Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez celebrate engagement with $4,000 wine

Her boob job has been a great investment for her

You can’t expect a billionaire to toast his engagement with Bartles and Jaymes.

Jeff Bezos, 59, and Lauren Sanchez, 53, celebrated their new relationship status with some very pricey and rare booze in the South of France on May 22.

Specifically, they ordered a $4,285 bottle of Dugat-Py Grand Cru from Domaine Bernard at La Petit Maison in Cannes, France, a source told People Magazine.

According to the magazine, the happy couple sat with Bezo’s sister Christina Bezos Poore and her husband Steve Poore in a vine-covered gazebo overlooking the Mediterranean.

A source said they were in good spirits but “didn’t want to make a fuss” with an insider adding that the Amazon founder is usually a low-key customer at the exclusive restaurant, which regularly features a late night cover band.

Last week, The Post broke the news that Bezos popped the question to his lady love of five years. At the time, they were in southern France for the Cannes Film Festival, but TMZ reported that he asked for her hand in marriage somewhere near Mallorca or Ibiza, Spain.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/29/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-toast-engagement-with-4000-wine/

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Honest Science on Transgenderism Revoked

Sad when science becomes subservient to politics. Very Soviet

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a 1954 speaking engagement at Columbia University, said, “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

This concern was shared by multiple presidents and other thinkers who lived through World War II, all of whom warned repeatedly of what happens when people silence honest discussion and instead force an ideology on everyone. It only leads to great suffering.

Now, scientific journals are blocking and/or discrediting scholarly research and papers that point to issues like transgenderism being a social contagion. American psychologist J. Michael Bailey and Suzanna Diaz coauthored a paper entitled, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases.” It was set to be published in Springer Nature, a supposedly trusted resource for scientific data and “the development of new ideas.”

However, Springer Nature decided to retract the paper because it said the methodology was suspect. That questionable methodology? Well, according to Springer Nature, the paper had a concerning lack of “written informed consent” from the participants in the study.

This, as National Review points out, is likely just a ruse. The paper provides more solid proof that the transgenderism craze that is raging through our society right now is the result of social pressure or the “monkey see, monkey do” effect. In other words, it’s a social contagion.

Dr. Lisa Littman coined the phrase “rapid onset gender dysphoria” in 2018. Writer and journalist Abigail Shrier also put forward this theory in her book Irreversible Damage. The recently closed Tavistock Center in the UK also has posited that the insane rise in patients presenting with gender dysphoria is the result of social contagion.

But this fairly logical conclusion is actively shut down in the United States by the powers that be.

It’s not loving, we’re told, to say that people cannot be the opposite of their biological gender. Because transgenderism ideology has taken root in our culture, what started out as gender dysphoria — the honest-to-goodness mental disorder — that affected a minuscule percentage (less than 0.02%) of the population has grown into a staggering 2.1% of Gen Z’s sexual declaration.

Transgenderism is a logical conclusion of leftist liberalism. If individual freedom is the highest good, then being whatever gender you decide is freedom from the sexual binary (and also freedom from earthly reality). Transgenderism is certainly having its trendy moment.

That is an incredibly destructive thing to have happen to our society.

Adults who would otherwise be getting help for other needs like autism, depression, severe anxiety, or porn sickness are instead declaring themselves transgender. Their other underlying mental health conditions are suddenly being shrugged off. These adults are then destroying their bodies in the form of drugs and mutilating surgeries.

For children and teens, there are added complications. Not only are they navigating the same challenges that affect adults who conform to this ideology, but they are also contending with peer pressure and the normal discomfort that comes with a changing body.

Back to Eisenhower’s warning against shutting down honest dissent. When purportedly scientific journals are dismissing and retracting studies because the truth about transgenderism isn’t copasetic to the zeitgeist, then we have a problem. Springer Nature reportedly caved to angry activists and ironically ignored the experts. So much for “Trust the Science.”

If the inmates are running the asylum, then what are the sane people to do?

On a positive note, the people protesting Target and Bud Light are having a pivotal effect. Both have lost billions due to their outrageous promotion of transgenderism. Lawmakers in many states are presenting anti-child-mutilation legislation. Transgender activists are loud and oftentimes violent, but they do not represent the vast majority of Americans.

God willing, the transgender ideology has hit its threshold and will wane into the preposterous footnotes of American history. That doesn’t mean those of us who see transgenderism for what it is should rest on our laurels.

In the meantime, pray for those who are deceived by this ideology. They are believing a lie. Continue to love them, but use their correct biological pronouns, not the assumed ones under their trans delusion. Lying to them is not loving. Allowing them to remain deceived by a lie is also not loving.

Transgenderism leaves no room for honest discussion. In fact, it is adversarial to any who refuse to coddle their delusion. Therefore, we would do well to pay attention to those who are trying to suppress the truth, for they are no longer credible.

People who are following this social contagion are living in darkness. It’s time to turn on the light of reality.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/97631-honest-science-on-transgenderism-revoked-2023-05-30

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The Left’s Military ‘Extremism’ Hoax

Remember the military-wide “stand-down” that took place shortly after Joe Biden took office? The one ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the purpose of rooting out the right-wing extremists that were poisoning the ranks?

You remember. When Austin delivered the military-wide message that read, in part:

We need your help. I’m talking, of course, about extremism and extremist ideology — views and conduct that run counter to everything that we believe in, and which can actually tear at the fabric of who we are as an institution. … I want you to revisit the oath that you took when you joined the military. … Read those words again. Consider what they really mean. And think about the promise that you made to yourselves, and to your teammates, and to your fellow citizens. I also want you to share with your leadership your own personal experiences with encountering extremists and extremist ideology in the military … and I want your leadership to listen to those stories. And I want them to listen to any ideas that you might have to help us stamp out of the ranks the dangerous conduct that this ideology inspires.

It was all a hoax. And a smear.

A new survey from the RAND Corporation indicates that our military veterans are less likely than American civilians in general to support radicalism and extremism.

That’s right. Instead of our military being a breeding ground for “extremism and extremist ideology,” as Joe Biden’s defense secretary insisted, the exact opposite is the case. As The Washington Times reports: “The study from the RAND Corp. surveyed nearly 1,000 veterans late last year. The report’s release comes amid a concerted push inside the Pentagon to identify and weed out potential extremists in the ranks, an effort that began in earnest after the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol. Dozens of veterans and several active-duty troops allegedly took part that day, fueling fears that right-wing political violence could emanate from within the armed forces and threaten the stability of the country.”

According to the survey’s authors, “There was no evidence to support the notion that the veteran community, as a whole, manifests higher rates of support for violent extremist groups or extremist beliefs than the American public.”

Among the study’s key findings: “Support for extremist groups — including white supremacism, Proud Boys, black nationalism, and Antifa — ranged from 1 percent (White supremacists) to 5.5 percent (Antifa) and was generally lower than rates derived from previous representative surveys of the general population.”

Imagine that. If we’re to believe all the garbage being promoted by the Biden administration, we’d think that our veterans — having just left their active-duty military brotherhood — would be more likely to fall in with extremist groups. In fact, they’re less so. As the study notes, even the minority of those who did express support for extremist groups didn’t endorse political violence.

Come to think of it, we had a pretty good sense of this a year ago.

Joe Biden, though, is unimpressed. In fact, last Thursday he announced at a Rose Garden ceremony that he’s nominating Air Force Chief of Staff C.Q. Brown to succeed the awful Mark “White Rage” Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“While General Brown is a proud, butt-kickin’ American airman,” said Scranton Joe, “first and always, he’s also been an operational leader in the joint force. He gained respect across every service from those who have seen him in action, and have come to depend on his judgment. More than that, he gained the respect of our allies and partners around the world, who regard General Brown as a trusted partner and a top-notch strategist.”

Uh-huh. To get an idea of the sort of leadership that Brown will bring to the Joint Chiefs, we need only revisit a video he posted in the wake of the George Floyd riots — a video showing the general to be overly fixated on racial grievance and not sufficiently focused on war-fighting.

For those counting by race, Brown would be the second black to serve as Joint Chiefs chairman — Colin Powell having been the first. And, with Brown joining Austin at the Pentagon, this would also be the first time that our Department of Defense’s top uniformed and civilian leaders were black.

