THAT WOULD BE NICE: CNN Analyst: Trump Could Capture His ‘Great White Whale’ in 2024.
Archive for 2024
October 25, 2024
I KINDA LIKE THAT RULE, TBH: Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC’s click-to-cancel rule: Cable companies worry rule will make it hard to talk customers out of canceling.
How about making them not want to cancel by giving them better service at better prices? I know, that’s crazy talk.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE WARRIORS GONE?
I’ve had a number of people ask me what I think happened that caused our senior military leadership to go from being the most respected institution in America to being a bunch of banana republic narcissistic self-serving politicos.
There are so many ways to answer that, but I…
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) October 24, 2024
Read the whole thing.
JIM TREACHER: Adolf Hitler Endorses Kamala Harris! “In a stunning turn of events, Adolf Hitler has endorsed Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris.”
Click over to see “All the fake images in this newsletter [that] were generated with DreamStudio.”
And after you’re understandably creeped out by them, as Treacher cautions, “Hey, don’t yell at me. She’s the one who dragged that guy into it! If you had told me 20 years ago that one day, Dick Cheney and his daughter would endorse a Democrat who says the Republican nominee is Hitler…”
I’m so old, I can remember when the left were painting toothbrush mustaches on Cheney himself; he’s the last guy I thought would have Stockholm Syndrome, but here we are as this election is about to enter its last week. Curiously, a decade ago, his daughter was doing the same to Obama, so perhaps this analogy is getting a bit played out:
Liz Cheney compared herself to “Winston Churchill standing up to [Adolf] Hitler” on Tuesday night when declaring her opposition to American airstrikes in Syria — the latest in a series of Liz-Cheney-thinking-rather-highly-of-Liz-Cheney moments. She was speaking to about 150 Tea Party members when she rejected President Obama’s call to strike Syria, calling his national security policy “amateurish.” It seems Obama is Hitler in this scenario. We might note that more often, Obama has been compared to another British politician, Neville Chamberlain, who appeased Hitler.
Played out — who am I kidding? Back to today, where the House of Stephanopoulos is predictably going full Godwin:
And Hillary accidentally throws Bill right under the bus:
Welcome to the last 75 years of American politics, where everybody gets to be Hitler for 15 minutes, before being reformed as a wise elder statesman when the next Hitler comes along.
Incidentally, Worst. Hitler. Ever: Holocaust survivor denounces Kamala Harris for boosting Trump-Hitler comparisons, says ex-prez is ‘a mensch.’
UPDATE: Hillary also threw herself under the bus! Trump campaign slams Hillary Clinton for ‘hypocrisy’ with NYC Nazi rally comparison. “Clinton was honored through a ‘Tribute to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’ at [Madison Square Garden] in January 2001, archived White House records show. The event was held just days after she was sworn in as a U.S. senator.”
YUGE: WaPo Declares It Will Not Endorse a Presidential Candidate This Election.
In a somewhat stunning turn of events, The Washington Post has declared that it will not endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 election — nor will it do so in future elections. But…why now?
From the horse’s mouth:
The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.
“Roots,” you say? When did things change? After reviewing the times when WaPo previously declined to endorse (1960, 1972), The Post added:
That was strong reasoning, but in 1976 for understandable reasons at the time, we changed this long-standing policy and endorsed Jimmy Carter as president. But we had it right before that, and this is what we are going back to.
The Post endorsed Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris) in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
On the heels of the Los Angeles Times’ decision earlier in the week not to endorse, this announcement is sure to send shockwaves through the political media landscape.
For some, it is the proverbial time of choosing:
WATCH: Morning Joe Melts Down Over Trump’s Transgender Ad.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough fumed over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recent transgender ad airing in battleground states, saying the Harris campaign “is blind to” the ad’s impact in the final days before the election.
“They’ve run that 30,000 times during football games. It’s having an impact,” Scarborough said Friday of the ad, which highlights Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal immigrants.
“The [Harris] campaign is blind to it, they’re just blind to it. I don’t know if they think they’re too good to respond to an ad,” Scarborough continued.
As Rich Lowry wrote last week: The GOP Makes Democrats Pay the Price for Trans Insanity.
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Harris’s Radical-Left Base Is Angry She’s Trying to Hide Her Extreme Left-Wing Beliefs. “There’s been an odd disconnect between the campaign’s economic populist ad strategy and the event strategy that focuses almost exclusively on Liz Cheney kumbaya optics that depress the base right as voting begins and don’t provably win more swing voters than bread-and-butter issues.”
WOEING: Boeing is still bleeding money on the Starliner commercial crew program.
Apart from technical execution, Ortberg identified Boeing’s errors in cost and risk estimation as other reasons for the company’s poor performance on several fixed-price government contracts, including Starliner.
“We’re not going to be able to just wave the wand and clean up these troubled contracts,” he said. “We signed up to some things that are problematic.”
Ortberg said he is reluctant to ditch all of Boeing’s troubled contracts. “Even if we wanted to, I don’t think we can walk away from these contracts,” he said. “These are our core customers that need this capability. We’ve got long-term commitments to them. So walking away isn’t an answer to this.”
However, Orberg added that Boeing could reassess programs as they shift from one contract phase to the next. NASA’s commercial crew contract with Boeing has a maximum value of $4.6 billion, but that assumes the agency gives Boeing the green light to fly six operational Starliner missions.
Assuming Starliner flies six missions with four astronauts at the fixed price of $90 million per seat (SpaceX Crew Dragon costs $65 million per seat), Starliner would generate $2.16 billion in revenue for Boeing.
That’s revenue, not profit, for a program that’s already cost Boeing $1.85 billion in losses. If there’s a business case remaining for Starliner, it must be incredibly slender.
THIS JUST CAME IN: Boeing Explores Sale of Space Business.
The effort, part of a strategy by Boeing’s new Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg to streamline the company and stem its financial losses, is at an early stage and may not result in a deal.
Boeing faces a deepening financial crisis. Its largest labor union has rejected two contract proposals and extended a strike that has halted most of its airplane production. Meanwhile, Boeing’s space and defense projects have been hobbled by delays and cost overruns.
For decades, the company has worked hand-in-glove on big National Aeronautics and Space Administration programs, including the Apollo astronaut missions and creating the space station. In recent years, SpaceX has supplanted Boeing’s role as a top agency partner. NASA recently opted to have two astronauts wait months for a ride back from the ISS on a SpaceX craft after problems emerged on Starliner’s first-ever human spaceflight.
Boeing is expected to keep its position overseeing the Space Launch System, some of the people said. The SLS is a huge rocket NASA is paying the company to build to start future lunar-exploration missions. The rocket successfully completed its first flight for NASA about two years ago, though Boeing has faced production challenges and quality control issues with the system.
I’m guessing that’s because SLS is an irresistible (and unaffordable for NASA) cash cow.
PUSHBACK:
🚨BREAKING: I filed a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to investigate the federal agency’s intimidation of businessman Elon Musk over his voter registration program that performs outreach to supporters of First and Second… pic.twitter.com/vaP7lTMLuC
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 25, 2024
ROGER SIMON: Even If Trump Wins, There’s a Long Road Ahead.
Donald Trump likes to tell us he can solve America’s demonstrable problems lickety-split.
There are many things he can do quickly, in days if not hours, by executive order. These include shutting the open border, to a great extent anyway, reinstating, even increasing, sanctions on Iran to cut the money flow enabling the mullahs and allowing domestic oil producers to drill, baby, drill. This would restrain Russian adventurism.
We can name several other improvements that could be done relatively easily, like ticketing the Department of Education for extinction and changing the comically “woke” leadership in our military. We can also get rid of the iffy voting machines and go back to paper ballots with one Election Day.
It’s clear that Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard will have important roles. (Is Tulsi the first woman president?)
Others will return who have served well in the past with names like Kudlow and Grenell. The list is not short.
But looming over all this is another reality.
Kamala Harris, no matter what, will have received tens of millions of votes, perhaps won the popular vote.
These people all supported someone who is unable to answer the most predictable softball questions in anything resembling coherent English.
* * * * * * * * *
And yet millions and millions support her. Some of this is Trump Derangement Syndrome, some of it is being a Democrat by inheritance (everyone in my family always was) or habit (not all that different from smoking), some of it is from fear of losing a government job.
But some are drunk on tired ideology. We find this all over our schools, media and entertainment.
These people will make it Hell for their fellow Americans between Nov 5 and the inauguration on Jan 20. It could even lead to violence.
That interregnum won’t be the end of it either. This ideological infection is too entrenched. It has been going on a long time, since the days of Woodrow Wilson with a warp speed bump from the election of Barack Obama.
In the short-term though, Steve Hayward offers: A Trump Agenda for Day One.
If Trump wants to put the forces of the swamp on the defensive, he should forget the foolish 100-Day agenda borne of the FDR/New Deal myth. Instead, he needs to start with some bold hammer blows on the afternoon of Inauguration Day.
Click over for the list.
TRUE:
When the bill for all the free stuff comes in there'll be a lot of recriminations.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) October 24, 2024
IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ Election Ejection Edition, Part Deux.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED BIDEN-HARRIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BORDER CRISIS: ‘We pray Trump DOESN’T win’: 150,000 migrants in Mexico are rushing to the border before the election – and tell TODD BENSMAN they’re terrified Donald will lock them out!
KRUISER: Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week — ‘ZOMG! THE DEPORTATIONS!’ Edition.
UPDATE (From Ed): Talk about an October Surprise — I wasn’t expecting Trump’s proposal to get this endorsement so late in the game, but here we are in 2024:
Hillary screams into the mic, "DEPORT THEM!!! THEY'RE GONE!!!" Democrats cheer, media praises her "tough stance on border security" as she demands they need to learn English.
Oh, how times have changed… 🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/qZLB6241ux
— Apple Lamps (@lamps_apple) October 25, 2024
AMERICAN MEDIA BASICALLY WON’T TOUCH IT BUT BRITISH PAPERS WILL: Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff slapped me in the face so hard I spun around … I’m disgusted by his fake ‘perfect spouse’ persona.
The woman, a successful New York attorney, is remaining anonymous, but decided to speak out after Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband, denied the claims through a spokesman.
Emhoff’s accuser, who DailyMail.com is naming only as ‘Jane’, initially declined to comment on the record. But Emhoff’s denial, and his alleged hypocrisy by claiming to be a feminist in media interviews, finally became too much for her.
‘What’s frightening for a woman that’s been on the other end of it, is watching this completely fabricated persona being portrayed,’ Jane said.
‘He’s being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.’
That’s Kamala’s whole campaign in a nutshell.
And there is one American outlet willing to cover this.
GET YOUR GARAGE IN ORDER: Armor All Original Garage Floor Mat. #CommissionEarned
CHANGE:
The moment when Miami Dade County flipped to republicans.
Hillary won Miami Dade by 31 pts.
Let that sink in.
Trump is dominating in early voting. https://t.co/wgKrYs8ojw
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 24, 2024
Trump is running a solid campaign and DeSantis has done wonders turning Florida into a solid Red state.
MARTIN GURRI: Cuba Enters the Dark Ages.
On August 6, 1960, Fidel Castro nationalized the Cuban Electric Company and sent his minions to celebrate in the streets of Havana. The company’s logo, a lightbulb-nosed stick figure nicknamed “Calixto Kilowatt,” was paraded around in a huge open coffin. I remember watching this revolutionary ritual on Cuban TV, a young kid frightened by the macabre imagery. Castro’s propaganda was never gentle or subtle.
Fast-forward to last Friday, when the electric grid in Cuba suffered a complete collapse. This is not an exaggeration or a metaphor. The entire island went dark—even Havana, which has been protected from the worst of the recent blackouts. It was a civilizational breakdown. The economy quite literally ground to a halt, as factories and stores were ordered closed by the government. From elementary schools to universities, the educational system was put on pause. Hospitals turned people away. For three days, Cuba, already tattered and abused, entered a special circle of hell reserved for the most mismanaged nations on earth.
The material catastrophe is self-evident and can be measured empirically. The depth of human suffering is impossible to gauge from a distance. Without refrigeration, food—always hard to obtain—was spoiled. Mothers lacked milk for their children. Without fans or air conditioners, everyone, including the very young and the very old, was exposed to Cuba’s blistering temperatures. Without elevators, the old and the sick who lived in apartments were forced to sleep outdoors, in the heat and among the mosquitoes. Without traffic signals, venturing to the streets became a death-defying nightmare. Without light, the human mind itself begins to shut down—the Cuban public, frozen in place by an incompetent and antiquated regime, sank to almost metaphysical levels of hopelessness.
* * * * * * * * *
After three days of calamity, power is now being restored to parts of Havana. It won’t last. Disaster by now is a progressive condition. The regime in Cuba is hardly a government: It’s a gang of incompetents who hold absolute power but have no idea what to do with it. Cuba itself is hardly a country; it’s a lifeless thing, a corpse bleeding out its best talent, inert and decaying amid the glorious beauty of the Caribbean. This situation has lasted for 65 years and shows no signs of change.
Yet we are taught by religion to believe in resurrection. The island-wide blackout, inconceivable in a modern nation, provides an omen for the future. Sooner or later, infrastructure collapse will trigger political collapse.
Some ambitious general, discerning much virtue in capitalism, will sweep away the mafia and offer himself for the presidency. The crowd in the street will enthusiastically support anything that isn’t the present regime. The Cuban people have always been talented and energetic—any who doubt this can visit Miami and see for themselves. American investment and tourism will return in force. Cuba will come back to life. But it’s been a long, long wait, and it looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer.
Faster please; North Korea in the Caribbean needs a serious reboot.
SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Clueless Tim Walz Says Cheneys Will Persuade Libertarians To Vote For Kamala. “Does Tim Walz know what a libertarian is? The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate referenced the libertarian philosophy during a recent appearance on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. For some reason, Walz is possessed of the notion that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.)—of all people—is going to sell libertarians on voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Survey Says… LET FREEDOM RING! “Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ know I don’t focus much on polls but this one is exciting.”
WELL, GIVEN THE DEMOCRATS’ DIVISIVE, INCITEFUL RHETORIC, THAT MAKES SENSE: Many expect post-election violence, most blame media.