THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Joe Biden’s history tour from hell — from 1970s gas lines to the 1918 pandemic, where will the President take us next?

The first stop was the late 1970s. This came back in spring after a ransomware attack on a major American pipeline resulted in a gasoline shortage that sent lines at gas stations snaking around the block. Throw in inflation as the economy began to reopen, and Biden suddenly looked a lot like Jimmy Carter, only without the beer deregulation and awesome stories about homicidal rabbits. Instead, this exhibit was all animatronic Karens filling Tupperware with regular unleaded while glowering at the unmasked mom headed into the grocery store to buy $4 milk.

The next stop was the autumn of 1918, hospitals filled to capacity, portentous static over the CNN wireless. The Spanish flu killed millions of people, but it wasn’t until the second wave in the fall that its true lethality was brought to bear. And while the delta variant hasn’t been quite so devastating, sheer exhaustion with this pandemic has nonetheless forced a comparison. Hot Vax Summer has been canceled. One in 500 Americans has now died from COVID. This is the part of the tour where Biden gets punchy and starts shouting ‘come on, man!’ in the direction of perceived vaccine skeptics.

And then it’s on to the third exhibit, Saigon circa Gerald Ford by way of Afghanistan. Here, docent Biden’s defensiveness only increases. Just how in the hell was he supposed to know that Afghanistan would fall apart?! Other than, you know, the endless intelligence reports over the eight months that he had to plan and coordinate our withdrawal? Cut to the passengers looking leerily at the emergency exit and contemplating a duck and roll.

* * * * * * * *

The risk isn’t so much that America is going to come apart tomorrow. It’s that Biden will prove one of those weak placeholder leaders — cheers again, Jimmy Carter! — who fails to sufficiently grapple with the issues of his time. So it is that we enter the last room on the tour, a dark tunnel where trippy images flash on the walls: Americans trapped in Afghanistan, Haitians squatting at the border, immigration agents on horseback, anti-vaccine protesters, Frenchmen in berets shaking their fists.

Suddenly, for just an instant, docent Biden looks more like Charon at the ferry helm. The President’s flashes from the past are just that, flashes. It’s his inability to meet the challenges of the present that’s far more ominous.

The seemingly omnipresent “F*** Joe Biden” chants sure has powerful sense of ’60s and ’70s deja vu as well.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Rule of Law Hostage to ‘Enemy Action.’

I have always admired the admonitory wisdom that Auric Goldfinger imparted to James Bond early in Ian Fleming’s novel named for the gold-loving villain: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

I have thought often of that sage advisory in recent months as so many once-trustworthy institutions of American life seem to have been weaponized against the people they were meant to serve.

This is, alas, a huge topic, and today I will only scratch the surface

* * * * * * * *

During the Trump years, why was it that the awesome power of the state was routinely brought to bear against anyone in the president’s orbit while people in the Justice Department and various intelligence services could lie, leak, and even alter critical evidence with essentially no consequences?

Why is it that the Biden DOJ “declines to prosecute” five people arrested as Chinese spies while it continues its policy of harassing, arresting, and incarcerating people who were milling about the Capitol on Jan. 6?

Why is it that the Biden DOJ has declined to investigate the scandal of blue-state nursing home deaths in the wake of the COVID hysteria?

“The Department of Justice will not pursue investigations into New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan nursing home policies,” The Washington Examiner reported, “that resulted in thousands of residential COVID-19 deaths.”

It wasn’t just that the policy of stashing COVID patients in nursing homes was a deadly mistake, there was also a massive coverup.

In New York, for example, an aide to Governor Cuomo admitted in a leaked Zoom video that the Cuomo administration “purposely undercounted nursing home deaths to avoid a federal investigation.”

Don’t try this if you are Republican governor.

Now that Trump is out of office, the Biden administration, staffed with Obama retreads, is back to doing what Obama perfected, viewing American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head: History Will Condemn Bigots Using Coronavirus to Persecute Trump Supporters.

BYRON YORK: Democrats, double standards, and the Capitol riot committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she barred Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from the Capitol riot investigating committee because the two Republicans “had made statements and taken actions that I think would impact the integrity of the committee.” Pelosi said Jordan and Banks also “made statements and took actions that just made it ridiculous to put them on such a committee seeking the truth.”

But what about Pelosi’s Democratic choices for the committee? Might some of their statements and actions in the past impact the integrity of the committee? And have some of them said and done things that were so at odds with the facts as to make it ridiculous to put them on a committee seeking the truth?

Start with Pelosi’s pick for chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson. On a long-ago January 6 — in 2005, when Congress met to certify President George W. Bush’s victory in the 2004 presidential election — Thompson challenged the certification of the results from Ohio. At the time, some progressive Democrats were promoting wild theories about alleged tampering with electronic voting machines in the state. The House Democrats who voted against certification for Ohio’s results said they were simply protesting the result, and not trying to overturn the election. But the fact is, they focused their challenge on a single state, which just happened to be the decisive state in the 2004 contest. Had they gotten their way, and had Ohio been put in Democrat John Kerry’s column instead of Bush’s, Kerry would have been elected president.

In June 2008, Thompson voted to move forward articles of impeachment against President Bush.

By 2017, Thompson had become a devotee of theories that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. On January 20, 2017, Thompson boycotted Trump’s inauguration because of his concern “about the role that Russia had in our country’s democratic process,” according to a spokesman. Thompson was also angry that Trump had criticized Representative John Lewis after Lewis called Trump an “illegitimate” president.

In December 2017, and again in January 2018, Thompson voted to move forward articles of impeachment against Trump. While he believed more than ever in the collusion theory, the articles Thompson supported proposed to remove Trump from office for different reasons — for his comments on the Charlottesville riot, for his statements on the NFL, and in particular on quarterback/activist Colin Kaepernick, and for his reported description of Haiti, African nations, and El Salvador as “s—holes.” Thompson later also voted in favor of Russia-based impeachment as well.

Could one argue that Thompson, with his embrace of discredited and unproven conspiracy theories, has made statements and taken actions that would impact the integrity of the Capitol riot investigating committee?

Then there is another Democratic member, Representative Adam Schiff. As the ranking minority on the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff promoted the slanderous and unsubstantiated theories of the Steele dossier. For example, Schiff publicized a theory that Russia offered low-level Trump campaign adviser Carter Page potentially billions of dollars to influence Trump — Schiff actually read the dossier’s allegations aloud at an Intelligence Committee hearing. Schiff protested bitterly when his Republican counterpart on the committee, Chairman Devin Nunes, revealed that the dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party and that the FBI improperly used it to get a court-approved warrant to wiretap Page. Of course, the Trump-Russia special counsel, Robert Mueller, found no evidence to establish the claim about Page.

On the broader issue of collusion, Schiff claimed to have proof that it was true. There was “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight,” he said. But the Mueller investigation, which had infinitely more resources than Schiff, plus full law enforcement powers, could not establish that collusion ever took place, much less that it involved anyone in the Trump campaign. Schiff devoted years to leading his party — and much of the media — on a wild goose chase, even before he was chosen by Pelosi to lead the first Trump impeachment, which failed to convict the president. . . .

Like Chairman Thompson, another committee member, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, challenged the certification of Electoral College results. He did so on January 6, 2017, when Congress met to ratify Trump’s victory. Within a few months, Raskin was an adherent of the Russia theory, joining the earliest advocates for impeaching the president on the basis of that never-established supposition.

Could one argue that Raskin has made statements and taken actions that would impact the integrity of the Capitol riot investigating committee?

It’s all double standards. And if BLM had invaded the Capitol and done exactly what the Jan. 6, 2021 protesters did, it would have been used as an excuse to pass more BLM-friendly legislation. And the protesters would have been released posthaste on their own recognizance.

THE EGO HAS LANDED: Why Obama Failed — Barack Obama Misunderstands His Fundamental Errors.

Obama’s new audience is progressive posterity. He’s attempting to burnish his credentials with the radical activists of the present and the radical historians of the future. He wants to make it clear to them that any ostensible respect he may have shown for Republicans during his career was nothing more than a concession to electoral necessity. He wants them to know that the moderation was all for show — a tragic obligation kenotically undertaken by a progressive savior in a reactionary nation that couldn’t keep up with the pace of his moral leadership.

Ultimately, Obama failed as a leader because, unlike presidents past, he didn’t trust the public. He lacked both the courage and the convictions required to thrive in the democratic polity the birth of which Van Buren chronicled during the 1830s. To borrow from his own terminology, Obama would not prophesy for the public and he could not build coalitions with his colleagues. He knew that history had not dealt him an electorate the makeup of which intersected perfectly with his own ambitions, as it had for Jackson, Roosevelt, and Reagan. This is why he resents his Republican opponents so much. Neither they nor their voters were sufficiently made according to his own political image, an image that he still believes to be the best and clearest evidence of the small measure of moral credibility that can justly be claimed by the United States of America.

Like Carter, Obama will be using the DNC-MSM to try to spin the memories of his time in office for decades to come: Flashback: Poll: Obama ‘worst president’ since World War II.

IT’S THE RETURN OF CREEPY JOE: ‘Looks like she’s 19:’ Uproar after Biden’s remarks about girl at Virginia military base.

Flashback: Joe Biden Accused of Groping Breast of Secret Service Agent’s Girlfriend During 2009 Photo-Op. “According to the report, an unidentified Secret Service agent was suspended for a week after the incident for shoving the vice president ‘after he cupped his girlfriend’s breast while the couple was taking a photo with him’.”

Flashback: Democrat Makes #MeToo Claim Against Joe Biden: He Smelled Me and Kissed My Head. “Flores said that pictures of Biden touching other women inappropriately made it more difficult to keep silent, referring to Biden nuzzling the neck of Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife, kissing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, whispering in women’s ears, and snuggling women on the campaign trail.”

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

UPDATE: America Shouldn’t Tolerate ‘Biden Being Biden,’ Karol Markowicz warned in 2015 in Time magazine:

The most recent victim is Stephanie Carter. Her husband, Ashton Carter, was sworn in as the new defense secretary. As Ashton spoke at the podium, Biden rubbed Stephanie’s shoulders and whispered in her ear. She is only the latest in a series of women inappropriately groped by the vice president, America’s “Creepy Uncle Joe” as people stood by and watched. One of the more awkward moments from the Joe Biden inappropriate behavior reel is his whispering, grabbing, and ultimately trying to kiss Delaware Senator Chris Coon’ daughter Maggie. She is 13. Coons defended Biden saying that “he was being Joe” and it was just his way of being “thoughtful and sweet” to a young girl in the spotlight. Ultimately, what else could he say? Biden being Biden is an acceptable explanation to the media watching, what is a senator from the vice president’s party supposed to do?

But last year, voters decided that voting out #OrangeManBad was more important than #metoo:

(Updated and bumped.)

STUMBLING ALONG: U.S. Consumer Confidence Crashes ‘Unexpectedly.’

Ok, let’s see a show of hands — who actually finds this perfectly obvious news to be “unexpected”?

No one here? Good.

So just how biased and corrupt is even the financial media now?

It’s this biased and corrupt.

Consumer sentiment in the U.S. has unexpectedly decreased in the month of May, according to preliminary data released by the University of Michigan on Friday.

The report showed the consumer sentiment index dropped to 82.8 in May from 88.3 in April. The decrease surprised economists, who had expected the index to rise to 90.4.

It didn’t take an economist to predict that keeping several large states’ economies closed, the federal government printing money faster than a counterfeiter rolling down the autobahn in a Lamborghini, and Biden deliberately strangling domestic energy producers in the name of his Green New Deal scheme, would bring about inflation.

I’m not an economist. I anticipated it. I bet every reader here did too.

What does it take to see this gigantic freight train barreling down the tracks straight at you? Eyes and common sense.

The lack of the latter inside the head of President Trunalimunumaprzure led America’s Newspaper of Record to report: Biden Worried Gas Shortages May Hurt Carter’s Chances Against Reagan.

JOE BIDEN’S TROJAN HORSE PRESIDENCY:

Simply put, it sure seems like “moderate Joe” was a thin facade used to usher an ultra-progressive agenda in the backdoor. It resembles a Trojan horse: the famous hollow wooden horse, secretly filled with soldiers, that was given by the Greeks to the Trojans during the famed Trojan War. Once taken inside the impenetrable walls of Troy, Greek soldiers burst out of the horse and opened the gates to let in the besieging army.

Biden’s centrist facade got him in the door, and now the liberal hordes are taking over his administration. On Friday, the White House announced a commission to study the idea of packing the Supreme Court, an idea that would constitute a partisan assault on the judiciary as we know it and erode the rule of law.

This flirtation with radicalism is just the latest development in a series of extreme Biden administration policy overhauls that make former President Barack Obama seem like a conservative in comparison. For example, the president has embraced a federal $15 minimum wage, a job-killing policy rejected even by then-candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, and even tried to force it through as small businesses were struggling to survive amid the pandemic.

And Biden’s early approach to spending makes the New Deal pale in comparison. He has utterly discarded any semblance of fiscal restraint he ever had as a senator, throwing caution to the wind to push through a $1.9 trillion partisan COVID-19 “stimulus” package that, adjusted for inflation and population, is twice the size of the Obama-era bailout and slightly larger than former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Related: The Newest Deal.

I’ve been writing for years that the Democratic Party is addicted to New Dealism. Harry Truman wanted his own New Deal—the Fair Deal. Kennedy wanted his “New Frontier” (Not the cool one, though). LBJ—the only New Dealer other than FDR himself to be president—got his New Deal in the form of the Great Society. Clinton wanted one in his New Covenant and Obama tried with his New Foundation. Indeed, whenever there is a crisis, real or imagined, the call goes forth for yet another New Deal. Jimmy Carter didn’t call for a new New Deal, but he did believe the energy crisis was the moral equivalent of war, which is sort of the same thing. In the wake of 9/11, Chuck Schumer argued in the Washington Post, “the ‘new’ New Deal is upon us. The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it.” And of course, climate change requires a Green New Deal.

Now, as someone who thinks we didn’t need the first New Deal—or at least a lot of it—it shouldn’t surprise you that I certainly don’t think we need a second one, never mind a third one, if you count the Great Society, or a fourth one if you include the second New Deal.

Adding to it the previous administration in which Biden served, and it’s New New Deals all the way down for the left and their stenographers.

OUTSTANDING: Donald Trump to visit border in next few weeks. Invited by ICE and CBP.

The sense of amnesia leftists will have about Obama and Carter violating the unspoken rule that past presidents don’t comment on their successor will be astonishing to watch.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? In the Mideast, Biden Returns to Abnormal.

Joe Biden implicitly campaigned on Warren G. Harding’s 1920 promise of “a return to normalcy.” But his administration is returning to Barack Obama’s abnormal Middle East strategy. A normal policy would respect the fundamental commandment of sound statecraft: Strengthen friends and punish enemies. It would distinguish between them by asking two simple questions: Which states have tended to shelter comfortably under the American power umbrella? And which have instead sought to destroy the American order? Israel, Turkey and the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have functioned as pillars of the postwar American order. By contrast, for the past 40 years Iran has tirelessly opposed the American security system.

Three details of Iran’s strategic position could make it more dangerous in the near future. First, the Persian Gulf contains five of the world’s 10 largest proven oil reserves, and Iran threatens to dominate the region. Second, Tehran is increasingly allied with both Russia and China. Third, outreach to Iran by the U.S. has deeply angered most of America’s Middle Eastern allies.

A normal policy would seek to contain Iran. Every president since Jimmy Carter regarded Iran as a threat—except Mr. Obama. His flagship policy was the Joint Cooperative Plan of Action, to which Mr. Biden is dedicated to return. The JCPOA won’t contain Iran. Its sunset clauses create a clear path for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. By lifting sanctions, it supplies the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with cash.

And speaking of a return to abnormal in the Middle East: Biden’s New Asst Sec of State Worked for Islamic Terror State That Funds Hamas.

Related: Iran Threatens Retaliation as Diplomat Convicted of Paris Terror Plot.

JOHN LENNON: THE FIRST AND LAST GLOBAL ICON.

Lennon was killed on the cusp of that change, as symbolic as only a crowd symbol can be. His killer, the thwarted fan Mark Chapman, disapproved of the comments that had contributed to the end of The Beatles’ touring career, Lennon’s musings of March 1966: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary.”

The hysteria that followed the publication of Lennon’s claim supplies the central panel of the historical triptych. From the fascism of the European Thirties (stadium rallies, radio broadcasts, students burning books), to the mass entertainment of the American Sixties (stadium concerts, television broadcasts, young Christians burning Beatles albums), to the rise of globalized Islam in the Eighties (more stadium rallies, satellite television, young Islamists burning The Satanic Verses).

Lennon did not cross the historical frontier of 1980 along with the other three Beatles and his most ardent admirers, the Boomers. This prevented him from vitiating his appeal by ageing or making rubbish records in the decades of Rock music’s apparently interminable senescence. It could not prevent him turning into the horror that he had already become and could never escape: a modern celebrity.

* * * * * * * *

“The dream is over,” Lennon sang on “God” in 1970. “I don’t believe in Beatles.” But the copyrights live forever. Lennon escaped from one brand, the moptopped cartoon that were the early Beatles, but now he is more tightly imprisoned in Yoko’s franchise than he ever was in one of Brian Epstein’s suits.

This, to the evident and unending chagrin of Paul McCartney, is what Lennon now means, at least to those born after in the era when music was the dominant modern art form. He is the icon of a consumer substitute for religion and morality in the post-Christian West. This is everything he had attained by the time of that fateful interview in March 1966, and everything he tried to escape by breaking himself down in the following decade. Imagine if Lennon had lived, and seen how Yoko, his saviour and true love, his “Mother”, had turned his tormented life and great tunes into a parodic cash cow. It’s easy if you try.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I think Lennon might have fit in better in the 1980s than the above suggests: 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.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL: The FBI’s Bad Intelligence: The bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for its 2016 wiretaps.

t was worse than we thought. We’re referring to the FBI’s 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, as new documents this week reveal.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Thursday released newly declassified FBI documents that contain this stunner: The bureau relied on a suspected Russian agent for the information it used to obtain a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page.

Four years into accusations about Russia-Trump collusion, we finally learn that Russia’s main conduit for disinformation may have been America’s FBI. Vladimir Putin must be howling with laughter.

While the Democrats and NeverTrumpers were accusing Trump of being Putin’s tool, actually it was the Resistance that was Putin’s tool all along. Plus:

Here’s the kicker: The FBI identified Mr. Danchenko as Mr. Steele’s source in December 2016, when senior bureau officials also became aware of the prior FBI investigation. The FBI’s realization that it was being fed potential Russian disinformation should have put an immediate halt to the Page probe, if not the entire collusion investigation.

nstead and incredibly, the FBI failed to disclose this information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in all three of its subsequent renewal applications against Mr. Page. U.S. Attorney John Durham first brought the Danchenko information to Attorney General Bill Barr’s attention and said its public release would not interfere with his investigation.

In related news Thursday, the Justice Department disclosed more FBI text messages and notes in the tainted Michael Flynn case. These also reflect horribly on the James Comey-era FBI. Agents (names redacted) express dismay and disdain in the messages for the broader collusion investigation (code-named Crossfire Hurricane) and for the probe of Mr. Flynn.

In October 2016 internal messages, agents refer to the “Crossfire Road Show” and one says: “I’m tell [sic] man, if this thing ever gets FOIA’d, there are going to be some tough questions asked.” Another responds that the problem is “a scope way outside the boundaries of logic,” to which an agent says one team member is engaged in “rabbit holes and conspiracy theories.”

Agents questioned the use of national security letters (subpoenas that don’t require judicial permission) to get Mr. Flynn’s financial records. One series of messages is from Jan. 5, 2017, the same day Mr. Comey briefed Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Susan Rice on the Flynn/Trump investigations.

“[W]hat’s the word on how [Obama’s] briefing went?” asks one agent. “Don’t know, but people here are scrambling for info to support certain things and it’s a mad house.” A few days later, an FBI employee reports that they “all went and purchased professional liability insurance” over concerns about DOJ/FBI leaks and that “the new AG might have some questions.”

Justice also released a recent government interview of William Barnett, an FBI official who worked on the Crossfire investigation, and later for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Barnett said the Flynn investigation was so “problematic” that in February 2017 he asked to be removed, for fear it would “result in an IG investigation.” He said he only reluctantly joined the Mueller team, hoping to protect against “group think.” He found a “get TRUMP” attitude among its members, and that one Mueller prosecutor in particular was “obsessed with Flynn” and “had an agenda.”

The process, he said, was upside down, with investigators treated as a “speed bump” by attorneys who “wanted to be part of something ‘big.’” These “all stars” called the shots, and “there was a lack of letting the evidence lead the investigation.” He closed the interview by saying he believed the Mueller team brought a charge that Mr. Flynn lied to the FBI as another “means to ‘get TRUMP.’”
***

All of this underscores that the great scandal of 2016 wasn’t Russian collusion. It was the unleashing of America’s premier law enforcement agency against a presidential campaign based on Russian disinformation midwifed and financed by the Clinton campaign. The public is finally getting the truth about the FBI’s malfeasance, and Messrs. Barr and Durham deserve credit for exposing it.

So it’s exposed. Now who will be punished for an abuse of federal authority designed to overturn a national election?

RUSSIANS CONSERVATIVES HACKED HIS TELEPROMPTER!!!

Joe Biden makes multiple dubious claims at CNN town hall.

“When you guys started talking on television about ‘Biden, if he wins, will be the first person without an Ivy League degree to be elected president,’ I said, ‘Who the hell makes you think I need an Ivy League degree to be president?’” Biden said. “I’m not joking.”

#42 Bill Clinton: Georgetown.

#40 Ronald Reagan: Eureka College.

#39 Jimmy Carter: US Naval Academy (Annapolis).

#38 Gerald Ford: University of Michigan.

#37 Richard Nixon: Whittier College.

#36 LBJ: Texas State University.

#34 Dwight Eisenhower: US military Academy (West Point).

#33 Harry Truman: Spaldings Commercial College (Withdrew without degree).

AND:

Did not graduate from college

• George Washington(the death of Washington’s father ended his formal schooling; however, he believed strongly in formal education, and his will left money and/or stocks to support three educational institutions)^[1]
• James Monroe(attended the College of William and Mary, but dropped out to fight in the Revolutionary War)
• Andrew Jackson
• Martin Van Buren
• William Henry Harrison(attended college, but never received a degree)
• Zachary Taylor
• Millard Fillmore(founded the University at Buffalo)
• Abraham Lincoln(had only about a year of formal schooling of any kind)
• Andrew Johnson(no formal schooling of any kind)
• Grover Cleveland
• William McKinley(attended Allegheny College, but did not graduate; also attended Albany Law School, but also did not graduate)
• Harry S. Truman(went to business college and law school, but did not receive a degree from either)

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BEEN A BIG PART OF THE BIDEN-HARRIS BRAND: Kamala Harris throws #MeToo under the bus… again.

It’s been quite a week for Kamala Harris. In addition to promulgating anti-vaccination conspiracy theories about any coronavirus vaccine released during the Trump presidency, she met with the family of Jacob Blake, a man famous for fleeing from the police with his children in tow when he violated an existing restraining order after being charged with sexual assault…

Yet, it’s not just the radical Left that has embraced Blake. Harris decided to wade into the active criminal investigation and take the side of a man charged with sexual assault and domestic violence.

“I mean, they’re an incredible family,” said Harris after meeting with his family while Blake called in. “And what they’ve endured, and they just do it with such dignity and grace. And you know, they’re carrying the weight of a lot of voices on their shoulders.”

And it is an incredible family! Right-wing media calls attention to anti-Semitic posts by Jacob Blake’s father.

Flashback: Joe Biden Accused of Groping Breast of Secret Service Agent’s Girlfriend During 2009 Photo-Op.

Flashback: Democrat Makes #MeToo Claim Against Joe Biden: He Smelled Me and Kissed My Head. “Flores said that pictures of Biden touching other women inappropriately made it more difficult to keep silent, referring to Biden nuzzling the neck of Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife, kissing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, whispering in women’s ears, and snuggling women on the campaign trail.”

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

WHEN #METOO IS SOLD OUT FOR #ORANGEMANBAD: Joe Biden Accused of Groping Breast of Secret Service Agent’s Girlfriend During 2009 Photo-Op.

Flashback: Democrat Makes #MeToo Claim Against Joe Biden: He Smelled Me and Kissed My Head. “Flores said that pictures of Biden touching other women inappropriately made it more difficult to keep silent, referring to Biden nuzzling the neck of Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife, kissing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, whispering in women’s ears, and snuggling women on the campaign trail.”

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

OH: Joe Biden Accused of Groping Breast of Secret Service Agent’s Girlfriend During 2009 Photo-Op. “According to the report, an unidentified Secret Service agent was suspended for a week after the incident for shoving the vice president ‘after he cupped his girlfriend’s breast while the couple was taking a photo with him’.”

Much more at the link.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Flashback: Democrat Makes #MeToo Claim Against Joe Biden: He Smelled Me and Kissed My Head. “Flores said that pictures of Biden touching other women inappropriately made it more difficult to keep silent, referring to Biden nuzzling the neck of Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife, kissing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, whispering in women’s ears, and snuggling women on the campaign trail.”

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

SHE’S THE PERFECT RUNNING MATE FOR CREEPY UNCLE JOE BIDEN: Kamala Harris Ditched Tough Sex Offender Law.

Flashback: Democrat Makes #MeToo Claim Against Joe Biden: He Smelled Me and Kissed My Head. “Flores said that pictures of Biden touching other women inappropriately made it more difficult to keep silent, referring to Biden nuzzling the neck of Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s wife, kissing Sen. Chuck Grassley’s wife on the lips, whispering in women’s ears, and snuggling women on the campaign trail.”

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

MY PAPER ON STATE SECESSION JUST GETS MORE TIMELY: Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule.

You’ve got Oregonians seeking to cascade into Idaho, Virginians who identify as West Virginians, Illinoians fighting to escape Chicago, Californians dreaming of starting a 51st state, and New Yorkers who think three states are better than one.

Separation fever is sweeping the nation as quixotic but tenacious bands of frustrated rural dwellers, suburbanites and conservatives seek to break free from states with legislatures increasingly controlled by liberal big cities and metropolitan strongholds.

“Oregon is controlled by the northwest portion of the state, Portland to Eugene. That’s urban land, and their decisions are not really representing rural Oregon,” said Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho. “They have their agenda and they’re moving forward with it, and they’re not listening to us.”

In Virginia, the newly elected Democratic majority’s progressive legislation on issues such as gun rights has spurred “Vexit,” or “Virginia exit,” a campaign to merge right-tilting rural counties into neighboring West Virginia that organizers say has the potential to catch fire nationwide.

“To be honest, if this works — you’ve got a lot of red areas in this country that are totally dominated by a blue metropolis,” said Vexit2020 leader Rick Boyer, a former member of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors. “If it works in Virginia, there’s no reason it can’t reshape the political map.”

Stay tuned.

THIS IS CNN: “As Americans sit glued to impeachment hearings centered on allegations of bribery and self-interest over country, I can’t help but be emotional myself when I think about the Carters’ specific brand of patriotism and the fear that we may never see another president and first lady like them again.”

Only if America is very, very lucky. (Though the above quote is quite a tacit insult of Obama’s presidency.)

On the other hand, even history’s greatest monster can get something right. “As Americans sit glued to impeachment hearings,” here’s a flashback to last year: Jimmy Carter Believes That Democrats Shouldn’t Pursue Impeachment.

THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S A MOCKERY OF A SHAM: Byron York: Democrats don’t want public to know origins of Ukraine investigation like they didn’t want public to know origins of Russia investigation.

Why are House Democrats stonewalling questions about the identity of the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower?

Start by taking them at their word. Perhaps they really are concerned about the whistleblower’s personal safety. They also know that, beyond a limited prohibition applying to the inspector general of the intelligence community, no law bars anyone, in politics, media, or anywhere else, from revealing the whistleblower’s identity. So they worry.

But there is more to the story. Should the whistleblower have connections to prominent Democrats, exposure of his identity could be embarrassing to the party. And perhaps most of all, reading through the impeachment investigation depositions that have been released so far, it’s clear that cutting off questions that could possibly relate to the whistleblower has also allowed Democrats to shut off any look at how the Trump-Ukraine investigation started. Who was involved? What actions did they take? Why did some government employees think President Trump’s July 25 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky represented a lost opportunity, or poor judgment, while others thought it represented wrongdoing requiring congressional investigation?

Democrats do not want the public to know. And in that, their position is familiar to anyone who has watched Washington for the last two years: The Democrats’ determination to cut off questions about the origins of the Trump-Ukraine investigation is strikingly similar to their determination to cut off questions about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. In both cases, they fought hard to keep secret the origins of investigations that have shaken the nation, deeply divided the electorate, and affected the future of the presidency.

From their point of view, it makes sense. Democrats were rattled by Republican efforts to uncover the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. The Steele dossier, the use of spies and informants to target the Trump campaign, the Carter Page wiretap, the murky start to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — Democrats resisted GOP attempts to reveal them all. But in 2017 and 2018, Republicans controlled the House. Then-Chairman Devin Nunes used the power of the House Intelligence Committee to unearth key parts of the story. Nunes’ efforts eventually led to a Justice Department inspector general investigation whose results, expected in the coming weeks, could further damage the Democratic Trump-Russia storyline. And then there is the ongoing criminal investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

But Democrats now control the House.

Well, that needs to come to an end.

BYRON YORK: Justice Department inspector general has done separate report on James Comey.

Among other things, Comey has been under investigation for his handling of several memos he wrote memorializing conversations with President Trump. The memos began in January 2017, when Trump was still president-elect, and continued until April 2017, the month before Trump summarily fired the FBI director.

Comey’s memos were, at the least, confidential FBI documents, and at most, in some cases, classified. Comey told Congress that he sent some of the memos to a friend for the purpose of being leaked to the New York Times. Comey hoped media reports would set off a firestorm that would ultimately result in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump-Russia matter.

That is precisely what happened with the appointment of Robert Mueller.

It is not clear what conclusions Horowitz has reached about Comey’s actions. Horowitz earlier referred the Comey memo matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, but Justice officials declined to go forward.

Comey was also part of the process, much scrutinized by Republicans, through which the FBI sought and received a secret court warrant to wiretap short-term Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FBI cited allegations from the now-discredited Steele dossier as part of its application for the warrant. That action drew much criticism from Republicans and was ultimately one of the main shapers of the inspector general’s assignment.

Sources say the Comey report will deal just with Comey’s memos and not his broader role in the Trump-Russia investigation. As for Horowitz’s main report, it is still unclear precisely what it will cover and when it will be made public.

I hope we’ll see accountability, and full disclosure.

UPDATE: Ex-FBI Director Comey violated DOJ policies in handling Trump memos, inspector general says.

MEN BEWARE: Following the Billy Graham Rule Could Get You Fired. It Happened to a N.C. Sheriff.

[Manuel] Torres, who worked for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) from 2012 until he was fired in 2017, filed a complaint on July 31 accusing Sheriff Tracy Lynn Carter of discriminating against him by terminating his employment after he requested a reasonable religious accommodation based on his Christian beliefs — namely, Torres asked that he not be forced to spend time alone with a female coworker whom he was assigned to train. Torres is seeking “equitable and monetary relief in the form of present and future lost wages and benefits, compensatory damages for emotional distress and other injuries, and punitive and/or liquidated damages, as provided by law.”

The Billy Graham rule dates back to the 1940s, when Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham, who was spending long stretches of time on the road away from his family, made a pact with several other men involved in ministry, called the Modesto Manifesto, vowing to “avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion,” according to Graham’s autobiography. The idea behind the rule was to obey the Bible’s command to “abstain from every form of evil” (sometimes translated “abstain from all appearance of evil”). Graham’s desire was that no one should be able to accuse him of sexual misconduct as a result of being spotted alone with a woman. Vice President Mike Pence also follows a variation of the rule and has been the object of much scorn and mockery for his “antiquated” religious beliefs.

Five minutes before Harvey Weinstein became a household name, and Pence emerged looking like the smartest man in the Washington, DC media fishbowl.

ROSS PEROT WAS THE POPULIST WHO BETRAYED POPULISM:

Trump entertained a Reform party run in 2000 himself, and perhaps to satisfy Perot, as well as because of bad advice from consultants, Trump denounced Buchanan at the time. But Trump had the good sense not to seek the nomination of a party whose founder preferred to see it die than have a life after him. Instead, Trump learned from the failures of Perot and the Reform party. Trump, like Perot, campaigned as something of a moderate on social issues — but he did so without excluding social conservatives, and since becoming president he has served his coalition allies better than many a professed true-believer conservative Republican ever did. Trump also realized, as Perot should have recognized a quarter-century earlier, that third-party politics was a waste of time, when the same resources could be used to take over the GOP from within. Republican voters, if not Republican elites, still wanted the party to be that of Nixon and Reagan, not just the Bushes — the party of the Rust Belt and Reagan Democrats, not just the party of Social Security privatizers and military contractors. Trump put the politics of Perot and Buchanan together into a winning force on the right and a winning force in the 2016 election. Whatever happens next year, this has changed American politics in a way that Perot’s symbolic achievement in 1992 never did. Yet if Perot had been more far-sighted in 2000, he might have hastened the populist realignment — and spared the country some of the hardships and disgraces of the last 20 years.

He was a self-made billionaire, a brilliant if eccentric businessman who could have been an equally significant figure in politics — if only he had been willing to treat populism as something more than the private possession of H. Ross Perot.

By siphoning away votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992, Perot’s third party candidacy paved the way for eight years of Bill Clinton, who got cold feet over capturing Osama bin Laden, and massively expanded Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. Both 9/11 and the 2008 economic meltdown were twin hangovers from the Clinton years. In “The Complicated Political Legacy of H. Ross Perot,” Jim Geraghty notes that “Jonah Goldberg [once] wrote that someone could write a good book on how in the short span from 1988 to 1992, Ronald Reagan’s America became Bill Clinton’s America. At least one chapter in that book would have to cover H. Ross Perot, who passed away” on Tuesday:

Back to Jonah’s point, you might think that the time with the biggest interest in candidates outside the major parties would be a time of major crises and national instability. And yet . . . the United States of America in 1992 doesn’t look all that bad at all from the perspective of today. Yes, the country was emerging from a recession, but unemployment peaked at 7.8 percent in June, which looks pretty modest by the standards of the Great Recession. The tech and dot-com booms were just around the corner. The Cold War was over, Kuwait had been liberated from Saddam Hussein, and the United Nations had rarely looked more effective. The worst horrors of the Balkans still lay ahead. Al-Qaeda was just a bunch of unknown guys. North Korea had no nuclear weapons, nor did Iran — nor did India or Pakistan yet. Perot and Bill Clinton lamented that Washington was allegedly paralyzed by gridlock, but the partisanship of that era looks mild compared to today. The legislation passed during Bush’s presidency was pretty substantive.

Depending upon your point of view, Perot and Clinton either tapped into latent American anxiety in the early 1990s, or they convinced Americans that things had gone terribly wrong when in fact things were going okay. As I noted when George H.W. Bush passed away, on the campaign trail, Bill Clinton described a struggling, desperate America:

Unemployed workers who’ve lost not only their jobs but their pensions, their health care, and even their homes. Laid-off defense workers who now make their living driving cabs. Elderly couples whose refrigerators are bare because so much of their monthly Social Security check has to go for prescription drugs. Middle-class families everywhere who’ve taken second jobs to make ends meet.

H. Ross Perot declared in his book, “Unless we take action now, our nation may confront a situation similar to the Great Depression — and maybe even worse.” That looks pretty hyperbolic, considering how the 1990s turned out.

While the economy of the early 1990s looks pretty solid today, there was a genuine fear back then that the stock market crash of 1987 was the harbinger of very bad times to come, one that George H.W. Bush didn’t help by raising taxes in 1990, a year in which he was consumed by foreign policy decisions. A gesture that Bill Clinton repaid by declaring the mild recession of 1991-’92 as “the worst economy in fifty years” and by running to Papa Bush’s right by excoriating him for violating his 1988 “read my lips” pledge. While both Clinton and Perot “convinced Americans that things had gone terribly wrong when in fact things were going okay,” it would take the dot com boom — and a media, with a Democrat in the White House to once again report good economic news, to solidify that belief.

Which remarkably, survived until the fall of 2008.

BYRON YORK: As Barr mulls declassification, a familiar tune from critics.

In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee’s then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page.

All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President Trump, who made a declassification order. That is the only way Americans know about the Page warrant. From that knowledge came later revelations about the FBI’s use of confidential informants and undercover agents to get information on Trump campaign figures.

It is good that the public knows such things, just as it is good that the public knows what is in the Mueller report. But in the days before the Nunes memo was declassified, many of the nation’s top current and former intelligence officials, members of Congress, and analysts in the press warned that declassification would do grave damage to American national security.

It didn’t happen.

Now, some of the same people are issuing somber warnings of the damage that will be done if Attorney General William Barr declassifies documents showing what else the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies did in the 2016 Trump investigation.

It’s not national security they’re worried about. It’s their own.

Related: Lindsey Graham says intel officials concerned about exposure of 2016 misbehavior.

Also Related: Overwhelming Majority Want Investigation into Obama DOJ Spying of Trump.

Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”

BYRON YORK: AS BARR MULLS DECLASSIFICATION, A FAMILIAR TUNE FROM CRITICS.

In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee’s then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page.

All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President Trump, who made a declassification order. That is the only way Americans know about the Page warrant. From that knowledge came later revelations about the FBI’s use of confidential informants and undercover agents to get information on Trump campaign figures.

* * * * * * * *

Now, there is another fight about declassification. Nunes himself has heard this all before. “Every time we have tried to get information on the Russia hoax, the Left as well as the media and their leakers claimed it would devastate national security,” Nunes said in a text exchange. “Now we hear the same argument from the same reporters, leakers, and leftists, even though all their previous doomsday warnings proved false. These people simply use national security as a false justification to hide information that would reveal their abuses.”

Nunes summed up with one more line: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Related: Tears of the Times.

I was deeply touched by the concern implicit in the Julian Barnes and David Sanger in New York Times story reporting President Trump’s authorization of Attorney General Barr to declassify the documents underlying the greatest political scandal in American political history — i.e., the Russian collusion hoax. Their concern for national security permeates the story. There it is right at the top, for example, in the lead paragraph:

President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A. It effectively strips the agency of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which ones remain hidden.

Talk about pivots — didn’t Hollywood release, a year and a half ago, a movie — screened for and approved by the children of the scion who owned the Washington Post for decades, no less — whose theme was the importance of shining a light on the machinations of a liberal presidency and the deep state?

BYRON YORK: As Barr mulls declassification, a familiar tune from critics.

In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee’s then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page.

All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President Trump, who made a declassification order. That is the only way Americans know about the Page warrant. From that knowledge came later revelations about the FBI’s use of confidential informants and undercover agents to get information on Trump campaign figures.

It is good that the public knows such things, just as it is good that the public knows what is in the Mueller report. But in the days before the Nunes memo was declassified, many of the nation’s top current and former intelligence officials, members of Congress, and analysts in the press warned that declassification would do grave damage to American national security.

It didn’t happen.

Now, some of the same people are issuing somber warnings of the damage that will be done if Attorney General William Barr declassifies documents showing what else the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies did in the 2016 Trump investigation.

Why, it’s almost as though classification had become little more than a scam to protect powerful interests.