Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Seattle PD shuts down Antifa’s plans for election night CHAZ riot, several arrests made | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com
On Tuesday night, Seattle police shut down an Antifa direct action near the deadly CHAZ/CHOP anarchist zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Several left-wing militants were arrested on criminal charges, which resulted in the group dispersing for the evening, foiling Antifa's plan to riot on Election Day. The charges varied from property damage to defying police orders.
Seattle police maintained a substantial presence on the ground, preventing Antifa from conducting serious acts of illegal activity in the same neighborhood the militants forcefully seized control of during the 2020 George Floyd riots. Nearly 100 SPD officers followed the group on bikes and cars after they vandalized property and marched unlawfully in the street. Police issued announcements to the group throughout the night over an LRAD speaker and a police helicopter circled the militants demanding the agitators remain lawful over a loudspeaker. At least five arrests were made, police said.
Well that was easy.
November 6, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
America Unburdens Itself From What Has Been | Babylon Bee
U.S. — Donald Trump has defeated Kamala Harris to become the next president of the United States, proving once and for all that Americans are ready to unburden themselves from what has been.
Sources say the unburdening could lead to unprecedented levels of imagining what can be.
"Kamala was a huge burden, but now it's time for us to be unburdened, more unburdened than ever before," Donald Trump said as he addressed crowds at the Palm Beach Convention Center. "She was so terrible. But now she's gone. She's a ‘has-been.' So sad. Maybe she can work at McDonald's now."
His supporters roared in approval, hanging onto every word as Trump reminded them of his plans for the first 100 days in office now that the nation has been unburdened from Kamala's glaring incompetence.
Sources within the Trump campaign say the president wasn't nervous at all leading up to the election thanks in part to his new spiritual advisors Joe Rogan and Elon Musk. Instead of panicking, Trump reportedly spent most days working on his golf game in between campaign stops and owning libs on Twitter.
At publishing time, Trump's new efficiency advisor Ron Paul encouraged the nation to imagine what could be if there were no Federal Reserve.
via babylonbee.com
November 6, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Kamala Calls McDonald's To Ask If Her Old Job Still Available | Babylon Bee
U.S. — With the reality setting in of her devastating defeat, Kamala Harris called up McDonald's to see if she could by chance have her old job back.
"Yeah, I'm available," said Kamala, watching an interview replay. "Cashier, drive-through, onion lady. Stick me in the clown suit. I just need a job."
At publishing time, McDonald's had reportedly turned Kamala down as she never worked there in the first place and could not answer a single question on the McDonald's application.
via babylonbee.com
November 6, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Harris’s Loss Triggers Soul-Searching, Recriminations Within Democratic Party - WSJ
WASHINGTON—Kamala Harris’s defeat generated swift condemnation and soul-searching among Democrats, who are handing the White House back to a Republican they see as deeply flawed after their party failed to connect with voters preoccupied by inflation and illegal immigration.
The loss stunned Democrats, who felt confident going into Election Day that they had energy and momentum on their side. Instead, voters across several swing states delivered a clear rebuke by shifting in favor of President-elect Donald Trump.
The immediate reaction from party leaders was despondency. Asked who was to blame for the loss, one senior Democrat simply said “everyone.” The party lost ground with chunks of voters who used to be core to their coalition, including working-class voters and minorities, and lost rural areas in big numbers and failed to make up that deficit.
via www.wsj.com
By despising every traditionally American virtue and embracing every traditional American vice, and many novel vices as well, Democrats earned this defeat many times over. They not just awaken a slumbering giant. They had to assemble the sleeping giant and then kick it awake.
November 6, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, November 4, 2024
Exclusive | U.S. Chip Toolmakers Move to Cut China From Supply Chains - WSJ
The U.S. semiconductor industry is uprooting Chinese companies from supply chains, spurred by directives from Washington seeking to suppress China’s involvement in sensitive next-generation technology.
via www.wsj.com
November 4, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
What Should Be Done for Student Victims of the Shots? ⋆ Brownstone Institute
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Congressman Matt Rosendale who represents the Second District of Montana. His staff asked if I would support his new proposed bill called the University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act. In summary, the bill would require higher education institutions to pay the medical expenses for any student who was required or is currently required to take a Covid-19 vaccine to attend classes and who suffered a vaccine injury. Additionally, higher education institutions would lose all federal funds from the Department of Education if they do not comply with the legislation.
via brownstone.org
Good idea.
November 4, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Law Student Faces Expulsion for ‘Aggressive Pointing’ | The Free Press
When Houston Porter, a 28-year-old law student at Pace University, first walked into the college auditorium last month, he was surprised to see a packed house for the “Saving Women’s Sports” panel he was co-moderating.
“Our events normally don’t get that kind of turnout,” says Porter, a member of The Federalist Society, a conservative group that sponsored the panel at Pace’s law school in White Plains, New York. “So it was exciting.”
But not long after, Porter’s world started “crumbling down”—with at least one professor shouting at panelists and another allegedly rushing the stage, followed by a Title IX investigation that accuses him of having “aggressively pointed” at a transgender student and misgendering her. Now Porter faces the possibility of suspension, expulsion, and even being barred from practicing law.
About two dozen students, plus two faculty members, attended the October 15 panel against Proposition 1, a New York ballot measure that promises to codify gender identity and gender expression as protected classes in the state constitution. Porter said most attendees showed up wearing trans pride pins, but he didn’t think anything of it. In fact, he says, his LBGTQ peers were “the exact type of people” he hoped would join the discussion.
via www.thefp.com
This guy needs legal representation now.
November 4, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Senate Stakes Can’t Get Much Higher - WSJ
The race for the White House has tightened again, if you can take more drama, as new polls show Kamala Harris gaining ground in the last week, including Wisconsin, Georgia and even Iowa. This marks a good moment for a reminder of why this year’s U.S. Senate elections are unusually important.
If the Vice President wins, while Democrats keep a Senate majority, the House stands a good chance of going her way as well. After that, the progressive deluge.
via www.wsj.com
November 4, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
New York Bureaucrats Get Their Squirrel, P’Nut - WSJ
“They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours,” Mr. Longo told the New York Post. “They asked my wife, who is of German descent, what her immigration status was. They asked if I had cameras in my house. They wouldn’t allow me to go to the bathroom without a police escort, who then checked the back of the toilet to see if I was hiding anything there.”
Mr. Longo told the Post he took in P’Nut seven years ago after the squirrel’s mother was killed. P’Nut has since become something of a star on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Mr. Longo published images of P’Nut behaving more like a domesticated house pet than a rodent in the wild.
The squirrel cops nonetheless took custody of P’Nut and Fred and euthanized them to check for rabies after P’Nut allegedly bit one of the raiding agents on the hand. Mr. Longo told the Post he saw no evidence of the bite and that the agents wore heavy gloves. It is against state law to keep a wild animal in a home without a license, but Mr. Longo said he tried to release P’Nut into the wild only to rescue him after he was attacked by other animals.
The P’Nut incident has exploded on social media as an example of abusive government, and it’s hard to conclude otherwise if Mr. Longo’s account is accurate. The 34-year-old had better watch out now that he’s gone public, because there’s nobody more vengeful than a bureaucracy that’s been embarrassed when its bullying zealotry is exposed.
via www.wsj.com
Disgraceful.
November 4, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Saturday, November 2, 2024
The Endarkenment | City Journal
Asked whether she could provide a definition of the word “woman,” Ketanji Brown Jackson, Supreme Court nominee, magna cum laude at Harvard and graduate of Harvard Law, seemed perplexed: “I’m not a biologist,” she observed. Yet we are told by Jeremi Carswell, a specialist in the field, that children know perfectly well which of many genders they wish to grow up to be “from the moment that they have any ability to express themselves.”
During the 2020 pandemic, because of safety concerns, San Francisco took draconian measures to keep adults apart and children out of school, even as it promoted and protected the use of dangerous drugs by a large homeless population. That year, 257 San Franciscans died from the virus, while the number of overdose deaths climbed to 697.
In May 2024, former president Donald Trump was convicted in a Manhattan courtroom of a crime most Americans would be hard-pressed to describe. Three months earlier, a special prosecutor found that Joe Biden had mishandled classified documents but refused to bring charges because the sitting president of the United States was “an elderly man with a poor memory.”
These recent episodes are symptoms of a mass decline in America into unreason—bordering, at times, on a psychotic breakdown. Strange fantasies have overwhelmed reality: it’s an age of delusion, impossible longings, and ritual self-mutilation. The causes are many and complex, but the syndrome deserves a name. I’m going to call it the “Endarkenment” because it rises, like an accusing specter, out of the corpse of the fallen Enlightenment.
The Endarkenment is the pathological disorientation that convulses a society after it has extinguished all sources of meaning and lost sight of all paths to a happier future. It’s the triumph of wish over facts, the infantilization of top echelons of the social pyramid—of hyper-credentialed, globally mobile people, wielders of power and wealth and media, who, on a routine basis, confuse their self-important imaginings with the world itself. It’s the widespread descent of everyone else, now deprived of teachers, preachers, and role models, into a cognitive underclass, prone to the most bizarre theories about how things work.
The Endarkenment is experienced collectively as the disintegration of institutions, a traumatic fracturing of social life, and the seemingly ceaseless perpetuation of political conflict. But it is also experienced at the personal level in the form of heightened anxiety, depression, drug addiction, “deaths of despair,” and a loss of interest in family and procreation—even in sex.
The chaos has infected every level of contemporary society. For many, its perfect avatar is Trump—a man who selects his facts out of his fantasy life. Trump is a worthy representative, but I prefer outgoing president Biden because the light has literally gone out in his eyes and in much of his mind. Though the most powerful man on earth, decider between peace and war, he is unable to complete a coherent sentence. At the fateful June presidential debate, he made Trump sound like Pericles by comparison.
Biden is a stumbler in the dark. He, or those acting on his behalf, assembled an administration of aging retreads, cliché spouters, identity maniacs, cross-dressers, and vulgar Marxists, who, from Afghanistan
Martin Gurri.
This one's worth reading.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why Peanut the Squirrel Matters – HotAir
If you live on Twitter/X (or any of the social media platforms), you will likely have heard the story of Peanut the Squirrel.
Peanut has been a social media celebrity for seven years. An animal rescue nonprofit was built around him, saving hundreds of animals, from rodents to horses, from abuse, neglect, or simply bad luck. His story and his antics charmed millions of people, and helped people escape from the grittier and nastier realities of living in an unforgiving world.
via hotair.com
NY State wildlife authorities decided to raid the rescue where Peanut lived and then execute him, as they did his racoon friend. No search warrant, of course. The whole rescue is at risk now, no doubt for failing some regulatory requirement or other.
This story makes me sick.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
First, Second, Fourth Amendments Endangered by Kamala Harris | RealClearPolitics
Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats claim they are the party of freedom. In Harris’ interview on Club Shay Shay on Monday, she argued that people need to vote for her to preserve the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, that Trump “wants to terminate the Constitution.”
Yet, on the First Amendment, Harris previously called for government “oversight or regulation” of social media to stop what she calls misinformation. In 2022, her vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz, claimed: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.”
On gun ownership, Harris went so far as claiming: “I am in favor of the Second Amendment, I don’t believe that we should be taking anyone’s guns away.”
Reassuring, but Harris’ emphatic past support for gun control is consistent and legion. Let’s look at her record. She claimed during her 2020 presidential campaign, “I support a mandatory buyback program.” When pressed about Joe Biden’s claim at the time that she couldn’t ban assault weapons with an executive order, Harris enthusiastically responded, “Hey, Joe, rather than saying ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say ‘Yes, we can.’”
John Lott.
I remember when John Lott told me of the time he met one B. Obama when the latter was an instructor at Chicago. It was not a pleasant experience.
The Dems are not the party of freedom. I don't think they like freedom very much.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
How wokeness could cost the Democrats the election - spiked
Even more detested by most of the public are the ‘progressive’ activist class that has embraced Harris and shaped her past record. This group, as the author Musa al-Gharbi writes in his new book, We Have Never Been Woke, constitutes ‘a new elite’. Trained as ‘symbolic analysts’, these often flailing graduates and professionals now represent a revolutionary class pushing the Democrats towards the ideological loony bin. As long as Harris and the Democrats remain in thrall to the activists’ progressive ideology, they will be tarred with their widely unpopular views on everything from climate change to transgenderism, race quotas and immigration.
Joel Kotkin.
Yeah, really! But sadly, Kamala seems to actually be one of these "progressives," which is weird.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Dead-heat poll results are astonishing – and improbable, these experts say | US elections 2024 | The Guardian
This near-monolithic picture, emerging from multiple polls, has triggered suspicions among some analysts of “herding” around state poll averages by pollsters cautious of being proved wrong for the third time running after significantly underestimating Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020.
Writing on NBC’s website, Josh Clinton, a politics professor at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, the network’s director of elections, pondered whether the tied race reflected not the sentiments of the voters, but rather risk-averse decision-making by pollsters. Some, they suggested, may be wary of findings indicating unusually large leads for one candidate and introduce corrective weighting.
People forget that you're unlikely to pull out exactly one half black and one half white from a giant urn of balls.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Giant Supercomputer Built to Transform an Entire Country—and Paid For by Ozempic - WSJ
When she decided to uproot her life and move halfway across the world to run a company in a place where she had never lived, Nadia Carlsten wasn’t really sure what to expect.
But the American engineer with a passion for technology management definitely wasn’t expecting to be treated like a celebrity.
“I feel like the most popular person wherever I go,” Carlsten says. “I can just start the conversation with: I have over 1,500 GPUs—and everyone wants to talk to me.”
Carlsten has precisely 1,528 of the most powerful graphics-processing units on the planet because she just started as the chief executive of the Danish Centre for AI Innovation. The new company was built to run Denmark’s national AI supercomputer, which opened last week with a glitzy launch party where Carlsten was once again the center of attention.
She even found herself on a stage surrounded by royalty. To her left was Frederik X, the king of Denmark. To her right was Jensen Huang, the king of AI.
via www.wsj.com
I'm tellin' ya, AI's the bomb.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego band As I Lay Dying rocked by more controversy as four members abruptly quit – San Diego Union-Tribune
The future of San Diego’s Grammy Award-nominated Christian metalcore band As I Lay Dying is shrouded in mystery following the abrupt departures in the past two weeks of four of the five-man group’s members. Its tour manager has also quit.
The band’s sole remaining member is lead vocalist Tim Lambesis, who was released from prison in late 2016 after serving three years for attempting to solicit the murder of his first wife, Meggan. She subsequently divorced him and was given custody of their three adopted children from Ethiopia.
None of As I Lay Dying’s recently departed four former members have specifically disclosed what prompted their decisions to leave the band. But in individual statements on social media, they have cited a variety of factors for their departures without offering the exact reasons.
via www.sandiegouniontribune.com
Those darn Christian metalcore bands. Always getting up to something.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump will spend every day until the election in North Carolina, a swing state he won twice | AP News
GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump will rally supporters in North Carolina every day until Tuesday’s election, a flurry of late activity in the only swing state that he won in both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
Even as Trump looks to expand the electoral map and project strength with trips to New Mexico and Virginia, two Democratic states not widely viewed as competitive, he is putting considerable time into North Carolina, which last backed a Democrat for president in 2008.
via apnews.com
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump has reason in Pennsylvania to feel better than Harris - Washington Examiner
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole damn thing.”
Two weeks ago, former President Donald Trump announced these words to rallygoers in this Westmoreland County town at a packed event, which included several former Pittsburgh Steelers taking the stage to endorse him and steelworkers as well, who even got the former president to put on a hard hat that ruffled his hair.
via www.washingtonexaminer.com
Salena Zito.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Donald Trump Is Crack for Democrats - WSJ
Not that I think a single voter is influenced at this point by talk of Kremlin interference. The ho-hum reality on display simply reflects the pressure inside the bureaucracy, especially at the FBI and Justice Department, to be seen contributing to the anti-Trump effort.
And yet it all seems so pro forma now. Kamala Harris’s 100-day bubble of joy deflated on Day 87. She’s given up trying to win converts. She calls Mr. Trump a fascist. If that’s what she thought, why did she spend all those weeks talking about abortion?
Close elections are a bane to democracy, inviting every kind of recklessness to impart a last-minute tilt. But close elections are also the broadest possible signal that voters—those antic Americans with their differing views—are still in control.
Ms. Harris’s very existence as a candidate illustrates a second truth: Democrats don’t see Mr. Trump as Hitler. They see him as a godsend. They can’t get enough of him.
He’s such an easy mark, in 2016 they didn’t even bother with his real demerits but just fabricated evidence that he was a Russian agent.
Anything is possible with Mr. Trump as an opponent—a senile candidate, a nonentity candidate, open borders, mass forgiveness of college loans, taxpayer-funded sex-change operations.
via www.wsj.com
Holman Jenkins. Insightful as usual.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tech Giants See AI Bets Starting to Pay Off - WSJ
Some of the world’s biggest tech companies showed this week how the tens of billions of dollars they have bet on the artificial intelligence boom are starting to pay off. They also warned bigger investments are coming.
via www.wsj.com
It may be a plot by demons to turn us all into cyborgs. In the meantime however, it seems to be the place to put your money.
November 2, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, October 31, 2024
How Gender Ideology Captured the State Department | City Journal
The U.S. Department of State is charged with advancing American interests abroad through complex and delicate diplomatic missions, as well as maintaining the safety of those missions and the Americans serving them.
The institution’s lodestar should be the national interest, but under President Joe Biden, the State Department has demoted that critical objective in favor of a new global agenda: to spread radical gender theory to foreign nations.
It sounds absolutely nuts, but Christopher Rufo has the receipts.
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Abigail Shrier: The Kindergarten Intifada | The Free Press
Four years ago, I was among the first journalists to expose the widespread incursion of gender ideology into our schools. Once-fringe beliefs about gender swiftly took over large swaths of society partly thanks to their inclusion in school curricula and lessons.
Today, extensive interviews with parents, teachers, and non-profit organizations that monitor the radicalism and indoctrination in schools convinced me that demonization of Israel in American primary and secondary schools is no passing fad. Nor is it confined to elite private schools serving hyper-progressive families. As one Catholic parent who exposes radicalism in schools nationwide on the Substack Undercover Mother said to me: “They’ve moved on from BLM to gender unicorn to the new thing: anti-Israel activism. Anti-Israel activism is the new gender ideology in the schools.”
via www.thefp.com
Abigail Shirer.
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bubble-Wrapping Coates - Tablet Magazine
To enter into the intellectual world is to put yourself out there, to lay out your thoughts and ideas and allow others to respond. You don’t get to call other people names like “racist” or “white supremacist” and then cry when they push back. If Coates thinks that the Hamas terrorists who burned innocent women, men, and children alive on Oct. 7 and gleefully broadcast the footage of their atrocities to the world are the good guys, let him argue his case. If he believes himself to be an expert on one of the world’s most notorious trouble spots based on a 10-day visit with his progressive political handlers, then let him step forth and display the full extent of his expertise before the world.
Tevi Troy.
I fear those days are long gone.
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump and his lawyers take on the Syndicate - The Spectator World
Unlike in previous elections, however, Republicans are turning out in force for early voting. As I write, the tally in Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and elsewhere is very positive for the GOP. “The data is unbelievable,” said Republican operative Sean Spicer, “It’s almost too good to be true.” Political commentator Mark Halperin seconded Spicer’s observation, noting that, “If this continues, Donald Trump can’t lose, because the Democrats can’t possibly do well enough on Election Day.”
Well, that is why God — or perhaps it was his infernal counterpart — made lawyers: to make the weaker argument seem stronger, the stronger weaker and to transform a victory that seemed “too big to rig” into just another triumph for the deep state.
We really don’t know exactly how Trump’s victory will play out. I suspect that, to quote Halperin again, that it will mark both the psychological collapse of the Democratic Party and spark the “greatest mental-health crisis in the history of the country.” Remember the puppies, the playpens, the counseling sessions when Trump won in 2016? Remember the violent mobs, the females screaming at the sky, the efforts to convince electors not to vote for their chosen candidate? Multiply all that by a factor of ten.
via thespectator.com
I don't know if Roger Kimball is right or not. He certainly has a point though. We will at least know soon whether Trump does in fact win and if it is followed by the sort of psychological collapse of the Democratic Party he suggests.
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
How Trump Kept Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Gaffe From Getting Thrown Out | RealClearPolitics
As the White House tried to clean up President Biden’s mess, Donald Trump waited – you couldn’t say patiently.
“Just to clarify,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday before fielding another half dozen questions about the fiasco, Biden “was not calling Trump supporters garbage.” She pointed to his statement posted on social media, his longstanding reputation for empathy, his oft-stated desire to lower the temperature.
“He does not view Trump supporters, or anybody who supports Trump as ‘garbage,’” Jean-Pierre asserted on a day the White House preferred to talk about good economic news or really anything else. After an hour, she hoped that what Republicans gleefully were calling “Garbage-gate” was over.
Then Trump landed in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He wore an orange vest, walked to a white garbage truck, and climbed into the passenger’s seat. “How do you like my garbage truck?” he asked reporters. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Someday, they'll look back at this and laugh. But we can laugh now.
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
San Diego State U. investigates white students dressed up as Diddy and bottle of baby oil | The College Fix
San Diego State University is looking into a pair of white students who dressed up as Sean “Diddy” Combs and a bottle of baby oil for a Halloween party.
The biggest cause of concern, as you might expect in this day and age, was the “blackface” part of the male’s outfit. Never mind that Combs is awaiting trial for sex trafficking and racketeering, among other things.
According to the New York Post, social media commenters took the couple to task with remarks such as “Any excuse for blackface,” “Oh wow that’s not okay at all,” and “Not a single friend in sight to tell them ‘hey, this is a really bad idea.’”
One commenter noted the guy as Diddy was just “lazy” as he didn’t even bother to don the rap mogul’s all-white suit and “signature glasses.”
San Diego! In the news!
October 31, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
UK Government And Media Spread Disinformation About Southport Killer, Evidence Suggests
The riots in England this summer were motivated by far-right Islamophobia and driven by disinformation online, argued the UK media and government at the time. In July and August, social media posts claimed that a Muslim migrant was responsible for a mass stabbing in the seaside town of Southport. Those claims were false, according to officials and fact-checkers.
The riots began after a 17-year-old named Axel Rudakubana allegedly stabbed to death three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop. Rudakubana was born in the UK and raised Christian, the media reported. The rioters, said Prime Minister Keir Starmer, were “far-right thugs” seeking to exploit the tragedy and “target people because of the color of their skin.”
But it now appears that the UK government may have deliberately spread disinformation and used it to justify censorship and repression. Police yesterday issued new charges under the Terrorism Act against Rudakubana, now 18, for allegedly producing ricin, a biological toxin, and possessing an al-Qaeda training manual titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants.” Since police arrested Rudakubana at the scene of the stabbings, it’s likely they searched his home shortly after, and thus may have discovered the ricin and manual within hours of the attack.
via www.public.news
Alex Gutentag.
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Lost Mayan city found in Mexico jungle by accident
Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche.
They uncovered the hidden complex - which they have called Valeriana - using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.
They believe it is second in density only to Calakmul, thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America.
The team discovered three sites in total, in a survey area the size of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, “by accident” when one archaeologist browsed data on the internet.
“I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring,” explains Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US.
It was a Lidar survey, a remote sensing technique which fires thousands of laser pulses from a plane and maps objects below using the time the signal takes to return.
But when Mr Auld-Thomas processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed - a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
That is more than the number of people who live in the region today, the researchers say.
via www.bbc.com
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Aileen Cannon, Judge in Trump Assassination Case, Refuses to Recuse Herself - The New York Times
Mr. Routh’s lawyers first asked Judge Cannon to remove herself from the case two weeks ago. In their initial request, they argued that Mr. Trump had “repeatedly praised” her rulings in a separate case in which he stood accused of illegally holding onto classified documents after he left office.
In an unexpected decision in that matter, Judge Cannon threw out all the charges against Mr. Trump in July, ruling against decades of legal precedent that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, had been illegally appointed to his job.
But in her decision on Tuesday, Judge Cannon rebuffed the idea that she had been affected by Mr. Trump’s praise. She said she had in fact never met or spoken to the former president except “in connection with his required presence” in her courtroom for hearings in the classified documents case.
via www.nytimes.com
Too bad for Mr. Routh.
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
$400M project launched to tackle South Bay sewage crisis
The planned expansion, combined with wastewater infrastructure improvements in Mexico, aims to stop up to 90% of untreated wastewater from reaching San Diego's beaches. The project will be funded with $400 million in federal funding.
Urtason said the efforts are long overdue.
"Rather than enjoying my home that I raised my children in, having BBQs out in my yard, I can’t go out there. It’s just a shame, it’s pathetic. Everyone is just doing their little bit," she said.
Work at the plant is expected to start this year as the CDC continues investigating the public health impacts of sewage pollution.
via www.10news.com
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Supreme Court's conservative justices allow Virginia to resume its purge of voter registrations | AP News
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday allowed Virginia to resume its purge of voter registrations that the state says is aimed at stopping people who are not U.S. citizens from voting.
The high court, over the dissents of the three liberal justices, granted an emergency appeal from Virginia’s Republican administration led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The court provided no rationale for its action, which is typical in emergency appeals.
The justices acted on Virginia’s appeal after a federal judge found that the state illegally purged more than 1,600 voter registrations in the past two months. A federal appeals court had previously allowed the judge’s order to remain in effect.
via apnews.com
That darn Supreme Court. Always overruling inferior courts that ignore the law.
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Journalism Dies in Lockstep | City Journal
The problem with their stated reasons is not that those reasons are false but rather that Bezos and Soon-Shiong have massively underdiagnosed the problem. Endorsements are a trivial part of the media’s loss of credibility. The erosion of public trust derives from daily news coverage in which reporters uninhibitedly pass off their own political views as “fact,” editorializing with as much abandon as any editorial writer. It was under Bezos’s tenure that the Washington Post dedicated itself to its anti-Trump Democracy Dies in Darkness crusade. It was under Soon-Shiong that the Los Angeles Times ran one white-privilege mea culpa after another during the George Floyd race riots.
If Bezos and Soon-Shiong really want to pursue their belated commitment to traditional journalism, they should read their papers through the eyes of someone who holds diametrically opposed political views. Would that person find the papers’ reporting fair to what he believes are relevant facts? The answer, if the owners are honest, would have to be no. Bezos, Soon-Shiong, and any other magnate hoping to restore media credibility will have to beat back the growing narcissism of their own employees, who believe that they have been called to lead the public away from the path of Trumpian evil and toward the heaven of inclusive equity.
Heather MacDonald, who is right as usual.
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Mark of Kaine: The Biden Administration Under Fire for Virginia Lawsuit over Non-Citizen Voter Removals – JONATHAN TURLEY
Call it the Mark of Kaine. The heated dispute between the Biden Administration and the State of Virginia just took a curious turn after Virginia lawyers released support for the effort to remove alleged noncitizens from the voting rolls ahead of the presidential election. The main witness against the Biden Administration may prove to be Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) who is on the ballot this election.
Jonathan Turley.
October 30, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Shellenberger And Gutentag: “The Dam Is Collapsing”
But the picture of the media as a mirror of reality is no longer accurate and, in truth, never was. A better picture of the media is that it is a stream of propaganda coming from various political, ideological, and financial interests. The New York Times is an advertising platform that attracts readers through games, recipes, and news, but it’s also the unofficial publication of the Democratic Party and the U.S. deep state.
As for old-school investigative journalism, much of it has moved to X and Substack. Today, former CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge published a report on IRS whistleblowers who confirmed what we had long suspected but could not prove until now: that the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop in December 2019 and knew it "was real" immediately.
The consequence of the disruption of the media is so radical that old narratives are rapidly collapsing. Yesterday, the New York Times/Siena College revealed that the share of voters who think Trump “threatened American democracy” in 2020 is falling, while the share who think he was “just exercising his right to contest the election” is rising.
Trump and Harris are still in a close race, and pollsters say the election will be decided by which campaign can turn out voters in battleground states. Despite Harris’ setbacks, she may still have an advantage among likely voters nationally. “The dam,” as the two of us note in the podcast above, “is collapsing.”
via www.public.news
By golly, it's true.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
One Week Remains: Trump Slightly Ahead in Swing States
With one week left until Election Day, the polls are unlikely to shift significantly unless there is a last-minute surprise. While Donald Trump still holds consistent leads in polls, his win is not guaranteed, as his edge falls within the historical margin of error in most swing states.
The latest polls in the northern swing states from USA Today and InsiderAdvantage all found results within a tight margin of error. In Wisconsin, the USA Today poll, conducted Oct. 20-23 with 500 likely voters, found Trump led by 1 point. In the InsiderAdvantage polls, conducted from Oct. 26-27 with 800 likely voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, Trump also led by 1 point in both states. The margin of error for these polls were all 3-4 points, meaning the race is still too close to call.
Welp. Hang on to your butts.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Spinal Tap Election: Everything Is Turned Up to 11 | RealClearPolitics
These differences are playing out against a disorienting background condition, which is often ignored when we discuss politics and culture. The basic structure of modern economies is changing rapidly. The last such disorienting economic change was the Great Depression and, before that, the Second Industrial Revolution in the 1890s (the advent of big steel, oil, chemicals, and large corporations to manage them). Both the 1890s and 1930s produced long-lasting shifts in voters’ political alignments.
We are seeing another great realignment now, driven (on the economic side) by rapid innovation in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When those are combined with low-cost transportation, virtually free communication, and trade rules that encourage globalization, the result is social dislocation and disorientation. There is a palpable threat to employment in American manufacturing and, increasingly, in service industries.
Both political parties have responded by supporting trade protection, with Trump taking the lead. Doing so has helped him forge a populist Republican Party, centered on the working-class.
Amid these vast changes and bitter ideological differences, it is hardly surprising to see our political discourse becoming more virulent, depicting the opposition as “enemies,” as Trump has done for some elected representatives (and not just violent extremists).
The only way to contain those differences peacefully is to channel them through established democratic institutions, using well-established procedures. That’s the only hope the losing side will accept the results as legitimate.
To propose major changes to those institutions risks further undermining their already-wobbly legitimacy. To impose those changes for immediate political victories, to impose them with support from only one party, is worse than foolhardy. It’s dangerous. It would keep the amplifiers pinned on 11 while we scream at each other across the deafening noise.
Charles Lipson.
He makes good points, as usual.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Harris Stops Talking About Climate Change - WSJ
In an election characterized by bitter clashes, it’s notable that one typically divisive topic has gone almost unmentioned: climate change. President Trump doesn’t have much to say on the subject. But Vice President Harris’s silence is revealing—not only about American voters, but also the fundamental problem of climate policy today.
via www.wsj.com
Bjorn Lomborg
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Democrats’ Insanity Defense - Tablet Magazine
The result, for anyone skeptical of the Democratic Party yet bound to operate within the consensus reality of its discourse, is akin to living in a wilderness of mirrors. How to explain, for instance, that elected Democrats from the Biden White House on down support not only taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens, but policies that allow schools to “socially transition” children without informing their parents? How to explain, without sounding like a lunatic, that the newspapers and expert bodies that recommend life-altering surgeries for children, and defend them as “life-saving” or “medically necessary” care opposed only by cranks and Bible thumpers, either don’t know what they’re talking about or are lying to you for political reasons? That the claim that such surgeries were rarely if ever performed on children was also a lie? That when President Biden, the kindly old moderate, directed his Department of Health and Human Services to address the “barriers and exclusionary policies” keeping children from accessing “gender medicine,” what he was describing was a policy that would see members of his own administration pressuring medical agencies to allow procedures such as breast and penis removal be performed on young children, despite the lack of any proof that these measures contribute to greater mental or physical health?
The same GOP staffer, who is currently working on a competitive congressional race, told me that one problem his campaign regularly faces is that aspects of Democratic governance are simply too insane for voters to find credible, even when they are documented as official U.S. government policy. “When you outline the Democratic agenda, you have to water it down, because in both polling and focus groups, people just don’t believe it,” he said. “They are critical of things like boys in girls’ sports, but they tune out stuff about schools not informing parents about transitioning their children. They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.”
Park MacDougald.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Democrats Made a Trump Comeback Thinkable - WSJ
We are conflicted, however, because of this simple, enraging thought about the Democrats themselves: Are we really going to let them get away with exploiting that unease, using our doubts and manipulating our angst to validate retrospectively the damage they have wrought in the past four years and to approve proactively what they might do in the next four?
Their deceitfully vacuous campaign, its invitation to sign up to a blank slate on their plans for another term and a collective amnesia about their work in the current one, their empty pantsuit of a candidate, incessantly blurting inanities into the media void, incapable of articulating a single substantive idea for governing—what they amount to is nothing less than an abuse of the voters’ scruples, an exploitation of the yearning many have for a hint of normalcy. Don’t doubt that the Democrats fully intend to repurpose that passive desire into another sweeping mandate for their divisive and destructive ideology.
via www.wsj.com
Gerard Baker.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Tiresome Obamas - WSJ
Whatever happens on Nov. 5, one silver lining of the end of election season is that Americans will likely soon enjoy at least a brief respite from self-righteous, inaccurate and arrogant lectures from the Obama family. Recently former President Barack Obama jetted into Pennsylvania to insult voters who aren’t supporting Vice President Kamala Harris. On Saturday it was former First Lady Michelle Obama’s turn. In Kalamazoo, Mich., she exhibited the charming family habit of treating people who don’t share their politics as either ignorant or morally compromised.
via www.wsj.com
James Freeman.
So do we devoutly hope.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
How a Splintered Left Is Preparing for a Possible Trump Victory - WSJ
By now America is well versed in the predictions of the political right’s potential response should Donald Trump lose on Nov. 5: Anxiety boils about another stop-the-steal effort to contest the outcome.
Far less scrutinized: How might the left reckon with a Kamala Harris defeat? How would the Democrats handle a result that many have for months proclaimed is an existential threat to democracy itself?
As polls narrow, some Democratic stalwarts are trying to temper the sense of despair and the occasionally apocalyptic forecasts sweeping through their party. Jim Hannon, a psychotherapist and seasoned liberal organizer in Massachusetts, counseled calm in an open letter last week, noting Harris’s campaign strength, while urging a broader perspective.
“Trump could win. So, panic then? No,” he wrote. “A Trump presidency would be awful but not the end of history.”
Democrats have been here before. In 2016, their bewilderment at Trump’s victory gave way to a resistance that spawned the Women’s March that drew nearly half-a-million protesters to Washington, D.C., and millions more to related rallies nationwide.
via www.wsj.com
It will be the end of something though.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Donald Trump and the ‘Brilliant’ Dictators - WSJ
Mr. Trump: “We’re dealing, Joe, we’re dealing with the smartest people. They hate when I say, you know, when the press, when I called President Xi, they said, ‘He called President Xi brilliant,’” Mr. Trump said. “Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.”
Mr. Rogan: “Right. It doesn’t mean he’s not evil, or it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”
Mr. Trump: “Actually, we have evil people in our country. If you have a smart president, he can deal with Russia. He can deal with all of it.”
The reason freedom-loving people don’t like talk like this is because it flatters Mr. Xi for his success in terrorizing his people “with an iron fist.” Mr. Xi may be a smart guy, but you don’t have to be brilliant to rule when you can arrest or purge anyone at any time. All you have to be is ruthless and remorseless.
Mr. Rogan gave Mr. Trump an opening to speak such a truth, but the former President immediately pivoted to talking about his opponents in the U.S. This fits his pattern of describing his domestic opponents in nastier terms than he does rulers who imprison their people on a whim or start wars that kill tens of thousands of people.
via www.wsj.com
It's one the sources of the Hitler talk.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Bob Casey Plays the Trump Card - WSJ
A week from the election, we have bipartisan consensus on two points regarding Pennsylvania.
The first is that the presidential contest is way too close to call. The second is that only one contender has coattails. Both candidates for Senate—Republican challenger Dave McCormick and Democratic incumbent Bob Casey—agree on who that is: Donald Trump.
via www.wsj.com
William McGurn.
October 29, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, October 28, 2024
Neal's Yard's stolen cheese could be sold abroad, supplier says
Cheddar stolen from London cheese specialist Neal’s Yard Dairy may have been shipped abroad to be sold on, a supplier has told the BBC.
Truckles of Patrick Holden's Hafod Welsh Cheddar were among the £300,000 worth of produce stolen in a scam on 21 October.
Mr Holden said he believed the con was "sophisticated" and the cheese could have been taken to Russia or the Middle East.
The Met Police is investigating and Neal's Yard Dairy said it was working with "international authorities" to identify the scammers.
via www.bbc.com
October 28, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Middle East Drug Fueling War, Crime and All-Night Parties - WSJ
AMMAN, Jordan—Another urgent conflict in the Middle East is playing out on the border between Syria and Jordan: a war against captagon, an amphetamine-like drug that’s taken off across the region.
The drug cuts across social class and borders. It’s used by taxi drivers handling late-night shifts, militia fighters looking to induce courage, students studying for exams, and high-powered executives wanting to work, or party, long hours.
It’s all added up to a multibillion-dollar drug trade that is fueling more conflict in the region. Money from drug smuggling has lined the pockets of Iran-backed militias, including Hezbollah, which has spent vast amounts of its proceeds on weapons to fight Israel. The drug props up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has become one of the world’s biggest drug syndicates, helping it offset years of punishing Western economic sanctions.
Syria has denied any involvement in the drug trade.
via www.wsj.com
October 28, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Can You Handle Four More Years? - WSJ
Vice President Kamala Harris said in 2021: “If the goal is truly about equality, it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn’t start in the same place, some folks might need more—equitable distribution.” There it is, progressivism in a nutshell.
Actions speak loudly. Ms. Harris co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’s 2017 Medicare for All Act, co-sponsored the Green New Deal and was the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act to spend gobs on green gravy. I almost feel sorry for my center-left friends who’ve been mugged by a progressive agenda. My question: Can the economy handle four more years of progressive power?
via www.wsj.com
Andy Kessler.
October 28, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Supreme Court’s Future Is on the Ballot - WSJ
Ms. Harris: “The American people increasingly are losing confidence in the Supreme Court, in large part because of the behavior of certain members of that Court and because of certain rulings, including the Dobbs decision, and taking away a precedent that had been in place for 50 years, protecting a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. So I do believe that there should be some kind of reform of the Court, and we can study what that actually looks like.”
There you have it. Ms. Harris has already endorsed President Biden’s plan to impose “ethics” rules on the Justices that would invite political harassment and compromise judicial independence. Now she won’t disavow packing the Court. She has called for Democrats, if they keep the Senate in November, to bypass the 60-vote filibuster rule, letting them enact such bills without even a modicum of compromise.
via www.wsj.com
One party rule is on the ballot. Not so great if it's not your party.
October 28, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, October 27, 2024
How progressive politics turned Kamala Harris’s birthplace into a post-apocalyptic nightmare
Oakland, birthplace of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and the city where she launched her ill-fated presidential campaign in 2019, now resembles a post-apocalyptic nightmare, its streets piled high with trash, burned-out vehicles and homeless encampments.
Driving through its streets is a surreal and potentially dangerous experience. Many businesses have closed down and are boarded up. Those still operating are covered in graffiti, even on their windows, and many refuse to allow customers inside for fear of being robbed.
Critics of Ms Harris, who began her legal career as a prosecutor in Oakland, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, argue that the city is a stark example of the results of extreme Left-wing policies, some of which she embraced when she ran in the 2020 presidential race.
via news.yahoo.com
Toby Harnden.
October 27, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Harris has no intention of following the law - Washington Examiner
Facing the left-wing voters of a Democratic primary, Vice President Kamala Harris staked out radical positions on a slew of issues far outside mainstream opinion during her failed 2019 presidential run. Now facing a much more centrist general election electorate, Harris is desperate to distance herself from her extremist past, and one of her favorite dodges is her claim that she will “follow the law” if elected president.
Problem is, presidents have far-reaching powers to make the law through both regulatory and prosecutorial decision-making, especially on the issues on which Harris is most desperate to dodge accountability.
Take Harris’s Fox News interview in which Bret Baier asked, “When it comes to immigration, you supported allowing immigrants in the country illegally to apply for driver’s license, to qualify for free tuition at universities, to be enrolled in free healthcare. Do you still support those things?”
To which Harris responded, “Listen, that was five years ago, and I’m very clear that I will follow the law.”
Except, the Biden-Harris administration has not only not been following our nation’s immigration laws. It has been actively subverting them.
via www.washingtonexaminer.com
Yup.
October 27, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why America's future could hinge on Elon Musk
In recent months, a number of progressive commentators have suggested that Musk’s support for Donald Trump is part of a campaign to become a “Shadow President”. Many people I talk to in the tech industry also believe this — but they think of it as a good thing. Many of them, even the conservatives, despise Donald Trump as a human being, but they hope that with Trump aging and fading, Musk and J.D. Vance will be running the show in a competent technocratic manner. Put a superhero in charge, the thinking goes, and you get super-results — just as happened with SpaceX and Tesla.
But superpowers are inherently dangerous. For one thing, when you have all that power concentrated in the hands of one man, you incur a ton of idiosyncratic risk — if the superhero makes a bad decision, the whole populace is screwed. Also, power corrupts — humans are fallible beings, and the temptation to use one’s superpowers to settle scores, torment one’s critics, or simply rule the world is very large.
Most of superhero comics are about this. “Superheroes” are the super-people who subordinate their own wishes and desires to the good of broader society — Superman could become Earth’s absolute ruler, but instead he chooses to live a humble life and fight for “truth, justice, and the American way”. “Supervillains”, meanwhile, are the people who let their own desires override the public’s. Some are motivated by pure will to power (Dr. Doom, Green Goblin) or whimsical nihilism (The Joker), while others have a strong sense of their moral self-righteousness (Magneto, Adrian Veidt).3
Noah Smith.
Elon Musk might be a superhero who is our undoing. Uh, yeah, I suppose he might. It's important we keep up on that whole limited government thing. And probably not sign up to get our brains drilled a la Neuralink.
October 27, 2024 | Permalink | Comments (0)