OUT ON A LIMB: Kamala Harris Is the Reason Biden Is Running.

Apparently, “Biden 2024” was not the original plan; passing the torch to Harris was apparently the plan. And now, that plan is unworkable.

Back in March, some unnamed White House official told Reuters’ Jeff Mason and Nandita Bose that Biden “is also convinced that neither Harris nor any other Democratic hopefuls would be able to beat former President Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee.”

That’s a reasonable fear. Pollsters don’t ask about a hypothetical Trump vs. Harris matchup very often, but when they do, Trump is often ahead by a surprisingly comfortable margin. Although it’s also worth noting that right now, Harris’s job-approval rating in the FiveThirtyEight average is only three points below Biden’s. Maybe Biden likes having Harris around as a scapegoat for his own lousy numbers.

Flashback to America’s Newspaper Of Record: Kamala Disappointed To Learn President In Hospice Is Just Carter.

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 2020 FOR $500, ALEX: Trump’s second term seems inevitable.

Face it: Biden isn’t that popular as world leaders go. In their respective countries, Narendra Modi (India), Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico), Anthony Albanese (Australia), Lula (Brazil) and Giorgia Meloni (Italy) are all better liked. If you look at Biden’s job approval, using the RealClearPolitics average, he is now slightly more unpopular (a net approval of minus 11.6 percent) than Trump was at this stage in his presidency (minus 10.7 percent).

Trump is also not that unpopular. Indeed, he is less so than at this point eight years ago. In July 2015, Trump’s net unfavorable number was minus 39.3 percent. Today, it’s minus 16 percent. Then, just 23 percent of voters had a positive view of him. Now it’s 39 percent. The RealClear figure for Joe Biden is 41 percent, and his net unfavorable is minus 12 percent.

And that’s the state of play at the moment. But what if there’s a recession between now and next year? It’s not a certainty. There is more than one smart economist who still believes there could be a “soft landing,” despite all the recent worries sparked by US (and Swiss) bank failures. In an interview with CNBC, Apollo Global Management’s chief executive, Mark Rowan, even used the phrase “non-recession recession,” which we must hope doesn’t catch on.

On the other hand, former treasury secretary Larry Summers has had a pretty good run ever since he called the Biden administration’s inflationary fiscal mistake back in February 2021, and he said last week that there’s a 70 percent probability of a recession within the next year. He is not alone.

I’m with the bears. What we have witnessed over the past two years is an epic monetary policy failure. In June 2021, the members of the Federal Open Market Committee thought that the target federal funds rate this year would lie between zero and 1.75 percent. By March of this year, they had to revise those figures up to between 4.75 and 6 percent. Having been asleep at the wheel in 2021, they have cranked up short-term rates to try to bring inflation back down to 2 percent. But they are still a long way from achieving that.

As central bankers love to intone, monetary policy acts with long and variable lags. The current lag is taking longer than people appreciate. Recessions resemble slow chain reactions. The signal from the policy interest rate to the wider economy goes through multiple channels, but the most important is the volume of bank credit.

In the twelve months through March, total bank credit in the US economy declined in real terms. That rarely occurs. Since 1960, it has happened only during, or in the immediate aftermath of, a recession. This is the indicator to watch, along with the surveys of borrowers and lenders.

The deceptive indicators are those that track consumer behavior and the labour market, which still look strong. In the latest GDP print, consumption was still growing. But non-residential investment contracted. The present game of chicken over the debt ceiling makes a recession more likely. As in 2011, the showdown will probably be resolved at the last moment, within twenty-four hours of the “X-date” after which the Treasury must either slash public spending or default on some part of the federal debt. But the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis took place during the sluggish recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, when inflation and interest rates were close to the zero lower bound. The risk of a bond market accident is much higher today.

What this suggests to me is that Joe Biden is in serious danger of following Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush into the trashcan marked “one-term presidents.” Why? For the simple reason that no president since Calvin Coolidge a century ago has secured re-election if a recession has occurred in the two years before the nation votes. It does not need to be as severe as the Great Depression that destroyed Herbert Hoover’s presidency. A plain vanilla recession will suffice.

In the wake of the 1976 Republican convention, Ford was trailing his rival, Carter, by thirty-three points in the Gallup poll. His campaign did an extraordinary job of closing the gap, so that the result was tantalizingly close. But over the GOP, as the New York Times put it in its immediate post-election report, “hung the shadow of Richard M. Nixon and a dangerously shaky economy.”

In 1980, it was Carter’s turn to lose, in part because of “last-minute rejections of [his] handling of the economy,” in part because of the Iran hostage crisis. “Inflation and unemployment had been a constant drag on Mr. Carter throughout the race,” reported the New York Times. “The issue got new prominence when Mr. Reagan stressed it as he closed his argument in the debate in Cleveland by saying, ‘Ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?’”

And in 1992, Bill Clinton ran on “the economy, stupid,” one of three points on a sign that his chief strategist James Carville hung in the campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. (The others were “Change vs more of the same” and “Don’t forget healthcare.”)

If you think the economy isn’t going to be the issue in the 2024 election, I’ve got a Whip Inflation Now badge to sell you. Look at the Gallup poll on “satisfaction with the way things are going in the US.” That’s currently at the 1980 level, half what it was four years ago, before the pandemic. Gallup’s economic confidence index is deeply in negative territory, the opposite of where it was under Trump. And this is before any recession.

Whoever is running against Biden gets to play some variation on the “Worst economy in 50 years” tagline of Bill Clinton. But DeSantis can add a variation of Reagan’s trademark: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Well, Florida residents aren’t. As to the rest of America…”

DON’T GET COCKY: GOPerdammerung: Signs of a Seismic National Shift and a Red Tidal Wave. Americans rejected impotence in 1980. Something comparable is afoot this election year.

Upon graduating from college, I applied for, and got, a newswriting internship at influential Washington, D.C. station WTTG’s The 10 O’Clock News. There, even as a young punk, I could recognize the historic importance of the 1980 presidential campaign, although not yet the magnificence of the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan. My focus was on Jimmy Carter, and how two occurrences — one tragic and one comic — seemed to highlight his incompetence.

The worst of these was indirectly caused by Reagan, specifically his incomprehensible — to the Democrats — competitiveness in the race. The Carter team had wanted to run against the unacceptably right-wing — so they thought — Reagan as opposed to the formidably respectable steady hand, George H. Bush. But Reagan consistently hitting Carter for the Iran hostage fiasco resonated with the American people, and certainly me. A July 1980 Harris poll showed Carter losing to Reagan 53 to 26 percent (independent John Anderson had 18 percent). The desperate Carter went against his nature and authorized a military rescue of the hostages. This resulted in eight soldiers dead and a helicopter burning in the desert without combat.

The lesser incident, which took place two months prior, became humorously known as the Attack of the Killer Rabbit. President Carter was alone in a small fishing boat on a Georgia lake when a small white rabbit swam right toward him. Carter tried to repel the beast with a paddle and the rabbit swam away. Pictures of Carter wielding his oar against the non-monster took on ridiculous proportion and made him a mockery at the worst time, even in the then still valid Washington Post.

On November 4, 1980, I was at the Republican National Headquarters helping the WTTG reporter cover election night. It was the most electrifying night of my life. I watched a giant electronic map of the United States go red in 44 states in what seemed like half an hour. Saw the faces in the crowd change from shock to elation amid screams of joy. Looking back, I view the two Carter incidents as omens of the seismic shift in American politics and culture that took place that night. Eight years of a strong, patriotic American comeback followed — accompanied by some of the best films and music ever produced — leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then George Bush came in and mucked it with his “kinder, gentler nation” idiocy. Nonetheless, I see similar signs of change now, and foresee a sharp turn for the better this November 8.

Related: Independent Women Swing Hard Toward GOP Despite Democrats’ Abortion Push.

Republicans made massive gains with independent women in recent weeks as Democrats ramped up their messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections.

Forty-nine percent of voters plan to vote for the Republican nominee to represent their House district while 45 percent said they’d back their Democratic opponent, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday. Of particular note was a 32 point swing among independent women toward the GOP. In September’s iteration of the poll, Democrats boasted a 14 point lead among that demographic, but by October, Republicans held an 18 point advantage.

While Democratic officials and progressive commentators had suggested that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade might lessen the expected electoral blow of the midterms, the swing toward the GOP among independent women — the group most heavily targeted by Democratic strategists — suggests that their focus on abortion might be to their own detriment.

Still though, eschew the cockiness. As Glenn advises, “Seriously, if you care about this election, you need to be out volunteering and donating. Commenting on the Internet doesn’t count.”

WAPO: 7 ways a recession could be good for you financially.

5. Unemployment is still relatively low. People with jobs and money to spare can spend on luxuries such as a vacation.
Despite higher prices and rising interest rates, millions of Americans have been taking leisure trips.

More than half of Americans plan to travel for one or both of the holidays this year, even though airfares will be 43 percent higher than last year, according to Hopper, a travel booking app.

However, the unemployment rate did rise to 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, if you’re worried about your job security or a recession, just cancel your vacation plans for 2023.*

6. Your used car is worth more. If you’re looking to upgrade to a newer car, and your car is in fairly good condition, you’ll get more for your trade-in.

Used car and truck prices jumped 7.8 percent, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, new car prices were up 10 percent from a year ago.

This was the stuff of Saturday Night Live routines in the late ‘70s:

* And since there’s an Obama administration retread in the White House, enjoy the funemployment! “For the ‘funemployed,’ unemployment is welcome.”

UPDATE: Not the Bee asks us to “Look at this actual WaPo headline from today:”

Notice how she keeps comparing Biden to FDR?

That’s because the Party and Biden himself want the president to be compared to FDR.

But he’s not. The inflationary cycle we are in makes him Jimmy Carter 2.0, except that’s an insult to Carter.

Oh, I don’t know; I can see an FDR comparison here: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

And a Woodrow Wilson comparison as well: Biden’s age, re-election plan recall Woodrow Wilson.

(Updated and bumped.)

GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: Biden Adviser: ‘MAGA Republicans’ Would ‘Disrupt Our Democracy,’ ‘Destroy’ the USA.

President Biden was the first to slam “MAGA Republicans” as “extremists,” and members of his administration are following suit.

On Sunday, Keisha Lance Bottoms, one of Biden’s senior advisers, was asked if members of the Biden administration will “keep hammering away at that phrase” — MAGA Republicans — between now and the November election:

“Well, I think it will be important for all of us who care about the United States of America to call out what we see,” Bottoms told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart:

“And what we see, again, with this MAGA Republican agenda, is an effort to disrupt our democracy. So, whether it be through November and beyond November, I think it will always be important to call out any effort there is to destroy — essentially, destroy the United States of America.

“President Biden has been very clear, he wants to work in a bipartisan effort. He has worked in a bipartisan effort. He’s been able to get things done on behalf of our country.

“But when you have a MAGA Republican agenda that has no respect for the Constitution, that has no respect for free and fair elections, then it is important for all of us, not just the president, not just me, for all of us to call it out for what it is. It is a danger to our democracy, it is a danger to our way of life.”

Flashbacks:

● CNN Center in Atlanta damaged during protests.

—CNN, May 29th, 2020.

● Atlanta Protests Turn Violent: Police Cars, Local Restaurants Damaged.

—Georgia Public Broadcasting, May 29th, 2020.

● Atlanta’s protest ends with shattered storefronts and pleas for peace.

—Georgia Recorder, May 30th, 2020.

● College Football Hall of Fame vandalized, looted in Atlanta riots.

—AL.com, May 30th, 2020.

● Protesters burn down Wendy’s in Atlanta after police shooting.

—Reuters, June 13th, 2020.

● As Black Vigilance Becomes Armed Vigilantism, Accountability Is Lost in Atlanta’s Streets.

—The Intercept, June 24th, 2020.

● Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Doesn’t Have the Courage to Clear a Wendy’s Parking Lot and Now a Little Girl Is Dead.

—Stacey Lennox, PJ Media.com, July 6th, 2020.

● Amid spike in crime, a question of who owns the streets.

For some in Atlanta, the feeling is one of abandonment. “The police just don’t seem to care anymore,” says Morris Worthen, a Black Atlanta native. At the same time, he adds, “Everybody protests police shootings of Black people, but I don’t see any protests when Black people kill Black people.”

Nearby, a white neighbor, Tom Doyle, says he can’t deny a shift in attitude among his neighbors, regardless of their race.

“If the police back off, there’s really only two things left to do: defend yourself or be a victim,” says Mr. Doyle, who says he sometimes carries his gun.

But the police feel abandoned, too, says Thaddeus Johnson, a Georgia State University criminologist, who spent 10 years as an officer with the Memphis Police Department in Tennessee.

—The Christian Science Monitor, July 15th, 2020.

● Atlanta mayor says city has been ‘defunding the police’ for the last few years.

