THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR A WHILE, BUT GOOD: Muscles can bounce back despite weeks-long weight training breaks.
Archive for 2024
October 31, 2024
READER FAVORITE: Dickies Men’s Original 874 Work Pants. #CommissionEarned
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is This Any Way to Treat a Legend? “Clint Eastwood gets kicked to the theatrical curb via ‘Juror #2’ rollout.”
Sad. The trailer looked excellent.
HEY JEFF, HOW’S THAT REFORM OF THE POST COMING ALONG? Washington Post pays to boost stories critical of Trump as subscribers flee.
The Washington Post is paying to remind readers that it is still pretty tough on Donald Trump.
Like many news organizations, the Post pays a small amount each month to show articles in feeds on Facebook and other social media platforms. But on Monday, the paper aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign, boosting dozens of articles related to the election.
While the articles about Vice President Kamala Harris were relatively neutral in tone and focused on her innovative digital strategy, her policy proposals, and her chances of winning next week, the articles that the Post paid to highlight about Trump told a different story.
The paper boosted multiple critical articles, including about Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his misstatements, his allies’ attempts to “energize him as he struggles to adapt to Harris,” how his campaign damaged Springfield, Ohio, his fixation on the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, how crowds leave his rallies early, and his questioning of the results of the 2020 election, among other stories.
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Prior to Monday, the paper had run just around a dozen ads all month on Facebook, which largely featured simple Post branding without any mention of Trump. Monday’s paid Facebook push was a clear acknowledgment that the paper hopes to win back some of the anti-Trump subscribers that may have canceled. It’s also a demonstration of just how much the Post is reliant on liberal readers opposed to Trump for revenue. Instead of using the opportunity to boost its tech or culture coverage, the paper leaned more into what it knows converts readers into subscribers: Its critical reporting and op-eds about the former president.
And yet, it’s not enough, as John Nolte writes: Washington Post, L.A. Times Continue to Suffer Massive Subscription Cancellations. “With only leftists for paying customers and no real advertising revenue to fall back on, the Post had to serve those customers. Well, leftists don’t want journalism or truth. They want comfort and affirmation. And when you deny them that comfort and affirmation, they go into a snit and cancel their subscriptions. When you cater only to the left, you live under the axe of, That’s a nice business you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. This Race Is Close Only Because the Public Education Indoctrination Mill Has Succeeded. “If a person goes to a surgeon needing both a cancerous tumor removed and a knee replacement, the patient doesn’t opt for the knee replacement in the hope that the cancer will go away. Yes, things will be a lot better, but that tumor keeps on growing. At this point in American history, voter fraud is the bad knee and public education indoctrination is the cancer.”
ROGER SIMON: Am I a Nazi, Garbage, or Nazi Garbage?
My first reaction when I heard Joe Biden was calling Donald Trump supporters “garbage” is that he (Biden) wanted to sabotage, consciously or unconsciously, Kamala Harris’ campaign.
I could be wrong, but, as the Zen Buddhists say, “First thought, best thought.”
There are other possible explanations, such as he was desperate to stay relevant in the final hours of his presidency and just happened to make his dopey comment at the moment Ms. Harris was making her supposed “important closing argument,” such as it was.
Or he is just so terminally gaga that he doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing? But there’s nothing new in that.
His handlers (what a job they have) are off trying to convince everyone the president was just referring to comic Tony Hinchcliffe who provided the fulminating media with the one gotcha moment they could find in the endless hours of Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. They were dying to call the event Hitlerite but the inconvenient prevalence of numerous Israeli flags in the audience made that awkward.
Trump, his sense of humor always at the ready, took advantage of Biden’s mumbling idiocy by arranging to be met at a Wisconsin airport by a “big, beautiful MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN Garbage Truck.” He wore an outfit to match. When it comes to trolling. Trump wins the Nobel Prize. (He should have won it for the Abraham Accords.)
Real Clear Politics’ Tom Bevan, a man I have known for years and respect about as much as anyone for his level-headed political analysis, summed things up saying Biden’s “garbage” comment “couldn’t come at a worse time for Harris.”
Does this mean Trump wins? Who knows, but it’s looking good, especially if you believe the prediction markets, though they are tightening a whisker.
Given how flat-footed that Democrats in the media and the White House were on Tuesday night, I don’t believe that Biden’s “garbage” comment was deliberate, but as John Hinderaker writes at Power Line, it too could certainly help to drive turnout for the left: Signs and Portents:
The Democrats are pushing all the chips into the middle of the table. With Kamala Harris calling us Nazis and fascists, and Joe Biden calling us garbage, they aren’t planning any sort of unity-fest if they win. While Donald Trump is laying out a positive vision for his second term, one that will benefit all Americans who aren’t financially tied to the status quo, the Democrats are preparing to go scorched earth.
