A TASTE OF WHAT’S AHEAD FOR U.S. JOURNALISTS: Matt Taibbi at Racket News recalls a lunch gathering in Moscow back when being a journalist in Russia could be a fatal attraction. Now, the signs of something not unlike those days in Moscow are appearing here.

WELL, SHE IS: I Want to Be Perfectly Clear Here: Kamala Harris Is a Monster.

She’s monstrous in so many ways; it’s almost like a demented form of talent.

We ll know she’s an inarticulate puddle of goo when she’s let off the scripted hook. But her instincts are so base, so vile, and so authoritarian that sometimes it doesn’t matter what argle-bargle dribbles out in the end. What she’s done or is planning to do is so ghastly that you barely hear the words.

And then she has the unmitigated gall to pretend none of it happened. Or, as Bernie said, she’s playing the pragmatic politician to win.

Lying with a sincere and empathetic straight face.

What follows is a nearly complete takedown of Harris’s monstrousness.

STAND UP AGAINST BIGOTRY: White students sue Education Dept. over race-based exclusion in federally funded PhD scholarship program: Young America’s Foundation seeks to open the federally funded program to all individuals, ‘regardless of race.’

WHY ARE SO MANY UNIVERSITIES CESSPITS OF ANTISEMITISM? Will UCLA protect Jewish students this fall? Still a ‘question,’ lawyer says: Judge slams university’s ‘abhorrent’ actions helping pro-Palestinian protesters.

SCOTT PINSKER: What the Media Aren’t Telling You About Israel’s Ingenious Strike Against Terrorist Pagers.

SOUNDS LIKE HE’S CREATING A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT: ‘Racism expert’ Arizona prof attacks white students as ‘primary perpetrators’ of racial segregation on campus.

OUCH: Ukrainian drone attack triggers earthquake-sized blast at arsenal in Russia’s Tver region.

A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Russia triggered an earthquake-sized blast at a major arsenal in the Tver region on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of a nearby town, war bloggers and some media reported.

Unverified video and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame blasting into the night sky and multiple detonations thundering across a lake about 380 km (240 miles) west of Moscow.

NASA satellites picked up intense heat sources emanating from an area of about 14 square kilometres (5 square miles) at the site in the early hours and earthquake monitoring stations noted what sensors thought was a small earthquake, opens new tab in the area.

“The enemy hit an ammunition depot in the area of Toropets,” said Yuri Podolyaka, a Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger. “Everything that can burn is already burning there (and exploding).”

It’s over 300 miles from Tver and to Ukraine’s nearest border, so nice shooting.

PETE KIRSANOW:  Pete discusses the Commission on Civil Rights’ report on crime victimization in the National Review Online.  (My Statement is here.)

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: They Don’t Just Want to Kill Trump, They Want to Kill You Too. “Readers here know that we need to be vigilant. November 5, 2024 will be the biggest red line ever drawn in the sand. There won’t be a lot of hugs across the aisle.”

HMM: Inducing a Sino-Russian Split Through Ukraine.

How, then, can Washington engineer a Sino-Russian split? The answer lies in creating a proper incentive structure. To paraphrase Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, to expect concessions to Moscow on Ukraine today to be reciprocated with Russian concessions on China is naive: Putin’s strategy will not change until the Kremlin has encountered a sufficiently long string of failures to convince his successors that Russia’s current alignment with Beijing will fail to advance its interests. Or, to borrow from Kennan, Washington must embrace “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies” to punish Russian alignment with China.

The aim, therefore, ought to be a demonstration to both Russia and China that their partnership will bring more costs than benefits. An extended period of confrontation whereby U.S. actions make it impossible for Russia to further its interests, and where Chinese alignment with Russia harms its wider economic and political interests, will then enable the aforementioned tensions in the partnership to fester. Then and only then will their contradictions be ripe for exploitation.

It is worth noting that there exists a historical precedent for such a strategy. During the Cold War, to break the Sino-Soviet partnership crafted by Mao’s “tilt” to the Soviets, Eisenhower pursued a policy aimed at generating tensions between Moscow and Beijing by making China more dependent on the Soviet Union through dogged political and economic confrontation.

This policy helped create the conditions for Nixon’s opening.

An interesting read and probably worth your time.

IF I WERE HIM I’D AVOID PAGERS AND WALKIE TALKIES: Cornell Professor Who Praised ‘Exhilarating’ Slaughter Of Israelis Returns To Teaching.

HAHA:

Hezbollah terrorists this morning adjusting to their new reality. pic.twitter.com/y5lgGbBe1y

— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) September 19, 2024

UM, PHRASING: Harris Tosses Fresh Word Salad, and It’s Tasty.

SO MUCH GRASSROOTS ENTHUSIASM EVERYWHERE! Union Members Offered $100 To Attend Rally for Dem Rep. Susan Wild, Leaked Text Message Shows: Pennsylvania Democrat posed for pictures with union members and thanked them for attending.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: 5 Gallon Electric Drinking Portable Water Dispenser. #CommissionEarned

DON SURBER: What a Never Trumper Believes.

OR MAYBE JUST DISHONORING IT, AND THEMSELVES: RealClearInvestigations: To Many, the Justice Dept. Is Honoring Political Neutrality in the Breach Again.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. Importers Are Pulling in Goods Early as Possible Port Strike Draws Closer.

U.S. importers are rushing in millions of dollars’ worth of electronics, holiday goods and industrial materials to get ahead of a possible strike by dockworkers in less than two weeks that threatens to lock down major ports and hammer the American economy.

The drive has gained urgency as a walkout by 45,000 dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas has grown more likely, swamping West Coast ports with big cargo volumes as companies redraw their supply chains to get away from the looming labor turmoil.

“I have huge concerns about the potential strike or labor slowdown,” said Mac Harman, chief executive of Balsam Hill, a Redwood City, Calif., company that has diverted tens of thousands of artificial trees, wreaths and garlands that would usually land at the Port of New York and New Jersey to Oakland, Calif.

Balsam Hill still has millions more items to ship and faces a financial toll if it can’t get its goods to retail markets ahead of the holiday shopping season. “A strike will have a significant negative impact on both our ability to serve our customers and on our financial performance,” Harman said.

The International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents the dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, is warning that its members will strike if they don’t secure a labor deal before their current contract ends on Sept. 30. A walkout would hit major seaports including New York-New Jersey, Savannah, Ga., Norfolk, Va., and Houston.

The union, which is seeking a 77% wage increase over six years, and port employers haven’t met at the bargaining table yet and no negotiations have been scheduled.

Maybe because 77% over six years is a bit much, even for an opening negotiation position.

AWFLS ARE AWFUL: The rise of the Keffiyeh Karen.

There is the person I like to call the Keffiyeh Karen — the female student with a bare midriff and her head wrapped in the black or red and white patterning of Palestinian liberation, yelling anti-Zionist slogans with manic passion on elite college campus quadrangles and lawns.

In her ready and confident fury, her rudeness, her iron-fisted appetite for confrontation over infractions of what she deems political and moral gospel, the Keffiyeh Karen is related to a broader epidemic of the Gen Z Mean Girl. These Mean Girls have graduated from running the schoolyard to terrorizing the workplace. If there is one type to be afraid of in modern offices, it isn’t the lech or the shouty, hungover male middle manager. It’s the twenty-three-year-old gluten-free vegan graduate, wet behind the ears. We know what these misanthropic misses are capable of — we’ve seen the Phoebes and Annas of Just Stop Oil chuck soup on Van Gogh.

Several good friends of mine who work in corporate settings have told me tales to chill the blood — women in their early twenties conducting bullying campaigns, being proudly insubordinate to their bosses. They never face consequences.

Well, obviously they need to.

MATT TAIBBI: House Committee Rips State Department Over Censorship: The House Committee on Small Business prints a blistering report on the Global Engagement Center, a State Department “counter-messaging” entity at the center of the Twitter Files.

MATT TAIBBI: “Six weeks before the lancing of the boil that is the Trump-Harris election, officialdom has never been antsier. There’s desperation up there and the more bureaucratically thuggish tactics employed by agencies like GEC have not scratched their itch of uncertainty. Arbitrary removals of content aren’t cutting it. New overreaches are coming, but what? Our goons aren’t Russian enough to smash people with hammers, but as the earlier story today shows, they aren’t sane either. I’m not intimidated, but the days of smooth sailing might be over.”

UNION GUYS LOVED REAGAN, TOO: Teamsters’ Rank and File Favors Trump, but Union Announces ‘No Endorsement’ for President.

ASSASSINATION NATION: Trump Survives Slanted Roof And Slanted Debate.

EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED, VERY MUCH INCLUDING THE COMIC BOOKS: Antifa Batman? DC Comics introduces a poor, brutal, and left-wing Dark Knight.

THESE ARE FUN IF YOU AREN’T THE ONES HOLDING THE BAG:  The Most Wrecked House on the Market.