Dashing and daring, a tab he was sharing with wicked X/Twitter, the platform I loved ...
The prevailing view of so much of the young left in America is that we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad. pic.twitter.com/u01HsCRnv3
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) September 12, 2026
Ed: This might have been sufficient for tonight's Final Word all by itself. It's eight minutes of brutal truth about the attempts to whitewash terrorism in general, and 9/11 in particular. And Maher saves most of his fire for the Protection Racket Media, but this applies more broadly than just that context. Maher also recognizes this and references Luigi Mangione and the lunacy of the woke Left on many fronts.
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Hollywood in Toto: Macklemore recently lectured the crowd at an Ed Sheeran concert with his pro-Palestinian talking points, drawing outrage from select Jewish groups.
“It’s not a genocide. It’s a counter-attack in a war, a war that’s been waged on Israel since 1948 based on the ridiculous premise that Jews don’t belong in the one place on earth they are indigenous,” he said. “Hey geniuses, they’re the Indians in this scenario.”
Later, he returned to his thesis that too many modern Democrats have Hamas’ back, a group that steals food from its own citizens in addition to its savagery. Meanwhile, Israel sends massive amounts of aid to Gaza and allows for Palestinians to travel in order to get life-saving medical attention.
Worst genocidal movement ever, no? That’s Maher’s comic point, one you will not hear from the mouths of John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon or Seth Meyers.
Ed: It's not just a comic point. Maher couches this in stand-up form, but this is hard and angry truth delivered as such. Take notice that the audience mainly stopped reacting toward the end, and Maher didn't wait for laughter or applause. This was not a routine or a comic monologue; it was a declaration.
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Bill Maher: “I was reading about the Lindsay Clancy case, I kept reading about parents, so many, who go on record. I mean, they make TikToks and saying they hate being a parent. And I'm like, you did this to yourself. I'm not surprised you hate being a parent because you created… pic.twitter.com/O9eefSoSfT
— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) September 12, 2026
... I'm not surprised you hate being a parent because you created this system where you could never be alone. My parents had time alone. ‘Get the f*ck out of here.’ And we did.”
“And everything is a negotiation with a child. Of course you're exhausted. You can't have that situation with a child… Imagine if the military, you had to ask the soldiers, ‘What do you think, guys? You want to go into battle?’ It's the same with kids. You can't ask them everything. Just do it. Get out of the car. Get in the car. We're leaving…”
Ed: Why not one more from Maher, who's certainly earned it? He's right about the "gentle parenting" model, but it's also a bit of a non-sequitur, which Maher may have addressed in the larger context of his remarks. The issue with Clancy isn't about regretting being a parent, but a real mental illness. The only question was whether it robbed her of the ability to distinguish right from wrong and the consequences of her actions. The people who flood social media to discuss their contempt for their children miss that point entirely, while exposing themselves as selfish ghouls in the process.
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Miami New Times: News of mass layoffs by media titan McClatchy sent shockwaves through The Miami Herald Thursday after 30 reporters, a third of its newsroom, found out their jobs were axed.
In an internal memo sent to Herald staff, McClatchy’s top brass said a changing media landscape cluttered with news options has led to a 41 percent decline in consumer revenue, prompting the company to slash newsroom positions across its papers. At some publications, nearly 40 percent of staff were cut, according to the Florida-based journalism institute and news outlet Poynter. Status, a news outlet that covers the media industry, dubbed the sweeping cuts the “McClatchy Massacre” The layoffs affected 13 newsrooms across the country, including the Idaho Statesman, Lexington Herald-Leader, Sacramento Bee, Charlotte Observer, and Fresno Bee.
The cuts weren’t limited to journalists covering stories that had supposedly stopped resonating with readers. In Charlotte, they came just hours after one reporter published exactly the sort of accountability journalism newspapers have long argued makes local news indispensable.
Ed: The problem isn't the choice of stories. It's the utter lack of trust that the Protection Racket Media has created in its products, thanks in large part to the narrative-manipulation techniques Maher described in the first clip.
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NEW: Huge layoffs across McClatchy newspapers today, with some newsrooms gutted by a third. An internal email from management says consumer revenue has dipped 41% and "we cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment" pic.twitter.com/Uhne0z7TSj
— Katie Robertson (@katie_robertson) September 10, 2026
Ed: McClatchy may still not have absorbed the market signals, even while losing nearly half of its revenue resulting from them. Neither have most media outlets. They're still trying to impose Newspeak on its consumers, who keep rejecting it, and attempt to tell them that they should trust their narratives while ignoring what they see with their own eyes. Call it the Sharp As A Tack Gaslighting Strategy.
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Zachary Faria at WashEx: Talarico is lying. We know he is lying because he has maintained these positions for years. Talarico voted against legislation that would ban boys from playing in girls sports when he was in the Texas legislature, even explicitly saying, “Some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports.” He very explicitly said that fairness in sports does not matter if it means keeping “transgender girls” (read: boys) out of girls sports, and now asserts that he opposes it if it endangers fairness.
In fact, Talarico was so committed to the transgender movement dogma that he implied that the bill would literally kill transgender people. He said, “If one trans child dies to protect someone’s damn trophy, this bill is grotesque.” What seems more likely: Talarico is lying to the face of every voter in Texas, or he has changed his mind in the span of a few years to think that protecting “someone’s damn trophy” is worth it even if “one trans child dies”?
