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Not a fan of seafood, so I'll take your word for it.
I'm not a fan of chain restaurants either.
Lived in Manhattan for 21 years and ate in some of its finest restaurants.
What the hell do I know?
Morning, Bull. Hope all is well way down south.
Hey, Flo-zee. A ringing endorsement for Red Lobster from an NYC food critic.
Hey, Red Lobster: Please don’t cut bait on your surprisingly good Times Square location
By Steve Cuozzo Published May 15, 2024, 6:04 p.m. ET
https://nypost.com/2024/05/15/lifestyle/red-lobster-times-square-should-stay-open/
"Escape from NY..." At this point it's a necessity.
So glad I got out when the getting was good.
I liked the play on words too, Mr. G.
It takes more to being a lifeguard than being a strong swimmer.
Character plays a role.
Wonder how many migrant murderer rapists will apply for the job?
Bet Adams will say it's racist to do background checks.
He's a worthless moron.
What a mess.
Thank you, Mr. B_Dolphin.
I feel much better now.
Wear your muscle shirt in good health.
Aha! The truth comes out.
You can't stand me.
Hey, Bull. Stay safe.
TWC has your area under a tornado watch.
Good luck.
Report: Red Lobster Closes 100 Locations Around U.S.
ELIZABETH WEIBEL 14 May 2024 2:34
Seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster has closed one hundred locations around the United States, according to its website.
One hundred Red Lobster locations in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, California, and Florida, were listed as closed on the company website as of Tuesday.
CEO and Founder of TAGeX Brands, Neal Sherman, announced in a post on LinkedIn on Monday that his company would be hosting “the largest restaurant liquidation” through an online auction. The TAGex website listed auctions for 48 Red Lobster locations throughout the U.S. that had been closed and would be auctioning off kitchen items and furniture from the locations.
Red Lobster locations in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Watertown, New York, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Bloomingdale and Danville, Illinois, were among the restaurants that were closed.
All three locations in Jacksonville, Florida, were also listed as being closed, according to the restaurant chain’s website.
One employee from the Red Lobster in Buffalo, New York, told WKBW that he found out about the restaurant closure from one of the cooks, and not from corporate.
“I’m getting calls after calls this morning and my boy Don called me and he’s like, ‘You should come in right now,'” Ramon Garcia told the outlet. “I’m like, ‘Why, I’m off today,’ and he’s like, ‘Man, you just need to come in because there’s a lot of stuff going on.'”
The first Red Lobster location was opened in Lakeland, Florida, in 1968, and today the seafood chain has more than 700 locations throughout the world.
This comes nearly a month after Red Lobster considered filing for bankruptcy after their all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion led to the company losing $11 million during 2023.
“For those who have been in the US recently, $20 was very cheap,” Red Lobster CFO Ludovic Garnier said in a statement in November. “And the rationale for this promotion was to say we knew the price was cheap, but the idea was to bring more traffic in the restaurants.”
ThaiUnion, a Thailand-based company that specializes in producing seafood-based products, bought a stake in Red Lobster in 2020. Years later, in January 2024, ThaiUnion released a statement that it would be exiting from Red Lobster and taking a $530 million loss from its investment in the company.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/05/14/report-red-lobster-closes-100-locations-around-u-s/
Bashaw is classified as a moderate. I'll take it.
NJ will be more likely to vote for a moderate over a hard-core conservative.
The flyer he sent out focused on closing the border. I'm all for that.
He's also a successful businessman with an MBA from Wharton (Trump's alma mater).
One of the articles said he fought for small businesses during the pandemic.
Don't know anything about his opponents.
I've got work to do.
Jon Stewart calls out Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden and Bob Menendez in ‘How Dumb Is You?’ segment
By Hanna Panreck , Fox News Published May 14, 2024, 4:35 p.m. ET
Comedian Jon Stewart called out former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Hunter Biden during a segment on Monday focused on corruption titled, “How Dumb Is You?”
Stewart first took aim at Menendez, and said his alleged crimes were “f—— awful,” adding, “You, sir, are an elected official in America’s most respected legislative body. It’s like a license to print money. You don’t need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so f—— lucrative.”
Menendez is accused of accepting bribes from three wealthy businessmen in New Jersey and performing a variety of favors in return, including meddling in criminal investigations and taking actions benefiting the governments of Egypt and Qatar. Stewart also took aim at insider trading in Congress, which the legislative body has yet to vote on.
The comedian described Pelosi as one of the “biggest beneficiaries” of their ability to trade stocks before showing video of the former speaker of the House saying members of Congress should not be banned from trading stocks and should be allowed to participate in the “free market.”
“Here’s the thing. In a free market, everyone has access to the same information,” Stewart said. “So unless you’re gonna put all of us on the committees, I don’t get it.”
He then pointed to a $2 billion investment Jared Kushner’s company received from Saudi Arabia, before playing a clip of the president’s son being asked if he would have gotten a seat on the Burisma board if his last name wasn’t “Biden.” In the video, Biden replied, “Probably not.”
“Out of all the senators and representatives who dodged and prevaricated and wouldn’t answer any f—– questions, you know you’re in trouble when the most honest and transparent person in a story of government corruption is the ex-crackhead,” Stewart joked. “Robert Menendez’s gold bars in exchange for favorable legislation is obviously cartoonishly corrupt. But for anyone out there who thinks the status quo of government patronage and influence is of an entirely different species than Menendez, how dumb is you?”
Stewart also name-dropped Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Al., and former GOP Sen. Richard Burr earlier in the segment. Burr was investigated in 2020 for a slew of stocks he sold before the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the economy.
Jury selection for Menendez’ second federal corruption trial in a decade began on Monday. Menendez will stand trial alongside two of the three businessmen he is alleged to have accepted bribes from, real estate developer Fred Daibes and Wael Hana.
Menendez, Daibes and Hana have all pleaded not guilty. The third businessman, Jose Uribe, has pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the others.
Menendez announced that he would not be seeking re-election as a Democrat in November, but did not rule out a run as an independent.
(Puh-leeze. This cat belongs in the hoosegow not in the U.S. Senate.)
https://nypost.com/2024/05/14/us-news/jon-stewart-calls-out-nancy-pelosi-hunter-biden-and-bob-menendez-in-segment-on-political-corruption/
Thanks, Bull. Our primary is coming up on June 4th.
I have a lot of research to do.
Trump's Wildwood NJ rally...
Turns out there's a Wildwood businessman running for the Senate this year -- Curtis Bashaw.
Was this guy mentioned at or part of the rally? Thanks.
"There’s a scandal going on in Guatemala that everyone needs to know about..."
I searched for this sentence and got a number of hits.
These seem to be closest.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174415442
https://www.facebook.com/reel/794532419295633/
https://www.instagram.com/robbystarbuck/reel/C666RDqvQ85/
Looks like the IHub post is based on the videos on Facebook and Instagram but I didn't watch the videos.
Nolte: Democrat-Run California About to Get Hit with 50 Cent per Gallon Gas Tax
JOHN NOLTE 13 May 2024 4:02
In today’s edition of Getting What You Vote For, the dummies in California are about to get hit with a 50 cent per gallon gas tax.
Remember, California voters have handed the Democrat party full power over the former Golden State. Democrats run everything from the governorship on down. Democrats not only hold majorities in the state legislature, they hold veto-proof majorities. In other words…
Republicans are powerless in California. And so…
According to Triple-A, the average cost of a gallon of gas in California today is $5.29. That’s nearly $1.70 more than the national average. In some parts of California, gas costs $6.32 per gallon. The lowest cost for a gallon of gas in that Democrat-run shithole is $5.02.
Now add 50 cents to those prices.
Tee hee.
Fox Business reports:
In September, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s primary environmental regulator, reported gas prices will rise next year by about 50 cents a gallon and every year thereafter to aid in clean air efforts. The price increase does not include the existing gas tax in the state.
...
The report foresees gasoline price increases due to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard reforms that were created in 2007, likely rising by 47 cents next year and 52 cents by 2026. Diesel prices could climb by 59 cents this year and 66 cents in two years. Long-term projections suggest gasoline could surge by $1.15 and diesel by $1.50 per gallon from 2031 to 2046, with jet fuel increasing by $1.21.
After nine years, my wife and I fled Los Angeles in 2011 because the writing was all over the wall. Democrats were winning all the elections, housing costs were exploding, and I was about to get taxed for using plastic grocery bags instead of those filthy reusable ones. You could already feel the noose tightening 12 years ago, so my pretty wife and I moved back to the South. Boy, are we glad we did. California’s excuse for the grocery bag tax, like this upcoming gas tax, is “protecting the environment,” but that’s just an excuse to institute authoritarianism.
Since 2011, Democrats in California have consolidated their power even more by chasing away Normal People like myself. There are basically three classes of people in the most populous parts of that state now: the wealthy, the poor, and illegal aliens.
Vast portions of California are still glorious (except for the cost of living). But in the population centers that decide the state elections, Democrats have deliberately chased off a lot of the middle class and replaced them with illegal aliens. This 1) ensures Democrats a permanent governing majority in the state, and 2) ensures they do not lose federal congressional power or presidential electoral votes because the United States Census counts illegal aliens.
Thank heaven for our federalist system. In France and Germany and Sweden, there’s no escape. You can’t flee a “California” in Europe. But here in the States, we can flee to saner pastures. Eventually, Democrats will cheat enough to win the presidency enough to stack the Supreme Court with fascists who will kill the rights of the states to govern themselves (along with the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments), but that’s going to take a generation or two.
In the meantime, we have Wyoming.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/05/13/nolte-democrat-run-california-about-get-hit-50-cent-gallon-gas-tax/
The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation
‘The Population Bomb’ made dire predictions—and triggered a wave of repression around the world
Charles C. Mann January 2018
(I still have my copy.)
As 1968 began, Paul Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University, known to his peers for his groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies but almost unknown to the average person. That was about to change. In May, Ehrlich released a quickly written, cheaply bound paperback, The Population Bomb. Initially it was ignored. But over time Ehrlich’s tract would sell millions of copies and turn its author into a celebrity. It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked.
The first sentence set the tone: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” And humanity had lost. In the 1970s, the book promised, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” No matter what people do, “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Published at a time of tremendous conflict and social upheaval, Ehrlich’s book argued that many of the day’s most alarming events had a single, underlying cause: Too many people, packed into too-tight spaces, taking too much from the earth. Unless humanity cut down its numbers—soon—all of us would face “mass starvation” on “a dying planet.”
Ehrlich, now 85, told me recently that the book’s main contribution was to make population control “acceptable” as “a topic to debate.” But the book did far more than that. It gave a huge jolt to the nascent environmental movement and fueled an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world.
Born in 1932, Ehrlich was raised in a leafy New Jersey town. His childhood love of nature morphed into a fascination for collecting insects, especially butterflies. Something of a loner, as precocious as he was assertive, Ehrlich was publishing articles in local entomological journals in his teens. Even then he was dismayed by environmental degradation. The insecticide DDT was killing his beloved butterflies, and rapid suburban development was destroying their habitat.
When Ehrlich entered the University of Pennsylvania he befriended some upperclassmen who were impressed by his refusal to wear the freshman beanie, then a demeaning tradition. Not wanting to join a fraternity—another university custom—Ehrlich rented a house with his friends. They passed around books of interest, including Road to Survival, by William Vogt. Published in 1948, it was an early warning of the dangers of overpopulation. We are subject to the same biological laws as any species, Vogt said. If a species exhausts its resources, it crashes. Homo sapiens is a species rapidly approaching that terrible fate. Together with his own observations, Vogt’s book shaped Ehrlich’s ideas about ecology and population studies.
Ehrlich got his PhD at the University of Kansas in 1957, writing his dissertation on “The Morphology, Phylogeny and Higher Classification of the Butterflies.” Soon he was hired by Stanford University’s biology department, and in his classes he presented his ideas about population and the environment. Students, attracted by his charisma, mentioned Ehrlich to their parents. He was invited to speak to alumni groups, which put him in front of larger audiences, and then on local radio shows. David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club, asked him to write a book in a hurry, hoping—“naively,” Ehrlich says—to influence the 1968 presidential election. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, who would co-write many of his 40-plus books, produced the first draft of The Population Bomb in about three weeks, basing it on his lecture notes. Only his name was on the cover, Ehrlich told me, because his publisher said “single-authored books gets much more attention than dual-authored books...and I was at the time stupid enough to go along with it.”
Though Brower thought the book was “a first-rate battle tract,” no major newspaper reviewed it for four months. The New York Times gave it a one-paragraph notice almost a year after its release. Yet Ehrlich promoted it relentlessly, promulgating his message at scores or even hundreds of events.
In February 1970, Ehrlich’s work finally paid off: He was invited onto NBC’s “Tonight Show.” Johnny Carson, the comedian-host, was leery of serious guests like university professors because he feared they would be pompous, dull and opaque. Ehrlich proved to be affable, witty and blunt. Thousands of letters poured in after his appearance, astonishing the network. The Population Bomb shot up the best-seller lists. Carson invited Ehrlich back in April, just before the first Earth Day. For more than an hour he spoke about population and ecology, about birth control and sterilization, to an audience of tens of millions. After that, Ehrlich returned to the show many times.
Ehrlich said that he and Anne had “wanted to call the book Population, Resources, and Environment, because it’s not just population.” But their publisher and Brower thought this was too ponderous, and asked Hugh Moore, a businessman-activist who had written a pamphlet called “The Population Bomb,” if they could borrow his title. Ehrlich reluctantly agreed. “We hated the title,” he says now. It “hung me with being the population bomber.” Still, he acknowledges the title “worked,” in that it attracted attention.
The book received furious denunciations, many focused on Ehrlich’s seeming decision—emphasized by the title—to focus on human numbers as the cause of environmental problems, rather than total consumption. The sheer count of people, the critics said, matters much less than what people do. Population per se is not at the root of the world’s problems. The reason, Ehrlich’s detractors said, is that people are not fungible—the impact of one living one kind of life is completely different from that of another person living another kind of life.
Consider the opening scene of The Population Bomb. It describes a cab ride that Ehrlich and his family experienced in Delhi. In the “ancient taxi,” its seats “hopping with fleas,” the Ehrlichs entered “a crowded slum area.”
The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrust their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. . . . [S]ince that night, I’ve known the feel of overpopulation.
The Ehrlichs took the cab ride in 1966. How many people lived in Delhi then? A bit more than 2.8 million, according to the United Nations. By comparison, the 1966 population of Paris was about 8 million. No matter how carefully one searches through archives, it is not easy to find expressions of alarm about how the Champs-Élysées was “alive with people.” Instead, Paris in 1966 was an emblem of elegance and sophistication.
Delhi was overcrowded, and would continue to grow. By 1975, the city had 4.4 million people—a 50 percent gain in a decade. Why? “Not births,” says Sunita Narain, head of the Centre for Science and Environment, a think tank in Delhi. Instead, she says, the overwhelming majority of the new people in Delhi then were migrants drawn from other parts of India by the promise of employment. The government was deliberately trying to shift people away from small farms into industry. Many of the new factories were located around Delhi. Because there were more migrants than jobs, parts of Delhi had become jam-packed and unpleasant, exactly as Ehrlich wrote. But the crowding that gave him “the feel of overpopulation” had little to do with an overall population increase—with a sheer rise in births—and everything to do with institutions and government planning. “If you want to understand Delhi’s growth,” Narain argues, “you should study economics and sociology, not ecology and population biology.”
Driving the criticism of The Population Bomb were its arresting, graphic descriptions of the potential consequences of overpopulation: famine, pollution, social and ecological collapse. Ehrlich says he saw these as “scenarios,” illustrations of possible outcomes, and he expresses frustration that they are instead “continually quoted as predictions”—as stark inevitabilities. If he had the ability to go back in time, he said, he would not put them in the book.
It is true that in the book Ehrlich exhorted readers to remember that his scenarios “are just possibilities, not predictions.” But it is also true that he slipped into the language of prediction occasionally in the book, and more often in other settings. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” he promised in a 1969 magazine article. “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,” Ehrlich told CBS News a year later. “And by ‘the end’ I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”
Such statements contributed to a wave of population alarm then sweeping the world. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund, the Hugh Moore-backed Association for Voluntary Sterilization and other organizations promoted and funded programs to reduce fertility in poor places. “The results were horrific,” says Betsy Hartmann, author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, a classic 1987 exposé of the anti-population crusade. Some population-control programs pressured women to use only certain officially mandated contraceptives. In Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, health workers’ salaries were, in a system that invited abuse, dictated by the number of IUDs they inserted into women. In the Philippines, birth-control pills were literally pitched out of helicopters hovering over remote villages. Millions of people were sterilized, often coercively, sometimes illegally, frequently in unsafe conditions, in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
In the 1970s and ’80s, India, led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, embraced policies that in many states required sterilization for men and women to obtain water, electricity, ration cards, medical care and pay raises. Teachers could expel students from school if their parents weren’t sterilized. More than eight million men and women were sterilized in 1975 alone. (“At long last,” World Bank head Robert McNamara remarked, “India is moving to effectively address its population problem.”) For its part, China adopted a “one-child” policy that led to huge numbers—possibly 100 million—of coerced abortions, often in poor conditions contributing to infection, sterility and even death. Millions of forced sterilizations occurred.
Ehrlich does not see himself as responsible for such abuses. He strongly supported population-control measures like sterilization, and argued that the United States should pressure other governments to launch vasectomy campaigns, but he did not advocate for the programs’ brutality and discrimination.
Equally strongly, he disputes the criticism that none of his scenarios came true. Famines did occur in the 1970s, as Ehrlich had warned. India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, West and East Africa—all were wracked, horribly, by hunger in that decade. Nonetheless, there was no “great increase in the death rate” around the world. According to a widely accepted count by the British economist Stephen Devereux, starvation claimed four to five million lives during that decade—with most of the deaths due to warfare, rather than environmental exhaustion from overpopulation.
In fact, famine has not been increasing but has become rarer. When The Population Bomb appeared, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, something like one out of four people in the world was hungry. Today the proportion of hungry is about one out of ten. Meanwhile, the world’s population has more than doubled. People are surviving because they learned how to do things differently. They developed and adopted new agricultural techniques—improved seeds, high-intensity fertilizers, drip irrigation.
To Ehrlich, today’s reduction in hunger is but a temporary reprieve—a lucky, generation-long break, but no indication of a better future. Population will fall, he says now, either when people choose to dramatically reduce birthrates or when there is a massive die-off because ecosystems can no longer support us. “The much more likely [outcome] is an increase in the death rate, I’m afraid.”
His viewpoint, once common, is now more of an outlier. In 20 years of reporting on agriculture, I’ve met many researchers who share Ehrlich’s worry about feeding the world without inflicting massive environmental damage. But I can’t recall one who thinks failure is guaranteed or even probable. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” Ehrlich warned. The researchers I’ve encountered believe the battle continues. And nothing, they say, proves that humanity couldn’t win.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/
Dems pin Trump in NYC courtroom and he just turns it into his own personal campaign stage
By Miranda Devine Published May 12, 2024, 9:57 p.m. ET
When Joe Biden flew to San Francisco on Thursday for some fancy fundraisers, reporters noted that all the televisions on Air Force One were tuned to MSNBC, where the chyron read: “Stormy Daniels wraps 7-plus hours of testimony in Trump hush money trial.”
The president might be enjoying the wall-to-wall coverage of his opponent stuck in a Manhattan courtroom, but it probably is not the electoral gift Biden imagines.
Ever the showman, Donald Trump has flipped the adversity of his lawfare travails into a triumph of free media hits worth almost $2?billion, according to data provided exclusively by his campaign.
With cameras banned inside the courtroom, the former president makes his own news when he turns up at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse at Centre Street each day.
Every morning and some afternoons, Trump stands in the draughty 15th-floor corridor outside courtroom 1530 and addresses the assembled press pack without notes for three to five minutes, delivering pithy political bullets on the news of the day, trashing Biden, Judge Juan Merchan and the lawfare that Democrats are waging against him.
Free media coverage
His monologues, carried live by most TV networks and amplified online, have delivered his campaign an average of $260 million in earned (a?k?a free) digital media each day, according to a report by the Meltwater media monitoring agency, which estimates the equivalent cost of placing advertisements.
The first day of the Trump trial, April 15, delivered a whopping $440 million equivalent. The average weekly earned media during the trial has been $1.2 billion per week.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Dems.
The Meltwater figures cover only digital media. On TV, Nielsen ratings showed an initial boost in viewers in the first week of the trial for the most obsessed networks, CNN and MSNBC, of 30% and 6%, respectively.
Viewership fell in the second week because, without cameras in the courtroom, coverage relies on pundits giving breathless play-by-plays of Trump’s head movements or lip pursing. Breaking news! A new courtroom sketch!
With an eye for optics, Trump delights in the fact that the 80-year-old Art Deco granite courthouse with its harsh fluorescent lights has turned out somehow to be a flattering stage set, and the vault-like ceilings make his voice resonate rather than echo.
Every day, he takes pleasure in laying into “Trump-hating” Merchan, who has not recused himself despite the fact that his daughter Loren heads a political consulting firm that runs digital campaigns for Democrat candidates and posted a photo on social media of Trump behind bars.
A gag order prevents Trump from mentioning Loren, so he contents himself with lambasting her father. “He’s a corrupt judge, and he’s totally conflicted.”
He usually complains about being forced off the campaign trail and proclaims his innocence.
“I should be right now in Pennsylvania and Florida, in many other states, North Carolina, Georgia, campaigning. .?.?. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m innocent, and I’m being held in this court with a corrupt judge who’s totally conflicted.”
Has his dais in court
And he pitches the promises of his second presidency, to “drill, baby drill, to bring energy down, to close up the border, to get rid of all the criminals that are being allowed into our country .?.?. They’re taking [them] out of mental institutions [and] jails. .?.?. All of this is greatly affecting our country and very negatively. Now, we’re going to make America great again. Thank you very much.”
On Friday morning before court, Trump even took the opportunity to promote his rally the next day in Wildwood, NJ. He tried out some of the lines he would use at Wildwood, railing against the “horrible gag order” and reading aloud extracts from articles in the New York Post that he said declared the case a “legal catastrophe.”
“I’ll go now sit in that freezing courtroom for 8 or 9 hours and think about being on the campaign all day.”
Perhaps having seen the Meltwater figures, Trump extended his corridor remarks on Friday afternoon to 10 minutes and announced he was unafraid of jail.
Merchan is a “thug” who “wants to put me in jail.”
“And that could happen one day, and I’d be very proud to go to jail for our Constitution because what he’s doing is so unconstitutional.?.?.?. So fake, the whole case is fake. The judge is corrupt. It’s not a case. There’s no crime. .?.?. This is election interference. It all comes out of Washington.”
He gave a soliloquy on inflation: “It’s a tax on the American people due to gross incompetence.”
He said Biden “lies about everything, including his golf game” and that Biden and his donors are “against Israel.”
All week, he used his media moments to smash Biden on the politics of the day, deciding the topics in his limo during the 4-mile drive downtown from his apartment atop Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.
Thursday, it was Israel.
“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves. He’s totally abandoned Israel, as nobody can believe it. I guess he feels good about it because he did it as a political decision.”
It was campus protests on Tuesday.
“The country is on fire. There are protests all over the country. I’ve never seen anything like this. Many graduation ceremonies are being canceled. .?.?. And we have a president that just refuses to talk because he can’t talk.”
It was Biden donors Monday.
“Many of the protesters are backed by Biden’s donors. OK, are you listening, Israel?”
Off the battleground
You get the feeling Trump revels in the fact he is getting more publicity in the courthouse than he would from standing in an Ohio cornfield. It is reminiscent of 2016 when he was financially outgunned by his adversaries but ended up with more media coverage.
His Wildwood rally went ahead Saturday in front of a whopping crowd of more than 100,000 attendees, according to official estimates, and proved to be an extended version of his courtroom diatribes, with bonus impersonations of Biden.
Of course, the big crowds and the earned media bonanza reflect the fact that Trump is a consummate entertainer who puts on a free show.
But 2020 showed that crowd numbers are no guarantee of electoral victory. The hard work is still to be done in the swing states.
Overshadowing the unexpected upside of his courtroom travails is the fact that, while the media spotlight is fixed on Trump in New York, Democratic governors in the crucial battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania are quietly using their powers to tilt the playing field in favor of Biden.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/opinion/dems-pin-trump-in-nyc-courtroom-and-he-just-turns-it-into-his-own-personal-campaign-stage/
Trump now leading in 5 battleground states — all of which Biden won in 2020: poll
By Isabel Keane Published May 13, 2024 Updated May 13, 2024, 7:38 a.m. ET
Former President Donald Trump is leading President Biden in five critical, toss-up swing states — all of which Biden had won in 2020, a new set of polls revealed.
Surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Trump was more popular than Biden among voters in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Biden led among voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin.
All six of the battleground states looked at in the polls were won by Biden in 2020, and victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2024 would be enough for Biden to secure his re-election, as long as he did not lose any of the states he won four years ago.
The poll numbers revealed how issues like inflation, the Israel-Hamas war and immigration have caused widespread dissatisfaction among Americans, all while raising concerns over Biden’s ability to improve quality of life for Americans.
Nearly 70 percent of voters polled said that the country’s political and economic systems need a major overhaul — and only 13 percent of Biden’s supporters believe he would be able to bring about such change during his second term.
Howard University cancels graduation mid-ceremony after furious family members pound on doors, smash window
Porch pirate just snatches package from homeowner's hands mere seconds after it's delivered: video
Many of the voters polled even admitted that even while they dislike Trump, he would be the candidate to change things up.
Trump and Biden are currently tied among 18 to 29-year-olds and amongst Hispanic voters, even though over 60 percent of the demographic voted for Biden in 2020.
Trump has also secured 20 percent of Black voters’ support — the highest level of Black support for any Republican presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/13/us-news/trump-now-leading-in-5-battleground-states-all-of-which-biden-won-in-2020-polls/
This may be the week Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump falls apart
By Jonathan Turley Published May 12, 2024, 1:42 p.m. ET
Even for those of us who have long been critics of the “hush money” case against Donald Trump and its dubious legal theory, it has been surprising to see that the prosecutors had no more evidence than we previously knew about.
The assumption was that no rational prosecutor would base a major criminal case almost entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen, who was recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer peddling “perverse” theories in court.
The calculus of Alvin Bragg is now obvious. He is counting on the jury convicting Trump regardless of the evidence.
Which is also why Bragg likely fears that the judge, not the jury, will decide the case. After the government closes its evidence this week, the defense will move for a direct verdict by the judge on the basis that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.
Many of us agree with that assessment. After three weeks of testimony, there is still confusion on what crime Trump allegedly committed.
Bragg has vaguely referred to the labelling of payments to Stormy Daniels as “legal expenses” as a fraud committed to steal the election.
However, the election was over when those denotations were made. Moreover, many believe that such a characterization for payments related to a nondisclosure agreement is accurate. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed in the same election that hiding the funding for the Steele dossier as legal expenses was perfectly accurate).
Judge Juan Merchan, in my view, has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of the accused in this case.
But if he wants to show he is truly neutral, Merchan should grant the motion for a directed verdict.
To prevent that, Bragg has to show Merchan that someone claimed to have evidence directly tying Trump to an intentional fraudulent scheme to conceal a crime.
Thus far, Bragg hasn’t come close. Indeed, many of his witnesses helped Trump more than they hurt him.
Bragg started with the testimony of David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, on an uncharged transaction to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
The relevancy was marginal but the testimony backfired in that Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money.
He further said that he had killed or promoted stories for Trump in the years before he ever announced for president. He also said that he had killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
For good measure, Pecker noted that Cohen often exaggerates and would become loud and argumentative in their discussions.
Witnesses said that Trump likely had a mix of motivations for wanting to kill a story, including sparing his family from embarrassment. Daniels’ own counsel contradicted the prosecution’s reference to the payment as “hush money.”
Judge allows Stormy Daniels to give irrelevant, salacious testimony just to humiliate Trump
So prosecutors now turn to a witness, Michael Cohen, with a record of saying whatever serves his interests and those of his sponsors.
Everything is riding on his testimony. It is not enough to say that Trump wanted to hush up the alleged affair. That is no crime and NDAs are common and legal.
Cohen has to say that Trump specifically knew and approved of the characterization of the payments as “legal expenses.”
He further has to establish that Trump intended the denotation to conceal the payments for the purposes of election violations or fraud.
That could make this a “he said, he said” case if Trump were to actually testify. However, Merchan’s earlier rulings make such testimony highly unlikely.
The court approved a sweeping scope for cross examination if Trump dares to take the stand. No competent lawyer would advise him to do so after Merchan’s rulings.
That is exactly where Bragg wants to be: with a “he said” not a “he said, he said” case. With Trump effectively silenced, Bragg will argue that Cohen’s testimony is enough to get to the jury.
Given the blind rage of many New Yorkers for Trump, the testimony of a convicted, disbarred, serial perjurer may be enough. The question, then, is whether the judge will let it get that far.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/opinion/this-may-be-the-week-alvin-braggs-case-against-trump-falls-apart/
Bill Maher dredges up 2018 Stormy Daniels interview that totally undermines her Trump trial testimony
By Ryan King Published May 12, 2024, 12:42 p.m. ET
Morning, Mr. G. Yeah... who are they to judge a tippler's recreational habits?
Chilly this a.m. I'm in heaven. You're in hell. It will warm up. Then our positions will be reversed.
Thinking about fixing breakfast while I wait for things to dry out around here.
My back yard grass will be up to my azz if I don't get out there.
Have a good one and will leave you with this...
It was in the NY Post last night about affordable housing markets. Lots of pictures at the link.
Bargain bonanza: 15 cities revealed where home prices are falling amid soaring mortgage rates
By Mary K. Jacob Published May 10, 2024, 4:00 p.m. ET
... According to a recent report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), these 15 US cities have bucked the trend of rising home values, offering a respite for prospective buyers.
Topping the list is an upstate New York town steeped in rich culture and history; the roundup also includes three cities in Florida and two each in Texas and Louisiana.
While the nation witnesses a staggering 5 percent year-on-year increase in the median price of single-family homes, reaching a median of $389,400, some areas are swimming against the tide with select neighborhoods experiencing a decline in home values.
NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, attributes the discrepancy to the pressing issue of housing supply failing to meet burgeoning demand.
“Rising prices are the direct result of insufficient housing supply not meeting the full demand,” Yun explained, shedding light on the underlying dynamics of the market.
Leading the pack of bargain locales is New York’s Southern Tier city of Elmira, once hailed as the stomping ground of literary icon Mark Twain.
Surrounded by picturesque landscapes, Elmira saw its property prices plunge by a whopping 15.1% in the first quarter of 2024, setting the stage for an enticing buyer’s market...
https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/real-estate/bargain-bonanza-15-cities-revealed-where-home-prices-are-falling-amid-soaring-mortgage-rates/
Jim Simons, a Pioneer of Quantitative Trading, Dies at 86
A mathematician, he helped usher in a revolution in trading, embracing a computer-oriented, quantitative style in the 1980s
By Gregory Zuckerman Updated May 10, 2024 2:16 pm ET
Jim Simons, a mathematician who became one of the most successful investors in modern financial history, has died at age 86.
A cutting-edge code breaker and geometer, Simons helped pioneer a revolution in trading, embracing a computer-oriented, quantitative style in the 1980s well ahead of the Wall Street crowd. He and his team employed trading algorithms and artificial intelligence to outperform the market—and the likes of Warren Buffett and George Soros. Later, Simons became a political donor and an influential philanthropist in the worlds of science, health and education.
Simons, the son of a Boston shoe-factory executive, developed an early passion for mathematics and ignored the advice of the family physician who urged him to steer clear of the field because he wouldn’t make a living. The warning proved misplaced.
Simons began his career as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He proved popular with students. One year, Simons amused a graduate class by confessing that he didn’t know much about the topic—partial differential equations—but that he viewed teaching the course as a good way to learn.
Simons became restless, though. He started businesses with friends and dabbled in trading. Friends and family detected a desire for wealth.
“Jim understood at an early age that money is power,” said Barbara Simons, his first wife, in an interview...
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/jim-simons-a-pioneer-of-quantitative-trading-dies-6621d66e?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1
Wonder how they define excessive drinking?
I'm definitely not contributing.
Bought a 12-pack of Yuengling at the beginning of January.
There are two left in the fridge.
You win... your county/state ===> 19.51/17.18
My county/state ===> 17.67/16.84
Wonder if the nation's drinking numbers will drop once Brandon is out of office.
Cheers!
Enjoy your Barron dream.
I feel sorry for the kid. He never smiles. He stands out and looks downward like he wishes he could hide.
Bet Mama Melania put the kibosh on the convention stunt. Good for her.
That young man has been through enough.
I'm sure glad I don't have his father.
From my "favorite rag"... Barron Trump, 18, won’t be delegate for dad at RNC: ‘Prior commitments’
By Diana Glebova Published May 10, 2024, 6:04 p.m. ET
Donald Trump’s son Barron won’t be a delegate at the GOP Convention because of “prior commitments,” former first lady Melania Trump’s office told The Post on Friday.
Barron Trump, 18, was invited Wednesday to attend the Republican Convention in Milwaukee as a delegate for the Florida GOP — the first time the youngest member of the Trump family would have been directly involved in politics.
“While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” The Office of Melania Trump said in a statement.
He would have been a delegate for the Sunshine State alongside three of his older siblings — Don Jr., Eric and Tiffany — likely aiding in nominating his father to be the official Republican presidential nominee at the convention slated for July 15-18.
His fourth sibling, Ivanka Trump, who has said she will stay out of politics during her father’s re-election run, was the only Trump sibling not on the list.
Other GOP delegates connected to the Trump family include Don Jr.’s fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle and Tiffany’s husband Michael Boulos, NBC News reported.
Barron, a soon-to-be high school graduate — who is around 6 feet 7 inches tall — has largely been kept out of the spotlight and has never been reported to have said a word in public.
He usually travels alongside his mother and is rarely pictured out in public, but his recent 18th birthday could mean he will be more involved on the campaign trail.
Earlier Friday, Donald Trump revealed that Barron did have an interest in politics and at times, even advises him.
“He’s a little on the tall side. I will tell you, he’s a tall one, but he is a good-looking guy. And he’s really been a great student. And he does like politics. It’s sort of funny,” Trump told “Kayal and Company” on Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.
“He’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do,’ ” Trump added.
The former president also commented on where Barron will be going to college after a report from the Daily Beast he would be attending NYU but didn’t disclose where he would ultimately end up.
“So anyway, he’s a good guy. He’s a senior now in high school, and he’ll be going to college. And you know, a lot of, a lot of these choices of colleges are changing because you see what’s going on in the last month,” Trump said, apparently referring to anti-Israel campus protests.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/us-news/barron-trump-18-wont-be-delegate-for-dad-at-rnc-prior-commitments/
Interesting... and no bats.
Very Middle Earth.
Can't believe it only cost $300,000.
I call that a bargain.
Nice find, Mr. G.
Invisible ink... I could use some of that.
It would save me from myself.
Thanks, Gmenfan. Great idea.
lol... If we live that long.
With the way things are going, I'm not sure I want to be here by then.
God save the USA.
Four more years...
of chaos.
I can't stand it but I firmly believe the Bidenistas must be kicked to the curb.
Looks like Mr. Trump is the only logical choice.
Don't know where this piece came from but
sadly I know this is not from the Bee.
Morning, Gmenfan.
I'm enjoying this three-shirt morning.
Hang tough. Your weather will be back soon.
‘Princeton Princess’ whines that she’s ‘starving,’ blames university after choosing to go on anti-Israel hunger strike
By Isabel Keane Published May 9, 2024 Updated May 9, 2024, 11:00 a.m. ET
(Send them to Gaza. FWIW, the moronic tub o'lard looks like she could live off her fat reserves for at least two weeks... or more.)
A student-led hunger strike began on Princeton’s campus on Friday.
X / @CollinRugg
An anti-Israel protester at Princeton University sounded off about how she was “starving” during her self-imposed hunger strike and accused the prestigious university of purposefully “physically weakening” students.
Video shows the woman and other female protesters railing into a megaphone about the New Jersey Ivy League school’s refusal to divest from Israel following Hamas’ unprovoked attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7.
“This is absolutely unfair. My peers and I, we are starving. We are physically exhausted. I am quite literally shaking right now as you can see,” the protester says into the megaphone in a widely shared video on X.
A student-led hunger strike began Friday, with protesters demanding the school meet with them to discuss divestment and drop the criminal and disciplinary charges against two students who were arrested for erecting tents and 13 other peers who were arrested for trespassing an academic hall last month, Princeton’s student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, reported Monday.
After meeting with administrators on Monday, students indicated that they have no intention of halting their protest, which has left them “immunocompromised,” according to the female protester whose rally cry has gone viral online.
“We are both hot and cold at the same time. We are all immunocompromised and based on the university’s meeting yesterday with some of our bargaining team, they would love to continue physically weakening us because they can’t stand to say no to unjust murder,” she said to cheers and banging of drums.
Despite the complaints, the woman in the video concedes that going on a hunger strike was her choice.
“I will say I truly do not feel like I am doing anything special. This is my choice, and I would not spend my birthday doing anything other than being here,” she said.
“No matter how physically weak we may be, united we have never been stronger,” she added as the crowd began to chant, “The people united will never be defeated!”
According to the student newspaper, at least 15 students were taking part in the hunger strike Sunday night.
It was not immediately clear how that number may have changed throughout the week.
School president Christopher Eisgruber, graduate school dean Rodney Priestley and Amaney Jamal, dean of the School of Public and International Affairs, told students in an email Tuesday that administrators were working with the protesters.
“My colleagues and I are now in direct conversation with the protestors,” he wrote. “I have told them that we can consider their concerns through appropriate processes that respect the interests of multiple parties and viewpoints, but we cannot allow any group to circumvent those processes or exert special leverage.”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/09/us-news/princeton-students-complain-of-starving-amid-anti-israel-hunger-strike/
Dems’ kangaroo court against Donald Trump is only backfiring
By Miranda Devine Published May 8, 2024, 10:25 p.m. ET
Aha ! I've been boycotting Hollywood for years.
Missed Bullworth.
Great lyric. I may use it myself.
Howdy, possh. I'm impressed.
Pretty modern of you to know what the rappers say.
They do have a unique way with words.
Good to see you up and moving.
Nice out. Enjoy the day.
Hmmm... #396666.
Not exactly a grub but all multiples of three.
I like it.
Good one, Mr. G. I saw one (nonpolitical) yesterday on Rte. 80.
Source: An electronic sign from the NJDOT.
Message: Camp in the woods.
Not in the fast lane.
Good posts, Sir.
Thanks.
College anti-Israel agitators would be sent to Gaza under new House GOP bill
By Elizabeth Elkind, Fox News Published May 8, 2024, 4:59 p.m. ET
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY: Fox News
(I freakin' love it. Send the Somali Slut and Fugli Tlaib over there with them. I know... in my dreams.)
Bet this does not appear in the LSM.