THE TRUTH STINGS:
IRONY: Struck by how the Biden administration just 3 months ago openly called for Netanyahu to resign and now it is Joe Biden who is resigning and BIBI is at the White House one of Biden’s last meetings with a world leader before becoming a full on lame-duck President. pic.twitter.com/d7As2oQWQV
— Ron M. (@Jewtastic) July 25, 2024
Related: Netanyahu’s Meeting With Lame Duck Biden Was As Inconsequential As Anyone Expected.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Kamala? “We’ve heard an agonizing amount about Kamala’s ‘honeymoon’ period. Harris and her fellow Democrats have been like giddy newlyweds, but that excitement might come to a screeching halt when they see polling numbers.”
CHANGE? Rupert Murdoch is going to court to push his 3 more liberal kids out of his Fox and News Corp. media empires. “Murdoch’s three other children, who are said to have been blindsided by the move, have reportedly hired their own legal team to contest their father’s plans.”
A NEW LOW SO FAR: Hamas Lovers Hit New Low in D.C. Protest.
SO LONG, CHRYSLER? Stellantis ready to kill brands and fix U.S. problems, CEO Tavares says.
Stellantis is taking steps to fix weak margins and high inventory at its U.S. operations and will not hesitate to axe underperforming brands in its sprawling portfolio, its chief executive Carlos Tavares said on Thursday.
The warning for lossmaking brands is a turnaround for Tavares, who has maintained since Stellantis was created in 2021 from the merger of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA that all of its 14 brands including Maserati, Fiat, Peugeot and Jeep have a future.
“If they don’t make money, we’ll shut them down,” Carlos Tavares told reporters after the world’s No. 4 automaker delivered worse-than-expected first-half results, sending its shares down as much as 10%.
“We cannot afford to have brands that do not make money.”
Tavares didn’t mention Chrysler by name but the brand’s entire lineup consists of Pacifica minivans and existing inventory of the 300 sedan, which ceased production late last year.
WOEING: *NOW* Is It Cool If We Call Our Starliner Astronauts Stranded? “Whatever the difference is between ‘an abundance of caution’ and ‘we can’t admit failure yet,’ I have the feeling we’re not more than a few weeks from NASA showing us exactly what it is. If NASA’s Thursday press conference is anything to go by, that is.”
#RE-FUNDTHEPOLICE! [VIP]: You Won’t Believe How Desperate San Francisco Is for Cops. “If you thought, ‘Maybe San Francisco will just throw more money at the problem,’ pat yourself on the back. But I’d bet you’d never guess how much money.”
SHOT: Obama doesn’t believe Kamala Harris can beat Trump, which is why he hasn’t endorsed her.
Chaser: Obama Plans to Endorse VP Harris for President Soon.
I guess we’ll know soon enough which story is closer to the truth but, in the meantime, enjoy the ongoing chaos.
HUGE: Kamala Harris Receives Bipartisan Condemnation For Her Handling of the Border.
Swapping out Biden for Harris was supposed to calm jittery congressional Democrats in swing districts.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Fix Is in (Again): Dems Just Can’t Help Cheating. “The DNC seems to have timed the announcement to roughly coincide with Biden’s Oval Office address last night — a midweek tactical equivalent of the infamous Friday Night News Dump.”
GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: Ford keeps having to repair customers’ new cars and trucks. Its profit is plunging and its stock tumbled. “The company did not break out how much extra money it set aside to cover warranty expenses, but said ‘most’ of the $1.2 billion drop in operating income in the quarter came from that increased expense.”
THE COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Great. The FBI Is Run by a Conspiracy Theorist.
CYBER THREATS: North Korean hacker got hired by US security vendor, immediately loaded malware. “KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was ‘using a valid but stolen US-based identity’ and a photo that was “enhanced” by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4’s blog post called ‘an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor.'”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Corpse-in-Chief Has Got to Go. “The best case is that Biden’s brain is as impaired as we thought but that maybe his physical condition hasn’t declined as rapidly as it appears.”
COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:
A Liberty Bell monument (not the original) was among the federal monuments attacked and vandalized with pro-Hamas messages at the leftist “Day of Rage” yesterday in D.C. pic.twitter.com/b4wLc2D1bh
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 25, 2024
The lack of consequences tells you everything you need to know about who is actually running things.
IT’LL NEVER HAPPEN: 10 Questions We Dare the Media to Ask Kamala Harris.
CHANGE? The ‘Iron Lady’ of Venezuela Threatens to Unseat Its Autocrat.
Ms. Machado, 56, the newest leader of Venezuela’s opposition, has struck fear into the hearts of the country’s ruling party. In a matter of months, she has emerged from the political sidelines to build a powerful social movement capable of bringing thousands of people to the streets — and perhaps millions to the ballot box.
She is not the one running for president, but she is the driving force behind the main opposition candidate, a little-known diplomat named Edmundo González.
The mobilization Ms. Machado has catalyzed follows years of political apathy in Venezuela, where the government of President Nicolás Maduro has crushed protests and arrested dissidents, helping to spur an enormous exodus from the country.
An effort backed by the Trump administration to install a young legislator named Juan Guaidó as interim president failed, and last year Mr. Guaidó fled to the United States.
Now, Ms. Machado, a conservative former member of the national assembly once rejected by her own colleagues, has not only corralled Venezuela’s fractious opposition behind her, but has also captivated a broad swath of the electorate with a promise for sweeping government change.
Maduro won’t go quietly, that much is certain.
HMM: Elon Musk pushes back on reports that he’s donating $45M a month to super PAC backing Trump. “‘What’s been reported in the media is simply not true,’ Musk said in an interview with conservative commentator Jordan Peterson. ‘I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump.'”
The money would be nice but don’t be surprised the media got it wrong yet again.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The ‘Free Palestine’ Nazis Get More Unhinged With Each Protest. “Keeping in mind that these people are in sync with the woman who is the presumptive Democratic nominee, let us move on to just how bat**** crazy they are.”
OUCH: Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount.
Tuesday’s results also set the stage for what might be a more challenging second half of the year. For one, comparisons will be tougher as the second half of last year had Google nearly recovered from an earlier advertising slump. Google also didn’t fully ramp up its spending on AI infrastructure until well into the second half of 2023; capital expenditures in the first half of 2023 were barely half of the $25.2 billion the company has spent in the first half of this year.
That spending won’t be taking a breather any time soon, even as Google has pared back other costs and even brought its head count down by more than 1,300 positions in the most recent quarter. Alphabet said Tuesday that capex will be at or above $12 billion a quarter for the second half of the year, likely leading to a total outlay of more than $49 billion for the year—84% higher than what the company has averaged annually over the past five years.
“Look, obviously we are at the early stage of what I view as a very transformative area,” Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said during Tuesday’s earnings call when asked by an analyst about the company’s AI investments. He added that “the risk of underinvesting is dramatically greater than the risk of overinvesting for us here,” not mentioning the record amounts of capex that tech rivals Microsoft, Amazon.com and Meta Platforms are pouring into the same thing.
Maybe it is similar or maybe it isn’t. But AI right now reminds me of the late ’90s dotcom bubble — lots of corporate spending on the latest stuff that few people have any clue how to monetize.
MUSTN’T OFFEND THE DEMOCRATS OF DEARBORN: The Veep Sweepstakes: No Jews Need Apply.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Grant For Social Justice Org For Illegal Aliens = Widespread Child Sex Abuse. “One organization that took federal money was Austin-based Southwest Key, an organization that claims to be on the frontier of social justice, and now they’re accused of allowing wildspread child sex abuse to flourish on their watch.”
THEY DON’T HONESTLY GIVE A DAMN THAT THEY’RE GETTING CAUGHT IN REAL-TIME: Here’s the Liberal Media’s Latest ‘Cheap Fakes’ Gaslighting About Kamala Harris.
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