The Biden administration banned children from submitting Easter eggs with religious themes for its 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art contest.The competition, which is part of the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll, explicitly stipulated that egg designs not feature any “religious symbols” on the Christian holiday.
The tempest over Ms. McDaniel suggests the press is preparing to make the same mistake again. This is bad for the country, but it’s even worse for the press, which still doesn’t understand why it is so mistrusted.
Paying more than the bottom 70% is what Democrats call "not paying their fair share." In any case, Biden's claim about billionaires paying an 8% rate is a lie which he has been repeated for three years despite fact checks from every major news outlet pointing out that this is very misleading. In all, he's made this dishonest claim more than 30 times.
For YEARS you have falsely claimed that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia. You spent years attacking people who didn't agree with your dangerous conspiracy theory. You can sit down.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 26, 2024
Americans are desperate for a fundamentally different, fairer kind of economy, and Mr. Biden is working to give them one. The urgent challenge, politically, is helping voters understand that.
It's important to keep in mind that if you're someone interested in maintaining Social Security as a functioning program, the real threat isn't from proposed changes but from doing nothing. The trustees that oversee Social Security estimate that benefits will be cut by 23 percent starting in 2033, with further cuts needed in future years, unless policymakers make changes to the program's fundamental math."Virtually every serious person who works on Social Security policy knows the eligibility age must eventually rise higher," Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and expert on the broken math that is pushing America's entitlement programs into a death spiral, told Reason. "That said, partisan reform blueprints only attract partisan demagoguery and poison the well for reform."
Unhappy news for Americans: The United States is no longer among the 20 happiest countries in the world, according to new data from Gallup and its partners.In the newly released 2024 World Happiness Report, the U.S. dropped out of the top 20 on the list for the first time in the report's 12-year history. The U.S. now ranks at No. 23, compared to No. 15 last year.
Q Thanks, Karine. Yeah. When will the President hold another news conference so we can ask a question of him without having helicopter noise or jet noise in the background?MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I don’t have anything to preview — to share. Obviously, the President — the President, as you just say- — as you were just saying, the President takes questions pretty regularly, enjoys having engagement with all of you.I don’t have a press conference to lay out for you at this time.Q But is there — is there talk of one?MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I don’t have anything for you.
Reason: "Seattle Law Mandating Higher Delivery Driver Pay Is a Disaster - Just two weeks after the law went into effect, Seattleites had to contend with $26 coffees and $32 sandwiches."
In other words, while the ordinance theoretically raises driver earnings to over $26 per hour—a number that ironically far exceeds Seattle's $19.97 standard minimum wage—drivers are barely logging any hours as a result of the drastic decrease in demand for food delivery. As one Seattle driver summarized: "It was dead. Demand was dead." A second driver put it more bluntly: "I've got nothin'. I'm not gonna sit here for hours for one frickin' order."
Great job, Seattle. But good intentions, amirite?
All of this has, I believe, encouraged Biden and his officials to stake out a firm position opposing cuts to America’s social safety net — indeed, calling for increased benefits, to be paid for with increased taxes on corporations and high-income individuals.
Because Social Security benefits are tied to the amount of earnings on which taxes are paid, however, some of that increase in revenues would be offset by additional benefits paid to people with earnings above the maximum taxable amount under current law.
The first alternative, which would increase the taxable share of earnings from jobs covered by Social Security to 90 percent, would delay the exhaustion of the combined trust funds by 4 years, until calendar year 2037. The second alternative, which would apply the 12.4 percent payroll tax to earnings over $250,000, would delay the exhaustion of the combined trust funds by 13 years, until calendar year 2046.
Biden has seen no State of the Union poll bump yet. In fact, today's updated approval rating average is a new all-time lowhttps://t.co/hBrpbNmo7Q pic.twitter.com/kDP2Fc4xjK
— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) March 12, 2024
When Hur asked the president about the classified papers in his possession, the president contended that he “had no purpose for them, and I think it would be inappropriate for me to keep clearly classified documents.” But Hur, in his prepared testimony for Congress, says: “We also identified other recorded conversations during which Mr. Biden read classified information aloud to his ghostwriter.”
Q Mr. President, why did you share classified information with your ghostwriter?THE PRESIDENT: I did not share classified information. I did not share it.Q With your ghostwriter?THE PRESIDENT: With my ghostwriter, I did not. Guarantee you, I did not. What the —Q But the special counsel said that —THE PRESIDENT: Well, no, they did not say that.Q Okay.THE PRESIDENT: He did not say that.
"During her transcribed interview, Ms. Dehmlow revealed that the same FBI personnel who were warning social media companies about a potential Russian 'hack and leak' operation in the lead-up to the 2020 election knew that the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was not Russian disinformation," the letter reads."After the New York Post published a story based on the contents of the laptop about Biden family influence peddling, the FBI made the institutional decision to refuse to answer direct questions from social media companies about the laptop's authenticity," the letter adds.IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, an IRS agent with years of experience on the Hunter Biden tax case, testified to the House Ways and Means Committee last year that the FBI verified the authenticity of the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop in November 2019.
Let me get this straight. The President wants to use American taxpayer dollars to build a port in Gaza, and we won't even be getting back the six American hostages still being held there.
— Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) March 8, 2024
I now understand the meaning of Two State Solution.
The 2 states are Michigan & Minnesota.
The president, 81, made the awkward comment about the Jewish state’s head of government while mingling with lawmakers following his State of the Union address — asking Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) to keep what he said confidential.“I told him, ‘Bibi’ — and don’t repeat this, but [I said] ‘You and I are going to have a come to Jesus—’,” Biden began as an aide rushed over to stop him from saying more, exclaiming “Sir!” and whispering in his ear.“I’m on a hot mic here,” Biden said out loud after the aide conveyed his message, adding sarcastically, “Good. That was good.”
I’m not edumacated on military matters but I would imagine sticking US troops right on the beaches of Gaza to do construction work smack in the middle of a hot Middle East conflict is A PRETTY BAD IDEA JUST AN AWFUL STUPID RECIPE FOR DISASTER BUT OH WELL MICHIGAN MUSLIMS ARE MAD
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) March 7, 2024
Joe Biden is getting desperate, and when people are desperate they do especially stupid things.In a move that should worry everybody, Biden's war on "shrinkflation" and "corporate greed" has him inching toward a regime of price controls.
The wave of shrinkflation came in response to the rise in inflation the country experienced starting in 2021. I am baffled that the president would make such a big deal out of it now. The administration has been trying to fool voters into conflating the fact that inflation has tempered with the idea that prices are basically back to normal. It's not the case. While inflation has declined, the price of food is up by 20 percent on average since February 2021. Chicken and bread are up 25 percent, and rents are still mightily elevated.These higher prices explain why voters continue to express plenty of frustration about the economy despite low unemployment, positive economic growth, and rising wages.
JUST IN: #SCOTUS sets unusual, short-notice opinion release for Monday morning. Appears to signal that ruling on Trump ballot eligibility is looming. Earlier:https://t.co/tWUv8rxpsX
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) March 3, 2024
I'm sticking with my original prediction that this will be an 8-1 decision with always-wrong Sonia Sotomayor beclowning herself again.
If you dig into the crosstabs of the NYT-Siena poll you’ll find that there are a bunch of questions they haven’t yet released the answers to but will (I’m guessing) on subsequent days to keep their poll generating new news. I’m guessing those unreleased numbers have to do with perceptions of Biden and Trump on matters of age, competence, and criminality. And given that the results in this poll dovetail pretty well with the recent NBC News poll released three weeks ago, the age response is likely to be devastating for Biden.
Well, the question is what “we want to do related to speech.” If it involves blacklisting, throttling, deplatforming, and bans, it most certainly does raise questions of censorship. Free speech is now portrayed as an existential threat to the country as opposed to the very thing that defines us as a free people.McQuade captures the theoretical divide over free speech, though she is clearly voicing a view that is increasingly popular among law professors. She advances views of free speech that I have discussed in prior academic writings and the new book as “functionalist.” These views allow for greater trade offs between free speech and overriding social or political priorities.
Q Mr. President — Mr. President, you’re heading to the border on Thursday. Why go to the border now, Mr. President? You’re going on Thursday. Why go now?THE PRESIDENT: I’ve been planning to go Thursday.
Attorney Richard Rice later asked Bradley if he makes a habit of passing on "lies about your friends.""Do you tell lies about your friends? About a case of national importance?" Rice asked."I could have had, I don't know," Bradley responded.
And, you know, standing here in front of this portrait of the man behind me here, he — he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right. He said, “We — the better angels” — he said, “We must address the counsel — and adjust the better angels of our nature.” And we do the — and we do well to remember what else he said. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends.” This is in the middle of — this is in the — in the part of the Civil War. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends. We must not be enemies.”
That’s not the story @AP and your fear or lack of offending Lord know who or complete lack of news judgment of putting in the headline what the story is underscores why Americans' distrust in my profession has plummeted to a whopping 68% in the most recent Gallup survey. https://t.co/TN1bXgSJlD
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) February 25, 2024
On the menu today: No, it’s not the biggest deal in the world to hear that President Biden now uses notecards when giving remarks and answering questions at his closed-door, high-dollar campaign fundraisers. But considering how rarely the American public gets to hear Biden give off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks of any length and substance in any other venue, it’s an indication that Biden really is notecard- and teleprompter-dependent now. This means the usual advice that the president needs to get out there, interact with voters more, and make the case for himself and his policies is akin to asking him to demonstrate gymnastics or run a marathon. The guy just can’t do it anymore. And the White House would have you believe that he can keep going at it for another four to five years or so.
Golly, I wonder why consumers have negative views about the economy. pic.twitter.com/XuvywfiiT4
— Michael R. Strain (@MichaelRStrain) February 21, 2024
Here's what I'd propose. Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with “non-friendly” sources. “Non-friendly” doesn't mean hostile: nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great. A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journalistic perspectives.
They can’t say they simply hadn’t noticed Biden’s yearslong decline. No, that’d make it look as if they are bad at their jobs. Imagine that: a White House reporter who hadn’t noticed until recently that the president of the United States has struggled for his entire presidency, and even before then, to express a coherent thought.They can’t say they ignored the issue for political convenience. That would give the game away.Aha! They can tell someone such as Byers, anonymously of course, that they’ve struggled to cover the issue that everyone else has noticed and asked about since even before 2020 because — wait for it — they are just too damn conscientious.
Here’s the report’s biggest revelation: Biden held on to classified top-secret national-security documents after he left the vice-presidency, and he did it intentionally. This was no accident. Biden had those documents for this specific reason: He believed he had been right on American policy in Afghanistan (and that President Barack Obama had been wrong), and he wanted to paint himself as the visionary hero (and Obama as the heel) in the historical narrative. That’s why Biden shared some of their contents with his ghostwriter — though Hur acknowledges that Biden may have disclosed that classified information inadvertently, citing Biden’s “lapses in attention and vigilance.”Here’s the single most important piece of evidence in Hur’s report: In a recording made by the ghostwriter in February 2017 — a month after Biden left the vice-presidency — Biden says he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” That, folks, is the needle-scratch moment. Up until last week, the party line has essentially been, “Hey, classified documents are strewn all around the White House, a bunch of boxes got moved around, transition is chaotic, documents end up in various places; big mistake, whoops, sorry.” Now we know that’s untrue.
Between the United States and Russia, one country just arbitrarily seized the assets of an oligarch opposed to the regime, and is trying to jail him
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) February 16, 2024
The other country is Russia
Is there anything that Dementia Joe won't lie about? When I said "things will only get worse for Biden" I meant stuff like this: the Administration will fight against release of the Hur transcripts and it will only look like they're hiding something.
Because they are.
NBC News: "Biden attacked Hur for asking him when Beau died. That didn't happen, sources say."
President Joe Biden lashed out at Robert Hur last week over one particular line in the special counsel's report on his handling of classified documents: that Biden "did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died."
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters in an impromptu White House press conference. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
But Hur never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Hur’s five-hour interview with the president over two days last October. It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death, they said.
The fact that it was Dementia Joe who bought up Beau is very on-brand for Biden who uses his son as a shield whenever he gets caught in a tough situation. The transcripts and/or audio tapes will demonstrate Biden's confusion, therefore they must never see the light of day.
Still, releasing it at all was Garland’s decision, noted Barr’s former deputy, Rod Rosenstein, particularly because Hur recommended no charges against anyone involved. Rosenstein noted that prosecutors regularly write documents explaining their decisions not to bring charges. And those documents are typically kept secret.“Rob Hur didn’t issue a public report,” Rosenstein said. “He wrote a confidential internal memo. Attorney General Garland made the decision to release it.”
The president has to reassure and build confidence with the public by doing things that he has so far been unwilling to do convincingly. He needs to be out campaigning with voters far more in unrehearsed interactions. He could undertake more town hall meetings in communities and on national television. He should hold regular news conferences to demonstrate his command of and direction for leading the country.
When 2,529 people were offered a free subscription to their local newspapers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer, only forty-four accepted—less than 2 percent—according to an academic study set to be published this year in the American Journal of Political Science.
One returned an invitation to subscribe to the Post-Gazette with a message: “[t]he P-G is an awful newspaper run by horrible bigoted people.” Other comments collected from the social platforms read: “no thanks! Fake News” and “GOTTA BE BAD FOR THE MEDIA WHEN YOU CAN’T GIVE THE CRAP AWAY.”
Man Ruled Too Senile To Stand Trial Still Fine To Run Country https://t.co/vFcfq36IwW pic.twitter.com/CY4EFh8a8F
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 8, 2024
THE PRESIDENT: Folks, you’re going to ask me questions. Hang on a second. I’m going to be back on Thursday, and I don’t want to prejudice what may be going on in negotiations now, so I’m not going to be answering any questions on this.I’ll be back Thursday to stand here with you and answer all the questions you want about this issue.
Biden Touts Productive Climate Change Meeting With French Leader Napoleon Bonaparte https://t.co/nO7INuKYtu pic.twitter.com/uTQ435IrYs
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 6, 2024
The key problem with the border-security bill is that it required congressional Republicans to trust Joe Biden to take a wide range of actions to deter illegal immigration in the final year of his term, when he has done so little to do so during the first three years of his term.....There is little evidence that Joe Biden worries about high levels of illegal immigration per se. Joe Biden worries about the political fallout from high levels of illegal immigration, or more specifically, the political fallout from the perception that Biden can’t or won’t do anything about high levels of illegal immigration. Congressional Republican skeptics concluded that even if Biden were given what he wanted in this deal, Biden’s goal would be to change the perception of the insecure border, not change the facts of the insecure border.
President Joe Biden will again skip a pregame Super Bowl interview embraced by recent presidents as an annual tradition.Presidents have traditionally sought to leverage the marquee football event’s broad viewership, making Biden’s decision particularly notable in an election year.
This is Ringo and he loves to swim
— theworldofdog (@theworldofdog) February 1, 2024
(ringo.swims.a.lot IG) pic.twitter.com/1v5vRfw0uZ
Seven years later, that visual of immigrants living in a government building in Boston became a reality when dozens of migrants had to sleep on the floors of a baggage claim area at Boston Logan International Airport. The untenable situation, coupled with a crisis of emergency shelter locations across the state, forced Governor Maura Healey to convert the Melnea Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury, a state-owned facility, into a temporary overflow shelter to accommodate up to 100 homeless families, including migrants.The move prompted mixed reactions in Roxbury, where some people protested outside the recreational complex with signs that read “Boston’s full” and “Why Roxbury? Try Wellesley!” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu initially expressed disappointment over Healey’s decision to use the facility in Roxbury, a predominantly Black neighborhood, in light of the area’s history of economic disadvantages. “For the first community where this is being proposed to be Roxbury, a community that over so many decades has faced disinvestment, redlining, disproportionate outcomes. It’s very painful, and it’s painfully familiar,” Wu said on a radio show on Monday.
