No, it is not

College Investor: "Is Student Loan Forgiveness By Executive Order Legal?"

The President does not have the legal authority to forgive student loans on his own. Only Congress has the power of the purse. Executive action can be used only when it has been specifically authorized by Congress.

The executive branch cannot spend money that has not been appropriated by Congress, per 31 USC 1301 et seq (Antideficiency Act (P.L. 97-258)) and Article I, Section 7, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution.

Know who else came this exact same conclusion? Nancy Pelosi:

Why did Pelosi say “the president can’t do it.” She said that because the president can’t do it. Why did Pelosi say “that’s not even a discussion”? She said that because everybody knows that the president can’t do it. Why did Pelosi say that this was a matter for Congress? She said that because this is a matter for Congress.

The simplest explanation is that Congress decides how to spend money and only Congress can forgive this debt. 

Slavery is freedom

NY Post editorial: "Elon Musk’s right: The left has gone insane." 

They never really believed in free speech

Federalist: "Incensed By Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, The Left Won’t Even Pay Lip Service To Free Speech." - "There was a time not long ago when liberals at least pretended to support free speech. Those days are gone, and never coming back." 

Boy, this past week has been illuminating.

I expected nothing less

Red State: "Biden’s New ‘Ministry of Truth’ Director Turns out to Be a Raving Lunatic." 

That 70s show

NY Post: "GDP drops 1.4%, US economy shrinks for first time since 2020" and "Stagflation is staring Biden in the face — but he refuses to change course."

So this show is still on

Red State: "Chuck Todd Bitterly Admits Democrat Capitol Riot ‘Investigation’ Ploy Not Going as Planned."

This post suggests that Americans don't care about January 6th when inflation is at a 40-year high and we're slouching towards stagflation.  But even before Joe Biden wrecked the economy, I thought this show trial wouldn't play in Peoria because Americans want to turn the page on the Trump presidency.

Also: high-school graduate Chuck Todd is a tool.

The Ministry of Truth

Legal Insurrection: "Biden Administration Creating ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ Under DHS Headed by Trump-Hating Leftist - “Jankowicz also suggested last week that she opposes the The First Amendment because she thinks it is bad for ‘marginalized communities’ and called Elon Musk a ‘free speech absolutist’ because he wants to make Twitter more open to all voices.”

She seems qualified: "Biden’s new disinformation czar said voters need context, ‘not a fairy tale about a laptop repair shop’." 

Moral hazard? Never heard of it

 

These people are insufferable

Jonathan Turley: "MSNBC's Melber issues dire Twitter warning that seems oddly familiar."

These people are so ensconced in their media bubble, they can't even recognize the irony here.

Extra - Ace: "MSNBC: Now that Elon Musk Controls Twitter, He Can Rig Twitter's Rules to Favor One Party, Limit the Reach of Certain Speakers, Suppress Stories Before an Election, and Then Hide All His Handiwork With Zero Transparency."

Really, you don't say, Ari Melber.

You don't.

Say.

Shocking, isn't it?

Bring on the culture wars

Real Clear Politics has a morning and evening edition and there was a linked story in each with the latter one appearing to respond to the earlier piece.

In the morning, CNN's resident dimwit leftist Dean Obeidallah wrote this excrement: "Democrats should embrace being woke and make 2022 about GOP's extremism."

Some in today's Republican Party are trying to ban abortion, books they find objectionable, Black history from being taught fully, transgender teens from playing sports, and discussions of sexual orientation in schools, and now they're even going after Mickey Mouse.

Please, please, please Democrats: listen to Dean Obeidallah.  Please run on teaching first-graders about trans-sexuality, CRT, and allowing biological men into women's sports.  Show us you've learned absolutely nothing from the Virginia gubernatorial race.  

These people live entirely within a bubble, which is the topic of this Federalist article: "Democrats’ Culture War Is Destroying Their Ability To Govern Competently Enough To Fool Voters."

It is also why the left cannot understand its own failures. They have isolated themselves in a bubble that has drifted so far from reality and the concerns of normal voters that even electoral disaster may not bring them back to Earth. Cocooned in privilege and ideology, they think Biden is doing just fine. But most Americans have had enough of a government that is more committed to transitioning children than to controlling crime and inflation.

Driving home today, NPR played a blurb from somebody who claimed the Florida law nicknamed "Don't Say Gay" is some kind of an attack against trans kids.  My thought was "keep it up."

Well would you look at that

NY Post: "Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden business partner at the White House."

Hunter Biden’s closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing.

Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Biden’s claims that he knew nothing of his son’s dealings.

Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010 in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners.

The New York Post is now the only paper interested in doing journalism on this story.

New York Times: "We don't see nothin'."

You know you're winning when you're banned on social media

American Conservative: "Libs Of TikTok Vs. The Regime - The Washington Post's targeting of the anonymous account is just the latest flare-up in a cultural, spiritual, and political war." 

The Left hates free speech, the continuing saga

Twitchy: "Twitter will no longer allow advertisers ‘who deny the scientific consensus on climate change’."

Related - Oh, that's not notable: "Wikipedia deletes entry for Hunter Biden investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners." 

He sure does, Joey

 

Yes, I've seen "The Wire"

Hot Air: "IG report: Baltimore city schools had more than 900 ghost students costing taxpayers $10 million." 

I've already resolved that my kids will be the last generation in my family to go to public schools.

At least Carter once held a real job

Power Line: "I can't believe I miss Jimmy Carter."

I’m slowly working up to a long piece about the parallels between the hapless Jimmy Carter Administration and the Biden Clown Show that go beyond inflation, energy market disruptions, foreign policy cluelessness, and other totems of the dismal 1970s.

You have to be somebody of advanced age like (ahem) me to remember the Carter years.  For a huge chunk of America, they've never seen runaway inflation like this eating away at wages coupled with a feckless foreign policy dependent on Middle East plutocrats.  

It's all falling apart for BLM

Powerline: "BLM was always a fraud."

Wall Street Journal: "BLM’s Anti-Police Racket Is Coming Undone."

Fox News: "BLM silent when confronted with data showing massive 2020 spike in Black murder victims."

Why it's almost like they were just a means to an end.  A very swanky end.

The journalism elite, folks

This Not the Bee headline says it all: "This dude just made the most glaringly satirical post in history and The New York Times contacted him because they thought it was totally real." 

The New Coke of news platforms

Axios: "CNN+ looks doomed." - "Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN's longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios."

Buh-bye

Fear of a free speech planet

City Journal: "Musk Makes the Mask Slip - The Tesla CEO’s bid to buy Twitter has prompted many prominent figures to admit bluntly that they oppose free speech."

If Musk is trolling the humorless progressives who dominate our institutional and cultural heights, though, he has already achieved a coup. That Musk might buy Twitter has caused a meltdown among Twitter elites. “Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany,” wrote one blue check. “[This] could result in World War 3 and the destruction of our planet,” exclaimed another. Robert Reich has equated Musk to Vladimir Putin.

Musk has done more than simply induce liberal tears. He has caused a mask to slip. He has prompted many prominent figures to admit bluntly that they oppose free speech.

It's always been obvious to the conservative crowd.

Extra fun - The Paper of Record: "Dems Explain They Don't Want Billionaires Controlling Our Media Unless They're Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bloomberg, Buffett, Or Soros." 

Leporine intervention

Hot Air: "Easter Bunny saves Biden from foreign policy questions."

That was pretty crazy: Biden started talking about Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Easter Bunny jumped in before he committed yet another foreign policy gaffe.

Tax time

Reason: "Americans Will Spend 6.5 Billion Hours on Income Taxes This Year - The IRS takes not only your money, but a lot of your time." 

There were a couple of years where I had my own consultancy and the combination of regular income, small business income, and increasingly complicated deductions felt like it took 6 billion hours to complete.

Sleepwalking into disaster

NY Post: "Fears of recession are everywhere — except at the clueless White House." 

No kidding

Rich Lowry: "Joe Biden promised to bring normality to the White House — instead, he’s been anything but." 

Journalists: "Save us from free speech!"

Jim Treacher: "Musk Triggers Mass Journophrenia - Journos love free speech unless it's yours." 

Extra - Twitchy: "Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter has brought with it a parade of media hot takes like no other." 

If they didn't have double standards

 Matt Taibbi: "Twitter's Chickens Come Home to Roost" - "The Great Elon Musk panic of 2022 is revealing a big fat boatload of blue-check hypocrites." 

This is wild

 

Every item in this SF Walgreens is under lock and key.

There’s practically nothing you can buy without having to call an associate to unlock something.

I’ve never been in a country that lives this way. pic.twitter.com/omFdoqH2CL

— Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) 🇺🇦 (@antoniogm) April 13, 2022

Protect me from this freedom

Glenn Reynolds: "‘Censorship is free speech’ is the establishment’s Orwellian line on Elon Musk’s Twitter crusade." 

It's a new record!

CNBC: "Supplier prices rose 11.2% from a year ago in March, the biggest gain on record."

How convenient

Federalist: "Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Claims Asking About Allegations She Spent Millions In Donations On Mansions Is Racist." 

National policy or senile ramblings? Who can say!?!

National Review: "Biden’s Gaffes Are Becoming a Crisis."

Do a president’s words count, or not? If a president keeps making declarations that bear no relationship whatsoever to actual administration policy, he is at best irrelevant.

How strange, considering we were told repeatedly that "the words of a President matter."  

It's just a messaging problem

PJ Media: "Guess Who Democrats Will Blame for Their Midterm Election Losses?" 

We know, we know.

Just more flailing from this guy

Hot Air: "Inflation desperation: Biden to order more ethanol for cars as grain shortages loom."

Good news: Gas may go down by a dime!

Bad news: You have to drive to Nebraska to get the gas.

The White House has argued that the use of E15 can shave 10 cents off each gallon of gasoline. E15 is currently sold in 30 states at more than 2,300 gas stations, the Energy Department has said, but that is just a fraction of the more than 150,000 gas stations in the United States.

Brandon is doing everything he can to counter Putin's price hike - everything except drill for oil.  Gosh darn it, it's just not his fault.

The dotted line is Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Oh, wait, it's not.

It's Biden's inauguration. pic.twitter.com/4JYsxGBqDd

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) April 11, 2022

Going off half-cocked

The Corner: "Biden’s Tired Gun Act Is Back."

Shorter version: virtually everything Biden said today is completely wrong and he nominated a candidate to run the ATF who will never be confirmed.  So another huge waste of time for Brandon.

The New Yorker employs 4-year-olds

That's the only possible explanation for this ahistorical piece of crap article from toddler Amy Davidson Sorkin: "The Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings may only be the beginning."  Babygirl Sorkin is very upset at the tone and line of questioning at the Jackson hearings.  Very upset at the lack of decorum.

Word search on this article for "Kavanaugh" = zero mentions.

Little Amy joins Joe Biden and the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus as very serious people who are peeved by Justice Jackson being asked to answer questions about her (checks notes) judicial philosophy and sentencing guidelines.  Charles C.W. Cooke responded to Marcus' false equivalence:

Ah, yes. On the one side we have the Bork hearing, the Thomas hearing, and the abomination that was the Kavanaugh hearing — all of which involved deliberate and egregious character assassinations. And on the other side, we have the . . . Senate exercising its powers under the Constitution. (I’d put the Gorsuch filibuster into this category, too. I personally favored Gorsuch’s appointment, but the Senate was not obliged to, and it was permitted to filibuster him if it so wished.)

Even the slightest inspection here would reveal that there is no similarity between these things whatsoever. One suspects that the reason Marcus would rather breezily say that “neither side has clean hands” than “endlessly debate” her own evidence is that, in her heart of hearts, she knows it.

I suspect baby-teeth Amy Sorkin also knows this too unless she was distracted watching episodes of "Dora the Explorer."

Extra - Federalist: "Don’t Be Gaslighted About How Insane The Kavanaugh Hearings Were Even Before Blasey Ford Accusations."  

Sure you did, champ

Hot Air: "Obama: Hey, I warned you that Putin "was always ruthless"."

Terrorism expert and International security professor at Northeastern University Max Abrahms blasted Obama’s answer as “self-serving revisionist history.”

“Watch Obama’s self-serving revisionist history of how his administration responded the last time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014,” Abrahms wrote.

That's the B.O. M.O.

"Go start your own platform"

Reuters: "Elon Musk's arrival stirs fears among some Twitter employees."

Good.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly

Reason: "Why Is Facebook Censoring Articles About How BLM Used Donations To Buy a $6 Million House?" - "It's unclear why an opulent 6,500-square-foot $6 million mansion is needed to end police brutality and bring about racial justice for black Americans."  

Shut up, they explained

National Review: "Psaki Refuses to Explain Why Biden Wrote College Recommendation Letter for Chinese Businessman’s Son." 

It was during the time he was driving an 18-wheeler while teaching a class at UPenn.

Keep up the fight, libs. Don't stop now.

Legal Insurrection: "Media In Sync Trots out ‘QAnon,’ ‘Red Scare’ Cards to Attack Parents Rights Movement" - "Questioning SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing record towards child sex predators and championing Florida’s new parental rights law is supposed evidence of the GOP ginning up a modern-day version of the “red scare,” wrote Washington Post “reporter” Philip Bump." 

The horror, the horror

Babylon Bee: "Twitter Workers Worried Elon Musk Will Turn Their Free Speech Platform Into Platform That Allows Free Speech."

Biden wonders: "How can I diminish my Presidency any further?"

PJ Media: "Biden Presses Panic Button, Invites Obama to White House."

This is just sad.

Update - Called it.  Totally called it.

Called it, part 2: "If Obama thought that he was going to make Joe Biden look better by his visit, his appearance may have had the opposite effect."  Just painful to watch.

So this grift is still going on

Hot Air: "BLM used donations to buy a $6 million house in southern California." 

Washington Post: We done screwed up

Finally - finally - the mainstream media is awakening to the fact that they have a credibility problem and part of it traces back to their suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story: "Washington Post editorial board admits Hunter Biden story is a 'reckoning' for media."

"For now, what’s more compelling than the assorted accusations about the Bidens’ behavior is this question: Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now? When the New York Post published its blockbuster exclusive on the contents of a laptop said to have been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, mainstream media organizations balked at running with the same narrative. Social media sites displayed even greater caution," the editorial board wrote.

"Greater caution" meant that Twitter completely threw the NY Post off their platform.

"This series of events has prompted allegations of a coverup, or at best a double standard in the treatment of conservative and liberal politicians by mainstream media and social media sites," it wrote.

Here comes the great awakening where the mainstream media asks "Are we the baddies?"

Yes, yes you are, and you've squandered the public's trust in pursuit of your preferred narrative. 

I'm reminded of this quote from the 2003 movie "Shattered Glass" about when the magazine The New Republic discovered that one of their reporters had just invented stories out of thin air:

Chuck Lane: "Caitlin, when this thing blows, there isn't going to be a magazine anymore. If you want to make this about Mike, make it about Mike. I don't give a shit. You can resent me, you can hate me, but come Monday morning, we're all going to have to answer for what we let happen here. We're all going to have an apology to make! Jesus Christ! Don't you have any idea how much shit we're about to eat? Every competitor we ever took a shot at, they're going to pounce. And they should. Because we blew it, Caitlin. He handed us fiction after fiction and we printed them all as fact. Just because... we found him "entertaining." It's indefensible. Don't you know that?"

The mainstream media blew it.  But will they be able to repair the breach?  Somehow I think it's going to require razing the whole structure to the ground and rebuilding from the ground up.

Voting with their feet

Well, this is an interesting graph, h/t Power Line:

Reposting with clarified graph of the states pic.twitter.com/M1ykv8hr18

— Daniel Clifton (@DanCliftonStrat) March 29, 2022

I honestly don't understand how people live in California. 

Clown nose on, clown nose off

Andrew Sullivan: "The Problem With Jon Stewart - How painfully, cringingly super-woke must a comedian get to stay relevant?" 

Layers of fact-checkers

Ace: "Media All This Week: TRUMP MUST EXPLAIN "MISSING 7 1/2 HOURS OF PHONE RECORDS" ON JANUARY; DELETION OF RECORDS RECALLS WATERGATE

Media Today: Oops Nevermind the Records Are All There."

The media went full tilt with THE NEXT WATERGATE! and doing the bare minimum of actual journalism had to take a backseat to this MAJOR SCOOP.

Meanwhile, it took the NY Times and Washington Post a year-and-a-half to confirm that Hunter Biden's laptop was real because they didn't want to be too hasty.