Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Democrats Are Hitting the Panic Button Early Derek Hunter Derek Hunter

Democrats Are Hitting the Panic Button Early

Derek Hunter

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Scratch a Democrat and find a racist. As Kamala Harris travels the country, going from one ass-kissing interview to another, the rest of the Democratic Party establishment is starting to worry. You can’t polish a turd, but you can distract from the fact that it is a turd…but only for a while. Sooner or later, the emperor has no clothes, the sheep runs out of wool, and you’re left standing there with a turd. That’s where the Democrats are now.

The thing about Kamala Harris is the more people see her, the less they like her. She almost lost her first race for Attorney General of California…to a Republican; she was so bad as a candidate. She wins in a walk, at least in California, when she has a horrible opponent. 

After announcing her run for president in 2019, Harris polled very well and raised a ton of money. Then, people saw her on the campaign trail and heard her in interviews. Support for her collapsed to the point that she had to quit the race before a single vote was cast. Her polling as Vice President tracks right along with this – when she was made Border Czar (and she was, everyone knows it) and put in charge of voting rights (which seems to consist of mostly complaining about voter ID), people paid attention and did not like what they saw. Kamala Harris was less popular at the depths of Joe Biden’s unpopularity.

She made the perfect buffer for Biden: no matter how bad she looked, standing next to her, he looked better. 

After the coup, she’s all they have. There is no plan B. And as much as Democrats love abortion at any point, a public one in the 720th month is too much even for them.

Since no conceivable case can be made FOR Kamala Harris – and they aren’t even trying, offering only as much detail as “We want to do good stuff” – they must find another way to motivate their voters. And that other way will not be charm or personality – no one wants to drink a Miller High Life with Kamala. 

Enter the ex-presidents. 

You know things are bad when Democrats break out Bill Clinton. Hillary, fine, but Bill? It's a little awkward after so many of them publicly condemned Bill during the “Me Too” movement, albeit in a self-serving way. Then again, when the candidate’s husband has impregnated an employee, ruining his first marriage, and is alleged to have pimp-slapped an ex-girlfriend in public for daring to talk to another man, paid her $80,000 to get her to sign a non-disclosure agreement to not talk about it. You realize there is nothing resembling shame or decency left in the Democratic Party.

Honestly, at this point, there’s really only a credible rape charge difference between Bill and Pimp Doug Emhoff, so why not use him?

Then there’s Barack Obama. While not accused of rape by anyone, as far as we know, he’s about as lucky of a charm on the campaign trail as a room full of smashed mirrors; just ask Massachusetts Senator Martha Coakley. 

In his pitch, Obama went right to his favorite thing to do: talk about how awesome he thinks he is.

As president for eight years, Obama was the first president in the modern era never to achieve 3 percent GDP growth in any year; his final year was only 1.4 percent, and he was on the way down. He spent his administration whining about what he inherited from George W. Bush to justify why his economy was so bad. Then, after promising the country that Trump’s economic policies, especially his tax plan, would ruin the economy, President Trump’s economic policies were signed into law, and the economy boomed. Now, Barack is claiming credit for that. It's weird how he wants credit for what he said would be bad; what he said would ruin things after he was proven wrong. 

More than his economic illiteracy, Obama exposed just how far down the panic hole Democrats were when he told a group of black men that Harris wasn’t doing well with “the brothers” because they didn’t realize they had to vote for her. After all, she shares some melanin with them. Obama said, ““On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences.” 

That’s just a weird argument, considering it is completely devoid of any policy discussion. It’s just that she’s black. Well, half black, Obama ignores her Asian half because he can’t use it. 

But very few people “grew up” like Kamala – the child of 2 tenured professors at major universities, the child of privilege who spent her formative years on the mean streets of…Montreal, Quebec, Canada? Yep, that hotbed of the French spirit of cheese and surrender, just like all black men I’ve ever known. She did go the an HBCU, but very few black men choose to attend racially segregated institutions of higher learning, so it’s really another whiff there. 

Obama’s basic message is Kamala is black, or half black, and that should be enough for black men to vote for her. It’s the ultimate insult if you think about it. Then again, Democrats have pretty much been running with the “You’re black, and we’re Democrats, which means you have to vote for us or we’ll call you an ‘Uncle Tom’” platform for as long as I can remember why would they stop now?

