GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS: People pounce after MSNBC-linked Mehdi Hasan suggests imagining ‘if liberals or the Dems had … an actual propaganda arm.’
Democratic Party operatives from CBSNBCABCPBSNPRNYTWAPOCNN could not be reached for comment.
(Updated and bumped.)
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Sheldon Whitehouse: Dianne Feinstein Should Not Resign No Matter What Because We Need Judges Confirmed. “The fact is simple: if Senator Feinstein resigns, Mitch McConnell gets to decide whether Democrats have a Senate Judiciary majority.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Hunter’s sweetheart deal goes bust.
The chief thing to keep in mind as you savor the soap opera of Hunter Biden’s faux prosecution is that Hunter’s story is inseparable from the story of dear old dad, “the Big Guy,” Mr. 10 percent, i.e., Joe Biden, president of the United States. Yesterday, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty in a Delaware court to a sweetheart deal.
How sweet? Recognized medical authorities say it should come with a warning to diabetics. It’s so sweet, in fact, that Hunter, though he failed to pay more (way more) than $1 million in income tax, was going to be allowed to plead guilty to a couple of misdemeanor charges, avoid all jail time and — added bonus — have a felony gun charged dropped, swept under the carpet or otherwise “disappeared” just like an enemy of an Argentinean junta.
Sweet though it was, Hunter decided that the deal was not quite sweet enough when prosecutors held open the possibility of future liability for the famous once-and-future laptop owner. For her part, District Judge Maryellen Noreika was troubled by the prosecutors’ linking the tax charges to the gun charge: what did they have to do with one another? Was what they were asking her to do even constitutional?
So the plea bargain turned out to be no bargain. Judge Noreika gave the two sides thirty days to “clarify” the matter. Result: the miniseries will proceed for at least another season. The best part came on Tuesday when a lawyer on Hunter’s team rang up the court pretending to be from a GOP congressional committee. “You know that damaging file we sent to the court? Can you please take it down?”
Really? Yes really. Miranda Devine has all the details. Judge Noreika was not amused but it is not yet clear what the outcome or upshot of that “insane” (I quote a former federal prosecutor) behavior will be.
Why, it’s as if: The fix was in for Hunter Biden — until a hero judge stepped up.
FASTER, PLEASE: Nuclear rocket will cut journey time to Mars in half.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Abbott has done more to secure border than Mayorkas.
While President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is suing Texas for refusing to remove floating marine barriers in the Rio Grande, people continue to ask how many more congressional hearings it will take until Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas finally acts on the authority and responsibilities delegated to him by the president. As of now, it seems that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is more fit for the job of DHS secretary than Mayorkas, considering he has done much more to defend our southern border.
Well, that’s because Abbott isn’t trying to “fundamentally transform America” as these Obama retreads are aiming for:
● 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.”
UPDATE: Broadcast Networks Are Furious That Texas Buoys Actually Deter Illegal Aliens.
HOW IT STARTED: Democrats May Want to Panic About Hunter Biden Now.
—Matt Margolis, PJM, yesterday afternoon.
How it’s going: Meltdown at CNN as Hunter Biden’s plea deal falls apart.
—The Washington Examiner last night.
I AM BECOME DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF BRANDS: Bud Light Brewer Lays Off Hundreds of U.S. Workers.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): From the comments: “Right…some jerkwad in Marketing makes a terrible decision and the first people are impacted are the people who would have told them not to do it.” Biden’s America in a nutshell.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMER AMERICA: Obama Comes Out Against Parent Attempts To Keep Highly Sexualized “LGBTQ+” Books Out Schools, Calls It “Banning.”
The fate of the plea deal was up in the air throughout the day, with the two sides clashing over what the deal would mean for future charges against Hunter (whose lawyers seemed to want him to get a Get Out of Jail Free card), then hashing out a clarified agreement, before US District Judge Maryellen Noreika said she needed more information before giving the deal her approval.
For a White House desperate for the Hunter mess to go away*, today’s chaotic proceedings would have been an unpleasant surprise. Not that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was prepared to deviate from her script: “Hunter Biden is a private citizen,” Jean-Pierre said in today’s briefing, repeating her stock response to any questions surrounding the president’s son. Normally she waits for the rare question about the president’s son to deliver the line. Today, she got it out of the way before any hands went up.
Perhaps the most damning part of the hearing for the president was Judge Noreika’s skepticism about the deal, which she described as possibly “unconstitutional,” “not worth the paper it is printed on” and “not standard, not what I normally see.” Judge Noreika’s skepticism appears to center on the fact that the deal could offer Hunter immunity from future prosecution even as possible foreign agent charges loom over the first son.
Today’s messy proceedings were the Hunter Biden saga in microcosm. The White House, the Democratic Party and some in the media are desperate for it to go away and assuming it will, but the inconvenient set of facts relating to the president’s son’s chaotic conduct make for a bigger story than they hoped, or realized.
* Coincidentally, their Democratic party operatives with lavalieres also want it to go away as well: ‘Dark Chapter’; ABC, NBC Fret GOP ‘Not Ready to Move on’ From Hunter Despite No Evidence.
The latter link found via Ace of Spades who adds, “Video at the link. It’s a hoot. When will the media move on from urging the GOP to move on?”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Secret Service Says Eight-Ball Of Cocaine Found In Courtroom Chair Hunter Was Sitting In Probably Left By Tour Group.
WARREN HUART: The Abbey Road Story — A History Of Recording Innovation (Video).
