Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before: Second Quarter Real GDP Growth Revised Upwards by 0.7%

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Why is it that estimated growth rates always have to be revised downwards for Democrats and upwards for Republicans?

Because the left-wing bureaucrats consistently overestimate growth under Democrats and underestimate it under Republicans.

Note that it's the first estimate that gets all the press. The revision only gets noticed by economists and traders.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.2% in the second quarter of 2026, according to a U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released Wednesday.

In the first quarter, real GDP increased, at a revised rate of 2.5%.

The report released Monday, for April, May, and June, is an estimate, the third for the quarter.

Real GDP was revised up 0.7% point from the second estimate, "primarily reflecting upward revisions to investment, consumer spending and government spending," the Commerce Department's bureau also said.

Inflation came in -- say it with me -- unexpectedly low.

The key Commerce Department report released Wednesday shows consumer prices in August increased 0.3% from the previous month, less than Wall Street expected.

The report, the personal consumption expenditures price index, is the primary inflation gauge for the Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates based on inflation.

Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2%.

The seasonally adjusted 0.3% increase for the month, puts the 12-month gain at 3.4%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for increases of 0.3% and 3.7% respectively, according to CBNC.com.

Instapundit has some Russian Conspiracy Theory that the media manipulates economic news to favor politicians they vote for and to disfavor the politicians they hate.

What an absurd and Racist theory.

It is the best of economies, it is the worst of economies.

But which?

It really is a tale of two economies, depending on who you ask.

On the one hand, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the US economy has entered an "acceleration phase": Despite rising interest rates, the markets aren't tanking as many experts predicted.

On the other, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries railed just days before that President Donald Trump has delivered a "Rotten Age," with an economy that's "failing everyday Americans" -- and Americans seem to agree, with 63% disapproving of Trump's economic policies, per the RealClear Politics polling average.

By the numbers, Bessent has a strong case.

US jobless claims tumbled last week to levels not seen in years, retail sales are up and manufacturing is booming.

Importantly, the workforce participation rate is climbing -- so the low unemployment numbers aren't just the result of people giving up on the job search altogether.

As columnist Daniel McCarthy notes, "Establishment economists predicted none of this."

Well, they're usually wrong, it seems.

Trump's combination of lighter regulation, tighter restrictions on illegal immigration and protectionist tariffs is translating into more jobs here at home as businesses expand.

...

It's an old playbook, one that Bill Clinton's pollster Mark Penn wielded to defeat President George H.W. Bush in 1992.

The economy had actually recovered from a brief recession in 1991, but voters thought otherwise -- because the media told them so.

"There is often a huge disconnect between belief about the economy and the true economic state of affairs," Penn wrote in his 2007 book "Microtrends."

"Until the statistics are actually published, people tend to assess the economy through the eyes of the national media."

During the 1992 election, Clinton repeatedly told us we were experiencing the worst economy in 50 years.

The press echoed that message dutifully.

But as Penn recounted with glee, "The statistics that came out after the election showed that the period leading up to November had actually been a period of record growth."

Whether this is the best of economies, the worst of economies, or something in between, you can bet that for the next month-plus we'll be told it's the worst.

We always are, when the Republicans are in charge.

Although I am pessimistic about the midterms, NeverTrump liberal Frank Luntz of all people says that
the GOP hasn't lost yet.

His polling shows a rough cycle for both parties, but the details favor the GOP. Trump and Republicans aren't polling well, yet Democrats are doing even worse, and they've dug themselves deeper into their media bubbles. Even the turnout advantage Democrats are banking on turns out to be pretty thin.

"I'm looking at a turnout differential that advantages the Democrats by a couple of points, which means that there are more people who oppose Donald Trump, who are planning to vote, than those who support him," Luntz told CNN This Morning on Monday. "There's always been a historical advantage to the party out of power in the midterms, particularly in the first midterms."

A couple of points? That's it?

The party out of power usually walks into its first midterm with the wind at its back, and Democrats can only manage a two-point edge.

Luntz also explained why that edge is so fragile.

Trump's voters show up when he's on the ballot and stay home when he isn't, which makes his absence in November a bigger problem for Republicans than his approval ratings.

"When he is on the ballot, his people come out. They participate," he said. "They did in the on-year elections, 2016 and 2024. And they did not, in 2018. And they did not as much, even when Joe Biden was the president in 2020, for the 2022 election."

The fix is obvious, and Trump is already working on it. Luntz said the whole map hinges on whether the president can get those voters engaged again, starting with the biggest prize.

"But he needs his people to vote in a place like Texas," Luntz continued. "If the Trump voters participate, the Republican nominee in Texas is elected. If the Trump voters don't participate, the Democrats will achieve an upset. It's the same thing in states as small as Iowa, Alaska. It even matters in a state like Ohio."

Turnout is a big problem. I see a lot of conservatives trying to rally the base into turning out.

Muslim Terrorist Stabs Co-Pilot and Takes Control of Plane, Intending to Crash-Bomb It Into Tel Aviv; Israeli Passengers Aboard Channel the Spirit of Todd Beamer and Take the Cockpit

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Below, a passenger wearing the blood of the terrorist he beat up:

Pepel Klaasa @pepel_klaasa

A passenger on the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight recounts:

"We are currently in Saudi Arabia.

One of the crew members attacked the pilot with a knife and disabled the aircraft's systems. Yaniv (pictured?) and another passenger stormed the cockpit and subdued the attacker.

Luckily, there were two more pilots on board. They were the ones who managed to land the plane."

Well, yes. Overall, the probability that a plane full of Israelis will contain a trained assault team, two additional pilots, and, statistically, at least one cardiac surgeon, psychologist, lawyer, and diamond dealer is substantially higher than 50%.

Via bonhomme.

The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, thanks to the Israelis aboard "committing a genocide" on the terrorist.

I'm sure that's what CAIR will be saying any minute. When the Israelis beat the shit out of the terrorist attempting to kill them, did you know they killed 750,000 Gazan children? It's true. An Arab journalist said it. So it must be true.

A flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was unexpectedly diverted to Saudi Arabia after one pilot stabbed the other and "apparently tried to crash the plane", Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

The Flydubai plane - which took off from Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates early on Wednesday morning - signalled an emergency alert two hours into the flight.

Tracking data also showed a sudden drop in the plane's altitude.

Flight FZ1073 was forced to change course from its route to Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel and instead landed at Tabuk Airport in northeastern Saudi Arabia.

On arrival, accounts from passengers to local media detailed a stabbing in the cockpit of the plane.

In an address after the incident, Netanyahu confirmed the stabbing and said a passenger and crew member broke into the cockpit and overpowered "the pilot who had carried out the stabbing".

The pilot was arrested and is being questioned by Saudi authorities, the prime minister said.

The plane's captain and first officer were injured and taken to hospital, the company that owns Tabuk Airport said. It did not say what caused the injuries.

All the Jews are probably lying. I understand the BBC's refusal to just say the guy stabbed the other pilot. Who knows, maybe the other pilot slipped and fell on to a knife multiple times.

Flydubai said "an altercation occurred in the flight deck" and all passengers are safe and accounted for. The flight was carrying at least 150 people, with Netanyahu saying "almost all" passengers were Israeli.

And you can't trust the words of 150 different people, given that they're almost all Israelis.

...

Initial local media reports cited Israeli officials as saying a fight had broken out between two pilots.

But, speaking on Wednesday following the incident, Netanyahu confirmed later reports that one pilot had stabbed the other before "apparently trying to crash" the plane.

