HOW IT STARTED: Hacked Elmo X Account Used to Spread Antisemitic Incitement to Millions Online.

The official X account of Elmo, the beloved Sesame Street character followed by hundreds of thousands worldwide, was hacked on Sunday and used to disseminate chilling antisemitic hate speech and conspiracy theories — another stark example of how mainstream platforms are being weaponized to spread violent Jew-hatred.

The posts, written in all-caps and riddled with slurs, included genocidal language such as “Kill all Jews” and “Jews control the world and need to be exterminated.” They also invoked conspiracy theories about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and called U.S. President Donald Trump a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, echoing classical antisemitic tropes alleging Jewish control and manipulation of world affairs.

—Combat Antisemitism Movement, July 14th, 2025.

How It’s Going: Elmo Wishes Ramadan Mubarak to All of His Friends.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen, it’s that time of year when politicians wish a blessed Ramadan to their constituents. As Twitchy reported, Rep. Sharice Davids copied and pasted her Ramadan Mubarak post, sending her best wishes to all of her Muslim neighbors in Nassau County … which doesn’t exist in Kansas. A lot of time and care go into these things.

A lot of people noted that Ash Wednesday sort of flew under the radar in favor of Ramadan. Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg lit up the Big Four Bridge in honor of Ramadan.

* * * * * * * *

What we want to know is, what’s up with Elmo? The last time he popped up was to praise Bad Bunny’s halftime show, which was far from family-friendly. Now, Elmo wishes a blessed Ramadan to all of his friends. Yes, we searched his timeline, too, and came up empty.

—Twitchy, today.

YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE: Star Trek Artist Warns Fans That “Review Bombing” Starfleet Academy Could End the Franchise.

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Trump says Iran has 15 days to reach a deal or face ‘unfortunate’ outcome.

ACE OF SPADES: The Atlantic Publishes a Viral “Report” Account of a Boy Dying of Measles Because His Parents Didn’t Vaccinate Him. One Small Problem: The “Report” Is Actually Fiction, a “Hypothetical” Morality Play But The Atlantic Presented It As Actual Truth.

I repeat: It is fiction. I don’t mean it’s biased, I mean the Fake Christian lefty just made the story up — based on real reports and real science, she says — to serve as a harrowing morality play about vaccine hesitancy.

And The Atlantic, looking to get some viral advertising, presented it as fact until other reporters started asking about it.

The story — the fiction — was originally published as a 100% true factual “journalistic” account, with no warning or disclaimer to alert readers to the contrary.

At least, not until The Atlantic’s foray into Imaginary Journalism began provoking a reaction from journalists who like to pretend they don’t do this same thing every single day.

When I initially read Bruenig’s story, I was stunned: An Atlantic staff writer’s unvaccinated child had died of measles in the 2020s, and now she was writing about it? At the end of Bruenig’s piece, though, there’s an editor’s note: “This story is based on extensive reporting and interviews with physicians, including those who have cared directly for patients with measles.” That was the point when I sent a gift link to my mom group: “as far as I can tell this piece is fiction. What do we think about this choice? I am very conflicted!!!” My conflict stemmed from my concern that, though the piece was heavily researched, it was not a true story. I wondered if the key people whose minds might be changed by it — people who don’t vaccinate their kids — would brush it off as fiction, or fake.

And that’s this journalist’s only concern — not that falsehood is being presented as fact, but just that this story, once revealed to be fiction, would fail to serve its purpose as pro-vaccine propaganda.

“My conflict stemmed from my concern that, though the piece was heavily researched, it was not a true story. I wondered if the key people whose minds might be changed by it — people who don’t vaccinate their kids — would brush it off as fiction, or fake.”

Yes, we wouldn’t want readers brushing off a fictitious story as fiction, would we?

FISH DON’T KNOW THEY’RE WET: America’s future looks vulgar.

