SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a harrowing story of military sacrifice, punctuating it with “This is the God’s truth.” The only problem? Every detail in the story appears to be incorrect.
Related: Biden says he doesn’t know Boris Johnson’s name but UK leader ‘looks like Donald Trump.’
At least Biden didn’t call him Neil Kinnock, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice.
Earlier: Biden Forgets Obama’s Name During Town Hall – And It’s Awkward.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: SpaceX begins hunt for Starship landing sites on Mars.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: If Joe Walsh Is the Answer, Ask a Different Question.
WELL, THE “MY WORD AS A BIDEN” BIT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE TIPOFF: WaPo Investigation Finds ‘Almost Every Detail’ of Biden War Story False.
Of course, if he’s the nominee, the WaPo will forget all about this, but right now they’re trying to clear a path and he’s in the way.
KNIVES: The Applegate-Fairbairn Knife.
DAVID HARSANYI: James Comey is proof the ‘deep state’ is something to fear.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Also proof that the deep state has something to fear, I suspect.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED. Public Health Officials Warn About Mosquito-Borne Eastern Equine Encephalitis.
I SWEAR I HAVEN’T GONE OFF THE DEEP END: Who Gave Jeffrey Epstein the Frankie Five Angels Treatment?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Red wine is good for gut health, study finds.
AT AMAZON, save in Garden & Outdoor.
LIONEL SHRIVER: The abject stupidity of the San Francisco George Washington murals debacle.
So what’s the problem with these images? I fear I will bore you. ‘Don’t tell us,’ you say. ‘Pictures of slaves and dead Indians make students feel “unsafe”. The murals are “offensive” to certain “communities”. Did we get that right?’ Of course you did. But to be fair, when 49 freshmen at George Washington High were asked to write about the murals, only four wanted the works erased; the rest would preserve them intact, visible, and in place. Aside from a handful of noisy activists, this isn’t a snowflake story. It’s the grown-ups who are the idiots, and who assume that their city’s children are idiots — since if there are any kids who repeatedly pass these murals on the way to class and fail to get their message (and that’s hard to imagine), these children are already in a school where at least in theory one learns things.
It’s progressives of the sort who sit on the San Francisco School Board who are always banging on about the importance of teaching students the sordid aspects of American history. They’re the ones who would happily set aside lessons on the ingenious civic architecture of the Constitution in preference for concentrating solely on the document’s initial hypocrisy over slavery, and who denigrate George Washington as a slaveholder. They’re the ones who love nothing better than to induce a burning sense of hereditary shame in upcoming generations over how the West was won. So they’re the ones who, we presume, had they the talent, would paint the very murals they now want to obscure. ‘Bewildering’ doesn’t begin to say it.
Would that I could reassure my British readers that this urge to artistic vandalism is an American affliction, perhaps one specific to whackadoodle California. But campaigns to take down monuments and ban art that doesn’t pass an ever-stricter political purity test is not constrained to the US.
Read the whole thing, as the left’s cancel culture airbrushes down the memory hole the work of a communist painter hired by the FDR administration, in the name of what Rod Dreher dubbed “moralistic therapeutic barbarism.”
BYRON YORK: Justice Department inspector general has done separate report on James Comey.
Among other things, Comey has been under investigation for his handling of several memos he wrote memorializing conversations with President Trump. The memos began in January 2017, when Trump was still president-elect, and continued until April 2017, the month before Trump summarily fired the FBI director.
Comey’s memos were, at the least, confidential FBI documents, and at most, in some cases, classified. Comey told Congress that he sent some of the memos to a friend for the purpose of being leaked to the New York Times. Comey hoped media reports would set off a firestorm that would ultimately result in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump-Russia matter.
That is precisely what happened with the appointment of Robert Mueller.
It is not clear what conclusions Horowitz has reached about Comey’s actions. Horowitz earlier referred the Comey memo matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, but Justice officials declined to go forward.
Comey was also part of the process, much scrutinized by Republicans, through which the FBI sought and received a secret court warrant to wiretap short-term Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FBI cited allegations from the now-discredited Steele dossier as part of its application for the warrant. That action drew much criticism from Republicans and was ultimately one of the main shapers of the inspector general’s assignment.
Sources say the Comey report will deal just with Comey’s memos and not his broader role in the Trump-Russia investigation. As for Horowitz’s main report, it is still unclear precisely what it will cover and when it will be made public.
I hope we’ll see accountability, and full disclosure.
UPDATE: Ex-FBI Director Comey violated DOJ policies in handling Trump memos, inspector general says.
WHINING IS A POWER MOVE TODAY: How Conservatives Can Win Without Whining.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Boris Blindsides Bolshy Remainers.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Beto O’Rourke Campaign Claims Breitbart Reporter Ejected to Protect Black Students. “A Breitbart spokesperson hit back shortly after the O’Rourke campaign’s statement: ‘The false accusation that Breitbart is racist, or that its award-winning reporter — an Orthodox Jew, married to a black woman who serves in the military — is either racist or would make anyone at a black university uncomfortable is absurd. The irony of Mr. O’Rourke — who has stated himself that he is the beneficiary of ‘white privilege’ — purporting to decide for black students who should be banned from events that are open to the press, or what they should feel, is not lost on us’.”
HE’S RIGHT: Andrew Yang Wants Thorium Nuclear Power. Here’s What That Means. If you don’t support nuclear power, you don’t care about “climate change.”
BATTLESWARM BLOG: Leftists Lie About (spins dial) the Tea Party Being Racist.
Love the headline.
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