did not know” about the payments.

The most powerful and destructive perception in the world today is that using fossil fuels will cause catastrophic climate change.

This belief, marketed by every major government and corporate institution in the Western world, is the foundational premise underlying a policy agenda of stunning indifference to the aspirations of ordinary people.

The war on fossil fuel is a war on freedom, prosperity, pluralism, independence, national sovereignty, world peace, domestic tranquility, and, most ironically, the environment itself.

It is a war of rich against poor, the privileged against the disadvantaged, corporate monopolies against competitive upstarts, Malthusians against optimists, regulators against innovators, and authoritarians against freedom-loving people everywhere.

But this war cannot be won unless the perception is maintained. If fossil fuel is allowed to compete against other energy alternatives for customers as a vital and growing part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy, this authoritarian political agenda falls apart.  Here’s what you can do about this.

The decade-long French Revolution that broke out in 1789 soon devolved into far more than removing the monarchy, as it became antithetical to the earlier American precedent.

American notions of liberty and freedom were seen as far too narrow, given the state, if only all-powerful and all-wise, could mandate “equality” and force “fraternity” among its subjects. Each cycle of French revolutionary fervor soon became more radicalized and cannibalistic—until it reached its logical ends of violent absurdity.

That is what is happening today to the fervor of woke insanity in America, as it reaches its logical end of the same violent absurdity.  A counter-revolution is coming to sweep it away.

As Hunter Biden faces a potential criminal indictment, Devon Archer will make his last bid to avoid jail when his appeal is heard in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan.

As he grows increasingly despondent, friends with knowledge of Hunter’s thinking are telling Archer to accept that the Bidens have thrown him under the bus and that a last-minute presidential pardon has been ruled out.

They have urged him to save himself by using the only currency he has left — his knowledge of the Biden family influence-peddling scheme, for which he had a front-row seat for four years during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

Will he sing on Biden family crimes or not?

This week, Hunter Biden’s defense team traveled to Delaware seeking an update on the federal criminal investigation that has dragged on for almost five years. The reason seems clear: Time is running out on Hunter and the Biden family.

After years of delaying disclosures and admissions, Hunter could now be pushing to cap off the criminal side of the scandal before more information is released in Arkansas and Washington. For years, the Bidens have worked (with the media’s help) to delay any recognition of the influence peddling and corruption that may be revealed on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

It won’t work any more than his long refusal to acknowledge his fathering of his four-year-old child, Navy. Just as Hunter could not deny DNA, forensic and other evidence will soon make his laptop denials untenable in proceedings in which he and his counsel are required to tell the truth.

These proceedings are now colliding for the Bidens.

Sesame Street guest Anthony Blinken

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is claiming the political version of the immaculate conception.

In a Fox interview, Blinken suggests that he is free of blame in the creation of the 2020 letter from former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely Russian disinformation.

Despite the primary organizer of the letter naming him as the Biden campaign adviser who first raised the claim, Blinken insists that he remains without sin.

All of the letter signatories are taking the same position. No one is at fault in one of the most calculated false stories ever planted in the midst of an election cycle.

That would be hard enough to believe, but it’s not even the only lie Blinken is accused of telling in relation to Hunter Biden

Baby Mama Lunden Roberts with daughter Navy Joan

Hunter Biden’s showdown with baby mama Lunden Roberts in a Batesville, Ark., courtroom Monday (5/01) may be the first time in his life that he hasn’t been able to wheedle out of the consequences of his actions.

As Jonathan Turley on Fox reports:

“The viciousness of the Biden family toward Hunter's daughter, 4-year-old Navy Joan borders on monstrous.  In the Biden family, the 4-year-old girl remains "she who shall not be named" literally. Not only has President Biden refused to refer to her as a grandchild or even include a Christmas stocking with the other children, her father Hunter is fighting to prevent her from using the Biden name. Indeed, the only reason that Hunter is coming to the same state that his daughter lives in is to seek to reduce his child support.”

The president’s son is crying poor and seeking to cut child support payments to Navy Joan, his unacknowledged 4-year-old daughter with Roberts, a former stripper with whom he had a monthslong affair.

