OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Senator Manchin Strikes Deal on Massive Drug Pricing Package.

The drug pricing deal was originally part of a reconciliation package known as the “Build Back Better” bill, but Manchin balked at the $2 trillion price tag and the bill died aborning.

But Biden needed the Build Back Better bill, or some version of it, to give Democrats a record to take to the voters for midterms, so he asked Chuck Schumer to keep after Manchin to get something — anything — passed.

It appears now that Schumer has succeeded.

Details at the link.

BE PREPARED: REXBETI 219-Piece Premium Tool Kit. #CommissionEarned

OH: Warnock used campaign funds to fight personal lawsuit. “Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) used campaign money to cover legal expenses for a lawsuit relating to his time as a church minister — transactions that raise questions about whether the spending runs afoul of federal rules governing personal use of campaign funds.”

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Nervous NYT takes a closer look at Mayra Flores and ‘the rise of the far-Right Latina’ (not ‘Latinx’).

(Classical reference in headline.)

SHE JUST ISN’T UP TO THE MOST BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF POLITICKING: Kamala Harris Spends 28 Seconds Saying Absolutely Nothing in Highland Park.

SORRY, BIDEN, GAS STATIONS CAN’T JUST ‘BRING DOWN THE PRICE:’

It would take no more than a few minutes of a White House adviser’s time to learn that the “companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump” in most cases aren’t companies at all. More than half the gas stations in the country are single-store operations run by an individual or a family, according to the Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing (NACS), a trade association representing the stores that sell more than 80 percent of the gasoline American consumers use.

A “Shell” or “Exxon” logo on the canopy above a filling station doesn’t mean those oil companies own the gas station. All it means is that the station’s owners have contracted with that company for the right to advertise the well-known brand. It’s the same as having a neon “Coors Light” sign hanging in a bar—which doesn’t mean MillerCoors owns the establishment.

And those gas station owners aren’t raking in massive profits, either. Over the past five years, retailer gross margins have averaged 10.7 percent of the overall price of gas, according to NACS data. But most of those profits come from selling food, drinks, cigarettes, and the like.

The Hustle, a business and tech newsletter, put together a useful breakdown of the economics of gas stations last year. “Selling gas generally isn’t very profitable” due largely to intense price competition among retailers and the ease with which consumers can shop around (because they are literally in their cars). On fuel alone, gas stations have an average margin of 1.4 percent.

If gas stations sold fuel at cost, consumers might hardly notice the difference—but the small-time entrepreneurs running those stations would have a harder time making ends meet.

Biden’s ignorance about gas stations sounds like a replay of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D–Mass.) attempt at blaming higher food prices on greedy grocery store owners—despite the fact that they often operate on similarly tiny margins. It’s also a worrying sign when coupled with the fact that the White House has ordered the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate companies for earning “illicit profits” due to inflation.

Exit questions: “How can the Biden administration be trusted to police companies’ profits when it is demonstrating such economic illiteracy?”

And, why can’t the administration coordinate their messaging on one of the most important issues to voters going into the midterms?

BIDEN SAYS YOU DON’T KNOW HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT: Wall Street Says a Recession Is Coming. Consumers Say It’s Already Here.

Whether we’re technically in a recession or not, the Bidenflation misery is real — and likely here to stay a while.

HOW BADLY IS THE WHITE HOUSE DOING? SO BADLY THAT EVEN CNN HAS NOTICED: After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands.

Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together.
Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.
That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.

The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President’s party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House.

Top Democrats complain the President isn’t acting with — or perhaps is even capable of — the urgency the moment demands.

“Rudderless, aimless and hopeless” is how one member of Congress described the White House.

But why, considering the decision leaked weeks in advance? Democrats don’t know what to do after Roe overturning.

Despite having a six-week heads-up via a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Democratic Party appeared caught completely off foot by the Dobbs ruling, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.

With abortion laws now the purview of the states, there is also growing consternation in progressive media circles. They fear that President Joe Biden’s tepid response to the ruling, which centered on his offering a brief statement and then boarding an airplane and flying out of the country, has been inadequate at best. Biden mustered some anger at the NATO summit in Spain, but policy-wise, he has conceded there’s not much the White House will do.

While Biden was overseas and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reading poems, Democratic firebrands Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren were offering incandescent but unrealistic ideas to a sympathetic national media. These included the idea of impeaching Supreme Court justices and opening abortion tents on federal lands. The closest the House and Senate Democratic majorities can come to resembling even a shell of codifying Roe would require abolishing the filibuster, a popular idea among the media intelligentsia. Unfortunately, naughty Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have already stated that this is a non-starter. Beyond that, the Democrats have no plan for a post-Roe world, an inconvenient truth that they dare not admit to a disheartened base. The base, after all, now increasingly sees a feckless aged majority and a president who seems out to lunch at all times.

