Tonight: A GOP Presidential Debate

The second Republican primary debate will be hosted tonight at 9 EST by Fox Business. It will feature all the same candidates as the first one, minus Asa Hutchinson, and like the first one, minus Donald Trump. A lot of pundits are telling us what each candidate must do to “break through” or all is lost, and I can assure you that none of them know what they’re talking about. Fox News has a continually updated page with info on the debate and its participants, as well as various fun facts. You can get up to speed before it starts by checking it out here:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/gop-republican-presidential-debate

Here’s a use for AI technology that I didn’t see coming:

Someone used AI to analyze the Shroud of Turin and create a picture of the (alleged) face of Jesus.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/turin-shroud-reimagined-ai-shows-30987007

Don’t worry, we are keeping UKRAINE afloat…

If you have a small business that’s been struggling to survive everything from the COVID lockdowns to supply chain shortages to high inflation, at least you can rest assured that all those taxes you still have to pay are going for a good cause: spending millions of dollars to keep small businesses afloat in Ukraine.

https://www.westernjournal.com/uncovered-american-tax-dollars-funding-way-just-weapons-ukraine/

New 2024 poll reveals the elephant in the room

I told you yesterday about a Washington Post/ABC News poll that was disastrous for President Biden. It showed overwhelming disapproval of how he’s doing his job, and he was 10 points behind Trump in a rematch. It was so bad for Biden that WaPo must feel it’s failed in its duty to lie for Democrats and is casting aspersions on its own poll. Talk about falling on your sword, which sounds more like something Joe Biden would do.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/24/washington-post-disavows-own-poll-showing-trump-up-biden/

But to mix a metaphor or two, there’s an elephant in the room and they can’t sweep it under the rug. Another new poll, this time from NBC (!), found that 74% of Americans have concerns that Biden doesn’t have the mental or physical health to serve another term (including 59% who have “major concerns” – these are the people who’ve been paying attention.) Sixty percent are concerned that he might have been aware of his son Hunter’s shady business deals. It also found that 56% disapprove of how he’s doing his job, a career high for him.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/3-out-of-4-voters-worried-about-bidens-mental-fitness/

Worst of all for the Democrats, Biden’s approval rating is under 50% among most reliably Democratic voting blocs. He’s at 46% among 18-34-year-olds, 46% among women, 43% among Latinos and 26% among those with high school educations or less (they’ve probably noticed all the illegal aliens taking their jobs or driving down their wages.)

He still has 63% approval among black voters, but that’s down by 17 points since 1980.

https://thepostmillennial.com/bidens-approval-rating-among-black-americans-down-17-points-nbc-poll

These numbers are catastrophic for Democrats because the way the party wins elections these days (aside from the ways we’re not supposed to discuss) is by turning identity groups against each other, and convincing them Republicans are racist, sexist, etc., so they’ll keep voting for Democrat policies that aren’t in their best interests and are destroying their jobs, wages, communities and their children’s futures. They put together enough of these groups, and it puts them over 50%. But they need them voting Democrat in monolithic numbers.

That’s worked for generations, but then, we’ve never before had an Administration that was so far-left and pressed the “progressive” pedal to the metal the way this one has, from the open border to the revolving door jails to the raging inflation. Maybe the catastrophic results, coming so soon after the peace, prosperity and rising wages of the Trump years, have finally made the toxicity of leftist policies so obvious that people are at last taking off the blinders and seeing the whole picture.

Unbelievable

It’s bad enough that the Department of Veterans Affairs under Biden is producing training videos on the taxpayer’s dime that promote abortion as “reproductive health care,” but that agency is now so “woke” that the videos refer to the mothers as “pregnancy capable persons.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/sick-leaked-veterans-affairs-training-video-shows-government-gone-full-woke/

Wait, are they calling women “pregnancy capable persons?” That implies that men are incapable of pregnancy! I’m offended! I’m outraged!! I will denounce them on Tik-Tok!!!

Related: Watch Sen. Tim Scott’s powerful new ad, taking on the leftist canard that being pro-life makes you an “extremist”:

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2023/09/26/sen-tim-scotts-latest-political-ad-draws-a-line-on-what-it-means-to-be-pro-life-n2164300

Seriously, Dude?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the standing ovation that he, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and the Canadian Parliament gave to a former Nazi soldier on “Russian disinformation.” Hey, if the Russians can force Hunter Biden to do all that stuff on his laptop, they can force Justin Trudeau to give a standing-O to a Nazi.

Google would censor this post if they could…

I wrote recently about young “detransitioners” who are now old enough to start suing the school and medical authorities who misled them into thinking they had to permanently disfigure their bodies with “gender affirming health care” (i.e., dangerous drugs and irreversible, unnecessary surgery.) I expressed the hope that the rise in lawsuits would put the fear of playing God into some of these greedy quacks and make them to look for some other scam to run.

Well, Matt Margolis at PJ Media reports that that might already be happening.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/09/25/were-winning-the-fight-against-child-mutilation-n1729723

We were told by the “trans” activists that America had to stop being so repressive and get with the European nations on this. Well, more and more European nations are recognizing that this was a terrible, destructive delusion and are banning alleged gender-altering procedures. In the US, 22 states now ban them, but as Margolis reports, even in those states that allow some procedures like hormone blockers to continue, clinics are voluntarily stopping it for fear of being sued for malpractice later – and they should be afraid of that. Because it’s coming, and I expect it may soon be a tidal wave of lawsuits.

He also notes that another facet of the “trans” movement just took a major hit: the claim that “transitioning” children helps them. He writes that a recent comprehensive study found no medical benefit for young people who receive so-called “gender-affirming care” (actually, gender denying), and that as many as 90% of kids with gender confusion who aren’t encouraged to socially or medically transition no longer identify as transgender when they’re adults.

http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

Why, it’s almost as if there’s some natural bodily process that everyone goes through that turns them into what they’re supposed to be as adults, unless some quack who thinks he knows better than God tries to stop it.

Stories like this do exist, the media just doesn’t cover them

Here’s one of those stories that we’re assured don’t exist because the media seldom cover them. It’s about a good guy with a personal firearm preventing a crime. In fact, these stories happen surprisingly often, and I will gladly report them.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/would-be-burglars-armed-billy-club-pick-wrong-farmer-rob-i-will-shoot

Green Fantasy News:

After making grandiose promises about using new technologies to create a sustainable, non-oil-based future and spending about $1.5 billion testing “hundreds and hundreds” of alternative materials, the Lego company admitted that you can’t make Legos out of anything but plastic.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/legos-attempt-to-ditch-oil-based-bricks-is-a-costly-failure

President Biden is joining a UAW picket line today to try to win back the support of auto workers furious at him for killing their jobs by trying to force everyone into electric cars. Meanwhile, Ford announced that it’s halting work on a planned $3.5 billion factory in Michigan that was to have made EV batteries. Ford already announced that its slowing EV production after its EV unit was projected to lose $4.5 billion this year (EVs are stacking up unsold at dealerships), or about 50% more than anticipated. Ford said they’ll hold off on constructing the battery factory “until we’re confident about our ability to competitively run the plant.” How about until they’re confident that anyone will buy an EV just because Joe Biden tells them to?

https://www.westernjournal.com/ford-abruptly-halts-construction-much-touted-3-5-billion-ev-battery-plant/

In a related story, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is fighting Democrats who have been blocking his attempts to overturn the “Clean Cars” law they passed when they held all the state’s power. It commits Virginia to abiding by California’s car laws, which include a mandate that by model year 2026, 35% of all new cars and trucks sold in Virginia must be EVs (Do you spot the logical flaw in that sentence? Hint: How do they determine which 35% of shoppers have to buy them?) Youngkin called it “ludicrous” and said it “defies common sense” that Democrats would outsource Virginia’s energy decisions to California. I’d say it defies common sense for anyone to do anything California does. 

https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/24/youngkin-ev-mandate-virginia-california/

As our favorite YouTube mechanic Scotty Kilmer says, green cars are a myth. Electric cars are very limited, they have short ranges and long charge times, producing them pollutes more than producing an ICE car, and most of the electricity that charges them comes from fossil fuel-fired power plants. He notes that if you buy one now and someone invents a better battery that goes farther and charges faster without bursting into flames, your car will be worthless overnight. His advice: If you must buy an electric vehicle, hold off for a while, like maybe a decade or two.

RIP David McCallum

By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)

I’m sad to have to report that actor David McCallum has died at 90. His friends praised him as very kind, a Renaissance man of many talents who was interested in everything from science to music, and a great father who was married to his wife Katherine for 56 years.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/david-mccallum-dead-ncis-man-from-uncle-1235734772/

Modern TV viewers may know him for the role he played for 20 years, chief medical examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard on “NCIS.” But what I know him for is the brief period in the 1960s when he was the subject of an almost Beatles-level of hysteria known as Illya-mania. His role as the enigmatic Russian secret agent Illya Kuryakin on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” was supposed to be a minor role, but his chemistry with star Robert Vaughn and his sex appeal to teenyboppers rocketed him to co-star status and superstardom, with his face on everything from teen magazines to school lunch boxes to,of course, records, which is my field of expertise as the co-author of the book, “Hollywood Hi-Fi.” He only sang on a couple of singles, but he released four albums of orchestral pop song instrumentals that he conducted (his mom was a cellist, and his dad was first violinist for the London Philharmonic.)

I put together a post for our Hollywood Hi-Fi Facebook page that has multiple links to some of McCallum’s 1950s singles. If you'd like to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane in his memory – or just discover some fun (and in one case, kind of crazy) singles from the ‘60s, join us over there at this link, and give us a Follow if you enjoy it.

https://www.facebook.com/hollywoodhifibook/posts/pfbid0u5eiPfTVJQmADWqRdn8AsiXyoB3eBQfkNsx2hDbnfojHGmtnKd2ACSRfqXALmgzwl

Money wired from China to Hunter shows up at dad’s doorstep

We’ve joked that the Democrats wouldn’t admit there is evidence linking President Biden to his family’s foreign business until they saw security cam video of him in a parking garage being handed a suitcase with big flashing dollar signs on it.  (Maybe that’s next!  But even with that, they’d find some way to deny the truth.)  Yesterday, the breaking news was just about as obvious as that.

In July and August 2019, after former Vice President Biden had started his 2020 presidential campaign, Hunter Biden received two wire transfers from Chinese nationals in Beijing worth a total of $260,000, and the address of the beneficiary was the same as Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who heads the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, came to his job with a background as a BANKER, so he knows how to conduct a financial investigation and the significance of such documents as Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).  This information on the wire transfers came in response to his congressional subpoena.  “Bank records don’t lie but President Biden does,” Comer said in a statement Tuesday.  “In 2020, Joe Biden told Americans that his family never received money from China.”  (Of course, he’s referring to the now-infamous exchange during a presidential debate in which he accused Trump of being the one to do that.)

Former deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, who now teaches law at U.C. Berkeley, appeared on FOX NEWS’ late-night show with Trace Gallagher to talk about this, saying the House committees are “building the case slowly, steadily, by getting financial information like this.”  The first question to ask, he said, is where is this money coming from?  “Beijing, Moscow, coming into Biden family accounts.”  Then, where did it go?  What did it pay for?  Cars?  Yes, we know some of it did.  Houses?  You have to find that out.

“Only after you get all that does it make sense to start bringing in the headline witnesses.”  You don’t want to bring in Hunter and/or other Bidens and put them under oath until you have everything you might want to ask them about.  If it seems as though this is taking forever, that’s why.

After Biden got divorced from first wife Kathleen Buhle in 2017, he stayed for a time at his father’s home; recall that he falsely claimed to be the homeowner on a rental application in California.  And Hunter listed his dad’s house as his own billing address twice, for a personal credit card in 2018 and an Apple account in 2019.

Interestingly, though, according to Hunter’s memoir BEAUTIFUL THINGS, he was living in California at the time these transfers would have been made.  Comer told Laura Ingraham Tuesday night that he’s “pretty certain” Hunter was not living at his father’s Delaware house when the transfers were made.

“If you go back even further than that,” Comer said, “This Jonathan Li [the CEO of Chinese equity firm BHR], who wired the $260,000 from China to Hunter Biden’s personal account, he is part of the Chinese Communist Party...a huge business person in China, with a Chinese-backed entity that funds investment to the United States.”  The one issue both Republicans and Democrats in Congress can agree on, he said, is that we don’t want China taking over industries important to our national security.  (Aside:  Actually, it wouldn’t be surprising if some Democrats in Congress were fine with that.)  “This is the guy that does that,” Comer explained.

Joe Biden personally spoke by phone with Jonathan Li, met him for coffee, and wrote a letter of recommendation to help Li’s son or daughter (reports vary) get into Brown University in the U.S. (I’m surprised he didn’t think Brown was a little TOO communist for his kid.) They had a relationship to that extent at least, Joe no doubt wanting to grease the wheels for his son’s business dealings by doing a favor for an acquaintance.

According to Comer, Hunter’s attorney said Hunter never got any money from Li.  And, of course, Joe Biden said he never got any from China at all.  Well, here it is.  And it came literally to Joe’s doorstep.

“One thing we all agree on,” Comer said in closing, “is China’s a threat to the United States.  And here we have more evidence of the Biden family receiving millions and millions of dollars from our adversarial country --- for who knows what?  The Bidens never have said what they did to receive the money.  What did Hunter Biden do to receive a quarter of a million dollars from a Chinese national affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?”

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6337890757112

And here’s Comer on FOX BUSINESS NEWS, with a preview of Wednesday and Friday.  There’s so much evidence, he says, “this is like tracking a bleeding bear through a snowstorm.”

https://thelibertydaily.com/there-certainly-has-been-cover-up-rep-james/

https://nypost.com/2023/09/26/hunter-biden-received-260k-from-beijing-during-dads-campaign-with-dad-joes-address-on-wire-comer/

As FOX NEWS Digital reported Tuesday, the wire transfers were linked to BHR Partners, a joint venture between Hunter’s company Rosemont Seneca and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital.  BHR Partners is “a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited.  Hunter Biden reportedly sat on the board of BHR Partners.”  Hunter’s then-attorney said in 2019 that this “was an unpaid position.”  As we’ve reported, Bank of China is the fourth largest bank in the world, and controlled by the CCP.

The Oversight Committee has been compiling records of these international transfers and already can show that from 2014 to 2019, the Biden family and their associates received $24 million in foreign payments --- $15 million to the Bidens and $9 million for their business associates, $4 million more than previously known.

FOX NEWS Digital has more details on the two transfers and a good overview.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-received-250k-wire-from-beijing-with-beneficiary-address-listed-as-joe-biden-delaware-home

DAILY CALLER has a good summary, too, with details on Hunter’s and James’ business entities.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/26/hunter-biden-chinese-business-associates-joe-biden-address-payments-house-oversight

In an appearance on HANNITY Tuesday night, investigative reporter John Solomon said he thought he knew what new information was about to be released by the committees and that some of this, such as the FBI’s interview with James Biden, should be voted out on Wednesday and/or “in a couple weeks.”  There’s more coming, he said, on the October 2022 meeting during which IRS agent-turned-whistleblower Gary Shapley said “a red line was crossed” regarding not bringing charges that made him want to come forward.

Also, there are “other summaries of the case,” Solomon said, that make it clear they were planning to charge Hunter with failure to pay taxes on his Burisma income.  (Those are the charges that are now past the statute of limitations.)

There’s also evidence “that agents had developed a case that Joe Biden’s campaign had taken or benefited from illegal campaign contributions because somebody, a third party [Hunter’s “sugar brother” Kevin Morris] was paying his tax bill during the 2020 election and afterwards.”  As we’ve said, this was arguably to “clean it up” for his dad’s campaign.

RELATED:  Judicial Watch announced Tuesday that they’ve filed a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of ‘Justice’ for all records in the possession of FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten regarding a briefing that was given to the Senate on August 6, 2020.  Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley have long believed that this briefing was held --- and the subject matter subsequently leaked --- to undermine Congress’ investigation of Hunter Biden.

They’d filed a FOIA request over a year ago with no response; thus the lawsuit.  Key paragraph:

“First, it’s been alleged that the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity. It is further alleged that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by an FBI Headquarters (‘FBI HQ’) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease. Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”

See the full press release here:

https://www.judicialwatch.org/hunter-biden-investigation

PROGRAMMING NOTE:  On Thursday morning, the first House impeachment inquiry hearing will begin, to be headed by the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees.  According to the NEW YORK POST, witnesses include forensic accounting expert Bruce Dubinsky, former ‘Justice’ Department official Eileen O’Connor, and one of our favorite legal experts, George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?530616-1/hearing-biden-impeachment-inquiry

Michelle Obama is paid $741,000 to give one-hour speech in Germany.

Michelle Obama flew to Germany and pocketed a cool $741,000 (700,000 euros) for giving a one-hour speech on diversity and inclusion.  Let’s hope her speechwriters were sufficiently “included” on some of that $$$$.

This was at an annual event called the “Bits and Pretzels” forum in Munich, described by the NEW YORK POST as “a start-up event held on the sidelines of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival, according to the event website.”  The webpage said she spoke before about 5,000 people on how to “push back self-doubt while discussing the importance of inclusivity and diversity.”

The U.K. DAILY MAIL described the event as “a three-day love-in for European entrepreneurs.”

Year after year, organizers said, she had topped the list of people from whom participants wanted to hear at their love-in.  This is apparently one of the highest speaking fees they have ever paid.  President Obama spoke there in 2019, presumably for his usual speaking fee of just $400,000 (it wasn’t disclosed).

Axios reported in 2017 that Michelle’s usual speaking fee was $200,000.  But it’s skyrocketed, “amid speculation that she could be named the Democratic nominee for President.”  We would add that if she’s planning to run, that might explain the rush to go ahead and collect these fabulous speaking fees while she can.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12559675/michelle-obama-pay-munich-conference-speech

Judge rules against President Trump

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, a New York judge ruled against Donald Trump in a civil lawsuit brought by rabidly partisan attorney general Letitia James, who ran for election on the promise to “get Trump.” The judge found Trump guilty of being Donald Trump – oh wait, that’s just the subtext. The judge issued summary judgement that Trump committed fraud for years by massively overvaluing his properties in securing loans.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-judge-rules-trump-claims-committed-fraud-years-building-real-estate-empire/

To reach this verdict, he had to overlook the following: it’s the duty of lenders to do due diligence and verify the value of collateral, all the contracts had disclaimers on them saying that, differing opinions on property valuations are common in business, some of the charges are beyond the statute of limitations, all of the loans were paid back with interest, and none of the lenders were defrauded out of a penny. Indeed, it was obvious how this case would go when the judge ruled in advance that there didn’t have to be any victims of fraud for him to find Trump guilty of fraud, and when he fined Trump’s attorneys for repeating the same arguments because they were their legal arguments.

This will now proceed to a non-jury trial and assessing punishment, with James pushing for $250 million in fines and banning Trump from running his own businesses in New York. Trump called it a “horrible, un-American decision,” and his attorneys announced plans to appeal, calling the ruling “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”

https://www.breitbart.com/news/judge-rules-donald-trump-defrauded-banks-insurers-as-he-built-real-estate-empire

I hope that voters in New York are pleased with the deranged Democrats they’ve put in charge of their state. In this case, their chief prosecutor is presiding over a historic crime wave that’s made New York City a battle zone as real violent criminals run wild, yet has devoted her full attention to prosecuting a political opponent for taking out loans and paying them back with interest. She also now seeks to drive his multi-billion-dollar businesses out of the state. If so, he’ll be joining lots of other business people who are already leaving New York without being prosecuted into leaving. And like them, he’ll take millions of dollars in future tax revenues with him.

Think about that, New Yorkers, as you struggle to pay the crippling costs of all those illegal immigrants the other person you voted for let in. Biden’s immigration policy is bankrupting you, while James' political vendetta is causing you to be robbed blind while driving out one of your biggest taxpayers. Just try to calculate how much voting for Democrats has cost you, and weep.

Menendez update

Two dozen Democratic Senators are calling on Sen. Bob Menendez to resign. It might not be so much that they are morally outraged by his alleged naked corruption as that his radioactivity may harm them politically, since his campaign and PAC gave nearly $230,000 to other Democrats’ campaigns. John Fetterman even returned his donation in an envelope stuffed with hundred dollar bills (is that how Fetterman received it?)  Chuck Schumer argued that he deserves due process and the presumption of innocence, but this case is so over-the-top, the alleged corruption is startling even by New Jersey Democrat standards.

Interestingly, he’s been indicted for corruption before, but he got a hung jury. That wasn’t enough to drive him out of the Senate or even keep him from being named chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. But that case didn’t come with such attention-grabbing evidence, and it wasn’t during a time when Democrats are desperately trying to paint their opponent as corrupt by indicting him for breathing, plus they have a razor-thin Senate majority to defend and a worse record than the New York Jets.

At least now, we know where top Democrats draw the line on ethics. It’s somewhere between having 20 shell corporations to hide millions of dollars given to your crackhead son by shady foreign actors and having your suit pockets bulging with cash and gold bars with incriminating fingerprints and DNA on them.

Related: Speaking of Democrats hurling rocks from inside glass Houses and Senates…

https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/26/richard-blumenthal-wife-clarence-thomas-resign-stock-sales-august/

 I JUST WANTED TO SAY: 

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