X Factor

The Harris campaign doesn't like criticism:

The goal is to artificially manufacture consensus by making pro-Kamala Harris messages on social media appear more popular than they are, and it is often done in violation of the Terms of Service of the social media platforms. In more extreme cases, they are encouraging people to skirt election laws and using these “astroturfing” campaigns to spread disinformation they think will help win the upcoming election. Yesterday’s report documented how the Harris-Walz campaign has seen great success in manipulating Reddit’s algorithm, but that isn’t the only social media site they’re manipulating. The campaign has also been targeting Elon Musk’s X, perhaps the most influential site for political news. One particular goal, according to a user of the Harris-Walz campaign Discord server, is to get campaign volunteers to swarm the site and “block [community notes] we don’t like.” Prior to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the site’s management was known for capriciously removing information and regularly banning users in a way that employed a double standard that heavily disfavored conservative opinion. Musk, a major free speech advocate, sought to institute a more neutral way to deal with misleading tweets, and the “Community Notes” system was born.

X didn't mark the spot for them...

Teach Cheats

How fake teachers got their jobs:

In the scheme, individuals would typically pay $2,500 to have a proxy take certification tests for them at two testing centers in Houston. The scandal involved bribing a testing proctor to allow test applicants and their proxy to switch places, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced in a press conference Monday. Overall, more than 400 fraudulent exams were taken and over 200 teachers were falsely certified on a variety of exams and are now scattered across the state. The scheme was traced back to May 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The plot was allegedly orchestrated by Vincent Grayson, 57, the head boys basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School within the Houston Independent School District, prosecutors said. He, along with Tywana Gilford Mason, 51; Nicholas Newton, 35; Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22; and LaShonda Roberts, 39, have been charged with two felony counts each of engaging in organized criminal activity.

Teaching is a good scam if you can get it...

Transparently False

The Biden-Harris administration gets called out:

"From its onset, the Biden-Harris administration promised to ‘bring transparency and truth back to government,’ per then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki," the 26-page report from Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) states. "Psaki also claimed that President Joe Biden ‘is committed to ensuring we have the most ethically vigorous administration in history.’ However, the administration and its executive branch agencies have often failed to live up to these high ideals, and the myth of a scandal-free administration is just that: a myth." The report outlines alleged ethics violations throughout the Biden administration from the White House, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Interior, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, State Department and other various complaints.

Ethics are for little agencies...

The Better President

Bill Clinton makes another confession:

Clinton’s pro-Trump slip elicited groans from the crowd in Muskegon Heights. The former president quickly clarified, urging attendees to support Harris despite his comments on the economy. “I don’t think it’s right to say that people have to vote for Donald Trump because the economy was better than,” Clinton stated, adding that he believes Harris would be the better choice in the upcoming election. “I think I’m entitled to my opinion about who would be better… I used to be president, and I think I did pretty well.”

For him, that's saying something...

Bug Bust

Volkswagen calls it quits:

VW’s profitability challenges come as consumer demand for EVs has weakened in recent years, with EV sales growing 50% in the first half of 2023 and 31% in the first half of 2024, far less than the 71% increase in the first half of 2022. As a result of this decline, the company walked back plans to sell shares in its EV business in January. The automaker’s disappointing earnings also result from increased Chinese competition in the EV market, the WSJ reported. Deliveries in the Asian superpower fell 15% in the third quarter of 2024, largely due to lower-cost Chinese options such as BYD’s 2025 Seal EV.

No more mileage here...

Word Games

The White House tries damage control:

First tweeted out by NBC News White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez, Politico’s Jonathan Lemire, who was recently hired to be a host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, tried to clean the comment up, saying Biden was using the possessive of “supporter” to refer just to the comedian who made a joke about Puerto Rico. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” Lemire rewrote Biden’s quote. The White House then quickly released a “transcript” of the call that included the apostrophe. However, when asked by Axios if it talked to Biden before posting the transcript to confirm that is what he meant, the White House declined to comment. The next morning on MSNBC, Lemire was back, this time reading from the White House transcript to assert that Biden didn’t say what everybody knows he said. Oddly, MSNBC chose not to actually play the video of what Biden said so viewers could make up their own minds.

Garbage removal at work...

Desperate Times

Democrats turn to a rather unique approach:

Though the ad is largely hyperbolic in nature — no political party is seriously likely to ban porn at the federal level — the advertising is a part of a broader argument Democrats are making about Republicans: that they’re interfering in people’s personal lives. A number of states have, however, taken action in recent years to tighten access to pornography, including at least 19 states that require age verification to access online pornography, according to the Age Verification Providers Association. The ad is also notable in that it is targeted toward young men, a demographic both presidential campaigns have been courting. A Democratic pollster expressed concern that the Trump campaign could be making inroads with the group in a recent New York Times op-ed.

All the young dudes don't seem interested...

Blue Confusion

Democrats can't understand it:

Trump hasn't hypnotized voters, making them believe something that isn't true. Trump has successfully framed the economy in personal terms for millions of Americans. Damn the statistics; the economy is hurting people. If Harris had picked up on that earlier, she could have pivoted to her own economic plans. Instead of telling Americans they were stupid for believing the economy was not going gangbusters, she could have laid out a coherent plan for her administration. Instead, she got sidetracked with the personal attacks on Trump. Now, because she hasn't defined herself or her economic program, all she's got is "Trump is a poopy-head and a fascist." It's not likely to work. “Her economic message hasn’t broken through,” a Harris donor said. “And the economy is the issue most people care about. She narrowed the gap a little on the issue, but she’s left a lot of people wondering about her vision.” While Harris has narrowed Trump's sizable advantage on the economy, she's still far behind, 46-38. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich, who once claimed that the federal debt doesn't matter and that huge government spending doesn't lead to high inflation, said that Harris needs to adjust her message to "center on 'anti-elitist' economics." Harris the populist?

Stranger things have happened...

Bar Bust

Fighting back against lawfare:

The America First complaint seizes on evidence that then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a member of the January 6 Committee, communicated with anti-Trump witness Cassidy Hutchinson without her attorney, Stefan Passantino, present. Media outlets reported — falsely — at the time that Passantino had coached Hutchinson to lie to the panel. Passantino is suing MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissman for defamation for repeating that claim nearly a year later. The 65 Project filed a bar complaint against Passantino in early 2023, signed by Teter, who filed “nearly 100 ethics complaints against lawyers aligned with President Trump, signing them all himself,” America First Legal notes. But Teter had no personal knowledge of the accusations against Passantino, “which have now been proven false by the work of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight,” America First Legal adds.

Fake lawyers, fake claims...

Red Romance

Tim Walz may have broken the rules of engagement:

Members of the U.S. government and military — particularly if they hold a security clearance — are warned to avoid romantic trysts with foreigners while traveling overseas, since it could lead to a situation where they are blackmailed for classified information or another kind of situation where U.S. national security could be put at risk. In fact, members of the U.S. military are typically required to report travel to a hostile nation to their unit ahead of time. As Breitbart News reported: Members of the United States military are typically required to report to or request permission from their command before traveling overseas — especially if they have a security clearance and they are traveling to a country hostile to U.S. interests, such as China. This is because members of the U.S. military are enticing targets of foreign espionage and exploitation. When traveling to hostile countries, they will often receive a defensive briefing before they go, on what to watch out for. Upon returning, they are sometimes asked to provide a briefing of the trip on who they met with and if anything out of the ordinary happened. Walz, at the time he taught English in China, had served in the military for eight years, having joined at 17 in 1981 and traveled to China at 25 in 1989.

It seems they learned more than he thought...

Real Diversity

Jeff Bezos wants changes:

Mr. Bezos has told others involved with The Post that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has appointed Mr. Lewis — a chief executive who previously worked at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal — and has informed Mr. Lewis that he wants more conservative writers on the opinion section, the person said.

A different opinion is worth a thousand words...

No More Shame

You can now openly be MAGA:

Attempts to shame Trump and his supporters, which might have worked at one point, are now falling flat. The Kamala Harris campaign reacted in a desperate, pathetic way to the Puerto Rico joke, posting a stilted, awkward rejoinder on X, as if Hinchcliffe’s joke was a policy statement from Trump himself. No one in America was actually offended by the joke, and the collective corporate media freakout about it was nothing but manufactured outrage. Americans have finally caught on to what these media outlets are doing, and they’re tuning it out — or just mercilessly mocking them.

