Government & Politics

• Hunter Biden’s criminal tax trial begins with jury selection in California (Fox News)

• Russia election interference déjà vu: When will these people learn? We ask this rhetorically because the answer is likely “Never.” As a case in point, the Biden/Harris Justice Department, led by corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland, announced yesterday that those dastardly Ruskies are once again working feverishly to fix an American presidential election. “We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia, and Iran, as well as China,” said Garland. Forgive us if we’re a bit jaded. After all, as independent journalist and Twitter Files coauthor Michael Shellenberger said, “We have this record of the Department of Justice running Russian disinformation hoaxes twice, not once. The first time claiming that the Russians favored Trump when we now know that they favored Clinton, and then the second time, the Hunter Biden laptop, where we now know that the FBI ran a disinformation effort to make people think that it was about the Russians.” Shellenberger added, “Nobody should trust blindly the Department of Justice when it says anything about Russia.” Or, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway puts it, “The government doing the most meddling in our elections is our own.” By the way, and in case you’re wondering: Vladimir Putin is pulling for Harris.

• What’s Kamala’s position on reparations? So much attention has been paid to Kamala Harris’s spectacular flip-flops on issues such as fracking and Donald Trump’s border wall that many Americans are unaware of an even more insidious and unpopular policy position she holds on reparations for the descendants of slavery. Never mind that black Americans have been receiving reparations for decades under the guise of Affirmative Action and countless social welfare programs. Harris wants the whole enchilada, even if she’s refusing to say so. “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill,” said then-Senator Kamala Harris to Al Sharpton in 2019. And remember what she repeatedly told us last week: “My values haven’t changed.” Harris’s values may not have changed, but neither has her strategy of avoiding the media and refusing to take policy positions. “No policy platform on her website and now just straight-up refusing to say where she stands on issues,” posted Abigail Jackson, the comms director for Republican Senator Josh Hawley. “Very normal behavior.”

• Capital gains bait and switch: Democrats rarely see a tax increase they don’t like, but paying taxes isn’t exactly popular, so Democrats play the “paying their fair share” game to sell tax hikes supposedly only on wealthy Americans. In truth, everyone ends up paying more. Joe Biden’s budget proposal calls for not only raising the taxation rate on capital gains to a level not seen since 1978 but also taxing Americans’ unrealized capital gains. Of course, doing so would harm investment, which would, in turn, hamper the growth of new business and limit job growth. In short, it’s a recipe for economic stagnation. Kamala Harris, who is just as tax-happy as any Democrat, has sought to blunt the negative response toward Biden’s tax proposals by trotting out a tax plan that is the same but less. She would raise the capital gains tax, but not as high as Biden. Furthermore, she would change the rules to also tax unrealized capital gains, but again at a lower rate than Biden. And to put lipstick on this ugly tax-increase pig, Harris proposes expanding the small business startup-expense deduction to $50,000 from the current amount of $5,000. Less of a bad idea is still a bad idea.

• Carville to Kamala: run away from Biden: Kamala Harris has enjoyed the longest honeymoon in the history of American presidential politics, but longtime Democrat strategist James Carville knows it can’t last forever. That’s why Corporal Cue Ball has taken to the op-ed page of The New York Times to give her three pieces of advice. In brief: “1. Help Mr. Trump hurt himself in the debate(s). … 2. Break from President Biden on policy. … 3. Display a clear growth mind-set from the 2020 Democratic primaries.” Carville’s first point was dealt a blow recently when ABC said it would mute the two candidates’ mics between responses. This will make it harder for Trump to interrupt her and, therefore, harder for her to repeatedly interject Excuse me, but I’m speaking, as she did with Mike Pence during their 2020 debate. As for running from Biden, that seems like a no-brainer. As Carville notes: “Since the early 1990s, political history has shown us that when a popular incumbent president is not on the ballot, we have a de facto change election. … 2024 will be won by who is fresh and who is rotten. It’s quite simple: The shepherd of tomorrow wins the sheep.” Rotten Kamala. Has a nice ring to it.

• Harris campaign agrees to ABC debate rules, ends microphone dispute (National Review)

• Tim Walz’s family supports Trump: Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Democrat Governor Tim Walz, must be the black sheep of the family when it comes to his political views. Not only has Walz’s older brother Jeff recently expressed opposition to his election bid, but now his extended family members in his home state of Nebraska have come out publicly in support of Donald Trump. A photo posted on X by Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles W. Herbster depicts eight members of the Walz family standing in front of a Trump 2024 flag, smiling broadly and wearing (grammatically challenged) T-shirts that read “Walz’s for Trump.” In his posting of the photo, Herbster writes, “Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…” All we can say is someone is likely not showing up for Thanksgiving dinner this year.

• Walz hit with House subpoena for records on $250 million Minnesota COVID fraud (NY Post)

• Liz Cheney endorses Kamala Harris after previously warning how radical she was (Daily Wire)

Leftmedia & Culture

• What’s with CNN and that non-live “live” interview with Harris? In a way, it was only natural that Kamala Harris would opt for CNN to air her first interview since being undemocratically selected as the Democrats’ nominee. After all, she’s a fake candidate, and CNN is a fake news network. While Harris got through the interview without any catastrophic gaffes, she didn’t do herself any favors for transparency or authenticity, and CNN didn’t help her case. As the Washington Examiner’s Christopher Tremoglie writes, “Largely promoted as Harris’s first sit-down interview with a member of the media, which she, oddly, did alongside Walz, it was little more than a prerecorded, propagandized conversation, obsequious agitprop, rather than a legitimate interview. And even though the interview was prerecorded, CNN still branded it as ‘live’ during the telecast.” Indeed, the word “live” was right there on the chyron along the bottom of the screen. They must think the American people are idiots. Or at least that the voters they’re courting are.

• Brian Stelter returning to CNN, will assume propaganda analyst role and write newsletter (Washington Times)

• “From the river to the sea” not hate speech, decrees Facebook: The genocidal anti-Semitic slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chanted by pro-Hamas protesters is not considered “hate speech” by Meta, Facebook’s parent company. An “independent” Oversight Board for Meta on Wednesday concluded that Facebook users posting the slogan on the social media platform were not in violation of the company’s rules against “hate speech.” This decision comes following Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitting last week that his company caved to the Biden administration’s pressure to censor certain speech on Facebook. According to the board, the rationale for not penalizing three cases in which Facebook users posted the anti-Semitic slogan is that “the three pieces of content contain contextual signals of solidarity with Palestinians” and not calls to violence against Jews. The board further argued, “Because the phrase does not have a single meaning, a blanket ban on content that includes the phrase, a default rule towards removal of such content, or even using it as a signal to trigger enforcement or review, would hinder protected political speech in unacceptable ways.” Suddenly, context matters to Meta — at least when it comes to the promulgation of radical leftist ideology.

• UN official who blamed Israel for October 7 attack set to deliver “Anatomy of a Genocide” speech at Brown (Washington Free Beacon)

Economy

• Job openings fall: The number of U.S. job openings has fallen to its lowest level in three and a half years. July’s numbers saw a decrease of 237,000 job openings to a total of 7.673 million jobs available, the lowest number since January 2021. Furthermore, the total number of job openings reported in June was revised down by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to a total of 7.910 million. (What is it with these downward revisions?) There is also a question of just how strong consumer spending was in July, as the headline unemployment rate rose to a near three-year high of 4.3%. Questions remain as to the impact of the massive influx of illegal immigration on the overall job market and, specifically, the rising unemployment rate.

• Biden to block nearly $15 billion sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese company Nippon (NY Post)

• Volvo gives up plan to sell only EVs by 2030 (BBC)

• 96% of spendy green policies do jack squat to reduce emissions (The Federalist)

• Four largest public sector unions bleeding membership (Daily Wire)

Misc.

• Fani Willis and her lover (the guy she hired to prosecute Trump) seen during daughter’s arrest after testifying they were no longer dating (Not the Bee)

• January 6 defendant receives first reduced sentence after Supreme Court ruling (Just the News)

• All 15 Arizona counties sued for failing to remove illegal aliens from voter rolls (Daily Wire)

• California bill to require speed limit alarms in cars heads to governor (Center Square)

• Court rules federal machine-gun law cannot be justified under Bruen (NRA-ILA)

• Remember the Navy commander who went viral for his backwards rifle scope? He’s been relieved of duty “due to a loss of confidence in his ability” (Not the Bee)

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