DURHAM TRIAL: The Guy Who Ran FBI Counterintelligence in Trump Russia Scam Has a Really, Really Bad Memory.

BLUE CITY BLUES: ‘The City is Not Safe’: Suspect in NYC Subway Shooting Had 19 Prior Arrests. “As part of a progressive criminal justice reform effort, New York abolished cash bail in 2019 for most misdemeanor and nonviolent charges. Opponents of the bail law have credited it with an ongoing rise in crime in municipal areas as the law permits more repeat offenders.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Stupid Is Whoopi Goldberg, Really?

HMM: Court upholds the block on Florida’s social media ‘censorship’ law. “The 11th Circuit ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by NetChoice and CCIA, the same trade groups who filed an emergency application with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito after a similar Texas social media law went into effect earlier this month. The court found that Florida’s argument that social media giants are not entitled to First Amendment rights doesn’t hold up.”

HE UNDERESTIMATED JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: My Biden-Voting Friend Had ‘No Idea’ Things Could Get This Bad. Buckle Up, Buddy, We’re Just Getting Started.

Ability or willingness? You make the call.

ENERGY: Federal judge blocks plan for 35 gas wells on national forest land in western Colorado.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: White House Frenzy Over Karine Jean-Pierre’s White Straight Male Backup.

Plus:

• That Wuhan lab has been monkeying around with the monkeypox virus
• Stop saying “despite” when you mean “because” of new voter laws
• Hillary perp walk: The greatest video meme in the history of the internet

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

OH: Bill Gates Poured Millions into Dark Money Fund Attacking Elon Musk.

Research exclusively shared with Breitbart News identifies hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Bill Gates’ foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that signed an open letter last month urging Twitter advertisers to boycott the company if Elon Musk restores free speech on the platform.

Breitbart News’ report, based on research and analysis from the newly-formed Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), analyzed public filings to trace hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from the letter signatories back to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
…
The open letter’s connection to the billionaire Microsoft founder is significant, as Gates is in the middle of a public feud with free speech advocate Musk. Last month, Gates revealed his $500 million short position against Musk-owned Tesla, prompting Musk to call Gates a “b*ner” killer alongside a meme of Gates as a pregnant man emoji.

Musk is working on making man into a multi-planet species while Gates sounds increasingly like a Bond villain who wants to force everyone to eat fungi instead of meat.

SCAM: January 6 Committee Wants $20,000 to Release Surveillance Video. “An outside observer might wonder at the cost. Today, a casual search at B&H shows several 20 terabyte external drives for between $600 and $1000 retail. How much data are we talking about?”

RASMUSSEN: Economic Confidence Plummets in May.

IT ISN’T MEANT TO BE: Homeland Security’s Rebooted Disinformation Plan Is No Better Than the First. “Compounding these dangerous conditions, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Mayorkas has prioritized all the wrong things: climate change, diversity and equity, LGBT Pride month, white supremacists, and now, ‘disinformation.’ To put Gorelick, the director of the information wall of separation, in charge of disinformation lacks self-awareness at a minimum, and handicaps their own efforts to garner public trust in their disinformation efforts.”

NOBODY’S FALLING FOR THIS ONE AGAIN: Is This How Biden Hopes to Save the Democrats in the Midterms?

THEY HAD TO GATHER IN DAVOS TO LEARN THIS? Ukraine war, price shocks have ‘darkened’ economic outlook, leaders warn in Davos.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Trump vs. Pence Is the Battle the GOP Doesn’t Need. “It’s hard not to see that the Times is anxious for Trump and Pence to run against each other in a Republican primary. Why? Because it would be an utter disaster for the party.”

Megan Fox: Ancient Archetypes, Amber Heard, and How to Avoid Both. “Athena turned Medusa into a monster with writhing snakes for hair whose glare would turn men to stone. But her face remained so beautiful that men couldn’t help but look at her. You could say that on the crazy/hot matrix, Medusa was at the highest point in the danger zone.”

Yours Truly: One of Our Vice Presidents Is Missing! “The situation our ‘border czar’ was supposed to fix has gotten so bad under the Biden-Harris Administration (or is that Harris-Biden?) that it could be the setup to a not-funny Johnny Carson bit.”

THIS IS THE QUESTION I’VE BEEN ASKING OVER AT THE PJMEDIA MOTHERSHIP FOR TWO MONTHS: Why is Xi Jinping doubling down on a ‘zero-Covid’ policy that is causing massive economic distress and public anger in China?

For an authoritarian regime that draws its legitimacy primarily from technocratic proficiency and ability to ensure economic growth and prosperity, cratering of the economy is bad enough, a depression in the job market is worse as it may create social unrest and pose political challenges for a regime obsessed with social stability. And it should be of particular concern for Xi ahead of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party where he is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in power.

Once again, unlike the 2020 experience when the lockdown measures in Wuhan benefitted the e-commerce industry, Xi’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy to tackle the notoriously contagious Omicron mutant has resulted in a decimation of both online and offline businesses in a “double killer” effect.

