HOOKERS AND BLOW AIN’T CHEAP, FOLKS: From Influence Peddler to Starving Artist: Hunter Biden Claims Family is Broke in Defaulting on $17 Million Bill.

In a deposition in ongoing litigation with the law firm Winston Taylor, Hunter claimed an inability to pay the $17 million he owes his lawyers for representing him in criminal prosecutions, congressional investigations, and civil lawsuits.

Hunter claimed under oath that “I don’t own anything of any value other than — and I don’t know the value of it — my paintings which I painted myself. So that’s it. And I don’t even have any other assets at all, stocks, bonds, anything like that, savings accounts.” He also added, “My family doesn’t have any money, and it’s not their debt anyway.”

The statement about his family is curious, since Joe and Jill Biden recently received numerous book contracts and were thought to be worth millions. However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Joe Biden is struggling with $800,000 in debt and, ironically, increased property taxes in his blue state of Delaware on his $2.7 million home. (Moving to Florida like many fleeing blue state taxes is not a viable option for the Bidens).

Worse yet, no one wants Biden to do speeches and appearances, cutting off a lucrative post-presidency income. Not only is Biden obviously diminished in his ability to give a speech, but many Democrats blame him for the reelection of Trump by clinging to power despite his obvious deteriorating mental and physical condition.

That’s a sad state of affairs for Joe Biden, but it’s also an accurate reflection of what his cabal did to the nation.

SCIENCE: Penn professor claims ‘cisness’ is unnatural, ‘sex isn’t real’ in new book.

If you think sex isn’t real, you’re doing it wrong.

YES:

This is brilliant:

“The Constitution was not written as a suggestion for calm weather. It was written to restrain power precisely when fear is highest and the people in charge are most certain they know better.” https://t.co/w141KLhMhN

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) August 4, 2026

A DISASTER IN THE MAKING: Scamdani and the Truth About City-Owned Grocery Stores.

BE PREPARED: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Blanket. #CommissionEarned

MASSIVE RESISTANCE: WVU closed DEI office, but faculty DEI toolkit remains online.

FROM SUICIDAL EMPATHY TO SUICIDAL ANTIPATHY:

This sounds like a typical "Irish" joke, but it's true:

The Irish Government bought a new €53m jet.

And insisted on removing an Israeli-made navigational system.

Now it can't land in the fog 🤣🤣🤣https://t.co/wgeBO3pfRW

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) August 4, 2026

I’m sure it’s fine — not much fog in Ireland, after all.

MAGA: U.S. Manufacturing Surges to Four‑Year High as Economy Expands Under Trump. “U.S. manufacturing activity surged to a four‑year high in July, with the ISM PMI rising to 55.6, the strongest reading since May 2022 [1]. The surge is driven by record order growth, AI investment, and a rebound in factory employment, with the employment index at 52.8, the highest since August 2022 [1]. Treasury officials say the economy remains robust, with real GDP growing 1.5% in Q2 2026 and business investment up 8.4%.”

Quarterly growth wasn’t great, but manufacturing signals confidence in the future.

COLLEGES HAVE SPENT DECADES WRITING RULES THAT MAKE FREE SPEECH OPTIONAL: The good news is that the worst campus speech codes are finally retreating. FIRE’s “green light” schools have climbed from 8 in 2006 to 76 today, while “red light” schools have hit a record low. But nearly 70% still earn a “yellow light.” Progress, yes. Mission accomplished, no.

THIS ISN’T ABOUT A PARTICULAR ISSUE, BUT A TOXIC MEDIA AND AN UNWILLINGNESS OR INABILITY TO THINK CRITICALLY:

Everyone should read this. I don’t think there’s a bigger political/societal issue in 2026 than social media and America’s cognitive health. https://t.co/72vj4AuT7K

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) August 3, 2026

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Fauci’s follies — time to toss the ‘science is settled’ groupthink.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I Prefer That My Groceries Not Taste Like Commie Terrorist. “Even if the government could own anything, the thought of it is repulsive. Bureaucracy never brings anything good to the table. The bigger the bureaucracy, the worse it makes things. New York City’s population is greater than the populations of three-quarters of the states in this country, so its bureaucracy is the wrong kind of robust.”

AMERICA’S FIRST PRESIDENT UNDERSTOOD THAT POWER MEANS KNOWING WHEN TO GIVE IT UP: H.W. Brands discusses George Washington’s character, his defense of national unity, and why the republic depended on a leader who put duty above ambition.

DON SURBER: It’s the candidates, stupid: Democrat nominees are creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re all together ooky.

JUST ANOTHER “ISM” FOR MISERY: ‘Democratic socialism’ just an opening act for communism.

DSA calls for nationalization of railroads, utilities, manufacturing, agriculture, technology, insurance, real estate, finance, and hospitals along with government control of the media and internet. It would free prisoners, abolish prisons, disarm and defund the police, “demilitarize” the border, end detention and deportation of illegal immigrants, and eliminate ICE. On national defense and foreign policy, DSA would dramatically cut U.S. military spending, quit NATO, and close all U.S. military bases in foreign countries.

In a blatant affront to the U.S Constitution, DSA’s platform would also trash the institutions of checks and balances, and the separation of powers by eliminating the presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court with all power vested in the House of Representatives. This moronic diatribe isn’t a “platform,” it’s a temper tantrum. Nonetheless, DSA is admired and taken seriously by the Democrat Progressive Caucus in Congress. The deafening silence you hear is from other Democrats who lack the courage to call the DSA out for the insurrectionists they are.

Furthermore, the DSA platform declares, “Our fight is to end capitalist exploitation. In overwhelming the old barbaric, order of capitalism, the working class will not only liberate itself from its own shackles, but all of humanity from the parasitic death-drive of capitalism.” It’s no coincidence that this is the language of Marx and Lenin. DSA’s notion of “democratic socialism” is only foreplay for outright communism. In the words of David Jenkins, a top leader of DSA, “Our goal is communism.”

And already they’ve either taken over, co-opted, or bullied a sizable fraction of the Democrat Party.

THIS IS NOT A RECIPE FOR SOCIETAL SUCCESS: Status matters so much for success in our world now because we so often just trust high status folks to run stuff, without much accountability re concrete performance metrics.

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE PRESS…:

The strategy CNN management chose was silence. Just say nothing, and hope the controversy fades away.

It's been almost 10 days since Fauci diary entries revealed that two of CNN's top anchors were private pals with the man they were supposed to be objectively covering.

From… pic.twitter.com/LnrIgKlTrA

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 3, 2026

…the press despises you more.

MAYBE WISCONSIN IS SO FAR GONE THAT THOSE ARE PLUSSES: Hong Chose Hasan Piker and Ilhan Omar. Wisconsin Should Notice.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Democrats Want to Close the Prisons, Except Not for People Like You.

Socialism is not about making lives better or creating prosperity or security or any of those things. It’s about jerks living out their personal psychodramas while they get off on making you miserable.

Nothing demonstrates that more than the idea of defunding the police and getting rid of prisons. After all, you wicked normal people deserve to have thugs, junkies, murderers, rapists, and other Democrat constituencies turned on you to make you pay for the crime of being you. You need to understand the deep hate that lives within all these people, and that’s why, in every single leftist sector of society, you see the actual criminals not merely being ignored but being idolized. The DSA types would free these barbarians for the express purpose of allowing those barbarians to hurt you, because you deserve to be hurt. You deserve to be killed. You deserve to be raped. Why? Because these freaks don’t like you and it amuses them to see you in pain.

But there’s a practical side to it too. The old Soviet Union understood it. Regular criminals were victims of society, and you, being the foundation of society, need to be victimized in return. If you were a regular criminal, you were treated infinitely better than someone who committed a real crime, that is, a political crime. If you opposed the regime, then you were a real criminal.

Leftists still think that way.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: aosu D1 Max, 4K 8MP Solar Security Camera Wireless Outdoor. #CommissionEarned

AARON HANSCOM: Nick Shirley’s New Video Dismantles the Left’s Narrative on Ceuta’s Migrant Crisis.

Intrepid investigative journalist Nick Shirley isn’t one to shrink from danger. He had to escape from Cuba when spies followed him during his trip to the communist island and was forced to hire 24/7 security after exposing Somali fraud in Minneapolis. In his latest video, Shirley once again finds himself in serious peril when a Muslim man chases him through the streets while wielding a knife and threatening to stab him.

The scene of the pursuit was the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta, which has made headlines in recent days after 60,000 illegal migrants poured in from Morocco. Shirley traveled to the autonomous city to report on the current state of the crisis, which has become more manageable after most of the migrants returned to Morocco.

While the knife chase — in which the enraged man yells, “I’m going to stab both of you,” at Shirley and Javier Mansilla, the Spanish vigilante who accompanies Shirley in the video, as they run down the street — will likely attract the most attention, there are several other revealing moments I want to highlight that go against the left’s preferred narrative of what is occurring in Spain right now.

Video at link.

DISPATCHES FROM THE RED ZONES: Florida’s DOGE Is Delivering.

Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team’s work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts—it also includes auditing university curriculum and state union programs and reining in rogue municipalities that had adopted woke-left policies.

Take Florida’s SB 1134, which banned counties and municipalities from using government funds for discriminatory DEI programs and activities. Florida DOGE found that local governments were forcing employees to undergo “Transgender Humility” training, which included the use of a “wheel of power/privilege” that singled out certain ethnic groups as being worse than others. In some extreme cases, the team found that local governments were directing taxpayer dollars to immigration lawyers who represented criminal illegal aliens. All of this was identified by Florida DOGE and prohibited by law.

This ideological audit was most prevalent in universities, where the team examined over 74,000 syllabi and 100,000 research articles for left-wing ideological content. Funding for these DEI-related activities was effectively halted through SB 266 and SB 7044. While the federal DOGE program failed to codify reform through legislation, Florida DOGE succeeded.

Florida DOGE has proven it is the model to emulate.

There are an awful lot of red states that ought to be doing just that.

IF THEY SUCCEED, THEY WILL BE JUDGED AND FOUND WANTING:

Bill Gurley on Anthropic: "I don't think they think they're writing software. I think they're midwifing a deity" https://t.co/H1DlxyuH1R pic.twitter.com/h3kAIpbUyp

— Ruben (@rdominguezibar) August 1, 2026

“Sinners in the hands of an angry AI” would be fun to write.

JASON GUMP: Charity casts doubts on volunteering record of Cambridge professor.

A charity has cast doubt on claims about volunteering made by the Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row.

Prof Jason Arday has listed among his achievements “installing water points” in South America and West Africa with the charity WaterAid.

WaterAid, however, says it never sends volunteers abroad.

It is the latest blow to Prof Arday’s credibility following questions over alleged plagiarism and apparently bogus claims he has made about ultra-distance running and fundraising.

His memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, is set to be published at the end of this month, with a publicity tour of the UK and America to promote it.

His editors must having Biden-level aneurysms right now.

ICYMI:

The inconvenient truth. pic.twitter.com/P8QmsX5GcA

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) August 3, 2026