RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nypost.com/2024/08/13/opinion/identity-politics-wont-save-kamala-harris-in-this-election/

When did you last test yourself for COVID-19?

There was a time when plans were cancelled at the first sign of a sniffle.

Four years later, the strange spell of COVID has lost its potency: The fever has broken.

Life continues as it did pre-pandemonium, but now with the lingering memory of how the pursuit of blind emotion — fear, in this case — clouds our judgment and compels obedience.

Identity politics is a different type of virus, one that was seeded by the far left to win the 2020 election.

Tailored to satiate fears during a period of social unrest, “progressives” convinced us that all society’s problems could be solved by bowing to the demands of social justice warriors.

Their carefully curated media image — as a balm to heal Trump fatigue with the Democratic Party’s compassion — facilitated their victory.

But with victory came contempt for at least half the electorate.

President Biden has repeatedly used the phrase “MAGA Republicans” to stereotype Trump supporters as dangerous authoritarians.

Democrats’ political consultants seem to have settled on this strategy to conceal their divisive and destructive policies of the last four years.

Millions of dollars feed this machinery — ads, focus groups, curated polls and an army of people knocking on doors — to create the illusion that with Kamala Harris, the party has great momentum.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/15/the-weird-creepy-surreal-and-dangerous-2024-campaign/

The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history.

Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world:

1. How can Kamala Harris merely promise us fixes to come in 2025 for inflation and an open border when she is still vice president for another six months? Why can’t she enact her proposed solutions to these problems (which she helped create) right now?

2. Would the media prefer to help her win but lose further credibility themselves by failing to ask why she has disowned her last three decades of leftist agendas, or to reclaim some of their reputations and thereby risk her losing?

3. Does the left appreciate the new campaign and election protocols it has now established?

That is to say:

Cancel by fiat their virtual nominee four months before the election when he sinks in the polls?

Nullify the outcome of a year of primaries and the will of 14 million voters?

Threaten a sitting president with removal by the 25th Amendment process unless he steps aside as his party nominee?

Anoint a replacement nominee before the convention and without a single primary—and then prevent any rival candidates from challenging her?

4. After the precedents of 2020 and 2024, is the future orthodox protocol for any Democratic nominee now to avoid all interviews and ex tempore speaking, and stick to teleprompted speeches and scripted responses only?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/15/the-democrats-nauseating-doublespeak-about-freedom/\

“Liberals don’t care what you do, so long as it’s mandatory.” — M. Stanton Evans

This week a coalition of leftist groups released an ad for Kamala Harris that contains what the New York Times describes as the “unified message from the left.” What is the message? The election is all about “our freedom” – by which they mean their freedom, not yours.

As the Times puts it, leftist groups tested its “freedom” messaging in the 2022 midterms to “reclaim the language about freedom and personal liberty,” which they say helped “blunt what had been expected to be a sweeping victory for Republicans.”

As we noted in this space recently, Harris has been talking up the theme of freedom, although she struggled to even name three. (See: “Kamala The Authoritarian Calls Election A ‘Fight For Freedom’.”)

The ad puts it this way: “This election is about two different futures. One where we control our lives. And one where they do.”

The people who made the ad should be charged with false advertising.

Let’s look at the freedom scorecard. It’s leftist Democrats such as Kamala Harris who:
Proposed a constitutional amendment that would shred the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
Worked with Big Tech to censor content they didn’t like, something that Democrats – not Republicans – overwhelming favor.
Pushed a California bill that would criminalize speech questioning the “consensus” on climate change.
Said, as Tim Walz did: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-harris-campaigns-hubris-may-be-on-the-verge-of-breeding-nemesis/

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly in recent weeks, Kamala Harris’s substanceless presidential campaign has been a deranging, quasi-psychedelic experience, like watching the everyday physical reality you previously took for granted simply melt into fractal trails of pastel-colored candy floss. So picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies as I take you down to America’s political strawberry fields, where nothing is real and there’s nothing to get hung about — and where Harris’s campaign has now simply decided to steal policy positions from Donald Trump’s campaign because, hey, haven’t you heard? It’s a “vibes” election now, friend! And the vibes will make a sober man seasick.

The first example of the Harris campaign’s capsizing reality — as discussed at length on Friday — was her sudden rebranding as a “border hawk” — rewriting her history while tellingly never once promising to either stop or reverse the flow of illegals pouring over the southern border. This weekend? It was Kamala in Nevada (a swing state whose hinge is the service-worker-based casino industry) promising to end taxes on tips.

I assume others here will write about the policy implications of this fantasy proposal with greater intelligence than I am capable of mustering anymore. Honestly, it sounds like a terrible idea to me, and a transparent giveaway to secure the electoral votes of Nevada alone, which (pace, alas, Jon Ralston) does not matter all that much in terms of 2024’s electoral calculus. In fact, I said as much back when Trump himself first proposed it in Las Vegas, joking that from Trump’s perspective it was probably just a way to further ingratiate himself with exotic dancers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/veterans-will-not-be-fooled-by-tim-walz/

Kamala Harris’s disastrous and cowardly choice of Tim Walz as her running mate over Josh Shapiro – who was the logical pick and was shamefully passed over because he is Jewish – is simply more of the same with her. He’s a choice made from fear. She feared somebody who would be competition. She feared somebody who would be smarter, which really limited her choices. So she chose this guy, who no doubt told her exactly what she wanted to hear. This is her modus operandi. She’s afraid. She operates from fear, and now she has exactly the kind of sergeant major she wants by her side – one who will be sure to enable her worst instincts all the way to defeat.

You just know that Walz being in the Army checked a box for her – DEI hacks love checking boxes – and she didn’t look any deeper than that. No one around her did either. None of her flunkies ever served. None of them understand. They just thought that they could flash some pictures of Walz in his uniform strutting about, and that would be enough to nail down the votes of all the rubes with DD 214s. But what you don’t know can hurt you. And what she doesn’t know is that Tim Walz is going to alienate vets, except for the pinko blue falcons like the loathsome Vindmans and those Twitter goofs who insist you shouldn’t have an AR15 because they are experts, having once qualified “marksman” on an M4.

You can Google “blue falcon” if you want. Just don’t do it with kids around or on your employer’s computer.

Civilians aren’t going to understand this. It’s a veteran thing. Civvies will look at pictures of him in his BDUs or ACUs and think he looks STRAC. But vets know what they see when they look at this guy and it’s not good.

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/08/10/walz-former-superior-he-quit-and-went-over-my-head-to-do-so-n3792960

We covered this a couple of days ago based on a clip, but the entire interview with retired Minnesota National Guard Command Sergeant Major Doug Julin is worth watching. CNN’s Laura Coates spent ten minutes on Thursday night trying to defend Tim Walz through most of it, but Julin would not be deterred. Not only did Walz know that his unit would be deployed when he suddenly retired, Walz back-doored Julin in applying for retirement, he explains, leaving his unit in the lurch. 

And there’s a reason Walz did that — a very clear reason, Julin points out:

COATES: Is your concern that it’s — oh, go ahead. I do want to ask this question quickly, Sergeant Major, and I appreciate your time, but is your — [crosstalk] — concern about the manner in which he did not speak to you or his decision to retire, which he, as we’ve talked about, he would have been entitled to do, which causes the most concern? Because that is the focus that so many people are wondering about, whether he has done something wrong in service or done something personally to offend you.

JULIN: No, he did something wrong in service, as I stated before. He knew the policies and procedures and how we go to leadership and address issues or discuss issues and concerns out there. Again, backing up, he had told me, no, I’m going forward, we’re going to go with the battalion, and go from there. So, I’m under the believing, he told me he was going forward. I’m underneath that believing that he’s going forward. He went around me, which he should have addressed it with me so he could help me with some things out there.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/14/a-campaign-of-joy/

The Democratic talking points were issued and the media enthusiastically accommodated: The Harris-Walz campaign is now a moveable feast of joy. But there’s nothing even remotely joyful about Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s political orientation. Their positions are founded on militancy and just plain meanness.

The media are nothing but shills for the Democratic Party. They are so willing to please that they will run with whatever theme the party tells them to. Take a look at recent headlines. 

“Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign,” says the New York Times.

“Harris is pushing joy,” according to the Associated Press’ surely unbiased reporting.

The British Guardian swears that the “Democrats’ joy is unconfined,” while ABC News wants Americans to know that “early Harris-Walz rallies feature big crowds, talk of ‘joy.’”

National Public Radio says “Harris and Walz reintroduce joy,” as the Washington Post declares that “​​Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” And from Salon’s perspective, “Vibes matter: Trump can hardly restrain his jealousy over the Harris campaign’s joy.”

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/11/theater-of-the-absurd-harris-walz-edition/

H. L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

Last week in this space, I pointed out the irony of the Sudden Harris Ascendancy Syndrome.  Here she was, one of the least popular figures on the American scene—someone, moreover, whom everyone, no matter their political coloration, regarded primarily as political life insurance for Joe Biden—and yet, Wham!, the very moment Biden resigns, her media reconstruction begins in earnest.

I almost wrote “media rehabilitation,” but that would not have been quite right. We say that someone is rehabilitated when he has fallen from a previous state of health, competence, or popularity.

Kamala Harris has never been competent or popular.  So what the media has done to or with her these last couple of weeks is more of an outright fabrication project. In part, as I wrote last week, it is a product of “magical thinking,” the belief, or at least the hope or pretense, that by saying something is so, you magically make it so.

The primary aim of this bit of theatrical slight-of-hand is positive.  It is to make people believe, for as long as they inhabit this theater of the absurd (the show runs, by the way, until November 5) that the person answering to the name “Kamala Harris” is not against fracking, though her doppelgänger, who existed until July 21 when Joe Biden dropped out of the race, was adamantly against fracking.