Quick Hits
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Rep. Ilhan Omar @IlhanWe're getting justice and accountability for every single Minnesotan who's suffered under Trump's terrorization of our state.
Our time is now.
Speaking of "Squad" members with tribal vengeance on their minds: Former congressperson and stone-cold racist Cori Bush has registered as a foreign agent for a foreign anti-Israel Dark Money group.
Chuck Ross:
'Squad' Alum Cori Bush Registers as Paid Foreign Agent, Will Lead Anti-Israel Propaganda Tours of West Bank for Shadowy NGO
Bush, who was voted out of Congress in 2024 and told a pro-Israel group she was 'coming to tear your kingdom down,' recently visited the West Bank and complained about 'Jim Crow' treatmentFormer Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) has registered as a foreign agent for a shadowy European NGO to lead "fact-finding" missions to the West Bank--part of a seemingly elaborate propaganda campaign against Israel.
The ex-Squad member, who once warned pro-Israel advocacy groups that she was coming to "tear your kingdom down," signed on as an independent contractor for the International Federation for Rights and Development (IFRD), a Brussels-based "human rights" nonprofit, according to disclosures she filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act last week.
According to the contract, IFRD will pay $25,000 to Bush and her friend and campaign manager, Stephany Spaulding, for a project through January to "coordinate fact-finding delegations" to Gaza and the West Bank to elevate "the narratives of Palestinian farmers and residents with settlers in the West Bank and other occupied territories." The women's contract provides for $6,000 a month in compensation and another $7,000 for dealing with FARA compliance.
It is unclear who funds IFRD, which is led by Palestinian filmmaker Gamaal El Attar. The group does not disclose its backers, but claims it does not receive money from any foreign governments. Bush's foreign agent disclosure pulls back the curtain on its well-orchestrated PR campaign, the details of which have not been previously reported.
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After the West Bank visit, Bush and Alkam appeared on fired MSNBC firebrand Joy Reid's podcast, where Bush claimed she felt Jim Crow-style treatment from the Israeli military during the trip....
There is good reason to question the rigor of the "fact-finding missions" given threats she has made against Israel and its supporters.After losing her Democratic primary in 2024, Bush threatened AIPAC after the pro-Israel advocacy group spent heavily in support of her opponent, Rep. Wesley Bell.
"They're about to see this other Cori, this other side," she told supporters. "AIPAC, I'm coming to tear your kingdom down."
"All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid," said Bush. The Biden administration condemned those remarks.
David Strom on Queen of the Midwits Anne Applebaum.
Who exactly is Anne Applebaum? She is the Queen of the Midwits. Midwits are people with above-average intelligence, but not by nearly as much as they think.I believe, contrary to what some argue, that of all the people in the world, they are by far the most likely to suffer from the so-called Dunning-Kruger Effect, a well-known intellectual defect in which people wrongly believe they are far more intelligent, competent, and able to see further into a problem than the people around them. They are smart enough to believe they understand something, and too dumb to realize they don't.
Most intellectuals and technocrats fit into this category. Rather than seeing that the systems they are playing with are too complex to control easily, they live under the illusion that they have enough insight to make them work properly. They usually wind up mucking things up horrifically. In many ways, they're the opposite of Javier Milei, who wants to get government out of the way because the market can't be tweaked into perfection; these people believe they can tweak the world and make it obey their fantasies.
Anne Applebaum is a perfect example.
Who wouldn't be impressed? She doesn't just parrot The Narrative(TM); she has been shaping it for decades.
Hillary Clinton was, NeverTrump and their liberal fuck-buddies assure us, more psychologically stable than Donald Trump.
Overton
@overton_newsThis is embarrassing.
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is on CNN, complaining to Anderson Cooper about her 2016 debate against President Trump.
TEN YEARS LATER, she's still rehashing the debate and explaining what she wishes she had said to Trump.
CLINTON: "You know, one thing I thought about was just like, you know, turn on him really fast and say; 'back up, you creep! You're not going to intimidate me!'"
"I also thought that that would be perceived by people as, you know, me being angry, and Lord knows we don't want an angry woman."
"No, not that, under any circumstances...no matter for what cause."
This is the political equivalent of the guy at the bar still talking about the high school football game he lost, explaining everything he could have done differently.
Old liberal "man" with emotional instability assaults a TP USA worker who is merely voicing his opinions; is arrested for assault, but claims we didn't see the whole exchange. (Apparently this creaky emotionally-labile dicksucker thinks that "the whole exchange" would justify assault.)
I'm so surprised to see a leftwing "man" whose emotions are ungovernable as those of a tween girl with a pill addiction. That's just not the psychology I expect from them.
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After 31 Years of Failure, Amateur Clickbait Hate-Site Salon Announces That They Are Shutting Down and Will Miss Their Six Readers
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Oh no!
Anyway.
Goodbye from Salon
It has been an extraordinary privilege.
Yes, the privilege was entirely yours. That checks out.
Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication.
It's difficult to find the right words for the end of something that has meant so much to so many people. Salon was never just a website. It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier.
It was a toxic hate site and propaganda mill funded by left-wing partisans but not well-funded by left-wing partisans because left-wing partisans are greedy moneygrubbing cheapskates who obsess about other people's money and therefore will not part with their own. They do not donate to charities or causes they "support," and who "support" things by demanding the government fund their charitable causes rather than themselves.
That was never on the table, so eventually you ran out of other people's money.
And probably the shuttering of US AID and various other Deep State propaganda slush-funds didn't help.
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Over three decades, Salon has brought together politics, culture, criticism and ideas in a way that was distinctly our own.
It brought together socialist agitation, Democrat conspiracy theories, and race- and gender-grifting.
You know -- like every other media outlet.
Our journalism examined power and politics, questioned assumptions, surfaced stories that deserved attention and made room for perspectives that were too often overlooked.
Which assumptions did you question? Would I be wrong to assume you exclusively questioned the assumptions of anyone on the right or in the middle -- that is, you, like all other fake leftwing intellectuals, examined everyone's assumptions except your own or your readers'?
To the founders who imagined it, the staff members who built it, the contributors who gave it their voices and the alumni who carried its spirit into the world: Thank you. Salon's legacy belongs to all of you.
It's a legacy of failure and nigh-constant bankruptcy crises and last-minute cash-grabs from leftwing lunatics. Telling people "This legacy belongs to you" is about as insulting a thing as one can say to one's readers, besides accusing them of being drug-addicted gay hustlers.
We also want to thank our readers. You came to Salon for the journalism, the dialogue, the essays, the criticism, the unexpected discoveries and the sense that there was a place on the internet where ideas mattered.
They came for the validation for their mental illnesses and scapegoats and all of their most cherished hatreds.
The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable.
I mean, you wrote the same thing in like 2006. It hasn't been "sustainable" since about the time Pets.com filed for Chapter 11.
Thirty-one years is a remarkable run, but what matters most is what happened during those years: the journalism, the ideas, the voices, the conversations and the community that grew around them.
No one will remember you and your graves will all be unmarked and choked by the least-credible, least-talented weeds in the brokeass plot.
Related:
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Greasy Governor Gavin Newsom Makes It Official: All 500+ Loathsome Murderers on California's Death Row Will be Spared the Death Penalty
—Disinformation Expert Ace
He commuted their sentences.
California hasn't executed a prisoner since 2006.
On Jan. 17, 2006, the last death row prisoner from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was executed, ending a century-long practice of capital punishment in the state.From 1893 to 2006, the state of California executed 513 prisoners by use of hanging, lethal gas and lethal injection, according to CDCR records.
After 23 years and 1 month on death row, 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen would become the final California death row prisoner to be executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison.
Allen was sentenced to death on Dec. 2, 1982, after being convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and one count of conspiracy. He was charged in connection with the homicides of Bryon William Schletewitz, Douglas Scott White and Jospehine Linda Rocha.
But before he was put on death row, Allen had already been sentenced to life in 1978 for burglarizing a Fresno grocery store and ordering the murder of someone who knew about the crime.
While serving his sentence at Folsom State Prison he met Billie Ray Hamilton. With Hamilton's help, Allen plotted to kill the people who informed against him during his trial.
I bolded his crimes to illustrate that he was a conscienceless evil recidivist who didn't "merely" kill one or even two people, but murdered multiple people and then arranged for a hit man to kill one of the witnesses against him and then schemed to kill others while in prison.
This is not unusual. Everyone on California's death row had this kind of consistent, viciously evil drive to kill.
No one on California's death row had "merely" one "Ooopsie Poopsie I did a mistake-murder" killings. They are all multiple murders or murders with special circumstances, like murdering a child or being a rapist-murderer. The death penalty requires such "special circumstances." "Merely" taking another human being's life is not enough to get you the death penalty.
Democrats then placed a moratorium on further executions for loathsome murderers and rapist-murders and serial killers.
But they still had enough respect for the Normie Vote to avoid simply absolving the killers of the ultimate penalty. They had to pretend that, possibly one day, the moratorium would be lifted and men who deserve to die would be executed.
Flush with confidence from the Big Win for Communism, Greasy Gavin decided
that he no longer needed to pretend to care about the Normie Vote and commuted all the death sentences to life in prison.
Which, of course, doesn't mean life in prison.
Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped a bombshell move on Thursday to commute all 548 death-row inmates in California.In a letter to Californians, Newsom said that he understood that victims are angry at the horrendousness of the inmates' crimes.
"But as Governor, I have concluded the state cannot morally kill them," he wrote. "We can now let these offenders die in obscurity while we forever remember and honor their victims."
"I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us," Newsom explained.
"I know we cannot execute people in our imperfect legal system and remain true to our core values, first among them justice and human decency."
Newsom said the decision to mass commute was one of the "most difficult" in his career, and he said he's deeply aware how it will trigger unpleasant memories of victims' surviving family members.
"I deeply respect the views of those who will strongly disagree with my decision, including some families of victims who have suffered the worst possible loss," the Democratic governor said. "I hold this painful truth along with the belief that this is a righteous action."
So always remember this when Democrats claim they won't, for example, endorse gay marriage, endorse transitioning children, impose actual authoritarian communism, etc., etc., etc.
What they always mean is: "I will not do these things in the current month because public opinion is strongly against me. But the moment that opposition begins to waver, or we win enough seats to be able to lose seats for several elections and maintain a majority, Katy Bar the Door."
This is obvious, and proven repeatedly through the years, but do be on notice that you are a Racist Conspiracy Theorist Peddling Russian Disinformation if you point this out.
Incompetent, Uneducated Boob and Socialist Nithiya Raman Has been Elected the Final Mayor of the City Formerly Known as Los Angeles
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Democratic socialist Nithya Raman will defeat incumbent Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayor's race, CNN's Decision Desk projects.Raman, a city councilmember, overtook Republican Spencer Pratt in June's nonpartisan primary to set up what was arguably a tougher race for Bass, a Democratic former congresswoman. With Raman's victory, the nation's two largest cities -- New York and Los Angeles -- will be led by democratic socialists next year.
Raman has vowed to cut street homelessness in half before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Olympics.
Um, she already promised to do that. Homelessness exploded.
Nithya Raman's victory means four years of destructive chaos -- and her socialist revolution will leave LA in ruins
Nithya Raman's victory in the race for LA mayor has been compared to an earthquake. It could shake the foundations of politics in the city.After all, Raman is a far-left socialist. She is a second-term City Council member with no executive experience. She only arrived in LA in 2013.
She worked in India during her 20s and 30s. She is a foreign carpetbagger.
Raman was on nobody's radar when she declared her candidacy -- after she had already endorsed incumbent mayor Karen Bass.
She had almost no support from organized labor, which holds many levers of power. One union leader called Raman a "political opportunist."
Well, she certainly made the most of her opportunity.
She was carried to victory by a nationwide "blue wave" -- but also by a "red" rebellion against the Democratic Party establishment.
With Raman's victory, socialists will control the two largest and most important cities in America.
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It's likely that Raman will be seen as a weak mayor. There could be chaos at City Hall.
We could see members of the City Council stepping forward to flex their muscle. Special interest groups, city agencies, and big businesses could start jockeying for position.
But it's also possible that the center of power could shift -- from City Hall to the politburo or "Steering Committee" of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, which is largely an unknown entity.
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One thing is clear: Karen Bass has been held accountable for her failures in dealing with the wildfires and homelessness.
Taking potshots from the outside is easy enough. Running a major city is a real responsibility.If that happens, she will be remembered less as an earthquake, and more as an El Niño tidal wave wave -- making a huge impact for a short while, but then receding, leaving the wreckage behind.
Adam Carolla, a lifelong resident of LA, has been reporting on Nitwit Nithiya for years. There is an empidemic of street thieves stole expensive catalytic converters from cars -- with a repair costing thousands of dollars -- and actually murdering several car owners who came out to stop them.
She did not call for a crackdown on thieves, which would be Racist. Nor did she call for increased prison time, which would be Regressive.
She called for the punishment of car companies for not putting expensive car components inside of steel safe-like enclosures.
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Russell Brand Found Guilty of One Count of Rape and Three Counts of Sexual Assault
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Obnoxious, compulsive man plays with matches all of his life and gets singed.
I don't have to form a judgment about whether he is guilty of rape to know that, by his own admission, he was ruthless in the pursuit of a goal of having sex with 5,000 women.
Just as we say to women, "take prudent steps to minimize your risk of rape," we can also say to a man, "take prudent steps, such as not attempting to bang every young woman you meet, to minimize your chances of being convicted of rape."
Russell Brand is facing years in jail today after being found guilty of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others to feed his 'voracious' and violent lust.The comedian and actor, 51, closed his eyes as he was convicted of raping a 21-year-old fan he picked out of the crowd after one of his Hammersmith Apollo gigs in 2009.
Brand, then 33, pushed the woman face down into a pillow on his 'enormous' bed and removed his condom while raping her at his 2.3 million [pounds] Hampstead mansion, leaving her struggling to breathe.
She was left bleeding from her anus and afterwards said Brand ordered her to 'clean up the mess you've made' before switching on the TV to watch the science-fiction series Quantum Leap.
Huh.
The woman tried to clear up before being ushered out by a member of staff. A driver then handed her tissues as he took her home. Fearing she had contracted HIV, she underwent tests, which came back negative.
It can today be revealed that Brand has also been accused of raping two more women, including a 16-year-old schoolgirl, with the Crown Prosecution Service seeking to bring further charges.
He was cleared of three other charges, two of them rape, and one for sexual assault.
His victims told the court how Brand forced them into sexual activity, sometimes within seconds of first meeting them, while exploiting his fame in pursuit of a goal of sleeping with 5,000 women.
After eight-and-a-half hours of deliberations, jurors convicted him of the 2009 rape and sexually assaulting an MTV worker at a party in a Soho bar in 2004. But they cleared him of orally raping her in a toilet afterwards.
They also found Brand, a born-again Christian who said he wore the 'full armour of God' in court, guilty of sexually assaulting a Capital Radio worker after encountering her in a corridor in 2005.
I don't know if I buy his claim of being a Christian. He did a tour called "Messiah Complex," the main point of which was that he was a philosopher on par with the world's greatest thinkers and possibly the reincarnation of Jesus Himself.
It wasn't just a title. It was a mission statement.
I can't be 100% sure about that because I tried to watch it but had to turn it off after 20 minutes because it was nothing but the most obnoxious ravings of a certifiable narcissist with a lot of screaming fans enabling him in his delusions.
At the end of the show -- I fast forwarded through it -- he made some "joke" about him being the second coming but that was also a super-clever pun about him coming, sexually, for the second time and boy oh boy that's such a great joke I immediately wrote it down in my diary of Jokes That a Professional Comedian Should Not Be Proud He Wrote.
But boy did Russell Brand beam with pride and narcissism at his witty pun.
It's the kind of thing a guy on a barstool says and you fake-laugh. It should not be a closing line to a fully-written and lavishly produced comedy special.
And then he did a documentary called "The Second Coming." The full documentary is here, I think.
I suspect that Brand's interest in Christianity and his interest in appealing to the Manosphere closely track with the increasing scrutiny he was receiving from prosecutors for his past escapades.
So while I do admit, of course, that someone's heart can be changed by Jesus, you'll have to excuse me for doubting that this guy's heart has been changed by Jesus, aka Russell Brand himself.
That doesn't mean he's guilty.
But it also doesn't mean I'm required to fly to his defense, either.
Ms Gallacher cried and held hands with an aide in the public gallery. Before the jury returned its verdicts, Brand looked at his wife and said: 'Laura, I love you.'
He loudly replied: 'Yes, my Lord,' when he was remanded into custody. He will be sentenced on Monday at Southwark Crown Court after being denied the chance to say goodbye to his children and wife.
I don't know if the "my Lord" here is a term of respect for the judge or an indication that God just spoke to him.
...The BBC had received more than a dozen sexual misconduct complaints concerning the Despicable Me star's time as a Radio 2 DJ from 2005 until 2008.
Brand preyed on women he encountered while becoming one of Britain's best-known stand-up comedians, a lauded TV and radio host, and a Hollywood movie star.
He was cleared of two rape charges and one charge of attempted indecent assault following the month-long trial.
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As part of his defence, his barrister had asked his accusers why they did not 'kick and scream' more.
Following the verdicts, the judge warned him that he faces prison.
Mr Justice Bennathan said: 'You've been convicted of a number of offences including rape.
'The consequence of that is inevitably a significant custodial term. My current view is that I therefore have to remand you into custody.'
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Brand had got his big TV break in 2004 when he was chosen to host Big Brother's Big Mouth, and within a couple of months of the show starting he had sexually assaulted a woman in the Nordic bar in Soho, central London.
At a party of his former MTV colleagues, Brand grabbed the woman's breasts while they stood in the middle of the bar.
She accused him of dragging her to the men's toilets and orally raping her but the jury found Brand not guilty on that count.
The woman told the court the 'lad culture' of the time meant she did not report her interaction with Brand to police, telling the court: 'He was a celebrity and it would be his word against mine.
'I just thought the odds weren't in my favour.'
A worker at Capital Radio said Brand forced himself on her during a visit to the station in 2005, pinning her to a wall while he groped and 'sloppily' kissed her.
She told jurors members of Brand's entourage watched on as the attack happened, and did nothing but laugh as she looked over pleading for them to intervene.
A Brand superfan told the court how she willingly had a threesome with the comedian in 2009 after one of his shows at the Hammersmith Apollo.
Overawed by Brand's fame, the 21-year-old -- who was in a relationship at the time -- agreed to go to the star's 2.3million [pounds] Hampstead townhouse a few days later for sex.
But she said the encounter started with Brand unnervingly forcing her to strip, shower, and brush her teeth before they went to bed together.
She told jurors they had 'awkward' consensual sex, but Brand then raped her by forcing her into non-consensual anal sex and ignored her cries of pain.
Women were a 'disposable commodity' to Brand, said prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC, who dubbed him a 'sexual predator'.
'They didn't matter to him. He didn't even need to know their names. They were just a means to an end.'
The fan who was raped at Brand's home later bumped into him at Edinburgh Festival, and said he apologised after she said he had treated her 'like an animal'.
In 2009, during a recording session at Channel 4, members of Brand's entourage, Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy, forced a young female staffer to give him a massage, the court heard.
When she had reluctantly agreed, Brand thrust his head into the woman's groin and only got up again when apparently insulted that she had commented on his 'bony' body.
'I was so repulsed by the situation,' she told the court, and said she complained afterwards to her Channel 4 bosses.
But Brand was cleared by the jury of raping a woman at the Labour Party conference in 1999, after meeting her at the end of one of his cabaret shows.
He was also cleared of trying to indecently assault an MTV worker after dragging her towards a toilet at her workplace.
Following his convictions, it can now be revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to bring charges in relation to a 16-year-old girl Brand is accused of sexually assaulting after grooming the virgin when he was aged 30.
Known by a pseudonym in the Channel 4 Dispatches programme which first exposed Brand in 2023, 'Alice' claimed that a BBC car took her from school to the star's house where she was later abused.
During their three-month relationship Brand called her 'my little dolly' and she had to punch him to stop an oral rape, she said.
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Brand is already facing civil claims in Britain and the US.
A High Court claim from a woman seeking 100,000 [pounds] in damages for alleged personal injury and sexual abuse has been placed on hold pending the conclusion of the criminal trial.
The woman, referred to only in legal papers as AGX, says she was 23 when Brand forced himself on her at his Los Angeles mansion in 2008.
She fled half-dressed in terror after he allegedly pushed her onto his bed and tried to perform sex acts against her will.
There is also a separate lawsuit in New York after Brand was accused by an extra in the 2011 romantic comedy Arthur of exposing himself to cast members before sexually assaulting her in a lavatory on set.
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Brand claimed to have felt the 'presence of God' in the courtroom, on his Christian podcast which he continued to record while standing trial for rape and sexual assault.
He told reporters repeatedly that he was 'blessed' as he arrived at court each morning to face the charges.
He and his wife prayed for those involved in the case.
He carried symbols of his Christian faith: a Bible complete with dozens of colourful tabs and a silver cross clasped tightly in his hands during the prosecution's opening address.
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Brand's own words from his 2007 book My Booky Wook also came back to haunt him, calling himself 'demonically sexy' and admitting he could be 'uneasy company' when in the pursuit of sex.
He wrote: 'If I want something -- whether it's a job or a woman -- I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that's in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.'
Good. Now do the "Asian" Rape Gangs.
Is the verdict just?
Charlie Kirk found this entire prosecution suspicious:
Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11Apr 4, 2025
Every single allegation against Russell Brand concerns events that took place twenty years ago or more. None of them existed while he was a famous actor or comedian. All of them emerged once he became a highly visible dissident on politics and Covid.
Brand has been forthright about his behavior as a young man, but the idea he was a serial rapist is absurd and, more importantly, completely unprovable.
This is a political prosecution, plain and simple.
Megyn Kelly claims that the woman accusing him of anal rape sure did consent to a lot of stuff before that:
Megyn Kelly @megynkelly
She admitted that w/in moments of meeting RB backstage, she used her tongue on his anus (as another woman was fellating him). She hadn't even been introduced. Later she went to his place excited for sex (which they had). The two discussed anal sex b/4 hvg it - she said it was her 1st time. Her friend testified that the accuser admitted to her that she agreed to it (told RB "be gentle"). RB testified they watched tv together after.When a reporter first contacted accuser about RB she said "I'm not sure my story has much in it; I was an idiot, young & stupid, probably as much to blame."
Michael Tracey @mtraceyHere is one of the "rapes" that Russell Brand has just been convicted of. It allegedly occurred after what the woman says was a consensual threesome with Brand, followed by consensual vaginal sex. It was then, according to the woman, that Brand committed "anal rape" upon her...
Consent to the other things does not mean she consented to the anal sex, of course. But there is room for doubt that she refused consent.
Now, the below isn't evidence -- just hearsay and scuttlebutt -- but Konstantine Kisin (a based YouTuber and comedian) says that when he was on the comedy circuit, it was an open secret that Brand was a rapist.
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Muslim Brotherhood Congratulates Abdulrhaman Mohamed El-Sayed for Working on Behalf of "the Islamic World" by Working Within "the [Infidel] Political System"
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Huh! And I was told it was racist to say that Abdulrhaman Mohamed El-Sayed was working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood for international Islam.
Is it racist when the Muslim Brotherhood says it, or nah?
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The Morning Rant
—CBD
For some unfathomable reason, President Trump announced on Tuesday that military aid to Israel would end this year. His explanation is a mess of the rational and the irrational.
Is it a good idea? Absolutely.
Was it announced without any thought and without any political advantage? Absolutely.
Here is the transcript of the interview, and here is the salient portion.
Why? Because they don't need it, Brian. I mean, I asked them, because they don't need it. And because why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayad when they don't need it? It's a bad -- it's a bad talking point because when you say, why don't we give everybody $4 billion? Israel's our number one; we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it. We've been doing it for years, I've been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country, they don't need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.
Regardless of whether the aid is a good idea, El-Sayad's comments should be refuted as contrary to the current law and policy of the United States government. Recognizing the political pitfalls of aid to Israel is reasonable, but changing that dynamic as an afterthought on election Tuesday, rather than using it to his and the Republican Party's political advantage is simply stupid.
As for the aid itself? Israel obviously requires a large and sophisticated military to counter the many threats against it, and since American weaponry is the best in the world, it is appropriate that it prioritize that technological advantage. But that aid has been a millstone around Israel's neck for a very long time. It has given the American president a huge amount of power over Israel's military decisions, and to a lesser extent its foreign policy. Most recently, Drooling Joe Biden (or someone in his administration) restricted shipments of certain weapons to Israel to control its military operations in Gaza. And before that, in 2014, the Obama administration restricted shipments of Hellfire missiles.
But the real control occurs behind the scenes. The threat is not that Israel will be unable to purchase American weaponry, but that there are strings attached to each purchase. And that is a caustic and dangerous situation, because Israel cannot always act in its own interests, but must defer to American foreign policy demands and the whims of the president, whoever he might be.
Those 2,000 and 500 pound bombs that Biden restricted? How many Israeli soldiers died because they had to go house-to-house (a brutal and dangerous tactic), rather than simply destroying the terrorist hives from the relative safety of the air? How many hostages were killed because the Biden administration slowed the Israeli military effort?
The military and technological relationship between Israel and America is strong. Civilian high-tech and military cooperation makes us both stronger. While the loss of four billion dollars in aid will hurt the Israeli military budget, the freedom to act independently is, in the long term, a far more valuable thing.
