Early Quick Hits

These are really from last night but this is all still Real News, Mr. President.

Michael Cohen's former lawyer attests that Cohen repeatedly denied that Trump broke any laws when debriefed by DOJ (and Mueller) lawyers in 2018.

"Cohen decided that while he didn't believe the allegation (of the Stormy Daniels story), that he thought the story would be embarrassing for Trump and especially for Melania, so he decided he would take care of it himself."

I forgot to mention this earlier, but in Ed Morrissey's article about this, he mentions that Michael Cohen is pitching around a reality tv show about himself called "The Fixer." Here's the presumably self-funded video teaser he released for this show.

So yes, I'd say he has a strong financial interest in lying to Get Trump.

A gallon of gas already costs $5.29 in California. That's going to change, though. Because they're slapping a fifty cent per gallon surcharge on it.

In today's edition of Getting What You Vote For, the dummies in California are about to get hit with a 50 cent per gallon gas tax.

Remember, California voters have handed the Democrat party full power over the former Golden State. Democrats run everything from the governorship on down. Democrats not only hold majorities in the state legislature, they hold veto-proof majorities. In other words...

Republicans are powerless in California. And so...

According to Triple-A, the average cost of a gallon of gas in California today is $5.29. That's nearly $1.70 more than the national average. In some parts of California, gas costs $6.32 per gallon. The lowest cost for a gallon of gas in that Democrat-run shithole is $5.02.

Now add 50 cents to those prices.

Tee hee.

The barbarians are at the gate in the castle's throne room.

Washington DC will now demand that day care centers be staffed only by people with a college degree. I assume this is pushed by the teachers unions, who always fight to restrict the number of competitors for jobs in this field. This will drive costs into the stratosphere and make it impossible for most to afford.

Average toddler day care costs in Washington, D.C., exceed $24,000 a year, outstripping expenses in cities like New York and San Francisco. Despite the steep prices, parents such as Megan McCune and Tom Shonosky, who live in a suburban D.C. neighborhood with their children John and Lizzy, believe day care is still worth it.

"They're doing these amazing activities with kids. John's last teacher was planning just all these really stimulating, exciting experiences," McCune says. "That's just not something that we can feasibly do and also have full-time jobs."

But day care might soon become a luxury the couple can no longer afford. In 2016, a regulation was passed mandating that day care workers obtain a college degree. The city's logic is straightforward: If D.C.'s day care staff had college degrees, they could do a better job helping disadvantaged kids climb out of poverty.

This is Reason magazine. Reason thinks that it's "straightforward" and obvious that people with degrees are better caregivers to children.

Among the many things to be despised in these fringy libertarians is their gross petit-bourgeois six-people-living-in-an-apartment downscale elitism. People who don't make enough money to be considered elite pile a lot of importance on credentials, for obvious reasons.

...

After a delay, the rule was finally implemented in December 2023.

Yet contrary to its intended benefits, this regulation could lead to job losses among day care workers, increased operating costs for day cares, and higher tuition for parents.

Ami Bawa, lead teacher and assistant director at a nursery school in northwest D.C., exemplifies the unintended consequences of the regulation. Although she has been working in the field for over 20 years, Bawa may now be forced out of her job. "Even though I have a lot of experiential learning, I don't meet what is now the current standard," she explains.

I don't want to blow your minds or anything, but it turns out Biden's effete gangsters at the DOJ have been illegally punishing whistleblowers.

When they were told to stop, they claimed they stopped -- while continuing to illegally punish them.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed Tuesday officials at the federal law enforcement agency have inappropriately retaliated against whistleblowers by pulling security clearances and implementing other retribution against them.

A lot of guys fired by the FBI or DEA for whistleblowing would get jobs in the private security sector. So these Deep State Nazis yank their security clearances so that they can't get jobs. They want to starve them until they recant.

"The purpose of this memorandum is to advise you of concerns that the Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has identified regarding the Department's compliance with 50 U.S.C. § 3341 and the Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) Security Executive Agent Directive 9 (SEAD 9), which provide protections for federal employees who allege their security clearance has been suspended, revoked, or denied in retaliation for making a protected disclosure," a new OIG memo states. "This concern came to our attention in connection with the OIG's assessment of complaints the OIG received from employees of a DOJ component, alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity."

The investigation covered the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Oh, and they suspend them without pay for a year or more.

While crippling their ability to find outside work.

"[A] lack of a DOJ appeal process for employees who allege their suspension of more than 1 year is retaliatory, as required by Section 3341 and SEAD 9, is especially problematic at DOJ components that regularly suspend employees without pay for the duration of the security review process, which can sometimes last years," the memo continues.

I feel bad about blowing your minds again after having just blown your minds, but Biden's Racialist Gangsters in the VA are now denying vocational training and psychological services to white veterans.

DEI Hits the VA: Biden's Veterans Affairs Department Offers Race-Based Training Programs That Exclude White Vets 'Equity' means realizing 'treating everybody the same might not be enough,' VA official Shawn Liu says

Peter Hasson
May 13, 2024

President Joe Biden's Department of Veterans Affairs is offering race-based training programs and workshops that exclude white veterans--programs that one legal expert says are "of dubious constitutionality and legality."

The programs are taking place in at least four states, a Washington Free Beacon review of online offerings found.

In Battle Creek, Mich., for example, the VA offers a "BIPOC Support Group," an "8-week curriculum designed to provide support for Veterans that identify as people of color/BIPOC, or as multiracial or biracial," according to a program description. The Battle Creek VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma and Empowerment" program, a "weekly group, tailored to our Veterans of color, to address race-based stress and trauma in a safe and validating environment."

In Long Beach, Calif., the VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma Empowerment Group," which it says is for "Veterans who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and who are interested in addressing issues of race-based stress, trauma, resilience, and empowerment." A similar program in Palo Alto, Calif., invites "Women Veterans of color" to join a "10-week group to explore [the] impact of racism on your well-being."

In Minneapolis, meanwhile, a VA-sponsored "Black Veterans peer support group" welcomes "all Veterans who self-identify as Black" to learn "skills that help protect against the negative impact of racial stress and trauma by increasing feelings of belongingness, connectedness to racial/ethnic identity and empowerment." And the VA's Central Ohio Health Care System advertises a "Minority Stress & Empowerment" group, an eight-week series "open to Black, Indigenous and all Veterans of color who are interested in addressing race-based stress and trauma."

Under Biden, the federal government has made "equity" a guiding principle thanks to a June 2021 executive order instructing agencies to beef up their diversity programming. "Such training programs," the order said, "should enable Federal employees, managers, and leaders to have knowledge of systemic and institutional racism and bias" as well as an "increased understanding of implicit and unconscious bias."

In other settings, however, race-based offerings have landed private entities in hot water. Last year, amid legal scrutiny, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer quietly amended a fellowship program to remove a provision that barred whites and Asians from applying. Now, University of San Diego law professor and U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Gail Heriot is expressing similar concern over the VA's programs.

"It seems like every time you turn around there's another race-exclusive government program of dubious constitutionality and legality," Heriot told the Free Beacon. "Race exclusivity should raise red flags. Yet for the past four years, we've been seeing more and more of this kind of thing."

The VA did not respond to a request for comment.

Of course not. You peons think the government answers to you?

...

The VA has a history of implementing left-wing cultural initiatives under Biden.

In 2021, internal agency training included the "genderbread" diagram, which is also featured in some elementary school curricula. The diagram points to the brain, heart, and pelvic area of a gingerbread "person" to distinguish "gender identity," "sexual orientation," and "biological sex," respectively. The full body of the gingerbread "person" represents its "gender expression," the diagram says.

I can imagine the wounded veterans there thinking, "I got shot the f*** up in Afghanistan so I can sit here and be lectured about my inner gender identity."

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has won the Republican primary to compete for Joe Manchin's senate seat -- he's retiring -- which essentially wins the race for the GOP. The article claims, a bit prematurely, that this means the GOP will have a "minimum of 50 seats" after the election.

I don't like making bets on what the GOP's minimum performance will turn out to be.

AGAIN: Biden claims that Beau Biden was killed by burn-pits or something and claims that's just like cops being killed in the line of duty.

In case you had any doubts at all, Bill Maher played video of a 2018 interview with Sloppy Daniels in which she was firm on the point that her encounter with Trump was "not a MeToo situation." Now the scabrous whore lies and suggests that Trump physically menaced her into sex by (checks notes) sitting down on a bed, which created a "power imbalance."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:35 PM

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