Archive for 2022

ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, I’M TIRED OF BEING ROBBED, AND YOU SHOULD BE TOO:  Immiseration.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden tells heckler ‘you look crazy’ in election eve visit to deep-blue Maryland.

President Biden fended off a group of hecklers on Monday — telling one of them “you look crazy” — as he delivered his final speech before the midterm elections in a deeply Democratic part of Maryland.

“You’re a disgrace!” the first of multiple hecklers shouted at Biden during a rally for gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore just outside Washington.

“I tell you what, let him sing! Let the man sing,” Biden said, before reverse-heckling another disruptive guest.

“Hey man, don’t jump. You look crazy enough to jump,” the president told the second heckler, who was wearing a US flag top hat at the historically black Bowie State University.

More gaffes from Biden tonight: President Biden tells black college students they’re just as smart and just as bright.

President Joe Biden is certainly flirting with disaster here, but he pulled it off. Speaking at Bowie State University in Maryland, a historically black college or university (HBCU), Biden told the students that they’re just as smart and just as bright as those students at other schools that have endowments. As we say, it was a risky line, seeing as Biden in 2019 told a crowd in Iowa that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

Earlier: Biden: The Pudding President’s Insults Continue.

UPDATE: America’s Newspaper of Record has found a clip of Biden’s powerful election day video:

 

OPEN THREAD: Be what you want to be, do what you want to do.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Your Election News Break for the Day: Don’t Lick the Toads.

Well that’s toad-ally terrifying….

Hey there! Here is the “ribbiting” late night content no one asked for. Yet here we are. The Sonoran desert toad (Bufo alvarius), also known as the Colorado river toad, is one of the largest toads found in North America, measuring nearly 7 inches (18 cm).

What sound does it make? Its call has been described as a “weak, low-pitched toot, lasting less than a second.” Was that the toad or did something startle you?

These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin. It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth. As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking. Thank you.

I know this doesn’t need to be said to Insta-readers, but at a minimum, practice safe licking. As Dave Barry says, “I’d like to remind all my readers, especially you impressionable young people, that if you must lick a toad, make sure it’s wearing a condom. Thank you.”

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: White House says Biden ‘comes from coal country’ amid flap over energy comments.

The White House maintained on Monday that President Joe Biden’s words about fossil fuels were “twisted” and that, as a Scranton native, he understands the importance of coal country.

Biden exposed an energy rift in the Democratic Party days before the midterm elections, and energy is an issue that could endanger their candidates in key races that will decide which party controls Congress next year.

“The president’s words, we believe, were twisted,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Monday’s briefing. “Anyone who knows President Biden knows he comes from coal country, from Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

Biden elicited a strong backlash from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) when he said coal plants would be shut down.

“We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar also providing tax credits to help families buy energy-efficient appliances,” Biden said.

Manchin blasted Biden’s comments as “not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs.”

“No more drilling,” Biden also said when pressed by a New York rally attendee on drilling on federal land and in federal waters. This runs counter to the White House’s messaging on energy production, including his claim that oil companies should be drilling more when discussing the need to lower gas prices.

Here’s further proof that Biden knows coal country well:

Related:

Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?

Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

Related: Understanding Biden Administration Energy Policy. “It all makes perfect sense if you just assume that Biden is prepared to say whatever he thinks the current audience wants to hear, no matter how contradictory to his previous statements and how factually inaccurate, with complete confidence that the mainstream media will cover for him.”

But Biden is now considered expendable by the DNC-MSM: WaPo’s category of lying for Biden: “The Bottomless Pinocchio.”

UPDATE: Biden Keeps Promising To Make Energy More Expensive. Believe Him.

(Updated and bumped.)

HMM: Psyche review finds institutional problems at JPL.

The independent review, chaired by retired aerospace executive Tom Young, found that while delays in development and testing were the cause of the mission to mission its August 2022 launch window, they were not the only problems Psyche had encountered. The board said that other unresolved software issues, incomplete verification and validation of vehicle systems, and “insufficient plans and preparation for mission operations” could have also caused a delay.

The board linked those problems to more fundamental issues with the management not just of the Psyche mission itself but also others at JPL. “The Psyche issues are not unique to Psyche. They are indicative of broader institutional issues,” Young said at an online town hall meeting held by NASA to present the report’s findings.

JPL has been the only government space program that has consistently worked, so they need to fix these.

SALENA ZITO: How the Democrats Lost Their Way.

If there were a way to illustrate the beginning, middle, and end of this election cycle in four powerful moments, I’d start with the faces of the men and women working on the construction of the Keystone pipeline, and the owners of the small businesses who supported them, that I witnessed days after President Joe Biden terminated their livelihoods.

These are people who work with their hands in the harshest of weather conditions digging trenches, cleaning feeder pipes, laying concrete, ensuring the proper fittings on the connecting pipes, and loading and unloading heavy materials by hand. That’s not including the faces of the people who run the motels, diners, machine shops, and barber shops and the mechanics who make sure they are fed, housed, cleaned, and able to get home when the job is done.

The next image in my coverage of these first two years of the Biden administration captured the true beginning of his descent away from the public. It happened while I was driving past the town square in Independence, Missouri, and saw 13 empty chairs sitting in a semicircle at the base of the lowered American flag in front of the Old Jackson County Courthouse, with each chair bearing the name of one of the 13 soldiers lost in Afghanistan during Biden’s bug-out from that country.

It was in the days and weeks after Aug. 26, 2021, when the nation lost those service members during Biden’s botched withdrawal, that the media and the Democratic Party as a whole failed to understand the mark that moment had on the American psyche. It was a shift away from the party in power and the president, whose credibility since then has never stopped slipping away.

Read the whole thing.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Poll Worker Fired For Selecting Straight Democrat Ticket On Voter’s Ballot, Calling Republicans ‘Racist.’ “The incidents come after Democrats and their allies in the corporate media launched a nonstop propaganda campaign claiming GOP poll workers represent an existential threat to democracy (despite the fact that actual threats of violence and intimidation are extremely rare). Yet when a Democrat poll worker engages in election interference, Democrats are silent.”

CAROL ROTH: The election is about the economy, stupid.

After severe devastation, voters get a chance to hold politicians accountable in the only way available to them today, by voting, and finally get some change.

While Biden and the Democrats have trotted out lies ranging from inflation (it’s transitory, it’s good for you, it’s corporations’ fault, it’s your fault, it’s Putin’s fault, etc.) to saying the economy is ”strong as hell,” people cannot be gaslit when they have to live with the consequences.

Whether it is at the local, state, or federal level, there are people running for reelection who have enabled a lot of destructive policy and new people running who supported these efforts and would do more of the same.

So much damage has been caused that it’s hard to encompass all the egregious economic and financial issues that have resulted from bad policy over the past two-plus years. Here’s a starter recap.

State and local politicians shuttered large sections of the economy, picking winners and losers and telling a large part of the population that they were “nonessential.” Small businesses were targeted, yet relief favored larger companies and was rampant with fraud.

They put in place or supported mandates that took away people’s livelihoods based on a political narrative instead of data and science.

They disrupted the learning and development of kids at all ages.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: VDH: The Left Were the Mad Scientists, We Were Their Lab Rats.

THIS DOES NOT INSPIRE CONFIDENCE: Denver firefighters suspended for getting woman pronounced dead even though she was alive.

Two Denver firefighters will serve unpaid suspensions for asking a doctor to pronounce a living woman dead even though they hadn’t assessed her or looked at her.

“The serious nature of this misconduct cannot be understated — the patient was pronounced, though she was in fact alive, and the medical care she deserved was delayed,” Mary Dulacki, chief deputy executive director of the Denver Department of Public Safety, wrote in letters outlining the firefighters’ misconduct.

Lt. Patrick Lopez and firefighter Marshall Henry on June 24 responded to a welfare check after a caller said he hadn’t heard from his daughter in several days, according to the disciplinary letter, obtained by The Denver Post through an open records request. The caller said his daughter had just had stomach surgery and it was unusual to not hear from her every day.

Denver police Officer Eugene McComas entered the home and found the woman inside. The officer told the firefighters outside that the woman’s skin was discolored, she was leaking fluids and she smelled of decomposition.

Lopez then dialed the number for the on-call emergency department physician at Denver Health Medical Center to obtain a pronouncement of death. Lopez handed the phone to Henry while the line was still ringing.

Henry relayed the police officer’s description of the woman as though he had made the observations, saying “she is bloated and obviously dead,” according to the letter. The doctor asked Henry whether the woman had a pulse or if there were signs of trauma and Henry said no, despite not having assessed her or looked at her himself.

The doctor pronounced the woman dead.

But after the firefighters left the scene, McComas went back inside the house and saw the woman moving. The officer called the fire department and an ambulance back to the house and the woman was taken to the hospital, the letter states. The woman survived, Department of Safety records administrator Andrea Webber said.

Unimpressive, to say the least.