Thursday's Final Word

AP Photo/Erin Hooley

I met all the tabs and I clicked myself a few, and to my surprise, like everything else that I've been through, it opened up my eyes ...

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Ed: Land acknowledgments are the political equivalent of declaring preferred pronouns. It's all pomposity and self-importance at no cost whatsoever. It's not at all surprising to see Democrats cling to this practice, as well as the equally narcissistic Declaration of Pronouns. Mark's also correct that the architecture for this center is particularly ugly and stands out like a sore thumb in its own neighborhood, but I'm not sure that even the Kims are this self-obsessed.

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John Fund at The Spectator: Its brutalist near-windowless features have been compared to a 225 foot World War Two flak tower. Britain’s Guardian even noted it was “like a Klingon prison.” In part because federal law limits taxpayer-funded presidential archives to 70,000 square feet, Obama instead chose to build a sprawling campus on 19 acres. It features a museum covering four floors complete with a replica of the Oval Office, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, an auditorium, an NBA-regulation-size basketball court, a two-level playground, a vegetable garden, a recording studio, classrooms and more than two dozen pieces of public art. It could almost be its own city. ...

The Obama Foundation also set highly ambitious goals to have half of the overall project done by firms owned by female, black and Latino Chicagoans.

But the New York Post reported last week that “some of the very subcontractors who helped build the 19.3-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side say they are facing financial ruin as they race to recover millions of dollars they claim remain unpaid ahead of the center’s grand opening.”

And a Fox News Digital investigation “identified multiple construction firms claiming losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions.”

Ed: How generous and progressive Obama is for ensuring he stiffs a diverse group of contractors. The project was supposed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a fund to ensure that state and local taxpayers didn't end up on the hook for these bills. As far as is known at the moment, the fund only has around one million dollars, which is barely more than Valerie Jarrett's annual salary at the foundation that ran this project. 

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Ed: Talk about damning with faint praise. Why not just list all six before the "friendship, cousel, and devotion" line? It's almost analogous to Jill Biden's effusive praise for Joe after the debate for not falling over and tripping on his own drool. 

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Daily Mail: Former First Lady Michelle Obama sang her husband's praises during the opening ceremony of his Presidential Center in Chicago, shutting down rumors that the two have been on the outs, but a recent interview comment has kept the allegations alive.

Michelle delivered a lengthy speech during the ceremony, kicking off her remarks by announcing that she wanted to take some time to 'fully sing his praises.' 

The loving tribute seemed to dispel widespread accusations that the couple was living separate lives after leaving the White House, fueled by their lack of public appearances together. 

Ed: Well, what did people expect the former First Lady to do at this event – announce a divorce? I think most of these rumors are nonsense anyway. Mrs. Obama gets far too chatty about her personal life in these podcasts, but she's got a deluge of her own money now. If she wanted to go her own way, she would have by now. The same is true about the Clintons, too.

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Ed: Get ready for Khanna's eventual mea culpa for Graham Platner. He's full of crap. He didn't just make a wrong call in either case. Khanna chose to participate in the Biden cover-up, and now he's choosing to support a violent Nazi-tatted Kik creeper with no record of adult accomplishment whatsoever. Here's a reminder from today ...

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NY Post: Former President Joe Biden was awkwardly left lingering by himself on stage at the grand opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, tepidly waving at the crowd after the ceremony ended.

A gleeful Obama had waltzed off the stage to the music, followed by a smiling former first lady Jill Biden, while the 46th president stood there seemingly dazed all by himself.

For reasons that aren’t clear, the 83-year-old went over to the podium and took off his sunglasses before staring into the crowd with a puzzled look on his face.

“Where’s my granddaughter?” he shouted.

Ed: Sharp. As. A. Tack™. The Biden family is a cruel set of humanoids, no? Why would they leave Joe to wander on stage alone at a public event? Democrats like Khanna tried to assure us that Biden was up to another four-year term, too. 

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Ed: Harsh? Yes. Accurate? Well ... 

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Don Surber: He walked into the G7 Summit meeting like he was walking onto a yacht. He stopped and said, “Hello. I’m the Boss,” and then the Big Dog continued to his seat at the table between Starmer the corgi and Macron the poodle. The statement was the truth disguised as an inside joke. ...

From FDR to LBJ and Nixon, American presidents were the rock-hard solid protectors of the free world. Both Bushes were humble and seemed overwhelmed but when the storm hit, they steered around the icebergs in two wars and saved the ship. Reagan needs no explanation.

We Americans took electing the Leader of the Free World for granted.

But not every president makes the cut because not every president projects strength needed to lead. The world needs a strong captain at the helm. Bosuns are poor substitutes.