Earlier, at EdDriscoll.com:
● ‘If These Walls Could Sing’ opens the doors to Abbey Road Studios.
● ‘Recording The Beatles:’ Looking Back at the Deepest Dive Ever Into the Sound of the Fab Four.
And my review of the new book co-written by Huart: How Complete is the New ‘Home Studio Recording: The Complete Guide?’
MORE BLOWBACK FROM 2020’s CRAZINESS: Mom Who Let Child Play at a Park Finally Removed From Unfit Parent Registry.
The appeal by Sarra (whose full name is being withheld to protect her identity) was handled by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) and the Goldwater Institute, two nonprofit organizations that help defend individual rights. They argued that Arizona’s actions were unconstitutional.
“But instead of responding to this brief, DCS decided to just permanently remove Sarra’s name from the list,” says Adi Dynar, an attorney at the PLF. “We suspect they didn’t want this kind of ruling on the books, because that affects the other 81,000 names.”
Perhaps the state thought it was better to lose one battle than to deal with an army of parents demanding justice.
The case against Sarra was this: In November 2020, as COVID-19 raged, she let her son and his friend, age 5, play at the park while she shopped for a Thanksgiving turkey.
This seemed prudent. The grocery was asking shoppers not to bring in kids, and the park was one that Sarra had played in herself as a child, about five blocks from the store. What’s more, a friend happened to be teaching a tai chi class there. After about 20 minutes, the friend called Sarra about a police officer who was talking to her son.
When Sarra arrived at the park, the officer told her that she had committed negligence by leaving the kids alone, even for a short length of time in a safe, public place.
Earlier: They got covid 100% wrong.
WELL, IT DEFINITELY BEATS THE ALTERNATIVE: Greatest rock’n’roll showman Mick Jagger turns 80.
JAMES LILEKS’ WEDNESDAY REVIEW OF MODERN THOUGHT:
It’s hot. I use the AC in my car when I’m leaving the office. Turn it high, open the windows, blast out all the hot air. Today the temp in the car was quite hot, so I opened the moon roof as well, and hit the Le Mans curve at a speed that was probably a tad over the limit. It’s a great patch of road, with gentle curves, and it’s fun to punch it. I don’t overdo it, because I saw a Highway Patrol car in a secret location six years ago and now expect it every time, but it’s a liberating feeling to rocket out of downtown on the open road, warm wind streaming out, cold air blasting my face, something exhilarating on the music system. The whole thing lasts maybe a minute.
It is, I know, terribly irresponsible, but now and then a man has to channel his inner Captain Pike: hit it.
The use of air conditioning, and a car, makes me a bad person, I know. Which brings me to something related.
Read the whole thing.
MARK JUDGE: The end of the Washington Post.
The Washington Post is collapsing. Once one of America’s great media institutions, the paper lost $100 million last year and has shed 500,000 subscribers. Recent reports reveal that Post owner Jeff Bezos is going to be more hands-on to try and save the paper.
Yet trying to get employees of the Post to do their jobs is like trying to get dogs to play baseball. Dogs just aren’t interested in baseball, and the breed of journalist now at the Post is just not interested in journalism. Always a liberal paper, the Post is now pure propaganda.
Earlier this year, veteran Post reporter Bob Woodward, who of course became famous for his Watergate coverage, blasted the media and the young reporters at his own paper for their falling for “Russiagate,” the hoax that President Donald Trump was working with the Russians. Woodward called the Steele dossier, the basis for that story, garbage, and told the Columbia Journalism Review that the media had to “walk down the painful road of introspection.” Woodward then said this: “To be honest, there was a lack of curiosity on the part of the people at the Post about what I had said, why I said this, and I accepted that and I didn’t force it on anyone.”
At the Post the problem is not as much a lack of curiosity as much as the desire to push a certain narrative. This is where my personal experience with the paper comes in.
Democracy dies in Democrat propaganda.
ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER LAYER IN THE HUNTER BIDEN STORY:
If you put the best possible—least scandalous—face on the Hunter Biden saga, it’s still repellent. A Ukrainian oligarch hired Hunter and paid him a fortune in hopes of influencing his vice-president father’s attitude toward Ukraine—and Joe Biden was just fine with it. Biden and his team falsely dismissed Hunter’s incriminating laptop in 2020 as Russian disinformation not to cover up any crimes but merely to keep embarrassing-but-true information from the American voting public during an election year.
That’s the defense, and it already cops to more sordid official wrongdoing than Donald Trump has ever been found guilty of.
But considering all the facts, the real story has the potential to get much worse. In 2014, Joe Biden was vice president of the United States and the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine, with a particular interest in addressing Ukrainian corruption. That year, Hunter Biden was hired by the notoriously opaque Ukrainian energy company Burisma to serve on its board. Despite Hunter’s having no work experience or education in energy exploration and extraction, Burisma paid him a salary of $83,000 a month. (About this arrangement, the State Department declared at the time that there was no conflict of interest.)
While Hunter was working for Burisma, Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian leaders to fire prosecutor general Victor Shokin—whose investigation into the company was, according to Shokin’s former deputy, “dormant” at the time.
America’s Newspaper of Record knows how it will all end: McCarthy Says 783rd Impeachable Offense By Biden Will Be The Last Straw. “At publishing time, Republicans confirmed they will soon retaliate against the Bidens by dragging cabinet members before a committee so Jim Jordan can angrily furrow his brow at them.”
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