In the biggest news to come out of the Supreme Court of the United States since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Court has granted a review of Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo.

In its deliberations, the court will deal with the question of whether to overrule the infamous Chevron Doctrine, a ’80s-era precedent that granted broad powers known as “Chevron Deference” to the bureaucratic state to interpret vague, often narrow statutes with near zero accountability.

The federal government has been completely out of control for decades, and the Chevron Doctrine has been at the heart of many of the abuses. Now, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the doctrine at some major level. This is incredibly important.

A rollback of administrative agency power would positively impact American lives more than almost any policy Congress or a president could institute. It would send shockwaves throughout the federal government.

NYPost this morning (4/26)

One of Donald Trump’s gifts is that he drives his enemies so crazy that they do really weird things.  The latest evidence came yesterday morning (4/25) when Joe Biden released a three-minute video announcing he is seeking re-election.

The world’s a mess, America is spiraling downward at a rapid rate and Biden would be older than dirt at the end of a second term, but he wants to “finish the job.”

Finish the job?? Apparently not satisfied with merely damaging America, he aims to destroy it.  He’s so despised that even most of Biden’s fellow Democrats ­believe it’s time for him to say goodbye.  Yesterday – the day of his announcement, NBC reported polling showing 70% of Americans don’t want Biden to run again – while a majority of 51% of Democrats don’t want him.

So why is he running?  I believe there is hidden reason why the president is compelled to run again.  Here it is.

Alex Berenson on Tucker Carlson Tonight January 22, 2022

I wouldn’t exactly call Tucker Carlson a friend – even though I appeared on his show at least 50 times.

I’ve never had a beer or a coffee off-set with Tucker. We have very similar views on some issues, like the dangers of cannabis and mRNA jabs, but very different on others like Ukraine.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t exactly say Tucker is just an acquaintance, just another news anchor who interviewed me, either.  For two years of Covid and vaccine madness, we had a certain ride or die relationship.

I don’t know why Tucker and Fox parted ways so abruptly.  What I do know: The glee on the left about Tucker’s departure is misplaced. Tucker isn’t going anywhere. He has said he won’t run for President. Make no mistake, he would instantly be a serious threat for the Republican nomination if he did.

But if he chooses to stay in media, he will be in line for a payday from a streaming service far, far larger than what he currently makes at Fox.  Here’s why.

[Note by JW: Women have more testosterone receptors in their brain than men.  As they have no testicles, their ovaries produce well over a magnitude less testosterone than men.  To compensate for this, a child or teenage girl’s developing brain produces more receptors.  Thus, when a gender dysphoric young woman like Audrey Hale takes testosterone injections to try to be a man, it can send their capacity for aggression to fully psychotic levels.]

If the Nashville shooter had been a straight constitutional conservative would the FBI be blocking the killer's manifesto, or would it be scrutinized for months on every mainstream media platform from day one?

Twenty journals, five laptops, a suicide note and various other notes written by Hale were seized from the house she shared with her parents as well as two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks and seven cellphones, according to a FBI search warrant.  The FBI is refusing to release them. Can you guess why? Of course you can.

In the closing address at last month’s Summit for Democracy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken piously proclaimed, “As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident. It requires constant effort.”

Or in the case of the 2020 election, it required deceiving American voters.

The House Judiciary Committee has revealed that Blinken, then a top Biden adviser, orchestrated the letter from 51 top intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign.

Blinken contacted former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, who swayed scores of other former top officials — including three ex-CIA chiefs — to sign that letter to debunk the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign.

Polls show that Biden would have lost the election if the media had accurately reported the contents of that laptop.

Hunter Biden’s hard drive, which he’s now conceded is legitimate, proved that Hunter was an exceptionally debauched character. Drugs and prostitutes dominated his life for a long time, and his own family didn’t trust him around teenage girls.

That’s why it’s easy to believe Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s as-yet unsubstantiated claim that the Biden family was benefitting from human trafficking both in the U.S.  and Eastern Europe—including Russia and (pre-Zelensky) Ukraine. Just because she says it doesn’t mean it’s true, so the real shock is that we live in a world in which it seems possible, even likely.

