Search of Trump’s Home Roils 2022 Midterms, 2024 Presidential Race

Yeah, it's big. There was virtually unanimous outrage on Twitter last night (follow scroll down here). Even some Democrats see the threat to republican democracy. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Many Republicans denounce FBI raid on former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence as politically motivated":

WASHINGTON—The FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home rallied many prominent Republicans around the former president and could shift the political course of both the midterm elections for control of Congress and the 2024 presidential race.

While many details of the FBI’s investigation remain unknown, the developments both challenge and underscore Mr. Trump’s hold on the GOP, just as he is publicly considering a third run for the White House. Many Republicans, including potential presidential rivals, denounced the search, casting it as a politically driven action by the Biden administration, while others demanded more details from the Justice Department but stopped short of criticizing its motives.

“This is a brazen weaponization of the FBI by Biden’s DOJ against his political opponent,” tweeted Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.), a member of the GOP leadership, reflecting the stance of many House Republicans.

People familiar with the matter said the search was part of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who was present during the search, said that federal agents “seized paper.”

The White House didn’t get any advance notice of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, an administration official said.

The Justice Department has been looking into the former president’s handling of official records and his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Monday’s search is separate from the Jan. 6 investigation, the people familiar with the probe said. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and casts the investigations as part of a long-running campaign by Democrats.

People close to Mr. Trump said the search could further motivate him to announce a run for president in 2024 before the midterm elections.

Shortly after midnight, Mr. Trump posted a campaign-style video on his TruthSocial account that teased a possible campaign. “We are a nation that has become a joke … but soon we will have greatness again.” It ends with an on-screen message: “The best is yet to come.”

Some GOP lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) have been pushing Mr. Trump to hold off on any announcement until after the election, to not upset the party’s chances of taking back the House. While Mr. Trump remains a powerful motivator of Republican voters, he repels many swing voters, and party leaders have focused their midterms pitch on the economy and inflation. Republicans are seen as heavily favored to win back the House, while the Senate is seen as a tossup.

Polls show Mr. Trump as the top GOP candidate in a hypothetical 2024 presidential field, and he easily won a straw poll at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “We may have to do it again,” he said in a speech Saturday at the gathering.

Mr. McCarthy said late Monday that “the Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and pledged to investigate Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department if Republicans take power.

Democrats have defended the raid. “No person is above the law, not even a former president of the United States,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on NBC’s “Today Show.”

House Republican leaders will have a chance to take the temperature of the conference at a previously scheduled members-only call on Tuesday that was set up to discuss the Senate-passed climate and health bill. Members of the Republican Study Committee, made up of House conservatives, are scheduled to have dinner with Mr. Trump on Tuesday night at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club.

The members-only call is shaping as a proving ground for Mr. McCarthy, who is in line for the House speakership next year if Republicans regain control. Mr. McCarthy needs to show that he can be tough on the issue to respond to the restive conservative wing of his base, a House Republican said. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) suggested this week on “The War Room” podcast, broadcast by Trump ally Stephen Bannon, that Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker.

A Republican takeover of the House in the November midterm elections would give them subpoena powers in 2023 and the ability to create committees and lead investigations. Many Republicans were already planning to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and said following the search of Mr. Trump’s home that they would hold hearings on the FBI’s actions as well.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is increasingly seen by many Republicans nationally as a potential Trump alternative, joined in the condemnation. The raid “is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents,” he said.

While some rivals were quick to defend Mr. Trump, the developments also underscored what they see as his vulnerability as a deeply divisive figure in American politics. He drew a record number of votes for an incumbent U.S. president in 2020, but lost by about seven million votes to President Biden.

“Other Republican leaders will see him as vulnerable,” said GOP donor Dan Eberhart. “There is now blood in the water.” He said that could give added reason for potential 2024 candidates, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to look at the race...

William Gass, The Tunnel

This is the novel that predicted Donald Trump's America.

At Amazon, William Gass, The Tunnel.

Aubrey's Blue Athletic Outfit

Aubrey is previously here.

She takes good care of her body. Very fit looking.

Unmask Alice Cracks Open Story of Wildly Successful Literary Hoax

I have a copy of Go Ask Alice, though I've only skimmed. But I've read reviews of the new book just out, Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries, and I'm eager to read it.

At Quillette, "Go Ask Beatrice: Notes on a Dishonest Decade."

"Beatrice" is Beatrice Sparks, the notorous Mormon youth counselor and inveterate hoaxer. 

Albert Woodfox, Survivor of 42 Years in Solitary Confinement, Dies at 75

Following-up, "Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist)."

At NYT, "His term in solitary was perhaps the longest in American history. He described how he kept his sanity, and dignity, in an acclaimed memoir":

Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary confinement — possibly more time than any other prisoner in all of American history — yet emerged to win acclaim with a memoir that declared his spirit unbroken, died on Thursday in New Orleans. He was 75.

His lead lawyer, George Kendall, said the cause was Covid-19. Mr. Kendall added that Mr. Woodfox also had a number of pre-existing organ conditions.

Mr. Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being accused of murdering Brent Miller, a 23-year-old corrections officer. A tangled legal ordeal ensued, including two convictions, both overturned, and three indictments stretching over four decades.

The case struck most commentators as problematic. No forensic evidence linked Mr. Woodfox to the crime, so the authorities’ argument depended on witnesses, who over time were discredited or proved unreliable.

“The facts of the case were on his side,” The New York Times editorial board wrote in a 2014 opinion piece about Mr. Woodfox.

But Louisiana’s attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, saw things differently. “This is the most dangerous person on the planet,” he told NPR in 2008.

Mr. Woodfox’s punishment defied imagination, not only for its monotony — he was alone 23 hours a day in a six-by-nine-foot cell — but also for its agonies and humiliations. He was gassed and beaten, he wrote in a memoir, “Solitary” (2019), in which he described how he had kept his sanity, and dignity, while locked up alone. He was strip-searched with needless, brutal frequency.

His plight first received national attention when he became known as one of the “Angola Three,” men held continuously in solitary confinement for decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is commonly called Angola, after a slave plantation that once occupied the site.

In 2005, a federal judge wrote that the length of time the men had spent in solitary confinement went “so far beyond the pale” that there seemed not to be “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.”

Mr. Woodfox would spend more than another decade in solitary before becoming, in 2016, the last of the three men to be released from prison.

His first stint at Angola came in 1965, after he was convicted of a series of minor crimes committed as a teenager. The prison was notoriously harsh, even to the point of conjuring the days of slavery. Black prisoners, like Mr. Woodfox, did field work by hand, overseen by white prison guards on horseback, shotguns across their laps. New inmates were often inducted into a regime of sexual slavery that was encouraged by guards.

Released after eight months, he was soon charged with car theft, leading to another eight months at Angola. After that, he embarked on a darker criminal career, beating and robbing people.

In 1969, Mr. Woodfox was convicted again, this time for armed robbery, and sentenced to 50 years. By then a seasoned lawbreaker, he managed to sneak a gun into the courthouse where he was being sentenced and escape. He fled to New York City, landing in Harlem.

A few months later he was incarcerated again, this time in the Tombs, the Manhattan jail, where he spent about a year and a half.

It proved to be a turning point, he wrote in his memoir. At the Tombs, he met members of the Black Panther Party, who governed his tier of cells not by force but by sharing food. They held discussions, treating people respectfully and intelligently, he wrote. They argued that racism was an institutional phenomenon, infecting police departments, banks, universities and juries.

“It was as if a light went on in a room inside me that I hadn’t known existed,” Mr. Woodfox wrote. “I had morals, principles and values I never had before.”

He added, “I would never be a criminal again.”

He was sent back to Angola in 1971 thinking himself a reformed man. But his most serious criminal conviction — for murdering the Angola corrections officer in 1972, which he denied — still lay ahead of him, and with it four decades in solitary, a term broken for only about a year and a half in the 1990s while he awaited retrial.

The other two members of the Angola Three, Robert King and Herman Wallace, were also Panthers and began their solitary confinement at Angola the same year as Mr. Woodfox. The three became friends by shouting to one another from their cells. They were “our own means of inspiration to one another,” Mr. Woodfox wrote. In his spare time, he added, “I turned my cell into a university, a hall of debate, a law school.”

He taught one inmate how to read, he said, by instructing him in how to sound out words in a dictionary. He told him to shout to him at any hour of the day or night if he could not understand something...

Albert Woodfox, Solitary

At Amazon, Albert Woodfox, Solitary: A Biography (National Book Award Finalist; Pulitzer Prize Finalist).

Despite Climate Bill, Electric Cars Will Remain Out of Reach for Many

Well, blow me down! 

At the New York Times, "Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill ":

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions. High prices are caused by shortages of batteries, of raw materials like lithium, and of components like semiconductors. Strong demand for electric vehicles from affluent buyers means that carmakers have little incentive to sell cheaper models. For low- and middle-income people who don’t have their own garages or driveways, another obstacle is the lack of enough public facilities to recharge.

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install new stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich.

To some extent, the carmakers are following their usual game plan. They have always introduced new technology at a luxury price. With time, the new features and gadgets make their way into cheaper cars. But emission-free technology has an urgency that voice navigation or massaging seats did not. Transportation accounts for 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Battery-powered cars produce far less carbon dioxide than vehicles that run on gasoline or diesel. That’s true even accounting for the emissions from generating electricity and from manufacturing batteries, according to numerous studies.

Only a few years ago analysts were predicting that electric vehicles would soon be as cheap to buy as gasoline cars. Factoring in the savings on fuel and maintenance, going electric would be a no-brainer.

Instead, soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle by 14 percent last year to $66,000, $20,000 more than the average for all new cars, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Demand for electric vehicles is so strong that models like the Ford Mach-E are effectively sold out, and there are long wait times for others. Tesla’s website informs buyers that they can’t expect delivery of a Model Y, with a purchase price of $66,000, until sometime between January and April 2023.

With so much demand, carmakers have little reason to target budget-minded buyers. Economy car stalwarts like Toyota and Honda are not yet selling significant numbers of all-electric models in the United States. Scarcity has been good for Ford, Mercedes and other carmakers that are selling fewer cars than before the pandemic but recording fat profits.

Automakers are “not giving any more discounts because demand is higher than the supply,” said Axel Schmidt, a senior managing director at Accenture who oversees the consulting firm’s automotive division. “The general trend currently is no one is interested in low prices.”

Advertised prices for electric vehicles tend to start at around $40,000, not including a federal tax credit of $7,500. Good luck finding an electric car at that semi-affordable price.

Ford has stopped taking orders for Lightning electric pickups, with an advertised starting price of about $40,000, because it can’t make them fast enough. Hyundai advertises that its electric Ioniq 5 starts at about $40,000. But the cheapest models available from dealers in the New York area, based on a search of the company’s website, were around $49,000 before taxes.

Tesla’s Model 3, which the company began producing in 2017, was supposed to be an electric car for average folks, with a base price of $35,000. But Tesla has since raised the price for the cheapest version to $47,000...

Shoot, $35,000's still not cheap. Some schlup from the barrio, South Central, or any urban 'hood near you ain't buying this car, or any EV, for that matter. These cars are for the leftist climate change psychos. Teslas are everywhere in Irvine. They're boring af. They all look the same. Nothing against them in principle. But if that's your status symbol gtfo. (*Eye-rol*.)

Keep reading. 

Elizabeth Williamson, Sandy Hook

At Amazon, Elizabeth Williamson, Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth.

Miranda 'Let Me Down Easy'

She was seen previously here.

A fit and fine lady. 

Let me down easy🎶 pic.twitter.com/Hy1l7vCMyA

— Miranda Cohen (@mirandacohenfit) August 3, 2022

Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place

An brilliant novel, first published in 1947, by Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place.

Britain's Tavistock Scandal (VIDEO)

Douglas Murray's at the video below.

And at the New York Times (the mainstream, noncontroversial take), "England Overhauls Medical Care for Transgender Youth: The National Health Service is closing England’s sole youth gender clinic, which had been criticized for long wait times and inadequate services."

Also, at Spiked, "How ‘The Blob’ smothered the Tavistock scandal: The civil service is determined to crush any dissent against gender ideology."

And from Kathleen Stock, at UnHerd, "Why the Tavistock had to fall: Its ideological roots were rotten from the start":

For years, the seeds of the Tavistock’s downfall have been hiding in plain sight, as a picture has slowly emerged of its clinicians doling out harmful drugs to gender-confused youth as if they were sweets. At the same time, though, a more subtle clue to the clinic’s endemic dysfunction has been contained in the generic communications that followed each new crisis.

“Thoughtful” is a self-description that crops up repeatedly. In response to critical reporting from Newsnight in 2019, the clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service insisted that it was “a thoughtful and safe service”. When Keira Bell and others took their case to the High Court a year later, arguing that under-16s could not give informed consent to puberty blockers, a GIDS spokesperson replied obstinately that theirs was “a safe and thoughtful service”. And when the Care Quality Commission rated the service as “inadequate”, the Tavistock’s ensuing statement defensively began: “The first thing to say is that GIDS has a long track record of thoughtful and high quality care.”

Alongside this manic insistence on thoughtfulness, there has also been a marked tendency to engage in special pleading about the especially difficult and highly contested cultural position the service occupies. For instance, in response to the damning CQC report, CEO Paul Jenkins replied that GIDS “has found itself in the middle of a cultural and political battleground”. And to the news of the closure last week, a spokesperson commented, with the air of someone sighing heavily: “Over the last couple of years, our staff… have worked tirelessly and under intense scrutiny in a difficult climate.”

Presumably what they really mean by this is that, as is now known, for several years GIDS has been caught between the emotionally blackmailing demands of transactivist organisations such as Mermaids and GIRES, talking constantly about suicide risk and lobbying hard for yet more relaxed attitudes to medicalising children, and the criticisms of those who profoundly object to the notion of a “trans child” in the first place. Former employees such as Susan Evans have reported the historical influence of Mermaids and GIRES on managers at the service, despite their lack of formal medical expertise and the possession of clearly vested interests.

Now, you might think that it is the job of a healthcare provider — and especially one who dispenses medication to children — to try to remove itself from current furores, social trends, and pressure from political activists, and to just get on with providing evidence-based medicine according to whatever gold-standard methodology is available at the time. And you might also think that while being thoughtful is all very well in a medical provider, you don’t exactly want them to emulate Hamlet. But to apply these earthbound medical standards to GIDS is to fail to recognise some of the distinctive and converging influences on the service that have led to the unholy mess we now see.

A crucial yet underappreciated part of the story is the clinic’s strong emphasis on psychoanalysis and psychodynamic approaches to mental health. The founder of the Tavistock, Hugh Crichton-Miller, was explicitly influenced by Freud and Jung. And when Domenico Di Ceglie founded the Gender Identity Service for children in 1989, later commissioned nationally as the only English NHS provider, he too was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic methods.

In a 2018 article describing his process, Di Ceglie quotes a Jungian perspective approvingly: “the psyche speaks in metaphors, in analogies, in images, that’s its primary language, so why talk differently? We must write in a way that evokes the poetic basis of mind… it’s a sensitivity to language.” He goes on to describe some of the metaphors and images he has found useful in trying help young dysphoric patients understand their own experience: the metaphor of being “a stranger in one’s own body”, for instance, or the image of navigating between the binary of sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis from The Odyssey. Throughout Di Ceglie’s published writing, there is an emphasis on the co-creation of meaning with young patients in the absence of access to any empirical certainty about who the patient “really” is.

This intellectual focus upon the fluidity and construction of meaning, and upon the power of narrative to create more stable personalities, is also heavily present in the published work of Bernadette Wren, Head of Psychology for 25 years at what insiders tweely call the “Tavi”. By her own description, she was “deeply involved” with the GIDS team for much of that time. Alongside psychoanalysis, she adds post-structuralist philosophy to her formative influences, citing figures such as Richard Rorty and Michel Foucault as important in her thinking.

True to the relativism of these philosophers, in Wren’s intellectual vision there are no objective truths but only a series of subjective narratives. She writes: “If the idea of living in the postmodern era means anything, it is that in all our activity together we are in the business of making meaning.” She continues: “In our time, it is hard to see any knowledge or understanding as ‘mirroring’ nature, or ‘mirroring’ reality.” She concludes: “There is an implication here for our work in gender identity clinics: that we are in the business of helping actively to construct the idea and the understanding of transgender, and for this we should accept responsibility.” In other words, ordinary binary notions of truth and falsity, or of discovering what is right and wrong, are inapplicable when it comes to the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth — because there are no prior fixed facts about identity, or truth, or morality here to discover. All meaning is up for grabs.

Against this intellectual background, the Tavistock’s flannel about being a thoughtful service sheltering from the storm of our present culture wars starts to make more sense. At least historically, senior clinicians at the Tavistock have never believed there is anything but certain context-bound forms of thought, floating about in a post-modern void. They have assumed meaning is constructed, not found. They have denied that there is any certain or timeless knowledge, but only specific cultural dynamics to navigate in the here and now. Under such an approach, what else could you do but be “thoughtful”?

A recognition of ambiguity within the life of the psyche would be perfectly fine — indeed, I assume, therapeutically helpful — if all that had ever happened at GIDS was that people sat around talking to one other. But the general relativist stance of senior clinicians was made incredibly dangerous for patients by the presence of an additional factor in the therapeutic mix, nestling somewhat anomalously among Di Ceglie’s stated foundational aims for his service. Alongside commonplace psychodynamic goals such as “to ameliorate associated behavioural, emotional and relationship difficulties”, “to allow mourning processes to occur”, “to enable symbol formation and symbolic thinking” and “to sustain hope”, we also find: “to encourage exploration of the mind-body relationship by promoting close collaboration among professionals in different specialities, including paediatric endocrinology.”

I don’t know about you, but when I read this, the birds — or rather the mermaids, perhaps — stop singing...

 

Double-Vision

On Twitter.

How Crazy-Ass Tom Cruise and 'Top Gun' Saved America (VIDEO)

I saw this movie. Folks are right: It's very good.

From Matt Taibbi, on Substack, "America needs to get back to meaningless fun, and "Top Gun: Maverick" delivers in colossal doses." 

How Democrats See Abortion Politics After Kansas Vote

At the New York Times, "‘Your Bedroom Is on the Ballot’: How Democrats See Abortion Politics After Kansas":

A decisive vote to defend abortion rights in deeply conservative Kansas reverberated across the midterm campaign landscape on Wednesday, galvanizing Democrats and underscoring for Republicans the risks of overreaching on one of the most emotionally charged matters in American politics.

In a state where Republicans far outnumber Democrats, Kansans delivered a clear message in the first major vote testing the potency of abortion politics since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: Abortion opponents are going too far.

The overwhelming defeat of a measure that would have removed abortion protections from the state constitution quickly emboldened Democrats to run more assertively on abortion rights and even to reclaim some of the language long deployed by conservatives against government overreach, using it to cast abortion bans as infringing on personal freedoms. (As of Wednesday, the margin was 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent.)

“The court practically dared women in this country to go to the ballot box to restore the right to choose,” President Biden said by video Wednesday, as he signed an executive order aimed at helping Americans cross state lines for abortions. “They don’t have a clue about the power of American women.”

In interviews, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, urged Democrats to be “full-throated” in their support of abortion access, and Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said the Kansas vote offered a “preview of coming attractions” for Republicans. Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat in a highly competitive district, issued a statement saying that abortion access “hits at the core of preserving personal freedom, and of ensuring that women, and not the government, can decide their own fate.”

Republicans said the midterm campaigns would be defined by Mr. Biden’s disastrous approval ratings and economic concerns.

Both Republicans and Democrats caution against conflating the results of an up-or-down ballot question with how Americans will vote in November, when they will be weighing a long list of issues, personalities and their views of Democratic control of Washington. “Add in candidates and a much more robust conversation about lots of other issues, this single issue isn’t going to drive the full national narrative that the Democrats are hoping for,” said David Kochel, a veteran of Republican politics in nearby Iowa. Still, Mr. Kochel acknowledged the risks of Republicans’ overstepping, as social conservatives push for abortion bans with few exceptions that polls generally show to be unpopular.

“The base of the G.O.P. is definitely ahead of where the voters are in wanting to restrict abortion,” he said. “That’s the main lesson of Kansas.”

Polls have long shown most Americans support at least some abortion rights. But abortion opponents have been far more likely to let the issue determine their vote, leading to a passion gap between the two sides of the issue. Democrats hoped the Supreme Court decision this summer erasing the constitutional right to an abortion would change that, as Republican-led states rushed to enact new restrictions, and outright bans on the procedure took hold.

The Kansas vote was the most concrete evidence yet that a broad swath of voters — including some Republicans who still support their party in November — were ready to push back. Kansans voted down the amendment in Johnson County — home to the populous, moderate suburbs outside Kansas City — rejecting the measure with about 70 percent of the vote, a sign of the power of this issue in suburban battlegrounds nationwide. But the amendment was also defeated in more conservative counties, as abortion rights support outpaced Mr. Biden’s showing in 2020 nearly everywhere.

After months of struggling with their own disengaged if not demoralized base, Democratic strategists and officials hoped the results signaled a sort of awakening. They argued that abortion rights are a powerful part of the effort to cast Republicans as extremists and turn the 2022 elections into a choice between two parties, rather than a referendum just on Democrats...

Still more.

 

The Dam Breaks: Key Dems Run Away From Biden '24

From Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "You've seen the polls showing that large majorities of Democratic voters want the party to pick a new nominee for president in 2024, bypassing incumbent President Joe Biden. Now we're seeing the living embodiment of those polls as some important Democratic lawmakers distance themselves from, or outright oppose, a reelection run by the nearly 80-year-old president."

The Origins of Erika Jayne's $800K Diamond Earrings — a Mystery

 At the Los Angeles Times, "Unraveling the mystery of Erika Jayne’s $800K diamond earrings — and Tom Girardi’s finances":

Not long after they started dating, Tom Girard presented cocktail waitress and aspiring actress Erika Chahoy with a pair of $800,000 diamond earrings.

“It was the first significant gift I had given her,” Girardi recalled years later to tax authorities.

The earrings set the tone for the private-jet-and-haute-couture lifestyle the pair would enjoy as a married couple.

Now, with the demise of the Girardis’ relationship and fortune, the jewelry has become a plot point in the quest to unravel the disgraced lawyer’s finances.

The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Girardi’s famed firm, Girardi Keese, has moved to seize a pair of diamond stud earrings, with plans to sell them to compensate cheated clients and other creditors. Erika Girardi at first agreed to relinquish them, but last month, her attorney announced that she was switching strategies and would battle for the baubles in court.

The earrings’ current location — a safe deposit box — is one of the only certain things about them. Neither the trustee nor Erika has described them in detail. There are no confirmed pictures of the jewelry, despite the star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” having been a red-carpet regular who was photographed by paparazzi as she conducted her life in Los Angeles.

When Times reporters attempted to trace the gems’ provenance, they found a tangled web of contradictions that pointed to a deeper mystery.

By his own account, Tom Girardi loved showering his third, much-younger wife with expensive jewelry.

The diamond earrings he gave her around the time of their 2000 wedding, when he was 60 and she was 28, were part of a collection that grew to include rings, bracelets, watches and other jewelry with a total value he once estimated at $15 million.

The earrings and other pieces came from M.M. Jewelers, a small shop tucked in a warren of similar outfits in downtown L.A.’s jewelry district. As a lawyer for the store’s owners, the Menzilcian family, acknowledged, “The relationship goes back a long way.”

Minding the store on a recent morning, Ared “Mike” Menzilcian said his father, 85, had a decades-long relationship with the lawyer, 83. Menzilcian declined to provide specific information as to the cut or clarity of the diamonds in the earrings, but he said the two stones — one for each ear — were “near flawless,” adding, “They were extremely large.”

Erika Girardi possessed the earrings until at least 2007, when she embarked on a career, bankrolled by her husband, as pop singer “Erika Jayne,” according to court records...

Also, "Tom Girardi’s epic corruption exposes the secretive world of private judges."

In Debate, Democrat Congressman Jerry Nadler Refuses to Say That Biden Should Run For President; Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Says She Doesn't Believe He Is Running for President

At AoSHQ, "If you recall, New York Democrats had long kept these two in their own separate protected fiefdoms by aggressive gerrymandering. But when the last gerrymander -- called the "Jerrymander," for carving an geometrically obscene district for Nadler -- was tossed out by a judge, the areas these two had represented for years (the Upper West Side and Upper East Side) got merged into the same district, and they're now competing in a primary against each other."

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "'I want you to run... I happen to think you won't be running... you're a great President': Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney botches apology to Biden for saying he won't be on 2024 ticket in very awkward interview."

Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, Tearing Us Apart

At Amazon, Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.

John Eastman Was Always Looking for Election Fraud, and Looking to Get Paid

I've met this guy, years ago at the David Horowitz retreat at the Terranea, on the Palos Verdes pennisula.

He's not as he first appears, not be a long (money) shot.

At the New York Times, "Trump Lawyer Proposed Challenging Georgia Senate Elections in Search of Fraud":

SCOOP: John Eastman sent an email to Giuliani two weeks after Jan. 6 arguing they should sue in Georgia to keep searching for the fraud his email acknowledged they had failed to find - and also sought $270k in payments @lukebroadwater https://t.co/z88H3qqUef

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 4, 2022

On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, John Eastman suggested looking for voting irregularities in Georgia — and asked for help being paid the $270,000 he billed the Trump campaign.

John Eastman, the conservative lawyer whose plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election failed in spectacular fashion on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an email two weeks later arguing that pro-Trump forces should sue to keep searching for the supposed election fraud he acknowledged they had failed to find.

On Jan. 20, 2021, hours after President Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Eastman emailed Rudolph W. Giuliani, former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, proposing that they challenge the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that had been won on Jan. 5 by Democrats.

“A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Mr. Eastman wrote in the previously undisclosed email, which also went to others, including a top Trump campaign adviser. “If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”

The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who worked on the Trump campaign at the time, is the latest evidence that even some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters knew they had not proven their baseless claims of widespread voting fraud — but wanted to continue their efforts to delegitimize the outcome even after Mr. Biden had taken office.

Mr. Eastman’s message also underscored that he had not taken on the work of keeping Mr. Trump in office just out of conviction: He asked for Mr. Giuliani’s help in collecting on a $270,000 invoice he had sent the Trump campaign the previous day for his legal services.

The charges included $10,000 a day for eight days of work in January 2021, including the two days before Jan. 6 when Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump, during meetings in the Oval Office, sought unsuccessfully to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to go along with the plan to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. (Mr. Eastman appears never to have been paid.)

A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment...

 

Katie Hits Laguna Beach

Soaking up the sun, on Instagram.

Kizer Cormorant Pocket Knife

This thing's a beauty, at Amazon, Kizer Cormorant Pocket Knife, S35VN Steel Folding Knives, Green Micarta Handle EDC Knife, Ki4562E3.

Also, the old reliable, Buck Knives 119 Special Fixed Blade Hunting Knife, 6" 420HC Blade, Black Phenolic Handle with Leather Sheath.

Vin Scully, 1927-2022

I can't add anything better than what all the other heartbroken folks have said. Major League Baseball lost a monumental soul, and all of America too.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Vin Scully, forever the voice of the Dodgers, dies at 94" and "The Dodgers lost their voice when Vin Scully died. Angelenos lost a family member."

At the video segment, his last day in the announcers booth at Dodgers Stadium, October 2nd, 2016, and his comments on socialism below:

Vin Scully tells the story of what made him fall in love with the game of baseball 💙

pic.twitter.com/7whI1dBTqg

— Baseball Quotes (@BaseballQuotes1) August 3, 2022

Vin Scully on socialism. pic.twitter.com/oaNC7vhsZW

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 3, 2022

San Clemente Considers Creating 'Abortion Free Zone'

Beautiful city. Classic California beach town. I was just down there over the weekend shopping at Beach Town Books.

Didn't see any pro-aborts protesting, however. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "This Orange County city to consider banning abortions, becoming ‘sanctuary for life’."

This City Council in Southern California is considering a resolution that would make it an abortion-free zone.https://t.co/dPQJR6ysHI

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 3, 2022

Lottie Loves Summer

On Instagram.

Will Bunch, After the Ivory Tower

Out today, from Will Bunch, at Amazon, After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics―and How to Fix It.

Rhian Cools Off

On Twitter.

The Left's Assault on the Middle Class (VIDEO)

Here's Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, for the Rising on the Hill TV: 

Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster Antitrust Case Goes to Court

Opening arguments were held yesterday. 

The attorney for Penguin Random House, Daniel Petrocelli, is a freakin' firecracker.

At the New York Times, "The trial to decide whether the publishing giant may buy Simon & Schuster is a test of the Biden administration’s push to expand antitrust enforcement."

And at Vanity Fair, "The Antitrust Showdown to Determine Simon & Schuster's Fate Is About to Begin":

Jonathan Karp is rallying the troops at S&S as its suitor, Penguin Random House, heads to trial Monday against Biden’s Justice Department. The witness list is a who’s who of publishing bosses, power agents, and authors—including Stephen King—with a $2 billion deal on the line.

On Monday, as lawyers for Penguin Random House and the Department of Justice were sharpening their sabres ahead of the antitrust duel of the summer, CEO Jonathan Karp fired off an email to his approximately 1,500 employees at Simon & Schuster, the nearly century-old publishing house that Karp has lorded over for the past two years. The fate of Simon & Schuster—whose catalog stretches from the classics of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, to the mass-market gold mines of Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark, to the recent political blockbusters of Bob Woodward and Mary Trump—has hung in the balance since the publisher was put on the block in March 2020 by its parent company, now called Paramount Global, which arose from the tortured recombination of Viacom and CBS, whose focus on mounting an offensive in the streaming wars leaves little room to manage a comparatively antiquated book-publishing business.

Almost nine months after the sale was announced, Bertelsmann’s PRH bested Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins with a $2.18 billion bid for S&S, a proposed mash-up that would turn the Big Five publishers into the Big Four. However, the Champagne toasts turned out to be premature: Last November, Joe Biden’s merger-averse DOJ sued to block the deal, citing concerns that it would give the world’s largest book publisher “unprecedented control” over the industry, resulting in “lower advances for authors and ultimately fewer books and less variety for consumers,” a string of claims that PRH characterizes as ludicrous. S&S has been in limbo ever since—a discontinued operation as far as Paramount Global’s earnings releases are concerned, and yet still bereft of its suitor’s embrace.

Which brings us back to Karp’s memo, a sort of pep talk to counteract the lingering uncertainty. “As I’ve told you before, I am hopeful that Simon & Schuster will become part of Penguin Random House,” wrote Karp, a 58-year-old former reporter and theater buff who rose up to become one of the most powerful and highly regarded figures in the publishing industry. “I spent 16 years at Random House, and I know their culture is a lot like ours—wholeheartedly devoted to books and deeply committed to its employees and authors. Penguin Random House’s parent company, Bertelsmann, has been in the book business since 1835 and shares Penguin Random House’s profound commitment to improve public readership. I strongly believe that Penguin Random House will be an excellent steward of Simon & Schuster’s legacy, and that we, and our authors, will benefit greatly from becoming a part of this superb publishing company.”

The fate of S&S will soon be decided one way or another, with PRH and the DOJ gearing up to face off in court. The bench trial is set to begin Monday, adjudicated by Judge Florence Pan at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Three weeks have been allocated for the trial, which is slated to run from August 1 to August 19. The attorneys will then have until September 7 to submit any additional briefings to the court, and Pan is expected to rule sometime in November. The witness list is stacked with A-listers from the publishing world, including executives from S&S and PRH, as well as top literary agents and authors. Karp and Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle are both due to be called, as are King (for the government), Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch (ditto), and power agents Andrew Wylie (whose client roster includes Vanity Fair), Gail Ross, Joy Harris, and Elyse Cheney. (Those agents and a few others are notably being called by the defense.) The array of potential witnesses includes PRH honcho Andy Ward and the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author Charles Duhigg. “During the trial, our ability to comment on the testimony and proceedings will be limited,” Karp told his staff. “We will keep you informed of further developments when we have news that we can share.”

PRH buying S&S is a small deal in the grand scheme of things, but the merger is being closely watched insofar as it reflects the Biden administration’s push to stem corporate consolidation. It also has obvious implications for the already much-consolidated publishing space, where there’s skepticism about creating another behemoth in an industry that has been upended by Amazon. As one big shot editor told me when the lawsuit was first announced, “I don’t know anyone who would think this is a great thing to happen.” Both sides filed their pretrial briefs last Friday...

Keep reading.

 

Fit to Print? UNC's Settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones is Bad News

Great piece from Phil Magness, for the James G. Martin Center, "A reporter who hasn’t dreamt of one day writing for the New York Times is a rare bird..."

NBC 'News': Biden Was Meticulously Engaged in Drone Strike Planning, Even Inquiring What Kind of Building Materials the House Was Made of the Strike Was So Absolutely Flawless No One Else in House Was Disturbed

At AoSHQ, "This article was written by several people including Deep State Stenographer "Fusion Ken" Dilanian. I believe all this."

Biden's Cybersecurity Chief Says National Security Apparatus Must Focus On 'Dismantling Systemic Racism'

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Is there a single agency in Old Joe Biden’s catastrophic administration that hasn’t been completely corrupted and politicized? Apparently not."

Jessica Simpson Daisy Dukes

Oh this woman is my tormenter. 

At Us Magazine, "Jessica Simpson Wears Daisy Dukes, Shows Off Her Toned Legs in New Pic.

Annie Jacobson, Surprise, Kill, Vanish

At Amazon, Annie Jacobson, Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins.

Last Conviction in Salem Witch Trials Is Cleared 329 Years Later

Amazing story.

At the New York Times, "The exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last person whose name was not officially cleared, came from the efforts of an eighth-grade civics teacher and her students":

Elizabeth Johnson Jr. is — officially — not a witch.

Until last week, the Andover, Mass., woman, who confessed to practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, was the only remaining person convicted during the trials whose name had not been cleared.

Though she was sentenced to death in 1693, after she and more than 20 members of her extended family faced similar allegations, she was granted a reprieve and avoided the death sentence.

The exoneration came on Thursday, 329 years after her conviction, tucked inside a $53 billion state budget signed by Gov. Charlie Baker. It was the product of a three-year lobbying effort by a civics teacher and her eighth-grade class, along with a state senator who helped champion the cause.

“I’m excited and relieved,” Carrie LaPierre, the teacher at North Andover Middle School, said in an interview on Saturday, “but also disappointed I didn’t get to talk to the kids about it,” as they are on summer vacation. “It’s been such a huge project,” Ms. LaPierre added. “We called her E.J.J., all the kids and I. She just became one of our world, in a sense.”

Only the broad contours of Ms. Johnson’s life are known. She was 22 years old when accused, may have had a mental disability and never married or had children, which were factors that could make a woman a target in the trials, Ms. LaPierre said.

The governor of Massachusetts at the time granted Ms. Johnson a reprieve from death, and she died in 1747 at the age of 77. But unlike others convicted at the trials, Ms. Johnson did not have any known descendants who could fight to clear her name. Previous efforts to exonerate people convicted of witchcraft overlooked Ms. Johnson, perhaps because of administrative confusion, historians said: Her mother, who had the same name, was also convicted but was exonerated earlier.

The effort to clear Ms. Johnson’s name was a dream project for the eighth-grade civics class, Ms. LaPierre said. It allowed her to teach students about research methods, including the use of primary sources; the process by which a bill becomes a law; and ways to contact state lawmakers. The project also taught students the value of persistence: After an intensive letter-writing campaign, the bill to exonerate Ms. Johnson was essentially dead. As the students turned their efforts to lobbying the governor for a pardon, their state senator, Diana DiZoglio, added an amendment to the budget bill, reviving the exoneration effort.

“These students have set an incredible example of the power of advocacy and speaking up for others who don’t have a voice,” Ms. DiZoglio, a Democrat whose district includes North Andover, said in an interview.

At least 172 people from Salem and surrounding towns, which include what is now North Andover, were accused of witchcraft in 1692 as part of an inquisition by the Puritans that was rooted in paranoia, according to historians.

Emerson W. Baker, a history professor at Salem State University and the author of “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience,” said there were many reasons innocent people would confess to witchcraft. Many wanted to avoid being tortured, or even believed that perhaps they might in fact be a witch and just didn’t know it, the result of a pressure campaign by religious ministers and even family members.

“At what point does she say,” Mr. Baker asked, “‘For the good of the community, I probably should confess? I don’t think I’m a witch, but maybe I had some bad thoughts and I shouldn’t have had them.’” It would have been a logical thought process for a society that widely believed in the existence of witches, he said.

Another common reason for confessions, Professor Baker said, was for survival. It became clear by the summer of 1692 that those who pleaded not guilty were quickly tried, convicted and hanged while those who pleaded guilty seemed to escape that gruesome fate...

 

U.S. Says Drone Strike Killed al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri (VIDEO)

I watched President Biden's address live this afternoon, now available at the video below.

And at the Wall Street Journal, "First known U.S. counterrorism operation in Afghanistan since exit last year targeted a private residence in Afghan capital":

WASHINGTON—The White House said Monday that a U.S. missile launched from a drone in Afghanistan killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, a founding member of the jihadist movement and one of the key strategists behind an international campaign of terror that culminated in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.

The U.S. strike targeted a safe house in a residential area in central Kabul on Sunday morning, in what was the first known counterrorism operation in the country since U.S. forces withdrew last year. The Biden administration said the Taliban was aware that al Zawahiri was hiding in Kabul, the clearest display of the continuing alliance between al Qaeda and the group now ruling Afghanistan.

Speaking from the White House balcony on Monday, President Biden announced the strike, describing al Zawahiri as a terror leader who for decades “was the mastermind behind the attacks against Americans.” Those attacks included the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens of others and 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500.

Al Zawahiri, 71, was an Egyptian national and longtime deputy of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. In the lead up to 9/11, Zawahiri was the most important of bin Laden’s advisers as they planned the hijackings. He was also instrumental in shaping how the terror group used the 2001 attacks to gain members, often through propaganda letters and videos.

Mr. Biden during his eight-minute address said he approved the “carefully planned” operation a week ago “after being advised conditions were optimal.”

“The United States did not seek its war on terror. You came to us. We answered with the same principles and resolve that has shaped us for generations upon generation to protect the innocent and defend liberty,” Mr. Biden said.

The Taliban seized power during America’s final weeks in the country after two decades of war.

The group has publicly pledged to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for terrorist organizations, and claims that it seeks peaceful relations with all countries.

The revelation that al Qaeda’s leader and family moved to a safe house in one of the most affluent parts of Kabul soon after the Taliban returned to power undermines those claims.

A senior Biden administration official said Zawahiri was killed by two U.S. Hellfire missiles fired from a drone as he stood on the balcony of the safe house in downtown Kabul.

“Senior Haqqani Taliban figures were aware of Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul,” the official said.

Pentagon officials said they had no knowledge of the strike and the senior Biden administration official declined to specify which U.S. agency was responsible, suggesting it was a CIA operation. The CIA declined to comment.

The strike is a badly needed victory for the Biden administration after the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal last summer that helped return the Taliban’s most conservative factions to power.

The White House said no civilian casualties resulted from the strike just after 6 a.m. on Sunday morning.

There was no known response from al Qaeda.

The Taliban condemned the attack, calling it a violation of international law and the agreement it signed with the U.S. in 2020 that set the terms of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Such actions are repetitions of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against U.S., Afghanistan and the region’s interests,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman.

The last U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan one year ago killed 10 civilian members of an Afghan family in the final week of U.S. presence in the country. The casualties included seven children. The operation was initially described as successful. The U.S. later admitted that the target was a mistake.

The U.S. intelligence community has “high confidence” that the dead individual is Zawahiri, the official said.

The president was first briefed on plans for a strike on July 1 in the White House Situation Room by advisers including CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Christine Abizaid, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, the Biden official said.

Mr. Biden made the decision to order the strike at a July 25 meeting with top advisers at which all the participants recommended going forward with it, the official said.

The official said that for several years, U.S. intelligence agencies had been aware of a network of individuals that supported the al Qaeda leader.

Intelligence agencies tracked several members of Zawahiri’s family, including his wife and children, as they moved to Kabul. The United States then got confirmation that Zawahiri himself was in Kabul.

In early April, that intelligence was briefed to deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer and White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then later to national security adviser Jake Sullivan and the president, the official said.

As with the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. spy agencies built a replica of the house where Zawahiri was staying, and brought it to meetings with Mr. Biden and his aides, the official said. Specialists used the model to confirm that Zawahiri could be killed in a missile strike without collapsing the entire structure and killing civilians, including members of his family.

After the strike, Haqqani Taliban members sought to cover up the fact that Zawahiri had taken shelter there by moving Zawahiri’s family to another location, according to the administration official.

“The safe house used by Zawahiri is now empty,” the official said.

Under the terms of the agreement signed with the Trump administration in February 2020, the Taliban vowed to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to plan attacks against the U.S. and its allies.

But the Taliban didn’t explicitly commit to continuing operations to target the group or to break ties with them.

The United Nations has since reported that the Taliban and al Qaeda remain closely connected...

U.S. Says Drone Strike Killed al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri

Victor Ray, On Critical Race Theory

At Amazon, Victor Ray, On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care.

Dev Monday

Devbender, on Instagram. 

In Monkeypox, Gay Men Confront Echoes of the Past

Check Inez Stepman for the truth bomb of the century, on Twtter below:

At at the New York Times, "‘It’s Scary’: Gay Men Confront a Health Crisis With Echoes of the Past":

One month of monogamy to flatten the curve

— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) July 28, 2022

Monkeypox has sparked frustration and anxiety among gay and bisexual men in New York, who remember mistakes and discrimination during the early years of the AIDS crisis.

It was happy hour at a gay bar in Harlem, 4West Lounge, and the after-work crowd had come to drink rum punch and watch “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

But instead, perched on stools, the men talked about the rapidly spreading monkeypox virus: their efforts to snag a coveted vaccine appointment, in a city where demand for the shots far outstrips supply; the slow government rollout of vaccines and treatment; and their confusion about how the disease spreads and how to stay safe.

“It feels like survival of the fittest, with all the pandemic waves and now monkeypox and all these vaccine problems,” said James Ogden, 31, who secured a vaccine appointment after weeks spent navigating the city’s glitchy online sign-up process.

Kelvin Ehigie, 32, the bartender, agreed. When asked about the future, he said: “I do not feel confident.”

For gay and bisexual men in New York, the summer has been consumed with similar conversations as monkeypox cases spike among men who have sex with men.

There is widespread fear of the virus, which primarily spreads through close physical contact and causes excruciating lesions and other symptoms that can lead to hospitalization. There is fear of the isolation and potential stigma of an infection, since those who contract monkeypox must stay home for weeks. And some fear the vaccine itself, in an echo of the hesitancy and mistrust that hindered the coronavirus response.

Many are also furious at the lags and fumbles in the government’s effort to contain the disease, including delayed vaccines and mixed messaging about how the virus spreads and how people should protect themselves.

And some are anxious that monkeypox could be twisted into a political weapon to be used against gay and transgender people, whose rights have come under increasing fire from Republicans in recent months.

Last week, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, after it spread from parts of Africa where it is endemic to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people around the world over the course of three months. As of Thursday, there were more than 3,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and 1,148 in New York, but experts suggest cases are being undercounted.

Mr. Ehigie received the first shot of the two-dose vaccine regimen after a referral from his therapist, but worried the city might never give him a second.

And, while he said everyone understands how H.I.V. spreads, monkeypox still felt like a mystery to him and many others. “Especially being in New York,” he said, “where everyone is in close contact with everyone else all the time, it’s scary.”

Nearly all of the cases outside of Africa have been in men who have sex with men. In New York, only 1.4 percent of monkeypox patients self-identified as straight, with the rest describing themselves as gay, bisexual or declining to say, according to city data.

The disease is rarely fatal, and no deaths have been reported outside of Africa.

But the combination of government failure and a virus that has so far primarily affected gay and bisexual men has drawn frequent comparisons to the early years of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic.

Those years were marked by acts of homophobia that remain seared in the minds of many gay Americans. The White House press secretary made jokes about AIDS at a 1982 press briefing. Churches refused to provide funerals for the dead. And President Ronald Reagan did not deliver a public speech on the epidemic until 1987, by which point roughly 23,000 Americans had died of the disease.

Disagreements within the New York City Department of Health about how to communicate the risks of the disease spilled into public view last week. Some epidemiologists have argued that officials should more explicitly advise men who have sex with men to reduce their number of partners, or even consider short-term abstinence. (The director general of the W.H.O. made a similar recommendation this week, including that men should reconsider having “sex with new partners,” according to STAT News.)

A department spokeswoman has said messages advising men to abstain from sex in particular could stigmatize gay and bisexual men and repeat the mistakes of the past.

That history was on many people’s minds (and many people’s banners) at a protest last week in Manhattan that was organized by activist groups including ACT UP, which formed in 1987 in response to government inaction on H.I.V./AIDS.

“I am sad that we have to be here,” said Erik Bottcher, a city councilman whose district includes Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, neighborhoods that have been hit hard by the outbreak.

“We have been forced to do this for so long, we have been forced to fight for our own health care when we got let down by the government,” he said. “Shame on the government for letting us down again.”

Nearby, protesters carried signs comparing President Biden to Mr. Reagan.

Jon Catlin, 29, a graduate student, said he knew several people with monkeypox in New York and many more in Berlin, where he lives part time to do research. He said he studies the evolution of the idea of catastrophe in German thought, and “whose suffering counts as a crisis.”

“Because it is happening to queer people,” Mr. Catlin said, the government has been slow to treat monkeypox as a true crisis, waiting to deploy vaccine doses until cases had grown exponentially...

 

The Commie Colonization of America

From Michelle Malkin, at the Unz Review":

From California to the New York island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf stream waters, the land that used to belong to Americans has been milked and bilked by investors and paid government agents of the People’s Republic of China. The National Association of Realtors reported last week that wealthy Chinese spent $6.1 billion on U.S. real estate in the past year. They’ve captured more than 10% of the market and have the highest average purchase price of all foreign real estate investors at over $1 million per home.

California is their top pick, with more than a third of all homes located in the Golden State. (Or is it the Maoist Red State now?) In addition, China-tied entities own nearly 192,000 acres of American farmland and forest land — the bulk controlled by ShuangHui International after it acquired U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods in 2013.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made headlines this week blasting the takeover as a “huge problem.” Indeed, the commie colonization of America has been taking place for decades. But it’s not rapacious Beijing enemies abroad who deserve the most blame. It’s traitorous Democrats and globalist Republicans who’ve pimped and profited off of fraud-ridden green card rackets that allowed foreigners to gobble up our country.

In my books “Invasion” (2002) and “Sold Out” (2015), my 2017 mini-documentary, “The Dark World of EB-5: U.S. Citizenship for Sale,” my 2016 report on Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s China deals, and countless syndicated columns dating back to 2001, I’ve blown the whistle on the national security nightmare posed by China’s favorite vehicle for gobbling up our neighborhoods: the bipartisan-boosted EB-5 investor visa scam. This is the same racket exploited by former Democrat Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, lobbied for by the late Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and Department of Homeland Security official Alejandro Mayorkas, and embraced by South Dakota Republican officials.

In “Sold Out,” I plunged into the Atlantic Yards EB-5 boondoogle, 70% owned by the Shanghai government-run Greenland Group. A source in the foreign real estate investment industry alerted me in 2016 to some of the other top Chinese land grabs facilitated by the bipartisan EB-5 racket, including:

— A $620 million luxury condo project in San Francisco by Chinese-owned Vanke;

— A $1.5 billion development deal in Oakland, California, with Chinese company, Zarsion; and

— The $60 million Europa Village residential development in Temecula, California, wine country involving over 100 Chinese EB-5 investors.

The Chinese are buying up north Texas, charter schools and adjacent properties in Arizona, North Carolina and Florida, and 40% of the iconic General Motors building in New York. Just last week, a pair of Chinese investors were finally arrested for their alleged role in an EB-5 scheme to create a “China City” in the Catskills. The liberal media only pounced on the story because the investors illegally gave money to the Trump campaign; but the scam had been exposed back in 2013 by the Center for Immigration Studies’ EB-5 watchdog, David North.

Still more.

Kayla Role Playing

On Twitter.

Can the Biden Presidency Be Saved?

From Andrew Sullivan, "If he can sustain the deal-making, why not?":

Now we’re talking.

The entire promise and rationale of a Biden presidency was not, I hate to break it to my lefty friends, a total transformation of the country in favor of green energy and “social justice.” It was a return to constitutional normalcy, and the kind of legislative deal-making that offers gradual progress on the biggest challenges of the day.

We wanted a better rollout of vaccines, competent economic management of the bust-and-boom cycle of the pandemic, progress on the urgent question of climate change, and responsibility again on the world stage. Biden gets a B on the first, a C- on the second, a B+ on climate, and a solid B in foreign policy.

That B+ on the climate depends of course on whether the Schumer-Manchin deal struck this week can get to the president’s desk. It looks like it can, if Senator Sinema doesn’t blow it up, and some geezers can recover from Covid quickly enough. And it represents what a Biden presidency promised to a center-right voter like me.

It’s an old-fashioned political deal between two Senators, with Biden on the sidelines. Manchin gets some goodies for the carbon industries in exchange for the biggest federal investment in clean energy ever. There’s a tax on the super-rich. There’s even some incentives for keeping nuclear plants alive. There’s a popular move to reduce Medicare drug prices; and more secure access to healthcare for the less privileged.

And this popularist package is branded as an inflation reduction measure! That’s a bit of a stretch, of course, but it may have a mild deflationary effect in a couple of years. The widely detested Larry Summers — see the Dishcast below — reassured Manchin on the inflationary impact this past week, and, as Chait details today, Summers has credibility on the issue after his sane and prescient warnings about inflation a year and a half ago. It comes after a bipartisan computer chips bill to better compete with China.

It’s not a New Green Deal; and it’s not socialized medicine. It’s what we used to call pragmatic progress...

 RELATED: At NYT, "Manchin, in Reversal, Agrees to Quick Action on Climate and Tax Plan."

Cameras in Public Schools

Darleene's been hammering this point:

This keeps coming up. NO teacher should ever be getting their "affirmation" "validation" jollies from his or her captive audience of minors. Why aren't these people who USE children for their own ends screened out?

Public schools need cameras in the classrooms NOW. https://t.co/4ShfHMvsn4

— Darleen Click ♦ I support #LibsOfTikTok (@darleenclick) August 1, 2022

Professor Robert George: Constitutional Republic, Not Pure Democracy (VIDEO)

At Prager University:

National Democratic Redistricting Committee Backs 'Far-Right' Candidates in a Major Way (VIDEO)

At MSNBC, on YouTube.

And from Representative Peter Meijer, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "Why the Democrats Are Funding My Far-Right Opponent: They said Trump was a threat to democracy. Now they are propping up my MAGA challenger."

as a lifelong Dem voter, reading this paragraph felt kind of like finding a writhing nest of venomous snakes nestled in the foundations of my own house; I'm trying to think of a better, more nuanced word than "disgusting," but good lordhttps://t.co/TOZGLzFQWb pic.twitter.com/GI8H6mCjFQ

— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) August 1, 2022

Does GOP Get to Play by Radical Left's New Rules?

From Victor Davis Hanson, at American Greatness, "Are the New Progressive Rules Reciprocal?"

War With Russia Enters New Phase as Ukraine Readies Southern Counterblow

The Ukraine war grinds on.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Ukrainian offensive to reclaim key port city could be pivot in conflict, with success reinforcing support for Kyiv’s fight in parts of the West":

After months of Russian forces making painfully slow gains in Ukraine’s east, the focus of the war is moving to the south, where a potentially decisive phase of the conflict will play out.

Ukraine has used long-range artillery and rocket systems, including the American M142 Himars, to halt Russia’s grinding advances in the east, destroying ammunition dumps, command-and-control centers and air-defense systems that appear to have limited Moscow’s ability to supply its front lines. Now, with the help of these Western weapons, Ukraine says it is mounting a counteroffensive to take back the Southern port city of Kherson.

Russia continues its bombardment of cities across Ukraine including in the early hours of Sunday, when it launched an assault on the port of Mykolaiv, killing a prominent businessman. But for Ukraine, Kherson is an important strategic objective as the largest population center occupied by the Russians and the first city to fall. As a port, it is economically important to the Ukrainians and taking it back would deny Russian forces access to the southern coast toward Odessa.

Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired major general in the Australian army, said the offensive will force Russia to make hard decisions about keeping troops in the Donbas or moving them south to protect Kherson.

If the Ukrainians retake the city, he said, they could be in a position to threaten Russia’s main Black Sea naval base, 150 miles away, at Sevastopol.

The Ukrainian effort to retake Kherson represents a significant development in the conflict, said Gen. Ryan. “If the Ukrainians can take that back, that will be a turning point,” he said. “But we’re not at a turning point yet.”

Symbolic importance Eliot Cohen, a military historian and strategist with the bipartisan policy research group the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Kherson carried great symbolic importance.

“Taking back the original city that the Russians took without much effort in the beginning, would be psychologically very significant,” he said. It would be a bigger deal than either Ukraine’s recapture of Snake Island in June or the sinking of Russia’s flagship, the Moskva, in April.

Military offensives are more challenging than defensive operations. Analysts caution that Ukraine shouldn’t—and likely won’t—rush into the fight in the south because it must continue to check Russian advances in the east. But demonstrating that it can retake ground in the south would provide an important victory for Ukrainian morale and show its backers, particularly those in Europe as the continent faces a tough winter with likely energy shortages, that their support is yielding results on the ground.

If Ukraine’s push to dislodge Russians from Kherson fails or falters, however, it could weaken support for Kyiv’s fight in some Western capitals. Ukrainians are likely to continue fighting whatever happens, but an unsuccessful campaign could prompt more calls for a negotiated settlement, particularly from parts of Western Europe facing reduced flows of Russian natural gas.

U.S. officials say Ukrainian forces are advancing in the south, and public assessments from British defense intelligence suggest the counteroffensive in Kherson is gathering momentum. The British intelligence said Thursday that Ukrainian forces have likely established a bridgehead south of the Ingulets River, which forms the northern boundary of the Kherson region, and have damaged at least three bridges that Russia uses to deliver supplies to the area. One—the 1,100-yard Antonivsky bridge near Kherson city—is now probably unusable.

This has exposed Russia’s 49th Army, stationed on the west bank of the Dnipro River, and has cut off Kherson city from other occupied territories, the British intelligence said. On Saturday, they said Russian forces were highly likely to have established two pontoon bridges and a ferry system to compensate for the bridge damage.

‘One bite at a time’

This phase of the war will look different from the first one, when Moscow unsuccessfully mounted an effort to strike at Kyiv and topple the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the second that continues in the east, where grueling exchanges of artillery fire have yielded modest advantages for Russian forces at great cost.

Mr. Cohen says this phase will likely have parallels with what happened in the last year of World War I, when the Germans on the one side and the British and Australians on the other sought to “break in” past the front lines, exploit weakness and infiltrate forces.

This requires “meticulously planned operations, which take one bite at a time out of the enemy’s front line. And then you move artillery forward, you consolidate your position, let them counterattack if they want to, and then you take another bite,” he said.

Analysts point out that this phase won’t depend on artillery alone. Konrad Muzyka, president of Rochan Consulting, military analysts based in Gdansk, Poland, said, “Himars cripple Russia’s ability to conduct offensive operations, but they won’t force the Russians to leave Ukraine. For that you need manpower and armor.”

This requires “meticulously planned operations, which take one bite at a time out of the enemy’s front line. And then you move artillery forward, you consolidate your position, let them counterattack if they want to, and then you take another bite,” he said.

Analysts point out that this phase won’t depend on artillery alone. Konrad Muzyka, president of Rochan Consulting, military analysts based in Gdansk, Poland, said, “Himars cripple Russia’s ability to conduct offensive operations, but they won’t force the Russians to leave Ukraine. For that you need manpower and armor.”

This brings in the big unknown: “We don’t know what the structure of the Ukrainian army is, we don’t know its number of troops or the state of their morale,” he said. Ukraine has lost thousands of soldiers in recent months and many good leaders.

Chris Dougherty, a former U.S. Defense Department strategist now at the Center for a New American Security, said that, despite all the materiel the West has given to Ukraine, it probably still lacks the equipment and trained forces to retake ground successfully and quickly.

“The worry I have is we give advanced equipment to the Ukrainians and they use it to stop the bleeding,” he said. “That makes sense if you’re bleeding to death. But what’s the next thing you do?” He said Russia has been unable to capitalize on its massive artillery blitzes to take significant ground, and Ukraine risks falling into the same trap...

 

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