Quick Hits

Three years after the 9/11 attacks that so inconvenienced his aunt in her commutes from Tanzania, Zohran Mamdani's father Mahmood (of course) argued that we must not view suicide bombers are barbaric terrorists, but as soldiers honorably fighting their enemies.

Andy Ngo @MrAndyNgo

Portland (Oct. 26) -- In a final move to argue the city doesn't need the National Guard to maintain order, @PortlandPolice and state troopers dismantle & confiscate leftover Antifa riot camp supplies. Why didn't they do this months ago?

Video here.

It's almost as if the state and city government are in league with a terrorist street army and will only act against them if the federal government threatens an invasion.

Are they going to shut down the Antifa safe house just feet from the ICE facility or nah?

The left continues embracing and promoting assassination culture.

An anarchist with a lengthy rap sheet has been arrested for allegedly putting a $45,000 hit out on US Attorney General Pam Bondi on TikTok, according to the feds.

Tyler Maxon Avalos, 29, was nabbed on Oct. 16 after a tipster alerted the FBI to the alleged murder-for-hire plot the suspect had blasted out on social media earlier this month.

The chilling post included a photo of Bondi with a "sniper-scope red dot" on her forehead with the caption: "WANTED: Pam Bondi / REWARD: 45,000 ' DEAD OR ALIVE / (PREFERABLY DEAD)," court documents charge.

Underneath the photo, Avalos allegedly added: "Cough cough. When they don't serve us, then what?"

The feds allege Avalos, who has a prior history of convictions, has anarchist ties and noted that his TikTok username was "Wacko" -- an apparent anarchy symbol.

His profile also brandished a link to "An Anarchist FAQ book," according to court filings.

Avalos has a lengthy criminal history, including prior raps for stalking and domestic assault, records show.

Taylor Lorenz wants to date him.

Speaking of Bondi: She's putting Pelosi on notice about her incitement against ICE agents.

Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a blunt warning late Thursday to top Democrat leaders threatening Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, saying anyone who targets federal officers enforcing deportation laws could face arrest. The warning came after reports that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and other Democrat leaders were exploring ways to arrest or expose ICE agents operating in their jurisdictions.

"You cannot disclose the identity of a federal agent, where they live, or anything that can harm them," Bondi said during an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters. She confirmed that Pelosi and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins had each received formal letters from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche cautioning them against interfering with ICE operations.

During the interview, Bondi revealed that she had ordered Pelosi to preserve her emails in connection with an ongoing investigation. "You are impeding an investigation, and we will charge you. If they think I won't, they have not met me," she said. The exchange quickly drew national attention after Watters shared the clip on X, noting Bondi's warning came after Pelosi "ordered ICE to be arrested."

John Brennan is claiming that he's innocent and that Trump is just out for revenge.

Trouble is, John Brennan is incandescently guilty of everything he's charged with.

HOW JOHN BRENNAN LIED TO CONGRESS. The Justice Department is evaluating a criminal referral accusing former CIA Director John Brennan of lying to Congress. In the referral, Republican members of the House allege that Brennan lied to investigators trying to figure out what the nation's intelligence agencies did in their pursuit of President Donald Trump over the Russia collusion matter. The case is a strong one.

It started back in 2017. Congressional Republicans were trying to trace the FBI, CIA, and other agencies' activities in what is often known as the "Russia hoax." One central focus was the Steele dossier, the collection of false and salacious accusations that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
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The dossier, as everyone knows today, was a political oppo research job. It was put together by a former British spy who was hired and paid by operatives working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. As an investigative document, it was 100% BS.

That, of course, did not stop the FBI from embracing it. The bureau accepted the dossier as a legitimate source. The FBI included material from the dossier in a secret court application to wiretap a former low-level Trump campaign aide named Carter Page. And it even briefly hired the dossier's fabricator, Christopher Steele.
Here was where things did not add up for Hill investigators. Given what the FBI was doing, one might have expected that the CIA would also have played some role in the whole dossier saga. But John Brennan, then the head of the CIA, swore under oath that the CIA had nothing to do with the dossier.

A lot of the Republicans' questions had to do with what was called the Intelligence Community Assessment, the document produced by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other agencies describing their investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The assessment had famously -- and controversially -- concluded that Vladimir Putin "developed a clear preference" for candidate Donald Trump and "aspired" to help Trump win the election.

