The media meets its Hunter’s Notebook moment — after years of denying the obvious, even dissemblers like CNN have had to concede what we knew all along

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A movie ends its run

"At the end of the day, Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting," Chuck Todd of NBC News admitted. "And there were no clips tonight. Right? This was—you saw before your eyes."

All those bogus stories like “the real Joe Biden, in private, in the Oval Office, is the sharpest mind in the room” flew in the face of reality, denied what everyone could see, but the media (tried to) feed the public stories of “fake videos”, and outright assertions that “there’s nothing to see here”. Last night, that all came to a stumbling, gasping halt.

Biden’s disastrous debate pitches his reelection bid into crisis

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency.

It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta to stand eight feet from ex-President Donald Trump at what may turn into the most fateful presidential debate in history.

Objectively, Biden produced the weakest performance since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon started the tradition of televised debates in 1960 — then, as on Thursday, in a television studio with no audience.

Minutes into the showdown, hosted by CNN, a full-blown Democratic panic was underway at the idea of heading into the election with such a diminished figure at the top of the ticket.

Biden’s chief debate coach, Ron Klain, famously argues that “while you can lose a debate at any time, you can only win it in the first 30 minutes.” By that standard, the president’s showing was devastating. The tone of the evening was set well before the half hour.

>>>>

Biden’s voice was weak, at times reduced to a whisper. Early on, the president’s answers drifted into incoherence. He missed openings to jab Trump on abortion — the top Democratic talking point — and meandered into highlighting his own biggest political liability, immigration. “We finally beat Medicare,” Biden said at one point, lapsing into confused silence. It was the kind of debate gaffe that Democrats had hoped to avoid. Worse, while Trump spoke, Biden often watched, his mouth gaping open, exacerbating an impression of a president cruelly diminished. His bravura battering of Trump in a debate four years ago was a distant memory.

To see a president struggle before millions of people watching on television all around the world was tough to see. As a matter of humanity, the personification of the ravages of age that await everyone was painful. Biden’s campaign revealed during the debate that he had been suffering from a cold. But by that time, the damage had already been done.

Biden had entered the debate facing a somber test — to prove to the majority of Americans who believe he is too old to serve that he is vital, energetic and up to fulfilling his duties in a second term that would end when he is 86. Instead, the president ended up validating those fears and potentially convincing many more voters that his faculties have decayed. The stumbling performance raised questions about the strategic choice Biden’s campaign made in pushing for a debate with Trump. It also completely undercut attempts by the White House and the campaign to talk up Biden’s heartiness behind the scenes. Memories of the president’s barnstorming State of the Union address in March, when he put many fears about his age to rest, have now been obliterated.

‘Painful’

Often, presidential debates are remembered for visual moments that become embedded in the collective public consciousness in subsequent days. Troublingly for Biden, a viewer only paying attention to visual clues would surely have formed the impression that Trump was the more robust personality. And the history of presidential elections suggests that the candidate who seems strong often beats the one who is weak.

“It’s painful. I love Joe Biden,” said Van Jones, a CNN political commentator. “He’s a good man, he loves his country, he’s doing the best that he can. But he had a chance … tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base and he failed to do that. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to want to see him take a different course now.”

Not really germaine, but it is revealing, and pretty damn funny:

"Look, there’s so many young women who have been—including a young woman who just was murdered," Biden said. "The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that. But here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their in-laws, by their spouses, brothers and sisters."

Jesus wept.

So, I watched the debate on my computer ... (Updating as I go along)

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My take: I thought the moderators were fine — color me astonished. Biden looked awful, sounded worse. Trump came across as presidential, Joe came across as … Joe.

UPDATE: This funny; scary, but funny

When you’ve lost the NYT ….

Good Lord, he’s even lost NBC!

'Babbling' and 'hoarse': Biden's debate performance sends Democrats into a panic

ATLANTA — President Joe Biden was supposed to put the nation’s mind at ease over his physical and mental capacity with his debate showing Thursday night. 

But from the onset of the debate, the 81-year-old struggled seemingly even to talk, mostly summoning a weak, raspy voice. In the opening minutes, the president repeatedly tripped over his words, misspoke and lost his train of thought.  

In one of the most notable moments, Biden ended a rambling statement that lacked focus by saying, “We finally beat Medicare,” before moderators cut him off and transitioned back to Trump. 

While Biden warmed up and gained more of a rhythm as the debate progressed, he struggled to land a punch against Trump. 

Trump — unleashing a torrent of bad information — didn’t hesitate to pounce on Biden, saying at one point that he didn’t understand what Biden had just said with regard to the border. 

“I don’t know if he knows what he said either,” Trump said.   

Nearly an hour into the debate, a Biden aide and others familiar with his situation offered up an explanation for the president’s hoarseness: He has a cold.

Even the Biden campaign acknowledged that the debate would be a critical moment in the election, with officials hoping it could shake up the race to the president’s benefit. Most polls have found the race to be neck and neck, a razor-thin margin that has remained unchanged for months, even after a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. 

Questions about Biden’s age and frailty have dragged down his polling numbers for months. The public concerns are exacerbated by deceptively edited videos, some of which have gone viral, that cut off relevant portions of an event, making it appear as if Biden is wandering or confused. This was Biden’s first opportunity — since the State of the Union speech — to dispel that narrative. 

Instead of a new beginning, many Democrats saw it as a moment for panic. 

“Democrats just committed collective suicide,” said one party strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “Biden sounds hoarse, looks tired and is babbling. He is reaffirming everything voters already perceived. President Biden can’t win. This debate is a nail in the political coffin.“ 

This didn’t go well:

See new posts

22:55

Senior Democratic figures 'having conversations' about 'should we ask the president to step aside'

John King of CNN reports:

Right now as we speak there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic party. It started moments into the debate and it continues right ow. It involves strategists, party officials and fundraisers, and they are having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal.

They're having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations involve should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside. Others are about should prominent Democrats go public with that call, because this debate was so terrible,

We give up: have at it, thugs

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Another 80 Pro-Palestinian Protesters Have the Charges Against Them Dropped

Rick Moran, PJ Media:

It appears that criminal trespassing in the United States has been taken off the books. 

Ten days ago, a Manhattan prosecutor dismissed charges against 31 pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall on Columbia University's campus. Their lack of criminal history and the “extremely limited video and security footage” available to prosecutors resulted in the release of the protesters.

"All these matters are dismissed and sealed in the interest of justice," Judge Kevin McGrath announced in the courtroom.

Some justice.

On Wednesday, a prosecutor in Travis County, Texas, dismissed similar charges against 80 protesters. Delia Garza, a Democrat who is the elected attorney for Travis County, "determined it couldn’t meet the legal burden to prove the cases beyond a reasonable doubt," according to the Associated Press.

What's happening? The reason prosecutors are dropping the charges is that radical law firms would have represented the protesters, which would have made prosecuting the offenders a nightmare. They could have tied up the courts for weeks, even months, until the DA would have dropped the charges out of exasperation. [I’ll disagree here, partially — the prosecutors are on the side of the protestors, and wouldn’t pursue charges against them even if there were no defense lawyers threatening to clog the court dockets — FWIW]

Lawfare by any other name.

The UT protests were even more disruptive and violent than the demonstrations at Columbia.

On April 29 at UT, officers in riot gear encircled about 100 sitting protesters, dragging or carrying them out one by one amid screams. Another group of demonstrators trapped police and a van full of arrestees between buildings, creating a mass of bodies pushing and shoving. Officers used pepper spray and flash-bang devices to clear the crowd.

The university said in a statement at the time that many of the protesters weren’t affiliated with the school and that encampments were prohibited on the campus in the state capital. The school also alleged that some demonstrators were “physically and verbally combative” with university staff, prompting officials to call law enforcement. The Texas Department of Public Safety said arrests were made at the behest of the university and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

So: Arson, if done for the approved cause, is legal, as is shoplifting, even when conducted by flash mobs of dozens of thieves; beatings of bystanders is acceptable and won’t be prosecuted, so long as the beatings are administered by ANTIFA mobs; closing down interstate highways and bridges, if done for the “proper” cause — there are many of them; subway fare-beaters are ignored; open drug use and using public sidewalks as toilets is encouraged in the first casortland and Seattle. We can now add criminal trespass and vandalism to the exempted class.

Have I mentioned that we no longer deport illegal aliens, and in fact, pay to fly them in here?

None of this bodes well for the nation.

Biden is released from the basement, greets the Democrat's favorite election-denier, one loser to another

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i like how they identify him for those of us who may have forgotten what he looks like after all his time away

And his handlers have equipped him with new bouncy shoes: glued to the floor, leg braces hidden under his baggy-legged pantaloons, he may just manage to stay upright for the full 90-minute debate tonight.

I'm completely baffled (Updated)

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37 Rockwood Lane, 1 acre in the R-2 zone (so maximum FAR 3,900 sq.ft.) was listed in May at $2.250 million, a price that seemed to me to be entirely appropriate, and has been snapped up for $3.105 million.

Go figure.

UPDATE: A reader has pointed out another sale right around the corner from 37 — 80 Rockwood Lane, which sold for $2.730 million in 2020, was put on the market this past March at $3.495 and sold for $4.2. No. 80 is on 2.28 acres, compared to No. 37’s 1, so it has twice the allowable FAR footage for a new structure (which is apparently the plan: the property was listed as a rental yesterday, presumably in anticipation of the 1-2 years it will take to get a new build through our regulatory process). Even so, it seems that 37’s sales price isn’t the surprising number I’d thought it was. Sheesh.

(Another update): 18 Rockwood Lane Spur, 1.68 acres, was listed @ $2.595 last fall and sold for $2.910 million. It, too, has now been rented out, so I can only conclude that the new normal for building lots in this neighborhood is approx. $3 million.

That would indicate, to me, that Rockwood Lane is being transformed into a neighborhood of $10 million homes — that’s quite a jump from what so recently saw a range for new homes of between $6 and $7 million.

18 Rockwood Lane Spur

However many illegal aliens Biden has and will let in, they and all who came before them aren't leaving.

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back to africa? Not hardly

As Britain is discovering,

Britain Spent Millions to Send Migrants to Africa. So Far, Just Two Have Gone.

Two years ago, the British government decided to spend big to outsource a migration problem.

To deter migrants seeking asylum from illegally entering the country, it announced a radical plan: Those smuggled on makeshift dinghies to British shores would be sent to Rwanda, a small country in central Africa, where they would remain. The U.K. government handed Rwanda a £120 million (about $150 million) down payment and told it to get ready to host thousands of potential refugees.

Shortly after, Hope Hostel, a neatly kept yellow-fronted hotel in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, was rented out with British taxpayer funds to accommodate the expected planeloads of asylum seekers. Hotel manager Ismael Bakina and his team of 40 have been keeping busy ever since, changing the sheets on 100 double beds weekly, trimming decorative pot shapes into the bushes that adorn the hotel’s entrance and mowing the lawn on its mini-soccer pitch.

But on a recent day the beds at Hope Hostel were untouched. The suggestion box at the reception desk sat empty. No one has yet come to stay. “We are still waiting,” Bakina said, standing near a sign that reads: “Come as a guest, leave as a friend.”

No one may ever arrive. The U.K. government’s plan—criticized by some as inhumane, praised by others as a pragmatic response to a global migration crisis—has faced logistical, political and legal hurdles. So far, it’s been a huge waste of money. Just two migrants have volunteered to go to Rwanda after being paid £3,000 by the British state.

The U.S. will never tolerate the rounding up of these “newcomers: and shipping them back against their will — I have no problem with such a mass deportation, but between the courts, the Left, and even some soft-hearted conaservatives, it’s not gonna happen.

Which the Left knows, and has intended all along.

Not that there's much of England left to save, but this won't help

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I haven’t been following England — why would I? — but this caught my eye: the Extinction Now people appear to have won, and their goal of extinction is on the cusp of success.

Election spells end of North Sea as Labour policies doom oil industry

Starmer victory would prompt operators to give up on British waters, warn analysts

The looming early election threatens the end of the North Sea oil industry, according to experts, with Labour’s threat to extend the Government’s windfall levy set to hasten the sector’s decline.

Analysts said a likely victory for Sir Keir Starmer would prompt operators to give up on British waters, meaning some of Britain’s biggest oil and gas reserves may never be recovered.

“If Labour deliver on their promises, the UK continental shelf is finished,” said Ashley Kelty, research director at Panmure Gordon, a leading investment bank.

The future of the North Sea oil industry was thrown into doubt in 2022 when the Government imposed a windfall levy on the profits from oil and gas production that took total tax to an eye-watering 75pc.

Labour has pledged to add another 3pc, along with banning new drilling and, perhaps most damaging of all, stripping offshore companies of the tax breaks they get when investing in new fields. The plans were confirmed by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves at a meeting last week.

How does a manufacture compete when its energy costs are 10X greater than competitors in other countries? The U.S. might wonder the same thing, because Biden et als are hoping to even the playing field by matching England’s and Europe’s prices. China, and the rest of the coal burners in Asia must be delighted.

...Britain has been going down this path since 2008, when Parliament wrote an 80 percent decarbonization target into law, which it raised to 100 percent, or net zero, in 2019. This luxury net-zero policy, which only the rich can afford, has been devastating for both businesses and ordinary Britons just trying to heat their homes and get to work.

...In 2020, even before the recent surge in energy costs, everyday Britons were paying about 75 percent more for electricity than Americans, the result of a double whammy—cap-and-trade policies on the one hand and renewable subsidies on the other. And then came the Ukraine shock. During the 2022 energy crisis, electricity rates for British businesses were more than double the average paid by U.S. businesses.

In Britain, the impact of cap-and-trade on the cost of fuel to generate electricity is massive. In 2022, government-imposed carbon costs averaged $128 per megawatt hour (MWh) for coal-generated electricity and $51 per MWh for natural gas. Those costs are on top of actual fuel costs, which averaged $150 per MWh for electricity generated from coal and $160 per MWh for natural gas. These mean that it cost $278 to generate 1 MWh of electricity from coal and $211 from natural gas.

...So in the U.S., the fuel cost per MWh of electricity generated from coal was $27 per MWh (versus $278 in Britain) and $61 per MWh for natural gas (versus $211 in Britain).

Britons also have to pay the cost of subsidizing politically favored wind and solar. Analysis of the renewable portfolios of Britain’s Big Six energy companies shows that the average price for wind- and solar-generated electricity between 2009 and 2020 was well over £100 per MWh, whereas the price for reliable electricity from gas- and coal-fired power stations fell from £60 per MWh in 2013 to less than £50 per MWh in 2020.

I'll admit that I'm somewhat ambivalent about Tucker Carlson, but he's priceless here

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Twitchy is right:

Love him or hate him, but you, dear readers, are going to LOVE this clip of Tucker Carlson laying absolute waste to an Australian 'journalist' who asked him the most absurd interview questions this writer has heard in a long time. And we listen to the nonsense that comes from Democrats for a living here.

Watch, it's totally worth the near 6 minutes:

REPORTER: So you talked a little bit about immigration, and in the past, you've talked about how white Australians, Americans, and Europeans, are being replaced by non-white immigrants in what is often referred to as the great replacement theory. 

CARLSON: Have I said whites have been replaced? 

REPORTER: Well...

CARLSON: I don't think I've said that.

REPORTER: Well, it's been mentioned on your show 4,000 times, and...

CARLSON: Really, when did I say that? I've said whites are being replaced?

REPORTER: You have said that before. Yeah.

CARLSON: Really? I would challenge you to cite that because I'm pretty sure I haven't said that. I said native-born Americans are being replaced, including blacks. 

REPORTER: Native-born Americans? 

CARLSON: Native-born Americans, Americans like black Americans, African Americans have been in the United States, in many cases, their families for over 400 years, and their concerns are every bit as real and valid and alive to me as the concerns of white people whose families have been there 400 years. I've never said whites are being replaced, not one time, and you can't cite it so..

REPORTER: I believe that's untrue...

CARLSON: We've just met, but when our relationship starts with a lie, it makes it tough to be friends. 

REPORTER: Well, you've been lying about (inaudible)...

CARLSON: You actually can't cite it because I didn't say it.

What you just witnessed is my favorite tactic for dealing with dishonest journalists. To put it simply, never accept their premises. Remember, we are often talking about pampered trust-fund kids when it comes to modern reporters. They don't like to work, and they see their job as making headlines, not news. In other words, they are lazy, and they will very often make an allegation based on something they've read on social media without ever verifying it themselves. 

Has that reporter actually watched thousands of episodes of Carlson's show to know "white" replacement has been brought up "4,000 times?" Of course, she hasn't. In this instance, she was repeating a stereotype and one that just so happened to be false. Carlson could have gotten defensive and attempted to defend the ground she laid out. Instead, he pulled the rug out from under her, challenging her to cite where he's ever said "white people" are being replaced. That left her stammering and unable. 

At that point, he had already won the exchange in the first minute. He wasn't done, though. After explaining his actual position, the reporter then circled back to the so-called "replacement theory," claiming it has inspired mass shooters. 

CARLSON: How about no more lying in your questions and then I'll answer it. 

REPORTER: Okay, well, umm, this is the same theory, or as you say idea, that has inspired the New York Buffalo shooting where eleven black Americans were killed, two white Americans were killed...

CARLSON: Oh, God, come on...You know what I mean...

REPORTER: It's also inspired the worst, it's inspired the worst, one of the worst Australian gunman of all time 

CARLSON: How do they get people this stupid in the media? I guess it doesn't pay well. Look, I'm sorry, I've lived among people like you for too long, and I don't mean to call you stupid, maybe you're just pretending to be, but I've never, I'm totally against violence. I'm totally against the war in Ukraine, for example, which doubtless you support, and like all dutiful liberals support more carnage. I don't. I hate mass shootings, actually. 

Nothing I've said, what does it mean to inspire something? My views are not bigoted against any group, they're honest, they're factual. That's not hate. That's reality, and my views derive from my deep concerns for Americans, actually.

The reporter then sarcastically asked if Carlson's opposition to violence means he supports "gun control." That went about as well for her as you'd expect.