Oh, baby, this link rips the clicks from your back, it's a browser trap, it's a trollicide tab ... 

Ed: Ahem. Given that Obama spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a presidential library that looks like a Star Wars imperial suppository, what room does he have to talk about taste? It's also a massively stupid swipe at the American middle class. 

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Stephen Soukop at American Greatness: Now, I know what you’re thinking: Obama? The guy who left office ten years ago? Why is this multi-deci-millionaire running around the country trying to get socialists and socialist-adjacent candidates (including Abdul El-Sayed) elected to high office? Shouldn’t he be off enjoying his oceanfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard or his other oceanfront mansion on Oahu? Or playing basketball on the NBA regulation-size court at the aforementioned “library”? Isn’t that what most ex-presidents are doing a decade after their terms ended, enjoying retirement? ...

In other words, I wouldn’t mind a whole lot if he decided to become a beach bum and demanded that taxpayers foot the bill for his Secret Service detail to take surfing lessons, as long as it meant that he’d never set foot on a political stage again. As he demonstrated with his “Cheesecake Factory” put-down, the guy is a sanctimonious oikophobe, unrivaled in his self-promotion and detestation of the canaille even among this nation’s unusually supercilious ruling class.

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More Syrupean Economic Bleeding From the Tariff Fight Beege Welborn Conservative Lawyer Points to a Double Standard at the NYTimes John Sexton

But then, that’s kind of the point—and the specific reason Republicans should be grateful to him.

In this context, it’s important to remember that Barack Obama was, in many ways, Donald Trump’s creator—or at least President Donald Trump’s creator. Without Obama, Trump would never have become president, and that’s true both literally and figuratively.

Ed: Taking a potshot at Cheesecake Factory underscores Obama's contempt for mainstream America. As I have repeatedly pointed out, Hillary Clinton asked Obama to rescue her in 2016, and his faux-hip dismissiveness of middle-class America ended up delivering the state to Trump. Democrats see Obama as their Golden Age, but Obama is the author of their radical turn and their disconnect with voters, even black voters, as the party embraces Marxism and Islamism. 

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Ed: It's another "basket of deplorables" comment, one that targets most of the voters that Democrats wanted to convince with Obama's last-minute rescue in Motor City. 

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USA Today: U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, similarly called The Cheesecake Factory "a nice dinner for hardworking Americans" in a post on X.

Scott Jennings, another conservative commentator, slammed Obama in a post on X: "Makes speeches for 500k a pop. Hasn’t eaten dinner that costs less than $250 in years. Has never been in a Cheesecake Factory. Undefeated at condescending to regular folks. Will always be known for a presidency that ushered in the Trump era to begin with." ...

"How out of touch with working class America do you have to be if you are busting on Cheesecake Factory? Have you had that brown bread? The cheesecake with the cherry pie filling poured on top of it? The avocado egg rolls?" one X user wrote.

Ed: Yep — it's the breadbasket of deplorables. Maybe Obama should have used The Olive Garden instead. 

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Ed: El-Sayed's "conservative outreach" coordinator has the same opinion of mainstream Americans as Obama does. 

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Ed: Indeed. Five stars, no notes. If it had not been for Uyger promoting this, I might have suspected this of being a dirty trick from El-Sayed's opponents. 

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Americans for Prosperity: Among swing voters we spoke to, sentiment has shifted in a few notable ways in recent weeks. In September, they were evenly split on whether the Democrat Party is controlled by the far left; in the first half of October, a clear majority said it is. Views of DSA turned more negative, and more of them chose personal freedom and free markets over more government control as the country’s path forward.

In Keene, N.H., AFP canvasser Derek met a couple who usually vote Democrat. Their message: they “do not want socialists writing one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else.”

Among all the voters we spoke to, including swing and Republican-leaning voters, the verdict was more decisive: 76% said the Democrat Party is controlled by the far left, and unfavorable views of DSA outnumbered favorable ones nearly seven to one, 69% to 10%.

Ed: What does this mean? I'd say it's evidence that the GOP's midterm convention landed with voters. It's also evidence that Trump and Republicans have succeeded in making Democrats' radicalism a major issue for the midterm cycle, at least competing with the election being primarily a referendum on Trump. Just how much that has penetrated into voter choices may be tough to calculate, especially with polling being so unreliable in this cycle. 

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... and creating a fairer federal tax code? Yes, we do!! How we do so is not by blaming the high costs of our goods on the only Jewish homeland in the world. I want to see Democrats succeed at every level, and that means keeping our focus on lowering costs for Michigan families and reining in this out-of-control President.

Ed: As I wrote earlier, this is the most antisemitic campaign ad I have ever seen, bar none. It's so bad that even Stevens felt it necessary to distance the party from Rebellion PAC's campaign. It's also bat-guano crazy, and so is anyone pushing this messaging. Stevens and other Dems will hide behind the claim that El-Sayed didn't have anything to do with this ad, but (a) it demonstrates who his allies really are, and (b) the silence thus far from El-Sayed is notable (as of 3 pm ET). 