He added that an Israeli passenger told him "the plane went into a spin and began to descend" before the passenger and a crew member broke into the cockpit and overpowered the "pilot who had carried out the stabbing".

...

Passengers on board the flight have been talking to various media outlets. BBC News has not been able to verify their accounts.

You'd think the consistent accounts of 150 different people would verify each other's accounts, but no, these are Jews, and they probably did a genocide in the cockpit.

Yasmin Abukasis told Reuters that her daughter - who was on the flight - said a man holding a knife had forced one of the pilots onto the floor, and that there was blood everywhere.

Speaking from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, she said her daughter phoned her to say she heard screaming on the plane as a pilot called for help, adding that two other pilots took control of the plane as other passengers ran towards a man who had a knife.

"The plane start to lose control. So all the people, they scream, they think they are going," Abukasis told AP news agency.

One female passenger described the "very stressful" moment people realised the plane was descending. "We understood the pilots lost control," she told Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom.

"There are people here with shirts covered in blood," she said, adding: "Now we are fine and want to return home."

Another unnamed passenger told the Jerusalem Post that while passengers near the front of the plane forced the attacker from the cockpit after the stabbing of the co-pilot, two pilots from the back of the plane helped land the aircraft.

Almog Itali, who was also on board the flight, told media one of the pilots who landed the aircraft was British.

The other pilot was European, Itali said, although he did not provide a specific nationality.

The media is calling the attempt at a 9/11 in Tel Aviv an "altercation" or "flight fight."

The Detective-Karens of TikTok Has a New Obsession to Shriek About

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Oh good. The leftist Karens have decided on This Week's Hair-Tearing Freak-Out.

Two years ago, at Cornell, a woman arranged a sexual encounter with a frat brother. She showed up drunk, and then drank more at the frat, and then did ketamine as well.

She had a threesome with two frat brothers. She later told police the encounter was consensual and voluntary. She even mentioned that at several points some frat brothers attempted some light sexual behavior -- a kiss in one case --and she said "No" to it, and that behavior stopped.

Later in the night she had a second threesome with other dudes.

I imagine she got quite the reputation as a genuine slag over this behavior.

Although this became a scandal two years ago, and some frat brothers were expelled for drug use, no charges were ever brought. According to the woman's own statement, she voluntarily got drunk (mostly before she ever showed up), she voluntarily did ketamine, and she voluntarily engaged in two threesomes. In fact, she texted one of the frat brothers to tell him she enjoyed her threesome and she'd be up for more.

Now she says "I was raped." She's filing a civil suit and claiming that the frat brothers "drugged" her without her knowledge and that they had sex with her without her consent. Contradicting her previous statements.

But because this is a blue state (New York) where everything is gay and stupid, and the same TikTok Detectives who claimed Patrick Clancy killed his children are activated, the prosecutors are re-opening the case.

Prosecutors in upstate New York are defending their decision not to bring charges in 2024 after an alleged "gang rape" at a Cornell University fraternity.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten described the allegations as "morally disturbing" but argued that the facts he knew at the time did not support a prosecution.

"If what was said on social media about this case was true, those fraternity members would be in prison right now," Van Houten told ABC News.

Van Houten argued that Jane Doe's account of the incident from 2024 suggested that she consented to the sexual activity. He said that she did not withdraw her consent, and that when she raised concerns, the fraternity members "stopped and did not pursue what they were doing."

"She clearly consented in the beginning, and there was never any indication that she changed that to the things that she participated in," he said. "There is a disconnect in the sense of how the community and how social media has understood this to have happened. If at any point Jane Doe had said, 'I don't consent to this anymore,' or in those words, or in any form of communication. If there had been continued sexual activity, contact by these individuals, that would be a crime. But that's not what was alleged in her statement."

Apparently there is a Snapchat picture which is referenced but not detailed. I guess it shows the frat guys in a compromising position. But I have no idea. The DA acknowledges the picture is "gross" but is not evidence of a crime.

...

"But the question that we analyzed was: Did Jane Doe consent to what happened, and was she unable to consent?" he said. "I'm not clear on exactly how that was given to us, or if anyone here looked at it. That was not critical to our analysis, as I mentioned earlier. The issue was her consent, and if you take that Snapchat being vile and crude and vulgar, that did not have any relevance to the issue of whether Jane Doe consented to what was happening," Van Houten said.

The DA's comments come a day after his office announced it would be reopening the 2024 case in light of Jane Doe's civil lawsuit alleging that she was drugged, assaulted and gang raped by seven former and current members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell.

Cornell's Chi Phi chapter was barred from campus after the alleged Oct. 19, 2024, incident, though none of the individuals allegedly involved faced criminal charges, according to the DA.

An attorney for Jane Doe responded to Van Houten's written statement on Monday, alleging his client's claims were not investigated thoroughly.

Because she literally said she got drunk by herself, voluntarily did drugs, and consented to a three-way. What is the crime, apart from her admitted use of an illegal drug?

There is one fact that makes this seem like it could have been a rape. Three weeks after the event, she said she consented to the first threeway, but says she did not consent to the second (and whatever other sex she had later), and said she was raped.

But she also admits to having memory gaps, due to being drunk and high on ketamine.

Jane Doe in Cornell University case told campus police, "I can say with 100% confidence I was raped," transcript shows

...

CBS News New York investigative reporter Mahsa Saeidi exclusively obtained a transcript of the alleged victim's interview with campus police from a source.
Jane Doe describes initial sexual activity, gaps in memory

The interview began on Nov. 14 -- more than three weeks after the alleged gang rape -- and continued the next day.

A campus police investigator led the questioning. A Title IX investigator, a victim advocate, and Jane Doe's adviser were also in the room for the first day of the interview.

According to the transcript, Jane Doe described drinking and using drugs the night of the alleged rape, and said she had gaps in her memory.

The transcript shows she distinguished the initial sexual activity from what she says happened later, and when asked whether she was OK with the initial encounter, she said, "Yeah, as much as I can be because, again, I was super drunk when I got there ... But I was pretty OK with all of this."

And then this claim comes:

Jane Doe added, according to the transcript, "And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard."

According to the transcript, she said she didn't remember the end of the night "where I was raped" and didn't know how many people had sex with her.

When describing what happened later in the night, the transcript says Jane Doe said, "I can say with 100% confidence I was raped."

The transcript shows that throughout the interview, the investigator asks questions as he prepares her written statement.

Before discussing what Jane Doe said when men asked her for sex, the transcript says the investigator warned her that his questions may sound accusatory, but said he needed specific answers to determine the right charges.

According to the transcript, Jane Doe said she swatted one man's hand away and told him she was uncomfortable, and she told another man no a few times or that she was too tired.

"Was it 'no' or was it, 'eh, I'm tired'?" the investigator asked, according to the transcript.

The transcript says Jane Doe responded, "I think it's 'I'm tired.'"

According to the transcript, the investigator later asked whether she got tired of answering the men's questions and gave in.

"Yes. It was coercion, yes," Jane Doe said, according to the transcript. She also said she was "completely and totally incapacitated."

The DA says he never saw this part of the police interview.

It wouldn't change the charging decision -- she admits she doesn't remember what happened and it's hard to make a rape case when she was clearly given consent for another threeway. No, consent does not "carry over" to other people, but as a practical matter it's hard to prove that a woman who was freely agreeing to sex with multiple partners later didn't consent to additional sex.

Just by admitting she has gaps in her memory and is "pretty clouded," she's signing the jury form stating "reasonable doubt." Her admission that she doesn't even remember how many men she had sex with puts an exclamation point after reasonable doubt -- how can she say she withdrew consent for some sexual encounters when she doesn't even remember them all?

