Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

October 17, 2024

PHONING IT IN: Harris Slated To Attend Famed Al Smith Charity Dinner ‘On Screen’ After Snubbing Catholic Group. “Harris was slated to be the first presidential candidate in decades to skip the event, which benefits Catholic charities that support children’s medical and financial needs. Now, Harris plans to join the Oct. 17 event ‘on screen, likely via video,’ according to a Friday email from vice chair of the Al Smith Foundation’s board of directors, Mary Erdoes.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 17th, 2024

DEMOCRATS SURE GOT IT GOOD:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 17th, 2024

October 16, 2024

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD DOING STRAIGHT-UP REPORTAGE ONCE AGAIN:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

JOHN NOLTE: Mark Halperin Says Trump Victory Will ‘Cause Greatest Mental Health Crisis in History.’

“I say this not flippantly,” Halperin explains before adding: ”I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”

He believes, “Tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation … to other human beings … to their vision to what their future for them and their children could be like. And that will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals.”

“Are you being serious?” asks Carlson.

“I’m being a hundred percent serious,” answers Halperin, who then goes on: A Trump victory will “lead to trauma in the workplace [and] alcoholism [and] broken marriages.”

Halperin adds that Democrats were able to dismiss Trump’s 2016 victory as a “fluke” caused by disgraced former FBI Director James Comey re-opening the email investigation against Hillary Clinton. But this time, if Trump wins, it will be in a normal environment and a clear victory will mean “America chose by the rules pre-agreed to [and if] Donald Trump [wins] again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America.”

“And it will be sustained, unprecedented, and hideous.”

“Mental health crises often manifest in violence,” Carlson says.

“Yeah,” Halperin agrees. “I think there’ll be some violence. I think there’ll be workplace fights, fights at kids’ birthday parties … protests that will turn violent.”

Exit question: Is It Time to Invest in Plywood? “A recent insurance company alert was a good reminder for me not to hold the naive belief that political riots and attacks on property are only in faraway countries. Should Donald Trump be elected on Nov. 5, among other election outcomes around the world, the money boys at the insurance home offices are warning business owners to take precautions — be prepared!”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend writes: “Haha, apparently Halperin missed the mental health crisis of the last 8 years of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Compounded by that lockdown bullshit. Someone please explain how the mental health of lefties has ever been a matter of serious concern in this country. Help me out here. I thought trauma in the workplace, substance abuse and broken marriages were lefty mainstays…”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

‘I’M SPEAKING:’ Bret Baier Interviews Kamala Harris.

UPDATE:

 

Posted at 6:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

SATURDAY NIGHT CAPTURES THE SHOW’S CHAOS BUT LEAVES YOU DIZZY:

No need to wait in line in Midtown Manhattan for a front-row seat at SNL — Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night drops you right into the coked-up whirlwind of the show’s October 11, 1975, debut. The film is more than just a nostalgic trip back to the chaotic birth of a comedy institution; it’s a study of the age-old clash between unruly creatives and their corporate overlords, all unfolding within the storied halls of Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza while cultural shifts pulse through the bustling New York City streets below.

The movie effortlessly transports you to the 1970s, when television’s golden age was fading and a new generation — that was brought up on television but never truly saw itself on-screen — was rising to take its place. The opening scene flickers through a cathode-ray tube, as if you’re watching vintage SNL clips on your mom’s old TV. The attention to detail — from the haircuts to the line delivery — is impeccable. It feels less like a re-creation and more like you’re experiencing the raw talent that defined the show’s early days unfold in real time.

I’m not sure if “real time” is the right phrase here. I saw it over the weekend, and as someone who loved the show’s first five years, I enjoyed the film quite a bit. But it’s a comedy movie, not a documentary, and compresses the events of the months leading up to the show’s debut into a frenetic 109 minutes of non-stop insanity. For example, a comedy writer who in real-life had been with the show almost since its inception is found by Lorne Michaels in a bar about 15 minutes before SNL debuts. In the scene before that, Michaels is bombing as the would-be host of “Weekend Update,” and immediately decides to give the mock news segment to Chevy Chase. And according to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in the meticulously researched 1986 book, A Backstage History of Saturday Night, coke wasn’t that prevalent with the SNL cast and creative team until a year or two into the show’s run – marijuana was the drug of choice when the show first began. An early scene in Saturday Night depicts Billy Preston, who along with Janis Ian performed in the debut episode, handing Garrett Morris a vial of pharmaceutical grade coke. Those knowledgeable of the show’s history will make the connection that Morris is reported to have developed a massive addiction to freebasing coke by the show’s fifth season. (Although to be fair, most viewers will at least make the connection that almost everybody on SNL would soon have coke issues of their own.)

Dylan O’Brien, the actor who portrays Dan Aykroyd, absolutely nails the young Aykroyd’s voice and performing style. But the Saturday Night movie depicts him rehearsing sketches that were months, sometimes years away from debuting on SNL. Willem Defoe plays Dave Tebet, a grizzled real-life NBC executive who worked as a fixer to Johnny Carson, and had grave doubts that SNL could succeed. But Herb Schlosser, the NBC executive who conceived of a live show out of Rockefeller Center replacing Carson’s Saturday night reruns, and championed Lorne Michaels’ vision of the show that would fill that timeslot is nowhere to be found in the movie. And while, at first glance, J. K. Simmons is a very unlikely choice to portray Milton Berle, he does an excellent job – though in real life, Berle was actually nowhere to be found when SNL debuted, but he did host the show (disastrously) in its fourth season, in 1979.

The more inside baseball knowledge you have of Saturday Night Live’s brilliant first five seasons, the more you’ll enjoy Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night movie. It’s not entirely accurate, but to paraphrase the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, when the legend becomes fact, film the legend – and add plenty of simulated mescaline, to boot.

Posted at 6:48 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

POLITICO MAKES SURPRISE IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO TRUMP 2024 CAMPAIGN: Federal employees are worried about a return of Donald Trump to the White House.

EPA employees are shuffling to “safer” agencies. An Interior Department worker is putting off buying a new car and poring over Project 2025. And civil servants across the government are worried they might soon get fired.

Federal employees throughout the executive branch are panicking at the thought of another Trump administration.

Former President Donald Trump has pledged to “demolish the deep state.” His running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, has said Trump ought to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state.” It’s not just campaign-trail bluster. In the waning days of his first administration, Trump sought to make it easier to fire federal employees — a move that was quickly reversed by the Biden administration.

Workers in some agencies are particularly distraught about a possible Trump return. The former president and his allies have singled out certain agencies — including those that issue environmental rules — as prime targets, should he return to office in January.

Climate, clean energy and conservation programs scaled up and burnished with cash during the Biden administration are certain to be lightning rods for Trump and his team. That’s looming large over energy and environmental workers, who are feeling the pressure on a professional level as they’re hustling to get Biden’s priorities wrapped up in the coming months. It’s also hitting them personally as they fear they might soon be out of a job.

The prospect of a Trump return is shaping how one Interior employee and their spouse — another federal worker — are handling their finances.

“We have stopped doing any money-spending things because what if we’re without jobs in the next year?” the Interior employee said. “We need all the savings we can get.”

I’ll take “Statements millions of ordinary Americans have been saying during the last four years” for $500, Alex.

Related: Let’s Assume the Polling Trends Are Right and Donald Trump’s About to Win. Then What?

But what if they’re wrong? ‘I’m Not Doing This S—t Again’: Border Patrol Agents Warn of Mass ‘Exodus’ if Harris Wins Election.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

DON LEMON: ‘Far-Right’ Media, ‘Misogyny,’ ‘Sexism’ Are Why Black Men Have Ditched Kamala.

Monday on his eponymous independent show, former CNN host Don Lemon lashed out at black and Latino men who’ve, at a minimum, shown an iciness toward Vice President Kamala Harris and an openness to former President Trump. This, Lemon argued, was due to consummation of a “center right or far right” media “ecosystem” of “digital, streaming podcasts” as well as “misogyny” and “sexism” “that they’re being left behind, especially by women.”

Later in the show, Lemon surprisingly came to the defense of CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil by rebuking CBS News for their all-but public struggle sessions by pro-Palestinian employees humiliating Dokoupil for his grilling of author Ta-Nehisi Coates.

But starting with minorities being interested in Trump, Lemon first lamented that “young men of all ethnicities are listening to media now…as we call ‘mainstream media’ or ‘corporate media’” but rather “digital, streaming, podcasts, all of this and in that ecosystem, everything is pretty much to the right — either center right or far right.”

Don’t get cocky, but most lefties don’t play the “right-wing media bias” card until after the election is over.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

STEALTH EDIT: FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats.

When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.

But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.

The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.

Well, this happens when your focus is on monitoring Trump supporters, pro-lifers, and churchgoers.

But at least the DNC-MSM got to “fact-check” the former president last month:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CITIZENS: ‘Evil’ super gang seizes four apartment complexes in major Texas city in new terrifying show of strength.

A dangerous Venezuelan gang has taken over at least four apartment complexes in San Antonio, Texas, as it expands its reach in yet another America city, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Dubbed the ‘epitome of evil’, Tren de Aragua (TdA) is known to run drug smuggling, child prostitution and human trafficking rings in South America, with its members crossing over into the US in recent years amid a wave of Venezuelan migrants.

The tattooed mobsters have since unleashed a wave of crime across the country from Miami and Texas to Denver and New York.

The gang’s activities in the American cities are back in the spotlight after ABC News’ Martha Raddatz claimed the instances of gang members’ presence in apartments was limited to a ‘handful’ of complexes in Aurora, Colorado.

Just last week a small army of police officers raided an apartment complex in San Antonio and arrested 19 individuals – including four gang members.

Law enforcement sources confirmed TdA had been operating at the Palatia Apartments for five to six months – squatting in empty units they either rented out to other migrants, used as a base to deal cocaine or, most horrifically, as prostitution dens to pimp out women and children.

But now DailyMail.com can reveal that this apartment invasion is just the tip of the iceberg in the major southern Texas city, with at least three other rental properties also occupied by the criminal organization.

As Rush Limbaugh’s former engineer Bo Snerdley tweets, “Don’t worry. According to [Martha Raddatz], it’s just a ‘handful’ of people committing criminal acts. Nothing to be concerned about — and you might be xenophobic if you dare mention it.”

Related: How Republican states have borne the brunt of migration.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Black Nationalist Gets $20 Million to Promote ‘Segregation’ in Public Schools.

An adviser to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who supports school segregation and is a member of the Black Panther Party with family ties to Iran, runs a nonprofit that has raked in nearly $20 million in donations from the government and nonprofits, including the Gates Foundation.

Sharif El-Mekki, a former middle and high school teacher and principal, founded the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED) in 2019, which defines its vision as “a world where. . . all black students are taught by high-quality, same-race teachers,” and where “all teachers demonstrate high levels of expertise in anti-racist mindsets.” CBED argues that employing black teachers to educate black students increases educational outcomes.

Since its founding, CBED has trained thousands of teachers across the U.S. in “education activism,” urging a “commitment to liberation education from the racism inherent in America’s institutions, including our schools.” A CBED information packet titled “The Anti-Racist Guide to Teacher Retention,” developed with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, defines education as “a political act” that “can upend white supremacy and a racist history of using education as an oppressive social force.”

“Every lesson plan is a political document, and every classroom interaction a political statement,” the guide reads.

El-Mekki’s nonprofit boasts more than $19.5 million in assets, boosted by funders including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated over $1.4 million between 2020 and 2021, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which gave over $1.1 million in 2022, according to public tax filings. Other backers include NBC Universal, Nike, the Bezos Family Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania School of Education, and dozens more. In 2023 alone, CBED trained more than 1,700 educators. In their most recent tax filing from 2023, El-Mekki drew a salary of $233,410 from the organization.

“He started up this organization, which on paper sounds like a really wonderful endeavor, getting more black teachers in the classroom,” said Dr. Mika Hackner, a senior research associate at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, which drafted a report on El-Mekki’s extremist views and activism that she shared with The Free Press. “But if you scratch beneath the surface—not even beneath the surface, it’s on their website—he’s propagating some pretty dangerous and divisive ideas.”

El-Mekki, she added, is “bringing in segregation by a different and more socially and politically acceptable name.”

Well, that’s been the left’s goal for over a quarter of a century now.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH:

From the river to the sea, souvlaki will be free!

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 16th, 2024

October 15, 2024

AMERICA’S TEAM IS OFFICIALLY A CLOWN SHOW: Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones Threatens to Fire Radio Hosts.

Bill Parcells was a miracle worker and took a 5-11 team to the playoffs in year one — with the abysmal Quincy Carter as quarterback! He also rebuilt the defense, groomed Tony Romo, and left the team with a loaded roster. They were as talented as anyone in the league.

So what did Jones do?

First, he alienated Parcells by forcing Terrell Owens on his hands. Then he replaced Parcells with another head coach, Wade Phillips (bad!) in 2007, followed by Jason Garrett (bad!) in 2010, and now Mike McCarthy (ugh!) in 2020.

This brings us to 2024, where the Detroit Lions just obliterated the Dallas Cowboys 47-9 on Sunday. It was the worst home loss in the history of their current stadium.

So naturally, the local Dallas media asked Jones about it on 105.3 The Fan. They had to; it would’ve been journalistic malpractice to ignore it.

Jerry Jones responded by threatening to fire all of ‘em!

“Your job isn’t to let me to [sic] go over all the reasons that I did something,” Jones seethed. “That’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions. I’m not kidding.”

And he’s not kidding: This is how Jerry Jones looks at the world. It’s HIS team. He owns it — as he liked to remind us over and over (and over) again.

But if it’s his team, then it’s no longer America’s Team.

As Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News notes: By sparring with radio hosts, Jerry Jones shows Cowboys are equal parts tragedy, comedy.

When Jones entered the league in the late 1980s, he expressed his admiration for the original Darth Rader, Al Davis, who in his heyday, was a brilliant general manager and owner with the Oakland Raiders. But as Davis reached his dotage, he appeared increasingly out of touch with both the NFL specifically, and Planet Earth in general. At age 82, Jones seems determined to follow the same trajectory as his former hero.

Posted at 5:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

CNN: Say, Remember When Kamala Pledged to Prosecute Oil Producers Rather Than Praise Them?

Sure, I do. That was around the same time that Kamala Harris proposed and backed a Medicare for All socialized-medicine bill. And for that matter, bragged about her role in ensuring that taxpayers covered the cost of transgender surgeries for prison inmates, opposed a border wall, wanted to defund ICE, and so on.

Most of the Protection Racket Media has refused to cover these previous positions, or pretend that Harris has addressed them. Give credit to CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski for continuing to dig into Harris’ record, practically alone in his field in doing so. This afternoon, the K-File reporter reminds everyone that Harris ran in 2019 on a platform of prosecuting oil companies for producing fossil-fuel energy — production for which Harris now wants to claim credit:

When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2019, she repeatedly warned oil companies they should be prepared to face hefty fines and even criminal prosecution under a future Harris administration for their role in contributing to climate change.

Now, as the Democratic nominee, Harris is highlighting the country’s record oil and gas production. She rarely talks about climate change, and, despite having been a vigorous supporter of the Green New Deal, her campaign’s website is light on climate policy details.

It’s a stark shift that illustrates the delicate politics of energy — but also how Harris has abandoned a number of progressive positions she held before joining Joe Biden’s ticket in 2020.

Be sure to read it all. However, this is not really a new story, but rather an expansion on a common theme of Harris’ campaign as well as the lack of media attention to it. Candidates can and often do change positions on specific issues depending on election cycles and constituencies being sought. As J.D. Vance explained this week, he has changed his position on a national regulation on abortion because he sees the wisdom of Donald Trump’s federalist approach to it, and he is no longer running for a Senate seat where those issues would be debated anyway.

Related: Harris Says If You Like Your Car, You Can Keep It. Her Record Says Otherwise.

This is the challenge of running a change election with a candidate who not only is the same party as the person she’s hoping to replace, but has also been around the block a few times — she has quite a record of leftism, and she can’t disown it all.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH JOHN FETTERMAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY:

In accordance with the prophecy:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

LIKE LED ZEPPELIN, IF YOU’RE GOING TO PLAGIARIZE, WHY NOT STEAL FROM THE BEST? Kamala Harris accused of plagiarizing Martin Luther King in her book.

Kamala Harris has been accused of plagiarising Martin Luther King in the book that helped launch her political career.

The US vice-president is accused of copying a more than a dozen sections of Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.

She appears to rip-off Rev Dr Martin Luther King in an anecdote from her childhood during the civil rights movement.

The 59-year-old wrote: “My mother used to laugh when she told the story about a time I was fussing as a toddler: She leaned down to ask me, “Kamala, what’s wrong? What do you want?” and I wailed back, “Fweedom.”

The story is very similar to one shared by the civil rights leader, as the New York Post and other outlets have previously noted.

“I will never forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother,” King told Playboy magazine in 1965.

“‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked at him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom’,”.

Stefan Weber, an Austrian academic dubbed the “plagiarism hunter”, reviewed the book and accused the Democratic presidential nominee of dozens of instances of lifting passages without appropriate citation.

The plagiarism in Ms Harris’s book ranges from “minor transgressions” to more “serious infractions”, according to Dr Weber.

Related: Kamala Harris vs Martin Luther King Jr: Who said it better?

MLK: I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.

KH: So, Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.

MLK: Our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.

KH: You know, if you just look at where the stars are in the sky, don’t look at ‘em as just random things. If you just look at ‘em as points, look at the constellation – what does it show you?’

If Kamala does go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the contact high in the green room should be absolutely incredible.

Speaking of which:

Flashback: Kamala Harris Didn’t Send 1500 People To Jail For Pot — It Was More Than That. As “Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle discovered as he fact-checked Gabbard’s claim, the number of people Harris sent to jail for marijuana violations was actually closer to 2000.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

WOKAL DISTANCE: There’s a huge story behind [Christopher Rufo’s] plagiarism investigations people have missed: The integrity of America’s elite institutions has been destroyed by fraud, lying, low standards, and political corruption. It’s just like the 2007 housing market.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

ALWAYS BRING YOUR OWN CAMERA: See how CBS aggressively edited an interview with Speaker Mike Johnson to fit the Narrative.™

Even for a mainstream media outlet this is disgraceful stuff:

Strap in folks, because it’s worse than you think. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson got edited into oblivion when he appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and it becomes obvious why they did it once we look at the unedited footage.

Mollie Hemmingway tweets, “Holy schmoley. Time for all Republicans to refuse to even appear on CBS. Seriously.” But if you must, as Glenn has written, always bring your own camera to interviews.

Related: As is their quadrennial standard in the fall, CBS is going all in to help the team:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Pelosi admits she hasn’t spoken to Biden since she forced him out of the Presidential race.

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden have not spoken since she forced him to drop out of the presidential election, the still-powerful former House speaker has admitted.

Pelosi was central to the effort by Democrats to get Biden to bow out of the race in July after a disastrous and concerning performance in his first and only presidential debate against Donald Trump of the 2024 election cycle.

On a Guardian podcast Tuesday, the California Democrat confirmed the once-close allies had not spoken since Biden was forced to make the stunning move. She said: ‘Not since then, no. But I’m prayerful about it.’

Pelosi maintained that while she still considered the president a friend and political ally, she knew that she had to do something to cut his time in the Oval Office short.

The desperate, late-in-the race move came amid continuing concern about Biden’s mental acuity and ability to lead, but was propelled by Democrats’  concerns over whether he could beat Donald Trump in November.

And, indeed, Pelosi also admitted it was the politics of beating Trump that pushed the decision to end Biden’s campaign forward.

‘Elections are decisions. You decide to win. I decided a while ago that Donald Trump will never set foot in the White House again as president of the United States or in any other capacity,’ she told the Guardian.

‘So when you make a decision, you have to make every decision in favor of winning… and the most important decision of all is the candidate.’

Pelosi may be age 84, and in November of 2022, it was reported that she would “step down from party leadership.” But in her mind at least, to paraphrase Woody Allen at the beginning of Manhattan, DC is her town, and it always will be.

(But remember, Trump’s the dictator.)

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 15th, 2024

October 14, 2024

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