—Reporter Newspapers, June 11th, 2020.

Related: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

UPDATE: Dem midterm strategy: Racing for the Bottom(s).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the United States of America was doing a heck of a lot better under a MAGA Republican president than under the current one.

That is unless you think that inflation, a cratering economy, food and gas shortages, and everybody thinking the country is moving in the wrong direction are the preferred conditions. And I sometimes wonder if this isn’t the case for the Biden crowd.

Of course in their view the only thing that matters is that they are in power and can continue funneling money to their buddies, so America is better off under Biden’s rule in their view.

Democrats nationally have two issues upon which they are hanging their electoral hat: abortion, and hating Donald Trump/his supporters. Both of them are issues that appeal to their base and almost nobody else. The Biden Administration makes the Carter Administration look tack sharp and competent, just as Hunter Biden makes Billy Carter look sophisticated.

My own prediction is that come November 9 Republicans will have won control of both the House and the Senate. I could be very wrong about this, as I often am. But I am going out on a limb here.

Don’t get cocky.

(Updated and bumped.)

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Jeff Dunetz: I Cried Thursday Night, But Biden Made Me Feel Better On Friday.

[B]ased on his speech on Thursday, President Biden taught me that the MAGA goals were all evil. I felt horrible.

He even stopped calling us Ultra MAGA. Whenever a cleaning product introduces a more robust version of their product, they use Ultra as a prefix to the product’s name. When our President called us Ultra, I thought it was meant as a complement.

Thursday night President Biden, who campaigned on the basis of uniting the country, but never kept that promise, was at his most divisive. He singled out the people whose political positions were close to mine as evil and unAmerican.

I took the Presidents words to heart and cried all night long.

But on Friday, I felt so much better because the POTUS no longer thought I was a bad person. I was no longer very evil, maybe as bad as Generalissimo Francisco Franco ( who, I have been told is still dead).

On Friday, the President made me feel so much better.

President Biden on Friday said he does not consider any Donald Trump supporters to be a “threat” to the U.S. He said things that most people who supported MAGA goals would agree with.

He said the failure to condemn violence for political gains was “inappropriate.”

Holy Cow. I agree. People who use violence to make a political statement are wrong, and our leaders should condemn them publicly. I may have been sick with COVID and missed when the President scolded the people who encouraged and attempted to kill Supreme Court Justices after they ruled that abortion was a State rather than a Federal Issue.

As Byron York asked on Friday, “Huh? Biden’s remarks at the White House cast a cloud of confusion over what he said the night before. Did he mean it? Did he fully understand the kind of accusations he was making in Philadelphia? Was he confused? The president’s rhetoric was terribly serious and terribly divisive. It was hard to understand why he even gave the speech. Now, it is not clear whether he understands it, either.”

Dan McLaughlin compared Biden’s Philadelphia debacle to Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech of 1979. But I don’t recall Carter saying “Whoops — never mind!” the day after.

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: The Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal.

Democrats may be betting that adverse coverage of Mr. Trump will help them in November, or in 2024. They’d better hope so. Their media defenders recklessly ignore the boomerang history of unleashed governmental powers and the long-term political danger of violating precedents and norms. A Democratic Congress enacted, and Jimmy Carter signed, the first independent counsel law in 1978. Two decades later it led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

If anything, a perceived political persecution of Mr. Trump could help him to a second term. And he would be even more unrestrained as the 47th president than he was as the 45th. A second Trump administration wouldn’t have the caliber of grown-ups who signed up for the first tour. Mr. Garland’s raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media’s new standard is that the department can’t be questioned as it goes about ensuring “no one is above the law.” Let’s see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan.

Payback could come even sooner. Democrats set a new low with their Ukrainian impeachment circus, and a GOP House next year might be up for a reprise. Get ready for a few more select committees—perhaps excluding the minority party, as the Democrats effectively did with the Jan. 6 committee—to investigate Mr. Garland’s politicized department or Hunter Biden’s finances. Watch them subpoena sitting Democratic representatives, as the Jan. 6 committee did to Republicans. Reps. Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell may find themselves on the back bench with a new Republican majority eager to follow Mrs. Pelosi’s example and strip the opposing team’s members of committee assignments.

All this tit for tat will further undermine our institutions and polarize the nation—but such is the nature of retributive politics. Which is why the wholesale Democratic and media defense of this week’s events is so reckless. Both parties long understood that political restraint was less about civility than self-preservation. What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard.

To coin a 2016-era Insta-phrase, choose the form of your destructor.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Biden Team Goes into Recession Denial. Welcome to ‘It’s Not a Recession, We Swear!’ Week

Politico’s Ben White characterizes this week as a “Category 5 economic storm,” but I think the dominant theme will be, “It’s not a recession, we swear!”

As much as economy-watchers will be studying the Consumer Confidence Index numbers on Tuesday and the Federal Reserve meeting and decision on interest rates Wednesday, the biggest deal will be the numbers for second-quarter economic growth, announced at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Thursday morning. We don’t know what the second-quarter economic numbers are going to be, but they’re probably not going to be good. The Atlanta Fed thinks it will show that the U.S. GDP shrank 1.6 percent in the last quarter. The previous quarter was a decline of 1.6 percent as well — so if the Atlanta Fed projection is correct, Thursday will bring news that the U.S. is now in a recession, at least by the traditional definition. (Even if it doesn’t, and it shows GDP growth at 0.0 or slightly higher, the U.S. is still in lousy near-recessionary conditions.)

Biden and his team will argue that, despite the numbers, the U.S. isn’t really in a recession. In fact, White writes that if Republicans declare we’re in recession, “It will not be true. At least not yet. But President Joe Biden and Democratic candidates across the country will face a daunting and possibly impossible challenge explaining to people why it’s not true.”

Jimmy Carter’s late economics advisor, Alfred “Bananas” Kahn, could not be reached for comment.

Related: New marker laid down:

“The Taliban won’t take over Afghanistan.”

“Inflation won’t be a problem.” https://t.co/LgJUfSIwKj

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 25, 2022

A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Trek FX 1 Disc, the First Bicycle of the United States, explains “Why I Busted Joe Biden’s Elderly Ass on Father’s Day Weekend.”

First of all, I want to thank the Washington Free Beacon for reaching out. It was the only respectable media outlet to express concern and show any interest in telling my side of the story. It is a story the American public deserves to hear.

The incident that took place on June 18, 2022 in Rehoboth Beach was no accident. I accept full responsibility for my role in deliberately causing President Joe Biden to bust his elderly ass on the pavement in front of a gawking mob. My actions, which I do not regret, were motivated by years of festering resentment and an overwhelming sense of moral outrage. I took the geezer down to send a message.

This is my truth: I hate being Joe Biden’s bicycle. I am routinely forced to provide Sleepy Joe with conveyance, exercise, and entertainment during his many vacations. In return I am subjected to hours upon hours of deranged, incomprehensible anecdotes about the Suez Crisis or the Cuyahoga River fires or the trucker strike of 1973-4. His brain is as warped and rusted as my crankset.

Pedal on over, and read the whole, err, bike.

Related: Joe Biden’s Bike Fall Checks the Final Item on the Jimmy Carter Narrative List.

(Classical reference in headline.)

NBC NEWS: BIDEN ‘RATTLED’ BY POLLING, ANGRY HE’S NOT GETTING ENOUGH CREDIT. Link safe; goes to Guy Benson of Townhall:

(3) This is highly sympathetic spin that is ultimately self-defeating:

Any assessment of Biden’s performance needs to take into account the epic challenges he faced from the start. “They came in with the most daunting set of challenges arguably since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only to then be hit by a perfect storm of crises, from Ukraine to inflation to the supply chain to baby formula,” said Chris Whipple, the author of a book about White House chiefs of staff who is now writing a book about the Biden presidency. “What’s next? Locusts?” Biden wonders the same thing. “I’ve heard him say recently that he used to say about President Obama’s tenure that everything landed on his desk but locusts, and now he understands how that feels,” a White House official said.Biden inherited problems, as every president does. Of course, his argument to voters was that he and his team would fix them, by dint of their competence and doing the opposite of Donald Trump.  He wanted this job.  He got it.  On a number of fronts, from COVID to the economy, to immigration, he could have achieved better outcomes my simply doing nothing, or close to it.  He also inherited COVID vaccines (despite false White House claims), an economy just waiting to rebound, and some successful illegal immigration mitigation policies.  He and his team have mismanaged pandemic-related spending, harmed millions of students by bowing to teachers unions’ fake science, overheated the economy with inflationary spending that some Democratic economists warned against, and turbocharged the border crisis.  Afghanistan was another self-inflicted disgrace, the sheer incompetence of which may have informed Vladimir Putin’s miscalculation in Ukraine.  Wondering aloud about outside forces like the plague is embarrassing.

Read the whole thing. If that language of “the most daunting set of challenges arguably since Franklin D. Roosevelt” quoted above feel like deja vu, that’s not surprising, since it’s a classic bit of Democrat spin — George H.W. Bush’s mild recession of ’91-’92 was described as “The worst economy in 50 years” by candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign, to cast Papa Bush as the reincarnation of Herbert Hoover. Time magazine portrayed incoming-President Obama as FDR for their November 24th, 2008 cover, with the headline, “The New New Deal.”

And speaking of Obama, as Noah Rothman of Commentary writes, “Consciously or otherwise, the Biden administration is channeling the Obama White House’s self-indulgence:” Joe Biden’s Presidency Reaches the Self-Pity Stage.

“Now, let’s face it,” Barack Obama told a group of Democratic donors at roughly the same point in his presidency, “this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.” In public and private, the former president regularly lamented the circumstances that befell his presidency—from the ploddingly slow economic recovery to the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. In his own telling, Obama was a victim of circumstance. His pursuit of higher tax rates, support for a burdensome regulatory environment, and the ill-considered withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq failed to earn him sufficient praise.

The former president bristled at the GOP’s critique of his administration’s profligacy. “It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini, and all that stuff, and then just as you’re sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab,” Obama told another group of donors. The blame for America’s ballooning debt, which just about doubled under his watch, could be laid at the feet of structural forces, reckless actors in the private sector, and, of course, Republicans. Obama and his team convinced themselves that they could talk Americans into believing their objectively unenviable economic circumstances weren’t that bad after all. Biden’s team seems to have bought into the same myth.

Obama was similarly ill-served by his staff. When the president declared that “the private sector is doing fine” in the summer of 2012 (only to later admit that “the economy is not doing fine”), Obama’s  staff did their best to suggest the president had not said what the nation heard him say. From “you didn’t build that” to Obama’s “hot mic” moment confessing to nominal Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” in his second term, the president’s aides (and much of the journalistic establishment) were quick to “clean up” and “contextualize” those remarks. Before White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was the subject of much second-guessing, it was Rahm Emanuel who was failing the president.

Every president inherits a set of circumstances, some of which are more advantageous than others. Every president encounters unforeseen challenges. Every president is opposed by the party out of power. And although Biden has a unique talent for malapropisms, every president relies on his communications staffers to mop up after a gaffe or misstatement. The Biden White House isn’t uniquely beset by the forces of history. Indeed, so much of what the president and those in his orbit resent are conditions they either contributed to or incepted into existence.

As Ace of Spades notes, “The magnitude of Joe Biden’s failures is now so large that even Joe Biden is beginning to grasp it. That’s how big a thing this is. Even f’n’ Joe Biden gets it now. He now realizes that the midterms will be a historic repudiation, and that 2024 will probably be one as well. And that he will go down as a worse President than Jimmy Carter. So that means it’s time for Pre-criminations. It’s time for Joe Biden to start trashing his staff and blaming them for his failures.”

Exit quote:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: How Biden Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Inflation.

“Government was making the wrong decisions,” Biden told the Atlantic. “As much as 5 or 6 percentage points on the inflation rate were due to oil. Another 5 percent was due to Vietnam. And so you have 10 or 11 percent on top of the inflation that had accumulated since 1932, as conservatives had predicted, and BAM—everything’s gone.”

If those conditions sound familiar, it’s because they are. Inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years—driven in part by the war in Ukraine, rising oil prices, and an unprecedented amount of federal spending—and it risks completely sinking Biden’s presidency just as they sank Carter’s.

Yet the Biden of the 1970s and the Biden of 2022 might as well be two different people, with the latter challenging economic orthodoxy and alleging that new entitlements and stimulus in the form of Build Back Better will actually bring consumer prices down. As a young, reform-minded senator in the 1970s, Biden introduced bills to slash tens of millions of dollars from what believed were ineffective and useless federal agencies and insisted the only way out of America’s stagflation nightmare was massive spending cuts. His 180-degree change reflects the leftward lurch of a Democratic Party and White House staffed with ideologues (many of whom never lived through the 1970s) able to convince a nearly 80-year-old president that everything he once understood about how the economy worked was completely wrong.

* * * * * * * *

After reviewing then-president Gerald Ford’s budget, Biden expressly attacked the White House for not doing enough to address high gas prices and for its tax hikes on corporations, arguing there were better ways to cool demand. During a Senate hearing in 1974, Biden chastised liberals for forgetting “the vast resources of the ocean and their importance to us … [which] range from lobsters to oil.”

Although Biden called for some tax hikes on the margins, his plan to curb inflation was defined mostly by spending cuts. During his Senate reelection campaign in 1978, Biden took out a full-page advertisement in the News Journal, one of the largest newspapers in his home state of Delaware, to promote his “sunset bill” that would force “a thorough and complete review of federal spending programs every four years … [that] would automatically end a program that wasn’t proved useful or effective.”

“The spiraling costs of inflation are ripping into the fabric of American society,” the ad reads. “We must bring these problems under control and the first place to start is with the cost of government.”

Today of course, spurred on by his far left base, Biden sings a quite different tune, proclaiming that inflation-hawk “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” and leading others to wonder: Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

BIDEN GETS THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS:

Before even taking office, journalists were already elevating Joe Biden to the ranks of those greatest of Democratic presidents, the ones known not by their names but their initials. Not that he was a three-letter president; no one’s ever called him “JRB.” But he could be, hoped to be. Most of all, had to be. The numerous crises facing the country demanded it. And so, he let it be known during the 2020 campaign, his would be an FDR-sized presidency.

Two years later, no one is comparing Joe Biden to FDR*. If his name is mentioned alongside LBJ’s, it is only to note how far short the achievements of the 46th president have come compared to the 36th**. The one predecessor Biden does find himself sharing a breath with these days is Jimmy Carter, who also presided over rampant inflation at home and debacles abroad.

The flattering comparisons have crumbled in tandem with his agenda. Biden entered office with ambitious plans on climate change, gun control, the minimum wage, immigration, criminal justice reform, healthcare, childcare, parental leave, voting rights, tax hikes on the rich, and a host of other issues, many of which were supposed to be folded into the moribund Build Back Better bill. Yet over the past year, his program has been trimmed relentlessly, as one policy after another has fallen by the wayside like a tree being whittled to a toothpick.

With major action unlikely and the midterm elections rapidly approaching, Biden is now scrambling for any victory he can get, however modest or Pyrrhic it may be. This is especially the case as progressives and other core Democratic constituencies have grown increasingly restive and dissatisfied with what they see as a lack of movement on their priorities. Hence, Biden’s recent embrace of student debt forgiveness and continuing efforts to lift Title 42, the directive first implemented by the Trump administration at the southern border to expel illegal immigrants on COVID grounds, on May 23. Both initiatives have support within the Democratic Party, but that support is far from universal. Biden nonetheless seems determined to push ahead. He needs something, anything, to show the base that he’s with them, even if the cost of placating it is alienating the rest of the country even more.

* Some comparisons may be apt: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

** No, there is another: As William Voegeli wrote in his review of Shlaes’ 2019 book, Great Society: A New History:

The Great Society was predicated on the opposite conviction: America had become an “Affluent Society” (the title of John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1958 bestseller), whose irrepressible growth meant that worries about finite resources could no longer excuse tolerating remediable social problems (There was no such thing as an irremediable social problem.) Treating America’s new prosperity as permanent and inexhaustible, the Great Society proceeded to kill the goose laying the golden eggs, setting in motion what Shlaes calls an “economic tragedy.” Neither the inflation of the 1970s nor the transformation of America’s industrial heartland into its Rust Belt was inevitable, she argues. Both were direct, foreseeable consequences of short-sighted choices: demanding that monetary policy accommodate irresponsible fiscal policy, and labor and management agreeing to enrich one another by fleecing customers and shareholders ever more brazenly.

Don’t worry though, Biden can handle it — just ask him:

“Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Biden told Politico last year. “When did Milton Friedman die and become king?” Biden asked in 2019. The truth is that Friedman, who died in 2006, has held little sway over either Democrats or Republicans for almost two decades. But Biden wants to mark the definitive end of Friedman and the “neoliberal” economics he espoused by unleashing a tsunami of dollars into the global economy and inundating Americans with new entitlements.

I’m sure things will turn out differently this time around.

ERICK ERICKSON: The Curious Case of the Accidental Senators: Don’t Say They Can’t Win.

The Senate shift to the GOP in 1980 was so unexpected that no one had even contemplated a transition plan. Howard Baker who had, ironically, run in the Republican presidential primary to stop Ronald Reagan, became Senate Majority Leader because of Reagan’s coattails and Carter’s disastrous collapse. It was the largest swing in a Senate election since 1958 and the Senate GOP’s best showing since 1946 when voters turned against Truman. The Republicans held all ten of their existing seats up for re-election and flipped twelve of the twenty-four Democrat seats for a total gain of 22 seats.

The 1980 election moved men like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, John Tower, and Barry Goldwater into Senate leadership positions.

“The swing in the Senate is probably even greater, in ideological terms, than the shift in the White House,” a prominent labor leader said yesterday. “A bleeping disaster,” said another.

Fast forward to now, the year 2022. The nation’s mood is as pessimistic or more pessimistic than in 1980. Inflation is at a forty-year high. American morale is in decline so much so that members of the Biden Administration have used the word malaise as Carter did. We have a labor shortage, a housing shortage, a baby formula shortage, and other shortages. “The 16 percent of voters who think the country is on the right track is easily a 13-year low in the NBC News survey.”

Corporate America seems very good at manufacturing profits, not products. Private equity groups are imposing the left’s ESG (environmental, social, governance) agenda on the Fortune 500, even if it is bad for business and helps China. The same groups are buying up American homes, forcing Americans into permanent tenant status and depriving them of home equity. They’ve taken a stand for leftwing social causes even as most Americans are not down with the agenda.

Schools are ruining the lives of students with lockdowns, excuses, and indoctrination. Parents are furious and the Department of Education is furious with the parents.

Congress won’t secure the border or take care of the basic functions of government, while also blowing up deficits and making inflation worse. The Biden Administration compounds the problems by driving up energy costs, harming American wage growth, and generally having the King Midas but turds approach. Everything Biden touches turns to poo. Oh, and COVID is starting to surge again.

I think David McCormick is a wiser choice in Pennsylvania than Kathy Barnette. Both are real Republicans and actual conservatives and not huckster frauds like Mehmet Oz. I think Herschel Walker has so much baggage that he is an enormous lift for voters to get into office, especially when any of the other Georgia Republican senate candidates would be easier to get across the finish line.

