The FBI thwarted what they described as a plot to violently overthrow the government and kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and federal prosecutors are expected to discuss the alleged conspiracy later Thursday.
The alleged plot involved reaching out to members of a Michigan militia, according to a federal affidavit filed Thursday.
“Several members talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor,” an FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. “The group decided they needed to increase their numbers and encouraged each other to talk to their neighbors and spread their message.”
The affidavit was filed hours after a team of FBI agents raided a Hartland Township home Wednesday and comes amid an ongoing investigation into the death of a Metro Detroit man killed during a shootout with FBI agents.
I doubt they will be given the same treatment as our “mostly peaceful” rioters: “Flora Westbrooks, owner of Flora’s Hair Designs, will be VP Pence’s guest at the debate tonight. Her salon was burned to the ground by rioters. Kamala Harris helped bail them out.”
You know, Jane Fonda said that Covid-19 is God’s gift to the left, but the way it’s financially wrecking woke institutions, from Hollywood, to journalism, to the NBA and NFL, to higher education, makes me wonder if that’s really the case.
I was in the greater Austin area a few weeks ago, and my general impression was that Abbott has burned through a truly impressive amount of goodwill over the lockdowns.
*REALLY* DON’T GET COCKY: Trump is losing. Badly. That’s what the recent polls shows. That doesn’t mean he will lose. There’s almost a month left, and if he can turn around 2.5% of current Biden voters, and thus get within around 4% of Biden, plus pick up a few “shy Trump” voters, he can win the electoral college while losing the popular vote by several points. But right now he’s losing, and it’s not because the polls are biased, not because of any conspiracy by the media to cover up his success. He’s basically getting the vote of every voter who approves of his job performance, and no one else. He’s more popular than he was in 2016, but Biden is much more popular than Clinton was. Worse yet, a lot of people think the race is much closer than it is right now, and are sending in early ballots voting for Democratic Senate candidates to “check” Trump. I’m telling it like it is, and I’m sorry that’s bad news for most Instapundit readers. And note that I am totally not averse to calling things for Trump against the media consensus when I see things going his way.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Really, don’t get cocky. You should be donating and working on this election, and putting out the max effort, because everything is up for grabs. And encourage your friends to turn out and vote too.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A Facebook friend sends this:
Someone asked me what feedback I am getting with door knocking in Bristol/Levittown PA. I’ve been doing this 3 days/wk, for 3 wkends. Working class to upper middle neighborhoods, all registered voters, all ages, roughly equal by party.
1) if it’s Biden they usually say Biden, occasionally apologetically.
2) if they say I’m undecided but don’t close the door, if you ask what are your issues or how will you decide, they say Trump or give you clues it’ll be Trump (ex: “I’m pro life.”)
3) I always ask if anything in the debates changed their mind – so far always no, they already were going to vote for that person.
4) So far no mind changes at all, or they didn’t say.
5) sometimes they refuse to say, period, and close the door.
6) if Trump – they are going to vote in person.
7) if anti Trump – why? 2-3/day – emotional negative reaction to him (“he’s disgusting”) or media memes (“wants to be a dictator”)
8) I always get maybe 1 in 25 who are vociferously Democrat or pro-Biden and let me have it.
9) but most aren’t home or don’t answer the door.
10) this weekend I want to ask if Trump’s covid diagnosis and choices around that changed their minds.
Interesting.
TEXAS LULU CAUGHT VOTING ILLEGALLY: The Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman did a little digging — remember when that was par for the course for journalists? — and discovered:
Helane ‘Lulu’ Sawsan Seikaly, who is challenging Republican incumbent Van Taylor in Texas’s Third Congressional District, worked in California until at least last year as an attorney for a Sacramento-based law firm and as a professor at the University of California Davis. Using an address linked to her parents, however, Seikaly voted in Texas in both 2016 and 2018, public records show.
You can perhaps guess what comes to my mind here:
HARVARD, STANFORD, OXFORD PROFS SAY END LOCKDOWNS: They said it earlier this week in The Great Barrington Statement. American Institute for Economic Research’s (AIER) Jenin Younes notes that:
“While these scientists are not the first to express such views, given the degree to which their stance conflicts with the prevailing wisdom that everyone has a moral obligation to participate in efforts to ‘stop the spread,’ it is not surprising that they have already encountered significant opposition. Among their primary detractors is Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, who considers their proposal akin to a suggestion that society ‘cull[] the herd of the sick and disabled. It’s grotesque.’”
Seeking “herd immunity” has a bit of a Social Darwinist ring to it, but Younes points to some basic facts, namely, that “at 1.05 million deaths over the past nine or ten months, the coronavirus appears to be a problem along the lines of, for example, traffic accidents, which cause 1.35 million deaths per year, or tuberculosis, which results in 1.5 million deaths annually.”
Vice President Mike Pence emerged from the 2020 vice presidential debate Wednesday night with a sound victory over challenger Sen. Kamala Harris. The debate was, of course, calmer and more focused on policy than the presidential debate between Trump and Biden last week. Although it may seem surprising that such conditions would work in favor of the bombastic Trump administration, Pence’s unflappable demeanor and meticulous preparation proved to be his big advantages of the night.
Pence started the evening by mounting a much better defense of the administration’s COVID response than Trump ever could. It was not necessarily convincing, but all he really had to do was survive what was sure to be the most challenging segment of the night. From that point on, Pence coasted on Harris’s and Biden’s disagreements over moderate vs progressive policy and Harris’s own hypocritical record on criminal justice reform, the Green New Deal, fracking, and more.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Riots of 2020 have given the Second Amendment a boost. “Even in normal times, gun owners joke that ‘when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.’ But, sometimes, they’re not coming at all. Sometimes they’re not even allowed to show up.”
Actually, as I watched the vice-presidential debate, I came to the conclusion—very little.
But perhaps that is because I am so biased against Kamala Harris—who has seemed to me a total phony since I lived in California, an empty vessel, not even really a liberal or a progressive, but an opportunist interested in the main chance who would vote conservative if she represented Mississippi—that I am not in the slightest a neutral observer.
But I wonder if there are any neutral observers, certainly not in the media.
Once again the moderator—Susan Page of US Today—was biased, though not as much as Chris Wallace, which would be difficult. Indeed, the host of Fox News Sunday carried that attitude forward into Wednesday night’s post-debate spin, predictably looking to say something bad about Mike Pence who, all-in-all. had a good night.
Basically, Pence’s was a workman-like performance, while Kamala smirked at his responses unappealingly for the camera, close-up, in split screen. (Don’t debate prep coaches warn about this? It certainly makes the candidate the kind of person you’d want to run from at a cocktail party.)
I wasn’t surprised that pollster Frank Luntz’s focus group declared Pence the winner because of this smirking.
You know Pence killed it, when the House of Stephanopoulos has to resort to this cliché:
Later, when ordinary Americans fought back against the lockdowns decimating their livelihoods, stars mocked them as hicks who didn’t understand science and wanted to kill grandma while their paychecks kept a-coming.
Not a nice look. It got worse from there.
The usual celebrity angst against President Trump ramped up, if one can believe that was possible. The ugly comments got uglier, with some directly targeting Trump voters.
You know, the folks who also like to unwind at the local cineplex.
Some stars took their activism in a ghastly direction, donating to the Minnesota Freedom Fund which bails out jailed protesters. Celebrities like Seth Rogen, Steve Carell and Janelle Monae didn’t care if their money sprang unfairly arrested protesters (unlikely) or folks who eagerly set the city on fire (or committed even worse crimes).
Twitter isn’t real life, but chances are the cacophony of vile, divisive messages coming from Celebrity Nation seeped into the national consciousness.
It’s one thing to swallow hard and watch a new Samuel L. Jackson film at home. It’s another to snag a sitter and/or fork over $30-plus for a Jackson movie knowing he just insulted anyone voting Trump on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
Think that sentiment isn’t a factor in the anemic box office receipts we’re seeing these days?
Stars got hyper-political, and nasty, at the worst possible time. The theatrical model is on life support thanks to COVID, and media outlets which have scared us silly by downplaying hopeful news and exaggerating terrifying tidbits.
Will anyone be itching to pay $15 for an overhyped sequel coming Spring time, knowing they can watch it on their big-screen TV in a few weeks?
It’s been fascinating since the early days of our current unpleasantness, seeing the moral equivalent of war comparisons that used to be reserved for fighting global warming being transferred over to fighting the pandemic. (The latest bit of silliness: Boeing’s bête noire, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee tweeted “What aircraft carriers were in World War II, masks are today” on Tuesday.) If you’re going to play that card, I expect to see Hollywood doing their part as well, the modern-day equivalent of when Hollywood Republicans like Bing Crosby committed themselves to supporting FDR’s war effort:
As Michael Jordan reportedly said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” They buy movie tickets as well – until after being hectored to death by Hollywood, they don’t.
THEY SAY VOTING’S NOT IMPORTANT. AND YOU SAY? It’s a dismal fact that nearly half of all voting-age Americans will stay home come Election Day. Colson Center’s Joseph Backholm offers three snappy and fact-based comebacks to the usual excuses.
We don’t really need to go back through all of the double-digit leads Hillary Clinton had on Trump, and the alleged mathematical certainties of a Hillary win and so on. Everybody knows the pollsters blew it then.
What’s different now? Anything?
Not really. Not fundamentally.
There were shy Trump voters in 2016 that pollsters couldn’t pick up. There are just as many now. Probably more — if anything the Left has been more oppressive and more fearsome in its attempts to shame and disparage Trump voters where it can. Deranged Democrats are recording themselves vandalizing Trump signs, some even on private property. Cars with Trump bumper stickers get keyed. People attack strangers for wearing MAGA hats.
What we found out in 2016 is those tactics don’t persuade people not to vote for Trump. Such tactics drive those votes underground, and they resurface in the secrecy of the voting booth. There is no penalty for straight-up lying to a pollster, at least not yet.
In 2016 it was Hillary Clinton calling those voters deplorables. This year it’s Antifa beating them up in the streets.
Do you not think Trump’s voters are even more shy than they were before?
Enthusiasm is if anything even greater than it was in 2016 among uncloseted Trump voters, but for quieter voters, genuine physical fear of being outed as a Trump voter must be greater than it was four years ago.
TRIBUTE TO EDDIE VAN HALEN: Mark Hemingway thinks quite highly of the just-deceased guitar master. My tastes run more to Mark Knopfler, Chet Atkins and the Marshall Tucker Band’s Toy Caldwell/George McCorkle duo, but if Mark Hemingway approves EVH, well then, maybe I need to be a little more expansive in this realm.
HOW CONVENIENT (AS GLENN WOULD SAY): The FBI is stonewalling the Hunter Biden investigation. I’m sure it has nothing to do with anything happening in November.
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