TOP HOUSE DEM TO AMERICANS: SHUTDOWN PRODUCES SUFFERING ... BUT OFFERS CHANCE AT 'LEVERAGE' ... RAPID RESPONSE 47: @WhipKClark, the number two House Democrat, on the Democrat Shutdown: "Of course there will be families that are going to suffer... but it is one of the few leverage times we have." These people are SICK! (VIDEO)

News A Midsummer Night’s Dream Comedian Alice Lowe is Writing a Horror Version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream It’s all fun and games until you have a frickin’ donkey head. By Molly Templeton | Published on October 23, 2025 Screenshot: HanWay Film Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: HanWay Film Getting lost in a forest with a bunch of magical creatures who transform you, cast spells on you, and make you do unlikely things sounds moderately terrifying. Shakespeare just made it funny. Now, British comedian, writer, and actor Alice Lowe (Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace) is set to put her own scary spin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, turning the classic comedy of fairy meddling, weddings, transformations, and mistaken identities into something else entirely. Lowe told Deadline, “I wanted to make a classic and it struck me that A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I know so well, is always made in the same way over and over. It’s so genuinely funny. But also fey and fairies and blah blah blah. But I don’t see why it couldn’t be revisited with how terrifying and odd everything happens in it, and how the undercurrents are actually so dark and strange.” She’s not wrong. And to be fair, she’s not the first person to tweak Shakespeare in this way: Lowe follows in the footsteps of 2017’s A Midsummer’s Nightmare, a film I must admit I had never heard of before, despite the fact that it stars Paul Walter Hauser (Fantastic Four: First Steps) and Dominic Monaghan (The Lord of the Rings). It was apparently intended to be the pilot for a Lifetime series. There is also an early 2000s film called A Midsummer Night’s Rave, which I think is self-explanatory. I am somewhat more excited about Lowe’s project. Lowe is also writing and directing a film called Sprites, a horror comedy about which she said: It’s set in the early ’80s, which is a period that fascinates me. It’s a time when things were rapidly changing and I think the onset of the individualism that is today the mainstay of our psyches and society at large. . . . More so than today our parents would be saying one thing, but doing another. And it seems to me this was a kind of betrayal of contracts in families. So there was still a rigidity of behaving and conforming. A trust in institutions. Yet, society was starting to abandon those rules. Institutional abuse and misuse of those rules. And so, as a kid, you could slip through those cracks. So at its core it’s about being afraid of adults! Lowe’s last film was Timestalker (pictured above), the trailer for which was absolutely delightful. She co-wrote and starred in 2012’s Sightseers, which was directed by Ben Wheatley (Kill List). She was also in Hot Fuzz, Black Mirror, and The Mighty Boosh, but for many people the most important thing about her is that she starred in the beloved cult favorite Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. The series was created by Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness, who starred as a horror author (Holness) and his publisher (Ayoade). It is one of those series I have been told to watch for more years than I can count. Probably I should watch it. Probably you should too, in preparation for Lowe’s upcoming films. One does wish to be thorough.[end-mark] The post Comedian Alice Lowe is Writing a Horror Version of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> appeared first on Reactor.

After 65 years of socialist control, Cuba’s private sector has become the islands most unexpected victory for freedom. For decades, the Castro regime tried to convince the world—and its own people—that socialism was efficient, equal, and sustainable. But today, the model is collapsing under its own weight. Food shortages, blackouts, and mass emigration have exposed the truth: Socialism doesn’t work. What does work—and quietly transforms Cuba from within—is the entrepreneurial spirit of ordinary citizens who have stopped waited on the state. Many outside observers still don’t realize Cuba even has a private sector. The regime downplays it, terrified of what it represents: economic independence, self-reliance, and dignity. Yet since 2021, more than 10,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (MIPYMES) have been officially registered, according to the Cuba Study Group. These are not “oligarchs” or “elites.” They are everyday Cubans who have decided to hacer de tripas corazones—to turn scarcity into strength and survival into freedom.  The government recognized these enterprises after the historic July 11, 2021, protests, when thousands demanded libertad. The regime crushed the demonstrations with violence, but it could not suppress the deeper revolution underway: ownership and autonomy.  Havana’s recognition is far from genuine. Entrepreneurs face suffocating regulations, absurd taxes, and constant fear of confiscation. Imports are restricted, permits selectively denied, and the financial system is nearly unusable. It’s a system designed to punish success—the same socialist mindset that has bankrupted Cuba for decades.  Yet despite the obstacles, the private sector is thriving. Small and medium-sized enterprises now represent over 55% of Cuba’s entrepreneurial system—far surpassing the 2,500 state-owned enterprises—and account for roughly 14% of GDP. Their activities span construction, food production, hospitality, and manufacturing. Nearly half operate in Havana; the rest are spread across the provinces.  Forty-two percent of small and medium-sized enterprises evolved from previously self-employed workers (cuentapropistas), while 58% are entirely new ventures. There are now over 576,000 self-employed Cubans—far too many to all be connected to the military or Communist Party. Most entrepreneurs are ordinary citizens building livelihoods under impossible conditions.  They rely on creativity and limited resources to operate. Many employ neighbors, pay better wages than the state, and provide goods and services government stores no longer supply. These are not collaborators—they are survivors, innovators, and quiet dissidents. Traditional dissidents, brave and outspoken, remain essential. But not all resistance has to take the same form. In a country where speech is criminalized, sometimes the most radical act is economic independence.  The private sector is doing what decades of central planning never could: creating value, meeting real needs, and restoring personal agency. It drains the regime of what it fears most—control. It weakens the state’s monopoly, reclaims individuals from dependency, and fosters a new class of Cubans who think and act for themselves.  This is the slow erosion of totalitarianism—not through ideology, but through enterprise. After six decades of collectivized rule, Cubans are remembering what it means to be autonomous. They are reclaiming their dignity one business at a time. The future of Cuba is not being written in the offices of the Communist Party, but in the workshops, bakeries, and digital platforms of its private citizens.  And in that sense, after all these years—we’ve already won.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.  The post Cuba’s Private Sector Is Quietly Rewriting the Revolution appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democratic Whip: The Shutdown Is Our Fault

WSJ: Could Trump's Sanctions on Russian Oil End the War?

"If the object is an alien spacecraft slowing down, and the anti-tail is braking thrust, then this change from anti-tail to tail would be entirely expected near perihelion," Avi Loeb wrote, but there is a better explanation.

Americans are united in their belief that the smuggling of drugs into the country is a problem – and more approve of the Trump Administration’s strikes on boats carrying those drugs to the U.S. than oppose the tactic, results of a new national survey reveal. Just 4% of U.S. adult citizens, polled October 17-20 by The Economist/YouGov, say that smuggling drugs into the U.S. is “not a problem,” but two-thirds consider it to be a “major problem.“ Fully 86% of Americans say it’s either a major (64%) or minor (22%) problem for the nation. Another 10% aren’t sure. While the percent who consider drug smuggling to be a problem is consistent across political affiliations, Democrats are less likely to think it’s a major problem (53%) than are either Republicans (83%) or Independents (57%). To combat drug smuggling from the Caribbean, the U.S. military has begun conducting lethal strikes on the boats suspected of carrying those drugs to America, a tactic approved of by half (48%) of U.S. citizens and disapproved of by more than a third (38%). Here, the partisan divide is more pronounced, with Democrats and Independents more likely to disapprove than approve (62%-23% and 48%-34%, respectively) and Republicans far more likely to support the measure (87%-6%).

One of the Republican lawmakers targeted by the FBI during the previous administration is preparing to take several Biden officials to court, including Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by former Attorney General Merrick Garland on dubious legal grounds."There is absolutely nothing 'proper' about spying on your political opponents to further your own radical agenda," Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn noted on X. "This is further proof Jack Smith must be fully investigated and held accountable as soon as possible."'These guys just hated Donald Trump, and they hated us because we supported Donald Trump.'Earlier this month, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents from 2023 indicating that the FBI under the Biden administration obtained private cellphone records from Blackburn and eight other Republican lawmakers during its Arctic Frost operation — an investigation that ultimately morphed into Smith's federal case against President Donald Trump regarding the 2020 election.After a briefing by FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on the alleged surveillance scheme — which Grassley said was worse than Watergate — Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, one of the eight GOP senators targeted, said that "we were surveilled simply for being Republicans."Bongino indicated that the FBI obtained call logs from the affected GOP lawmakers' phone carriers for the period of Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021. Smith ultimately used and disclosed the records in his 2024 indictment of President Donald Trump.There now appears to be a reckoning under way. For starters, the FBI has canned several agents involved in Operation Arctic Frost and opened an internal investigation.RELATED: Exclusive: House Republican seeks criminal investigation into Jack Smith's alleged surveillance scheme Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesRep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and other Republican lawmakers have called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a criminal probe into Smith."The Biden administration used Operation Arctic Frost to target its political opponents by authorizing covert surveillance on elected members of the Republican Party," Brecheen told Blaze News last week. "We cannot let the Biden administration and special counsel Jack Smith get away with this direct violation of the Constitution."Meanwhile, Grassley has written to four telecommunications companies and five federal entities demanding answers about precisely which records were turned over to Smith as part of his elector case against Trump, noting that "there are serious constitutional questions that those communications are still subject to constitutional protections."Lawyers for Jack Smith, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, tried their best in a Tuesday letter to Grassley to spin the apparent surveillance of elected officials as benign and "lawful" data collection.'I can assure you this, we will be suing the Biden DOJ, Jack Smith, and his CR-15 team.'"A number of people have falsely stated that Mr. Smith 'tapped' senators' phones, 'spied' on their communications, or 'surveilled' their conversations," the lawyers wrote, according to the New York Times. "Toll records are historical in nature, and do not include the content of calls. Wiretapping, by contrast, involves intercepting the telecommunications in real time, which the special counsel’s office did not do."The lawyers further characterized the covert effort to find out who the Republican lawmakers were speaking to and when as "entirely proper, lawful, and consistent with established Department of Justice policy" and claimed that Smith was authorized to seek the records by the Biden Justice Department's Public Integrity Section.Breuer and Koski apparently engaged in some mental gymnastics to play off the alleged surveillance scheme as business as usual, comparing it to two instances where the targets were themselves under criminal investigation, namely former President Joe Biden during the classified documents probe and former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), who was convicted on bribery charges."Mr. Smith’s use of the toll records as Special Counsel was lawful and in accordance with normal investigative procedure," wrote Smith's lawyers.Upon receipt of the letter, Grassley wrote on X, "SMELLS LIKE POLITICS."Blackburn told Just the News that she will be suing Biden DOJ and FBI officials who targeted her, Smith in particular.The senator suggested that the 2023 grand jury subpoena of phone records violated her First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy; her separation of powers protection as a senator; and potentially the Stored Communications Act because Verizon, her telecommunications carrier, allegedly turned over information pertaining to where she was when she made calls. "We know that they pulled what is called the toll data, that is every call we either made or received, the duration of the call, the individual and the number that it was to and from, and then also the physical location where we were when that call was either made or received," said Blackburn."I can assure you this, we will be suing the Biden DOJ, Jack Smith, and his CR-15 team, which, of course, has already been fired by [FBI Director] Kash Patel, thank goodness," noted the senator. "These guys just hated Donald Trump, and they hated us because we supported Donald Trump and we were standing with Donald Trump."In addition to wanting to take Smith to court, Blackburn has expressed an interest in seeing the former special counsel disbarred.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Once upon a time, science fiction was a brand-new, chrome-shiny phenomenon rocketing across the sky of the American pulp fiction scene.As the borderlines of the Industrial Age were just beginning to blur against those of the incoming Information Age, early sci-fi envisioned societies, worlds, and even whole universes filled with possibilities. Action and adventure, intrigue and mystery, horror, romance, humor … you could get it all within the pages of the latest edition of your favorite science fiction magazine.The science fiction I read today — and I do read a ton of it — is mostly bleak and drab and too often just really sad.Rockets, robots, ray gunsThe magazine titles themselves – Amazing Stories, Fantastic Mysteries, Astounding Stories, If: Worlds of Science Fiction — were a good clue. And if ever there was a time to judge a book by its cover, you could feast your eyes on plenty of rockets, ray-gun-wielding cheesecake girls, and delightfully clunky robots (pronounced ROW-BUTTS, for you science fiction radio neophytes out there).Fantastical machines driven by atomics and imagination whirred and ground within the frameworks of massive Earth-built spaceships — said ships filled with men bent on surviving each harrowing encounter with alien monsters so as to be there for the next one. Often as not, there’d be one woman aboard, as well, to be the love interest for the main character (she was usually the captain’s daughter, too, and thus forbidden fruit).But hey, maybe early military sci-fi wasn’t your thing. That was okay, because you could flip through a few pages, pass an ad telling you why your doctor probably recommended Camel cigarettes above all others, and step into some post-atomic-war scenario where the mutants are on our hero’s tail. Or perhaps you’d seek out the story where a band of intrepid big-game hunters time-travel back to go on a dinosaur safari.This was the golden age of science fiction, and depending on who you ask, it lasted until maybe the 1980s, when it began to be subsumed in popular media by new forms such as the techno thriller (con grazie, Michael Crichton) and when most of the remaining energy from this multimedia juggernaut filtered upward into giant television and movie vehicles — most notably "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Wars."Stardate: 1966Now, if you’ve read this far, you’re clearly just fine with a gross amount of oversimplification. That’s good — I like you. So let’s keep it going as we round the third corner into my actual point.Somewhere along the line, things in science fiction started getting sociopolitical. And at first, that wasn’t so bad. "Star Trek: The Original Series" (the 60s-era "Trek" upon which later installments of the franchise was based) tackled issues like racism, sexism, and the futility of war. By the time its successor show came around, writers and producers were tackling sticky issues of the day like racism, sexism, the futility of war, and (kind of) the then-nascent sociopolitical honey trap of transsexualism.Meet the futureCenturies changed.In the wake of Y2K’s sputtering burp of a soliloquy on mankind’s technological Tower of Babel not coming down after all — and, of course, a couple of real towers coming down in horrifying and history-altering fashion — Americans moved into a new age without really realizing it. It was (and still is) an age of realized technology, where internet reached far more functional speeds, supercomputers began fitting in our pockets, electric cars became a real thing, rockets started going into space for fun again, and social media introduced a whole new way for humanity to wage war against itself.In short, we finally had almost everything the golden age of science fiction dared us to dream about.Planet PronounAnd then, along came wokeness.Far be it from me to lay before you here a comprehensive history of what that has meant for society so far. I am unqualified to do so, and my guess is you’re aware of most of it. But perhaps one of the lesser-known zones of infection for the aptly named woke mind virus is almost the entire world of science fiction.Woke got "Star Wars." Woke got "Star Trek." Woke got other movies and television series. And hey, remember all those words ago when we were talking about science fiction magazines? Many of them are still around … and woke got them too. If you check out Asimov’s, or Clarkesworld, or Escape Pod, or any of the dozens of sci-fi magazines still extant out in the pulp literary world, I’m going to give you about an 85%-90% chance of primarily encountering tales tied directly to identity politics. It has very nearly completely captured the industry.RELATED: All good sci-fi is religious CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesAnd let me be clear: It’s not my intention to suggest that the pronoun folk shouldn’t have a seat at the sci-fi table — if anything, many of the things they have to say in their stories probably belong in that genre more than just about any other.But I also think that — particularly on the conservative end of the sociopolitical spectrum and increasingly on the liberal end — we have to face the fact that "intersectional" thinking at large and wokeism in particular are breeding grounds for many of the darker things humanity is capable of creating. The science fiction I read today — and I do read a ton of it — is mostly bleak and drab and too often just really sad. This is not to say there aren’t some phenomenal woke writers — I encounter them frequently. But you can be a great writer and still depress your reader to no end. Just ask John Steinbeck. Author Josh Jennings and his book, 'Space Tractor." Getty Images/Josh Jennings'Tractor' beamA few years ago I found — at random — a science fiction masterpiece called "The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast." It’s a professional recapturing of the golden age of science fiction, and it’s been delighting me ever since by taking me back to when science fiction wasn’t just well written; it was well intentioned, in most cases. As a reader and listener, I can feel it feeding the fertile ground of my imagination, while also often inspiring me to have hope for the future of humanity … and spurring me to do my part in creating that future.As a writer, I am inspired to make sure that we Americans can experience a new golden age of science fiction. To that end, I’ve made a modest contribution in the form of my new book: "Space Tractor and Other Science Fiction Short Stories." It came out October 16, on my birthday. If you’re like me and you miss that bygone era — but you’d also like something with modern flavor to it — well … I would humbly submit that my book might be just what you’re looking for.From space battles to alien abductions, from blasted post-apocalyptic wastelands to colonized asteroids with farmers running drugs (as in the title story), from alien villagers’ concept of the afterlife coming true to planets that can fit inside your pocket … this book truly has something for everyone.Except maybe the pronoun people — although I hope you can find something you like, too.Read an excerpt of "Space Tractor" here.