Monday's Final Word

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You could have a tab train if you just lay down your links

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You don't get to walk away from this now. You invited the speaker. Enjoy the ride.

Ed: Funny, that's what I think about Democrats nominating Abdul El-Sayed, Graham Platner, Darializer Chevalier, Adam Hamawy, and a number of other nutcases in this cycle. I still think they should have been stuck with Platner. Speaking of being stuck with nutcases ...

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NY Post: Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico once opposed multiple major legislative efforts to crack down on sex predators getting cashless bail in the early 2020s, though he eventually did back some tighter rules on bail last year.

Back in 2021, the GOP-led Texas state legislature pursued multiple pieces of legislation aimed at cracking down on individuals arrested for alleged heinous crimes being allowed to post no-cash bond, triggering a tense fight with Democrats.

Talarico (D), a Texas state rep since 2018, voted against a May 2021 bill, HB 20, that restricted individuals in jail from posting bail on personal bonds, where they aren’t required to make an upfront payment, if they were arrested for sexual or violent crimes. ...

That same month, he opposed a proposed constitutional amendment that would’ve barred judges from granting bail to individuals accused of committing sex crimes against minors under 17 and people accused of “committing continuous trafficking of persons.”

Ed: The big tragedy here is that the Democrats managed to kill the bill by fleebagging. When it comes to choosing sides, Talarico chooses violent offenders and sex offenders. There is no reason for PR bonds for people accused of violent or predatory behavior; judges should have the option to impose normal bail on such defendants. PR bonds should be limited to non-violent offenses and defendants who pose no risk to the community or to the potential for absconding. 

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Ed: That went downhill fast, eh? Saad may have gone nuclear, but the original point was a non-sequitur. Tuberville's point was not at all addressed in the credentialist response offered, but don't be surprised to see that non-sequitur pop up repeatedly in the Protection Racket Media's eventual defenses of El-Sayed. 

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Matt Taibbi: Before that May 25th, “white supremacist” was a term reserved for neo-Nazis, the Klan, the Patriot Front, Vanguard America, and other groups that could plausibly be described as white supremacist. After May 25th, every part of American life was white supremacist: not just policing but museums (which suddenly faced calls to be abolished as “monuments to white supremacy”), schools, the judiciary, marriage, sports, classical music, the national park system, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, books, “apolitical” video games, Christianity (which had a “white supremacy problem,” according to the New Yorker) and, well, everything else. We were to “decolonize everything,” because that period of “a little crazy” redefined American society from top to bottom as a single evil in need of a teardown.

Immense harm was done, not just to individuals who lost careers but to thousands of years of human accomplishment, consigned to the dustbin of history as blood-soaked grasping by unenlightened racists, unworthy of Instagram-educated post-Floyd America. Now AOC giggles and says “Woke 1” should get a mulligan. She was among the loudest shriekers of the period. Remember her saying that bail for Kyle Rittenhouse was part of the “protection of white supremacy,” or that Republicans cared more about preserving the “mythology of whiteness” than “the grandeur of democracy”? She wants to laugh off the embarrassing past — this is the maddening and increasingly common “Why are you talking about that?” tactic — in service of her electoral future.

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The context of this exchange is fascinating, because the topic proves why politicians like AOC can’t be allowed a mulligan. She may not endorse Francesca Hong, the batshit DSA candidate for governor of Wisconsin, but she doesn’t have to, because Hong’s existence is proof that the damage is already done. Hong is the outpatient who described having a half-white son from a previous marriage as “my proximity to whiteness continues” ...

Ed: David wrote about the "Woke 1" dodge earlier today. Woke 1 is still in effect, as Taibbi argues, and not just in a residual manner. The hard-Left elite still enforces its tenets, but people are no longer afraid to push back. You can thank Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, and (of late) Sophie Cunningham for that. 

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Ed: Not to mention that Don Lemon literally and personally raided a Christian service as part of a politically motivated attack connected to ICE protests. He's still under indictment in that case. What chutzpah. 

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Jerusalem Post: Hamas's support network in the United States was left intact after the Holy Land Foundation trial and is active today in the form of the Council on Arab and Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other groups, a retired FBI agent who led the Holy Land Foundation case told the US Senate on Wednesday. ...

Testifying before the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights was Lara Burns, who led the investigation between 2001 and 2008.

Burns spoke of the FBI lawfully wiretapping a meeting of the leaders of the Palestine Committee in 1993 in Philadelphia. During this, Burns said members of the Palestine Committee defined the scope of the conspiracy, which included supporting Hamas abroad and infiltrating universities, media, and politics here in the US with the intention of “normalizing Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood extremist ideology in American society.”

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“They also noted their intent to cleanse the curriculum in US-based schools because, quote, ‘We don’t want our children growing up surrendering to the idea of peace with Jews,’” she said.

Ed: This is worth reading in full. Burns testified that the strategy has evolved in the past three decades, but its goals remain the same: to normalize Hamas terrorism through the US educational system and produce activists to support Islamist terror campaigns. We can see how well they have succeeded not just on college campuses the past three years, but in primaries in Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Maine this year. 

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Ed: Yes, this is true, although "any smart journalist" is not a large universe in the Protection Racket Media. I wrote about this earlier and credited Kristen Welker for forcing El-Sayed to address the question. And now, it might be difficult for other reporters to avoid it as long as El-Sayed keeps avoiding an answer to it. Let's hope, anyway. 

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AxiosThe International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will soon remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine site in Syria after the Trump administration reached understandings with Syria and Israel, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.

Why it matters: The Trump administration and IAEA scrambled to reach a diplomatic agreement to secure the material and prevent an escalation involving Israel, Syria and possibly even Turkey over the sensitive site.

U.S. officials say the episode validates President Trump's approach to Syria and shows how the U.S. used its close relations with the new Syrian government to neutralize a potential crisis.

The dramatic, behind-the-scenes exchange of threats and diplomacy over the secret site — which played out for months before reaching a resolution several weeks ago — was kept secret and has not been previously reported.

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Ed: This was a fascinating story. I wondered whether there was more to Trump's outreach to al-Sharaa, who was clearly on the other side of the war on terror for several years. We share an antipathy to Iran, but that hardly seemed to justify the intensity of the outreach. Now we know the real story, and it turns out that the Iranian nuclear threat may have been worse than we imagined before Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee Damascus. 

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Calls Haiti "hell.." gets mad at Trump for basically saying the exact same thing.

Liberals have no standards!

Ed: That's not true. They have two standards – one for themselves, the other to apply against their opponents. The Left's freakout over Trump's "s***holes" comment from eight years ago was always performative anyway, but also self-rebutting. If those places aren't "s***holes," then why would people from those countries need asylum at all?

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Fiona Brown at UnHerd: The song lyrics were the first red flag. The way he’d ramble about Tinie Tempah or Eminem, or how black artists like Beyoncé were sexualized by white men, without offering any evidence to substantiate his claims. Or else there were the film clips, from Fish Tank and Kidulthood, which he’d tell us to discuss without offering guidance on how to do so. And this was if he was even in the classroom at all. He often arrived late and left early, once teaching for a single hour when four were scheduled.

So when I saw Jason Arday’s name in the news, my first thought was: “finally!” As a student on the Education module Arday taught at the University of Roehampton, back in autumn 2018, a module replete with music but shockingly light on education, I can’t help but have thoughts on the story that’s unfolded over the last couple of weeks. For me, though, the real surprise is that it didn’t all come out sooner.

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Before Arday arrived at Roehampton, university leaders enthusiastically told us of his amazing backstory: how he only learned to speak at 11 and write at 18, and how excited they were to have him teaching us. Naturally, we were all very interested to see the man himself, even if the module he’d be teaching had been written by a previous lecturer.

I can honestly describe Arday’s teaching as terrible. He rarely used the PowerPoint slides. Instead, he usually sat casually on a desk, giving his generalized views on racism without ever referring to any academic theories — let alone those relevant to the “Youth Participation and Identities” module he was supposed to be teaching.

Ed: Gee, how could Cambridge have possibly known this man was a complete fraud? He's the Milli Vanilli of elite Academia, and even his students knew it. 

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Ed: Yes, please run this clip in Michigan. When does the Ohio State game come up this year? (Dang it, it's after the election on Nov. 28th.) This is yet another way in which the Left will turn Democrats into the Weirdo Party, come hell or high water. Or the Buckeyes. I expect Hugh Hewitt to add this to his show opener for the duration of the midterms.

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Jonathan Turley: A month after National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg announced that Sam Alito was retiring (a story NPR later had to retract), the 76-year-old jurist told the Wall Street Journal in an interview, “Obviously, I’m here for another term.”

Looking at the docket for the coming term, it is easy to see why. Even after overturning Roe v. Wade and other historic opinions, Alito still has unfinished business. An example can be found in two cases involving bans on semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 that are now awaiting argument in the October term.

Many of us have been frustrated by the Court’s failure to address these laws barring AR-15s and other weapons. Just last year, the Supreme Court declined review of such a Maryland law. Alito and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated that they wanted to hear the case, failing just one vote short of granting certiorari.

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Ed: Alito is too young to retire from the Supreme Court. He's in good health, his mind is as clear as ever, and he's able now to help shape some of the most important constitutional issues on a court willing to actually address them. They don't get them all right, but they do get most of them correct, and Alito is a key reason why. 

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So we need to figure this out rather than scare people. 

Both industries are job creators, both industries revitalize towns I've been covering for decades that have been dying. 

Both provide national security & data centers can be built by reputable companies that do not draw drinking water or shift new grid costs onto local households and businesses.

Ed: Both industries are routinely targeted by Luddites and hysterics, too. The fulmination of the anti-data center activists is even more amusing given their terminally online status, too. Where do they think their data goes? It's not literally a cloud, people. 

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Saturday night's lyric: "Bottle of Wine" by Tom Paxton.


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