According to her, in addition to money coming to the Bidens from various foreign countries,

“I just saw evidence of human trafficking. This involved prostitutes not only from here in the United States, but foreign countries like Russia and Ukraine. This is unbelievable that a President and a former Vice President, not only his son Hunter Biden, but many more family members extending past Hunter Biden and his immediate family.”

All Show and No Go in China, Emmanuel

In its geopolitical competition with the West, China has long sought to divide the U.S. from Europe. Last week it appeared to score a coup when French President Emmanuel Macron declared Europe wouldn’t follow the U.S.’s approach toward Beijing.

Appearances, though, are deceiving. In fact, the European Union has decisively changed its approach to China in the past year. Europeans use milder language than Americans, saying they wish to “de-risk” their economic relationship with China, not “decouple.”

But in substance, European de-risking and American decoupling look much the same. Indeed, Europe is erecting economic defenses against China that in some cases go further than the U.S.

Which leads to a question: Why do European companies know more about the dangers of doing business with China than Elon Musk?

LeMay, Patton, and Trump, by Andrea Widburg

If you have failed to realize we are living through the most significant social, economic, and political revolution in history, it can only be by a herculean effort in self-deception. So powerful is man’s ability “to thrust aside what they do not desire,” is it any wonder history is replete with catastrophes born of those who would substitute hope for reason?

What makes today’s revolution different is the unholy coalescence of inconceivable powerful, yet wholly corrupt institutions; unimaginable technological capability; and the systematic indoctrination of the most depraved ideology the world has ever known.

What is to be done? One key: You cannot fight barbarians by Marquess of Queensberry rules. As with all decent men, to both their credit and their demise, they are unable to bring themselves to fight any other way.

But we have experience fighting barbarians.  We had them in WWII, like Iron Pants LeMay and Blood & Guts Patton.  We need such a man now.

Getting anxious, Vlad?

Combat operations in the Donbas trenches remain deadlocked, but their diminishing intensity does not signify an impasse in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, which continues to evolve on the ground.

Most likely, the Russian command has tried to stockpile long-range missiles for a new series of strikes, perhaps aimed at disrupting supply routes for the expected Ukrainian offensive, possibly by hitting key bridges on the Dnipro River (Topwar.ru, April 13).

The mounting anxiety in Russia about the much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive operation constitutes the most significant change in the political context of the war, and it goes in parallel with the realization that the long-promised Russian winter-spring offensive did in fact happen — and spectacularly failing to yield any gains at enormous costs (Topwar.ru, April 10).

Imagine being able to take your children or grandchildren to a Hollywood blockbuster that tells the story of a great American business success, celebrates entrepreneurial values, isn’t woke, and includes only a little profanity.

Air — the story of how underdog shoe company Nike landed Michael Jordan’s revolutionary endorsement of the “Air Jordan” shoe — is exactly that. The Jordan shoe changed fashion and completely realigned how athletes benefit from products they associate with. It’s still one of the most successful consumer products ever.

Hollywood is fresh from observing how Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick broke box-office records a year ago and grossed over $1 billion worldwide. Though it will still produce many woke films, Hollywood may have decided that it has to pay for its frequent box-office losses by producing entertainment that people actually want to shell out money for.

That’s what Hollywood has done with Air, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. See the Trailer below.

Twenty years ago, the idea of putting a live cell in a human, directing it to travel to a specific location, and having it do a specific task would have been considered impossible. Today it’s reality, and hundreds of companies are working on cell-therapy applications.

That’s only the beginning.  Advancements arriving at an exponentially increasing rate lie ahead as new discoveries reach the clinic with breathtaking speed. We can now reasonably speculate about therapies that will give us the ability to clean tiny cancers from our bodies as routinely as dentists clean our teeth.

We can look for the possibility of gaining immunity from dozens of viruses with a single vaccine and editing genes to eliminate many birth defects. We can picture growing new organs from patients’ own cells and even slowing the aging process. Here’s why and how.