SUCKING IN THE ’70s: Inside the Booming Business of Punk Rock’s Past.

And yet, the dealer du jour for these sort of collectables is not some venerable auction house, but rather a 40-year-old New Jersey resident who has become arguably America’s most in-demand collector of rare punk memorabilia. His name is Brian Gorsegner, and he exhibits his envy-inducing loot on the Instagram account @AncientArtifax, whose 25,000 followers include an impressive array of illustrious cool kids: Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Lars Frederiksen (Rancid), Brian Baker (Minor Threat), Mac McCaughan (Merge Records), Violet Grohl (daughter of Dave), Roger Gastman (art dealer/graffiti guru), Lance Bangs (music-video director to the indie elite), Les Savy Fav (the band) and—who knew?—Brooke Smith (Silence of the Lambs/Grey’s Anatomy).

* * * * * * * *

“I’d come to realize that as important, or perhaps even moreso, than the items I was acquiring, was the first-hand tales that accompanied them,” Gorsegner writes in the intro. “I feel a great sense of pride and responsibility that the items in this book have been entrusted to me to survive another 40 years. This wasn’t memorabilia, and it wasn’t ephemera. These were artifacts of a time and a place that would shape my way of life.”

Gorsegner began collecting and selling as a teenager in central New Jersey. After touring the world as the vocalist for his own successful band (Night Birds), and establishing a career as a booking agent (whose clients include OG punk legends like Alice Bag and T.V. Smith), he saw his hobby take off during the pandemic, when everyone was at home “digging in their attics and their basements, either doomsday selling or doomsday buying.”

He began traversing the country to rummage through the mementos of aging punks, at times accompanied by a film crew for a four-part documentary produced by the rebooted Creem magazine. (The series is still looking for a home.) He pays good money for collections, often in the mid-five-figures. (“That’s me emptying my bank account.”) He keeps the items he can’t bring himself to part with and tries to break even by selling the rest either on Instagram or at occasional pop-ups, like the one Gorsegner is hosting at the Queens music venue-cum-gallery TV Eye as one of several book release events. Reflecting on punk’s evolution as a luxury commodity, Gorsegner is as astounded as the next guy. “This stuff was made by delinquent children,” he says, “and now it will sell for $10,000.”

Speaking of the ’70s, as original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts famously said, “You can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde.”

THOROUGHLY, I HOPE: A United flight was diverted after a ‘biohazard’ incident. How do airlines handle cleaning the plane?

IT LOOKS LIKE A RECESSION IS COMING:

It’s mind-blowing that the Harris campaign would blame Trump for the poor jobs report and accuse him of “bringing us to the brink of recession.” He hasn’t been in office since January 20, 2021, and yet the current economy is now his fault?

Does that make sense to anyone?

While it is nonsensical to blame Trump for the jobs report, especially when Kamala has been claiming for years that “Bidenomics is working,” there is a method behind the madness.

An election year recession is devastating to the party in power. Case in point: McCain had a nearly three-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average before the economic collapse in September 2008. Stagflation also contributed to Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 over Jimmy Carter.

So, the Harris campaign is trying to push the narrative that Trump is to blame for the coming recession. Do they really think that will work? It’s a desperate and weak strategy that is destined to fail, but it’s the only play they have.

In 1992, the DNC-MSM portrayed a growing economy as “the worst in 50 years” to help Bill Clinton, only to admit after he won that, as the Charlotte Business Journal noted in 2010, “The U.S. economy actually grew 4.2% in the fourth-quarter that year and went on to enjoy a terrific decade-long run of prosperity. And we learned in hindsight that recession had actually already ended when the [September 1992 Time magazine] article was printed.” Time described it in December of that year as “Bush’s Economic Present for Clinton.”

In 2008, in order to crown Obama as the next FDR, the media focused on what Virginia Postrel dubbed at the time as “Depression Lust, and Depression Porn.” In April of 2020, Kurt Schlichter wrote, “The Democrats Totally Want A Depression.” Will their media outlets portray Biden-Harris’s stagnant economy as still quite good to prop her up or the end of the world in an attempt to blame it on the Bad Orange Man — who’s been out of office for four years?

Exit quote:

Kamala is asked how she will fix inflation…

She answers by saying generic words about what inflation is for a solid 45 seconds.

Has there ever been a dumber person running for president? 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/5yvPotpDBX

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) August 3, 2024

UPDATE: Salena Zito: Middle America rattled by jobs report.

Paul Sracic, political science professor at Youngstown State University, said political strategist James Carville was right when he said “It’s the economy stupid” when he centered former President Bill Clinton’s campaign on economic issues.

“As it was then and now, it is how people feel about the economy and if their lives are better that is driving this election,” he said. “The word recession is powerful. A lot of economics is psychological. The numbers that came out on Friday is very bad news for the Harris campaign. They were touting a soft landing last week and that is not going to happen now.”

Sracic said Biden and Harris both got the messaging wrong from the onset on the economy: “It began with inflation. They woefully underestimated inflation from the start, dismissing it as transitory. Maybe if they had reacted sooner, not understanding would not have become an overarching theme for them.”

Just think of it as “Milton Friedman’s Revenge.”

AND PUBLIC HEALTH PARTISANSHIP LETS BLACK LIVES MATTER AND PRO-GAZA RIOTS HAPPEN: Public health vigilance lets big events like Olympics happen.

OLD AND BUSTED: Cocaine Bear.

The New Hotness? Cocaine Sharks! Sharks Off Rio de Janeiro Test Positive For Cocaine.

Based on this 2020 Babylon Bee headline, the solution to the cocaine sharks may work itself out next year: Trump Retaliates Against Asian Murder Hornets With American Kamikaze Bears.

FROM OIL WELLS TO OH WELL: California Loses Chevron.

Net zero, net new jobs: Choose one.

Bloomberg:

Chevron Corp., based in California since the days of kerosene lamps, is moving headquarters to Texas after years of fighting Golden State officials over strict environmental policies and costly regulations.

The move announced Friday will end the company’s 145 years of being based in the most populous US state. The shift prompted Texas Governor Greg Abbott to welcome Chevron to its “true home,” while a spokesperson for his California counterpart Gavin Newsom dismissed it as a “logical culmination” of a years-long transition by the oil giant.

Doubtless those workers losing their jobs or forced to relocate will be comforted by the thought that their fate is the “logical culmination” of a long process.

* * * * * * * *

Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, is saying that the decision to move is not about politics, but about “what’s good for our company to compete and perform.”  In reality, it’s obviously about both. He has clearly been eyeing Texas for a while and describes Houston as “the energy capital of the world.” Bloomberg quotes Wirth as telling an audience in, well, Houston back in 2019 that “policies in California have become pretty restrictive on a lot of business fronts, not just the environment.”

And those policies could become even more restrictive in the formerly golden state: California Regulators Propose Gov’t Takeover Of Oil Refineries To Stave Off Energy Crisis.

“The deployment of ZEVs [zero-emission vehicles] and a robust mass transit system are critical for achieving the state’s climate goals, reducing local air pollution, and eventually eliminating dependence on the volatile global petroleum markets. As demand for gasoline shrinks, refineries may close or convert to processing clean transportation fuels,” the report states. “This will lead to fewer gasoline refineries, with increased market concentration and associated market problems that often accompany it.”

To address the market concentration issue, the CEC proposed a variety of state interventions, including setting up state-owned refineries.

“The State of California would purchase and own refineries in the State to manage the supply and price of gasoline,” wrote the study’s authors, with the scope of the initiative ranging from “one refinery to all refineries in the state.”

Back in 2008, City Journal’s Max Schulz referred to “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism.” Now the Sacramento is looking to make it official and go full Soviet. Or perhaps worse; earlier this year, Steve Hayward dubbed the state “The North Korea of the USA.” As he wrote, “Never mind the social tyranny the state has attempted to impose, such as strict vaccine mandates, legal sanctions for anyone who dissents from transgender ideology or uses the wrong pronoun, and attempted legal penalties for any physicians who dissent from official Covid ideology. Stick with just economics.”

Otherwise, this could end as well as the real North Korea:

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Public masturbation soars in NYC with sickos pleasuring and exposing themselves in the open up 51 percent.

Related:

Taiwan is so amazing. These are the new Travis Scott’s by Nike.
–
In the US, they would be locked away, as a hooligans would do a day light raid. In Xinmengding they are displayed by the front door. The lack of street crime in Asia is such an economic advantage. pic.twitter.com/mnL7lpN8Mg

— Mark Simon (@MarkSimonHK) August 4, 2024

ROGER KIMBALL: Kamala Harris and the Masque of Magical Thinking.

How did the magical thinking arise in the first place? One source is the habit of credulity that is a by-product of all utopian thought. The Democrats have mutated into the party of nowhere, so it is not surprising that they prefer pleasing fantasy to sobering reality.

The other chief source is the attack on objective truth that, in various ways, has been the gospel proclaimed by fancy professors for the past several decades. Students everywhere are taught to be suspicious of truth, to proclaim the relativity of values. This is a brain-addling teaching, but one that you would have to look far and wide to find a place it hasn’t reached.

As I noted in that earlier column on magical thinking, epistemic nihilism is the order of the day in all the best colleges and universities. But the result is not so much a failure as a promiscuity of belief. Hence the hyperventilating media shamans with their intoxicating potions. Some conservative pundits are fretting that Kamala Harris represents a credible challenge to the Trump juggernaut. Absent an assassin’s bullet, the successful rekindling of  Democratic lawfare, or some other praeternatural intervention,  I think the Democrats are setting themselves up not only for major disappointment but for staggering disillusionment. That’s the trouble with magical thinking. Sooner or later, reality intrudes and destroys the web of fantasy that the spurious magic has spun. Donald Trump is an avenging angel of reality. The Dems, as well as certain besotted anti-Trump conservatives, are dancing now.  They won’t be gyrating when the music stops and the hall empties.

Like CNN before him yesterday, why is George Stephanopoulos obsessed with telling a black man why his opinions are wrong, and that being an Indian-American is a “slur?”

An unhinged George Stephanopoulos threw a tantrum this morning over Kamala Harris's "racial identity"

George: "I don't understand why you keep on repeating it. Why the president keeps repeating it"

Byron: "George, actually I'm not the one who keeps repeating it…you're the one… pic.twitter.com/tJ84k24GZJ

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) August 4, 2024

More on the latter, here: Now, This is How You Do It! Byron Donalds Decimates George Stephanopoulos Over Kamala’s Heritage (Watch).

LIGHTNING DEAL: ComfiLife Gel Enhanced Seat Cushion. #CommissionEarned

JOE ROGAN GOES LIVE ON NETFLIX… AND LIBERALS LOSE THEIR MINDS:

Let’s be clear: Joe Rogan is NOT a conservative. And he’s never been anywhere close to being a conservative. Ever. In fact, if you ignore the media’s coverage and focus instead on what Rogan actually believes, he’s a liberal man who “identifies” as a conservative man.

And I’d even go further: If he’d hosted “The Joe Rogan Experience” in the 1990s or 2000s, Rogan would’ve been — by a ridiculously wide margin — the single most leftwing man in American media: He supports gay marriage, increased social safety nets, drug legalization (and how!), abortion, and universal basic income. He even backed Bernie Sanders for president. His ideology isn’t exactly “The Way Things Ought to Be, Part II.”

This is why he’s such a useful barometer of how far to the left everyone else has gone: Only on a planet that’s completely fallen off a cliff could a leftwinger like Rogan appear to be a conservative… simply because he likes MMA, works out, wasn’t a fan of mandatory COVID vaccines, and thinks it’s unfair for men to fight women.

But Rogan’s biggest crime — and the reason the liberal media will never forgive him — is that he’s not hostile to conservatives.

It would be a much shorter list to narrow down the things that leftists don’t lose their minds over these days. But kudos to Netflix for airing Rogan’s special, and for reminding their workers when they had lost their leftist hive minds over Dave Chappelle, “As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

PUSH BACK: VMI alumni file lawsuit against institute’s official alumni association.

DOESN’T THAT MAKE THEM LEGITIMATE TARGETS? NYU anti-Israel group says it will ’embrace’ tactics of an ‘armed struggle’ to achieve goals: ‘NYU will respond to any threat or use of violence swiftly, decisively, and severely,’ the school wrote. “The anti-Israel activists pushed back on the university’s condemnation, alleging their statement was ‘misread.’” Nah, they just assumed the usual culture of impunity.

LIGHTNING DEAL: Sun Joe SPX3000 Electric Pressure Washer. #CommissionEarned

ICYMI, JAMIE RASKIN BUSTED BY COMMUNITY NOTES:

The democratic world must stand up for the rule of law in Venezuela and oppose Maduro’s assault on the electoral process and free speech. The right-wing attack on democratic institutions anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. https://t.co/AjKOgvtAGz

— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) August 2, 2024

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. labor market weakens, stocks plunge.

A friend suggests that this is about to roar out as the big election issue despite all the efforts of Democrats and the legacy press — but I repeat myself — to kill it. “People have been sour on the economy for awhile but if it’s getting harder for legacy media to direct people away from believing their lyin’ eyes, that could complicate the Kamala snow job they are currently trying to produce.”

THAT WILL LEAVE A MARK: Michaelah Montgomery Sets It Off at the Atlanta Trump-Vance Rally.

This is the single most savage moment of the 2024 campaign cycle 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/U1mK2sIsn3

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 3, 2024

Earlier: Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff cheated on his first wife with daughter Ella’s nanny Najen Naylor — and got her PREGNANT.

THEY’RE ALL JUST PARTY OPERATIVES NOW:

Becomes Democratic nominee for president taking zero questions from the press.
Curious where the voices among the national print & cable & network news organizations & individual reporters voicing deep concerns.
There is so much the public does not know. https://t.co/A8Epnnxkrd

— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) August 3, 2024

$100 MILLION HERE, $100 MILLION THERE, AND SOONER OR LATER, YOU’RE TALKING REAL MONEY: U.S. Government Has Sent $239 Million to Taliban Since 2021 Due to State Dept’s Vetting Failures, Report Reveals.

The U.S. government has inadvertently sent at least $239 million to the Taliban in development assistance since 2021, according to a new report. The oversight occurred because the State Department failed to properly vet award recipients.

Less than a year after it was reported that the Taliban established fake nonprofits to siphon millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, a new investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reveals that the terrorist group has received hundreds of millions in development assistance due to inadequate vetting by the State Department. Since the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal, at least $239 million have likely filled the Taliban’s coffers.

And there’s the billions of dollars worth of military equipment we left when the Biden-Harris administration bugged out in 2021:

BRAD THOMPSON: Contracts and the Birth of a Free Society.

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff cheated on his first wife with daughter Ella’s nanny Najen Naylor — and got her PREGNANT.

Kamala Harris’s husband’s first marriage ended after he got his children’s nanny pregnant, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff cheated on his first wife Kerstin with the blonde nanny, who also taught at their children’s pricey private school.

The woman, Najen Naylor, 47, did not deny the story when approached by DailyMail.com at her home in the New York millionaires’ playground, The Hamptons.

She would not comment, except to say, ‘I’m kind of freaked out right now.’

A close friend with direct knowledge of the affair and pregnancy told DailyMail.com that Naylor did not keep the child – though her social media shows a video of a mysterious baby girl named Brook in 2009, the year the baby would have been born.

Another  friend, Stacey Brooks, who mothered twin boys around the same time as Naylor was expecting, also did not deny any of the claims – but said she would not divulge further information without Naylor’s permission.

The incendiary news is said to be causing panic in Harris’s campaign, just as she has overtaken Donald Trump in several polls and as she ramps up her final push to win over voters in November.

Emhoff confirmed the story. “Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff acknowledged Saturday in a statement to CNN that he had an affair during his first marriage after the alleged details of the relationship were published by a British tabloid.”

To ask why a story like this was broken by “a British tabloid” and not the DNC-MSM is to answer the question.

UPDATE: When PR work replaces journalism: Doug Emhoff is pushing more men to advocate for abortion rights.

—Yamiche Alcindor, NBC News, May 8th. 

If the name sounds familiar: Remembering Yamiche Alcindor’s Greatest Hits.

Yamiche Alcindor, previously a White House correspondent for PBS, will be transitioning into a role covering Washington more broadly for NBC, the network announced Tuesday. She will continue to host Washington Week for PBS.

Over the years, Alcindor has built a reputation as one of the most partisan reporters in the mainstream press, using her seat in the White House briefing room as a soapbox for progressive politics, despite working for the taxpayer-funded, and ostensibly nonpartisan PBS.

Here’s a taste of what NBC will be getting out of its newest employee:

Not included: Yamiche Alcindor craps on Madison Cawthorn after he literally rises from his wheelchair to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And given the topic, this post from October 27th, 2016 seems relevant: Buried Lede: Chris Matthews Does Journalism. Matthews Confronts NYT Reporter On Bias: Know Any Pro-Life Reporters? (Video):

“And really this is something I think that is kind of an effective argument,” NYT reporter Yamiche Alcindor told Matthews, referring to GOP nominee Donald Trump’s argument the “elite media” is biased against him and is helping rig the election. “Because people really do feel when they go and get the news that they are really getting it from these people who have some sort of plan to rig this election, or rig the economy, or don’t want to cover the real issues.”

* * * * * * * * *

Matthews interrupted: “Do you know anybody Yamiche at The New York Times who is pro-life?”

“That’s not a question I’m going to answer,” she laughed. “I have no idea.”

“Do you know anybody?” Matthews pressed. “Just, you don’t have to name names. Do you know anybody at the Times who is pro-life?”

“I have not asked my coworkers that question, I should say,” Alcindor replied.

“Oh that’s cute,” Matthews said.

As I wrote at the time, indeed it is. Shades of the deer in the headlights responses from Lesley Stahl, Andrea Mitchell and ABC Nightline host Dan Harris when asked in various television interviews if any conservatives work on the air at their respective networks.

MORE:

OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for blogging.

SHE DID THAT…

Loving these short, raw “courtesy of Kamala Harris” ads the Trump Super PAC is running in targeted swing areas.

Grocery bills, gas prices, border chaos, crime – very strong reminders of the issues that gave Kamala Harris a 35% approval rating. pic.twitter.com/v0tUUSYgkc

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 3, 2024

…And then cackled at your torment.

FAIR ENOUGH, BUT DON’T GET COCKY, EITHER: Don’t Fall For ‘Operation Demoralize.’ “It happens every single election,” William A. Jacobson writes. “They create a narrative that it’s over, that the Democrat’s going to win, that it’s hopeless for Republicans to do anything…. All I can say is, I warn you, this is Operation Demoralize and they’re very good at it, and it seems to be working.”

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THE NEW SPACE RACE: Mind The Launch Gap.