HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: These are the words colleges don’t want you to say.

ANARCHO-TYRANNY IS WHEN THEY DON’T POLICE SHOPLIFTING BUT HAMMER-DOWN ON THIS: SF couple gets $1,500 fine for parking in their driveway despite doing so for nearly 40 years.

UPDATE: A friend writes: “Wow. Imagine the revenue potential if the City and County of SF started fining people for shitting on sidewalks.”

The thing to understand is that they know who they’re targeting and who they’re not, and they’re doing it for reasons.

WELL, ONLY BECAUSE HE’S A MISERABLE FAILURE: White House Report Card: Zogby says Biden ‘in real trouble’.

CHINA IS COUNTING ON THE EPA TO KEEP US DOWN:  China Slams U.S. Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling, Tells Biden Admin to Stick to ‘Climate’ Obligations.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Insignia 24-inch Class F20 Series Smart HD 720p Fire TV. #CommissionEarned

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Teacher-turned-OnlyFans star pregnant by student, is keeping the baby. He’s 22, and a former student.

SALENA ZITO: How Herschel Walker can still beat Raphael Warnock for Georgia’s Senate. It shouldn’t even be close.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Glamorous heiress, 45, charged with having sex with 14-year-old boy four times in one day. “An Australian horse heiress is saddled with charges after being accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy four times in a single day. Savannah Daisley, 45, faced Waverley Local Court in Sydney on Tuesday on child sex abuse allegations, with Judge Jaqueline Milledge denying her bail over the ‘quite disturbing’ allegations.”

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: What the reactions to Clarence Thomas post-Roe reveal about white liberals: Soon after the court handed down its decision, some pro-choice advocates began hurling outrageous and overtly racist remarks at the justice.

THEY ARE REALLY TODDLERS:  Climate Activists Glue Themselves to Historic Oil Paintings.

We don’t need to pay attention to what they think they want. We need to send them to their rooms with warm milk and a teddy bear.

THIS IS NOT AN EMERGENCY. I’M NOT IN TROUBLE: But if you read my blog and find value in it, you might consider supporting it.

THIS WATCHDOG HAS A TARGET RICH ENVIRONMENT:  Watchdog calls out the government’s most ridiculous spending.

IS SHE A BIOLOGIST?  Chelsea Handler’s late-night takeover: ‘White men’s opinions are irrelevant’.

I GATHER THAT, COME NOVEMBER 08, LIZ CHENEY IS LIKELY TO BE AVAILABLE …  ‘The View’ finally gets a new permanent conservative co-host: Pay attention!

BECAUSE THEN WE’LL AUTOMAGICALLY HAVE GREEN ENERGY TM: Biden Team Is Making Sure There Is Pain At The Pump.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO CONTINUE IT:  The Divine Importance of Preserving Freedom.

HURRAY:  The New American Slave Revolt, Led by Clarence Thomas.

THE GREAT ART SCAM:  Of Dustbins and Binmen.

I will confess some years ago, one of my family’s great amusements was to go to the art museum in Denver, and do highfalutin spoken reviews of trash cans….

THE MIRACLE IN PHILADELPHIA:  July 2, 1776: Continental Congress Votes in Favor of Independence.

IT’S JUST A REALLY BAD SHOW:  Liz Cheney’s J6 Committee Show Trial Theatrics Are Further Exposed After ‘Concerning Messages’ Source Is Revealed.

OPEN THREAD: We’ll go dreaming.

FASCIST OFFICIALS THREATEN TO CANCEL THE ASPEN TIMES BECAUSE ITS NEW OWNERS ARE UNWOKE:

The new owners asked that the newspaper staff refrain from commenting on the pending litigation while settlement talks were ongoing. That’s standard and prudent in legal proceedings. You don’t want employees saying things that might become evidence at trial or disrupt the settlement negotiations.

The staff refused to follow instructions. For that, one was fired. Another quit, saying he had literally cried about being denied the “right” to say whatever he wanted to say in the newspaper, whenever he wanted to say it, regardless of the impact on the newspaper’s pending lawsuit and settlement negotiations.

OK, that’s how these things sort out. Bosses boss, children are childish, and crybabies cry. Life goes on.

But now it’s getting serious. A group of the Aspen progressive establishment – the leftist elite who control the town – recently sent a letter to the new owners demanding they reinstate the fired staff, publish the content (of dubious veracity) that was withheld while the litigation was pending, and promise that in the future they will follow the publishing diktats of the letter-signers. The letter to the newspaper and the newspaper’s reply are HERE.

The letter-signers include all five county commissioners, the mayor and a former mayor, numerous city councilmen from Aspen, Snowmass and nearby Basalt, and the challenger to the Republican representative for the Congressional District that includes Aspen. Every single one is a Democrat, as are over 70% of Aspen residents.

