THE PUBLIC IS HEAVILY AGAINST SUCH LEGISLATION, NOT THAT DEMOCRATS CARE: Senate Democrats “Virtually Certain” to Pass “Supreme Court Reform” Bill By Majority Vote in 2025.
Archive for 2024
August 27, 2024
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Wargaming the Electoral College: The Spoiler That Wasn’t.
The Polymarket results are closely in line with various polls (more on those in a moment) supposedly showing that Harris had opened things up in the Southwest (Ariz. and Nev.), shored things up in the Upper Midwest (Mich. and Wisc.), and weakened Trump slightly in the South (Ga. and N.C.).
The net result is a 251-251 tie (including leaners) with Pennsylvania determining the winner. The numbers and the swing states haven’t changed that much but Harris has more routes to victory than Biden had, and Trump has fewer than he had against Biden.
About those polls…
Stephen Kruiser and I were having this conversation earlier today on our Five O’Clock Somewhere video live chat that pollsters seem to be oversampling Democrats as part of the Uniparty push to make Harris seem inevitable.
That said, she is likely doing better than Biden was doing against Trump, if only because she doesn’t look and sound like she has one foot in the grave. That alone was probably enough to win back some stragglers.
Enter one Robert F. Kennedy Jr as he (mostly) exits the race.
Much more at the link.
JOHN SCHINDLER IS OLD-SCHOOL NEVERTRUMP, BUT NOW HE’S HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS: Who Really Is Barack Obama? A Counterintelligence Inquiry: Our 44th president harmed the security of America, Israel, and the West – it’s time to ask why.
I’ve learned quite a bit over the past decade. Many liberals who became my superfans when I was asking necessary questions about Trump’s connections to Moscow got very upset when I did what any counterintelligence professional does and kept asking questions – not exclusively about Republicans and Russia. China now presents a far greater espionage and illicit influence threat to the United States (and the West more broadly) than Russia or any other country, but liberals don’t like to dwell on Chinese spy operations aimed at U.S. politics, since so many of these involve Democrats.
The same liberals who regard any Republican who ever shook hands with a Russian as a probable Kremlin operative think there’s nothing at all strange about Hunter Biden taking several million dollars from CEFC China Energy, a known Chinese intelligence front. (The less we say about the “Big Guy” and his ten percent, perhaps the better.) Similarly, the fact that the current Democrat vice-presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, made over 30 visits to Communist China, with some of his “educational” junkets there being funded by the Chinese foreign ministry (which is the standard cover for China’s Ministry of State Security), is considered a nothingburger by liberals. Anyone asking obvious questions in this weird case is “paranoid.”
Asking questions is the nature of counterintelligence work. Making hypotheses based on limited information constitutes the cornerstone of counterespionage. If you’re not judicious, you can wind up in the vaunted Wilderness of Mirrors alarmingly easily. “Just asking questions” here doesn’t mean social media sealioning, rather making informed inferences from intelligence fragments, looking for patterns. This is why counterintelligence must be left to professionals, while there are few things more toxic in a democracy than amateur counterintelligence weaponized for partisan purposes (see: Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy).
So, what happens when you employ a professional counterintelligence eye and look at today’s Democrats?
What jumps out immediately is the shocking extent to which foreign spies and extremists have gained a foothold at the upper echelons of the Democrats. Over the past 15 years, people possessing connections and views which would have been show-stoppers until quite recently have instead risen to the commanding heights of the Democratic party. President Bill Clinton endured a scandal relating to Chinese Communist money and his 1996 reelection campaign, a troublesome impropriety that’s been largely forgotten. But it’s not like the Clinton cabinet included people with questionable ties to Beijing and its spies.
Tim Walz and his many trips to the PRC combined with his stated affection for China and its Communist regime would have gotten more attention when Bill Clinton occupied the White House. Similarly, Walz’s dalliances with radical Islam would have been too much for 1990s Democrats to gloss over. It’s been reported that Walz, while campaigning in 2018 to be Minnesota governor, praised Asad Zaman, a senior Muslim cleric, as a “master teacher” among other accolades. Inconveniently, Zaman has pushed blatant Nazi propaganda and considered the Oct. 7 HAMAS attack on Israel a marvelous act of liberation rather than a massive war crime. Worse, Walz has hosted Zaman several times as Minnesota governor, giving $100,000 in state funds to Zaman’s organization. There’s the interesting part. Bad vetting happens, but Zaman’s the head of Minnesota’s chapter of the Muslim American Society, which is hardly a secret. MAS was established in 1993 and has chapters across the United States. It’s an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which MAS doesn’t really even deny, and that matters because the Brotherhood, established in Egypt in 1928, is the world’s preeminent Sunni Islamic extremist organization. . . .
How did we get to this place, which from any counterintelligence viewpoint looks highly alarming (plus pretty bonkers)? Individuals with ties to FTOs like HAMAS, no matter how tenebrous, are not supposed to possess any security clearances, much less occupy senior security jobs in Washington, DC. Where did this all go wrong?
What happened was Barack Hussein Obama.
It’s now painfully clear that since Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he and his people have been running the Democratic party at the top levels. The mainstream media isn’t bothering to elide this any longer. Cadres decide everything, per Stalin’s sagacious mantra, and Obama’s chosen cadres have run the show during President Joe Biden’s presidency (since Biden was suffering from age-related decline from early in his presidency, which became impossible to hide over the last year, it’s worth pondering how much Joe was really commander-in-chief at all: but that’s another matter for another time). We should expect the same cadres will be running things if we get President Kamala Harris. Obama-Biden will then become Obama-Biden-Harris: OBH, if you like. There’s been remarkable continuity in personnel across these administrations, especially in the national security arena, which is no accident.
It’s time to confront the difficult reality that Team OBH in its foreign policy has boosted avowed enemies of the United States like the Islamic Republic of Iran plus radical Islamists of many stripes, all of which have ample American blood on their hands. Why? It needs to be asked if such an outcome, which is unquestionably detrimental to the security of the United States, Israel, and the entire West, isn’t a bug but rather a feature of Democrat foreign policy since 2009.
Welcome to the party, pal.
Plus: “At the dawn of the Obama era, a Pentagon friend and colleague, now of blessed memory, warned me that the new administration was riddled with Islamist sympathizers and related Communist-adjacent types who were seeking to swing U.S. foreign policy in a direction more pleasing to the mullahs in Tehran and jihadists worldwide. Moreover, he predicted the emergence of a domestic front, an odd alliance of leftist radicals, terrorist fans, LGBT activists, environmentalists, and Islamists, all seeking to change America at a basic “anti-imperialist” level. I pooh-poohed his predictions as unduly alarmist, the output of a brilliant mind that was scattered by too many deployments. I was wrong.”
Related: Tehran Tries to Take Out Trump.
August 26, 2024
ANTIFA IS BEING TRAINED UP FOR A SIMILAR ROLE HERE: Maduro’s Communist Thugs Help Him Bully His Way to Power.
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Amazon expands Kennedy Space Center facility to accelerate satellite deployments.
Plus: SpaceX Private Spacewalk Mission Launches Tonight. Or maybe it counts as early tomorrow morning. “The Polaris Dawn mission, a commercial spaceflight backed by American billionaire Jared Isaacman that will attempt the first private spacewalk, is currently scheduled to launch on Tuesday, Aug. 27, on a Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon capsule Resilience. Liftoff is scheduled for 3:38 a.m. EDT (0738 GMT) from Florida’s Cape Canaveral.”
MY STRATEGY WOULD JUST BE TO HIRE SPACEX TO GET RID OF IT: Defying Disaster: NASA’s Innovative Strategies in Planetary Defense.
FIRST RFK, NOW THIS: Tulsi Gabbard Endorses Trump.
Hey, she won more delegates in the Democratic Primary than Kamala did.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Out: Soccer Moms and Security Moms. In: Health Moms. Is RFK Jr. the secret to suburban women?
And as always, if you like these essays, consider a paid subscription.
NO SH*T, SHERLOCK: Meta Platforms CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Monday that the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured” his team for months in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including content from ordinary Americans.
Just the News is reporting that:
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg continued. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
The Facebook founder also admitted that Facebook demoted the Hunter Biden laptop story, because it was warned by the FBI about a potential Russian disinformation operation regarding Burisma and the Biden family leading into the 2020 election.
“It’s been since made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg said.
Too little, too late, Zuck.
We all knew District Court Judge Terry Doughty was correct.
SPRAY, BABY, SPRAY: 10 Massachusetts communities at high risk of mosquito-spread virus ‘Triple E.’
The threat of Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus has prompted several Massachusetts towns to implement targeted mosquito spraying to protect residents.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this virus, often called Triple E, is transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito and can cause a “rare but severe illness.” Although the number of annual cases is low, the virus can pose a significant health risk.
The CDC says most people infected don’t have any symptoms, but symptoms can range from a febrile illness to more severe neurological problems.
The disease is particularly dangerous if it leads to encephalitis, or inflammation in the brain, with approximately 30% of people with encephalitis dying.
Many survivors experience long-term neurological issues, according to the CDC, which notes there are no human vaccines or specific treatments available, making prevention crucial.
Die, skeeters, die.
THE LEFT DOESN’T PRODUCE ENOUGH CHILDREN SO THEY HAVE TO INDOCTRINATE OTHER PEOPLE’S: Kamala Harris Wants Your Kids in Public School and She Wants Them There NOW!
OLD AND BUSTED: Trump Will Destroy Democracy!
The New Hotness? We’ll do the job ourselves: Human Rights Campaign president says we must “reimagine” democracy to be “more revolutionary” than the “little piece of paper“ our founders drafted.
They're Communists. https://t.co/OsSwxG7zWi
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) August 26, 2024
Flashback: Kamala Harris Dismisses Kavanaugh’s Pocket Constitution: ‘That Book You Carry.’
Piers Morgan could not be reached for comment: Piers Morgan gets owned by Ben Shapiro, refers to Constitution as “your little book.”
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What’s Going On With Land Rover?
JUST SAW THIS, BUT IT UNDERSCORES MY LATEST SUBSTACK:
— Alex Clark (@yoalexrapz) August 25, 2024
EARLY CHECK-OUT: President Vacation.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Apple iPad (9th Generation): with A13 Bionic chip, 10.2-inch Retina Display. #CommissionEarned
BRINGING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT: Defensive Gun Use of the Day: Texas Daylight Machete Home Invasion Attempt.
DEEP DIVE: Inside Boeing’s factory lapses that led to the Alaska Air blowout.
The door plug that blew out on Alaska Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet over Portland had sealed a hole cut out of the fuselage for an optional emergency exit door installed by only a few airlines.
Most 737 MAX 9s, like the Alaska jet, have a plug there, not a real door. To a passenger seated at that location, it looks like just another cabin window.
And the mechanics in Renton assembling the airplane don’t typically have to do anything with a door plug. It comes fully installed from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., and there’s usually no reason to open it in Renton.
A specialized door crew in Renton of about 20 to 25 mechanics covering three assembly lines is dedicated to the work of rigging passenger, cargo and other doors. They work first shift, 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
They are the only mechanics that do such work, and even they rarely deal with a door plug. A Boeing manufacturing record lists door plug work performed in Renton just four times last year, one time in 2022 and twice in 2021.
A 35-year veteran on the door team told NTSB investigators that he is “the only one that can work on all the doors” and he was typically the only mechanic who would work on door plugs.
That mechanic was on vacation on the two critical days, Sept. 18 and 19 last year, when the door plug on the Alaska MAX 9 had to be opened and closed.
It’s a lengthy read but worth your time.
HEALTH: Breakthrough medical treatment kills prostate cancer, study finds. “Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery that could revolutionize the treatment of prostate cancer. By targeting a single enzyme called PI5P4Kα, scientists have found a way to potentially kill prostate cancer cells, offering new hope for patients who face the growing challenge of treatment resistance.”
TO BE FAIR, BUGOUTS ARE WHAT KAMALA AND JOE DO BEST:
BREAKING: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden skip Arlington Memorial Ceremony for the 13 troopers who died in Afghanistan on the 3rd anniversary
Only 1 former president showed up
His name is Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/x1msiHjWjO
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 26, 2024
Such moments are no laughing matter — unless you’re the vice president, alas:
FLASHBACK: This was Kamala Harris' first reaction to the reports that Americans were trapped and possibly dead in Afghanistan three years ago.
"Slow down" followed by a maniacal cackle.pic.twitter.com/O65GtPQdoM
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 26, 2024
WHAT A MONSTER. Pitt cardiologist Norman Wang was demoted, had an article retracted, and was told he was “unsafe” for students because of maniac statements like “Ultimately, all who aspire to a profession in medicine and cardiology must be assessed as individuals on the basis of their personal merits, not their race and ethnic identities.” He’s suing. (In the meantime, if you need a cardiologist, I suspect he’s a safe bet.)