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Tuesday, July 12, 2022

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Twitter Stock Dives as Elon Musk Looks to Pull Out of Acquisition Deal

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk’s effort to terminate his deal to buy Twitter Inc. sent shares of the social-media company tumbling, as investors prepare for what is expected to be a messy courtroom battle. Twitter shares fell 6.7% to $34.35 shortly after the opening bell, putting shares on pace for their biggest drop in nearly two months. The move follows Mr. Musk’s disclosure to securities regulators Friday that he is seeking to abandon his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and take it private, saying that the company hasn’t provided the information he needs to assess the prevalence of fake or spam accounts. Twitter stock is trading about 37% below the $54.20-a-share price at which Mr. Musk agreed to buy the company in April, marking a stunning turnaround for what has been considered the buzziest deal of the year. Its shares also are trading below where they were in early April before Mr. Musk took a surprise 9% stake in the company, which officially kicked off his takeover attempt (Wall Street Journal). Yahoo: With a $1 billion breakup fee on the line, traders are bracing for more chaos as Twitter takes Musk to court. Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor said the company will pursue legal action in order to close the transaction “on the price and terms agreed by Mr. Musk.” The company has hired merger-law heavyweight Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and aims to file suit early this week, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Twitter has denied Musk’s claims, saying bots are less than 5% of the total users, with executives repeating as recently as Thursday that their estimates are accurate (Yahoo).

Biden’s Approval Ratings Continue to Plummet

New York Times: 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 (New York Times). Josh Kraushaar: Biden approval rating: 33 (!) percent 64% of Democrats want new Dem nominee for 2024 (Twitter). Logan Dobson: Believe this is Joe Biden’s first dip to over -20 on net job approval brutal! and getting worse (Twitter)!

Former Presidential Advisor David Gergen: “It’s inappropriate to seek that office after you’re 80 or in your 80s”

79 and counting. New York Times: Just a year and a half into his first term, Mr. Biden is already more than a year older than Ronald Reagan was at the end of two terms. If he mounts another campaign in 2024, Mr. Biden would be asking the country to elect a leader who would be 86 at the end of his tenure, testing the outer boundaries of age and the presidency. Polls show many Americans consider Mr. Biden too old, and some Democratic strategists do not think he should run again… Questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness have nonetheless taken a toll on his public standing. In a June survey by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters believed he was showing that he is too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents 65 or older. Mr. Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and listless. He sometimes loses his train of thought, has trouble summoning names or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Mr. Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy” (New York Times). Insider: Former presidential advisor David Gergen in a recent interview said that it is “inappropriate” for candidates to pursue the presidency after they’ve turned 80 years old. “I do feel it’s inappropriate to seek that office after you’re 80 or in your 80s,” he told The New York Times. “I have just turned 80 and I have found over the last two or three years I think it would have been unwise for me to try to run any organization. You’re not quite as sharp as you once were,” he added. Gergen — a political commentator who served under former presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton — said that the rigors of the highly-demanding position would present a challenge to someone at an advanced age (Insider).

Biden Celebrates Bipartisan Gun Control Bill, Pushes for More With Call to Ban “Assault Weapons”

Give them an inch and they take a mile. Hill: President Biden on Monday capped off a celebration of a recently passed bipartisan gun safety law with a call to take further action, including a ban on assault weapons. Biden spoke to a crowd of hundreds of lawmakers, advocates and relatives of gun violence victims on the South Lawn of the White House to mark the passage and signing last month of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left nearly 20 children dead. At the end of his remarks, Biden acknowledged more needed to be done, focusing in particular on the availability of high-powered weapons (Hill). CBS: “Assault weapons need to be banned,” Biden says while calling for common sense measures (Twitter). Townhall: Biden today: “None of what I’m talking about infringes on anyone’s Second Amendment rights…I support the Second Amendment.” Biden, moments later: “Assault weapons need to be banned…I’m determined to ban these weapons again…” (Twitter).

Biden Takes First Trip of Presidency to Middle East

Associated Press: President Joe Biden will confront a kaleidoscope of challenges when he travels to the Middle East this week, his first trip there since taking office. With the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the rearview mirror, the United States is reassessing its role in the region at a time when its focus has shifted to Europe and Asia (Associated Press). Newsweek: President Joe Biden’s attempt to lower rising oil prices by convincing Saudi Arabia to increase production looks set to fail as Saudi officials have indicated the country is not willing to abandon its oil production alliance with Russia, which Washington has claimed is part of the reason for sky-high fuel costs. Biden has said that the trip will advance American interests by focusing on the global trade and supply chains the U.S. relies on. Many countries in the West, including the U.S., want Saudi Arabia to produce more oil to help mitigate the growing global energy crisis that was ignited by the Ukraine war. More production will also punish Russia, a major oil exporter, by bringing global prices down (Newsweek). Wall Street Journal: The president intends to discuss the Saudi human-rights record, U.S. officials said, which underpinned his campaign vow to treat the country like a pariah. But Saudi officials say they are unlikely to make any human-rights concessions and aren’t willing to abandon an oil-production alliance with Moscow, which the U.S. has blamed in part for high oil prices. Without substantial progress on energy or human-rights issues, some of the president’s allies worry he could return to the U.S. largely empty-handed and unable to tout new efforts to address high inflation, a top concern for voters ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Mr. Biden intends to make the case that the trip is about bolstering domestic interests, U.S. officials said (Wall Street Journal).

Biden Steers Hard Left, But Progressives Still Want More

Daily Herald: What’s going on with Joe Biden? Why is a president who ran and was elected as a centrist Democrat supporting one left-wing proposal after another? What has prompted the politician whose sensitivity to public opinion was finely honed for four decades to take one unpopular stand after another (Daily Herald)? PJ Media: Biden has shown a remarkable ability to abandon the mantles of “unifier” and “moderate” and to govern as far to the left as possible. Running hard toward the green climate agenda, pushing astonishing spending packages, buying into radical policies on transgenderism, rebuking the Supreme Court for doing its job in overturning bad law, and advocating for the federal takeover of elections to entrench the party’s power are just a few of the examples of Biden-era leftism. Yet it’s not enough in the eyes of many in his party. The president’s detractors from his left complain that his tone isn’t firm enough or that he hasn’t demonstrated enough outrage, which is funny because so many of his statements sound like lectures aimed at those who don’t agree with him. His progressive critics say that he hasn’t talked enough about issues like abortion and gun control, and they may have a point because Biden often comes across as reactive rather than proactive (PJ Media).

Military Recruitment Across All Branches Suffers Due to More Young People Becoming Unwilling and Ineligible

NBC: Every branch of the U.S. military is struggling to meet its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goals, say multiple U.S. military and defense officials, and numbers obtained by NBC News show both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it. The officials said the Pentagon’s top leaders are now scrambling for ways to find new recruits to fill out the ranks of the all-volunteer force. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks consider the shortfall a serious issue, said the officials, and have been meeting on it frequently with other leaders. The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years (NBC). Fox News: The largest branch of the military, the U.S. Army, has hit 40% of its recruiting goal with only three months left in the fiscal year. To compensate, the Army lowered its standards. No high school diploma or GED? OK. Tattoos on the neck and hands? Fine, no waiver needed. That recruits with no high school and neck tattoos might be training and discipline problems later will be a challenge left to platoon sergeants and squad leaders. And, in a signal that leadership knows the problem will persist, the Pentagon is reconsidering more than 250 disqualifications for service, such as asthma and ADHD. Many of these recruits would incur higher medical costs down the road, as they will be more likely to be medically discharged, earning a payment from taxpayers for life while not contributing to the national defense—the worst of both worlds (Fox News). US Military: The younger generation has different values than in the past. Past generations were more likely to view service as honorable and respectable. These days, it’s more of a means to an end. With that, very few younger people are even interested in military service (US Military).

Investigation Reveals Border Patrol Did Not Whip Migrants, Still Recommends Agents be Punished Due to Media Hysterics

No wonder trust in media is at an all-time low. Federalist: Nearly 10 months after corporate media and Democrat conspiracy theorists flooded front pages, the White House press briefing room, and Twitter with assertions that Border Patrol agents whipped migrants, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigation found no evidence that the horseback unit used their reins to strike at the influx of Haitians illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. And in fact, it was the media’s fake story that sparked an investigation in the first place. Some media grifters such as MSNBC’s Joy Reid parroted those speculations as fact and suggested that “whips which come from the slave era, slavery era, were part of the package that we issue to any sort of law enforcement or government sanction personnel.” Other outlets, such as The New York Times, said the agents used “the reins of their horses to strike at running migrants.” The legacy paper tried to scrub that blatant lie from an article later when the photographer who took the viral photos said he never saw Border Patrol use their leather reins to whip anyone. But even that didn’t stop President Joe Biden and his team from spreading the whipping lie as truth. Nor did it stop the corrupt media from amplifying the White House’s frenzy over the faux incident (Federalist). PJ Media: Nobody in the administration has apologized to these agents, but it gets worse. The investigation still declared that the agents applied “unnecessary” force to the illegal immigrants, while one agent in particular used “denigrating and inappropriate language and to have maneuvered his horse unsafely.” The investigators recommended that four agents be punished, with degrees of discipline ranging from a letter of reprimand to termination (PJ Media).

AOC, Ted Lieu Pen Letter to Senate Asking Them to Declare Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh Liars

National Review: Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) recently called on the Senate to take a position on whether conservative Supreme Court justices lied during their confirmation hearings regarding their willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. The pair claimed in the letter to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on Friday that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh “directly lied” to members of the Senate. “We request that the Senate make its position clear on whether Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied under oath during their confirmation hearings,” the letter said (National Review). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We cannot allow Supreme Court nominees lying and/or misleading the Senate under oath to go unanswered. Both GOP & Dem Senators stated SCOTUS justices misled them. This cannot be accepted as precedent. Doing so erodes rule of law, delegitimizes the court, and imperils democracy (Twitter). Daily Wire: Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh stated during their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe — along with its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey — to be settled precedent in the eyes of the court. Many took those statements to mean that they would never vote to overturn the two landmark abortion cases — which they did in late June. But stating that those cases were “precedent” did not mean that either justice was lying — nor did it necessarily constitute a promise to never overturn said precedent. The fact that both Roe and Casey were “precedent” did not mean that they were necessarily constitutional or that they were not simply bad law, however. Plessy v. Ferguson — which allowed for segregation under the banner of “separate but equal” — was also precedent once, until Brown v. Board of Education reversed that (Daily Wire).

10.

Historic Composer, Monty Norman, Famed for Writing James Bond Theme Passes Away at 94

CBC: Monty Norman, a British composer who wrote the theme tune for the James Bond films, has died. He was 94. A statement posted Monday on Norman’s official website said: “It is with sadness we share the news that Monty Norman died on 11th July 2022 after a short illness.” Born Monty Noserovitch to Jewish parents in the East End of London in 1928, Norman got his first guitar when he was 16. He performed with big bands and in a variety double act with comedian Benny Hill before writing songs for early British rockers Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele and composing for stage musicals including Make Me an Offer, Expresso Bongo, Songbook and Poppy. Norman was hired by producer Albert (Cubby) Broccoli to compose a theme for the first James Bond film, Dr. No, released in 1962 (CBC).

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