After the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in the college admissions process, Democrats have been ranting over rich kids benefiting from family connections to get into Ivy League schools.

Most recently, President Joe Biden said that his administration would direct the Department of Education to crack down on how “practices like legacy admissions … expand privilege instead of opportunity.”

And of course, just like the IRS loophole the Bidens used to dodge $500k in taxes, and his son’s appointment to the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma (“because of his name“), Joe Biden is a hypocrite on this issue as well.

As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Hunter Biden had his daddy helped get his daughter into the University of Pennsylvania.

Text messages and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, show how Joe and Hunter Biden worked behind the scenes to get a subpar family member into one of the most selective schools in the country.

Maisy Biden’s college admissions process could raise a number of uncomfortable questions for the president. The saga highlights exactly the kind of “legacy admissions” Biden has slammed. The story also highlights the Biden family’s occasionally shady dealings with the University of Pennsylvania just as congressional Republicans are probing alleged ethical misconduct by both Joe and Hunter Biden. -Free Beacon

“I applied early decision to Penn today!!” Maisy Biden texted Hunter on October 31 of 2018. Then, two days later, Maisy asked papa Hunter for an update on her application.

In the ensuing months, Hunter and Joe Biden embarked on a monumental effort to get Maisy into the college which accepts just 5.9% of those who apply – taking their case to the University of Pennsylvania president, Amy Gutmann.

Of note, the Bidens had cultivated a  close relationship with Gutmann prior to the ask. In 2013, Gutmann awarded Joe Biden an honorary doctor of laws degree, and has called Biden “one of our nation’s foremost statesmen.”

On Dec. 13, 2018, Joe texted Hunter to let him know that he was “going to try to see [University of Pennsylvania] Pres GUTMANN tomorrow.”

Two days later, Joe said he “had a great talk with Guttman [sic].“

“Maisy still in the game for regular acceptance. But must do well in class this period. It’s real,” Joe wrote Hunter on December 15, adding “We should talk about tutors etc starting tomorrow.”

The next day, December 16, Hunter told his daughter the good news – she was provisionally in if she coudl get her grades up in her senior year. Hunter also suggested she explore playing lacrosse at Penn.

“I also think it would help if you had lax coach talk to their lax coach,” wrote the First Crackhead. “Bottom line is that Guttman [sic] made clear that in order for her to explain the 11th grade you had to show improvement in 12th,” Hunter wrote. “Which is something I think we would have all liked to know form [sic] the start, but in fairness we were much later in the app process than usual and made it look like we weren’t 100% about Penn.“

In March of 2019, Joe texted Hunter to let him know that he asked UPenn’s Dean of Admissions about Maisy’s application. Joe told Hunter that Gutmann would call him directly to let him know if Maisy had gotten in.

“If I hear before 1pm on [March 29, 2019] I’ll call immediately so you can call Maisy,” said Joe. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do on anything.”

And just like that, Maisy Biden – whose grades needed improvement, got into the very hard-to-get-into UPenn after Hunter and Joe staged an influence campaign.

Read the rest here…

Bud Light’s latest ad is getting slammed online as the beer brand keeps garnering angry comments and a huge number of dislikes, with the company facing ire from both sides of the social aisle.

As Naveen Anthrapully reports as The Epoch Times, the latest ad, “Backyard Grunts with Travis Kelce”, released on the weekend of July 4, features Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce with a group of men grunting as they crack open a can of Bud Light.

On YouTube, it has gotten 2,187 comments, 256 likes and over 11,000 dislikes. Some of the comments on the ad are quite scathing.

“So you went from a man pretending to be a little girl to now showing manly grunting people … to swing it the other way? You gotta lock your marketing team in a room with rabid dogs and toss the key,” said one user.

“This is such an entertaining horror show!! Bud Light continues to push above and beyond the Envelope of Depraved Desperation & Pathetic Pleading!!” said another user.

I support Kelce as a KC receiver for Mahomes but he looks desperate for money to stoop to do commercials for Bud light.

— rodney durrett (@DurrettRodney) July 3, 2023

“LOL Kelce didn’t even touch the can. Come on, Bud Light, you guys are losin … Still,” one user observed.

Bud Light’s Twitter post celebrating the July 4th weekend also attracted massive backlash.

“It’s 4th of July weekend, enjoy some beer,” said the post, which got over 26,000 comments and just around 4,500 likes.

“My family always called it Independence Day. This year I guess it’s independence from politically active beer too,” Tom Pappert, editor-in-chief at Valiant News, stated in a July 1 tweet.

“I don’t drink beer. But if I did, it would NOT be Bud Light. We didn’t forget!” Chaya Raichik, the creator of Libs of TikTok, stated in a tweet and garnered nearly 2,000 likes.

Permanent Dent in Sales

Bud Light turned into a boycott target after partnering with transgender social media personality Dylan Mulvaney in a promotional campaign in April. Since then, sales have cratered, market capitalization declined, and Bud Light-maker Anheuser-Busch InBev is caught in a tough spot trying to regain people’s confidence in the brand.

Data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ show that sales for Bud Light was down 28.5 percent year over year for the week ended June 17, according to the New York Post. Other Anheuser-Busch brands, including Michelob Ultra and Budweiser, have also seen year-over-year losses.

Between April 3 and July 3, Anheuser-Busch’s market capitalization declined from $133.68 billion to $115.38 billion—a loss of more than $18 billion.

During this period, the company’s stock fell from €61.16 to €52.48, an over 14 percent decline.

In a recent note, Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett said that the recent underperformance of Anheuser-Busch implies a “permanent reduction” in the company’s business in the United States, according to Barron’s.

“Our proprietary survey data suggest these headwinds are likely to fade even if we do not expect the U.S. business ever to fully recover from its current challenges.”

Bud Light has also lost the number-one position in the U.S. beer market following the marketing debacle.

Meanwhile, Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group, a major contractor for Bud Light, is shutting down two of its glass-bottling plants in Louisiana and North Carolina amid declining sales for the beer.

Leftist Backlash

As Bud Light deals with the disastrous aftermath of its pro-LGBT campaign, Mr. Mulvaney has now come out slamming the company for abandoning the transgender activist while left-wing media are blaming the firm for trying to appeal to its conservative audience.

“I patiently waited for things to get better,” Mulvaney said in a recent Instagram Reel about the backlash. “But surprise, they haven’t really, and I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did.”

“For a company to hire a trans-person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans-person at all because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want,” Mulvaney insisted.

Left-wing outlet Jezebel ran an article on Bud Light last month with the headline, “Bud Light Is Embracing Country Music and Football to Try and Win Back Transphobes.”

A former president of sales and distribution for Anheuser-Busch, Anson Frericks, has called for the company’s U.S. CEO Brendan Whitworth to step down from the post due to his inability to solve the Mulvaney fiasco.

In a write-up at Daily Mail, Mr. Frericks criticized the company for not providing an appropriate response to Mulvaney’s claim that Bud Light abandoned the activist following the controversy.

Bud Light’s response to Mulvaney’s claim was that “as we move forward, we will focus on what we do best—brewing great beer for everyone and earning our place in moments that matter to our consumers.”

Frericks called the response “weak and indecisive … What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. And it will only deepen the chasm between the brand and its customers.”

He called Mulvaney’s criticism of Bud Light a sign of the activist cutting ties with the brand, “something Whitworth should have had the wisdom to do weeks ago.”

The bullish case for silver continues to revolve around increasing demand for the precious metal in the solar power industry and worsening supply deficits as limited mine production is coming online in the near term. 

Several months ago, we published a note titled, “Solar Energy Production Could Require Most Of The Global Silver Reserves By 2050.” Last month we cited a report that said, “The growing demand for silver in the solar power industry will likely put a significant squeeze on supply in the coming years, and the current price of silver does not reflect the likely shortages.” 

Even though solar is still a small part of total silver demand, it’s increasing fast. A report from The Silver Institute, an industry association, found silver demand from the solar industry will be around 14% this year, up from 5% in 2014. Much of the demand is from Chinese solar manufacturing plants as the world races to decarbonize power grids in the name of ‘climate change.’ 

Gregor Gregersen, founder of Singapore-based dealer Silver Bullion, told Bloomberg that solar is a “great example of how inelastic demand for silver is.” He said the days of the solar industry using small amounts of silver are over, and demand is about to surge. 

Bloomberg explains how high-tech solar panels in the next few years will use a lot more silver:

The standard passivated emitter and rear contact cell will likely be overtaken in the next two to three years by tunnel oxide passivated contact and heterojunction structures, according to BloombergNEF. While PERC cells need about 10 milligrams of silver per watt, TOPCon cells require 13 milligrams and heterojunction 22 milligrams.

And the increase in silver demand via the solar industry comes as there’s already a squeeze on the supply of silver. We noted last month, “While silver demand set records in every category in 2022, supply was flat with mine output falling by 0.6%. This resulted in a 237.7 million ounce market deficit in 2022.” 

Data from The Silver Institute shows silver production is set to increase by 2% this year while industrial consumption rises by 4%. The problem, which Bloomberg explains, is ramping up production comes with many challenges:

The trouble for silver buyers is that cranking up supply is far from easy, given the rarity of primary mines. About 80% of supply of the metal comes from lead, zinc, copper and gold projects, with silver a by-product.

And in an environment where miners are already reluctant to commit to large new projects, lower margins in silver compared with other precious and industrial metals mean positive price signals aren’t enough to crank up output. Even newly approved projects could be a decade away from production.

With the decarbonization of power grids underway and likely a multi-decade project, a study from the University of New South Wales expects the solar industry could exhaust between 85–98% of global silver reserves by 2050. 

On Wednesday morning, spot silver prices were around $22.85 an ounce. There’s a possibility that prices could slip further on a rising dollar or fears about a hard economic landing. 

But in the long run, silver prices will have to be repriced higher as decarbonization efforts are increased globally because the metal is so critical to the solar industry. 

Authored by William Biagini via Campus Reform,

Earlier this year, members of a Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter in Wyoming filed a lawsuit after the sorority admitted a man who identifies as a woman named Artemis Langford into the house.

The sorority responded on June 20 by submitting a motion to dismiss the case and called it “frivolous litigation.”

According to the lawsuit, Langford is 6’2” and 260 pounds.

He often sits in the women’s common area of the University of Wyoming chapter located on the second floor and silently observes them for hours.

Campus Reform obtained the motion, which states that “What dismissal will do is establish that Plaintiffs’ legal claims are baseless and show their supporters and others who may seek to use the courts for their own political purposes that funding frivolous litigation is not the way to resolve disputes or effect change.”

“Plaintiffs are upset that Kappa has adopted an inclusive position allowing for the admission of transgender women,” it also reads.

“They are upset that their collegiate chapter decided to admit Langford as a transgender woman. They are upset that Kappa did not step in to override their chapter’s membership decision.”

Finally, the motion defends Lang’s identification as a woman.

“As previously discussed, Kappa has defined women to include individuals who “identify as women” and nothing in Kappa’s governing documents bars that interpretation.”

Campus Reform previously reported on the controversy back in 2022 when Kappa Kappa Gamma first decided to admit Langford into the organization. In March of this year, seven members of the sorority filed a lawsuit against Langford and the sorority.

Two months later, the seven sisters who filed the lawsuit made an appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show in May to discuss how they felt about Lang’s presence in the house.

“It’s supposed to be a safe place where we can rest our heads at night…”

Sorority sisters speak out about fear and betrayal after biological man was allowed into their sorority.

Watch below, and download:https://t.co/F96HgI7HIWhttps://t.co/wj2a0VX9Vw

— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) May 15, 2023

As Campus Reform has already reported, one of the girls on the show stated that “It’s a weird, gut-wrenching feeling that every time I leave my room, I’ll walk past him in the hall in whatever setting that may be. And it’s never a pleasant encounter and that’s the scary part. This just goes to show that we need women’s spaces for that reason. Our house is our home.”

The University of Wyoming declined the opportunity to provide a statement.

Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties for comment. This article will be updated accordingly. 

Via SchiffGold.com,

June continued a stock market rally that produced big gains through the first half of the year. But what exactly is driving this rally and is it really justified by the economic fundamentals? Peter breaks it down in a recent podcast and concludes that this is likely a bear market rally.

June was a fantastic month for the stock market, particularly the NASDAQ, which was up 12.8%. The S&P 500 charted an 8.3% increase. The Dow Jones finished up 3.4%.

The strong June helped power stocks higher through the first half of 2022. The S&P 500 was up 15.9% through the first six months of 2023. That was the best start to a year since 2019, during a period when the Federal Reserve was cutting rates.

Now we’ve had a bigger rally even though the Fed hasn’t even started cutting rates yet. It’s still hiking rates and indicating it’s going to hike some more – we still got this big rally. And I think it’s because the markets don’t really believe the Fed. They know the Fed is likely near the end or done hiking, and so that is the relief rally.”

Peter said in all of this, the markets are missing a key point – inflation is going to get worse.

The Fed hasn’t won. The Fed has lost. The markets just haven’t figured that out yet.”

More speculative stocks saw the biggest gains through the first half of 2023. The NASDAQ was up 31.7%. That is the best H1 for the NASDAQ since 1983. The NASDAQ 100 had its best first half ever. The Cathie Wood Ark Innovation ETF gained 42% (although it is still down 72.4% from its peak).

Peter said he thinks these are all bear market rallies.

I think that yes, there were a lot of shorts in the market that got caught, that have been covering. I think this AI narrative kind of came out of left field. Nobody was really talking about this at the end of 2022. It kind of gathered a lot of momentum in the second half of this year. That kind of lit a fire under a lot of these big-cap tech names that were already going up because of short-covering and the fact that the markets were starting to price in the rate cuts, even though we haven’t had the Fed concede them. The markets have gotten ahead of the Fed. But we’ve had a lot of acceleration.”

Is this rally justified given the economic news? It is according to the mainstream, who keeps trumpeting “strong” economic data. But in fact, the economic data isn’t as strong as the headlines claim. Peter said all the economic news has basically been bad.

We’ve had a little bit of good news. The employment numbers continue to surprise on the upside. But again, I think this is all very superficial. We continue to get a lot of weak economic data.”

Meanwhile, price inflation continues to run hot. The core PCE Price Index was up 4.6% year-on-year. As Peter noted, these numbers remain significantly higher than the Fed’s 2% target.

In fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell conceded that price inflation wasn’t likely to hit that target until 2025.

That’s another two more years. And of course, he’s still wrong. We’re still not going to get down to 2%. But for Powell to say we’re still going to have to wait another two years? A lot can happen in the next two years, including a big recession, which means lots of money printing, which means inflation could take off. If you’ve got to look forward two years in order to forecast 2% inflation, you have no confidence whatsoever in the accuracy of that forecast. So, in other words, Powell has no idea when, if ever, inflation is going to get down to 2%. That is a big admission.”

Given the prospect of continued price inflation coupled with increasingly weak economic data and the fact that even Federal Reserve economists believe something else is going to break in the economy with higher interest rates, the stock market rally doesn’t seem justified.

In this podcast, Peter also dives into the recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and student loan forgiveness.

Authored by Alice Girodano via The Epoch Times,

On the afternoon of Friday before arguably one of the busiest holiday weekends in America, the Biden administration issued a memo announcing that due to national security, it was going to postpone the release of certain classified documents relevant to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK).

Despite the quiet announcement on the eve of the July 4th weekend, it sparked off outrage led by  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) who has in recent times openly speculated that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was behind his uncle’s assassination and that he could be in danger from the agency.

In a barrage of Twitter posts, Kennedy, who is gaining momentum against Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president, suggested a coverup. 

“The assassination was 60 years ago. What national security secrets could possibly be at risk? What are they hiding?” he asked.

He blasted Biden for choosing the timing to cover the “bad news” he would be “maintaining secrecy indefinitely” on JFK assassination records.

Kennedy charged that the postponement was an “unlawful” violation of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated the release of all government-held JFK assassination records no later than October 2017. 

The White House announcement is unlawful. In 1992 the JFK Records Act was passed unanimously by Congress with the promise that all assassination related records would be released no later than October 2017. This promise has broken once again with this midnight announcement.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 2, 2023

The records have been kept with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The deadline to release the JFK assassination documents has been repeatedly extended including under the Trump Administration. 

However, the law does include an exception in instances where the president certifies that a continued delay is “made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” and the harm is “of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest.”

In December, as part of a partial release of new records, Biden issued a signed agreement that the remainder would be released on June 30, the eve of the Independence Day weekend.

On Friday, the White House announced that more than 99 percent of the records have been publicly released. But in the memo signed by Biden, the president said that NARA’s acting archivist recommended he postpone the public release of “certain redacted information” in the records released back in December. 

“[C]ontinued postponement of public disclosure of that information is necessary to protect against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure,” the memo states.

Biden also said that future release of the withheld JFK assassination records would  “occur in a manner consistent” with a policy called the Transparency Plan, which was established by the National Declassification Center (NDC).

“The Transparency Plans will ensure that the public will have access to the maximum amount of information while continuing to protect against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations under the standards of the Act,” wrote Biden in the memo.

Since declaring his candidacy for president, Kennedy has become increasingly vocal about his belief that evidence shows his uncle JFK was murdered by the American government. 

He noted that among the members of the Warren Commission, as it was named, to review the assassination, was ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was fired by President Kennedy.   

Dulles died in 1969, six years after Kennedy’s 1963 assassination and denied any involvement in Kennedy’s murder. 

Dulles International Airport in Washington was named after his brother John Foster Dulles, who served as secretary of state under President Dwight Eisenhower.

RFK Jr. believes Dulles used his position with the Warren Commission to cover up evidence of CIA involvement. He said in a recent interview that his own father’s “first instincts” was that the federal agency carried out the killing.

The CIA has long denied any involvement in the 35th president’s death.

In 1979, a U.S. House review committee appointed to study evidence of the assassination concluded that at least two gunmen and co-conspirators were involved in Kennedy’s murder. 

The only person ever accused of killing Kennedy was former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, who denied being the assailant, was killed a few days after Kennedy’s death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. 

Ruby was convicted and sentenced to prison where he died in 1967 while waiting for a new trial after winning an appeal of his conviction.

In mid-June, national conservative podcaster Joe Rogan asked Kennedy if he was concerned about his safety in relation to being targeted by intelligence agencies, like the CIA.

Kennedy said yes, that “he has to be careful” and that he does “take precautions.”

Public trust in government is at an all-time low. Releasing these records would be a small but significant step toward regaining that trust. #Kennedy24

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 2, 2023

Today at 2:00pm the Fed will release the Minutes to the June 14 “skip the rate hike… just don’t call it a pause” FOMC decision.

As newsquawk writes in its preview, the minutes are likely to exhibit some of the growing splits within the committee which have already been reflected in public official commentary. Given the Dot Plot, which pencils in two more hikes by year-end, it’s likely a majority are leaning towards a July hike (as money markets are pricing at an 80%+ probability), although how much this is telegraphed in the minutes remains to be seen with policymakers publicly saying their decisions are data-dependent, and those looking for any guidance for September and beyond will likely be disappointed with Powell keeping all options on the table in his more recent commentary.

To be sure, traders will be looking for any preferences expressed for the rate path, albeit Powell has been reluctant to accept publicly that they are now in an “every other meeting”, suggesting that they could hike at consecutive meetings again if needed, so it appears unlikely the minutes will box policymakers into a specific strategy. The minutes will likely show at least a few participants calling for caution in further hikes with the Dot Plot showing two members who have pencilled in no more hikes at all – we know one of those is (non-voter) Bostic. We could also see some reluctance expressed to not hike at the June meeting itself, with the Dot Plot seen at the time as an appeasement for the Hawks, albeit several officials have given weight to two further hikes as a modal outcome: San Francisco Fed’s Daly (typically dovish) said later in June that two more hikes this year is a very reasonable projection.

However, money markets themselves are reluctant to fully bake in two more hikes with the terminal rate currently priced at 5.40% in November – note we get the key June NFP report this coming Friday and June CPI next Wednesday.

FOMC & SEP REVIEW:

The Fed left rates unchanged at 5-5.25% on June 14th as expected, but crucially, ramped up its 2023 rate dot forecast by 50bps to 5.6% from 5.1% (the range of dots plotted for this year were lifted to 5.1-6.1% from 4.9-5.9%), with many expecting just a 25bps increase, firmly keeping the “skip” narrative on the table. The 2024 median dot was raised to 4.6% from 4.3%, 2025 to 3.4% from 3.1%, but the longer term ‘neutral’ rate was left at 2.5% (albeit the central tendency of the estimates increased to 2.5-2.8% from 2.4-2.6% amid speculation around a higher equilibrium rate regime). Driving those increases included a material increase in the real GDP 2023 forecast to 1% from 0.4% in March, with Core PCE forecast rising to 3.9% from 3.6% and the 2023 unemployment projection tumbling to 4.1% from 4.5%.

In his prepared remarks, Chair Powell said the Fed had covered a lot of ground and the full effects of tightening are yet to be felt. But he caveated that by saying “nearly” all participations see further hikes as appropriate. Looking to July, Powell stressed officials would be considering all the data since they last hiked in May, which implicitly increases the likelihood of a hike given the resilient data since then and ahead of the June inflation and NFP numbers.

Powell said in his Q&A that the question of speed on rate hikes is separate from the level of rates, saying the Fed is not so far away from the destination, which makes it reasonable to go slower, but noted that a 5.6% terminal rate is pretty consistent with where it was trading before the banking turmoil in March.

Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

The author of the much-debunked “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, seems to be a glutton for punishment on Twitter.

Rather than slink away from her pathetic, largely invented, and completely distorted history of America’s founding gone stale, she used the occasion of Independence Day to double down.

It didn’t go well for her.

You can’t understand 1776 if you don’t understand 1619. July 4, 1776 when the colonists declared independence, 1/5 of the population of the 13 colonies was enslaved. They would not gain freedom for a century. This, too, is the 4th of July. This, too, is the story of America. pic.twitter.com/IRpr9NfXWu

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 4, 2023

The 1619 Project was commissioned by the New York Times magazine in 2019, bearing Hannah-Jones’s pet claim that the U.S. was founded in 1776 on the preservation and perpetuation of slavery.

Anyone who reads a real history book knows how valid that one is.

Which is why Hannah-Jones got scored 16 ways to Sunday by all or virtually all who posted on her Twitter claim, still beating on that dead horse.

The replies can be read below the tweet itself, but here are a few curations:

Cool story. Now do the history of black people owning slaves in this country. Now do South America’s history of enslaving people. Now do the countries of Africa and their history of enslaving people. Now do the world’s history of enslaving people.

…and…

In the 18th century America created the blueprint for the modern world. In the 19th America fought a war to end slavery. Then America saved the world in the 20th and went on and created the 21st. America is the greatest country to ever exist. We all just got lucky to be born here.

…and…

Nope. Your false attempts to change the narrative are going in the trash where they belong. Happy Fourth, non-historian!

…and…

We all know it. We learned it in grammar school. And we also learned how we overcame all of this through the civil war, multiple amendments to our Constitution, and decades battles to ensure civil rights for all. And we have truly achieved equality for all under the law.

…and…

This tendency is becoming like the Easter tradition of declaring “Jesus was actually a brown middle-easterner. Suck it, white bigots.” It’s not news and has nothing to do with why the holiday is celebrated.

…and…

Crybaby. The past is ugly in many ways, but some white men in the 18th Century got together and produced a document that would eventually open up freedom and equality for everyone and to this day our nation still strives to improve.

…and…

It’s a little pathetic to whine about slavery in the U.S. that 158 years ago while taking no action to deal with slavery that exists today.

…and…

She can’t make any money off of that.

…and…

Why do you hate America and Americans?

She bit back after a few of the earlier criticisms, such as this one:

All credible historians have said the 1619 project is a rewriting of history.

…with…

Well, since historians rewrite history as a profession — literally what historians do — I’d love you to show me all the historians who said that.

…and this one…

Blame the enslavement on British colonial policies.

In his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson blamed the presence of enslaved Africans in North America on avaricious British colonial policies.

..with…

And tell me why that passage didn’t make it into the actual Declaration. I’ll wait.

…and this one:

I’m not really curious to read the book because it seems like we learned all this in school already. Does keeping this knowledge on the top of our mind make some difference in our daily lives?

…with…

Learned all of what? Also, that we have little use of remembering this past today is such a strange argument to make about the annual commemoration of an event that happened 247 years ago.

..but persuaded no one and just drew more scorings.

She eventually gave up, given that her obnoxious and ignorant tweet drew more than 2,000 negative responses, some of which were just cuss words.

But not quite. She wrapped up her 4th of July sentiment with this separate tweet to someone calling himself “Sentient Ham Sandwich,” which only brought her more scorings, ever blithely secure in the panglossian certainties of the establishment:

I’m sorry the truth makes you feel bad, but clearly the myths have not served you well. https://t.co/n7XzDOT3Y9

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 4, 2023

The whole ratio-ing seems to be congruent with the times, where wokesterly corporations have seen a tremendous public outcry against their overt leftwingery, while the Supreme Court has just struck down affirmative action in college admissions as contrary to the spirit of the Constitution.

Now this for the very goddess of wokedom — signaling that she’s a tad behind the times.

It’s all part of the wokester apocalypse, going on across the country. Stay tuned for more.

Ukraine’s leaders are once again complaining about the slowness of the West in fulfilling prior commitments related to military aid and advanced weaponry, despite the tens of billions in aid already sent.

Among the key talking points from President Zelensky and Ukraine’s military commanders has been the urgent need for air superiority, in the form of US-made F-16 fighters. The US and its allies starting months ago agreed to a training program based in Europe for Ukrainian pilots. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is now lashing out at the West for what he’s describing as a “delay” in the training.

He said that a particular country made a promise to begin the training in June (without naming the country), but this never materialized. He said this in a TV interview which aired Monday.

Kubela claimed that Ukraine is set receive a first batch of F-16 fighter jets “in the first months of next year” – which would have been based on a training timeline which began in June. His words suggest this won’t happen according to the original timeline.

According to his words as translated in regional media: 

“Training did not start in June. This means that the schedule begins to shift… We are now working with all relevant parties, with all countries involved in the jet coalition, to accelerate this process as much as possible,” he said.

He added that:

“There was a promise to start training in June from one of the countries, now they say they continue to prepare for the start of training, they miscalculated, they need more time. But we do not have time.”

The leading countries of this emerging “fighter jet coalition” which have pledged to help Ukraine included the UK, the US, and France. 

But there are significant hurdles even should the training be “expedited” – as Kiev as been wanting. We described in May, when agreements regarding Ukrainian pilot training were being made in Europe: 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the question of jets “was not a straightforward thing.” 

A French official also addressed the serious hurdles facing any future plan to given Ukrainians jets. “Before delivering a plane, you need to train pilots. It takes a long time. Ukrainian pilots are not trained to use French systems. They don’t speak French, let alone English,” an unnamed Elysée official told Politico.

Another question is whether the Ukrainians would use jets to attack border areas inside Russia’s territory, as they are now doing with drones, despite Zelensky’s official stance of not having “approved” such measures. However, recent Pentagon leaks show otherwise…

All of this comes against the backdrop of a much slower than expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, which at this point can even be described as essentially stalled. And yet the escalation continues…

Americans must understand that sponsoring the Ukraine war is not ending any time soon. Not only does Zelensky admit the counteroffensive is going slower than he expected but he’s simultaneously maintaining that Crimea is off the table. In other words, Ukraine will not compromise.

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) July 3, 2023

Russia has repeatedly warned against such a move as introducing Western warplanes into Ukraine, and has already leveled the charge that NATO countries are at this point a direct party to the conflict.

The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet has announced that early Wednesday Iranian naval vessels attempted to seize two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, which included firing shots at one of them. 

The US Navy said it responded and prevented the seizures. “The Iranian navy did make attempts to seize commercial tankers lawfully transiting international waters,” Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, confirmed in a statement. “The U.S. Navy responded immediately and prevented those seizures.”

It was only the second tanker which was fired upon during the incident, leaving no casualties or major damage. 

The Associated Press described the tanker which was fired upon as US managed, though Bahamas-flagged and Greek-owned:

Ambrey, a maritime intelligence service, said the tanker that was fired upon was a Bahamas-flagged, Greek-owned, U.S. managed crude oil tanker transiting from the United Arab Emirates to Singapore. It said the firing of shots happened 28 nautical miles northeast of Muscat, the capital of Oman.

The US Navy has further described that in total Iran seized at least five commercial vessels over the course of the last two years, and in addition there’s been several harassment incidents of foreign ships reported. 

In April, elite Iranian commandos raided a US-bound oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, swooping in on a helicopter. That tanker was Chinese-owned, and bound for Houston. But Tehran has sought to justify its actions by citing recent instances of Washington seizing its own oil on the high seas.

Currently, there’s a move in US Congress to toughen US action against Iranian ‘illegal’ crude exports: 

Several US senators backed the Biden administration’s move to seize Iranian oil tankers at Panama Canal, calling for more measures to stop export of Iran’s crude.

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told Iran International’s Arash Aalaei he “applauds” the seizure and he “hopes they’ll have many more.”

He added that this is a message to Iranians warning them that they cannot ultimately divert their oil and violate embargoes imposed on their oil trade. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) told us that he supports the Biden administration’s seizure of Suez Rajan tanker carrying Iranian crude oil, lauding it as “a very strong move.”

The Senator added: “Iranian aggression in many ways, including supplying drones to Russia to facilitate an illegal war in Ukraine, the behavior of Iran both to its own people and beyond the borders, is getting worse and worse and worse.”