Nice Jeep

On Twitter.

Also, beautiful babe from Playboy.

And Billie Eilish.

The Marlboro Marine

Have a good Veterans Day everybody.

The video's from the Los Angeles Times:

How Likely Is a Democratic Comeback Next Year?

Not likely. A snowball's chance? 

I mean, yesterday's inflation numbers are bad enough, but considering Democrats haven't learned a thing from the Virginia results, I'd say their chance are about nil.

It's Kyle Kondik, from Sabato’s Crystal Ball, at the New York Times:

The election results from last week reconfirmed a basic reality about American politics: For either party, holding the White House comes with significant power, but in off-year elections, it is often a burden.

Democrats hoped that this year would be an exception. By trying to focus the electorate on Donald Trump, they sought to rouse the Democratic base. This approach would also avoid making elections a referendum on President Biden and his approval ratings, which have sagged after months of struggles with the Afghanistan exit, Covid, gas prices, inflation and congressional Democrats.

In other words, Democrats hoped that the usual rules of political gravity would not apply. But we should not be surprised that the familiar force endured.

Republicans performed well in races across the country — most notably in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, states that Mr. Biden won by double digits in 2020. Vote counts are still being finalized, but it appears they shifted almost identically toward the Republicans compared with 2017, the last time those governorships were on the ballot — margins of about 11 points. Virginia provides a striking example of how often the presidential party does poorly — the White House party candidate has now lost the gubernatorial race in 11 of the past 12 elections.

Unfortunately for Democrats, political gravity is also likely to act against them in 2022 — and

they face real limits on what they can do about it.

There were signs of Democratic decline in all sorts of different places. The suburban-exurban Loudoun County in Northern Virginia is an example. Terry McAuliffe carried it, but his Republican rival in the governor’s race, Glenn Youngkin, campaigned aggressively there on education issues and basically cut the margin compared with 2017 in half. Places like Loudoun are where Democrats made advancements in the Trump years. To have any hope of holding the House next year, the party will have to perform well in such areas.

Turnout in terms of raw votes cast compared with the 2017 gubernatorial race was up all over Virginia, but some of the places where turnout growth was smallest included Democratic urban areas and college towns.

But Republicans had no such trouble: Their turnout was excellent. In New Jersey, the county that saw the biggest growth in total votes compared with 2017 was Ocean, an exurb on the Jersey Shore, which Gov. Phil Murphy’s Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, won by over 35 points.

Democrats have also struggled in rural areas, and the results last week suggest that they have not hit bottom there yet. In the Ninth Congressional District in rural southwestern Virginia, Mr. Youngkin performed even better than Mr. Trump did in 2020. This combination — even deeper losses in rural areas paired with fallout in more populous areas — would be catastrophic for Democrats, particularly in the competitive Midwest, where Mr. Biden in 2020 helped arrest Democratic decline in many white, rural areas but where it is not hard to imagine Democratic performance continuing to slide.

Like this year, the fundamentals for the 2022 midterms are not in the Democrats’ favor. Midterms often act as an agent of change in the House. The president’s party has lost ground in the House in 37 of the 40 midterms since the Civil War, with an average seat loss of 33 (since World War II, the average is a smaller, though still substantial, 27). Since 1900, the House has flipped party control 11 times, and nine of those changes have come in midterm election years, including the last five (1954, 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018). Given that Republicans need to pick up only five seats next year, they are very well positioned to win the chamber.

It is not entirely unheard-of for the presidential party to net House seats in the midterms. It happened in 1998 and 2002, though those come with significant caveats. In ’98, President Bill Clinton had strong approval in spite of (or perhaps aided by) his impeachment battle with Republicans and presided over a strong economy; Democrats had also had lost a lot of ground in the 1994 midterm (and made only a dent in that new Republican majority in 1996). They gained a modest four seats.

In 2002, Republicans were defending a slim majority, but they benefited from President George W. Bush’s sky-high approval rating following the Sept. 11 attacks and decennial reapportionment and redistricting, which contributed to their eight-seat net gain.

So against this political gravity, is there anything Democrats can do?

Nice Belly Button

On Twitter.

Lottie Lush:

Nicaragua Descends Into Police State (VIDEO)

Daniel Ortega is a communist totalitarian with a long history. I call for regime change. Topple the motherfucker.

At the New York Times, "Nicaragua Descends Into Autocratic Rule as Ortega Crushes Dissent":

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Daniel Ortega became a hero in Nicaragua for helping overthrow a notorious dictator. Now, 40 years later, he has become the kind of authoritarian leader he once fought against.

After methodically choking off competition and dissent, Mr. Ortega has all but ensured his victory in presidential elections on Sunday, representing a turn toward an openly dictatorial model that could set an example for other leaders across Latin America.

He detained the credible challengers who planned to run against him, shut down opposition parties, banned large campaign events and closed voting stations en masse. He even jailed some of the elderly Sandinistas who fought with him to depose the dictator, Anastasio Somoza.

“This isn’t an election, this is a farce,” said Berta Valle, the wife of one of the jailed opposition leaders. “No one will elect anyone, because the only candidate is Daniel Ortega.”

Mr. Ortega’s path to a fourth consecutive term in office and near-total control of Nicaragua has ushered in a new era of repression and terror, analysts said. His claim to victory would deliver another blow to President Biden’s agenda in the region, where his administration has failed to slow an anti-democratic slide and a mass exodus of desperate people toward the United States.

A record number of Nicaraguans have been intercepted crossing the Southwest border of the United States this year since Mr. Ortega began crushing his opposition. And more than 80,000 Nicaraguans are living as refugees in neighboring Costa Rica.

“This is a turning point toward authoritarianism in the region,” said José Miguel Vivanco, head of the Americas region for Human Rights Watch, who called Mr. Ortega’s crackdown “a slow-motion horror movie.”

“He is not even trying to preserve some sort of facade of democratic rule,” Mr. Vivanco said of the Nicaraguan leader. “He is in a flagrant, open manner, just deciding to treat the election as a performance.”

The commission that monitors elections has been entrusted to Ortega loyalists, and there have been no public debates among the contest’s five remaining candidates, all of whom are little-known members of parties aligned with his Sandinista government.

The electoral authority said early on Monday that, with nearly half of the votes counted, Mr. Ortega had won about three quarters of them. It did not give results for congressional elections.

Once polls opened early on Sunday morning, some polling stations had lines as Nicaraguans turned out to cast their ballots. But as the day progressed, many of the stations were largely empty. The streets of the capital, Managua, were also quiet, with little to show that a significant election was underway.

The night before, at least four people from opposition organizations were arrested and their houses raided by the police.

“These elections are, thank God, a sign, a commitment by the vast majority of Nicaraguans to vote for peace,” Mr. Ortega said in a national television broadcast on Sunday. “We are burying war and giving life to peace.”

Mr. Ortega first came to power after helping lead the revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. More than a decade later, he was ousted by Nicaraguan voters, in what was considered the nation’s first democratic election.

That lesson about the risks of democratic rule appears to have shaped the rest of Mr. Ortega’s political life. He took office again in 2007, after getting a rival party to agree to a legal change that allowed a candidate to win an election with just 35 percent of the vote. He then spent years undermining the institutions holding together the country’s fragile democracy.

He made it clear that he would not tolerate dissent in 2018, when he sent the police to violently smother protests against the government, leading to hundreds of deaths and accusations by human rights groups of crimes against humanity.

But the sudden sweep of arrests preceding the elections, which sent seven political candidates and more than 150 others to jail, transformed the country into what many activists described as a police state, where even mild expressions of dissent are muted by fear.

A sportswriter was recently imprisoned for a series of posts critical of the government on Twitter and Facebook, under a new law that mandates up to five years in jail for anyone who says anything that “endangers economic stability” or “public order.”

After the detentions began, the United States placed new sanctions on Nicaraguan officials and the Organization of American States condemned the government...

 

Beautiful Katie Pavlich for Halloween

She's a knockout. 

And smarter than a stack of encyclopedias. 

On Twitter:

Shaken, not stirred #007 🍸🖤https://t.co/pfbAwPHteN pic.twitter.com/0WLMFI4VEs

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) October 31, 2021

"Biden's Crappy Polling Softens, Becomes Loose: Only 42% Agree That #PoopyPantsJoe Is 'Mentally Sharp'"

As always, Ace is hilarious. 

More at AoSHQ. 

Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bad News

This woman is hot!

At Amazon, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.

Also, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "How Journalism Abandoned the Working Class."

More here, "New Book: How Elite University Grads RUINED Media, Working Class Concerns IGNORED By Press."

And watch, with Megyn Kelly: 

Houston vs. Atlanta Is Rob Manfred's Nightmare World Series

I've been watching a lot of sports, but I've had no time to write about them. 

John Gruden, my favorite guy, resigns. Dodgers win seven elimination games in a row, but can't hold on against the relentless Braves.

College football: U.S.C.'s program has been nuked, their head coach fired. (And besides that, there's more scandals on that campus than the Vatican.)

Work's been busy and thus posting light. I'll pick up the pace after I get my term papers graded. That's the semester hump. After that it's pretty much downhill.

Anyway, don't miss this piece at W.S.J. Very good, "The MLB commissioner yanked the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and punished the Astros for their cheating scandal. Fans are not expected to be forgiving in either city":

HOUSTON—Sometime in the next week or so, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred will hand off the World Series championship trophy in one of the two cities in America in which he might be most despised.

One is Houston, the site of Tuesday night’s Game 1, where Manfred is seen as a villain over his handling of the sign-stealing scandal that tarnished the Astros’ title in 2017 and stained their players’ legacies. Many fans here believe Manfred scapegoated the Astros for committing a crime that was widespread at the time and unfairly transformed them into the most hated franchise in professional sports.

The other is Atlanta, where Manfred sparked a political firestorm by pulling the All-Star Game in response to Georgia’s new voting law. The move, which the Braves publicly opposed, enraged some state officials and alienated a portion of fans, who are now celebrating even more important games coming to town.

However it shakes out, it is a hellish proposition for Manfred. Sports commissioners frequently hear boos. (Just ask Roger Goodell how much he enjoys showing his face in New England.) But the vitriol Manfred will face at the end of this World Series will be particularly vicious, and coming from all directions—whatever he does now.

Manfred is pinned between liberal and conservative American politics in part because MLB began to respond to calls to act on social issues last year. It left the commissioner simultaneously under pressure to take those stances to their logical conclusion, at the same time he is still facing resentment from people aggrieved at the positions.

If the series ends in Atlanta, Manfred will deliver baseball’s highest honor at the ballpark that he deprived of hosting the All-Star Game. At the time, Manfred said relocating the game was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.” The Braves responded by saying they were “deeply disappointed” and noted that moving the game was “neither our decision, nor our recommendation.”

“Unfortunately, businesses, employees and fans in Georgia are the victims of this decision,” the Braves said.

To Manfred, relocating the All-Star Game had nothing to do with the Braves or the people of Georgia but was rather a move to stave off further controversy, people familiar with the matter said. MLB worried about the possibility of players boycotting the game—or having to answer questions about their status for months leading up to it. Ultimately, MLB knew that no matter what it did with the All-Star Game, people would be angry. Manfred determined moving it to Denver was the better option.

Certainly, some people in Georgia who are against the voting law supported Manfred. Republican politicians in the state, however, are viewing the Braves advancing to the World Series and as some sort of karmic payback. “It’s really ridiculous to inject politics into sports and then to baseball, but that’s what they did,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday.

Astros fans feel like victims, too, and blame Manfred for undermining what should have been the proudest moment in the history of the franchise. In January 2020, Manfred suspended then-manager A.J. Hinch and then-general manager Jeff Luhnow for their involvement in the Astros’ scheme. (They were both fired that same day, though Hinch has since resurfaced as the manager for the Detroit Tigers.) Manfred also docked Houston’s first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts and fined the team $5 million.

Whether they should be mad at Manfred is another story. In spite of everything, no players were punished for their roles in the scheme. In the two seasons since the revelation of the scandal, the Astros advanced to the American League Championship Series and now the World Series. They’re doing just fine.

But to some in Houston, the Astros were singled out for something other teams were already doing...

 

G.O.P. Gains in Governor's Race

 From Monmouth University, "Enthusiasm gap and shift in voter priorities boost Youngkin."

Biden Has Lost Support Across All Groups of Americans — But Especially Independents and Hispanics

 At FiveThirtyEight, "Over his first nine months in office, President Biden has lost support among Americans of all stripes — men and women, Black voters and white voters, Zoomers and Baby Boomers."

Maria Bartiromo and James Freeman, The Cost

At Amazon, Maria Bartiromo and James Freeman, The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival.

Sunday Women

Anne Hathway on Sunday is, er, risque.

Big Sophie Howard.

And rad chick:

Allen Guelzo, Robert E. Lee

At Amazon, Allen Guelzo, Robert E. Lee: A Life.

As Afghanistan Sinks Into Destitution, Some Sell Children to Survive

At WSJ, "U.N. warns that 95% of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat as winter approaches":

HERAT, Afghanistan—Desperate to feed her family, Saleha, a housecleaner here in western Afghanistan, has incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she sees out is to hand over her 3-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money.

The debt is $550.

Saleha, a 40-year-old mother of six who goes by one name, earns 70 cents a day cleaning homes in a wealthier neighborhood of Herat. Her much older husband doesn’t have any work.

Such is the starkness of deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis that is worsening fast after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, prompting the U.S. to freeze $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets and causing a halt in most foreign aid.

Already, 95% of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, which has warned that “people are being pushed to the brink of survival.” Almost the entire Afghan population of 40 million people could fall below the poverty line in coming months, according to the U.N.

Behind these statistics lie countless personal tragedies of families like Saleha’s. She and her husband used to work on a farm in the western province of Badghis, but two years ago lost that income because of fighting in the area and drought. So they borrowed money just to get food. Hoping to find employment, they ended up moving to a giant encampment of people displaced from other provinces, known as Shahrak Sabz, in Herat.

With the financial system and trade paralyzed after the Taliban takeover, prices for basic food items like flour and oil have doubled since mid-August. The lender offered early this month to write off the debt if she hands over her little girl.

They have three months to provide the money. Otherwise, Najiba will be doing household work in the lender’s home and be married off to one of his three sons when she reaches puberty. They are not sure which one. The oldest is now 6.

“If life continues to be this awful, I will kill my children and myself,” said Saleha, speaking in her tiny two-room home. “I don’t even know what we will eat tonight.”

“I will try to find money to save my daughter’s life,” added her husband, Abdul Wahab.

The lender, Khalid Ahmad, confirmed he had made the offer to the couple.

“I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” said Mr. Ahmad, reached by phone in Badghis. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.”

They have three months to provide the money. Otherwise, Najiba will be doing household work in the lender’s home and be married off to one of his three sons when she reaches puberty. They are not sure which one. The oldest is now 6.

“If life continues to be this awful, I will kill my children and myself,” said Saleha, speaking in her tiny two-room home. “I don’t even know what we will eat tonight.”

“I will try to find money to save my daughter’s life,” added her husband, Abdul Wahab.

The lender, Khalid Ahmad, confirmed he had made the offer to the couple.

“I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” said Mr. Ahmad, reached by phone in Badghis. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.”

Following the Taliban takeover, neighboring Pakistan and Iran, where many men from this community used to work as laborers, closed their borders, bracing for a flood of refugees. All that is left as work is collecting plastic bottles and other trash to sell for recycling. Other families in the area have had to surrender children to repay debts, residents say.

Growing destitution could undermine the Taliban’s so-far solid hold on power and serve as a recruiting tool for the local branch of Islamic State, their only significant rival. A Taliban official in the west of the country said that Afghans would have to get used to a meager existence.

“We suffered for 20 years fighting jihad, we lost members of our families, we didn’t have proper food, and in the end, we were rewarded with this government. If people have to struggle for a few months, so what?” said the official. “Popularity is not important for the Taliban.”

Taliban officials have repeatedly said they welcome international aid for Afghanistan but wouldn’t compromise on their Islamic beliefs to secure assistance...

 

Backlash Against Dave Chappelle's 'The Closer' (VIDEO)

If you've watched Chappelle's latest and last comedy special on Netflix, you might be flummoxed by all the hullabaloo. Then again, if you're up on despicable cancel culture, maybe not. 

One of many hilarious moments is when he told his audience that he was "uncancelable." He tells all the media scolds and woke Twitter idiots to fuck off. It's boss, heh.

Leftist won't let go, though Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has refused to cave. Maybe he still will, but I doubt it. Netflix has the power, not the ghoulish woke mob. Chappelle's show received sky-high viewer ratings on Dirty Rotten Tomatoes. Sarandos says the show's too popular to cancel. 

Anyway, just watch it for yourself. The cancel mobs make a lot of noise and they are very successful, but they can't bring down everyone, especially the biggest stars in the industry. 

The latest at NYT, "Netflix Loses Its Glow as Critics Target Chappelle Special":

It was looking like a great year for Netflix. It surpassed 200 million subscribers, won 44 Emmys and gave the world “Squid Game,” a South Korean series that became a sensation.

That’s all changed. Internally, the tech company that revolutionized Hollywood is now in an uproar as employees challenge the executives responsible for its success and accuse the streaming service of facilitating the spread of hate speech and perhaps inciting violence.

At the center of the unrest is “The Closer,” the much-anticipated special from the Emmy-winning comedian Dave Chappelle, which debuted on Oct. 5 and was the fourth-most-watched program on Netflix in the United States on Thursday. In the show, Mr. Chappelle comments mockingly on transgender people and aligns himself with the author J.K. Rowling as “Team TERF,” an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term used for a group of people who argue that a transgender woman’s biological sex determines her gender and can’t be changed.

“The Closer” has thrust Netflix into difficult cultural debates, generating the kind of critical news coverage that usually attends Facebook and Google.

Several organizations, including GLAAD, the organization that monitors the news media and entertainment companies for bias against the L.G.B.T.Q. community, have criticized the special as transphobic. Some on Netflix’s staff have argued that it could incite harm against trans people. This week, the company briefly suspended three employees who attended a virtual meeting of executives without permission, and a contingent of workers has planned a walkout for next week.

A discussion this week on an internal Netflix message board between Reed Hastings, a co-chief executive, and company employees suggested that the two sides remained far apart on the issue of Mr. Chappelle’s special. A transcript of the wide-ranging online chat, in which Mr. Hastings expressed his views on free speech and argued firmly against the comedian’s detractors, was obtained by The New York Times.

One employee questioned whether Netflix was “making the wrong historical choice around hate speech.” In reply, Mr. Hastings wrote: “To your macro question on being on the right side of history, we will always continue to reflect on the tensions between freedom and safety. I do believe that our commitment to artistic expression and pleasing our members is the right long term choice for Netflix, and that we are on the right side, but only time will tell.”

He also said Mr. Chappelle was very popular with Netflix subscribers, citing the “stickiness” of “The Closer” and noting how well it had scored on the entertainment ratings website Rotten Tomatoes. “The core strategy,” Mr. Hastings wrote, “is to please our members.”

Replying to an employee who argued that Mr. Chappelle’s words were harmful, Mr. Hastings wrote: “In stand-up comedy, comedians say lots of outrageous things for effect. Some people like the art form, or at least particular comedians, and others do not.”

When another employee expressed an opinion that Mr. Chappelle had a history of homophobia and bigotry, Mr. Hastings said he disagreed, and would welcome the comedian back to Netflix.

“We disagree with your characterization and we’ll continue to work with Dave Chappelle in the future,” he said. “We see him as a unique voice, but can understand if you or others never want to watch his show.”

He added, “We do not see Dave Chappelle as harmful, or in need of any offset, which we obviously and respectfully disagree on.”

In a note to employees this week, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s other co-chief executive, expressed his unwavering support for Mr. Chappelle and struck back at the argument that the comic’s statements could lead to violence...

More.

 

We Got Here Because of Cowardice

 From Bari Weiss, at Commentary, "We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage":

I'm in @Commentary. @louweiss can die happy. https://t.co/TZnKkY4cb3

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 14, 2021

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon...

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully.

In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. It is why statues of Grant and Washington are being torn down. And it is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out loud in class.

In this ideology, intentions don’t matter. That is why Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic utility worker at San Diego Gas and Electric, was fired for making what someone said he thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture—when in fact he was cracking his knuckles out of his car window.

In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective. Thus, the argument to get rid of the SAT. Or the admissions tests for public schools like Stuyvesant in New York or Lowell in San Francisco.

In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class. That is why third-graders in Cupertino, California, were asked to rate themselves in terms of their power and privilege. In third grade.

In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted. This is why, one high-schooler in New York tells me, students in his school are told, “If you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as “not racist.”

Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism.

What we call “cancel culture” is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next.

It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.

“I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way.

If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work.

The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America.

Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army...

More.

 

Afghanistan Mosque Bombing Kills at Least 38 Shiite Worshippers in Kanduhar

The news for Biden is so-bad all-around there's not enough room for above-the-fold headlines in the nation's newspapers. The bad news is packing it, overwhelming everything else. 

I hate to predict elections (because really, you never know until voters actually vote), but if historical precedent is any clue, 2022 is going to be an electoral tsunami like we've never seen. I feel like we're back in the 1970 and Jimmy Carter is whining about the "malaise" he couldn't fix. 

I'll be surprised if Biden doesn't mandate thermostats lowered to 65 degrees this winter and tell regular folks to put on a cardigan sweaters.

At WSJ, "Afghanistan Mosque Bombing Kills at Least 38 Shiite Worshippers":

A complex suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in southern Afghanistan’s main city of Kandahar killed at least 38 worshipers Friday, breaking two months of relative peace in the Taliban’s historic stronghold and highlighting the threat posed by a spreading presence of Islamic State.

While nobody took immediate responsibility, Friday’s attack followed a suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State that killed some 100 people on Oct. 8 at a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Kunduz. The extremist group’s regional affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, has repeatedly targeted Afghanistan’s Shiite minority in recent months.

Kandahar’s main hospital, Mirwais, said it received 38 fatalities and 72 people who were injured in the blast. Mohammad Qasam, the chief doctor at the hospital, warned that the death toll could rise.

“The prayer had ended. We were preparing to leave the mosque when we heard gunfire outside. A few seconds later, there was a blast inside. I was close to the entrance and managed to escape quickly,” said the witness. He said two suicide bombers detonated outside the mosque and a third blew himself up inside.

While both the Taliban and Islamic State adhere to a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, the two groups have profound ideological differences and consider each other enemies. Though the Taliban persecuted Shiites in the past, they have since softened their position and say that, under their rule, the religious freedom of Afghanistan’s Shiite community will be safeguarded. Islamic State considers all Shiite Muslims infidels who should be killed. The Taliban condemned the attack and directed their security forces “to find the perpetrators as soon as possible and bring them to justice,” according to a statement released by the group’s chief spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid.

The recent series of deadly bombings present a challenge to the Taliban government. Since the Taliban toppled the U.S.-backed Afghan republic on Aug. 15 and proclaimed a restored Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, improved security has been a key source of legitimacy for Afghanistan’s new rulers. Yet ISKP—the only significant militant group currently operating in Afghanistan—has struck many high-profile targets since then, including a bombing outside Kabul airport that killed 200 Afghans waiting to be evacuated and 13 U.S. service members.

Friday’s blast shows that the Taliban are struggling to guarantee security even in Kandahar, their historical stronghold.

“The Taliban have been dismissive of the Islamic State’s threat—and it is showing how wrong they are,” said Asfandyar Mir, an Afghanistan expert at the United States Institute of Peace. “Carrying out this attack in the Taliban’s heartland is a clear signal that the Islamic State wants to take the fight to the Taliban, bleed their legitimacy and sovereignty over Afghanistan.”

The mosque bombing interrupted a period of unusual peace in southern Afghanistan, home to some of the deadliest battlegrounds of the 20-year war waged by the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan allies.

“When the Taliban took over the country, I thought we would be rid of war but now I think the situation may get even worse in the future,” said Navid, a resident of Kandahar city who didn’t want his surname to be used. “The harsh truth, which we all have to accept, is that there is no peace in Afghanistan. We will never be able to live peacefully, neither under the previous government nor the current Islamic Emirate,” he added.

Afghanistan has largely avoided the kind of sectarian strife that plagues much of the Muslim world. ISKP, which was formed by spinoff factions of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in 2014, was the first group to systematically target Shiite Muslims, who make up around a fifth of Afghanistan’s population...

 

On Joe Rogin vs. Sanjay Jupta: 'However much contempt you harbor for these media corporations — and I know it’s a lot — it’s still not enough. They deserve more. No institution does more damage to political and cultural life than employees of media corporations...'

 At Instapundit below.

And watch, at Fox News, "Joe Rogan 'absolutely eviscerated' CNN's Sanjay Gupta..." (VIDEO).

Britain's Conservative M.P. David Amess Murdered in Stabbing Attack in Essex (VIDEO)

Awful. Just horrible. 

At NYT, "Longtime U.K. Lawmaker Is Stabbed to Death, Stunning Britain":

David Amess, a Conservative member of Parliament, was holding a meeting in his constituency at the time. He is the second politician killed in an attack in just over five years.

More, "In full: Police hold press conference after MP stabbed to death."