Randi Weingarten Has Entered the CDL Wars

AFT President discovers another oppressed class in need of immediate union protection: people with commercial driver’s licenses

The American Federation of Teachers has apparently decided that teaching children is no longer a sufficiently broad mission. I mean, after all, why stop at teachers, school bus drivers, and education policy when there are 17 million CDL (Commercial Drivers License) records sitting around just begging for union intervention?

Yes, Randi Weingarten is now involved in a lawsuit over the federal government's efforts to obtain commercial driver’s license records.

And if you are wondering what this has to do with the American Federation of Teachers, don't worry. The answer eventually arrives, although it takes a scenic route through the Democratic Party's favorite subjects: immigration, ICE, privacy, government power, and the mysterious belief that every federal database becomes sacred the moment someone proposes checking it.

Unions were originally created to protect American workers.

Then many of them discovered politics.

Then they discovered progressive politics.

And eventually some discovered that their membership rolls could double as a taxpayer-funded focus group for every Democratic policy imaginable.

The AFT says it represents about 13,500 transportation workers, including school bus drivers and maintenance drivers, many of whom hold CDLs.

Fair enough, but there is a slight complication.

These are not merely driver's licenses for people operating a family sedan. Commercial driver's licenses are used by people driving enormous vehicles capable of turning an ordinary Tuesday morning commute into a national emergency.

And some Americans have already paid the ultimate price for failures involving improperly qualified commercial drivers.

Marcus Coleman testified before Congress earlier this month after a 2024 crash caused by an illegal alien CDL driver left his 5-year-old daughters with severe brain injuries.

That's the part of the story where the adults in the room might reasonably ask whether every person entrusted with a massive commercial vehicle is actually qualified to operate it.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy apparently had the same crazy thought.

The administration shut down scores of commercial trucking schools over serious English proficiency problems among their students.

Apparently, federal officials would like commercial drivers to understand the language used on the road.

This has proven to be a controversial position.

The AFT responded by joining an ongoing lawsuit against the Department of Transportation.

The union explained:

..[T]he AFT moved to join an ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation, seeking to stop the agency from seizing the personal records of 17 million commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, the nonprofit that maintains the national database of driver records. The AFT is represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and Murphy Anderson PLLC.

The AFT says those records contain sensitive information, including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, license numbers, and state of record.

That's a legitimate privacy concern.

But then Randi Weingarten entered the chat, apparently having been alerted that the federal government was attempting to enforce something.

“Many AFT members require a CDL to work as school bus drivers or Department of Transportation employees, and we must protect them and their privacy against the vindictive nature of this president and his cronies,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Just like we sued the Department of Government Efficiency for trying to mine personal information from millions of working-class Americans, today we intervene against the U.S. government’s attempt to strong-arm the AAMVA to turn over CDL holders’ private information. This illegal demand puts millions of people’s personal data up for grabs without their consent, people who had no choice but to provide their personal information to the states so they could simply work, and who have no way to remove it from the database.”

And there it is.

The AFT has apparently decided that the appropriate response to concerns about commercial driver qualifications is to make sure nobody looks too closely at the paperwork.

This is particularly reassuring for anyone whose child rides a school bus.

The federal government wants access to CDL records.

The AFT wants the government to back away from the records.

Twenty-two states, including Illinois, are suing because they apparently have an old-fashioned belief that commercial drivers should be properly licensed and that public safety might be worth considering.

What an amazing concept.

Of course, Weingarten has never been shy about getting involved in causes far beyond the traditional boundaries of a teachers union. Next she'll be trying to woo the National Cemetery Board of Trustees [no such organization--I made it up] in order to grab even more votes from the dead.

There have been anti-ICE campaigns, political battles involving corporations, international trips, and now the exciting new world of CDL database litigation.

At this rate, the next AFT convention may need to be held at an international summit because the union has apparently run out of domestic issues.

Imagine being an American teacher who pays union dues because you want better pay, better working conditions, and someone fighting for you at the bargaining table.

