Camilla, Out In These Streets, Standing On Bidnis....,

 

What Has She Accomplished As Vice President?

It Wouldn't Have Taken Much To Show Humanity...,

theblaze  |  On Wednesday, Trump sat for questions at a National Association of Black Journalists panel in Washington. The appearance began with immediate contention: Scott didn't say "hello" to Trump but immediately began to grill him with questions implying that he is racist. 

In true Trump form, the former president condemned Scott for her "nasty" question.

Reflecting on the event during a "Fox & Friends" interview, Faulkner — who was one of three black journalists to question Trump at the NABJ event — expressed dismay over how Trump was treated.

Not only did audio and technical problems snare the event — issues Faulkner attributed to the NABJ and ABC News — but Faulkner blasted Scott, though without naming her, for stirring up emotion through "gotcha moments" that grabbed headlines. She mourned the fact that emotionally charged moments grabbed headlines instead of the fact that Trump, according to Faulkner, willingly walked "into a racial storm."

But that's not the only problem with the event, Faulkner went on to say.

Like Trump, Faulkner took significant issue with the fact that Trump was not given a proper welcome.

"He walks out on stage and not a greeting to acknowledge it's been 18 days at that point since you survived an assassination attempt. 'We're going to ask you tough questions, but Mr. President, welcome, and we are glad you're still here,'" she said.

"I mean, it didn't take much to show humanity, and in that moment, I was so disappointed that that didn't happen," she added. "I couldn't control it, but it got things off to an emotional start, and you and I both know that once that happens and you are interviewing someone, there is an agenda."

At the end of her reflection, Faulkner made a prediction about the 2024 election: The only color that will matter is green.

"I don't know that people are going to vote on the color of their skin and the hair texture this time around," she predicted. "This is about money, the color is green."

 

Rep. Jasmine Crockett Cosponsored Bill to Revoke Trump Secret Service Protection

TheTexan  | Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30), a freshman from Dallas, signed onto a resolution back in April that would have stripped Secret Service protection from Donald Trump had he been sentenced to prison — a proposal now gaining attention following the July 13 assassination attempt against the former president.

House Resolution 8081 by Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS-02) would have changed the law centered on “Denying Certain Felons Secret Service Protection.”

“The protection authorized…shall terminate for any person upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year,” the text reads.

Thompson and Crockett were joined by Reps. Troy Carter (D-LA-02), Barbara Lee (D-CA-12), Frederica Wilson (D-FL-24), Yvette Clarke (D-NY-09), Bonnie Coleman (D-NJ-12), Joyce Beatty (D-OH-03), and Steve Cohen (D-TN-09).

“Unfortunately, current law doesn’t anticipate how Secret Service protection would impact the felony prison sentence of a protectee — even a former President,” Thompson said when the resolution was filed.

“It is regrettable that it has come to this, but this previously unthought-of scenario could become our reality. Therefore, it is necessary for us to be prepared and update the law so the American people can be assured that protective status does not translate into special treatment — and that those who are sentenced to prison will indeed serve the time required of them.”

The bill’s fact sheet says specifically, “This measure would apply to former President Trump. It also would apply to all Secret Service protectees convicted and sentenced under felony charges.”

Trump was convicted in May on 34 felony counts in the New York “hush money” trial; he has not yet been sentenced to any prison time or any other punishment stemming from those convictions.

The resolution fell under the spotlight over the weekend when a gunman took multiple shots at Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally, one of which struck the former president in his ear and another which killed an attendee and injured two others. The assassination attempt failed in taking out Trump but could secure his election this November.

The betting odds of a Trump election jumped to 71 percent following the assassination attempt and his chances in swing states also jumped.

In its aftermath, Republicans in the Texas Legislature started circulating a joint letter calling for Crockett to resign from Congress.

The Wages Of Presidementia

 

Negroes Getting In Trouble F'ing Around With Brandon...,

WaPo  | The head of a Philadelphia radio station said Sunday it has parted ways with a host who acknowledged that she interviewed President Biden with questions submitted by his campaign, going against the station’s practice and those of most news outlets.

“On July 3, the first post-debate interview with President Joe Biden was arranged and negotiated independently by WURD radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders without knowledge, consultation or collaboration with WURD management,” Sara M. Lomax, president and CEO of WURD Radio said in a statement.

“The interview featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners. As a result, Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately.”

Lomax described the station as Philadelphia’s only independently owned Black talk radio station. She said such a move violated the trust the station has developed with its audience over the last two decades, and “is not a practice that WURD Radio engages in or endorses as a matter of practice or official policy.”

She added: “WURD Radio is not a mouthpiece for the Biden or any other Administration,” and that “we will commit to reviewing our policies, procedures, and practices to reinforce WURD’s independence and trust with our listeners. But mainstream media should do its own introspection to explore how they have lost the trust of so many Americans, Black Americans chief among them.”

In a one-minute video posted on Facebook on Sunday, Lawful-Sanders said, “effective immediately I am no longer an on-air host at WURD. I tendered my resignation yesterday. It was accepted.”

She then thanked “all of you who played a part in this journey, including WURD Radio.” She went on to say that she is “grateful,” and that “Life is moving. Things are shifting and changing. And, in a day or so you’ll hear more.”

Lawful-Sanders’s interview was one of two Biden recorded last week after his June 27 debate against the 78-year-old presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. In it, Biden, 81 appeared at times tired, confused and incoherent, touching off calls from a growing number of Democrats to question whether he should continue running.

After the debate, the White House press secretary announced that Biden had recorded two radio interviews, one with Lawful-Sanders on WURD and the other with Earl Ingram, whose show is broadcast across Wisconsin.

On Saturday, Lawful-Sanders and Ingram appeared on CNN, where a host said both interviews with Biden featured very similar questions. “Were those questions given to you by the White House, or the campaign, or did you have to submit questions ahead of this interview?” CNN host Victor Blackwell asked Lawful-Sanders.

“The questions were sent to me for approval. I approved of them,” she said. Ingram was not asked about his questions during an appearance on CNN, but later told ABC News: “Yes, I was given some questions for Biden.” Ingram said he was given five questions and asked Biden four of them, according to the outlet. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him all the things I wanted to ask,” he said.

Later on Saturday, Lawful-Sanders sent a statement defending her interview and how questions were negotiated in advance.

You Can't Make A Competent Silk Purse Out Of A Senile Sow's Ear

CTH  |  The wheels on the bus go thump, thump, thump…. just ask the three debate officials who are now being blamed for the disastrous performance by Joe Biden in Atlanta last week.

According to several sources who have talked to Politico, the Biden family are naming top Biden advisor Anita Dunn, her CIA husband Bob Bauer and top advisor Ron Klain for horrible debate preparation.  The three senior staff advisors have been a part of the Biden/Obama orbit for many years.  Jill Biden and the rest of the family are pointing the finger directly at them.

WASHINGTON DC – Members of Joe Biden’s family privately trashed his top campaign advisers at Camp David this weekend, blaming them for the president’s flop in Thursday’s debate and urging Biden to fire or demote people in his political high command.

There is no immediate expectation that Biden will follow through on that advice, according to three people briefed on the family conversations but not directly involved. The three people were granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

The blame was cast widely on staffers, including: Anita Dunn, the senior adviser who frequently has the president’s ear; her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in rehearsals at Camp David; and Ron Klain, the former chief of staff who ran point on the debate prep and previous cycles’ sessions.

“The aides who prepped the President have been with him for years, often decades, seeing him through victories and challenges. He maintains strong confidence in them,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

 

Little Buckwheat Is Gonna Outlast Anita Dunn

NYPost  |  Top aides to President Biden secretly hatched a plan this past fall to replace White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre by recruiting outside allies to nudge her out the door, The Post has learned.

Jean-Pierre, who made history in May 2022 by becoming the first black and first openly gay person to hold the position, had developed the exasperating habit of reading canned answers directly from a binder to reporters at her regular briefings — offering what her superiors viewed as a less-than-compelling pitch for the 81-year-old Biden as he readied his re-election campaign.

De facto White House communications chief Anita Dunn, 66, the wife of Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer, told colleagues she had decided to call in prominent Democrats to explain to Jean-Pierre, 49, that the time was ripe to move on, sources told The Post.

SCAPEGOATS - HEADS MAY ROLL AT THE WHITE HOUSE: Anita Dunn, who is currently serving as a Senior Advisor to President Biden and plays a crucial role in the administration's strategy and messaging, is being fiercely blasted by Biden's inner circle over the debate disaster. In case… pic.twitter.com/QXb0SYRTyR

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) June 30, 2024

“There were a number of people she asked to engage Karine,” said one source who heard of the strategy directly from Dunn, whose role as senior adviser has been filled during the past three presidencies by Jared Kushner (Donald Trump), Valerie Jarrett (Barack Obama) and Karl Rove (George W. Bush).

While Jean-Pierre isn’t going anywhere, the issues that brought about Dunn’s failed machinations remain — with both sources saying the press secretary is too reliant on notes to provide the pushback and quick-thinking repartee needed to effectively champion Biden’s cause.

“Karine doesn’t have an understanding of the issues and she reads the book [binder] word-for-word,” said the second source, adding that the situation is made worse by the fact that “she thinks she’s doing an amazing job.”

“She doesn’t have a grasp of the issues and doesn’t spend the time to learn,” this person said.

“These issues are not second nature to people. Israel and Gaza is a perfect example. It’s very nuanced. Jen would have calls with people to feel well-versed enough to go to the briefing.”

“There’s an enormous amount of work that goes into getting ready,” the first source said, “and consistently she does not put in that level of work.”

In response, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told The Post: “Not only are these claims wildly false, but the reality is the polar opposite. Karine was never approached by anyone with such a message. She spends four hours preparing every day. And neither Jeff nor Anita did any such thing; both have been unflinchingly supportive of her.”

Bates added Friday morning: “Every press secretary uses the binder. Why is she being singled out?”

 

Honestly Not Sure How A Turd Like This Calls Itself A Scholar.....,

chronicle  |  It is not surprising for a boss to think that employees should avoid saying things in public that might damage the organization for which they both work. It is not even surprising for the boss to understand “damage” to include making the boss’s own life more difficult.

But college faculty members have fought very hard, for a very long time, to be protected from such attitudes. They have established that, unlike employees at most organizations, they have the right to publicly criticize their employer and their administration. So it is notable when an especially prominent administrator publicly announces that faculty speech rights should be rolled back a century or so. That is what Lawrence D. Bobo, dean of social science and a professor of social sciences at Harvard University, did last week in an opinion essay published in The Harvard Crimson with the ominous title, “Faculty Speech Must Have Limits.”

Members of the faculty, Bobo argued, have the right to debate “key policy matters” in “internal discussion,” but they should be careful that their dissent not reach outside ears:

A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs. Along with freedom of expression and the protection of tenure comes a responsibility to exercise good professional judgment and to refrain from conscious action that would seriously harm the university and its independence.

Such public criticisms, Bobo says, “cross a line into sanctionable violations of professional conduct.” If a group of faculty members, for example, decides that a dean’s policies are inimical to their institution’s core mission, and if they take their criticism to the press, then — according to Bobo — they should be properly disciplined.

Bobo’s views were conventional wisdom among university officials and trustees in 1900. They are shocking in 2024. Shocking, but unfortunately no longer surprising. The Harvard dean’s arguments resonate with a growing movement of those who wish to muzzle the faculty. Professors are to be free to speak, so long as they do not say anything that might disturb the powers that be. Those in power may not want the faculty to march to the same tune, but they do all like giving the faculty their marching orders and expecting them not to step out of line.

The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued jointly by the American Association of University Professors and what was then called the Association of American Colleges, established the now widely adopted rules regarding faculty speech. It specifies that when professors “speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.” The statement does suggest that professors have some “special obligations” when speaking in public, though the AAUP has long urged that those be treated as suggestive rather than obligatory. Even so, the statement merely urged professors to “be accurate” and “exercise appropriate restraint.” They “should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances,” and thus they should avoid embarrassing themselves in public by being rude or ignorant. But there was no suggestion that they should avoid airing the university’s dirty laundry.

Harvard’s own free-expression policy, first adopted in the Vietnam era, is if anything even more emphatic about the need for officials to tolerate dissent and critique. It notes that “reasoned dissent plays a particularly vital part” in the university’s existence and that all members of the university community have the right to “advocate and publicize opinion by print, sign, and voice.” Dissenters are not to obstruct “the essential processes of the university” or interfere “with the ability of members of the university to perform their normal activities,” but they are free to “press for action” and “constructive change” by organizing, advocating, and persuading. Bobo’s ideas about where the limits of faculty speech are to be found are plainly at odds with both AAUP principles and common university policies, not to mention First Amendment principles that would bind officials at state universities.

The AAUP’s 1915 Declaration of Principles provided the rationale for such protections of faculty dissent. “With respect to certain external conditions of his vocation,” a professor “accepts a responsibility to the authorities of the institution in which he serves,” but “in the essentials of his professional activity his duty is to the wider public to which the institution itself is morally amenable.” The “university is a great and indispensable organ of the higher life of a civilized community,” and the members of the faculty “hold an independent place, with quite equal responsibilities” for caring for and preserving those institutions. For those purposes, the “professorial office” was not that of an employee doing the bidding of a boss but that of a scholar answering to a public trust. The faculty’s ultimate duty is not to the college as such but to the larger public that even private universities, as charitable institutions, serve.

Weak People Are Open, Empty, and Easily Occupied By Evil...,

Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...What vessel do they choose? The… pic.twitter.com/ugF3bMgxcx

— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 21, 2024

Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...

Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...

What vessel do they choose? The weak. It's weak men and women who are instruments of evil. The weaker the leader, the more evil that leader will be...

Unfortunately we reached the time in American history where every leader is either a woman or a weak man pretty much...Mike Johnson...but he's a weak man and that's the man you should be afraid of....

Weak people just become a host for evil, an empty building that evil occupies, possesses even. And that's exactly what's happening to Mike Johnson. That's absolutely crazy what Mike Johnson is doing, but not because he's evil, it's because he's weak and therefore susceptible to evil..."

CIA Showed The House Speaker Its Pictures Of His Little Johnson.....,

davidstockman  |  What Johnson’s impending Waterloo means, therefore, is not merely the prospect of another wild and wooly succession battle, but actually that there is no point at all in the preservation of a Republican majority and GOP House Speaker. After all, the Washington GOP has become so infected with neocon warmongers and careerist pols who spend a lifetime basking in the imperial projects and pretensions of the world’s War Capital that apparently the best the House GOP caucus could do when it ejected the previous careerist deep stater from the Speaker’s chair was to tap the dim-witted nincompoop who currently occupies it.

The Republican party is thus truly beyond redemption. As JFK once said about the CIA, its needs to be splintered into a thousand pieces and swept into the dustbin of history.

Indeed, when you look at the calamitous fiscal trajectory embedded in the CBO’s latest 30-year fiscal outlook, you truly have to wonder about what miniature minds like Congressman Johnson’s are actually thinking. That is to say, the latest CBO report published in March presumes that there will never be another recession and no inflation flare-up, interest rate spike, global energy dislocation, prolonged Forever War or any other imaginable crisis ever again—just smooth economic sailing for the next 30 years.

And yet, and then. Even by the math of this Rosy Scenario on steroids the public debt will reach $140 trillion at minimum by 2054. In turn, that would cause interest payments on the public debt with rates no higher than those which prevailed between 1986 and 1997 to reach $10 trillion per year.

You simply don’t need paragraphs, pages and whole monographs worth of analysis and amplification to understand where that is going. The nation’s fisc is now on the cusp of descending into the maws of a doomsday machine. So how in the world do these elements of Johnson’s offering make even the remotest sense?

Speaker Johnson's Foreign Aid Boondoggle:

• Indo-Pacific aid: $8.1 billion.
• Israel: $26.4 billion.
• Ukraine: $60.8 billion.
• Total: $95.3 billion.

Apparently, it’s because Johnson and a good share of the Washington GOP have succumbed wholesale to neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow excuses for warmongering. For crying out loud, Putin has no interest in molesting the Poles, to say nothing of storming the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. He is certainly no Ghandi, but well more than smart enough to recognize that with Russia’s GDP of $2.2 trillion and war budget of $80 billion there would be no point in going to war with NATO’s $45 trillion of GDP and combined war budgets in excess of $1.2 trillion.

Likewise, China’s $50 trillion debt-ridden Ponzi would collapse in months if its $3.5 trillion flow of export earnings were disrupted after attempting to land its single modern aircraft carrier on the California coast. And Iran has no nukes, no intercontinental range missiles and a GDP equal to 130 hours of US annual output.

So, some Axis of evil!

Yet that’s exactly what the Speaker said this morning after going to too many Deep State briefings and apparently having his own johnson yanked once too often. The Swamp creatures surely see the lad’s naivete and blithering ignorance as a gift that doesn’t stop giving. That is to say, a “mark” who knows nothing at all about the world from sources not stamped, “Top Secret (lies)”.

Speaker Mike Johnson: “We’re going to stand for freedom and make sure that Putin doesn’t march through Europe… we’re the greatest Nation on the planet, and we have to act like it”,

This is a critical time right now, a critical time on the world stage. I can make a selfish decision and do something that’s different but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do. I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we've gotten.

I believe Xi, Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they’re in coordination on it. “So I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.

To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys. My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is so many American families. This is not a game, this is not a joke.

Needless to say, our dufus Speaker doesn’t know the “Baltics” from the “Balkans” where Serbia and other Russian friendlies are definitely not quaking in their boots about Putin.

In point of fact, however, it is not hard to see that the civil war and territorial dispute between Kiev and Moscow over the Donbas and rim of the Black Sea from Mariupol to Odessa is a one-off of Russian and regional history and Washington’s mindless push of NATO eastward to Russia’s very doorstep.

The light-yellow area of this 1897 map gave an unmistakable message: To wit, in the late Russian Empire there was no doubt as to the paternity of the Donbas and the lands adjacent to the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. Already then, they were part of the 125 years-old New Russia, which had been assembled by purchase and conquest during the reign of Catherine the Great.

Indeed, it was only in 1922 that the yellow area—essentially demarcating the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which recently voted to rejoin Russia—was appended to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by the great humanitarian and map-maker, V. Lenin.

And yet Speaker Johnson now wants to crash the Republican Party on enforcing a map drawn by one of history’s bloodiest monsters. It’s come down to that.

The Show Must Go On....,

antiwar  |  President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.

US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.

“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.

In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.

Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.

But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.

While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.

Iran Breached And Spec'd The Complete Iron Dome While Hitting Its Targets With Hypersonic Missiles

simplicius  |  Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.

Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km.

Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, which peeled back another layer of sophistication that included such things as possible endoatmospheric interception attempts with Israeli Arrow-3 ABM missiles.

But let’s step back for a moment to state that Iran’s operation in general was modeled after the sophisticated paradigm set by Russia in Ukraine: it began with the launch of various types of drones, which included some Shahed-136s (Geran-2 in Russia) as well as others. We can see that from the Israeli-released footage of some of the drone interceptions:

Fake It Till You Make It Incompetents Need To Return The Oxygen They Stole In Memphis...,

tri-statedefender  |   Sharing their experiences with crime reduction, The Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime wrapped up a two-day conference at the Hyatt Centric Beale Street Memphis on Thursday, March 28.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young hosted Black leaders from 18 U.S. cities during the meeting that began Wednesday, March 27. 

“People want the short-term solution. They want to figure out how we are going to stop crime today. And then, we want to figure out how to stop crime in the future. In order to do that, there has to be an intense dialogue,” said Young.

In addition to Washington D.C., they came from several states with large African-American populations, like Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and California. 

“We have a lot of violence around convenience stores and gas stations,” Mayor Tishaura Jones told Action News 5 after the conference. “So how can we hold those business owners accountable and also bring down crime? (We’re also finding that ) some of the things that we’re already doing, we’re finding that other mayors are doing as well.”

Strategies were front and center in the discussion. They included Operation GOOD in Jackson, Miss. and Operation Scarlett in Charlotte, N.C. According to proponents, both have paid dividends in their respective communities.

Operation GOOD is a nonprofit with ambitious goals to curb recidivism, reduce violence and tackling blight, for example. Operation Scarlett is an ongoing anti-luxury car theft operation that was expanded to 11 states and 152 law enforcement agencies. So far, 132 vehicles have been retrieved.

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis also appeared at the event.

Russ Wiggington, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, moderated the conversation. 

The Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank devoted to criminal justice policy, began the conference with a keynote presentation.

To allow attendants to speak freely, no media were invited to the event. However, Young has suggested future meetings could be open to the public and virtual. It’s a sentiment matched by Mayor Chokwe Lumumba Jr. of Jackson, Miss.

“We’re ensuring amongst ourselves that this will not be the last engagement, but that we will continue to lean in,” Lumumba said at a post-conference press event.

Latest Crime Stats

Although crime rates in Memphis has dropped recently, they are still above pre-pandemic levels.

Overall, the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission statistics reflect a 6.4% drop in fourth quarter of 2023, over 2022’s final period. This includes murder, burglary, robbery, theft, weapons and drug charges. Property crimes fell 10.1% too.

However, violent crime in Memphis bucked the trend. In addition to 398 homicides in 2023 – breaking the 2021 record – the major violent crime rate rose 7.4% in Memphis. Shelby County saw inflated numbers too, with a 6.3% jump over 2022.

To date, there have been over 80 homicides in 2024. Memphis has the highest number of all the cities represented during he meetings. Most have seen a decrease.

The Black Mayors Coalition on Crime is the latest in a series of conversations Young has recently held to address crime early in his first term.

Who Finally Grew A Pair And Fired This Evil Fat Failtard?!?!

MoA  |  A big fat rat is leaving the ship.

One might interpret this as the State Department's admittance of defeat in the U.S. war against Russia in Ukraine:

On the Retirement of Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland - Anthony Blinken / State Department, Mar 5 2024

Victoria Nuland has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – a role in which she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy and revitalize America’s global leadership at a crucial time for our nation and the world.
...
[I]t’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come. Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.
...
President Biden and I have asked our Under Secretary for Management John Bass to serve as Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs until Toria’s replacement is confirmed.

Victoria Nuland, a member of the neo-conservative Kagan clan, is only 62 years old - too young to retire regularly.

She will be remembered for handing out cookies to anti-government demonstrators in Ukraine and for installing the 2014 coup regime.

That has been her main project in the State Department. But the 2014 Maidan putsch that turn the Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia, has ended in a complete failure.

bigger

Neither was Russia 'weakened' by the war nor has Ukraine any perspective to survive but as some Russian controlled land-locked backwater country in Europe's east.

Given that billions were spent on Ukraine with little controls and nothing to show for Nuland, and her family, have certainly made a bit on the side. One wonders if any of the ongoing and coming investigations into the black hole Ukraine will leave them unscarred.

As even Guardian commentators are now waking up to the mess they helped create it is high time for European politicians to also finally accept this reality:

Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine.

As for the west’s “soft power” sanctions on Russia, they have failed miserably, disrupting the global trading economy in the process. Sanctions may be beloved of western diplomats and thinktanks. They may even hurt someone – not least Britain’s energy users – but they have not devastated the Russian economy or changed Putin’s mind. This year Russia’s growth rate is expected to exceed Britain’s.

The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.

FUH WRONG WITH YOU! DORITOS?!?!?!

dailymail  | Doritos is being slammed as the new Bud Light after hiring a trans influencer as a 'brand ambassador' despite the activist appearing to promote child sexual abuse in the past.

Spanish native Samantha Hudson - whose real name is Iván González Ranedo - is a singer and activist with over 30,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her partnership with Doritos Spain, run by PepsiCo Spain, was recently announced. 

Hudson, 24, has identified herself as 'anti-capitalist' and 'Marxist' in interviews, released a song critical of the Catholic Church and even said in one video that she is for 'the abolition of [and to] destroy and annihilate the traditional monogamous nuclear family.' 

As a teen, she has also tweeted about wanting to do 'thuggish things' to a minor. 

The partnership between Hudson and Doritos was quickly blasted online and many made reference to Bud Light's disastrous partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney - which saw Budweiser lose $1.4 billion in sales as a result. 

The Daily Caller posted a screenshot of a tweet she allegedly made in 2015, when Hudson was 15, writing in Spanish about the seeming assault of a minor. 

Another alleged post translates to: 'In the middle of the street in Mallorca in panties and screaming that I’m a nymphomaniac in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.'

According to Newsweek, she has also been accused of mocking sexual assault victims, though Hudson herself has claimed she was sexually abused as a teenager in a 2023 interview. 

Hudson's new partnership with Doritos was announced through a 50-second video called 'Crunch Talks.' 

Social media users were quick to point out similarities to the Bud Light campaign and its impact.  

'Doritos is about to get the Bud Light treatment,' wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter. 

Another wrote: 'Just make flavored tortilla chips. You don't need to have a stance on anything other than that. It's not tricky.' 

'Why are brands like Doritos being so self-destructive? Have they learned nothing from the Budweiser snafu? Let me guess, their advertising division is headed by a DEI hire?' 

DailyMail.com has reached out to PepsiCo and Frito Lay for comment.

Lil' Buckwheat's Capacity To Lie On The Fly No Longer Up To Cornpop Standards....,

dailycaller  |  Karine Jean-Pierre has turned over her spotlight to Admiral John Kirby in an “unprecedented” way as the White House barrels toward a pivotal election season, a Daily Caller review of briefing data reveals.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Kirby has been a mainstay at briefings alongside Jean-Pierre to answer reporters’ questions about the foreign conflict. Though Americans have indicated the war is not their top concern, Kirby has remained at the briefings — only missing three since the start of the year through Oct. 7. Of the briefings he has attended in 2024, 19 out of the 22 total held, Kirby has fielded questions for almost the exact same amount of time as Jean-Pierre.

As of Feb. 27, Jean-Pierre has spent about 11 hours and 31 minutes at the White House press briefing podium this year across 22 briefings. Kirby has answered questions for just under nine hours and two minutes in 19 briefings. In those 19 briefings when Kirby and Jean-Pierre were together, the press secretary spoke for just shy of nine hours and 11 minutes — almost a perfect fifty-fifty split with her counterpart.

“There is no precedent for this. Press secretaries always bring guests, right. It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have the OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] guys brief you on the budget and talk to you about that.’ That’s normal,” Sean Spicer, one-time press secretary for former President Donald Trump, told the Daily Caller. “That’s as old as the job. But this idea that you have a co-press secretary is unprecedented.”

Some other names have made appearances at briefings and gaggles, either alongside Jean-Pierre or Kirby: deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations Ian Sams and a few other policy-specific officials from the administration.

But none have appeared nearly as often as Kirby, who Jean-Pierre was reportedly concerned might usurp her as press secretary when she first got the job. Biden “awkwardly” added that Kirby would be joining Jean-Pierre’s team when the president gave her the press secretary position in 2022, leaving her “upset and confused,” according to Axios.

Jean-Pierre’s appointment was lauded as historic and powerful when she got the job — she’s the first black press secretary, and is also a lesbian woman of immigrant parents. From the beginning, things have reportedly been rocky, though — Biden also allegedly said that Jean-Pierre didn’t need to worry because she’d “have an admiral looking over your shoulder,” a comment that was not received well by the new press secretary.

Amid the tension between Kirby and Jean-Pierre, the latter’s top deputy, Dalton, is reportedly ditching the White House for a gig at Apple.

That leaves a clear path to the top job for Kirby. He has told some around the White House he’s interested in the position, according to Axios, but other White House officials denied those accounts.

When it comes to gaggles, Kirby has appeared at more as of late, speaking at seven of them between the start of the year and Feb. 16 for a total of more than an hour and seven minutes. The pair has attended four gaggles together, with Jean-Pierre answering questions for more than 41 minutes.

“I don’t think the dynamic is awkward to begin with. I think they did it under the presence, under the guise of national security and foreign affairs. But the reality is, Kirby has really taken over a lot more, for obvious reasons,” Spicer said. “The press secretary should be able to handle all of the issues and it’s pretty obvious that there’s a level of competence that just doesn’t exist.”

 

 

What Happened To Jon Stewart?

twitter  |  In which Jon Stewart tries to convince you crime and urban decay are simply “the price of freedom” and Russia’s clean streets and subways are only possible because of political repression—a total crock, and he knows it. America could easily enjoy those things too, and has in the past.

The idea here is just to use the bogeyman Putin to reconcile Americans to their own social decline by making them reflexively suspicious of high-trust societies, and associate any attempts to stem/reverse the problem (or even draw attention to it) with authoritarianism. “Don’t believe your lying eyes and draw the obvious conclusions—that’s what fascists do!”

No, actually, we don’t have to accept “urinal caked chaotic subways” to protect our liberty. Incredibly stupid and insidious argument by Stewart.

The Pentagon Can't Account For 63% Of Its Assets But Congress Gives Them $886 Billion Just The Same...,

thepressunited  |   The US Department of Defense has failed its sixth annual audit in a row, but taxpayer money will keep going down that drain

Recently, the Pentagon admitted it couldn’t account for trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money, having failed a massive yearly audit for the sixth year running.

The process consisted of the 29 sub-audits of the DoD’s various services, and only seven passed this year – no improvement over the last. These audits only began taking place in 2017, meaning that the Pentagon has never successfully passed one.

This year’s failure made some headlines, was commented upon briefly by the mainstream media, and then just as quickly forgotten by an American society accustomed to pouring money down the black hole of defense spending.

The defense budget of the United States is grotesquely large, its $877 billion dwarfing the $849 billion spent by the next ten nations with the largest defense expenditures. And yet, the Pentagon cannot fully account for the $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities it has accrued at US taxpayer expense, ostensibly in defense of the United States and its allies. As the Biden administration seeks $886 billion for next year’s defense budget (and Congress seems prepared to add an additional $80 billion to that amount), the apparent indifference of the American collective – government, media, and public – to how nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars will be spent speaks volumes about the overall bankrupt nature of the American establishment. 

Audits, however, are an accountant’s trick, a series of numbers on a ledger which, for the average person, do not equate to reality. Americans have grown accustomed to seeing big numbers when it comes to defense spending, and as a result, we likewise expect big things from our military. But the fact is, the US defense establishment increasingly physically resembles the numbers on the ledgers the accountants have been trying to balance – it just doesn’t add up. 

Despite spending some $2.3 trillion on a two-decade military misadventure in Afghanistan, the American people witnessed the ignominious retreat from that nation live on TV in August 2021. Likewise, a $758 billion investment in the 2003 invasion and subsequent decade-long occupation of Iraq went south when the US was compelled to withdraw in 2011– only to return in 2014 for another decade of chasing down ISIS, itself a manifestation of the failures of the original Iraqi venture. Overall, the US has spent more than $1.8 trillion on its 20-year nightmare in Iraq and Syria.

The Deliberative Branch Of Congress Told Biden To "Go Fuck Yourself"

zerohedge  |   On Wednesday President Joe Biden suggested that if Congress doesn't send Ukraine more money, now, it may 'embolden' Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade a NATO ally, which would precipitate "American troops fighting Russian troops."

The threat was not persuasive.

In response, Senate Republicans channeled Elon Musk (G...F...Y...), blocking Biden's $111 emergency supplemental package that would also include aid for Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and a smattering of border funding.

The Senate voted 49-51, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold required to allow the proposal to come up for consideration. Notably, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted against the measure, while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) flipped his vote to 'no' to preserve the option of revisiting the bill at a later date.

President Joe Biden has raised the possibility of "American troops fighting Russian troops" in a speech urging Congress to put aside "petty, partisan, angry politics" which is holding up his multibillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine. He said that he's willing to make "significant compromises" with Republicans but that it's they who've been unwilling to back down from their "extreme" demands. 

"This cannot wait," Biden stressed in the televised remarks from the White House. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. Simple as that. Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he can hope for and abandon our global leadership."

"I’m willing to make significant compromises on the border. We need to fix the broken border system. It is broken. And thus far I’ve gotten no response," Biden pleaded. He made the speech after speaking with G7 leaders, who are reportedly alarmed that US funding to Ukraine is set to run dry in a mere three weeks.

"If we walk away, how many of our European friends are going to continue to fund and at what rates are they going to continue to fund?" he posed.

And that's when the fear-mongering really kicked into overdrive. He went so far as to say that if Ukraine's defense isn't funded, this will lead to the country being steamrolled by the Russian military machine, and an emboldened Putin will then seek to gobble up more territory.