KAROL MARKOWICZ: Corruption allegations hit New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s inner circle.

Joseph Jardin, who was previously the FDNY’s chief of fire prevention, is suing after he and six other department chiefs were demoted for protesting the use of the DMO List. But Jardin’s suit alleges not just favoritism but also looking the other way about actual danger. As the website The City reported in November 2023, “Last spring Jardin told the FBI about an interaction in 2021, when Adams was still Brooklyn Borough President but soon to be mayor, and allegedly pressured the FDNY to reinspect a newly constructed 35-story Midtown building housing the Turkish consulate where the fire safety system had failed an inspection.”

A 35-story building in Manhattan already failing a fire department inspection and being fast-tracked for approval is more than just a political scandal.

For a long time, despite the innuendos and the gossip, the house searches and the subpoenas, no one had been arrested. That changed last Monday, Sept. 16.

Anthony Saccavino and Brian Cordasco, two high-ranking fire department officials who had resigned their posts after their own FBI home raids earlier this year, were arrested in connection with the investigation.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams held a press conference on Monday outlining the scheme. “They allegedly created a VIP lane for faster service that could only be accessed with bribes,” he said at a press conference. “That’s classic pay-to-play corruption.”

Suddenly, New York City Hall’s attempts to brush off the corruption allegations looked unlikely to succeed. In the last year, many had come to the mayor’s defense. Former New York Gov. David Paterson called the federal investigation “Orwellian” and suggested the Biden administration was coming after Adams because he had criticized the president for sending migrants to New York. The conversation about whether Adams would survive his term was no longer theoretical. If the FDNY officials were facing jail for their role in expediting the inspections, it stood to reason that someone in the mayor’s office had motivated them to do so.

What’s interesting is, according to the New York Post, “Adams’ campaign accepted a $6,000 donation from three donors who served on the board of a foundation backed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son Bilal.” A $6,000 donation hardly seems like the kind of thing to blow up your mayoralty over. And the existence of the DMO List during the de Blasio administration tells the story that this kind of, yes, corruption was often accepted and overlooked.

Exit quote: “‘I’m dyslexic. I was arrested. I was rejected. Now I’m elected,’ Adams likes to say. Yes, but can he stay that way?”

Meanwhile, get ready to return to the bad old days, Fun City: NYC could become a dystopian hellhole run by liberal activist Jumaane Williams who protested against police if Adams gets the boot: ‘Lord help us.’

Social media users have already started expressing fear about what a mayor Williams would mean for NYC.

‘Jumaane D. Williams makes AOC look like Joe Manchin. Big defund the police/bail reform guy,’ Joe Colangelo said on X.

‘To say this would be the final nail in the coffin for NYC is an understatement. JW is basically a villain from Batman,’ another X user added.

Lisa Cappiello simply wrote: ‘Lord help us.’

During 15 years in public service, Williams has stoked anti-police sentiment and pushed for criminal reform, including to end solitary confinement in city prisons. He is also a prominent pro-Palestine activist.

The failed gubernatorial candidate is a firm proponent of slashing the NYPD’s budget but lives in a US military base in Brooklyn that offers 24-hour security.

Williams was a leader of the 2020 BLM protests in NYC. In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, he led marches to Brooklyn Borough Hall to demand NYPD budget cuts.

He also threatened to refuse to sign a warrant authorizing the collection of real estate taxes, which underpin the city’s budget.

Williams said he would not sign that warrant unless the city eliminated the next class of police officers.

‘This guy hates the cops, hates America. Wears a Keffiyeh,’ Sliwa told DailyMail.com. ‘The police will no longer be able to function….

Sliwa added that even in a temporary position, Williams’ mayorship could have lasting effects for NYC and it will spark an exodus from the city.

‘[City Council] will pass so much legislation that he will sign and will never be able to be rescinded,’ Sliwa added.  ‘New York City will become the socialist capital of the world.’

I’m pretty sure that The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t meant to be a how-to guide for calm municipal government.

JIM GERAGHTY: Eric Adams Indictment a Window into Pernicious Foreign Bribery Operations.

