In the morning, you go browsing for the tab that sits there frozen, and you click 'til it has popped up, but the script is not reloading...

Ed: Your billionaires are worse than our billionaires! That was Warren's reaction, and her surprise is hilarious. I'm sure she didn't expect CNN to call her out. Frankly, neither did I. 

===

Free Beacon: Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico now claims he is a friend to his state's oil and gas interests, recently stating that he owes "a lot to that industry." But, as a far-left state representative, Talarico—who at the time was pushing a Texas version of the "Green New Deal"—advocated in favor of eliminating a key tax exemption that saves the industry and, by extension, consumers about $1 billion every year.

In 2019, Talarico told the Austin Chronicle, a liberal alternative weekly, that he opposed the so-called high cost natural gas exemption, calling it an "outdated and inefficient" loophole, according to an interview unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon. The exemption, which the Texas state government created in 1989, reduces the tax companies have to pay on natural gas drilled from more expensive wells.

Recommended
Is It OK to Speak the Truth Bluntly? David Strom 'Stafford County Man' Knocks the Head Off One of the Marines on the Quantico Iwo Jima Statue ILLEGAL Beege Welborn

"It was put in place in the 1980s when it was more expensive to drill for natural gas," Talarico said at the time. "Technology has advanced and it's no longer as difficult, but because of special interests that exemption is still in place in our tax code."

Ed: I nearly wrote about this separately today, but didn't get the chance. Talarico wants to pretend to be oil-friendly now, but he's been trying to shut down the industry here for years in favor of a Green New Deal regime in Texas. Be sure to read it all at the FB. And Talarico's friends in high places are worth noting as well...

===

Ed: The hypocrisy is especially pungent in Texas, where Talarico wouldn't have had a prayer without Hoffman's financial intervention. 

===

Politico: “I don’t just have small dreams for this country … and that requires us to, when we need to, to compromise and work together,” Deluzio said. “I stand my ground on core values, and where I’ve got to work with Republicans and House members and senators on delivering project funding, I do that. I think you need a representative who can do both of those things.”

It might as well have been a test run of his stump speech if Deluzio follows through on strong hints he’ll run for Senate in 2028 — against fellow Democratic incumbent John Fetterman, who he suggests has betrayed some of those core values.

“If I’m going to do it, I’m doing it to win, and I’m going to win,” Deluzio said in an interview with POLITICO over a plate of greens and beans — a Pittsburgh staple — followed by pumpkin ravioli at Sarafino’s Restaurant, which he’s patronized since he was a teenager. He said he’s giving the matter “serious thought” and won’t make a decision until after the midterms.

Deluzio campaigned with Fetterman in 2022, when both were seeking election to Congress. But he’s since grown more vocal in his criticism of the senator and has been essentially laying the groundwork for a challenge for months — taunting Fetterman in media interviews and social media posts, hammering him over and over again in particular for his embrace of President Donald Trump’s Iran war.

Ed: Deluzio claims to want to work with Republicans. Fetterman actually has worked with Republicans while still voting more than 90% of the time with Democrats, and he's getting pilloried for it. Fetterman hasn't betrayed the party's values; he's stuck by them in terms of working-class policy and support for liberal democracies abroad, including Israel. Democrats betrayed Fetterman, and Deluzio is either lying or delusional if he thinks that he'll be allowed to work with Republicans. 

===

Ed: The results of the two debates in Michigan tend to show that El-Sayed is in way over his head. Anyone with real political talent would anticipate these questions and have an argument prepared for them. He's so easily rattled because, like most leftists, he hasn't had to deal with dissenting points of view. Academia has created a generation or two of intellectually and morally flabby leftists. 

===

Mediaite: Politico corrected a report Wednesday evening claiming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was involved in coordinating the interview between Fox News host Sean Hannity and then press secretary Katie Zacharia, following a threat of “consequences” from the White House.

Politico, which President Donald Trump recently tried to ban from the White House, originally reported that Wiles was behind the Zacharia interview with Hannity, which was widely seen as contributing to Zacharia’s ouster.

The report was updated and now leads with a correction saying, “An earlier version of this report, including its headline, mischaracterized the role White House chief of staff Susie Wiles played in then-press secretary Katie Zacharia’s interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. POLITICO’s follow-up reporting indicates she did not play a direct role in setting up the interview.”

Ed: So they got it wrong and had to backtrack, belatedly, only because Trump called them out and imposed consequences for it. It's very difficult to feel sympathy for their exclusion from the White House briefing room if they misinform their readers with such impunity. 

===

Ed: Is this really the big problem facing the Irish people and government? This looks like a distraction campaign by virtue-signalers from other issues, notably the social issues around immigration. Grandparents' hugs are a weird concern for a national government. 

===

Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO: It should be said that we can overdo hugs. Covid pulled it back a bit — even still — but we have even a quasi-professional networking culture where there’s an understood pressure to hug. It’s a more intimate greeting than we let on, and for anyone who has had a negative experience of a physical “boundary violation” — a phrase I hate because it is so vague and can mean way too many things — it can be jarring. We should be sensitive to this. Sometimes a smile and wave — an air hug? — is all that’s needed.

We absolutely must be more vigilant in protecting children from actual harm — which usually (hopefully) does not implicate their grandparents.

At the same time, we’ve learned some helpful things from old-school therapy culture that we should know instinctively — and perhaps we do, until it is beaten out of us: Children need affection. Grandparents are the natural people to give it to them.

Rape is a real thing. So is adult abuse of children that falls short of that. Don’t distract from evil with nonsense commercials.

Ed: If you want to go after rape, go after rapists. If you want to go after child abuse, go after abusers of children. Why go after grandparents for offering normal affection to their grandchildren? There is another agenda at work here, and I suspect it relates to those who want to "deconstruct" the nuclear family altogether. 

===

Ed: There's an agenda at work here, too. The French political and legal establishment is gripped with "suicidal empathy" or worse. If they won't impose deterring consequences for rioting and destroying France's historical infrastructure, we can expect to see a lot more of that destruction. 

===

CBS News: Armed and in uniform, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status — and to inquire if they have registered to vote or cast votes in past elections, a CBS News Investigation has found. 

The operation is part of an effort to root out potential noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. DHS has alleged that there could be as many as 250,000 citizens illegally registered to vote, although election experts have disputed the accuracy of this figure. Just 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud related offenses since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to the Department of Justice. There are 227 million registered voters in the U.S.

Critics say that sending armed federal agents to the doors of U.S. residents could be intimidating for legal voters. 

Ed: Why would it intimidate legal voters? The DoJ is imposing the proper legal consequences on illegal voting in order to keep more of it from happening. That has nothing to do with citizens who vote legally. This is an attempt to eliminate those consequences and, by doing so, encourage illegal voting on a broader basis. That's what the "critics" really want.

===

Ed: Hey, I thought the Left didn't care about this stuff. I know I don't. 

===

The Daily Signal: Far-left political influencer Hasan Piker was recently grilled on a satirical internet show—and the clips it generated were gold.

“Now, Karl Marx said, ‘To each according to his needs.’ You live in a $2.7 million house,” the host said. “Why are your needs more important than 90% of other Californians?”

Piker appeared uncomfortable as he answered—and it wasn’t because he was fully decked out in a Mao suit. 

To put it simply, proudly sporting the uniform of a regime that took the lives of an estimated 80 million people, all while enjoying the prosperity of a $2.7 million house and invitations to Oscar parties, isn’t a good look.

Ed: And El-Sayed needs to explain why he hangs out with Mao lovers in his "I am not a socialist" pose, too. Read the whole essay. 

===

Ed: RIP and thanks for some great memories. 

===

Ed: I thought that sounded familiar!

===

Last night's lyric: "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. My former radio partner and current VIP contributor Mitch Berg insists that this is the most conservative rock song ever. I agree.