DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

Check it out.

You are the mayor. You know exactly what this city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.

Not the Bee.

In 2025, Laura Lee Yourex was arrested for illegally registering her dog to vote and casting a ballot in her dog’s name: twice.

The second time after the dog had died.

Lest you should worry that California had somehow reformed and would attempt to rein in illegal voting like this, you’ll be happy to know Yourex just had all her charges dropped.

Bear in mind, one of those votes was actually counted in the gubernatorial recall election, so this wasn’t a harmless act!

The New Neo.

Obama: knave, not fool.

Indeed.

Yes, many politicians hide things – sexual promiscuity, for example, or their academic records. And sometimes they change their minds on something or even several things. But I can’t offhand think of another president who ran for office in the first place on a lie about who he was and what he intended. Obama did exactly that.

When arguing with people on the topic of Israel, I’ve often brought up India and Pakistan. They all have looked at me blankly; they either have no idea what I’m talking about and/or they don’t care because to them analogies are dangerous because they threaten their entrenched views about Israel. Can’t have that.

Spot on.

The Foundry.

As Muslims have become more politically organized, Muslim advocacy organizations have also become increasingly involved in American politics and elections. Among the organizations that have drawn significant scrutiny are the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

Understanding the history of these organizations, their relationships with foreign terrorist groups, and the controversy surrounding them can provide context for why they have become part of political debates and why more voters need to pay attention to candidates with connections to them.

The Foundry.

Ballot measures allowing same-day voter registration and scrapping party primaries could make it easier for establishment Democrats to keep power in deep-blue Massachusetts.

Voters are considering the two measures this fall. Election integrity experts have long been suspicious of Election Day voter registration, as it could flood election clerks with new registrants they can’t possibly verify at the last minute.

“The reason the Left wants it is because it fits their turnout model, just as they don’t want rules on ballot harvesting, to get out the vote, and win,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Daily Signal.

“This would just invite massive cheating,” Ken Cuccinelli, chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, told the Daily Signal.

In the state, the more controversial of the two measures is the nonpartisan primary. Only a handful of states—most notably California—have nonpartisan primaries, often called “jungle primaries,” where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election.

“It’s the California model. A top-two in a blue state is tailor-made to ensure you have two left-leaning candidates in the general election,” Snead said.

Sounds tailor-made for Taxachussetts.

Read it.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about left-wing terrorism threatening Western civilization. Now, Europe is seeing what these groups are capable of.

“Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training, materials, and target information through shared encrypted channels—moving through underground networks of safe houses, and finance and sustain their operations through transnational funds,” Rubio warned in July.

On Monday, the Louvre in Paris had to be shut down due to protesters barricading the entrances. This followed a weekend of violent riots that caused damage to government buildings and thousands of businesses and led to nearly 2,400 arrests across France. Almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured during the violence on Saturday, and at least 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted over the weekend.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed far-left groups for causing “profound unrest in the country in the run-up to the presidential election,” Reuters reported.

Read it.

On Oct. 1, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, Inc. v. Frederic and answer an important question: Does a regulation prohibiting a church from building a religious structure on its own property violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act?

The answer is yes, and the court should say so without conditions.

RLUIPA, enacted in 2000, addresses a significant threat to the First Amendment’s protection of our free exercise of religion. Zoning codes and discretionary permitting processes could be read to exclude or disfavor houses of worship, particularly smaller or less familiar ones. So, the statute’s Substantial Burden Provision bars any government from implementing a land-use regulation in a way that substantially burdens religious exercise unless the government proves the burden is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest.

Oh, the Karens will find some way around that, just as they did around the strictures on institutional racism in college admissions.

Read it.

Sergey Brin once called government a “giant bonfire of partisanship” and spent years on the political sidelines. But in recent months, the Google co-founder has emerged as a political force in California, pouring unprecedented sums into the fight to defeat a proposed tax on billionaires.

…

“Brin could have easily just run a No campaign and defeated [Prop 40], but he built a whole organization,” said Brandon Castillo, a veteran ballot measures consultant who is not working on either side of the wealth tax campaign. “They’ve awakened him. He wants to be a political player.”

Brin has learned the Microsoft Lesson: Those who ignore politics are doomed to be buggered by those who don’t.

We have the technology.

Read it.

My grandmother kept a cupboard she called the just-in-case, and for most of my childhood I read it as a harmless eccentricity rather than what it was – a wound made edible. She had been a girl during the Depression, and somewhere in her twenties she had learned to keep tinned beans, sacks of flour, jars sealed with wax and paper, all of it rotated with the humourless discipline of a quartermaster provisioning for a war that had already ended but might, at any hour, resume. Nothing in that cupboard was ever eaten first. It sat at the back of the shelf like a private insurance policy against a world that had once taken everything from her family and could, she believed, do so again at a moment’s notice.

Costco sells emergency rations at an affordable price. I’ve got a tub of them in my garage. Why take a chance? That’s all I’m sayin’….

The Race Is On for Trump Staffers to Hire Lawyers in Case Democrats Win Midterms (Wall Street Journal)

Obama calls Trump officials’ investigation of Ilhan Omar ‘appalling’ (Raquel Coronell Uribe/NBC News)  Mommmeeee! Donald hit me back!

Republicans already know who they want to blame if they suffer big midterm losses (Politico)  I’d be tempted to say ‘Politico’, but I’m pretty sure they mean Trump.

Republicans fall back to the red wall (Politico)  Politico is really pushing the Narrative as we get down to the wire.

Trump Presidencies See Return of Federal Executions  For all of you out there who are ‘triggered’.

Michigan senator wants to save democracy by bullying young people so they are terrified to work for her political opponents

Vance Went Off-Script. It Didn’t Go Well (Nia-Malika Henderson/Bloomberg)  Must have been all of those Trump cooties.

Meet the researchers leaving the US because of Trump’s funding cuts and politicization of science (Adithi Ramakrishnan/Associated Press)  It’s surprising how many people think that they’re entitled to spend their lives being supported by taxpayers while poking around into stuff that interests them. I’d love to have that job.

This Cybersecurity Agency Is Supposed to Protect U.S. Elections. Officials Fear It’s Been Compromised by Trump. (ProPublica)  Democrat officials, of course.

Donald Trump is Politically Bankrupt. Be Very Afraid (Paul Krugman)  If he’s so barnkrupt, why is The Vacuum so afraid of him?

Donald Trump Is Learning That He Can’t Steal This Election (Paul Blumenthal/HuffPost) The Paper of Record of Feminism is strongly pushing the Narrative.

‘Happy Birthday, Vlad. Yours, Always.’ – DJT. (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  One of the benefits of having Trump as President is that it flushes all of the RINOs out of the underbrush. The Kristol krew have revealed their Democrat souls, and it is not a pretty sight.

Trump’s Golf Empire Is A Billion-Dollar Tax Shelter (Dan Alexander/Forbes)  Of course, if he were a Democrat no word would be said.

Abdul El-Sayed’s fighting style terrifies MAGA (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  ‘Fighting style’? You mean ‘jihad’? (Amanda Marcotte loses her shit.)

To Russia With Love, Signed Donald (Wall Street Journal)  The WSJ has apparently fully embraced being a Voice of the Crust.

Sen. Slotkin Threatens Trump Supporters, Staff with ‘Ton of Problems’  Looking for authoritarianism? Democrats got you covered.

Trump says New Mexico should ‘immediately’ change name to New America (Dan Diamond/Washington Post)  Ah ah ah ah yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

Trump approval falls to record low of 31% as midterms near, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (Jason Lange/Reuters)  Pushing the Narrative as hard as they can.

Read it.

“The Dems are a total mess of cluster B psychopathology. They will continue to humiliate themselves & alienate the normal population.”

– JD Haltigan on X

Looks like the punishments will continue across the pond until morale improves. France on fire in the “mostly peaceful” riots – according to the BBC – this past weekend could yet ignite a final, furious, Globalist-Jacobin bid to wreck Western Civ as populist nationalism looms ever larger to defeat them. That is, whatever the demonic coalition of desperate Euro elites backed by the Soros NGO empire, the WEF, the UN bureaucracy, possibly the British Crown, and the EU, can induce their Lefty-left useful idiots to act out intifada-style against the people and their culture.

President Macron stepped up Sunday to ask, “How can French people do this to France?” as the ancient tower of the Limoges city hall collapsed in flames. Somebody please inform him that the parties responsible for all the fiery chaos are not necessarily French people. Any way you cut it, this has got to be the end-of-pretend that flooding Europe with jihadis for two decades was a grand and noble idea. Where’s that whiff of grapeshot when you really need it?

You also must wonder whether the American Lefty-left has riot-envy. Their handlers in the Democratic Party and its dark entourage of “resistance” foundations, billionaire NGO-funders, and Deep State seditionists must be itching to unleash similar punishments across the USA, as they managed to do in 2020 to honor the saintly George Floyd. Of course, they don’t have the same resources they enjoyed back then. The US president – know who that is? – has choked off a good deal of their money-laundered cash-flow.

Read it.

Four in 10 college students say offensive speech should be subject to criminal prosecution, the highest share in the three years the question has been asked, according to an Inquire survey sponsored by the Buckley Institute.

The survey of 803 full-time undergraduates at four-year colleges found 40% agreed that offensive speech should be prosecuted as a crime, while 52% disagreed and 9% were unsure. Support rose from 33% last year and 31% in 2024.

Thirteen percent strongly agreed and 26% somewhat agreed.

I would be in favor of raising the voting age to 24. That’s about the time when kids get over being stupid, as insurance rates plainly show.

Read it.

This November, California voters will decide whether a fraction of the state’s population should pay a 5% wealth tax to help fund public programs. Proposition 40 would make roughly 200 of the richest Californians bail out the state’s deficits and save the budget for another year of easy spending.

California is not the only blue “paradise” with this plan. Nationwide, at least 10 Democrat-run states facing pressure to deliver on promises to expand welfare programs have reflexively reached for the wallets of the wealthy. The appeal is obvious: These taxes fall on relatively few voters, while the resulting revenue can finance programs benefitting a far larger population.

However, taxing the rich is not a “get out of debt free” card. It’s a way for states to ignore their own financial mismanagement while forcing their highest earners and most profitable businesses to pick up the slack. When progressive taxes push high earners to relocate to more business-friendly states, they take with them investments, charity, productive businesses, job opportunities, and taxable income.

Despite these consequences, a wave of income tax revisions is hitting blue states. Connecticut Democrats aim to raise the top marginal rates to 7.5% for earners over $250,000 and 7.99% for those making over $500,000. Michigan’s ballot proposal would levy a 5% tax on individual income over $500,000. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed a 2% income tax increase on residents making $1 million, creating a top marginal rate of nearly 17%. Rhode Island has even approved a 3% surtax on income above $1 million.

Although taxing the rich may appear to be an attractive source of revenue for government officials, it comes at a cost. Massachusetts provides perhaps the best test case.

Read it.

Geothermal has long been the clean, firm power source that was always a few breakthroughs away from being cheap enough to matter. Numbers buried in a Nevada utility filing suggest that day may have arrived.

Babylon Bee.

Very kind of them.

Not the Bee.

No doubt soon to be replaced by city-owned and operated bread lines and soup kitchens, as is traditional in socialist jurisdictions.

You can’t use your EBT in a restaurant, so nobody gets to use a restaurant. Just looking out for the little people by making bigger people smaller.

Not the Bee.

Last week, Angie Nixon said she wanted to lock up her opponent.

She was then offered a chance to amend her statement on CBS Face the Nation.

This stems from a grand jury ruling that said funds were misappropriated, but no one was named as responsible. An appeals court then looked at the case and struck down the grand jury report.

This means there’s already been an investigation. There’s already been a legal ruling. Gov. DeSantis said the whole thing was an obvious hoax.

But Nixon says Republicans are guilty and AG Ashley Moody needs to go to prison because she allegedly “knew” about the scandal that turned out to be a non-scandal with no legal wrongdoing. Nixon claims this non-scandal will cause kids to die.

Even CBS’s Margaret Brennan was completely shocked and taken aback by her answer.

If you’re looking for fascists, Democrats have got you covered.

Read it.

Five years after Berliners voted to expropriate their landlords, the German capital finally has a government willing to do it.

On Saturday, Die Linke, the Greens and the SPD presented the 30-page exploratory paper that will underpin their coalition agreement for the next Berlin Senate, and buried among the usual promises sits a plan to socialize, under Article 15 of the German constitution, every apartment a private landlord owns in Berlin above the first 10,000. The compensation for this act of municipal generosity: a hard cap of €16 billion which works out to about €105K per unit, or 58% of book value… and even that cap is conditional on “fiscal sustainability.”

The bond market did the rest: Adler Group’s 10% notes due 2029 plunged 20 points on Monday to a record low around 59 cents on the euro (they dropped as 53 earlier in the session), as creditors scrambled to price in the possibility that 43% of Adler’s yielding Berlin portfolio is about to be bought by the state at a 42% to 48% discount to book.

New York Post.

Federal agents collared suspects in a slew of voter fraud cases Monday morning, chasing targets across California drawn from a list of more than 20,000 suspected noncitizens in the state who allegedly registered to vote in next month’s midterm election.

Under the effort dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote,” law enforcement authorities sought more than two-dozen foreign nationals charged with fraudulently registering to vote in US elections, in which most of them allegedly cast illegal ballots. Department of Justice officials called it the largest such takedown in the state’s history.

Read it.

A Palestinian teacher working for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says a school administrator threatened to cut out her tongue after she challenged lessons she said encouraged hatred of Jews and glorified Hamas.

The 40-year-old geography teacher told the New York Post in an interview published Monday that an administrator confronted her with scissors days after she argued with a colleague about teaching girls.

“[The school official] told me, ‘We’ll make you wish for death, and if you don’t stop arguing, we will cut your tongue,'” she recalled through a translator.

I’ll bet Democrats wish they could get away with saying that.

Read it.

As France’s fiery student protests merged with a nationwide revolt on Saturday, a communist leader and academic, Vijay Prashad, celebrated the unrest with a message linking protests across three continents.

“Paris-New Delhi-Buenos Aires,” Prashad posted on X, borrowing a line from the British punk band The Clash: “Let fury have the hour, anger can be power.”

Prashad was important not only for what he said, but for who he is: executive director of Tricontinental Ltd., a nonprofit funded by an American-born Marxist tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, who lives in Shanghai.

The message captured how France’s riots have become part of a wider international narrative of rebellion — a kind of “Chaos Inc.” — amplified by a transnational network of communist and socialist organizations stretching from Europe to Asia, Australia, Africa and South America and North America.

Read it.

A super PAC supporting a Republican candidate who shares a name with Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, has received millions of dollars from groups linked to progressive donors, according to newly disclosed campaign finance records.

Democrats are hoping that the Alaskan voters are too stupid to figure out which is which.

In a state that keeps returning RINO Murkowski to the Senate, I can’t say they’re wrong.

CBS News, a Voice of the Crust.

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider the constitutionality of a nearly 160-year-old federal ban on distilling liquor at home.

Arguments in the case, known as Department of Justice v. McNutt, will likely take place next year, with a decision coming by late June or early July.

For more than a century, Congress has limited the location of distilling to prevent tax evasion. Under the law at issue in the case, enacted in 1868, a “person may not produce distilled spirits at home for personal use.” Any person who uses or possesses stills or other equipment to produce distilled spirits in “any dwelling house” or shed, yard or enclosure faces criminal penalties.

Violators face fines and up to five years in prison. The violator’s home and property within it are also subject to forfeiture.

Congress approved the restrictions after determining that there was rampant tax evasion by commercial distillers. At that time, the tax rate for spirits was $2 per gallon, more than their market price, and commercial distillers found it cheaper to bribe revenue officers than pay the tax, according to a House report from 1867. Lawmakers determined that “at least seven-eights” of spirits went untaxed at the time.

The legislation that ultimately would prohibit home distilling cut the tax rate and required the duties to be paid before the spirits were removed from warehouses. There are no exceptions for distilled spirits made for personal or family use.

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

new boogeyman arrived in Democratic campaign ads this year with such force that it was possible to forget it had ever been absent. Slotted between clichés about “rising costs,” the “rigged economy,” and the elusive “fair shot” for the middle class, the familiar villains of billionaires, insurance companies, and “MAGA extremists” were joined by a friend turned foe.

“Big Tech’s invading Ohio, driving up our electric rates, damaging our environment, destroying our farmland,” Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio warned in one ad. Roy Cooper, who is running in North Carolina for Senate, said in another: “My plan stops grocery stores from using AI to overcharge you.” A 30-second spot in Wisconsin features Rebecca Cooke, a congressional candidate, promising voters seated around a kitchen table: “I don’t want to be beholden to any of these Big Tech companies.” And the House Majority PAC, a group closely aligned with Democratic leaders that has been attacking Republicans for their proximity to the new baddie on the block, released an ad labeling the incumbent Republican in Wisconsin’s Third District “Data Center Derrick Van Orden”—and suggesting that he was designed by artificial intelligence to serve its interests.

The sudden Democratic revulsion toward Big Tech and all its offspring—data centers, artificial intelligence, tech oligarchs—has defined this midterm election and will likely continue through the early innings of the 2028 presidential campaign. For most of the past few decades, Democrats cast themselves as a futurist party heralding a digital utopia, a posture founded by Al Gore and solidified when Barack Obama traveled to Google’s headquarters in 2007 to announce his presidential campaign’s commitment to “use technology to reach ever-expanding horizons.” Republicans were the ones warning about censorship and centralized power, as corporate executives clumsily adjusted the levers of permissible speech on social media.

Read it.

The high court on Monday announced it will take up the case of Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, concerning a Maryland county’s lottery admissions policy to increase racial diversity at certain magnet middle schools. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of Asian American parents, claims the lottery discriminates against Asian Americans.

The Supreme Court in 2023 rejected race-based college and university admissions policies in a case where the plaintiffs were also Asian American.

While the case is about K-12, the outcome could also affect higher education, said Wilcox, senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

“After the Harvard case, universities continued to use proxies for race,” Wilcox told The Daily Signal. “We believe this was an intentional disicrmination case.”

Wilcox said the Pacific Legal Foundation has reviewed public school districts in Boston, New York City, and Alexandria, Virginia, that have used what it considers similar stealth race-based policies. So the case will have national ramifications.

You may ask: Why is the Left so invested in disadvantaging smart people in favor of less-smart people?

Look at a bell-curve distribution of average IQ by race and you’ll find the answer.

Read it.

Foreign influence on university campuses in the U.S. is a serious threat to national security. In 2024, a congressional investigation exposed nearly $40 million in unreported research contracts between the Chinese Communist Party and two top U.S. research universities.

To protect national security and provide greater transparency to the American people, the U.S. Senate should consider the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act to shine sunlight on university dealings with foreign entities.

Yet some organizations are trying to stop any attempts to provide transparency over such funding. For example, earlier this month, the Association of American Universities filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education in a bid to stop the second Trump administration from publishing data on foreign spending sources on U.S. colleges just as the administration was prepared to release it. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order pausing the release of the data.

The Education Department intends to proceed, stating that “Americans deserve transparency about the billions flowing from overseas to U.S. campuses, and [the Department of Education] will fight AAU in court to deliver it.”

The Association of American Universities noted that it was concerned that releasing such data on donors would lead to “harassment, reputational harm, and, in some cases, real danger [to donors] in their home countries … ”

Then they ought to leave. If they can’t leave, how do they have money to donate to American universities? And why?

Leftists are always complaining about how businessmen will chase a dollar even if it means trampling on others, but businessmen are positive sluggards behind an academic chasing a funding dollar.

Read it.

A National Guard member was shot and injured while trying to break up a fight in the nation’s capital, and the person suspected of firing the gun also was shot in an exchange with guard members, police said Monday.

The shooting happened at about 11:10 p.m. Sunday as seven or eight guard members in a parked van were monitoring the fight on a sidewalk in southeast Washington, in the Eastern Market neighborhood, said Jeffery Carroll, interim chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington.

“They exited their vehicle to try to intervene to try to stop the fight from occurring when they heard gunshots,” Carroll told reporters. “An individual that had been involved in the fight had pulled out a firearm and began shooting.”

The first duty of any government is to maintain order and protect its citizens. Democrats have historically been increasingly inept at performing this function, preferring to spend their time on persecuting people who disagree with them and buying votes with taxpayer money.

Read it.

So: When has a Muslim ‘authority’ ever arrested somebody for attacking anybody, much less ‘journalists and displomats’?

Not the Bee.

I guess they think that France is sufficiently softened up that now is the time to strike.

I’m awfully glad that there’s an ocean between us and them. (Although, if Democrats ever get control of the government again, that might not be enough….)

ATQUE: Europe Is Burning—Is America Next?

Take time ot mow the flowers.

Read it.

The UK is the coal-mine canary for the U.S. and it’s choking on the floor.

Read it.

On Columbus Day, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant of Representative Ilhan Omar’s home. For several months, there have been rumors that she was under investigation for immigration fraud. A few weeks ago, White House Border Czar Tom Homan acknowledged that the congresswoman was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro says her office is investigating Omar for potential financial crimes. The D.C. magistrate judge who authorized the search of Omar’s residence is a registered Democrat who donated to Hillary Clinton and received professional appointments from other Democrats.

Despite the fact that Democrats wholeheartedly cheered when President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized FBI agents to use deadly force against the Trump family when they raided his Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 to retrieve evidence of the Department of Justice’s unlawful spying operations against Republican politicians during Barack Obama’s presidency, the people who repeatedly told us for years that “nobody is above the law” now insist that the raid of Omar’s residence is an “abuse of power,” “political retribution,” and the act of “a fascist police state.”

As news of the Omar raid broke, CNN’s Jake Tapper called it “vindictive” and questioned whether it was a “legitimate law enforcement action.” Tapper’s supposedly expert guest – a Democrat lawfare operative – responded to the host’s predetermined judgment of the investigation by calling it, “Partisan. Racism. Xenophobia.”

Bill Kristol – who, amazingly enough, was once regarded as a trusted public intellectual among Republican voters before revealing himself to have been a complete fraud who lied about almost everything he long claimed to believe – posted this urgent request on X: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” When FBI agents were pawing through First Lady Melania Trump’s undergarments back in 2022, Kristol encouraged Americans to be patient and to avoid any rush to judgment – even though the criminal targeting of an American president was unprecedented and shocking.

PBS Hypes New Doc As ‘An Act Of Resistance’ To Trump  Because It’s All About Trump.

No Kings turns its focus to voting this weekend. Here’s what we know (Ava Berger/NPR)  Republicans ought to found an analogous organization called No Fools.

Trump’s October barrage (Zachary Basu/Axios)  Because It’s All About Trump.

Trump’s Election Interference Is Underway (Amanda Carpenter/The Bulwark)  Amanda Carpenter loses her shit.

The Immigration Crackdown Is Making It Much Harder to Build Houses (Nicholas G. Miller/Wall Street Journal) One job Americans allegedly won’t do is pay existing residents decent wages.

MS NOW Portrays Midterms As Democracy Supporters Versus Fascists

Who wants to visit an authoritarian America? (Brynn Tannehill/Public Notice)  Quite a lot of people, it turns out, judging by the flood over the southern border and the number overstaying their student and tourist visas.

Surge in ICE raids is aimed at discouraging voter turnout, immigration advocates say (Melissa Gomez/Los Angeles Times)  Certainly illegal voter turnout, which is what they’re actually bitching about.

Trump DOJ Seeks Judge’s Removal in DC Golf Course Fight

Poll finds jump in Republicans who say Trump is enriching himself (Washington Post)  When in doubt, fake a poll.

‘These are really tough times’: House Republicans confront voter fury over Trump’s Washington in final midterm stretch (Sarah Ferris/CNN)  Pushing the Narrative ahead of the mid-terms.

Democrats lead Republicans in House vote choice as Trump’s approval rating hits record low: ABC/Post/Ipsos poll (Emily Guskin/ABC News)  According to a Narrative Media poll, of course.

Poll: Americans are anxious, pessimistic and deeply unhappy with Trump ahead of the midterms (Sahil Kapur/NBC News)  According to a Narrative Media poll, of course.

‘Scorched It All’: How Trump Lost the Affordability Debate, According to Abigail Spanberger (Liz Crampton/Politico)

Steve Levitsky on the slide into “competitive authoritarianism” (Public Notice)

Trump approval hits record low, handing Democrats a clear midterm edge (Washington Post)  According to a Narrative Media poll, of course.

“I Want That Deterrence Message”: Michigan Dem Slotkin Wants To Prosecute Trump Admin To Scare Off Young Conservatives

Obama blasts Trump admin’s Omar crackdown (Mike Zapler/Axios)  Of course he does.

Trump’s sinking approval leaves GOP candidates in a bind (Axios)  Only if they believe the Narrative Media—in which case they deserve to lose.

Michigan senator says she wants to use the law as a “deterrent” against young people who want to work for the Trump administration

The Foundry.

Parents rely on student grades and report cards to track progress. And every state is required to test students in reading and math annually in grades three through eight. State officials reliably publish graduation rates for each class every year. Then there are college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT, still more ways for parents and students to gauge achievement.

Yet not all these indicators agree with each other. For example, reading and math scores on the Nation’s Report Card (or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, otherwise known as NAEP) have been dismal for a decade or more as the average graduation rate in the U.S. is 87%.

How could students perform poorly in key subjects and yet schools graduate nearly nine out of 10 students unless one of these measures is unreliable?

Oh, say it ain’t so!

Read it.

All the fiends of Hell have been loosed, and are now rampaging through the cities of France. Yesterday afternoon a mob set fire to the Mairie, or town hall, of Limoges. The fire raged on into the night, and eventually the building’s iconic bell tower toppled into the burning ruins.

Like the fall of the steeple of Notre Dame in Paris, the moment serves as a symbolic reminder that the great, ancient civilization known as France is rapidly approaching its smoldering finale.

I suppose you could say that the Mairie had a good run. After all, it was built in 1883, which means it’s almost twice as old as I am. But still, it breaks my heart to see that venerable clocher come down. It’s not as if any more like it will be built in France, or elsewhere in Western Europe. The grand architecture that we see now is all we’ll ever get.

Ironically enough, Limoges is a well-known leftist bastion, and its citizens routinely vote for socialists and communists. Last night the earnest citadins of Limoges got what they voted for, good and hard.

Read it.

Seventeen Republican attorneys general have filed suit to stop it. They are right. The rest of the country should say so – and reject California’s attempt to impose its policies on everyone else.

California’s Senate Bill 54 effectively tells companies: If you want to sell in California, redesign your packaging, cut plastic on California’s timetable, and pay fees to a private Washington, D.C., organization called Circular Action Alliance. CAA sets the fees, keeps its methodology confidential, and handles disputes through arbitration rather than a court.

But packaging is not a California issue. It is a national supply-chain issue. Companies do not invent a unique box for Sacramento and another for South Bend. They build one system. When California attaches conditions to its market, those conditions travel. Costs travel with them – onto manufacturers, distributors, and the families who buy toothpaste and canned goods in states that never voted for this scheme.

California is using the size of its market to impose its preferences on commerce that happens everywhere else. The attorneys general call that what it is: one state trying to set national policy.

I have seen this movie before.

Read it.

Based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, psychologist and researcher Jean Twenge found that “the decline appears to be driven almost entirely by girls.”

Girls identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual dropped 5 percentage points, hitting 22 percent last year. Among boys, that percentage fell by 2 percentage points to 7 percent.

“The trends are striking,” especially compared to data from a decade ago, Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University, wrote on her blog in late September.

Reasons for the decline in teen in lesbian, gay, or bisexual identification are not readily apparent. “I have to confess: I have no idea,” Twenge wrote.

Determining whether the numbers reflect the start of a trend requires further examination, she and other professionals say.

Competing explanations for the shift are emerging amid a larger debate over alternative sexuality in America.

Read it.

Saudi Arabia executes people by beheading them in public. No chance of them waking up afterward with complaints about the process.

Perhaps we ought to farm out the execution of Nidal Hassan to them. I doubt they would bungle it.

Read it.

The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s LGBTQI+ Working Group convened quarterly stakeholder meetings with organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Women’s Law Center, and others while the department challenged state laws regarding transgender medicine, bathrooms, and women’s sports.

The newly revealed documents show advocacy groups asking federal officials to discuss “what the federal government can do to limit or stop anti-trans legislation,” “strategic involvement by DOJ,” litigation involving gender medicine, and other policy priorities.

“Under the Biden administration, far-left activist groups were given a seat at the table in shaping the Civil Rights Division’s priorities,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told the Daily Signal. “Under this administration, the division enforces federal civil rights laws as written, for every American equally, and its litigation and enforcement decisions are not shaped by outside activists.”

The documents do not portray the meetings as one-way briefings by federal officials.

The Foundry.

One of the foundational ideals of a free nation is that all its citizens live under the same rules. Democrats know this. They’ve been lecturing us for years that “no one is above the law.”

So, what happens if a federal investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., provides incontrovertible evidence that she obtained citizenship by lying? Should we ignore it? Should Omar be given an exemption from the law because she’s in Congress? Or because she’s a Democrat?

Those on the left carping about the investigation into Omar being politically motivated can’t be taken seriously. Not after they spent a decade engaged in blatant lawfare—first by attempting to annul the 2016 election of Donald Trump by concocting one lurid conspiracy theory after the next, and then by trying to stop him from running for the presidency in 2024.

When you spend your time stripping away norms, you can’t expect the other side to unilaterally disarm.

Watch it.

Professor David Betz of University College London is interviewed for the Middle Eastern Forum.

Chapters
0:00 Preview
0:21 Welcome and introduction
1:05 Betz’s opening argument
2:30 Two vectors and convex politics
3:59 Factionalism
5:30 Downgrading
7:25 The legitimacy crisis
9:05 Economic precarity
11:25 Declining obedience
13:25 Elite incompetence and disunity
15:45 What the conflict would look like
17:53 No peaceful off-ramp
20:27 Q&A: Antisemitism in the U.K.
23:34 Lessons for the United States
29:04 Could it spread across Europe?
30:51 Belligerents, police and army
39:15 What does the elite want?
43:41 Four possible outcomes
52:33 Closing

The Foundry.

Everyone absorbing the elitist media spin on the midterm elections cannot avoid the swirling symphony of doom for the Republicans. Conventional wisdom suggests a good night for Democrats, and that’s before you look at the president’s dreadful approval rating. Polls can be tricky: one can disapprove of Trump and still vote the Republican party line.

All this doom might be accurate–or it might turn out like 2016. Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning, they said. Then-“CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley suppressed his delight as he claimed, “Time is running out for Donald Trump … No candidate down this far, this late, has ever recovered.” Over on ABC, Jonathan Karl echoed: “Donald Trump is down 17 points among women. You do not get elected … if you are down 17 points among women.”

When all of the media’s polls turned out to look like Fake News, Democrats immediately suspected the election had been stolen and then spent four years denying reality.

So it was amazing when the front page of The New York Times on Oct. 15 boasted new research on the president’s second-term statements about his loss in 2020: “Trump’s Relentless Campaign To Cast Doubt On Elections With Lies and Bold Claims.” They don’t have the slightest bit of shame about anyone turning that around on them. They won a Pulitzer Prize for their “relentless campaign to cast doubt” on Trump’s 2016 election, and they weren’t going to send it back in disgrace.

In 2024, the networks spent the last few weeks of the campaign wildly speculating about how Donald Trump wouldn’t accept his impending defeat and it would be complete chaos. They eagerly shared the alleged data point from the Des Moines Register that Kamala Harris was up 3 points in Iowa–and then she lost by 13.

New York Post.

Welcome to socialism in action.

Be careful not to step in the diversity; it’s impossible to get that off of your shoes.

New York Post.

Crews of motorized bike-riding thieves — some of them illegal migrant gang-bangers — are terrorizing New York City, viciously snatching thousands of dollars in jewelry from the necks of unsuspecting cops and civilians alike, The Post has learned.

There have been more than 20 motorized bike chain-snatchings since September, with at least 10 of them turning violent, according to the NYPD — and police sources say that’s just a drop in the bucket.

“There are hundreds of chain snatchings around the city,” said a law enforcement officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s not cleared to talk to the news media.

New York City—bringing the Turd World to you.

If they are caught, lefty judges often spring the crooks just as fast.

And they are never handed over to ICE if their immigration status is in question because NYC is a sanctuary city, an NYPD officer said.

“We’re not allowed to confer with ICE so we just arrest them,” said the cop, who also asked to remain anonymous so he wouldn’t get in trouble. “They get released on their own recognizance [by a judge] and they go back and do it again.”

Time to leave.

The War Zone.

Army leaders preparing for a potential fight in the Pacific told us that some of the biggest lessons they’ve learned from the war in Ukraine and America’s now-paused fight against Iran are to move around assets that you can and find a better way to camouflage those that you can’t. While seemingly common sense, these lessons come from watching how war is now waged. The ubiquity of drones in Ukraine providing constant overwatch and strike capabilities, and U.S. troops killed and equipment destroyed or damaged by massive Iranian barrages on static installations are informing changes to how the Army trains, equips and operates.

These conversations took place during the recently wrapped Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) annual convention in Washington, D.C., which TWZ attended.

“A lot of the things that are happening right now in terms of long-range fires, integrated air and missile defense, and the lessons that we’re learning from them, we’re able to bring a lot of that to our potential challenges in the Pacific,” Gen. Ron Clark, commander of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), told us at a media roundtable. “Specifically, I am thinking through mobility and camouflage. So it’s one of those age-old Army forgotten sciences of how to hide in plain sight and how to camouflage ourselves from observation, because the ability to be able to see surface entities is almost ubiquitous.”

NBC Frames Trump as Misogynist After Zacharia Press Secretary Ouster  If he were a Democrat, they would be celebrating his willingness to appoint women. (Bias? What bias?)

Infantino told by top Fifa figures to scrap or depoliticise peace prize after Trump furore (The Guardian)

Trump in Georgia falsely claims election of Jon Ossoff was illegitimate (George Chidi/The Guardian)

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia confirms she never passed bar exam after saying she’s a lawyer (Kathryn Watson/CBS News)  You don’t need to pass the bar exam to be a lawyer—all you need is a law degree, which she has. Passing the bar exam makes you an attorney, who can legally practice law, an entirely different thing, and one that ‘journalists’ and politicians keep getting wrong. I have a law degree, and so I am a lawyer; I never took the bar exam, and so am not licensed to practice, and hence not an attorney. This is the sort of ignorance with which we suffer on a daily basis.

Why Europe’s Right Is Breaking Up With MAGA (Wall Street Journal)  There’s that MAGA guy again. (MAGA is the New Nigger.)