KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Let’s Take Some Time to Dream About Fauci in an Orange Jumpsuit. “Fauci is the kind of guy who can make one long for the transparency and honesty of the Nixon days. Nixon, by the way, was president when Fauci first went to work for the federal bureaucratic behemoth.”

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Newsom Challenges Biden For Censor-In-Chief Title.

Nearly one year since Newsom signed AB 587 into law to “protect Californians from hate and disinformation spread online,” California’s attempts to legitimize its attacks on the First Amendment are in full swing.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” Newsom said in a September 2022 statement.

The law requires Big Tech companies to submit reports to California Attorney General Rob Bonta detailing how they define terms such as hate speech, racism, extremism, radicalization, disinformation, misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference and what they do to enforce censorship policies related to those categories. Starting Jan. 1, 2024, companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube will be required to disclose how many posts were deemed worthy of suppression, how many people viewed those posts before they were censored, and whether they reinstated the contended post following an appeal from the offending user.

Notably missing from the law’s requirements is a description of what the attorney general’s office plans to do with this information — besides blasting it out to the public. Given Bonta’s history of shamelessly demanding the CEOs of Meta, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit curb the “spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms [that] has led to a proliferation of conspiracy theories, political violence, and threats to democracy ahead of the 2022 midterm elections,” it’s not a stretch to say he intends to use the data to pressure Big Tech into censoring even more content that the state deems wrongthink.

The real benefit of this law, as far as California Democrats are concerned, is that its mere existence will encourage social media platforms to do whatever they think Democrats want them to do. Not that most of them need much encouraging.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Judge Approves Oregon’s ‘Terrible’ New Gun Control Law.

RUSSIA: Man tries to firebomb Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow.

According to reports, a man in Moscow was apprehended on Monday evening after trying to throw a Molotov cocktail at the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square. The incident did not result in any damage to the mausoleum.

The suspect, identified as 37-year-old Konstantin Stachukov, was detained at the scene.

Authorities have opened a case against him for “disobedience to the lawful demand” of an officer. While the motive behind his actions is still unknown, it has been noted that the same individual had previously been detained in May for carrying Molotov cocktails in Red Square.

Currently, there is no available information regarding the motives of the arsonist.

Other than Lenin having been a mass-murdering communist?

SAY ANYTHING: Biden Tries to Take Credit for Something Trump Did.

“One year after its launch, our Administration’s 988 suicide and crisis hotline has helped 5 million Americans when they needed it most,” Biden tweeted.

“One year ago, we launched 988 — a national network of crisis centers to answer calls and texts from folks who need rapid mental health care,” a separate tweet noted. “Mental health affects all of us. And I remain committed to ensuring that every American has access to support when they need it.”

There’s just one rather significant key detail that Biden neglected to mention: the hotline was created back in 2019 when Donald Trump was president.

Maybe Biden forgot.

HE’S NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS BUT IT’S ALIENS: Announcing UFO hearing, House lawmaker says, ‘We’re done with the cover-ups.’

The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing next week on “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAPs, more commonly known as UFOs, Rep. Tim Burchett confirmed Monday.

“We’re done with the cover-ups,” the Tennessee lawmaker declared in a Twitter post announcing the hearing, which has been scheduled for July 26.

The announcement comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., last week submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would mandate government records related to UAPs “carry the presumption of disclosure.”

With Americans’ ever-increasing interest in mysterious and unexplained flying objects, Schumer said, “It’s long past time they get some answers.”

Mysterious lights in California sky identified as satellites
“The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena,” he said in a statement. “We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena but to create a pipeline for future research to be made public.”

Faster, please.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Biden Admin Awards Massive No-Bid Contracts to Dem-Connected Firm with $600k Tax Lien. “The Biden administration has awarded private companies hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to house illegal aliens amid an unprecedented surge at the southern border. One of the major recipients is a Democrat-linked logistics company that owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes.”

I’m not saying Biden opened the border just to benefit his tax-dodging buddies…

THIS HAS ACTUALLY BEEN GOING ON FOR QUITE A WHILE AND WITH GOOD RESULTS: Google and Microsoft Rush to Bring AI to Medical Field.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

NEW: The Walgreens at 16th/Geary in San Francisco has chained up the freezer section ⛓️

Workers said normally shoplifters clean out all the pizza and ice cream every night. They’re usually hit 20x a day. The whole store is virtually locked up. @KPIXtv

h/t @greenbergnation pic.twitter.com/lfFWmkLWdo

— Betty Yu (@bett_yu) July 18, 2023

The future of shopping in America’s Democrat-run cities will eventually evolve into the Soviet model of paying a clerk first at one counter, then waiting for your goods to be delivered at the next counter. Shoppers won’t be allowed near any of the merchandise. But that’s what happens when you elect Soviet-minded politicians.

Our remaining advantage over the Soviet model is that enough of America still works that there are goods behind the counter.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Biden Crime Family Had Over 20 Shell Companies Laundering Foreign Payments.

WOW: World’s first drug to regrow teeth is now in clinical trials.

VICTORIA TAFT: Portland Has an Apparent Serial Killer. His Accomplice May Be the Governor.

PRIVACY: Bill that would allow French police to locate suspects by tapping their devices is up for a vote. “The proposed law plainly stipulates that the procedure can be executed ‘without the knowledge or consent of its owner or possessor’ but is limited to suspects involved in terrorism, organized crime and other illegal activities punishable by five or more years in prison.”

Well, for now. Once the technology is mandated, its use will expand.

