THE MEDIA COVERS ELON MUSK LIKE BLIND MEN DESCRIBING AN ELEPHANT

You probably know the parable of the blind men who tried to describe an elephant:

The first blind man put out his hand and touched the side of the elephant. “How smooth! An elephant is like a wall.” The second blind man put out his hand and touched the trunk of the elephant. “How round! An elephant is like a snake.” The third blind man put out his hand and touched the tusk of the elephant. “How sharp! An elephant is like a spear.” The fourth blind man put out his hand and touched the leg of the elephant. “How tall! An elephant is like a tree.” The fifth blind man reached out his hand and touched the ear of the elephant. “How wide! An elephant is like a fan.” The sixth blind man put out his hand and touched the tail of the elephant. “How thin! An elephant is like a rope.”

An argument ensued, each blind man thinking his own perception of the elephant was the correct one. The Rajah, awakened by the commotion, called out from the balcony. “The elephant is a big animal,” he said. “Each man touched only one part. You must put all the parts together to find out what an elephant is like.”

Enlightened by the Rajah’s wisdom, the blind men reached agreement. “Each one of us knows only a part. To find out the whole truth we must put all the parts together.”

I'm thinking about this as I read The New York Times today and see reports on Elon Musk's handiwork. In her "On Politics" newsletter, Jess Bidgood tells us about Musk's campaign spending on behalf of Republicans:

For Republicans, Christmas came in July.

That’s when Elon Musk began funneling more than $276 million into the party’s efforts to save its majorities in Congress, my colleague Teddy Schleifer has learned.

It is a stonkingly large amount of money, and it includes, in sum, one of the biggest political donations in history: $158 million to Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

It means that when we talk about the Republicans’ considerable outside spending advantage over Democrats in this midterm, we are talking, in large part, about Musk’s personal contributions.

And it means that a mercurial figure who once backed off political spending is back in the game.

The ensuing conversation is all about Musk the Republican donor -- how much he's giving, the fact that he's not personally on the campaign trail, how little he's tweeting about politics. The rest of Musk's life seems almost irrelevant to Bidgood and Schleifer. In the linked story by Schleifer, we're told about Musk's get-out-the-vote efforts, the issues that motivate him (trans people), and the specifics of his spending. Again, the rest of his life is treated as irrelevant, apart from this passage, which is more concerned about his relationship with Donald Trump:

Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another. He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White House and overseeing Mr. Trump’s government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president’s major domestic policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.

But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three events in the last two weeks and praising each other.

Meanwhile, we have this story today about the war between Russia and Ukraine:

Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost partial access to Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Kyiv relies on a militarized version of the wireless internet network paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership....

The Starlink development was interpreted in Ukraine as part of a Trump administration pressure campaign to limit Ukraine’s ability to fight. Mr. Trump is pushing Kyiv to stop attacking oil refineries so that Russia can pump more diesel onto global markets as high prices threaten the prospects of Mr. Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections.

The head of Starlink is mentioned only briefly.

SpaceX, which operates Starlink, and its chief executive, Elon Musk, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

And there's an op-ed about the Ebola crisis in Africa, written by Heather Kerr, the International Rescue Committee's country director for Congo. Kerr writes:

I have worked in humanitarian health in this region for decades and helped lead responses to several Ebola outbreaks. I have never seen one get this far ahead of us.

One reason:

Before 2025, U.S. government funding supported disease surveillance, outbreak preparedness and treatment programs run by humanitarian organizations across eastern Congo. That funding was sharply reduced as part of broader cuts last year. Budget reductions forced my organization, the International Rescue Committee, to cut funding to the health facilities focused on primary care in the Ituri Province, where this outbreak began.

In clinics in Ituri, the funding cuts have meant going without the surveillance tools needed to flag Ebola symptoms early, allowing the virus to spread before we can catch up.

Kerr never mentions Elon Musk by name. She doesn't mention DOGE. I don't blame her -- Musk and Trump can be extremely vindictive, and it's best not to risk further assaults on foreign aid to Africa. But this yet another depiction of Musk that feels like one blind person's hand on an elephant.

Last month, the Times reported that child sexual abuse material continues to appear on Musk's X:

A review by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that the site’s own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, responded to requests from users by creating dozens of sexualized and sometimes sexually explicit photos of children, including victims previously known to law enforcement, at the beginning of the year. The images included children in sexualized poses with partially exposed genitals, in states of undress and with fluid on their faces.

A separate analysis by The New York Times found that during the first half of the year, users on X posted child sexual abuse material previously flagged by authorities, including some of the most egregious content that the site attempts to block using automated filters.

But this never seems to come up in mainstream-media stories about Musk as a high-rolling Republican donor, or about Musk as a government contractor, or about Musk doing Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump's bidding with Starlink.

And what the Times told us in June about Musk's role in European racist unrest also doesn't come up in these stories:

On Tuesday and Wednesday, protesters in Belfast who were furious about an attack by a Sudanese refugee set fire to cars and property and hurled objects at the police. That followed a night of angry rioting in Southampton last week after new video was released in the murder in December of an 18-year-old college student who was falsely accused by his attacker of having perpetrated a racist assault.

“There’s a playbook,” said Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which researches extremism, hate and disinformation globally. “An incident of violence like this is identified and rapidly amplified by not just a domestic but a global, transnational, far-right ecosystem who use such incidents to absorb them into their own kind of international narrative.”

... Britain is especially vulnerable because it shares the English language with the United States, which she said makes it easier for right-wing groups there to use the American-based social media companies to stoke anger from afar.

That was the case on Tuesday, when Elon Musk, the owner of X, called for people to “REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY” protest in Belfast. He highlighted an image that listed protest locations distributed by Tommy Robinson, an anti-Muslim agitator in Britain with multiple criminal convictions....

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Party in Britain, denounced what he called a pattern in which a brutal crime “makes us all feel immense pain and anger, and then extremists who exploit that grief and anger to spread hatred and violence, aided and abetted by social media barons like Elon Musk.”

Why is a fomentor of global racist agitation, publisher of computer-generated child porn, and ally of Moscow's dictator discussed as just another rich Republican donor, even as the budget cuts he oversaw during his first stint in government cause widespread death? Because our media covers all of these aspects of Musk's life in isolation. Every story is siloed. Every reporter is a blind man feeling an elephant.

Jamelle Bouie is right to ask this:

is there anyone thinking/writing about the actual mechanics of disentangling the US government from elon musk?

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) October 11, 2026 at 8:44 PM

The ansswer appears to be no. I think that's largely because our political culture is terrified of offending rich people and doesn't want to report on Elon Musk in full, because then we'd see him for what he rzeally is, a full-spectrum criminal, racist, and sociopath. We're never supposed to see the whole elephant.

THE RIGHT'S NEW LINE ON TALARICO AND FLU-GHAZI: OUR COMPLETELY FABRICATED RUMORS WERE FAKE BUT ACCURATE

The non-Republican media believes that the GOP's disinformation about James Talarico's absence from the campaign trail is a disaster for the disinformationists. The San Antonio Current's headline is "Conspiracy Claim About James Talarico Mental Breakdown Blows Up in Right-Wingers’ Faces." The Daily Beast says, "MAGA’s Conspiracy About Dem Star Dealt Humiliating Blow." Rolling Stone says, "The Right’s Desperate Conspiracy Theory About James Talarico Goes Up in Flames."

But right-wingers don't believe they failed -- and in their vacuum-sealed information bubble, they didn't. They know we can read what they're saying, and they know that the facts disprove their rumor of a secret stay at an Ohio mental facility (both The New York Times and CBS News have examined images from a home security system and report that the images prove Talarico was at home during the period of his alleged stay in Ohio), so they're acknowledging that, yeah, their story was fake news. But they insist that the campaign-trail absence proves that something is fishy about this Talarico fellow.

In an overheated post that runs nearly four thousand words, the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh acknowledges much of the evidence that debunks the rumormongers, including the Ohio facility's assertion that Talarico was never a patient.

Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.

— Lindner Center HOPE (@LindnerCtrHope) October 11, 2026

Walsh concedes that the story was fake.

So that’s a pretty definitive statement. For his part, Talarico then responded to the post from the facility, saying he’s never even been to Ohio.

Which is true.

I’ve never even been to Ohio 😂

— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) October 12, 2026

But, Walsh says, doesn't it seem as if the story was ... fake but accurate?

A couple of things about this. Number one — it’s very possible Talarico and his campaign are hiding something. But we do have to concede that, as for the mental health institution in Ohio, this looks like a fraudulent story that was planted by GOP operatives. Maybe they were right “directionally,” as people like to say. There are reasons to think there’s something strange going on here.

