I've been clickin' these tabs so long, beatin' the ones that are wrong, I know every link in these dirty browsers of Webway ...
“If you’re one of the few Republicans who’s running against a Democrat who’s not that crazy, then just talk about Abdul El-Sayed. He’s got enough material for the whole country,” Vice President JD Vance tells House Republicans. https://t.co/opt83Agsw2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 15, 2026
Ed: Sounds like good advice. The article itself is paywalled, but this is amusing enough. If GOP candidates really want the crazy, though, they might want to talk about tax absconder Angie Nixon instead.
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Politico: Vice President JD Vance rallied House Republicans in a pre-midterm Capitol Hill visit Tuesday, encouraging members to support each other on the campaign trail and through fundraising.
He did not address the topic that has dominated conversations in Congress in recent days: the risk posed by artificial intelligence and what, if anything, lawmakers ought to do about it.
Instead, according to five people in the room granted anonymity to comment on the private meeting, the vice president urged Republicans in safe seats to help their vulnerable colleague and encouraged members to focus on the “choice” voters face with Democrats. ...
Another member described it as a “great locker room speech.” Vance in particular attacked James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the Texas Senate race, according to two of the people.
Ed: Talarico works as a foil too, but his case may be more nuanced in areas outside of Texas. Talarico has been better at presenting himself as non-crazy since entering the Democrat primary for the Senate. El-Sayed and Nixon just don't have the skills necessary to pull that off. In fact, I would advise Ken Paxton (and/or the PACs) to include Nixon and El-Sayed in his campaign here to land the Talarico hits more effectively.
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Texas Republicans, take notes.
— Luke Macias (@lukemaciastx) September 15, 2026
One of the best TV ads so far this cycle. pic.twitter.com/PMUrygP6J1
Ed: Paxton could probably use a couple of soft-sell approaches at some point. This was absolutely charming.
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KARE 11 in MN: Beginning in May 2024, KARE 11 Investigates reported on allegations of fraudulent billing at Evergreen Recovery – including 203 hours of work by one employee in a single day.
In July of that year, the FBI raided Evergreen and a federal judge froze the company’s assets.
Now, two years later, a court filing indicates authorities may have missed millions of dollars in a hidden account.
Evergreen Recovery co-owner David Backus recently told his attorney there is a $25 million certificate of deposit (CD) that should be included among the company’s assets.
Neither federal prosecutors nor the court-appointed receiver tasked with locating Evergreen’s assets knew about the account.
Ed: There's so much fraud in Minnesota that no one can keep up with the money, it seems.
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Harry Booth. Tarbell Fellow. Billy Perrigo. Tarbell Grantee.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) September 15, 2026
Zero disclosure.
Par for the Doomer course. pic.twitter.com/WunMOofzxt
Ed: And the Protection Racket Media wonders why the American people despise them. Time isn't reporting news; it's conducting narrative maintenance on a social panic to plow the ground for cartel behavior. Moskovitz is one of the founders of Facebook, by the way, which is not unfamiliar with that kind of panic or cartel benefit, thanks to the "misinformation" panic of the last few years.
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Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO: To recap that speech: Talarico said that the bill was an attack on the very “humanity” of trans children; that it amounted to “endangering the lives of some of our most vulnerable children to solve a problem that doesn’t exist”; that it was “grotesque” in putting “someone’s damn trophy” ahead of even one child’s life; that it entailed “picking on kids” and “hurting children”; that it wrongly denied that “trans children are God’s children made in God’s own image”; that it further wrongly denied that “they are perfect, they are beautiful, and they are sacred”; that it was “immoral,” “a special kind of sin,” and “hateful.”
You may not have gotten the impression from this speech that Talarico “opposes trans athletes playing girls’ sports when it jeopardizes safety or fairness.” But that’s what one of his spokesman said a few weeks ago. Then, last week, the candidate himself made the same remark on Fox News, adding that he cares deeply about kids’ sports.
The closest he has come to explaining the difference between his 2026 stance, on the one hand, and his 2021 vote and speech, on the other, is that the bill should have left local communities in control rather than setting a statewide policy.
