An expert explains the bigger picture.

More than twice the size of the previous record holder.

????: Finance Minister Katy Gallagher reveals that the Digital ID Act 2024 will officially commence from 1 December, 2024. She ensures Australians that the system will provide individuals with a “safe and voluntary” way to verify your identity for use in online transactions with government and businesses. UTL COMMENT:- Why do they always push everything as 'safe'?? Calling ?? bully Gallagher. It will NOT be safe nor secure and will say voluntary in small print for a time period. This Communist Government are not working for the Australian people. I DO NOT TRUST the Government or Opposition. Oh...and go fuck yourselves!! STOP DIGITAL ID AT ALL COSTS!!!

On Tuesday, Joe Biden was in New Orleans to tout a grant given to Tulane University for cancer research. Biden, who has almost literally ruined every single thing he’s touched in the miserable three and a half years he’s been president, is claiming now that he’ll cure cancer before leaving office. Maybe Biden should have spearheaded a Dementia Moonshot instead. Who knows? He might still be atop the Democrats’ ticket if that had paid off. Biden’s speech gave some heft to the plotters inside his party who ran him off as their nominee last month. He didn’t just slur his words in New Orleans; he commenced to shouting after repeating a fake story about all the time he’s spent with Xi Jinping: Biden (sundowning) repeats the fake story about Xi Jinping and the Tibetan plateau, then starts randomly screaming. He is truly unwell — and Kamala covered it up. pic.twitter.com/z8HIEEOxOF — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 13, 2024 Of course, the worst of the New Orleans trip was how it ended. Biden and his entourage stopped in at world-famous Drago’s Restaurant in Metairie, the seafood place that for all practical purposes invented the chargrilled oyster, and he ate… …a cheeseburger. With that pearls-before-swine moment past, Biden would next make news Wednesday morning when a piece in Politico featured the president, or at least those sentient members of his inner circle willing to leak to the Democrat organ’s reporters, engaging in a Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me routine whining about how he was deposed from the party’s ticket: President Joe Biden is frustrated that Barack Obama wouldn’t tell him to his face that he should leave the race. He’s angry with Nancy Pelosi and views her as ruthless for ushering him out the door. And he’s still miffed at the role Chuck Schumer played, too. Biden has told his closest aides and associates that he is coming to terms with his decision to bow out of the presidential race last month, but still harbors some frustration toward the members of his own party he believes pushed him out, according to three people familiar with Biden’s thinking who are not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. Oh, how terrible for him. There is a certain glee some of us can take from the fact that Biden is now publicly grousing about being run off the ballot by the Cool Kids in his party. After all, it’s been three weeks plus since Kamala Harris’ ascension as the Democrats’ new savior, and it’s obvious that the legacy corporate media will now abandon any pretense of objectivity or credible journalism in order to cast her as anything but the incompetent empty skirt that she’s been her entire political career. And along comes Biden to micturate on Harris’ press coronation, whether intentionally or out of a lack of discipline, and it’s fun to watch. Let’s not forget that it was Biden’s endorsement of Harris that foreclosed the sham media primary that Obama and others among the Democrats’ Cool Kids had been publicly touting while plotting his removal. That was almost certainly done out of spite, and if Biden will continue publicly grousing about his removal, it might just generate the kind of discord that breaks up the fact-free honeymoon America is being subjected to. Call that social justice if you will. Be that as it may, Biden — or his disgruntled handlers who recognize there will be reduced or even absent places for them on Team Harris — wasn’t done complaining to Politico: A senior White House official, also granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said Biden views Pelosi as “ruthless” and willing to set aside long-term relationships in order to keep her party in power — and, most importantly, to prevent Republican nominee Donald Trump from returning to the White House. “That’s who she has always been,” the person added. Pelosi and Biden have not spoken since he stepped away. And the president’s anger flashed to the surface during a televised interview that aired this weekend when he namechecked the former speaker as he explained why he quit the race. “And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Biden told CBS. “You’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say, why did so — and — and I thought it’d be a real distraction.” And another delicious morsel: Biden has long thought that Obama’s staff looked down upon him and the president’s aides still bristle when Obama allies like David Axelrod or the Pod Save America cast criticize the incumbent. Many people around Biden were rankled when, in 2016, Obama made clear he favored Hillary Clinton to succeed him and not his own vice president. But it’s Pelosi who came in for the bulk of the grousing: But Biden’s inner circle believes Pelosi was the decisive voice in pushing him out. His allies thought that, after nearly two weeks of trying to reassure fellow Democrats, his candidacy was on track to be salvaged the morning of July 10. But that was when Pelosi made a now-infamous appearance on “Morning Joe,” repeatedly making clear that she did not support Biden continuing his candidacy. The president’s aides believe that opened the door for a host of other Democrats and donors to follow suit. Moreover, Biden’s inner circle told him the day before he dropped out that if he persisted in the race they believed that Pelosi was going to take her misgivings public — including her belief that Trump would defeat him — which would have been deeply humiliating for a sitting president, two of the people said. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday said that Biden “respects” Pelosi and insisted that he has “no hard feelings.” One guesses that Joe wasn’t impressed by Pelosi’s ridiculous suggestions that he be added to Mount Rushmore. Maybe he’s somewhat sentient after all. The Politico piece won’t likely get much oxygen, as the rest of the media isn’t interested in talking about Biden’s problems. You can’t blame them, really, as Biden hasn’t exactly earned much sympathy for the damage he’s done. But if the grousing and whining continues, and Dirty Joe carries on peeing on Kamala’s parade up and through the Democrats’ convention next week — he’s speaking on Monday night, rather than Wednesday or Thursday, and that speech is almost certainly going to be a low point no matter its content — then if nothing else, the public’s attention might well turn to Harris’ role not just in the coup that ruined Biden’s reelection bid but, more importantly, her role in gaslighting America about his mental competence over the past four years. Either way, let it burn. And at a seafood restaurant, don’t eat a cheeseburger. Don’t be like Dirty Joe. Have some class, for crying out loud. READ MORE: Kamala’s Media Bodyguards Behold, Tampon Tim Harris Can Avoid Reporters But Not Economics The post Poor, Poor, Pitiful Joe appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Over more than three years, Democrats couldn’t sell Joe Biden; now, they must sell Kamala Harris in just under three months. This tall order requires two things: convincing voters that this administration deserves four more years and that Harris is truly different from Biden. Democrats’ continued marketing strategy of hiding their candidate tells Americans that neither is true. On paper, selling Joe Biden should have been easy. Joe had a long Senate resume. He also had two terms as vice president behind Democrats’ most popular living president. Facing him was a divisive incumbent hobbled by a pandemic, an economy slowed by lockdowns, and civil unrest. Even so, it was not all that easy with Joe. Despite winning with 51.3 percent of the popular vote, his electoral vote victory was razor-thin (just 77,000 votes spread across four states provided his margin). And from the moment Joe entered the White House, it got harder still. Joe seemed to have the Midas touch in reverse: everything he touched went wrong — foreign policy, inflation, illegal immigration. Topping it off, Joe’s own failings became increasingly clear. As Joe’s term progressed and his popularity fell, he became increasingly dependent on — and subservient to — his radical Left. Selling Joe as substance, rather than symbol, proved too hard a task. So, halfway through 2024, the Democrat elite replaced Joe with Kamala Harris. On paper, Harris in 2024 should be as easy a sell as Joe was in 2020. Where Biden’s time in politics lacked accomplishments, Harris’ lacked duration. The problem for Harris — and therefore for Democrats trying to sell her — is that she, like Biden before her, only exists on paper. Not only is there no “there” there; there is less “there” than there was with Biden. While Biden had practically no private sector experience, Harris has literally none. After entering government straight from law school, she has held only government jobs, some (thanks to then California Speaker Wille Brown) as incongruous as they are forgettable (on California’s Unemployment Insurance Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission). Harris’ time as a prosecutor would seem appealing at a time when America feels threatened by rampant lawlessness — until we recall that this lawlessness is Democrats’ doing and that Harris’ tenures also overlap with California’s descent into dystopia — in particular through the now infamous Proposition 47 (now on California’s ballot for repeal this November). In the Senate, Harris was there just over two years before she mistook herself for president. Democrat voters, however, did not, and her 2020 campaign ended before 2020 itself began. Somehow, failing to make it to the presidential starting line qualified her to be vice president. Yet like her presidential campaign, Harris’ tenure as vice president started in reverse. It never found its forward gear. Of her three most notable assignments — abortion, voting rights, and immigration — she registered two “nondecisions” and a cataclysmic failure so great on immigration that her first job in running for president has been to run away from having been the administration’s border czar. It was not long ago that there were calls to replace Harris as vice president. Of course, Harris’ biggest problem is also Democrats’ biggest problem — which in turn was Biden’s biggest problem and remains this administration’s biggest problem: radical left policies. Democrats insisted, Biden capitulated, and Harris now owns them. Hugely unpopular, Democrats cannot change the American people’s mind. As much as Democrats would like to pretend — and to have America believe — that Harris (and before her, Biden) is “the product,” she is not. Harris and Biden were merely the spokespeople for the actual product: leftist extremism. Stuck with selling a hugely unpopular product, Democrats’ hope was to hide it behind their spokesperson. When over the first six months of this year, both product and spokesperson failed with Biden, Democrats just changed their spokesperson. Harris and Biden have some differences. Harris is far more to the left than Biden: in 2019, the National Republican Senatorial Committee ranked her the Senate’s most liberal member. Her embrace of the Green New Deal in the Senate and her tapping of Tim Walz (the Midwest’s version of Bernie Sanders) only confirm it. Like Biden, Harris has a tissue-thin resume. Harris is also a poor communicator. Similarly to Biden, she can veer into the nonsensical at a moment’s notice and a teleprompter’s absence. And because Biden’s speaking difficulties were ultimately used to depose him from the nomination he had won, Democrats are doubly reluctant for Harris to wrestle the English language in public. So, in another similarity with Biden, Democrats are using the same strategy of hiding her from serious public interaction — as they did with Biden in 2020 and increasingly during his presidency — something the establishment media is happy to accommodate. With under three months to go, Democrats hope their strategy of running out the clock on Harris may have a better chance of success. However, Biden and Harris are similar in an even more important, and dangerous, way for Democrats. Neither are the real problem; Democrats’ real problem is the leftist extremism with which they have stuck their nominees. The same people who told us that Biden was fine from 2020 and into 2024, that he was the best choice for the president, and then forced him out less than a month ago now tell us to trust them about Harris. They see no inconsistency because Biden and Harris are merely spokespeople, not the product itself. Changing the mouthpiece doesn’t change the message — any more than hiding the messenger does. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023. READ MORE: Kamala’s Media Bodyguards Teeing Off on ‘Trad’ Wives USA 2024: Dept. of Health Shuts Down 12-Year-Old’s Ice Cream Stand The post Selling Harris by Hiding Harris appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Imagine for a minute that someone with almost $445,000 in credit card debt said to you, “I just don’t make enough money.” You’d think that this person was a fool and caution them to reduce their spending. Unfortunately, this is exactly the argument that Vice President Harris and congressional Democrats want the American people to believe. On Monday, July 29, 2024, the national debt eclipsed $35 trillion — a figure unimaginable just a generation ago. Pundits who seek to diminish the severity of this measure will point out that, while debt has reached record levels, the debt-to-GDP ratio is lower now than it was during the pandemic and hope that it will fall further despite CBO projections to the contrary. Looking at debt-to-GDP ratios is dangerously misleading. To see why, we need to understand what this number represents. The debt-to-GDP ratio divides the total national debt ($35 trillion) by GDP ($25.44 trillion). With this, we arrive at our current debt-to-GDP ratio of 1.37. In other words, the current national debt is equivalent to 137 percent of GDP or about 16 months of total U.S. economic activity. Collectivists will tell you that GDP is a measure of the nation’s total income. While this is true, it is also misleading. GDP is indeed a measure of the total income earned by the people within the U.S. But by referring to it as the “nation’s income,” the implication is that it is, in fact, owned by the nation itself and not the people who earned it. In making this error, pundits seek to diminish the severity of the national debt. While a 137 percent debt-to-GDP ratio sounds scary enough, it hides the much more alarming truth. Just like a household, the nation should use what it actually collects in revenue, not the combined totals of what everyone earns. The federal government should not use “GDP” as its implicit income. It should use federal receipts. Looking at this, we can see that federal receipts for 2023 were $4.4 trillion. The current federal debt of $35 trillion therefore represents about eight years’ worth of federal revenues. Let’s compare this to the American worker. Most recent data reports that the median weekly earnings of full-time workers is equivalent to about $57,150 annually. If American workers ran their budgets the way Congress runs theirs, the median worker would have about $445,000 in credit card debt. Looking at GDP growth and using it as a justification for continued federal deficits is lunacy. This would be akin to our already-indebted worker saying, “Because my neighbor got a raise, I can open a new credit card.” After all, a neighborhood’s debt-to-GDP falls when neighbors’ incomes rise. It is easy to see the folly in this line of reasoning for individuals. But with Congress, this somehow passes muster? Give me a break. By shifting the discussion away from current national debt and toward debt-to-GDP ratios, pundits seek to obfuscate the underlying problem: that Congress cannot keep its fiscal house in order. This should be alarming to all people. Despite the difficulties in doing so, most Americans manage to balance their own budgets year in and year out. But according to the U.S. Treasury, Congress has only run a surplus five times in the past 50 years. Every other year has been a deficit and by more than enough to totally offset all surpluses. So why can’t Congress get its financial affairs in order? Financial illiteracy cannot be the culprit, as we rarely hear about lawmakers falling on hard financial times in their private lives. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite, with D.C. lawmakers raking in money hand over fist. There can be only one conclusion: that something about the chambers of Congress renders people who are otherwise perfectly capable of balancing their own household budgets unable or unwilling to do so on a larger scale. The reality is that fiscal irresponsibility is the name of the game in the nation’s capital. Recent figures put congressional spending at about $12 million per minute, every minute, around the clock. The reason is simple: Washington bureaucrats believe that spending creates jobs. This has the relationship precisely backwards: people work so that they can have money to spend. We do not spend money so that others can have work. Fiscal responsibility on the part of Congress has never been more important. But we must get away from the collectivist mindset that interprets individuals’ income as “the nation’s income.” What we need is transparency with the American people and effective budgetary oversight. Recent scholarship evidences that when people become aware of their personal taxes paid and the breakdown of how that money is spent, it “reduces support for higher taxes and spending and increases support for lower taxes and spending.” While there is budget oversight today, the sheer volume of budget tricks and gimmicks that are regularly used makes oversight farcical at best. For example, whenever a tax or spending bill is proposed, two numbers must be established: the baseline, which is a projection of what will happen if the law is unchanged, and the score, which is the effect the proposed bill will have on the overall budget. Selecting assumptions and methodologies to arrive at these numbers has become a game unto itself, with policymakers selecting those which best make the case they want to make. We also see policymakers elect to phase programs in over time rather than spend all the money at once. This is because doing so helps to reduce the score of a program, spreading it out over multiple budgets. The effect is the same, but the spending counts differently. Further, by passing legislation this way, current policymakers effectively tie the hands of future policymakers into providing additional funding. This is because repealing a spending program that has not yet borne fruit is nigh impossible. What we need is budgetary oversight that takes these and other gimmicks into account and eschews the collectivist mentality that focusing on debt-to-GDP ratios represents. Only then can Congress solve its spending problem and alleviate the concerns of ordinary, everyday Americans. READ MORE: America Needs a Rational Energy Policy JD Vance and the Bipartisan Itch to Tax Behavior The post From GDP to Reality: Putting the $35 Trillion Debt Into Perspective appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — In Las Vegas over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris offered, “I was attorney general of a border state.” Her language conjures an image of a law woman wearing spurs and squinting southward as the sun sets. Harris does not brag that she would be great on border security because she was the attorney general of California — because that’s when reality sets in. California Democrats have been notorious in their opposition to robust federal immigration enforcement. So with Joe Biden in the White House and Kamala Harris by his side, it should come as no surprise that some 8 million unauthorized migrants crossed the border under their watch. Nonetheless, Harris’ presidential campaign has a new ad with an unbelievable slogan: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.” Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, likes to point out that Harris hails from San Francisco, which was an early adopter of sanctuary city policies in 1989. Elected San Francisco district attorney in 2004, Harris supported the city’s sanctuary policy, which juvenile probation staff had determined could be used to shield serious offenders under age 18 from federal immigration authorities. Some gang members from Central America figured out that they didn’t have to prove they were minors. In 2008, then-San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken found that 30 percent of undocumented offenders who claimed to be under 18 actually were adults. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times reported that Back on Track, her jobs training program for low-level, drug-trafficking offenders, was open to illegal immigrants even though they were not eligible to work legally in the United States. Harris said the decision to allow illegal immigrants into the program was a “flaw in the design,” which she then fixed. But the real flaw was in Harris’ view that it was her role to check what ICE officials did. In 2016, as she ran for the U.S. Senate, Harris called immigration one of the “civil rights issues of our time,” and proposed getting rid of the term “illegal alien.” In 2017, Harris said, “It is wrong to somehow suggest that an undocumented immigrant is a criminal.” In 2018, Harris said she wanted “to critically reexamine ICE and its role and the way it is being administered and what it’s doing.” In 2019, as a presidential hopeful, Harris said she wanted to close migrant detention centers “on day one.” Then three years of surges brought 8 million migrants across the border after they were drawn by executive orders signed by Biden. This year, the president was forced to sign a new order to end to his own open-door approach. Rather than admit that the burst in new migrants was the result of that policy, Biden and Harris blame Republicans for not passing a bill to override the administration’s own executive actions. It must be tough pointing fingers at others while pretending you had nothing to do with your own policies. It’s time for a new narrative so big media have a new consensus story: Harris may have run for the White House in 2019 as a “progressive prosecutor,” but today she is a moderate. You can read all about it in the Atlantic, Time magazine and the New York Times. As a former Bay Area resident, I get it. Californians live in a bubble. New Yorkers and beltway insiders, too. They also view House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi as a moderate. They have no idea how their progressive politicians and their enforcement-lite policies look to much of the country. Terms I would use to describe Harris and others with her approach to immigration law would include left-wing, extreme, and, given the enthusiasm for undermining laws passed by elected officials, undemocratic. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: Kamala Harris and the Civilizational Jihad of Democratic Street Thuggery The post Harris Campaign Ad Calls Her ‘Tough’ on the Border appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

There are a few things we can all agree on as Americans, and one of them is that serving our country for any length of time — especially for 24 years — is a good thing. There’s something romantic (not in the lovey-dovey way, but in the devoted-to-idealistic-aspirations way) about a service record. It’s a record that tends to speak volumes about the person who possesses it. It bespeaks self-discipline, courage, honor, and (perhaps most importantly) it tells us that the individual in question loves his countrymen enough to pick up a gun and risk his life for them. (READ MORE by Aubrey Gulick: Walz v. Vance: Who’s Weirder?) Yes, the valor we associate with veterans and active-duty members is a bit of a stereotype, but having grown up surrounded by these kinds of men, I can tell you that the stereotype is a stereotype for a very good reason. But it’s also just a stereotype. If you’ve been hanging around X for any length of time in the last week, or have dedicated yourself to a cursory listen of vice presidential campaign speeches, you’ll know that the VP race has turned into a squabble over who has a better military record. JD Vance was honorably discharged after serving four years in the Marine Corps, including a 2005 deployment to Iraq where he never actually saw combat. Tim Walz, on the other hand, served 24 years in the National Guard and was honorably discharged while (allegedly) slinking out of a dangerous deployment to Iraq. According to some members of his (understandably) disgruntled unit, Walz arranged his retirement without informing his immediate commander or his unit. Instead, he submitted his paperwork to two senior officers and just kinda left. That, obviously, left certain members of the unit rather frustrated. Although, as Will Selber pointed out at the Bulwark, if Walz had broken rules and regulations, that would have come up long before now. What is particularly damning, however, is that Walz’s campaign has not yet released the exact date he applied for retirement — a date that could reveal that he intentionally avoided deployment, which would be a bit of a PR disaster. (READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick: Tim Walz’s Message on Murdering Babies: ‘Mind Your Own Damn Business’) Regardless of how that turns out, it seems pretty apparent that Walz, at the very least, misled the American public by saying he served as a command sergeant major. His retirement papers list him as a master sergeant, owing to the fact that he didn’t quite complete all the academic requirements needed to keep the higher rank. It’s a technicality, yes, but last week the Harris-Walz campaign quietly changed his bio on their website, listing him as a master sergeant rather than as a command sergeant major. That action at least admits some sort of guilt. Then again, Walz shot back at JD Vance this week while speaking at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ convention. “I firmly believe you should never denigrate another person’s service record. To anyone brave enough to put on that uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I just have a few simple words: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.” To which Vance responded: “Hi Tim, I thank you for your service. But you shouldn’t have lied about it. You shouldn’t have said you went to war when you didn’t. Nor should you have said that you didn’t know your unit was going to Iraq. Happy to discuss more in a debate.” Hi Tim, I thank you for your service. But you shouldn’t have lied about it. You shouldn’t have said you went to war when you didn’t. Nor should you have said that you didn’t know your unit was going to Iraq. Happy to discuss more in a debate.https://t.co/6vUlF9dBkJ — JD Vance (@JDVance) August 13, 2024 So, evidently, we’re all going to be subjected to a debate about what counts as honorable service in the military — a debate that none of us really wanted, but actually really matters. (READ MORE: Beware Tim Walz: The Silly Midwestern Grandpa Who’s Actually a Flaming Lib) Why is this line of attack effective? Because the old-fashioned natural virtues that Virgil and Homer celebrated in classic works like the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid are still qualities we want our leaders to possess today. If we’re going to fill in the little circle next to a man’s name on a ballot, we’d like to know that he cares enough about his country and his fellow man to pick up his gun, wade into battle, and potentially offer his life for them. The post Walz and Vance Are Squabbling Over Valor appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On the one hand is Thierry Breton: Frenchman and professional fool. On top of that, he is European commissioner for the internal market. On the other hand is Elon Musk: a madman with a lot of talent and a great sense of humor. Musk won an interview with Donald Trump that all the world’s newspapers would have killed for. As soon as Breton saw that Musk would interview Trump, he sent him a mile-long open letter full of threats: “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections,” he wrote. Breton has been trying for years to take down Trump, Musk, Orban, Le Pen, and so many others, but he has only reinforced them.  He is the typical European commissioner; that is, he represents everything that goes wrong in the EU. He has now been milling around in public office for more than 20 years, having previously flitted around in different positions in private enterprise, although always staying very close to political power and public money. His last great feat in the private sector was at Atos, a global communications giant that went public in 2017. Breton was its CEO from 2008 to 2019. When in 2019 Breton stepped down as the company’s CEO, Atos was three times larger than when he arrived, but its viability hung in the balance, as it needed a miracle to avoid bankruptcy. Brilliant management. Under Breton’s leadership, Atos won numerous succulent European public contracts.  The main obsession of this French epistolary genius is to put an end to freedom on Twitter and Facebook with the excuse of alleged disinformation. He has also criticized TikTok, but not because of the risk of espionage from the Chinese communist regime, but rather because it is too addictive for children. That gives you an idea of his type. When the Hungarian government refused a concession to a radio station opposing Orban, Breton went ballistic. And that’s precisely what he wants to do with Elon Musk, X and Donald Trump. His obsession with Trump goes back a long way. When social networks suspended the former president’s accounts in 2021, Breton celebrated.  In theory, Breton and Musk should be friends. Musk’s dark area is his push for the hated electric vehicle, and Breton’s main reverie is that gasoline cars will disappear. He wanted to ban them across the EU by 2035 and was forced into an extension to avoid wrecking 600,000 jobs. When Meloni criticized these measures, Breton, reaching insurmountable heights of cynicism, said that this is a decision taken by “the European people,” as if anyone had ever asked us about this question before.  But where you’re going to meet the real Breton (and all the Bretons flooding Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission) is in the fine print of this car issue: he decided to ban the sale of combustion cars from 2030… but only if the buyer is European. Thus, gasoline-powered cars can continue to be manufactured as long as they are sold outside of the EU. In other words, it will mean that the European citizen will be paying a lot of money for a crappy electric car, and the African citizen buying big gasoline cars at ridiculous prices and without anyone to complain about his behavior. That’s how Breton saves the planet; that’s how the EU works. Thanks to the idiots in Brussels, we will have to become Senegalese nationals in order to live in freedom. In Europe, they will give us shelter, health, and economic aid, and in Africa they will let us drive the car we want. It’s a win-win situation. I think by now that you’ve probably guessed that, if I am to position myself in this Musk–Breton contest, I’m on Elon’s team.  READ MORE: Woke? Nope. Back to Sleep. France Shows the World How to Ruin the Olympics The post Social Democratic Dictatorship: European Commission Threatens Musk for Interviewing Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.