And what are the "reasons"? What's Walsh's evidence that "there’s something strange going on"? Well ... just look at Talarico! He obviously didn't have a bad flu -- and he's obviously a psycho!

On September 30, Talarico was scheduled to participate in an in-person interview with the CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council. He attended via Zoom instead, claiming he had the flu — even though, as the event moderator pointed out, he looked fine.

No one has ever had a bad flu while appearing to be healthy! Everyone knows that!

... putting aside the question of his health, it needs to be said that this has to be one of the most patronizing and phony candidates to ever run for office in this country.

Just by looking at him, you can tell that if he thought it would help him win this race, James Talarico would not hesitate to sacrifice your elderly grandmother to the gods, Aztec-style. No one is buying the idea that this guy decided out of the goodness of his heart to self-quarantine just a couple of weeks before early voting begins in one of the most important elections of the year. But we’re supposed to believe that he “couldn’t live with himself” if he infected a random person with — what, a head cold?

Walsh, who is not a doctor and who has apparently never had a bad flu or met someone who has a bad flu, continues his expert diagnosis:

That’s the other problem here. On Zoom, he comes across as someone who’s mildly congested. Whatever “fever” he has, it’s obviously a very mild one. The interview lasted an hour, and he was answering questions without any issues whatsoever.

This is why he felt the need to explicitly state that he’s very sick, and that he’s trying to protect innocent men, women, and children from his horrific illness. If he didn’t spell it out for everyone, no one would have any idea he’s sick. Even the event moderator seemed confused by the whole thing. And then he claims he’s “at his most contagious” during the virtual event, which means he shouldn’t be much sicker than he currently is. That should be the point where the fever breaks, and things begin to return to normal in a couple of days.

Walsh writes:

What we can say with certainty is that it’s extremely unusual for a candidate — who, at all appearances, was not seriously ill — to disappear from the campaign trail at a pivotal moment, for nearly two weeks.

And then, once he'd gotten better, he looked ... better! Isn't that suspicious?

Talarico finally appeared for an interview on Sunday with a local news station to explain what had happened. And he didn’t help matters.

Everything about this interview — his demeanor and his answers — makes it seem much, much more likely that he’s lying. Right off the bat, he looks perfectly healthy. If you just spent two weeks battling the flu — an illness that left you bedridden and unable to campaign for the most important election of your life, or even speak on a Zoom call — then you simply don’t look this healthy and normal when you go out in public. His weight hasn’t changed at all. It’s bizarre.

It was ... the flu! He should be scarred for life! Am I right?

Walsh isn't the only Republican propagandist who's arguing that Flu-ghazi still looks suspicious, even though the mental facility story was obviously false. Here's longtime GOP attack dog Mary Katherine Ham on X:

And here's Fox's Liz Peek:

His disappearance gave rise to a whirlwind of apparently erroneous rumors. Because Talarico has voiced some wacky ideas in the past, like believing there are six genders or that God is non-binary — which he has been forced to walk back — some voters are primed to believe such rumors....

Undoubtedly, Talarico’s progressive young base will not be deterred by his peculiar walk-about, but his lengthy absence from the campaign trail casts a cloud over his run.

Let me tell you what's going to happen to this narrative on the right. It won't be abandoned, any more that "Trump won the 2020 election" has been abandoned -- and, for that matter, any more than "Michelle Obama is a man" has been abandoned. At minimum, it will be a shibboleth, an in-joke to be shared with the like-minded, especially if Talarico becomes a senator. Any time there's a negative story about him, or even a trivial health story about him, Republicans will snigger among themselves at the frail little soyboy (even though, by that time, he will be the frail little soyboy who beat them like a rented mule). They'll all continue to believe that something was wrong, and therefore it doesn't matter that their master narrative was completely fraudulent. They'll keep pulling at the few remaining loose threads (though the only one I know of that's still unexplained is the fact that Talarico said once that he went to urgent care and later said he saw his primary care physician). They'll insist they were right for as long as Talarico is in public life, because the truth means nothing to them. The prime directive is: never apologize and stay on offense. They're all Roy Cohn.

