KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Mitch McConnell, Dehydration, and Questionable Washington Physicians. “The physician enablers — we can throw John Fetterman’s doctor into the mix too — are doing the country a disservice by giving their patients a green light to hang around at work until they drop. The White House physician who insists that President LOLEightyonemillion is functional is an active participant in the rapid destruction of the Republic.”
Archive for 2023
September 8, 2023
DEAL OF THE DAY: Carhartt Men’s Rugged Relaxed Fit 5-Pocket Jeans. #CommissionEarned
DON SURBER: Kamala Can Win: The Deep State Loves Her. “Well, being popular among voters is overrated in elections that are fixed. . . . The deep state can turn Kamala into a straight Obama if necessary. And it just might become necessary if Biden makes many more public appearances. Her greatest attribute to the DC crowd is her incompetence. The deep state loves incompetent people because they rely on the Civil Service-protected Peter Strzoks to run things.”
PROVIDING CONVENIENT COVER FOR THOSE SO-CALLED SANCTUARY CITIES: Biden administration considers forcing migrant families to remain in Texas. “Administration officials have been considering the idea as a way to stem recent increases in the numbers of migrant families crossing the southern border, which reportedly reached an all-time high last month. Supporters of the remain-in-Texas idea, which has yet to be finalized, hope that it would help the administration advance its goals of quickly deporting families who fail initial asylum screenings and deterring other families from crossing in the first place.”
I remember when Remain in Texas was set a bit further south and called Remain in Mexico.
LOL, ONLY SUCKERS BELIEVED THAT WOULD HAPPEN: Fattened IRS not targeting high-income returns as Biden promised.
Internal Revenue Service auditors continue to target middle-income earners despite promises by the president and his team to turn agents loose on those earning $400,000 and higher.
Its budget swelled $80 billion by Democrats hopeful of exposing fraud by the rich, a new audit shows that agents are still mostly chasing down families and businesses with incomes of $200,000 or less, half the president’s promised target.
Billionaires can put up a fight, and can affect your post-government employment. Middle class people can’t do either, they’re just sheep to be sheared.
GRENELL IS USUALLY TOO SHARP TO PLAY LOSING GAMES LIKE THIS ONE: Ric Grenell Calls Ron DeSantis ‘Homophobic,’ But Then Megyn Kelly Asks for Receipts.
YES: Beware the Special Counsel’s New Indictment Plans for Hunter Biden.
It’s the tax and financial crimes and misconduct that strike closer to the heart of the Biden family enrichment scheme, which is the more meaningful and growing scandal. Some razzle-dazzle of a gun charge, absent any serious pursuit of illegal activity related to financial dealings and foreign agent non-disclosures, could easily be interpreted as a deliberate distraction. A diversion, if you will. The DOJ’s ability to spare Hunter Biden any serious charges, while also protecting his father’s political and legal standing, fell apart with the defunct plea deal. Hunter Biden may now get his wrist slapped quite a bit harder than everyone involved would have liked (defense and prosecution alike) because, essentially, they got caught.
But the real smoke would engulf the Biden family ‘business,’ and that related financial paper trail. If Weiss stops at a new gun charge — look, a bright shiny object — plus the tax misdemeanors already listed in the previous compact, that would strike me as yet another face-saving political exercise. Indeed, it could be interpreted as Weiss coming “a little bit harder at Hunter Biden (while still taking care to insulate ‘the Big Guy),” while still serving the Biden DOJ’s overriding “inclination to protect the Bidens to the greatest extent possible.” In short, I recommend tapping the breaks on any premature celebrations over newfound “accountability,” carefully scrutinizing the fine print of whatever might emerge in a forthcoming indictment, then watching to see whether or not the Special Counsel probe then effectively ends.
If the Weiss investigation proceeds as it has thus far, expect this sacrificial lamb move to be the extent of it.
Congress can and will continue its investigation but with the Dem-controlled DOJ back in “wingman” mode for the Biden crime family, that’s probably about as much as anyone can expect.
TREAT SOCIAL MEDIA LIKE TOBACCO: “Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes’ Barbie dream house may have it all but it doesn’t have wifi for the kids. The proud parents of Esmeralda Amada, 8, and Amada Lee, 7, the Hitch actress and Barbie movie Kensation keep a strictly internet-free home when it comes to their kiddos. In a recent video uploaded to Instagram Mendes went on the record with her wifi-free policy and why she thinks it’s important to keep her daughters offline for now.”
SPYWARE ON WHEELS: Your Car Reports on Your Activities, Even Those in the Back Seat.
OUR DEGENERATE TIMES COME AT A PRICE: Sex Heals Trauma: Our culture is so afraid of sex that we’ve walled it off from healing.
Our society is all about sexuality, but super prudish about sex. At least about heterosexual sex.
September 7, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Just do it.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: NYC Mayor Eric Adams Rails Against Illegal Immigrants, Claiming They Will “Destroy New York City.”
Even Axios has noted: Blue state migrant crisis sparks political disaster for Biden.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Leads the Nation in Losing Money on Home Sales.