Yet this was obviously not the basis for his passionate opposition to the bill. His speech did not argue that localities should be able to treat trans kids as subhuman, endanger their lives, hurt them to solve a non-problem, etc. He said nothing about local control.
Ed: The problem Talarico faces is not just the need to change positions, which is bad enough, but also to reverse himself on tone. Talarico used that language in 2021 because he was performing for the progressive activists who kept him in his state legislative seat from his district in Austin.
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🚨 WATCH
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 14, 2026
James Talarico says his “favorite drag queen” is Alyssa Edwards — who has described himself as "a drag performer that works with children." pic.twitter.com/u5HNKh4CQt
Ed: Just having a "favorite drag performer" is going to be an issue in Texas, apart from a few very deep blue precincts in Austin and maybe Dallas. Ordinary Texas voters do not have "favorite drag performers," much less have one they can name, and especially not one who prefers to work with children.
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Matt Margolis at PJ Media: Talarico didn’t hesitate even a fraction of a second. If you watch the video, you can see that he knew exactly what his answer was, because it’s totally normal for a straight dude to have a favorite drag queen.
But it gets worse. Let’s do a deep dive into who “Alyssa Edwards” is.
Alyssa Edwards is the stage name of Justin Dwayne Lee Johnson, a performer who has described himself as "a drag performer that works with children," and who has spent years advocating for youth drag shows. Johnson has openly discussed sharing the stage with the young dancers he trains himself. "I remember being at World Pride in New York a few years back and sharing the stage with my dance students, one of the most powerful moments of my life," he told Out magazine.
In fact, the 2018 Netflix docuseries Dancing Queen featured Johnson's work with those young dancers. The Dallas Observer reported that Johnson called one 10-year-old male student his "mini-me," and that the child dressed as Johnson’s drag alter ego during an episode of the show.
Remember when Talarico professed his love for “trans children?” Do you think it’s just a coincidence that his favorite drag queen is one known for working with minors?
Ed: Texans will likely have another term for this – grooming. Don't be surprised if this starts popping up in TV ads across Texas. In fact ...
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What normal person can name their favorite drag queen this quickly?
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 14, 2026
When James Talarico isn’t advocating for children to dress in drag, he’s watching drag performances and saying that Texas produces the best drag queens.
James Talarico is too weird and too radical for Texas.…
Ed: Soon to be an ad appearing near you!
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Fox News, July 6: Senate hopeful James Talarico is on the defensive after remarks resurfaced in which he lavished praise on Texas drag queens as "some of the best" in the country.
Talarico, the Democrats' nominee in Texas’ hotly contested Senate race, made the comment in May 2023 while criticizing a bill in the state legislature banning "sexually oriented performances" on public property and in the presence of minors — a measure that would have likely restricted some drag shows.
He voted "present" on the legislation at the urging of the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus after language explicitly referencing drag performers was stripped from an earlier version, arguing the revised bill would better protect their performances, in a statement to The Texas Newsroom.
"I think Texas is obviously the best state in the nation and I think we produce some of the best drag queens in the nation," Talarico told the outlet. "And I didn’t want any legislation to target them or hurt that industry."
Ed: FWIW, I have no problem with drag as a form of entertainment for adults. There's a long tradition of drag in comedy and burlesque. But when it's aimed at children, it starts looking more like grooming than comedy.
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TALARICO HAD HIS “FAVORITE TEXAS DRAG QUEEN” ANSWER LOCKED AND LOADED 😂
— The Will Cain Show (@WillCainShow) September 15, 2026
No thinking. No hesitation. Just straight to Alyssa Edwards. @willcain tries the same challenge and questions whether Talarico could name a Texas college football quarterback as quickly. pic.twitter.com/VgbxAiBpkF
Ed: Maybe someone should test that question with Talarico.
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Ira Stoll at the Free Beacon: Yet even by the standard of partisan cheerleading, every once in a while—okay, almost every day—an article comes along that is so shameless in its Democratic Party advocacy that it’s enough to make a reader laugh out loud, or at least engage in a visible eye-roll.