And her current story -- that she was drugged without her knowledge -- expressly contradicts her statements that she took the drugs voluntarily, and showed up drunk in the first place.

We frequently say that women should be warned not to get pass-out drunk and then go off with men. That's good advice, and should be repeated, but we're always told we're "victim blaming" and "slut shaming" when we offer good advice.

But some advice should be given to men, too: Don't sleep with women like this. Don't even be alone with women like this.

Normal women don't agree to multiple three-ways with strangers. If a woman agrees to this, she is psychologically abnormal, and you may be signing up a for a lifetime of pain for five minutes of pleasure. You may be signing up for a lifetime of persecution by a mentally-ill broken woman.

At any rate, enjoy. This will be the the Karens' screaming conniption topic for the next month.

Wednesday Morning Rant

—Joe Mannix

The AI mania continues to impress, not just due to specific mind-boggling decisions but the wider market environment. There is no shortage of madness in either, and they can help to explain each other. My favorite recent example involves the Japanese investment firm SoftBank and its pet company, OpenAI. SoftBank has gone all-in on AI, and OpenAI receives much of its investment. SoftBank has invested heavily in OpenAI and its Stargate Project, which aims to invest half a trillion dollars over a few years.

And SoftBank is not just blowing smoke. The money is actually involved, and not a small amount of it. There has been one story in the SoftBank/OpenAI financing saga that has been unfolding over the past few months, and it - and the market's response to it - has been fascinating. Back in March, SoftBank announced that it had secured short-term financing to the tune of $40 billion to dump into its AI investments, with OpenAI getting 75% of that. It went onto SoftBank's corporate card, but as anyone who has ever financed a big-ticket item with a credit card knows, that's a bad way to do it.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

The Morning Report — 9/ 30 /26

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. As CBD and I yammered on about, yet again, on the latest episode of the podcast linked here as well as the top of the sidebar and on the popular outlets listed at the bottom of this post . . .

we can bitch and moan all we want about the quality or lack thereof of our candidates, but we have to get out and vote . . . . early and often. I say that half in jest considering the Democrat/Left's history and penchant for election thievery,

The left-wing League of Women Voters is on notice after allegedly trying to pay high school students to register to vote earlier this year in Kansas. . . On Friday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sent a cease-and-desist letter to the League of Women Voters of Kansas and the LVW chapter in Leavenworth County, demanding the groups “immediately stop offering cash, gift cards, or any other item of value in connection with voter registration or voting…” 

as I and my fellow Wisconsinites witnessed a few weeks back when the Dems feared the leading candidate Francesca Hong an avowed DSA freak would win the race and then come this November get thrashed by Tom TIffany and so Milwaukee and environs somehow came up with the necessary ballots for David Crowley.

David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive, defeated socialist State Representative Francesca Hong by approximately 3,000 votes in Wisconsin’s Democrat gubernatorial Primary election, Tuesday, after a late night counting error delayed the results.

Five of nine USB sticks from Milwaukee’s central count facility delivered to the county courthouse shortly before midnight Tuesday night, were missing election results, containing only audit logs instead of vote totals.

Paulina Gutierrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said officials just clicked the wrong button on five of the tabulators, and downloaded audit logs instead of election results. Gutierrez said the human error affected approximately 15,000 absentee ballots. Officials were forced to return to the Bay View central count facility with a police escort to re-download the correct results from the five machines. The mistake delayed the final tally for the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary by more than an hour, pushing the announcement of David Crowley’s narrow victory over Francesca Hong into the early morning hours.

Crowley is touted as the so-called "moderate," but in a party of racists, criminals, perverts and tyrants who have spent the past 200 years doing all they can to destroy the nation as founded to secure absolute power for all time, what does that word even mean anymore?

Most Americans are busy working, raising families, paying mortgages and trying to figure out why their grocery bill suddenly looks like a car payment. They aren't spending Tuesday night reading the Democratic Socialists of America's political program. But perhaps they should. Because DSA isn't merely a group of activists holding signs outside city hall anymore. Its candidates are winning elections. New York City's DSA chapter says its endorsed candidates won nine of ten Democratic primary contests this summer. Two of those victories came in congressional races. The organization says its volunteers knocked on more than 800,000 doors during those campaigns. . . Again, those aren't Republican talking points. Those are DSA's own standards. So let's have the argument.

If Americans want public ownership of major industries, make the case. If Americans want to abolish the Senate, make the case. If Americans want to eliminate the Electoral College, fundamentally restructure the presidency and change the relationship between Congress and the Supreme Court, make the case. That's democracy.

But voters should understand what they're voting for. And Republicans shouldn't cheapen that debate by calling every Democrat a communist. Joe Manchin wasn't a communist. Neither is every liberal member of Congress. When every political opponent receives the most extreme label available, eventually voters stop listening. There is a much stronger argument available.

So when we say vote early and often, more and more it's less in jest and a reflection of the reality we face.

And not just in the blue wastelands but the threat is actually in solid bastions, or what we perceive and believe are solid bastions of Americanism like Texas. Please tell me that this maniac doesn't have a shot in hell!!!

Come November, Democrat James Talarico will face off against Republican Ken Paxton for the Lone Star State’s highly coveted Senate seat. Talarico has been flagged as a rising star for a party desperately seeking to regain momentum after a bruising 2024 loss, and some think he might be the man to deliver Texas to Team Blue. Politicos coo at his youthful vigor, his “aw-shucks” personality, and, most importantly, his frequent appeals to Christian theology. The aspiring senator boldly proclaims his alleged Christian bona fides in interviews and on the campaign trail. In an interview with The New York Times’ resident wonk Ezra Klein, Talarico detailed how his Baptist grandfather initially instilled in him Christian values, and how this seed of theology led him to seek ministry after finishing his studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Yes, it's Texas but still. I fear he has more of a chance of taking a Texas Senate Seat than of California or New York ousting the cancerous lesions occupying their senate seats and governor's mansions and replacing them with latter day Rockefellers let alone Reagans.

Early and Often, yo!!!!!

Have a good day.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Do the American people have a right to know?
  Who Killed DHS Whistleblower Philip Haney and DNC Official Seth Rich?

Daily Tech News 30 September 2026

—Pixy Misa

• Anthropic announced not long ago that it was paying SpaceX $1.25 billion per month to lease capacity in datacenters that actually existed. The number now looks to be closer to twice that. (WCCFTech)
  
  The only way to win is to own the stadium.
  
  
  
• Anthropic also listed its own IPO. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Seeking a valuation of $2 trillion and warning that not only will it not give humanity a home in the stars, it will very likely wipe us all out right here on Earth.
  
  Uh...

Tuesday Overnight Open Thread - September 29, 2026

—Doof

Howdy Hordelings! The Tuesday ONT has arrived. On time, as always. Open thread, as always. Ready to be whelmed?

***

I support this kind of torture!

🚨 #BREAKING: American man "kidnaps" Flock camera, subjecting it against its will to 23,040 license plates per second.pic.twitter.com/kYCJAD7CNv

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) September 29, 2026

-----

I agree with this in principle - but if Newsom thinks it's a good idea, I'm immediately skeptical

Newsom signs ‘ghost ticket’ ban but says its carve-outs need more work

California is taking action against the sale of “ghost tickets.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed Assembly Bill 1349, bipartisan legislation that targets the live-event ticket resale market. “Ghost tickets,” also known as speculative tickets, are concert and sports tickets that resellers list before they actually have them. The new law bars sellers from advertising, listing or selling tickets they don’t possess or have the legal right to receive, unless the event’s presenter or venue allows it. It’s intended to address persistent complaints from consumers about the practice.

“Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” Newsom said on X.

The law prohibits using software to get around ticket limits, queue and presale restrictions. It restricts websites and ads designed to make resellers look like authorized ticket sources. Sellers in violation could face misdemeanor charges and penalties.

***

“While there may be good reasons for exempting certain sellers from the bill’s provisions, such a carve-out deserves further discussion,” Newsom wrote.

Newsom didn’t say which sellers he meant. His concerns allude to amendments made in the final days of the legislative session. Critics say those changes in effect exempt StubHub, one of the biggest ticket resale platforms, from the new rules.

Ask the question "what the worst way this can be abused?" The logical answer likely means money in the hands of Newsom and other nefarious politicians.

-----

I read this multiple times and I'm still not fully understanding it!

A 24-foot tunnel borer chewed 2.7 miles under Lake Mead against water pressure of up to 218 psi, with a car tire carrying 33, to plant a drinking straw near the lake bottom, and the lake just hit its lowest level since Hoover Dam first filled it

Lake Mead hit another record low this month, which barely counts as news anymore. The lake has spent most of 2026 sliding past the marks set during the 2022 water crisis, and by September 22 it was down to 1,038.14 feet above sea level, the lowest it’s been since Hoover Dam first filled it in the 1930s.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: Las Vegas pulls 90 percent of its water from that shrinking lake, so why does a metro area of more than two million people still have water coming out of every tap, fountain and misting system in town? A big part of the answer is a machine that finished its job over a decade ago, working under more water pressure than any tunnel boring machine had handled before, at least according to the company that built it.

Back in 2008, the Southern Nevada Water Authority started building a third drinking water intake for Lake Mead. The two existing straws sit at 1,050 and 1,000 feet above sea level, and the lake kept dropping toward both, so the new one had to pull from near the bottom. Getting a pipe down there meant boring a tunnel underneath the lake itself, through ground soaked with the lake’s own water.

The job went to Vegas Tunnel Constructors, a joint venture of S.A. Healy out of Chicago and Salini Impregilo out of Milan, and to a machine Herrenknecht built specifically for it: the S-502, a tunnel borer the water authority describes as 24 feet in diameter. It went into the ground in late 2011 through a 590-foot launch shaft at the lakeshore, roughly the height of a 50-story building, straight down. From the bottom of that hole it chewed 2.7 miles through rock toward one precise spot on the lake bed, and on December 10, 2014, it broke through.

***

At the far end, the bore had to dock with an intake structure resting on the bottom of the lake. Crews blasted a shaft out of the lake bed with shaped charges, lowered a concrete-and-steel intake of more than 1,300 short tons (1,200 metric tons) into it, and anchored the whole thing with more than 1,000 truckloads of concrete, per the water authority.

Then the machine had to hit that target after 2.7 miles underground, which is arguably the harder trick. Breaking through into a lakebed with the water still sitting on top is its own special category of nervous; a much smaller machine pulled a similar stunt under a California reservoir this year, and that one only had 347 feet to cover.

Water started moving through Intake No. 3 to the valley’s treatment plants in September 2015. The whole design goal was elevation: the new straw keeps drawing with the lake below 1,000 feet, a line the older intakes were never built to survive.

Long article, which I find fascinating. Maybe too nerdy for you??

-----

On the subject of bodies of water -- ever wonder which US river is the oldest?

The Oldest River In The United States

The oldest river in the United States has, hands down, the most ironic name in all of American geography: the New River. Far from new, it is thought to be one of the oldest rivers on the entire planet, older than the dinosaurs, and older even than the ancient mountains it slices straight through. It is a river that was already flowing before almost everything around it existed. Here is the strange and wonderful story of America's most misleadingly named waterway.

The New River is widely considered the oldest river in North America, and it is frequently called the second-oldest river in the entire world, trailing only the Nile. It rises high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, near Blowing Rock, then runs north through Virginia and into West Virginia, covering roughly 320 miles before merging with other waters to become the Kanawha. For a river saddled with such a forgettable, generic name, it has a genuinely staggering pedigree.

-----

Speaking of old

Rod Stewart retiring from touring after more than 6 decades

Rod Stewart has announced he will be retiring from touring after more than six decades.

The legendary singer-songwriter, 81, announced The Final Encore Tour Monday morning, just weeks after canceling portions of his U.S. "One Last Time" farewell tour following a coronary stent procedure.

“Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation and sadness, I have to announce next year will be my last tour ever, ever, ever. I’m not retiring, but this will be the last rock and roll tour,” Stewart said in a social media post.

***

Stewart rose to prominence in the late 1960s with the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces.

His solo breakthrough came with the 1971 album “Every Picture Tells a Story,” featuring “Maggie May.”

***

He has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice: as a solo artist in 1994 and as a member of the Faces in 2012.

-----

Apologies to Ace if he already covered this on a Cafe thread

Bear goes into Aspen farmers market, eats pastries and bread

***

DJ Doof - This Date In Music History Edition

Born on this date in 1963 - American musician, singer, songwriter, Les Claypool best known as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and primary songwriter of Primus.

You wanted this one, didn't you?

***

On this date in 1976 - Rush released their first live album All The World's A Stage

***

On this date in 1979 - The Police had their first UK No.1 single with 'Message In A Bottle' the group's third Top 20 hit. The song was released as the first single from Reggatta de Blanc

***

Tonight's ONT brought to you by non-cryptic car codes

***

Doof Enterprises, LLC is excited about opening night of the 2026-2027 NHL season tonight. If you're not, we feel sorry for you!

Your feedback may or may not be very important to Doof Enterprises. Follow Mr. Doof on X @doof2112 or do the email thing – doof2112 at proton dot me.

Close it up

An Otter Cafe

—Disinformation Expert Ace

"My parents went to France without me!!!"

Head tilts galore.

Bowling trick shot-- hitting the 3-7 spare and then knocking over the 10 in the neighboring lane.

Criminals are amateurs at violence. Marines are professionals.

Fighter pilot unimpressed by amusement park rides.

Rapid pothole repair.

Poor dog spends his days in a hospital staffed by babies.

Bad babies.

Sneaky fake-sleeping baby.

Feed me.

What in the Noah's Ark?

Swimming with a juvenile jaguar.

Basically a cloned cat.

Confirmed: The ship that Moby Dick was based on, the Essex, was sunk by a sperm whale's head butt.

A "Moby Dick" Shipwreck Survivor Had a Theory About How a Whale Sank His Ship. 200 Years Later, He's Been Proven Right "This wasn't originally our hypothesis, it was Owen Chase's," one evolutionary biologist said of the whaler who first called the animal's forehead a weapon

* Researchers confirmed sperm whales can use their massive foreheads as weapons, validating a theory from the 1800s

* Drone footage captured sperm whales headbutting, systematically documenting the behavior for the first time

* A sperm whale's head can deliver a blow with the force of a bus traveling 40 mph

More than two centuries ago, a teenage boy watched a sperm whale sink his ship. Now, the theory that grew out of that disaster has been confirmed as accurate.

On Nov. 20, 1820, 15-year-old Thomas Nickerson was aboard the whaleship Essex, a specialized vessel designed for hunting and processing whales, when a massive sperm whale sped toward the vessel and struck it head-on. According to BBC Future, the whale swam roughly 900 feet away, turned and charged again, striking the bow. The Essex sank, stranding 20 men some 1,300 miles from land in what became one of the most infamous survival ordeals in maritime history and the inspiration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Now, 175 years after the novel's publication, researchers have confirmed how a sperm whale can take down a ship several times its size. The answer, it turns out, was predicted by Owen Chase, the Essex's first mate, who argued that the whale's enormous forehead was a weapon.

"This wasn't originally our hypothesis; it was Owen Chase's," retired evolutionary biologist Dave Carrier told the outlet. "An 18th-Century whaler argued that the forehead was a weapon, and we set out to test that." For two centuries, Carrier said, biologists had largely dismissed the whaler's account, but "the whaler's intuition and experience were probably correct."

...

"Whales are mammals, closely related to animals like deer and rams, where males compete by ramming," he said.

Well, and dolphins and orcas ram things too, and they're first cousins of whales.

Quick Hits

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Seattle passes bill to make polyamorous fruitcakes and whores a protected class.

Of course.

So the law will stop landowners from refusing to rent to sleazy smelly polycules with rotating homeless bang-bums.

Seattle passed a measure on Tuesday to extend civil rights protections to non-monogamous people and multigenerational households, and recognize additional sexual orientations and gender identities as protected classes under local law. The city council voted unanimously in favor of the bill.

As the largest city yet to pass such a law, Seattle joins a growing group of local governments acknowledging non-monogamous and polyamorous people as frequent subjects of housing and workplace discrimination, and in need of commensurate protection. Boston suburbs Cambridge and Somerville, and Berkeley and Oakland in California's Bay Area, have previously passed similar policies; Seattle is the 10th city to do so. Advocates say the efforts help local governments serve the many family structures that actually exist, not just the ones that are easy to define.

Research cited by the city council suggests that 10-20% of North Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy during their lives, while 5% are currently non-monogamous. More than 50% of respondents to a 2018 academic survey reported experiencing discrimination due to their consensual non-monogamous practices, including in medical settings, workplaces and family court.

Local advocate Jessa Davis helped spearhead the grassroots movement to enact a bill in Seattle after her partner experienced job discrimination in August 2024 due to her non-monogamy. Davis said the experience exposed which forms of discrimination were still "not illegal" in Seattle, even as targeting her partner "based on her sexual orientation or her gender identity or political ideology" would have been "covered in Seattle".

Following engagement with advocates, Seattle's Human Rights Commission penned an open letter in December 2025 in favor of a bill to address discrimination "on the basis of family and relationship structure" and to close "loopholes that currently allow exclusion, harassment, and denial of opportunity to persist unchecked".

"Decarceration" comes to Main Street USA.

EDGEWOOD, Pennsylvania -- The Evans family threw a Halloween party every year in their backyard on Linden Avenue. Neighbor Jeannine Fisher, who lives a few doors down, told WPXI, the local NBC affiliate, that she remembers "tons of people and kids" there. She also remembers the first time she met Idris Evans: He helped carry her groceries from down the street to her house.

It's the kind of street where that still happens. It's also the kind of street where people don't think much about whether the kitchen window is open on a warm September night.

Just after midnight on Thursday, police say someone came through that window.
Advertisement

Evans, 46, and his wife, Gina, woke up in their third-floor bedroom to find a man in his underwear attacking them with a kitchen knife. Gina Evans later told police, according to the criminal complaint, that the man was "psychotic" and kept talking about God and being God. She yelled for their boys, 8 and 12, to run to a neighbor's house, and they did. Then, badly wounded, she ran to another neighbor's house herself.

Her husband died in the hospital. He was a pediatric critical care physician at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh; co-medical director of its pediatric transport team, the doctors who go get the sickest children by helicopter and ambulance; and an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Police found the suspect hiding in the overgrown part of neighbor Sandra Trappen's garden, bleeding from deep cuts on his hands.
Advertisement

"This is not a place, you know, where you would generally feel fearful," Trappen said.

His name is Elijah Hemingway. He is 32 and from Pittsburgh's Hazelwood neighborhood. He is charged with criminal homicide, attempted homicide, burglary, and aggravated assault. He is presumed innocent.

What has unsettled people well beyond this block is what came out over the next 72 hours. Hemingway had been arrested in Allegheny County in July on a felony burglary charge and released without posting a dime. He had spent most of 2025 in a Florida jail and a court-ordered mental-health commitment after allegedly beating a girlfriend and fighting sheriff's deputies. And on Saturday, county police charged him with raping a woman on a footpath in Wilkinsburg, a working-class borough bordering Pittsburgh, about 14 hours before the Evans family was attacked.

Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her cross-dressing "bimbofication" husband. If you forgot that scandal, he would dress like a girl while wearing ludicrously oversized prosthetic breasts.

Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her husband Bryon, citing irreconcilable differences months after a bombshell report detailed his affinity for "bimbofication" fetish models.

The former South Dakota governor and Homeland Security secretary filed Monday in Hamlin County Court in her home state.

The couple have been married since 1992 and have three children: daughters Kassidy, 31, Kennedy, 29, and son Booker, 23. Kassidy and Kennedy both have children of their own.

In late March, days after Noem was fired as DHS chief by President Trump, the Daily Mail reported that Bryon Noem regularly chatted up women from the so-called "bimbofication" scene, in which adult performers augment their breasts with massive amounts of saline to achieve a "Barbie doll"-like appearance.

Citing "hundreds" of messages sent to three models, the Mail reported that Byron Noem said he coveted "huge, huge ridiculous boobs" -- and even shared a photo of himself wearing pink hot pants and a flesh-colored, well-endowed bodysuit.

A rep for Noem told The Post at the time that she was "devastated" by the revelation, adding: "The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time."

Nancy French reportedly sighed and said, "What I would do to have a manly husband like that."

The Venezuelan Shot by ICE Has Been Charged With Assaulting an Officer

—Disinformation Expert Ace

The violent illegal alien attacked ICE agents as they were serving him a final deportation order.

The media are demonic liars, and keep repeating "he had a valid work permit" as if this is the same as permission to be in the country. It's not. I think this is screwed up, but because we're allowing illegals to come to the country and stay here for years while their fake asylum claims work through the system, we give out work permits in the meantime.

This is not the same as permission to stay. For proof of that, observe this case, where an ICE agent was delivering a final deportation order.

But the media keep repeating "work permit, work permit, work permit."

The complaint accuses Garces-Perez of sideswiping an officer with his driver's-side car mirror and later attempting to hit an officer with his car, according to the Associated Press.

He was pulled over after a judge issued a final removal order, according to US Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas.

Garces-Perez provided his driver's license but ignored agents' requests to get out of his car, the complaint alleges. He discussed with an agent in Spanish moving the car and parking it, according to court documents, which say the conversation wasn't aggressive.

About a minute later, Garces-Perez allegedly "abruptly" closed the window and drove off. One of the officers was struck in his torso with the driver's side-view mirror.

Garces-Perez, who was reportedly shot in the back, then released from a hospital hours later, was an asylum seeker with a valid work permit, according to immigration lawyer Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch.

Meanwhile, the media keeps appeasing the Black Lives Matter revolutionaries by suggesting that a black woman was lynched by whites.

They always report the race of the hanged woman -- but refuse to mention the three men charged with killing her are black, too.

That's because the "Pro-Blacks," as Black Conservative Perspective calls racist black agitators, are pushing the conspiracy theory that whites must have done it because "blacks don't hang other blacks."

Lindsay Clancy's Scumbag Lawyer Kevin Reddington Contradicts His Earlier Defense, Now Insists That There's No Evidence Lindsay Clancy Murdered Her Children at All

—Disinformation Expert Ace

He's in court to ask that the judge just declare Lindsay Clancy innocent.

During the trial, he accepted that Lindsay Clancy killed her children-- she admitted it three times, and there was overwhelming physical evidence besides -- but now, during this motion hearing, joins the Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Cultists in wondering if someone else killed the kids.

He doesn't say it, but the Conspiracy Cultists claim that Patrick Clancy killed his children, then "hypnotized" Lindsay into believing she did it and confessing to it.

And this is where Kevin Reddington is now. Repeating the Cultist's conspiracies, ignoring his own client's admissions of guilt.

"Where's the evidence she did this?!" he now lie-asks.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued that prosecutors simply haven't produced enough evidence to prove his client killed her children. Prosecutors quickly fired back, publicly dismissing Reddington's assertion as a "laughable theory".

Despite the exchanges inside the courtroom, major rulings remain on hold.

Judge William Sullivan indicated that no substantial decisions are expected until at least November 2, leaving several key motions unresolved for the coming weeks.

Planning for a potential retrial also appears to be stalled. Both the prosecution and Reddington acknowledged that they are not yet ready to engage in formal discussions regarding a new trial date.

Reddington noted that he is unavailable to take the case to trial again until next June, though Judge Sullivan made it clear he has no intention of needlessly kicking the case down the road.

Outside of the core trial logistics, new legal representations have emerged. The holdout juror from the previous proceedings has officially retained new local counsel, bringing attorney Heather O'Connor on board, she announced in a press conference after the hearing.

Good. Sue him. Get him disbarred.

NYT Tech Editor Gunned Down by In-Laws -- Because His Trans Lifestyle Wound Up Influencing His Son to Wear His Sister's Dresses

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Modern problems.

Accused killer grandma attacked trans NYT exec when his son started wearing sister's dresses: explosive court docs

A grandmother who allegedly gunned down her transgender New York Times executive son-in-law accused him of inspiring her grandson to wear his sister's dresses, court documents show.

Jonathan McKinsey, the newspaper's head of engineering for games player experience, was allegedly killed by his elderly in-laws, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, on Saturday. They allegedly took turns shooting McKinsey in the parking lot of a park in Dublin.

Chen visited McKinsey and his wife, Candice Jang, to watch their children in 2023, a restraining order filed by McKinsey against Jang said.

Chen noticed McKinsey's son Wyatt had begun asking to wear his sister Alexis' dresses, a "phase" he was going through, McKinsey said, according to the records.

She then began allegedly berating him for the behavior, calling the young child a "disgusting queer" and a "pervert." Chen also allegedly hit McKinsey's young son in the back of the head when he asked.

When McKinsey begged her to stop, Chen turned her ire to the New York Times employee, who was transgender and transitioned from female to male in 2010, according to the documents.

She then called McKinsey the same names, the restraining order alleged.

The "trans" NYT "game journalist" reportedly physically abused his wife and child. And he says she told him to kill himself.

McKinsey also accused his wife of abuse in their relationship, including an episode where she pushed him to try to commit suicide, the documents say.

McKinsey claimed Jang told him he should kill himself because "no one would want to be with someone as f--ked up and transgender like me."

Jang first filed a restraining order against McKinsey last year, alleging he "threatened to kill me and my parents."

Alameda County prosecutors also charged him with two counts of misdemeanor child abuse after an incident where he allegedly hit their six-year-old son in the face with an open hand.

Jang also told investigators about a 2018 domestic violence incident, where McKinsey bruised her left arm, the charging documents say.

Who knows. Who knows.

Fauci Infected African Monkeys with Aerosolized Ebola.
His Primary Fear? Not an Ebola Outbreak. Just That the Public Would Find Out About His Faucistein Experimentations.

—Disinformation Expert Ace

Deb Heine at American Greatness:

Newly Released Fauci Files Reveal Dangerous NIAID-Funded Aerosolized Ebola Research

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released documents from Dr. Fauci's diary and emails Monday detailing his dangerous NIAID-funded research during the Obama Administration, including a 2015 experiment that exposed vaccinated monkeys to aerosolized Ebola.

The risky research was conducted at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick under a NIAID task order. The NIAID study compared four vaccines in groups of four monkeys exposed to aerosolized Ebola. The exposure was engineered to drive the virus deep into the lungs in a way natural infection would not, the records show.

The vaccinated primates reportedly developed necrosis, inflammation, and fibrin in the lungs, while the unvaccinated controls did not, indicating that the vaccine itself was making the disease worse. The experiments left 80 percent of vaccinated monkeys dead.

Fauci was mostly concerned with keeping the experiment secret so that the public wouldn't know about his failures:

"What idiots those guys at USAMRIID are," Fauci wrote on March 7, 2016. The work "should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place," he added. Two days later, however, then-NIAID director wrote that the experiments were "important for bio defense."

Fauci was outraged that the failed vaccine research was shared with U.S. embassy officials in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

"This should have been a classified experiment," he wrote in his diary. "The foolish DOD people send the data to the FDA and then circulated as FYI to various embassies including those in West Africa where we are about to engage on a much larger DSD vaccine trial for Ebola."

According to Fauci, the embassy officials "went bonkers" because it looked like the U.S. wanted to vaccinate people with a dangerous vaccine.

He also said such experiments should have been classified because they "could indicate a vulnerability."

...

Following this disclosure, NIAID officials discussed "damage control" in an email chain. "We may need to a bit of damage control here," NIAID's biodefense director wrote.

The problem for Fauci wasn't the dangerous experiments, but the possibility the public could find out about the dangerous experiments. So he took immediate steps to have the research classified.

"The DoD folks said that they wanted to publish the data. I said that I thought that it should be classified and the NSC people blew them out of the water and said that they agreed with me," he said.

More at the link.

Thanks to Comrade Arthur.

Meanwhile, MAHA is exploding over the CDC's recommendation to use covid vaccines "off-label."

"Off-label" refers to a use of a drug for reasons other than the recommended use. For example, trazadone is, per its label, intended as an anti-depressive drug, but it's also great for curing insomnia, so it is often prescribed off-label for that purpose.

In the case of covid vaccines, they are now recommended only for the frail or sick.

So the CDC is telling people to ignore that recommendation, and telling people to inject their healthy babies (at no risk for covid infection) with the covid "vaccine" off-label.

'Staggering surrender': CDC pushes COVID vaccines for healthy people 'off-label,' infuriating MAHA

Return of one-size-fits-all recommendations from Biden administration, after FDA issued limited approvals for elderly and high-risk, may hurt midterm turnout for GOP beyond spat with pro-lifers over lax abortion pill rules.

The second Trump administration increasingly resembles the Biden administration on two issues that played a major role in President Donald Trump's 2024 victory, raising the question of how many foot soldiers Republicans can turn out in November midterms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blew past its sibling Food and Drug Administration's targeted approvals of updated COVID-19 vaccines for elderly and high-risk Americans, quietly issuing recommendations last week that all healthy adults and children starting at 6 months old take the non-sterilizing mRNA products off-label.

The expansion is even more surprising because the FDA approved Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines without direct human evidence for the efficacy of the new formulations compared to a placebo, putting tens of millions of Americans who still get COVID vaccines for themselves or their children at risk of becoming guinea pigs.

The CDC cryptically cited "legal uncertainties and inquiries" for its one-size-fits-all jab recommendations, which simply reinstate its recommendations from the July 2025 immunization schedule for the upcoming "respiratory illness season."

Heidi Overton, nominee for FDA commissioner, pointedly affirmed at her confirmation hearing last week that the agency has deemed "all" approved vaccines on the market "safe and effective," giving the CDC cover for its off-label push.

Neither the CDC nor Department of Health and Human Services answered Just the News queries to explain the recommendations in light of the FDA's targeted approvals.

In 2027, Trump's Department of Education Will Begin Limiting Government Loans for "Students" In No-Hope Majors

—Disinformation Expert Ace

I voted for this.

Sounds good, but it's a very limited first step.

The new rule will mostly go after for-profit private "schools" teaching skills like cosmetology. Supposedly non-profit colleges and universities, where the bulk of educational fraud occurs, will mostly be untouched.

But one can hope.

If your degree doesn't pay enough, you can't borrow. Federal loans cut for low-wage programs

College students pursuing majors, advanced degrees or certifications in fields that consistently earn low incomes will no longer be able to take out federal loans to pay for their schooling under new Trump administration rules.

Many of the degree programs that educate social workers, artists, teacher aides and especially certification programs for barbers and nail technicians are likely to fail a new federal litmus test: Will they make more money upon graduation than if they never enrolled in the first place?

I can't believe this is even controversial.

The new federal rule, finalized this month by the Education Department, comes amid a national crisis in student loan defaults -- and is part of a larger effort to ensure a college degree or professional certification serves as an avenue for economic advancement rather than a debt trap.

It has also provoked debate over whether the mission of higher education -- and help paying for it -- should be tied to a paycheck after graduation.

But unlike other aspects of the administration's education actions, the new policy has relatively broad support, with some student advocates saying it should be tougher.

The Education Department hasn't yet calculated the final data against which institutions will be judged, leaving uncertainty on exactly what programs will face consequences.

The vast majority of bachelor's and advanced degree programs at public and nonprofit colleges and universities are expected to be safe, with about 3% expected to fail, according to the department's estimates.

Those are rookie numbers. We need to get that up to 50%.

But maybe this is the "foot in the door" to achieve a more sane policy.

However, about 33% of programs at for-profit schools are expected to fail.

Overall, 4.2% of students who receive federal loans or grants are enrolled in programs expected to fail the new benchmark, according to the Education Department. An estimated 5.2% of programs overall may fail, but not all students take out federal loans.

"For the first time in a very long time ... institutions and college leaders are going to be held accountable," said Michael Itzkowitz, president of the education research organization HEA Group. "They are going to start looking and paying more attention to economic outcomes than they ever have before."

We need to greatly expand the rule to cover the Fake Majors at "real" colleges.

These students will never be able to pay their loans back, because the "fields" they're "studying" have no economic use and therefore they will get a degree to become a low-paid barista. Then the taxpayer will have to absorb the loss of the never-repaid loan.

They write it off, Jerry. They just write it off.

Another benefit is that many of these "majors" are actually just training to become bitter revolutionaries. Many "subjects" taught in college now are just Marxist agitation towards chaos and tumult. Far from being a benefit to society, these fields train "students" to undermine and attack society.

And these Fake Majors contribute to the growing problem of what is called "the overproduction of elites," though I reject the word "elites" here. Scholars have noted that societies become unstable and violent when universities produce too many "elites" -- I would call them "aspirants to the elite," because they're failed would-be elites, not actual elites. People get degrees with the belief that they're tickets to an upper-class lifestyle and find out that they're not qualified for any job with an upper-class salary, or even a middle-class salary. They become savagely bitter and attack society itself, animated not only by the ideological tenets of Marxism but overpowering rage at a system that has "failed" them.

Maybe it was designed to do just this. The system is rigged to produce millions of useless-but-entitled, bitter, angry Democrat Socialists.

Medical schools strictly limit how many students are allowed into an actually necessary field which really is a ticket to the upper levels of the upper class. Medical schools make sure there is no overproduction of doctors. (Though many believe that they have become an unreasonably restrictive cartel, under-producing doctors to make sure that every doctor, no matter how unskilled, becomes wealthy.)

If medical schools do this, why don't colleges also limit how many students enroll in African America Experiences In Media? Why do they not try to limit how many very-important Feminist Critiques of Macho Culture in Gay Communities "scholars" are produced?

Since they won't limit the number of "elites" going into these fields, the government will just have to limit how much public money is loaned out to students in these no-hope, Barista Prep fields.

The Morning Rant: CAFE Is Neutered, But Not Dead Yet!

—CBD

The pathetic and impossible manipulations of the automobile market perpetrated by a series of ignorant administrations came to a head with the drooling imbecile figurehead named Joe Biden. Mandating an impossible 50 miles/gallon for 2031 was wishcasting on a grand scale. It is impossible to achieve without destroying the market for large automobiles and shifting America to tiny econo-boxes with ridiculous technology designed without attention to what consumers actually want.

But...that's what they want! The idea of sacrificing another American industry on the altar of ClimateChange^TM was (and is) the Democrat Party's wet dream! Imagine all of the people who would sign up for government assistance! All the new programs to retrain workers for the new green economy!

Thankfully, the current administration realized that CAFE was just another tool to destroy our economy, and gutted the future standard.

Heartland Institute Experts Applaud Trump's New, Realistic Automobile Efficiency Standards

President Trump’s decision to rescind the Biden administration’s deadly, costly, EV diktat is long-overdue. Government shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what types of cars and trucks people drive, nor be telling automakers, in the face of consumer demand as indicated through sales, that fuel economy is what they should care about the most. A fetishistic fear of climate change should not dictate American transportation policies. Thank you, President Trump, for putting average American drivers first.

Just not enough! They have allowed an increase from the current 30 miles/gallon to 35 miles/gallon by 2031. Instead of allowing consumer demand to drive technological improvement, the government did what all governments everywhere throughout history have done...tell us what to do. So the car companies will build shitty little cars that get good mileage so their average fuel economy will satisfy the government edict. That's not how markets work!

Anyone who has ever driven a modern car understands how ridiculous some of the solutions have been. That maddening auto-shut-off that kills the engine at seemingly random times when the car is stopped? Does anybody like that? Does anyone believe that adding thousands of additional starting cycles to a starter and engine is a good idea? Or the disappearance of spare tires because their weight cuts into fuel economy? What about the millions of people who get stranded and have to spend time and money for a tow to a tire shop instead of spending 15 minutes to change the tire themselves?

All of these "innovations" have opportunity costs that are borne by the consumer, but are not calculated into the decision. The auto companies are fixated on meeting CAFE, not improving the total cost of owning and operating an automobile. And that is government's fault!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Overseas Highway
Ralston Crawford

The Morning Report — 9/ 29 /26

—J.J. Sefton

Good Morning Kids. Let's start off with a couple of blood pressure-raising items and then ask a simple question. First off we have this rancid, repugnant despicable skank from Beantown...

. . . Registration documents tell enrollees that no legal status is required to earn a grant. “Classes cover organizing, public narrative, city government, immigration history, racism, and equity,” according to the New Bedford Guide. The program is also sponsored by the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, which funds deportation-defense lawyers and opposes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Wu’s administration is paying migrants $575 to enroll in a ten-week civic-engagement and community-organizing course to help migrants grow their political power to replace Americans.

