It's My Mind

The Glass Wall

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 01:31:48 -0500

The only piece of the Root interview I had seen was the short one where El-Sayed tries to explain that Mike Rogers is an NPC.

He says the term, then has to define it. Non-playing character. Someone who just goes along with the program. The clip is brief. The explanation takes longer than the insult. That was the only part I had watched.

The rest of the interview is longer. In it he talks about Black voters in Detroit.

He tells Ashley Allison that too many Black Detroiters have had bad experiences with “somebody who looks like me.” Then he describes the glass wall: the party store, the gas station, the distance that is already set before he speaks.

Here's a short clip of the exchange here: [VIDEO]

In the primary he carried the state. He did not carry Detroit. He was outspent. He says the money was aimed at the connection. The connection still needed work.

Current polls put Black support for him in the mid-to-high 60s. Democratic Senate preference in the same surveys sits closer to the low 80s. The gap is the softness. Soft enough that a Republican opening a field office in Detroit is worth noting. Soft enough that he is still explaining the wall in October.

He lists three things Black voters can hold him to: maternal mortality, capital in Black neighborhoods, school funding that still follows old lines. Those are concrete. The glass wall is the part that does not fit on the list.

Rogers is not going to win Detroit. He needs the margin of people who stay home, or the margin of people who decide the name and the face still matter. El-Sayed is the one who named the wall. He is also the one who has to decide whether talking about it in a D.C. interview moves anyone on the other side of it.

Here's the full interview: [VIDEO]

Stratton v. Tracy: It Went as Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:03:36 -0500

They met once. It went the way I expected.

Watch the full forum here: [VIDEO]

Brandis Friedman moderated the only joint appearance of the general election. One hour from the WTTW studios. Early voting was already underway. This was the last scheduled chance for voters to see Juliana Stratton and Don Tracy answer the same questions in the same room.

Tracy called Stratton a socialist who wants to fund unaffordable programs. Stratton tied Tracy to Trump and blamed the Iran war plus tariffs for higher costs on rent, gas, groceries, and healthcare.

On immigration she called ICE Trump’s private police force and said she would abolish the agency. Tracy called the Chicago raids ugly and chaotic but blamed sanctuary policies and the refusal of state and local officials to cooperate.

She wants the federal minimum wage at $25 an hour. He called that a death sentence for small businesses. She pointed to the Illinois raise to $15 under Pritzker as proof it works.

She said she would not vote to fund the war in Iran. He said it was worth it if it stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

She pushed Medicare for All so no one has to choose between a doctor and rent. He called it a $30–50 trillion government takeover of a system that already works.

He defended cuts to SNAP: there is dignity in work. He would welcome a Trump endorsement if offered.

The race is the first open Illinois Senate seat in decades. Stratton is the lieutenant governor. Tracy is a Springfield attorney and the former state party chair. Polling has shown a double-digit lead for the Democrat. The last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois was Mark Kirk in 2010.

I will add more once I sit with it.

The Deterrence Message

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:04:10 -0500

I keep noticing when the stated goal of an investigation is not only the case itself but the calculation the next person is supposed to make before taking the job.

On Monday mornings PBD Podcast the panel discussed this cut of Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin speaking at the University of Chicago on October 13. It was a live recording of Vox’s America, Actually podcast with Astead Herndon.

Watch the PBD Podcast clip here: [VIDEO]

She was asked how Congress reasserts itself as a check if Democrats regain the majority. She talked about signature cases, not just the president but the people who enabled him. The people around him do not have the same immunity he does.

Then she said she wants young people coming out of school to ask whether working for the Trump administration is buying themselves a ton of problems they do not want, and to avoid participating. She wants that deterrence message sent.

The clip spread. Trump called her a lowlife who is ruining her state. She later said the point was accountability for corruption and lawbreaking, not targeting people for their politics, and that the outrage was manufactured. The full exchange is on the Vox podcast.

The full exchange is on the Vox podcast: Elissa Slotkin says it’s time for new faces | America, Actually

What I keep turning over is the part she named out loud: the deterrence. Not only the case, but the signal meant for the graduate still deciding whether to take the job.

Stratton v. Tracy: Side by Side, Finally

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 01:23:03 -0500

I almost missed this. Saw it on Capitol Fax this evening. The main thing is that the candidates for Dick Durbin’s open U.S. Senate seat are set to debate on Tuesday.

Tonight, October 20, 2026, at 8 p.m. on WTTW, Chicago Tonight anchor Brandis Friedman moderates the only joint appearance of the general election between Democrat Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy. It runs one hour from the WTTW studios on the North Side, with a studio audience. The forum airs live on WTTW and streams on the PBS app, wttw.com, Facebook, and YouTube. Rebroadcasts follow later in the week.

Credit: WTTW

Early voting in Illinois started September 24. This is the last scheduled chance for voters to see the two major-party nominees for Dick Durbin’s open seat answer the same questions in the same room. Tracy accepted invitations from multiple outlets and groups earlier in the cycle. Stratton’s campaign accepted this one.

I wrote about the race in September. Cook looks settled. The collars are the question. The post is here: Illinois Looks Settled.

American Center Party candidate Whitfield Harrington is on the ballot but was not invited. WTTW’s published standards require a candidate to show at least 15 percent in a post-primary public poll (plus other criteria) to appear.

The race is the first open Illinois Senate seat in decades. Stratton is the lieutenant governor and the Democratic nominee after a competitive primary. Tracy is a Springfield attorney and the former state party chair. Polling has shown a double-digit lead for the Democrat. The last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois was Mark Kirk in 2010. The forum is the public record of what they chose to say when the clock ran out.

Watch on WTTW at 8 p.m. or stream it from their site. When it’s uploaded to YouTube it will be shared here, and like I did with the governor’s forum, offer my own take once I watch it.

Europe Burned Over the Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:42:23 -0500

I haven't watched it yet. Ben Shapiro on the France and Italy riots that blew up over the weekend after a month of school protests: the crowds aren't there for better schools or lower prices. He says they are there to break the cities.

Watch Shapiro's recent podcast here: VIDEO

I put this on because the title was sitting there. The school protests that fed the weekend’s riots started about a month ago—teachers striking and students blockading a lycée in Créteil over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, and run-down buildings. It spread, with repeated marches and closures through early October. The large-scale violence (Limoges town hall torched, shops looted, thousands arrested) broke out Saturday when those actions joined a planned cost-of-living day with unions and former Yellow Vests.

The same weekend the violence crossed into Italy. Cost-of-living marches in northern cities—Milan, Turin, Bologna, Bergamo—drew thousands and then frayed at the edges. In Milan the trouble centered on Piazza Duomo and the Galleria: masked groups threw stones and fireworks at police, looted shops, set bins alight, and forced officers back with tear gas and water cannons before a second night of the same. Hundreds were detained across the two days, most of them young, many of them minors. Meloni said demonstrating is a right and setting cities ablaze is not; she called an emergency meeting for Monday and told the opposition any hesitation in condemning it would look like justification. The Italian numbers were smaller than France’s, but the pictures were of the same kind of night.

Ben Shapiro is talking about the riots that have been running through French and Italian cities—Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Limoges, Milan, Turin. Historic buildings torched, stores looted, cars burned, police and firefighters attacked, Palestinian flags and keffiyehs everywhere. The official framing is students and unions out for better schools, more classrooms, and relief from the cost of living. Shapiro says look at the composition of the crowds, who is cheering them, and the numbers on who has arrived in those countries over the last forty years. He treats it as a red-green alliance—communists, radical Muslims, and third-worldists—united in hatred of the West and trying to wreck the place rather than negotiate a policy. He points to the already-high welfare spending (France at 31 percent of GDP), the demographic shifts, the preference among younger French Muslims for Sharia over French law, Mélenchon’s encouragement, and the old Sartre introduction to Fanon about killing a European. The American warning is that importing the third world without assimilation turns the place into the third world. I haven’t sat through the whole episode, so this is just the shape of the argument.

When Shapiro says the riots are meant to break the cities, he is not claiming the official organizers handed out maps for arson. He is saying the violence is not a side effect of a negotiation over teacher shortages or fuel prices. The targets—town halls that survived wars, tourist offices, stores, police—are the ordinary furniture of the place, and the people doing the breaking are not, in his reading, the parents who want more classrooms. He treats the Palestinian flags, the keffiyehs, the communist cheers, and the demographic numbers as evidence that a portion of the crowd has already decided the existing city is the enemy, not a project to improve. The “break the cities” line is his way of saying the destruction is the point for that portion, not a tactic to win a budget fight.

The Wheelchair She Named

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 15:00:00 -0500

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill was on MSDNC (or whatever the network calls itself after decoupling from NBC News) talking about the planned military firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan. She said this:

"The thing that just keeps breaking my heart: imagine the 20-year-old, maybe the 18-year-old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair."

Michael Steele nodded. Steele is a Republican, and a never-Trumper, though that is secondary. The stare looked intense. I wanted to believe he had already checked out by the time she finished.

NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill on the execution of Nidal Hasan: "The thing that just keeps breaking my heart: imagine the 20-year-old, maybe the 18-year-old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair." https://t.co/6WdVnDjvTt
— Ezydu (@ezradulis) October 17, 2026

Hasan is the Army psychiatrist who walked into the readiness processing center at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, shouted “Allahu akbar,” and opened fire. Thirteen people were killed. More than thirty were wounded. He has been paralyzed from the waist down since the police shot him to stop the attack. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2013. The appellate process finished. President Trump approved the sentence this month. The Army set December 3 at Fort Hood. There was discussion of livestreaming his execution; that part was walked back.

One of the thirteen was Private Francheska Velez, 21, from Chicago. She had just returned from Iraq. She was pregnant. Witnesses heard her crying “My baby! My baby!” as she was shot. The unborn child died with her.

h/t Newsalert

Sherrill is a Navy veteran. In her written statement she said Hasan killed thirteen innocent soldiers and deserves to be brought to justice. The public spectacle, she argued, runs against the values she took an oath to protect. What she said keeps her up at night is the detail of soldiers to the firing squad—the psychological burden, the blanks some rifles traditionally carried, the young person who feels bound to follow the order.

On the air she narrowed it further. The thing that keeps breaking her heart is the image of the 20-year-old, or the 18-year-old, who stepped up to serve and then gets told to shoot the man in the wheelchair.

That is the sentence she chose to say out loud.

Earlier: The Sentence Is the Sentence

Blue States Need the Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0500

You may have seen my two recent posts on the Illinois gubernatorial race. One asked whether the only televised forum between Governor Pritzker and Darren Bailey would move anyone who hasn’t already voted. The other was about what a solid opposition actually looks like in a state that has grown used to one-party rule. My point in covering it is simple: Illinois needs an opposition party that can win. As PBD has said about candidates running for president, the opposition still has to sell the dream.

California is another state in the same position. Steve Hilton finished second in the top-two primary and is the Republican nominee against Xavier Becerra. He has spent months making the case that the state can be more affordable and better governed. Polls still show him trailing by a wide margin. The election is unlikely to go his way.

Now we arrive at New York. Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is running for another term against Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. If I am reading people like Bill O’Reilly correctly, Blakeman has a realistic shot at knocking off the incumbent.

Here are some highlights via NY Post: [VIDEO]

The exchanges are mostly about utility bills, sanctuary policies, spending on migrants, and Hochul’s attempts to tie Blakeman to President Trump. Blakeman’s side of the argument is that she has been governor for five years and the results are hers. Hochul’s side is that the alternative is Trump-style leadership.

I have not watched the full debate yet. The New York Post’s panel of experts split on who won it. Michael Goodwin wrote that Blakeman came prepared and put her on defense. Most public polls still show Hochul ahead by single digits to the low teens. She also has a large cash advantage.

Whether Blakeman can close the gap is the question the next three weeks will answer. The larger point is the same one I keep coming back to with Illinois and California. In states that have been blue for a long time, the opposition does not only need a record of problems to point at. It still has to sell something better.

Hochul has never struck me as particularly popular. She became governor in 2021 when Andrew Cuomo resigned. She then won a full term in 2022 against Lee Zeldin by roughly six points—the closest race for NY Governor in decades.

The Playbook Has Not Changed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:18:58 -0500

I keep seeing the same sequence described in different places. Universities first. Then the unions. Then their own outlets. Then the cities. The people who notice it early get called alarmists. By the time the pattern is obvious, the people who called it a pattern are already being told they imagined the order.

Matt Walsh put the Russian version of that sequence on YouTube this week. The episode is from his Real History series and is now free at the link: [VIDEO]

Walsh’s chapters run from academia in the 1890s, through the crises the Bolsheviks refused to let pass unused, the rise of left-wing violence, the seizure itself, the incompetent opposition that let it happen, an apathetic population, and then America today.

How did the Bolsheviks take power?

They did not win an election. In the fall of 1917 they organized through the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee, seized the telegraph, the railway stations, the banks, the bridges, and the post offices, then arrested the remaining ministers of the Provisional Government inside the Winter Palace. The operation in Petrograd was nearly bloodless. Lenin had returned from exile with German help; Trotsky handled the military side. They announced the transfer of power to the soviets and immediately formed their own Council of People’s Commissars. When the Constituent Assembly elections later showed them with roughly a quarter of the vote, they dissolved the assembly. The slogan was “All power to the Soviets.” The result was power to the Bolsheviks. That sequence is not in serious dispute.

From whom did they take power?

Not directly from the Tsar. Nicholas II had already abdicated in March after the February Revolution. Power had passed to a Provisional Government—first under Prince Lvov, then under Alexander Kerensky—that shared an uneasy dual authority with the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks took it from that Provisional Government. Kerensky’s forces were too thin and too late; he fled.

How did they fare in power?

They held it. The Civil War followed. The Cheka and the Red Terror began almost immediately. War Communism, grain requisitions, and the resulting famine killed millions. The Romanovs were executed in 1918. The regime lasted until 1991. The later body count does not change the fact that the opening moves met little organized resistance.

Comparisons to 2020

Walsh’s final chapter treats 2020 as the clearest recent American exhibit of the same sequence. Academia as the long incubator. A crisis that was not allowed to remain limited. A visible rise in political violence that large institutions declined to name or contain. An opposition that looked decisive on paper and hesitant in practice. A population that, in many places, treated the disorder as either justified or not their problem.

That reading is solid on the institutional order and the reluctance to confront actors already inside the institutions. It is open to attack where it treats the resemblance as continuity of project. There was no armed seizure of the capital, no dissolution of an elected assembly, no Cheka, and no transfer of sovereign power to a single party. Courts continued to operate. An election was held. Private property and competitive parties remained. The weakest stretch is the leap from “this is how they took Petrograd” to “this is what is happening now.” The first half can be checked against the record of October–November 1917. The second half depends on the viewer accepting that resemblance of tactics equals continuity of outcome. Once that acceptance is withheld, the video becomes a strong account of one revolution and a thinner brief about the present.

This Is on California

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0500

I hadn’t been following the California gubernatorial race much since the open primary in June. The right generally agrees the state is a mess under one-party rule, and the consensus is that Steve Hilton — former British political operative and Fox News host — will lose in November.

The usual exhibit is what happened to Spencer Pratt in the same June election. He hoped to reach the runoff for mayor of Los Angeles. There were the familiar complaints about mail-in ballots and California’s loose rules on what counts and when.

I have been to Skid Row twice in my lifetime. I still find it hard to believe a whole neighborhood in this nation is allowed to stay like that.

This video from Fox News Digital reporter Ashley J. DiMella is revealing. She walks the area with Hilton. He notes the federal help clearing streets, then makes the point that the condition itself remains on California.

🚨 ON THE GROUND: Fox News Digital joined @SteveHiltonx in LA’s Skid Row, witnessing human feces, open drug use, sprawling encampments and trash-filled sidewalks. Hilton calls it a “political scandal.” https://t.co/yPREpf7Qpq
— AJD (@AshleyJDiMella) October 12, 2026

Hilton calls it a political scandal rather than a natural disaster. Billions spent, nonprofits funded for “harm reduction,” streets still covered in encampments, drugs, and refuse.

Hilton debated his Democratic opponent Xavier Becerra once, on CNN at the end of September in Burbank. Moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, it was the only scheduled one. Hilton opened by thanking the network for bringing Becerra “out of hiding,” a line aimed at Becerra’s sparse public schedule since the primary.

I just had to see video of that shot. Here's a story on that debate via KCRA [VIDEO]

Becerra spent much of the hour tying Hilton to Trump and resting on his long résumé in Sacramento and Washington. The criticism of Becerra as an empty suit comes mainly from that pattern: low visibility, reluctance to do more debates, and a campaign that treats experience and opposition to Trump as the answer rather than a break from the conditions that produced Skid Row.

The video does not argue that Hilton will win. It does show why the problem is still described as California’s to solve, even when the federal government steps in to clear a block. Whether that distinction moves any votes in November is a separate question. The footage is the exhibit.

Stephen A. Smith Won't Stay Comfortable

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:01:37 -0500

I keep hearing Stephen A. Smith outside the sports window.

Stephen A. Smith is the loud voice on ESPN’s First Take. He started as a newspaper writer covering high school and pro sports in New York and Philadelphia, then moved into radio and television. He has two daughters. He calls himself an independent and has spent more of the last couple of years talking about politics, including whether he would run.

He appears on Bill O’Reilly’s We’ll Do It Live podcast. [VIDEO]

They covered sports media that will not criticize players because the leagues do not want it. Smith said he did not get into the business to be comfortable. They also went into race and the black vote. Smith said one party has been given a license to take black votes for granted and the other a license to ignore them. They touched on what keeps the two sides from hearing each other.

This was certainly a good talk. To be honest, it throws me off that a sports guy has become a commentator on political and social issues. I do think he’s often been right about the Democrat Party taking Black voters for granted. I think he might be right on a lot of racial issues.

I trailed off before the interesting discussion over whether Bill O’Reilly should be able to comment on issues that relate to Black Americans. Especially the part about Black youth being deprived of responsible parents, and the idea that O’Reilly, or anyone else, may not be able to relate to the Black experience. That was the part worth sitting with.

Six Voices, One Caucus

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0500

I watched the New York Times Opinion video with the six Black lawmakers. They are asked, in different ways, why the Congressional Black Caucus still exists and why Black representation still matters once the numbers are no longer required by law.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Their answer is lived experience. One of them says that when you are not at the table you are on the menu, and that for many centuries Black people were on the menu. Another says the caucus and Black legislators have been the ones fighting for additional funding for HBCUs, because they know what those schools are worth. A third talks about a constituent whose son needed a Medicaid exemption for autism; the office got it two days before the deadline. Another describes meetings held to keep hospitals open in the district. The claim is that someone who grew up in the neighborhood, went to the churches and the schools, can name the problem and fight for the money in a way an outsider cannot.

On the Supreme Court they are blunt. One says the Court in Louisiana v. Callais struck down and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. Another says the justices essentially told the states: you can make the districts as racially discriminatory as you want, just do not say you did it because of race. They call the effect colorism more than open racism. Terri Sewell, who grew up in Selma, says it is personal; her district is where the four little girls were bombed and where Bloody Sunday happened, and she is still fighting to restore the 1965 Act. Cleo Fields, whose Louisiana district was at the center of the case, and Jim Clyburn, who has been in Congress thirty-three years, both treat the ruling as a reversal of the progress that took them from six Black members in 1965 to more than sixty.

Asked whether Washington has abandoned the lessons of the civil rights era, they answer without a doubt, definitely, certainly. What they mean is the post-1965 understanding that the right to vote required active federal tools against maps and procedures that produced under-representation. They treat the Callais decision as the latest step away from that consensus: states may now draw districts that reduce Black representation so long as they do not announce race as the motive. In their telling, ignoring the history of Selma and Birmingham while dismantling the statute that came out of it returns the country to a world in which the formal right exists but the practical ability to elect preferred candidates can be engineered away.

What they describe themselves doing is mostly the ordinary work of a member: constituent casework, hospital funding, HBCU money, the things that require knowing the district. They do not claim the caucus is a separate government. They claim it is the place where those specific fights get organized when the broader Congress is not paying attention.

They are also asked about the state of the institution itself. One says Congress has become much more tribal, which makes it harder to get things done. Another describes it as floundering and dysfunctional. They note that the president has made clear he does not want the Republican side working with Democrats, so the minority is left out of the drafting and then handed the finished product. On corruption, the question is put to them directly. One answers that Congress has corrupt elements and that some members enrich themselves. The fix they offer is the usual one: take the dark money out of politics, reform campaign finance, elect people who care about the district more than the next job. They do not pretend the caucus solves the gridlock. They treat it as one of the remaining rooms where the history and the casework still get discussed in the same conversation, while the larger body stays stuck.

A Narrower Room

I cringe at the assertion of racism or colorism in the Supreme Court ruling. The claim treats the outcome of Callais as deliberate exclusion rather than a decision about whether race can be the predominant factor in drawing districts.

A few members of the Congressional Black Caucus already represent non-Black majority districts or near-Black majority districts. Lauren Underwood’s Illinois seat and Janelle Bynum’s Oregon seat are examples. That fact sits beside the argument that Black representation requires majority-Black maps.

If the concern is continuing Black representation in Congress, this may be the moment to talk about uncapping the House. The current number is 435. One thing the members in the video note is communities of interest. Increasing the number of seats would let those communities be drawn without forcing the choice between packing and cracking that the Voting Rights Act cases keep litigating.

My view of the Congressional Black Caucus is that it is a hyperpartisan entity and a long way from the so-called conscience of Congress. Black members and historically Black Republicans who have wanted to join have generally been shunned. The room that remains is narrower than the one they describe.

Bailey Interrupted. Pritzker Stayed Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:14:53 -0500

I had the chance to watch Tuesday’s WTTW-TV Illinois gubernatorial forum in its entirety. The original post with the full video is here: Will the Forum Move the Needle. At this time it has not caused me to move the needle on whether I am enthusiastic about a third term for Governor Pritzker or whether Darren Bailey should have his turn. I am guessing it has not moved the needle for anyone else either.

Credit: Chicago Sun-Times

It seemed like Bailey was doing a lot of interrupting. I may appreciate that he was attempting to show some fire, but it was particularly distracting. A few times the governor had to let Bailey know that he was interrupting. He was never flustered about it. He just stayed cool, like he got this.

Bailey got his points in about the situation in this state. This was an opportunity to show Illinois that there is an opposition party. The governor especially made sure to note the defection of former Illinois House GOP Leader Jim Durkin, who endorsed the incumbent.

They also went back and forth on energy. Bailey talked about utility bills climbing and said we are phasing out reliable energy too soon. Pritzker, while Bailey was cutting in, brought up the high cost of diesel and tied it to federal policy. Nuclear did not get a long run in the hour, but the broader argument was the same one Illinois has been having for years: what counts as reliable, what we are willing to build, and who pays when the bills keep rising.

On taxes and the economy, Bailey talked about high property taxes, utility costs, and spending on people who are here illegally. He called continued taxation of the rich a socialist mentality that has driven people out. Pritzker pointed to the credit upgrades and the budgets he has balanced.

Bailey talked a bit about the SAFE-T Act. Pritzker tried to illustrate what it was supposed to do.

“Darren Bailey’s answer to this is to go back to a system where the most violent criminals can buy their way out of jail. I don’t think they should be able to. I think judges and prosecutors ought to decide whether or not someone should be let out in the community or not.”

For what it is worth, the current Cook County State’s Attorney, Eileen O’Neill Burke, has said the electronic monitoring system is not working. See this recent piece: Cook County State's Attorney Eileen Burke says murder of CTA janitor proof that electronic monitoring system is broken.

On sanctuary status, Bailey said the rules stop local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities on people here illegally who have committed serious crimes. Pritzker criticized the federal operation and said mistakes were made on both sides.

On data centers, Bailey said they came in with free rein and tax breaks and that energy prices have spiked. Pritzker said he has paused the incentives and that any new ones should bring their own energy and leave the decision to local people.

On the Chicago Bears, Bailey said he is glad he will not be known as the governor who lost them and that they are going to Indiana. Pritzker said he believes something can still be done in November without putting the cost on the taxpayers.

None of it moved the needle for me. Bailey showed there is still an opposition. The governor stayed composed and defended the record. There is another recap of the coverage over at The Capitol Fax blog: Gubernatorial forum coverage roundup. The video is still up if you want to watch it yourself.

Will the Forum Move the Needle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 01:04:36 -0500

I wasn’t able to watch the Tuesday gubernatorial forum between incumbent Governor JB Pritzker and GOP challenger Darren Bailey. It aired on WTTW Chicago, our local PBS affiliate. I’m not giving much of an opinion until I watch it.

You can watch the forum here [VIDEO]

I’ve already said where I believe this race is headed in November. Early voting in Illinois began in late September—some collar counties opened sites on September 24, Chicago’s downtown supersites on October 1, and suburban Cook on October 7. The question now is narrower: does this forum change the mind of any voter who hasn’t already cast a ballot?

Noted further is the absence of independent candidate Collin Corbett.

I had been keenly interested in races outside Illinois, especially California. I couldn’t find the full CNN debate between GOP candidate Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former cabinet secretary. Regardless, it is important to keep my focus on home.

Common Sense, Not Ideology

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:22:40 -0500

The New York Post ran this on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

The full interview is here: [VIDEO]

He said the city lost its way.

“We got so entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets.”

He pointed to 810 overdose deaths three years ago and 30,000 car break-ins.

“There’s nothing progressive about that.”

Break-ins are down 90 percent under him. He still wants the city to look out for immigrants and the LGBTQ community. What he rejects is treating open-air drug use and shoplifting as acceptable. His line is the mother walking her child to the bus stop who should not have to see that.

This sits next to the June post on Bill O’Reilly’s NewsNation special The Decline and Fall of San Francisco. O’Reilly walked the Tenderloin and called the progressive experiment compassion without consequences. Lurie is now saying roughly the same thing from inside the office.

Lurie is the moderate Democrat who beat London Breed in 2024. He has shielded the police budget from cuts, raised officer pay, and started a hiring push after the department was hundreds of officers short. In addition, he made 600 treatment and recovery beds available last year.

A Warrant Was Signed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 23:30:00 -0500

They opened the door with a warrant.

Glenn Beck posted this Monday afternoon, hours after the first reports. [VIDEO]

Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived before dawn at the Washington residence of Rep. Ilhan Omar. Neighbors described banging on doors around 4:30 or 5 a.m. Agents in HSI jackets were still on the street later that morning, carrying boxes out of the house. The Department of Justice confirmed that HSI executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the department as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. No further details were released. No charges have been filed.

Sources who spoke to Fox News, Reuters, CBS, and others described the probe as focused on alleged immigration fraud and false statements tied to paperwork completed by Omar’s late father when she was a child. She arrived in the United States as a refugee in the mid-1990s. Omar’s office called the search an “outrageous abuse of power” and an attempt to weaponize law enforcement against a political enemy. On X she wrote that she was okay, that Trump had targeted her for a decade with “baseless lies,” and that she would not be silenced. House Democratic leaders issued a joint statement calling the action deeply disturbing.

Beck’s segment centers on a different long-running claim. He asks whether agents were looking for DNA evidence that could settle, one way or the other, the allegation that Omar entered a marriage with a brother for immigration purposes. He notes that the State Department once paused certain African asylum applications after DNA testing showed high rates of fraudulent family claims, and he recalls that he raised the brother-marriage reporting years ago when it received little attention. The video treats the judicially approved warrant as the new fact, not the older public accusations.

The reporting that has circulated so far points to the childhood paperwork rather than the marriage claim. Those are distinct allegations. A federal magistrate judge still had to find probable cause that evidence of a crime was present at the residence before signing the warrant. That step is not required for a political speech or a cable segment. The midterm elections are three weeks away. Omar is seeking reelection. The Justice Department has traditionally limited enforcement actions that could be seen as influencing an election, though the department has not explained how it weighed that policy here.

The boxes left the house. What they contain has not been described in public. The investigation is ongoing. The warrant was already signed.

All the Chips on the Table

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:05:42 -0500

CBS Sunday Morning still has the feel of appointment television, even when you’re watching it on Paramount+ at a later time. In the most recent edition, one of the segments featured political strategist Steve Bannon interviewed by senior contributor Ted Koppel. (Yes, that Ted Koppel—the longtime host of ABC’s Nightline.)

Who is Steve Bannon?
Steve Bannon is a former investment banker, media executive, and political operative who became widely known as executive chairman of Breitbart News and as a key strategist in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. He served briefly as White House chief strategist early in the first Trump administration before returning to media as host of the War Room podcast, where he has remained a prominent voice for the MAGA movement, populist nationalism, and Republican electoral strategy. He has also faced legal consequences, including a 2022 contempt-of-Congress conviction related to the January 6 investigation and a guilty plea in a fundraising fraud case tied to a border-wall charity.

Watch interview here: [VIDEO]

In the interview (conducted in Bannon’s “War Room”), Koppel pressed him on the durability of Trumpism and the stakes of the 2026 midterms. Bannon described himself as the leading advocate for a third term for President Trump, arguing that the 22nd Amendment’s term limits could be worked around through “a number of different alternatives” and that “you could drive a truck through that amendment.” He acknowledged such an effort would be contested in the courts but framed it as consistent with the constant legal challenges the administration already faces.

On the 2020 election, Bannon was unyielding, stating that “the core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election.” When Koppel noted the certified results and the many court losses, Bannon maintained that the cases never fully reached the merits because of standing issues. He also discussed his approach to political filmmaking, defending techniques inspired by Leni Riefenstahl’s powerful propaganda films. He called her “one of the most powerful filmmakers ever” and said his aim has been to recreate the force of those films to give ordinary people a voice, even while acknowledging she was “amoral” and worked for the Nazis.

Looking ahead to the midterms, Bannon warned that Republicans “can’t afford to lose.” He sketched a scenario in which a Democratic House would turn the White House into “Fort Apache,” with impeachments of figures such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth and a steady stream of subpoenas aimed at the administration. His prescription was total commitment: “push all our chips in the middle of the table… there’s no retreat, and there’s no substitute for victory. Let’s fight like hell.” When Koppel suggested this meant doing “whatever it takes,” Bannon replied, “Exactly.”

The conversation also covered broader trends—the rise of populist and nationalist movements abroad (including Germany’s AfD), the ground game of Democratic Socialists in places like New York and Texas, media as an adversarial force, and Bannon’s view of Trump as a once-in-a-generation historical figure. Throughout, the exchange underscored the intensity of the current political moment as seen from one of the movement’s most prominent strategists.

The Sentence Is the Sentence

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 13:06:23 -0500

Last week I wrote about the attempted execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike. As of this writing she is still alive and appears to be doing fine. It was expected that she had suffered brain damage. Instead she is conscious and talking, according to reports.

Then another piece of news hit this week. President Trump approved the execution by firing squad of former U.S. Army officer Nidal Hasan. We also learn that Hasan’s execution will be live streamed.

Here's one news story about this: [VIDEO]

CONTENT WARNING: This section describes a mass shooting, the deaths of service members and a civilian, and a capital case now moving toward execution.

Nidal Malik Hasan was a major and a psychiatrist in the U.S. Army. Born in Virginia in 1970 to Palestinian immigrant parents, he enlisted after high school, took a commission, and completed medical school through the military. By 2009 he was treating soldiers at Fort Hood.

On the afternoon of November 5, 2009, he walked into a readiness center where troops were getting clearances for deployment or return. He shouted “Allahu Akbar,” then opened fire with a handgun. Thirteen people were killed—mostly soldiers, one of them a pregnant private—and more than thirty others were wounded. Police officers shot him; the wounds left him paralyzed from the waist down.

At his 2013 court-martial he represented himself. He told the panel he was the shooter, called no witnesses, and offered essentially no defense. The same military jury that convicted him of thirteen counts of premeditated murder and thirty-two counts of attempted premeditated murder sentenced him to death, dismissal, and forfeiture of pay. He showed little reaction.

The appeals ran for years. The Supreme Court declined further review in 2025. In early October 2026 President Trump approved the sentence after a recommendation from the Defense Secretary. The Army set execution by firing squad for December 3, 2026, at Fort Hood. If carried out it would be the first military execution since 1961.

That is the sequence as the record stands: an officer and doctor who attacked unarmed soldiers and a civilian at his own post, a trial in which he declined to contest the facts, a death sentence imposed by a panel of officers, and a date now fixed more than sixteen years later.

Their Choice, Not the Camera

Just like the Pike case, the facts are not in dispute. Hasan admitted he was the shooter. I am not pro-capital punishment as a general rule, but these two are clearly guilty of the crimes they committed.

I took issue with Pike’s reported behavior after the killing—passing around pieces of the victim’s skull. In Hasan’s case the motive was increasing radicalization. What really caught my attention via Glenn Beck was the detail about Private Francheska Velez, the 21-year-old from Chicago who was pregnant and screaming about her unborn baby when the shooting started. He didn't care and shot her. That is horrendous.

There is no argument from me about the crime itself or the conviction. I do have a problem with live-streaming the execution. For members of the affected families or for people in the armed services who want to witness it, I have little issue. That is their choice for their own sense of justice. I do not fully understand the need, but it is not mine to decide.

I do not think the public should see it as a live stream online. The sentence is the sentence. The camera is something else.

One Civilization, Many Nations

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 01:25:56 -0500

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on October 7 from the Pnyx, the old speaking hill in Athens, with the Acropolis behind him. The State Department posted the full remarks the same day. He was not taking questions. He was making a case about what the West inherited from that hill, and what he thinks it has done with the inheritance.

Watch Rubio's remarks here [VIDEO]

He starts with the ruin that is not a ruin. Other ruins, he says, are places where history exhausted itself. The Acropolis still calls people back. He tells the Persian sack of 480 B.C., the handful who stayed and fought, the burial of the broken stones, and the Parthenon raised under Pericles. From there he walks the debt he says America still owes: columns and domes in Washington, Philadelphia as a Greek name, Plutarch as the author most cited in the Federalist Papers. Athens gave democracy, Plato and Aristotle the philosophy, and the language itself — democracy, tyranny, politics. Under that, he says, is a temperament: individuality, ambition, discovery, risk, glory, and the conviction that the unknown can be known. That confidence, in his telling, became the Western mind — math, science, natural law — and the soil in which Christianity took root in Europe. Civic life was organized around contest. The men who built the Parthenon built upwards. The ideal he says has replaced that is a world of perfect safety, with no glory in winning and no shame in losing, the exceptional held to the average.

The second half is the bill for forgetting it. Nationalism became a dirty word. Monuments came down. Children were taught to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. Borders opened, industry was outsourced, militaries were allowed to wither. He puts the West at a crossroads: the next decade writes the next century, and the choice is to act now or lose the choice to act at all. Under President Trump, he says, the United States has chosen the unapologetic pursuit of national power — supply chains, reindustrialization, defense, the industries of the future. He draws one hard line with Iran’s rulers, a cult of death against heroes who may die for a cause but do not worship death. Allies, he says, should not be shackled by guilt or signed on as caretakers of a managed decline. One civilization, many nations: born in Athens, forged in Rome, baptized in Christendom. The close is that the story is worth defending, and that the West has to win it together.

Not a Given

Many of us take living in the West for granted. That may be part of why the people who run the institutions have done so little about immigration from the third world. There was a hope, often left unstated, that the blessings of the place would remake the people who arrived. It has not worked that way often enough to keep treating it as a given.

The focus right now is on those who come from the Islamic world. The O’Reilly documentary on London is one exhibit. The French lycée unrest is another — budget cuts and the unrest of third-world immigrants meeting in the same schools. Rubio’s speech does not name those streets. It does name the inheritance that is supposed to be worth defending, and the shame that made defending it unfashionable.

We have had it good here. Right or wrong, Western nations have had a large influence on the world. That is not the same as assuming everyone who was not born in the West is glad to be among us, or that the place will remain what it has been if the people who built it stop acting like it is theirs.

The Crusade Was the Reply

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 8 Oct 2026 23:58:04 -0500

Patrick Bet-David put it as an or. Islam, or a West that has gone soft. Raymond Ibrahim would not take the or. He is an American historian, born here to Coptic immigrants from Egypt, fluent in Arabic, a former Arabic specialist at the Library of Congress, and the author of *Sword and Scimitar* and *Defenders of the West*. This is his hour on PBD Podcast #869, posted Thursday. Bet-David opened on the title. The answer was yes to both.

Watch interview here [VIDEO]

He set the Moslems aside first. The doctrine, he said, is the thing you can read. The people are a separate conversation. Born to a Moslem father, you are a Moslem. Leave it, especially for Christianity, and the law calls you an apostate. Blasphemy is death. A Christian or a Jew can live under it and pay the jizya, and in the classical law a non-Moslem’s testimony is not accepted against a Moslem. A Moslem’s word counts against a non-Moslem. The reverse does not. That is not religious freedom as the West uses the phrase.

Then the other half. On his telling, Islam is not a strong force walking into a locked house. It is being invited, and the criticism is what gets treated as the offense. He put the softening earlier than the last decade. Reformation polemics against the Crusades. Enlightenment secularism. The 1960s, and the movies. Fake history, he said, is worse than fake news, because the news cycle ends.

The Crusades are the chapter he thinks the universities got backward. John Esposito’s line, five centuries of peaceful coexistence, is the one he wanted off the table. What he put in its place was the Seljuk push into Asia Minor. Ani, called the city of a thousand churches, desecrated. The Holy Sepulchre wrecked in 1009. Asia Minor was the country of the churches in Revelation. It is Turkey now. The First Crusade, in his account, is a response. Not the opening move.

He tied the rewrite to the money. Saudi and Qatari funding into the centers that teach the softer version. Georgetown came up. Then the alliance that does not sit in the usual column. The wars that reached Europe, he said, came from Sunni states. Saudi Arabia as the home of Wahhabism. Turkey as a neo-Ottoman project. America is allied with those, and opposed to Iran. He called the Saudi reforms a surface, and used the word taqiyya — concealment of what you actually hold, which the schools allow under threat, and which he was stretching to cover a state policy.

Migration is in the interview, and he treats it as a problem. Not as an invasion. As an invitation. His line is that Moslems are not forcing the door while police hold it. Governments are bringing them in, and jailing the criticism. He names Britain, France, Sweden, and Germany, and says the crime followed the influx. Hungary and Poland, he says, do not have the problem because those governments said no. Greece, on a trip he described, was a pass-through. The destination was the rich country that would pay. In the law as he reads it, a Moslem is not supposed to settle in a non-Moslem country unless the trip is dawa, preaching and winning goodwill. That is the permission he thinks a lot of the later arrivals are using.

The percentage is the same argument, not a census. A jar of a hundred candies. Most of them fine. Ten that might kill you. Are you still eating from the jar. At least 10 percent, he said, and he pointed at Texas, a mosque and Sharia fight at about 1 percent, against European cities he called enclaves the police will not enter. I wrote on September 12 that the enemy changed shape, and that post stopped before this argument. This episode is that argument. His history is not signed here. The question he was asked is still not only one question.

Could This Happen Here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 8 Oct 2026 00:11:00 -0500

Bill O'Reilly's NewsNation special, The Siege of London, aired Sunday. He was a student at the University of London. The hour opens on street footage from London, Southampton, and Belfast, then the line he says Americans give him when they go back. O'Reilly was here a few decades ago. What the hell happened?

Watch O'Reilly special here: [VIDEO]

His answer is the policy. Thirty years of mass immigration. A net-migration peak in 2023. Small boats up sharply since 2020. Seven prime ministers in eleven years.

Matthew Goodwin says the old traditions get taken apart a piece at a time, and that the reply is racist, Nazi, whatever is handy. Lord Anthony Sewell, born in Brixton to Jamaican parents, says every country should have borders, and that a lot of this was cheap labor. The number on the screen is the 2021 census. London at 15 percent Muslim, up from 12.6 percent in 2011. On his own feed he called it the Muslim siege of London. Then the sentence the hour is built to ask. Could this happen here?

The placard says the roof leaks. The map says something else.

Across the Channel in France, the same week, the street is already open. The blockades started September 17 at a lycée in Créteil, then spread through Seine-Saint-Denis and the Val-de-Marne before going national. Tuesday's crowd was about 256,000. More than 6,000 arrested since the start, most of them minors. A teenager lost a hand. The written demands are teachers, roofs, and a day that runs until 6.

I have not seen a police tally of illegal entrants in that crowd. What the map does say is where it began. Seine-Saint-Denis, a focus of the unrest, was 31.2 percent immigrant in 2021, highest in metropolitan France. Immigrant, in that count, means born abroad. Nile Gardiner called the street an uprising of the far left with second- and third-generation migrants. Palestinian flags were in the Strasbourg march. President Trump posted that this is not about schools. It is out-of-control mass migration. The boats in O'Reilly's hour leave French beaches. The effect does not have to be printed on the placard.

@realDonaldTrump via Truth Social

Not a Comment on the Opposition #twill

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 12:01:16 -0500

I was asked by a relative to try to predict the midterms. In 2024 it was easier to say Vice President Kam-A-la Harris would get her clock cleaned by President Donald Trump. Even then it was not fully assured. This time is harder.

Both sides have put up candidates I would not send.

