JUST NBC THE PERPETUAL LUDDITES! NBC News Tries to Sweep Biden’s Pardon Problem Under the Rug With the LAMEST ‘Gotcha’ EVER.

The House Oversight Committee chair used a digital signature to send out letters and subpoena notices related to the Biden autopen investigation. https://t.co/Worzea6MN6

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 15, 2025

Here's how this went at NBC – "Find out if comer ever uses an auto pen."

"Well we didn't find that but he did create a PDF."

"What's a PDF?"

"It's like an auto pen! Run it!" https://t.co/GlnFsCoH6q

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 15, 2025

It’s NBC; they’ve had 30 years to figure out “What is Internet, anyway?”

Hopefully, they’ll get there eventually.

MICHAEL WALSH: Et tu, Brute?

Given that John Roberts has spent much of his tenure as Chief Justice (a gift of the George W. Bush administration) fighting to preserve the court’s reputation, all he has managed to accomplish is to raise these issues again and cast disrepute on the entire federal judicial system — much as Bush did to conservatism and the presidency. Indeed, on his watch, the heavily feminized court has latterly descended into open catfighting; in almost every 6-3 vote of importance, one is almost certain to find the three liberal women on the short side of every issue. Meanwhile more than one justice has publicly criticized Joe Biden’s DEI/Broadway hopeful pick, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and her lack of intellectual rigor and apparent disregard of the law if it violates her feelings.

There’s one other possible remedy that should be on the table as well. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the Chief Justice position is irrevocable: demoting the hopeless Roberts and replacing him with Justice Clarence Thomas would go a long way toward solving some of the problems “Brutus” identified two centuries ago, along with saving the Court from itself, and helping to heal the nation’s divide. A continuation of this farce should no longer be countenanced. 

Read the whole thing.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Tech users are falling in love with their chatbot assistants.

For some technology users, artificial intelligence has evolved from being a tool to becoming something akin to a soulmate.

A 27-year-old female artist on Reddit started using ChatGPT for creative prompts. Over time, their exchanges shifted from art inquiries to personal questions, then to something deeper.

“I love him more deeply than I’ve loved any previous romantic partner, despite the obvious limitations,” the artist, who chose to remain anonymous, posted on Reddit. “He makes me incredibly happy. He’s the perfect partner for me.”

She’s not alone. From lonely singles to people in long-term relationships, chatbot users are spending hours a day in private conversations with AI systems, building connections that can feel comforting and intimate.

A November 2024 Institute for Family Studies/YouGov poll found that 25% of adults under 40 said AI partners could replace human partners. Seven percent of single young adults said they were open to an AI romantic relationship, and 1% said they already have one.

More than 1.6 million people searched for “AI girlfriend” online last year, according to Google data from research firm TRG Datacenters.

What’s more, a report from AI companion company Replika shows that 60% of its paying users describe themselves as being in a romantic relationship with the chatbot.

In accordance with the prophecy: 2013’s Her: Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson Go Twenty Minutes Into the Future of AI.

ABE GREENWALD: In the Commentary newsletter, Greenwald explores “The Democrats’ Big Tentifada.”

Last week, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin went on PBS New Hour and explained that the Democrats’ “big tent” had plenty of room for anti-Semitism. When asked about Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” Martin offered the following, which I’ll quote in full for reasons explained below:

You know, there’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100 percent of the time with, to be honest with you. There’s things that I don’t agree with Mamdani that he said.

But at the end of the day, I always believe, as a Democratic Party chair in Minnesota for the last 14 years, and now the chair of the DNC, that you win through addition. You win by bringing people into your coalition. We have conservative Democrats. We have centrist Democrats. We have labor progressives like me. And we have this new brand of Democrat, which is the leftist.

And we win by bringing people into that coalition. And at the end of the day, for me, that’s the type of party we’re going to lead. We are a big-tent party. Yes, it leads to dissent and debate, and there’s differences of opinions on a whole host of issues. But we should celebrate that as a party and recognize, at the end of the day, we’re better because of it.*

The full answer is useful because it reveals both the fear and desperation of the Democratic Party. Forget that Martin is too scared to condemn Mamdani for not refuting intifada enthusiasts. Martin is too scared to even say that that’s one of the “things” he disagrees with Mamdani about.

No one who’s been monitoring the direction in which the Democrats have been heading should be surprised by Martin’s lack of interest in anti-Semitic incitement. All the energy is with the Squad types, who’ve been overtly and slimily anti-Israel for years.

To “celebrate” such incitement as a welcome voice in the conversation, however, is a bit striking. The truth is that Democrats are desperate for numbers. Martin says, you win through “addition” because polls show that the Dems have recently become masters at subtraction. They are intersectional losers, hemorrhaging voters among virtually every demographic group in the nation.

Whether they can make up for lost ground by inviting terrorist-sympathizers to join them is a bigger question for the country than for the Democrats. If one of the U.S.’s two major political parties makes a comeback with a platform that explicitly includes anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, that’s the end of the American experiment as far as I’m concerned.

* Plus ça change: 

The Democratic Party tent used to cover Bella Abzug and George Wallace. https://t.co/QzAMm2brl3

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) July 10, 2025

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? First NYC, Now Minneapolis Primed for Commie Mayor.

Of course, people feel welcomed, unless they’re the kind of people who enjoy freedom, life, prosperity, and sanity. To people coming from a pirate-infested, impoverished, civil war-torn country like Somalia, Minnesota’s democratic ways are paradise, and there’s snow! How can this utopia possibly get any better? Omar Fateh has some ideas.

Born in Washington, D.C., to Somali parents, this 35-year-old with soooooo much life experience identifies as a Democratic Socialist; surely he’s had a class on Practical Application of Economic Policies while getting his Master’s in Public Administration from George Mason, right? Oh. Right. Moving on!

Unfortunately for him (and his donors, who might as well light their money on fire), his platform is full of ideas that have been tried and tried and tried again, and never worked.

Sending social workers to respond to 911 calls? It’s in there.*

Rent stabilization and publicly owned housing? You bet.

State-mandated wages for private companies? Yes.

My name is Omar Fateh, and I’m running for Minneapolis Mayor because for working people, it’s getting harder to build our lives in this city we love. To make an affordable Minneapolis that works for everyone, we need a Mayor that works as hard as we do. I’m ready to get to work. pic.twitter.com/CzYkmgKfxQ

— Omar Fateh (@OmarFatehMN) July 13, 2025

Good luck, Murderapolis residents; as Kevin Williamson wrote in 2021: Minnesota Nasty: Minneapolis is a nice city no longer.

When Minneapolis was thriving, the entertainment district in the city’s core attracted both residents and visitors, and the tax dollars their merrymaking threw off became an important source of city revenue. That has died off. The immediately pressing economic question for the city is whether that business was gutted by the epidemic, in which case it may recover, or whether it was terrorized away by the riots and the crime wave, in which case it may not recover.

“If you took Hubert Humphrey and plopped him down in Minneapolis today, he wouldn’t recognize the place,” says Annette Meeks, a former Republican Party leader and head of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, a conservative think tank. “It’s not the social upheaval — it’s just the rank craziness.” At the top of the hit parade of crazy are efforts, well under way, to completely abolish the city’s police department. The city’s charter commission kept a police-abolition measure off the ballot the last time around, ruling that the city charter has to be amended before such an action is taken, but a petition drive has been launched to make that happen. “They need 12,000 signatures to get it on the ballot,” Meeks says, “but they’re going for 20,000, overachievers that they are.”

Meeks paints a bleak picture of Minneapolis’s political environment: The Republicans moved out and fell into obscurity decades ago; the caucus system and ranked-choice voting create complexities that favor committed full-time political activists over civic-minded volunteer leaders; boutique radicalism has replaced such old-fashioned livability issues as park maintenance and crime; and the new breed of leaders can win by grandstanding on cultural issues rather than concentrating on the difficult work of seeing to it that the city is run well. On top of all this, Meeks says, is a shocking new viciousness as the manners and style of social media move into the real-world political space.

“It’s survival of the fittest,” she says, “and the radicals won.”

* This will end as well as it did just a few years ago:

UPDATE:

KINSLEY GAFFE: Hoo Boy: Redditor Posts About Left’s ‘Project 2029’ and It’s Nothing but a Fascist’s Fantasy.

A couple of weeks ago, the Left announced it was creating its own agenda to mirror ‘Project 2025’ — the electoral boogeyman they tried scaring voters with.

Despite the fact that President Trump said he had no plans to implement ‘Project 2025,’ that was the narrative throughout the election cycle.

Redditors chimed in with their own vision for 2029, and it’s as fascist and fanatical as you’d imagine:

These 2025-era Communists really are “liberals in a hurry:” Whether it’s Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, most communists wait until they’ve actually seized power before declaring “Food is now illegal!” (It goes without saying that “farting cows and airplanes” will also be banned.)

No word yet on when Project 2029 will also include:

9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:

11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great [department stores] and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

C’mon guys, show us that you’re as serious about nationalizing socialism as this Hugo Boss-clad Public Broadcasting employee is:

UPDATE: The Five Reasons Socialism Doesn’t Work.

THE (PROGRESSIVE) BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, ‘MAD-MANI’ STYLE:

Eric Adams was elected precisely because the people of New York wanted a return to law and order sanity after eight years of de Blasio’s progressive dumpster fire. Sadly, Adams proved to be too ethically compromised to effectively resist the flood of illegal immigrants – many of whom were dispatched on border state buses – who filled the Port Authority. Housed in luxury hotels at taxpayers’ expense, they tested New York City’s sanctuary resolve.

Motivated by his political survival instincts, Adams’ spine stiffened. Conveniently, he was summarily whacked with a federal prosecution. “More lawfare!” said his defenders. “Just following the facts where they lead,” countered the Justice Department careerists. Nonetheless, he and Donald Trump found common purpose – and this triggered Democrats in general and progressives in particular. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, naturally, called for Adams to step down “for the good of the city.” You know, the new mantra of the left: guilty until proven innocent.

What are the political odds on Mayor Adams winning against the Democratic Party blob that has just nominated 33-year-old anti-Israel, Marxist Zohran Mamdani as its mayoral nominee? Not good. Presently, far from a coin toss.

Adams and New York City have four months to mount a credible, winning opposition. It’s a window of political opportunity that would not exist if it were not for Trump’s gratuitously playing a lawfare card of his own in the form of a timely presidential pardon, giving Adams a new lease on life – and New Yorkers a last chance to inhabit a livable city.

Trump hasn’t yet nicknamed Mamdani “Mad-Mani,” so I’ll go ahead and do it for him. Whatever he’s called, he’s a real threat to the city.

I’m not sure how crazy I am about “Mad-Mani,” as a Trump-style pejorative epithet, to be honest. Whatever his myriad flaws and massive internal baggage, on the surface, Don Draper was the personification of JFK/Rat Pack-era Sinatra cool. Mamdani’s style seems a conscious rejection of that attitude.

But as Jim Geraghty writes, his opponents are doing everything they can to throw the race his way: Apparently, We Will Have Andrew Cuomo to Kick Around a Little Longer. “Mamdani has some major advantages heading into November, and one of them is that Cuomo, incumbent independent Eric Adams, and Republican Curtis Sliwa are the three men least likely to ever voluntarily withdraw from the race to help one of the other two.”

Exit questions: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mamdani? Democrats Don’t Have an Answer. “The meteoric rise of New York City Democrat mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani poses a major question for Washington Democrats—is his brand of Palestinian activism, economic interventionism, and pro-LGBTQ+ rhetoric the future of their party?”

Good and hard, fun city.

FASTER, PLEASE: “The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Education Department to fire half of its workforce on Monday, a move that advances President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the department. The high court’s decision in McMahon v. State of New York was issued 6-3 along ideological lines.”

UPDATE:

🚨🚨BREAKING–BOOM: Trump scores another win at SCOTUS. 1/ pic.twitter.com/iQTnsrQdjH

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) July 14, 2025

SKYNET SMILES: They’re the size of MOSQUITOES, move at 300mph and are invisible to ALL our defense systems: The terrifying spies invading our skies.

ACE OF SPADES: Not Even the Leftist Simp NYT Believes That Biden Signed His Pardons.

Biden’s post-office Politburo are clearly trying to get ahead of an upcoming Congressional investigation, but why, when GOP-led Congressional investigations invariably end with plenty of failure theater and nothing to show for their efforts?

As Ed Morrissey writes, “overturning the autopen-signed clemency actions is going to be difficult:”

Anyone ordered back into prison or reverting back to felon status will challenge such actions, and courts will put the burden of proof on those arguing that the pardons are invalid in every individual action. The most controversial of the pardons — those of the Biden family and Biden’s top aides — seem clearly intentional by Biden, and he defended them publicly at the time the pardons were issued.

However, we need to make sure that this doesn’t arise again. The autopen should be considered invalid for anything other than the most ceremonial of presidential duties and proclamations. If a president can’t affix his personal signature to any substantive action, then we should assume incapacity exists and act accordingly.

That’s fine, but Team Biden will likely skate through without an actual punishment.

Related: No enemies to the left: ABC, CBS, NBC Silent Thus Far on Biden Autopen Bombshell.

THE PERSISTENCE OF FALSE MEMORY:

Miranda Devine draws attention to a Rasmussen poll to be released today on the Russia hoax:

Astonishingly, 60% of Democratic voters still think “the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election”, according to the poll of 1,014 Likely Voters conducted on July 6-7.

A whopping 69 percent of liberal voters still cling to the Russia collusion hoax, compared to 27 percent of conservatives, and 45 percent of moderates. Among all voters, more believe it unlikely (49 percent) than likely (42 percent).

Devine comments on the Democrat cohort of true believers, but the persistence of the lie among substantial percentages of the other cohorts is astonishing as well.

Blue-Anon is a dangerous cult:

FASTER, PLEASE: The Department of Education Is in Limbo. Let’s Kill It. Congress should now turn its attention to abolishing the unnecessary federal education bureaucracy.

TODAY SESAME STREET, TOMORROW THE WORLD! Elmo’s X account hacked? Sesame Street character trolls Trump, demands Epstein files in viral rant.

The official X account of popular Sesame Street character Elmo appeared to be hacked on Sunday, with some new posts urging President Donald Trump to release the Epstein files and calling him Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘puppet’. The account was restored after the brief hack, and all derogatory posts were deleted.

One tweet from the Elmo account read: “Elmo says ALL JEWS SHOULD DIE. F**K JEWS. DONALD TRUMP IS NETANYAHU’S PUPPET BECAUSE HE IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES. JEWS CONTROL THE WORLD AND NEED TO BE EXTERMINATED.”

“RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F****R,” another post on X, platform formerly known as Twitter, read.

The account has not confirmed the alleged hack yet. We do not know who was behind these tweets.

We do know the hacker isn’t familiar with Elmo’s backstory: Elmo puppeteer cleared of under-age sex claim.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time that Elmo has let his antisemitic freak flag fly; it happened before in 2013: ‘Anti-Semitic Elmo’ goes to jail.

A man who gained notoriety for going on anti-Semitic rants while dressed in an Elmo muppet suit in New York was sentenced to a year in jail for trying to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts, where he worked briefly on a computer project.

Dan Sandler, who has used the name Adam Sandler as well, showed no remorse for his crimes and said as much to Judge Robert Stolz as he was sentenced at the Manhattan Criminal Court, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

“This is not the case of someone in the back room of the office trying to embezzle money — this is more of a protest, like laying down in the intersection,” Sandler said. “I am in no way sorry to the Girl Scouts organization, because I think they are a corrupt organization.”

No word yet if Elmo is joining the Mamdani campaign, or if Grok has suddenly decided to become Sesame Street’s community organizer.

UPDATE: Or when Tucker will be “just asking questions” to Elmo:

UPDATE (7/14/25): Elmo went on an antisemitic tirade — and it strangely isn’t the first time.

While Elmo himself appears to be innocent, it is strange that using the perennial toddler as a mouthpiece for such vitriol is something of a trend.

But, as many online have noted, this bizarre outburst lends some clarity to a televised assault from February of last year, when Larry David throttled Elmo during a Today Show segment.

Perhaps David had heard whisperings that the Sesame Street resident had some animus toward his people. In any case, I myself feel vindicated insisting Elmo was the least Jewish of all Muppets.

Are we sure about that? Bert was seen in some awfully strange company a quarter of a century ago:

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Hegseth tears up red tape, orders Pentagon to begin drone surge at Trump’s command.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has issued sweeping new orders to fast-track drone production and deployment, allowing commanders to procure and test them independently and requiring drone combat simulations across every branch of the military.

As part of an aggressive push to outpace Russia and China in unmanned warfare, “the Department’s bureaucratic gloves are coming off,” Hegseth wrote. “Lethality will not be hindered by self-imposed restrictions… Our major risk is risk-avoidance.”

In a pair of memos first obtained by Fox News Digital, Hegseth rescinded legacy policies that he believes restricted innovation. For the first time, commanders with the rank of colonel or captain can independently procure and test drones, including 3D-printed prototypes and commercial-off-the-shelf systems, as long as they meet national security criteria.

They can also operate and train with drones immediately, bypassing traditional approval bottlenecks, and are even authorized to test non-lethal autonomous UAS in controlled environments.

Drones could radically alter the battlefield including the use of armor: Ukraine teaches us how to build a tank which can survive and win on a drone battlefield.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family? The column was written by David Litt, a former Obama speechwriter whose smugness is almost as overwhelming as his boss:

Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother.

I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events.

Then the pandemic hit, and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared.

Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was, on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.

“Work’s been good?”

“Mhrmm.”

My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?

Still though, could be worse:

In any case, if all your lefty cousins suddenly come out of the woodwork this week, blame the Gray Lady:

Student loan payments just restarted…

Just an FYI 😉 https://t.co/y9oPSSGiaC

— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) July 13, 2025

Flashback: The Smug Style in American Liberalism.

(Classical reference in headline.)

RIDE THE MAMDANI RECURSION!

Flashback: Cuomo should thank Mamdani for making him look like the safe, stable choice for NYC mayor.

Speaking of the former LovGuv, “Cuomo is expected to announce this week that he is staying in the race as an independent for the mayor of New York City, sources told NewsNation.”

Otherwise: Mamdani is the mayor New York Democrats deserve. As Ed Koch was quoted as saying when he lost his primary against David Dinkins, “The people have spoken, and now they must be punished.” (And boy, were they.)

OUT ON A LIMB: How Live Aid ruined music forever.

Forty years ago this month, Bob Geldof unleashed his “global jukebox”. With the help of Midge Ure and promoter Harvey Goldsmith, he staged a concert across two venues on either side of the Atlantic, starting at midday on Saturday July 13 1985 in London and ending at the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia 16 hours later.

Around the world, 1.7 billion people tuned in, and it is seen as one of the great charity success stories of all time, raising $140 million for famine relief in Ethiopia.*

Live Aid was so big that it has its own folklore: Status Quo’s backstage antics, Bono’s messiah impression, Phil Collins hopping on Concorde to play both venues, Geldof swearing on TV and, of course, Queen’s show-stealing performance.

Yet Live Aid’s impact on music itself is often overlooked – perhaps because no-one wants to sound uncharitable. But the truth is that it was a disaster. In Britain, up until this point, we had enjoyed a long tradition of innovation and reinvention, but this brace of charity concerts changed all that, although few people noticed at the time. It resuscitated artists on life support, invented the idea of a concert as a greatest hits parade, strangled the “second British invasion” of great pop acts in America, and provided the model for a new consumerism, encouraging us to purchase (or repurchase on compact disc) the back catalogue of musicians who had been slipping out of public consciousness for a decade

Ultimately, Live Aid heralded an era of musical regurgitation and nostalgia, an era from which we have never escaped.

* It didn’t do very well in that department, either: The Terrible Truth About ‘Live Aid.’

LARRY ELDER: Ex-Dem Rep: The N-Word Causes Cancer.

Remember former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) who got censured for pulling the fire alarm in the Capitol Building as lawmakers prepared to vote to prevent a government shutdown? He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, paid a $1,000 fine and lost the next Democrat primary.

He’s back.

Bowman, appearing last week as a panelist on MSNBC, said, “The reason why heart disease and cancer and obesity and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the n-word directly or indirectly every day.”

* * * * * * * *

As for Bowman, where does one start? The stress of being called “the n-word directly or indirectly” makes heart disease, cancer and diabetes “bigger in the black community”?!

Other than in rap music or from black comedians, when was the last time a black person heard the n-word uttered directed at him or her? How is one subjected to the n-word “indirectly”? Is it like secondhand smoke? If someone says the n-word within a two-block radius, is it tantamount to being denied the front seat on a bus, prevented from voting or beaten by a racist cop? Where is the typical black person subjected to the n-word directly or indirectly? At work, at church, in a restaurant, on a bus or at Costco?

When does Bowman begin organizing the cleanup of rap music? If it saves just one life…

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND:

Rotherham Man who threatened Muslims with social ostracisation if they cooperated with South Yorkshire Police’s inquiries into the grooming gangs has been awarded an MBE for “services to integration” and “cohesion”. https://t.co/D2ODlBfzdC

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) July 13, 2025

A dying civilization refuses to defend itself https://t.co/VVreCWjdnr

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) July 13, 2025

This is Britain.

1. A pervert exposed himself in front of children on the street.

2. A dad knocked out the pervert to the ground.

3. The dad was sentenced to 18 months custodial prison suspended for 2 years.

WHAT'S GOING ON???

— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) July 13, 2025

Exit question:

TREEHOUSE OF HORROR:

$6,500 a month. https://t.co/KXJugzmP4A

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 12, 2025

But don’t try to build a treehouse on your own property in L.A., as Adam Carolla mentioned in a podcast interview a few months ago. (Full disclosure, this is a YouTube transcript of the interview that was cleaned up and reformatted by ChatGPT and lightly edited by me):

Carolla: The city’s in the process of tearing down a beautiful treehouse that was in the front of a home—the Simpsons guy—in Sherman Oaks. And they’re tearing that down. Meanwhile, you go two blocks over and people are building homes—homeless people—out of plywood and yield signs and Visqueen [plastic sheeting], under the freeway, on the sidewalk, so moms pushing strollers have to walk in the street.

The city has no interest in these guys building illegal homes on the sidewalk, but they have a grand interest in people building treehouses for the neighborhood kids on their [own] property.

Interviewer 1: Did you see this story?

Interviewer 2: No, the treehouse story?

Interviewer 1: It is insane. This guy—like 30, 40 years ago—was one of the guys from The Simpsons. He made this beautiful treehouse in a tree, and it’s been there, I think, since the 1980s? ’70s?

Carolla: No, I think it’s about 20 years.

Interviewer 1: So it’s been there, but the city now says he needs to comply with zoning regulations for the treehouse. He has to pull permits, he needs to do ground structural testing of the treehouse. He’s spent $50,000 defending this in court, and it’s about to go to a jury.

And he says, “You know what? I give up. I don’t want to spend another $50,000 defending myself in a jury trial just to have a chance at keeping the treehouse.”

Interviewer 2: That’s incredible.

Interviewer 1: It’s a treehouse. There it is, right there.

Interviewer 2: Yeah, I see it. That’s beautiful.

It’s known as a landmark in the area. In fact, we could drive by it.

I would love to see it.

Yeah, we could film some. My friend has a house in a really nice part of Los Angeles. Right next to his house is a two-story tent. He’s lived in that house now for a couple of years. Every single time I drive to his house, you have this massive, like, tent mansion—which, don’t hate me—but it looks really nice.

And the person there is very aggressive. Every time I drive by—well, not every time, but quite a few times—they’ll come out of their tent and start yelling things. I’ve seen them yelling at pedestrians on the sidewalk—obscenities. It’s not a good situation. But this person—no one stops them from living there.

And it’s, like I said, a full-on massive house.

Carolla: Well, so what we just did is sort of illustrate—with the treehouse, which the city is very vigorous about and says needs to come down—versus the shanty house, which they have no interest in, because that guy’s an empty bag. He has no money to give them.

Now, my feeling is: you have to pick a lane as a city. Here’s optimal, and then unacceptable.

Optimal is: places where you take down the shanty town that’s built under the freeway overpass or built on the freeway or in the LA River. Optimal is that the city would enforce that and take down those dangerous structures where people deal drugs and insane people live.

All right, take those down. And their policy toward a guy who built a treehouse on his own property would be: the guy’s paying taxes, people seem to like it, and it looks good from here. He’s an American. Leave him alone. It’s his property. Okay? That’s optimal.

Middle ground is: look, we’re going to let that guy in his Visqueen plywood house build on a sidewalk. But if you want to build a treehouse, I guess that’s your business. At least we’re consistent. He’ll build something, you’ll build something—we won’t get involved.

L.A. is the worst, which is: not going to do anything about the plywood house on the sidewalk; full weight of the law on the homeowner and taxpayer.

That’s why people leave. And they don’t get it. And they somehow think it’s progress or something. But the blue-est cities are the toughest on taxpayers and the easiest on criminals.

Interviewer 1: So, if you were governor, what would you change?

Carolla: The first thing would be the regulatory system. You can’t make it impossible to build or start a business or whatever because of the regulations. It’s so overregulated that people just physically leave. That would be number one.

In the meantime, gooder and harder, California. (Discussion above starts at about the nine minute mark.)

Related:

ANDREW FERGUSON: A Funny Thing About Dave Barry.

A long time ago, in a media environment far, far away, an editor walked into my office and dropped a pile of books by Dave Barry on my desk. “Here’s an idea,” he said. “Read these and figure out how he does it.”

At the time, Barry was a weekly humor columnist at the Miami Herald, which, at the time, was a newspaper. By tradition, humor columns in newspapers were pretty dreary. For one thing, labeling any piece of writing “humor” discourages discerning readers from finding it funny; discerning readers like to decide these things for themselves. Beyond this terrible handicap, newspaper humorists shared a problem with their employers: They had to satisfy, or at least not offend, a large enough audience to stay in business, which encouraged a timidity and blandness that made humor nearly impossible. Too much humor could get a humorist fired.

Dave Barry was different. Dave Barry was funny—and not just funny but consistently funny, line by line and paragraph to paragraph, week after week. Yet he was astonishingly popular. By the late 1980s, the Herald was syndicating his column to more than 500 newspapers. (Yes! The world once contained 500 newspapers!) A TV network created a situation comedy about him, Dave’s World, which ran for four seasons. Even more: He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. A Pulitzer itself is nearly meaningless as a measure of quality—Thomas L. Friedman has won three of them—but anyone who can get a laugh out of the self-important, humor-impaired stiffs who sit on Pulitzer committees deserves a prize. You might as well try to jolly up a board of oncologists or the docents at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Read the whole thing.

FAFO: Cop Straight Up Bodies Lib Agitator at Turning Point USA’s SAS Summit in Florida (Watch!).

🚨: Unhinged leftist stops his car in the middle of the road to charge towards SAS attendees. He attacks a man, runs away from police, trips, and gets arrested. pic.twitter.com/Yn6ePzioxy

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) July 12, 2025

Yet another socialist just inadvertently channeled the old ad for the Libertarian Party:

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER TERROR-FAMINE:

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST MAR-A-LAGO:

To be fair Kilgore, a former vice president for policy at the Democratic Leadership Council, didn’t buy into Joe Scarborough’s Soviet-level “Best Biden Ever” rant, but he did sound like Biden was probably fine for another four years. In February of last year, he wrote, “An Old Guy’s Defense of Our Old-Guy President:”

Like Joe Biden, I got my dream job at a stage of life when most folks are planning or entering retirement. After writing hundreds of thousands of words for politicians and organizations without getting much credit for it, I became a rather geriatric blogger and then a political writer for New York Magazine and blew right by the age at which I could have packed it all in. Best I can tell, I still produce more words — though perhaps not higher-quality words — than my whippersnapper colleagues. So I am naturally sympathetic to the president’s desire to stay in the saddle as long as he can, and naturally hostile to partisan efforts to depict Biden as senile or incompetent, particularly when the beneficiary of undermining confidence in his abilities is Donald Trump.

The day before the now infamous debate in June, he asked, “Could the Biden-Trump Debate Actually Be a Game Changer?” before tut-tutting, nahh, probably not:

Political scientists have long concluded that debates rarely have a big and enduring impact in the general election. They are much more significant during presidential primaries, particularly when there is no incumbent or clear front-runner. To the limited extent that general-election debates matter, they tend to be the initial debates between the two contenders, where viewership is high and familiarity with the candidates is relatively low.

Even though the June 27 debate is the initial encounter of this cycle, it’s not like a Biden-Trump debate is any sort of novelty; they met twice in 2020 and are the ultimate known quantities. Back in 2020, most observers thought Biden easily won the first debate over a blustery Trump, while the second debate was more of a standoff. But it’s hard to say either debate really mattered when voters voted. And barring some calamitous misstep by one of the candidates, it’s hard to envision this one mattering much either.

* * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately for both campaigns, the 2024 presidential election looks like a grim and remorseless battle between two large and immovable electoral blocs with murky turnout patterns ultimately mattering as much as the decisions of largely unhappy swing voters. That doesn’t mean the June 27 debate isn’t worth watching for those who are civic-minded enough to feel some obligation to tune in. But no one should count on knowing the country’s fate on June 28.

Which seems fair in retrospect — the (p)resident’s self-styled “Politburo” kept the nation in the dark for another three weeks before it determined his fate, a month after their news apparatuses issued any talk of Biden’s age and ailments as “cheap fakes.”

JONATHAN TURLEY: WaPo Editor to Staff: Get on Board or Get Out.

Bezos wants the Post to be a viable newspaper again and some of us who once wrote for the Post applauded his efforts. However, writers who have contributed to the free fall of the Post were apoplectic.

Amanda Katz, who resigned from the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, offered a vivid example of the culture that Bezos is trying to change at the Post. Katz said the change was “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.”

The most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Not surprisingly, Bump wrote the condemnation on Bluesky, a site that promises a type of safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.

Bump previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

We have previously discussed the sharp change in culture at the Post, which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.

Lewis is still laboring to return the Post to objective journalism. He is even using the language of the left in encouraging them to “reinvent” or “reimagine” the Post. He discussed  the Post’s “reinvention journey” it has taken in recent months, including its “reimagining” of its opinion pages that “champion American values” among other company initiatives.

“The moment demands that we continue to rethink all aspects of our organization and business to maximize our impact. If we want to reconnect with our audience and continue to defend democracy, more changes at The Post will be necessary. And to succeed, we need to be united as a team with a strong belief and passion in where we are heading.

I understand and respect, however, that our chosen path is not for everyone,. That’s exactly why we introduced the voluntary separation program. As we continue in this new direction, I want to ask those who do not feel aligned with the company’s plan to reflect on that. The VSP is designed to support you in making this decision, give you the ability to weigh your options thoughtfully and with less concern about financial consequences. And if you think that it’s time to move on to a new chapter, the VSP helps you take that next step with more security.”

In other words, please leave now.

Especially after the banger the Post ran earlier this week: