KEEP IN MIND MY HEALTH MIGHT BE INFLUENCING MY PERSPECTIVE. IT’S BEEN A HARD TWO WEEKS: Super Genius.

Also, don’t worry. I am now on antibiotics. If they don’t work, will go to doc in box tomorrow.

AND THEY ARE SCARED:  Dem Super PAC Runs Intimidating Ads in Cities With High Black Populations: ‘Your Friends and Family Will Be Able To See How Often You Vote’ .

AND PEOPLE ARE TALKING BACK: Auschwitz Survivor: Harris Owes Everyone ‘Murdered by Hitler an Apology’ for Comparing Trump to Him.

AND IN THE END WE WIN, THEY LOSE:  CNN Pundits Blast Kamala’s Evasive ‘Word Salad’ Non-Answers After Train-Wreck Town Hall.

If they fraud themselves in again, it’s just going to make things harder. For a while.

BUT THERE ARE GOOD DEVELOPMENTS:  Israel Launches Retaliatory Counterstrike On Iran.

AND EVEN IF THEIR CANDIDATE IS AS STUPID AS SHE’S EVIL:  Kamala Harris Flunked the Job Interviews.

EVEN IF THEIR FORTIFICATION IS INEFFECTIVE:  The Post Hasn’t Given Up.

DON’T BE SURE WE CAN BEAT THE FRAUD:  ‘What they’re after is the ultimate prize of flipping three to four congressional seats in the state of Ohio,’ GOP state Sen. McColley said.

DON’T BE SURE WE CAN BEAT THE FRAUD: Democrats blocking the early voting sites gives credence to concerns that the left is trying to suppress the vote in the deep-red area.

LOOK, NO, IT’S NOT HOPELESS, AND AT ANY RATE WE SHOULD GIVE IT OUR ALL, BUT DON’T BE SURE WE CAN BEAT THE FRAUD:  BOMBSHELL: Iranian Hackers Broke Into State’s Voter Roll Database – Used Names, SS and Driver’s License #’s to Fill Out UOCAVA Registrations – Shared Video of Their Actions Online!

THEY’RE TRYING TO GET US ALL KILLED:   Trump Team Blasts Harris’s “Dangerous Rhetoric” Remarks.

WELL, YES:

The anger over these non-endorsements illustrates better than anything that liberals now believe that the supreme, overarching duty of media outlets is not to inform or act as adversarial checks on power, but to do everything possible – I mean everything – to help defeat Trump: https://t.co/x03DDZsDCt

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 25, 2024

BREAKING: The Trump-Rogan Podcast Just Dropped! (Video).

SALENA ZITO: Vance homecoming: The recovery and redemption arc of Beverly Aikins.

Last year, when covering Vance visiting one of the Great Oaks Career Campuses, a vocational-technical school system in Cincinnati, I watched him walk into the surgical technology class and see something very familiar to him: students practicing having their blood drawn for final exams — something he told the classroom his mother used to practice on him when she was in nursing school.

Vance was only there to observe the class, but when he noticed that one of the students was anxious about having her blood drawn by her classmate, he casually removed his suit jacket and offered to take her place. When no objection from the teacher or students materialized, he sat down, rolled up his sleeves, and smiled.

He explained he had some experience with this with his mother to the nervous student about to stick a needle in his arm. Vance said quietly, “Don’t be nervous. If you have to do it again, it’s fine with me. I am here for you until you get it right.”

Good for him. I had a similar experience when I was a pretty new professor. The university had “operation health check” at the student center, where you could get your blood pressure taken, have some blood drawn for free bloodwork, and the like. The catch was that it was all done by nursing students. The poor girl who was assigned to draw my blood was super nervous and couldn’t get the vein — which is unusual, because I have “good veins” according to pretty much everyone who’s ever drawn my blood. I let her keep trying until she got it, on like the fifth or sixth try. But I figured if she quit then she’d have a complex forever. Pretty much my whole forearm was black and blue and green later, but it was worth it. After all, I’m a teacher.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Team Kamala: Now Jill Stein Is a Threat to Democracy by … Appearing On Ballot. “So everyone’s a threat to democracy if they oppose Democrats in open elections? Is that how democracy works? Gee, it’s a good thing that Democrats anointed their nominee rather than rely on democracy, then!”

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

YES: America is at risk of high impact GPS jamming and spoofing from space.

EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: NEW: Israel Launches Retaliatory Strikes on Iran — and Syria.

HMM: One Type of Fiber May Have Weight Loss Benefits Similar to Ozempic. “The findings align with another recent study by Duca, which fed barley flour, rich in beta-glucan, to rodents. Even though the rats continued eating just as much of their high-fat diet as before, their energy expenditure increased and they lost weight anyway. A similar outcome was observed in mice fed beta-glucan in the new study. These animals also showed increased concentrations of butyrate in their guts, which is a metabolite made when microbes break down fiber. Butyrate induces the release of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which is the natural protein that synthetic drugs like Ozempic mimic to stimulate insulin release.”

FASTER, PLEASE: UCLA Scientists Discover Protein That Repairs Heart Damage.

JUSTICE TO A COLLEAGUE IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN NOT HELPING TRUMP:

Update: The @stanford faculty senate, by a single vote, decided to punt the vote to rescind the 2020 censure of Scott Atlas until next month.