Plus: “In addition to activating location services, the measure would also allow investigators to activate a suspect’s phone camera and microphone.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Last Election. “The critical nature of the 2024 election makes the probable lineup of rival candidates all the more curious. Can the Dems find no one but Joe Biden to stop the MAGA? The under-appreciated effect of Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy on progressives is that by locking them in a crisis mode, they lack time to evolve or renew their strategy. They go into each new battle with the same old talking points and the same geriatric leadership. Like Mahan’s ‘fleet in being,’ they comprise a threat that cannot be ignored and the Dems must send the old Mighty Hood out to meet them. The end point of all these forced moves is an extraordinarily unpalatable dilemma. The establishment nightmare is Biden loses; but perhaps an even worse dread is a situation where Biden wins.”

#METOO: I Owe my Economics to Robert Heinlein. “As individuals, we have free will. I cannot reliably tell you what decisions any individual is going to make on any given day. But if you give me a group of a thousand people, and a set of institutional rules, I can make statistical predictions about their behavior with high confidence. Businessmen maximize their profits. Politicians seek reelection. When we aggregate across a large enough number of individuals, the ‘randomness’ of free will starts to look more and more predictable. But how far can we take it? How much of human nature can we reduce to lines on a chart?”

HMM: Ron DeSantis Proclaims Potential Running Mate.

NIMBY: Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up. “But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining.”

I’ll believe that the “clean energy transition” is necessary when the people who keep telling me about the necessity of the clean energy transition start acting like the clean energy transition is necessary.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Meta’s Threads Is Already Fraying. “Threads also might have a top end on their user base. In order to sign up, users must first have an account with Meta’s Instagram. To get on Instagram, users have to pony up their phone number and agree to have their personal data anally probed each night by Zuckerberg. I, who have tried every new Twitter killer that anyone ever launched, said, ‘No way, Jose.'”

COOL. NOW ZERO OUT THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (AND A FEW OTHERS, WHILE YOU’RE AT IT): House Appropriations Subcommittee Zeroes Out California High‐​Speed Rail. “Inclusion of the anti‐​HSR provision in the budget is unlikely to kill the project on its own, but perhaps it will trigger a renewed debate about high‐​speed rail at the federal level. Such a conversation is essential because if the project continues along its current trajectory, its sponsors will ultimately require tens of billions of federal funding. And the California project is seen by advocates as the first part of a nationwide high‐​speed rail network that would require hundreds of billions in federal funding. In 2021, Representative Seth Moulton (D‑MA) introduced a bill that would have spent $205 billion of federal funds on a nationwide high‐​speed network. Had that bill passed, the total cost would likely have multiplied amid cost overruns and operating losses.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: How Long Can DeSantis Take the High Road Against Trump? “Whether DeSantis can effectively get in the mud while battling Trump remains to be seen. He doesn’t shy from confrontation, but his style is vastly different from Trump’s. He’s the boxer while Trump is the street brawler. Boxers can win a lot of fights, but they can also be dropped by one punch from a brawler.”

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: If Moms for Liberty ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. “In breakout sessions, Moms learned ‘how to run for school boards — and if they win, how to advance their agenda even when in the minority,’ Pondiscio writes. ‘More than half of the 500 candidates Moms for Liberty endorsed for local school board elections last year won their races.'”

IT’S ALSO THE POINT: The Excuse for Dropping White House Cocaine Case Is a Slap to Our Intelligence.

The flagrancy of the hypocrisy is on purpose, to rub our faces with the fact that the elites can and will get away with most anything.

THERE GOES BIDEN AGAIN, RESTORING OUR PRECIOUS NORMS: Biden’s FTC Punished Twitter For Seceding From The Censorship Complex.

The Federal Trade Commission inappropriately pressured an independent third-party auditing firm to find Twitter had violated the terms of its settlement agreement with the FTC, a motion filed last week in federal court reveals. That misconduct and the FTC’s own repudiation of the terms of the settlement agreement entitle Twitter to vacate the consent order, its lawyers maintain.

This latest development holds significance beyond Twitter’s fight with the FTC, however, with the details providing further evidence that the Biden administration targeted Twitter because of its owner Elon Musk’s support for free speech on his platform.

I “felt as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it had started,” a CPA with nearly 30 years of experience with the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) testified last month. The FTC’s pressure campaign left EY partner David Roque so unsettled that he sought guidance from another partner concerning controlling ethical standards for CPAs to assess whether his independence had been compromised by the federal agency.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Yes, Really: Texas University Offers Degrees in ‘Victim Studies.’

XI’S CCP IS REVERTING TO FORM: China’s wanton economic self-destruction.

Beijing has labeled this year the “Year of Investing in China.” Regional leaders have sent delegations around the world to drum up interest, with little to show for it. At a World Economic Forum event in the Chinese port city of Tianjin last month, China’s premier Li Qiang told a round table of business leaders, “I want to take this opportunity to affirm China’s commitment to opening up.” While this week, Xi Jinping himself was quoted by state television as calling for greater foreign cooperation in trade, investment and financial innovation.

It all smacked a bit of desperation after months of Xi trying to bring foreign companies to heel. This including questioning staff at consulting firm Bain and Co and raiding and detaining staff at the Beijing office of the due diligence company Mintz Group. Both of these companies deal in information, making the sort of insights into the market and about would-be partners that are essential in the opaque world of Chinese business. The CCP seems intent on closing down sources of information it does not control. China has barred its companies from buying from US chipmaker Micron Technology and has introduced a vaguely worded anti-espionage law, which allows for the inspection of electronic devices and baggage. It has also raised fears that business activities long regarded as routine, such as market research, could be criminalized. All of this has added to the perception in foreign boardrooms that doing business in China has become very risky. There are whispers that the country is becoming uninvestable.

Plus: “There’s long been a view in Beijing that foreign companies would put up with almost anything for a slice of the China market, but calculations are changing, and many are now concluding that Xi’s China is simply not worth the ordeal.”

Previously: “People talk about ‘deglobalization,’ but the proper term is ‘reglobalization minus China.'”