WHY KARI LAKE IS THE NEXT REPUBLICAN STAR:

As a local news anchor in Phoenix for 20 years, she entered the race with built-in name recognition and a reservoir of credibility that have stood her in good stead. It’s a little as if Walter Cronkite, back when network anchors were still near the height of their powers, up and decided to jump in the Democratic primary against President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Then, there’s the fact that Lake loves the microphone and camera, and they love her back. She has communication skills that an army of consultants could never impart to a candidate with less experience. Lake has basically had more than 20 years of media training, and it shows.

At a rally with Tulsi Gabbard this week that involved a sit-down conversation with the former Democratic congresswoman on stage, Lake could have been mistaken for the celebrity MC. She was fluid and in control. Not a word was out of place. She seamlessly interwove pleasant chitchat with her campaign message, which, with an emphasis on the border, education and water issues, hardly sounded radical.

TV news-anchoring is about connecting with the viewers and projecting authority, and these are attributes that are directly transferable to the political realm. If you seem unflappable, people will think you are unflappable, and that creates a sense of command.

Lake has made a point of snapping back at the media constantly. Knowing how valuable these exchanges are for motivating Republicans, her campaign is careful to get them on video and spread them widely. The latest such moment had Lake taking a question about her election denialism from a reporter and turning it around by citing chapter and verse regarding Democrats denying the legitimacy of Republican presidential victories since 2000. This doesn’t excuse anything Lake has said, but it showed moxie — and in how she pulled it off — practiced showmanship.

On top of all of this, she is running against perhaps the worst Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the country, the Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, whose campaign is currently consumed with trying to justify her refusal to debate Lake. Hobbs emphatically lacks Lake’s star power and in fact, feels more like a candidate for the board of the Central Arizona Water Conservation District than the highest elected office in the state.

Read the whole thing.

NUKE THE FBI: Former PJTV Filmmaker Investigated by FBI as Domestic Terrorist for J6 Documentary.

SO MUCH FOR TRYING TO BE A “GOOD” REPUBLICAN, MIKE: Students walk out of Mike Pence speech. “Dozens of Georgetown University (GU) students walked out of Gaston Hall during Vice President Mike Pence’s speech Wednesday night. The protesters stood up minutes after Pence took the stage and left the room, while others unveiled a large banner reading ‘LGBTQ+, Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights,’ video obtained by Campus Reform shows.”

COLORADO: Aspen newspapers are finally covering blackmail story — with a pillow.

As reported in numerous outlets including this site, a man came forward last week alleging that he blackmailed the Democrat candidate challenging conservative firebrand Lauren Boebert for Colorado’s Third Congressional District, while the candidate was a city councilman in Aspen. The two daily newspapers – both overtly liberal – refused to run the story even while numerous citizens brought it to their attention.

The Dem candidate is Adam Frisch, and the Congresswoman he is campaigning to unseat is Lauren Boebert. Frisch presents himself as a high-minded moderate intellectual, but his initial broadcast email drumming up support name-called Boebert, in junior high fashion, “Boebert the Betrayer.” His campaign has gone downhill from there.

Boebert’s district went for Trump by over 9 points in the 2020 election, so Frisch has an uphill battle, which just got steeper.

The substance of the blackmail allegation is that the blackmailer successfully coerced Frisch to flip his position on a proposal to allow the ride sharing service Lyft into Aspen to compete with the blackmailer’s local taxi company a few years ago.

Frisch initially supported the Lyft proposal, but flipped to opposing it. The blackmailer said the reason for Frisch’s flip is that his assistant caught Frisch having sex in a woman’s storage unit that the blackmailer had rented out to the woman.

Seems newsworthy.

DISCREPANCIES OR DIFFERENCES IN DETAIL? That’s something of an obscure-sounding question, but it’s relevant to much of what skeptics offer in their efforts to  discredit the Gospels, especially regarding claims about the Resurrection.

Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press addresses this approach on HillFaith today regarding the varying reports of which women were first on the scene at the tomb on Easter morning. The fact Matthew and Mark report some names, while Luke and John include some others is not a disqualifying element, he argues.

For car guys, Lyons makes a point using a brief scene in a garage with an old Jaguar and what looks to me like a Jensen-Healey. What do you think? I’ve never actually seen one up close, but I’ve long thought the Jensen-Healey was an under-appreciated moment in the history of Brit sports cars.

AFGHANS STUCK IN GUATEMALA NOT HAPPY WITH BIDEN: They fled their homes when the U.S. hastily abandoned Afghanistan and ended up in Central America with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

One of them tells the Daily Caller News Foundation that he has a message for President Joe Biden: “We also have a lot of messages for him. First of all, Afghanistan was a country that moving to a good side. It was changing, moving for us from last 20 year, we were also in the war.

“Our future was bright. Our education system was at a good side, everything was going well, but suddenly they made a decision, but everything finished. Our future, our education system, everything.”

One wonders if Biden remembers, much less cares.

HAPPY TRAFALGAR DAY!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Fetterman’s Wife Is Giving off a Creepy Jill Biden Vibe. “Since that day last weekend, everything is coming up Gisele Fetterman. They may not be campaigning from a basement, but she’s definitely giving off that ‘I am my husband’s handler’ vibe that Jill Biden first began showing in the summer of 2020.”

TRANSGENDERISM A LOSING ISSUE FOR LEFT: New Trafalgar Group survey of likely voters finds nearly 80 percent of Americans — including 53 percent of Democrats — think it should be illegal to administer puberty blocking drugs to minors. Don’t hold your breath waiting to hear this reported by ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS/CNN/MSNBC/NYT/WP/USAT/ETC/ETC.

ON SERVING YOUR COUNTRY: A lament. “What is going on? Is this anecdotal only to our region, or is it happening everywhere? And, quite honestly, would a parent – especially one who had been in or knew anything about the military – even recommend that as a choice to their child in the current cultural environment? Listening to friends, other vets, and fellow Marines, that has to be happening more often than not. When I pose that question, ‘Would you tell a kid today to go in/enlist?’ the first exclamation out of their mouths rhymes with ‘duck’ and is followed by an emphatic ‘NO!’ It is so toxic.”

YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET, FAT: Fed’s Inflation ‘Nowcast’ Tracker Suggests Price Pressures Increasing.

HMMMM: Jon Gabriel: We Are No Longer Conservatives; We Are Restorationists.

IT’S UP TO VOTERS TO MAKE IT SO: Voters agree: GOP to take House and Senate.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US heating worries mount amid growing costs, uncertainty.

AFTER 2020, NO BLUE STATE POLITICIAN’S JOB SHOULD BE SAFE: The Far Left Could Be In Trouble in Big Cities.

Maybe playing up racial-identity politics wasn’t such a great idea after all.

There have been signs that the most radical left-wing ideas are failing in extremely blue cities. A Minneapolis referendum to defund the police failed. San Francisco removed its hyper-progressive district attorney in a recall election, and his replacement cleaned house upon taking office. San Francisco voters also threw out three radical school-board members, and the new board reinstated merit-based admissions at a top high school.

In states whose politics are dominated by big cities, Republican candidates have surprised on the upside this cycle. We’ve seen a strong performance so far from Lee Zeldin in New York, who is running for governor on a law-and-order platform as voters are increasingly concerned about crime. Even if he doesn’t win, he could push Republicans over the finish line in competitive House races. And Christine Drazan in Oregon is pulling into the lead against Democrat Tina Kotek, who is essentially promising to continue the progressive policies of unpopular incumbent Kate Brown. Drazan has handled tricky issues such as abortion with skill and has hammered Kotek, who was speaker of the Oregon house, for her record on school closures during the pandemic.

* * * * * * * *

It’s not written in the Constitution that big cities have to be governed by progressive Democrats. They’ve become dominant in urban politics through years of work and political organizing. Many Republicans saw their electoral success and gave up. But when presented with viable alternatives to progressivism, voters are open to better governance. The Left has gone too far for many voters in many big cities across the country, and it is starting to pay the price for its excesses.

Faster, please.

PRESS DEEPLY UPSET THAT THE DEM NARRATIVE ISN’T GETTING TRACTION: Americans’ Indifference About January 6 Is the Real Threat to Democracy.

So what has been the ultimate effect of all this high-visibility evidence of a rogue president gone insurrectionist? Well, the number of Republicans who agree with Trump’s “stolen election” fable has almost certainly gone up rather than down. The 45th president remains the leader of his party by any reasonable definition and is unquestionably the front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination if, as expected, he chooses to run. He actually leads Biden in averages of 2024 trial heats.

And the best efforts of the House select committee have failed to make the events of January 6 a significant campaign issue in the 2022 midterms.

But some unusually deep polling by the New York Times and Siena College about whether voters care about “threats to democracy,” and how they understand that term, might justify Democrats’ focus on other issues.

That recent survey asked an open-ended question about the “most important issue facing the country today.” Just 7 percent cited “the state of democracy.” That’s nothing compared with the 26 percent who offered “the economy” or the 19 percent who volunteered “inflation or the cost of living.” But concerns about democracy did top “abortion,” which was cited by 4 percent, and “crime,” which was called a top issue by 3 percent. Moreover, the pollsters later asked whether American democracy is “currently under threat,” and 71 percent said yes. That’s a big deal, right?

Maybe not. It’s when the pollsters dig into what people mean by “threats to democracy” that any focus on January 6 gets lost. Far and away the most popular complaint was about politicians and government generally being “corrupt.” . . .

