Posts Tagged ‘Democratic National Convention’

Bret Weinstein Calls The Democratic Party “An Existential Threat To The Republic”

Wednesday, August 28th, 2024

On Patrick Bet-David’s podcast, mugged liberal evolutionary psychologist Bret Weinstein calls the modern Democratic Party “an existential threat to the republic” and says the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsement has him willing to vote for Trump.

  • It starts with a clip of RFK, Jr. denouncing the DNC and the mainstream media (“They [his relatives and old school Democrats] would be astonished to learn of a Democratic party Presidential nominee who like Vice President Harris has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days”) only to have CNN fade out the audio.
  • Patrick Bet-David: “The moment he’s about to criticize Kamala they do this.”
  • Bret Weinstein: “It was classic Robert F Kennedy, Jr. You know, he has encyclopedic knowledge on a wide range of subjects and he covered a great many of them.”
  • BW: “What he was effectively saying was that the presentation that we all receive is pure stagecraft, and he’s right. And then to have CNN cut away, not able to engage in their usual level of stagecraft, because they don’t know what he’s going to say, is incredible. They validated exactly what it was he was describing, which was a fake world that’s presented over our screens by these mega monolith corporations that decide what we get to know and when we get to know it.”
  • PBD: “At the RNC, the name Joe Biden was mentioned two times during the entire convention, but at the DNC, Trump was mentioned 400 times, not because of policies, just trashing him.”
  • BW: “I think [RFK, Jr’s endorsement of Trump] absolutely monumental, because I think there is we are in a novel moment in American political history, where many of us who hold different positions on the political spectrum have different priorities with respect to policy are finding that none of our differences matter in light of the jeopardy that the that the republic is in.”
  • BW:”[RFK, Jr] is emboldening a movement that is more widely recognizing that those differences have to be put aside until the main job is done.”
  • BW: “I was very interested in the way he navigated the idea this was not a simple endorsement of Trump, this was an endorsement of retaking the White House and using that position to restore the republic to its proper course.”
  • BW: “The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon, oh, nothing no policies. No interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus.”
  • BW: [On whether RFK’s support makes him consider voting for Trump] “Oh, absolutely let me just be perfectly clear about that. I think the modern Democratic Party is an existential threat to the republic.”
  • BW: “Although I am a Democrat, I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, the party that I see in front of me today is literally the inverse of the party I signed up for. This is now the party of war, this is the party of racism, this is the party of censorship. I don’t recognize this party. There is no conceivable scenario in which I would vote for Kamla Harris.”
  • BW: “I am open to voting for Trump. I’m especially open to it if he is partnered with Bobby Kennedy, because what that tells me is that my values, which are a much closer match for Bobby’s, are represented in that Administration, and that’s really what I want.”
  • BW: “I want a coalition to redefine American politics, because, frankly, we have a long-standing problem with corruption, which has now turned into something else with with the modern Democratic Party.”
  • BW: “We need to rethink the way we govern ourselves, so that corruption is not the dominant force, and a coalition is the way we’re going to do that.”
  • The interview is interesting for several reasons:

  • Weinstein is dead on about the corruption and totalitarian tendencies of the modern Democratic Party. Indeed, if you removed the corruption and social justice from the Democratic Party, I doubt there’s anything left.
  • The appeal of RFK, Jr. continues to elude me, seeming a mishmash of ecowhackjobism, pre-social justice liberal nostrums and healthy serving of conspiracy theories who receives outsized media attention for a man who’s never held elected office. But Weinstein is hardly an unlearned rube dazzled by the faded ghost of Camelot. Clearly the cadres of disaffected old-school liberals and soft-left squishy independents who feel deeply alienated from the modern Democratic Party is bigger than I thought it was, and Kennedy and former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard seem to have become the totems for this group.
  • That both Kennedy and Gabbard have endorsed Trump may be more significant than I thought at first. In the wake of the Twitter files and other revelations about just how badly the Democratic Media Complex has deceived people on a wide range of issues, I think many in this group have come to the realization that their Trump Derangement Syndrome is a false worldview imposed on them by systemic preference falsification, and have gradually come to regard Trump as the lesser evil compared to the endemic corruption and disasterous policies of the modern Democratic Party. I think many in this group see the Kennedy and Gabbard endorsements as giving them permission to vote for Trump, a sort of Get Out of Liberal Guilt Free card. Clearly Kennedy isn’t doing it for the money. “If Bobby’s endorsed him, how bad can he be?”
  • Even if Kennedy only brings over 3% of voters, that could be a huge swing in November.

    LinkSwarm For August 23, 2024

    Friday, August 23rd, 2024

    Both unemployment and inflation numbers in the Biden Recession are lies, the DNC finishes up as bad as everyone thought it would be, why supporting Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression in Ukraine is not a conservative position, Canada goes on strike, crappy modern art prices collapse, and Disney ships The Acolyte to a farm in the country where it can run around all day.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Biden’s Labor Department admits that it overcounted new jobs created by 818,000.

    For the past few days, rumors and reports have indicated that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was going to downwardly revise their assessment of the number of jobs created from April 2023 to March 2024 “by up to 1 million. This means that all ‘beats’ recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US job market is in far worse shape than the admin[istration] would admit.”

    The revision is out, and while it’s not quite a million, it’s still really darn high — 818,000 fewer jobs were created in that yearlong period than were initially reported.

    In a normal presidential campaign, where the nominee and her running mate did interviews and press conferences, this would be a major headache. Luckily, Kamala Harris and her campaign have more or less unilaterally decided she doesn’t have to do them anymore, and figures like Michael Steele, Rick Wilson, and Leslie Gray Streeter have concurred that presidential candidates answering questions in interviews are an unneeded relic of a bygone era. The candidate will tell us all we need to know or deserve to know in her stump speech.

    The president and his team want to communicate the story of successful economic management. The vice president running for her own term doesn’t have the luxury of insisting the economy is doing gangbusters and that inflation is defeated when so many Americans, looking at empty storefronts and office spaces, are concluding otherwise.

  • The other half of the Misery index, inflation, is up higher than the official rate as well:

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • This is going to have a lot of Democrats going to Brown Alert: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Suspends Presidential Campaign, Endorses Trump.”

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “suspended” his presidential campaign Friday afternoon, explaining that he would remain on the ballot in many states to give his supporters a protest-vote option but that he would remove his name from the ballot in battleground states, where his presence might help Kamala Harris, the candidate he views as the most significant threat to his populist political project.

    Kennedy launched his quixotic run for America’s highest office after boosting his national profile during the Covid pandemic. Already a prominent vaccine skeptic and a scion of America’s most famous political dynasty, Kennedy emerged as a leader of the populist backlash against pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, writing a bestselling book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which cast the face of the federal government’s Covid response as a power-hungry bureaucrat intent on using health emergencies as a pretext to control the public.

    After making a splash through his appearances in independent media and building a following among well-heeled Silicon Valley donors, Kennedy abandoned his effort to get on the Democratic primary ballot, accusing the party of sabotaging him. Having failed to gain traction as an independent candidate and with his campaign coffers near empty, Kennedy finally announced the suspension of his campaign in an upbeat speech from Phoenix, Arizona, in which he argued that he and his supporters succeeded in shaking up America’s political establishment.

    “We proved them wrong,” Kennedy said of the those who doubted his ability to mount a campaign as an independent. “We did it because, beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive political movement.”

    Kennedy went on to attack Democrats for “disenfranchising American voters” by swapping in Kamala Harris for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, casting the party he called home for decades as a corrupt cabal of elites who carefully stage manage the political process through their influence over the media.

    “The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles, and it’s joined this systemic attack on democracy,” Kennedy said. “The media justifies their censorship on the grounds of combatting misinformation, but governments and oppressors don’t censor lies, they don’t fear lies, they fear the truth and that’s what they censor.”

  • The DNC just finished up and it was “a parade of horribles“:

    The DNC was a parade of horribles, displaying every form of sin, debauchery, and malign political philosophy invented by mankind—all in one room. We’ve spent the last four days being hectored by screeching harridans who demand that we reject the values that made the United States the greatest country in history and replace them with a feminist nightmare.

    • We learned that a Harris-Walz administration would put abortion on demand, for any and every reason, at the top of its priority list because, in the Democrats’ view, we are not killing enough babies in this country. They’re going to squeeze every dead baby they can out of their four years in office if they make it to the White House.
    • We also learned that they’re going to drag us into more wars and conflicts and encourage more terror attacks with their flaccid foreign policy—as they hobnob with All the Right Globalists in Davos.
    • We’ll be looking at Soviet-style price controls, unbridled socialism, and more regulations on businesses.
    • Kamala and Co. believe that the economy is just humming along, choosing to ignore runaway inflation, rampant joblessness, and the inability of many people to purchase homes, so they’ll double down on the Biden-Harris economic policies.
    • They’ll destroy children and families by encouraging mental illnesses like transgenderism, using the schools as a vehicle to spread their destructive lies about gender.
    • And speaking of schools, never forget that Kamala wants to bring back school busing in the name of equity while destroying school choice, which actually results in equity by putting educational decisions in parents’ hands. In June 2019, busing was discussed in a Democratic debate when Harris was still in the race. Afterward, her campaign confirmed that she “supported busing as a method for school integration.” And God only knows what they’ll do to homeschooling if they win in November.
    • And, of course, the border will remain wide open, with rapists, child traffickers, fentanyl pushers, and drug cartels at liberty to walk into the United States almost unimpeded.
    • Pro-lifers and peaceful protesters will continue to be locked up while violent felons roam free under a Harris-Walz administration.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Man who says he went with Tim Walz to China says he’s Maoist to the core.

    A man who says he joined Tim Walz on a trip to communist China is speaking out about his experience of traveling to the country with the future vice-presidential candidate.

    “It was almost a daily revelation of how much he adores the communist regime,” the former student told Alpha News.

    For over a decade, Tim Walz traveled to and from China. First arriving in the country in 1989, Walz taught at a high school in partnership with a nonprofit program affiliated with Harvard University. During this first trip, Walz was visiting Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square protests began in April. Those protests ended in June when the communist government massacred protestors on June 3-4, 1989.

    After the massacre, Walz later took a train to Beijing to visit the square, according to the New York Times.

    Upon returning to the United States after that first trip, Walz told local newspapers how much he enjoyed his time in China. On June 4, 1994, Walz married Gwen Whipple on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Gwen told a local newspaper that Walz “wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The couple spent their honeymoon in China, according to local reports from the time.
    The Star Herald/Newspapers.com

    After this first trip to China, Walz founded a company that took students on summer trips to China. Walz said in a 2016 interview that he has traveled to China “about 30 times” as a teacher and member of Congress. The New York Post recently reported that Walz was a visiting fellow at a state-run university in China as recently as 2007.

    Now, a former student who says he joined Walz on a 1995 trip to China is speaking to Alpha News about the experience. That student, Shad, asked that we not use his last name.

    For several weeks, Walz and his group of students explored China together in the summer of 1995, Shad said. They saw Tiananmen Square, walked along the Great Wall of China, and traversed the country. However, the former student says he was struck by Walz’s adoration for China and its communist ideology.

    “There was no doubt he was a true believer,” Shad said. “I’ve been trying to tell people this for 30 years. Nobody wanted to listen.

    “At night, we’d go out, we’d walk the street fairs. We’d be buying souvenirs and Tim was always buying the little red book. He said he gave them as gifts … I saw him buy at least a dozen on the trip,” he said.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Democrats admit what Republicans have known all along: they want to amnesty all the illegal aliens they’ve let in the country.
  • “Congressional Democrats in tight reelection bids skip Harris, party’s nominating convention.”

    Several congressional Democrats facing tight reelection bids, particularly those in tossup or GOP-leaning states or House districts, are skipping the party’s nominating convention in Chicago this week.

    Montana Sen. Jon Tester has not yet endorsed Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, and he was the red state’s only delegate to withhold a vote backing Harris, according to Montana Public Radio.

    Instead of attending the Democratic National Convention, Tester will hold a fundraiser, farm and campaign for his reelection, according to the Montana Free Press.

    Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen told The New York Times that she would be campaigning for her reelection this week and needed to be close to her home state.

    Tester, Brown and Rosen are three of the six Senate Democrats most vulnerable to losing reelection, according the the news outlet Roll Call.

    Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, declined to join the virtual vote to nominate Harris, the Bangor Daily News reported. He also wouldn’t say who he’s voting for in November.

    Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told CNN he rarely attends conventions, but he has attended each convention during his time in Congress, according to The Hill newspaper.

    New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich told Scripps News he has commitments that conflict with the convention.

    Plus Rep Yadira Caraveo (D-CO), Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR), Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK), and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) also skipped the convention.

  • Don Lemon asks random about the 2024 election and finds out a lot are supporting Trump.

  • Van Jones admits that anti-Jewish bigotry is “marbled” into the Democratic Party.
  • So just where is ActBlue getting all their money?

    Paging Dr. Adrienne Young, M.D.

    The good doctor is listed online as an “internist” in McKees Rocks, a borough in western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, known locally as “the Rocks.”

    Campaign finance filings report Young’s practice is located on Heckel Road in McKees and list a 412 area code phone number. But her office does not appear to exist at this address and the number is not in service. Moreover, none of the receptionists attached to doctors’ offices located in close proximity to Young’s office address in McKees have ever heard of her. That’s peculiar in and of itself. But a search of campaign finance records only adds to the intrigue.

    Someone identified as Adrienne Young has been making substantial contributions to a left-of-center political action committee known as ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records.

    ActBlue was founded in 2009 to help Democratic Party candidates and allied “progressive” groups raise funds through a multiheaded hydra serving as a conduit for left-wing donors, with two more arms—ActBlue Charities and ActBlue Civics—funneling money to 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) clients, respectively.

    Restoration News is still attempting to contact the individual listed in campaign finance documents as Adrienne Young. Records list her residing on Leet Road in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. These records show that since 2017, Young has made 17,342 in contributions to ActBlue totaling $209,670.06—which averages seven contributions per day.

    However, there is no one named Adrienne Young residing at that or any other Leet Road address. Moreover, there is no one named Adrienne Young who could be described as a “mega-donor” in the same vein as say a George Soros, the source of the Open Society Foundations’ billions, or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Moreover, mega-donors do not typically make multiple transactions over an extended period of time, but instead make lump sum donations.

    To add to the confusion, one online search for Young does suggest she has more than 44 years of experience in the medical field and graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in 1979. It raises a key question: Such a credentialed person should not be so difficult to find. If she’s out there, Young could be the victim of identity theft. If she’s not, then she might be a fictitious person used to pump funds into ActBlue.

    “Smurfing” involves repackaging large sums of money into smaller, individual transactions to appear less suspicious and avoid scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Is “Adrienne Young” a cover for such an operation, benefiting Democrats?

    While it is indisputably the case that ActBlue is ringing the bell with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, it’s not evident the smaller contributions that translate over time into larger sums are coming from an individual donor.

    One of the more recent contributions to ActBlue leading back to the donor identified as Young came on March 16, 2023, in the amount of $1196.50. That’s not an unusual amount for an individual, but what is unusual is folding that amount into more than 17,000 contributions made over the span of several years. The donor identified as Young was actively contributing to ActBlue at least through part of this year with a donation of $429.00 made on April 30, 2024. If a smurfing operation is underway, it may not be limited to what’s flowing into ActBlue.

    There were also 991 donations made in Young’s name totaling $26,481 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 904 donations totaling $22,881.72 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and $16,190.56 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a left-of-center PAC based in Chicago.

    Once again, multiple small donations add up to large donations over time. Young is listed, for example, as making a $869 donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on May 12, 2019, $1,776 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee on May 23, 2024, and $800.00 to the Progressive Turnout Project on April 12, 2024. Apparently, Young has been an active donor, at least up until a few months ago.

    Allegations involving multiple donations to ActBlue that might possibly involve identify and credit card theft have caught the attention of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares who is conducting his own investigation. The attorney general has sent a letter to ActBlue that is available on X. For its part, ActBlue has pushed back against Miyares in a statement describing the Republican attorney general’s actions as a partisan exercise.

    How expansive smurfing might be across the country isn’t certain. But the common denominator in these questionable transactions—ActBlue—certainly is.

    Restoration News has identified another potential fictional donor, Wendy Urbanowicz, residing in Vancouver, Washington. Campaign finance records show that since 2020 she has made 28,659 donations to ActBlue totaling $260,196—averaging 17 contributions per day.

    Urbanowicz supposedly made another 720 donations totaling $12,099 to the Democratic Congressional Committee; 609 donations totaling $12,365 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee; and 259 donations totaling $11,421 to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

    But an online search for Urbanowicz is every bit as fruitless as a search for Adrienne Young. She’s listed in FEC filings as a 73-year-old residing in Vancouver, Washington, with a 360 area code phone number. Once again, there is no record of Urbanowicz in Vancouver and the number is not active.

    It’s always possible someone is deceased or moved away. But some of the contributions listed by the FEC for Urbanowicz are as recent as May 2024. Just to cite a few examples, a donation from Urbanowicz in the amount of $2,955 was made on March 22 and a $193 donation was made on May 12.

    Not all of the FEC records pop up in an online search. This one, for instance, for ActBlue produces an error message.

    But Urbanowicz and Young are both listed as donors to the far-left PAC EMILY’s List, which backs Democrats. In these filings, Urbanowicz is listed at a P.O. Box in Vancouver with the ZIP code 98668. We’re still attempting to track down Urbanowicz, but early indications are that no one with her name resides in Vancouver or nearby.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Chicago is living down to its reputation. “Texas Delegate Robbed at Gunpoint Near Democratic Convention in Downtown Chicago.”

    A member of the Texas Democratic delegation, who arrived in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention this week, was robbed at gunpoint while walking with a friend in the city early Wednesday morning.

    The delegate’s name is unknown at this time, CWBChicago reported. The outlet said it is “not identifying him by name because he is a crime victim.” No one is in custody and detectives are still investigating the crime, the Chicago Police Department confirmed in a statement obtained by National Review.

    The victim and his friend were walking near Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel Chicago when a gunman in a ski mask pulled up in a black Range Rover and robbed them around 2 a.m. The robber stole a 25-year-old man’s wallet and hotel-room key in the same vicinity before turning his attention to the delegate and his associate. No injuries were reported in either incident.

    The prime suspects are described as two black men wearing all black clothing and ski masks. They are still believed to be at large.

    The Chicago police issued an alert warning the community about the robbers Thursday morning, saying they were linked to another robbery around the same time that the delegate and the two other victims were mugged. The pair are also responsible for two more robberies early Tuesday and Monday morning.

    Sounds like the sorts of career criminals that Democrats go out of their way to make sure remains on the streets to victimize people…

  • “D.C. Councilman Known for Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Arrested on Bribery Charge.”

    Washington, D.C., councilman Trayon White (D.) was arrested Sunday on a bribery charge, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia announced, over allegations that he agreed to take cash payments in exchange for pressuring government employees to extend public-safety contracts with two firms.

    White, who chairs the D.C. Council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries, and Youth Affairs and oversees the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, allegedly sought a sum of $156,000 — three percent of total contract value — for his work. In its press release, the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves noted that White’s alleged corruption was caught on film.

    “According to the complaint, White’s agreement with a confidential human source (the owner of the companies) — including the source’s payments to White of $35,000 in cash on four separate occasions (June 26, July 17, July 25, and August 9, 2024_ and the source showing White a document reflecting how White’s three-percent cut was calculated based on those contracts — was captured on video,” the release reads.

    Graves wrote in a statement that the time-sensitive nature of the case led his office to act quickly.

    “Because the investigation into the alleged bribery scheme involved contracts that could soon be awarded and other potential official acts that could be taken, our Office took swift steps to address the alleged crimes we were investigating,” Graves said.

    White is perhaps best known for a 2018 video he published in which he accused Jewish financiers of controlling the weather.

    “Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man,” White said. “Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation. And D.C. keep talking about ‘we a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

  • Another day, another potential assassination attempt against Trump.
  • Here’s a good essay on why conservatives should be on Ukraine’s side in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

    It’s time to talk to some of the bizarrely non-conservative conservatives, who for unfathomable reasons are fans of Putin’s Russia. We call these people “Brosheviks.”

    The simple background is that Kiev is far older than Moscow, and various groups controlled both territories. Ukraine was independent as a nation, then captured by the USSR. The USSR spent seventy plus years abusing and starving Ukraine to the tune of more than 30 million people. After the USSR collapsed it became independent, and the poorest country in Europe, looted and raped by its occupiers.

    Ukraine had a lot of corruption because it was a former Soviet state. They all do. It has far less corruption than Russia. Remember the Clinton Foundation washing $650 mil through Russia? And Uranium deals? Etc? That’s just the stuff we know about large scale.
    ~~
    The USSR, though, and now Russia has the greatest propaganda organ the world has ever seen. Witness:

    Literally every Russian military development—tank, aircraft, everything, led to wails of, “Oooh! The Russians have got us this time! ZOMG! State of the art! We’ll be catching up for generations! Panic! Gloom, despair, and agony on me!”

    Then we’d capture or acquire one and it would be shit tier garbage. Every fucking time. The MiG25: Shit that couldn’t dogfight or maneuver and had no loiter time. The T72: Shit armor, shit fire control, overall shit. The T90: Such shit a Bradley can take it out with 25mm. The vaunted AK47: If you’ve ever shot one you understand it’s a weapon for illiterate peasants and yes, jams like you wouldn’t believe if you haven’t handled one. That long stroke gas piston loves corrosion, debris, and mud and turns into an unergonomic club.

    The USSR persuaded the Western world, especially the left, that they were some sort of victims, not a larger, less-effective murder machine as the Nazis, but still a mass murder machine with a higher body count. Hanging a Swastika banner will get you excoriated (and should), but hang up the Hammer and Sickle, and well, we have to be tolerant of divergent viewpoints.

    We really fucking don’t. Commies are just as much subhuman shit as the Nazis. But that propaganda.

    Snip.

    “Ukraine has corruption! Vlad is saving us from the New World Order!”

    Name a single nation we’ve ever assisted in war that wasn’t corrupt. Including our own.

    Also, if you’ve paid attention the last decade (you obviously haven’t paid attention the last decade), Ukraine was in the process of flushing the corrupt leaders, most of whom were…friends of Vladimir Sputum.
    ~~
    “Ukraine has Nazis!”

    Probably a few. So does the US. So does Russia, since the head of Wagner Group, named after Hitler’s favorite composer, LITERALLY HAS SS INSIGNIA TATTOOED ON HIS CHEST, COLLARS AND SHOULDERS. Are you that fucking gullible and retarded? Apparently.

    Also, the POWs from the alleged Nazi Azov Battalion were exchanged for Russian POWs, no issue. So no (alleged) Nazis were actually stopped or tried.

    Also, those “Nazis” are taking orders from a Jewish comedian. Vlad explains this as “They’re a special kind of Nazi that isn’t necessarily anti-semitic, but still Nazis.” So, National Socialists…like yourself, Vlad?

    Snip.

    “Russia warned Ukraine not to join NATO! They can’t be aggressive like that.”

    Ukraine has not joined NATO, and your ex doesn’t get to tell you who to date.
    ~~
    “Russia is rightfully afraid of NATO aggression!”

    THIS Cold War bullshit again? Are you liberal, or retarded?
    ~~
    “Why won’t anyone stand with Russia against the New World Order? Vlad is a hero!”

    Such a hero his allies are Lil Kim in North Korea, and the Assahola in Iran. That’s who you’re supporting here, dipshit.
    ~~
    “You’re going to find out that Ukraine is carefully making it look like they’re winning! There’s this huge push in March/April 2023/2024 that’s going to end it. After Ukraine is worn out fighting Russian garbage, the A-team is going to wreck them!”

    It’s been 2.5 years. The Russian Airborne died the first day. The vaunted Spaznutz met Ukrainian reservists and got slaughtered like the shit tier, third world, all-show-and-no-dick bitches they actually are. It’s getting worse. Russians have been seen on scooters (the step on kind that populate cities like cockroaches) and Chinese golf carts. They’re losing T54s on a recurring basis, having run out of modern (1960s) tanks. It’s become a joke at this point.

    Snip.

    FACT: Russia invaded Ukraine because it wanted to seize territory it’s not entitled to, and is getting its incompetent shit tier military ass kicked by a third world nation. Even if they “win” a few counties of utter wasteland that are wrecked more than No Man’s Land in WWI, they’ve lost their credibility and military footprint for decades to come.

    Now stop being their propaganda bitch.

    Much more at the link. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Ukraine hit the only ferry working across the Kerch strait when it was loaded with fuel tanks.
  • Ukraine also hit Marinovka airbase in Volgograd, some 500km from the front lines, with drones using ball bearing warheads like on HIMARS tungsten rounds, hitting number of hangers and destroying at least three Su-34 and one Su-24 aircraft.
  • “Texas Children’s Whistleblower Fired After Alleging Child Gender Modification Medicaid Fraud.”

    Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) has fired a whistleblower following allegations that it was “unlawfully billing the state Medicaid program” for the purposes of child gender modification.

    The whistleblower, Vanessa Sivadge, provided a statement to the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo with details about how she was fired after revealing the “sex-change procedures ongoing at the hospital, but also the fraud and deception related to the illegal billing practices to Medicaid in having these procedures covered by taxpayers.”

    Sivadge stated that after her initial story went public, TCH put her “on leave.” She was then fired on Friday, August 16.

    Prior to Sivadge blowing the whistle, she stated that she submitted a religious accommodation request to transfer to another department. She said her role in the endocrinology clinic “was devastating” because her role as a nurse “primarily involved providing medication refills and working with physicians to answer questions from parents about treatment plans.”

    Sivadge added that she “would like to challenge this in court” and asked for donations for her legal defense.

    “No regrets,” wrote Sivadge on social media.

    Her story first became public back in June, following a previous TCH whistleblower, Eithan Haim, alleging that TCH had continued to provide “gender-affirming care” to minor children even after stating that it would stop doing so.

    Following Sivadge talking with Rufo, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents to her home to “intimidate and threaten her,” in Rufo’s words.

    Haim has been visited by agents of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and has been indicted on four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

  • Harris County’s Lina Hidalgo still hasn’t given up on her socialist guaranteed income program, despite the Texas Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional.

    The Harris County Commissioners Court voted along partisan lines last week to revive a guaranteed basic income (GBI) program for select residents with more restrictions and higher costs, although a previous version was halted by state courts earlier this year.

    Under the original version of the program, named Uplift Harris, the county planned to send “no-strings-attached” $500 monthly stipends to 1,928 recipients for 18 months, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the program last April. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) halted the plan indefinitely.

    Now Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo says the revised program, Uplift Harris 2.0, will provide preloaded cards with restrictions on how the funds may be spent.

    “That’s not the spirit of a guaranteed income program,” said Hidalgo. “If the state gets in the way of this and the program becomes stuck in court again then the funds will be reallocated to programs that already exist to support people living in poverty.”

    Hidalgo did not specify the restrictions on how recipients could spend funds but said the debit cards could be used for “medicine, groceries, et cetera.” The county has not yet published details of the revised GBI.

    Commissioners will cover the costs of Uplift Harris with nearly $21 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, of which $17,350,000 will be distributed to selected residents and $1 million will fund a study of the program’s effectiveness.

    Administrative costs charged by nonprofit GiveDirectly were originally $1,740,500, but under the revised GBI will rise another $400,000.

    All the better to rake off more social justice graft…

  • Both Canadian freight rail networks are hit by strikes.

  • If someone contacts you claiming to be a U.S. Marshall, but claims you need to pay your failure to appear fine in cash, then it’s a scam.

  • “Russian businesses are locked out of billions as payment issues reportedly pile up abroad.” The sanctions are leaky, but not entirely useless.
  • Why Japanese software lags so far behind western software.
  • The Baltics switch over to European electrical standards.
  • There can be only one.
  • Google to Invest $1 Billion in Texas Data, Cloud Center Infrastructure. Google plans to make another billion-dollar investment in Texas to support data center infrastructure.” I have no respect for woke Google, but better they spend money in Texas rather than California.
  • “Warner Bros Discovery pledges $8.5 billion on Nevada Studios pending tax credit approval.” Moving production out of California makes a lot of sense, though $8.5 billion is a lot of money for a company with a market cap of $19.5 billion.
  • Follow-up: Disney backtracks on forced arbitration for wrongful death lawsuit.
  • Critical Drinker watches the new Snow White trailer. “As for the dwarfs, [these] things are absolute nightmare fuel.” And it’s amusing to see Rachel Zegler go from calling the original “dated” to calling it “beloved” is an amusing turnabout.
  • And speaking of the Drinker, he gets to dance on The Acolyte grave.

    In life you reap what you sow, and if what you sow happens to be a $180 million vanity project made by a feminist activist promoted way beyond her abilities with practically no experience, only a vague understanding of the subject matter, and even less talent for actual storytelling, starring a blank-faced charisma-vacuum with all the acting talent of a comatose Steven Seagal, and incorporating some of the most cringe-inducing scenes ever committed to film, then, well, what you reap will be a big old dose of cancel.

    More: “Man, it’s got to be a bitter pill for Kathleen Kennedy to swallow. [The Acolyte] represented her ultimate vision for Star Wars: Female focused, female led, and female directed. And, funnily enough, it was rejected by absolutely everyone.” And: “The cold, harsh truth is that the mythical ‘modern audience’ that Lucasfilm have been chasing for 10 years now simply doesn’t exist, never has existed, and never will exist.”

  • Just a bit more on The Acolyte from How it Should have Ended:

  • This just in: Crappy modern art is now bringing in 1/10th of what it was. Still outperforming NFTs, though…
  • John Richardson of the No Lawyers – Only Guns And Money blog is running for the NRA Board of Directors. Since he has done such and admirable job of covering every twist and turn of the organization’s dysfunction during the terminal years of the LaPierre regime, I can only imagine that he’ll be an excellent addition to the board.
  • Rotten Tomatoes drops the audience score to hide how much viewers actually hate woke films. Sounds like they just made their site entirely useless.
  • Kotaku social justice warrior Alyssa Mercante threatens to sue the Internet. I’m sure that will work out well for her…
  • Jeremy Clarkson bans Labour PM Keir Starmer from Clarkson’s newly opened pub.
  • Hoovie spent more than three times as much renovating his farmhouse as I spent on my entire house in 2004.
  • Woman runs over her boyfriend on the way the couples therapy.
  • The vicious claw shrimp strikes again. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • I am proud to announced that I am the Grand Prize winner in this year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest.

  • “Kamala Harris Unveils New Economic Platform ‘We Must Seize The Means Of Production And Execute The Bourgeoisie.'”
  • David French Founds New Group ‘Evangelicals For Satan.'”
  • I’ve featured a dog bus video before, but not this particular one:

  • Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    DNC Riot Season Begins

    Monday, August 19th, 2024

    The Democratic National Convention kicks off this week, and Chicago businesses are getting ready…by boarding up their widows and doors.

    Chicago business owners, reeling since the lootings and vandalism that occurred during the 2020 civil uprisings, are taking no chances with the thousands of anti-Israel activists who are set to arrive at the Windy City’s downtown area this week to “shut down the DNC for Gaza.”

    Although the Democratic National Convention is set to kick off Monday, business owners in the downtown area have already taken measures to protect their stores from belligerent rioters, boarding up their windows and barricading their doors. By Thursday, several storefronts had been shielded by plywood, local media outlets reported.

    “As we know, this city has a poor track record when it comes to protecting businesses,” a local store owner, Scott Shapiro, told ABC Chicago. “We felt it was more prudent to board up, since our customers and their employers have told them to stay home throughout the convention for their own safety.”

    Mr. Shapiro’s menswear shop on Clark Street, Syd Jerome, nearly went out of business four years ago after it was repeatedly ransacked and lost nearly $100,000 in merchandise. His shop was just one of the businesses that suffered from repeated break-ins during the George Floyd protests that took hold of Chicago in summer 2020.

    Gee, do you think it’s possibly that all those “pro-Palestinian” protesters descending on Chicago just might want to loot and torch a shop run by someone who’s last name is “Shapiro”?

    The owner of Chicago Board-Up Services, Vicki Fichter, said her crew has already worked on more than a dozen businesses in the past week and she has received more than 40 requests for board-up jobs in the downtown area.

    “We’re boarding them up tight, so that there’s no entry,” Ms. Fichter told ABC.

    Sounds like Chicago business owners know exactly what “mostly peaceful” Democratic Party activism looks like.

    Another sign of the fun and games in store for Chicago? Someone has been delivering pallets of bricks to various locations in Chicago.

    As the Democratic National Convention (DNC) approaches, Chicago has noticed a concerning trend that has raised alarm among residents and law enforcement. Pallets of bricks have mysteriously appeared on street corners, sparking speculation that the city could experience a new wave of organized chaos similar to other violent protests of previous years.

    The presence of these bricks is not an isolated incident but a strategy with a well-known history. In the summer of 2020, similar deliveries were reported in various cities across the United States, including Minneapolis, New York, and Portland. These cities experienced protests against police brutality that turned into riots. Authorities and citizens connected these pallets of bricks to groups such as Antifa, alleging that the groups used them to arm protesters and stoke violence under the guise of legitimate demonstrations.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Worse still for Chicago, the police seem to be calling in sick. “According to some reports on social media, more than 1,000 officers are calling in sick.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    What’s more, the perimeter security is evidently easily breached. And protesters have already breached the outer perimeter fence.

    It seems that some social justice factions of the Democratic Party actively want destructive riots, even when they harm Democrats and Democrat-run cities, presumably to keep other factions in line. This time around, the riots will ostensibly be about the Israel Hamas War (which, much to the frustration of jihad-friendly social justice warriors, Israel is winning handily), but we know that even if the Middle East were enjoying a rare respite of peace, the brick hurlers would just find another reason to riot…

    Has Josh Shapiro Already Been Anointed Kamala’s Veep Pick?

    Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024

    It’s obvious that someone is scripting the Democratic Party’s dance steps through this eventful two weeks, from Biden stepping down to Kamala’s ascension to the party dutifully falling in line behind her. I wonder if those same powers behind the throne have already anointed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

    This has been a suspicion since his name first appeared among the likes of Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer (and 2020 retreads like Elizabeth Warren) as a possible replacement for Slow Joe at the convention. After all, male, pale and Jewish hardly fits the profile of the intersectionality-obsessed and Hamas-besotted cadres of the Party’s rank and file, and he’s only been governor since 2023. I also noticed a whole lot of media outlets had “Is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro going to be Kamala’s running mate” pieces cued up and ready to go within an hour of the “Biden’s out” announcement.

    But look at this Google trending chart I constructed.

    Since it was announced that Biden was dropping out of 2024 Presidential campaign, it looks like Shapiro has been the most searched name among veep possibilities. Certainly being governor of a must-win swing state for Democrats must have something to do with it. Maybe they feel that Shapiro can keep the race close enough in Pennsylvania that the 3 AM drops of ballot fraud won’t seem so obvious.

    Also, it appears that Democratic megadonor Alex Soros is a fan of Shapiro’s.

    If Shapiro is the party’s pick, it will only add fuel to the theory that the Soros clan is the one actually pulling the Democratic Party’s strings…

    LinkSwarm for August 21, 2020

    Friday, August 21st, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! This one may be a little short because I was busy buying books last night. This roundup is also light on Democratic National Convention news because, really, who has time to watch that garbage?

  • President Donald Trump is the last bulwark against the deluge:

    Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.

    But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.

    Snip.

    Most hated Trump not because he hated or ridiculed them, but because he found them useless, as we saw from the fixations of John Brennan and James Clapper to the dazed pundits of NeverTrump to the wise men of the retired military.

    What created the hatred of Trump and his supporters, then, was not a rather heterodox political agenda (see below), but a style that took on the Left on its own terms, and shocked a Republican establishment—again not just by conjuring the specter of Lee Atwater, but by shrugging as irrelevant his ostracism by the traditional conservative beltway insider.

    Overview of Trump economy snipped.

    Joe Biden has claimed the recent historic establishment of diplomatic relationships between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was not of the Trump Administration’s own making, but the logical epilogue to years of hard Obama Administration foundational work.

    Biden is right in a sense. For eight years, his Obama team sought to empower Iran—through the lifting of sanctions; through the flawed Iran Deal; through appeasement of Hezbollah, the Assads, and Hamas; through estrangement of the Arab Gulf States and Israel—all as a bizarre Persian/Shiite counterweight to the Sunni Arab world and the U.S.-Israeli special relationship.

    Obama and Biden so succeeded that they drove Israel and Gulf States to seek an-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend realist partnership, whose fruition we witnessed last week.

    We forget, however, when Trump entered office, that Israel was isolated. Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States were bewildered by U.S. neutrality in the Middle East. Iran was ascendant. The “jayvees” of ISIS had overrun much of Iraq with delusions of caliphate grandeur. The Ottomanizing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was supposedly our new trusted “bridge” between East and West.

    Less than four years later, Iran is isolated, broke, and a veritable client of China. ISIS was bombed out of existence. Israel and much of the Arab world are more worried about Iran than they are about each other. The Palestinians are not the key to regional peace. Turkey is recognized as the rogue that it had become while relations with Greece have warmed.

    The United States is energy independent of the Middle East, as is Israel—because of the expansion of fracking and horizontal drilling that a Biden-Harris Administration claims would cease upon assuming office.

    Snip.

    For all the hoax of “Russian collusion,” Vladimir Putin is in terrible shape and has not fooled the administration as he did with “reset” in the Obama years. In the last four years, the United States upped sanctions on Russia, crashed the world export market of natural gas and oil so dear to Moscow, beefed up NATO spending, hectored Germany about its new energy dependence on Putin, increased U.S. military capability, reached out to frontline Eastern Europe, left an asymmetrical missile deal with Russia, obliterated Russian mercenaries in Syria, sold lethal weapons to Ukraine—even as the likes of James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and an array of retired generals sermonized that Trump was a Russian “asset.” Translated that means the president who contained Putin they loathed, and the Obama presidency that empowered him they idolized.

    Snip.

    Trump is neither a traditional conservative in the Ronald Reagan mode nor a centrist establishmentarian Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney. But he has done more culturally for the conservative cause than any president since Calvin Coolidge. Like him or not, he has appointed more constructionist federal judges at all levels than any prior Republican president in a single term.

    He likewise has been more opposed than any prior Republican to the current culture of abortion on demand. His education secretary is trying to enforce the Bill of Rights on what have become sometimes neo-fascistic college campuses, and to discourage race-based set asides and de facto discrimination on the basis of race.

    He is a defender of the police while acknowledging the need for greater oversight, and opposed both violence in the streets, and the appeasement of it by blue state governors and mayors. In some sense, there are no conservatives, either by temperament or by political ability, eager to stop the summer madness of statue toppling, arson, spiraling crime, shakedowns, cancel culture and the vows of Antifa and BLM that all this is the beginning of a complete rewriting of American history and a radical recalibration of our shared futures.

    Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach.

    No president in the history of the Republic has ever been targeted for removal by the opposition party, the permanent bureaucracy, and members of his own party, and in such an illegal and unethical manner.

    There was the first impeachment effort, the Beltway punditry in early 2017 calling for his removal by coup if necessary, the voting machine suits, the Clinton-Obama-Steele subversion of the Trump campaign and transition, the Hollywood assassination chic, the effort to take out former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the farce of the 25th Amendment that included the bathos of high federal officials contemplating wearing wires in private conservations with the president to the psychodrama of Professor Bandy Lee testifying before Congress about Trump’s mental state, the silly Emolument Clause gambit (Trump has lost over $1 billion while in office and taking no salary), the subversion of the FISA courts, the Russian hoax, Robert Mueller’s two-year long and $35 million witch hunt, the fabricated Steele dossier implanted in the bowels of the Obama government and media, the one-phone-call impeachment circus, the revolt of the retired generals, and what has rightly lately been called “coup porn,” the hysteria over Ukraine and the caricaturing of Trump in 2020 as Typhoid Mary, Herbert Hoover, and Bull Connor as the Left weaponized the contagion, quarantine, and rioting.

    The Left, the media, and the NeverTrump Right rarely now any more argue all of the above was warranted or based on verifiable wrongdoing, but see the mish-mash instead as a righteous “any means necessary” tactic to achieve the noble end of destroying a president that they detest.

    That Trump is still standing is an unrecognized tribute to his resilience, stamina, and willpower to fight it out to the bitter end.

    His critics say 2020 is not 2016. This time the polls are right on, not rigged by the sort who trafficked in absurd Russian hoaxes or were mesmerized by Michael Avanetti. The silent Trump voters no longer exist, they add. The suburban mom, we are told, fears Trump’s temper more than Antifa. The fence-sitter is bothered more by tweeting than Biden’s ever-longer moments of confused silence. And on and on.

    Perhaps.

    But Americans at some point empathize with an underdog fighter on behalf of what they fear may be a fading America, even someone they are not always fond of, but who does not give up when bullied and subjected to a level of unwarranted abuse that they themselves know they could never endure. The Left never wished to beat Trump at the polls (indeed they feared such an ordeal); they instead wanted to destroy his person, his family, and everyone who followed him.

    That Trump withstood such illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical venom also says something about those who dished it out—and, in the end, did so viciously and yet so impotently.

  • “I think the Democrats want Trump to win“:

    One of the more perplexing things was the DNC giving a speaking slot to former Ohio governor and noted mailman’s son John Kasich. Kasich brings slightly less excitement than dryer lint to any gathering he graces but what was most amusing was that during the somnambulant lead-up to the DNC, the Democrats were acting like Kasich was a real big get for them.

    He’s a milquetoast squish Republican whom no Republicans like anymore, so he tucked tail and went begging for attention crumbs from the Democrats, which is the way of the spineless squishes. After backstabbing his own party to score points with the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media, Kasich then — as Matt details at Townhall — crapped all over his hosts by disparaging Bartender of the Year Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

  • Speaking of the Russian collusion hoax, Kevin Clinesmith, the now Ex-FBI lawyer near the center of Crossfire Hurricane, just pled guilty, “admitting that he altered an email that he used to apply for a FISA warrant against former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page…The guilty plea marks the first conviction in the probe of the Russia investigation led by U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.”
  • A bit more Clinesmith background:

    Of all of the Obama administration loyalists who contributed to the Russia collusion hoax, Clinesmith is the one most obviously guilty of a felony: he altered an email he received from the CIA to say that Carter Page was NOT a CIA source, when in fact the email said Page WAS a CIA source, and submitted that fake document to the federal court in order to obtain a FISA warrant. That is worth five years in prison and, of course, the end of his legal career. Clinesmith’s guilty plea is significant, in part, because he may be willing to implicate others who are higher in the DOJ chain of command.

  • Soon:

  • Ninth Circuit Court rules that magazine limit bans are an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. “It should be noted that this will likely go to a full hearing of the 9th Circuit, but it also should be noted that the court is now majority Republican-appointed. If a full hearing brings the same result, then this all but forces Chief Justice John Roberts to stop being a coward and to take this up.” Flipping the Ninth is a huge achievement for the Trump Administration.
  • The Supreme Court declines to stop construction of the border wall.
  • “The Hint is ‘GET _ _ _ _ GO _ _ _ _ _.’ “Nike Suffers $790 Million Loss, CEO Confirms Layoffs.”
  • Goodyear goes full Social Justice Warrior, allows #BlackLivesMatter, bans Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Now swears it was all a mistake.
  • Democrats remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. How long until they cut the “flag,” “republic,” “one nation,” and “liberty” parts out as well and just pledge directly to Social Justice? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democratic big money donor Ed Buck hit with four more felony charges.
  • Wait, the government can secretly plant cameras on your property as long as they’re outside?
  • Scott “I ordered my cops to let Parkland kids die” Israel defeated in his attempt to win his old job back.
  • Microsoft put off a Day Zero fix for two years.
  • A thread on how lack of concrete engineering know-how in the third world has led to numerous deaths. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Heh:

  • True dat:

  • Boom:

  • “Democratic Convention Viewer Wishing They Would Just Get To The Part About All The Free Stuff
  • “Brilliant Trump Puts Himself On All Postage Stamps, Forcing Democrats To Push For Abolishing USPS.”
  • Presumably an Acme piano:

  • Repeat: “DNC Crowd Erupts As Kermit Gosnell Gives Surprise Speech From Prison.”
  • “Might I suggest the Faceripper 9000?”
  • “I am Mark Zuckerberg. I am human just like you.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Smart dog:

  • BidenWatch for August 17, 2020

    Monday, August 17th, 2020

    The Virtual DNC starts today, voters are not sold on Slow Joe, Team Obama thinks he’s an idiot, he hates the Second Amendment, and we harvest a week’s worth of Kamala Harris bashing. Plus a whole bunch of the Babylon Bee. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • The virtual Democratic National Convention starts today. Finally, a political event that combines the dignity of a Zoom meeting with the raw excitement of a Zoom meeting.
  • Swing voters are not sold on Biden.
    • Many of these voters prioritize the economy as their #1 issue in this election and continue to trust Trump on that issue, saying the economy was doing well before the pandemic.
    • In addition to improving the economy and trying to bring more jobs to the U.S., Jeff O. said he’s picking Trump because “I don’t think that Biden is mentally capable of being president.”
    • Matt T. described Biden as “up there in age” and “showing signs of dementia” as well as “a puppet” who is “controlled by a lot of people in the deep state.” He went on to define that term as “the lobbyists, the people that have the big money, the people that have influence on a lot of the politicians.”
  • Just who is running against Trump?

    As we enter the final 90 days of the November presidential campaign, a few truths are crystalizing about the “Biden problem,” or the inability of a 77-year-old Joe Biden to conduct a “normal” campaign.

    Biden’s cognitive challenges are increasing geometrically, whether as a result of months of relative inactivity and lack of stimulation or just consistent with the medical trajectory of his affliction. His lot is increasingly similar to historical figures such as 67-year-old President William Henry Harrison, William Gladstone’s last tenure as prime minister, Chancellor Hindenburg, or Franklin Roosevelt in late 1944—age and physical infirmities signaling to the concerned that a subordinate might assume power sooner than later.

    Snip.

    So we are witnessing a campaign never before experienced in American history and not entirely attributable to the plague and quarantine. After all, the fellow septuagenarian Trump, with his own array of medical challenges, insists upon frenetic and near-constant public appearances. His opponent is a noncandidate conducting a noncampaign that demands we ask the question, who exactly is drafting the Biden agenda and strategy? Or, rather, who or what is Biden, if not a composite cat’s paw of an anonymous left-wing central committee?

    When Biden speaks for more than a few minutes without a script or a minder in his basement, the results are often racist of the sort in the Black Lives Matter era that otherwise would be rightly damned and called out as disqualifying. If his inner racialist persona continues to surface, Biden’s insensitivities threaten to expose a muzzled BLM as a mere transparent effort to grab power rather than to address “systemic racism” of the sort the exempt Biden seems to exude.

    Biden needs the minority vote in overwhelming numbers, as he realized in his late comeback in the primaries. But the continuance of his often angry, unapologetic racialist nonsense suggests that his cognitive issues trump his political sense of self-control.

    The inner Biden at 77 is turning out to be an unabashed bigot in the age of “cancel culture” and thought crimes that has apparently declared him immune from the opprobrium reserved for any such speech.

    For Biden, if any African American doesn’t vote for him, then “you ain’t black”—a charge fired back at black podcaster with near venom. Biden more calmly assures us, in his all-knowing Bideneque wisdom, that Americans can’t tell Asians in general apart—channeling the ancient racist trope that “they all look alike.”

    In his scrambled sociology, blacks are unimaginatively monolithic politically, while Latinos are diverse and more flexible. Biden seems to have no notion that “Latino” is a sort of construct to encompass everyone from a Brazilian aristocrat to an immigrant from the state of Oaxaca, and not comparable to the more inclusive and precise term “African American.” Moreover, while the black leadership in Congress may be politically monolithic, there are millions of blacks who oppose abortion, defunding the police, and illegal immigration.

  • Not to put too fine a point on it, but Team Obama thinks Joe Biden is an idiot:

    You could certainly see technocratic eye-rolling at times,” said Jen Psaki, the former White House communications director. Young White House aides frequently mocked Biden’s gaffes and lack of discipline in comparison to the almost clerical Obama. They would chortle at how Biden, like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving, would launch into extended monologues that everyone had heard before.

    Former administration officials treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.

    Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, who was known for his mind-meld with the president, wrote in his memoir that “in the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile.”

    Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”

    Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”

  • More on the same subject: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Kamala Harris on the Ticket Is an In-Kind Donation to Trump-Pence 2020“:

    What Harris Brings to the Ticket

    Baggage, for starters. Enough baggage to fill a fleet of 747s. Tyler goes over much of it here and here.

    Harris has been a, shall we say, problematic candidate from the get-go. Her tenures as both the district attorney in San Francisco and the attorney general of California left a lot to be desired. I wrote in a post early last year speculating that she may be her own toughest obstacle because of this:

    Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is not only running against an ever-growing field of fellow Democrats for the 2020 presidential election, but also against what may prove to be a couple of far more formidable opponents: her own records as the district attorney of San Francisco and later the attorney general of California.

    What’s problematic for Harris is that the people who have the most problems with her records are the very progressives she seeks to secure as her base.

    A Capitol Hill friend of mine joked that Harris on the ticket might put California in play for the Republicans, which serves as a humorous segue to the next point here.

    Conventional wisdom dictates that the out-of-power party’s nominee chooses a running mate that can deliver votes from a part of the country that the candidate needs.

    Spoiler alert: California’s electoral votes were already Biden’s.

    From a practical, electoral vote standpoint, Harris brings nothing to the ticket. The deep blue states that were already going to vote for der Bidengaffer are still going to vote for him. Does anyone really think that she is going win over hearts and minds in swing states?

    Let us not forget that Harris is available for this gig because she was the biggest flop of the “top-tier” (her words) candidates to have to leave the race (no, Beto was never top-tier). She may have lasted until December of 2019 but I was already doing a Kamala campaign deathwatch in September on the Morning Briefing after the big Dem donors fled her in droves.

  • “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deploy the Charlottesville hoax to stir up racial pain and anger.”

    I saw in a tweet that he was forefronting the Charlottesville “fine people” hoax. On his first day of campaigning with his running mate, he led with that. I say “he,” but I don’t really believe it’s him. I think it’s more likely that he’s a foggy-minded figurehead, and other people have decided to frame the message like that. I consider these people — whoever they are — despicable. They have chosen quite deliberately to commit to a lie that is intended to make black people feel hated and they are doing it for political gain.

    As my earlier post about the tweet says, I blogged in April 2019, “If Biden does not come forward and retract [a video relying on the Charlottesville hoax] and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President.” Now, more than a year later, Biden has done the opposite. He’s doubled down on the lie and he’s making it the centerpiece of his campaign!

  • The truth about Biden is getting out:

    Somehow, despite the press blockade, word about Joe Biden has gotten out. Rasmussen got this stunning poll result: 59% of respondents don’t think Biden will be around to finish a four-year term, should he be elected. And it isn’t only Republicans who doubt that Biden will be well enough to serve out a term in office. Forty-nine percent of Democrats agree that if Biden wins, it is likely his vice-president will assume the office within four years. No wonder Biden’s handlers are pondering his Veep selection carefully!

    Bear in mind that it is only August. Most people haven’t yet begun paying attention to politics. The public’s perception that Joe Biden is more or less incapacitated will only grow as voters see him in action and begin following events more closely. Of course, the Democrats want to make this year’s election a referendum on President Trump, whom they think they have fatally weakened with non-stop smears over the last four years. They might be right. But I seriously doubt that a majority of Americans will vote for a candidate whom they rightly see as suffering from seriously diminished capacities. Which raises once again the question whether Biden will actually be on the ballot in November.

    Slow Joe is going to stay in hiding for as long as possible.

    Joe Biden isn’t leaving his Delaware home for the campaign trail anytime soon.

    The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is gearing up to step into the spotlight when he announces his vice presidential pick and accepts the party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention this month. But don’t expect a dramatic shift from Biden away from what Republicans tease is his “basement bunker” strategy to that of a news-cycle warrior in the months before Election Day.

    When the coronavirus pandemic first shut down normal life in March, political observers immediately wondered how Biden would be able to campaign effectively while cooped up in his basement. A few months later, after he secured a new in-home studio, started a steady stream of digital events, and rose in the polls, Democrats warmed to his low-key campaign while letting President Trump deal with negative press. Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in June that Biden is “fine in the basement.”

    There was a sense, though, that eventually, in the heat of the fall campaign season, Biden would assume a higher profile in the daily news cycle.

    But there are indications that the low-key style could be here to stay.

    Snip.

    His style is so understated lately that journalists have started hinting annoyance that Biden is not participating in tough national interviews. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said on-air last month that Biden is due for more press exposure. Following a tense interview Trump did with Axios’s Jonathan Swan, several journalists questioned whether the campaign would allow Swan to interview Biden.

    So far that’s a big N O from Slow Joe’s campaign…

  • The Biden campaign raised $26 million in fundraising in the 24 hours after the Harris veep pick. The donor class loves it when Biden follows the script…
  • Kurt Schlichter unloads on the Harris pick:

    All across America, little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, who have been endlessly told by unspecified haters that they can never be nominated to be vice president, were inspired at Kamala Harris’ selection by whoever selected her on behalf of Grandpa Badfinger. Yes, if they hook up with a powerful married Democrat man, that initial connection can fuel their rise to power too.

    Take that, all you modern-day Bull Connors (Connor was a Democrat, but shhhhhhh)! “I won’t cotton to them little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, thinkin’ they can be vice president someday,” they drawl as they twirl their mustaches. Well, Kamala showed all the haters. Girls of that oddly specific demographic can be nominated to be vice president, and let’s take it one step further – they don’t even have to hook up with a powerful married Democrat man and fuel their rise to power via that initial connection to do it! Well, sure Kamala did, and so did the ethnically uninteresting Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit, but those little girls can do it themselves. Well, maybe if they are Republicans.

    And speaking of Sarah Palin, it’s great to see that it’s once again bad to criticize a woman running for vice president.

    Now, criticizing Kamala (pronounced “i wil pr?’ nouns h?r nam ene wa i dam wel plez”) Harris has been officially declared racist and cisgender and sexist, as well as sexist, cisgender, and racist, by The New York Times, all of pinko Twitter, and the Fredocons, so we better not criticize her. Got that? No criticism. You must just sit back and let the tsunami of excitement created by the nomination of this avaricious grasper wash over you.

  • A recap of how Biden got here. “Biden will be the oldest nominee either party has ever had, and would be the oldest occupant of the White House ever on the day he took the oath. But the younger voters who preferred [Bernie] Sanders did not turn out in significant numbers during the primaries, a fact Sanders himself acknowledged.”
  • Here’s a detailed breakdown of Biden’s hostility to the Second Amendment, including banning import of some AR-pattern rifles and regulating existing rifles.
    

  • Harris doesn’t want you to own a gun either.
  • Reminder: Harris wants to eliminate private health insurance.
  • More on the “Crooked Cop” theme:

  • “Rose McGowan Calls Out Kamala Harris Over Harvey Weinstein: ‘How Many Predators Bankroll You?‘ “Kamala Harris accepted $2,500 from Harvey Weinstein for her re-election campaign for California attorney general in 2014. Three years later, she received another $2,500 donation from Weinstein for her bid for the U.S. Senate.”
  • CNN is all in on Kamala Harris.

    After nearly four solid years of CNN screeching about “speaking truth to power,” network staffers are poised to slink back into their usual habit of acting as pro bono spokespersons for the Democratic presidential ticket.

    Pour out a cold one for the Golden Age of Journalism.

    Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, campaigned together for the first time this week, promising followers in a socially distanced gymnasium that they will return honor and order to the United States.

    CNN employees responded to the campaign event with overwhelmingly positive reviews, singling out Harris’s performance as especially praiseworthy. Some hailed the senator’s allegedly extraordinary rhetorical talents. Some proclaimed the moment an especially historic one in American politics. Some theorized that President Trump must really be scared now. Others marveled simply at what a wonderful smile Harris has.

    This is all on top of the fact that many of these same CNN staffers are already awestruck by how incredible and historic it is that Biden picked a woman of color to be his running mate.

    “I thought Kamala Harris gave a fantastic speech,” said CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson. “She absolutely nailed it. I think this is one of the finest performances I’ve seen her deliver in terms of a speech. She has tremendous range as a speaker.”

    It goes on like that for quite a while, each sentence more reverential and cloying than the last.

    All true. But did any expect otherwise? I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any member of the Democratic Media Complex who’s expressed the slightest reserve about Harris. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Heh:

  • No campaign surrogates on Sunday news shows before the “convention.”


    

  • Never forget that Kamala Harris was a ringleader in the attempted Bret Kavanaugh chracter assassination.

    Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., used the Kavanaugh nomination in 2018 as a springboard for her failed presidential campaign. Focusing on her support for abortion and position on the Senate Judiciary Committee that handled the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Harris strongly opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination within moments of it being announced, and long before she had a chance to review his record.

    She joined other Democratic presidential hopefuls on the steps of the Supreme Court the next day to further express her opposition. She ran 3,600 different advertisements on Facebook before the second round of hearings began in late September 2018.

    “Her performance during the Kavanaugh circus stood out as particularly demagogic, cynical & abysmal,” wrote TownHall political editor Guy Benson.

    Within a few seconds of the first hearings being gaveled to order, Harris interrupted the proceedings in an attempt to shut them down on procedural grounds, part of a coordinated attack that included attempts by hundreds of compensated activists to get arrested.

    Harris, a former prosecutor, led a line of questioning that was an obvious attempt to put Kavanaugh in a perjury trap, albeit a trap he was able to avoid. Harris began by asking Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed Robert Mueller, the special counsel then investigating the Trump presidential campaign, with anyone.

    (Hat tip: Sean Davis.)

  • Biden’s positions on tech. He gives lip-service to the corpse of net neutrality, but he has no problem sucking up to donors who hate it (like Comcast). Doesn’t sound like he wants to keep Trump tariffs on China either, which I’m sure will also please many big business donors…
  • Talcum X 2018: “No way I’m supporting Harris & Biden.” Talcum X 2020: “Man, I love me some Harris and Biden!”
  • Bernie Sanders’ national press secretary is not enthused at the Harris pick:

    Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former National press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray criticized 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for selecting Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.

    After the news broke that Biden selected Harris to be his running mate, Joy Gray labeled Harris as America’s “top cop” and blasted the Democratic party.

    “We are in the midst of the largest protest movement in American history, the subject of which is excessive policing, and the Democratic Party chose a ‘top cop’ and the author of the Joe Biden crime bill to save us from Trump. The contempt for the base is, wow,” Joy Gray said.

    Of course, the Social justice Warriors only think they’re the base. The fact Sanders got his ass kicked by Slow Joe proves otherwise…

  • Ouch!

  • “Beautiful golden hair on the Delaware Biden!”

  • Cruel but fair:

  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

  • I chuckled:

  • “Concerns Raised As President Xi Seen Wearing Biden-Harris 2020 Shirt.
  • “Party Of The Poor And Oppressed Nominates Old, Rich, White Man And Cop.”
  • “‘I Don’t Need A Cognitive Test!’ Biden Screams At Pigeon.”
  • “Kamala Harris Sneaks Into White House To Plant Weed On Mike Pence.”
  • “Report: Kamala Harris Already Vetting VP Picks.”
  • “Biden: ‘A Black Woman Will Become President Over My Dead Body.'”
  • Zing!

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    BidenWatch for August 10, 2020

    Monday, August 10th, 2020

    Biden inserts foot into mouth yet again, refuses to leave his basement for something as trivial as the DNC, embraces illegal alien amnesty, mumbles about China, plays footsie with more commies, and gives up on door-knocking. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Biden won’t accept the nomination at the DNC convention in Milwaukee, will accept from his home in Delaware instead. Way to convince people you’re not feeble and senile!
  • Indeed, there’s not going to be any in-person DNC at all. Why would anyone watch an online streaming convention unless it’s their job? What’s the point if you can’t see the freaks in the funny hats?
  • Get ready for the Biden amnesty:

    On his website, former Vice President (and presumptive Democratic candidate for president) Joe Biden vows, if elected, to pass legislation “providing a roadmap to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants”. Last week, his old boss, former President Barack Obama, explained how Biden (or whoever controls him) will do it: by eliminating the filibuster.

    Snip.

    Obama believes that Biden will be elected, and that the Democrats will win a majority in the Senate in November, as the Wall Street Journal postulated on July 30. That will enable both to push for legislation that they want — like statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. And amnesty for illegal aliens.

    Each of these actions will solidify a Democratic majority into the foreseeable future, and give the party of Jackson the White House for as long.

    Snip.

    If the Democrats maintain control of the House, win the White House, and gain control of the Senate and end the filibuster, amnesty would be among the first bills that would be rammed through to signature in the 117th Congress, for that most basic (and base) of reasons: power.

    Assuming that there are 10.5 million illegal aliens in the United States (a conservative estimate the Pew Research Center in June 2019 made of the population in 2017), and depending on the parameters of the amnesty, that would mean that there could be that many new voters (or more) in 2026.

  • “Trump’s campaign knocks on a million doors a week. Biden’s knocks on 0.”

    Donald Trump’s campaign says it knocked on over 1 million doors in the past week alone.

    Joe Biden’s campaign says it knocked on zero.

    The Republican and Democratic parties — from the presidential candidates on down — are taking polar opposite approaches to door-to-door canvassing this fall. The competing bets on the value of face-to-face campaigning during a pandemic has no modern precedent, making it a potential wild card in November, especially in close races.

    Biden and the Democratic National Committee aren’t sending volunteers or staffers to talk with voters at home, and don’t anticipate doing anything more than dropping off literature unless the crisis abates. The campaign and the Democratic National Committee think they can compensate for the lack of in-person canvassing with phone calls, texts, new forms of digital organizing, and virtual meet-ups with voters.

    I don’t know how effective door-knocking is in 2020, but I do know that every other method listing is easy to ignore. I suspect that door-knocking and direct mail work better for casual voters than “virtual meetups,” mainly because a 1% chance of effectivity is better than a 0% chance.

  • Biden doesn’t make gaffes, he is a gaffe.

    Gertrude Stein once quipped of her native Oakland, California, “there is no there there.” Isn’t that how it is with Joe Biden? He doesn’t make gaffes; he is a gaffe, poor thing. (I’ve expatiated on this elsewhere.)

    I suspect that most Americans, whatever side of the political aisle they occupy, do not really see Joe Biden—especially when, like Alice, they are looking directly at him. They need to manage a sidelong glance, a sudden shift of perspective to catch his drift (and I employ the word “drift” advisedly).

    This was brought home to me by an article that appeared a few days ago in Le Figaro, the biggest newspaper in France. The headline summed up its burden: “La stupéfiante indulgence des grands médias américains envers Joe Biden”—“The stupefying indulgence of big American media towards Joe Biden.”

    The author evinced no pro-Trump sympathies. On the contrary. Yet he wrote in amazement at the seamless media distortion that worked to disparage Trump while excusing Biden—a process that “va jusqu’à l’occultation des faits”—goes so far (add an expression of amazement) as to conceal the facts.

    Description of plagiarizing Neil Kinnock snipped.

    The article in Le Figaro notes that the American media has generally covered for Democrats while castigating Republicans. Just think of their worshipful treatment of JFK and demonization of Richard Nixon. (And the love affair with all things Kennedy reached back to JFK’s father—Hitler’s favorite U.S. ambassador—and forward to Teddy “Chappaquiddick” “waitress sandwich” Kennedy and beyond. And of course, the media positively fawned over Barack Obama while snarling endlessly at George W. Bush.

    But there is something different and more extreme about the indulgence lavished upon Joe Biden and the obloquy heaped upon President Trump. Le Figaro quotes Joel Kotkin, an outspoken opponent of Trump’s, who nevertheless acknowledges he has “never seen a president treated the way he was. The effort to remove him was already being considered before he even set foot in the White House!”

    Meanwhile, Joe Biden, endeavoring to ingratiate himself with black voters, claims that he was arrested by South African police while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela. But he wasn’t and he didn’t. “Invention,” Figaro notes, “du début à la fin.”

    In brief, the difference in the treatment accorded to Trump and Biden is the difference between a bright daytime and a black night. . . . It amounts to a democratic scandal that is essentially Orwellian.

    In one sense, the article in Le Figaro tells us nothing we didn’t already know. And yet it reveals a rift or fissure in The Narrative that is obvious to everyone outside the bubble, outside the echo chamber of American punditocracy. Joe Biden is toast. Already the polls, rigged though most of them are, are tightening. President Trump is calmly stealing the Democrats’ thunder, issuing executive orders on everything from payroll tax cuts to instituting a moratorium on evictions.

    Coronavirus hysteria has, at least for now, prevented the president from deploying his biggest vote-getter, the huge rally. But he has adapted and is outflanking poor Biden on every front.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Remember: Hispanics are diverse, but black people are not:

  • More on Biden’s black people aren’t diverse gaffe. “I think what happened is that Biden, in cognitive decline, is losing the ability to maintain the boundary between what is said behind the scenes with his advisers and what is appropriate for speech to the general public.”
  • More on the same subject:

  • No Hispanic speakers at virtual DNC?
  • Devastating:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of senile: No, he hasn’t taken a cognitive test, likens it to being tested for cocaine. A failed cocaine test being what got Hunter Biden kicked out of the military.
  • Speaking of Hunter, Judicial Watch is suing over his travel records.
  • Tucker Carlson on Joe Biden. Correction: By the time coronavirus hit, Biden was already stomping Sanders by a 2-1 margin everywhere.
    

  • Slow Joe hops on the “healthcare for illegal aliens” train:

  • Biden, Michael Brown, and hands up don’t shoot, the founding myth of #BlackLivesMatter.
  • “Joe Biden Is Absolutely the Vehicle for the Communist Takeover of the Democrat Party.”

    The Biden/Sanders Unity Platform explicitly calls for defunding police agencies. Black Lives Matter leaders are demanding even more radical changes to the criminal justice system, and in an interview late last month, Biden responded “Absolutely” when he was asked if he would divert funds away from law enforcement.

    Yet, just today, Biden said he supports additional funding for police. Perhaps it is a poll-driven statement as polls have repeatedly shown this is deeply unpopular.

    Snip.

    Now the Radical Communist Party (RCP) has endorsed Biden. They did it very carefully, saying Biden is still a terrible candidate, but he is the lesser of two evils. For them, he certainly is. Trump will stand up to the anarcho-communists in antifa and other groups. Biden’s inner circle sympathizes with their aims, and their allies are ascendant in the Democrat party.

    Just today, another candidate supported by the Justice Democrats defeated an incumbent Democrat. Cori Bush, Ferguson Black Lives Matter leader, will join the other ideologues in the Squad when she wins in November. She defeated Lacy Clay, a black man whose father founded the Congressional Black Caucus. Clay supported Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, yet he wasn’t radical enough for new urban Democrats. She is the sixth socialist challenger to win a primary.

    Remember that the Radical Communist Party was the group that had pre-printed signs ready to go for the Ferguson riots.

    Spokespeople for Refuse Fascism include Carl Dix, a founding member of the RCP and Sunsara Taylor, another member of the RCP. The cutest thing about Taylor is that she also sits on the board of World Can’t Wait. This organization used the exact same language, accusations of bigotry and fascism, and calls to drive out the regime following the reelection of George W. Bush. And the same ridiculous logic to tie their batty ideas together.

    It almost seems like the RCP pushes out these satellite groups that borrow the 501(c)(3) status from another organization to fund their riots and destruction every time Democrats lose an election. Refuse Fascism runs its donations through the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ). Its funders read like a who’s who of left-wing radicals from Tides to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

    There’s that name again…

  • Is this NYTWall Street executives are getting on board with Biden” piece real or wishful thinking?

    Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

    Last month, multiple Wall Street bundlers, including Alan Leventhal, the chief executive of Beacon Capital; Nat Simons, who runs a clean-tech investment fund; and Mr. Gray, Blackstone’s president, held virtual fund-raisers for Mr. Biden. The giving has been so robust that the Biden campaign is now asking for at least $1 million in donations before it will confirm the former vice president’s attendance at an event, say bundlers.

    As the checks roll in, the Biden campaign has been carefully cultivating its relationship with the business community, with a focus on Wall Street. The outreach has included offering private briefings ahead of major policy rollouts and dangling various donor packages for the upcoming, and mostly virtual, Democratic National Convention.

    I guess Democrats think the 1% is cool now that the real class enemy is working class cops…

  • Slow Joe talks China…I think.

    Does he even mean WHO here, or did he mean the WTO?

  • Speaking of China:

  • Veep pick = “Living Will”

  • The “final” Biden veep pick “rankings“: Harris, Rice, Whitmer, Duckworth, Bass. I don’t know any pundit that doesn’t think Biden is going to pick a black woman.
  • But the hard left says no former police officers or prosecutors, which leaves Harris out, assuming Biden (or his handlers) cares what they think.
  • Reminder: Chris “Waitress Sandwich” Dodd is heading up the VP search efforts. What could possibly go wrong?
  • “Biden Says He Can’t Wait To Find Out Who He Picked For VP.”
  • Robin Williams takes down Biden from beyond the grave:

  • Name starts with “B”

  • Trump campaign 404 pages, including some aimed at Slow Joe and Grandma Death. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
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    Police to DNC: Since You Hate Cops So Much, Police Your Own Damn Convention

    Wednesday, July 29th, 2020

    If you’ve ever read about the the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and said to yourself “You know, there just wasn’t enough rioting and violence going on there!” you may get your wish:

    More than 100 law enforcement agencies have reportedly pulled out of security agreements to send personnel to help with security at the Democratic National Convention next month in part because they are concerned about recent efforts to limit law enforcement’s use of tear gas and pepper spray in responding to violent riots.

    Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales was ordered last month to change the department’s policies to ban the use of tear gas and pepper spray.

    “Since the Milwaukee order was issued, more than 100 law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin and across the country decided against coming to Milwaukee, Morales told WTMJ-TV on Tuesday,” the Associated Press reported. “They were concerned with directives placed on the police department, including not allowing tear gas or pepper spray, he said.”

    In Wisconsin, Franklin Police Chief Rick Oliva said, “It is apparent there is a lack of commitment to provide the Milwaukee Police Department with the resources it needs to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters, attendees, citizens and police personnel. I can not send personnel if they are not properly equipped or will not be allowed to engage in appropriate actions which would ensure their safety.”

    Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson responded by indicating that his department would not be sending officers to event, saying, “I understand that use of chemical irritants and pepper spray is serious and those are to be used only when legally justified. But when you take that out of the continuum that doesn’t leave the officers much other than getting harmed or using deadly force and that’s not good for any officer or the public.”

    The news comes as violent left-wing riots have rocked multiple cities across the U.S. in the weeks since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

    “Unfortunately, some have chosen to respond to George Floyd’s death in a far less productive way – by demonizing the police, promoting slogans like ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), and making grossly irresponsible proposals to defund the police,” Attorney General William Barr said in prepared remarks to the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “The demonization of police is not only unfair and inconsistent with the principle that all people should be treated as individuals, but gravely injurious to our inner city communities. There is no harder job in America today than being a police officer.”

    This will provide a handy test of just how much control centrist Democrats have over the radical antifa and #BlackLivesMatter rioters their financial backers have helped underwrite. My guess is: Less than they think.

    The Milwaukee DNC has been scaled-down to being “mostly” virtual, but hundreds still plan to “protest.” Maybe the larger #BlackLivesMatter/antifa community will see it as a new opportunity to bus in for mayhem and to set an entirely new city on fire.

    The International Order of Police and Fraternal Order of Police have both endorsed President Trump, and given how much leftwing activists openly hate their guts, I’m betting a lot more prominent local police unions will follow suit.

    Come convention time, one wonders if the entirety of the Milwaukee police force will stage a “blue flu” sick-out.

    Alternately, the DNC may view this as a great excuse to completely cancel all the “in-person” portions of the Democratic National Convention entirely. The certainly don’t want to expose Joe Biden to any more human interaction than necessary…

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for April 6, 2020

    Monday, April 6th, 2020

    The frozen campaign continues. Slow Joe racks up Pinocchios and launches a podcast, the Democratic Convention has been moved back a month (and may turn into a virtual-only affair), and Bernie’s doppelganger says it’s time to throw in the towel. It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

    Wisconsin may or may not have a primary tomorrow. It’s theoretically going ahead but there seem to be numerous legal challenges due to the difficulty of holding it due to the Wuhan coronavirus.

    Delegates

    Right now the delegate count stands at:

    1. Joe Biden 1,217
    2. Bernie Sanders 914
    3. Elizabeth Warren 81
    4. Michael Bloomberg 55
    5. Pete Buttigieg 26
    6. Amy Klobuchar 7
    7. Tulsi Gabbard 2

    Not updated since March 26.

    Polls
    Yet again, there’s not a single poll that has Sanders up over Biden at the state or national level, and polling itself seems to have dropped off to almost nothing, a victim of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Joe Rogan says he’d rather vote for President Donald Trump than Joe Biden. “I’d rather vote for Trump than [Biden]. I don’t think he can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the fuck he’ll be like after a year in office.” (It’s an interesting interview, but then I get to the part where his guest talks about a friend’s self-trepanation and go “Well, this is a little far afield of fodder for a political blog…”)
  • Democrats have postponed the start of their convention from July 13 to August 17.
  • In fact, Democrats are considering cancelling it entirely.
  • Now on to the clown car itself (or what’s left of it):

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside Biden’s coronavirus bunker:

    From the nuts and bolts of campaigning (fundraising, door-knocking, holding rallies) to the most basic assumptions about the economy and how the public sees Trump, nearly everything needs to be reassessed. Biden’s Philadelphia headquarters has been cleared out. “Everybody’s working remotely across the whole campaign,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director. “We’re all discovering the joys of a Zoom conference call.”…

    The presumed date by which Biden’s delegate nerds predicted Bernie Sanders would be unofficially knocked out of the race has been upended by a series of canceled primaries. Biden had planned to use a predicted victory in Georgia on Tuesday to essentially end the race by declaring that he had achieved “an insurmountable delegate lead.”

    Instead, the Georgia primary was moved to May and Biden retreated to a makeshift studio in his basement at home in Delaware to broadcast Zoom videos that have had to compete — poorly, so far — with briefings from elected officials like Trump and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who are actually responsible for dealing with the crisis.

    “Everything that’s happening right now is like nothing I’ve experienced in previous presidential campaigns,” said Dunn.

    The first big political issue is whether the Sanders campaign has any chance of returning from the dead. With many remaining primaries getting kicked to May and June, Biden might not be able to deliver his “insurmountable delegate lead” line until the summer. And while the pandemic has essentially erased Sanders from the news, there is an undercurrent of frustration — and a little nervousness — among some Biden aides that he has been robbed of a clean victory as the presumptive nominee at the end of March, as they had assumed he would. “There’s no closure,” said a top Biden adviser.

    The pandemic exploded and inserted itself as the only issue that matters just as Biden made his remarkable transition from lost cause to incredible comeback. The rebound was so swift and his dominance over the race so sudden, that a lot of Biden advisers and outside allies are still processing what happened. Did Biden build an excellent team that just took some time to get things right? Or was Biden’s team hapless and he was simply the beneficiary of underlying dynamics in the primary that allowed him to beat Sanders?

    The latter view was expressed by an informal adviser to the campaign.

    “After Super Tuesday, Biden got catapulted to the front of the line in spite of himself and his campaign,” he said. “The classic example of that obviously is Massachusetts, where he never went there, didn’t spend any money, didn’t have any people on the ground, and he beat Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. It’s extraordinary. And there’s a reason for it: Democratic voters were saying that the most important thing to them is to beat Trump and he was happy to be the beneficiary of that. But perhaps many of us were overly critical of how they ran the campaign and, frankly, how he performed. He has some fundamental strengths that those of us watching this undervalued.”

    “Coronavirus is killing the Biden campaign — and making him look like a fool“:

    When Biden has been heard from, he has looked frankly pathetic. After disappearing for more than a week after his primary victories in Missouri, Michigan and Washington, Biden emerged this week for a series of speeches and interviews from his Wilmington, Del., home.

    The purpose was obvious­ — his campaign desperately needs to muscle its way back into the news cycle. But that turned out to be easier said than done…Biden is clearly not working for the Biden campaign.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Speaking of looking like a fool, watch Sundown Joe stumble his way through another interview.

    Robert Gates makes the case against Biden as commander-in-chief:

    Gates is a Republican and is certainly no liberal, but his reputation for moderation, pragmatism, and managerial talent was such that Barack Obama wanted to retain him for a long stint as secretary of defense. It wasn’t the easiest of tenures, but for two and a half years, Gates worked diligently and as smoothly as he could with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the Obama-Biden national security team.

    It is therefore a matter of grave alarm—at least a DEFCON 2 and possibly DEFCON 1, the ultimate state of alert—when Gates, that most centered of centrists, asserts that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every foreign policy and national security issue for the past four decades.”

    The entire syllabus of Biden’s foreign policy and national security errors is a target-rich environment for the many American Greatness writers with expertise on particular issues. Anyone who makes the case for Biden’s election to the presidency should be made to defend the extremism and demonstrated failure of Biden’s national security record.

    Speaking of bad judgment, remember that Biden was calling President Trump’s travel bans “xenophobia” before the Wuhan Cornavirus really got going. (Hat tip: Director Blue.) Is Biden a chronic liar or just senile?

    The former VP doesn’t just stick to marginal lies or spin either, he goes directly at major issues knowing that he’ll be shown to be fibbing.

    But does he know? That’s a real question when you’ve got a guy who’s clearly losing his mental faculties. As I’ve documented here, here, and here (among many others), Biden’s inability to process his thoughts and his constant “gaffes” are apparent at this point. There have also been bouts of anger on the campaign trail in which he’s berated or even physically accosted Democrat primary voters.

    These are the kinds of things someone wouldn’t do if they had the ability to understand what they were doing. Trump may be a brute at times, but you’ll never find him jabbing his finger in a voter’s chest and yelling at them.

    All of these things raise serious questions about just how stable Biden is. If you’ve watched him lately, he looks like he’s about to fall over while just trying to do remote TV hits. This is not a guy who looks — or acts — like he’s all there. So while the constant lies are worthy of coverage — and every single one needs to be slammed — the reality of his condition may be much more serious than just a case of being a politician.

    Given Biden’s lying, it’s no surprise that he’s racked up the Pionocchios. “He’s collected a total of eleven Pinocchios from the Washington Post in just the past few weeks.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Biden thinks it likely that there will be no in-person Democratic National Convention. He may be right, but he’s sending mixed messages:

    Did you know that Joe Biden has a podcast? Speaking of which: “Biden’s New Podcast Available Exclusively On Vinyl.” “Joe Biden did a town hall about coronavirus last night [March 27] on CNN, and I don’t think there is a single news article about it other than on CNN itself, which doesn’t seem to have a transcript.” Biden is running ahead of where Hillary Clinton did against Sanders four years ago. “Biden held onto much of the turf that Clinton won in 2016, but he also captured a lot of territory that Sanders carried four years ago. We found that much of Biden’s success can be explained by his dominance in areas with larger shares of white voters without a college degree.” Time’s Up: We’re here to fight for all women who make accusations of sexual assault. Well, except those against Joe Biden. For Reasons. Related:

    Elizabeth Warren all but endorses Biden.

  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: Convention Substitute? Will Democrats dump Joe for Cuomo?

    Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Yet many Democrats have ‘buyers’ remorse’ as the COVID virus has driven Biden off centerstage and into a hastily-built basement studio in his Delaware home.

    Biden has tried to remain relevant to the public through TV broadcasts, but those appearances have been gaffe-prone and interspersed with lapses in lucidity. Last Friday, he announced on CNN that ‘I speak to all five of my grandkids,’ which must make his very much alive sixth grandchild feel a little neglected. Dave Catanese of McClatchy found his interview last Monday painful to watch: ‘Joe Biden struggled mightily at the top of his MSNBC interview where he looked to be reading from notes to answer a question.’

    Democrats openly worry about the lack of enthusiasm for Biden. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found 86 percent of Trump supporters enthusiastic about their choice. Only 74 percent of Biden backers said the same thing. Most ominously, the poll found that 15 percent of Democrats who still back Bernie Sanders say they’d vote for Trump, not Biden, in November. That’s more than the 12 percent of Sanders voters who plumped for Trump in 2016.

    (Hat tip: Gail Heriot at instapundit.)

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Sanders camp says he has a narrow path to victory, but refuses to say what it is. Presumably it involves walking The Path of the Dead through the White Mountains.


    Looks legit.

    The knife-in-the-back anonymous-top-aides-say-he-should-consider-dropping-out stage is already in full swing. Of course, it’s from the Washington Post and contains the magic “just trust me bro” phrase (“according to two people with knowledge of the situation,”) so who knows if it’s real or just more DNC rat-farking. His Saturday Night Live doppelganger Larry David says Sanders should drop out and everybody should back Biden.

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Dropped out March 4, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (Dropped out March 1, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020 and endorsed Warren)
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard (Dropped out March 19, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.(Dropped out March 2, 2020 and endorsed Biden.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Dropped out February 12, 2020)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer. (Dropped out February 29, 20020)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Dropped out March 5, 2020)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang (Dropped out February 11, 2020, later endorsed Biden)
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