OUR SOCIETY IS TURNING PETS INTO PSEUDO-CHILDREN: Their Job Is to Help You Grieve Your Pet: Though still rare, social workers in animal hospitals are growing in their ranks.

Ms. Maxwell is a veterinary social worker, a job in a little-known corner of the therapy world that focuses on easing the stress, worry and grief that can arise when a pet needs medical care.

Pets no longer exist at the periphery of the human family — to take one example, a survey in 2022 found that almost half of Americans sleep with an animal in their bed. As that relationship has intensified, so has the stress when something goes wrong. Those emotions can spill over at animal hospitals, where social workers can help pet owners work through difficult choices, such as whether to euthanize a pet or whether they can afford to pay thousands of dollars for their care.

Though still rare, social workers in animal hospitals are growing in their ranks. Large chains, like VCA, are beginning to employ them, as are major academic veterinary hospitals. The service is typically offered for free. About 175 people have earned a certification in veterinary social work from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which is a center for the field.

I predict rapid growth. I don’t really approve of people treating animals like substitute children — it smacks too much of Children of Men and I think it’s socially destructive — but it’s a huge trend.

THEN THEY AREN’T THE INSIDERS THEY THINK THEY ARE: WH Insiders Reportedly Aren’t Sure How Involved Joe Biden Is in Decision-Making.

Of course, Jill and Hunter might be the only true “insiders” left.

DON’T THINK IT WILL STOP IN CANADA: Leftists pushing for “pre-crime” legislation authorizing the government to arrest individuals before they commit some offense. Writing in Mind Matters, Denyse O’Leary describes the situation in Canada that makes likely passage there in the near future of such laws. My gosh, next they will be telling us that, if we want to eat or keep our jobs, we have to have “666” tattooed on our foreheads and wrists!

JUST BECAUSE AI IS GETTING BETTER DOESN’T MEAN IT DOESN’T CONTAIN STUPIDITIES: ChatGPT’s much-heralded Mac app was storing conversations as plain text.

NATE SILVER: Blaming the media is what got Democrats into this mess.

In their critiques of coverage of Biden’s age, then, progressive media scolds are like the dog who caught the car. They succeeded in getting the media to frame the issue gingerly — for every story that engaged forthrightly, there were two that dismissed it as “misinformation”, sometimes even inventing whole new categories like “cheap fakes” to describe what were simply lightly edited but unflattering video clips of Biden.

But having caught the car, the critics aren’t sure what to do with it. Because the car was a lemon. In hunting down bad vibes, the critics didn’t change the underlying reality — they only made the media seem out of touch. “Vibes theory”, the postmodernist strain that began with Rove but has now has a through-line to progressive media critics, fails when it comes to things the public can see with its own eyes, like Biden’s obviously deteriorating condition or the fact that prices are much higher than they were when Biden took office. Instead, the Democratic Party now finds itself in a state of crisis.

There’s a lot of excuse-mongering in Silver’s piece, probably because it’s difficult to accept that the “reality-based community” never was.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Dems Outraged Over Vice President Chosen For Her Race And Gender Being Labeled ‘DEI Hire’ https://t.co/SR07H6uCAL pic.twitter.com/8zqGLpD4Vu

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 7, 2024

EUROPE: France Just Committed Suicide. “Books have and will be written on the subject of Europe’s self-loathing, a continent that decades ago gave up fighting vainly the old ennui — or much of anything else, for that matter.”

COLOR ME SKEPTICAL: Study explores the link between stock market fluctuations and emergency room visits in China.

THE EV BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: Battery maker SK On declares ‘emergency’ as EV sales disappoint.

BOOK I WANT TO READ: Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. #CommissionEarned

CORN, POPPED: The Democratic National Convention Could Be an Epic Political Massacre.

WHEN YOU’RE AN ESTABLISHMENT LEFTIST WHO’S LOST MAUREEN DOWD: Joe Biden, in the Goodest Bunker Ever.

Biden’s word salad and sudden drops in volume to pianissimo are relevant for reporters to cover because they’re a microcosm of the questions at the heart of the 2024 Democratic campaign: Is the president’s mental state strong enough to beat Donald Trump and can he serve for four more years? The desperate Biden team is ready to go to war over every syllable.

In my Saturday column, I quoted Biden’s line to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, about how he would feel if Trump were sworn in as president because he refused to step aside: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

Now, “goodest” isn’t a word. But my researcher, Andrew Trunsky, and I listened to the video, our ears up against the computer, 10 times, and that’s what it sounded like. We also checked the ABC News transcript and that’s the word they used. Times news reporters and reporters for other news outlets took their cue from the ABC transcript.

The confusion was so universal that on Axios Saturday, there were two different versions: Mike Allen’s newsletter used “goodest” and another story used “I did as good a job as I know I can do.”

After my column posted Saturday morning, T.J. Ducklo, a Biden campaign spokesman, emailed me to “flag” that ABC News had updated its transcript to read: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Ducklo asked if I could “tweak” the column and change the word “goodest” to make my piece “consistent with the corrected transcript,” even though the revised version was also gobbledygook.

When I said we would tell our editor what he thought, Ducklo wrote back: “Yeah again, it’s not what I think. It’s what ABC News, who conducted the interview, thinks. I think it would be quite unusual if the Times asserted the president said something that the news organization who conducted the interview says he didn’t say …”

Andrew and I both emailed Ducklo, asking whether ABC had changed the transcript on its own or if the Biden team had asked them to change it.

“ABC News, like any news organization, makes their own independent editorial decisions,” Ducklo replied to us. “surely you are not suggesting otherwise.” He emailed again to add: “Had another convo on this. ABC News received the tape and confirmed the error to us. Then made the correction.”

I was more confused than ever. What tape? From whom?? Why the runaround??? Given the White House’s egregious coverup about Biden’s sag from aging, the spokesman’s coyness seemed de trop. By Saturday night, Shear and Michael Grynbaum had a Times story clearing up things. Indeed, the White House had asked ABC News to check whether the president said “goodest” or “good as,” after the White House stenographers, who had recorded the president on ABC News, noticed the discrepancy between their recording and the network’s transcript.

The Times attached notes on my column and all the news stories that had used “goodest,” explaining the befuddlement.
Whatever the president meant, his answer to that question went over like a lead balloon. No one cares if he feels good about himself in a losing cause.

It might seem like much ado about goodest. But it’s a harbinger of tense times between a White House in bunker mode and a press corps in ferret mode.

ABC’s transcript currently reads, “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” which still isn’t a form of English you and I speak — and it sure doesn’t sound like what Biden actually said:

BIDEN on how he'd feel after losing the election: "I'll feel, as long as I gave it my all, and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that's what this is about." pic.twitter.com/PCQhQCSkga

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 6, 2024

In any case, it speaks volumes that the post-debate, the DNC-MSM is finally dropping the pretense of protecting the old man, in-part because, as Jorge Bonilla wrote at NewsBusters on Friday night, “ABC Didn’t Get Their Campaign-Ending Moment.”

Or as Peppermint Psaki admitted on her Sunday MSNBC show, “when the interview ended, it ‘left us all in this sort of purgatory for the moment’ and said it ‘wasn’t a home run at all.'”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: U.S. Officials Wanted to Avoid Trump’s ‘Kids in Cages’ Problem. Doing So Created Another Dilemma.

In 2021, when the new Biden administration was struggling to cope with a sudden influx of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, the government repeatedly overrode the concerns of lower-level workers who warned about placing them in certain households, documents and interviews show.

“It does not appear safe for the minor to be released to a home environment that was not fully assessed,” a case worker wrote about a child slated to live in a hostel-like home in Florida with at least three adults. A few days later, an official dismissed the recommendation to reject the proposed guardian, according to internal government memos.

At another facility in Pomona, Calif., about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, more than 100 children that summer were sent to temporary guardians who were issued denials early in the process by case coordinators, according to a review of internal government data that tracks unaccompanied children, emails and other communications, and interviews with caseworkers.

About two dozen more denials were overturned because of clerical errors or issues such as missing fingerprints that were resolved, records show. But many of the others were approved with scant details explaining why. Some of those home addresses were tied to histories of criminal activity or other behavior that indicated the possibility the children would be put to work, interviews and records show. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine what happened to the children after they left the facility.

So sex trafficking and slavery mattered less to the White House than the optics of the crisis that they created.

BIDEN CAMPAIGN COLLAPSE TRACKER: The Senate Knives Come Out for Caesar. “Day Four is another big one for my Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker series, after what I’m calling the Long Holiday Weekend of Bad News That Wouldn’t Quit. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, I know — like Presidentish Joe Biden trying to read aloud a Dick & Jane book to a kindergarten class after 4 p.m.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: One memorable speech can turn around a faltering campaign − how Nixon did it with his ‘Checkers’ talk.

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, Robert Ruark, a syndicated columnist, wrote that Nixon had effectively “stripped himself naked for all the world to see, and he brought the missus and the kids and the dog … into the act.” Nixon had aligned himself with mainstream Americans in what Wicker described as a “political masterstroke.”

Nixon closed by inviting viewers and listeners to help decide his political fate by sending letters and telegrams not to Eisenhower but to members of the Republican National Committee. Tell them, Nixon said, “whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it.”

Americans responded by the tens of thousands, expressing support for Nixon. Members of the Republican National Committee voted without objection to keep him on the ticket.

The outcome was perhaps encouraged by less-sensational disclosures at the time that Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee, had supported supplementary income funds for appointees to state positions in Illinois and that his running mate, Sen. John Sparkman, had kept his wife on his congressional payroll for 10 years.

The day after the speech, Eisenhower met Nixon in West Virginia and declared his running mate vindicated. “Why, you’re my boy!” the Herald Tribune quoted the general as saying.

A political disaster had been averted. Nixon served two terms as vice president in Eisenhower’s administrations and twice won the presidency before resigning in August 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

Nixon’s rescuing himself in the 1952 election was notable and perhaps instructive, suggesting that a creative, high-profile and timely response can prevent sensational allegations from overwhelming a beleaguered candidacy, much as they nearly did to Nixon.

Nixon was 39 when he delivered the Checkers speech. Biden is a quite fossilized 81. How is his equivalent media experience going today, on the safest of safe leftist venues? Watch: Joe Biden Goes on Morning Joe, Appears to Read From a Script and Starts Screaming Incoherently.

And given Brandon’s recent foray into spray tans, there’s a weird sense of déjà vu going on here:

Calling into his favorite show to say all the polls he sees have him winning, brag about his crowd sizes, rail against "the elites," and dares anyone to challenge him at the convention. What year is this? Who is the president?

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 8, 2024

HE’S FINE: Comer Seeks Docs, Interview With White House Physician Who Obviously Lied. “On Sunday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer demanded to interview O’Connor, and has suggested that the doctor’s involvement in a Biden family business dealing ‘may have’ influenced his medical assessments of the president – who was found to be too cognitively impaired to prosecute for mishandling classified documents.”

HOMELESS, DRUG-ADDICTED GOTH TEEN ATHEIST: Not much to hope for if that describes your situation in life. It actually did describe Christina Baker’s life at one time, but, boy, is it different now, as she explains today on HillFaith.

NOW, THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: Japan introduces a 12-meter humanoid robot by West Japan Railway for train line maintenance.

It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.

Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude, disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes mounted on a truck – which can drive on rails – will be put to use for maintenance work on the company’s network.

Its operator sits in a cockpit on the truck, “seeing” through the robot’s eyes via cameras and operating its powerful limbs and hands remotely.

With a vertical reach of 12 metres (40ft), the machine can use various attachments for its arms to carry objects as heavy as 40kg (88lb), hold a brush to paint or use a chainsaw.

Robbie and C3PO smile:

BUT WE ALL KNOW THE TRUTH, DON’T WE? Colleges, experts disagree on why taxpayer-funded Truman Scholarships skew liberal.

LEFTISM IS AN EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT: Democrats Push Depopulation as U.S. Fertility Plummets.

PUSHBACK: Arizona regents move forward with ban on student groups’ support for terrorists.

The measure would prohibit student groups from “knowingly [providing] material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization as defined in 18 U.S. Code § 2339B.”

It would also stop student groups from calling “for violence and/or genocide against any individual or group based on race, color, national origin, or shared ancestry,” and from engaging in “other conduct” that “interferes with maintaining a school environment free from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, including shared ancestry.”

Wait, unfair. “Antidiscrimination” law is only supposed to discriminate against white conservatives.

BECAUSE THEY’RE AFRAID HE’LL LOSE AND IT’S ALSO THEIR SAD ATTEMPT AT GETTING PEOPLE TO FORGET THEIR COMPLICITY. NEXT QUESTION? Why is the pundit class so desperate to push Biden out of the race?

STEVEN MALANGA: Covid Politics ’24. Joe Biden’s effort to use pandemic failures as a weapon against Donald Trump risks reminding voters of how much they dislike the president’s own policies. Yes, Trump made mistakes, but Biden did far worse — and actually gave Fauci a promotion.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The DNC’s Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Been the Problem All Along. “The once precise Democratic National Committee has been caught up in the Trump Derangement Syndrome fugue state along with the rank and file Dems, and that’s how we got here. I was stunned when Biden announced that he would seek reelection. The DNC of old would have headed that off long before it got to the pass.”

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Coleman RoadTrip 225 Portable Tabletop Propane Grill. #CommissionEarned