WHEN YOUR HOT TAKE IS JUST TOO GOOD TO CHECK:
This is the current headline and editor’s note above a completely rewritten story: We got it wrong: More people moved out of New York and California than Florida in 2021. “This story has been updated to correct an error regarding Census data. In 2021, an estimated 469,577 people moved out of Florida, while 674,740 people relocated to the state. An earlier version of the story switched those numbers.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Team Biden Doubles Down on Its Soviet Censorship Freak Flag. “Then the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu came ashore in America. The Dems found it impossible to hide their fondness for totalitarianism. It’s been one headlong rush to the commie cliff ever since.”
RESTORING TRUST IN OUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS: 56% Of Voters Agree Biden ‘Likely’ Took Bribes In Office.
Whistleblowers allege President Joe Biden and his family have taken up to $30 million in illicit bribes and payments from foreign sources tied to China, Russia and Ukraine. Biden denies it. Do Americans believe him? No. By more than 2-to-1, they say they believe the whistleblowers, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.
The online poll of 1,341 adults, taken July 5-7, asked respondents how likely is it that the claims are true? The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.
The results weren’t close. Americans, by 56% to 27%, called Biden bribery charges “likely,” rather than “unlikely.” Further broken down, the “likely” responses included 34% who called it “very likely” compared to 21% who called it “somewhat likely.” Among the “unlikely” responses, only 12% said it was “not at all likely,” while 15% termed it “not very likely.”
He didn’t get rich selling books, Jack.
BIG BROTHER REALLY IS WATCHING YOU: Massachusetts Health Department Covertly Installed COVID Spyware on Phones.
FIGHT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Jim Caviezel: I Lost Two Agents Over ‘Sound of Freedom.’ “I lost my agents over this. Yep, 17 years, 15 years. I lost my lawyer over this, and now I understand why all these actors didn’t want to do the movie because of this. Listen, you do ‘Schindler’s List’ 50 years later, you’re a hero. Try doing ‘Schindler’s List’ when the real Nazis are right there. Understand how that becomes more dangerous?”
THET CAN’T EVEN COUNT ALL THEIR OWN GRANDKIDS: How Many Bidens Live in the White House, Anyway?
CBS NEWS TODAY: Biden’s “grandfatherly appeal” may be asset overseas at NATO summit.
Bonchie at RedState yesterday: The Bat Signal Goes up to Defend Biden for Disowning His Young Granddaughter.
I WATCHED A REPLAY OF THE LAUNCH ON MONDAY BUT DIDN’T NOTICE THE RECORD-SETTING PART: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches for record-breaking 16th time, lands on ship at sea.
HEALTH: The One-Time Shot That Could End Type 2 Diabetes. “Fractyl Health aims to address the limitations of current treatments by developing one-time gene therapy for type 2 diabetes. The company’s approach involves delivering an artificial gene to the pancreas, continuously producing the GLP-1 hormone. By doing so, there would be no need for weekly injections, and the therapeutic effects of the hormone could be sustained for years.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Jewish camp leaders challenge carry law due to anti-semitism. “Concerns of racism or anti-semitism or anything else like that should be taken seriously and people should be empowered by the constitutionally protected rights granted them by being human beings to combat them, with words when appropriate and with bullets when their lives are threatened.”
SOCIALISM IN 24 SECONDS:
This is so surreal. The socialist Spanish minister uses a private jet to attend a climate conference. 100 metres before the venue she gets out off the limo and takes a bicycle. The security cars follow her. pic.twitter.com/NkSF3hJrOH
— David Vance (@DVATW) July 11, 2023
MATT VESPA: What Trump’s Legal Team Just Filed Might Not Please Special Counsel Jack Smith.
It’s news that no one wants to hear regarding the trial over the alleged mishandling of classified materials by Donald Trump. It’s the second indictment slapped against the former president, with the first being related to Trump’s hush money agreement with ex-porn star Stormy Daniels. That legal entanglement is a circus drenched in partisan politics. The legalese etched in the Daniels indictment brought forward by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is viewed as exceptionally shoddy, but there will be a trial next year, nonetheless. That’s the point: damaging Trump through death-by-a-thousand legal cuts could work.
This classified materials indictment filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith is also a partisan witch hunt, though harder to dismiss as Trump did engage in reckless activities with these sensitive documents. He made the case for the overly zealous lawyers at the Justice Department easy. It was preventable, but that’s history. Smith claimed he wanted a speedy trial though he asked for a four-month delay in setting the date. Now, given the circumstances, Trump’s legal team is asking to delay the trial until after the presidential election.
I’m a rip-the-bandage-off-all-at-once kind of guy, so the delay doesn’t make much sense to me, particularly while trying to run for office with “legal entanglements like this around your neck,” as Vespa put it.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: If It’s Tuesday, We Must Be Stuck With Biden Forever (Unless We Aren’t). “I’ll have to ask you to forgive me for sounding like I’m suffering from Sudden Onset Multiple Personality Disorder — that’s a thing, right? — because I’m only following a news cycle that spins and flips around like two fat kids riding a seesaw mounted to a trampoline inside a bouncy house.”
GET WOKE…: Not Just Bud Light: Anheuser-Busch’s Other Beer Brands See Sales Crash.
Sales of Michelob Ultra fell by 4.3 percent in the week that ended July 1 compared with last year, and Busch Light was down 8.5 percent, the New York Post reported. Both brands are, like Bud Light, owned by the Anheuser-Busch brewing company.
“Budweiser trends have been slipping for a very long time, but it’s the Michelob Ultra negative numbers and now Busch Light negative trends that are most alarming to me,” Bump Williams, whose consulting firm ran the numbers from NielsenIQ data, told the Post. “They were very healthy prior to April 1.”
Sales of Bud Light the week prior, ending on June 24, were 27.9 percent lower than during the same period last year. The brand’s troubling numbers came despite Bud Light giving out rebates for free beer ahead of Independence Day weekend.
Maybe they should try apologizing and making a very public management shakeup. Mostly, Anheuser-Busch’s marketing division should move out of New York and back to its roots in St Louis.
DECLINE IS A CHOICE, AND LOS ANGELES VOTERS CHOSE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN: As New Crime-Encouraging Policies Take Effect, Rapper 50 Cent Says L.A. Is ‘Finished.’
BACK TO BAKHMUT: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 10, 2023.
Ukrainian officials stated on July 10 that Ukrainian forces have fire control over Bakhmut and Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) around the city. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces have taken control of unspecified heights around Bakhmut, allowing Ukrainian forces to establish fire control over Bakhmut itself. Ukrainian officials have recently signaled that Ukraine seeks to trap Russian forces within the city, and it appears that Ukrainian operations in the Bakhmut area in recent days have been intended to slowly envelop Russian troops in Bakhmut and on its flanks. ISW was previously conservative when assessing claims of Russian fire control and general interdiction of Ukrainian lines of communication in and around Bakhmut as Russian forces gradually took control of the settlement, but Ukrainian claims of establishing fire control may be more credible. Both Ukrainian and Russian sources have indicated in recent days that Ukraine is gaining ground in the Bakhmut area and on its southwestern flanks including specific terrain features that can give Ukrainian forces fire advantage.
Bakhmut — maybe best summed up with “never have so many fought so hard over so little” — was Russia’s only gain in their costly winter/spring offensive.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: New Biden Spin—He’s a Real Jerk So…No Dementia! “I buy the part about the rants happening but the notion that the perpetually addled idiot we see in virtually every public appearance suddenly becomes engaged and just bursting with brilliant questions is a tough sell.”
UH-HUH: Biden admin attempts to blame construction workers for baggie of cocaine in the West Wing.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan hinted that the cocaine found at the White House likely came from construction workers working in the area for renovation instead of the Biden family.
Sullivan noted that the space has not been in use recently as the area by the situation room has not been undergoing renovations.
He said, “I would make a point about the Situation Room because I think there’s been a lot questionable reporting on this. The Situation Room is not in use and has not been in use for months because it is currently under construction.”
The space currently being used as a substitute for the space is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “[T]he only people coming in and going out of the Sit Room in this period have been workers who are getting it ready to go,” Sullivan added.
Sullivan’s story would do a better job of passing the sniff test if the Situation Room weren’t the third location where the cocaine was claimed to have been found.
NATO: Turkey’s Bombshell Sweden Demand Rocks NATO Summit Before it Even Begins.
Alliance leaders gathering in Vilnius on the eve of Tuesday’s summit were hoping a meeting between Erdogan and Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson would see the Turkish leader lift his veto on Sweden’s membership.
But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared in no mood to compromise, declaring that he would only back Sweden’s NATO candidacy if European Union members – most of whom are also NATO allies – agree to revive Turkey’s negotiations to join the EU.
The demand, never before made in public, threatened to open a new rift between Ankara and its Western partners, even as NATO and the EU tackle Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the continent’s worst security crisis since World War II.
But: NATO chief says Turkey agrees to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to Parliament swiftly.
My initial thought was, “Somebody backed down in a hurry and it probably wasn’t the EU because they almost never do anything quickly.”
But then this: The Turkey-NATO Deal On Sweden Is A Disaster.
President Biden’s team, working assiduously in the background, may want to share Stoltenberg’s supposed triumph.
They should not.
What NATO officials bill as a diplomatic masterstroke is actually a disaster in the making.
Put aside Turkey’s humiliation of Sweden and the erosion, at Erdogan’s behest, of free speech and democracy in that country. And put aside the hypocrisy of treating Kurds in Sweden as terrorists when Islamic State sympathizers in Turkey not only roam free but also populate Erdogan’s administration and Turkey’s intelligence service.
Rather, the problem appears to be a new quid pro quo.
Not only does Turkey now expect the lifting of most defense-related sanctions, but a Turkish official also said that Turkey now expects
Europe to fast track its long moribund European Union accession process.
“A disaster in the making” is an apt description of Biden’s overall foreign policy.
TAKE OFF AND NUKE THE ENTIRE SITE FROM ORBIT: Mark Levin Goes Nuclear: ‘We Must Break the Back of the DOJ!’
JOANNE JACOBS: Universities talk ‘diversity,’ demand conformity. “Requiring would-be professors to swear allegiance to a political ideology is a free-speech violation, charges a lawsuit filed in May. John D. Haltigan applied to teach psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He had to submit a ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI) statement, which the suit compares to loyalty oaths required of faculty members during the Red Scare of the ’50s.”
ZERO CONCERN FOR THE HEALTH OF THE COUNTRY, ONLY FOR THE STRENGTH OF THE PARTY: Biden and Other Obama Officials Sought to ‘Torpedo’ Incoming Trump Admin, Docs Show.
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