Quick Hits

In case you missed these updates:

Greg Price @greg_price11

BREAKING: On the false claim in the Steele Dossier that Trump was peed on by Russian hookers, the Durham Report says that Steele's source Igor Danchenko made the whole thing up, never heard it from any of his sources, and never even stayed at the hotel where he said it occurred.

@ChuckRossDC 2h

It's a 320-page report. One quick thing that catches my eye: FBI ended one aspect of its investigation after "a longtime and valuable confidential human source" made an "improper and possibly illegal campaign contribution" to the Clinton campaign on behalf of a "foreign entity."

Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley

From the Durham report: "Within days of the receipt, the unvetted and unverified SteeleReports were used to support probable cause in the FBI's FISA applications."

...Another notable line: "on July 26, 2016, Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."

Jada Pinkett "Smith's" alt-history comedy Yas Slay Kween Kleopatra! is now the lowest rated show in Rotten Tomatoes history.

NotTheBee quotes a shocked Forbes:

However, the show has done something I didn't think was even possible. It has not just the lowest audience score in Netflix history, it has essentially the lowest audience score possible on Rotten Tomatoes, a 1%. Not a 10%, a 1%. (Update: It just ticked up to 2%. Still an unprecedented low)

There aren't many critic reviews in, but those are low as well, with the show sitting at a 13%. But those audience scores? I've never seen anything like this. Not with bad shows. Not with politically controversial shows prone to review bombing. Never this bad, not in Netflix history. Honesty, I think not even in TV history, at least with this many reviews in (over a thousand).

Via Instapundit, who quotes a friend: "Guess she can go back to humiliating Will Smith full-time now." He uses the word "humiliate" in the David French sense of the word.

Someone showed up at arch-leftist Representative Gerry Connolly's congressional offices looking for him, and beat up his staffers with a baseball bat.

A person looking for Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly allegedly attacked two of his staffers with a metal baseball bat at his district office Monday, the congressman said in a statement.

Connolly, a Democrat, said the individual was taken into police custody and the two staffers who were injured were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

One of the staffers, a senior aide, was hit in the head, according to Connolly's office in Fairfax. The other, an intern who had just started working in the office, was hit in the side.

What a terrible thing to happen!

The suspect was identified as Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, Virginia.

He is charged with one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding, according to the U.S. Capitol Police.

In addition to hitting the staffers, the individual trashed much of the office with the bat, breaking glass and smashing computers, Connolly's office said.

...

Police said a motive for the incident is not clear.

Allow me to speculate freely: There's something personal and unsavory going on between this person and Connelly. Maybe Connelly pays him to pee on him, and refused to pay last time.

I learned this kind of evidence-free speculation from Jake Tapper.

Oxford will be hosting a debate on whether or not biological sex is real or not.

Spoiler alert: Oxford isn't a very good school any longer.

Oxford will be offering emotional therapy, support, and "counseling" for students who are injured by the Dangerously-True Words that a transgenderism skeptic might utter.

One of the world's oldest and most prestigious debating societies will offer an emotional support team and a "welfare space" to help students cope with an upcoming speaker who has criticized the dominant transgender ideology.

English philosopher Kathleen Stock, who has affirmed the male-female binary and argued that gender should not trump sex in all circumstances, is scheduled to speak at the Oxford Union at the end of the month, The Times UK reported Tuesday.

The union stated that during the event, it would provide a "non-student support team that will remain in a separate welfare space to offer counseling and advice," according to The Times.

It will also offer "student welfare officers." Students will be allowed to ask questions anonymously online.

SHOCK: Governor Newsom announces that California's budget deficit will be an upside surprise.

The $31.5 billion budget shortfall exceeds the $22.5 billion "projection" by about... what, 40% or so?

And it will get only worse from here. FEE says that Atlas is shrugging and emigrating to Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

Last September, billionaire Ken Griffin announced he was pulling up stakes and moving Citadel--his gigantic hedge fund--from Chicago to Miami.

The Windy City was out of control, he told Bloomberg, something that dawned on him after a colleague made a coffee run and was robbed by a thief who put "a gun to his head."

It's no secret that Griffin's exit is part of a much larger migration taking place across America.

Data show that several populous blue states--California, New York, and Illinois among them--have been losing population and companies for years. In 2021 Forbes wrote about "leftugees" fleeing blue states for red ones. A few years before that, a headline in The Hill touched on "the great exodus out of America's blue cities."

New IRS data, however, show the speed with which blue states are losing taxpayers--and their adjusted gross income (AGI)--is increasing. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that more than 100,000 people left Illinois in 2021, taking with them some $11 billion in AGI, nearly double its 2019 total. For New York it was $24.5 billion, an increase of more than 150 percent from 2019. California, meanwhile, saw its AGI loss ($29 billion) more than triple since 2019.

That people are migrating from these states is important. But who is migrating is equally important, and the data paint a bleak picture for these states. Taxpayers giving up on the Prairie State and the Empire State made about $35,000 more per year than new arrivals. For Florida, the data are even more stark. The average income for a new arrival to the Sunshine State was roughly $150,000--more than double those leaving.

"In other words, the geese with the golden eggs are flying away," writes economist Daniel Mitchell, referring to the IRS data.

The Fed's model for predicting recessions is showing the greatest odds in 40 years of a coming recession, probably because it's easy to predict a condition the country's already been in for a year.

The likelihood that the United States will experience an economic recession at some point over the next year has risen to a 40-year high, according to a probability model created by the New York Federal Reserve.

The probability of a recession now stands at 68.2 percent, the highest level since 1982. This means it has now surpassed its November 2007 level, which was recorded shortly before the credit crunch at 40 percent.

A leading manufacturing index just fell off a cliff.

After the stunningly surprising upside surge in April, The Empire Fed Manufacturing Survey has collapsed back to reality in May, crashing 42.6 points to -31.8 from +10.8 (dramatically worse than the -19.0 expected). Outside of the COVID lockdowns, this is the biggest [month-over-month] drop ever...

Swallowall tries to claim that Democrats don't support Defund the Police. Technically, he says "I never supported Defund the Police," but he's attempting to clam Democrats generally didn't support it.

Andy Biggs plays a video of Democrats all supporting Defund the Police.

Fang Fang's vaigzsh gets drier and drier every time this gaywad speaks.

posted by Ace at 06:14 PM

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