THAT’S NICE. DON’T GET COCKY: Real Clear Politics just released their ‘No Toss-Up States’ electoral map and Trump is gonna love it.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Corrupt Media Couldn’t Save ‘The Acolyte’ from Cancellation.

Reporters didn’t just share updates on the series, created by Leslye Headland. They defended the saga, showered it with glowing reviews and said anyone who disagreed was a racist, sexist troll.

We all know why.

The series doubled down on Disney’s progressive agenda, from the cast’s aggressive diversity to the creation of a lesbian witch coven. The media became Disney’s extended PR team, swatting away naysayers without giving fans credit for sussing out a shoddy series.

Funny how the same sexist, racist fans loved “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” a film with a very diverse cast led by an empowered heroine (Felicity Jones).

As Rachel Zegler might say, “Weird!”

“The Acolyte” stands as one of the worst “Star Wars” projects since Disney shelled out $4 billion in 2012 to acquire the property from George Lucas. None of the press’ accusations could save the series from itself.

Woke. Dull. Terribly written. Canon-breaking themes.

And as a result, the Critical Drinker notes, “No More Acolyte for You, Rebel Scum!”

DISPATCHES FROM SUMMER RERUN SEASON: Nielsen: DNC Television Ratings Crash 22% from 2016.

The television ratings of the first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) sunk 22 percent from 2016, according to Nielsen.

The ratings crash suggests that Vice President Kamala Harris is far less popular than the media purported.

About 20 million people watched the first night of the DNC, up from 2020’s virtual convention but severely down from 2016, Axios reported:

• Around 19.1 million viewers watched the DNC live from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. ET during the president’s speech.
• MSNBC drew the most viewers across all networks with 4.6 million, followed by CNN (3.2 million), ABC (2.8 million), Fox News (2.4 million), CBS (2.0 million) and NBC (1.8 million), according to fast national data provided by MSNBC.
• Monday marked the network’s largest DNC night 1 viewership ever, a spokesperson said.

The ratings crash came after the media spent countless hours hyping Harris’s “historic” candidacy.

Don’t get cocky.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: ‘Queer Theory:’ Biden-Harris Official Calls for ‘Queering Nuclear Weapons.’ No, Really.

If you’ve been waiting for that perfect example that the rabid left is not only a threat to the moral fabric of American society but also a clear and present danger to the very existence of the United States, today’s your “lucky” day. Even better, the example comes from none other than the Biden-Harris administration.

Sneha Nair, appointed in February as special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a wing of the Biden-Harris Department of Energy, has been pushing various disarmament policies – including reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Fine, that’s nothing new on the left. But, as far as I can tell, this is:

Nair also argues that advancing “queer theory” to include America’s nuclear arsenal is essential to America’s national security. No, really. I’ll give you a minute to stop laughing before we continue.

Ready? Nair’s insane argument goes like this:

Queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament. Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing.

By understanding DEI as a set of values critical to security, and therefore as an element of an effective nuclear security culture, stakeholders can explore how DEI can contribute to stronger security at nuclear facilities

Collectively, these principles (of DEI) can work to mitigate counterproductive work behavior and prevent disgruntled employees from becoming insider threats.

If only the crew of the USS Dark Star recognized that their talking AI nuclear bomb was operating from beyond the gender binary, they just might have returned to earth safely:

In accordance with the prophecy:

Progress: U.S. Military Introduces Very First Gender-Neutral Bomb https://t.co/giy7KGnkSj

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 11, 2021

A CHEER FOR PHIL DONAHUE: “What is remarkable is not so much that Donahue would host Friedman for an entire show, but that he would let Milton finish his answer. He didn’t interrupt of heckle or demagogue his guest. In fact he is courteous and polite to Friedman throughout. Perhaps Donahue knew he was overmatched, but regardless it is unthinkable that The View or MSNBC or any other news outlet today would let a guest go on for as long as Donahue does in this clip.”

A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER!

"If Donald Trump gets back into the White House, he's going to fire civil servants, like intelligence officers…and even federal prosecutors…!"

Trump couldn't buy a better campaign ad than this! 😂pic.twitter.com/QyGqWxqNYN

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 20, 2024

THE NO-LONGER READY FOR PRIMETIME PLAYER: The Accidental President Shuffles Off the Stage.

It was less a roar than a long series of shouts, a reheated collection of his greatest hits from the period since he reemerged as a presidential candidate in 2019. Biden pointed, hectored, bellowed, and glared. The president had been done dirty by his own party and the convention organizers, and he wasn’t interested in hiding his peevish mood.

“You can’t love your country only when you win.” “There’s no place for political violence in America! “We finally beat big Pharma!” “[Trump] never built a damn thing!” “Great jobs, right here in America! With every new job and new factory, pride and hope are returning to America’s communities!” “Wall Street didn’t build America! The middle class built America! And unions built the middle class!” “‘Suckers and losers!’ Who does he think he is? Who does he think he is?” “We just have to remember who we are! We’re the United States of America, and there’s nothing we cannot do when we do it together!” *

Our Noah Rothman noticed that a lot of Biden’s rhetoric was recycled from his “remarks about the continued battle for the soul of the nation” at Independence Hall in September 2022. Other parts felt recycled from this year’s State of the Union Address.

Perhaps the most significant line was one that was ad-libbed: “Those protesters out in the street, they’ve got a point.”

In one final, absurdly shameless insult from his party, Biden took the stage at 11:26 p.m. Eastern time, pushed out of the prime-time window by an inordinately long list of can’t-miss Democratic Party all-stars like Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, childhood friends of Kamala Harris Stacey Johnson-Batiste and Doris Johnson, Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, Texas representative Jasmine Crockett, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, and Delaware senator Chris Coons, before we got to Biden’s wife Jill and daughter Ashley.

Now, West Coasters might be shrugging, but there was a time when finishing by 11 p.m. Eastern was important for the local news and, after that, The Tonight Show. And even today, all other things being equal, you would rather that audiences in the Eastern time zone — you know, in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia and North Carolina — could watch your best featured speakers.

The not-so-subtle signal was that Democrats didn’t want anyone to watch Joe Biden’s speech live. And it’s hard to begrudge them that trepidation, as his last appearance in prime time was such an unmitigated disaster that it led to him quitting the race.

I’m sure Joe’s late speech was merely a coincidence; a victim of bad planning and long-running speeches throughout the day. I mean, just ask Nancy what happened to John Gill: Pelosi Admits She Put Old Joe Out to Pasture When He Was No Longer Useful.

* And: Biden Repeats the ‘Very Fine People’ Line in His ‘Hero’s Goodbye.’

Which seems like an odd thing to bring up, given that (a) the smear against Trump has been debunked by Snopes, and (b) referencing it yet again reminds people that it’s Charlottesvilles all the way down in Joe Biden’s America:

Related: Daniel Greenfield on [INSERT SCARY MUSIC HERE] The Night of the Living Democrat Dead.

UPDATE:

An actual “very fine people on both sides” moment after giving a lecture about Charlottesville. https://t.co/WMSzLWcJee

— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 20, 2024

SPRINGTIME FOR CANDACE: At this Point, Candace Owens Should Grow Out the Rest of Her Mustache. “In less than a decade, she’s gone from the left to the right, and then to the Reich.”

BIDEN’S BACK, BABY! Or not, but still, this is embarrassing:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): They really do seem to be phoning it in this year. It’s like the whole A-Team found something else to do.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Kamala Harris Unveils New Economic Platform: 'We Must Seize The Means Of Production And Execute The Bourgeoisie' https://t.co/Ss8Y9j6wIR pic.twitter.com/Bos5Fcq7S2

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 18, 2024

Meanwhile, at American Greatness: The Rise of the Red Fascists.

EVERYTHING IS UNDER (CROWD) CONTROL: The evolution of riot response.

Crowd control has come a long way since the Chicago police department, armed only with billy clubs, sunglasses and a healthy hatred for spoiled college students, beat the daylights out of rioting hippies in summer 1968. In 2005 the department upgraded to the Damascus riot control kit. In those halcyon days, police departments issued press releases about their ability to outfit officers in upper-body and shoulder protectors, forearm protectors, knee and shin guards, elbow pads, protective gloves and gear bags. Such toys are only as good as the willingness to deploy them: the city tallied up $66 million in damage in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots in 2020.

The Chicago department’s new policy concerning crowd control, posted for public comment in June, says that its officers will “remain unbiased and opinion neutral in any communication with individuals within the crowd while affirming that the First Amendment rights of lawful participants are protected.” Democrats were awful lenient about First Amendment-inspired arson in 2020, but you get the sense Chicago authorities expected to be less tolerant of such activities with the eyes of the nation turned toward Kamala Harris’s August coronation at the Democratic National Convention.

