Posts Tagged ‘Herschel Walker’

An End To Herschel Walker Emails

Wednesday, December 7th, 2022

Republican Herschel Walker lost the Georgia senate runoff to Democrat Raphael Warnock, meaning that the Senate will have a 51-49 Democratic majority to start 2023.

I’m going to leave the whys and hows of how Republicans lost a winnable seat to others. What I am going to note is that we know, with a 100% surety, one reason Walker didn’t lose the runoff: A failure to send out enough donation solicitation emails.

The Walker campaign sent out a shitload of those.

Because I have a blog, am signed up to various political sites, and have occasionally donated small amounts of money to various Republican candidates, I get a tsunami of fundraising emails, all of which filed in a Political folder. And no one, including the Ted Cruz campaign (I donated to both senate and presidential runs) has sent me more email solicitations than the Herschel Walker campaign.

Since Walker announced his run on August 25, 2021, I have received no less than 751 fundraising emails. Here’s a screencap of just the Walker emails I received July 19-26:

But it’s not just Walker himself asking for money for his campaign. People who have asked me for money for Walker include:

  • Mary Vought (executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund)
  • President Trump
  • Marco Rubio
  • Jim Jordan
  • Ted Cruz
  • Ron DeSantis
  • Nikki Haley
  • Brian Kemp
  • Ronna McDaniel (RNC chairwoman)
  • Elise Stefanik
  • Tim Scott
  • Mike Pompeo
  • Erich Pratt (Gun Owners of America)
  • Charlie Kirk (for Turning Point PAC)
  • Josh Hawley
  • Tom Cotton
  • Etc.
  • Even his dog Cheerio “sent” me email asking for money. The response must have been underwhelming, because they stopped sending those a while back.

    I realize campaigns need to do fundraising. But clearly carpet bombing people’s inboxes goes far past the point of diminishing returns.

    So, I for one, am looking forward to not receiving a zillion emails from Herschel Walker from now on.

    (Ironically, I received one today from John James via The Post Millennial, despite the runoff being over…)

    Watching The Red Wave Approach Shore

    Saturday, October 22nd, 2022

    Always keeping in mind Instapundit’s “Don’t get cocky!” warning, there are a whole lot of signs that this year’s midterm is going to be another Republican wave election along the lines of 2010 or 2014.

    Here are some signposts for the impending Red Tsunami:

  • Remember how Democrats crowed how Roe vs. Wade was going to doom Republican electoral chances? Yeah, not so much.

    Republicans made massive gains with independent women in recent weeks as Democrats ramped up their messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections.

    Forty-nine percent of voters plan to vote for the Republican nominee to represent their House district while 45 percent said they’d back their Democratic opponent, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday. Of particular note was a 32 point swing among independent women toward the GOP. In September’s iteration of the poll, Democrats boasted a 14 point lead among that demographic, but by October, Republicans held an 18 point advantage.

    While Democratic officials and progressive commentators had suggested that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade might lessen the expected electoral blow of the midterms, the swing toward the GOP among independent women — the group most heavily targeted by Democratic strategists — suggests that their focus on abortion might be to their own detriment.

    In a TV segment last month, Republican operative Matt Gorman was rebuked by his fellow panelists for suggesting that abortion “is not in the top four of issues.”

    Yamiche Alcindor of PBS and NBC insisted that on the campaign trail “abortion comes up 90 percent of the time” when she speaks with voters. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and former senator who lost her re-election bid in 2016, shouted over other guests to declare “I hope Matt keeps saying that everywhere he goes — that abortion isn’t really an issue here in this election. I think it is exactly what infuriates women when they hear that.”

    According to a study conducted by AdImpact, Democrats spent 73 million on messaging ads about abortion in September, which is “about a third of all Democratic television ad spending,” per NPR.

    Twenty-six percent of voters in the Times/Siena poll identified the economy as the most important issue facing the country today. That was followed by inflation (18 percent), other (9 percent), the state of democracy (8 percent), immigration and abortion (five percent apiece), and then political division (four percent).

    Only 24 percent of voters said the country was on the right track, while 64 percent indicated the opposite. Democrats presently hold the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, and President Joe Biden’s approval rating is nearly 20 points underwater.

    So how do you explain a 32 point swing between two polls? A few possible answers: A.) Democrat’s loud, radical position on abortion is actually alienating independent women, B.) The crappy Biden economy is really starting to bite, or C.) Pollsters running biased polls to help Democrats simply stopped lying in order for their final electoral predictions to more closely match reality. Much as I’d like to believe A is the cause, I think C is the more likely culprit. Caveat: The sample was “792 likely voters nationwide,” which is a pretty damn small sample.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • It doesn’t help that Democrats are on the wrong side of the crime issue yet again.

    Democrats have no solutions to today’s crime surge.

    Here’s how they shrug off the mayhem.

    First: Deep denial.

    Through Sept. 27, New Orleans suffered 208 homicides, up 44% versus that period in 2021 and 141% in 2019. The Crescent City has become America’s Murder Capital.

    “I do not embrace that at all,” said Democratic Mayor La Toya Cantrell. “It isn’t based on what’s happening on the ground.” She later said that “our city is safer than it’s been in a long time.”

    Crime books can be cooked: Curbing arrests can “erase” lawlessness by leaving it unrecorded. But there’s no faking a cadaver. Regardless, Cantrell scoffs at humiliating police data.

    Then there’s the revolving door for violent criminals Soros-backed Democrat DAs have instituted:

    100% gun control would not have stopped David Jakubonis who, last July 21, confronted Zeldin on the hustings, shoved a sharp keychain weapon beside the candidate’s neck, and said: “You’re done.”

    Jakubonis was armed and threatened a congressman.

    Regardless, he was free the next day before being arrested on federal charges.

    Vincent Buccino savored pizza outside a Hell’s Kitchen eatery on Sept. 9.

    An unprovoked attacker smashed a chair over his head and broke his arm.

    The unidentified criminal remains at large.

    Michael Palacios terrorized a Manhattan McDonald’s on Sept. 16. After harassing patrons, he yanked an ax from his backpack, menaced diners, and chopped up a table, chairs, and glass wall. He, too, was arrested and swiftly sprung without bail.

    Palacios was arrested again on Oct. 11, for alleged graffiti and bicycle theft.

    Once more, Palacios was freed without bail.

    And if you dare to notice this, Democrats will call you a racist. “Democrats shout, ‘Racism!’ as often as people exhale.”

  • Speaking of being soft on crime, more and more citizens are noticing.

    In July 2021, House Bill 1054 took effect in the Evergreen State after being passed by the Democratic state legislature and signed by the Democratic governor over the objections of [Chelan County sheriff Brian Burnett] and state law-enforcement associations.

    Before they can pursue a vehicle, the new law requires that officers ensure that four conditions have been met: (1) An officer must have either a reasonable suspicion a driver is impaired due to drugs or alcohol, or probable cause to believe that he has committed certain kinds of violent crimes or sex crimes; (2) pursuit must be necessary to identify or apprehend the suspect; (3) the driver must be an imminent threat to the safety of others such that the risks of not pursuing him outweigh the risks of pursuit; and (4) a supervisor has authorized pursuit.

    Burnett told National Review that these restrictions represent a threat to public safety. Anecdotally, that’s evidenced by Spitzer’s sojourn across the region and, statistically, it’s backed up by the data. Prior to HB 1054’s taking effect, the state recorded, on average, around 2,000 stolen vehicles per month. Since its passage, that figure has soared, reaching heights in excess of 4,000 per month.

    “What we’re seeing on an average daily basis — whether it’s our jurisdiction or one of our neighboring jurisdictions — is there’s people that don’t stop for us all day long,” said Burnett. “It can be anything from a stolen vehicle, to somebody that we have probable cause on, or just a basic traffic stop, and, you know, next thing on it’s pedal to the metal and they’re off and running,” he continued.

    Burnett and his fellow law-enforcement officials had foreseen these issues and lobbied against the bill, but he said lawmakers refused to take their concerns seriously.

    “The response early on — because we have a Democratic-controlled Senate and House, and it’s a fairly large margin there — it was almost to the point of, I’ll call it arrogance,” remembered Burnett. The message the legislature sent to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs was: “We don’t need you, we don’t need your opinion,” he added. “We were begging them and telling them and giving them reasons why: ‘Please don’t do this, it’s bad, bad policy,’” he said, but they ignored the pleas, because their majorities (57–41 in the House and 28–21 in the Senate) empower them to impose their will without compromise. But public opinion will probably assert itself eventually, given that crime is surging in the state: Washington set records for homicides in 2020 and then again 2021.

    Democrats have a long history, stretching back at least into the 1970s, of soft-on-crime policies costing them elections. And Soros DAs intent on “bail reform” have made them even softer on crime than they were in the nadir of the 1970s.

    (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics.)

  • Democrats think they may have peaked to early.

    The 40,000-foot view is bad enough, but it’s the steady drumbeat of discouraging race-by-race poll results that now has Democrats bracing for a punishing midterm.

    In the battle to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, Republicans have taken small leads in Wisconsin and Nevada, and Herschel Walker is still hanging around despite the October-surprise claims about his ex-girlfriend’s abortion. RealClearPolitics now puts Dr. Oz in the lead in Pennsylvania, after adjusting for historical polling errors, and projects a 52-48 GOP Senate majority.

    In the House, counting “safe,” “likely” and “leans,” RealClearPolitics gives Republicans a 221-176 lead, with 38 more races considered toss-ups. In June, that outlet projected the GOP would gain 24.5 seats; now it forecasts a 27-seat pickup.

    In reliably blue Oregon, a Republican is poised to take the governorship for the first time in 35 years. Michigan governor and lockdown enthusiast Gretchen Whitmer is up only now leading by just 5 points in the latest poll. Even the New York governor race has tightened up, with Quinnipiac putting Democrat Kathy Hochul up only 4 points — and independents breaking toward challenger Lee Zeldin 57% to 37%.

    “I think we had three really good weeks in August that everybody patted themselves on the back,” an anonymous Democratic advisor to major donors tells Politico. “We were like, ‘Yeah, that should be enough to overcome two years of shitty everything’.” Now, he says, “It’s not looking great. The best we can hope for right now is a 50-50 Senate, but the House is long gone.”

    Oddsmakers have similarly flipped red when it comes to the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate, joining a longstanding bet that they’ll win control of the House.

    Yes, Democrats “peaked” on election night in 2020 when they used massive voting fraud in a handful of districts to steal the election for Biden (along with a senate race or two) and then acted like they had a blowout mandate to impose social justice on the country.

  • The Democrat label is now toxic, and every time voters see Democrats speak, they seem to turn against them.

    The Republican surge is animated by decisive debate victories on Friday in three key races: Georgia (Senate), Michigan (Governor), and Wisconsin (Governor). Georgia had been trending Democrat before the debate under the weight of Hershel Walker’s scandals, but likely no more.

    Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, seemed like a hopeless case, but now, on the strength of a decisive win in her debate with incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer the race seems winnable. The Republican Governor’s Association, after waiting to commit, now is pumping millions into her campaign. Responding to Dixon’s surge, former president Obama has announced plans to campaign against her in Michigan.

    And, in Wisconsin, Republican Tim Michaels clearly defeated a largely passive and obviously aging Democratic governor Tony Evers.

    Walker was supposed to lose the debate because, as a football hero, he’s not necessarily very articulate. Coming up against an experienced pastor, Senator Raphael Warnock’s chances seemed dim. But Walker surprised everyone with a strong performance. Whatever the issue he pivoted to bring it back to inflation and Joe Biden. Surprisingly, on abortion he indicated new flexibility and backed it in cases of rape or a danger to the life of the mother. But, above all he seemed to have mastered his new trade of politics and was able to spar with the best of them.

    The most important debate will come next week in Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Oz and stroke-impaired John Fetterman on October 25th. Fetterman won’t release his medical records and recent on camera interviews indicate that he mispronounces words and cannot easily understand what he hears unless it is printed out in front of him.

    Whatever his medical prognosis, he cannot recover from his radical positions on pardoning and releasing one in three Pennsylvania prison inmates and on defunding the police.

    Other than the Oz-Fetterman race, we now lead in all contests for seats currently held by the Republicans. North Carolina is close but Ted Budd holds a consistent lead. And, despite a less than stellar debate performance, JD Vance is ahead in Ohio.

    “Every debate has tanked the Democrat in the polls.”

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Things are so bad that Democrats are shifting money from safe seats to really safe seats.

    Some “safe seats” aren’t very safe anymore for suddenly vulnerable Democrats, and that has panicked PACs moving campaign dollars to protect previously invulnerable seats.

    We’re down to the wire in Election 2022, and stuff just got real.

    Today’s news takes us to deep blue Oregon, where onetime shoo-in Kurt Schrader just got the rug pulled out from under him by his own Democrat Party as he fights off Republican Amy Ryan Courser. According to AdImpact (as spotted by Josh Kraushaar), party ad spending for Schrader in the 5th district was shifted to the 6th to boost Andrea Salinas against Republican Mike Erickson. [As noted in the comments below, Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated Rep. Kurt Schrader in the Democratic Primary. -LP]

    Maybe you’re thinking this kind of thing happens all the time, and it does.

    But it doesn’t often happen that Democrats appear to be writing off a district that Presidentish Joe Biden won in 2020 by nine points, to shore up a district that Biden won by 13 points.

    If 10-and-up is the Democrats’ new firewall, they’re in bigger trouble than even I imagined. Complicating things even more for Oregon Democrats, gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek (looking to replace the outgoing and execrable Kate Brown) regularly polls behind Republican Christine Drazan.

    Stephen Green notes that Oregon may be a special case because “Portland has served as Ground Zero for some of the craziest progressive ideas being put into terrible practice.” Wait, turning your city over to Antifa for endless riots isn’t popular with voters? Who knew?

  • You know who else thinks Democrats have gone to far pushing social justice? Would you believe the Lightbringer himself?

    Former President Barack Obama slammed Democrats in a recent podcast, calling them “buzzkills” whose identity politics and cancel culture rhetoric force people to “walk on eggshells.”

    Speaking with four of his former employees on the Pod Save America podcast, the former prez said that his fellow Democrats need to tone it down and understand that everyone makes mistakes, the Daily Mail reports.

    “Sometimes Democrats are [buzzkills]. Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes,” he said, adding that Democrats should learn from he felt were his mistakes as president.

  • What does it say when the biggest beneficiary of white guilt and victimhood identity politics in political history says that Democrats have gone too far in that direction?

    A sane party might be inclined to listen to him.

    But the Democratic Party hasn’t been sane in a long, long time…

    LinkSwarm for August 28, 2021

    Friday, August 27th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Biden’s Afghan debacle continues to top the news:

  • At least 90 people, including 13 American soldiers, were killed in in a bombing at an entrance to the Kabul airport.
  • Un-Fucking believable: “U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate.”

    U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.

    The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

    But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials.

    “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

    “French officials gave the Nazi occupiers a list of Parisian Jews they wanted to remain safe…”

  • What is behind Biden’s inexplicable trust for the Taliban?

    It is becoming increasingly difficult to draw any conclusion other than that President Biden knowingly and willfully surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban.

    To be clear, this is different from concluding that Biden committed to a recklessly premature date for withdrawing all U.S. forces (which, practically speaking, would necessitate NATO’s departure, too) while being aware that the Taliban were capturing territory and that the Afghan security forces might be unable to hold them off over the ensuing months.

    That would be bad, but not as damning as what I am deducing.

    I now believe Biden long ago reasoned that the Taliban were going to take over the country inevitably and decided to treat them as the de facto government. Consistent with this — and with the progressive Democratic orientation that American military power is needlessly provocative, and that concessions are the preferred way to inspire rogues into good behavior — Biden determined back in the spring that he would set a firm deadline to pull our forces out, and then demonstrate to the Taliban that the deadline was real.

    Snip.

    Biden saw the Taliban as the regime in waiting, with whom his administration was energetically negotiating. If he proved to the Taliban that the U.S. really was leaving no matter what, then he figured the Taliban would allow — even facilitate — the evacuation of thousands of American civilian workers, contractors, and diplomatic personnel. Biden would pull out American troops and trust the Taliban, thus appeased, with the fate of the remaining Americans.

    This is mind-boggling, but not the half of it. Biden was also effectively administering the coup de grace to the Afghan government, and not only by elevating the Taliban to the sole Afghan party with which his administration would negotiate the terms of the U.S. departure. Biden would also pull out in a manner that undermined the Afghan security forces’ capacity to fight the Taliban. After all, if U.S. troops and contractors continued providing technical and logistical support to the Afghan ground and air forces, the Taliban might interpret that as an American commitment to continue the war. Biden would make sure the jihadists had no cause for doubt.

    In this, Biden had to know he would be leaving to the Taliban the fate of tens of thousands of Afghans who supported American combat, intelligence, training, and nation-building efforts over the last 20 years. Though many government officials, members of Congress, and influential commentators pleaded with the Biden administration to fast-track the visa process and evacuate the Afghans while American forces were still in control, Biden plainly rationalized that this could provoke the Taliban into retaliatory measures — potentially against Americans — that would put public pressure on him to maintain U.S. forces in the country. Biden’s priority was to withdraw them. Ergo, the Taliban — yes, that Taliban — would be trusted to deal benignly with America’s Afghan allies.

    Read the piece for Andrew McCarthy’s reasoning behind this conclusion, including the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and evacuating Bagram in the dead of night. My only quibble with his analysis is that his working assumption that Biden is making the decisions of the Biden Administration. I rather doubt it…

  • On the ground in Afghanistan: things are bad:

    “My phone is melting, and my inbox is jammed, from grown Afghan men pleading, crying to get out with their wives and children,” my reader begins:

    All of them used to work for our company. They are engineers, electricians, lab technicians, urban planners, CAD drafters, surveyors, concrete masons, welders — all skilled technical and professional people who enjoyed what we would consider a solid middle-class life. Some went on to become lecturers at university. These aren’t herders and farmers — they are civilized, educated, middle class tradesman and professionals who trusted their government to maintain the safety and security of the nation. Their average age of the parents is late thirties. Their average family size is seven. The youngest child among them is 10 days old. Inside of a month, their lives are uprooted by bloodthirsty barbarians. They are hunted because they helped the Americans.

    One of our families has been waiting in the Entry Control Point for four days straight – living in trash and filth, with no shelter, jammed among thousands of others. The parents know full well what awaits if they are fortunate to get out. They are willing to live the life of a refugee in a camp near a military installation. Essentially a one room United Nations Refugee Center shack, or group expeditionary tents, no indoor plumbing, no kitchen. They share public toilets and showers and live in a fenced compound in a sea of other shacks or tents surrounded by gravel — for at least 12-18 months while they wait for the State Department to process their visas. They are willing to walk away from their middle-class comforts and live in refugee camps for well over a year, possibly two, for the freedom and liberty of the United States. Amanullah asked me yesterday if I could get him to Mexico so he could walk to Texas so he wouldn’t have to live in a refugee camp. They know.

    Don’t let anyone claim that Afghans who worked for America or international organizations will be fine.

    “Here’s a kick in the gut,” my reader continues. “Fawad — not his real name — called me crying last night after midnight. His brother-in-law was killed by the Taliban earlier that day. He had worked for an American contractor in Zabul [a southern province considered part of the Taliban’s heartland]. He was beaten in the street and then shot in the head so the villagers could see.”

  • More of that California ballot fraud that doesn’t exist. “300 recall ballots, drugs, multiple driver’s licenses found in vehicle of passed out felon: Torrance police.” I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Random X. Felon wasn’t working for Larry Elder…
  • Speaking of which: Democrats have the State of California investigating Larry Elder’s campaign.
  • Speaking of voting fraud, polls show growing support for voter ID.
  • Supreme Court upholds reinstatement of President Trump’s “stay in Mexico” policy for illegal aliens. Texas and Missouri were the lead plaintiffs.
  • The Supreme Court also struck down Biden’s eviction moratorium.

    “It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” the Court majority wrote in an unsigned opinion.

    “Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the opinion continued. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”

  • On his way out the door, disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo granted clemency to Weather Underground cop-killer David Gilbert.

    David Gilbert is the father of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. He had Chesa with his then-partner Kathy Boudin.

    David Gilbert was also a member of the Weather Underground, the domestic terrorist group responsible for the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in New York.

    Gilbert and Boudin dropped off infant Chesa with a babysitter before driving to the robbery.

    The terrorists, with members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force and Black Liberation Army, robbed the truck and wounded guard Joe Trombino and killed his co-worker Peter Paige. Police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady died in the shootout.

    A jury convicted Gilbert of three counts of second-degree murder and four counts of first-degree robbery.

  • Oh: They also took his Emmy away. The one they gave to him after we all knew he was a Granny-murderer…
  • Politico sells to German publishing giant Axel Springer for about $1 billion. Hopefully this will result in Axel Springer CEO Mathias Dopfner firing some snowflakes when he insists they do actual reporting rather than waging social justice… (Hat tip: Director Blue.) (Previously.)
  • Emerald Robinson: “How I Murdered The Weekly Standard“:

    My modest proposal was that the 3% of Republicans who never approved of President Trump should stop pretending that they were spokesmen for the 97% of Republicans who did. In the corporate media, where 97% of that 3% were keeping a high profile on cable news, the distortions became preposterous. This seemed to me elementary logic. But for the tiny group of delusional Never Trumpers, my modest proposal fell on them like a ton of bricks.

    In the end, my essay ignited a kind of public war among conservative intellectuals that helped to bring down the neocons and the Never Trumpers in the media. Not only did the Weekly Standard shut down, but the National Review kicked out Jonah Goldberg, and the neocon’s peewee prince Bill Kristol went to work for Democrats – all in six months. How did that happen? They had no base of support outside of the Beltway, and they were in willful denial about their own unpopularity. This dynamic was obvious at all levels of media, but let’s take a high visibility example: the old panel at Fox New’s Special Report with Bret Baier. Now, Bret Baier is obviously a very quiet Never Trumper but if you stacked your daily panel with Stephen Hayes, A. B. Stoddard, and Jonah Goldberg and these were the “conservative” pundits you picked to defend President Trump’s policies then it’s obvious what Bret was doing.

    A week or so after my essay appeared, I got a very short and shrill phone call from one of Bret’s staffers – who was a rabid Hillary Clinton supporter, no less. When I picked up the call, she was angry and breathless and did not want to do small talk. She said: “You don’t know what you’ve done, you don’t understand the damage you’ve caused to this show.” I asked her to calm down, and be specific. She hung up instead.

    This bizarre exchange piqued my interest enough to watch Bret Baier’s show that night, which was an emotion I rarely felt for Special Report. Sure enough, Bret Baier ended the episode with an odd little “farewell” segment to Stephen Hayes. The gist of it was that Hayes was suddenly taking “a one year vacation to Spain” with the family. My first thought was: who does a video farewell when they take a vacation? The whole thing was pure baloney. It was now perfectly clear why Bret’s hysterical staffer had called. Apparently my essay had been a crucial factor in getting Stephen Hayes kicked off TV. Someone over at corporate had finally looked at the piss poor ratings Bret was getting and the light bulb went off: no one wants to listen to Hayes anymore. That was certainly true. (A few months later, the sour puss A. B. Stoddard also disappeared from the Special Report show – this time without a video farewell.)

    Hayes getting axed left me surprised. How was I to know that Fox executives could read? How was I to know that Baier and Hayes were roommates in college? Did Hayes sail to Spain on one of those idiotic cruises that he was always pushing on his subscribers? Jonah Goldberg had been taunting me from the pages of the National Review that the Never Trumpers were all doing fine – and then suddenly none of them were doing fine. In his video farewell, Hayes wanted everyone to know that he’d be back in a year, and that he was still the chief editor of the Weekly Standard magazine. Both of these statements actually turned out to be false.

    Five months later, I got a call from an insider that all the employees at the Weekly Standard were being asked to prepare for the worst. Had anyone run with this story yet? No they hadn’t. Had it somehow fallen to me to be the first to announce the end of the celebrated neocon magazine where Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes had regularly taunted the American working class? Yes it had. The Lord had delivered them into my hands

    Honestly, it was less of a murder than documenting a suicide…

  • Snopes co-founder and owner caught plagiarizing dozens of articles and Snopes went ahead and fact-checked it for us.”
  • Communist purges communists:

    Like the Soviet Union under Stalin, Current Affairs is the private kingdom of one man, in this case the dandy communist Nathan Robinson. For five years, Robinson has been all over Current Affairs like a cheap suit, while a small team of deluded volunteers has labored in his salt mine, generating content for the greater glory of the revolution, and their leader, the Potemkin page-turner. But even five-year plans go awry.

    Lyta Gold, who was hired to generate ‘Amusements’, is not amused. Gold claims that when the staff attempted to form a workers’ co-operative, Robinson fired them all.

    It would take a heart of stone not to laugh… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x More Effective Than Vaccines At Stopping Delta.”
  • “Large CDC Study Doesn’t Support Mask Mandates in Schools.” This is the sort of science Democrats don’t want settled. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • In an administration that sucks, Jen Psaki stands out for really sucking hard.
  • Speaking of sucking, here’s Spanish-language media omitting embarrassing information in their translation:

  • Texas Wins Preliminary Victory Against Biden Administration in Medicaid Lawsuit. The district court’s order temporarily suspends the Biden administration’s revocation of Texas Section 1115 Medicaid waiver.” The Biden Administration retroactively denied a waiver issued by the Trump Administration in an attempt to force ObamaCare down the state’s throat.
  • Texas election integrity law finally passes the Texas House, meaning Democrat’s quorum-busting stunts got them Jack and Squat.
  • Herschel Walker is running for the U.S. Senate.
  • Germany Schnitzels Itself After Ditching Nuclear, Coal Power For Green Pipe Dreams.” Keep enjoying the highest energy costs in Europe, Deutschland…
  • Samsung tops Intel as world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer.
  • Not news: Vultures eating dead cows. News: vultures eating live cows.
  • The Shat at 90.
  • Who should you back with your Go Fund Me money, Brett Butler or Spinal Tap’s Viv Savage? (I did toss a little money Brett’s way, as I knew her a little back in my standup comedy days…)
  • “Americans At Mercy Of Taliban Just Glad We Don’t Have A President Who Posts Mean Tweets Anymore.”
  • RNC: Video, Recaps, and Recaps of Recaps

    Wednesday, August 26th, 2020

    I’ve been too busy to watch the RNC, but I have been watching selected videos and reading recaps, so here’s my recap of the recaps, starting with videos of some of the most notable speakers.

  • South Carolina Senator Tim Scott:

    “In an overwhelmingly white district, the voters judged me not on the color of my skin but on the content of my character.”

    “Our family went from cotton to congress in one lifetime.”

  • Running back legend Herschel Walker:

    “I take it as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a thirty seven year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they’re talking about. Growing up in the deep south, I’ve seen racism up close. I know what it is, and it isn’t Donald Trump.”

  • Maryland Republican congressional candidate Kim Klacik:

    Democrats have controlled this part of Baltimore for over 50 years, and they have run this beautiful place right into the ground. Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on every corner, drug addicts, guns on the street: that’s now the norm in many neighborhoods. You’d think Maryland taxpayers would be getting a lot, because our taxes are out of control. Instead we’re paying for decades of incompetence and corruption. Sadly, the same cycle of decay exists in many Democrat-run cities, and yet the Democrats still assume black people will vote for them, no matter how much they let us down and take us for granted. We’re sick of it. We’re not going to take it any more.

    (Previously.)

  • Georgia Democratic State Representative Vernon Jones:

    “Unfortunately, Democrats have turned their backs on our brave police officers. They call it defunding, and it’s a danger to our cities, our neighborhoods, and our children…Our police need more funding, not less.”

  • Maximo Alverez, entrepreneur and survivor of Cuban communism:

    “The country I was born in is gone, totally destroyed. When I watch the news from Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and other cities, when I see the history being rewritten, I hear echoes of a former life I never wanted to hear again. I see shadows I thought I had outrun.”

  • Transcript of the McClokey’s speech: “Whether it’s the defunding of police, ending cash bails or criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again, or encouraging anarchy and chaos on our streets, it seems as if the Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens.”
  • And they’re already receiving death threats.
  • Mollie Hemingway offers 6 Quick Takeaways From The First Night Of The Republican National Convention.

    One major theme of the Democratic convention was that America is a racial hell-hole and Donald Trump is racist. It is quite typical for Democrats and other political groups to incite or exploit racial hatred, prejudice, or tension for political gain around the time of elections. While black voters are some of Democrats’ most reliable supporters, fear of a larger segment of them being recruited by Trump has led to particular hysteria among Democratic strategists this election season.

    The typical Republican response is to cower in fear or respond defensively that they are not racist. But the first night of this convention was not that at all. At this convention, Republicans traded defense for offense.

    Whether it was Jones or Klacik speaking about their frustrations with how Democrats handle race issues, Haley describing the racism she faced as a little brown girl growing up in South Carolina, Walker talking about how offended he gets when people claim his friend Trump is racist, or Scott describing how his family went from “cotton to Congress in a lifetime,” the speeches and rhetoric weren’t timid or tiptoeing around issues but tackling them head on. It was a surprising change of pace.

  • Ace of Spades has Part One recap of the first night. Including this:

  • And Part Two.
  • A recap from Chicks On the Right.