The Patriot Post® · Tuesday: Below the Fold

• Francine likely to become hurricane on Tuesday as final preps underway in Texas, Louisiana ahead of landfall (More)

Politics

• RFK is back on the ballot in Michigan: On Monday, Michigan’s Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that granted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s request to have his name removed from the state ballot after he suspended his presidential campaign last month. The Michigan high court, a majority of its justices being Democrat-nominated, contended that Kennedy “has not shown an entitlement to this extraordinary relief, and we reverse.” Democrats initially wanted to keep RFK off of state ballots, fearing he’d siphon votes from their nominee. But since he endorsed Donald Trump, they have fought to keep him on the ballot to pull votes away from the Republican. Kennedy’s attorney, Aaron Siri, cogently pointed out, “This plainly has nothing to do with ballot or election integrity. The aim is precisely the opposite — to have unwitting Michigan voters throw away their votes on a withdrawn candidate.” The two Republican-nominated justices excoriated the court’s majority decision, contending, “The ballots printed as a result of the Court’s decision will have the potential to confuse the voters, distort their choices, and pervert the true popular will and affect the outcome of the election.” But this is how Democrats “save democracy.”

• NY Times columnist says the quiet part out loud: When it comes to covering Donald Trump, it’s safe to say that The New York Times long ago checked its journalistic credentials at the door. It was just over eight years ago, in fact, when the Times’s Jim Rutenberg famously and disgracefully tried to rationalize a different journalistic treatment for Trump. And now comes columnist and editorial board member Mara Gay. Opining on the subject of balanced coverage between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Gay picked up where Rutenberg left off, saying that it’s “a little silly” to expect fairness where Trump is concerned. “It’s just the context is difficult because of the extremism of the Republican Party,” she said, “because of how extreme Donald Trump is, it’s hard to hold both candidates accountable equally because one is committed to democracy and is functioning as a normal candidate from a normal American party, and the other is not.” No bias to see here, folks. Move along.

• Biden’s DOJ doesn’t like clean voter rolls: The Biden/Harris administration is not happy with Republican-led states acting to protect election integrity by cleaning up their voter rolls. On Monday, the Justice Department warned states that it is watching closely the process of states seeking to remove noncitizens from their rolls. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke stated, “As we approach Election Day, it is important that states adhere to all aspects of federal law that safeguard the rights of eligible voters to remain on the active voter lists and to vote free from discrimination and intimidation.” Furthermore, the DOJ released an online video asking people to come forward if they believe that they have been improperly removed from a state’s voter rolls. Never mind the fact that federal law recognizes the right of states to clean up their voter rolls. Instead of giving voters greater assurance that the election results are truly the fraud-free reflection of the voice of the people, the Biden administration is muddying the waters over vacuous assertions of voter suppression.

• Melania Trump speaks out, promotes memoir in brief video: When First Lady Hillary Clinton burst onto the scene in 1992, she promised a two-for-one presidency. It didn’t go well, largely because the American people found her to be so meddlesome and so utterly unlikable. Melania Trump, on the other hand, provided a refreshing contrast during her four years as first lady, maintaining a quiet dignity while doing good works largely in the background. She’s also been largely absent from the campaign trail this cycle, but that’s about to change. She has a memoir, Melania, due out next month, just in time for the election. And on Sunday, she posted a brief video in which she says, “The 2020 election results changed our lives forever. It impacted our quality of life, cost of food, gasoline, safety, and even the geopolitical landscape. America is more divided today than ever before.” We’re not sure the election of her husband will somehow magically undivide us as a nation, but her other points are well taken. The Biden/Harris administration has been a costly experiment in bad governance.

• ABC News 100% positive for Harris, 93% negative for Trump: With a one-and-only presidential debate just hours away on ABC, we reflect on the radically tilted playing field that Donald Trump finds himself on. The Media Research Center reviewed 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s “World News Tonight” from July 21, the day Harris entered the race, to September 6. What did MRC find? Not a single negative statement about Harris crossed the lips of ABC’s crack journos, while the network’s coverage of Trump during that same period was almost exclusively negative. In short, ABC News delivered 100% positive coverage for Harris compared to 93% negative coverage for Trump. As NewsBusters adds, “During these same weeks, both the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News also delivered highly positive coverage for Harris, and mostly negative coverage for Trump, yet not as extreme as we found with ABC’s World News Tonight.” Here, we’re reminded of the great Rush Limbaugh, who famously claimed that he fought the Left with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair. So too, it seems, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

• Humor: Kamala’s seven debate demands revealed (More)

Policy

• Embarrassing copy-paste plagues Harris’s launch of policy platform (More)

• Kamala Harris’s platform declares war on the Supreme Court (More)

• Harris pledged to use taxpayer money to fund sex change surgeries for illegal aliens in detention (More)

• Cuomo aides knew his nursing home mandate would be “great debacle,” helped governor “edit” report that deflated deaths (More)

Big Tech

• Undercover sting exposes how Google is actively helping Kamala Harris (More)

• Google faces a new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly (More)

Security

• Kremlin gets mullah missiles: Last month, the State Department warned Iran that sending missiles to Russia “represent[s] a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” and the U.S. and our NATO allies “are prepared to deliver a swift and severe response if Iran were to move forward with the transfer of ballistic missiles.” Clearly, Iran is not worried about any “swift or severe response” since it has delivered a shipment of hundreds of short-range ballistic missiles to Moscow. Indeed, this has been par for the course for Tehran since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine back in the spring of 2022, as Iran has repeatedly aided Russia’s war effort by sending everything from drones to artillery shells to now missiles. In exchange for the missiles, Russia “agreed to supply Iran with its advanced Su-35 fighter jets, attack helicopters, and training aircraft,” General Erik Kurilla of U.S. Central Command noted earlier this year. Meanwhile, the Biden/Harris administration refuses to enforce sanctions against Tehran, demonstrating yet again the administration’s feckless leadership.

• Iraqi bank used U.S.-created banking system to funnel money to Iran: Blowback is a thing in geopolitics, and an Iraqi banking system that we created is yet another case in point. An audit of three particular Iraqi banks has revealed that what The Wall Street Journal calls “an ad hoc banking system set up around two decades ago under the U.S. occupation” led to a surreptitious and untraceable funneling of funds “to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the anti-U.S. militias it supports, according to U.S. officials.” We’re shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that there’s corruption within Iraq’s banking system, but here we are. As the Journal adds: “A top U.S. Treasury official told Iraqi officials at a Baghdad meeting in January that Iraqi banks 'deliberately exploited’ their access to U.S. dollars to support [Iran’s] Quds Force,” an Iranian paramilitary organization once headed by the Trump-liquidated Qasem Soleimani. “The militias were involved in ‘ongoing attacks’ on U.S. forces,” the Journal notes, “including some that have caused casualties.” It could be worse, we suppose. For example, we could’ve simply sent billions in cash directly to the Iranian regime. Oh, wait.

• Indonesian police detain seven in a failed plot to attack Pope Francis (More)

• Germany expands border controls to curb irregular migration and extremism risks (More)

• Illicit Chinese vapes are flooding the U.S. market — and becoming a leading choice for children (More)

• Haitian migrants eating pets? Here’s the even more serious story about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (More)

Culture

• The AAP leans into woke gender ideology: The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to expose the fact that it has embraced the woke gender-bending ideology hook, line, and sinker. Apparently, one of the leading goals of the AAP is transing the kids. If this wasn’t the case, then why would it invite infamous gender-bender Dr. Richard “Rachel” Levine, the assistant secretary for health, to be the closing speaker for the AAP’s upcoming national convention? The AAP has also invited “queer” doctor and author Seema Yasmin to speak at the event. Yasmin is infamous for her children’s book The ABCs of Queer History, which is listed for ages five and up. The book promotes the Marxist tenets of DEI and the rainbow cult to kids. When a children’s health organization has been hijacked to promote a radical leftist, scientifically unsound, and socially toxic ideology, can it really be regarded as a legitimate child health organization? The AAP is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

• Mother of Georgia shooting suspect called school to warn of emergency (More)

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