The latest Super Bowl offers the most recent opportunity to reflect on the terminal state of our national culture, held together chiefly by a distractive and unhealthy mania for commercial sports and perfectly exemplified by the infantile yet aggressively transgressive nihilism of a brainless showoff calling himself Bad Bunny and dressed all in white, suggestive perhaps of an anti-Easter Bunny. Why, one wonders, has no political theorist from Hobbes forward posited the ideal human community as one which would combine political democracy with cultural and intellectual aristocracy – as, indeed, America at the time of her founding and for several generations thereafter did? Such an arrangement might satisfy critics of democratic society on the anti-egalitarian right, such as T.S. Eliot, and those on the egalitarian left, like John Rawls, for whom democracy can never be inclusive and participatory enough.

* * * * * * * * *

Other dissenters (in America especially) from the new world in formation attempted to revive the old agrarian tradition, the most famous being the Southern Agrarians in the American South in the 1920s and 1930s whose members included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle and Robert Penn Warren. But Agrarianism failed to survive World War Two, while subsequent and more inclusive and popular attempts at resurrecting and promoting the old  agricultural values and ways of life – the “back-to-the-land movement” in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, and Wendell Berry’s protest against industrial agriculture and what he calls “the unsettling of America” – were as quixotic in practical terms as they were productive in literary ones.

The tragic fact is that the recreation of any sort of high culture as something more than a footnote to the mass culture represented by Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, the Kardashians, Billie Eilish, et al. is as impossible as the reestablishment of anything like civil and political peace in the United States – and elsewhere – is. The western world, it seems, is doomed to a future of a vulgar and transgressive popular culture, maintained in the context of angry political division and social chaos.

The earliest halftime performers during the first few years of the Super Bowl included Al Hirt, Carol Channing, the Grambling State University marching band, Doc Severinsen, Lionel Hampton, and Ella Fitzgerald. They would have looked askance at the halftime performers of the last quarter century, which included Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom Petty, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. From the perspective of the jazz-infused performers of the Super Bowl’s early years, the Super Bowl has been quite vulgar indeed since the 1990s.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How To Be The Stig — Ben Collins Reveals Trade Secrets (Video):

THE CORBYNIZATION AND GASLIGHTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES:

Rwanda – 1 million murdered
Cambodians – 2 million murdered
Holocaust – 6 million murdered
Great Leap Forward – 27m murdered
Armenians – 1.5 million murdered
Holodomor – 5 million murdered
Darfur – 400,000 murdered

Gaza – 30,000 civilians killed during a two year war https://t.co/IO8NbO5eeu

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) February 19, 2026

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: How Clavicular’s ‘looksmaxxing’ took over New York Fashion Week.

Elena Velez’s F/W 2026-27 New York Fashion Week show centered on “looksmaxxing”: the internet-inspired pursuit of physical perfection at any cost. The runway presentation examined a generation raised under fluorescent ring lights and the judgment of the social-media algorithm. And she capped the night off with a feature from Clavicular, one of the X algorithm’s current favorite characters.

Velez, still in her early thirties, stands out as one of the few designers fluent in the language of the internet. The cultural current is dominated by self-optimization taken to its logical extreme. Faces are flattened into grids, bodies are dissected by comment sections, desirability is quantified in followers, likes and engagement rate. Looks run the show, now more than ever. For the average person, physical appearance now carries the same weight as in the fashion world, shaping how we are judged and valued every day.

Velez also courts controversy, by gathering right-wing personalities and liberal fashion journalists in the same room, such as in her 2023 Longhouse-themed show and her 2024 Gone with the Wind-themed salon (I modeled in both). This creates tension and gives her shows a transgressive charge.

Speaking of tension and transgressions:

Wild that he keeps getting these fawning profiles by "liberal" media outlets when he is outwardly racist, uses the n-word towards black people, hangs out with neo-Nazis, and has called black women ugly. https://t.co/Aj0AUMKR9T

— Corey Walker 🇺🇸 (@CoreyWriting) February 19, 2026

Earlier: Clavicular’s cult of ‘looksmaxxing’ speaks to the narcissism of our age.

So why then has this face launched a thousand thinkpieces? Largely because, Clavicular is seen as a player in the Very Online right. Indeed, an evening he spent at a Florida club with Groyper princeling Nick Fuentes and the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan, where they bopped along to Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’, became headline news. Clavicular also runs with an assortment of unsavory characters – anti-Semites, Christian nationalists, ‘redpilled’ acolytes of the manosphere.

But looksmaxxing itself is not an ideology. It is an absence of ideology, a vacuum filled by insecurity. Clavicular is best understood not as a right-wing thought leader, but as a kind of male-to-male transgender influencer. He, like Fuentes, the Tates and all the rest, are caricatures of masculinity.

The ghost of Hermann Goering smiles.

(Classical – and NSFW – reference in headline.)

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST DONNY: Can the Gaslighting Get Even More Brazen?

For some reason, the Democrats are arguing that they have never called President Trump a Nazi or a racist, and Pravda is doing their best to back them up.

Perhaps Pravda figures want to deny that they themselves slander Trump all the time. There must be polling showing that their most ridiculous accusations are not helping their cause and are hurting their credibility with all but the most insane folks out there.

Sure Nicolle. 👌pic.twitter.com/aUVXY5YPZw https://t.co/YQpphNoUIv

— MAZE (@mazemoore) February 19, 2026

 

Flashback: Who is calling who a Nazi?

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats that it almost precludes notice. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s parallels between U.S. President Donald Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his “State of the State” budget address on Feb. 19 hit a new low.

Veering from his speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, he compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

After castigating the president’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker said: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”

Such deceitful criticism of Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. His comments ignore the reality of a president who was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

—Sara Lehmann, Jewish News Syndicate, February 21st, 2025.

In addition to Pritzker’s amnesia, it’s amazing how the previous Democrat candidate for the presidency has been tossed down the memory hole. Here’s the late Jeff Dunetz in October of 2024: Kamala Says Trump’s Like Hitler. Is He? Or Is Kamala An Idiot?

Yesterday, V.P. Harris compared President Trump to Hitler,  “Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses.”

The V.P.’s comment comparing Trump to Hitler indicates she doesn’t care about minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust or she is an imbecile incapable of understanding.

Her comments were based on a story in the leftist magazine The Atlantic reporting that Trump’s former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, called Trump a “fascist” and recalled his admiration for Nazi generals. Kelly also raised concerns about Trump’s recent threats to use the military against “the enemy from within.”

Similarly, another Kamala-supporting ex-general, who, like FDR before him, believes that “fascism” means shrinking government and the welfare state:

As Kurt Schlichter asks at Townhall today: What Do the Dems Do After They’ve Done Their Worst and It Flops?

Where do you go next when you say the worst things imaginable about someone, and it doesn’t matter?

That’s where we are now, and it should be no surprise to anybody who has ever heard about the boy who cried “Wolf.” Maybe the left doesn’t like that fable because they’re assuming the gender of the brat who fakes alarms over dreaded predators and finally gets gobbled up when the dreaded predator arrives, and nobody believes him, her, or them. Regardless, they’re not paying attention to the moral of the story.

Nobody who doesn’t already believe the Democrats believes them now. We’ve had ten years of Trump, and by extension, we patriots, being bombarded with the worst possible accusations and…nothing? Calling somebody “Hitler” should mean something. Hitler was bad, really bad, and to equate somebody with Hitler should be something that one takes seriously because no serious person would casually equate another with Hitler, unless the accused had done something positively Hitlerean. But that’s not the case today. It doesn’t mean anything because everything they say, every lie, epithet and slander, is meaningless. They call Trump “Hitler.” Everybody knows he’s not Hitler. So, no one cares that he gets called “Hitler,” least of all the guy who’s supposed to be Hitler 2.0.

To be fair, we’re here because Democrats have been calling Republican presidents and presidential candidates Hitler since 1944. As with predicting the end of the world since 1970 from global cooling/global warming/global climate chaos, eventually, the hoariest of slurs loses its sting. Perhaps that’s why the latest talking point apparently went out:

Notice the shift…

In the past 48 hours prominent Dems and the Media have pushed the narrative that no one has called POTUS Trump racist and they haven’t referred to him as Hitler.

Orders have gone out.

Polling must show Americans don’t like those lies.pic.twitter.com/WRw9tWP5Ma

— C3 (@C_3C_3) February 19, 2026

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Affluent White Female Liberals Are Living In A Made-Up World.

In a recent viral video, an angry mob (composed almost entirely of white women) hurled expletives at the staff of a Minneapolis CorePower yoga studio, berating them because they reportedly removed anti-ICE signage. While their verbal onslaught apparently worked in this case, these females revealed just how many women live in a Land of Make Believe where everyone magically bends to their will.

This tiny glimpse into the world of make-believe perpetuated by Affluent, White, Female, Liberals (AWFL) has been a long time in coming; many are waking up to the saccharine dream where the AWFLs can do whatever they want, unscathed, while the rest of us must conform and then clean up their messes. For decades the West has built itself around the ideal life for these women, requiring very little by way of sacrifice, inconvenience, earnest effort, or real scrutiny. In today’s world, it is good to be a victim. It is a made-up world that most of us have grown used to believing is real.

As a famous — albeit — fictional law enforcement official famously said, let’s be careful out there:

UPDATE: And then there are the people who only get their news from their iPhone or iPad: Apple News ‘inflames political polarization’ as it excludes conservative outlets from ‘top stories:’ bombshell study.

RUN TO DAYLIGHT: Chicago Bears are ‘committed’ to Indiana move. Here’s what would need to happen.

There is now a “shared commitment” to bring the Chicago Bears to Indiana.

Indiana lawmakers announced Feb. 19 that they’ve struck a deal to potentially locate the football team’s new stadium in northwest Indiana, pending the passage of a bill that provides the framework for a financial package and any due diligence at the proposed Hammond site. This comes nearly two months to the day from the team president’s fateful letter that sparked breathless negotiations.

“It represents a transformational investment for northwest Indiana and our state,” House Speaker Todd Huston told the House ways and means committee, sharing that the Chicago Bears are willing to invest $2 billion in a stadium site in the region.

Indiana lawmakers, too, in the form of Senate Bill 27, have outlined a set of investment promises from the state, Lake and Porter counties to bring the stadium to fruition.

“The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date,” the Bears said in a statement. “We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana.”

Presumably, the Bears will keep their Chicago moniker, in the same way that the Jets and Giants are considered “New York” teams, despite playing in a stadium in New Jersey, and the Cowboys have always been the Dallas Cowboys, despite playing outside of the city since 1971, in first Irving, and then Arlington, Texas.

In any case, will the last person to flee the Second City please turn out the lights?

JUST IN: Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is upset that the Chicago Bears are leaving Chicago for Indiana, says there is "clear evidence" for why they should stay.

Not even the Chicago Bears want to stay in his hellhole crimeridden city 🤣pic.twitter.com/hfshyrsK1h

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 19, 2026

ED MARKEY: TRANS ALL THE KIDS!

Almost 80 years old, almost 50 years in DC, and the thing he fights hardest for is the right of ghoul doctors to drug and mutilate confused children. Sad. https://t.co/Sn0qDiRsdK

— Gerry Callahan (@GerryCallahan) February 19, 2026

Presumably, in 2026, Markey isn’t too concerned with any long term consequences to kids having surgery at a young age, because at this point, they only have a few years left:

Related:

Deleted, but the internet is forever https://t.co/uzreMUqCjl pic.twitter.com/giVea6Udok

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) February 19, 2026

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Lindsey Graham Just Gave a Major Hint About What the Admin Plans to Do About Iran.

BREAKING: Senator Lindsey Graham, in an interview with Sky News Arabia: "The US decision regarding Iran has already been made. The ships are not arriving in the area only because the weather is pleasant at this time of year”

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) February 19, 2026

CUBA LIBRE? As the Communist Cuban Junta Enters End-of-Life Care, Marco Rubio Begins Secretly Talking to Raul Castro’s Grandson About a Living Will.

WORST. HITLER. EVER: 

Craziest part of fascism is when you take to social media to put out a public statement announcing you're going to protest, all without fear of any legal repercussions. https://t.co/F8kHOE2HrP

— Sunny (@sunnyright) February 18, 2026

LAW AND ORDER:

Trump brings a D.C. anti-crime activist who lost her son to violence to speak. She says Democrats never sent anyone to talk to her. No one talked to her until Trump who finally did something.

She gives Democrats hell:

“I love Trump. I don’t want to hear nothing you have to say… pic.twitter.com/LShHxvgrNV

— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) February 18, 2026

Tweet continues, “I don’t want to hear nothing you have to say about that racist stuff. And don’t be hating on me because I’m standing up for somebody that deserves to be stood up for. Get off the man’s back. Let him do his job!”

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: Rhode Island trans shooter’s son, 37, jailed for torching black church year before dad’s deadly hockey rampage.

The troubled, racist son of trans Nazi-loving Rhode Island killer Robert Dorgan was jailed last year for setting a series of fires at a predominantly black church, according to a report.

Kevin Colantonio, one of six children Dorgan had with three different women, is serving a nearly seven-year sentence in a Texas federal prison for using gasoline and a lighter to spark five fires outside Shiloh Gospel Temple Ministries in North Providence in February 2024, WPRI reported.

The church — which the deranged arsonist labeled as a place of worship for “Atheist God mockers” in a text to his family after the blaze — serves a mostly black congregation of 100 and was empty when the flames erupted.

Considering that dad had an SS symbol tattooed on his arm, is Colantonio aware of their views on religion? The Nazis’ love affair with the occult.

[O]ccult-related activities and organizations were often suppressed in Nazi Germany at the behest of Heinrich Himmler’s Rasputin-like personal occultist, Karl Maria Wiligut. The point of this was to ensure that Wiligut’s own brand of occultism would be the eminent philosophy of the Nazis.

Wiligut had developed a religion centered on worshipping the Germanic god Irmin. According to Wiligut, German culture dated back to 228,000 BC, a period of time when the Earth had three suns and was populated by giants, dwarfs, and other mythical creatures. He also claimed to be descended from a line of kings from this period of time. It should also be noted that Wiligut was a diagnosed schizophrenic.

Himmler, who was an avid follower of the occult, consulted Wiligut on a wide variety of issues. Using Wiligut’s prophecies, Himmler chose the castle Wewelsburg to serve as a base of operations for his SS troops and established a room in the castle with a crystal representing the Holy Grail. Wiligut also helped in the design of the rune-covered death’s head rings that the SS troops wore, personal awards that Himmler issued himself.

Himmler was particularly attracted to Wiligut’s brand of paganism, as he disliked the Judaic origins of Christianity. After the end of the WWII, Himmler believed that the “old Germanic gods will be restored.” Leveraging his influence and his boss’s desire to see a Germanic paganism, Wiligut attempted to stamp out competing philosophies to his Irminism.

Related: “Hitler presented himself as a Christian patriot to win over the German public as they faced economic and moral degradation during the unchecked liberalism of the 1920s, but in private he was not a fan of the religion.  Hitler is noted by Albert Speer as saying: ‘You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?’”

OLD AND BUSTED: I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It.

–Paraphrase of Voltaire’s philosophy by historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall.

The New Frenchness? French President Emmanuel Macron Says Free Speech Is ‘Pure Bulls**t’ Unless Regulated.

Translation from doublespeak to English: “I just want to be able to arrest people and seize their assets for thoughtcrimes.”

— Jason Wilkins (@TheJasonWilkins) February 18, 2026

Meanwhile in Germany, Freidrich Merz is partying like it’s 1939:

Germany’s most famous figures of civilian resistance, the Scholl siblings, for whom secrecy was a matter of survival, were captured by Nazi operatives on this day in 1943 and executed four days later. For Germany’s current leader to choose the 83rd anniversary of their capture to… https://t.co/Tag0oD6QIq

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) February 18, 2026

Tweet continues, “For Germany’s current leader to choose the 83rd anniversary of their capture to demand the unmasking of critical voices online is a grotesque display of a country that has learned nothing from its own history.”

EVERYBODY’S WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND: U.S. military prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but Trump has yet to make a final call, sources say.

FROM BAUHAUS TO BARRY’S HOUSE: Here’s What the Outside of Barack Obama’s Presidential Library Should Look Like.

https://t.co/GgGqNO7m9p pic.twitter.com/2uDDMl8kPr

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) February 18, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRIORITIES:

The Key Bridge has not been rebuilt.

There’s raw sewage flooding the Potomac River.

Democrat Wes Moore signs emergency legislation…

To ban local authorities from aiding ICE in removing illegals from Maryland.

Democrats are trying to destroy America.pic.twitter.com/khowHcvqXW

— C3 (@C_3C_3) February 18, 2026

FROM BAUHAUS TO TOM’S HOUSE: James Lileks on architect Louis Kahn.

While browsing through an Architectural Record from 1977, there was a gushing review of the incredibly brilliant Yale Center for British Art by the incredibly brilliant Louis Kahn.

* * * * * * * * *

The British Center’s special site and function surely had something to do with these surprising developments. Directly across the street from it stands the earliest of Kahn’s mature buildings: the first in his great sequence of inventive designs. It is Yale’s Art Gallery of 1953.

 

Ah yes. That one. The building that gave us one of the best examples of life before and after the Second World War.

Hint: Kahn’s building is on the left.

You know how many years separate those two structures?

Nineteen.

The building on the right was completed in 1928. The building on the left was begun in 1947.

In From Bauhaus To Our House, Yale man Tom Wolfe wrote:

Yale’s administrators were shocked. Kahn had been an architect for twenty years but had done little more than work as assistant architect, under Howe, among others, on some housing projects. He was not much to look at, either. He was short. He had wispy reddish-white hair that stuck out this way and that. His face was badly scarred as the result of a childhood accident. He wore wrinkled shirts and black suits. The backs of his sleeves were shiny. He always had a little cigar of unfortunate hue in his mouth. His tie was always loose. He was nearsighted, and in the classrooms where he served as visiting critic, you would see Kahn holding some student’s yard-long blueprint three inches from his face and moving his head over it like a scanner.

But that was merely the exterior. Somewhere deep within this shambles there seemed to be a molten core of confidence … and architectural destiny … Kahn would walk into a classroom, stare blearily at the students, open his mouth … and from the depths would come a remarkable voice:

“Every building must have … its own soul.”

One day he walked into a classroom and began a lecture with the words: “Light … is.” There followed a pause that seemed seven days long, just long enough to re-create the world.

His unlikely physical appearance only made these moments more striking. The visionary passion of the man was irresistible. Everybody was wiped out.

Kahn stared at the administrators in the same fashion, and the voice said: What do you mean, “It has nothing to do with the existing building”? You don’t understand? You don’t see it? You don’t see the string courses? They express the floor lines of the existing building. They reveal the structure. For a quarter of a century, those floors have been hidden behind masonry, completely concealed. Now they will be unconcealed. Now the entire structure will be unconcealed. Honest form—beauty, as you choose to call it—can only result from unconcealed structure!

Unconcealed structure? Did he say unconcealed structure? Baffled but somehow intimidated, as if by Cagliostro or a Jacmel hoongan, the Yale administration yielded to the destiny of architecture and took it like a man.

As Wolfe concluded his chapter, “Administrators, directors, boards of trustees, municipal committees, and executive officers have been taking it like men ever since.”

JIM GERAGHTY: Stephen Colbert and James Talarico Are Lying to You.

The equal-time rule was part of the Communications Act of 1934. It states, “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.”

Note that this applies to broadcast television stations include NBC, CBS, and ABC. The FCC’s equal time rule does not apply to cable channels like Fox News Channel, CNN, or MSNOW, because they don’t go out over public airwaves. (There are professional political pundits out there who don’t know or understand that distinction.)

* * * * * * * *

You can decide that the equal-time rule is stupid, but no broadcast television network is allowed to cite a “well, that’s stupid” provision when appealing a fine or punishment from the commission.

Texas holds its primaries on March 3, less than two weeks away. State Representative James Talarico and Representative Jasmine Crockett are the two best-known Senate candidates on the Democratic side, and different polls will give you different results on which one is ahead. A little-known third candidate, Ahmad Hassan, is also running for the Democratic nomination.

Stephen Colbert, the soon-to-be canceled $20 million per year host of The Late Show on CBS, wanted to have Talarico on his program Monday night.

But Colbert did not air his interview. Viewers watching at home saw Colbert at his desk, delivering a monologue:

[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast. Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.

Colbert continued:

But on January 21st of this year, a letter was released by FCC chairman and smug bowling pin Brendan Carr. In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated by partisan purposes. Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC. So, FCC-U.

I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself, sir. Hey, you smelt it, because you dealt it. You are Dutch oven-ing America’s airwaves.

Ah, what wit! Can you believe CBS is losing $40 million per year on that show, and isn’t keeping that guy and his program around longer?

“Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV,” Colbert said.

Except Trump and his administration hadn’t “silenced” anyone. Nor, apparently, had Colbert’s bosses. A statement from CBS issued Tuesdaypointed out that the network hadn’t told Colbert that he couldn’t air the interview with Talarico, as the host had claimed to his audience. They had simply reminded Colbert of the equal-time rule:

“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

It gets worse; Talarico has been on a tirade on X since Monday, arguing that President Trump has tried to “silence” him, “censor” him, “block” the airing of the interview, and that he is a victim of “cancel culture.”

“His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert,” Talarico claimed, apparently oblivious to the fact that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is a government agency and not a broadcasting station and thus doesn’t “air” anything.

Time travel — it’s not just for Joy Reid anymore:

I mean, if this is the case, the bigger story here is that Trump has the ability to travel backwards in time to alter the trajectory of current issues, don't you agree? Truly stunning.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 18, 2026

Exit question:

Why won't Colbert clear this up by hosting Jasmine Crockett?

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 18, 2026

CHARLIE DON’T SURF! How Robert Duvall, the Vietnam War, and a Yater Spoon Changed Surfing.

Oh, Colonel Kilgore, off you go without your Renny Yater Spoon. Your magical, trusty, beloved steed of a “very good board,” as you so plainly put it. And to have it pilfered by none other than a brother in fiberglass, foam, and fins? A professional, no less? What a crying shame. Yes, sir, we all know how hard it is to find a board you like, don’t we?

Here’s to Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore, United States Army Air Cavalry commander and bona fide surf nut. A wave seeker so devout and itinerant that he’d go to the ends of the earth—and his humanity—to land a helicopter, engage in heated combat, and ultimately napalm a village in order (at least in part) to sample its surf. Politics aside, how can you not admire that kind of conviction in a fellow surfer? And still with six hours of incoming tide to kill, at that. A true surfer wastes no time with getting priorities in line, and that you were, LTC.

From that very first exchange with professional noserider extraordinaire and (drafted) Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Lance Johnson, we knew, instinctually, that not only were you one of ours, but you had soul.

You had the kind of intrepid spirit that deems no peak too hairy for a little waterborne R&R.

Apocalypse Now screenwriter John Milius, an avid surfboarder in his younger days, wrote Duvall’s incredible dialogue. He told Surfer magazine in 2010, that in his mind, “the Vietnam War was a California war. It was a clash of cultures between the United States and this far off Asian land. But even more than that it was a clash between California culture and Asian culture. There was California music, and Hells Angels flames on Huey gunships. It was a California war. I guess the surfer is a cliche for the Vietnam War in the same way that the kid from Brooklyn stuck in the B-29 tail-gunner position was the World War II cliche.”

THE DEMOCRATS’ INSANITY DEFENSE:

Republican pollsters have complained that some of their best ads and attack lines don’t poll well because voters simply don’t believe true things that Democrats are actually doing could possibly be real. https://t.co/pUz4Okqqd6

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 17, 2026

Flashback to late October of 2024: The Democrats’ Insanity Defense.

In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. “She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president’s most radical past positions. “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”

The idea that the vice president “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser cited it in a column posted the next morning as an example of Trump’s lunacy: “What the hell was he talking about?” Glasser wrote of the trans operation lines. “No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’ point.”

That reaction was understandable—the idea of the operations was, as Trump himself said, a “thing nobody would ever think of.” The problem was that it is true.

* * * * * * * *

The same GOP staffer, who is currently working on a competitive congressional race, told me that one problem his campaign regularly faces is that aspects of Democratic governance are simply too insane for voters to find credible, even when they are documented as official U.S. government policy. “When you outline the Democratic agenda, you have to water it down, because in both polling and focus groups, people just don’t believe it,” he said. “They are critical of things like boys in girls’ sports, but they tune out stuff about schools not informing parents about transitioning their children. They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.”

Another Republican operative made a related point on the failure of the party’s attempt to message on trans issues in 2022, which was that the reality of the procedures was so gruesome that voters simply preferred not to think about it. “Phrases like ‘genital mutilation’ are disgusting and viscerally off-putting, even to voters who may be sympathetic to the Republicans’ position but will just write you off as a freak for talking about it that way.”

A similar dynamic plays out in foreign policy. On the one hand the Democrats conjured out of thin air the claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, which was, we now know, a conspiracy theory concocted by ex-spies and Clinton campaign operatives and seeded in the intelligence agencies and media by the outgoing Obama administration to cripple the new administration. That is to say that it is not a matter of partisan political opinion; it is simply false. Yet as of 2022, nearly half of U.S. voters, and a majority of Democrats, still believed that Trump was elected in 2016 due to Russian interference, and the hoax remains a mainstay of Democratic rhetoric. It even played a major role in the 2020 election, providing the predicate for the Biden campaign to collude with tech companies and retired spooks to censor reporting about Hunter Biden’s foreign influence-peddling schemes, which turned out to be entirely real.

Of course, plenty of insane stories ran in the paper that employs McAardle:

i'm annoyed by fake stuff that i made up that feels real to me, and that's why i don't feel bad about a lot of people losing their jobs pic.twitter.com/jxLdLCu3LX

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 5, 2026

"Stuff I made up."

I'm willing to bet there's an 99% chance you didn't even know this piece existed in the Washington Post, which is what Cooke was satirically referencing.

He's more informed about what content the Washington Post was putting out than you are. Now do you see…

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 6, 2026

Not to be confused with other stories the Post simply invented out of whole cloth:

We might care if it weren't for all the lying.

Y'all shouldn't have done all this lying:

· The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax
· The Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Hoax
· Trump “Destroying” White House Hoax
· Photo of Starving Gaza Baby Hoax
· Israeli Troops Murdered Food-Seeking… https://t.co/24WbELSSVS

— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) January 26, 2026