OUR FAKE ‘DEMOCRACY.’ Using a teleprompter for a “town hall” means it’s staged. This is not normal and we are not obliged to pretend it is.

🚨 BREAKING: Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall

Watch them panic when they realized they were showing the prompter live on-air pic.twitter.com/fiUFcfN2Kx

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2024

THAT’S GOING TO LEAVE A MARK:

Governor @RonDeSantis shot down a news reporter today who tried to get him to blame Hurricane Milton on climate change. He didn’t evade it either — he directly answered the question and cited stats to debunk the claim.

Oh, and those stats Governor DeSantis cited? They were… pic.twitter.com/eeribQJT9a

— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) October 10, 2024

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Impossible to Say Too Many Bad Things About Illegal Alien Invaders. “The most galling aspect of the discussion about this nightmare is that the people responsible for it spent years pretending that there was no problem at all. Kamala Harris assured the American public on more than one occasion that the border was secure. Once the situation got so out of control that they could no longer deny what was happening, Dems blamed Republicans for not passing a bill that they claim would have taken care of everything. Actually, the bill would have — you guessed it — compounded the problem.”

HMM: Google break-up could turn Big Tech into Medium Tech.

The DoJ’s proposal shows how far the US government is willing to go to shift the balance of power in tech. Google is the first big loser in an industry-wide antitrust fight that has been brewing for years. If these sorts of penalties are meted out, the US tech industry will start to look very different. Big Tech could become Medium Tech.

A caveat: regulatory legal action is notoriously slow. The DoJ published its complaint in 2020 and Judge Amit Mehta found the company guilty this August. He has given himself until summer 2025 to make a decision. Google can then appeal. The DoJ is considering more options than forcing the sale of parts of the business. This is why the company’s share price has not plummeted. It remains just 14 per cent shy of the all-time high. Investors find it hard to price the risk of potential changes that may not even happen.

Still, Google is being tied up in legal battles just as its rivals are raising record sums to develop artificial intelligence. Google’s AI plans may not be in the crosshairs of this particular fight but they could be one of its casualties. The drag effect of government intervention can be long-lasting. China’s severe crackdown on its own tech sector in 2020 hobbled the sector’s growth.

I’m all for breaking up Google but trusting Washington to get the job done without unacceptable collateral damage sometimes feels like a stretch.

DON’T GET COCKY: Trump maintains 2-point lead for fifth straight week.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The creepy thought experiments of Ta-Nehisi Coates.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Harris Is Joined at the Hip With Biden, and There’s Nothing She Can Do to Separate Herself.

SPREADING MISINFORMATION: ‘Demonstration of Ignorance’: Anti-Israel Installation Riddled With Falsehoods Stands in Harvard Yard: ‘It shames Harvard and makes you wonder what is being taught, and what is being learned, in its classrooms today,’ Middle East scholar Elliott Abrams says.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  EdWeek asks, “How School Discipline Get Dragged into the Presidential Election?”  I don’t know, but please, please, please, don’t let it be about race.  We’ve seen enough of that.

SUSTAINABILITY: Government Employees Exceed Population Of Florida.

The numbers are harrowing enough but this bit stands out: “The seven congressional districts with the highest percentage of federal civilian workers in its workforce are all in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. — and all are represented by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Ninja Air Fryer, Roast, Bake, Air Fry, Roast, Broil, Reheats. #CommissionEarned

I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE TOLD IT WAS GOOD TO PUNCH NAZIS. Columbia’s Student Protesters Really Have Embraced Hamas.

Of course, we always knew they didn’t mean Nazis, they meant Republicans. And now they’re embracing Nazi values.

SUPPLY, MEET DEMAND: Vance Says Illegal Aliens Crowd U.S. Millennials Out of Housing Market.

JOHN LUCAS: The “National Security Leaders for America” Expose Themselves as Partisan Agents. Well, that’s been clear since at least 2016.

Be so-called “National Security Leaders for America” (NSL4A) have done it again. This time they have waded into state elections for national offices. They do so based upon the false representation that they are motivated purely by patriotism and an unblemished desire to protect the national security. They purport to be non-partisan.

Hogwash.

This article complements my article of October 6, “Fall in Line, You Proles,” which analyzed a letter from these self-proclaimed “National Security Leaders” trashing President Trump and endorsing Vice President Harris for president. In that article, I noted that although NSL4A holds itself out as non-partisan and motivated purely by nothing more than its members’ unblemished motives as American patriots, it is, in fact, a partisan organization.

Although NSL4A claims that its members are “Republicans, Democrats, and Independents,” that implication of non-partisanship is a sham. As I shall show below, their pretense to be mere “public servants” who are not loyal “to any one individual or party,” is not true. Then when they use that supposed neutral status to promote particular candidates, it is a fraud upon the American People to whom they address their letter.

A good old-fashioned Fisking follows.

FEMA HASN’T BEEN COMPETENT IN A LONG TIME, IF EVER. Double-Barreled Hurricane Crisis Exposes FEMA’s Chronic Leadership, Staffing Problems.

OPEN THREAD: Rock me like a hurricane.

RIP: Ethel Kennedy, 96, widow of the assassinated Bobby Kennedy who stoically raised their 11 children alone.

THIS SOUNDS PRETTY INSURRECTION-Y TO ME: Axios: Some top Dems won’t commit to certifying a Trump win.

House Democrats railed against House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for hedging on whether a GOP-controlled House would certify a Kamala Harris victory. But some of their senior members are playing a similar game.

Why it matters: Those Democrats are trapped between their deep distrust of Donald Trump and their vigorous denunciations of any election challenges in the years since the Jan. 6 attack.

• Trump “is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we’re talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments,” asserted Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).
• Democratic leaders, however, seem fully prepared to certify a Trump victory – making potential dissenters a small minority.

What they’re saying: Raskin, the House Oversight Committee ranking member and former Jan. 6 committee member who objected to Trump electors in 2017, told Axios in an interview that if Trump “won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it.”

• Asked if he assumes a Trump victory would be free, fair and honest, however, Raskin said: “I definitely don’t assume that.”

• Argued Raskin: “Democrats don’t engage in election fraud and election fabrication.”

JFK, Mayor Daley, the Watergate hearings, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Time magazine would like a word here.

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: ‘Don’t invest in San Francisco, because you won’t make it:’ Facing closure, chef unloads on city.

When it comes to choosing where to operate a business, location is often the most important criterion. But if you ask chef Peter Hemsley of upscale seafood restaurant Aphotic, it is beyond that in San Francisco. Just 19 months ago, the chef opened Aphotic in a cavernous, inky black space near the intersection of Folsom and Third streets in SoMa. By the end of the year, it will be closed.

Hemsley is adamant that it wasn’t the food or even the $215 price tag on the 11-course tasting menu that caused the restaurant to fold. He blames the city.

“If I could have found a better location, I would have,” Hemsley told The Standard. “But it’s expensive and hard, and, for those who can’t, the lesson is: Don’t invest in San Francisco, because you won’t make it.”

* * * * * * * * *

In the Instagram post, Hemsley expressed in candid terms exactly why he decided to throw in the towel. On top of industry-wide issues, including the rising price of ingredients and labor, Hemsley called Aphotic’s location on the southwest side of the Moscone Center the “ugly butt end of a desolate convention center suck hole” — a juicy quote that understandably showed up in headlines.

Hemsley told The Standard he saw the writing on the wall in recent weeks. It’d been a slow spring and summer, but as the usually busy fall season set in, reservations weren’t picking up. “I knew that forecasting into the spring and summer of yet another year, it probably wasn’t going to work and that this was the time to call it,” he said.

It’d be easy to write off Hemsley as bitter. But there is evidence to back up his experience. Tourism industry experts confirmed last month that 2024 has been a big letdown for San Francisco. This year, the Moscone Center will host just 25 events, down from 34 in 2023. Matters are on track to improve only marginally in 2025.

High-spending international tourists, the kind who might have splurged on a fancy dinner at Aphotic, haven’t returned to the city. Hemsley points out that he’s not the first to note the impossibility of keeping a restaurant alive in SoMa these days — even at a more approachable price point.

It really is a doom loop — the more the negative headlines keep piling up about Frisco, the less tourists want to visit, and the more the city contracts.

Exit quote:

I asked Hemsley what he thinks the city could be doing to support small-business owners. “No city official ever reached out to us to see how we were doing or to congratulate us or to let us know what their plans were or any multitude of things that they could do to help out small businesses,” Hemsley said. “So I think that lets you know about the mindset of the city.”

Well to be fair, SF politicians have much more important priorities these days than keeping their city’s businesses alive and tourists flying, bringing their disposable income with them:

● San Francisco Auditing 98 Monuments to Remove Those Deemed ‘Racist or Sexist’.

● San Francisco Police Are Fighting Crime By Dressing up in Inflatable Chicken Costumes to Catch Drivers Speeding Through Crosswalks.

● San Francisco Flew ‘Appeal to Heaven’ Flag Until Saturday.

● San Francisco Spends $5 Million of Taxpayer Money to Give Free Beer and Vodka Shots to Homeless.

● San Francisco Mayor Appoints Drag Queen to Head Office of Transgender Initiatives.

● San Francisco’s Train System is Still Running on Floppy Disks.

● San Francisco officials weigh in on departure of Elon Musk’s X headquarters: ‘Good riddance.’

How many more businesses whose departures will be met by San Fran officials responding with some variation of “good riddance” before voters decide enough is enough? Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Robbers Announce They Will Have To Leave San Francisco Because Everything’s Been Robbed.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Space policy for the new President — whoever it might be.

We’ve been very fortunate to have solid space policy over the past several administrations. I hope this continues.

HE USUALLY DOES WHEN IT’S HIM TALKING AND NOT HIS DETRACTORS CHARACTERIZING WHAT HE SAYS: “I think Trump comes across very positively, so thanks to The Washington Post for making this available.”

WOW, CATHOLICS FOR KAMALA ISN’T WHAT I WAS EXPECTING AT ALL! Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds Doritos to left-wing influencer in deeply bizarre ‘communion’ video.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer raised eyebrows Thursday over a bizarre video in which she fed Doritos into the mouth of a liberal podcaster — in which some said was a stunt that imitated the Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion.

In the short clip, posted on podcaster Liz Plank’s Instagram account, the lefty influencer was seen on her knees opening her mouth for Whitmer to place Doritos on her tongue.

Plank, the face of an influencer group that calls itself “Hotties For Harris,” tried to shoe-horn the vid into a statement on industrial policy — specifically about the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which gave billions in funding to boost the semiconductor industry.

“If he won’t, Gretchen Whitmer will. Chips aren’t just delicious, the CHIPS Act is a game-changer for U.S. tech and manufacturing, boosting domestic production of semiconductors to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers! Donald Trump would put that at risk,” Plank captioned the Instagram video.

But most users couldn’t get past the sacrilegious overtones of the clip. It quickly set social media ablaze with puzzlement, intrigue and criticism.

“Many Catholics are going to see this as mocking the communion rail,” Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters, stressed on X. “Except Catholics don’t make it look like sensual.””Let’s be clear what’s happening in this video,” Trump adviser Tim Murtaugh stressed on X. “Gov. Whitmer of Michigan is pretending to give communion to an leftist podcaster on her knees, using a Dorito as the Eucharist while wearing a Harris-Walz hat.”

“Do they want ZERO Catholic votes for Harris?”

Conservative pundit Liz Wheeler lamented:

“it’s wild that some Christians refuse to vote when Democrats obviously loathe you… because you’re Christian.”

Exit question:

Remember when Gretchen Whitmer called JD Vance weird? pic.twitter.com/rDVPcdIF3X

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) October 10, 2024

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: A Severe Solar Storm Is Expected to Strike Earth This Week.

HMM: Loneliness increases dementia odds by 31%, study finds. I remain skeptical about a lot of these correlational studies. I think it’s just about as likely that early aspects of dementia make people less sociable and hence lonelier.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee for Your Heart: The Regenerative Power of Caffeine on Vascular Health.