October 9, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Don’t Get Too Excited About the AWOL Dem Candidates. “Democrats can weather horrible campaign optics because — DRUMROLL PLEASE — their flying monkeys in the mainstream media run interference for them. Aging, impressionable voters still watch the evening news and David Muir won’t be wondering what’s going on with any late-stage campaign weirdness. If Talarico says he has the 90-year flu then, by golly, he has the flu.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

GOD SAVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE FROM RABBIS WHO CAN’T RECOGNIZE EVIL LITERALLY STARING THEM IN THE FACE:

Posted at 8:46 am by David Bernstein

FORTUNATELY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY UP FRONT: The American Dream Costs $5.3 Million — And It’s Getting Pricier.

The report from Investopedia analyzes eight major milestones — getting married, owning a home, buying new cars, raising two children and sending them to college, retirement, paying for healthcare, owning pets, and taking an annual vacation. The total costs associated with these milestones were $5,320,133 in 2026, a 4.1 percent increase from $5,111,632 in 2025, according to the same report, which reviewed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Looking at each individual milestone, the cost of homeownership increased by 7.7 percent. Similarly, the cost of raising two children and sending them to college increased by 8.9 percent, and the cost of retirement also increased by 2.2 percent, according to the report.

Interesting that the cost of retirement is the one item that went up less than the rate of inflation.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

ICYMI: HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 8:29 am by Glenn Reynolds

MAKE SOUTH AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:

Grok translates Pancher’s tweet as, “Augusto Cury has decided to support Flávio Bolsonaro, according to an investigation by @igorgadelham
Support video is expected to be released in the next few hours.”

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

I MEAN, NO WONDER HE’S GONE INTO HIDING:

And I was joking when I posted this yesterday…

…or at least I thought so.

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

I’M BEGINNING TO THINK WE NEED TO GO BACK TO SINGLE-SEX COLLEGES, CURFEWS, AND DORM MOTHERS.

Posted at 7:51 am by Glenn Reynolds

OLD AND BUSTED: The Seven Fat Years and How to Do It Again.

—Then-Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, 1992.

The New Hotness? Wall Street Journal vs. Treasury Secretary Bessent Erupts as Pre-Election Blood Feud.

Too bad the Ultimate Fighting Championship stage has been taken down from the White House lawn, because if it were still there, it’d provide a venue for what is emerging as one of the bitterest and most consequential political and economic fights in the run-up to the midterm elections: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent versus the Wall Street Journal, and in particular the Journal’s Federal Reserve reporter and “chief economics correspondent,” Nick Timiraos.

Bessent targeted Timiraos in a social media post in August that has amassed nearly 4 million views. “One of the highlights of the Warsh Fed has been watching stenographers posing as journalists, like the WSJ’s Nick Timiraos, reduced to reporting Fed backroom gossip because they’re incapable of performing real economic or monetary policy analysis without being spoon-fed,” Bessent wrote.

The feud got even hotter this week, with the Journal publishing a breathless front-page news article on October 7 under four bylines with the not exactly earthshattering scoop that Bessent “can excoriate staff when he is frustrated”—as if no one in the Wall Street Journal newsroom, or Washington Bureau, or elsewhere in the media empire controlled by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, has ever expressed frustration in direct terms at a staffer. Buried in the article is the disclosure that “the Treasury Department blocked a Journal reporter from attending a press conference” and “the department also revoked the credentials of reporters from the Journal … to cover a G-20 finance ministers summit in North Carolina.”

Roger Kimball responds:

Exit question:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

YOUR BASE IS WHO YOU PANDER TO:

Posted at 7:20 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

(Also, eschew all modalities of cocksuredness.)

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Writing and Reflections Volume 3: Essays on the Writing Process from World-Building to Words.

Reflections on the many and far-flung fields that writing can touch upon, from original inspiration to the final work.

Magic and science. Talking birds and cats. Ideas and their origins. Magic, in schools, on the battlefield, and whether it is evil. Fairy tales. Exposition. Utopias. Wandering heroes in series. Wicked stepmothers and their motives. And more.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

THE BIGGEST SIGN WE HAVE THAT THE DEMOCRATS AREN’T SURE OF WOMEN IS THE IMPORTANCE GIVEN THE CLANCY CASE AND THE CORNELL CASE:  About That Night in Cornell.

Third, the timing of the claim is suspicious. I know her suit was technically filed in September, but coming as it does shortly before an election it qualifies as an “October Surprise.”

When I make this observation, I get criticized because the politicians who have shown the most interest in the case are Democrats running for office in deep-blue New York, and they are hardly in danger of losing their respective elections.

I think the critics miss the point. The timing and sensational nature of the claims about this case made by leftist pols force every other politician to take a public position on the case. No politician, even one cruising to re-election, wants to be seen equivocating on an issue like rape.

Now, it seems to have been mostly dropped, so it didn’t work. I’m almost in fear of what they come up with next to make women fall in line at the polls. Any bets? I hope it doesn’t involve a pregnant woman getting shot (by the police of maybe ICE) as is the old trick of communists everywhere.

Posted at 5:00 am by Sarah Hoyt