The President The Dems Elected!

AUGUST 2, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM, REUTERS SCREAMS…

I am a day late with this, but it is still worth a chuckle. Someone posted a short video clip of Joe Biden walking away from his wife while she is speaking at a podium, and added ice cream truck music as though Biden is being lured away by the prospect of ice cream. This is what is commonly known as a joke:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1552571908226289664&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Fi-scream-you-scream-reuters-screams.php&sessionId=77888d0801c88c8cfcbf1161e2de98948439597e&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=6da0b7085cc99%3A1658260301864&width=550px

Note that Twitter flagged the video as “manipulated media.”

But Reuters was taking no chances. It put its fact-checking operation to work.

Social media users are sharing a video of U.S. President Joe Biden walking away momentarily during a speech given by U.S. First Lady Jill Biden and claiming that he was distracted by an ice cream truck. The video being shared, however, has been digitally edited to include music usually played by an ice cream truck.
***
Some posts also included photos with an ice cream truck in the background (here).

The original video was posted on C-SPAN (here) on Sept. 10, 2021…. At around the 01:35 mark, Biden can be seen walking out of frame and returning a few seconds later, but no ice cream truck can be seen in the video nor can any music be heard.

VERDICT

Altered. This video has been digitally edited to include ice cream truck music as U.S. President Joe Biden walked away momentarily during first lady Jill Biden’s speech.

Thanks for clearing that up, Reuters. What strikes me about this episode is that Reuters evidently believes that Joe Biden’s mental decline is so severe that people really will think that he wanders away in a fog when he hears an ice cream truck. In that respect, the “fact check” is unintentionally revealing.

When Will Conservative West Virginia Remove Its Lefty Joe?

Goodbye, Joe Manchin. Your Senate Career Is Over

BY: SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT at the Federalist:

AUGUST 02, 2022

The West Virginia moderate declared his support for legislation that’s a slap in the face to his constituents who put him in office.

SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT

Joe Manchin, the Democratic U.S. senator from West Virginia, may finally see the writing on the wall and realize his time in politics is coming to an end. Manchin, who held onto his Senate seat by just over 3 percent during his most recent reelection bid, is likely to squander any of the goodwill he has generated among his constituents with his recently declared support for the latest reconciliation bill in the Senate.  

After presenting himself as a foil to many of the Biden administration’s leftist legislative goals, Manchin has come to an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer about dedicating “hundreds of billions” of federal funds to “deficit reduction,” raising taxes on American industry, and emboldening green energy initiatives.

https://03898e6c3d395825bda1778d3d7cf145.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Manchin has insisted that passing the reconciliation bill will bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, but the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) disagrees. According to NAM, the bill intends to raise $313 billion, nearly half of which will be generated by imposing a 15 percent minimum corporate levy on domestic manufacturers.

This new tax is expected to reduce real GDP by $68.45 billion, eliminate more than 200,000 jobs, and decrease the income of laborers by $17.11 billion.

The bill also, according to Manchin, “addresses our nation’s energy and climate crisis by adopting commonsense solutions through strategic and historic investments that allow us to decarbonize.” According to a summary of the bill from Senate Democrats, the bill would “put the U.S. on a path to roughly 40% emissions reduction by 2030, and would represent the single biggest climate investment in U.S. history.”

Effectively, the bill incentivizes the manufacturing of green technology while disincentivizing most other forms of industrial production.

In West Virginia, the coal industry employs more than 30,000 residents with $2 billion in wages and a nearly $4 billion effect on the state’s economy. And along with coal, the state’s economy is essentially reliant on its manufacturing sector.

In 2020, Donald Trump carried West Virginia by nearly 30 points, and in 2018, Manchin barely maintained his seat during a Democratic wave election. Despite this, Manchin is choosing to support legislation that will most certainly negatively affect his constituents and his state’s economy.

Manchin is not up for reelection until 2024, but considering the increasingly Republican landscape of his home state and his willingness to sabotage the livelihoods of the people who put him in office, it grows more and more likely that this will be the last time he is in office.

Those Of You Who Know Manchin, KNOW HE’S A SLITHERING DEM CON ARTIST WITH GOP TONES!

And now we know why Manchin cut a deal on energy bill

JAZZ SHAW Aug 02, 2022 4:31 PM ET

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AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Okay, the title isn’t entirely on the mark because there is virtually nothing that happens in Washington these days that can be distilled down to a single event, moment, or person. But this is at least a piece of the puzzle when it comes to the deal that Joe Manchin struck with Chuck Schumer to try to put a bill covering climate issues and energy policy over the finish line. Of course, as Ed pointed out earlier, the deal may turn out to be Manchin’s swan song in the Senate, assuming he even wanted to bother trying for another term. So was it an effort to salvage the midterms for his party? Unlikely. There are probably more Democrats looking for his scalp than Republicans. But the deal does contain one thing that Manchin has desired for a very long time. It would mandate the completion of a natural gas pipeline through his home state of West Virginia. (Politico)

Before Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) lent his crucial vote to his party’s climate, tax and healthcare package, he got a commitment from Democratic leaders to pass energy permitting legislation. And Manchin on Monday released details of that side agreement that make clear he’s secured the construction of a major home-state natural gas pipeline in the process.

