GRAHAM LINEHAN: “This is what ten years of ‘words are violence’ has achieved.”

KONSTANTIN KISIN: “[T]onight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn’t even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever.”

SUSPECTED SHOOTER OF CHARLIE KIRK IN CUSTODY: REPORT.

UPDATE:

BREAKING: A person taken into custody after Charlie Kirk was shot has been released, Utah Valley University says. https://t.co/wZ12LkYp8e

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 10, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARENTHESES STATES: Watching The End Game Of New York’s Climate Madness Begin To Play Out.

As I have written many times, with New York’s fantasy “net zero” energy plans, it is not a question of whether they will fail, but only when and how. The Democrats, who dominate state politics, and their environmentalist allies, are firmly committed to the impossible. Thus, they are caught in a trap of their own making, and from which there is no good escape. The fact that they are caught in this trap is obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skills, but almost all of our politicians and environmentalists lack those. However, a small handful of them are starting to sense the impending crash. This makes for amusing interplay.

The state’s Climate Act of 2019 directs hostility to fossil fuels on all fronts. In the realm of electricity, the Act mandates 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and 100% from “zero emissions” sources by 2040. The official plan for achieving those mandates basically boils down to building lots of wind turbines and solar panels, and then lots more of same — principally off-shore wind turbines — until a flood of infinitely “free” wind and sun washes over us and brings us to energy nirvana. Meanwhile, also on the path to “net zero,” development of natural gas infrastructure is to be halted and reversed. More than half way to the 2030 deadline, the progress toward the 70% renewable electricity goal has actually been negative (due to the premature closure of two large nuclear power plants). On the natural gas front, two big pipeline projects have been blocked by the state environmental regulator (DEC) on phony grounds of “water quality.” And meanwhile there are plans for big new electricity consumers (chip plants and data centers) in the upstate area.

Time to crank up the wind turbines! And then President Trump swept back into office, and as one of his first acts pulled the plug on the off-shore wind projects.

So as of this past Spring, here’s where we were: lots of new electricity demand coming along, all new natural gas infrastructure (including two big new pipelines) blocked, and the planned future of wind turbines (which wouldn’t work in any event) also blocked. Does anyone see a potential problem here?

Meanwhile, in the formerly Golden State: California Lawmakers Squeezed Refineries Out, Now Scramble To Pay One Well-Known Company To Keep Theirs Running.

After years of enforcing stringent regulations that helped force major refineries to close, California Democrats are now reportedly considering paying Valero millions to keep a San Francisco-area fuel plant afloat.

With two major refineries already scheduled to shut down and strict regulations in place, concerns about California’s already high gas prices have become a top issue for lawmakers. According to a Bloomberg report Tuesday, sources familiar with the private deliberations said lawmakers have discussed whether to pay Valero between $80 million and $200 million in state funds to keep its Benicia refinery operating.

The Benicia plant is slated to close by April 2026. The proposed payment would be earmarked for routine maintenance, one of the largest costs for refineries, Bloomberg reported.

When asked about the report and how the state has handled the refinery closures, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation it had no information to share.

Concerns over higher gas prices have mounted due to the scheduled refinery closures, with Republican State Sen. Tony Strickland telling the DCNF that the potential $8-plus per gallon is the “direct result” of Newsom’s agenda.

Isn’t that what Democrats want? Of course: Steven Chu, Obama’s incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” A few months earlier, the L.A. Times published a column extolling “The joy of $8 gas,” which of course would lead to what the paper would describe the following year as “funemployment.”

But for Gavin Newsom, a 2028 presidential bid is far more important than saving Gaia. (I’ll believe global cooling/warming/climate change/climate chaos is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act that way themselves, to coin a Insta-phrase.)

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Megyn Kelly and Andrew Klavan Watch Piers Morgan “Trans” Guest Melt Down When He Asks What “Non-Binary” Means:

On Substack, Stephen Knight sets the scene: Laurie Penny’s car crash appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored reveals a lot about nonsensical new identities.

Laurie Penny is a British author and feminist. And she has always been insufferable. Penny exemplifies that deeply obnoxious combination of privilege, faux-radicalism and a cluelessness that forces satirists to up their game. In fact, if Laurie Penny didn’t exist, it’d be necessary for Andrew Doyle to invent her.

I did naively assume she may dial down the trendy, cringe inducing student activism given she is quickly approaching her 40’s. But there are no signs of that happening if her recent appearance on ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ is anything to go by.

Penny was 1 of 5 panellists on Morgan’s show to discuss the recent arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan for social media posts. Penny of course had absolutely nothing of value to say about that, doing her very best to justify Linehan’s arrest.

But it’s what she said (or rather couldn’t manage to) a little later that was the most illuminating part of the discussion.

This transcript of what happens when Morgan asks Penny to define “non-binary” is such a nonsensical word salad that it would astonish even Kamala Harris:

A transcript of the Laurie Penny on Piers Morgan shit show. They/them is truly the grift that keeps on giving:
(Piers Morgan)
Blaire's a trans woman. Why don't we let her answer?
(Laurie Penny)
I'm also transgender.
(Piers Morgan)
Which trans are you, if you don't mind me asking?…

— Julie Bindel (@bindelj) September 9, 2025

Transcript continues:

MORGAN:  Which trans are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

PENNY:  I’m non-binary.

MORGAN:  What does that mean?

PENNY:  I’m a non-binary person. I use they, them pronouns. Sorry, are we going to spend… Do we really want to spend the rest of this discussing my personal gender identity?

MORGAN:  You’re the one who mentioned it. I didn’t even know.

BLAIRE WHITE:  This is a nightmare.

MORGAN:  Okay, so now I know. I’m just asking you what that means.

PENNY:  Like, do you really want to discuss this?

MORGAN:  You raised the subject of yourself being trans. I’m simply asking…

WHITE:  Can I finish my point? It’s always a non-binary person speaking over a transsexual.

MORGAN:  It’s really interesting to me. You raised it, not me. I didn’t even know. So now you’ve raised it. What does that actually mean? What do you mean, you’re non-binary?

PENNY:  Are you really, really just gonna…

MORGAN:  Can you explain it?

PENNY:  Are you gonna cut Blaire off now?

MORGAN:  I’m just asking you to explain. I’ll come back to Blaire in a moment.

WHITE:  Well, you were the one that cut me off, Sis, but I will say…

MORGAN:  Sorry, Blaire, wait one second. I just want to ask, what do you mean by non-binary?

PENNY:  When I say I’m non-binary, I’m expressing my identity in a way that I have a right to do. What does that mean?

MORGAN:  I’m sorry?

MORGAN:  What’s your sexuality?

PENNY:  My sexuality? It doesn’t have anything to do with my sexuality.

MORGAN:  Actually, the UK government now says that people are male or female. The British Prime Minister says people are male or female.

PENNY:  I don’t think the UK government should have the final say on how I express myself and how I’m treated. Well, they determine the laws of the country. I’m just curious what you mean by non-binary. MORGAN:  What does that mean? PENNY:  I go by they/them pronouns.

MORGAN:  What does that mean? This is only one of you. What does they, them…

PENNY:  Actually, they, them has been… The collective they has been used to refer to individual people for centuries and still is. So, if you don’t understand basic grammar, that’s on you.

MORGAN:  I don’t understand. I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t understand the concept of what non-binary means or why you would use a plural pronoun to describe a singular person. To me, this is the problem with the whole woke thing. It’s inexplicable. Nobody really knows what it means. I don’t know what you mean by non-binary, they, them. There’s one of you sitting here, and you look to me, female. You’re a female. Are you a female?

PENNY:  If you don’t understand what non-binary means…

MORGAN:  Are you a female?

PENNY:  If you don’t understand what non-binary means, then I’m not sure you’re in a position to lead a debate.

MORGAN:  So just tell me. But if you can’t explain it in simple language, then what’s the point?

WHITE:  Explain what non-binary is. I can tell you exactly what being a transsexual is.

PENNY:  It means that my gender identity is something other than man or woman. I’m a non-binary individual.

MORGAN:  But you accept you’re a female?

PENNY:  I don’t think that I’m here to discuss the contents of my underpants.

MORGAN:  You raised this whole thing. I didn’t mention anything about what you were. You did. You said, I’m trans.

PENNY:  This has really become uncomfortably personal. Has it?

MORGAN:  You said it, not me.

In response, JK Rowling adds, “I hereby publicly announce that I am non-trinary:”

I hereby publicly announce that I am non-trinary. I identify as not man, not woman and not non-binary, because Laurie Penny just trashed that brand. I will be treating all questions on my new identity as though the asker is demanding nudes. You have been warned.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 9, 2025

In the clip at the top of this post, Klavan tells Kelly, “I’m not surprised that this person identifies as something they can’t even define. And the kind of self-righteous attitude they took like ‘how dare you ask me what I mean when I say something, sir.’ You know, ‘how dare you’ is comical, but it’s only comical in the in the context of this greater tragedy of people talking confused young people into madness.”

