WATCH: The Best Fact-Check of Kamala Harris in History, and You’ll Never Guess How It Ends.

Is this my most clickbaity headline in a long time? Probably. Am I about to deliver on every promise it makes? Absolutely.

The setup happened during the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the topic centered on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. When pressed on the matter, Harris tried to pivot by claiming that there is not a single American service member currently serving in a combat zone.

HARRIS: As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.

That’s a bold proclamation, but is it true? That’s where this epic fact-check comes in, and be sure to watch the video so you can see the twist at the end. Be warned that while hilarious, there is some salty language used.

This is the greatest fact-check to ever exist. It will never get better than this. Savor it. pic.twitter.com/V6U6q4EF8t

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 14, 2024

Exit quote: “Harris doesn’t care about military members. That’s made clear by her choosing to cast them aside for political gain. For her, they are just obstacles on her way to the White House. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Democrat.”

THAT’LL RUIN YOUR DAY: Moment freight train smashes into stranded 18-wheeler carrying military howitzer in ‘devastating’ collision.

This is the shocking moment a freight train smashed into a stranded vehicle carrying a military howitzer in South Carolina.

The crash happened at a railroad crossing near Highway 52 in Goose Creek yesterday afternoon.

Debris can be seen flying into the air as the train collides with the 18-wheeled tractor-trailer as it tries to cross the tracks.

The crossing was also destroyed in the crash and the road was closed by police.

Cops from the Goose Creek Police Department said they received a call about the collision at around 12.30pm on Thursday.

Police said the trailer, which was carrying a military vehicle, got struck while driving over the train crossing.

There were no reports of any injuries and the driver refused treatment.

The military vehicle on the trailer has been described as a M109 Paladin Howitzer.

This being 2024, the crash can be observed from multiple angles:

STEVE HAYWARD: Republicans for Suicide.

The case of Dick Cheney is even more curious than most never Trumpers because his claim that Trump represents the most serious threat to the Constitution ever raises a question: What is the premise of that hyperbole? Is it that the executive branch has grown too powerful? Well yes—heartily agree. Yet the paradox here is that Trump in his first term kept trying to get Congress to step up and assert its constitutional powers to solve some of our major problems, rather than using executive ukase as Obama and Biden liked to do (and no doubt Harris will too, if she wins). And Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have struck the most serious blows against executive power, especially in striking down the Chevron Doctrine.

I wonder if Cheney agrees with that decision. If the executive branch is too powerful to be trusted in the hands of Donald Trump, maybe Cheney ought to look in the mirror a bit longer. After all, as both a congressman in the 1980s, and then as vice president, Cheney was one of the leading champions of maximum executive power, and produced serious work in support of the “unitary executive” idea.

In the past, all Republican presidents or presidential candidates were called Hitler by Democratic politicians and their operatives with bylines while they ran or were in office, and then rehabilitated as thoughtful elder statesmen once there was a new Hitler who needed attacking. But now that we have former Republicans endorsing the current Democratic presidential candidate, it places their opponents’ past rhetoric in sharp perspective. Why should we believe their crazy rantings now, knowing that they’ll find astonishing levels of Strange New Respect™ a few years later?

SUPERCUT!

Harris: I'm proud to be endorsed by the Dark Lord himself! pic.twitter.com/ifpLk1W0DJ

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 12, 2024

Or as the Hill exclaimed on Tuesday: How the GOP’s Darth Vader turned into Luke Skywalker.

Incidentally, as the Spectator’s “Cockburn” asked in February of 2020: Why do NeverTrumpers think they can run the Democratic party? The arrogance follows wherever they go.

UPDATE: Everything seemingly is spinning out of control!* AP is quick to provide redemption to Cheney:

Meanwhile, from America’s Newspaper of Record:

* Classical reference.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Cat-astophe Edition.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Roland Emmerich Is Ready To Shop Lawrence In Arabia.

The filmmaker has long dreamed of playing in the world of the classic 1962 film starring Peter O’Toole, and in the coming weeks, he and Bohemian Rhapsody writer Anthony McCarten will take it out to potential partners. The duo envision this as a three-season prestige series, and McCarten hopes to write the entire first season.

Emmerich calls it “In Arabia,” rather than “of Arabia,” because as he says, “it has a little bit more characters” than the original movie.

In 1983, executives at NBC thought, “Yes! Let’s turn the beloved 1943 movie Casablanca into a TV series. And let’s get David Soul out of Starsky and Hutch to play Rick, the iconic character played by the legendary Humphrey Bogart. It’ll be brilliant!”

It wasn’t. And Roland Emmerich’s TV series version of one of the greatest films ever made will likely be worse.

MARK JUDGE: BlueAnon: Liberalism’s tragic descent into paranoia and conspiracy theories.

[David Harsanyi’s] The Rise of BlueAnon is one of the most important political books of the decade. It’s also one of the saddest, exploring how a once-great Democratic Party has become infected with paranoia and conspiracy theories. Harsanyi, a columnist for the Washington Examiner, calls these new liberal crazies “BlueAnon.” They are the left-wing version of QAnon, the crazy far-right conspiracy nuts. Thus, there’s no real difference between conspiracy guy Alex Jones and Russiagate hoaxer Rachel Maddow.

Harsanyi argues that while QAnon is a fringe phenomenon, BlueAnon has entered the mainstream of American culture through media, universities, and the internet. It has also become a dangerous threat to the future of American democracy.

“Over the past decades,” Harsanyi observes, “the American left and its institutions have mainstreamed a unique brand of political paranoia. The modern Democratic Party’s policy prescriptions—even what it views as our most pressing societal problems—are increasingly tethered to groundless or sensationalized anxieties, myths, revisionist histories, pseudoscientific alarmism, and outright lies.

Exit quote: “The biggest difference between Alex Jones and Rachel Maddow is the haircut.”

THE RIGHT WEAPONIZES THE ANTI-SEMITISM OF THE LEFT. We’re for It.

Oh, we forgot to mention: The ads are airing in the Detroit area. Dearborn, Mich., is an inner-ring suburb of Detroit home to the country’s largest Muslim population, and what the Times report from Katie Glueck doesn’t say is that the 40,000 or so odd Arabs there don’t like Jews.

It’s not that the ads are anti-Semitic, it’s that the voters are. The ads are a bit of political chicanery aimed at turning that bigotry against the Democratic ticket. It’s cynicism, not anti-Semitism.

Saul Alinsky smiles.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Kamala Harris sticks with ABC for first solo interview since slanted debate — and still serves up word salad.

Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with an ABC affiliate for her first solo interview Friday, choosing the same network that got her through this week’s slanted presidential debate — but still managed to stumble through softball questions.

She answered five questions from Action News 6 ABC, a local affiliate of ABC News, in the interview that came just days after the moderators in the ABC debate with Donald Trump assisted her by providing fact checks on the former president but not her.

One of the ABC moderators for the debate, Linsey Davis, is a member of Harris’ sorority and Dana Walden, a Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC, is one of the vice president’s close friends.

Action News 6 ABC anchor Brian Taff asked Harris, 59, what she would specifically do to bring down prices as president.

“Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up as a middle class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard,” she began, before going on about her neighborhood where people “were proud of their lawn.”

“We as Americans have beautiful character. We have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions,” Harris went on.

Twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Related: Wait, did Kamala lose the debate? “If you think this election is about vibes, then it’s a big deal that Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, something Brian Stelter keeps hyping up… but if it’s about fundamentals? What if any questions did Kamala answer in that debate to resolve people’s uncertainty about what she plans to do? Her dismissiveness on fracking, guns and abortion as if nothing Trump argued was landing seems to me to be a mistake, instead of confronting it head on and promising to the American people what she will and will not do.”

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Who Really Are the MAGA People?

Who really are the MAGA People? pic.twitter.com/Zk6rvijCge

— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) September 13, 2024

As Ed Morrissey writes, “I love the anthropological tone of this ad, coming from RFK’s former running mate. This is the same way that Mainstream Media treats conservatives in America, too.”

The DNC-MSM have been would-be anthropologists for over half a century. Jonah Goldberg was writing about the media’s “Gorillas in the Mist” style of covering half the country way back in 2002.

Time magazine was (non-ironically) employing that same tone in 1970.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: RFK Jr. Really Really Hoping Nobody Asks Him Point Blank If He’s Ever Eaten A Cat.

LISTEN SUG, DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: Who’s Ready for World War Three?

(Classical reference in headline.)

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warns US economy faces an outcome worse than a recession. “The chief executive of the biggest bank in the US said this week ‘the worst income is stagflation,’ which he would not ‘take off the table.'”

NEO: The debate: the supposed intelligentsia versus the commoners.

There are polls in which people say Kamala won the debate but that doesn’t make them vote for her. That’s not so hard to understand, because life in the real world is not a debate, complete with mugging, lies, and moderators who control the questions and the flow. The gist of what I’ve seen is that a great many undecideds were annoyed that Kamala gave out little of substance during the debate concerning her proposals for what she would do as president. They wanted the nuts and bolts, and she didn’t provide it.

With a video assist from the Ruthless Podcast, who as Neo writes, “do a good job of analyzing – in enormous and yet entertaining detail – what happened at the hands of the debate moderators on Tuesday night. When I say ‘entertaining,’ what I mean is that the podcasters all have a good sense of humor, not that the moderator bias itself was the least bit amusing.”

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Tourist who dropped Cheetos in largest US cave could trigger ‘world-changing’ chaos, parks service warns.

Didn’t we learn anything from The Pepsi Syndrome?

(Classical reference in headline.)

OLD AND BUSTED: Dangerous content flagged by media to avoid exposure to sensitive puritanical conservatives.

The New Hotness? Media content to block dangerous flag to avoid exposure to sensitive puritanical leftists.

HAHAHAHA. Weatherman covers the camera as Trump flag is waved in the background. pic.twitter.com/1UhxAMoYls

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 12, 2024

NEWS YOU CAN USE: ‘Don’t eat cats and dogs,’ Biden tells voters while wearing Trump hat.

Joe Biden donned a Trump baseball cap and told a crowd of people “not to eat dogs and cats” during a light-hearted exchange on the campaign trail.

The US president was referring to wild claims repeated by Donald Trump during his debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the pets of the people that live there”.

Mr Biden was initially persuaded to wear his former opponent’s hat by a Trump supporter after a humorous back-and-forth between the two men.

It started off by Mr Biden offering to give his presidential hat to the Trump supporter, who asked him: “Are you going to autograph it?” Mr Biden said he would autograph the hat before the Trump supporter quipped: “Do you remember your name?”

The president joked back that he “doesn’t remember my name” because he’s “slow”, which sparked laughter among the crowd.

He doesn’t remember who is boss is as well, apparently.

Related: If You Want Haitians Eating Cats And Decapitating Ducks In Your Town, Vote For Harris.

UPDATE: “Ohio is sending troopers and $2.5 million to city where many Haitian migrants have relocated,” according to those crazed MAGA-hat wearing nuts at, err, PBS.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

ED MORRISSEY: Bidenflation Still Hammering the Working Class — Minorities Hardest Hit: WaPo.

Has inflation begun to ease back to normal? The Biden-Harris administration wants voters to believe it, arguing that consumer-goods prices appear to have stabilized. Have they?

Today’s Producer Price Index shows annualized unadjusted wholesale inflation dipping down to 1.7% in August. That would be welcome news for consumers, but inflation for wholesale consumer foods hit 4.2%. Most of the overall decline came in wholesale energy prices (-8.4%), which consumers will also welcome but may not be all that good of a trade-off from their weekly visit to grocery stores.

Yesterday’s Consumer Price Index offered a mixed bag, too, but not for the middle and working classes. The overall annualized rate dropped from July’s 2.9% to 2.5% in August, again mainly because of a dramatic fall in energy prices (-4.0%). The upward spike continued in shelter costs, shooting up 5.2% in August, and included both rentals (5.2%) and owner costs (5.4%). Insurance spiked 3.6%, and municipal utilities went up 4.2%.

And this, of course, follows on the effects of three years of high overall inflation and its compounding effects, especially on shelter costs. The unnecessary and predictably corrosive mass stimulus in the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris American Rescue Plan of March 2021 — the key initiative of Bidenomics — launched that 40-year-high inflation cycle, and it continues to pound consumers to this day.

Don’t worry — all the stats look fine:

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Under Gov. Tim Walz, Babies Born Alive in Botched Abortions Were Left to Die. Then He Removed Reporting Requirements.

JOHN NOLTE: Time Issues Humiliating Correction Admitting Kamala Supports Taxpayer-Funded Gender Surgery for Illegals.

Despite all of this being true, here’s how Time covered this moment: “The former President … falsely claimed that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.”

Now, on top of Time being staffed with lousy, lazy, partisan, left-wing activists who spread misinformation, there’s another reason Time spread this lie… The idea of taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegal aliens is so outside the mainstream, so wackadoodle, Time likely didn’t even bother to fact-check Trump’s statement. It was simply assumed Trump had invented this because no sane person would ever support something so ridiculously dumb. Honestly, what a way to attract every deviant on the planet to sneak into America — Free sex changes, girls!

Well, much to Time’s humiliation, the truth will out and the outlet was forced to not only issue a correction, but through a correction, a helluva lot more people will read the correction than Time’s dumb article, and the word is out that Kamala does indeed support taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for illegal aliens:

Correction, Sept. 11

The original version of this story mischaracterized as false Donald Trump’s statement accusing Kamala Harris of supporting “transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison” As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris filled out a questionnaire saying she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition treatment for detained immigrants.

What’s especially interesting is that at no time since this news broke has Kamala or her campaign backed off of this wackadoodle belief.

She actually believes this, and as she made clear, her values have not changed.

Then there are the Tiny Mummies at the New Yorker:

And on the West Coast, the squares at the Seattle Times are determined to forget about their city’s legendary Summer of Love in 2020: Oof! Seattle Times’ Trump Fact-Check Gets a Community Notes Nuking (Using Their Own Previous Story).

Related: ABC Moderators Were Lying: Eight ‘Aborted’ Babies Were Born Alive & Then Left to Die in Minnesota.

ANSWERS TO THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why the B-52 is outliving newer bombers (video).

UNITED WE STAND; DON’T QUIT UNTIL THE FIGHT IS OVER AND YOU’VE WON: New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize strike.

With the election less than two months away, a strike could hurt the paper. However, while there seems to be overwhelming support for a strike, Tuesday’s vote doesn’t guarantee that a strike will happen.

Take as long as you need, fellas — hopefully the journalists who depend upon you to amplify their work will join you on the picket line as well.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: On 9/11, John Kirby Talks Botched Afghan Withdrawal: ‘No Use in Responding’ to a ‘Handful of Vets.’

Now, White House spokesdroid John Kirby, remarking on comments by American veterans of that conflict, said on the anniversary of 9/11 of all days that there was “no use in responding.”

On the anniversary of 9/11, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby dismissed the concerns of military veterans critical of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, writing in response to a Fox News Digital press inquiry that there’s “no use” weighing in on the veterans’ views.

“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” Kirby said in a “reply all” email chain Wednesday afternoon that appeared to be intended for White House staffers, but which also included Fox News Digital.

What stripe would that be, Mr. Kirby? What do you mean by that? I suppose there’s “no use in responding” to those questions, either.

As the Victory Girls note, “This morning, John Kirby said one of the quiet parts very loudly. The Biden Administration has no love for our military and most definitely believes that any veteran who speaks out against the Biden Harris cabal should be disrespected and dismissed out of hand.”

Will whoever is actually running the White House penalize Kirby in any meaningful way? (Rhetorical question, I know.)

JAMES MAY DRIVES THE TESLA CYBERTRUCK (Video):

From the video’s comments: “James May measuring how curved each panel of the Cybertruck has with a steel rule is the most James May thing you’ll ever see.”

ON THE BEACH: It’s a Beach if We Say So: Lost Scenes From Downtown’s Hipster Landfill.

If you’re not prepared for it, an old photograph of the Twin Towers can do a number on your heart.

That’s partly why Fred Conrad’s picture of the sunbathers is so eerie and disquieting: We know something the sunbathers don’t. Something horrific. Something that will unmake, and remake, the world by the time they reach middle age. Conrad, a former Times staff photographer, took the shot in 1977. It must have seemed whimsical at the time — a nod to the eternal war between business and pleasure. Today, it’s surreal, almost post-apocalyptic. It looks like a poster for “Planet of the Apes.”

And that’s not just because the towers are no more. It’s also because of the beach in the picture. There was a beach in Battery Park City?

There was, albeit only for a few years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.