The Spectator.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee yesterday that the government pressured his company to censor content during the Covid-19 pandemic and said he regrets following their wishes. The committee described his comments as a “big win for free speech.”

Meta produced thousands of documents for the committee’s investigation into alleged government censorship and Zuckerberg wrote the supplemental letter to outline what he had learned during the process. “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” he said. Zuckerberg said content related to Hunter Biden’s laptop was also in the sights of government officials, as the FBI approached Meta and warned stories of Biden family corruption were part of a “potential Russian disinformation operation.” Meta complied by demoting articles related to these issues.

“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction,” Zuckerberg wrote. He promised that his company would be ready to push back on government pressure in the future and said he wished he had handled the situation differently ahead of the 2020 election.

Steve Sailer.

Kamala’s one regret was that at the signing of her bill, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, one man couldn’t be there to share the spotlight with her, a man who had gone above and beyond the call of Wokeness to raise awareness of Kamala’s ETAA: her good friend Jussie Smollett.

Sure, TV star Jussie Smollett’s passion for helping pass his pal Kamala Harris’s “Emmett Till Antilynching Act” led him to self-lynch himself during a downtown Chicago polar vortex and blame it on white men shouting “This is MAGA Country!”

But that was an anti-WHITE hate crime, so it was OK.

Meanwhile, in other late-breaking Emmett Till news, the Washington Post today runs a 2,000 word article on Till’s death a mere 69 years ago today.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

The National Park Service has doled out about $250,000 in taxpayer-funded grants to add LGBT landmarks to the National Register of Historic Places even as it faces a multibillion-dollar backlog maintaining the public land it oversees.

Through the National Park Service’s so-called Underrepresented Communities Grant Program, which was designed to diversify America’s historical landmarks to include more racial and sexual minorities, the government agency is paying several other agencies and nonprofits to seek out “historic” LGBT locations and submit applications for them to the National Register of Historic Places, government spending records show.

While the Park Service focused on ensuring that the gay community is represented equitably among designated historical locations, however, it faced an estimated $23.3 billion maintenance backlog during fiscal year 2023, which ended Sept. 30, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service.

Read it.

In a sharp escalation of Italy’s ongoing crackdown on illegal migration across the Mediterranean, the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has impounded a humanitarian rescue ship for the 23rd time. The vessel, Geo Barents, operated by the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was detained in the port of Salerno this week following its rescue of 191 migrants.

The 60-day detention order, issued on Monday night, is one of the most severe actions taken in an 18-month campaign against humanitarian groups operating in the Mediterranean. Italian authorities accused Geo Barents of endangering lives and failing to provide timely information during a night-time rescue last Friday, when the crew intervened to save migrants from a small fiberglass boat that was being approached by a Libyan coastguard vessel, FT reports.

God forbid the Libyan coastguard should ‘rescue’ them and return them to Libya where they came from.

The Foundry.

A 2021 Biden administration executive order constitutes unlawful and potentially partisan interference in the election process, according to a new report from Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

President Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order 14019 directs executive branch departments and federal employees to use federal resources to get out the vote, von Spakovsky says.

Illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, dubbed DACA recipients, “are in the country illegally, and everyone who is being given health benefits through federal programs is also being told to register to vote,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.

Read it.

Iran has spent the last decade quietly smuggling advanced weapons into the West Bank to arm more than two dozen militant factions responsible for a spate of recent terror attacks, experts say, culminating on Wednesday in a massive Israeli military operation to root out Tehran’s proxies.

Regional analysts have been warning for some time that a weakened Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has set the stage for Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to usurp control over the area and use it as a launching pad for Oct. 7-style attacks in densely populated areas near Jerusalem. Now, Tehran is funding, arming, and directing a constellation of more than 20 militant groups that see the West Bank as a pathway to terror in central Israel, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank.

“Arms have flooded the West Bank, and terrorist organizations that used to be confined to some areas in the northern Gaza Strip have now flourished,” Joe Truzman, an FDD research analyst who focuses on Palestinian militant groups, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Now, there are more than two dozen branches established by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank,” a sharp uptick from previous years.

Read it.

Robin DiAngelo, the pro-DEI author of the bestselling book “White Fragility,” is a fraud.

She’s also been accused of rampantly plagiarizing minority scholars in a scathing new report by The Washington Free Beacon.

“According to a complaint filed last week with the University of Washington, where DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education, she plagiarized several scholars—including two minorities—in her doctoral thesis,” the Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reported.

For those who are unaware, DiAngelo is one of the most prominent public faces of the “antiracism” movement. She, alongside fellow guru of antiracism Ibram X. Kendi, exploded in popularity during the 2020 “racial awakening” and Black Lives Matter-provoked protests.

Read it.

The CIA suppressed secrets from inside Iran during the Obama administration showing efforts by Tehran to build a nuclear weapon were more advanced than suspected, according to a former National Security Agency counterintelligence official.

Read it.

The EPA has said the new standards are part of efforts to sharply reduce emissions of methane and “other harmful air pollution from oil and natural gas operations.”

Led by the state of Oklahoma, attorneys general from states including Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and Virginia filed an emergency appeal to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the rule that went into effect this year.

In their Aug. 27 filing, the states argued that while the federal government has the authority to set emissions limits, the rule outlines specific technologies, processes, and methods that the agency believes states must employ to achieve certain emission-reduction targets, among other requirements. The “EPA did not limit itself to its statutory role for existing sources and then leave it to the States to adopt appropriate standards of performance,” they said.

Furthermore the “rule’s ‘presumptive standards’ are onerous, imposing costs on the oil and gas industries that will—as even EPA admits—inevitably be passed onto consumers across the country,” the states wrote.

Associated Press.

But we wanna buy those vote! Waaaaah!

Read it.

Law enforcement in the United States has collapsed. Americans in many parts of the country see that products at CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart stores are behind plexiglass, that you must call a clerk to unlock the glass and then wait while you read and examine the different packages. People know these companies have no choice. Americans know that crime is rising, but the true collapse in law enforcement, particularly in large cities, is without precedent.

A Gallup survey last November showed that 92% of Republicans and even 58% of Democrats believed that crime was rising. In a series of surveys from March 2023 to April 2024, Rasmussen Reports finds a remarkably constant percentage of Americans who believe that violent crime is getting worse – 60% to 61%. Roughly four times as many people think violent crime is rising rather than getting better.

Why Special Counsel Jack Smith Filed a New Trump Indictment

Georgia governor inquires whether he can remove MAGA election board members after series of alarming votes (Katie Hawkinson/The Independent)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

How a Zuckerberg letter got Trump to accuse himself of rigging 2020 (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

Jack Smith Secures Superseding Indictment Against Trump

Kamala’s Campaign Pushes Trump’s Impulse Control Problems (emptywheel)

Largely Anti-Trump CNN Panel Insist Trump DID NOT Win Biden Debate

Donald Trump, JD Vance and RFK Jr.? ‘Weird’ doesn’t do justice to this loony trifecta. (Rex Huppke/USA Today)

Trump’s Approach to Florida’s High-Stakes Abortion Amendment: Don’t Ask. Won’t Tell. (Marc A. Caputo/The Bulwark)

Trump economic plans would cost more than $4 trillion over a decade (Aris Folley/The Hill).

Trump budget would spike deficits by nearly 5 times Harris proposal, says Penn Wharton (Rebecca Picciotto/CNBC)

The Superseding Trump Indictment Is about Obstruction as Much as Immunity (emptywheel)

‘This is simply insane’: Questions raised about vetting of J.D. Vance amid new blow-up (Tom Boggioni/Raw Story)

In resurfaced remarks, Vance bashes teachers union president for not having ‘some of her own’ children (Zoë Richards/NBC News)

Trump’s new indictment rocks his newly reshaped race against Kamala Harris (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

Revealed: top Vance aide worked for far-right consultancy with extremist links (Jason Wilson/The Guardian)

Donald Trump’s embrace of RFK Jr. exposes the campaign’s QAnon strategy (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Pop quiz: Do you know what ‘QAnon’ means?

Fresh controversy brews over Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery visit (Colin McCullough/CNN)

Trump’s Ugly, Shameless New Offer to RFK Jr. Hands Dems a Big Weapon (Greg Sargent/New Republic)

Trump promoted another Truth Social account that calls for killing his political opponents (Eric Hananoki/Media Matters for America)

WATCH: Kamala Harris Now Wants To Build the Border Wall That She Called Trump’s ‘Vanity Project’

Kamala Policy Page Now Just Redirects To Trump’s Website  Babylon Bee.

A sitting VP has won once in 188 years. Harris isn’t likely to be next. (Marc A. Thiessen/Washington Post)

Why Did the New York Times Let Itself Be Used as a Mule? (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Crazed Kamala Supporters Attack Arlington National Cemetery Director for Allowing Trump To Lay Wreaths on Soldiers’ Graves

How the media blew 2024?s election (Will Bunch/The Philadelphia Inquirer)

21 Questions for Harris – We’re asking unanswered questions for her potential administration. (David Leonhardt/New York Times)

Harris Campaign Rebuffs Volunteers Asking for Policy Details To Share With Voters

Harris needs Gen Z. Here’s her plan to win them (Elena Moore/NPR)

The Weirdest Acknowledgement of the Botched Afghan Withdrawal

Kamala Scrubs Berkeley and Canada Out of Her Life Story

Kamala campaign flip-flops on EV mandates

First Debate: Can Trump Handle ‘Badass’ Black Female Ex-Prosecutor?  Where are you going to find one of those? Is Fani Willis running for President?

Hidin’ Harris

JD Vance Blasts Teachers Union Head For Not Having ‘A Single Child’ In Resurfaced Clip (Marita Vlachou/HuffPost)

Biden-Harris Admin Uses Loopholes to Expand Welfare Benefits, Again

Pro-Abortionists Attack Chicago Catholic Pregnancy Center After DNC

O’Donnell Claims SCOTUS is a ‘Stain,’ Blames Slavery For GOP-Appointed Justices

The Policy Desperation Of Kamala Harris

Harris Campaign Says It’s a ‘Lie’ That Kamala Backs EV Mandates, but Her Record Tells a Different Story

Police Group to Harris: Apologize for 2020 Comments

Read it.

The University of Michigan’s new student government campaigned on a simple message: Until the school agrees to divest from Israel, “No Business As Usual.”

Michigan’s Central Student Government is in charge of disbursing a $1.3 million annual budget, funded by student fees, among hundreds of student groups. But in the wake of its election victory in the spring, the Shut It Down Party is vowing to withhold funding from all student groups unless the university agrees to divest.

“If CSG cannot be used to support our pursuit of divestment, we will take decisive action to disrupt the status quo,” a March campaign statement from the party reads. “We will halt CSG activity and funding dispersal until the University of Michigan divests. We will Shut. It. Down.”

Good. The world would be better off without collecting a bunch of such morons in the same place.

Read it.

Italian authorities have impounded a so-called ‘rescue ship,’ operated by the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for failing to cooperate with Italian border guards during its mission to pick up migrants from the Mediterranean Sea. Despite successfully cracking down on illegal migration, Giorgia Meloni’s conservative government continues to face foreign-funded NGOs that collude with human smugglers to take as many migrants as possible to Italy.

The ship in question, the Geo Barents is a rescue and salvage ship owned by a Norwegian company, and currently chartered by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). It has carried out ‘sea-rescue operations’ in the Mediterranean since June 2021.

Italian authorities ordered the boat’s sixty-day detention on Monday, August 26th after Geo Barents disembarked 191 rescued migrants at the port of Salerno, near Naples. The captain of the boat has been issued a fine of €3,300. Rome accused Geo Barents of endangering lives and failing to provide prompt information to Italian authorities during a night-time rescue in the central Mediterranean last Friday.

Here’s how the scam works:

• ‘Migrants’ go to sea from a Turd World country in something that barely floats.
• ‘Migrants’ somehow manage to get outside the 3-mile limit.
• Bleeding-heart NGO boats (who have been poised and waiting) swoop in to ‘rescue’ them and take them the rest of the way across the ocean.
• Illegal immigrant privileges ensue.

Read it.

Gee, imagine that. Funny how all of these ‘conspiracy theories’ turn out to be true.

Read it.

off the coast of Gaza would face major challenges, but Biden pushed the $230 million plan anyway, an internal report reveals.

Biden promised, during his March State of the Union address, to open a pier to deliver humanitarian aid to the two million-plus people in the war-torn Gaza Strip. At the time, “multiple USAID staff expressed concerns” that rough waves posed major challenges for the project, according to an inspector general report published Tuesday. Biden’s focus on the pier also undermined the agency’s advocacy for opening more on-land pathways for aid—which the report deemed “more efficient and proven.”

Despite the agency’s objections, the White House pressured USAID to build the pier, which survived a mere 20 days. From the start, the operation was plagued by rough weather and security problems that significantly limited the amount of aid flowing into Gaza. Humanitarian aid groups criticized the project, calling it ineffective and wasteful.

Read it.

The recent departure of U.S. warships from the Pacific leaves a strategic void in the crucial region as forces turn their attention to the Middle East.

The USS Lincoln Strike Group, which consists of a fleet of warships and fighter jets led by an aircraft carrier, arrived last week at the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, area of operation after departing from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command earlier in August.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was the last remaining aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific—a flashpoint for hostilities between China and several U.S. allies—and there won’t be a replacement in the region anytime soon, according to Naval News.

Read it.

Get woke, go broke….

Read it.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is trying to strongarm several smaller member states into changing their commissioner nominations to women so that she can have the gender-balanced cabinet she vowed to set up. But disregarding countries’ sovereign choice for a PR stunt might not only affect her relationship with the capitals but also hurt any women in her administration, whose rightful place in Brussels could be questioned from now on.

The deadline for nominating members to the second von der Leyen Commission is just days away, and all but five countries have submitted nominations. However, many have chosen to ignore von der Leyen’s request to put forward two names this year—a man and a woman—so that she could come up with a mix of candidates that is at least 50% female.

Out of the 21 nominations so far, 16 are men. There is nothing to be outraged about: there is not a single clause in the treaties that would demand gender parity in the Commission, unlike those that guarantee member states’ right to nominate whoever they see most fit for the job.

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

The Democratic National Convention really is living up to the “convention” part of the title, in the ancient Aristotelian sense of “convention” (nomos) superseding nature (physis). On the one hand, Democrats talk about families and children and whatnot, but ostentatiously display mobile abortion and vasectomy trucks outside the convention grounds, which are apparently fully booked. Democrats are hostile to nothing so much as human nature.

Now, whenever I hear a leftist say they don’t want to bring children into this evil racist climate-destroying nation, I heartily approve. These are indeed the very people I do not want to reproduce. They are doing humanity and great favor, and likely improving the gene pool, by deciding not to reproduce.

Hear, hear.

Read it.

“Wildfire rolls through a community, and you essentially lose everything all the way down to the foundation,” says Cavanaugh, who has former senior-level experience serving in the Department of Homeland Security, at the White House, and at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Now, you think once you’ve lost everything down to the foundation, start the rebuild process, but, everything as it burns leaves chemicals and other items on the ground. You’ve got to pick up the personal effects that are salvageable. [There are] a lot of environmental regulations involved with wildfire, so that all takes time.”

Emphasis added to underscore the fact of modern life that government makes everything harder and slower and more expensive.

Read it.

The word capitalism has no stable definition and should probably be permanently retired. That won’t happen, however, because too many people are invested in its use and abuse.

Indeed. The widespread use of ‘capitalism’ is based on Marx’s discussion of ‘the capitalist means of production’ in the beginning of Das Kapital, but really boils down to ‘buying machines run by workers in order to produce stuff’–the most accurate term for which is industrialism, because it’s used in all modern forms of production (including those used by socialists and communists).

Read it.

Investigative journalist Chris Papst of Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore has spent years exposing grade scandals and corruption within Baltimore City Schools. His reporting has undoubtedly drawn the ire of the head of the school system, who, in a recent interview, jokingly said her husband hasn’t “punched out” the reporter.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration finalized a decision to block oil and gas development across 28 million acres of public lands in Alaska, reversing a slate of actions taken in the final days of the Trump administration.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a statement Tuesday, confirming that she would formally revoke five public land orders that the agency’s then-secretary David Bernhardt signed in January 2021. Those orders removed decades-old restrictions on the massive area, instead returning it to federal multiple-use status and, as a result, allowing the government to open the land up for uses such as recreation, grazing, timber harvesting, mining, and energy development.

The restrictions ultimately preserved in the Interior Department’s announcement date back to the 1970s and lock the land up for the foreseeable future. Because the Trump administration’s January 2021 actions would have reopened the land, Haaland’s actions effectively serve as a land withdrawal and are part of the current administration’s broader climate agenda cracking down on oil and gas development.

Read it.

Last December, Liz Magill, then president of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, resigned. This was the result of a public relations nightmare for the school, brought on by a rise in antisemitism on campus, widespread protests, and, of course, her disastrous performance in front of the House Education and Workforce Committee. While the right celebrated, I wrote a cautionary tale about their excitement. Now, as Ivy League presidents keep dropping like flies, the latest victim being Columbia’s chief administrator, Minouche Shafik, we should all remember that new management doesn’t fix a broken business model.

Read it.

The U.S. military for the first time in decades has no aircraft carrier strike groups in the Indo-Pacific region, despite mounting tensions with China over disputed South China Sea islands, the Taiwan Strait, and a recent Chinese air incursion near Japan.

The Pentagon recently ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln to speed up its deployment from the Pacific to the Middle East to be ready for a potential conflict with Iran. Earlier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, like the Lincoln based in San Diego, was sent to the Middle East.

Both warships are currently in the Gulf of Oman, USNI reported Monday.

Read it.

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday submitted a court filing against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the Georgia Court of Appeals, arguing that she should be removed from the case for committing a “severe violation” of the state’s legal guidelines.

She was elected on a platform of witch-hunting Trump. How has she lasted this long?

Read it.

Anti-woke crusader Robby Starbuck is making headlines again, this time taking credit for Lowe’s scaling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Starbuck, known for his relentless campaign against far-left white-collar activists infiltration of corporate America’s management teams and corporate boardrooms, argues that companies like Lowe’s should focus on selling products instead of being woke activists.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration is facing pressure to crack down on car advertisements that misleadingly characterize electric vehicles as “zero-emission” vehicles, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, four lawmakers led by Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) urged her to develop guidelines “to limit untruthful claims of zero-emission vehicles.” Ernst—alongside Sens. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), and Pete Ricketts (R., Neb.)—noted the British Advertising Standards Authority requires auto companies to make clear in ads that EVs are only zero-emission when being driven.

The lawmakers’ letter further noted that EVs consume a large amount of energy, much of which is powered by fossil fuel sources like natural gas and coal. And they added that mining process for critical minerals required in EV batteries is even more carbon-intensive.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration has deployed a little-known hiring mechanism to staff key divisions of the Department of Justice ahead of the 2024 election, according to documents provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by Protect the Public’s Trust.

Hundreds of people, primarily lawyers and judges, have been appointed to the Environmental and Natural Resources, Antitrust, and Immigration Review divisions of the DOJ using its “Schedule A” hiring authority since President Joe Biden took office, documents shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation by Protect the Public’s Trust show.

Schedule A hiring does not require appointments to be made on the basis of merit and appointments do not expire at the end of the current president’s term, meaning these bureaucrats will stick around even if former President Donald Trump takes office in 2025, according to the Office of Budget and Management.

Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying that the purpose of government was to hire and pay government workers.

New York Post.

Moran Stella Yanai, 41, who was among those snatched from the Nova Music Festival during the Oct. 7 bloodshed, told the Israeli N12 network that her kidnappers also promised to release her sooner if she converted.

“Almost daily one of them would enter the room, saying, ‘Would be better for you to be a Muslim woman,’ and once the terrorist sent one of his comrades to get a head covering to put on me, and show me what it means to be a Muslim woman,” Yanai said.

“As a woman, my biggest fear is being sold. That someone would forcefully marry me and that I will have to convert to Islam.”

Where are the ‘feminists’? Melting down about Trump.

The New Neo.

If you’re of a certain age, like I am, you probably remember those bumper stickers that exhorted us all to Question Authority. It was the mark of a thinking person not to take everything at face value, in particular the words of the government or government agencies.

I remember once going to an SDS meeting when I was in college. I was never a leftist but I suppose I was toying with it a bit at the time (this was during the Vietnam War). But what I saw and heard at that meeting repelled me on a gut level and I never went back. That one meeting cured me of any interest in taking the left as an authority on anything, except their angry, ranting, incoherent, narcissistic selves.

I wish I could remember what was said, but I don’t. I only remember the sense I had of dangerous people who were also stupid, and yet very very arrogant. That just about summed it up.

Anti-Trump PAC Continues to Shuffle Millions of Donor Dollars to Firms Owned by Insiders

Trump Says We ‘Gotta’ Restrict the First Amendment (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)

How will team Trump tell him he should be muted during his debate with Harris? (Robert Reich)

Taunting Trump: Harris campaign’s sneer tactics (Mike Allen/Axios)

The Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump (Tom Nichols/The Atlantic)

First look: Latinos warned Project 2025 would hit them hard (Astrid Galván/Axios)

MAGA attacks on Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter threaten to backfire on Donald Trump (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

How The Hell Was Trump Allowed To Use Arlington National Cemetery As A Campaign Prop? (Charles P. Pierce/Esquire)

Biden, Harris push scrutiny of police. Trump would halt such efforts. (Washington Post)

MAGA Is So ‘Desperate’ They’ve Now Gone After Tim Walz’s Dog (William Vaillancourt/The Daily Beast) MAGA is the New Nigger.

How Democrats View Kennedy and Trump: ‘A Weirdo Campaign Just Got Weirder’ (Nicholas Nehamas/New York Times)

Trump’s Evangelical Supporters Just Lost Their Best Excuse (Peter Wehner/The Atlantic)

Crockett: Trump will ‘get his butt handed to him’ if he debates Harris (Cheyanne M. Daniels/The Hill)

Sen. Warren: Trump ‘Really Afraid’ of Kamala Harris  In her dreams.

Confederate Voter Intimidation 2.0: The GOP’s Dark Strategy for Winning (Thom Hartmann/The Hartmann Report)  Dunh dunh DUNHHHHH…..

California Dems want to help undocumented immigrants buy homes – during presidential race (Eric He/Politico)  But ‘undocumented’ immigrants won’t be allowed to vote, perish the thought.

More than 200 Bush, McCain, Romney alums endorse Harris for president, criticize Trump (Joey Garrison/USA Today)  RINOs assemble! (The Great Sort continues.)

First to ABC: Retired 4-star general, 200 former GOP staffers endorse Harris (Selina Wang/ABC News)

More than 200 Former Bush, Romney, McCain Staffers Endorse Harris

More than 200 Bush, McCain, Romney aides endorse Harris (Alex Gangitano/The Hill)

Former Aides to Bush, Romney and McCain Back Harris Over Trump (Chris Cameron/New York Times)

Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for 2020 Democratic nomination, endorses Trump against former foe Harris (Associated Press)

Another Pete Buttigieg Failure? Merchant Marine Manpower Deficit Sidelines 17 Support Ships For Wartime  Of course not. In order to ‘fail’, you have to try to do something.

Al Sharpton Decries Capitalism: ‘As Outdated as Bell-Bottom Pants’ And Sharpton is as outdated as the former Soviet Union.

Harris is the ‘Only Person’ Foreign Adversaries ‘Fear Less Than Biden,’ Mike Johnson Says  Well, that’s something.

Biden-Harris Equity Commission Wants To Spend $20 Million To Disarm Traffic Cops

Biden and Harris ‘Never Once Reached Out’ to Relatives of Soldiers Killed in Bungled Afghanistan Withdrawal, Families Say

AP Wonders: Golly, How Is Kamala Getting Away With ‘New Way Forward’? (Ed Morrissey/HotAir)

In Stunning Letter To Congress, Zuckerberg Admits Biden-Harris Pressured Facebook To Censor Content

BOMBSHELL: The Regime Media SUPPRESS Facebook’s Censorship Admission

Biden-Harris Admin Sued for Stonewalling Gazan Aid Probe

PolitiFact Pleases PBS: Hands Down, Democrat Convention Much More Factual Than RNC

If Everything Is So Great, Why Are Millions Of Americans Sleeping In Their Vehicles?

Prime Examples of California Policies Destroying Towns

An Anatomy of a Harris Campaign Stop Shows There Is No There, There

Goodbye, JFK Democrats

Three Quarters Of Democrat Voters Don’t Know What Any Of Kamala Harris’ Policies Are  As long as she’s Not Trump, they don’t care. Same as with Biden.

EXCLUSIVE: Economist Slams Leftist Media for Mindlessly Propping Up ‘Anemic’ Biden-Harris Job Market

Spokesman Says Walz’s Lies Make Him Authentic

Harris Team in Conflict Over First Interview Plans

Harris flip-flops on building the border wall (Axios)

Jennings Upsets CNN Panel By Not Being Wiling to ‘Give Up’ Values To Vote Harris

STUDY: Google Fuels Harris-Media Honeymoon, Favors Leftist Media Nearly 10 Times More

The thread connecting Robert Kennedy Jr., chemtrails and Project 2025 (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

Harris, Who Once Called Trump’s Border Wall ‘Un-American,’ Now Pledges To Continue Building It

Read it.

The Democrat-held California Legislature passed a first-of-its-kind bill that will require public universities in the Golden State to hire undocumented students who do not have work permits, forcing Gov. Gavin Newsom to weigh in on the measure during an election year.

Time to leave.

New York Times.

Good. Now maybe they can get some education done.

Read it.

China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Chinese government announced on Aug. 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night-vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has been navigating red tape for years to develop a mine in Valley County, Idaho, that could decrease reliance on the Chinese supply of antimony, but the slow permitting process is getting in the way, energy experts told the DCNF.

The Hill.

Oh, ya think?

Fani Willis doesn’t take a breath without playing the race card.

UPDATE: Trump Lawyers: Willis ‘Disqualified’ by Race Rhetoric

Bolts.

The Nebraska Voting Rights Restoration Coalition was ready for July 19. A new state law, Legislative Bill 20, would take effect that day, instantly granting voting rights to some 7,000 people with past felony convictions. Because the law requires state officials to do very little to notify people of their newfound eligibility, let alone to automatically register them, the work of contacting and assisting those affected would largely fall to community groups.

And so the coalition reserved ad space on print, digital, and radio platforms. It organized registration drives in Omaha and Lincoln, each to be held in the first days of the law’s enactment. Those events were to kick off a statewide campaign that would touch many more towns and cities, and go through late October, when Nebraska cuts off new voter registration ahead of the general election.

But the ads never ran. No one was registered at the events in Lincoln and Omaha. More than a month after its planned launch, the campaign has yet to begin.

That’s because two Republican elected officials in Nebraska—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen—halted implementation of the new law, shutting down new registrations for people with past felonies and throwing into question the voting rights of tens of thousands of other Nebraskans who, until last month, were legally, unambiguously eligible to vote.

Vote Democrat, that is.

ZMan looks behind the curtain.

A new trend in the world of internet politics is a reboot of an old trend in actual politics and that is the abortion issue. Abortion was good politics for both parties since Roe because it let them posture without having to do anything. The Democrats promised to defend abortion and Republicans promised to end it. Meanwhile the issue languished in the courts until the Trump court overturned Roe. Since then, both sides of the abortion battle have been trying to revive their money maker.

To some degree, they have been successful. The people we call the left have convinced themselves that the election will turn on abortion. They generate fake polls and fake news stories to goose the online influencer community. Of course, the most gullible of that bunch, the right-wing influencers, take the bait. There is no group less politically astute than the right-wing influencers. The media then uses online chatter to talk about the abortion issue as if everyone cares.

The truth is, no one cares. Just two percent of people list abortion as a major concern going onto the election. As always, economics is what matters. The people who care about abortion are the most predictable voting bloc in America. The pro-abortion people vote Democrat and the anti-abortion people vote Republican. It is why both parties took these voters for granted for fifty years. They knew that these voters would never alter their behavior.

From an evolutionary standpoint, abortion (like homosexuality) is a self-correcting problem–although, admittedly, on a geologic scale.

Read it.

More accurately, it’s the Arabs’ kippah.

Politico.

When Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested late Saturday at an airport outside Paris, accused of complicity in illegal online behavior and refusing to disclose information to authorities, right-leaning American political figures leapt to his defense, including Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

Left-leaning civil liberties groups also took Telegram’s side — to a point.

The arrest is casting a spotlight on the messy global status of a messaging app whose sprawling reach and commitment to free speech have earned it a rotating cast of friends and enemies in the political arena, and whose multinational structure raises tough questions about enforcing digital rules in the age of social media.

USA Today.

U.S. Army Private Travis King, who last year ran into North Korea and was taken into custody there, will plead guilty to five charges, including desertion, while taking responsibility for his conduct, his lawyer said in a statement on Monday.

The U.S. Army charged King with crimes ranging from desertion for running into North Korea in July to assault against fellow soldiers and solicitation of child pornography, Reuters reported late last year. He was charged by the Army with 14 offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, after his release from North Korean custody in September.

His release followed weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations that led the Swedish government to retrieve King in North Korea and bring him across the border into China for a handoff to the U.S. ambassador.

“He will plead guilty to five of those (14 offenses), including desertion, three counts of disobeying an officer, and assault on a noncommissioned officer,” his lawyer said. “He will plead not guilty to the remaining offenses, which the Army will withdraw and dismiss.”

Read it.

People who have been following international news closely in recent years might have noticed that Qatar keeps appearing in the headlines and clearly punches well above its weight in world affairs for a country with only 300,000 citizens.

Lately, Qatar has been in the spotlight for housing the Hamas leadership while at the same time playing the role of the main negotiator, together with Egypt, for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Qatar also served as a safe haven for the Taliban for many years, and in 2020, facilitated a peace agreement between the United States and the Islamist group.

In between, Doha has also managed to organize the World Cup in football and was behind the largest corruption scandal in the history of the European Parliament, known as “Qatargate.”

Read it.

A massive coordinated terror attack on several locations in southwestern Pakistan has left at least 70 dead over a 24-hour period of terror which started Sunday night.

The attacks were the work of a separatist group called the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), which claimed responsibility. It started with bombings and gunfire targeting a national military camp in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, which left at least one soldier dead.

In the same area, gunmen stormed four police stations, setting vehicles on fire. By morning, a key bridge in the area was also attacked and destroyed. But the situation escalated when militants attacked a major highway in a town called Bela. They intercepted traffic and then proceeded to execute people, reports say.

Read it.

On-campus anti-Israel vandalism began as the fall semester began Monday at many colleges across the country.