Tala-Freak-Out?

Democrat Strategists Remove James Talarico From Campaign Trail To Hide The Fact That He's James Talarico https://t.co/7AmHsxISij

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 9, 2026

This is too funny to ignore. From NBC News:

After drawing scrutiny for his absence from the campaign trail, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who had been sick with the flu, returned to the stump in Texas on Friday.

“James Talarico is back on the campaign trail talking to voters at Austin City Limits,” Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis said in a statement.

Social media posts showed Talarico walking on the grounds of the festival on Friday.

Via PJ Media:

As time passed, rumors began to swirl. As Matt also reported earlier on Friday, Sara Gonzales at The Blaze, Spencer Pratt, and others claimed they heard unverified tips that Talarico had checked into a mental-health facility after having a full mental breakdown at the end of September.

Just as these rumors hit their peak, Talarico has finally made a public appearance. On Friday, he was seen walking the grounds at the Austin City Limits Festival, talking and taking pictures with other festival-goers. Well, I hope he's not contagious.

Around the time Talarico disappeared, his campaign produced an ad claiming he wasn't a member of the Chinese Communist Party. This ran starting October 3:

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico released a new campaign ad this week directly denying allegations tied to his voting record. "Ken Paxton is lying about my record, even making fake AI videos of me," Talarico says in the ad. "No, I'm not a member of the Chinese Communist Party. No, I don't support sex change surgeries for kids."

The denial follows millions in attack ads from Paxton allies, citing Talarico's 2025 vote against Senate Bill 17, which barred foreign adversaries, including China, from buying Texas land. Talarico's campaign notes he supported an amendment specifically banning Chinese purchases near military bases, and separately voted against SB 667, which restricted state investment in CCP-tied companies.

. . . Does running a direct-denial ad address voter concerns effectively, or does repeating the accusation, even to deny it, risk reinforcing the very claim it's trying to dispel?

This followed a summer of attacks from Paxton:

After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state's Republican Senate primary this week, he delivered a run of insults directed at his general election opponent, Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico.

"He goes by a few names that you all may have heard of. Some people know him as tofu Talarico. Some people call him six-gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talafreako," he said to laughter and cheers. "And others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico."

Paxton also quickly released an ad that ends with an image of Talarico next to the words: "Radical Talarico: too low-T for Texas."

. . . White House advisor Stephen Miller used "transgender" as an insult, telling Fox News that Talarico is the Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate." Talarico is not transgender.

"He's clearly transitioning into a female," Miller said. "When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn't come out. Soy milk comes out."

According to USA Today,

With 10 days until early voting starts in Texas for the midterm elections, a new poll suggests momentum may be shifting back in Republicans' favor in two key races.

A new UMass Lowell/YouGov poll, released Oct. 8, shows Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico tied at 45%, with 7% of respondents undecided.

“The last time Democrats won a U.S. Senate race in Texas, Ken Paxton didn’t yet have a law degree and James Talarico wasn’t even born. With the race tied, anything can happen between now and the election,” said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell.

Talarico has led Paxton in most September and October polls, sometimes by margins outside the poll’s error.

Videos showing Talarico in his Austin festival reappearance suggest he took a gingerly approach, flanked by two lady staffers, with security surrounding him farther from camera range, and of course, Austin is very friendly territory for him. If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective.

The campaign must have come to recognize this late last month, and it gave Talarico himself the vapors. In this context, of course, his disppearance will only give those attacks more credence. Whether his people can ger him fully back on the trail will be interesting to see.

Nidal Hasan Firing Squad To Be Livestreamed

Several days ago, according to the UK Guardian:

Donald Trump has approved the execution by US army firing squad of Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

. . . Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on 5 November 2009 at a medical facility in the sprawling military base, which served as a staging point for soldiers to deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Hasan had spoken online with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

This AP article appears to be generally incorrect in what it claims about the Army's execution protocols:

In a post on social media Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said he scheduled the execution for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood — the site where Hasan opened fire killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others.

Telle confirmed in his post on X that Trump had approved the execution on Oct. 2, starting the clock in Army regulations that requires an execution date to be set no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after that approval.

Telle also noted that the execution would be carried out by firing squad, but did not offer details of where on base the execution would take place, what personnel would be a part of that squad or what procedure they would follow.

. . . The procedures for execution in Army regulations do not contain specific protocols for particular methods of execution. Experts said in previous iterations of the firing squad — nearly 80 years ago — one shooter would be given a blank so they all could plausibly believe they had not fired the fatal shot.

. . . Before Hasan’s execution was set for Fort Hood, there was speculation the Army might reach out to one of the handful of states that have recently reinstated the firing squad for use in executions — particularly South Carolina or Utah, where they’ve renovated facilities and established protocols.

. . . It’s unclear if the Army will borrow from the state’s protocol, but it sets out for three volunteer shooters to stand 15 feet (4.6 meters) from the condemned prisoner, who is strapped to a chair. A medical professional uses an X-ray to find the prisoner’s heart and place a target over it. A hood is placed over the prisoner’s head after his final words, and a shade is lifted so the shooters can see their target.

At 3:53 in the YouTube video embedded above, Ryan McBeth discusses the most recent Army protocol for execution by firing squad, which dates from 1944. The firing squad has 12 members and a sergeant. From one to four of the 12 rifles are loaded with blanks. If the initial volley doesn't kill the condemned, the sergeant administers a coup de grâce to the head with a sidearm. The condemned is normally tied to a post, but since Hasan was paralyzed by gunsbhots during his capture and uses a wheelchair, exactly what will be done in his case is unclear. Via CNN, the execution will be livestreamed:

The Pentagon said Thursday it will livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week to let the public watch a firing squad execute Nidal Hasan at the same base in Texas where he carried out the massacre.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, drawing swift backlash from both sides of the aisle.

. . . A public livestream of Hasan’s execution could potentially violate the Army regulations governing military capital punishment. Army Regulation 190-55 specifies the types of people permitted to witness a military execution, and it also bars minors from watching the punishment. But the Army’s provost marshal general — a general who oversees military law enforcement — is permitted to waive provisions of the regulation so long as the waiver doesn’t violate the law or a higher binding regulation.

The President of the USCCB reacted predictably:

“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement released Friday.

The problem I see is that it's increasingly plain that the enemy is Islam, which is seeking to override Western cultural history, much of which has been influenced by Catholics and Jews. Often it operates via grandly violent massacres, as it did on 9/11, or indeed as Hasan himself undertook. I think one counter to this strategy is equally vivid imagery; this was certainly done in the elimination of Osama bin Laden, and I think it's entirely appropriate in this case.

UK Immigration And Class

"opposing immigration, illegal or otherwise, is a class signifier in Britain, and most middle-class people—including most politicians—aren’t prepared to support a political cause that would see them associated with the lower orders." https://t.co/9RR2YgIby2

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) October 6, 2026

The post above raises yet again the class question in the UK that I keep puzzling over: the upper classes in the UK seem genuinely to resent, maybe even to hate, the working class. As I've noted here several times, this goes back at least to the General Strike of 1926:

The General Strike began on 3 May 1926 when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called on workers across key industries to stop work in support of coal miners who were facing severe wage cuts and longer working hours.

After the First World War Britain’s coal industry was struggling. Mine owners wanted to reduce miners’ pay and increase working hours to keep their businesses profitable.

Miners’ unions resisted, warning that the proposals would push already hard-pressed workers into deeper poverty.

There was a general fear among the upper classes that a general strike was more than just a labor action, it was a threat of revolution. According to Wikipedia,

The leaders of the Labour Party were troubled about the proposed general strike because they were aware of the revolutionary elements within the union movement and of the damage that they might do to the party's new reputation as a party of government. During the next two days, frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement between the government and the mining industry representatives.

It appears that the Labour Party, which was the creature of the bourgeois Fabian Society, feared the potential revolutionary influence of the general strike, as did the TUC, which essentially lost control of it. At the same time,

the government put in place a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) of volunteers to maintain order in the street.

The volunteers, who were bourgeois, also tried to replace the unionized rail workers, although they had no experience at that type of work. Nevertheless, the attitude seems to have been that if the middle and upper classes coulld pitch in if needed, there was no need for the working class, and they saw the whole thing as a lark.

On 6 May 1926, there was a change of atmosphere. The government newspaper, British Gazette, suggested that means of transport into London began to improve compared to the first day with volunteers, car sharing, cyclists, private buses, as well as strikebreakers. A statement on the front page indicated 200 London General Omnibus Company buses 'on the streets'. Only 86 LGOC buses, however, were operating.

The TUC, whoch never had much heart in the strike, nevertheless made a show of "negotiation" with the governnment, but it eventually called off the strike without getting any deal, and the UK bourgeoisie came away with the idea it had won.

Labour gained its first full majority government in 1945, and in succeeding years, it instituted national health care and socialized the coal and transport industries. The problem, though, was that Labour never represented the working class; it was always a bourgeois movement that convinced itself it was promoting working class interests. Thus its first instincts were to keep working class wages down, and it did this by importing workers from the former empire to replace native workers in the newly socialized medical, coal, and transport industries.

There's now discomfort in Piddington, the upscale village that, reacting to the government's plan to locate 1250 male migrants in a nearby former military facility, voted symbolically to leave the UK and become part of the US. One one hand, they don't want to be associated with the working-class anti-migrant movement, especially

the arrival of Daniel Thomas, who prefers to be called Danny Tommo, the leader of the new balaclava-wearing anti-migrant movement Patriot Platform, with an offer to rally his masked supporters, if the site is opened, “to protect women and children” locally.

. . . Andrew Smith, a Network Rail employee from Bicester, was less upbeat: “We don’t want to see masked people like there were in Dover – that’s not really the view of the local people; we are concerned to do the right thing. These people have got to go somewhere, but it has to be properly resourced with the proper facilities.”

Thus bourgeois oppositiun to migration exists only insofar as the migration impacts their lifestyle directly; if the government wants to put them somewhere other than migrant hotels, that's fine, just not near upscale villages. That the government should on one hand stop the boats and on the other send the migrants back is a whole separate issue that doesn't concern Piddington.

It's hard not to conclude the UK will handle this issue no differently than it handled the 1926 General Strike. You can only kick the can so far down the road.

Quebec Election

Almost unnoticed in this week's news was a provincial election in Quebec. Politico had a somewhat obtuse take:

As much of Canada unites against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Quebecers have elected a Parti Québécois government promising a referendum on independence that most of the province doesn’t want.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon won a five-party race on Monday night, earning a minority government with just 28% of the vote. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which won back-to-back majorities after taking power in 2018, was wiped off the electoral map, a rarity in Canadian history.

. . . Voters in the province wanted change, though they did not give St-Pierre Plamondon the 64 seats needed to secure a majority government, awarding him instead a minority mandate — the fourth in the province’s history.

Carney is Quebec’s most popular politician, with the Angus Reid Institute measuring his personal appeal at 61%. The province’s industries are among the most exposed to Trump’s tariffs. The combination may give the new separatist premier a reason to play nice with the federal Liberals — at least for the short term.

But St-Pierre Plamondon’s arrival could also complicate Carney’s attempts to keep Canada’s premiers united against Trump’s tariff agenda.

I've pointed out here that referenda on secession in Canada are actually a non-issue, because the Clarity Act lets Ottawa set the rules for any proposed secession:

Although the law applies to all provinces, the [1999] Clarity Act was created in response to the 1995 Quebec referendum and ongoing independence movement in that province. The content of the act was based on the 1998 secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada made by the federal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

It gives the House of Commons in Ottawa the authority to determine whether the questions on any referendum are sufficiently clear, as well as whether any majority vote to secede is sufficiently large. It also requires an amendment to the Canadian constitution for a secession to take place. So far, polling in both Alberta and Quebec suggets that neither province would have a majority of any size in favor of secession, but Parliament would be able to override any such vote in any case.

Such coverage as legacy media has given misses the main point, which the Quebec commentator in the YouTube video embedded above outlines clearly:

People in Quebec. . . understand that they are already a linguistic minority within Canada, and they have been subnjected to mass immigration that is fundamentally changing the makeup of the province. The argument for Quebec independence today, and the argument that will likely be made in the referendum, will be one of nationalism, aka, do we want to continue importing people from the third world who do not share our values and who continue to cause havoc that continues to threaten the French language in Canada?

Quebec is becoming less and less French every day. You go to Montreal now, most people speak to you in English instead of French. Or do we want to preserve the Quebec nation? This is something that concerns people of all poltical stripes in Quebec. The example I often give is I have people in my extended family. . . that are very, very leftwing Quebecers, but that also believe that we need to ban the burka, that teachers should not be wearing hijabs in schools, that police officers should not be wearing turbans. . .

I noted this a month ago:

This parallels another question that's come up in the Canadian trade dispute: Prime Minister Carney insists he was protecting Francophone Canada by rejecting the recent trade agreement -- but observers have made the point that Canadian immigration policy, which involves widespread immigration from India, threatens to flood out Francophone Canada. The Century Initiative, a project with widespread support from the Laurentian Elite, aims to increase the population of Canada, currently 41 million, to, 100 million by 2100. While it has not been passed by the Canadian parliament, current immigration policy there seems generally consistent with it.

In effect, with the native birth rate stable but current residents leaving, this would add 60 millon migrants from India to the current population of 41 million, with roughly 9 million whose first language is French. This would create a far larger language group whose primary language is Hindi or Punjabi, although Canadian Charter Rights (a weaker version of the US Bill of Rights) currently recognize only English and French as official languages.

So current unspoken policy in Ottawa is to dilute the French population anywhere in Canada beyond recognition by importing migrants who speak neither English nor French. It appears that French Canadians have few options to protest this policy -- which seems to be pushing the limits of implied French rights under their "constitution" -- beyond proposing secession referenda, which are feckless enterprises. This is the same non-option that Albertans have. Meanwhile, Like it or not, Canada isn't going to be able to continue on its current path.

"Panic At The Pentagon"?

There's an air of unreality in UK reactions to the withdrawal of US B-1 bombers from Fairford. Here's a "BBC expert":

On Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said: “The unexpected mass withdrawal of America’s heavy bombers from RAF Fairford has happened so suddenly, it hints at something approaching panic in the Pentagon.

“There must be concerns in Washington that the US cannot risk catastrophic damage to another one of its high-value aircraft.”

Gardner said the US decision to remove its bombers suggested there was “clearly a new threat on top of the existing one”.

He said: “The US is still heavily bruised about the damage done to its high value aircraft in the Middle East by Iranian precision strikes.

“This must be a huge shock to it that bases in its closest ally, the UK, are not as safe as they thought they were. So they’ve pulled them all the way back to the continent of the United States.”

Gardner said it “will be a loss to the US and an embarrassment to the UK”.

"Former British diplomats" say it's success for Iran:

The withdrawal of US bombers from UK military base RAF Fairford will be seen as a “success by Iran”, amid a series of security threats to Britain, former British diplomats have said.

. . . Former diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown said Iran could interpret the withdrawal as a weakening of the US deterrent and its alliance with Britain.

“From the Iranian point of view, its already a win if they’re driving a wedge between two Nato allies. They might think we need to do more of this,” he told The National.

The withdrawal showed the “weakening of a US defence position by removing assets from a strategically significant base”, Mr Fitton-Brown said.

Peter Ricketts, who served as the UK’s first national security adviser between 2010 and 2012, said: “I think it's hard to conclude anything other than that this will be seen as a success by Iran.

“Whether it was the intention or whether it's the inadvertent outcome, it is certainly the outcome that they have now forced the US into a public bring-back of their forces from one of their allies,” Lord Ricketts told the BBC. “That what we thought were secure areas in the UK can no longer be considered entirely secure.”

So, those Yanks have gone weak at the knees, right? We're best off without those fair weather friends if a few van dudes send them packing! Except,

Mr Fitton-Brown said the UK’s next steps would be to reassure the Americans that it can handle terrorist threats on British soil, or that the threat represented in this instance was low.

But another UK expert talks to Time:

David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, says the U.S. withdrawal from Fairford is “historic, unprecedented, and an indication of the sense of vulnerability” surrounding U.S. military assets abroad.

“Fairford is normally the place during a crisis where America sends bombers to beef up America's military capability and its formal operating bases, whether that's for operations in Europe, like the Kosovo campaign, or for operations in the Gulf through 2003 onwards, or indeed for operations in Iran,” Dunn tells TIME. “This [removal] is an indication of concerns about the safety of those assets in their forward operating bases.”

. . . RAF Fairford is a NATO-designated standby deployment and a U.S. forward operating base for U.S. Global Strike Command, according to U.K. government records. The base, which opened in 1944, has been used extensively by U.S. military aircraft in previous conflicts, including "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in 2003.

The U.S. Air Force describes RAF Fairford as its “preferred” European “bomber forward operating location” and previously said it has used Fairford “nearly continuously” since the base was constructed.

Former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to allow U.S. access to U.K. military bases in its offensive strikes against Iran—a move that earned him the wrath of Trump. Starmer changed his position in March, authorizing the U.S. to use bombers based at RAF Fairford to carry ⁠out strikes on Iranian missile sites used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Prof Dunn's implication is clear: the action is "historic" and "unprecedented", because it shows the US can no longer assume the UK can control its borders, but it also comes in the context of Labour's extreme reluctance to honor its NATO commitment. Clearly this represents a practical change in the US-UK-NATO relationship, despite claims that there's been no change:

The US removed its bombers from RAF Fairford partly because of a reported threat of a possible Iranian drone attack against the base, American officials have said.

. . . A third official said the US can deploy the bombers from anywhere, so it made sense to move them out of an abundance of caution.

. . . Asked if there was a "specific threat" that led to the removal of the US bombers, Mr Trump replied: "Yeah I think we can say that. They didn't fly out by accident.

"There were some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we'll capture the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit. Not very far."

. . . It comes after US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the removal of the US bombers was not directly connected to the arrests of five men near the base.

"The Department of War is constantly reallocating resources where they need to be. There are regular rotations that happen as well," Mr Rubio said.

This has a lot to say about the future of NATO, and I'm not sure if the UK is adjusting to it yet.

US Withdraws B-1s From Fairford

The Pentagon confirms that all B-1 bombers deployed to RAF Fairford in the UK have returned to the US: "Due to operational security considerations, we could not confirm the aircraft's movement in real time; however, we can now confirm that all US bombers deployed to RAF Fairford in the UK have returned to their home bases in the US."

— Eli Afriat 🇮🇱 (@EliAfriatISR) October 4, 2026

As of yesterday,

The US has withdrawn all of its bomber jets from RAF Fairford after air force commanders received new reports of an Iran-backed plot against the base.

The Pentagon said all bombers deployed to the base, which US forces have used to strike Iran, have returned to the United States.

Counter-terror police are investigating whether Iran was behind a suspected plot to target the base on Sept 27.

The initial announcement was bare bones:

The need to move the bombers was so urgent that some of the planes were ordered into the air while refuelling aircraft were still being scrambled.

A Pentagon official told The Telegraph: "While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States."

Air & Space Forces Magazine provided more detail:

All 12 American bombers deployed in Britain rapidly returned to the U.S. on Oct. 4 following security concerns about a potential Iranian threat to their base in the U.K.

The dozen B-1B Lancer bombers, which were stationed at RAF Fairford amid ongoing hostilities with Iran, departed over the course of a day, local aircraft spotters said. The U.S. military later confirmed the unexpected departure of the aircraft.

“All U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon and U.S. European Command said in statements to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The U.S. military emphasized that bombers could still strike targets across the globe from the continental United States—something B-1B, B-2 Spirit, and B-52 Stratofortress bombers all did during the height of operations against Iran this spring.

“The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities—including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States—anywhere, anytime,” the statement read.

Still, stationing bombers at RAF Fairford sharply reduced the flight time U.S. bombers needed to strike targets in Iran. The open-source group Military Air Tracking Alliance recorded 29 separate bombers that deployed to RAF Fairford, located in southwest England, at different points during the conflict.

The departure of the last 12 bombers comes a week after arrests were made following a suspected plot against the base. Six people have been arrested in connection with the episode. U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications” that Iran was behind the threat.

. . . At the height of the deployment, which began in early March during Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. had around two dozen bombers deployed to RAF Fairford at a single time—some 18 B-1B and half a dozen B-52H bombers. Since the U.S. reached a shaky ceasefire with Iran in April, the bombers have mostly conducted training missions, and the B-52s left months ago. One B-1B that arrived just last week to replace another bomber was part of the exodus on Oct. 4.

The UK minimizes the issue:

Downing Street has insisted RAF Fairford is secure a day after the US air force suddenly withdrew a dozen B-1 bombers that had been stationed at the Gloucestershire base amid security concerns about a possible threat from Iran.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson, speaking during a scheduled briefing, said “yes” when asked if the military site was safe – contrasting with the concern showed by the US military during the hasty redeployment the day before.

Pointing to comments made last week by the defence secretary, Wes Streeting, the official said there were “tried and tested approaches to defend our bases around the country and throughout the world”, highlighting protection of the airbase.

. . . US officials told the New York Times that commanders had received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the site. Some of the bombers left so quickly that refuelling aircraft had to be scrambled to support their flights to the US.

It's hard to avoid inferring that the US has received a new threat, beyond what was implicit in last week's episode with the van dudes, and thought the threat was serious enough to pull the B-1s out of harm's way. Comments on the news suggest the US has lost confidence in the UK's ability to handle the problem. On the other hand, this comes at a time when the US Air Force has been expanding and upgrading its UK operations. As of July,

The United States Air Force is about to pour $4.2 billion into its three main operating bases in the United Kingdom — the single largest American basing investment in Britain in decades. A presentation by the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, obtained by The Guardian, lays out sweeping upgrades to RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, and RAF Fairford that will reshape America's military footprint on British soil for a generation.

The spending surge comes as U.S. forces in the UK are more operationally active than at any point since the Cold War. Lakenheath's fighters have deployed repeatedly to the Middle East for Operation Epic Fury, Fairford's bombers have flown daily combat sorties to Iran, and Mildenhall's special operations aircraft remain on permanent standby for contingencies across three continents.

The lion's share — $1.6 billion — goes to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, home of the 48th Fighter Wing and one of the most combat-experienced fighter units in the Air Force. The base currently operates two squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagles and two squadrons of F-35A Lightning IIs.

. . . RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire rounds out the trio with $500 million in planned upgrades. The base was placed in care-and-maintenance status in 2010 but has grown steadily more active since 2014, hosting near-annual rotations of B-52s, B-1Bs, and B-2 Spirits. In 2019 it became home to a permanent U-2 Dragon Lady detachment.

Whether the withdrawal of the B-1s from Fairford reflects a potential overall policy change toward UK bases is a complete unknown.

What Are The Cornell Seven Teaching Us About College?

This remarkably silly piece says parents are rethnking sending their kids to Cornell:

[I]n recent days, college counselors and admissions consultants have fielded frantic messages from shaken parents, questioning whether the university should remain on their campus tour lists. Would my daughter be safe? Is Greek life less entrenched at other colleges?

But sometimes they're asking: Will it actually be easier to get into Cornell this year?

. . . Cornell is a platinum brand institution with international standing, which -- like many of its highly selective peers -- can be shielded from its troubles by an elite school halo. It received more than 67,000 applications last year and admitted roughly 9%.

Among the Ivies, Cornell isn't all that selective. Brown's acceptance rate is more like 5%, Columbia 4%, Harvard 4% as well. Even Dartmouth, apparently the current title holder for Joke of the Ivy League, is 6%. Maybe they'll revisit this at some point. But let's check in on other higher ed news I've covered here.

Back in July, I noted that Brown had a cheating scandal:

This spring, after three decades of teaching at Brown, [Prof Robero] Serrano let his students take their midterm exam at home, upping the difficulty to compensate for the unlimited time. The average score, which had historically run between 65% and 80%, jumped to 96%.

Was that a particularly studious class? Maybe. But Serrano suspected a simpler explanation: AI.

He announced that the final would be given in person, causing 18 students to drop the class. Nine more didn't bother showing up for the exam.

The average score on the final was 48.6%.

Serrano shared the anonymized results of the 59 students who took both tests with Inside Higher Ed. A handful can be safely called honest. One scored 95.5% on the midterm and 95% on the final. Another went from 55% to 59%, the only student whose score actually improved.

Many more students fell from highs in the top percentile to failing grades. Two who submitted perfect midterm exams scored exactly 0% on the final.

I suspect a similar investigation at Cornell would bring equivalent results. An Ivy degree is going to be hit-or-miss if you ask how many Ivy students routinely cheat. Then there's the problem of Greek life, which we see nervous parents bringing up about Cornell. In August, I looked at the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students at an off-campus residence.

[T]his residence was widely known as a "party house" and something of an eztension of the on-campus Greek scene. The door locks were combination-style; the combination was widely known and never changed. Outsiders were routinely in and out of the place, it simply wasn't secure.

The levels of blood alcohol in all four victims ranged from the precariously high, 0.282 g/100 mL, to 0.107 g/100 mL, which would be just a plain ol' DUI or maybe drunk and disorderly. Two of them also had amphetamines in their blood.The BACs of the eight students involved in the Cornell Seven affair were not recorded, but "Jane Doe" reported some passing out, with additional use of ketamine over a period of several hours. Just another day in paradise.

While some colleges and universities have striven to eliminate Greek organizations, this had little effect on student life. Georgetown, with a reputation roughly comparable to Cornell, eliminated fraternities in the 1950s, but Hunter Biden, who graduated in 1992, first developed his cocaine habit tbere and continued the alcohol abuse he'd started earlier. Unfortunately, religious affiliation generally doesn't make a uniiversity more safe. In fact, it occurred to me that all eight of the students involved in the Cornell Seven episode were, and still likely are, in Hunter Biden territory.

This reminds me of a remark my uncle, a corporate CEO, made. In a chat with my father, his brother, he mentioned one of his subordinates, who'd met my father. "What did you think of him?" my uncle asked.

"He seemed like sort of an ass-kisser," my father answered.

"Well," my uncle replied, "I run an ass-kisser factory."

In this case, the US higher education system is actually running a Hunter Biden factory, irrespective of Greek life or religious affiliation. Whether or not they have Greek houses, and whether or not students are members of Greek houses, underage alcohol and narcotics are freely available, in part because many students develop drinking and narcotics habits by their early teens, and what they find in college isn't new. Add to that an institutionally enabled culture of promiscuity:

Students in the sixties demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. “We’re adults,” the students shouted. “We can manage our own lives. If we want to have members of the opposite sex in our rooms at any hour of the day or night, that’s our right.” The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora’s box of boorish, sluttish behavior that gets cruder each year.

At best -- and this has probably always been then case in higher ed; look at Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited for what life was like at Oxford in the 1920s -- kids of good character are dumped into a sea of kids of less-good character and have to struggle their way through as best they can. Why would we see anything good in such a situation? Why would we pressure a younger generation to sacrifice their childhood and adolescence to compete to get into such environments?

Just as one possible strategy, if trying to work out a solution for a child approaching college age, I might consider a commuter school, with the kid living at home, just as one possibility.