The reason? Some faculty argued that rescinding the censure will send a political signal in favor of Trump in the upcoming election.… https://t.co/hNeKFitX4Z

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) October 25, 2024

FREDDIE DE BOER: Who Says Another Google is Coming? “Why has AI hype been so overwhelming? I’ve argued that, at the bottom of this strange moment, there’s a broad desire to be freed from the mundane. AI sounds like something that might relieve us from the burden of living in boring reality, and that’s an attractive notion even for people living generally contented lives. . . . Another big driver of AI hype, though, is the recent investment environment. . . . Tech is a very mature field now, and despite startup mythology, what tech startups are trying to do now is often capital-intensive. The free money spigot has been turned off. There’s no law of nature that says another Google or Facebook is going to appear out of the mist and offer you an opportunity for pre-IPO investment. And yet a quick perusal of the ‘hockey stick growth’ search term on Twitter reveals how many people are chasing this dream.”

FILE UNDER AYFKM? Reuters utterly beclowns themselves again. The news agency who brought you “Green Helmet Guy” and “Fake IDF Missiles” proves once again that if an ignorant child writes idiotic editorialization, as long as it fits the “conventional wisdom” in their bubble, it’s off to the races.

Case in point: Today they filed a piece of garbage about the State of Missouri probing Google over the suppression of conservative content. In the file, this little gem of editorialization appeared:

“Trump and his supporters have alleged without evidence that Google searches displayed only “bad stories” about the former U.S. president.” (Emphasis added).

“Without evidence? Under what rock is this child living? As many of you know, as a First Amendment lawyer I have the honor of advising representing many outfits including The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Signal, The Daily Caller, and Just The News. And I can (without breaking any attorney/client privileges) tell you there is a sh*t-ton (that’s the legal phrase) of evidence that news outlets perceived as “right leaning” are most assuredly on Double Secret Probation with Google, Apple, MSN and others.

Just ask the good folks at PJMedia, or the Good Professor. I’m sure they’ll affirm.

HMM: Simple test helps gauge signs of aging in people 50 and over. “Folks over 50 who can stand on one leg for 30 seconds are aging gracefully, particularly if it’s not their strong leg, a new study finds.”

COCKBURN: Jennifer Rubin’s resignation from the Washington Post is surely imminent.

The non-endorsement is the new endorsement! Hot on the heels of the Los Angeles Times’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race, a controversial call made by the paper’s owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong that has been met with multiple staff resignations, the Washington Post is following suit.

A statement published Friday reads: “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

Public statements from leading Post personalities have been aghast. Columnist Karen Attiah tweeted, “Jesus Christ.” Then, an hour later, “…” Then an hour later still, “What an absolute stab in the back. What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.”

Of most interest to Cockburn, however, were the remarks of fellow columnist and MSNBC mainstay Jennifer Rubin to the LA Times resignations earlier in the week. In response to Sewell Chan’s resignation from the Times, she wrote, “Bravo. All respect.” Followed by, “and where are the rest of them?”

The implication is clear: now that her paper, too, is refusing to endorse the sainted Kamala Harris, Rubin must be set to join the charge of resignations in disgust, along with Robert Kagan, as a sort-of Potomac Joan of Arc. The prospect brings a tear to Cockburn’s eye. Such bravery.

Ed Morrissey adds: WaPo: Never Mind on That Whole Darkness Thing.

Besides, it’s hardly a secret how the Post views Trump at least, if not Harris. They adopted their banner not after January 6, but just after Trump took office in 2017. Bezos owned the Post at that time too, and had used the slogan during the 2016 election before Trump had even formally won the nomination. It’s still on the masthead, and even as Bezos put it there, Allahpundit recognized it for what it is:

The timing gives the slogan the same effect as that dopey NBC News story from a few days ago noting that Trump would not, in fact, become the shortest-serving president in American history. It’s a declaration of opposition to the new administration. If it wasn’t, they would have slapped it on the front page back when Barack Obama, a.k.a. “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation,” started snooping in journalists’ phone records.

With all that as background, does the refusal to participate in endorsements really matter? It does to Lewis’ predecessor, Marty Baron, who called Lewis and Bezos cowards for refusing to participate:

Colleagues were said to be “shocked” and uniformly negative. Post corporate spokespeople have not responded to multiple messages left by NPR on the subject.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump’s presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Baron said in a statement to NPR. “Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

As Baron’s statement hints, if you’re on Twitter today, it may seem like every employee at the Post has very publicly lost his mind: Floodgates Have Opened! Hilariously Brutal Thread of All Freak-Outs Over Wapo Not Endorsing Kamala Wins Twitter.

It really is an incredible thread. Just click here and start scrolling before the Posties either come to their senses or are read the riot act and start deleting their cris de cour:

THE FLOODGATES HAVE OPENED https://t.co/g1tOV2g0SW

— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) October 25, 2024

Attiah is taking the non-endorsement of Kamala particularly badly:

Hey, you know who else called an unexpected last minute betrayal a “stab in the back,” right?

Given today’s freakout, and the general redlining of the Godwin meter, John Ekdahl proposes a new slogan for the Post:

Hey, they really are leftists in a hurry!