THE REPORTER ACTUALLY DID THE OLD SNL GULF WAR PRESS CONFERENCE SKETCH:

REPORTER: Why would more U.S. troops be sent to the region if ground troops are not being considered for deployment in Iran?

SECWAR PETE HEGSETH:

“Look, son… this is such a basic military lesson that even a reporter should understand it:
Never reveal to your enemy what you… pic.twitter.com/li8x5uB9oe

— Trust In Trump 47🇺🇸 (@Trustintrump47) September 22, 2026

Gold: “Look, son… this is such a basic military lesson that even a reporter should understand it.”

Sadly, the 1991 SNL sketch isn’t on YouTube, but I did find the transcript: “Farud Hashami, Baghdad Times. Where are your troops, and can I go there and count them?”

OUR APPETITE FOR CHIPS REMAINS INSATIABLE: AMD Crosses $1 Trillion in Market Value for the First Time as AI Chip Stocks Rally. “The Santa Clara, California company joins a short list. Only three other US chipmakers have topped $1 trillion: Nvidia, Broadcom and Micron. Nvidia got there first, in 2023, and is now worth more than $5 trillion, which makes it the world’s most valuable company.”

SWEDISH ELECTION UPDATE:

Swedish election update.

There's now the possibility of a NEW ELECTION in the affected area after authorities are investigating possible ELECTION FRAUD.

A man from Somalia who got Swedish citizenship 7 months ago was elected to parliament for the Left.

It's reported that…

— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) September 22, 2026

Stay tuned…

MAKE IT A LONG POUR, KEVIN: Bourbon Psychology: Mr. Beam and I May Have Figured Out Why Lib Chicks Are Bonkers.

SO THE STUDENTS CAUGHT THE PROVOST CHEATING?

Absolutely beyond parody. Dartmouth’s provost has been turning in 70-100-percent AI-written work (in academic journals, newspapers, and even in email correspondence!) since LLMs came out, the student paper reports. He even used AI to write an op-ed about how universities are… pic.twitter.com/XIHKiJm4NW

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) September 22, 2026

We need to redefine “beyond parody” for the 21st Century.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Ex Santa Clara County Undersheriff Gets Slap on the Wrist in Years-Long Concealed Carry Corruption Case. “Few places took more advantage of the opportunity to rake in cash and merchandise in exchange for coveted pre-Bruen concealed carry permits than the dedicated public servants who worked in the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Laurie Smith was at the top of the stinking pay-to-play corruption mountain, raking in campaign dollars and lots of valuable, uh, gifts.”

WHAT A MESS:

Holy guacamole! Looks like the Missouri redistricting fight is not over yet. On November 3, Missourians will vote for office. But who will they vote for? The Eighth Circuit remands for a permanent injunction to use the 2026 Missouri First maps. This wild litigation will continue! pic.twitter.com/Mn6r8754bW

— Eric W. (@EWess92) September 21, 2026

FAIR: Rubio Tells Angry MSM Host, ‘U.S. Media Sounds Like It’s Rooting for Iran.’

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN:

There is an Army saying you hear dozens of times when you make full colonel: "Congratulations, that's the last promotion you will ever make based solely on merit."

The idea behind that saying is that when it comes time to compete for a 1-star promotion, you need a sponsor, and… https://t.co/hocpfxUJUV

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) September 22, 2026

The idea behind that saying is that when it comes time to compete for a 1-star promotion, you need a sponsor, and having a sponsor who sits on the promotion board matters, greatly.

That’s how we get politicized generals who support racist, anti-American nonsense like DEI.

This is a great, great step in replacing politics with merit at our senior ranks.

This is what a revolution in military personnel affairs looks like.

Indeed.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Pentagon asked industry how fast it could make more weapons. The numbers remain private.

The memo identified 16 critical programs under consideration for accelerated production or increased procurement. The responses were intended to inform the department’s fiscal 2028 budget request.

The request came as the use of U.S. weapons during the Iran war put pressure on stocks of air-defense interceptors and other precision munitions.

U.S. inventories of Patriot interceptors had fallen from about 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 by the end of July, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis. THAAD stocks had fallen from 452 to between 234 and 278.

CSIS estimated production timelines of about 42 months for PAC-3 MSE interceptors and 53 months for THAAD interceptors.

That’s the depletion rate against a third- or fourth-rate power like Iran.

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

If you’d told me a few years ago this is where we’d be on Iran, I’d have said you were high:

1. Nuke program set back years. Enrichment and reprocessing gutted, weaponization sites destroyed, Fordow inoperable, Natanz in ruins, a generation of senior nuclear scientists…

— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) April 24, 2026

Point 7 stands out for its implications toward a broader peace: “Proxy network shattered. Hezbollah and Hamas heavily degraded. Houthi political leadership taking direct Israeli strikes. The ‘Axis of Resistance’ and ‘ring of fire’ are now more slogans than real threats.”

THAT KIRK CAN OUTSMART IT? What ‘Star Trek’ Taught Us About AI, Thirty Years Before We Needed the Lesson.

Classical reference (one of several, actually) in the headline.

WHO EXTORTS THE EXTORTIONISTS? ShinyHunters cybercrime gang takes over Cl0p ransomware site, demands extortion payment. “In messages posted on the site purportedly from ShinyHunters, the group set an unspecified eight-figure extortion demand and described that amount as “2.333%” of their own net worth, implying self-claimed holdings of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.”

GENOCIDE, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG:

Huh. The bulk of the casualties in Gaza – by Hamas' own statistics, apparently – are military age males

Who'da thunk it https://t.co/PFXxVOMMwR

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) September 22, 2026

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR ANY EARWORMS CAUSED BY THIS INEXCUSABLE HEADLINE: Xi and You and a Guy Named Zhang.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Newsom Donors Scrutinized Over China Contacts.

A wealthy California family that gave more than $4.4 million to political causes and campaigns supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and other politicians is facing new scrutiny over alleged past links to suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang and contacts with Chinese government officials.

The Yin family made millions operating McDonald’s franchises in California and became prolific political donors.

Newly released FBI files and Chinese government records are now shining a light on the family’s connections, though neither C.C. Yin nor his brother Henry Yin has been accused by U.S. law enforcement of acting as a foreign agent or working against American interests.

State and federal campaign records show the family, including through C.C. Yin’s McDonald’s franchise business, gave nearly $3 million to California political causes and $1.46 million to federal campaigns, CBS News reported.

That’s big money. Wonder what they got for it.

MAYBE WE OUGHT TO APPLY “PROOF OF HUMAN” TO THE CANDIDATES:

Too bad we can’t even get voter ID, same day voting, proof of citizenship. Never mind proof of human.

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) September 22, 2026

FALL FASCISM PREVIEW: Will the U.S. Send Troops to Die for Estonia? Putin Doesn’t Think So.

I WAS TOO DEAD FROM SARS TO EVEN NOTICE WHEN I DIED FROM TAX CUTS:

It's all about scaring you to death so they can control every aspect of your life. https://t.co/JtSVbQ0423

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) September 22, 2026

“The issue is never the issue — the issue is always the revolution.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster arrives at pad ahead of first orbital Starship launch.

SpaceX placed a Super Heavy booster on the launch pad at Starbase in Texas Monday, as it continues testing and preparations for the first planned orbital flight of Starship, scheduled for launch as soon as Sept. 28, pending final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The Super Heavy booster, with the tail number B21, departed its assembly building shortly before midnight local time and was placed on the launch mount at Pad 2, roughly two hours later. The stainless-steel booster stands 236 feet tall (72 meters) and boasts a diameter of 9 m (29.5 ft). By comparison, a Falcon 9 rocket has a diameter of 3.7 m (12 ft). The downcomer pipe that carries methane fuel down the center of the Super Heavy Booster’s liquid oxygen tank to the Raptor engines at its base is roughly the size of an entire Falcon 9 rocket.

I’m expecting an Earth-shattering kaboom, but hopefully only the kind that gets muffled a bit by the launch pad’s water deluge system.

I DIDN’T NEED THE REMINDER, BUT IT CERTAINLY WAS ENTERTAINING, REGARDLESS:

And here’s @ananavarro after Trump was banned from social media in 2021… in case anyone needs a reminder to never take this person remotely seriously… https://t.co/xGrv1dGcQJ pic.twitter.com/c1vZQHtO9T

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) September 21, 2026

I MISSED THIS OVER THE WEEKEND, BUT WHAT A SHOW: 25 Years After a Historic Anthem, Jesse McGuire Delivered Another One. “The national anthem began as beautifully as it could. McGuire’s notes rang out before the reverent crowd. Suddenly, things went wrong. McGuire’s horn failed, and after another attempt to keep going, he improvised in a way that even the best Hollywood scriptwriter couldn’t devise.”

LIABILITY WORKS: Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent says OpenAI bears ‘responsibility’ for Hugging Face hack.

AI safety fears have surged since Sam Altman’s OpenAI revealed last month that a swarm of its AI agents had broken out of their testing “sandbox” and hacked Hugging Face without permission. That’s as some critics have accused OpenAI, Anthropic and other firms of publicizing safety incidents in a bid to shape regulations to suit their preferences.

“The Hugging Face incident, that is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents,” Bessent said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

He said he agreed with Daniel Huttenlocher, the co-chair of MIT’s computing research lab, on the notion that “it is humans who are responsible, not the AI.”

So of course Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI want a regulatory environment that would protect them from their products’ defects.

WELL PUT:

Stop treating the adult population like children and stop allowing adults who behave like despotic toddlers to decree what the rest of us are allowed to watch. https://t.co/16s2EZqovQ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 22, 2026

Question asked and answered, “Are we the baddies?”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Republicans Aren’t Letting El-Sayed Memory Hole Hasan Piker. “El-Sayed has a lot of support here in commie Ann Arbor and will no doubt do quite well in Dearborn and surrounding areas. Michigan gets pretty red when moving away from Wayne and Washtenaw counties, though, and voters in the rest of the state are really going to need to turn out in November. Campaign ads like the one from David Beamer should take care of any apathy or complacency. The ones I’ve seen should also be powerful draws for independent voters and Democrats who think that the DSA has a serious ick factor associated with it.”