The situation is so grim that a former Chinese central bank advisor, Huang Yiping, an economics professor at Peking University, was quoted by Wall Street Journal as saying, “We’ve reached a point where we should use policies to save the economy at all costs.” A similar refrain can be heard from Wei Yao, chief economist at Societe Generale SA, who told Bloomberg that “if the surge in unemployment does not raise the urgency of adjusting the zero-Covid measures to allow the economy to normalize, we don’t know what will.”

The founder and chair of one of Asia’s biggest private equity investors, Weijian Shan, has said that China’s policies have caused a “deep economic crisis” and “Chinese economy at this moment is in the worst shape in the past 30 years.”

I wonder what the Biden Administration will come up with to try and help bail Beijing out.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats’ Georgia Lies Are Being Laid Bare. “It’s a shame that Abrams and the rest of the Democrats (including the village idiot masquerading as president) can’t be held criminally responsible for incessantly lying about Republicans and voter suppression, which they’ve been doing for decades.”

UKRAINE: Russia intensifies Donbas offensive as war enters fourth month.

The Ukrainian armed forces said in a Facebook update on Tuesday that Russian forces were conducting non-stop “offensive operations” in the region, adding “the enemy is exerting intense fire along the entire line of contact”.

The governor of Lugansk said Russia had sent thousands of troops to capture his entire region and that Severodonetsk was under massive attack, warning residents that it was too late to evacuate.

“At this point I will not say: get out, evacuate. Now I will say: stay in a shelter,” Sergiy Gaidai said on Telegram. “Because such a density of shelling will not allow us to calmly gather people and come for them.”

Residents of Bakhmut, a crucial junction that serves as a command centre for much of the Ukrainian war effort, told AFP of the aerial onslaught they had suffered.

As I wrote last week:

Though much less effective than advertised, the Russian armed forces can still cause a lot of death and destruction. Manpower and logistical limitations, however, prevent them from advancing very far or in more than one direction at a time. The retreats from Kyiv and Kharkiv are the result of these very real limits.

The Ukraine armed forces have fought beyond most expectations, particularly in their ability to inflict damage on those parts of the Russian military that can afford it the least. Retired Australian Army General Mick Ryan describes how Ukraine has focused on Russia’s “communications networks, logistic supply routes, rear areas, artillery and senior commanders in their command posts” to devastating effect.

But Ukraine has yet to demonstrate that it can force the Russian troops out of areas where Moscow chooses to remain strong.

Or keep the Russians out, provided Russia limits its offensive to a single axis, moving at a (brutally expensive) snail’s pace.

This would be a great time for cooler heads to push for a negotiated settlement but there don’t seem to be any of those around.

BRIGHT FUTURE IN SALES: Stacey Abrams’ Pitch: ‘Georgia Sucks, So Put Me in Charge of It.’

HMM: China launches an autonomous mothership full of autonomous drones.

China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week – the world’s first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It’ll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles.

The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, it’s the first carrier of its kind, a self-contained autonomous platform that will roll out with everything necessary to perform a fully integrated operation including drone aircraft, boats and submersibles.

t’s kitted out with everything it needs to deploy its own boats, subs and aircraft, communicate with them, and run co-ordinated missions, including conducting “task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional views of specific targets,” according to the shipbuilding company. The aerial drones can land back on its deck, and it stands ready to retrieve the boats and subs once they’ve made their rounds.

“The Intelligent, unmanned ship is a beautiful new ‘marine species’ that will bring revolutionary changes for ocean observation,” said Professor Dake Chen of the Chinese Academy of Science’s School of Oceanography.

While it’s mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has “military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets,” a capability at the forefront of many autonomous marine projects.

Please note that Beijing went from laying down a new class of ship to christening is less than a year.

VICTORIA TAFT: Sussmann Trial Week 2: It Was Hillary, In the Back Room, With the Chardonnay Bottle. “The institutions of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA and a special counsel appointment were put in the service of Hillary Clinton, undermining their reputations just to look good for the boss. Absolute treachery.”

BLUE CITY BLUES: Houston Exceeds Its Credit Limit. “It sucks when you exceed your credit limit and you can’t buy gas for your car. And ‘you’ in this case means ‘the City of Houston.'”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Left Will Never Stop Smearing Us.

THAT’S NICE. BUT WITH WHAT? Russia to bulk up military on western borders amid NATO moves, Ukraine war. “Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday it will beef up its military presence along its western borders by creating 12 new units in its Western Military District by the end of 2022.”

Between the manpower shortages that have plagued the post-Soviet military for decades and equipment losses in Ukraine, all I can say is: Good luck with that.

FALLOUT: Russian Diplomat Quits Over ‘Criminal’ Ukraine War: ‘Never Have I Been So Ashamed of My Country.’

UKRAINE WAR: Syria’s barrel bomb experts in Russia to help with potential Ukraine campaign.

Intelligence officers say more than 50 specialists, all with vast experience in making and delivering the crude explosive, have been in Russia for several weeks working alongside officials from Vladimir Putin’s military.

Their arrival is understood to be one factor behind US and European warnings that the Russian military may have been preparing for the use of chemical weapons in the conflict, which has entered its fourth month with little sign of slowing.

Barrel bombs – crude explosives packed in to a drum and dropped from a helicopter – were used to devastating effect throughout the Syrian war.

Under Vlad Putin, Russia is transforming itself from a Third World nation with a First World military to a Third World nation with a Third World military.