IT’S LIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: ‘Full-Blown Scandal’: Biden-Harris Admin Hid Documents To Justify Fossil Fuel Crackdown, Oversight Committee Says: Oversight Committee GOP accelerates probe into Biden-Harris admin’s fossil fuel moratorium.

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:

WELL: Clinton Does It Again: Humiliates Kamala in Front of Crowd, And There’s Nothing She Can Do to Stop Him.

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.

YEP: “There’s a crazy amount of bias, which drives me away from whatever they are hoping to push. My sympathy for Donald Trump, the target of so much unfairness, is a bit absurd. I’m supposed to hate him? You idiots have made me love him. But somehow now you are drawing the line. What game is this?”

THEY WORK FOR CHEAP: ‘What the F**k to do With Them?’: Russian Troops Not Thrilled with North Korean Conscripts.

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.

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.

YES: America is at risk of high impact GPS jamming and spoofing from space.

EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: NEW: Israel Launches Retaliatory Strikes on Iran — and Syria.

HMM: One Type of Fiber May Have Weight Loss Benefits Similar to Ozempic. “The findings align with another recent study by Duca, which fed barley flour, rich in beta-glucan, to rodents. Even though the rats continued eating just as much of their high-fat diet as before, their energy expenditure increased and they lost weight anyway. A similar outcome was observed in mice fed beta-glucan in the new study. These animals also showed increased concentrations of butyrate in their guts, which is a metabolite made when microbes break down fiber. Butyrate induces the release of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which is the natural protein that synthetic drugs like Ozempic mimic to stimulate insulin release.”

FASTER, PLEASE: UCLA Scientists Discover Protein That Repairs Heart Damage.

JUSTICE TO A COLLEAGUE IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN NOT HELPING TRUMP:

Update: The @stanford faculty senate, by a single vote, decided to punt the vote to rescind the 2020 censure of Scott Atlas until next month.

The reason? Some faculty argued that rescinding the censure will send a political signal in favor of Trump in the upcoming election.… https://t.co/hNeKFitX4Z

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) October 25, 2024

FREDDIE DE BOER: Who Says Another Google is Coming? “Why has AI hype been so overwhelming? I’ve argued that, at the bottom of this strange moment, there’s a broad desire to be freed from the mundane. AI sounds like something that might relieve us from the burden of living in boring reality, and that’s an attractive notion even for people living generally contented lives. . . . Another big driver of AI hype, though, is the recent investment environment. . . . Tech is a very mature field now, and despite startup mythology, what tech startups are trying to do now is often capital-intensive. The free money spigot has been turned off. There’s no law of nature that says another Google or Facebook is going to appear out of the mist and offer you an opportunity for pre-IPO investment. And yet a quick perusal of the ‘hockey stick growth’ search term on Twitter reveals how many people are chasing this dream.”

HMM: Simple test helps gauge signs of aging in people 50 and over. “Folks over 50 who can stand on one leg for 30 seconds are aging gracefully, particularly if it’s not their strong leg, a new study finds.”

#BIDENFLATION: 2025 Lincoln Navigator Gets Way More Expensive, Starts at $101,990.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: More Support For Challenges To New Massachusetts Gun Law.

WAPO WON’T ENDORSE KAMALA, LEFTIES FURIOUS:

On the other hand they really could just think Kamala Harris is that bad.

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 25, 2024

Kamala Harris – "He's Hitler

Washington Post – "Yeah we've thought about it and we're still not going to endorse you over Hitler. Sorry."

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 25, 2024

They won’t endorse Kamala Harris, but they think her girlfriend-slapping husband is super sexy. pic.twitter.com/wgu33mQJR9

— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) October 25, 2024

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

FASTER, PLEASE: Low-cost, portable device can detect colorectal and prostate cancer in an hour.

I KINDA LIKE THAT RULE, TBH: Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC’s click-to-cancel rule: Cable companies worry rule will make it hard to talk customers out of canceling.

How about making them not want to cancel by giving them better service at better prices? I know, that’s crazy talk.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Cyprus signs NASA’s Artemis Accords, becoming 46th nation to commit to safe space exploration.

HMM: Nutritional supplements with curcumin could curb macular degeneration, study suggests.

PUSHBACK:

🚨BREAKING: I filed a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request with the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to investigate the federal agency’s intimidation of businessman Elon Musk over his voter registration program that performs outreach to supporters of First and Second… pic.twitter.com/vaP7lTMLuC

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 25, 2024