Flotsam and Jetsam - The Wisconsin Autopsy Continues

We're still digesting the results of Tuesday's primaries. Teri Christoph at RedState hears Voter Data Was Missing From 5 Milwaukee USB Sticks — Then WI's Election Night Got Even Weirder. So, were the polls wrong, and Hong wasn't as popular as believed, or did the DNC-E step in and rig the results? Kurt Schlichter at TownHall VIP says Ignore the Poll Dancers. Ben Shapiro @benshapiro, "We're watching an enormous misread of the results from Wisconsin. The dumb take is that the DSA has reached its ceiling, and the establishment is fighting back. That's totally wrong. The normie Dems are simply negotiating the terms of their surrender. Those terms are obvious: the Democratic Party will ingest and mirror the key precepts of the DSA, and they won't go whole hog against DSA candidates who don't totally say the quiet part out loud. This is why Slotkin didn't endorse Stevens against El-Sayed in Michigan. It's why Schumer and Jeffries didn't endorse Cuomo against Mamdani in NYC. In return, the DSA's most important figures will refrain from endorsing the very worst candidates. This is why Bernie and AOC didn't endorse Hong. If they had, she would have won. The goal of the pact is obvious: candidates who are DSA in all but name, who receive unified Democratic support after the primaries, and who still have a shot at winning a general election. So don't be fooled: the DSA is driving the car, choosing the direction. The normie Dems are just negotiating over the speed." PJM's Rick Moran on Why the Wisconsin Governors' Race Will Define the Midterms for Republicans. Buck Sexton @BuckSexton, "You can get away with saying lots of crazy things in America today, but "let's cancel Thanksgiving" isn't one of them." Quote The Wall Street Journal @WSJ, "David Crowley narrowly won the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin governor, delivering a significant blow to the insurgent far-left in a nail-biter race." Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando, "This keeps happening in places with fiercely contested Democrat primaries because you have two lavishly funded ballot harvesting machines battling each other. We can all see this. We know what’s happening here. And we’re doing nothing about it." Quote Rich Baris THE PEOPLE'S PUNDIT @Peoples_Pundit, "Wisconsin Democrats are CRUSHING Republicans in turnout." MD Kittle at Da Fed reports the Notorious Wisconsin Election Official At Center Of Zuckbucks Scandal Resigns. Hmmm. 

At PJM, VodkaPundit looks at Mamdani and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (and It’s Only Wednesday). From NYPo, Manhattan rents reach all-time high of $6,655/month amid Mamdani’s rent freeze and pied-a-terre tax threat. Batya Ungar-Sargon @bungarsargon, "Who could have predicted that stupid ideas cooked up by rich squatting nepo babies would backfire and hurt struggling working class New Yorkers."

The Patriarch Tree @PatriarchTree, "The Party of College Educated White Folks Craving Swarthy Foreign Guys — it’s not really about health care policy or “affordability” or whatever. @TheDemocrats are now a BDSM cult organized around some kind of weird masochistic Mandingo fetish." Quote Kyle Smith @rkylesmith, "Don't underestimate the value of looks. El-Sayed won in part because he's good-looking. Mamdani won in large part because he's cute. if Francesca Hong looked as good as AOC she would have won. Easily." Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby, "Hasan Piker: “I don't give a f*** what Black people care about.” “Let's go back to a better time, when lynchings were happening.”" Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt, "This is how all DSA people speak in private. Every single one. Communists want to destroy your entire way of life, and they will lie to you and pretend like they're not violent psychopaths. Don't let socialists anywhere near power." At TownHall Matt Vespa notes Not Even Joe Scarborough Could Believe What the DSA Co-Chair Said About Hamas and October 7. At Insty, VodkaPundit adds MAYBE A FEW YEARS HARD LABOR: "No Repentance = No Grace For Woke Bullshit. “There was no ‘Woke 1.0,’ just a continuous racialist, anti-Western Civilization, anti-rational, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-Republican movement whose roots stretch back into the Comintern, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, carried forward into the Port Huron Statement, the Weather Underground, the campus radicals of the 1960s and their long march through academia and other western institutions... PJM's Vicky Taft hears The Left Is Coming for Your County Sheriff.

From Ace, The FBI and "Intelligence" Agencies Had Intel From 14 Different Sources About the Biden Family's Corruption. Wray Covered It Up and Claimed It Was All "Disinformation" "Christopher Wray was recommended to Trump by Super-Republican Chris Christie. So you know he's a straight shooter." Capt. Ed at Hat Hair has a fainting spell at Pelosi: Biden Declining? Someone Shoulda Said Something! From Tierney's Real News, Laundering Our Tax Dollars. Matt Vespa again, The Initiative That This Top House Republican Said 'There's No Excuse for Delay', fraud. Democrats don't see it as fraud, they see it as constituent services.

From Fortune, Google cofounder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses.

Sarah Anderson at PJM has the sads as Karoline Leavitt Resigns as White House Press Secretary, to be with her family. No, really! From Da Signal, Trump Confirms Karoline Leavitt’s White House Departure. It's too bad, I really enjoyed her "no quarters" attitude with the White House press corpse. 

Nick Arama at RedState enjoys how Marco Rubio's Hilarious Interaction With His Wife Prompts RFK Jr. to Cap It Off With Perfect Reply. Hat Hair's Beege Welborn is Totally Into the Way the Trump Cabinet Dogs Each Other, Even Over Cats MORE. Buzz Patterson @BuzzPatterson, "This is hysterical. Marco disses RFK for his diet. He’s a Pop- Tart guy. I love this Cabinet! @katiemillerpod RUBIO: “No! This is a CRAZY diet. This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand like this is not a sustainable thing. He has to travel with coolers of sauerkraut!” “I'm not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It's ridiculous. I can't do it!” Q: Are you MAHA? RUBIO: “I'm in favor of MAHA. Like I think people should be healthy.” JEANETTE: No, he's not. Q: What's he eat? JEANETTE: Pop-Tarts! RUBIO: The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in the history of the world.”

From Breitbart Bus Dig, The Vibecession Comes for MAGA, "The American right’s views of the U.S. economy deteriorated significantly over the past month." Joel Pollak @joelpollak, "There are two really amazing facts about today's CPI report. 1. Blue (Democrat) metros have MUCH higher inflation than Red (Republican) metros. 2. Prescription drug prices have fallen for 7 months -- longest such decline since 1947. Did you hear that? Media ignored it. (1/3)."

John Sexton reports Ukraine Carries Out Major Strike on Russian Grain Terminal.

Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby, "Cenk Uygur: “Everybody knows it’s just Israel falsifying documents to make it look like Iran is trying to kill Trump.” Amir Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Forces: “We aim to kill Trump.”"

Tyler O'Neil at Da Signal,  Former SPLC CFO Arrested, AG Blanche Confirms "The SPLC faces federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering related to its alleged payments to members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other groups. While the center claims it was paying informants in order to combat extremism, the Justice Department claims it was propping up the extremism that it claims it exists to oppose. The Justice Department also claims the SPLC opened bank accounts for fictitious entities to funnel cash to the extremists."

At NYPo, the Divine Ms. Devine sees The walls — and evidence — are slowly building around Dr. Anthony Fauci. From the Right Time's Kathy Gyngell, Anthony Fauci: What He Knew, When He Knew It - His AIDS Fearmongering All Over Again, "Fauci's diaries confirm the warnings his critics were demonised and cancelled for raising. But Covid was not the first time this dangerously arrogant doctor had used scaremongering tactics to raise huge amounts of money to fund questionable vaccines."

Shipwreckedcrew lawsplains The Lawfare Over New Postal Rules For Mail-In Ballots Is More Complicated That Most Understand -- You Need A Scorecard To Keep Up. "There are three other cases with District Judges trying to block the Administration but one has gone to the D.C. Circuit where the Administration received a favorable decision." CIS  reports Trump Issues Two New ‘Birthright Citizenship’ Orders, "... inviting challenges the White House will likely relish. Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of law."

At Althouse, "ICE is planning to buy up to $20 million worth of electric gloves designed to allow agents to deliver painful shocks to detainees." "I'm reading "ICE’s new weapon: painful electric shock gloves/The glove is manufactured by a firm called Compliant Technologies" (London Times). The Glove — Generated Low-Output Voltage Emitter — "is not effective through clothing or hair and can be degraded on individuals and animals that are extremely hairy." So what body parts do you grab with your electrified hands? I was able to find what I think is Compliant's manual. My search for "face" only turned up a couple instance of "surface": "Periodic cleaning of the outside surface area of the G.L.O.V.E. SHALL only be done with 'My-Shield' wipes or surface cleaner in order to maintain the warranty on the G.L.O.V.E.""

Eric Kaufmann @epkaufm, "The Jason Arday case 'is an aberration' says Cambridge. Actually it is just the most visible manifestation of a diversity-industrial complex. My @HeterodoxCentre report into UKRI grant funding shows that DEI keywords are up 24 times since 2000 and have doubled since 2020." Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63, "Does anyone believe they don't think they are getting something for their money? Direct interference and propaganda investment are one thing, but this is the longer influence game." Quote Visegrád 24 @visegrad24, "Qatar has become the largest overall donor of U.S. colleges and universities since 1986, with $6.3 billion as of late 2025. Over $2 billion of it flowed from Qatar to the U.S. between 2021 and 2024 alone." Hat Hair's John Sexton hears a Northern Virginia High School Has a Major Antisemitism Problem, Yorktown High. "One male Jewish student reported being repeatedly targeted because he wore a kippah, which a female classmate tried to pull off his head. After a male student called him an antisemitic slur, he began covering his kippah with a baseball cap. A female Jewish student said that she was chased because she was Jewish, and other Jewish students described seeing Nazi salutes, hearing Holocaust jokes, and being told that they belonged in a gas chamber or that “Hitler should have finished the job.” 

Amy Curtis hears Sophie Cunningham Has a New Unexpected Ally Hugh Laurie @hughlaurie, "Strange this whole broigus should happen in professional basketball, where 99.9% of the world are, effectively, ‘women’. Per Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated, if you’re an American man between 20 and 40 years of age and 7 feet tall or more, there’s a 17% chance you’re already in the NBA."

And more at the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 08.12.26 (Afternoon Edition) and In The Mailbox: 08.12.26 (Evening Edition).