GOP investigators wanted to know: Was that conclusion based on the dossier?

Republicans knew the FBI wanted to include the dossier's allegations in the Intelligence Community Assessment. But what about the CIA? Did Brennan's agency support including the dossier in the assessment? In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan said absolutely not, that the dossier played no role in the CIA's work. Brennan told lawmakers the dossier "was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment."

Six years later, on May 11, 2023, Brennan again found himself answering questions from Hill Republicans, and he again denied CIA involvement with the dossier. "I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all," Brennan said. "I said the first time I actually saw it, it was after the election. And the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier. ... It was [the FBI's] purview, their area, not ours at all." Brennan also reiterated earlier testimony when he said, "The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment."

Now it appears that what Brennan told congressional investigators was false. The current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who used to be one of the House investigators looking into the Russia matter, has declassified documents from Brennan's time at the agency which show that, far from keeping the dossier at arm's reach, Brennan actually forced CIA analysts to use it and overruled the analysts who wanted to leave the dossier out of the Intelligence Community Assessment.

Ratcliffe asked the CIA's Directorate of Analysis (DA) to review the tradecraft used in producing the assessment. First of all, the DA found what it called "multiple procedural anomalies" in the CIA's preparation of the assessment... Together, all of the "anomalies" "impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft," the DA concluded.

There was no doubt the FBI wanted to include the dossier in the Intelligence

Community Assessment; the CIA self-investigation found that "FBI leadership made it clear that their participation in the assessment hinged on the dossier's inclusion." FBI officials "repeatedly pushed" to include the dossier in the assessment.

But career CIA analysts did not want to include the dossier. The CIA's deputy director for analysis sent Brennan an email saying that including the dossier's information in any form would threaten "the credibility of the entire document." That was when Brennan made the decision to overrule his experts. From the CIA's Directorate of Analysis:

Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the dossier by the two mission center leaders -- one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background -- he appeared more swayed by the dossier's general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that "my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report."

...

Taken together, these passages show that significant portions of Brennan's congressional testimony about the dossier and the Intelligence Community Assessment were untrue. When he said the dossier "was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment" -- that was untrue. When he said "I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all" -- that was untrue. When he said "the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier" -- that was untrue. When he said "The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment" -- that was untrue.

Here's the bottom line, which Republicans have believed for a long time. In the politically supercharged atmosphere of late 2016 and early 2017, the FBI and CIA both knew the dossier was BS. They knew they had no business including it in their assessment of Russia's 2016 activities. But they included it anyway because it told them what they wanted to hear -- that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. And then, under oath before Congress, John Brennan lied about it.

Cracker Barrel's Woke Girlboss Failure of a CEO is claiming her repudiation of the brand's identity wasn't ideological at all.

Cracker Barrel's top executive on Tuesday said the folksy restaurant chain's disastrous logo change wasn't about politics -- instead claiming the switch was made for the sake of highway visibility, according to a report.

Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino was forced to defend the headline-grabbing bungle at the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York on Tuesday as the company faces stepped-up heat from an activist investor.

The embattled restaurant boss -- who has faced accusations of having a "woke" agenda as she stripped the chain's beloved "Uncle Herschel" mascot from the chain's logo -- instead insisted that the redesign was meant to make the sign easier to read for drivers speeding past interstate exits.
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino defended the restaurant chain's brief and costly logo experiment. 4
Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino defended the restaurant chain's brief and costly logo experiment. REUTERS

"Part of this transformation is setting up success for the long term," Masino said at the conference. Her comments were reported by the Wall Street Journal.

In August, Cracker Barrel 's stock tanked when the Tennessee-based chain replaced its classic image of a man in overalls leaning against a wooden barrel with a minimalist design that read only "Cracker Barrel."

The new look was rolled out alongside a slate of modern store remodels and a marketing overhaul led by the consulting firm Prophet -- all part of a $700 million rebranding plan aimed at drawing younger diners.

Ah, the elusive Modern Audience. As for her claim: Companies have different variations of their logo for just this sort of reason. A simplified logo for a highway sign makes sense -- but she changed the store's main logo. This wasn't about the sign being more visible on the highway. This was about her showing off to her AWFL sorority sisters.

She's lying because she's being challenged and the board may just fire her.

Trump is blocking leftwing gun control groups from receiving federal money earmarked at reducing gun violence.

The Trump administration has released solicitations for a grant program meant to stop gun violence in underserved communities. But this year, the non-profits the grant was built around are disqualified from applying, according to an application notice released by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in September.

The Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI), was created in 2022, to support groups working in rural and urban communities struggling to address violence and fund research studying the programs' efficacy.

The pioneering program was born out of a recognition by the Biden administration that such community-centered programs were among the most successful tools in combating the US' deep-rooted gun violence problem, and had played a crucial role in helping reduce homicides in major US cities.

Before Trump's inauguration, community-based organizations, non-profits and local and state governments were eligible to apply for the grant. Now, only city, county and tribal governments are allowed. And the stated goal of the program has been changed from "comprehensive, community-based prevention" to "supports law enforcement efforts to reduce violent crime and improve police-community relations".

Since 2022, the federal government has awarded more than $300m to over 120 non-profits, city and county governments and research institutions through the initiative, according to an archived list of grant recipients.

I assume the gun control groups were just using them money for political agitation against lawful gun ownership. But I'm not sure.

Collin Rugg @CollinRugg

NEW: Arnold Schwarzenegger claps back at CNN's Jake Tapper, calls out "extreme gerrymandering" in blue states.

Tapper: "Do you believe that the Republican Party is starting this?"

Schwarzenegger: "No, Jake. There has been gerrymandering going on for 200 years."

"There is such extreme gerrymandering going on that in a state like Massachusetts, it has like 40% of the people voting for Trump, they have zero representatives."

"The Republican Party has zero representatives sent to the House. Think about that."

"In New Mexico, 45% of the people voted for Trump and vote Republican, and zero is sent to the House, zero representatives from the Republican Party."

Last week, the ugly Jen Paski made a nasty attack on JD Vance and his wife, claiming that she, as an Indian immigrant, was basically a hostage who needed to be rescued. "Blink four times," the nasty whore Psaki said. "We'll come save you."

That's not the part of the interview that most interests me, though.

You of course know that every new Republican is the Worst Republican Ever, and once a Republican has retired, or has died, and is no longer a threat to the Democrat party, the Democrat-Antifa-Media Party starts talking up how terrific retired/dead Republicans were compared to the New Worst Republican Ever.

Nixon was the worst Republican ever, until Reagan. At least Nixon was rational! Reagan is crazy! He'll blow up the world.

I'll skip the elder Bush, which might be the first time the New Republican wasn't the Worst Republican.

The younger Bush was elected, and now Reagan was hailed a sensible, intelligent man who could be negotiated with, while George W. Bush was a coked-up retard who wanted to 9/11 the world.

Then of course came Mitt Romney and John McCain, who were both briefly the Worst Republicans Ever. Where are the healers and deep-thinkers in the GOP, like Reagan?

And then Trump. And suddenly the Democrat-Antifa-Media Party began talking up Der Chimpenfuhrer George W. Bush as being a statesman and highly-qualified president.

Notice that in all cases, old Republicans are never contrasted favorably with the New Worst Republican Ever until the old Republicans are out of office or in the ground.

Except now. For the first time ever, Jen Psaki has began favorably talking up Trump to compare him with the not-yet-president JD Vance, who she already has decided is the New Worst Republican Ever.

While the old Worst Republican Ever is still in office and deporting all the Cancer Curers!

Extraordinary.

Victor Davis Hanson commented on this:

Overton @overton_news

Victor Davis Hanson just fired back at Jen Psaki's attacks on Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha.

What he exposed goes far beyond simple political jabs.

They're TERRIFIED that the MAGA movement isn't tied to just one man...it could continue long into the future.

"They thought when he was selected as vice president, he brought nothing to the ticket because Ohio was going to be won, he was a White male, there was no diversity, but they didn't really appreciate that he's one of the best explicators of the MAGA agenda."

"He eviscerated the media every time he got on television. He was a real force multiplier of the Trump ticket."

"And they're afraid of him."

"And now they're thinking, you know, we were betting on MAGA is inseparable from Trump. He was the sun, and without him there will be no sunlight."

"And then people like Rubio and JD Vance come along and they think, oh my God, this thing could go on and on and on with this new populist Republican Party."

"And they're terrified of it, and so they feel that maybe she's too sophisticated for this Appalachian-born Vance or whatever, but they're terrified that MAGA will go beyond Donald Trump."

"I think they should be terrified, because I think it will."

posted by Ace at 05:08 PM

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