I have been something of a lonely voice defending Trump on his viral "They are eating the dogs and cats" charge during the debate.
Political commentators naturally have gone nuts about the claim, both because it seems implausible on its face and because it is, legitimately unconfirmed. They are rumors, not established facts.
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Harris and the Democrats have made fun of him, the mainstream media have blasted him, and even Republicans are secretly and not-so-secretly cringing about the insanity of Trump going there.
I think they are dead wrong and still believe that Trump can capitalize on the issue.
Weeelll, I do confess I put together a Reggae tune about eating kittens on Sona but it didn't meet our high standards here at the RC. But I would like to point out -- why are all the memes about cats and not dogs? Are puppies considered less worthy than kittens?
Trump pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis say that, according to their data from the top seven battleground states, the answer is no. “We found that despite the best efforts of Kamala Harris and [the] media to portray the debate as some kind of overwhelming win for her, voters did not see it this way as support for her remained flat,” they wrote in a memo released on Thursday. “The only change we saw was a 2-point bump for President Trump in both ballot configurations.”
“In our post-debate data, President Trump leads Vice President Harris by 2-points, 48% – 46%, and in the head-to-head ballot, he is up 3-points, 50% – 47%,” Fabrizio and Tunis continued. “Clearly, target state voters were not impressed by Kamala Harris’ empty platitudes and while the media would have people believe she is cruising to victory, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.” Their predebate numbers, they said, showed the two candidates tied.
You would perhaps expect this take from the Trump campaign. More independent numbers are needed, as well as more time for the voters to digest the debate. But focus groups of undecided voters convened by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Reutersfound them unmoved, even if they agreed that Harris succeeded in rattling Trump.
China is on the edge of recession — excluding Covid, for the first time since 2008 — as new data showed all-important manufacturing contracted for the fourth month in a row with particular weakness in new orders.
In other words, what they’ve got is backlog, then it's a cliff.
Manufacturing makes up a third of China’s economy — much more than the US. While the collapse in China property — another third of China’s economy — is adding fuel to the fire.
(LifeSiteNews) — A left-wing Swiss politician is facing heavy backlash for shooting a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding the Baby Jesus.
Sanija Ameti from the Green-Liberal Party (GLP) posted pictures on Instagram of herself firing an air gun at a target depicting Our Lady holding Jesus Christ as a Child. She added the word “unwind” to her post, implying that shooting the image helped her to relax.
After facing outrage over her blasphemous actions, Ameti posted an apology and deleted the video, stating: “As a template for the 10-meter shooting range, I needed motifs that were visible enough. I only had the Koller catalog to hand, which was big enough. I didn’t pay attention to the content of the pictures. That wasn’t right. I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart if I offended anyone!”
However, Ameti specifically shot the faces of Our Lady and Jesus, who are clearly depicted as a mother and baby, several times.
Not even the president of her GLP party, Jürg Grossen, seemed to believe that Ameti was unaware of what she was doing. “This behavior by Sanjia Ameti is unacceptable. It was a deliberate provocation,” he said.
At the start of Wednesday’s presidential debate, David Muir of ABC News pitched Kamala Harris a softball and Harris ducked it. Here’s the question in its entirety:
I want to begin tonight with the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue, and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris, you and President [Biden] were elected four years ago, and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?
The correct reply was a resounding Yes! But Harris changed the subject to two economic policies meant to distinguish her program from that of President Joe Biden. In so doing, she lost an opportunity to inform viewers about the Biden administration’s excellent record on economic policy (which to a great extent is also her own) and inadvertently lent credence to Donald Trump’s subsequent outrageous lies about Biden’s “terrible economy.” At one point Trump said: “They’ve destroyed the economy, and all you have to do is look at a poll.” That was half right: Polls continue to fault Biden’s handling of the economy. Public sentiment has, for some time, failed to align with nonsubjective data that tells the opposite story. That’s why Harris didn’t dare tell Muir: “Of course Americans are better off than they were four years ago.” But that’s the truthful answer, even as voters refuse, exasperatingly, to believe it.
An example of the higher gaslighting. Do not consider that your pound of Starbucks now costs you $13 not $9. That housing prices have increased however many 100's of $K than the last time you looked. That lunch for you plus one costs you closer to $30 (I'm cheap) than $20. And try looking for a job right now. The CPI numbers should come with a warning label. The degree to which the official numbers are just cooked these days -- and I say this as a former semi-hemi-demi-professional economist--are frankly shocking. But whatever! Kamala probably did us a favor by skating on the economy question. We would have just heard more lies and who knows, perhaps cleverer ones. Trump has a different set of lies, but one I'm convinced will do less harm than Kamala's, which have been tried too often before (e.g., price controls). And then there's the whole regulatory super-snafu. I'm surprised Elon is surprised it takes longer to permit a rocket launch than it does to build the rocket.
Svennevig assembled an earth-science detective squad of 68 experts who, with seismic recordings, satellite images, field measurements, drone video and computer simulations, reconstructed what happened. The evidence revealed that 33 million cubic yards of rock and ice—the volume of 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools—had plunged into the Dickson Fjord in eastern Greenland, triggering a tsunami.
The massive wave crested at 650 feet above the water’s surface, throwing debris onto a nearby rock face. It settled down to 25 feet, but over the next nine days, it sloshed from one side of the fjord to the other, striking the sides with enough force to move the walls, creating the seismic signal that propagated around the planet, Svennevig said.
The landslide was caused by a melting glacier below the mountaintop, according to the study, and Svennevig said scientists are reconsidering the kinds of natural disasters that are now possible in a warming Arctic environment.
I didn't know the Earth had vibrated. But I bet the cause was global warming (sic). Let's see. Wait for it. Ah, yes, here it is. I guess it's too late to junk my Suburban, having already done so. I now drive an Outback, which I would rate as just ok. Perhaps some of you have recommendations for that perfect highway plus off-road capable small SUV? That doesn't contribute to shaking the Earth of course. Can't have that.
Kamala Harris declared in Tuesday’s debate that a vote for her is a vote “to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy ’cause you don’t like the outcome.” She was alluding to the 2021 Capitol riot, but she and her party are also attacking the foundations of our democracy: the Supreme Court and the freedom of speech.
Several candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, including Ms. Harris, said they were open to the idea of packing the court by expanding the number of seats. Mr. Biden opposed the idea, but a week after he exited the 2024 presidential race, he announced a “bold plan” to “reform” the high court. It would pack the court via term limits and also impose a “binding code of conduct,” aimed at conservative justices.
Ms. Harris quickly endorsed the proposal in a statement, citing a “clear crisis of confidence” in the court owing to “decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.” She might as well have added “because you don’t like the outcome.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) has already introduced ethics and term-limits legislation and said Ms. Harris’s campaign has told him “that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about.”
The attacks on the court are part of a growing counterconstitutional movement that began in higher education and seems recently to have reached a critical mass in the media and politics. The past few months have seen an explosion of books and articles laying out a new vision of “democracy” unconstrained by constitutional limits on majority power.
Not to be a pessimist and this de-Constitutionalization should be resisted to the utmost, but it seems the momentum is on their side. Too bad most of those promoting it won't live to see the disasters their fine reforms bring in tow. But: don't give up. Fight to the end. Someday someone will tell our story.
SAN DIEGO—Victor Ochoa was 7 years old when a stranger in a wide-brimmed hat came to his house and told his parents they had three days to leave the U.S.
The man, brandishing a pistol beneath his trench coat, warned that federal immigration authorities would be back to make sure the family was gone. That night, Ochoa said, his mother’s wails echoed through the house while his parents made plans to leave East Los Angeles and return to Mexico.
Nearly 70 years later, Ochoa, who was born in the U.S., vividly recalled the details of that day in 1955 and the tough times that followed. His parents had arrived illegally in the U.S. a decade earlier and worked in factories, drove trucks and cleaned houses. They raised Ochoa and his sister to speak only English.
Days after the stranger’s visit, the family fled to the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. Over the next seven years, Ochoa struggled with a new country and new language. He was bullied and called “gringo,” he said. Local children made fun of his broken Spanish, and the tap water made him sick for months. At 14, he returned to live in the U.S., later settling in San Diego.
San Diego! In the news! Although, it's mostly bad news. Also, allow me to point out, you would be hard pressed, very hard pressed, to find any Mexican-American who went through our ridiculous legal immigration process, who supports our current policy of "just sneak in and let us worry about the rest," policy.
POKROVSK, Ukraine—Even as tanks help Ukraine push into Russia, armies are rethinking how the powerful vehicles are made and deployed after a recent history of being humbled in combat.
Tanks were once the king of the battlefield. But the proliferation of drones in Ukraine means the large, noisy vehicles can be spotted and targeted within minutes. That has seen dozens of cutting-edge Western tanks used only sparingly in the battle they were meant to shape, while others have been damaged, destroyed or captured.
In response, armies are adding technology to tanks to spot and protect against drones while also exploring design changes to make the heavy, armored vehicles more maneuverable. Battlefield tactics are already changing and lessons from Ukraine are being integrated into training.
“In the near term, we absolutely need to urgently make some adjustments to maintain the survivability of our armored formations,” said Gen. James Rainey, who heads the U.S. Army Futures Command, which looks at ways to equip and transform the Army.
The nature of land warfare is changing before our eyes. The best people are obviously on the Ukrainian side and they have the best possible incentives to innovate. Drones and surely more AI-equipped drones are quickly rendering tanks and aircraft carriers obsolete. The future is going to be strange.
POKROVSK, Ukraine—Even as tanks help Ukraine push into Russia, armies are rethinking how the powerful vehicles are made and deployed after a recent history of being humbled in combat.
Tanks were once the king of the battlefield. But the proliferation of drones in Ukraine means the large, noisy vehicles can be spotted and targeted within minutes. That has seen dozens of cutting-edge Western tanks used only sparingly in the battle they were meant to shape, while others have been damaged, destroyed or captured.
In response, armies are adding technology to tanks to spot and protect against drones while also exploring design changes to make the heavy, armored vehicles more maneuverable. Battlefield tactics are already changing and lessons from Ukraine are being integrated into training.
“In the near term, we absolutely need to urgently make some adjustments to maintain the survivability of our armored formations,” said Gen. James Rainey, who heads the U.S. Army Futures Command, which looks at ways to equip and transform the Army.
The nature of land warfare is changing before our eyes. The best people are obviously on the Ukrainian side and they have the best possible incentives to innovate. Drones and surely more AI-equipped drones are quickly rendering tanks and aircraft carriers obsolete. The future is going to be strange.
As a public service, and to illustrate the breadth of the law-breaking, we’re providing a summary of the legal defeats across five of the most lawless agencies. Clip and save in case Donald Trump or Kamala Harris retain anyone running these agencies.
An idea -- I'm just spitballing here -- how about teaching the little law kiddos about this thing formerly known as The Law. You've probably heard of it. It's this thing where if you don't follow it, you get in trouble. Using it to bring down your enemies -- that's practically unthinkable. You're not allowed to twist it every which way to get what you want. Which is probably what was drummed into your innocent little head by your teachers anyway, but that's another story.
Reuters interviewed 10 swing voters after the event and gave the story an intriguing headline: “Some undecided voters not convinced by Harris after debate with Trump.” That’s one way to put it. “Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him,” the piece explains. One remained undecided. Three backed Ms. Harris.
A New York Times interview of eight undecided voters after the debate found two leaning toward Mr. Trump, one toward Ms. Harris, the rest extremely confused. CNN, BBC and Wall Street Journal interviews with uncommitted voters produced similar mixed results.
These voters’ responses highlight Ms. Harris’s problems. She has succeeded in dodging questions about her past and her agenda and she did so again Tuesday night. The press raved over her deftness. But whoops. Five of the Reuters interviewees faulted her for failing to explain how she’d help improve the economy—their top issue. “There was no real meat and bones for her plan,” said a 61-year-old entrepreneur from Florida, who is now leaning toward Mr. Trump. A Nevada resident said he also moved toward Mr. Trump after hearing Ms. Harris tell him “not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate.” At least Mr. Biden in his basement spoke to the issue that in 2020 was voters’ top concern: Covid. Ms. Harris is AWOL on the economy.
Mr. Trump was equally short on agenda details, but unlike Ms. Harris, he doesn’t necessarily have to provide a plan. People lived life under his leadership and can compare it with the Biden-Harris economy. A 34-year-old black woman in Milwaukee explained to the Times why the debate nudged her toward the Republican: “When Trump was in office—not going to lie—I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years.”
The debate cleared up one thing -- How did Kamala get to be VP in the first place, if she's so bad. Turns out she's not that bad. She can pitch a pretty good speechlet to a sympathetic audience. She has the cliches and tired tropes down pretty well. It's hard to believe anyone was persuaded by anything either candidate had to say, but Kamala came out as not a complete idiot. She should at least get credit for being a deeper sort of idiot. Much credit to her coaches, I suppose. Trump OTOH must be completely uncoachable.
BEIJING (LifeSiteNews) — As official Congressional reports document China’s continued persecution of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis’ suggestion that Chinese Catholics “will suffer” due to his Sino-Vatican deal appears to remain true.
With the Vatican’s secretive deal with China likely to be renewed in the coming weeks, Chinese Catholics have already spent six years living under the terms of the agreement.
From the earliest days, faithful Catholics in China – namely those resisting to join the schismatic Communist-state approved church – have faced increased persecution due to the Vatican’s deal.
U.S. law-enforcement officials had watched with alarm the spread of a Venezuelan gang known for dismembering rivals from Chile to Colombia. But the gang, known as the Tren de Aragua, seemed contained in Latin America.
Then late last year, Anthony Salisbury, a top Homeland Security official, got a call. “Hey, have you heard of the Tren de Aragua?” a Texas official asked.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve seen them,” Salisbury responded.
In fact, the colleague said, Tren de Aragua members were operating in Texas. Now, Salisbury said, there are also dozens of criminal cases involving the gang in Miami, where he is based.
“They expanded fast in Latin America,” he said, “and they’re expanding fast here.”
Russia is piling pressure on Ukraine’s stretched front line in the east, setting up fierce battles for two cities that could bring it closer to achieving its current main military aim.
Moscow’s forces are targeting the Ukrainian logistics center of Pokrovsk and trying to seize the high ground in Chasiv Yar. Capturing those two cities would put Russia in position to try to take the rest of the eastern Donetsk region, which President Vladimir Putin has declared part of Russia.
Russia has been steadily advancing toward Pokrovsk, with its troops just a few miles outside the city. Pokrovsk is a larger city than Avdiivka—the most recent major Ukrainian city to fall—and Ukraine is fighting for it despite being outgunned and outnumbered.
Who came out on top, when Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump shared the stage for 90 minutes in Philadelphia? Members of the Journal’s editorial board react on the issues, the candidates’ presentations, standout moments and more.
SEOUL—After pushing a stroller to a park near her home in a Seoul suburb, Kang Seung-min plopped down on a bench. Then an elderly woman approached, looking for a friendly chat with Kang about motherhood.
“I’m not even married yet,” Kang, 24, responded.
The startled woman stared into the stroller and took in the little passenger: a brown poodle named Coco. She left, imploring Kang to start a family. “I don’t want to get married,” Kang says. “I’d rather spend money on my dog.”
A global discourse has emerged, including in the U.S., about childlessness and the reluctance to bear offspring. But the hand-wringing might be at its fiercest in South Korea, home to the wealthy world’s lowest birthrate, as well as another distinction that has fur flying: the skyrocketing sales of dog strollers, which last year outpaced those of baby strollers for the first time, according to Gmarket, one of South Korea’s largest online retailers. The trend held true for the first six months of this year, too.
I had a number of Korean women students in my AI seminar in the last few years. Their anxiety about finding someone to marry and have kids with was palpable. (And in one case, the joy of the woman who had had her first child was even more palpable.) Why Korean or other men aren't stepping up, I have no idea. One of them in a different discussion about what to invest in remarked presciently, "pets." If you could have a law that said you could buy a second dog only if you had a child, that might work.
Our rivals and opponents abroad cannot decide which is better for their own anti-American agendas—a derelict and absent Biden-Harris or dealing with a cognitively challenged Biden and a linguistically loopy Harris?
So, again, who or what now governs America?
Is it Biden again at the beach or closing up shop at noon for his nap and early bedtime?
Or is it Vice President Harris, far from the White House, out campaigning and confused over who she really is or wants to be, what, if anything, she plans on doing if elected president, and how to avoid any unscripted moment?
Or are our real rulers the stealth cabal of Democratic grandees and billionaire donors who arranged the Biden presidency by forcing out his 2020 primary rivals, staged the conspiratorial silence about his real disabilities for well over three years, ambushed him, and forced him off the Democratic ticket, and are now frantically reinventing Kamala Harris as capable and centrist when just a few months ago they had written her off as incompetent and a hopeless wannabe California radical?
As a result, a confused but also encouraged world of enemies watches the listless United States and wonders whether to try something stupid.
I hope there is enough of a political science discipline left to shed some light on just what the heck is happening in our current election cycle. My hopes are not great. It looks like more than just another realignment to me.
Former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin on Saturday: "I will bring back free speech in America because it's been taken away. They've taken away your free speech and the fake news is a threat to this country. They are just horrible people. Not everyone, I mean I know most of them up there. Most of them are good... Some are good but some are just absolutely terrible human beings. They know what's going on."
"You don't know the details. When we know the facts then the story gets written the exact opposite of what it is, you start to lose faith in the press, I will tell you. But I will sign an executive order banning any federal employee from colluding to limit speech, and we will fire every federal bureaucrat who is engaged in domestic censorship under the Harris regime. We will do that," Trump said.
Which is more likely to influence a U.S. election? A dribble of Russian propaganda in an ocean of online electioneering, or a federal law-enforcement campaign against one of the candidates?
You decide. Bear that choice in mind when analyzing the Justice Department’s decision this week to jump again into the election fray with another round of warnings over “Russian disinformation”—even as the first mail-in ballots go out.
The most striking part of the Wednesday press conference in which the department unveiled indictments against covert Russian actors was its lack of self-awareness. As if this weren’t the same government agency that fed us the Trump-Russia collusion lies of 2016 (and 2017 and 2018 and 2019), an ally of an intelligence community that four years ago falsely branded reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop “disinformation.” Whatever the merits of this week’s actions against Russians—they look legit—the Justice Department’s failure to acknowledge it has an enormous credibility problem is almost comical.
Soaring costs of in-home care, medical advances that extend lives but require ongoing help, and the growing ranks of older baby boomers are creating new pressures. Spouses, adult children and siblings are putting their lives on hold to care for relatives, wrestling with sleep deprivation and constant worry. Families are draining savings to hire help, pay for medical care, and modify homes.
More than 11,000 people in the U.S. are turning 65 every day and the vast majority—77% of Americans age 50 and older according to an AARP survey—want to live as long as possible in their current home. At some point, many will need help. About one-fourth of those 65 and older will eventually require significant support and services for more than three years, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Even when loved ones need round-the-clock care for many years, families provide about half the care hours, says Anqi Chen, senior research economist at the center. “It’s a very large burden on them,” she says.
Yale and Princeton have published the racial breakdown of their entering classes. They show that both institutions have violated the ban on racial discrimination in college admissions that the Supreme Court affirmed last year.
Readers of a certain age will remember the South’s “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s anti-school discrimination decisions, starting with Brown v. Board. I believe that what Yale and Princeton have now done is the harbinger of massive resistance to the Court’s anti-school discrimination decisions of last year.
The Ukrainian army has launched a stunning offensive into Kursk, Russia, under a shield of advanced electronic weapons. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating that 21st-century conflicts will be won or lost in the arena of electronic warfare.
Think of electronic warfare as casting spells on an invisible battlefield. Combatants strive to preserve their own signals, while disrupting those of the enemy. In Kursk, the Ukrainians took advantage of their technical knowledge to achieve a leap in battlefield tactics. Using a variety of electronic sensing systems, they managed to figure out the key Russian radio frequencies along the invasion route. They jammed these frequencies, creating a series of electronic bubbles that kept enemy drones away from Ukrainian forces, allowing reconnaissance units, tanks and mechanized infantry to breach the Russian border mostly undetected. This is the chaotic way of modern combat: a choreography of lightweight, unmanned systems driven by a spiderweb of electronic signals.
During visits to Ukraine over the past year, we observed the convergence of unmanned systems and electronic warfare, increasingly conducted by front-line troops. An island in the Dnipro River delta south of Mykolaiv is held by a contingent of Ukrainian special forces. These units would normally be supported by heavy artillery, attack aviation, and air-defense missiles, and resupplied by traditional maritime assets. Today, short on conventional resources but buoyed by Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs, they are pioneering the development and use of quadcopters and drone boats for resupply, reconnaissance, evacuation and amphibious assaults.
NEW YORK—Donald Trump plans to outline a suite of economic proposals in a speech here Thursday, including introducing a government efficiency commission recommended by Elon Musk, taking an even more aggressive swipe at regulations than during his first White House term and pledging to rescind certain unspent funds appropriated during the Biden administration.
The commission would conduct “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reform,” the Republican former president plans to say in an appearance before the Economic Club of New York. The goal would be to identify ways to eliminate fraud and improper payments, according to portions of the speech viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
LONDON — Michel Barnier was once the bane of Britain’s hardcore Eurosceptics — and they're not exactly thrilled about his return to frontline politics.
The EU’s former Brexit negotiator was on Thursday nominated by Emmanuel Macron as French prime minister in an attempt to break months of political deadlock in the country.
The shock pick has already raised concerns among some high-profile Brexiteers about the effect it will have on the U.K.'s relations with both France and the EU.
EL CAJON, Calif. (KGTV) - An East County family is grieving the loss of a beloved grandfather, struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from church.
Feet from a small memorial at the crash site, a brother-in-law, nephew and son stood together in grief.
"I've lost my best friend. Half of my heart is broken,” said Wisam Youhanna.
On Sunday morning, Youhana's father, 81-year-old Augustine Youhanna Sana, was doing what he's done every day since his wife passed away in January: Attending services at St. Peter's Chaldean Cathedral in El Cajon.
After leaving church, he walked a few blocks. At the intersection of Jamacha Road and Brabham Street, just blocks from home, Issac Askandar, who was stopped at a red light, says Sana got a walk signal and walked a few feet into the crosswalk.
“I saw a gold car coming down the mountain at a high rate of speed. It took the right turn very quickly and hit the gentleman,” said Askandar.
A 2019 interview featuring Kamala Harris has recently gone viral on X. In it, she made the bold assertion that then-President Donald Trump “has lost his privileges and [his Twitter account] should be taken down”. Harris first voiced this stance during a CNN conversation with Jake Tapper, and reiterated it in a subsequent appeal.
With Harris now running for president in the upcoming November election, questions naturally arise about how her administration might handle free speech, especially concerning platforms such as X, now owned by Elon Musk. If elected, Harris could spearhead initiatives which severely impact Musk’s platform, possibly even leading to a ban or other significant legal actions.
Harris's views on free speech are clear enough -- it works for me but not for thee! An appreciation of the importance of the First Amendment is reason enough to vote for Trump. Apparently there's good Catholic theology on choosing the lesser of two evils in an election.
If Harris’s lead in the Blue Wall states lasts until Election Day, she will garner 270 electoral votes, even if she loses all the other swing states.
Over the past six weeks, just about everything has gone right for the Harris campaign. But because things can change, and often do, in the closing weeks of presidential campaigns, it would be hasty to conclude that Harris is now the clear favorite to win the election in November.
If her momentum continues, Harris will probably win. But it may not. If she stumbles in the September 10 debate, the momentum of the race may change. Trump’s campaign could regain its balance and sharpen its focus. And unforeseen events could shift the dynamic between the candidates.
We should also be cautious about concluding that Harris now enjoys a clear lead over Trump. In recent elections, not just individual polls but also poll averages have turned out to be misleading. Not only have there been large gaps between September surveys and actual results; the same has been true for polls conducted just days before the election. These gaps have not been random; most of them underestimated the share of the vote that Donald Trump eventually received, often by wide margins.
Tucker Carlson is just asking questions. Questions like: what if Andrew Tate’s camgirl harem is actually the height of masculinity? And: isn’t the Russian grocery equivalent of Aldi absolutely incredible, just as the Moscow train station is perhaps the most beautiful thing mankind has created? And this week: why don’t we fully appreciate the total bind Adolf Hitler was in when he had just so many prisoners of war thanks to German success on the battlefield?
The decisions Carlson has made in the past several months have struck his former friends and ideological allies as veering in the space between the eccentric and the outrageous. But his most recent foray into the undiscovered country of whackadoo revisionism has broken off even some of his last cadre of conservative defenders, who maintained despite all the signals that this man, once the most influential media figure on the right, was still a good, brave, stable Christian conservative with the best interests of America at heart.
I had the chance to appear on Tucker's show just a few years ago when we had what you may recall as the cockswaddle kerfuffle. I agreed with many of Tucker's views but not others. But my lawyer was against the idea. Not insistent, but definitely against it. So I decided in the end not to do it, even though it would surely have helped put this struggling blog (but one that refuses to just die!) on the map. Now Tucker seems to have completely slipped his reins and flown off into cloud cuckoo land. In all fairness, Tucker should have sorted out his feelings about WW2 in his twenties and not be discovering them just now. If he ended up on Hitler's side, well, ok, but then he has to realize he's one of the baddies. It's just embarrassing to go all through this now.
In other news, Tucker is convinced that UFOs are demons, and he might have a point. At least with respect to some of them anyway.
We’ll admit that the competition for the dumbest economic policy is fierce these days—with prices controls on food, a 10% across-the-board tariff, and national rent control on the table. But opposition to the Nippon deal deserves careful consideration for this distinct dishonor given the deal’s manifest benefits and nonexistent harm.
Ms. Harris is apparently undaunted by economic illiteracy, telling a Monday rally in Pittsburgh that “U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated.”
A politician with the U.S. national interest in mind would celebrate the Nippon Steel deal, which would boost U.S. manufacturing. The Japanese firm has promised to spend $2.7 billion refurbishing the Pittsburgh steel maker’s aging plants. It has also agreed to honor U.S. Steel’s collective-bargaining agreements with the United Steelworkers.
The union has nonetheless lobbied the Administration to block the deal because it prefers a takeover by Cleveland-Cliffs, a union shop like U.S. Steel. The union wants to create a domestic cartel shielded from competition by the Trump-Biden 25% steel tariffs.
Yeah, those big tariffs are a reason not to like Trump or Vance. Of course, Biden Harris like them too because tariffs protect unions. In fact, they're a win for everyone except the investors. Oh, and the consumers of course.
A large, predatory shark swimming near Bermuda was gobbled up by an even bigger shark — even swallowing the tracking device that was attached to it — in what scientists say is the first recorded case of its kind.
Porbeagle sharks (Lamna nasus) can grow to about 12 feet (3.6 meters) long. These large sharks patrol the Northern Atlantic Ocean as well as parts of the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere, ranging into the Antarctic. Their muscular, streamlined forms and angled, spear-like teeth make them formidable predators. But the porbeagle, it seems, is not immune to predation itself.
A former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday on federal charges of acting as a secret agent of the Chinese government, authorities said.
Linda Sun, 41, is accused of using her high-ranking positions in state government to serve the interests of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for millions of dollars. Her husband, Chris Hu, 40, was also arrested in the alleged scheme.
Sun was charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering. Hu was charged with money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.
Both pleaded not guilty Tuesday afternoon. Sun was set to be released on a $1.5 million bond, her husband on a $500,000 bond.
Many young men seem to admire Trump’s king-of-the-jungle vibe: he roars, he bellows, he boasts that no one can ever beat him (unless they cheat). But when you cut through Trump’s tough talk and look at the record, it becomes clear that Trump did very little for young men in his four years as president.
Whoops, I should note that if you’re a young man making more than $1m a year, Trump did do a lot for you, thanks to his colossal tax cuts for the richest 1%. But for the more than 99% of young men who don’t make $1m a year, sorry, Trump didn’t do diddly for you, other than cut your taxes a wee bit, a tiny fraction of the tax cuts that he gave to the richest Americans.
I recognize that many young men feel uncomfortable about the Democratic party, partly because some Democrats unfortunately treat men as a problem – and sometimes as the problem. If the Democrats were smart, they’d see thatyoung men – like every other group in society – have problems that they need help with, problems like affording a home, finding a good-paying job, obtaining health insurance, affording college and having enough money to raise a family.
Last week’s headline reporting that a Venezuelan gang had taken over and terrorized an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, stunned observers and pierced through the “boiling frog” syndrome that often prevents U.S. media from accurately conveying the severity of the border crisis. The gang, Tren de Aragua, forcibly seized Aurora’s Aspen Grove Apartments from its landlords and began patrolling the migrant-packed complex with high-powered weaponry, including AR-15s and AK-47s. The brazen nature of the takeover, common in Latin America but unprecedented in the United States, alarmed local citizens. One Aurora resident’s comments to Fox News encapsulate the situation: “This is organized. They patrol the property with guns visibly, like they're not trying to hide them. There's no repercussion. These are ghosts.”
The U.S. is experiencing its largest immigration wave in generations, driven by millions of people from around the world seeking personal safety and economic opportunity. Immigrants are swelling the population and changing the makeup of the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate through the economy for decades.
Since the end of 2020, more than nine million people have migrated to the U.S., after subtracting those who have left, coming both legally and illegally, according to estimates and projections from the Congressional Budget Office. That’s nearly as many as the number that came in the previous decade. Immigration has lifted U.S. population growth to almost 1.2% a year, the highest since the early 1990s. Without it, the U.S. population would be growing 0.2% a year because of declining birthrates and would begin shrinking around 2040, the CBO projects.
Rates of violence in Viking Age Norway and Denmark were long believed to be comparable. A team of researchers including University of South Florida sociologist David Jacobson challenges that assumption.
Their findings show that interpersonal violence—violence not meted out as punishment by authorities—was much more common in Norway. This is evident in the much greater rates of trauma on skeletons and the extent of weaponry in Norway. The study, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, sheds new light on how Viking Age societies in Norway and Denmark differed in their experiences with violence and the role social structures played in shaping those patterns.
Animal rights groups on Wednesday said gunfire killed a beluga whale that rose to fame in Norway after its unusual harness sparked suspicions the creature was trained by Russia as a spy.
The organizations NOAH and One Whale said they had filed a complaint with Norwegian police asking them to open a "criminal investigation."
Nicknamed "Hvaldimir" in a pun on the Norwegian word for whale, hval, and its purported ties to Moscow, the white beluga first appeared off the coast in Norway's far-northern Finnmark region in 2019.
He was found dead on Saturday in a bay Norway's southwestern coast.
His body was transported on Monday to a local branch of the Norwegian Veterinary Institute for autopsy.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, one of Ukraine’s most recognizable faces on the international stage, resigned Wednesday ahead of an expected reshuffling of government leaders. Russian strikes, meanwhile, killed seven people in a western city, a day after one of the deadliest missile attacks since the war began.
Kuleba, 43, gave no reason for stepping down. Four other Cabinet ministers tendered their resignations late Tuesday, likely making this reshuffle the biggest since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated last week that the reshuffling was imminent, with the war poised to enter a critical stage and to mark its 1,000th day in November.
He said Wednesday that Ukraine needs “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.” He said during a Kyiv news conference with visiting Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris that he could not announce any replacements yet because he did not know whether the candidates would accept his invitation to join the government.
Zelenskyy needs to keep up Ukraine’s morale amid the grinding war of attrition with its bigger neighbor and to steel the country’s resolve for what will be another hard winter. Russia has been smashing Ukraine’s power grid, knocking out some 70% of generation capacity and rupturing heat and water supplies.
The coming winter is no joke to ordinary Ukrainians. Ania will be in Sweden finishing up her doctorate but Luke seems determined to stay in Kyiv -- unless the cold gets to be too much which it well may, given the attacks that the infrastructure has had to endure. I don't like San Diego in the winter so much if the heat isn't working. Kyiv is much worse. It's like Chicago, though less violent I suppose.
Luke was making comparisons the other day when we spoke. He recounted how he recently drove from Lviv to Kyiv. He remarked that driving in Ukraine scared him much more than the missile attacks did. The condition of the roads, the speeds at which people drive, the utter disregard for safety -- Don't do the Russians job for them, Ukrainians! Slow down!
The oldest millennials have entered their 40s and are noticing the effects of aging. It might not be in their heads.
A growing body of research says the aging process might resemble rolling hills more than a slow and steady climb. Age-related changes—slowing metabolism, wrinkling skin—pile up over time but may crescendo at specific points in your life.
In a study published in the journal Nature Aging in August, a team of Stanford scientists described “waves” of aging, where major biomolecular shifts happen in the body around ages 44 and 60.
The researchers found people in their mid-40s, for example, had meaningful changes in biological markers and pathways related to their abilities to metabolize alcohol and fats. These types of changes can lead to gradual weight gain or greater sensitivity to that nightly glass of wine.
Not surprisingly, although the media has heralded lawsuits like the one by Dominion Voting System against Fox News (which led to a large settlement), they are overwhelmingly hostile toward the Musk lawsuits.
It is not hard to see why. The Media Matters lawsuit directly challenges the ability of media outlets to create false narratives to advance a political agenda. As with the CNN and New York Times cases, it can expose how the media first decides on a conclusion and then frames or even invents the facts to support it.
While rejecting the longstanding principles of journalism such as objectivity, these media outlets are citing the cases and defenses secured by those now-outdated media organizations. They want to be advocates, but they also want to be protected as journalists.
These cases still face tough challenges, including challenging jury polls in places like New York. However, they are exposing the bias that now characterizes much of American journalism.
It looks like the fight between the Harris and Trump campaigns over former President Donald Trump‘s appearance at Arlington National Cemetery is intensifying, not diminishing. Vice President Kamala Harris herself posted a statement on X using Trump’s visit to mark the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack as an opportunity to revive the “suckers and losers” slur against Trump. Trump, in turn, produced statements of support from several Gold Star families who lost loved ones in the Biden-Harris administration’s chaotic, violent, and thoroughly bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan — the people whose sacrifice Trump had come to Arlington to respect.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was as bad and perhaps worse than our departure from South Vietnam -- worse for its utter disorganization and panic. It was the signature move of the Biden-Harris administration. I wasn't going to vote for Trump -- what's the point in California? But having witnessed the respective campaigns over the summer, I'd vote for Trump, except for his position on Ukraine. Maybe I'll write in DeSantis. But Trump had better win, for the sake of the country. Harris isn't a Democrat. She's a communist or as good as.
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was already the largest European conflict since 1945. It is expanding into new territory, escalating as both sides intensify their airstrikes, and deepening the fissures in the Western coalition that backs Ukraine. It is also getting more complicated. With Ukraine’s offensive in the north expanding even as Russia tightens its death grip around Pokrovsk in the east, it is hard for casual observers to follow this tragic and unnecessary conflict.
The most recent development is Ukraine’s successful attack on the Russian border region of Kursk. Geographically speaking, the chunk of Russian territory seized by Ukraine in its current offensive isn’t large. At about 500 square miles, it is roughly the size of Los Angeles. It is only about 1% of the more than 40,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia and 0.0076%, or less than 1/10,000th, of the 6.6 million square miles in the Russian Federation.
In Ukrainian-occupied Russia, there are no important cities or transit routes. No mines, important factories or power plants. From a purely military perspective, the area is insignificant. The loss of it doesn’t keep Mr. Putin from waging war, nor does its occupation afford Ukraine resources or a strategic position that will help it win.
Even so, it matters.
It matters in part because Ukraine has successfully defied one of the great taboos of the atomic age. This is the first time that a nonnuclear country has invaded and occupied the territory of a nuclear power. Deterrence theoreticians have long believed that one of the benefits of having nuclear weapons is that no one would dare invade a nuclear-weapons state. Russia’s failure to launch nuclear weapons against invading forces now leaves scholars and policymakers scratching their heads.
KYIV, Ukraine—Two Russian ballistic missiles hit a military institute and a hospital in a central Ukrainian city, killing 41 and injuring 206 in the deadliest strike this year, Ukrainian officials said.
The attack in Poltava on Tuesday highlighted how a shortage of air-defense systems is leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russian strikes, as well as exposing apparent Ukrainian military shortcomings for failing to better protect the training center.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded for more missile systems and jet fighters to shield Ukraine from Russian attacks, calling Western deliveries too few and too slow.
“Once again, we urge everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror: Air defense systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not in a warehouse somewhere,” Zelensky said in a statement after the strike.
He repeated calls to be able to strike deeper into Russia using Western-supplied missiles, something the U.S. and allies currently bar Kyiv from doing.
Day before yesterday there were also big missile attacks on Kyiv. We spoke with Luke and Ania. They were tired but in good spirits considering. Those new Ukrainian made ballistic missiles cannot come soon enough.
In case Twitter had somehow failed to notice the directive, then–Senator Harris said: “And I am asking that Twitter does what it has done on previous occasions, which is revoke someone’s privilege because they have not lived up to the advantages of the privilege.”
Two weeks after the Tapper interview, at the Democratic primary debate on October 15, 2019, Harris repeated her call for Twitter to ban President Donald Trump from its platform. Harris claimed that the mass shooter at an El Paso Walmart had been “informed by how Donald Trump uses that platform.” She several times urged Elizabeth Warren, “Join me in saying his Twitter account should be shut down.”
Even Elizabeth Warren seemed appalled. She refused with a simple “No.” She is a law professor, after all.
After that debate, Harris told Tapper flatly: “The bottom line is you can’t say you have one rule for Facebook and another rule for Twitter. The same rule has to apply which is that there has to be a responsibility placed on social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation and that has to stop.” [Emphasis mine.]
Did you get that? It’s worth watching: Harris said social media sites should not be able to communicate information directly with the public without government oversight.
The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900EX equivalent to the country’s Air Force One, was seized in the Dominican Republic on Monday and transported to Florida, the DOJ said. Officials claim the plane’s purchase violated US export control and sanctions laws.
Following the seizure, photos appeared to show federal agents collecting boxes of evidence from the aircraft.
The US has imposed sanctions in the Latin American country for years, and has seized dozens of luxury vehicles bound for Venezuela.
“This morning, the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for the use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies,” Attorney General Merrick B Garland said in a written statement.
Law enforcement officials shot down suggestions that migrants who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexican border tried to forcefully board a school bus in a remote area of San Diego earlier this week.
Two brief encounters between a school bus and people not affiliated with a school were reported by national news outlets as a possible threat to students, but after an investigation officials determined there was no cause for alarm.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, a bus driver with the Jamul-Dulzura Union School District reported seeing groups of people along Highway 94 in the eastern part of the county, about 11 miles from the border.
The story has been getting worse and worse as the national media got ahold of it. I suspect there will be fake news about gangs of migrants trying to hijack school busses in the future.
As such, the totalitarian takeover of Brazil is a model for what the Democrats and the legacy news media want for the whole world. Pro-censorship scholars at Stanford and Harvard, Democrats in Congress, and the US news media have long recognized that the First Amendment is an obstacle to their plans. And so they have supported censorship efforts by nations with weaker free speech protections, like Brazil, Britain, Australia, and the European Union, to censor and even block X.
It’s important that we fight back. We need to show our support for free speech. I urge my Brazilian friends to stay on the platform. Everyone knows that it would be extremely difficult for Moraes to enforce his insane decree, much less fairly and equally. Proof of this comes from the fact that the Brazilian government and the ruling Workers’ Party are still using X, which means they are also using VPNs to evade their own ban.
Brazil is thus not just a dictatorship but a lawless one. Its leaders are behaving like the hypocritical pig leaders in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
And independent Brazilian politicians including Senator Eduardo Girão, Congressman Marcel Van Hattam, and Vice Governor of Minas Gerais, Mateus Simões are all resisting the ban and posting on X. “I never imagined myself practicing and propagating civil disobedience,” said Simões, “but censorship cannot be tolerated, ever.”
It should be one of the nation’s highest educational priorities to get its most brilliant STEM students into those elite universities. Until a few years ago, the California Institute of Technology was the model. Caltech admitted from the top down based on evidence of exceptional talent and then put its students through a demanding curriculum that only those with zeal and a capacity for hard labor—the other requirements for great achievement—could survive. The record of achievement among Caltech graduates and faculty speaks for itself—46 Nobel Laureates, 66 awarded National Medals of Science and 75 elected to the National Academy of Sciences, all generated by a school that enrolls only about 1,000 undergraduates and 1,400 graduate students at a time.
Caltech might have gone wobbly. It suspended standardized-test requirements in undergraduate admission for four years starting in 2020, and its website boasts that “holistic review is the cornerstone of our admissions process” and this month Caltech announced that “in a historic milestone,” its freshman class will be majority female. But we still have the example of the old Caltech that every elite STEM department should emulate: require evidence of exceptional academic ability in the applications, admit those of top ability regardless of race, sex or social skills, holistic review be damned, and then push those students to their limits.
Doing so would play havoc with the DEI ideal student body. Based on the known distribution of math talent at the highest level and sex differences in occupational preferences, the students in these elite STEM departments will be more than 90% Asian or white and more than 80% male. But some things are more important than having the correct demographic mix. Finding and developing one of our rarest and most precious human resources is one of them.
But Brazil is not a democracy. It is a nation ruled by two men, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who controls Brazil’s Senate President by abusing his powers, and President Lula, who endorsed Moraes’ actions this morning. According to Brazilian legal experts, Moraes’ censorship demands of X, his summons to X on Wednesday, and his freezing Starlink’s bank accounts yesterday are all brazenly illegal and unconstitutional acts.
The Lula government stepped up the persecution of political dissidents, including the incarceration without trial of an aide to former president Jair Bolsonaro, and crackdowns on freedom always start small.
And a few minutes ago, Moraes ordered the suspension of X in Brazil and said that anyone who tries to evade the ban through a VPN will be fined $8,900 per day.