Notably, the document says the legislation will “require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.” Manchin, also the chair of the Energy Committee, has called for the completion of the natural gas pipeline, which would send natural gas through his home state of West Virginia to the East Coast, for years.

Manchin has been trying to get the Mountain Valley Pipeline finished for well over a decade. His version of the proposed bill would give that to him and he could bring home all of the jobs and opportunities (such as LNG exports) that would come with it to his constituents. But this still isn’t close to being a done deal.

First, this will be seen as a poison pill by the progressives in his party. They’re trying to “end” fossil fuels, as Joe Biden promised to do on the campaign trail, only to realize this year that it was a horrible mistake. It wouldn’t take all that many lefty Democrats to walk away from this for it to fall to pieces. And there are already some rumblings along those lines coming from the Squad and their friends. We shall see.

But even if Schumer and Pelosi can manage to herd enough of their cats to make this happen, they will still need ten Republicans in the Senate. There’s a lot of liberal wishlist material in the bill from what we’ve seen thus far. How many Republicans are going to jump on board just because there’s one new pipeline for West Virginia and a few relaxed regulations in our energy policy? (The current version Manchin presented, or at least part of it, would shorten approval times and create mandatory review windows for energy projects.)

And even if some number of Republicans do like the energy portion of the bill, why would the GOP show any interest in handing the Democrats something that might be described as a “win” when they are this close to the finish line for the midterms? Even with a majority in both chambers, the GOP has managed to basically shut down Joe Biden’s entire agenda aside from the COVID relief spending and support for Ukraine. That’s another reason the Dem enthusiasm has been in the tank. It’s bad enough that they’re getting a shot in the arm over the Supreme Court decisions. Do you really want to hand them a climate change gift as well? It doesn’t sound all that plausible.

There’s an old saying that refers to “many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.” Democrats are trying to celebrate this deal as much as possible at the moment. But Joe Manchin can’t deliver GOP votes in the Senate unless he has something seriously substantial to hand them. And I’m not seeing it yet.

The Evil Dems Have Concocted Evil TO DESTROY AMERICA’S PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP!

August 2, 2022

Democrats Are Learning That Hating Trump Is Not The Same As Governing

By Jeff M. Lewis at American Thinker:

From the time Donald and Melania Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy for President of the United States, there has been little other than a torrent of hate directed at him, his family, and all who support him. We have endured the past several years being required to account for how we could support such a man.

For me, it was simple. My support for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 (clearly explained to family and friends) came down to the three pillars of American exceptionalism and success: the Constitution, national security, and the economy.

We need not look very far to see just how horribly elected Democrats have done on all three.

Donald J. Trump and the MAGA movement remain a threat to the Democrats, and it’s their fault. They have governed over the past 14 years against the prevailing will of the people, by hook or by crook. They have fully employed every branch of government and every government agency against the American people at every opportunity. Their cancerous quest for power knows no bounds.

On the Constitution, those who have been paying attention can clearly see that America has a two-tiered justice system. If one supports Democrats and their pet causes, there will be little accountability, and there will be no mention of one’s bad behavior in the press. However, if one is seen as a political opponent of the Democrat party, it’s off to the gulag. Conservatives and MAGA supporters know well the plight of the January 6 detainees: cruel and unusual solitary confinement, lack of due process and representation, and ruinous consequences for exercising their constitutional rights.

Furthermore, no American who supports the Constitution and has taken an oath to support and defend it can, at the same time, be in favor of “packing the court.” This will forever alter American jurisprudence in a way that will deny citizens their right to redress their grievances against the government. To do this would forever prevent any opposition from arguing the unconstitutionality of any law the legislative branch passed. The courts would be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the legislature and the executive branch, and no longer an independent check on their powers.

Image: Trump is in the Democrats’ way. Internet meme; creator unknown.

On national security, international law known as the Nuremberg Code prevents medical experimentation on humans. An unconscionable breach of legal precedent has resulted in military service members being required to get the COVID vaccines. The vaccines are experimental, don’t prevent infection, and have serious negative side effects. One need not have only religious objections to the vaccine; there are plenty of additional reasons for concern. Amazingly, the current regime would rather weaken our military readiness with their purge than allow an international legal precedent to stand and allow service members to make their own decisions about the shot. Military readiness has and will continue to suffer, as we are now learning that military recruiting goals are falling short.

In addition, one cannot consider our national security and the security of citizens in communities across America without a review of the crises at our southern border. The Biden Crime Family has enriched and empowered Mexican drug cartels. The open border has resulted in a deeper, more entrenched oppression of illegal immigrants, and it has wrought not only their carnage and deaths along their perilous trek to America but the drugs flood across the border, as well. Deadly Fentanyl overdoses are killing scores of American citizens every day.

The economy is in recession, and no amount of spin or re-defining what actually constitutes a recession can change the data. Most maddening, it was all predictable—and predicted. Since last year, economists have warned that unrestrained government spending would increase inflation. When combined with the Doomsday regime’s promised attack on the U.S. petroleum industry and the concomitant rise in gas prices, a weakened dollar combines with the high cost of producing and delivering goods and services to weaken every American family’s financial outlook.

Democrat party governance is to raise taxes, spend billions on IRS enforcement, ignore the low workforce participation rate (still far below pre-pandemic levels), and gaslight Americans that we have a strong labor market because unemployment is low, which negates all the rest of the compounding negative data.

Democrats: It’s your fault that Donald Trump is the force he is because every time you speak you insult us with your lies, and we are tired of it.

America was stronger and was on the rise when Donald Trump was President. An objective examination of every metric as it relates to those three essential pillars—the Constitution, national security, and the economy—provides irrefutable evidence of Democrat malpractice, malfeasance, an inexcusable breach of trust, and a violation of their oath of office that has weakened America.

Therefore, let’s reflect on this quote of the year, by Dan Gelernter in an article for American Greatness:

The Democrats are in the same trouble they get into every time they’re running the country: People hate their policies so much that the only recourse is to pretend they’re not actually in charge.

Evidenced by their quest for unrestrained power and their disdain for having to earn Americans’ votes, the Democrats’ only play under the shadow of the wreckage they have caused is to attempt to eliminate the opposition. They cannot compete in the arena of ideas, and they have no results to stand on. From the time the Democrat Party held their federal legislative majority in 2009, they have governed against the will of the people. They use the deep state for their own nefarious purposes, and recoil at the notion they must be held accountable.

America is languishing in a cold civil war. During America’s Civil War of the 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln and the Union gained victories under General Ulysses Grant. Lincoln said to Grant’s critics, “He fights.” During World War II, General George Patton was successful, and the Nazis feared him. As distasteful as his speech, his habits, or his actions may have been, he scared the hell out of America’s enemies, and he never wavered from the relentless pursuit of victory.

With the current civil war underway, America needs a fighter in the Oval Office. Donald Trump is that fighter, which is why he is such a threat to the Democrats.

Democrats: Again, it’s your fault that Donald Trump is the force he is, and it is your fault there is a need for such a man as Donald Trump to fight back against your corrupt governance, disdain for our Constitutional rights, corrupt state-controlled propaganda media cohorts, and the disaster you have wrought since you stole your way into power.

There are those who hate America and want to tear it down, and there are those, like Donald Trump (and us), who know that America is the last, greatest hope for humanity. A rising tide of American success will “lift all boats.” It is the Democrats’ fault that Donald Trump is such an electoral threat; their continued persecution, their J6 Committee, and the deep state which supports it all have only solidified his support.

The Democrats’ hate for Donald Trump is not congruent with governing. They did not support Donald Trump, they had nothing to do with his success, and therefore they cannot destroy his support or wrest it from him.

I am reminded of a warning, provided in the original Star Wars movie by Obi-wan Kenobi: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.”

Friends! Patriots! Rise, and gear up. Be lovers of your Freedom, and anxious to defend it.

Jeff M. Lewis is a Christian, a husband and father, a Veteran, and a small business owner who resides with his family in South Texas.

Do Dems OWN THE FBI?

All FBI Agents Must Blow Their Whistles Or They’ll Be Complicit In Bureau’s Politicization

AUGUST 02, 2022

What the FBI needs to rehabilitate itself is a cavalcade of whistleblowers exposing the rot within the bureau.

by MARGOT CLEVELAND at the Federalist:

Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office confirmed to The Federalist that the multiple FBI whistleblowers charging misconduct related to the Hunter Biden investigation only came forward in the last two months. While the existence of these new whistleblowers proves promising, other FBI agents with knowledge of misconduct or political bias must stop hiding behind the chain of command and start blowing their own whistles. 

“Multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions” informed the Iowa Republican senator that “Washington Field Office assistant special agent in charge Timothy Thibault and other FBI officials … ‘falsely portray[ed] as disinformation evidence acquired from multiple sources that provided the FBI derogatory information related to Hunter Biden’s financial and foreign business activities, even though some of that information had already been or could be verified.’”

The whistleblowers further charged that “in August of 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment, which was used by a team of agents at FBI headquarters to improperly discredit and falsely claim that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down.” “The FBI headquarters team allegedly placed their assessment findings in a restricted access subfolder, effectively flagging sources and derogatory evidence related to Hunter Biden as disinformation while shielding the justification for such findings from scrutiny,” Grassley revealed.

The significance of these developments cannot be overstated, for several reasons. First, the whistleblowers accuse supervisory bureau officials — not merely low-level line agents — with manipulating evidence related to an investigation of the son of the president of the United States. The ongoing investigation also implicates the president and his brother in the pay-to-play scandal of influence-peddling.

That reality alone should shock the core of the bureau, but there is more. The whistleblowers’ charges, when read in light of FBI leaks to the Washington Post, suggest that “FBI Headquarters either improperly withheld information or presented inaccurate information to the U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh and possibly also Delaware,” which were tasked with investigating Hunter Biden. 

Further, by burying evidence about Hunter Biden, which at the time included the laptop he had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, the FBI agents concealed a dangerous national security risk that both the intelligence community and Joe Biden needed to know, namely that Hunter believed Russians had stolen a second laptop that contained similarly compromising material. 

The new information revealed by the FBI whistleblowers exposes yet a further scandal, which Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., highlighted in a letter he dispatched to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz last week. In his letter, Johnson noted that while he was investigating Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings, the FBI provided him and Grassley with a supposed briefing on August 6, 2020. That briefing “was not specific” and was “unconnected” to their investigation, Johnson noted, and he and Grassley had “always assumed [it] was a set up to intentionally discredit [their] ongoing work into Hunter Biden’s extensive foreign financial entanglements.” 

In fact, as Johnson highlighted in his letter, leakers from the FBI fed the fact of the briefing to the Washington Post. The Post then framed the briefing as “an extensive effort by the [FBI] to alert members of Congress … that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome.” That spin worked to falsely portray Grassley and Johnson’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign financial dealings as corrupted by Russian disinformation.

Johnson’s letter to the DOJ, FBI, and OIG concisely captured the significance of these facts and the horror of the scandal: “If these recent whistleblower revelations are true, it would strongly suggest that the FBI’s August 6, 2020, briefing was indeed a targeted effort to intentionally undermine a Congressional investigation. The FBI being weaponized against two sitting chairmen of U.S. Senate committees with constitutional oversight responsibilities would be one of the greatest episodes of Executive Branch corruption in American history.”

The Whole FBI Owns This

The FBI scandal does not end there, however, and concerns not merely the alleged misconduct by a few in the upper echelon of the bureau. Rather, the fact that the whistleblowers, including “those in senior positions” of the FBI, are only now coming forward to expose the malfeasance they witnessed — even though the investigation into Hunter Biden has been ongoing since 2018 and the alleged spiking of the evidence occurred in 2020 — renders the scandal owned by the entire agency and every member of the organization. 

The failure of other FBI agents and “those in senior positions” to object to the shameful politicization of the bureau finds its root in the Russia collusion hoax, with agents ignoring the misconduct by the bureau’s leaders, such as Director James Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, and FBI Special Counsel Lisa Page. FBI Special Agent William Barnett, in a detailed interview with former U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, revealed both the breadth of the bureau’s partisan impropriety and the reticence of apolitical agents to challenge their bosses.

Barnett, who served as the FBI’s case agent in the investigation of former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, spoke with then-U.S. Attorney Jensen after then-Attorney General William Barr tasked Jensen with reviewing the Flynn case. As The Federalist previously reported, Barnett “told Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators that the handling of the probes troubled him so much that he threatened to quit working on it in one case, and threatened to go to the Inspector General in another.”

A summary of Barnett’s interview noted that he believed “there was never any basis for the bizarre ‘collusion’ theory the agency and the special counsel relentlessly pursued, to the point that agents made jokes about how they could take any piece of information and claim it was evidence of collusion.” Barnett also believed the Special Counsel Office “pursued Flynn simply as a means to ‘get Trump’ and viewed FBI investigators as a ‘speed bump’ slowing down the work of the attorneys leading the inquisition.”

Jensen’s comprehensive summary of his interview with Barnett revealed many more extensive problems dating from 2016 and through Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But it wasn’t until September 2020 when Barr initiated a review of the Flynn case by a U.S. attorney outside of D.C. that Barnett’s firsthand experience became known to those willing to address the corruption. 

The now-former attorney general did just that when he moved to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn, concluding the FBI’s questioning of Flynn that served as the basis for the criminal charge “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.” The federal judge presiding over the Flynn case refused to dismiss the case, though, and with the legal wrangling continuing past the 2020 election, prompted outgoing President Donald Trump to pardon Flynn. 

Beyond the numerous FBI improprieties that occurred during the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller investigations — including high-level leaks by agents — the interview of Barnett revealed a follow-the-marching-orders mentality that cannot continue if agents want to restore integrity to the bureau. 

“While Barnett questioned the investigative theory, he did not think at the time the investigation was illegal, particularly due to the oversight by attorneys (i.e., CLINESMITH) and the direction being given by top FBI officials,” the summary of Barnett’s interview stated, with Barnett noting he “was willing to follow instructions being given by the Deputy Director as long as it was not a violation of law.” 

Turn the Tide

The last two months seem to suggest a potential change in attitude, with FBI whistleblowers willing to work with outsiders committed to reform. 

In addition to whistleblowers exposing the alleged misconduct related to the Biden family, they have also alerted Grassley to the FBI’s politicizing of election crimes and campaign finance investigations. And with whistleblowers also alerting Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan that “FBI leaders are instructing agents to reclassify cases to bolster the Biden administration’s narrative that ‘domestic violent extremism’ is a major threat,” there is hope that the dedicated men and women of the bureau want to restore integrity to the agency.

It may be difficult for FBI agents, trained to trust the hierarchy, to reboot their reticence, but recent events establish that the FBI leadership cannot right itself. What the FBI needs, then, to rehabilitate itself is a cavalcade of whistleblowers exposing the rot within the bureau. Every agent at every level must join the few brave whistleblowers who have come forward. 

If, knowing what they do now about DOJ and FBI leadership’s inability to clean the political mess, agents remain mum, they will be complicit in the scandal, and Americans will no longer distinguish between the hardworking men and women of the FBI and the supposedly few bad apples — we will view the entire bureau as bad.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Will Dem’s CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS PULL OUT THEIR “COURTESY” COUNTS To Save Their Lefties Again?

CBS forecast: GOP to gain just 16 House seats in November?

ALLAHPUNDIT Aug 01, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

It’s the first day of August in an election year, which means the commentariat is bored and grasping for storylines to spice up a campaign that won’t begin humming for another month. Not only is it an election year, it’s likely to be a wave year, which means there’s even less suspense about the outcome than there usually is.

David Drucker identified the typical pundit cycle of life in a season like this last week on Twitter. We’re in the so-called “bedwetting” phase of midterm prognostications at the moment.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1550965492545994752&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Fallahpundit%2F2022%2F08%2F01%2Fcbs-forecast-gop-to-gain-just-16-house-seats-in-november-n486684&sessionId=616c7704ae85767fbeca5816f755a8402159e244&siteScreenName=hotairblog&theme=light&widgetsVersion=6da0b7085cc99%3A1658260301864&width=550px

A red wave is inevitable, but how big will it be? Are we talking tsunami or just the current gently lapping against the sea wall in blue states?

Over at RCP today, the GOP’s lead in the generic ballot has reached its lowest point since January:

At 44.2 percent, Republicans’ share of the vote is also the lowest it’s been in more than six months. Wet that bed!

CBS News published its first battleground tracker of the campaign over the weekend, a model they’ve assembled by polling tens of thousands of voters and then connecting “their current preferences to the 2020 Census, district data and millions of voter records to estimate seat counts.” If you’re hoping for a Republican pick-up of 60+ seats a la 2010, CBS says you should aim lower.

Forty seats? Lower.

Twenty seats? Teeny bit lower.

Sixteen seats, says their model. That would be more than enough to flip the House, giving Republicans a majority of 230-205, but it would pale next to some of their recent House majorities. From the start of 2015 through the beginning of 219, they controlled more than 240 seats. In the first two years of Bush’s second term, they held 233. Even in an age of extreme gerrymandering and geographical self-sorting, a 230-seat majority would feel like dismal underperformance given the fundamentals of this election. Inflation is at a 40-year high and the country is basically unanimous in believing that the president, who’s polling under 40 percent, should retire. What’s it gonna take to turn a small red wave into a red tsunami?

Maybe nothing if Drucker is right. Maybe we’re just at that point of the campaign where Americans are at the beach, tuned out of politics, and will break hard to the right once they start paying attention again in September. There are plenty of indicators in CBS’s data that bode ill for Dems:

[Y]et, in the 2018 midterms Democrats won women by 19 points; today that’s cut in half. They won White women with college degrees by a whopping 20 points; today, their lead among the latter is just six. There are a double-digit number of undecideds in this group, setting them up to be a key group to watch over the next months…

There’s a gender gap on enthusiasm: women are less likely than men to say they’re very enthusiastic about voting, by double digits…

While 2018 set a record for youth turnout in midterm elections, 2022 so far looks to be a return to normal, lower patterns. Just a third of registered voters under 30 feel very enthusiastic about voting this year, lower than their older counterparts. And they constitute the least likely age group to say they’ll definitely vote this year. Add to that a modest Republican turnout advantage even among older voters and it becomes clear why Democrats are trailing…

One key group to watch is White women with a college degree. They went big for Democrats in 2018, but 12% of them are undecided in their vote choice right now.

Democrats were hoping for more of a Roe-inspired backlash among women, especially educated women. Meanwhile, they lead among Hispanics by just three points, 45/42. In the 2018 midterm exit polls, they won that group by, uh, 40 points. It’s *really* hard to believe that a shift that profound combined with diminished enthusiasm among core Democratic constituencies like women and young adults won’t add up to more than 16 net seats for the GOP.

After all, says Amy Walter, a president’s job approval always has a gravitational effect downballot. Candidates can and routinely do run several points ahead of an unpopular president from their own party in midterm races, but historically there’s been a limit as to how far ahead at around five to six points. Which means if Biden is polling at 40 percent approval in battleground races, figures like Raphael Warnock and John Fetterman and Tim Ryan might be expected to stall out at around 46 percent. And it’s awfully hard to win an election at 46 percent if you don’t have the electoral college to help you out.

Bottom line: The encouraging midterm news for Dems lately is probably a combination of GOP bedwetting and the summer doldrums distorting the likelihood of a big red wave en route. Biden’s going to end up dragging down candidates who would win if the national environment were just a tiny bit better for his party. But if you want to read the case for how and why Republicans really might blow it, Harry Enten’s your man. Maybe the gravitational effect in this midterm will be a bit weaker than it usually is, he speculates, allowing candidates like Warnock to reach orbit:

It’s because Republicans are also unpopular. There are a lot of voters who don’t like either Biden or the GOP…

Biden’s favorable rating among those under 50 is shockingly low (32%) given that younger voters are usually part of the Democratic base.

Yet, these same voters are going 48% to 39% for Democrats on the generic ballot.

The bottom line is Republicans may not be able to count on voters defaulting to them. Put another way, Democrats may not be able to win this upcoming midterm. Republicans, though, could definitely lose it.

It’s not just a Trump thing. Dr. Oz has performed so abysmally in Pennsylvania thus far against Fetterman that Republican operatives have begun gaming out ways that they can flip the Senate despite losing in PA. Oz is a much less popular figure there than Trump is. Meanwhile, Herschel Walker has trailed in the last six polls of Georgia against Warnock, and although Ryan is a longshot in Ohio against J.D. Vance, he’s holding his own in early internal polling. There’s an excellent chance that all three Republicans I just named end up running behind Trump in their home states. The House will flip, whether easily or less comfortably, but the Senate really is in play. At least during summer bedwetting season.

When Will We Discover Crooked Biden’s Corrupt Seizure OF THE PRESIDENCY IN THAT 2020 ELECTION?

Trump’s response to Biden’s rebound COVID-19 diagnosis includes flashback to 2020 election

KAREN TOWNSEND Aug 01, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

It’s Trump being Trump. Joe Biden tested positive, again, for COVID-19 and is back in isolation after a brief reprieve last week. Biden received a get well wish from the former president via social media (of course) and it’s not a standard run-of-the-mill get-well-soon wish. Trump used the opportunity to weave in some 2020 election grievances into his statement.

Trump posted on Truth Social. It’s a mix of references to Biden’s mental acuity and a reference to ballots from nursing homes in Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election all mixed together.

“Joe Biden’s second bout of Covid, sometimes referred to as the China Virus, was sadly misdiagnosed by his doctors,” Mr. Trump said late Sunday on Truth Social, the social media platform he launched after getting kicked off Twitter.

“He instead has Dementia, but is happily recovering well. Joe is thinking of moving, part time, to one of those beautiful Wisconsin Nursing Homes, where almost 100% of the residents miraculously, and for the first time in history, had the strength and energy to vote — even if those votes were cast illegally. Get well soon, Joe!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Okay, then. Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday after testing negative four times last week. The White House physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor (Biden’s personal physician), called it a Paxlovid rebound. He feels well and his symptoms have not returned. Rebounds by those patients given Paxlovid is reported to be a small percentage of recipients. Dr. Fauci, however, experienced the same thing after he was given Paxlovid.

The antiviral pill developed by Pfizer is the first pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of COVID-19. It was granted emergency use authorization in December. Though it has been approved, data from Pfizer shows some users can experience a rebound after completion of a round of treatment. Users will test negative and then suddenly begin testing positive again.

Researchers say it might have something to do with how the drug is metabolized in certain individuals and whether it reaches enough infected cells to stop all viral replication.

However, experts say the drug appears to be staving off severe disease as it did in clinical trials.

With two such high profile patients, Fauci and Biden, it is hard not to think that rebounds are not typical. Only a small percentage of patients given Paxlovid experience rebounds, despite what social media might have you think.

Around 1% to 2% of people taking Paxlovid in Pfizer’s clinical trial tested positive for the coronavirus after having tested negative. Rebound rates are around 5% among the tens of thousands of people who’ve taken the drug in real-life settings, the White House Covid response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, said at a news conference last week.

“If you look at Twitter, it feels like everybody has rebound,” Jha said. “But it turns out there’s actually clinical data.”

A small study in June found that less than 1% of Covid patients had their symptoms rebound around nine days, on average, after they took Paxlovid. In a larger study of 13,600 Covid patients, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, 6% had their symptoms rebound in the month following the treatment.

Was it just bad luck that Biden and Fauci experienced rebound COVID? Maybe. Or maybe it is as FNC’s Dr. Makary said. Not everyone should be prescribed Paxlovid. He suggests that if everyone is being treated with it then the virus and the medicine become too familiar together. The virus mutates and adjusts its response to the drug. He thinks the drug is over-prescribed.

Back to the get well wish. This one seems to be the real deal. The last one, when Biden received his original COVID-19 diagnosis, a get well wish from Trump proved to be a fake. It was fact-checked to determine if it was real.

CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump in a statement wished President Joe Biden a speedy recovery from COVID-19 and referred to his own fight against the virus as “Herculean.”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. This statement is fabricated, a Trump spokesperson confirmed on Twitter. It does not appear among the former president’s public statements on his website or on social media.

It went viral at the time. It kinda sounds legit, right? And, it’s true – no one wants Kamala to be president.

“I hope Sleepy Joe is able to bounce back quickly, much as I was,” the bogus statement read. “Doctors described my fight against the China virus as Herculean, and not meaning the woke Disney Hercules but rather the Kevin Sorbo one. The Lou Ferrigno one as well.”

The fake statement then wished Biden a “speedy recovery” and said that “no one wants” Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place.

We can all wish Biden a speedy recovery. We know Kamala is waiting nearby.

Surviving From Today’s Fascist Dem Left TO SAVE FREEDOM IN AMERICA!

August 1, 2022

Redefining – The New Pretzel Logic of the Left

By Brian C. Joondeph at American Thinker:

Definitions make order of our lives.

Imagine if the definitions of right and left or up and down could vary based on the whims of our leaders and their pet agendas or causes? This is especially true in science, where everything relies on a solid framework of truths and accepted terms.

Economics is one such science and has a host of definitions. One such term is “recession” and here is the definition from the appropriately named publication, The Economist:

Broadly speaking, a period of slow or negative economic GROWTH, usually accompanied by rising UNEMPLOYMENT. Economists have two more precise definitions of a recession. The first, which can be hard to prove, is when an economy is growing at less than its long-term trend rate of growth and has spare CAPACITY. The second is two consecutive quarters of falling GDP.

The International Monetary Fund has a similar definition, with some wiggle room.

There is no official definition of recession, but there is general recognition that the term refers to a period of decline in economic activity. Very short periods of decline are not considered recessions. Most commentators and analysts use, as a practical definition of recession, two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) — the value of all goods and services a country produces.

Recession can have a qualitative and quantitative definition, the former being a loosey-goosey “period of decline” or “period of negative growth,” the latter a clear numeric way to define it, specifically two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. 

That is like saying a blizzard is when it’s snowing hard, despite there being an actual definition that is specific and quantifiable for a blizzard, not simply a bad snowstorm in the eye of the beholder. Or saying the winner of the baseball game is the team that played better, which is subjective, rather than the objective measure of which team scored more runs.

Based on the GDP number released last week, by the conventional quantitative measure of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, we are officially in a recession. Yet the White House and their media fanboys and fangirls are now trying to redefine recession, ignoring the quantitative definition used for more than half a century.

How convenient. The Biden administration is presiding over the worst economy that most Americans ever lived through, with true inflation, as in food and energy costs, pushing 20 percent, along with a shrinking economy. There is a term for this, stagflation, that hasn’t been uttered since the Carter presidency in the late 1970s.

President Biden and his handlers are trying to avoid that label being attached to their regime. Especially ahead of the midterm elections. How? By simply denying the obvious. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “This is not an economy in recession.” Instead, she says, “We’re in a period of transition.” Remember when she said inflation would be “transitory”?

White House advisor Brian Deese won’t use that dreaded ‘R’ word either, declaring that the U.S. economy is in a “period of transition”. Instead of stagflation, he claims America is now in, “a period of stable and resilient growth.” The administration must have conducted focus groups who much preferred “transition” to “recession.”

Wikipedia can’t decide what a recession is either, altering the definition 47 times over a 24-hour period after the Biden administration furiously tried to change the accepted definition.

Yet Wikipedia acknowledges that for quantitative science, like mathematics or economics, precision is necessary: “In mathematics, a definition is used to give a precise meaning to a new term, by describing a condition which unambiguously qualifies what a mathematical term is and is not.”

Imagine if this occurred on President Trump’s watch. Would we have situational or fluid definitions? Fat chance.

MarketWatch, in the Spring of 2020, reporting on the Trump recession noted: “A recession is typically defined as two straight quarters of negative GDP.” CNBC agreed, “As a rule of thumb, recessions are thought to entail two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.”

But with a Democrat in the White House, it’s time to redefine things in a light more favorable to those in charge. The media believes the obvious recession is not a recession if they say otherwise.

What else have Democrats and the left redefined? The longstanding definition of vaccine changed during the COVID pandemic. The CDC made this change from: “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.”

Why? Because the vaccines did not provide immunity to COVID, as evidenced by quadruple vaccinated President Biden recently diagnosed with COVID, recovering and then getting COVID again a week later. Or the high number of COVID cases in countries where most of the population has been vaxxed and boosted. When the definition doesn’t fit the facts, change the definition, just like with recession.

‘Woman’ is another word that has never been in dispute, easily defined based on genetics and anatomy. I don’t recall there ever being a question about defining man and woman, ever since the first pages of the Bible describing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Yet now the definition of “woman” is in question. A recent nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, couldn’t define ‘woman.’ Yet she was deemed capable of sitting on the highest court.

Remember two summers ago when American city riots and rampant property destruction were described as “peaceful protests”? Or when an open southern border, through which millions of illegal immigrants pass each year, is called “secure” by the DHS chief charged with securing and enforcing our border?

An ”illegal alien” is now an “undocumented worker.” “They” used to refer to a group of people; now it describes someone whose proclaimed gender is not the traditional male or female. A biological male college swimmer was nominated for NCAA woman of the year. “Pedophile” or “groomer” is now a “minor-attracted person.”

Then there are the epithets. Terms like ‘racist,’ ‘Nazi,’ and ‘white supremacist’ all have definitions.

To Democrats and their media supporters, these terms now apply to anyone who disagrees with them or their progressive ideas or agenda.

Situational definitions are convenient when the fact doesn’t fit one’s preferred narrative. The White House spiel is that the U.S. economy is the “strongest in history” when it painfully obvious to most Americans that it’s quite the opposite. Therefore, inflation becomes “transient” when it’s not, and a recession, as traditionally defined, is simply some type of transition and not really a recession.

Perhaps the left is channeling Ben Kenobi from Star Wars, telling the sand trooper that: “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

While CNN viewers may swallow that hook, line, and sinker, most Americans don’t.

Democrats and the media can attempt to spin the recession as rainbows and unicorns, using pretzel logic and silly talk, but those in the real world, buying groceries and gasoline, paying their daily bills, watching businesses struggle and close, know better.

We define words for a reason, to provide clarity and precision. Unfortunately, the left wants to define everything as it chooses, a state of anarchy where reality is determined by those in charge. How Orwellian.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. 

“…most of the public opposes overturning Roe!”

Collins, Murkowski, two Dems introduce bill that would reinstate Roe rules as federal law

ALLAHPUNDIT Aug 01, 2022 at HotAir:

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

I understand why Democrats would want to introduce this. And I understand why Murkowski would want to join them.

I’m less clear on why Susan Collins would. Unless she really is royally pissed at Brett Kavanaugh for allegedly having misled her about Roe in their private conversations and now feels obliged to try to make amends to the left somehow.

It’s not gonna work, if that’s the play. I have yet to see or hear a Democrat anywhere since Roe was overruled refer to Collins as anything other than a dupe or a liar for supporting Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Even Kamala Harris has shrugged off questions about whether Gorsuch or Kavanaugh should be impeached by saying that she simply didn’t believe them when they spoke encouragingly about stare decisis. The lefty line is that only a sucker or a secret pro-lifer could have thought they were on the level.

So here’s Collins trying to prove she’s not a secret pro-lifer, just a sucker, I guess.

Today, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Reproductive Freedom For All Act. This legislation would enact in federal law the essential holdings of Roe v. Wade and related cases, protecting abortion rights and contraception access. This would undo the damage of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and would enshrine in federal law the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.

“Every American should have autonomy over their own health care decisions, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs has made it imperative for Congress to restore women’s reproductive rights. I’m proud to introduce bipartisan legislation with my colleagues to write into law the protections provided through Roe and Casey as well as affirming access to contraception provided in Griswold and other cases,” said Senator Murkowski. “For five decades, reproductive health care decisions were centered with the individual – we cannot go back in time in limiting personal freedoms for women.”…

“The Supreme Court’s recent abandonment of longstanding precedent erodes the reproductive rights on which women have relied for half a century. These basic rights need to be the same for American women regardless of the state in which they reside. Our bill would restore the right to obtain an abortion by enacting in federal law Roe v. Wade and other seminal Supreme Court decisions pertaining to reproductive freedom. In addition, our bill would protect access to contraception,” said Senator Collins. “By reinstating—neither expanding nor restricting—the longstanding legal framework for reproductive rights in this country, our bill would preserve abortion access along with basic conscience protections that are relied upon by health care providers who have religious objections.”

The so-called Reproductive Freedom For All Act differs in some ways from the Women’s Health Protection Act, which passed the House a few weeks ago. Notably, it upholds conscience protections for medical personnel who don’t want to participate in abortions; the WHPA would weaken those protections, which is why Collins wouldn’t support it. The guts of the bill, which will take you less than two minutes to read, would reinstate the federal status quo that was stripped away by the Dobbs ruling by barring states from placing any “undue burden” (defined vaguely as “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman”) on the right to have an abortion before a fetus is viable. “Undue burden” comes from the Supreme Court’s now-overruled Casey decision and the viability standard comes from Roe. Just a return to the law as it stood six weeks ago, then, right?

Well, hold on. The WHPA allows abortion on demand pre-viability and then abortion after viability when “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” Pro-lifers warn that that’s a loophole big enough to drive a tank through, particularly because the WHPA also instructs judges to interpret its provisions “liberally.” If a woman goes to Planned Parenthood in her third trimester and says she’s bummed out that she’s having a baby, is that enough of a “health” concern (depression!) to justify an immediate termination? If it is, then the WHPA does much more than just codify Roe. It creates a de facto rule of abortion on demand throughout all nine months.

So what does the new bill backed by Collins and Murkowski say? Quote:

This one also creates a vague “health” exception that could be abused, although (a) the language about a health problem that’s “medically indicated” presumably would require more than the patient feeling blue to justify a late-term abortion and (b) there’s nothing in the text here that encourages judges to interpret it “liberally.” But if a woman came to her doctor in her third trimester with an official diagnosis of depression from her psychiatrist, would that be enough of a “medical indication” to justify an abortion at that stage? It’s not clear to me from the legislation.

That’s an edge case, admittedly, as nearly all abortions are performed before viability. But it’d be nice if they addressed whether mental health counts as “health.”

Anyway. Democrats want to introduce this bill because they know most of the public opposes overturning Roe and they’re eager to get Senate Republicans on the other side of the issue before the midterms. Murkowski wants to introduce the bill because the kooky ranked-choice voting system in her upcoming Senate race means that Democratic voters in Alaska are hugely important to her reelection bid, and this is an obvious way to pander to them. Collins isn’t up for reelection until 2026, however, and she knows that a floor vote on this bill will be a campaign ad for Democrats, for all intents and purposes. So why is she co-sponsoring it?

Is it really just her way of rebuking Kavanaugh, or is she starting to worry already about how her vote to confirm the man who overturned Roe will play in Maine when she’s up again in 2026? You can never start too early in preparing for your next campaign, I guess. Especially in a state that tends to prefer the other party.

Exit question: Knowing that Joe Manchin is probably on board, how many votes will this legislation get in the Senate? I’d guesstimate a range of somewhere between 52 and 52.