A little mockery goes a long way...

Gas Wins Again

Porsche is sticking with customer demand:

Meschke said Porsche will give people what they want by refreshing its gas-fueled and plug-in hybrid cars. The executive team is giving the R&D department the flexibility to work on multiple powertrain solutions, including "new combustion-engined derivatives of electrified cars." Does this mean EVs will also get gas variants? It's too early to say seeing as how the new Macan is built on a dedicated architecture. It rides on the same Premium Platform Electric (PPE) as the Audi A6 and Q6 E-tron models. With the 718 replacement launching in 2025, logic tells us development of the next-gen Boxster and Cayman has already been finalized. The sports car duo is also expected to be an EV-only affair. Looking further ahead, the three-row SUV codenamed "K1" will also be strictly electric per Porsche's recent statements. The smaller Cayenne will retain V8 power into the 2030s, which means it'll peacefully coexist with a namesake electric model for many years. The same strategy will be applied for the Panamera since the planned EV variant won't spell the end for the ICE model.

Gas isn't quite dead yet...

Losing Game

Yes, she's losing:

I wouldn't count my chickens before they hatch, of course, but we've been seeing signs of Kamala's campaign's collapse for weeks. We don't know if the polls are spot-on this year or underestimating Trump's support like they have in the past, but Trump's position in the polls in 2024 is far stronger than it was in 2020 or 2016. According to a recent report from Axios, a growing number of top Democrats are privately expressing doubts about Harris’s chances, even though polls technically suggest the race could go either way. Despite the party’s tendency for pessimism, insiders are notably concerned that Harris’s efforts aren’t swaying voters, despite a $1 billion campaign to boost her image and discredit Trump. Meanwhile, Trump and allied committees raised about $92 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 16, roughly half of what Democrats spent in the past three months. “We’re not saying Harris is losing or will lose,” writes Axios, but the report “reflects scores of conversations with people close to Harris and intimately involved in swing-state races, including officials inside her campaign and top Biden administration officials.” The tone has shifted from early optimism to a far more somber assessment of her chances against Donald Trump.

They bet on the wrong horse...

Halloween Tricks

No treats for you:

The consumer price index for candy and chewing gum is up around 22 percent since Biden took office nearly four years ago. That’s more than twice the cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency. In fact, it is more inflation than the Trump and Obama administrations combined. Inflation appears to be causing Americans to pull back on their Halloween plans. A survey by the Halloween & Costume Association found that 53 percent of America consumers say rising costs would impact their plans—and price is the biggest factor in choosing a costume.

Just wear a Harris mask this year...

E For Efficiency

Time to stop feeding the beast:

Trump has previously said he'd put Musk in charge of a department of government efficiency — or "DOGE," after the cryptocurrency — if he wins the election. Musk did not elaborate on policy changes or spending cuts he would implement if he were to join a second Trump administration. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign in a statement to Business Insider said Musk has "dedicated himself to America's future" by offering to serve in a hypothetical second Trump administration "to ensure our government works more efficiently and uses America's taxpayer dollars effectively."

It's time someone did...

Crazy Blues

The Democrats have gone nuts:

Harris has not been able to articulate any major differences between her policies and those of the Biden administration, so it will be “more of the same.” Thus, instead of discussing policies, Democrats have decided to engage in a despicable strategy, the hateful demonization of Trump and his supporters. While this demagoguery is disgusting, it is a long-standing practice for Democrats. In the 2016 campaign, Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, infamously claimed Trump and “half” of his “supporters” could be placed in “the basket of deplorables.” She called them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic…and, unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.” In this campaign, the hateful loser, Hillary Clinton, has continued to hurl vile insults toward President Trump and his supporters. Last Thursday, on CNN, Clinton compared Trump’s major event at Madison Square Garden in New York City to a 1939 pro-Nazi rally. Incredibly, she said that Trump was “actually reenacting” the Nazi rally. Of course, such a comment is not only preposterous, but it is also incendiary. It is insulting toward President Trump and millions of his supporters. Yet, sadly, Clinton is not the only Democrat pushing this outrageous narrative. Trying to scare Americans about Donald Trump has become the closing argument for Vice President Harris. While her supporters initially said Harris would be offering “joy” to the American people, that message was abandoned weeks ago. Today, there is no joy from Kamala Harris, it is nothing but a steady diet of hate. In her CNN town hall meeting, Harris was asked about whether Trump is a fascist, and she answered, “Yes I do.” The problem with such nonsense is that Trump did not act like a “fascist” in his four years as President. Instead, he delivered peace, prosperity and border security.

You know, all those fascist things...

Fake Fraud

It's fake, or something:

“The IC assesses that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” the joint statement reads. “Local election officials have already debunked the video’s content.” The ODNI, the FBI, and CISA said the apparently fake video is part of an effort by the Russian government “to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.” “In the lead up to election day and in the weeks and months after, the IC expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans,” the statement reads. The joint statement did not specify exactly how these U.S. intelligence and national security agencies determined that it was Russian influence actors who created the ballot destruction video.

Those darned Russkies are everywhere...

Email Error

The Biden administration may have broken the law:

The complaint cites a report from The Daily Wire about a taxpayer-funded email blast that was sent in September from HHS and praised Vice President Kamala Harris. The email went to everyone signed up to receive updates on the government’s Medicare program, which is used by 66 million people. It featured a letter from President Joe Biden highlighting the administration’s “historic reforms” to the program, attributing the benefits to the work of Harris, the Democratic nominee for President. “We request the Office of Special Counsel investigate whether Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and other federal employees violated the Hatch Act by sending a blatant political email to Medicare recipients,” Kendra Arnold, the executive director of Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust (FACT), said in a letter to Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire. “The unsolicited email was paid for by HHS and utilized identification rolls kept by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),” Arnold said. “The email was entirely political in both its purpose and language, it was sent to citizens who are Medicare recipients from an official government email address and from an official department.”

Playing politics the hard way...

Daddy Knew Best

Even Kamala Harris's Marxist father knew better:

“Trends in international trade have moved against U.S. workers,” he wrote. “U.S. immigration laws have been modified in ways that increase the influx of low-skilled workers, who compete with native-born youths and low-skilled adult workers for low-skilled jobs. “This shift has been a particularly serious problem for blacks, who constitute a high proportion of the low-skilled adult workers,” according to the book. Harris, a Marxist economist, lives just a two miles away from his daughter in Washington D.C., but the two rarely speak.

Like father, not like daughter...

Voters Not Necessary

You may be obsolete:

How close are we to intelligence agencies deciding that with advances in AI and the statistical analytic skills of modern political science, voters are obsolete? This is not a far-fetched question. In an exchange preserved on video from a 2017 World Economic Forum meeting, Klaus Schwab suggested that voters have become obsolete given advances in computer technology. Schwab said, “But since the next step could be to go into prescriptive mode, which means you do not even have to have elections anymore because you can already predict what, predict, and afterwards you can say, ‘Why do we need the elections?’ Because we know what the result will be. Can you imagine such a world?” The World Economic Forum quickly attempted to control the damage, issuing a corrective statement insisting that Schwab’s comments were not “a call for action” but a hypothetical musing based on the anticipated predictive capabilities of computer technology in the future.

Skynet will decide...

Freedom Rules

The people have made their choice:

From inflation to war and peace, the others are all rock-solid for the GOP. But one of the remaining issues is not like the others. Inflation hits home. So does crime — and the price of health care, immigration, and war. Yet way up there in second place is "Free Speech." That's not a kitchen-table issue. There's no free speech in your pocketbook to vote on. But it's still the most American of issues. And Americans still see it that way. One party explicitly says it wants to control what you can read or say by determining what "disinformation" is. The other party — or at least two men, Donald Trump and Elon Musk — knows how wrong and dangerous that is.

Freedom is for all, or none...

Desperate Times

The Democrats just can't seem to understand:

A growing number of top Democrats tell us privately they feel Vice President Harris will lose — even though polls show a coin-toss finish 11 days from now. Why it matters: Democrats admit they tend to be hand-wringing, bed-wetting, doomsdayers. But what's striking is how our private conversations with Democrats inside and outside her campaign reveal broad concern that little she does, says — or tries — seems to move the needle. .... The big picture: A common gripe among high-level Dems is that Harris does a nice job explaining why people shouldn't vote for Trump — but struggles to crisply explain why they should vote for her. In other words, she's a strong prosecutor — but struggles as a public defender. Democratic insiders loved a line Harris used in the CNN town hall on Wednesday night, and sharpened Thursday night outside Atlanta in Clarkston, Georgia: "Just imagine the Oval Office in three months. ... It's either Donald Trump in there stewing — stewing! — over his enemies list, or me, working for you, checking off my to-do list." The campaign even socialized a 15-point "Kamala Harris' to-do list." "Better late than never," a top Democrat told us. Another leading Democrat said: "It's good. We're not dead yet."

But they might be getting there...

No One Asked

According to Amazon, people weren't interested:

According to Fox Business, Amazon told lawmakers that the AI technology had not been updated to reflect Harris’ new status as the Democratic Party presidential nominee. As a result, for a period of six weeks, Alexa freely gave reasons to vote for Harris under the assumption that she was not a presidential candidate. Although Amazon may have faced questions why this oversight was not spotted sooner, the truth was that they simply were unaware of the issue due to such a low frequency of requests as to why you should vote for Harris. Such queries were only asked 225 times from July 21 to Sept. 2, compared to 14,000 times for Trump – a 6,000% difference!

They just weren't interested in her...

Spending Speech

Democrats don't like the opposition winning:

The DCCC’s complaint against the FEC is nothing more than a desperate attempt to silence Republican voices by attacking the use of joint fundraising committee ads. Rather than compete on the merits of their ideas, they aim to limit the information voters can access. They are using campaign finance laws not as a shield to protect the electoral process but as a weapon to suppress political rivals. If they genuinely believed in their messages, they wouldn’t need to change the rules mid-game to gain advantages. Let’s not forget that Vice President Kamala Harris has already surpassed the $1 billion mark in her campaign fundraising. This milestone is not inherently problematic—if anything, it shows the level of support she has garnered. I think it is fantastic! It becomes hypocritical, however, when her party files a lawsuit to limit Republican fundraising strategies while Harris’s own campaign benefits from the very methods the DCCC is suing over. The Democrats seem more interested in playing a hypocritical version of “you can’t do what we are actually doing.”

Money for me, not for thee...

Keystone Caper

There's voter fraud in Pennsylvania:

The Lancaster County commissioners and District Attorney Heather Adams said instances of voter registration fraud were discovered in batches of last-minute submissions linked to canvassing largely focused on the city since June. A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday's deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney's office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information. The officials said one or two organizations that conducted registration drives in the county in recent months were responsible for the applications. They did not name the organizations. .. Adams said her investigators found problems with 60% of the registrations they have so far reviewed. She did not say how many of the 2,500 registrations had been investigated. She said applications came from people living in the city, as well as Columbia, Elizabethtown, Akron, Ephrata, Stevens and Strasburg. She also said the same organization or organizations responsible for submitting the registrations were believed to be active in two other counties. She did not name those counties but said her investigators had reached out to them.

Busted Blues...

Mother Checker

Meet Microsoft's word police:

Gone are the days when Word offered spelling and grammar checks. Now, for people who like their writing software to nudge and prod them during the writing process by suggesting “more suitable” replacements, Word has something called “Inclusivity Checker.” Grammar settings window showing options for inclusiveness, including biases such as age, cultural, gender, and racial. The repository of terms contained in the tool, that are recommended to be replaced, is only growing. A modern update takes a dim view of the expression “maternity leave” on “gender-inclusivity” grounds, and suggests that it be replaced with “birth-related leave,” “parental leave,” or “childbirth leave.” Fathers who go on paternity leave should instead be described as taking “child-bonding leave,” Microsoft thinks. All this is explained as a way to make sure that the writer is inclusive of “all genders.” Is all this really necessary? Microsoft thinks it is. According to the Free Speech Union, one of the terms writers who, for some reason, use Word are advised to replace is Postman Pat: it should be “Postal Worker Pat,” according to those behind this effort.

The forbidden words are here...

Toil And Trouble

The witches' laments:

In recent months, potential evidence has emerged that shows so-called witches discussing whether they should cast spells against Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election -- according to a post about "r/WitchesVsPatriarchy" on Reddit. “I was thinking of doing a freezer spell by writing Trump and Project 2025 (maybe also Trump supporters and GOP) on a piece of paper, sticking it into my Yoghurt drink bottle, drown it in water, and freeze it,” one person wrote in late July. “What do you think?” Some alleged witches supported the poster, with several saying "anyday is a good day for this verbal diarrhea space-occupying lesion to go away!" While many encouraged the poster, as well as shared their own spells against Trump, several said spells are just a waste of time because the Republican is seemingly untouchable. In fact, one "witch" strongly advised against it, suggesting everyone practice spells in favor of Kamala Harris instead. "I hate to say this, but don't do magic against him. He has a form of protection surrounding him that feeds off of magic done against him. You will have better results if you focus your magic on helping his opponent or protecting yourself and others. I wish it would work to bind him or do a freezer spell, but you will only be helping him." Others had theories as to why spells don't impact Trump. "That ghoul has a sh*t filled diaper for protection," one person wrote. Some said certain spells just don't seem to work as well against political figures "because they have a lot of energy around them." Plus, one said, Trump has quite a few people praying for him.

That works, too...

Green Grift

It just sort of got lost:

An Oxfam audit of the World Bank’s 2017-2023 climate finance portfolio found that between $24 billion and $41 billion in climate finance went unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed. There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible. It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy.

Seems like someone else benefited instead...

Spending Spree

It's greed, or something:

Satire Survives

Parody lives in California:

The development comes less than a month after Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, on behalf of The Babylon Bee and attorney Kelly Chang Rickert, sued the state over two new laws that aim to censor online content.

Because one of those laws, AB 2839, went into effect immediately, The Babylon Bee and Rickert—as well as a plaintiff in another case—asked the federal judges to immediately put that law on hold. That law applies around election time to censor digitally edited content that is “materially deceptive” and addresses candidates, elected officials, and other election material related to California elections. The law also forces speakers to include a disclaimer when posting satire and imposes severe penalties, allowing anyone who sees the content to sue and obtain attorneys’ fees, costs, and damages. (ADF)

“California’s war against political memes is censorship, plain and simple," said ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategy and Center for Conscience Initiatives Jonathan Scruggs. "We shouldn’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates. Gov. Newsom has no constitutional authority to act as the humor police. While lawmakers act as if posting and resharing memes is a threat to democracy, these laws censor speech California politicians don’t like. We are grateful that California’s unconstitutional law can no longer be applied to censor The Babylon Bee and Ms. Rickert while the case continues and that they are again free to exercise their First Amendment rights to poke fun at political leaders.”

Comedy is easy, censoring it is hard...

The Queen's Court

Harris has plans:

"I do believe there should be some kind of reform to the Court," Harris said when asked if she would support expanding the Supreme Court to 12 justices. Harris falsely claimed the "American people" are losing confidence in the Supreme Court. Reality proves it's Democrats who continue to undermine decisions that don't fall in line with their political goals. Court watchers are pushing back on Harris' radical positions.

It's the peoples' court, not hers...

Gut Feeling

Nate Silver's got a feeling:

"In an election where the seven battleground states are all polling within a percentage point or two, 50-50 is the only responsible forecast," he wrote. "Since the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that is more or less exactly where my model has had it." "Yet when I deliver this unsatisfying news, I inevitably get a question: 'C’mon, Nate, what’s your gut say?'" he continued. "So OK, I’ll tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats."

Sometimes you should just trust your gut...

Dark Red

Cuba's dark age continues:

The situation caused by the nationwide blackout worsened in eastern Cuba with the landfall of Hurricane Oscar — now weakened to tropical storm status — in the city of Baracoa, Guantanamo, on Sunday. The Castro regime, which appears to be functioning with little interruption through the blackout, held a meeting of its National Defense Committee on Sunday evening. In the encounter, Díaz-Canel, dressed in military garb, provided an “update” on the developing situation and threatened to repress citizens protesting the communist regime. “There is all the disposition and all the capacity and all the deployment and scope of the systems that we have organized from the defense councils, from the organizations, from the party, from the government, from the administrations to respond to the population to any concern, as long as it is done in a civilized, organized and disciplined manner,” Díaz-Canel said. “But we will not accept nor will we allow anyone to act by provoking vandalism and much less disrupting the tranquility of our people, and that is a conviction and that is a principle of our revolution,” he continued.

That's the government's job...

The China Connection

Harris took Chinese cash:

Officials with Driving Force Action PAC wrote to Harris on October 11: We are deeply concerned about the reported $50,000 in political contributions your campaign received from Stella Ke Li, a Chinese national and senior executive at BYD, a Chinese electric vehicle company with close ties to the CCP and a company identified as a national security threat on par with Huawei. BYD has been described as a company that benefits from substantial support from the Chinese government through direct subsidies and military-civil fusion initiatives. As detailed in various reports, BYD collaborates with military affiliates on significant projects, including data aggregation from vehicles and technology sharing with state-owned enterprises. Furthermore, Ms. Ke Li, who made these contributions, appears to be married to Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s founder and a prominent CCP member. [Emphasis added] The acceptance of political contributions from an executive of a company with such ties to the CCP raises serious ethical and national security concerns, especially in light of your campaign’s previous stance on reducing reliance on foreign adversaries for critical industries like electric vehicles. While you have recently spoken in support of American manufacturing and expressed concern about China’s dominance in the electric vehicle market, accepting contributions from BYD appears inconsistent with these statements. [Emphasis added] “In light of these concerns, Driving Force Action demands that your campaign return the $50,000 contribution made by Ms. Li and publicly disassociate from any financial ties to BYD,” the letter continues. “We believe this action is necessary to demonstrate your commitment to protecting American jobs, defending national security, and maintaining transparency in your campaign.” [Emphasis added]

She may have literally crossed a Red line...

Don't Mention Doug

He who shall not be named:

JENNINGS: I think this Eminem thing, I got to tell you, this campaign is — so, everything that’s said about Donald Trump and his treatment of women and the gender gap in this campaign, this rapper, who I fully admit sold a lot of records. If you’ve read some of the things he has said about the promotion of domestic violence. BAKARI SELLERS: No, no, no. He said if you’re famous you can grab them by the — JENNINGS: Bakari, I listened to your entire filibuster. If you could just give me 13 seconds. SELLERS: I give you 12 because he said grab them by the — JENNINGS: And so — and so, when you think about the things he has said in order to sell those records and you also consider some of the questions that are swirling around Harris’ own husband in this regard. SELLERS: Oh my God. JENNINGS: I find — SELLERS: OK, you don’t even get 12 seconds. JENNINGS: I find – SELLERS: I’m not going to let you go into the far end of B.S. JENNINGS: I’m just telling you — ABBY PHILLIP: Scott, you can’t –hey, hey. SELLERS: I can’t represent you in the defamation case. PHILLIP: We’re going to — we’re going to stop here for a second.

No allegations allowed...

Hat Tip

Tip your hard hat in his memory:

"Realizing the need for greater safety within the mines, Bullard designed a hard hat for miners inspired by the steel doughboy helmet he wore as a soldier," states a Bullard company biography. "The helmet was made of canvas, glue and black paint, and given the trademarked name ‘Hard Boiled’ because of the steam used in the manufacturing process," the National Museum of American History reports. The Hard Boiled Hat Edward W. Bullard invented the hard hat in 1919. Early models were called Hard Boiled Hats, as steam was used to bind together the various layers of protection. (Smithsonian/National Museum of American History) The Hard Boiled Hat, first developed in 1919, quickly evolved with better designs and safety measures, including webbing to provide a cushion of space between the helmet shell and a worker's head. For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle Bullard applied for a patent for his product in 1927, receiving approval in 1929. .... Anti-American protests erupted around the nation in the wake of the killing of four Kent State University students on May 4 that year. New York City protests centered around Wall Street and City Hall in Lower Manhattan. "By an accident of history, these protests took place right below one of the greatest concentrations of blue-collar workers in American history," said author Kuhn. That would be the World Trade Center. Some 5,000 hard-hat workers toiled every day in 1970 on the colossal construction project, including its iconic Twin Towers, just blocks from the protests. "These workers were more likely [than the protesters] to have kin and colleagues and neighbors in Vietnam," said Kuhn. Among other affronts to hard-hat Americans: then-Mayor John Lindsay ordered City Hall flags flown at half-mast after the Kent State killings. "The Hard Hat Riot was the prelude to the divide we now live with in America." — David Paul Kuhn New York City's hard-hat workers had enough. They left the World Trade Center, and other job sites around the city, and descended on downtown Manhattan to take back their country — hard hats resting proudly on their heads. "The construction workers marched on through the narrow streets of the Financial District toward City Hall, where they sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and demanded that Mayor Lindsay raise the flags to full-mast," reports Smithsonian Magazine. "They eventually got their way."

You don't need to be hard-headed to appreciate the hard hat...

Passing Grades

Grades for everyone:

Blaze News reached out to Patrick and asked a series of questions, including whether ELL students received passing grades even if they failed to turn in assignments and/or attend class as required. Patrick did not respond. However, Patrick did indicate in the email viewed by Blaze News that the grading policy at the school may soon be changed. "It seems like a better solution might be possible, so I have given our Director of Instruction and his team of Administrators the task of coming up with a better solution to this grading issue," he wrote. The grading scale in the online version of the school handbook is not currently accessible, but prospective graduates of Northwestern Jr./Sr. High School must earn at least 21.5 credits and "demonstrate competency in math and English by passing the state’s algebra I and English II tests" or through other approved means.

All grades are not created equal...

Fannie's Plan

They were already going after him:

Wade said Willis began outreach for a Trump-related search committee prior to her taking office on Jan. 1, 2021, according to the transcript of the deposition, which was conducted by the House Judiciary Committee last week. “And was there outreach to you to be part of the search committee prior to January 1, 2021?” a committee lawyer asked Wade. “Absolutely,” Wade replied, adding that the contact started “sometime after the [2020] election, but prior to her taking office.” Wade’s remarks that Willis reached out to him before the day she took office to mobilize him and others to prosecute Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election underscores the district attorney’s aggression when targeting Trump, even as he was still in office and challenges to the 2020 election were still playing out.

They didn't want to wait...

Interview Investigation

Time to face some questions:

While Simington said that the FCC should take a cautious approach to looking into CBS’s apparent distortion of Harris’s answer, he also said that the commission should take the complaint seriously and that it likely means opening an inquiry. “The Commission is not a roving arbiter of truth. We do not second-guess genuine editorial judgment. And if the exercise of good-faith editorial judgment is ultimately all that happened, then the Commission cannot and should not act to censor or otherwise ‘punish’ a licensee,” Simington said. “The application of our news distortion policy is intentionally narrowly-specified. But that does not mean that nothing a licensee does can ever trigger it. The Commission can and should take the complaint seriously. That might, and probably does, mean opening an inquiry.”

Seems like somebody should...

Thought Police

Orwell was right:

“A man has been convicted today because of the content of his thoughts — his prayers to God — on the public streets of England,” Alliance Defending Freedom UK legal counsel Jeremiah Igunnubole lamented in a statement. “We can hardly sink any lower in our neglect of basic fundamental freedoms of free speech and thought.” This isn’t the only case where pro-life Brits have been arrested for prayer; this has happened multiple times now, and it’s downright dystopian. This man didn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t steal from anyone or trespass on the clinic’s property. He didn’t even shout at women entering the abortion clinic or try to convince them not to go through with their decision. He silently bowed his head in prayer, and the British government treated that as a “crime.” In reality, freedom of religion is a basic human right, and the real criminals here are the people violating the rights of Smith-Connor and his ilk. But Americans need to do more than simply sympathize with our friends across the pond who are living under increasingly Orwellian censorship regimes. We need to realize that if we’re not careful, the same kind of thing could eventually happen here.

It can't happen here-until it does...

FEMA Follies

Disaters can be racist, or something:

FEMA’s 2022-2026 strategic plan, an overarching document created by agencies to lay out their priorities, named its first goal not as disaster relief, but instead diversity, equity and inclusion. In its first goal, the plan promised to “Instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.” It’s second named priority is to “lead whole of Community in climate resilience.” FEMA’s “readiness” comes in as the third goal in the plan. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion cannot be optional; they must be core components of how the agency conducts itself internally and executes its mission,” the plan reads. FEMA makes clear in its plan that equity, which includes racial identity, will be taken into consideration when distributing aid, highlighting that there should be “equitable and fair distribution of assistance to all those affected – especially those disproportionally impacted." The “especially” signifies a belief in the DEI community that certain groups, including transgender people or minorities, suffer more from natural disasters. FEMA has also hired Montage Marketing Group to “elevate diversity and engage employees in creating an inclusive workplace.” Those efforts included kicking off an “Inclusive Diversity Council” and promoting Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Make sure you're in the preferred group during the next disaster...

Men Not Wanted

The Left hates men:

Scott Jennings from CNN gets it: “This gender gap issue is real. It's a real problem, and you see the Democrats reacting to it. And I think what they are now finally… coming to realize is that a lot of men think Democrats care more about dudes who want to become women than dudes who just want to be dudes." In fact, name ANY GROUP that Democrats care less about than dudes that just want to be dudes. Particularly straight white dudes who want to be dudes.

No dudes, dude...

No Canada

The North isn't the way out:

They don't seem to understand that the groundswell for Trump is a cry from ordinary Americans: LEAVE US ALONE! Liberals spend all their time trying to figure out how to suppress conservatives and truly can't imagine a world where the other side is perfectly willing to let the leftists chop off their own genitals as long as they stay away from the children.

Anxiety — and honest-to-God fear— has replaced joy on the trail for fretful Democrats 18 days out. Harris didn’t even say the word in her remarks. Instead, she described at least three times a “fight.” “The election is here right now,” Harris said. “We have to energize and organize and mobilize and remind our neighbors and our friends that their vote is their voice.” And not long after she walked off stage, voters here were contemplating what they would do not just in the days before they make it to the ballot box, but after if their preferred outcome didn’t materialize. Some were weighing voting with their feet. “Oh, God, she has to win: I don’t want to live in a Trumpian hellscape,” said Erin Conklin, a 62-year-old retired homemaker and artist. “We might have to leave: Canada, if they’ll take us.” Gabriela Jelinek, a 32-year-old Grand Rapids marketer, stands for a portrait after listening to Harris deliver remarks at Riverside Park. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO “Truthfully, I have thought about moving out of the country,” she said. “I’ve also thought about having to marry a friend in order to protect my assets as a single woman.” Why? “Like a male friend — in order to make sure my life is protected, because I feel like we’ll be going to times where we need male permission to do everything.” Mary Harig, a 64-year-old retired registered nurse who wore a “Cat Ladies for Kamala” T-shirt, had progressed even further in her talks with her husband, who didn’t have long left as a postal service worker before he could retire. “We’re close enough to Canada,” Harig said. ‘“And my husband has said, too, ‘We cannot take another four years of this.’ And if this does happen, we will go to Canada.”

It's ironic since Canadians are pretty much done with leftist rule. Two-thirds of Canadians hate Justin Trudeau with the white-hot passion of titanium being smelted. Fidel Castro's son has a lower popularity rating than Joe Biden, so I am not sure that Canada is the promised land they hope for.

The paradise that isn't there...

Death For Taxes

Kamala Harris wants everyone to pay:

The American Business Defense Foundation reports that under the Harris tax plan, the number of Americans subject to the hated death tax would double or triple. This would happen because Harris has declared she will let the Trump tax cut expire next year if she becomes president. Thanks to the Trump tax cut, the amount of an estate that is currently exempt from tax is roughly $13.6 million. But according to the IRS: "Under the tax reform law, the increase is only temporary. Thus, in 2026, the exemption is due to revert to its pre-2018 level of $5 million, as adjusted for inflation." Kamala wants this to happen. She wants to soak the millionaires and billionaires. But under her plan, thousands more families will be clobbered by this tax when a parent dies. This brings new meaning to the idea of "the grim reaper."

Dying is easy, paying for it is hard...

Burger King

Trump at McDonald's:

Social Insecurity

Tim Walz's story about his Mom may have revealed more about the liberal mindset than he intended:

If we were to believe Tim, his mother would starve without her Social Security check arriving on time. That says more about Tim than about Social Security, the government, Donald Trump, Republicans, or whoever he is trying to make a point about. If this were literally true, Tim Walz is a monster. Of course, it is not LITERALLY true. First of all, you have to work hard to be food insecure in the United States. The only reason somebody becomes food insecure is that there is some fundamental dysfunction in the person or their caretaker. A child may have a drug-abusing parent, for instance, which is a tragedy, of course, but not a failure of society. We live in a country where, when people are in need, strangers will fly in helicopters and drop off food and supplies at the drop of a hat. So what Tim is really saying is something different: the government ought to be the primary caretaker for everybody, including his mother. He shouldn't have to care for her; caring is a job to be outsourced. That has been the ideological foundation of the welfare statists for over a century. It is a foundational principle of Marxism, which aims to substitute the state for the family. "It takes a village," as it were, because it shouldn't be the parents themselves who raise children or children who take care of their parents as they age.

The government isn't the village...

Man Things

Democrats really need to stop dissing men:

The Democratic Party has told men -- for years -- they're the problem in this country. That 'toxic masculinity' is to blame for all the world's ills, and that bias against men in the court system, on college campuses, and employment is justified because men have 'privilege.' Guess what? That strategy is backfiring and now the Dems are panicking. .... The entire post reads:

The fact is the Democratic Party stands for discrimination against many groups. And three of those groups are straight people, white people, and biological men. So trying to convince straight white men to vote democrat is like trying to convince chickens to vote for the wolf. At some point, you can’t hide the reality of what you are asking them to do. So if you want to convince straight white men to vote for you, you *need* to change your policies. But also, you guys are hilariously out of touch with us as a demographic. That is also true.

No wonder they need fake men for their ads...

Speech Defense

Bill Maher defends Elon Musk:

Four Years Gone

It's Jimmy Carter all over again:

Over half, 52%, of respondents said they are not better off than they were in 2020, while 39% said they are better off, according to the poll. This is the highest rate of dissatisfaction among Americans since 1992, when 46% said they were not better off than four years prior, while 38% said their situation had improved. This trend coincides with the economic confidence index, which puts confidence at a 26-point deficit in 2024 compared to a four-point deficit in 2020, according to the poll. The ECI has remained in the negatives over the last four years, while Americans are burdened with inflation and surging prices. Because of these hardships, the economy has risen to become the top priority for Americans, according to the poll. In January 2020, only 10% of Americans said the economy is the nation's most pressing issue, compared to nearly half in October 2024.

Time to channel Reagan again...

Minutes Meeting

The FCC is investigating 60 Minutes:

CBS aired two different broadcasts with separate answers from Harris in response to the same question from “60 Minutes” interviewer Bill Whitaker on whether Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “listening” to the Biden-Harris administration. FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington told the DCNF that while the commission often receives frivolous complaints alleging news distortion, the complaint lodged on Oct. 16 by the Center for American Rights (CAR) against WCBS, CBS’ New York subsidiary, is substantively different and should not be dismissed at face value. .... “The FCC does not regulate, or really even respond to, allegations of politically unfavorable coverage or legitimate editorial discretion,” Simington wrote in a statement to the DCNF. “The recent complaint regarding WCBS-TV raises a fully different set of issues regarding whether or not coverage was intentionally distorted: reporting that something was said in response to a question that literally was not. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s a different issue.” A person familiar with the FCC told the DCNF that while CAR’s complaint could potentially move forward, the Democratic chair of the commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, is unlikely to act on the complaint, especially 18 days before the presidential election. In the event former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, the commission could be given a green light to act on the complaint with a Republican commissioner appointed as chair, the person told the DNCF.

Editing the editors...

Canadian Blobs

The mystery of the Northern blobs:

Environmental authorities in Canada are trying to solve the mystery of unidentified white blobs that have been washing up on Newfoundland beaches. The white masses, which range in size from a coin to a dinner plate, started showing up on area beaches in September, and locals shared photos of the unidentified objects in the Beachcombers of Newfoundland and Labrador Facebook group. Some suggested the blobs could be ambergris or another fluid originating from a whale, but opinions are split.

Paging Michael Moore...

Dark Design

The joys of Communism:

Cuba’s electrical grid shut down on Friday, putting the country into a blackout after “the failure” of one of the island’s major power plants, according to its energy ministry. In a statement on X, the ministry said “the failure” of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant caused “the total disconnection of the National Electrical System” from 11 a.m. ET on Friday. It comes after Cuba’s increasingly energy strapped government called for draconian measures to save power, including telling many workers to stay home.

They can comfort each other in the dark...

Seasons Greetings

It's come to this:

Stop using ‘summer’, ‘winter’ and the rest when inviting researchers to events — it’s a small step, but it’s necessary and inclusive.

So there it is-nature is exclusionary. I blame Gaia...

Space Cases

NASA funding gets lost in space:

As NASA paid out millions to fund environmental justice initiatives, the agency in February fired about 530 people, plus an additional 40 contractors, or 8% of its workforce, working at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Post reported. Many of the workers let go were involved in the agency’s Mars Sample Return program, which was studying possible evidence of past life on the red planet. While short on funds for Mars research and a major space telescope, NASA shelled out millions on embedding DEI both within its own organizational structure and in the broader scientific community, records show. In 2023, for instance, NASA approved a contract worth roughly $2.9 million to a consulting firm to “incorporate and deeply engrain” DEI in the “culture” of its Space Mission Directorate, according to spending records. NASA allocated another $900,000 in 2020 for the National Academy of Sciences to help it increase diversity among the leaders of space missions.

There is no intelligent life here...

Simon Says

He was literally trying to steal the vote:

Former Moore County Democratic Party Chair Lowell Simon resigned after he was arrested on Thursday, Oct. 10 and charged with two counts of removing political signs. The crime is a misdemeanor under North Carolina state law. In a Facebook post, Moore County Democratic Party said Simon had apologized for his actions. “While we appreciate the hard work and dedication he has shown to the Democratic Party and the community, the Moore County Democratic Party cannot and will not condone the tampering of political signs or any other illegal activity,” the party wrote. “We believe in the importance of freedom of expression and speech, and hope that local law enforcement will continue to enforce such laws that protect those freedoms fairly and without bias across party lines.”

Except when they steal other peoples' signs...

Liberal Logic

Liberals love government solutions:

Democrats constantly extol the virtues of high-speed rail, although, in a country as large as America, it doesn’t make much sense in most places. Arguably, one of the places it does make sense is a state with a dense population, like California. So, how has that been going? In 2008, California voters approved $9.95 billion of state bond funding as seed money to build an 800-mile high-speed rail (HSR) network connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the Central Valley to coastal cities, at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour, with an expected completion date of 2020. ...But now, 15 years after the bond issue, three years after the expected completion date, not one train has left the station. Not one route has been completed, even though nearly all the $9.95 billion seed money has been spent. And the original budget of about $33 billion for the entire 800-mile system is now inadequate to build just one route (Bakersfield to Merced), whose cost pencils out to $207 million per mile—a cost that will almost certainly rise in the future, and for a route that may not be ready for ten years. Or more. Or perhaps ever. ...There is no path to completion for the fantasy rail system that was falsely sold to voters 15 years ago. Finishing the Bakersfield-Merced route, which will cost in excess of $35 billion, and which won’t be operative for ten years, doesn’t come close to penciling out. The only reasonable decision is to end a project that should never have begun. Similarly, California has one of the worst homeless problems in America and their response has largely been to bend over backward to cater to the homeless. They’ve spent 24 billion dollars doing this since 2019. So, how is this working out? Since 2019, California has spent about $24 billion on homelessness, but in this five-year period, homelessness increased by about 30,000, to more than 181,000. Put differently, California spent the equivalent of about $160,000 per person (based on the 2019 figure) over the last five years. If you want to see a similarly effective program at the federal level, Joe Biden & Kamala Harris’s 42 billion dollar attempt to roll out high-speed Internet to rural areas fits the bill: One of President Joe Biden's pledges upon entering office in 2021 was to expand Americans' access to high-speed broadband Internet. But despite apportioning tens of billions of dollars to the task, not one person has been connected to the Internet as a result of the initiative. Contained within the 2021 infrastructure bill, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program authorized more than $42 billion in grants, to "connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed Internet by the end of the decade." "In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans," Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) this month. "Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at [the] earliest." Keep in mind, these are the people who are constantly telling you that all you need to do to fix all your problems is give the government more money and power. Yet, when the government gets more money and power, what do you get? Hot garbage.

Garbage in, garbage out...

No More Joy

Joy is over:

Polling shows Harris lost momentum in the past weeks while using the “campaign of joy.” Her new strategy appears to be the use of President Joe Biden’s 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 playbook that demonizes former President Donald Trump as unhinged, unstable, and unchecked. Politico Playbook reported the shift on Friday: You can see the change on the campaign trail, where Harris’ early emphasis on joy has given way to more direct verbal attacks on Trump, including playing video of him, AP’s Zeke Miller and Steve Karnowski report from La Crosse. You can see it on the airwaves, where a new Harris ad calls Trump “unhinged,” “unstable” and “unchecked” in a second term, NBC’s Monica Alba scooped. (Interestingly, this is all a bit of a return to Biden’s old anti-Trump messaging.) Reuters’ Jeff Mason and Nandita Bose report that the broader Harris strategy shift is an effort to play up her prosecutorial image and project strength to gain support from men and Republicans. “Unhinged is the way to describe Kamala Harris throwing open our borders to unvetted criminals putting the safety of Americans at risk,” Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to Trump, told NBC News. “Unhinged is her support for economic policy that has made life for Americans unaffordable and trade policy that favors foreign workers over America’s working men and women”

Being unhinged seems all the rage for Democrats...

Unequal Opportunity

Loans for all, after all:

The Democrats have resorted to desperate measures as polling among Black Americans suggests a notable shift towards Donald Trump. While the Vice President still leads the Republican among this traditionally Democrat-leaning demographic, Trump’s increasing support among Black voters has rang alarm bells for the Harris campaign in a neck-and-neck election. The situation is so bleak that Barack Obama is offering patronizing lectures towards Black voters, while Harris herself unveiled a policy manifesto targeting African American males. Featuring policies such as $20,000 forgivable loans and the federal legalization of marijuana, critics argued that the policies were racist (the former specifically) and unlikely to be upheld in the Supreme Court. Rather embarrassingly, Harris’ campaign has now been forced to backtrack on the manifesto, and now claims their racially-specific pandering was actually for everyone, regardless of race! That’s despite her manifesto being titled “Agenda for Black Men”…. though I guess we do live in a day and age where you can identify as pretty much anything.

Pandering should at least be legal...

Waste Report

There's fraud everywhere:

Vice President Kamala Harris has "been an active participant in the worst administration in U.S. history that has inflicted untold harm on the American people," Comer told Fox News Digital. Comer compiled a 72-page report with the committee’s "118th Congress accomplishments," highlighting the committee’s work — including its investigation into the Biden family’s domestic and international business dealings, oversight of the Biden-Harris administration’s border crisis, as well as probing the fraud and abuse related to COVID unemployment relief benefits and the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the U.S. "Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are committed to achieving what Democrats have neglected: rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government and holding the Biden-Harris Administration accountable," he said. "We have succeeded."

Waste is good business...

Broke Planet

The world is in debt:

The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor report, released on Oct. 15, projects that global public debt will exceed $100 trillion—equal to about 93 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP)—in 2024, and that it could approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. The United States, in particular, faces significant risks if fiscal policies are not adjusted urgently. The report emphasizes that countries, including the United States, need to address debt risks with carefully crafted fiscal strategies. It warns that debt levels could be worse than anticipated because of large spending pressures, sizeable unidentified debt, and overly optimistic debt projections. Unidentified debt, which refers to liabilities that do not appear explicitly in budget documents—such as contingent liabilities, losses at federally owned enterprises such as the U.S. Postal Service, and other off-balance-sheet obligations—poses a significant risk to debt sustainability, according to the IMF.

Spending their way into oblivion...

FU To The EU

BMW tells the EU to go pound sand:

In April of 2023, eurocrats inflicted a new EV diktat on one of the world's largest economies — but also one of the slowest growing and least innovative. Without quite saying so, the goal of Europe's stricture is to force all new car sales to be electric after 2035. Every new car, truck, van, SUV, etc. must be 100% emissions-free. BMW is well poised to meet that goal. The Bavarian-based carmaker's line already features no fewer than five all-electric vehicles ranging from sporty (the i4) to luxury sedan (i7) to a full-size SUV (XM). While BMW's EVs don't enjoy anything like Tesla's sales, even in Europe, they're generally well-regarded by critics and buyers alike. So the EU and BMW are two fully charged peas in a pod, right? Not any longer. "BMW Group CEO Oliver Zipse said during this year’s Paris Motor Show that the European Union must cancel the upcoming 2035 ban on vehicles that emit carbon dioxide," Inside EVs reported on Wednesday. I certainly didn't see that one coming, but I'm just as certainly glad to. One reason for Zipse's turnaround must be due to simple market forces. "In June 2024, the European electric vehicle (EV) market continued its dynamic journey with 294,000 plugin vehicle registrations," the European Commission reported in August. "However, the overall market saw a slight decline of 5% year over year (YoY), contrasting with the general automotive market's modest growth of 4% YoY." Modestly shrinking sales in a modestly growing market is not a good look for EVs.

Mandates can't work if they don't sell...

California Complaint

Elon Musk versus California:

The Wall Street Journal:

Elon Musk’s space company sued regulators in California after officials rejected a request to allow more SpaceX rocket launches, claiming the decision was politically motivated. In a 284-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday in California’s central district, SpaceX accused regulators of overreaching their authority and violating Musk’s right to free speech.

An unhinged member of the commission named Gretchen Newsom (surprisingly not related to the state's unhinged governor) ranted like a madwoman about Musk's tweets about Hurricane Helene and the fact that she believes he has an "anti-California agenda." Going out of her way to prove that her reasons for denying SpaceX had nothing to do with anything germane to the process, Newsom cited what she called Musk's “bigoted beliefs against California’s safeguards and protections over our transgender community," as part of her tantrum. California wants to cede its place among states that lead the world in technological innovation because reasons and feelings and mean tweets. Radical leftists are not only mentally unwell, but they are emotional weaklings as well. They need to be in straitjackets and padded rooms, not positions of power.

This is what happens when you let crazy people take over...

Crazy Time

A Trump win would cause mass insanity, or something:

Fake Take

Meet the ultimate trans troll:

Seiter made his shocking and bizarre revelation while speaking with Alex Stein on his BlazeTV podcast; he came out as transgender in May of this year and claims he did it to highlight how “gullible and delusional the left is.” “I think a lot of trans women are turned on at the thought of themselves being women. Guess what? It doesn’t magically make them women,” Seiter said. “We live in a free country, you can do whatever you want. But don’t make your fetish my truth. I don’t have to accept it.” Seiter said that when he came out he was met with “intolerance, bigotry and gatekeeping” from both the left and the right. The interview began with Seiter wearing a full face of makeup that a podcast staffer slowly removed as time unfolded. “I faked being a faker. I pretender to be a pretender,” Seiter said. “We are all the same, we are all men putting on makeup and dresses and claiming we are women, and I hope that this could help some people understand that just because you put on dresses and makeup as a man doesn’t magically make you a woman.”

A faker with a message...

Social Insecurity

No, Trump isn't getting rid of Social Security:

Dale said, “She’s been saying that at a bunch of events dating back to July, that Project 2025, this conservative think tank plan that sets up proposals for a next Republican administration, says that Social Security should be cut under the next administration.” In North Carolina, at a campaign rally, Harris said, “Donald Trump will give billionaires and corporations massive tax cuts, cut Social Security and Medicare and make it easier for companies to deny overtime pay for workers.” Dale said, “So project 2025 is online. It’s a giant document you can read it. Nowhere in there does it call for Social Security cuts. In fact, it barely mentions Social Security. Now, it does say that the federal budget should be balanced and Harris allies might tell you, well, you can’t reasonably do that without Social Security cuts.”

The cutting that isn't there..

Payment Time

Harris panders:

Harris, who would be the first Black female president if elected, has sharpened her pitch to African American voters – a critical Democratic constituency – while polling suggests Trump has made slight inroads with Black male voters. Harris told Charlamagne that reparations for descendants of enslaved people should be studied, but stopped short of endorsing a reparations plan. "On the point of reparations, it has to be studied. There's no question about that. And I've been very clear about that position," said Harris, who as a U.S. senator from California backed legislation that would have created a federal commission to study slavery reparations.

More money promises from those who never owned slaves...

Crime Review

Crime has gone up under Biden after all:

On October 16, 2024, Real Clear Investigations noted: When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime. But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The updated FBI data for 2022 shows there were 1,699 more murders than originally reported, 7,780 more rapes, over 33,000 more robberies, and over 37,000 more aggravated assaults.

Thank you, Joe...

Word Sweep

Robots are literally racist:

Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson was watching TV when his robot started to malfunction. "It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something," he told the ABC. "You could hear snippets of maybe a voice." Through the Ecovacs app, he saw that a stranger was accessing its live camera feed and remote control feature. Dismissing it as some kind of glitch, Mr Swenson reset his password, rebooted the robot and sat back down on the couch beside his wife and 13-year-old son. Almost straight away, it started to move again. This time, there was no ambiguity about what was coming out of the speaker. A voice was yelling racist obscenities, loud and clear, right in front of Mr Swenson's son. "F*** n******s," screamed the voice, over and over again.

Time to wash out the robots' mouths...

Candle Crisis

Time to cancel a candle:

Bath & Body Works recently released a line of winter-themed candles just in time for Christmas shopping. One of the candles is called “Snowed In,” and the artwork on the outside of the jar is supposed to evoke those paper cut-out snowflakes that we call made as kids. There’s one teeny-tiny problem with the artwork. Some people say that it looks like Ku Klux Klan hoods. Oof. I don’t know that I would have immediately noticed it, but now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. And neither can other consumers. “People on X nicknamed the controversial candle the 'KKKandle, the 'scandle,' and the 'klandle,'” reports the Daily Mail. “Many people called out the people behind the seasonal sconce, with one tweeting, 'Bath & Body Works needs to fire all the people who approved this candle artwork.'”

Sometimes a candle is just a candle...

Faking It

Kamala Harris is a plagiarist:

The passages called into question by Mr. Rufo on his Substack platform involve about 500 words in the approximately 65,000-word, 200-page book. Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, wrote the book with another author when she was the district attorney in San Francisco. In a review of the book, The New York Times found that none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is considered the most serious form of plagiarism. Instead, the sentences copy descriptions of programs or statistical information that appear elsewhere. … Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant in New Orleans and the publisher of Plagiarism Today, said on Monday that his initial reaction to Mr. Rufo’s claims was that the errors were not serious, given the size of the document.

It's lying any way you print it...

Bad Feelings

There seems to be bad blood between them:

National political correspondent Alex Thompson reported "many senior Biden aides remain wounded by the president being pushed out of his re-election bid and are still adjusting to being in a supporting role on the campaign trail." "They're too much in their feelings," one Harris ally reportedly told Axios about the White House. Thompson wrote the main issue with some Harris campaign members is that White House aides "aren't sufficiently coordinating Biden's messaging and schedule to align with what's best for the vice president's campaign."

They just can't seem to get along...

Scam School

Don't fall for it:

Skills Set

Heh:

Wind Woes

Wind goes bust:

On the one hand, we have statements by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that approved all these wind farms that they will have little or no impact worldwide on carbon output and airborne pollution. But scientists believe they will have a potentially massive, harmful effect on the ocean environment. We also have statements from Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry over the years admitting that “If all the industrial nations went down to zero emission ... it wouldn't be enough. Not when more than 65% of the world's carbon pollution comes from the developing world.” Also, every study I know of that has been done on wind power, such as the ERCOT Bentek IV study on the impact of 2,300 wind turbines on the Texas grid, has reported virtually zero reduction of carbon and fossil fuel use because intermittent wind requires fossil fuel plants to ramp up and down to keep voltage constant. Meanwhile, a number of new U.S.-designed modular nuclear power reactors are now in production in several countries, and can produce far more power, all without creating waste fuel or emissions of any kind. In the interim, of course, natural gas is needed to allow faster replacement of coal use.

Wind went nowhere fast...

Lost Generation

We are the forgotten generation:

Gen X basically invented cool. They survived without social media, and they’re really proud of it. But now they’re finding themselves a bit trapped in this awkward limbo where Boomers rule Facebook with political rants and Millennials and Gen Z dominate TikTok with dance challenges and life hacks. Meanwhile, Gen X is lurking in the background, kind of wanting to join the fun but mostly just cringing at everyone else. We’re too jaded for TikTok trends, and honestly, Facebook is just a giant digital family reunion we never wanted to attend.

We excel at lurking...

Bugged

When trannies attack:

Four individuals linked to the disruption were taken into custody, though it is suspected that several others evaded capture. Though not all of the attackers are confirmed to be transgender, several activists seemed to present themselves as such.The LGB Alliance, a charity focused on supporting gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals, without transgenderism stealing focus, organized the ‘Our Lives! Our Future!’ conference where the attack took place.Attacks on those opposed to transgender ideology are no longer uncommon in the Western world. For instance, in France, pro-trans activists set off an explosive device in Lyon to disrupt a talk by feminist and trans-critical activist Marguerite Stern in September.

The alliance apparently didn't get the memo...

Blogging In The Years: 2007

Joe Biden says he's against illegal immigration:

Unfit To Fail

Failing fitness tests is racist, or something:

According to the lawsuit, fewer black and female police applicants are passing the written exam and fitness test, respectively, than white males. The DOJ claims that’s due to discriminatory tests, which allegedly violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The DOJ “alleges that South Bend uses a written examination that discriminates against Black applicants and a physical fitness test that discriminates against female applicants,” a press release from the department said. Notably, the South Bend Police Department lowered their fitness standards in 2019 in an attempt to include more females on the force. However, women are continuing to fail the test at greater rates than their male counterparts, The Daily Caller reported. “Equal employment opportunity is critical to ensuring that law enforcement agencies do not unfairly exclude otherwise eligible job applicants based on discriminatory practices,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Sometimes failing is just failing...

Art Dismay

Hunter's art is no longer for sale:

According to experts in the art industry, Hunter Biden’s art career is a thing of the past. Now that the president’s time in the District of Corruption is over, so is his son’s shady art business. “His father is no longer relevant in the maelstrom, which is politics,” Charlie Horne, president of Gurr Johns, an art valuation and advisory firm, told the outlet. He predicted that over time, Hunter Biden’s art market will be “wash[ed] away.” “His cachet will be short-lived. I don’t think he’s ever gotten real traction,” he continued.

Portrait of the President's son as a frustrated artist...

Farmed Out

Why the government shouldn't be involved in growing food:

Epoch Times carried a full-page column by pediatric Dr. Joel Warsh last week titled “America’s Health Crisis: Expanding on RFK Jr.’s Plan to Make America Healthy Again.” As much as his thoughts may sound good, they still suffer from the same old government interventionist mindset. He wants a “National Emergency Declaration of Health.” Can you imagine the wrangling, jet fuel, focus groups, and lobbying that would occur with such an initiative? He suggests we should “recreate the food pyramid” with good food and pastured meat and eggs on the bottom instead of the top. You’d have to move the entire climate change, cow farts narrative to make this happen. Then yet more government mandates: corporations with more than 100 employees “should be required to offer wellness programs that include fitness classes, nutritional counseling, and mental health services.” Oh my, we’ve now exchanged one nanny for another. He wants health education taught in all public schools, regulations banning junk food ads when children watch TV, and subsidies for organic and transitioning farms. This is just a sampling of his list and much of it would indeed be good…if it were possible. But it’s not. Simply put, to get a legislative and bureaucratic push on these kinds of agendas is insanity according to Albert Einstein’s definition: “trying to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.” I believe we are where we are in all these areas due to government micro-management; asking for government to get us out is asking for all the agencies, all the politicians, all the lobbyists, all the Happy Meals addicts, all the Chick-fil-A cultists, to do a 180. Ain’t gonna happen. So you ask “Well, it’s easy to be negative. What’s your solution?” I think when we engage in these kinds of same-thinking solutions, we obfuscate the simple and consistent argument that carries the most weight. While my plan may not sound doable either – and I admit on the surface that’s true – I think it takes a higher philosophically consistent road. And instead of trading one regulation for another, one bureaucrat for another, one agency for another, it cuts to the heart of the problem and offers a more defensible position. The most disempowering mindset is one that assumes the only solutions are from the government. Private certification, independent research, and individual choice offer much better solutions.

Leave farming to the farmers who actually know how...

Reading Dues

College professors have discovered that their students can't read:

Perhaps the issue presented by The Atlantic is not merely the lower standards of the K-12 systems, but also the lower standards of the universities which aspire to attract admissions and keep their bloated campuses open. There are a lot of administrative mouths to feed after all. Another thing: Today's students might not be able to read a book all the way through, but they are familiar with critical race theory, gender fluidity, and Christian nationalism. Here's a term I learned in a book once, and I think it applies here: "Useful idiot." We're so focused on progressive politics in some of our schools that we forgot to teach kids how to read.

But they can listen to all the propaganda they want...

King Gay

The once and gay king?

Despite questions over whether King Arthur even actually existed — or at the very least, doubts about the veracity of the fantastical tales of his life recorded hundreds of years after he supposedly reigned — the left-wing council in Denbighshire, Wales has included the mythological ruler in their LGBTQ+ history timeline, the Daily Telegraph reports. The decision to classify King Arthur as LGBTQ+ was reportedly sparked by a local tale of the leader using women’s clothing as a disguise to get closer to a woman in Ruthin in Denbighshire whom he was romantically interested in. His rouse was foiled by a rival named Hueil mab Caw, who had spotted Arthur by his lame knee which he had injured in an earlier fight. For mocking his injured knee, Hueil was put to death by Aurthur.

Guinevere might have a problem with this...

X Return

X returns to Brazil:

The decision, issued on Oct. 8 by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, mandates that Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency take all necessary steps to resume the platform’s operations across the South American country, where X has an estimated 20 million users. The platform, which is owned by tech mogul Elon Musk, had been suspended nationwide since Aug. 30 because of repeated noncompliance with court rulings related to corporate legal representation and content moderation requirements, as well as the suspension of certain user accounts. Brazilian authorities have framed the suspension as part of an ongoing investigation into the platform’s alleged role in spreading misinformation and hate speech during critical periods, including the lead-up to Brazil’s 2024 municipal elections. Musk and X’s global government affairs team have denounced de Moraes’s orders—and the suspension itself—as unlawful attempts at censorship.

X 1, Communists 0...

No Gas Allowed

Providence bans gas stations:

The city is now poised to restrict the construction of new gas stations after proposing an amendment to its guiding comprehensive plan for urban planning on Wednesday. Councilman John Goncalves is backing the amendment, which is in line with the Biden administration’s climate goals of increasing the adoption of electric vehicles and prioritizing green infrastructure, such as electric charging stations. The amendment would ban all new gas stations within city limits but would not affect existing sites. Existing business owners would still be permitted to transfer ownership of any gas station to new owners, according to the Boston Globe. In its original draft of the comprehensive plan, the city council sought to “discourage” new gas stations. However, the amendment would alter that language to “prohibit.” There are approximately 40 licensed and operational gas stations within Providence, according to the Boston Globe. However, city council officials declined to provide the outlet with a specific number. The most recently built station, the Neon Marketplace, was constructed in 2022 on Kinsley Avenue.

Rhode Island is gassed out...