From the funding of brown-skinned Anti-American foreign-born brownshirts with our own money, we move along to the ungrateful, self-hating America-hating scions of those who made fortunes by embracing America, Americanism and the free market to the fullest, now selling us down the river to the cancer on humanity from the east.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a $1.4 billion U.S.-based charity with funding from the Rockefeller family and other donors, has forged a "dangerous partnership with Communist China" and is pouring millions of dollars into China-based nonprofits that are advancing the Chinese Communist Party's foreign policy goals.

That's one of the findings in a new report, "The Rockefeller Network: How the Rockefeller Family Turned Their Oil Fortune into Extreme Climate Activism," out today from Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative watchdog organization.

Just to underscore the aforementioned, there's this bit of completely unsurprising commentary from the Speaker of the House...

Johnson revealed his thoughts about AI data centers during an appearance on Fox Business when host Cheryl Casone suggested that China has been stoking the opposition. “This is what Democrats do. Every election cycle they find something to glom onto and say that this is doom and gloom and everyone will die if we don’t win,” Johnson said. “Don’t buy it. This is a Chinese psyop. I really believe that. That’s not a conspiracy theory.”

I don't disagree, but certainly our own homegrown Luddite Communist scum are stoking the fears on their own, of course the Chi-Coms have the cash and wherewithal to fuel the propaganda campaigns against AI and for the insane Communists now running the Democrat Party in the hopes of derailing and hastening the destruction of America post November of this year and two years from now.

To this I ask of you all, where are our death squads?! Of course contrary to the Leftist blood-libels we are not racist Nazi white supremacists — we are tolerant to a fault, way too tolerant given that the wolves are now quite literally at our throats.

At the barest of bare minimums why are Wu the Rockefellers and all the other ne'er-do-well miscreant scions who commit treason by throwing billions of their forbears' wealth to those who seek our destruction, not in orange jumpsuits facing a life of pounding big boulders into pebbles.

A candidate seeking the State Senate District 47 seat in the November General Election was convicted recently of felony charges and sentenced on Thursday to seven years with two years to serve in a state prison. Or the Georgia State Senate. Justin Grant Gillespie, 41, of Hull, was convicted in a bench trial before Madison County Superior Court Judge Chris NeSmith, who found him guilty of cruelty to children and battery.

Meh, considering the past 200 years of our history, this is a nothing-burger from the Democrats.

If only we the people of We The People were the tiniest scintilla of the anti-(small d)-democratic fiends they accuse us of being, WOW! Where is our Meir Kahane/Simon Bolivar?!

Just axing the question, as the bromides from my old Brooklyn neighborhood might say. On these and all the other repulsiveness in the linkapalooza, I bid you all to,
Have a good day.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• Victor Davis Hanson: Republicans risk repeating 1992 by failing to counter economic pessimism with the facts about strong growth, falling inflation, rising incomes, and a recovering economy. Remembering the False Gloom and Doom of the 1992 Elections—and the Upcoming Midterms

Daily Tech News 29 September 2026

—Pixy Misa

• OpenAI still doesn't seem to have a handle on all its rogue AI activity. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Because they are idiots.
  
  
  
• Nvidia has launched a new platform for reining in rogue AI activity. (Tech Crunch)
  
  A profitable market because people are idiots.

Monday Overnight Open Thread (9/28/26)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Quote I

“Go back to Somalia, go live in Somalia then, if America is so bad,” he said. “And it’s not just Ilhan. It’s Ilhan. It’s Mamdani. It’s Sayed.” Former NBA player Royce White.

Quote II

“It’s not people like you, I would love to have you on,” Maher said. “I talk about Islam. It’s never personal, and it’s never about race. It’s about ideas. Religion is an opinion; that’s all religion is.” Bill Maher

Quote III

Revenues often come from activities that those with discretionary funding can afford like golf, the marina, and beer gardens. These activities are traditionally and predominately supported by white users. This racial inequity is born from a history of systemic racism & injustice. Wisconsin Communist Candidate for Gov, David Crowley

Sorry your kind sits on the front porch slugging down malt liquor and not congregating with us high fa-looting pilsner drinkers.

Good evening, it has been a while since you had Paul Joseph Watson and yours truly on one night.

Respect your elders? Treat women with respect? No, only the lust for enslavement by 7th century B.C. savages.

Anger grows across Spain after elderly woman is evicted from her home of 70 years
Maricarmen Abascal, 87, was removed from the Madrid apartment she had called home since 1955. Her eviction has fueled anger about Spain’s housing crisis.

That is what happens to the average citizen when they give up all means of self-protection.

Speaking of protection, Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna has left the rails pursuing the 2028 Commie nomination. The only leader qualified is a convicted multiple murderer!

How to win friends & influence Dems

Marwan Barghouti is serving five consecutive life sentences for murder. He is incarcerated in an Israeli prison. When it published a column by Barghouti in 2017, the New York Times tactfully described him as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.”

Now the ambitious Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna picks up the thread from the Times whitewash in calling for Barghouti’s release in order for him to become a Palestinian leader. “Palestinians must choose their own leaders. Barghouti has a unique standing among all Palestinian factions. He’s seen as non-corrupt, a strong leader and secular. Barghouti could deliver a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel,” he said.

*****

Would you like or love to Make America Great Again SCOTUS? Well for one thing, give Mr. Kenneth Jouppi back his fvcking plane, with an apology and a large check.

How a six-pack of beer and the Magna Carta could finally fix a problem plaguing Americans for decades
Kenneth Jouppi's $95,000 Cessna was confiscated after a misdemeanor conviction for bringing beer into a dry village

The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in a case out of Alaska that centers around an airplane, a six-pack of beer and an amendment to the Constitution that traces its history back centuries as a legal expert lays out the potential impact of the ruling to Fox News Digital.

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted," the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states.

That amendment is at the heart of a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court in December, and Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at Heritage Foundation, described it as "the case that libertarians and freedom-minded people have been hoping for years."

So what is happening next door in the Land of 10,000 lakes and 82 million TDS sufferers? It seems like Minnesota doesn't give a halal rat's ass about any citizen's rights.

President Trump’s Justice Department has taken Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul to federal court over gun-purchase delays that can leave law-abiding citizens waiting nearly two months.

The lawsuit targets a state permit-to-purchase system and local practices that DOJ says turn a constitutional right into a bureaucratic waiting game.

For a person facing a credible threat at home, 30 or 60 days is not an administrative inconvenience. It can be the entire emergency.

The Justice Department says Minnesota law imposes a 30-day period on residents who want to acquire a firearm for home defense but do not intend to carry it publicly. DOJ says the delays can approach 60 days in Minneapolis and St. Paul, even after an applicant has passed a federal background check.

When guns are banned. Only outlaws and a large number of useless LEOs will have them. And we know who will use them and who won't.

*****

The ONT Musical Interlude & Color-Rama Emporium

&&&&&

*****

Go big or stay home and blame the accelerator pedal says our, Genius Award Winner.

EUGENE, Ore. - Eugene police arrested a man after he repeatedly crashed his car into a bank building on Willamette Street, according to the Eugene Police Department.

EPD officials said that officers were called to US Bank at 800 Willamette Street around 10 a.m. on Sept. 24 after reports that a Subaru was running into the building. The driver left the area on foot before police arrived. When officers got to the scene, they found the Subaru parked near the front entrance of the bank. The cinder block siding of the building had a large hole in it, and rubble and debris were scattered on the sidewalk. The Subaru had heavy front-end damage with the front bumper and grill hanging down, and branches from bushes were stuck in the rear bumper.

*****

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Mixed Signals.

Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire & AceCorp, LLC. No shoes, no shirt, no lingerie, no problem. No more credit from the Liquor Store. And remember, Lutefisk happens.

Close it up