The Show Notes: Musk Still Wants Twitter, Biden's OPEC Problem, More Herschel News & The Iowa Ad
Welcome! Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter at full price.
NEW: Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen hire divorce lawyers. - Page Six
HEADLINE: Biden to tour Ian damage in Florida with DeSantis feud on hold for now. - CNN
DATA: National debt crosses $31 trillion.
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The Great Media Disconnect: The Des Moines Register Editorial Board is blasting Republican Governor Kim Reynolds for a “racist” re-election ad. Here is what the Editorial Board says: “The ad is dehumanizing. It’s racist. It’s embarrassing. It’s indefensible. It should be beneath any Iowa elected official.”
Want to see the ad? See if you agree with the editorialists.
I bet you don’t see how it is dehumanizing, racist, embarrassing, or indefensible. I bet you see it as a good ad that plays on Iowa’s strengths and leverages the left’s weaknesses against it. And that is why Democrats are going to lose in five weeks. They and the media exist in the same bubble, which is not the bubble in which most voters exist. They live in the battery-powered car bubble and most voters live in the fossil fuel pick-up voter bubble. The latter is about to whip up on the former at the ballot box.
Clip of the day:
Biden Begs OPEC
OPEC+ is expected to announce a major cut in oil production and the Biden administration is in full panic mode. A sharp production cut would send gas prices soaring less than five weeks before election day. The production cuts are projected to be as large as 1 million barrels of oil PER DAY - a level not seen since the beginning of the pandemic.
What are they doing: Biden administration officials have been lobbying their counterparts all across the middle east to vote against the cuts. Biden visited Saudi Arabia earlier this year in a failed attempt to beg for higher oil production.
Reminder: The Biden administration has approved fewer oil leases than any sitting President since World War 2. - WSJ (paywall)
Did Herschel Do It?
Politico slipped a noteworthy line in their daily email regarding Herschel Walker: “Walker has denied the (abortion) story, which POLITICO hasn’t independently verified.” The inability of one of the nation’s premier political media outlets to verify the story should be noteworthy.
Ukraine Surges
Putin signed into law the newly annexed regions of Eastern Ukraine despite Ukrainian forces gaining ground in those regions by the day. The heavy losses inflicted on the Russians come as Putin struggles to sell the war at home with hundreds of thousands of young men fleeing the country to avoid the draft.
Much of the advancement by Ukrainian forces have been with Russian equipment left behind. The equipment ranges from small arms all the way to tanks. Ukrainians have simply scrubbed the Russian Z off the side of captured vehicles and used them as their own.
The 2024 Senate
Bad news for Democrats: If you think this Senate cycle was difficult for Democrats, just wait until the next cycle. In 2024, Democrats will be defending 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for election with many in bright red states.
Worst news for Democrats: At least eight Democratic Senators up for reelection in 2024 have not indicated if they will run. Replacing incumbents with new candidates significantly complicates the process. Go deeper with Politico.
FBI undercounts number of times armed citizens have thwarted active shooting incidents: report
This is from Fox News:
A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) argues that the FBI's data contains "massive errors" when tracking active shooting incidents, undercounting how often armed citizens have thwarted active-shooting situations over the last eight years.
"Although collecting such data is fraught with challenges, some see a pattern of distortion in the FBI numbers because the errors almost exclusively go one way, minimizing the life-saving actions of armed citizens," the report, which was provided to Fox News Digital this week by Crime Prevention Research Center founder and president John Lott, states.
The rest of the news:
Senate Dems face brutal 2024 map with at least eight undecided incumbents - Politico
Mark Kelly has edge in Arizona Senate race that hinges on abortion, economy, immigration - CBS
Why Conservative Women Report Being the Happiest—and How You Can Be, Too - Newsweek
George W. Bush to fundraise for Colorado GOP Senate candidate Joe O'Dea - NBC
Will Herschel Walker's Abortion Controversy Hurt His Chances In Georgia? - FiveThirtyEight
Vice chair of Treasury Dept’s new racial equity committee wants to defund police, 'center race' in all policy - Fox News
DeSantis leads ‘defanged’ Crist after hurricane, poll shows - NBC
Republicans gain ground in Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - Politico
Mason-Dixon: Dems facing a Florida wipeout - HotAir
This fresh blow to newspapers -- and our democracy -- must be stopped | Editorial - NJ
Citing Concern for Free Speech, 12 Federal Judges Say They Won’t Take Clerks from Yale Law School - Free Beacon
Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft - NYT (paywall)
In other news: