Boy, we sure are finding lots of items to pick from these days when it comes to the 5QT, aren’t we?
It reminds me of that famous Mandy Patinkin line from The Princess Bride…
And of course I’m not summing up, either. I’m just picking a few things that might hold your interest long enough to keep you from clicking over to that other open window on your browser.
Starting with the horrid woman under whose misrule the state of Arizona suffers.
1. The Chinese Asset in the Governor’s Mansion in Phoenix
It was an especially obnoxious bit of political chicanery that put Katie Hobbs into office as Arizona’s governor in 2022. The wacky leftist Democrat was the secretary of state who had overseen the utterly broken 2020 election (whether you believe the Democrats stole the election or not, it’s pretty obvious that election wasn’t well run), and she decided she deserved a promotion two years later and thus ran for the state’s top office.
Hobbs managed to beat Kari Lake that year… maybe. The 2022 election in Arizona was every bit as hinky as 2020, and perhaps more so, given that Katie Hobbs was in charge of the very flawed and exceptionally suspicious interminable vote-counting process, which magically resulted in a razor-thin margin of victory.
What are the wages of that victory? Well…
Arizona Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, criticized Gov. Katie Hobbs this week after the Democrat vetoed a bill that would have outlawed Chinese land ownership in Arizona.
Senate Bill 1109 would have banned China from buying, owning or acquiring land in the state. Shamp introduced the legislation.
During legislative hearings, Shamp said she introduced SB 1109 due to growing threats of China buying land near “critical infrastructure, military bases and sensitive corporate areas.”
She added that these land acquisitions serve a purpose for China, which is to surveil and collect data on people who manage sensitive assets and items.
Shamp explained China attempted to lease land near Luke Air Force Base, which is in her district. None of this land was sold to China.
Around the country, states are implementing bans on landowning by Chinese entities around sensitive areas. Arizona has lots of those, not to mention it’s a border state, and it’s really not a good idea to have foreign adversaries owning land along the Mexican border.
Tell that to Hobbs, though, and you won’t get anywhere. Besides, this isn’t her first veto of legislation like this so far in 2025. It’s her third…
SB 1109 is not the first public safety legislation that Hobbs has vetoed this year.
In April, she vetoed SB 1027 and SB 1066.
SB 1027 would have prohibited Arizona’s critical telecommunications infrastructure from using equipment manufactured by American adversaries.
The other bill, SB 1066, would have prevented the selling of Arizona land to a foreign adversary.
You might have thought Kari Lake was a little too intense for comfort, and she did give off something of a shrill vibe at times (other times, to be sure, Lake was awesome) when she ran for governor in 2022 and the Senate in 2024. But at least it’s clear that Kari Lake wouldn’t be flouting the will of the people of Arizona, as expressed by their elected representatives in the state legislature, to keep the Chinese Communist Party from buying up that state like Hobbs is doing with her vetoes. (RELATED: Arizona’s Trump Wave Wasn’t Enough to Save Kari Lake)
Kathy Hochul is probably the worst governor in America right now. But Hobbs isn’t all that far off. It’s a national imperative that Arizonans dump her out with the garbage in 2026.
2. Karine Jean-Pierre Is Kidding, Right?
Of all the hilariously non-credible tell-alls beginning to make their way into the public sphere, starting with that goofy Jake Tapper book about the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental deficiencies last year, I don’t think there will ever be anything quite so uproarious as this new — I’m not even sure what to call it; is it a novel? — item from former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. (RELATED: Joe Biden, Jake Tapper, and the Lampshading of America)
KJP was an abjectly atrocious spokeslesbian for the Biden White House. She told provable, unconvincing lie after provable, unconvincing lie on that podium for years on behalf of what we now know was as illegitimate a governmental regime as we have ever had in American history. There has never been so egregious a Baghdad Bob in American government as Jean-Pierre was.
But now that the truth about the non compos mentis facsimile president she served has tumbled out, Jean-Pierre presents us with a book in which she now says she’s an independent and that we have to stop putting ourselves in identity boxes.
This from somebody who ceaselessly advertised herself on the basis of the boxes checked off by her hiring — black woman, openly gay, blah blah blah.
I don’t need to go too far with this. But… is this a joke? It has to be a joke.
WATCH: Just a few months ago, Karine Jean-Pierre said she didn’t want to “rehash the past.” Like many of the things she said from the White House podium, that wasn’t true.
Jean-Pierre on Wednesday unveiled her new book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside… pic.twitter.com/nezPYyuy9g
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 5, 2025
And joke or not, it’s hilarious.
For the last three years, you were a homophobic racist bigot for criticizing KJP’s performance as press secretary.
Now, Democrats & media are saying everyone always knew she was incompetent https://t.co/IIH9pmoYA9
— Christina Pushaw ???? ???????? (@ChristinaPushaw) June 5, 2025
3. Not Taking the Bait on the New Elon–Trump Feud
I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow of all the back-and-forth between President Trump and Elon Musk, which started over the latter’s public opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill. You already know about all of this. (RELATED: Take the Win on the Big Beautiful Bill)
What I’m going to say is that if you pay attention, you can see evidence that this might all be a ruse, a psyop intended to shake loose some votes and get the BBB — and the rescission bills, the first of which dropped this week containing just under $10 billion worth of low-hanging fruit — passed through the House and Senate. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Rescission Cometh)
Exactly how this works, I can’t discern yet. I suspect this is all maneuvering toward a resolution along the lines of what Jennifer Van Laar described in a really good RedState post on Thursday morning, with one caveat…
So, it looks like the Senate will attempt to make some changes and send it back to the House, which is a good opportunity for conservatives to fight for additional spending reductions within the confines of what reconciliation allows — and keeping in mind what Graham said about the possibility of additional reconciliation bills this year.
Theoretically, these efforts could be separated into dozens of standalone bills, but each would have to get 60 votes in the Senate since they’re not part of a reconciliation bill. Given the time frame in which the GOP Congress must codify these cuts and accomplish other legislative priorities — it wouldn’t be good to be heading toward the last weeks of the fiscal year before getting to appropriations, and we’re almost to that point — and the lack of any feasible legislation that can get 218 votes in the House and 51 in the Senate, the only answer is to pass the Big, Beautiful Bill as soon as possible.
That’s all correct, except Van Laar is missing the fact that the standalone bills she’s talking about would be rescissions, and those can’t be filibustered, so 218 and 50+1 (meaning that Vice President Vance could break a tie) will get a rescission passed.
I get the impression Musk understands this. And while I wouldn’t think his frustration is fake, my guess is a lot of this is performative.
For example, on Thursday, Musk popped out with an X post claiming that Trump was in the Epstein files. And of course he is, because Trump and Jeffrey Epstein flew on each other’s planes from New York to Palm Beach two decades ago, and as a result, Trump’s name would appear on Epstein’s flight logs.
But apparently not when it came to flights to Epstein’s pedo-island paradise, which is important.
And Musk knows this. He’s known it for a long time. Putting it out there is bait — it’s the kind of thing you’d see when the pro wrestlers would trash-talk each other as they hyped up some pre-scripted championship match.
This is probably the only time I’ll reference something Elie Mystal says, as he’s generally a dunce, but…
I can tell some of you people have never watched the WWF/WWE.
Elon is doing a classic “heel turn.” This builds tensions and keeps ratings high.
By Electomania 2028, liberals will try to tag Elon in, but he’ll refuse. Then, when Trump is about to be pinned, he’ll bit Dems with a…
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) June 5, 2025
There are other potential hints here, but I’m not going to belabor it. Just consider that Musk’s customer base for Tesla, at least until its main product is household companion robots, is mostly a bunch of Democrats who hate him — and publicly breaking with Trump pro-wrestling style begins to eliminate part of that problem, at least until around 2028 when the first robots start to hit the market.
Just saying.
Plus, there is this…
Watch Vance. pic.twitter.com/78YG9EhEkH
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) June 5, 2025
That’s an awfully loud silence.
Let’s just let this play out. Even if I’m wrong, there is ZERO chance we know the whole story of what’s happening here.
4. Here’s a Must-Read for Traditional Americans and Most Especially Christians
Michael Clary is the Lead Pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, and he’s the author of God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality. Beyond that, I can’t say I know much about him other than he wrote an essay back in January for the Center for Baptist Leadership’s website that has been percolating for a while and was recently brought to my attention. It decries “loser theology” and treats Trump’s election as a pivot point in reasserting a biblically-centered American culture…
There’s no question that “the vibe shift” has decidedly moved in a more conservative direction in our country. Trump alone didn’t cause the shift. But he is a major vessel and spokesman representing it. At the ground level, the shift belongs to the people who are and will be making it happen, including many Christians.
That is, as long as we can get out of our own way.
While I’m excited about the vibe shift and the prospects of flourishing under four years of a second Trump Administration, one of the biggest obstacles Christians must overcome to capitalize on this moment is what I call “loser theology.”
What’s “loser theology”? Clary explains…
At its core, loser theology convinces believers that asserting agency for Christ is inherently wrong. It frames passivity, weakness, and vague trust in God as the hallmarks of true faithfulness, while strength, conviction, and action are branded as dangerous forms of legalism and pride.
This theology offers a spiritualized excuse for being ineffective, weak, and lazy men.
And, even worse, loser theology is how liberalism is marketed to Bible-believing, conservative Christians as the only “acceptable” framework for faith in the public square.
He talks about the battle between “prodigal son” leftists and “elder brother” right-wingers, with both being unacceptable and so a milquetoast Third Way wherein Christians are supposed to be subservient in culture wars while trying to hold on to their own turf is the only way forward.
Clary says that’s bunk, and that restoring a muscular, masculine Christianity is the only way to rebuild an American culture beset with failure. He’s spot on.
Read the whole thing. It will make sense to more than just Baptists. I’m what I call a bad Catholic, and it fits in perfectly with what I’ve been talking about — revivalism, as our regular readers are aware — for a while.
5. Weaponized Governmental Failure Falls Victim To The Defiance Of Citizen Smartassery In New Orleans
I was going to use this last thing to talk about Your Friends And Neighbors, the Jon Hamm-starring series at AppleTV+, and what it has to say about divorced dads and modern-day America, but what I’ve got on that is way more than would fit here. Instead, I have something for you which is much more entertaining.
Namely, this…
New Orleans’s physical geography — it’s a city built in a river delta which is supposed to be a swamp — makes potholes in the streets a bit more likely than average, but that would simply mean that if it was a well-run municipality there would be an emphasis on competent management of the city streets.
And there is not much of that. Drive around on residential streets throughout the Big Easy, and you will find the disrepair of those streets nothing short of comical — but more than that, spend any time living in that city and you’ll realize the elected leaders and bureaucrats running the place couldn’t give a fig about taking care of the problem.
The Laurel Street Zoo is but a new manifestation of humorous citizen protest over neighborhood potholes big enough to eat or destroy cars. For years, they’ve been filled with flowers, Mardi Gras beads, mannequins dressed as showgirls, and all kinds of entertaining and sarcastic spectacles. After former Mayor Mitch Landrieu wasted most of his two terms in office defenestrating the iconic statues of Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard in a woke crusade, residents began publicly naming the potholes after Confederate generals under the assumption that doing so would induce Landrieu to fill them in.
Even that didn’t work, which, if you’re familiar with the concept of Weaponized Governmental Failure, is no accident.
So now it’s the Laurel Street Zoo.
Potholes are becoming tourist attractions in New Orleans, and it’s happening as a means of subversive protest against the city’s entrenched governing class.
So if you’re in uptown New Orleans, you might venture over to Laurel and Webster Streets to check out the show. But don’t drive your own car if you don’t want to have to get some suspension work done. And definitely don’t feed the flamingos.
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