Saturday Miscellany

First, in the world of election interference, we reserve a special place for Jack Smith. Since Smith’s first indictments were compromised by the Supreme Court, he is back with some new ones.

Consider the view of Mark Penn. Recall that Penn used to work for the Clinton administration. He is fair and open minded; he is not a MAGA partisan.

He wrote on Twitter:

Our elections continually descend into an unworthy mess as the public learned Biden was unfit only from a debate after a non primary primary and now a whole new team has been installed and the lawfare campaign resumed. Like many I believe Trump should have acted faster when the riot broke out but the attempt to turn the election challenges into a criminal conspiracy at this point is Jack Smith and the Justice Department interfering in the election. No primaries. Few interviews. No policy papers. And now more lawfare. The world’s most important job affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people should not be conducted this way.

Second, as might have been expected, Kamala Harris did manage to throw in some word salads in her rather unimpressive interview with Dana Bash Thursday.

Among them this:

The climate crisis is real that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time. 

Evidently, she is neither very intelligent nor very competent.

Third, meanwhile over in Aurora, Colorado, a Venezuelan gang has taken over apartment buildings, among other places. You have no doubt seen the pictures of gang members breaking down doors to apartments, in order to expel the inhabitants. They are even collecting rent.

Precisely why the police are not involved in stopping this horror is beyond me.

Apparently, it is not beyond the governor of Colorado. The Democrat Governor, Jared Polis, long since a proponent of sanctuary for illegal migrants, refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of his policies.

His response to the migrant invasion of his state, via the New York Post:

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis dismissed anger over Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua taking over apartment buildings in the Denver suburb of Aurora, calling it “imagination” — despite video footage, police reports and the city’s mayor confirming it’s happening.

Polis’ press office offered the snarky statement Wednesday night in response to Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky — who told The Post the gang’s takeovers are tied to his policies.

“The Governor has already let the Mayor know that the State is ready to support the local police department with assistance from state troopers and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation if needed,” Shelby Wieman, a spokesperson for the Dem governor, told The Post.

“But, according to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination.”

Wieman added that “it’s illegal to take over buildings in Colorado” and if Jurinsky has “knowledge” of such activity that the governor’s office is “ready to assist” cops “in taking them back.”

The evidence is clear and unimpeachable. It has been running on local television in Denver. But, it makes Democrat Polis look bad and it makes Kamala Harris look bad, so, the politicians want to gaslight us, to assure us that our senses are lying, that we are suffering from an overactive imagination.

As of now, it appears that the governor has had a change of heart. He seems to want to help with the imaginary problem, because it is hurting him politically.

Fourth, as we have been pointing out, more and more companies, even universities, have been shutting down DEI programs and DEI bureaucrats.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the situation at Brown Forman:

More companies are backing away from diversity, equity and inclusion policies amid new public scrutiny, and the distiller Brown-Forman illustrates the trend.

In an internal company email shared on social media by conservative Robby Starbuck, the Brown-Forman Corp. Executive Leadership Team wrote that since it launched its diversity initiatives in 2019 “the world has evolved, our business has changed, and the legal and external landscape has shifted dramatically, particularly within the United States.”

Brown-Forman’s email said it will end “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions,” also known as race-based hiring, contracting and promotion. It will also end “participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index Survey.” This politicized index scores companies’ LGBTQ+ “workplace inclusion,” including categories on “transgender workplace best practices” and “corporate social responsibility.”

The company added that it will be “reviewing training programs for consistency with an evolved strategy” and ensure that “executive incentives and employee goals are tied to business performance,” a suggestion that perhaps they weren’t closely linked before.

The Brown-Forman shift follows similar rollbacks at Harley-Davidson Inc., Deere & Co. and Tractor Supply Co., which withdrew their major DEI initiatives this summer. Lowe’s Cos. announced similar changes on Monday and Ford Motor Co, did so on Wednesday.

Fifth, speaking of liars, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz deserves a special prize. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash to explain why he kept insisting that he was in combat and why he misrepresented his rank-- he declared himself to be a command master sergeant when he was just a sergeant major-- Walz explained that it was just bad grammar.

Once a liar, always a liar.

Sixth, Alan Dershowitz comments on the student protests, the ones that want to free Palestine of all Jews. Anyway, he asks the salient question:

Is a single student group demanding that Hamas agree to cease fire?  No! 

How many of our political leaders, obsessed with taking both sides of the issue, have said as much?

Seventh, and then there is Joy, the new Kamala Harris signature. What does it mean, you might be asking. Well, John McWhorter has a cogent analysis in the Times.

He explains that joy is a way of emphasizing that she is black. It fits a candidate who brings nothing of consequence to her candidacy.

...let’s face it, nothing about Harris just now justifies her being treated as some kind of once-in-a-generation phenom or savior. 

This is not about substance, but optics. Harris is being received on the basis of a category she fits into rather than who she is as an individual.

John Sexton offers a point that sounds strangely like a point I have made:

I've argued before that I think the whole "joy" thing was cooked up by Harris' handlers as a way to recontextualize her worst tic as a candidate, i.e. her habit of bursting into hysterics when she is losing her audience's attention. 

And then, McWhorter adds this. I consider it to be a very astute analysis of the Kamala cackle:

Harris is way out of her depth and her laughter isn't about joy it's about her own awkwardness as a speaker. She laughs to bring people on her side because she can't accomplish that with her words alone. She needs to lighten the mood, to make things collegial rather than adversarial. The laugh is socially strategic and you have to admit it was a stroke of genius to embrace it rather than try to downplay it.

But the fact remains that none of this will matter if Harris wins and is actually called on to handle a crisis. In the midst of war or natural disaster no one is going to want to hear that awkward laugh or any flippant commentary about her joy.

Well stated, and on point.

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