CHANGE: The Border Crisis Is Over.

“Bi-den! Bi-den! Bi-den! Bi-den! Bi-den!”

“They should let us pass. We are calling out to Mexico and the U.S. and to Biden, the new U.S. president, to remind him of the presidential campaign promises he made, to make him aware we are here,” said one of them, Raul Pino Gonzalez of Havana, to a Cuban news reporter.

“There is an expectation. There is hope and there is enthusiasm in those who believe that, with the change of administration, will come new measures and that they will immediately enter and there will be new conditions that will allow them to request asylum,” Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua State Council for Population and Migration, told a Mexican newspaper that night.

They were right in their interpretation of Biden’s campaign promises, if a tad early. An estimated 10-12 million foreign nationals would more successfully answer the call starting on Biden’s inauguration day a few weeks later, in record-smashing populations of between 200,000 and 350,000, ushered straight into America every month for the next four years.

And all of that is now at an end. With frankly shocking speed, the Trump Administration has cut off the flood tide of illegal immigration that raged for all of Biden’s term. By the second full month of Donald Trump’s new term, just 8,300 had attempted a crossing, and every one of them was detained and deported—a record-breaking nadir.

At the beginning of the year, Joe Scarborough had yet another change of heart and exclaimed, “The border was not Biden’s finest moment, frankly.” But from Biden’s handlers’ point of view, it was the successful element of their administration:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller in February of 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

● Tom Cotton’s Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”

MARK JUDGE: Jonathan Capehart’s WaPo Hissy Fit.

Finally, there is a contentious meeting with journalist and editorial board member Karen Tumulty:

“There have been multiple misunderstandings or whatever,” she began. She then said, “I’m sorry.” I don’t recall the words immediately after that because of what came in the next breath. “But I do think use of the word ‘hyperbolic’ is defensible.” In that moment, I thought for sure I was being punked. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Tumulty then made a pronouncement. “I have a rule: No one should be called a Nazi unless they were an actual Nazi,” she told me. “So for President Biden to call the Georgia voter law ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ well that’s an insult to people who lived through Jim Crow.”

I sat frozen, gripping the armrests of my chair as I stared at her in disbelief. With that one comment, Tumulty took an incident where I felt ignored and compounded the insult by robbing me of my humanity. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t see that I was Black, that I came to the conversation with knowledge and history she could never have, that my worldview, albeit it different from hers, was equally valid.

I sat in stunned, unblinking silence for what seemed like ten minutes after Tumulty removed herself from my office. My mind reeled with what had just happened. In a time when people, especially white people, are so careful not to make racial situations worse, Tumulty seemed to have done just that.

Karen Tumulty made the mistake of treating Jonathan Capehart like an adult. She made the mistake of assuming he could rationally follow facts to their proper conclusions, and that he could act like a grown man if he disagreed with an editorial. She refused to genuflect before the dapper black ambassador between the races, to bow and scrape before the Little Lord Fauntleroy of the Fourth Estate.

Jeff Bezos is trying to save The Washington Post, which is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and has lost all credibility. The departure of Jonathan Capehart can only help that process.

Note that Capehart can be rather selective about when he chooses to play the race card. In order to keep the withered husk of Biden propped up a year ago, he chose to keep that card firmly in the deck:

Is he confusing an imported migrant class with a former slave class, because that would confirm some pretty big things about what we've been saying about why they are doing this.

Nice of Capehart to just skip over that one.

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 10, 2024

ALL QUIET ON THE CLIMATE CHANGE FRONT:

AOC has spent her entire tenure as a congresswoman with this mindset in mind; January 6^th 2020 was the equivalent of  ‘Serving in War.’ As Kevin Wiliamson wrote in his 2019 article headlined “Sandy’s War:”

Meow [the Moral Equivalent of War] has many cynical political uses: If every political opponent is the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler, if every political initiative tantamount to D-Day, then there is much that can be excused in the way of underhandedness, rhetorical excess, demagoguery, and the like. As [Jonah] Goldberg reminds us, war and war alone has been the great champion of socialism, because it provides an emergency pretext for the authoritarian project of reorganizing an organic society in accordance with the necessarily synthetic model decocted from ideology, bias, bigotry, eccentricity, and the self-interest, always unavoidable, of the planners empowered with drawing up the blueprints of this or that brave new world or utopia.

In 2021, in order to get some fresh headlines from her stillborn Green Nude Eel of 2019, AOC played the Moral Equivalent Card yet again: Move over Marine Corps, AOC’s pushing for 1.5M-strong ‘Climate Corps.’

The moral equivalent of war has been the organizing principle of the left since the start of the 20th century, trapping them in the moral equivalent of a quagmire, with no sign of an exit strategy in sight. In 2019, Australia’s Tim Blair finally wargamed its conclusion: If radical environmentalism is refighting WWII, “Fair enough. Nuking Hiroshima it is, then.”

As Blair’s quip highlights, progress during the real WWII was of course much faster than the left’s imaginary “moral equivalent:” Marines stormed Iwo Jima in March of 1945, only a few months before finishing off Japan. Original “Progressive” philosopher William James coined the phrase “the moral equivalent of war” to justify lefty power grabs in 1910. Al Gore envisioned the planet’s woes as the equivalent of Kristalnacht in 1989; Time magazine’s imaginary eco-warriors raised a tree on Mount Suribachi in 2008, and as the Columbia University press release inadvertently highlights above, this quagmire of moral equivalency mindlessly rages on.

WHERE’S THE DOWNSIDE?

Look I've been as critical of tariffs as anyone but if the long term vision is domestic Nike sweatshops filled with fired DC bureaucrats, I'm willing to listen https://t.co/CmsJ7bx5vk

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 7, 2025

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Joe Biden Was “a Shell of Himself” by End of Term. Hunter Biden Didn’t Help.

Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House [by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes] arrived this week, loaded with, well, insider details about how Biden, Trump, and Kamala Harris tried to win the presidency: Biden aides laying down strips of fluorescent tape to help guide the president’s walk through a New Jersey fundraiser; Trump surprisingly turning away from chaos and turning down Corey Lewandowski’s bid to oust rival campaign aides; and Harris being hamstrung by Biden’s insistence that there be “no daylight” between the two Democrats.

I spoke with Allen and Parnes at a moment when the consequences of the 2024 election were hitting hard, everywhere from Wall Street to Kyiv. In the interview, edited for length and clarity, the two described how they discovered more Democratic dysfunction than was apparent at the time, and how Trump’s team kept its candidate under control. Mostly.

Vanity Fair: The opening scene of the book describes a series of power players as they watch the fateful Biden-Trump debate. Where were the two of you that night?

Jonathan Allen: I was at Shelly’s Back Room on F Street Northwest in Washington, smoking a cigar, watching the debate, and calling and texting with sources.

Amie Parnes: I was at home. My phone was blowing up. I think I had maybe 50 text exchanges that night with freaked-out lawmakers, strategists, basically everyone—Republicans, Democrats. I often go back and look at those messages because they were surreal.

At that point, in June 2024, President Biden’s physical and mental capacities had long been a central issue in the campaign. Was his terrible debate performance still a surprise to you?

Parnes: It was just stunning to watch.

Allen: We’d been watching Biden’s decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020. And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought.

Your book describes the lengths to which the president’s longtime inner circle—including first lady Jill Biden and senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti—went to hide that decline. Who was most responsible?

Parnes: All of them. It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off. He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours.

—Chris Smith, Vanity Fair, Friday.

Related: Joe Biden Is Somehow in a Better Place Today Than He Was Four Years Ago.

—Chris Smith, Vanity Fair, January 9th, 2024

SURVEY: MOST SELF-IDENTIFYING LEFTIES SAY KILLING TRUMP IS JUSTIFIED.

The unhinged left, fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and seething hatred for Elon Musk, is trending more violent, according to a new study that finds political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is “becoming increasingly normalized.”

The report, produced by the Network of Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, finds a broader “assassination culture” appears to be “emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.”

Less than a year after assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Trump and the literally explosive violence against Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles, it’s no secret that leftists are ratcheting up violent rhetoric and actions. The more troubling trend is that an “assassination culture” isn’t just coming from the “fringe” left.

“These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,” states the report, titled, “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.”

…

“The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,” the authors of the latest study write.

James Carville asks: ‘Do You Know How This Ends?’: Carville Invokes Nazis, Opens ‘Nominations’ For Trump ‘Collaborators.’

Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville invoked the Nazis and suggested that anyone who “collaborated” with President Donald Trump might eventually suffer the same fate as those who’d cooperated with brutal German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Carville made the comments on his Politicon podcast, where he referred to major corporations and law firms that were aiding the Trump administration as “traitors” and suggested they’d be ripe for “retribution” if the people were so inclined.

🚨Deranged James Carville compares companies working with the Trump administration to N*zi collaborators after the liberation of Paris in 1944:

"Do you know what's going to happen? Do you know how this ends?"

"Do you know what the country is going to feel toward collaborators… pic.twitter.com/xFat1erweW

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 4, 2025

Notice that unlike January of 2011 when they whipped themselves into a moral panic over Sarah Palin’s clip art after the Giffords shooting, nobody in the DNC-MSM is calling for the left to dial back their rhetoric. No enemies to the left.

AILING PATIENT NOT FLATLINING YET: A Minecraft Movie Is the Hit Hollywood’s Been Waiting For.

The first three months of 2025 have been a disaster for the movie industry, with box-office disappointments including “Snow White,” “Mickey 17,” “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Novocaine” and “The Alto Knights.”

The total domestic box office in that period was $1.42 billion, down 12% from last year and 41% from 2019, the last year unaffected by the pandemic and 2023’s Hollywood labor strikes.

The first three months of the year “could not have been any worse for us,” Bill Barstow, chief executive of Main Street Theatres, a small chain of cinemas based in Nebraska, said at the CinemaCon industry convention in Las Vegas last week. Many theater owners were buzzing at CinemaCon about “Minecraft’s” potential to break out based on advance ticket sales.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s film business has been under growing pressure with two of this year’s biggest flops, “Mickey 17” and “Alto Knights,” and arguably the biggest box-office disaster of 2024 in “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Studio chiefs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca have been spending large sums on risky projects at a time when the rest of their company is under pressure to cut costs.

Oh, and speaking of Snow White: The Last Straw: Snow White Production Slammed As Second Most Polluting Disney Film.

But do you want to know how we can tell now that the new “Snow White” and all seven vertically-challenged people have been well and truly tossed under the bus? The film is now being attacked for its carbon emissions.

By analysing more than 250 Disney film sets, Snow White was revealed to have created at least 4,258 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

This was the second most polluting Disney film, after The Little Mermaid live action remake which contributed to 5,983 tonnes, since 2019 when the environmental reporting requirement was introduced.

The combined emissions total more than Birmingham‘s and Luton’s annual CO2 contributions, according to The Observer.

Now, this information might have still been released, and the film production still criticized even had the movie been a roaring success, but I’m inclined to think not; as the old saying goes, “Success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan.” On that basis, “Snow White” is the red-headed stepchild of a rented mule.

Here’s the giggle-inducing bit:

Snow White also created more greenhouse gases than the latest Fast & Furious film Fast X, despite the blockbuster principally being set around cars.

So, Vin Diesel and a bunch of hot cars roaring around the landscape produced lower carbon emissions than this Disney grenade. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

According to John Nolte, Snow White “no longer has any serious chance of reaching $100 million domestic.”

Well, I for one am happy to have done my bit to protect the environment by skipping the environmentally destructive Snow White, and am eagerly awaiting Fast & Furious X, a film that has an infinitely more Al Gore-approved message. (Actually, given that Gore tacitly declared global warming over when he sold out to oil-rich Qatar, and his reported love of gas-guzzling private jets, FFX really is a film that’s perfectly aligned with Al’s lifestyle!)

Related: The Critical Drinker on A Minecraft Movie: Pure Mindless Slop, And It’ll Make A Billion Dollars. “Minecraft is where filmmaking and imagination goes to die; the logical endpoint of lazy IP-exploiting Hollywood executives who are driven entirely by numbers and statistics.”

DAVE BARRY: Yoga Trauma.

This will be a short emergency Substack. I just wanted to draw your attention to an alarming recent occurrence in New York City, which I found out about from a story in the Sunday New York Times.

What happened was — prepare to be horrified — a woman took a sip of water during a yoga class. Yes. According to the Times story, which is not a brief story, and which I am not making up, this resulted in a “firestorm.”

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

(Via SDA.)

DESPACHOS DESDE EL AGUJERO DE LA MEMORIA: Pirates will restore Roberto Clemente sign to right field wall following fan backlash at its removal.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will restore a sign honoring franchise icon Roberto Clemente to the right field wall following fan backlash at its removal.

In the sign’s place is an ad for Surfside alcoholic drinks.

Many fans took to social media over the weekend to express outrage over the sign’s removal. Roberto Clemente Jr. also shared his disbelief at the removal of the image.

It’s the 2020s — entire sports teams have been memory holed, so it’s not surprising to see an individual player also disappear as well, but it’s good to see his tribute back.

NOW THAT’S SOME SERIOUS POOL HUSTLING!

My God. They did it, they actually did it. And it's perfect. https://t.co/vZErC7tTqK

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 6, 2025

THIS IS CNN: Trump Ag Secretary Laughs After Jake Tapper Insists ‘I’m NOT On The Left.’

Jake Tapper has denied being “of the left.”

On Sunday’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, host Tapper, in a loaded question, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins: “How long do you anticipate this tariff chaos is going to be going on? 30 days, 60 days, 90 days?”

In response, Rollins wryly responded:

“We’re now two days in, right? You’ve got two days of data. Everyone, especially on your side, on the left, is freaking out.“

Snapped back Tapper: “I’m not on the left.”

That earned a sardonic laugh [see screencap] and “thank you” from Rollins.

So, Tapper is “not on the left.” Really? Let’s go to his record.

Read the whole thing.

Secretary of Agriculture @BrookeLRollins: “Everyone, especially on your side, on the left, is freaking out.”@JakeTapper: “I’m not on the left.”
Rollins: “All right, Jake, thank you.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/xs6EEiTkJd

— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 6, 2025

PREMISE OVERLOAD: During the protests over the Bush-Cheney War on Terror 20 years ago, Glenn always used to ask, “where are the giant papier-mâché puppets?” Finally, like Pinocchio, they’ve gotten their wish, and they’ve become sentient. Well, almost:

The theater kids saved democracy yesterday.

pic.twitter.com/dxXkw8izdq

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) April 6, 2025

Wait — she’s apparently implying that Trump is a Nazi because there is a swastika in the middle of the Betsy Ross flag. But just in time for Fourth of July 2019, Nike and Colin Kaepernick ginned up a protest to sell his sneakers by explicitly calling the Betsy Ross flag a symbol of hate:

The Pied Piper of wokeness, Colin Kaepernick‏, kicked off the week by successfully pressuring Nike to recall a shoe adorned with the original 13-star American flag attributed to America’s founding mother, Betsy Ross.

For years, polite liberal opinion has lectured us that Kaepernick, who famously kneeled during the national anthem when he was an NFL football player, didn’t hate America — he just wanted to protest police brutality against African Americans. We were to also overlook the time he wore socks featuring pigs dressed as police officers and the time he wore Fidel Castro on his T-shirt. Hillary Clinton declared those kneeling during the anthem were “not against our anthem or our flag.”

Whoops.

Now Kaepernick is tossing Betsy Ross into the basket of deplorables, while Democratic presidential contenders like Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand and Beto O’Rourke clap along like well-trained seals.

This quickly set off quite a chain reaction that year:

● Major League Soccer Declares Betsy Ross Flag a ‘Symbol of Hate.’

● Nike stocks surge 2% following controversial decision to recall ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ sneakers after star endorser Colin Kaepernick claims they are offensive due to slavery ties.

● Jim Treacher wrote on July 3rd 2019, Betsy Ross’s flag design “was good enough for Obama’s inauguration. Not anymore. If Betsy Ross is racist now, how about the 76ers? The Patriots? Should we start picketing showings of Hamilton?”

● That same day, “MSNBC guest Michael Eric Dyson compared the Betsy Ross American flag to the Nazi swastika and a burning Ku Klux Klan cross.”

Sort of like those earlier Hitlers George Bush and Dick Cheney last year, was the Betsy Ross Flag temporarily rehabilitated, but only to attack Trump once again, or has America always been born of original sin? Or did the young theater kid not remember 2019’s corporate wilding attack on the flag before swinging into action?

(Classical reference in headline.)

DISPATCHES FROM THE PALACE GUARD COMEDIANS: SNL Mocks Elon Musk, Not Democrats Torching Teslas.

The sketch brought “SNL” alum Mike Myers back to portray Musk. The fictional Musk bragged that a new Tesla model offers an adaptation for modern times.

It vandalizes itself.

Recently, our dealerships have been the targets of many attacks … Suddenly no one likes Tesla cars. I asked myself why, then I answered myself. Because of me!”

His solution? The Tesla Model V.

“The first electric car in history to be fully self-vandalizing! With features like self-smashing headlights, self-slashing tires and AI-powered graffiti … You can choose from penises or swastikas, or my favorite: swastikas made out of penises!”

The vandals in question could spend years behind bars for their actions. Tesla owners, likely Democrats who hoped their purchase would positively impact the climate, now fear for their safety.

“SNL” could have mocked the raging hypocrisy in play. Liberals have spent years demanding more EVs to prevent Climate Change. Now, their party is cheering on attacks against the number one electric car company in the country.

Instead, they turn what many dub domestic terrorism into a laugh line. Maybe [Mel] Brooks can visit the show’s writers’ room and give them a crash course on Humanity 101.

Not surprisingly, SNL in its current ancient and enfeebled state lacks the courage to force their own audience to ask themselves, “Are we the baddies?”

‘GO BACK TO AFRICA!’ How the Democratic Party Became the Party of Xenophobes and Racists.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is originally from Mogadishu, Somalia. You’ve gotta keep that in mind to fully appreciate her astonishing lack of self-awareness:

“Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also suggested Musk did not care for democracy because he came from South Africa.

“Elon Musk, who grew up in apartheid, Trump who worships dictators around the country, and strong men, are not interested in our constitutional republic,” Omar said.

Interestingly, Omar and Musk both arrived in America in 1995. (In an alternate timeline, maybe they walked by each other in the airport.) It’s unclear why someone of Somalian origin is any more or less trustworthy than someone from South Africa.

The Democrats are trying to scale a political mountain, but they better be careful: The slope is awfully slippery.

Fox News noted that Elon Musk’s opposition to apartheid has been long established:

Despite these claims, a Snopes fact-check found the reason Musk left his birth country in the first place was to avoid military service because he did not want to fight for an apartheid state.

Furthermore, Musk discussed his South African upbringing in a 2013 interview:

INTERVIEWER: You grew up in South Africa. […] You were in the army there?

MUSK: No. I left at 17. Well, in part, in order to avoid conscription in the army.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, you left so you didn’t have to deal with the army.

MUSK: You know, spending two years suppressing Black people doesn’t seem to be a great use of time.

It’s 2025, and one political party is still screaming, “Go back to Africa!” at its enemies. And it’s not the Republican Party. Today, the Democrats are actively trafficking in bigotry, racism, and xenophobia.

Frankly, it stinks.

(Even worse than Axe Body Spray.)

As P.J. O’Rourke famously wrote in 1991’s Parliament of Whores:

Not long after Andy [Ferguson] and I met, we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue and encountered some or another noisy pinko demonstration. “How come,” I asked Andy, “whenever something upsets the Left, you see immediate marches and parades and rallies with signs already printed and rhyming slogans already composed, whereas whenever something upsets the Right, you see two members of the Young Americans for Freedom waving a six-inch American flag?”

“We have jobs,” said Andy.

But the left have astroturfed signs, backed up with preprinted cue cards!

They have no clue why they are there, and they have no clue what their signs even mean. pic.twitter.com/BxtiskoD3t

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 6, 2025

ROGER KIMBALL: Actions v. Words.

Donald Trump is different. He does what others say is impossible. Some commentator (I forget who) recently employed a quip attributed to Winston Churchill about Trump.  Churchill is supposed to have said that U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was “the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.” Apparently, Churchill did not say that. But it is a memorable image, and one can understand why someone would apply it to Donald Trump. He has been in office fewer than 100 days, yet look at the disruptions he has instigated. On his first day, he abolished all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs throughout the federal government.  He also forbade simply renaming those programs in order to carry on their racist, inequitable work by subterfuge. He insisted that universities jettison their coddling of racist and anti-Semitic policies as a condition for receiving federal money. As of this writing, hundreds of millions of dollars have been withheld from Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and other elite institutions for failing to abide by this directive. He tapped Elon Musk to help him identify and eliminate waste and fraud in the government.  The revelations are stunning.  It’s almost as if the U.S. government had evolved into a machine to serve politicians at the taxpayer’s expense.

This last week, Trump got around to one of the main things he campaigned on, his “favorite word,” tariffs. The stock market cratered, the establishment recoiled like a scrotum in icy water, and the acrid scent of panic was everywhere. I wrote about the tariffs the morning of what Trump called “Liberation Day” before the market opened. I expected market tumult but was taken aback by the ferocity of the market reaction.

Still, I continue to believe that we should give Trump’s strong medicine a chance to work. I think that the commentator Tanvi Ratner is correct: the tariffs “aren’t a trade tweak,” she wrote, “they’re the first move in a full-spectrum reset.” As the stock market declines, investors flee to treasury bonds, forcing the yield on those bonds lower. This year, almost $10 trillion will need to be refinanced. Every basis point that the yield declines translates into a billion-dollar annual savings in loan repayment. Thus, a 0.5% drop, she points out,  would save $500 billion over a decade. As of this writing, the yield has declined about 0.7 points.  That’s a lot of money saved.

Read the whole thing.

YOU GO, GIRL! Joan of Arc was non-binary, schoolchildren taught.

Joan of Arc was non-binary, secondary school pupils are being taught.

Lesson plans produced for English language students aged between 11 and 14 include the claim about the medieval figure, who is the patron saint of France and fought against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.

In the Who We Are anthology published by Collins, which is made up of “representative and inclusive contemporary texts”, a lesson plan includes a biography that reads: “Joan of Arc (1412-31) is today considered by some to have been non-binary.”

The knight cropped her hair in the male fashion and wore men’s clothes, which formed part of the heresy case against her for which she was burned at the stake in 1431.

But she never claimed not to be female and also did not adopt the non-binary gender identity, which only emerged in the late 20th century.

Robert Tombs, professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge, branded the claim “insulting”.

“Joan of Arc fought as a woman and died as a woman,” he told The Telegraph. “To call her something else is insulting to her and indirectly to all women who are brave enough to risk their lives for their beliefs – as if women are incapable of heroism.”

Carolyn Brown, a retired psychologist now working with the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is yet another ridiculous example of attempting to rewrite history and erase strong, rebellious female characters from our past.

As they say on Airstrip One, who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: The Opportunistic End of the Biden Cover-Up.

The people who told you there was nothing wrong with former President Biden are excited to discuss all the ways in which there was absolutely something wrong with former President Biden.

If these people had any capacity for shame, they’d be feeling it about now.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week…NBC News’s Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes discussed their new book, which details the lengths to which the former president’s inner circle reportedly went to keep his deterioration a secret from voters.

Scarborough and his chirpy co-host, Mika Brzezinski, nodded along during the segment, as if they were mere spectators to the effort to hide the president’s condition and not themselves active participants.

“You know,” said Scarborough, “we always look back in retrospect and think things were a certain way, just because it’s the way the media, at the time, defined it.”

You said it, Joe! But you also said this, back in March of last year:

“I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent,” said Scarborough on Wednesday. “But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years. And, you know — I don’t know if people know this or not — Biden used to be a hothead. Sometimes that Irishman would getting in front of the reasoning. Sometimes he would say things he didn’t want to say.”

“Start your tape right now,” he continued, “because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second, and I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

Joe Scarborough: “F you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever.”

pic.twitter.com/P2lW5NdP5R

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 6, 2024

The Obama and Biden administrations (but I repeat myself) would say anything to survive the current newscycle, knowing that their Democratic party operatives with bylines would never call them on their duplicity. I hope it was worth it for those party operatives to sacrifice whatever minimal amount of credibility they had left in their effort to drag the withered husk of Joe Biden over the finish line one last time.

UPDATE: Scott Jennings of CNN effectively calls the rest of CNN full-blown liars over their 2024 reportage:

"These books coming out, it can all be told now. I mean, I sat here all during the campaign and was assured Joe Biden was fine, Kamala Harris had the most organic-grassroots-driven campaign. The Democrats were unified. We had a campaign of joy and everything was hunky dory." pic.twitter.com/n53Z95gBbA

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) April 5, 2025

QUESTION ASKED FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: Has Sweden Found the Right Solution to the Coronavirus?

If the COVID-19 pandemic tails off in a few weeks, months before the alarmists claim it will, they will probably pivot immediately and pat themselves on the back for the brilliant social-distancing controls that they imposed on the world. They will claim that their heroic recommendations averted total calamity. Unfortunately, they will be wrong; and Sweden, which has done almost no mandated social distancing, will probably prove them wrong.

Lots of people are rushing to discredit Sweden’s approach, which relies more on calibrated precautions and isolating only the most vulnerable than on imposing a full lockdown. While gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited and high schools and colleges are closed, Sweden has kept its borders open as well as its preschools, grade schools, bars, restaurants, parks, and shops.

President Trump has no use for Sweden’s nuanced approach. Last Wednesday, he smeared it in a spectacular fashion by saying he’d heard that Sweden “gave it a shot, and they saw things that were really frightening, and they went immediately to shutting down the country.” He and the public-health experts who told him this were wrong on both counts and would do better to question their approach. Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist and now adviser to the Swedish Health Agency, says that other nations “have taken political, unconsidered actions” that are not justified by the facts.

In the rush to lock down nations and, as a result, crater their economies, no one has addressed this simple yet critical question: How do we know social-isolation controls actually work? And even if they do work for some infectious epidemics, do they work for COVID-19? And even if they work for this novel coronavirus, do they have to be implemented by a certain point in the epidemic? Or are they locking down the barn door after the horses are long gone?

Flash-forward to a year ago: How Sweden Proved the World Wrong About Lockdown:

Certainly, Sweden did not do everything right during the pandemic. The government itself admitted that in 2022, when it concluded its inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. However, Sweden did manage to succeed in a few key areas where other nations failed spectacularly. Notably, it did not panic during the crisis. It considered how its policies would impact society as a whole. It did not just focus on limiting cases of Covid. And it did not ignore the potential long-term effects of lockdown. Above all, it recognised that the pandemic policy of China’s authoritarian government should not have served as a guide for a liberal democracy.

Of course, our study isn’t perfect. We could never possibly cover every single health aspect or economic indicator. And yet our analysis does reveal some cold, hard facts about the real cost of lockdowns. The burden is now on the pro-lockdown camp to prove that their disastrous policies were worth it.

As John Tierney spotted here in August of 2023, “Sweden’s ‘Laissez Faire’ Pandemic Policies Paid Off. Sweden, which the media denounced in 2020 as a ‘pariah’ and a ‘cautionary tale’ because it stayed open and and told its citizens not to wear masks, has come through the pandemic with the lowest rate of excess mortality in Europe, as Johan Norberg shows in a Cato Institute report. All the more reason its public-health leaders deserve a Nobel Prize.”

Not surprisingly, John’s post was titled, “Why the Media Doesn’t Talk About Sweden Anymore.”

PIONEERING MUSICIAN’S DIARY REVEALS AN ADDICTION TO PHOTOSHOP:

As reported by Digital Camera World, [Brian] Eno’s diaries offer behind the scenes look into the thoughts and daily life of a musical genius. However, one note stuck out to many readers. It seems that Eno has an addiction. His vice may surprise, as Eno appears to be addicted to Photoshop.

Nearly a dozen diary entries detail Eno’s penchant for losing time by “fiddling” with Photoshop.

The entry for January 31, 1995, reads, “Too long playing with Photoshop — lethal time-waster — like chronic alcoholism. Should schedule it in the diary and not use it otherwise.”

Then on February 13, 1995, “Renata came to clean, but I’d already wrecked the morning by resorting to Photoshop.”

Several other entries give insight into his hobby of using Photoshop to alter the physiology of women.

The diary entry for January 2 muses, “created some novel [redacted] in Photoshop — modifying back views of women to expand their bottoms to Cosmic proportions, creating she-males by collage. Strange that one remains gripped by the same fantasies throughout life.”

Sir Mix-a-Lot could not be reached for comment!

Related: Eno’s late ’70s speech, “The Studio As Compositional Tool,” transcribed by Downbeat for their July and August 1983 issues, and the gateway drug for many home music recording enthusiasts in the 1980s.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ASTROTURF:

These protests today are not organic. All 1300 of them have been preplanned by the same six Democrat led and funded NGOs. The resistance is made up of a professional agitator class, whose only purpose is to engage in destabilizing and Marxist revolutions. That is what they learn…

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) April 5, 2025

HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO: September 5 Draws Powerful Distinction Between Good and Evil.

The politics of such a terrorist attack also gum up the situation. Given that the Munich Olympics were happening in Germany just 27 years after the Holocaust, there is a palpable pressure for the German government to show it has reformed.

Officials want to protect the Israeli athletes at all costs, but its police and military are inexperienced and neutered, hiding important details from the public. When the pressure gets too hot, their first response is to shut down the broadcasts.

 

“September 5” certainly isn’t a deep cut against the Fourth Estate. If anything, it’s meant to lionize it. Given its unique perspective, though, and the insane history in play, it captures many of the fascinating tensions that exist within journalism.

ABC’s voyeuristic viewpoint, inexperienced journalists and reliance on press releases from the state mean that it is doomed to misreport important details that can get people killed. They want to make a difference, but their success can only be bittersweet.

Their best efforts make them, at best, documenters of man’s inhumanity.

Not surprisingly, the film’s approach to the underlying issue of Israel vs. Palestine is mostly to sideline it. There isn’t much reflecting on the morality of the conflict.

It’s currently streaming on Paramount+ and highly recommended. Or as I wrote last month: September 5: Chilling Recreation of the First Live TV Broadcast of Terrorism.

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN IS NOW STREAMING ONLINE: Here’s my review from January: ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ – If You’re a Fan, Catch It on the Big Screen.

But watching at home on a big TV with a good surround sound system isn’t all that bad an alternative; it’s available for purchase or rent at Amazon Prime Video.

HMMM:

Paul Volcker, call your office!

JONATHAN TURLEY: The liberals’ license: How the left finds release in an age of rage.

“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”

Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.”

But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.

There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.

They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.

The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.

Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.

Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens.

Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations, and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars.

In August of 2019, Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying, “You have to be ready to take a punch. And therefore you have to be ready to throw a punch—for the children.” And that was after Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson attempted to assassinate Steve Scalise, and Rand Paul was attacked in 2017.

The year after Pelosi’s quote followed a summer of “fiery, but mostly peaceful” arson and looting. How will the left amp up their attacks next beyond vandalizing Teslas?

(Or as America’s Newspaper of Record predicted in 2022: Authorities Warn Tonight’s Protests May Escalate From ‘Mostly Peaceful’ To ‘Somewhat Peaceful.’)

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Tax the Penguins Edition.