PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:

Buried 2007 video of Senator Joe Biden discussing troop removal from Afghanistan. It would be a REAL SHAME if everyone saw this…

"And you leave those billions of dollars of weapons behind I promise they're going to be used against your grandchild and mine some day" – The Big… pic.twitter.com/kptwzUjjCo

— Gain of Fauci (@DschlopesIsBack) May 26, 2025

Besides the creepiness of Bad Touch Biden getting in a female voter’s face, 2007-era Biden has got a point about all those weapons being left behind. Too bad the “Politburo” that was running the White House in his name from 2021-2024 didn’t seem to care: Taliban parade US military vehicles, weapons to celebrate 3 years in power, AP reports.

It’s quite a bit of gear, actually: US left behind $7 billion of military equipment in Afghanistan after 2021 withdrawal, Pentagon report says.

And not just machinery: Millions of Dollars, Classified Information, and Biometric Data: Inside What the Biden-Harris Admin Left Behind in Afghanistan.

MICHAEL WALSH: Minding Our Own Business.

Regarding Taiwan, America needs to find another option to the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and other Taiwanese chip manufacturers, who account for about half of chip production worldwide. (Rebuilding the U.S. chip industry is one purpose of the tariff regimen, and should be clearly explained as such.) There’s not much the Navy can do to stop the mainland’s invasion of Taiwan short of dragging the U.S. into a shooting war with the CCP, and the loss of the island would not be a crushing blow to American military interests in East Asia.

As for Russia, the current mess can be directly laid at the feet of Bush 42’s predecessor, his father George H.W. Bush, on whose watch the American victory in the Cold War was squandered. Russia could have been bought for pennies on the dollar and brought into the West with timely investment and political reform. Instead, sensing a vacuum, it was taken over by KGB ronin like Putin and mercantile gangsters who had already been feasting on the corpse of the USSR even before it was dead. The only beneficiary of America’s failure to capitalize on the triumph of its primary foreign policy objective of the forty years between 1949 and 1989 has turned out to be George Soros.

Washington concluded his address with these words: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism—this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.”

By George, he’s right.

Read the whole thing.

KAMALA HARRIS TAKES SWIPE AT ELON MUSK AND TRUMP ADMIN: ‘Remember the 1930s.’

During his March interview with Rogan, the Tesla founder emphasized that “you should care about other people,” but argued, “we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk contended. “They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”

Harris also appeared to lament President Trump’s foreign policy approach, without mentioning him or any of his top officials by name.

“I do worry, frankly, about what’s happening in the world right now,” the former vice president admitted.

“It’s important that we remember the 1930s,” she went on.

I’m so old, I can remember as far back as October, when Kamala was comparing Trump to Hitler (while aggressively seeking endorsements from Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, who were Hitler from 2001 to 2008):

Yesterday, V.P. Harris compared President Trump to Hitler,  “Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses.”

The V.P.’s comment comparing Trump to Hitler indicates she doesn’t care about minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust or she is an imbecile incapable of understanding.

Her comments were based on a story in the leftist magazine The Atlantic reporting that Trump’s former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, called Trump a “fascist” and recalled his admiration for Nazi generals. Kelly also raised concerns about Trump’s recent threats to use the military against “the enemy from within.”

Apparently, we can now step down from Def Con 1, and concentrate on Trump being an American Firster. Which as David Gelernter wrote in his 2013 book America-Lite was very much a bipartisan affair:

Many thoughtful liberals were urging America to get into the European war, where Britain all alone faced a Nazi empire that had already crushed Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Right-wing isolationists demanded neutrality. The opposition of such famous right-wingers as Charles Lindbergh and groups like the America Firsters is well known. Right-wing opposition (sometimes stained with anti-Semitism) has a prominent place in modern history books.

Less well known are the left-liberal intellectuals who opposed American aid to Britain and, naturally, America’s entering the fight herself. Mainly they were Marxists or socialists who saw the war, or pretended to see it, as a fight among capitalist, imperialist powers—a fight of no concern to America. (Not many Americans of any sort were sympathetic to the British Empire, as opposed to the British nation.) Some anti-Hitler sentiment within the U.S. intelligentsia magically evaporated when Stalin made his deal with Hitler one week before the Nazi invasion of Poland. Loyal American Communists followed Moscow’s line. But there was principled antiwar sentiment too.

In fall 1939, a statement appeared in Partisan Review. Partisan (as people called it) ranks among the most important periodicals in modern history. It has “come to be regarded,” wrote Diana Trilling in her memoirs (1993), “as the best intellectual journal of the American mid-twentieth century.” Norman Podhoretz called it “the most distinguished literary magazine of our time.”3 Irving Kristol wrote that “in its heyday” Partisan was “unquestionably one of the finest American cultural periodicals ever published—perhaps even the finest.” Cynthia Ozick remembered browsing a newsstand on her first day at college. “Copies of Partisan Review: the table of the gods. Jean Stafford, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Irving Howe . . . ” Many of the most eminent writers of the day. Here is Partisan’s view of the Second World War in fall 1939:

The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of “Stop Hitler!”, would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties.

Scott Pelley smiles.

LE JOURNAL DE RÉFÉRENCE DE L’AMÉRIQUE:

STILL BOOTING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers.

In 2024, Windows was at the centre of a controversy across the German internet. It started with a job listing for Deutsche Bahn, the country’s railway service. The role being recruited was an IT systems administrator who would maintain the driver’s cab display system on high-speed and regional trains. The problem was the necessary qualifications: applicants were expected to have expertise with Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS – systems released 32 and 44 years ago, respectively. In certain parts of Germany, commuting depends on operating systems that are older than many passengers.

A Deutsche Bahn spokesperson says that’s to be expected. “Our trains have a long service life and are in operation for up to 30 years or longer.” Deutsche Bahn regularly modernises its trains, the spokesperson says, but systems that meet safety standards and prove themselves stable are generally kept in operation. “Windows 3.11 is also exclusively used in a small number of trains for operating displays only.”

It’s not just German transit, either. The trains in San Francisco’s Muni Metro light railway, for example, won’t start up in the morning until someone sticks a floppy disk into the computer that loads DOS software on the railway’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS). Last year, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) announced its plans to retire this system over the coming decade, but today the floppy disks live on. (The SFMTA did not respond to a request for comment.)

Shades of the New Yorker cover from 2013, which showed Obama with Gordon Gekko’s brick-sized cell phone and Kathleen Sebelius crossing her fingers while Jay Carney nervously inserted a five-inch floppy disk into the TRS-80-era Obamacare server. Not to mention the speeches that Newt Gingrich was giving during the heady Contract With America days of 1994 and 1995, when he would hold up in one hand a vacuum tube, and in the other a microchip. As he explained, vacuum tubes were still in use in some FAA-regulated Air Traffic Control towers in America.

Perhaps some are still in use: Air traffic controllers working with ‘World War II technology.’ Interview: Randy Babbitt, former FAA administrator.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot:

He wanted Biden to win, so he lied to himself https://t.co/0bGM6l2t4H

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) May 26, 2025

● Chaser:

Remember when “Dr” Jill Biden told Jake Tapper he couldn’t talk or mention any of Biden’s Gaffes anymore “because of Donald Trump”?

Maybe this is why Tapper stayed quiet for four years while anyone with a functioning brain could see Biden was toast. pic.twitter.com/19JxPejH4b

— Clyp Keeper (@DGrayTexas45) May 25, 2025

Wow, Tapper sure argued long and hard with “Dr.” Jill when she unilaterally announced that her husband’s decades of infamous gaffes were suddenly rendered samizdat in 2020.

UPDATE: Now It Can Be Told: Before Tapper’s Book, Washington Week Host/Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg Mocked Warnings from Rep. Phillips, Hur.

Washington Week with The Atlantic host (and Atlantic editor) Jeffrey Goldberg devoted a full episode of his latest show, normally a political panel, solely to interviewing journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

NewsBusters has already covered Goldberg’s insulting arrogance, as if “media critics don’t understand ‘how reporting works’ when journalists cooperated with Biden in denying what was obvious to a large majority of Americans — that Biden wasn’t fit to be president.”

Tapper also brought up a couple of names of people who brought Biden’s decline to national attention in 2024, including former Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who tried to challenge Biden in Democratic primaries, calling attention to Biden’s age and decline, and special counsel Robert Hur, who had famously described Biden in his special counsel report on the former president’s handling of classified documents as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

After Tapper asked rhetorically, “Where are the incentive structures for people in our politics to raise their hand and say, the emperor has no clothes?” Goldberg himself brought up Rep. Phillips’ challenge.

Flashback to last September: Jake Tapper and Jeffrey Goldberg, Good Buddies Who Hate Trump.

UM DIE WICHTIGEN FRAGEN ZU STELLEN: How can Germany be so bizarre and so boring?

When I lived in Berlin a decade ago, I was struck by the contrast between the dullness of young Germans and the incredible weirdness of everything else. Only in German could the word for “gums” (Zahnfleisch) mean “toothflesh.” And only in fleisch-mad Germany (the word for “meat” is the same as “flesh,” which is somehow incredibly disgusting) would people snack on raw pork, a dish known as mett. Mett, also known, rather curiously, as Hackepeter, is sometimes offered at buffets in the shape of a hedgehog (what else?) with raw onion spines. It simply doesn’t get stranger.

While musing on such things, I would cycle slowly around the bizarre gigantist ministries of the Nazi period near Checkpoint Charlie (itself a relic of a truly bonkers, menacing portion of the past), or past the Stasi headquarters in the almost mind-bendingly drab Lichtenberg. Or I’d drive down south with my then-boyfriend to Munich or Heidelberg and observe the particularly blood-curdling hedonism with which older West Germans took refreshment. All very odd.

Germany is still just as dull and just as mad. Bar some standout characters like Sahra Wagenknecht, of the populist party of the same name, and the knicker-twisting rise of the AfD, the political landscape is preternaturally boring – in part a function of its hopeless and labyrinthine proportional electoral system.

A week and a half ago, I visited the “Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945” exhibition at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, which runs to June 22nd, before moving onward to other American museums. Assembled by Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie*, take two guesses why this exhibition is touring the States in 2025. Of the exhibition, Judith H. Dobrzynski of the Wall Street Journal notes:

Contrary to much popular belief, all art is not political. But in the first half of the 20th century—when Germany was experiencing rapid industrialization and militarization; the rise of nationalism and socialism; the defeat of World War I; the creation and swift fall of the liberal Weimar Republic; and a totalitarian Nazi regime that enforced its artistic taste by persecuting, exiling, even killing artists—German art certainly was.

From Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Christian Schad to Max Beckmann and Paul Klee, artists drew inspiration from the turmoil, turning out paintings and sculptures that commented overtly or slyly on modern life and politics. Alas, beyond these marquee names, many have had little to no exposure in the U.S.

(In contrast, a Fort Worth alternative weekly author lets his TDS run rampant in his review of the exhibit.)

What’s fascinating is how terrifying German expressionism appears, especially when compared to infinitely more cheerful French impressionists of the 19^th century. German expressionism was dark, angry stuff – and these artists were the good guys! But much of the interwar art on display here has an ominous foreboding quality to it. Perhaps it was simply the unease and the terrible economic strains of the worst of the Weimar years, but in retrospect, much of this troubling artwork seems to preview far worse times ahead for Germany.

Speaking of which, to return to the topic at the start of this post, as to making 21^st century Germany less boring, things in 2025 should be heating up quite nicely:

Auf Wiedersehen https://t.co/V3sPV15esj

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) May 25, 2025

* The Neue Nationalgalerie, an incredible exercise in engineering which functions quite poorly as an actual museum, was the last building that architect Mies van der Rohe played a major role in designing, before he passed away at age 84 in 1968. Yes,that Mies van der Rohe.

THE COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SINKHOLE: Deranged Leftwing Propagandist Scott Pelley on Chopping Block at CBS; CBS “News” Embarrassed by Gayle King’s Insistence That She’s an Astronaut Now, and May Also Be Fired.

Back to the Daily Mail:

And there might be more exits to come. Multiple sources told the Daily Mail that 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley could also be on the way out.     ‘It’s marquee name after marquee name.’

As Megyn Kelly noted, CBS doesn’t have any “marquee” names.

‘People don’t want to say it out loud in the office but the entire space debacle really hurt us,’ a 60 Minutes staffer said of King’s participation in Blue Origin’s all-female spaceflight on April 2. ‘Gayle being part of that is not a good look for our brand.’

‘I think a lot of people resent Gayle for that,’ continued the insider. ‘I know I do.’

There was a general sense of embarrassment, said one Early Show producer. ‘I almost feel like apologizing when I tell people where I work. I hate it here.’

LOL. Cry more.

Coding you must learn.

But the most palpable impact appears to have been felt at 60 Minutes, where staff have compared the atmosphere to a ‘sinking ship’.

* * * * * * * *

Scott Pelley supported the Regime’s banning of rightist speech but now tells Wake Forest graduates they are soldiers in the war against Trump’s crackdown on free speech.

Pompous CBS journalist Scott Pelley closed his commencement address at Wake Forest by telling graduates they “are the fierce defenders of democracy, the seekers of truth,” and “the vanguard against ignorance” that’s taken over the country (i.e. Trump).

He added: “In a moment… pic.twitter.com/EzFV79yJRR

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 23, 2025

Which is odd, because as Guy Benson notes below, in February, 60 Minutes acted like it really, really hated free speech. Here’s our roundup from back then: Europeans Don’t Get Free Speech, and Neither Does CBS News, Apparently.

That was also the weekend in which CBS’s Margaret Brennan astonishingly said with a straight face to JD Vance that an excess of free speech caused the Holocaust.

60 Minutes recently ran a lengthy report gushing over Germany’s anti-free speech policies, in which prosecutors laughed about confiscating phones and levying fines over bad thoughts. The lengthy report featured ZERO dissenting voices. Not even one quote against censorship. https://t.co/It79lvqWIK

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 26, 2025

Related: Would Pelley approve of this basic American freedom being taken away? They Want to Control Us: MA Democrat Introduces Legislation to Limit How Far Citizens Can Travel.

🚨 WATCH: Sen. Cynthia Creem says EVs aren’t enough—Massachusetts must limit how far you can drive, too. Her bill creates a panel to track your mileage and fine you if you go too far.

She says just walk or bike instead.

Textbook extreme, out-of-touch policymaking. 👇#mapoli pic.twitter.com/RgI3OqMTL0

— Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance (@MassFiscal) May 23, 2025

Of course he’d sign onboard with the above MA state senator’s proposal in a second: CBS ‘Global Warming Special’ Host Likened Warming Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers.

While most of the country was watching the Green Bay Packers play the New York Giants, CBS aired an hour-long, severely one-sided special about the threat of global warming.

The special was hosted by CBS’s Scott Pelley. In January 2007, Pelley was asked why he refused to include global warming skeptics in his reporting. He responded, “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”

The January 20 CBS special attacked the Bush White House for not being willing to sign the Kyoto Protocol after he was elected – furthering the common misconception that Bush has been alone in his opposition to it, as the Senate actually voted 95 to 0 to reject Kyoto earlier.

—Jeff Poor, NewsBusters, January 21^st, 2008.

Flashback: CBS’s Scott Pelley Loses a Fight Rigged in his Favor.

ROGER SIMON: Thinking about Michael Ledeen on Memorial Day.

THE NOT-SO-FINAL COUNTDOWN:

● Shot: It is in the West’s interest to prevent nations’ climate destruction – as well as its duty.

—The London Independent, yesterday.

● Chaser: (And yes, you know what’s coming already, don’t you?)

—The London Independent, March 20^th, 2000.

RIP: Former NY Democratic Rep Charlie Rangel dead at 94. “Rangel has died at the age of 94, eight years after leaving Congress following more than 40 years of serving in the House.”

FRENCH PRESS: Bizarre moment French President Macron is shoved in the face by his wife while ‘squabbling.’

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Announcement: The Babylon Bee Is Now A Full-Service Restaurant And All Our Writers Are Compensated Entirely With Tips.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Babylon Bee is no longer a satire website. After months of strategy meetings and lots of thinking really hard, we have decided to pivot to becoming a full-service restaurant empire. In light of this change, all our writers and other staffers will now be known as “waiters,” “busboys,” and “food-making guys,” and will be compensated entirely in “tips.”

This compensation plan, created without any kind of intent to avoid income taxes or otherwise skirt federal tax laws, is ultimately the best compensation structure for our employees. After lengthy discussion with our staffers, they expressed their desire to be compensated with tips rather than salaries or hourly wages, citing factors like being better motivated by tips and a sense of satisfaction when a customer tips them.

Heh, indeed.™

GAVIN NEWSOM CANNOT ESCAPE HIS EMBARRASSING LEGACY ON HOMELESSNESS:

California Governor Gavin Newsom would very much like to be president. As one of the Democratic Party’s more charismatic leaders, he certainly has a shot. But Newsom’s presidential ambitions are burdened by the sorry state in which his leadership has left California — the cost of living is sky high, crime is out of control, and the middle class is disappearing. His constituents are voting with their feet, the largest percentage finding refuge in the two states Newsom loves to ridicule: Texas and Florida

Homelessness is perhaps the greatest albatross around the governor’s neck. With 187,000 homeless persons, California has one-quarter of America’s homeless population. A staggering two-thirds of homeless Californians are unsheltered. (RELATED: Will California Go Forward or Backward on Homelessness?)

But Newsom wants to assure every decent American that California’s homelessness crisis is not his fault. At least, that seems to be the subtext of his recent statement calling out California’s cities for not doing their part. “Local leaders asked for resources, [and] we delivered the largest state investment in history,” the governor announced. “The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”

But “resources” and “investments” aren’t the issues here, of course. In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

Flashback: Gavin Newsom’s 10-year plan to end San Francisco homelessness marks 20-year anniversary.

OH, THAT WAR ON MEN: Jake Tapper Says Liberal Podcaster Made Racism Jab After He Revealed Son Wants To Be a Cop: ‘This Is Why You F**kers Are Losing Elections.’

Tapper and his Original Sin co-author Alex Thompson joined Scott Galloway on The Prof G Pod on Thursday, and Tapper at one point recounted how a left-leaning podcaster made a racism jab about his son after Tapper revealed he wanted to go into law enforcement.

“My son is now 15 years old, and he’s a gamer. He’s a football fan, starting linebacker on his varsity football team. The Democratic Party has no way of communicating with him. They have no entree into his world,” Tapper said during a discussion on the Democratic Party’s struggles to reach young men.

The CNN anchor would not name the podcast he was referring to, but said he received an odd reaction after revealing his son’s intentions, simply saying it was a “left-leaning podcast that shall remain nameless.”*

Tapper and Thompson have visited numerous podcasts across the political spectrum while promoting their book, which focuses on former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline in office and the efforts taken to keep it hidden from the public.

“Their joke was about my 15-year-old son, ‘Oh, how does he feel about minorities?’ Like the idea that he wants to be a policeman, therefore he’s, he’s racist, my son. And like, you know, that was the big laugh. And then I got dragged in the comments and all that stuff and, and I thought to myself, ‘This is why you fuckers are losing elections,’” Tapper said.

“One hundred percent,” Galloway agreed.

Tapper argued terms like “toxic masculinity” are thrown at young men who have “worlds” that don’t center on politics.

“He’s 15. He thinks about World War II and gaming and playing linebacker, that’s his world,” Tapper said about his son. “You’re deciding he’s a racist because he wants to be a cop. And why does he want to be a cop? He wants to be a cop because he wants to help people, you know, and he thinks that’s the best way he can help people. And that’s how the Democratic Party talks to men, not just white men, but men.”

You don’t say:

The New York Post notes today that, “This group is now the loneliest in the US, poll reveals — inside the shocking ‘epidemic:’”

A new Gallup poll has revealed that American men are the loneliest people.

To conduct their poll, researchers collected data from 2023 to 2024 — and discovered that US Gen Z and millennial men are the loneliest (25%) compared to only 18% of American women in the same age group.

That means that one in four American men under 35 feel more isolated than their peers in other countries — including France, Canada, Ireland and Spain.

* * * * * * * *

This common feeling of isolation “is the coming to a head of a set of forces that have been in existence in boys’ and mens’ lives for generations,” psychologist Michael Reichert, founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men” told Fortune Well.

And what exactly is causing today’s generation of young men to feel so secluded from the outside world?

According to experts, it’s from a variety of things.

Justin Yong, a New York City psychotherapist, told Fortune that men are disconnecting from the rest of the world thanks to toxic digital occupiers like gaming and porn that “give this short term dopamine hit and relief that replaces real intimacy and acts as a barrier to being vulnerable to how they might be feeling.”

Another ongoing issue among young men is “societal norms around what it means to be a man,” Yong told the outlet.

“The problem, of course, is that when they became less authentic, they alienated themselves from even their important relationships, feeling that they had to hide a part of themselves because the world didn’t want that from them… Beginning at age 4,” Recihert said.

Fortunately, Democrats have a plan to reach this group:

Because Gorillas in the Mist-style communication between the far left and the rest of the country has always worked so well in the past.

* As with Original Sin, which is loaded with unnamed sources, lest Tapper and Thompson cause Obama and Biden-era retreads potential jobs in future Democrat administrations, Tapper doesn’t want to risk a lefty podcaster being shamed, either.

USA TODAY: George Floyd’s legacy under siege as racial justice efforts lose ground, memorials removed.

While some work to preserve memories of the movement, others have found symbolic and substantive ways to try and erase it.

One by one, memorials to Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement have come down in recent years, including in Washington; Des Moines; Indianapolis; Salt Lake City; Santa Barbara, California; and Asheville, North Carolina.

Well, I hope they’re using tried and true methods that were approved by good ol’ Popular Mechanics magazine in June of 2020: How to Topple a Statue Using Science. Bring that sucker down without anyone getting hurt.

Additional helpful suggestions were published in June of 2020 as well: Professor of ‘art crime’ instructs protesters on better way to topple statues that offend them.

Exit questions:

YES, I TOO, OFTEN CONFUSE JAKE TAPPER AND LAURENCE HARVEY: Dems are mad about Biden book. Jake Tapper must be a deep undercover MAGA agent.

It’s been a big week for news about former President Joe Biden.

On May 20, a book detailing Biden’s decline hit the bookshelves. And only days before, Biden announced he had an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

All of it has sparked intense speculation among the media and political leaders. “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, lays out in detail the lengths to which Biden’s family and closest aides went to try to hide the president’s true condition.

And thanks to a cooperative legacy media, the Biden cover-up went as planned until he showed the world just how bad things were at the June 2024 debate with Donald Trump.

Yet, even now, after so much attention and reporting on what Biden and Democrats attempted to keep from the American people, some in the media and many on the left are offering surprising takes.

Take this post on X from The Daily Beast, for example: “JD Vance wasted no time sharing his concerns that the former president was not ‘capable of doing the job’ while in office − fueling the MAGA conspiracy about a ‘cover-up’ of Biden’s health.”

The Daily Beast was responding to an answer Vance gave about Biden’s cancer news.

Or consider this observation from NBC News: “An initial wave of bipartisan sympathy for Biden’s cancer diagnosis has given way to suggestions from Trump’s allies that the former president’s inner circle masked his condition while he was in office to create an illusion that he was still up to the job.”

If the cover-up of Biden’s deterioration was a “MAGA conspiracy” by “Trump’s allies,” one must conclude the following: Tapper – and Thompson by association – are deep undercover MAGA agents.

It’s laughable, I know. But it’s essentially what Democrats and the liberal media are alleging.

It’s a safe bet that thinking that Tapper is the second coming of the Manchurian Candidate will fade rapidly once this box ticking exercise is concluded, and Tapper, Thompson and the rest of the DNC-MSM start obsessing over the health of Trump, soon to be 79, over the course of his second term.

TOO GOOD TO CHECK: Brazilian tribe sues for £113million after claims they became addicted to porn after Elon Musk’s Starlink system gave them access to high-speed internet.

But note who’s getting sued here:

An indigenous Brazilian tribe has sued the New York Times over a report which claimed they had become addicted to porn after Elon Musk‘s Starlink system gave them high-speed internet access.

The Marubo tribe from the remote Javari valley, who existed in small huts scattered along the Itui River for hundreds of years, filed a defamation lawsuit seeking at least £133million ($180million) in damages this week at a Los Angeles Court.

It also names TMZ and Yahoo as defendants, alleging their stories amplified and sensationalised the report for The Times and further tarnished the 2,000-member tribe.

The suit claims the June 2024 NYT story by reporter Jack Nicas on how the tribe reacted to the satellite service introduction ‘portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations their youth had become consumed by pornography’.

Buried lede: Lionel Hutz is alive and well and living in the Brazilian rainforest!

ROGER KIMBALL: The Centenary of Buckley and the Crisis of Free Speech.

Free speech, it turns out, is like other freedoms: its victory is never permanent. It is a melancholy truth that the right of free speech, like other civilizational achievements, must constantly be renewed to survive.

That was one of Edmund Burke’s central insights. But it is an insight that is regularly forgotten—until reality intrudes upon our reverie to remind us. Every generation finds that it must work anew to win or at least to maintain the freedoms bequeathed to it by earlier generations.

What was argued for and won yesterday is today once again up for grabs. Which moves patience and perseverance to the head of the queue of political virtues. You already made the argument. But it always turns out that you must make it again.

During the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in 1932, the Austrian essayist Karl Kraus was anguishing over the placement of commas in a column. It might seem futile at such a moment, he told a friend, but concluded that “if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.”

Was that hyperbolic? Perhaps. But the general point holds: language matters. Telling the truth is not only a linguistic desideratum; it is also a political imperative. I know that Bill Buckley, who devoted much of his seemingly boundless energy to broadcasting the truth, would have had much to say about the many ways our culture has colluded against that often lonely but always exigent task.

Read the whole thing.

SCOTT JOHNSON: Looking back at 23 years.

It’s been a while since I took the occasion of Power Line’s anniversary to look back. Borrowing from previous editions, I want to do so again today to highlight themes that continue to resonate with me.

• It was 23 years ago this weekend — 23 years ago today, I think, but maybe tomorrow — that John Hinderaker went to Blogger and set up Power Line. On Memorial Day that weekend he gave me a call and invited me to contribute. We’ve moved on from Blogger, but we’re still here. Survival has its charms; many good sites have come and gone or gone off the deep end over the years.

* * * * * * * * *

• On the evening of September 8, 2004, CBS News/60 Minutes II broadcast the inaptly titled report “For the record.” With a little help from Atlanta attorney Harry MacDougald supplemented by information from some knowledgeable readers and fellow writers online, we had a hand in turning the CBS News story into Rathergate. Triggered by the Hollywood version in 2015, John and I looked back on the scandal in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.”

• We made our contribution in part through readers who got us going with information they emailed on the morning of September 9. It is amazing to me in retrospect that we were able to post the initial updates to “The Sixty-First Minute” based on messages from the few thousand regular readers we had at the time. Other readers came that morning from links that directed them to us.

• As we were flooded with emails following the post, I called John mid-morning for help sorting through the messages and assessing the information. John took a look and called me back 15 minutes later. “Dan Rather is toast,” he said. “The key to the case is kerning.” I’m sure John had never heard the word before reviewing the email that morning. With his trial lawyer’s eye, however, he had fastened on powerful proof of the fraud.

• Working for Matt Drudge, Andrew Breitbart linked to the post early that afternoon with a screaming siren on the Drudge Report. By the end of the day some 500,000 readers had visited the post. Inside CBS News they were trying to figure out what had happened. What had happened was one of the great journalistic frauds of all time, the unraveling of which led to Dan Rather’s early retirement from CBS News.

Read the whole thing.

NIETZSCHE SMILES: Man in the image of OpenAI.

This week, OpenAI acquired Ive’s AI device startup, io, ahead of a new product they’ve been outfitting.

It will look something like another personal device, though one devoted to the full offerings of artificial intelligence. The Wall Street Journal reports that it will be “able of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life” and “unobtrusive,” physically. One leak indicates the device may be worn around the neck and have camera and microphone capabilities.

In short, it’s a constant companion in the style of God — one in which the user’s life, ​​his “intimate thoughts and expressions,” are the prized input. Every consumer knows he is the real product, and as such knows his personal information is at risk implicitly anytime he is online. This time, no longer is data collection a matter of possibility, or even a negative externality: Knowing the person, and then using and preempting his experiences is the whole, explicit product. That precise mode is part of what makes it such an attempt at “creating God in our own image,” as one bizarre entrepreneur and venture capitalist has put the idea of a superintelligence.

Bryan Johnson: God didn't create us, we are creating God in our own image by building superintelligent AI pic.twitter.com/EdRweMshyf

— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) January 8, 2025

Gosh. As Spencer Klavan writes in response:

I don’t wish death on Bryan Johnson. About that, he and I are agreed. But I wouldn’t wish the kind of life he’s living on him either, nor on my worst enemy. The man is spending millions every year to keep from dying, and he looks like a wreck. Gaunt, drained, frozen in a Botox half-smile—the kind of look you’d expect from an aggressively calibrated life.

Most recently, Johnson appeared on Bari Weiss’s Honestly podcast and murmured eerily about a common AI trope: “I think the irony is that we told stories of God creating us, and I think the reality is that we are creating God.”

Since not a single major religion proposes that God is anything like a supercomputer, I struggle to imagine what sorts of spiritual longings Johnson thinks GPT-1000 is going to satisfy or replace. But really this is just primitive Babel-tier tech worship, not even informed enough to rise to the level of error.

Baby steps, please. Let’s try to successfully get Siri mated up with ChatGPT before worrying about creating God, huh?

TEN YEARS GONE:

🚨 #BREAKING: The Biden team says the last time Joe Biden received a PSA test for prostate cancer was 2014

Absolute BULLSHT, and even CNN is calling it out!

"He was President of the United States and didn't get tested? I find this very surprising."

SUBPOENA BIDEN'S DOCTOR! pic.twitter.com/ImrPm7Wj1t

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 20, 2025

The following year, Joe was making very ill-advised jokes about the topic: Joe Biden jokes about faking prostate cancer to get out of Obama administration.

At an event honoring former Vice President Walter Mondale, Mr. Biden recounted the conditions he placed on joining Mr. Obama’s ticket in 2008 and also made clear he would leave the administration if he encountered deep, substantive policy differences with the president.

“Two things: to be able to completely be level with you and argue with you if we disagree, privately,” Mr. Biden said of his 2008 conversations with Mr. Obama, in which the two men discussed the vice president’s role.

“And secondly, I want to be the last person in the room on every major decision, and I didn’t mean that figuratively, I meant that literally — the last person in the room,” he continued. “He’s president. He gets to make the decision, and unless there’s an overwhelming disagreement in principle, in which case I’d develop prostate cancer or something and leave, and he knew I meant that … I get to be the last person in the room. And that’s where I think I can serve best.”

Biden was cast by Obama in 2008 as the boring old grownup in the room to give the appearance of offsetting Barry’s inexperience and radical chic background. Who makes jokes like this?

UPDATE: Video surfaces of Biden making his very strange 2015 joke(?) about prostate cancer: Decade Old Video of Biden Shows Him Joking of Faking Prostate Cancer to Get Out of Obama Administration.

🚨2015: Joe Biden jokes about faking prostate cancer to get out of the Obama administration:

“He’s president. He gets to make the decision, and unless there’s an overwhelming disagreement on principle — in which case I’d develop prostate cancer or something and leave." pic.twitter.com/v0W8J3fCvk

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 23, 2025

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Ads Never Ran Because the Campaign Believed They Were ‘Unusable.’

Before Joe Biden dropped out, his campaign team had a devil of a time trying to find footage from campaign events they could use that would demonstrate Biden’s ability to go “off script” and communicate with voters.

According to the book “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, at one point, the campaign decided to stage a town hall with handpicked audience members and staffers. Biden was given the questions in advance, supposedly ensuring he would provide the kind of answers that would make for footage showing him in charge of his faculties and with a firm grasp of the facts.

It was a failure. According to “Original Sin,” the event “went so poorly” that “people in the campaign determined the town hall yielded unusable material.”

The event was closed to the press. Only his most fervent supporters were present and asking questions Biden knew were coming. “Biden had trouble. The campaign ultimately decided that the footage wasn’t usable,” according to one of Tapper/Alexander’s sources on the campaign.

As I wrote last week, in 2023, the New Yorker linked to Biden’s video announcing “his” reelection bid, but failed to reference how little Joe himself actually appears on camera during the video, and how despite all of the audio editing in the voice over, he’s still slurring some words — but no member of the DNC-MSM wanted to go first in fear of throwing the election to the Bad Orange Man, and losing their access to the Obama Biden White House.

The following year, the conservative New York Post* reported, “Biden mocked over number of jump cuts in Trump debate challenge video: ‘Like a Claymation film.’” But the Democrats acted like their media really was Pravda, and forgot that in an age of diversified media, voters were still going to actually see see how badly Biden was performing, and how he was being propped up by his party’s operatives with bylines.

This 14 second video had so many cuts its almost like a claymation film. https://t.co/DQznhMsznx

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) May 15, 2024

* A Murdoch newspaper, which was how Jake Tapper sneered away the Wall Street Journal’s reporting of Biden’s health declines in June of 2024: Wall Street Journal calls out Tapper for sneering at paper’s story about Biden’s decline.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called out CNN host Jake Tapper on Sunday for previously dismissing the paper’s June 2024 article about former President Joe Biden showing “signs of slipping.” The criticism comes as Tapper’s new book on Biden’s decline while in office is set to be released.

“The Wall Street Journal reported, in a detailed piece on June 4, 2024, that those who observed Mr. Biden in person were concerned about his decline. Mr. Tapper quoted a White House dismissal of the story, including a sneer that the Journal is ‘owned by News Corp, which is run by the Murdochs,’ as if that rebutted the story. He then interviewed a Democrat who dismissed it,” the paper’s editorial board wrote, recalling a segment from Tapper’s CNN show, “The Lead,” from last year.

“A more curious journalist would have explored if it were true, and maybe even done some of his own reporting. Only now does he tacitly admit the Journal was right,” the board added.

The Journal reported at the time that the president was showing “signs of slipping,” as its reporters spoke to 45 lawmakers and administration officials about Biden’s mental faculties. Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” will be released on Tuesday.

“The Biden senility coverup is also a media reckoning. Whenever someone dared to point out that Mr. Biden wasn’t up to the job, a praetorian media guard assembled to deny it. We could quote chapter and verse from many media sources, but one example worth citing is none other than Mr. Tapper. Grabien, the TV clip service, has compiled a montage of the CNN host casting doubt on those who cast doubt on Mr. Biden’s mental fitness,” the WSJ editors wrote.

Now that the campaign is concluded, and Jake needs to sell some books, can it can be told.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Southern Poverty Law Center Puts Largest Conservative Grassroots Youth Group on ‘Hate Map’ With Klan Chapters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is comparing the largest conservative grassroots youth organization to the Ku Klux Klan, adding Turning Point USA to its “hate map” that plots KKK chapters and claims to expose “the groups upholding white supremacy in the United States.”

The latest version of the SPLC hate map, released Thursday, lists Turning Point USA for the first time, categorizing the group as an “anti-government extremist group.” The hate map also includes PragerU, a nonprofit that uses digital media to spread conservative ideas, putting it in the same category as Turning Point USA.

Critics have long accused the SPLC of liberal bias in applying its “hate” accusations, though the SPLC contests these claims.

Having seen many of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s videos “owning the libs” on YouTube, it’s tough to picture him as a crypto-Woodrow Wilson supporter who admires “the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.”

As for Prager U, Tyler O’Neil writes:

PragerU told The Daily Signal that the SPLC did not reach out to them before putting the group on the “hate map.”

“No, they did not notify us and if they’d like to know how we feel about SPLC, we actually have an entire 5 minute video about them titled The “Anti-Hate” Group That Is a Hate Group,” a PragerU representative said.

Here’s that video:

Ultimately though, isn’t this all academic? As America’s Newspaper of Record noted in 2021: KKK Disbands As Progressive Left Accomplishing All Their Goals.

HUH. I BELIEVE YOU SPELLED “ALL OF THEM” INCORRECTLY: Several Bay Area cities among worst cities to start a business.