HUNTER BIDEN’S LAWYER RESPONDS TO BOMBSHELL TEXTS: My Client Was Too Doped Up on Crack To Be Trusted.

Hunter Biden was too doped up on crack cocaine when he invoked President Joe Biden’s name in threatening texts to a Chinese businessman to be taken seriously, his attorney said in a statement Friday.

The attorney, Chris Clark, said Hunter Biden’s “verifiable words or actions” took place “in the midst of a horrible addiction” and therefore have “no connection to anyone in his family.” The statement is an apparent reference to a July 30, 2017, text message Hunter Biden sent to an official with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy threatening that he and then-former vice president Joe Biden would come down on him with their full weight if he did not fulfill his “commitment.”

“We would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” Hunter Biden said in the message. “I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Clark’s move to discredit his own client appears to be an effort to shield the president from the implications of the message. If Joe Biden was sitting next to his son as he sent the message as it suggests, it would be a blow to his repeated claims that he never discussed overseas business deals with his son. Ten days after Hunter Biden sent the message, a Chinese official associated with CEFC China Energy wired two payments totaling $5.1 million to the first son.

Or to put it another way:

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Photos Place Hunter Biden At Father’s House The Day He Invoked Dad’s Name to Chinese Business Partner. “If Joe Biden was sitting next to his son as he sent the message as it suggests, it would be a fatal blow to the president’s repeated claims that he never discussed overseas business deals with his son, and the photographs of Hunter Biden at what appears to be a family gathering at the Delaware home is the strongest indication that he was in close proximity to his father when he threatened the Chinese businessman. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.”

FRIEND OF TITANIC SUBMERSIBLE PASSENGERS SAYS DEBRIS ON SEA FLOOR IS CONFIRMED WRECKAGE FROM SUB. “A landing frame and a rear cover was recovered from the submersible. So that confirms it’s the submersible.”

Related:

NEW: OceanGate releases a statement on missing submarine:

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul Henry Nargeolet have sadly been lost…These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of… pic.twitter.com/OQriL9eNym

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 22, 2023

UPDATE: The Coast Guard confirms: Missing Titanic submarine found, crew killed in deep-sea catastrophe, Coast Guard says.

MORE: US Navy: Implosion of Titan submersible happened “days ago.” “A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search said. The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.”

(Updated and bumped.)

UNEXPECTEDLY! Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy Says “It’s Entirely Possible” For Phoebe Waller-Bridge To Take Over Indiana Jones Franchise.

Kennedy spoke with Variety about the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny film, where she was asked if Disney and Lucasfilm see potential for Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her character, Helena Shaw, to carry on the franchise.

Kennedy informed the outlet that “it’s entirely possible.” However, she also added, “We’re not having any of those conversations right now. We’re just focused on finishing this with Harrison.”

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Walgreens’ Locked-Up Shelves Ripped Off by Thieves.

Stores from Safeway to Home Depot have been increasingly locking items behind screens to deter shoplifting in the Bay Area and across the country. Customers and staff in San Francisco stores recently described the security measures as irritating, with it taking several minutes to access basic items like toothbrushes or high-value items such as liquor and power tools.

Walgreens manager Chanh Luu said the group entered the Bernal Heights store at around 8 p.m. and began smashing the shelves in two of the store’s aisles, where laundry soap and dental products are locked away behind plastic shields due to rampant shoplifting in the city. The shields were torn away so the thieves could get their hands on the items but were already replaced by Tuesday when The Standard visited.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Thrown to the Wolves — Transgender Ideology and the Corruption of Medicine.

Rufo: What do you predict for the future of transgender medicine? Will it continue to gain ground, or will it all fall apart?

Physician: I don’t know. I pray that there is a change. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is what puberty blockers do to children. This medication is called a “gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist” and it comes in the form of monthly injections or an implant. And because it simulates the activity of this hormone, it shuts down the activity of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is this almond-sized structure in your brain, it’s one of the most primal structures we have, and it controls all the other hormonal structures in your body—your sexual development, your emotions, your fight-or-flight response, everything. But it shouldn’t be described in such cold physiological terms because your hypothalamus is not just a hormone factory. It’s this system that allows you to stand in awe of the beauty of a sunset, or to hear the sounds of orchestral music and to stop whatever you’re doing and want to listen. And I always think that if someone were to ask me, Where is it that you would look for the divine spark in each individual? I would say that it would be somewhere “beneath the inner chamber,” which is the Greek derivation of the term hypothalamus. To shut down that system is to shut down what makes us human.

