Wednesday tabber, there's no other ...
Kamala Harris claims that people say she was "the most qualified candidate ever to run for president."pic.twitter.com/pxh3yYN7LE
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 15, 2025
Ed: Some people have said she's the biggest idiot ever to top a major-party ticket, too. I know which way I'm betting.
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WSJ: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from moving ahead with mass firings of federal employees while the government is shut down.
Judge Susan Illston issued the temporary restraining order in a ruling from the bench on Wednesday, stopping the government from cutting federal workers at multiple agencies.
The court record suggested that the Trump administration has “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like,” said Illston, a Bill Clinton appointee.
Ed: Yes, well, that's what people elected them to do. Congress abdicated its role by allowing the budget to lapse. This is a political question rather than a legal one, as the Supreme Court will eventually remind yet another district court judge, but the whole thing will be moot when Senate Dems realize this is not playing well and end up voting for the Clean CR next week.
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Zohran Mamdani says the murder of 64-year-old Nicola Tanzi allegedly by a man wielding a sword and has 33 past arrests means we have to do more to help those like the suspect “suffering from mental health issues” and rectifying our “broken system” by putting criminals in group… pic.twitter.com/f9pPJeqsbG
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 15, 2025
... and rectifying our “broken system” by putting criminals in group homes, not jails
Ed: I'd bet that Tanzi would have something to say about that ... if he were still alive. Mamdani wants dangerous psychopaths with dozens of arrests to remain on the streets. That's all this says.
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WaPo: What weighed 3,000 pounds at dawn’s early light in Washington and will virtually disappear by sundown?
The correct guess is a large ice sculpture of the word “Democracy” placed on the National Mall on Wednesday morning in direct view of the U.S. Capitol as a vanishing reminder, its creators said, of rapidly eroding rights and an existential threat to the freedom on which America was founded.
Ed: So now democracy dies in sunlight? Isn't that the opposite message of the Post's slogan? This stunt from the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's is about as useful as all of their other stunts, which finally exhausted Unilever and forced an end to their partnership.
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"Israel gave the US new intel that Hamas has access to more bodies than it claims. "We don't see Hamas making max effort re: the bodies. We know they can do more & don't think anyone should give them any discounts," a senior Isr official said." @BarakRavid https://t.co/QKECCBcIlO
— Shalom Lipner (@ShalomLipner) October 15, 2025
Ed: The Hamas Hokey Pokey continues. No one else wants to dance, however.
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Just the News: Trump has pressured India and China to stop doing business with Russia in a bid to shut down its economy and force an end to the Ukraine War.
"He assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia," Trump said. "It's a big stop. Now, I've gotta get China to do the same."
Ed: Perhaps the credibility Trump has accumulated from shutting down Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and forcing Hamas to cough up the hostages has paid off. Let's wait and see whether India confirms this change in policy, but if it's true, it will put a huge dent in Putin's revenues and likely force him to choose his war or his economy.
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MacCallum: "Should Hamas give up their weapons?"
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 15, 2025
Zohran: "I believe that a future here in New York City is affordable for all."
MacCallum: "You won't say that Hamas should lay down their arms?"
Zohran: "I don't have any opinions on the future of Hamas." pic.twitter.com/5leKLPrdIt
Ed: Oh yes he does. He just knows he can't speak them out loud.
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Tablet Magazine: For both Peifer and Gruben, the final blow was the Democratic primary victory of Zohran Mamdani, the politician who blamed Israel for Oct. 7 as the atrocities were still unfolding. “When I saw Mamdani win, it was really difficult,” said Gruben. “I spent time in Paris growing up and experienced hardcore antisemitism there, so I know what it looks like outside America. To see that kind of hatred reach the one place that, in my mind, was safe from it is too much to bear. It breaks my heart.”
Gruben now lives in Europe with Israeli filmmaker Sarah Benjamin, whom he met through the group chat and recently married. For her, the pattern New York is following is less surprising. “It always has to happen. And in the places where it didn’t happen yet, it will. It never happened in New York, so naturally, it’s time.”
For Peifer, Mamdani’s victory was the culmination of a situation that had become untenable for him. “You can log off Twitter, but then you walk outside and it’s in your face anyway: stickers glorifying Hamas, pro-terror rallies in the park, people in keffiyehs everywhere. It was inescapable.”
Ed: NYC's Jews are considering what they call the Mamdani Exodus. I'm very certain that won't concern Mamdani in the least, but they will take capital, commerce, and intellectual value with them wherever they go. And they won't be the only capital fleeing NYC either.
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Again this man’s father, a professor at Columbia University, wants to normalize suicide bombings. Overtly pro-terrorism. https://t.co/i6JtC0gV1p pic.twitter.com/vSRSMxc0gM
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) October 15, 2025
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Free Beacon: Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones (D.) should be stripped of his license to practice law, a government watchdog group charged in a complaint Tuesday with the Virginia State Bar (VSB), the third such petition filed since the release of text messages showing Jones fantasizing about killing a GOP lawmaker and wishing for the death of that lawmaker’s child.
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) said Jones violated the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct, which require attorneys to demonstrate respect for public officials in their professional and personal affairs, when he sent text messages in 2022 to Virginia state delegate Carrie Coyner (R.) saying then-speaker of the state house, Todd Gilbert (R.), should get "two bullets to the head," and that he would like to "piss on the graves" of his Republican colleagues over policy disagreements. Later, during a phone call with Coyner, Jones said he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own children die to spur her husband to change his political views.
"Jay Jones should be disbarred for his outrageous, violent rhetoric," NLPC counsel Paul Kamenar told the Washington Free Beacon. "And even if he should be elected attorney general, he would be prohibited from carrying out his legal duties if he were disbarred or his license suspended. At a minimum, he would be under a cloud of an adverse disciplinary investigation by the Virginia State Bar."
Ed: He should be shunned from electoral politics, at least. And yet no Democrat has been willing to do it. What does that tell us? Mamdani is the mainstream of the Democrat Party, not the fringe.
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From today’s NYT profile. He has an opinion. https://t.co/nWrgdqbl7r pic.twitter.com/V56RPjdt2J
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 15, 2025
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NY Post: NBC News is preparing for its largest round of layoffs in years, with about 150 employees expected to lose their jobs this week as the network adjusts to life without its cable siblings MSNBC and CNBC, according to a report.
The job cuts, expected to begin Wednesday and continue through Thursday, will hit roughly 7% of the 2,000-person news division, Status reported.
Ed: To steal from a lawyer joke, that's a good start. Some of this is just the expected job reductions from cutting MSNBC and CNBC loose, but that's not the only factor in play.
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🚨JUST NOW: Speaker Mike Johnson says that Democrats will keep the Government Shutdown UNTIL the "No Kings" riots happen Saturday
— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) October 15, 2025
"I don't think it will end before the HATE America rally on the mall Saturday."
Democrats want MORE people to show up Saturday, if they open the… pic.twitter.com/kBtOVLLnWH
Ed: Perfect nomenclature. Four stars. No notes.
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Niall Ferguson at The Free Press: The key roles played by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—respectively, Trump’s friend and son-in-law—were especially painful for Hayward to acknowledge. But he could not deny it: “Trump succeeded in ending the war in Gaza, where Biden and his expert class failed.”
It is excruciating for anyone on the left to admit any of this. For all these authors are in the grip of a pathetic nostalgia for a vanished age in which the United Nations mattered; job titles mattered; international law mattered; and human rights transcended mere economics. They appear not to have processed that “Biden and his expert class failed” precisely because all those things ceased to work many years ago. ...
In a recent interview, Kushner observed that the people who had previously tried to negotiate peace in the Middle East were “history professors. . . or diplomats.” His approach was fundamentally different, he said. “It’s just different being deal guys—just a different sport.”
He is right about that. The question is what you make of it. If you would rather leave peacemaking to the historians and diplomats, then you may wait a long time for wars to end. If it’s results you care about, you may be willing to tolerate the constant blurring of public and private interest that is the hallmark of the Trump era. Deal guys: They get the job done.
Ed: The expert class failed miserably for the last 30-plus years since Oslo. And not just in this area, but in practically every area of governance. The pandemic was the most dramatic reveal of the corruption and arrogance of the expert class, but this may be their biggest humiliation.
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🚨 JUST IN: Stunning data reveals Christianity is SURGING in the United States
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 15, 2025
Bible sales: +41.6%
App downloads: +79.5%
Christian music streaming: +50%
What an amazing sight to see. pic.twitter.com/4uixSGfCjl
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