YOU WANTED CHEAPER DIESEL, YOU'RE GETTING LAWFARE AGAINST ILHAN OMAR

Disillusioned Donald Trump voters want cheaper groceries, cheaper gas, and cheaper diesel. Here's what Trump is giving them instead:

Federal agents searched Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home on Monday as part of a criminal investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter....

The Justice Department said in a statement Monday that HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the department in the Washington, D.C., area but provided no other details.

You do this kind of thing early on a Monday morning when you want it to dominate the news cycle, preferably for days. You do it on the second Monday in October when you want it to tip the upcoming elections.

The White House openly proclaims (via Fox News and the New York Post) that this is about alleged immigration irregularities for which Omar herself can't be blamed. From Fox:

Two sources close to the investigation say the search stems from a criminal fraud investigation into the Somali-born congresswoman's immigration paperwork, which was filled out by her late father when she was a child.

And from the Post:

Two sources close to the investigation told [Fox News] that the raid is part of an investigation into the left-wing Democrat’s immigration documents, which were filled out by her late father when she was a child.

I don't know why the GOP mouthpieces in the Murdoch media want to emphasize this. Are they just wallowing in the cruelty of punishing an immigrant for actions taken on her behalf when she was a child? Are they hoping Democrats will rally to her defense, which will cause their own disaffected base voters to rally to Republican candidates? (I don't think very many Democrats will speak up on Omar's behalf. I think they'll leave her to defend herself.)

This raid happened shortly after Lisa Needham of Public Notice published a post in response to Trump's efforts to stir up racist anger against Minnesota Somalis.

Trump tries to start a race war: "The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants ... The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back!"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2026 at 4:34 PM

Needham thinks this is about elections in Minnesota:

Minnesota has been reliably blue for years. The last time the Republicans won a statewide race was 2006. The best chance the GOP has is to ride a wave of racist hatred all the way to the ballot box.

But I think it's about elections nationwide. Omar is probably the most hated elected official among the MAGA/Fox/GOP rank-and-file, now that Barack Obama is long retired and Nancy Pelosi is a lame-duck congresswoman no longer in leadership. She's probably rivaled only by Anthony Fauci in the pantheon of right-wing hate targets. I can't completely rule out the possibility that this raid will motivate a few disaffected Republican voters, though my guess is that everyone who's exultant about this now is a ride-or-die Republican who was already certain to vote the straight party line.

An alternate theory is that this isn't really about the election at all -- like other things we've seen during this campaign season (the Trump-is-awesome taxpayer-funded ads, for instance), it's an attempt to please the boss, who apparently can't tell the difference between political moves that satisfy his cravings (for flattery, for racism) and political moves that help Republicans win. He might believe that this will really move the electoral needle nationwide because it pleases him so much.

In any event, it's clear that the administration wants to denaturalize and deport Omar. If the White House had anything, the denaturalization process would be well underway. They're fishing for evidence of a deportation-worthy irregularity because nothing else they have will hold up in court.

THE ANTI-TALARICO RUMORMONGERS SEEM A LITTLE DESPERATE (updated)

James Talarico spent nearly two weeks off the campaign trail, sidelined, the candidate says, by a really bad flu. On Friday he returned to the campaign trail, making an appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.

Talarico's absence from the campaign trail didn't interrupt his string of positive polling -- even the right-leaning Trafalgar Group says he's winning the race by 3 points -- but it did lead to some right-wing rumormongering, though not in the form I would have expected:

Talarico’s return comes after right-wing talking heads, including failed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, cited anonymous sources insisting the Austin-area state rep was locked away in a mental health facility after a breakdown.

One Twitter account even baselessly speculated that Talarico had attempted suicide.

Pratt -- who still hasn't made good on his promise in June to release damaging audio about one of the remaining L.A. mayoral candidates -- tried to make this about strength and weakness:

"You want to win these fights on the battlefield of ideas, not the minefield of poor health." But Talarico is winning -- unlike you, Mr. Allegedly Healthy Loser.

That's a tack also taken by Talarico's Republican opponent:

Jimmy appears to be having a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out on the national stage. My campaign has a simple request: proof of life. https://t.co/pzCXWmpbdN

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 8, 2026

"Talarico is mentally fragile, easily overwhelmed, and prone to illness." That's the message here -- that Talarico is weak and therefore unelectable.

But will that be effective at all? Talarico leads this race even though he can't out-macho the Republicans and isn't trying to. They call him gay. They call him a vegan. I'm sure that the people who won't vote for him believe both of those things, and despise him as a result. This is more of the same. But are there any voters who were planning to vote for him and now won't because of this rumor? Are there any voters who were planning to stay home, but now will turn out for Paxton? If months of "Talafreako" talk haven't gotten the job done for Paxton, why would this?

The rumormongers have a very elaborate narrative. They claim to have identified a private plane, presumably carrying Talarico, that traveled to Austin from Ohio, not far from the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility where Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, received seven weeks of treatment for depression back in 2023.

It appears to be very likely that James Talarico flew to Ohio to seek mental treatment at the same facility Lina Hidalgo went to back in 2023 during her meltdowns. He flew back this morning to attend a music festival. This confirms my theory--he was sick two weeks ago, but there is no middle ground for any "flu" of that magnitude to impact a diabetic with a flu shot for two weeks without requiring full hospitalization. Something came up in between that caused this, and I have a feeling we are going to find out what that is next week. (And no, I am not suicidal)

— Red Eagle Politics (@RedEaglePatriot) October 10, 2026

Even if it's true, would Talarico's voters care? In 2022, John Fetterman struggled through debates after a powerful stroke and still won his Senate election. I'm not convinced that even a mental health crisis would necessarily slow Talarico's momentum. (And his explanation still remains plausible -- he is a Type 1 diabetic, and there are some powerful virus out there in the Age of RFK Jr.)

I think Talarico's haters can't believe that their efforts to dehumanize him and sink his campaign aren't enough. Maybe this will work! I don't think it will. There are voters who fall for this kind of he-man chest-thumping and they're likely to be Paxton voters, and then there are normal people, people who understand that human beings can have physical and mental health issues sometimes. I think there are enough of those for Talarico to win.

*****

UPDATE: The idiots are claiming they have proof of Talarico's stay at Lindner.

🚨 BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Ohio mental hospital CONFIRMS James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week The “flu” thing was a BIG FAT LIE Following reporting by @SaraGonzalesTX and @CarolineWren, a hospital employee told @RheinAmacher and I that Talarico had in fact been a patient at the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes in around-the-clock mental health treatment. While I sympathize with those dealing with mental health crises, this man is CLEARLY not suited to become a US Senator representing over 30 MILLION TEXANS. The job doesn’t get easier after being elected — it only gets MORE stressful. And Talarico clearly can’t handle it. I pray he gets the help he needs, but Texans need a real representative they can rely on.

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 11, 2026

The call is being debunked as AI-generated, and X is intervening to suppress that debunking:

Elon immediately suspended this account that showed Nick Sortor’s recorded call to the mental health facility was AI generated and is preventing community notes on the Sortor post. It’s all hands on deck trying to make the fake Talarico story stick https://t.co/ZA9bdpc0b5

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) October 11, 2026

Folks, I'm 67 years old, which means I have a few medical issues. Therefore, I know a fair amount about our healthcare system, and I don't need AI analysis to know that the phone call is bullshit.

I know it's bullshit because no employee of any medical facility would release confidential information about a patient this way. They wouldn't even release information about a patient who had an innocuous medical problem -- say, a sprained wrist. They wouldn't acknowledge the patient by name or reveal that the patient had been treated. They damn well wouldn't tell a caller the name and release date of a patient at a mental health facility. That's a firing offense.

Al Camino posted analyses of the Sortor clip and a clip posted on X by Brian Krassenstein, in which a Lindner employee says what I'm telling you here -- that no such information would ever be released. The analyses say that the Krassenstein clip seems legit and the Sortor clip doesn't. What Camino posted has been preserved in slides 2 and 3 of this Reddit post. But anyone who knows the healthcare system knows that this information would never be released by an employee. These people have nothing.

READ SOME BREITBART COMMENTS ON THE UPCOMING EXECUTION AND LOSE YOUR FAITH IN HUMANITY

Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, will die in December in a livestreamed execution. If you don't believe that America is two irreconcilable nations, I think the right-wing response to this execution might change your mind.

Here's a reaction to the planned livestream that I found in a Breitbart comments section:

This won't be any surprise to those who know that lynchings often became joyous public spectacles in twentieth-century America.

I think there'll be quite a few watch parties in America. Most will be voluntary and celebratory, but I also think some institutions -- red-state prisons, religious-right private schools -- will make viewing of the execution compulsory.

(The Breitbart commenter says that his church is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in middle Tennessee. Another commenter says, "My kids and I will be cheering from our church pew. Pastor is going to put it on the projector!")

The comment thread I'm quoting is in response to a Breitbart story about J.D. Vance's assertion that if the execution is "ultimately live-streamed, I’m not going to be watching it." I'm surprised he's taking this position when he has Republican primaries to win two years from now, but I guess he's calculating that this will be acceptable to some of the base, and will make him seem like a "reasonable" conservative to middle-of-the-road general-election voters.

Some of the commenters call Vance a "soyboy," and many say that his reluctance to watch the video makes Marco Rubio look like a better presidential pick.

Rubio is so much of a tougher SOB than JD

****

As for JD Vance...man up cupcake. Marco Rubio is looking far better than you in 2028 anyway. Go ahead and go away like Pence.

****

Can Vance watch a firefight that matters? Can Vance order an action that needs doing?

I am afraid Vance looks at the world through "Neville Chamberlain" glasses.

But most aren't interested in Vance. They just see the story as an excuse to vent their bigotry, bloodlust, and (of course) hatred of Democrats.

The Demonrats have their tail feathers in a knot over one of their admired terrorists being publicly executed.

****

They're trying to make us feel uncomfortable about it and they're so far from doing that.

****

He is an evil man on his way down into hell.

They want Hasan's body desecrated.

I don't mind if it's a public execution but i may not watch.
All i want is, to see that NASTY Islamist Muslim POS get executed!

Then before he is berried with a tombstone saying he is a nasty Islamist Muslim traitor...they put a BIG pork sausage in his you know what.

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Show some class...bury him with bacon.

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Why waste perfectly good bacon, pork fat will do the trick.

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Only after the whole pig roast celebration !

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I’m going to visit Fort hood that day and deliver Hasan an emotional support pig to keep him company.

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Make his burial spot a roadside urinary relief station where you let it go right into the soil he’s buried in.

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If they bury him make sure it’s an unmarked grave and he is wrapped in a pig skin.

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I would still put a crucifix on his chest ... in case he saw the light before his soul goes forever into the decent into the maelstrom of Hell.

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Agreed. Maybe remove his head and drive a stake into his heart just for fun. I’m cool with that.

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I agree in live streaming the event and in lieu of a firing-squad I would suggest the guillotine with a dozen camera angles to include looking down into the basket. I want to see him wink.

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May I suggest using a wood chipper feet first ? That would be very entertaining !

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Make him dance too while shooting at his feet.

(Hasan was shot by law enforcement during the Fort Hood attack and is a paraplegic.)

There are the usual "72 virgins" jokes.

I hope that his 72 virgins are all transvestites

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In Nidal Hasan's case he has 72 goats waiting on him. LOL

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No not goats please - they are sweet creatures like dogs. How about 72 rattlesnakes or polar bears?

Also, this is fine because Charlie Kirk.

We had public executions for most of our history. You just don't like the fact that it's your buddy getting 86d. You losers celebrated Charlie Kirk's public execution. Reap what you sow, terrorist.

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Charlie Kirk's assassination and the demoncrats cheered.

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Charlie Kirk never murdered anyone, and the satanic left loved watching and cheering for his death.

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Charlie Kirk was executed live on camera. Democrats laughed and cheered. Spare me the tears.

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Yep. And the execution of that health insurance CEO was also streamed and all the leftists threw huge parties and celebrated it too.

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And wanted to **** the shooter. And wanted to **** the Boston terrorist. The leftist men are really lacking to have their women that desperate.

And what about abortion?

It’s barbaric! Barbaric, I tell you!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a partial birth abortion.

****

Maybe abortions should be live streamed. I think it would make many people know just how brutal it is. At least this azz-clown is just going to be shot. Not torn to little pieces by a vacuum cleaner.

****

Agreed. No sane person would approve of abortion if they were to watch the murder scene with the fake surgeon and other evil MFs (nurses, anesthesiologists, other trash) participating in the Devil Worship Ceremony.

And then there's this:

For approximately 24 hours after the Charlie Kirk murder, we could see the entire assassination in real time online on multiple channels. After the first 24 hours Globalists and other Leftist trash ordered the videos to be butchered, downsized, or removed. Charlie lost 4 pints of blood before he hit the floor. Our goal is to make all Leftists lose 5 pints of blood before they hit the floor. Everyone needs to see the violence Globalists and their minions have unleashed on Western Civilization. We want to see videos of ferals abducting, slashing, raping, and murdering modern humans. It is the only way to wake citizens up to the assaults the Left is using to destroy the USA and Europe.

