MUST FLEE TV: ESPN Quietly Produced Series About Racism Starring Left-Wing Extremist Ibram Kendi and Featuring Jemele Hill.

WHAT HATH AI WROUGHT?! I Laughed And I’m Not Sorry. “Currently doing the rounds, The late Norman Rockwell depicts Modern [Weimar] America.”

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Starbucks Is Closing Seven Downtown San Francisco Locations on October 22.

OUT ON A LIMB: This Was a Bad Week for the GOP.

DISPATCHES FROM THE ICE FLOE:

Dear @JoeBiden, you did noble service for your country, but it’s time to let someone else finish the job. You don’t want to go down as Ruth Bader Biden. pic.twitter.com/fJNkjBvgtO

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) September 30, 2023

Flashback: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Er, exactly what “noble service” has Biden ever done?

A RARE MOMENT OF A REPUBLICAN PLAYING HARDBALL: Nancy Pelosi Ordered to Vacate Her Office by New Acting Speaker, and the Tears Start Immediately. “Democrats play for keeps, and the only way to respond to their ruthlessness is with ruthlessness. The band-aid was ripped off in a variety of ways with McCarthy’s ouster. Going forward, there should be no presumption that the opposition party won’t get involved in the majority’s fight over who will be Speaker. Pelosi wanted to cause chaos and chaos she should receive. That starts with making her staffers haul her big screen TV and the rest of her belongings out of her prestigious office.”

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: McCarthy’s sitdown with Jewish leaders was ‘waste of time’, says Congressional candidate.

Many responses to the tweet indicated offense taken, “A man who wants to represent these Jews in the United States Congress is insulting them instead of seeking their vote,” said Superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District Joel M. Petlin. “Congratulations to @MondaireJones on finding the most Antisemitic way to celebrate the defeat of #SpeakerMcCarthy”

However, it appears that the intended message behind Jone’s post may have been lost, as the congressional candidate later retweeted “Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly wasted the time of Hasidic leaders in the Lower Hudson Valley. He has never delivered for communities in Rockland and will continue to fail to deliver for Rocklanders because he’s no longer Speaker.”

We don’t have any word yet if he blamed the first tweet on his comms shop, but Jones’ followed up with this to remind everyone that no, really, he’s no anti-Semite, honest!

“TOTAL CLOWN SHOW:” I Don’t Think the House Fight Worked Out the Way Matt Gaetz Thought It Would.

THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE…

Legend pic.twitter.com/06v780ZbcX

— Inverse Cramer (Not Jim Cramer) (@CramerTracker) October 3, 2023

KEVIN MCCARTHY BOWS OUT OF HOUSE SPEAKERSHIP RERUN AFTER HISTORIC OUSTER.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So what do I think? I think ousting McCarthy was a mistake. I’m inclined to agree with Rep. Thomas Massie, who pointed out that he was all-in on efforts to remove John Boehner and Paul Ryan, but says that McCarthy has done a better job of running the House than any GOP speaker in decades. I understand the anger over not getting regular order, etc., but this has consequences that go far beyond internal GOP politics. It’s risky.

How risky? Heck, if I’m the Democrats, I vote somebody tolerable as President Pro Tem of the Senate, then have Biden and Kamala both step down. With the Speakership of the House vacant, they could pick a succesor president that easily. If I’m Chuck Schumer, I’m scheming for that right now . . .

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: No, puberty blockers are not the same as the pill.

Last Thursday, the Metro published an article by Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic ‘transwoman’. The article was entitled: ‘We accept teenagers taking the pill – why don’t we feel the same about puberty blockers?’

This title, in and of itself, was disingenuous, dangerous and disgraceful.

I immediately wrote to one of the lead editors at the Metro, expressing my concern with the piece, and requesting that they allow me to write a response piece, in the interests of balance.

After a few days, I finally heard back, being told: “it wouldn’t be one for us on this occasion”.

This was disappointing but not surprising, given the Metro’s increasing tendency to push partisan gender ideology on its readers.

So, here is the response piece that the Metro refused to publish.

Read the whole thing.

THE 1970s CALLED AND THEY WANT THEIR ECONOMIC POLICY BACK: Price Controls Don’t Fight Inflation: 40 Centuries of Evidence.

The 1970s called and they want their economic policy back. This may sound like a cheap quip against the growing popularity of attempts to control prices in the face of inflation. After all, France is implementing price controls right now, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also forced grocery stores to come explain price hikes with the hint that he might start doing the same. These policies and scapegoating of businesses are the same as in the 1970s, hence the quip. But I could have quipped about any number of historical examples – the 1940s, the 1930s in Germany, the 1910s, the 1790s in France, and on and on. After all, as one aptly titled book made explicit – “forty centuries of wage and price controls” teach us exactly “how not to fight inflation.”

The best way to understand why is by invoking an analogy about thermometers and temperature that Milton Friedman employed when inflation was a big issue during the 1960s and 1970s. Prices function somewhat like a thermometer inside your house. They indicate the point where the quantities that producers are willing to supply to the market match the quantities consumers demand, based on their available budget. Monetary policy for its part, is the thermostat. If the thermometer says that the temperature is going up, it’s either because there are changes in the economy in general (i.e., the outside temperature) or because someone turned up the thermostat. Sometimes, it can be a mixture of both factors (i.e., loose monetary policy and supply shocks occurring simultaneously). Distinguishing between them is not an easy task. People who propose to impose price controls are essentially trying to break the thermometer by preventing it from showing the rising temperature and claiming the problem is solved.

Just think of the effects of Bidenomics as Milton Friedman’s revenge.

ED MORRISSEY: House Republicans make history by decapitating themselves. Now what? “The most likely way out of this impasse will be to find someone acceptable to enough Democrats to overcome the Rebel Alliance in the GOP. That’s what McClintock means, and that will be precisely where Gaetz et al will have led the Republican majority. And to get there, the GOP will likely have to give up its investigations into Biden Inc in order to get the House back underway. House Republicans will meet in an hour or so to discuss their next steps. Good luck finding them.”

BIDENOMICS WORKING AS PLANNED: Dow loses more than 400 points and goes negative for 2023 as interest rates spike.

KEVIN MCCARTHY OUSTED AS HOUSE SPEAKER, THRUSTING CONGRESS INTO CHAOS.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your phone will emit a blaring emergency alert tone tomorrow — unless you do this.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): So I guess 2:20 tomorrow is the perfect time for a coup or something. Everyone will ignore any reports.

DISPATCHES FROM THE SWAMP: Meet the Activist Wife Who Networks the Anti-MAGA White House While Her Prosecutor Husband Puts January Sixers in Jail.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The Chickens Come Home to Roost for Muriel Bowser and Her Pro-BLM Virtue Signaling. “DC’s mayor says nation’s capital is up to 400 cops short and ‘we have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers.’”

Related: Democratic congressman suffers the consequences of his actions. “Cockburn probably need not mention the irony of members of the political party who have been sympathetic to defunding the police becoming the victims of crime. [Democrats Henry Cuellar and Angie Craig] have rhetorically opposed the Defund the Police movement, but also both voted for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a sweeping overhaul of policing in America that would have removed qualified immunity from police officers and ‘redirect funding to community-based policing programs,’ according to NPR. Local police departments that did not comply with the new policing standards laid out by the bill would ‘lose access to federal policing funding,’ said Vox. The bill ultimately did not become law, but on the local level, Democrats have installed progressive prosecutors and shrugged at rising crime.”

SOCIALISTS ARE MAD AT CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM FOR THE DUMBEST REASON IMAGINABLE:

California Governor Gavin Newsom just got an ugly reminder of how impossible it is to make everyone happy in politics. Left-wing union activists and socialists are furious with the solidly liberal governor for a truly absurd reason.

Newsom just vetoed controversial legislation, SB 799, which would’ve extended unemployment benefits to striking workers. He cited the existing unemployment system’s looming insolvency as his rationale against expanding the benefits, which would speed up the program’s spiral into the red.

Newsom’s left-wing critics freaked out.

California Labor Federation leader Lorena Gonzalez blasted Newsom in a statement, saying his veto “punishes workers” and is “out-of-step with American values.” The socialist magazine Jacobin similarly slammed Newsom, labeling him “anti-worker” and accusing him of “selling out workers.”

Why, it’s as if he’s seriously thinking of running for president in 2024, or something.

GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING: Politico: Fighting against the USSR didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi.

When the headline contradicts the body copy:

Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.

And the ongoing turmoil over Canada’s parliament recognizing former SS trooper Yaroslav Hunka highlights one of the most important reasons why.

Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth — a major problem for Western democracies trying to fight disinformation and propaganda by countering it with the truth, and one reason why fact-checking and debunking are only of limited use for doing so.

In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front. And it’s a demonstration of how when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity.

This history is complicated because fighting against the USSR at the time didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi, just someone who had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist. However, the idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide. And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.

This may be out on a limb, but if you join the Nazi Party, you were — I know this is shocking, especially for the Politico — a Nazi during WWII.

REPUBLICANS POUNCE! It’s not that Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm that’s the problem … it’s Republicans POUNCING.

Representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm. Republicans pounced. https://t.co/FtfW9oyS74

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) October 3, 2023

I know, it’s The New Republic but still. THEY ALWAYS DO THIS. A Democrat screws up, the Right/Republicans acknowledge the screw-up, and then the freakin’ story becomes the big mean Republicans POUNCING. SEIZING. STRIKING.

Even though Bowman is the actual story. Guess they want to deflect from how stupid or corrupt this guy really is.

As Jim Treacher says:

LIBERAL GETS MUGGED: Breaking: Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar Reportedly Carjacked at Gunpoint in DC.

RIP: Super Bowl champ and three-time Pro Bowler Russ Francis, 70, dies in plane crash.

STACY MCCAIN: ‘Building a Deeply Inclusive Culture.’

This year, Forbes named 26-year-old Pava Lapere to its prestigious “30 Under 30” business leaders. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, LaPere co-founded a successful startup company, EcoMap Technologies, based in Baltimore. Lapere was recently praised by her colleagues:

“Pava was not only the visionary force behind EcoMap but was also a deeply compassionate and dedicated leader. Her untiring commitment to our company, to Baltimore, to amplifying the critical work of ecosystems across the country, and to building a deeply inclusive culture as a leader, friend, and partner set a standard . . .”

Perhaps you noticed the past tense verb, “was.” Because, did I mention — I’m pretty sure I did — that Lapere based her company in Baltimore, where the crime rate is worse than Chicago?

* * * * * * * *

“She wanted to disrupt the tech industry’s reigning power structure of white men and make way for more women and other people from disadvantaged groups. . . . She studied computer science for three years before switching her major to sociology because, she said, she wanted to use entrepreneurship to solve inequalities in society. . . . EcoMap has committed to a ’50/50%’ goal of employing a staff that is half women and half people of color.” And of course, she was a BLM supporter.

Standing against “systemic racism” is all fine and good, I suppose, up until the moment you die from blunt force trauma because a convicted sex offender, who was sentenced to 30 years, gets out of prison early under a “criminal justice reform” law that gave him “good time” credits:

Read the whole thing.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER ON THE CREATOR: “Flawed Brilliance” (video).