2024 IS NOT ONLY STRANGER THAN YOU IMAGINE, IT’S STRANGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE: There’s No Way in Hell Biden Drops Out But… “There is no way Presidentish Joe Biden will drop out of the race, and I’m here to tell you today why he might.”

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Hollywood’s War on Dwarves. “You may have heard something about a remake of Time Bandits and thought ‘that sounds like a bad idea.’ An even worse idea? Making it without dwarves.”

NOT ONLY IS THE PAST STRANGER THAN WE IMAGINE, IT IS STRANGER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE: Taylor Swift Brings Store Manager’s Dreams to Life in 2012 Macy’s Commercial.

Taylor Swift is great at making dreams come true. In an effort to promote her newest fragrance, Wonderstruck Enchanted, Swift stars in a new Macy’s commercial in which she makes a store manager’s hopes and dreams a reality… sort of.

The star-studded commercial actually advertises products made by a number of fan-favorite stars, including Justin Bieber, Diddy, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, and Carlos Santana. A Macy’s store manager arrives at work to see all of these celebrities trying out their products, and he immediately wanders off into a dream world — because surely, this can’t be real. He can envision himself playing guitar with Santana, having Martha Stewart serve him breakfast in bed and playing wingman to the Biebs while he puts on an in-store performance.

I had no idea this serious a glitch in the Matrix even existed:

But it gets crazier, as Trump meets Edmund Gwenn’s Santa from 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street:

ADVISE AND CONSENT: Biden’s New Nominee Is the Absolute Worst, and Ted Cruz Is Having None of It. “Federal magistrate judge Sarah Netburn is one of those radical Barack Obama appointees who probably has ordinary Democrats doing face-palms so hard that you can see perfect fingerprints embedded in their foreheads. Naturally, Presidentish Joe Biden has decided what Netburn really deserves is a promotion to a U.S. District Court.”

THREAD:

Also: ‘A Failed Medical School’: How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA: Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”

Even before the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. “We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants,” the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “This is troubling.”

“I wondered,” the official added, “if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”

Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. . . . Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA’s anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

Sounds like a conspiracy to deprive people of their civil rights, under color of law. And if you’re worried about black women dying, maybe don’t send them incompetent doctors?

Plus: “Within three years of Lucero’s hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.”

So who hired her, and who kept her on the job?

CONSEQUENCES: Uvalde Families Sue State Police, School District for Response to School Shooting.

Families of children killed in the mass shooting at an elementary school here two years ago and survivors filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 91 state police officers and the local school district, calling their response the “single greatest failure of law enforcement to confront an active shooter in American history.” . . . A gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers while nearly 400 officers from some two dozen state and federal agencies waited to intervene for more than an hour, even as children repeatedly called 911 from inside the classroom.

The suit, filed on behalf of families of 17 of the children killed and two of the surviving victims in federal court in the Western District of Texas, is against individuals because of immunity protections for state departments, those involved with the suit said. Among its claims are that the defendants violated the 14th Amendment constitutional rights of the victims and survivors.

A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety declined to comment.

We need a federal civil rights law allowing for damages from police departments and officials for failure to protect, with no sovereign immunity.

UPDATE YOUR NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY:

You can’t make this stuff up and in 2024 America, you don’t have to.

21ST CENTURY CAMPAIGNING: Trump campaign starts taking cryptocurrency donations, vows to build a ‘crypto army.’ “The move opens a new source of potential funds for the Trump campaign, which still lags Biden in cash on hand even as it outraised the Democratic incumbent in April.”

Note that Trump outraised Biden during the New York trial which was supposed to hamstring his ability to function as a candidate.

WHEN YOU’RE A DEMOCRAT WHO’S LOST THE PALACE GUARD AT COMEDY CENTRAL:

 

COLLUSION: Dickinson College cancels CNN commencement speaker to appease pro-Palestinian students.

Related: Is Hamas Winning? Well, it’s certainly getting a lot of help from traitors to the West.

Related:

Plus: The Left’s Ideological Mullet: DEI in the Front, ‘Anti-Zionist’ in the Back.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT INFLATION WAS IMAGINARY, TRANSITORY, HIGH-CLASS, AND BASICALLY OVER ALREADY: Federal Reserve minutes indicate worries over lack of progress on inflation. “Consumer surveys indicate increasing worries. For instance, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed the one-year outlook at 3.5%, the highest since November, while overall optimism slumped. A New York Fed survey showed similar results.”

Wages haven’t caught up with inflation and consumers have already burned through their savings and maxed out their credit cards. Spending has to give.

NEW ALLEGATIONS OF PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT IN THE JACK SMITH PROSECUTION OF DONALD TRUMP: “Walt Nauta, one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants, [was scheduled] to present arguments that special counsel Jack Smith’s team had selectively and vindictively brought charges against him. But the hearing quickly diverted into a longstanding disagreement over an August 2022 meeting between prosecutor Jay Bratt and Nauta’s defense attorney, Stanley Woodward. Woodward has claimed in court proceedings and filings that Bratt attempted to pressure him into convincing Nauta to cooperate against Trump by threatening to affect a potential judgeship nomination.”