The name “Samuel Dickstein” really ought to be more widely remembered and loathed:

Dickstein, a Democrat from New York City who served in the House of Representatives from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, conducted himself in public life with none of the refined elegance that his self-presentation suggested. . . .

So over-the-top as to be ineffectual — he had the poor taste to call for Noel Coward to be barred from the country because the English wit made a quip about the manliness of Brooklyn soldiers — Dickstein left Congress in 1946, and served as a state Supreme Court justice until his death in 1954. In 1963, a portion of the street grid close to where he used to live on East Broadway was christened “Samuel Dickstein Plaza.” No controversy attended the occasion. He then went about the time-honored practice of being forgotten.

That is, until 1999, when Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev published The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America — the Stalin Era, which through the use of previously unavailable KGB records went a long way toward convincing those who could be convinced that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg were in fact working for the Soviet Union. The authors also revealed that Stalin had a spy in Congress, an exasperating character who once “blazed up very much, claiming that if we didn’t give him money he would break with us,” according to his Soviet contact. To this day, Sam Dickstein is the only known U.S. representative to have served as a covert agent for a foreign power. His codename was Crook. . . . 

According to Weinstein and Vassiliev, Dickstein had earned a total of $12,000 during his time on the Soviet payroll, about $200,000 when adjusted for inflation. [Emphasis added.]

(I just want to point out that if I had a corrupt representative working for the Russians with the codename “Crook” in one of my novels, readers would complain it was a little too on the nose.)

At a recent speech while accepting an award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the legendary George Will observed, “The way you lower the temperature of politics is to lower the stakes of politics.” Similarly, if you want fewer opportunities for foreign corruption, reduce the size, power, and personnel in government. A big, sprawling government, whether it’s federal, state, or local, with Byzantine regulations and lots of staffers who can do favors or ensure paperwork gets approved, creates lots of motive, means, and opportunity for bribery and illicit favors.

Read the whole thing. As Milton Friedman once said, “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”

Related: “Where the hell does Eric Adams live?” We Staked Out Eric Adams’s House in Brooklyn.

UPDATE: Adams Charged With Bribery, Wire Fraud.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

TOMORROW’S POSTMORTEMS TODAY! Presidential Election Pre-Postmortem:

THE 2024 ELECTION IS OVER and [Donald Trump // Kamala Harris] has won. Or, perhaps it’s more correct to say that [Kamala Harris // Donald Trump] has lostthe election, because after [Trump’s // Harris’s] stumbling, error-ridden campaign, it seems inappropriate to describe [him // her] as a “winner.” It was obvious from August on that [Trump // Harris] would defeat [Harris // Trump], and it’s astounding how wrong the political experts’ predictions proved to be.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

(Via SDA.)

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Eric Adams becomes first sitting NYC mayor to be indicted by grand jury in historic federal probe: sources. “Details about the exact accusations remained unclear, but are believed to be connected to allegations of the Turkish government illegally funneling money into his mayoral campaign, according to sources. It’s also uncertain how the indictment is related to a sweeping set of Sept. 4 raids that targeted several high-profile Adams administration officials, which sent City Hall into a weeks-long tailspin as news reports emerged of investigations focused on alleged corruption by the mayor’s inner circle.”

UPDATE: “Foreign interference in our elections? It seems like pretty small beer, especially given that the Iranian mullahs may be trying to assassinate Donald Trump. That’s what I call election interference.”

MORE: (P)resident Biden, always the last to know:

Hours before NYC Mayor Eric Adams was indicted, he was hanging with President Biden at a Metropolitan Museum of Art reception after the UN pic.twitter.com/RYIGCoRVkh

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 26, 2024

IT DOESN’T FEEL PITY, OR REMORSE, OR FEAR, AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP, EVER, UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD: Terminator director recruited by British rival to OpenAI in bid to woo Hollywood.

James Cameron, the creator of The Terminator franchise, has joined forces with a British start-up developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology as it seeks to win over Hollywood.

The veteran filmmaker, who once said that AI could one day do his job, has been appointed to the board of Stability AI, which develops tools for creating images and videos using algorithms.

The appointment comes amid fears among actors, writers and animators that AI bots, which can generate photorealistic videos or mimic voices, could eventually replace them.

A wave of Hollywood actors strikes last year paralysed the film and television industry amid fears their work could be replaced by machines.

Mr Cameron, who also directed Titanic and Avatar and won critical acclaim for his use of visual effects and computer generated imagery, joins Stability AI weeks after it secured critical funding and underwent a major executive reshuffle.

Having the father of the Terminator involved with AI is right up there with GE using Agent Smith from the Matrix to promote its healthcare division during the Obamacare era:

BORDER CZAR TO FINALLY VISIT BORDER: Harris to visit Arizona border town to highlight immigration plan.

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona this week, her campaign announced Wednesday as she desperately tries to flip the script on what’s been a persistent political weakness.

Ms. Harris is scheduled to visit the border town of Douglas in the key swing state of Arizona on Friday. She will give a speech on immigration, though campaign officials did not reveal any details about the trip.

Ms. Harris last visited the border when she traveled to El Paso, Texas in 2021 as she faced pressure over the increasing number of immigrants crossing the southern border into the U.S. The trip was scheduled after Ms. Harris was widely criticized for dismissing calls to travel to the border during an NBC news interview.

The lack of visits to the border is somewhat surprising since President Biden had tasked her with overseeing the root causes of immigration, which led to her being called the “border czar.”

Polls show that former President Donald Trump has a significant advantage with voters on the issue of illegal immigration and border security. A massive influx of immigrants shattered records as millions crossed the border each year under Mr. Biden’s watch.

Crises by design:

● 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.”

● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: 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.’”

THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON: Hooters sparks fears of mass closures as chain takes drastic action over huge debts.

THE VIEW FANS ALL NOTICE THE SAME SMALL OUTFIT DETAIL AS JOE BIDEN JOGS INTO THE STUDIO:

One person wrote: ‘Biden goes on the sitcom The View wearing a joined US/Ukraine flag pin. Where is his Israel/US pin? As an American I’m sickened by the Biden Harris administration’s unfair hate for some of our allies and even more disgusting by their hate and disregard for half of America’s citizens and for the United States and all this country stands for.’

* * * * * * * * *

During his appearance on The View, Biden slammed Trump as having no redeeming social value and indicated he’d like to squash him like a bug.

Gosh, where do nutters keep getting the idea that Trump needs to be assassinated?

Whoopi Goldberg compares Trump to a bug.

Biden then imitates smashing a bug d*ad on the table.

Hosts and audience laugh.

Is this incitement to violence? Just imagine if Trump did thispic.twitter.com/BKgvVGFc7w

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 25, 2024

The Daily Mail adds that Biden “got a rock star welcome from the hosts, who fawned over him, and the audience, which gave him a standing ovation:”

‘It’s like having one of the Beatles at the table,’ The View’s Sara Haines gushed.

Whoopi Goldberg praised the president repeatedly during his 30-minute appearance on the show.

‘You were my ride or die,’ she said. ‘Thank you for everything you have done in my lifetime.’

‘He’s a kissy guy,’ Joy Behar said. ‘I like that about him.’

When Biden first walked out to the sustained applause, Behar told him of the audience: ‘They love you.’

‘It’s always better when you’re leaving,’ Biden responded.

Amidst the lovefest, “Sunny Hostin compared Biden to George Washington during this show.”

As always the consistency of the View’s hosts is astonishing: Sunny Hostin goes viral explaining George Washington’s history as a slave owner.

—The Grio, June 22nd, 2020.

Or maybe it really is: Considering that Biden bragged to one interviewer in 2006 that “My state was a slave state,” and the following year referred to then-fellow Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama as “articulate and bright and clean,” what is Hostin trying to insinuate here?

Related: Biden Tells The View Hosts He Always Planned to Only Stay for 1 Term. (Really? Roll Tape!)

