I still argue that the only good thing that happened during the Obama years was all-day breakfast at McDonalds, and COVID took that away from us. Which is when I started saying that COVID won’t be truly over until we get all-day breakfast at McDonalds back again. And it looks like that isn’t going to happen.
One reason might be that consumers can’t afford it:
Part of a general pattern of understating the real inflation Americans face every day:
P.S. For comparison purposes:
President Biden publicly acknowledged his betrayal of Israel’s anticipated offensive in Rafah in an interview with Erin Burnett on CNN. The CNN story on the interview is here. As a practical matter, Biden supports Hamas. Biden opposes Israel. Biden’s declaration of “ironclad” support for Israel is “inoperative,” to borrow a term from Watergate.
On Tuesday Biden gave a Holocaust remembrance speech decrying those calling for “the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.” Biden asserted that his support for the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree.” In Biden’s world, the usual principles of rational thought do not obtain. Who says A need not say B. Who says A also says not A.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said in reference to the 2,000-pound bombs that Biden is withholding from the IDF. Biden also told Burnett that he’s withholding artillery ammunition.
Biden labored to articulate his thinking, or his “thinking.” This is how he put it on CNN: “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,”
Biden has proved himself a fool many times over. It has long since become redundant. This episode merely puts an exclamation point on it. Every friend of the United States must weigh the price of friendship, Biden style. Every enemy of the United States is experiencing the kind of pleasure that is usually limited to private experience.
The IDF has sustained casualties as a result of its extraordinary efforts to avoid and minimize civilian casualties. It has also lost soldiers in its efforts to appease Biden’s demands. This week it lost four soldiers at the Kerem Shalom border crossing for humanitarian aid.
John Spencer is chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He has demonstrated many times over that Israel has created a new standard for urban warfare. Spencer wrote the linked March Newsweek column anticipating Biden’s current “thinking”:
In their criticism, Israel’s opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The international community, and increasingly the United States, barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF for not doing enough to protect civilians—even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage. Instead, the U.S. and its allies should be studying how they can apply the IDF’s tactics for protecting civilians, despite the fact that these militaries would almost certainly be extremely reluctant to employ these techniques because of how it would disadvantage them in any fight with an urban terrorist army like Hamas.
Spencer expanded on his observations, most recently, in a podcast with Sam Harris this week that is posted here on YouTube.
It is a fool’s errand to apply standards of reality and rationality to Biden. Clownworld is his domain. We’re just living in it (as Senator Graham demonstrated yesterday).
Israel has not been abandoned by America. It has been abandoned and betrayed by the Biden administration.
Sen. Lindsay Graham's questioning of Def. Secretary Lloyd Austin should be heard by the American people so they can see what is being done to the Jews in their name. pic.twitter.com/E5QnUxdJo1— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) May 8, 2024
I wrote about my friend Scott Sansby last year in “My friend Scottie.” We have been friends since my family moved from Moorhead to St. Paul in 1958. In other words, we have been friends since the Eisenhower administration.
Scottie has an incredibly wide network of friends and admirers, but we stayed best friends through high school and have remained friends ever since. I share so many memories with Scottie I feel like they fill half my brain.
This past August he suffered a catastrophic injury and has sustained related financial burdens since then. Scottie’s family has set up a GoFundMe page for him here.
Mike Shaw owns Shaw’s Bar and Grill in northeast Minneapolis. Mike stepped forth to arrange a two-day benefit for Scottie this Saturday and Sunday. Bands will be playing inside and outside Shaw’s through the afternoon and evening on both days. The poster below provides a handy summary of the lineup and times.
A gentleman named Neal Bond created a video tribute to Scottie in support of the benefit. Neal’s video comes with this summary and appeal:
Scott Sansby is a legendary musician and entrepreneur in Minnesota. He has played drums with many influential bands and artists since the early 1970s. These include Zarathustra, Passage, The Doug Maynard Band, Joe Juliano, Mick Sterling, Scottie Miller, Paul Mayasich, Walking Wounded, Jeff Dayton, Moses Oakland, and the Lisa Wenger Band. He has truly been one of the building blocks of the Minnesota music scene.
Scott also toured and recorded with national acts like Leon Russell, D.J Rogers and Mary McCreary. His impeccable drumming, professional approach, and personable style put him on the short list of anyone looking for a great drummer or percussionist. People loved watching Scott play. You could feel the passion in his playing, and nothing fulfilled him more than helping pack a dance floor.
Please help Scott in his journey of recovery! Scott is in desperate need for funding so that he can get the help he needs to recover. His injury has an uncertain prognosis and he needs specialized care. Help us raise money to help him cover his healthcare costs and hopefully recover more movement in his limbs.
We are looking for donations for the silent auction for the May 11-12 fundraiser. You can either drop off items at Shaw’s Bar & Grill or contact us about picking up. 100% of the money we raise through donations will go to addressing his healthcare costs.
Help us help someone who has brought joy to people through over five decades of music.
Check out Neal’s video below and join us this weekend if you can.
Back in 1965, Barry McGuire told fans to “look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you boy.” That is good advice in 2024, and other old songs may provide the same service. For example, as the Buffalo Springfield noticed back in 1967, “there’s something happening here,” and if you stepped out of line “the man” would come and take you away. So “stop, children what’s that sound, everybody look what’s goin’ down.” The parallels should be obvious and Jimi Hendrix was on to it.
“Will I live tomorrow?” Jimi wondered, “well I just can’t say. But I know for sure, I don’t live today.” It’s easy to feel that way if you stop and look around at what’s going down, with neo-Nazi leftists in the street, Iran working three shifts to build a nuclear weapon, 10 million more illegals in the country, and the Delaware Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. As Mose Allison said, his mind is on vacation and his mouth is working overtime. Mose also noted that the world was “one big trouble spot,” and “there’s always somebody playing with dynamite.” Even so, Mose didn’t worry about a thing, because he knew “nothing’s going to be alright.”
“The time has come today,” sang the Chambers Brothers, and “there are things to realize.” As Steve notes, things are bound to get worse before they get worse. So while there’s still time, “go where you wanna go, do what you wanna do.” In other words, plead the Fifth Dimension. It’s the American way.
Well yes, of course. But at the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman highlights an interview with the Times’s current executive editor, Joseph Kahn. Hope springs eternal, I guess:
Regular news consumers may recall Ben Smith as the Buzzfeed editor who helped define post-journalistic coverage of the Trump presidency by publishing the bogus Steele dossier in 2017 while admitting he didn’t know whether it was true or false. Naturally Mr. Smith was later hired by the New York Times. But he then wrote about “weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism.” By 2020 Mr. Smith seemed to appreciate—at least conceptually—the value of confirming the accuracy of a story before publication.
Now at Semafor, Mr. Smith goes back to the New York Times to interview the newspaper’s executive editor, Joseph Kahn, and finds some encouraging news for Times readers who thirst for straight reporting.
I guess that depends on what you call straight reporting. Kahn says:
It’s also true that Trump could win this election in a popular vote… It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening… I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House. We become an instrument of the Biden campaign? We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff that’s very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side? And that would accomplish — what?
It would help the Democratic Party stay in power, which is all the Times has ever cared about. But is the paper really seeing a new dawn of objectivity?
Ben: Do you think that an alien reading The New York Times would come away thinking Joe Biden is a good president?
Ah, the rubber meets the road!
Joe: I think you would see a much more favorable view of Biden’s conduct over foreign policy at a difficult time than the polling shows the general public believes.
Then follows a paean to Biden’s foreign policy record that concludes that, in the Times’s coverage, Biden…
…shows a degree of engagement and mastery over some of the details of foreign policy. … I think you’d get a very favorable portrait of him.
Actually, the best you can say for Joe Biden on foreign policy is that he has been president for two and a half years, and World War III hasn’t broken out yet. Not that the Times would blame him if it did.
On to domestic policy:
I also think we’ve done much more — whether it’s the Inflation Reduction Act…
No acknowledgement that the Inflation Reduction Act caused massive inflation, making all Americans poorer.
…whether it’s the infrastructure bill — on the details of the legislation that passed, and the efforts of this administration to actually implement that and get the money out there.
Getting money “out there,” whether we have the money or not, is of course what Democrats do best.
So I think you’d get a pretty well-rounded, fair portrait of Biden. Of course, you’d also see some coverage about his frailty and his age. But it depends. Is this alien a voracious reader who comes every day? If he did, he’s not going to see that much about [Biden’s] age.
Let’s not make people nervous about the fact that our president is senile! The Times may profess to have given up “resistance journalism,” but we can’t expect them to be right-wing extremists. And if Trump wins in November, the resistance will be back.
