Read it.

Finishing a data center in America has become a logistical nightmare. Now just starting one is turning into a problem too, even in the one county that was supposed to say yes to everything.

Back in April, when we reported that “Half Of US Data Centers Scheduled To Start In 2026, Will Be Canceled Or Delayed,” the blame was spread across the usual suspects: power, transformers, permitting and a vague, growing sense that the locals were getting restless. Two months later, Blackstone sold its stake in three Northern Virginia data centers amid grassroot outrage, cashing out of a bet it made less than three years earlier, in the heart of what is known, with zero irony, as “Data Center Alley.”

And now the restless locals have claimed their biggest scalp yet.

According to the Washington Post, Amazon has scrapped a plan to build data centers on the site of George Washington University’s former campus in Ashburn, Northern Virginia, after reaching an agreement with local officials amid widespread opposition from residents. Under the deal announced Tuesday by Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall, Amazon will repurpose the majority of the 122-acre campus for mixed-use and residential development, and commit to never building data centers on the land. It will also donate 25 acres to the county for a community arts center and recreational facility, and hand $5 million to the county’s housing fund.

Read it.

“The Left has always preferred the ashes of its own making to the inheritance of better men.” – Celina101 on X

By now, everybody and his uncle interested in public matters has probably read that a claque of current-and-former agency officials, ex-USAID busybodies, military officers, activist academics, Democratic Party paladins, and freelance communist jihadis has been exposed plotting the overthrow of the US government. The plot was reported by the diligent “X” blogger Jennica Pounds under her nom-de-plume “Data Republican,” who lately received an enormous document-and-recording dump courtesy of careless color revolutionaries who recorded themselves and saved doc files against orders, the dumb bunnies.

Ms. Pounds, an experienced software engineer turned political detective, came to public attention early in 2025 when she assisted Elon Musk’s DOGE operation in building a database of NGO money trails emanating from the colossal USAID grant matrix – after which her identity was “doxed” by Rolling Stone and she underwent a harassment campaign.

Of course, USAID was abolished early in the Trump 2.0 admin, and a lot of the “activists” defenestrated from it moved into scores of NGOs, with their salaries switched from taxpayer funding to the bank accounts of George Soros-connected orgs and sundry other shady characters like Shanghai-based Neville Roy Singham. These are the NGOs forever puling about “our democracy,” meaning their drive to punish, persecute, and push around Americans who demur from a communist future. Data Republican says her reporting so far is “only the beginning” of much more detailed and alarming disclosures.

Read it.

As they do.

Read it.

Each deep state participant has a footprint and the only way to make sense of their assembly is to track their former and current pathways – that takes a lot of time to assemble.

Erica Chenoweth, Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith (Ret.), Danielle M. Reiff, Dr. Paul Zeitz, Maria J. Stephan, Julia Roig, Walt Roberts, Brendan Halloran, Laura Adams and Zoe Marks appear to represent the core leftist group. These interests appear to be the ones defended by The Washington Post.

Former CIA operatives who entered congress in 2018 and 2020, ex. U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin – part of the IC freshman class, also seem to represent the action group, executing the agenda of the planners.

Former ODNI Chief of Staff to Tulsi Gabbard, Alexa Henning, has a good name for the group overall, “The USAID Alumni Network.” That representation is the best encapsulation, as the motives and intents of the group seem to center around former USAID funding, NGO’s and direct finance.

This USAID commonality appears to be the central component that triggered the leftist opposition toward a more forward stance on action against the Trump administration, and by consequence toward the 2026 midterm election. Factually, if you want to determine the motives of people within any organized system, track their finance component.

Quillette.

“They want to read Sex and the City.”

That’s what a friend, a famous New York City literary agent, told me a few weeks ago when we were on the phone talking about editors at the five biggest publishing houses in the world: Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette, and Macmillan. These are the editors who determine what books end up at Barnes & Noble and what books remain unpublished PDFs.

Right now, it looks like a masculine novel he represents will never see the light of day. It’s a novel that is praised by a National Book Award winner, a famous war veteran, and other giants. It’s a novel that would have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a competitive bidding war in the 1990s. But a lot has changed since then.

Today, the Big Five publishers are staffed almost entirely by women. According to the most recent data, more than 70 percent of staffers are women. More than 70 percent of editors are women. Even 70 percent of all interns are women. At the executive level, more than 60 percent of leaders are women. In 2026, American publishing looks like lululemon.

The single biggest transformation in the history of American publishing has been its utter takeover by women. How did we get here?

The Telegraph (UK).

Piddington village is suing the Home Office, alleging it acted unlawfully by failing to consider the threat a new asylum camp could pose to wildlife.

The community campaign group Wrong Plan, Wrong Site is seeking a judicial review of the plan to turn the disused Bicester Garrison in Oxfordshire into a camp for up to 1,256 asylum seekers.

In papers filed at the High Court, the village claims the Government failed to consider endangered wildlife around the site, including some of Britain’s rarest bats, great crested newts and badgers.

In its submission, it claims that the Home Office “erred in law” by concluding that the camp was unlikely to damage the environment without carrying out a full wildlife assessment.

Hoist with their own proglodyte petard.

The Telegraph (UK).

The secretary-general of the Commonwealth has suggested that the King should apologise for slavery.

Speaking before the King’s visit to the Caribbean, which begins next week, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said that an apology for slavery “wouldn’t hurt” and that the “time has come” for a discussion about reparations.

Asked whether the monarch should apologise, the Commonwealth chief told Sky News: “That’s what the countries have asked for… It wouldn’t hurt to have that. Not at all.”

Perhaps the nations of West Africa, who sold the slaves to the Europeans on the coast, or the Arab countries, who enslaved more Africans than the Europeans did, might go first.

“Us as countries sit around the table to discuss, as difficult a subject as it is, I believe that countries will come to some conclusions. So whether it takes the form of financial reparations or reparations in kind, that is for the countries to decide on.”

When pushed on what she meant by “reparations in kind”, Mrs Ayorkor Botchwey said it could involve “concessional financing”, “return of artefacts” and “climate issues”.

In other words, GIVE US FREE STUFF.

The Telegraph (UK).

The Church of England is “heading for financial disaster” because of net-zero targets and slavery reparations, a report has warned.

Academics believe “significant costs” from “extravagant” social-justice projects are contributing to the Church’s financial malaise, with 37 of its 42 dioceses operating with budget deficits.

Most people shoot themselves in the foot. These guys decided to go for the kneecap.

The Church has been told to slash bureaucracy, make parishes its “first priority” and cut the number of diocesan bishops by almost a third to give “deeply dispirited” parishioners and clergy hope for the future.

The report, written by Canon Robin Gill and Prof John Craven, says the “crisis” of declining attendance, donations and ordinations can be halted only through “ruthless” reforms. It cites net zero and Project Spire as “costly” initiatives viewed by churchgoers as “unrealistic, extravagant, unsustainable and deeply depressing”.

Perhaps they ought to try returning to Christianity.  Just sayin’….

Not the Bee.

When you blame the gun instead of the shooter, I can see where this logic makes sense.

Read it.

Masked groups in Paris are openly bragging on social media about the designer goods and electronics they just looted, turning what began as student complaints about school conditions into a free-for-all that media outlets have had to repackage as a cost-of-living cry.

It’s all just an excuse to steal other people’s stuff.

The clip shows looters displaying their take while the official story has shifted from teacher shortages and dilapidated classrooms to broader “economic hardship.”

Luxury stores, grocery shelves, and pharmacies became the practical target once the chaos spread.

Envy and greed. That’s the Left for you.

Read it.

A Mail on Sunday investigation has found that the BBC’s education website is pushing extreme Left-wing views on open borders, Net Zero and inequality to children as young as 11.

It is, after all, a Voice of the Crust.

Read it.

As President Donald Trump prepares to campaign for GOP candidates in Iowa, the White House is highlighting the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal aliens who have been removed from the streets under his administration.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security arrested illegal immigrants convicted of crimes including child prostitution, assault of a minor, and domestic abuse. Two of the aliens were previously arrested but later released into the country under the Biden administration, the White House claimed.

In his rally in Sioux City Thursday night, Trump will highlight the administration’s record on border security and contrast it with liberal policies in Europe, which he says have led to riots and chaos. He is traveling to Iowa to support GOP Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson and GOP gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn.

“The riots in France are a direct result of their leader’s open border policies. This is what will happen in America if radical Democrats have their way,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told the Daily Signal. “They are the party of open borders, amnesty, lawlessness, and chaos, while President Trump and Republicans are the party of common sense and law and order.”

Though Trump won Iowa by 13 points in 2024, Hinson is running only 0.4 percentage points ahead of her Democrat opponent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Lahn’s opponent, Rob Sand, leads by 6.7 points.

Meet the criminal illegal immigrants apprehended by DHS.

Read it.

A new migrant caravan of mostly Central American migrants left Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala on Tuesday. Many in the group, according to some reports, intend to posture near the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes that a Democratic win in the midterms might signal a return to a less secure border.

According to one report by Milenio Diario, a daily print media company based in Mexico City, the group calling themselves “Caravan Without Borders” is estimated at more than 400 migrants. The bulk of the large group of migrants hails from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The group includes smaller numbers of Nicaraguan, Haitian, Venezuelan, and Cuban nationals.

The Foundry.

The New York Post cover on Oct. 19 summed it up in two words: “FRANCE BURNS.” Over the weekend, there was massive unrest in France from leftist extremists. So there were several interesting journalism patterns.

Labeling. Typically, reporters didn’t want to label protesters as “far left,” let alone “left.” Note to reporters: When Greta Thunberg shows up in solidarity, it’s a leftist protest. But some reporters stayed vague, like ABC’s Marcus Moore: “A protest that started with high school students now spiraling to more general concerns about the cost of living, and France’s future.” Anyone with eyes could see it wasn’t just “students” in the streets, and that it’s not just about economics.

Funny Riots? During his one-day work week, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart unfurled the whole “hey, the French are natural rioters” comedy: “They stormed the Bastille! Other than adultery, it’s the most French thing you can do! It’s like blaming immigrants in America for remembering the Alamo. Riots are just a part of the general ambiance in France!” Would this be funny to people whose cars and businesses were looted or destroyed?

Political Exploitation. After a few days of violence and destruction, the political implications inevitably break out. The New York Times front page on Oct. 20 lamented: “French Right Has Opening In Upheaval: Riots Fit Rhetoric as Election Approaches.”

NBC’s Richard Engel hit that message repeatedly. “Although French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting, it’s the same argument France’s far-right parties are using, hoping to capitalize on the chaos to win key elections in the spring.”

But that’s not as odd as CNN saying riots are being used by Trump for “fearmongering,” like they didn’t spend about four years fearmongering for political gain after the Jan. 6 riot. CNN reporter Alayna Treene lamented Trump used “some of this darker rhetoric … using this kind of fear mongering to try and convince voters to turn out for his party.” Then host Sara Sidner added the Democrat Helper spin: “And to be fair, no Democrat who was running or otherwise has said they want to burn America to the ground.”

Well, they’re not going to SAY it … watch what they do, not what they say.

Read it.

The Women’s National Basketball Association declared two former male professional basketball players ineligible to join the league because they aren’t women. However, the league did not provide a definition of “woman” in its announcement.

While responding to an inquiry from several members of Congress about player safety and the league’s definition of a woman, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated in an Oct. 16 letter, “only women are eligible to play in the WNBA and the individuals you cite in your letter are both men.” The dispute stems from August, when former National Basketball Association players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White said they identified as women and were thus eligible to enter the WNBA’s 2027 Draft.

Announcing Engelbert’s decision on X, Kanter Freedom said in a Tuesday post, “Apparently, the WNBA still can’t define what a WOMAN is, but they’re absolutely certain they know what a MAN is! How convenient!”

“WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has declared that I am a man,” he added. “Who gave her the authority to decide who I am? Who gets to define my identity? And how can the WNBA determine who is a man without explaining what qualifies someone as a woman”

Read it.

Descendants of the Native American chief whose likeness inspired the Washington Redskins logo are pressing the Commanders to restore the NFL team’s name and image, and want the team’s new stadium named for him.

The estate of Chief John Two Guns White Calf, a Blackfeet leader born on Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation, says the family was never consulted before the team, now the Washington Commanders, dropped the name and logo in 2020, amid long-standing objections from Native American activist groups that considered the name a slur, KRTV reported.

“They tried to erase us, like we didn’t exist anymore,” estate lead Kenneth Conway told the television station in Great Falls, Montana.

Read it.

Anthony Stephen Fauci harmed millions of Americans by mismanaging the pandemic. Google’s YouTube and its woke censors helped him every step of the way.

The pandemic is over. The censorship is not. YouTube still suppresses speech that threatens Dr. Fauci and the failed policies he built. The latest example is an interview I gave to Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek about my new book, “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison.”

YouTube runs its censorship under what it calls the “Four R’s of Responsibility”: Remove, Raise, Reduce, Reward. It did not Remove the interview; a takedown would have made news. It chose the quiet R: Reduce.

Here is what Reduce looks like. The interview premiered on Oct. 13. Five days later it had 21,248 views. The 10 full episodes of Mr. Jekielek’s American Thought Leaders posted before mine averaged about 170,000 views; the five immediately before it averaged 73,000. In the show’s China playlist, where my interview sits, the 10 prior episodes averaged 124,000. An episode with Dr. Phil posted one day ago already has 47,000—more than double mine in a fifth of the time.

This is not an unpopular video. According to Mr. Jekielek, it is performing massively on other platforms. Only on YouTube has it been wounded on arrival.

New York Post.

A Minnesota rapper who traveled to France to join escalating riots has urged white people to “raise hell” and “f–k s–t up” as part of a revolution on American soil, The Post discovered. And communist-linked groups in the US may be working to bring that hell to the nation’s capital.

Artist Tufawon, whose real name is Rafael Gonzalez Jr., joined Swedish activist Greta Thunberg outside Paul Éluard, the high school at the heart of the leftist protests marred by violence, looting and arson.

He addressed balaclava-clad protesters before performing his song “No One Is Illegal,” and riling up the crowd with chants of “f–k ICE” and “ICE out.”

Watch it.

Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin) turns over a rock.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Read it.

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

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.

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

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.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Can a college campus accurately assess its antisemitism problem without talking to Jews?

That’s the question facing the University of Pittsburgh, where an internal working group on campus antisemitism recently published a report that did not include, nor appear to have solicited, the perspectives of the school’s estimated 1,400 Jewish students — nor any other members of the campus Jewish community beyond the group itself.

Apparently they didn’t want to be confused by facts.

1Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

— Lamentations 5:1-5

Not the Bee.

Man, they should’ve been a little more careful when they wrote the 14th Amendment. Look how much it’s cost us.

They did not anticipate that crooks and fools would be in charge of the government in the 20th century.

But yeah, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the annual bill for educating, doctoring, and feeding the U.S.-born kids of immigrants comes out to a cool $150.7 billion — half of which is spent on education (so making them dumber and teaching them about gay stuff).

Serves ’em right.

The American Mind.

The Obama Presidential Center, located on Chicago’s South Side, opened in June 2026, nine years and five months after Barack Obama’s term in office concluded. The politicians who build these centers force themselves to run one final fundraising gauntlet, not to finance an election campaign but to leave behind an edifice that makes an enduring case for their probity, sagacity, and historical importance.

What sets Obama apart is that he began publicly discussing the greatness he hoped for prior to occupying, winning, or seeking the nation’s highest office. “My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don’t want to just be the president,” Barack Obama told journalist Jacob Weisberg in 2006. “You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president.” Later in the interview he said, “There are, what, maybe 10 presidents in our history out of 40-something who you can truly say led the country? And then there are 30 who just kind of did their best.”

At the time, having been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 after serving eight years in the Illinois state legislature, Obama was still a Washington, D.C. newcomer. The author of The Audacity of Hope (2006) lived up to his book’s title in October 2006, during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “When I think about great presidents, I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways,” Obama said. Specifically, “they transformed the culture” rather than “simply promoted one or two particular issues.”

By that measure, Trump is one of the greatest U.S. Presidents of all time.

Notably absent from the latter takes, however, were claims that Obama had fulfilled the lofty expectations he had set before being elected. His admirers, rather, had long since concluded that he was a capable leader but not a world-historical figure. Jacob Weisberg, reflecting in 2017 for Slate on the career of the young politician he had interviewed eleven years before, wrote that Obama’s “legacy of integrity, eloquence, and patient commitment” qualified him as an “inspirational” president. But not a “transformational” one.

He was a legend in his own mind.

New York Post.

Young women in my generation were lied to.

We grew up in the era of “sex positivity” and were told that sex was a morally inconsequential pastime.

We were led to believe that by having sex like men, we could achieve liberation.

Guess that didn’t work.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

At a moment when populist candidates and anti-billionaire sentiment are surging nationally, a campaign to tax the assets of California’s billionaires is faltering.

Opponents are hammering the airwaves with ads portraying the tax as an economic wrecking ball, and the measure’s poll numbers have steadily eroded. Multiple surveys last month found it drawing only a narrow plurality, with support in the mid-40s — a warning sign for a campaign that needs to expand its coalition.

Ballot initiative veteran Chris Lehman pointed to one telling shift: Independents now oppose the wealth tax while supporting a separate tax measure for public schools. That, he said, “should’ve rang every alarm bell on Earth.”

“The trendlines from the polling I’ve seen are all looking bad for the yes side,” said Lehman, who is not working for either campaign. “They’re all looking good for the no side.”

A labor union’s proposal to offset federal health care cuts with a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s fewer than 300 billionaires has convulsed California politics from the moment it was filed late last year. Now, as ballots are hitting voters’ mailboxes, Proposition 40’s supporters are getting knocked back by powerful headwinds — including an opposition alliance comprising some of the state’s most powerful political players and richest residents.

Read it.

So can migrants—back where they came from.

Read it.

About a dozen girls on a Washington state high school cross-country team forfeited a race Tuesday rather than compete against a male runner who switched from the boys team to the girls team mid-season.

Footage of the meet between Camas High School and Battle Ground High School in southwestern Washington shows the starting signal sounding and some runners beginning the race while the protesting girls walk forward before leaving the course.

“I don’t see how it’s OK to discriminate against my daughter and the daughters of everyone else that is trying to fairly compete,” Kevin Burns, whose daughter Holly led the protest, told OutKick.

Last month, a Camas sophomore male switched to the girls team midseason. After finishing 76th in a boys race, he has since won a varsity girls meet and placed second in two others, Outkick reported. The story has gained national attention, with teammates and opponents staging protests.

Camas School District Superintendent John Anzalone said the girls will not be penalized for refusing to compete.

“The girls are entitled to handle this however is best for them, and I was at the meet and it was peacefully done,” he told Outkick. “This was really about supporting and providing that space for the girls who did walk off to do so and not feel any repercussions.”

Not the Bee.

Read it.

And indeed he does.

Read it.

Members of the Camas High School girls cross country team walk off the course at the start of a 4A Greater St. Helens League meet against Battle Ground on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026 at UL campus in Camas. The girls are protesting the inclusion of a transgender runner on their team.

Even on the Left Coast, girls have stopped putting up with Woke bullshit.

Read it.

A 14-year-old pupil walked into a middle school near Marseille Monday morning with a hunting shotgun hidden inside a guitar case and opened fire, wounding the principal and a teacher.

Both suffered non-life-threatening injuries to the lower body. Staff overpowered the shooter before police arrived. Education Minister Édouard Geffray stated on social media: “Two staff members from the National Education system, a principal and a teacher, were victims this morning of gunshot wounds at Lakanal middle school in Aubagne. A student is said to be the perpetrator.”

He added that the act was “yet further evidence of the rise of unchecked violence in our society.”

Read it.

America has forgotten how to build, courtesy of a Byzantine permitting process that delays projects for years and often kills them altogether. A new bill could change that, though, and let the U.S. actually start building things again, including badly needed energy infrastructure that would reduce prices.

The current paralysis was made painfully evident this year when the Iran war disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and oil jumped from about $70 a barrel to about $100 in a matter of weeks. Prices at the pump skyrocketed while costs for natural gas, fertilizer, electricity, and more also rose.

America has weathered the supply shock better than most countries because of our shale production, but the cushion is much thinner than it should be. Every stalled well, pipeline, port, and power line is a shock absorber missing from U.S. infrastructure. Energy security is national security, and a country that cannot build cannot be secure.

The problem, of course, is that every oil well and natural gas well is another stake in the heart of the proglodyte dream of our getting ‘net zero’, all of our energy electricity generated by wind, solar, and unicorn farts.

Read it.

A man was shot and killed on a light-rail train in Minneapolis early in the morning on October 3. While rail officials were quick to call this “an anomaly,” in fact, there has been about one murder on board a Twin Cities light-rail train each year since the beginning of the pandemic.