September 9, 2024

TIM GRAHAM: Jake Tapper and Jeffrey Goldberg, Good Buddies Who Hate Trump.

In Tapper’s latest Goldberg interview, they discussed John McCain’s son Jim endorsing Kamala Harris. Goldberg implied that’s how John McCain would have voted this year.

Then they decried Trump visiting Arlington Cemetery with grieving Gold Star families and filming the visit. Neither man acknowledged uncomfortable truths, such as John McCain filming a campaign advertisement at Arlington, not to mention the professional photographs Joe Biden had taken there.

All this gave Goldberg the license to repeat his magazine’s most hostile Donald Trump stories: “He obviously, very famously got out of Vietnam. He equally famously has referred to people who get killed on behalf of the country as suckers and losers.”

Goldberg mused to Rosenthal that social media is a “vast unregulated experiment,” but no one regulates Goldberg for repeating claims for which he has no evidence – nothing recorded, just claimed. Many people around Trump said it never happened.

Tapper then asked why Trump-hating generals like Milley and Mattis won’t openly come out for Harris. “The military is apolitical,” claimed Goldberg without giggling. Because soon he admitted that generals “let it be known, through journalists and other means, what happened inside the White House in Donald Trump’s first term.”

“The military is apolitical,” except when they leak to anti-Trump news outlets about how horrible Trump is. Which makes them political, especially the staying-anonymous part. They’re about as apolitical as Goldberg and Tapper.

Related: Scoop: Generals come to Harris’ defense on Afghanistan.

To be fair, all generals love a good parade: Taliban parade US military vehicles, weapons to celebrate 3 years in power, AP reports.

I imagine it was quite a lengthy parade: Millions of Dollars, Classified Information, and Biometric Data: Inside What the Biden-Harris Admin Left Behind in Afghanistan.

Flashback: Harris says she had key role in Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal decision. The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing U.S. troops.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

KDJ: This Is Why Your Blue-Haired Harpy-in-Law Is a Raging Marxist. “The key to survival in college for white students is to denounce themselves and hate other white people who do not ascribe to Marxist values. They must submit fully to commie indoctrination. There is no diversity of thought.”

Posted at 2:15 pm by Stephen Green

WE HAVE AN INCREASINGLY HOLLOW MILITARY AND ZERO LEADERSHIP. THAT’S NO WAY TO KEEP THE PEACE:

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH KAMALA HARRIS: Remember when Democrats (and everybody else) thought Kamala Harris was a bad vice president?

In February 2023, the New York Times published an article titled, “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.” The headline was generous, given what followed. “The painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and around the nation … said [Harris] had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country,” the New York Times reported. “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”

The New York Times went on to note that Harris’s vice presidency is notable largely because of her race and gender, as opposed to her accomplishments in office. “She has already made history as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American ever to serve as vice president,” the paper said, “but she has still struggled to define her role much beyond that legacy.”

Given all that, the New York Times reported that “a quiet panic” had “set in among key Democrats about what would happen if President Biden opted not to run for a second term.” Harris made the situation even worse by retreating to “a bunker” for about a year, the New York Times said, “after her disastrous interview with Lester Holt of NBC News.”

In November 2021, three months before the New York Times published the “lost hope” piece, CNN published “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president.” CNN reported that “key West Wing aides” — meaning people close to Biden — were “worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus” from Harris. The aides, CNN continued, “have largely thrown up their hands at [Harris] and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now.”

Hey, nobody wants to make a potential president’s enemies list: Binders full of racists: Report: Kamala Harris Keeps Enemies List of Journalists Who Don’t ‘Appreciate Her Life Experience.’

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

“BIAS? WHAT BIAS?” Part Deux: The Columbia Journalism Review, staffed by People Who Are Smarter Than You and Know Things really tips their hand in this execrable article titled “Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?”

One line struck me as the dead giveaway:

“The biggest problem, I concluded, was not journalists’ failure to resolve an unresolvable debate about exposure, but their failure to accurately describe Trump’s rhetoric…”

You see, the starting point is that Trump is crazy. If that’s your baseline, then there’s no pretending you are seeking truth and reporting it.

(IMHO, Trump, for the most part, is crazy like a fox. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he is a GrandMaster Troll.)

Meanwhile, Kamala’s word-salad generation continues unabated, and consistently softened or even ignored by a compliant group of cheerleaders.

“The New York Times is attempting to spin Vice President Kamala Harris’ history of unflattering viral moments as “celebratory artifacts” following her swift emergence as the presumptive Democratic nominee,” Fox reported.

As my hero Jules Winnfield would say…

 

Posted at 1:27 pm by Charles Glasser

TOM COTTON TO CNN: You Know What the Biggest Intel Threat to the Election Is?

BASH: I want to turn to a very different topic, and that is something that the Justice Department said this week. They detailed a Russian government effort to stoke divisions in the U.S. using front organizations and social media prominent right-wing influencers like Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson, who have ties to Tenet Media. That’s a company that the Justice Department says was being funded by Russian operatives. You sit on the Intelligence Committee. How worried are you that right-wing influencers, people who do have an impact on their constituents, are being funded, either directly or indirectly, by the Russian government in order to make an impact on this election?

COTTON: Well, first off, Dana, we haven’t been in session, so I haven’t seen any intelligence about this matter. I have only seen the allegations I have read in the newspaper. People should not knowingly take money from the government of Russia or Iran or China or any other adversarial nation to try to influence the election. But I also think it’s fair to say that a few memes or videos in the vast sea of political commentary is not going to make much of a difference in this election, nor has it in past elections as well.

What did make a difference in the last election is the lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop that more than four dozen former intelligence officials lied about in the middle of that campaign. And most networks, including this one, bought that lie hook, line and sinker. That did make a difference in the election.

As Ed Morrissey concludes, “Hunter Biden’s convictions prove that the laptop was real, and that either leaves the media as partners in that American intel propaganda effort or as dupes. Either way, Dana Bash and CNN are the last people who should attempt to lecture anyone on ‘election interference.’ The last except for all of the other MSM outlets, of course.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

SOME KY. HUMOR FROM MY CONGRESSMAN:

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PRIORITIES: Nation With Lowest Birthrate Is Rocked by Soaring Sales of Dog Strollers.

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.

They are so ubiquitous a national broadcaster in January aired a segment titled: “‘Am I the Only One Annoyed By This?’ A Heated Debate Over Dog Strollers.”

In many advanced economies, including the U.S., adults treat their pets like pampered children, with fancy birthday parties, decked-out doggy mansions, private-plane travel and rides in dog strollers.

But pet parents have South Korean officials howling.

The country is confronting a national fertility rate of 0.72—or a mere third of the level needed to maintain the population. At a youth roundtable last year, Kim Moon-soo, the country’s now labor minister, scolded the fresh-faced attendees: “What I worry about is young people not loving each other,” Kim said. “Instead, they love their dogs and carry them around, they don’t get married, and they don’t have children.”

Dogs are great — I have three. It’s interesting that a society that’s basically stopped having kids has started treating dogs as substitute children.

But they aren’t children, shouldn’t be used as substitutes for children, and most importantly, won’t take care of people when they get too old to care for themselves.

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

MARK STEYN: The Uniparty Turns Literal.

How’s it going over on the Republican side? Well, former president George W Bush has announced he won’t be endorsing anyone in this election. On the other hand, over two hundred Bush, McCain and Romney staffers have declared they’re voting for Kamala. I’m not sure I’ve heard of any of them, but, as you know, the McCain and Romney campaigns remain bywords for hugely successful political operations, so no doubt many of those hundreds of staffers helped craft what are widely acknowledged to be two of the most impressive concession speeches in American history.

* * * * * * * *

I thought Cheney was an homme sérieux. But, in the end, he wasn’t. The Bush years have to be accounted a terrible failure, in which the leadership of the then dominant superpower was unable to grasp the simplest of truths — not least about the need for strategic clarity. Under Cheney, America launched wars with no war aims, in which it deluded itself that “smart bombs” counted for more than will. Meanwhile, on the home front, the rate of Muslim immigration to America doubled …because it was more important to show the world how nice we are than to consider the cultural consequences of demographic transformation. So the west spent twenty years fighting over the most barren and worthless sod on the planet, while surrendering Malmö and Marseille, Rotterdam and Nottingham, and Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. This is what happens when you have a political class almost entirely disconnected from the rhythms of real life in real countries.

So Trump has performed a great service in driving the likes of Cheney to vote Kamala. The feeble charade of TweedleDem vs TweedleRep is designed to obscure the central fact of end-stage western “democracy” — that, on anything that really matters, nothing can be permitted to change. Thus, having Dick Cheney and Ilhan Omar formally on the same team is very helpful. Trump has driven the “respectable” political class to make the Uniparty literal, and its consolidation has freed up space for an actual second party.

Read the whole thing.

Related: May the force of hypocrisy be with Darth Cheney and two-faced Kamala!

We’ve entered some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Piers Morgan is a voice of sanity, to coin an Insta-phrase.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLORADO: More On Venezuelan Gangs.

“The report recounts that this summer, the gang approached the property manager and told him they would help him out in exchange for half of all the rent that he collected.”

“The gang members then allegedly took over vacant apartments, and according to the document, moved families into those units and started collecting rent.”

The gang obviously didn’t fear property management or the police.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Will Kamala Build a Wall? Most Voters Doubt It. “Axios reported last week that Harris promised to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called ‘un-American’ during the Trump administration.” Twenty-eight percent (28%) of voters believe it’s likely that, if elected president, Harris would actually build the border wall, including 11% who say it’s Very Likely. However, 64% don’t consider it likely Harris would actually build the border wall, including 41% who think it’s Not At All Likely.”

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

APPEARANCES CAN DECEIVE: Just ask former Newsboys lead singer and co-founder John James. He explains it all this morning on HillFaith, including why fame and fortune can be the worst (and best, but not like you’d think!) thing to ever happen to you.

Posted at 10:34 am by Mark Tapscott

CHANGE: Meet Ohio State’s new ‘intellectual diversity’ center director. “A new civics center at Ohio State University will help students learn how to “engage with fellow citizens in a civil way,” according to the director. Former University of Toledo Professor Lee Strang is now at Ohio State University to lead the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society. It is one of five new ‘intellectual diversity’ centers at public Ohio universities that are in the works.”

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE BEEB: BBC breaches its own editorial guidelines 1,500 times over Israel-Hamas war.

The research analyzed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts, and social media. Additionally, a team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research and analyzed nine million words of BBC output using artificial intelligence (AI), The Telegraph added.

The research found that there was a “deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel” and that Israel was associated with genocide 14 times more than the Hamas terror group was throughout the analyzed BBC coverage.

The total number of BBC editorial breaches, including impartiality, accuracy, editorial values, and public interest, was 1,553.
Further findings from the research included the BBC’s repeated downplaying of Hamas terrorism. Conversely, Israel was presented as a “militaristic and aggressive nation” by the BBC, the report said.

When 1,500 mistakes all run in the same direction, they aren’t mistakes.

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

HOWEVER MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA, IT IS NOT ENOUGH:

Biden got away with running a basement campaign because the press let him. The only difference between now and 2020 is that Harris’s basement campaign is only in the metaphorical basement.

Posted at 9:19 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: There Are Three Kinds of Lies — Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Polls. “Oddly, many of the people I know who don’t trust anything about our elections are still clinging to the polls. I’ve been bumping into a lot of them lately. The disconnect is understandable, though. Adrift on a sea of uncertainty, we need to cling to something to keep ourselves from drowning. Good news in the polls can feel like a life preserver while we’re waiting for the election.”

Posted at 9:05 am by Stephen Green