Read the whole thing.

RANDI WEINGARTEN CONTINUES TO FAIL UPWARD: Teachers’ Union President Who Pushed Lockdowns Appointed to DHS School-Safety Panel.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Democrat Donor Arrested for Starting Massive Fire Democrats Blamed on Climate Change.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Judge Finds Hunter Biden Guilty Of Being ‘A Lovable Little Rascal With A Heart Of Gold.’

PUSHING BACK AGAINST WEIMAR AMERICA: Riley Gaines Humiliates the President of Human Rights Campaign.

Dem witness: "There's been this news article about men that think they can beat Serena Williams in tennis. And it's just not the case. She is stronger than them." @Riley_Gaines_: "Both Serena and Venus lost to the 203rd ranked male tennis player." pic.twitter.com/MSAnV6IA5t

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 21, 2023

Related: Ted Cruz is forced to ask Democrat same basic question five times — but she refuses to answer: ‘It’s a yes-no question.’

JEFF DUNETZ: The President Who Didn’t Get Credit For Creating Strong Alliance With Israel.

BEN DREYFUSS: Let’s Discuss The Left Wing Psychopaths Who Think The Titanic Tourists Deserve To Die.

We, Princes of Maine, Kings of New England, live in the future of tomorrow and have medicine and shelter and Grubhub, so our empathy machines are not as directly responsible for our immediate survival as they were for people who knew that if their buddy didn’t help them out, they would get eaten by hyenas. But that doesn’t mean empathy totally just for funsies. On a societal level, it’s pretty important that people be generally against unnecessary suffering, and setting life and death aside, there are lesser but still important benefits to the social contract.

(I’m paraphrasing, so if you are really interested in some of this evolution stuff, I think you should check out your local library.)

The abnormal psychopaths, refusing to admit that they are indeed psychopaths, would argue that their empathy machines are, in fact, the ones that are doing the purest evolutionary function. They are caring about people like them because a world that cares about people like them is easier to live in for people like them, and they are a person like them. History has shown us that this can lead to very bad things like war and death and prejudice and those travel adapters you have to bring with you when you go to Europe, but there is a bit of a certain “ok, sure, in some limited ways,” you have to hand them.

But one of the defining characteristics of normal people is that our empathy machines, fortunately for society, are not so singularly transactional. We care about people even when it isn’t immediately obvious that there is something in it for us.

The normal people on Monday did what the normal people do. But the abnormal people didn’t do that.

They heard the news, read the stories, took in all of the information that made you sad, and their first reaction was: anyone who can afford a $250k tourist trip deserves to die.

Or worse — they voted for people who have (R)s after their names: The New Republic Decided to Go There on the Titanic Submersible Story.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Washington State gas prices now highest in U.S.; experts point to new climate legislation.

Washington unseated California this week as the state with the most expensive gasoline.

Prices here have been steadily climbing since January, reaching $4.91 per gallon of regular gas on average this week, surpassing the Golden State, the longtime national leader at the pump, according to a Seattle Times analysis of retail prices compiled by AAA. The average price in King County exceeded $5 a gallon on Wednesday.

Experts say Washington’s price surge is linked to the state’s latest, most-ambitious efforts to battle climate change, specifically the new carbon-pricing program launched this year that charges businesses for the greenhouse gases they emit. The first two quarterly auctions of emission allowances raked in more than $850 million.

Now oil companies are choosing to pass on the compliance fees, the experts say. Those costs add up to about 50 cents per gallon for the consumer, according to the Oil Price Information Service, a Dow Jones company that collects fuel-pricing information for many clients, including AAA. The state Department of Ecology, which oversees the carbon-pricing program, says it’s aware of oil companies passing on the costs but has no power to stop it.

Flashbacks: Why Aren’t Democrats Dancing for Joy About Sky-High Gas Prices?

In the service of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats have long openly worked to raise the price of fossil fuel energy. They have done so by proposing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, higher leasing fees, and other measures to jack up costs so people burn less of it. This is why Barack Obama said, in answer to a related question about electricity, that his energy plan would make prices “necessarily skyrocket.” This is why Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna praised BP’s CEO less than six months ago for pledging to reduce oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. Reductions in oil production and rising gasoline prices are part of the Democrats’ agenda and the Paris climate agenda.

There’s even more to it than that. Over the past decade, the Democrats’ overt hostility toward fossil fuels has even driven companies in the industry to sideline production, purely for public relations purposes, while prioritizing meaningless, politically correct carbon emissions goals. How can Democrats suddenly feign outrage at their incredible success in influencing the industry?

Is it a mystery why Democrats aren’t doing a sack dance and celebrating the salvation of planet earth?

There’s the small matter of their political survival, of course. It would be unseemly — like doing a jig at an Irish funeral — to celebrate other people’s pain. And it would cost many Democrats who are secretly jubilant about high gas prices their political careers.

Instead, Democrats are pretending to look for a way to “ease consumers’ pain.”

In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”

And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”

● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.

● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”

● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”

JON GABRIEL INTERVIEWS HOT AIR’S ED MORRISSEY (Video):

‘WE SAW PEOPLE DEFECATING IN THE STREETS:’ Ron DeSantis takes his war with Gavin Newsom to San Francisco as he rips homelessness and influx of drug addicts.

Newsom has continuously attacked DeSantis for his policies in Florida – even releasing an ad earlier this year urged Americans not to vote for the governor with the tagline ‘don’t make America Florida.’

DeSantis’ team is using that same rhetoric in return, releasing an email with the one-minute video with the subject line: ‘Don’t California Our Nation.’

‘We’re here in the once great city of San Francisco,’ DeSantis said in a straight-to-camera video shot on the streets of the California city.

‘We came in here and saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin. We saw people smoking crack cocaine,’ he detailed. ‘And you look around and the city is not vibrant anymore. It’s really collapsed because of leftist policies. And these policies have caused people to flee this area.’

Newsom claims that DeSantis’ policies are too far right, but DeSantis says on the flip side that his California counterpart’s laws have led to a collapse of the Golden State.

‘They don’t prosecute criminals like they do in most parts of the country and the wreckage has really been sad to see,’ DeSantis said in the video. ‘I’ve seen so many businesses boarded up. I’ve seen so much riff-raff just running around. It just shows you these policies matter. Leadership matters.’

‘They are doing it wrong here,’ he added.

Related: DeSantis diagnoses San Francisco’s problems but the Mayor hates the medicine.

Recently, California politicians have been obsessed with engaging in political sparring matches with Ron DeSantis. Ostensibly, they are angry Californians are leaving their state en masse and moving to Florida. San Francisco Mayor Breed was clearly upset DeSantis pointed out the drugs and feces in the streets, and shot back with her own retort.

https://twitter.com/NvrBackDown24/status/1671643075498713088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1671643075498713088%7Ctwgr%5E69ab0dfa499391d8bbb900199fc034163428e4e1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fjustmindy%2F2023%2F06%2F21%2Flondon-breed-responds-to-ron-desantis-n2384731

Breed’s response is a textbook definition of what Victor Davis Hanson once dubbed “The Bloomberg Syndrome.” As VDH wrote in early 2011 when then-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg failed to adequately remove a foot and half or so of global warming from his city streets:

It is a human trait to focus on cheap and lofty rhetoric rather than costly, earthy reality. It is a bureaucratic characteristic to rail against the trifling misdemeanor rather than address the often-dangerous felony. And it is political habit to mask one’s own failures by lecturing others on their supposed shortcomings. Ambitious elected officials often manage to do all three.

The result in these hard times is that our elected sheriffs, mayors, and governors are loudly weighing in on national and global challenges that are quite often out of their own jurisdiction, while ignoring or failing to solve the very problems that they were elected to address.

Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.

And quite possibly, a fair amount of “bad luck” to strike as well.

MATT GAETZ RIPS INTO JOHN DURHAM: ‘You Won’t Tell Us Who Gave the Orders Because You’re Protecting Those People!’ (Video.)

Gaetz:  Have you ever heard of the Washington Generals?

Durham: The Washington Generals? Yes.

Gaetz: And they’re the team that basically gets paid to show up and lose, right?

Durham: (Laughing) I’m sure that the players who exert blood, sweat, and tears don’t view it that way, but you might.

Gaetz: I think they do. I think they do because the job of the Washington Generals is to show up every night and to play the Harlem Globetrotters, and their job is to lose —

Durham:  Oh, I’m thinking — I’m sorry — of a different, I was thinking of a different team.

Gaetz: Yeah, so their job is to lose, and I’m kind of wondering, and it just seems so facially obvious, that it’s not what’s in your report that’s telling, it’s the omission — it’s the lack of work you did. And for the people, like the chairman, who put trust in you, I think you let them down, I think you let the country down, and you are one of the barriers to the true accountability that we need.

Durham: Do I get to respond to that or comment on that? Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever investigated a crime —

Gaetz: I don’t know that you have. You didn’t investigate these, Mr. Durham. How about Andy McCabe? Did you charge him? Did you investigate him?

Jordan: The gentleman’s time has expired. The witness can respond, then we’ll move on to our last —

Durham: I don’t know, Sir, whether you’ve ever had occasion to try to investigate crimes under the rules and regulations, and under the Constitution that we’re bound by. We can gather evidence, in particularly lawful ways, but we can’t charge people, because we might think something —

Gaetz: It’s not just that you didn’t charge — it’s that you didn’t investigate. You didn’t investigate the Mueller team wiping their phones and you won’t tell us who gave the orders because you’re protecting those people!

As a regular observer of hearings like this, I couldn’t help but notice the pivot toward lambasting Durham from the Republican side. It seemed to occur while the committee was in brief recess to take a floor vote (regarding whether or not to move forward with censuring Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the committee who had his own tangle with Durham earlier in the day). Was that a strategic move to undercut arguments that Republicans were just glomming onto Durham to generate talking points and defend the honor of their beloved former president (as some of the Democrats on the committee insisted)? Or is something else afoot here? Was Durham indeed playing the role of Washington General? Controlled opposition to appease the calls for accountability while running cover for the “deep state”?

It’s hard to know anymore who’s playing who, and who’s running what op. I guess that’s what years of government officials acting in bad faith and refusing to be straight with the people who elect them and pay their salaries breeds.

And as for accountability, well, I hope no one’s holding their breath.

Read the whole thing.

HOUSE VOTES TO CENSURE ADAM SCHIFF.

DEVELOPING: Huge Explosion Rocks Paris, Over 35 Injured.

BREAKING: House Votes to Censure Adam Schiff.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Bud Light May Now Have a Lawsuit on Its Hands After Shareholder Values Tank.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Geraldo Rivera Says He’s Off Fox News’ The Five.

DURHAM: You better believe Obama, Biden, and Comey knew that this was a Hillary dirty trick. “So why didn’t Durham charge Comey for withholding evidence? That’s a good question, to which the answer is likely: he’d never have won a conviction on it. It’s clear, though, that Comey did precisely that and helped quarterback a gross intrusion of federal law enforcement into the political process, and did so with knowing malice.”

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: In San Francisco, Government Failure Erases Billions of Dollars of Commercial Real Estate Valuations.

San Francisco is proving to be ground zero in the nationwide commercial real estate collapse. While the values of offices and malls are tumbling in many US cities, the losses in San Francisco are more dramatic and, unlike elsewhere, have extended to hotels. City and state government mismanagement have played a major role in destroying billions of dollars in assessable real estate values, but the role of these policies is easily overlooked.

San Francisco’s plight was thrown into sharp relief on June 5, when the owner of two downtown hotels containing a combined 2,925 rooms announced that it would cease making payments on a $725 million mortgage backed by the properties. Commercial bond investors will now have to find a company willing to purchase the hotels at a small fraction of their estimated 2020 valuation of $1.561 billion.

Gooder and harder, San Fran.

A CENTURY OF BUFF: US is Testing Brand New Engines to Fly Its B-52s for a Full Century (Video).

OUT ON A LIMB: Lab Leak Theory: 1, Misinformation Cops: 0. Confirmation of Wuhan scientists as “patients zero” makes the lab leak theory look likely—and the misinformation police look like fools.