Politics

Joe Biden would never be in a hair band; a hair plugs band, maybe. Yet the president does seem to be following a maxim known well to every aging rocker: when nothing else is working, you hit the road. So it was that yesterday Biden left Washington on a tour that sent him to Los Angeles with stops afterward in Santa Fe and Philadelphia. And while his handlers seem to have talked him out of doing the whole thing via Amtrak, there are other reasons to think this is not a typical presidential jaunt. From out of the White House has come news that the president is frustrated with his dismal poll numbers. He's also reportedly tired of being over-handled by his staff — and fair enough.

Cockburn can’t help but tune into the late-night shows. On Wednesday night, he was spoiled rotten: President Joe Biden showed up on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, kicking off a West Coast tour to revive his declining popularity. While the audience applause lasted more than a minute upon his arrival, Cockburn wasn't quite impressed with the interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEtPV-qvLe8&ab_channel=JimmyKimmelLive From the start, it was clear Kimmel would carry the show like a pack mule, clarifying Biden’s points and continually asking questions that led the president towards easy answers, along with the occasional jab at Trump and Fox News. Kimmel kicked off proceedings by asking: “Do you mind if I ask you some serious questions?

Our worrying acceptance of political violence  There are plenty of good reasons to be cynical about the House January 6 Committee’s hearings scheduled for prime time this evening. The lawmakers have hired an experienced documentary maker and TV news executive to turn the committee’s work into a slick audience-friendly production. According to Axios, former ABC News president is producing the event “as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.” Meanwhile, even outlets sympathetic to the committee’s work acknowledge the electoral calculation behind the whole production. A New York Times story this week described the hearings as a chance for Democrats to “recast their midterm message.

Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen predicted Tuesday during a CNN interview that the upcoming midterm elections could be rife with violence, implying that Trump supporters were gearing up for a January 6 redux. Barely a day later, it was someone on his own side who attempted to exert political influence with deadly force. Nicholas John Roske, a 26-year-old man from California, was arrested and charged with attempted murder Wednesday after he showed up to Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home dressed in black and armed with a Glock 17 handgun, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray, and duct tape. Roske, who was upset that the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, found Kavanaugh's address online and arrived at his home in a taxi shortly after 1 a.m.

Matthew McConaughey came to Cockburn’s hometown of Washington, DC on Tuesday. It was not to say hi, of course, but to advocate for “commonsense gun control” at the White House. McConaughey is a Uvalde native and wanted to speak about the victims, as well as how the government might better regulate firearms. McConaughey spoke about going back to Uvalde and talking to the families of the victims. He said, “We need background checks, we need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21, we need a waiting period for those rifles, we need red flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them.” He went on Bret Baier’s Fox News show that night to continue opining.

Eric Adams comes crashing down to earth When Eric Adams was elected mayor of New York, he was a breath of fresh air. The zany former Republican ex-cop said all the right things about the urgent need to bring rising violent crime under control, reopen after the pandemic and get the Big Apple back on track. There followed a honeymoon period in which Adams was burning the candle at both ends, facing off against progressive prosecutors by day, doing his bit to keep New York’s clubs and restaurants solvent by night. “If you’re going to hang out with the boys at night, you have to get up with the men in the morning,” he was fond of saying.

Janet Yellen makes her excuses Did Joe Biden ignore the advice of his treasury secretary when compiling the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the early days of his administration? That is what a new biography of Janet Yellen suggests. On Friday Bloomberg reported that, according to Yellen biographer Owen Ullmann: “Privately, Yellen agreed with [Larry] Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly.” According to an advance copy of the book, out in September and titled Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All, Yellen told the White House that the Covid spending package should be scaled back by a third.

Elon Musk recently posted a meme about Jeffrey Epstein and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Twitter, the brand he's soon (maybe?) hoping to buy. The meme says, “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” While Cockburn has nothing but reverence for his governmental overlords, Musk's reference to the Jeffery Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell client list does stand out as a particularly juicy piece of news. The mainstream media has avoided the list like the Spanish Flu. Doesn’t the average person deserve to know which of their esteemed leaders has taken a trip to the infamous Little Saint James Island?

On Friday, June 3, assailants vandalized the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, not far from Cockburn's Washington home. An unknown party splashed a gallon of red paint on the center’s front door and doormat, as well as egging the place and spraying graffiti on the walls that said, “JANE SAYS REVENGE.” “As the day unfolded, there was a lot of positive outreach," Janet Durig, the pregnancy center’s executive director, told Cockburn. "We’ve had people asking from all over the area asking if anything is damaged or needs to be replaced.” She also said, “The police were extremely helpful.