FORMER ESPN HOST SAMANTHA STEELE PONDER:

John Podhoretz adds, “this is the experience of EVERYONE in New York. Everyone. And anyone who says different is lying.”

JD Vance notes:

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s only going to get worse under Mayor Mamdani.

ED MORRISSEY: Boom: Biden ‘Reckless’ to Run Again, Says … Kamala Harris.

And the incoherence only gets worse. Harris refers to “months of growing panic” about Biden’s cognitive “health,” which is a longer timeline than the three weeks between the debate and Biden’s withdrawal. Harris claims she didn’t speak up out of “loyalty,” but Harris wasn’t supposed to be loyal to Biden. She swore fealty to the Constitution, and if Harris had “months of growing panic” about Biden’s unfitness for the job, the Constitution provides the mechanism to deal with it. Harris could have convened Biden’s Cabinet and then gone to Congress with those concerns, and had him removed from office over incapacitation.

However, Harris then argues that there was no reason for “months of growing panic” in the first place:

“Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president. On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” the excerpt says.

“But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser.”

“I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,” she writes.

So … what was the “months of growing panic” about, then? Why gripe now about having to remain silent out of loyalty? Harris wants to eat her cake and have it at the same time with this argument. It seems likely now that some in the White House will admit to Biden’s incapacity while in office and implicate Harris as being aware of it. In her book, Harris appears to be providing cover stories to cover all bases, even when those stories contradict each other.

Pro tip:

NOT ANTI-WAR, JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE: Pro-Palestine protesters confront Trump during night out at Washington DC restaurant.

Donald Trump was shouted at by pro-Palestine protesters who accused him of being “the Hitler of our time” as he went out for dinner in Washington DC.

The president took a rare evening off to sit down for a meal with members of his cabinet as he attempted to demonstrate that his crime crackdown in the US capital was working.

Mr Trump has claimed the capital’s nightlife is booming as a result of decreased crime levels after he took over the city’s police force and deployed the national guard.

Trumpeting the success of his policy, Mr Trump treated members of the administration to a meal at Joe’s Seafood, located just a stone’s throw from the White House.

Ahead of the president’s arrival, the restaurant was screened off by secret service agents, who performed security checks and turned away diners hoping to grab a walk-in table, according to the Washingtonian’s food editor.

But as the president sat down at his table, several women began to loudly protest, a clip shared by a CNN reporter on social media shows.

The women stood in the restaurant screaming: “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!” and were led across the street by law enforcement.

Well they’re right, inasmuch as every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge has been accused at one time or another, or being Hitler. But since the protestors are all alive today, they’re all very much wrong. (And why would pro-Palestinians be using Hitler as an epithet? The Grand Mufti could not be reached for comment.)

UPDATE: Activist Loons at Restaurant Inadvertently Prove Trump’s the Worst Authoritarian Dictator EVER. “My irony meter exploded into tiny pieces when the people who side with the terrorists who would like to eliminate Jews equated Trump to Hitler. The projection is off the charts.”

You know how I know Trump isn’t Hitler?

Those protesters all went home to their families tonight instead of a prison camp. https://t.co/oCa0i0QtjK

— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) September 10, 2025

WHOA: Kamala Harris Unburdens Herself of Joe Biden, Rips Him, Jill, and His Team in New Book.

The problem with Harris wasn’t a lack of two-minute introductions at events, or that the comms team didn’t spend most of its time singing her praises. The problem was Harris. She had always been an unlikable, inauthentic politician who only got to where she is through a series of questionable connections, corrupt dealings, and the fact that California is a deep blue state.

Harris’ accusations don’t just stop at a perceived lack of proactiveness in defending her, though. She goes on to claim Biden and his team were actively trying to harm her.

Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.

The plain fact is many people who come to work with a new administration in the White House haven’t done it before. It’s a job unlike any other, and not every person, no matter how talented in their former position, can step up into such a high-stress, round-the-clock role. Others find they just don’t want a job that doesn’t pay particularly well, takes a massive toll on family, and rules out anything resembling a normal life. I’m not going to keep people on who can’t thrive in their jobs—it’s not fair to them and it’s not good for the country.

So the first year in any White House sees staff churn. Working for the first woman vice president, my staff had the additional challenge of confronting gendered stereotypes, a constant battle that could prove exhausting.

Gendered stereotypes? The only reason Harris got the position was because she was a black woman, a fact that no one really denies at this point. She also enjoyed lavish praise, far more than any past vice president, from the mainstream press throughout her tenure. Yet, she’s painting herself as a victim. It’s astonishing.

I was the first vice president to have a dedicated press pool tracking my every public move. Before me, vice presidents had what’s called a “supplemental pool,” as the first lady does, covering important events. Because of this constant attention, things that had never been especially newsworthy about the vice president were suddenly reported and scrutinized.

And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more.

There’s nothing ambiguous about that. Harris point-blank accuses the White House of trying to sabotage her, and perhaps she’s right on some level. There’s no doubt that animosity existed between Harris and Biden and that it extended to their teams. There’s also no doubt that many in the White House, including Jill Biden, held a large grudge after the former vice president accused Joe Biden, her then-primary opponent, of racism.

Flashback to June of 2021: Is Biden and President Klain Setting Kamala Up for Failure? The Abuse of Kamala Harris.

THE WAR ON WORLD WAR II: Why False Revisionism Must Be Defeated.

Nearly a year apart from each other, Tucker Carlson interviewed guests Darryl Cooper and David Collum — “amateur” historians — who have erroneously circulated false narratives about the war, contradicting the story that the Allied Powers were entirely morally ‘good.’

Last summer, Cooper ignited a bevy of notoriety and backlash by claiming Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II for declaring war on Germany after the invasion of Poland. He even provided cover for Adolf Hitler. This August, Collum posited, “The story we got about World War II is all wrong” to which Carlson agreed, and even suggested the Allies should have aligned with the Nazis and fought the Soviet Union.

The interviews were certainly “incendiary” as World War II historian Victor Davis Hanson stated before refuting Collum’s mischaracterizations of the war point-by-point. The year prior, British historian Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, pummeled Cooper’s “staggering ignorance and disregard for historical fact” against the man who, arguably, saved Western Civilization.

Still, millions of people consumed Carlson’s videos; and there is a susceptible audience prone to accept the historical inaccuracies as gospel on a first glance rather than critically reading to discern fact from fiction. In fact, Americans are reading less, so YouTube videos, social media, and podcasts hold more weight as sources of information. But the correction is never as large or widely promoted as the initial report; so there is a danger in the amplification of these egregious narratives.

Andrew Fowler of RealClearHistory asks, “This ignorance makes revisionism more dangerous, as audiences are less equipped to separate fact from fiction. The question becomes: what is the revisionists’ end game? Certainly not to perpetuate freedom or to properly educate the public. Regardless, it is sowing distrust in the very foundations of democracy.”

“End game” implies a single, unified goal; Gnosticism for its own sake is also a possibility. Back in 2012, the European Union went on a full Oceania meets Whig History bender and declared that WWII was actually “The European Civil War” that foretold the coming of the EU. In 2022, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times similarly fired up the memory hole when he declared, “Ukraine Is the First Real World War.”

Regarding Tucker’s interview with Daryl Cooper, Lee Smith of Tablet wrote last week, “What did it matter to Carlson that his stunt could’ve cost Trump the election? His brand is despair and demoralization, and the model works best when Americans have lost faith in their country. Like Obama, he was hacking away at the United States’ historic roots and dismantling its heroic narrative of itself: Churchill was the bad guy, and everything your grandfathers believed and fought for was a lie. The Greatest Generation was a hoax.”

JIM TREACHER: Cracker Barrel Surrenders.

Cracker Barrel “steamlined” their logo last month, and everybody went completely bonkers. I think Trump even tweeted about it? Probably. He tweets about pretty much everything, and no slight to the American dream is too small.

So of course, Cracker Barrel caved almost instantly.

Which was a big mistake! Barrelheads (as we don’t call ourselves) smelled blood in the water and pushed for further concessions. We don’t like what their fancy new citified CEO has been doing with the place, and we want ‘em to put it back like it was. It wasn’t broke and didn’t need to be fixed.

Today, the enemy retreated another step.

Bullying works!

And now is not the time to stop. If your local Cracker Barrel has been remodeled, ask why it hasn’t been changed back yet. If the entire chain admits this whole thing was a mistake, why should you be punished for it?

Don’t be a jerk about it or anything. Just something to bring up when the cashier asks how you enjoyed your meal.

Today, Cracker Barrel. Tomorrow, McDonald’s. No more big gray shoeboxes!

