TOO MUCH — AND NOT ENOUGH: Here’s What We Know About the Anti-ICE Shooter.
It’s been a busy day.
Archive for 2025
September 24, 2025
A WINK AS GOOD AS A NOD: Charlie Kirk’s Producer Connects Jimmy Kimmel’s Rhetoric to Dallas ICE Shooting.
CHANGE (IT BACK): U.S. Ed Dept will fund ‘unifying, uplifting’ civics, history lessons.
“Civics is largely a bipartisan priority, but debates about how the subject should be taught often break down along partisan lines,” writes Schwartz. Republican state legislators have focused on building civic knowledge and pride, and opposed attempts to engage students in lobbying local officials or working on solutions to local problems. They think “action civics,” as it’s known, means turning students into activists for their teacher’s favored causes.
National education groups have designed guidelines that try “to chart a middle path, emphasizing the importance of building both civic knowledge and civic dispositions,” she writes.
Trump’s America 250 group is certain to run into the same credibility problems as the 1776 Commission. “The membership of this coalition seems to represent one side of the aisle,” Louise Dubé, the CEO of iCivics, a civic education nonprofit, told Education Week. “We understand that this is an open coalition, and we believe it would be useful to our country to integrate more balance of perspectives so that we can as a nation exercise reflective patriotism at this critical time.”
I like patriotism, and I prefer it without foam at the mouth or self-flagellation. I hope the great normie center can decide to celebrate this anniversary in a unifying, uplifting and reflective way. There are a lot of us sane people.
But are there enough of us teaching K-12?
CORN, POPPED: Tables Turned on This Year’s Shutdown Theater. ”When you talk about the Freedom Caucus talking about passing a CR [Continuing Resolution] and the Democrats saying, ‘I’m going to shut down the government.’ I’ve never seen anything so weird in my life.”
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ROGER KIMBALL: Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk have exposed the media’s depravity.
The accepted media narrative was that Charlie Kirk was a “far-right” fringe figure. But his murder allowed millions of people to realize that Kirk’s ideas were also their ideas. They were mainstream ideas. Not only were those millions outraged by Kirk’s assassination, they were also free to celebrate his teaching. At the same time, many on the left greeted the murder of Kirk with a snarling ecstasy of hatred. They were glad Kirk was murdered. Some hoped his wife and children would be, too. Others provided lists of people who should share his fate. As Reynolds observed, “These aren’t just a few wackos. These are large numbers of people in professional and managerial jobs… who genuinely believe that holding ideas they don’t like should carry the death penalty.”
Which brings me to Plato. In Book II of The Republic, Socrates says that one thing no one can abide is “deception in the soul about realities.” Ordinary lies are one thing. People tell them all the time. But “everyone fears” the “true lie” that would disconnect one from the way things really are.
The commentator Scott Adams makes a related point when he talks about the people who are being fired or ostracized for saying hateful things about Kirk. The noteworthy thing, Adams says, is that they are surprised at the critical reaction to their vituperation against Kirk. They thought that the world at large would agree with them that Kirk, Donald Trump and their kith were fascists, Nazis, etc. They are shocked that this is not the case. They have been living in a media-nourished bubble in which Trump is the reincarnation of Hitler. They are, says Adams, “hypnotized Hitlerians.” They believe – because they have been assiduously instructed to believe – that America has been taken over by a Hitler-like figure. So in one sense, Adams notes, they are victims. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of Hitler? But the Hitlerians have been deceived in their souls about the truth. This does not mean they are not responsible for fomenting hate, only that their behavior can be explained.
More here: Scott Adams: Why Did People Think They Could Cheer Charlie Kirk’s Murder Without Consequences?
ADAMS: There are numerous stories of teachers and people associated with schools who are getting canceled—meaning fired—for saying horrible things: essentially being happy, or saying it was justified, that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. What do you think about that? People are losing their jobs all over the place.
Well, let me tell you the thing that is most shocking about that. The most shocking thing is that the people who spoke out that way believed they wouldn’t get fired. I think they were all surprised, which means they’ve been living entirely within a bubble in which they thought other people would agree with that. Are you kidding me?
They thought they were in the bubble of reality where—let’s say that Hitler was an American and he died—would you feel bad about saying, “Thank God Hitler died”? No, you wouldn’t, because you would assume that almost every single person would agree with you. So it would be easy to say that.
These people are saying it in public for the world to see, as if that’s what a normal person would think. How hypnotized would you have to be?
So, in my mind anyway—and I think I’ve said it online at least once—I think of these people as the “hypnotized Hitlerians.” You can drop the “hypnotized” if you need to. But the Hitlerians are people who live in this little world where they think Hitler actually came to power in the United States because so many bad people on the left have been saying that. People should know better.
But the DNC-MSM aren’t going to stop doing the “hypnotizing” anytime soon:
SUPERCUT: MSNBC has an addiction to calling ICE “gestapo.” pic.twitter.com/NjsYstcCbn
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 24, 2025
ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ADVOCATES’ NEW WEAPON: Cold, hard, numbers.
REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Another Chicago ‘Violence Interruptor’s’ Violent Career Interrupted by a Long Prison Sentence.
PSST! Come Read Antifa’s Official Insurrection Guidelines. “While leftwing midwits like Chuck Todd brayed things like ‘I don’t even know what Antifa is. I know what the definition of Antifa is. There is no group!’ the group was busy putting together promotional materials for new members.”
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TROLL LEVEL: POTUS DJT.
The White House has placed a photo of an auto-pen signature instead of a portrait of former President Biden on the “Presidential Walk of Fame” pic.twitter.com/4HRU7g8Vr8
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 24, 2025
SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS IN A HERMETICALLY SEALED ENVELOPE KEPT IN A #2 MAYONNAISE JAR ON FUNK AND WAGNALL’S PORCH: Jimmy Kimmel Proves He’s a Free Speech Fraud. “The Biden administration crushed free speech, and because it mostly impacted conservatives, Kimmel looked the other way. Then and now.”
20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:
🚨 JUST IN: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says if Zohran Mamdani carries out his socialist plans as mayor, NYC will be BEGGING for a federal bailout – and that he WON'T give it to them.
"I guarantee you, and there are not lot of things in life that are sure, that New York… pic.twitter.com/4K93ATNlpU
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 24, 2025
Tweet continues:
“I guarantee you, and there are not lot of things in life that are sure, that New York City will be coming to the federal government for a bailout if the Mamdani plans are implemented.”
HOST: Will you give it to them?
“Drop dead. Drop dead.”
I’m absolutely certain that the New York Daily News has a “TRUMP TO CITY: DROP DEAD” cover page already laid out as an Adobe InDesign file and ready to go for when Mamdani takes office and demands a bailout.
Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream.
Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but.
The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build.
Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy.
In 2011, the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, hailed it as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”
But ultimately, it’s been more emblematic of profligate government spending and unwise bets on poorly conceived, quickly outdated technologies.
“Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government subsidized energy schemes,”Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News via statement this past February. It “never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected, while relying on natural gas to stay operational.”
To revise and extend the remarks by the late P.J. O’Rourke, you can’t get good Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and the TV and you can’t get solar power in the California desert. That’s all you need to know about communism.
NEWS FOR LAWYERS: Avoid Super-Embarrassing Redaction Failures. “I have often run across documents written by lawyers that looked redacted—but all the supposedly secret information in them could be extracted with literally three keystrokes (ctrl-A, ctrl-C, ctrl-V). One was a court filing that was filed pursuant to a court order authorizing the redaction; but the material so carefully marked secret proved not to be secret at all. Another carefully tried to hide the real name of a litigant whom the lawyer was trying to keep pseudonymous; but the name was one copy-and-paste away from being visible. What’s more, when the documents were posted online in searchable spaces, search engines indexed the supposedly hidden material, so searching for the real name would find the document in which the lawyer had been trying to redact the name.”
CORRECT USE OF THE WORD “DIPSHIT” BELOW:
The gunman had anti-ICE messaging carved on the bullets he used. What, precisely, did I get wrong, dipshit? https://t.co/XRtFm4vdVB
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 24, 2025
I’m just waiting for the Community Notes.
YOU STAY CLASSY, GAVIN: Noem: Family Upset by Gov. Newsom’s ‘Bad Day’ Post.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her family was shaken by a cryptic post, taken by many as a threat directed at her, issued through California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office.
The post was short: “Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.”
But it had enough of a potentially dangerous angle to create a reaction from Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
“We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials. I’ve referred this matter to @SecretService and requested a full threat assessment,” Essayli posted on X.
The Hill reported that Noem told Fox News that the post from Newsom’s office was taken to be “menacing” and “panicked” her family and friends.
“It was cryptic, and it was really menacing,” she said. “It immediately panicked my family and friends.” Within minutes of the post being visible, Noem said she even got calls from her children: “Are you OK, Mom? Are you fine?” she said.
Whatever happened to “lowering the temperature” following an act of political violence?
Oh, right — that’s only for Republicans.
TOO GOOD TO CHECK: What Abba can teach Greta Thunberg.
When Greta Thunberg set sail with a 51-vessel flotilla from Barcelona last month, she no doubt knew that her attempts to “break the illegal siege of Gaza” would face pushback. But she might not have expected to be serenaded with Abba songs on the high seas.
Greta and her activists claim that Israeli drones hacked their radios just off the coast of Crete, blasting the Swedish band’s 1980 hit Lay All Your Love On Me through the speakers.
Putting aside how much of this is true or not, and whether a flotilla of activists is the answer to the Israel-Gaza war, I, for one, am very glad that Greta got the chance to listen to some Abba. They may have some good advice for her current predicament.
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The first time you heard Dancing Queen maybe you were at a wedding, a school disco or a basement karaoke parlour after one too many drinks. You probably threw your hands in the air, you were “having the time of your life”.
But at some point, in all our lives, we start to see the sadness of the song. Because Dancing Queen isn’t about the youthful dancer having a great time of it. It’s about the singer, watching from afar.
The singer sees everyone “digging the dancing queen”. But it’s not her. Maybe it was once, but now she’s been replaced by a younger, more exciting up and comer. It’s an elegiac paean to life’s tragedies, culminating in an uplifting acceptance that yes, maybe you can’t always be the dancing queen, but you can still enjoy the disco.
I get the impression that Greta hasn’t quite swallowed this pill yet. Hauled out of obscurity and into fame when she was still a child, she can’t quite let go. Maybe this is why she’s pivoted causes: moving on from wind turbines and donning herself in a Keffiyeh as the spotlight shifted.
Why it’s as if, “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself” or something.
UPDATE: Great moments in tolerance for diversity: “Greta Thunberg’s flotilla bound for Gaza has descended into chaos after pro-Palestine activists quit the convoy when they learnt LGBTQ+ campaigners were on board, it has been claimed…Between the defections, the meltdowns, and now Israel’s disco-level trolling, Greta’s Gaza cruise is looking less like a ‘humanitarian mission’ and more like a floating farce.”
IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT HIS PATIENCE WITH PUTIN SEEMS TO HAVE FINALLY RUN OUT: Trump’s UN Bombshell on Ukraine Cheers Kyiv and Their NATO Allies.
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