TONIGHT ON THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF HBO’S VEEP: Harris Pivots to Unity in Closing Argument after Embracing ‘Threat-to-Democracy’ Charge Throughout Campaign.
Good luck with that, when her boss just called half the country “garbage.”
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
October 29, 2024
THE SPINAL TAP ELECTION: Everything Is Turned Up to 11.
For many women, abortion is a hard-won right and they believe that they alone should decide whether to keep their pregnancy or terminate it. Achieving that right (codified in the 1973 Roe v .Wade decision) was the most important feminist victory since the advent of voting rights for women. Their political opponents say pregnant women should not have unfettered discretion to deal with pregnancy since it involves another, innocent life. The debate over women’s rights, human autonomy, and the protection of innocents is suffused with both practical consequences and symbolic weight.
The same is true for transgender rights. The right of adults to choose their gender is now widely accepted, a major change from 20 or 30 years ago. The battles now are whether children should be subject to irreversible changes, who should make those decisions, whether transgender women (born men) should compete against biological women and girls in sports, whether biological and transgender girls should use the same bathrooms and locker rooms, and whether taxpayers should pay for gender-changing operations on prison inmates and illegal aliens. The numbers involved in these issues are relatively small, but their symbolic weight is large. Opposing sides face each other across a cultural chasm, drenched with contempt for the opposition.
These differences are playing out against a disorienting background condition, which is often ignored when we discuss politics and culture. The basic structure of modern economies is changing rapidly. The last such disorienting economic change was the Great Depression and, before that, the Second Industrial Revolution in the 1890s (the advent of big steel, oil, chemicals, and large corporations to manage them). Both the 1890s and 1930s produced long-lasting shifts in voters’ political alignments.
We are seeing another great realignment now, driven (on the economic side) by rapid innovation in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When those are combined with low-cost transportation, virtually free communication, and trade rules that encourage globalization, the result is social dislocation and disorientation. There is a palpable threat to employment in American manufacturing and, increasingly, in service industries.
Both political parties have responded by supporting trade protection, with Trump taking the lead. Doing so has helped him forge a populist Republican Party, centered on the working-class.
Amid these vast changes and bitter ideological differences, it is hardly surprising to see our political discourse becoming more virulent, depicting the opposition as “enemies,” as Trump has done for some elected representatives (and not just violent extremists).
The only way to contain those differences peacefully is to channel them through established democratic institutions, using well-established procedures. That’s the only hope the losing side will accept the results as legitimate.
Supporters of Al Gore and John Kerry could not be reached for comment.
THE DEMOCRATS’ INSANITY DEFENSE:
In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical past positions. “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in a column posted the next morning as an example of Trump’s lunacy: “What the hell was he talking about?” Glasser wrote of the trans operation lines. “No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’ point.”
That reaction was understandable—the idea of the operations was, as Trump himself said, a “thing nobody would ever think of.” The problem was that it is true.
* * * * * * * *
The same GOP staffer, who is currently working on a competitive congressional race, told me that one problem his campaign regularly faces is that aspects of Democratic governance are simply too insane for voters to find credible, even when they are documented as official U.S. government policy. “When you outline the Democratic agenda, you have to water it down, because in both polling and focus groups, people just don’t believe it,” he said. “They are critical of things like boys in girls’ sports, but they tune out stuff about schools not informing parents about transitioning their children. They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.”
Another Republican operative made a related point on the failure of the party’s attempt to message on trans issues in 2022, which was that the reality of the procedures was so gruesome that voters simply preferred not to think about it. “Phrases like ‘genital mutilation’ are disgusting and viscerally off-putting, even to voters who may be sympathetic to the Republicans’ position but will just write you off as a freak for talking about it that way.”
A similar dynamic plays out in foreign policy. On the one hand the Democrats conjured out of thin air the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, which was, we now know, a conspiracy theory concocted by ex-spies and Clinton campaign operatives and seeded in the intelligence agencies and media by the outgoing Obama administration to cripple the new administration. That is to say that it is not a matter of partisan political opinion; it is simply false. Yet as of 2022, nearly half of U.S. voters, and a majority of Democrats, still believed that Trump was elected in 2016 due to Russian interference, and the hoax remains a mainstay of Democratic rhetoric. It even played a major role in the 2020 election, providing the predicate for the Biden campaign to collude with tech companies and retired spooks to censor reporting about Hunter Biden’s foreign influence-peddling schemes, which turned out to be entirely real.
If the past decade of politics has felt like staring into endless funhouse mirrors, needless to say, read the whole thing.
Related:
● Jake Tapper Is Lying About CNN’s Key Role In The Russia Collusion Hoax.
STEVE BANNON RELEASED:
BANNON: “I am finally out of being a political prisoner by the Merrick Garland, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi regime.” pic.twitter.com/2YYobLA6FO
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 29, 2024
I WAS TOLD I WOULD BE WATCHING A FASCIST RALLY AND ALL I GOT WAS A DON RICKLES CONCERT: Jon Stewart defends Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial MSG Trump rally joke.
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.
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.”)
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.”
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.
October 28, 2024
INEVITABLE: Hitler tunes in to video of Trump’s MSG rally:
Brilliant. Replace the faces of the Nazi officers with Kamala, Tim and Morning Joe gang and you've essentially got a documentary. https://t.co/hM9VocfqXl
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) October 29, 2024
“IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS:” Ben Shapiro Does an Epic Reverse Uno on ‘The NY Times’ and Exposes Their Lame October Surprise.
3/ 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.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 29, 2024
Tucker Carlson also received an identical request from the same Timesperson:
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2024
So the L.A. Times, the WaPo and now the New York Times have all decided to commit ritual seppuku in the last two weeks of the election? I hope it was worth it for all concerned.
(Classical reference in headline.)
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Progress: Trump Holds Most Ethnically Diverse, Pro-Israel Nazi Rally In History.
TONIGHT ON THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF HBO’S VEEP:
The Vice President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen.
Kamala at a semiconductor plant: "Can I touch it?"
Worker: "Do not touch it… Please do not touch any of the poly — it is very sharp."
Kamala: "And shiny!
This is straight out of Veep.
pic.twitter.com/af9rjje3OE— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 28, 2024
JEFF BEZOS GOES OUT ON A LIMB: The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media.
In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.
Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Good luck with that, Jeff. Four years before Bezos bought the Post, it claimed on the cover of its then-subsidiary weekly publication Newsweek that, with the Obama entering office, “We Are All Socialists Now.”
A few months prior to that, the late Deborah Howell, then the Post’s ombudswoman wrote:
Thousands of conservatives and even some moderates have complained during my more than three-year term that The Post is too liberal; many have stopped subscribing, including more than 900 in the past four weeks.
It pains me to see lost subscribers and revenue, especially when newspapers are shrinking. Conservative complaints can be wrong: The mainstream media were not to blame for John McCain’s loss; Barack Obama’s more effective campaign and the financial crisis were.
But some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.
Back in 1992, the late Ginny Carroll, bureau chief in first Detroit and then Houston of the then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek, appeared on C-Span after admitting she wore a button labeled “Yeah, I’m In The Media, Screw You!” at the 1992 Republican convention, and defended it:
“My reaction to that button [‘Rather Biased’] and others, in part, is a button I bought yesterday that says `Yeah, I’m In The Media, Screw You!’….I do understand why a lot of people are upset with us, why we rank somewhere between terrorists and bank robbers on the approval scale. We do criticize. That’s part of our role. Our role is not just to parrot what people say, it’s to make people think. I think that sometimes I want to say to the electorate `Grow up!’”
Only now, with 200,000 subscriber cancellations and counting, is the Post forced to say “Grow up!” to its own leftist readers, and Bezos is forced to pretend he cares about balancing the paper’s coverage. But then, these sorts of mea culpas happen at the end, or shortly after every presidential election from the DNC-MSM, but curiously, their coverage only seems to get worse when the next election rolls around.
JUST NBC THE AIRBRUSHING! NBC Cuts Out Nick Bosa And His MAGA Hat In Edited Postgame Video, Deletes It After Being Called Out.
San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa crashed Brock Purdy’s postgame interview following their team’s 30-24 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. Bosa didn’t say a word during his two-second appearance in the video, but instead pointed to the white and gold ‘Make America Great Again’ hat atop his head.