In Texas the Senate race is James Talarico aka "Talafreako" against Ken Paxton. Texas is not a purple state that wandered. It is a red state, and Paxton is still not clear of Talarico. September polls had the Democrat ahead or tied. A New York Times/Siena survey in June had them even at 47. That is the tell. Paxton carries the baggage. Talarico is a strange fit for the state he is asking to send him.

He is a Presbyterian seminarian who told the Texas House, in 2021, that God is non-binary, and that trans children are made in God's image. He has said other traditions circle the same truth. I am not grading his theology. I am saying a candidate who talks that way is asking Texas to ignore what it has been. Democrats may still vote for him. A lot of them cannot bring themselves to vote for a Republican, especially one aligned with Donald Trump.

The same pattern shows up with Democratic Socialists of America candidates who have won House seats. I would not call them strong candidates. They have a leg up anyway. Democrats who are not socialists will often take the socialist over the Republican.

Allow me to bring this conversation home to Illinois.

My read on the Illinois races I have looked at in September is that Democrats keep the governor's mansion and the Senate seat Dick Durbin is leaving. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton against former state party chair Don Tracy. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, running for a third term, against Darren Bailey again.

If there was a seat people could call winnable, it was Durbin's. I am saying winnable. I am not saying Republicans win it. A Public Policy Polling survey taken September 30 and October 1 had Stratton at 49 and Tracy at 36. The same poll had Pritzker at 54 and Bailey at 34, with independent Collin Corbett at 6. The Senate gap is the smaller one. Smaller is not small.

Then came Monday. Via CapitolFax.

Former Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin endorsed Pritzker over Bailey, in a video the governor's campaign released. Durkin led the House minority from 2013 to 2023. He still calls himself a Republican. He said he served with Bailey, that Bailey's politics are subtraction, and that he is not cut out for the job. He cited infrastructure, the state's credit, and gun laws. Then the line that matters: he is not going to waste his vote.

I am not surprised. Durkin has been uneasy with Trump and with MAGA Republicans for years. He is not the first Illinois Republican to cross. In August 2024 the late Jim Edgar, governor from 1991 to 1999, said he would vote for Harris. He told a Springfield radio host he had never voted for Trump and would not start. Ray LaHood, Adam Kinzinger, and Joe Walsh were on the same list. Edgar's was a federal race. Durkin's is the state he used to help lead.

Durkin is also no longer only a former leader. Since he left the House in 2023 he has been in government affairs, affiliated with Point of Difference Strategies. That firm is led by Lisa Duarte, who was Pritzker's deputy governor for budget and economy. Bailey says the endorsement is about a job. I cannot prove that. The reader can hold both facts.

What it tells me is simpler. The Illinois GOP has to be the solid opposition. Not a comment on the opposition. Not a former leader lending his name to the man already in the office. A party that loses and still stands on the other side of the vote.

I would have little trouble with that party lining up with the MAGA faction. That is a position. Endorsing the incumbent is not a position. It is a vacancy.

In the 2000s, conservative writers I used to cite called the Springfield arrangement the bipartisan combine. John Kass at the Tribune had been using the Combine for years. In a March 2008 column he put the phrase out for other writers to take, and he quoted former U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald calling it the bipartisan Illinois political combine. Legislative leaders, a governor, a mayor, cutting deals with very little daylight between them. Fitzgerald's point was that their allegiance was not to a party. It was to the pocketbook.

People now call the Washington version a uniparty. Same observation. A Republican who lines up with Democrats, and a party label that does not survive the deal. The word itself is older than that use. Ralph Nader's campaign was already saying corporate uniparty in 2000. The use readers know, the one aimed at so-called RINOs, came later, once the right picked it up. In the sources I was reading, the Combine was the Illinois word for it first. A Republican vote for the Democratic governor is how that arrangement stays intact.

Illinois is a blue state. That is not an argument for a softer Republican Party. It is the argument for a harder one. Republicans last held the state Senate after the 2000 election and lost it in 2002. The Democratic majority was seated in January 2003. That is the chamber Barack Obama entered in 1997, while Republicans still ran it. They have not had it since. The House has been Democratic even longer, aside from one term in the mid-1990s. The last Republican statewide win was Bruce Rauner in 2014.

A party in that shape does not get to endorse the other side and call it realism. To make the Illinois GOP the opposition again, what would it take?

Not a War on the Lab

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 23:44:16 -0500

The clip title says the left is losing its war against biology. I had to stop on the phrase. War on biology can mean a lab. A chromosome. A drug. That is not what they are talking about.

Jeremy Boreing posted the cut Monday. The sit-down is from September 16, his Wednesday live with Kurt Schlichter, Zuby, and Nathan Finochio. The phrase shows up about two minutes in, after they have already said the quiet part.

Watch the clip here [VIDEO]

The point is that an advantage is not a confession. Beautiful, intelligent, strong, born to means: use it, and do not impoverish yourself to prove a point nobody asked for. Weak, get stronger. Unattractive, grooming does more than a speech. Sydney Sweeney is the exhibit. The modesty argument, Boreing grants, is a real argument. What he likes is that she is not ashamed of being Sydney Sweeney. One of them calls the male gaze a female superpower. Wrong uses exist. The attraction, he says, is not the crime. Every person here got here because a man was attracted to a woman.

That is what they mean by the war. Not a lab, and not what Boreing calls the good fight, tamping down a sin. The other fight. Rewriting what men have found attractive in women, and women in men, and force-feeding a standard the room says men reject on sight. He folds merit and markets into the same move. Some cards are dealt. Play them. Sports is where he says the war pauses. People accept the fastest runner and the heaviest lift. Off the field the boxes start. The room then points at Zuby and calls him the 2019 women's deadlift champion. That is his old joke, not a title. The point is that a man in the women's category is not, on their account, a close call.

Harrison Bergeron is the story they remember as the warning, different gifts left free, and Boreing suspects it would now be screened as the future. The closer is the disparity line. Downstream of diversity, he says, is different interests, different jobs, different incomes. Not a verdict on moral worth. The tall athlete is a better basketball player, not a better man. His guess for why that distinction fails is secularism. Equal before God used to be enough. Without that, equality has to be collected here, in every column.

The full episode is here: [VIDEO]

Why We Need to Bring Back Bullying is the September 16 Wednesday live with Kurt Schlichter, Zuby, and Nathan Finochio, and the title is the argument, not a side joke. The rule they want retired is the one that said do not be mean, do not punch down, never make anyone feel bad. Shame, they say, is what used to mark stupid, ugly, and ridiculous before those words became unsayable, and a culture that cannot say them cannot defend a standard. They tie that to a feminized consensus, where feelings outrank a decision and leadership never forces one. The late stretch is the exhibit. Prom queen, on their account, is a beauty title, not an inclusion slot. Weird, they say, is not the same as good, and someone should have said so earlier than the internet. Sydney Sweeney is the shot they want taken. A New York Post writer dumped on her, and the room wants the shame sent back, as course correction. The male-gaze line sits in that same permission. It is a sentence they say you are no longer allowed to speak, which is the bullying they mean. Not a fist. A public no.

Men, a Great Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 2 Oct 2026 12:40:46 -0500

The New York Post ran a headline on September 30 that did more work than the question underneath it. Two-thirds of young Democratic women, it said, blame men for most of society’s problems.

Two-thirds of young Dem women say men are to blame for most of society's problems: poll https://t.co/cpxQu0uK5O pic.twitter.com/ZxC67JGDfA
— New York Post (@nypost) September 30, 2026

That is not what they were asked.

The Survey Center on American Life asked whether “the challenges that women face in American society” are “a great deal” due to the behavior or actions of men. Sixty-six percent of Democratic women ages 18 to 29 said yes. Eighteen percent of Republican women the same age said yes.

The interviews are from last summer. The center talked to 5,451 adults from July 25 to August 1, 2025, as part of its Civility and Morality Survey, and posted this cut on September 22. The Post ran it eight days later.

The gap does not close with age. Among women 30 to 49, 54 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of Republicans gave that answer. From 50 to 64, 47 and 25. At 65 and older, 48 and 16. The youngest Democratic women are the high mark. They are not the only ones.

Men were asked the mirror question: are the challenges men face a great deal due to women? Sixteen percent said yes. Among Republican men 18 to 29, 26 percent. Democratic young men are less likely to say it. The Post puts that gap at about twenty points.

So the headline did extra work. "Most of society's problems" is not what was asked. What was asked is still a fifty-point split, and it is largest where the women are youngest.

The article does not say why. It shows who is ready to say men are a great deal of the problem, and who is not. It does not say what they think those men did.

A poll cannot tell you whether the blame is earned. It can tell you who is ready to assign it, and who is not.

h/t Newsalert

Alive After the Needle

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 1 Oct 2026 01:44:49 -0500

This got my attention on Wednesday.

I am not for the death penalty. I also do not need a sermon to see what Christa Pike did in Knoxville in 1995. Those two things can sit in the same paragraph.

Tennessee tried to execute her at Riverbend. Courts spent the day opening and closing the door. The Sixth Circuit paused the warrant about an hour before the 10 a.m. time. The Supreme Court lifted that stay around 5:50 p.m. The state then ran the protocol late. Two syringes of pentobarbital. Witnesses heard her snoring with her mouth open. The curtains closed, opened, closed again. An ambulance left the prison. Governor Bill Lee froze the rest of the 2026 calendar and ordered a review. As I write this, she is alive.

If you never heard of the case, here is the short version. I asked Grok to summarize the crime.

CONTENT WARNING: The next section summarizes the crime. Skip it if you do not want those details.

Overview of the Christa Pike case

Christa Pike was 18 and Colleen Slemmer was 19. Both were students at the Knoxville Job Corps Center in January 1995. Pike’s boyfriend was 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. A third student, Shadolla Peterson, went along.

Pike believed Slemmer was trying to take Shipp and “running her mouth.” Slemmer’s friends denied it. The pentagram carved into Slemmer’s chest fed a satanic-panic reading of the case; court records and later reporting treat jealousy as the motive, not a ritual. Shipp was the one interested in occult imagery.

On January 12, 1995, they signed Slemmer out of the dorm on a peace-offering story—marijuana, or a trip to Blockbuster—and walked her to a secluded stretch of the University of Tennessee agricultural campus near an abandoned steam plant. Peterson watched. Pike and Shipp beat and slashed Slemmer for about half an hour with a box cutter (and, in some accounts, a meat cleaver). A pentagram was carved into her chest while she was still alive. When she tried to run, they caught her. Pike cut her throat and smashed her skull with a chunk of asphalt. Pike kept a piece of the skull and showed it around the center that night. The body was found the next morning. Arrests followed within about two days.

In March 1996 a Knoxville jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and conspiracy. On March 30 she was sentenced to death (then by electrocution) plus 25 years on the conspiracy count. She was 20 at sentencing—the youngest woman put on death row in the modern era. Shipp, still 17 at the time of the killing, got life with the possibility of parole. Peterson testified for the state and did not go to prison.

The death sentence for Slemmer’s murder is what kept her on Tennessee’s row. The September 30, 2026 date was not called off in the morning. They administered the drugs that night. She lived.

My thoughts

My own opposition to the death penalty is more recent. The idea that the state can kill someone who did not do the crime is the part that doesn't sit well with me. It is easier to open a cell than to un-kill a person. You cannot hand back the years either way. You can at least stop adding a second irreversible act on a first mistake.

That is the innocence problem. This case is not that problem.

Pike is not a close call on the facts. A budding conflict became a half-hour torture killing. She brought a piece of the skull home like a souvenir. You still have to do something with a person capable of that. Life without parole is “something.” So is a competent execution. Wednesday was neither.

A botched attempt does not commute a sentence by itself. Willie Francis walked out of Louisiana’s chair in 1946 and was electrocuted the next year. Ohio failed Romell Broom on the needles in 2009 and the courts said the state could try again. Alabama failed two men on IVs in 2022 and later used nitrogen. The rare modern case that became life—Doyle Hamm in Alabama—took a settlement, not the botch alone. Lee (Tennessee Governor) has paused dates. He has not rewritten 1996.

I am watching what Tennessee does with a woman who received the drugs and kept breathing. The crime is thirty-one years old. The warrant is spent. The review will decide whether the next move is another date, a different method, or the cell she already occupies.

Relevant newslinks

Even Hostin Said Wait

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 01:14:26 -0500

This showed up on Steve Bartin’s Newsalert Tuesday afternoon. Sunny Hostin, on the liberal morning show The View, talking about the Cornell case. Journalist Glenn Greenwald posted the same clip on X: if even she is saying wait, the point should not be hard.

Watch that segment here: [VIDEO]

Last week a former student filed a civil suit. She says that in October 2024, at Chi Phi, she was drugged and assaulted by seven fraternity members. A group chat from that night is out. A site went up naming the seven. None of them has been criminally charged.

Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten declined to prosecute in 2024. He has reopened it and says he will take it to a grand jury. He also says the new civil allegations are “dramatically different” from the account his office had then.

Hostin says she read Jane Doe’s 2024 statement. She says that under New York law, voluntary intoxication that only impairs judgment is not, by itself, inability to consent. She says three of the men, on that statement, did not touch her, and that one told people to get out. Then this:

“The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet. I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they’re reporting it unfairly… there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought forth a case.”

She also said she believes women, and that the 2024 statement and the 2026 lawsuit are not the same document.

This looks like the next moral outrage. The pictures are already moving on Facebook and Instagram. Some of the comments are not “wait for the court.” They are not asking what the law will call a crime. They are asking how to make the men as wrecked as they believe she is.

“Believe all victims” is the language that travels with a story like this. Trust but verify is the slower sentence. The allegations are ugly. Hearing them is enough to be disturbed. That feeling is not a charge.

Van Houten is taking it to a grand jury. That is the place for the question. The social media feed is not. Innocent until proven guilty is not a courtesy you give after the pictures have done their work. It is the rule before they do.