OLD AND BUSTED: Lizzo Vows ‘The Whole Country Will Be Like Detroit’ if Kamala Harris Becomes President.

The New Hotness? Will the whole country be like Oakland if Kamala because president? How progressive politics turned Kamala Harris’s birthplace into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Oakland, birthplace of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and the city where she launched her ill-fated presidential campaign in 2019, now resembles a post-apocalyptic nightmare, its streets piled high with trash, burned-out vehicles and homeless encampments.

Driving through its streets is a surreal and potentially dangerous experience. Many businesses have closed down and are boarded up. Those still operating are covered in graffiti, even on their windows, and many refuse to allow customers inside for fear of being robbed.

Critics of Ms Harris, who began her legal career as a prosecutor in Oakland, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, argue that the city is a stark example of the results of extreme Left-wing policies, some of which she embraced when she ran in the 2020 presidential race.

This time around, Ms Harris has distanced herself from movements such as “defund the police”, which she praised four years ago.

Former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has branded Ms Harris a “communist”, rejecting her claims that she was tough on crime as a prosecutor and as California’s attorney general.

Meanwhile, Oakland criminals are becoming more brazen by the day, emboldened by the knowledge that the average police response time after a 911 emergency call is 48 minutes. Their latest method of break-and-enter theft is “ram and rob”—smashing a car through a storefront before jumping out to loot.

Related: Harris still won’t weigh in on California’s tough-on-crime ballot measure.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is registered to vote in California, said Wednesday that she still needs to take a look at Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure on California’s Nov. 5 ballot that would reverse some progressive criminal justice reforms voters approved a decade ago.

“I’ve not voted yet and I’ve actually not read it yet,” Harris told reporters ahead of a flight from Detroit to New Jersey, in response to a question about Proposition 36. “But I’ll let you know.”

Why does Proposition 36 exist? To dial back the excesses of Proposition 47: How Kamala Harris Helped Create a Crime Wave in CA.

In 2014, as Attorney General, Kamala Harris was one of the leading champions of Prop 47 — which eliminated the ability of police and prosecutors to arrest and punish criminals in California for countless crimes.

Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California and candidate for State Assembly, says Harris even lied to voters by giving Prop 47 a false and misleading ballot title that suggested it was a “tough-on-crime” initiative. The title read: “Criminal Sentences. Misdemeanor Penalties. Initiative Statute.” This began the practice of state Attorneys General approving misleading ballot titles.

“Because of Kamala Harris and Prop 47, a crime wave has hit California — with our communities across the state experiencing an unprecedented spike in both retail/property crimes as well as violent crimes ranging from assault, rape, and murder,” said DeMaio.

DeMaio says that in November, voters have a chance to turn the tide to stop the California crime wave by voting yes on a new ballot measure, Prop 36.

No wonder Kamala is playing so coy about Prop 36.

UPDATE: Will the whole country be like Minneapolis if Kamala wins? Flashback: Did Tim Walz ’Let Minneapolis Burn?’

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

MELISSA MACKENZIE: The Best Possible Outcome for Democrats: A Trump Win.

It took a bit of time, but the hagiography of the media around Kamala Harris couldn’t hold. She is what she always was: an incompetent, dull-witted woman who achieved her success through horizontal negotiations and pretty privilege. Every time she talks, American voters wince. Every advertisement is a herculean effort in combatting full-body cringe reactions. To Scott McKay’s point: Kamala Harris isn’t having fun, her campaign isn’t having fun, and good grief, her voters aren’t having fun. She’ll get plenty of votes simply because she has ovaries, but even Biden polled better among women than Harris is now.

It’s a cataclysmic political outcome. Except, it’s not.

Should Harris win, it will be worse for the Democrats (and America, but we’re talking politics only for the moment). Consider, if she wins, after four disastrous years, she’ll be crowding out other, more able candidates. By losing, the Democrats can regroup and find someone who actually has a chance against JD Vance and/or Ron DeSantis, two young and capable politicians waiting in the wings.

Boom! With both Biden and Harris gone, two of the worst politicians in recent memory, the Democrats are free to remake themselves. The question is this, though: will they?

