THURSDAY: Towel-snapping fun with The Five!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2025

What they do with Tarlov: It's as we said in this morning's report. On our most-watched "cable news" TV show, this was the tease in question:

Up next! Who's got the better beach bod, Trump or Sleepy?

GG's "poop mug" was right there on the table before him. It functions as his security blanket. Scripted dimwit tease to the side, the guy seems to need some help.

As it turned out, the next segment—Segment 2—didn't actually turn on President Biden's beach bod. That said, along the way, Katie Pavlich said this about what the Democrats are foolishly doing at the present time:

PAVLITCH (10/15/25): Democrats are focused on the wrong guy. Trump is not running for re-election. He is done in 2028, and yet Democrats continue to go after him. 

Presidential hopefuls like Gavin Newsom just can't get over the fact that he just needs to come up with his own ideas, can't just copy Trump for everything he does—and they're just not authentic.

Trump isn't running for re-election? Steve Bannon just got through saying, once again, that Trump will run again in 2028, though that assumes that we'll still be having elections at that point in time.

Setting that matter to the side, President Trump is currently seizing control of the nation and the world. On The Five, Pavlich thinks the Dems are silly for paying attention to him!

The Five is a deeply stupidified version of what a news broadcast might have been like at one time. Basically, it's The Big Weekend Show plus a punching bag, as the silly boy later said:

WATTERS: This show's different, because we let Harold talk, you know?

FORD: Thank you.

WATTERS: It's not a pile-on. We don't just cut you off, like with Jessica. We listen.

PANEL: [GENERAL HILARITY]

Those are the corporation's children—the corporation's children at play. Also, that is no program for intelligent humans. That's an unmistakable message being beamed from within a dimwit culture.

As we've noted again and again, Jessica Tarlov's days in this braindead program's liberal chair give The Five its unique frisson. As soon as she starts to make a point, the group interruptions start, much as the silly boy Watters said.

Harold Ford is more accommodating in his days in the liberal chair. For that reason, he is allowed to speak.

That said, Gutfeld's interactions with Ford have started taking on an unpleasant racial air, turning on this imagined premise:

Why does Harold say "ax" instead of "ask?"

GiGi just keeps floating that rot. The little guy has an anger inside which won't seem to let him go.

For Hemingway, Paris was "a moveable feast." The Five is a braindead garbage can which gets opened each day at 5.

It's an assault on the dying American experiment.  We Blues just let this go.

SILO RED, SILO BLUE: McEnany in Silo Red!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2025

No country for big-brained humans: With the World Series drawing near, we think of the time Ralph Branca was forced to walk off the mound.

Right there at Gotham's Polo Grounds, he had surrendered the Bobby Thompson home run blast which came to be known as "the shot heard round the world." If memory serves, he had to walk all the way to the door in the center field wall, roughly 500 feet from home plate, to enter the losing team's clubhouse and dressing room.

We were only 3 at that time. More than thirty years later, we saw the late comedian, Bob Woods, forced to walk off the stage at Baltimore's brand new, struggling City Light comedy club.

For a reason we won't describe, the Sunday night show had started with only two patrons present. Midway through the gentleman's headline set, the patrons decided to leave.

Brother Woods, a national act, did the sensible thing—he slowly walked off the stage. Yesterday, a long stream of American journalists followed suit, trudging out of the Pentagon and off into the light. 

This morning, the New York Times describes what happened under the headline shown below. As an aside, we're happy to see that Eric Wemple had gone from the Washington Post to the Times:

How the Pentagon Is Blocking Out News Organizations

Wednesday was a major moment for the coverage of the United States military. Scores of journalists with access to the Pentagon handed in their press passes rather than sign on to new rules laid out by Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense.

The news organizations that have refused to agree to the rules include large organizations such as The New York Times, NBC News and Fox News, as well as many smaller publications that focus entirely on the military. At least one news organization, the conservative cable network One America News, has agreed to the new terms.

The new rules codify sharp limitations on access and raise the prospect of punishment—including revocation of credentials—for simply requesting information on matters of public interest.

So has behaved the emperor Hegseth, one of the nation's new men.

Scores of reporters single-filed out. To read about this event without a paywall, the Associated Press tells the tale under this headline:

Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules

Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules “common sense” to help regulate a “very disruptive” press.

News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information—classified or otherwise—that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.

Many of the reporters waited to leave together at a 4 p.m. deadline set by the Defense Department to get out of the building. As the hour approached, boxes of documents lined a Pentagon corridor and reporters carried chairs, a copying machine, books and old photos to the parking lot from suddenly abandoned workspaces. Shortly after 4, about 40 to 50 journalists left together after handing in badges.

It was a bit like The Grapes of Wrath when the Okies are forced to head out. As you'll note, Fox News joined the Times and the Washington Post is loading up its belongings and silently moving on.

Thus ruled the Sultan Hegseth, late of the Fox & Friends Weekend TV show as seen on the "cable news" messaging unit known as the Fox News Channel.

