“If your news source is CNN, the New York Times, pre-Elon Twitter, or just about any broadcast television news network…”

October 31, 2022

Here’s why I am predicting a red wave on November 8

By Brian C. Joondeph at American Thinker:

If your news source is CNN, the New York Times, pre-Elon Twitter, or just about any broadcast television news network, you will see a blue wave coming for the November 8 midterm elections. The economy is in great shape, according to the White House, inflation is transient, energy is cheap and abundant, and life is grand for everyone. Democrats believe voters will recognize this and reward Democrats with full control of Congress in just over a week.

YouTube screen grab

A few weeks ago The Hill boldly proclaimed, “Midterms: The big red wave has crested and turned into a rising blue tide.”  Last week The Hill doubled down asserting, “Democrats widen lead to 5 points on generic congressional ballot.” The President is optimistic for a blue wave, as reported by CNBC, “Biden predicts Democrats’ odds will improve as the midterm elections approach, citing economic improvements.”

The reality is that the dismal economic conditions are what’s paving the way for a red wave. Democrats and their corporate media allies are either oblivious or attempting to gaslight voters by claiming otherwise. Wisely Republicans are channeling President Clinton’s consigliere James Carville who once observed, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

What issues are important to voters this election cycle? Democrats, taking their cues from social media and MSNBC, assume that abortion, green energy, and the nonsensical January 6 commission are top issues motivating voters. Instead, they ignore the real world that confronts most Americans daily, including their wallets, shopping carts, and savings accounts.

Outside the liberal beltway media echo chamber, Rasmussen Reports asked likely US voters what they care about and this may be far more reflective of voter sentiment and predictive of the color of the wave coming November 8.

In their Daily Presidential Tracking poll of likely US voters, they found only 23% strongly approve of President Biden’s job performance, compared with 45% strongly disapproving. With Biden as the head of the Democrat party, being underwater by 22 points doesn’t bode well for his party’s prospects next week.

Now let us look at the issues likely to determine the color of the upcoming November wave, or perhaps just a trickle, but more likely red than blue.

Start with the economy, stupid or not. In mid-October, Rasmussen Reports found that, “88% of Likely U.S. voters are concerned about the economy, including 60% who are very concerned. Just 10% aren’t concerned about the issue. A related issue, inflation, is concerning to 89% of voters.” Carville was right – it is the economy, stupid.

Education is another issue important to Americans in flyover country, although apparently not to Democrats and the media chattering classes in the DC-NYC axis where their children attend fancy private schools far removed from shootings, wokeness, gender confusion, mandates, and other modern features of most American public schools.

In my state of Colorado, for example, a big issue in the governor’s race is education as barely one-third of fourth and eight grade students are performing at grade level in math and reading.

Getting Acquainted TO THE PELOSI WORLD!

OCTOBER 31, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

SHE WHO MUST NOT BE MENTIONED

This Washington Free Beacon editorial includes Nancy Pelosi’s fundraising appeal on the back of the attack on her husband. The Free Beacon editorial responds to the call for Republicans to “spend the final week of the campaign sitting on the bench, reflecting, atoning” for the attack on Paul Pelosi. Minnesota 6h District Rep. and NRCC chairman Tom Emmer received the impassioned instruction of Margaret Brennan for Republicans to quit their lowdown ways and lay off Nancy Pelosi (video below). Brennan hosts CBS’s Deface the Nation, as Rush used to call it.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1586744629470314499&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F10%2Fshe-who-must-not-be-mentioned.php&sessionId=f5b4c12d3beda46ae1d30e6cef0bd1de348fc3a9&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1c23387b1f70c%3A1664388199485&width=550px

As RedState’s Mr. Bonchie duly observes: “If you watch the clip, Brennan attempts to connect normal Republican election rhetoric to the attack on Paul Pelosi, asking why the GOP is still running ads tying going after Nancy Pelosi. That despite the fact that even the authorities have stated they have not ascertained a motive for the crime yet.”

You may recall she who must be obeyed. Nancy Pelosi is now she who must not be mentioned. As I think about it, Pelosi is both she who must be obeyed and she who must not be mentioned.

But The Vice President Of Our America IS LOONIER THAN OUR PRESIDENT!!!

OCTOBER 31, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN JOE BIDEN, MEDIA

WEEKEND AT BIDEN’S

The New York Post asks whether staffers are covering up for President Biden the way they did for Senate candidate John Fetterman. See my tribute to the Fetterman campaign’s work in “Five for Fetterman.”

We have frequently observed Biden’s mental debility. Even Ray Charles could see it. We have have even invoked the black comedy Weekend at Bernie’s in this context. The Post editorial now dares to go there in “Are we living through ‘Weekend at Biden’s’? America needs to know, but the complicit media won’t ask.”

If we were taking bets on a medical diagnosis, what would the over/under be on Biden’s mental acuity? I vary day to day on that. He himself probably has good and bad days. Today I would put it at 40 percent. The problem is that Biden operating at 40 percent of capacity probably exceeds Vice President Harris at full throttle. The Harris problem is beyond the scope of the Post editorial, but it is in the background.

“Beatings will continue until morale improves.”

GREAT AMERICA

Free Bird

Everything about Elon Musk insults the coddled, low-testosterone consensus that has been ruining America this last decade through the promulgation of its dependency agenda.

By Roger Kimball at American Greatness:

October 29, 2022

“The Bird is Freed!”

That’s what Elon Musk tweeted upon the consummation of his bid to buy Twitter. ’Twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why? For one thing, as Musk later tweeted, henceforth comedy once again will now be “legal on Twitter.”

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for more money than you or I can really contemplate ($44 billion) lit the punditocracy ablaze. On the Left there was, as St. Matthew (13:42) put it in another context, abundant “fletus et stridor dentium,” “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” On the Right, there were cheers and not a little “Schadenfreude,” which is German for “serves you right, knucklehead.” The Right also went in for some creative trolling.

The dominant narrative, on the Left anyway, is that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter represents a conservative takeover of the social media giant. Twitter had been a brash and scrappy upstart, you see, and now it has been “colonized” by the rich and powerful. . . .

That’s the idea, anyway. You can practically hear the Nabobs of the Narrative holding their breath while they wait to see if the public buys it. 

Their public will, of course. But how about the rest of us? 

The New York Times gave fastidious expression to this canard in a story headlined “Twitter, Once a Threat to Titans, Now Belongs to One.” A “threat to titans,” eh? What do you suppose that means? The Times explains in its subhead. “A decade ago, the social media platform was a tool for rebels and those challenging authority. But over time, the powerful learned how to use it for their own goals.”

In order to appreciate how funny this is, you can start with CNN’s story about the pile of money paid to the executives that Musk, in his first order of business, fired on Thursday. It is a large pile. According to CNN, Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former CEO, Ned Segal (former CFO), and Vijaya Gadde (former Chief Legal Officer) will walk away with nearly $200 million. (I pause so that you, along with many others, can savor the word “former.”)

Gadde, by the way, was not only paid many millions of dollars a year but was also instrumental in engineering the expulsion of Donald Trump, then the president of the United States, from the platform. 

The idea that Twitter was a challenge to the establishment before the advent of Musk is almost as wrong as the idea that Musk is conservative and that he aims to transform Twitter into a a bastion of Trumpesque MAGA (or, to quote Joe Biden’s focus group, “ultra-MAGA”) sentiment. 

As Musk has repeatedly stressed, his aim is to open Twitter to a wide range of political viewpoints, Left as well Right, “progressive” as well as conservative. By removing the top executives, Musk merely removed a hose spewing intolerance camouflaged as inarguable virtue. Marinated in that sentiment, many of Twitter’s 7,500 employees doubtless have absorbed the mantra that “free speech” means “speech I agree with.” In the run up to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, rumors were rife that he planned to fire “75 percent” of the workforce. Musk later denied that, but everyone expects him to put the company on a serious diet.

Everyone also expects him to make big changes in the way the company oversees “content” on Twitter. Musk is the very incarnation of a man in a hurry. His firing of Agrawal, Sega, and Gadde happened before his name could be painted on the door to his office. So did his immediate deployment of software engineers from Tesla to review Twitter source code. 

But on issues of general policy he seems to be moving more deliberately. Twitter distinguished itself by its intolerance of views that challenged the dominant progressive narrative on everything from the presidency of Donald Trump, Hunter Biden’s laptop (really, a subset of Twitter’s Trump allergy), “climate change,” BLM, and various approved forms of “progressive” sexual pathology. Trespassing upon any of those orthodoxies could get you suspended, “shadow banned,” or banned outright. 

That will change, but not all at once. Soon after taking over, Musk announced (on Twitter, bien sur) that the company would be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

There are, I think, two major things to bear in mind about Musk’s takeover of Twitter. One is that, although he is not himself a conservative, the fact that he supports a robust view of free speech in which a wide variety of opinions are not only tolerated but encouraged means that he will be regarded as an existential threat by the progressive establishment. 

That establishment is right to regard him as a threat. For its guardians require strict conformity in dispensing their twisted gospel of “diversity” if they are to maintain their power and perquisites. Open the door just a little, let just a little sunlight in, and pow! The magic spell that made it seem OK to say that men are women, that “climate change” is a threat to humanity, that COVID is a peril on the same plane as the Black Death, or that BLM and Antifa were justified in burning down our cities—suddenly that spell is broken, and so is the hold over the narrative that these new guardians of conformity had enforced.

The second thing to bear in mind is that the establishment will not sit idly by as Elon Musk challenges their narrative. Everything about Musk is an insult to the coddled, low-testosterone consensus that has been ruining America this last decade through the promulgation of its dependency agenda. It is no accident, as the Marxists say, that even as Musk pushes ahead with his reformation of Twitter, the coercive busybodies of the state have begun making minatory noises about “investigating” Musk. Thus we read that Tesla is under federal investigation over autopilot claims. 

Expect more of that. Beatings will continue until morale improves. As Glenn Reynolds put it at Instapundit, “The Bureaucracy Mobilizes Against A Threat.” Were the midterms not just around the corner, I might be worried about this coalescing threat against Elon Musk. But come November 9, the clock will be ticking against that sclerotic, freedom-hating consensus. The bird is freed, and we will be too. Fiat Musk!

“….a DNC staffer who was mysteriously murdered…”

October 30, 2022

What’s Behind the Seth Rich Coverup?

By Clarice Feldman at American Thinker:

The Epoch Times reports on the continuing efforts by the FBI to hide the contents of Seth Rich’s computer, and while I am not sure why, the reasonable assumption is that to disclose this material would, as a number of experts have long contended, prove that Mueller’s claim that the DNC computer was hacked by Russians was of a piece with the entire nonsensical and disproven claims that Russia conspired to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Since it has been several years since focus was on the murder of Seth Rich and the publication by Julian Assange of the efforts inside the DNC to see that Hillary was the party’s presidential candidate, a summary look at the details is warranted.

Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was mysteriously murdered on July 10, 2016, in Washington, D.C. after having been shot twice in the back. None of the valuable items in his possession seem to have been stolen. That would seem to rule out robbery. He had no known enemies and the murder occurred early in the morning (4:20 a.m.) in a safe neighborhood of the city. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for the crime. There were no known witnesses to the murder. Nor to my knowledge were any suspects ever named. Local law enforcement nevertheless suggested his murder was part of a botched robbery. Six days after the murder, Wikileaks published over 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments from the DNC files. In November of that year, they published over 8,000 more emails from the files. The emails showed that party officials favored Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, long embroiled in a lengthy effort to avoid extradition to the U.S. from the U.K., has refused steadfastly to name the source of this material but has hinted on Dutch television that it was Seth Rich. He has repeatedly said the Russian government was not the source.

Persons familiar with such things have examined the rate of data transmission, inter alia, and concluded the DNC system was not hacked by outsiders. Instead, they contend that the files were copied to a storage device like a thumb drive and transmitted to Assange’s Wikileaks.

The usual MSM and lefty internet sites dismissed these claims as “fake news” and the claimants as “conspiracy theorists.” Robert Mueller seems to have played along with them by indicting a number of Russian intelligence agents for hacking these files. If this were intended to cover up the truth it would be a convenient way to do it, for it is extremely unlikely any of these agents would appear here to contest the allegations in the indictment. (This was not the first time the Russian Collusion fairytale was fanned by a Mueller stunt like this. Mueller indicted a number of Russian firms and individuals for attempting to influence the 2016 election. Only one showed up to contest the charges, Concord Management and Consulting, and the Department of Justice dropped the charges against it.) 