However, the main problem for Democrats lies in their extreme position on abortion up to the moment of birth. Roe acted as a warm duvet over the operational procedures of abortion. It allowed Democrats to stand by a “pro-choice” talking point without having to defend it to a moderate electorate still not comfortable with a party willing to celebrate abortion. With Roe lifted, Democrats now have to go about the act of actually selling abortion by campaigning on it at state levels. For the first time in 50 years, national office seekers will have to specify their positions. Democrats will be forced either to stand firm on an unpopular extreme or moderate their positions and anger their base further. As of now, they cannot decide, and they are unprepared.

Between not being able to define “what is a woman?”,  and adopting a position on abortion that almost a quarter of a century ago was parodied on South Park as abortion up to “the fortieth trimester,” the Democrats seem to be  woefully positioned for the midterms. Ed Morrissey spots NBC reporting:Dems’ midterm strategy? Let Republicans bail out Biden.

Still though, don’t get cocky. As Ed writes, “It’s so crazy, it just might work. Even conservatives worry that Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November, either by selecting fringe nominees, overplaying their hand after the end of Roe, or perhaps in some other imaginative and self-destructive manner. We’re kinda used to it by now.”

UPDATE: So is Nancy Pelosi scrambling to find a way to overcome Dobbs? On the contrary! She’s living la dolce vita: Nancy Pelosi’s Italian job. The House Speaker’s campaign war chest is raising eyebrows:

Pelosi may be on vacation in southern Europe, but that hasn’t stopped her from aggressively trying to fundraise off the fall of Roe. “I asked you Monday. I asked you Tuesday. I asked you Wednesday. I asked you Thursday. I’m truly sorry to ask you again today,” reads one Pelosi fundraising email from last week. “But my team just informed me we failed to meet yesterday’s FIRST End of Quarter Deadline since the Supreme Court’s ruling. I won’t sugarcoat this. If I don’t reach 1,387 more gifts before midnight to close the budget gap, it will be the single most devastating setback for Democrats’ chances of winning this election and protecting women’s reproductive freedoms nationwide.”

Reaction online to the photos of Pelosi was typically muted.

“If I have nightmares about Nancy Pelosi’s boobs tonight I am suing,” tweeted the Post Millennial’s Ashley St. Clair.

“Inflation has hit Nancy Pelosi,” wrote comedian Andrew Schulz.

“Please stop sharing Nancy Pelosi’s ta-tas this is a family site,” tweeted @beyondreasdoubt.

Click over for the photos — if you dare.

(Updated and boobed bumped.)

OF COURSE: DOJ Challenging Arizona’s Citizenship Requirement for Voting.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. We are paying the violent price for refusing to lock people up — and treating them.

There also is the matter of violently expressed mental illness and its corollary, the clearly disturbed and deteriorating individual who may not yet have hurt someone, but who unmistakably is headed in that direction.

Full details are lacking on the Highland shooter, but he seems to be mad, and there’s no doubt that both the Uvalde and Buffalo killers were too. Dramatically so.

And then there are the muttering subway pushers, random slashers and incoherent sidewalk campers who pose such a threat to big-city dwellers everywhere.

But what, preemptively, can be done about them — the shooters and the street people alike?

Right now, not much. Court rulings from the ’60s and ’70s make it very difficult to intervene, even where the need is obvious, until the rifle fire begins or there’s another dead body on the tracks.

Not to be flip, but think of it as bail-reform/defund-the-police for the deteriorating mentally ill — an imperfect analogy, sure, but not by much.

A lot of obvious nonsense from the ’60s and ’70s still haunts us.

NOW CANCEL FAUCI: Looks like NIH has canceled the next phase of those awful tests using Beagle puppies. Now, how about canceling the guy who approved the tests in the first place?

AND IT ISN’T A SLENDER MAJORITY: Majority of Americans Think Joe Biden Should Have a Note Pinned to His Sweater and Be Sent Home to Delaware.

THAT TREE HAS TOO MANY BRANCHES:  Charles Lipson on Controlling the Fourth Branch of Government.

FASTER? PLEASE! First commercially viable lithium metal battery solid state charges in just 15 minutes.

YOU STAY CLASSY, RHODE ISLAND: Ivy League R.I. State Senator Twerks Upside-Down for Votes.