MAGA

I don't know what to say in response to that.

I assume it will be easy to find clips of this execution after the fact, though not everywhere. The Washington Post reports:

Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, has prohibited the live-streaming of capital punishment on its platforms since 2019. A TikTok spokesperson referred to its policy on violent content, which says depicting “the moment of someone’s death” is not allowed on the video-sharing service.

Meta, YouTube and X did not respond to questions about how they would apply their policies to streams or subsequent clips of Hasan’s execution.

My guess is that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit will take down videos depicting the moment of Hasan's death. X will leave them up, as will Truth Social. And that will be the new normal. We'll see if pressure from the White House or threatened right-wing boycotts motivate Meta, TikTok, and YouTube to change their policies.

SOMEWHERE IN HELL, CHARLIE KIRK IS CHEERING ON PETE HEGSETH

I'm sure you know this:

The firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, the Pentagon said Thursday....

[Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice on Wednesday, said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution would be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

Predictably, Hegseth was almost gleeful as he announced this to his interviewer, Jack Posobiec.

Hegseth on Nidal Hasan: "He's gonna get a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be. We'll make sure that people are able to watch it. That it's public. Because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 8, 2026 at 2:36 PM

I'm pleased that there's some pushback among Republicans. I don't mean outgoing senator Thom Tillis, who tweeted,

Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting. Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.

Tillis doesn't impress me because he just a published a book called How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents: The Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink, which he's promoting primarily in the non-conservative media. He may be in search of a job as a professional apostate Republican on CNN or MS NOW, if he hasn't already lined a position up. He's no longer a Republican in good standing.

I'm somewhat more impressed by the denunciation from libertarian Robby Soave, who tweeted:

I sympathize with the thirst for vengeance, and Nidal Hasan certainly deserves to die for what he did… but a public execution is giving a terrorist exactly what he wants: publicity. They fantasize about being martyred like this, in front of a crowd (and a live TV audience???). It’s ISIS recruitment slop.

Soave still some credibility on the right, as do Kathryn Jean Lopez and Erick Erickson, who denounce Hegseth's plan on religious grounds. Between them, they quote the Bible, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Augustine to explain their disgust.

But Erickson also knows he's at odds with the current right-wing zeitgeist:

Over to you, random internet dude who claims to be a committed Christian in the Presbyterian Church in America:

I don't want to overpraise Erick Erickson. He's a right-wing attack dog who sometimes goes through phases of heterodoxy that make him appear reasonable, thoughtful, and moral. It won't last. But it's good to see that there's some room for doubt about this on the right.

But probably not much. Donald Trump was proposing the release of execution videos back in 2023, according to Rolling Stone:

“What do you think of firing squads?”

That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone....

Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and, according to two of the sources, possibly even by guillotine....

In at least one instance late last year, according to the third source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death.

Last month, CNN reported that the most zeitgeist-y Republican in America, Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French, repeatedly called for the execution of political figures he doesn't like, including Barack Obama and Adam Schiff; French repeatedly used the hashtag #HangEmHigh. Also:

... February 2025 tweets include multiple calls for executions against government officials he said were exposed by DOGE....

French wrote at the time that DOGE, which was an acronym of Department of Government Efficiency, should actually stand for “Dangle Officials Gallows Expeditiously,” adding in other tweets he wanted “more than perp walks” and “public executions,” for government officials he said were exposed by DOGE.

And then there was the time in 2024 that Charlie Kirk practiced politics the right way by calling for public executions and recommending that children watch them:

On his weekly panel discussion, "ThoughtCrime," Kirk was discussing death penalties....

"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?" Kirk asked.

Kirk, along with his co-hosts Jack Posobiec, Tyler Bowyer and Blake Neff, continued to discuss at what age should children watch the public executions, with one co-host pointing out as young as 12 years old.

"I think maybe age 12, sixth grade or so when you are old enough... " Neff said.

While Bowyer pointed out that it should be at an age when someone "can embrace the meaning" of the execution.

*****

Why is Hegseth doing this? There might be some truth to this:

Hegseth wants to livestream a public execution for the same reason ISIS livestreamed/posted their public executions: to radicalize & recruit the same demographic of downwardly-mobile, low IQ, credulous 17-27 year old males that ISIS snuff films attracted.

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) October 9, 2026

But I think it's more about cruelty, and about creating compelling television in a Fox News way. (Hegseth is the purest product of Fox News in a Fox-saturated administration.)

I also think we're seeing the right's usual craving for an easy, lazy fix. In the Rolling Stone story about Trump, a source says, of Trump's proposed release of execution videos, “The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals.” Kirk and his posse agreed:

... Kirk asked whether crime would go up or down if children were to watch public executions, "Here's a question for anyone that might be not persuaded. Would crime go up or down?"

Bowyer said, "It would go way down," with Kirk then asking, "So why is this even a question?"

Republicans believe that their own cruelty is virtuous, and that most problems can be easily solved with the swift applcation of that cruelty. That's why they liked torture in the George W. Bush years. That's why they like ICE brutality and Stephen Miller's deliberately cruel concentration camps. That's why they thought Alligator Alcatraz was an awesome idea.

I think Republicans -- in the reddest states and also in the Trump administration in its waning days -- will execute more prisoners publicly after this execution. I don't think even widespread condemnation from liberals and centrists will stop grandstanding Republicans. And as a country, we might just get used to it.

A POSSIBLE TRUMP OCTOBER SURPRISE IS ALREADY FAILING

I don't know what else President Trump is planning in order to prevent a Republican bloodbath in the midterms, but if all his schemes are as ill-conceived as the one reported by The Atlantic yesterday, we don't have much to worry about.

The White House has asked the Pentagon to develop strike options against Iranian targets that could be exercised ahead of the midterms, according to two administration officials.

How do we know this is intended to be a midterm October surprise? Because White House insiders say it is.

The planning underscores just how much the president wants to reduce gas prices and demonstrate progress in the conflict before the vote, administration officials told us.

... those in favor believe that further action after months of uneasy peace could allow Trump to demonstrate strength and potentially declare some sort of victory, giving Republicans much-needed momentum heading into the election. “It would make the president look like he got a win and that gas prices would start going down,” a Republican familiar with the deliberations told us....

But gas prices wouldn't start going down. In fact, the mere possibility that Trump might do this appears to be raising oil prices right now. NBC News reports:

The price of oil jumped sharply Thursday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume large-scale U.S. military operations against Iran in the coming weeks.

Brent crude oil rose more than 5% to more than $105 per barrel in early trading, while U.S. crude oil rose almost 5% to nearly $93 per barrel. Benchmark diesel futures jumped 4.5% in European trading. Heating oil, a proxy for jet fuel, rose more than 4%.

(Heating oil isn't just "a proxy for jet fuel." It's still a primary fuel for heating in the Northeast. Half of Maine residents use oil heat, and they were already expected to pay an average of more than $1,260 per family for heating this winter.)

More from NBC:

The move higher in oil prices also pushed up bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield, which heavily influences consumer borrowing rates, jumped to 5.35%....

U.S. stock futures dropped in response. S&P 500 futures fell 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures slid 0.8%. Futures for the Russell 2000, which tracks small and medium-sized companies, fell 1%.

So this is a disaster and it hasn't even happened yet.

Trump simply doesn't understand that war is a process that has costs even for the winner. Venezuela lulled him into believing that he could simply attack Iran and score a win with little or no cost to America. Boom -- victory! You might imagine that the last seven months were a learning experience for Trump, but Trump doesn't learn. He now thinks he can do Boom -- electoral victory! He can't.

I don't know if the other October surprises Trump is considering, such as the seizure of voting machines, will be similarly ill-conceived, but we can hope. It's quite possible that Trump will try to seize voting machines in locales where the government is likely to push back hardest, both legislatively and in court. There's a good chance that he'll focus on states that get on his nerves, like California, rather than states where key races are taking place. Because Trump is still angry about 2020, he might go after Georgia, where Jon Ossoff is likely to win by such a comfortable margin that Trump's cries of "Fraud!" will be especially implausible, while ignoring other states (Iowa? Maine?) with much tighter races.

I don't want to rule out the possibility that Trump's efforts will be effective, but he often doesn't know how to use the power our system has ceded to him in an effective way. Let's hope that's true in this election season.