That the Democrats are getting this desperate this early – everyone closes campaigns desperate – is a good sign for Republicans, but it is not a sign to take our foot off the gas. The biggest obstacle Republicans face in the election's closing weeks is complacency. Fight like you’re losing, constantly, and never let up until the other side admits it is over and they lost. Otherwise, Democrats will cheat and steal it, which they’re going to try to do. Fight like hell because that’s where the country is headed if they win. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2024/10/13/democrats-are-hitting-the-panic-button-early-n2646147?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

‘More Money Than God’ Isn’t Helping Kamala Harris

‘More Money Than God’ Isn’t Helping Kamala Harris

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Kamala Harris is one the unique forces in American politics: the more people see her, the less they like her. Nothing that instills confidence or even a sense of competence comes out of her mouth. She can’t articulate what she wants to do as president beyond “good things." I've never seen anyone rise so high without having any skills to justify that rise. And all the money in the world won’t change that.

Barack Obama rose to the presidency very quickly and without many bumps, so you might think he would fit the destruction I’ve outlined above. But Obama had beliefs – as bad and crazy as they were, he did have them. He could discuss them; he could sell them. You could question the depth of his knowledge on any subject, but the same can be said about any politician.

Well, not any politician because Kamala Harris can’t. Tim Walz can’t either, though I’m not familiar enough with his campaigns for governor to know if he’s unable to speak intelligently or has been instructed not to avoid making Harris look bad. Neither answer is perfect. 

The only reason Harris is in contention this year is the corporate media is propping her up, and the billion-dollar liberal billionaires are thrown at her.

The media’s influence is waning, but it’s not gone. Never forget that fully 36 percent of Americans believed Joe Biden was mentally up to a second term thanks exclusively to their lies and biased coverage. And before they started propping up Kamala, she was less popular than he was. That’s a lot of heavy lifting and a long distance to drag a body.

The months they’ve had to drag Kamala have not been kind to her. She started gangbusters, but people see nothing from her – she’s still being dragged. She’s like that friend helping you and a few others carry something big, and you notice they aren’t really lifting anything, only pretending. Only in this case is Kamala Harris not helping herself.

Then there’s the money.

As the media’s ability to help is fading, money can fill that void. Expect the Harris team to flood the airwaves with every manner of BS in 30-second and 1-minute increments. She has raised a ton of money and will spend it all and more. She has to. 

Some of it will be spent on “walking around money” and a ground game to get out the vote, which I pray the Trump campaign is countering. But the rest will be thrown at television, trying to convince voters that their gut instincts about her are wrong. 

See, the more people see of Kamala Harris, the less they like her, as I said. So, that means her ads can’t feature her as much as a normal campaign. 

That leaves the campaign with nothing but voice-covered attack ads against Donald Trump. But the problem for Democrats is literally everything that can be said against Donald Trump has been said and been said for years, except maybe that he’s a murderer. 

It’s not that Trump is Teflon; it’s that he’s covered with all of the attacks and the reminder that none have proven true. How many times can someone be called “Putin’s tool” by the people who empowered the Russian dictator to invade Ukraine? How often can someone be called a “friend of dictators” as the dictators in Iran actively work to help Democrats because they had it really badly under the first Trump administration? How many different ways can Trump be called an “enemy of the middle class” when the middle class can’t afford to feed their families under their self-appointed “champions” while remembering the could under him?

Having more money than God is a problem anyone running for office would love to have, but to sell a candidate to the public, you have to have a candidate the public is at least interested in buying. No one is interested in Kamala Harris, so doubling God’s bank account isn’t help. All the pretty wrapping paper in the world and the gift under the most beautiful tree ever will never change the fact that the gift is a pack of socks. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2024/10/14/more-money-than-god-isnt-helping-kamala-harris-n2646168?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson      Red Bluff Daily News 10/15/2024

    Local, state, Kamala-fornia items

About the glitch in the round-a-bout project on South Main Street: It may seem trivial that clay, despite many decades of use for the I-5 off ramp without such issues, may experience compaction under the proposed circular replacement of the former T-shaped intersection.

We have, for many years, observed a major train overpass under construction in La Pine, Oregon. The heavily trafficked US 97 needs to go over the rail tracks; decades ago, both handled a fraction of the current volume. It’s a beautifully engineered multi-lane ramp on either side of the large gap for the trains.

Just one glitch: They failed to adequately analyze the soil under the massive ramp structures, which now sit like two monoliths, or something designed for one of Evel Knievel’s dare devil stunts. In the years since discovering the instability of the soil, the structures have “subsided/sunk” a number of inches, with predictions of future sinking. The old saying applies: Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

***

I am, on principle, opposed to requests for funds, at the local, state or national level (are we over 30 trillion dollars in debt yet?) unless, in the local case, the books can be opened, examined and analyzed to see what has been done with the existing funding. Let taxpayers be informed of what has changed such that revenues, which used to be sufficient, are no longer adequate. What expenditures have gone up, or been “bootstrapped” onto existing categories, creating this apparent shortfall?

***

Not to get too mathematical, but I recall that the average home price locally was generally below $100,000 when I first began my inglorious decade-and-a-half in the real estate business. Internet calculators convert that to around $212,000 in 2024. And yet, another Internet search reveals that local homes average well over $300,000; compared to the average/median home price in California of $900,000+, that’s not bad.

That still shows “affordability” is a problem even here in the hinterlands. In fact, the same housing project that would take weeks to get approved and a year or two to build in other states—can, in parts of our not-so-fair state, take years to get approved and decades to finish. Not to mention the project-killing environmental studies, impact statements, as well as the litigious nature of opponents. Thank politics!

Like housing, gas and energy in the former Golden State is unaffordable. If your goal was for residents to exist on the precipice of being broke, you couldn’t have more effective policies than what Gov. Newsom, and his legislative and regulatory Democrats, have foisted on us.

“Chevron Exec Nukes Gavin Newsom Over Oil, Gas Storage Scheme” (Redstate.com). Chevron’s Andy Walz roasts the delusional Big Regulatory “new requirement that gas and oil companies should be subjected to a minimum storage requirement to avoid shortages and the concomitant price spikes.” He condemned it saying, “The California government remains unique in its focus on marketplace interference, with negative effects on consumers, resulting in the highest U.S. gasoline prices…California has investigated the industry numerous times for price gouging and come up with no evidence or charges.”

Bureaucrats ignorant in refining to oversee safety standards? Are these the same geniuses who are pushing a potential 47 cent hike in gas prices? Who formulated the ludicrous concept of “road diets” to inconvenience drivers into mass transit, or onto bicycles?

***

More of “Kamala’s California sojourn”: 1) “F for Fail—Performance Review of Kamala’s Stint As San Francisco City Attorney Revealed.” Bob Hoge finds, in an unearthed document, that Ms. Harris’ evaluation in 11 categories, was “below average” in 5, “average” in 2 and “above average” in only 3. she was “5 out of 5” for “Your advice memoranda, letters… and documents are easy to read and understand and are free of legalese and jargon.” Perhaps said documents were written by someone other than the same Kamala Harris that now struggles to speak coherently, while answering in “word salads.”

2) “Kamala Finally Reveals What Kind of Gun She Has—and Now She's Got a Big Problem” (Victoria Taft). Having now specified that she owns a Glock hand gun, the problem is that, as attorney general of California, Kamala Harris declared that gun to be “unsafe” because they “do not have a compliant chamber load indicator, a magazine disconnect and lacked microstamping” (gun law attorney Kostas Moros). “She supported the Unsafe Handgun Act and expanded it in 2013.” An injunction was secured against the law in 2023.

3) RFK, Jr. has told a true story of how Kamala started imprisoning parents in California whose kids missed school—the first woman she locked up was a black mother whose daughter had sickle cell anemia.

4) After Muslim terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 Americans in San Bernardino, including blacks, Asians and Hispanics, attorney general Harris failed to name a single victim and failed to condemn the attack even as gun violence. How, exactly, does that demonstrate the “high character” of Kamala Harris? Draw you own conclusions.

Happy Birthday, Christopher Columbus

Happy Birthday, Christopher Columbus

by John Hinderaker in Anti-AmericanismHistoryHolidaysTim Walz

These days, that seems to be a minority sentiment. Kamala Harris, for one, supports replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, an early harbinger of the DEI fiasco that later engulfed the U.S. Here is Kamala:


Far from representing “honesty,” erasing Columbus’s discovery of America in favor of honoring unspecified indigenous peoples is another way of saying that the discovery of America was a mistake. A tragedy. Something that never should have happened.

The same anti-American impulse reigned when Tim Walz’s administration replaced the old Minnesota state seal with a new one. The old seal was traditional: it depicted a pioneer, an Indian, a setting sun, a waterfall and pine trees, and included the state’s motto, “L’Etoile du Nord,” and the year 1858, when Minnesota joined the Union, just in time to play a heroic role in the Civil War.

In the new seal, the pioneer, the Indian and the motto are gone, replaced with a loon. And the year of statehood has been removed. Why? Because 1858 is a “traumatic date,” “not something to honor.” Erasing Columbus is just like erasing the date of statehood. These are vengeful anti-American acts. They say that it would have been better if the USA had never existed.

Finally, we can’t leave Minnesota without remembering that Tim Walz’s administration oversaw the toppling and removal from the State Capitol grounds of a statue of Columbus that had been in place since 1931. Walz and his far-left administration looked on this act of anti-American vandalism with approval. My organization has campaigned to return the statue to its rightful place. Bill Walsh writes:

A great way to celebrate Columbus Day in Minnesota would be to return the statue of Christopher Columbus to its rightful place on the State Capitol grounds. Those with a newfound interest in covering Gov. Tim Walz might want to revisit his role in standing by while his supporters pulled the statue down. Instead of protecting the statue from vandalism, the State Patrol was deployed moments after it came crashing down.

Those around the country who are observing Tim Walz for the first time have no doubt noticed a pattern.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/10/happy-birthday-christopher-columbus.php

The joke is on woke CBS News execs as new execs considering ‘blowing the place up’

The joke is on woke CBS News execs as new execs considering ‘blowing the place up’

CBS News — the once-prestigious “Tiffany Network” built by giants like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — is the latest media institution to succumb to the bizarre spectacle of full-on wokeness.

That was proven by a leaked tape of CBS’s fake-news execs idiotic­ally rebuking an actual real journalist doing his job.

“CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil got into trouble because he pressed the author of a one-sided, anti-Israel polemic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, about his warped, historically inaccurate views on the Middle East conflict.

"CBS Mornings" host Tony Dokoupil received criticism from network bosses over his interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
“CBS Mornings” host Tony Dokoupil received criticism from network bosses over his interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.CBS Mornings

It’s another example of how challenging someone like Coates — who is questioning Israel’s right to defend itself even on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre — is verboten in modern journalism these days.

00:00
05:04

What is less public is how all this weirdness is impacting CBS’s future as an ongoing business, and most important, its pending sale to Skydance, an independent studio run by movie producer David Ellison of “Top Gun: Maverick” fame.

David’s dad, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, provides much of the money behind the deal and from what I gather, he’s not too happy about his latest acquisition.

If you don’t know Larry, here’s a primer: He’s one of the world’s richest men, and one of the most pro-Israel executives in corporate America — he’s buds with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Let’s just say the people at Skydance and the Ellisons read the newspapers (particularly The Post, which I know for a fact).

They are powerless to do anything about what’s happening at CBS for now; the $28 billion deal to buy the network’s parent Paramount from the controlling Redstone family doesn’t close until sometime in the spring.

But they won’t be powerless for much longer. As one person who knows all the players at CBS’s new owners told me: “They’re thinking about blowing the place up.”

What exactly “blowing the place up” means, no one knows for sure. Will it result in the defenestration of CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and news-gathering chief Adrienne Roark, both of whom presided over the in-house thrashing of Dokoupil?

Above reproach?

Could it be the creation of a new ethics department — one devoid of DEI lunacy? One reason they chose to throw one of their own under the bus, many people believe, is because Coates is black, which in the world of DEI means he’s above reproach.

As I reported last week, the Anti-Defamation League and its chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, complained to McMahon that Dokoupil, who is Jewish, was merely doing his job and being held to an absurd double standard.

The flacks at Skydance declined to comment because they don’t officially own the network just yet (CBS press officials didn’t return emails for comment), but none of this is going unnoticed at Skydance as they see the value of the investment diminished by the woke mind virus and the controversy it unleashed that keeps the whole mess in the news, and not in a good way.

Also chiming in is CBS nominal owner, Shari Redstone, daughter of the late media mogul Sumner Redstone and architect of the media conglomerate. Shari said McMahon & Co. “made a mistake here” in their critique of Dokoupil.

Then Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks added more heat when he defended the network brass in a memo that appears to be written by some leftist in his DEI department.

The good news is the Ellisons and their partners at RedBird Capital, an investment firm that specializes in media, are said to be united that the CBS woke show must end, I am told by people who know their thinking.

They’re aware of another looming controversy that threatens their investment: Whether the esteemed CBS “60 Minutes” news magazine favorably edited its interview with Kamala Harris.

Yes, the woke suits at CBS are playing with fire — and their jobs — for a lot of reasons, including simple math.

I’ve read the Paramount balance sheet, and it doesn’t break out how much the news division earns (or loses) on its own.

The division is an expensive one at that. It costs money to run a big news operation. Woke programming costs even more in an era of cord cutting.

As I point out in my new book, “Go Woke Go Broke; The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America,” businesses that continue to go there are increasingly crushed by consumers.

That’s why my Wall Street sources who know Ellison and RedBird say the news division could be sold at some point.

They’re more concerned with monetizing the sports programming like CBS’s decidedly less political football coverage.

In the interim, though, David Ellison and pops Larry want CBS News to go back to its roots, people close to them tell me.


They don’t believe there’s a market for woke programming given the crowded marketplace occupied by the likes of MSNBC. “If CBS is going to survive, it’s got to get back to down-the-middle programming,” said one person with knowledge of Skydance’s thinking.

And, they tell me, if that takes blowing up the place, so be it.