Morning Joe began with this topic this morning. They arrived here way too late.

Back in 2015, Joe and Mika were still social friends of the new candidate, Candidate Trump. Over the previous four years, he had been pretending that President Obama had been born in Kenya, not in the United States. 

Joe and Mika kept cavorting with him on their show anyway. It was Rachel Maddow's drinking pal who had been his enabler on the Fox News Channel during those gong-show years.

(Today, the drinking pal is at Newsmax. Like so many other things, Rachel's tolerance for what her buddy did for those four years has never been explained, nor will anyone ever ask.)

We recall telling the analysts that Mika and the new candidate needed to go rent a room during that peculiar first year. If memory serves, Joe and Mika broke with the candidate in January 2016, when he began pretending that he didn't know who this "David Duke" actually was.

That break came way too late. This morning's New York Times crawls with headlines about the way the ship is being redirected. That includes a headline about the retribution the candidate promised during the 2024 campaign.

On Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, the candidate had said that the pledge meant that his enemies would be punished. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and alternate Saturdays, he said the retribution would just be about all the winning. 

It was much like that with respect to deportations, with "mass deportation" promised one day, "the worst of the worst" the next. Different voters heard different things. Many heard no such statements at all.

At least a decade ago, we began recalling—and we began posting, right at this site—what Professor Brown had mysteriously said, during a Phi Beta Kappa address, all the way back in May 1960. This is the puzzling passage which had come to mind:

Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis

[...]

I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery...and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...

There comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries...by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

The power which makes all things new is magic. What our time needs is mystery: what our time needs is magic. Who would not say that only a miracle can save us?

For the full text of Prodessor Brown's address, you can just click this.

We don't know what he was talking about in that unusual passage. We have no idea how we ever knew about that statement—how we knew about it well enough to remember it fifty years later.

For the record, Norman O. Brown was very hot in the 1960s. When he died in 2002, the New York times did a full-length obituary.

This morning, we highlight what may be the only passage of that speech which remains relevant. "Only a miracle can save us? That's what the classicist said at the time, even before President Kennedy squeaked into the Oval Office and unveiled The New Frontier.

This morning, the headlines at the New York Times suggest that the die has been cast. Different people will have different views about that apparent turn of the screw, but some of the dual headlines say this:

Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules
The new rules codify strict limitations on access to and raise the prospect of punishment for requesting information on matters of public interest.

Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.

Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela
The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.

Trump Rattles Vaccine Experts Over Aluminum
The president’s call for removal of the metal from childhood inoculations set off alarms. About half of shots for polio, whooping cough and other diseases would be affected.

U.S. Attorney Was Forced Out After Clashes Over How to Handle Russia Inquiry
The departures of Todd Gilbert and his deputy in the Western District of Virginia show the pressure being brought on prosecutors to pursue the president’s perceived foes.

Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump From Firing Government Workers During Shutdown
Labor groups are set to square off against the Trump administration one day after the president renewed his threat to cut “Democrat programs.”

U.S. Says It Revoked Visas of Some People Who Criticized Charlie Kirk
The State Department’s X account listed six examples of people who it said had made comments about the assassination of Mr. Kirk, a right-wing activist, and said it was withdrawing their visas.

Racist and Homophobic Texts From Young Republican Officials Prompt Backlash
Some local G.O.P. officials who participated in the text exchanges are losing their jobs or being pressured to resign. But top Republicans have been dismissive.

Trump Administration Decimates Birth Control Office in Layoffs
The layoffs have raised fears that the administration could be effectively ending an initiative that provides contraception for millions of low-income women.

Different people will have different views about the actions described in those reports. Some people may challenge the accuracy of the reporting.

That said, we also note this "news analysis" piece, and this news report from the recent achievement of peace:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Oval Office Becomes a Diorama of Power Dynamics as Trump Goes After Rivals
Top officials, unwilling to fight for the historical independence of their institutions, watched on Wednesday as President Trump continued his pursuit of controlling law enforcement.

With Truce in Place, Hamas Pursues Bloody Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza
A video this week captured Hamas fighters in Gaza executing Palestinian rivals as the militant group tries to assert that it is still the dominant force in the territory after two years of war with Israel.

The president was naming the rivals he seems to want to see jailed. Also, another bloody crackdown in Gaza.

It seems there must have been plenty of topics to discuss and clarify on the nation's most-watched "cable news" program—but if you thought that, you should possibly think again. 

The first fat joke came at 5:02 p.m., triggered by Den Mother Dana. Greg Gutfeld took her "Goliath" reference and ran, after which he teased the program's second segment in the following manner:

Up next! Who's got the better beach bod, Trump or Sleepy?

That was the tease he delivered. You can see his "poop mug" sitting before him on the table as the chuckle-rich day rolled along. 

Let's just say that the major topics were AWOL from the day's show. Gaza was gone, long gone, as was the exodus from the Pentagon.

The program had five segments in all. Here were the final three, with plenty of time for towel-snapping and some good solid all around fun:

Segment 3: Cheryl Hines was interviewed poorly on The Five

Segment 4: Alec Baldwin had a fender bender (no charges, no one hurt)

Segment 5: Katie Porters interview meltdown

An enjoyable time was had by all. We'll let a few of the chyrons speaks for themselves:

CHERYL HINES BATTLES "THE VIEW"

ALEC BALDWIN: I HIT A BIG FAT TREE

KATIE PORTER HINTS OF MORE PSYCHO VIDEOS

That fifth segment quickly went south. In this report for Mediaite, Charlie Nash provides video and transcript about where these simpleton flyweights went:

Fox Co-Host Briskly Tries to Change the Subject After Jesse Watters Says Jennifer Aniston Used to Be ‘Much Better Looking’

Fox News’ The Five co-host Harold Ford Jr. awkwardly tried to move the show “on to the next segment,” Wednesday, after Jesse Watters remarked that Friends star Jennifer Aniston “was much better looking” before.

“People didn’t get attractive until the internet,” argued co-host Greg Gutfeld during a segment on former Democratic congresswoman Katie Porter. “Watch ‘Friends,’ they’re not even hot.”

And so on from there. Gutfeld often assigns himself the task of reporting that Taylor Swift is only a 5 or a 6.

That is no country for [intelligent] men. But almost surely, this was the most-watched "cable news" program of the day here in this broken nation.

The poop mug was there at 5. Was it there again at 10? Believe it or not, the Gutfeld! program opened with an assessment of a very difficult (scientific) topic—the topic of transgender identity and transgender science. These were the flyweights the Fox News Channel called upon for their review:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Kennedy: former MTV VJ
Greg Gutfeld: host
Molly Hemingway: Fox News contributor
Jeff Dye: comedian

Each of these medical specialists took a turn pretending to outline the science. Needless to say, the bloated blowhard spoke last. We know of no obvious reason to believe that these messenger children had any real idea what they were talking about.

Needless to say, the gang also did a segment about how (physically) unattractive Porter is. This seems to be pretty much what these messengers have.

That is no "cable news" channel for intelligent men or women. Nor is Gutfeld! a comedy show, s observers sometimes say they think.

As we've noted, Gutfeld! is a propaganda / messaging show which hides behind a corporate beard of so-called "comedy stylings." The channel groomed its host for this role for many years, starting way back when it gave him his own nightly show at 3 a.m.

This is the work of Silo Red. The major orgs within Silo Blue are committed to ignoring what happens there. With that in mind:

It's quite a decision to move from the Harvard Law School to a role inside this tribal madhouse. Kayleigh McEnany made that decision. As we noted yesterday, this is the way she prepared:

Kayleigh McEnany

Kayleigh Michelle McEnany (born April 18, 1988) is an American political commentator, media personality, and former political spokesperson who served as the 33rd White House press secretary during the first Trump administration from 2020 to 2021.

Early in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, she was a critic of Donald Trump but over time became one of his staunchest defenders.

[...]

McEnany was born and raised in Tampa, Florida...McEnany attended the Academy of the Holy Names, a private Catholic preparatory school in Tampa. After graduating, she majored in international politics at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., and she studied abroad at St Edmund Hall, Oxford...

McEnany attended the University of Miami School of Law for her first (1L) year before transferring to Harvard Law School. At the Miami School of Law, McEnany received the Bruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class. She graduated from Harvard in 2016.

From Harvard Law to a pile of junk. But also, from standard issue anti-Trump to a role as one of his staunchest defenders.

The fellow with the poop mug blazed a similar trail. Based on a New York Times report, the CEO may have given him the word that it was time to get right.

Broadcasting from inside Silo Red, the Fox News Channel has been feeding this gruel to the nation's largest "cable news" audience by far. Broadcasting from inside Silo Blue, the people who went to the finest schools have agreed that they must never report or discuss what happens over there.

We leave you today with a basic question. Which silo contains the big-brained humans of whom Wikipedia comically speaks?

We think it's time for these silos to go. It may of course be too late.

Tomorrow: McEnany and Gutfeld flip; an anthropologist explains


WEDNESDAY: What happens when empires fall apart?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2025

The center, failing to hold: Can the Democratic Party survive—regain some measure of control? 

Everything is possible, of course, but our doubts continue to grow. We'll start with CNN's eccentric figure filbert, Harry Enten, floating a gloomy assessment:

CNN Data Chief Reveals Dems’ Chances of Taking the House in 2026 ‘Have Gone Plummeting Down’

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten on Wednesday explained how the Democratic Party’s chances of retaking the House of Representatives have sharply declined in recent months.

During a Wednesday morning segment, Enten took a closer look at the highly-anticipated midterm elections in 2026...

As Enten noted, the prediction market Kalshi had the Democrats’ chances of retaking the House at a staggering 83% in April 2025. Since then, however, the GOP has taken a big out of that lead.