STAY HEALTHY: Ninja Professional 72 Oz Countertop Blender. #CommissionEarned

MAYBE ELON WILL GET THIS FIXED: Have you noticed a difference in how Twitter tackles deadnaming Elliott Page as opposed to, say, death threats on SCOTUS Justices?

QUITE AN INDEPENDENCE DAY BASH BY THE SUPREME COURT: Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts points to the remarkable week in the High Court just before the holiday as the real Independence Day celebration.

HARD HATS DIDN’T JUST FALL FROM THE SKY; SOMEBODY HAD TO INVENT THEM:  Edward Bullard was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during WWI.  He noticed something that was obvious, but it’s funny how many people fail to see things that are obvious:  Helmets work.  They saved the lives of many a doughboy from shrapnel, bullets, and whatever else came flying at them.  When Bullard returned home to San Francisco and to his family’s business, which sold equipment to miners, he wanted develop a helmet that could protect miners, too.  His “Hard Boiled Miner’s Helmet” eventually evolved into the modern hard hat.

Bullard was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame just this year.

SENSITIVITY READERS ARE THE NEW LITERARY GATEKEEPERS:

In theory, sensitivity readers were a way to write outside your identity without causing offense by “getting it wrong.” But the emerging consensus, especially in Y.A., was that it was even more wrong to stray outside your lane in the first place. In a particularly revealing 2018 feature on the culture website Vulture, a sought-after sensitivity reader expressed profound contempt for the authors whose manuscripts she was paid to vet.

“These writers think they’re doing the world a service. Like, ‘Look at me, I’m showing up for the social-justice movement.’ But the problem is that they’re showing up and they’re taking a seat,” she said.

The implications were clear: If you were a white author writing black characters, you were taking up space that could have gone to a more deserving marginalized writer. If you needed a sensitivity reader, then was this really your story to tell?

These questions don’t serve as a deterrent for everyone. In the intervening years, sensitivity readers have become de rigueur—in young adult fiction, but also, increasingly, in work for adults. Sometimes a publisher will insist on this extra step; sometimes, a conscientious writer will seek it out on his own. The prevalence of the practice is more sensed than studied—there’s no data on what percentage of books go through this sort of vetting—and it’s highly variable depending on the writer’s own genre and community; the ultra-woke author of prestigious literary fiction is a lot more likely to request or receive a sensitivity read than, say, a hard-boiled crime novelist.

Those who put stock in sensitivity reads seem to mostly imagine that the practice offers a form of insurance, preempting allegations of this -ism or that -phobia, although it rarely pans out that way.

When The Men, Sandra Newman’s sci-fi novel in which everyone with a Y chromosome suddenly vanishes from the face of the earth, came under fire for what critics termed the “transphobic” implication that people with Y chromosomes are men, one of the chief questions was whether the author had engaged a trans sensitivity reader. But when Newman said that yes, she had, the outrage only multiplied. Why had she hired only one sensitivity reader? Did she think this was an excuse?

“That only makes it WORSE,” one commenter wrote, “because you’re claiming you KNOWINGLY did this.”

Indeed, not even the professionally sensitive are safe when a cancellation comes calling. In 2019, sensitivity reader Kosoko Jackson frantically pulled his own Y.A. debut novel after he was called out for setting a gay romance against the backdrop of the Kosovo War. (As is typical of these controversies, it’s hard to parse exactly what Jackson did wrong, but the complaints mainly focused on the offense of “centering” the wrong identity category—in this case, two American boys—in a story set amid a real-life tragedy that mainly affected people of another identity category.)

Related: The Social Media Mob Versus the Novelist, the new video from Reason TV:

As Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451, books will be burned to protect everyone’s feelings as much as to block the content within them. But I’m not sure if even he would have predicted that it would be the publishers who would be outsourcing those who manned the flamethrowers.

OKAY, GROOMERS: Disney Introduces Gay Spider-Man.

Come back Fredric Wertham, all is forgiven!

OH: Highland Park Shooter Dressed as a Woman — Tell Us Again He Is a Conservative.

THE NEW NORMAL: Prices don’t drop when inflation eases. Why your wallet will be hurting for a while.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: LOL, Trump Is Still the Democrats’ Daddy. “The House Soviet Select Committee on Daddy Issues, also known as the J6 Committee, exists solely to make up reasons to keep Trump from running for president again because they know that they have no one who can beat him in a fair fight and without a generous assist from a pandemic.”

IS HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLODING?:  “Wages Fell for Professors this Year in Largest Drop on Record, Report Says.“