After Rich’s murder, on March 15, 2018, a source provided to the FBI information and material extracted from the computer. The FBI originally claimed it never had possession of Rich’s laptop nor any information from it. Years later (in 2020) after receipt of this material, however, the agency backtracked and admitted it had thousands of files from Rich’s computer. Brian Huddleston sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain disclosure of those documents.

On September 29, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant ordered the Bureau to produce them in 14 days, dismissing the argument that that to release them would present a clear invasion of the Rich family privacy interests.  How weak was the Bureau’s defense? Judge Mazzant noted “Pointedly, the FBI cites no case law for the proposition that survivors of the deceased have a privacy interest in information related to the deceased’s favorite music or relationship history.” He said that cases relating to autopsies, death scene photographs, and other materials from a person’s final moments” were inapplicable.”

The FBI filed a new motion asking Judge Mazzant to reverse its order and argues that in the event he does not, it will need 66 years to produce that information.

Ty Clevenger, Huddleston’s lawyer disputes the FBI’s claims:

“If the court overrules the FBI’s motion, the FBI wants to produce records at a rate of 500 pages per month. At that rate, it will take almost 67 years just to produce the documents, never mind the images and other files,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“After dealing with the FBI for five years, I now assume that the FBI is lying to me unless and until it proves otherwise. The FBI is desperately trying to hide records about Seth Rich, and that begs the question of why.”

For certain, the FBI stall is not only to protect Mueller. The claim that the DNC was “hacked” was bruited about by then-President Obama, the FBI, the Department of Homeland security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and it was done before it ever received a report from Crowd Strike on the DNC server images. Mueller claimed that the DNC hacks took place between May 25 and June 1, 2016. Crowd Strike’s sensors were on the DNC’s network beginning on May 1 of that year, and they report that there was no indication of any intrusion on the network after that May 1 date. This strongly suggests to me that the “conspiracy theorists” were right when they claimed the leak of the DNC network was an inside job. It may well not have been Seth Rich who did it, but, whether it was he or not, why is the FBI trying so hard to keep what has been in its possession for over four years a secret?

The Worst Kind Of Hypocrisy!

 OCTOBER 30, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ILHAN OMAR, LIBERALS

TWO KINDS OF HYPOCRISY

If the worst anyone can say of you is that you are a hypocrite, congratulations: you are on the fast track to Heaven. On the whole, hypocrisy is perhaps a good thing because hypocrites at least uphold a standard to which they and others are presumed to aspire.

That is what I always thought, anyway.

But there are two kinds of hypocrisy, one much worse than the other. We normally think of a hypocrite as someone who publicly upholds a good or moral principle, while violating it in his or her private life. That is not admirable, but, as noted above, there is something to be said for it.

A second type of hypocrite is the person who publicly advocates an evil principle, thereby helping to worsen the condition of others, while following a better rule in his or her own life. This, in my view, is a much worse variety of hypocrisy because it is so hurtful to the non-privileged. If you want to read a whole book about it, check out Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. Liberals constantly advocate for bad policies in the public sphere, while following conservative principles when it comes to themselves and their own families.

Ilhan Omar exemplifies this more vicious type of hypocrisy. She hates law enforcement and campaigns to defund the police, but when it comes to her own safety? Men with guns. Alpha News reports:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign recently dropped tens of thousands of dollars on private security services following her calls to defund the police and support for a campaign to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, federal filings show.

According to Federal Election Commission records, the campaign spent $27,081.14 on “security services” between July and September, the highest quarter to date.

Before the third quarter, her campaign paid roughly $83,000 to private security firms between May 2019 and July this year, according to a review of federal filings.

So that is over $110,000 total. No doubt many thousands of Omar’s low-income and middle-income constituents, who live in sky-high-crime Minneapolis and its inner-tier suburbs, would love to spend $100,000+ to protect themselves and their families. But they can’t afford it. Omar wouldn’t be able to afford it either, except that she is a celebrity left-wing politician.

Ilhan to her constituents: Too bad about the violent crime that is making your lives intolerable. I am doing my best to make your situation worse, by attacking law enforcement and encouraging defunding the police. But hey–I got mine, Jack! I don’t need to rely on any understaffed, underfunded, viciously undermined police force! I’ve got my own private security, paid for by rich liberals across the country. So keep voting for me, suckers!

That is the worst possible kind of hypocrisy.