Jerry Ford was just a congressional lifer. Carter and Clinton were failed governors of failed states. Obama was a dinghy and his puppet Biden was a dingbat. Their presidencies covered 26 of the last 52 years birthing a generation unfamiliar with the title Leader of the Free World.

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Trump has re-introduced the nation to the full duties of a president.

Ed: Was his hat strategically dipped below one eye, and was his scarf apricot? IYKYK. Anyway, other than the Carly Simon reference at the beginning of this excerpt, Don hits the nail on the head. I'm not sure that the MOU helps in this case, but it does show that the US calls the shots and that we've stopped being embarrassed about making it clear. We spend far more on defending the Free World than anyone else does, so why wouldn't we be The Boss?

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Ed: We are The Boss. Also, we're pretty boss. I wasn't a huge fan of the effort put into getting the World Cup hosting honors this year, but it does seem to be paying off in the way it shows Europeans what a properly oriented capitalist economy combined with liberty can accomplish. 

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NBC News: Minor league baseball’s York Revolution declined to play its Pride Night game on Thursday and opted instead to forfeit after players refused to wear uniforms that featured a rainbow design, team officials said.

The Revolution’s game against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs was going to mark the Pennsylvania team’s 11th Annual Pride Night, but players refused to don special jerseys that had rainbow sleeves.

Thursday night’s schedule game will go down as a forfeit, the Revolution said.

“This decision was not reached lightly,” according to a team statement.

Ed: Yes, it was. The team demanded that its players take part in political speech that they do not support, and then rather than allow people to speak for themselves, the owners literally took their ball and went home. I guess we have two more weeks of You Must Wear The Ribbon performative nonsense in sports and everywhere else, but don't expect fans to return if these leagues keep shoving their posturing down their throats and those of the employees as well. If teams want to have a Pride Night, why not just leave it to the fans who want to participate?

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Ed: It was "marred" because some players wrote the Biblical verse on their hats that explains the rainbow as a sign of God's covenant after the Great Flood. How did that "mar" anything? Why are demonstrations of religious faith bigotry but forced compliance with political messaging is "love"?

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Kira Davis: California’s Democrat supermajority hates voter ID. So much so they sued the city of Huntington Beach when it tried to institute its own voter ID policy for local elections. So much so that Governor Newsom signed several new laws prior to the primaries that would make it more difficult to verify signatures and challenge suspect ballots.

California Democrats say voter ID is racist, bigoted, and disenfranchising.

Among the plethora of state-mandated ‘equity’ initiatives is a policy that requires utility companies to reward a certain percentage of their contracts to LGBT-owned businesses. How do you determine if a business is gay enough for this benefit?

You may be shocked to hear this but…it’s with ID.

California Assemblyman David Tangipa (R- AD 8) took to X this week to describe the incredible absurdity of California’s ‘gay certification’ racket and it defies belief.

Ed: Well, well, well. Democrats like to claim that voter-ID is fascist too, and the demand for forced political speech to support the LGBTQ+ agenda certainly fits that description. 

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Ed: Only in Hollywood can this level of talent and this level of sheer cluelessness coexist. 

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Matt Taibbi: I burst out laughing at this passage:

The gospel being preached by some of today’s tech barons appears to be, at least in part, a kind of justification for the existence of a billionaire class. It meshes with the philosophy outlined by Milton and Rose Friedman in the libertarian treatise “Free to Choose,” which embraces equality of opportunity but takes a dim view of prioritizing equality of outcomes. They argued that material inequality was justified as long as economic competition was open to all.

Recapping: in order to grasp the idea that we tolerate/encourage wealth and inequality as a consequence of free economic competition, we apparently need to read a) Peter Thiel’s 2014 book “Zero to One,” and b) the “libertarian treatise” Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman. It isn’t, say, an idea hammered into every American from birth, and so central to national consciousness that kids arrive in elementary school knowing it. No, it’s radical, obscure libertarian teaching.

Growing up I didn’t know another child, let alone an adult with a doctorate, who was confused by “all men are created equal.” You didn’t need to be propagandized by Milton Friedman to know it didn’t mean “all men are created with equal abilities and advantages” or “all men should remain economically equal,” or some other absurdity. Like a lot of the foundational American concepts, Jefferson’s line was easy to understand even for a child, one of the reasons it’s resonated across centuries. Now, a Columbia professor pretends in the pages of the nation’s leading newspaper to be confused by it, and Times editors play along with the insulting gambit.

Ed: Be sure to read it all. It's a great takedown of the cultural rot at the NYT and in Academia. 

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Ed: Don't forget the NY Times's hoax about Israeli rape dogs. 

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Last night's lyric: "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" by my all-time favorite, Jim Croce. 

Editor's note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments -- and support independent platforms -- why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!

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