olezigaba

"Ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered... and I shouldn't say this publicly... I feel better." -Dave Chappelle at Madison Square Garden And the New York City crowd laughs like a bunch of hyenas. teapawt.net/PostViralRepost/status…

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin agrees to pay $29.5 million to settle claims it discriminated against White employees. Follow: @AFpost

I decided to sleep on JD Vance’s post from yesterday before commenting on it substantively. I have done so, and given it substantial thought. My verdict? Here is what I believe that post actually was saying: “Yeah we lost the election big time. But it’s not my fault, it’s the fault of the guy who made me who I am, and to whom I owe my entire political career. If only everybody had listened to me everything would have been OK. Oh yeah, I’m specifically throwing my boss under the bus, but I am also impliedly throwing Rubio and Hegseth under the bus too because I want to be President. No, I’m not going to talk about the way my lunatic belief that the Iranian mullahs could be reasoned with is really what brought us to this point. I’m also not going to talk about how my hatred of Israel and alliance with fellow Israel-haters and groyper-adjacent loons like Tucker chases away far more voters than it attracts. In other words, I’m not taking responsibility for anything and blaming everybody else. And I’m dropping this literally hours after the election is over so I can set the narrative now before anybody else has a chance to talk that says I’m the good guy, that MAGA is dead, and that I’m the leader of what comes next. No, I did not coordinate this with Trump, I just told him I’m going to do it. And he will say it’s OK because if he does not he’ll get savaged with reports that he has lost control of the Presidency, which was kind of what I wanted. It’s DC. Loyalty does not matter. Vote for me for President.” Does loyalty matter? I believe it does, because if someone is disloyal to the man who made them, they will also be disloyal to the voters who put them into office. My 2c. (And yes, if Vance is the nominee I’ll still vote for him over communist jihadists, but now is the time to debate these kinds of issues inside our own movement.)

"I am pleased to announce that Mr. Stephen Miller, the current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Trump Administration, and one of my most trusted advisors, will become the Chief of Staff starting Monday, November 9, 2026. Susie Wiles, who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation. I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff — She has done a great job!" - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸

Debate over U.S. foreign policy, including America’s relationship with Israel, and its effect on the midterm elections is entirely legitimate. However, only 4% of voters rated foreign policy as their primary concern. When leaders like Vice President JD Vance and commentators ignore the data and instead choose to assert that voter behavior was about Israel, it’s not just a deeply flawed analysis but can be weaponized to assign collective blame to Jewish Americans for policy decisions or political outcomes. Antisemitism is rising and drawing energy from extremes of both sides of the political spectrum. Israel is neither diverting federal resources away from our communities nor the reason groceries are more expensive. Hostility toward the Jewish state too often has become a fig leaf for targeting, scapegoating, and excluding Jewish Americans. Elected officials in both parties have an obligation to engage responsibly, to challenge rhetoric that blames Israel or the Jewish people for America’s political outcomes, and to bring our country together. Now is the time.

SCHUMER: “I have many jobs as majority leader... and one is to fight for aid to Israel! All the aid that Israel needs, I will continue to fight for it!” “We delivered more security assistance to Israel our ally under my leadership than ever, ever before. We will keep doing that...” “I will always fight to give Israel what it needs...” This was earlier this year at a Jewish Community Relations Council event in NYC:

- Replace John Thune with Mike Lee - Change the rules to (51) votes - Pass the Save America Act - Confirm all Trump Judges w-o debate - Abolish the Visa program - Pass law making Scotus only (9) Justices - Change the rules back to (60) votes Democrats don't have 2/3rds majority, they cannot override a Presidential Veto Thank you for your attention to this matter

From a fascinating New York Times post-mortem on the election. If true (and the reporters on this piece are very well sourced) it is beyond disturbing that the WH Chief of Staff was trying to steer the President away from the most popular issue with our voters.

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

This contentious interchange between the NY Times and @GinaHinojosaTX was truly amazing. Hinojosa offered one of the best explanations of populism I've ever seen. Her comments were a total rejection of Corporate Dems' neoliberal formula. Her Texas victory is a game changer.

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

BREAKING: Just as a glimmer of hope emerges between the US and Iran, someone starts bombing Iranian radar sites. I suspect Israel. I posted a few days ago that a glimmer of hope had emerged in the US-Iran talks mediated by Qatar. Over the past few days, progress has increased to the point that sources and officials on all sides have privately expressed a degree of optimism, and both JD Vance and Trump himself did so publicly just a few hours ago. Then, suddenly, things started to blow up on the Iranian island of Qeshm, as well as near the cities of Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz in southern Iran. The Iranians tell me that they are certain the attacks were conducted by Israel, and not the US. A senior US source tells me it wasn’t the American side. I posted last weekend that Israel had breached Iranian airspace. Tehran, however, opted not to respond, suspecting that Israel wanted to goad Iran into a trap by responding harshly, as that could help Netanyahu in the elections and force Trump’s hand in terms of turning to war. It would be completely in line with a decades-long pattern of Israeli sabotage of US-Iran diplomacy that Netanyahu would begin kinetic action on the eve of a potential breakthrough in US-Iran talks - which incidentally appears to include a Chinese dimension - in order to sabotage it. Israel has opposed every US-Iran deal, including Trump’s MOU from this past summer. Read more: tritaparsi.substack.com/p/br…

AUSTIN MAN slams into a stopped minivan at 103 mph on Mother's Day, right in front of a cop, and kills a fire captain hours after his fifth son was born. DA Jose Garza's office asked him to pay a small fine. Marvin Taylor was on his way to pick up his four other boys so they could meet their new baby brother. He was sitting at a red light on Koenig Lane when a Dodge Durango doing 103 in a 45 zone slammed into him and threw his van 150 feet. He died pinned inside. The officer found the driver, Rodney Bremby, with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech and stench of alcohol. He was charged with intoxication manslaughter, which carries up to 20 years in prison. A judge revoked his bond twice while the case was pending, and both times he was back out within two weeks. On Monday he got 10 years of probation, community service, and $535 in fees. Five boys have lost their father, and the man who killed him just had to pay a small fine and promise not do it again before going back home.

The Lawrence family ❤️ INDvsJAX -- 1:00pm ET on CBS/Paramount+ Stream on @NFLPlus

Healing powers in the sky bridge. Suddenly upon boarding they could walk to seats

Ambassador Huckabee, this is unreleased video of an American who was beaten almost to death last week by Israeli settlers. You know his name because he came to you for help, but you blew him off. That’s disgraceful. Do your job. @GovMikeHuckabee @SecRubio @davidamilstein @WhiteHouse

its so funny how the star wars prequels are obviously cinematic masterpieces, but a bunch of chungus gen X nerds who never amounted to anything convinced us they were bad because they didnt make them feel like empire strikes back did when they were 10

The Iran War was and is extremely unpopular. The people who wanted it decided getting the war early was worth losing the midterms over. That was the political calculus. Now they are finger wagging at others, trying to blame shift. Completely insufferable people.