OLD AND BUSTED: President Ash Carter.

The New Hotness: President Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused 9/11 Mastermind, Accomplices.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked a plea agreement made days earlier with the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and two alleged accomplices.

The plea agreement, announced Wednesday, would have spared the three men from receiving the death penalty.

Instead, Austin relieved the overseer of the war court at Guantanamo Bay on Friday and announced in a memo that he had assumed control as the convening authority for military commissions.

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote in the memo addressed to retired Brigadeer General Susan K. Escallier.

“Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself,” he said. “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the main conspirator in al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and two co-conspirators had agreed to plead guilty with the U.S. military justice system.

In more news from President Austin: US sending aircraft carrier, warships and fighter squadron to Middle East as region braces for Iranian retaliation.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group, which is currently operating in the Gulf of Oman, according to a statement from Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh.

In addition, destroyers and cruisers capable of ballistic missile defense will also be sent to the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea. The statement does not say which warships have been sent, but two US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea took part in intercepting the barrage of strikes Iran launched against Israel in April.

Austin also ordered the deployment of a fighter squadron to the region, Singh said.

President Austin jokes aside, who is running the show in DC with Biden being non compos mentis? Because otherwise:

How it started: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.

—Time magazine, October 28th, 2020.

How it’s going: “Jill Biden is becoming the Edith Wilson of America.”

—The Boston Herald, July 6th, 2024.

HOW IT STARTED: In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

How it’s going: San Francisco Mayor Orders City Staffers to Offer Homeless Bus Tickets Out of Town.

For several years, San Francisco has struggled with crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, which was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The degradation and talk of a “doom loop” has turned away tourists and driven out businesses.

In 2022, the Coalition on Homelessness sued the city, accusing it of violating its rules for removing camps. At one point, the city was hit with a wave of suspicious lawsuits from homeless residents who claimed that city workers had illegally disposed of their valuables – electronics, “priceless” baseball card and stamp collections, art, and “business prototypes.” In early 2023, a federal judge blocked the city from clearing camps.

That changed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in June. During a debate last month, Breed vowed to take action against the sprawling homeless camps that have taken over city parks and sidewalks. “Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties,” she said, according to the San Francisco Standard.

In addition to directing staff to offer relocation services to the homeless, Breed is also requiring police officers, firefighters, and paramedics to carry handouts with information about the city’s relocation services. The city will also establish a tracking system that will publish data about the effectiveness of its relocation efforts.

I’m so old, I can remember when San Fransisco leftists purported to be against bussing.

QUEEN KAMALA CROWNED: Kamala Harris is officially crowned as the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump.

OLD AND BUSTED: From Bauhaus to Our House.

The New Hotness? From Bauhaus to Our Skatepark! Mark Judge test rides The Beautiful New Carver Bauhaus Skateboard.

It’s a perfect fit for a skateboard. Because the German Bauhaus Movement (1919-1933) combined fine art and functional craft, many of its most lasting works were not necessarily painting and sculpture, but furniture, craft and home design. Marcel Breuer, Marianne Brandt, and others created the minimalism that would influence the furniture and utensils of the 1950s-60s, and architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were the forefathers of the International Style that still exists in architecture.

The Carvehaus art design is two circles, red and blue, intersecting, with a curve of yellow where they overlap. It signals pure early-20th century modernism. As is always the case with Carvers, the patented deck, truck and wheels are top flight—industrial, indestructible, archetypal and beautiful; Bauhaus masterpieces themselves. For me modernism has also always had a profound spiritual power. Although the movement is considered an artistic break from the past, and it was, there’s also something godly and familiar in the shapes and designs. Carl Jung was right that there are archetypes that have always existed that we don’t create but can discover. It’s why Piet Mondrian’s squares seem both new and familiar, why Picasso hits us with something new yet also buried deep in the psyche, why Rothko’s shapes evoke not just radicalism but contemplation. It’s why minimalism in music such as the composer Philip Glass can be both soulful and surprising. As Chesterton said, the Christian can believe in both fate and free will.

As Mies van der Rohe never said, God is in the gnarliness. Read the whole thing.

HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.

—Time magazine, October 28th, 2020.

How it’s going: Welcome to the Harris-Biden Recession.

—Matt Margolis, PJ Media, today.

Flashback: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.

IS HARRIS BURNING? ‘Bully’ Kamala Harris ‘berated staff,’ left them in tears after berating them with ‘F-bombs,’ intern told never to make eye contact: report.

Kamala Harris “throws around F-bombs” and constantly berated her staff when she was California Attorney General, according to a shocking report.

An unearthed 2019 op-ed from professor Terry McAteer published in California newspaper The Union describes the “eye-opening” month his son Gregory spent as an intern for Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

McAteer, a Democrat with generational political ties to the party, claimed his son was subjected to a “side of Kamala Harris which the general public does not know”.

“Harris vocally throws around ‘F-bombs’ and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others,” McAteer wrote.

“As AG… Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, ‘Good Morning General’.

Don’t worry though, the AP has an explanation for all of that. She’s an “adroit code-switcher:”

Kamala Harris has range. She can grill nominees for the Supreme Court or meet with foreign dignitaries, then pivot to hosting a Diwali celebration or dancing enthusiastically alongside an HBCU-styled marching band.

It is a dexterity that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian-American to serve as vice president, developed as a person of color to navigate the corridors of power or Main Street in a nation where race and identity influence how one is received or embraced.

Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is an adroit code-switcher, a term that can include deliberately adjusting one’s speech style and expression to optimize relatability and ensure she gets a message across.

Kamala Harris morphed into Hilaria Baldwin so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Hillary Clinton Meets With Kamala To Help Her Improve Her Black Accent.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Hillary Clinton-run group helps fund Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

Related:

Hillary funds those dedicated to spewing venom, destroying priceless artwork, and making everyone’s life absolutely miserable.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

WEIRD:

She is SOMETHING ELSE https://t.co/DJGg7iRZvc

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) August 1, 2024

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: How Harris’ Gaza stance could win back young climate voters.

HE WOULD HAVE BEEN OUT MUCH SOONER HAD HE BEEN A WNBA PLAYER: American journalist Evan Gershkovich released in biggest East-West prisoner swap since Cold War.

The American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been freed from a Russian jail as part of the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War.

Sixteen prisoners were handed over to US officials on Thursday in a deal struck between the White House, the Kremlin and several other European nations.

Mr Gershkovich, 32, a Wall Street Journal reporter, has been in Russian custody since March 2023, when he was arrested on a reporting assignment and accused of spying for the American government.

Paul Whelan, a British-American former US marine, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British-Russian activist, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American reporter, are among the other Western prisoners released.

Russia received eight of its own nationals in exchange, including Vadim Krasikov, an intelligence agent know as the “bicycle assassin”, and Artem and Anna Dultsev, who were arrested living as deep cover spies in Slovenia.

The deal involved more Western countries than any other prisoner swap in history, and saw the release of Russian prisoners in Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Norway.

Gershkovich went out head held high:

In contrast, Creepy Joe Biden made an appearance today: Biden tells freed prisoner’s 13-year-old daughter: ‘No serious guys until you’re 30.’

And he brought along a serious case of Trunalimunumaprzure:

SHE’S IN NO WAY TIRED, THE NEXT GENERATION: Kamala Harris Unveiled A New Accent Last Night And It’ll Make Your Skin Crawl.

Kamala Harris unveiled a brand new voice during her Atlanta campaign stop last night – her first as the presumptive democratic nominee – and it rocked this great country to the core.

If you thought her cackle was bad, strap the hell in, because this one is a doozy.

For those who missed it – and I don’t blame you, because I certainly did – this Kamala Harris rally was … something. It was an event, for sure.

I’m talking rappers on stage, asses twerking left and right, right in peoples’ faces, and, of course, Kamala taking hold of the microphone and introducing America to a new accent.

And buddy, we noticed:

Kamala Harris panders to Atlanta voters with a new voice: pic.twitter.com/qTXu4lbsc9

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 31, 2024

Classical reference in headline:

21st CENTURY QUESTIONS: “A woman on her knees sobbing after being punched hard in the face by an opponent who has characteristics of a biological male. She may have a broken nose. Is this sport now? Is this the Olympic ideal?”

Because that is what we have just witnessed. This is apparently justifiable. Angela Carini, a world and European Championships silver medallist, pulled out of a fight with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif after 46 seconds.

I don’t know how she stepped in the ring in the first place. She is no fragile flower but she said she had never been hit so hard before. Through her tears she said she was there to honour her father, and she was a warrior but just had to stop.

On Monday, Theodore Dalrymple wrote, “Cultural Decay Can Hardly Go Further.” He was referring the opening of the Olympics, but that headline neatly sums up much of what we’ve seen afterward as well.

Related: Female volleyball player, 17, left paralyzed with brain damage by transgender opponent who ‘cackled with delight’ after knocking her to ground.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE LEFT HATED “SELECTED, NOT ELECTED” PRESIDENTS:

It’s VDH, so click over and read the whole thing.

WELL, THAT’S ONE WAY TO PANDER TO MUSLIM-AMERICAN DEMOCRATS: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and two other terrorists awaiting trial on Guantanamo Bay strike plea deals. KSM, “the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and two other terrorists being held on Guantánamo Bay will plead guilty as part of a deal that’ll allow them to skirt the death penalty, prosecutors said Wednesday.”

WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF THE BBC UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Shame of the BBC: How top TV presenters from Jimmy Savile to Stuart Hall and Huw Edwards captured the trust of the British public — while harboring a secret dark side.

ANOTHER SIDE TO KAMALA HARRIS:

Gregory [McAteer] had an eye-opening experience in Kamala Harris’ office that none of us expected. For his sake, the month could not pass quickly enough. Needless to say, he was delighted to work in Feinstein’s office for the rest of the summer.

Four short episodes I would like to share of his month-long internship for Kamala Harris:

Senator Harris vocally throws around “F-bombs” and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others. The staff is in complete fear of her and she uses her profanity throughout the day.

As Attorney General, Senator Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General.”

Never once during the month-long internship did Harris introduce herself to our son (as he was only in an office with 20 paid employees) and staff was too intimidated by her to introduce him. The only acknowledgment was a form letter of “thanks” signed by Harris given to him on his last day of service.

Gregory was also given instructions to never address Harris nor look her in the eye as that privilege was only allowed to senior staff members.

Sounds a bit, umm, weird to me.

H.D. MILLER: Through the Orange-Bitcoin-Glass.

This past weekend, my youngest daughter and I headed off to the big hoo-haw Bitcoin Conference downtown, courtesy of my oldest daughter who has been interning this summer with BTC Inc., the sumptuously overstaffed company that runs the conference. We wanted to see Trump and RFK, Jr. speak, and so my oldest daughter found us two free tickets, worth a combined street value of $1398.00 in fiat money.

Like many Americans, I kick myself hard for not putting money into Bitcoin back in the day. Unlike most Americans, however, I learned about Bitcoin very, very early on, in 2010, when fellow posters in online forums started touting it as the next big thing when the price was somewhere around 50 cents per coin. Of course, in response to this great discovery, I immediately and mercilessly mocked anyone who said they’d bought Bitcoin. I’m the guy standing on the dock when Columbus returned, calling him a liar.

In my favor, I was not alone in mocking Bitcoin buyers, almost all sensible people were doing that, because everyone who was into Bitcoin in 2010 was doing so to buy illicit drugs, or so it seemed.

Welp. Here we are. It’s the future and the stoners and autistic edgelords have won. Bitcoin 2024 has taken over the Music City Center and forced various politicians to come and kiss the disembodied ring of the electronic God Emperor, Big Daddy Bitcoin.

Read the whole thing.

BREAKING: Senior Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Assassinated on Iranian Soil.

Related:

US pressed Israel not to strike in Beirut. So Israel decided to eliminate a top terrorist on US most wanted list, in Beirut. Choice of target likely made it difficult for Washington to object. https://t.co/SZHxtMnsdO

— Israel Radar (@IsraelRadar_com) July 30, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE MOS EISLEY CANTINA: What I Saw at ‘White Dudes for Harris.’

Imagine if Republicans put on a celebrity-studded event called “White Dudes for Trump” that raised $4 million. Imagine the endless op-eds. Consider the B-roll that outlets like NPR or MSNBC might use: Klan rallies, January 6, clips from The Handmaid’s Tale, perhaps.

The Democrats get to do segregation because they’re doing it ironically. They’re slightly poking fun at the left-wing orthodoxy that everyone gets to do identity politics except white guys. Of course, they wouldn’t want people to think they were poking too much fun at the idea, in which you ask a black guy to open your white guy event, where almost no speakers actually talk about making life better for white men.

But is “Haha, don’t worry, we’re the good ones” a winning strategy for appealing to white men who haven’t decided to vote for Kamala yet? Probably not.

More on a similarly headlined piece by Declan Leary at the Spectator:

I did not expect a three-hour Zoom call to awaken my sense of racial solidarity. It was, admittedly, an impressive showing: nearly 200,000 virtual attendees racked up more than $4 million in small-dollar, blood-money donations. (Every so often, a cartoon rendition of the vice president in blue pantsuit pops up over the bar tracking contributions, lifting her arms robotically. A big gold star flashes behind her with giant script: KAMALA.) I had only been to one other rally this size before — and that one didn’t end too well.

The organizer is something of a surprise. The internet is awash with photos of a Democrat apparatchik named Ross Morales Rocketto, a great hulking mass of progressive energy, but he is not the man I see before me. Ozempic works miracles. The man bun is another story.

Morales Rocketto seems aware of the discomfort with which many will approach a whites-only boys’ club devoted to electing the first Jamaican-Indian female president. He laments the fact that “throughout American history, when white men have organized, it was often with pointy hats on.” He is evidently unaware that he is raising money for a descendant of slave owners.

Also at the virtual cantina, Luke Skywalker himself:

Hamill was campaigning hard for Biden as recently as May, happy to pretend that Biden was healthy enough and mentally fit to run for a second term, until the party told him to drop the pretense and seamlessly pivot to Harris, unburdened by what has been, to coin a phrase.

MARK HEMINGWAY: The Media Won’t Tell You Political Corruption Defined Kamala Harris’ Affair With Willie Brown.

Brown, who was repeatedly investigated by the FBI for corruption, was far more involved in Harris’ career ascent than appointing her to two board positions. He was a kingmaker in California, and he was heavily involved in helping Harris get elected as San Francisco district attorney. Brown didn’t do this entirely out of the goodness of his heart. Harris was working for the previous district attorney, Terence Hallinan, and quit when she got passed over for the No. 2 position in the DA’s office.

Hallinan found himself as the subject of criticism from other city officials, but others suggested the controversy was manufactured. “This whole thing is about Kamala Harris,” a source close to Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Cross one of Willie’s friends and there will be hell to pay.” Eventually, Harris ran for DA with Brown’s powerful backing — a former Brown aide managed her campaign, and Brown played a key role in her fundraising, which was incredibly successful. After starting the race polling a distant third, she won the election.

Once in office, Harris then dropped or pled out corruption charges against friends of Willie Brown that Hallinan had been pursuing. There were a number of Brown’s friends let off the hook, but most notably this included a sweetheart plea deal for a notorious city contractor caught defrauding the city by using inferior recycled concrete in sensitive projects such as parking garages and the Bay Bridge. This compromised the structural integrity of those projects and endangered lives. But Harris dropped all the fraud charges and accepted a guilty plea on a single count involving an environmental violation.

“Harris’ office had no explanation for why it dropped the concrete case,” reported the Chronicle. A better explanation is that the contractor in question was generous with campaign donations and had previously been popped for making an illegal $2,000 donation to, yup, Willie Brown.

Read the whole thing.

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Mark Kelly: Astronaut, senator, VP short-lister … ex-vitamin huckster.

As Jim Geraghty writes in the WaPo:

In 2015, former astronaut Mark Kelly rode a motorcycle onto a stage in China, with an American flag on one handlebar and the flag of the People’s Republic of China on the other. After dismounting, he told the audience before him how terrific Shaklee vitamins were, and how he took Shaklee Vitalizer on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2011, an out-of-this-world event honored on the Shaklee Facebook page.

* * * * * * * *

Nice gig, Senator. It makes your $55,000 speech in 2018 for Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, then the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, look respectable. (Kelly returned the money amid his 2019 Senate candidacy; the United Arab Emirates’ human rights record at that time and since is … bad. Lots of politicians equivocate about U.S. alliances with dubious Middle Eastern allies. But it’s unclear how many have accepted five-figure checks from them.)

No doubt, some Kelly fan is scoffing and insisting this is no big deal, and that surely Donald Trump — the guy behind Trump University — is the last person who could criticize Kelly for making a quick buck on an unsavory endorsement deal. Then again, the whole point of the Democratic ticket is to be a clearly better option than Trump, not just a different flavor of the same willingness to smile for a quick buck from chumps.

If Harris chooses Kelly, the Trump campaign would likely try to tie Kelly’s vitamin-pushing days to the Chinese investors in Kelly’s balloon company. The campaign ad labeling Kelly a “Mark-churian candidate” practically writes itself. But there would be no need to gild the lily; the absurd image of Kelly on the motorcycle, touting Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink, is thoroughly cringe-inducing.

Since the whole point of Kamala’s “JD Vance is weird” campaign is to reflect away from her and the left’s myriad quirks (and to begin the demonization process that all Republican candidates are subjected to by the left), it could be a nice form of turnabout for the Trump campaign to play up Kelly’s brand of hucksterism. “There’s no getting around it,” Geraghty concludes. “For a stretch, Kelly’s name, image and reputation — largely built at NASA — was for sale. Choose carefully, Madam Vice President.”

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Norah O’Donnell to Quit the ‘CBS Evening News’ After the Election.

HOW IT STARTED: Ron DeSantis Sends Two Planes of Illegal Immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

—Fox News, September 14th, 2022.

How it’s going: The wealthy sanctuary state that’s going broke under its $1.8 trillion migrant ‘time bomb.’

—The London Daily Mail, today.

Flashback:

NO THANKS, I’M STILL SOCIAL DISTANCING: Meet the Trans-Identifying Male Felons of the Washington State Women’s Prison.

UPDATE: Well, now we know who was dialing into “White Dudes for Harris” last night:

Here's Kamala bragging about her work to ensure "every transgender inmate in the prison system" has access to taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries. pic.twitter.com/YRukQk7b6y

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 30, 2024