Heh, indeed. They don’t have to go all the way back to their original Googie-style structures of the 1950s with the enormous golden arches jutting out. I’d take the mansard roof boxes of the 1970s, as long as the staff are also wearing throwback polyester uniforms from that era:

HOW WE GOT HERE:

This year I’ve been thinking a lot about how the western world got so dysfunctional. Here’s my rough, best-guess story:

1. WW2 gave rise to a strong taboo against ethnonationalism. While perhaps at first this taboo was valuable, over time it also contaminated discussions of race…

— Richard Ngo (@RichardMCNgo) September 8, 2025

Read the whole thing.

GHOULISH: Media Turn Charlotte Stabbing into Another ‘Republicans Pounce’ Story.

The corporate media have finally been shamed into covering the brutal stabbing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zaruska by a mentally ill black man in Charlotte, and predictably, they’ve turned it into a “Republicans pounce!” story. In between gasps of horror that the Trump administration has “seized on” the story, print outlets and TV talking heads have been hard at work identifying the real culprit of the gruesome murder: insufficient public health funding.

First, let’s address this idiotic comment by CNN’s Abby Phillip on Monday: “People are murdered every single day…but this particular one, I’m trying to understand why this has become such a flashpoint on the right.”

Curiously, one of her colleagues at CNN has the same take:

Did they really think a story like this could be memory holed into oblivion?

Apparently, yes they did:

🚨 Ben Shapiro drops a TRUTH BOMB: The media buries stories when the narrative doesn’t fit. If the races were reversed, it would dominate headlines for months. pic.twitter.com/1viY6ZARs6

— Victoria Byrne (@Thevictoria76) September 9, 2025

NEWS YOU CAN USE: iPhone 17 Pro vs iPhone 16 Pro: Here’s everything new.

Apple has big storage changes coming to this year’s iPhone 17 lineup.

All iPhone 17 models, including the Pro and Pro Max, now start at 256GB of storage.

With iPhone 16 Pro, the smaller model started at 128GB while only the Pro Max started at 256GB.

Also new this year: iPhone 17 Pro Max offers the first-ever 2TB storage option.

On the pricing front, despite persistent rumors of price hikes, Apple’s new Pro models have good news.

• iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099: this is technically a $100 increase over iPhone 16 Pro, but with the higher starting storage, it’s actually the same cost as a 256GB 16 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199: exactly the same price as the iPhone 16 Pro Max

If you want to upgrade storage, the 17 Pro Max will cost you $1,399 for 512GB, $1,599 for 1TB, and a whopping $1,999 for 2TB. iPhone 17 Pro has similar $200 bumps for 512GB and 1TB, but there’s no 2TB option.

The obvious question is, “who needs a two TB iPhone?” YouTubers and other social media video shooters could certainly find it appealing, as this 2023 article at Lifewire suggests:

“If iPhone brings USB-C and up to 2TB of storage internal, then if you were on the road and running out of space on your laptop, you could potentially transfer over a bunch of your files to your phone temporarily until you get home to clear things off,” filmmaker Travis Johansen told Lifewire via email. “A huge benefit of having a two terabyte phone is also just the fact that shooting 360 video in 4k or even 8K takes a ton of space.”

Record With ‘Reckless Abandon’

As the iPhone’s video capabilities improve, professionals can shoot TV shows and movies with just a phone. But at that level, storage fills up fast, and because there is no option for external storage on the iPhone (no SD cards, for example), you need to make sure you have enough space.

It’s not just movie makers either. Musicians can also fill up their SSDs pretty fast, as can podcasters, especially video podcasters, or folks recording multiple audio streams from several participants.

“For me, as a podcaster and content creator, I am definitely interested in the freedom of having that much space to be able to record, edit and store all of the episode assets without being tethered to the cloud,” podcaster Nate Runkel told Lifewire via email. “I like that I will have essentially a mobile podcast studio in my pocket that I will not have to worry about running out of space in the middle of a project and will be able to edit on the fly. It will also grant me the freedom to shoot videos in 4K with reckless abandon and zero fear.”

Also, it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come in 70 years. This 1956 photo gives a sense of how much physical space a five megabyte hard drive required:

Now two terabytes fits in your hand.

So how are Apple’s AI features, which proved to be an enormous bust this year, after last fall’s massive hype, coming along? This doesn’t sound promising: Apple barely talked about AI at its big iPhone 17 event.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG. Mark Judge: From Alger Hiss to Russiagate: Seven decades of media lies.

In the new issue of Harper’s magazine, a small article appears that claims Alger Hiss was innocent.

Hiss, who died in 1996, was a high-ranking State Department official in the 1930s and ’40s. Hiss was also a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. This was proven not only when Hiss was identified as a spy by a man named Whittaker Chambers in 1948, but in the Venona transcripts, secret Soviet cables that were made public by the United States in 1995.

Yet 30 years after Venona, Harper’s magazine and the American Left continue to lie about Alger Hiss. For those discouraged by the media lying about Russiagate, or lying about Joe Biden’s mental health, or lying about crime in America’s cities, or lying about Brett Kavanaugh, the Harper’s item will not bring hope. Decades after the fact, the media can’t even admit that a communist spy was a communist spy.

I’m not sure if he still does it, but for years, Hugh Hewitt invariably asked his lefty guests whether or not Hiss was a spy for the Soviets. The results could be, on occasion, absolutely hilarious: MSNBC’s Karen Finney Getting A Little Hung Up Over Alger Hiss.

THE TABOO THAT KILLED IRYNA ZARUTSKA:

Zarutska’s murder has received a striking lack of coverage from most mainstream media outlets, and while on one hand this is hardly surprising—there are tens of thousands of homicides in this country every year, and only a handful of these ever become national news—it’s hard not to see the silence of the press on this matter as representative of a certain bias in what kinds of American crime stories are deemed worthy of public attention. It’s hard not to compare, for instance, the media response to the death of Iryna Zarutska last month with its coverage of the May 2023 encounter on the New York City subway between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely—who, like Brown, was black, homeless, mentally ill, and prone to violent outbursts on public transit.

Then, as now, there was a sense that it was in bad taste—if not outright racist—to acknowledge that men like Brown and Neely are a familiar presence in American urban public spaces, and that this presence is not a good thing. Then, as now, the progressive party line was that it’s “real corny” and “a mark of low moral character” to admit that you are discomfited by encountering people on public transit who behave in ways that telegraph the imminent possibility of violence, or confrontation, or the lower-grade-but-still-unpleasant spectacle of seeing someone evacuate his bowels onto the seat where, but for your instinctive choice to herd your family down the car, your 3-year-old toddler would still have been sitting.

The problem with this taboo around certain uncomfortable truths about public disorder is that when you make discussing those truths a thing that is Simply Not Done by decent progressive people, you leave the field of discourse wide open to the kind of person who cares about neither progressive politics nor decency. That is where we are now.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy asks why the left doesn’t demand safe mass transit:

Liberals want you to ride public transportation. They hate cars, they hate airplanes. So wouldn’t it make sense to then make it safe?

But they disregard the working men and women and instead they fight for the crime and homelessness that reside on these trains.@POTUS has it… pic.twitter.com/yYCVgKY2JU

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) September 9, 2025

Press Secretary Karoline Leavit calls out the DNC-MSM for their silence:

THIS is how it’s done.

Karoline Leavitt calls out the Fake News and Democrats TO THEIR FACES for ignoring and fueling the murder of Iryna Zarutska:

“Many outlets in this room decided her murder was not worth reporting on originally because it does not fit a preferred… pic.twitter.com/X3ZaeMR0qs

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 9, 2025

YORGOS LANTHIMOS, OLIVIA COLMAN, AYO EDEBIRI AND JOSH O’CONNOR AMONG 1,200 INDUSTRY NAMES PLEDGING NOT TO WORK WITH ISRAELI FILM INSTITUTIONS ‘COMPLICIT IN WAR CRIMES:’

Figures from across the film and TV world, including Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy and Palme d’Or winners, have signed a pledge saying they will refuse to work with Israeli institutions and companies that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

The list of signatories — which has surpassed 1,200 names — includes filmmakers such as Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Adam McKay, Boots Riley, Emma Seligman, Joshua Oppenheimer and Mike Leigh, and actors including Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone, Mark Ruffalo, Hannah Einbinder, Peter Sarsgaard, Aimee Lou Wood, Paapa Essiedu, Gael Garcia Bernal, Riz Ahmed, Melissa Barrera, Cynthia Nixon, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Joe Alwyn and Josh O’Connor.

So it’s a list. Presumably written in ink. Ink that happens to be black. I’m so old, I can remember when Hollywood professed to be against those sort of things:

RICH LOWRY: Charlotte’s mayor underplays murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zaruska – when city is to blame.

In her response to the murder of Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, the city’s mayor demonstrated the mindset that allowed the heinous act to happen in the first place.

The mayor, Vi Lyles, called the murder of the young Ukraine refugee woman “a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental health care.”

