TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Why Are the Media Treating ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Like Criminal Hate Speech?

Progressive political strategist and commentator Chris Hahn accused the pilot of “sympathizing with terrorist[s].” CNN’s Joe Lockhart attacked Southwest for not immediately firing the pilot. The airline is investigating the incident.

Keep in mind that what touched off this public freakout was an Associated Press story asserting that a pilot had uttered the statement. We don’t have audio footage of it, though I did listen to audio from another incident involving a pilot allegedly saying “let’s go Brandon,” and guess what? It really sounded like he was saying “let’s go Braves,” as in the sports team. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but I would bet it was a simple misunderstanding. Even if it wasn’t, it would be wrong to treat the utterance of “let’s go Brandon” as a crime, or terrorist behavior.

Make no mistake: The chant is clearly First Amendment–protected speech, even if some would consider it hate speech. Contrary to what many progressive activists naively assume, hate speech is free speech. There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment, because there is no mutually agreed-upon definition of hate speech, and there are no Supreme Court decisions supporting such an exception. The Supreme Court has carved out some categories of speech that don’t qualify for protection—threats of imminent violence, for instance—but hate speech isn’t one of them. On the contrary, the right to insult political leaders and government officials is perhaps the most important and obvious component of the First Amendment.

Ken Dilanian of NBC News said he called to ask the Secret Service whether “let’s go Brandon” emblazoned on an assault rifle represented a security threat to the president, which he thinks “is a reasonable question.”

* * * * * * * *

That isn’t a reasonable question at all. Here’s a reasonable question: Why do mainstream media figures think their main job is to police speech that offends Democrats?

AT LEAST EIGHT DEAD, OVER 300 INJURED AT ASTROWORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL IN HOUSTON.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Bill Maher, liberal professor clash on CRT in schools: It’s ‘disingenuous’ to say parents oppose Black history.

Another guest, Brown University Professor Glenn Loury, knocked the “activists on the left” who he claimed deny “what I see with my lying eyes” regarding what’s going on in the classroom.

[Frequent MSNBC guest Michael Eric Dyson, a Vanderbilt University professor] continued to argue, however, that the debate in school districts was solely focused on how Black history is taught to children rather than the CRT ideology itself.

“But that’s not all we’re talking about,” Maher pushed back. “We’re talking about kids who seem to be too young sometimes to fully appreciate all this. I think if kids watched you, they wouldn’t know a lot of those words. So to ask them as opposed to letting kids be kids, maybe, where usually kids are pretty nice to each other if they’re instructed not to be.”

Loury told Maher “we need to be getting beyond race,” saying “we’re in the 21st century, not the 19th century” and that young people shouldn’t be “put into boxes” but allowed to do “what comes naturally, which is cross the lines.”

Dyson doubled down, calling that a “failed experiment” and denying there’s been a “race-neutral approach.”

“Failed in the sense that there’s been no progress? That things aren’t different?” a puzzled Maher asked.

“That’s a strawman argument. Of course, there’s been progress,” Dyson said.

“Well, you said ‘failed,’” Maher pushed back.

The liberal professor explained that it wasn’t Black people who were “putting people into boxes” and that they didn’t want to be “segregated” the way they are.

Maher then complained about the “self-segregation” that has taken place on college campuses when it comes to separate dorms or graduation ceremonies based on race, something Dyson didn’t deny.

Earlier this week on MSNBC, Dyson referred to Virginia’s newly elected GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears as “white supremacy by ventriloquist effect. There is a black mouth moving but a white idea running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the white supremacist practices.”

UPDATE: Leftists Slam Bill Maher For Saying The Pandemic Is Over. “The pandemic is done! That was the declaration by Bill Maher on his HBO program Real Time this weekend. This did not make leftists happy. Perhaps because they didn’t want to spend time searching for a new way to control the lives of Americans.”

ROGER SIMON: Republican Jews Meet in Vegas Amidst Rising Antisemitism and a Clueless Administration.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada—The Republican Jewish Coalition begins its annual conference in Las Vegas Nov. 5—postponed a year due to COVID—under a dark cloud with a hint of light.

The dark cloud—it should not surprise readers to know, but it will some anyway—is the ominous rise of antisemitism in our country. It’s not exactly Germany 1938, but, according to a 2021 survey by the American Jewish Committee:

“Approximately one in four (24 percent) American Jews has been the target of antisemitism over the past 12 months: 17 percent said they had been the targets of antisemitic remarks in person, 12 percent said they had been the targets of antisemitism online or on social media, and 3 percent said they had been the victims of physical attacks.

“Consequently, approximately four out of every ten American Jews (39 percent) have changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism.”

Despite what some nostalgic liberal groups would like us to believe, the vast majority of this bigotry, soft or hard, comes not from the remnants of the KKK, but from the supposedly “woke” left, as well as the obvious Islamic extremists.

Much of this has been fueled by anti-Israel causes such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, especially after the recent Gaza War, but, more ominously, it has leaked into the United States Congress and the Biden Administration.

The left, “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, led by AOC and her “Squad”— if you take the Progressive Caucus in its entirety that is nearly a hundred congressmen and women—has taken such previously outlandish stands as refusing to fund replenishing the Iron Dome system.

This even though the Iron Dome is a defensive weapon that prevents people being killed or maimed by missiles aimed willy-nilly at civilians, large numbers of whom, ironically, are Palestinians themselves.

If these “progressives” actually know the Arab population of Israel is rapidly approaching two million, that by defunding the Iron Dome they would be murdering Arabs as well as Jews (not to mention Christians, Bahais, Hindus and others who inhabit the diverse—to co-opt their language—state of Israel), they certainly don’t give any indication of it.

What they give indication of is something approaching a bloodlust toward the Jewish state—and it comes straight out of the leftwing of the Democratic Party.

Related: Donald Trump among Republican Jewish Coalition conference attendees. Presidential contenders appearing at the conference include Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, and the former president, Donald Trump.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Total Schadenfreude Edition.

JIM TREACHER: Yes, Kyle Rittenhouse Acted in Self-Defense. Facts don’t care about your feelings:

I’m no Perry Mason, but if somebody tells you he’s going to kill you, and then he starts chasing you and tries to grab your weapon, he’s not interested in a calm and rational exchange of ideas. It’s safe to assume he intends to do what he just told you he’s going to do.

Kyle Rittenhouse is neither a hero nor a murderer. He’s a kid who got in over his head and defended his own life when things went wrong. If he hadn’t shot those guys, they would’ve killed him. And all the people screaming at him right now would’ve just shrugged, because they only care about human life when it serves their political ends.

I’m sorry those guys are dead, but they shouldn’t have chased down a heavily armed man they had just threatened to kill. If you don’t like it, send your complaints to the Darwin Awards.

Related: Rittenhouse Trial Day 3: State’s Own Witnesses Damage Prosecution, Reinforce Self-Defense Narrative.

Perhaps the highlight of the [Richard] McGinnis [a Daily Caller videographer] testimony, however, occurred during Binger’s re-direct questioning of him.

Binger had been very unhappy when McGinnis was allowed to suggest during cross-examination that it had been the intent of Rosenbaum to seize Kyle’s rifle. Binger objected at the time, but Judge Schroeder overruled the objection.

Now on re-direct, Binger rather heatedly challenged his own witness: You can’t read Rosenbaum’s mind, right? You can’t know what he was actually thinking, right? Your interpretation of his intent is nothing but complete guesswork, isn’t that right?

McGinnis paused a moment, and replied: “Well, he said “F-you, and then he reached for the weapon.” So, maybe not entirely guesswork.

Video here:

FASTER, PLEASE: The future of space travel according to Branson, Musk, and Bezos.

As billionaires Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk use their private space exploration companies to shoot for the stars, they have been dogged by persistent, progressive criticism that this is all a highly combustible vanity project. “Billionaire Space Race: Shameless Vanity Projects in a World of Want” read one representative headline on the website Socialist Alternative.

But is it more than that? The Washington Examiner asked a rocket scientist for thoughts on what, if anything, these titans of industry are contributing to the future of space exploration.

“We are on the cusp of transition in space transportation comparable to the introduction of the DC-3 in aviation, or perhaps the transition from reciprocating engines to jets in commercial aviation,” said James Bennett, the chief regulatory officer for Immortal Data Inc. “The maritime analogy would be from sailing ships to steam in ocean navigation — perhaps the best analogy because steam changed the way everything was done in ocean transport.”

The man he pointed to as most responsible for this possibility is Musk.

I hope the next DC-3 is more reliable than the last one. As Arthur C. Clarke said of the Space Shuttle when asked by Discover magazine in 1999, “What was the most important development during the past 30 years of space exploration?“, he replied, “For want of anything else, I might as well say the space shuttle–although it’s only the DC-1-and-a-half, and not the DC-3, that NASA had hoped for.

I SHOUTED OUT WHO KILLED THE KENNEDYS, WHEN AFTER ALL IT WAS YOU AND ME: QAnon supporters speculate Rolling Stones’s Keith Richards is JFK after Dallas disappointment.

Though the dead Kennedys didn’t make an appearance in Dallas on Tuesday, that didn’t deter a faction of QAnon supporters expecting the return of the political dynasty, who now have a new target for their affection, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

When the Kennedys failed to appear during the Tuesday gathering, some started to posit that the reveal might still happen at a Rolling Stones concert coincidentally happening in the city that evening. When this also didn’t happen, QAnon accounts on Telegram and Twitter started to speculate that Richards was actually the 35th president, and if 1993 movie Wayne’s World 2 taught the world anything, it’s that “Keith Richards cannot be killed by conventional weapons.”

* * * * * * * *

QAnon supporters gathered by the hundreds in downtown Dallas in Dealey Plaza, where John F. Kennedy was assassinated, expecting to see the emergence of the former president as well as his son, John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, from witness protection. The theory posited that Kennedy Sr., upon resuming his role as president, would institute Donald Trump as the rightful president, with Kennedy Jr. as his vice president. The whole thing would be ordained by God because the Kennedy family is the bloodline of Jesus Christ, QAnon supporters contend.

I skipped the QAnon rally and headed straight to the Stones’ concert. It was much more fun — even if getting out of the Cotton Bowl felt a bit like leaving Altamont.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I don’t know why people are making fun of a few hundred people in Dallas. After all, millions of people still believe in socialism.

MORE WOKE NONSENSE: Microsoft Hosts Open MSIgnite Show Declaring Race, Corporate Guilt.

Microsoft opened an event by apologizing to indigenous tribes of America on whose land their offices are built. No word on whether Bill Gates wants to actually return them.

Microsoft hosted Microsoft Ignite 2021 in a Nov. 2 broadcast and couldn’t wait more than 30 seconds to start spewing woke gibberish. After an initially cheerful greeting, Senior Program Manager Allison Weins declared, “First, we want to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulalip, and coast Salish peoples since time immemorial.” She noted further those peoples are “still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.” It appears that the secret to having Big Tech companies actually respect ancient traditions and culture is being born into a group liberals care about.

Weins continued by explaining she is “an Asian, white female with dark brown hair, wearing a red sleeveless top.” Her co-host AI Platform Program Manager Seth Juarez responded in kind: “I am a tall Hispanic male wearing a blue shirt, khaki pants. Today we kick off two days of learning more about the latest solutions, exploring how these key innovations can empower you to do great things and connecting with peers from around the world.”

Atheist liberal podcaster and author Sam Harris commented via Twitter that “It seems like part of the rationale for this must be to help the visually impaired. But, whatever the intentions, this makes Microsoft look like the Cirque du Soleil of wokeness. Quillette Founding Editor Clarie Lehmann made a similar remark, asking, “Will wokeness contribute to the unwinding of globalisation? The rest of the world does not want these bizarre sectarian mind viruses exported to them.”

Exit question: “When will Microsoft be returning the land it occupies to Native Americans? There’s more to these declarations of cultural sensitivity than empty virtue-signaling, I hope.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.  When a trucker beats a professional politician in an election, America wins.

Related: Tom Nichols seems pretty grumpy about that Republican truck driver who won a New Jersey senate seat.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Powerful New Jersey Senate Democrat says ‘12,000 ballots recently found’ support refusal to concede to truck driver.

AS BIDEN MANDATES VACCINES, CDC DIRECTOR WALENSKY STUMBLES WHEN ASKED HOW MANY CDC EMPLOYEES ARE VACCINATED:

“What percent of CDC employees are vaccinated?” Rep. Cassidy asked.

“We’re actively encouraging vaccination on all of our employees and doing a lot of education and outreach in order to get our agency fully vaccinated,’ [Dr. Rochelle Walensky] said, completely dodging the question.

“And the — but the percent?” he asked.

“I don’t have that for you today,” she admitted.

There you have it: The head of a government agency has unilaterally made itself an enforcer of the nation’s pandemic response can’t even follow its own vaccine guidance.

Party of science!

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Arrest illustrates how the Steele dossier was a political dirty trick orchestrated by Hillary Clinton.

Special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Igor Danchenko, the principal source for the bogus Steele dossier used by the FBI as a basis for the Trump-Russia investigation, further illustrates that Durham has his sights set on the Clinton campaign.

Danchenko has been charged with five counts of lying to the FBI in interviews during 2017, as the bureau struggled in futility to verify outlandish allegations that Donald Trump and his campaign were clandestine agents of the Kremlin. Those allegations were compiled in the so-called Steele dossier, which the FBI relied on in obtaining surveillance warrants from a secret federal court.

The dossier was generated by the Clinton campaign. Its principal author was former British spy Christopher Steele. Steele’s main source was Danchenko, a Russian native based in the United States who worked at the Brookings Institution — a Washington think tank whose former president, Strobe Talbott, is a college friend of Bill Clinton’s who worked in the Clinton State Department.

At Brookings, Danchenko worked with Fiona Hill, later a member of President Trump’s National Security Council (and a key witness in the first Trump impeachment over the unrelated Ukraine controversy). It was through Hill that Danchenko became acquainted with Steele, who ran a London-based intelligence firm upon leaving MI-6, the British spy service.

Durham’s indictment alleges that Danchenko lied about two major points.

Related: Woman Who Testified Against Trump Also Introduced Authors of Fake Russian ‘Dossier’ to Each Other. Gee, What Are the Odds … ?

BREAKING: House Passes Infrastructure Vote, Hands Biden Legislative Victory. “Six Democrats voted against the legislation, while 13 Republicans voted in favor of it.”

SMALL DEAD ANIMALS’ READER SURVEY: Shortages in Canada (And The US). “The comments are open for your observations and reports only, and please include your region or city. This is an informal survey – not a debate or discussion. Off topic and link dumps will be deleted. Update: These comments are quite the read. I’m pinning this post to the end of the day, then will do an update and compilation tomorrow.”

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? MSNBC Guest on Winsome Sears: ‘There Is a Black Mouth Moving But a White Idea Running on the Runway of the Tongue.’

Republican and Marine veteran Winsome Sears’s becoming the first black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia has confounded and frustrated many in the media.

During a Thursday segment on MSNBC’s The ReidOut with host Joy Reid, for example, Professor Michael Eric Dyson suggested that as a Republican opposed to the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools, Sears — Old Dominion’s lieutenant governor-elect — is a puppet of white supremacy.

“The problem is, here, they want white supremacy by ventriloquist effect,” he explained. “There is a black mouth moving but a white idea running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the white supremacist practices.”

As Beckett Adams of the Washington Examiner tweets, “MSNBC hosts and contributors have argued in the past that ‘charged,’ ‘angry,’ ‘Chicago,’ ‘Baltimore,’ ‘golf,’ and ‘privileged’ are racist codewords. but not a word for Joy Reid and her guest calling the black Virginia Lt. gov-elect a white supremacy-supporting ‘black mouth.’”

GOODER AND HARDER: Replacement Glass Shortage Adding To Woes Of San Francisco Car Break-Ins Victims.

Yen Phan, a San Francisco food blogger, found her car windshield violently smashed while she was parked on Mission Street near 22nd Street — a busy, heavily trafficked part of town.

“I thought it was bird poop or some kind of stain, but no it looked like it was smashed with a baseball bat, and there were about four marks, and then the roof was also dented,” said Phan.

After calling about half a dozen glass repair shops, she found they all faced a glass shortage.

“Normal glass repair is about 2 to $300,” said Phan. “And then when I talked to the guy I was like why is it $900, does it really cost that much, and can you not get it done any sooner, and he was like yeah, ‘No.’”

The owner of a brand new Audi RS7 also ran into the same headaches, after burglars broke into her vehicle on Hawthorne Street near Howard Street in San Francisco’s South Of Market neighborhood in September.

“We went to probably seven auto glass shops in the Bay Area,” said Trisha Bantigue. “All of them were backlogged, and especially you know add in the manufacturing delays from all over the world, it took me more than 4 weeks to replace that car window.”

And it cost $2,000.

“We have not seen a glass shortage like this,” said Co-Owner of MAZ Auto Glass Kevin Sarat-Guzman. “We’ve seen low supply, but not until the aspect where even when we order through the dealer they have no projected timeline, so we could be waiting weeks to months.”

Curiously, CTRL-F on the above CBS Bay Area article brings back zero results for the words Chesa Boudin or Pete Buttigieg.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: UK Considering Legislation That Would Imprison Internet Trolls.

If you ever need a reminder of how important freedom of speech is, all you need to do is look across the pond. The United Kingdom, which doesn’t have a First Amendment, has slowly seen citizens’ free speech rights eroded—and now may soon start imprisoning people for being trolls on the internet.

At question is pending legislation called the “Online Safety Bill,” which ostensibly punishes social media companies that allow harassment. Yet it may be expanded to include new criminal penalties for individuals who engage in mean speech online.

“Trolls could face two years in prison for sending messages or posting content that causes psychological harm under legislation targeting online hate,” the Times of London reports. “The Department for Culture, Media & Sport has accepted recommendations from the Law Commission for crimes to be based on ‘likely psychological harm.’ The proposed law change will shift the focus on to the ‘harmful effect’ of a message rather than if it contains ‘indecent’ or ‘grossly offensive’ content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality.”

In 2018, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.”

As a wise woman once wrote, “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.”

GOODER AND HARDER: George Soros, Unions, Other Far-Left Entities Donated Heavily to Defeat Pro-Police Ballot Measure in Austin, Texas.

RITTENHOUSE DEFENSE SUGGESTS KENOSHA DA COLLUDED WITH DETECTIVE TO HIDE CELL PHONE EVIDENCE TAKEN BY WOUNDED MAN.

Earlier: FBI Spy Video Shows Kyle Rittenhouse Being Chased Down at Kenosha Riot…Which Explains Why You’ve Never Seen It.

PLENTY OF GUILT TO GO AROUND: The Tiki-Torch Hoax Should Not Be Blamed Only on the Lincoln Project’s Grifters.

Jim commented on the Intercept story about Lauren Windsor and the Lincoln Project attempting to defend their role in the now-infamous tiki-torch stunt at a Glenn Youngkin rally by making the case that they planned it as an open satire — sort of like “Billionaires for Bush” — rather than intending it to be a hoax that people mistook for actual white nationalists. Jim’s conclusion: “The simple answer seems to be the accurate one. The folks at the Lincoln Project are just stupid. Really, really stupid.”

That’s true, but there are two additional, related points worth considering here about why the blame should not stop with the Lincoln Project. One is about the media coverage. The story went national starting with Elizabeth Holmes, a supposedly straight-news reporter from NBC29 in Charlottesville, who presented the fake white nationalists as if they were for real:

Read the whole thing — and then check out this Twitter thread by Drew Holden, who spots additional players getting in on the action. “Now, you’ll notice that these tweets were never flagged for disinformation or anything of the sort. Something tells me that if the parties were reversed, some outlets may call this an organized attempt to spread lies days before an election to suppress the vote. The takeaway here should be clear: as I’ve said many times before, if a story perfectly, hilariously and inexplicably confirms all of your priors, it may well be too good to be true. It never hurts to wait for more details to come out. And it should go without saying, but it’s despicable behavior from @ProjectLincoln at a time when racial relations are, by any metric, bad and trending worse.”

MANCHIN AND SINEMA: Cassandras of the Senate.

After Biden surveyed the wreckage in Virginia, he urged his party to hit the gas pedal on passing the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills, suggesting that perhaps the failure to pass the acts affected the outcome of the Virginia governor’s race. This is a typical trick, one he learned from his old boss: if people don’t like the agenda, it must be because there isn’t enough of it.

But Manchin and Sinema are in the right here. They have navigated the negotiations patiently and deftly, perhaps aware of what happened to their party the last time an enormous unpopular package was rammed through Congress by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Obamacare was passed in 2010, but four years later the Democrats were still paying the price for its unpopularity. The 2014 midterm swing was the largest transfer of congressional power since World War Two. 2022 looks to not only be a repeat, but worse, even at local levels where the core of the Democratic Party power structure is in danger: teachers’ unions.

The media is haranguing Manchin and Sinema. Activists and members of their own party are hounding and alienating them. But the two senators who have urged restraint on Biden’s massive spending agenda not only find themselves looking like prophets for issuing electoral warnings but could very well find themselves as two of the safest members of the party. And they know it.

Sinema, and more to the point Manchin see what lies ahead of a rudderless president who can’t get out of his own way and is beholden to the far left and journalists on Twitter. They are both playing the long game for their own political futures. Their party is failing to take notice.

Related: Manchin, Spanberger: Fellow Dems better realize Biden’s no FDR.

UPDATE: Far left environmental activists swarm Joe Manchin’s Maserati as he tries to leave parking garage. “‘Weird that blocking someone from driving to work, screaming at them, and then pretending he was running you over didn’t make him empathize with you!’ added Maggie Howell, a staffer for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Price of Oreos set to increase due to inflation: Report.

FBI SPY VIDEO SHOWS KYLE RITTENHOUSE BEING CHASED DOWN AT KENOSHA RIOT: Which Explains Why You’ve Never Seen It.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: McAuliffe Blames Loss On Low 3AM Ballot Turnout.