FASTER, PLEASE: Elon Just Offered to Buy Twitter for $43 Billion Cash.

That’s right, it’s happening.

Elon has offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion in cash. He wants to take it private and “transform” it into “the platform for free speech around the globe” (his words).

And he’s apparently not quitting with just Twitter!

(I think Frank may have made that last one up.) As a result, Twitter lefties are having a meltdown right now: Here’s a roundup of the woke freakout to Elon’s takeover bid at Twitter.

As well as:

I, too, enjoyed Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism back in the day. But even I don’t make Hitler comparisons with someone who made his bones thanks to the Obama administration.

DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats face nightmare scenario, ‘biblical disaster.’

Inflation, immigration, the war in Ukraine and the still-lingering COVID-19 pandemic make for a dreadful political atmosphere for President Biden’s party.

The problems are compounded by Biden’s weak approval numbers and the historical pattern whereby a president’s party typically loses seats in the first midterms of his tenure.

Some Democrats believe a turnaround is still possible, or at least that losses can be kept modest.

But others, granted anonymity to speak candidly, sound a louder alarm.

“I think this is going to be a biblical disaster,” said one such Democratic strategist, who did not wish to be named. “This is the reality we are in as Democrats and no one wants to face it.”

Well, they’ve been able to implement so many of the policies they wanted – what did they think would happen?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colin Diver: The Rankings Farce. “‘U.S. News’ and its ilk embrace faux-precise formulas riven with statistical misconceptions.”

BECAUSE OF COURSE: Feds Apologize to Violent BLM and Antifa Rioters for Not Being Nicer to Them as They Set Fires in Front of White House.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Product shortages and soaring prices reveal fragility of U.S. supply chain/ “About 31% of grocery products consumers browsed were out of stock in the first week of April, according to Datasembly, a research firm that tracks grocery and retail pricing. That’s up from 11% at the end of November 2021. Out-of-stock notices were even more common in Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, where they surpassed 40%.”

I don’t think the country should even have a Secretary of Transportation, but since we do have one, where the hell is he and what the hell is he doing?

RED GUARDS: Activists continue cancel campaign against Montana professor over private comments.

They view The Lives of Others as a how-to manual.

THE SEC NEEDS A SPECIAL COUNSEL INVESTIGATION: SEC Enforcement Staff Accessed Adjudicatory Documents in Midst of Administrative Proceedings.

SEC released a statement yesterday admitting that “administrative support personnel from Enforcement, who were responsible for maintaining Enforcement’s case files, accessed [restricted] Adjudication memoranda via the Office of the Secretary’s databases.” This self-described “control deficiency” is actually an outrageous breach of ethics—and possibly law—by SEC that illustrates why the Constitution forbids housing prosecutorial functions and adjudicatory functions in a single agency.

SEC filed in Cochran simultaneously with publishing the statement, so Ms. Cochran was not informed of SEC’s “control deficiency” when it was discovered. NCLA and Ms. Cochran were only made aware of the Commission’s breach when it was publicly disclosed. The Commission has known about this issue long enough to hire outside investigators, conduct an audit with “dozens of interviews,” and collect documents. Yet critical details, including who knew what and when, remain undisclosed. If this breach of ethics had occurred in private litigation or before a federal court, it would raise red flags. SEC claims “this access did not impact the actions taken by the staff investigating and prosecuting the cases or the Commission’s decision-making in the matters.” At present, there is no way to verify that this breach did not impact Ms. Cochran’s case. To make matters worse, SEC hired an outside firm that regularly does millions of dollars of business with the agency to investigate the scandal. Hiring a firm with a conflict of interest to investigate a conflict of interest hardly inspires confidence.

Restoring the “controls” that were disregarded here is not enough. As this breach has demonstrated, it would be impossible to monitor the internal controls at SEC sufficiently to guarantee that agency staff would not make the same error again. A computer correction of a purported “control deficiency” cannot repair the all-too-human impulse to abuse power, win at all costs, and share information inside an agency. Whatever controls are baked into the software, none of those can remedy the inherent problems that combining the enforcement and adjudication power inside an agency create.

Agencies that combine enforcement and adjudication — as many do — are unconstitutional. But convenient for the government.

I posted this last week, but this story has gotten surprisingly little coverage so I’m posting it again. Understand: The “prosecutors” at the SEC illegally accesssed files belonging to the “judges.”

This raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of the SEC, and demands an outside investigation with subpoena power.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Biden Can’t Even Convince CNN That Putin Is to Blame for Inflation. “Neither a CNN host nor a guest could sugarcoat inflation for Biden? Ouch. And Lemon wasn’t finished calling Biden out.”

Stephen Kruiser: What If Liz Cheney Doesn’t Lose? “My latest cause of concern is the nagging feeling that Liz Cheney might not be going away next year. I mean away from the House of Representatives. Should she lose her seat in Congress, we know she will soon resurface at CNN, MSNBC, or Adam Kinzinger’s house, where they’ll sip wine coolers in a kiddie pool and whine about Donald Trump all day.”

Yours Truly: Ukraine War: Have Missiles Made Tanks Obsolete? “A few guys sneaking around the woods with a few antitank missiles can do a whole lot of damage to an entire armored column.”

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATRED AND MEDICAL ABUSE? Wake Forest backs student who tweeted about injuring patient after pronoun pin conflict.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE OF HATE EDITION: A Remarkable Outbreak of Antisemitism at NYU Law School. “And if I were an employer interviewing NYU students, I might very well ask any student who belongs to any of the organizations that signed on to SJP’s antisemitism why they stayed in that organization.”

AND THEY’LL PASS THE SAVINGS ON TO YOU! Amazon to Start Charging Sellers 5% ‘Fuel and Inflation’ Fee, Reports Say.

THE DEMOCRATS SEEM TO HAVE A PATTERN OF CRAPPING ON THE PEOPLE WHO PROTECT THEM: “Secret Service agents were outraged last year by the White House’s attempt to downplay bite injuries caused by then-first dog Major — even trying to get President Biden to personally pay for a damaged coat, newly released documents show.”

HEH:

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Mexican Official Warns That Revoking Title 42 Will Mean ‘Chaos’ for U.S. and Mexico.

SHOCKER: NJ inmates at women’s only prison pregnant after sex with ‘another incarcerated person:’ There are 27 trans inmates currently housed at the facility. “The prison houses more than 800 inmates, and began housing transgender women last year following a lawsuit brought forth by a trans inmate who lived in men’s prisons for 18 months and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. There are 27 inmates who identify as transgender currently housed at the facility, according to NJ.com. New Jersey’s policy does not require trans women inmates to undergo gender-reassignment surgery to be held in the facility.”

SPOILER: WE’LL GET BOTH. White House Expects More Inflation, Not Recession.

It was Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Clinton and later a senior economic adviser to President Obama, who warned the White House for months last year that, no, inflation would not be temporary or transitory as they had hoped.

And he was right: the Consumer Price Index rose by 7.9% through February, the fastest annual increase in four decades. Eventually President Biden came around, announcing last month that addressing inflation would be his “top priority.” Now, ahead of new data to be released by the Labor Department Tuesday, the White House warns that inflation numbers will be “extraordinarily elevated.”

Given that Summers was right about inflation, does Biden believe the economist will be right about a recession? “That is not a projection we have made from here,” Jen Psaki told reporters in the briefing room Monday. “We believe,” added the White House press secretary, “that the economy is strong.”

They might actually believe this, which means the White House will keep us on a course that makes stagflation almost inevitable.

SUSPENDING STUDENT LOAN REPAYMENTS BENEFITS RICH: Wait a minute, aren’t federally-backed student loans mainly meant to help middle and lower class students?

So why then does Biden’s suspension of repayments benefit mainly high-income professionals like doctors and lawyers? Hans Bader points to a searing critique of the suspension written by Matt Yglesias, who has never been mistaken for a right-winger and who recently wrote this:

“As Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget shows, medical doctors have received $48,500 in relief versus $29,500 for people with law degrees, $4,500 for people with bachelor’s degrees, and a measly $2,000 for those who didn’t finish their degree and are objectively most in need of help.”

Hmmmm. As Bader details, suspending student loan repayments, again, is just one of multiple Biden policies that drive inflation in the U.S. to levels twice those now seen in Europe. And Biden was warned by economists on the Left and Right that such would be the result.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Dempocalypse: Quinnipiac poll shows Biden approval at -37 among young adults.

Corrupt gerontocracies don’t appeal to the youth vote? Go figure.

Related: Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve. “They said that the memory lapses do not appear to be constant and that some days she is nearly as sharp as she used to be. During the March confirmation hearing for soon-to-be-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Feinstein appeared composed as she read pertinent questions, though she repeated comments to Jackson about the judge’s composure in the face of tough questioning. But some close to her said that on her most difficult days, she does not seem to fully recognize even longtime colleagues.”

CHANGE: DeSantis pulls into tie with Trump’s favorables. He fights — and he wins.

YOU THINK MY TAKEOVER IS HOSTILE, WAIT TIL YOU SEE ME TONIGHT: Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion in cash.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hey FBI, We’re Running Low on Those White Domestic Terrorists You Keep Warning Us About. “Before the cries of ‘RAAAAAAACISM’ come raining down harder (they’re always raining down, after all), I want to say that I’m not positing that all white people are innocent. And I have no doubt that there are some fringe groups out there that are heavy on the Caucasian. What I am saying is that maybe federal law enforcement should look at things on a case-by-case basis, rather than through a lens that’s clouded by a narrative that is driven by a political vendetta.”

INSTITUTIONALIZED–A NEW PODCAST:  Charles Fain Lehman and Aaron Sibarium recently interviewed me about my new “Roots of Wokeness” article.  Check out the podcast!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Under Federal Scrutiny, NYU Law School Faces Uproar Over Anti-Semitism.

Why is higher education, and legal education in particular, such a cesspit of hate?

TOP SELLER: Stud Finder Wall Scanner – 5 in 1 Stud Detector. #CommissionEarned

SUCKERS: “For years, people marched, got tear-gassed, donated and literally put their lives on the line in the hopes of Black emancipation — not a Black influencer McMansion.”

BLM = Buying Large Mansions.