THEY DON’T OUTNUMBER ARMED AMERICANS. AND THEY’LL RUN LIKE RATS IF BRANDON TRIES TO CALL ON THEM: Brandon’s foreign legion.
THE DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN MARXISTS AS LONG AS I’VE FOLLOWED THEM: The switcheroos of the two parties.
They just used to pretend harder.
IT WILL COME HERE. NOT SOON ENOUGH TO SAVE A LOT OF KIDS, THOUGH: The Brits issue some sanity on underage transgender transition.
NO. THANK YOU: Biden wants you to enter his fantasy world.
MOTHERS, DON’T LET YOUR KIDS ATTEND IVY LEAGUES: Harvard students get paid $2,700 to go protest in favor of reverse racism; The Hill reporter openly says mental compentence in a “Democrat” office holder is not important; Google again skewing election-related search results; Elon Musk enters Twitter HQ as “Chief Twit”.
FALSE FLAG? Hobbs Blames Lake For Burglary, Then Dodges.
THEY’RE NOT EVEN TRYING ANYMORE: $5 Gas in 2020? Biden Delivers Another Lie-Filled Speech as He Tries to Hype Up NY Democrats.
LADIES, GENTLEMEN AND SMALL DRAGONS: This is how you troll. Go you and do likewise.
UPDATE (From Ed): It is indeed a great troll, but alas, not from Trump himself: MSNBC’s Alex Wagner and Twitter Blue Checks Fall for Fake Trump Statement Claiming His Account Will Be Reinstated After Musk Takeover.
MY SCHADENBONER IS ENORMOUS: Elon Musk fires Twitter’s top brass after closing $44 billion deal: reports.
Meanwhile, a friend comments: “I wrote many nasty articles about Elon Musk back in the day. I think I owe him an apology. He just took over the most tyrannical force in American public life, and is giving every indicator of removing its tyrannical effects.”
NOW THEY TELL US: Wemple: James Bennet was right and his leftist critics inside and outside the NY Times were wrong. “In retrospect, the claim that black Times staffers were endangered by the op-ed seems particularly indefensible. Wemple reports he spoke to about 30 staffers and asked if any of them still believed that. None were willing to defend it on the record. Personally, I’m not invested in James Bennet’s career but I think this was a pretty clear case of arguably the most powerful newspaper in the US buckling under pressure from a woke mob using woke mob tactics to get their way. The fact that the mob won is definitely bad news.”
This was obvious all along, of course. But we’re seeing a lot of this sort or writing lately. Perhaps they’re preparing the Democrats for a post-shellacking rethinking. Or maybe a post-shellacking purge.
And I don’t really know Bennet — I met him over a decade ago when The Atlantic was trying to recruit my blog to join Andrew Sullivan, Megan McArdle, etc., and he seemed like a nice guy, but that’s all. As The Atlantic staff and I got to know each other, it seemed like a bad fit, and nothing has made me wish it had worked out otherwise. And yet, even in its current diminished state The Atlantic seems more open to different ideas than the NYT, which is very faint praise indeed.
CRIME IS JUST A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION: MetroGUARD: MTA pays for private security as Gov. Hochul ignores rampant crime.
OPEN THREAD: Talk about what interests you.
DON’T GET COCKY: Throw in the towel. Kari Lake up by 11 in Arizona.
There’s almost definitely something odd going on in the Grand Canyon State and recent surveys suggest that there may be more ticket-splitting than usual coming our way on November 8th. Just this week, the Arizona Senate race moved into a tie, with Real Clear Politics shifting the election from “leans Democrat” to a tossup. But at the very same time, the gubernatorial fight is shaping up to be a blowout unless there is a huge shift in momentum at the eleventh hour. A FOX 10 InsiderAdvantage poll conducted this week gives Republican Kari Lake an eleven-point lead over her debate-adverse Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs. To put it mildly, Democrats are going into full-blown panic mode and scrambling to prevent a potential red wave from turning into a crimson tsunami. (Fox 10 Phoenix)
A new FOX 10 InsiderAdvantage poll shows the race for Governor – widening a bit. But the race for U.S. Senate is turning into a dead heat.
With less than 2 weeks to go before the November election, Republican Kari Lake leads Democrat Katie Hobbs by 11 percentage points. Only about 2% of voters are undecided. Pollster Matt Towery believes that Hobbs’ reluctance to debate Lake may be a reason why the gap has widened in recent weeks. According to InsiderAdvantage, Lake is polling higher among older adults and Hispanics.
I don’t want to jinx anyone by calling any closely contested race a “done deal” with more than a week left to go and Lake clearly can’t afford to take her foot off the gas at this stage. But that same poll showed the race being far closer only a month ago and even favored Hobbs to win earlier in the summer. All of the momentum in the later stages of the battle has been in Lake’s corner.
If Lake is actually drawing those numbers, it could also propel Blake Masters across the finish line: Leftist Think Tank’s Poll: Blake Masters and Mark Kelly Are Tied.
As Glenn likes to say though about eschewing the cockiness, “Seriously, if you care about this election, you need to be out volunteering and donating. Commenting on the Internet doesn’t count.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China rolls out rocket to launch 3rd and final space station module.
THE WAPO’S ERIC WEMPLE: James Bennet was right.
Controversy over an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) consumed the New York Times in June 2020 and claimed the job of then-editorial page editor James Bennet. Two-and-a-half years later, Bennet has shared some thoughts about the episode — and, in particular, the role of Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger.
“He set me on fire and threw me in the garbage and used my reverence for the institution against me,” Bennet recently told Ben Smith of Semafor. “This is why I was so bewildered for so long after I had what felt like all my colleagues treating me like an incompetent fascist.”
That may sound like the angst of a guy who’s still disgruntled at losing his job. And it is, for a compelling reason: Bennet is right. He’s right about Sulzberger, he’s right about the Cotton op-ed, and he’s right about the lessons that linger from his tumultuous final days at the Times.
is outburst in Semafor furnishes a toehold for reassessing one of the most consequential journalism fights in decades. To date, the lesson from the set-to — that publishing a senator arguing that federal troops could be deployed against rioters is unacceptable — will forever circumscribe what issues opinion sections are allowed to address. It’s also long past time to ask why more people who claim to uphold journalism and free expression — including, um, the Erik Wemple Blog — didn’t speak out then in Bennet’s defense.
It’s because we were afraid to.
More here, in an article that isn’t paywalled: Our ‘cowardice’ prevented us from defending James Bennet amid NYT’s Tom Cotton op-ed uproar: WaPo media critic.
“In initially sticking up for the Times’s role in publishing controversial fare, Sulzberger had it right. The paper had published an opinion by a U.S. senator (and possible presidential candidate) advocating for a lawful act by the president,” Wemple wrote.
Wemple knocked the Times staffers who labeled Cotton’s op-ed a “danger,” writing “It was an exercise in manipulative hyperbole brilliantly calibrated for immediate impact.”
“The Erik Wemple Blog has asked about 30 Times staffers whether they still believe their ‘danger’ tweets and whether there was any merit in Bennet’s retort. Not one of them replied with an on-the-record defense. Such was the depth of conviction behind a central argument in l’affaire Cotton,” Wemple wrote.
The Post media critic admitted he and journalists broadly mishandled the episode that resulted in Bennet’s exit.
“It’s also long past time to ask why more people who claim to uphold journalism and free expression — including, um, the Erik Wemple Blog — didn’t speak out then in Bennet’s defense. It’s because we were afraid to,” Wemple wrote. “Our criticism of the Twitter outburst comes 875 days too late. Although the hollowness of the internal uproar against Bennet was immediately apparent, we responded with an evenhanded critique of the Times’s flip-flop, not the unapologetic defense of journalism that the situation required.”
“Our posture was one of cowardice and midcareer risk management. With that, we pile one more regret onto a controversy littered with them,” Wemple added.
WASN’T JOE BIDEN THERE FOR OPENING NIGHT? A 1931 Broadway Play That Describes 2022 Politics.
Can a President be impeached because he likes corn muffins? If Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, and Nancy Pelosi are involved, the answer is most probably yes. But this post isn’t about an actual impeachment. It’s about an impeachment that happened in a Broadway play. IMHO it’s the most biting political satire ever written for the stage. And though it opened on Broadway ninety-one years ago, it perfectly describes politics today.
On December 26th, 1931, the most biting political satire ever written opened at the Music Box Theater on Broadway. Called Of Thee I Sing, it was the first successful American musical with a consistently satiric tone.
What made it work was it captured Americans’ feelings about the politics of the day. What would make it work today is that it captures Americans’ feelings about the politics of now. It includes political issues such as identity politics, a political elite, irrelevant campaign themes, big money politics, and a Congress that changes its positions every time the wind changes and impeached at the drop of a hat, just to name a few.
Read the whole thing.
GREAT MOMENTS IN MESSAGE DISCIPLINE: Biden pushes Corvette to 118 mph in drag race against Colin Powell’s son.
President Biden is burning rubber away from the the midterm campaign trail.
The 79-year-old took his 1967 Corvette Stingray for a spin on an episode of CNBC’s “Jay Leno’s Garage” that aired Wednesday night.
Biden’s green convertible, featuring a 350-horsepower V-8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission, was no match for Michael Powell’s more powerful automatic 2015 Stingray.
The president, clad in a navy blue Ralph Lauren polo, khakis and sunglasses, was beaten off the line at the James J. Rowley Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, Md., and never caught up, despite getting the classic car up to 118 mph.
Powell, the son of the late Secretary of State Colin Powell, avenged Biden’s victory over the elder Powell in a similar drag race that aired on the program in 2016.
Funny how the internal combustion engine is a singular environmental evil — until it’s time for a pre-midterms PR appearance by Grandpa Brandon:
● Biden seeks to make half of new U.S. auto fleet electric by 2030.
● Biden last year: “We will take, literally, millions of automobiles off the road — off the road, saving tens of millions of barrels of oil, dealing with cleaning up the air. This is not hyperbole; this is a fact.”
● Granholm: California’s New Gas Vehicle Sale Ban ‘Could Be’ a National Model. “Elex Michaelson [of Los Angeles’ Fox affiliate] asked [Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm], ‘California made national headlines by becoming the first state to say, by 2035, we’re not going to have any gas-powered vehicles that are new that are being sold. You can still drive your old ones, but you can’t sell new ones. Do you like this concept?’ Granholm responded, ‘Yeah, I do. I think California really is leaning in. And of course, the federal government has a goal of — the president has announced — by 2030 that half of the vehicles in the U.S., the new ones sold would be electric.’”
● Kinsley Gaffe: State Dept. official slammed for saying he prefers high gas prices.
● Buttigieg Whines About Americans Not Wanting Electric Cars.
And all of the games with gas prices:
More malarkey: “Let’s debunk some myths: My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production.”
Joe Biden, it’s time to meet Joe Biden!
● Biden’s plan to cancel Keystone pipeline signals a rocky start with Canada.
—The Washington Post, January 19th, 2021.
● Success: Biden Gets the High Gas Prices He Promised.
—The Pipeline, June 17th.
● Biden pulls 3 offshore oil lease sales, curbing new drilling this year.
—The Washington Post, May 12th.
● Biden administration won’t appeal judge’s ruling revoking Gulf of Mexico drilling leases.
—The Washington Post, February 28th.
Flashbacks: Why Aren’t Democrats Dancing for Joy About Sky-High Gas Prices?
In the service of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats have long openly worked to raise the price of fossil fuel energy. They have done so by proposing carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, higher leasing fees, and other measures to jack up costs so people burn less of it. This is why Barack Obama said, in answer to a related question about electricity, that his energy plan would make prices “necessarily skyrocket.” This is why Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna praised BP’s CEO less than six months ago for pledging to reduce oil and gas production by 40% by 2030. Reductions in oil production and rising gasoline prices are part of the Democrats’ agenda and the Paris climate agenda.
There’s even more to it than that. Over the past decade, the Democrats’ overt hostility toward fossil fuels has even driven companies in the industry to sideline production, purely for public relations purposes, while prioritizing meaningless, politically correct carbon emissions goals. How can Democrats suddenly feign outrage at their incredible success in influencing the industry?
Is it a mystery why Democrats aren’t doing a sack dance and celebrating the salvation of planet earth?
There’s the small matter of their political survival, of course. It would be unseemly — like doing a jig at an Irish funeral — to celebrate other people’s pain. And it would cost many Democrats who are secretly jubilant about high gas prices their political careers.
Instead, Democrats are pretending to look for a way to “ease consumers’ pain.”
In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So despite Biden claiming today that high gas prices are Putin’s fault, is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
● Americans Need To Pay More for Gas To Defend ‘Liberal World Order.’
● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.
● The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
ELON MUSK ANNOUNCES HE BOUGHT TWITTER IN $44 BILLION DEAL:
Elon Musk is officially Twitter’s new daddy — at least according to Elon Musk — who says he hopes the platform will continue to be a digital town square for years to come.
The Tesla/SpaceX boss explained his reasons for the $44 billion purchase Thursday, saying, “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide in our society.” He continues, “In the relentless pursuit of clicks, much of traditional media has fueled and catered to those polarized extremes, as they believe that is what brings in the money, but, in doing so, the opportunity for dialogue is lost.”
He says, “That is why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love. And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility.”
The New Republic has a sad: Why Elon Musk’s Idea of “Free Speech” Will Help Ruin America. Twitter without content moderation—and with Donald Trump and others reinvited—means that lies and disinformation will overwhelm the truth and the fascists will take over.
Disinformation, you say?
“Disinformation” is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya. It is a KGB form of tradecraft from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB First Chief Directorate, otherwise known as the KGB foreign spy academy.
Disinformation is definition 159 in the KGB’s “Lexicon of KGB Terms,” published internally by the Soviet foreign intelligence service before 1984. Here it is: “Misleading by means of false information; A form of intelligence work in the Active Measures field, which consists of the secret channeling towards an adversary of false information, especially prepared materials and fabricated documents designed to mislead him and prompt him to take decisions and measures which fit with the plans and intentions of the Intelligence Service.”
No wonder it’s become the left’s newest favorite word.
UPDATE: It’s Begun: Elon Musk Lays Down the Law in Memo to Twitter Advertisers.
MORE: Elon Musk now in charge of Twitter, CEO and CFO have left, sources tell CNBC.
The WaPo adds, “As one of his first moves, [Musk] fired several top Twitter executives, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. One of those confirmed the deal had closed. CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, were all fired, according to the people. Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel, was also pushed out, one of the people said.”
Flashback to April: “Shortly after billionaire Elon Musk bought the powerful social media platform, top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde called a virtual meeting with the policy and legal teams she oversees to discuss what the new ownership could mean for them. Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change, according to three people familiar with the meeting. She acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk’s leadership…Gadde played a leading role in negotiating the deal between Twitter and Musk, according to one person familiar with the dynamics. She has shepherded Twitter through some of its most contentious political battles, including the decisions to remove all political advertising and to boot former President Donald Trump from the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill — a position that has earned her devoted fans within Twitter, as well as a large contingent of right-wing critics.”
Also in April: ‘What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board:’ Elon Musk’s messages to Twitter’s top management reveal heated negotiations.
THE DEMAND FOR ELECTRIC-CAR DRIVERS EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY: Electrify America Chargers Are Rarely Used – What’s Up With Non-Tesla Fast Charging? “Electrify America reported they conducted 1.45 million charging sessions in 2021. They announce that with pride, but it’s worth noting that they had around 3,500 charging stalls at the end of 2021, and around 2,300 at the start, for an average of just under 3,000. So that works out to a rough average of around 1.25 charging sessions a day per stall, a shockingly low number.”
DRINKING WITH James Bond.
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