Welcome to Sunday, September 7, 2026, and Morning Show Hosts Day. Although “The View“, a talk show that made me cringe every time I saw it, isn’t exactly a morning show, it’s uber-woke (often with a token conservative), and Nellie Bowles has two items about it in her latest TGIF (Sunny Hostin is one of the passel of woke women who was on the show):
→ Sunny Hostin once served on a jury: This week on The View, Sunny Hostin said that when she was on a jury in the early ’90s, she was the holdout juror who prevented a good, if ill, man from going to prison. That’s right: She claims to have been the holdout in the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” trial (which might not be true but let’s go with Sunny). Here’s Sunny on his crime: “He did not mean to kill her and once he killed her, he panicked. He chopped up her body, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime,” she continued, talking over the other panelists to make one final important point: “And he fed her body parts to the unhoused.” So crucial. He fed her body parts to the unhoused. She really wants to be sure you heard that part. Because, well, that’s honestly admirable. The unhoused are famously hungry. If someone slaughters your mother but then feeds her flesh to the homeless, it’s morally neutral. What? You want to starve our unhoused community of human flesh? You’ve never panicked and accidentally chopped up, boiled, and served human body parts? Okay, Ms. Perfect! Speaking of The View:
→ In sickness and in murdering our children: I love The View, the beating heart of absolutely berserk American discourse. Because Sara Haines was also on the show criticizing Patrick Clancy for leaving his wife after she, uhh, strangled their kids. Haines said, “What bothers me is he talks about forgiving her, which I love, but he focuses on that and never jumps to what so many people struggle with. How did the marital love end so quickly?” Yes, Patrick, how? How did that love end so quickly? What changed? We’re all struggling to understand. You made a commitment!
It’s also Ancestor Appreciation Day, National Corned Beef Hash Day, National Chocolate Milk Day (2 cents for a carton when I went to school), and World Rivers Day. Speaking of which, here’s one of the songs, “Old Rivers” on my list of Coyne’s Worst Songs. It’s a recitation by Walter Brennan, who played Grandpappy Amos on “The Real McCoys” television show (1957-1963). Amazingly, this song made it to #5 in the American Billboard Hot 100!
The mule. . . .Old Rivers. . . and me. That last “me” is enough to make you weep, eh? We have a better song below.
Posting may be light until later in the week due to slow healing of my eye and a passel of doctor visits. Bear with me, though some people aren’t bearing!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 9 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*As I noted briefly yesterday, Trump has rejected Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal and says there will likely be renewed bombing after the midterm elections.
President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.
Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.
But privately Trump was skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said.
After this article was published, a reporter asked Trump on Saturday about the offer. “I’m rejecting their deal,” he said
Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.
The level of strikes Trump is contemplating couldn’t be determined. He is reluctant to resume major combat operations, the officials said, partly because the U.S. wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies. But Trump has also announced massive attacks to push through diplomatic deadlocks in U.S.-Iran negotiations, sometimes following through but always stepping back from his most audacious threats, including wiping out the entirety of Iranian civilization.
Trump told the United Nations this week politics don’t enter his mind when aiming to pry nuclear fuel from Iran.
There was no mention of nuclear fuel in the proposed deal, at least so far as I know, and yes, Trump keeps flip flopping on war strategy. I keep saying that all he has to threaten to do is bomb Kharg Island, cutting off all of Iran’s oil supply to the West, and that might well turn the tide. But what do I know? I’m a biologist, not a pundit.
*Over at the WaPo, Henry Olson lists the ten Senate seats most likely to flip, and all, save the ones in Michigan and Iowa, he deems likely to flip to Democratic control. Given that there are 43 Democrats in the Senate (including independents who caucus with them) and 53 Republicans, a flip of just six of these seats would give Democrats firm control of the Senate.
North Carolina: North Carolina unsurprisingly tops my rankings. The Tar Heel State leans Republican in federal elections and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Kay Hagan in 2008. But most statewide races there are close, and the Democrats nominated popular two-term former governor Roy Cooper, who has led in polling all year. Some of that lead — he’s ahead of GOP nominee Michael Whatley by eight points in the RealClearPolitics average — is certainly because Whatley is still largely unknown to about a third of voters. But RCP has Cooper at 49.3 percent, and as long as he remains around the magic 50 percent mark, it will be hard for Whatley to win.
Ohio: Democrat Sherrod Brown appears on track to reenter the Senate two years after he was defeated by Republican Bernie Moreno. Throughout his career, Brown has run ahead of the Democratic trend, and polling has consistently put him ahead in this race by three to eight percentage points. Like many states with large agricultural sectors, Ohio seems to be swinging against Republicans this year.
Maine: [Susan] Collins has survived in this blue state only because she attracts many Democratic voters. She certainly can win again, but Trump’s low popularity will be a barrier to the levels of ticket splitting she needs, and this week brought a bombshell ProPublica report that until 2025 she had been a subject of an FBI bribery investigation (her office strongly denied any impropriety by the senator). . . One to watch, but Democrat Troy Jackson is the favorite.
Michigan: Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s well-known weaknesses give Republican Mike Rogers a shot to pull off a blue-to-red upset. Michigan has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, but Rogers came close in 2024. The big unknown: Will Michiganders who vote Democratic in other races abandon El-Sayed knowing his defeat could cost the party control of the Senate? It’s a good sign for El-Sayed that his support has been steadily rising since he won his primary on Aug. 4, but the race is far from over.
Alaska: It may surprise some readers to see Alaska this high on the list. But here’s another case of a good Democratic candidate combining with a good environment. Former congresswoman Mary Peltola beat a flawed Republican nominee and showed her crossover appeal by running five points ahead of Kamala Harris even when she lost in 2024.
Texas: Democrat James Talarico has been ahead in the last nine polls, but his lead still averages under three points. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the scandal-scarred GOP nominee, is flawed in the extreme. Will Republicans and GOP-leaning independents vote party over person?
Iowa: According to the polling, the race between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek is a dead heat. Hinson does not seem to be suffering as much GOP voter defection as other nominees, and she trails among independents by a smaller margin than her more endangered colleagues. It’s still a toss-up, but I join most raters in thinking Hinson is likelier to prevail.
New Hampshire: Republicans have reason to be excited about New Hampshire, where polls consistently show former senator John E. Sununu running ahead of expectations in this light-blue state. Three respected race raters have moved this one into their toss-up category. The fact remains, however, that New Hampshire is a highly educated, moderate state that has elected only one Republican to the Senate (Kelly Ayotte in the GOP wave of 2010) since President George W. Bush’s first term. It would be extremely strange if Sununu, who lost his reelection bid in 2008 to outgoing senator Jeanne Shaheen, can buck that trend in such a Democratic year.
Minnesota: Recent polling shows Minnesotaclose. The Democratic candidate, Peggy Flanagan, is very progressive, and as the sitting lieutenant governor she can be tied to the benefits-fraud scandal that destroyed Gov. Tim Walz’s career. Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, is a talented campaigner, and one cannot entirely rule out an upset. But it’s very rare for a candidate from a party likely to do poorly in a midterm to capture a seat in the opposing party’s column.
Georgia: After a narrow runoff win in 2021, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has turned himself into a fundraising powerhouse and dark-horse presidential contender. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Mike Collins has had trouble raising money and has been stalked by a series of controversies involving problematic staffers. Georgia is Republican enough that the GOP is spending to try to elevate Collins, but don’t be surprised if he gets cut off — triaged, in political parlance — in October.
A lot of this sounds like wishful thinking.
*Roxane Gay, writer and NYT contributing editor, has a column that is mixed, “The W.N.B.A should take care of its own” (archived here; the WNBA stands for “The Women’s National Basketball Association”). She’s right about the dominance of drama over basketball, but dead wrong about wanting trans-identified males to play long with the women.
The W.N.B.A. is having a moment.
As the league celebrates its 30th anniversary, the audience is growing exponentially, and the number of teams is expanding. After years of fighting tirelessly for fair wages and a successful strike authorization vote, the players’ union earned a collective bargaining agreement; for the first time, star players in the league have secured million-dollar contracts; the league minimum salary is now $270,000; and there are higher salary caps for teams.
For anyone watching the W.N.B.A. blossom over the past three decades, this has all been a long time coming, hard-earned and richly deserved. But alongside the growth and increased public attention, the league is also facing a pair of crises, not necessarily of its own making: how to welcome trans women, if and when it becomes necessary, and a rise in racism directed toward Black players. How the league and the players navigate that will determine its future, one made possible by a loyal fan base that is largely composed of the very people most vulnerable to those ideological attacks.
. . .The league, however, does not exist in a bubble. The former N.B.A. players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, in a bid to be provocative, declared in August for the 2027 W.N.B.A. draft. In doing so, they stated that they were going to identify as trans women so they could be eligible to play. Freedom has continued this farce, appearing on conservative media, desperately seeking the attention he was unable to garner in the N.B.A.