NBC, however, couldn’t stomach the fact that one of the most popular players in all of football would wear a MAGA hat and publicly endorse former President Donald Trump. So, naturally, they cut Bosa’s brief appearance from the video and shared the edited version to Sunday Night Football’s 1.3 million followers on X as if nothing happened.
We can’t show you the edited clip that the Sunday Night Football account shared because they decided to delete it after it was up overnight and their mentions were flooded with people calling them out for trying to hide the moment.
In other news from the world of football: ‘Coach’ Tim Walz gets mocked for fumbling simple football term: ‘You don’t ‘run a pick 6.’
Tim Walz dropped a wide-open pass on NFL Sunday.
The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate livestreamed himself playing video games with Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in an appeal to younger male voters — only to be mocked after misusing a common football term.
Walz, a former defensive coordinator at Mankato West High School, tweeted afterward that the far-left Bronx and Queens rep “could run a mean pick 6” — referring to an interception returned for a touchdown — in the Madden video game series.
The post was later deleted, but not before conservatives jumped on the malapropism.
“This was a real deleted tweet from alleged football coach Tampon Tim. ‘Can run a mean pick 6’ Lmfao,” commentator Greg Price wrote on X.
How do you do, fellow NFL enthusiasts!
BRENDAN O’NEILL: Trump’s New York invasion exposed the MAGA madness powering him to victory.
And the expletives! I’m not coy but even I was shaken by all the swearing.
Someone had scrawled “EAT A—, TRUMP” across the sidewalk of 8th Avenue. A gang of sad-looking antifa activists waved a black-and-white flag that said “F— TRUMP”. “Get the f— out of New York City!”, Kamala fanboys yelled at Trump supporters.
The Trumpists gave as good as they got. One of them played on a loudspeaker a rap version of Trump saying “They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs”, in reference to his thin claims about Haitian migrants cooking pets in Ohio.
It was at that point that I felt like I’d been transported into a farce. One side yelling about Nazis and psychopaths, the other blasting out a tinny ditty about cat-eating.
It felt like a comedy version of the American Civil War. It was a mostly pantomime clash, where the point was not to convince the other side, or even to engage with it, but just to hurl insults and make fun.
There were some surreal moments. I saw a black lady draped in a neon-pink Trump 2024 flag being called racist by a bunch of white TikTok kids. Eh? And it struck me as insensitive – to say the least – when a man holding up a “Jews for Trump” banner was told “Welcome to your Nazi rally”.
My takeaway is that both sides are a tad crazy, but the MAGA side at least has some fun with it. There was a knowingness to their provocations. Like when they played Trump saying “They’re eating the cats” – it’s not necessarily that they think Haitians are chowing down on moggies, but rather that they know this tall tale irritates the hell out of PC New Yorkers.
The Kamala camp, by contrast, seemed to be in the grip of existential dread. They really believe Trump is a psychopath who will turn this great republic into a Nazi hellhole.
Calm down? Such fretting is not only fact-lite – Trump might be annoying, but he’s not Hitler. It also can’t be good for one’s health. I worry whether “aunti-fascist” is getting any sleep.
So there, on 8th Avenue, was America’s tribal divide. Fearful Leftists pitted against mocking Right-wingers. Not one mind was changed, but it was a good day out.
If Trump wins (don’t get cocky, given the size of Kamala’s war chest), as Steve wrote for the PJM Mothership: How to Stage an Intervention on 70 Million TDS Sufferers.
Our most pressing issue is the mental health crisis affecting tens of millions of Americans, a toxic combination of persecution fantasies, narcissism, and outright delusion. Weirdly enough, neither drugs nor alcohol seem to be involved in anything more than typical amounts.
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) began more than 20 years ago as Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) — remember “Bushitler” and “Darth Cheney?” But that was then and this is now. Bush is now an elder statesman who has grown respectable because he won’t endorse Trump, and Cheney — who up until recently was regularly denounced by our lefty friends as a war criminal — is now more beloved by Democrats than the son of Robert F. Kennedy.
“See? Not even HITLER would vote for HITLER!” is the rationalization currently percolating in various lefty skulls around the nation.
Earlier this month, Stephen Miller tweeted:
I thought he was only talking about the media — not half the residents of Manhattan.
MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Michelle Obama just dropped a clue about who will win the election. Simply follow the plain-spoken truth.
The Bidens, the billionaire class and rational voters everywhere all know that Trump isn’t going to unleash the military on U.S. citizens, or ‘be a dictator on day one’, or prosecute his political enemies.
Hell — Trump even said he’d consider pardoning Hunter Biden if elected!
‘I wouldn’t take it off the books,’ Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt last week. ‘Unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously… I happen to think it’s very bad for our country.’
Look at that. If only the left-leaning media would amplify that message. Instead, we got Michelle Obama stumping for Harris over the weekend, remonstrating the crowd much as her husband has been unsuccessfully doing to black male voters.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me,’ Michelle said in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Saturday, ‘if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.’
Dazzle us? At this point, we’re just looking for a coherent, specific answer to any question. Just one.
But in Michelle’s telling, voters who are concerned about the border crisis, rising crime, the affordable housing shortage, and a Middle East on fire just need to lower their expectations.
‘We pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that [Trump] doesn’t even have the courage to do,’ she continued.
Please. Trump sat down for three hours with Joe Rogan last week, an appearance that has already racked up over 34 million views on YouTube alone. And this billionaire spoke the lingua franca of his working-class supporters: MMA fighters, what he learned about UFOs, and his sheer awe at moving into the White House and standing in the Lincoln bedroom.
Trump also noted that, unlike Harris, he can speak discursively before circling back to his initial thought — what he calls ‘the weave’.
The vice president, he said, ‘couldn’t put two sentences together’.
That is some plain-spoken truth. It certainly lands better than hysterical cries of fascism.
And:
Tight as the polls are, it feels like Donald Trump will win.
After all, why else would the left-wing media call him Hitler?
Why else would MSNBC shamelessly intersperse footage of the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden with Trump’s Sunday MSG event, overflowing with middle and working-class voters — in effect, calling those voters Nazis?
Why else would the New York Times plaster the front page of its Sunday op-ed section with huge block type, font size otherwise reserved for the outbreak of world wars, to what Trump will do if he wins — including ‘USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS’?
Not to mention the furor over the refusal by both the L.A. Times and Washington Post (owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos) to endorse either candidate, which sent the left into a tizzy of canceled subscriptions and social-media virtue-signaling.
Author Stephen King: ‘After five years, I have cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post’ — a statement King posted on X, which happens to be owned by another Trump-supporting billionaire. The left can’t win for trying.
Although, if King were serious about being an agent for #Resistence, he’d really put his money where his keyboard is:
Related: WaPo Loses 200,000 Subscribers Because Liberals Are Insane.
WHITE SUPREMACY — YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG: Rainbow Coalition at “Nazi” Rally. “Quotable quote: ‘I’m the black Nazi.’”
The next generation of Nazi's and White supremacists were spotted at the Trump rally. America is in trouble. @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/VbLuuM8l7V
— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) October 28, 2024
METAPHOR ALERT: Here’s What Happened When Janet Yellen Was Asked About the Status of the Dollar.
A few days ago, Janet Yellen was answering: "How concerned are you about the long term status of the dollar?"
The US Treasury Department sign fell off. pic.twitter.com/S9tDjqyXAb
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) October 28, 2024
RUY TEIXEIRA: How Progressives Blew It.
It wasn’t so long ago progressives were riding high. They had a moment; they really did. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, were hegemonic in the nation’s discourse. Building in the teens and cresting in the early ’20s with the Black Lives Matter protests and the heady early days of the Biden administration, very few of their ideas seemed off the table. Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish ICE and decriminalize the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a “Green New Deal”? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Only a bigot would resist!
Progressives thought they had ripped the Overton window wide open and it remained only to push the voters through it. In their view, that wouldn’t be too hard since these were great ideas, and voters, at least the non-deplorable ones, were thirsty for a bold new approach to America’s problems.
In reality, a lot of these ideas were pretty terrible and most voters, outside the precincts of the progressive left itself, were never very interested in them. That was true from the get-go, but now the backlash against these ideas is strong enough that it can’t be ignored. As a result, politics is adjusting and the progressive moment is well and truly over.
Well, likely “temporarily on pause,” or waiting to be replaced with even zanier ideas. Is it possible to put the brakes on the left’s goals of the past ten or twenty years in the age of the social media?
UPDATE TO THE KUNCE COMMANDO COSPLAY KERFUFFLE: Missouri Democrat’s Gun Stunt That Led to a Reporter’s Injury Just Got Even Worse.
Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Lucas Kunce has already come in for a heaping helping of well-deserved mockery after an event at a backyard “range” led to a reporter being hit with shrapnel. But Kunce’s decision to fire AR-15s at steel targets about ten yards away, his co-hort Adam Kinzinger’s decision to use an optic but no eye protection, the lack of a visible backstop behind the targets, and the presence of containers of Tannerite on the shooting bench the Democrats were using aren’t the only troubling details about the photo op.
As the Kansas City Star reports, one of the men who says he helped organize the event may not be allowed to legally possess or even touch a gun or ammunition.
As Kunce and Kinziger were shooting, Chad Everett Downs remained nearby. Before the event, Downs spoke with a Star photojournalist, saying that the range was his but that the event was taking place at his neighbor’s residence.
Downs said he lived “across the way” and said his neighbor allows him to shoot on the property. He showed The Star firearms that were on the table that belonged to him.
Missouri court records show that Downs was charged with 17 counts of felony perjury in August by Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston. He has been issued a criminal summons and waived his preliminary hearing. His ex-wife in a court filing earlier this month alleged the man owns or has access to guns in violation of his bond conditions.
Read the whole thing.
WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED TO #METOO? The Weirdest Appeal of the 2024 Campaign.
The Democrats can’t defend the Biden/Harris record, and they are stuck with a terrible candidate. So, out of desperation, they are trying to construct an alternative reality in which it makes sense to vote for them. This is what their yammering about the 2025 Project is all about, as well as their claim that Trump is a “fascist” and a “Nazi,” and much else. But this ad is the most bizarre attempt to campaign in another universe that I have seen.
The ad says that Republicans are trying to impose a national ban on pornography, which is ridiculous. It also implies, if I understand it correctly, that Republicans want to make masturbation illegal:
(Click over to YouTube should you wish to watch the video; it’s age-restricted and thus isn’t embeddable.)
Masturbation? Whoopi Goldberg tells me that Trump is going to make interracial marriage illegal:
Wow, I hope somebody told J.D. Vance about this!
As Dan McLaughlin writes, “Why is this campaign now being waged on The Man in the High Castle meets The Handmaid’s Tale? I’ll tell you why: because the time for persuasion is over.”
So, it doesn’t really matter to the Democrats’ messaging at the moment whether they think they are cruising for a 1936-style blue tidal wave, a 1980-style red tsunami, or a razor-thin coin-toss election: They were always going to end this way, whipping their supporters into a frenzy and ignoring all messages that aren’t dialed all the way to eleven. If Democrats seem to be in a rage, a panic, or a tantrum in the campaign’s final week, that’s because that was the plan all along.
It’s only Monday; it’s going to be one heck of a long week of freakouts and meltdowns as the left goes to plaid:
THIS WILL END WELL: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative opinion writers at the paper.
Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section — even as he remains silent over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Bezos — the world’s second richest person with a fortune that Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued at $211 billion as of Monday — is keen on gaining a more ideologically diverse readership by expanding his newspaper’s reach among right-leaning audiences, according to a report in The New York Times.
The Amazon founder, meanwhile, has remained silent over the non-endorsement controversy. He has not spoken publicly amid protests from high-level staffers and prominent figures such as Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
This will end in one of two ways. The New York Times brought in Adam Rubenstein from the Weekly Standard; he was then run out on a rail by their leftist young staffers after he published Tom Cotton’s op-ed during the “Starting from Zero” cultural revolution of the summer of 2020, as were center left journalists Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles. The Post brought in Dave Weigel, previously from Reason, and Jennifer Rubin from Commentary and, alas, PJ Media. CNN brought in Oliver Darcy from Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. All quickly went native and got their inner Bulworths on.
Perhaps a conservative opinion writer will work out there better, and it would be great to see the second coming of George Will at the WaPo. But given how the paper’s staffers reacted last week when its editor and/or Bezos didn’t allow the paper to publicly endorse Kamala, it will definitely be quite a toxic work atmosphere for some time to come.
