I'm going where the tabbies read like whines; we can jump in the comments, click links all the time ...

... The person who's supposed to be figuring out how to make your life more affordable. The guy who's supposed to be figuring out how to lower inflation. And reduce interest rates. They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory."

Ed: If you have to explain the joke, you flopped. If you have to respond to the derision it produced, you really flopped. Obama's too thin-skinned to realize how thin-skinned he sounds here. (Via Twitchy)

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Mike LaChance at Gateway Pundit: Hey everyone, former is tired of all the division in the country. He is tired of being angry and wants friendship and neighborliness.

Who wants to tell him how we got here?

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Maybe someone could remind him about the time he told his supporters that he wanted them to argue with their neighbors and get in their faces. Or the time he told voters that he wanted them angry. Or the time he told people to argue about healthcare at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Or the time he told people to vote out of revenge.

He is quite possibly the most divisive American political figure of the last hundred years and intentionally so. To hear him talk like this now is utterly laughable.

Ed: I laughed out loud at Obama’s claim that he wants an end to division and partisanship. Of course he does – on his own terms, by sidelining opposition to the Left. Joe Biden (or his puppetmasters) gave that the ol’ college try with their Big Tech censorship and “misinformation” policing. He’s just sore that he’s spent the last decade-plus fighting Donald Trump … and losing. 

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Ed: What in the world ... ? Obama makes fun of Cheesecake Factory and then features this in his rallies. He really knows how to connect with Middle America, eh?

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Eddie Scarry at The Federalist: The very unsatisfying truth about these midterm elections is that Republicans have done next to nothing to deserve maintaining any government power. At the same time, Democrats shouldn’t be given the opportunity to take us back to the godawful Biden years.

That’s exactly what they’ll do the second they have the chance. Democrats in the most competitive races across the country have done exceedingly well at insisting to voters their focus is “affordability.” They talk about grocery and gas prices with autistic levels of concentration, and though they have no real proposals to reverse our seemingly endless cost nightmare, it’s working to their advantage because it’s President Trump’s decision to start a war in the Middle East that reignited the inflation surge that up until then had been quickly cooling.

Voters want prices lowered. Under Republican government, prices are going up. What’s worse, they didn’t need to. That’s the result of a choice made by the current administration. It’s only logical that voters would want to try something else in the next election. But no matter what Democrats are saying about “affordability,” trust that their priorities are anything but lowering prices.

Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times editorial this week urging everyone to vote Democrat explained what the party will do if and when it takes control of Congress. Hint: It’s not “immediately work to end the war and bring prices down.”

Ed: Anyone who considers gas prices as their chief issue in this election had better look at California’s pump prices to see where Democrats would take the country. Their explicit energy policies were to increase prices for all fossil-fuel based energy as a backdoor subsidy for “green” energy. It’s a disaster in California, and the Biden Regency tried to expand it nationally. 

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Ed: Talarico doesn’t have an original thought in his head, but I didn’t realize he was a flat-out plagiarist. Nice catch by the RNC, but maybe too late for it to have an impact at this stage of the election. Texans have already cast a lot of ballots in early in-person voting. 

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Josh Hammer at Front Page Magazine: To be a realist in American politics is to accept that we live, and have lived since the founding of the modern Republican Party in the mid-1850s, in a two-party system. When we vote in any given state or federal election, it is simply the case that either the Republican or Democratic candidate for office will prevail. We can wish it were not so, and that were viable third-party options, but to wish for a “better” or “ideal” world is to commit the fundamental error of not living in reality. The only relevant question at this time, when an American enters the voting booth to elect someone for state or federal office, is whether the Republican or the Democrat will win.

That is not a simplistic or reductionist view of voting: It is merely a description of reality.

Voters in Texas should consider that, whatever questions they may have about Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R-Tex.) spotty personal life and ethical baggage, the alternative is a lunatic leftist backbencher who has no business whatsoever being in Washington, let alone representing the great state of Texas in the esteemed chamber once known as the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Voters in Michigan should consider that, whatever reservations they might have about former Rep. Mike Rogers’ (R-Mich.) general tepidness, the alternative is a fifth column Islamist and jihad-sympathizer who, if he wins, will represent the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the United States Senate. Right-thinking voters all across the nation, more generally, should be thinking, planning, and acting along similar sober lines.

Ed: I may write more about this tomorrow. For now, I'd boil this down to two words: Grow up. General elections are choices not just about the candidates themselves but the policies they will pursue once in power. Josh is exactly correct. 

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Ed: Good Lord. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the campaign for the awful Troy Jackson attracted staffers who are just as awful as he is. This woman might have some legal recourse for this fraud and deception, and I hope she fully explores it. 

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The College Fix: A University of Chicago student has filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Elissa Slotkin for her recent suggestion that college graduates who work for the Trump administration might be prosecuted.

“Senator Slotkin, if you thought this was over, you’re wrong,” said student Michael Bicksel in a video he posted on X on Oct. 22 as he held up a copy of an ethics complaint he filed with the U.S. Senate.

“The complaint was submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and argues that Slotkin proposed using congressional investigations and potential prosecutions to frighten young people away from serving in a Republican administration,” Fox News reported.

“The complaint asks the committee to determine whether Slotkin’s comments amounted to ‘improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate,’ a standard described in the Senate Ethics Manual as applying to conduct that may be unethical even if it does not violate a specific law or Senate rule,” the outlet reported.

Ed: Necessary but likely insufficient. The ethics committes in both chambers generally limit themselves to financial and personal misconduct in office rather than policing rhetoric on the campaign trail. Slotkin deserves consequences for that rhetoric, but the voters need to provide it in her next election. They’ll have to wait four years, though. 

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Ed: Seeing this question percolate today – a lot. Still no answers.

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Jonathan Turley: Not long ago, former Fox News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge began a painful daily ritual. With her oldest son for support, she walked to the mailbox at the end of her street and dropped an envelope into the mail. It contained a check for a daily fine of $800 that she was ordered to pay to coerce her into revealing her confidential sources in a national security story that aired on Fox News in 2017. The money came from the college funds of her two children.

As Herridge drained the savings of her military family, an alleged former colonel in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was demanding that a court increase the daily fine to $5,000. A court later rescinded the fines, but they will be reimposed unless the Supreme Court takes Herridge’s case and reverses the lower courts.

Yanping Chen led a school called the University of Management and Technology (UMT) in Northern Virginia, which catered to U.S. service members. According to investigators and experts, Chen’s past in the Chinese military suggested that UMT posed a national security danger, including by potentially gathering information on military personnel participating in its programs. The Department of Justice declined to prosecute Chen. Nevertheless, after Herridge’s investigative report, the government terminated its contracts with UMT because it considered the school a national security risk.

All of that would seem to be the makings of a Pulitzer, not a court sanction.

Ed: This seems like a strange case indeed. It’s a civil case, not a criminal prosecution dependent on testimony from a confidential source. I have some reservations about “shields” in the latter cases, but this is more straightforward in terms of the First Amendment. Let’s hope that SCOTUS acts to release Herridge from this case. 

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… Four hours later, Channel 12’s revised exit poll had Netanyahu’s allied parties ahead of Eisenkot’s camp.

There had been a warning before election night. In the final campaign week, one broadcaster gave Likud 19 seats and another gave it 30. An eleven-seat disagreement over the country’s largest party should have been a central story.

That criticism includes The Jerusalem Post. Our October 22 report led on Eisenkot’s polling advantage. It explained that neither camp had a majority, but we should have made the disagreement among pollsters impossible to miss. Readers following Israel from abroad depended on us to explain how open this contest remained.

Ed: Looks like Israel has similar polling reliability as the U.S. does. I wonder if it has similar origins – a desire by the media to manage narratives rather than report news. At least the JPost is ‘fessing up to it. We’ll see what happens if we have a miss here on the midterms. 

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Jerusalem Post: The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) is investigating suspicions that foreign entities, potentially including Qatar and Turkey, funneled money into Israel to influence voting in Arab communities, following a directive from Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg to investigate suspected foreign funding and election bribery.

The investigation will not delay publication of the final election results, a Central Elections Committee source told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. The source said it would also not prevent President Isaac Herzog from selecting a party leader to begin the coalition-building process. ...

The foreign-funding inquiry, a police investigation into suspected bribery involving Ra’am voting slips, and any legal challenge to election results are distinct proceedings. None of the allegations amounts to a finding that the election results were altered unlawfully.

Israeli media have identified Qatar and Turkey as possible sources of the suspected funding. Channel 13 reported that investigators were examining whether money had passed through currency exchangers and local institutions along routes previously used to transfer terrorist funds, allegedly to encourage voting in Arab communities through unlawful means.

Ed: This appears to be more analogous to a campaign finance scandal in the US rather than a suspicion of illegal voting. Still worth watching, especially for the U.S. response to any interference from Qatar or Turkey. 

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Ed: Not gonna lie … 

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Last night's lyric: "The Israelites" by Desmond Dekker and the Aces.