IN THE TRADITION OF J. EDGAR HOOVER: The lure of the closet.
They just can’t leave them panties alone.
REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT WON’T DIE, BUT THESE IDIOTS MIGHT: Must-hear: Gad Saad on what the FBI raid on Trump’s home says about the West.
It might not be too late, if they repent, shut up and go away.
No, I’m not waiting with sandwiches by the phone.
CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL IT SMELLS AS FOUL: The Left is Now Desperately Trying to Change the Meaning of the Word ‘Raid’.
The idiots think if they change the word they erase the offense.
OH, HONEY, YOU’RE NOT THE LONE RANGER: Biden’s Department of Labor threatens to end me.
They want to end all of us.
AND, ALAS, NOT WALKED NAKED BEHIND A DONKEY, WITH HANDS TIED TO THE TAIL, BEING WHIPPED TILL THE BLOOD RAN FREELY: Pro-Antifa High School Teacher in California Gets Paid to Resign.
Which would be my solution to this stupidity, pour encourager les autres.
THE ROAD IS LONG, WITH MANY A WINDING TURN: The Limits Of History.
But in the end, we win, they lose.
THEY HAVE CHOSEN AMERICANS AS THE SHAPE OF THEIR DESTRUCTORS. SO BE IT: FBI delivers subpoenas to several Pa. Republican lawmakers: sources say.
August 10, 2022
SO I’VE BEEN READING P.T. DEUTERMANN’S WORLD WAR II BOOKS, which I highly recommend. Well written, well plotted, technically knowledgeable, interesting characters.
AND THE (MOB) HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: FBI delivers subpoenas to several PA Republican lawmakers, sources say.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Report: FBI Raided Mar-A-Lago After Tip That Parents Were Protesting A School Board Meeting There.
SKYNET SMILES: US Space Force tests robot dogs to patrol Cape Canaveral.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: New York Professor Claims Those Who Don’t Want to Mask in Her Class Are ‘Racist.’
The mask fanatics refuse to give up.
Even though nearly every jurisdiction in the United States has ended mandates, there are legions of people desperate to maintain the disproven fiction of universal masking.
Mountains of data have accumulated over the past several years showing that masks have been completely ineffective at preventing the spread of COVID.
Yet some are so committed to avoiding admitting that the leaders of their political ideology have been wrong that they’re willing to continue policies, seemingly forever.
One such recent example came from a SUNY New Paltz Professor Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón who is described on LinkedIn as an “interdisciplinary Latina feminist performance studies scholar.”
Pabón announced on Twitter that she will be enforcing mask mandates in her classroom, even though the school she teaches at no longer requires them, and is even “building mask wearing” into her syllabus…She also claims in the (potential) syllabus that “Refusing to mask indoors is a manifestation of ableism and racism, an exercise of individual privilege that tells the most vulnerable that their health does not matter.”
Speaking of mask fanatics: Fauci: ‘Inexplicable’ That Americans See Forced Masking as Encroachment on Freedom.
BY TOMORROW WE’LL BE TOLD TRUMP WAS ACTUALLY BEHIND IT: Details of What FBI Seized at Mar-a-Lago Make FBI Raid Look Downright Scandalous.
PROUD LATINA IS CANCELLED BY HEARTLESS SOCIALISTS: Rosita gets Canceled! Sesame Place removes all traces of character from park after black family launched $25m lawsuit claiming ‘racist’ mascot ignored their kids.
NY GOV. KATHY HOCHUL GOES OFF SCRIPT WHILE ATTACKING FLORIDA GOV. RON DESANTIS AT HOLOCAUST EVENT: Hochul jokes about Jews fleeing to Florida during Holocaust event.
Gov. Kathy Hochul sounded like a bad Borscht Belt comedian at a bill signing tied to Holocaust education in schools Wednesday as she tried to land a joke at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ expense.
“I just want to say to the 1.77 million Jews who call New York home: Thank you for calling New York home. Don’t go anywhere or to another state. Florida is overrated. I shouldn’t say this, but look at the governor. It starts at the top down,” Hochul cracked.
“Getting in trouble – gotta stay on script,” the governor quickly added before she was forced to abruptly segue to her introduction of Holocaust survivor Celia Kener at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.
Related: Antisemitic Attacks in New York Are at Highest Level in Decades.
OUT ON A LIMB: DOJ source calls raid a ‘spectacular backfire,’ claims AG Garland didn’t approve it.
The story concludes with another big revelation. It claims that AG Merrick Garland was being updated on the National Archives investigation and knew about the grand jury but did not approve the search Monday. Newsweek’s source claims Garland had “no prior knowledge” of the time of the raid. Instead it was FBI Director Christopher Wray who approved the search. Finally, the source adds, “It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact.”
This is a lot of new information but I think the big take-aways are that this had nothing to do with Jan. 6 and that these DOJ sources are now feeling a lot of pressure, enough that they are a) trying to explain themselves and b) blaming the “spectacular backfire” on the FBI and the US Attorney while trying to insulate AG Garland from the blowback.
As Scott Johnson writes at Power Line, “We saw the FBI agents holding the fort down outside Mar-a-Lago with big weapons. It was sickening. Christopher Wray should be sent packing and the FBI should be dissolved and reconstituted. It has become an unaccountable and politically corrupt organization.”
Related: FBI Quest for Trump Documents Started With Breezy Chats, Tour of a Crowded Closet. “FBI officials showed up with instructions to keep the search as unobtrusive as possible, with agents dressed in plainclothes and told not to take any weapons, people familiar with the plan said. The Secret Service was notified and then Mr. Trump’s lawyers. On site, the FBI asked for several things, according to a person familiar, including a diagram of the sprawling building and that surveillance cameras be turned off, citing officer safety.”
Earlier:
NOW OUT FROM DAVE KOPEL: Restoring the Right to Bear Arms: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Download it early and often!
I DUNNO, JUST LOOK AROUND: The Human Brain May Not Be Shrinking After All.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s secretive space plane flies higher and longer than before.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Trump Thanks FBI For Kicking Off His 2024 Reelection Campaign.
HMM: FDA authorizes altered monkeypox dosing regimen to increase doses five-fold.
Using this approach we’d have over 100 million doses available, if the CDC, NIH, and FDA hadn’t screwed up.
JEFFREY CARTER: MAKING OTHER NUMBERS UP:
NY Attorney General Letitia James ran on a campaign of “getting Trump”. Two days ago, Joe Biden attacked his political rival with the full force and power of the Federal Government dispatching 30 FBI agents to raid his home in Florida.
The goal is to keep Trump off the ballot.
I don’t want to see the President run in 2024. I’d like to see the torch passed on to younger people. However, the more they attack him and the more unfairly he is treated it makes me want to see him run again and fully support him.
The “they” isn’t just the Democratic Party. It’s also the RINOs in the Republican Party that make a nice living off grifting with the government. I saw it destroy any competitiveness in the Illinois Republican Party and I don’t want the RINOs to destroy the national party. I’d prefer that small government conservatives get elected and destroy the bureaucracy, and kick the RINOs out.
Trump is accused of committing fraud by Letitia James in the way he ran his business. He is accussed of inflating the assets on the business balance sheet to get loans and conduct business with other entitites. I saw Trump’s statement, and predictably it was an attacking statement. People forget that the thing a lot of us like is he actually fights and fights aggressively.
Trump is right. She is a pure political hack no different than an apparatchik in the Stalin Administration.
But, I’d like to add some nuance to this and hopefully, reasonable people will see the light. People with Trump Derangement Syndrome will never see the light.
Private markets are just that, private. Trump’s hotel business isn’t public. It’s not listed on a stock exchange. There is no private marketplace where you can buy and sell Trump shares in his hotels. It’s 100% his.
He can value his buildings at whatever the heck he wants to value them at. He can say each one is worth $1B, $10B or a hundred million bajillion trillion. If he doesn’t have any outside equity investors, it doesn’t matter at all what he values them at.
Read the whole thing.
Plus:
Someday, hopefully in November, there will be new sheriffs in town that will assume the power that the Democrats are using wontonly.
I don’t think Republicans should use it to target political rivals like Schiff, Pelosi, Schumer, Biden and the rest of the Democrats have done-with the full support of the entire apparatus and every candidate of the Democratic party by the way.
But, boy, it’s awfully hard not to wish they’d use it that way.
That’s how Civil Wars get going.
And some people seem to want that.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “A White House Middle School teacher’s aide was arrested Tuesday after being accused of engaging in a sexual relationship with a minor. . . . During the investigation, detectives discovered that the sexual acts began approximately two years ago when the juvenile and Cartwright began communicating via Snapchat. The investigation also revealed that Cartwright had sexual intercourse with the student approximately 15 times before family members of the student discovered the inappropriate sexual acts were occurring. Officials said the detectives presented this case to the Sumner County Grand Jury in August of 2022 and returned sealed indictments against Cartwright for statutory rape by an authority figure and continuous sexual abuse of a child.”
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Goes Woke, Will Explore ‘Internalized Misogyny’ and ‘Patriarchy.’
I thought Season 8 of Game of Thrones had killed the franchise, but I guess they aren’t done beating the corpse yet.
BE PREPARED: SABRE Pepper Spray Keychain with Quick Release for Easy Access. #CommissionEarned
OH, GOSH, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Chicago’s Public Defender: Police Are Abusing Anti-Gun Laws, Targeting Minorities.
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro Wireless Earbuds with MagSafe Charging Case. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini warns the era of stagflation is here and central banks are setting a trap in trying to normalize policy.
“The world economy is undergoing a radical regime shift,” he said in an op-ed for Project Syndicate on Tuesday, declaring the end of the Great Moderation, during which economies enjoyed low inflation, high growth, and mild recessions.
Those qualities have been the standard for the past few decades, but are reversing into what Roubini dubs as the Great Stagflation: an era of high inflation, low growth, high debt, and the potential for severe recessions.
Global economies carry larger debt ratios than before, setting up central banks for potential failure, Roubini said.
“Central banks are thus locked in a ‘debt trap’: any attempt to normalize monetary policy will cause debt-servicing burdens to spike, leading to massive insolvencies, cascading financial crises, and fallout in the real economy,” he said.
Glenn or I could do a whole series of I-Told-You-So articles going back 20 years, when big spending and big borrowing combined with ZIRP became the new normal, but it’s all too depressing.
IT’S EVERYWHERE: The Ubiquitin Universe.
THE BIG QUESTION: Are we human beings just meaningless specks in a vast universe without a purpose for being? Before you get all defensive, or depressed, or deranged (just kidding!), check out today’s video on HillFaith.
‘DEEP’ THOUGHT FROM ADAMS: Send New Yorkers to campaign for Beto in Texas. “Just try to imagine the way Texans will receive door-knockers who deliver a message like: ‘Hello, I’m from New York City, and I’d like to tell you how Mayor Eric Adams thinks you should vote.’ It would come across as ‘Youse hicks betta vote for Beto, if you know what’s good for ya.’ A bless your heart might be the kindest reaction they get, followed by gales of laughter.”
CAN’T ANYBODY THERE PLAY THIS GAME? The White House Response to the Mar-a-Lago Raid Was a Disaster.
IN MY AREA IT’S A LOT MORE THAN THAT: More than 40% of U.S. adults have returned to ‘pre-COVID-19 normal,’ survey says.
STICKER SHOCK: “Significant Material Cost Increases”: Ford Hikes Prices Of EV Truck By Up To $7,000. “F-150 Lightning’s new MSRP is now between $47,000 to $97,000, up from approximately $40,000 to $92,000 — prices exclude destination/delivery fee plus government fees and taxes, any finance charges, any dealer processing charge, any electronic filing charge, and any emission testing charge.”
Previously: Tow No! The Ford F-150 Lightning Struggled in Our Towing Test. “In MotorTrend testing, an F-150 Lightning Platinum saddled with a camper that nearly maxed out its 8,500-pound towing capacity couldn’t even cover 100 miles. Range improved when we hooked up a significantly lighter trailer, but not by as much as you might expect.”
A minimum of $47k (plus taxes and fees) for a truck with limited tow range.
That’s one severely uneconomical virtue signal.
OUR FRIENDS, THE MULLAHS: DOJ indictment shows Iran plotted to kill John Bolton while Biden, EU negotiated for renewed JCPOA.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: If You’re STILL Voting Blue, You Get the Tyranny You Deserve. “Tyranny doesn’t just show up one day and say, ‘I’m here to take your liberties away.’ It comes in steps, and the raid on Trump’s home is a big, big step in a long line of them.”
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers — and Media Play Along.
The show follows Pratt’s character, Navy SEAL commander James Reece, who is determined to find out who killed his platoon and get revenge.
While critics were not pleased with the production, many fans immediately came to Pratt’s rescue, with the audience score on the review site coming in as 94% “fresh.”
In a brazen move, the “Wanted” star took to his Instagram story, sharing a report that suggested the actor defied “woke critics.”
In a follow-up post, Pratt shared a picture of the infamous Dr. Evil from the “Austin Powers” films, referencing the enormous amount of people who had streamed his show on Prime Video that had clearly disregarded any negative commentary.
It’d be nicer just to let the work — and its success – speak for itself, but the Left murdered niceties.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Glorious Inflation News, Comrades! You’re Getting Poorer Slightly Less Quickly. “I haven’t seen this big a celebration since our most recent battlefield victory over Eastasia, with whom Oceania has always been at war. Unless we’ve always been at war with Eurasia.”
Update: Biden, reading from a script, claimed 0% inflation last month. Gaslit video at the link.
DEAL OF THE DAY: HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14-inch Laptop. #CommissionEarned
HMM: Russian Airbase In Crimea Goes Boom. “Russian military assets blowing up in Ukraine isn’t news, especially now that they’ve fielded HIMARS. What is news is these strikes are a good 200 kilometers from the front line.”
CANCEL CULTURE COMES FOR..METALLICA? Some Stranger Things Fans Are Now Trying to Cancel Metallica, Twitter Reacts.
However it’s described, in her video, Trueblood presses Metallica about their past actions caught on photo or video, including when members such as former bassist Jason Newsted appeared to do Nazi salutes onstage. She also shows footage where Metallica seemed to make fun of the death of Kurt Cobain after the Nirvana singer’s 1994 suicide. (One includes Megadeth‘s Dave Mustaine, but he was already out of Metallica at the time.)
Trueblood further claims Metallica singer James Hetfield kept Ice-T‘s Body Count off a 1992 Metallica tour with Guns N’ Roses due to the hip-hop artist’s race. She includes a classic MTV News clip suggesting the source of the rumor as Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose.
Naturally, Metallica fans on Twitter reacted in droves to Trueblood’s video. One tweet summarized, “The fact metallica welcomed and defended all the new fans that came from the stranger things fandom and they’ve gone and THROWN IT BACK IN THEIR FACES…”
But another seemed to counter in support of Trueblood’s take, saying, “Metallica fans proving they’re racist lmao.” Yet another replied to the drama, “Search Metallica cancelled… all about racism etc.” See more Twitter reactions down under the video.
As Kevin Williamson wrote in 2018, “Watch What You Say. Someone Else Is.”
The generation that reached what passes for maturity in the age of social media is the most status-obsessed—and hence etiquette-obsessed—since the ancien régime. They are all miniaturists: There hasn’t been an important and original book of political ideas written by an American Millennial, and very few of them have read one, either. But they are very interested in individual pronouns and 280-character tweets. It is extraordinarily difficult for any one of them to raise his own status through doing interesting and imaginative intellectual work, because there is practically no audience for such work among his peers. Worse, the generation ahead of him stopped paying attention to Millennials years ago, and the generation behind him never started.
What that leaves is the takfiri tendency, scalp-hunting or engineering a court scandal at Versailles. Concurrent with that belief is the superstition that people such as Harvey Weinstein or Bret Stephens take up cultural space that might otherwise be filled by some more worthy person if only the infidel were removed, as though society were an inverted game of Tetris, with each little disintegration helping to enable everybody else to move up one slot at a time. Status obsession does funny things to one’s map of social reality. It leads to all manner of bizarre thinking.
And as a result, we live in the dumbest timeline imaginable.
THEY DON’T LOOK LIKE “THIS IS MAGA COUNTRY” TYPES: DA mulls charges against teens arrested for attack on Chinese UW-Madison student.
THAT’S BECAUSE HIS WINS ARE AMERICA’S LOSSES: As Democrats Celebrate Biden ‘Wins,’ More Blue House Seats Become Competitive.
#RESISTANCE WORKS: UChicago drops booster mandate after saga of COVID regulations, protests.
HHS TRANS-GENDERING GUIDELINES IGNORED FDA WARNING: President Ronald Reagan oft quipped that the government’s left hand often doesn’t know what its far-left hand is doing. Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader used the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover a contemporary illustration of this enduring reality.
Seems the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Population Affairs (OPA) ignored warnings issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding the very real health dangers of using puberty blockers in children.
As Bader points out, “the FDA recently added a warning to the puberty blockers used by transgender children undergoing gender transitions. The warning was added after the FDA identified ‘a serious potential side effect’ that can ’cause cause a dangerous surge of spinal fluid pressure in the brain,’ as well as ‘headaches, nausea, double vision, and even permanent vision loss.’”
But hey, parents, not to worry, the ideological fanatics running HHS and the OPA know better about these things than the experts at FDA, so go right ahead and fill your kids with those puberty blockers.
A little aspirin ought to stop their whining and crying about those headaches, nausea, double vision and stumbling into furniture, tripping over the dog and walking into traffic. After all, as Reagan also said, they are from the government and they are here to help us.
HMM: China graft probes stem from anger over failed chip plans.
The investigations have sent shockwaves through a semiconductor industry long accustomed to top-level support. Xi Jinping’s government had allocated more than $100 billion to build up a domestic semiconductor sector so the country could break its dependence on the West. A key area of scrutiny is the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund — known within the industry as Big Fund — which had become Beijing’s primary vehicle for doling out capital to the country’s chipmakers.
The nation’s top anti-graft agency announced investigations into three more executives who helped manage the Big Fund’s assets on Tuesday, adding it was dispatching a team to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The same regulator was already investigating the minister, Xiao Yaqing — making him the most senior sitting cabinet member to face a disciplinary probe in almost four years.
“If you’re going to be putting tens of billions of dollars in an industry, regardless of whether it’s a high technology one or just like building trains and airports, you’re going to have illicit dealings going on,” said Jordan Schneider, a senior analyst at Rhodium Group and host of the China Talk podcast.
Previously: ‘Japan Inc.’ and Other Tales of Industrial Policy Apocalypse. “Perhaps most notable in this regard was the Japanese government’s own admission that the MITI model had not worked as well as planned. A 2000 report by the Policy Research Institute within Japan’s Ministry of Finance concluded that ‘the Japanese model was not the source of Japanese competitiveness but the cause of our failure.’ MITI was renamed the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at about the same time, and its mission shifted more toward market-oriented reforms.”
Yesterday: Biden Signs CHIPS Act Into Law, Sending $53B to US Chipmakers.
But this time it’ll work for sure.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dear Dems—Trump 2024 Is Gonna Be Super LIT. “All of this is being driven by the Democrats’ obsession with using the J6 fauxsurrection to keep Trump off of the ballot in 2024. They know that they could resurrect FDR and Trump is still going to waltz back into the White House. He’s the monster under all of their beds. As I’ve written before, he’s not only living rent-free in their heads, he’s building condos and inviting his friends.”
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN! Inflation “only” 8.5% in July. Yay! All credit to the sage in the White House!
Wait, what?
Even with the lower-than-expected numbers, inflation pressures remained strong.
The jump in the food index put the 12-month increase to 10.9%, the fastest pace since May 1979. Even with the monthly drop in the energy index, electricity prices rose 1.6% and were up 15.2% from a year ago. The energy index rose 32.9% from a year ago. . . . Shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the CPI weighting, continued to rise and are up 5.7% from a year ago.
Well, uh, it’s still great news because . . . economists expected 8.7%!
Plus: “While inflation has been accelerating, gross domestic product declined for the first two quarters of 2022. The combination of slow growth and rising prices is associated with stagflation, while the two straight quarters of negative GDP meets a widely held definition of recession.”
UPDATE: July CPI report: Inflation dips to 8.5%, flat month-on-month — but why? “This is still the fifth straight month that overall CPI inflation has remained above 8%. Core CPI has been above 5% for ten straight months, and is flattening out around 6% over the last three months. Those are not good signs, especially when considering that all of these reports are compounding on high inflation rates from a year ago. . . . And on top of that, inflation’s persisting into what looks like a looming recession, if it has not yet arrived.”
But it’s all good news in the press, and will remain so until November.
LEFTY POLLSTER FINDS LEFTY THEMES DON’T WORK WITH VOTERS: This is intriguing – the Winning Jobs Narrative Project surveyed 60,000 voters in 17 states and discovered this:
“‘Making villains of corporations’ and embracing ‘culture war topics like abortion’ are ineffective strategies for Democrats. Liberals would attract more voters, in fact, if they sounded like conservatives — talking about ‘respect for work’ and placing ‘government in a supporting rather than primary role,'” reports Washington Free Beacon’s Robert Schmad.
TOP. MEN. FBI ‘Scoured’ Melania’s Wardrobe at Mar-A-Lago Looking for… Classified Shoes?
Sounds like a fishing expedition launched out of desperation. But maybe Manolo is an unindicted coconspirator or something.
Then again, since the first director of the FBI was widely reputed to be a cross-dresser, maybe their interest was more . . . personal.
TRUMP 2024, DESANTIS 2028/32: If Merrick Garland doesn’t give a solid, fast reason for raiding Trump’s home, he’s probably just re-elected him.
IT’S A TRANSITORY, HIGH-CLASS PROBLEM: Inflation a ‘concern’ for California food bank as price hikes ‘put a lot of pressure’ on household budgets.
IN A WAY, IT’S NEWS THAT THIS KIND OF THING HAS BECOME SO ROUTINE: SpaceX launches 52 Starlink satellites, lands rocket at sea.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Food crisis: Inflation forcing change in eating habits.
Hit hardest are families with children — with 72% changing their habits to accommodate higher prices for basics such as eggs, milk, butter, and bacon — and women under 40 at 73%.
Rasmussen found that nearly all Americans, 89%, have been paying more since President Joe Biden took office, and 61% believe they will still be paying more in a year.
Notably, there was virtually no difference between Republican and Democratic reactions to the question of paying more. The survey analysis found that 88% of Democrats are paying more for food than they were a year ago, and 90% of Republicans said they are too.
Unfortunately, higher prices are a reality with inflation at a 40-year high.
It didn’t happen by accident.
WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS BIDEN WAS NOT BRIEFED ON FBI RAID AT MAR-A-LAGO:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that President Biden was not made aware that the FBI planned to searchformer president Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago before the action was carried out on Monday.
“What I can tell you definitively and for sure, he was not aware of this,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden. “Nobody at the White House was. Nobody was given a heads up and we did not know about what happened yesterday.”
There’s a possibility this is actually true, given how undisciplined this White House has been. As Matthew Continetti asked last month: Who’s In Charge?
If all the White House has to offer is excuses, if decisions are made either slowly or randomly, if the communications team and the president and vice president seem to live on different planets, if incompetence and mismanagement appear throughout the government, it is because the chief executive allows it. No conspiracy is required to explain the ineptitude. This is Joe Biden we are talking about. Lately, though, I have been having second thoughts. Not that Barack Obama or Ron Klain or Dr. Jill are running the show in secret. What I have been wondering, instead, is whether anyone is leading the government at all. There is no power, either overt or covert, in or behind the throne. The throne is empty.
Think of the economy, the border, and Ukraine. From time to time, Biden addresses these issues. He may even answer questions about them. The White House sends out press releases describing its latest initiatives. Vice President Harris or the second gentleman pops up somewhere to talk about all the good she and he are doing.
Yet each of these elements—the president, his staff, his spokesperson, his vice president, his policy—comes across as disconnected, discombobulated, as if each inhabits a separate sphere of activity. Whether because of Biden’s age, or his weekend trips to Delaware, or years of remote work, or lower-level staff turnover, or a painstakingly slow decision-making process, or ideological stubbornness, or a lack of a strategic plan, this administration drifts from crisis to crisis, and from one bad headline to the next. And nothing improves.
The raid on Mar-a-Lago certainly helped to get a lot of bad headlines for Biden out of the press, by putting Trump front and center in the media again, which the administration is thrilled about. It will likely dominate the Sunday talk shows, getting Team Brandon past yet another disastrous news cycle.
ACTUALLY, HE TURNED UP THE POLITICS AT JUSTICE FROM DAY ONE. THE VOW WAS ALWAYS JUST A LIE. Garland vowed to depoliticize Justice. Then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. Remember when he treated parents who spoke up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists?
Flashback: Merrick Garland has proved himself unfit for Supreme Court — but he shouldn’t be AG either.
JULIETTE OCHIENG: “About the raid again: please stop expecting them to go by the book. Why should they start now?”
If you like her work, consider subscribing.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Urgent polio boosters for London children.
All children aged one to nine and living in Greater London will be offered a polio vaccine after the virus was detected in sewage.
The virus, which can cause paralysis, has been found 116 times in London’s wastewater since February.
The urgent immunisation campaign will see nearly a million children offered the vaccine – including those already up to date with their jabs. . . .
However, what is happening now is slightly complicated as the samples detected are linked to a polio vaccine used in other countries.
Parts of the world still dealing with polio outbreaks use the oral polio vaccine – which is safe, but uses a live virus. This gives a huge amount of immunity, but has the potential to spread from person to person in areas where not a lot of people are protected.
Everything is going swimmingly.
PROGRESSIVE POLITICS IS PUSHED DOWN BY THE RULING CLASS, NOT DEMANDED BY THE MASSES: Progressive Pollster Finds That People Oppose Progressive Policies: Winning Jobs Narrative Project says Dems should ‘realize progressive Twitter isn’t real life.’
DEAL OF THE DAY: GearLight S2000 LED Flashlight. #CommissionEarned
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. Labor Productivity Suffers Biggest Crash Ever Recorded, Labor Costs Soar Most Since 1982.
1982 was the big year of the early ’80s recession engineered by Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan to squeeze inflation out of the economy — and set the stage for the ’80s boom times.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, is just getting started taxing and regulating productivity gains out of existence.
THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A TOP-DOWN PRIORITY IN AMERICA: Some tech employees have had enough of the DEI focus at work.
WHEN THE LEFT DOES IT, IT’S “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE,” WHEN THE RIGHT DOES IT, IT’S AN “INSURRECTION:” Arizona Dem Praised Radical Immigration Group That Harassed Sinema: Kirsten Engel’s support for leftist groups could alienate voters.
BETTER SEND IN MORE FBI GUYS: Wait — Those ‘Classified’ Docs FBI Sought in Trump Raid Were Already Declassified.
AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Report: FBI Raided Mar-A-Lago After Tip That Parents Were Protesting A School Board Meeting There.
APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY: New Details About Judge Who Approved Mar-A-Lago Raid Raises All Sorts of Red Flags. It seems the Justice Department should have put an issue of this magnitude before a full federal judge, rather than a magistrate, and that maybe it should have found someone without an Epstein connection. Maybe there’s nothing actually wrong here, but you can’t blame people for wondering. And maybe they figured that if they’d put it in front of that sort of a judge he would have laughed and told them to go away.
WELL PLAYED. EXCEEDINGLY WELL PLAYED: Israeli students accuse Ben & Jerry’s of occupying tribal land in Vermont.
COOL. DEAR BORDER GOVERNORS, WE THE CITIZENS VOLUNTEER CONTRIBUTE CASH TO HELP SEND EVERYONE WHO CROSSES THAT BORDER TO NYC AND DC: DHS Ending Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy.
REALLY? WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO CAMPAIGN FOR? CLOSED BORDERS? NYC Mayor Adams Wants to Bus New Yorkers to TX to Campaign Against Gov. Abbott.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IS THAT THE MARXISTS ARE GIBBERINGLY PANICKED AND ACTING LIKE THE LUNATICS THEY ARE: omething’s Happening Here: Feds Seize Cell Phone Of Trump Ally House Rep Scott Perry Day After Mar-a-Lago Raid.
NO, NO, NO. HE ISN’T WEAPONIZING THEM. THEY’RE ALREADY WEAPONIZED: White House Spox Karine Jean-Pierre Refuses To Say If Biden Is Weaponizing DOJ, FBI Against Political Opponents.
THEY’RE THE ONLY ONES BELIEVING THEIR LIES: When Rulers’ Lies Come in Battalions.
MAY? MAY??? Joe Manchin May Have Just Cooked His Own Goose.
The pop up timer on that goose popped a while ago.
VERY FEW THINGS LEAVE ME WORDLESS, BUT THE STUPID FBI TRICKS YESTERDAY DID SO: Speaking of Bad Plots.
OH, YOU DON’T SAY. HAS ANYONE SEEN MY SHOCKED FACE? Judge who signed off the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion donated $2,000 to Barack Obama’s campaign and represented Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express pilots, his scheduler and ‘Yugoslavian sex slave’.
Is it pedophilia all the way down?
LOOK, THEY STILL THINK ULTRA-MAGA IS AN INSULT: Bizarre White House self-own: “Dark Brandon Returns”.
Ultra Maga, Assemble! For Justice, honor and the American Way!
THOSE ELUSIVE DOCUMENTS: Press Statements in Response to Media Queries About Presidential Records.
I’ll believe documents justify an FBI (Who knew their real name was Federal Bureau of Infamy?) raid when they raid Sandy Berger’s socks.
UH. I DIDN’T KNOW ROBERT ZIMMERMAN HATED THUGS AND GOONS SO BADLY HE’D COMPARE THEM TO DEMOCRATS: The Democratic Party of thugs and goons.
DON’T MALIGN THE THIRD WORLD. MOST OF THEM AREN’T QUITE THAT BAD: Dan Bongino erupts over FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago: ‘Third-world bulls***’.
THE REAL CAUSE OF THE FIBBIE RAID: Fewer Americans think Trump ‘responsible’ for Jan. 6 after hearings, 40% would still back 2024 run: poll.
CRISES BY DESIGN: The US Industrial Complex Is Starting to Buckle From High Power Costs. Surging bills are forcing companies to scale back industrial operations, threatening a greater drag on the economy.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chinese company’s rocket launches 3 satellites into orbit.
GOP HOUSE MEMBER WHO VOTED TO IMPEACH TRUMP CONCEDES: “Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of two Republican members of Washington’s congressional delegation who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, has conceded her reelection bid after being overtaken in late vote tallies by an intraparty challenger. Trump had targeted the six-term incumbent and endorsed Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, in the 3rd Congressional District contest. The district is in southwest Washington state, across the border from Portland, Oregon.”
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Albuquerque Cops Identify Suspect Muhammad Syed in Murders of Muslim Men.
Police on Tuesday announced they’ve charged an Albuquerque man with the murders of two Muslim men in a spate of recent slayings that have shaken New Mexico’s largest city in recent weeks.
Muhammad Syed, 51, also faces possible charges for the murders of another two Muslim men who were killed in Albuquerque in the last nine months. Ahmad Assed, president of the city’s largest mosque, told The New York Times that authorities informed him the shooter is a Sunni Muslim who may have targeted the victims because he was angry over his daughter marrying a Shiite Muslim.
Thus, this story will likely be quickly memory-holed.
TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME! Israeli students accuse Ben & Jerry’s of occupying tribal land in Vermont.
Israeli students claim that ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is “illegally” occupying land in Vermont that once belonged to a Abenaki native American tribe and should practice what it preaches and immediately evacuate the properties.
A cheeky letter sent to B&J — signed by more than 1,000 Israeli students and academics affiliated with Students for Justice in America — accuses B&J of of hypocrisy.
“We have concluded that your company’s occupation of the Abenaki lands is illegal and we believe it is wholly inconsistent with the stated values that Ben & Jerry’s purports to maintain. Ironically, in July of the last year you announced that you would discontinue the sale of your products in Israel because you object to the Jewish State allegedly occupying Palestinian territories,” the letter to B&J’s chairperson, Anuradha Mittal said.
Over to you, Ben & Jerry’s. When will you be departing the land you’re illegally occupying?
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