GOP Despair

Senate GOP candidates might not be doing as well as everyone thought: “The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states,” per an internal memo reported on by Politico. There are currently open seats in Michigan, Maryland, and Arizona, plus the West Virginia (where Republican Jim Justice is up against Democrat Glenn Elliott) and Montana (where Republican Tim Sheehy is up against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester) races look quite good for them.

“But other pickup opportunities, namely Maryland and Michigan, are moving in the wrong direction,” notes Politico. “And Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the two incumbents running in a state Trump won in 2020, looks surprisingly strong in Ohio.”

It still looks like Republicans will manage to win control of the chamber, but it’s a question of by what margins. In fact, they even have a few problems with incumbents: The memo specifically warns that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is in trouble, up by only one point in the most recent poll (compared with three points in mid-September), with his opponent Colin Allred outspending him since August.

FEMA-hater arrested: “FEMA warned last week that a deluge of mis- and disinformation surrounding Hurricane Helene had hampered federal response efforts,” reports Axios. On Saturday, 44-year-old William Jacob Parsons of Bostic, North Carolina, armed with both a rifle and a handgun, was arrested and charged. Parsons had allegedly made comments “about possibly harming FEMA employees working after the disaster of Hurricane Helene in the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock area,” according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.

Initial reports had claimed a militia was involved, but law enforcement later amended this to say Parsons was acting alone.

This comes on the heels of an awful lot of media-class bellyaching about how online misinformation and disinformation has resulted in FEMA workers fearing for their lives. It is absolutely possible that there has been a slight uptick in this, and that there are a few crazies—mostly acting alone—who are targeting government workers. But it is itself needless fearmongering to act like there’s some vast epidemic of violence directed at FEMA employees.

Case in point: “As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts,” wrote Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic last week, who called it “more than just a misinformation crisis” and lamenting the fact that “angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees.” Warzel says that an extremism research group has found that “‘falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,’ including ‘calls to send militias to face down FEMA.’”

Any violent threat is concerning, but part of the reason why the above arrest is notable is precisely because there have been so few of them, contra Warzel’s implication that there’s some kind of mass movement against FEMA employees.

Scenes from New York: I legitimately find this to be so helpful.

A map for all the East Coasters visiting LA pic.twitter.com/aSL8g1ungx

— Tyler Bindi (@TripleNetTyler) October 14, 2024

• “Harris isn’t ‘vague’ or ‘careful’ or disinclined to ‘delineate her stance.’ She’s wildly, catastrophically, incontestably out of her depth,” writes Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review in a wonderfully titled piece: “Kamala Harris Is an Idiot.” “She’s not ‘light’; she’s dull. She’s not a ‘dodger’; she’s a fool.”
• “Biden administration officials have discussed capping sales of advanced AI chips from Nvidia Corp. and other American companies on a country-specific basis, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would limit some nations’ artificial intelligence capabilities,” reports Bloomberg.
• “North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas on Tuesday, prompting South Korea’s military to fire warning shots,” reports Reuters. Pyongyang indicated it’s moving away from reunification as the goal.
• Government efforts to incentivize people to have kids don’t appear to be working, per this piece from The Wall Street Journal. But it’s possible that a) the price is not right, b) that it takes a while for incentives to actually affect decision making and for a pro-childrearing culture to spring up, and c) that incentives would be more successful if aimed at the already-breeding (i.e., getting the family with three kids to go ahead and have a fourth versus trying to move the needle on the couple with zero kids going for one).
• The Chinese government, worried about economic outlook, is looking to bolster revenue. One way it’s aiming to do this is by cracking down on the ultrarich. Bloomberg has more: “Some wealthy individuals in major Chinese cities were told in recent months to conduct self-assessments or summoned by tax authorities for meetings to evaluate potential payments, including those in arrears from past years, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.”
• You may have seen the “Man Enough” ad, which was put out by Creatives for Harris. Matt Taibbi did some digging and figured out that it was not in fact parody, as many people had initially assumed. It was just horrifically bad, caricaturing masculinity in a way most normal men and women don’t want (but apparently Democratic strategists are into it). “The ‘White Dudes For Harris‘ model of self-flagellating beta-male, standing mute and service-ready with Gimp-style ballgag in its mouth while the Kamala-led DNC drums fingers on its head, has been subsumed in postmodern idiocy for so long, it only understands maleness as a collection of stereotyped identity markers,” writes Taibbi.
• Interesting discourse spurred by this (which I, lo and behold, have some thoughts on as well):

Atomization is chosen. People everywhere can’t wait to be prosperous enough to kick the village to the curb, for better or worse. https://t.co/yD324Sq8ni

— Alex Kaschuta (@kaschuta) October 14, 2024

• The spookiest possible Halloween decoration:

Some glorious freak in my neighborhood has built a graveyard to failed American presidential campaigns. pic.twitter.com/K02Et8DXg6

— They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara (@BabsVan) October 14, 2024

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