This sure sounds a lot closer to MAGA folk calling Washington a “swamp” than it does to members of Congress expressing shock at the desecration of “the temple of democracy” on January 6.

Similarly, voters perceiving a “threat to democracy” are nearly as likely to view Biden as a “major threat” (38 percent) as Trump (45 percent). Forty-nine percent call “electronic voting machines” a major or minor threat (as opposed to no threat at all), and 54 percent feel the same way about voting by mail. The claim with the strongest bipartisan support is that “mainstream media” are a threat to democracy: 84 percent of respondents, including 83 percent of self-identified independents, consider the media a major or minor threat to democracy.

Sounds like the voters have a solid sense of reality, much to the dismay of this writer. And maybe voters don’t think of the Capitol as a “temple of democracy” because, well, it isn’t. And the Capitol LARP-fest was nothing compared to the bloody riots that Democrats and the media — but I repeat myself — tacitly, and even openly, approved. People noticed.

LAWLESSNESS, FULL SPEED AHEAD: Kevin McCarthy Says GOP Won’t Move to Impeach Biden or Administration Officials.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Poll: Biden Nearly 50 Percent Underwater With Parents.

Flashback: The Left is Losing Its War on Parents.

MOUNTAIN LION VS. COYOTES ON LOS ANGELES STREET (VIDEO):

LOS ANGELES, California — A mountain lion confronted a pack of coyotes on a residential street on Wednesday night, a rare sight that is a reminder that for all its urban sprawl and congestion, L.A. remains surrounded by wilderness.

The standoff took place at approximately 10:45 p.m. in the Marquez Knolls neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, an affluent area on the northwest side of the city, nestled between the Santa Monica Mountains and the beaches of the Pacific Ocean.

As families settled down to sleep, the neighborhood was roused by the barking and yelping of coyotes. That, in itself, is not so unusual: coyotes frequently emerge from the mountains and hunt for small rodents — including dogs and cats — on the city periphery.

What was unusual was the reason the coyotes were making such a commotion: they were frightened by a large adult mountain lion, which apparently had been hunting in the area.

David Baron, call your office:

Wow. pic.twitter.com/amxdGGI10I

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 21, 2022

JOANNE JACOBS: ‘Protect our kids from graphic porn’ in the school library. “Hundreds of Muslim parents told the Dearborn (MI) school board that they’re not OK with books that depict sex acts, describe group masturbation games or or recommend apps such as Grindr to meet strangers for casual sex.”

Related: “Parents, who have deeper roots in their communities and are more likely to vote than singles are, are breaking R+35. That’s yuge, maybe even unprecedented.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: Goodthreads Men’s Down Jacket with Hood. #CommissionEarned

THE GREENS’ CLOUD-CUCKOOLAND. It makes more sense when you realize that it’s not actually meant to work.

THE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE TWINS: The Biden-Fetterman rally is every bit as coherent as you’d imagine.

“Biden goes to bat for John Fetterman in Pennsylvania,” reads the headline from Bloomberg. If so, Joe Biden appears to have struck out. And Fetterman apparently never came up to bat.

* * * * * * * *

One has to wonder just how accurate the polling out of Pennsylvania has been after this rally. If the race was close and/or Fetterman was leading, they’d never have had Biden come out to campaign. Barack Obama? Sure. Even Bernie Sanders might have done better with working-class voters. Bringing Biden in to close the sale for Fetterman, however, feels like a desperation move as the candidate spins downward with voters — especially if they were relying on Biden to bolster their campaign’s coherence.

I wonder how far down the list of closers Biden was. “We can’t get either of the Obamas. We can’t get Bernie. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to go with the old man at this point. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Earlier: Biden says John Fetterman’s wife will be ‘great lady in the Senate.’

DEMOCRATS LIED, SAVINGS DIED: Top Democrat Admits ‘All of Us Knew’ Their Party’s Policies Would Cause Inflation.

JEFFREY CARTER: The Education Debate in a Microcosm: The Administrators Don’t Get It.

I left Chicago for a lot of reasons, personal safety being the number one reason. I left a lot of friends there. There has been a tempest in a teapot brewing there for a long time and you can extrapolate it across the United States where it has been repeated.

The Teacher’s Unions, and the elite administrators along with their school boards have wrecked government-run education in the United States. The US had a great educational system until the 1960s.

Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race on an education issue. The media has focused on Virginia and other school systems. But, the first strike in the fight happened in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

First, some background.

Read the whole thing.

Plus: “Speak up. Get involved. I know so many people that don’t want to “be political” and are tired of all the stuff that is going on. They just want to be left alone. But, the leftists won’t leave you alone until you get rid of them.”

The way you get them to leave you alone is to make it prohibitively expensive — and painful — to not leave you alone. And they’re slow learners.