Democrats Form Circular Firing Squad, and Chuck Schumer's in the Center

As angry as the Democrats pretended to be about the Schumer Shutdown, what really sent them into a rage was a vote that would…fund the government, and send money to all those SNAP recipients they pretended to care about. Wall Street Journal: The decision by eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus to side with Republicans on a bill ending the government shutdown drew heated condemnations from other members of the party and reopened longstanding divisions on how best to fight back against President Trump. The vote to advance the measure also put new scrutiny on the leadership of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), with left-leaning critics saying the defections showed he couldn’t keep his troops in line. Democrats were coming off strong election wins this past Tuesday, and many lawmakers and activists said the results showed that Senate Democrats should continue to hold the line on their demands for extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. (Wall Street Journal) X and Bluesky were filled with progressives howling in rage, and POLITICO reports that Chuck Schumer’s position as Senate Minority Leader is on shaky ground because progressives thought that last Tuesday’s victories at the polls would give them power they didn’t have before the elections. POLITICO: The Democratic base wants a fight. Chuck Schumer won’t give it to them. The Senate minority leader on Thursday backed away from the shutdown confrontation that many liberal voters and activist leaders had been pushing for — arguing that closing the government would only empower President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk in their bureaucracy-slashing campaign. That decision sent shockwaves through the left and had many in their ranks seething at a top party leader who had sought to win them over in recent years. Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of the liberal grassroots organization Indivisible, quickly dubbed it the “Schumer surrender.” “I guess we’ll find out to what extent Schumer is leading the party into irrelevance,” he said in an interview, adding that his decision “tells me maybe he’s lost a step.”… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it a mistake. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called it “a very bad night.” And Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Ca.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of being ineffective and called for his removal. “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” Khanna said in a post on X following the vote. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?” (POLITICO) One activist summed up his view of Schumer, also from POLITICO: And further outside Washington, longtime party activists and high-dollar donors fumed about Schumer: “He sucks,” one state party chair who was granted anonymity to respond candidly, adding that the cave constituted “political malpractice.” Too bad, so sad.

Progressives Furious That SNAP Funds Will Flow Again

The most bizarre thing about the Democrats’ meltdown over eight Democratic Senators voting to end the filibuster is that moments before the vote, they were all emphasizing how the “Trump shutdown” was starving Americans. As soon as it was clear that the funds would be flowing soon, they howled in rage that the pain would end. David Strom: Nobody is more upset by the pain ending than progressives. They are absolutely furious at the Democrats who voted to get the money flowing again to SNAP beneficiaries, government workers, and air traffic controllers. They absolutely LOVED the shutdown. Why? It’s simple: progressives actually want to turn up the pain and pressure on the American public because they believe it enhances their power. It is a simple calculation for them, and one that leftists have made for two centuries. It is an essential strategy in revolutionary politics, and one of the key reasons that leftism, terror, and terrorism almost always go together. Marxists, for instance, worked against unionization for decades because they believed that unions would reduce the revolutionary pressures brought about by the exploitation of workers. That exploitation, they argued, was essential to creating the pressure for the coming revolution. Social insurance states were an obstacle to the victory of communism. Out of pain comes their power. The unhappier people were, the more likely they would turn to the communists… Progressives are angry because they wanted to “heighten the contradictions.” This is, for them, not just about elections; it is about fundamentally restructuring society. That’s why restoring SNAP funding is such a loss in their eyes. They WANT the suffering to get worse. They want the air travel system to collapse. They want to maximize the pain.  (Hot Air)

Supreme Court Declines to Revisit Same Sex Marriage Decision

Kim Davis, a County Clerk in Kentucky, appealed to the Supreme Court a case that might have resulted in a reversal of their earlier decision in Obergefell to mandate legalized gay marriage in all 50 states. The Court declined to consider her appeal. New York Times: The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request that it consider overturning its landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage a decade ago.The court, without comment, declined the petition, filed by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who gained national attention in 2015 when she defied a court order and refused to issue same-sex licenses because of her religious beliefs. She had asked the Supreme Court to reverse an order that required her to pay more than $300,000 to a couple denied a marriage license and to overturn the same-sex marriage ruling from 2015. (New York Times) Democrats have been trying to gin up fear that the conservative court would tear up precedent. Nope. Ed Morrissey: It takes four justices to accept a case for review, or to grant certiorari, in the court’s lingo. Trump appointed three of the current justices on the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Two other conservatives predate their appointment: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, neither of whom can be described as a slave to stare decisis. This is the same panel that overturned Roe, after all, just three years ago. And yet, despite that 6-3 decision, the same court couldn’t find four justices interested in revisiting Obergefell. (Hot Air) Even in a conservative-dominated Supreme Court, Obergefell is here to stay.

Donald Trump Threatens to Sue the BBC, and the BBC Is Imploding

The BBC is having a tough time lately, and it is all its fault. The Telegraph took the scalps of the top echelon of BBC leadership when it reported that they had buried an investigation into bias that showed a pattern of manipulating news stories to fit false narratives. Daybreak covered the controversy yesterday, and President Trump was clearly reading our work. New York Times: President Trump on Monday threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion over a documentary that his lawyer claimed included “malicious, disparaging” edits to a speech Mr. Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021. The legal threat came in a letter from Alejandro Brito, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, to the BBC that was obtained by The New York Times. The letter demanded a full retraction of the documentary, an apology and what his lawyers said would be payments that “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.” The letter said that if those demands were not met, “President Trump will be left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than $1,000,000,000 (One Billion Dollars) in damages.” It said that the lawsuit would be filed if the BBC had not taken action by this Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern time. The head of the BBC, Tim Davie, and the chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned on Sunday after growing pressure over the editing of the documentary. The BBC said on its website that it had received a letter threatening legal action and that it would “respond in due course.” The documentary, called “Trump: A Second Chance?” and broadcast before the presidential election last year, had already been removed from the BBC’s online player. Samir Shah, the BBC’s chair, said in a separate letter Monday that complaints about the editing of the clip had been discussed by the standards committee in January and May, and that the points raised in the review had been relayed to the BBC team that produced the documentary, part of a long-running current affairs series called Panorama. “With hindsight, it would have been better to take more formal action,” he wrote. He added: “We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologize for that error of judgment.” (New York Times) Great Britain, it should be noted, does not have an absence of malice standard as we do here in the United States. Not that there is any question of malice here. It was clearly done with malicious intent.

Momentum Building to Ban Cell Phones in Schools?

No serious person questions whether cell phones in schools have been detrimental; however, there has been considerable debate about the extent of the problem and how to address it. Well, in Western Pennsylvania there has been a natural experiment where some school districts bit the bullet and banned the demonic devices. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Woodland Hills is one of several Western Pennsylvania schools — including at Clairton in Allegheny County and Monessen in Westmoreland — that have reported lower rates of cyberbullying, fewer fights and improved scores on standardized tests. “It’s completely changed the environment,” Monessen Superintendent Robert Motte said. Across the region, districts implemented phone-related policies and procedures in recent years, including several Pittsburgh Public high schools, McKeesport and Penn Hills in Allegheny County; along with Washington and Ringgold school districts in Washington County. Some Allegheny County lawmakers are seeking a statewide ban on student cellphone use in schools. The local efforts mirror a national movement as educators weigh new research showing the benefits and short-term challenges of keeping cellphones out of classrooms. Benefits were largely established in an October report by RAND, a California-based nonpartisan research organization. In it, 70% of principals surveyed said bans had an overall positive impact on school climate; 67% said bans reduced inappropriate cellphone use; and 54% said it reduced cyberbullying. A smaller number cited challenges around parent concerns. … But the report also found several benefits to the bans such as improved test scores and a reduction in student unexcused absences. … “There’s reason to expect that these benefits could actually be larger in the longer run because … it takes some time for these effects of bans on measures like school climate or student engagement to take effect,” Mr. Ozek said. … the process has reshaped the school day. The district has seen fewer altercations between students, and if there is an incident students no longer record it or text about it later. Teens are also now unable to record TikTok videos in the hallways or spend time texting, which would make them late to class, Superintendent Tamara Allen-Thomas said. And “lunch is beautiful,” Ms. Allen-Thomas said. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Defund the Police Movement Haunts Democrats in Potentially Tight Races

Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders’ favorite candidate for US Senate in Michigan has a “Defund the Police” problem. Now that the popularity of  “criminal justice reform” has waned more than a bit, Abdul El-Sayed is scrubbing his social media feed of all references to the movement. CNN: A CNN KFile review of comments El-Sayed made from 2020 to 2021 found he repeatedly said US police departments were overfunded and promoted what he called the “refund movement” — a plan to redirect taxpayer money from police budgets to social services for schools, libraries, parks and clinics. A CNN tally of his deleted tweets found he posted about a dozen times in support of the “defund the police” movement. Past versions of El-Sayed’s campaign website during his failed run for governor in 2018 also included a 20-page policy document on criminal justice reforms. The proposal offers a litany of progressive policies, including improving police training and accountability, prison and sentencing reform, ending cash bail, hiring more public defenders, and assisting recently released prisoners. (CNN) Michigan Chronicle: The Democratic primary election for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat is being closely watched by party insiders across the nation looking for the template for energizing Democratic voters. In the three way primary to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, El-Sayed is running against state Sen. Mallory McCmorrow, D-Royal Oak, and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. McMorrow and Stevens, particularly the latter, are considered to the right of El-Sayed, whose campaign earlier this summer compared him to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. (Michigan Chronicle)

Will Drought Do What No Military Strike Could in Iran?

With all the focus on wars, sanctions, spies, and religious oppression related to Iran, it turns out that the Achilles Heel of the regime might actually be its inability to provide water and power to its capital, Tehran. There is, apparently, so little water available in its reservoirs that the city may soon have to be evacuated. Redstate: Mother Nature may accomplish something that neither the U.S. nor Israel could ever have contemplated: the evacuation of Tehran’s 9.7 million inhabitants. Iran is currently experiencing its fifth consecutive year of drought, and the autumnal rainfall is about a quarter of that in 2024, that would be two millimeters. In short, Tehran is facing a “Day Zero” catastrophe. “Zero day” is probably shortly after January 1. Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, warned on Thursday that if the drought persisted more than a month longer, “we’ll have to evacuate Tehran.” Mr. Pezeshkian has not explained how such an evacuation would be managed. Mr. Pezeshkian has warned about Tehran’s water crisis for months, and has even promoted moving the capital south, closer to the Persian Gulf, where there is “access to open waters.” The Amir Kabir Dam, once a vital lifeline holding over 160,000 acre-feet, now languishes at a mere 8 percent capacity, or about a two-week supply for Tehran. In terms of reservoir capacity, isn’t huge. It is about the size of the Canyon Dam on Texas’s Guadalupe River or the Smith Mountain Dam on Virginia’s Roanoke River. But when you plop it down in the middle of the desert and make your nation’s capital and a lot of your agriculture dependent on it for water, it takes on a significance all its own. The other reservoirs in the five-dam system that supplies Tehran with water — Latyan, Lar, Mamloo, and Taleqan — are in equally poor condition. At Latyan, only half of the current 10 percent fill can be used. Lar is at one percent, Mamloo at seven percent, and Taleqan, which is about twice the size of Amir Kabir, is at 30 percent capacity. (Redstate) Hmm. This almost sounds like divine retribution…

International Olympic Committee Discovers That Men and Women Are Physically Different

Who could have guessed that men and women differ in their physical attributes? Until recently, the list would not have included the International Olympic Committee, which permitted transgender “women” (men) to compete in women’s sports. But that is set to change if reports are right. Daily Mail: A ban on transgender women competitors is strongly expected to be in place for the  2028 Olympics – but it remains unclear if there will be barriers against athletes with differences of sexual development (DSD) after the boxing furore at Paris 2024. Under the existing rules, each sport is empowered to decide if transgender women can compete if their testosterone levels fall below a designated threshold. But the International Olympic Committee, under new president Kirsty Coventry, is in discussions about a dramatic policy shift that would impose a blanket ban across all sports for the Los Angeles Games. Such a move would prevent the kind of scenario that saw Laurel Hubbard contest the weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Hubbard transitioned in 2012. While Olympic sources have confirmed that such a measure is very much the ‘direction of travel’, it is highly unlikely to come into force before the Winter Olympics in Italy next February. One report suggested that a rule change could be announced in February, but insiders estimated it might take between six months and a year for it to be approved and cleared. (Daily Mail) We now have an answer to the eternal question of how long it takes a bureaucracy to go from admitting that it has messed up to implementing a simple and obvious fix: six to twelve months. As to how long it took to admit that mistake, the answer is “far too long.”

Fetterman: ‘I Should Have Quit’ the Senate Race After Stroke

Irony seems to follow Senator John Fetterman in the way that a puppy follows its beloved master. Fetterman remained in his Senate race despite his obvious disability because he was beloved by his progressive followers, who insisted he was fine. Now, as he has recovered and become a lone moderate voice among the Democrats, his previous followers hate him with a passion, and Fetterman now admits that Republicans were right to question his decision to remain in the race. RedState: One of the Democrats’ lone voices of sanity, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, admits that, in hindsight, he “should’ve quit” his Senate bid back in 2022. He went on to open up about whether he sees a future with the party that has become obsessed with appeasing the radicals. … In a new excerpt in the Free Press from Fetterman’s upcoming memoir “Unfettered,” the Democrat reflects on the last three years and touches on whether he sees if he will have a place in the party – or if his time is up. In the excerpt, Fetterman reflected on what happened when he was on the campaign trail in 2022, and when his wife, Gisele, noticed his mouth dropping and ordered his team to get him to the hospital right away. After suffering a stroke, Fetterman was left with only the ability to communicate with voters using closed captioning. He admits that at this point, despite his positive polling numbers, “In hindsight, I should have quit.” (RedState) (Free Press) Irony of ironies, Fetterman is now the Republicans’ favorite Democrat, and Democrats agree that Fetterman should have quit.

Happy 250th Birthday to the Marine Corps!

November 10^th was the 250^th Anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps, making it older than the country itself. Every American owes his or her freedom to the valiant service of countless Marines who risked their lives so that we can live free. Marine Corps: For 250 years, the Marine Corps has stood as the vanguard, keeping the promise to be first to fight, no matter the cost. #Marines stationed across the globe commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, honoring a distinguished legacy of service, sacrifice, and unwavering fidelity to both the nation and fellow Marines. #USMC250 #MarineCorps #SemperFi (Marine Corps on X) Click the link to watch the video. It will bring a tear to your eye.