Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike ... what tab is it? ...
Quite a hot mic moment on CCTV in Beijing today as Putin and Xi, both 72 years old, are caught casually talking about living to 150 and maybe forever thanks to organ transplants. (As picked up by Bloomberg.) pic.twitter.com/kC4VTRaobq
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) September 3, 2025
Ed: And then you walk past a window in Moscow and suddenly it's all over. I do wonder, though, whether some of the physical changes reported for Putin in recent years might be the result of immune suppression. Maybe he's tried it, but if so, he's trading aging for a host of other issues ... along with the aging, too. We have long personal experience with organ transplants, and while they are life-saving, they create a host of other issues to manage.
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CNN: American Eagle stock surged 25% after its earnings report Wednesday, with its CEO thanking the controversial Sydney Sweeney “Good Jeans” ad campaign for boosting brand awareness and profit.
“The fall season is off to a positive start. Fueled by stronger product offerings and the success of recent marketing campaigns with Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce, we have seen an uptick in customer awareness, engagement and comparable sales,” American Eagle Outfitters CEO Jay Schottenstein said on Wednesday in an earnings release statement.
Ed: I love a happy ending.
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recalled to @mirandadevine on “Pod Force One” that, while serving as governor of North Dakota, he spent more time at the border than “border czar” Kamala Harris. Subscribe here: https://t.co/43uCRud1bu pic.twitter.com/w3LVLSbkTt
— New York Post (@nypost) September 3, 2025
Ed: No doubt. I moved to central Texas in June 2021, never got further south than Austin in the following three years, and even I got closer to the border than Harris.
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NY Post: The United States could see its population shrink for the first time ever in 2025 as immigration numbers have plummeted, according to a report.
Net international migration to the US in 2025 could drop to as low as negative-525,000 this year, according to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute. With a net of 519,000 births reported by the US Census last year, the US could possibly lose 6,000 people — the first population decline in nearly 250 years of American history.
AEI predicts that the net immigration into the US will fall off from about 2.8 million to between 115,000 and negative-525,000, which, even at the lower end, is still a 96 percent fall in international immigration, the Telegraph reported.
Ed: This isn't a measure of whether people want to come to the US. This is a measure of how effective the new administration has dealt with the massive flood of illegals that entered in the previous four years. We will have net-negative immigration for at least the next couple of years as we eject those who came in during that period.
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So these alleged Epstein survivors had a big press conference to urge Trump to release the names even though they say they already know the names but won’t tell us what the names are. Oh ok. Yeah makes total sense.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 3, 2025
Ed: Interesting point. I wrote about this issue earlier, but Walsh makes a good point. The victims are the witnesses that would identify the perps, so why aren't they identifying them publicly? It would take this story from its perpetual nothingburger status to significance in a hurry -- especially when the people they name start filing defamation suits. Alan Dershowitz had to take that step to slap down a public accusation.
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TIPP Insights: The conventional wisdom is that China has cemented its position as the dominant partner, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After all, it is now Russia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for more than half of Russian imports in 2023, whereas Russia doesn’t even make China’s top five. While Russia relies on China to buy roughly half of its crude oil exports, these purchases account for only 17.5% of China’s total oil imports. Simply put, Russia needs China to keep its own economy going.
Yet for all this dependence, China is not dictating outcomes, and the Kremlin is not acting like a junior partner. Consider the war in Ukraine. While it has some significant upsides for China – not least by diverting US resources from the Pacific theater – there is no doubt that Putin is calling the shots on the timing, scope, and endgame.
On paper, China may have the leverage to influence Russia’s policy. But it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Ukraine could compel China to use it. Doing so would not only jeopardize China’s relations with a key partner, but also contravene its own core foreign-policy principle of “non-interference.” Putin knows that better than anyone.
Ed: Eh ... I think Xi doesn't feel the need to yank the marionette strings yet. China uses soft power, or at least soft and subtle moves connected to enough hard power, to get what they want. Putin's doing pretty well at pinning down Europe and the US on Ukraine, or so Xi may have thought until Trump bombed Iran. Perhaps now that Trump has given up on getting Putin to see reason, Xi may decide to take the reins a bit more firmly.
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President @realDonaldTrump reveals where things stand personally with @elonmusk...
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 3, 2025
These are two brilliant men and great Americans. I, like millions of others, really would love to see them get the band back together soon 👇 pic.twitter.com/pywib1gJo0
Ed: I think Musk's choice will be to retreat from politics, or at least lower his visibility. That's what I would recommend. To the extent that he wants to influence policy, Musk will likely choose to do so quietly by funding candidates and activist groups to achieve his purposes.
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Matt Taibbi: He was released on bail on condition that he not go on X. I assume he had someone else send him screenshots of the above tweets he posted on his Substack.
I have never been to the UK, so I’ve resisted saying what evidence clearly shows: We need to stop pretending that the UK is a free, liberal democracy.
It’s not just this incident.
Ed: I don't think the UK is interested in pretending any more, either. They have fully embraced a weird, woke version of INGSOC that requires a newly edited dictionary of Newspeak every couple of years. They have prosecutors scouring social media (as Taibbi goes on to remind us) to find people to prosecute for their speech.
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The UK: where a comedy writer is met with armed police because he tweeted that if a man refuses to leave a woman-only space he should get kicked in the balls, and elected politician @IanRBristow is free to publicly tell a woman to shut the fuck up with a picture of a gun. pic.twitter.com/3EYgByY88T
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 3, 2025
Ed: Progressive privilege in action in the UK. See above.
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Daily Wire: Another deadly school shooting at the hands of a trans-identifying killer is prompting discussions about investigations into transgender domestic terrorism — and what kind of emphasis authorities should put on suspects who are undergoing so-called gender-affirming care.
Asked by The Daily Wire if the White House would support a new classification such as transgender domestic terrorism, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that she would have to “check with the appropriate people.” But since then, The Daily Wire has learned that the White House’s draft national security strategy on domestic terrorism will specifically address transgender violence.
“I can report that the new draft U.S. Counterterrorism [plan] addresses the issue,” Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and senior director for counterterrorism, told The Daily Wire, asked whether there should be a transgender domestic terrorism classification.
Ed: The Biden administration played games with identity politics and domestic-terror risks with much less justification. Remember when the FBI and DoJ treated pro-life activists like domestic terrorists? Parents at school board meetings objecting to woke curricula and boys invading girls' spaces? Traditional Catholics? Yeah, cry me a river, Queer Movement. How many of those groups produced monsters that massacred children in faith spaces, anyway?
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UPDATE: Cal State Professor Jonathan Caravello has been indicted by a federal grand jury for a violation of 18 USC 111. He faces up to 20 years in prison for throwing a tear gas canister at federal agents. https://t.co/uRfgxbfbUK
— Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) September 3, 2025
Ed: Play stupid games ... win stupid prizes.
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After appearing as the face of American Eagle Jeans, Sydney Sweeney is now the face of Jimmy Choo.
— Hi I’m Matthew (@matt110725) September 3, 2025
Cue the meltdowns in 3… 2… 1… https://t.co/PBxwebUYbh
Ed: You're welcome. And pass the popcorn.
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