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Jim Geraghty at NRO: In Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar’s memoir, This Is What America Looks Like, she mentions her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, frequently, but her only description of her father’s profession in Somalia was that he was “an educator.” She more specifically described her late mother’s profession (“a secretary for a government minister”) and her grandfather’s profession (“a government job, helping run the country’s network of lighthouses.”)

A reader might be surprised, a few pages later, when Omar mentions, “Our family of civil servants and teachers was well off enough to have a guarded compound and driver. But I didn’t like the attention I received from the other kids for the in-your-face privilege of our white Toyota Corolla and our driver, Fatah.”

At the time Somalia was one of the poorest countries in the world; a reader might well wonder what kind of a family of teachers and lighthouse managers could afford a guarded compound and driver. Later in the book, describing how the country’s conflicts spurred her family to flee, Omar describes someone attempting to break into the compound. “After about an hour of quiet, we heard a massive volley of gunfire at the gate. Bullets — loud, loud, bullets — banged over and over at our gate.”

The sequence of events makes more sense when you learn that Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army. 

Ed: Read it all, as this is likely the heart of the joint DHS/DOJ investigation of Ilhan Omar-ish. Nur would not have been eligible for asylum had his involvement in the genocidal Barre military had been disclosed, and that means Omar-ish would not have been admitted either, let alone naturalized. Jim also adds this toward the end...

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... the chapter is entitled, “War: 1989-1991, Mogadishu, Somalia.” Mogadishu experienced severe riots in July 1989, including a mass execution that became known as the “Jazeera beach massacre.” 

If, in her own words in her own autobiography, Omar was eight when this occurred in 1989, then she was born in 1981, and was 19 years old in the year 2000, when her father purportedly obtained his citizenship, not 1982 as she currently claims.

Ed: She allegedly lied about her age, too. That's also material to her admission and naturalization.  

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Rusty Weiss at RedState: DHS has said Ghana provided diplomatic assurances for Diawara's safety, and 60 Minutes, well into their story, noted that the department questioned the credibility of his fear claim.

Going the route that Diawara allegedly did is not unheard of.

A 2026 BBC undercover investigation documented a network of UK legal advisers and firms charging thousands of pounds to coach migrants, particularly those from Pakistan and Bangladesh, to falsely claim they are gay in order to obtain asylum. 

The advisers provided guidance on fabricating evidence such as staged photographs, support letters, and medical reports, prompting arrests and Home Office action against those involved in the scheme.

Ed: And now, via DHS, the rest of the story ... 

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Ed: Why didn't 60 Minutes mention this in its report? It would have interfered with its nuclear-family scolding. 

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Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal: The restoration of law and order in America is happening in large part because of President Donald Trump, in particular, his insistence that immigration laws be enforced and criminal illegal aliens be deported.

The administration should double and triple down on this message. America’s return to normalcy is contingent on making border security and deportations a top priority.

This much is undeniable: Trump’s deportations and focus on border security have run alongside a remarkable national drop in crime. To dismiss this as a mere coincidence is as absurd as when we were told there was no crime surge following the George Floyd riots and police defunding in 2020 and the explosion of border crossings during the Joe Biden presidency.

The media—always quick to reinforce whatever narrative Democrats and the Left choose to peddle—have mostly tried to wave away the connection between crime and immigration law enforcement. They’ve run misleading headlines saying that Trump’s deportations are not targeting criminals—let’s leave aside the fact that all illegal aliens have broken U.S. laws—and that if they are, then the numbers of criminal aliens is negligible, they say.

Ed: That's the false narrative that 60 Minutes was attempting to push yesterday. Bari Weiss has a lot more work to do, obviously. 

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Ed: Best wishes to the bride and groom! 

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NY Post: A high-profile Los Angeles immigration reporter has been fired amid allegations of ethical breaches, including claims he had a secret romantic relationship with a rising California state senator and allowed her to help write stories published under his byline.

Memo Torres, 46, abruptly parted ways with left-leaning news outlet L.A. TACO this week after an internal investigation that the publication says followed nearly five months of discussions over repeated violations of its policies and journalistic standards, according to LA Material.

The split has sparked a public war of words between Torres and his former employer, with L.A. TACO pushing back against claims it forced him out to scale back its coverage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across Southern California.

Ed: Yet more politico-media corruption, although this is low-stakes. How many people expected unbiased reporting from LA TACO on immigration enforcement? To their credit – and I mean this – they have opted for full transparency and accountability. Memo Torres chose ... a different direction, which LA TACO's editors explain at the link. Based on their response, I'd be inclined to trust their reporting on cultural life in Los Angeles, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt. This response has more integrity than anything 60 Minutes has ever shown. Kudos, sincerely. 

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Ed: Nothing says tougher than shipping pallets of cash to Tehran without insisting on genuine oversight and enforcement of the JCPOA's conditions, either. 

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Saturday's lyric: "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO.