October 29, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED:

TRANSLATION, which for some stupid reason doesn’t embed:

MEGA-SCANDAL: The winner of the BERLIN elections, from the far-left party Die Linke, accidentally confesses that Hamas controls her party and fears for her life💣

A mistake has just triggered an astonishing security crisis. The magazine Der Spiegel—a media outlet, it must be noted, with a marked leftist slant—has brought to light an internal document proving how Die Linke has been hijacked by Islamism.

Its candidate to govern Berlin, Elif Eralp, accidentally sent the newsroom her private notes from an interview where she confesses to being coerced and terrified by Hamas operatives within her own party.

It turns out that after an interview, the candidate’s team reviewed the transcript. During this process, Eralp made internal comments that were meant to remain in the strictest confidentiality. However, the document with the un-erased annotations was sent back to the journalists.

The content of those notes is dynamite. When Der Spiegel asked her about Ibrahim Ibrahim—a pro-Palestinian Hamas sympathizer who celebrated the October 7 massacre—the public response was going to be evasive. But in the margin of the leaked document, Eralp wrote the truth: “There is a PROBLEM. […] my husband no, and neither do I, want to name specific names, he is afraid of these people and so am I.”

The leak exposes the raw reality of Islamo-leftism in Germany: Eralp even went so far as to compare the threat level of these pro-Palestinian militants to that of Organized Crime and implores to abort the publication: “I can’t put myself and my family in danger for Der SPIEGEL. What do we do now? Do we scrap the whole interview?”

The biggest joke of the entire situation, however, was captured in one of the phrases that Eralp did want to publish. In a display of utter disconnection, the candidate states in the interview: “What I can say with total clarity is that, as governing mayor, I will ensure the safety of all Berlin women and all Berlin men.” A promise that rings utterly ridiculous coming from a leader who, in the same document, secretly admits that she can’t even protect her own family from the rank-and-file of her party.

In the wake of the scandal, Eralp has announced that she will take legal action against Der Spiegel and file a formal complaint with the Press Council for having quoted her internal annotations. This judicial maneuver immediately reveals just how sensitive and utterly overwhelmed these leadership cadres really are when faced with crisis situations.

Berlin’s radical left believed it could politically capitalize on Islamic extremism; today, the documents prove that it’s the extremism holding them hostage.

We all saw this coming.

Posted at 9:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AAAAND THE HITS KEEP COMING! I know, poor Sarah’s “shocked face” is getting burned out, but Just the News just published a story about El-Sayed’s appearances and campaigning in Islamic centers, where they had said lovely things. Things like this:

“O our Lord, the Zionists have spread corruption in the land. Your forbearance has deceived them, so show them Your power, O Compeller. They killed our brothers and sisters, so take the worst revenge upon them,” the leader sang, according to the video…

***

“O Allah, take revenge on Israel and those who help it. O Allah, send down upon them Your wrath and punishment this very hour.”

Makes you all warm and fuzzy, don’t it?

 

Posted at 8:50 pm by Charles Glasser

OUR SOURCE WAS THE NEW YORK TIMES.  In his 2003 book Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite, Bernard Goldberg wrote:

So let’s get to the root cause of liberal media bias in America.

You guessed it! The New York Times, a paper 99.5 percent of the American people do not read, yet which is still the most influential newspaper in America because the most influential people in America do in fact read it.

So, yes, the New York Times does indeed occupy a unique place in American journalism. And it’s not just because its columns are syndicated to hundreds of local papers around the country. It’s mostly because it sets the agenda for so many other news outlets, especially the networks where most Americans get their world and national news. The fact is, the Big Three news networks wouldn’t know what to put on the air without it. As I’ve said in the past, if the New York Times went on strike tomorrow morning, they’d have to cancel the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts tomorrow night.

Some exceptions apply, of course:

More here: Bari Weiss faced ‘significant resistance’ from CBS News staffers about Alaska ballot scandal, insiders say.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY:

Tweet concludes:

He’s claiming that the opposing candidate will usher in internment camps, which would be a really uncomfortable fact, if his coworker and podcast partner had not floated someone with an actual Nazi internment camp guard symbol on his chest for President in 2028 prior to that candidate dropping out.

How would Rogers’ internment camps differ from those that Naomi Wolf swore were right around the corner in the fall of 2008? Sarah ‘Evita’ Palin to Usher in Rovian Police State.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

RIP: Marvin R. Shanken, Founder, Editor and Publisher of Cigar Aficionado Magazine, Dies at 83. “Shanken began his publishing career in 1972, when he purchased a small beverage alcohol industry newsletter named Impact. Within a decade, he turned it into essential reading for thousands of members of the spirits and wine industries. In 1979, he purchased a struggling newspaper given away for free at wine shops named The Wine Spectator, which he would grow and then transform into a glossy magazine prized by more than three million wine lovers as essential reading. In 1992, he released the premiere issue of Cigar Aficionado, a magazine he created based around his longtime love of cigars. The magazine was instrumental in bringing new interest to the long-struggling cigar industry, showing the world that cigars were luxury products rather than commodities. The magazine today has an audience of more than 1.3 million people.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHRISTIAN TOTO: How Legacy Media Weaponizes Late-Night Propaganda.

Late-night shows, “The View” and “Saturday Night Live” hammer President Donald Trump and all things GOP 24/7. It’s literally all they do from a political perspective. They downplay the DSA, when they’re not making excuses for their egregious views, ignore Democrats behaving badly and pretend Hasan Piker isn’t a pox on the culture.

These programs are in-kind contributions to the DNC. Period. That’s shameful enough. And while Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” is unabashedly on the Right, the show’s libertarian panelists (like Kat Timpf) routinely hold GOP feet to the fire.

As well they should.

The far-Left propaganda doesn’t merely exist on the shows themselves. Reporters at Variety, Entertainment Weekly, Deadline, TheWrap.com, The Hollywood Reporter and more regularly take these late-night screeds and turn them into news articles.

For almost 20 years now, SNL has existed only to provide Sunday column fodder for Beltway journalists. As John Hinderaker wrote in 2017 at Power Line, political reporters and wire services love to recap SNL episodes, because it allows them to get their biases in print while still maintaining a thin veneer of objectivity. “‘Respectable’ news outlets like the AP can’t publish absurd comedy skits ripping President Trump, much as they might like to,” Hinderaker wrote. “But by covering Saturday Night Live, they turn such meaningless attacks into fake ‘news.’”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

● Shot: Will we always have Paris?

Two worlds met in Paris last week. Thanks to the presence of Art Basel, some of the world’s most valuable art that wasn’t already in the city was shipped there. It arrived just in time for Paris to go up in flames. Most of the art fair went ahead as planned at the Grand Palais, but the final weekend was canceled.

Parisian friends and those who were visiting the city described scenes of Dada-esque absurdity. They navigated streets filled with burning bins and rioting “youths” in balaclavas, before slipping into champagne receptions. Some who attempted to get out of the city spoke of Mogadishu-like scenes at Gare du Nord, where the country’s newest net-contributors were busily assaulting any available police and stealing the luggage of any tourist they could find.

—Douglas Murray, The Spectator, yesterday.

● Chaser: It’s the Demography, Stupid.

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands–probably–just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.

—Mark Steyn, The Wall Street Journal, January 4th, 2006.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

SHAME IS IN SHORT SUPPLY OVER THERE:

Posted at 5:39 pm by Stephen Green

RIP: Patrick Stewart, Star Trek Captain and X-Men Superhero, Dies at 86.

UPDATE: Stewart answers one of the most important questions:

Posted at 5:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE ASSASSINATION FAN BASE: University of Texas Student Reaps the Whirlwind After Reading Depraved ‘Kirkiversary’ Poem at TPUSA Event.

A University of Texas at San Antonio student is receiving major blowback online after she gleefully read a poem celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk during a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) “Pick Up the Mic” event featuring Texas Youth Summit founder Christian Collins.

The student, who introduced herself as “Pamper Baby,” told the crowd she had taken a Plan B morning-after pill that morning and as an immigrant, felt guilty, so she “wanted to share a poem” she had written.

The student, since identified as Isa Casahuga, cited “freedom of speech” before launching into her demented parody of “The Night Before Christmas” glorifying TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s brutal assassination. Kirk was fatally shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

I wonder if Casahuga gave any thought that future employers will be googling her name, and it might give them pause before hiring her:

Sadly though, as Tod Lindberg wrote earlier this year at Commentary, Casahuga is far from alone in her bloodlust:

The wounded Reagan quipped to the lead doctor on his trauma team, “I hope you’re all Republican.” What made the quip amusing is that both Reagan and the team knew it mattered not in the least whether its members were Republican. The doctor, a Democrat, amusingly but perhaps a bit solemnly replied, “Today, we’re all Republicans.”

I think most Americans would like to live in a world where such an exchange is still possible. I’m not sure it is.

A significant number of Americans took to Bluesky, TikTok, Reddit, and the streets to express their regret that Trump’s would-be assassins had been unsuccessful and to praise the assassins of Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare’s Thompson. In the case of the latter two, many asked or offered their opinion on who should be next. (I won’t cite any examples. If you are at all online, you have seen them in abundance, and if not, you may want to spare yourself.)

At present, the assassination fan base is pretty much a left-wing subculture. So far, it has applauded attempts on the lives of a former president, a conservative activist, a corporate CEO, and a conservative Supreme Court justice. The closest thing on the right is the online coterie claiming that Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, did nothing wrong, either because they were let in or were duped into entering by a government plot. But to speak up on behalf of J6 defendants, even to the point of alleging conspiracies, is not the same as celebrating the assassinations of Kirk and Thompson and lamenting the misses on Trump. I hope no comparable figure on the left becomes a target that thereby allows us to ascertain whether there is a comparable fan base for assassination on the right.

We should also note that even “lone gunmen, acting alone” have to get their ideas about whom to target from somewhere. They, too, have social networks, which likely traffic in in-group suggestions about who in the out-group are the worst of the worst. So we are now living in a political culture in which a potential would-be assassin can count on a social network for inspiration and an outpouring of public support after the fact. This is fertile ground for evil, perhaps because assassins always believe they are doing good. And we may be cultivating more and more of them.

Last month, Marco Rubio tweeted:

Faster, please:

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

FOR BRITAIN, WWIII MIGHT BE FOUGHT ENTIRELY ON HOME SOIL:

And against the invaders already arrived.

Posted at 5:07 pm by Stephen Green

THAT ISN’T JOURNALISM: New York Times Increasingly Relies on Left-Wing Nonprofit Journalism.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine cover story, which stoked fears about farmed salmon causing pollution, was attributed to “the Outlaw Ocean Project.” That’s a nonprofit organization that says its major donors include “the Bloomberg Ocean Fund and Oceans5, the Oak Foundation, the Packard Foundation, 11th Hour Racing Charitable, LLC/The Schmidt Family Foundation, Humanity United, the Philip Stephenson Foundation, the Moore Foundation, the McPike-Zima Foundation, the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, the Drue and HJ Heinz II Charitable Trust, the Paul M. Angell Foundation, and the Becht Foundation…” Michael Bloomberg is a former Democratic presidential candidate and major Democratic political donor, and Oceans5 is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which a watchdog report recently identified as part of a far-left network of Rockefeller charities.

Wednesday, the Times followed up with an opinion section multimedia feature from Alissa Quart, “editorial director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.”

The Economic Hardship Reporting Project is a nonprofit organization with backing from left-wing donors including George and Alexander Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network, and the Ford Foundation.

The “news” is an op.

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

HE SAYS THEY MANUFACTURE THE BEST CHEESECAKES:

Posted at 4:36 pm by Stephen Green