B-Man

That would be Shawn Farash, Trump’s Best Impersonator

CA Sec. of State Owns Up to Big Mistake on Newsom's Gerrymandering Special Election Ballots by Becky Nobel When they are in power, Democrats love to make up the rules as they go along. But when Republicans take over and decide to play the game by the rules Democrats made up, well, that's a problem. Former President Barack Obama was fond of chiding Republicans with a condescending "elections have consequences" reminder. Recently, Republicans on both the national and state levels have not been so subtle about returning that same rebuke in the form of an old Democrat "strategy": mid-decade redistricting, or gerrymandering, before the 2026 midterm election. Democrats are not happy, and the epicenter of their unhappiness is California. {snip} But because California Gov. Gavin Newsom is all about sticking it to Texas, and ultimately Donald Trump, the result is Proposition 50, which will be on the November 4 ballot in California. If passed, it could eliminate four to six Republican seats in a state that is already gerrymandered within an inch of its life. But there are a few problems: one, unlike Texas, California's state constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting, and two, in 2008, voters approved a measure that would transfer power to redraw congressional districts from the state legislature to an independent "citizens" commission. Bypassing the law has never been an issue for Democrats, so fast forward to today. With a little over a month to go before the election, mail-in ballots have already been sent to millions of voters. However, on Tuesday, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber admitted to a big mistake regarding those millions of mail-in ballots that have gone out. A labeling error in the Voter Information Guide mistakenly labeled the proposed new congressional district 27 as district 22. https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2025/10/01/ca-sec-of-state-owns-up-to-big-mistake-on-newsom-gerrymandering-special-election-ballots-n2194619

DOE Takes a Scalpel to 'Nearly $8B' in Blue States' Green Energy Waste During Schumer Shutdown by Becca Lower The Democrats appear to have miscalculated on triggering a government shutdown by a vast measure, which we started to see in motion mere hours after the Schumer Shutdown began on Oct. 1. President Trump signaled in a Truth Social post he was eager to sit down with OMB head Vought in the afternoon, to dig into what extraneous government spending might get cut--especially anything prized by the Democrats. Anyway, sure enough, on Wednesday evening, the Energy Department chimed in, sharing in a press release posted on X that after a review that started in May, they had "determined that these projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars." Here are the offices and agencies that were awarded the money: Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Office of Grid Deployment (GDO) Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Fossil Energy (FE). Long story short, the DOE said to the green energy scammers: Not on our watch. https://redstate.com/beccalower/2025/10/02/ombs-vought-takes-a-scalpel-to-nearly-8b-in-blue-states-green-energy-waste-during-schumer-shutdown-n2194674

Living the good life, Thanks.

JOHN NOONAN: The Speech the Pentagon Didn’t Want, but the Military Needed. War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s headline-grabbing speech in Quantico this week has irked the professional commentary class but is drawing accolades from those who matter — the men and women on the frontlines of America’s defense. Hegseth’s remarks to every general officer in the U.S. military, which called for a force-wide military reset and realignment back to warfighting fundamentals, were derided in all the usual places. The Atlantic led with “hundreds of generals try to keep a straight face.” The New York Times wrote, “his address focused on the kinds of issues he would have dealt with as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq or as a company commander in the Guard. He talked about grooming standards. . . . He preached the importance of physical fitness . . . [he said] without presenting any evidence, that standards had been lowered across the force over the last decade to meet arbitrary racial and gender quotas” (evidence of that here, should NYT researchers need assistance for future stories). MSNBC’s header proclaimed the speech “was even worse than expected.” Not one of the authors of these pieces was a veteran. None of them fought on combat deployments under the failed military leaders of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And none of them were twice awarded the Bronze Star like Hegseth. My various interactions with military pals are hardly scientific, but credibly tell a very different story than the one bouncing around the usual echo chambers. One USAF fighter pilot and graduate of the service’s elite weapons school, on the cusp of separating from service, texted me that he “may have to reconsider leaving.” Another Air Force colleague, a quiet critic of this administration, admitted, “at least we’re getting serious again.” And an old infantry officer pal, now retired, offered me a relieved “finally.” A more scientific Congressional report in 2021 found that 94 percent of sailors interviewed said the string of high-profile operational failures was related to Navy culture and leadership problems. (Full disclosure, I worked on this report as a Senate staffer). The reaction to the speech was reflective of the wider disconnect between people who think for a living and people who do for a living. It was a microcosm of the 2016 and 2024 elections, with high-wealth, high-status coastal smarty-pants types utterly appalled at the national electorate’s rejection of weird political fads, their plea for common sense, and exhausted need for a return to the basics of good governance. This is a fair summarization of the Biden Administration’s treatment of the Pentagon. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas frames it as a widening ideological dichotomy between the “people who take a shower before work and the people who take a shower after work.” I always liked the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s quote, possibly apocryphal, “I prefer the company of peasants as they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” In modern America, there seems to be an inverse relationship between educational credentials and common sense. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-speech-the-pentagon-didnt-want-but-the-military-needed/

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Regarding the Attorney General race. VA Dems Are NOT Sending Their Best: AG Candidate Jay Jones' Reckless Driving (116 MPH!) Charges Get WORSE Virginia's speeding laws are pretty darn strict. It's true. For example, if a Virginian is caught going 20 miles or more above the speed limit they could not only serve six months in jail AND pay thousands in fines. So, you'd think a guy going 116 mph in a 65 mph speed limit would definitely go to jail and pay those fines, right? Guess not, if you're a Democrat, like Jay Jones. https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/10/02/jay-jones-116-mph-va-n2419798

Everyone. But you knew that. Meanwhile

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How Trump Is Doing To hear the Democrats tell it, the policies of the Trump administration have been a catastrophic failure and Americans are in a state of near-revolt. But the truth is more or less the opposite. Today Rasmussen published charts comparing approval of President Joe Biden with that of President Trump. These are monthly averages, so daily ups and downs are smoothed out: President Trump is markedly more popular than Joe Biden was, and his approval has held essentially steady since his inauguration. You may say that Biden represents a low bar, and of course that is true. But up to the bitter end, Democrats at least claimed to believe that Biden was doing a bang-up job. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/10/how-trump-is-doing.php