Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
October 31, 2024
THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR A WHILE, BUT GOOD: Muscles can bounce back despite weeks-long weight training breaks.
PUHLEEZ. IT’S NOT A CRIME, OR EVEN A “HATE” CRIME, OR EVEN RACIST. San Diego State U. investigates white students dressed up as Diddy and bottle of baby oil. And it’s clearly established that “blackface” is protected by the First Amendment, and any university administrator who punishes someone for that will forfeit qualified immunity.
The real crime is reminding people that someone that celebrities and politicians hobnobbed with for many years was a predator. Which keeps turning out the be the case.
AN AWFUL LOT OF WHITE WOMEN IN THIS CROWD, AS USUAL: Meet the 11 anti-Israel agitators arrested after occupying a University of Minnesota building.
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: “This is pre-postmortem. They know it’s lost.”
Plus: Pre-postmortem, Part 2: “Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win.”
But don’t get cocky.
IMPRISONING DISSIDENTS OFTEN BACKFIRES: A serene Steve Bannon says his stint in the slammer was ‘empowering.’ He was released yesterday from the federal prison where he was incarcerated as a political prisoner for the last four months.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and host of the War Room podcast, was released from FCI Danbury, the federal prison where he was incarcerated as a political prisoner for the last four months Tuesday. His tort? The same thing that Eric Holder and Merrick Garland were guilty of: refusing to respond to a Congressional subpoena. Neither Holder nor Garland were indicted or incarcerated, of course, because neither supports Donald Trump.
That was Bannon’s real outrage: supporting the man whom Kamala Harris describes as “literally Hitler” and a “fascist” and whose supporters Joe Biden just described as “garbage.”
About 100 Karens of all sexes crowded into a suite at Lowe’s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue to preen, scold and attempt to play Gotcha! with a man who quietly ran circles around them all. You said nasty things about Elon Musk in the past and now you support him: how do you explain that?
Bannon pointed out that Musk has undergone a process of political maturation, something that the Karen in question only blinked at.
Buzz, buzz, buzz. There they all were, the rancid Lilliputians from the AP, the Washington Post, Daily Beast, the Bulwark: what about January 6? Who does he think won the 2020 election? Will he respect the results of the 2024 election? Etc., etc.
They were pathetic, but Bannon was serene and forthright, explaining that his stint in the slammer had been an “empowering” experience. He spent much of his timing tutoring about 100 fellow prisoners, mostly non-violent drug offenders, in civics, a subject the hostile crybullies of the press might profit from.
Bannon described how the focus of politics was moving from race through gender and was just about to settle on the critical issue of money. The reason that support for Donald Trump is soaring among blacks and Hispanics is that they understand his populist message. They remember the manifold economic successes of his first term: the tax cuts, the historically low unemployment, the rising wages, especially at the lower end of the scale, the ethic of MAGA.
Stay tuned.
HE WON’T. ON THE OTHER HAND, A COUPLE OF MY LAW STUDENTS WERE CONVINCED TODAY THAT IF KAMALA WINS SHE’LL JAIL ELON MUSK. Stop pretending Trump will send journalists to gulag.
But in this country it’s Democrats who put their enemies in concentration camps. Just ask FDR.
THE E.V. BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: Volkswagen Hits the Net-Zero Wall: The German company’s layoffs and pay cuts are a warning to America about Biden-Harris climate policies. “An October surprise for the U.S. election may have arrived this week—in Germany. Word that Volkswagen could close three vehicle factories, cut 10,000 jobs and impose steep across-the-board pay reductions is a warning for Americans about the peril of Biden-Harris climate policy. The news was communicated to workers on Monday by the head of the company’s labor-relations council, and to describe it as a shock to Europe’s largest economy is an understatement. Volkswagen Group employs some 300,000 in Germany with 10 factories for its flagship VW brand. It has avoided involuntary layoffs for three decades and hasn’t shuttered a factory in its home country in its 87-year history. . . . A bigger share of the blame lies with politicians, however, especially for their climate policies. Germany’s auto industry is trapped in a vise between higher energy prices that drive up the cost of production, and electric-vehicle mandates that drive down sales. VW is cracking under the pressure.”
ROGER SIMON’S ELECTION-INDUCED IDENTITY CRISIS: Am I a Nazi, Garbage, or Nazi Garbage?
INDEED: NATO Needs to Fix its German Problem: The USA has other priorities to attend to.
NATO was created to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out. They don’t like Americans anymore, the Germans seem to have largely conquered the EU, and the Russians can’t even make it through Ukraine; they’d splatter if they ran into Poland. So . . .
WELL, OF COURSE: A Big Clue Has Been Dropped About Who’s Behind Those Exploding Ballot Boxes; Be Ready for Election Chaos. “The mistake we must not make here is thinking that these are just some isolated incidences perpetrated by some leftist wackadoodle, or that the chaos will only be seen at drop-off ballot boxes in the PNW. We have more than a full year’s worth of proof that the pro-Hamas crowd is rage-filled, violent and intent on silencing and punishing those they see as their enemies. And there some is pretty solid evidence that they count Kamala Harris as one of their own.”
ERIC COWPERTHWAITE: A Few Thoughts On Paris: In Response To Kurt Schlichter. “Overall, I think some of what we hear about France “falling” is very much untrue, and some is quite true. But it is a long way from reality that France is nearly overrun by Islam and Sharia. Germany was much worse, from that perspective, which we visited in August of 2022.”
October 30, 2024
HE’S KIND OF AN ARGUMENT AGAINST IMMIGRATION:
This was the "fuck-your-freedoms" propaganda messenger during Covid.https://t.co/VizI9bIomr
— The Extreme Truth & Liberty Barsh Consulting Co. (@EmilyTVproducer) October 31, 2024
I mean, with all that America gave him, we wind up with “Fuck your freedoms” and the endorsement of a sad apparatchik with a girly-man running mate.
OPEN THREAD: Stop and smell the roses.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches 3 astronauts to Tiangong space station on Shenzhou 19 mission.
THEY’VE FOCUSED RATHER MORE ON LITIGATION AND THREATS THEREOF THAN ON PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT, I BELIEVE: Dominion Keeps Popping Up In All the Wrong Places–Including Passwords Made Public. On the other hand, the notion that Dems are setting things up to challenge an election they expect to lose is interesting. And it’s certainly possible that Dominion could stink and that Democrats are taking advantage to set up for a disputed election.
WELL, FASTER, PLEASE: Forgotten Antibiotic From Decades Past Could Be a Superbug Killer. “This compound is still highly effective at killing drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria but at concentrations that are not toxic. In mouse models, S-F actually managed to kill off a strain of bacteria that has proved resistant to numerous existing drugs, all with minimal to no toxicity.”
HMM: What the Hell is Going On in Michigan? “‘Vote early and often’ is one of those election campaign jokes politicians like to indulge in, but one Michigan voter ID reportedly has voted 29 times so far — and one expert just found 164,568 little anomalies.”
FROM YOUR KEYBOARD TO GOD’S EAR: This Election Might Not Be Close.
And what we think is happening is that Donald Trump is doing far better than many of the polls, and the print and broadcast media coverage, are letting on. If we’re wrong, we’ll be the first to admit it, and you can feel free to come back here next week and heckle us in the comments.
The first point to make is that despite some razor-thin poll margins and talk of a “coin-flip” election, the environment is extremely favorable to Republicans. For one thing, the GOP has made significant party registration gains since the last election cycle. In Pennsylvania, widely considered to be the key to the election, Republicans have cut the Democrats’ registration advantage from more than 685,000 in 2020 to less than 300,000 this year—a gain of more than 385,000 in a state that Biden took by only about 80,000 votes. And in late September, Gallup released the results of its survey on the 2024 election environment, concluding that “nearly all Gallup measures that have shown some relationship to past presidential outcomes … favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party.” . . .
We have also, for a couple of weeks now, been receiving early vote (EV) numbers in some of the major swing states. The conventional wisdom is that you can’t pay attention to EV numbers because EV totals have historically been misleading in predicting final results, not to mention that elections have changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We think some of that is being overstated, but sure—don’t take the EV numbers as gospel truth. Still, they give us a chance to look at real-life voter behavior and shouldn’t be ignored.
What the EV numbers show right now is that Trump is doing much better than anyone anticipated. This is exactly what we might have expected if we’d tuned out every media story about Trump: Hitler II and looked at fundamentals like registration, party ID, and the electoral environment—which is another reason to take these numbers seriously. . . . Again, anything could happen, so don’t bet the house. But as we read headline and X post after headline and X post this morning, suggesting the closest election of our lifetime, we thought it might be helpful to at least offer an opposing view: Trump is doing extremely well right now, and the final result may not even be that close.
If it’s not close, they can’t cheat. And if it is close, they will. So I hope this is right, but: 1, 2, 3: Don’t Get Cocky!
And we’ll know the truth soon enough.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: ABC station mistakenly airs election results declaring Harris winner of key swing state. “The numbers seen on the screen were randomly generated test results sent out to help news organizations make sure their equipment is working properly in advance of election night.”
HMM: Trump-Vance Campaign Discovers Leftist Activists Impersonating Election Officials. “Democrat activists in Philadelphia have been wearing fake badges claiming to be “Voter Protection” agents and impersonating election officials to suppress the vote. Radical leftists are trying to intimidate voters and interfere with Pennsylvanians’ right to cast their ballots. These are a few examples of an activists throughout Pennsylvania. These are not election officials and should not interfere with voters casting ballots.”
LOL:
https://t.co/QgOQ8anglW pic.twitter.com/ztXq92uG6P
— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) October 30, 2024
🚨 Rolling up on the back of a garbage truck to the Trump Campaign event in North Carolina.
With @VivekGRamaswamy
Massive love. Listen to the crowd.
This is how we win 👊🏼 pic.twitter.com/4ApcwHjyNm
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 30, 2024
MAGA pic.twitter.com/ydbZikJ2SV
— ThatOneGuy55 (@Tesla7771) October 30, 2024
Related: Biden calls Trump supporters ‘garbage,’ reminding us what most Dems think.
UPDATE:
@davidgokhshtein 🚨JUST IN: Vivek is out here working a shift as a garbage man after Biden called all MAGA supporters “garbage.” Talk about making a statement!