'Their viable path got less probable

his office had received over 3,000 phone calls and emails

Energy reality is inescapable in a growing economy like India’s, and only sources such as coal, oil and natural gas can meet the demand.

The Jesus and Mary Chain band was formed in East Kilbride, Scotland, in 1983 by brothers Jim and William Reid, emerged as a pivotal force in the alternative rock scene. The band is known for its distinctive fusion of punk rock sensibilities with melodic pop, heavily utilizing feedback and minimalist song structures, which earned them a reputation as innovators in the noise pop and shoegaze genres. Their debut album, Psychocandy, released in 1985, is widely regarded as a groundbreaking work that influenced a generation of musicians. Over the years, the band has released a total of nine studio albums, including The post Complete List Of The Jesus and Mary Chain Albums And Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

News Outlander: Blood of My Blood Adjust Your Kilt: We’ve Got First Looks of Upcoming Outlander Episodes & Prequel Blood of My Blood Why set your love story in one century when it can be in EVERY CENTURY By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on July 11, 2024 Credit: Starz Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Starz Feast your eyes on these first-look images from the two Outlander shows set to premiere on Starz. The first is the flagship series based on the books by Diana Gabaldon, which is set to air the back half of its seventh season this fall. The images, which the network released during their panel at TCA’s Summer Press Tour, give us a glimpse of Claire (Caitríona Balfe ), Jamie (Sam Heughan), and Young Ian (John Bell) returning to Scotland for the first time since Season Three. Here’s the official synopsis for the upcoming episodes: Coming off of the first half of Outlander season seven, viewers find Claire (Caitríona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Young Ian (John Bell) leaving the colonies and arriving in their beloved homeland: Scotland. The perils of the Revolutionary War force them to choose between standing by those they love and fighting for the land they have made their new home. Meanwhile, Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) face new enemies across time, and must battle the forces that threaten to pull their family apart. As loyalties change and painful secrets come to light, Jamie and Claire’s marriage is tested like never before. With their love binding them over oceans and centuries, can the MacKenzies and Frasers find their way back to each other? We also finally have our first look at the prequel season, Blood of My Blood, which centers on Claire’s parents, Henry (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia (Hermione Corfield), in WWI-era England and Jamie’s parents, Brian (Jamie Roy) and Ellen (Harriet Slater), in the early 18th century Scottish Highlands. The ten-episode first season of Outlander: Blood of My Blood is currently in production in Scotland and will air in 2025.  The second half of Outlander Season Seven premieres on November 22, 2024 with new episodes available weekly on Fridays at midnight ET on the Starz app and all Starz streaming and on-demand platforms. On the network, new episodes will debut at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. In addition to the eight remaining episodes in Season Seven, Outlander is currently in production on a ten-episode eighth and final season. Check out the first look images for both shows below.[end-mark] Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz Credit: Starz The post Adjust Your Kilt: We’ve Got First Looks of Upcoming <i>Outlander</i> Episodes & Prequel <i>Blood of My Blood</i> appeared first on Reactor.

The crowning event at the Highland Games in Scotland is the tug-of-war. Eight brothers in arms square off against eight others across the line, gripping a rope as big as the biceps they wrap around it. I can’t help but think how similar the world of politics is. Those of us who wish to preserve constitutional government and human flourishing find ourselves in a great tug-of-war with a progressive Left that values neither. In a tug-of-war, the goal for each team is not just to hold its side but to “drive out” the other team. On each end of the contest stand the “anchors,” burly men who loop the rope around their shoulders and dig in with all their weight. They will not be moved. On the near ends of the rope are men with a different role to play. Face-to-face with their opponents, they look for warning signs of “lifts” (heaves) from the other team and seek opportunities to execute one of their own. The rest of the men do their best to act in harmony, each one occupying that place on the line best suited to his strength, size, and stamina. One man often provides commands to the rest of the team. To win, all eight on a side must act in unison; one deviation and the opponents gain the leverage they need to win. Though each man has a different role to play, everyone on the rope is critical to victory. A letup by one may lead to a letdown for all. We’ve been getting whipped of late in the great tug-of-war, in part because we’re just not as good as the other side at working together. As with the eight men on the rope, multiple players are in this contest. Some are cogitators, think-tank types whose view from the ivory tower provides and reinforces the long-term perspective those on the ground need. Some are educators, whose job isn’t to develop new ideas but to seed them into the populace; the best way to change the next generation is to raise it. And promulgators include journalists, entertainers, and advertisers who socialize and popularize ideas. For the past 50 years, cogitators on the Right have held their own, but we’ve been playing catch-up in the realms of education and promulgation. That said, two additional types of players who don’t fully appreciate each other’s roles have padded our side’s losing record: agitators and legislators. Agitators are like the immovable brutes on the far end of the rope. They uncompromisingly dig in on an issue. They protest. They write. They call. They engage. They don’t settle for half a loaf. Their work vitally serves to shift the Overton window. This doesn’t mean that agitators must be always agitated; the most effective aren’t cranky or rude, but endearing and determined. They are vital to the cause. Legislators, by contrast, operate face-to-face with the opposition, looking into their eyes across the aisle every day. They must continually weigh the trade-offs between securing half a loaf or none. They strategize. They negotiate. They bob and weave. Their objective is to tug issues in the right direction, knowing that in most cases they can’t get all they want. They are also vital to the cause. Agitators and legislators share a common goal but, importantly, pursue it via different tactics. Principled legislators are grateful for faithful agitators who work to shift the issue their way. Practical agitators are glad to know they have cunning legislators doing what they can to bring about common objectives. But they must trust each other, and that’s where the work so often breaks down. Especially of late. The Tug of War Association Handbook says the sport “has many brilliant teams but no individual stars.” This is the challenge of being a legislator in our media-saturated age. Legislators face cameras everywhere from congressional hearing rooms to their own living rooms, feeding cable audiences desperate for their daily dish. Legislators who become nothing more than agitators may gain political stardom but also lose their ability to legislate. The handbook goes on: “In addition to the hard, physical effort and grit demanded by the individual there must be the highest order of self-discipline and cooperation in the interest of the team.” Agitators with little patience or understanding of the art of the possible develop unrealistic expectations. Once they convince themselves that legislators have become capitulators, they press the detonator. But good intentions don’t justify bad strategy, and forgetting which side you’re digging in against is no way to win. Only by working together, respecting each other’s roles, can agitators and legislators pull things in the right direction. While tug-of-war appears to be a game of mere strength, it’s really a game of strategy. As an agitator myself, I get frustrated when I perceive legislators capitulating to the other side. But as a businessman who has practiced the art of give-and-take for decades, I appreciate the fine art of getting things done. And I’ve learned that when circumstances aren’t going the way I want or expect, I either can complain about what’s happening or reframe the challenge. The latter is much more productive. Progressives are better at this game, which is why the rope has been steadily moving leftward. In part it’s because they’re collectivists, both philosophically and temperamentally, who collaborate better than those of us with more individualist tendencies. It’s also because of progressives’ willingness to be patient. “The long march through the institutions” has been underway for nearly a century now. Perhaps we can learn something from the rest of the men on each side in a tug-of-war (who outnumber those on the ends by 6 to 2). Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, two presidents who outperformed in accomplishing their objectives, both had a keen ability to “read the rope,” knowing when principled agitation was called for (Reagan’s walking away from the 1986 Reykjavík summit) or practical legislation was the ticket (Clinton’s embracing welfare reform in 1996). They both got a lot done. I want to win. You want to win. We want to win together. On any given issue at any given time, we’re going to make our own determinations regarding whether what we’re witnessing in the legislative arena is spineless capitulation or diplomatic negotiation. Regardless of where we come down on that, we must remain strategic, disciplined, and focused on winning the war, not just this battle. There is a time agitators must call legislators to account. There’s a time legislators need agitators to provide room for them to maneuver. If we understand “agitators vs. legislators” to mean in contrast to one another rather than against one another, we’re more likely to get the balance correct. Agitators work from the end in mind. Legislators work toward the end in mind. Like the fiery Sam Adams and the circumspect John Adams, they’re key players in the same cause. Sam and John were second cousins, but many people thought of them as brothers. We could do worse than emulate their example. The post Agitators vs. Legislators: Same Team, Cross-Purposes appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The real threat to “American democracy” is not former President Donald Trump or a foreign dictator, but the fact that the American voters keep voting for less immigration and elected politicians keep “rewarding” them with more, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, said in a speech Wednesday night. Vance addressed an audience at the annual National Conservatism Conference in the nation’s capital. The ideas that have come from those conferences, which began in 2019, have changed the Republican Party and the country. The Ohio lawmaker said that he thinks there have been some positive changes within the GOP regarding foreign policy, noting that there’s now a stronger focus on having a realistic outlook toward the limits of American power. He said that military power is “fundamentally downstream” from industrial power. “The important lesson from World War II is not that if you thump your chest and pretend you are the good guy, you can win a conflict,” he said. “The most important lesson of World War II is that if the homefront is strong, we can win and project power overseas.” Vance said that the war in Ukraine continues to drag on with billions of dollars being spent by the United States without a clear vision or strategy for victory. He said he thinks an increasing number of Republicans understand this problem. Another major problem, Vance said, is that some policymakers and media outlets think that a war with China could be won while being dependent on China for vital goods. You can’t have “unlimited free trade” with countries that “hate you,” the Ohio senator said. Even more important than the shifting ideas about trade, Vance spoke about the increasing opposition to the idea that all immigration is good for America and other Western countries. Vance said that he speaks to conservatives in other Western nations and their constant complaint is that they insist on reducing the amount of immigration to their countries, but politicians ignore them. He said that the reasons for that are that ruling elites desire cheap labor from other countries and that they don’t particularly like “the populations of their own countries.” “They seem to not really like their own fellow citizens, even though the wars that they want are, of course, going to be fought by people in the heartland, not by the people who are walking down the streets of Washington, D.C.,” Vance said. The explosion in immigration in recent years has caused an increase in home prices, Vance said. The communities with the highest numbers of immigrants are seeing higher home prices as a result of simple supply and demand. He cited Springfield, Ohio, as an example of what happens when a city has a massive increase in immigration in a short time. Vance said that this small city has seen its population nearly double, with mostly Haitian illegal aliens, and that has caused housing prices to skyrocket. “Now go to Springfield, go to Clark County, Ohio, and ask the people there whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in four years,” he said. “[The price of housing] is through the roof.” Middle-class people who have lived in the city for generations can’t afford a place to live, Vance said. “A third of the local county health budget is tied up in giving free benefits to illegal immigrants,” he said. Vance noted that these people aren’t technically illegal aliens, because President Joe Biden’s administration has essentially made sure that nobody is counted as illegal. There needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking from leaders, Vance said, in that they must give priority to the people living in their own country. He said that the National Conservatism movement is changing the debate on that front. Vance concluded his remarks by saying that America is not simply an idea—though it was founded on great ideas. Instead, it’s a nation with a common history and a common future. One of the positive things about this country is that America allows for newcomers, he said, “but we allow them on our terms.” Vance said that his family is originally from central Kentucky, deep in Appalachia. He said the people from there are very poor, but they love America—not because it’s a great idea, but because this is their home. He pointed out that there is a cemetery there where the remains of many of his family members and ancestors rest. “In that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the American Civil War and if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small, mountain cemetery in Kentucky,” the freshman senator said. There would be seven generations there who would have “fought for this country, who have built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die protecting this country if they were asked to.” “That is not just an idea. That is not just a set of principles. That is a homeland,” Vance said. The post JD Vance: America’s a Homeland, Not Just an Idea. Mass Immigration Is Sullying That. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

All eyes were on Dr. Anthony Fauci when he testified last month under oath before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Praising him for his leadership, Democrats labeled the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as the victim. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., for example, accused Republicans of wasting “significant time and taxpayer money fueling conspiracy theories.” To their credit, House Republicans, with a few exceptions, focused on the facts. The subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, uncovered several issues at the National Institutes of Health (the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is part of the NIH), including a lack of transparency, a flawed grant approval process, and a conflict of interest in protecting EcoHealth Alliance, the controversial firm that subcontracted NIH-funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Many suspect that this type of research, enhancing the transmissibility and severity of the coronavirus pathogen, contributed to the initial COVID-19 spread and its impact. Beyond these specific issues, however, an even more serious problem has emerged: the American people’s lack of trust in our public health and scientific institutions—a reality that is expected to persist for decades to come. According to a recent survey, 70% of respondents believed that scientists will not publish findings if the results contradict the interests of the organization funding the study, and a mere 42% of respondents believed that scientists can overcome their human and political biases. The public has a valid reason to feel this way, given that the subcommittee’s findings are consistent with their sentiments. In hindsight, during the pandemic, federal public health officials contributed more to the public’s loss of trust in them than the “unvaccinated” individuals these officials often blamed for not “following the science.” Early in the pandemic, Fauci initially deemed masks unnecessary then later supported mandating them. However, he admitted during the hearing that there was “no study that did masks on kids” nor was there a “control trial” that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to justify its six-foot social distancing rule. In fact, this past January, Fauci conceded in closed-door testimony to the subcommittee that this six-foot rule “sort of just appeared.” Regarding Fauci’s relationship with the CDC, Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., a fellow physician on the subcommittee, asked, “Once we realized that the virus was not spread by droplets and was aerosolized, did you feel an indication to go back to the CDC and say, ‘Let’s base this on science’… and ‘get rid of this six-foot rule’?” In response to Joyce’s questioning, Fauci responded that it is “not appropriate to be publicly challenging a sister organization.” Science, in other words, must take a back seat to bureaucratic politeness. Given this mixed messaging and lack of transparency, Americans are right to be conflicted about whom to trust. Unfortunately, these practices continued in regard to the COVID-19 vaccine. The messaging about the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing transmission and the duration of that protection was unclear. Fauci, during the June hearing, conceded that the protection “waned rather rapidly.” Yet in 2021 the vaccine was mandated in various sectors, including schools, health care, the federal workforce, and the military. There were many sound reasons for popular pushbacks against these mandates, but the most notable concern was that the government inserted itself in the relationship between physicians and their patients. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., a physician who treated COVID-19 patients, stated, “I watched as public health officials and politicians told my patients what treatment options were best for them regardless of their comorbidities or their medical history.” Consequently, he said his opinions on mandates were relegated to “conspiracy and misinformation by so-called ‘health care experts’ who had never treated a patient throughout the entire pandemic.” Furthermore, McCormick played a recording of Fauci stating that making people’s lives difficult leads them to “lose their ideological bulls**t” and get vaccinated. Consequently, increased political polarization, decreased public trust in lifesaving vaccines, erosion of social well-being, and compromised doctor-patient relationships have been among the many lingering negative results of these policies. Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and colleagues who sided with him often touted that they were just “following the science,” but based on the unfolding record revealed under oath to the subcommittee by several witnesses, they followed the politics. To his credit, Fauci finally acknowledged mistakes made at the federal level. For one, he said he recognized the need to “reevaluate” prior mandates that removed the notion of informed consent and contributed to a rise in vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, he acknowledged that to bring more clarity to the public, the CDC must do better to address the “lack of communication and interaction between the federal response and local public health officials.” Given these revelations, public health officials must be willing to candidly admit when they are uncertain or quickly admit when the government makes mistakes. Just as they used their platforms to encourage vaccination, they must also utilize their influence to call out any inconsistencies or missteps. Science is not and should never be represented by a single individual, a group of bureaucrats, or a powerful institution. It is rather the dynamic product of uncensored, open-minded discussion among a diverse community of informed professionals and educated researchers looking at the facts. Finally, science must be pursued in an environment of transparency. The best data should drive public policy, and such a commitment to scientific integrity can purge the partisanship of public health. Fauci’s recent testimony before Congress was a tonic. He revealed under oath some key federal policy failures during his tenure. In preparing for the next national health emergency, public health officials should pursue a path of transparency and facts rather than blunt edicts and fear. That is the only appropriate approach for the citizens of a free society. The post Fauci’s Recent Testimony Once Again Reveals Need to Restore Scientific Integrity appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. During a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, several Democrats characterized scrutiny of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) (a World Economic Forum-affiliated pro-censorship advertising alliance that blacklists brands, creators, and content from advertising if they’re deemed to violate its “brand safety” rules) as “dangerous” and a “sham.” GARM has faced growing scrutiny over the way its practices have resulted in certain viewpoints being demonetized. Before this July 10 hearing, House Republicans released a report showing that GARM and its members had “carefully” monitored a number of conservative outlets, placed conservative media outlet The Daily Wire on an advertising exclusion list, and pushed for advertising restrictions on the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. And the intention of this hearing was to respond to these allegations and examine “whether existing civil and criminal penalties and current antitrust law enforcement efforts are sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.” But, as has often been the case during hearings related to huge corporations and alliances targeting smaller businesses and entities, Democrats downplayed, dismissed, or outright denied the concerns that were raised. “This hearing has nothing to do with antitrust laws, since the majority’s allegations wither under even the most basic antitrust analysis,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said during his opening statement. “This is instead another dangerous effort by the majority to bully companies into promoting and supporting far-right extremist views, views that brands understandably do…not want to be associated with. In this case, the majority seeks to undermine companies’ First Amendment rights and to make it harder for them to avoid monetizing online and offline harm through advertising.” He continued by suggesting that those who have shone a light on GARM’s practices are engaging in a “made-up scheme,” accused Republicans of pushing a “conspiracy theory that conservative content is being censored,” and claimed that there’s “no evidence” to support allegations of wrongdoing. https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-1.mp4 https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-2.mp4   Later in the hearing, Nadler again dismissed criticism of GARM by describing the investigation into GARM as a “sham.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-3.mp4 Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) pushed similar talking points to Nadler and claimed that the issue has been “investigated and produced no support for any unlawfulness.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-4.mp4 Two witnesses who work for companies with close ties to GARM also downplayed this big advertising conglomerate’s role in the blacklisting of independent publishers. The Global Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GroupM (a large media buying agency that’s a member of GARM’s Steer Team, which is closely involved in GARM’s day-to-day operations), Christian Juhl, claimed that: “GroupM is not the arbiter of how to categorize websites, nor do we want to be because we have no control of our publishers and no role in moderating content. We also rely on independent third parties to identify domains with those definitions and additional categories that our clients deem unsuitable.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-5.mp4 Herrish Patel, the President of Unilever USA (a major consumer goods company that’s also part of GARM’s Steer Team), similarly denied that his organization uses market power for censorship or deploys advertising capital in a political way. And when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) claimed it’s “hard to believe” Unilever’s goal is to avoid politics when one of its executives flagged a 2020 Trump campaign ad to Facebook to check whether it violated any rules, Patel insisted that he wasn’t sure on the “intention” of the communication and suggested that the push for scrutiny of the ad came from Rob Rakowitz, the leader and co-founder of GARM. https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-6.mp4 While Democrats and the executives who testified attempted to minimize the impact of GARM’s decisions on smaller brands and publishers, Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, provided a first-hand account of how Democrats, the Biden administration, Big Tech, legacy media, and entities such as GARM are part of an “informal pressure system” that strips smaller brands and publishers of advertising revenue: “There is in fact an informal pressure system created by Democratic legislators, this White House, legacy media advertisers, and pseudo-objective brand safety organizations. That system guarantees that advertising dollars flow only to left-wing media brands. Let me explain how this works. When a conservative competitor to the legacy media arises, members of that legacy media and their political allies rush to paint such competitors as dangerous. The commentator Kara Swisher of the New York Times, for example, told the head of YouTube that my videos at Daily Wire were a quote gateway drug that would lead children, including her own teenage son, to watch neo-Nazi content. Never mind the Yamaka. Elected Democrats pick up that same messaging in 2017. Senator Diane Feinstein told lawyers at Facebook, Google, and Twitter quote ‘you created these platforms, and now they’re being misused, and you have to be the ones to do something about it or we will.’ Social media companies react to incentive structures, including threats. They’ve responded by adopting the standards of third-party, left-wing informational safety groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media or GARM. GARM purportedly sets brand safety standards, objective standards by which advertisers and platforms can supposedly determine just what sort of content ought to be deemed safe for advertising. In reality, GARM acts as a cartel. Its members account for 90% of ad spending in the United States, almost a trillion dollars. In other words, if you’re not getting ad dollars from GARM members, it’s nearly impossible to run an ad-based business. And if you’re not following their preferred political narratives, the ones that Kara Swisher and Diane Feinstein would follow, you will not be deemed brand-safe. Your business will be throttled.” Shapiro continued by noting that The Daily Wire’s YouTube channel had seen a “1,000% increase in content enforcements over a 2-year period since 2021” after the Feinstein threat and that his personal Facebook page had seen an “over 80% drop in impressions” after Democrat officials pressured social media companies. https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-7.mp4 And despite the attempts by Democrats and the GroupM and Unilever executives to present this pressure system as a non-issue, several other exchanges during the hearing further highlighted the uneven way that these advertising blacklists are deployed. When questioned b y Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC), GroupM executive Juhl was unable to name a single liberal site that has been placed on GroupM’s “risky list.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-8.mp4 Shapiro similarly noted that Unilever is willing to advertise with large legacy media outlets yet is reluctant to advertise on conservative news outlets: “When it comes to the original question that the chairman was asking, which is whether, for example, Unilever ever advertises…with the New York Times or with MSNBC or with CNN or with The View, all of which have host who have said extraordinarily controversial things, the answer was yes. And when it comes to would they advertise or have they advertised on conservative news outlets, the answer typically is no. I also should mention at this point that I’ve been told…by the advertising department of my own company that Group M’s managing director actually told us explicitly, The Daily Wire has an uphill battle based on our politically conservative content.” https://video.reclaimthenet.org/articles/garm-hearing-july-2024-9.mp4 You can watch the full hearing here. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Watch: Democrats Downplay Influence of Major Advertising Alliance’s Demonetization Blacklists appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Political commentator and podcast host Robby Starbuck exposed John Deere for betraying the values and interests of their customers.  In a July 9 video, Starbucks went after John Deere for shifting jobs and production out of the United States, while embracing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In a series of posts, Starbuck accused the company of embracing radical policies like pushing employees to state their pronouns, boosting gender theory propaganda and allowing men in women’s restrooms.  “They just had to do mass layoffs and have announced a production shift to Mexico,” Starbuck said, before taking the company to task. “I can't think of anything that's a larger betrayal of the American worker than taking jobs to Mexico while forcing this DEI down their throats. It's a violation of so many of your employees’ values and your customers’ values to push this woke trojan horse for leftism.” On its official website, John Deere brags about its DEI initiatives, including separating employees based on race and gender. “We believe by strengthening the diversity of our workforce, we can give everyone their chance to leap forward,” the website notes. “That’s why we celebrate diversity, champion equity, and promote inclusiveness so every employee can make the greatest impact as their true self.” As pointed out by Starbuck, John Deere has a number of so-called employee resource groups dividing its employees. These groups specifically separate employees who are Asian, black, Native American, Hispanic or “Latine” (an alternative for “Latinx”). The company also includes a group called “Rainbow” for LGBTQ employees. Starbuck recently led a successful campaign to force Tractor Supply, a company with a largely rural conservative consumer base, to abandon DEI. After a several-week boycott, Tractor Supply promised to “eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals” in a post on X. The company also promised not to fund pride festivals, abandon carbon emission goals and cease providing data to the LGBT pressure group the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).  Starbuck, however, referred to John Deere as “Much worse than Tractor Supply” in his video. The conservative commentator issued a call to action. “When we use our voices and wallets to vote our values, we can change the world and we can restore great American companies to a culture of sanity, meritocracy and culture war neutrality OR we can inspire competitors to step up to the plate to fight for our business.” He also noted that John Deere has an extremely high rating from the HRC, which uses its corporate equality index to note the extent to which companies comply with its radical demands. John Deere earned 95 out of 100 possible points from a radical leftist group that demands insurance coverage for genital mutilation and chemical castration.  According to the 1792 Exchange, John Deere does cover these costs, not only for employees but for their children: “The company covers transgender-related medical costs for its employees and their children.” This database of corporate bias ratings also notes that John Deere uses “sex and gender ideology criteria” to judge job applicants, potential vendors, marketing campaigns and donations. It also notes that John Deere pushes mandatory “ideological training” on employees.  Conservatives are under attack! Support businesses that share your values or at least understand that they serve customers and employees rather than radical ESG pressure groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.