QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED…WITH A MEANINGLESS WORD SALAD:

WATCH Kamala Harris' response to: "Should folks stand for the National Anthem?"pic.twitter.com/fL8owFTxmC

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) October 1, 2024

THE GANG THAT COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT:

Iranian report: 5 dead, 12 wounded IRGC forces from the Yanbarkaf unit in the explosion of a Segil missile before firing (therefore the launch) at Mallard.

Also: A Palestinian from Gaza living in Jericho was the only reported death in the IRGC attack.

The Islamic Regime only…

— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 1, 2024

DISGRUNTLED JOE BIDEN DISAPPOINTED AS KAMALA HARRIS TRIES TO DISTANCE FROM HIS RECORD, REPORT CLAIMS:

President Joe Biden is disappointed at how quickly his influence is dwindling as Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to move beyond him, according to an NBC News report.

Biden has noticed that Harris is not referring to him very often in her campaign speeches, the report notes, citing six people familiar with his comments.

He was also saddened when Harris specifically distanced herself from him, insisting in the presidential debate that she was ‘clearly’ not Joe Biden and offering a ‘new generation of leadership.’

A Harris campaign official tried to ward off rumors of an upset Biden by noting that the president has repeatedly told Harris to do whatever she needs to do to win.

Harris and Biden also had lunch together on Thursday for the first time in a while, an official confirmed, as they both went to the White House for a meeting with Ukrainian president Voldymyr Zelensky.

Harris met separately with Zelensky at the White House, however, and delivered separate remarks from the president.

The White House dismissed the report as ‘uninformed claims’ that were ‘the polar opposite of the truth.’

And they may be right, based on their detailed, carefully laid out Middle East policies they’re sharing with the American media, and by extension, the rest of the world:

Shot:

Welp. The “Don’t" Doctrine didn’t seem to work. pic.twitter.com/blOeTF0zlZ

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) October 1, 2024

Chaser:

Reporter: "What's your message to Iran?"

Kamala: "Don't."

You'll be shocked to learn this diplomatic strategy did not work out. pic.twitter.com/0aOMFOJ23v

— Match Point (@MatchPoiint) October 1, 2024

Related: “You might be asking, ‘Why didn’t they make Biden step aside already, and elevate Kamala before the election?’ A sensible question, but if she became president now, she inherits directly the legacy of the unpopular Biden policies. She would now have to start fixing problems on her ‘Day One.’ It wouldn’t fit her strategy of trying to present a ‘fresh start’ and enable some distance between herself and Biden. Of course this is absurd, but it seems to be working to some extent.”

WHAT RESPONSE? Dem Strategist Blasts the Biden-Harris Administration’s Hurricane Response.

RIP: John Amos, ‘Good Times’ Dad, Dies at 84. He played Gordy the weatherman on ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and earned an Emmy nom for his turn as the older Kunta Kinte on ‘Roots.’

TRUE: Nostalgia Shouldn’t Drive Your Carry Gun Choice.

I SUSPECT THIS IS TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: Gogo buys rival to tackle Starlink aviation expansion.

Gogo is acquiring inflight connectivity rival Satcom Direct to counter rising competition from SpaceX’s Starlink in the market for providing Wi-Fi to business jets.

Satcom Direct would get $375 million in cash and five million shares from Gogo under a deal announced Sept. 30, subject to regulatory approvals, and up to $225 million in extra payments tied to performance targets over the next four years, suggesting around $636 million in maximum total proceeds.

Gogo has historically dominated the small and midsize part of the business aviation market and connects about 7,000 planes, according to William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, while Satcom Direct has a commanding market share for long-haul.

Combined, William Blair estimates the companies are providing Wi-Fi to around 8,200 of the 9,200 business jets that currently have connectivity — or nearly 90% of the market.

In-flight Starlink is faster and has lower latency — and is so cheap to install and operate that airlines like United will offer it for free. It seems likely Gogo will get replaced by carriers in the classic two ways, gradually then suddenly.

A GOOD FRIEND IS DONATING TO THIS GROUP, WHICH IS FLYING RELIEF SUPPLIES INTO THE HURRICANE AREA: Wings of Hope. I’ve donated.

Please put any other suggestions for useful charities in the comments. (Bumped).

UPDATE: It’s helping. From Wings of Hope: “We were just able to get a second helicopter for two days, gas bill funded. There are two of us now. It’s huge, will post more about the impact and what’s going on tomorrow, but this is a really really big deal and saving a lot of people’s lives. So many dead, they are not talking about it, is sad to see. Like a war zone.”

KDJ: Non-Shocker: Hurricane Victims Getting the Maui/East Palestine Treatment from Biden and Harris. “The Democrats are paying little attention to Buncombe County, N.C., where 35 of North Carolina’s 47 dead thus far from the monster storm were from. Roughly 59.7% of Buncombe County residents voted for the same president who now prefers the beach to helping his voters who are struggling to find food.”

He’s checked out, Jack.

DON’T GET COCKY: Tim Sheehy Dominates in Debate. Is the Montana Senate Race Over Now?

READER FAVORITE: Apple iPad (9th Generation): with A13 Bionic chip. #CommissionEarned

LOOKS LIKE A LONG, HARD SLOG:

Hezbollah’s Imad-type tunnel networks are thought to be extensive and sophisticated, serving multiple strategic purposes including shelter, storage, secure communication hubs, and as launch sites for attacks. These subterranean fortifications, reported to have been developed with… https://t.co/pCIBuoITM4

— dan linnaeus (@DanLinnaeus) October 1, 2024

Read the whole thing.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: What Happened to Tucker Carlson?

Carlson hides his worst rhetoric behind a “just asking questions” and anti-cancel-culture pose. He faced only a modest backlash from his allies over the Darryl Cooper interview. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a tweet defending Winston Churchill, then appeared at a Tucker Carlson Live event the next day. A “Dear Fellow Patriot” Heritage fundraising email was sent out under Tucker Carlson’s name on September 12—just 10 days after Carlson called Darryl Cooper “the most important historian in the United States.”

There were calls for Trump to distance himself from Carlson after the Cooper interview, but no such distancing occurred. “The fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship; we believe in free speech and debate,” GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said on September 6. Vance appeared at a Tucker Carlson Live event in Pennsylvania on September 21.

The Tucker Carlson Live tour has the trappings of a presidential listening tour, with the potential candidate surrounded by MAGA elites like Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. The tour wrapped up on Saturday night with a joint appearance with the former GOP president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. Earlier this year, Don Jr. said he wanted his father to pick either Vance or Carlson as his running mate, and there’s no question that Carlson is the more charismatic of the two.

WELL, GOOD: Ultrasound test detects 96% of ovarian cancers in postmenopausal women.

HARRIS AND BIDEN FACE THEIR OCTOBER SURPRISE: Major Longshoremen Strike Hits East Coast Ports.

Thousands of dock workers at ports along the East and Gulf coasts went on strike early Tuesday morning amid a contract dispute, halting the flow of goods with a potentially costly work stoppage.

Their union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, failed to reach a new six-year agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance, the group representing employers at ports from Maine to Texas. Workers walked off the job just as their previous contract expired.

It’s unclear how long the strike will last and how expensive it will be, but a prolonged shutdown could deal a significant blow to the economy since the workers who handle shipping containers control major commercial choke points.

The showdown also presents a political problem for President Joe Biden, who has the power to suspend the strike. Doing so would take away workers’ leverage and could hurt the union-friendly president’s relationship with organized labor.

Exit quote from Harold J. Daggett, the union’s president, and gold chain enthusiast (language warning):

This video is better if you play the music from ‘The Godfather’ underneath it. https://t.co/A2P4bSfG8Y

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) October 1, 2024

UPDATE: As Iowahawk tweets, “The entire US supply chain is controlled by a bunch of stock gangster movie extras from the 1936 Warner Brothers casting office…There is literally no group on Planet Earth that could be so easily and deservedly replaced by robots.”

Threats of strikes are a powerful incentive for American docks to “learn to code,” to coin a phrase:

THAT WAS A GREAT CAR: The Audi RS7—they won’t make them like this much longer.

I test drove an Audi RS7 a while back.

APPRENTICESHIPS MAKING A COMEBACK, AT LEAST IN NC. We’re gonna need these skills to rebuild western North Carolina. (And, given world events, possibly Western civilization…)

INDEED: The U.S. Navy Shouldn’t Gloat over China’s Submarine Setback.

The U.S. Navy and the larger maritime sector have suffered a one hammer blow after another to their reputation for competence over the past several years. Another fell just last week, around the same time the Type 041 debacle came to light. To wit, the Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet oiler USNS Big Horn, the main supply ship for the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier task force, ran aground in the Arabian Sea. Big Horn suffered flooding in its engineering spaces as well as rudder damage and had to be towed to port in Oman for repairs. Laying it up deprives the carrier group of fuel and precious supplies without which no fleet can operate at sea for long.

Reportedly no replacement vessel with adequate cargo capacity is available. With Big Horn sidelined, it remains to be seen how Abraham Lincoln and its escorts will offset the loss of logistical support. If vessels comprising the task force have to put into port to replenish fuel and stores, that will thin out the naval presence in the Red Sea—creating a more permissive setting for Houthi attacks on shipping in that vital waterway. This on top of recent news that navy leaders are considering idling seventeen ships out of an already perilously lean logistics fleet because too few civilian mariners are available to crew them.

Peacetime strategic competition is virtual war.

The Navy is our first line of defense and has been for almost 250 years.

WAPO SAYS TA-TA TO TAY-TAY: Taylor Lorenz Exits Washington Post to Launch ‘User Mag’ on Substack.

UPDATE: No word yet on what role ageism played in Lorenz leaving the Post:

More here: ‘Nature Is Healing!’ Taylor Lorenz Out at Wapo and Hoo Boy, X Has Brutally Hilarious Thoughts About That.

SETTING THE BAR HIGHER FOR SELF-DELUSION: What is it about some of these “media” and “political” reporters who are 100% clueless when it comes to the disdain and lack of respect from the general public?

Live in a bubble, die in a bubble.

I thought Brian “Potato Boy” Stelter was always at the top of that class, but the often-wrong, but never-in-doubt Taylor Lorenz, hoping to save face by “going independent” has upped the ante.

She says:

“I will be reporting on the people and movements that are steering tech and internet culture, from weird online phenomena, to under-the-radar trends, to content creators, platform developments, policy initiatives, and the powerful forces that shape our online world. It’s about who has power on the internet and how that power is being wielded.”

Like most leftist dopes, her real goal is to preserve, if not expand her own “power” to “shape the online world.”

Here’s a fun trick: Go to her announcement linked above. Search for the words “accuracy,” “fairness” or “clarity.

Get back to me on that, huh?

THERE’S NO MORE DENYING THAT THIS IS WAR:

BREAKING:

New video shows a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles striking Israel pic.twitter.com/nbjqRcQQml

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 1, 2024

More:

Ch 14 reported that the U.S. and Iran are negotiating the scope of the strike so that the U.S. will be able to compel Israel not to retaliate.
Get it?
The Biden-Harris administration is reportedly telling a U.S. enemy what level of assault against a U.S. ally is acceptable.

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 1, 2024

If that’s true, whatever leverage the Biden Cartel still held over Israel is likely gone. It certainly ought to be.

MORE DETAILS: Israel Under Major Attack From Iranian Missiles.

IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING? The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books. To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1988. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

“My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.

As Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Harris/Biden’s ‘Illegal Alien Airlines’ Program Is an Unmitigated Fraud.

NUTRITION: Study supports value of intermittent fasting combined with nutritional counseling.

F.A., MEET F.O.: Armed Citizen Shoots Robber Who Used Toy Gun in Stick-Up.