But don’t think any of them cannot win.

Especially when voters remember the good times were as recent as 2019 – that’s very a different environment than the Democratic Party’s perma-malaise, which began around 1968 and continued through the entire decade of the 1970s, until voters at last saw change in the form of Ronald Reagan. But to coin an Insta-phrase, don’t get cocky.

THERE’S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE, AND POLITICO IS “UNEXPECTEDLY” BORED ONCE AGAIN: The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter.

Washington reporters have long considered the role of White House correspondent to be the crown jewel of American political journalism. It has launched high-profile television careers, scored countless reporters book deals and been bestowed on media veterans for years of ink-drenched work.

But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.

* * * * * * * *

The Obama press room launched a whole cohort of journalists into media stardom. The Trump press room launched another. The Biden press room?

“I can’t think of any [stars],” said a well-known television news executive. “I don’t really watch the briefings.”

The dulling down of the White House beat is not due to a lack of reportorial talent in the room. Nor has it meant that the work being done hasn’t been important: major stories are being broken regularly on everything from the Covid fight, to the war in Ukraine, to inflation, immigration and legislative battles over the social safety net. Rather, what is happening is the fulfillment of a central Biden promise. Running for office against Donald Trump — the most theatrical, attention-seeking, Beltway-panic-inducing president in living memory — he pledged to make Washington news boring again.

And, well, mission accomplished sir.

“Jen [Psaki] is very good at her job, which is unfortunate,” one reporter who has covered the past two administrations from the room said. “And the work is a lot less rewarding, because you’re no longer saving democracy from Sean Spicer and his Men’s Wearhouse suit. Jawing with Jen just makes you look like an asshole.”

Notice the name of that last “reporter” isn’t given in the article. But let’s review: Russia at war with Ukraine, and our being dragged in; our disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, with Americans still stranded there; an out of control border; out of control gas prices, and the return of Jimmy Carter-style stagflation; a schizophrenic Dr. Fauci; and the tapping of the appropriately named “Misinformation Czar.” Not to mention Biden frequently in full “Trunalimunumaprzure!” mode, leading to his occasional threatening of Putin, and his staffers having to walk said threats back an hour or so later.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the return of their Obama-era boredom makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:

Related:

Speaking of which:

VDH: The Nihilism of the Left.

The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands. And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

For understandable reasons, socialists and leftists are usually kept out of the inner circles of the Democratic Party, and especially kept away from control of the country. A now resuscitated Bernie Sanders for most of his political career was an inert outlier. The brief flirtations with old-style hardcore liberals such as George McGovern in 1972 and Mike Dukakis in 1988 imploded the Democratic Party. Their crash-and-burn campaigns were followed by corrective nominees who actually won the presidency: Southern governors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Such was the nation’s innate distrust of the Left, and in particular the East Coast elite liberal. For nearly half a century between the elections of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, it was assumed that no Democratic presidential candidate could win the popular vote unless he had a reassuring Southern accent.

How did the extreme Left manage its rare takeover of the country between 2018 and 2020? Certainly, Obama’s election helped accelerate the woke movement and energized identity politics. One could also argue over the political opportunities in 2020 following the devastation of COVID-19.

In the long term, the medicine of lockdowns and quarantines probably proved more calamitous than the disease, and this crisis mode made doable what had once been unimaginable. State governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and Andrew Cuomo did not let the pandemic crisis go to waste. It was a rare occasion to leverage agendas that otherwise had no public support in ordinary times.

Read the whole thing.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Chaser:

“Well, there’s that passage about tearing down the Wall,” Reagan said. “That Wall has to come down. That’s what I’d like to say.”

The speech was circulated to the State Department and the NSC three weeks before it was to be delivered. For three weeks, State and the NSC fought the speech. They argued that it was crude. They claimed that it was unduly provocative. They asserted that the passage about the Wall amounted to a cruel gimmick, one that would unfairly raise Berliners’ hopes. There were telephone calls, memoranda, and meetings. State and the NSC submitted their own alternative drafts–as best I recall, there were seven–one of them composed by Kornblum. In each, the call for Gorbachev to tear down the Wall was missing.

This presented Tom Griscom with a problem. On the one hand, he had objections to the speech from virtually the entire foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. government. On the other, he had Ronald Reagan. The president liked the speech. Griscom had heard him say so. The president especially liked the passage about tearing down the Berlin Wall, the very part of the speech to which the foreign policy experts were most vehemently opposed. If that passage had to come out, it would be Griscom’s job to explain to Reagan why.

The week before the president’s departure, the battle reached a pitch. Every time State or the NSC registered a new objection to the speech, Griscom summoned me to his office, where he had me tell him, one more time, why I was convinced State and the NSC were wrong and the speech, as I had written it, was right. (On one of these occasions, Colin Powell, then national security adviser, was waiting in Griscom’s office for me. I held my ground as best I could.) Griscom was evidently waiting for an objection that he believed Ronald Reagan himself would find compelling. He never heard it. When the president departed for the Venice summit, he took with him the speech I had written.

On the very morning Air Force One left Venice for Berlin, the State Department and the National Security Council made a last effort to block the speech, forwarding yet another alternative draft. Griscom chose not to take it to the forward cabin. Air Force One landed. Hours later, President Reagan delivered his speech.

There is a school of thought that Ronald Reagan managed to look good only because he had clever writers putting words into his mouth. (Perhaps the leading exponent is my former colleague Peggy Noonan, who while a Reagan speechwriter appeared in a magazine article under a caption that said just that: “The woman who puts the words in the president’s mouth.”) There is a basic problem with this view. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Bob Dole all had clever writers. Why wasn’t one of them the Great Communicator?

Because we, his speechwriters, were not creating Reagan; we were stealing from him. Reagan’s policies were straightforward–he had been articulating them for two decades. When the State Department and the National Security Council began attempting to block my draft by submitting alternative drafts, they weakened their own case. Their drafts lacked boldness. They conveyed no sense of conviction. They had not stolen, as I had, from Frau Elz–and from Ronald Reagan.

—“Tearing Down That Wall,” Peter Robinson in The Weekly Standard, then-edited by Bill Kristol, June 23rd, 1997.

Related: Blinken continues cleanup of Biden’s Putin ‘cannot remain in power’ remark.

More: Zelensky Responds to Joe Biden’s ‘Historic’ NATO Speech in Less Than Flattering Terms.

LET’S GO BRANDON: Howie Carr: From the gas pump to chicken wings, many price hikes to thank Biden for.

Now Americans have yet another new daily ritual in the age of Brandon.

You drive by that gas station you pass every morning on your way to work and on the way home in the evening, and you can’t help but notice with ever-increasing dread the daily spiral in the price of a gallon of gasoline or diesel.

It’s like watching an accident on the highway — only instead of the wrecks being towed away and the debris cleared, every time you drive by the flames have risen higher.

When Joe Biden is president and the price of gas goes up 10 cents over the course of a few hours, what do you call that now?

A good day!

It’s not just the price of gas that’s gone out of control under the Democrats — how about home heating oil?

All you deplorables and bitter clingers are not supposed to think about any of this, of course. It would be bad for the narrative of The Party. On TV, on the same cable networks which not so long ago were screaming Russia-Russia-Russia are now hysterical over Ukraine-Ukraine-Ukraine.

The same very ethical press that has brought Americans, among other things, WMD, the Russian collusion hoax, the COVID-19 panic, the “insurrection” and “climate change,” now hysterically screams that Ukraine is the apocalypse du jour, and that these high gas prices, which began skyrocketing on the day Brandon was installed was president, are not his fault.

Plus:

Here are some reports from the domestic front line, from texters and callers to my radio show, about Biden’s war on the working classes:

From 781 area code: “I buy my gas in Newton. Gas went up 26 cents a gallon in 1 day. Owner said it’s biggest jump he’s ever seen. He thought 10 cents was a big jump, but 26 cents is scary.”

If Trump were still president, the Democrat media would call each insane price hike a “grim milestone.” But now … nothing to see here, folks move along, and let’s get an update on the Ghost of Kyiv which is actually from a video game, as well as on the 13 brave martyrs of Snake Island, who by the way weren’t killed, just captured.

A home heating oil report from 617: “Called my oil company and told them we can only afford half a tank for our next delivery. We have a 275-gallon tank and since it will be less than 150 gallons, delivered price will be $4.54 per gallon. What other choice do we have?”

Plymouth, New Hampshire: “Ordered heating oil at $3.93. Delivery this morning: $4.11. Gasoline went from $3.79 last night to $4.04 this morning.”

Elections have consequences. Just ask the 11,000 union tradesmen fired from the Keystone XL pipeline, or Ukrainians, for that matter. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that’s what we have in the White House now.

Putin invaded none of his neighbors when Trump was president. And Putin also had a lot less foreign currency to use for his horrible aggression — the price of a barrel of oil was $41 on Election Day. Now, as Brandon unleashes total war on the domestic energy industry, the price is up to $116 a barrel.

More than anyone else, Putin should say, “Thanks, Brandon!”

Another 617: “Got gas at lunch today in Watertown for $3.64 a gallon, which I thought seemed ‘low.’ Three hours later it was $3.93.”

From 508: “Got my car inspected & wanted to fill up afterwards. The price had gone up 10 cents in the meantime.”

From Maine: “$108 to fill diesel 2500 Ram truck last week, $141 today.”

From 781: “Working 8 hrs. OT today so I can buy me a tank of gas.”

Another 207: “Used to fill up my truck for $40. That’s not even half a tank now.”

Don’t worry though. Dementia Joe et al. are on the case. Jennifer Granholm, his energy secretary whom he sometimes calls “Governor” or “Senator,” says the administration is looking at “every tool available.”

God knows, the Brandon regime has more than enough tools on the payroll — Pete Buttigieg, Marty Walsh, John Kerry, Antony Blinken, Ron Klain, etc.

Let’s go back to the text line for a look at food prices:

From 508: “Sea scallops have tripled. And it’s Lenten season. Thanks Brandon!”

From 978: “Went to pick up Chinese food in Peabody. Sign next to register: chicken wings $15.95, baby back ribs $17.95.”

April 15 will soon be here: “I’m doing my taxes so I had to look up how my mutual funds are doing. Since Jan. 1 – OMG! What a disaster!”

It’s not only the prices of food and fuel that have gone out of control since Jan. 20, 2021.

“Just paid $50 for a 10-foot piece of PVC pipe for a new toilet. I know who I want to flush down it. Thanks Brandon!”

However, certain industries are in the chips now in this new error, er, era. Anyone who makes locks for gas caps — their market hasn’t been this robust since Jimmy Carter. And how about the companies that make the stickers with a photo of Biden pointing, along with the words, “I did that!”

Seems like you see those stickers on half the gas pumps in the US — as well as on prime cuts of meat in the supermarkets.

Related:

BIDEN SAYS HE’S MADE EVERYTHING AWESOME, BUT AMERICANS HAVE A ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL’ ISSUE WITH BEING HAPPY:

Just when you think Joe Biden can’t possibly say anything more ridiculous than the last time, he proves you wrong. Lesson: Never underestimate our intrepid president and his ability to stoop to new lows of silliness, causing you to spit your liquid refreshment all over your computer screen. Or wherever. No, really.

The latest hysterical case in point, which was posted to Twitter on Saturday by our friends at the Republican National Committee, speaks for itself, but I can’t stop myself from transcribing the damn thing.

Ready? This — with a Barney Fife-like straight face, mind you:

There’s a phenomenal negative psychological impact that COVID has had [COVID! Of course!] on the public psyche. And so you have an awful lot of people who are, notwithstanding the fact that things have gotten so better for them economically, uh, that they are thinking, but, how do you get up in the morning feeling happy? Happy that everything’s alright.

Here’s Joe, America.

Biden claims he's made things better but people are “psychologically” unable to "feel happy." pic.twitter.com/AxgSGBvgZa

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 26, 2022

Earlier:

● Biden pauses new oil and gas leases amid legal battle over cost of climate change.

● Fed’s favorite inflation gauge up 5.2% for biggest annual gain since 1983.

● VP Kamala Harris admits a ‘level of malaise’ in US over COVID, gets compared to Jimmy Carter.

● Is failure a byproduct or an aim of Democratic policy?

Embrace the healing power of “and.”

TIM BLAIR: Imagine No Olympics. In a rare moment of generosity, China made it that much easier to boycott its Genocide Games by playing the worst song ever recorded.

Flashback: The Babylon Bee made a parody of John Lennon’s “Imagine” about communism and it’s quite simply the greatest thing you’ll see on the internet today:

On the other hand, it’s awfully subversive of whoever suggested “Imagine” be played at the CCP Olympics, considering that near the end of his tragically short life, Lennon (allegedly) supported the man who brought down another evil empire: Working class hero? John Lennon ‘was closet conservative and fan of Reagan.’ “But by the time he died, John Lennon was a closet conservative embarrassed by his radical past, according to his former personal assistant. Fred Seaman claims that the former Beatle was a fan of Ronald Reagan, who went on to become America’s Republican president in 1981 and forged a close political alliance with Margaret Thatcher. ‘John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on [Democrat] Jimmy Carter,’ he says in a documentary film.”

I DON’T MISS THE 1970s: On this day in 1974, members of an urban guerrilla group calling itself the “Symbionese Liberation Army” dragged 19-year-old Patty Hearst from her Berkeley apartment. Ms. Hearst was tossed into the trunk of a car; her fiancé, who may have tried to prevent the kidnapping, was left beaten and bloodied.

The SLA members had learned of the young heiress’s whereabouts by reading the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Society” page. In announcing her engagement, it listed her address—2603 Benvenue Avenue, Apartment 4—which happened to be not far from SLA headquarters. What could be more convenient?

The original plan was to use Hearst to gain the release of two SLA members who had been arrested for the notorious murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster. That didn’t work.

Plan B was to press the Hearst family to give millions to feed California’s poor. That did work … initially at least. The Hearst family donated $2 million worth of food to an operation dubbed “People in Need.” Alas, that project descended into chaos, with more not-so-well-behaved people showing up for free food than had been anticipated. Dissatisfied, the SLA declined to release Ms. Hearst.

During this period, Ms. Hearst was being kept in a closet. When she was let out to eat, she was blindfolded.

But a funny thing happened. The SLA periodically released tape recordings that included statements from Ms. Hearst. In these “communiqués,” Hearst began sounding increasingly sympathetic to her captors. In one early message, she said, “I’m not being starved or beaten or unnecessarily frightened.” (This didn’t match up well with her later testimony that she had been repeatedly sexually abused and threatened with death during her captivity.)

A few more weeks into her ordeal, she became critical of her family.   She even complained about the food her father had provided to “People in Need”: “It sounds like most of the food is low quality. No one received any beef or lamb. Anyway, it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of food our family is used to eating.”

Finally, after about two months, she recorded a rant in which she claimed that “the corporate state” is about to murder Black and poor people “down to the last man, woman, and child.” The “corporate state” was “about to totally automate the entire state industrial state” and remove “unneeded people.”

“I have been given the choice of one: being released …, or two: joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been given the name Tania after a comrade who (more…)

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Biden’s Net Economic Approval Rating Tanks to -13 Points, Worse Than Jimmy Carter.

Forty-five percent of registered voters said they approved of Biden’s performance on the economy, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll released Tuesday, a study that has generally been more favorable to the president than others. Fifty-four percent said they disapproved. “The average of all polls taken in December is quite similar with Biden at -13 points on the economy,” CNN said in its findings, noting the figure exceeded even former President Jimmy Carter’s low-water mark in 1978, when a CBS News/New York Times poll found that president with a -8 percent gap.

On Biden’s performance more broadly, 55 percent said they disapproved, while 44 percent said they approved.

The development comes after skyrocketing inflation. Labor Department numbers pegged inflation-related price hikes at 6.8 percent in November, the highest number since 1982, and 6.2 percent in October. November marked the sixth consecutive month the rate fell above 5 percent.

Both Obama (source of the above headline) and Carter himself must laughing at having to dodge the Carter comparisons thanks to Brandon’s ability to indeed, f*** things up.

Was this the moment when everything went pear-shaped?

GREAT MOMENTS IN CHUTZPAH AND/OR AMNESIA: Democrats livid over GOP’s COVID-19 attacks on Biden.

UNEXPECTEDLY: ABC/NBC Most Concerned With How Omicron Variant Hurts Biden’s Agenda.

With the emergence of the new Omicron Covid variant out of South Africa that’s reportedly more transmissible than Delta, the liberal media’s initial reaction on Sunday was to fret for the future – not in terms of how it could hurt people, but how it could hurt President Biden’s agenda. ABC’s Good Morning America worried about the midterm elections and NBC’s Sunday Today wanted Biden to “use the bully pulpit” against Republicans.

ABC congressional correspondent Rachel Scott was filling in as co-anchor of GMA when she asked deputy political director Averi Harper about how the new variant could be a wet blanket for Biden. “Nearly 150 days ago the President said we were closer to declaring independence from the virus. Now we see this new Covid variant. How much of a challenge does this pose for the President,” she wondered.

“[W]e saw the markets took a nosedive on Friday all because of the omicron variant. So, I would say this poses a significant challenge to the Biden administration, particularly on the economic front,” warned Harper.

Her biggest concern was reserved for how Omicron could damage Biden’s and Democrats’ chances in the midterms[.]

Flashbacks to early March of 2020:

● Chuck Todd: Coronavirus Can Be to Trump Like Iran Hostages Were to Carter.

● ‘She’s actually smiling:’ MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and guest discuss coronavirus that could become ‘Trump’s Katrina.’

Which dovetails nicely with this quote from Mickey Kaus in 2005: “In short, Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. No wonder Gwen Ifill smiles the ‘inner smile.’”

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Top Republican Pushes Congressional Witnesses To Disclose Foreign Influence.

Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would require experts slated to give congressional testimony to disclose whether their employers accept foreign money. The proposal largely targets universities and think tanks, which provide a steady stream of expert witnesses for congressional foreign policy hearings.

While the bill would cover donations from all countries, Banks focuses on China, given the Communist regime’s significant funding for prominent Washington-based think tanks. The China-United States Exchange Foundation, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, has in recent years donated millions of dollars to the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. CIA director William Burns, the former president of Carnegie, testified this year that he cut ties with the Exchange Foundation because of its efforts to malignly influence American policymakers.

I’d suggest bringing back the House Un-American Activities Committee, except that so many in Congress are already un-American.

A HINT OF WHAT TO EXPECT FROM GOP HOUSE: Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) has introduced a bill requiring congressional witnesses to disclose foreign contributions to their employers. Universities and think tanks receiving Chinese funding are the primary targets, but other nations, notably in the Middle East, are also big donors to well-known foundations.

“The China-United States Exchange Foundation, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, has in recent years donated millions of dollars to the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. CIA director William Burns, the former president of Carnegie, testified this year that he cut ties with the Exchange Foundation because of its efforts to malignly influence American policymakers,” according to The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross.