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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Outrage greets The Post’s revelation of hidden migrant camps in Hamptons By  Jack Morphet and    Bruce Golding

https://nypost.com/2022/07/11/the-posts-revelation-of-hamptons-migrant-camps-sparks-outrage/

Hamptons residents said Monday they were shocked to learn from The Post that illegal immigrants were living in the woods amid the area’s sprawling mansions — as outraged online commenters blamed nouveau-riche property owners and liberal voters.

“I haven’t seen homelessness in the Hamptons at all. The first I heard of it was when I read it in The Post,” a woman in Southampton said.

“I see those guys at the 7-Eleven in the morning waiting for work. I would imagine it’s impossible for them to find housing because it’s very expensive but you don’t see homelessness around town.”

Bill Gallo, 74, of Remsenburg, said, “I had no idea. I can’t imagine people here even know.”

“I bought a home in the Hamptons in 2015. I spend half my time in Florida and half my time here,” the retired grain trader said.

“You walk the streets of Southampton and you don’t see any homeless.”

Gallo added: “I imagined migrant workers lived in lower-income areas adjacent to the Hamptons, like certain areas in Riverhead or Speonk — very modest areas.”

As Whitmer Plays the Victim, the Justice Department Moves to Conceal More Evidence It appears that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and possibly one of her top advisors, were accomplices, not innocents, in a “foiled” kidnapping plot. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/11/as-whitmer-plays-the-victim-the-justice-department-moves-to-conceal-more-evidence/

No one in national politics plays the role of victim better than Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

In a fawning 3,700-word puff piece published by the Washington Post over the weekend, reporter Ruby Cramer told the embattled governor’s self-described tale of woe: Whitmer isn’t really an ambitious political climber—the daughter of well-connected and wealthy parents, she started running for office in her 20s and was elected to the Michigan legislature at age 29—but rather a misunderstood and underappreciated champion of the people targeted because of her sex, looks, anti-Trump stance, lockdown orders, and pro-abortion views, among other unjustified reasons for “right-wing” derision. 

That’s Whitmer’s story, anyway.

Interviewed at the official governor’s summer residence in Mackinac Island, Whitmer and her daughters detailed the horrors of growing up in Clarence Thomas’ America while enjoying a taxpayer-funded getaway. “I live on a college campus,” Whitmer’s oldest daughter, Sherry, told Cramer. (Both daughters attend the prestigious University of Michigan.) “There are people out there who would force me into conceiving. It’s a scary thought.” She then admitted she really doesn’t have to worry about an unwanted pregnancy since she is a lesbian.

But the FBI-concocted plot to abduct and assassinate Whitmer remains a source of great angst for the governor even though she knew about it weeks, if not months, before the “kidnappers” were arrested. At some point during the summer of 2020, Whitmer told her family “there was going to be a story coming out soon about ‘some people plotting to kidnap and kill me.’” That disclosure, according to Whitmer, happened a few months after an anti-lockdown protest at the Lansing Capitol building in late April 2020.

From there, Whitmer’s recollection of the timeline gets fuzzy, if not revelatory. “When the kidnapping plot was announced, it was summer. And people were blowing up your phone, right?” Whitmer asked her daughters during the interview. “Yeah,” replied her daughter, Sydney.

Except that’s not what happened. Law enforcement made the arrests on October 7, 2020—fall, not summer. Whitmer for her part was ready to go the next day with a distraught video message blaming Donald Trump for inciting right-wing “militias” to attack her. The shocking news produced wall-to-wall negative headlines for Trump as millions of Americans were voting for president; Joe Biden took full advantage of the FBI’s latest gift to the Democratic Party, ranting from the campaign trail about Trump’s “dog whistles” to extremist groups.

New York Times says Biden’s age is an ‘uncomfortable issue’ for White House, Democrats in stunning report NYT alleges staff ‘quietly watch out’ for Biden and closely monitor him during his trips to Delaware By Joseph A. Wulfsohn

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-biden-age-uncomfortable-issue-white-house-democrats-stunning-report?intcmp=tw_fnc

The New York Times published a stunning report about President Biden’s age and how it’s becoming an “uncomfortable issue” for the White House and the Democratic Party. 

The headline of the report on Saturday declared that 79-year-old Biden is “testing the boundaries of age and the presidency,” first highlighting how his upcoming trip to the Middle East was initially tacked onto his recent trip to Europe with one anonymous official calling it “crazy” if the president had done a 10-day trip overseas, those aides tell the Times there were “political and diplomatic” reasons behind separating the trip into two. 

“But the reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges,” Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote. “And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.”

Baker recapped from Biden’s European trip how he needed guidance from another world leader to look at the cameras for a photo-op and how now-outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson answered a question on behalf of the president, who didn’t hear a reporter shouting a question about Ukraine. 

Our New Antoinettes  These humanitarian rich feel just terrible about the sins of America, but not terrible enough to sacrifice any element of their privileged lifestyles—the just deserts they feel for being so righteous. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/10/our-new-antoinettes/

Marie Antoinette, the beheaded wife of the beheaded French Bourbon King Charles Louis XVI, did not really say “Let them cake.”

But in the short time that the French Revolution became utterly unhinged, toxic, and nihilistic, she became nonetheless iconic as an out-of-touch elite who had lived in a make-believe world at Versailles, without a clue (or care?) about the ordeal of the masses.

Rather than worry about the drudgery of the French peasant, Marie dressed up as one. And she roamed about in her idyllic faux peasant “farm” at the Hameau de la Reine, near the palace at Versailles.

Apparently, during these brief rustic interludes, Marie felt that the more she might act out a sort of aristocratic peasant life, the more she could find simplicity and escape the drama of court life, but without the real-life, crushing poverty of the poor.

The modern left-wing elite are becoming our version of Antoinettes. Thirty-eight-year-old Mark Zuckerberg is worth over $60 billion. But he enjoys T-shirts, jeans, and apparent simplicity in his many landed estates. He is so worried about the wrong voting tendencies of the clueless middle classes that he poured nearly $420 million of dark money from his vast fortune into the 2020 election—de facto absorbing the work of key precinct registrars—to ensure the “right” result for the unthinking multitudes.

Americans, almost uniquely among modern nations, mostly do not envy, much less despise the rich. But there is a certain sort of privilege that they do not like: the sanctimonious and hypercritical rich whose rhetoric is at odds with their own lifestyles and the methods by which they inherited or made vast sums. And they especially are turned off by those who exude open disdain for the clinger/deplorable/dregs class—to paraphrase the Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden nomenclature.

Look Deeper, And The Jobs News Under Biden Sucks

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/11/look-deeper-and-the-jobs-news-under-biden-sucks/

After months and months of bad news and metastasizing crises, who can blame President Joe Biden for seizing one glimmer of good economic news? Too bad the good news isn’t really that good at all.

On the surface, the economic news from Friday looked celebratory. The Labor Department reported that the economy had created 372,000 mobs in June, beating the consensus forecast (a rare thing under Biden). The unemployment rate held at 3.6%. And, to top it off, jobs in the private sector regained all the losses from the COVID lockdowns.

In response, Biden rushed out a statement bragging about how “this has been the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history,” and that it “would not have been possible without the decisive action my administration took last year to fix a broken COVID response, and pass the American Rescue Plan to get our economy back on track.”

He went on: “We have more Americans working in the private sector today than any day during Donald Trump’s Presidency – more people than any time in our history.”

Only the last claim has any truth to it.

The idea that Biden presided over the fastest job growth in history is meaningless since he took office after the biggest decline in jobs in history. From February 2020 to April 2020, the economy shed a stunning 22 million jobs – thanks to COVID lockdowns we now know were completely pointless.

Biden’s Approval Hits 33 Percent; Democrats Want 2024 Options, Poll Shows Shane Goldmacher

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bidens-approval-hits-33-percent-democrats-want-2024-options-poll-shows/ar-AAZrdFj?li=BBnb7Kz

President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating.

Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation. More than three-quarters of registered voters see the United States moving in the wrong direction, a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties.

Only 13 percent of American voters said the nation was on the right track — the lowest point in Times polling since the depths of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.For Mr. Biden, that bleak national outlook has pushed his job approval rating to a perilously low point. Republican opposition is predictably overwhelming, but more than two-thirds of independents also now disapprove of the president’s performance, and nearly half disapprove strongly. Among fellow Democrats his approval rating stands at 70 percent, a relatively low figure for a president, especially heading into the 2022 midterms when Mr. Biden needs to rally Democrats to the polls to maintain control of Congress.

Trumped Up J6 Hearings Pump Trump Up If Trump is the candidate, Americans will vote for him not in spite of January 6, but in part because of it—especially the deep-state response to it.  By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/09/trumped-up-j6-hearings-pump-trump-up/

It’s been an eventful week. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was forced to resign. Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, was shot dead while delivering a campaign speech. And Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Sri Lankin prime minister, offered to resign after thousands of protestors stormed his residence and burned it to the ground. 

On the home front, various groups unhappy with some recent rulings by the Supreme Court have offered bounties for people who report on the whereabouts of the justices. A 73-year-old man in North Philadelphia was set upon and beaten to death by a pod of rampaging black teens. And it was widely reported that Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, would be traveling to Utah to meet with conservative donors. 

It was that last item that really set the collective heart of the punditocracy all pit-a-pat. You could tell this by the number of reporters who breathlessly described the event as a meeting with “mega-donors,” “mega” being the favored intensifier du jour. It means, “This is serious. Pay attention.”

For those with an active imagination, what that event signaled was the prospect—glorious or terrifying, depending on the political coloration of the reporter—of a DeSantis candidacy for president in 2024. 

That would suit me just fine. I think DeSantis is one of the very best governors in the United States. He is also the one most often spoken of together with the word “president.” The prospect terrifies anyone on the Left who preserves even a slender tether to reality, for it is clear that set against a drooling, senile puppet such as Joe Biden or a clownish relative of Nancy Pelosi like Gavin Newsom, DeSantis would wipe the floor, dry the dishes, and tidy up the laundry with them. 

For many on the Right, DeSantis is the handkerchief with which they can mop their furrowed brow. For he is conservative. He is quick on his feet. And, above all, he is not Donald Trump. 

President Biden and His Admiral Have Boarded a Sinking Ship By Jay Tucker

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/president_biden_and_his_admiral_have_boarded_a_sinking_ship.html

Admiral (not a Navy admiral) “Rachel” Levine is a so-called transgender woman, a pediatrician, and now a U.S. asst. secretary for health.  Levine has joined President Biden and many others in the LGBT campaign to promote “gender-affirming care” for youths.  “There is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care[.]”   

Levine’s “no argument” assertions are hogwash for many obvious reasons.  Here are three.

First, the 2012 Report of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force (Report), at 4, emphasized that there is no consensus regarding treatment of children with GID (now called G.D.), because “opinions vary widely among experts” as to treatments.

Second, the 2012 World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care asserts that social transition for children, which would include use of opposite-sex bathrooms and participation in opposite-sex sports, “is a controversial issue.”

Third, the American College of Pediatricians has concluded: “Ethics alone demands an end to the use of pubertal suppression with GnRH agonists, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents.  The American College of Pediatricians recommends an immediate cessation of these interventions, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies.”

Don’t blame America for Brittney Griner’s fate Bringing her home is on Biden’s State Department Stephen L. Miller

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/america-brittney-griner-russia-cannabis-biden/

I sympathize with Brittney Griner. The WNBA star currently detained in Russia is arguably the face of her sport. This week Griner pleaded guilty in court to possession of hash oil upon her entry to Russia. She has been detained for several weeks now; her and her family have made several pleas to the Biden administration to step in and free her, which they should — without giving up notorious Russian arms dealers or criminals. (President Biden, meanwhile, has been remarkably lenient towards the Russian nationals who use illicit substances with his son — but that’s a tale for another time.)

The conflict in Ukraine and the Biden administration’s proxy war against Russia complicates this matter further — once again, Biden and his State Department find themselves in a jam.

The sensitive diplomatic work of bringing Griner home is vital. But alone it is not important enough for the national media, who would prefer to view the Griner case through the same narrow scope of racial grievances. It’s not enough to suggest the Biden administration appears to be once again dragging its feet and acting without a sense of urgency. For some members of the media, the very country, the United States and the people who reside in it, is also responsible for Griner’s detainment. The reason, they say, is because we are a racist institution, and to a minor degree, a sexist one as well. Apparently Griner’s ongoing detention in Russia for her own actions is the fault of white male privilege, just like everything else.

According to Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, “If Brittney Griner were Tom Brady, America would be losing its mind…Where is the outrage over the hostage superstar? I think I know…” This Tom Brady analogy grossly oversimplifies the Griner case and the geopolitical tectonics it involves.

VIDEO: 73-Year-Old Man Dies After Group Of 7 Teens Brutally Attack Him In North Philadelphia

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2022/07/09/teens-attack-kill-man-cecil-b-moore-avenue-north-philadelphia/

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Police are searching for a group of seven teenage suspects who brutally beat a 73-year-old man with a cone and other objects in North Philadelphia last month, knocking the man to the ground and causing head injuries.

Police identified the victim Friday as James Lambert, who died from injuries the following day.

The incident happened June 24 around 2:45 a.m. on the 2100 block of Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

Lambert was by himself only a few blocks away from his home when he was surrounded by seven teenagers and attacked from behind. Police say they believe the man did nothing to provoke the assault.