RENAMING INDIA WOULD BE INSANE:
India’s rulers are apparently unhappy with the country’s name and appear determined to do away with it altogether. They would prefer it if everyone — not just in India but across the rest of the world — used the name “Bharat” when referring to it. Changing India’s name is political madness, amounting to nothing more than a divisive ploy dreamt up by Hindu nationalists for short-term gain.
Rumors of an imminent name change have been flying after official invites for the G20 summit asked leaders to join the “president of Bharat” for dinner. Officials also used the term in a handbook — called “Bharat, The Mother of Democracy” — issued to foreign delegates heading to the summit. A further clue came when a senior spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tweeted that the country’s leader, Narendra Modi, was attending a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia as the “prime minister of Bharat.”
“Bharat” is a Sanskrit term for India found in ancient Hindu scriptures, written about 2,000 years ago. The word also means “India” in Hindi. Yet the traditional name “India” also has deep roots, tracing its origins to the river Indus, as well as terms commonly used to refer to the subcontinent for many centuries, stretching as far back as the ancient Greeks.
Modi is simply attempting to do a macro level what Bal Thackeray did on a micro level in the 1990s. As Kevin Williamson wrote in his 2019 book, The Smallest Minority:
I lived for a while in Bombay, which we apparently are now supposed to call “Mumbai.” Do you know why we’re supposed to call it that? Because Bombay has long been governed by an actual fascist political party called Shiv Sena, or Shivaji’s Army, Shivaji being the Hindu hero who turned back the Muslim invaders and saved his Hindu kingdom from what right-wing Hindu nationalists describe as Abrahamic pollution. (Yes, they hate the Muslims, but they’re none too keen on Jews and Christians, either.) Shiv Sena in the 1990s was led by a daft newspaper cartoonist named Bal Thackeray, who liked to pose for photographs with tigers and palled around with Michael Jackson. He set about purging not only English but also Hindi names for local institutions and landmarks, insisting on the regional language, Marathi. Hence, “Mumbai.” But if you ask a “Mumbai” taxi driver to take you to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Railway Station, he’ll look at you funny, because he still calls it “Victoria Terminus.”
Everyone in the DNC-MSM quickly made the leap to calling the city “Mumbai” though. Hopefully Modi won’t have similar success.
A NEOCONSERVATIVE IS A LIBERAL WHO HAS BEEN MUGGED:
How it started: “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me. Dismantle. The. Minneapolis. Police. Department.”
—Shivanthi Sathanandan, vice chair of the Minnesota Democrat Farm-Labor Party, June 5th, 2020.
How it’s going: [T]hat all changed on Tuesday. Ms. Sathanandan was carjacked and viciously beaten:
The second vice chairwoman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is calling for tougher consequences for criminals after she was beaten and carjacked in front of her young children at her home in Minneapolis on Tuesday.
***
Sathananda was left with a broken leg, deep lacerations on her head, and bruising. She’s now calling for politicians to be tougher on crime.She is now singing quite a different tune when it comes to crime and law enforcement:
—John Hinderaker, Power Line, today.
BILL MANDATES MONITORING BELT AND ROAD: Sen. James Lankford today introduced legislation requiring every U.S. overseas embassy to designate an official to monitor local activities linked to China’s predatory lending program known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). One might wonder why the State Department has to be told by Congress to keep an eye on one of the major tools employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to expand Beijing’s world-wide totalitarian influence. But at least the Oklahoma Republican is doing something about it.
A RESPONSE TO THE RECRUITING CRISIS: Maintaining standards is more important than “making mission.”
Over time, the standards that a person must meet in order to enlist in one of the armed services of the United States have varied considerably. At times when recruits abound, the qualifications required of them go up. When, however, recruits are hard to find, these requirements go down.
Unfortunately, the further standards fall, the greater the tendency of people to view the barracks as a refuge for losers in search of “three hots and a cot.” This stigma, in turn, discourages the enlistment of people able to surmount a much higher bar. In other words, like the debasement of currency, a reduction in the prerequisite virtues required of recruits is a short-term solution with ruinous long-term costs.
In addition to discouraging the enlistment of men and women of quality, the acceptance of large numbers of substandard volunteers fosters the rise of dysfunctional organizational cultures. Thus, rather than pushing their subordinates to “be all they can be,” leaders devote their best energies to keeping them out of trouble.
Plus: “In anticipation of such complaints, I would remind the personnel people that a lad or lass who can barely perform the duties of a private probably lacks the makings of a first-class NCO. To underline this point, I would tell tales of ‘seventies trash,’ persons who, having enlisted (or been commissioned) at a time when standards were low, did to America’s armed forces what barnacles do to a ship: taking up space, slowing things down, and lowering expectations.”
So long as they understand how to use the correct pronouns.
MORE BENEFITS OF EXERCISE: Physical fitness may reduce need for psychiatric medications.
DOES TENURE MATTER FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM? Mark McNeilly’s analysis of FIRE’s numbers shows that it does. But it should matter a lot more if it is to be worth the downsides.
READER FAVORITE: Gel Seat Cushion for Long Sitting. #CommissionEarned