Or what about his belief that there are six biological sexes? Talarico made those comments in 2021, when he was 32 years old. Now, he has magically changed his mind, just in time to run in a statewide general election in Texas. Most of the rest of us have understood that there were just two biological sexes since we were children. How is it that a 32-year-old man asserted otherwise, only to a few years later claim he simply doesn’t believe it anymore?
Ed: He's trying to convince people he's become a born-again moderate. Will it work? Doubtful, but what else can Talarico do at this point? He has to lie to have any chance at competing in a statewide election in Texas. This is the problem created when parties nominate extremists from their safest legislative districts to contests where the constituency is vastly different. This won't help much either ...
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TEXAS SENATE RACE: Would you be surprised to learn that the architect of James Talarico's political career is a trans man who attended Furman University and got a degree in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies? Tyler Mitchell, now known as Hyacinth High (they/them/theirs),… pic.twitter.com/IqxISn4aNp
— @amuse (@amuse) September 10, 2026
Ed: I did some digging on this to find news coverage about it, and came up empty. However, High's own Twitter bio corroborates the claim to have worked for Talarico's campaigns in the past: "current campaigns specialist @fairnessproject | fmr @texasdemocrats, @jamestalarico, @vademocrats, @LCVoters | non-binary, queer, southern | they/them". The account has been quiet for six years, but is still active.
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Daily Wire: The Democratic Party’s great white hope in Texas, Senate candidate James Talarico, visited a mosque in the days after the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks — a move that he now defends as being in the interest of “solidarity.”
Talarico’s mother was behind the trip — he was 12 years old at the time — and she took his sister Madeleine and two of his friends as well, to counter some of the distrust of American Muslims in the days after the attacks. ...
In 2021, Talarico sponsored a bill that would allow Imams to perform weddings in Texas. Talarico’s church has also continued to blur the lines, hosting an annual Iftar dinner for the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and inviting a local Imam to deliver a sermon in 2022. Rigby himself has touted partnerships with the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Ed: Interesting, although it's a bit of a stretch to blame a 12-year-old for the choices of his parents. It certainly appears to have informed Talarico's adult politics, however, along with his claim a few years ago that he came to appreciate Christianity through "Islamic mystics." You can bet that Paxton and his allies will be making sure that voters know about it.
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James Talarico says “all of my money comes from hardworking Texans” while on a fundraising trip to collect checks from wealthy elites in California.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 12, 2026
You can’t make this up. pic.twitter.com/DPHCo8q5Tf
Ed: He literally spent Labor Day weekend attempting to bolster his campaign from donors in Los Angeles.
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Daily Caller: Despite his moderate facade, Democrat Texas Senate nominee James Talarico put up several job postings that prioritized transgender and nonwhite people, according to listings reviewed by the Daily Caller.
Past Talarico political campaigns pushed numerous job listings specifically urging minorities to apply. Critics contend that this pattern in campaign hiring belies Talarico’s progressive priorities and his past campaign’s full embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“Women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ applicants are strongly encouraged to apply,” one listing reads.
Talarico has also openly bragged about having a majority female and minority staff, criticizing other candidates who take the minority vote for granted.
Ed: This hits closer to the mark. Texans are sick to death of DEI, at least those outside of Houston and perhaps a smattering of precincts in Dallas and San Antonio.
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SICK.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 12, 2026
Texas Democrat James Talarico uses Jesus Christ to defend criminal illegal aliens.
"What would Jesus do if he visited the U.S. Senate? I think he would tell the Senators...'I was a stranger and you deported me'...and then I think he would flip over those fancy desks..." pic.twitter.com/10g9irjCJP
Ed: Let's leave aside the theological argument, which we can address another time. Does Talarico really mean to Jesus-shame Texas voters who have grown tired of footing the bill for the Democrats' border crisis during the Biden Regency? Is that his big political strategy? Because if it is, then Talarico really needs to spend time outside of Austin to acquaint himself with his statewide immigration-enforcement-backing constituency in this election, and not just the East-California-ish constituency in his Austin state senate district.
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NY Times: For months, top Republican outside groups stayed away from Mr. Paxton’s contest, where polls show a close competition between him and a well-funded Democratic opponent, James Talarico. But a flood of outside money suddenly arrived over the last two weeks to help Mr. Paxton amid Mr. Talarico’s rising prospects of winning.
The new $51 million investment from Texas PAC, a group affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC allied with Senate Republican leaders, adds to the more than $23 million that has already been booked by a half dozen other G.O.P. groups on advertising for Mr. Paxton from Sept. 1 through Election Day. That gives Mr. Paxton and Republican allies a 5-to-1 spending advantage over Mr. Talarico and Democratic allies, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. For months, the Democratic side had possessed a clear spending advantage.
The approximate total of $75 million doesn’t include all of a $10 million Texas ad buy disclosed by President Trump’s super PAC last week or the $2 million-plus investment in voter contact work from Elon Musk’s super PAC.
Ed: I wrote about this earlier today, but the scope of the gap is even more dramatic than I thought. It appears that Talarico and his allies burned through most of their money already, and now are dramatically overmatched in the general election. And as this Final Word demonstrates, Paxton and the GOP have a lot more ammunition to use in this campaign still. Now we know why Talarico went to SoCal to beg for scraps, too.
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Mamdani Lays Wreath At Tomb Of The Unknown Hijacker https://t.co/uDqbIs7Xs6
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) September 11, 2026
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Last night's lyric: "Tuesday" by John Ondrasik, in honor of those lost on 9/11.
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