Closing the tabs ...
61-year-old Michelle Obama complains that it was “expensive to live in the White House.”
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) May 3, 2025
Barack earned $400K a year as president for eight years. The Obamas entered the White House with a net worth of $1.3 million. The Obamas are now worth around $70 million. pic.twitter.com/gDgtAdhUZ6
Ed: These don't sound like "first world problems." They sound like "one percenter problems." Anything connected to official business gets covered by taxpayers, such as official dinners, official travel, etc. As for the rest, well, I'll let Jim Geraghty put it in perspective next.
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The Obamas entered the White House with a net worth of $1.3 million dollars, which would be about $2 million in today’s dollars. As a U.S. senator, Obama was making $174,000 per year. Sales from his memoir, Dreams from My Father, increased the couple’s income considerably; he made $1.2 million from book sales in 2005 and $551,240 in 2006. Michelle had stepped down from her position at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where her income had been about $265,000 a year.
You know who else pays for “every bit of food” that their children eat? Just about every other family in the country.
Ed: Seriously -- who did Mrs. Obama aim this message at? The Obamas did not get victimized by their political achievements. The Obamas got fabulously wealthy thanks to their "public" service ... and she's complaining about paying for her own food?
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"This is who he's always been": @ZitoSalena responds to staffers who say they 'no longer recognize' Sen. Fetterman after he bucked party lines. pic.twitter.com/TRrPZ5dC84
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 4, 2025
Ed: Salena Zito is the one reporter who knows Pennsylvania best. This isn't a Fetterman story; this is a progressive-establishment story, angry over any slight apostasy and going overboard to punish ir.
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Fetterman shared a screenshot of a Reuters article headlined, “Iran says it will strike back if US or Israel attack.”
“We cannot negotiate with Iran,” he wrote. “It’s time to destroy their nuclear program and neutralize the remaining capabilities of its proxies. I remain steadfast with Israel. Provide whatever is necessary to carry this out.”
Ed: Sounds rational to me.
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🚨 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: “Dozens” bussed away by ICE after Tennessee highway patrol conducted traffic stops resulting in illegal aliens found with guns and drugs.
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) May 5, 2025
This is the way. State & local police partnering with ICE to exponentially increase arrests. pic.twitter.com/XjQGjNtLmY
Ed: This is what state and local law enforcement should have been doing all along. For the last couple of decades, political leadership have obstructed law enforcement with "sanctuary" policies that create danger for police and for local communities. It's long past time to start cracking down on those who aid and abet criminal activities, even when they are elected officials or judges who personally interfere with warrant enforcement.
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Gateway Pundit reporter: “The President signed an E.O. threatening to defund sanctuary cities for their policies. Why not just arrest the leaders who are harboring and shielding illegal aliens from deportation?”
— ༒𝒥𝑒𝓃𝓃𝓎༒ (@pploflightunite) May 5, 2025
Tom Homan with a smirk “Wait til you see what’s comin’.” pic.twitter.com/pwsWrtRBm7
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On Thursday, Vance told Fox News’s Bret Baier he was shocked at the level of next-generation technology he saw at a South Carolina steel manufacturing plant. “I didn’t fully appreciate how high-tech this steel facility was,” said Vance. “These are jobs of the future, making American steel, building bridges and automobiles, homes for the American people. And doing it in an incredibly sophisticated way.”
Vance is right. And it’s why he should encourage President Donald Trump to make a huge investment into the jobs of the future by approving Nippon Steel’s $21 billion into the American steel industry.
Ed: Worth reading in whole. I'm not sure I agree, but unless US Steel can find capital investment on this scale from American sources, it's likely to go under. That wouldn't help anyone. And right now, I'd be far more concerned about China as a partner than Japan.
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President Donald Trump was asked by Fox News' @JacquiHeinrich about the viral AI-generated image of him as the Pope that was posted on the official White House account.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 5, 2025
HEINRICH: "Some Catholics were not so happy about the image of you looking like the Pope..."
TRUMP: "Oh, I… pic.twitter.com/rvwelwIzOC
Ed: As a Catholic, I say ... meh. So what? I'm much more offended by those who defend abortion, and I suspect the Venn diagram of the groups that do so and those offended by this joke probably overlap so much that the two are nearly indistinguishable.
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Not long ago, anyone could comb through a wide range of official data from China. Then it started to disappear.
Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone.
In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Ed: I am unconvinced that official figures from Beijing are worth much anyway. The fact that they've stopped producing those at all, though, indicates that the situation is deteriorating for Xi Jinping in a way that even the CCP can't cover up.
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🚨WOW — Jasmine Crockett tells graduate students that they're ready to be "boots on the ground" and implies that they can arm themselves with folding chairs. pic.twitter.com/SA0GWKSMrp
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 5, 2025
Ed: Just another piece of evidence that Academia has little to do with education, and everything to do with indoctrination. That also explains Jasmine Crockett.
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