So the Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf is the one who stymied the FBI investigation of Joe Biden's links to Hunter Biden's deals

[Whistleblower] Shapley said that, prior to the interview with [Hunter Biden business associate Rob] Walker, “we had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.” But the whistleblower said that Delaware assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf “interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy” and stated that she did not want to ask questions about "dad."

The whistleblower said that “when multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there's no specific criminality to that line of questioning.” Shapley said, “This upset the FBI too.”

“There were multiple times where Lesley Wolf said that she didn't want to ask questions about dad,” Shapley said. “We referred to Hunter Biden's father, you know, as dad.”

Shapley quoted the Delaware prosecutor as saying, “I don't want to talk about the big guy. I don't want to ask about dad. … Don't ask about the big guy.”

Shapley said, “The IRS and FBI agents conducting this interview [of Walker] tried to skirt AUSA Wolf's direction.” He added that the FBI agent tried to get Walker to talk about the email “while not directly contradicting” the direction by Wolf not to ask about “the big guy.”

The IRS whistleblower argued that “based on guidance provided by the prosecutors on a recurring basis to not look into anything related to President Biden, there is no way of knowing if evidence of other criminal activity existed concerning Hunter Biden or President Biden.”

The whistleblower said that “in August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant” and that “the messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on.” Shapley said that “nevertheless, prosecutors denied investigators' requests to develop a strategy to look into the messages and denied investigators' suggestion to obtain location information to see where the texts were sent from.”

More.

IRS whistleblower says Hunter Biden could have been charged with failure to file or pay taxes for each of the 5 years 2015-2019 and felony tax evasion and/or filing a false return for each of the years 2014, 2018, and 2019

 Earlier this week, Biden agreed to enter guilty pleas for two misdemeanor tax charges that related to his failure to pay tax on more than $3 million in income. As part of the deal with Delaware U.S Attorney David Weiss — who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump and was kept in the position by the current administration to continue the probe —  Biden will avoid full prosecution on a separate gun possession charge. A Delaware judge must approve the agreement at a hearing currently set for July 26.

More. 

One law for me, another for thee.

Criminal head of the FBI James Comey withheld evidence of Hillary plot against Trump from his own FBI agents investigating Trump

 They all knew, except the agents. Hillary Clinton continues to be the worst person in the whole world, and all her patsies the dumbest.

What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.

That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,” and one of its recipients was then-FBI director James Comey. Oversight chair Jim Jordan asks Durham whether Comey ever bothered to share that with the agents assigned to the newly launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane or ever presented to the FISA court when applications were made for domestic surveillance of Trump campaign officials. Nope, Durham says, and explains how he found that out . . .

. . . the director of the FBI knowingly withheld evidence pertinent to an FBI investigation. That resulted not just in errors made by the agents conducting the investigation that might have resulted ending what turned out to be a witch hunt, but also contributed to misrepresentations to the FISA court about the nature of the evidence they used to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign figures. ...

Comey knew it, but made sure the agents assigned to the case did not. So did Obama, Lynch, and Biden. And yet all of these officeholders lied publicly about the nature of the rumors and innuendo consistently for months.

More.

Iowa meteorologist who was global warming apostle driven out of the profession by one e-mail stalker who was caught

WaPo tells his litany of woe, here.

Public school education in the United States continues its decades-long freefall, accelerated by pandemic closures and a system obsessed with sexual grooming

 The decline in math scores last year was the biggest in the past 50 years, according to newly released federal data. ...

The lowest-performing students scored at levels last recorded in the 1970s, when the assessment began. ...

Test results from earlier this year showed that U.S. history scores among middle schoolers are also falling — dropping to the lowest levels ever recorded since the assessment began in 1994. 

More.

Joe Biden is obviously not in charge: Calls Xi Jinping what he really is, a dictator, one day after his Secretary of State tries to soothe relations with Taiwan remarks

 Biden calls Xi 'dictator,' fueling Chinese anger... 

Blinken Tells Xi Jinping U.S. Does Not Support Taiwanese Independence, After Meeting To Quell Tension

LOL, Trumpworld catching on only now that Mark Meadows wasn't really one of them when it was obvious in 2017

 Months ago, Meadows and his lawyer severed communications with most of Trumpland ...

Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger this month offered only vagueness ...

That cryptic statement did not sit well with much of Trumpworld. In recent weeks, several lawyers and confidants had already discussed their unconfirmed suspicions with Trump that Meadows was being very useful to the feds in order to reduce Meadows’ own possible legal exposure, two other people familiar with the matter say. Both sources independently tell Rolling Stone that when the topic has come up within the past several months, Trump has at times said that he doesn’t know what Meadows is doing, adding that it would be a “shame” if the MAGAland rumors were true.     

More.

Meadows played key roles in mucking up both Obamacare repeal and immigration reform.

Trumpworld is a bunch of dimwits, and Meadows knows it better than anyone else.

LOL, Democrat named Wackerman, $400 donor to Lincoln Project, arrested for setting July 2022 "Oak Fire" in Yosemite National Park which Democrats blamed on global warming

 The so-called Oak Fire destroyed 127 homes and 66 outbuildings. Roughly 6,000 people were forced to evacuate as the inferno torched 30 square miles of land and smoke from the fire drifted more than 200 miles into parts of Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area.     

More.

Trump's Operation Warp Speed disappears into a black hole

 

Fewer than 1.7 million jabs have been administered in 2023 through May 9 in the United States, per Our World in Data.

On the Sunday grill: My May 1984 33-cent hamburger should cost 96-cents in May 2023, instead it costs $1.24

 It's nearly 30% overpriced.

The inflation-adjusted pound of ground beef over the period should cost $3.82.

I buy the good stuff, however. My burger costs $1.50, washed down with a cheap pint of Hamm's Beer for 83-cents.

I'll be back to beans and rice on Monday.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

 

Trump's greatest economy ever is simply part of the worst economy ever, now in its sixteenth year and third year of Biden

Something about some guy abandoning free market principles in order to save the free market system.

LOL Mexico soccer fans strike again, Las Vegas match called early because of Puto! chants

Things are really getting bad if you have to go to Mexico to escape the Nazis to practice the First Amendment.

 

Homophobic chants force US-Mexico soccer match to end early in Las Vegas

The United States men’s match against Mexico was cut short Thursday night by the referee after the stadium devolved into echoes of homophobic chants from Mexican soccer fans. ... Four players were ejected in a testy second half of the game, which the U.S. won 3-0 for a spot Sunday in the CONCACAF Nations League final against Canada.

Wait for it.

Trend for average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan shows an anomaly of less than +0.5 degrees F after 124 years

 Could be just a heat island effect from KGRR.

As long as you put 'em all in there and never let 'em out, I'm all for it

 

Most Oppose Construction of New $3.5 Billion FBI Headquarters

Congress went on a spending orgy since 2019 adding $8.77 trillion to the national debt and dimwits blame the Fed for being unable to control inflation

 Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Blame yourselves. You elected them.

 

The chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule.

-- Plato, Republic, I, 346f.

The Fed left the Funds Rate unchanged yesterday, and no members of the Federal Reserve Board currently anticipate a rate lower than at present through the end of the year

 They anticipate higher, but not by much, which means more rate hikes this year.

The yield curve aggregate yesterday closed just 4 basis points lower than the current cycle high of 4.674% achieved on March 8th, at 4.671%. That's the sum of the basis points for all US Treasury securities marketed yesterday divided by 13 (ranging from 1-month securities to 30-year).

To say the Fed's response to inflation has been timid would be an understatement.

In the 1980s the Fed's response to core inflation such as we experience today at 5.3% year over year was a Fed Funds Rate in excess of 10%. We're at 5.08%. The yield curve is not steppin' and fetchin' when the big dog won't bark.

This is not a serious country, and is perversely more than willing to inflict the worst tax on all, namely inflation, mostly because the whole damn economy is predicated on 2% inflation, which halves your nestegg in 35 years.

At 5% it does that in just fourteen.

It's criminal.

The price of gasoline has fallen, but only to the level of Obama-era expensive, not Trump-era cheap

 

Trump did nothing wrong with his records: He knows it and they know it, but you don't, which is just the way they want it

 When Trump actually finds a competent attorney, the attorney should immediately file to have the case dismissed based on the Jackson ruling of 2012.

But will he?

Trump’s Boxes and Clinton’s Sock Drawer

A president chooses what records to return or keep and the National Archives can’t do anything about it.

... The National Archives and Records Administration was never given the recordings. As Mr. Branch tells it, Mr. Clinton hid them in his sock drawer to keep them away from the public and took them with him when he left office.

My organization, Judicial Watch, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to NARA for the audiotapes. The agency responded that the tapes were Mr. Clinton’s personal records and therefore not subject to the Presidential Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act.

We sued in federal court and asked the judge to declare the audiotapes to be presidential records and, because they weren’t currently in NARA’s possession, compel the government to get them.

In defending NARA, the Justice Department argued that NARA doesn’t have “a duty to engage in a never-ending search for potential presidential records” that weren’t provided to NARA by the president at the end of his term. Nor, the department asserted, does the Presidential Records Act require NARA to appropriate potential presidential records forcibly. The government’s position was that Congress had decided that the president and the president alone decides what is a presidential record and what isn’t. He may take with him whatever records he chooses at the end of his term.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed: “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”

Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”

I lost because Judge Jackson concluded the government’s hands were tied. Mr. Clinton took the tapes, and no one could do anything about it.

More.

Permanently higher prices for the basics looks to be the future

 The simple egg is now 25% more expensive at Sam's Club compared with pre-Covid. I used to pay routinely $3.98 for two dozen like those shown below. Prices nationally have fallen only to the unusually high levels of 2015.

Whole chicken is up 23%, electricity 18%, and both appear to be stable or rising.

Avian flu is now only sporadic.

 

Core CPI inflation in the United States in May at 5.32% year-over-year has hardly come down from 5.58% in January

 

I remember when the orgies at the White House were at least kept indoors

 

The 47% is back

 

Nature has a self-cleansing mechanism

 

In 15 years we've gone from Obamagirl to a topless Biden girlyman at the White House

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My local utility has repriced my fixed monthly payment for natural gas and electricity for the next year

 The new price is down 30% from last year's horrendous price.

The monthly payment will now resemble the high end of normal I experienced in the years prior to the Russia-Ukraine War.

Like a boot off my neck.

Today's up-is-down headlines: UK Daily Mail v CNBC, Drudge v Real Clear

 'LOW ENERGY' TRUMP SPEECH (Drudge)

Trump Delivers Fiery Speech in Georgia: "They're Coming After You" (Real Clear Politics)

Nemesis is coming, Draco is coming

 

Lolbertarian says the worst possible thing which could happen to the economy (i.e. "to me") is higher future taxes

More self-absorbed than your average tranny.

Scott Sumner, here:

The consequence of the reckless fiscal policy will not be a financial crisis. Nor will it be a default. Even the permanent monetization of the debt is unlikely, in my view. The most likely consequence will be higher future taxes and slower economic growth. This will lead to reduced living standards. It might also push politics in a more “populist” direction, with consequences that are difficult to predict (but unlikely to be desirable.)

Trump is toast

 

Trump’s Former AG Bill Barr Lowers the Boom in Stunning Analysis on Fox News Sunday: ‘If Even Half of it is True, He is Toast’

Misunderstood survivalist and math genius Ted Kaczynski dies in prison at 81, evaded the incompetent FBI for 17 year bombing campaign against tech

 The bigoted AP Obama, here:

But once revealed as a wild-eyed hermit with long hair and beard who weathered Montana winters in a one-room shack, Kaczynski struck many as more of a pathetic loner than romantic anti-hero.

I'm proud to be an asshole from El Paso

 

One bad cracker ruins the whole barrel, girl

 

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Trump twofer: The simplest explanation is that he was saving on magazine subscription reading material and toilet paper at the same time

 

The national debt is up $457 billion since May 31st

 

Can't keep the firing squad waiting, now can we?

 

Republicans just watch while Trump gets shot in the middle of 5th Avenue

 

Bob and Doug BBQ goes slightly amiss, Canada wildfires consume the equivalent of Maryland and more

 

The Supremes still don't have the courage to void the tyrannical, unequal, racist, Northern neo-reconstructionism of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the American South

 The Supremes are not colorblind and are as reprehensible in this as any college or business using racial quotas to exclude whites and Asians in favor of less qualified people of color, and they know it.

American liberalism is nothing if not hypocritical.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.

In doing so, the court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — turned away the state’s effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.

In Thursday’s ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law.

He wrote that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power” and that the Alabama ruling “does not diminish or disregard those concerns."

The court instead “simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here,” Roberts added.

As such, the court left open future challenges to the law, with Kavanaugh writing in a separate opinion that his vote did not rule out challenges to Section 2 based on whether there is a time at which the 1965 law's authorization of the consideration of race in redistricting is no longer justified.

More.

Today's up-is-down headlines: Variety v The Hill, Drudge v Real Clear

 Tucker Takes Man Cave Rants to Social Media -- to Smaller Results... (Drudge)

First Episode of "Tucker on Twitter" Nets More Than 70 Million Views (Real Clear Politics)

 

Gold remains far more overvalued than US stocks, which is saying a lot

Gold is at least 167% overvalued relative to inflation since 1913. $600ish gold makes sense. $1600 gold does not, let alone $2067, the 2020 high.

Meanwhile stocks are off-the-charts overvalued, about 93% relative to the post-Great Depression median valuation of 81 through 2019, as of the latest GDP figures from late May.

Speculation in both gold and stocks, not to mention a host of other things, has been driven by Federal Reserve interest rate suppression since 2001.

How long elevated gold and stock prices can persist in the new higher interest rate environment is anyone's guess.

The Fed Funds rate still averaged a low 1.69% in 2022, so it's still early innings.

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May 25, 2023

Young Americans are too ignorant to blame the correct government entity for housing unaffordability for some reason

 . . . young Americans condemn their municipal and state governments for the current housing affordability problem.

More.

Quest for money overwhelms hypocritical PGA Tour as it merges with Saudi LIV Golf

 As usual that lyin' blue scumbelly Donald Trump is at the heart of this:

The agreement — the second stunning sports deal in just months, following World Wrestling Entertainment’s merger with Endeavor Group’s UFC — will require the approval of the PGA Tour policy board, Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to players that was obtained by CNBC. ...

Family members of those who perished in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have protested the league, including outside of events. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were from Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, was born in the country. It has been concluded by U.S. officials that Saudi nationals helped fund the terrorist group al-Qaeda, although investigations didn’t find that the Saudi officials were complicit in the attacks.

The group 9/11 Families United said they were “shocked and deeply offended” by the merger in a statement on Tuesday.

“Mr. Monahan talked last summer about knowing people who lost loved ones on 9/11, then wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now – as does he,” said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada, whose husband Tom died in the World Trade Center’s North Tower. “PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money – it was never to honor the great game of golf.” ...

Former President Donald Trump, who has hosted a number of LIV Golf events at his golf courses, has defended those events, falsely claiming that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11.” Last year, Trump also said on Truth Social that a merger between LIV and The PGA Tour was inevitable.

On Tuesday, Trump weighed in on the merger on his Truth Social platform: “Great news from LIV Golf. A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!”

More.

On the contrary, 365k Union dead x $7.5 million each equals $2.7375 trillion in reparations blacks owe Uncle Sam, at minimum

 

St. Matthew's School in Newfoundland, Canada, hard at work grooming the children: The agenda is pride 365

 One month is not enough.

College dropout F. Chuck Todd calls it quits at Meet The Depressed while he's still ahead

Proving yet once again that you don't need a college degree to rise to the level of your incompetence in this great country of ours.

 

The left's campaign to make sure Trump is the GOP candidate gets more incoherent by the day

 Days ago we were told Ron DeSantis is too dumb to run his own messaging and had to rely on his wife.

Now his wife is a Walmart deplorable.

I'd say they've lost their minds but they never had any to lose.

 

You'd think Trump could spell his name correctly after all that's passed between them, but why congratulate North Korean ascendancy to the WHO?

It's all just weird.

And Jimmy Carter level bad.

 

The tide is turning

 

It's the third anniversary of the $2 billion June Donald Trump did nothing about except tweet

 

I had to see it for myself because I just couldn't believe it was real, but it is

 

Magadonia is located in the tiny country of Also Ran:

 

Full time employment in May 2023 was a solid 50.47% of civilian population, similar to 2019 levels: Recession delayed

 The measure averaged 49.7% in 1Q2023, but climbed in April to 50.2% and to 50.4% now.

Full time usually peaks in the summer.

Debt ceiling compromise clears the US Senate 63-36, Republican Senators extract pledge from Chucky Schumer for more defense spending which amounts to a pig in a poke so 31 vote against it anyway

Hello, all spending bills must originate in the House.

Some Senate Republicans are pretending you don't know that.

What a joke.

 CNBC:

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of the day Thursday hammering out an agreement with a group of Senate Republicans who demanded that he pledge to support a supplemental defense funding bill before they would agree to fast-track the debt ceiling bill.

The current House debt ceiling bill provided $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 3% year over year. That figure rose to $895 billion in 2025, an increase of 1%.

But GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called this “woefully inadequate” Thursday, arguing that a 1% increase did not keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding. The solution came in the form of a rare joint statement from Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which was read on the floor.

“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats,” Schumer read. “Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds and respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance,” said Schumer.

The Hill:

The normally slow-moving chamber raced through a dozen votes in just over three hours. ...

A total of 31 Republicans voted against the measure ...

Just four Democrats voted against the measure: Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), along with Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). ...

The legislation would provide $886 billion for defense, which negotiators described as a 3 percent increase, and $637 billion for non-defense programs, according to a White House summary. ...

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said McCarthy didn’t sign off on the agreement between Senate leaders and defense-minded GOP senators. ...

Asked how confident he is about a defense supplemental spending bill passing later in the year, Thune said, “hard to say.” 

“It was important for some of our members have folks on the record acknowledging there clearly could be a need, will be a need for our national security interests,” he said.

Trump's February 2020 deal with Taliban finally pays off lol, Taliban terrorists attack Iran terrorists with US weapons Joe Biden left behind

 Taliban Fighting Iran -- With American Weapons...

 

Wants absolutely nothing to do with Labia, either

 World's first openly gay president elected in Latvia...

Suit yourself

 LIZZO: KNOCK OFF FAT TAUNTS OR I QUIT MUSIC!