Cross-Examination

• GDP rises: Third-quarter GDP numbers released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday came in higher than the expected 4.3%, rising to 4.9%. While that number looks like an indication of strong economic growth, the economy is not entirely healthy. Job Creators President Alfredo Ortiz called the number a “mirage created by unprecedented deficit spending.” Ron DeSantis also weighed in: “Today’s GDP numbers are reflective of the wider Biden economy — inflated. Much of last quarter’s growth was driven by unsustainable government spending and monetary policy. In reality, consumer confidence is falling, inflation is still nearly double the average of the last 30 years, our oil reserves are at a 40-year low, auto loan delinquencies and credit card debt are near all-time highs, and more Americans are forced to take on multiple jobs to cover basic expenses. Bidenflation is killing the average American’s bottom line, and things will only get worse in the months ahead as credit dries up and gas prices increase even further because of Biden’s anti-energy policies.”

• Doling out retribution: On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had killed Hamas’s head of intelligence, Shadi Barud, in a targeted airstrike. Barud was said to have planned and orchestrated Hamas’s murderous attack on innocent Israelis. Three other Hamas military leaders were also killed in targeted strikes. Meanwhile, the U.S. military conducted airstrikes in eastern Syria, targeting Iranian weapons depots and ammo storage facilities in response to 19 attacks leveled against American military personnel in Iraq and Syria. It’s a needed shot across the bow after Team Biden’s red line.

• The Appropriated Press’s selective stylebook: It’s no secret that our mainstream media suffers from an acute case of moral relativism, but its bouts seem to become more severe, more debilitating, when the news of the day involves a conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Such is the case with the Associated Appropriated Press, which modestly calls itself “the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news,” and which recently issued “verbal guidance on the Israel-Hamas coverage” in which the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” are to be avoided like a story about the White House’s cocaine business. Interestingly, the AP does acknowledge that terrorism is “the calculated use of violence, especially against civilians, to create terror to disrupt and demoralize societies for political ends,” but it becomes downright squeamish when applying the term to noble Hamas freedom fighters who shoot fleeing young concertgoers in the back and decapitate Jewish babies. Luckily for the AP, though, that troubling term is always available for affixing to pro-Trump political protesters, or when it gleefully reports that a lachrymose RINO has called a fellow Republican a “legislative terrorist.”

• Harvard “task force” for anti-Semitic students: Harvard University clearly has a racism problem. Not only has the Ivy League school effectively thumbed its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against its race-based admission policies that discriminated against Asians, but the school is now actively harboring anti-Semites. Harvard is seeking to protect the 30+ student groups that signed letters blaming Israel for Hamas’s unprovoked murderous attack against Israelis. The university announced plans to create a task force that will aim to assist these students in navigating the backlash they have received for publicly endorsing anti-Semitism. That assistance will include instructions on how to respond to online harassment. But the truth is, it is not these anti-Semitic students who are under threat; rather, they are the threat, as demonstrated by the protests and rallies they’ve held at universities across the country, captured in a series of videos.

• Belly Laugh of the Day: Speaking of the anti-Israel protesters, at one of these rallies a pro-Palestinian protester with a bullhorn called for a boycott of several big American businesses. She shouted out the names of several companies, including Starbucks, Disney, Walmart, and Nike. Several observers note that the speaker was in fact wearing a pair of Nike shoes even as she was calling for its boycott. The hypocrisy runs strong in this one.

• Racism solved, Lee statue secretly melted down: Who knew it’d be this easy? And why didn’t anyone think of it years ago? On Saturday, the dual stains of slavery, our nation’s original sin, and racism, the stubborn vestige of that sin, were scrubbed away, removed from our dark history, expunged from our record and our daily life, when a statue of one of history’s most brilliant generals, Robert E. Lee, was, as The Washington Post giddily reports, surreptitiously “cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.” Yep, that’ll do it. That’ll end racism. Lee, of course, was a Confederate, and he was thus on the wrong side of history even though he opposed the institution of slavery. And the magnificent statue of him that once stood in Charlottesville — the one whose scheduled removal was the basis for protests and counterprotests in 2017 that resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer and the ongoing false smearing of Donald Trump — is now gone. “Well, they can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” gloated Andrea Douglas, the executive director of Charlottesville’s black history museum, as she watched pieces of oxidized history being fed into a 2,250-degree furnace. “There will be no tape for that.” Yep, problem solved.

• Trump’s best poll numbers ever, and some of Biden’s worst ever: There’s nothing like a string of indictments and gag orders to boost one’s presidential prospects. A recent Harvard Caps Harris poll of 2,116 registered voters showed Donald Trump getting 39% support, Joe Biden 33%, and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 19%. This reminds us of a three-way race in 1992 — a race that included independent businessman Ross Perot also pulling 19% of the vote and bleeding support away from the incumbent president, Republican George H.W. Bush — which vaulted Democrat Bill Clinton into the White House with just 43% of the vote. Elsewhere, in an even more significant Morning Consult poll in the election-deciding swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump leads Biden 47% to 43%. Pollster and former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway called these numbers “the best” of Trump’s political career. Even more ominously for the enfeebled 80-year-old incumbent, respondents said the economy was their most important issue, and they disapproved of Biden’s handling of it by a whopping 65% to 14%. Finally, a new Gallup poll showed Biden’s support among Democrats dropping 11 points in a single month, from 86% to 75%. No wonder gelato tycoon Dean Phillips is getting into the race.

• Communist China’s new purge: It was just over a year ago, at a meeting of China’s Communist Party Congress, when 79-year-old former Chinese President Hu Jintao was hoisted by the armpit and “escorted” out of Beijing’s Great Hall of the People by one of current President Xi Jinping’s henchmen. At the time, NBC News called it “a moment of unexpected drama during an otherwise highly choreographed event.” Things in China today are decidedly less dramatic but perhaps no less significant. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty writes: “In the past few months, several top Chinese government officials have suddenly disappeared; one day, they stopped making public appearances and showing up at meetings, and their replacements were announced months later. It looks like something akin to a purge is occurring within the top level of the Chinese government, with Xi Jinping removing anyone he’s not 100 percent certain is completely loyal to him.” The disappeared aren’t just any schlubs, either. They include China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang; the commander of the PLA’s Rocket Force, Li Yuchao, along with its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo; and finally, Defense Minister Li Shangfu. It looks to us like Xi might be getting a bit twitchy, perhaps due to the precarious position of his country’s economy.

• The Florida Man Games: Coming February 2024 in St. Augustine, Florida, the first (and possibly annual) “Florida Man Games.” The event aims to capitalize on the Sunshine State’s famous — or infamous — reputation with a competition that aims to be “the most insane athletic showdown on Earth.” The objective is to have fun with those “Florida man” news reports of bizarre and crazy stories often involving individuals with guns, drugs, alcohol, gators, or any number of humorous things. For example, several of the competitions listed include “Weaponized Pool Noodle Mud Duel,” “A Catalytic Converter, 2 Bikes, And A Handful Of Copper Pipes: Race Against Time,” and “Beer Belly Florida Sumo.” In other words, it is an event for rednecks poking fun at themselves for being rednecks.

Headlines

• Desperate manhunt for suspected Maine shooter Robert Card sparks urgent alert at Canadian border (New York Post)

• Kamala Harris praises gun laws in Australia, which confiscated hundreds of thousands of guns (Fox News)

• Biden pushes lawsuits against gunmakers following Maine attacks (Breitbart)

• Video reveals Jamaal Bowman taking down emergency exit signs before pulling fire alarm (New York Post)

• Speaker Johnson supports $14 billion for Israel, but says America “cannot be dropping money out of helicopters” (Fox News)

• Republican presidential candidate Larry Elder suspends campaign, endorses Donald Trump (Fox News)

• Dean Phillips launching Democrat primary challenge to Biden (Washington Examiner)

• IDF tanks, troops briefly enter Gaza in second limited overnight raid ahead of ground op (Times of Israel)

• Rashida Tlaib employed Hamas activists, had “extensive fundraising ties” to Hamas supporters (Hot Air)

• California city the first in U.S. to condemn Israel, accuse Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza (New York Post)

• More Americans are raiding retirement funds for emergencies (USA Today)

• Humor: Seventy-six sacrificial goats delivered to pizza parlor for Hillary Clinton’s birthday party (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.