Freedom has mostly pushed the league to provide a definition of “woman,” a tired conservative talking point, presumably because he and White think they are cleverly revealing some flaw in inclusive logic. The W.N.B.A. has indicated that neither Freedom nor White is eligible, but the question of how to craft a fair and reasonable policy for trans women remains.
The Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham was vocal earlier this year about her beliefs that trans women shouldn’t play in the W.N.B.A. “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” Cunningham said in an ESPN interview. Her claims exploit one of the most popular attacks against trans women — the idea that women and girls are not safe around trans women.
That’s not my reason for opposing trans women (“trans-identified men”) playing in the WNBA. It’s that they have an unfair advantage over biological women. I agree with Cunningham.
. . . Thus far, there has been only one openly trans W.N.B.A. player — the talented Layshia Clarendon, who retired after playing for 12 seasons, and also identifies as nonbinary. Thus far the controversy has been entirely manufactured by people with no real connection to the trans community.
The author goes on about the preponderance of black and queer women in the WNBA, but I don’t see a reason why that should cause concern. And yes, there’s a rivalry that sometimes becomes physical between Caitlin Clark, white, and Angel Reese, black, and watching the WNBA I think there’s too much concern over that, though the physicality is horrific. If the WNBA is to hold our attention, we’ll have to concentrate not on that drama but on the sport. Speaking of which, one of the author’s maladaptive recommendations is this:
The W.N.B.A., as a league, should lead the charge for making space for trans women in women’s sports.
Does that mean that trans women should be able to compete in all women’s sports? If not, why just basketball? Yes, there was once a trans woman WNBA player, but that should be the last one.
*And, if you need more stupid kerfuffles in the culture wars, read the Free Press‘s column by Liel Leibovitz, “Why you should care that Aslan is a woman.” (The voice of an upcoming animation of “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” has the voice of the Jesus-lion Aslan spoken by Meryl Streep. And there’s the rub: the subtitle is “The decision to have Meryl Streep voice the character in the new ‘Narnia’ film is neither a stroke of brilliance nor a microaggression against conservatives. It’s much more profound and dangerous.” Seriously? Profound and dangerous?
In case you’ve never stepped through that famous wardrobe door and into C.S. Lewis’s magical world, you should know that Aslan is a lion and the King above all High Kings in Narnia. Why, then, would anyone mind if Streep—a lioness and the Queen above all High Queens of Hollywood—gives the big cat a new purring sound?
The usual pop pugilists, still licking their wounds from the fight over Christopher Nolan’s casting choices in The Odyssey, rose to offer the usual arguments. Gerwig, growled the culture warriors on the right, is feminizing a quintessentially male figure; they could overlook her decision to turn Ken into a bumbling bobo in Barbie, her previous film, but giving the mightily maned lion a bit of gender reassignment surgery is a step too far. Relax, cooed their counterparts on the left, this is Meryl we’re talking about here and, really, there’s no one that woman can’t brilliantly portray.
But a woman can’t play a man if that man is JESUS!:
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Aslan is meant to emulate. Any fifth grader could point toward Jesus—which is precisely what a class full of actual fifth graders argued in a letter to Lewis in 1954. The author, however, wrote back right away, telling the children they had it dead wrong.
“I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia,’ ” Lewis wrote from his office in Oxford Magdalen College. “I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that it is quite a different thing.”
As is usual with C.S. Lewis, I fail to grasp the distinction there. But let’s proceed:
Which, Lewis wrote again and again to anyone who broached the topic, was the entire point of the Narnia novels. Aslan wasn’t an allegory for Jesus; he really was Jesus. All the author did was project Christ into a different world, where, he told another correspondent, “He would really have been a physical object. . . as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than His death on Calvary.” And if little boys and girls walked away from the books loving Aslan, then the faithful author would’ve achieved his goal, because the one they were really loving was Jesus Christ Himself.
. . . The problem, then, isn’t merely that a woman can’t or oughtn’t play traditionally male roles, a retrograde worldview which, thankfully, none but our grimmest guardians of tradition still hold. The problem is that, while imagining Jesus as a lion merely explores an image already present in the Bible, Jesus’s maleness is an essential aspect of his being. A woman can’t play Aslan because Aslan is Jesus, and Jesus, the son of God, is male. To alter that fact is to make him precisely what he is not: an allegory that may be repurposed and redesigned at will.
. . . And an attack like that isn’t about just another cheeky casting decision or wild artistic choice. It’s a bold step toward telling American believers that their culture rejects them and their beliefs. Gerwig’s film, then, may be fun and entertaining and even moving. But to Aslan’s loyal followers, it will never be more than a deliberate assault on their core beliefs. And if we’ve learned anything from our repeated visits to Narnia, such assaults rarely go unanswered.
O horrors! We can’t let this happen, even though some people say that Jesus was trans or bisexual. But there’s a far more pressing question here. Why did Leibovitz, who said explicitly that he’s a religious Jew, care so much about this? Presumably, religious Jews don’t see Jesus as a savior or the Messiah. And why did the Free Press deem this worthy of publication?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili vehemently denies she’s praying. And of course she isn’t: she’s an atheist cat.
Me: Are you praying?
Hili: No, I’m talking to a spider.
In Polish:
Ja: Modlisz się?
Hili: Nie, rozmawiam z pająkiem.
*******************
From reader Michael Glenister, who saw this face in the back of a truck:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:
From Kitty Litterposting:
Masih calls attention to an Iranian woman who got the death sentence for helping move wounded protestors to hospitals:
Let me introduce you to Mahboubeh Shabani, a 33-year-old woman from Mashhad received death sentence.
During the January uprising, when protesters were shot and wounded in the streets, Mahboubeh used her motorcycle to take injured people to hospitals.
For this, she was arrested,… pic.twitter.com/Y7qTdIDdJF
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) September 26, 2026
From Luana: What was really suspended was the American Psychological Association’s authority to give or withhold accreditation. And it was a federal panel’s recommendation, based on the APA’s antisemitism, not a final decision. What does that accreditation panel do? The City Journal says this:
While the APA does not possess a formal legal monopoly on psychology education, in practice it exerts near monopolistic influence on professional training across clinical, counseling, and school psychology. This includes control over doctoral education, internships, and hospital and medical-center placements. The accreditation standards of the APA disproportionately shape the values and practices of the mental-health workforce in the United States.
BREAKING: An advisory panel on accreditation has recommended that the Department of Education suspend the American Psychological Association (APA) for 12 months amidst concerns about ideological standards on DEI, gender-related treatment, and especially antisemitism.
After…
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 25, 2026
From Jeff Maurer. Does this mean we can call them “Eskimo pies” again?
When I was a speechwriter, I was told by many American Indians that they call themselves “Indians”,* so I was constantly writing the word into speeches and then explaining my choice to disbelieving white people.
*But others don’t! https://t.co/j2InG2wn99
— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) September 25, 2026
Two from my feed. First, cat parkour:
yes, cats are truly amazing! pic.twitter.com/fDVP4owREo
— Kitty Cat Empire (@KittyCatEmpire) September 25, 2026
Always follow the cat:
After following a sign to “follow the cat,” they were guided around the corner directly to a bar table where the cat jumped up like a proper host.. Bro really works there..🐈🐾😅 pic.twitter.com/RX5pPLGlPU
— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) September 26, 2026
And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was six years old, and would be 89 today had she lived. https://t.co/wQn5uoQo7D
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 27, 2026
Two from Doctor Cobb, now in Seattle ’cause he’s famous. We know about the first one, but the announcement is funny:
New cat just dropped. Landed on its feet, it’s fine.
This worried the hell out of me, but all was right in the end. (I hope they didn’t squash it!)
Most riveting thing I've seen all week
— Oregon 🕎🎲 (@oregonthedm.bsky.social) 2026-09-25T14:51:42.276Z
Music for the day: The Four Tops sing “Ask the Lonely” as performed in Paris. This, along with James Brown’s performance at the TAMI Festival, is in my view the most soulful music ever recorded on video. Look at Levi Stubbs sweat as he belts it out!
As an elementary school kid in Israel I read C. S. Lewis and, like most kids in Israel, had no idea it was about Jesus. I loved it, obviously. Can’t we just enjoy this work on its own without the Christian background?
Of course we can, but that’s not what Lewis intended when he wrote the books.
“Bear with me, though some people aren’t bearing!”
Really? What is the matter with these people?
Re. “Yes, there was once a trans woman WNBA player, but that should be the last one.”
If I am not mistaken, there has not yet been a “trans woman” in the WNBA. Layshia Clarendon was “trans” in the sense that she “transitioned” from the category woman to the category non-binary (as was mentioned in the quoted piece; kinda like the track and field athlete Nikki Hiltz), but she was not a trans woman, i.e. a man identifying as a woman.
“Jesus’s maleness is an essential part of his being.”
Why is giving God’s son a female voice a bigger problem than giving God’s son the body of a lion? Is Jesus’ maleness really a more essential attribute than his humanness?
Of course, God is omnipotent, so he can beget sons with the bodies of lions if he wants. And the author would surely concede that God could beget a son with a female voice, if he wanted, too.
But that’s the real problem for the author: He believes God would never want a son with a female voice. And why? The answer is: because sons are male, by definition. And since the Bible says, “He made them male and female,” it follows that that God abhors beings with a mixture of male and female traits.
In short, what the author seems to be saying—without actually saying it—is that an Aslan with a female voice is an abomination, and thus a slap in the face to Bible-believing Christians and Jews, because God is anti-trans.
“But 35 years ago, jurors told The Post, Newsday, the Daily News and the Associated Press that the actual holdout was an unemployed man who wanted to keep the trial going so he could continue getting paid by the court for his civic duty.” LINK
Roxanne Gay is the cousin of Claudine Gay, famous Harvard plagiarist. Current pay $900K-ish.
Both “poor Haitian refugees” are actually scions of the Haitian concrete monopoly family, this in a country where everything is concrete, so spare a thought for the poor dears.
Roxanne Gay, a woman of size, “roomy”, is one of the most deeply poisonous individuals in American life. I mention her enormous size only as she has made it an issue in her Fat Acceptance stance.
I remember the cannibal murder of Tomkins Sq. Park (which used to be a very shady part of town that stocked the very best heroin if you weren’t eaten).
Top THAT Chicago! 🙂
D.A.
NYC
It is clear that the APA has been following the tracks of disciplines like anthropology and sociology in subjugating their intellectual efforts to various ideologies. The children’s trans controversy is one example, but antisemitism is the best one. The election of Lara Sheehi to the position of president of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, a division of the APA, is the best example. Whatever one’s opinion of psychoanalysis, it owes more to Freud than to Fanon, but Sheehi prefers to propagate the canon of Fanon in her work. And anyone who openly supported a terrorist organization like Hamas, which used children as suicide bombers, at the time of her election, and doubled down on her support after October 7, is hardly qualified to lead a clinical organization.
“the league is also facing a pair of crises, not necessarily of its own making: how to welcome trans women, if and when it becomes necessary, and a rise in racism directed toward Black players.”
Toward Black players? Seems to me the league’s biggest problem – by far – is racism directed at White players, namely Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham.
Lewis never tried to hide his Christian apologetics. They are quite apparent in the Narnia books as well as his sci-fi trilogy. That does not stop his books from being quite enjoyable, in my opinion. He was a good enough writer that one can read his books while ignoring the Christian allegories. And when I read the Narnia books as a child (given to me by a neighbor who was indifferently to religion; she had just noticed my love of fantasy books), the Christian allegories were quite apparent to me. I didn’t care.
Hostin’s claim that she was the holdout juror reveals her dishonesty, but even worse, her amorality, taking pride in a jury decision that is clearly wrong.
I suppose that threatening Iran with strikes to come after the election can’t hurt much. If Iran responds with concessions before the election—a highly unlikely outcome—fuel prices might go down and the Republicans might do better in November. If they don’t concede, little changes.
That’s probably the calculus. But you never know with Iran. They might escalate with something dramatic in an attempt to influence the election: an “October surprise” that could demand an immediate response.
After the election, Trump can either go ahead with strikes or deem them unnecessary and continue with the economic blockade and the blockade of Iran in the Strait. He has a lot of wiggle room.
The trans umbrella now covers everybody who goes all the way (hormones and surgery, a tiny minority) to men who wear women’s underwear. Trans keeps expanding to increase its numbers, though it’s still a small minority.
The WNBA player is a woman (adult human female) but claims she’s neither female nor male (“nonbinary.”) She is not trans, but the trans umbrella covers anyone who denies their sex.
AFAIK, no man has ever played in the WNBA. However, a few men are playing in the NWSL.
Another feminist brainwashed by trans ideology, Roxane Gay recently underwent bariatric surgery, so we’ll see if she remains a fat icon.
BTW, who is not bearing with you?? That’s ridiculous! Take all the time you need to heal.
Does Aslan in the new Narnia film have a mane? Perhaps the film-makers’ idea is that Aslan started as a lioness, and became a trans-male-lion, receiving the mane by medical intervention in one of Narnia’s affirmative care clinics.
I have long enjoyed C.S.Lewis’ evocative writing, in the sci-fi trilogy and in the allegorical fantasy “The Great Divorce”. Their Christian outlook never bothered me, any more than the frequent presence of the Greek gods disturbs modern readers of Homer.