In that category can be placed an article that appeared in the print New York Times under the headline "Seeking Jolt, G.O.P. Turns to a New Red Scare." It solemnly assures New York Times readers that Republican accusations that the Democrats are communists are "far-fetched" and "baseless" because, after all, "no credible midterm candidate identifies as a communist." Also, the charge "has little overlap with Democrats’ actual platforms."
After all the dismissiveness, in the 14th paragraph the Times allows that "In some ways, far-left leaders have fed the argument. In 2020, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leader of the progressive movement and a self-described democratic socialist, praised elements of the Communist Cuban revolution. And Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who unseated a Democratic congressman in a New York primary in June, once maintained a social-media account that circulated a post suggesting that public libraries should carry more Marxist literature." ...
In the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign, when Kamala Harris accused Trump of fascism, the Times trotted out Jonathan Weisman to declare that "The definitions of fascism, however, have never been completely fixed as each new generation’s authoritarians vary their forms and methods of control." When it comes to Trump’s accusations of communism, however, there is no such flexibility, just the Times getting on its high horse about how "baseless" the accusation is. It’s a classic Times double standard.
Ed: If it weren't for double standards, the NY Times would have none at all. And haven't on communism since the days of Walter Duranty and his cover-up of Soviet genocide in Ukraine.
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Just to be clear, this is Variety explicitly piling on a popular young actress in an environment where there are not enough movie stars and where studios are openly complaining about not being able to attract men. Variety is no longer a friend to Hollywood. https://t.co/OvsQ6aUuoX
— George MF Washington (@GMFWashington) September 15, 2026
Ed: Variety endeavors to act as an enforcer for the hard-Left progressive elite establishment in Hollywood. That is its purpose.
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YOU SLUT https://t.co/gviPV5P5ie
— Nick Searcy, Actor/Director/Producer/Author (@yesnicksearcy) September 15, 2026
Ed: Hate the game, not the playa, Nick!
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Free Press: On the cover of its latest edition, The Economist promises to uncover “the truth and the lies” about “Islam in Europe.” The story it presents is, for the magazine’s readership, a reassuring one: a crisis of two extreme fringes fighting across a sensible middle. But this is a false framing that betrays the complexity of Islam in Europe it promises to untangle, just when honest understanding is urgently needed. Allow me to explain why.
The editors offer a soothing symmetry: on one side, a small minority of Islamist extremists; on the other, a small minority of far-right extremists. “Islam poses no serious danger,” declares the accompanying editorial. “But Islamism and the fear of Islam do.” Both are dangerous. Both must be resisted. In this formulation, the vast majority of Muslims and the vast majority of native Europeans are peaceable people caught between two fringes. The task of the responsible commentator is to condemn both fringes with equal force, while warning against the temptation to blame whole communities for the actions of its extremists. This is presented as the fair, balanced, and non-paranoid position, making The Economist the sober grown-up in the room who refuses to be drawn into the ugliness of either side.
Unfortunately, that symmetry does not reflect reality, and by insisting on it, The Economist puts its elite readers in a box and discourages them from looking beyond it. Consider what would have to be true for the symmetry to hold. There would have to be, on the European far right, a creedal architecture of comparable depth to Islamic scripture and tradition: a body of texts venerated by a fourth of humanity, taught in seminaries across dozens of countries, printed in hundreds of millions of copies, and read by every serious adherent of the faith as an authoritative source of guidance. There is not.
Ed: Be sure to read this all. The Western press is so self-loathing about its foundation to Western civilization that it refuses to criticize anyone else without applying the same criticism to "the far Right" – ie, those who defend Western civilization and prefer to live within it – even when the comparison is absurd. Ali utterly demolishes the false equivalency peddled by The Economist, and most of the rest of Western media along with it.
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A bumper sticker in Texas that I saw recently! It's 100% correct too! pic.twitter.com/jh44miivjv
— Lawrence Poslaiko- America First! (@RealLPoslaiko) September 15, 2026
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Last night's lyric: "Locomotion" by Little Eva and various artists. My favorite version is by Grand Funk Railroad.
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