MSNBC HOST’S MARIE ANTOINETTE MOMENT: Just tap into your savings to pay for higher grocery prices.

Meh, what’s the big deal? It doesn’t really matter that Americans are paying more for groceries these days because everyone saved so much money during the pandemic. That is the logic coming from MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle. She called it a “dirty little secret” that Americans can afford higher prices.

Ruhle is an MSNBC business correspondent so it caused some eyebrows to raise when she told NBC anchor Willie Geist this malarkey. She told Geist, “The dirty little secret here, Willie, while nobody likes to pay more, on average, we have the money to do so. Household savings hit a record high over the pandemic, we didn’t really have anywhere to go out and spend.” This happened during her interview with Geist on the Today Show segment Sunday Focus. One of my colleagues at MRC/Newsbusters described her aptly – “inflation airhead”.

[Dan Aykroyd’s] Jimmy Carter smiles knowingly.

HALF-CENTURY OLD, UNSEEN FOOTAGE SHOWS BEATLES WRITING AND RECORDING IN NEW DOCUMENTARY GET BACK (video).

THE VOICE OF A JEN-ERATION:

A few months back sometime around 2 a.m. I was sitting in a bar I probably shouldn’t have been in, engrossed in conversation with three good friends. One put a difficult question to me: “Who do you think is the greatest columnist alive today?” I said myself, but when nobody laughed I felt like a jerk and started to offer real answers. We went through the obvious possibilities—Ross Douthat and suchlike—but concluded that none of them quite deserved the honor. We turned to talented but rather more niche right-wing wordsmiths but again came up short on every one. Finally, we ran through old hands whose work in better days might earn them some kind of emeritus status—George Will, Pat Buchanan.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to the conclusion that nobody alive and writing today could be saddled with a label such as “greatest.” Our very finest writers, we realized, would have been the in-house mediocrities at midsize regional magazines if they had entered this business a century ago. We have no D. Keith Manos, no Bill Buckleys; we don’t even have any Walter Lippmans.

Maybe we were too dour; beer, etc., had been flowing. With time to reflect and mostly sober up, I’d like to amend my answer. In the clear light of day it seems obvious to me that our greatest living columnist can be no other than Jennifer Rubin, grande dame of the Washington Post.

I’m sure I lost some of you just there. Maybe you think I’m joking. (I would never.) Maybe you think I’ve lost it. (Not yet, anyways.) I am both entirely sincere and, as always, to be taken quite seriously.

Now, let me be clear. I think Jen Rubin is our greatest living columnist in much the same way that I think Nic Cage is our greatest living actor: committed 100 percent to the bit, while simultaneously absorbing it into a self that is inscrutably bizarre. All at once the role is reduced to the level of absurdity, elevated to the level of art, and intertwined with the person of the artist.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

RITTENHOUSE PROSECUTOR SHOCKS EVERYONE WITH WHAT HE DOES WITH AR-15 IN COURT: “But you may not believe what Binger did next in the course of trying to make his point about Rittenhouse’s actions. He picked up the AR-15 that was an exhibit in the courtroom and pointed it at people including the jury. Check the finger placement, too:”

As Steve writes at the PJ Mothership: WHOA: Rittenhouse Prosecutor Thomas Binger Aims AR-15 at People in Courtroom, Finger on the Trigger.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Alec Baldwin was unavailable for comment.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: 50 years of predictions that the climate apocalypse is nigh.

If it all sounds slightly familiar, consider this news story from 1972:

“We have ten years to stop the catastrophe,” said the UN’s environmental protection boss. That’s one of the headlines collected by Bjorn Lomberg, author of “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”

Lomberg notes that, for more than 50 years, the United Nations and the media have regularly predicted we’re on the verge of calamity. And they always seem to forget about the last warning.

In 1982, after the catastrophe failed to materialize, the New York Times covered the second UN conference on the environment, which opened “amid gloom”:

The piece quotes Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United Nations environmental program, as saying that if things aren’t fixed by the turn of the century — the year 2000 — the world would face “an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.’’

In 1989, a senior UN environmental official shaved a year off that dire prediction, saying that if we didn’t fix climate change by 1999, we would have “Global disaster, nations wiped off the face of the earth, crop failures”:

Related: Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of [2022].

51 years on, to paraphrase the late Kathy Shaidle on Trump as Hitler, I’m already on (at least) my fourth apocalypse:

(Classical reference in headline.)

JOE BIDEN’S SACRIFICIAL PRESIDENCY:

If you want to force a population off of meat consumption because you think it’s harming the planet, you simply make things like meat too expensive. If you want to force people into electric vehicles because you believe they’re harming the planet, you let gas prices soar to astronomical levels, to the point where people don’t drive and opt for public transportation.

To the Democrats, this is the Biden sacrifice. He will be a one-term president, but in his one term, he’ll be able to transform the country in a way no politician who cared about his political future would ever dare to attempt. It’s a deal that a 79-year-old Joe Biden would take, if it meant the national press speaks his name in the same breath as FDR.

Joe Biden is not the future. He might not even be the present. That’s why his administration is governing like he has months to live, sweeping through a bucket list of progressive wishes. Doing so is already causing enormous harm, but in the end it will be worth it for the Democrats, and it will be worth it for Biden.

Even Psaki knows he’s obviously on borrowed time: Video surfaces of Psaki 2 years ago laughing at Biden’s gaffes: “What on earth is happening right now?”

QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Why on earth does Beto O’Rourke want to run for governor of Texas?

OH NOES! Infighting Between Team Biden And Team Harris:

The NY Post points out that Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California and a longtime friend of Harris, confirmed there is irritation. “It is natural that those of us who know her know how much more help she can provide than what she is currently asked, “That’s where the frustration is coming from.”

This site’s been very critical of Joe Biden because he’s deserved it,  but he is more correct in this case. When I was a corporate manager, it was impossible to give someone more responsibility until they proved themselves on the assignments they did have. Harris didn’t even make a show of trying to fix the illegal immigration problem. But on the other hand, Harris has a point. Team Biden rushed to defend Pete Buttigieg when he was being blasted for his paternity leave. Which most of the time they do not do for Kamala Harris.

Exit questions:

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Study: Nets Silent on Radical Biden Nominee: Praised Soviet Union, Wants to Destroy Oil, Gas.

This may be the most radical Biden nominee you’ve never heard of. On Thursday, Saule Omarova is set to face Senate hearings to head Comptroller of the Currency, a branch of the Treasury Department. Who is this woman? She appears enchanted with Soviet Russia, and “wants” to bankrupt industries. And ABC, CBS and NBC haven’t said a word about her.

The Cornell University law professor back in February appeared at a “social wealth seminar” and said this: “What I’m thinking about primarily is primarily the coal industry and the oil and gas industry. A lot of the smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order. At least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?”

But that’s only the start. Back in 2019, she praised the old USSR, a regime that murdered tens of millions of people, because they didn’t have a “gender pay gap.”

Also on Omarova’s mind: “Omarova has endorsed radical proposals for government control and regulation of the banking sector. In a paper entitled The People’s Ledger, she argues for a ‘systematic democratization of finance’ where citizens have government bank accounts with the Federal Reserve that ‘fully replace—rather than compete with— private bank deposits.’ Omarova openly admits that her ‘proposed reform will effectively ‘end banking’ as we know it.’”

To paraphrase Mark Steyn’s quip regarding East German-born Angela Merkel, you can take the girl out of the Soviet Union, but you can’t take the Soviet Union out of the girl.

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Patrick Leahy announces retirement in 2022. “It’s tough to imagine that a Republican could replace Leahy, even with Scott’s big win last year. If all Democrats can offer in this midterm is a warmed-over lifetime politician, though, maybe the GOP has a shot. More to the point, however, Leahy’s retirement opens up another unexpected point of vulnerability in the Senate. After all, at 81 Leahy was hardly over the hill for the upper chamber. Chuck Grassley just announced his re-election bid at 88, after all.”

53 YEARS BEFORE THE ASTROWORLD CONCERT DISASTER, THERE WAS ALTAMONT.

My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com.

Related: Astroworld Festival tragedy death toll rises to 10: ‘This was a blood bath.’

(Updated and bumped.)

TNSTAAFL: Kamala Harris Just Told Taxpayers An Embarrassingly Blatant Lie. “‘There is also a point that is important to make on the Build Back Better framework… it is designed to make it less expensive for working people to live,’ Harris said. ‘And Build Back Better is not going to cost anything, we’re paying for it.’ ‘When we can get Build Back Better passed, and we are optimistic that we will, the American people will see costs actually reduced around some of the most essential services,’ she continued. ‘So, that is a big part of our agenda, and I think it’s important to also stress that it’s not going to cost anything for the American taxpayer.’ That’s right: The vice president is claiming, with a straight face, that the Biden administration’s plan to spend trillions on climate change and welfare policies costs nothing and that taxpayers will be unaffected. She literally said, ‘it’s not going to cost anything, we’re paying for it.’”

DEVELOPING: Judge in Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Dismisses Firearm Possession Charge.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris Sour on Each Other.

Insiders have speculated that Biden modeled his relationship with the office of the vice president after his former boss, President Obama, relegating Harris to a more ceremonial role rather than a historic one in which she actively plays a role in carrying out his agenda. Insiders, however, believe that Joe Biden did not adequately calibrate his experience as vice president “to someone with far different qualifications and skills.”

Even occasions in which it appeared that Kamala Harris played a greater role in the Biden administration, such as during the Afghanistan withdrawal, insiders say she expressed dismay in private over her lack of involvement.

“Harris has also complained to confidants about not being a greater part of the President’s approach to the Afghanistan withdrawal — despite telling CNN at the time she was the last one in the room when he made the decision — leaving her without more to draw on when she defended him publicly,” the outlet noted.

An anonymous Democratic Party donor lamented that President Biden has failed to put Kamala Harris in a position to lead, setting her up for failure.

“Kamala Harris is a leader but is not being put in positions to lead. That doesn’t make sense. We need to be thinking long term, and we need to be doing what’s best for the party,” said the donor. “You should be putting her in positions to succeed, as opposed to putting weights on her. If you did give her the ability to step up and help her lead, it would strengthen you and strengthen the party.”

Beyond the sidelining, insiders also feel that the Biden administration has not done enough to curtail partisan attacks on her from the conservatives. One former Harris aide even suggested race may be a factor, considering that the White House jumped at the opportunity to defend Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg when it was revealed that he went on three months paternity leave during the supply-chain crisis.

“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a White man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves,” said the former aide.

Harris and Biden souring on each other and the Harris camp playing the race card against Biden? Who could have anticipated that?

Flashback: Kamala Harris Admits Plan to Slam Biden in Debate, Repeats Lie About Segregationists.

Related: “When you’ve lost CNN. . .”

IT’S COME TO THIS: William Hogarth’s Paintings Now Come with a Trigger Warning.

A TWEET TOO FAR: Judge cited tweet by Ron Klain for blocking Biden’s vaccine mandate: Chief of Staff said imposing it as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ‘ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.’

As the previous president discovered the hard way, President Klain really needs to be much more careful with his use of social media.

ROGER SIMON: GOP Leaders Betray Their Voters Over Lisa Murkowski.

According to the Washington Post, the following transpired when Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)—chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee—appeared on “Meet the Press” Nov. 7:

“Scott reaffirmed his support for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), defying the attacks that Trump has levied against both. Trump has endorsed Murkowski’s primary challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, saying in June that Tshibaka is ‘MAGA all the way.’”

When asked if the NRSC would back Murkowski financially, Scott said “Absolutely.”

What kind of game is the Florida senator playing here?  Arguments exist pro and con McConnell, who has done some things well, notably judicial nominations, but Murkowski?

Nothing is discernible for her and, as noted above, several good Republicans are running against her in the primary.  Moreover, Alaska is a reliable GOP state.  Trump won it comfortably in 2020.

I can only speculate what’s behind Scott’s support, but it couldn’t be more obvious that he is betraying, disdaining, alienating, ignoring—choose the word you wish— the Republican rank-and-file, who are finished with Murkowski. Ask virtually anyone. (It’s worth remembering Murkowski initially became senator through being appointed by her father, then state governor.)

This is a foolish thing to do on many levels, so the conclusion must be there is money involved for someone (or some candidate or candidates). Otherwise it makes little sense unless it’s part of a covert plot by so-called “moderate” (read: RINO) Republicans to subvert Trump. Possibly both are involved.

That this was done at a moment of maximum Republican enthusiasm after the victory in Virginia and the near-victory in Democrat stronghold New Jersey makes it all the more disturbing.

Plus:

Many people wonder why Republicans lose when they are able to outdraw the Democrats on the ground, and not just at Trump rallies, in large numbers.

Perhaps it is that some of them, the leadership in particular, secretly want to lose—or to win only when their candidates are part of the Deep State/Uniparty.

While Republican voters are eager for the midterms, I hope the politicians they’re electing know that the base is rather leery about a return to the Stupid Party’s patented formula of “failure theater.”

INSIDE EVERY LIBERAL IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT:

Related: Here’s Democrat pollster Rachel Bitecofer enjoying the smug life:

(classical reference in headline.)

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE K-12 IMPLOSION AND WEIMAR AMERICA: Thousands of Massachusetts Parents Pull Kids From ‘Woke’ Sex Ed Classes.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Media Calls for ‘Rules’ Treating Republicans as Not ‘Normal.’

While we see media going to all kinds of Orwellian lengths to defend the failures of Joe Biden, the opposite side of the coin is how much media will spin reality to attack Republicans.

Now, we’ve seen bias when it comes to media. But the Washington Post’s Jen Rubin exceeds bias and moves right into outright lunacy with this mad rant at Republicans.

First, she falsely claims that the Republican Party has been endorsing violence. But then she gets to the meat of what she wants to say — that the media has to have “rules” for how they treat Republicans. Now, I will give you a “Jen Rubin” warning going in. You’ve been warned.

“You have to have new ground rules for the media,” Rubin whines. “They have to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians. They are not normal politicians … This is a party that spends its entire time cooking up ridiculous culture memes & fanning violence & coming up with outright lies.” Then the MSNBC host completely endorses the crazy idea, shaking her head ‘yes’ and telling Rubin she’s completely right.

That’s quite a take for someone appearing on the network that employs Al Sharpton. But we’ve been here before multiple times; in June of 2020 Reason’s Matt Welch noted: Journalists Abandoning ‘Objectivity’ for ‘Moral Clarity’ Really Just Want To Call People Immoral.

Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer-prize-winning correspondent for the 60 Minutes offshoot 60 in 6, has the latest and perhaps loudest in a recent series of think-pieces extolling the virtues of newsroom revolts such as the one that erupted at The New York Times earlier this month after its opinion pages published a controversial piece by Sen. Tom Cotton (R – Ark.).

Lowery and his industry allies contend that the national tumult stemming from the police killing of George Floyd is a prime opportunity to overhaul journalism’s very mission statement. “Neutral objectivity” as an aspiration, he argues in a Times essay, has failed, and should be replaced by “moral clarity.”

“Moral clarity would insist that politicians who traffic in racist stereotypes and tropes—however cleverly—be labeled such with clear language and unburied evidence,” Lowery writes. “Racism, as we know, is not about what lies in the depths of a human’s heart. It is about word and deed. And a more aggressive commitment to truth from the press would empower our industry to finally admit that.”

This proposed objectivity-for-morality swap is gaining momentum in the spaces where professional journalists congregate, pontificate, and/or swarm on Twitter to get senior managers fired.

Newsrooms “are really struggling to cover…in a way that appears to be nonpartisan a kind of political landscape where one political party in many ways has gone rogue and is not following the rules,” the Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning Nikole Hannah-Jones said on CNN’s Reliable Sources after the Cotton flap, in which she was a driving figure. “This adherence to even-handedness, both-sidesism, the View from Nowhere, doesn’t actually work in the political circumstances that we’re in.”

And then there was ABC in 2004:

An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff: During coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush not to “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable.”

The controversial internal memo obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how “Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.”

But Halperin claims that Bush is hoping to “win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.”

“The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done,” Halperin writes.

Halperin’s claim that ABCNEWS will not “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable” set off sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.

Halperin states the responsibilities of the ABCNEWS staff have “become quite grave.”

In August, Halperin declared online: “This is now John Kerry’s contest to lose.”

That was also the year that the New York Times’ then-ombudsman admitted the obvious: “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.”

Between articles like that, ABC’s admission in 2004, Rubin’s appearance on MSNBC, and journalists preening on social media, it’s good to see the legacy media admitting that they’re simply Democratic Party operatives with bylines, though.

Related: John Kass, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, asks and answers: Why is corporate legacy media dying? Danchenko indictment and collapsing Russia Hoax narrative reveal the answer: Root Rot.

HOW ANTI-RACISM BECAME A RELIGION:

‘I write this viscerally driven by the fact that the ideology in question is one under which white people calling themselves our saviours make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species, and teach black people to revel in that status and cherish it as making us special.’

But what elements of the left aren’t a substitute for religion? Since we’re currently living in the version of the Matrix that was programmed by Tom Wolfe before his death in 2018, it’s worth quoting from in his epochal 1976 article, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening:” “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.” (That line was written with early ‘70s radical chic in mind, but reverberates quite nicely today, given Antifa’s love of paramilitary cosplay.)

DON’T GET COCKY: More Polls Show Looming Democrat Disaster.

Related: More Grim Polls for Democrats.

‘BE PREPARED TO SACRIFICE:’ Chinese state media threatens Australia as Taiwan tensions continue.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Brass Against Apologize For Singer Urinating On Fan’s Face During Festival Set: “Sophia Got Carried Away.”

IF THE SHOPLIFTERS DON’T FINISH THEM OFF, THE RATS WILL: ‘Severe rat infestation’ temporarily closes San Francisco Walgreens location.