Everybody's clicking a brand new tab now, I know you'll get to like it if you give it a browse now ...
"I know, right? Imagine not even realizing you're part of the problem. That would be crazy right? It would never happen to you though. No way. You're too smart. You'd recognize if your brain got captured. Of course you'd never get suckered into helping them. Nah, that would be… pic.twitter.com/0WXokLC36f
— Tommy 🇺🇸 (@RealitySalesman) September 12, 2026
Ed: Does Stewart even realize the irony here, or is he playing with his audience? We lived through four years of exactly what Stewart describes in multiple contexts. Almost the entire American media industry lied to us about Joe Biden's cognitive failures, insisting until the debate that he was Sharp As A Tack™ and that videos showing otherwise were "cheap fakes." The same media propagated the lie about the origins of COVID-19 being a natural crossover in a Wuhan wet market, plus subsidiary lies about masks, distancing, the necessity of closures, and vaccinations. Let's not also forget about the Biden Regency's efforts to shut down debate and dissent while casting it as "domestic terrorism" and "misinformation."
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Brad Slager at Mediaite: These are tiresome times with James Talarico getting the media worked up, as the press is clearly on board with his campaign. When it was announced that he was going to sit for an interview with Jimmy Kimmel most could have written the upcoming manufactured “controversy.” ...
Then this weekend things became even more insufferably insipid. On Saturday morning, ESPN’s College GameDay had a segment where Senator Ted Cruz sat for an interview. This was because they were staging the game in Austin, Texas, and they discussed an issue in Congress regarding the effort to have more governmental oversight of college sports and the NIL standards that have gotten out of control.
There were voices expressing outrage merely at the appearance of Cruz, but the more impacted thinkers were drawing comparisons to the Kimmel non-troversy; Why was Talarico banned from broadcasts, but Cruz is allowed to appear on ESPN?!?!
For two very simple reasons. To start, Ted Cruz is not currently running for office, so his appearing had no bearing on the Equal Time issue. Secondly, even if he was currently campaigning, it still would not apply, as he was seen on a cable network. The Equal Time provision only applies to broadcasts over airwaves. It is the same reason the Talarico-Kimmel confab was moved to YouTube; cable television and the internet are not governed by FCC regulations.
Ed: The media can't even report on the media honestly. The FCC does not have jurisdiction over cable, only over broadcast stations. The Equal Time Rule is not the same thing as the Fairness Doctrine either, another point that media outlets and social-media trolls couldn't get straight. The Equal Time Rule only applies to candidates, not to opinions, as the Fairness Doctrine regulated. The most obvious evidence of the Fairness Doctrine's continued demise is late-night television itself, which has become a deranged activist bubble for socialists and progressives.
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Talarico and his media allies liked the script so much the first time, they decided to run it back.
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 13, 2026
Same setup, same answer. pic.twitter.com/xOlj67Ptwh
Ed: Lame the first time, even more lame the second. All that Colbert and Kimmel needed to do was to extend an invitation in both instances to Talarico's opponents in those elections – Jasmine Crockett in the first instance, Ken Paxton in the second. Even if Paxton (or Crockett) declined, then the Equal Time Rule would have been satisfied. Both Colbert and Kimmel refused to offer the invitations because they knew they'd be outmatched if Crockett and Paxton agreed to appear.
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Sarah McLaughlin at Expression at FIRE: Many of the free speech fights today rest on the question: How do we protect kids online? But some of the battles over what can be said or shared on the internet are about protecting a remarkably less vulnerable — and significantly more powerful — group from so-called harm: public officials. One such case is in Australia, where top bureaucrat body the Secretaries Board is asking Parliament to cap politicians’ and parties’ ability to share and criticize clips of testimony from the very officials the board represents.
In a recent submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Parliamentary Standards’ inquiry into workplace behavior codes, the Secretaries Board raised concerns about challenges facing public servants and officials, including members of the military and heads of government agencies, when acting as witnesses before Parliament.
One of the Board’s “emerging concerns” is that politicians, political parties, and “third parties” can excerpt “short segments of committee broadcasts and distribute them to large audiences via social media.” In doing so, the Board notes, they can present “incomplete” clips of exchanges, remove segments from their “broader context,” add “captions with highlights or additional commentary,” and “invite ridicule, hostility or abuse directed at individual officials.”
Ed: Someone alert Jon Stewart! This is exactly what the Biden Regency wanted to do, sotto voce, with its Misinformation Board and Nina Jankowicz. The people in power want to shut down debate, dissent, and accountability. And don't think for a moment it couldn't happen here, because it actually happened here during the pandemic, even if Stewart seems to be unaware of it.
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Shouldn't you be called Birthing Person Jones? https://t.co/nIphm1AXEu
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) September 12, 2026
Ed: I'd settle for Chestfeeder Jones.
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WSJ: President Trump pushed back on the need for tighter federal regulations on artificial intelligence and dismissed safety concerns as a hoax that would leave the industry in financial ruin and hand China a competitive edge. ...
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”
In a separate post, he later questioned why industry leaders were calling for regulation, which he said could “drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy.” He likened worries about AI’s safety risks to the allegations that underpinned impeachment proceedings during his first term, “and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructions’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.”
Ed: Be sure to read David's excellent and lengthy analysis from this morning. Are there risks with AI? Yes, but the current panic is an irrational and hyperbolic response to those, and seems to mainly benefit the people behind AI ventures. The panic has already led to calls to allow cartel behavior between them in a manner that would kneecap competition. Never, ever trust a social panic.
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Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead.
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) September 13, 2026
You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier…
... the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement.
I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.
But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier.
Ed: There's more at the link, so click through to read it all. Sacks shares my skepticism about the social panic over AI and how neatly it fits the financial interests of the main AI players. This looks a lot like the attempts to form cartel monopolies at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and force everyone else to work for the cartel rather than compete against it.
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Tom Knighton: What if Bernie’s anti-AI bill, Coxon’s sudden resignation, and an op-ed in a major paoper all happening at the same time aren’t some coincidence, but are nothing more than a major offensive in a cold war over AI with the People’s Republic of China?
Don’t tell me they wouldn’t do that. We’ve got Chinese researchers smuggling in samples of dangerous pathogens, we’ve got tracking software in countless Chinese-based apps, and they’re putting weird things in products used in solar energy.
To assume they won’t do something shady with AI is beyond retarded.
AI needs guardrails. I’ll agree with that. But I want the industry to put their heads together and find the guardrails that work for the customer best, while not leading to the AI apocalypse.
Ed: Exactly. To the extent China is driving this anti-AI panic, let's ask ourselves why, and recall how honest they were about the Wuhan Virology lab six years ago. And how honest the DC bureaucrats were about it, too.
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Talarico: "What if we ran our world like we run a kindergarten classroom? Because at the end of the day, aren't we all just really big kindergartners?"
— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) September 13, 2026
He’s just so … soft. I hate it. pic.twitter.com/XWYMapGLbx
Ed: No, we are not just big kindergartners, and Talarico should be embarrassed to suggest it. Then again, he should be embarrassed to be still on his mom's checking account as a 37-year-old man, too. Talarico may actually be a big kindergartner, but that's another reason to keep him from winning a seat in the US Senate.
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The Telegraph (UK) via AOL: The 29-year-old Euphoria star has been criticised by female athletes, who have accused her of setting back women in sport.
Amy Hunt, the British sprint champion, stared directly down the camera after the women’s 200-metre final at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship on Sunday and said: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women’s sport looks like. Hard work, sweat, blood, tears. This is a beautiful evening.”
Ariarne Titmus, an Australian Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, said: “How do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?”
She described the campaign as “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft” and to “every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is – teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity”.
Ed: Before any of these athletes criticize Sweeney, they should be first forced to define "woman" in connection to access to female competition. Then they should be asked whether they raised any objection to Nike's use of Dylan Mulvaney to promote their sports bras a few years back. Perhaps these women should object more forcefully to the woke scolds selling out women and girls by allowing males to invade their spaces before getting chippy about Sweeney's use of her own physical assets to promote the services of those who sponsor those sports.
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If Sydney Sweeney was unattractive, no one would be outraged by the photos. People are jealous she looks hot. https://t.co/SdzuntlooT
— Lydia Moynihan (@LydiaMoynihan) September 14, 2026
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Fox News: Sydney Sweeney seemingly responded to backlash from her recent nude sports ad.
Sweeney, 29, shared a series of images on social media over the weekend which featured prominent athletes posing naked for various magazine covers.
Earlier this week, the "Euphoria" star faced harsh criticism after daring to bare her body in a provocative campaign for the sports trading app Novig.
Ed: It's empowering when they do it, and it's demeaning when someone really attractive does it.
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Does Lucy Davis, or any other hysterics claiming women's sports are being sexualized by Sydney Sweeney, have the same outrage for the times ESPN Magazine puts out is "Body Issue"???
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) September 14, 2026
Women were posing in the exact same manner, so explain the difference. https://t.co/2lme5lcA1c pic.twitter.com/3YikfpNcM2
Ed: Precisely my point. And Lydia's.
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25 Years ago I was honored to play Superman at the Concert for NYC.
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) September 14, 2026
Sharing the stage again with our incredible first responders under two light beams soaring to the heavens was sublime.
Our Promise to "Never Forget" is Eternal. God Bless America.🇺🇸❤️👊pic.twitter.com/A5jbXqoLmh
Ed: If you missed this on Friday, be sure to catch it now. ABC News did well in its commemoration of 9/11, focusing on the victims and families of the terrorist attack while avoiding politics at all. John, Cyndi Lauper, and Lainey Wilson offered beautiful performances from Ground Zero. Kudos all around, and if you get a chance to watch the entire one-hour special, I am certain you will agree.
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Saturday night's lyric: "El Paso" by Marty Robbins.
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