It’s shedding light, but perhaps not in areas the mayor would like to see exposed:

And there it is

MacArthur Foundation gave Mecklenburg county $3.3 million to empty out their prisons

This is why Charlotte is so dangerous now https://t.co/bEiz4A1FUv

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) September 9, 2025

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: When Hollywood Did It Right: Die Hard.

Recently we saw an entertainment news story which suggested that Disney was trying to figure out how to get young men back into theaters to see Disney movies again. Well, it seems to me that the best way to do that would be to get more John McClanes on Disney’s movie screens and a lot less of whatever it is Disney has been producing for the last 20 years.

Besides being one of the greatest, most quintessential American action movies ever made, one which spawned its own genre (for years Hollywood execs sold movies by saying “it’s Die Hard in a (fill in the blank)), “Die Hard” reveals an important way in which the current theatrical movie model is hopelessly broken.

Much like “Lethal Weapon” (the subject of last week’s essay), “Die Hard” was a relatively inexpensive contained action “programmer” which caught lightning in a bottle and became a cultural juggernaut, spawning multiple sequels, launching Bruce Willis into the pantheon of our biggest movie stars, and adding multiple one-liners (“Yippee-Kai-Yay-Motherfucker!”) to the speech patterns of every day Americans.

But movies like these were more than just a low-risk way for the studios to make a little money, they were an opportunity to introduce promising young stars to the moviegoing audience. Like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover before “Lethal Weapon”, the average American movie fan had no idea who Bruce Willis was before “Die Hard” introduced him. The death of the studio “programmer” has meant the disappearance of this young star farm system as well. And this has been a critical cause of the total breakdown of Hollywood’s once formidable movie star factory.

Exit question: “The bottom line is that Hollywood needs to be asking itself a very important question… are there no movies because there are no stars? Or are there no stars because there are no movies?”

JOURNALISTS POUNCE ON REPUBLICANS FOR NOTICING CRIME:

Republicans have done the unthinkable once again by noticing the senseless murder of an attractive young woman in Charlotte, N.C., and using it as an example to counter the Democratic view that crime is good and criminals are the real victims.

On Monday, Axios lamented that a video of the gruesome fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, who fled war-torn Ukraine for a better life in the United States, was “drawing repeated attention” from Republicans who believe that protecting innocent civilians is more important than coddling career criminals in the name of “equity” and social justice. The perpetrator, Decarlos Brown, was a mentally deranged homeless man with an extensive criminal record who had received lenient treatment under the Democrat-controlled justice system.

Axios reporter Marc Caputo pounced and seized on GOP officials and “MAGA influencers” for highlighting Zarutska’s tragic death—in a random unprovoked attack by a repeat offender who belonged in prison—in order to “elevate the issue of urban crime” and accuse mainstream media outlets of refusing to cover the case and other horrific acts of violence in cities run by Democrats.

For what it’s worth, the accusation of media indifference seems rather irrefutable given that Axios was one of the first national outlets to mention the fatal stabbing, which occurred on Aug. 22, in a story suggesting Republicans were at fault for noticing.

The New York Times finally deigned to cover the Zarutska stabbing today. Naturally, they go with the “Republicans Pounce” angle that the DNC-MSM have all triangulated on, if they’re going to report on this story at all: A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right.

CNN’s media janitor has chosen a similar approach as his form of anti-journalism:

And speaking of anti-journalism:

Other bastions of old media are attempting to memory hole this story as quickly as possible: Back to Bias by Omission: ABC, CBS Wave Goodbye to Covering Charlotte Light Rail Murder.

ED MORRISSEY: Israel Hits Hamas Meeting — In Qatar.

This comes just a couple of days after Trump offered a final proposal and warned that time had run out for the release of the hostages. “This is my last warning,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “there will not be another one!” Trump is making it very clear that any red lines he draws in military terms will get immediate action if not respected.

Update: Did the Qataris know? This message from the emirate to Hamas sounds prophetic a day later:

Reuters: Qatar’s Prime Minister urges Hamas in Doha to accept the latest U.S.-backed proposal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release.

He most probably hinted that the U.S. will green light an operation against them… pic.twitter.com/HO4tF5HGCf

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) September 8, 2025

Maybe they did know and at least agreed to tolerate it, if not green-lit it. However, one has to wonder whether this is yet another instance of Trump working with the Israelis to use an offer as a pretext for targeting senior leadership gathering to strategize a response. And maybe the Qataris helped out with that too, tiring of providing a safe haven to the freeloaders. The Billionaire Boys Club should have relocated to Turkey after the October 7 massacre.

