If life were more serious, we’d be paying attention to the administration and the UK’s latest efforts to start World War III which strikes me as the best overriding reason to vote for Trump. 

There is no other way to interpret it: Washington and its client NATO members are declaring war on Russia.  That is the direct meaning of the forthcoming visit of Zelensky to Washington where the parties will agree on targets inside Russia.

To say this is an insane, reckless move is understatement.  This is the most dangerous step possible for the US and NATO and it will lead to World War III.

Don't believe any garbage "justifying" the use of long-range missiles on Russia.

Putin has pointed out that while Ukraine will host the missiles, they will be fired by NATO personnel who will also insert the targeting data coming from overhead satellites covering Russian territory.  Those satellites are American.

The upcoming Zelensky-Biden meeting should also include Harris, so she takes full responsibility for starting a war.

No one can presume what the outcome will be.  Will Russia unleash nuclear weapons and bring a definitive end to the Ukraine war?  Will it shoot down American satellites?  Will Russia send rockets to hit supply depots in Europe, especially in Poland, which is the jumping off point for military supplies to Ukraine?

There are many other possibilities open to Russia. Russia could transfer nuclear weapons to Iran, for example, or to Syria. 

The truth is Washington wants to take up Zelensky's proposals for deep strikes on Russian territory because Ukraine is losing the war and could be defeated even before the Presidential elections in November.  The Biden-Harris “team” will have to explain why they kept backing a loser, causing tens of thousands of casualties, instead of seeking a diplomatic settlement that was easily within their grasp. Here again Washington stopped a deal in the making between Ukraine and Russia, and Biden and Harris are directly responsible for that.

Zelensky's strategy is easy to grasp.  He knows everything is falling apart and Ukraine won't be able to fight anymore by winter, as the infrastructure of the country, especially electrical power, but also fuel, dries up. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski says that Ukraine’s electrical power has been degraded by 70%, perhaps more.

So Zelensky's strategy is to bring NATO directly into the war.  And, stupidly and arrogantly, Washington is playing the same game.

Instead, we are focused on what is laughably called a “presidential debate,” in which once again the Democrat candidate seems to have had advance knowledge of the questions and the “moderators” used Candy Crowley-like false “fact checks” to attack her opponent. (We could have anticipated this, considering one of the moderators, Linsey Davis, is Harris’s sorority sister, and the network biggie, Dana Walden, is a close friend of Harris who introduced her to her husband.) We have been promised this weekend, probably today, the release of an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower who asserts of personal knowledge that pre-debate Harris was given “sample” questions virtually identical to those posed the candidates and a promise that the moderators would “fact check” Trump, but not her.

Former Clinton advisor Mark Penn said ABC must hire an outside firm to investigate whether there was collusion.

"I don't know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that..."

In any event, the moderators’ performance was so bad, I think, that more than ABC will pay the consequences -- we are likely in the future to be spared another one of these ridiculous non-debate debates. 

If you’ve paid any attention at all to Harris’s speaking abilities, you know that but for debate night, she is incoherent. Indeed, days later she finally consented to a solo interview by a friendly ABC reporter, Brian Taff, and she bombed as always. 

 You needn’t bother watching the entire thing -- this example is a fair representation:

TAFF: Talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people. What are one or two specific things you have in mind for that?

HARRIS: Well, I'll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people. You know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. I try to explain to some people who might not have had the same experience, but a lot of people will relate to this. 

You know, I grew up in a neighborhood of people who were really proud of their lawn, you know, and I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity and that we as Americans have a beautiful character. You know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams, but not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So, when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business. 

Almost 100 years ago U.S. presidential campaigns were satirized in a Gershwin Brothers musical Of Thee I Sing which was reprised more recently. There the theme of candidate Wintergreen’s campaign is “love” (compare to Harris’s theme “joy”).  He chooses not to marry the winner of a beauty contest who, it turns out, is the “illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate son of an illegitimate nephew of Napoleon,” causing a diplomatic dustup with France  and an effort to impeach him for breach of promise. It all works out in the end because the nice woman he chose to marry just gave birth to twins and “love is sweeping the country.” The satire, of course, is the preposterous things upon which elections turn.

For all the obvious ambushing of Trump in the debate, I think he won it. Like Scott Adams:

[T]he only thing I recall about the debate today is “They’re eating the dogs.” Visual. Scary. Viral. Memorable. Repeatable. And directionally correct in terms of unchecked immigration risk. It’s the strongest play of the election. Trump won the debate. I gotta stop underestimating his game. Trump had no base hits in the debate but his long ball is still rising. Incredible. 

(All week, the internet was flooded with cat and dog memes. This one’s my favorite.)

The Haitian immigrants who swamped the small town of Springfield, Ohio, are slaughtering animals, overwhelming city services, causing traffic incidents, and there is videographic evidence of skinned cats being barbecued by immigrants in the nearby neighborhoods of Dayton, Ohio. 

There is a legitimate debate to be had about migration and culture. All immigrants bring with them a particular tradition, which, in the case of countries such as Haiti and the Congo, can include practices that many Americans find disturbing. This cultural divide causes understandable consternation for non-migrants living in the rougher parts of places like Dayton and Springfield. They don’t enjoy the luxury of many in the establishment media, who can maintain a safe distance, condescending to those who raise the alarm while not even bothering to investigate anything themselves.

These revelations do not mean that assimilation is impossible, but the establishment will need to engage in a more honest debate, rather than simply smearing critics as racists and conspiracy theorists. One can make the case for migration, but one cannot, at the same time, deny that it comes with costs -- which, in this case, seem to include a pair of flayed cats on a blue barbeque in Dayton, Ohio.

The crazy notion that we could bring in millions of third-world immigrants to the West without serious economic, social and political consequences is now facing substantial multinational pushback.

In the Netherlands, Geert wilders has succeeded in forming a coalition set to enact serious restrictions on immigration.

The Netherlands will deter new arrivals, the incoming government says, by having the “strictest admission rules in Europe,” by housing arrivals in the most “austere facilities possible”, and by immediately deporting migrants found trying to cross the border without permission or without papers back to the other side.

Administratively, the law would flip the present burden of proof required when deciding migration applications, so asylum seekers have to prove they have a right to be in the country, rather than the expectation being the state having to prove that they don’t. The appeals process will be truncated, and rules changed to deport “nuisance” makers, “criminal aliens”, and “undesirable” migrants more quickly. There will be “strict action against violence and nuisance” by asylum seekers who act against women, LGBT individuals, and Christians, they said.

Hungary and Poland are defying the EU by banning third-world immigration, and Sweden has announced a go-home policy -- saving itself decades of social-welfare expenses, it will offer migrants who haven’t integrated into Swedish society $35,000 per person to return to their home countries.

Here, for failing to respond to the issues involving the Haitian immigrants, a petition is underway to replace the entire Springfield city commission, and the governor has suddenly decided to send manpower and money to deal with the problems Trump highlighted. Ohio attorney general Dave Yost says the influx of migrants has strained the state’s social services and the federal government has been of no assistance.

So, on the one hand, even in the course of a preposterously managed “debate,” Trump has highlighted a significant problem: He tipped over the preset chess board. Compare this with Harris, who wants to provide extravagantly costly services to illegals, including gender transition surgeries to those illegals in prison.

Image: AT via Magic Studio