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Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
October 26, 2024
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN GUNFIGHTER: Straight Talk: Jelly Bryce Oklahoma Shootist. “In his later years Bryce taught firearm techniques to new agents and represented the bureau by putting on shooting exhibitions. He was known for his point-shooting techniques and for using a deep crouch when drawing his gun and getting his shots off. Point shooting and the deep crouch became FBI trademarks for that era.”
LIKE I NEEDED ANOTHER REASON TO AVOID CANDY CORN: Some Halloween candy includes cancer-linked Red Dye 3, watchdog says.
BAD NEWS FOR SURGEONS: Weight-loss surgeries decline 25% as GLP-1 drugs grow in popularity.
SCIENCE: Diversity study reveals Hollywood prefers busty Latinas over breast baring whites.
Me, I’m broad-minded about such things.
HMM:
TRUMP: “Tonight, the Middle East is a tinderbox. It's ready to explode. People are being killed… Nobody is in charge. Joe Biden is asleep, and Kamala is at a dance party with Beyonce.”🔥
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) October 26, 2024
FACT CHECK: There was no dancing, Beyonce didn’t perform, and Kamala went all schoolmarm on protesters.
While Trump and Joe Rogan are laughing, chatting up and having a good time Kamala is barking at protesters at her Beyoncé concert rally thing.
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) October 26, 2024
MATT TAIBBI: Uh, Oh: New York Times, Washington Post Signal Post-Election Crackdown: Elite anxiety is bleeding into public commentary, suggesting we have more than an election to worry about in the coming weeks. “What about just letting voters choose? No go, explain the Harvard men.”
ICYMI:
The closing dozen days of Trump being called a Nazi has a 2016 feel to it
What’s new: his supporters are pushing back with a testimonial video of an Auschwitz survivor who backs him https://t.co/OttJVNUn8U
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) October 25, 2024
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Democrats Warn It May Take At Least 4 Years To Count Ballots https://t.co/KWeN4zJVRV pic.twitter.com/UELJWvdzbj
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 25, 2024
Related:
So here’s my theory on what’s happening. With Kamala looking likely to lose already, the Clinton forces are turning on the Obama machine. Ever since he beat Hillary in 2008, the two have been in an uneasy truce. But the knives were always waiting to come out. If Obama’s standard-bearer — and that’s what Kamala is — doesn’t just lose, but goes down in a Dukakis-level defeat, then she, and Obama, will be marginalized within the party — as was Dukakis, who became virtually a pariah.
That’s why Clinton is getting in digs at her, and it’s why Democratic institutions that are under Clinton influence, like the LAT and the WaPo, aren’t endorsing her. It’s all about making sure her loss is humiliating.
Will the Clintons be able to take advantage of this? Maybe, maybe not. But at least they’ll have revenge.
MATT TAIBBI: Note On The Washington Post’s Non-Endorsement: The media ship be sinking.
Around this time last night I read the Levitsky/Ziblatt New York Times editorial about the “Fifth Choice” for stopping Trump, which read like a clarion call to ignore coming bad election news. On the heels of weeks of other catastrophizing editorials, it came as a shock.
Now word comes about stunning industry news of another sort. The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have declined to endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, which in the case of the Bezos Post especially reads like a decision to surrender to coming bad election news. The Post has been the tip of the anti-Trump spear for years, and with the Times led the movement to openly politicize journalism via its insufferably self-congratulating “Democracy Dies in Darkness” campaign, so bowing out of the open advocacy game with publisher William Lewis promising a return to the paper’s “roots” is beyond surprising. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who penned last year’s million-word “Calling All Hinckleys” editorial comparing Trump to Julius Caesar, resigned in protest, presumably to spend more time snuggling with spouse Victoria Nuland.
The 16,000 or so comments under the Lewis editorial so far reveal two things. Post readers prefer the more traditionally British double-L spelling of “cancelled.” Also, many readers noticed with chagrin the contrast with the Times piece. . . .
I’ve heard so many crazy things in the last weeks about behind-the-scenes maneuvering in Washington that it’s been tough to know what to believe, but it’s clear we’re headed for some kind of historic confrontation. I have trouble believing institutional America will really reverse course after eight years of dystopian lunacy, but Bezos and the Post just changed something, probably over the passionate objections of 98% of staff. Whatever’s going on, it sure isn’t boring.
I have a theory of what’s going on. More on that in a later post.
October 25, 2024
WELL, YES:
The anger over these non-endorsements illustrates better than anything that liberals now believe that the supreme, overarching duty of media outlets is not to inform or act as adversarial checks on power, but to do everything possible – I mean everything – to help defeat Trump: https://t.co/x03DDZsDCt
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 25, 2024
SALENA ZITO: Vance homecoming: The recovery and redemption arc of Beverly Aikins.
Last year, when covering Vance visiting one of the Great Oaks Career Campuses, a vocational-technical school system in Cincinnati, I watched him walk into the surgical technology class and see something very familiar to him: students practicing having their blood drawn for final exams — something he told the classroom his mother used to practice on him when she was in nursing school.
Vance was only there to observe the class, but when he noticed that one of the students was anxious about having her blood drawn by her classmate, he casually removed his suit jacket and offered to take her place. When no objection from the teacher or students materialized, he sat down, rolled up his sleeves, and smiled.
He explained he had some experience with this with his mother to the nervous student about to stick a needle in his arm. Vance said quietly, “Don’t be nervous. If you have to do it again, it’s fine with me. I am here for you until you get it right.”
Good for him. I had a similar experience when I was a pretty new professor. The university had “operation health check” at the student center, where you could get your blood pressure taken, have some blood drawn for free bloodwork, and the like. The catch was that it was all done by nursing students. The poor girl who was assigned to draw my blood was super nervous and couldn’t get the vein — which is unusual, because I have “good veins” according to pretty much everyone who’s ever drawn my blood. I let her keep trying until she got it, on like the fifth or sixth try. But I figured if she quit then she’d have a complex forever. Pretty much my whole forearm was black and blue and green later, but it was worth it. After all, I’m a teacher.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Team Kamala: Now Jill Stein Is a Threat to Democracy by … Appearing On Ballot. “So everyone’s a threat to democracy if they oppose Democrats in open elections? Is that how democracy works? Gee, it’s a good thing that Democrats anointed their nominee rather than rely on democracy, then!”
OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.
EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: NEW: Israel Launches Retaliatory Strikes on Iran — and Syria.