Ramblin' around this dirty old web, singin' for emojis and tabs ...
Count the edits! 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 https://t.co/R3ROqkBW7M
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) August 7, 2026
Ed: I lost count after a dozen cuts, and that was within the first minute. My favorite was when Kamala needed a separate cut solely for the question, "Why?" Even apart from the incompetence of her speech, the point is idiotic. Before the Motor Voter Act, states required people to present either a birth certificate or passport to confirm citizenship before registering to vote. States require either form of identification to get a marriage license, a driver's license, and most professional licenses, too. Real ID cards, now required for airline travel, also require one or the other. These are not difficult obstacles to overcome, unless you're too drunk or careless to deal with reality.
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Fox News: During the wee hours of Saturday morning, Senate Republicans tried and failed to get Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his colleagues to back a stripped back voter ID bill amid a spree of last-minute legislative business
But Senate Democrats, including Schumer, have for years espoused support for identification to vote. Several states with Democratic senators have voter ID laws, too.
"Democrats support voter ID," Schumer said in March. "In fact, we included it, and it is included, in our Freedom to Vote legislation several years ago."
Schumer and his entire caucus voted against the bill from Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, nonetheless. Requiring identification is already the practice in 36 states. Of those, 23 require photo ID, while 13 accept another form of identification, such as a bank statement. Nine of those states have Democratic senators.
Ed: Democrats say a lot of things. They rarely mean any of them. They're paying lip service to voter ID because it is incredibly popular in the US, a 75/25 issue overall and even gets majority support from Democrat voters. The party establishment and the socialists don't want this basic election security process in place. We can surmise the reasons why.
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In 2005, Jimmy Carter backed voter ID. He said it would help more Americans vote, not fewer.
— Senator Dave McCormick (@SenMcCormickPA) August 7, 2026
The SAVE America Act carries that principle forward.
Two decades later, my Democratic colleagues call the same idea voter suppression. pic.twitter.com/iolxN8KACW
Ed: That's because Democrat leadership now consists of demagogues and incompetents. And in Kamala's case, incoherents.
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WSJ: The Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general, cementing his place atop the Justice Department after a contentious battle that focused on his willingness to bend the agency to President Trump’s political and financial interests.
Blanche was confirmed Saturday by a 50-49 vote, with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joining the Democratic minority in voting against him.
For Blanche, the confirmation adds prestige rather than power, because he has been acting as attorney general in a temporary capacity since April while also serving as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official.
The vote, taken just before senators’ August recess, capped one of the most unusual confirmation processes for attorney general in recent memory.
Ed: Not to mention one of the dumber processes to boot. There is no universe in which Blanche is more objectionable than Merrick Garland, and yet it took weeks just to get Senate Republicans who voted to confirm the latter to agree to confirm the former. Part of those complications came from a foolish "settlement" to a lawsuit brought by Trump that created a nearly $2 billion slush fund outside the control and oversight of Congress. Mostly, though, it was created by butthurt over primary challenges. The only pass that should exist would be for Susan Collins, whose Senate seat is at risk and is more important than a single vote on Blanche's confirmation ... or at least should be.
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'COMPLETE IDIOCRACY': Michigan native @KidRock sounds off after a resurfaced clip of U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed saying he hates Mackinac Island goes viral.
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) August 8, 2026
"It's God's country. Every little town up here in north Michigan is like a Norman Rockwell painting come to… pic.twitter.com/QpAe50fWog
"It's God's country. Every little town up here in north Michigan is like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life."
Ed: You don't have to explain, Mr. Rock. We understand perfectly what El-Sayed hates about Mackinac, and by extension, the rest of the US. El-Sayed may be an idiot, but he's a dangerous idiot. And Mike Rogers should work hard to make sure Michiganders know it. I'd love to take the Kid Rock tour of Mackinac, though ...
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Jonathan Turley: With the election in November, the next predictable step will be for Hong to join El-Sayed on Mackinac Island for a public Thanksgiving dinner. Talarico will be on hand to carve the bird with enthusiasm.
The real problem is that these individuals spent years throwing red meat (or, in the case of Talarico, tofu) to the far left. These statements were not considered extreme or controversial until they found themselves speaking to a wider audience. Then they sounded just crazy.
Moreover, some lies are unlikely to register with voters who may prefer to live in delusion. The fact that the Mamdani markets will ultimately sell the most expensive produce in New York is an inconvenient fact that is best ignored.
The model for far-left politicians appears to be Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger who ran as a moderate and then governed from the far left. Spanberger, for example, pledged not to gerrymander districts to eliminate all Republican districts and then immediately moved to do so. Many voters likely did not believe her on gerrymandering, taxes, or other broken pledges before the election. They just needed her to say it. So, you might have to visit Mackinac or feign enjoyment at Thanksgiving or barbeques for a few weeks. Then you can do a Spanberger.
Ed: Mamdani just tried that in Staten Island at an event supporting the NYPD. How did that work out? The old rules don't apply as they previously did, largely because social media keeps these dumb statements alive forever. El-Sayed's gripe about Mackinac was from six years ago, about the same length of time as Hong's complaints about Thanksgiving. Spanberger just lied during the campaign; these other candidates have been venting their honest and radical thoughts for years. Platner is another example, for that matter.
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Ed: Speaking of lies ... yikes. You don't have to be in politics or the media to be a fabulist for money and fame. It helps, of course, but you can achieve your dreams other ways – in Academia! Quelle surprise. This might be the most amusing video you'll see this week. Nate the Lawyer is one of my favorite YouTube subscriptions, by the way. And kudos to Marc Lamont Hill in this case, too, because he didn't have to pursue this, but he did, and he did it with integrity.
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Fareed Zakaria: Uncontrolled immigration is the rocket fuel behind right-wing populism worldwide
— jay plemons (@jayplemons) August 7, 2026
“In general, over the last 10 years, the center-left has been unwilling to really come to grips with the reality of this problem that you have many many more people trying to come… pic.twitter.com/gJk8ouIxgJ
... into the country and many of them are really just economic migrants and they figured out that there is a path to not being deported if they say they're claiming asylum.”
“So the whole asylum system has broken down and because the establishment and the left in general have been unwilling to sort of call a spade a spade and look this problem in the eye, people have increasingly drifted to right-wing parties, populist parties.”
“If you were to point to one single issue that has caused transformation of politics in the western world it would be this kind of uncontrolled migration.”
“If these countries don't have some controls not only will they be overwhelmed because there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in Africa who could make this journey but more importantly you will lose control of the politics of your country because people in Spain and in other parts of Europe will start voting for parties that do shut down the border just as Donald Trump did shut down the border in the south in the United States.”
Ed: Via my friend Steven Schier. What's interesting is how invested the Democrat Party, the DSA, and leftist parties in Europe are in ignoring this obvious truth. People want their culture to survive, and uncontrolled immigration destroys it. Immigration without requirements for assimilation, even softer social requirements, also destroys it. Conservatives have spent decades warning about this, only to be called racists and bigots. Those insults don't work any longer, and the Left has been slow to understand that.
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Axios: The Senate passed a stopgap spending bill early Saturday that would keep the government funded through Dec. 11, moving Washington closer to avoiding another shutdown before the November midterms.
Why it matters: The bipartisan 90-6 vote would push the next government funding deadline past Election Day while offering some checks on the Trump administration. ...
The House will have to approve the Senate's changes after lawmakers return from their August recess.
If it does, Washington will have traded a possible pre-election shutdown fight for a potentially much larger post-election showdown in December over spending levels, Trump's grantmaking powers and the rest of the unfinished fiscal 2027 appropriations process.
Ed: Ho hum, now we're passing CRs two months before budget deadlines. I believe the House may rubber-stamp this because it gives Mike Johnson more runway for the reconciliation bill the House has been developing this summer, which addresses other White House priorities. We'll see, but Congress' incompetence at its core responsibility is only getting worse.
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That's because moderates are Liberal and value individual autonomy
— Pileate (@thepileate) August 7, 2026
Socialism and Liberalism are definitionally incompatible to a point that they are almost polar opposites
Please familiarize yourselves with the nuances of these terms if you haven't yet; this is how to stop DSA pic.twitter.com/845SUawLpo
Ed: This is a handy guideline to why Bill Maher may end up voting Republican in 2028. Or maybe even this year.
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Free Beacon: Jason Arday, who resigned from his prestigious professorship at Cambridge on Wednesday after the university launched an investigation into his academic integrity, is now facing more scrutiny as Simon & Schuster is set to publish his memoir in the United States next week. But the Washington Free Beacon has obtained pre-publication proofs of the book, which show that during the early months of this year the publisher removed what could have been much more fodder for the already rampant accusations of academic misconduct and false claims.
Edits to Arday's online biography on Simon & Schuster's website, the Free Beacon reported this week, further suggest that the publisher knew as long as a year ago that there were questions about the author's credibility and truthworthiness. ...
The Free Beacon examined two pre-publication proofs of the book: a U.S. version dated Jan. 6, and the U.K. final edition, dated June 18. Comparing the two iterations reveals that Simon & Schuster made a series of changes, including altering verbatim quotes, that appear to have been an effort to protect his reputation—which is all the more valuable now that he stands accused of sweeping embellishments, dishonesty, and even academic fraud. One edit effectively acknowledges the possibility that he could lose his professorship.
Ed: Read it all. This is not just a failure by Cambridge; it is an indictment of the credibility of the entire elite class. Simon & Schuster appears to be participating in a rewriting of Arday's history, quite literally, to prevent accountability for the misdeeds of everyone involved in Arday's fabulism.
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Until Enes changes his name to Venus I’m doubtful of his/her commitment. https://t.co/fdu33Jv7mc
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) August 8, 2026
Ed: A goddess on a mountaintop? Burning like a silver flame? He's got it, or maybe "she's" got it. Er ... perhaps this will be good for another Final Word.
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Last night's lyric: "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by The Charlie Daniels Band. I really appreciated all of the fun rewritten lyrics from last night, too, especially the one from SSGT Ranger Davis. That made my morning!
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