DHS.

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials approached Roberts, he identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away, where ICE officers located him with help from Iowa State Patrol officers. At the time of arrest, a loaded handgun, hunting knife and $3,000 cash were found in his vehicle. On Oct. 2, he was charged with being an illegal alien in possession of firearms.

Roberts’ rap sheet and immigration history reveal a long record of criminal conduct in the United States. He should never have been serving in a role overseeing children in Iowa’s largest school district.

“Ian Andre Roberts, a criminal illegal alien with multiple weapons charges and a drug trafficking charge, should have never been able to work around children,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “When ICE officers arrested this Superintendent, he was in possession of an illegal handgun, a hunting knife, and nearly $3,000 in cash. This criminal illegal alien is now in U.S. Marshals custody and facing charges for being an illegal alien in possession of a firearms. Under Secretary Noem, ICE will continue to arrest the worst of the worst and put the safety of America’s children FIRST.”

Read it.

California is home to numerous profitable industries, but many of the state’s residents struggle to survive under the weight of big government. Case in point: excessive regulations have suffocated the state’s housing market and led to some of the nation’s highest rents and most expensive homes.

In contrast, metro areas in the South, particularly in Texas, are leading in the construction of new apartment buildings this year. Austin hosted nearly double the number of new units as Los Angeles, which is larger tin both geographic and population size. One of the reasons for the South’s housing boom is its less-restrictive regulatory environment. According to Doug Ressler, a senior analyst and manager of business at Yardi Matrix, a real estate data firm, “Southern metros typically offer streamlined approval processes and fewer regulatory hurdles, making it easier to bring multi-family projects to market.” Notably, Texas lawmakers further relaxed the state’s land zoning laws earlier this year to allow for more housing construction.

Read it.

X user DataRepublican, also known as Jennica Pounds, who leads DOGE-adjacent efforts in an open-source capacity, has delved deeper into the dark-money-funded NGO world. Her latest target: George Soros and one of the largest soft-power projects of the 1990s, called the Muskie Fellowship program.

But the focus here is not the Muskie Fellowship program, but rather her question: “This is straight off the Federal Register. Now ask yourself why Wikipedia doesn’t mention the Soros Foundation.”

She added, “And fun fact — Soros had further grants for these graduates of the Muskie fellowship program. Hard to interpret this as something other than using our taxpayer funds to educate his minions.” 

ATQUE: Rabid Climate Group Goes to War with Trump to Protect Its ‘Major’ Financier: George Soros

Read it.

California parents will no longer face arrest if their children miss school following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Oct. 1 decision to approve legislation repealing Kamala Harris’s truancy law.

Read it.

Yesterday, two members of the New York State (NYS) Senate introduced Senate Bill 8518 (S8518), which imposes excise taxes on digital asset mining using the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, making it even more difficult than it already is for bitcoin miners to operate in the state.

Politicians’ motto; If it moves, tax it. If it doesn’t move, kick it until in moves, then tax it.

Read it.

Harvard, apparently, can never learn.

It has made itself the poster-child for all the failures of contemporary education, including the racketeering around endowments, government grant grifts, race and gender hustles, and intellectual surrender to ideas that would make medieval astrologasters burst out laughing.

Case in point: the university lately announced the hiring of a Boston-area drag-queen to teach a course in the spring semester of 2026 about the TV show known as Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The show features contestants vying for prizes and crowns based on “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent” (C.U.N.T.). Get the picture? Reach into your Jungian psychology tool-bag.

This backwater of the arts was identified some years ago by the literary pop-star Susan Sontag as “camp” derived from the French se camper “to pose in an exaggerated fashion” depicting “unnatural artifice.” Camp is the theatrical cousin of kitsch, which is the celebration of bad taste, with histrionic overtones of exaggerated sentimentality

Read it.

Hamas said Friday that it has accepted some elements of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip, including giving up power and releasing all remaining hostages, but that others require further consultations among Palestinians.

The statement came hours after Trump said that Hamas must agree to the deal by Sunday evening, threatening an even greater military onslaught nearly two years into the war sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel. It was unclear how the U.S. and Israel would respond to partial acceptance.

Trump appears keen to deliver on pledges to end the war and return dozens of hostages ahead of the second anniversary of the attack on Tuesday. His peace plan has been accepted by Israel and welcomed internationally, but key mediators Egypt and Qatar have said some elements need further negotiation, without elaborating.

Read it.

Jihad Al-Shamie, the Syrian-born British citizen who police say attacked a synagogue in England on Thursday, resulting in the deaths of two worshippers, was out on bail on suspicion of rape at the time, according to reports.

Authorities had said that Al-Shamie was not known to them before his terror attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester despite being investigated in connection with an alleged rape earlier this year.

Al-Shamie was fatally shot by police after plowing his vehicle into a crowd of worshippers on Yom Kippur — the holiest day of the Jewish year — and stabbing them.

Read it.

Republicans and Democrats offer competing claims about whether people who entered the country unlawfully are benefiting from Medicaid.

“The law prohibits undocumented immigrants from getting payments from Medicare, Medicaid, or the ACA. There’s no money, not a penny of federal dollars that are going there,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Sept. 30.

Yet Republicans say millions of people who entered the country illegally do receive federal health benefits.

“By some estimates, 20 million illegal aliens came [here] from every country, all around the world,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Oct. 2, referring to the years of the Biden administration.

“[Democrats] gave them all this parole status so that they could get enrolled onto taxpayer benefits.”

Newsbusteres.

The synergy between the liberal late night comedy shows and the liberal news media was on full display on Thursday night as The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng each relied on their journalist compatriots on CBS and The Daily Show, respectively, to claim Republicans are, in Colbert’s words, being “stupid” and “fearmongering” by saying Democrats want to give federal benefits to illegal aliens in exchange for ending the government shutdown.

Colbert introduced a montage of Republicans making that point by declaring, “The sticking point of the shutdown negotiations has been healthcare. The Democrats want to restore some of the Affordable Care Act benefits that the Republicans cut earlier this year in the Big Beautiful Bill, or as the Republicans describe it.”

…

The problem for Colbert and his friends is what is the definition of an illegal immigrant? According to Vance, the Biden administration waved a magic wand and gave millions of illegal immigrants legal status by designating them as parolees.

Read it.

One of the two victims who died in the synagogue attack in Manchester, UK was shot dead by police, with the other victim killed by suspect. In fact, the police were the only ones with guns at the incident.

Here’s what happened: The suspect, Jihad al-Shamie, rammed a vehicle into a crowd of people gathered outside the synagogue, striking several individuals. He then exited the car and stabbed at least one person before attempting to enter the building. Worshippers and security staff managed to block his entry – when armed cops showed up within 7 minutes and shot al-Shamie.

Al-Shamie killed one of the victims and sent two to the hospital with injuries, while the cops accidentally killed another victim and shot a 3rd person who was also sent to the hospital. sd

You can’t make this stuff up.

New Atlas.

Nautical disruptor Sharrow Marine has been hard at work fast-expanding its lineup of innovative twisted-loop propellers, releasing tweaked models for new applications while also ramping up overall production. A year ago, that work saw it launch the MX-A propeller for smaller outboards, effectively cutting pricing by more than half compared to previous launches. Now it’s doing it again with the AX, smashing downward through the four-figure floor for the first time with a propeller designed for even smaller outboards and kicker motors. Buyers seeking to put the company’s striking, efficiency-boosting loop-blades to work can now do so for well under $1K.

Officially introduced on Tuesday, the all-new Sharrow AX propeller follows the MX-A in using a lightweight aluminum construction that delivers corrosion-resistant performance without the expense of stainless steel. Unlike with the MX-A. The AX slides below the targeted 40-hp+ market of the MX-A and is designed specifically for small outboards ranging between 6 and 30 hp.

“With the launch of the Sharrow AX, we’re proud to introduce our technology to the small-engine market,” said founder and CEO Greg Sharrow. “Whether used as a primary prop on a small outboard or as an auxiliary kicker for trolling, the AX offers smoother handling, quieter operation and unmatched fuel efficiency.”

Toroidal propellers represent the first significant advance in propeller design since the discovery of the cavitation problem in 1885. Go to YouTube and search for ‘toroidal propeller’ and be prepared to be amazed.

The Telegraph (UK).

A university has placed a trigger warning on Ian Fleming’s James Bond classic Dr No, warning students of “racism and xenophobia”.

Fleming’s sixth Bond novel, Dr No tells the story of 007’s investigation into the disappearance of two fellow MI6 operatives in Jamaica. The villain is the Chinese-German mad scientist Dr Julius No, who runs a guano mine from the fictional island of Crab Key.

With steel pincers for hands, the evil doctor was later immortalised in the first Bond franchise film featuring Sean Connery in 1962, using the same title as Fleming’s novel.

But “academic killjoys” at the University of Portsmouth have deemed Fleming’s portrayal of the main antagonist and other characters as “problematic”, warning the book contains instances of “racism and xenophobia”.

UPDATE: Amazon Is Digitally Erasing Guns from James Bond Posters

The Telegraph (UK).

The Church of England, like the American Protestant Episcopal Church before it, has severed any last tie to the Apostolic Christian tradition, and is now officially the Church of the Woke.

The Telegraph (UK).

A day after Jihad al-Shamie had driven his car at speed at Jewish worshippers and then stabbed at them in a frenzied, murderous assault, his father posted on Facebook a short statement expressing his “profound shock”.

In a 124-word statement, Faraj al-Shamie said he and his family “strongly condemns this heinous act, which targeted peaceful, innocent civilians”. It was a show of contrition seemingly fitting of a Syrian-born doctor who has spent years working overseas as a trauma surgeon, often in hostile environments.

Except that on Oct 7 2023, in the hours after Hamas terrorists stormed Israel and slaughtered almost 1,200 people and took 250 civilians and soldiers hostage, the father appeared to show not a shred of humanity for the Jewish victims of that atrocity.

On the same Facebook page where he said how sorry he was about the Manchester attack, he had posted, some two years earlier, praise for the Hamas fighters, describing them as “Allah’s men on earth”.

He didn’t stop there. The armed militants who had infiltrated the Jewish state on motorbikes and paragliders had “proved beyond a shadow of a doubt” that Israel would eventually be destroyed, he went on.

As long as Islam exists, ‘jihadis’ will be a problem. It’s been that way for 1400 years, and there is no indication that it will change. Whether our Ruling Class will continue prating how ‘peaceful’ Muslims are while ignoring the mass murder, or whether they will wake up and decide to do something about it, is an exercise left for the reader. 

The Telegraph (UK).

Three “hero” Tube passengers who tackled a man exposing himself in front of children have been interviewed under caution by police.

‘Under caution’ means they’ve been read their rights, similar to being Mirandized in the U.S., and indicating that they are under formal criminal investigation.

Five members of the public removed the naked man from a busy carriage on the District Line in August.

Video footage posted online at the time showed the man repeatedly refusing to pull up his trousers as he shouted and told those trying to intervene to “f— off”. A scuffle then broke out as the individual was tackled to the carriage floor and thrown off the train at East Ham station, where he was eventually arrested on the platform.

However, when he was later detained under the Mental Health Act, the British Transport Police (BTP) began an investigation into his “assault by a number of other passengers”.

No good deed goes unpunished, especially in modern Britain.

The Times (UK).

It was the moment of truth. On Friday Rachel Reeves was handed a double-sided sheet of A3 containing the Treasury’s assessment of the first official forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Like her predecessors the chancellor’s instinct will have been to turn the page and look for the figure on the very bottom right-hand corner — the number that will ultimately determine the fate of her budget and potentially the entire government.

That figure is known as the “fiscal headroom” — effectively the amount of money the government has left after its tax and spending plans are taken into account. And Reeves is heading for negative territory. Economists believe that to make the numbers add up she will have to find as much as £30 billion, precipitating the need for huge tax rises in the budget.

This is what happens in a country that still has some contact with fiscal responsibility. In the U.S., of course, we just print more money and pretend it doesn’t matter.

The Times (UK).

There’s no time of year sadder than the political perineum. The Labour Party conference, like Christmas, has been and gone. The Conservative Party conference, like the always underwhelming New Year’s Eve, is yet to arrive. What are we meant to do with ourselves? There’s no Quality Street lying about, no darts on the telly either.

Well, while we wait, here’s a fun little game. What we do know is that this next week, like the next four years, will be defined by how the two main parties go about trying to free themselves from the terrible jaws of Nigel Farage. Reform UK began party conference season miles ahead in the polls. They will almost certainly end it still miles ahead in the polls. Can they be beaten? There is plenty of evidence to suggest they can. But how might each party go about doing it?

Some polling and research done recently by Best for Britain suggests that Reform voters are not the monolithic, immigrant hotel protesting, flag to lamppost-tying homogenous mass they are sometimes considered to be. They divide into five distinct tribes. Some, for example, are so busy worrying about the NHS that they don’t even have time to paint their local roundabout with a cross of St George. The backbench Labour MP and occasional era-defining note-leaver Liam Byrne has also assigned each tribe their own bespoke cocktail of grievance, made from varying quantities of different grievances such as anger, pessimism and a sense of unfairness.

So how might Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch go about luring these angry tribes people back where they belong? And how might they be getting it wrong?

Read it.

A new study has found that people tend to alter their appearance to suit their names. The researchers sought to determine whether parents choose a baby name based on what seems fitting for the baby’s appearance, or if individuals’ facial appearances change over the years to align with the social stereotypes associated with their names.

Scientific American, a Voice of the Crust.

Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue. Languages as different as English, Russian, Hindustani, Latin and Sanskrit can all be traced back to this ancestral language.

Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have figured out a lot about that first Indo-European language, including many of the words it used and some of the grammatical rules that governed it. Along the way, they’ve come up with theories about who its original speakers were, where and how they lived, and how their language spread so widely.

Most linguists think that those speakers were nomadic herders who lived on the steppes of Ukraine and western Russia about 6,000 years ago. Yet a minority put the origin 2,000 to 3,000 years before that, with a community of farmers in Anatolia, in the area of modern-day Turkey. Now a new analysis, using techniques borrowed from evolutionary biology, has come down in favor of the latter, albeit with an important later role for the steppes.

The computational technique used in the new analysis is hotly disputed among linguists. But its proponents say it promises to bring more quantitative rigor to the field, and could possibly push key dates further into the past, much as radiocarbon dating did in the field of archaeology.

NPR, a Voice of the Crust.

hink of Jennifer, or as we like to call her, “Jen.” Jen of the dazzling smile, Jen of the gorgeous chin, Jen with her hair down, Jen tousled, Jen as Rachel, Jen with Brad; Jen without Brad, Jen with Vince, Jen at the Oscars, and, of course, Jen as a neuron in the medial part of the temporal lobe.

Maybe you missed that last Jen.

A few years ago, a UCLA neurosurgeon named Itzhak Fried, while operating on patients who suffer from debilitating epileptic seizures, discovered what he now calls the “Jennifer Aniston Neuron.”

Better Homes & Gardens.

A garbage disposal is an electronic device fitted to the underside of a kitchen sink. It uses blades to grind food waste into pieces small enough to be carried away in the plumbing system. It is a clean, fast, eco-friendly way to get rid of your kitchen waste, as food goes into the water system and not a landfill.

While things like vegetables, fruit, cooked foods, and even ice can go down a garbage disposal without problems, other things can clog your plumbing or damage the blades. This can be costly to have repaired, so it’s in your best interest to know how to properly use one. To ensure the long life of your garbage disposal, avoid putting these items down the drain.

Looking at this list, one wonders whether a garbage disposal is worth having at all.

Read it.

What should the goal of economic policy be? Ideally, a political party would have a clear answer to that question, one it could convey to voters and translate into specific proposals. Yet the Democrats currently lack any sort of unified economic vision. In its absence, the intellectual wings of the various factions that make up the party have been left to battle with one another in the hopes that their competing visions will set the party’s economic agenda for the next election cycle.

One of the factions that is best situated to fill the current policy void, at least partially, is the New Antitrust Movement, which won converts and gained influence during the Biden presidency.1 Over the last 15 years, this movement has gradually built out an impressive political apparatus, including foundation-funded political organizations like the Open Markets Institute, American Economic Liberties Project, and More Perfect Union, media footholds at places like The American Prospect, a stable of elected officials like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and a set of semi-celebrity bureaucrats including Jonathan Kanter, Tim Wu, and Lina Khan.

For most modern political factions, it is hard to pinpoint their exact origins. They seem to emerge from a variety of disparate sources and cultural shifts that can only be described impressionistically. But this is not so for the New Antitrust Movement. Unlike other Democratic factions, it has an identifiable individual founder: Barry Lynn. It also has what is essentially a founding document: Lynn’s 2009 book Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.

Sixteen long years later, Cornered’s diagnosis of what ails the American economy remains quite influential even though many of the illustrative industries Lynn diagnosed as unacceptably concentrated have since been disrupted by new entrants. More importantly, despite its big flaws, the idea that the proliferation and protection of small business owners is itself an important goal that supersedes more conventional goals like efficiency, growth, and labor protection has taken hold of a large portion of the policy-focused left, with no retreat on the horizon.

Read it.

Many of us have repeated the assertion that writing paper in early modern England was expensive and scarce, but it has always bothered me. After hearing this fairly regularly in response to two common questions —“Why did people write on the endleaves of printed books?” and “Why are there no ‘Shakespeare manuscripts’?”—I started keeping track of paper prices in account books and bills and receipts to see if this was actually true. I was suspicious because a considerable number of early modern manuscript books at the Folger and elsewhere are mostly blank.

The majority of letters from this period are written on the first page of a four page bifolium, with the inner two pages left blank and the last page used to write the superscription (the address). An etiquette manual published in 1675 encourages the ostentatious display of blank paper as a show of respect, its writer suggesting that when composing a letter, to “make use of large Paper rather than small, and a whole sheet (though we write but six lines in the first Page) rather than half a one, is no inconsiderable piece of ceremony, one shewing reverence and esteem, the other familiarity or indifference” (Antoine de Courtin, The Rules of Civility).

However, even drafts of letters are often written on whole sheets, suggesting that leaving blank paper unused was hardly considered decadent and not only meant to impress.

The Wall Street Journal.

Around the country, the fathers’ rights movement was gaining momentum. Dividing time and decision-making equally between parents, advocates argued, reduced children’s feelings of abandonment, promoted gender equality and lowered tensions between feuding couples.

“There is no law that affects more people other than taxes or traffic,” said Matt Hale, vice chair of the National Parents Organization, an advocacy group formerly known as Fathers and Families. “Giving kids equal access to both their parents is just common sense.” Dads like Hale and Holdsworth found a sympathetic ear in lawmakers including Jason Nemes, a Kentucky state representative whose own father was his primary guardian after his parents divorced.

In 2018, Kentucky became the first state to pass a law making equally shared custody the default arrangement in divorces and separations. Four other states—Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida and Missouri—have since passed their own versions of Kentucky’s custody bill. Around 20 more are considering or close to passing similar laws, according to an analysis by the National Parents Organization.

The law has become a model for other states, not least because Kentucky’s divorce rate has plummeted. Between 2016 and 2023 it fell 25%, compared with a nationwide decline of 18%, according to an analysis by the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

Hale calls the drop in the divorce rate an unintended bonus of the custody law. He suggested that parents are increasingly likely to stay together because they realize they’ll be in regular touch regardless, so “they might as well work it out.” He added that he’s heard stories of couples who decided not to break up because of the presumption of shared custody, and years later are glad they stayed together.

Plus women realized that they could no longer divorce a husband and take both the kids and (accordingly) generous “child support”.

Navy Matters.

The last Avenger class mine countermeasures (MCM) vessel, USS Devastator (MCM 6), has now been retired.[1] Our surface MCM capability is now entirely in the hands of the Independence class LCS. Yes, that LCS. The ship and MCM module that has suffered years of delay, failure after failure, and no realistic operational testing. That one. That disaster. No, this isn’t a Halloween horror story, although it should scare you to death. This is our current naval MCM reality.

Daily Record (UK).

Climbing influencer Balin Miller, 23, fell to his death as he was scaling El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, an enormous sheer granite rock face of approximately 3,000 feet.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Daily Record (UK).

The incident unfolded outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Authorities believe Al-Shamie drove his car into worshippers before exiting the vehicle and launching a knife attack. Two men were killed and three others injured.

Officers initially reported that the attacker appeared to be wearing an explosive vest, but later confirmed it was a non-viable device, reports the Mirror. Now more details of Al-Shamie have emerged, here is what we know so far.

According to the PA news agency, Al-Shamie was a British citizen of Syrian descent. He arrived in the UK as a young child and was granted citizenship in 2006. Security services confirmed his name had not previously appeared in police or intelligence databases, and he had not been referred to the government’s Prevent anti-radicalisation programme.

Top Oversight Dem calls for investigation over White House shutdown messaging (Gregory Svirnovskiy/Politico)

Read it.

A sticker featuring a target over a photo of Alternative for Germany (AfD) party co-leader, Alice Weidel, is allegedly being distributed by the Left Party Youth in Hannover, Germany. The sticker, which also features the text, “Aim Here,” has sparked an investigation by the German police.

“This sticker is being distributed by the youth organization of the Left in Hannover. This is not just a call to violence, this is an incitement to attack in the spirit of the left-terrorist Antifa. The radical Left should finally have the plug pulled. Criminal complaint is being filed!” wrote Thorsten Weiß, the deputy chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in Berlin.

The Left only objects to political violence when they are the targets.

Read it.

Recruiting for the Navy is at its highest level since the early 2000s, just two years after the service missed its active-duty goal.

“We’ve listened to those line recruiters and done the things that they indicated were the most important to them, and that has changed the game on the inspiration, the drive and the willingness to go the extra mile to get the job done,” Rear Adm. James Waters III, head of Navy Recruiting Command, told reporters Monday, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Navy, Army, and Air Force missed their recruiting goals in 2023, and they took steps to bring in new prospects.

Read it.

Fundamentally, any kind of “superbaby” or “designer baby” project depends on two steps:
1.) figure out what genes you ideally want;
2.) create an embryo with those genes.
It’s already standard to do a very simple version of this two-step process. In the typical course of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), embryos are usually screened for chromosomal abnormalities that would cause disabilities like Down Syndrome, and only the “healthy” embryos are implanted.
But most (partially) heritable traits and disease risks are not as easy to predict.

Watch it.

Nick Norwitz (PhD, MD) does a deep dive on a new study on the oldest verifiable human woman.

He also relates this to what individuals can do to take advantage of what this study discovered.

Let’s see–nope, no sign of Grievance Studies majors, ‘journalism’, ‘communications’, or DEI administrators.

The Spectator (UK).

When I was offered the chance to review two new books about the Devil, I thought, “what fun!” I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly diabolical person, but as someone whose deep love of Paradise Lost has made me, as good old William Blake didn’t quite put it, “of the devil’s party while very much knowing it,” I rubbed my hands together in glee at the prospect of getting down and dirty with Old Nick.

Not, you understand, that my purely literary interest can begin to compare to the “Satanic Panic” outbreak that gripped the imaginations of middle America in the late 1980s and 1990s. “Satanic cults! Every hour, every day, their ranks are growing!” So began one typically understated NBC special that boasted macabre stories of animal sacrifice, cannibalism, ritualistic child abuse and grisly ceremonial murders, all described with a mixture of apparent shock and prurient relish. People genuinely feared that agents of the Devil walked among them. Not least because the media whipped them up into a frenzy.

It is easy to look back at Satanic Panic and chuckle at its absurdity. For a brief moment, we might pity the teenage goths and emos who were suspected of unspeakable crimes because they liked the color black. We can do this because, of course, in our enlightened age, nobody really believes in the Devil anymore. Even the camp but hardly blood-curdling flamboyance of the Satanic Temple is somewhat restrained today; its adherents now spend their time rather quaintly fighting for “representation in schools.”

What I find interesting is that humans, uniquely among the animal world, have developed social institutions to constrain or even suppress natural instinctive behaviors. No other animal species has anything resembling a police force. Whence comes the notion that certain proclivities (that we all have) are somehow not-good?

Read it.

UK’s Counter Terrorism Police name Manchester synagogue attacker as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35 year old UK citizen, of Syrian descent. This is my shocked face. I listened to and watched several news reports this morning out of Britain and whether GBN, BBC, or SkyNews – not a single one of them speculated on who the attacker, who was wearing a suicide bomb vest could have been.

My,. what a surprise.

Hochul alleges DHS cut $187M from counterterrorism funding with ‘no discretion’ (Brady Knox/Washington Examiner)

Judge Blocks Trump Plan to Pull NYC Transit Funds

Trump Cuts Funding to 16 Blue States That Didn’t Vote for Him (Malcolm Ferguson/New Republic)  I suggest that the fact that they are Blue States is more significant than the fact that they might not have voted for him.

Trump administration uses government websites and email messages to pin the shutdown on Democrats (NBC News)  As Democrats always did with Republicans. They act as if this were a New And Strange Thing.

Why Trump’s 2020 election loss lives on in the Georgia governor’s race (Patrick Svitek/Washington Post)

We asked 1,000 Americans who they blame for the shutdown (Washington Post)  It’s never about the shutdown–it’s always about the blame game.

White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes (Tony Romm/New York Times)  As every Democrat administration has done in the past.

Google joins presidential bribe club (Liz Dye/Public Notice)

Head of Eisenhower library resigns after sword spat with Trump administration (Ed O’Keefe/CBS News)

Trump’s ICE Has Started Targeting Activists, Not Just Immigrants (Mike Ludwig/Truthout)  What a great idea! Deport Antifa!

Stephen Miller Implies He Intended for Trump’s Nutjobs to Kill Democrats (emptywheel)

Trump Finds a New Way to Use the White House for Tacky Racist Trolling (Tom Latchem/The Daily Beast)

Trump Quietly Grants Defense Guarantee To Autocracy That Gave Him A Luxury Jet (S.V. Date/HuffPost)

Late Night Shows Receive Their Shutdown Talking Points

More Americans blame Trump, Republicans for shutdown than Democrats: Survey (Tara Suter/The Hill)

Public Trust in News Media Drops to Another New Low in Gallup Poll (Even Among Dems!)

Google News Shifts Blame for Gov’t Shutdown

Trump’s ‘Shoot the Hostage’ Shutdown Strategy (Andrew Egger/The Bulwark)

‘NATO for nonprofits’: Groups organize to band together if targeted by Trump (Peter Nicholas/NBC News)

Trump’s Flood of Emergency Appeals Is Straining the Judicial System (Lydia Wheeler/Wall Street Journal)  Much like all the bogus suits against Trump.

No Matter Who Controls What, the Media Will Blame the GOP if the Government Shuts Down

Read it.

Amid a government shutdown fight that highlights disagreements between New York-born President Donald Trump and two Democratic leaders from New York in Congress, the Empire State has found itself in the spotlight.

After Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., denied Republicans his party’s votes necessary to pass a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open, the White House froze funding for subway infrastructure projects in New York City.

“Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [diversity, equity, and inclusion] principles,” wrote Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on the social media platform X on the first day of the shutdown. Vought has the authority to determine which programs are essential during a shutdown.

Read it.

Streaming giant Netflix saw its shares drop 2.4% this week, or the equivalent of more than $15 billion in only a few days, following the call for a boycott of the company from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Forbes reported on Thursday.

Musk, billionaire and former White House adviser, urged his 227 million followers on X to cancel their Netflix subscriptions ‘for the health of your kids’ and slammed a cartoon he claimed promoted a pro-transgender agenda to children. Musk was referring to “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” an animated series featuring a gay, transgender teenage boy and a bisexual girl with autism.

The hashtag #CancelNetflix soon went viral.

The Foundry.

The “Schumer Shutdown” is here and Democrats have essentially reversed 30 years of messaging about the dangers of closing the government.

Forty-three Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Shumer, D-N.Y., voted against a stopgap budget measure Tuesday night that triggered a government shutdown. This came over protests by congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump.

It’s a remarkable reversal for America’s two major political parties.

In past shutdown debates, Republicans have typically been in the more difficult position of demanding budget cuts while Democrats blast them for not supporting X, Y, and Z. In many cases, there has been a Democrat in the White House who could help congressional Democrats craft any narrative they chose about the catastrophic consequence of the government closing.

They’ve typically portrayed the ensuing government shutdowns as something akin to the apocalypse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posted a montage of Democrats arguing during past budget battles, saying that shutting down the government would be devastating to the average American.

Read it.

Faced with a rapidly worsening budget outlook, German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) believes he has finally found a fresh source of revenue. By scrapping the long-standing “marriage splitting” tax benefit—a system that allows couples to pool income and reduce their tax bill—he hopes to plug the ever-widening budget holes. It marks the preliminary climax of a tax hike debate designed less to fix Germany’s fiscal crisis than to relieve politicians from the pressure of implementing structural reforms.

In truth, this development comes as no surprise. The SPD has long sought to abolish marriage splitting. The measure is framed as a response to Germany’s structural deficit, which is projected to balloon to more than €170 billion by 2029—provided, of course, that the German economy does not sink even deeper into recession than it already has.

Read it.

Well, it sells everything else….

Read it.

Crazed Trump hater Joy Reid took a break from ranting into her iPhone from her couch to appear on on Black Entertainment Television’s The Breakfast Club, where she claimed that working hard to earn more money and leave it to your own children is a major part of some sort of evil racist MAGA plot.

Funny how black women do their best to alter their appearance to get as far as they can away from looking like black women.

Read it.

Real America’s Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam visited the ICE facility in South Portland, exposing how the left-wing political machine operates, from Antifa attacks on the building at night to dark-money–funded NGOs providing support to illegal aliens by day. Together, this paints the picture of how the left’s machine works to subvert the nation, and in extension, national security.

Let’s begin with Bergquam’s late-night reporting outside the ICE facility in Portland that shows the federal government personnel countering Antifa warriors who attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s deportation program of criminal illegals.

By early morning, Antifa cells scatter like ants, only to be replaced by workers from leftist NGOs, according to Bergquam, who spoke with Steve Bannon. He noted that these NGO workers are “aiding and abetting illegal aliens” outside the courthouse in Portland.

Bergquam added, “These leftist NGOs are also part of the networks of telling these illegals when ICE is coming to their communities – it’s all a coordinated effort.”

Newsbusters.

As the Trump administration takes on the latest wave of left-wing violence, an obituary reminds us what happens when political killers get away with their crimes.

The law never caught up with Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur.

She died last Thursday, age 78, an honored guest of Cuba’s Communist regime — and honored, disgracefully, by tenured radicals in America’s universities, too.

Professors have placed the convicted murderer on lists of “African-American heroes” and present her as a model for activism.

Stanford University’s dean of students, Mona Hicks, quoted a “loving refrain from Assata Shakur” in a campus email at the time of the George Floyd riots:

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.’”

That language wasn’t metaphorical — when Shakur said fight, it was a call to violence.

She wasn’t just an activist. She was a terrorist, a self-styled “revolutionary” of the Black Liberation Army, a Marxist-Leninist radical group in the 1970s.

Revolution for them meant robbing banks, planting bombs and killing cops.

Newsbusters.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger published a list of reforms for the heinously biased online encyclopedia, including calling for an end to what amounts to an effective blacklist of right-leaning media, as exposed by MRC Free Speech America. The response was swift.

Sanger posted his “Nine Theses on Wikipedia” on X Sept. 29 and explained them during interviews with independent journalist Tucker Carlson and Just the News founder John Solomon. Sanger denounced Wikipedia’s “perennial sources” list, which MRC Free Speech America exposed for effectively blacklisting right-of-center media sources while greenlighting a majority of left-of-center media sources. In response, pro-free speech advocates joined in condemning Wikipedia. X owner Elon Musk, for his part, praised Sanger’s theses, writing, “Some good suggestions from the co-founder of Wikipedia.”

Pro bono publico has a lot of stretch to it.

In Court Filings, Oregon Police Slam Trump’s Portland Takeover (Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket)

Dallas Fed Respondents Turn Apocalyptic Amid Trump Push To Hammer Oil Prices

Trump Is Lying About Antifa to Justify His Authoritarian Crackdown (Jeet Heer/The Nation)

How Tom Homan wound up ensnared in an FBI contracts-for-cash sting (MSNBC)

MAGA Melts Down as Bad Bunny Is Named as Next Super Bowl Headliner (Leigh Kimmins/The Daily Beast)  The Daily Beast, as always, is concerned about this MAGA guy, whom only they apparently are able to see. (NFL chooses crossdressing leftwing activist from Puerto Rico to play Super Bowl LX Halftime Show)

Is Trump keeping all his promises? This MAGA couple doesn’t think so. (Hannah Knowles/Washington Post)  Now there’s a MAGA ‘couple’. They’re breeding like flies.

Under Trump, US cedes its share of China’s beef market to Australia (Reuters)

With Portland, Trump’s Police State Is Getting Bigger and More Radical (Perry Bacon/New Republic)

Pentagon Pete’s ‘Manic’ Meltdowns Exposed by Aides (Laura Esposito/The Daily Beast)

Trump’s new tariffs will slam America’s already brutal housing crisis (Rachel Cohen/Vox)  I wasn’t aware that we imported houses from foreign countries. Well, you learn something new every day.

YouTube to Pay $24.5 Million to Settle Lawsuit Brought by Trump (Wall Street Journal)  Still winning after al these years….

Trump Has Lost Credibility Worldwide, at Huge Cost (Andreas Kluth/Bloomberg)

Cutbacks at HUD come as Black homeownership falls (Emily Peck/Axios)  Because, as we all know, black homeownership is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer.

Elon Musk’s latest power grab points in a clear direction (Tom Tugendhat/Washington Post)

ICE officer seen on video pushing woman to ground has returned to duty (Camilo Montoya-Galvez/CBS News)  Evidently he had a good reason.

ICE Fires Chemical Weapon At TV Reporter In Broadview; ‘Unprovoked’ Attack Under Investigation (Mack Liederman/Block Club Chicago)  And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

Why Trump’s Use of Military in US Is So Controversial (Bloomberg)

Fully MAGA-fied Christianity (Peter Wehner/The Atlantic)  MAGA Is The New Nigger.

GAO: Trump Broke the Law by Withholding FEMA Funds

JB Pritzker Demands Americans Call Trump Exactly What He Is (Malcolm Ferguson/New Republic) “Mr. President”

Trump Administration Opens New Front to Strip Harvard of Federal Funding (Wall Street Journal)

Democrats Should Do the Honorable Thing and Refuse to Fund an Authoritarian Administration (Andy Craig/The UnPopulist)

Trump admin looks at deep cuts to homeless housing program (Katherine Hapgood/Politico)  Because, as we all know, housing the homeless is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer.

Judge Halts Trump Plan to Cut Hundreds of VOA Jobs

National Security Directive Declares War on Those Who Don’t Support Trump Agenda (Ken Klippenstein/Latest – Truthout)

Trump posts vulgar deepfake slam of Democratic leaders after White House meeting (Meredith Lee Hill/Politico)

Oregon Governor Says There’s No Insurrection, Tells Trump To “Stand Down”

Trump’s Shortsighted Campaign of Vengeance (Jonathan Chait/The Atlantic)

An American Friend: The Trump-Appointed Diplomat Accused of Shielding El Salvador’s President From Law Enforcement (ProPublica)

Trump posts racist, AI-generated video of Schumer and Jeffries ahead of looming government shutdown (Kit Maher/CNN)

After Volatile Summer, Trump’s Approval Remains Low but Stable, Poll Finds (New York Times)

Florida Plans to Hand Over Prime Miami Property for Trump Library (Patricia Mazzei/New York Times)  Like they did for Obama in Chicago?

Trump administration moves to defund inspector general watchdog group (Meryl Kornfield/Washington Post)

Trump says he’ll fire generals “on the spot” if he dislikes them (Colin Demarest/Axios)  Which he is entitled to do–he is, after all, the President.

Hakeem Jeffries slams ‘racist and fake’ video posted by Trump (Nicholas Wu/Politico)

Trump Refers to Racial Slur During Address to the Military (Shawn McCreesh/New York Times)

Targeting Tylenol Is Just Another Excuse to Blame Women for Everything (Katha Pollitt/The Nation)

Hegseth Summoned Military Leaders to Say “FAFO” in Disturbing Speech (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Trump says US cities should be ‘training grounds for our military’ in incendiary speech (George Chidi/The Guardian)  Incendiary!

CNN Whines About Kimmel Suspension but Ignored Years of Biden Censorship

Trump, 79, Admits He Struggles Descending Stairs (Farrah Tomazin/The Daily Beast)

Trump Press Sec’s Vile New Effort to Exploit Mormon Shooting Backfires (New Republic)

Hegseth to generals: Embrace MAGA military or quit (Colin Demarest/Axios)  Yeah, let’s put thtt MAGA guy in camo and see what he can do.

“It’s a war from within.” (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Fight Over Hidden Report on Trump Documents Case Goes to Appeals Court (Charlie Savage/New York Times)

Judge excoriates Trump in blistering decision calling efforts to deport pro-Palestinian academics illegal (Politico)

Trump’s USAID pause stranded lifesaving drugs. Children died waiting. (Washington Post)  Because, as we all know, the health of the world’s children is TOTALLY the responsibility of the U.S. government–and the U.S. taxpayer.

The View Decries Hegseth’s ‘Bizarre’ ‘Retro Vision’ of Physically Fit Military

Trump Makes It Very Clear They’re Going To Turn TikTok Into A Right Wing Propaganda Machine (Karl Bode/Techdirt)

Climate Doomsayer Michael Mann Resigns After Smearing Charlie Kirk as Head of ‘Trump’s Hitler Youth’

Trump and Hegseth’s plan for a MAGA military reset, told in 11 quotes (Herb Scribner/Axios)

Right-wing media run wild with the blatantly false claim that Democrats are shutting down the government to secure “health care for illegals” (Gideon Taaffe/Media Matters for America)

Trump is targeting the First Amendment rights of all Americans (The Contrarian) Just like a Democrat!

Elon Musk’s Wikipedia Competitor Is Going to Be a Disaster (Matt Novak/Gizmodo)

Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Targeted Noncitizens Over Pro-Palestinian Speech (Zach Montague/New York Times)

Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims to generals and admirals, some about the military (Daniel Dale/CNN)

Trump mandates all federal agencies send email blaming Dems for potential gov’t shutdown (Marisa Kabas/The Handbasket)

Behar Crash Out: ‘You’re Delusional’ to Think U.S. Will ‘Survive’ Trump

‘Disbelief’: Pentagon reporter can’t find one military official who liked Hegseth’s speech (Sarah K. Burris/Raw Story)

Trump administration uses taxpayer dollars to blame Democrats for government shutdown (NPR)  As NPR does with Republicans.

Legal Organizations Across the Ideological Spectrum Urge Court to Reinstate Lawsuit Against Trump Administration’s Unconstitutional Attack on Academic Freedom (ACLU)

The other reason Democrats are taking Trump to the mat in a shutdown battle (Jennifer Scholtes/Politico)

Judge orders Trump administration to preserve $233M in FEMA grants it attempted to pull from blue states (Kyle Cheney/Politico)

Trump to Americans: “Go F*ck Yourself”; shuts down Republican-controlled government, increasing monthly health care costs by hundreds of dollars (Governor of California)

Labor unions sue OMB, OPM for ‘unlawful’ threats of mass layoffs ahead of shutdown (Faith Wardwell/Politico)

The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

The Supreme Court’s newest decision could make it impossible to end the shutdown (Ian Millhiser/Vox)  No, it wouldn’t.

Trump’s MAGA-fied military prepares for “war from within” (Zachary Basu/Axios)  MAGA–is there anything it can’t do?

Trump attempts a major step toward dictatorship (Justin Glawe/Public Notice)

Trump Has No Mandate to Destroy America (Jamelle Bouie/New York Times)

The Commander in Chief Is Not Okay (Tom Nichols/The Atlantic)

Pritzker compares Trump to Putin, calls for invoking 25th Amendment for suggesting military use Chicago as “training grounds” (Chris Tye/CBS News)

Unions sue Trump admin over mass layoff plan during government shutdown (Avery Lotz/Axios)

Democrats Get Frantic Over Trump’s “Racist” Mexican Bandito Meme

The Republican Shutdown Argument is a Giant Lie (Jonathan Cohn/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew go full Democrat.

MAGA can’t expand its base — and Christian music tells us why (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte seems to hav a crush on this MAGA guy.

Trump Administration to Withhold $18 Billion for N.Y.C. Transit Projects (Matthew Haag/New York Times)

Not Just “Medbeds”: How TruthSocial’s Bogus Medical Claims Fool Elderly Trump Fans (Anna Merlan/Mother Jones)

The “Moral Monsters” Among Us (Adrian Carrasquillo/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew go full Democrat.

Hegseth’s Hatred of Americans Makes Him Unfit for Office but a Perfect Fit for Trump (Cathy Young/The UnPopulist)  Don’t hold it in, Cathy, tell us how you really feel.

White House fires much of the National Council on the Humanities (Washington Post)  Whose main job is passing out taxpayer money to Woke drones.

The foundry.

A Michigan youth center Friday hosted a memorial service mourning the “martyrdom” of terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The event featured local Islamic leader Usama AbdulGhani, a resident scholar and spiritual leader at a K-5 school, who praised Nasrallah’s “bravery” and “divine resistance”—a resistance he said is now led by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Nasrallah, the long-term leader of Hezbollah, an officially designated U.S. terrorist organization, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2024 after spending decades on Israel’s kill list for his involvement in numerous deadly attacks.

The event, held at the Hadi Youth Community Center in Dearborn, Michigan, commemorated the one-year anniversary of Nasrallah’s death and urged prayers for the “ultimate victory of the Resistance.”

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.