How Much Longer Will Joe Be Protected? 

President Biden’s story about having nothing whatsoever to do with Hunter’s overseas consulting business keeps getting thinner. Even the corporate media is catching on.

On July 28, I talked about some of the evidence (including bank statements) of Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian money moving from overseas accounts into not only Hunter’s shell companies but into the private bank accounts of more than a half-dozen Biden family members.

The same day that article was published, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business associate, testified before the House Oversight Committee about “at least 20” private phone conversations or personal meetings with Hunter and foreign executives where Joe Biden was present.

On July 31, in an interview conducted by Tucker Carlson, Archer admitted that Biden understood what those conversations were about. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I can definitively say at dinners and meetings, he knew there were business associates.” He even called Joe Biden’s presence during the meetings an “abuse of soft power.”

Archer also noted that Hunter was hired to be on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm, because that “offered the company the advantages associated with the Biden brand.”

At this point, and given the fact that Hunter was not able to get the first-in-US-history lifetime immunity for past and future felonies (agreed to by the Justice Department), I can’t see how his business of creating a personal net worth of more than $100 million by consulting with Russia, China, and Ukraine during the Obama years is going to be contained.

And as the details start to come out from whistleblowers and subpoenas, I can’t see how everyone that has been helping him won’t abandon him. And when that happens, the next to go will be “the big guy.”

Of course, I could be wrong. Let’s see what happens.

What to Do with the Student Debt Problem 

As I said on July 21, President Biden’s efforts to “forgive” student debt is not only a terrible idea from an economic and financial incentive perspective, it’s complexly immoral.

Here’s a much better idea – one that you won’t like if you like Biden, because it comes from Ron DeSantis: Make student loan debt dischargeable during bankruptcy. Like any other loan. That’s not possible now, but the prohibition against it doesn’t make sense.

DeSantis’s idea is to allow students buried in debt to declare bankruptcy and move on from there. But with a twist. “I think the universities should be responsible for the student debt,” he said. “You produce somebody that can be successful, they pay off the loans, great. If you don’t, then you’re gonna be on the hook.”

Nellie Bowles, writing in The Free Press, had this to say about the proposal:

“I like this a lot. Most of the people who want student debt forgiven argue that the government should do it all, that the truck driver’s taxes should cover that MA in Modernist Art. None of these activists would dare touch Harvard’s endowment (currently $53.2 billion as of June 2021) or any other university bank accounts. DeSantis is right. Free the student debtors. Raid the endowments. Make schools make their students employable, or at least, you know, functional. Let’s start there.”

Smart Guns Hit the Market 

After years of development and promotion, smart guns are finally on the market. In December, a brand called the Biofire Smart Gun will be widely available to US citizens from Florida to Oregon.

Smart guns aren’t AI-smart, but they do offer a feature that hasn’t been available before. They use fingerprint and facial recognition technology to identify registered owners. Nobody else can fire the gun. The gun isn’t smart enough to decide whether the owner should be using it. But in reducing the use to a single person, experts say it will lower the risk of unwanted shootings and theft.

That’s good. But couldn’t we do better?

With all the advanced technology available today, why can’t gun scientists develop smart guns that could stop bad guys in their tracks, but not kill them? What would be wrong with that?

Click here.

Venezuelans at the Top of Illegal Immigrant Flow to the US 

After 2.5 years of basically wide-open borders, the Biden administration has done a little tightening. Since May 12, the average number of daily illegal crossings has been around 3,360, down from about 7,100 in March.

A large number of those immigrants have been Venezuelans fleeing the economic disaster and political oppression that started when Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) came to power in 1999. (Inflation in Venezuela is now over 400%.)

According to the WSJ, more than 7.3 million Venezuelans have left their country, making them the biggest refugee group in the world right now. About 6.4 million of them have settled in Central and South America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But many hundreds of thousands are hoping to get into the US.

Click here.

What Do You Get When You Mix China with Russia and North Korea?

Danger, for sure! 

Top Russian and Chinese officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese Politburo member Li Hongzhong, met with North Korea’s dictator in North Korea last week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the truce that ended the Korean War.

North Korea launched more than 100 ballistic missiles since last year, while China and Russia have blocked US-led efforts at the UN Security Council to have North Korea sanctioned.

Click here.

US Industry’s Recent Boom Market: It Is Ending. Or What? 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 237 points last Thursday (0.7%), while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.6%, putting an end to the longest running bull market for tech stocks since 1987.

Click here.

European Union Countries, Liberal on Most Issues, Are Putting a Lid on Immigration 

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister 

The European Union is ratcheting down the flow of immigrants through negotiated migration and asylum policies and tighter enforcement at the borders. The campaign to reduce immigration has been led by Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, whose anti-immigration stance gave her a strong victory in the parliamentary election last September. In Holland, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government recently collapsed over the immigration issue. And according to the WSJ, anti-immigration proposals are doing well in Austria, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Get this: The growing anti-immigration sentiment was kindled in 2016 when a million migrants, mostly from Syria, entered the EU. In the USA, we had more than twice that many illegals cross the Southern border last year.

The World Is Getting Older. Fast!

It’s not just my generation, it’s the Baby Boomers. And it’s not just in the USA. The population of the entire world is aging. And aging fast. To get a feel for how important this is, check out this chart.

Mike Pence: Like Abbott & Costello in One Person 

Mike Pence has an interesting personality. On the one hand, he comes off as contemplative and serious. On the other hand, he often says things that make my jaw drop.

In this example, he responds to a very direct and reasonable question from Tucker Carlson. Click here.

Why Student Debt Forgiveness Is a Bad Idea (in Case It’s Not Obvious) 

Notwithstanding the fact that the action is senseless, unethical, and probably illegal, the Biden administration recently announced that it will “discharge the loans of 804,000 student borrowers who have been enrolled in income-driven repayment plans and have accumulated the equivalent of 20 or 25 years of qualifying monthly payments.”

I grew up being told that when you borrow money, you pay it back. No matter what. That felt as sensible and sacred of a commandment as Thou Shalt Not Steal or Thou Shalt Not Kill.

There is absolutely no way to justify the action. It is an insult to the millions of Americans that worked double shifts to repay their student loans. It sends a terrible message to college students and their younger brothers and sisters. And it’s an obvious pay-for-votes by the most corrupt and immoral administration in my lifetime.

Oh, and one more thing: It’s going to cost taxpayers (who pay their debts) $39 billion!

Click here.

What’s FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan Really Up To?

Lina Khan 

The FTC is going after OpenAI’s ChatGPT by “investigating” whether the technology may be “harming people” by publishing false information about them.

In a July 13 press release accompanying a civil subpoena, the FTC said it will find out if OpenAI has “engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm.”

As someone that doesn’t take government press releases as gospel, I’m suspicious.

First, since when does the FTC investigate possible future harm-doing? Its job is to investigate current and prosecute current wrongdoings. And that only when there is ample factual evidence of wrongdoing.

Second, the FTC is not in the business of policing speech. Its bailiwick is “trade,” as in the Federal Trade Commission.

Third, even if the FTC had a legitimate reason to investigate and prosecute speech, ChatGPT is not a conveyor of speech – in the sense of ideas and opinions – the way that the media (newspapers, magazines, TV, the internet, etc.) is. It is not – at least at the moment – a being with agency. Like any other tool, a screwdriver, for instance, ChatGPT can be used for all sorts of useful purposes. But it can also be used to hurt people.

Investigating the company behind ChatGPT for speech concerns is like investigating Stanley or Craftsman to determine if screwdrivers could possibly be used to stab someone to death. Doh!

The FTC surely knows this. So why is it doing it?

I see the current excuse – protecting individuals from libel or slander – as patently false. What the government is doing here, I suspect, is looking to get the AI industry under its thumb in any and every way it can, before AI advances to the next level and the government can’t control it anymore.

I don’t think the FTC, or the Biden administration, has any idea of what sort of threat AI is to them, but they want to figure it out. Beginning the investigation with the FTC and a concern that vague is a good, low-key way of moving forward.

I haven’t been using ChatGPT, but I keep promising myself that I will get acquainted with it. It’s already impressive, and it will be getting a major upgrade soon, as the company has just struck a deal with the Associated Press to access the 177-year-old news organization’s text archives. Click here.

The Government’s Digital Dollar Plan Is Moving Apace 

Alex Mashinsky 

Alex Mashinsky, the founder of Celsius Network, a now-defunct crypto exchange, was arrested last week in NYC and charged with seven federal crimes, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, and market manipulation. In the last three months, the government has gone after at least one major cryptocurrency business a week. The week of June 10, for example, it was Binance and Coinbase.

What, if anything, is going on?

One thing is that some of these companies are engaged in fraud and federal regulators are doing their jobs. Another thing – and this I can’t prove – is what I suggested in the June 8, 2022 issue. It is just one more step of a plan that is already well underway: replacing the paper dollar with a digital dollar, and then using the digital dollar to monitor and control just about everything every single American does or says.

For more on this, click here.

Huge Return on Tiny Collectible 

This is the sort of story that inspires millions of amateur collectors to spend weekends browsing thrift stores and garage sales. Here you have a nicely painted but otherwise undistinguished little vase that was bought for $3.30 and later sold at auction for $11,800.

In today’s interconnected world, this is a rare phenomenon, but it’s still fun to read about, if you fancy this sort of thing. Click here.

School Massacres… Where? 

The US has led the world in school massacres for as long as I can remember. But now I’m seeing reports of school killings in Europe. And just the other day, I read about six people (including three children) stabbed to death in a kindergarten in southeastern China’s Guangdong province. According to The Hustle, the massacre was one of several similar incidents. At least 17 knife attacks in schools have occurred in China since 2010.

Gun-related murders are extremely rare in China because guns are almost impossible to get. In China, apparently, knives are the mass murderer’s weapon of choice.

Hunter’s Inside Deal

Did Hunter Biden get a special deal in getting a “diversion” for his tax violations?

There’s no doubt about it. As one tax expert stated in a Congressional deposition, this may be the first time in history that the Justice Department allowed someone that had done what Hunter did to receive no jail time. The average time has been 39 months in jail.

Click here.

The Next Joe Rogan? 

I’ve been trying to understand what it is about Joe Rogan that has made him, by far, the most successful podcaster in the world. It’s none of the things you might guess. It’s not celebrity interviews. He does very few of them. It’s not sensationalism. Most of the topics he covers are mundane. It’s not being outlandish or outrageous – acting the shock jock, as it were. No. It’s something else. And until I saw this guy, I thought Rogan was the only social media celebrity that had it. What do you think? Does he have the Joe Rogan thing? And if so, what is it?

Click here.

“Take Away My Liberty, but Don’t Touch My Pronouns

When you are convicted of felony murder in America, you lose a bunch of your rights, including your constitutional right to liberty for as long as your prison sentence lasts. But one right you won’t lose, at least according to the NYT and WSJ, is your right to be addressed by the pronoun of your choice. This was clear from two pieces I read last week on the conviction of Lee Aldrich, a man who pled guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted first-degree murder.

You may remember reading about the mass shooting last November at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. Aldrich stormed into the place with a rifle and a handgun and let loose, killing five and injuring 17. It was subsequently discovered that, a year before, he had threatened to become “the next mass murderer.” It was also noted that he himself identified as nonbinary and that his preferred pronouns were “they” and “them.”

In reporting the plea deal, both newspapers seemed comfortable calling this sole perpetrator “they” and “them,” which made the rest of their reporting ungrammatical, confusing, and irritating. In my opinion, since the attack was undeniably a hate crime against the LGBTQ+ community, they should be able to get together and formally strip Aldrich of all his pronounal rights.

Note: For more on my stance on transgender rights, see “Readers Write,” below.

Jiu Jitsu: Beyond Self-Defense 

Watch this story about a 16-year-old high school wrestler who thwarts an attempted kidnapping.

Then watch this.

The story of Rancho Santana… 

The project my publishing partners and I started in Nicaragua 25 years ago, without a plan or a permit, has been made into a documentary. Click here to watch the trailer.

Everyone Wants to Be a Victim in America Today – Even Skinny People!

It’s no longer cool to win a gold medal or graduate cum laude or start a successful business or climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. In today’s America, the only sure way to get attention is to figure out and complain about some way you have been victimized.

 Meghan Markle is doing it. So is Oprah Winfrey. In a recent New York Times article, I discovered a new way to climb aboard the victim train: Become a victim of “skinny shaming”!

The article, written by Gina Kolata, tells several stories of women that took Wegovy, one of a new class of drugs prescribed for obesity. One of those women, Katarra Ewing of Detroit, lost 90 pounds on the drug.

But there was an unintended and unexpected side effect: Many of her longtime friends, she said, abandoned her! Apparently, they preferred the 90-pound-plumper version. “Only my genuine friends are left,” she complained, “and that’s a very small number.”

Click here.

Sleeping Man Shoots Himself in Self-Defense 

I’m trying to decide what to make of this story… or what the Illinois DA was thinking.

A 62-year-old man is facing firearms charges in Illinois after authorities say he accidentally shot himself in the leg in his sleep – while dreaming that he was defending himself against an “intruder” in his home.

Click here.

The Difference Between an Independent Musician and an Industry-Backed One 

This clip is a little outdated. (The rankings he quotes are from several months ago.) But the point he makes is a good one. And what he’s doing – promoting his record this way – is very clever.

Click here.