According to Enten's source, Democratic chances of retaking the House have slid to 63%, which of course is still more than half. We have no idea if there's any value to such assessments. But when we go looking for the juice, we don't have much luck seeing it.

How do large, sprawling empires come undone? In this case, along came the democratization of media, and there went the republic. People can't tell the wheat from the chaff, just as it ever was.

We'll start with this limited, dumb example:

Baier Claps Back at MAGA Fans Over [Fox News Channel's Rejection] of Trump Pentagon Policy

Fox News anchor Bret Baier clapped back at MAGA fans upset about the network joining a protest of the Trump Pentagon’s proposed press policies, even politely responding to a viewer who called him a “moron.”

The network is among those protesting the new policy that was announced by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and which sparked immediate outrage from the Pentagon Press Association as an “unprecedented message of intimidation.”

The Fox News Chanel has joined the various enemies of the people in rejecting Pete Hegseth's proposed restriction on coverage of the Defense Department. That leaves Bret Baier dealing with incoming from clueless MAGA supporters out in Red America—from people who don't understand that they're being conned again, through certain factual representations, by the disordered Hegseth.

On balance, we the people were never up to the challenge, on our own, of knowing where the fraudsters were. To cite one example, the forerunner to the FDA was created to guard us against our tendency to fall for the various music men., with their various "elixir remedies" and their famous "diphtheria antitoxin derived from tetanus-contaminated serum," which was "originally collected from a horse named Jim who had contracted tetanus."

Our gullibility didn't mean that we were bad people. It meant that we were people people. 

Today, though, as an empire comes undone, Robert Kennedy Jr. has come along with his endless versions of that serum originally collected from Jim. 

All these years later, with many voices ringing in many ears through the wonders of various media, many of us still can't see that something is totally wrong with the guy. We can't see that something is wrong with him, and the press corps doesn't like to discuss the personal histories of people named Kennedy, even when the life stories in question are as disordered as his. 

Meanwhile, a segment has emerged in Red America which is willing to say and do anything. This is a new example:

Mike Johnson Doesn’t Hold Back as He Slams No Kings Rally: ‘We Call It the Hate America Rally’

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) mockingly dubbed the upcoming “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump a “Hate America Rally,” with Johnson saying the crowd will be littered with a bunch of communists and terrorist supporters who loathe their own country.

The speaker shared his prediction while talking to reporters about the government shutdown on Wednesday morning.

“I encourage you to watch—we call it the ‘Hate America Rally’—that’ll happen Saturday,” Johnson said. “Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet ya see pro-Hamas supporters, I bet you you see Antifa-types, I bet ya see the Marxists in full display. The people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”

We'd call that a silent secession, delivered in a measured tone of voice. The sitting president tends to be louder. When he called the Democratic Party "the party of Satan," the finer people at the New York Times knew that mustn't report that remarkable fact, not even on page one.

For whatever reason or reasons, a certain portion of Red America has decided we're no longer a single people. Borrowing from a sensational Hollywood script, they're mad as Hell about various matters and they aren't going to take it any more. 

Nor are they willing to say that they've stepped over the side of the ship.

Over here in Blue America, our journalistic, academic and political elites thoroughly lack the juice. In all honesty, Kamala Harris was never presidential timber—she proved that in 2019; also, almost no one ever is—but she won't stop stampeding around and begging for ridicule by saying things like this:

Kamala Harris Bizarrely Boasts She May Have Been ‘Most Qualified’ Presidential Candidate ‘Ever’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris submitted that [some] people have said she is the “most qualified” presidential candidate in the history of the United States during a recent interview with reporter and Pivot podcast co-host Kara Swisher on Oct. 9.

That's a foolish thing to say, but she says such things on the regular. That doesn't make her a bad person. It means she isn't presidential timber, like almost everyone else, including almost every known United States senator.

Almost no one ever is! Joe Biden wasn't presidential timber—he proved that in 1987, then again in 2007—but a succession of accidents put him in the White House in 2021, and after some unexplained, rather strange policy decisions and an insistence on running again, we now have the reigning tsar of the Middle East back in the Oval again and seizing control of the nation's reins of power.

He has filled his playroom with broken toys, with histories of extremely strange childhoods. His niece says he's likely a sociopath. Our press corps has no established language with which to discuss such facts, and it has no desire to do so. 

Over here in Blue America, our elected officials don't know how to "talk pork to the people," to quote Al Gore's father back in 1970. You saw the recent meltdown by Katie Porter—or given the way information flow currently works, it's possible that you didn't. 

We're hoping that Candidate Spanberger can holds on in Virginia in the wake of what the AG candidate once said and did. Is New Jersey still looking good? We feel the encroachment of doubts.

Let's switch allusions at this point, moving from The Second Coming (Yeats) to Sunday Morning (Stevens)

Sunday Morning

[....]

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe

[...]

The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

We threw in the Palestine line simply to provide currency. But as you watch people like Porter crashing and burning, we Blues are flailing in the wake of "that old catastrophe" known as the subjugation of an entire people on the basis of that old monster, "race."

