September 14, 2026

DEMOCRATS HAD JUST TWO YEARS UNDER BIDEN TO JACK UP SPENDING, AND AFTER FOUR YEARS, THE GOP STILL LACKS THE GUTS TO FIGHT THE RATCHET EFFECT: Congress mum on federal deficit hitting $2 trillion milestone, again.

The federal government has collected $4.8 trillion and spent $6.8 trillion, generating a deficit already higher than last year’s with still a month of borrowing to go.

“Such extraordinarily high deficits are just one piece of our fiscal situation that is falling apart,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said.

“The gross national debt recently hit the sobering milestone of $40 trillion; we’re now spending more on yearly interest costs than on our national defense; debt held by the public exceeds the size of our entire economy; and trust funds for programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on face insolvency in less than a decade.”

As of Thursday afternoon, however, even the so-called Republican “deficit hawks” in Congress haven’t responded to the news, following a pattern of lawmakers largely disregarding soaring deficit spending.

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” the wise man once said.

Posted at 1:43 pm by Stephen Green

ED MORRISSEY: Talarico Pulls Race Card for Some Reason – Hilarity Ensues.

[Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate Bo] French’s dumb tweet is not anyone else’s responsibility but French’s. Cornyn must have a lot of time on his hands these days to be playing Twitter Cop rather than U.S. Senator, which may explain why Texans decided to nominate Paxton in his place. Why Cornyn wants to apply the Akin Strategy to his own party over one stupid tweet by French rather than focus on the rapid rise of Marxists and Islamist sympathizers among Democrats in Texas, Florida, Michigan, New York, Maine, and elsewhere is a question Cornyn will have to answer … and should.

That brings us to Talarico, who has all but disappeared over the last few weeks in Texas, both on the stump and in TV ads. Paxton and the GOP have combined up for over $50 million in new ads hammering Talarico’s record, which started almost as soon as the RNC Midterm Convention closed on Thursday night. Talarico apparently also had nothing better to do than troll X/Twitter, and transformed Cornyn’s attack on French into an attack accusing Paxton of racism instead:

Oh, does Talarico want to talk about cowering to “extremists”? This is quite the election cycle for that discussion, which the GOP all but demanded in their convention last week. Rather than go after Abdul El-Sayed, Hasan Piker, Darializer Chevalier, Angie Nixon, or the DSA in response, however, Paxton instead targeted the extremism of Talarico directly:

[Paxton’s tweet concludes] “I will continue to focus on uniting our State and bringing together the broadest possible coalition to fight for Texas, our values, and our families.”

Whatever that means, indeed. Talarico has been a font of Academia-speak racism for the entirety of his career, not to mention an extremist on transgender issues and abortion. Now that the general election has begun, Talarico has had to reverse himself on allowing pediatric sex-change operations, declaring the existence of six genders (which he never named), God being “non-binary,” whatever that means, and hating his own “whiteness” as well as Christianity, when it was unenlightened by “Islamic mystics.” At present, the man who wants Paxton to be held accountable for racism is spending most of his time and resources in Houston and parts of Dallas to convince black voters to show up for him, after Jasmine Crockett accused Talarico and Texas Democrats of being the real racists in 2026.

Paxton’s response made it clear that he’s not going to play the woke rhetoric game with Talarico, and that the Democrat nominee is out of his depth and desperate for relevance. And we all know how desperation plays in politics and dating.

Which is why Kurt Schlichter adds: Don’t Believe the Hype About James Talarico.

The Republicans have vaults of video clips of this guy saying the remarkably obnoxious things, and the worst of them are related to his much-vaunted pseudo-Christianity. Leftists have no understanding of Christianity. They think that they can pull the string on their little Charlie Anti-McCarthy and have their dummy babble about sandals-n’-socialism Jesus to fool the religious rubes. But southern Christians are actual Christians, and they are well aware of the false-prophet problem in Protestantism. They hear this guy babbling about how Jesus isn’t the only way to salvation; Allah is too, and that ain’t going to play.

Talarico already has a lot of problems among blacks, which his blasphemy is not going to help. He beat Jasmine Crockett, but she and her supporters think he stole the primary. The Texas Democrats are divided between affluent whites and traditional black voters, many of whom are going to take one look at this guy and shake their heads. They may not vote for Paxton, but they may just stay home and not vote for Satan’s little demon. Same with Latinos — the dude gives off vibes that are no bueno to these traditional, family-oriented, hard-working patriots.

Don’t get cocky, y’all.

Related: They Call Him ‘Talafreako’ for a Reason — Wait Until You Hear What He Said About Parents.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE ESPN HAS GONE BEFORE: Sydney Sweeney’s naked betting advert ‘sexualizes’ women’s sport.

Sydney Sweeney has been accused of sexualising women in sport after appearing naked in a betting advert.

The Hollywood actress posed for Novig, a sports-prediction market company, in a video that has had almost one million views in four days.

The advert shows Sweeney sitting topless on a basketball hoop, saying: “So they wanted to show just sports.”

After saying “sports” nine times while playing tennis, golf, and baseball in various states of undress, she adds: “You can’t trade this, I just look good here. No betting on wars or deaths, and no politics. Just you and your take on sports.”

It closes with her walking away naked.

The 29-year-old Euphoria star has been criticised by female athletes, who have accused her of setting back women in sport.

Sweeney has set back sports all the way back to 2009, when ESPN magazine’s “The Body Issue” began running images such as these:

Perhaps even as far back as 1995!

Which is why: No One Is Really Mad About Sydney Sweeney’s Latest Ad Campaign. “USA TODAY’s ‘mixed reporting’ angle is not journalism. It’s not reporting. It’s how the media elevates a few random online voices in support of their narrative, namely that Sydney Sweeney and provocative ads are the controversial, extreme position. This is a pattern. They did it with jeans, they’re doing it with Novig, and they’ll keep doing it.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT OPEN BORDERS*:

*And why the Left loves them.

Posted at 12:32 pm by Stephen Green

THIS MATTERS:

And from the replies: “This is the same psycho clam who gave a ted talk about consensus mattering more than truth when she was (mis)managing wikipedia.”

Posted at 12:26 pm by Stephen Green

TYLER O’NEIL: Parents ‘Intentionally Left Out’ of AI Strategy Discussions Between Microsoft, Left-Leaning Teachers Union, Critics Say.

Microsoft teamed up with America’s second-largest teachers union to release a “National AI Safety & Privacy Standard” Wednesday, and critics are warning about the union’s left-leaning bias and the coalition’s apparent absence of engagement with parent associations or parental rights groups.

The American Federation of Teachers, its New York City affiliate United Federation of Teachers, and Microsoft jointly presented the standard, aiming to establish “legally enforceable protections to ensure the safety of students, families, and educators” following “months of intense negotiations and in the absence of any meaningful federal and state rules.”

Microsoft says the policy will go into effect on Nov. 1 for every school district that already has contracts with the company, and districts will not have to wait until renewal or to opt in.

“We have forged a hard-fought, iron-clad privacy agreement with real teeth that protects students and families, because no one else, including the federal government, has stepped up to do the real work,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said.

The AI company Anthropic, when launching its Claude for Teachers program, noted that it, too, was working with AFT “to align our terms and privacy practices with gold standards they’re developing.”

Yet critics sounded the alarm.

“After reviewing this agreement, one thing is clear: Parents were intentionally left out of the equation,” Tina Descovich, CEO of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Could Weingarten fail this far upward?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

LAWRENCE PERSON: Updates On The Murder Of Andrew Wimsatt. Here’s the high level summary of corrections:

In the original post, I said Andrew was a CHL/LTC holder who “likely would have survived his assault had he been carrying that day.”

The early reports I was relying on didn’t make clear that he was sitting on a park bench when his assailant snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the neck.* I had the impression he was still walking when the attack occurred. Obviously, in such a situation Andrew wouldn’t have had time to draw his weapon to stave off the attack.

I originally wrote that Benedict Ogbodiegwu, Andrew’s alleged attacker, “does not appear to have been released on bail for previous offenses in Travis County.” This may technically be true, but I didn’t think to search the Williamson County judicial database, where it shows he has had one felony and multiple misdemeanors dismissed.

But evidence has emerged that his attacker wasn’t just known as a crime risk, but a mental health risk as well.

Full details at the link.

Posted at 11:39 am by Stephen Green

THE OIL IS NO GOOD AT THE PUMP IF YOU CAN’T REFINE IT INTO GAS OR DIESEL:

“Who in their right mind would commit the huge lump of capital it takes to build a new refinery just to have it shut down by anti-CO2 nutballs the next time the Democrats are running the federal government?”

Posted at 11:24 am by Stephen Green

TO BE HONEST, I DON’T THINK ALBERT SPEER WOULD APPROVE OF SOMETHING THIS ROCOCO:

UPDATE: Two days after 9/11, leftist finds new ballrooms and arches to topple:

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll