October 12, 2026

HOWARD KURTZ: The blue wave looks real until you look a little closer.

It’s like watching some sci-fi game with players competing on 470 different fields. Which is your basic definition of crazytown. No human being, without mainlining AI into his or her arm, could possibly track so many contests, so we bounce from one race to the next, with buzzers and bells, like a pinball machine.

Look! Charlie Cook is moving 18 House races in the Democrats’ favor! This is o-vah! The blue wave is getting stronger. Put a cork in this one, it’s done!

But wait a minute. The Republicans have a huge cash advantage. Big-time Democratic donors, for whatever reason, are sitting on their checkbooks. Don’t they realize the stakes? Are they all blinded by the sun on their private islands?

No cockiness, please.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

Posted at 2:29 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S A LOT TO UNPACK IN ONE HEADLINE: DHS Issues Statement After ICE Arrests Illegal Alien from Nigeria Who Exposed Himself in Public While Working for Congressional Campaign in Pennsylvania. “According to local reporting, Igbojekwe was working as a canvasser for Janelle Stelson, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district, at the time of the incident. He was arrested after he was caught in public with his pants off, fully exposing himself, in a residential neighborhood near a park with residents, including children, in the area.”

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

HMM…:

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

ROGER SIMON: Ilhan Omar Investigated in Time for… My Book?

No, I have not been conspiring with Tom Homan.

That Homeland Security agents raided Ilhan Omar’s DC apartment at 6 AM this morning, hours after Bob Goldberg of The Zionist Times published his glowing review of my novel EMET (thank you, Bob), which contained the following parody of Omar being shipped out, is entirely coincidental:

“Bilan Ali, a Minneapolis congresswoman Golub [the novel’s rabbi protagonist] regards as anti-American and extraordinarily ungrateful to the country that took her in, is packed into a foam-lined box with energy bars and lemon Gatorade. The Golem ships her to Mogadishu on Emirates, because it is the safest and most luxurious carrier. She arrives healthy, in a beekeeper’s suit labeled ‘RETURNED TO SENDER,’ and flies home first class within hours.”

20 minutes into the future?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHY THE WORLD MUST SEE ‘BEARING WITNESS:’ For those not familiar with it, “Bearing Witness” is the 47-minute documentary compiled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

To date, only selected public officials, including diplomats and legislators, and a few journalists have been allowed to view it. Their reactions are telling, as reported by Richard Pollock in his Substack column on the issue (Note especially the Blinken and Schumer responses):

“After viewing the film, former Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on November 3, 2023, ‘It remains almost beyond human capacity to process, to digest…It is shocking that the brutality of the slaughter has receded so quickly in the memories of so many.’

“About 40 U.S. Senators viewed the film in late November 2023 in a special Capitol Hill private screening. Marc Rod, a senior congressional correspondent for the Jewish Insider chronicled some of their reactions after seeing the film.

“Then Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida told reporters, ‘I think it’s really important not to sanitize this. Over time these horrifying incidents sort of lose their impact,’ he told reporters. ‘The one thing that struck me is how proud and gleeful these people were [about] what they were doing to civilians, unarmed children, people sitting around at home having breakfast, kids out at a rave party. It gives you insight into what human beings are capable of.’

“Senator Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas said after seeing it: ‘It’s the face of evil.’ Rod reported that ‘the usually voluble Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, clearly struggling with what he’d seen.’

“Cruz added, ‘There is a level of evil and hate and depravity that defies words. And it is astonishing that there are still some in America and across the globe who deny these atrocities occurred. This was not combat. This was the slaughter of innocent civilians. And the joy and celebration among those terrorists as they were murdering children — it simply defies words.’

“Senator Chuck Schumer, who then was the Senate Majority Leader said after seeing the film, ‘It was jarring and harrowing. It shook all of us up in the room. I had to go sit in my office for a half hour alone after seeing it.’”

Pollock’s report is for the purpose of encouraging the public release of the full documentary. Yes, it is horribly graphic, but so were the many films made of the German Holocaust and released to the public within days of the liberation by the Allies of the concentration camps.

I absolutely agree with Pollock. What do you think?

Posted at 1:17 pm by Mark Tapscott

IRAN ISN’T VIETNAM, YET: A new national survey — the Issues & Insights/TIPP Poll — found there are still significant numbers of Americans who support military action against Iran to ensure it never has a nuclear weapon.

“The first question the October poll asked was a straightforward one: ‘Do you support or oppose U.S. military action against Iran?’ Overall, 44% say they support the action (with 23% saying they strongly support it), while 42% oppose (28% strongly). Fourteen percent say they’re ‘not sure.’

“Not surprisingly, there’s a strong partisan split, with support solid among self-identified Republicans (71%), much weaker among independents (30%), and weakest among Democrats (26%),” I&I reports.

Posted at 1:02 pm by Mark Tapscott

AUTOMATION: Waymo’s driverless rides debut in Denver. “Before Waymo could carry a single paying passenger in Denver, two Colorado taxi companies asked the Public Utilities Commission to block part of its permit. Their complaint? That Waymo would get to compete without the regulatory burdens placed on large taxi companies. The PUC ultimately approved Waymo’s license, but the episode is a preview of the fights ahead.”

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

TOP GUN, 40 YEARS ON:

You want to talk nostalgia? Perhaps nothing hit the patriotic ’80s kid like Top Gun‘s opening scene on the carrier’s flattop. That was pure cinematic wizardry, the very pinnacle of the era’s patriotic pictures. Harold Faltermeyer’s slow synth pulse rising out of the darkness for morning flight ops, steam dancing across the Enterprise‘s deck, the F-14’s twin turbofans igniting to afterburner, the crew’s delicate choreography, sunlight breaking over the flattop and building a slow, steady tension until it breaks with Kenny Loggins’s soaring electric guitar launching Tomcats into the great blue. It was solemn, muscular, technological, and almost religious in its reverence for U.S. airpower, an anthem for the golden center of the American jet age.

It did almost half a billion dollars at the box office, inflation-adjusted, of course, and topped the charts as 1986’s highest-grossing movie. It ran in theaters for more than half a year. But it was more than just a financial smash. Top Gun was the living, breathing embodiment of 1980s America: cocky, confident, gutsy, technologically dominant, and glamorous. And maybe a little bit* gay. Vietnam was in the rearview mirror. The military was cool again. And director Tony Scott’s brilliance was that he got this hallowed vibe to eager audiences without the tedious moralizing so common in today’s Hollywood.

* Quentin Tarantino could not be reached for comment:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAKE NO MISTAKE, THE COST SAVINGS ARE RADICAL:

Posted at 12:26 pm by Stephen Green

ANTI-ITALIAN DISCRIMINATION: The Bigotry Behind the Columbus Cancellers.

“You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s anti-Italian discrimination. Columbus Day is a day of Italian pride. It’s our holiday and they want to take it away.”

So declares Silvio, one of the characters in The Sopranos, in a gloomy but very funny and politically incorrect scene at their regular meeting spot at Satriale’s market. The gang is upset by news of a local anti-Columbus Day protest. The organizers are planning a “death watch” over a statue of Columbus — that is, Cristoforo Colombo, the famous explorer from Genoa.

The woke liberal will be puzzled by this perspective from Italian Americans. It doesn’t fit with the left’s selective view of bigotry, restricted to “people of color” and other preferred leftist victim groups. The modern wokester is often confused by other ethnicities and nationalities and creeds that have experienced prejudice, particularly Christians whose liberties leftists are eager to limit when they clash with their purposes.

QED: Mamdani to skip Manhattan Columbus parade in latest snub to NYC Italian community.

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME BEIJING HAS EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL: China’s debt interest costs are soaring above U.S. levels and growing faster than any other budget category as Beijing struggles to prop up growth.

The world is flooded with debt, but while the U.S. and Europe have caused angst on global markets lately, China’s fiscal situation isn’t looking so great either.

In fact, China’s debt has shot up so much in recent years that interest payments on all its borrowing are commanding a bigger share of public spending.

Debt-servicing payments will account for 19.2% of the central government’s general public budget this year, up from 12% in 2014, according to new Conference Board estimates cited by the Financial Times.

That tracks with a separate report earlier this year from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which also found that 19% of Beijing’s spending is earmarked for interest on debt. That’s more than the 14% of the U.S. federal budget that goes to interest costs.

Ouch.

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green

THE AI ECONOMY STILL NEEDS BEGINNERS. This strikes me as very true: “The result is a difficult paradox: AI can make experienced workers more productive while it could reduce the number of opportunities through which beginners can acquire experience.” We need to figure out how to fix this, fast.

Posted at 11:32 am by Robert Shibley

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

Posted at 11:24 am by Stephen Green

NOW OUT, From Andrew Fox, Ghostlands.#CommisisonEarned

Posted at 11:02 am by Helen Smith