Winners, Losers and Links

Winning and losing with grace

Winners

Speaker Johnson - Passed a bill with his slim majority. Not much grandstanding, not many theatrics. The GOP congress has been quiet so far this year. Maybe they don’t want to be visible when people finally hate the Democrats in Congress more than them. He needs to stop talk of cutting the third rail entitlements. Just let DOGE find the waste and fraud.

Macron - He has an opportunity to set up France to lead in Europe if Trump is serious about disengaging. Limited time left in his term, but he can lay the groundwork.

Jeff Bezos - He is trying to steer the ship of the Washington Post towards a port where they can seem reasonable.

Losers

Big college endowments - In that reconciliation bill, there was an increase to the tax on endowments for schools with huge endowments (per student). Not tanks in Harvard Yard, but a nice step to witness.

Ukraine - Kursk bulge continues to shrink, but Europe does promise to help more. Note that Hungary is now joined by Italy, Portugal and Spain in blocking re-allocating money to Ukraine. Ukrainians have not seen a positive turn of events in a long while.

Joy Reid - The MSNBC gravy train came to an end. She can start a substack as she undoubtedly has a huge audience just waiting for her insights.

Bill Maher - He is staking out ground for liberals to admit they went to excess but the right is still full of filthy rubes so a good person cannot support them. It is not going to work because the Democrat activist class will not allow it. He is staking out ground that went underwater years ago.

Links

Biden admin may go down in history as the most overt mafia government in American history.

Chris Rufo reveals how depraved some intel officers are and how open they are about it at work.

Now that the Iraq War has been over for long enough, we get to read interesting details about what exactly happened during that weird odyssey.

Podcast covers the way woke ideology has hampered archaeololgy, the sad current state and the way it opens space for Graham hancock types and amateurs who dream big. Nice section on giants in America and how the Smithsonian could squash uncertainty quickly but does not.

Soros money going to faux angry constituents at congressional town halls. They are trying to gin up momentum for the midterms. It has only been a month, but they need to get the wheels in motion.