21 thoughts on “News/Politics 6-16-23

  1. Ok this made me chuckle a tad bit… I know I shouldn’t but I’ve only had one cup of coffee

    At a press conference, right before saying, “I’m going off script, I’m going to get in trouble,” Biden told reporters:

    “We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”

    Wouldn’t it be nice if a reporter would ask Joe Biden who he would get in trouble with for going off script? Sigh. I’d hope I live long enough to find out the answer to that question.

    Anyway, I can’t WAIT to see Biden’s new Ocean Train! It was cute how excited he was. Biden’s brain, what’s left of it, is already riding the rails, hanging out with that cartoon fish Nemo and enjoying preprandial cocktails in the smoking car.

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  2. Of course, anyone can misspeak and, probably, will if speaking in public often. Anyone who works, lives or is around people with dementia issues know what they see, however. Very sad.

    Equally sad is Bill Gates’ apparent inability or care about partnering with the communist party of China.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Well sadly Gates didn’t care about “partnering” with underage girls at Epstein’s Island either, so this is really no shock.

    Slave labor has it’s perks if you benefit from it I guess.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Liar, liar….

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Fox has gone woke now that Murdoch’s sons and woke daughter in laws run the show.

    CONTENT WARNING!!!!!!

    Seriously, it’s so bad I’ll skip a couple in the thread. You can click one and see those that are missing if it so suits you.

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  6. True.

    https://twitter.com/TheBalkanist/status/1669337952780951552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1669337952780951552%7Ctwgr%5Eee0227604e9012312d491d77648644473a51da54%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fbrettt%2F2023%2F06%2F15%2Fmika-brzezinski-and-friends-laugh-off-the-bribery-allegations-against-joe-biden-n2384549

    They know it’s true. But they knowingly spread lies anyway, as long as it benefits Democrats.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. The media doesn’t ask questions that may expose Democrats.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Why?

    Because un-American clowns run our country now.

    “Indict Walt Nauta? Why Not the Biggest Liars First?”

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/06/15/indict_walt_nauta_why_not_the_biggest_liars_first_149359.html

    “Walt Nauta is a 10-year veteran of the Navy and served as an aide to former President Donald Trump both in and out of office.

    Special Counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly “making false statements in interviews with the FBI.” The indictment’s subtext is that Nauta refused to cooperate with, and turn state’s evidence to, the special counsel in its efforts to convict Trump.

    But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?

    Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?

    After all, when Smith announced his indictments of Trump, he lectured America on the rule of law and the cherished notion that no one is above it.

    So let us start with the former interim director of the FBI itself, Andrew McCabe.

    McCabe admittedly lied four times about his illegally leaking sensitive information to witnesses and mishandling classified information.

    Have those crimes suddenly ceased being felonies?

    Or is it now the policy of the United States government that an FBI director can lie with impunity, and leak, and mishandle sensitive classified information?

    Yet Walt Nauta may be sent to prison while McCabe will continue to earn a fine salary at CNN as a paid “expert” to deplore . . . what exactly?

    What McCabe knows best from his own experience with the deed – the “mishandling of classified information”?

    Nauta reportedly is being indicted for claiming he “did not know” what he supposedly did know in relation to the movement of the president’s papers.

    His denial was proffered with nearly the exact phraseology that another FBI director, James Comey, used under oath when he stonewalled congressional inquisitors on 245 occasions.

    Was the FBI director ever indicted for feigning ignorance or amnesia before Congress?

    Did Nauta ever record a private, and likely classified, conservation he had with the president of the United States in the White House, and then leak it to the New York Times?

    That is precisely what James “Higher Loyalty” Comey bragged about doing.

    Most recently, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm admitted that she, too, recently lied while under oath to Congress when she denied owning private stocks.

    Was Nauta’s “I don’t know” a greater threat to the rule of law and the security of the republic than the lies of the secretary of Energy? She deliberately misled Congress about potential conflicts of interest involving her stock portfolio.”

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Action, not words.

    “DeSantis’ Plan to Tear Down the DOJ Is What All the Candidates Need
    Actions are what matter, not personalities.”

    https://spectator.org/desantis-plan-to-tear-down-the-doj-is-what-all-the-candidates-need/

    “This is, on the surface and even a little below it, a column about Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and the 2024 GOP primary. But it’s about more than that, and if you’ll leave the partisan preferences at the door for a bit, hopefully we can come to some sort of larger understanding that we’ll need as the next presidential race looms.

    All we’re really talking about this week is the indictment of Trump down in Miami and its political ramifications — none of which are good. Is this a pristine example of weaponized government? Did Trump put himself in the position to get indicted? Is this actually a good thing for him? Does it force Republican voters to rally around Trump in a way they might otherwise not do, and is that the design of the Machine that controls our institutions of power? Is the Pump-and-Dump-Trump strategy real? Is it inevitable?

    Those things are easy to get caught up in. We just had a historic, and very frightening, development in American politics. Lots of presidential figures have done things that could very well have put them in legal jeopardy; never before was it thought a good idea to prosecute them on a partisan basis. Then when it does finally happen, it’s over … documents in boxes and a dispute over whether Trump has the right to keep them.

    It’s all very bizarre, and because of that, it’s titillating. We’re not likely to get past it anytime soon, and because we aren’t, Trump is sucking all the oxygen out of the nascent 2024 campaign. One wonders whether Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who just threw his hat into the ring for some reason, has any clue what he’s doing, or whether those advising him aren’t just trying to grift their way into a few months of paychecks.

    And all of it is wrong.

    I already said this week that I don’t see any real legitimacy in Trump’s indictment. It’s clearly political, and it’s clearly an abuse of power. You cannot let Hillary Clinton destroy government documents that she mishandled on a private email server with no consequences, then send Main Justice down to Florida with guns blazing at Trump for his recalcitrance with the bureaucrats at the National Archives. It doesn’t matter whether Trump was less cooperative than the law requires; the whole thing stinks of a banana republic, and it’s not good enough for the United States of America.

    But we need to understand that this is not about Trump, and just because they’re after him doesn’t mean he’s America’s political Jesus.

    Because our politicians in this country — especially not in this current era — are not divine. They’re people. Most of them aren’t even particularly good people.

    What we’ve got to insist on is actions. Significant, substantive, and difficult actions that must be taken if we’re going to survive as a country.

    At this point, I honestly don’t care if Trump is the nominee — which is what the polls say is pretty darned likely — or if it’s DeSantis. What I care about is that (1) we’ve got to have a Republican nominee who is capable and willing to do the things necessary to win in November 2024 — whether that means harvesting ballots, hiring every lawyer in America to engage in lawfare against local Democrat vote-fraud machines, kissing all the babies, lying to the rubes, whatever — and (2) that nominee, once he wins, had better be willing to take action.

    Don’t take this as an endorsement of DeSantis, but Phil Wegmann at RealClearPolitics had a fascinating piece about the governor’s plans to tear the DOJ and the FBI down to the studs and rebuild them into something that looks and works very, very differently than what we have now. A quick excerpt:

    [DeSantis] has privately told advisors that he will hire and fire plenty of federal personnel, reorganize entire agencies, and execute a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy to restore the Justice Department to a mission more in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.”

    But his ambitions go beyond bureaucratic restructuring. He wants to physically remove large swathes of the DOJ from the District of Columbia, including FBI headquarters, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

    “We’re not going to let all this power accumulate in Washington, we’re going to break up these agencies,” DeSantis said during a private strategy session over the weekend, excerpts of which were obtained exclusively by RCP. He vowed in that call to order “some of the problematic components of the DOJ” be uprooted, reorganized, and then promptly “shipped to other parts of the country.”

    This fits with one of the central themes of the DeSantis campaign, namely that he’d be “an energetic executive,” a president with the focus and attention to detail necessary to make the most of his Article II powers. On the stump, the governor regularly wins applause from primary voters for promising not just to wage war on the so-called deep state, but to end it.

    The goal, according to senior outside advisors, ought to be returning the DOJ and FBI to a more limited “pre-9/11” mission. Republicans were outraged last Friday when former President Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents. DeSantis has condemned that move, and his campaign scheduled the Saturday conference call “not knowing,” he told advisors, that there would be “news last night.” But the governor is also intimately familiar with conservative gripes about political bias inside President Biden’s Department of Justice. They have been central to his campaign.

    “We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said on the call, pointing to how those agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” wrongfully investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory, and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.”

    This is the kind of thing we’ve got to have. If it’s DeSantis in charge of it, great. If it’s Trump, that’s fine too. The point is, it has to be done.”

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  10. Garbage media does garbage things.

    “PBS Adds ‘Context’ to Trump Bedminster Speech While CNN, MSNBC Declare It Too ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Untrue’ to Cover

    “We’re not carrying his remarks live because frankly, he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous,” CNN’s Jake Tapper announced after wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s arrival in Miami and his arraignment.”

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/06/pbs-adds-context-to-trump-bedminster-speech-while-cnn-msnbc-declare-it-too-dangerous-untrue-to-cover/

    “For a group of people who got what they wanted Tuesday when former President Donald Trump was arraigned in a Miami courtroom on 37 federal counts related to the classified documents probe, the Usual Suspects on the cable news networks sure were a sour-faced lot.

    Take, for instance, how CNN’s Jake Tapper whined about Trump’s stop at a local Cuban cafe in the aftermath of his arraignment, where people prayed for him and sang “happy birthday” to him. Tapper was very faux fended that Trump was being showered with attention and was at points smiling and laughing with the crowd:

    “To the folks in the control room, I don’t need to see any more of that. He’s trying to turn it into a spectacle, into a campaign ad. That is enough of that. We’ve seen it already. Ah, let’s go over again the 37 charges that Donald Trump is facing…”

    “MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace was also not amused, calling on the control room to stop airing the footage:”

    “MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who rose to fame and fortune during the Trump presidential era by repeatedly perpetuating, as Tapper did, the Russia/Trump collusion hoax , similarly proclaimed that the paragons of truth-telling at MSNBC simply were not willing to tolerate untruths allegedly being told “no matter who says them”:

    “We are here to bring you the news. It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations, no matter who says them.”

    “Though PBS did air Trump’s speech, they kept adding “context” notes throughout, including towards the end when they engaged in the “words are violence” tactic the left is notorious for:”

    “CNN’s and MSNBC’s refusal to air Trump’s speech was rather perplexing considering that according to a Newsbusters analysis, 95 percent of both networks’ coverage on Tuesday was devoted to Trump’s arraignment.

    Needless to say, Maddow, Tapper, and Wallace were all called out for obsessing about Trump all during the course of the day before refusing to air the speech he gave defending himself against the charges both networks analyzed and dissected all day:”

    —–

    Garbage in, garbage out.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. “But muh norms” they whine…..

    While shattering them and breaking the law.

    “KJP defiantly continues to violate the Hatch Act with slams to “MAGA” Republicans”

    https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2023/06/16/kjp-defiantly-continues-to-violate-the-hatch-act-with-slams-to-maga-republicans-n558383

    “While Joe Biden languishes with a 35% rating with Hispanic voters and screening the movie about the Flaming Hot Cheetos guy to pander for some votes, with an assist by actress Eva Longoria, his press secretary is deliberately violating the Hatch Act. Like a stubborn child who refuses to listen to someone telling her “no”, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre continues to use the term “MAGA Republicans” though that has been determined to be a violation of the Hatch Act.

    Not only is her use of the term a violation of the Hatch Act, it was deemed election interference. She used it right before the 2022 midterm elections because her boss, the president, was quite proud of the term he takes credit for coining (he didn’t), including when he goes even bigger and uses the term Mega MAGA Republicans. That Joe, he’s a clever guy, right? Ugh.

    The idea behind MAGA Republicans is to call out Republican voters, specifically Trump voters, as out of touch, out of the mainstream. She and Biden usually sneer as they say it. Where’s all that uniting and healing the soul of America, Joe?

    Anyway, the OSC decided that using “MAGA” is off-limits because Trump is a candidate again and it’s a play on his campaign slogan. For the press secretary, who speaks for the president, Trump’s opponent, as she does, it creates election interference. OSC is right – the whole point of saying MAGA is to poke at the divided electorate.

    On the same day, the OSC sent guidance to agencies which stated that “MAGA” was off-limits because it was too closely connected with former President Trump’s campaign for the White House.

    “MAGA remains the campaign slogan of a current candidate for partisan political office, and therefore, its use constitutes political activity,” the OSC wrote in the memo.

    “Accordingly, federal employees should not use “MAGA” or “Make America Great Again” while on duty, in the workplace, or when acting in their official capacity, including communicating through social media, email, or on government websites.”

    She was questioned about the decision and she brushed it off by saying she had clearance to use the term. Her boss uses the term and she thought that entitled her to do so, too. Now she and the White House are doubling down and refusing to stop using the term. She will continue to violate the Hatch Act. A statement was released from the White House that pokes a finger in the eye of OSC.

    Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a memo that Republicans’ “main economic agenda item” is “MAGA tax welfare for the richest Americans and giant corporations, at the expense of continuing to grow our economy by investing in America.”

    KJP didn’t receive anything but a letter from OSC saying she violated the Hatch Act. There isn’t any enforcement to speak of about violations. She wasn’t issued a fine or anything like that.

    On Thursday, Protect the People’s Trust (PPT) filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and the White House Counsel’s Office requesting an investigation into Hatch Act violations by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. PPT filed the complaint against KJP originally so it is reasonable that they would follow up with another complaint filed over her continued use of the term. It’s past time for the corrupt and arrogant Biden administration to be held accountable at all levels.”

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  12. Not shocking, especially considering how many other politicians were doing far worse at Epstein’s underage rape operation.

    “JPMorgan Says Ex-First Lady of U.S. Virgin Islands Helped Epstein Traffic Women

    Cecile de Jongh arranged visas for Epstein’s alleged victims and asked him for political donations, court filings show”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/jpmorgan-says-ex-first-lady-of-u-s-virgin-islands-helped-epstein-traffic-women-509dd39d?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1

    “The former first lady of the U.S. Virgin Islands helped Jeffrey Epstein’s victims get visas and lined up English-language classes for them, facilitating his alleged sex-trafficking scheme, JPMorgan Chase said in a new court filing.

    The bank released emails between Epstein and the former first lady, Cecile de Jongh, who was also an office manager for the convicted sex offender’s businesses in the U.S. territory, as part of a lawsuit between the government and the bank over Epstein’s connections to both. …

    “JPMorgan Chase has cherry-picked and mischaracterized Epstein’s interactions with U.S. Virgin Islands officials and residents in an attempt to distract and shift blame away from its role in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes,” a spokeswoman for the territory’s attorney general said Thursday.”

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  13. If it’s too racy for YouTube, why isn’t it too racy for minors?

    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/06/16/youtube-censors-video-of-pride-parade-as-inappropriate-content-n558319?cx_testId=1&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0&cx_experienceId=EXIO3RTI8YOF#cxrecs_s

    “The irony is rich.

    A conservative podcaster posted a video on YouTube criticizing sexualized displays that occurred at a “family-friendly” Pride parade, and YouTube censored it for being too explicit to show.”

    Liked by 2 people

  14. Livin’ the dream under Democrat rule….

    “Emails show what was behind closure of San Francisco mall (plus another major closure)”

    https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/06/15/emails-show-what-was-behind-closure-of-san-francisco-mall-plus-another-major-closure-n558337

    “As Beege pointed out earlier this week, the owners of Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco have announced that they’ll be giving the property over to the lender. The mall had already lost Nordstoms last month and this week the Cinemark movie theater also announce it was closing. In fact, today is the theater’s last day.

    The Cinemark movie theater complex sent an email to its customers announcing its final films would play Thursday, and the complex would close on Friday.

    In a statement to The Standard, Cinemark confirmed the decision to permanently close the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD theater shortly before the conclusion of its lease term, attributing the shutdown to a “comprehensive review of local business conditions.”

    What kind of business conditions? Oh, those kind of conditions.

    Seeing feces on the ground is not uncommon in the city by the bay. But human waste has been showing up somewhere else: the elevators in Downtown San Francisco’s Westfield Centre.

    “It’s like twice a week now. It used to be once a month,” said Abimael Garcia, who manages janitors at Westfield. “So lately, it’s increased.”…

    Kim said she saw feces in one of the elevators that leads from the theater to Mission Street about two weeks ago, and that someone appeared to have stepped in it.

    Speaking of business conditions at Westfield Mall, we’re getting a bit more detail on the problems the mall was facing thanks to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. The city had agreed to provide two on duty officers to patrol the site and the mall had also hired two off-duty officers. But it wasn’t enough.

    One Westfield executive said in a February email, which The Chronicle obtained through a public records request, that staff from the youth jewelry store Claire’s had reported that “there was not much slow down” in shoplifting incidents at the store since the city added officers to the mall.

    Emily Weber, a vice president at Westfield’s parent company…wrote Feb. 9 that, in addition to the concerns raised by Claire’s, “I’m also hearing now from our center team that there were two incidents yesterday where people were held up by knife point at the center for theft.”

    Claire’s closed the location in March. But they weren’t the only store complaining:

    “We urgently need to discuss Westfield,” wrote Sami Archondo, vice president of retail at Ted Baker, in an October email to other top executives at the clothing store chain.

    Archondo said Ted Baker’s San Francisco Centre location had five female associates who were reporting an “increase in violent activity from homeless people on the streets coming in the mall.” The employees had said people also “continue to come in to our location to swipe the front table,” Archondo wrote.

    No one is suggesting this is the only problem the mall was dealing with. With the advent of work-from-home, there’s just a lot less foot traffic at these locations. Fewer shoppers means less revenue. At some point it’s difficult to tell if locals aren’t going to the mall because they just aren’t going downtown often or if they aren’t going downtown often because of the conditions at the mall.

    And yet, there are some hints that maybe it is the conditions that are driving this. People are still going to the mall, just not in downtown San Francisco. An hour south in more suburban San Jose the Westfield owned mall is booming:”

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Gates, Bill Clinton, and Trump all hung out with Epstein. Trump liked to wander into the Miss Teen USA dressing room. Trump, Gates, and Clinton — the morality or lack of it is the same. The rich will exploit anyone they can, including the young.

    FOX is just imitating typical urban corporate culture. FOX employees have always had a low opinion of their audience and their own guests. The Dominon lawsuit showed how hosts like Carlson actually thought of the people they interviewed and supported.

    Comparing drag queens to priests and cops in terms of molesting children is an ongoing meme on the internet. The point of course is to show drag queens are less dangerous for children than youth pastors, coaches, police etc.

    Complaining Jack Smith is indicting some for lying while others are not indicted is a classic “squirrel” or diversion. Smith indicted those who committed perjury in his jurisdiction. Others may have committed perjury elsewhere but that’s not Smith’s jurisdiction or problem.

    I thought Mega Maga was a term coined by Boebert. Its a violation of the law to mock your opponent’s slogan?

    Youtube has its own rules and algorithms which are occasionally ridiculous and over the top. Other organizations may differ.

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  16. Not sure why you posted the urban mall story. Urban malls were a bad idea from the start. It was an attempt to replicate what was popular in the suburbs, but was culturally inappropriate downtown and tore down what made downtowns unique.

    There’s a downtown mall near my house. It’s as the kids say “sketch” but it has a large Asian oriented grocery store (cheaper than the chains) farmers market, a movie theatre with a couple recliner seats, and a public library. Many stores have their own security plus mall security. The police patrol the liquor store Friday and Saturday. It’s one of the few public libraries I know with security and a police presence.

    It has its problems – prositution in the library, homeless sleeping in the food court, and frequent ambulance calls to pick up overdoses. Theft and fights are common. Do I blame my socialist city government? or conservative provincial government or liberal federal government? Or perhaps realize urban malls were a bad idea no matter who is in charge? Suburban malls have similar problems – malls have lost their appeal.

    Personally I like it – it’s convenient and cheap and guaranteed I will never meet a student on the weekend shopping.

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  17. What is rich? What is exploiting?
    Maybe it is just that they are human and you have your human perspective. I just have a difficult time believing that all rich people exploit everybody they can.

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