Cockburn

Cockburn

Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips and party invites to cockburn@thespectator.com.

Does Biden have Covid, cancer and dementia?

Joe Biden has had a lot to worry about lately. First, according to his own account, he has cancer thanks to emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Delaware: "That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation." A White House spokesman later clarified that Biden had had "non-melanoma skin cancers" removed before he took office, though that doesn't explain why he claimed he has cancer now. Apparently he's contracted Covid too. The president tested positive today and will be isolating at the White House.

budget
failson hunter biden

Hunter Biden may be indicted, reports…CNN?

Trouble may be ahead for America's least favorite fortunate son. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials are reportedly discussing whether to indict Hunter Biden on charges relating to tax and foreign lobbying violations. This comes as an investigation into his finances is reaching a “critical stage.” While this might seem like yet another story the mainstream media would sweep under the rug, Cockburn is pleased to see that even CNN covered it. Clearly something is up here. Back in March, one of Cockburn’s pals, Charles Lipson, covered the media’s purposeful blindness into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal after the New York Times casually verified that the computer was real (a year and a half after the New York Post had verified it and been banned from Twitter for its efforts).

Why are the Colbert Insurrectionists being set free?

Cockburn remembers well the Colbert Insurrection back in June, when several staffers on Stephen Colbert's Late Show were arrested for trespassing at the Capitol. Yet he's since been surprised to learn that the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has dropped all charges. Despite the clear and evident danger of the Colbert staffers, the Capitol Police released a statement saying: The United States Capitol Police was just informed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is declining to prosecute the case. We respect the decision that office has made. Any questions about that decision should be referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. If the Colbert crew got their cases dismissed, then what about the January 6ers?

Colbert

Dr. Fauci: don’t let the door hitcha…

Dr. Fauci has announced that he will retire soon — and Cockburn is popping Champagne. Anthony Fauci, surely the most (in)famous scientist in the United States, has decided to call it quits by the end of Joe Biden’s first (and hopefully last) term. As he departs from his monopoly on mainstream media health consultancy, he’ll pass go and collect a whopping $350,000 per year, the largest federal retirement package in US history. So cue up the in memoriam reel of everything that made the Fauci regime suck. While churches had to close starting in March 2020, somehow Fauci was OK with Tinder hookups. A year later, he waged a war on Christmas gatherings worse than the Grinch himself.

libertarian

The journalists who got it wrong about the Good Guy with a Gun

On Sunday, at a mall in Indiana, a mass shooter's rampage was cut short after he was shot by a Good Guy with a Gun. Yet according to many on the progressive left, the Good Guy with a Gun doesn't exist: he's a myth. Therefore, in honor of the Good Samaritan in Indiana, Cockburn presents the top five articles that got it wrong about the Good Guy with a Gun. Time's obligatory post-Uvalde anti-gun article Time magazine posted a plain rebuttal to the Good Guy with a Gun argument after the Uvalde massacre. Time points out (fairly) all the “good guys with guns” who conveniently showed up at the last minute, i.e. the Uvalde police department and the Parkland security guard who hid when the shooting started. (But then doesn't that prove that citizens need to be able to defend themselves?

Judge swats down Amber Heard’s demand for a mistrial

While Cockburn already covered the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard verdict a month ago (live from the courthouse!), he notes that Ms. Heard hasn’t moved on. She's since resurfaced, with her lawyers attempting to throw out the ruling against her or declare a mistrial on the basis of a single juror, Juror Fifteen, supposedly being fraudulent. On Wednesday, Judge Penney Azcarate issued her decision: no. Azcarate wrote: Juror Fifteen was vetted by the Court on the record and met the statutory requirements for service. Fifteen was vetted by the Court on the record and met the statutory requirements for service. The parties also questioned the jury panel for a full day and informed the Court that the jury panel was acceptable.

johnny depp amber heard

Lauren Boebert’s awesome gun-themed restaurant has closed

Cockburn doesn’t leave the swampy bounds of the District too often, but he has now and then been tempted by a trip to Colorado’s Western Slope, where, until last Sunday, Representative Lauren Boebert ran a restaurant in the town of Rifle. Every waitress who worked there open-carried a gun. Cockburn learned of this Second Amendment-themed eatery through a video his colleague Teresa Mull produced back when Boebert was just a gun and burger-slinging small business owner. Now, eight years later, Shooters Grill has closed. According to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Boebert was shocked to learn that her new landlord would not be renewing her restaurant’s lease: Boebert said the letter came as a shock.

Huma Abedin trades up for Bradley Cooper

A few things Cockburn always enjoys (aside from alcohol and low prices) are drama and scandal. He was therefore delighted to learn this week that actor Bradley Cooper has been secretly dating Huma Abedin, the former top aide to Hillary Clinton and ex-wife of the political excommunicate Anthony Weiner. Per Page Six, "The top aide to Hillary Clinton... has been seeing the A-lister for the past few months, according to multiple insiders... Page Six is told that the high-profile pair arrived together at the Met Gala on May 2 and then split up for the red carpet. Pictures show Abedin, forty-six, in a canary-yellow gown posing for the cameras, with Cooper, forty-seven, keeping his distance behind her.

huma abedin

Five tacos Jill Biden thinks are Hispanics

Jill Biden apparently thinks Hispanics are tacos and vice versa. At a conference in San Antonio on Monday, Dr. Biden said Latinos were "as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio." And just as there's a plethora of Hispanic Americans, so too is there an incredible variety of tacos. Here now are five tacos that may remind Jill Biden of various Latinos she knows. The Crunch Wrap Supreme from Taco Bell This is the most un-Mexican of the bunch (i.e. not Mexican at all, nor is it even a taco). Taco Bell’s Crunch Wrap Supreme is full of things that will upset your stomach but will satisfy your hunger. Unfortunately Jill Biden won't be able to try one given that it would come too close to eating an actual Hispanic.

The Hunter Biden iCloud leak double-standard

Another day, another deeply compromising story about America’s first son. This weekend, a hacker on the 4chan messageboard claimed to have cracked Hunter Biden’s iCloud password — and proceeded to dump what appears to be the contents of his phone and iPad online. The images and videos in question are more or less exactly what you’d expect: Hunter smoking crack, Hunter brandishing firearms, Hunter cavorting with sex workers, Hunter naked displaying his large appendage. For readers, such as Cockburn, who managed to sidestep the Big Tech-media effort to suppress the New York Post’s “Laptop from Hell” story in October 2020, the iCloud leak contains no new revelations, just more of the same.

hunter biden

‘Rescinded’: LinkedIn users are listing their retracted job offers

Cockburn was on one of his regular jaunts through LinkedIn this week, on the lookout for more gainful employment than the Speccie currently offers him. During his perusal, one word kept catching his eye on the profiles of other users: “Rescinded.” Prospective employees are deciding to denote when a company had made them a job offer — and then changed their mind after a change in corporate hiring plans. The cryptocurrency wallet company Coinbase appears to be one of the biggest offenders. Ashutosh, a software engineer, posted the following: After considering several factors, I had chosen to join Coinbase over pursuing a PhD.

rescinded linkedin

Doug Schoen’s hacky ‘Hillary can win’ columns, ranked

Cockburn spent this morning mentally reliving the trauma of the 2016 election after reading the latest installment of Doug Schoen’s shilling campaign for another Hillary bid for the presidency. Schoen, a Democratic pollster and former employee of Clinton's, has an entire CV of pro-Hillary op-eds to his name. Here now is the definitive ranking of his pro-Clinton hack jobs. 5. ‘The Hillary Moment,’ November 21, 2011 This daring ode, the first in the series, speaks of his deep infatuation with the Queen of Chillin’ in Cedar Rapids long before she sparred with The Donald. Here, he begs for Obama to step down after his first term lest he lose to the Republicans — a take that didn't age well after 2012. “Mrs.

Combatting the cucked coffee conglomerates

Cockburn is always looking for a good roast to accompany his morning swig of Bailey’s. Luckily, if you’re a card-toting member of the Grand Old Party, own at least one gun, and supported the Iraq War when it was in vogue, you have a plethora of options. On his search to find a coffee that can’t be cucked, Cockburn initially found Black Rifle Coffee Company, which might bring with it a connotation of Ben Shapiro or National Review to any attuned Republican ear. Veteran-owned with blends named “AK-47” and “Coffee, or Die,” the company has poised itself to become any patriot’s official blend, even recently becoming the official coffee of the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, this is not without controversy, on both left and right.

The Biden hire who defended an underage prostitution site

In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security raided the headquarters of the self-proclaimed “original and world’s largest male escort site,” Rentboy.com. The cause was a complaint of conspiracy to violate the Travel Act and on charges of promoting prostitution. The CEO of Rentboy, Jeffrey Hurant, pleaded guilty to these prostitution charges and was sentenced to six months in prison. Why is this background important? Cockburn notes that Sam Brinton is one of the Biden administration’s newest diversity hires at the Department of Energy and wrote an op-ed defending Rentboy.com when it was raided.

nancy pelosi breasts

Nancy Pelosi’s Italian job

The price of gasoline in California is averaging at over $6 a gallon. Inflation is 8.6 percent. The nation is reeling after yet another mass shooting, and the Democratic base is furious at their party for being caught flat-footed by the Supreme Court on abortion. How are our nation’s leaders responding? Well, Nancy Pelosi and her ample bosom are taking a waterfront stroll at a private beach club in Italy. The Speaker of the House looked well below her eighty-two years as she showcased her tanned figure in a turquoise-patterned bathing suit. Pelosi and her beau Paul are taking a break from, respectively, suspect stock trading and drink driving at the highly exclusive Alpemare Beach Club near Florence, owned by Italian opera star Andrea Bocelli.

Twitter gives Jordan Peterson the boot, Dave Rubin follows

Jordan Peterson went from being a psychologist advising troubled kids to an unlikely political figure as he fought against the Canadian government’s compelled speech law for pronouns. Cockburn watched with fascination as Peterson clashed repeatedly with the left-wing narrative, even going as far as to resign from his tenured position at the University of Toronto due to their rampant leftist ideology. On June 28, Twitter suspended him for this tweet (as recalled by his daughter): https://twitter.com/MikhailaFuller/status/1541946666567323649 Clearly referring to someone by their birth name is a sin for Twitter. Little did Cockburn know that Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, was to be next on the chopping block. Rubin sent this tweet before being suspended: https://twitter.

Pro-choicers in DC try to get arrested, succeed

Cockburn isn’t much for parades, but one happened to pass him by on Thursday when protesters with the Center for Popular Democracy rallied to overturn the overturning of Roe v. Wade. For a while, Cockburn walked alongside the protesters, watching as people in blue vests herded them along until they reached an intersection, where they promptly sat down. Cockburn, being the exquisite legal scholar that he is, deduced that this was illegal. And the demonstrators knew it too. The event was intended as a “mass civil disobedience.” Once sat down, they enjoyed chants, songs, and generally being arrested by the police. One particularly excited speaker said into the microphone: Together we gather full of righteous indignation, threatened by a radical minority...

joe rogan ivermectin

Joe Rogan praises DeSantis, says he didn’t vote for Biden

Cockburn tuned into The Joe Rogan Experience the other day, Rogan’s 1837th episode, in case you were wondering. The guest was unwoke former Disney actress Gina Carano, though it was Rogan himself who said something that made Cockburn smile: Gina Carano: Are you throwing out any support towards anyone or are you gonna hold off? Didn’t Elon Musk come out recently for DeSantis? Joe Rogan: Yeah, I think Ron DeSantis would work as a good president. I mean, what he’s done for Florida has been admirable. That's impressive coming from a former Bernie Bro. Rogan continued, “You know, he's not perfect, he’s a human being, but what he’s done is stand up for freedoms.

pam anderson

Pam Anderson racks up primary win in Colorado

Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light. Some people need to help somebody, when the edge of surrender’s in sight. Pam Anderson is firmly in the latter category, after her win in the Republican primary for Colorado secretary of state on Tuesday night. Anderson handily defeated Mesa County treasurer Tina Peters, who ran on a platform of election denialism, by fifteen points.

Boris gaffes, Russia laughs

Cockburn woke up this morning to a good laugh over his coffee when he saw that British prime minister Boris Johnson had attributed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to “toxic masculinity.” Johnson, the Conservative PM of the UK, told German broadcaster ZDF, “If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn't, but if he were, I really don't think he would've embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has." He proceeded to say that the war is a “perfect example of toxic masculinity,” urging more countries to have “more women in positions of power.” While Putin’s bare chest on horseback may be the source of endless memes, Cockburn believes Johnson is focusing on the wrong things here.