The Financial Times headlines: “The violent gang crisis shaking Sweden.” Spoiler alert: it all has to do with immigration.
Sweden has suffered an extraordinary spate of violence in recent months, particularly in Uppsala and its neighbour to the south, capital Stockholm. At its worst in September and October, barely a day went by without a shooting, bombing or hand grenade attack — sometimes several.
The Nordic country has gone from having one of the lowest levels of fatal shootings in Europe to one of the highest in just a decade. …
In a televised addressed at the end of September, Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, offered his diagnosis for the unprecedented violence, directly blaming “irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration”.
“I cannot over-emphasise the seriousness of the situation,” added the leader of the centre-right Moderate party. “Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like it.”
The issue has shaken the full strata of society in the Nordic country. “This is a social earthquake in Sweden,” says Jesper Brodin, chief executive of furniture giant Ikea’s retail arm and one of the country’s most high-profile business leaders.
“If this continues for the next two decades, Sweden is lost. It’s tearing us apart,” says Richard Jomshof, head of the Swedish parliament’s justice committee and an MP from far-right Sweden Democrats.
As always, “far right” means “not crazy about mass immigration from third-world countries.” So most people are, in fact, “far right,” and the Sweden Democrats are now one of Sweden’s largest parties.
Sweden currently has a rate of homicide committed with a firearm that is nearly twice that of any other EU country. That is a brand-new phenomenon, attributable entirely to Sweden’s welcoming attitude toward “refugees,” of which it has imported two million. The Financial Times article quotes Swedes who attribute the problem to a lack of assimilation of immigrants:
[T]he nearest thing to agreement across the political spectrum is that Sweden itself has not done enough to integrate its immigrant communities.
Almost all Swedish cities have at least one so-called vulnerable area, where immigrants often make up a majority of the population. Crime rates there tend to be high and schools struggle to keep students or maintain discipline.
“I don’t want to say migration is what went wrong; I would rather say integration [went wrong],” says Jens Lapidus, a criminal defence lawyer turned crime author…
That is almost a tautology. But hasn’t it become obvious that some groups of people are easier to assimilate than others? And wouldn’t a sane immigration policy, such as the U.S. formerly had, prioritize immigration from countries that are culturally compatible? The answer obviously is Yes, and yet posing the question, let alone answering it, is anathema on the American Left, as on the Swedish Left. But at least in Sweden, they are having an intelligent debate.
• Biden suffers another defeat at the hands of his Teleprompter:
BIDEN's teleprompter troubles continue 🤦🏽♂️
"My theology professor at the Catholic school I went to was a guy named Riley [LAST NAME]…" pic.twitter.com/YkdwO44AVN
— Raj Aryal (@rajaryal07) May 8, 2024
• Meanwhile, talk about letting the (Hamas) mask slip:
Student at @FIU complains that “Anti-Jewish” protesters aren’t protected on campus.
Note that she expressly said “Anti-Jewish” while reading her speech OFF A PIECE OF PAPER.
When they tell you who they are, BELIEVE THEM. #AntizionismIsAntisemitism
🎥 @IsraelWarRoom pic.twitter.com/Lu2DjQsWCG
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) May 8, 2024
• I have identified my new academic hero. From Jennifer Burns’ new biography of Milton Friedman (review from me forthcoming):
“[Prof. Harry] Johnson was a prodigious drinker. It was said he boarded a transatlantic flight with an unopened bottle of duty-free scotch, emerging at the end with a new academic paper and an empty bottle.”
• So I guess Star Trek II was a documentary of sorts? In any case this story may explain a lot:
RFK Jr says a worm ate part of his brain and then died inside his head
Anti-vaccine activist turned independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has revealed that a worm ate part of his brain and then died inside his head.
According to The New York Times, Mr Kennedy made the bizarre admission during a deposition held as part of his 2012 divorce proceeding.
He reportedly said he’d begun to experience “cognitive problems” and both short and long-term memory loss in 2010, not long after his uncle, the late Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy, died from the effects of brain cancer.
The Times said the record of his 2012 deposition showed Mr Kennedy had initially feared he, too, had a brain tumour.
But he received a second opinion from a doctor in New York who told him the cause of his problems — and a dark spot on his brain scans — was a dead parasite.
Mr Kennedy testified that the doctor had told him that the dark spot on the scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.
Leave it to the Babylon Bee to get the right spin on this story:
