This Is on California

I hadn’t been following the California gubernatorial race much since the open primary in June. The right generally agrees the state is a mess under one-party rule, and the consensus is that Steve Hilton — former British political operative and Fox News host — will lose in November.

The usual exhibit is what happened to Spencer Pratt in the same June election. He hoped to reach the runoff for mayor of Los Angeles. There were the familiar complaints about mail-in ballots and California’s loose rules on what counts and when.

I have been to Skid Row twice in my lifetime. I still find it hard to believe a whole neighborhood in this nation is allowed to stay like that.

This video from Fox News Digital reporter Ashley J. DiMella is revealing. She walks the area with Hilton. He notes the federal help clearing streets, then makes the point that the condition itself remains on California.

🚨 ON THE GROUND: Fox News Digital joined @SteveHiltonx in LA’s Skid Row, witnessing human feces, open drug use, sprawling encampments and trash-filled sidewalks. Hilton calls it a “political scandal.” https://t.co/yPREpf7Qpq

— AJD (@AshleyJDiMella) October 12, 2026

Hilton calls it a political scandal rather than a natural disaster. Billions spent, nonprofits funded for “harm reduction,” streets still covered in encampments, drugs, and refuse.

Stephen A. Smith Won't Stay Comfortable

I keep hearing Stephen A. Smith outside the sports window.

Stephen A. Smith is the loud voice on ESPN’s First Take. He started as a newspaper writer covering high school and pro sports in New York and Philadelphia, then moved into radio and television. He has two daughters. He calls himself an independent and has spent more of the last couple of years talking about politics, including whether he would run.

He appears on Bill O’Reilly’s We’ll Do It Live podcast. [VIDEO]

Six Voices, One Caucus

I watched the New York Times Opinion video with the six Black lawmakers. They are asked, in different ways, why the Congressional Black Caucus still exists and why Black representation still matters once the numbers are no longer required by law.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

Bailey Interrupted. Pritzker Stayed Cool

I had the chance to watch Tuesday’s WTTW-TV Illinois gubernatorial forum in its entirety. The original post with the full video is here: Will the Forum Move the Needle. At this time it has not caused me to move the needle on whether I am enthusiastic about a third term for Governor Pritzker or whether Darren Bailey should have his turn. I am guessing it has not moved the needle for anyone else either.

Credit: Chicago Sun-Times

Will the Forum Move the Needle

I wasn’t able to watch the Tuesday gubernatorial forum between incumbent Governor JB Pritzker and GOP challenger Darren Bailey. It aired on WTTW Chicago, our local PBS affiliate. I’m not giving much of an opinion until I watch it.

You can watch the forum here [VIDEO]

I’ve already said where I believe this race is headed in November. Early voting in Illinois began in late September—some collar counties opened sites on September 24, Chicago’s downtown supersites on October 1, and suburban Cook on October 7. The question now is narrower: does this forum change the mind of any voter who hasn’t already cast a ballot?

Noted further is the absence of independent candidate Collin Corbett.

I had been keenly interested in races outside Illinois, especially California. I couldn’t find the full CNN debate between GOP candidate Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former cabinet secretary. Regardless, it is important to keep my focus on home.

Common Sense, Not Ideology

The New York Post ran this on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

The full interview is here: [VIDEO]

A Warrant Was Signed

They opened the door with a warrant.

Glenn Beck posted this Monday afternoon, hours after the first reports. [VIDEO]

All the Chips on the Table

CBS Sunday Morning still has the feel of appointment television, even when you’re watching it on Paramount+ at a later time. In the most recent edition, one of the segments featured political strategist Steve Bannon interviewed by senior contributor Ted Koppel. (Yes, that Ted Koppel—the longtime host of ABC’s Nightline.)

Who is Steve Bannon?
Steve Bannon is a former investment banker, media executive, and political operative who became widely known as executive chairman of Breitbart News and as a key strategist in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. He served briefly as White House chief strategist early in the first Trump administration before returning to media as host of the War Room podcast, where he has remained a prominent voice for the MAGA movement, populist nationalism, and Republican electoral strategy. He has also faced legal consequences, including a 2022 contempt-of-Congress conviction related to the January 6 investigation and a guilty plea in a fundraising fraud case tied to a border-wall charity.

Watch interview here: [VIDEO]

The Sentence Is the Sentence

Last week I wrote about the attempted execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike. As of this writing she is still alive and appears to be doing fine. It was expected that she had suffered brain damage. Instead she is conscious and talking, according to reports.

Then another piece of news hit this week. President Trump approved the execution by firing squad of former U.S. Army officer Nidal Hasan. We also learn that Hasan’s execution will be live streamed.

Here's one news story about this: [VIDEO]

CONTENT WARNING: This section describes a mass shooting, the deaths of service members and a civilian, and a capital case now moving toward execution.

One Civilization, Many Nations

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on October 7 from the Pnyx, the old speaking hill in Athens, with the Acropolis behind him. The State Department posted the full remarks the same day. He was not taking questions. He was making a case about what the West inherited from that hill, and what he thinks it has done with the inheritance.

Watch Rubio's remarks here [VIDEO]

The Crusade Was the Reply

 Patrick Bet-David put it as an or. Islam, or a West that has gone soft. Raymond Ibrahim would not take the or. He is an American historian, born here to Coptic immigrants from Egypt, fluent in Arabic, a former Arabic specialist at the Library of Congress, and the author of *Sword and Scimitar* and *Defenders of the West*. This is his hour on PBD Podcast #869, posted Thursday. Bet-David opened on the title. The answer was yes to both.

Watch interview here [VIDEO]

Could This Happen Here

Bill O'Reilly's NewsNation special, The Siege of London, aired Sunday. He was a student at the University of London. The hour opens on street footage from London, Southampton, and Belfast, then the line he says Americans give him when they go back. O'Reilly was here a few decades ago. What the hell happened?

Watch O'Reilly special here: [VIDEO]

Not a Comment on the Opposition #twill

I was asked by a relative to try to predict the midterms. In 2024 it was easier to say Vice President Kam-A-la Harris would get her clock cleaned by President Donald Trump. Even then it was not fully assured. This time is harder.

Both sides have put up candidates I would not send.

In Texas the Senate race is James Talarico aka "Talafreako" against Ken Paxton. Texas is not a purple state that wandered. It is a red state, and Paxton is still not clear of Talarico. September polls had the Democrat ahead or tied. A New York Times/Siena survey in June had them even at 47. That is the tell. Paxton carries the baggage. Talarico is a strange fit for the state he is asking to send him.

He is a Presbyterian seminarian who told the Texas House, in 2021, that God is non-binary, and that trans children are made in God's image. He has said other traditions circle the same truth. I am not grading his theology. I am saying a candidate who talks that way is asking Texas to ignore what it has been. Democrats may still vote for him. A lot of them cannot bring themselves to vote for a Republican, especially one aligned with Donald Trump.

The same pattern shows up with Democratic Socialists of America candidates who have won House seats. I would not call them strong candidates. They have a leg up anyway. Democrats who are not socialists will often take the socialist over the Republican.

Allow me to bring this conversation home to Illinois. 

My read on the Illinois races I have looked at in September is that Democrats keep the governor's mansion and the Senate seat Dick Durbin is leaving. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton against former state party chair Don Tracy. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, running for a third term, against Darren Bailey again.

If there was a seat people could call winnable, it was Durbin's. I am saying winnable. I am not saying Republicans win it. A Public Policy Polling survey taken September 30 and October 1 had Stratton at 49 and Tracy at 36. The same poll had Pritzker at 54 and Bailey at 34, with independent Collin Corbett at 6. The Senate gap is the smaller one. Smaller is not small.

Then came Monday. Via CapitolFax.

Not a War on the Lab

 The clip title says the left is losing its war against biology. I had to stop on the phrase. War on biology can mean a lab. A chromosome. A drug. That is not what they are talking about.

Jeremy Boreing posted the cut Monday. The sit-down is from September 16, his Wednesday live with Kurt Schlichter, Zuby, and Nathan Finochio. The phrase shows up about two minutes in, after they have already said the quiet part.

Watch the clip here [VIDEO]

The point is that an advantage is not a confession. Beautiful, intelligent, strong, born to means: use it, and do not impoverish yourself to prove a point nobody asked for. Weak, get stronger. Unattractive, grooming does more than a speech. Sydney Sweeney is the exhibit. The modesty argument, Boreing grants, is a real argument. What he likes is that she is not ashamed of being Sydney Sweeney. One of them calls the male gaze a female superpower. Wrong uses exist. The attraction, he says, is not the crime. Every person here got here because a man was attracted to a woman.

Men, a Great Deal

The New York Post ran a headline on September 30 that did more work than the question underneath it. Two-thirds of young Democratic women, it said, blame men for most of society’s problems.

Two-thirds of young Dem women say men are to blame for most of society's problems: poll https://t.co/cpxQu0uK5O pic.twitter.com/ZxC67JGDfA

— New York Post (@nypost) September 30, 2026

That is not what they were asked.

The Survey Center on American Life asked whether “the challenges that women face in American society” are “a great deal” due to the behavior or actions of men. Sixty-six percent of Democratic women ages 18 to 29 said yes. Eighteen percent of Republican women the same age said yes.

The interviews are from last summer. The center talked to 5,451 adults from July 25 to August 1, 2025, as part of its Civility and Morality Survey, and posted this cut on September 22. The Post ran it eight days later.

The gap does not close with age. Among women 30 to 49, 54 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of Republicans gave that answer. From 50 to 64, 47 and 25. At 65 and older, 48 and 16. The youngest Democratic women are the high mark. They are not the only ones.

Men were asked the mirror question: are the challenges men face a great deal due to women? Sixteen percent said yes. Among Republican men 18 to 29, 26 percent. Democratic young men are less likely to say it. The Post puts that gap at about twenty points.

So the headline did extra work. "Most of society's problems" is not what was asked. What was asked is still a fifty-point split, and it is largest where the women are youngest.

The article does not say why. It shows who is ready to say men are a great deal of the problem, and who is not. It does not say what they think those men did.

A poll cannot tell you whether the blame is earned. It can tell you who is ready to assign it, and who is not.

h/t Newsalert