. . ."The state’s reliance on public sector growth to offset private sector losses suggests that California’s economy is heading for a serious crash.
"Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent celebration of California’s job growth paints an incomplete picture of the state’s economic reality.
"A new report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reveals a concerning trend: while overall employment has increased, the private sector is shrinking.
"Since September 2022, California has added 207,000 jobs.
"However, this headline figure obscures a critical shift.
"The private sector lost 154,000 jobs during this period, while public and public-supported sectors grew by 361,000 positions.
"In essence, government-related hiring is propping up the state’s employment numbers.
"Newsom highlighted California’s role in national job creation, stating, “16% of all national job creation last month came right here in California.”
"While factually correct, this statement fails to address the underlying imbalance between public and private sector growth." . . .
In 2022 Gavin Newsom stated CA has a surplus of $100 billion dollars. “$100B SURPLUS” In 2024, California is facing a record budget deficit of $68 billion. “$68B DEFICIT” Democrats have done to CA what they’ve done to America. This is intentional. NEVER NEWSOM in the WH! pic.twitter.com/hb5KC1SePv
The Last Refuge "The tip of the Lawfare spear consists of a small group of former DOJ attorneys and Main Justice leftists who helped AG Eric Holder create the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) when it was formed on behalf of President Obama.
"Lawfare, writ large, are a tribe of leftists who strategically weaponize the justice systems within the DOJ. They are also the main guides, strategists and legal analysts who previously used Robert Mueller and currently use Jack Smith.
"The tribe is led by a trio of fellow travelers: Mary McCord, Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissmann.
"If you research the group, you will discover that Mary McCord sits at the center of every attack approach deployed against President Trump {CITATION}. The influence of McCord cannot be overstated, while gender fluid leftists like Eisen, Weissmann (and others), wax philosophically about which statutes can be twisted and interpreted to assist their Lawfare strategy du jour." . . .
"As surely befits a man who looks like a corporate villain from a Hollywood thriller, he's painfully superficial, critics have long whispered. 'Gavin is always around pretty people. But he doesn't seem to have many real friends,' . . ."
. . ."Some polling suggests swapping out Biden for another candidate at the eleventh hour would be even worse than keeping him. But after Thursday night and the ensuing Democrat 'freak out' – with even the usually loyal New York Times now calling for Biden to resign – there might not be much choice.
"At a youthful 56, Newsom has risen smoothly up the ranks to the top of California politics, making him on paper an obvious candidate for the White House.
"But, as that toe-curling 20-year-old magazine shoot illustrates, the political capital Republicans have made out of Biden's troubled son Hunter would pale in significance to the mileage to be had from Newsom.
"For while he's handsomely telegenic, the perma-tanned Californian is an undeniably oleaginous and sleazy character whose playboy past includes more than its fair share of infidelity, alcohol abuse and questionable business behavior.
"And let's not forget the complete mess he and his championing of hard-left policies has made of California, the luster of the Golden State endlessly tarnished by bad news: from crime, drugs and homelessness to high taxes, electricity and water shortages, and a sky-high deficit that has led to an exodus of businesses and citizens.
"At the center of it all is a man who hails from California aristocracy.
"At least Joe Biden can say he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Newsom had the biggest spoon in the cutlery drawer – the Getty family." . . .
"I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same." Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
"You’d have to assume any meeting of House Democrats to discuss political messaging these days would be tense, considering that the leader of the party just laid a rotten egg at the presidential debate last Thursday.
"As Biden sees his odds of winning reelection plummet, party leaders have been freaking out, with some even calling for the president to leave the race.
"It’s no surprise, then, that a Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) meeting reportedly devolved into a grievance fest Tuesday, with panicked members openly criticizing the president and his strategy (or lack thereof). There were even reportedly mentions of the “donkey in the room”— and we all know who that is. Per Axios:
The virtual meeting Tuesday afternoon was a listening session the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) held to go over messaging ahead of the 2024 election.
Much of the meeting was taken up by members expressing their irritation and misgivings toward Biden and his team, according to a member in the meeting and another source briefed on the matter.
Biden was repeatedly referred to derisively as the "donkey in the room," both sources said.
"As we reported early Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) formally became the first elected House Dem domino to fall in what soon may become a cascade:" . . .
Biden 'Not A Pleasant Person': White House Staffers Report"After the disastrous performance during last week’s first presidential debate, there has been a rift between President Joe Biden and his staff. Politicoreportedthat White House aides are frustrated and scared of their boss.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” one senior administration official told Politico. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared sh*tless of him.”
“He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it,” the official added." . . .
"Some 75% of the public thinks so, saying he's 'too old' to become president again.
"But when one thinks of the consequences of a senile president, the typical warning that comes to mind is the 3:00 a.m. phone call indicating an international crisis. A senile president isn't going to understand what's going on.
"But it's worse than that, and Politico describes what is happening in Biden's day-to-day presidency." . . .
. . ."Which is not hard to imagine Biden may be experiencing as he screams at his very loyal longtime staff. It must be awful for all sides.
"Thing is, it's awful-est of all to us, the American people. Someone with that condition should be in care, not executing the most powerful job in the world.
"Staff keep information from him, telling him only what he likes to hear. He can't even make good decisions without all the facts, yet staff feels a need to keep him calm and themselves protected.
"That's no way to run a country. That sounds like one of those strange situations in 16th or 17th century Spain where the monarch was incapacitated. Spain went from the richest and most powerful country in the world to a nation that fell apart and skidded into irrelevance quite suddenly after a string of those. It sounds like the Kremlin during the late Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko era, or Russia when Boris Yeltsin was incapacitated.
"The voting public is right to demand a president of sound mind and body. While I don't doubt that Biden and his greedy family entourage will try to continue to cling to power all through the election, voters know it's up to them to make a decision if the Bidens won't.
"The reports coming out suggest a headless country without a functional leader."
'The left-wing legacy media that has propped up Joe Biden for years has finally turned on the president.
"After his disastrous debate performance last week, the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the NY Times had no choice but to flip the switch and launch a revolt against Joe Biden.' " Video
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” one senior administration official told Politico. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared sh*tless of him.”
“He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it,” the official added." . . .
“Everyone has been on eggshells about this sort of thing happening,” said one Democrat who had a personal window into the internal operations at the White House. “The staff watch him like a hawk to step in before a thing happens.”
According to the report, Former President Obama described the Biden family as 'weird s***' following a fundraiser for the Beau Biden Foundation in 2017.
Michelle was initially reluctant to campaign for Joe in 2020, but was ultimately persuaded to hit the trail when Democrats told her the stakes would be too high if she missed out.
Now her husband has taken to the trail solo by appearing at multiple glitzy fundraisers with Joe.
"Vice President Kamala Harris was caught making false accusations about former President Donald Trump, this time by Elon Musk.
"Harris posted on X Sunday that Trump would ban abortion access in the U.S.
“Donald Trump would ban abortion nationwide,” she wrote, adding, “President Joe Biden and I will do everything in our power to stop him and restore women’s reproductive freedom.”
"Musk responded, “He clearly said he would not do so in the debate.”
Donald Trump would ban abortion nationwide.
President @JoeBiden and I will do everything in our power to stop him and restore women's reproductive freedom.
"Why is this happening? I previously reported that Mayon Karen Bass is a close political ally of BLM LA boss Melina Abdullah, who has backed the pro-terrorist campaign against Jews. When Jews were attacked at UCLA, Democrat members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion to fund legal support for the terrorist supporters."
"Thirty minutes after Hamas supporters first set up their operation outside a Los Angeles synagogue, they maced their first Jew. And the Los Angeles police did nothing.
"Not until an hour into the terrorist rally outside a synagogue, did the LAPD finally step in, pushing back masked Jihad supporters in keffiyeh terror scarves from the entrance of Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) which they had occupied.
"And then the mob, chanting calls for “intifada” and the destruction of Israel, moved outward to target two smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from Islamic terror in Iran.
“ 'Billions of us will come and kill you,” a heavily accented Middle Eastern man in a keffiyeh unprompted rasped at me as I walked up. Only dozens had actually shown up, but they made up for it with bullhorns, robotic chants, and assaults in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.
"The Jewish counterprotesters had come waving American and Israeli flags while the other side was a sea of terrorist flags. A man wore an Antifa cap, another had come in ski goggles during 90-degree heat, while others toted bear spray, metal bottles, and other implements of violence." . . .
"Brick-throwing mobs. Mass arrests. Torched synagogues. Broken glass. Between November 9 and 10, 1938, the pogrom now known as Kristallnacht resulted in the destruction of over 7,500 Jewish businesses, 1,000 synagogues, and any sense of security Jewish people in Germany and its territories felt in the face of Nazi rule and a growing tide of anti-Semitism.
"Today, Kristallnacht is seen as the first act of what would eventually become the Holocaust. But did the world see the writing on the wall in 1938?
"If you’d read an American newspaper in the days and weeks after the pogrom, you might have thought so. As news of the pogroms made its way to the United States, newspapers filled, first with descriptions of the violence, then with reactions that ranged from terrified to furious. “MOBS WRECK JEWISH STORES IN BERLIN,” shouted a typical headline from the Chicago Daily Tribune. “Nazi Mobs Riot in Wild Orgy,” reported the Los Angeles Times." . . .
"But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulating allies judge us unreliable and calculating neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join."
"Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?
"Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?
"Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the U.S. lead in boycotting Russian oil?
"Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?
"Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?
"What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral or a de facto enemy?
"Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?
"Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?
"Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia to be used in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?
"Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?
"Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?
"Let us answer by listing 10 ways by which America lost all deterrence:
1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the largest air base in central Asia — recently retrofitted at a cost of $300 million — and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.
2) The Biden administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about the extent that China had surveilled top secret sites.
A member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Norbert Rottgen, said, “This night will not be forgotten. The Democrats must now change course. And Germany must prepare itself as quickly as possible for a future that is uncertain in terms of security policy. If we do not take responsibility for Europe now, no one will.”
"You who are so brave in donning priests' and nuns' gear to mock Christians would never dream of doing so to Muslims, whose compatriots are doing far worse to gays today than the meanest Christians ever did to gays, at any time in the history of their religion." . . .
"Another Pride Month has come and gone. I'll admit that it was more subdued than it has been in recent years. The specter of Israeli neo-Nazi homophobes throwing Gazan gays off rooftops undoubtedly dampened the festivities (more on that below). But I'm old enough to remember when Pride was just a parade in the big cities. Then it became a day. Then a week. Now it's a month. Now it's in schools, department stores, fast food chains, and library reading rooms. And if you think it's all going just a tad overboard, you're worse than Hitler.
"If aliens observed Pride Month from space, one could forgive them for assuming that gays in contemporary America must be the most oppressed group in the history of mankind, hence the necessity of an ever-increasing display of awareness and recognition. But an unfortunate and entirely predictable, phenomenon has occurred in the years since Obergefell and the advent of gays in the military. The oppressed has become the oppressor and gleefully so. To recap the last decade or so of Pride:
"Christian business owner Jack Phillips has been mired in lawfare since 2012 after he politely refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding due to his religious beliefs. Despite having won his case at the Supreme Court (on procedural grounds), he kept getting requests from LGBTQ activists to make obscene cakes, which they knew beforehand that he would refuse to bake, at which time they promptly sued and re-sued, intending to destroy him and his business — all because he has a different opinion than they do as to what constitutes a marriage.
"Is this what you're proud of?"
"We are told the purpose of Pride is for gay people to be accepted for who they are. But in recent Pride parades, organizers have banned rainbow flags with Stars of David superimposed (though Palestinian flags are allowed). At other Pride parades, organizers have banned gay police officers from marching. And, bizarrely, organizers have removed lesbians from Pride parades for the audacity of being attracted exclusively to women who are... wait for it... biological women. So much for accepting people for who they are." . . .
Lego releases new Gaza Pride set • Genesius Times
"This revolutionary new toy is designed to promote cultural sensitivity and to teach children about the importance of acceptance and tolerance, and has been hailed by some as a “miracle cure” for the world’s problems.
“We are pleased to announce the release of our new Gaza Pride set,” said Lego spokesperson, Cee Nile, in a recent press conference. “We believe that this is the best way to ensure that children can continue to learn about the importance of acceptance and tolerance, and to promote cultural sensitivity in a fun and engaging way.”
"The new set features a variety of colorful and creative designs, including a miniature rainbow-colored mosque, a tiny Palestinian flag, and a tiny replica of the Gaza skyline. The set also includes a variety of Lego figures, including a Palestinian farmer, a young girl wearing a hijab, a guy in a rainbow shirt, and a tall building so they can throw him off." . . .
"No sooner did my short piece debunking the possibility of replacing SloJoe appear than the question attained new urgency with his complete collapse in the first… “debate,” I hear they’re calling it. It seems that everybody -- Democrats more than anyone -- are now clamoring for the replacement of the inhabitant of the White Nursing Home.
"The problem is that it’s already too late.
"Along with the factors previously discussed – major party registration deadlines, primaries, delegates – even more major obstacles have arisen." . . .
"I think he practiced that line and received coaching on how to look and sound truly angry. I think his people believed this was the stake to drive into Trump's heart. But Biden looked old and ugly and weird, and Trump grabbed that stake and clonked him over the head with it." . . .
One can recognize that face; Biden used it at the State Of The Union address for one. TD
"A post-debate forecast from the Economist gave former President Donald Trump a 73- percent chance of victory in November. Trump leads Biden by six points in the probability of winning the popular vote in November, Nate Silver’s election model forecasted post-debate.
"A party’s lead candidate, such as Biden, should ideally attract voters to down-ticket candidates, but that hope appears to be fading after Biden’s highly criticized debate performance.
“I don’t ever want to see him here,” one lawmaker told Axios of Biden, adding, “Every single donor — and I’m only calling major donors — is furious and wants him to step aside.”
"Swing district Democrat House members are “freaking out” about Biden’s impact on their races, a senior House Democrat said, based on discussions with them." . . .
"The tan likely would have been applied in response to criticism of his poor performance at Thursday’s debate, which sparked concerns about his age and cognitive ability.
"The president delivered a five-minute speech off a teleprompter in response to the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity on Monday and refused questions from the press as he left the podium. Commentators interpreted the remarks as little more than performative theater to alleviate concerns about his abilities; his orange appearance, which echoes former President Donald Trump, spurred the most mockery." . . .
Uh oh, Joe! Carl Bernstein on CNN says the “horror show” we saw during the debate has happened 15-20 other times in the last year and a half according to close aides and people “who love Joe.” The knives are definitely out. pic.twitter.com/yIiiqWIKZu
“Relations between the Obamas and the Bidens have never been warm. At times they’ve been hostile.”
“But recently they’ve deteriorated further, mostly due to Jill Biden.”
“In the hours and days after the debate, she kept her husband cloistered away from anyone who might convince him to drop out.”
“Jill Biden is the driving force behind her husband’s reelection campaign, just as she was in 2020, when other members of the family (including Biden’s sister Val) considered him too impaired to run.” . . .
