SHE’S BACK! Douglas Murray: Kamala Harris returning to the political landscape can be best described by Gen Z as ‘cringe.’

If you´re still not clear on what is going on, well, at least Kamala and her team have given us a couple of clues. One is that they have decided to adopt the X-label of “@headquarters_67.”

This is a reference to an online meme briefly popular with some youths some while ago.

The meme — which, like a lot of online memes, is too complicated and unimportant to go into here — signals a desire to be down with the kids.

Unfortunately, the meme was already long dead and buried even before Kamala and her social media geniuses decided to dig it up and batter its corpse one final time.

Even CNN has admitted that this attempt to look cool is almost the epitome of what the kids might call “cringe.”

Kamala couldn’t have looked more out of sync if she’d started talking about Pepe the Frog.

Which is why her clueless social media team decided it was time for a quick re-rebrand:

‘VERY REVEALING!’ One Short Word in AOC’s WaPo Layoffs Take Gives Away How Dems View the Media.

The left have viewed the Post as “our media” for quite some time. In the fall of 2006, Bill Clinton told a Washington Post interviewer, that “There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies — and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new-media excesses.”

That’s a pretty mild way to describe what the media would shortly morph into a year later, as Obama worship went into overdrive, followed by everything we’ve seen over the last decade to attack the Bad Orange Man.

UNEXPECTEDLY: More WA businesses considering leaving the state due to high taxes.

The latest Association of Washington Business quarterly survey shows bad news on the economic front, with 44% of business leaders saying they are considering moving their personal residence out of state and businesses indicating they are now more than twice as likely – 30% to 14% – to expand outside the state than within it.

The results of AWB’s winter survey are based on 429 responses collected by email from business owners and operators across the state between Jan. 12 and Feb. 2.

“Washington employers signaled a continuing collapse in confidence in the state economy in this quarterly survey, with significant year-over-year deterioration across multiple metrics driven largely by the state’s growing tax burden,” according to the survey’s executive summary.

I wonder if part of the “no hire, no fire” economy is due to uncertainty created by ham-fisted blue-state governance.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: She Drove the Rental Like She Rented It. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how not to get your rental car out of an impound lot, the very worst time to cop a feel, and the stupidest reason to impersonate an FBI agent.”

BLUE CITY BLUES: 5 largest U.S. cities don’t have enough money to pay bills.

At the end of fiscal 2024, all five cities didn’t have enough money to pay their bills despite having balanced budget requirements. In order “to claim their budgets were balanced, as is required by law in the five cities, elected officials” didn’t include “the full cost of government in their budget calculations and shifted costs onto future taxpayers,” TIA said.

Combined, the five cities had $144 billion in assets; their combined debt, including unfunded pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB), totaled $384 billion. Their combined shortfall was $240 billion, according to the analysis. This included $92 billion in pension debt and $112 billion in OPEB, mainly retiree health care, debt.

A “common and pressing challenge persists” in all five cities, the report notes: “long-term costs of pensions and retiree health care benefits continue to strain their financial health despite short-term improvements or varying circumstances.”

“While investment gains have temporarily eased pension liabilities in cities like New York City and Houston, these gains remain unrealized and uncertain,” it says. New York City’s growing retiree health care obligations “remain vastly underfunded,” as do the other cities’ it notes.

“Chicago exemplifies the consequences of chronic pension underfunding, with liabilities exceeding assets and recurring budget shortfalls,” it adds.

“Los Angeles and Philadelphia, which have made progress in funding, face limitations in financial flexibility due to increased capital investments and rising expenses,” it adds.

The report also grades each city based on its taxpayer burden. New York City and Chicago received F grades; Philadelphia received a D; Houston and Los Angeles received C grades for fiscal health.

Aside from bad finances, guess what else all five cities have in common.

LET’S RETURN TO TEACHING STUDENTS HOW TO ARGUE. In the sense of “we are discussing the crux of the issue” rather than “I am (X identity) so I feel (Y feeling) and you can’t challenge that.” An idea so crazy it just might work (and that is also thousands of years old).

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ Where Trump Makes Life More, What’s That Word Again? Oh Yes, Affordable. “Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™, where the most extraordinary thing has happened in one of the most expensive areas of the country since Donald Trump came back to the Oval Office: Things are getting — what’s that word again? — Oh, yes, more affordable. This help comes despite howling leftists who haven’t been able to repeal the law of supply and demand — yet.”

HMM: The “No Hire, No Fire” Economy.

Job seekers are discouraged by a plague of ghost job listings intended to provide the illusion of growth, with no intention of anyone ever being hired.

Inflation is low, yet consumer confidence is at the lowest level in more than a decade. Stocks are booming, yet no one seems to be hiring. (This seems to be my personal experience as well.) Trump and congressional Republicans have managed to lower taxes, yet the “animal spirits” of the American economy do not seem like they’re been unleashed.

Is AI eliminating jobs? Maybe, especially in the service sector (those AI agents everyone hates have probably replaced some humans on support lines). But tech has been a job growth driver for much of this century, and an AI infrastructure build-out seems to be sucking up all available venture capital (and then some) with very little to show for it in the way of actual profits thus far.

It’s a weird time, to be sure — but at least we have “no fire” to go along with the “no fire,” and perhaps more importantly, wages are up.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED IS LOWERING SUPER BOWL EXPECTATIONS: Why Super Bowl TV Ratings Will Be Down This Year.

Last year’s Super Bowl between the Eagles and Chiefs drew 127.7 million viewers for Fox. It set a new record for the most watched telecast in television history.

My guess is that NBC won’t come close to topping this on Sunday, despite Nielsen using a new viewership measurement system that has seen big increases across the board for most sporting events in recent months.

For one reason, last year’s Super Bowl aired on Fox’s free streaming service, Tubi. This year’s Super Bowl will air on Peacock, which is a paid service. Tubi has 97 million active users. Peacock has 44 million subscribers.

Another big reason why this Super Bowl won’t be watched by as many people as last year’s is because of who is here and who isn’t here.

Travis Kelce’s fiancée is not part of this Super Bowl. That eliminates a large portion of people who watched last year’s Super Bowl despite not caring even one bit about football. Patrick Mahomes has also reached that level where the non-NFL fan may tune in to see him play. Sam Darnold and Drake Maye will not bring in one of those fans.

Okay, so the Chiefs didn’t even make it to the playoffs this year. But why couldn’t “Travis Kelce’s fiancée” perform at the Super Bowl halftime? As alluded to above, she has a rather substantial fan base, and they might have tuned in just to see her.

Flashback: Why is an anti-American crossdresser being chosen to headline the most American event ever?

That’s why:

“LEARN TO CODE.”

Related:

Also:

UPDATE:

LATEST LEFTIST MONOMANIA ACHIEVED:

Tweet continues:

No matter how many times the Democratic Party goes back to its same old dirty tricks, they can always count on the same gullible, impressionable, low-info fools to keep falling for it.

QED: Team GB skier urinates ‘F— ICE’ in snow at Winter Olympics.

A Team GB athlete has launched a stinging attack on the ICE agency ahead of the opening ceremony at the Winter Games, urinating the words “F— ICE” into the snow.

Gus Kenworthy, a British-American model and actor, who has come out of retirement to appear for Team GB in freestyle skiing, posted the message on his Instagram account on Wednesday before confirming his methodology with a follow-up message. “My last post was pee so it only felt appropriate to follow it up with a lil’ dump… of photos from January. Yes, I’m a child,” he told his 1.2 million followers.

Well, yes. So why should anyone follow your advice on ignoring illegal immigration in either nation?

UGH: Houston doctor indicted on charges he falsified records to block patients’ liver transplants. “Bynon is accused of making false statements in his role as director of abdominal organ transplantation and surgical director for liver transplantation at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston. Of the five patients detailed in an indictment made public on Thursday, three died and two others were able to get liver transplants at different hospitals.”

Nothing as to why he would have done that.

TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: