OUR GERONTOCRACY: Katherine Feinstein alleges Sen. Dianne Feinstein is victim of elder abuse in filings. “The filing, submitted Aug. 8, partially confirmed what had previously been reported by other outlets: that Katherine Feinstein, a former San Francisco County Superior Court judge and current San Francisco fire commissioner, has limited power of attorney over her mother, which the senator signed over to her on July 23, 2023. The recent court filing notes that this entitles Katherine to make legal decisions for her mother in certain civil-related matters.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: Meet Billy Joel, Florida Man. “Billy Joel, one of Long Island’s most famous residents, has apparently departed for Florida. That’s the big crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap — an entire week’s worth of nuttiness wrapped up in one easy-to-swallow medicated news capsule.”

Plus:

• Australia’s newest superstar is probably afraid of knives.
• You’ll never believe Canada’s newest leading cause of death.
• Women shouting down women for fake women.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The “New Normal” Mortgage Rate Range.

THERE ARE MANY LESSONS THERE: ‘Shark Tank’ star to teach business students about Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light’s collapsed sales.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Frigidaire Window Air Conditioner. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING, BESIDES EVERYONE? Target Sales Are Punished by Pride Month Backlash: Retailer lowers profit goal for full year; executives say they will modify Pride Month promotion.

Target said shopper backlash over its Pride Month collection, as well as cautious consumers, pushed sales sharply lower in the most recent quarter.

The retailer said it expected sales to decline again in the current quarter and lowered its profit goal for the full year. Executives said they would still mark Pride Month next year but with a more focused assortment of merchandise. . . .

Retail rival TJX, which owns T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, reported on Wednesday a 6% jump in comparable sales in the same quarter and raised its sales growth and profit targets for the year. TJX said it had strong foot traffic to its stores and demand for apparel and home goods. Shares gained 3% in premarket trading.

Target shares have fallen 16% so far this year. Its experience with its Pride collection exemplifies the cultural environment companies face when it comes to issues that could be perceived as controversial.

Who could have guessed that kid’s bikinis designed for boys to tuck their penises away would be “perceived as controversian?” Again, everyone except the bubble-dwellers in Target’s fashion merchandising and marketing departments.

Another example of the diversity problem within nearly all of our major institutions.

UPDATE: My mistake. The “tuck-friendly” swimsuits were only in the adult section. Target did, however, offer kids a swimskirt that would “thoughtfully fit on multiple body types and gender expressions.”

THIS ISN’T NORMAL OR SUSTAINABLE: Biden Budget Deficits Look Like Those Normally Seen In Recessions.

To hear President Joe Biden tell it, the US economy is booming. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is running monthly budget deficits that you would normally see during a deep recession.

With two months left to go, the deficit for fiscal 2023 now stands at $1.61 trillion, after the federal government charted another massive shortfall in July.
And Biden wants to spend even more.

To put the $1.61 trillion deficit in perspective, prior to the pandemic, the US government had only run deficits over $1 trillion four times — all in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Trump almost hit the $1 trillion mark in 2019 and was on pace to run a trillion-dollar deficit prior to the pandemic. The economic catastrophe caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 gave policymakers an excuse to spend with no questions asked. Now the Biden administration has settled into the new status quo – running ’08 financial crisis-like deficits every single year.

The July budget deficit came in at $220.78 billion, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. The shortfall was due to a double whammy of big spending and falling government tax receipts.

Well, get used to that.

HMM: Christie Pulls Ahead of DeSantis in Latest New Hampshire Poll.

FOIA TURNS UP CRACKS IN GLOBAL DISINFORMATION INDEX: Hans Bader just received a large batch of documents from the Department of State on the UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) that targets conservative and non-Lefty media that advertisers are urged to boycott. The GDI is a transparent censorship operation seeking to silence dissenters from the conventional wisdom of the Progressive Establishment. The more sunlight is shone on GDI, the better and the sooner the whole thing will fall apart.

CHANGE? The idea of a BRICS common currency is almost ’embarrassing,’ the economist who named the group says.

Lord Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist who first gave the BRICS bloc its name, has slammed the idea of the five nations ever collaborating to create a common currency.

The group — which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — has been calling for ways to end the dollar’s dominance as the world’s premier reserve currency, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called for a common trading note between them.

But O’Neill, who coined the bloc’s name in a 2001 research paper, is unconvinced.

“It’s just ridiculous,” he told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “They’re going to create a BRICS central bank? How would you do that? It’s embarrassing almost.”

Five countries with reputations even worse than modern Washington’s don’t add up to a single reputable country.

THE MOST ASININE CLIMATE CHANGE SENTENCE EVER: You’ve read about the absurd Montana judge’s ruling that the state’s constitution requires officials there to consider the climate impacts of issuing new oil and gas drilling permits. But leave it to Issues & Insights to dig out what does read like the most asinine statement ever uttered on these issues.

PUSHBACK: Embattled anthropology prof settles lawsuit with SJSU, gets gig as ‘heterodox’ scholar.

THE IRONY: IT BURNS  As has been often said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken

“Workers at Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco told to work from home due to crime.”

WANTED? REALLY? Wanted: Single Male, No Smokers, Must Have Climate Anxiety.

HOW TO FAIL AT BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING: ‘Shark Tank’ star to teach business students about Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light’s collapsed sales.

On Jul 31, Canadian investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful,” announced plans to teach about the “unprecedented” boycott of Bud Light to college students nationwide this fall.

“This is an extraordinary case that I’ll be teaching in business schools across America this fall,” O’Leary said in an interview with Fox News.

“To lose 25% market share has never been achieved, and it’s impossible to even dream it,” O’Leary Fox News, mentioning that some of the largest previous moves in the beer market range between 1-5%.

He emphasized that beer is essentially the same product, and what sets it apart is the power of its brand. In April 2023, Bud Light partnered with controversial transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney.

“You have to ask yourself: ‘on a campaign that really brings you into a discussion around gender identity, is that the right thing for my beer brand?’” O’Leary said,.referring to Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood” Tiktok video series, which initially propelled him into the spotlight.

O’Leary won’t be the last. Business schools will be teaching this for years as the counterpoint to how Johnson & Johnson dealt with the Tylenol poisoning murders of 1982.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Evil Teachers’ Unions Have Completed Their Chicago Flex. “This wasn’t the biggest news story yesterday, but it does offer a good snapshot of the state of leftist politics in the United States of America at present. It’s also not about Hunter Biden, so our streak continues.”

AND IT’S NOT LIKE WE’RE DOING SO GREAT: China is now growing more slowly than the U.S.

Weird how as soon as Chairman Xi reinjected communism into the Chinese economy, it started to die. It’s almost like that stuff is poison.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: It’s democracy in the dark without Nashville shooter manifesto’s release.

YOUR OCCASIONAL REMINDER THAT COMMIES LIE ABOUT ANYTHING AND CONCEAL WHAT THEY CAN’T GET AWAY WITH LYING ABOUT:

As China announces that it will no longer be publishing youth unemployment data (because the rate is very high lol), a reminder that they have been steadily publishing fewer and fewer economic indicators in recent years as the data has become less rosy https://t.co/tdMDWhPeOA pic.twitter.com/ZuE6p6ZZAP

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) August 15, 2023

Xi wants Communist controls and capitalist returns. I guess we’ll see if he can pull it off but the indicators are mostly bad.

MORE ON THE WEIRDNESS AT NORTHERN OHIO UNIVERSITY: A Deep Dive Into The Attempt To Fire Tenured Law Professor.

HMM: Mark Meadows Files To Remove Georgia State Prosecution To Federal Court. “Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se: arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the President’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the President. One would expect a Chief of Staff to the President of the United States to do these sorts of things…. This is precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official’s duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits, and that the removal statute shields against.”

CHANGE: Sage Steele Is Ready for Her ‘Next Chapter’ After Settling Her Lawsuit With ESPN.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Fitch warns it may be forced to downgrade dozens of banks, including JPMorgan Chase. “The credit rating firms relied upon by bond investors have roiled markets lately with their actions. Last week, Moody’s downgraded 10 small and midsized banks and warned that cuts could come for another 17 lenders, including larger institutions like Truist and U.S. Bank. Earlier this month, Fitch downgraded the U.S. long-term credit rating because of political dysfunction and growing debt loads, a move that was derided by business leaders including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.”

Apparently Dimon doesn’t have much room to talk.

HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY: University of Virginia School of Law — Exposed.

To graduate from the 8th-ranked University of Virginia School of Law these days, you have to demonstrate an “understanding” of “bias/racism/cross-cultural dependency.” Granted, the school’s website doesn’t explain what that means, but the course catalog does indicate which offerings would satisfy that politically correct requirement.

Clearly, the left’s Woke obsessions with race, gender, abortion, and other tenets of political orthodoxy are now officially ensconced at the public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 to “advance human knowledge, educate leaders, and cultivate an informed citizenry.”

PJMedia’s series on the country’s “top” law schools, as rated by U.S. News and World Report for the 2022-2023 school year, has illuminated the bad, the ugly, and the uglier at the supposedly “elite” institutions charged with instructing our nation’s next generation of lawyers.

This is the latest in PJ Media’s ongoing series exposing the secrets of America’s law schools.

INCENTIVES MATTER: ‘Where did they go?’ San Diego now enforcing homeless camping ban. A friend comments:

Key takeaways here:
1. The homeless respond to policy and incentives like anyone else. The mere announcement of a future camping ban (plus some enforcement of other existing rules) rapidly cleared out major problem areas.

2. The provision of shelter or housing is neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish these clear-outs. Of the people asked to leave Balboa Park on the first day of enforcement (issuance of warnings), none accepted offers of shelter.

3. The NGOs that have colonized the homeless problem have neither the incentive nor the knowledge to solve it. The head of one shelter was confused by the magical disappearance of his potential clients. “Where dId they go?”

“He was especially surprised by how empty Commercial Street was, and said outreach teams were still surveying the city. They’re scramblin’ around to figure out where everybody went.’ Commercial Street had once been so clogged that tents and tarps spilled onto the road. Yet at one point, the only movement came from a pair of officers crossing the road.”

We get urban decay because we tolerate it. And as for the nonprofits/NGOs, homelessness is far too lucrative a problem to solve.