They will have the help of the Secret Service — if you can see that as a good thing after the incompetence displayed at the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump in July. Chicago PD has said that more than 2,000 officers had forty-eight hours of new training leading up to the DNC. There was also a surge in surveillance equipment covering the city — courtesy of the Secret Service.

Bryce Eddy believes that, even after the summer conventions, there are likely to be more riots due to political upheaval in the coming months. Eddy is on the board of the Center for Security Policy where he has helped partner private security with law enforcement agencies to help train for crowd control. He stood at the frontlines of the riots in LA in 2020.

“Covid and the BLM riots changed so many things,” he says. “Police departments were overwhelmed all over the country. Normally, they would rely on each other for what we call ‘mutual aid.’ But now, there have been agreements between high level security firms and police departments developing to where the security firms can offer additional services and what they call mutual aid, which is, again, usually just between law enforcement departments.”

Flashback to the end of May in 2020: Mayor Moron Destroys America’s Major Cities.

There is a validated playbook for dealing with riots. It is a tale of two riots in the awful summer of widespread racial unrest in 1967. Eugene Methvin’s 1991 National Review “riot primer” laid out the playbook:

In a nutshell: Riots begin when some set of social forces temporarily overwhelms or paralyzes the police, who stand by, their highly visible inaction signaling to the small percentage of teenaged embryonic psychopaths and hardened young adults that a moral holiday is under way. This criminal minority spearheads the car-burning, window-smashing, and blood-letting, mobbing such hate targets as blacks, or white merchants, or lone cops. Then the drawing effect brings out the large crowds of older men, and women and children, to share the Roman carnival of looting. Then the major killing begins: slow runners caught in burning buildings and-as civic forces mobilize-in police and National Guard gunfire.…

The time to halt a riot is right at the start, by pinching off the criminal spearhead with precise and overwhelming force. The cops will usually be caught flat-footed (no pun intended) by the initial outbreak. But they need to spring into a pre-arranged mobilization that should always be as ready in every major city as the fire-department or hospital disaster-response program.

Methvin compared two July 1967 riots. In Toledo, rioters began smashing things, throwing rocks at police cruisers. The authorities resounded instantly and decisively, arresting the thugs, with order restored within 36 hours. No one died. Not so in Detroit, where the authorities decided to allow rioters to let off steam. Five days of violence followed, with more than 40 fatalities and more than 1,000 injured. Property damage was estimated at over $40 million, in 2020 dollars, roughly $300 million. It was the worst rioting in America since the 1863 New York City draft riots, not to be exceeded in scale until the 1992 Rodney King riots.

And there is a lasting loss for failing to do so. South Central Los Angeles never recovered from the double blow of the 1965 Watts and 1992 conflagrations. Detroit and Newark never recovered from the destruction of 1967. Washington, D.C., never fully recovered from the riots after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. As Methvin noted, during the 1991 Mount Pleasant riots in the nation’s capital, the new mayor got a crash course in the right and wrong way to deal with violent unrest:

In Washington, D.C., on Sunday, May 5, a black female police officer attempted to arrest a Hispanic man who was drinking and unruly on a street in the Mount Pleasant area, heavily populated by recent Central American immigrants. The man drew a knife and advanced, the officer reported, whereupon she shot and severely wounded him. The rumor spread that he was dead, shot while handcuffed. A flashfire of violence erupted as hundreds of youths set fire to police cars, smashed windows, and looted. Washington’s new mayor, Sharon Pratt Dixon, at first ordered police to disperse crowds but make no arrests. The second night, running gangs of youths fought a thousand policemen, burning and looting as they spread out. Mayor Dixon then declared a curfew and ordered arrests, whereupon the violence subsided. Police made 230 arrests in three days.

Q.E.D.

Yet that same year, New York Mayor David Dinkins took a “let off steam” approach, as black rioters marched through the streets of Crown Heights shouting “Heil Hitler!” as they assaulted Jews, after a rabbi’s car accidentally struck two children, killing one. A rabbinical student — a student guest from Australia, a more civilized place than was New York City in 1991 — was stabbed to death. (It should be noted that in both the Mount Pleasant and Crown Heights cases, crowds reacted violently to rumors of police misconduct that proved to be false.)

That eternal lesson, however, has once again been unlearned, as the capital’s current mayor, almost as much of a moron as Minneapolis’s America’s moron numero uno, refused to help the Secret Service guard the White House when rioters assailed the residence; the Secret Service, which does know what to do, promptly quelled the violence.

The full due bill for the current mauling of countless cities across the nation, with neighborhoods torched beyond repair, will be in the many billions. Beyond that are the businesses that will never reopen and the lives of innocent property owners and their families ruined. Even worse, the due bill comes on the heels of a pandemic that for a long time will raise the costs of rebuilding and lower potential revenues.

The 2020 riots took many people by surprise, and it probably shouldn’t have; by now we should know: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

Speaking of which: Harris/Walz: Mostly Peaceful.

QUESTION ASKED: Trump’s ‘Comrade Kamala’ Attack. Accurate, But Too Far?

Why is it okay to compare Trump — and indeed every GOP presidential candidate over the last 75 years  — to a leading National Socialist, but it’s not okay to point out Kamala’s predilection for International Socialism, especially when:

Related: Man who says he accompanied Walz on trip to China calls VP candidate ‘Maoist to the core.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE? DNC Attendees Will Have Opportunities For Free Vasectomies, Abortions.

Alas, probably not free plywood: Chicago Businesses Prepare for Mostly Peaceful Protests As DNC Brings Joy to the Windy City.

UPDATE Accept no substitutes during the semi-annual Second City riot season!

BYRON YORK: A story everyone should know: Harris, Biden, and Gianfranco Torres-Navarro. “Wait a minute, some Democrats might say. Are you arguing that every person who crosses the border illegally is a murderer? Of course not. What the Torres-Navarro case shows is that U.S. authorities, under Biden and Harris, are not really checking anybody. If they let a man wanted for 23 murders through, they’ll let anybody through. And indeed, they do.”

As York writes:

If the Trump campaign has any say in it, voters should learn the name of Gianfranco Torres-Navarro. According to U.S. authorities, Torres-Navarro is the leader of a Peruvian crime gang and is thought to be personally responsible for 23 murders. He is a notorious figure in Peru, where he is known as “Gianfranco 23,” clearly “a reference to the number of people he is alleged to have killed,” according to the Associated Press. He has a girlfriend who, also according to the Associated Press, “has a sizable following on the social media platform TikTok where she showed off their lavish lifestyle, including designer clothes, resort vacations and shooting targets at a gun range.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but Torres-Navarro’s gang is known as “Los Killers.”

As with Al Gore kicking off the snowball that ultimately made Willie Horton a household name in 1988, gentlemen, start your ad campaigns.

FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN LITTLE CANADA, MINNESOTA: The Top Ten Reasons Tim Walz Stinks, According to a Minnesotan.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Return of the King (of Twitter).

PAUL VERHOEVEN CREATED ROBOCOP AS A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: Coming To San Fran? Viral Video Shows ‘Sub-Lethal’ Remote Gun Protecting Commercial Building.

ED-209 (no relation), call your office!

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Paranoid Android — Watch as San Francisco parking lot full of confused driverless AI taxis causes misery for locals by honking at each other day and night.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Holocaust inversion is going mainstream – it’s deeply disturbing.

Holocaust inversion transposes the guilt of the abusers, the Nazis, onto the abused, the Jews, and leaves no room for any other possibility. It plays on a widespread societal belief about abused children: they can grow up to become abusers themselves – though of course most do not. But Holocaust inversion takes it a step further. Projecting this archetype about individuals onto a nation, it does not merely take the possibility that the abused can become abusers, it assumes, as Mishra did, that it is inevitable that the abused become abusers, and leaves no room even for the possibility that the abused is actually innocent.

This troubling trend continued. In April, after claiming that the Jewish state is conducting “a war against humanity itself,” Chef José Andrés told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s This Week, “if somebody knows suffering, that’s the people of Israel. If somebody really understands the meaning of suffering, if somebody should be holding the highest standards of humanity, I will say that’s also the people of Israel.” His obvious implication is that what the Jews are now doing to the Palestinians, is the same as what the Nazis did to the Jews. Andrés, the founder of the World Central Kitchen relief agency, invoked Jewish suffering during the Holocaust in order to imply an analogy to what Gazans were experiencing, even as he parroted Nazi-esque language himself. Raddatz offered no push-back, and his statements aired on a major network.

The point of Holocaust inversion, of course, is to legitimize violence against Jews. After all, if they are Nazis, they must deserve it. This was made clear in June, when Within Our Lifetime founder Nerdeen Kiswani led those who gathered to protest an exhibit about the Nova music festival in a chant claiming the festival was “like having a rave right next to the gas chambers during the Holocaust.” Gaza, in her absurd analogy, was like the gas chambers. And the Israeli ravegoers, according to her logic, deserved what they got.

And then last month, John Oliver brought Holocaust inversion to HBO using language almost identical to that of Cynthia Nixon. “A phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is ‘never again,’ an anti-genocide slogan often invoked in memory of the Holocaust, and it’s always been open to two interpretations. There’s the one that means, this must never again happen to the Jewish people and the one that means, this must never again happen to any people anywhere, and in the West Bank as in Gaza right now it’s pretty clear which one the Israeli government has favored.”

Flashbacks:

● Columbia University makes no mention of Jews in Holocaust Remembrance Day post.

● The rise and rise of Holocaust envy.

● Whoopi Goldberg’s Ignorance About The Holocaust Is What Happens When Intersectionality Rots People’s Brains.

● Zone of Interest: The Real Problem With Jonathan Glazer.

● Glazer’s Partners Refute Glazer.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER ON THE SNOW WHITE TRAILER: Nightmare Fuel (Video).

Evergreen:

GONE WITH THE WINDY CITY: Chicago population hits lowest point since 1920. “At the 1920 Census, Chicago’s population was 2.7 million, up over 516,000 in a decade. More than 100 years later, Chicago’s population is 2.66 million, a loss of 128,034 from nine straight years of decline.”

Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931.

C’MON JAMES, FIND A NEW PLAY TO RUN, HUH? James Carville Says GOP Supports Israel Because ‘Jews Are Whiter Than The Palestinians.’

Flashback:

DEMOCRACY DIES IN GASLIGHTING YOUR READERS: Washington Post reviews star columnist Taylor Lorenz’s ‘war criminal’ jab at Biden.

Senior editors at the Washington Post are reviewing a prominent tech columnist’s private story on social media, which appears to label President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The Post’s Taylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo she shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over her shoulder; the damning caption rests just below him, accompanied by a text frowny face.

After the New York Post’s Jon Levine — a frequent critic of hers — revealed the Instagram photo caption yesterday in a tweet, Lorenz wrote back at him: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”

A fact-check appended to Levine’s tweet cited her apparent denial. (The contextual note to the tweet says, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation which has added a false caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screengrab of Lorenz’s actual post, which contained that caption. It was not shared with her wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition they not be identified due to the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a spokesperson for the newspaper told NPR. “We’re aware of the alleged post and are looking into it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

I just can’t see something like this coming from Lorenz:

I really can’t: ‘Al Jazeera On the Potomac:’ WaPo Reporter Taylor Lorenz Boosts Defenses of Los Angeles Synagogue Protest.

Flashback: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?

“AN IRRESISTIBLE MIX OF ART AND GENITALS:” How a classy, A-list historical film turned into a $17 million hardcore porno.

“Caligula,” one of cinema’s oddest and most tawdry experiments, was produced by Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione, the massively wealthy publisher who poured his own money into the project about the infamously depraved ancient Roman emperor.

Opposed to the serious drama that director Tinto Brass and screenwriter Gore Vidal desired to make, Guccione commandeered the production in post and added graphic scenes of hardcore sex to spice things up.

* * * * * * * *

A lot of sex. Multiple, unsimulated orgy scenes leave nothing to the imagination — and go well beyond what most imaginations can whip up. For instance, at Emperor Tiberius’ (O’Toole) home on the island of Capri, a completely nude woman wields a live eel.

Penthouse even published a special collectors edition in January 1981 called “Girls of Caligula,” the same of which could not be said of “Cleopatra” or “Spartacus.”

Critics were appalled at the gratuitous filth. Roger Ebert, generally open-minded, called it “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.”

But starting Friday, a new version of that trash called “The Ultimate Cut” will begin playing select theaters.

Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren must be so proud this week.

WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE WAPO: When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls? It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is.

But they worked so well for Richard Nixon…