But the political calculation was ham-handed at best, and non-existent at worst. It did nothing for President Trump except buttress JD Vance's drift toward Tucker Carlson-style Jew-hate, and it may very well have injured Bibi Netanyahu's political machinations in Israel to create a strong coalition.
Was it off-the-cuff pontification, or was it planned? Who knows, but the result is a mess. I doubt that this announcement, had it been made at a politically opportune moment a few weeks or months ago would have prevented the ass-kicking of the mid-term elections, but it might have mitigated it somewhat.
Political capital is ephemeral, and whatever President Trump might have earned with this ill-timed announcement will be dissipated by the time he needs it.
And that is illustrative of the problem with the Trump administration!
[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. And if you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow me it would be much appreciated!
The Morning Report — 11/5 /26
—J.J. Sefton
Good morning kids. As you can see and you could have guessed the overwhelming majority of the links this morning are analyses and opinions about the absolute disaster that was the midterm elections. For those of us old enough to remember them, past elections came and went and win lose or draw, we mostly shrugged our shoulders especially if our side/candidates did not emerge victorious and thought that life goes on, America was and always will be America and nothing much really will change.
This was more or less the tone of the latest podcast linked here as well as in the sidebar and available on the most popular platforms listed at the bottom of this post
That said, given the nature of who and what comprises the Democrat Party and especially a large percentage of the candidates that won both House and Senate seats on Tuesday, I truly do not share the optimism about the future of my Cohost CBD. Even still, as I have noted in the past, if my dear mother of blessed memory and her family miraculously could survive death camps, the labor brigades and death marches at the hands of the Nazis and still wind up living relatively long, blessed, fulfilled and happy lives, then is all really lost?
Well, I too am desperate to be as optimistic as I can, but in answer to that question we sure as hell are going to find out. And it ain't gonna be pretty.
In a resurfaced clip shared on social media this week, Cliff Connolly, a member of the steering committee of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), emphasized the DSA’s “hatred” of the Constitution. The DSA may quadruple its presence in the House of Representatives and potentially force concessions from Hakeem Jeffries in any bid for Speaker following the midterms. . . Replacing the Constitution and the Presidency, Abolishing the Senate and Expanding the House, Ranked-Choice Voting and Multiparty Politics, Voting Rights for Noncitizens, Ending the Electoral College, Subordinating the Judiciary. (Meh they already control it- jjs), D.C. Statehood, Publicly-Financed Elections.
I can hear some of you groaning that it's all just blather and that there's no way in hell they can achieve any of that. Well if you don't think they're not going to go for it, now that they control both chambers, quite a few statehouses, including places like TEXAS that was supposed to be a bastion of Americanism, as well as the bulk of the bureaucracy and much of the Judiciary they're looking at green lights and no speed limits. And what of police forces and even the US Military?! plus the Antifa and BLM goon squads? I mean, for fuck's sake people we now have an actual U.S. Senator who is supported by and likely an actual member of the Muslim Brotherhood!
As friend and friend of the blog the erudite and estimable historian Robert Spencer postulates:
Many have observed that this election was a choice between continuing as a free republic or becoming a totalitarian socialist state and/or an Islamic republic. Many others, of course, dismissed such talk as campaign hyperbole, and it won’t happen all at once, but anyone who fails to recognize the hostility of the “progressives” to dissent and their determination to transform the nation into a one-party state are simply naïve or tragically uninformed. . . the MAGA movement is now dead. Those who hate America and everything it has been are firmly in power in Congress, and in two years will capture the presidency as well. The consequences of all this will be far-reaching, even to the point of making the free, open, and peaceful society in which we once lived a dim memory. All citizens of the United States should have taken it as a warning when one half of the body politic declared that restoring the nation’s greatness was a noxious and execrable idea. Or perhaps by the time that group constituted half of the electorate, it was already too late.In any case, the twilight of what remains of that greatness is now upon us.
China’s state-run Global Times wrote in the wake of the U.S. midterms that “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.” The Chinese Communist paper did not explain why it decided to put its own cheap shot of “myth” in scare quotes, as the word was not quoted from any other source, and the point of the editorial was that democracy is mythical because the citizens of the U.S. and other Western nations do not actually believe their votes bring them better government.
Dumb statement in that Xi should've congratulated the forces of freedom and democracy such as we have here in the PRC! That last line is actually kind of humorous in that it's unintentionally truthful. We, that is our fellow citizens in name only just recreated , no not '68, but 1933 Germany right here at home!
How Hollywood Helped Fuel Tuesday’s Blue Tsunami: Call it a collective approach, one that aligned key cultural forces together with one goal above all else. Progressive power.
Beyond that, this utter hideousness is also what it begets...
A special education teacher at a Montgomery County, Maryland, elementary school urged women to "stop giving birth" to boys because America's "patriarchal hell" means they're all "menace[s] to society," a Washington Free Beacon review found. The teacher, Dana Zentgraf, also called to overthrow the U.S. government. "It's your son too. It's all of them," Zentgraf wrote in a Facebook post under her online name, "Da Graf." "They are all menace[s] to society and we need to stop giving birth to them."
Well if politics is downstream from culture then what is being taught to our children from Pre-K through Post-Grad is upstream from all of it.
Unless and until we wrest total control of education, all is well and truly lost, perhaps forever. And considering the results of last Tuesday, the advances made by parents and others in breaking up or starting to break up the Indoctrinaton Mill that American academia has been for nearly 60 years will vanish.
On all this I nevertheless wish you all to keep the faith and have a good day, and pray for guidance and for the America we yearn for to somehow reemerge from the wreckage of Tuesday and what it will beget, and to endure.
- ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
- “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.”
China Gloats After U.S. Midterms: The World Is Tired of Democracy
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Daily Tech News 5 November 2026
—Pixy Misa
Top Story- The CEO of Team Group - a maker of memory modules and SSDs but not of the chips themselves - says that the shortage will get worse next year before probably getting worse still in 2028. (Tom's Hardware)
He also notes that the Big Three memory manufacturers whose profits now need to be calculated using the alphabets of dead languages rather than regular numbers are in no hurry to reverse this trend.
Of course this means they'll get their lunch eaten in the long term by Chinese manufacturers like CXMT and YTMC, and good riddance.
- China meanwhile is still well behind the curve on complicated logic chips like GPUs, and has turned to Nvidia with a $70 billion order for export-friendly RTX Pro 5500 models. They'll get 1% of that if they're lucky, because Nvidia can't get the GPU chips or the memory chips. (Tom's Hardware)
A pox on every house.
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Wednesday Night ONT - November 4, 2026 [TRex]
—Open Blogger
Good evening Horde! The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. The bar is open and fully stocked. Step up and place your order.
Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors.
If you're a troll, go away.
This is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Please.
[Top photo: Newark Airport, Terminal A - flag in reverse side flag configuration (right shoulder, stars leading). The other side wasn't photo accessible at the time.]
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Post-Disaster Cafe
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Feisty badgers.
Dog is really earning this stick.
Baby hippo doesn't want to get out of the water. Until his mom tells him to.
Tigers are really good climbers. So there's no chance of escaping them. As with bears.
Expect traffic delays due to dam construction.
An unhinged Democrat Constituent decided to attack a group of firefighters. This went as well as most of the plans of low-impulse-control, low-IQ individuals.
A longer video here.
Mountain goat shakes off, powers away from a mountain lion who's got it in his jaws.
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Quick Hits
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Almost as if oil was being hoarded to drive up prices and then released the moment the polls closed: Crude oil prices plummet a day after the election.
Via Democrat propaganda outlet NBC:
Oil prices dropped sharply Wednesday, propelled by growing hopes for a resolution in the Iran war.European Brent crude fell below $100 per barrel for the first time since Oct. 7. The move translated to a nearly $8 drop, or an 8.3% decline. U.S. crude oil, or West Texas Intermediate, also slipped 8.3% to close at about $88.12. It was oil's biggest daily decline since April.
Relief for consumers may follow. Oil's fall could bring the national average price of gas down below $4 in the "days ahead," Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, said.
Spencer Pratt @spencerprattHamas Piker: I HATE AMERICA! YOU DESERVED 9/11
DNC: Well, we have a big tent!Haley Stevens: I don't think we should blame Jews for produce
DNC: YOU TRAITOR! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A USED CONDOM!What a time to be alive.
Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_7h
Understand the implications of what happened in Texas last night.
Gina Hinojosa has called on Gov. Abbott to end state & local cooperation with ICE & she can order that on day one.
Hinojosa voted against the 2017 SB 4 as a TX state rep. The bill was essentially a sanctuary cities ban and required TX law enforcement to cooperate with ICE detainers. She then voted against another SB 4 in 2023, which made it a state crime to cross illegally into Texas.
Should there be another border crisis in coming years, there will likely be no resistance from Texas at the border. No Texas DPS, no TX National Guard, no razor wire or water buoys, and no Operation Lone Star, which Hinojosa called a "dog and pony show" and "political theater".
Remember when 15,000 Haitians surged illegally into Del Rio, TX in 2021 under the international bridge? That was only stopped because Texas DPS responded on Abbott's orders and physically blocked further crossings by lining up their cruisers to form a wall. The Biden Border Patrol was caught off guard and offered almost no resistance, except for some horseback agents who were falsely slandered for "whipping".
Additionally, because Republicans failed to pass any legislation codifying President Trump's border security measures, if Dems take the White House in 2028, that Dem president could, if he/she wants to, reverse every single Trump border security policy immediately upon taking office because they were all done at the executive level, and they can order Border Patrol to go back to a passive catch & release policy like we saw under Biden.
Meanwhile, the latest caravan of illegal immigrants is due in Texas within weeks.
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JD Vance: Let's Face It, the Real Takeaway From the Election Is That Trump Is a Warmonger and We Have to Embrace the Anti-Israel Policies of My Good Friend Tucker Carlson
—Disinformation Expert Ace
JD Vance has repudiated Trump's prosecution of the war with Iran.
We should be being nice to 9th century savages who are building nuclear weapons. Look at Europe -- just being nice to them works every time!
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called for a major pivot in the Trump administration's priorities after the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in the Tuesday evening midterm contests.Democrats took Senate seats not just in battleground states, but in typically Republican bastions like Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Vance, for his part, acknowledged that the administration had lost large portions of reliable voters.
"The reason we lost is the war," he posted on X. "The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest," Vance went on. "But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there."
There's no doubt the Iran War was a major issue:
Byron York @ByronYorkFrom exit polls, the percentage of voters who ranked a particular issue a "crucial or major factor" in deciding their vote, followed by the percentage of them who voted Democrat:
90% Government corruption (56%)
89% Cost of living (58%)
74% Iran (63%)
73% Immigration enforcement policies (46%)
56% AI/Data centers (64%)
But "get out of Iran, leave those poor savages alone" is a big position on the left, and among the Ron Paul/Nick Fuentes Complete Isolation and Appeasement pseudoright -- who tend to vote for Democrats to show us all how much they hate us (and Israel).
Turning Israel into an enemy will make the Muslims like us.
Trust them!
JD Vance
@JDVanceOne of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"--whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn't sharp enough down the stretch. I'm sure that's true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster--one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we'd lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to IsraelOur voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She's also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement--by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, "I told you so": you're right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let's take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
JD Vance pointedly refused to endorse Beyamin Netanyahu, too. That's his choice, of course, but let's drop the pretense that he isn't just aping the politics of his close friend Tucker Carlson.
Vance has a lot of reason to want these to be the causes.If the future of the GOP isn't through Michigan and the white working class but instead trying to win over Hispanics, there's no reason to run him.
Posted by: Red Turban Someguy
By the way, does JD Vance's Stronk America First Agenda include reducing the huge flow of Indians into this country to take American jobs and crash 18-wheelers into American citizens, or nah?
Nah, right?
I bet it's very important we retain a friendly relationship with India, right? And continue allowing huge transfers of population from India to the US?
Hey buddy, if you want to play this kind of politics, I'm game. Deal me in.
If you believe that Trump's divisiveness was a contributing factor to our loss (and our loss in 2022, and our "loss" in 2020), then you probably will have reservations about JD Vance's Big Smart Harvard-Educated Plan to replace Trump's divisiveness with the much more divisive divisiveness of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
That's gonna be a no from me, dog. Hard pass.
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Barack Obama: We Have to Solve This Problem of High Healthcare Premiums I Caused Under Obamacare After Vowing to Make Health Care Affordable Forever
—Disinformation Expert Ace
This will be a key Democrat demand for the next two -- or hundred -- years: Fix the healthcare scheme we promised you would fix healthcare forever. Take away healthcare from Republicans and give it to Democrats.
In the final sprint to the midterm elections, former President Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail to stump for Democrat candidates.One of his favorite talking points? Health insurance premiums, he says, are too high. Apparently, he doesn't see the irony.
"We've got to make sure that nobody has to worry about high healthcare premiums," Obama declared at a rally in Georgia recently. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's virtually word-for-word the same line Obama was feeding to audiences during his first campaign for president in 2008.
AMAC Magazine, free with membershipPerhaps the 44th president needs to be reminded that his signature legislative achievement (the one that literally bears his name) was sold to the American public as a cure-all to lower health insurance premiums. Or, perhaps he simply can't cope with the fact that Obamacare is just as much of an ugly, dismal failure as his grotesque presidential library -- a monstrosity that has turned the American healthcare system into a nightmare for virtually everyone.
Either way, voters should feel insulted at how stupid Obama apparently thinks they are. How many times do Democrats expect the public to buy the same lie?
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Disney Groomer Corporation Looks to Slash Workforce by 20% Because of Declining Revenues
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Palate cleanser, and early. I think we need it.
Some good news, by which I mean bad news for bad people:
The Walt Disney Company is looking at eliminating thousands of positions and has asked some managers to target 20% in annual cost savings, according to multiple media reports.The possible job cuts come as CEO Josh D'Amaro is reportedly facing challenges from growing AI use, weaker box office revenue, mounting competition from streaming challengers and a slowdown in theme park attendance abroad, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.
It's almost as if alienating your (former) core audience with divisive family-unfriendly "inserting queerness" messaging has consequences.
And this isn't the first round of cuts:
...Still, the company has made a number of substantial cuts this year. In fact, just last week, the Walt Disney Company's theme parks division laid off between 100 and 200 people.
...
The decision came after Disney offered voluntary early retirement packages in August to executives as part of a cost-reduction effort.
...
Prior to this memo, Disney had eliminated 1,000 roles in April, as well as made staff cuts in July and September. The September staff reductions impacted an additional couple hundred employees, mainly in the tech and HR areas.
In further Everything Is Gay news, Ben Wishlaw, who played a young "Q" since Skyfall, was disinvited from returning to the series when it reboots.
He says that he was disappointed, like George Takei was, that, while his character was made Officially Gay, for some reason a franchise in which he is only a secondary player chose to focus on the main characters instead of his secondary character's sexual leanings.
Ben Whishaw has confirmed he won't be returning as Q in the Bond franchise.Whishaw, 46, played 007's tech wizard Q for nine years, appearing in Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).
At just 31 when he was cast, he was the youngest actor to play the MI6 gadgets master; replacing John Cleese.
He was a bit of a drip if I'm being honest but I don't know if I can blame him for that. Everyone in the "Bond" movies -- I don't know if they really were even Bond movies at all -- was a sad-sack Low Energy Jeb after Casino Royale, probably because the idiot playing Bond thought that dour and depressive = realistic and gritty.
Oh, and of course Daniel Craig wanted Bond himself to be acknowledged as gay. I guess making Q gay was the Safety School of sexuality reveals.
In a 2024 interview, the actor shared his hunch that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson will 'start all over again' with a completely new cast following Daniel Craig's departure as 007.
Last year Amazon MGM Studios struck a deal with longtime franchise stewards Broccoli and Wilson to take full control of Ian Fleming's franchise, and with auditions finally taking place for the lead role, Whishaw has confirmed his suspicions of a complete overhaul were correct.
The Sunday Times writes that Whishaw 'won't be in the next instalment', whilst talking to the actor about his acting back catalogue.
Whishaw said in the interview: 'I rarely think about Bond... that would be weird' as he mused about the fervent speculation around the reboot.
Me too. I was a onetime Bond fanatic and now don't even care who the next Fake Bond Actor will be.
Whilst he hasn't dwelled on his time with 007, Whishaw does have one regret about his portrayal of Q -- admitting that his character's homosexuality felt 'unsatisfying' because although there is a brief reference to him going on a date with a man in No Time to Die, his sexuality isn't picked up on again.
I mean, why would it be? It's the Bond Franchise not Q's Grindr Adventures.
It's a typical corporate move to make a minor character "canonically gay" for Twitter attention and then drop the matter.
In more James Bond news (and you can tell how checked out I am because I'm adding this as an afterthought instead of featuring it as big entertainment news), they have supposedly cast the new Bond.
As Nerdorotic said: He's white, so that's something.
I think one of those geeks also said something like "He's a decent pick of you're making a realistic movie about SAS operatives from the working or middle class, but not so much for a gentleman spy franchise."
I don't know. I've never seen a movie with him in it, except one of the "Fantastic Beasts" movies where he played, I'm guessing, a very secondary role. I have no memory of him (as I don't really remember the Fantastic Beast movie, except for Randy Daytona, who I really liked).
Update: He played who I guessed he played, "Newt Scamander's" brother, who's in the second movie for like three minutes.
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The Brutal Shifts in Demographic Groups That Doomed Us
—Disinformation Expert Ace
I started bolding the important parts but I stopped because it's all bold-faced important.
According to preliminary exit polling data from an SSRS Voter Poll, Latino men shifted 33-points toward Republicans in 2024 before swinging 24 points back toward Democrats in 2026. Latinos overall moved 27-points right before shifting 20-points left last night, while Catholics followed a 25-point Republican swing with a 16-point Democratic reversal.The biggest reversal came among voters ages 18-29, whose 13-point shift toward Republicans in 2024 was overwhelmed by a 35-point swing toward Democrats last night. Suburban voters swung 20 points toward Democrats after moving six points right in 2024, while Asian voters shifted 25 points left after moving 12 points right.
The losses also extended to groups often associated with the Republican base. Men shifted four-points toward Republicans between 2020 and 2024, then swung 11 points toward Democrats in the preliminary 2026 results. Voters without a college degree moved 11 points right in 2024 before shifting seven-points back left, while households earning $50,000--$99,999 followed a 20-point Republican shift with an 11-point Democratic reversal. Even rural and small-town voters moved 15-points right before swinging 11 points back toward Democrats.
Did the electorate decide we were too "harsh" on immigration by deporting illegals, including dangerous predatory illegal alien criminals?
Maybe. Keep in mind, people are stupid and weak-minded. We've seen for decades that the public agrees that taxes should be cut and that the budget should be balanced, but then cry that you're being too meeeean when you actually cut government spending and firing goldbricking federal "workers" at useless money-pits like USAID.
They want all the benefits of fiscal sanity without the meeeean actions required to enact it.
Similary, the public may have decided they don't like open borders or illegals flooding our nation. But they think it's too meeeean to actually seal the borders and deport the illegals.
Remember when Kamala Harris' big contribution as Border Czar was to say to illegals, "Don't come"?
It could be that the sad fact is that while the public does want the border secured, the "meanest" action they will accept to secure it is a drunken sixty-year-old ex-partygirl mistress telling people "Don't come." Anything more than that is "extreme."
Update: I wonder if, starting six months ago, Trump let up on the deportation raids. And then restarted them after the midterms -- similar to his easing off on Iran with the promise of action after the midterms.
It is pretty firmly established that gas prices drove votes.
Note that in the below graph, the price of gas is inverted so that high prices are represented by the line going down and low prices are shown by the line going up.
It is done this way to show the very close alignment with Trump's approval rate. As the price of gas goes up, Trump's approval goes down.
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A Federal Magistrate Dismisses Charges Against the FBI Agents Who Lied About Interfering in the Hunter Biden Probe
—Disinformation Expert Ace
A change of topic for the moment.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was "weaponization" of President Donald Trump's Justice Department just before the midterm elections.
In a scathing, hourlong ruling read from the bench, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that produced the charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by "critical mistakes" that require the dismissal of the case.
"I am deeply troubled by what has happened here in this case," Faruqui said. "Whathas transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization."
Oh? We'll soon see that this magistrate -- not a real judge, and not confirmed by the Senate -- is zimself a big Weaponizer so long as that Weaponization goes against the right.
The ruling may not bring a permanent end to the matter because the Justice Department still has the option of pursuing an indictment, even though it has struggled during the Trump administration to persuade grand juries in the nation's capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.
The magistrate admits his decision is motivated by the political calendar:
...
"I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar," Faruqui said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the elections, which will determine control of Congress for the last two years of the Republican president's second term.
Prosecutors had accused the two former FBI officials of falsely downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President Joe Biden's son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice Department had failed to establish in its complaint that any statements made during 2023 testimony were intentionally false and had affected lawmakers' investigation of Hunter Biden or that the former officials had any motive to deceive.
Hans Mahncke @HansMahnckeThis would be comical if it weren't so depressing. FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides were caught dead to rights. Anyone with two functioning brain cells who has read the documents can see that they flatly denied to Congress what they were openly discussing in their own emails. The failure to do anything about the completely out-of-control DC courts, or to at least try to start fixing a system that makes it impossible to hold Democrats accountable, will be the most damning legacy of these past two years.
Oh, and:
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against Harvard University by the Justice Department, which alleged the school failed to provide admissions records that could ensure it had ended affirmative action in admissions.The DOJ had accused Harvard of stonewalling the investigation into potential racial discrimination and refusing to comply with a federal investigation, ABC News reported. The lawsuit asked a judge to force the university to turn over the requested records.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun concluded the DOJ failed to take the necessary procedural steps to acquire the data before filing the lawsuit.
Joun added that the ruling doesn't end the dispute over the data, stressing her decision was on the limited question of whether the government had adequately satisfied the prerequisites, at this point, for judicial enforcement to occur.
Below: More on magistrate Zia Faruqui.
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The Wreckage
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Sorry for bailing last night. It was painful.
It was a bloodbath.
We're in a tough position now.
I'll talk about my early reactions and theories on the night in a later post.
For now, the damage assessment:
Republicans entered the night with a 53 to 47 edge, and Democrats needed to flip four seats. They flipped at least seven, with victories in some of the most Republican states in the country. The Republican seats lost were:Texas: James Talarico defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Ohio: former Sen. Sherrod Brown beat Sen. Jon Husted.
Kansas: Adam Hamilton unseated Sen. Roger Marshall.
Iowa: Josh Turek defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson.
South Carolina: Annie Andrews upset longtime Sen. Graham.
North Carolina: former Gov. Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley for an open seat.
Maine: Troy Jackson unseated Sen. Susan Collins, who conceded Wednesday.Democrats also held every seat they were defending in the battlegrounds. Sen. Jon Ossoff beat Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia, Chris Pappas defeated former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire, and Abdul El-Sayed defeated former Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan's open seat, per CBS News. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Juliana Stratton in Illinois kept open seats in Democratic hands.
We don't know yet if the cheating whore Mary Peltola stole the seat in Alaska from the real Dan Sullivan.
We also lost gubernatorial races, including Texas'.
Republicans held a 26 to 24 advantage in governorships going in, with 36 races on the ballot. Democrats flipped four GOP-held offices.Texas: Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Gov. Greg Abbott.
Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms beat Rick Jackson, ending a 24-year Republican run in the governor's office.
Ohio: Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy to succeed Gov. Mike DeWine.
Iowa: State Auditor Rob Sand beat Zach Lahn.
At least we can finally say goodbye to the annoying game show host and grifter Vivek Ramaswamy.
They're still counting House seats, but not only did the Democrats take the House, but they'll have the largest majority they've had in decades.
In the the House, Democrats will start the year with what would be its largest majority in nearly two decades, NBC News projects. Democrats flipped more than two dozen districts, some that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.
Trump is now obviously a lame duck. Not only does he face the most intensely hostile Congress than any president has ever faced -- Lincoln got rid of most of his congressional opponents by branding them insurrectionists -- but the cowardly NeverTrumpers and GOPe Corporate Supremacists who pretended to support him for the past ten years while covertly undermining him now have no fear of him and can undermine him more openly.
Unfortunately, Trump 1.0 had a golden economy to offset many voters' intense dislike of him. Trump 2.0 has a decent economy, but people can't see beyond persistently high inflation and they think the economy is in poor shape.
I assume this All-American Solid Citizen won:
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Wednesday Morning Rant
—Joe Mannix
It'll make things so easy, they said
This article was written before election returns came in, so this is not an election thread. You are welcome to discuss that anyway if desired, since election returns are probably the main topic of conversation
The past decade or so has seen a wild proliferation of stuff that falls into the general category often called the "Internet of Things," or IoT. These are things that do something and connect to the internet either to perform its work or to extend its functionality. IoT devices are often referred to as "smart" devices. "Smart" cameras, doorbells, TVs, locks, thermostats, switches and more all go online to function or to work to their maximum effect. This is all increasingly common and often underscores security and privacy issues or risks. Those risks are so real that it's not unreasonable to just assume that all of it is simply not secure at all, and implement or it not based on your risk appetite.
But that's in the household. IoT is not merely merely for consumer electronics and household gadgets, it's also industrial equipment, and the risk profile there is radically different. If someone hacks your "smart lock," he can wander in and rob your house. If he hacks your "smart camera" and catches something compromising, he could blackmail you. If he hacks your factory, that's a whole different story. If he hacks your supply chain management, that's a whole different story. The risk blast radius in industry is much greater than it is at the household level, and those risks are not merely hypothetical. There have been some very public incidents in Europe that demonstrate the problem, as multiple attacks on industrial IoT were targeted squarely at the food supply.
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