Then you open the newspaper and discover that your union is helping litigate a federal dispute involving 17 million commercial driver's license records.

Somewhere, a teacher is probably asking, "Did I authorize this?" and "Do I want the union to piss my money away for a cause I don't care about?"

And somewhere else, a union official is preparing a 47-page response explaining why the answer is none of your dadgum business.

The truly bizarre part is that the AFT's argument is being made in the name of working Americans while the larger dispute involves whether the government should be able to identify commercial drivers who may not meet basic licensing requirements. Apples and mangos. 

That includes drivers operating school buses. You know buses carrying children.

Children who generally have very little say in who gets behind the wheel.

There is a certain dark comedy in watching an organization dedicated to protecting children become deeply concerned that the government might investigate the qualifications of people operating vehicles around children.

But perhaps this is simply the modern union movement.

Protect the database.

Protect the driver.

Protect the politics.

And if anyone asks whether the driver can actually understand the road signs, immediately call the lawyers.

The old AFT protected teachers.

The new AFT apparently has enough time to protect 17 million CDL records, battle the federal government, fight ICE, weigh in on corporate politics, travel internationally, and somehow still find time to send out emails reminding teachers that their dues are due.

At this point, perhaps the next logical step is for the AFT to start representing air-traffic controllers, deep-sea fishermen, nuclear submarine crews, and anyone else who happens to possess a government-issued credential.

After all, once you've decided that 17 million commercial driver's license holders are your responsibility, there isn't much left to unionize.

AFT: Fighting for educators, transportation workers, and apparently anyone else whose paperwork the government wants to inspect.

Perhaps AFT should stand for: Any Freaking Thing.

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Iran-Backed Houthis Capture Strategic Red Sea Island, Because Apparently One Middle East Crisis Wasn't Enough

Dance of the Fandango Cucaracha

The Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen have apparently decided that controlling a country was not ambitious enough. On Friday, they declared that they had seized Perim, a small volcanic island sitting in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

Because when you're an Iranian proxy militia, nothing says "regional stability" quite like grabbing strategically important real estate in the middle of an international shipping lane.

The announcement came just one day after the Houthis seized the port city of Mokha with assistance from Iran.

Sources within Yemen's internationally recognized, but largely exiled, government confirmed the Houthi takeover of Perim. They also said the insurgents had seized Dhubab, the port city closest to the island.

Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen's government and has a rather obvious interest in keeping the Red Sea open for its oil shipments, responded Friday by launching airstrikes against the airport in Mokha.

It remained unclear whether those airstrikes would be followed by the slightly more complicated step of actually trying to take the city back.

Maj. Gen. Tareq Saleh, a commander in the Yemeni government's armed forces, said he was forced to order a "strategic retreat" from the Houthi advance toward the Bab el-Mandeb area.

"The armed forces in the western coast paid a heavy price — martyrs and wounded — over the past days as they confronted the Houthi attack planned by Iran, and supported by it," he said.

Apparently "strategic retreat" is the Middle Eastern military equivalent of "We are going to let them have this one."

A senior Yemeni military official told the Associated Press that his government was "stunned that the Saudi air force did not try to prevent the capture of Mokha" by "striking the Houthis as they advanced."

The official suspected the Saudis needed American approval for such defensive airstrikes and never got it. He also blamed a "lack of coordination" among forces allied with his government, giving the Houthis a "priceless opportunity" to seize strategically important coastal territory.

Nothing says geopolitical competence quite like watching an enemy advance toward a critical shipping chokepoint while everyone waits for someone else to make a phone call.

According to Axios, Saudi Arabia's de facto chief executive, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, personally called President Donald Trump twice on Thursday and "urged him to launch strikes against the Houthis."

Trump reportedly declined, at least partly because his administration does not want the United States dragged directly into Yemen's long and exceptionally ugly civil war, which has now been going on for more than 12 years.

U.S. officials reportedly told their Saudi counterparts that Trump wants American forces concentrating on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

Which, considering the Middle East currently has enough potential flashpoints to fill a large military planner's worst nightmare, is probably not the craziest position in Washington this week.

Another problem for Yemen's government is that it has lost the support of the United Arab Emirates, which fell out with Saudi Arabia in January over UAE support for a separatist faction in southern Yemen known as the Southern Transitional Council, or STC.

The STC had proven to be an effective anti-Houthi force. Unfortunately, it also had the minor disadvantage of being at odds with the Presidential Leadership Council, the Yemeni government supported by Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis forced the UAE out of Yemen, and the STC subsequently decided it wasn't interested in fighting outside the territory it hopes to separate from the rest of Yemen.

So, to recap, the anti-Houthi coalition has managed to become sufficiently divided that the Houthis are now taking strategic territory while everyone else sorts out who is supposed to be fighting whom.

Iran, naturally, is thrilled.

Tehran has been desperate to open another front in the conflict and increase economic pressure on the United States and its allies. On Friday, Iran demanded that Saudi Arabia end its "blockade" of Yemen and return to peace negotiations with the Houthis.

A spokesman for Iran's terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps then raised the stakes by saying any future negotiations with the United States should include Yemen as well as Lebanon, another country where Iranian proxy forces are active.

Because nothing says "peace talks" like showing up with a shopping list of additional countries where you've helped create disasters.

The Houthis, meanwhile, insisted Friday that they don't intend to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb Strait for all international shipping. Apparently Saudi Arabia is the only customer they have in mind.

"Freedom of navigation and international trade in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab are safe and orderly," promised Houthi Politburo member Hazem al-Assad.

This is certainly reassuring, assuming one has recently suffered a severe head injury.

Oil markets aren't nearly as confident.

Losing the Saudi oil shipments moving through the Red Sea would be a significant blow to the global economy. There is also the small matter of the Houthi track record when it comes to attacking ships. Their definition of "we only target the ships we mean to target" has not always inspired universal confidence.

Benchmark oil prices surged above $100 per barrel this week before retreating somewhat Friday, still finishing the week up 9 percent. Saudi oil exports were down 23 percent in August, falling to their lowest level since 1990.

"Once again, it is geopolitical fears driving everything," said Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank on Friday morning.

"In terms of the latest Middle East headlines, yesterday saw growing concerns over the safety of Red Sea shipping, and the potential knock-on effects for Saudi oil exports, as Houthi rebels captured Yemen’s port city of Mokha, which is located close to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the southern end of the Red Sea, Reid said.

The Houthis have also continued attacking Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure directly, despite warnings from Pakistan that it might intervene to defend the Saudis under the trilateral Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed in August 2026 between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Then came another ominous development.

Satellite images prompted as-yet unconfirmed reports Friday that the Houthis had attacked Saudi Arabia's vital East-West oil pipeline, a 750-mile artery carrying crude from refineries in Abqaiq to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

The Houthis have targeted the pipeline before during clashes with Saudi Arabia. Following an April attack, the Saudis repaired the line and increased its capacity to approximately 7 million barrels per day.

Yanbu has been loading roughly 3.7 million barrels per day since the beginning of September as Saudi Arabia attempts to route more of its oil exports away from the increasingly problematic Strait of Hormuz.

Satellite imagery showed a massive plume of smoke, but the Saudi government has not confirmed an attack on the East-West Pipeline or provided details about possible damage.

For now, then, the situation is still developing.

But Iran has its proxies advancing, the Houthis are sitting on increasingly valuable territory, Saudi Arabia is trying to protect its oil routes, Yemen's government is retreating, America's allies are asking Washington what to do, and oil traders are watching all of it while reaching for the antacids.

In other words, just another quiet Friday in the neighborhood.

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Nation Relocates Kids Of Dictator Who Massacred 200,000 To Ohio, Then Routes $1.8 Million In Medicare Their Way

COLUMBUS, OH - In another triumph of compassion, screening, and paperwork, the children of Somali dictator Siad Barre have been living quietly in Ohio for decades after their father was overthrown in 1991. 

Barre's regime is alleged to be responsible for killing as many as 200,000 people. A family-linked home health company later collected more than $1.8 million in Medicare funding. 

Ayanle Mohamed Siad and his sister, Deka Mohamed Siad, settled in Columbus after the family dictatorship collapsed. Deka and her late husband, former Somali ambassador Abdikarim Ali Omar, ran Vanguard Home Health Care, a company that received more than $1.8 million in Medicare funding, according to the New York Post. The company closed after Omar's death in 2021. 

Officials have not explained which box on the immigration form covers "child of the man who ran a 21-year slaughterhouse." They have explained that the billing looked fine.

Barre seized power in Somalia for roughly 21 years before being overthrown. Ayanle has been accused of serving as head of Barre's administration in the final years of the dictatorship. He currently lives in a $350,000 house with his wife and son, and his presence has left many in the Somali community outraged.

Survivors of the old regime now live in the same metro area as the old regime's children, which immigration planners apparently filed under "diversity."

“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes so I was shocked to see his son [Ayanle] in the mosque enjoying his freedom,” one Somali, Ali-Guban Mohamed, told the New York Post. “My family were rounded up in a small township called Agabur and executed. Their bodies were put into a well, and that was happening across the board.”

“It was a 21-year military dictatorship, one man rule and a bunch of his men. Siad Barre dictated where you could go, where you could live, where you can travel,” he continued. 

Mohammad, who came to the US after Barre ordered the massacre of civilians in the Isaaq clan, said that “not a single person had been held accountable for the genocide that took place,” under Barre’s rule. “It feels very bad to know Ayanle is here. Others are scared to speak out but I don’t care. People need to know the truth. He was supposed to be the one who took over from his father, like Saddam Hussein’s son.”

American taxpayers, meanwhile, were held accountable right on schedule. Medicare sent the money. The house got bought. The mosque visits continued. The genocide file stayed in the "not our department" cabinet. 

Despite his atrocities, Barre is celebrated by the Somali Museum of Ohio, which has referred to him as its “honorable grandfather.” 

And let's also remember, AOC and Zohran Mamdani laughed out freaking loud at the 911 Memorial event. Of course, this has nothing to do with this story, but I had to mention it.

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Conservatives Finally Find Yet Another Reason to Cancel Netflix

Netflix Discovers That Mocking a Murdered Conservative on the Anniversary of His Assassination Is Apparently Not Great for Customer Retention

Conservatives' latest Netflix boycott didn't exactly come out of leftist field [pardon the pun]. It's the result of years of cultural grievances, political battles, questionable children's programming, and now a social-media post that somehow managed to combine a much-loved murdered conservative activist, a neck wound, and a promotional campaign for a British gangster show.

What could possibly go wrong?

On September 10, 2026, the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination, Netflix's UK & Ireland account decided it was the perfect time to promote The Gentlemen Season 2 with the caption:

“Nearly did himself a neck injury.”

Charlie [I cannot bring myself to formally calling him Kirk], of course, was shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

Conservatives on social media responded with the traditional consumer feedback mechanism of the modern age: canceling their subscriptions and posting screenshots to prove they had done it.

Figures including Libs of TikTok, Jack Posobiec, and Rudy Giuliani called for a boycott. I didn't because I was oblivious of the situation at the time since I have a life and don't live on social media.

Netflix, apparently realizing that this was not going to be one of those promotional campaigns where everyone simply shrugs and watches the show, insisted conservatives had gotten the joke completely wrong. Both sides of the aisle apparently have their own scolds who scour the internet to find the latest offense.

Anyway, the company called the interpretation “inaccurate and ludicrous,” explaining that the caption referred to a scene in which a character whips his head around at a wedding.

Which is certainly one explanation.

The post was not taken down.

And while Netflix may have been technically correct about what the caption referred to, the timing turned out to be about as strategically brilliant as announcing a half-price fireworks sale outside a gasoline station. What a pile of dolt bags.

For Charlie's supporters, September 10 was already a painful anniversary. Seeing Netflix use the phrase “neck injury” in a promotional post that landed on that exact date understandably struck many conservatives as another example of a company that simply does not understand why people are angry.

And Then There's the Rest of the Netflix Problem

The funny thing is that conservatives didn't need Netflix to post the “neck injury” line.

They already had a pretty substantial file folder labeled Reasons We Don't Like Netflix.

For years, conservatives have complained about the company's approach to children's programming and LGBTQ themes, in the spirit of a grooming maneuver. 

Critics, including Elon Musk in 2025, pointed to shows such as Dead End: Paranormal Park, The Baby-Sitters Club, and certain CoComelon episodes that include transgender or non-binary characters or themes. One can imagine Veggie Tales' Larry The Cucumber transitioning into a female cucumber named Loretta as this woke nonsense continues.

Loretta [formerly Larry] the Cucumber

Conservative reports have claimed that a significant share of Netflix's G- and Y7-rated programming contains LGBTQ content. 

And so the plot sickens.

Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt brought similar complaints to a February 2026 Senate hearing, describing Netflix's children's programming as “woke” and accusing the company of promoting a “transgender ideology.”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has rejected the idea that the company has a political agenda, arguing that its enormous catalog simply reflects a wide range of stories.

Because apparently the solution to a culture war is to make approximately 7,000 television shows and then insist nobody should notice any patterns.

Netflix also has a multi-year production deal with Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions, originally signed in 2018.

Susan Rice, a former Obama administration official, sits on Netflix's board of mind controllers.

Conservatives became even more suspicious during the proposed 2025-2026 Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, with some MAGA influencers portraying the deal as “the Obamas taking over media.”

The bid ultimately failed amid political pressure and a competing offer.

But by then, conservatives had already filed the transaction under Things That Somehow Make Netflix Even More Netflixish--say that three times fast on helium.

The Politics Don't Help

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has donated heavily to Democratic causes and candidates.

Critics have also pointed to Netflix's statements following former thug and drug addict George Floyd's death and what they regard as a catalog heavily tilted toward progressive positions on race, gender, family, and other cultural issues.

From the conservative perspective, the problem isn't simply that Netflix has left-wing programming. It's that conservatives believe Netflix has spent years behaving as though there is only one acceptable political worldview and that anyone who disagrees can simply go watch something else. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what millions of people can now do with the press of a button.

Remember Cuties? The 2020 French film generated a massive boycott campaign over its sexualized depiction of young girls. That controversy never completely disappeared from conservative memory.

Apparently Netflix has discovered that people on the internet possess something remarkably dangerous: Screenshots.

Adding another layer to the situation, a Florida attorney general lawsuit filed around the same time as the Kirk anniversary controversy alleges deceptive data collection involving minors.

That case is focused primarily on privacy and advertising rather than the culture-war programming dispute, but it gives conservatives yet another reason to look at Netflix and wonder whether perhaps they would rather spend their $20 somewhere else.

At this point, Netflix may want to consider changing its corporate slogan from “Watch What You Want” to “Please Stop Canceling.” The “neck injury” post didn't create conservative anger toward Netflix, it merely poured gasoline onto a fire that had been burning for years.

For many conservatives, Netflix represents something much larger than a streaming service. It represents a culturally progressive institution that they believe has used entertainment, children's programming, political relationships, and corporate influence to push ideas they reject.

Netflix's response remains essentially the same: We're an entertainment company, not a political organization, and our library contains lots of different stories. 

So cut out the damn wokeness. Every hero in every movie doesn't need to be a person of color, or a woman who, in spite of weighing 100 pounds can beat the snot out of guys twice her size.

Conservatives' response is also essentially the same: That's nice. Here's the unsubscribe button. Buh-byeee.

The only question now is whether Netflix can survive the horrifying consequences of its latest promotional campaign.

Namely, conservatives discovering that canceling a streaming service is considerably easier than canceling cable and that dinner date at your in-laws. [Just kidding.]

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Declassified 9/11 Docs Reveal Government Had Apparently Heard About Hijacking Thing

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration has released a batch of previously classified documents showing that the Clinton and Bush administrations had been warned for years that Al Qaeda was interested in attacking the United States, including the apparently revolutionary concept of hijacking an airplane.

The documents, declassified on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, reportedly contain more than 100 pages of intelligence briefings seen by Presidents Clinton and Bush between February 1998 and September 2001.

Among the revelations is the stunning discovery that American intelligence agencies had actually received information suggesting that terrorists might use passenger aircraft as weapons.

In other words, the government apparently had some idea that something bad could happen involving airplanes, terrorists, and America.

Unfortunately, the information seems to have remained safely inside the federal government, where intelligence warnings are traditionally placed in a secure location where nobody has to do anything about them.

One 1998 intelligence report warned:

"Reporting suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh 'Umar' Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sadiq Awda. One source quoted a senior member of the Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that as of late October, the IG has completed planning for an operation in the US on behalf of Bin Ladin but that the operation was on hold. A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options—perhaps including an aircraft hijacking."

Apparently, "perhaps including an aircraft hijacking" was intelligence-speak for "there is a possibility that terrorists could hijack an airplane," a concept that would become considerably less hypothetical three years later.

The documents also reportedly stated that:

"IG leader Islambouli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during the 'next couple of weeks' to free 'Abd al-Rahman and the other prisoners,"

The same source reportedly warned that:

"Bid Ladin might implement plans to hijack a US aircraft before the beginning of Ramadan on 20 December and that two members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport."

That last detail seems particularly encouraging, since it suggests terrorists were not merely discussing hijacking airplanes over coffee. They were apparently conducting practice runs at American airports.

The documents further warned that members of Bin Ladin's "network" had "received hijack training."

They also said Bin Ladin and his allies "are moving closer to implementing anti-US attacks at unspecified locations, but we do not know whether they are related to attacks on aircraft."

At some point, one imagines, the government had accumulated enough warning signs to fill an entire filing cabinet.

And yet here we are.

On September 11, 2001, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists ultimately hijacked four passenger planes. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, another struck the Pentagon, and passengers aboard the fourth plane fought back against the hijackers before it crashed in Pennsylvania.

More than 3,000 people were killed.

Among the dead were hundreds of firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, and other first responders who ran toward the danger while everyone else was desperately trying to get away from it.

Twenty-five years later, the release of these documents provides yet another painful reminder that the warning signs were there.

For decades, Americans have debated whether the government knew something was coming, whether intelligence agencies adequately connected the dots, and whether more could have been done to prevent the attacks.

The newly released documents are unlikely to settle every question.

They do, however, provide another remarkable glimpse into the world of pre-9/11 federal intelligence, where warnings about terrorists planning to hijack American aircraft could apparently make it all the way into the President's Daily Brief without making it quite as far as the people who needed to do something about them.

Because apparently the one thing nobody in Washington had thought to classify was the possibility that terrorists might actually mean what they were saying.

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Candidate Who Compared 9/11 To COVID Now Says Murdering Innocents Is Bad

LANSING, MI — Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed released a somber 9/11 video Friday after apparently discovering that crashing planes into buildings and killing thousands of Americans is, in fact, a bad thing.

El-Sayed, who hopes to become the first Muslim U.S. senator, told viewers the country should not forget the victims or the first responders who died. In other words, this America-hating slug would say anything to get elected.

The message marked a sharp change from earlier comments in which he compared 9/11 deaths to COVID and warned about “the rise in white supremacist violence.” 

“A cruel act of terror took the lives of more than 3,000 kids, women, men, including brave first responders who ran into the rubble to save lives that day,” El-Sayed said with a forked tongue in the new video. “Thousands more were injured. Many continue to suffer the consequences even today.”

The video arrived as El-Sayed works to put some distance between himself and a pile of old anti-American positions. He has deleted dozens of posts, including 9/11 comments, calls to defund the police, and arguments against the Second Amendment. 

Thus began more BS: “Today, on 9/11, we honor the lives that were taken from us in a terrible act of terrorism. Nothing can justify the murder of innocent civilians, nothing.  And on this day, we mourn the victims, their families, and the destruction those terrorists caused,” El-Sayed added.

That victim-first tone stood in contrast to posts from recent years that he later deleted. Conservative outlet Townhall archived several of them. 

“Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country,” he wrote on September 11, 2021. 

On September 11, 2020, he compared the government’s 9/11 response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “19 yrs ago, 2977 lives were taken from us on 9/11. We mourn them. To avenge their deaths, our country launched harmful wars that took lives,” he wrote. 

“Since the #pandemic, we’ve lost the equivalent of 64 9/11s. That’s one EVERY 3.5 DAYS. Why is there no war on #COVID to SAVE lives?” 

That same day he said he “feared” for his family’s safety for the first time on 9/11 and claimed “white supremacist violence” was “blooming” under President Donald Trump after germinating under President George W. Bush.

After more than 3,000 Americans reportedly died of COVID, El-Sayed posted that more lives had been lost than on 9/11.

“I hope that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against climate change & poverty… like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11,” he wrote on X. “We could save lives, rather than take them.” 

Campaign aides said the new message reflects growth, maturity, and a sudden realization that Michigan voters can still read the internet. Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has spent weeks highlighting El-Sayed’s old rhetoric and his close ties to activist and co-Jew hating Hasan Piker, who once said America “deserved 9/11.”

At press time, El-Sayed was said to be reviewing which remaining posts still needed to vanish before November. He is clearly a disgusting piece of human garbage.

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The Widow Who Refused the Official Silence

Twenty-five years on, the commemorations of September 11 have a settled rhythm. Names are read. Bells are struck. Officials look grave. 

Then a widow stepped forward at Ground Zero and declined to play her assigned part.

Terry Strada's husband, Tom, was murdered in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He had been at work on the 104th floor when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. On Friday, at the ceremony marking a quarter-century since that morning, she said that Saudi Arabia still evades responsibility for the attacks, and that the United States has helped it do so.

Terry is national chair of 9/11 Families United. She did not waste the occasion on atmosphere. 

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe, and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones," Strada said.

Then she turned from the kingdom to the governments that have found it convenient to look away. 

"But for 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families." Vice President JD Vance was in the audience in Lower Manhattan, the most senior official of the Trump administration present. 

President Trump spoke separately at the Pentagon. Strada addressed both. 

"It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this," she said. "Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back. Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans."

Tom Strada was 41 and worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. Days before the attacks, he and his wife had brought their third child home from the hospital. After the plane hit, he called her and said he was heading toward the stairwell. 

That is the human fact over which the diplomacy has been conducted. Nearly 3,000 people were killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard the hijacked aircraft. Since then Strada has become one of the most persistent advocates for something rarer than remembrance: an accounting. She is among the thousands of family members and survivors who sued Saudi Arabia, alleging that the kingdom provided material support to the al Qaeda hijackers. 

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied the allegations. Denial has been its posture for a generation and they are liars, plain and simple.

Last August a federal judge, George B. Daniels, ruled there was "reasonable evidence" that two Saudi government employees supported two future al Qaeda hijackers who entered the United States in early 2000 and took flight lessons. The judge allowed the case to proceed and rejected the kingdom's attempt to have it dismissed.

For more than a decade after the attacks, sovereign immunity made such a suit almost impossible. That changed in September 2016, when Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, permitting Americans to sue foreign governments accused of providing material support for terrorist attacks on American soil.

President Barack Hussein  Obama vetoed the bill. 

He argued that it threatened "to strip all foreign governments of immunity from judicial process in the United States based solely upon allegations by private litigants." 

Congress overrode the veto within days. The lawsuit against Saudi Arabia was filed in March 2017. It remains pending. 

These clowns laughed while families gave tribute to their dead loved ones

So the scene on Friday was not merely ceremonial. A woman whose husband died on the 104th floor told the officials in front of her that friendship with Riyadh has been purchased, year after year, at the expense of the dead and of the people left to bury them. Whether anyone in power intends to treat that as more than an awkward interlude at a memorial is another question. Strada, at least, declined to pretend that time had settled it.

She has bigger cajones than all the politicians who attended the memorial. Every one of them.

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Is this Lindsay Clancy 2.0? Another MA mother kills her kids claiming "mental illness"

What the freak is going on in Massachusetts?

The state that has already given us the legal circus surrounding the Lindsay Clancy case now has another mother accused of murdering her own children, and apparently the Massachusetts justice system has been handed another opportunity to debate whether consequences are still a thing.

Janette MacAusland, 49, is facing charges in connection with the deaths of her two children. Her attorney is now asking the judge to dismiss the case because of "mental illness." [And anyway, now that Massachusetts has voted for no gestational-age cutoff, it just like abortion, right?]

Because apparently the criminal justice system's latest feature is letting people commit horrific crimes and then asking whether society is being a little too judgmental about it.

"I would suggest that given my client has no record, given the fact that we are now at the four-month mark and we still can't even have a projected exact date of presentation or follow-up presentation, that the court, within its duty and obligation, has to either dismiss or set a reasonable bail with conditions," said her attorney. "I would suggest that reasonable bail would be $25,000."

Yes, $25,000. That's a mere $12,500 per child.

That is less a bail request and more of a "Please remember to check in with your parole officer" starter package.

Later, her attorney appeared to address reporters outside the courtroom.

"This is not Lindsay Clancy 2.0," he lied. "Janette MacAusland is her own woman. But there's been a discussion, a discourse that's opened up in this country about whether or not we wanna criminalize mental illness. And I'm hoping that this district attorney's office and the new district attorney-elect takes a look at this and takes a different approach in how we prosecute women suffering from profound mental health problems."

Fair enough. Mental illness is real, serious and deserving of treatment.

But there is a rather enormous difference between treating mental illness and pretending that mental illness somehow makes the victims of a horrific crime less dead.

Apparently, we are now supposed to have a national conversation about whether prosecuting someone accused of killing her children is "criminalizing mental illness." That's bullcrap.

At some point, maybe we could have a conversation about criminalizing murder. That used to be kind of a popular position.

And if this approach continues, perhaps Massachusetts can simply replace its criminal courts with a wellness center.

Did you murder your children?

No judgment here. Let's talk about your feelings.

Are you a danger to society?

Let's explore that together.

Have you demonstrated that you might kill again?

Wonderful. Here's a $25,000 bail hearing and directions to the nearest mental health clinic. ["Hey, why not go out and kill another child--we're having a special this week."]

Meanwhile, anyone still foolish enough to believe that committing a horrific crime should result in prison time can apparently be dismissed as hopelessly unenlightened.

The real danger, of course, is that eventually the system decides that the people who were harmed are less important than the psychological comfort of the person accused of harming them.

And that is where this gets truly insane.

Mental illness should not automatically mean someone is guilty. It should not automatically mean someone is innocent, either. If someone is genuinely so mentally unstable that she is capable of killing her own children, the obvious question is whether she can safely be allowed back into society.

That isn't cruelty. It's what we call protecting the public.

And no, the answer shouldn't be to lock up every mentally ill person. Nor should it be to pretend that mental illness somehow transforms murder into a therapeutic misunderstanding.

Because if your defense is that you were so profoundly mentally ill that you might suddenly snap and murder children, perhaps the appropriate government response isn't, "Congratulations, you're free to go."

Perhaps it is, "You're going to need some serious supervision." Prison much?

Otherwise, we are going to end up with a justice system where everyone is responsible for everything except the person who actually committed the crime.

And eventually, we will all stand around wondering how this happened.

What could possibly go wrong?

Thanks for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee at any amount if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

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