(Also, and good God: extensive backlash RE sexual / gender politics, with us Blues pretending that we can't understand what some of the objections are.)

The old catastrophe can still control the ebb and flow of American feeling. Now that the media have been democratized—now that every D-list comedian is selling some serum derived from Jim on some podcast somewhere—we find that we the voters, Red and Blue, can't tell wheat from chaff.

That's true among us Blue voters too. Over on the Fox News Channel, new clown cars roll up to the set every hour. This is the way things call apart when large empires can no longer hold.

Over there, inside Silo Red, there are plenty of valid complaints about what has come from our own Silo Blue. In Silo Red, the tools simply don't know how to regulate their anger and their sense of entitlement / privilege 

Over here, in Silo Blue, we don't know how to see the various things we've done over the long sweep of the past sixty years. We aren't the people we've claimed to be. Despite our occasional college degrees, it turns out that we're people people too!

When he called the Dems "the party of Satan," the New York Times ran and hid. So too when Tucker said he'd been attacked by demons right there in his bed with his dogs. When Noem said, two separate times, that ICE caught one "illegal" who was so bad—who was such a cannibal—that he tried to eat his own arm so he could escape his restraints.

She told the story two separate times, on TV! Also, the president's magic bed! But as our organs avert their gaze, we Blues are still living with the 1988 Jon Lovitz line—I can't believe we're losing to this guy!

For the record, Enten still has it at 63%. One final question regarding the slightly eccentric Enten:

Goodness gracious! Where did CNN get that guy?

Full disclosure: Harry Enten seems like s good, decent person. Full and complete info here.


SILO RED, SILO BLUE: From Harvard Law School to Silo Red!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2025

What makes Kayleigh run? In translation, Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Lapdog, ends in the following way:

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.

As written, and in translation, that's how the story ends.

Nabokov described Lady with Lapdog as "one of the greatest stories ever written." He gave six reasons why it was great, the sixth of which was this: "the story does not really end."

That was a story about a love which was forbidden under the prevailing rules of a given age. It was also a story about a man who finally discovers his soul, to his surprise, perhaps a bit later in life.

"The most difficult part was only beginning?" That's the way matters stand in Gaza, or at least so many specialists say. We'll link you to excerpts from a pair of opinion columns at the New York Times:

Bret Stephens
Why Israel Won the War
Israelis rallied and won—at least inasmuch as a lasting victory is ever possible in the Middle East...The current cease-fire brings a set of difficult questions about what comes next—for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else invested in their future. 

Thomas Friedman
Mr. Trump, on the Middle East, Please Move Fast and Break Things
I realize it is early, but right now I don’t even see the baby steps to the next phase. I see no U.N. resolution on the table creating the Arab/international peacekeeping force to oversee Hamas’s disarmament and security in Gaza until a proper Palestinian security force can be created. I see no money on the table for the billions that will be needed for reconstruction, and I have no idea who is supposed to appoint and manage the cabinet of Palestinian technocrats who are supposed to run Gaza instead of Hamas, which is already using its Interior Ministry and police forces to reassert control in Gaza.

Stephens and Friedman are different people, coming at this from different perspectives. But they're saying a somewhat similar thing about what may lie ahead.

Similarly, here's a news analysis piece by the Times' Halbfinger and Rasgon. Also, a Washington Post opinion piece by Max Boot:

David Halbfinger, Adam Rasgon
Now Comes the Hard Part for the Gaza Cease-Fire Plan
Getting Israel’s hostages released from Gaza and stopping the war may have taken two years and the direct efforts of the American president and the leaders of several Arab and Muslim nations. But that was almost certainly the easy part.

Getting Hamas to give up its weapons, and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip—key preconditions for Israel to pull out of Gaza fully, as both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Monday—could prove a lot harder.

Max Boot
Why the Gaza ceasefire won’t lead to lasting peace
The war’s end presents an opportunity...to resurrect the long-dormant two-state solution. But while the Trump peace plan slightly opens the door to Palestinian statehood—it speaks of creating conditions “for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”—both Israel and Hamas appear intent on slamming that door shut.

The first precondition for making progress toward lasting peace would be for Hamas to disarm—point 13 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan—leading to the “demilitarization of Gaza.” Far from giving up its weapons, however, Hamas has reemerged to assert control over the parts of the Gaza Strip that are no longer under Israeli occupation.

Friend, do those observers all seem to hail from some perch inside the deep state? We give you the current perspective from the Wall Street Journal:

Ma'Ayeh et al.
After Israeli Withdrawal, Hamas Launches Violent Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza
As Israeli troops pulled back last week to facilitate a deal that freed the living hostages still held in Gaza, Hamas surged security forces in behind them—a public assertion of authority intended to make clear the group remains the enclave’s governing power.

The most difficult part is just beginning—unless you're taking you cues from the clown show staged last night in the Fox News Channel. On the primetime show in question, the status of events in Isreal and Gaza were pseudo-assessed by this grab bag of usual suspects:

Gutfeld!: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Kat Timpf: comedian
Greg Gutfeld: host
Erin Maguire: Republican strategist
Joe DeVito: comedian

A different discussion emerged from this group, in which everyone agreed with the host of the show.

How dumb can these corporate messengers get? The bloated blowhard closed the short pseudo-discussion. This is why such analyses are being written, the fatuous fellow now said:

TYRUS (10/14/25): I think it's jealousy.

GUTFELD: Yeah.

TYRUS: ...We've heard amazing depictions of how this all went down. I think my favorite one was [adopts mocking voice], "Oh, now they think it's peace because Gaza's nothing but rubble?"

 Whose fault was that? Hamas!

This was a highly simplistic pseudo-discussion, ordered up by the CEO who's known as "Sends in The Clowns."

Meanwhile, can termagants have rabbit ears? As best we can tell, the host hasn't compared the women of The View to horses or cattle or even to "livestock" this week. Last night, though, his opening brief patter of jokes included this observation:

GUTFELD: On today's show, Joy Behar said, quote, "Republicans are afraid of us."

Come on! It's not like being a stupid bitch is contagious!

AUDIENCE: [Laughter]

GUTFELD: It was actually worse—the original draft. I'm not kidding.

Yes, that's what he said. That's what he said in Silo Red, as Silo Blue loudly snored.

(The Fox News feminist sat there and took it. On Monday evening's show, she said that Candidate Spanberger (D-Va.) looks like the kind of woman who pees standing up, if you get what that means.)

This is the type of imitation of life the CEO orders. Millions of people who watch this program believe they're watching real discussions of actual news events.

As we noted at the end of last week, the squalor of this squalid TV show is slowly spreading down into The Five. This brings us back to Kayleigh McEnany who giggled and played, at the end of last week, as she pretended that she was looking at videotape of a famous person's colonoscopy.

"It looks like the Holland Tunnel in there," she said, speaking on the nation's most-watched "cable news" program.

Full disclosure:

We've been using language during this report which isn't traditional journalistic language. Over here in Blue America, our journalists lack an established language for talking about sheer stupidity performed by unqualified players.

We ourselves aren't especially qualified to discuss the state of play in Gaza. That's why we would link you to people who are.

On the imitation of life called the Fox News Channel, such distinctions are being broken down, discarded. At some point, McEnany decided that she would enlist for a role in the production of this powerful corporate product.

As we began to sketch last Friday, McEnany can't be portrayed as dumb. Her academic record seems to rule that out. Here's what the good book tells us:

Kayleigh McEnany

Kayleigh Michelle McEnany (born April 18, 1988) is an American political commentator, media personality, and former political spokesperson who served as the 33rd White House press secretary during the first Trump administration from 2020 to 2021.

Early in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, she was a critic of Donald Trump but over time became one of his staunchest defenders.

[...]

McEnany was born and raised in Tampa, Florida...McEnany attended the Academy of the Holy Names, a private Catholic preparatory school in Tampa. After graduating, she majored in international politics at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., and she studied abroad at St Edmund Hall, Oxford...

McEnany attended the University of Miami School of Law for her first (1L) year before transferring to Harvard Law School. At the Miami School of Law, McEnany received the Bruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class. She graduated from Harvard in 2016.

Following her stint at Oxford, she rocked the world as a first law student, then got shipped to the Harvard Law School. Along the way, she flipped on Trump. Since then, she has signed on for a significant role inside Silo Red at the Fox News Channel.

She signed on to play a role in that channel's endless array of silly pseudo-discussions. Last week, that had her saying, on The Five, that the non-existent videotape of somebody's colon looked like the Holland Tunnel.

It's time to tear these silos down, but how do people get into these silos? Why would this high-IQ player behave in these ways?

For the record, Gutfeld himself got flipped RE Trump. In his case, it seems that he may have flipped on the advice of the CEO. But what makes these transitions occur? When we return tomorrow, let's take a quick look at the record.

Today, the hard part is just beginning for people who want to see real peace in the theater at hand. Unless you watch the Fox News Channel, in which case the president has accomplished his latest peace deal and only the jealous say different.

Over here inside Silo Blue, this is all completely OK. We Blues lack an established language for discussing corporate product of this type—for discussing this type of dimwitted assault on the very possibility of the American project.

Tomorrow: What made the two stars flip?


TUESDAY: Was Wallace back in the silo again?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2025

Ignoring events in the room: We remain grateful to Nicolle Wallace for her recent podcast with Rosie O'Donnell.

We're still seeking a way to discuss what we saw and heard in that podcast. As we've noted, we had three brief interactions with Rosie at three different stages of her career. After watching that podcast, we regard that as a point of pride—and we're saddened by the pathetic use the boys and girls of Silo Red chose of make of one deeply insightful discussion found on that remarkable podcast.

Over here in Blue America, we turned to Deadline: White House yesterday afternoon, right at 4 o'clock sharp. We wondered what Wallace would be saying about the major news event of the day.

We discovered that, at four o'clock, she didn't seem to be discussing the major event of the day. As best we can tell from On Demand, she devoted two short segments, during the course of her two-hour show, to what was happening yesterday in Isreal and Gaza. Those segments ate fifteen minutes on the clock, from roughly 4:35 to roughly 4:50, with one commercial break.

There's a great deal which remains to be said about the shape of the president's "peace deal," and about the interests of all parties, including the people of Gaza, as the current situation moves forward. Yesterday, it seemed to us that we were seeing the same old approach from Wallace at Silo Blue:

She'll mainly talk about whatever it is that we Blues most want to hear. If citizens are wondering about some other topic, that will be too darn bad.

At Silo Red, Red American viewers are fed the porridge the bosses assume they will like. We think that was a losing approach for Silo Blue over the past few years, as our tribunes avoided major topics in pursuit of the impossible dream of sending Donald J. Trump to jail.

We're grateful to Wallace for that podcast with Rosie O'Donnell. Also, we think it's time for Silo Blue to throw its bowls of porridge away and deepen its approach.


SILOS RED AND BLUE: Have you ever seen Donald Trump angry?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2025

That's what the stool pigeon asked: This morning, the headlines at The Atlantic seem to be sounding a type of warning:

George Packer
America Needs Patriotism
The experiment only works if people believe in it.
David Brooks
Why Aren’t Americans Doing More to Resist Trump?

Anne Applebaum
How America Went From Inspiring Democracy to Enabling Autocracy Around the World

"America needs patriotism," George Packer has now said. We strongly agree with that sentiment. but let's put that a slightly different way:

This floundering, flailing, failing nation needs to get rid of its silos. 

It's time for the people within them to go. Today, let's start to ask ourselves who those people are.

A few weeks ago, we watched a new offering from Nova's 52nd season on PBS. At the program's official site, the program carries this thumbnail:

Human: Neanderthal Encounters
Discover how Homo sapiens outlasted Neanderthals—and how they helped make us who we are today.

Ella Al-Shamahi, a British paleoanthropologist (and stand-up comedian?) was the voice of the program, which seems to be part of a BBC series. This particular presentation largely seemed to be tracing the story told in Yuval Noah Harari's mammoth 2011 best-seller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, but then again what do we know?

We Homo sapiens today! We outlasted the Neanderthals—and several other groups. After watching the program, we decided to see what the leading authority has to say about our kind. 

When we googled "Homo sapiens," we found the Wikipedia entry under a simpler designation. The first part of what the entry can be seen below, somewhat comically in our view.

At Wikipedia, "Homo sapiens" defaults to a simpler term—"Human." At that point, the gushing starts:

Human

Humans, scientifically known as Homo sapiens, are primates that belong to the biological family of great apes and are characterized by hairlessness, bipedality, and high intelligence. Humans have large brains compared to body size, enabling more advanced cognitive skills that facilitate successful adaptation to varied environments, development of sophisticated tools, and formation of complex social structures and civilizations.

Humans are highly social, with individual humans tending to belong to a multi-layered network of distinct social groupsfrom families and peer groups to corporations and political states. As such, social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, languages, and traditions (collectively termed institutions), each of which bolsters human society. Humans are also highly curious: the desire to understand and influence phenomena has motivated humanity's development of science, technology, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other frameworks of knowledge; humans also study themselves through such domains as anthropology, social science, history, psychology, and medicine. As of 2025, there are estimated to be more than 8 billion living humans.

We humans are sounding pretty good—and there are more than 8 billion of us!  We're characterized by our high intelligence, but also by the large brains (compared to body size) which enable more advanced cognitive skills. 

We tend to form complex social structures and civilizations. Each of the institutions we form bolsters human society.

We're highly curious, the authority says. Based upon context, we assume that Wikipedia means that in a good way.

A bit later, the portrait goes on to say this:

Although the term "humans" technically equates with all members of the genus Homo, in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens, the only extant member. All other members of the genus Homo, which are now extinct, are known as archaic humans, and the term "modern human" is used to distinguish Homo sapiens from archaic humans. Anatomically modern humans emerged at least 300,000 years ago in Africa, evolving from Homo heidelbergensis or a similar species. Migrating out of Africa, they gradually replaced and interbred with local populations of archaic humans...

Humans are sexually dimorphic: generally, males have greater body strength and females have a higher body fat percentage. At puberty, humans develop secondary sex characteristics. Females are capable of pregnancy, usually between puberty, at around 12 years old, and menopause, around the age of 50. Childbirth is dangerous, with a high risk of complications and death. Often, both the mother and the father provide care for their children, who are helpless at birth.

Helpless at birth, and perhaps after that, as described in the Neil Young song, or as seen in our "national discourse."

We're forced to say that Wikipedia's overview strikes us as an example of unintentional humor. Perhaps because we watch so much of our flailing nation's "cable news" fare, it seemed to us that we the humans may not be quite as impressive as that overview might suggest.

Man [sic] is the rational animal, Aristotle is widely said to have said. Given what that statement is frequently taken to mean, that pronouncement has always struck us as perhaps a bit wayward too. 

Question:

To what extent can the modern American discourse be characterized as a highly intelligent institution which bolsters human society? 

We ask because we saw JD Vance flounder and flail in response to all questions on this weekend's Sunday shows, but also because we saw a human ask the crazy highlighted question at 10:06 Eastern last night. Here's what the human asked:

Now let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen Trump show an ounce of anger about anything? And not just since he became a politician—I mean ever!  Hell, even when he got shot, he didn't give the guy the finger...

But boy, would Joe Biden get angry, just about over anything, because Joe Biden came from the lethargic, bureaucratic world of the acceptable...

And now what Trump has done, through his persistent optimism, is provide a sharp contrast between the attention-seeking ego and those who wish to improve the lives around them—the golden age, if you will. It's the difference between hopeful action and selfish anger.

Yes, he actually said that! On one of the nation's most-watched primetime "cable news" shows, the persistently furious host was saying that no one has ever seen President Trump show even an ounce of anger about anything. Such is the product of the very big brains written about under "Human."

During the segment in question on this Fox News Channel "cable news" program, the big-brained humans were complaining, once again, about the fact that the president's HISTORIC PEACE DEAL—a peace deal which doesn't yet exist—hadn't been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—a prize for which the peace deal wasn't eligible, given the fact that nominations closed early in the year.

A bit later in the same segment, the big-brained host explained why "even Hillary Clinton" had complimented President Trump on the current ceasefire / release of the last twenty hostages. It wasn't because she was behaving correctly! The big-brained host now said this:

My cynicism says she's getting something out of this Middle East deal. Like, she's a shark for money, so there's got to be something where her and Bill are seeing some cash come out of Qatar or something. Don't you think? What would make her like Trump? Some money.

The big-brained idolator of President Trump was calling Clinton "a shark for money!" None of the stooges arrayed around him mentioned the $400 million jet the president has already scored from Qatar, with an estimated billion dollars' worth of refurbishing needed, on the public dime, before it can be fully his.

(Those numbers are both reported estimates.)

Given the fact that President Trump—no one has ever seen him angry—has already scored that gigantic gift from the Qataris, this whole spectacle was human dumbness as stupid as dumbness can get.

As always, the CEO had sent in the clowns. This was last night's carload:

Gutfeld!: Monday, October 13, 2025
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Kat Timpf: comedian
Greg Gutfeld: host
Eric Trump: son of President Trump
Tom Shillue: impressionist

Three comedians and the president's son had been sent in to agree with the manifest lunacy churned by the big-brained host. The president's son has been making the rounds, angrily publicizing a new book in which he angrily denounces the various legal actions brought against himself and his father in recent years.

(In some if those instances, we'd say he may well have a point. But this son was almost as angry as Mark Levin was when he guested on Levin's Sunday night Fox News Channel program.)

In a later segment of last night's show, producers presented only one part of Vance's meltdown with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. They presented only Vance's final statement, where he scolded Stephanopoulos for repeatedly asking a question he kept refusing to answer. 

It fell to Shillue to tell Fox viewers that Vance had answered every question Stephanopoulos asked. This is the big-brained conduct which transpires inside Silo Red—inside the corporate silo which messages Red America.

Our two silos, Red and Blue, have come to us courtesy of the democratization of media and thanks to the practice of segregation by viewpoint. In one way, the Wikipedia portrait gets it almost half right:

The stooges who sat on the Red American set—the ones who have never seen Donald Trump angry—have in fact been able to develop a distinct social group. In the process, they've been able a new set of values, social norms, languages, and traditions (collectively termed institutions).

That said, it's hard to see how this tribal idiocy can be said to "bolster human society." And as this lunacy is offered each night, Silo Blue—the silo servicing Blue America—is peopled by a group of humans who, among their other failings, insist on looking away from the lunatic behavior on display in Silo Red.

In today's New York Times, Tom Edsall offers his long weekly post, this time about a related problem:

The Rise of Social Media and the Fall of Western Democracy

As goes The Atlantic, so goes Tom Edsall. That's the headline on his long piece. Long story short—every kind of lunacy is now active in the world thanks to the way social media has created a global supply of popular nutcase pseudo-analysts.

"Is it even possible to weigh the costs of social media against its benefits?" Edsall asks. Finally, someone at the New York Times is calling attention to the madness that's currently reshaping the world, even as higher-profile performers at the Times refuse to report or discuss the varieties of cognitive breakdown which are currently reinventing the known human world.

Silo Blue is faulty enough. Silo Red represents an open assault on the human experiment.

At Silo Red, they've never seen it! They've never seen the sitting president show an ounce of anger! 

Tomorrow, who are the humans in Silo Red? And how did their big brains get there?

Tomorrow: McEnany falls in line, with the nutcase Gutfeld to follow