Biden now claims he was always planning to only serve one term: “I saw myself as a transition president” pic.twitter.com/ILhSMH8P1r

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 25, 2024

Malarkey, to coin a phrase:

"Absolutely the president is in this race, you've heard him say that time and time again… He is the best person to take on Donald Trump." – Biden Campaign Chair @jomalleydillon

He’s not going anywhere. Good.#TrumpVance24 pic.twitter.com/kzO9EMLMuE

— Rob Smith (@robsmithonline) July 19, 2024

MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Kamala Harris Promises ‘Bold Experimentation’ like Franklin Roosevelt, but Americans Aren’t Lab Rats.

Steve responded:

Yes: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

And speaking of lefties, even Paul Krugman reluctantly admitted that it was only “the economic miracle of the 1940s“ – or as I like to call it, World War II – that ultimately jumpstarted the American economy. Prior to that, as Mark Steyn wrote, “Lots of other places — from Britain to Australia — took a hit in 1929 but, alas, they lacked an FDR to keep it going till the end of the Thirties. That’s why in other countries they refer to it as ‘the Depression,’ but only in the U.S. is it ‘Great.’”

“Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking a world?”, FDR advisor Stuart Chase wrote at the conclusion to A New Deal, the 1932 book that gave the name to the series of FDR’s statist government policies that would go on to prolong the Great Depression for years. Kamala and Walz would update that to Communist China as they nodded in agreement with the sentiment.

UPDATE: In her interview tonight with fangirl Stephanie Ruhle, Kamala is boldly experimenting with the word “holistic” in sentences:

Holistically in a holistic manner is holistically holistic. pic.twitter.com/PRIXLYdBF4

— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) September 26, 2024

(Classical reference in headline.)

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Why Do People Care That Chappell Roan Won’t Endorse Kamala Harris?

Chappell Roan isn’t endorsing a candidate for president. While this seems hardly newsworthy, the internet virtually erupted in horror that the 26-year-old musician, who shot to fame earlier this year, doesn’t want to use her frame to urge fans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I have so many issues with our government in every way,” Roan told The Guardian last week. “There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There’s problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote—vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”

Backlash to Roan’s comments swiftly proliferated online.

“Chappell roan is an embarrassment to lesbians,” one X user wrote in a post with more than 4 million views. “You can’t borrow from drag aesthetics and embrace your sexuality and then pretend the party that would criminalize our happiness is the same as the one who protects it.”

“How do you feel about tens of thousands of pregnant rape victims forced to carried their rapists’ children to term?” reads another viral response. “LGTBQ+ rights? The future of democracy? The future of the planet? Anything???”

These users weren’t alone in their outrage. One post on X detailing the interview has 74 million views and counting, with tens of thousands of comments and quotes debating Roan’s comments.

Related:

DON’T GET COCKY: Hopes of a Democratic Senate Majority Next Year Are Hanging by a Thread.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: ‘共产主义是最好的! 好好好!’ Says Tim Walz In Eloquent Rebuttal Of Alleged Ties To China.

ACE OF SPADES: David Sacks, Elon Musk: Democrats Are Programming Their Lunatics to Kill Trump.

David Sacks points out that Ryan Routh, the man who attempted to assassinate President Trump, has tweets that sound exactly like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the corporate media.

“Let’s look at the rhetoric that Ryan Routh was literally quoting on his X. He was saying that Trump was an existential threat to democracy. He was quoting what Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the mainstream media have been saying chapter and verse. If you want to ascribe motivation there, where did Routh get these ideas?”

“They’ve been endlessly amplified by the mainstream media, and it’s not like a one-off comment. It’s been the central narrative for the last several years that somehow Trump represents this existential threat to democracy, and one way or another, that threat must be eliminated. Ryan Routh simply took literally what the mainstream media has been saying.”

“When you call the guy Hitler for years and again, you create billions of impressions around that, and it’s not like a one-off statement, but it’s something that is drummed into the public over and over again. It seems like to me you are asking for trouble.”

Related: Trump’s Would-Be Assassin’s Explanation. “The man who intended to murder former President Donald Trump on Sept. 18 has explained in his own words why he wanted to do it. The words aren’t only his, though — they’re also the slogans and cliches of Trump’s Democratic opponents, virtually verbatim.”

OLD AND BUSTED: Digital Thespians.

The New Hotness? Digital journalists! Zombie Journalism — British Newspaper Rumored to Be Bringing Back Dead Art Critic in AI Form.

One of the biggest debates raging on the artificial intelligence front — especially in the entertainment industry — is about the use of AI to keep people “alive” long after they’ve left this mortal coil. A once-proud London newspaper organization is rumored to be planning to put one of its most prominent, but deceased, writers back to work.

Deadline:

EXCLUSIVE: He was one of the most feared and revered British art critics of his generation — and now, nearly a decade after his death, Brian Sewell could be about to wield his pen once more.

Deadline understands that London’s historic Evening Standard newspaper has been making plans to revive its former writer using artificial intelligence.

Two sources said AI Sewell has been assigned to review The National Gallery’s new Vincent van Gogh exhibition, titled Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.

There is something either insidious or hilarious about having art critiqued by soulless artificial intelligence. Then again, many (most?) artists and entertainers would say that living, breathing critics don’t have souls either.

I’d be curious to see how an AI journobot programmed with the leitmotifs of a critic who passed on a decade ago would respond to today’s ever-so-woke art world.

In the world of film criticism, Bosley Crowther was The Man at the New York Times for decades, until he was put out to pasture because he hated 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde with a white-hot passion, and was suddenly seen by the paper’s core leftist audience as an ancient reactionary. Speaking of the latter, note this from further into the Deadline article that Stephen Kruiser quoted above:

Sewell, who died in 2015 at the age of 84, worked for the Standard for more than 30 years and was renowned for his biting critiques.

Known as Britain’s poshest art critic, he described a Damien Hirst exhibition as “detestable” and said Banksy should have been “put down at birth.” He once said there has “never been a first-rank woman artist” and “only men are capable of aesthetic greatness.”

C’mon Evening Standard, make this happen – and then program an AI letters to the editor reader; both will have plenty of fun dealing with exploding British crania!

RFK AND NUZZI: A Bunny Short of Fatal Attraction?

Did Robert Kennedy Jr return to his philandering ways? Did an ambitious reporter set him up? Or was this a mutual ‘Fatal Attraction’ scenario stopped short of the boiling bunny?

Better question: Which entertainment platform will make the inevitable TV movie — Hallmark or Cinemax?

Unlike the original Fatal Attraction, given that it’s RFK Jr. we’re talking about, he could well be the one boiling the bunny in this relationship.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Slower airplanes ‘could cut fuel waste.’

After hours cooped up on a flight, most passengers are more than ready to be back on the tarmac. But they may soon be on board even longer thanks to a report by scientists at the University of Cambridge, which has recommended that planes should fly slower to burn less fuel and reduce emissions.

The report said that if aircraft flew 15 per cent slower, fuel burn would reduce by 5 to 7 per cent. This would add 50 minutes to a flight from London to New York, which is at present about seven hours.

The report concedes that “one drawback of reducing speed is the potential negative impact on airline productivity and passenger acceptance, especially for longer flights”, but says that flying slower is one of three “bold measures” the aviation industry could adopt to dramatically reduce fuel burn.

Evergreen: Environmentalists make good movie villains because they want to make your real life worse.

YES, MUCH MORE: MSNBC Columnists Wants More Gun Talk From Kamala. “I absolutely agree with [Alexander] Nazaryan that Harris should be talking more about guns, even if we have very different reasons for wanting to hear more from the candidate on the issue.”

MANCHIN REFUSES TO ENDORSE KAMALA:

Kyrsten Sinema explains why gutting the filibuster to pass Roe V. Wade is a terrible idea for the left:

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden’s UN Remarks Are a Sad Ending to His Political Career As He Slurs, Struggles and Lies.

Joe Biden spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in what is likely his last big world speech to close out his 50 years in political life.

Unfortunately, he’s going out after having left the country in shambles. He’s leaving because he was shoved off his reelection bid by his own party, who knew he was going to lose.

His condition was much in evidence as he spoke, despite the fact that he had a teleprompter.

A handler even had to indicate to him where the podium was that he was supposed to speak from.

He was slurring up a storm and you could see how heavily he was relying on the teleprompter. And he seemed to be getting even older even as he detailed some of the things that had happened over those 50 years.

He claimed that we brought Osama bin Laden “justice.” But he had been against taking bin Laden out at the time, even as he now appeared to be trying to take credit for it.

He spoke about the decision to pull out of Afghanistan and said it was the right decision, but he took no responsibility for the botched way in which he conducted the withdrawal, which led to the death of 13 Americans.

Flashback: Biden Thinks No One Made Mistakes in Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal: Report.

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: Former AG Barr ‘dumbfounded’ at DOJ’s decision to release letter of Trump would-be assassin. Bill Barr: ‘It served no purpose other than to risk inciting further violence.’

Exactly. That’s why it was released.

THE NYC LOCKDOWN: an orgy of hypocrisy.

‘The only way I could do this job for the city was if I had some way to blow off steam every now and then’, he is recorded saying. Poor Dr Varma. We all remember what a tense time it was. Who could blame the man for getting off his head on ecstasy and going to a couple of orgies here and there?

Certainly not the Atlantic magazine, which published a piece last Friday with the headline, ‘Public-health officials should have been talking about their sex parties the whole time’. And no, this was not satire.

Dusting off NYC’s Covid rule book from 2020, the Atlantic notes that city guidance ‘discouraged – but did not forbid – group sex’. The piece helpfully points out that ‘Varma explained that he’d partied responsibly, noting “Everybody got tests and things like that”.’ There was no word from the Atlantic as to whether or not Varma managed to get his plums sucked by fellow orgy participants when the city guidelines were to only have group sex while ‘wear[ing] a face covering’. Quite the logistical challenge.

* * * * * * * *

In one recording, Varma states that right before he helped push through ‘the vaccine mandate’ in NYC in November 2021, he had a ‘wild night’ involving a dance party on a boat and then a rave with 200 other people underneath a bank. ‘Everyone was rolling, we were all taking molly [MDMA] and everybody was so high, and I was so happy because I hadn’t done that in like a year.’

Sadly for some New Yorkers, not all raves are created equal. There were clearly those attended by the likes of Varmar, which were reported on sympathetically by the New York Times. A 2021 article on the ‘thriving’ illegal rave scene quoted a DJ whose SoHo party was shut down, although the police were ‘very kind’ and gave everyone time to leave before issuing any fines.

The NYPD were less lenient towards raves in Queens – where the plebs live. One raid on an illegal rave in 2020 led to four arrests and over a dozen criminal-court-appearance tickets for misdemeanour offences. Other gatherings of the non-privileged classes were treated similarly harshly. In Borough Park, Brooklyn, cops cited five religious institutions for ‘holding services with more than 10 people’. Each violation came with a $15,000 fine.

The original subhead of the Atlantic piece was “At least it would have shown that they’re relatable.” Tell that to the people who couldn’t visit loved ones in nursing homes, go to funerals, lost their businesses due to lockdown, and/or had their kids’ education setback for years. As Charles Cooke wrote in 2021, “Of all the ills in all the world, duplicity is the hardest to recover from. And, despite the best efforts of our feckless smart set, there can be no herd immunity from its effects.”

UPDATE: Your children couldn’t go to school in 2020, but the elites could attend sex parties.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Son of Ryan Routh, accused in Trump assassination attempt, arrested for child pornography.

NFL LEGEND BRETT FAVRE, 54, REVEALS HE IS BATTLING PARKINSON’S DISEASE: “Favre — who played in the NFL for 20 years — has previously spoken openly about suffering ‘thousands’ of concussions on the football field.”

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENTS: Zelensky joins Putin, campaigning and advocating for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania. “President Trump was nearly murdered a mere week ago by a dirtbag who proclaimed a fanatical devotion to Ukraine’s war. Now Zelensky has turned up to try to knock President Trump out another way? He should sit this one out. This is nothing if not a bad look. But the irony of it is amazing. Both Zelensky and Putin, locked in a multi-billion-dollar war financed on the Ukraine side by the U.S. are now openly supporting Harris together.”

Exit question, featuring Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro: