I’LL CATCH THE GRAY MEN WHEN THEY DIVE FROM THE 14TH FLOOR: Wells Fargo Executive Leaped to His Death from Boardroom Window. “Greg Beckett was assigned to work on the bank’s internal controls that protect it from risks.” Weirdly, he actually did dive from the 14th floor.
Don’t let ’em fall on me.
DON SURBER: “The civil — well, non-criminal — Democrat vengeance trial of Donald Trump began yesterday in Manhattan. . . . New York charged President Trump with claiming his property is worth more than the amount recorded in the tax books. Only 99% of American taxpayers do that. The trial should be as fair as the 5 wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. The judge is a kangaroo.”
AND YET WHAT HE DID WAS CHUMP CHANGE COMPARED TO THE BIDENS: Robert Menendez Broke the Goldilocks Rule of Corruption.
The question is whether this level of corruption is now enough for Democrats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) recently suggested a type of Goldilocks rule for corruption. He warned that people in Washington had better be careful if they want to crack down on the Biden family’s influence-peddling.
“If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries — not just in politics — where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique.”
It would appear that the question is not corruption, but when a little corruption is “just right.”
Plus: “So get ready for politicians to suddenly declare themselves ‘shocked, shocked’ by the allegations against Menendez. These are the same people who made Menendez the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, twice. They gave him the power of leverage with countries where bribery is an accepted practice. It was like making a known arsonist the CEO of the International Paper Corporation. In the end, the problem is not Menendez. It is the array of other politicians who enabled him while dismissing his reputation for corruption. To use Newsom’s words, Menendez is ‘hardly unique’ for cashing in on his position. That is precisely the problem.”
BIT BY BIT, THE ASIAN AMERICAN VOTE IS TRENDING GOP: Some of the reasons for this are contained in my Statement written in connection with the Commissioner on Civil Rights’ report of Anti-Asian racism.
“DOES THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION HAVE IT IN FOR ELON MUSK?”
JustTheNews says:
“Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter (now X), relaxed its misinformation policies on the platform, and become increasingly critical of Democrats and the Biden administration, federal agencies have begun probing X, Tesla, and SpaceX, raising questions about targeting of the billionaire’s breadth of companies.”
This weaponization of government makes Nixon look like an amateur.
ROUTINE BUT NEVER BORING: SpaceX rounds out third quarter with 70 launches for the year.
So far we’ve seen SpaceX launch 70 rockets in the year, beating the company’s 2022 record of 61. This was the company’s fourth straight year of beating its year to date record from the previous year. In 2020 when this current streak started, SpaceX was only able to launch 26 times that year.
Starlink has played a huge role in getting SpaceX’s launch numbers so high. The company began launching Gen 2 “Mini” Starlink satellites to expand but also replace the now four plus year old Gen 1 satellites. Out of the 70 launches so far this year, only 27 were non-Starlink missions, including NASA crewed and cargo flights, some commercial satellite flights, and missions for the DoD.
Of course the Falcon 9 has carried the vast majority of those 70 launches.However, 2023 has been a good year for Falcon Heavy flights from SpaceX. Practically a Falcon 9 with two extra first stages strapped to its sides as boosters, the Falcon Heavy laid dormant for several years since its first round of commercial launches in 2019. That changed when the Space Force launched its first mission on a Falcon Heavy at the end of 2022 and since then we’ve seen three more launches this year with a fourth, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, coming next week.
A close friend of mine spent many years building and launching rockets for ULA and, before that, Lockheed-Martin, and Martin Marietta. Before SpaceX proved reusability was feasible and profitable, he explained to me one of the reasons it would “never work.” ULA and others had looked into reusability for decades and determined there wasn’t enough launch demand to make it profitable. He was very sincere but, in the end, also very wrong.
SpaceX’s Starlink helps create the demand that SpaceX uses to generate the profits that keep SpaceX rockets a generation (or two) ahead of the competition. That’s about as slick a business model as any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: I Can’t Believe What Biden Just Stole From Trump. “Today I discovered a case in which Biden quietly murdered one of Trump’s most successful policies only to resurrect it with much more fanfare..”
IT’S COME TO THIS: What if Everyone Wanted a Maritime Strategy, But We Never Got One?
LIBERAL GETS MUGGED: Breaking: Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar Reportedly Carjacked at Gunpoint in DC.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: With Trump Already Found Guilty, His New York Fraud Trial Begins. “This isn’t a judicial proceeding; it’s a partisan farce. . . . Most significantly, the good judge imposed the corporate death penalty: putting Trump, his adult sons, and the Trump Organization out of business, taking away their state-issued business licenses, calling for the appointment of receivers to oversee the dissolution of Trump’s business entities, and continuing to subject him to monitors. And now, after all that, the trial begins.”
LOL:
“Wow. I really wish someone would’ve warned them. So sad.” pic.twitter.com/xb5LXEmbm3
— Ken Theroux (@KenTheroux) October 2, 2023
OPEN THREAD: I do this for you.
STACY MCCAIN: ‘Building a Deeply Inclusive Culture.’
This year, Forbes named 26-year-old Pava Lapere to its prestigious “30 Under 30” business leaders. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, LaPere co-founded a successful startup company, EcoMap Technologies, based in Baltimore. Lapere was recently praised by her colleagues:
“Pava was not only the visionary force behind EcoMap but was also a deeply compassionate and dedicated leader. Her untiring commitment to our company, to Baltimore, to amplifying the critical work of ecosystems across the country, and to building a deeply inclusive culture as a leader, friend, and partner set a standard . . .”
Perhaps you noticed the past tense verb, “was.” Because, did I mention — I’m pretty sure I did — that Lapere based her company in Baltimore, where the crime rate is worse than Chicago?
* * * * * * * *
“She wanted to disrupt the tech industry’s reigning power structure of white men and make way for more women and other people from disadvantaged groups. . . . She studied computer science for three years before switching her major to sociology because, she said, she wanted to use entrepreneurship to solve inequalities in society. . . . EcoMap has committed to a ’50/50%’ goal of employing a staff that is half women and half people of color.” And of course, she was a BLM supporter.
Standing against “systemic racism” is all fine and good, I suppose, up until the moment you die from blunt force trauma because a convicted sex offender, who was sentenced to 30 years, gets out of prison early under a “criminal justice reform” law that gave him “good time” credits:
Read the whole thing.
FIRE IN MICROGRAVITY: Watch Chinese astronauts light a match on Tiangong space station.
IS THE POPE CATHOLIC?
BREAKING: Pope Francis expresses openness to same-sex blessings in response to cardinal criticshttps://t.co/k88pjtCPeM
— America Magazine (@americamag) October 2, 2023
Related: Read Pope Francis’ response to the dubia presented to him by 5 cardinals.
THE CRITICAL DRINKER ON THE CREATOR: “Flawed Brilliance” (video).
MICHAEL WALSH: Good-Bye to All That.
And here we are. Despite the polls, which at this point only offer a choice between two superannuated, erratic geriatrics, the voting public understands that neither Trump nor Biden is the way forward. Both are running in large part on resentment of the other, and of the nearly — nearly — 50 percent of Americans who, at the moment, support them. But there is a near-zero chance that either man will be on the ballot in November of 2024 when the only poll that matters takes place. (Ask Hillary Clinton if she disagrees.) Biden is visibly crumbling before everybody’s eyes, while Trump’s King Lear imitation on his vanity social-media platform, Truth Social, has become a national embarrassment.
Further, the increasingly surly Biden’s performance in office is the best argument against returning him to power, while Trump’s disgraceful final year in office, which includes both turning the country over to the sinister Tony Fauci and summoning the demons of January 6 to challenge an election even his closet advisers later admitted under oath they knew was lost, disqualifies him from another turn in the Oval Office.
But, as they used to say in Vietnam, embrace the suck. With neither octogenarian (Trump would be 82 at the close of a hypothetical second term) in the race, the way would be clear for a long-overdue changing of the Boomer and even pre-Boomer guard that has long dominated U.S. politics. A Trump- and Biden-free election opens up vast new vistas for a rapidly changing country, allowing frank if not always friendly discussion about today’s particularly thorny problems, including the untrammeled invasion across the southern border, the rolling back of Critical Theory and all its unholy spawns, and returning the libertine genie of “non-binary” sexuality to its bottle and burying it at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
The removal of Trump and Biden from the lists would also immediately make clear the stark distinctions between the parties, unencumbered by their outsized, media-fueled personalities. On the left, the death of modern Liberalism, which began with the McGovern campaign of 1972, would be laid bare, and the “woke” minority exposed for the malignant civilization-killers they are. On the right, the post-presidential poison of Trumpism would dissipate into the atmosphere, to be replaced by a fair contest among Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence (representing some form of Trumpism minus Trump), and perhaps even Glenn Youngkin, currently lurking in plain sight.
As Andrew McCarthy notes: Democrats’ 2024 Plan Is Working to Perfection. “Former president Trump has a nine-point lead over President Joe Biden in a recent Washington Post/ABC poll! Yeah, right. So skewed in Trump’s favor is this survey, it’s hilarious — at least until it dawns on you that this nonsense was put out by reliable media-Democratic-complex organs, in the undoubted calculation that Republicans would crow, ‘See? Trump must be the nominee!’ As night follows day, Republicans have fallen for it — as if we inhabit a world where it is fathomable that the deeply unpopular Trump has a nearly double-digit lead over the incumbent president. What could get it to 20 points? Another Capitol riot?”
QUESTION ASKED: Are Cops Allowed to Be the Good Guys Yet?
Hollywood nuked the hero-cop, in an effort to be less offensive to those who might confuse movies with real life. Nowadays, exploring a cop’s internal struggles in film and seeing the world through their eyes in our current, crime-ridden era is far too brazen and provocative.
And if a filmmaker dares try, our cadre of trusty critics and demagogues are ready to swarm and condemn any effort as an endorsement of all police actions and an apology for anything awful that a real cop has ever done.
Maybe we are this impressionable?
Would the resurrection of cops as big-screen protagonists elevate the optics of the law enforcement profession, attracting a more inspired applicant? (See the Navy recruitment boost after 1986’s “Top Gun”) Cadets who are more equipped to deescalate tensions, make split-second life-or-death calls, even catch the teenage version of me?
We empower police with lethality; we should only encourage this if we want cops to be the best of us.
“There’s a flip side to that coin.”
Passions have simmered since 2020. In Minneapolis, where they enacted cuts to law enforcement budgets and staff, and in LA, where the mayor pledged to cut one hundred fifty million in police funding outside his mansion in Hancock Park, the statistics should be strategically dismissed.
Sure, crime rates have soared and response times have increased, but why would we want to summon the police anyway? Aren’t they the bad guys now?
Even if some of our national crime wave isn’t being exaggerated by Fox News, people on the Westside need not worry, it’s the communities of color that will continue to suffer the brunt of this brave new world.
Cops are still acceptable on the small screen, however. In his 1983 book Inside Prime Time, the late Todd Gitlin wrote:
[Police Story and Police Woman producer David] Gerber took to cop shows not only because the police were society’s blue line but because they could be the networks’. In the industry jargon, they afforded a franchise—a hero’s right to interfere every week in the lives of others. “In television there are a certain amount of franchises,” Gerber points out. “What do you got? You got doctor, lawyer, and chief. Throw in some Indians, for westerns. So doctor, lawyer, and police; the westerns are gone. You try to do something offbeat—White Shadow, Paper Chase, American Dream—and you get shot down. So you stay with the franchise or you take a chance. In June the networks have patience with anything. The flowers are blooming, hooray, hooray. Come September, they lose patience, because they’re in a competitive race.”
Much more recently — last year — Cheers producer Rob Long wrote in Commentary: How You Know Americans Like Cops.
But my friend who pitched this project did not make a sale. Cops, he was told, are problematic. People, he was told, don’t like cop shows because they no longer like cops. And no one wants to see a show about bad cops trying to go straight.
Which was an odd conclusion for those television executives to draw. From the Law & Order franchise (begun in 1990) to the CSI collection of hit police dramas on CBS (begun in 2000) to the successful reboots of S.W.A.T. (premiered 2017) and FBI (debuted 2018)—American audiences can’t seem to get enough of cops putting bad guys in jail. Blue Bloods, a popular and long-running drama on CBS about an NYPD family, has been a ratings workhorse since 2010. It rarely dips below 10 million viewers per episode. And don’t forget the two 911s on Fox and Chicago PD on NBC.
So why did my friend strike out all over town? Because he was pitching a new series, something fresh and original—well, not too fresh or original, it was basically The Dirty Dozen with cops—and it rattled the executives. It’s one thing to extend a franchise that already exists and that comes from a powerful producer—Dick Wolf at NBC, Jerry Bruckheimer at CBS— but it’s another to ask a network exec to lean back in his Aeron and take a chance on something, especially when all the cultural indicators he follows are sending the loud message that cops are radioactive.
And yet: The ratings for these shows in general have been steady-as-she-goes, even during 2020, the tumultuous year that saw protests, riots, and the defund-the-police movement take hold of American culture. Well, certain parts of American culture.
According to my rough math, based on weekly Nielsen ratings, about 75 million people watch police dramas every week. They may be out of step with the moment, but that’s a lot of people. Enough to make a difference in things that depend on getting a large group to agree with you, as in election results.
I’ll bet a fair amount of those viewers would enjoy a good big screen popcorn movie about cops as well.
IN THE MAIL: Borrowed Time, by John Nolte.
ROGER KIMBALL: Jamaal Bowman and the Wisdom of Orwell.
What’s the most famous line in George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm”?
One good candidate comes when the animals wake up one day to discover that the uplifting, egalitarian motto that had been painted on the side of the barn for all to see—“All Animals Are Equal”—had acquired a codicil.
“All Animals are Equal,” it now read, “But Some Are More Equal Than Others.”
It’s a proclamation for our time.
Don’t be surprised if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides to substitute it for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) current motto “QUI PRO DOMINA JUSTITIA SEQUITUR”: “Who prosecutes for Lady Justice.”
Actually, Mr. Garland keeps telling us that “no one is above the law” and “everyone, Democrat as well as Republican,” is treated the same.
That’s what he says.
However, he does the opposite, as anyone who compares the way that (for example) the Bidens are treated and the way Donald Trump and his supporters are treated.
It’s a two-tier, banana-republic system over which Mr. Garland presides, with some animals obviously, flagrantly being more equal than others.
The latest, mildly comical example of this dispensation was vouchsafed to us by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, “D” with a capital “D” from New York.
The gambit that Orwell described has come in handy for Mr. Bowman.
When Mr. Bowman was a school principal, he warned students that if they disrupted the school’s business by frivolously calling 911, pulling a fire alarm when there was no fire, and so on, they would face suspension or expulsion.
Now that he’s an elected representative of the U.S. Congress, however, he sees how useful such disruptions can be.
Stephen Miller adds: It Would Appear Some People Are Above The Law:
In this country, no one is above the law” has become a rallying mantra of both our national media and increasing, the Democratic Party (but is there a difference, really?). Attorney General Merrick Garland used this phrase on 60 Minutes this past Sunday, as did President Joe Biden during a friendly kid glove chat with ProPublica reporter John Harwood.
As justification for pursuing more than ninety indictments on several fronts against former president Donald Trump, on everything from electioneering to housing classified documents, the left has pounded the tables on the rule of law being the most important foundational principal to the survival of the Republic itself. And it has been solemnly reported that way by several cable news infotainment, including Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow.
Well now they get to put this claim to the test. This past weekend, as members of Congress were staying to vote on a continuing resolution to avert a possible government shutdown, Representative Jamaal Bowman, from New York, was captured on video camera in the federal Cannon Building appearing to pull a red and clearly-labeled fire alarm. Bowman’s excuse, per his office, was that he was in a hurry and the notion of a push-bar exit door confused and disoriented him at the time.
Meanwhile, Bowman keeps digging: In Jamaal Bowman’s continuing tale of unfortunate events, he ‘accidentally’ calls Republicans ‘Nazis:’
I just became aware that in our messaging guidance, there was inappropriate use of the term Nazi without my consent. I condemn the use of the term Nazi out of its precise definition. It is important to specify the term Nazi to refer to members of the Nazi party & neo-Nazis. https://t.co/DUi92VpUia
— Congressman Jamaal Bowman (@RepBowman) October 2, 2023
Which seems odd, because today isn’t the first time that he’s called a Republican a Nazi:
Was it also an accidental, non-consensual use of the term when you called me a Nazi back in March? Do you condemn that use of the term too? https://t.co/frEmJjJ16u pic.twitter.com/YFp1OJwKho
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) October 2, 2023
And finally, America’s Newspaper of Record “reports:” Rep. Bowman Pulls Fire Alarm Again While Trying To Flush Urinal.
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