Is there a successor to the Democratic Leadership Council eager to promote another Bill Clinton-style move (feign) to somewhere near the center if Kamala loses? Or are the post-2020 Dems so over their skis that such a move would be impossible?

Related: “We’re nine days away from the end of the presidential election (and potentially a few days more away from knowing the victor). But within one of the defining political factions of our era, the possibility of a Harris win is already prompting an existential question: Are we in the last gasps of the Never Trump movement?”

QUESTION ASKED: Is Tua Tagovailoa the Man Who Will Kill the NFL?

On Sunday, he’ll return to the field when the Miami Dolphins face the Arizona Cardinals. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell would never admit it, but he doesn’t want Tua to play. Not on Sunday, not ever again.

Because, if Tua takes another headshot, it would probably end his career. That’s bad PR.

Worst case scenario, it could kill him.

And that just might kill the NFL.

Not right away, of course. But then again, CTE doesn’t kill you right away, either.

Pro football is deeply entrenched in American culture, but there are troubling signs of erosion: The “kneeling” controversy alienated a percentage of fans, and for many different reasons, younger Americans are less likely to watch or play the game. It’s a sign of the times: Facebook is more popular than face masks.

But the biggest issue is the risk of brain damage.

In a recent survey, 92% of parents worried about brain damage from tackle football. And 91% doubted if helmets provided adequate protection.

If kids don’t play the game, in 20 years, there is no game.

In contrast, as Scott Pinsker writes: “When I was a kid, concussions were funny. It was kinda the football version of that pull-my-finger gag:”

In fact, all the way until 2006, ESPN featured a segment called “Jacked Up!” It was nothing but devastating, ungodly collisions — and concussions galore.

No hyperbole, folks. Check out this snippet from 2004. It’s less than two minutes long. Note how gleeful and giddy the hosts are:

Heck, the 1977 CBS NFL Today opening credits are full of clips that would get players permanently banned from the league today, but back then, this was considered the cheerful introduction to an afternoon of family-friendly TV viewing:

This 1977 CBS NFL Today intro is fucking spectacular. The plays get progressively more illegal and fucked up to the point I was almost expecting some guy to get murdered on the field by the end. Do yourself a favor and watch this.

pic.twitter.com/PIlcjiO46Z

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) August 26, 2024

That NFL is long gone; Pinsker wonders how much longer the league itself will go on. No wonder Roger Goodell was probably thrilled that all the kneeling and protests from 2015 to 2017 kept concussions out of the sports section for a few years.

FASTER, PLEASE: Breakthrough coming? Iceland could get solar power from space in 2030.

I remember talking about space solar power to people in the eighties and nineties to responses that ranged from skeptical to disdainful. Likewise space tourism. But now that stuff is becoming real.

THE LAST DAYS OF COCAINE MITCH: McConnell will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November after a record run in the job.

HAHA: Michelle Obama Scolds Michigan: It’s Not Funny. “To anyone out there thinking about sitting out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you, your rage does not exist in a vacuum… To the women listening, we have every right to demand that the men in our lives do better by us. We have to use our voices to make these choices clear to the men that we love. Our lives are worth more than their anger and disappointment.”

That’s right. The old pitch was to be “man enough to vote for a woman.” The new pitch is “never mind, just be henpecked enough to vote for a woman when your wife or girlfriend demands it, rather than risk her displeasure. Your feelings and desires don’t matter, you’re only men and we Democrats basically hate you anyway. But now we need your vote.”

That should sell.

WE’VE ENTERED SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH VAN JONES IS A VOICE OF SANITY:

“If progressives have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil it’s kinda hard to keep them on your side. If you're chasing people out of the party, you can't be mad when they leave.”

— Van Jones pic.twitter.com/Cld4KgQn5C

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) October 26, 2024

Earlier: Dems’ Closing Pitch to Young Men: Stop Being Fascist Oppressors and Vote Kamala.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Absolute Nutter Gwen Walz Says Tampons in Boys’ Bathrooms Help Students Learn to Read.

UNHINGED: Gwen Walz says public schools stocking tampons in boys' bathrooms is about "learning to read and closing gaps" pic.twitter.com/Lg92Uwb0d9

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 27, 2024

REPORT: Israel hit Iranian nuclear test sites, satellite reveals.

Israeli air strikes damaged a military base linked to Iran’s defunct nuclear weapons programme on Saturday, satellite images show.

The attack appears to have hit a ballistic missile site in Parchin, where it is suspected Iran has previously conducted tests of high explosives that could be used in a nuclear weapon.

Photographs taken on Sunday morning by satellite firm Planet Labs also showed that an Israeli strike destroyed two buildings at the nearby Khojir base, where analysts believe solid fuel for ballistic missiles was mixed.

Israel did not target Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil refineries, after pressure from US and other Western countries.

David Albright, a former UN inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security, was the first to identify the damage to the bases. He confirmed that one of the buildings hit in Parchin, Taleghan 2, was formerly used for nuclear testing.

* * * * * * * * *

Ronen Solomon, an Israeli defence analyst, said the former nuclear site was still a critical part of Iran’s nuclear supply chain.

“The [Israeli] idea is to cut the supply of ballistic missiles to use against Israel, and in the end to prevent Iran building a nuclear warhead,” he said.

Mr Solomon said the attack allowed Israel to bypass a veto from the West and Iran on hitting Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, such as Natanz. “This isn’t a nuclear facility, as Iran… called it a military facility, so that gave Israel a green light to attack it.”

He added: “Israel couldn’t target the enrichment, so it targeted the integration of the missile and the trigger of the bomb for the head of the missile, which is being tested at Taleghan 2.”

In his “World War III Tracker,” Steve Hayward wrote:

Regarding Israel’s strike on Iran, it appears Israel has acceded to American demands that it not strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, or its important oil infrastructure. This likely reflects not merely the usual timorousness of Democratic foreign and defense policy elites, but the more proximate driver of the upcoming election. Democrats are terrified that any escalation of the Middle East front will diminish further Kamala Harris’s chances of winning.

At The Free Press, Niall Ferguson writes,”the United States has lost all but a shred of the influence it once had over Israeli policy. Fact: As a share of Israeli national income, U.S. aid peaked at 22 percent in 1979. It’s now down to 0.6 percent.”

If so, why is Israel still taking its cues from the Biden-Harris White House as to what they can and cannot attack?

SEEMS LIKE ALL THE OZEMPIC NEWS IS GOOD: Alzheimer’s Breakthrough: Popular Diabetes Drug Ozempic Linked to Much Lower Risk.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Liberals spread fake image of Kamala’s face superimposed on female Canadian McDonald’s employee who died of cancer in 2007.

A digitally altered image of Kamala Harris dressed as a McDonald’s employee has gone viral on social media, sparking debate over her recent claim that she once worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California. The photo, widely shared by some liberal users as supposed “proof” of Harris’s claim, is actually a modified image of a white Canadian woman who passed away from cancer in 2007.

The original photo is of Suzanne Bernier, who passed away from cancer in 2007, according to an archived webpage about her life.

Earlier: Meet the New York Times Source Who Claims Kamala Harris’s Late Mother Told Her That Her Daughter Worked at McDonald’s. She’s a Harris Campaign Surrogate Who’s Visited the White House.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I’m a self-made millionaire at 20 — but my X-rated career has ruined my dating life. She does seem to cast the problem as coming from her earning more than boyfriends, which may be part of it, but probably isn’t all of it.

“However, the star, who creates niche, X-rated content featuring her beloved Ford Falcon, said she’s proud of the financial stability she’s been able to create for herself, and won’t make herself smaller for a man’s comfort.”

PAULINE KAEL, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

As Kael herself never said, “I live in a rather special world. I don’t know anyone with truck nuts. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

STEVE HAYWARD: Behind the Left’s Hitler Hysteria.

With the election possibly coming down to a margin of a few thousand votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Harris can’t afford any attrition among progressive and young voters who ought to be in her pocket. Playing the Hitler Card is a desperate attempt to keep these voters from defecting or not voting at all.

Every person who plays the Hitler card, or drops an F-bomb needs to be asked how they would define fascism: Fascism, Again. An explainer, of sorts.

UPDATE: Tim Walz Calls Trump Madison Square Garden Attendees Nazis.

The most multicultural Nazis ever!

UPDATE: The Political “F” Word Will Backfire On Harris.

Yes, this week, with help from The Atlantic and New York Times reports of disgruntled former Trump staffers such as John Kelly making odd claims, Kamala Harris turned again to the tired account of how Trump is really like Hitler. Perhaps sensing that the campaign isn’t going far enough, The Atlantic published a breathless account by Anne Appelbaum of how Die Orange Führer is using the powers of all the great modern dictators. It was titled “Trump is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.”

For anyone who really believes this, I have some good psychological counselors I can recommend.

The fact is, though, that it’s not really working. As of October 26, 2024, the RealClearPolitics national average of polls has Trump beating Harris by 0.1% and 0.9% in the battleground states. He’s never polled better. And the betting markets average has a Trump victory at 60.5% with a Harris victory at 38.3%.

Nothing is guaranteed, but even left-wing Vox seems a bit dubious about choosing the “Trump is a fascist” strategy as a “closing argument.” Writer Christian Paz’s explainer piece about why the campaign took the Democrats’ road continually traveled explains that it has arisen from desperation: “According to polling, she’s been largely unable to make more inroads with independents or continue making gains with swing-state voters after an initial burst of support after taking up her party’s nomination.” And yet, Paz also observes that this iteration of “F” word bombing isn’t really that different from Joe Biden’s “democracy and Dobbs” approach, which wasn’t successful: “Based on Biden’s polling, that message wasn’t working.”

Exit question: Jewish People Attend Trump ‘Nazi’ Rally at Madison Square Garden. Didn’t They Get the Memo?

ALL THE VICE-PRESIDENT’S MEN: “Surprising and disappointing:” Woodward and Bernstein respond to Bezos blocking WaPo endorsement.

Two of the most famed reporters to ever work for the Washington Post are sounding off on owner Jeff Bezos‘ decision to squash any presidential endorsement from the paper.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the duo that broke the Watergate scandal for the paper and brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon*, called Bezos’ move “surprising and disappointing” in a joint statement.

“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy,” they shared. “Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

* In 2004, “Woodward [dismissed] both detractors and fans who contend that the media unseated a president. ‘To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit,’ he says. ‘The press always plays a role, whether by being passive or by being aggressive, but it’s a mistake to overemphasize’ the media’s coverage.”

Despite that, as Joseph Campbell explored in 2022 in a textbook “Media Myth Alert:” Watergate at 50: Why the ‘heroic-journalist’ myth still defines the scandal.

Curiously, modern-day Posties, while angry with the paper, still want to keep getting their lucrative paychecks signed by Jeff Bezos:

Playing a factor in the calculus of that decision maybe the concern that their potential readers could be even dumber if they leave the Post and go elsewhere:

OBAMA/HARRIS OFFICIAL CUTS VIDEOS PRAISING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Wilson Osorio is a senior-level political appointee of the Biden-Harris administration at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He’s also a prolific TikTok voice praising and encouraging illegal immigration, according to Tom Jones and the American Accountability Foundation (AAF).

TAKING THE CAMPAIGN DEEP IN OPPOSING TERRITORY:

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN IS PACKED FOR TRUMP 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/lKqEkMRPDu

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 27, 2024

UPDATE (From Ed):

Never seen a nazi rally with jews, blacks, and hindus as speakers 🤣 pic.twitter.com/xtT67T2Tre

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) October 27, 2024

FOREBODINGS:

I think there's a great disquiet in the world today. People are excited but afraid and rightly so, for no one can say what these towering clouds mean. But we'll find out.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 26, 2024

CLEAN YOUR OWN CAR: VIKING Car Wash Brush, Long Handle Tire Cleaner for Car Detailing.

OLD AND BUSTED: England’s Great Train Robbery.

The New Hotness in Old Blighty? The Great Cheese Robbery! Massive Cheese Heist in London: Authorities Describe Thieves’ Plan as Brie-lliant.

There are con men, then there are con artists, and then there is the guy who passed himself off as a French cheese wholesaler and made off with 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning British cheddar. You have to admit; that’s fetamazing.

Thieves with a nose for fine cheese have pulled off a massive cheddar ripoff in London.

Neal’s Yard Dairy said a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer had made off with 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning cheddar worth 300,000 British pounds ($390,000) before the company realized it had been scammed and reported the theft on Monday.

“The high monetary value of these cheeses likely made them a particular target for the thieves,” Neal’s Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler, and retailer of British artisanal cheese, said in a statement.

Whoever this con artist is, he’s too gouda to be believed. While I’m not any more fondue of crooks than anyone else, you’ve got to admit, this took some chutzpah. One wonders if the mastermind planned this provolone, or if he had help. I mean, that’s a pretty sharp trick to pull off. I camembert an equally audacious act of thievery, anywhere. It almost has a roma-ntic vibe to it, doesn’t it? If you don’t think so, well, I suppose we can abrie to disabrie.

In their write-up of the incident, the BBC made sure to include the most important detail of the incident: “Westcombe Dairy’s maturing cave is equipped with cheddar-turning robot, nicknamed Tina the Turner.”

That’s absolutely adorable.

THEY TOLD US THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED, AND THEN: Shaken Baby Syndrome Has Been Discredited. Why Is Robert Roberson Still on Death Row?

RIGHT WING MEDIA BIAS WATCH: Brain-Dead — Morning Joe Touts Columnist’s Idea the Press Is ROUGHER On Kamala!

You can tell Donald Trump is winning and Kamala Harris is losing when Washington Post columnists like Eugene Robinson are lashing out at the liberal media, like they have failed to cover Donald Trump viciously enough, that they somehow haven’t played up former Trump aides calling him a fascist enough. This seems to ignore what the networks and newspapers did this week!

But they celebrated his angry anti-media column on Morning Joe on Friday. Mika Brzezinski read it with a thrill up her leg:

Somehow, it is apparently baked into this campaign that Trump is allowed to talk and act like a complete lunatic while Harris has to be perfect in every way. I don’t know the answer to the chicken-or-egg question — whether media coverage is leading public perception or vice versa — but the disparate treatment is glaring.

He’s actually claiming Kamala Harris gets rougher treatment than Trump. Does he need a Breathalyzer test?

As I wrote the week before last when Don Lemon went off on a similar tear, eschew the cockiness, but don’t most lefties wait until after the election is over before playing the “right-wing media bias” card?

HE DOESN’T SOUND THAT WELL TO ME: ‘Well-man’ thrown from castle identified from 800-year-old Norse saga. “A passage in the Norse “Sverris Saga,” the 800-year-old story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes a military raid that occurred in AD 1197, during which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg Castle, outside Trondheim in central Norway, likely as an attempt to poison the main water source for the local inhabitants.”

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Nation’s Interns Declare War on the Nation.

A brief Sunday morning Corner note, because here in the terminal throes of the strangest presidential campaign of the past half century, the surrealistic comedy is rushing by in a slipstream that makes it all too much to process — you have to get some of the funnier moments down in writing, or else all these memories will be gone for good, lost in time like tears in rain.

On September 23, the editors of the venerable ultraprogressive magazine the Nation endorsed Kamala Harris for president. That is not the story, because that is not noteworthy — the Nation has been endorsing far-Left Democrats for well over a century, during most of which time it was run by actual Communists. No, the story here is that, yesterday, the Nation‘s fall 2024 internship staff just published a collectively written counter-essay attacking their editors for selling out and endorsing Harris — and they published it in the Nation itself.

I’ll admit that my first reaction pretty much tracked with that of Ben Dreyfuss in the link provided above. (I would love to reprint it here, but Sunday feels like an inauspicious day to test standards of decency.) The interns’ piece instantly became the butt of jokes on social media last night, but I’ve noticed that some misunderstand why it’s being mocked and why every media professional with even a shred of self-respect is mocking it as well. It’s not that interns shouldn’t be allowed to write articles. It’s not that interns aren’t allowed to have opinions. (Ideally, they would not be dumb opinions, but, hey — it’s a sorting process.) It is that interns should not be ganging up to attack their own bosses in public. The lunatics aren’t running the asylum, at least not yet, but they are collectively organizing to dictate morality. I cannot even believe I have to point it out, but this is no way to run an organization.

I’m so old, I can remember when editors decided what articles a publication would run, before these new enlightened times in which publications leak like a sieve via their Slack channels and allowing interns a chance to upload their own sophomoric takes on a particular topic.

Exit question: