What we begin with today involves the scandal — we’re not allowed to call it a scandal, but it’s surely one — at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Or perhaps it’s better put as the latest and most grotesque element of the ongoing multi-headed scandal at the White House.

1. Team Biden’s Cocaine Communism?

You probably heard Thursday morning that the Secret Service has finished its investigation into who was behind the cocaine found in a storage area of the West Wing of the White House, and you were probably not surprised to learn that, gosh, the Secret Service simply has no earthly idea who could have deposited it there.

Surely it couldn’t have been Hunter Biden, who is apparently a resident of the White House while he dodges service of process in the paternity lawsuit over his illegitimate child. You know, the one that Grandpa Joe refuses to acknowledge?

In any event, yep — that cocaine just ended up there by itself, as best the Secret Service can tell:

The Secret Service has concluded its investigation into the small bag of cocaine found at the White House and has been unable to identify a suspect, two sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Secret Service officials combed through visitor logs and surveillance footage of hundreds of individuals who entered the West Wing in the days preceding the discovery and were unable to identify a suspect, one of the sources said.

Investigators were also unable to identify the particular moment or day when the baggie was left inside the West Wing cubby near the lower level entrance where it was discovered.

The second source said that the leading theory remains that it was left by one of the hundreds of visitors who entered the West Wing that weekend for tours and were asked to leave their phones inside those cubbies.

Hey-o, we can’t trace the yeyo.

Bonchie at RedState probably summed this up best:

So let me get this straight. The cocaine was reportedly left in a security area where people deposit electronic devices. That would mean there would have been cameras everywhere. Further, the people that make it to that point would have gone through multiple levels of security beforehand. There are also visitor logs for all outside entrants to the White House.

And yet, we are to believe that they just couldn’t find the culprit? That they didn’t see a single suspicious person on camera? I mean, come on. I understand that it’s possible the cocaine was left by a visitor, but when you jerk people around like this and then just suddenly end the investigation by claiming nothing was found, people are going to roll their eyes.

We are talking about federal agencies that are supposed to be the best of the best. These are the people that protect elected officials and stop assassins. But they can’t figure out who left a bag of cocaine in a public area of the White House covered in cameras.

Another theory, one that I’m going to go with until I see evidence that another theory has more evidence to support it:

Cocaine communism in the White House sounds eminently plausible to me.

— RVIVR (@RVIVRdotcom) July 13, 2023

2. The Impending Death of Bud Light (And the Inevitable Rebrand Into Something Else)

You might also have heard about Costco’s “Death Star” treatment of Bud Light:

Costco just gave the “Death Star” to Bud Light. That’s the asterisk you see on sale items which aren’t going to be restocked anymore. Bud Light is done. pic.twitter.com/WVUlbNSqS0

— vbspurs (@vbspurs) July 13, 2023

As Stephen Green notes, this is a big deal:

It’s the logo that Costco shoppers dread: when the “Death Star” appears next to their favorite item, indicating that the discount retail giant won’t restock once current inventory has sold out. Just this year, the Death Star has appeared on Filthy brand blue cheese olives, Kinder’s organic toasted onion dip mix, and Jonny Pops chocolate dipped strawberry pops.

Now the Death Star has been spotted adorning the price signs for Bud Light, which was the most popular beer in America back in the olden days of […checks notes…] a couple months ago.

If you think that’s a bad sign for Bud Light sales, you’re wrong. It’s much, much worse.

Green is probably also spot-on with this:

What Costco’s Death Star tells me is that the unofficial Bud Light boycott extends far beyond people like you and me who are deeply steeped in politics in ways that Normal-Americans aren’t. If the broad middle of America isn’t buying the stuff anymore, at least not in numbers sufficient to maintain Costco’s sharp eye for market trends and good deals, then parent company AB-InBev has dug itself a deeper hole than most of us imagined.

I’d also add that once a brand has lost shelf space, it’s very difficult to win back. Going even further, customers can’t buy what isn’t made available. Costco buyers who never even heard of Bud Light’s marketing fail with He Who Shall Not Be Named will stop buying Bud Light, too, just because it isn’t there — but some other discount light beer is.

If there is such a thing as a death spiral for a brand, we might be witnessing it.

I would go a bit further, particularly given the news earlier this week that Bud Light has gone from the top-selling beer in America in April to … not even in the top 10 in July thanks to their dalliance with female impersonator Dylan Mulvaney as a brand ambassador. I’m going to say that with retailers like Costco opting not even to stock it anymore, the suits at InBev, the parent company, are going to ultimately just kill the brand altogether.

There will still be Bud Light, mind you. It’ll still be brewed. They’re not going to shut down those production lines; that would be a waste of resources. They’re just going to relaunch it as something else. Bud’s All-American, or Little Buddy Beer, or whatever. Something inoffensive that gives them a fresh start and an opportunity to rebuild without the stink of their woke/trans escapade this spring.

Don’t doubt me on this. And when it happens, you won’t have to run out and buy it in order to claim a win. It’s already a win. They’re going to teach the death of Bud Light in business schools for the next 50 years. They’ll have to.

3. Michael Shellenberger Skewers the “White Nationalist” Myth

It’s behind a subscription wall on his Twitter, but Michael Shellenberger has an excellent post exploding this false “white nationalist” narrative the Left and the regime shills in law enforcement and media have been peddling. You hear this garbage all of the time, and it’s used as a weapon to defame conservatives who don’t dance around the question in just the right way.

We saw this make an ignominious debut back in 2017 with Donald Trump, who was trashed as supporting neo-Nazis after he attempted to explain that the riot in Charlottesville originated with a peaceful protest by mainstream Americans who thought it was ridiculous to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee that had stood as a landmark in that city for more than a century. That was an egregious lie for which nobody in the media or the Democrat Party (but of course, I repeat myself) was ever punished.

And the latest iteration came when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) made a rookie mistake in trying to explain that what the woke commissars in the Biden Defense Department are claiming is “white nationalism” is actually standard, ordinary red-blooded Americans who don’t go in for the toxic racial narratives of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Tuberville’s verbiage wasn’t calibrated as carefully as it could have been, and before he knew it the entire Senate GOP caucus was throwing him under the bus and he was fitted with a cancel culture–brand hair shirt.

But as Shellenberger says, this is all flapdoodle and bunkum and worse:

But there’s no good evidence that domestic terrorism is increasing. Neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security have submitted “comprehensive data to Congress in required reports” regarding violent extremism, found the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Last year there were only 21 homicides linked to white supremacists in the entire country. By comparison, Chicago alone saw an average of 58 homicides every month. From 2013 to 2021, the FBI’s domestic terrorism-related investigations increased by 357 percent, but there was no similar increase in terrorist attacks during that period.

Terrorism and racism are declining virtually everywhere, including in the U.S. The Global Terrorism Index reported that in 2022, deaths from terrorism fell by 9%, which is 38% lower than its peak in 2015. The number of terror attacks also decreased by 28% from 2021 to 2022. And a 2019 study found that in the United States, conscious and unconscious prejudice for “sexuality, race, and skin-tone attitudes” have decreased over the last decade.

If the number of open FBI cases reflected the actual level of extremist violence, there would be a domestic terrorist attack every day.

And now, a new investigation by Public finds that the FBI is not only exaggerating the threat of white supremacy, but is also embedding confidential human sources within white nationalist groups and encouraging members of these groups to engage in illegal activity.

Earlier this year, a white nationalist organization called Patriot Front held demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, sparking rumors online that the FBI was involved. In June, more rumors swirled when a fight broke out between American-flag-toting Proud Boys and a group of masked Rose City Nationalists at an Oregon City Pride Night Festival.

In an email to Public, FBI spokeswoman Joy Jiras denied any FBI involvement in the Oregon City rally but defended using undercover informants. “Federal courts and juries have overwhelmingly upheld the use of undercover operations in terrorism cases,” she said, “and their use has produced a lengthy public record of guilty pleas and convictions.”

But a source in a position to know has confirmed to Public that the FBI has pushed confidential informants to buy weapons so that agents can expand the scope and scale of domestic violent extremism investigations. The patterns in most FBI entrapment cases are eerily similar. The FBI pays an informant to lure people into planning and almost carrying out terrorist attacks using weapons, money, and other materials usually provided by the FBI before arresting them at the last minute.

4. The “Strong Female Lead”

The Critical Drinker, who’s a big favorite of The American Spectator’s staff, explained why the “Strong Female Lead” is killing so many movies:

This is both courageous and spot-on because when you say it you run the risk of being labeled a misogynist. Except it’s the purveyors of the “Strong Female Lead” who are the real misogynists because these hyper-butch characters who waste your movie-watching time beating the snot out of men twice their size aren’t women in any sense of the word. They don’t act like women act, they don’t have stories that women have, they lack the empathy and grace women supply to society (and which society so desperately needs from its female half).

More significantly, the notion, or moral argument, that these characters promote is that women can solve disputes or overcome adversity through physical aggression.

And they can’t. In all but a very tiny number of cases, that’s a dead end. Not just for women, but especially for women.

That’s not to mention the damage that these cultural messages are doing. Particularly among the lower classes, women are more violent now than ever, and it’s a disaster.

5. Why Do Hollywood’s Movies Suck as Much as They Do?

Speaking of moral arguments, here’s a clip about why modern movies are so awful. It’s from Brittany Sellner, who we’re not allowed to credit with any worthy social commentary because the Left has decided she’s persona non grata for her “alt-right political views.” As to that, whatever, but Sellner makes a very good case that great storytelling is about advancing a moral argument that is true, but doing it in a way that is also subtle and woven into a plausible and relatable plot.

She’s right about that. These woke propaganda films audiences simply can’t stand wear their lousy moral arguments on their sleeves, and nobody buys them anymore.

While watching this, I couldn’t help thinking about the abysmal Rose Tico, the character played by Kelly Marie Tran in a fat suit in the disastrous Star Wars movie The Last Jedi. She was one of the worst movie characters of all time, and she was clearly a vehicle for the woke Disney gang to advance their garbage arguments. Remember the infamous line that the Resistance would win “not by fighting what we hate …  but saving what we love?”

One of the stupidest movie lines of all time. You simply can’t abuse audiences with such awful dreck without losing them forever, and Hollywood is losing. Eventually, Chinese communists and Mexican drug cartels will think up better ways of sapping our culture and laundering their money, and those money-burning studios will dry up and make way for something better.