Republican News

This post was originally published on this site

When the Ukrainian President came back to the United States recently, his primary purpose in visiting was to pitch his secret “victory plan” that would presumably allow Ukraine to “defeat Russia” and retake their lost territory, driving Putin from the field of battle in the process. Some might plausibly argue that he was also engaging in a bit of attempted election interference, courting the support of Kamala Harris and eventually Donald Trump when he really should only have been talking to Joe Biden. To describe the reception his victory plan received as “cool” would be generous, and few military analysts found it to be plausible. But Fox News analyst Rebekah Koffler dug a bit deeper to determine precisely where the plan missed the mark. She draws a parallel between Zelensky’s proposal and that of Reagan’s vision for how the United States could eventually win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The key difference is that Reagan’s vision actually included a path to victory. (Fox News)

The plan lacks a realistic definition of victory and a viable strategy to achieve it. President Reagan famously described in 1977 his vision for winning the Cold War with the Soviet Union to his confidant and adviser Richard Allen – “We win, they lose.” Sounds simple.

But underpinning this approach was a thoroughly thought out strategy of containment, developed and executed by Reagan and his team over the course of many years. This strategy comprised of a series of very specific measures that centered on boosting America’s military might and defense economics while weakening the Soviet Union’s.

Unlike Reagan’s, Zelenskyy’s plan is little more than the same old plea he’s been employing for over two years – more U.S. and European weapons and permission to launch missile strikes deep into Russian territory. This repackaged request that lacked a comprehensive strategy to win left senior U.S. and European officials “unimpressed,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Therein lies the fundamental blind spot (intentional or otherwise) in Zelensky’s victory plan. It’s simply more of the same as it’s been since the beginning. More taxpayer money for Zelensky’s people, for weapons, for everything they need. Yet all of that money would be going down the same rabbit hole. His vision remains the same. He wants to drive Russia out of all of the land it has taken – including Crimea – and force the Russians back fully inside their own borders. He also wants membership in NATO to be put on the table.

Yet Ukraine lacks the leverage to accomplish any of those goals and seems to forget that NATO membership was one of the driving factors that kicked off the war to begin with. The plan also ignores the fact that the Russians have been slowly but steadily taking more and more Ukrainian territory while the Ukrainians have been forced backward, with the brief exception of a temporary incursion into one rural part of central Russia. (And even that is already slipping away.) 

The calls for additional long-range missiles is equally impractical. The number of such weapons required to turn the tide would greatly exceed the reserves and future production capacity of the United States to supply them. The best that Zelensky could reasonable hope for is a temporary stalemate and he lacks the supplies to keep his people afloat on the home front under these circumstances.

Zelensky’s goals are completely understandable, but his plan is untenable. And if we’re not careful he’s going to drag us into this war whether we like it or not. That can’t be allowed to happen.

This post was originally published on this site

I’ve written about 60 Minutes’ edits to the Kamala Harris interview, slicing and dicing her word salads to paste together a coherent answer. It is, in a way, exactly the opposite of what the media does to create false Donald Trump narratives like the “fine people” hoax. 

More information has come out about the disastrous interview and 60 Minutes’ manipulations, and of course, we should throw in CBS’ lie about Leslie Stahl’s Trump interview in 2020. They flat-out lied about what happened, and there is tape to prove it. 

And, of course, CBS is facing fallout from its Ta-Nahise Coates interview and the Maoist struggle sessions at the network. I wrote about that yesterday, too. But let’s set that one aside because that is more about woke ideology taking over the newsroom and not flat-out dishonesty. 

First, let’s go back to the edits CBS made–that we know of. We actually have only a tiny amount of information, and even THAT makes CBS look terrible. Here is the original clip comparison that started the controversy.

60 Minutes removed Kamala’s word salad in the latest version. 1984 is here.

pic.twitter.com/vMglNptrvu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 8, 2024

The only reason we have this much to go on is that CBS pre-released a few tidbits from the interview and then edited them down for the final broadcast. Enterprising people noticed the vast differences between the videos originally seen and those that aired and are now shared by CBS as genuine. 

Laura Powell put together transcripts of the differences, and they are startling. 

Just to make it clear, they turned this response:

“The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas—Hezbollah…

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) October 8, 2024

Let me quote her transcript and highlight what was taken out:

In addition to substituting an entirely different answer to a question, 

@60Minutes edited Kamala Harris’s response to the previous question so much that it is not an accurate representation of what she said. 

Here is the question and answer from the original clip, with the parts edited out before broadcast in brackets:

WHITAKER: We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris Administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire; he’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon; he went in anyway. [He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war.] Does the US have no sway over prime minister Netanyahu?

HARRIS: [The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas—Hezbollah presents—um Iran um, I think that is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now,] the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, [which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region, including Arab leaders.]

WHITAKER: But it seems that prime minister Netanyahu is not listening.

HARRIS: [Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.]

You immediately notice that CBS left on the cutting room floor the vast majority of what she said, the vast majority of which was nonsense. Laura lays it out concisely:

Just to make it clear, they turned this response:

“The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And when we think about the threat that Hamas—Hezbollah presents—um Iran um, I think that is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now, the work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region, including Arab leaders.”

Into a concise and vague statement:

“The work that we do diplomatically, with the leadership of Israel, is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.”

All that verbiage is cut and pasted into one concise sentence that makes her sound 1000% better. 

That’s just one exchange. God knows what else they did because they are hiding the evidence. The transcript they released was not of the whole exchange but their edited version. They are hiding the ball and have clammed up about it. 

Here are the two different 60 Minutes edits layered on top of each other in full. You will hear where Whitaker’s questions line up, and the different edited answers from Harris.

SC 1842 (bottom) is what aired on Monday night.
SC 1843.5 (top) is what the Face the Nation X account… pic.twitter.com/FEuQp2o0kn

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 9, 2024

The Harris/Walz campaign could have been in the editing room, and for all we know, they were. Not that it would matter because CBS took a pretty decent interview from Whitaker and turned it into something else to help her. 

SCOOP: Does CBS News Know Where Jerusalem Is?

‘Do not refer to it as being in Israel,’ said the network’s senior director of standards and practices.@ollywiseman in @TheFP:https://t.co/UtwmT6o2QY

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 9, 2024

Stephen Miller did an excellent podcast on the topic. He points out something I hadn’t noticed: CBS cut out Harris’ most pro-Israel comments. This fits nicely with the Coates controversy. Tony Dokoupil challenged Coates on his anti-Israel screed and was forced to apologize to the newsroom for asking questions. In both instances the issue was Israel, and in both cases CBS was deprecating any defense of Israel. 

10/9/24 VS Media Podcast on Substack – Breaking down in detail, clip by clip, just how 60 Minutes and CBS News reshaped and re-edited Kamala Harris’ interview and answers on Israel. https://t.co/5OsgRyZp6Q pic.twitter.com/FeYX7JUdi9

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 9, 2024

RELEASE. THE. TAPE. https://t.co/cmeqinu0HB

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) October 10, 2024

Now consider the Trump controversy. 

Donald Trump was willing to sit down with an interview with 60 Minutes but rightly demanded an apology for Leslie Stahl’s claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was discredited–a fake. We all know that is completely false, and it is now evidence in Hunter’s legal troubles. The FBI had verified it in 2019 and hid it, and the intelligence community lied about it, but it had been verified and fair game. Stahl lied to cover it up. 

CBS has the tape from the interview, so they know they are lying in this clip.

60 Minutes straight up claimed tonight that Lesley Stahl didn’t dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinfo in 2020.

The only problem is that’s exactly what happened.

Notice how they don’t say “we were wrong. The laptop was real.”

Instead, they mock Trump for demanding… pic.twitter.com/QAQZkuQDBC

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 8, 2024

Glenn Kessler, the “fact checker,” claims that Trump is wrong to criticize CBS and 60 Minutes, posting transcripts. Except if you read the transcript themselves you see he is pulling a 60 Minutes here–slicing and dicing to create a false impression. 

For the record: Here’s the exchange with Stahl on 60 minutes. She said the laptop “can’t be verified.” At the time, virtually no news organizations were not given access to the hard drive to do their own forensic analysis https://t.co/JwbWD4KaFD https://t.co/3jKsSpbSem pic.twitter.com/g299T0QnUX

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) October 2, 2024

In his own post, he shows that Stahl said the laptop was “investigated and discredited.” Both of those statements are false and used to dismiss a true story that may have changed the outcome of the election. 

We now know that the laptop was real, the shady deals in China and Ukraine are real, and that millions of dollars have been spread around from foreign countries to Biden family members, yet CBS claims it is TRUMP who is lying about what we can see and read. 

60 Minutes has, unfortunately, a lot of credibility with an important group of voters, including a lot of swing voters. In this one episode, they manipulated the Harris interview to make her look coherent and falsely claimed that Trump was wrong about something that is indisputably true. They defended their own lies and called him a liar. 

Some commenters say that nobody trusts the MSM anymore, but that isn’t true. Their influence is vastly diminished, but a lot of low- to mid-information voters still trust brands like 60 Minutes. 

Who knows if 60 Minutes will break its silence on these scandals or whether anyone else in the MSM will call them on it? I tend to doubt it. Instead, you will get a circling of the wagons because, well, they are propagandists. 

This post was originally published on this site

It’s a rule nearly as old as human language itself. What goes up, must come down. NASA finally managed to violate that rule a few times in recent decades when it launched missions taking vehicles so far away from the Earth that they wouldn’t return on their own (such as Voyager) or dumped them on other planets they couldn’t escape from, like the Mars landers. But for the most part, the rule has held true. The same can be said for the International Space Station. Nearly everyone at NASA agrees that the ISS needs to be deorbited at some point, likely by 2030, give or take a couple of years. But there is a key difference that makes the ISS unique in this regard. The ISS was sent up in many stages and assembled in orbit. The total craft now weighs in excess of 400 tons. Bringing it down safely is easier said than done. (Space News)

NASA is faced with the challenge of safely deorbiting, in one fell swoop, over 400 tons of space hardware in a few years. As of now, the agency plans on deorbiting the International Space Station in early 2031 by dragging it back toward Earth and dumping it into an isolated patch of the Pacific Ocean — an idea that has scientists and environmental watchdogs ringing alarm bells.

As recently reported by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG), the orbital outpost is plagued by ongoing wear-and-tear issues, such as cracks and air leaks, after decades of use.

NASA has examined and rejected several options for decommissioning the ISS, including disassembly and return to Earth, storing the facility in a higher orbit and even a natural orbital decay scenario with uncontrolled reentry. Instead, NASA concluded in a white paper that “using a U.S.-developed deorbit vehicle, with a final target in a remote part of the ocean, is the best option for station’s end of life.”

The contract for creating what’s come to be known as the “United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV)” was awarded to SpaceX at a cost of $843 million. A specially modified Falcon Heavy rocket will be equipped with extra thrusters designed to force the ISS into a powered, destructive nose-dive. SpaceX has plenty of experience in crashing rockets at this point, so this should be right up Elon Musk’s ally. But the question is, where and how do you force a 400-ton machine down from space and into the ocean without creating some sort of navigation hazard?

Smaller components from space tend to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, but the ISS components were specifically designed to avoid that fate. So where can Musk land it and what sort of travel hazards might that entail? The go-to destination is known as Point Nemo, formally dubbed “the pole of inaccessibility.” The location earned that name by being the furthest point from any land on the planet, located off the coast of Antarctica. 

Some scientists are already protesting the decision, however. They claim that the space remnants are toxic to the marine environment and can release harmful byproducts over time. They draw a comparison between this and the decision to dump unspent ammunition from World War 2 into the ocean, a decision that led to many serious issues in the modern era. But what other options does that leave us with? The ISS is coming down at some point, either with help from us or on its own.

Noboby seems to like this plan, but even the EPA is calling it “the least worse option.” In any event, the time to have thought about this was decades ago when we first began sending components into orbit, not now. The die has been cast and we apparently don’t have a plan B.

This post was originally published on this site

I wrote about this situation in August and now it has seen a surprising turn. The backstory here is that pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan took a novel approach to forcing the school to agree to their divestment demands. They ran a slate of candidates and effectively took over the student government. As promised during their campaign, the activists immediately shut down the funding of all student groups on campus. 

The defunding started during the summer but it wasn’t until most students returned to campus in the fall that people got upset. After all, the money in question didn’t come from the school, it was a fee which each student had to pay to fund activities. So the students payed and yet none of their groups had any funds.

“It feels a little silly to me to refuse to hand out money that’s coming from students to help students,” said Gabriel Scheck, a senior, and president and captain of the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, which receives up to a third of its annual budget from the student government.

The team is one of the few club sports without membership fees. But without funding, the players would need to pay dues and other expenses, like travel, which Mr. Scheck said would increase the barrier to entry.

Enough students complained that the university agreed to a new plan. They would fund the groups the usual amount on a temporary basis and then, at some future point when the student funds were released, those groups would pay the school back. It was a loan to get around the defunding effort. The activists didn’t like that because meant they couldn’t inflict any misery on fellow students. They new student president asked campus groups to boycott the money being offered.

On top of that, the whole effort was a waste of everyone’s time because the school had already said it would not divest.

Now here we are a couple months later and something unexpected has happened. The student government reversed course and restored funding to student groups. 

…in a meeting packed with activists on Tuesday, the student assembly voted to support a petition that restored the budget. And it rejected an opposing petition that would have sent most of the student government’s money to another university’s initiative in Gaza.

The activist student president had vetoed two previous attempts to pass a budget, but this time she was outsmarted by a junior.

In a maneuver that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson might applaud, Liam Reaser, a junior, circulated a petition that collected enough student signatures to prevent a veto according to student government rules. The assembly needed only a simple majority of votes to pass it.

“My impression is that most people on campus don’t really care about student politics, but started to care about it when the vital services we’ve provided for years were interrupted,” Mr. Reaser wrote in a statement to The Times.

The counter move by the activists was to propose sending the entire budget to a group trying to restore higher education in Gaza. That effort failed in a 22 to 16 vote. As you can imagine, the campus activists were furious.

Last night, the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government voted on a Gaza Reparations Act. This legislation would have defunded nearly all of UMich’s clubs in order to send $440K to Birzeit University.

This measure failed, and the activists immediately freaked out. pic.twitter.com/x9EV7NM1gD

— Stu (@thestustustudio) October 9, 2024

So there you have it. Their plan to use the levers of student government to get their way has failed and all they can do is chant like idiots. Other students are clearly tired of this. Hopefully that activist exhaustion will become a trend that spreads to other campuses.

This post was originally published on this site

You would not expect this to be allowed in Texas, but the Texas Secretary of State’s Elections officials have instructed local precincts to accept driver’s licenses issued to noncitizens as valid IDs for voting. 

Here is the official advisory from
the Secretary of State.

Thank you @LisaSRECSD12 for sharing the source video and @TexasScorecard for reporting. pic.twitter.com/sJf0s9pnMB

— Joseph Trimmer (@JosephTrimmer_) October 9, 2024

Obviously, you can’t trust a single video describing a phone call to prove that this is a statewide policy, but the policy is spelled out in an advisory from the Secretary of State’s office. The policy is actual. 

The whole point of voter ID is to prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots and having a policy that ignores the validity of the ID makes it worthless. 

It’s true that the Secretary of State requires officials to inform people that noncitizens are not allowed to vote and that there are potential penalties, but making something illegal is hardly an effective prevention tool. We have prisons full of people who commit crimes despite knowing the risks, and the real risks from illegally voting have historically been small to nonexistent. 

I can’t say why the Secretary of State has chosen to implement this policy. However, it is easy to speculate: it is just conceivable that somebody was issued a restricted driver’s license and subsequently became a citizen and failed to update their identification. However, these licenses have a very limited term of validity, with a maximum of one year. 

There is no doubt that if even one such case existed, the left would go insane, so rather than requiring valid identification, the requirement is dropped in favor of informing people of the law. 

Sorry, that’s stupid. New citizens should follow the law and update their ID if they want to vote. This policy leaves a hole in the system as big as the gaps in the border wall. 

BREAKING: California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a bill barring local governments in the state from establishing local laws requiring residents to present identification to vote.

Now ask yourself why anyone would want such a law… pic.twitter.com/Qre3cAGmJ5

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 30, 2024

If it were the case that everybody wanted to quell concerns about ballot integrity, doing so would be simple: valid ID, paper ballots, shorter periods of voting, and hand counting. That is how most countries in the world do it, and their elections run much more smoothly and quickly than ours. France gets results within hours, and nobody wonders about the fairness of the process. 

Trump says the only reason Gavin Newsom signed a bill to ban voter ID from being required in California’s elections is because Democrats want to CHEAT

Trump is totally correct. Election fraud is rampant in California. For example, over 1.2 million ineligible voters were on Los… pic.twitter.com/ACdVxHx9Id

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 1, 2024

Here, the opposite is true: lots of people worry about fairness, yet any suggestions made to ensure ballot integrity are fought tooth and nail, and a smear campaign is run against them. It is as if the opponents of voter ID and paper ballots either don’t care to reassure us–which harms democracy–or they want to make it simple to cheat, which undermines our democratic process. 

It boggles the mind that anybody trusts our elections completely for many reasons. The incentive to cheat is enormous–controlling the laws, regulations, and trillions of dollars of spending is a mighty incentive to cheat. People have killed for much less, so the idea that nobody votes illegally or organizes efforts to do so is ridiculous. 

If Democrats cared about reassuring voters the process is fair, they should join Republicans and Independents in creating a system that makes it difficult instead of designing a system that makes it incredibly easy. 

They fight mightily to make the system insecure. Is it any wonder that lots of people question election results?

This post was originally published on this site

There are a couple of new polls out that suggest Trump is doing well in Michigan or, alternatively, that Harris is not doing well there. First up is this Quinnipiac Poll of the rust belt which has Trump up in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In Michigan, 50 percent of likely voters support Trump, 47 percent support Harris, and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver and independent candidate Cornel West each receive 1 percent support.

This compares to September when Harris received 50 percent support, Trump received 45 percent support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 2 percent support…

In a hypothetical two-way race, Trump receives 51 percent support and Harris receives 47 percent support.

In Wisconsin the poll had similar results.

In Wisconsin, 48 percent of likely voters support Trump, 46 percent support Harris, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver each receive 1 percent support.

The good news for Harris is that the same poll has her up 49-46 in Pennsylvania and that’s with Jill Stein taking 2%. The margin of error in the Michigan poll was 3.1% and in the PA poll it was 2.6%.

The othe new poll making some news comes from the Arab American Institute. It found a surprising reversal in who is winning among Arab Americans in Michigan.

Israel’s bloody war in Gaza has eroded support among a once reliable constituency with a major presence in must-win Michigan.

While Arab Americans voted nearly 60 percent for Joe Biden in 2020, with Donald Trump garnering just 35 percent of their support, the new poll finds Trump winning the Arab American vote 42 to 41 percent over Harris. The picture among likely voters is even worse, with Trump leading 46-42, pointing to a politically perilous enthusiasm gap.

It’s a small poll but the results seem to jibe with a trend others have been talking about. The NY Times just reported this on Monday.

The discontent is palpable on the ground in Michigan, which has more than 300,000 residents with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, though high-quality polling on Arab American and Muslim voters is scant. In nearly two dozen interviews this weekend with a range of these voters across levels of religious observance and familial countries of origin, just two said they were voting for her.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Instituted, told Rolling Stone that unlike previous polls where Arab Americans mostly had the same concerns as other Americans, this new poll was different.

In the poll we just finished, this is the first time where Gaza or Palestinian issues were in the top three. And among Democrats, it was the top issue. It crosses all the lines. It’s Lebanese, and Egyptians, and Palestinians. It’s also Muslims and Christians. It’s the recent immigrants and the ones born here. When you get numbers that high, it impacts the vote in a significant way. This poll showed that people who were historically Democratic voters were either not enthusiastic about voting at all, or some of them were going to vote for Trump. It was the first time we had actually Trump in the lead, 42 to 41…

The reaction I’m getting, when I go around the country and talk to people, is they want to punish Democrats. That’s not a smart political move, but that’s what people are feeling. And I don’t have an argument to make because they haven’t given us arguments to make.

Zogby did suggest that some of that vote shift toward Trump was pretty soft. He suggested if Harris made a bold statement about a ceasefire or something else, she might reclaim a percentage of those voters. 

So I guess that’s something to look for in the next week or so. If Democrats really are as nervous about Michigan as they claim to be, maybe Harris will have to do something drastic to try to stop the loss.

This post was originally published on this site

There are some things I missed spending my formative years in the Appalachian mountains in New Jersey. And, yes – there are ‘mountains’ in NJ, even ski areas. The particular one we lived on top of, which all those years ago was pretty isolated, had been tapped at about 1200′ in height or so by the altimeter in my Daddy’s Eastern Airlines Electra when he rumbled over the homestead one day on his way back to Newark with an empty plane.

Sussex County at the time was rural with a capital ‘R’ and not known for any regional culinary specialty, less mind any dining chain establishment of any description. The closest we came to meeting the NJ mold was an affection for Taylor pork roll (ROLL – it says so on the label, dammit) and…well, a pizza parlor opened by Italian refugees from closer to the city who’d needed to establish some distance from, let’s just say, a ‘family’ feud.

All those ‘New Jersey’ icons like Wawas, fried hotdogs, etc might as well have existed in a different universe to the agrarian natives of the area then. The Sussex Diner and spaghetti with meatballs bigger than your head on Wednesdays was the go-to place.

In California, it was different, with everyone developing crushes on Del Taco or Taco Bell—huge arguments. Tommy Burgers or In-N-Out (no question there—double-double with grilled onions and fries). Late-night rabble-rousing was never a chain – always Tiny Naylor’s on Red Hill in Tustin.

It wasn’t until we hit the South that we became aware of the ultimate ubiquitous meeting and eating “place.” That yellow jacket combination of bright yellow and black sign rising above an interstate on a 150-foot-tall pole or shimmering in the fog on a backcountry Carolina or Panhandle road.

The Waffle House.

They were everywhere. ARE everywhere, and everyone loves them.

Here in Pensacola, I counted roughly 16 on a Google map search within what we consider the Pensacola area. That’s before it stretches out to the wilds of the back county. And you know they have them, too – never you doubt it.

Waffle Houses are legendary. There’s one here that I was told years ago, if a person ever wanted to see every manner of human being and social strata in one place, stop at the Waffle House up by the interstate or the one on Gregory ’round about 2 am. Guaranteed, the world in all its glory will be there.

Our Ebola* in his salad days would regularly wind up at the Gregory Street Waffle House in the wee hours. Oh, he mourned mightily from overseas when we had to tell him they were discontinuing the t-bone steak he used to order when his wallet was heavier than usual.

Seriously – a t-bone that was edible and affordable. Or settling for a cup of good coffee.

In a place that feels the same comfy place no matter where it is.

“Is the Waffle House universally awesome? It is indeed, marvelous, an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed—its warm yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the South to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes, it is always faithful, always there for you.” ~ Tony Bourdain

Waffle House rules the Southern world. They are always here for you. 

But you’d best listen up if they are not.

Folks, if Waffle House is closing, you know this is a big deal. https://t.co/6MWEGACJTR

— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 8, 2024

One of the most amazing things to come out of these two horrific storms is that Waffle House has been revealed for what it truly is.

Beneath all the homespun charm, greasy eggs, and TikTok video eat-in counter fights, they are an efficiency machine that blows the doors off the government.

Behold the wizards who are so good at what they do. FEMA and others consult with them.

Waffle House has a Storm Center with an entire operations team that is so good at their job they assist FEMA during hurricanes.

The European mind cannot comprehend this pic.twitter.com/Wfmw5hPzzC

— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) October 9, 2024

Oh, yeah, they do.

Today I had the opportunity to visit the @WaffleHouse Storm Center as we continue to recover from Hurricane Helene and prepare for Hurricane Milton. Thank you to the Waffle House Operations Team for your great work to prepare and inform the public during times like this. pic.twitter.com/gIBA3onKcl

— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) October 8, 2024

In fact, their disaster response team uses an index that was initially conceived and designed by a former FEMA director who, unlike what we’ve been burdened with lately, apparently took his job seriously and knew his stuff.

Waffle House Hurricane Response

The Waffle House is a restaurant based in Georgia which has been recognized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its exceptional preparedness during hurricanes, ready to serve customers and first responders. Their preparedness is effective and reliable enough that they are (along with a few other companies) used by FEMA as an informal metric called the Waffle House Index to determine how badly a storm has affected a given area.

Results

Providing Resources During Recovery

Because of its level of preparedness, Waffle House is able to provide a place for residents to charge their phones and provide food to first responders in the aftermath of a storm.

Waffle House supports its locations by monitoring storms at the Waffle House Storm Center. Waffle House locations are able to operate on gas alone, though they sometimes bring in electric generators. The company also mobilizes “jump teams”: people who come from other parts of the United States to cover for employees who are unable to report to work because of the storm. Finally, they prepare to reduce to a limited menu under circumstances in which some of their supplies are difficult to obtain.

Wider Disaster Coordination

The Waffle House Index, devised in 2004 by former FEMA Director Craig Fugate, uses a color code to indicate the status of each restaurant. Green indicates that a restaurant is fully operational. Yellow indicates limited menu, gas power, or no power. Red indicates that it is closed. A closed location indicates a very severe situation. FEMA uses this index to determine how quickly businesses will rebound as well as how the wider community is doing.

The Waffle House Index is a thang:

…Dan Stoneking, FEMA director of external affairs, wrote in a FEMA blog post:^[12][13]

As Craig [Fugate] often says, the Waffle House test doesn’t just tell us how quickly a business might rebound – it also tells us how the larger community is faring. The sooner restaurants, grocery and corner stores, or banks can re-open, the sooner local economies will start generating revenue again – signaling a stronger recovery for that community. The success of the private sector in preparing for and weathering disasters is essential to a community’s ability to recover in the long run.

— Dan Stoneking, FEMA News of the Day – What do Waffle Houses Have to Do with Risk Management?

And they are all in on getting the restaurants up and operational as quickly as possible after a storm because the priority is what’s most important for the community, not what the chain needs.

It’s no wonder some people have stars in their eyes about Waffle House, like Ebola when he was young, the sweet older couples I see eating there every Sunday after church, the young carousers slumped in booths, and everyone in between.

People like my friend Matt, who immortalized his Waffle House love in one of the prettiest paintings I’ve ever seen.

Next week I’m going to have to pause my printing of all of my art prints temporarily. I will be in search for a new printer. In the meantime they are still up. And originals are always available. https://t.co/RiYPOfodRf pic.twitter.com/tnb8ZhDaAx

— Matt Dawson (@SaintRPh) October 9, 2024

It only goes to show you how great this country is. Our heroes not only don’t have capes; some wear uniforms or everyday clothes, and they come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.

And you find them in the last place you’d expect.

Wearing yellow and black, with two over-easy and a side of hash browns.

*Our son was one of the very first computer and gaming savants in the early 90s, winning tournaments and designing “skins” for games not long after AL Gore invented the innerwebs. Unfortunately, he also had a knack for catching the first viruses. One was so virulent that it wiped his computer and all of my work and required one of his father’s computer geeks to come from base with a DoD program to finally exterminate it. His uncle Bingley nicknamed him “Ebola,” and it has been his nom-de-innerwebs ever since.

This post was originally published on this site

When we last checked in on the fate of Chicago’s ShotSpotter crime-fighting technology, there were some signs that a deal might be on the table that could see Mayor Brandon Johnson’s efforts to remove the system from the city reversed. But I included an important caveat with the idea: maybe. A strong majority of the Aldermen on the City Council were in favor of a plan that would allow the Police Administrator to negotiate a new contract with ShotSpotter and a group of local business owners had offered to kick in $2.5 million to gain an extension to the contract. A headline this week in CBS News Chicago seemed to offer more hope, claiming that Johnson had agreed not to veto the new contract. But that turned out to be less than met the eye and the Mayor still plans to sink the deal. 

Mayor Brandon Johnson will not veto an ordinance that would have allowed the city’s top cop to negotiate a new deal to revive Chicago’s controversial gunshot detection program.

While Johnson said last month that he had “no choice” but to veto the ordinance that sought to reinstate the city’s ShotSpotter program, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said in an email Tuesday night that it was later “deemed unnecessary” to do so because the ordinance cannot be enforced.

“An attempt by the legislative body to compel the executive branch to enter into a contract with a specific contractor would violate the separation of powers. The authority to enter and administer contracts lies with the executive branch,” a mayoral spokesperson said. “While the legislative branch has legislative authority, it cannot obligate the executive branch to execute a contract and certainly not under specific terms. The executive branch must retain discretion over matters such as contract terms, remuneration, and the duration of the agreement.”

In other words, the Mayor plans to sink the plan using what amounts to a pocket veto. He will allow the Aldermen to vote on the new contract and allow it to go into place. But then he will simply choose not to honor the contract by claiming that the authority to establish such a contract and fund the agreement lies with the executive branch. There does not appear to be a clear path to challenge such a ruling, so ShotSpotter will remain shut down for the foreseeable future. Johnson claims to be looking at alternative technology to replace it, but no viable competitors have been identified with the same capabilities.

This is one of the most polite games of “chicken” you are likely to ever see play out in Chicago politics. Johnson has been given every imaginable opportunity to walk away from this terrible decision while saving face. He has rebuked his potential saviors at every turn. Johnson knows that ShotSpotter works and that it saves lives while decreasing response times to 911 calls. The City Council knows it. The data is all out there in black and white proving this to be true. Even some of Johnson’s most loyal supporters on the Council have opposed him on this issue (politely) and yet he refuses to back down.

The real question is why? He campaigned on a pledge to remove ShotSpotter, but it was a race that he was winning easily anyway. The citizens of Chicago support the technology and many have come forward to testify about the lives it has saved. Even if a replacement technology were identified, money would still be required to pay for it. It’s simply a question of who would be signing the checks. This seems like a very narrow-minded approach to an eminently solvable problem. Yet the technology remains offline and the body count continues to rise. Is it too farfetched to ask whether someone with ShotSpotter or some aldermen who support it have gotten on Johnson’s bad side? This is Chicago we’re talking about here, so everything is on the table as far as I’m concerned.

This post was originally published on this site

This list has finally been released a couple weeks after the school superintendent missed a deadline to do so. There are 11 schools on the chopping block and if they are closed the district will save about $22 million per year.

The long-awaited list includes eight elementary schools, one K-8 and two high schools, as well as two other schools that were eligible for closure but instead would remain open to accept students coming from one of the shuttered sites, Superintendent Matt Wayne said. No middle schools were included.

The announcement offers the first specifics after a monthslong process to close city schools to address the 14,000 empty seats spread across the district’s 102 schools. The empty seats are due to two decades of declining enrollment, including the loss of 4,000 students in the past five years.

It seems the bottom line in the decision making was enrollment. Schools that had fewer than 260 students were marked for closure.

The 13 sites were deemed eligible for closure because they have 260 students or fewer, and in the case of elementary schools, a low “composite score.” The score was calculated using a range of factors including facility conditions, student achievement, location and the impact on disadvantaged students…

“The schools with the lowest enrollment are the most vulnerable to the impacts of those cuts,” Wayne said, but there is no choice but to make the cuts, he said.

“Without a balanced budget and a plan to consolidate our resources, we risk a state takeover of our school district,” Wayne said in a note sent to school communities Tuesday. “Should SFUSD fall into receivership, the state of California will take over the District’s governance and its financial, operational, and programmatic decisions for years to come.”

The budget is the issue driving this. San Francisco’s school budged hasn’t been taken over by the state yet, but the state did appoint two “fiscal experts” earlier this year to point out the obvious. With so many fewer students, schools needed to be closed as the district was facing a $100 million shortfall. 

Even closing these 11 schools is probably just a start. SF has 10 other schools wither fewer than 260 students. Those schools are getting a pass for now because their test scores were better. But there’s no reason to think this trend is going to change. San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major US city. It’s not a place where families can afford to live or where people want to raise kids.

Nevertheless, local officials impacted by the proposal vowed to fight.

Four schools on the list are within Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s district. In a statement, Peskin, who is running for mayor, blasted the district’s proposal to close the schools.

“I intend to do everything I can to have the SFUSD to reconsider this unfair, ill-advised decision that will disproportionately adversely impact schools in the northeast and particularly the Asian American community,” Peskin said in a text.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro District where the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy is located, expressed concern about the closure impacting the school site named after LGBTQ civil rights icon. He demanded an explanation for the decision, including its rationale and implications for nearby school communities.

The current list won’t be final until next month and then the school board will hold a vote in December. Impacted parents hope changes can be made before that vote makes this final.

“We’ve fought for this school for so long,” said Harvey Milk Elementary parent Laura McMullen who has a fifth grader. “And we are not going to stand by and watch this happen. (The district) will have another fight on their hands.”…

Derik Dulin, a PE teacher at the school and parent of a Milk fifth grader, was frustrated with the possibility of closure and a merger with Sanchez Elementary.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “It’s kind of bulls—. Not kind of, it is.”

No one wants their school closed but, again, the district is going to cut $100 million from the budget because it has no choice and because it wants to avoid a complete state takeover. That means all of these schools and likely several more are going to need to close. There’s no other choice.

This post was originally published on this site

One of the most important variables that sticks out in polls is one that few people seem to have noticed: for the first time ever in Gallup polls, Republicans have a Party ID edge over Democrats right before a presidential election. 

“More Americans Identify as Republican Than Democrat. Here’s What That Means for the Election.”https://t.co/lzNNZV0k7q

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 9, 2024

NBC polls are showing the same thing, and the effect is not small. It makes a huge difference that the partisan tilt of the electorate has shifted. 

Beneath the headline results in many polls, something unusual has turned up with big implications for politics: More voters are calling themselves Republicans than Democrats, suggesting that the GOP has its first durable lead in party identification in more than three decades.

The development gives former President Donald Trump an important structural advantage in the November election. But other factors could prove more important to the outcome. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris still leads narrowly in many polls, in some cases because she does well with independent voters.

Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who works on NBC News surveys, first noticed in May that more voters were calling themselves Republicans. “Wow, the biggest deal in polling is when lines cross, and for the first time in decades, Republicans now have the national edge on party ID,’’ he wrote. He called the development “the underrecognized game-changer for 2024.’’

In combined NBC polls this year, Republicans lead by 2 percentage points over Democrats, 42% to 40%, when voters were asked which party they identified with. That compares with Democratic leads of 6 points in 2020, 7 points in 2016 and 9 points in 2012.

“Republicans being 5 to 9 points down on party identification—that is like running uphill,’’ McInturff said. “We don’t know the election’s outcome, but we know Republicans have a better shot at doing well if party ID is functionally tied, with perhaps the smallest tilt toward Republicans.’’

Gallup also found more voters identifying as Republican than Democratic, by 3 points in its July-to-September surveys. It was the first time that the GOP had an advantage in the third quarter before a presidential election in Gallup surveys dating to 1992.

That swing in voter party preference is HUGE. Republicans are doing 8 points better in party ID than in 2020 and 9 points better than in 2016. Poll results are not determined by raw random samples these days because the data collection is not done randomly. It can’t be because segments of the population are more or less likely to answer polls or be accessible to pollsters. 

Every pollster has a “special sauce” they use to model the electorate, including weighting party identification. Honest pollsters aren’t cooking the books so much as trying to reshape their data to fit their model of what a truly random sample would look like. 

Of course, if the electorate doesn’t look like the model, the poll will be wrong. This isn’t a “margin of error,” which is calculated by the number of data points. It is a fundamental problem because the data is not randomly collected. MOEs assume random samples. 

That’s a too long explanation for a simple problem: if Gallup and NBC are seeing a genuine shift in party ID, most polls will be wrong unless the correct for that shift, as well as the “shy” Trump voter.

The polls in the last two presidential elections were horribly off–well outside the margin of error–because the model of the electorate was wrong. Take a look at the polling from the last two cycles on this day from RealClearPolitics:

This Day In History: October 9, 2020: Biden +9.7 | October 9, 2016: Clinton +4.6

In their RCP poll average for today they have Harris up by 2. That is almost 8 points lower than Biden’s average in 2020. 

This race is TIGHT: within 2 points in all 7 critical battlegrounds. Harris barely wins if the result matches the polls.

But Trump crushes Harris & wins all the key states with a 2020 like poll miss. Harris, though, crushes Trump & wins all of them with a 2022 like poll miss. pic.twitter.com/b3ZJlbRI0w

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) September 20, 2024

Harry Enten of CNN does excellent poll analyses, bringing the complex down to the simple. He has done several segments about the difficulties of understanding polling and how to read them. 

Why 2024 is way too close to call: The avg. state polling miss is 3.4 pts since 1972. All swing states are within that.

The true margin of error of state poll avgs. is way bigger (+/- 9.4 pts).

Anything from a Trump 300+ electoral vote win to Harris doing the same is possible. pic.twitter.com/ViMI4aXyCB

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 8, 2024

Some pollsters clearly cook the books, misrepresenting the electorate. But every pollster has to contend with the fact that poll data is not actually random, as necessary to get reliable polls. The statistics can be dead on, but the data has to be shaped before the analysis is done. 

Who is a “likely voter?” “How many Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are there in real life?” “How do we collect the data since each demographic prefers to use different communication tools?” Dishonest pollsters can make the data say almost anything, and honest pollsters still have to make educated guesses to make the data make sense. 

Of course, Democrats should be nervous.
Of course, Republicans should be nervous.

This is race has been consistently tight to a historic degree… It could break either way… or it could be as close in the vote count as the polls indicate now. pic.twitter.com/mTJ02639PN

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 9, 2024

Political consultants know the strengths and weaknesses of polls and are much more demanding than media outlets because they use the data not to generate interest in the story but to actually win elections. Horserace polls are entertainment for political junkies; internal campaign polls are for directing strategy. 

“I just saw some new private polling that’s very robust. Private polling,” says @MarkHalperin. Kamala Harris “is in a lot of trouble … In the conversations I’m having with Trump people and Democrats with data, they are extremely bullish on Trump’s chances in the last 48 hours.… pic.twitter.com/KF3tSM2sLo

— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) October 9, 2024

That’s why you have seen a shift in Harris’ strategy. Her internals clearly told her that what she was doing was not working. Those polls could be wrong, too, for the same reasons, of course, but the pollsters tend to be much more stringent about their methods because they need repeat clients who demand a lot more than the news outlets, who want exciting results, or results that say what they want them to. 

The shift from Democrat to Republican preference is an indicator that the electorate has changed. It doesn’t guarantee a Trump win since Independents ultimately choose the victor. But it does say something about the mood of the electorate. They are sour on Democrats. 

With Kamala tying herself to Biden more publicly, this could have a major effect. Republicans sure think so, given how they have jumped on Harris’ saying she would do everything as Biden has. 

🚨 NEW AD pic.twitter.com/QAtPWIme91

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 9, 2024

The Harris campaign is scared, and they should be. I am not PREDICTING a loss, but I think a Trump victory–if trends continue–is more likely than not. 

This is insane. Trump is polling nearly double digits better in Pennsylvania than both Biden 2020 and Clinton 2016 at this point in the race. WOW. pic.twitter.com/ChZLF0bL0l

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 9, 2024

I suspect the public pollsters are, for the most part, trying to get reasonably accurate results, but if there is an error half as bad as the last two election cycle you should expect that Trump wins pretty easily in the electoral college. He may even have a shot at the popular vote. 

Well see.