After all, if you are in power and your country is infected with Nazis, fascists and garbage people, what should they expect? We will see a crackdown the likes of which our country has never experienced, with near-total control over the means of communication and lawfare that, this time, won’t only be directed at figures like Trump and Steve Bannon, who was just released from a federal prison. I think the Democrats plan on casting a much wider net to punish “Nazis” and “fascists,” with no one to protest except us garbage people, whom they intend to silence, one way or another. If the Democrats can get to 51%, they will try to cement themselves in power for a long time to come.
QED: Ben Shapiro writes of receiving a near identical email from a WaPo “reporter” to that of one he received earlier from a New York Timesman with the same goal of demonetization:
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Biden Doctrine Goes Bust.
Not that defense is a Biden priority. He sent budget proposals to Congress that reduced defense spending, only to be overridden by sober-minded committees of jurisdiction. Under Biden, the U.S. government spends more on debt service than on defense. The armed forces struggle to meet recruitment goals. Threats multiply.
Blinken says that after economics, the administration’s second “pillar of renewal” is strengthening U.S. alliances. Biden deserves credit for welcoming Sweden and Finland into NATO; bolstering the Indo-Pacific “quad” of America, Australia, India, and Japan; and creating AUKUS, a trilateral partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Skilled diplomacy was required to build out inherited institutions, he argues, and create new ones to balance China. For decades, presidents have said U.S. policy would turn toward East Asia. “The Biden administration,” writes Matthews, “made the pivot happen.”
Let’s not speak too soon. Biden’s diplomacy hasn’t lessened China’s belligerence. China’s intelligence and cyber warfare against the United States go on. The high-altitude surveillance balloon that transited north America in 2023 was a display of Chinese strength. China hasn’t relaxed its grip on Tibetans, Uighurs in Xinjiang, or Hongkongers. Its “no limits” partnership with Russia has deepened, providing Vladimir Putin an economic lifeline that sustains his war machine.
China’s own military buildup is extraordinary. Its harassment and encirclement of Taiwan are increasing. Its naval vessels assert primacy in the South China Sea by ramming Philippine ships. The Philippines is a treaty ally. The United States is pledged to the nation’s defense.
Read the whole thing.
PEOPLE DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED GARBAGE AND THEY PROBABLY LIKE EVEN LESS BEING LIED TO ABOUT IT: Now You Can REALLY See How Badly Biden Screwed Kamala Over With His ‘Garbage’ Comment. “Using Google Trends, we can see the interest in both stories over time. Google Trends numbers show search interest relative to the peak for a specific region and time. A score of 100 indicates peak popularity, 50 means half as popular, and 0 means there wasn’t enough data for the term. Here’s the Google Trends graph comparing searches for ‘Puerto Rico garbage’ and ‘Biden Trump supporters garbage.'”
HEH:
Sending the King of NAFTA to rust belt Michigan to yell at Arabs a week before the election is truly some Veep-level shit. https://t.co/06E3ymvQL5
— Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) October 31, 2024
I’m so old, I remember when Clinton could play his “I feel your pain” schtick well enough that people bought it.
BEEGE WELBORN GOES DUMPSTER DIVING INTO THE BIDEN-HARRIS FEUD: Who Doesn’t Love a Good Dumpster Fire Every Now and Then?
PUHLEEZ. IT’S NOT A CRIME, OR EVEN A “HATE” CRIME, OR EVEN RACIST. San Diego State U. investigates white students dressed up as Diddy and bottle of baby oil. And it’s clearly established that “blackface” is protected by the First Amendment, and any university administrator who punishes someone for that will forfeit qualified immunity.
The real crime is reminding people that someone that celebrities and politicians hobnobbed with for many years was a predator. Which keeps turning out the be the case.
AN AWFUL LOT OF WHITE WOMEN IN THIS CROWD, AS USUAL: Meet the 11 anti-Israel agitators arrested after occupying a University of Minnesota building.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER BUT THIS IS DANGEROUSLY LATE: DoD industrial base plan targets weak links in supply chains.
“Single sources of supply is a problem across the industrial base,” noted Laura Taylor-Kale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy.
Zeppieri said risks tied to “single sources” and “fragile sources” of critical components in the defense supply chain are among the issues addressed in the newly released National Defense Industrial Strategy Implementation Plan.
The unclassified version of the plan highlights measures to strengthen domestic manufacturing for defense purposes and increase supply chain resilience against adversarial threats.
DoD anticipates an increasing need for resilience in the supply chain, including within the space sector. “We are very much aware and doing analysis on that,” Taylor-Kale said.
Details about specific vulnerabilities are reserved for the classified version of the report.
You can be sure Beijing and Moscow know exactly what they are.
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: “This is pre-postmortem. They know it’s lost.”
Plus: Pre-postmortem, Part 2: “Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win.”
But don’t get cocky.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ‘Dark’ and ‘Scary’ Trump Sure Looks Like He’s Having Fun. “Donald Trump loves the American people. It’s always evident when he’s out campaigning. He’s the polar opposite of the alt-universe Trump who the Dems’ media lapdogs are always talking about.”
IMPRISONING DISSIDENTS OFTEN BACKFIRES: A serene Steve Bannon says his stint in the slammer was ‘empowering.’ He was released yesterday from the federal prison where he was incarcerated as a political prisoner for the last four months.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and host of the War Room podcast, was released from FCI Danbury, the federal prison where he was incarcerated as a political prisoner for the last four months Tuesday. His tort? The same thing that Eric Holder and Merrick Garland were guilty of: refusing to respond to a Congressional subpoena. Neither Holder nor Garland were indicted or incarcerated, of course, because neither supports Donald Trump.
That was Bannon’s real outrage: supporting the man whom Kamala Harris describes as “literally Hitler” and a “fascist” and whose supporters Joe Biden just described as “garbage.”
About 100 Karens of all sexes crowded into a suite at Lowe’s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue to preen, scold and attempt to play Gotcha! with a man who quietly ran circles around them all. You said nasty things about Elon Musk in the past and now you support him: how do you explain that?
Bannon pointed out that Musk has undergone a process of political maturation, something that the Karen in question only blinked at.
Buzz, buzz, buzz. There they all were, the rancid Lilliputians from the AP, the Washington Post, Daily Beast, the Bulwark: what about January 6? Who does he think won the 2020 election? Will he respect the results of the 2024 election? Etc., etc.
They were pathetic, but Bannon was serene and forthright, explaining that his stint in the slammer had been an “empowering” experience. He spent much of his timing tutoring about 100 fellow prisoners, mostly non-violent drug offenders, in civics, a subject the hostile crybullies of the press might profit from.
Bannon described how the focus of politics was moving from race through gender and was just about to settle on the critical issue of money. The reason that support for Donald Trump is soaring among blacks and Hispanics is that they understand his populist message. They remember the manifold economic successes of his first term: the tax cuts, the historically low unemployment, the rising wages, especially at the lower end of the scale, the ethic of MAGA.
Stay tuned.
THAT’S ODD: NASA finds, but does not disclose, root cause of Orion heat shield erosion.
Asked about the status of the heat shield at an Oct. 28 meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) in Houston, Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said those reviews had determined what caused the additional char loss.
“We have conclusive determination of what the root cause is of the issue,” she said. “We have been able to demonstrate and reproduce it in the arc jet facilities out at Ames.” The Arc Jet Complex at NASA’s Ames Research Center can reproduce the heating conditions seen on reentry.
However, she declined to identify what that root cause is. “I’m not going to share right now,” she said when asked about it. “When it comes out, it will all come out together.”
Another NASA official confirmed that in a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium here later the same day.
“We have gotten to a root cause. We are having conversations within the agency to make sure we have we have a good understanding of what’s going on not only with the heat shield but also next steps in how that actually applies to Artemis 2,” said Lakiesha Hawkins, assistant deputy associate administrator in the Moon to Mars office. She also declined to identify the specific root cause.
My guess is that whatever the root cause is, the fix is going to be time-consuming and/or expensive. Or maybe Orion is good to go with the existing heat shield, although you’d think NASA would crow about that.
Whatever the case, secrecy isn’t a good look for a program as troubled as Artemis is.
HE WON’T. ON THE OTHER HAND, A COUPLE OF MY LAW STUDENTS WERE CONVINCED TODAY THAT IF KAMALA WINS SHE’LL JAIL ELON MUSK. Stop pretending Trump will send journalists to gulag.
But in this country it’s Democrats who put their enemies in concentration camps. Just ask FDR.
THE E.V. BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: Volkswagen Hits the Net-Zero Wall: The German company’s layoffs and pay cuts are a warning to America about Biden-Harris climate policies. “An October surprise for the U.S. election may have arrived this week—in Germany. Word that Volkswagen could close three vehicle factories, cut 10,000 jobs and impose steep across-the-board pay reductions is a warning for Americans about the peril of Biden-Harris climate policy. The news was communicated to workers on Monday by the head of the company’s labor-relations council, and to describe it as a shock to Europe’s largest economy is an understatement. Volkswagen Group employs some 300,000 in Germany with 10 factories for its flagship VW brand. It has avoided involuntary layoffs for three decades and hasn’t shuttered a factory in its home country in its 87-year history. . . . A bigger share of the blame lies with politicians, however, especially for their climate policies. Germany’s auto industry is trapped in a vise between higher energy prices that drive up the cost of production, and electric-vehicle mandates that drive down sales. VW is cracking under the pressure.”
ROGER SIMON’S ELECTION-INDUCED IDENTITY CRISIS: Am I a Nazi, Garbage, or Nazi Garbage?
INDEED: NATO Needs to Fix its German Problem: The USA has other priorities to attend to.
NATO was created to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out. They don’t like Americans anymore, the Germans seem to have largely conquered the EU, and the Russians can’t even make it through Ukraine; they’d splatter if they ran into Poland. So . . .