Hello, and welcome to Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. Traffic lights, oysters, and underwear all sharing the calendar, which is a strange trio if you think about it too hard.
My calendar says it’s Work Like A Dog Day, Underwear Day, Oyster Day, Psychiatric Technicians Day, Traffic Light Day, and Dashcam Day. Work like you mean it, eat an oyster, thank a psychiatric tech, and check that your underwear drawer is in order before you hit the road — the dashcam’s rolling either way.
Today In History:
1858: The first transatlantic telegraph cable is completed, largely through the efforts of American merchant Cyrus West Field, instantly shrinking the communication gap between Europe and North America.
1858: Julia Archibald Holmes becomes the first woman on record to reach the summit of Pikes Peak, climbing in what she called her “American costume” of a short dress, bloomers, and moccasins.
1861: Congress adopts the nation’s first income tax to help finance the Civil War.
1864: Union Admiral David Farragut leads his fleet past Confederate defenses at the Battle of Mobile Bay, reportedly ordering, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
1884: The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal is laid on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor.
1914: The world’s first electric traffic signal is installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio — the very reason for today’s Traffic Light Day.
1924: The comic strip “Little Orphan Annie” makes its debut in the New York Daily News.
1962: Actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her Los Angeles home at age 36, her death ruled a probable overdose.
1963: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, banning nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater.
1981: President Reagan begins firing 11,500 striking federal air traffic controllers after they refuse to return to work.
Birthdays Today Include: Neil Armstrong, astronaut and first man to walk on the moon; Loni Anderson, actor (WKRP in Cincinnati); Patrick Ewing, NBA Hall of Famer; Marsai Martin, actor (black-ish); Taylor Momsen, actor/singer (Gossip Girl); John Huston, film director (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre).
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This landed in my inbox overnight, forwarded indirectly from Nathan Brand, and it took most of my first cup of coffee this morning to stop laughing at it. I won’t embed Piker’s video here — it’s exactly as charming as you’d expect — but if you feel like subjecting yourself to it, have at it. Here’s the gist: “Hasan Piker’s message to Democrats who didn’t vote for Abdul El-Sayed: ‘You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s**t.'”
Uh huh. So by this man’s lights, it’s “Islamophobic” to have questions about handing high office to a candidate whose religious tradition, even in its less than literalist strains, treats we infidels as legitimate targets for killing? Bold framing from a man who has never once, so far as I can find, applied that same standard of scrutiny to himself.
Here’s the thing that makes the timing genuinely delicious for me: Piker fired that off before the votes were fully counted. As of this morning (Indeed, mere moments before this piece went to press), Abdul El-Sayed actually is claiming victory in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary — a real, if narrow, victory over establishment favorite Haley Stevens, roughly 48.5% to 47.5%, with progressive activists packing Detroit’s Majestic Theatre to celebrate.
So the “unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s**t” Piker was so furious at weren’t even the deciding factor. Enough Michigan Democrats voted for El-Sayed anyway to hand him the nomination. Piker spent his rage on a fight the guy was already winning. That’s not activism, that’s performance art with decidedly worse manners.
For anyone who hasn’t been tracking Piker’s greatest hits, a little context on the man doing the name-calling: this is the same Hasan Piker who told a CNN panel that Hamas is, in his own words, “a thousand times better than Israel”. You remember Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, so designated not just by us, but by the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The same Piker who once said America “deserved” the September 11 attacks.
The same Piker who was recently caught on camera with El-Sayed and Rep. Summer Lee, all three of them reportedly proud of having refused to condemn the October 7 Hamas massacre. And when Bill Maher — a man who has spent decades needling every religion equally, including his own liberal tribe — declined to roll out the red carpet for him, Piker’s response wasn’t self-reflection. It was to call Maher an “Islamophobe” demonstrating “anti-Blackness,” in the same breath complaining that “this double standard exists in American politics. Islamophobia is oftentimes not considered at all.”
That last line is worth sitting with, because it’s the whole playbook in miniature: any criticism, any hesitation, any raised eyebrow gets flattened instantly into “phobia,” while the actual content of what Piker himself has said — cheering on a terror group, excusing an attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans — gets waved off as edgy commentary nobody’s allowed to bring up in polite company.
This is precisely the dynamic I have been writing about in this column for weeks now: the “socialism of fools” playbook, dressed up in fresh Gen-Z streaming clothes. Call the target’s judgment into question, and the target isn’t wrong, you’re bigoted. Refuse to appear alongside a man who’s excused a terrorist massacre, and you’re not exercising basic judgment, you’re “Islamophobic”. It’s the identical rhetorical shield we’ve watched deployed around antisemitism for years now, just with the labels swapped.
And Jewish Michigan Democrats noticed the pattern well before I did. Back in April, when El-Sayed first brought Piker onto campus at Michigan State and the University of Michigan, Hillel at MSU called Piker a “known antisemite” and said it was “deeply troubled” by his visit. A state representative pulled out of the rally entirely, citing her Jewish constituents’ concerns. None of that stopped El-Sayed. If anything, last night’s win rewards the strategy.
So here’s where we land: A candidate who wouldn’t distance himself from a man who’s excused a terrorist attack just won a major-party Senate primary in a swing state, and the man in question is out there this morning calling half the Democratic electorate slurs for having noticed.
The polling data is already showing the Republican Mike Rodgers up by significant numbers. PollingSource’s aggregate of the last 4 polls (90-day window) has Rogers up 45.5%–42%, rating the race “Lean R.” Meanwhile, the most recent single poll, EPIC-MRA (fielded July 24–31), has Rogers at 46%, El-Sayed at 43%. That’s the newest data point I’ve been able to find this morning, taken right before the primary.
Interestingly, the Michigan Education Association/Glengariff Group poll (commissioned by the teachers’ union, no endorsement in the race) found Rogers beating El-Sayed by a full 10 points, with 11% undecided. You would expect more glowing numbers for the radical from a poll commissioned by a teacher’s union. Even more interesting is that among independents specifically, that same poll found Rogers crushing El-Sayed 47% to 19%. That’s a revealing and brutal number if it holds, since independents typically decide Michigan statewide races.
It would appear that given the choice between “Islamophobic” and “correctly reading the room”, the latter seems to be winning out. And here’s the death blow: That 50/50 split among Democrats that got us to where we are this morning is bound to amount to less than 100% support among Democrats for Sayed in the general election.
Parting shot: Are the Democrats who vote for Sayed Republican-phobic?
Thought for the Day: As noted in Today In History, Admiral Farragut ordered full speed ahead through a minefield and won; most of the country’s problems today come from leaders doing the opposite. Full stop ahead of every obstacle, real or imagined.
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Take care of yourself today. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
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