INDEED: The World Doesn’t Care About Your Partisan Politics.

American foreign policy is always something of a hostage to the domestic politics of the moment. While this might be the unavoidable byproduct of democracy, it can greatly distort our understanding of the world and the coherence of strategic planning.

The Israel-Iran-Ukraine-Russia linedance provides a steady stream of examples, but never has it brought as much clarity to the mismatch between U.S. partisan politics and American grand strategy as it has in recent days. Republicans tend to favor Israel but not Ukraine, and Democrats, the reverse. Our enemies, of course, see it very differently.

Just before the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Russia has supplied the Houthis—the Iranian proxy in Yemen that has been shooting missiles at commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea—with “targeting data” to help sink ships, kill civilians, and sabotage the supply chain. “The data,” the Journal explains, “was passed through members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were embedded with the Houthis in Yemen.”

That sentence is a handy organizational chart. The Houthis aren’t merely supported by Iran, the Houthis are Iran. And the Russia-Iran alliance has become so tight that Vladimir Putin is helping the Iranians retaliate against the U.S. and Israel for having the temerity to counter Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and, more specifically, for America’s modest support for Ukraine’s existence against Russia’s eliminationist war machine.

Russia wants to bleed Western resources in the Middle East because Moscow is bleeding resources in trying to destroy part of Europe. Russia is angry that it is bad at war, so it is making more war.

Read the whole thing.

Previously: Nobody can say they weren’t warned.

BEN SHAPIRO, TUCKER CARLSON SHARE STRONG RESPONSES ABOUT YOUTUBE DEMONETIZATION TO NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER:

The conservative hosts each shared a message received from New York Times reporter Nico Grant, who covers YouTube and Google for the outlet, to social media.

In the message purporting to be from Grant, the reporter seeks comment on a story the outlet is preparing centered on YouTube demonetization of election-related videos. He says the outlet is utilizing data from Media Matters that identified 286 videos that shared misinformation about the election.

“What, precisely, is NYT doing? It’s perfectly obvious: using research from Media Matters, a radical Left-wing organization whose sole purpose is destroying conservative media (see below), in order to pressure YouTube to demonetize and penalize any and all conservatives ONE WEEK FROM THE ELECTION,” Shapiro argued. “That’s the entire game here. Run an article in America’s ‘most trusted newspaper’ that declares pretty much every major conservative a purveyor of ‘misinformation’ on YouTube, thus strong-arming YouTube into taking action against conservatives.”

Shapiro concluded by writing “So, The New York Times wants comment? Here’s my comment: kindly, go (expletive) yourself.”

As for Tucker’s response: Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro expose Media Matters’ targeting of conservative voices before election.

On October 28, Carlson shared screenshots on X (formerly Twitter), showcasing Grant’s outreach, where Grant inquired about Carlson’s YouTube activity and content policies in relation to an article planned by The New York Times using data from Media Matters for America. Media Matters, a left-leaning organization, reportedly identified 286 YouTube videos containing what it labeled as “election misinformation,” some allegedly from Carlson’s channel.

Grant’s message to Carlson read, in part, “I wanted to give you an opportunity to comment for an upcoming article that takes a look at how political commentators have discussed the upcoming election on YouTube… Media Matters identified 286 YouTube videos… including narratives that have been debunked.” The text also asked Carlson to confirm his status in YouTube’s Partner Program and whether his videos faced demonetization or warnings for alleged misinformation.

Carlson’s response was direct: “So The New York Times is working with a left wing hate group to silence critics of the Democratic Party? Please ask yourself why you’re participating in it.” In a follow-up message, Carlson told Grant, “I told you to [explicitly] off, which I am now doing.” Carlson’s refusal was paired with his insistence that his comments be quoted.

Ed Morrissey adds:

For those who do not recall, Media Matters currently is fighting a lawsuit from Elon Musk for fraud and tortious interference over a clumsy and dishonest attempt to “prove” that extremist content got connected to advertising on Twitter/X. Even apart from that, Media Matters operates as an attack dog against conservative publications, a highly partisan player that hardly hides its intentions. Launching this attempt to deplatform conservatives the week before a national election is right up their alley.

* * * * * * * *

The New York Times isn’t a newspaper, and Nico Grant isn’t a reporter. It’s an activist organization where actual reporters only occasionally work. Their real purpose is to silence the Left’s critics, as well as their own, so that their preferred elite clique can rule rather than govern.

This is precisely why mass media polls below politicians by double digits among Americans when it comes to trust. If Bezos wants to restore trust in the Washington Post, perhaps he should assign reporters to dig into the NYT/Media Matters partnership on this attempt to deplatform independent media.

That is, if his staff will let him.

So how many other conservatives did Grant blast out the same form email to?

Grant has since locked down his Twitter account, though his bio is still online at the New York Times, where it states:

Journalistic Ethics

As a Times journalist, I share the values and adhere to the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook. I want all of my work to be accurate and fair. I do not accept gifts, money or favors from anyone who might figure into my reporting. I do not directly own or trade stocks. I make every effort to understand issues from multiple angles. When I am working, I always identify myself as a reporter for The Times. I fiercely protect the anonymity of my sources. I also corroborate reporting with other sources and, preferably, with documentation.

Curiously, deplatforming and demonetizing the other side of the aisle aren’t mentioned as goals in his bio.

UPDATE: America’s Newspaper of Record is having a bit of fun here:

“Do you have documentation to support your claim that Satan is in direct communication with Democrats?”

Well, Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to him (among others) in 1971. Hey, isn’t that good enough?

(Via Kate at Small Dead Animals, who sagely writes, “Mischief Is Important.”)

JOHN STOSSEL: The Crisis Industry: How Activists Profit from Panic.  An entertaining video exposing the charlatans doing well by doing bad: promoting fake scares about racism, hate crimes, homophobia, vaping, and environmental doom. Stossel and I discuss my City Journal article about activists desperately switching to new causes, “The March of Dimes Syndrome,” and my book with Roy Baumeister, The Power of Bad.

IT’S SURPRISING HOW SURPRISED THE PENTAGON IS BY ANY OF THESE LAPSES: Pentagon Runs Low on Air-Defense Missiles as Demand Surges.

Interceptors are fast becoming the most sought-after ordnance during the widening crisis in the Middle East, as Israel and other U.S. allies face an increasing threat from missiles and drones fired by Iran and the militias it supports. The shortfall could become even more urgent after Israel’s Friday night strikes on Iran, which U.S. officials fear might spark another wave of attacks by Tehran.

Standard Missiles, which are usually ship-launched and come in various types, are among the most common interceptors the U.S. has used to defend Israeli territory from Iranian missile attacks, and are critical for stopping Houthi attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. has launched more than 100 Standard Missiles since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, the U.S. officials said.

The Defense Department says it doesn’t publicly disclose its stockpiles because the information is classified and could be leveraged by Iran and its proxies.

“Over the course of the last year, the Department of Defense has augmented our force posture in the region to protect U.S. forces and support the defense of Israel, while always taking into account U.S. readiness and stockpiles,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.

The heavy use of the Pentagon’s limited stockpile of missile interceptors is raising concerns about the ability of the U.S. and its allies to keep pace with unexpected, high demand created by the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Nobody can say they weren’t warned.

Your weekly reminder that we were given one last warning almost half a decade ago when Iran attacked the undefended Al Assad airbase with ballistic missiles.

Air defense was woefully under capitalized in the GWOT era and has not caught up. Patriot, THAAD (which BTW, can we give… https://t.co/n8QJiCCDEs

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) October 29, 2024

Every war begins without enough stockpiles. But Ukraine is going on three years now, we don’t even have to fight there (nor should we), but the Biden-Harris administration can’t even make a show of procurement strength to bring the Russians to the negotiating table.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA identifies 9 possible landing regions for Artemis III moon mission.

JD VANCE TO GO ON JOE ROGAN’S PODCAST:

The Vance-Rogan interview will be recorded just five days after Rogan’s episode with former President Donald Trump dropped and quickly generated tens of millions of views on YouTube. The Guardian reported that “two people with direct knowledge of the matter” said Vance’s sitdown with Rogan is scheduled to begin recording at 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. Rogan’s podcast episodes are usually uploaded to Spotify and YouTube a few hours after the recording is finished.

Vance will go on “The Joe Rogan Experience” as Vice President Kamala Harris’ team continues to push for an interview with the most-listened-to podcast host in the world. Rogan revealed early on Tuesday that Harris “has not passed on doing the podcast,” adding that the timing and stipulations have not worked out.

“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour,” Rogan wrote. “I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”

That “nice conversation” is Rogan’s way of saying that he wants to talk to Kamala for three hours in his standard conversational format, so that eventually, she has to drop the talking points and the word salads and reveals something honest about herself. Also, unlike the rest of the sycophantic media, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to say, if you want the massive promotion my show brings, you’ll do it on my terms, on my home turf.

On the other hand, as John Loftus writes at the Daily Caller: Kamala Is Apparently Trying To Girlboss Joe Rogan, And It’s A Pretty Smart Strategy. “Liberal women hate Rogan — he’s too much of a bro for them. Demanding Rogan do the podcast on her terms is a savvy way to dodge it. She and her campaign know he won’t cave, especially since Trump did it in his preferred format. Harris doesn’t piss off her base of liberal women, whom she will need to mobilize in full to win, and she doesn’t embarrass herself, either. It’s not like an appearance on Rogan’s show would win over any men to her camp.”

But ultimately, as Nick Arama writes at Red State, “Her restrictions are an admission that she can’t handle what Trump can. If you can’t even do three hours with Rogan, how can you expect to do the job as president? The real problem is that three hours would reveal what a fake person she is, and she knows it.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Dems Panicking Because Literally Hitler™ Attacks Aren’t Working.

I BELIEVE THIS: Rapid defibrillator use saves lives from cardiac arrest, study finds.

JEFF GOLSTEIN: Notes from a cluttered mind.

I usually try to keep Monday’s “Notes” posts lighthearted, but today I’m a bit under the weather and, as a result, I’m surly. And what follows needs saying: with 9 days left before election day, the Democratic Party has fine-tuned and now fully committed to its closing message for the 2024 Presidential race. And that message is this: people who vote for Kamala Harris — citizens and undocumented migrants alike — are Good and Righteous. They alone, among earthly creatures, walk with the angels, and they alone serve as protectors of our Constitutional order, guardians of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, (amen!); they are the beneficent, the charitable, the sympathetic to those less fortunate and oppressed — and they in their beatitude forestall a tide of cold brackish corruption sure to be unleashed by the “far right,” a pestilential deluge certain to drown the country in a maelstrom of suffocating fascist rule.

Alternately, the benighted and ugly cretins who vote for Donald Trump — degraded in their genetics and inferior in their cultural fashioning — are filthy, vulgar, and unreconstructed in their myriad hatreds. They are dumb animals. Vile. Evil. They are racist to the core. Nazis in their hearts. And as Nazis, they exist in their extremism unthinkingly and programmatically, glutted with darkness, their souls black and grubby. And they must be rejected, these Nazis — thoroughly and completely — by anyone who lays claim to a soul or a conscience.

This closing Democratic Party message is as clear and as plainly articulated as I’ve ever heard it in the fifteen presidential election cycles I’ve lived through. Democrats — or rather, the progressive left who has taken over the old Democratic party and galvanized behind Kamala Harris — absolutely and unapologetically despise their political opponents, whom they largely view as subhuman. Their hatred is literal and visceral. It is palpable.

It’s also meant to provoke violence and provide justification for cheating. There are no holds barred fighting Nazis.

And do read the whole thing.

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS: A Florida court yesterday that vacated an Order that required re-writing history and removing commentary on social media. Apparently, the court on March 13 demanded that, according to Eugene Volokh:

“[Anyone] remove and cause to be removed from any Site (including the web sites themselves and all URLS and links, even if they change) all statements, posts, social media, or videos or documents related to directly or indirectly to a lawsuit between Alex Daoud (mayor of Miami Beach from 1985 to 1991) but later convicted of bribery and various other charges. Some years later, he arranged a real estate deal together with his daughter, Kelly Hyman (a lawyer and occasional political commentator)—but that went bad, and led her to sue him.”

According to Volokh’s post yesterday, media lawyer and good pal Marc Randazza got the Order vacated. Eugene is right of course, that such a broad sweeping order — not even served upon non-parties — more than likely violates both the First Amendment’s ban on prior restraints and in general, Due Process when it comes to demanding that media do (or not do) something over which they have not been made a party.

THIS IS CNN: What Caused a CNN Guest to Get Ejected and Banned Midway Through a Segment?

I know we’ve covered a lot of meltdowns on CNN and MSNBC—this one might be the best. It was rambunctious, entertaining, and totally exposed the liberal media for being the clown show that it is when it booted a guest for dishing dirt right back to a pro-Hamas sympathizer during Abby Phillip’s show. Ryan Girdusky has been torching liberal narratives on this program for weeks, much to the irritation of Phillip and her panel guests.

When the insufferable Medhi Hassan was invited, you knew there would be fireworks. The Left is still worked up about Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which was the topic of discussion. It’s when Hassan implies that Girdusky is a Nazi that things went off the rails. Girdusky wouldn’t let that fly, telling Hasan, “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”

Absolutely legendary comeback, and a clinic on the only way to handle garbage corporate media. https://t.co/TPfdpxeCtK

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 29, 2024

Matt Margolis adds: Watch: CNN Segment Descends Into Chaos, Conservative Analyst Banned Over Joke.

Naturally, CNN used the incident as an excuse to ban Girdusky, who has been dismantling leftist narratives for many weeks, from the network.

“There is zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air,” the network said in a statement. “We aim to foster thoughtful conversations and debate including between people who profoundly disagree with each other in order to explore important issues and promote mutual understanding. But we will not allow guests to be demeaned or for the line of civility to be crossed. Ryan Girdusky will not be welcomed back at our network.”

Girdusky reacted to the banning on X/Twitter.

And putting out feelers for his next media gig:

And remember, this happened on Monday, as the craziest last week before Election Tuesday rolls on.

METAPHOR ALERT:

Moscow Telegram channels report that the sewage system in Moscow broke down.

A "fountain" the height of a residential building is seen in one of Moscow's districts.

A sh*t show, literally. pic.twitter.com/n8K30uAnJz

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 28, 2024

There’s something rotten in Moscow.

CDR SALAMANDER: Serious Nations Do Serious Things. Unserious Nations Waste Their Inheritance. Ignoring the Arctic is strategic malpractice.

LOL, DIVERSITY IN HIGHER ED: Faculty Presidential Election Survey: 78% Harris, 9% Trump.

BRING IT ON: RFK Jr. Threatens War on FDA in Epic Tweet.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China to send 14th crewed mission to space on Shenzhou-19.

A MUCH DEEPER DIVE INTO THOSE CALIFORNIA REFINERY CLOSURES: When Climate Cult Madness and National Security Collide.

Climate cultists and green grifters have never been very practical in implementing their schemes and driving these homegrown, home-production oil firms out of CA will be the most beautiful, expensive, and potentially disastrous illustration of their ignorance and hypocrisy.

Where will the fuel now come from when a state has no inbound pipelines and no plans to build any refineries to replace the ones they drove off?

Why, fuel tankers, of course.

But, see, there’s a problem. We have very few domestic tankers, none being built, and those already in service work mostly out of the Gulf of Mexico and up the East Coast. They’re booked and busy – no time to go the opposite way, through the Panama Canal and then up the coast to deliver oil to CA.

So the climate activists shrieking about carbon footprints who could have continued to have gasoline from right near the CA Coast or the interior of the state will now be paying the freight for boatloads – literally – of it to travel all the way from Asia.

Much more at the link, including this gem: “Our Navy NOW is going to have to fight the Chinese in the Pacific dependent on fuel FROM THE PACIFIC – perhaps even from the Chinese themselves.”

WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: The Penultimate Edition. “We’ll start this second-to-last Wargaming column by going back to basics with a look at RCP’s poll-averaged base map — complete with tossups, leaners, and likelies. Then we’ll get down to business.”

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

PRIORITIES:

We’re spending $2.6 million to make geodetic science more diverse and inclusive but deportations are just too expensive https://t.co/ehtGWVVYfb

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) October 28, 2024

RandoLand is a great follow if you’re looking for the very latest in government waste and corruption.

WELL, PROFESSORS. Trump ‘violent rhetoric’ needs ‘close monitoring’: political scientists.

Monitor this, bitchez.

Look at this display that the Democrats put up.

This is clearly a threat and message to President Trump.

They aren’t even hiding it. pic.twitter.com/WD6ohvNayF

— Jack (@jackunheard) October 27, 2024

NEVER WAS, NEVER WILL BE: Under Biden and Harris, There Is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.

TELL THE LITTLE TWERPS TO SHUT UP AND STUDY: ‘#StopAsianHate’: UMich dean caves to left, changes book covers amid claims of racism.

A HUNDRED THOUSAND HERE AND A HUNDRED THOUSAND THERE AND PRETTY SOON YOU’RE TALKING REAL LOSSES: Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

A corporate spokesperson declined to comment, citing The Washington Post Co.’s status as a privately held company.

“It’s a colossal number,” former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR. “The problem is, people don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.”

The Washington Post spent years cultivating a particularly insular audience by playing up to their vanities and biases, but mostly their vanities. They aren’t taking lightly to having their bubble popped.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Handheld Vacuum Cordless Rechargeable. #CommissionEarned