Exit question:

Try their beepers? https://t.co/VAMZPnNmgf

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 9, 2025

MARK JUDGE: The Anti-Communist Film Fest Invite List: Alec Baldwin? “Baldwin also writes about God as a guiding force in his life – especially after he got sober in the early 1990s. Baldwin hates the press and played Jack Ryan, the hero of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. How can he not be a closet Republican?”

JACINDA ARDERN: ‘I made mistakes — but I was human.’

Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern says her five years in office felt like a decade.

Speaking on Brodie Kane’s Kiwi Yarns show, Ardern reflected on guiding the country through a turbulent period marked by the Christchurch terror attacks, the Whakaari/White Island eruption, major floods, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“So much happened to New Zealand in a short space of time. I think it’s understandable that the country is still reeling a bit from that period.”
Ardern stressed that Covid-19 was not the sole reason for her decision to step away from politics, but acknowledged the pandemic’s heavy toll.

“I never pinpointed Covid specifically, because in part I think it was just an accumulation of crises. Five years of leadership felt like 10 – that’s probably what I would say.

“As much as you were trying to make the best possible decisions, inevitably there were consequences for people, and people didn’t always believe it was the right thing to do.”

Mistakes were made: Why Jacinda Ardern’s COVID-19 elimination strategy was doomed to fail.

When Jacinda Ardern made the decision to lock down New Zealand – hard – in an effort to eliminate COVID-19 from her island nation, the Australian left cheered: If only we went down the same road, we likewise listened to the experts, we too could get rid of coronavirus and, perhaps, get back to our normal lives.

But now, New Zealand stands as a cautionary tale about the nature of coronavirus: No matter how hard you try to fight the virus by smashing businesses, civil liberties, and lives, the thing always seems to find a way to come back.

—The Sydney Telegraph, August 12th, 2020.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is No Saint. “The population of New Zealand is smaller than New York City. The entire country has a fraction of the air traffic of London alone. The UK had a high number of cases because its capital is one of the biggest cities in the world, is a melting pot of cultures, and is a banking powerhouse… What is motivating British liberals who are singing the praises of New Zealand? It can only be hypocrisy, or just plain ignorance. What happened to open borders and freedom of movement? Wouldn’t they be the first to criticise Boris Johnson for imposing similar restrictions at the border?”

—Spiked, August 14th, 2020.

HOW IT STARTED: Cal Thomas Stumps Leslie Stahl, Who Can’t Name a Conservative at CBS.

—The Media Research Center, January 21st, 2003.

How it’s going: CBS Taps Conservative Policy Veteran for New Ombudsman Role.

The new ownership of CBS News on Monday selected Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former chief executive of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning policy think tank, to review complaints about its coverage in a new post as ombudsman at the network.

Mr. Weinstein, who has no experience overseeing news coverage, was an unexpected choice for the role. He will report to Jeff Shell, the new president of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which recently merged with the Hollywood studio Skydance.

Installing an ombudsman at CBS News was one of Skydance’s commitments to the Trump administration this year when the company sought approval for its merger with Paramount.

Skydance’s founder, David Ellison, has pledged to revamp CBS News, which regularly lags ABC and NBC in the Nielsen ratings and recently endured a standoff with President Trump over accusations of editorial bias. Mr. Ellison is in talks to acquire The Free Press, an independent news outlet, and install its co-founder Bari Weiss in a senior editorial role at CBS News; last week, the network changed its rules for handling some political interviews after pressure from the Trump administration.

Mr. Weinstein has had a long career in right-leaning and neoconservative public policy circles. He is a firm and vocal champion of Israel and a frequent critic of the Biden administration, once comparing the Biden White House to the bumbling characters of the television show “Veep.”

—A petulant New York Times today. Why, it’s as if the New York Times is a liberal newspaper or something.

AND NOW, A FEW WORDS FROM JOE BIDEN:

1989. Senator Biden calls on George Bush to do more to fight crime and drug trafficking.

Beef up border security. Build more prisons. Set up an international strike force to take out narco terrorists.

Oh how times have changed.pic.twitter.com/dMumrvsYDI

— MAZE (@mazemoore) September 8, 2025

As with Democrats’ previous tough talk on immigration, Trump should run this clip and add, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.”

Related: The View: Trump Crime Crackdown About Literal ‘War’ Against Americans.

Wow, they turned against Joe Biden even more than Biden himself did.