FAUCI FOLLIES: Was Fauci Incompetent or Dishonest? Either Way, in the Final Analysis, Lives Have Been Ruined.

STILL TRUE: Why the Hammer and Sickle Should Be Treated Like the Swastika.

THE SUICIDE OF EXPERTISE: ‘Too Long for Me to Read’: Fauci Dismissed Expert’s Email About Chinese Disinformation on COVID-19.

OUT ON A LIMB: Former MI6 Head Warns China Will Have Had Lab Leak Evidence “Destroyed Or Made To Disappear.”

VANITY FAIR (OF ALL PLACES!) JUST BLEW UP THE COVID COVERUP: And this is just the summary:

“A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.”

MISSOURI: Mikaela Haynes Committed Suicide After Exposure to Child Rapist, Who Wants Visitation With His Other Daughter.

IT’S STILL ALL ABOUT HIM: Obama Says Joe Biden Is ‘Essentially Finishing The Job’ Of The Obama Administration.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Penn health policy professor set up dinner plans with Fauci in May 2020, ignoring travel and distancing rules.

“CONFIRM” NOT “REVEAL”: Bombshell Emails Reveal That Fauci Wasn’t Being Straight With the American People.

EAT THE RICH: Here are the colleges that would pay an endowment tax under the ‘Ivory Tower Tax Act.’

NOT FIRED, JUST “REASSIGNED.” Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces in which he claimed Jews have ‘an insatiable appetite for war.’ “Kamau Bobb will be reassigned to a STEM research role.”

TRUMP MIDDLE EAST DIPLOMACY CONTINUES PAYING DIVIDENDS: Honduras Set to Move Embassy to Jerusalem.

YES: Fauci emails all the more reason for US to get to bottom of COVID origins.

For a year, we’ve been told to “trust the science” — but Fauci, our leading scientist, made declarations that certain theories were “debunked” when they weren’t. Why did he back up Daszak’s self-serving dismissal of the lab theory with no real evidence — when, in fact, he was getting e-mail evidence to the contrary?

These revelations don’t ease the growing concern that US taxpayer cash might have helped unleash this plague.

No, they don’t.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Churches Wrestle $2M From Gavin Newsom Over COVID Lockdowns.

PANDEMIC THOUGHTS: Nocebos and Mass Hysteria. “A nocebo effect is the opposite of a placebo effect. A placebo makes you get well because you think you will. A nocebo makes you get sick because you think you will. Both work if you believe authority figures (doctors and experts) who say they work. The mechanism is imaginary or psychological. But the effects are real and physiological.”

STEVEN SEAGAL HAS JOINED A PRO-KREMLIN POLITICAL PARTY:

There’s another reason Seagal may enjoy spending time in Russia as opposed to the US these days. Starting in early 2018 the LAPD was reportedly investigating claims of sexual misconduct after several actresses came forward and made accusations. At least one of the claims involved an allegation of rape. Back in 2018 when Seagal was acting as a goodwill ambassador for Putin, he was asked about those allegations and got up and walked out of the BBC interview…In any case, Seagal who became a Republican action star not many years after Rocky was beating up Ivan Drago is now the face of a left-wing party supporting President Putin.

* * * * * * * *

I was looking for the source of this quote and here it is, an RT interview from 2017 in which Seagal calls Putin, “one of the greatest world leaders if not the greatest world leader alive today.”

And to think, I knew him (Seagal that is, not Putin) when:

YOUNG ADULT INFOTAINMENT SITE VOX SEEMS TO THINK THIS IS ACTUALLY NEWS: Billionaires are racing to sidestep President Biden’s plan to raise their taxes.

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO NORMALCY: Gun sales: Best May ever, 2021 set to crush record, public ‘afraid of violence, tyranny.’

THIS IS COOL: United Airlines is buying 15 super-fast jets from startup Boom Supersonic. The new planes could fly Newark to London in less than 4 hours, United said. I’ve written about Boom in the past and I’m pretty excited to see this going forward.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Democrats Want to Destroy Democracy to Save It.

The idea that there’s going to be an armed attempt to return Trump in triumph to Pennsylvania Avenue by the end of this summer is ludicrous, but that’s part of the charm for its intended audience of MSNBCNN fans. They adore any narrative that provides them the kind of fake boogeyman – like climate change or systemic racism – that they love to battle. They get to pretend they are courageous knights by slaying toothless dragons, like the Great Insurrection that never seems to come. Never have so many thought themselves so brave for risking so little: “We need to fearlessly resist Donald Trump before he destroys our democracy – send tweet!”

So, the experts should unbunch their panties and take a deep breath. We’re not going quit securing our elections, and it doesn’t look like their high-pitched, girlish shrieks are going to cause Joe Manchin to commit ritual electoral suicide in his deep red state. The Dem’s trash election fraud initiative is swirling down the toilet. Experts schmexperts, they’re just going to have to live with an electoral system that is almost, but not quite, as fair, honest, and secure as Mexico’s.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Fauci Fraud Is Now Plain for All to See. “Yeah, almost everything since March of 2020 has been irritating. I’ve had a sneaking suspicion all along, however, that a lot of the nutjobs like me would eventually be vindicated. That’s not an easy thing to hope for when up against a mainstream press that now does nothing but lie for a living, but I knew that this clown car we’ve been watching for 17 months wasn’t built for the long haul.”

TRUMP’S DIPLOMACY CONTINUES TO BEAR FRUIT: Honduras Set to Move Embassy to Jerusalem.

THERE’S DEFINITELY SHRINKAGE. ‘Shrinkflation:’ The Latest Consequence of Reckless Federal Spending, Explained.

We already know that top inflation metrics have recently surged, and executives at companies like Costco are warning that price hikes are hurting their customers. Now, there’s a new inflation consequence hitting consumers: “Shrinkflation.”

I’d never heard the term before today, but new reporting from the Washington Post explains how some companies are dealing with inflation in their supply costs by shrinking the sizes of their products, to avoid the customer backlash that comes with raising sticker prices.

“Consumers are paying more for a growing range of household staples in ways that don’t show up on receipts — thinner rolls, lighter bags, smaller cans — as companies look to offset rising labor and materials costs without scaring off customers,” the Post reports. “It’s a form of retail camouflage known as ‘shrinkflation,’ and economists and consumer advocates who track packaging expect it to become more pronounced as inflation ratchets up, taking hold of such everyday items such as paper towels, potato chips and diapers.”

“Shrinkflation” has been going on for quite some time — the portmanteau has its own Wikipedia page listing “shrinkflated” food products going back a decade — but watch for the trend to accelerate in the Biden era. Perhaps shrinkflation even explains the weird optics showing the giant Bidens next to Mr. Inflation himself:

FROG, MEET SCORPION: Lisa Murkowski Gets Served a Great Big Helping of ‘Unity’ From Joe Biden.

OOPS: “Let us pray now, for science.”