Summing up, then: Our woke military is adrift, troop morale is low, reputation and readiness are suffering greatly, and we’re unable to hit our recruiting numbers. But, hey, at least we’re “diverse.”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/97630-the-lefts-military-extremism-hoax-2023-05-30

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The French academic paying a heavy price for probing the Muslim Brotherhood
Liam Duffy

I am meeting: Dr. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who’s been living under police protection for the last six weeks since the reaction to her book on the Muslim Brotherhood took a turn.

The Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the most significant Islamist organisation in the world. A political party founded against the backdrop of 20th century colonialism in Egypt, it arrived in the West via students and exiles fleeing repressive regimes in the Arab world. It is also obsessively secretive. So an anthropologist probing and writing about the group’s activities doesn’t go down well.

The rumblings began before the book was even published. When the book came out in January though, Bergeaud-Blackler, no stranger to sensitive subjects, could not have anticipated the response. The denunciations came thick and fast, some from Islamist sympathisers in the media and academic sphere, some from those who believed they were defending Muslims against a bigoted screed. The author’s conference at the Sorbonne was cancelled (since rescheduled) without a proper explanation. As the controversy grew, death threats arrived.

He is there on behalf of the French state to prevent an assassination

In a tribute to his friend, Martin Amis once joked that if the Rushdie affair were the Amis affair, he would have soon become a drug-addled recluse (although put more poetically). Bergeaud-Blackler doesn’t strike me as the sort, but with this in mind I ask if she wasn’t tempted to abscond to a beach in Mexico and put all this behind her?

No. She is defiant, but the anthropologist is most obviously dismayed when describing how some other academics implied the death threats were fabricated or exaggerated to promote the book. The death threats were very real, and they were credible – and not just because she inhabits a post-Samuel Paty France. Besides, I very much doubt la république would provide the big bloke outside to help book sales.

Bergeaud-Blackler has found a sympathetic hearing in parts of the media, allowing her to come out swinging. To date, she insists she has not received a genuine rebuttal of her work. Instead, she says, the reaction has consisted of accusations of Islamophobia, and of promoting conspiracy theories, alongside denunciations of her character and motive. Some has been all these things, but with the veneer of academic critique.

Among the more hysterical accusations against Bergeaud-Blackler’s study, are those that have compared it to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged plans for Jewish global domination designed to stir up antisemitic sentiment. The parallel is over the top but useful for opponents to make. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organisation that seeks to gradually transform state and society into its vision of an Islamic one. ‘Islam is the solution,’ is its most famous slogan.

Perhaps the most influential Brotherhood ideologue until his recent death, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, outlined a comprehensive plan of priorities for the movement. But, all too often, the organisation can be opaque. One formerly prominent UK-based member left because of its excessive secrecy: ‘We are not selling opium,’ he complained, ‘we are propagating dawa (conveying the message of Islam to non-Muslims.)’

Is there a relationship between the Brotherhood and terrorism, specifically the jihadist kind, I ask Bergeaud-Blackler. It’s a question that has been doing the rounds in European policy circles since the early 2000s: ‘They are really embarrassed by the jihadists,’ she almost laughs back. I note this is less of a moral objection than a strategic one: jihadists bring bad press. On the other hand, she believes that the Brothers’ political narratives and grievances inadvertently contribute to radicalisation.

I clumsily point out that while Bergeaud-Blackler the academic must strive for objectivity, Bergeaud-Blackler the person makes no secret of her opposition to the Brotherhood and Islamist politics.

‘I don’t oppose them as a human being, I oppose them as a democrat, as a scientist,’ she fires back, ‘in a theocracy, science as we know it can no longer be practiced. So, I must oppose them.’

It strikes me that the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood installing a theocracy any time soon is ludicrous, something all too absent from analysis over the years. It’s easy to be spooked by the group’s grand plans, something that has led to some quarters vastly overstating their influence and conflating ordinary Muslims with the ambitions of a small cohort of political activists. But it also occurs to me that they don’t actually need to be successful. It is in merely trying to implement this utopian vision that the damage may be done.

If an academic must face a campaign of denunciations and even death threats for investigating Islamism in Europe, then the next academic, or journalist, will never pick up their pen. As we get up to leave and the police officers I never spotted emerge, it’s clear that both science and democratic freedoms can come under threat, long before any hint of a theocracy.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-french-academic-paying-a-heavy-price-for-probing-the-muslim-brotherhood

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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