THE THREAT IS REAL:
Thank you, receipt via 𝕏 acknowledged. https://t.co/aYo0OsyFVE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
DOGE wants to cut a trillion dollars — $4 billion a day — out of the federal budget. Those are numbers some might commit murder to protect.
NICE GIFT: Snailax Shiatsu Neck Shoulder Massager, Back Massager with Soothing Heat. #CommissionEarned
IT’S COME TO THIS: Joe Biden Signs With CAA Talent Agency For Representation.
Donald Trump might be absorbing all the political oxygen right now, but his successor and predecessor isn’t ready to totally exit the stage.
Joe Biden has signed with Creative Artists Agency in all areas, the agency said Monday.
“President Biden is one of America’s most respected and influential voices in national and global affairs,” Richard Lovett, co-chairman of CAA, said today of the agency’s former and now present client. “His lifelong commitment to public service is one of unity, optimism, dignity, and possibility. We are profoundly honored to partner with him again.”
In July, after Biden had been yanked off the stage, Sonny Bunch expl0red: Why Hollywood Turned on Biden First.
Even in an age of aging heroes—one in which the biggest box office draws are Tom Cruise (62) and Denzel Washington (69) and Will Smith (55) and Keanu Reeves (59)—what’s being sold is not that they’re old but that they’re effective, that they’ve got verve, that they can outperform men and women half their age. It’s why Biden embraced the Onion’s vision of him as the aging bro washing his Trans Am, it’s why he goes everywhere he can in Top Gun-style aviators. It’s why the Dark Brandon meme took off in certain quarters of the Democratic party: He’s not nearing death, he’s old and wily and still vibrant enough to crush his enemies.
Call it shallow, call it whatever you want: politics is the art of persuasion and perception, and people are less likely to be persuaded by someone they perceive to be incapable of doing the job. People are also less likely to be persuaded by folks who lie to their face and tell them everything is just fine with Biden, that he’s clearly together enough to get the job done. For what it’s worth, I am incredibly ambivalent about the effort to replace Biden: the unknown unknowns that come with either a mini-primary at the convention or simply replacing Biden with Harris atop the ticket are vast and, potentially, destabilizing. And maybe Biden rights the ship with a series of command performances in front of the press and population alike. Maybe it was a one-off thing and his standing will improve in the polls.
But pretending there isn’t a conversation to be had at all is foolish and self-defeating. The voters have seen what they have seen. Again: politics is perception. And right now, the perception is bad.
Perhaps Biden has merely sold the rights to image and voice, and Industrial Light and Magic can de-age his image like Michael Douglas in Ant Man and Respeecher can de-age his voice, as the Star Wars spinoffs did for the voice of James Earl Jones, shortly before he passed away last year. But even with all of that digital firepower now at Hollywood’s disposal, unlike Obama, it’s tough to picture Biden having much of a future in Tinseltown.
WE AREN’T OUT OF THE WEIMAR WOODS YET: Idaho Army National Guard Is Under Fire for Declaring ‘No Christians in Command.’
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Emilia Perez — Everything Wrong With Modern Hollywood.
Related: The racist, misogynistic transgender actress destroying Netflix’s Oscar dreams.
WELL, I WAS RIGHT. The Left Gave Us Trump 2.0. And they’re not going to like it.
NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS PROMISED:
The US Navy released a new photo of USS Preble (DDG-88) firing her HELIOS laser weapon. pic.twitter.com/oL4rMsA4Xu
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) February 3, 2025
From the replies: “Good luck, Canada.”
Soft power is great and is almost always preferred. But part of America’s soft power is our military’s reputation. When that declines, chaos increases.
CRYING COMMIES ARE THE SECOND-BEST COMMIES: Cry More, Commies: China Freaking Out Over Tariffs.
IT’S NOT LIKE THAT. IT IS THAT.
Criticizing Musk for wanting to protect taxes is like crying because someone shut off your corruption tap.
— Jacob (@jacob_w_palmer) February 3, 2025
Related:
BREAKING: IIhan Omar loses it, shrieking over Trump's freezing of USAID payments, calls him a dictator:
"We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like!"
— Jack (@jackunheard) February 3, 2025
Yes, dictators are noted for cutting back on sham foreign aid. It’s practically a trademark.
YOU CAN’T SPELL DEI WITHOUT DIE: Secret Service Agent: DEI Contributed to Near-Killing of Trump.
SCOTT PRESLER AIMS TO DO FOR NEW JERSEY WHAT HE DID FOR PENNSYLVANIA:
New Jersey
A month ago, democrats had an advantage of 896,350 voter registrations.
Today, that lead is narrowed to 883,437.
‼️-12,913‼️
🟦 LOST 2,433 voters, while
🟥 GAINED 10,480Yes, New Jersey Republicans gained 10,480 voters in the month of January‼️
EARTHQUAKE
— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) February 3, 2025
Dismiss this poll or that poll about party affiliation but voter party registrations are an excellent indicator of how people will vote. Presler has New Jersey’s moving in the right direction and he’s just getting started.
WHOA: Border Crossings Down 93%.
White House Border Czar Tom Homan told Fox News on Sunday that illegal border crossings are down 93% since Donald Trump won his belated reelection in November. Speaking with Maria Bartiromo, Homan also promised, “When we find that criminal, he’s most likely with others, and they’re gonna go too. So if you wanna be a sanctuary city, you’re gonna get exactly what you don’t want. More agents in the community and more non-criminals arrested.”
“We got more work to do,” Homan concluded — and what a welcome change that is from the last four years.
Read the whole thing.
AMERICA: “Do you think the Democrats learned anything from their historic loss?”
Democrats: The Right to Pee Is Everything.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Prosthetic limb gains more natural control through hand–brain connection.
ROBERT SPENCER: California’s ‘Gay As F**k’ Top Military Commander. “Many have professed to find ‘two Americas’ in the nation’s economic and racial divisions, but nowhere is there more of an estrangement between Americans than in the political and cultural realms. A fresh indication of that comes from the center of the loony left, the California S.S.R. itself, where a top National Guard commander proudly displayed a gay flag in his office and promptly got a promotion from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Make Me President). Well, of course he did. The meteoric rise of Major Gen. Matt Beevers is an indication of how spectacularly insane the left has become.”
GENDER SENSITIVITY TRAINING — THE FINAL FRONTIER:
Finding USAID gender sensitivity training in the trash after the Taliban took over Afghanistan: https://t.co/iYFKjcr42b pic.twitter.com/GM3BEnyAck
— Callum (@AkkadSecretary) February 2, 2025
In accordance with the prophecy:
CHANGE: Hollywood’s Texadus. “Following the LA fires, it’s probably the perfect time to make this pitch. California’s insane tax and regulatory environment under one-party Democrat rule has already been pushing production out of Hollywood for a long time, but the fires have made collapse in basic governing competence when it comes to crime, homelessness, infrastructure, water, land management and about a dozen other basic government functions painfully clear to even the most blinkered Hollywood functionary.”
READER FAVORITE: G Gradual Men’s Sweatpants with Zipper Pockets. #CommissionEarned
THE LEFT WAS DESIGNED BY AND FOR GARBAGE PEOPLE:
This. This is the chemically pure resentment goblin spirit of the left.
Guy sees a kid, just a kid, a literal genius who won a six figure prize for using AI to decipher an ancient scroll that had stumped archeologists for decades, who gives up a 7 figure income in tech to serve… https://t.co/PbMuf71T4B
— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry_en) February 3, 2025
A very important and symbolic detail is that the DOGE wiz kid who deciphered the scroll didn't come from MIT or Harvard et al. but graduated from the University of Nebraska https://t.co/21PGWQYUgJ
— Lomez (@L0m3z) February 3, 2025
Pretty much every day when deployed on active duty, I put my life and the life of my Sailors in the very capable hands of young men and women even younger than these guys.
We’ll be just fine, probably great. https://t.co/yRjl6VFb1L
— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) February 3, 2025
UPDATE:
Time to confess:
Media reports saying that @DOGE has some of world’s best software engineers are in fact true.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
ANOTHER UPDATE: Haha!
My favorite part about DOGE is how one of the guys will be some kind of insane prodigy who decoded the Herculaneum Papyrii at the age of 20 and the hit piece author’s bio trying to take him down is like, “associate staff writer for general topics, hobbies include having a cat.” pic.twitter.com/wgXE2RkVCL
— Payton Alexander (@AlexanderPayton) February 3, 2025
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM WHILE ENJOYING HEARING THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN: Obama’s Fundamental Transformation Is Blowing Up.
On the political side, Obama’s transformations were less legislative (he never cared for the dirty work of politicking on Capitol Hill, even when Democrats were in charge) than they were procedural. Obama’s weaponization of the formerly nonpartisan bureaucracy against the Right might have begun at the IRS but it hardly ended there. He used the State Department and the UN to bypass the Senate’s authority to ratify treaties and Congress’s power to authorize the use of force. Then there are the multibillion-dollar slush funds at USAID and other agencies, whose corruption we’ve long suspected and are only now learning the true scale of.
Underappreciated in all this is the influence of former Obama hand Samantha Power — who was also Presidentish Joe Biden’s pick to head up USAID these last four years. Considered too radical to lead State, where Obama wanted her, Power has moved from one powerful — but often secretive — executive branch position to another.
With the election of Trump 2.0 the DGAF Edition, all that work is being undone.
Much more at the link.
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