The letter-signers gave the newspaper owners two weeks to comply with their demands. If they don’t, then the letter-signers threaten “reactions.”

To make sure the newspaper owners get the message, the letter details the threatened “reactions.” They include:

“Directing our individual organizations to pull advertisements and notices from the paper; encouraging local businesses to do the same; refusing interviews with reporters at the Aspen Times; or calling for a boycott of the paper.”

This is astounding. Government officials explicitly referencing their government organizations are threatening to put a newspaper out of business as punishment for its editorial decisions about what to publish and when.

If these letter-signers as private citizens simply wanted to express their objections to the newspaper’s editorial decisions, fine. That’s what letters to the editor are for – to persuade or sometimes just to rant.

But they chose coordinated actions in their capacity as government officials to overtly threaten the existence of the newspaper.

Read the whole thing.

Evergreen:

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Is the electric grid ready for extreme space weather?

YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE: Bank suffers exodus of customers after social media manager told them to LEAVE if they don’t like staff sharing pronouns on badges. “Branding expert Martin Townsend said Halifax’s policy is a ‘Ratner moment’ and an ‘astonishing’ mistake that will be considered one of the biggest PR blunders in recent history.’ . . . Mr Townsend referred to Gerald Ratner, who infamously caused the value of the jewellery firm he was chief executive of to plummet after branding one of its products as ‘total c**p’ in a speech.”

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH DAVID AXELROD IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Former Top Obama Advisor David Axelrod Shreds Biden, Says He’s ‘Not in Command.’

The man who masterminded both successful presidential campaigns for former President Obama, strategist David Axelrod, has harsh words for the current Commander-in-Chief saying, “There is this sense that things are kind of out of control and he’s not in command.” Appearing on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” Thursday, he added, “so, you know, this is a very, very fraught environment for him right now.”

The first question that pops into my mind is, does this have Obama’s blessing? It’s hard to imagine that Axelrod, now a CNN commentator, would criticize the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer without running it first by his former boss. My second question is, how long does this guy want to work at CNN? Because if he keeps spouting off like this, he’s bound to upset some folks at the left-leaning network who have been covering for Biden since day one of his presidency. Paging Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy…

Axelrod didn’t stop there though, continuing to rip the president:

Inflation, no one president can control inflation, but it is a gale force wind right now. It’s affecting politics.

You heard him on gas prices today. He talks about the gas tax holiday, but he is not going to get the gas tax holiday and there are a lot of Americans who are skeptical about whether that would help.

It’s true that no one president can control inflation, but one can certainly exacerbate the problem with profligate spending. Biden’s out-of-control layouts include mega-bills like the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan providing for COVID relief. Throw in tens of billions more sent to Ukraine. Think all this might have something to do with inflation?

Don’t forget that Biden wanted to spend more—up to $5 trillion more on the Build Back Better bill, but was only stopped because he couldn’t get the votes. Imagine how much worse inflation would be had that behemoth made it through Congress.

At the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti answers the question: Who’s In Charge?

Every time I speak to a conservative audience, I am asked who is really in charge in the White House. My answer has been that the president is in command. After all, institutions take on the character of their leaders. 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.

Fortunately though, John Nolte writes that Biden’s stenographers at CNN have one solution: Come and see the racism inherent in the system! CNN Lays Groundwork to Dismiss Announcement of Biden Recession as Racist.

And so the desperate stupes at CNNLOL came up with this beauty of a headline….

Who decides if the US is in a recession? Eight White economists you’ve never heard of

And the 1400 or so words that follow are all about undermining any upcoming declaration of a recession as illegitimate because white people….

There is a clear lack of racial diversity amongst the eight members, and NBER has never had a member who has been a racial minority, according to Gary Hoover, co-chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession.

[…]

In recent years there has been a push by policymakers and the Biden administration to include more diverse thinking in economic analysis.

Janet Yellen, America’s first woman Treasury secretary and its first woman Fed chair, has argued that the lack of women and minority economists at the Federal Reserve and the federal government is a top priority. That lack of diversity, she said, skews viewpoints and limits the issues of discussion.

This is not an opinion piece—I mean, it is an opinion piece, obviously, but it’s presented as news.

This is how desperate the corporate media now are….

Thanks only to left-wing policies (profligate federal spending, green nonsense exploding energy prices, etc.), things are so objectively bad in America — and the corrupt media’s credibility and moral authority are so eroded — that all CNN can come up with is naked nihilism to push back on the coming declaration that the United States is officially in a recession—which will be an objective fact.

Next will be the early Obama-era trope which was updated slightly for the coronavirus lockdowns: Sure we’re in a recession, but think of how it’s benefiting the environment!